#so far she's been excessively rational even when everything around her is on fire | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

retvenkos · 4 years ago

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“and we were destroyed before we were made whole.”

A/N: the amazing @brokenandheadoverheels asked me to talk about my mc for blades of light and shadow so here we gooooooo

@bladesappreciationweek, Day 7: MC + Wild Card SOME GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT OLINDA, MY BLADES OF LIGHT AND SHADOW MC...

background: while i do like the mc’s original background, sometimes you have to disregard canon for the drama of it all. so.... just kind of disregard the “bandits killed my parents” storyline.

she’s a human - more about her look here

she and her family lived on the outskirts of riverbend - they were humble farmers, working the land, and they were old friends with kade’s family.

when olinda is five, there’s a drought.

it hits right right before crop season, and nothing can grow. droughts in morella are rare, but when they hit, they last for a long time - years. the crown is expected to have resources saved in the event of these

king arlan, a man of excess and pride, blew through a lot of morella’s saved resources throwing the most elaborate of banquets to get nobles on his side, rather than his twin brother

(who was the more popular of the two but younger by just a few minutes, denying him a birthright that many would have loved to see challenged.)

when the drought hit, it was a crisis that needed averting.

the position of king’s advisor was a revolving door because arlan was intent on finding someone who could fix this problem, without having to negotiate with orcs or elves or (even worse) send expeditions beyond morella’s borders to hopefully find aid in the people only spoken of in stories and legends.

charlatans, arlan thought, there was no possible way that there could be a species of people more intelligent and more capable than his own.

eventually, one advisor of the dozens suggested encroaching on private land in the southeast - a place where the drought was suspected to have hit less. those lands were all privately owned because long ago, the land was gifted to brave men who served on the front lines of a war, but that was long enough ago that few remember it. besides, it’s already farming country, most of it. it’s been mostly forgotten. the idea was to take back the land, get the most fruitful harvest they could, and give the biggest rations to those in Whitetower - the home of all the nobles. the nobles wouldn’t care enough to check to see how the poorer parts of the nation were doing, and as long as their bellies were full, they would support arlan.

arlan agrees that the plan is engenius. so how do they decide to steal land from innocent, hard working farmers? by taxing them, of course!

so one day, kingsguard marches up to houses, declaring an emergency increase in taxes. when the struggling farmers inevitably fail to pay, they seize the property. and if anyone is to put up a fight, they’re jailed for their crime. there are a few “aggressive” farmers who put up a fight, and a few are killed or gravely injured. the crown manages to hush it up for the most part, and due to such aggression, they have reason to strip many others of their property.

it’s terrible, and a little prince named aerin sees what is happening and cries, one night. his brother baldur laughs and whispers “you’re just as weak as they are. i’d be careful you aren’t next.”

there is much unrest in the rural parts of the kingdom, and during this time, kade, his mother, his lame uncle, and a former neighbor move in with olinda’s family. together, they are resourceful enough to scrape up enough for the high taxes, and because their property has always been less fertile than those around them, they are overlooked.

for two years, the makeshift family survives, going to sleep without food in their bellies, selling their valuables and conserving as much as they can. no one knows when the drought is going to end, and until it’s truly over, they have to be careful.

kade’s uncle passes

one of olinda’s parents dies, something like pity for those who live on their face

when spring comes around again, it’s mostly dry. one night it rains, and olinda and kade dance in the downpour, ignoring their family telling them they’ll get sick.

it’s still a painfully dry season, and everything is dry enough that if it were to be lit on fire, the whole countryside would burn before you could make it to the river to get water.

during the day, the family works and the children are left to themselves - sometimes assigned menial tasks but mostly just left to roam with the strict warning to never step foot on a neighbor’s property. most of it belonged to king arlan, now, and if they were caught, they would lose a hand.... and perhaps something more.

olinda was mischievous, though, and kade was nothing if not the person to egg her on. together, they got very good at sneaking through the trees, using their own renditions of bird calls to play and tease the other.

one day, during their usual games, kade raced to olinda, cheeks blotchy, and told her he found an apple tree. olinda thinks it’s just another one of his tricks (“you’re always turning shadows into boogeymen and clouds into dragons.”) but kade insists.

“show me, then.”

“well...”

“see? i knew it was a lie.”

“it isn’t! it’s just... well, it’s on one of the king’s farm.”

“so?”

“you know we can’t get close to those farms!”

“you did if you saw apples.”

“well... they were sort of small. and definitely not ripe.”

“did you see them or not?”

“i did!”

“so you can take me back.”

“but, olinda—”

“kade, all of this land belonged to us before it belonged to them. those are our apples. besides, we’re not going to eat them - we’re just going to take a look.”

they decide to go after night fall. no one will be out in the fields that late at night, and their parent’s won’t know they’re gone.

but in true seven year old fashion, they don’t realize that it’s going to be too dark to actually see the apples from a distance.

olinda convinces kade to take them closer - onto the property so that he can prove they’re actually there.

when they get close enough to the tree to properly tell, kade’s stomach growls and olinda says they’ve already come this far - they might as well take some.

they take three apples and stop to eat them in the woods before they go home. the apples are terribly unripe and pitifully small, but they eat all three and lick their sticky hands clean. kade insists on planting the seeds, despite the drought, and so it’s well into the night by the time they start to make their way back home.

i believe it’s the light they saw first. the heat was already unbearable, that time of year, and the ash was too akin to dust and dirt for their young minds to reason.

when they saw the fire, kade was the first to run. he made it far on his spindly legs before a coughing fit overwhelmed him and he staggered backward.

their house and all their crops were on fire

burning before their eyes.

olinda was the first one to remember what their parents had always said, in case a fire should start. she pulled kade to the place where they were to wait - a wooded area that was far away enough to hopefully be safe, but close enough that they could watch their world burn to the ground.

their parents weren’t there, and for some reason, olinda thought that they would come

kade’s mother was probably just trying to pull on her shoes or something. they would meet them there - just like they always said they would.

olinda waited all night for them to come, even when kade knew they weren’t coming

part of her is still waiting.

farmers and the king’s guard were the ones to put out most of the fire, and for some reason, it rained that night - barely more than a sprinkle, but enough to dampen olinda and kade’s clothes and enough to calm smouldering ashes.

by that time, it was too late - the fire ravaged the area and much was lost. their house was burnt down, and some time in the morning, olinda and kade crawled back to its foundations, finding very little in its wake.

they ash stuck under their fingernails and collected in their throat. kade was coughing from how thick it was, and olinda rubbed his back, as though trying to ease the pain that ate at him.

who started the fire, olinda and kade would never know. bandits, some said, the hungry, thought others. some people even blamed the drought itself.

but aerin knew. he had heard his father and baldur speaking through a crack in the door about two families who they couldn’t oust from their land. they somehow managed to keep up with the tax - no matter how high they pushed it. they were survivors.

baldur (barely ten, at the time) expressed that everyone could be crushed, somehow. “can’t they just burn?” he had asked, with something dangerous in his eye.

arlan had thought for a moment, and eventually said something about how legend said a phoenix could rise from the ashes. perhaps the land could, too. he then patted his son’s head and left, a swish of furs and jewelry.

a nearby farmer went over to the burned ruins in the morning to make sure nothing was left burning, and when he found two kids, he put them in his cart and took them to riverbend - the failing town nearby.

he brought them into the pub, and the town christened two new orphans - nowhere children, they called them.

riverbend knew a lot of tragedies, and orphans with nothing to their name were called what they were - children who came from nowhere and were going the same.

the farmer couldn’t feed two more hungry mouths. neither could anyone else, for that matter. the pub owner said they could watch them for a week or two - then they’d become someone else’s problem.

kade seemed to be sick, after the fire. he was paler, feverish in the dreadful heat, and the bright look in his eye was fading.

it was olinda’s eighth birthday when someone new came to the pub. he was a weathered looking man - younger than he seemed and tired - the pub owner seemed to know him, and kade and olinda were introduced to him, not too long after his arrival.

he had been a nowhere child, once. he still was, really, with very little to his name. but he was working as a blacksmith and a farmhand at some place nearby. he didn’t have money for two kids - especially when one of them looked like a ghost - but he had a debt to pay forward. he figured this was the way to do it.

“but you’re going to earn your keep - you hear me?”

kade simply coughed

“i can earn it for the both of us.”

and the man nodded at olinda, something dark in his eyes “yeah, i reckon you can”

and olinda did well.

having lived on a farm her whole life, any task she needed to do was a quick study, and having been born from tragedy and drought, she was constantly working, used to the grime beneath her fingernails and the sweat that lingered on her brow.

olinda was strong and worked in the fields, and kade was smart and helped count money and barter with vendors in town. his sickness never really left him, it lingered in him always, but most days it wasn’t bad. he worked as best he could, but much fell on olinda’s shoulders.

when olinda was 9, the drought was over. four years later, and things were growing again. the taxes stayed high for a while, but at some point, word started to get out that arlan had suspiciously high taxes on certain farming regions, and whispers of when they were imposed started. arlan’s twin brother seemed to be currying favor with the king’s privy council.

the taxes lowered again.

fear didn’t leave the hearts of the farmers, though. they knew what had happened, and they knew how vulnerable they were. olinda and kade grew up alongside fear and ruin, and it would stick with them for the rest of their lives.

when olinda and kade were 10, kade’s sickness flared up again, this time far worse than anything olinda had ever seen.

riverbend had a name for this, too - ghost sickness. a way the dead damn the living for having survived when they shouldn’t have. a way the dead promised to claim kade soon.

but olinda had already lost too much to lose kade, too.

she worked all day - harder than before to account for kade’s lack of work - and at night, she would pretend to sleep but really stay up, listening to his coughs to see if they got worse, and making sure he was breathing, when he finally did fall asleep.

the townsfolk told kade stories during this time, and the bard in him was born. he was always a charismatic speaker, and now, with such fanciful tales... it wasn’t just pity that earned them free bread.

during this time, an anger festered in olinda. all of life was so cruel to her and kade. it took everything from them when they were so young, and now it threatened to take away what little she had fought so hard to build.

by 13, olinda would get into fights with other kids her age. they looked at her funny because she was a nowhere girl with a dying brother, and she was tired of it. she would give them a reason to respect her, if they needed it.

the farmer that had taken them in (and still cared for them, the three drifting here and there, wherever they could find work) found out.

he advised her to take out her anger on things other than people, but also taught her proper form. he told kade, once, when they thought olinda was asleep, that he knew that anger far too well - it was bound to come out, at some point.

by 15, kade began to get his strength back. he was still thinner and weaker than most, but he lost the pallor to his skin and he could hold a meal and get through a day of activity.

the farmer they lived with died when kade and olinda were 16, and once again, it was just the two of them.

olinda could do most everything by now - she was a decent blacksmith, a skilled farmhand, a fisher, a rudimentary carpenter, a fletcher, a leatherworker... kade joked that if she ever wanted to be a gladiator she could.

point is, she was decent at a lot of things, explaining why she was able to so easily pick up skills during the book.

kade, on the other hand, was an entertainer with the added skill of having an encyclopedic knowledge on random things (like, he knows what flora and fauna are safe to eat or he knows a crazy amount of geography and can use maps really well). he also knows elf and orc languages - all thanks to the people who would keep him company, at his bedside.

it’s a big superstition in morella that one of the few ways to wash away your sins is to appease the dying. they are close to the veil and if you visit them when are in between, they will remember you and give you blessings, later on.

kade also worked as a peddler for a while, selling things that olinda made while drifting from here to there. they traveled a bit between small towns, staying at pubs and inns. kade often charmed them a decent meal for cheap and at the end of the night, olinda got them kicked out for brawling.

they always came back to riverbend, though, never going far. despite not having a home, they seemed to be tethered to riverbend, like they had unfinished business, there.

personality/relationships:

as you can see, olinda is a little more.... pugnacious and rough around the edges than the actual mc for blades.

she’s seen how terrible this world is to the best of people, and she has had to bear the brunt of misfortune on her shoulders from very young. it’s only natural that she have some of that anger in her heart.

olinda may not believe in the goodness of the world, but she has hope for it, yet. that’s all because of kade’s stories - he would tell them to her every night and make her swear that she wouldn’t give up on the world, and at some point, olinda started to believe that maybe things weren’t so hopeless, after all. it was just their poor luck that landed them where they were.

this also means, though, that olinda is extremely caring and sensitive when it comes to those who are suffering. she would rather die than turn her back on someone in need, and this will put her in sticky situations over the course of her journey.

olinda doesn’t really see herself as a hero - she would like to save the world, but she has only ever been a nowhere child, and nowhere children don’t go anywhere. she thinks it would be amazing to do something grand - something that could change the world, but she truly doesn’t think herself capable

it takes a lot of prodding to get olinda to realize the weight of her actions and the possible outcome, and when she realizes that what she is doing could truly change the world, she has a hunger and thirst to prove herself.

olinda always gives 100% to whatever she’s doing, and it can often come at her detriment. when she’s given the chance to be more, she seizes it - damn the consequences.

olinda doesn’t have a lot of friends or close relationships - she has lost everyone who has ever gotten close, and part of her wonders, especially when kade looks sick, if it’s her. maybe she curses whoever comes near.

when olinda first meets nia she is baffled by her innocence. it’s not refreshing nor is it something that angers her - it’s just confusing. and maybe, at some point, olinda envies nia for her rosy view of the world. to nia, fire is just fire; it’s not a burning funeral pyre that haunts her dreams. to nia, sickness is just sickness; it’s not a vengeful ghost ripping away the one good thing she relies on. to nia, shadows are just shadows; they’re not something she has been running from ever since she was seven years old. olinda wants a bit of that. and maybe she’s worried that she will ruin nia, if they were to ever become closer than travel companions.

nia definitely teaches olinda the beauty in the world. kade taught olinda beauty in the past and the possible future, but he could never teach her to love the beauty of the present. nia does, slowly but surely. she shows her how things manage to grow, despite the world conspiring against them. she shows olinda how this world is still good, deep down. there is always light, with nia, and when she instills that view in olinda, it’s important.

when meeting mal, olinda immediately saw something of a kindred spirit - he was clearly damaged, too, this world against him from the beginning. they were both survivors looking for their family but while still being afraid of letting others close. although mal seemed to hide his damage better. instead of righteous fury, mal was ambivalent, and olinda wanted desperately to learn how he did it. olinda quickly learned though, that mal was an avoider - he didn’t let things roll over his shoulders, he jumped to the side before they could get to him. together, these two get some therapy and learn to take this world without letting it change them.

what i absolutely adore about their relationship is that they are both constantly teaching each other new skills. mal teaches olinda how to throw knives and how to be sneaky and she teaches him how to set traps or how to make a scabbard for his knives. they are constantly trying to one up each other by knowing how to do more things or being better at select skills, but it’s just friendly competition that keeps the other on their toes.

when it comes to tyril, olinda is less than enthused. these two had the hardest time getting along, and it all kinda stemmed from tyril being like,,,, “don’t slow me down” and olinda is like,,,,,, you invited yourself??? but also, i think that he reminds olinda a lot of the farmer that took her and kade in, so it’s a wound that tyril unwittingly hits. but also, tyril and olinda both know that the other is useful, and part of them knows to make a person who has the most potential of becoming a future enemy a friend, first, so that’s why they swallow their pride to reach out. they’re both headstrong, but they also both have deeper wounds, and that connects them. it’s like,,,,, i see you and i respect you, but if you weren’t on my side, i would not hesitate to end you.

i think that olinda and tyril eventually become great partners on the battlefield - they work in sync really well because they are both a little self sacrificing in their melee attack, and they are both fairly versatile. they definitely work well together, and they definitely teach each other patience. and don’t get me wrong - they have their soft, vulnerable moments together, but they’re too similar to be good for each other™

this leaves me to talk about imtura, who definitely vibes with olinda. they both do what they have to do, and while it infuriates olinda that imtura doesn’t open up much (she’s surrounded by kade and nia in the beginning, who are like - do you want to know my tragic backstory? i’ll tell you right now, even if you don’t want it. then, mal is willing to tell some parts, and tyril is just tyril. olinda is 90% sure that he doesn’t even have a past, he just has vague allusions. imtura just shutting her down right away because she doesn’t feel like it? blasphemy.) olinda respects imtura. they’re both self-made women trying to find their way through this world, and they both learn to really lean on each other.

funnily enough, olinda teaches imtura to let her soft side out. olinda “i will fight you if you so much as look at me wrong” teaches imtura to be vulnerable. it’s weird. but, olinda is big on emotions - harsh and vulnerable, so she teaches imtura to express those more. imtura teaches olinda when to let that anger simmer, without flying off the handle. think first, then pull out your axes. they do wonders for each other’s emotional maturity.

oh! i think i should mention aerin. at first, olinda is against aerin and baldur. she does NOT want to have to take care of two princes who have lived sheltered lives and are the reason she lost her family. however, it’s much easier to hate baldur and something about aerin reminds olinda of kade.... a smart, bookish boy who’s lonely and doesn’t mean much to anyone, in this world. the two definitely bond, (and while i chose some of the romance options just to see) they only become friends. it’s crushing when he betrays them, and for a moment, olinda is afraid that maybe when she finds kade, he’ll be the same.

random thoughts:

olinda has a fear of fire. her eyes follow it’s tongues very carefully and she’s always double checking that it gets put out. the company figures this out fairly early on, and nia is almost always the one to very pointedly put it out. the first time, she made a big show of it, and everyone laughed, but olinda thought it was very sweet.

it’s kind of a joke, now, that whenever anyone puts the fire out, they make some very pointed comment. olinda always rolls her eyes, but she won’t deny that she does sleep easier, now.

it’s 100% an inside joke between olinda and tyril that they make up the most outlandish constellations - all stemming back from that time they talked about kade making up constellations. tyril made up a constellation once while on the road, stretching his imagination to cheer up olinda. nia tried to (sweetly and carefully) correct tyril, but he insisted until olinda realized what he was doing and smiled. together, they’ve made up some pretty good ones, and when kade joins the group, he makes up stories for each constellation they make.

mal is a pickpocket, and one of the first things he ever taught olinda was that skill. they like to have little competitions to see who is the better pickpocket (tyril was the final level and the hardest to pickpocket), and at one point, the game changed to sneaking things into people’s pockets. mal slipped olinda a love letter once and it was vvv sweet. olinda will sometimes jokingly mock him for it, but we all know she enlisted kade to help her write one back.

imtura and olinda spar! they do it all the time, and even though imtura wins most of the time, they both maintain that it’s a tie - they’re both too good.

also, olinda 100% makes imtura a new gauntlet - it’s a collaborative process. imtura chose what she wanted it to look like and what materials she wanted and olinda made it for her, trying to teach imtura, but imtura was terrible at it.

olinda has long hair, and nia taught her how to do really intricate braids. my girl used to just tie it up into a bun or ponytail, getting all kinds of tangles. nia was rightfully appalled and taught olinda how to braid her hair nicely.

the whole company has definitely braided each other’s hair.

the only one allowed to touch imtura’s hair is nia, and tyril would rather die than let mal touch his hair, but all of them know how to braid hair and you cannot tell me that they haven’t helped each other tie their hair back before going into battle

tyril is the worst at telling stories, and it’s a joke within the whole company. whenever they’re all hanging out after dinner, they tell stories and at least one person tries to tell a story terribly, seeing if they can do it worse than tyril

at first this super annoyed tyril, but now he will correct people’s terrible stories, making them even worse by revising the story and cutting out entire chunks or just interrupting them, saying the premise is already too interesting.

the exact opposite happens with mal - his stories are all incredibly detailed, but they’re all the same

the company tries to make a “mal story” that checks off all the cliches

contessa?

poorly timed winks?

a daring escape that is 100% fake?

an increasingly large diamond?

a charming disguise?

nia is actually really good at coming up with the most outlandish stories. mal is very proud.

speaking of nia, this woman did not know how to cook. imtura teaches her, and it’s actually really sweet. everyone thought nia was going to get queasy at gutting a fish, but she was oddly okay with it.

imtura gets really connected to her culture later on, so the whole company knows orcish sayings and the know a lot of the customs. it’s very sweet.

olinda is actually really bad at flirting, so mal is constantly trying to give her “tips” which is really just an excuse to hit on her. tyril hates it, nia is slightly scandalized, and imtura joins in on the fun.

olinda is actually scarily good at deception, though, and she teaches nia, which scares the whole company.

AND FLUFF ENSUES.

-- taglist: @musicallisto, @missameliep // message me if you want to be added!

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harrypotterwholock · 3 years ago

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A sodier's guilt

Summary:

Jordan and TC are happy to find out that she is pregnant. However, after an accident at an emergency call, things start to go downhill.

Part 1 of a series.

Jordan was overjoyed. Though the child hadn't been planned, a bond had been formed between her and TC as soon as she told him the big news. They were parents now. "Are you kidding me?" He had said. "No, TC.", She said with tears in her eyes. "We're having a baby!" With that, all his doubts were overcome. He took her in his arms and whirled her in a circle. "I'm so happy Jordan, I can't believe it!" But then he immediately fell back into his role as a doctor and asked her worriedly. "Have you been to the doctor? We have to have all the examinations done immediately! " Jordan laughed and put her hand on TC’s chest. “Take it easy, Cowboy, I only took the test half an hour ago. We'll manage everything. " Since then, the two had spent all of their time preparing for their future role as parents, and now Jordan was three months pregnant. Although TC himself was very much a risk-taker, he had tried everything to prevent her from going on missions, but she had opposed him. “No, TC, I can continue to do my job as normal. Nothing will happen to me and nothing will happen to the baby either. " TC had objected most sharply, but eventually, he had to give in and has accompanied her on all of her missions ever since to ensure her safety. Meanwhile, Jordan was annoyed by his excessive care but somehow she also thought it was sweet to see a cautious side of TC, who otherwise rushes into battle without thinking.

That way, the two were on a mission together today. A boy was shot by his alcoholic father. Jordan and TC were sent to the scene as emergency doctors. TC had only agreed to the operation because the police did not assume that the perpetrator would come back. But still, his tension was visible. “Jordan, I really don't think it's good that you're here. Please stay here in the ambulance while I take care of the boy. I don't want anything to happen to you or the baby. " Jordan sighed in exasperation. “TC, I think it's really cute how you care for me, but I have to do my job. I'm not in the last trimester, and after all the examinations, the baby is also doing great! " The car stopped, and the paramedic got out. Jordan turned away from TC and got out of the car. Cursing, TC followed her and ran ahead to the boy, who was lying in the front yard of a row house. The father apparently shot him in the open air. Jordan reached the patient first. "What's his name?" She asked the desperate mother. "His name is Peter. Oh god, please help my boy! I don't want him to die! " Jordan put a reassuring hand on the mother's shoulder. "We will give our best. Please move a little to the side so that we can take care of Peter. ” TC knelt next to the boy. “Hello Peter, my name is Dr Callahan, and this is my colleague Dr Alexander. We will take care of you now. " TC removed the boy's T-shirt with scissors and examined the gunshot wound. Apparently, the shooter hadn't hit anything vital and missed the shoulder bone. The boy would recover quickly. “The injury looks good, Peter. You will be back on your feet very quickly. "Said TC and winked at the boy. Peter didn't answer and groaned in pain. "I'll give him morphine, his vital signs are stable." Jordan said, drawing up a syringe. TC prepared the stretcher and lifted the boy onto it. “Come on, let's get out of here as soon as possible. The shooter has still not been caught. Just at that moment, another shot rang out, and Jordan screamed, falling to the ground. She lay on her side and pressed her hand to her stomach. The shooter hit her. "T-TC, he hit the baby," she said before passing out. A wild exchange of fire rang out in the background as the police tried to incapacitate the perpetrator. "Take care of the boy, he is stable enough and does not have to be transported immediately." TC instructed the paramedic. "I have to take Jordan to the San Antonio Memorial immediately in the ambulance, she is too badly injured and needs immediate treatment." TC picked Jordan up and carried her to the ambulance. As the ambulance drove off, he immediately began tending to her wounds. Jordan slowly regained consciousness. “Breath easy, Jordan, stay with me. We can do it! ”Asserted TC doggedly and tamponaded her gunshot wound. She stopped bleeding. He breathed a sigh of relief. At least he wasn't going to lose Jordan, but the state of the baby couldn't be evaluated at the time. “A little faster, if you please!” TC shouted to the driver. Desperate, he ruffled his hands through his hair. How many times had he told Jordan not to deliberately endanger herself or the child and now it was happening. The ambulance came to a screeching halt. TC pushed the door open, jumped out and unloaded the stretcher in no time at all. Drew and Scott were already waiting for him outside. "Oh my god, is that Jordan? What happened TC? “Asked Scott, who was pale as a ghost. “She was shot by the missing shooter. Abdominal gunshot wound, the baby is believed to be at risk. We have to get her to the operating room right away. Together they pushed the stretcher up to the doors of the operating room. Drew held TC back. “TC, you can't come with me now. You are far too upset to make rational decisions now. Scott and I will take care of her, we will do our best. The best thing to do is go to the lounge. " "No Drew, you don't understand ...!" But Drew and Scott had already disappeared into the operating room and Kenny held him back. “Believe me, man, it's for the best. Come with me, I'll get you a coffee. "

TC sat trembling on the couch in the lounge, not registering that the hot coffee was burning his hands. Kenny sat across from him. "Come on, give me the cup. I'll put it away for you." TC was gone, thrown back into its worst nightmares from the war. Shots and grenades rang out. He looked for his brother, but he was nowhere to be found. TC slowly opened the door of a hut where he suspected the shooter to be. But when he looked inside, he saw only a child. He couldn't bring himself to shoot, the boy was still too young for the war, couldn't really understand what he was doing. Suddenly someone pushed open the door at the other end of the hut. His brother stormed in and opened fire but narrowly missed the boy. The boy returned fire and shot his brother right in the head. Another soldier shot the boy, who immediately fell to the ground. TC stormed towards his brother.

Why hadn't he reacted immediately at the time? He alone was to blame for his brother's death, of that he was sure. And now he was also responsible for the death of his and Jordan's child. Had he changed her mind, she would never have been shot. The wave of guilt that rolled over him crushed his heart. Slowly he looked up at Kenny. He had to go to a bar, to a fight, just somewhere where he didn't have to think about his crushing guilt, which he would never be able to atone for. The door to the lounge opened and TC woke up from his dreams. Drew stepped up to him and sat next to him. He put his arm around his shoulder sympathetically. “Jordan is fine, she will definitely survive the shot. But she's still sleeping, I'll bring you to her right now. " TC looked over at him. He knew what it meant that Drew hadn't said anything about the baby. "What about the baby Drew?" Drew hesitated, unsure how best to get the news across to TC. “IS MY BABY ALIVE? ANSWER ME! ”TC yelled at him. "I ... I'm sorry TC, but we couldn't help him anymore. The shot went straight through Jordan's uterus. He was dead instantly. " TC ran his hands over his face, close to tears. But he knew he had to be strong now, for Jordan. “Can I see her now? I have to see her. " "Of course, I'll take you there immediately," Drew replied and helped TC up, who was slumped when he received the heavy news.

He approached her bed cautiously. It was unusual to see her all at once in a hospital bed, in a surgical gown, instead of a strong doctor devoted to caring for her patients. But even the strongest people had moments of weakness. TC sat down on the edge of her bed and took her hand in his. "Jordan, I'm so sorry," he said while tears ran down his face. "If only I could have convinced you or if I had seen the shooter earlier ... It's all my fault." He knew she would sleep a few more hours because of the morphine, but he bravely stood guard by her side, determined to be with her when she woke up and found out about her loss.

#the night shift #tc callahan #jordan alexander #drew alister #the night shift fanfiction #the night shift fanfic #tc callahan x jordan alexander #tc callahan fanfic #angst #hurt/comfort #fanfic #fanfiction

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cherry3point14 · 5 years ago

Text

Cookies & Milk

Pairing: Dean x British!Reader Warnings: Established D/s, mind you don’t fall down the crack Word Count: 2,172. Summary: Dean buys you some cookies. You call them biscuits. Arguments ensue, lines are drawn and restraints are required. A/N: Have any of y’all met @winchesters-meaty-feast? She’s my pal and partner in crime. We have extensive conversations about many a subject but one day the most important topic arose. Biscuits. I’m a dunker, she is not. It almost tore us apart but luckily we’re stronger than that. Anyway, I drabbled this Dom/sub biscuit thing in our chat and the following CRACK is what snowballed from that. (This is meant to be dumb ok. Don’t come for me over this weirdness.)

Ao3 if you prefer.

You should close your laptop.

In the late afternoon—underground where the time of day doesn’t matter—even then the light it’s emitting is too blue. Sure, you could turn down the brightness but it’s too little too late. Your eyes are already starting to ache from the strain.

You're not even doing anything important. You started scrolling a few hours ago; a news story that might have been something, but turned out to be nothing. Less than nothing, it was mundane. Dull as dishwater, as your mum might say. You would have closed your laptop then if it hadn’t been for that link at the bottom of the page. To another article, this time about an unexpected cold snap. This leads you to look up weather trends in Kansas, which becomes reading the articles on weather.com. Who even knew weather.com had articles? Still, they do and they’re very informative. The problem is that their data all points to it being cold as balls soon (your term, not theirs). So, now you’re shopping, with a pair of snow boots and two winter coats in your basket. And you’re debating a new scarf to put you over the free shipping threshold.

It is really time to shut your laptop before you go ahead and checkout. Dean hates having to pick up your parcels in town. Always complains that you have a problem. Pretty hypocritical considering the number of breweries he keeps in business. Besides he doesn’t even have a reason to complain, Marta loves seeing him, she lights up like a Christmas tree for him. You walk into the post office and you get a ton of side-eye, plus a ten-minute wait, but Dean? Well, he’s always at the front of her line.

You’re so engrossed in shopping that you don’t immediately look up at the sound of the bunker door. It’ll be Dean, you know that much. He’ll have a couple of brown bags from his supply run and you don't want to insult him by insinuating that he needs help.

It’s for the greater good anyway, the longer you sit here the more chance there is of you buying him snow boots too. Maybe he'll let you buy him a hat too.

Once he’s finished stomping his way down the stairs he sets the paper bags down next to you. It just so happens that's the exact moment you finally look up at him. A grateful smile on your face and over the top fluttering eyelashes—to remind him how loveable you are.

He shakes his head at how obvious you are. “I didn’t buy them for just you.” His unnecessary emphasis is all the permission you need.

“Is that smoke?” You sniff the air, one arm sliding inside the nearest bag, “must be the fire in your pants.”

He tries. Bless his heart. He tries to hold out. You can see him chewing the inside of his mouth as your arm moves about inside the bag to liberally finger his goods. The haul from the supermarket anyway. But he cannot resist your lame jokes and it ends the same as always. He cracks. A twitch of his lip, shaking his head and then an eye roll even Sam would be proud of.

“Other bag, Sherlock.”

“Ah-ha!” You grin when you switch to the other bag. Instead of fresh fruits and vegetables, you’re treated to food of the more processed variety. Plastic bags filled with crisps, a pie carton and, oh he really does love you, biscuits.

You slink back down to your screen, tearing the package open with your teeth as you do. Revitalised by the imminent influx of sugar. Dean sighs but doesn’t say another word. He picks up the rest of the groceries and carries them away. Presumably to the kitchen by the distant sounds of him putting everything away.

It’s another five minutes when he returns with a glass of milk that he puts down next to you. With a determined thump of glass on wood, as if the sound is an entire explanation.

“Thanks, but you know I don’t…”

“Take the damn milk.”

Normally you’d be irritated for being cut off mid-sentence, but it’s his exasperated tone that catches your attention. You even deign to look at him again, ignoring the popup that’s offering an extra 15% off if you enter your email. “You ok?”

He scratches at the scruff on his jaw while he tries to internally talk himself down from the ledge. “Nothing, nothing. Drink the milk, please.”

You look from him to the glass and frown at the white liquid. There’s nothing wrong with it per se. It looks like a perfectly good glass of milk, the kind you might see on a ‘got milk’ ad from the nineties. It’s not that you hate milk, you just prefer your biscuits to have a little bite. Dean should know that by now but if he’s forgotten then you are more than happy to remind him. “You eat your biscuits how you want, let me eat mine how I want.”

In your attempt to be rational you have failed to notice the desperation in his, 'please'. And now you’ve managed to tick him off.

“Cookies,” he grinds out.

“What?”

“They’re cookies. Dammit, you’ve lived here long enough to call a cookie a cookie.”

The outburst is not Dean’s fault. He’s not exactly hoarding MAGA caps and asking you to go back to England. No, this outrage is the product of a very specific joke that you might have taken too far.

Ordinarily, you switched back and forth between American and British all the time. As easy as breathing. You’d lived in the good ol’ US of A for long enough that your brain simply picked out the first word it could reach. A lot of the time it ended up being American without much intention, people understood better.

And then a few weeks back you’d been on the way to a hunt, sprawled in the back seat. Despite the fact that you were still strategizing with Sam you were comfortable. You could have fallen asleep right there if Sam hadn't kept talking. The word had slipped out on a whim. You called Baby’s trunk a boot.

Dean—being an absolute drama queen—had slammed on the brakes and eloquently asked what the fuck you called his Baby. Apparently, it was the first time you’d said that particular British word.

If you hadn’t found his reaction utterly hilarious that would have been the end of it. Except you did find it funny. The way his face soured, that little crease in the middle of his brow, he was so offended by four little letters. It was beautiful.

Now it’s been a few weeks of very purposeful language choices. Asking to borrow his mobile to make a call, or to wear his hoodie. And you’ll admit the ‘pip pip cheerio’ as he left the bunker earlier had been excessive. That isn’t even a real thing people say.

You’ve been torturing the poor guy with British slang. And because this isn’t the first time you’ve taken a joke too far, you’d usually hold your hands up and apologise. You’re good at apologising. He likes when you have to apologise because you always make it worth his while.

The problem is, biscuit had been an honest-to-god slip of the tongue. It had been the most natural word for your brain to conjure and so his anger seems a tad unjustified. Utterly out of proportion.

“It’s a biscuit.” You repeat as you take a bite, noticing the way his left eye seems to twitch at the crunch.

“It’s a cookie. It says right there on the packet. It’s a fucking sandwich cookie.” He points at the ripped plastic on the table for emphasis.

You sigh with the kind of effort that forces all the air from your lungs. “This country can’t spell half the time, why should I trust the packet?”

“Because you’re eating from it.”

He’s got you on a technicality. And he knows it. He knows it by the telling pause before you speak and the flash of panic in your eyes.

“So?”

It’s not an argument that’s going to win world-class debates but you couldn’t go ahead and let him have the last word.

Dean's problem now is he thinks he’s got you on the ropes, so he goes and gets cocky. He puffs out his chest a little and bites back a smirk.

“So? So… cookies and milk is as American as apple pie-”

“Invented by the Dutch.”

“-whatever. It’s a thing. Which means you gotta sit down, shut up and drink your fucking milk.”

You always love it when he does that. Argues his way to a conclusion whether he’s right or not. It’s kind of ridiculously hot.

Or at least that’s how you justify putting your half-eaten biscuit down. Slowly rising from your chair and crawling onto his lap. You lean in, slow enough to tease him, letting your breath settle over his skin as you whisper in his ear. “I know a way we could settle this.”

“What’re you doing?” He manages between teeth that are grinding against each other. The muscles in his arms are tense where he’s pulling at the rope that holds him.

Any other night and you might calm him down at this point. Remind your good boy that he shouldn’t hurt himself. Or depending on the game you’d remind him who he belongs to, who he’s foolishly directing his anger towards. But there’s no soothing touches or harsh reminders bestowed upon Dean tonight. This game is different. This is a battle for dominance, unlike one you’ve played before.

For the first time, he wants to win as much as you do.

There’s no mutual satisfaction in the room because you’re both out for blood. Where blood equals being right about snack goods. And unfortunately for Dean, he didn’t figure it out before he let you tighten the ropes around his wrists.

“I thought that was obvious, baby. I wanted something sweet.”

His eyes flick between the glass of milk he’d seen you carry in and the cookies plated up beside it. Well, you’d call them biscuits but that’s not what this argument is about.

“Don’t you dare.” There’s a threat in his voice.

For a moment it surprises you and you’re quick to counter him, “I’ll do what I like.” Your tone is reminder enough for him to remember his place.

He retreats a little, gives an inch so that you can take a mile. A breath rattles through his chest doing little to calm his tightly wound body. At the very least, he switches anger for desperation. Dean knows you love it when he pleads, “please Princess. Please, I’m begging you. Dunk it.”

Your entire body glows a little when he calls you by your name. The change in his attitude only urges you onwards though, with a smirk turning up the corners of your mouth.

Your hand finds a treat, fingers picking it up with deliberate, delicate movements. His eyes are wide as he watches you hover the biscuit over the glass as if maybe you’ll appease him. The whimper he lets out when you bypass the drink is almost fulfilling enough that you’re no longer hungry. Almost.

The room takes on an eerie silence as you part your lips and take a bite. A loud, crunchy bite. Crumbs fall onto the table beneath you—probably in slow motion— and chewing only seems to increase the volume.

“Son of a bitch.” He mutters as you swallow, “you’re crazy.”

You hadn’t planned on it but you walk across the room then, half a biscuit in your hand and a satisfied smile on your face. He’s slumped in his chair a little. He’s defeated since he knows he won’t defeat the knots keeping him in place.

“Come on, try it for me.”

“Go to hell.”

It's your turn to roll your eyes, “don’t be so dramatic, you’ve been to hell. This can’t be that bad.”

As you reason with him, you slide into his lap again, which will be torture enough because he can’t touch you. Except you also hold the biscuit to his lips.

“Please. For me. Be my good boy.” You coo as if you're not toying with him.

His thighs twitch beneath you at the use of his nickname and, because he’s always your good boy, he opens his mouth.

5eva tags: @divadinag @darthdeziewok @fluentinfiction @witch-of-letters @supernatural-teamfreewillpage @magnitude101999 @alexwinchester23 Dean babes: @thewinchesterchronicles @akshi8278 @bloodydaydreamer

#dean x reader #supernatural fanfiction #spn x reader #dean winchester x reader #spn fanfiction #supernatural #spn #spn fanfic #supernatural fanfic #dean winchester #dean winchester x you #dean x you #dean x y/n #dean dean the soft lil bean #I missed all the 2020 bingos so this is the sort of shit you have to suffer with now #I bet you missed me now

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flightofaqrow · 3 years ago

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mothering (on mother’s day)

qrow + Sun Wukong ( @ultravioletvoleur )

fighting clearly hadn’t been what was on the kid’s mind. maybe he just wasn’t thinkin’ at all; he definitely isn’t right now as words tumble from his mouth, barely coherent. qrow still doesn’t need to hear these things about his niece, but he’ll let this one slide.

Sun leans his back against the wall, tail swaying to and fro. His face spoke to the internal conflict he was struggling with when it came to this, “I was hoping I could actually… Ask for your advice?”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"Quick update, may wanna say Happy Mother's Day to your niece. ...Kaybye!"

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

qrow whips open Harbinger faster than a nevermore diving upon its prey, and fires a warning shot off as Sun makes a break for it, near missing the base of his tail.

he knows the kid well enough by now, and trusts Yang even more, than to truly buy into the implications of his statement. oh, but if playing this cat and mouse game makes the cheeky monkey so happy, qrow will absolutely go a round.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“YIPE!”

That was a much faster reaction than he’d anticipated, barely making it ten feet before the crack of exploding gunpowder rang out. There was a hole smoking in the wall in front of him- dangerously close to banana height, and Sun began sweating. He turned very jerkily, with the closest approximation of a cocksure grin he could manage through his abject terror.

“Oh, uh. D-did you… Need something?”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

well, at least qrow got to make a point, should he ever actually need to act on teaching the kid a thing or two. alternatively, about picking fights one may not be able to win. a similar tough past he may have, thieves at least tended to work from codes of honor. not every struggle is the same.

he prods, sarcastic, feigned anger lining the sharp curve of narrowed eyes, sword still deployed at his side, “what in all of remnant makes you think you can just say things to me?”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

There is a very audible gulp as the Hunstman advances on him. Every other time they’d traded barbs, he’d gotten the sense that Qrow was something of an old glory days kind of person, who had lost their touch a bit. However, that split second action, and the pointed glare burning through his confidence like a hot knife through butter, told him a whole new story.

Qrow Branwen was what his nightmares were made of.

“Well you see I thought we were buddies and I thought you would know it was a joke I swear I haven’t laid a hand on your niece like that I would never well not never possibly in the future but definitely not right now not that I don’t think she’s attractive she’s very attractive oh but that’s not the only reason-”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

tch. forever a curse, even at his best. maybe he laid on the drama a bit too thick. honestly, he thought a bit of zeal is something Sun could appreciate. he’s far too much talk still, isn’t he? all bright light and translucent beaming rays which still questioned their own substance. he might be further ahead than he seemed at first, but still has a ways to go. …kids these days.

“of course I knew it was a joke, golden boy.” qrow folds away his weapon, drops his stance, while raising a brow. he lessens his posturing, but not his attention, hand still remaining on Harbinger’s hilt in the case of some trick.

“but I also took it as a taunt, tellin’ me you’re finally ready for a real man’s brawl. heh, guess i was wrong.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“What?!”

He’d almost lost his stones by way of his ass for a sassback?! Their Uncle was even more intimidating now, and he was going to die on that hill. Still, though, knowing that he wasn’t actually angry was a huge relief. The tension left his body and he slumped down with a sigh-

And then he noticed Qrow’s weapon was still out and ready.

“He-hey, uh. N-no need for that. I didn’t come here looking for a fight. I actually wanted to get you riled up so we could then use that energy into doing something for her. I- I know her situation with her mom isn’t great. I dunno the specifics, that’s for her to tell me when she’s ready, but…” He trailed off, trying to find the words.

“Well, I guess… I just want to make today lively for her, instead of having people walking on eggshells around her. Make her excited and happy that today happened, rather than add it to a growing pile of disappointing holidays.”

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“you moron,” finally, he fully releases, instead staring dumbfounded at the other. he really did think he could just come around and say whatever, and still get his way without consequences. what single-minded, reckless, stupid drivel. yeah, qrow had been an idiot brained teen at one point, but seriously never that bad. he didn’t have that kinda energy. different plans took different tactics, did they not teach anything at Haven or Shade anymore?

“i don’t need to be ‘riled up’ to do something for my family, kid. couldn’t you just ask like a normal person? i promise you, me bein’ jazzed up ain’t the kinda lively she needs.”

eyes now round with sadness; his chest deflates; pointed corners of his mouth turn down. it’s too close to the belligerence he used to have - unprovoked, but drunk. he’s trying so hard to be better than that. for a lotta reasons, but Yang too.

he breathes in, and out, fingers running in and out over his forehead. once satisfied in processing all these thoughts, in having switched gears, he turns to Sun once more, hopefully coming off with the same rational attitude he wants in return, “so, then, turn your brain and your sense of respect on, and just tell me what you had in mind, huh?

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“Well… That’s kinda the thing. I was hoping I could actually… Ask for your advice?”

He leans his back against the wall, tail swaying to and fro. His face spoke to the internal conflict he was struggling with when it came to this. In truth, he’d wanted to go about this like a normal person, more than anything. Something in him, however, be it a defense mechanism or just a general need for attention he’d never really received drove him to do everything to an excess.

Truth be told, nobody hated Sun’s antics more than he, himself.

“I… I’m going to try to be serious here, for a minute. It’s- It’s not something that comes easy.” He sighed and pinched at the bridge of his nose. “I’m… scared. I’m really, truly scared, Qrow, of how she makes me feel. How much it would hurt to lose her, or even see her hurting. I just get so caught up in my own head that I can’t think straight, and… I’ve never…”

Another sigh. “I’ve never had a family before. So I don’t know what to do to help someone who’s mourning theirs. But I see her hurting, and I want to help, and when I came to you, I swear, I wanted to just ask, but. …That would mean… Admitting I love her.”

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oh, here we go. this roller coaster again. what about his look or his life or any of his choices made him seem like someone to go to for advice? qrow barely scraped his own life together, and still dropped the pieces too many times. but somewhere along the line, somewhere in just trying to do good - for his team, for Oz, for his family, for Ruby, something must have slipped in to his very psyche, huh.

Ruby somehow always knows the right thing to do. Yang had told her.

I had good role models. Ruby had told him.

he’s cursed. and he wrestles with it every damn day. and while he’d never call it a good thing, maybe some people see themselves in that same fight. maybe he sees himself in theirs and their struggle to understand and express themselves, and that’s why even in the times he wants nothing to do with other people and their decisions, and he’s sure he’ll just mess everything up, he can’t help but listen. he can’t turn them away. doing so would do nothing to mend the wounds of a broken world. and in the end, continuing to try is the only way to stick it to Salem.

he takes a spot next to the young man against the wall, knee bending and sole kicking up as he leans, crosses his arms, turns his head to Sun and fixes his gaze on him.

“yeah. loving people is scary. probably means you’re doin’ it right.”

qrow doesn’t know a damn thing about romance. not like that, anyway. he’s never been brave enough to face that very fear, to let someone that intimately close. almost, sometimes, maybe. somehow his chances always disappear before he’s quite there, only confirming those very fears. a great and terrible feedback loop, that. although, he can’t say such words are entirely unfamiliar; admittedly, the whole conversation is nostalgic. thrice over. he laughs, a bittersweet little huff, “…you sound just like her parents.”

that kinda love he knows, found, eventually. family. and if you ask him, they’re equally as scary to think of losing. “our family has never been the typical picket fence dream either, so don’t think you’re missin’ pieces of some non-existent normal. there’s no big secret about bein’ one, kid. you just gotta be there for each other.”

a palm-down hand raises to sweep across his body in a dismissive motion, “an’ not everything has to be some grand production to top the one before. trust me, i’ve screwed that up enough times to know.” qrow looks towards the ground, slides the toe of his shoe back and forth. “Yang, she… she’s used to people comin’ and goin’ in her life. if they come back at all. so, seriously… just go to her. be with her. she’s a tough egg, and too smart. she’ll tell you what she needs if you can just shut your giant trap enough to let her.”

#* not all are so brave = ultravioletvoleur *#* we got work to do = ic *#* how do you think legends and fairy tales get started? = thread archive *

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juniperwindsong · 5 years ago

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Necessary Monsters (3/16)

Summary:

"Brought her in on my shift, they did. Thought she were dead! Pale as a corpse - like there weren't no blood left in her - but twitching, like. The way I used to see 'em back when...You-Know-Who's followers were torturing people left and right. You'd see 'em twitch like that when they'd had the Cruciatus Curse used on 'em too long."

It takes twelve and half minutes to walk the road leading from the Hogwarts grounds into Hogsmeade, then a matter of seconds to apparate outside the Leaky Cauldron in London. Add four more minutes to enter the crowded pub, climb the stairs, and wind down the hall to the room at the very end, and Felix has had just enough time to work himself into a respectable frenzy.

Felix has never been able to pinpoint the exact date he fell in love with Juniper Windsong, so he can't say definitively just how long he's been planning their reunion. But it's been the highlight of his thoughts for almost a year. The perfect evening, carefully orchestrated to show Juniper how he's come to feel about her and persuade her to feel the same. Gone to pieces.

He slams the door, the parade of ruined moments and wasted opportunities building enough furious momentum behind his arm to rattle the frame. Throwing his cloak over the room's mouldy winged armchair, Felix runs his fingers irritably through his hair. He should have been more direct, he berates himself, kicking petulantly at one of the chair's wobbly legs. It gives an indignant "Oi!" and scoots away from him, nearer the fire. He had hoped to let his actions explain his feelings for him, even thought he'd done a halfway decent job in spite of the evening's rocky start. But replaying their conversations in his head, Felix fears he wasn't obvious enough.

Regret beats a heartless rhythm against the inside of his skull as he perches on the edge of the rickety bed. Juniper did want to see him over the summer, he consoles himself, that's something. And she had seemed genuinely excited at the prospect of visiting him. And there was that moment in the common room, their fingers intertwined, faces so close Felix could almost feel the nervous excitement radiating from her. He's positive Juniper had been waiting for him to lean in just a bit more, even imagines her eyes had flicked for a moment to his lips.

Felix falls back against the lumpy mattress with a groan. All that means nothing if she gets herself killed next year. Felix had so hoped finding Jacob Windsong alive would finally put a stop to her amateur investigations. But he knows with a sinking certainty, in spite of her assurances that she wants to leave the Cursed Vaults behind, Juniper will never be able to escape their web while her brother is still caught in it.

And even if she survives her last year of school unscathed, he thinks miserably, there's always her excessive number of male friends. Juniper may have little interest in them now, but Felix knows better than anyone how much a relationship can change in one term.

His brain bruised by the weight of all the things he cannot control, Felix pulls his wand out from underneath him and points it in the direction of his valise.

"Accio," he mumbles.

The bag sails halfheartedly across the room and stalls at the foot of the bed. Felix uses the tip of his shoe to edge it closer to him, his hand fumbling for the catch. He reaches in without looking and, as he does whenever he feels anxious, pulls out a sheaf of parchments wrapped in a leather tie, heavily frayed and dangerously thin in places.

He tugs at the crude binding carefully, toying, as he often does, with the romantic notion of finding a ribbon, preferably Juniper's, to replace the leather. But he's never known her to wear any kind of ribbon in her hair. And anyway, Felix thinks as he pulls out a particularly worn piece of parchment, he doubts a hair ribbon would wrap all the way around their collected years of correspondence. He settles back against the pillow and lets the words he knows by heart soothe its anxiously racing beat.

Since his graduation, Felix has received more letters from Juniper than he can count. This by itself isn't exceptional. He's received many letters, far more than he expected. Former classmates write occasionally with updates on their lives, Barnaby writes regularly for advice, and even his mother sends the sporadic note pleading with him to return home. But it's Juniper who writes with questions about him. Juniper, to whom Felix recounts his days, even the most boring and difficult bits. She has the uncanny ability to read past his affected formality, and Felix soon discovers there's no one else with whom he can truly be himself.

After months of rough tenting with bad food and very few actual dragons, it's Juniper Felix complains to, and Juniper who both sympathises and challenges him to stay his course. When he's forced to kill a dragon for the first time in defence of himself and his team, it's to Juniper Felix relays the entire gut-wrenching affair, complete with the horrid guilt he feels and the nightmares he cannot shake. And it's Juniper who comforts him with words like a balm, that he reads through each night to lull himself to sleep. Her letters become the best part of every month, and he begins counting the days until they arrive.

It's after the end of his first and only relationship, nearly a year ago, that Felix begins picking Juniper's letters apart, studying them as intently as if he'll be tested on their contents. He re-reads everything she's ever written, parsing each word for hidden meaning, anything that might indicate she cares for him as more than a friend or confidante. Some days Felix is convinced he can read love plainly in her words, then the next day he's sure he imagined it. The uncertainty drives him to distraction, until admitting the depth of his feelings actually seems like the less painful option. But it has to be done face to face, Felix decides, that’s the proper way. And after the Quidditch match on which so much of her school reputation is staked seems like the best time; when she'll either be full of high spirits or in need of comfort.

Felix sets the worn letter aside in agitation. It's no good. He's reached a level of anxiety he's only ever been able to soothe by writing to Juniper about it, which he can hardly do in this case.

An idea appears in Felix’s head fully formed, and he sits up abruptly. Why not just tell her in a letter? Felix had convinced himself love was something that must be discussed in person, that the month spent waiting for a response to such an admission would be unbearable. But he's no longer at the mercy of inter-continental post. Her return letter might even reach him before he left England. And he's always been better able to express himself in writing.

Perhaps his prose can do what his actions couldn't and convince her to keep herself safe. For him.

Reinvigorated by this new plan, Felix scrambles off the bed. He pulls parchment, quill, and ink from his bag, and seats himself at the spindly-legged stool in front of the room's token writing desk. A small window looms behind it, the darkness outside transforming the glass into a black mirror reflecting his face, every line quivering with purpose.

Felix dips his quill in ink and pauses briefly at the top of the parchment. The ink drips slowly from the quill tip after one minute, and then another, and then several pass without him pressing the point to the page, as it dawns on him that he has not the first idea how to begin such a letter. Which seems impossible; he's composed snatches of letters like this in his head for a year, waiting for the perfect moment to pen them. But now it's time, words seem to have deserted Felix, just as they did in the common room and out on the grounds.

Because it has to be perfect. That's key. Whatever he writes has to convince Juniper to put aside a quest that's become an obsession, persuade her his love is worth such a sacrifice. And Felix is positive it is. There isn't a person alive, including her brother, who cares for Juniper more than he does. Felix is certain of that.

A small, confident smile flickers to life on his lips, and Felix begins to write. Haltingly at first. But he finds as he focuses on Juniper’s smiling face, the memory of her cheek pressed against his fingers, the words come easier, and it isn't long before he's pouring his heart onto the page. He confesses to the parchment everything he's felt for Juniper since he was seventeen, allowing emotion to choose his words instead of adherence to any literary form. Felix writes until his parchment is exhausted, then leans back from the desk.

He holds the letter close to the yellow candle illuminating the desktop in uneven patches and reads what he's written with a critical eye; and then again, trying to see the words from her perspective. With a slight shake of his head, Felix sets the parchment back down and picks up the quill again, crossing out lines and adding words in, until any ordinary candle would have melted into its iron holder and sputtered out.

By the time the sky outside the window lightens to a steely grey, Felix has finished a draft he likes. Perhaps it would be hubris to call it perfect, he thinks immodestly, but it's certainly close. He folds the parchment with extreme care, as though excess creases may cause her to simply throw the thing away without reading, then tucks it delicately into an envelope and seals it before he can reconsider.

Flushed with excitement, Felix stands, stretching his cramped fingers. The thought of waiting to deliver the letter is intolerable, but, as he glances out the window at the predawn light, he knows the Post Office in Diagon Alley won't yet be open. The rational voice in his head suggests timidly that he ought to get some sleep, but there's too much adrenaline coursing through him and he's itchy for action. He'll wait in the pub, he decides, have a quick bite to eat and then set off as soon as the hour strikes.

Felix tucks the letter carefully into the pocket of his rumpled robes, and walks with a bounce out of the room and down the cramped and winding stairs.

Felix wasn't overly familiar with the Leaky Cauldron before two days ago. Necessity has forced him to rent a room there while in England. His father, astonishingly tolerant up till now of what he considers Felix's "rebellious dragon phase", has made it clear in his last correspondence that a transfer to the Romanian Reserve is the final straw, and until Felix is willing to return to his family obligations, he will no longer enjoy any Rosier family benefits. Namely money and a place to live. Since Felix has expected this since he first introduced his chosen profession to his parents, he's only moderately hurt.

This is the second morning Felix has spent in the inn and pub, but he’s learned he enjoys its sleepy silence as the regulars engross themselves in their papers before ingesting enough food and news to begin chatting with their neighbors. It makes for a pleasant start to the day, and Felix pushes open the door looking forward to a quiet breakfast before he completes his life-changing post.

Instead, a low thrum of excited muttering fills the room, emanating from the fireplace where nearly all the pub’s early-morning patrons, and even its proprietor, have congregated. Tom has not yet bothered to set down all the chairs from their night-time perches on the tables. He's standing just behind a witch in lime-green robes who seems to be the center of the whispering crowd.

Felix seats himself on a stool at the bar, casting surreptitious glances over at the furtive group, trying to catch snippets of their conversation. But they insist on speaking in hushed tones, as if their subject is too dangerous to be discussed at a normal volume. Felix finally catches the eye of the barman, who breaks reluctantly away and trots over.

"You'll be wanting breakfast, then, sir?" Tom asks, his voice friendly, though he continues to shoot longing looks behind him. "It was coffee you took, in't that right?"

"Yes, thank you," replies Felix distractedly. "Is everything alright?" He looks pointedly at the fireplace and Tom's eyes light up with the thrill of the gossip.

"Oh, I'm afraid not," says the barman with enthusiasm. "There was another attack up at Hogwarts school last night!"

All Felix's animated energy freezes in an instant, leaving his limbs stiff and his hand quite unable to lift the cup Tom sets in front of him.

"You mean... someone else was petrified? I thought that was all over."

Tom shakes his head happily. "Not petrified no. Apparently, the student was brought to St Mungo’s. The school professors weren't sure what happened, but they’re trying to keep it awful quiet. Winn," he jerks his chin over at the witch in green robes. "Was on duty and just happened to see them bring her in."

"'Her'?" Felix asks, his throat so dry it comes out a croak. There's hundreds of students at Hogwarts, he reassures his racing heart, there's no reason for it to be -

"The Windsong girl. You know - the Cursebreaker? Her brother's that one expelled some years back, you might remember him - Master Rosier?"

Felix vacates his stool and stumbles over to the fireplace where the witch in lime-green robes continues to murmur under her breath to her captive audience.

"Excuse me," he somehow manages to say.

The witches and wizards around the fire all look up at him.

"Did you...did you say you saw a Hogwarts student brought into St Mungo’s last night?"

The witch called Winn nods vigorously. "Not just any Hogwarts student! Jacob Windsong's sister! The one what's been opening all them cursed vaults up at the school the last few years!" Her voice is subdued but shaking with excitement. She shuffles her chair around to face Felix, clearly pleased for an excuse to retell her story.

"Brought her in on my shift, they did. Thought she were dead! Pale as a corpse - like there weren't no blood left in her - but twitching, like. The way I used to see 'em back when..." She clears her throat and her eyes dart about as if searching for hidden spies, before she continues even lower than before, "Back when You-Know-Who's followers were torturing people left and right. You'd see 'em twitch like that when they'd had the Cruciatus Curse used on 'em too long."

One of the wizards by the fire shakes his head and says something about the mad goings-on of teenagers these days, but Felix isn’t listening. He’s already moving away, lurching between tables and knocking into chairs as if drunk. Ignoring the pub patrons' affronted looks and Tom still calling to him from the bar, he trips out the front door and apparates as soon as his feet hit the pavement.

Felix hasn't been to St Mungo’s since he was a child, and his current visit does nothing to improve his ill-feeling about the place. The lobby is packed, which seems strange to him for so early in the morning. The seats are full of witches and wizards tapping their feet and sighing with poorly-hidden impatience. Healers in lime-green robes walk swiftly to and fro, all headed in different directions, and the queue for the help desk is a dozen people long. There's a sign above it informing those who can read which types of maladies belong to each floor of the hospital. But, Felix realises, since he doesn't know exactly what's happened to Juniper, he has no idea where she might be.

Blood pumps thickly in his head, making the sounds in the lobby seem oddly muffled as though he's underwater. Felix walks briskly to the information desk and brings his hand down harder than intended on top of the counter. The smacking sound has no visible effect on the bored-looking help witch beyond a quick flick of her eyes away from the hiccoughing wizard in the queue and toward Felix.

"I'm looking for Juniper Windsong," he says, his voice shaking with some emotion he doesn't have time to identify.

"Excuse me, sir,” the help-witch drawls tonelessly. "But if you have a question you'll need to queue up like everyone else."

She gives a barely perceptible jerk of her chin at the line of people now glaring at Felix. One woman's entire face is a vivid shade of pink, and a small child standing with his mother seems to have steam emitting from his nostrils. But none of them appear in any immediate danger to Felix, and he turns back to the help-witch belligerently.

"This cannot wait. Juniper Windsong. She was brought in last night."

The help-witch blinks dubiously at him, but something in Felix's voice or face seems to convince the girl her life will be easier the sooner she gets rid of him. She drags a clipboard across the desk toward her with two fingers and glances down at it.

"I don't have anyone by that name here," she announces, her tone still bored but a slight curl at the edge of her mouth.

"Yes, you do! You must!" he insists, now almost shouting. Because if she's not here, then that means....

"Mr Rosier."

A cold, quiet, and all too familiar voice stops Felix's rising panic in its tracks. He whips around to find Professor Snape standing by the entrance to a stairwell. "What are you-"

"Professor!" Felix interrupts, abandoning the help desk and hurrying over to Snape.

"Is it true?" he asks, suddenly breathless. "Juniper. Is she-"

Before Felix can finish, Snape grips his elbow tightly and drags him into the stairwell, slamming the door shut behind them. The Potions Master casts his dark eyes around as if making sure they’re alone before answering in a crisp whisper:

"Kindly do not bandy Miss Windsong's name about in front of so many witnesses. It is important that her presence at this hospital be kept entirely secret. Which is why,” his eyes narrow at Felix, “I must ask how you came to know she was here."

"I - she - " Felix tries to breathe normally, but the air catches against his ribs, constricting his chest. "A healer. In the Leaky Cauldron. She...she said she saw her - Juniper - last night. She said, she was attacked. But-"

"How do you know the person speaking was a healer?"

Thrown by the question, Felix casts his mind back for the details of the conversation that he realizes with a lurch was not fifteen minutes ago. It feels more like hours.

"Tom! He said she was a healer. And she had the robes, the same color green that the healers wear."

Snape closes his eyes briefly, nostrils flaring in forceful exhalation. Felix has seen this look on the Potion Master’s face before when dealing with exceptionally dim-witted students, but whether it’s himself or the healer in question with whom Snape is exasperated he doesn’t know, or care.

"Professor, what's happened to Juniper? Is she alright? The healer said she was attacked, but she didn't say...I mean...she wasn't sure..." Every ending Felix can think of to this sentence causes his throat to convulse.

Snape considers before answering, his words tinged with frost. “Miss Windsong is alive for the moment."

A flood of warm relief washes over Felix almost tangibly.

"But," Snape continues. "she has been very gravely..." He pauses, tongue between his teeth, as if choosing his next word carefully."...Wounded."

"Why? What happened? Is it something to do with the Vaults? Is she going to be alright?" Felix asks every question that comes to his mind all in a rush.

Snape says nothing. He scrutinizes Felix closely, and Felix gets that uncomfortable prickle he sometimes feels around his former head of house, as though the professor can see right through him. He averts his gaze, and stares instead at his ink-stained hands.

Snape's voice, still frigid, but not quite as icy as before, breaks the silence.

"Follow me, Mr Rosier."

Snape turns on his heel and ascends the staircase without a backward glance. Felix hastens to follow.

At the fourth floor landing, Snape throws open the door and proceeds into a corridor crowded with harried healers. Felix, who cuts a much less intimidating figure than the Potions Master, has to push through the lime-green crowd forcefully in order to keep up. Snape turns down a side hall, and then another, longer one, until they reach a deserted corridor with a dirty window marking a dead-end. Snape forgoes the doors on either side, stopping instead in front of the window, daylight just peeking through the streaky glass. He taps the pane on the lower right with his wand, and Felix can hear a very soft click, like a lock being turned. The window swings inward, and Snape and Felix step quickly inside.

The room is small, only slightly larger than the Hogwarts Artefact Room, with no windows and no other doors. There's just enough space for a solid looking bed, a rather high bedside table covered in potion bottles on one side if it, and a chair pulled up to the other. Felix can see the outline of legs tucked under a white sheet lying on the bed, but the rest of the occupant is hidden by the bulky figure in the chair, who stands quickly and revolves to face the two intruders.

The man raises his wand directly at Felix, who flinches, though for once it has less to do with the wand itself and more to do with the heavily scarred face of the person holding it.

"Password," the man grunts. Snape does not bother to conceal his eye-roll.

"Dragon Heart-String,” he pronounces with very slight disdain, and the strange looking person lowers his wand a fraction.

All Felix’s attention is caught up in the man's one electric blue eye that swivels eerily over both newcomers, then rolls right back into his head as if checking on the patient in the bed behind him. He's so distracted by this display, Felix doesn't notice the man's other eye inspecting him suspiciously.

"Who is this?" the man asks in a gruff voice. "I thought you were bringing back one of the trainees."

"It seems as though the healers cannot all be trusted,” Snape replies loftily. “One is already blabbing the attack in the pub."

The other man swears under his breath.

"This is...a friend of Windsong's,” Snape continues.

Felix isn't sure, but he thinks there's a slight pause before Snape pronounces the word 'friend', and a careful note to his words. But he's too preoccupied to give this further thought. The shock of the room's strange guardian has worn off enough for Felix's attention to return to the bed. And as the man steps toward Snape, the head on the pillow becomes visible.

If Felix hadn't known it was supposed to be Juniper, he might not have recognised her straight away. She looks like an entirely different person from the vibrant young woman laughing and flirting with him only hours ago. It's as though all the blood has been drained from beneath her skin, leaving her as pale and lifeless as the healer in the pub described. The only part of her with any colour is the uncountable number of angry red cuts decorating her face and the visible portion of her neck and arms. She's so eerily still Felix would be terrified Snape was mistaken about her condition, if it weren't for the slight twitching of her fingers, curled strangely and lying on either side of her.

Bile rises in Felix's throat and he has to swallow hard to keep from being violently ill. He’s known Juniper to be injured many times before; she’s famous for it. He’s seen her battered by Devil's Snare, half-frozen to death by cursed ice, knocked about by a dragon. But his memories of those admittedly deadly injuries all include her face set in grim determination or flushed with success. Felix has never seen her like this. Broken and beaten on a hospital bed.

"What happened to her?" he asks, his voice hoarse.

"Tortured," the man with the strange blue eye replies matter-of-factly. "Cruciatus curse by the tremors. And the cuts are one of R's signature curses.”

"R?" asks Felix vaguely, fumbling for anything that will keep his mind from creating a mental picture of Juniper being tortured.

The man explains irritably as though this should be common knowledge. "R is the organisation after the vaults. They're the ones have been threatening Miss Windsong the last few years."

"But...how could they get to her while she's at school?" questions Felix, his voice rising. "Surely, there's spells and wards set up to protect the students?"

"Of course," Snape responds coolly from behind Felix. "But it's been well-established that the defences surrounding school grounds can be penetrated. One has to be inside the school itself for the Headmaster's greater protections to be of any effect. And Miss Windsong was found outside on the grounds. Do you have any idea why she might have been out there, Mr. Rosier?"

Felix's knees buckle abruptly. He grabs the back of the bedside chair to keep himself from falling to the floor. If his display of weakness elicits any reaction from the other men, Felix doesn't notice. His eyes are shut tight against the emotions threatening to overwhelm him. His voice cracks as he rasps:

"It's my fault."

"Excuse me?" The man with the swiveling blue eye whips around to face Felix again, normal eye narrowed. His wand is still pointed aggressively, and Felix half wishes the man would just curse him.

"I - she - was with me," Felix tries to explain, nausea churning his stomach sickly. The chair is now the only thing keeping him upright.

"You were with her on the grounds?" the man demands, his blue eye now fixed on Felix as well. "What happened? What did you see? Who else was there?"

"There wasn't anyone. There was...it was...just us. "

The weight of the guilt causes something in Felix to snap. He cranes his neck around searching for the eyes of his former head of house, desperate for assurance that this isn't his fault; that Juniper isn't half-dead because of him.

"I told her not to, Professor, I swear! She wouldn't listen, I couldn't stop her! But...everything was normal. There wasn't anything strange or-or suspicious on the grounds. I didn't - I mean, I - I thought..."

Snape wrenches his gaze away from Felix, as if his pleading is something painful to watch. But Felix is beyond embarrassment for the moment.

"Mr. Rosier," Snape responds, still looking decidedly anywhere but at Felix. “I am all too familiar with Miss Windsong's particularly obdurate determination to do whatever she pleases. However, I think we both know you exerted little effort to dissuade her. And it cannot be denied that you are the reason Miss Windsong was out on the grounds alone last night."

Each of Snape’s words cuts deeply into Felix, like a mirror of the wounds decorating Juniper’s arms. All his defensiveness bleeds slowly out of him, and he sags further against the chair.

"If," Snape continues, "you would like to make amends for your foolishness, then perhaps you would be willing to help us now."

"I - Yes! Of course, anything, what-"

"At the moment, Miss Windsong appears to be under an enchantment of some kind. Discovering what exactly happened to her and who attacked her may enable us to wake her. We need to investigate, but we also need to keep a guard over her. It is not unlikely that whoever did this may return when they realize their work is unfinished."

"I'll stay," Felix answers, a semblance of strength returning to his voice. The idea that he'll be allowed to help is entirely unexpected, but a set task goes a long way to reasserting his focus.

The strange-eyed man looks from Felix to Snape, his face, a map of scars and craters, alight with skepticism.

"You sure he's up to it?"

Snape stares hard at Felix until that uncomfortable prickling begins to resurface, but Felix is determined to keep his gaze, to prove he can be trusted.

"I believe so," Snape answers. The other man gives Snape a disparaging look before lowering his wand to his side.

"Fine. If anything happens to her, it'll be on your heads then." He crosses the small room in two long strides and looks back at Felix as he reaches the door.

"You. No one is to enter this room without the password. The healers assigned to her know it, and they're the only ones I trust. Anyone else tries to get in, stun them and call for backup. Do you understand?"

Felix nods in affirmation, not trusting himself to speak.

"Do not take this lightly, boy. Miss Windsong's life may depend on your vigilance."

Felix straightens with as much fortitude as he can muster. He directs his words to the man in front of him, but they’re really a promise to himself.

"I won’t let anything happen to her."

Read Chapter 4 | View all stories on the Masterpost

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fightthegods · 5 years ago

Text

dated — november 2008 - april 2010 located — dorchester, boston type — one-shot

AGE FOURTEEN

Eoin comes to consciousness, eyes blinking and unfocused. Where however long ago, his entire world and body was intense pain, waking up now is met with calm and warmth; a smiling face comes into focus, and a gentle hand presses to his cheek. "Mom?" he asks, his voice cracked and raw.

There's a laugh, "I sure hope not." The face comes into focus; soft, warm brown eyes framed by wild, black, and kinky hair. There's a smile on the girl's face, though it speaks more of amusement than anything else. "Come, let's get you to your feet. Can you stand?"

Oh, but he is lying down, isn't he? Eoin finally manages to tear his gaze from the angel above him to look around at the reality of the world. "What happened?" The question comes at the same time as the memory comes back to him. The walls of the alley are still sizzling under the biting acid, there's the acrid smell of death in the air, and three bodies, unmoving, half-decayed. No, not decayed. Corroded.

The girl gets up from where she'd been sitting and holds a hand out to him for him to take, which he does. There's surprising strength in her as she pulls him to his feet, or maybe he just isn't that heavy. "You got into a fight," she claims as she too looks around at the mess, then turns a little wicked smile on him. "Or maybe a fight got into you. Doesn't matter, you should feel better now."

"Yeah," Eoin stammers quietly, hands moving along his body slowly. Where previously his broken ribs, cracked under relentlessly kicking boots, were endlessly cracked, there's no trace of harm or pain in them now. His face is absent of swelling despite the beating, and the only hint that anything had happened at all is the caked blood where previously there had been excessive wounds. "Thank you. How did you do that?"

The reply comes in the way of a cheeky wink, followed by an equally cheeky grin. "The burning cure," she says, producing a worn zippo from her pocket. The flame of the lighter catches in her open hand and is extinguished once more when she closes it. "Where are your parents?" Eoin can only reply with a frown and a little shrug. The girl studies him for a moment, then, with a nod, she seems to make up her mind about something. "Okay. I want you to meet some people."

There's nothing Eoin can really do as her hand wraps around his upper arm and he's dragged down the alleyway. "I'm Eoin," he says, eyes still glued to her as though she's a mirage and if he looked away, she'd vanish. "What's your name?"

The girl looks back at him when she stops at the mouth of the alley, the mischief ever-present in her smile. "Nachelle."

AGE FIFTEEN

"Stop! Eoin, stop!" Nachelle's voice calls and echoes through the abandoned warehouse they call their home, along with several other kids, both mutant and human. A shriek pierces the otherwise silent space. "Please! Please stop!"

On the cot they share, Eoin has her pinned down, straddling her waist as Nachelle turns and squirms the best she can under his relentless assault. A wicked smirk rests on his face as his fingers dig into her ribs, over and over, pulling yet another scream from her lips. "Call me a dumbass again. Go on, try me."

Nachelle's eyes squeeze shut as sharp laughter bubbles from her mouth, and her head shakes violently. "You're a—” A gasp. "You're a dumbass, Eoin. Please, stop!" This time it's Eoin's turn to laugh, and when his fingers settle, he leaves Nachelle a panting mess.

"Fine," he snickers as he gets off her and lies down next to her. It's a tight fit, as it always is, but neither teenager seems to mind very much. Her head finds his chest and an arm wraps around his waist as she pulls herself into her side and that much closer to him. Eoin's hand drops on her head, playing with her hair slowly.

"You are a dumbass, Eoin," Nachelle repeats when her panting and soft giggles have subsided.

Eoin simply nods. "Mhm. I know."

Silence falls upon the warehouse again, and Eoin doesn't know how long they lie there, her fingers gently tracing patterns on his chest while one of his fingers twists around a piece of black hair over and over.

"I love you."

The words push into the silence slowly, and for a second, Eoin thinks that perhaps he misheard. When he blinks his eyes open and looks down, they connect with hers; no mischief, no laughter in her eyes. She said what she said and she meant it.

They stare at each other for an eternity. She's not taking it back, and Eoin realises he doesn't ever want her to.

"I love you too." Of course he does. How could he not?

The smile that he conjures onto her face with those four words leaves every radiant smile that had come before it but a dull affair. When she crashes her lips against his, he thinks for all its flaws and hardships, his life is absolutely perfect the way it is.

AGE FIFTEEN

Panic clings to every edge of Eoin's mind as he gasps in the cold Boston air, the salt in the air burning into the back of his throat as much as the gas is burning into his lungs. It all happened far too quick for him to comprehend; one moment they're all sleeping peacefully, the next, the warehouse — their home — is invaded by men in dark vests and riot gear, flashlights shining everywhere, blinding them even upon the deafening sound of gunfire.

The gas poured from his hands unlike a manner he'd ever seen gas do; it wasn't wispy, or billowing, but rather thick, almost liquid, like a waterfall of thick vapour unleashed from the pores of his hands. Silence came quick, and the only thing that stopped the unbidden assault from his hands was the fact that he couldn't breathe.

Before he could fall to his knees and succumb, already lightheaded, he's grabbed by the arm and pulled from the warehouse by a hacking and coughing form.

His knees finally find the floor even as another gunshot rings in the air. Nachelle drops the rifle by the police officer's now-dead body before she crouches next to him, wrapping her arms around his shaking and crying form.

"We're okay, Eoin," she reassures him, but her voice is ravaged, and she can't keep herself from coughing no matter how much she tries. "We have to go, we can't stay here. More will come, come on."

"I killed them," he whispers through his panicked sobs, voice just as raw and painful as Nachelle's sounds. "I killed them all. I killed them, I killed them." His body rocks back and forth on its own accord before he's hauled to his feet.

"No you didn't, baby," she says, but her attention isn't on him. The kids that also made it out find their way towards them, some older teenagers like Nachelle, some Eoin's age, and others younger still. "Is this everyone?" An older boy nods his head, still coughing as he watches Eoin. "Don't look at him, Jarod, it's not his fucking fault. Grab the little ones, we need to leave."

The next day, the news reports a warehouse of dangerous mutants has been eliminated, and viewers are asked to keep the officers that died in their thoughts and prayers. Nachelle turns off the TV with angry eyes. They know better than these lies.

AGE SIXTEEN

There's something in her eyes, a challenge, her gaze unwavering as its fixed on him. Eoin looks at the man holding her by the hair harshly. "So what's it gonna be?" the human asks, no, demands, and Nachelle's hand on the man's wrist tightens, her glare going darker.

Eoin has known her for long enough to know what her face is telling him. Don't. Eyes moving between her and the human, he finds his fists clenching by his sides. Don't give in. And she's right, of course. They've fought for everything they have, and under no circumstance are they going to give it up for some mutant-hating piece of shit with a gun and a threat.

His eyes narrow, and maybe there's something about him, a shift in his body, the movement of his hand, that betrays his intention. "Eoin," Nachelle says, just as the pungent smell of acid fills the air and he throws the glob. Intended for the human hand holding the gun to Nachelle's head, the man shifts her in the line of fire at the last moment, and Eoin watches in horror as the acid burns away at her face.

She's silent. The animalistic scream that tears through the air isn't hers; it's his own. The human lets go of her hair, startled, and starts backing away as the gun is aimed at him. In the next second, Eoin's world goes black, and, even as the gun is fired and lodges a bullet into his shoulder, the animal wearing Eoin's skin pounces on the man with unimaginable speed.

When Eoin's rational mind switches back on, he's sitting on the severely mutilated corpse of the human, panting hard. The wailing of police sirens rings in the air, far still, and it can't drown out the murmurs of the shocked crowd that's now gathering in the street near the alley; phone cameras are pointed at him, heads shaking. Monster, some hiss. Mutant scum, others spit. Eoin looks between them, their judging eyes, and then his eyes fall on Nachelle's still form.

There's something in the depth of his stomach that lurches and stills; something in the back of his mind that snaps. With slow movements, he shifts towards her. He can't look at her face; won't. Instead, he digs into her pocket and pulls her zippo from it. The burning cure.

Eoin gets up to his feet and holds up acidic hands with cold eyes. "Move!" he roars at the crowd, even as he approaches them. They part like the red sea, some scrambling to get out of his way more as he walks through them. He should just kill them all.

When the police finally arrive, Eoin is long gone, and whatever was left of the person Nachelle knew died with her in that alley.

#oneshot.#violence tw #death tw

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harryglom · 5 years ago

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Present Time (a short story)

It was the weirdest wall in the world.

Clock after clock stacked floor to ceiling. A chorus of tick-tocking and tock-ticking. Old and gold, ornate and engraved, bare and blank, international, novelty and nautical and a cuckoo clock or two. At the centre, the ones with darker edges of black firs and autumn wood matched with one another in a circle. In the centre of this circle were two lines drawn by a set of clocks of brighter colours, of white edges and silvers. Altogether they built a mosaic of clocks and, drawn as one, became a single giant clock in and of itself. A bazaar of sound, it was like being perched inside a beating heart. The display being so intricate, you have to ask, whose got the time?

One might also think to ask: is it safe for a psychiatrist's waiting room to have such an absurd array of clocks? If reality has become fragile to someone in some way as to lead them into his or her care, they probably shouldn't adorn their walls with displays that could be interpreted as a personal affront to a person's peculiarity. Or, at least in my experience of the room so far, a pointed statement of one's own alienation and madness.

The secretary chewed sourly on her pen, sucking and un-sucking in time with each loudly punctuated second. Her eyes were full of contempt, colourless and glazed over by the poison of her own perceived wasted potential. She looked like the ink had been slowly drawn into her lips and, year on year, sapped into her pale skin and made one with her blood. Her name was Irma Loveless and she didn't seem the person who could appreciate the irony of her name.

"Irma?" I said as jovially as I could "The last Irma I met was a hurricane."

She wasn't amused. She stared blankly through me, threw the pen onto the desk and walked across the room to the bathroom down the hall. The door thudded behind her and left me wondering if she makes that same sour face when she's taking, as can only be deduced by her unwavering demeanour, a powerfully hateful shit. Secretary, a word that used to wear its heart on its sleeve. Now pronounced sek-rah-terry, once was secret-ary: a bank of secrets. Is there any more fitting place for such a title than within ear shot of a therapy session? Perhaps the troubles of the world have meddled their way into her life as sullen ghostly whispers. Or perhaps she's just a cunt.

Sara Simmons leaves the doctor's office. A frail middle-aged woman, Sara can best be described as a blonde perm hanging at the end of a mop. She's always jangling her bag and twitching her taut and bony arms looking for something. I don't think she'd know relaxation if it hit her in the face with rohypnol. She used to come in here with her husband until her madness was deemed by the psychiatrist not to be shared. He was a banker, a big guy who looked at the other patients as if there should be a VIP room to separate him from the riff-raff. He was a man with big money, big decisions and a big dick attitude. He had no time for emotions besides a hunger for domination and a suicidal thought or two. Now she comes in alone, twice a week, with an irrational fear of time. I wonder why?

She told me all this last Tuesday despite my best performance of a certifiably anti-social Grade-A nutjob. I suppose for 200 pounds an hour, you've got to make your moneys worth where you can. I'm not a doctor but from the stolen minutes of self reflection she's inflicted upon the waiting room, I'd diagnose her with an incurable case of a terrible personality. She gives me a weak smile before leaving money in an envelope on Irma's desk. She's stopped charging the credit card: her husband thinks she's at brunch with the girls. Like he'd care, she'd say with a sudden vigour, a crack of pained breath splintering the air, hoping someone or something in the universe would challenge her. The last thing she does when she leaves is tie up her navy blue scarf, a cotton stream beneath the frazzled bolts of sun that comprise her hair, covering the air between her shirt and pale throat and I struggle to not momentarily consider picturing a noose.

Mr Peterson would usually be next, waddling in from his time-machine life of waist coats and romantic poetry memorised verbatim, a stanza or two left to linger in the waiting room like a sudden burst of sunlight.

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!

Selfishly, the Dickensian odd-ball went and died on us. He joined his husband and Byron in the big clouds in the sky and left us behind in a cultural wasteland, adrift like the boss-eyed soldiers wading through the embers of Dresden. Matching craters in the earth and their skin, concave boils of led and blood, where once joy and life resided in. We're all looking, like Byron said, for the moment where the fates change horses.

Irma returned unchanged and motioned me through to the doctor's office. I'll have to rethink my diagnosis of poisoned blood and bowel extremities and go with what is most simple: a cunt, a total and utter cunt. I nod at her and the curtesy goes unrecieved, her eyes drawn to the floor as she slams the door behind. It was a white fire door-- heavy enough that a slam requires deliberate, rehearsed and methodical engagement. Yes, a cunt indeed.

"Oscar, what can I help you with today?" Doctor Mathis says as she pins her round framed glasses onto the thin bridge of her nose. She sits cross legged in a pallid green skirt suit and her silvery blonde hair hangs above the lightly frayed cotton edges of her jacket collar. She is a vision of grandmotherly serenity and she speaks with a honeyed-glass transatlantic accent. "Been too busy being sane to see me?"

This is a reference to our last session, a month prior, where happiness had coursed easy through me like a summer's breeze. I always get hyperbolic when I'm happy and so the usually pointed words of sane and insane avoided by psychiatrists have become part of our regular vernacular. They probably didn't teach her this when she got her PHD but sometimes, for the right patient, we need to be mocked out of our self indulgence. I suppose, not mocked so far as to stop paying 200 pounds a session to discuss nothing but oneself but who am I to judge? I'm the one who is insane.

"It's all starts and stops with me isn't it?" Springs my voice. It's the first time I've been honest all week.

"That's life, Oscar." She says smiling.

"Is that the kind of observation that separates private from NHS?"

"The best lessons, for a case like yours" She adjusts her notepad into a comfortable position under her arm, "are often the simplest."

I've made a game of deciphering my psychiatrists when I get bored of myself. I play detective, scan outfits for clues, ticks and habits, the rings and life around their eyes. Divorced? Former addict? A late-starter? A sexual maniac who feeds off the madness of others? She's the first one who ever picked up on it, grinning with amusement, noticing me noticing her.

"Its hard being watched for you isn't it? Being vulnerable to observation. Those who feel themselves cast outside their lives, feeling scrutinised, often seek control in casting others in the same place." She never stuttered or paused. She simply removed the purple beaded bracelets she habitually played with, the ones I had been not so surreptitiously eyeing up throughout the conversation. The beads rattled for a moment on the table and she leaned forward like a drawn arrow. "Why do you think you feel the need to deflect attention?"

She's always like that, audaciously perceptive in a way only a good psychiatrist can be. Sometimes in doctors offices there is a lot of excess data, the human folly of pinning significance on that which has none, wrapped up in narratives perceived to be influenced by everything but that which has truly influenced them. Once we had core experiences and reactions, simple emotional mathematics. Now we have existential self awareness and who needs it, to end up like Sara Simmons? Yet sometimes something slips through the cracks, strikes a chord brighter than lightning, lingers in the lexicon of your brain, rigidly unforgotten like your worst nightmare or deepest regret. Why do you think you feel the need to deflect attention?

Instead in this session we discuss the pitfalls of self awareness, mindful not to mention Sara after the swift and stern rebuke Dr Mathis dealt me the last time I mentioned another patient in her presence. I perfunctorily professed my regret, admitting that I'm a bit of a bastard. She said outside of these walls that would not count as an apology. There's always something being avoided like the remaining broccoli on a sweet tooth kid's plate. Aimless philosophy and scathing observation are my chocolate pudding. I wonder if beneath the frailty Sara Simmons is the same-- using wellness as a pastime, branding Mr Peterson a poof, Irma a piece of work and me a creep. Little did she know that I am all three.

"I'm sometimes not in control of my thoughts." I spring forth, hoping to jumpstart anything other than auto-pilot conversation. She holds silent with her pen poised. "I've told you before, my brain whirs past me. It's like life is happening over here in one part of my brain and me, the real me, is off to the side."

"As seriously as that first time?"

"No, not as bad as since- no." I corrected myself. "The thoughts are as bad; hurting things. People. Animals. Children."

Even in a place as safe as this, the last word hits me like a knife edged boomerang, severing her pleasantries and my dignity at the throat. I can feel her eyes on me, I know they're gentle but even in her profession she must sometimes be afraid.

"We've talked about moral scrupulosity before. It's very common and not indicative of the rationality of people with your condition." She says "Much as popular culture would have you believe otherwise."

She knows I like horror movies. I used to talk about them a lot when I first came here, that they were all to blame; Freddie, Jason and Jigsaw, and of course Hannibal the Cannibal. They danced in my dreams, finger nails, steak knives and masks, bonfires of depravity ablaze beneath my eyelids. Yet in daylight, my thoughts never showed them holding the weapon. It was never them squeezing the life, bubbling bursting cartoon eyeballs left lopsided, pinning fur-skins to the walls. She talked me down from thinking I was one of them.

She joked: "Very few, in my experience, are."

I suppose it is rather funny in a way, those dark corners of thoughts that never belonged to you. A summer's day, cherry blossom and silver maple seed twisting into your conditioned hair and artisanal ice cream when your brain decides to ponder what that short woman would look like hanging from a tree. A building in flames at the slightest shame of a cracked voice, to think of nothing else but the sound of their screams. Or a man who cuts in line at the coffee shop being crumpled by construction, loose scaffolding, metal bolts and beams where his face should be. I suppose it is rather funny. Unfortunately, it's not for me.

"Commonality doesn't make them less pleasant."

"I'm sure it doesn't. But you've made progress: you're now sure these thoughts are not really you. Surrendering to it, as long as they don't flare up any worse later, is the best you can do."

Surrendering, always surrendering. Surrendering to impulses to run away, surrendering to happiness, surrendering to love and for all the money in the world I can't stand the possibility of surrendering to myself. She leans forward again, closer with her hands on her knees, and gestures for me to open up towards her again.

"Do you know why I keep all those clocks, Oscar?"

"Because you're as mad as us?"

"Because for all my medicine, mental tricks and multiple degrees" She takes off her glasses to clean them again. "I don't have the answers to everything. I have only what we all have-- the present moment."

I look up at her, with glistening eyes that say the honey moon is over. Her eyes are calm, still as the shores of emerald green seas. In the silence, the clock ticks enter the from the other room. It doesn't startle me, it becomes a part of me, my brain ticking forward with it, ready to strike a new hour for my life. Of course, this hour has been and gone many times but it rings true as the bells of midnight every time.

"I think- I think it's time for the medication again."

She assumes next week's time before I go, stands and turns her body in a way that seems to indicate that she would like to prescribe a hug were it allowed. A flash in my brain; a hug that crushes her bones, silvery gold locks torn at the root, blood on her matching emerald shoes. I breathe and smile weakly, my fingers mere inches away from hers as I take the prescription. She holds her hand tight on the paper for a moment as I begin to slide it away. She just nods at me in earnest, a distanced yet maternal motion, like an aunt for a nephew who has grown too old for kisses. That's the closest she can give me. I suppose it's funny in a way.

I heave open the fire door and clear out of Irma's way before she gets to take up my space. I don't make eye contact with anyone on the way out nor skirt my eyes over the weirdest wall in the world. I just glare over the empty chair where Mr Peterson would sit. As I walk onto the pavement, the high trills of bird calls replacing the sterile ticking of the clocks, the world rushes back to me. A flash in my brain, for once pleasant, recalled a poem he once said.

Time, like an ever-rolling stream,

Bears all its sons away;

They fly forgotten, as a dream

Dies at the opening day.

Silvery upon the leaves, beams of gold glistens through the shifting trees onto windows of black taxis.

I hail one down and, presently, resume my life.

#queer fiction #new poets corner #new writing #original writing #original story #short story #short tales #mental health #positive mental attitude #mental disorder #actually ocd #writers #weird fiction #weirdart #im weird #excerpt from a story i'll never write #excerpt from a book i'll never write #excerpt from a book i might write #excerpts of stories

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madscientistjournal · 6 years ago

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The Essence of Sprout

An essay by Professor Caldwell Mook, as told to Nick Morrish Art by Leigh Legler

It is not often that I agree to become personally involved in one of the scientific experiments that I am investigating. Generally, I prefer to observe and deride from a safe distance. However, Doctor Felix Happensnapper’s research into sensory enhancement intrigued me greatly.

Many years ago, as a callow youth living in rural England, I was persuaded to play in a village cricket match. I was allocated a fielding position close to the batsman; a position with the apt name of “silly mid-off.” After a while, I made the mistake of concentrating on a problem of mental calculus, rather than the game in progress. It was the turn of the rival team’s captain to bat. In response to some heckling from the crowd, he swung energetically at the ball which promptly struck me hard on the bridge of the nose.

Interestingly, before I passed out, I clearly recall being able to calculate the velocity and vector of the offending projectile with considerable accuracy.

When I came round, I had lost a large amount of blood and much of my sense of smell. My body efficiently replaced the missing blood cells, but my olfactory nerves were never the same again. I consider this to be a gross design flaw and were it possible, I would certainly have complained to the manufacturer.

Since this unfortunate incident, I have been unable to discern anything but the most pungent aromas and the strongest tastes. Over the last year, I have compensated for this by dining extensively on Goat Vindaloo, a fiery curry dish from south-east India, which even my acquaintances from the Indian sub-continent consider uncomfortably hot.

As much as I enjoy the sensory experience, my new diet has put something of a dampener on my social life, as the after-effects can put be somewhat off-putting to those with a normal sense of smell. I had been searching for a more convenient solution to my problem, so when I heard of Doctor Happensnapper’s work, I put aside my usual skepticism and offered myself as a subject for his experiments.

“We have developed efficient hearing aids, so why not scent aids, taste aids, or even touch aids?” he asked when we met at his Hampshire laboratory.

Although housed in a Victorian Gothic building studded with sinister-looking pinnacles and gloomy towers, the laboratory itself was perfectly clean and modern. I understand that the myriad spider’s webs in the foyer are merely there for effect.

“As you can see, I have been experimenting with a series of sprays, gels, injections, and electrical shock therapies to both enhance and degrade the efficacy of the sensory nerves.”

I am aware that electrical shock treatment is now considered the gold standard amongst para-rational medical practitioners such as Doctor Happensnapper. However, I suggested we begin with more conventional treatments, since their effects are usually temporary and are less likely to cause scarring or memory loss.

The doctor began by offering me a patent nasal spray which he said would fortify my damaged olfactory nerves. I tried it, and within a few minutes, I was able to detect the scent of new mown grass drifting in through an open window. I was delighted by this result and congratulated Doctor Happensnapper on his formulation.

Gradually, I began to detect more smells, both pleasant and unpleasant. The intensity of the experience increased exponentially, and I soon became aware of a strong odor of curry exuding from my skin.

I had for some time wondered if my personal hygiene was suffering due to my poor sense of smell, and I now had considerable evidence to support this hypothesis. I asked his assistant, Nurse Mundy, a large bearded gentleman with little discernable bedside manner, if there was a shower I could use. I followed his directions, but as soon as I entered the bathroom, I was overcome by the stench of chemicals, air fresheners, and drains and immediately passed out.

I awoke some hours later on a hospital bed. Doctor Happensnapper did not appear unduly concerned but made notes on my condition and agreed to use a lower dose next time. He suggested we move on to the sense of taste which, I found, had also diminished as a result of the accident.

Nurse Bundy applied several unpleasant tasting droplets on my tongue to collate what is commonly known as a taste map. From this, the doctor was able to deduce which areas required the most enhancement and which were working satisfactorily.

He produced a viscous gel, which the nurse spread over the relevant parts of my tongue. I suffered a certain gagging reflex, but the taste was not unduly unpleasant. Nurse Bundy then fed me small pieces of food, such as broccoli, chocolate, anchovies, and so on.

My experience of each flavor was indeed heightened, and my opinion of the doctor’s methods was somewhat restored. However, when the nurse returned an hour later to repeat the tests, I found that everything now unaccountably tasted of Brussels sprouts. Now I am not one of these people who detest the noble sprout, but the intensity of its bitter flavor soon overcame all others.

My distress was clearly evident to Nurse Bundy, who attempted to remove the gel with an electric toothbrush. Unfortunately, the spearmint flavoring of the anti-bacterial rinsing fluid only exacerbated the all-encompassing sprout sensation. Overwhelmed by this vegetable excess, my brain again decided that a brief period of unconsciousness was required.

However, when the nurse returned an hour later to repeat the tests, I found that everything now unaccountably tasted of Brussels sprouts.

Once I had recovered, Doctor Happensnapper returned, appearing even more excited by the results of this latest experiment.

“Do you not see what this means? If we can enhance the sprout reaction in a subject who has no aversion to its taste, then surely we can also reduce it in those to whom it is a complete anathema. The boon to mankind and also to my research budget could be immense. Imagine what the Brussels Sprout Growers Association would say if I could make their product universally acceptable.”

I consented to assisting him in his continued research, but only after a suitable fee was agreed, the amount of which I am not prepared to disclose. I was introduced to Doctor Happensnapper’s wife, Ingrid, a tall, emaciated-looking woman with disconcertingly hairy hands and a limited command of the English language. She distilled the essence of sprout from a large cast iron pot filled with the vegetable, which she had been stewing over an open fire.

Once the potion was ready, she wasted no time before passing it Nurse Bundy with a nervous wink and a grimace. The nurse began by applying a high-concentration Emla cream to my sprout taste receptors. He then administered several drops of essence of sprout to each side of my tongue and waited for it to take effect. The inhibiting cream certainly reduced the adverse reactions noted previously but on the left side only.

“I see you are uni-sprout intolerant,” explained the doctor. “You have a tongue asymmetry, which means that half your taste buds are more sensitive than the other half.”

He advised Nurse Bundy to double the strength of the cream applied to the right-hand side. Although I could now no longer feel large parts of my tongue, or my face for that matter, it did even out the taste sensations. However, I did not find essence of sprout any more pleasing to my taste.

It reminded me rather of the cabbage soup my grandmother used to make. Needless to say, visits to her house are not a fond childhood memory. As sad as I was to hear of her unfortunate accident with my nephew’s skateboard and the London Underground train, there was a part of me that was inappropriately overjoyed that I would never have to taste her cooking ever again.

I concluded that Doctor Happensnapper’s scheme to extort money from sprout farmers was doomed to failure. However, I decided not to mention this to him until I was certain his fee was securely in my bank account. I consider that his sense enhancement experiments may one day bear fruit, but I shall wait until his techniques are at a more mature stage of development before subjecting myself to Nurse Bundy’s tender ministrations once more.

On a positive note, my sense of taste remains somewhat improved. I have relinquished my Indian curry diet and have recently developed a fondness for Thai cuisine. I look forward to the renewal of various social relationships which have languished in recent months under the miasma of Goat Vindaloo.

Since the conclusion of my investigation, however, I have been unable to so much as look at a Brussels sprout without shuddering. In the autumn, I am seriously considering taking a sabbatical somewhere in the far east until Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other sprout-related festivities are safely in the past.

Professor Caldwell Mook holds the Mithering Chair of General Negativity at the University of Leeds, England. He specializes in pre-emptive risk analyses for technology that has yet to be invented. Professor Mook regularly offers discouragement and derision to scientists and engineers around the world.

Nick Morrish is an increasingly mad engineer who lives in Hampshire, England, where his eccentricities are considered quite normal. During a long and futile career, he has worked for a number of frankly certifiable, multinational companies. He clings to the last vestiges of sanity by writing serious and truthful stories about the nature of existence. Since no one else seems to observe truth in quite the same way, his work is often mistaken for satire or fantasy.

Leigh’s professional title is “illustrator,” but that’s just a nice word for “monster-maker,” in this case. More information about them can be found at http://leighlegler.carbonmade.com/.

The Essence of Sprout was originally published on Mad Scientist Journal

#Caldwell Mook #Food Science #Leigh Legler #Nick Morrish #Pharmacology

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ladygadfly · 7 years ago

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Reylo Week 2018 day 1: Colours

Shades

Jakku is yellow.

Rey’s earliest memory is yellow sand stretching on and on as far as the eye can see. Yellow so glaringly bright that looking at it would blind you. The relentless sun beating down so hard sometimes that the sky itself seemed bleached out, worn thin and ruined just like everything else on Jakku.

She remembers bottles and glasses of strong smelling amber coloured liquid. Shards and slivers of glass littering the floor.

She remembers a woman’s wrists, mottled a sickly yellow with old bruises, her hands shaking as she drains another bottle and then smashes it over a man’s head.

Madness is a legitimate problem in the desert. The heat drives people to insanity, thirst making people gorge themselves on unclean, stagnant water that has been sitting too long. Rey knows as well as they do that it will make them sick. They can’t stop themselves. They’ll go jaundiced and swollen bellied, parasites eating at their insides, begging for water at the end. To quench their thirst, to ease their fever.

Rey is very, very careful with rationing her water. Very, very careful with cleaning the debris and pus from every little scrape and scratch she receives. Jakku kills. It kills easily and often. And no-one misses you when you go.

Nothing is new on Jakku. Everything is inherited or stolen or scavenged. Children inherit property, inherit prejudices, inherit anger and hate and bitterness. Nothing is good on Jakku, no-one ever leaves Jakku to do great things, no-one becomes truly successful on Jakku. Even the junk merchants are only a few steps further away from poverty than their workers, and they know it.

They’re living in the graveyard of a battle that was supposed to be the end of an empire. It wasn’t.

They pick over corpses of felled destroyers and at-ats. And if Rey comes across the old bleached bones of someone who died in a long ago battle, or some poor scavenger who came before her and took a fall, she takes the time to kick sand over them and think a few words of respect. She can’t do much else.

This place will grind her down eventually. No matter how she rages against it, Rey knows she’s fighting a losing battle. She sees it in the worn husks of women cleaning machinery at the cleaning stations, the thousands of tally marks scratched into the walls of her home. She’s long since lost count. That’s not why she does it any more. She lies in her cot at night, listening to the wind moving the sand and swears she can feel something being scoured away from her. The pain of loss made worse by her total inability to articulate what it actually is that she’s losing.

She has to leave before this place breaks her.

She sits outside the walker and places the rebel pilot helmet on her head, the tinted glass of the visor turning the sands around her a deeper yellow.

She waits.

**** The resistance is blue.

The console lights cast the faces of everyone in the war room with a bluish glow. They look spectral, bright eyed and haunted as they fight desperately with what little they have.

Rey likes exploring the planets they make port on (never for very long), and especially loves the ones with lots of water and life and greenery. Once she goes off to train in a nearby forest, leaving with stern instructions from Leia to keep an active comm link open. She spends a little time moving through her forms, then lies back and watches clouds scudding across the sky. The sky is such a soft blue here. The shifting light and dark as clouds move across the sun and the leaves move in the breeze lulls her into a trance, and before she knows it Poe is on the comm telling her to get back to base.

When Finn asks her what she was doing she replies “Meditating, mostly.” It’s not exactly a lie.

The first time she fires up her new saberstaff the blue beams crackle in such a familiar way that her hands start to shake. She powers it down quickly. The beams are as stable as they can be, Rey had made sure of that. It’s a beautifully made weapon, meticulously researched and designed. Finn and Rose had gone on a special infiltration mission to get her schematics from some old archive on one of the core worlds. The mission was incredibly dangerous, and Rey yelled at them for at least ten minutes before hugging them in gratitude.

Leia looks at her steadily from the doorway of the room they’re using as a makeshift armoury.

“General, I…I didn’t hear you come in.” For a woman leaning heavily on a cane she still moves as quiet as a lothcat, Rey thinks ruefully.

The general gives a crooked smile and makes her way over to the workbench Rey is standing by. She’s moving slower these days, but with no less poise and elegance.

“That’s a magnificent weapon Rey, you should be proud.” There’s a heavy pause. “The beam is very…” Leia trails off meaningfully and Rey swallows, mouth suddenly dry.

“When the saber broke, the kyber crystal split as well. It wasn’t a clean break they…cracked.”

“Luke’s old saber.” Leia murmurs.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t-“

The general waves her hand dismissively. “Don’t apologise Rey. Besides, wouldn’t you need two crystals to make a staff anyway? It’s near impossible to get kyber anywhere in the galaxy these days. The Force knew what it was doing.”

Rey thinks of the throne room, fire raining down around her as she put every ounce of strength into pulling the saber towards her. Of a force at the other end pulling just as hard back.

“I think so too. But I still…I just…I wish it didn’t have to be like this.” To Rey’s mortification she feels her voice break, tears pricking her eyes.

Leia places her hands over Rey’s. They’re cold, and Rey can see blue veins underneath thin papery skin. Blue bloods, she thinks dumbly. They call royals blue bloods.

“Me too, dear.” Leia has tears in her eyes as well. “Me too.”

**** Ben is red.

Rey had read of the process of bleeding a crystal. How you had to force your hate and pain and anger into the crystal until it was corrupted and took on a red hue.

Ben, of course, had gone too far with it and poured so much of his pain into the crystal that it fractured, creating an unstable beam. It was only when Rey began researching how to make her own saber that she realised just how dangerous Ben’s weapon really was. The rather ostentatious quillons were there to vent excess power. Without them they whole weapon would explode as soon as it was activated.

And wasn’t that just Ben all over. Too much power, too much anger, too much emotion, too much of everything. She wonders sometimes how he doesn’t just fly apart completely with the burning maelstrom going on inside him.

Rey should be frightened. She should run away, send co-ordinates to the resistance of the uninhabited backwater planet they tentatively agreed to meet up on through the bond. They came to talk but within a short span of time they had ignited their sabers and were striking and parrying, Ben giving pointers on how to better kill him. She’s not sure if they’re actually fighting or if they’re sparring, all she knows is this is possibly the calmest she’s ever felt Ben. His rage has subsided and he’s focused on correcting her footwork even as she slashes at him.

The heat within him is still there, but it’s different. Softer, somehow. Rey falters and as she missteps Ben’s eyes snap to hers and she knows. Feels the same heat low in her belly.

Rey catches hold of the front of his shirt the same time he grabs her round the waist. Their lips press together awkwardly, desperately. Neither of them has much of an idea what they’re doing but Rey can’t bring herself to care. Not about the Resistance or the First Order or the Jedi or any of it. Not when every part of her soul is reaching out for Ben, not when she can feel him reaching back.

Deactivated sabers fall to the ground and so do they, tearing at each other’s clothes in their desperation to feel skin against skin. Rey rakes her fingernails down his broad, pale back hard enough to draw tiny beads of blood and Ben moans. He presses bites and kisses down her neck and across her breasts as he pushes across the bond how much he loves her, how he needs her, the sheer intensity of his emotion stealing Rey’s breath.

Of course their first time is like this, this mix of tenderness and roughness, passion and pain in equal measure. How could it be anything else?

When he enters her, she winces. It’s not out of pain, Rey is accustomed to pain. It’s just so strange having someone physically inside of her. Ben stills over her, his face flushed, lips swollen.

“Do you want me to stop?” Ben frowns and begins to move away, only for Rey’s legs to lock around his hips.

“Don’t you kriffing dare.” She manages to grit out, shifting her hips experimentally.

It takes them a moment to find a good rhythm, but it helps when you can literally read your partner’s mind. Ben fucks the same way he fights, throwing his whole being into it. She puts a suggestion across the bond, showing Ben how she touches herself, and he immediately slips a hand between them to rub against her clit in a way that has her positively wailing underneath him.

She reaches her climax just before he does, clawing at Ben’s back and biting his shoulder as the ripples of her orgasm push him over the edge. He shouts as he spills into her, mind blissfully blank.

By the time their sweat has dried he’s apologising, and Rey considers smacking some sense into him.

“Why the hell are you apologising? You know I wanted that right? You did feel how much I enjoyed that? Please tell me you could tell that I enjoyed that.”

“Yes, I could tell you enjoyed that.” There’s a hint of smugness in his voice, but she decides he’s earned it. “I just…I had planned this differently.”

“You planned this?” Rey grins. “What did you have planned? Dim lighting, flowers and romantic music?”

Ben has the good grace to flush. He had, in fact, envisaged something like the cheesy holo-romance scene Rey is describing. “I meant for there to be a bed at least.” He mutters.

Rey’s laughter peals out, soon joined by Ben’s rumbling chuckle. Seeing him so carefree makes Rey feel lightheaded. He looks so much younger when he smiles.

He pulls his cape over them, and for a while they just hold each other. Neither wants to be the one to say it.

“Ben. We can’t do this.”

“I know.”

“It’s dangerous.”

“It is.”

There is another agonising pause.

“What do we do now?”

Ben shifts uncomfortably. The planet is warm but the ground is hardly the most comfortable place to be having this conversation.

“The plan you came up with, we should go ahead with it. It’s very risky but if we pull it off, we can end this war now.”

“And be together?”

Ben presses his lips to her forehead.

“And be together.” Provided we both survive.

“I heard that.” Rey pokes his chest. “I’m not dying on you and you’re not dying on me Ben Solo, not when I just got you back.”

“I assure you sweetheart, dying is the last thing I intend to do.”

**** The new Jedi order is grey.

The first place they go to is Ach-to.

“Well, you showed me the way here eventually.” Ben gives a lopsided grin from the co-pilot’s seat. He’s changed since the war ended, still with his moments of darkness but the light within him getting brighter, strengthened by Rey’s love and a new purpose in life.

Rey just rolls her eyes and punches in the landing co-ordinates.

The caretakers like Ben straight off, more than they have ever liked Rey. Within a week Ben has picked up snippets of whatever ancient language they speak and utterly charms the fish women by making polite conversation in their native tongue.

“Why do they call you The Destroyer?” His eyes are twinkling as he says it, and Rey fully expects the caretakers have told him of every little incident that lead to that ignoble nickname.

“You remember the time I told you about the mirror cave?”

“Don’t change the subject.” Stop trying to distract me.

“That was in that hut.” She points across the courtyard. I’m not trying. I’m succeeding. “They rebuilt it. You want to pay a visit?” She saunters across the open space, pushing across the bond an image of Ben pressing her against the stone walls of the domed hut as she screams his name.

Ben almost trips over his feet rushing to follow her. She succeeds in distracting him. Thoroughly.

When they emerge from the hut a while later, a caretaker narrows her eyes at them from across the way and mutters something. Rey doesn’t understand the words but the tone is universal.

“Ugh, what is she saying?”

“You don’t want to know.”

One morning she leads Ben to the room where Luke had told her the first lesson. They sit by the pool with the mosaic of the prime Jedi, discussing the texts Rey had taken. Ben is working on translating some of the older texts, going into raptures over the beauty of the penmanship and the complexity of the grammar rules of whatever ancient dialect it is written in. Rey understands less than half of it but doesn’t care, simply happy to gaze at Ben as he lights up talking about something he’s passionate about.

She’s reading one of the texts when Ben stands up to stretch his legs. His footsteps echo around the stone cavern, and it isn’t until the silence stretches out Rey realises he’s stopped. She looks up, and sees Ben standing by the platform where she first consciously reached out to the force.

Ben is very still, his hands clenched.

She approaches him cautiously. He’s never hurt her, but he’s still having moments where the darkness overwhelms him. She suspects he always will. He’s had a long run of good days lately and she wants to hold on to that for as long as possible.

She calls out to him softly, and he starts, whirling round to meet her.

“You ok?”

“Luke. He was here. This is where he-“ He breaks off, hot tears spilling down his face, and Rey can feel the agony and shame washing over him.

She wants to say something. She wants to make it better, to take the pain of losing his father and uncle and mother from him. She can’t. She knows Ben will never be free of this, not really. He’ll always be caught between the light and the dark, fighting that battle within himself for the rest of his life.

She just holds him.

It’s a week later that Ben announces that he’s going into the cave. Rey’s first instinct is to tell him not to, afraid of what the mirror might show him, scared that it might shatter what little fragile happiness he’s been able to find.

But she realises it’s not her place to take this from him. She needed to see what the Force had to show her, so does Ben.

It doesn’t stop her from pacing nervously outside their hut waiting for him to come back though. The sky is a leaden stormy grey and the choppy waters surrounding the island are the same colour. She hears one rumble of thunder, then another, and the sky is split with a fork of lightning. The sky darkens and rain starts pelting down. Still she stands outside the hut, shivering, arms wrapped around her as she squints through the storm for a familiar hulking figure. She tries reaching out across the force bond but it’s uncharacteristically quiet, which terrifies her.

She’s just about made up her mind to run down to the cave, her mind filled with images of Ben bloodied and broken, when he trudges up the steps to the gathering of stone huts. His face is hidden underneath his hood. When they get into their hut he hangs up his cloak, takes off his boots, and starts undressing for bed. He doesn’t say a word, his face is blank. Not sure what else to do, Rey does the same, slipping into bed next to him.

The bonds is still silent and when Rey reaches out she finds Ben has closed himself off from her, which he almost never does. The silence makes her edgy, fidgeting until Ben puts a strong arm around her and pulls her to his chest. Finally he speaks.

“I’ve been thinking, about what we were discussing regarding taking the best parts from the dark and light sides in the new order.”

Rey looks up at him. Ben is gazing up at the ceiling, his face no longer blank but serene. The bond is still shut and Rey realises that Ben is keeping something from her, feeling a spike of anxiety as she wonders what he saw in the cave. His eyes are red-rimmed but he seems calm.

“I think that in the new order, we should allow relationships. Jedi should be allowed to love, and marry, and have children.”

He opens the bond finally and Rey gasps. His dark eyes gaze into hers as he lets the depth of his feelings for her flow through their bond. He wants all of those things, with her.

“Yes.” The word is out of her mouth before she can stop it. “Stars, Ben yes.”

He doesn’t seem to mind that she didn’t let him ask her out loud.

**** Their new life is purple.

Rey had insisted that the new training temple be built on a planet with lots of greenery and water, and Ben is more than happy to oblige. When the former resistance had bargained with the Republic to let Ben live, they had agreed on the condition that the new Jedis pick an uninhabited planet on the outer rim to build their temple. Rey is free to come and go as she pleases but it is understood that for Ben, this is a permanent banishment to be broken on pain of death. Considering the alternative, Ben is happy to oblige.

He scours the systems looking for a suitable planet, and when he finds one he comms Rey to come immediately.

When she lands, Ben is standing there with a bunch of small, sweet-smelling purple flowers grasped in his massive hand, presenting them to her with a flourish.

“My wedding gift to you.” He’s beaming as Rey takes the flowers and leaps into his arms, peppering her husband’s face with kisses.

“It’s perfect.” The planet is lush and beautiful, and Rey loves it on sight.

The process of building and establishing the temple is even more difficult than they both had anticipated. Even with help from many of the former resistance and first order members and even some republic workers that Finn somehow manages to wrangle for a time, construction is slow going. People are still wary of Ben, and he tries very hard to hide how it affects him. The stress of the project is making both of them lose sleep, and both have dark violet smudges under their eyes.

Rey has been on several missions to find potential padawans, and they now have a handful of children waiting in a core world orphanage for the temple to be complete so they can begin their training. Both Rey and Ben have agreed that they will not be taking children from their families at infancy, as the old Jedi order did. But both are equally adamant that force-sensitives need to be taught how to harness their powers, both for their safety and others.

It’s several months later than planned when they finally take in their first students, and they’re not remotely ready. Trying to keep the children on task whilst meditating is like trying to herd Porgs, keeping them awake during Jedi history lessons is nigh impossible, and the first few saber form lessons result in several spectacular dark purple bruises on students and teachers alike.

But eventually they fall into a routine. Eventually they feel like they know what they are doing.

So naturally something happens to throw them off.

Rey falls ill. She starts feeling tired for no reason and gets queasy in the mornings. It isn’t until she checks the calendar on her datapad that she realises she’s skipped her last two periods. She’d not had regular periods until joining the resistance and starting to put on weight, and between that and the stress of keeping their padawans from misbehaving she’d lost track. She sends a discreet comm to Rose asking her to make sure a med droid and a test is included in the next supplies shipment.

She’s sure Ben will sense the small life growing within her through the Force some time soon, he’s already caught on that there’s something going on when she starts being very careful what she puts through the bond. It’s important to Rey that she be absolutely sure, and that she tells him herself out loud.

The shipment arrives and the med droid confirms Rey’s suspicion. Really she can feel the life inside her already, but she wants to know it’s healthy before she tells Ben.

She goes to where Ben is trying, and failing, to walk the children through the Shii-Cho.

“Rey, can you come over here? I need to demonstrate…” He trails off. Rey is beaming, practically running over to him before throwing her arms around him to whisper in his ear. He freezes.

Then suddenly his lips are pressed against hers, the padawans making vomit noises at the sight of their two masters, already unnecessarily lovey-dovey in their opinion, making out in the middle of the training area.

“Class is dismissed.” Ben says, barely taking his lips off Rey’s.

Rey knew pregnancy would change her body, but she’s still not happy with the reddish-purple stretch marks that stripe across her belly. Ben kisses them and tells her she’s never looked more beautiful.

The med droid drops another bomb on her at her latest check-up. She’s trying to work out how to tell Ben when he gives her the perfect opportunity.

“Rose sent a message. She’s making a baby blanket, she wants to know if it should be pink or blue?”

“Hmm?” Rey is pressing her hands against her belly, the droid said she should start feeling movement soon.

“You know, pink for a girl or blue for a boy?” Ben in the image of forced nonchalance, she can tell he’s dying to know.

“Funny you should mention that. I just found out today.” Rey smiles. “Tell her to make a purple one.”

“Purple?” Ben frowns. “Why purple?”

“One of each.”

“One of each? One of…” Realisation dawns on his face. “As in, two? We’re having two?!”

“It must run in your family.” Rey laughs.

Ben falls to his knees in front of where she is sitting, kissing her belly.

“Rey you’re amazing. I love you so much I- oh kriff.” He reaches for the datapad and starts typing furiously.

“What is it?”

“I’m telling them to double the amount of baby stuff in the next supplies shipment.” He pauses. “And to include a crate of Corellian whiskey, I think I’m going to need it.” **** Well it's a bit late but here we go. I wrote this last minute and it is unbeta'd so please excuse any errors.

#reylo week 2018 #reyloweek2018 #reylo #rey #kylo ren #ben solo #my writing #guys I am so tired I stayed up so late to finish this

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jordan202 · 7 years ago

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My Boys: Beyond the Horizon - Chapter 10

hey guys, sorry for the long wait with this one.

This chapter focuses mostly on Megan and a situation that I think will ultimately serve to add a lot of personal growth to her. As a teenager, she is just uncovering the world and being challenged is a big, important part of the process of self discovery IMO.

It also has a cute Omelia moment that I just couldn't resist not adding. Cute bubbly Omelia flirting just makes my heart very happy.

As usual thank you @jia911 for proofreading and @bluebelle18 for being the JD to my Megan and always challenging me to do better.

My Boys: Beyond the Horizon – Chapter Ten

JD looked away from the music sheet. For the third time in less than five minutes, he caught blue eyes intensely staring at him. Just like it’d happened in all previous times, Megan looked away quickly, too embarrassed to be caught in the act.

For the past hour, they had been quietly sitting facing each other inside the music classroom. Every now and then, their teacher Mrs. Julian would walk by and ask if they needed any help, but Megan would quickly and politely refuse it, only to immediately go back to studying her own sheets.

But since she couldn’t seem to stop stealing a peek at him every ten minutes, JD could tell she was probably making a big effort to continuously stay in his presence without saying a word.

“You can just ask me, you know,” he decided to break the silence, instantly regaining her attention.

Megan turned her eyes up to meet his, mortified that she hadn’t held back the urge to look at the guy, especially because he’d caught her doing it every single time. Trying not to think about that, the teenage debated with herself whether or not to accept his suggestion. It would be too much of an obvious lie if she said there was nothing she wanted to ask. Megan was usually very good at reading people and she took pride in having a good intuition. Everything JD had showed so far had led her to think he was a terrible person and yet, for the past two days she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what he’d said in the school hall.

Sighing with resignation, the girl gave in, finally voicing the doubt that had been bothering her ever since.

“Were you really upset about what I said that day at Steve’s party?” she asked carefully, unaware of how adorable she looked when she frowned like that. In her mind, JD wasn’t really the kind of guy who cared about anyone or anything. So the fact that he had openly pointed out he thought she had accused him unjustly could only mean that… well… maybe he had actually been bothered by it?

JD successfully hid his surprise with the question. He lazily tapped a pencil on the sheet while thinking about an answer. He had never been one to lie and usually, the consequences of his excessive honesty didn’t bother him. But for some reason, that annoying girl looked so vulnerable and legitimately concerned with her widened blue eyes that he caught himself measuring his words not to come out too aggressive.

“I guess I was,” he replied sincerely. “You weren’t very fair to me,” the boy added, instantly noticing how she turned her chin up very proudly.

“You treated my friend like garbage!” Megan hissed, the fair skin on her face instantly flushing as made eye contact with him. “What was I supposed to think, that you-”

“Wait, what?” JD unceremoniously interrupted her, “how did I treat her like garbage?” the boy frowned heavily. “Only because I told her I didn’t want to be with her?”

At the same the boy admired Megan’s loyalty to Marianne and understood why she’d take her friend’s side in the messy situation, JD was also aware that the girl probably had been told about relationship only through her friend’s point of view.

Megan went silent for a few seconds. She knew Marianne was no saint and often idealized things too much, but it still didn’t justify JD doing things such as taking the girl’s virginity and then openly ignoring her days after.

“You were horrible to her,” Megan said, noticing a few people around had turned their heads to look because she’d just raised her voice.

“Because I treated her with honesty and truth?” JD replied unaffectedly.

Megan narrowed her eyes, suddenly not as compelled to give him a chance to talk. Did he seriously think he had actually been anything resembling nice to Marianne?

Megan had been there. She had witnessed firsthand how the guy had mostly ignored her friend. After what she’d heard about it and the alarming energy she’d felt in his presence, it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

There had been so many rumors… The girl thought back about the day she’d seen him for the first time. Claire had come up with absurd tales about his past and Megan had quickly dismissed them, judging the stories too ludicrous to be true. Over time, however, she’d come to wonder if Claire wasn’t right after all. Megan had never heard or seen anything remotely positive about the boy sitting right in front of her. He was cold, uncaring and absolutely selfish, exactly the kind of person she didn’t want to be around.

And yet, the shadow sparkling in his emerald green eyes made her question whether he was really being truthful or if he was just very good at manipulating people.

Well, not her, Megan decided. There was simply no way he could possibly charm her into believing he was worthy of her time or energy. Not after everything he’d showed. People often teased her about the way she couldn’t see an outcast and not reach out. This was probably just her nature tricking her into thinking she could somehow rescue that estranged boy from his own awful manners. It really was better to stay away and simply focus on the music work she had to do.

Restlessly fighting the urge to find out more and end her agonizing doubts, Megan couldn’t help herself. He’d said she could just ask him. On an impulse, the girl fired the first question that came to mind.

“Did you really take a knife to your old school?”

Megan raised her eyes and met his, immediately regretting having touched such an alarming subject. It had been bothering her ever since the day Claire had whispered that in her ear over the summer. Megan wished she had controlled her impulsivity a little better.

“Yes.”

His direct answer sent a shiver that ran up the girl’s spine.

So, there she had it… Megan had been brave enough to ask and looking into his eyes, she realized that JD really wasn’t lying. His voice had sounded so serious, there were no traces of playfulness in it. Nothing that made her think he felt sorry for doing what he’d just admitted either.

How did JD have the nerve to do such an inconsequent, horrible thing like that and openly confess it without even trying to justify why he’d done it?

“I don’t know how you sleep at night,” the girl whispered in alarm, more to herself than to him, but the boy caught up on her remark.

“I have a clean conscience, thank you for your concern,” JD replied in an ironic, dangerously low tone.

Megan noticed on his expression that his mood had gone from bored to suddenly very irritated. She could tell by the way his jaw was clenched that something she’d said had really gotten to him. And instead of making her feel satisfied, the realization made her feel strangely… agitated?

It didn’t matter, Megan thought. He had just admitted the worst and she was the one who had the right to be angry, not him. Her curiosity about his sudden mood change wasn’t enough to make her want to speak to the boy again.

For the following hour, Megan tried to devote her attention to the music sheet, not really sure how she should work as a team with JD, since after their brief dialogue he had simply pulled out what she later realized was a football playbook and remained focused on it for sixty whole minutes, completely ignoring the subject of the class they were in.

Even though rationally Megan had already decided that the best thing to do was to simply stay away, by the time class was over, she found herself waiting for the other students to leave the room so she could finally speak to him about the subject that had been bothering her. The girl had all the facts, she knew what JD had done. But what she couldn’t figure out was his motivation… And that was consuming her.

“Okay, so…” she started hesitantly, hoping to hold his attention. JD still looked like he was angry, but at least he had stayed back to listen. “Do you really, honestly believe you treated Marianne with respect and honesty?”

Megan could tell by the look on his face that he wasn’t expecting her question. She wondered if his surprise also had to do with the patient tone she was using. It occurred to her just now that this was probably the first time they were talking without shouting at each other or making accusations, but rather calmly and politely holding a conversation where both people involved could take their turn to speak.

JD stood at a distance, carefully examining her face. Megan realized he was probably trying to see if she was being serious or setting him up.

“Look, none of us happy with it, but we are music partners now… At least until Mrs. Julian changes her mind about it, what I hope happens soon,” the girl explained, looking into his eyes. “If we sit together without saying a word for two hours like we did today, it’s obvious she is not going to cave,” Megan wisely pointed out. She was well aware the teacher expected JD to make progress in music class and more than that, after the little scene they had made in their previous class, it was very likely the teacher kept them together at least until they proved that they could work as a team. “And to be honest, I think it’s a horrible prospect to sit here in silence hating each other for the entire semester,” the teenager added with a half-hearted smile. She didn’t like him and they didn’t have to be friends, but at least they should be partners to actually work their assignments or else they’d be at risk for getting a bad grade like their teacher had kindly reminded them. “You think that I judged you without hearing your side of the story,” Megan finally got to the point, seeing on his face that he was intrigued. “I will never know if you don’t tell me.”

JD’s first impulse was to tell her that it made no difference whatsoever if he explained to her his point of view. In fact, he wanted to say that he couldn’t care less what she thought. But before he could control, he heard himself taking part in the conversation.

“Does it really matter?”

Megan didn’t know why, but something in his defensive tone let her know she was being tested.

“Yes,” she responded to his doubt with security. JD had accused her of being unfair to him. Megan seriously doubted he could somehow justify his nasty behavior, especially when it concerned her friend, but since they were going to have to work together, she was kind of hoping he at least had a conscience or something that resembled a redeeming quality.

JD seemed to ponder whether or not to take that conversation forward but ultimately took a deep breath, slowly letting it out to finally answer her question.

“I never made your friend any promises,” he explained. “I was very honest with her, from the start.” On his first week in Seattle, his grandmother’s neighbor had introduced him to her granddaughter and after finding out they were going to the same school, the girl had quickly supposed they could spend time together. “We talked and hung out for a few days since I didn’t really know anyone in town yet…” Megan knew he was telling the truth because it was exactly what her friend had told her. “Marianne was the one who asked me out,” he added, looking Megan deeply in the eyes. “I told her I wasn’t looking for a relationship, I told her I didn’t want anything serious, with her or anyone else,” JD recalled, thinking about the disappointment in the girl’s eyes after he said the words, “it was obvious it wasn’t what she truly wanted but she told me it was fine. That we could just keep it casual and fun.”

“But still you…” Megan tried to think of words to express her discontentment with the situation, noticing he had stopped talking to give her the chance to speak her mind. “How is that being nice to her? You knew she was at risk for getting hurt and still you accepted to keep it going when it was obvious she was going to have her heart broken.”

“I never lied to her,” JD raised his eyebrows as if Megan was accusing him of something that didn’t make sense. “She is nice and I enjoyed going out with her, but to me that was it, I was clear about that. When Marianne started to act like it was more than it really was,” JD added, thinking about how clingy the girl had become, calling him and showing up when he was hanging out with his friends, “that’s when I had to be firm with her. So I ended it,” JD wished he had stopped talking then, but against his will, the words kept firing from his mouth. “How is that being disrespectful, exactly?”

“But you…” Megan sighed heavily. The scenario he was exposing didn’t surprise her that much, because it’d become obvious from the start to anyone who was paying closer attention that Marianne had been more involved with their brief relationship than JD had ever seemed to be. Megan remembered seeing how excited her friend always was whenever he was around, and how his façade often gave the opposite impression. When Megan had first seen the guy, he and Marianne had already been together for a few weeks. The girl supposed it was just when things had started to progress differently for each part involved.

But that wasn’t what bothered Megan the most, though. Even though she supposed JD could have been a little nicer on his attempts to stop Marianne’s advances, what had really annoyed the teenage girl was the fact that he had slept with her friend and then treated her like the moment had had absolutely no significance.

Just like Marianne, Megan was also inexperienced when it came to sex. And she just knew that if she’d lost her virginity to the guy she was in love with and he had coldly cast her aside only days after, she would have been devastated.

And very, very angry. Which was why she could relate to her friend’s plight at the moment.

Megan didn’t want to bring up the topic to discuss with him though because she believed she had no place exposing her friend’s personal life like that. Megan had known Marianne for a while now, and they were close. The girl recalled the way her friend had naively imagined that just because she was in love with the guy, JD would treat her the way she deserved to be treated. But he had ended things with her right after her first time, breaking her heart in the process.

“But I what?” JD rolled his eyes, impatiently. Why had he been stupid enough to even consider that the little hothead proudly standing up to him could somehow be any different from everyone else? “Stop looking for reasons to hate me, Megan. You probably heard things about me, decided I am this big villain and now you are desperately trying to hold onto that concept. I get it,” he raised his hands and added before turning around to walk away, “I know you are a spoiled little princess who’s used to having your way but it’s clear on your face you know that you know I did the right thing by being honest with your friend about the way I felt. But believe what you want to believe, I don’t care.”

Megan watched as he left the room. She knew she probably shouldn’t care. The guy was a rude, selfish human being who obviously didn’t care about anyone’s feelings.

“Yeah… I know you don’t… But you just had to sleep with her first, right?”

He still had his back turned to her, but Megan could hear his impatient sigh. He stopped walking and after a while of hesitation, finally turned around to look at her.

“What?” he impatiently asked.

“Before you decided to gallantly offer her your honesty, I mean,” Megan asked with a mix sarcasm and disapproval. “You just had to take her to bed and make her feel humiliated to be ignored afterwards, right?”

Megan knew she should be furious. She knew she should hate how he’d called her spoiled. But they had exchanged so many indelicacies for the past few weeks that it didn’t even bother her nearly as much as his unfeeling attitude towards her friend did.

“I didn’t lie to her to have sex with her,” JD rolled his eyes, censoring himself for not having already walked away like he normally would. “Marianne told me herself she thought we should do it,” he added, looking at Megan with a loathing scowl. “You are so full of yourself, aren’t you?” he asked in a low tone. “So much that you think you’re doing your friend a big favor by fighting her own battles for her when you’re really just labeling her as unfit to make her own decisions,” JD fired, seeing the look of shock on Megan’s face at his accusations. “You think you’re helping Marianne but you are not. How are you respecting her, really?” he leaned over the girl, looking straight into her eyes. “How are you being respectful if you encourage Marianne to act like I somehow owe her anything just because we had sex? She wanted it, I wanted it and we did it. Then I didn’t want it anymore because she was suffocating me after. I never made her any promises, I never signed a contract… On the contrary. I said I wasn’t looking for anything serious.”

“She was hoping that if she slept with you that would make you want to be with her, you stupid jerk!” Megan read the situation clearly now. “Is that really so hard to see?” she asked with a mix or irony and fury. “Couldn’t you just have gone for someone who wasn’t blindly seduced by your stupid act?”

JD took a deep breath, determined not to fight with her again.

“Marianne is a big girl, Megan. Don’t coddle her and act like she was a victim to her own decisions,” he looked into her eyes, seeing his words were infuriating her. “Of course I saw she was into me more than I was with her. But from the moment I told her I wasn’t interested in being her boyfriend and she agreed to keep it casual, why should I be blamed because she didn’t keep her word?”

“Because she didn’t know any better and you should have!” Megan furiously strode towards him, proudly standing up to the guy who annoyingly seemed to have an answer for every one of her arguments. “She was in love with you, how did you ever consider she could have had her better judgment at the time?”

JD saw the rosy color on her cheeks as she defied him, visibly worked up.

“You know… Have you ever thought that maybe you spent all this time convincing yourself and everyone else that Marianne was somehow a victim to me, but in reality, it’s you who constantly sees her as the victim?” JD raised his eyebrows suggestively. Megan had done something amazing by standing up for her friend when she was visibly in a fragile state, but up to this day the girl still seemed determined to apparently bring justice to a situation she wasn’t really directly involved. “As the poor girl who deserves your help and can’t speak for herself?” he added, taking Megan by surprise again. “Yeah, I figured you haven’t,” the boy answered his own question after seeing the look on her face, taking satisfaction in feeling like he’d won that battle against that daring hotheaded girl. “You are not helping Marianne by shielding her from things. Instead you should be helping her stand up for herself if she really thinks I screwed up.”

Megan was alarmed by her own silence. What he was saying was absolutely despicable. It wasn’t true, she knew. She indeed had stepped up for her friend the day of the party, but only because JD had put her in a horrible situation. And even though Megan was well aware she’d had all the best intentions, his accusation still got her thinking. Because it didn’t prevent the girl from drowning in guilt for the way she really felt sorry for Marianne.

Maybe she just had felt too sorry?

Could it really be? Had Megan really acted like a super protective friend, shielding Marianne at all costs and perhaps only contributing to the girl’s already low self-esteem?

No way, Megan realized, swallowing hard. Perhaps on the long run, Marianne would be able to fight her own battles, but right now, she was still too fragile. And Megan was only doing for her friend what she would have liked to have someone doing for her had she been in Marianne’s shoes.

Maybe that was why it bothered Megan so much?

Just like Marianne, she didn’t have a lot of experience. Megan didn’t like to admit it very much, but that bothered her. When it came to relationships with boys, she felt too exposed and vulnerable. And because of it, she could totally empathize with her friend at the moment. One day, Marianne might be fit to defend herself. Until that day came, Megan would make damn sure no one abused her fragility like that dumb jock had just done.

Megan had done what she’d done with the best intentions. She didn’t regret it.

“Still, you walked away and told her nothing had happened,” the girl recovered from the blow, absolutely determined not to let him walk away feeling like he was right. “You’re an asshole and nothing you say can change that. I was there. I saw it.”

JD saw the spark of fury in her eyes and he could tell she was fighting an internal battle. Instinctively, he realized that his words had deeply messed with her, enough to make her rethink her own attitude. But it was the way that her fiery, hot approach had been replaced by a broken, hurt speech that really got to him.

It felt like all of a sudden, an uncomfortable feeling made him sick to the stomach and he didn’t even understand why. JD had seen girls act much worse when faced with his honesty before. Hell, he’d even seen them cry and it still, it hardly ever bothered him. Girls cried for no reason and they had an awful tendency of taking advantage of their fragility to get what they wanted.

But now, the impulsive girl with fiery blue eyes proudly stood her ground, apparently too caught up with her own emotions to remember his presence. JD also went silent as he thought about what Megan had said. It made sense, he knew. He wasn’t a hypocrite to think everything he did was justifiable. Sometimes, for reasons he couldn’t explain, his behavior tended to really hurt people. Enough that he avoided getting close to them as much as he could.

Maybe he should have exploded at Megan like that. But at the same time, it had unexpectedly bothered him that the girl whose loyal manners he’d admired and who he had initially believed to actually be different from everyone else had obviously jumped to conclusions about him without even giving him the benefit of the doubt.

He really thought Megan might have been different... How stupid of him, JD figured. After so many years of people making assumptions about him, he had grown used to it. It didn’t bother him anymore and JD should have known better by now. Why would Megan be any different? She was in the most comfortable place, surrounded by people who really seemed to love and admire her. Why on Earth would she ever have a reason to think her opinion might have been biased, or that maybe, there might be a different version to a story than the one she wanted to believe in?

Girls like Megan were too used to having things done their way. They had the world on a string and more than enough people willing to give them absolutely everything they wanted. Like her boyfriend, for example, JD thought with a scoff. The guy pretty much worshipped the ground she walked on and if he was trying to hide that, he was doing an awful job so far.

Yes, he really shouldn’t care. Megan was too spoiled for own good. She was probably one of those girls who deemed her opinion as the absolute truth, without even bothering to fact check first. JD knew her kind. They were high maintenance and abused the effect they had on guys to manipulate them into doing what they wanted. He was better off as further away from her as possible.

But still… JD couldn’t really ignore the fact that that small brave girl had stood up to him to defend her friend in a way he’d never seen anyone do before. So even though Megan was probably self-centered and obnoxious, he had to admit she at least was a loyal friend.

People were usually intimidated by him, he had long ago noticed that. Yet Megan Hunt had been more than willing to let him have it. At first, he had been impressed and even satisfied. After watching her from a distance and seeing the way she was kind and generous to her friends, JD had to admit that had been how he expected her to be different. But then as Megan had obviously made up her mind about him based on something as despicable as rumors – and judging by her question about the knife she had heard them - JD had to confess he’d felt rather disappointed… But mostly at himself, for having high expectations of her in the first place.

Turning around after giving up making sense of the entire thing, JD hesitated one more time.

“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” he advised her.

Megan noticed the way he calmly stood with his hands inside his pockets. His emerald green eyes stared into her with such intensity that Megan felt like he was baring her soul.

“I still think you’re a jackass for the way you treated my friend but...” Megan bit her lower lip, taking one step in his direction. “It was wrong of me to call you out in front of everyone like that,” she admitted, letting out a heavy sigh. Even though the girl still though JD deserved the scrutiny for the way he’d treated Marianne, there had been several ways she could have handled it. Ways that didn’t involve humiliating him in front of their peers and openly making fun of him for things she didn’t even know might have personally touched a wound. Truth was, Megan didn’t know the guy. And she wasn’t interested in being friends with him. But that didn’t give her the right to treat him in a way she didn’t want anyone to be treated. “I was angry with you that you had hurt my friend and I fought fire with fire. That wasn’t very nice of me,” she belatedly realized. A mistake didn’t justify another. It didn’t matter if she thought JD owed Marianne an apology or not. She knew she was only responsible for her own actions. “I am sorry for the way I talked to you… and for the horrible things I said.”

Megan had seen him surprised a few times that afternoon, but just as she apologized, for the first time she thought the boy looked lost, as if he really didn’t know what to say. And that impacted her, because so far, JD always knew what to say.

The boy recovered from the unexpected action and held the Megan’s gaze, studying her expression to see if she really meant it, almost as if he couldn’t believe it. That went against everything he had decided she was. The way he had categorized her and made up his mind about the girl had just been unexpectedly challenged by her heartfelt apology.

“Okay,” it was the only thing he could mutter in response. She was still looking into his eyes and JD didn’t notice how hard he was trying not to break that contact.

It was the first time Megan saw him with his guard low, seemingly unsure of what to do. JD always looked confident and on top of his game, but now he looked more confused than she’d ever seen. Taking advantage of the situation to try to understand the guy a little more, Megan kept looking into his eyes, trying to break past his defenses. Her skills at figuring people out didn’t seem to work so well with him and that really bothered her.

“I have to go to practice now,” he said, finally breaking eye contact with the girl after what it felt like forever.

“Oh, right, football,” Megan reacted a little too quickly, instantly being brought back to reality as well. “Right. And I have to go to French class.”

The girl noticed as he nodded his head affirmatively, looking as if he couldn’t wait to get out of there. JD looked very uncomfortable. She was still trying to make sense of why things had gotten so awkward all of a sudden when, from across the hall, she heard his voice.

“Hey, Megan?”

The girl interrupted her thoughts to look up and once again meet his gaze.

“I didn’t know until it was too late,” JD sighed heavily, hating that he had the urge to tell her that, especially when he’d already decided he didn’t care what she thought. It was beside her point, but he still felt compelled to share the truth, unaware of how important what he was about to say was. “I didn’t know it was her first time,” he explained after seeing the confusion on the girl’s face. Instantly, Megan picked up on the fact he was speaking about Marianne and she was taken absolutely aback by the confession when JD added, “if she’d told me, I wouldn’t have gone forward with it.”

Before Megan could so much as open her mouth to reply, JD had already disappeared through the halls, leaving her only with several new doubts.

“Hey, Maggie,” Amelia asked for her best friend’s attention with a teasing voice. “Do you see that handsome man over there?” she pointed to the tall man with her eyes. “He’s into me.”

The two surgeons were standing next to the nurse station, both updating charts. Amelia had spoken loud enough so that only the two women and the guy approaching them could hear it.

Maggie chuckled with amusement at the same time Amelia received a look of pretend reprimand from her husband.

“What?” she openly flirted with him, biting her lower lip in a very tempting way, “I just called you handsome,” she pointed out. “You have no reason to look at me like that.”

“Right,” Owen tried to keep a serious face but was having a hard time containing the smile that insisted on forming on his lips.

“You’re into me,” Amelia insisted, absolutely determined to pester him.

Owen noticed she kept staring at him as if undressing him with her eyes.

“I am married to you,” he reminded her with his usual practicality.

“So?” Amelia blinked repeatedly as she approached him just enough to be able to whisper in his ear. “Have I told you that you look very hot with that tie?”

“What is it this time?” Maggie asked without taking her eyes off her chart. She and Amelia had been friends for years and she had grown used to the neurosurgeon’s playful ways. “What is she after?”

“Christmas bonus for her department,” Owen answered unaffectedly while checking lab results for the patient he was about to take to the OR. Even though they still had a few months before Christmas, he’d already notified his employees that whichever department showed the best performance during the semester would be granted a bonus check to invest in research at the end of the year.

“You know what I think,” Amelia shamelessly kept her act. She was kidding and they both knew it. As long as she didn’t resort to anything unprofessional such as speaking about their private life in front of colleagues or patients – and Amelia never did – she knew Owen enjoyed their playful banter as much as she did. “I think that Dr. Hunt is very interested in Neurosurgery.”

“I am sure he is,” Owen finally looked up to meet her flirtatious gaze and couldn’t contain his laughter. Amelia was playing games with her words. Owen decided to believe she was talking about their son and he could see her sneaky, witty bribery. Sometimes, he could tell his wife was more interested in playing and winning a challenge than in the actual reward. This was one of the cases.

“Maggie, don’t you think we owe it to the younger generations to make sure they get a good education?” Amelia asked her friend without breaking eye contact with Owen. It was now a game and whoever looked away first would lose.

“I think Tom would be much better off if he pursued a career in cardiothoracics,” Maggie affirmed with conviction.

“You know what I think?” Owen stared into his wife’s eyes, making a herculean effort to keep a straight face. She wouldn’t stop tempting him and he could see her intentions so clearly that it made him want to be alone with her, just so he could kiss away that wicked smile off her lips. “I think Dr. Shepherd here has way too much free time on her hands. Maybe she should go back to work.”

“You know what I think?” Amelia failed at her resolution not to laugh and finally stopped with the silly act, having way too much fun with the conversation, “I think you’re pretty cute.”

“Thank you, Dr. Shepherd,” Owen’s voice sounded serious but his smile and the look on his face translated just what he wanted to say to her.

Amelia saw his loving expression and watched as her husband walked away. Before the elevator doors closed, Owen looked in her direction one more time and the moment their eyes met, both surgeons exchanged a happy, genuine smile.

“You guys are so annoying,” Maggie teased with a sigh, looking from the elevator to her best friend. Owen and Amelia had one of the happiest and nicest relationships she’d ever seen and Maggie felt nothing but proud of her friend for it. “By the way, how are things with Tommy?”

“They’re better,” Amelia shared. Earlier that week, Owen had had an important conversation with their son and Thomas already seemed to be a little more comfortable in his shoes at work. “We haven’t had the chance to sit down and discuss it yet but from what little Owen has been able to tell me, I think Tom really needed that talk.”

“Good,” Maggie was glad to heart it. Thomas was her godson and even though she loved all of Amelia’s kids, she had always felt a special connection to the boy. “He’s rotating in my service next week.”

“Don’t contaminate my son with your nasty specialty, please,” Amelia smiled mischievously.

“I can’t make any promises,” Maggie laughed along. “And how is that thing with Megan and the new boyfriend?” the cardiothoracic surgeon asked with interest. Her daughter and Megan had grown up best friends all their lives and both girls were very close to their mothers. “Claire told me she is dating one of the guys in their group. Has she told Owen yet?”

“Not yet,” Amelia confessed with a lighthearted tone. “Meg is taking him to Lucas’ game on Saturday but she is going to introduce him to her dad and the boys as one of her friends,” Amelia shared. She was the only one in the house who knew about her daughter’s plan and honestly, she considered it a wise idea. If Owen and her sons met Megan’s boyfriend without the heavy weight of what the position meant, maybe they would be able to form a little less biased opinion of the guy before the Hunt boys crucified him, which would invariably happen as soon as Megan told her father and brothers about their real relationship status. “I actually have plans to pick up Megan from school tomorrow. She asked me to go the market with her to buy lobster or something like that… For some reason she is cooking dinner every night this week,” Amelia looked up and met her friend’s eyes. “I think she is really trying to soften Owen before Saturday.”

Maggie had fun with the plot.

“Are you sure she is really your kid?” the cardiothoracic surgeon asked with playful sarcasm. Amelia laughed, agreeing with head. Her daughter had the same sneaky manners as she. “Well, I guess as long as Megan is happy, neither Owen nor the boys have any right to meddle,” Maggie pointed out.

“Agreed,” Amelia replied with heartfelt contentment. “Now, who is going to help me convince them of that? Because that’s a whole different story.”

Maggie stopped what she was doing and processed the question for a moment.

“Good point…” the surgeon added, glad she wasn’t in Amelia’s shoes. “I honestly have no idea.”

next chapter finally brings the answer to the question of “what the hell happened to Lucas, Emily and Amelia five years ago?”

#omelia #owen hunt #amelia shepherd #greysanatomy #myboys #myboysfanfiction #omeliafanfics #omeliafic #amenff

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shannaraisles · 7 years ago

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Rylen Appreciation Week - Day 1

[Read on AO3]

Knight-Captain Rylen, the Templar

"This is insubordination! I am your commanding officer!"

Knight-Captain Rylen looked back at Ser Bevan, Knight-Commander of Starkhaven, from across the wide desk.

The title was a technicality only - there was no Circle in Starkhaven, hadn't been for years, not since the fire that had gutted their tower and destroyed so many phylacteries. Ser Bevan had risen to the rank of Knight-Commander in the months that followed, for his dogged pursuit of the escaped mages and the way he had organized the men and women under his command to escort them safely to other Circles in the Free Marches. Technically, there was no need for a garrison of templars in Starkhaven while there were no mages to protect, but the Chantry had deemed it necessary to maintain them there. To help keep order, they said. What was unspoken was the tacit approval from the Grand Cleric in Kirkwall of the way Ser Bevan had struck terror into the hearts of anyone who dared cross the Templar Order in Starkhaven.

What was also unspoken was the contempt many of Ser Bevan's subordinates held for him, knowing that his actions were built on fear and paranoia. He had modeled himself on Knight-Commander Meredith, and their barracks - once a place of as much contemplation and faith as it had been a military arm of the Chantry - had become a festering sore. In his terror of what might be, he turned a blind eye to knights that abused their position to cause harm to those without influence or wealth; he kept from promotion the moderates that would have curbed those abuses in his name. It was a blessing that he had no mages to terrorize. Rylen had been Knight-Captain long before Ser Bevan was promoted to rank above him, and despite attempts to demote or remove him, none of the charges had stuck. The Knight-Commander was forced to tolerate a Knight-Captain who moderated his orders, who interpreted them kindly when they insisted on punishment for those innocent beyond a reasonable doubt. But there was only so much a man could take, and that final line was there in front of him. He was ready to cross it.

"Then take command, ser!" Rylen countered, his voice forceful but not without respect. "Our brothers and sister in Kirkwall need support. They need lyrium, ser!"

"Supplies are being secured for them through Chantry channels," Ser Bevan insisted. "We will not interfere."

"They've had no supplies sent since before the bloodbath at the Gallows," Rylen ground out, trying to keep his temper in the face of his seething superior. "If even half the garrison there survived, they'll be on short rations, and they've still mages to guard and keep well there. We have a surplus of lyrium ourselves, ser. We've the means to aid them."

"That lyrium, Knight-Captain, is for the use of templars in Starkhaven and no other -"

"Aye, and if that were truly the case, Knight-Commander, you would not have had us on half-rations for the last month! Your punishment for an infraction that did not happen is excessive, and we'll not tolerate it much longer!"

That was the lack of lyrium talking, Rylen knew. They had all suffered for one woman's refusal to back down when Ser Bevan demanded she give up the location of her informant. Ser Giselle had stood her ground, denying their commander the opportunity to take swords into the Alienage to kill an elf whose only crime had been to share a rumor of the Champion of Kirkwall hiding there briefly before leaving the city. Rylen had stood with her; so had many others. They knew their Knight-Commander was walking a dangerous line, had hoped to keep him from making the mistake that would paint them all as murderers. Instead, Ser Giselle had been stripped of her knighthood and turned out of the Order, and as punishment for her integrity, they had all been placed on half-rations of lyrium until such time as Ser Bevan chose to lift the sanction. Even his most loyal templars, the abusers and murderers they had become, were punished, and their outrage had been swiftly silenced in a series of expulsions from the Order. But the sanction had not been lifted, and the Starkhaven templars had suffered together through the headaches, the nausea, the shakes and vivid nightmares. They supported one another and yes, a small group of them had chosen to also support the expelled Giselle, supplying her with lyrium pooled from their own meager rations, to allow her to keep functioning while she laid low among the elves that recognized the sacrifice she had made to protect them from what she now suffered.

Ser Bevan snarled at him, his round face reddening with fury. "Are you threatening me, Knight-Captain Rylen?"

"No, ser. When I threaten you, I will have my sword in my hand, and you will have a blade in your own. This is a warning, ser - a reminder that you are not as secure on your throne as you believe."

The Knight-Commander stared at him, and for the first time, Rylen thought he saw the fear in the man's eyes. So he was not as far gone as many of them had thought, it seemed, still enough the man he used to be at some core part of himself to recognize that abusing a garrison of a hundred men and women was not the wisest course of action for a man alone with no coherent Chantry support.

"The supply lines to Kirkwall have been disrupted, ser," Rylen reminded him. "Not only by the explosion, but by the slavers and bandits that have descended on the city. We received a delivery of lyrium ourselves this morning. If we take it to Kirkwall and remain on half-rations ourselves, we can support our brothers and sister there. Without lyrium, what little order they have restored will be lost as they struggle with their own withdrawal. For all we know, they've none left at all."

"And my prayers are with them, Knight-Captain." But Bevan frowned, passing a hand over his eyes as he sighed. "My responsibility is to the Order here in Starkhaven. I will not deprive them to aid others."

"We are already deprived!" Rylen took a step forward, shaking with the effort of keeping his own anger in check. "We have suffered a bare fraction of what they will suffer - it is our duty to lend them aid!"

Ser Bevan drew himself up, his face like thunder. "I am your commanding officer."

"Then you are failing in your duty to the Order, Ser Bevan. And I will not follow a man who sees a problem that can be solved and does nothing."

Rylen straightened his shoulders. He was crossing that line, here and now, and he knew he would likely never be able to walk across it again. But enough was enough. He could not stand by and watch, not when he had the means to help.

"I have already given orders, ser," he informed the senior knight. "The delivery we received this morning has not been unloaded from the carts. I intend to ask for volunteers among our rank to form a relief guard and escort that lyrium to Kirkwall."

"If you persist on this course, you will find yourself no longer a brother of the Order." Ser Bevan's voice was dark with menace, but Rylen could see it for what it was - a last attempt to intimidate a man of integrity whose tolerance he had finally pushed too far. "Think very carefully about the path you are proposing to walk."

Rylen drew a deep breath. "I have been thinking, ser," he answered, surprised by how calm he sounded. He wasn't entirely sure how that was possible; anger was burning inside him at the sheer belligerent ineptitude of his superior officer. "For months, I have thought, and watched, as you ignore the increasing troubles in the world. Troubles that are right on our doorstep, troubles we could help to solve if you would just lift a finger. I have stood by and said little as you follow the path already walked by Knight-Commander Meredith, even knowing so clearly where it will lead. I have seen enough to know that you will do nothing to prevent the madness that is coming over you, and in that madness, you will let the world burn before raising a hand to douse the flames. So I must act, ser."

"Oh, you must, must you?" Ser Bevan was still quiet, but the hard edge of his anger was fading. It was doubtful that anyone had drawn the parallel between himself and the insane Meredith so clearly for him before this moment. The horror of her end at the Gallows, so recent and so raw, was not a path to contemplate lightly. "You believe that you know better than your superiors, your betters?"

"No, ser, not in all things." Rylen set his jaw, gathering his words as he sought to appeal to the flicker of conscience he could see in the other man's eyes. "But I do know this. The world is falling to chaos, and there's not a damned thing I can do to stop it. I swore an oath, ser, an oath to the Maker Himself to protect and serve the people of Thedas. All people, ser, be they human, elf, dwarf, or mage. Aye, I've no power to protect them all, and our wee corner has more peace than perhaps we deserve. But I see a problem I can fix, and I will do it. You may expel me from the Order if you wish, but templar or no, that lyrium will reach Kirkwall."

There was a long silence, both men testing their wills against one another - the old guard pitted against the new; a man who feared the chaos erupting around them and reacted in anger to control what little he could, against the man who needed to mitigate at least some of that chaos and would risk everything to do it. Neither was wholly right, nor wholly wrong, but this could not go on.

Ser Bevan sighed, the anger in his eyes fading as sense returned to his gaze for the first time in months. "The Order is not what it once was, Ser Rylen," he said wearily. "We have lost our way, and I fear matters will only worsen before the Divine acts. But I feel ... glad ... that you have not forgotten what we were meant to be. You are a fine captain, Rylen. A better man than I."

"I am a younger man, ser," Rylen corrected him, his own anger easing as the battle lines were drawn back. "Not a better one. You have done as you thought best, though I regret few will agree with your methods. I must do what I think best."

"And no longer mine to command." The Knight-Commander straightened, reaching for a quill and parchment. "You may take twenty-five from our garrison here, if they wish to go. Deliver the lyrium and offer aid to the Gallows and Kirkwall. I will inform the acting Knight-Commander of your transfer to his command, and arrange for Kirkwall's lyrium to be delivered here for the foreseeable future, for safe passage to the City of Chains under our guard. With Andraste's grace, we may all return to full rations within a matter of weeks."

Relief coursed through Rylen's limbs, the tension in his muscles easing. "Thank you, ser. Maker be with you."

Ser Bevan nodded absently, the quill already scratching over the parchment before him as Rylen saluted and left the office, marching down to the courtyard to address the templars he called brother and sister. It wasn't a perfect solution to the problem, but it was something. And in all this madness, doing something was infinitely preferable to watching the world go to the Void unhindered.

#RylenAppreciationWeek #knight-captain rylen #starkhaven #i have no idea how to tag this #day 1 #obviously #also #authority issues?#maybe #Rylen being Rylen

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draconicmatriarch · 7 years ago

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Awakening

You fought so hard to win the battle. After all we've been through, please, don't let me lose you now. Shelter. We need shelter.

That single-minded drive to find somewhere secluded and safe drove the woman to carry her weakened warrior and the heavy sins that still dripped off his sword. Taking a quick breather to look down at herself, the numerous wounds had saturated the front of her beautiful silks.

“Please, wake up.” But his mind was too far away. Just keep going, that was all she could do, lest the threat of night would prey upon them.

Even the insects had become hushed as the muggy afternoon crept by, the ceaseless march of impending night always threatening. The creases of her palms turned into shallow streams of crimson as his wounds continued weeping. The opportunity presented itself in the form of a rock's steep outcropping creating a large but shallow cave, just enough to press their backs into and be protected from the wiles of the weather. Kia grasped the weapon attached to his back and carefully rested the gore-drenched blade to the side. The swordsman was laid out so she could address the full extent of the damage. With a shaking hand, her pack of medicine poured out before them, bandages unraveling, a bobbin of thread slowly makings its escape.

After remembering how she observed him remove his armor, her fingers reached under to locate the clasps. The rough texture slid across her fingers repeatedly, and her heart shuddered when she could not find it, hands searching in a shivering panic. Hooking her grip under his jagged collar, she tried to forcefully pry the iron shell off the broken man. His face was motionless, devoid of expression, even as the pins continued to keep his pieces in place. Even dragon strength could not part the fetish from his flesh. Unable to wake him or heal him, she mumbled his name between a sob. For now, all she could do was wipe the blood, bile, and tears from his face– one that had become ghastly pallid. It was a mistake to pull back his left eyelid, as she saw nothing but whiteness, the pupil gruesomely rolled behind his head.

All her training and there was nothing she could do. The terrors of nightfall were inevitable; all she could do was lay his head on her lap and wait.

The sun fell; mystical forces chittered. As dusk colors bled together, her hand was kept on his neck, feeling the Brand. As expected, her fingertip was eventually painted red, the hand quickly moving to her spear. The curtain of darkness was parted by the birth of her great flames, but she the sight before her was unprecedented. The phantasms lurked in front of their cave before they were snatched mid-air by serpents of light-- like swallows to the insects-- devoured between purifying fangs. This spectacle would repeat every night. The branded swordsman's curse was one fear lessened.

The silence and stillness was one day broken when Guts began to violently shiver, teeth chattering, fingers clenching. Kia burned her magical flame hotter, but it only continued. Unable to put her heated skin to his body, she resorted to her final option. Scales and muscle coiled around him as the dragon surrounded her treasure with her massive form. Her muzzle pressed to his head, gently puffing warm clouds of air against his face. Slowly, his shuddering abated. A speck of his mind awoke.

Warm. Safe. Her.

“Ki...” was all he could murmur before that faint light had to rest again.

It took days before the armor would finally yield.

A guilty sob was torn from her throat when she pulled back those plates. The meat of his shoulder was butchered and flayed before her eyes. The apostle's wrathful conflagration had scorched sections of his flesh, sickening broken blisters formed craters in his hide. Gazing at this beacon of infection, all hope fled.

He's going to die...

Could he have struggled all for this? To ingloriously bleed out? To have his body destroyed from within? Was she making him pointlessly suffer by trying to save him?

Yet her hands still moved to dip a rag into the water to clean his wounds as flecks of deadened skin peeled away. He had given everything of his fragile human existence to protect her; there was no way she could possibly repay her mate back. Yes, her mate. That's why he had to live, so she could become his; that's why she had to fight these grim odds. She wrapped his burns with loose, dry gauze after she finished cleaning them. When the needle pierced his shoulder, his fingers curled, brow twitching. Even in the deepest layer of his mind, he still quietly rebelled against his archnemesis– the loathsome needle. These subdued protests signaled the small spark of hope to return as the fissure was slowly closed with humble thread used to repair her robe.

Y̬͚̫͍̟͠o̯͓̖u̯ ͏͇̭̤̹̯l̛̲͙e͚͓̙ț̷̫̭ ̷̰͎̻͚h̦̬̦̝͉͘ḛ̩̜̣̻͘r̹̗̹̳ ͚̟̘̘s̙h̨̺̗̫͓a̩̠̪̗͇̟͔c͍͝k̶̫͖̩͕̦̠̥l̯ẹ̥̞͙̱ ̤̺̹y̲̫̰͓ͅo̙̭͔̟̖͇u̦.̷͇͔̼ ͓̭̥̱̰̰̦Y̵̻͚o̶̞͈̰̝u̦ ̻̩̮s̪̣̯̦̹̝̀ͅưf͎̙̹͇f̪oc̛͍̗̲a͓͖͓̝̪̺te̫̹̲̹̝͎ ̙̮̞͉̮̥u̺̞̱n̸̳ḏ̀e̙̪͎r̜͓̖̠̲͟ ̭̦y̸o̶̬͎̻͓͖̹u̻̲͙̩̻̕ͅr̦͍̖ ̨̞̝o̡͚͕̖͇̳̦w͍͇̝͢n̷̦̻ ̱͇͙̖̳̩̻c̶̹͚̫͚̩̟o̧̟͍͔l̨la͈r̳͕̩͝.̹͟ ̪̱̮͠S̶̬͓ͅh̭̠́o̼̼͚̹͖ͅw͈̩̖̖ ̝̣̟ẖ͕̖̬͈̗e͙͕̼͕̟͇̲͘r͍̙̱͢ y̱̟͕o͙̦u̱͕̯͉͢ṟ̙̠͍̰̲̩́ ̵̪̩f̜̠͖͇a̠̟̳͞n̛̙̰̟͖g̻s̯͖̦̤̝̟ͅ.̱̻͞

No. Never again...

W̞̲̻h̠̹͈̼a͎̦͟ṱ̲̮̳̤͢ ̼̳̹̮h̺̞͍͙̣a͇̮̕s͎̙̬̭ ̞̲͓̹̖̳l̹̳̦̹̯͘ͅo̖̜̹̰̟ͅv̹͕̫e̟͔͉̩͙̰̼ ̮̰̰̲̯e̡̝̱̦v̻̭̜̮̣͎̪e̯̫͖̯͇͟r̜̬̼͚͍͖ ̨̟͕g͖͢i̜̖͙͔͖̪v̶͓̟̥ͅe̫̦͔̻͉̦n̟̙͕͔ ̵̫̪ͅy̷͎̝o͏̺̘u̥̙?̟̘̯̗̪̦̠ ̧̬̹̩S̺̺̙̘̺̻͡c͉͕̘̯͍̩̺͟a̩̰r̖̗̩̣̰̹̕s̵̠̙̳̩̯̟͇.̩͇͖̹̹̘͈ ͔̞͕͇̜͉Ș̩̘̣̰u̫f̨͍̹̣̻f͏e̝̼͕̰̦̼r͎̻̫̩in̟͖̞̥͞g͉̠͓.͎̣͓̞̻͢ ̙Y͖̖̮̞ͅe̻͠t͚͉͞ ̜ͅn̥̟̭͞o̸̜̥͍̠̰ͅt ͉̬̪o̸̼̩͎̬̞̳͇n͇̬̬͎̜̦e̖̱͔̗̱͚̟͡ ̦̠̥s͚͈̗̤̀ț̩͇̠̻̤͠e̵̤̠̟p̧͖̪͉̜̤ ̞̯̹̫͞c̴͚͈͖l̻͔͇͚̞͍̩o̘̭̬̦s͇̠͉ȩ̗̖̙̟̭r͙̬̞̤̤̞͚͜ ͔̥̥́ͅt͘o̱̻͈ ͏̮͎͈̥͉̳̱hi̠̙͇̟͈̰̘͘m

The fire encircling him rose ever higher, as he tried to cover his ears against the vengeful noise. The Beast's words were both honey and poison.

Y̤̙̹̺͎ǫu ͜àr͇͎͎̣e͎̘̫̺̝͉̘͡ ̺̙ḅ̻͔o̬t͖̤̭̙̜h̞̯̜͕̣ͅ ̣m̩͎̯̤̟̼̦͝o̕n҉̠̼͇̮̫ͅs̷̻̜t̹̝̹̺̗̬e̴̝̠͎̼̙̪r̛͓̳s̢̳͇̩̖̼̠,̻̩̪͕̠͈ ͇͍͍͎̙͠a͞n̴̹̣͙d̛͓͚͔ ̥̮̪͓̤̥̥m̗̤͍̞̪̮o͚̘̫͚n͖̝̳̼̳̞̖s҉͍͇̖t̯͍̟e̗̮̩̙r̰s̠͔̩̺̮͈ ̜̘ͅwe̤̲͙̻̤̻̠r͕̳̞̗͉e ̕b̮͙̞̻o҉̝̖͔r͖̗̹̰͓̪̮n̶͖̺̬̠ ̱̺̯͈ṭͅo̠̳͖ ͓̘̳͉d҉̭̘͔̹̣̟̘e͉s̫̤̹̣͠t͕̖̖͇ṛ̵̮̘̠̦͚͖o҉̠̱͖y̰̳͔̳͔̫͝ͅ ͖̖͙e͔̫ͅa͚͍̦c̺̥̯̹h̼̠͇̮ ̢̮̻̻̻͎̞̜o̧̠̗͍̱t̯͜ͅh̝̹̤e̲̙r̩͉̣͈̖͟ͅ.͖ͅ

His body, still for days at a time, suddenly began to thrash, teeth gritted – S̶̬͓ͅh̭̠́o̼̼͚̹͖ͅw͈̩̖̖ ̝̣̟ẖ͕̖̬͈̗e͙͕̼͕̟͇̲͘r͍̙̱͢ y̱̟͕o͙̦u̱͕̯͉͢ṟ̙̠͍̰̲̩́ ̵̪̩f̜̠͖͇a̠̟̳͞n̛̙̰̟͖g̻s̯͖̦̤̝̟ͅ.̱̻͞ – guttural panting, chipped nails trying to slash at the rock bed beneath him. She cried his name out, but the Beast drowned her calling. He was alone. Kia crawled close to him, cradling his head in her hands and felt all the tension bottling in his neck muscles. What nightmare assaulted his dreams? Something that could make the hardened warrior tremble was a phantom that could not be fought alone.

I can't wake up. If I do I might...Visions of his hand cupping lily petals, crushing them, that look of betrayal in her eyes; he couldn't stand it, but the Hound relished in it. The Beast was circling him like wounded prey and the eye of Guts' mind began to darken. Nothing but dark fur like spines before his eyes. I can't do to her what I did to Casca. If waking is to destroy what I love, let me sleep forever.

C҉͚̱͇͙̭̣ͅa̙̠͙̙̻ͅr͏̣̟̣̳v̱͍͍͎͓e̞̹̘̜ͅ ̹̦͕y̦̝̱o̗͙̼u̴̘r̠ ͔͙̬̲͕̰ͅw̥̤̟̯̼̗a̺y̞ ͇̼̹͇t̫̮͙̗͙͡ͅͅo̹͟ ͉̬hi͍̯̻͙̘̘̜m̱͈̜̯͉̣!̘ He was a sword about to break just like the Apostle's did upon the muggy ground.

Loo-li lai-lay

Guts averted his eyes from the beast, looking away from the abyss, and stared hopefully toward the sky. A little flame drifted downward, the canine darting away from how it scorched its hide and blistered its vision.

And I'll sing you to sleep and I'll sing you tomorrow.

Guts held that delicate firelight in his palm, cupping it against the hellish winds of the monster's breath. He could see Kia's face in the rolling red and oranges and stayed crouched, focusing on her until his mind finally quieted– the cursings of the muzzle silent. All that was left was the cradle of her lullaby.

A week dragged by with little improvement to his condition. Their rations were now exhausted. Kia boiled the last palmful of rice with an excess of water, turning it into a thin gruel to sustain her and numb the vague hunger pangs. She could hunt, but she feared leaving his side. The crushing wheel of fate would allow that moment be the one he awoke or for him to go through another one of his fits, she just knew it. The days were long and were spent treating his wounds, adjusting his body to prevent sores, and singing as many lullabies as she could remember. When that was done, the true tortures of time began to settle into her bones. It was then that she addressed the poison still clinging to his blade. It was a morbid task wiping her own innards from the nicks in the edge. No matter how many times she would wipe away that stain, the essence of her would always be a part of the Dragonslayer. Passive but always on guard, her mind went back to the woman that wore her face, who accepted damnation.

“He cannot give you what you want most. You must give up your dream to fulfill his.” What does that mean?

Dreams... I don't think I have any, do I? Do I? I'm a Queen; I have no want for anything. I liberated my people, slew the Queen of the West, I am not longer under my sister's thumb, and my people prosper. When I die, my name will likely be written favorably in the annals of dragon lore. Maybe even a statue in my honor. What am I missing?

My dreams are my people's dreams, that's all that matters.

Bile stockpiled itself in her gut as moons devoid of a single grain of rice passed. Even her will began to crumble. She was no use of a caretaker as a pile of bones; she must hunt. A chipmunk scampered along the perimeter of their stony lean-to. Just a swallow of meat to make it through the day. That fearful marble glanced all around as it rustled through the stashed bounties of the winter prior. With predator instinct stored in her legs, she bounded upon it. It squeaked and gnawed at her fingers as she caged its head in her hand. A quick twist and its wheel no longer turned. Kia roasted the scrawny morsel, gnawing on bones when there was nothing left. As she wiped the tallow off her face, Guts' fingers began to curl, lapping at his chapped lips.

“When's breakfast...Kia?” He did not speak again that day, but she took that as a hope sign.

Thirty suns, thirty moons and he still had not risen. Any longer, and he would soon waste away. What a small thing for the warrior to fall for, a bite of bread. Kia had sustained him with drink, but she could not make him eat. He was once so valorous in his stoutness, now his muscles were being cannibalized in desperation. Over the horizon, not one traveler had passed through this cursed yet beautiful valley. Kia watched as a wind storm had begun to funnel into the land. Not wanting detritus to be scattered into his freshly changed wounds, once again she morphed into the form of legends. Her wing folded over him like a tent, bending and pitching in the gale. Tucking her head beneath her wing, she watched him closely and waited for the storm to pass—she expected it would be brief.

Guts groaned. His eyelid felt welded shut from the crust that had formed. The light filtered through her wing cast him in a blanket of soft red. The first thing he saw was a broad snout and those eyes the size of a round shield. He tried to move one shoulder but needles dipped in the blacksmith's forge stole his breath. He moved the other to find his prosthetic removed. He finally saw the beast up close, a beast whose name was spoken with knives on their tongue, Dragon, shielding him with her body, scales crooked and gashed from the scars across her torso. Feeling those big, billowing breaths and those marred jewels rising and falling, he placed his stump to them and leaned his forehead to press against hers.

@ex-mercenary

#exmercenary #:drabble:#:long post:#in fact its the longest post #ever #:Interlude:

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sawyernathan1991 · 4 years ago

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Reiki Chakra Meditation Youtube Fabulous Tricks

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Reiki Crystal Healing Session

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Chakra Reiki Pendant Necklace

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#Reiki Chakra Meditation Youtube Fabulous Tricks #Reiki Healing Phoenix

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themurphyzone · 7 years ago

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MML Connect Fanfiction: Contagious

Background: This story is based on something that happened in my junior year of high school. In the United States, more specifically, in Texas, we had an Ebola scare. This took place around the same time the Ebola epidemic went around in West Africa. The virus wasn’t detected until after a flight had touched down in the DFW airport, and that person transferred it to a nurse at a hospital in the downtown area.

A parent of a student at my high school had been on that flight, and was placed on a month long quarantine with everyone else on that flight. The school sent a newsletter home that detailed these events. Bad decision.

People panicked. Not everyone, but enough to be noticeable.

Ebola is NOT airborne by the way.

Now, who do we know who has a condition that causes people to panic and react because they don’t know how it actually works or how to protect themselves?

Mort was the one who believed in aura and vibes, not Melissa. However, she was starting to believe that there was a tense atmosphere in the cafeteria at the moment.

Then again, if the school hadn’t sent home that stupid newsletter, maybe she would’ve been in a better mood. She threw it away as soon as she got home, but she didn’t crumple it up first and her dad saw the bold headline sticking out from the top.

It was supposed to be an apology from the school for the incident at the Meet the Teachers’ Night when Murphy’s Law disrupted Principal Milder’s speech to the parents of the new sixth graders. The parents hadn’t been too happy at getting drenched by the sprinklers after all the ovens in the cafeteria exploded.

She could deal with strangers. However, her dad was an entirely different matter.

“Your safety comes first,” he said calmly. “Maybe you should stay home until this matter clears up.”

Melissa crossed her arms defiantly. “Dad, quit being paranoid. I can take care of myself. You’ve met Milo before. It’s not his fault. It never is.”

He scowled. “Look, he’s nice, but all he has to do is sneeze and suddenly everyone in the room catches something.”

“You can’t catch Murphy’s-it doesn’t work like-ugh! I’m going to my room. You can’t stop me from going to school.”

“She’s staring into space again,” Zack said, waving his hand in front of her face. Melissa grabbed it, shoving it away. “Welcome back.”

“Enjoying your flashback sequence?” Milo asked. “I have to be aware at all times, so I can’t relive my subconscious like you can.”

Melissa managed a weak smile. “It wasn’t the happy kind. My dad and I had a fight. He wanted me to stay home since he heard about the stuff that happened at Meet the Teachers’ Night.”

“That sounds awful,” Zack said. “At least my parents didn’t buy into it. I overheard people talking. They think Murphy’s Law is contagious. Then they tried convincing my mom. You should’ve seen the looks on their faces when she revealed that she’s a trained medical professional!”

Melissa respected Eileen Underwood even more now, though she only met her once on Career Day.

Milo smiled. “Well, now we’re just dawdling. Ha, dawdling’s kind of a funny word when you think about it! Let’s blow this empty cafeteria and head to art class! Onward!”

He immediately crashed into a column.

“Onward,” Milo repeated dazedly.

He did have a point. The cafeteria should’ve had more people at ten minutes before the first bell.

This was more serious than she thought.

First period art was shared between the sixth and seventh grades. While Mort and Lydia greeted them with a cheery wave, a sixth grade group across the room whispered in hushed tones.

They were sneaking glances at Milo. Melissa glared at them, and they quickly became interested in the messy scribbles that couldn’t be scrubbed out of the tables.

The bell rang, but only half of the class was there. All of the empty seats belonged to the sixth graders.

“Where’s everyone else?” Melissa asked.

Lydia shrugged. “Sleeping probably. Or a truckload of potatoes overturned near the school again and it’s causing some backup.”

“Classes get delayed all the time,” Mort said.

True. It wasn’t uncommon for people to run late because something was blocking the way to the classroom. Teachers were aware of this and were usually kind enough to wait up to fifteen minutes before passing out quizzes and tests.

Ten minutes flew by, and only one girl arrived. She cast a nervous glance at Milo and took the long way around to her seat.

“Do I have anything on me? Like a bug, or milk mustache?” Milo asked.

Melissa shook her head. “No.You’re bug and milk mustache free. What is their problem anyway?”

“The school does seem to be acting crazier than normal,” Zack said.

Mrs. Whitaker took attendance and set them in randomized groups for a project that would span the entire week. Milo and Melissa were placed with Dean and Justin, part of the group that had been watching Milo suspiciously earlier.

Melissa silently balked at being separated from the others, though the rational part of her mind told her that she could probably squeeze some information out of them.

“Are we allowed to change groups?” Dean asked loudly, wrinkling his nose in distaste at Milo.

Milo didn’t notice since he was too busy placing random objects on the table while searching for his pencil bag.

“This is a good learning opportunity for you, Dean,” Mrs. Whitaker said sternly. “You can learn a lot from people outside your normal peer group.”

Melissa hid a smile behind her hand. Once Mrs. Whitaker made a decision, it was final.

They received their assignment and Mrs. Whitaker left to grab a few sheets from the copy room.

Justin propped his elbow up on the table. “I learned how our teachers want to kill us by exposing us to Murphy-itis.”

Melissa glared at him. “It’s called Murphy’s Law,” she hissed through gritted teeth.

Next to her, Milo finally found his pencil bag. “It’s whatever can go wrong, will go wrong,” Milo explained as he put everything away. “It’s not an inflammation. Well, it can cause inflammations, I guess, depending on the object.”

He picked up a bag of colorful feathers. It was only partially closed, and a green feather escaped and floated gently onto Milo’s nose.

Milo sneezed, and the feather fell to the floor. Dean and Justin made disgusted faces, scooting their chairs as far away as possible.

“Bless you,” Melissa said.

“Thanks!” Milo exclaimed. Then he saw Dean and Justin applying generous amounts of hand sanitizer to the table and their pencils. “What’s wrong?”

Melissa could understand having a small bottle of hand sanitizer or wipes in a bag. But this was too excessive for her. “Could we keep the table dry at least?” she asked.

Dean shook his head. “We need to get rid of the bad luck before it infects us.”

Melissa scowled. “Do you even hear yourself right now? This is ridiculous and it’s way too early for me to apply a decent logical argument to this mess. Justin, grab the art supplies so we can start.”

“Why me?” Justin complained.

“Because we claim seniority,” Melissa said simply.

“Actually, I don’t think we can claim sen-” Melissa covered Milo’s mouth, winking.

It was petty, but after the way they treated Milo, it was difficult to not feel too satisfied.

On the way to science, Melissa discovered a new level of weird. A lot of masks, gloves, and air freshener were being carried around by the student body. If the administrator walked through the front door right now, she was certain he would mistake them for surgeons instead of students.

Melissa coughed as they passed someone who sprayed pine-scented air freshener in their direction. “Okay, given how many times we’ve been sprayed in three minutes, those masks are starting to look tempting,” Zack said.

“I kind of like the strawberry scent. It’s not that bad,” Milo admitted.

“I’m more of a lemon,” Melissa said. “In small amounts though. Not a fan of strong scents.”

To her relief, the class was full. She could relax now that nobody would antagonize Milo. Well, Bradley would probably make some remarks, but she was used to it.

Thankfully, they were working with Zack for the lab. Melissa put Milo on recording data duty, since they needed the Bunsen burners for one section.

“Darn, forgot the salt,” Melissa said. It was the last thing they needed in the solution.

“No worries, Melissa! I’ll grab it,” Milo said, heading for the supply cabinet. He grabbed the salt, only to trip over a loose electrical cord and knock another group’s solution and Bunsen burner over, which tumbled into an open air vent on the wall.

Mort peered into the air vent, only to yelp upon seeing flames. “Mrs. Murkawski, I think you might want to see this!” he yelled.

She rushed over, her eyes widening. “Unplug your burners, everyone! We’d better evacuate!”

Sure enough, the fire alarm began to wail. The class scrambled for their things and rushed out the door. Mrs. Murkawski followed behind them, carrying her desk over her head. She didn’t set it down until she was at a safe distance.

The other students and faculty poured out, many still wearing their masks and gloves. They gave Milo a wide berth.

When the fire department arrived, they determined the cause was the excessive air freshener sprayed by the students had caused the heat from the Bunsen burner to ignite. The damage was contained to just the math and science halls though.

“Hi, Mr. Chase!” Milo said.

“Dad,” Melissa muttered.

Mr. Chase glanced between them, waving off his fellow firefighters. “Why were your peers spraying so much air freshener in the first place?”

“Because they don’t understand how Murphy’s Law actually works,” Melissa said. “And before you say anything, this was an accident. Plain and simple.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Okay, I don’t have a full grip on Milo’s...condition myself. But you seem to. And I seem to remember a little girl telling me she wanted to be a journalist-slash-queen-of-the-universe.”

“Not in front of my friends please!” she whispered.

Zack and Milo laughed. “You told us that on Career Day!” Zack said. “It’s not new information or anything.”

Melissa folded her arms. “So what are you getting at?”

“Well, the best way to prevent something is to educate someone,” Mr. Chase replied. “Consider it a personal project if you want. You have the resources, the pictures, the theories. You could always interview Milo.”

“That sounds fun,” Milo said. “Maybe we could make a short film too. I know i’m not a very good actor, but it could still be fun!”

Melissa smiled. “Thanks, Dad.”

Mr. Chase gave her a brief hug. “No problem,” he said.

Murphy’s Law wasn’t something to be afraid of. Not when it could bring people together.

And Melissa was going to make sure other people knew it too.

Bonus Author’s Note: So the masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, low attendance, and freshener actually happened at my school. The only thing not mentioned in this story is how sexy Ebola nurse outfits skyrocketed in popularity around Halloween.

I once talked to a girl who came from a different city to have her physical therapy in DFW while the paranoia was going around. She said her peers shunned her because they thought she had Ebola. Milo has similar issues here, even though he sees everything through rose-tinted glasses and it’s Melissa who has to defend him.

The takeaway here is: Disease threatens physical health. If severe enough, it can leave mental scars as well. However, your chances of encountering paranoia and suspicion based on misinformation are much higher than getting the virus yourself.

I apologize if this comes off as heavy-handed. The Ebola panic is one of the most vivid memories I’ve come out of high school with and I just thought it would be interesting to share with you if you’re interested.

#milo murphy's law #mml connect #fanfiction #melissa chase

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