#stories about tombstone characters

[curlysgirl0202]

Short Story:

Whispers of Curly Bill's Devotion

🩵Curly Bill has a crush on the reader and believes she is out of his reach and sees him as nothing more than an old rustler who does nothing more simply amuse her.

🩵But....When the reader enters a saloon and sees two prostitutes sitting on Curly's lap, the old cowboy comes to realize how much she really cares.🩵

The afternoon sun settles on the Palo Verde trees that frame the town of Tombstone. A gentle spring breeze makes its way through the area, spreading the warm aroma of a new season.

The people of Tombstone move about tending to their business. Some went to the hotel for breakfast while others dined at the restaurant. Women carried baskets of eggs to sell to the mercantile and other folks went into town to sell other items such as freshly caught fish, homemade tortillas, flowers and handmade items such as vases and baskets.

Curly Bill sees you across the street and sees you talking with friends and looking beautiful.

He wants to approach you, but feels a little awkward as he understands you're a woman of substance and you show the old cowboy kindness because that's part of your personality. You display kindness to all the Cowboys, asking how they're doing and your concern is always welcome and very appreciated. You simply don't care what others think. Curly amuses you and he's grateful that he can at least do that.

Before Curly can get close to you, you retreat with some ladies and he with a painful heart watches you disappear with your companions.

The following day when you're enjoying the amenities of the town, you bump into none other than Curly Bill. Although the old cowboy would love a chance to court you, he understands you're more than likely out of his reach. And like forbidden fruit, he needs to have you now that he feels he can't have you.

Curly feels a sense of defeat, but also one of realization; he's never going to be good enough to court you and you probably find him funny and familar and enjoy his practical jokes and big personality. But Curly Bill knows it cannot be anything more than that. He knows he amuses you and has decided he can be acquainted with you, but he's clearly not going to win your heart.

Curly thinks about you and how out of his reach you are and curses under his breath. He was making a fool out of himself over you and hasn't secured your courtship. He comes to the conclusion that he is nothing more to you than just a jovial cowboy who can make you laugh every once in a while.

However, he's about to be proven wrong...

Curly is enjoying his ill-gotten gains on a few whores who laugh at everything the old rustler says and they also pretend to understand what he's saying and take turns marveling over his stories. Curly hates their insincere banter and wishes their words were sincere. Curly takes it in stride and resolves that at least there's a lady listening. Curly experiences intolerable loneliness like everyone else in the Wild West and will pay handsomely for some lady comfort. An insincere woman is better than none at all. He understands what they're doing; they just want Curly to throw money their way and they'll do and say anything to get it. It's while they're sitting near him that everything changes.

You walk into the room just as one of the whores gets up off Curly's lap. You enter with a smile on your face that suddenly dies when you see a whore on Curly's lap. She's cupping his face and grabbing the dough he throws on the table. She stuffs the money in her bra and continues giving the old rustler insincere compliments.

You enter the saloon and you don't see Curly immediately. Another girl lays on his lap while he throws a few bills on the table. As soon as the girls see the money, they begin laughing at every joke Curly makes.

"Well, YN!" Tom McClaury announces. "Just in time! You can sit on Curly's lap!'

You look over at Curly Bill, who has a ramera practically wrapped around him. Curly Bill taps his free leg and motions for you to come sit. "I got one free leg!" Curly Bill shouts in his drunkenness, his ability to control himself is diminished and with the room spinning from the rot gut he's been drinking, his head spins with drunken confusion.

You look over at Curly, who seems suddenly taken aback by your coldness towards him. Your large eyes grow wide with a sadness Curly has never seen on your face. You close your eyes and tears fall while you turn away so he can't see your reaction. But before you turn, Curly sees those tears and it rips his heart. He suddenly feels disgusted with himself and with the saloon girls, insincerely vying for his attention...And money.

"Awww, come on now! It don't mean nothin'!" Frank Stillwell declares. "Don't go gettin' your dander up!"

You slowly shake your head while staring at the floor. You care for Curly Bill and desire more than just a casual acquaintance. And all this time, he assumed your kindness stemmed from your upbringing and that you do not hold a space for contempt for anyone. You seem to treat others in the way they treat you. And everyone in town seems smitten with your sweet smile and friendly disposition.

"No thank you," you answer, pain in your voice. At this moment, Curly realizes your feelings for him.

"Aww! Come on, sweet pea !" McClaury shouts. "Curly's got enough room in his lap for you!"

You turn and see Curly, the smile gone from his face with the realization that you do care for him and do not see him in the same way these whores do. His heart sinks and although intoxicated, he's sober enough to know he's really hurt you. He didn't entertain ideas about you being interested in him enough to let him court you. Curly felt nothing would ever blossom between the two of you because you come from a family of substance and his background is chaotic and wild.

Now he sits, drunk and confused, his arms at his sides, no longer interested in holding the prostitute counting the money he threw at her.

"Come on, Curly!" The girl says, trying to pull his face away from you. "She can't give you what I can!" Curly looks at her with disgust and she quickly gets up. Curly Bill would never cause harm to any woman whether a whore or a woman of substance, but feels tempted to curse her.

Curly stands and his head moves in an imbalanced rhythm caused by the whiskey and the look on your face and the tears that he cannot believe he caused. He staggers to his feet and moves closer to you and tries to put his arm around you in an attempt to let you know he understands. He goes to kiss you and his confidence is shattered when the whiskey on his breath infiltrates your nostrils along with the stink of horses. You turn away and he can feel his face grow red.

"Stop it, Curly. You're drunk!" You shout, your voice cracking. You move past the big rustler who looks around at his gang who stares, not knowing what to say. The whore sees the madness in Curly's eyes and quickly leaves.

"What are y'all lookin' at?!" Curly growls loudly. He heads to the bar and takes a swing of whiskey directly from the bottle. He turns to face his cowboys who look at each other not sure what to make of Curly's sudden rage over you.

"I don't need her! I don't need nothing or nobody!" Curly slurs. "Hell! She was just messin' with my head anyhow. I don't need her! A fellow needs a woman who can take a little funnin' and havin' no sense of humor! She don't mean nothin' to me anyhow!" Curly pours booze into a shot glass, downs it and pours another, feeling disgusted by his own embarrassment and shame. But he continues spewing out his anger.

"Hell! I don't want no woman who can't handle some funnin'! I don't care about her neither and I never really cared. I don't need anything!" Curly staggers drunkenly to the table where Barnes and Stillwell are sitting. The two cowboys glance at one another and Stillwell gives Ringo an inquisitive look. Ringo shrugs.

Ringo, who witnessed the entire event was the only cowboy willing to say anything.

"She's not a whore, Bill. You didn't know that?" Ringo shakes his head while looking at the floor, his arms folded across his chest, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. "She's a lovely lady who happens to care about you."

Curly stares indignantly at Ringo and takes another sip of whiskey. He removes his hat and takes a bow before Johnny.

"Well, ain't that mighty fine, Juanito. I don't need her and I don't need nobody! She don't care about me anyhow! You think you're better than me, don't you? You always thought you was better than all us boys, readin' damn books and showing off quotin' everything from Willy to the damn Bible. Sides, you don't know nothin'! Nobody spoils the fun for old Curly Bill Brocious! Specially some self righteous lady who don't mean nothin' to me! Hell, I don't even care I ever see her again!" Curly Bill can't think clearly and his head begins to pound from too much drinking. He growls and keeps sucking back shots.

Ringo glares at Curly, not believing how angry the old cowboy is. Ringo knows Curly is crazy about you and deeply hurt and confused. Curly Bill had no idea you liked him; he just assumed you treated him with kindness because it seemed your natural tendency. Curly Bill feels like a fool.

An old fool.

"I think she's right. You're drunk." Ringo responds.

"Well, I don't care. I've seen you throw back more whiskey than anyone. So you wanna go and ruin all my fun too? Maybe you two should go on together!"

"Curly Bill." Ringo clears his throat.

"A lady like her is special and maybe so much so she's once in a lifetime."

Curly continues drinking. He shoots a glance at Johnny. "That more Willy Shakespeare?"

Ringo stands, a frustrated look in his eyes.

"You're a damn fool, Curly."

"I'd be a damn fool iffin' I let some woman spoil my good time. I don't care what she thinks! She ain't nothin'! She don't mean a thing to me! Isn't that right boys?" Curly barks. "A real man ain't gonna let some woman tell him what to do!"

"All women ever brought me was misery anyhow!"

Some of his drunken cowboys cheer and whistle while others observe their boss, losing his mind over a woman and declaring his freedom from her.

"I've had enough," Ringo says, looking directly at Curly.

"Well, then you can go find YN and tell her old Curly don't need her!"

Ringo leaves through the batwings. Curly staggers drunkenly to the exit, wanting to finish his conversation with Ringo, who is walking across the street with his signature gait. Curly hears the sounds of sobbing and turns his head. He sees you, leaning on a tall lamp post, your face buried in her arms, tears streaming down your face.

Curly stumbles backwards, almost losing his balance and falling. He can't believe the site before him and he regrets everything he said about not needing you. He needs you like he needs air to breathe, but he's too much of a horse's ass to admit it. The sounds of your sobbing cause him to grow fearful and then angry. He would delight in comforting you, but cannot because his actions caused you to fall into this state of sadness. Curly feels his heart sink with fear and that fear grows into rage. He suddenly fears you may have heard everything he said.

Who needs women! All they do is cause a man a damn affliction!

He watches you for a few moments and then heads back to the saloon that's becoming increasingly crowded. The sound of your crying floods his ears and drowns out the noise of the bar. He can't shake the sight of you standing there, clearly heartbroken and confused. He wonders for a moment why you never made your interests known.

Because women play games! He screams in his mind.

The Hawkins boys walk in, four men in their thirties. Slim, the oldest was sporting one pistol with a tied down holster. He was the most attractive of the four, standing just over six feet with steel blue eyes and a neatly trimmed mustache. He seems almost regal, although a seasoned outlaw. His brother, Bob was shorter with a stout and strong body. He carried two pistols and was known for never using a shot gun that wasn't sawed off. Then Martin, the tallest and biggest, known for his ability to break broncs, looks around with dark eyes and his face is adorned with a full beard. A cigarette hangs from his mouth. The fourth brother, Angus, who hardly ever spoke stood just under six feet and had a wide face with a beard that always looked untrimmed, follows his brothers to the bar.

"Howdy, boys!" Curly announces. "First round is on old Curly!"

The Hawkins boys shout while the bar dog keeps the whiskey and beer flowing in the place which is starting to fill up with thirsty patrons.

"Hey, boys! We don't need women who take our funnin' away, do we?" Curly laughs through his broken heart.

"Hell no! We do just fine with them sportin' ladies!" Martin Hawkins agrees.

After a time of drinking up the place and playing poker with the Hawkins boys, Curly returns to the camp to sleep. He curses under his breath due to his head pounding and the cold, hard ground he's forced to sleep on. He envisions your soft, voluptuous body wrapped around him and a feeling of warmth and safety. He quickly dismisses it, falling into a drunken sleep. In his dreams, he can see you crying, your face buried in your arms. He can hear you whisper, "Curly Bill...hold me. Just hold me."

He wipes your tears and then awakens to the sound of the Clanton's shouting and shooting at empty whiskey bottles.

Curly cannot recall a time when he felt worse. He stumbles to his feet and notices he forgot to take his boots off before going to sleep. After getting coffee and chuck, he sits and removes his boots, rubbing his toes which ache from being cramped in his boots for so long. The stink of horse shit, tobacco smoke and horrific body odor permeates Curly's nose and he feels like vomiting, but is able to keep it down. He finishes his breakfast and looks around for Ringo, knowing the younger cowboy was right; Curly was drunk and made a fool out of himself.

Ringo knows Curly made a huge mistake and he also understands that the old cowboy really didn't know about your feelings for him. You kept it to yourself that confused Curly. Ringo gets that his friend was probably shocked when he realized your desires for him. Curly told Ringo at one point, "she's mighty fine and pretty. Any fellow would be damn lucky to have her. But she's a lovely lady I don't think she wants to be around cowboys who stink all the time. Hell, sometimes I can't stand the smell of them boys! She deserves better than me anyhow. I know she don't like me the way I like her."

Curly meant nothing he said last night and begins to regret not simply going after you. Perhaps he could have gotten you to change your mind about him. If he just left, he may have been able to be the one to comfort you. But he stayed and ran his big mouth, which is something the rustler is known to do. He told everyone listening that he didn't care about you when nothing could be further from the truth. He feels like a fool for not defending his feelings and admitting how his heart wants you, but he was too drunk and proud. And now how would he be able to court you after declaring he didn't need or even want you?

Curly Bill mounts his horse and heads into town for more partying and poker. The stable kid takes Curly's horse and leads it to the livery while Curly walks through town, hoping it would cheer him up. He felt like a dog without a pack and the soft drizzle didn't make him feel any better.

And then he sees you... You're exiting the mercantile, holding a basket covered in a towel. You stop walking and run your hand through your unbound hair, appearing more lovely and beautiful than ever. You look over and see Curly Bill. He starts removing his hat, but you turn and continue walking in the opposite direction. Now that he feels he can no longer have you, being with you is all he cares about. He decides to go to the restaurant for a slice of cake and a cup of coffee. Something, anything to get his spirits up. While he eats his cake and sips his coffee, one of the dishwashers, Four Fingered Jake, comes over to collect some dishes left on the tables from previous patrons and looks at Curly.

"Feeling alright, Jack?" Four Fingered Jake, who lost a pinky during a handkerchief duel a few years ago, called every cowboy Jack as in "jackeroo," and sometimes it just annoyed old Curly.

"Fine. Everything is just fine," Curly lies, focusing on his cake. He looks out the window and hopes to see you again; not to talk, but just to see you. He can't shake the sight of you crying or the sound of your sobs. He takes his last bite and downs his coffee.

"Well! You surely look afflicted by something," Jake stands by Curly's table, his arms full of dirty dishes.

"Why don't you just leave me alone?" Curly groans.

"Sure thing, mood you're in right now."

"Hold on a minute," Curly begins. "Hey, you ever been in love, Jake?" Curly asks, not looking up from his coffee.

"Hell! How you think I lost my pinky? Defending a lovely lady! Oh boy was she sweet! Worth it. I done lost that duel, but she was such a good woman, she stayed by me anyways. Even wanted to give up everything just to build a life with me. Imagine that!"

"What happened?" Curly growls.

"The Pox got a hold of her." Jake stands, shaking his head. "Why you asking, jack?"

Curly looks up at Jake and then back at his coffee cup. "Nothin', no matter."

Curly leaves some money on the table and leaves the restaurant. The drizzle began to subside and the sun began peeking out from behind the jagged looking clouds that lazily move across the Tombstone sky.

While walking through town, he feels he has lost everything. Although he still has his rustling enterprise and his cowboy companions, he can't shake the fact that all along, you desired him. If you wanted him before, doesn't that mean you still care? His heart begins to burn with a small ember of hope. All he wants to do is make you happy.

You return to your small one bedroom cottage that resides about a ten minute walk from town. The drizzle causes moisture in your hair and you grab a small towel and wipe your damp head with it. You toss the towel aside and begin putting your items away. Curly's face enters your mind and a sharp pulling comes from inside you, almost knocking you over. You recall the content look on his face when the whore sat happily on his lap. The way he expected you to sit on his lap like you were some calico queen. You care for him so much, but always felt he showed you sweetness because of his chivalrous cowboy code. You feel Curly isn't the settling down type so you simply resigned to just enjoying his company whenever you could. So often, you wanted to share with the old cowboy how much you care for him, but you feared he would discourage your feelings; telling you not to waste your time with such a nomadic fellow. You couldn't bear to hear his rejection so you followed his lead. You just never expected to see him indulging in the company of prostitutes and it solidified the fact that he doesn't want you because he probably feels your life couldn't provide the excitement he seemed to want. You felt as though you couldn't provide for him the daring and adventurous lifestyle that seemed to embrace Curly's life and you often felt you may prove to be dull and boring for the old rustler.

You know how you feel, but the mystery of Curly's feelings about you spin around in your mind. You believe in his drunkenness that he tried to overtake you and have his way with you only to toss you aside. You didn't realize he was trying to console you. Tears fall from your eyes again and you fall to the ground, holding your knees against your chest.

He never cared about me.

I should have known!

There's no way I could ever make him happy anyway!

It was right of me to assume someone like Curly Bill could ever care about anyone but himself!

You would like to fall into his arms, but you feel he would turn you away.

He needs a woman who can satisfy him and I can't! I'm boring and have nothing to offer such an adventurous and natural man.

You continue sobbing, your face buried in your knees. If you could be bold and daring, maybe Curly would want you. But you cannot become someone you're not...

You begin to feel you lost any chance with Curly Bill. You recall how he slapped his thigh and expected you to sit like a lady of the line and you never felt more exploited in your life. You wanted Curly Bill to treat you like a treasure and instead, he treated you like a nanny, just wanting you for the moment. He would use you and then toss you away and the only difference between you and the chippies is that you didn't charge the old cowboy.

You wipe your tears and take a deep breath. Your attention goes towards the front door as if you're waiting for it to open. You blow your nose and run your hands through your hair.

The door slowly opens and you move slowly, a rolling pin in your hand, waiting to bash the unsuspecting thug.

When the door is fully opened and there's no one there, you blow the breath out of your lungs and lean against the wall, your head looking up. You replace the rolling pin and decide to make yourself some tea.

While sipping your tea, you wonder what Curly Bill is doing at the same moment. You smile to yourself. Then the memory of his face when he slapped his thigh and motioned for you to sit.

Like I'm a dog!

You shake your head and decide to do some gardening after you finish your tea. The last thing you want to do is venture into town. Your fear of running into Curly Bill scares you.

He just wants one thing and once I give it to him, I'm nothing but a whore to him! I will never let him lay a hand on me!

You cry these thoughts in your mind.

You begin by pulling the weeds out of your fruit and vegetable garden; you've planted carrots, peppers, potatoes, eggplant and tomatoes. You also planted basil, green beans and peas. While harvesting your small crop, you decide to make a soup. You'll be able to stretch it into at least five days worth of meals. You also think about making some dumplings or biscuits and then make the choice to invite a friend or two over to enjoy your freshly made soup. You delight in growing your own food and you really love creating delectable dishes you can share with others. You smile to yourself and feel good that you're not consumed with thoughts about Curly Bill. Maybe you'll be over him soon.

After washing and chopping your freshly picked delights, you feel it would taste better if you made it with already prepared vegetable stock. You clean yourself up, put some color on your lips, brush your hair and get your shopping basket. You slowly walk into town, touching some of the flowers and taking in the fresh air. You witness dandelion fuzz and small butterflies flitter through the air in a peaceful and whimsical nature dance. You smile and enjoy the moment, taking deep breaths of fresh air.

When the sounds of town begin to rise into your ears, you welcome the social scene performing before you.

The mercantile owner, Mr. Wilks, tips his hat while taking a break from sweeping the front porch.

"Good afternoon to you, YN," He says and then continues sweeping while you enter the store.

Mrs. Wilks wipes her small hands on her apron and climbs down from the step stool she was standing on while cleaning some shelves.

"Well, hello, YN! How nice to see you." The little woman scurries towards you with her small, mouse-like shaped body. "What can I get for you?"

"Oh, just some stock if you have any." You answer.

"Oh, of course!" The older lady responds. "Stock and broth. You're just in time too! The Simms just dropped off stock and bone broth. In fact, it's still hot!" The little old lady hugs you. "Oh, darling! I sure hope you're alright!"

You shrug. "Yeah, well I'm doing alright, I guess."

"I've seen you talkin' with that there Curly Bill Brocious and I'm here to tell you he ain't nothin' but trouble. Don't go wasting your time on some worthless cowboy!" The shopkeeper puts your items in your basket and you look at the floor, your heart broken and your head spinning. Nobody ever seemed to miss an opportunity to inform you of how you are wasting your time with Curly Bill. You really like the old cowboy; you love his smile, his deep voice, his willingness to protect you and how his hair curled around his forehead and oh!

You catch your breath and give the lady what you owe for your items.

"Don't forget what I said, love."

You look out the window and see Curly Bill on the other side of the street talking with a few cowboys. You stare out the window and wonder what the conversation consists of. Curly frowns while talking with Johnny Ringo and Pete Stillwell. You can see Curly take his hat off and continue gloating over something. Your trance becomes interrupted, "Don't forget, I said, dear."

You suddenly snap back into what you were doing. You clear your throat and pick up your basket. You nod at the shop keeper. "Of course," you whisper. "Oh, um...where do you keep the apples and pears? I just forgot I needed some." You hold your basket while keeping your head down.

"Oh, yes. Just down that hall and down the steps." The old lady motions towards the way.

Just as you're walking down the steps, Curly enters through the cellar door located on the other side of the house. He was hoping to swipe some fruit. When he sees you close the door behind you, he sneaks around and after You've gathered your fruit, you turn and see him standing before you. You gasp, completely surprised.

"YN," he swoons.

You try to move past him and open the door, but Curly blocks your way with his arm. The fear in your eyes causes Curly to grow weary with guilt, but he's not letting you leave until you allow him to at least apologize.

"Curly Bill," you whisper. "Please let me go. Please."

Curly continues blocking the door for another moment and then steps aside, allowing you to decide whether or not you're willing to talk to him. Your eyes look up at the cowboy and then you turn away. Curly wants to hold you, but when he moves towards you, you pull away.

"Please, YN," Curly begins. "Please give me a chance to tell you I'm sorry."

You nod your head, still convinced the old rustler just wants one thing and only wants to save face for his cowboys.

"Ok," you whisper. You quickly move past him and he watches you quickly leave.

The Hawkins boys see you coming and whistle as you pass and it infuriates Curly who is in no mood to fight.

Later that day, while you're cooking your soup, the door opens again. You go to close it and Martin Hawkins kicks it open. He enters your house with the other Hawkins. "Well, so here's where you live!"

"Who are you?" You ask, your voice shaking.

"I'm Martin Hawkins and these here are my brothers." The other boys tip their hats to you. Angus takes a fresh apple and bites into it and then winks at you.

"What do you want?" You implore.

The boys look at each other and then you. Martin and Bob move closer to you. Bob quickly holds your wrists and Martin takes a small piece of rope and binds your hands together.

"Please!" You beg. "Please! What do you want!?"

"You."

Your mouth falls open and you struggle to get away, but the men are big and burly and you're easily overpowered. They bring you outside and Martin pulls you up on his horse and they ride out.

The Hawkins boys bring you to their shack.

"So, old Curly thinks he can cheat us, huh?" Slim asks when the boys throw you onto the floor, your wrists still tied.

"Who are you?" You beg.

"I believe we already introduced ourselves. Curly owes us and what better way to get him to pay up than to take what matters?" Slim lights up a cigarette. He motions for Angus to retrieve something and the younger brother brings out a camera.

"You got it wrong. Curly doesn't care about me! I know that so you're wasting your time if you think he'll care!"

All four Hawkins boys laugh.

"That's not what he said when he was so drunk, he could hardly find the door. And he was still sober enough to cheat." Martin Hawkins scoffs.

You lower your head. *It can't be. He thinks I'm nothing but a..." You begin to sob uncontrollably.

Slim recalls Curly from the night before:

"You know something, boys? Even old Willy Shakespeare couldn't write about her with the right words cuz there ain't no one like YN!" He slaps his cards on the table and calls for three cards. "If you ever wanna see an angel, just look at her, boys! And I've gone done it like a damn fool!"

Curly doesn't care who's listening, he's usually running his mouth. The Hawkins boys share glances while playing.

"I lost her and now....well I may never get her back! Aw hell! I don't deserve her anyhow! I just kept makin' a damn fool of myself, thinkin' she didn't care none and then I saw her so sad and well, shit!" He takes a shot of whiskey.

The Hawkins boys didn't say much. They were amused watching the big gunfighter squirm from his broken heart. They continued letting Curly talk.

"You boys wouldn't understand anyhow cuz you never met an angel like that! And you never will neither!"

"Sounds like you're in love, Curly!" Bob Hawkins scoffs, a cigarette hanging from his wide mouth.

"Yeah, well I guess I am, boys! You're sayin' I shouldn't? You ever see her, you'll be in love too!"

***You swallow hard and cannot believe what you're hearing. All this time you and Curly both misunderstood

"Tie her up to the post,"Martin says, focusing on his cigarette. "We'll get a nice little picture for our friend, Curly Bill Brocious."

Too scared to speak and too outnumbered to escape, you are quickly overpowered by the boys who tie your arms up onto the post and then wrap rope around your legs to keep you still. Tears flow from your eyes.

"Awww, don't cry none. It's Curly Bill we really want," Martin says, touching your face. You try to turn away and they all chuckle.

"Now, see Bob there is gonna take your picture so we can show Curly."

"Please don't hurt Curly," you cry.

"You ain't concerned for yourself?" Slim asks, taking his last drag of his cigarette. "Make sure it's tight. I don't want her getting away."

"Oh, it's tight. She ain't going nowhere," Martin answers while Bob gets the camera ready.

"Smile, princess. This is for Curly Bill. Now, look at the camera," Slim barks.

You look into the lens and the flash causes you to flinch.

When the picture is ready, Slim rides out to town, the picture in a large, sealed envelope.

"Hey, deputy!" Slim calls for Billy Breckenridge.

"Howdy, Slim," Billy says.

"You know where Curly Bill is?"

"I think he's back at camp. He said something about having to brand some cows "

"Take this to him and don't open it. It's for him, you hear?"

Breckenridge takes the envelope and rides out to the cowboy camp. Curly is drowning his sorrows with rot gut while the Clanton's are branding a small calf.

"Curly! Something for you! From the Hawkins!" Breckenridge brings the envelope to Curly who opens it.

And falls to his knees. He bites his hand to maintain his control. He stares intensely into the photograph and the image of you tied up like that will be etched in his mind forever. Curly resolves to save you. He doesn't care if he never sees you again; he'll do anything. His rage grows into mind numbing fury, but he knows he needs to plan very carefully.

Ringo comes over and Curly Bill hands him the photograph. Ringo's eyes grow narrow and his lips begin trembling. He balls his hand into a tight fist. He returns the picture, not wanting to look at it.

Ringo begins thinking up a plan to rescue you. He knows the shack that the Hawkins have been staying at and it sits behind a grove of large trees. As a seasoned guerilla raider, Ringo starts thinking who will go along and how they will position themselves.

"We're with you, Curly," Ringo whispers. "We gotta wait. They're planning on us busting the door down. Indian Charlie and Pete Spence and Stillwell are gonna go out first and hide in the brush."

Curly Bill, too angry to speak, simply nods his head, knowing Ringo is the best one to plan this.

"I can't stand the thought of those damn thugs alone with her and her tied up like that. Shit, Johnny!"

"Curly, I don't think that's what they're after. Not long. Not too long. Me and the Youngers did guerilla raids over a dozen times. We gotta make sure everyone of us has at least three pistols. We can easily fire off sixty or seventy shots in less than a minute."

Keep going," Curly growls.

"We wait for one of those sons of bitches to come out. They can't hold onto their shit forever. They may even go two at a time."

"When do we ride?" Curly asks.

"Let the others go first. We'll follow, two boys at a time. Real slow, Curly. They're waiting for us right now, expecting an ambush and they're prepared for that. But I know the Hawkins and they're not guerillas."

Curly nodded. He watches Spence, Stillwell and Indian Charlie ride out. They secure their horses about 50 feet from the shack and crawl on their bellies to the trees and hide carefully. They have three pistols each and Stillwell has a sawed off shotgun.

Curly Bill and Ringo ride out together. They, like their fellow gang members scout the area carefully. They catch up with Indian Charlie and the others. While riding out, Curly tells Ringo:

"You're right, Johnny. I'm a damn fool! I had no idea YN felt that way about me. Hell! A man like me havin' a beauty like that goin' on and havin' them kind of feelings. She's so damn special and cute and hell, Johnny, what would you think?"

Ringo pulls the reigns in for a moment. He looks at Curly Bill, who is waiting for an answer.

"Curly Bill, you're right. I would have reservations about her too. Not that I wouldn't want her, but to make a damn fool of myself and then find out she was just being pleasant, well, I would feel awful." Ringo shakes his head, imagining what that would be like.

"It's a damn curse, Ringo. You find the woman of your dreams and know damn well she's out of reach cuz she don't care too much. Then you find out she cares a whole lot." Curly fights the tears forming in his eyes as he recalls that damn photograph of you. "That's what makes this whole thing so damn miserable. I swear right now I'll do anything to make her happy iffin' she gives me a chance and iffin' she don't, at least I saved her."

"Either way, you'll be a hero, Bill," Johnny claims, not looking at Curly.

"Yeah. But I won't care iffin' I can't be with YN."

Ringo and Curly secured their horses and crawled towards the trees where the others were waiting.

""None of em have come out to shit yet," Stillwell remarks. "What the hell are them boys waiting for?"

"They can't hold on to it forever." Ringo says, no expression in his voice.

"Are we ready?" Curly growls.

"We're ready, but damn that shithouse is ripe!" Spence adds.

Ringo recites sonnets in his mind while the others hold their pistols. They are the door open and like Ringo predicted, two of the Hawkins boys came out.

"Damn, he ain't heeled," Stillwell declares.

"Real slow, boys," Curly whispers.

Once the Hawkins boys are in the shit house, Ringo and Curly go close, almost holding their noses because of the stink.

Curly opens one of the doors and Bob Hawkins looks up in shock. "No! No! No!" He shouts before Curly fills him full of lead. Ringo does the same to Angus, who also pleads for his life.

"You never should've messed with her," Ringo remarks before killing Angus. Slim and Martin come running out, their pistols blazing in all directions. Ringo moves like a ghost, remembering everything Quantrill taught him about guerilla raids. The Hawkins were outnumbered by men and bullets as Curly and his boys were all sporting three pistols each. In a matter of seconds, the Cowboys fired off over 50 shots and all the Hawkins were meeting their makers. The Cowboys laugh and some twirl their guns before entering the house.

Curly Bill sees you, your chest heaving furiously and fear shows in your teary eyes. You gasp and struggle to get free as you're still tied to the post.

Curly replaces his guns and scans the area for anyone else. "We're clear, boys! Ain't no one else here!"

Too shocked to speak, your face gazes at Curly Bill and you can't believe he just risked his life to save you. He walks towards you and your chest continues breathing heavily and tears begin running down your face. Curly wipes your tears and takes his Bowie knife from his belt. He goes to cut the ropes and then pauses, just soaking up not only your beauty, but the fact that he at least redeemed himself and became your hero. He cups your face and kisses you and to his surprise, you do not resist. He smiles at you and the fear in your eyes begins subsiding.

"YN... Will you please forgive me for hurting you? You're all I think about and I'm a damn fool for lettin' you leave like that."

You nod your head. "Please let me go," you beg. "I... thank you for saving me! I didn't think you cared at all," you answer, your face gazing at the floor.

"YN... Curly Bill takes his hat off. "I love you," he whispers, sucking back tears. "I never meant to hurt you."

You look up your cowboy. You continue struggling.

"I'm gonna cut you loose after one question..." Curly's voice is just above a whisper. He smiles sheepishly.

"Please..." You answer.

Curly Bill doesn't take his eyes off of you.

"Will you marry me?" Curly asks.

Your eyes well up with tears. You nod your head.

"Yes!" You say in a soft voice.

Curly kisses you one more time. He takes his knife and cuts you loose. When he does, you fall into his arms, sobbing uncontrollably. Curly feels such a sense of relief and gratitude, he picks you up and holds you tight.

"I love you, Curly Bill. I always have."

He kisses your hands and rubs your wrists which appear raw from your tie ropes. He hates seeing that...

Curly Bill takes your face again and kisses you ever so gently.

"I never thought you'd kiss me like that," you whisper, wrapping your arms around him and holding him tight, your head on his strong shoulder. You close your eyes while the two of you enjoy a delightful and wonderous moment of pure love. The other Cowboys leave, giving the two of you some time alone.

When you conclude your kiss, he picks you up, his eyes locked with yours.

He carries you out and all the way to his horse, all while you keep your head in his chest. He can feel you trembling and he tightens his embrace, wanting you to feel safe and protected. Once he mounts his gelding, he pulls you up and he rides out at full gallop, his cowboys following and hooting with celebration.

Curly Bill brings you home and helps you get dressed into a warm nightgown. He tucks you into bed and caresses your face until you fall asleep.

After a few moments of watching you slumber, he removes his boots and falls into the bed.

He delights when in your sleep, you turn and rest your head on his chest.

The End...

[jupitermelichios]

so you've probably seen the news that riverdale ended with the main 4 in an actual, canonical, poly relationship

and that's amazing for a bunch of reasons, including the fact that the number of canon poly relationships on tv are miniscule and also it brings the number of canonically straight main cast members down to 1. Ethel is legitimately the show's token straight representation. love that for her

but to get the full impact of that news, you really also need to know that in order for the polycule to form:

Jughead's transdimensional angel girlfriend has to destroy multiple other timelines to create a new stable timeline for the polycule to live in. timelines destroyed include the one where jughead is immortal and trapped forever in a bunker underneath riverdale, and one where tony and fangs's magical timetravelling gay baby is fighting an evil wizard for control of a train full of evil ghosts

Jughead's magical transdimensional angel girlfriend then returns to the newly created main timeline, and restores the main cast's memories of all the other timelines, which she does by forcing them to watch the show riverdale. That is not a joke or a metaphor she even goes to the trouble to bring a colour tv back to the 1950s so they can watch in colour, except for Clay and Julian, because they did not exist in any of the previous timelines and they're sad about it and refuse to watch a show they're not in.

(Well, Julian technically did exist in the original timeline, but only as a ghost possessing a haunted doll, which doesn't really count)

(Also for some reason as well as the main cast, she makes dilton doily watch it, despite his only contributions to the show being a) dying as a human sacrifice in the og timeline, b) trying to blow up the planet and then dying because of it in the rivervale timeline, and c) gay kevin telling people he has the biggest dick in the 1950s tlmeline, and honestly, I feel like it would be kinder to just not show him any of that)

(ethel does not get to watch riverdale, because she did the only sensible thing any riverdale character has ever done and fucked off to a normal town to have an actual life, because as well as being the token straight character, she's also the token sane one)

After watching Riverdale, all of the main cast except Jughead and Betty decide it sucks and they hate it, and ask tabby to rewipe their memories and only give them the cute bits and not all the serial killers and shit, because the writers have run out of time for subtle metaphors and they weren't sure the audience had fully grasped that the entirely last season of the show is a weird metacommentary on the criticisms people have of the show riverdale so they're just straight up going to have archie andrews look straight to camera and say that the show should have been more like the comics

also I have no idea how only showing them the happy bits works, because that removes 90% of the entire plot so I assume they just have a bunch of completely out of context sex scenes and meals at the diner and nothing else. possibly also some musical numbers, idk if I'd count those as happy memories personally

Betty and Jug chose to keep their memories of the Gargoyle King and Betty's 2 long-lost secret gay serial killer brothers because they're edgy (and also because the writers are annoyed at all the people who say the show should be more like the comics, so they have the smartest characters say they liked the actually and everyone else is being a wimp about all the serial killers, because again, we have run out of time for subtlety)

Having had his memories restored, Jug's like "oh hi tabitha, my secret transdimensional angel girlfriend, I haven't seen you for months, I've really missed you. I'm so glad you're you're back. i love you so much"

And she responds by telling him that she'd chosen to write herself out of the timeline when she fixed in, and she has to return to the great big diner in the sky (not a joke, heaven is a diner in the riverdale universe and, it is heavily implied, also in our universe, so that's something to look forward to), so she freezes time halfway through kissing him and just nopes out of time and space. which is also how I would handle all break ups if I had angel powers tbh

since jug is now single, and all 4 of them just got multiple timeline's worth of fucking one another mainlined straight into their brains, the main 4 decide to all start dating

(they are probably inspired to do this in part by betty's sister, who in the new timeline is a burlesque performer who's stage name is Polly Amorous)

As far as I can tell from the last episode, they tell gay kevin about this and literally no one else, for reasons known only to themselves

also genuinely can't tell if this was the writers wanting a poly relationship for them, or if they just couldn't be bothered with the internet slap fights that would have followed them picking individual monogomous ships to be endgame

they also, hilariously, refuse to say that archie and jug are dating, I assume due to network restrictions, despite archie being canonically bi at this point, so betty's just like 'well sometimes I go to veronica's and we fuck, and the boys do... something we're not going to talk about'

the final episode of the show is a flash forward where as a now old betty is dying, jughead's ghost shows her memories of their teens, in which it's reveal that she has just straight up forgotten about being in a poly relationship

literally she looks at her teen self and is like "wow, I seem weirdly close to veroica jughead and archie" and Jug's ghost has to be like "because we were dating. how do you not remember that we were dating? what the hell? did I mean nothing to you?!"

also old betty specifically seeks out reggie and is like "hey you know how me and you dated, and you and veronica were together for years in multiple timelines, and you archie keep declaring your undying love for one another and nearly fucking, well we're all dating and we specifically decided not to invite you, sucks to be you" and walks away and I have no idea why she did it. justice for reggie

anyway RIP to the greatest television show ever made, it was so gay and so deranged and so meta, and there really will never be anything quite like it again

[xoxo-surfergirl]

the lady, the prince, & the sword

[in honor of spooky season]

aemond targaryen x fem!reader

abstract: over one hundred years after the dance, you grow up as a lady in the ruins of Harrenhal. One day, you get a little too curious about the prince and his dragon rumored to be rotting at the bottom of the lake, and awaken something beyond your understanding. 🕯️this fic is inspired by a post from @sapphirevhagar 🕯️ themes: spooky harrenhal, smut, ghost/undead aemond, aemond as a war criminal, forbidden romance if you squint, you are the lady of harrenhal, dark aemond (but like, he's a dark character so I just tried to stay true to who he is), piv & hand stuff

lucy's notes: ao3 link. I tried to make my characterization of aemond as true as I could, but I won't lie it was hard in this scenario!! I don't think he'd be the type to just fuck someone (but maybe he would...who knows), but for the purposes of this spooky halloween fic I tried to make it as realistic as I could. maybe he would if he was pussy starved for a century, so that's what I'm going for. ENJOY!

word count: 8.6k

The sun had struck its highest point in the sky, your very own guiding star to the lake below it. 

From this bluff above God’s Eye, you could see all of what you called home: a boundless land, resilient despite centuries of war that had left each tree as a tombstone watered with spilled blood. And yet, the land was more alive because of it, or perhaps despite it. You weren’t sure which, but you knew just as well as any other riverman that if you listened close enough, you could feel the breath of the land under your feet. 

The rolling evergreens murmured when the winds ran through their branches. Winter was coming, and soon the jeweled blue of God’s Eye would coalesce into bitter sheets of ice. But for now, the first light gusts coaxed the water’s surface into gentle catspaws, still forgiving enough on your skin to welcome you into the lake. There was no barrier between your toes and the grass. Your daily swims were the one time you went without boots, an activity of yours that the Lord of Harrenhal detested. Mud is unbecoming of a lady , your father would say. It was, but so was walking in squelching boots back to your chambers. 

The faint line of sand at your favorite lakeside spot had finally breached your toes. It was better than all of the rest. Much of the lake had no such comfortable entry as this: a large swath of sand perfectly divoted for entry. Silence was a familiar friend here. It was a true silence, unlike the faint drips and echoes that seeped through your walls. 

And so the last thing you were expecting was company. “And what finds my Lady at this cursed corner of God’s Eye?” 

“My good Patrek, I did not expect to see you here.” Hiding your fright was easier said than done. An old family friend of the less noble type, with a face worn by time and a voice weathered by wind. Onlookers were rare here, and you wondered if he had followed you all the way from the keep. 

“You should not be here, my Lady. You know the stories, educated as you are.” 

You did—of how the very burrows of sand that now welcomed your toes were dug by Daemon Targaryen’s dragon Caraxes in a death-crawl to shore after his rider and opponent had perished. Every riverman knew of the tale. 

“I swim here often. If there is a curse, I hope I have been spared it.” Brushing off a stubborn elder was something you were quite familiar with. 

“Then you know the dragon’s blood soaked into the soil, dying where you stand. The very ground you walk on is damned.” His voice gruffed against his throat, but there was no mistaking the concern there. 

It wasn’t that you didn’t believe in the power of such things—as a Lady of Harrenhal you knew very well from your own accord how often things are not always what they seemed. But even some tales were too far-fetched for your own belief.

 Besides, if you heeded every tale and story from your surrounding men, you’d hardly be able to leave your chambers. 

Telling an old riverman what to do was not a task you’d expected to find yourself involved in at this hour. The look in your eye did more talking than your words. “I appreciate your concern, Patrek. But I insist, I am more than alright.” 

With one last stare, he dismissed himself. Thank the gods. 

In front of you, fragile blades of grass dared to peek through the large sand trough. It was a perfect pathway to the water, gently sloping and kinder on your feet than the rocky mud surrounding the rest of the lake was. If this truly was Caraxes’ doing, he had carved such a fine entrance to the water. It had never regrown. Barren, unlike the greater parts of the rest of the lake—perhaps the agony of such a creature reshaping the dirt with its claws, belly dragging and wingless on one side, had scarred the land permanently. You could see it. 

The water lapped at your toes now. Dragons were a far away concept, from a land and world that no longer existed, yet you wondered if their deaths really were something so traitorous to the gods that the land could never fully be right again. 

Stepping further and further inside, the light billow of your dress danced in the water. There were times, like a moonlit night, where you would forgo your dress and let the lake feel you bare. Those moments were rare, and ladies hardly had enough privacy and virtue to spare to allow such brazen activities—but you indulged in them when the moon called. With a final push of your toes, you dove your hands ahead of you and released. For a second, you were flying, letting the water carry you before you pushed against it once more. Smiling came easy here. 

And yet Patrek’s words lingered. None of the information was new. Perhaps it was the graveness of his voice that haunted you. 

Words could melt in the water, and his were no exception. The water held you as your mother might have, or a lover—all over, bringing you a comfort you could find nowhere else. You ran your fingers and toes in the sand below you, feeling it sift in the weightlessness between them. 

The sun had sunk low in the sky when you emerged from the lake, mind and body calm in your daily ritual. 

A new day had brought with it new curiosities—it would be easier to say that getting the tales out of your head was a simple task, but over the course of the previous day, it had proved much more difficult than you’d hoped. 

Sleep had evaded you, and restlessness drew you to the library. Each book was half rotted away from moisture that settled between each page and binding stitch. The candle light in your hand fought a losing battle with the mist, surrendering to a low bruising blue. Even still, you had found what you came there for. 

It was readable despite the poor lighting.  Dragons in the Riverlands were a sore subject—it was not a surprise to find that many, if not all of the manuscripts on dragons were loathsome at best, and near traitorous to your Targaryen overlords at worst. 

Prince Daemon Targaryen and his dragon Caraxes dueled Prince Aemond Targaryen and his dragon Vhagar on the 22nd day of the 5th moon of 130 AC. Dragon shrieks rippled in the wind and dragonfire flamed into the sunset so bright that the sky itself was said to be alight. Prince Daemon is said to have leapt onto Vhagar, plunging the ancestral Targaryen Valyrian steel sword Dark Sister through his nephew’s good eye. Caraxes is believed to have crawled to shore before releasing a dying shriek. Prince Daemon, Prince Aemond and Vhagar’s bones are believed to remain at the bottom of the lake today. 

Portraits of the two men and their dragons had accompanied the passage, with sketches of the battle gathered from the artists and bards surrounding God’s Eye. Long platinum hair framed both men, though Daemon lacked Aemond’s youth and sapphire eye.

  What a peculiar thing, a sapphire eye. Imagining a dragon as large as Vhagar sunk deep beneath your nose was a strange thing, fitting for a strange man with a sapphire in his socket. Trying to imagine a creature, let alone a dragon as big as her, was incomprehensible. If she really was the size of a small keep, how could one command her? 

Aemond Targaryen had—and perhaps that made him one of the most god-like Targaryens of all Targaryens to exist. And now he was damned to spend his eternity bound to the dark blue dungeon that was the depths of God’s Eye. 

Your toes had found the water’s edge once again, among the supposed cursed grounds of Caraxes last breathing place. If one dragon’s death made the land cursed, then surely the death of two doubled it. 

Today was a different venture than you were used to. The sun was even more forgiving than usual, warming your skin before you ever touched the water. It was a compulsion that drew your limbs to swim further from shore, an unexplainable magnetic lord that your limbs gladly obliged. With a hefty suck of air, you submerged your head. The chamber of echoing silence took its hold of your ears as you sank deeper and with a blink, you opened your eyes. The sun rays refracted in planes off of the water’s surface, down to the awaiting bottom. Only on the most clear days were you able to see this far, and yet it still wasn’t far enough to reach its furthest depths. 

Arms and legs tugged on the water. You sank deeper, your hair and dress haloing your floating figure. Long tendrils of curly pondweed and brittle water nymph followed the soft current rippling through the lake. You could feel its light pull, but your limbs were much stronger than the fragile plants that lay there. Swimming forward into deeper territory, large rocks begin to take shape, with their own water thread and algae sprouting from aged cracks. 

It was so faint, you almost missed it. A sparkle or two in the darkness, a trap of sunlight where sunlight didn’t belong anymore, just out of your sight. Another pull of your arms and you were closer: close enough to almost see what could create such a glimmer. Your lungs were calling but you just needed to get one more look—

Despite the near fade to darkness, the shape was unmistakable: a silver pommel, jutting out from beyond the deep. The dragon wings at the hilt were frozen in flight. Realization laid its heavy hand upon your chest and the call of your lungs became too loud to ignore. Frantically swimming to the surface, the bubbles spilled from your lips as the water became warmer as the sun drew closer. Your rift of the surface was punctuated by the loud gasp of your aching chest. Save for your weak disruption, the top of the lake sat as tranquil and undisturbed as you had left it. 

If it’s what you thought it was—

A few more deep breaths later and you were down below the surface once again, heart thrumming with revelation. This time, you knew exactly how deep you needed to go. You don’t know how you didn’t see it before, but the glint was visible even near the surface. It was a distant sparkle in the underworld, as if it was capturing the blue essence of God’s Eye itself. Blood pumped through your ears in the chamber of the deep as your arms tugged, stomach threatening to turn despite your precious conservation of air. 

A sapphire and a sword, each a shining beacon of their own. The skull which held both tilted up towards the heavens. Beyond it, skeletal arms reached forward, nearly upward. Part of you knew that the same buoyancy which allowed you to float was the same that held him, but another part of you wondered if at the time of the prince’s death he was reaching towards the sky in hopeless defiance. His once royal leathers and armor were rusted and torn, ebbing like the eel grass that had taken root. Time submitted all to its will, even princes, leaving only rot behind. 

The incomprehensible became comprehensible with one look downwards: crumpled and black, you realized it was not depth, but dragon bones themselves that seemed to create the darkness of the water that surrounded him. Thick spires of obsidian bone curled around what you could only put together as a rib cage the size of a small keep. Her skull was far from her body, large eye sockets gaping and maw stretched with rows of dagger teeth. The very maw that was the last sight of many in the Riverlands. 

If you wanted to reach the surface, you needed to swim now. But for a few more moments, the urge to swim just a bit further was greater than your want for air. You don’t know what possessed you—it could have been the lack of oxygen, or that you were just fond of shiny things on occasion, but you reached for the bright pommel that was nearly offering itself out to you and pulled. The blade was heavier than you were anticipating, as much of a novice as you were, but you persisted. Drawing your arms tight into your chest and using your whole body to swim against it, you did your best to wrack it free from its hold in the prince’s skull. It felt almost wrong to pull so hard, but you persisted. Bubbles jutted from your mouth in the struggle until it wracked free. 

It was now the second time you surfaced, and your gasp was much louder than the last. The sword was heavy in your arms, wanting to drag you back down to the bottom with it and join the prince and his dragon. There was no particular reason for taking it—it was a beautiful thing, untouched by the same rot and ruin as the prince and his dragon below. A sneaky voice in your head reminded you that a relic like this could pay to fill Harrenhal’s coffers for half the year or more if returned to the Targaryens, yet that is not why you sought it. 

In fact, you weren’t sure you wanted anyone to know what you had taken, and made quick work to wrap it in your swimming dress on your way back to the castle. A large object wrapped in cloth was not subtle, but the impossibility of manning such a monstrosity of a castle worked in your favor. Taking careful steps and hiding in the many alcoves to weave your way back to your chambers without spectacle proved a successful effort. 

The afternoon had come and gone with little affair, besides a light dusting of rain. It rained at Harrenhal often. And often, you found it peaceful. The rain was a part of life, and the wetness with it. 

But as the late afternoon carried on to evening, it became no such rain. The sky had darkened hours before sundown, bright colors and pretty horizons forgotten behind the undulating turmoil above you. The thunder went beyond simple sounds to full-bodied vibrations, shaking you from the bottom of your feet through your ears. It was not a storm, but a wroth sky. You were certain that no castle for hundreds of miles was spared. 

The buckets meant to catch runaway leaks in the stones were overflowing from the violent rain. Wind raided every crevice it could weave through, whistling just to force itself through. Servants and your family alike had begun sheltering the most fragile of belongings: books, letters, artifacts, and wood sensitive to rot. The torches fought against the wind, a harsh back-and-forth that flickered all light around you into senselessness. 

Retiring early tended to suit you better in many storms, though you doubted you would be getting any meaningful sleep. Earlier, you had unfurled Dark Sister. A small bead of blood on your finger taught you that valyrian steel was as sharp as they say it is. The sword rested against your desk, tall and lethal, catching every strike of lightning as it came down through your window. 

Between each bout of thunder and battering of lightning, you managed to find moments of rest. Each time a strike would come down threatening to tear down the walls, you sat up, clutching your down quilt in your hands. And each time, Dark Sister was glinting in the corner, winged hilt spread like a pouncing bird of prey. 

And yet the greatest of your fears lay not with the presence of the ancestral Targaryen sword, but came in your winks of sleep: a figure, tall and eerie, in the corner of your chambers. Each time you had awoken, your eyes flashed across your room, fearing that you would find a creature of the night standing there. 

Luckily, it seemed the shadow had made its home in your head and not your chambers. When daybreak began to glow behind the clouds, your relief came with it. 

This day was much the same as the last, yet there were fewer and fewer channels for excess water to pour away from the hearths. There would be no swimming today, that much was certain; making the walk down to the lake alone would be enough to sink you into mud, never to be seen again. All were set to help the effort to keep what was able to be kept dry, lady or servant. 

“An omen, I fear,” said Mathilda, a favored handmaiden of yours, as she threw another bucket of water through the open window to the yard below. 

“An omen of what?” 

“Harrenhal hasn’t seen a storm like this in over a decade. It went against all folk predictions.” she breathed worriedly,  “A bad omen. Something isn’t right.” 

You had tucked the sword under your bed about halfway through the night when you realized that looking at it only made your stomach churn. There it lay still and waiting, inches from your two pairs of feet. 

But there was nothing you could do about it at this very moment. “Is there anything to do to protect against a bad omen?” 

“It depends on what’s happened. But for most of my knowledge, I am afraid not. The damage has already been done.” 

The pit in your stomach stirred. In the same evening, the thunder was just as fierce and lightning just as fiery. Regret compounded with every shake of thunder for the stolen sword. It was better left under the lake where it belonged—you knew that now. 

Purple cracked the sky in two from your chamber window, illuminating everything once more. Folktale or omen, bad tidings or tall whispers, on the morrow you would return it. 

And yet that was exactly what didn’t happen. 

Instead, it had happened like this: servants had been rushing around the keep all morning, doing their best to keep the rush of water from entering the hall of a hundred hearths and touching the rugs. Half soaked and boots trailing water already, you didn’t make it past the tower of dread before the guards crossed their swords and insisted that you shall not pass. Too much water could sweep you off your feet and carry you away, they had said, pushing you back to your chambers while you discreetly held a covered Dark Sister to your side. 

Tomorrow it was, then. Insistence would get you nowhere. A lady’s requests were either dutifully followed or carelessly ignored. It was imperative that the torrent stopped, or that you were able to more discreetly make your way to the lake. 

The sword could not be by your side any longer. Perhaps you could leak your secret to septa Scully—you knew her folkwoman heart still beat inside her somewhere, and it could drive her to help you. 

This night was no different from the last. Harrenhal and its eerie passageways and mangey essence had managed to frighten you as a girl, the darkest storms holding your fear hostage. It had been years since you had faced the same fear that licked at your erratic heart as it did now, tucked under your quilted down, thunder wracking itself outside. 

It was in your head—the uncontrolled storm, the tales in your ear—they had simply wormed their way deep in your mind. It was a weak consolation, but your heart finally began its slowing. 

A footstep in the darkness, outside your chambers, was enough to jolt it right back. 

Any sense of sleep had left you now, and all of your focus rushed to your ears. Digging yourself deeper in the covers, you exhaled as quietly as you could in wait. 

Just as you feared, there was another, and then another. 

No matter how hard your forced your eyes shut, the fright remained, each boot knocking on the stone outside, coming closer, and closer, until, 

The door creaked open softly, a rumble of storm to accompany it. Each finger, limb, and blink was frozen over. If you were still enough, perhaps whoever had opened the door would leave you behind. Each of your heart beats felt so loud it would give away your very existence. 

The cold voice that met you instead was nearly enough to get your heart to stop beating all together. “You have something of mine.” 

You dared not move, not even at the direct notice of your presence. 

Squelching wet footsteps punctuated in between his words, each one slowly creeping closer to your bedside. “I know you’re here, little lady of Harrenhal. No amount of stillness in the world would hide you from me.” 

With a swallow of fear, you scurried off of your bed to your night side table, hoping to distance yourself from the intruder. Sitting or laying felt too vulnerable for you to stay put. 

“I don’t understand.” Were the only words you managed to choke out to the shadowed figure in front of you. There was no weapon for you to reach, unless you reached under the bed and grabbed—

“How do you not know? You took it from me.” 

He lowered the hood of his cape. Platinum hair spilled down his shoulders over the black leather of his doublet that shined as if made from metal itself. His skin was pale as a soft moon, and a sapphire eye with a dash through his face—it was almost holy in nature, the beam of a celestial spell. Any thoughts of a common thief or crook left your mind. Even still, it did almost nothing to alleviate your fear, for you had recognized him. 

The pages in your books didn’t do him justice. Any gasp that may or may not have left your lips was drowned out by a whip of lightning.  “H-how?” 

“Give me back my sword.” He answered plainly. 

Shaky hands reached under the bed, eyes locked onto his fierce gaze as you gingerly felt for the hilt. Once in your grasp, you dragged it out, the weight even heavier in your arms than it had when you had pulled it to the surface. Your arm, lightly shaking, extended to his, the pommel and blade gleaming menacingly. His own palm lay over yours to reclaim the hilt. It was made of flesh, and warm—a mystery that evaded you. 

You figured he might strap the sword to whatever sheath was on his side and go back to wherever he had come from, but instead, he set it aside. In yet another movement of unpredictability, he stepped closer. 

“You must dive again and put it back yourself, I cannot do it for you.” His flesh eye studied you carefully, stepping forward to circle you. “But, you have given me reason to finally meet you.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I’ve had no one but you to keep me company for one hundred years” Now, he was at a distance where there was more familiarity and the details of his face became more prominent out of the shadows. “You swim in the lake almost every day.” 

You watched him attentively, attempting to understand what it was you were seeing. The fear of the unknown and absurd frightened you. It could be another dream, just like the one you had last night—but you were certain you were awake. 

He stepped even closer, daring to reach out his hand and brush it over your cheek, as if feeling the lifeblood that beat beneath it. “Who are you, one that swims in God’s Eye?” 

“I am a lady of Harrenhal” you paused, still trying to gauge his danger with your disbelief. “Who are you?” 

“You know who I am.” His sapphire was a burning blue ember in the night. 

Denial reared its unforgiving head into yours. Backing away, you tried to reason with yourself. “It’s a trick. Harrenhal plays tricks—I know this.” 

“I assure you, I am no illusion. Stop fighting it.” 

“I—” You let it sit for a moment. He stood in front of you, tall and enshadowed even in the faint candlelight. 

A deep exhale was all you could manage, closing your eyes in resignation. “Yes, my prince. Are you going to kill me?” 

“No, my lady. I’m not going to hurt you.” Watching the ground, you could see his black boots stepping towards you once more. “You did take my sword, but more than that, I simply wanted to meet the only one who dared swim down to me and Vhagar.” 

He tilted your chin up to meet his own eye. There was something curious there, almost soft. Aemond’s hand was so gentle it soothed your rabbit’s heart. “Now you see me, made of flesh.” 

Fear, though not absent, was no longer the only feeling that sent your blood pumping. The feeling of being wanted was something that you had coveted, yet always remained outside of your grasp. You imagined every movement of yours in the lake, how you had never been truly alone on your visits, even the ones in the deepest of summer where you shed your dress and embraced the lake with all of your bareness. 

Crafted in the image of the gods themselves or not, you knew it was impossible for every Targaryen to look the way he did; the beauty of him was something unique, you knew it. Another bolt fractured the sky outside, its flash illuminating both of you. It played a trick on your eyes, almost closing some of the distance between you with blinding light. 

��Are you scared of the storm?” Aemond loomed above you. 

“I’m of this land. Storms do not scare me.” 

“Did I frighten you?” 

He had to have known your answer, but you indulged him. “Yes, you did, my prince.” 

“You don’t need to be scared of me, my lady of God’s Eye.” He stepped closer, resting his left hand on your arm. His hair hung above your face now, a tilt of his head altering its course. “Does this frighten you?” 

You felt the soft weight of his palm, fearing breathing for the simple movement of it. “No, my prince.” With a careful pause, you continued. “My apologies for taking your sword. I didn’t know—” 

“You can repay me.” Aemond replied, his voice assured yet tender for your ears. “You have been tempting me in the lake for long enough.” 

You nodded lightly, delicately reaching out for your palm to meet his chest. There was a warmth coming from within, not cold like an undead body might be. The prince, real or not, was closer to you than any other man had ever been. He reached down, gently tugging you into a soft kiss. 

He was warm here too, and wet, much to your pleasure. Your lips opened to his own, mouths deftly sliding against one another. Aemond’s hand smoothed over your cheek, his palm nearly swallowing it whole. You moved together in a gentle sway, mouths delicately pressed together. In an act of boldness, you pressed your own body closer to his, your palm holding his side to steady yourself. 

The tempest outside your windows beat on. Your hands moved to crook in his neck. The skin there was soft like his mouth, and you wondered if the rest of him was just as welcoming. Aemond began walking forward, holding and kissing you through his guidance. Your lower back bumped against your mattress, and you broke your lips apart. 

It was perfection: the softness of this moment and the synergy of your movements against one another. 

Until it wasn’t. Perhaps it was the way the lightning had framed him, thunder dividing you two.  Within its roar came the cries of those he had forced to their knees in this very castle. The fall of wood as the huts of innocents burned to ash, Vhagar’s fire hot enough to meld armor and flesh to one. The scar he ripped across the belly of your homeland still hadn’t healed hundreds of years later, and you laid your lips on the man, or the entity of him, who had done it all. 

Your eyes must have given you away. 

“So you are frightened of me?” His subtle sultriness didn’t evade him, even in the light of the hell he had brought upon the earth. 

“You, Aemond Targaryen—reigned terror on this land,” you recoiled slightly, lifting yourself up onto your bed to inch away from him. 

He looked down, but any semblance of remorse was absent from his face. “I did. The fire that raged could be seen from the wall to Dorne.” 

History was a funny thing—something that becomes more intangible the longer it’s dead, fresh marks haunting only those who lived through it. But Aemond was tangible, here in front of you somehow. To him, did it happen yesterday or did it feel like a lifetime away?

Aemond paused, lifting his eye to meet yours, kneeling onto the floor, holding your gaze. “Let me atone for my sins then, my lady of Harrenhal.” 

Your breath hitched in your chest at the slight of his hands lifting your nightdress. 

Sitting up, you slowly pulled yourself away. “This is wrong. You’re—” 

“A monster?” 

Your lack of response was as much of an answer as anything else. 

“I am much more than that, I assure you.” You tried to pretend like the smoothing of his palm against your calf didn’t feel good. It was even harder to pretend that the man doing so wasn’t the most dashing man you’d ever seen, cursed by the gods or not. 

A lip bite was all he would get from you, uncertain of how to navigate your desire with your morality. 

“I can show you many things.” he hummed against your calf. 

You fell back onto the bed, whining lightly in frustration of the sexual kind. 

“If you only let me.” 

You closed your eyes. 

“Which would you rather do?” His princely voice was a seductor’s poison. 

“I can show you how deeply sorry I am for what I did to your home,” he said with a mocking sorrow as the featherlight warmth of his lips and tongue kissed the inside of your legs, up to the inside of your knee, and to the most sensitive skin on the inside of the meat of your thigh. Any resolve that you had was wafted away by the trace of his fingers. 

He pulled away, watching you carefully. “Or, you can show me how sorry you are for stealing my family’s sword. Which would you have it be?” 

Gods bless your ancestors. You prayed that they were not unlucky enough to bear witness to what you were about to say—the closest thing to treason you could commit. 

“I want to see your forgiveness, my prince.” You said, unsure of his next move but knowing somewhere within you that you would only indulge yourself further. 

Aemond smiled smugly. It suited him. “How about you feel it instead?” 

Hooking his fingers under your smallclothes, he rustled them off of you smoothly. You were exposed, cunt glistening and pooling wetness before him. Yes, definitely treason. 

You wondered what sins those long dead and buried beneath would have had to commit to be forced to hear your moan as one of his fingers entered your hole, ready and wanting. Aemond leaned over you, silver and knowing smile once more falling around your face. Using his thumb, he found your pearl so neatly in between your pillowy lips, touching you there lightly. 

“All wet, for me?” his smirk hung over you once more, satisfied by how quickly you dissolved under his hand. And what a joy it was to dissipate into a syrupy essence soaked mess. 

“Have you ever touched yourself?” he asked, eye observing every rise and fall of your breasts. 

“Well—yes, but,” you whimpered, shame in your gaze. “I’ve never been touched by anyone else.” 

“A good, pretty maiden then.” He added another finger, your body sucking him in and oozing wetness in its own craving. Every brush of his thumb and curl of his digits left your mouth hanging open and eyes pleading at the man above you for more. 

Aemond could act as in control as he wanted, but you saw the embers of greed in his eye and felt his hardness at your hip. 

“I am so terribly sorry,” Aemond started in your ear, his fingers working their way inside of your honey soaked walls and thumb expertly toying with your swollen bud, “for absolutely nothing.” 

The words fell on ears too consumed by the talent of his hands to give a damn. Warmth in your belly bloomed as if he had planted the sun in there himself, your shining juices dripping the length of his palm. You had never been brought to the point of near blindness and incapacity by pleasure before, your own fingers too untrained. 

When the peak of your pleasure came, your arms wrapped around Aemond’s shoulders, moans breathy and full. Your walls throbbed and dripped around his fingers and your body flexed underneath his. Thunder was your friend, drowning out every noise that bubbled from your lips. 

Aemond Targaryen, or whatever was left of him, had been starved of a woman’s taste for over one hundred years. He savored every bead of syrupy sex that dripped from your cunt onto his hands while you panted in the final glimmers of ecstasy. 

It was difficult to help your eyelids from closing—the man had sent you to the hands of the gods and back. All you could do was savor the feel of him under your fingertips, rubbing lightly, until your sleep claimed you without your will or knowledge. 

The dawn broke and you were alone once more, nothing but disorder in your head and gleaming sword under your bed. 

Light thunder beat through the clouds, a solemn sun hidden behind them. The rain had eased a touch, but there had not been enough reprieve to make it any easier for the servants to clean up what was becoming a half-drowned castle. 

Yet the water navigating through the crack in the stones over your head took up the least amount of room in your head. It was real. You knew it was from the echoes of ease in your limbs from the pleasure he played you to. If that wasn’t evidence enough, your slippery juices coated the nestle of your thighs.  

It was wrong—you knew it. What had materialized between you and the prince was highly improper, not only as a lady, but as a lady of Harrenhal, the very castle in which he was partially responsible for the large number of roaming ghosts and of the land which he brought to ash out of his own anger. 

Aemond had said that you needed to return the sword to the God’s Eye yourself. Perhaps you had tampered with something greatly out of your knowledge, and restoration was imperative for your own good and the good of the castle. 

And yet the sword never moved from under your bed. Perhaps you had forgotten, or perhaps, you had conveniently discovered a hundred and one other tasks that needed your attention. And perhaps, the prince would come again. 

You could pray for forgiveness from the river people later. It was your own secret shame to have and to hold, for no one else’s eyes or ears. 

It was last light. Mathilda swept a dollop of water that landed on her forehead. “This storm won’t break.” 

“I was a girl the last time one like this hit.” Of all the many storms that wracked this land, few had the same unbroken rainfall and loud slaughter of thunder. 

There was apprehension and fright in her eyes. Mathilda’s movements were unnatural to anything you had seen her, to the point that it struck its own fear in you . 

“What is it, Mathilda?” 

“There’s only one storm I remember like this,” she started, worrying her hands with another bucket of water. “I didn't want to believe it yesterday. You were a girl, yes.” 

“And what of it?” 

“This land is old. A mass graveyard is what it is. Someone had tampered with something they shouldn’t have.” 

Your stomach sank, and your secret with it. “What happened?” 

“The man was never seen again. And there’s only one place around here people disappear to.” 

The lake. You remembered him, a guard in your father’s command, the storm that tore on, and his disappearance marking the end of it. Everyone had figured he got swept away in the storm, but it seemed that Mathilda, among others, believed something different. Still—there were plenty of cursed objects lying around, perhaps you had gotten a touch more lucky with your object of choosing. 

But perhaps it wasn’t such a dismissive endeavor, and you were more than a halfwit for thinking so. And yet, the night had fallen once more—leaving you with no other choice but to wait and see. 

The blade seemed to find a light of its own even in the blackness of the storm ridden night, peaking just under your bed. Finding a rhythm in between the bolts of lightning and thunder happened over time, but the past few nights had begun to give you practice. Your apprehension kept you from your sleep nonetheless. 

There was always something more beyond the surface, that much you knew was true, and life was no exception. Gods existed, you were sure of it, you just didn’t know how, or why, or where—but there was something about the thread of actions over the past handful of days that connected pieces together in a visceral way you had never fully encountered.

Through each beat of lightning, the truth of every tale that you had ever heard came into question: the cook turned white rat, forced to eat his own young; the children of the forest and the Green King of the Isle of Faces, Sharra the witch queen and her inability to die. Before now, you had not fully disbelieved, but rather doubted the ability of magic or the whims of the gods to make profound changes in an instant. 

“You did not return my sword.” 

His entrance was silent but interruption swift, or you had been so lost in your own head you failed to notice. There was little shock this time. You had been expecting him. He stood there for a moment in patience, your eyes and finding the details of his trench coat in the shadow. There was much less fright in you now than there had been at his first intrusion, and you swung your legs to sit at the edge of your bed. 

“You disobeyed my request,” Aemond said, “I do not take kindly to those who disobey me. Why didn’t you return it, my lady of God’s Eye?” 

It was a fool’s endeavor, a disregard of any consequences. Eyes wide and waiting, you could do nothing but speak your deepest truth. 

“I did not want to.” 

He crept forward, a creature of the shadows coming to enact its wrath. “Explain yourself.” 

With a swallow of the last inklings of your pride and dignity, you replied. “Because I want more of what you did to me last night.” 

He stood as a relic, everything from his hair and skin and coat shining from within, regarding you with an intensity you had never had anyone offer you before. Time existed nowhere in this room; past and present converged in the tides of thunder that swayed over your heads, and you wondered if the world outside of your door still stood or if there was nothingness. 

“Who would have thought a lady to be so lustful? A lady of the Riverlands, no less.” His boots were off now, making his way to you like an animal preys upon what it desires to snatch in its claws. 

You held your chin in an acceptance of his mockery and all that came with it. Because he was right, and because you didn’t care so long as no one knew of it. Aemond moved to stand in between your legs, and you tilted your head to meet his own eye. 

“I suppose I will make an exception to my usual punishment since you have been so honest,” he reached to hold your face in his hands as if he was holding a holy grail. “Do you promise to make such an exception worth my while?” 

“I promise.” You nodded as well as you could in his soft hold, eyes large and pleading. 

The kiss that followed was soft, just as every other first touch between you had been—but it quickly became emboldened; a drop of satisfaction in a lake of craving. His hands slid down your sides, past the sensitivity of your waist and moving to grip the full flesh that sat on your thighs. 

Chest to chest, you were pressed against him, feeling through every movement and flex of the muscle beneath his flesh. Moving once more, his hand slid down in between your thighs where your smallclothes sat pitifully between your bare skin and his fingers. 

He swallowed your whimper into his mouth as his hand moved once more to play with your bud. Skin holds memory, they say, and you knew yours did of him: his light touch was enough to have you squirming beneath him with little effort. 

“My own little harlot of the Riverlands.” Aemond pulled away, moving to untie the wrap of your nightdress. You watched him carefully, a twing of shyness slowing your movements. 

He took your timid hands into his, holding them to him as he moved his nose to meet yours. “And yet a maiden, all the same.” 

You closed your eyes, savoring the feel of his tenderness. Both your hands moved now to take away what lies between your modesty and bareness. 

“Do I please you?” softly you looked at him, hoping that your shyness was replaced by your attempt to be sultry despite your lack of practice. 

He looked at you as a man starved, deprived of warm fleshy skin to sink into for a century, and there was no pretending in his eye that he hadn’t prayed that you would not return Dark Sister to its rightful place. No matter how powerful the man, beyond swords and war and life and death, the soft skin of a lover would always be a weakness. There was no hiding the membrane of vulnerability and desperation at something so human: the touch and feel of another. 

Leaning down to offer you a kiss, in a near whisper he replied, “Very much so.” 

Hands and lips tenderly felt you everywhere, the blood underneath beating against the glide of his fingers. It was worship of the most holy, or perhaps the indulgence of a sin most foul. The lines blurred and you sank under his want, whether it be worship or sin, you did not care. 

Your hands searched for him, shrugging off his own clothing in the rapture. 

“Whatever it was you did to me yesterday, please, I need to feel it again.” it was more of a breathy whisper in between kisses than an affirmative request. 

“I’ll show you something even better.” Aemond sank to your hips as his right hand did, already weaving slow strokes against your bud. And yet he sank farther, until his head rested between your thighs.

He watched you carefully from there, sliding one finger into your hole. His rubbing continued, and your legs began to weaken once more. You had swung your head to rest your eyes on your ceiling, unexpecting the hot wetness that met your bud. 

It was unlike anything you had felt before—heat on heat, wetness on wetness, his tongue skillfully lapping your clit. 

You fell under his enchantment for him like a man dies gasping underwater: slowly with resistance, until want for release pushes you to frantically search for it all at once. All thoughts of doing anything but taking everything he had to give you had been locked away, perhaps only to be seen again once you had gotten your fill. And you weren’t sure if you could ever be satisfied. 

From this point forward, you would be damned by this memory: Aemond sliding his tongue between your folds, sucking on your sex, and pulling pleasure from you as if he was born a hundred years ago to do it. 

He was determined to feel every drop of your essence sliding down his throat, holding you to him with his hands clasped around your thighs.  Your orgasm came with his lips and tongue never ceasing their worship of you, even as your thighs shook and moans echoed through your walls. 

Even though heavy breaths and dazed eyes of the afterglow, you would not make the mistake of falling asleep so soon, not after the previous night. Your hands lazily reached for him, pulling him closer to you. 

Because you wanted more . There was no clarity and rational thinking bestowed upon your release. If anything, it had driven you further into a wanting animal, a ravenous direwolf seeking to tame its taste for blood. Maiden status be damned, if doing such things with a long dead prince even counted. 

“Eager, are we?” he drawled over you, hands rustling between your bodies. “Shh. Let me take care of you.” 

You felt him on you then, skin to skin, his hard manhood heavy on your stomach. Aemond’s eye met yours as he slid his cock between your folds, gathering the wetness there. 

It was just you two in this moment, one body and another, seeking something buried deep within one another’s skin. 

Face to ear, you whispered about your inexperience and novelty. He did nothing but pull your lips into another kiss, allowing your bodies to slip against each other’s warmth for moments to come. Aemond was a desiring man, or creature—you weren’t sure which, not that it fully mattered to you anymore—and you could feel his own lust for you seeping into each of your kisses and all of his touches, much more wanton than they had yet to be. 

“Let me take you,” he nearly whined in between kisses, “I need to feel you.” 

“I want you. Show me this.” 

Forehead to forehead, Aemond reached between your bodies to guide his leaking cock to your entrance. You knew why maidens and ladies got wet—it would be impossible to carry out the deed without such slipperiness. What hung between a man’s legs was far too large to fit without it. 

Even still, it was always a challenge at first—your own sex squeezing so hard, seemingly wanting to suck his cock deeper inside you and milk it within your walls. As he went to the hilt, moaning was all you had to cope, the noises blending with the creak of the castle. 

“Does it always feel like this?” you choked, more than happy to be full of him but surprised at the feeling.

With his forehead still against yours, his breath fanned in your mouth. “At first, and then it will feel even better.” 

As if to show you, he began long strokes, the head of his cock sliding against the vice of your juicy walls. And you felt it bloom—the deep ember of pleasure at your core, both satisfied and left wanting more by each thrust. 

Your moans and whimpers against his ear were compounded by the thrust of his hips, heavy against your own, pushing his cock to the hilt now in every stroke, the head of it brutally kissing the end of you every time. 

He sat up now, hands firmly on your hips to control the angle of you and the drive of his cock to be right where he wanted them. Moving between your bodies, his thumb danced on your bud again, sending you to reflexively grip him further out of the sheer ecstasy of it. “What would your rivermen think of you like this, moaning like a whore on my cock?” 

It was more of a suffocated squeal than words, chest heaving, not being able to help the way your body was in his hands, moving at the speed he set. “They would think me a traitor.” 

“But you just couldn’t help it, could you? You needed more of me, no matter what I’ve done.” 

Despite you both knowing the truth of it, hardly any shame could touch you now in the throes of your bodies. In between love bites on your ear and kisses on your neck as he took you, there was more than enough praise spilling from his lips: haughty whispers of you take my cock so well and your body is made for me. 

It was as intense as it was pleasurable. Aemond’s platinum tresses locked you into a cage where it was only him: only his body, his cock—nothing else. He was making you into a woman of his own liking, his spell on you binding you to desire and breaking every one of your senses to want nothing but him. 

There was no clarity and rational thinking bestowed upon your release. Reaching the peak of it, your cunt hardly willing to let his cock move inside you and pulsing and pleading for it to be even deeper, you cried out, your own howl into the night. Aemond fucked you through it, seeking his own peak within your walls and finding it in the vice you had him in, milking him for every drop of his own essence to spill in the hot syrupy tightness of your cunt.  

The sedation you felt in your after-pleasure was familiar to the first night—leaving you in a daze, the murky waters difficult to navigate. Fighting it was futile, but you kept yourself awake enough to feel him pull away, save for leaving a kiss on your fingers and hear his final words.

Visit me, my lady of God’s Eye

It would be a selfish thing—you knew—to keep the sword, no matter how badly you wanted to satiate your desire during the night. But the storm raged on, and it was only right to do what had to be done to prevent the entirety of Harrenhal from being consumed by the water raiding every corridor and sieging nearly all chambers and apartments, only the highest of rooms in each tower being spared. 

It was a difficult task, but you had managed. And not hours after the sword was back in the sheath it belonged in, the rain had ceased, to the relief of all in the castle except for one. 

You hadn’t forgotten his last words to you. Sometimes, you swam back to the remains of the dragon prince again, hoping the hallowed skeleton could see you in the angelic light only water could give.  

And sometimes, in the deepest chamber of the lake, you swore you heard whispers in the catches of the currents. 

[celiastjamesoscar]

To Be Alone

Pairings: Wednesday Addams x fem!reader

Summary: Being alone was something special to Wednesday, but being alone with you was sacred. And she refused to share you with anyone else, even if that meant owning up to her feelings

A/N: this is part 1 of a series. If you would like to be included in the Taglist for it, let me know!

Warnings: slight friends with benefits, jealous Wednesday, snarky Reader

Word Count: 2.7K

My Masterlist

The sound of obnoxiously loud music rang throughout the room as the students of Nevermore danced in sporadic movements, and none matched the rhythm of the music. Crowds were never a fan of Wednesday’s, but she would put up with the brightest colors and loudest thumping of music to get a glimpse of you.

It was out of character for Wednesday to want anything romantic in her life, let alone with someone like you.

To put it nicely, you were just like Wednesday, a snarky asshole whose mouth sometimes got you in trouble. But you were also more friendly than Wednesday could ever be; you cared for others deeply, while Wednesday barely superficially cared for them. But when your warm, soft lips met Wednesday’s cold, stiff ones in the darkness of the woods on the coldest of winter nights, Wednesday felt her heart reach a warmth it had never known.

Your relationship with the Addams girl was a weird one, and you never expected her to be someone who would enjoy a friends-with-benefits situation. But when Wednesday called you at an ungodly hour and asked, no, told you that you were going to be her romantic partner for dinner with her family, you didn’t refuse her.

Wednesday prepped you on the car ride to dinner and told you everything you would need to say; you and Wednesday met through fencing class and soon became friends after Wednesday bested you in a duel. That information was vital to the story, according to Wednesday. You two only started to date after a romantic walk through the local graveyard, and you shared a kiss on the tombstone of the late Marilyn Thornhill.

The dinner was a peaceful one, with all things considered. You won the approval of Gomez Addams, and you seemed even to impress Grandmama. Morticia adored you, but she saw right through her daughter’s scheme of forcing you into a fake relationship with her. Of course, she would never tell Wednesday that she knew her daughter was lying to her about her relationship. Still, Morticia enjoyed watching her daughter pretend to understand the beauty and pain that is love. And Morticia knew that after enough time, Wednesday would slowly start to realize she had feelings for you.

After that dinner, you kissed Wednesday’s lips for the first time, entirely by accident. You had leaned in to kiss her on the cheek, but your sudden movement had startled the shorter girl, causing her to turn her head quickly, and when she did, her lips brushed yours. Instead of pulling back, Wednesday leaned deeper into the kiss and soon gripped your neck, trying to pull you impossibly closer as her lips connected with yours. She soon became addicted to them, and she refused to let anyone else taste them, and she soon started up an agreement with you; no feelings were involved, just late-night stolen kisses and moonlit strolls through the woods. But now, as she watched you talk with other women who weren’t her, she felt her chest tighten with anger.

“Wednesday, what are you doing?” Enid asked as she suddenly appeared beside the girl, startling Wednesday out of her thoughts. Enid had a suspicion of the goth girl’s interest in you, even though Wednesday refused to acknowledge it.

“Staring at Y/N with my autistic eyes,” Wednesday deadpanned, and the ravenette’s statement took aback Enid. “Um, okayyy,” Enid awkwardly replied as she gently placed her hands on Wednesday’s shoulders, slowly turning the girl, “I don’t know what to do with that information, but let’s go over here, where you can’t stare at Y/N.”

Truth be told, you weren’t doing anything to provoke jealousy in anyone, especially Wednesday. But the Addams loathed seeing you smile while talking to Yoko. Jealousy was a feeling she knew all too well, and it only happened with you. And for that, she would potentially murder you in your sleep tonight. It would be a clean murder, nearly no blood at all, but it put a frown on Wednesday’s lips; she wanted your murder to be a gory one, one that would bless her dreams of haunting images of you for the rest of her days, but the thought of drawing out your murder made Wednesday feel something she hadn’t felt in a long time: sadness.

“No,” Wednesday stated as she shook off Enid’s grip and continued watching you talk to the vampire. It was a dull dance, and you were only here to socialize and to make Wednesday jealous, which was working.

“Why are you so keen on watching Y/N talk to Yoko? They are roommates, like you and I,” Enid cheerfully replied, hoping to help ease the tension in Wednesday’s shoulders, but it only seemed to worsen. “Enid, three-fourths of this institution thinks that you and I are together romantically,” was all Wednesday said, and Enid picked up the hint.

“Point taken. So then, why don’t you go over there and talk to her? Like a normal person would do instead of staring at her like a creep,” Enid suggested, but judging by the glare her roommate gave her in return, she assumed that Wednesday hated the suggestion. “Well, if you’re going to be a loser whose only way of flirting is staring at Y/N until she notices you, then I don’t think you will have any luck at pulling her. But I wish you the best,” Enid stated as she quickly looked at you before returning her attention to Wednesday. She gave the goth a small hug-which Wednesday did not return-before skipping off to go God knows where.

It was as if Enid’s presence was stopping you from feeling Wednesday’s uncomfortable glaring, and as soon as the werewolf was gone, your eyes automatically found Wednesday’s dark ones.

You politely excused yourself from Yoko before walking over to Wednesday with a smug smile on your lips. Wednesday hated that smile on you, not because it looked terrible; it was quite the opposite. That smirk did something to her; it stirred something profound inside her, and she hated the beast you awoke in her.

“My lady,” you husked in a raspy voice as you took Wednesday’s hand in your own and bowed while placing a gentle kiss on the back of it. “What were you two talking about?” Wednesday asked, wasting no time in finding out if she was going to murder Yoko as well.

“Relax, my dove. We were just talking about ‘The Haunting of Hill House,’ nothing to worry about,” you replied softly as you stood up straight and gently caressed the more petite girl’s hand.

Wednesday scoffed at the pet name and tried to pull her hand out of your grip, but it only caused her to draw you closer. “You miss me that much?” You asked with a smirk as you placed Wednesday’s hand on your chest, and instead of pulling away, the more petite girl slowly ran her hand up your chest and stopped as she took your necklace between her polished black fingers.

It was a gift from Wednesday, of all people, and you wore it with pride like it was your last name. You never took it off, and in a way, it acted like a collar; no matter how far you strayed from Wednesday, people would look at it and automatically know who you belonged to.

The necklace itself was a golden chain that ended with a small circle. The circle had gold-colored beads with small, black dots in the middle. And in the center of that circle was a golden ‘W’ with a line attached to it, holding the W in place.

“You still wear it,” Wednesday stated as she flipped the W between her fingers, gently caressing it with her thumb.

“‘If you ever take this off, I will rain hellfire down on you and your family until the end of the earth. I will haunt you in this life and the next; you will never be able to get rid of the image of me standing over your lifeless body if you were ever to remove this necklace.’ Those were your exact words,” you recalled with a smirk as you watched Wednesday play with the necklace. “But hey, at least you think of us together in the next life.”

“No,” she simply stated, and you were going to argue back, but she pulled you down to her level by the necklace, “If you ever tell anyone I have plans with you in the next life, I will skin you alive and feed your remains to Fester.”

The laugh you gave Wednesday in response angered her beyond belief, but the sound of it infested her stomach with spiders, and if she wasn’t careful, she might even admit to caring about you. “Jokes on you, Uncle Fester is my best friend. We are basically inseparable,” you remarked as you stood back up, and Wednesday let go of the necklace.

“I hate that you are his favorite person,” Wednesday mumbled under her breath and then cleared her throat as she remembered why she needed to talk to you, “I will be needing your assistance this weekend.”

“And why’s that?” You asked with a smirk. You knew it was parent’s weekend, and Wednesday needed to keep up the act of you two being together; you just wanted to hear her admit it. “My parents are coming this weekend; you must be there to prove to them that I am capable of feeling emotions other than intense anger and homicidal thoughts,” Wednesday deadpanned as the loud music slowly turned into a softer one, a waltzing song.

You didn’t recognize the beautiful melody, but you stuck out your hand toward the smaller girl. “Can I have this dance?” You asked with a soft smile, and if it were under any other circumstance, Wednesday would have said yes. “No,” she dryly replied while slapping your hand away, “And you didn’t answer my question.”

“I didn’t know it was a question,” you stated.

“It’s not; I just like allowing you to think that you have a say in what you get to do.”

“You are a woman after my own heart, Wednesday Addams,” you joked, and Wednesday scoffed at you. “In your wildest dreams,” the goth girl stated as she walked away from you, but you followed her.

“So what will this weekend trip entail? Do I need to start flushing my teeth and putting on chapstick?” You questioned while following the smaller girl out of the ballroom. “Why do you not already floss your teeth?” Wednesday asked with an eyebrow hitched, clearly displaying her irritation that you don’t floss regularly.

“Ummm, because it’s pointless? I brush my teeth twice daily. Isn’t that enough?” You retorted with a curious look. “One day, you are going to wake up in the middle of the night, and all of your teeth will have fallen out of your brainless head. When that happens, I shall make a necklace out of them and force you to wear it as a remembrance of our conversation about flossing,” Wednesday stated as she walked toward her room. She had a weird way of showing affection toward you.

When Wednesday reached her dorm, she opened the door and tried to close it on you, but you caught it in just enough time and stepped into her room. You shut the door as you followed the ravenette toward her desk. “Okay, but seriously Wednesday. What do you want me to do when Mr. and Mrs. Addams arrive?” You questioned with a serious expression, and when Wednesday looked up at you, she missed your usual playful demeanor.

“Be normal. You’ve been around them before; why do you still ask me how you should act around them?” Wednesday questioned as she loaded paper into her typewriter. “Um, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I hate lying to people! And your mom is hot, so that also makes me nervous,” you responded with a little bit of defensiveness. But for an unknown reason, Wednesday felt her heart slowly break at mentioning your attraction to her mother.

“Do not remind me of your infuriating attraction to my mother,” Wednesday deadpanned as she began typing, “And we aren’t lying to them, so you don’t need to worry.”

A small scoff left your lips at her comment, but then a mischievous smile overtook your lips as you found a loophole. Carefully, you leaned an elbow on Wednesday’s desk and smirked at the ravenette, who seemed ignorant of the mistake she made.

“So, we aren’t lying to them, correct?” You asked in a calm voice as your eyes examined Wednesday’s face. “Why are you making me repeat myself? You are correct; we are not lying to them. Now, will you please leave me so I can work?” The Addams coldly remarked as she shook the feeling of spiders in her stomach at your proximity. No matter how many stolen kisses you two shared, you always made her nervous and gitty, which was a feeling she both loathed and cherished all the same.

“By that logic, we aren’t lying about our fake relationship? So that means we are actually, in fact, dating?” You asked with that same smirk, and Wednesday knew she had fucked up when she looked into your eyes and only saw hope that didn’t match your playful smirk. “We are not in a romantic relationship at all. We are just two acquaintances who engage in romantic activities from time to time. Now leave,” Wednesday stated as she grew increasingly annoyed with you.

You gave the smaller girl a pathetic sigh as you pushed yourself off the desk and slowly sauntered away from her desk, but before you could get too far, Wednesday grabbed your wrist. When you turned to face her, Wednesday reached up and tightly gripped your uniform tie as she brought your lips down to hers, and you both sighed into the kiss.

It had been too long since you both found comfort in each other’s lips, and Wednesday had started to crave their delicate touch and sweet taste. And, of course, by ‘too long,’ that meant nearly a day. The kiss itself was a chaste one that displayed all of the love and affection Wednesday had for you that she could never verbally say.

Only when oxygen became a problem did you pull away from those heavenly lips. With a small huff, the ravenette rested her forehead against yours as her free hand came up and slowly stroked your jaw.

“I want to rip out your mandible and add it to my bone collection,” was what Wednesday mumbled against your lips, but the words that traveled through your ears were, ‘You mean so much to me that I want to have a piece of you with me forever,’ and you were happy with that translation.

“You have such a way with words, you know that? You really know how to make a girl feel special,” you mumbled against her lips before placing a final kiss on them and turning to leave.

“Where are you going?” Wednesday asked as she returned to reality when she didn’t feel your lips anymore and saw you walking toward the door to leave.

“You told me to leave, so that’s what I’m doing,” you replied before a slight smirk overtook your face, “Why, do you miss me already?”

“No. Just be ready by tomorrow morning so we can eat breakfast with them,” Wednesday stated as she continued her work, ignoring the feeling in her stomach at the thought of you leaving for the night. Most of the time, when her parents visited, you would stay the night in her dorm to further push the agenda that you two were a couple. Definitely not because Wednesday found it hard to sleep without you at night.

“Goodnight, Wednesday. I hope your dreams are just as evil as you are,” you joked as you opened the door, and Wednesday huffed in response as you left the room.

Unbeknownst to you, Wednesday hadn’t been working on her novel. She had been writing out all the things you make her feel, and when you had wished nightmares upon her, the final sentence that had made its one onto the page was the thing that shattered her heart the most: ‘Gods should fear the love I have for you.’

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Taglist: @elduster @silentwolfsstuff @baddiebbarbietngz @maskthedwarf @aroaceanxietylemon

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 13: The Regrets Are Useless] [Series Finale]

A/N: Below are your final predictions. Let's see how you did... 🥰

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes.

Series title is a lyric from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “Whatsername” by Green Day.

Word count: 6.1k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Rain pours outside the cabin, mist-shrouded pine trees and still dark water, a place in southern Oregon called Lake of the Woods. The twin-sized bed with a thin foam mattress was once used by kids attending summer camp, capture the flag and s’mores, hikes and scary stories, but now the children are ghosts and the monsters are real, stumbling down streets and lurking in dark places, licking blood from what’s left of their lips.

Aemond is here but he’s also not, a castaway on an island where the world never ended, his hands in your hair as you straddle him, your hips moving tentatively, his lips and teeth at your throat, the sharp points of his canines like fangs.

“Am I doing this right?” you murmur doubtfully. “I feel like I’m definitely not doing this right…”

“Shh, you’re great, you’re incredible.”

“I’m sorry I don’t know how to do everything already, I’m sorry you have to teach me—”

“Stop,” Aemond commands, a sharp sigh through your hair. “I love this. I love you. I want to teach you things until the day I die.”

The nervous tension in your muscles unravels—peddles thrown into water, campfire smoke vanishing into indigo night—and now his hands are on your hips, steadying you, guiding you. You link your fingers around the back of his neck and try to find a cadence that isn’t uncomfortable, ungainly, effortful. You wanted to try this. You want to experience everything with him.

“Take your time,” Aemond is saying like it’s difficult for him to keep a train of thought, his eye closed, his cheeks flushed, blood-colored blooms like a dusk sky. “I’m fine down here, don’t worry about me…”

Rain drums against the windows; lightning flashes in the sky and thunder growls. From the front porch of one of the other cabins, you can hear the indistinct droning of conversations and Aegon strumming the acoustic guitar he brought from the beach house. It’s something you’ve overheard him singing before, one of his strange midcentury darlings, a song that should be too old for him to know the words to.

“All you big and burly men who roll the trucks along

Better listen, you’ll be thankful when you hear my song

You have really got it made if you’re haulin’ goods

Any place on earth but those Haynesville Woods…”

Your skin gleams with a cool sheen of sweat; there is a draft through the cabin walls that makes you shiver as you cling to Aemond. You roll your hips a certain way and he moans—suddenly, involuntarily—and you know you’ve found the right rhythm.

“It’s a stretch of road up north in Maine

That’s never ever ever seen a smile

If they’d buried all them truckers lost in them woods

There’d be a tombstone every mile

Count ‘em off, there’d be a tombstone every mile…”

Aemond is kissing you deeply, desperately, trembling hands and gasping shallow breaths. And there is not just euphoria written into the lines of his face; there is disorientation, there is wonder. He barely manages: “Alright…um…if you want me to last longer than about thirty more seconds, you should probably slow down…”

“No,” you tease, grinning as you bite at his full lips.

“When you’re loaded with potatoes and you’re headed down

You’ve got to drive the woods to get to Boston town

When it’s winter up in Maine, better check it over twice

That Haynesville road is just a ribbon of ice…”

Aemond cries out, louder than you’ve ever heard him before—you’ve never had privacy, you’ve never truly been alone—and then again, a helpless ecstatic sound, pleasure so overwhelming it almost starts to feel like pain.

“Quiet!” you whisper, giggling, touching two fingers to his mouth. “Everyone’s going to hear you.”

“Oh my God,” Aemond says. He falls back onto the mattress and brings you with him, his arms wrapped around you, kissing your cheeks and your forehead as the two of you lie there panting and entangled, his blue eye astonished. “Okay, okay, I need a minute. I think I just burst an aneurysm.”

“I killed you?” you purr with feigned distress, basking in your conquest.

“You can kill me whenever you want. You can kill me five times a day.”

“When you’re talking to a trucker that’s been haulin’ goods

Down that stretch of road in Maine they call the Haynesville Woods

He’ll tell you that dying and going down below

Won’t be half as bad as driving on that road of ice and snow…”

Aemond stares up at the ceiling—a steep gable roof, a motionless fan—and now you can tell he’s thinking about his family again, discorporate screams, misplaced trust. Otto Hightower’s bones were found in the shower, meaning he likely died before or not long after their power failed and water would have run out in the municipal system. They were probably killed before you and Aemond ever met, distant galaxies lightyears away, remote long-dead stars. And so all the blood you paid to get to California was wasted.

“Do you ever think about the people you have saved?” you ask gently as your fingertips trace the ridge of his scar. “You stitched yourself back together. You healed Aegon’s burns. You sutured Cregan’s arm. You got me and Rio down from that transmission tower.”

“I guess I did,” Aemond says, but his voice is ambivalent, as if none of these things count. He has not found someplace safe for you yet. His job is not finished; his triumphs may only be temporary.

“Aemond…back in Pennsylvania…why did you decide to help us?”

“Luke spotted you guys, and we all talked it over. If it had just been Rio, honestly, I wouldn’t have taken the chance. A man his size, and possibly armed…could be trouble, you know? But I figured since he was traveling with a woman and you seemed to be with him by choice, he was probably okay. And then when we first met, he was so protective of you…didn’t want me touching you, didn’t leave you alone…I realized he had to be a good guy.”

“He was,” you say solemnly. I was supposed to remind him about the racks. I was supposed to warn him. But you didn’t warn Rio about what was waiting to kill him in that sand-swept grocery store in Winnemucca, just like you didn’t warn Jace about radiation or Baela about the way the rungs of the ladder that ran up the side of the grain bin were rusted and creaking, and maybe there is more than enough blame to go around.

“And then after Battle Mountain, as soon as we found the gasoline and ammo, I knew we had to go back for you. It hit me all at once. I couldn’t protect you by leaving you with Rio and Cregan. And I couldn’t let you go. I’ve never had something like this before. I didn’t know it existed. I told the others we were turning around, and Aegon said: Thank fucking God. Rhaena took off sprinting towards the car.” Then Aemond kisses you again, but tenderly this time, slowly, like you’ll have forever and there’s no need to rush. “I’m going to get you to Odessa. I’m going to take you somewhere safe.”

The rain is stopping; there are still a few hours of daylight left.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Hey, Chip Skylark. Check it out,” Aegon says, grinning at you from where he’s sprawled on the wet dock and smoking a cigarette, wearing his neon green plastic sunglasses, his left leg finally freed from its bandages and on full display. You’re all wearing the same things, stolen t-shirts and shorts, sweatshirts at night when it gets cold, sneakers you can walk hundreds of miles in; but Aegon won’t give up his Sperry Bahamas. “It’s nature’s tattoo.”

You sit down beside him and admire the scar tissue, red knots and white cords, jagged terrain like a mountain range, organic highways and bridges and trails. “It’s a roadmap.”

“That’s appropriate.”

You’ve been traveling on foot for two weeks since Criston’s white Tahoe ran out of gas and was abandoned in the town of Mad River, California. Now you are only about ten miles from Odessa, close enough to reach in half a day but too far to get into town before nightfall. This time tomorrow you’ll be there, and it will either be a haven or a wasteland, and if Rio’s parents’ community in Odessa has disappeared then so has your last idea for where to go. Absentmindedly, you skate your fingerprints over the bumps and grooves of Aegon’s leg like a blind man reading braille. He shifts and clears his throat; you’ve made him uncomfortable somehow. You lift your hand away.

“I’m sorry, does that hurt?”

“Nah. I can’t really feel anything besides pressure. The nerve endings got fried.”

“Oh.” But now you don’t know what you did to upset him. Aegon doesn’t provide an explanation. Down the dock a ways towards the shore, Rhaena is reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and listening to the pink Sony Walkman formerly owned by a little girl named Ava. Inside whirls Green Day’s 2004 album American Idiot, which Aegon took from his bedroom at the beach house to add to his CD collection, a cultural archive, a gift for posterity. Cregan is teaching Daeron to fish with poles he found in one of the cabins; Helaena is bringing them worms. Aemond and Luke are gathering things dry enough to burn—books and wooden chairs from inside the cabins—and piling them up so Cregan can cook dinner once it’s caught.

“So,” Aegon says, changing the subject, scrutinizing you as he puffs on a Marlboro Gold. “Everything going okay?”

You know what he means; he must have heard Aemond earlier. “Yup.”

“Got it all figured out?”

“Sure did.”

“Great. I’m happy for you,” Aegon says, and yet there’s a twinge of melancholy he’s trying to hide. It must be hard for him; he and Daeron are the only single ones.

“We’ll find you some suitable candidates for your harem when we get to Odessa.”

He chuckles. “Oh, come on.”

“Guys, girls? Do you have a preference?”

He’s smiling wistfully down into the water, a dark rippling mirror. “I have too specific a preference, that’s the problem.”

“Yacht girls in bikinis. Golf cheerleaders.”

“There are no cheerleaders in golf, you yokel.”

“Okay, well…I’m sure you’ll be very popular with the lonely, traumatized, widowed women of the apocalypse.”

Aegon gazes morosely out over the lake. He pitches the end of his cigarette into the water, and your eyes catch briefly on the black ink of the tattoo on his forearm: It’s not over ‘til you’re underground. “I don’t know. I’ve been sober for two weeks and now everything is annoyingly clear.”

“What’s bothering you?”

He waits a while before he answers, evasive. “I’ve never been good at anything.”

“Everyone feels that way sometimes. Luke thinks he’s not good at anything either.”

“But Luke’s nice. I’m a rat bastard.”

You laugh. “You’re kind of nice, Aegon.”

“Yeah right.”

“No, seriously. I like being around you. You make me feel better. You’re like…” You ponder how to word it. “I feel like I could tell you whatever and not worry about being judged for it.”

He snorts. “As if you’ve ever done anything judgeable.”

You shrug, peering out over the lake. “I abandoned my family. I stopped sending them money, I stopped calling. And when everything happened…the zombies, the world ending…I didn’t even consider going back to Kentucky to try to help them. I went west with Rio instead. And now they’re probably all dead and it’s my fault. That’s evil. I couldn’t have gotten away with that level of betrayal. I must be cursed.”

Aegon is watching you, eyebrows raised. He has never heard this before. “But your family sucked, right?”

“Yeah,” you admit. “I think it would be hard to argue they didn’t.”

“So fuck ‘em,” Aegon says simply.

You smile at him, touched, grateful. “Okay. Fuck ‘em.”

“I’m relieved my family’s gone,” Aegon confesses, something so brutal he’d never tell anyone else. “I mean…I feel kind of bad about my mom and Criston. But as long as they were alive, I’d always be the person they raised. And if I could bring someone back, it wouldn’t be any of them. I’d pick Rio.”

“I would too,” you say softly, staring down at the faint burn marks on your palms from when you were stranded on that transmission tower with him, talking him out of suicide, so adamant that both of you were going to make it to Oregon. And you were wrong.

“So if you’re cursed, Pita Chips, sign me up because I’m right there with you.”

Rhaena pulls out an earbud and says to Aegon: “I don’t get this album.”

“What?!” he exclaims.

“It’s so good!” you concur. On the shore, Cregan is spearing several gutted rainbow trout on sticks so they can be roasted over the fire. Ice is gleefully gulping down fish organs.

Aegon continues: “Whatsername! St. Jimmy! Jesus of Suburbia!”

Rhaena blinks, glancing between you and Aegon. “But neither of you grew up in the suburbs.”

“It’s not about the suburbs, Rhaena!” Aegon replies with frenetic hand gestures. “It’s about being disillusioned and angry and failed by all the adults in your life, and self-medicating, and losing love every time you get a taste of it, and wanting to burn everything down and start over. It’s about hating the world and the world hating you back.”

“Okay, sure. I still don’t get it.”

You say: “You might have had too happy a childhood.” And you and Aegon burst out laughing.

“You guys are so weird,” Rhaena says, but she’s smiling. She stands up, gives Aegon back his Walkman, and walks to the end of the dock where Cregan is cooking the rainbow trout. Aemond and Daeron are gathering up the aluminum buckets found at the campground and set outside earlier today to collect rainwater. There is one five-pound bag of trail mix left to share, and then all the food is gone. If Cregan doesn’t kill something, you won’t eat.

“We should go help them with dinner,” you tell Aegon.

He groans. “Should we really?”

“Yeah. We should.”

“Fine.” He takes your hand when you offer it and struggles to his feet. Then you inhale a lungful of the scent of roasting trout, and startlingly powerful nausea punches through your stomach, so repellant you have to clamp a hand over your mouth to stop yourself from retching.

There has to be something wrong with the fish. It’s never smelled like that before.

Aegon seems baffled. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Does the trout smell right to you?”

Aegon sniffs the air like a labrador. “I guess…? I barely smell anything.”

“Well you probably destroyed your nose cells with all the coke.”

“That’s discriminatory. Addiction is a disease.” But his brow is furrowed with concern. “Seriously, are you okay? You look awful. Not like that. You know what I mean.”

“I’m fine.” You don’t feel fine; but everyone down by the fire is chatting and joking around nonchalantly, and surely if there actually was something wrong they would have noticed. “I’ll be back in a second.”

“Sure,” Aegon says, perplexed.

You hurry past the others and take refuge in the cabin you’re sharing with Aemond. Inside the trout smell isn’t so strong. You sit at the edge of the bed and suck in several deep breaths, trying to calm down, willing the confounding wave of nausea to pass.

Did I eat something bad, did I get bit by a spider or something…?

You are checking your arms and legs for little raised bitemarks when Helaena enters the cabin and shuts the door behind her. When she opens her burlap messenger bag to root around inside, you glimpse photographs she must have taken from the beach house, the frames left empty on the mantle of the fireplace. Then Helaena pulls out a pregnancy test, just one, Clearblue.

You gawk at it. “What are you doing?”

“You look sick,” Helaena says matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, but I don’t think it’s that.”

She is puzzled, wide innocent blue eyes. “Why not?”

“Well…I mean…that would be freakishly quick, wouldn’t it? Like…quick as in immediately. People can’t get pregnant the first time they have sex, right?”

“Huh. They really don’t have sex ed in Kentucky,” Helaena says, and leaves you alone with your pregnancy test. You don’t feel so nauseous anymore, but you sneak around the back of the cabin to take it anyway, because now you’re thinking about the possibility with a vividness you’ve never experienced before: a round blossoming belly and tiny handprints and Aemond cradling his child in his arms. And by the time you get the result, you aren’t even shocked. It feels like something that’s supposed to happen.

You and Aemond don’t have a moment alone together until after dark, sitting on the porch swing outside your cabin for first watch, everyone else asleep, Ice dozing serenely by your feet. The only sounds are the breeze through the pine trees, cool and damp, and the hoots of owls, and the chirping of crickets and cicadas.

“So guess what,” you say casually as moonbeams float rippling and fractured on the surface of the black-glass lake.

Aemond smiles drowsily, not expecting anything. “What?”

“In approximately eight months, I might be having your baby.”

At first, he doesn’t speak; he only studies the test when you hand it to him, and then looks at you like he’s not convinced you aren’t angry, like he can’t quite bring himself to believe that you’d want this with someone like him. “Are you afraid?”

“No,” you answer honestly. Maybe you should be, but you aren’t. “I’m hopeful. I feel like as soon as I realized it, everything got brighter. And now I’m thinking about the future instead of the past.” They’re not going to grow up like I did. They’re never going to think they aren’t loved. “What should we name it?”

“Not Otter.”

You laugh, trying to muffle it so you don’t wake anyone. Ice lifts her head and stares at you curiously, her shaggy grey ears straight up.

“I don’t know, I’m terrible with names,” Aemond says; and now he’s smiling again, a wide radiant smile, and you know he’s thinking about the future too. “Hope or Peace or something. Something happy. Something about starting over.”

You take his hand. “I can’t wait to start over with you.”

“Just one more day,” Aemond says.

One more day.

~~~~~~~~~~

“So what am I going to do in Odessa?” Luke asks as the eight of you—nine, if you count Ice—trek eastbound on Route 140. You are about five miles from Lake of the Woods and halfway to your destination. It’s only 80 degrees and overcast, good walking weather, although there is a looming threat of rain, occasional rogue drops and far-off rumbles of thunder. “Everyone has valuable skills except me. Chips has great aim and can build things, Daeron has his compound bow, Aemond is basically a doctor, Rhaena is learning how to shoot guns and treat injuries…”

“Aegon has skills?” Cregan jokes, casting him a good-natured grin. Aegon acts like he’s going to whack Cregan with his golf club, which he’s spinning around haphazardly. Both his Marlin .22 and acoustic guitar are slung across his back. There aren’t many bullets left, but everyone has a few.

“Aegon can navigate,” Luke says. “And probably impregnate ten women a day. Very useful during a population crisis.”

“We don’t need that in the gene pool,” Rhaena notes.

“You wrote stories in college, right?” you ask Luke.

“Screenplays, yeah,” he says hesitantly. “But I wouldn’t say I was super talented or anything.”

Aegon claps him on the shoulder “Well I’ve got good news for you, kid. A big chunk of the world’s screenwriters are probably dead now. So you’ll look so much better in comparison!”

“Thanks…?” Luke says.

“What I mean is,” you continue. “You could write books for people to read, since there aren’t really libraries or Barnes & Nobles anymore. And you could interview people to get their life stories and then record them so they aren’t lost forever. The next generation should know what the world was like before the zombies.”

“Yeah,” Aegon says as he pets Ice. “Someone has to tell them about blue raspberry Icees, right Blue Raspberry Icee?”

“Maybe,” Luke says thoughtfully, and you notice that he’s smiling a little.

Ice begins whining, and there is a rustling in the woods to the north, low-hanging branches of bigleaf maple and dogwood and Douglas fir trees being forced aside. “Zombie!” Aegon announces, pointing. Immediately, Daeron nocks an arrow and then releases it, and the figure draped in the shifting shadows of foliage drops to the ground.

“Hey Aegon,” Daeron says after a few seconds.

“Yeah?”

“That was actually a zombie, right?”

“Totally,” Aegon replies, but he doesn’t sound certain.

Aemond turns to his older brother accusingly. “How sure are you?”

“Like…50%.”

“Aegon!” Rhaena cries, petrified, and everyone rushes off the road to investigate.

Blessedly, the felled creature is long-dead, a former park ranger whose tan uniform hangs in gore-stained tatters. The nametag reads: Underwood. The arrow pierced its soft rotting skull and remains lodged there until Daeron pulls it out to be used again, giving Aegon an impatient scowl as he does.

“Close call,” Aegon tells him. “Think they would have charged you as an adult?”

“Lord almighty, that gave me a scare,” Cregan says, chuckling. Helaena spies a blackberry bush and begins picking a handful, and Cregan goes over to join her. Rhaena and Luke are telling Aegon that he needs to be more responsible and should have waited for Luke to confirm it was a zombie with his binoculars. You exchange a glance with Aegon: he rolls his eyes, you offer a smirk of commiseration. Ice is already trotting back towards Oregon Route 140.

You haven’t told anyone else that you’re pregnant yet, but eventually they’re going to notice that Aemond won’t leave your side. He sighs and asks you: “Have you had enough of this little field trip?”

“Definitely.” You head for the road. Aemond walks with you, placing you not on his left side but on his right where he can see you. You ask, smiling: “You don’t trust me to watch your blind side anymore, huh?”

“I prefer the view the way it is.”

You are only a few steps from the black artery of pavement that cuts through the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, a 114,000-acre preserve of wilderness that somehow—although it is 2,500 miles away—reminds you a bit of eastern Kentucky, endless emerald forests, the omnipotent shadows of mountains. And because you are on Aemond’s right side, he can look down and see something just in front of you on the earth strewn with knobby roots and pine needles and dead leaves.

“Don’t!” he shouts, snatching your forearm and yanking you backwards, and he’s never touched you like this before—so forcefully, so violently—and you stumble and almost fall, and your arm burns and aches where he grabbed you, and people are asking what’s going on, and you peer up at Aemond with confusion, fear, mistrust.

“Why…?”

And then you hear it rustling from the same place where you were standing a moment ago. The others yelp and dash out of the way as the snake escapes into the woods, a drab spotted olive green, a rattling tail, an angular skull like an arrowhead.

“Aemond?” you say, because he hasn’t moved, hasn’t made a sound. He looks down, and your gaze follows his. On his right calf, just a few inches above his ankle, are two small puncture wounds from the snake’s fangs, each dribbling a thin river of blood.

“Northern Pacific rattlesnake,” Helaena says, her voice shaking, tears welling up in her horrified eyes. “Venomous.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Aemond has one arm draped across Cregan’s shoulders, the other over Aegon’s. He’s moving slower, or is that just your imagination? His steps are less steady, his breathing more labored. His leg is swelling, a deep blue phantom of a bruise spreading beneath his skin, so tight it looks like it might split open.

“We’re almost there,” you say; you keep saying it, because hopefully that will make it true. “We’re only a few miles from Odessa, and we’ll find people who can help us.”

“Aemond, you’re a doctor,” Luke says.

Aemond’s voice is weak, pained, hazy. “I’m not a doctor.”

“You know what I mean!” Luke yells, frantic. “How do we fix you? What can we do?”

“Nothing,” Aemond says listlessly. “There’s nothing you can do without a hospital. I’ll either get better or I won’t.”

“People in Odessa will know how to help,” you insist. “They’re outside all the time, they hike, they hunt, they fish, they’ve seen snakebites before. They must have. They’ll have treatments.”

“Aemond,” Rhaena breathes, and you turn to see there is blood running from his nostrils. You scream, and Aemond touches his fingers to his face and then watches as they come away bloody.

“Put me down,” he tells Cregan and Aegon.

“No—” you begin, but then his knees buckle and he’s on the pavement anyway, blood pouring from his nose and his lips, blood filling up his right eye. Cregan walks to the shoulder of the highway, his head in his hands. Aegon stays beside Aemond, and you’re kneeling there with him, both of you using anything you have to clean the blood from Aemond’s face: the corners of your shirts, your bare hands.

He’s covered in blood, you think. Just like Jace, Baela, Rio.

“Can’t clot,” Aemond is murmuring. “The venom causes coagulotoxicity. Internal bleeding too. I feel like…like there’s all this pressure inside…”

Rhaena is taking Aemond’s pulse like he taught her to, fingers on the underside of his wrist. “It’s really faint,” she says quietly.

You grab a plastic Gatorade bottle filled with rainwater out of your backpack and tilt it against Aemond’s crimson-stained lips. He manages to swallow some of it. “Aemond, listen to me,” you say as calmly as you can. “You’re so close. We’re almost there. I need you to hang on a little longer.”

He shakes his head, slow dizzy motions. “It doesn’t matter.”

“They might have doctors in Odessa.” This is a fantasy, but you can’t resist it.

“Even if they do, there won’t be any antivenom. And it’s too late anyway.”

“No,” you say savagely, a sob ripping through your throat. “We didn’t cross 3,000 miles so you could die here. I won’t let you. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not fair.”

“Aegon,” Aemond says, reaching for him, drained and fumbling.

Aegon catches his hand. “I’m here.”

His eye—crystalline blue corrupted with red, blood in clear water—drifts to his brother. “You have to get her to Odessa. You have to help take care of everyone.”

Aegon is weeping. “Man, it’s supposed to be you. How can I still be here if you aren’t?”

“You can do this,” Aemond says.

“I’ll try.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, Aemond,” Aegon says, then crawls away on his hands and knees and collapses on the pavement, gutted, inconsolable, hemorrhaging grief instead of gore.

Everyone is crying and touching Aemond—his face, his hands—saying goodbye, accepting tasks, and they come away stained with red, and rain has begun to fall from a dark sky growling with thunder. Rhaena takes his medical kit. Helaena takes his Glock and stows it away in her messenger mag. Then Aemond looks for you, and now you are alone with him here in the middle of the highway, two golden lines on black asphalt, and with your thumbprint you whisk away the rivulet of blood that is spilling from his eye.

“You’re going to be okay,” he whispers as his heart fails, as his lungs fill with blood instead of air, as his pores leak rust and ruin. “Odessa will be everything we hoped for. I just won’t be there with you.”

“You can’t leave me,” you’re saying as rain patters against the road. I left my family and now my family is leaving me.

“Love,” he sighs, almost too softly to hear. “I don’t want to.”

You lie down on the pavement with him and rest your head on his chest, feel it rise and fall beneath you as the rain descends in sheets. And then Aemond exhales, deep and rattling, and he never tastes oxygen again, never speaks, never touches you. You don’t move from where you’re lying. You’re there until you’re drenched to the bones with rain and the world is a cold mist of pine trees, of wilderness, and you can never go back to any of the places you’ve been before, you can never get back the people you’ve left there.

Aegon is shaking you. “We have to keep moving,” he chokes out through tears.

You reply without looking at him. “I’m giving up now.”

“No you’re fucking not. We have to walk to Odessa.”

“Everyone’s dead in Odessa. Everyone’s dead everywhere. I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to stay in a world like this.”

On the periphery of your vision, you can see Aegon glancing at the others, standing just off the highway and under the canopy of the pine trees. He seems defeated, he seems lost.

Then suddenly Aegon turns back to you. “Hey!” he screams, so loudly you jolt upright, your palms on wet pavement, rain dripping from your hair. “I’m still alive. You’re still alive. This isn’t over yet. I said I would get you to Odessa, so that’s where we’re going. Stand up. Right now.”

Aegon holds out his hand. Thunder booms, lightning strobes, and then you take it. He pulls you to your feet and hesitates, as if he didn’t think he would get this far. Then he throws his arms around you, a crushing desperate embrace, a wordless devotion, a silent vow, sobbing into the curve of your neck, tasting the copper and iron of his brother’s blood on your skin.

“We have to keep moving,” he says again, like an apology, like he understands how impossible it feels. “The storm’s getting worse. It’ll be too dark to see soon.”

“We can’t leave him alone like this.”

“That’s not Aemond anymore,” Aegon pleads. “Aemond’s gone. And he would want us to live.”

Now the others are here on the road too: Daeron, Helaena, Cregan, Rhaena, Luke, Ice whimpering and licking scarlet stains of blood off your hands. You’re all holding each other; you’re all any of you have left. Cregan carries Aemond off the pavement and on a patch of grass alongside Route 140, the seven of you cover his body with branches of pine needles and white petals from dogwood trees. Rhaena is the first person to begin walking again, heading east. One by one you follow her. The downpour is torrential; if you are attacked now, you are nearly blind. Aegon stays beside you no matter how slow your steps are. You think if he disappears, you will too; the strings that tie you to the earth will fray and unweave and your bones will turn to mist, your voice will only be the wind howling down mountainsides. You have no way of knowing how long you’ve been walking or how many miles are left. You wonder what will happen to Aemond’s child if there is nothing for you in Odessa.

The rain is stopping. Now you can hear crows, woodpeckers, formations of geese honking in a foggy sky and squirrels scrabbling up tree trunks. Falcons perch watchfully on dead power lines. Rare aisles of sunlight are breaking through dissipating clouds.

They rise up out of the verdant jungle, a tangle of Pacific ninebark and blue elderberry: four figures in green camouflage, two men and two women, all wearing tactical sunglasses and wielding assault rifles, M16s you’re fairly sure, automatic and with 20-round magazines. Daeron moves to nock an arrow and then stops when he sees you’ve put up your hands. The others follow your lead: palms empty, willingly surrendering.

It’s them, you think dazedly. The people in Odessa. They’re alive, they’re real.

“Please cooperate and hand over all your weapons,” one of the women says, fifties, muscular, alert hawkish eyes.

No one moves. Then you unholster your Beretta M9—received from the U.S. Navy almost exactly five years ago, a different lifetime, a different world—and hold it out to the woman in your open palm. And now everybody else is giving their weapons over too: Aegon and Luke’s .22s, Rhaena’s Ruger, the spare Ruger and Aemond’s Glock hidden in Helaena’s burlap messenger bag, Daeron’s compound bow, Cregan’s axe. Ice peers up at Cregan anxiously, her yellowish eyes wide, but she wags her tail when he runs one of his large, calloused hands over her rain-soaked fur.

Aegon is still clutching his golf club. One of the men stares at him, incredulous. “You can keep that, son,” he says.

The woman nods to the men. “Nick and Glen will escort you five miles up the road, and then return your weapons. We ask that you keep moving and do not turn around. We don’t want trouble, but we can defend ourselves. Don’t think you can double back tomorrow and try to loot us or anything. This is your only warning. Do you understand?”

Aegon nudges your hand with his knuckles, then taps you harder when at first you’re too shellshocked to notice. You have to explain. You have to tell them why you’re here.

“I…I…” You begin, unable to make the words leave your lips, rats from a sinking ship, plummeting bodies from a burning building. Here you stand on a precipice, and with so many other people to save. “I served in the Navy with Bryan Osorio. We left Saratoga Springs together. He told me it would be safe here.”

Now they are interested. Slowly, the woman lowers her M16. “You know the Osorios?”

“I do.” I’ve known them for half a decade.

“Could any of them identify you and verify what you’re saying?”

“His wife, Sophie. She’s blonde, and she likes elephants, and she had a baby recently.”

The woman is scanning the faces behind you. “And where’s Bryan?”

“He’s not here anymore,” you say, and now you’re sobbing again. Aegon is squeezing your shoulder, his head bowed. “I’m sorry. I wanted to help him get home. I was supposed to warn him, I was supposed to stop it from biting him, but I didn’t and now he’s gone—”

“Okay, okay.” The woman motions for you to calm down, but her voice is kind. “Who are these guys? Your colleagues, your friends?”

“They’re my family.”

“You can vouch for them?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll all submit to searches for bitemarks?”

“Yes.”

The woman turns to the men she called Nick and Glen. “Take them inside, will you? Get the ID verified and then we’ll process everyone.”

“Got it,” the older man says. And then, to you and your companions: “Follow me.”

Nick and Glen lead you into the forest, the canopy of pine needles so thick the daylight turns to dusk, and you think of lightning bugs, of firelight, of drinking Guinness on the beach with Rio on Diego Garcia. There are several patrols, groups of four or five, that approach to stop you until they see Nick and Glen and wave you through. Then the trees open into a meadow of buttercups and daisies and pink fawn lilies, and beyond that an immense village, some houses decades old, others currently being constructed with logs from pine trees. There are hundreds of people tending to livestock, hanging up laundry to dry on clotheslines, digging in gardens, making candles and soap and butter. There are children playing without fear, giggling as they chase after scampering dogs, challenging each other to games of kickball and Uno.

In front of one of the houses that predates the apocalypse, brick with a screened-in porch, there is a small blonde woman standing in a garden, smiling and chatting with a middle-aged couple. The baby she carries against her chest in a blue sling has dark curly hair like Rio’s.

Sophie and the baby are here. They’ve been alive the whole time.

You rest a palm on your belly without realizing you’re doing it. “What happens now?” you ask Aegon.

“The rest of our lives.”

It is unimaginable, it is impossible, it is so full of luminous potential you feel like the light will spill out of your pores like blood, it’s an oasis, it’s a second chance, it’s an island in the vast lethal untamed blue of the Indian Ocean.

“Let’s go,” Aegon says softly, taking your hand and leading you across the field of wildflowers, kaleidoscopic blooms in the last days of summer.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Worksheets: Death & Sacrifice

Worksheets & Templates Death; Sacrifice; How to Kill Your Characters

Use the following questions as a story guide, or to interview your characters...

DEATH

What do you think happens after you die?

How does the thought of death affect you? Why?

Whose death has affected you the most?

What is the biggest lesson that death has taught you?

How do the deaths of people you didn’t know personally affect you?

Recount your favourite death myth.

What would you like to happen to your body after you die?

What would you like to be written on your tombstone, in your obituary, or in a posthumous biography of your life?

If you were a ghost, what would be your favourite haunt?

What do you fear most about death?

How is death not what you feared?

Describe death as a person, creature, or symbol.

What are your thoughts on euthanasia?

Which fictional character’s death affected you the most?

Is your own mortality different to that of others?

How has your perception of death evolved over time?

Research a death ritual.

How does death create life?

Choose 3 very different characters and explore their relationships with death.

How would you solve the trolley problem? [The Trolley Problem: You are riding in a trolley without functioning brakes, headed toward a switch in the tracks. On the current track stand 5 people who stand to be killed if the trolley continues on its path. You have access to a switch that would make the trolley change to the other track, but another individual stands there. That person is certain to be killed if the switch is activated. So do you switch tracks or not?]

Write a fictional will.

SACRIFICE

How do you know it’s the right time for you to make a sacrifice?

What are you afraid of losing?

How will losing this change you?

How will not losing this allow you to stay the same?

What is the cost of not making this sacrifice?

Why is this sacrifice necessary to achieving your dreams?

How can you make it feel more like a relief than a sacrifice?

Why have you been chosen to make this particular sacrifice?

What are the steps you need to take to make this sacrifice?

How will you know that you’ve really made it?

How to Kill your Characters

A worksheet to kill off a character...

Why is the characterʼs death important?

When does it occur?

Why then?

How long does it take?

Who is there with the character?

What is the character’s reaction to imminent death?

What emotion is evoked in the reader?

Locations (associated with the character):

Objects (associated with the character):

Themes (associated with the character):

Ways to die:

Effects of death on other characters:

Effects of death on the story:

Source

[inbarfink]

So when discussing the ending of ‘Over the Garden Wall’ and the nature of the Unknown in general, I think it is important to remember that it’s left deliberately up for interpretation. You know, it’s not a Quiz with one concrete answer we must uncover, but it’s more about our interpretations and personal feelings. Each and every one of us experiences that journey with Wirt and Greg into the Unknown in a slightly different way. 

So what I want to do here is not present a Correct Interpretation that will dispute all the others and prove them all wrong and prove myself right, I just want to share my own outlook on the nature of the Unknown. In the hopes that others will like it and it’ll inspire more cool readings and interpretations

So on some level I do agree with the popular theory that the Unknown is some sort of Afterlife - but I don’t see it as a regular Afterlife for human souls, I think it is an afterlife for Stories. This place is where fictional characters and stories end up once they’ve been totally forgotten by the living, ‘lost in the clouded annals of history’. and become.... unknown It is quite literally a place where ‘long forgotten stories are revealed to those who travel through the wood’.

That’s why the Unknown is a mishmash of different time periods and primarily visually and narratively influenced by stuff like fairy tales, ghost stories, children’s books and old cartoons - these stories have a high-tendency to be forgotten and thus get lost in the Unknown (whatever it’s because they rely on oral traditions or because they suffered from very poor preservation historically). 

And that is what the theme song, ‘Into the Unknown’ is talking about…

Where can we pretend that dreams do come true? In Stories.

And what are ‘the loveliest lies of all’? Now that would be Fiction. 

The entire concept of stories is a huge theme of this song, I think.

Beatrice and her family, Adelaide of the Pasture, Auntie Whispers and Lorna were all originally fairy tales. Maybe the same fairy tale, or maybe they were originally separated before being ‘melded’ together. (If, for example, the last child to Remember them before they were forgotten just assumed the Bad Witch in both the Auntie Whispers and Beatrice stories was Adelaide)

Pottsfield was an old urban legend about a haunted ghost town, Wirt and Greg basically played through its ‘plot’ directly. 

Miss Langtree, the schoolhouse and the other associated characters come from a long-forgotten and out-of-print children’s book. That’s why those characters tend to talk in comically-stilted expository dialogue. 

The Tavern was the setting for a series of 20’s animated cartoons.  (Although obviously set long before that era). The Tavern Keeper was created as a Betty Boop clone and was the main character. The Tavern setting was probably a mere framing device for all sort of musical animations. The reason why none of them can comprehend the idea of not having some sort of Title or Label is because that’s how they were written - all given job-related titles but not named.

Fred the Talking Horse was a main character from a forgotten tradition of humorous oral stories where he was sometimes a trickstery anti-hero and sometimes a straight-up comedic villain protagonist.

Quincy Endicott and Margueritte Grey were characters from a satiric limerick about the greedy rich and their wacky habits. (Quincy was at least inspired by a real-life person since his name appears on a tombstone in the real world)

Possibly the same limerick where the punchline was the status-quo at the beginning of their OTGW ep, that both rivals’ mansions have become connected and they assume the other is a ghost haunting their house. Or maybe they were each from different regional variations of the same limerick about a greedy rich weirdo being lost in their own house and going mad. 

Frogland and their little boat might be from a children’s book as well, but I also think that maybe… from the vignettes shown at the opening of the series…

That one might take place outside the Unknown, and shows the real inception of Frogland. Two brothers making up stories with their toy boat by the river. Since they never shared these stories with anyone else, when these two brothers died or maybe just grew up and forgot their boyhood misadventures by the stream - these stories also ended up in the Unknown. 

The Fishing Fish we see briefly in ‘Babes in the Woods’ might be a small comedic illustration from a children’s book, or another piece of limerick, or just someone’s random notebook doodle that gained a life of its own first in the creator’s mind and then in the Unknown. 

Cloud City, the North Wind and the Queen of the Clouds were also, much like the Tavern, from a very old cartoon.

The Beast was once just a mere Boogie Man to keep young children from wandering off into the woods. Ending up forgotten in the Unknown just ended up giving him a whole world of lost souls to harvest. 

Maybe the Woodsman and his daughter were always a part of the story of the Beast. But since it seems that the Woodsman being a lantern-bearer is a fairly recent development - they might have had their own separate story. Some sort of pastoral novel about a family moving near the woods? But their narrative has been ‘hijacked’ by the Beast. 

Wirt and Greg ended up lost within the Unknown cause had they actually died in the lake that night - they would have become a Story in their town. I mean we have a moody lonely teenager and his adorable little brother disappearing/dying - on the night of Halloween - after last being seen in a graveyard - with the older brother’s last act on this earth being to hand his crush a cassette of his love poetry. Can you imagine what sort of Urban Legenda you can grow from those seeds?

But as they were not yet dead, and not a Story yet… so they were technically an Unknown story. Between the borders of life and death from a human perspective because they were about to die, and from a Story perspective because they were just about to be born.

And the ending sequence, with the little vignettes showing where all the characters from all the episodes ended up. I think that’s almost like Wirt and Greg back in the world of the living and the real - being able to create happy endings for all of those stories they've met. That’s how the Woodsman’s daughter ended up being alive all along - it was less that the Woodsman's whole tragedy was a wacky misunderstanding all along. But it became so as a gift of thanks by their new storytellers - Wirt and Greg.

Because if dreams can't come true, than why not pretend?

[vickyvicarious]

I do genuinely love the descriptions Mina gives of the town, and also the way her writing feels reminiscent of those 'lady journalists' she planned to emulate. Not just stuff like her interviewing the old men she meets about local legends, but also just in the way she describes the area. I like that even when she is being quite descriptive here, with history, people, and landscape included, it still has a different feel to me than Jonathan's writing. Stoker did a great job of giving different writers distinctly different tones. (Today's entry is a fun contrast too between the terse and tense Captain, and Mina freshly arrived on her vacation and writing long descriptions.)

Right over the town is the ruin of Whitby Abbey, which was sacked by the Danes, and which is the scene of part of "Marmion," where the girl was built up in the wall. It is a most noble ruin, of immense size, and full of beautiful and romantic bits; there is a legend that a white lady is seen in one of the windows. Between it and the town there is another church, the parish one, round which is a big graveyard, all full of tombstones. This is to my mind the nicest spot in Whitby, for it lies right over the town, and has a full view of the harbour and all up the bay to where the headland called Kettleness stretches out into the sea. [...] Outside the harbour on this side there rises for about half a mile a great reef, the sharp edge of which runs straight out from behind the south lighthouse. At the end of it is a buoy with a bell, which swings in bad weather, and sends in a mournful sound on the wind. They have a legend here that when a ship is lost bells are heard out at sea.

Mina is sniffing out the local landmarks and stories, of course. And at the time hanging out in graveyards was way more common than it typically is today. But still, it seems pretty clear that she's partial all the spooky stories and is enjoying being in a place with so many of them, haha. It's fun to count up all the moments.

I shall come and sit here very often myself and work.

Also, still making plans! That, and her being conscious of timing (clock striking six and Mina knowing the Westenras will be back by then) are both little character beats which we've already seen in her letters to Lucy.

[livuyang]

snowfall director has now closed his account because he is facing criticism from novel and drama fans. fans were dissatisfied with the ending so he released an alternative ending for characters but this made them more mad. they said if he didn't put in the drama, there was no need to read it. they are also saying why they changed a rapist character and gave him a redemption arc, the director also cut a lot of situ and milan scenes (not due to censorship), he was the one who turned the female lead into a vampire they changed it, he changed also the ending in the novel, from it seems he gave extra scenes to ryan ren and cut from others characters. you can check it on weibo just searching chinese name of the drama. i will keep watch the drama but it's so sad seeing this.

the alternative end:

a few years later

△mi lan sat at the table and wrote a letter. the handwriting is beautiful but free and easy, quite in the style of shen zhiheng.

mi lan: (vo) mr. shen, i have also traveled all over the country, met many friends, and read many stories. i thought i would no longer remember the name shen zhiheng. however, everything i saw seemed to have your name written on it. i think this is the world you taught me.

△mi lan's room is piled with a lot of groceries, and the whole small room is like a grocery store. almost all the items that used to be in shen's mansion are preserved and placed in various positions within reach. there is also a piano in the sun.

mi lan: (vo) you once told me that you wanted to see when the prosperous era would come. i especially want to tell you about my experiences over the years. i have seen wars, sufferings, and the difficulties when it was first built, but i have also seen that this country is getting better and better. you… should be very happy, right?

△mi lan was walking on the street and happened to be standing at the door of a concert hall. there is a poster hanging outside the concert hall, which reads: the most mysterious pianist lan tianjin-hong kong concert.

△mi lan looked at the full moon on the poster and was lost in thought.

mi lan: (os) mr. shen, study hard and write, and see the world for you… you used newspapers back then, and now i use music. i am learning the path you have taken, moving forward step by step. i am so lonely, so lonely, i seem to have finally become you, so where are you?

mi lan: (laughing and whispering) i have waited for you year after year. waiting for the first spring rain every year. so today, i miss you especially.

△as soon as the words fell, mi lan seemed to feel a familiar breath, but when she turned around, she saw nothing.

2,

△situ weilian walked slowly through the cemetery, and then stood in front of one of the graves.

△situ weilian was holding a bunch of tuberose flowers. situ weilian slowly bent down and placed the bouquet in front of the tombstone.

△the tombstone reads: tomb of mother jin jingxue

△situ weilian stood in front of the tomb, looking at these three words.

△at this time, a descendant (female) of the jin family came to visit the tomb, and for the first time saw a young boy standing in front of jin jingxue's tomb. very curious.

descendant: hello, do you know grandma jingxue?

situ weilian: (chuckles) of course i know her. she is the most beautiful woman in tianjin.

descendant: (even more curious) i heard so too. my mother said that this grandma was the most fashionable person in tianjin. she never got married and lived a very chic life. it seems that your family has also received her kindness.

situ weilian: yes, you are right.

△situ weilian listened to this lively voice, and his expression gradually softened. the descendant placed the flowers.

△situ weilian slowly squatted down, looked at the name on the tombstone, and finally spoke in a low voice.

situ weilian: i'm sorry that i couldn't fulfill my promise to you. you must have left very disappointed.

△in front of the tombstone, only the flowers were shaking gently.

3.

△ sister zhang came out of the concert hall and grabbed mi lan.

sister zhang: the concert is about to start, where are you going?

△ mi lan couldn't help but take a few steps back, stretched out her hand to feel the falling rain, and smiled.

mi lan: sister zhang, i won't play in the concert hall today. i want to go to another place.

△ mi lan suddenly turned around and trotted.

4.

△ mi lan ran to a square, where there was an old piano, which was placed in the corner for tourists to use when the square was attracting customers.

△ mi lan suddenly walked over, sat down and started playing the piano.

△ the first song she played was the first song she learned when she was in the choir.

△ the spring rain gradually fell in the sound of the piano.

△ the crowd that had gathered to listen to the piano began to slowly disperse, until the whole square was filled with only the rustling sound of rain and the piano sound like a heaven and earth music.

△ in the rain, a man holding an umbrella slowly appeared on the square. the whole world seemed to have only one listener, but only this one listener.

△the sound of the piano gradually became softer.

△mi lan looked up at the man standing beside her, who stretched out his hand to shield her from the rain. it was shen zhiheng, whom she had not seen for a long, long time.

△mi lan stood up in disbelief, and slowly turned to look at shen zhiheng.

mi lan: you are… mr. shen.

△shen zhiheng held a pot of bright red camellia in his hand. he just looked at the much more mature mi lan tenderly. then he answered softly.

shen zhiheng: yes, i am. i'm back.

shen zhiheng: (os) mi lan, i crossed mountains and seas just to accompany you to listen to this spring rain.

△the rain hit the piano keys, as if it had become a melody again.

△the sky and the earth are getting farther away, just like the rising sun.

△the spring rain is falling down.

△the budding red camellia finally bloomed. the rain fell on the flowers, on the leaves, and in every corner of this world.

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

Sometimes I feel the shows world is… empty but at the same time has too much

In season 2 they put sentient robots able to feel actual emotions like they are something common enough for a teenager go make them

In the specials they introduce other magic systems like the cousins of the kwamis and then introduce things like Batwoman and super/Wonder Woman

Then in season 3 they introduce FREAKING ALIENS!!! (Bunnix said they exist) I wouldn’t be mad if they elaborated in those subjects

But they don’t, we don’t have meta humans in the rest of the show but season 5 finale, we don’t have magicians and we haven’t seen a flesh and bones alien (I think since I don’t know what Majestia’s whole deal is)

The origins episode and the backstory of the guardians and miraculous imply the existence of other monsters

We see a kraken, a fusion of a Sphinx with Medusa fighting Heracles, a dragon fighting a ladybug holder on medieval glass stain similar to the ones in churches, and then we see some unknown hero fighting a Evangelion like monster on the sea with a Japanese style

But we only have Akumas, Akumas and Akumas, and in special occasions we have Akumas but BIGGER or Akumas but R E D ,Where are those monsters in modern age? Some of the crossovers they had planned with other ZAK shows implied the existence of witches, fairy’s, ghosts and a giant snake monster

The world introduces the supernatural and science fiction but instead of using it we are stuck with miraculous

Why is no character using magic? Why isn’t there sandman or rhino like villains rooming the streets? I Can see post season 4 Gabriel doing what tombstone did in spectacular Spider-Man and turning criminals into super villains to get the miraculous or at least to make negativity higher through all of Paris by introducing super villains who are willingly evil AND have permanent powers

Or why isn’t there a evil wizard searching for the miraculous for power or a ancient evil the kwamis sealed searching to take revenge on Plagg and Tikki? Or just Gabriel using evil magic to summon a hunting hound monster to track the miraculous and the heroes have to find a way to defeat a enemy they can’t defeat by their usual way (their usual way is breaking the evilified object so the enemy just disappears)

They keep introducing weird things and concepts and do nothing with them, is like they tried to be Spider-Man in the “exists on a larger world full with heroes” and then proceeds to ignore all other Spider-Man things like having a rogues gallery and constantly facing magic and sci-fi threats

Heck I might even say he only did this to ride the Shared universe train marvel started but just like DC and the Dark verse, they failed (except for the Monsterverse, the Monsterverse is ETERNAL)

That's the weird thing about this show. It wants to be a simple good vs evil story, but it also wants to flesh out the universe for future spin-offs.

This is why I just can't stand the Miraculous World specials, because they don't do anything with the concepts introduced. The Miraculous scattered across the world, other magical artifacts like the Miraculous, and the goddamn multiverse are only used for what is glorified filler. A lot of these ideas could easily be fleshed out for their own seasons, but the show only wants the conflict to revolve around the heroes and whoever gets the Butterfly Miraculous.

If you want to expand your universe, you need to think about how this development will affect your story as well as your world.

[curlysgirl0202]

My opinion is he probably was not bad...The biggest issue for me would be his breath, which probably wasn't the freshest since people didn't regularly brush their teeth and he liked whiskey and smoking cigars. In addition, he probably didn't make out that much. He relied on the world's oldest profession since women were scarce.

Because his mustache is well grown in, it would probably tickle your lip and if he can get a rise out of you, he'll start kissing your neck so he can tickle you and get you squealing.

Overall, he may need to learn a little about kissing and start becoming more aware of his not so fresh breath 🌟

[writingoddess1125]

Okay since Corazon is dead, sadly, and he will never get to see his child grow, do you think reader will take them to his grave and told stories ( mostly about how clumsy he was) to their kid?

Heart of Gold

Ready to Cry! You've been Warned

⚠️ Warnings ⚠️ Sad Topics, Character Death, Bittersweet.

If you Like Click Here! <-

"Mami! Mami!" Your 6 year old daughter called out to you, running ahead as she smiled back at you proudly- it seemed a 20 minute hike didnt slow her down as much as it did you.

Dulce looked more like him everyday- it would be difficult to hide her once she got older... his big goofy smile, The Mess of blonde hair that seemed impossible to tame besides a beanie you put her in.

With a on her lips she continued to trudge through the snow, not letting the winter weather denture her it seemed. She hated to miss the weekly visits to her father..

It was another few minutes of walking before you reached it- The beautiful open clearing that had a single headstone surrounded by clear untouched snow besides two bare rose bushes on either side of the grave. It looked truly sorrowful during the winter and made the reality harder-

During the spring the clearing was filled with pink bleeding heart flowers and the rose bushes would blood, making it feel like Corazon was near by and next to you. Youd had planted it all when your daughter was one and the since bloomed just around her birthday- You'd said it was a gift from her father.

Dulce rushed forward, Sitting right infront of the stone. Uncaring of the cold as she started her normal routine. Clearing the snow off the stone while chatting away.

"Hace Frío.. don't worry! All the snow gone soon" Dulce said cheerfully, finishing wiping the snow as you took a seat. Pulling out candles to light, however pausing when you saw something to the left of the stone. Picking it up it was a fresh pack of unopened cigarettes- the same brand Corazon uses to smoke.. setting it down I front as you decided to leave the offering someone had clearly left your partner-

Dulce helped you light the candles and set out some of the things your brought, a cherry cake and a bottle of the liquor he liked. Once everything was set you sighed content.

"Can you tell me about him?" Dulce asked, always asking this when you two visited and wanting a new story about him.

"Yes my darling- Well He Acted very tough" You said with a giggle, choosing your words carefully.

"See- Your father had the act of a big tough guy, but if you scratched the surface you saw how much of a Goofy sweet man he was. Biggest heart too"

Dulce smiled widely, her attention fully on you as you spun your tale. Talking about the time Corazon had taken you out on a date, trying to be smooth and woo you over as he reached over to wrap a arm around you- however his lit cigarette catching the feathers of his coat and setting him ablaze. Dulce laughing as you described the child like scream he had as he tossed the coat to the ground and rapidly stopped on it like a mad man-

Or when he tried to walk towards you in a 'attractive' way- long strands and -but his long giraffe like legs seemed to not catch up as he face planted hard right before you cracking a tooth and givibg you a bit cheesy smile as you helped him up.

You had Dulce laughing and smiling for half an hour as you told her new and exciting tales of her father. After a while she had to take a moment to catch her breath- you as well. Dulce looking to the stone, as a serious look went over her eyes- Biting her lip a bit hesitantly.

"..Mamí... how did papa.. leave?" She asked softly, you frowning softly at her words.

"That is something even I'd like to know.." You said softly, looking at the gravestone of your lover. You had so many questions yourself... who would kill him? Who had brought him back? Had he intended to leave you and Dulce the way he had?

You wish at times as well it had been you who had brought him back, placing his tombstone- but more then anything you were greatful for whoever it was.. They had brought him home. Your hand reaching out and touching the icy stone with a gentle hand.

Dulce sees you do this, reaching out herself to touch the stone- her tiny fingers flinching at the coldness of it all. She stared for a moment, before reaching into her pockets clumsily-

"Mira, Papa, hice esto para ti- I made it in school" Dulce said softly as she set the now unfolded peice of construction paper down on the gravestone using the full box of cigarettes to pin it so it didn't fly away. There a crayon drawing of three stick figure people standing in the snow- Dulce in the middle holding your hand to the left and to her right a rendering of her father. She had never seen him- but you had told her what he looked like and even showed the single photo you had of him.

The stick figure man having a big red smile, a pink hat and the black feather coat- which looked like your daughter had done squiggles on his shoulder but that just made it sweeter. However what made your eyes misty was the big yellow heart on his chest and the blue halo around his pink hat.

"I hope you like it- Mamí says you had a heart of gold, I couldnt find gold so I hope yellow is okay?" Dulce said softly, beginning to talk about what she did to color it and make it pretty just for him. Speaking to the stone like he was truly there sitting infront of her, saying how she fell when she went to find a pink crayon since another kid took it and so on.

You bit your lip to hold back tears at this, The ache in your heart at the sight and you gently bowed you head to keep your daughter from seeing.

After a moment of silence you reached over, having finally been able to hold back your tears. Reaching over you pat your daughters back-

"Let's head back sugar" You say softly, Your little girl nodding as her nose wad starting to turn red. Scooping her up in your arms you turned away from the stone. Beginning the long walk back to your home-

[flowerandblood]

The Vanity and Variability (4)

[ Jane Austen • Aemond x Baratheon • female ]

[ warnings: fingering, kissing, masturbation, smut, sexual tension, angst, mention of trauma ]

[ description: Despite coming from a family with royal blood, Aemond is forced because of his brother’s debts to choose one of the daughters of the famously wealthy general, Borros Baratheon, as his wife to save his family from bankruptcy. When he arrives to make his choice he is distraught and discouraged, made all the more so by watching from the sidelines his youngest daughter, who seems more intrigued by his dog than her possible future husband. Slow burn, sexual tension, regency and Jane Austen prose vibe, vain, self-righteous Aemond. ]

A story which is an alternative universe of The Impossbile Choice taking place in regency times (1805-1815). The characters are all the same as in the main series, however, for obvious reasons they will behave differently and experience things differently from medieval times. You can read this without having to delve into the main series.

Aemond & Miss Baratheon & Vhagar Moodboard

* English is not my first language. Please, do not repost. Enjoy! *

Previous and next chapters: Masterlist

_____

She didn't suspect it was possible, but after the ball and the brief exchange of words that took place between them, the relationship between her and their guest had warmed significantly in her eyes. She no longer avoided him or held a grudge against him, they even exchanged short, polite pleasantries sometimes when they passed each other at home.

They occasionally came across each other during their long walks and usually then, to her surprise, Mr Targaryen did not avoid her by continuing on his way, but turned back with her, accompanying her silently on her way. Sometimes she dared to ask him one or two questions that she felt did not invade his privacy, but would allow her to learn something about him.

"Do you miss London, sir?" She asked one day, walking beside him with her hands folded behind her back, mimicking his gesture, and he hummed under his breath, looking around at the fields spread out before them, thinking over her question.

"I don't know. Maybe." He said in an absent voice, sunk in his thoughts. His answer surprised her, as she was sure he was going to start talking about what comforts he wouldn't experience here awaited him in London or that his family was waiting for him there.

However, he didn't elaborate on the subject, so she decided not to tire him out or draw anything out of him, recognising that friends should be protective of each other and understand one another.

The thought that a thread of understanding and a kind of mutual concern had been established between them pleased her, as she was no longer uncomfortable in his presence, able to place him at last in her mind as someone who was now part of her home.

She shuddered when she suddenly heard his low, thoughtful voice, not looking at her as the words left his lips.

"Where is your mother buried?"

She glanced at him astonished, feeling some kind of discomfort and pain at her mention. She lowered her gaze, sighing heavily.

"She's buried in the cemetery right behind the church. We're not far away, I can show you what a beautiful headstone our father ordered for her, if you like." She said softly, lifting her gaze to him uncertainly, convinced that he would refuse, that he had only asked her out of pure courtesy.

He, however, hummed under his breath and nodded.

For this reason, they turned onto a different road than usual, leading through the woods to the back of the cemetery. They entered its grounds through a side wicket, rows of old tombstones overgrown with ivy surrounded by the sunlight falling on them through the leaves of the trees. It was beautiful weather, perfect for melancholic walks in such places.

As promised, she stepped into one of the side alleys and stopped in front of a gravestone with a large statue of an angel with a woman's face, looking upwards with a raised hand.

She lowered her gaze, looking down at her fingers and saw out of the corner of her eye how, standing beside her, he made the sign of the cross and folded his hands in front of him, closing his eye, sinking apparently in prayer.

It made her heart warm to see this, feeling somehow that he was showing her mother respect in this way.

From the situation in the church, his approach was more gentle.

She closed her eyes, also deciding to pray, hearing the pleasant rustling of leaves and birdsong all around her.

She thought she wanted to pray for him.

So she asked her mother, who she believed was in heaven, to take care of him, to help him understand himself and make the right choice. That she would guide him as she had guided her through the difficult moments of his life, that she would watch over him in danger and moments of doubt.

She opened her eyes, feeling her heart warm at the thought, and looked at him, his cool, impenetrable gaze fixed on her. He lowered his head, clearly feeling that an awkward silence had fallen between them that he should break, but as usual he struggled to engage in a light, non-committal discussion.

"Please, sir. Don't worry about it. We don't need to talk. You don't even know how happy I am to have been able to come here with you." She said lightly, making the sign of the cross in front of the statue once more and turned away, walking slowly back the way she had come, turning to follow him with a smile over her shoulder.

He merely murmured and moved behind her, catching up with her step, looking around, admiring the beautiful old tombstones. She thought she felt some strange kind of peace in his company, quieting herself completely and appreciating that he was more careful with his words with her.

As they began to approach towards her house he countered that he would take another walk alone, and she nodded, moving away without a word.

He always did this so no one would see them coming back together.

He didn't want her sisters to torment her again.

He was really trying to be her friend and this thought filled her with a warm, pleasant feeling.

As soon as she stepped inside and pulled off her coat, Floris ran up to her, furrowing her brow.

"Have you seen Mr Targaryen? Are you trying to take him for yourself again?" She asked, looking at her reproachfully, Maris leaned out of the living room, listening to the whole exchange of words intently.

"No, I was at the cemetery. I didn't see him." She lied easily, recognising that the last person she intended to confide in was Floris.

Later that day, Cassandra and Ellyn insisted on arranging a walk into town together to take advantage of the fine weather, having heard rumours earlier that there were some lovely new dresses in Mrs Thomson's shop. To her surprise, after much persuasion, not only her brother but Mr Targaryen himself agreed.

Not wanting to frustrate her sisters and listen to the remarks that all his attention was focused on her she walked at the very end, looking around with a gentle smile, somehow happy and reassured that only she knew their little secret.

They were friends.

She saw him glance over his shoulder once in a while, seemingly just looking at the sights around him, but his gaze would focus on her for a moment, just for a moment, as if he wanted to see if she was suffering greatly from having to adapt to her sisters' moods.

The other thing that pleased her greatly was the apparent warming of his relationship with her brother. They often chatted in the sitting room away from the girls, sitting side by side at a small table discussing military and historical literature, which they both devoured in vast quantities, and she thought with amusement that if Royce had not been a man but one of her sisters, Mr Targaryen would have married him.

When they arrived at last they came upon a regiment of soldiers, among whom she immediately spotted Colonel Strong. She looked away, embarrassed by his words at the ball.

He had told her then, after their first dance, that she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen and he would be most reluctant to let her out of his arms. If Mr Targaryen had not interfered, she would have burned with shame.

How could he say such a thing to a girl he was seeing for the first time in his life?

She swallowed loudly and forced herself to smile when she saw him pull off his cap and approach her with a smile, bowing at the waist, and she nodded in front of him, noticing out of the corner of her eye the impatient gaze of Mr Targaryen and Royce in their direction.

She thought he had told her brother of his doubts about him.

"Miss Baratheon. What a wonderful coincidence. I was thinking of you." He said calmly, a gentle, serene smile on his face, but there was something in the way he phrased the sentence, in the look in his eyes that made her uncomfortable.

"Mr Strong. It's pleasure to see you too." She replied as warmly as she could, her sisters looking at her curiously from afar, laughing, probably thinking that some sort of flirtation was just taking place between them.

Her gaze turned to Mr Targaryen, his face expressing strained indifference, his lips tightened, the gaze of his healthy eye directed straight at Colonel Strong.

"I see that you and Mr Targaryen are close." He said lightly, and she immediately turned her face towards him, embarrassed, ready to deny it right away. "If I were you, however, I would not trust him. Everyone knows why he came here, and what he has been doing in London so far with the Countess Rivers."

She swallowed loudly, freezing with her mouth half-open, her voice trapped in her throat. She shook her head, blinking rapidly, trying to put any kind of smile on her face that would hide how horrified she was by his words, how hard her heart began to pound.

"I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean." She said softly, her voice trembling slightly, and hearing this he lowered his gaze and smiled in such an omniscient way that she realised he had drawn exactly the reaction he wanted from her.

"It was a scandalous affair. A much older woman who probably killed her husband to be with her lover and heir to a fortune. Well, the fortune is admittedly gone, but he still has his title and princely blood. He wanted very much to marry her, but did not get permission to do so. His grandfather decided they needed money." He told his story calmly, as if he were spinning some dull tale that might not interest her.

She felt pain, disappointment, regret, her brow furrowed in disbelief, her throat squeezed so tightly that for a moment she had trouble breathing. She looked towards Mr Targaryen, when their eyes met she saw that there was concern on his face.

She turned to face Colonel Strong again, swallowing with difficulty, and she grunted, holding back tears that were rising under her eyelids.

"How would I know if these were not only cruel accusations on your part?" She asked in a trembling voice, looking at him defiantly, clinging to the hope that he simply wanted to destroy his image in her eyes. He, however, chuckled under his breath, folding his hands behind him, turning his head curiously.

"I think many people can confirm that they heard disturbing noises from the rooms they locked themselves in during the balls in London. Though I assume an innocent creature such as yourself might not know what that means or what it entails." He said softly, and she felt a single, solitary tear of cruel disappointment and pain run down her cheek.

She didn't know what to do with what she was feeling, so she just turned tense and headed for home, heedless of her sisters' calls.

When she heard someone following her, she sped up her stride, not turning around, afraid of who she would see.

"Miss Baratheon. Wait." She heard Mr Targaryen's concerned voice behind her as he tried to level with her step, but she moved away from him immediately when he tried to come closer.

"Did he bother you again? Did he say something inappropriate?" He asked, grabbing her slightly by her arm, wanting to stop her, she however broke away from him aggressively, pushing him back.

"Did he say something inappropriate? A lot of things. About you, sir." She said angrily and they both stopped, breathing loudly, his gaze expressing consternation.

"He told me that you have a good friend in London." She whispered, swallowing loudly, tears one after another running down her cheeks. She looked away, glancing at the fields around them, shrugging her shoulders in a gesture of helplessness.

"It's in the past." She heard his terrified, throaty voice; she knew he was afraid of what she would do with this information. "I have nothing in common with her anymore."

She involuntarily laughed despairingly through her tears at his words, looking at him with raised eyebrows, he was paler than usual, looking at her pleadingly, his lips parted slightly.

"Do you think that is enough? That you would say that you no longer have anything in common with her? What would you say if you found out that Cassandra, Ellyn or Floris had a lover before you came here, on top of that, one you would have the pleasure of seeing among society after marrying them? I will tell you what you would say, sir." She said in a shaky voice, stepping closer to him, he pressed his lips together, swallowing with difficulty, she had the feeling that he himself was on the verge of crying for some reason.

"You would say that they are ungodly harlots unworthy of one look from you, unworthy to have any gentleman as their husband. You would say so because that is the way this world is made, that a man can take what he wants and a woman must wait until someone finally desires her, but in a way that does not deprive her of her honour and her dignity. However, you will not direct this same contempt towards yourself, you will not say that you are ashamed, you will not admit to my father that you are unworthy of his daughters, you will only stand proudly and say that this is the past. A past that would destroy any woman in your position!" She shouted desperately in his face, sobbing loudly, she heard a quiet moan leave his lips at her words, a single tear ran down his cheek.

"I am ashamed." He mumbled in a trembling voice, as if only now the weight of his actions and their significance had overwhelmed him, and she shook her head, distraught and disappointed.

"It's not enough." She mumbled with difficulty and turned, his angry, distraught voice reaching her from behind her.

"Were you as harsh towards your father?"

She felt something inside her freeze, she stopped and turned her pale face towards him. Only seeing the look on her face did his eye widen in horror, understanding what a mistake he had made, how he had misjudged the situation.

"What?" She choked out with a groan of despair, looking at him with her mouth wide open.

He swallowed loudly and shook his head, thus showing her that he would say nothing more, that he was wrong, that if he could he would take back his words spoken in despair and anger.

"What are you talking about, sir?" She asked him louder, feeling the anger rising within her, her heart pounding like mad.

"You should not hear this from me." He mumbled, lowering his gaze, another tear running down his face, his lower lip trembling, his healthy eye open wide.

"BUT I HEARD IT FROM YOU!" She cried out in a breaking voice, putting her hand over her mouth, trying to calm the convulsions of sobs that were breaking out of her throat.

He looked at her, trembling as she did, looking at her pleadingly, shaking his head.

She turned and simply ran away from him and from what she had found out.

Her father moved after her, seeing the state in which she ran into their house, followed her upstairs and knocked on her door. She locked herself up, sitting down by her bed and crying loudly.

"My darling, what has happened? Did someone hurt you? Please, open the door." He said pleadingly, knocking loudly, and she hid her head between her knees and cried further.

Her father had a lover.

A lover he certainly hid from them in London.

How could he?

Did he no longer love her mother?

Had he forgotten her?

She didn't leave her room all day, refusing to eat or drink. She refused to speak or see anyone, sad and depressed, not even Royce's voice compelled her to open up to him.

Late in the evening, lying in her bed in only her nightgown, she heard the sound of a door opening, someone's footsteps and rustling. She glanced behind her and saw that there was a letter lying on the floor beneath her door.

She swallowed loudly, guessing who the sender was, and wondered for a moment whether she should just tear it up and throw it away. However, she decided after a moment that everyone had a right to defend themselves.

She rose from the bedclothes and walked over to the envelope, grasping it in her hands, returning to her bed with it.

It was not sealed.

She opened it and took out two sheets of paper fully filled with small, masculine writing.

Miss Baratheon, I cannot describe how ashamed I feel after what happened today during our walk. I don't even know where to begin, so I will perhaps start with Colonel Strong's words about me, which, sadly, I must admit, are true. Over the past two years I have in fact had an intimate relationship with Countess Rivers. I write about this, as I have already mentioned, with great shame and regret, as this relationship on my part was an expression of my boyish helplessness. In my position, with my appearance, of which you are well aware, the interest of a beautiful and mature woman was something I thought I might never experience again in my life. This, of course, is no excuse, however, now, writing to you, I understand that there were no deep feelings behind my action, but the need to be desired, just as a child desires to be seen and noticed by a parent. I now recognise the deplorable nature of my actions and am ashamed of them, but what happened is irretrievably lost, as is my reputation in your eyes. I also want to make it clear that I deserve to be reprimanded as cruelly as you have inflicted on me and, in a way, I appreciate your honesty and directness, characteristic of a friend, which I am afraid you no longer consider me to be, all the more so after what I said about your father. Here, I must admit, I have nothing to defend myself. My behaviour and my words were shameful and disrespectful, all the more so when you look at the care with which your father welcomed me into your home despite the fact that I had come here to, let us be honest, beg for his daughters' dowry. However, I want to ask you not to lose your good opinion of him. I firmly believe that his decisions are dictated by not destroying your domestic tranquillity and the memory of your mother with another woman who would take her place at his side. After his words, which he has shared with me, I believe that in his eyes there is no one who can fill the void in his heart after his loss of her, and that his behaviour, understandably causing you pain and bringing you disappointment, is due to his loneliness. I have never before met a parent who loved his children so dearly. Even I, as a complete stranger to him, must admit with shame that Mr Baratheon pays more attention to me than my own father. You asked me some time ago if I missed London, but I was ashamed to answer you at the time that I did not. I only miss my mother and my younger brother, with whom, thank God, I maintain regular correspondence. To conclude this letter and my pathetic tale, I would like to apologise to you and assure you that I will understand if you tell your father about everything, I am ready to give him all the necessary explanations for my disgraceful behaviour. I also want to assure you that this is indeed the end of that unfortunate relationship for me and I have no intention of continuing it. I only dare to ask you to pray to God for my broken, empty soul. With sincerest affection Aemond

She read his letter several times, choking on her own tears, pressing her lips together to keep from making a sound. She felt hundreds of feelings at once, joy, grief, sympathy, sadness, relief, pain.

Reading his words, she felt as if he had poured his thoughts onto paper for her, let her into his mind, which had remained closed to others, laid himself bare to her.

Although she still felt disappointed, knowing that he was willing to open up to her, that he explained everything to her and apologised made her feel a little better.

She thought that he was now sitting alone in his room, broken and frightened, thinking for certain that she hated him, where in fact he had never seemed closer to her before.

She rose slowly, turning the key quietly in the lock and opened the door, looking around. She closed it behind her and ran barefoot to the other side of the corridor, careful of the bits of wooden floor that always creaked, and knocked on his door, wrapped only in her thin shawl.

She heard Vhagar rise from her place, and then someone's quiet footsteps. The door opened and he was standing in front of her in only his chemise and black trousers with braces, looking at her in disbelief, she noticed that his long white hair was already loose and she felt ashamed at the sight. She swallowed quietly, looking at him uncertainly.

"May I come in?" She whispered and he nodded quickly, leaning out and looking around to see if anyone had seen them, closing the door behind her.

Vhagar ran up to her merrily wagging her tail, wanting to start barking with happiness, but they both hushed her, Mr Targaryen ordering her to lie back in her place by his bed.

They looked at each other uncertainly at last, an uncomfortable, heavy silence around them.

"Have you read my letter?" He asked uncertainly, placing his hands behind him, looking to the side, moving his lower lip anxiously in an involuntary, nervous gesture.

"Yes." She whispered quietly, looking at her fingers, then back at him.

"I won't tell my father about anything." She added, and he looked at her with disbelief mixed with relief. He swallowed loudly, letting the air out quietly.

"Thank you."

They looked at each other in a silence even more awkward than before, having been in private with each other in a closed room for too long to consider it consistent with good manners, even more so when she was in such a negligee.

For some reason, however, she didn't want to leave.

She felt an overpowering shame and warmth at the thought that she wanted to stay by his side.

"If you wish, I can stay by your side tonight so you don't feel so lonely." She whispered quietly and it was only when these words, in her mind innocent, left her lips that she realised how ambiguous they sounded.

She saw his pupil dilate; he was looking at her with his lips slightly parted. She was sure he would answer her that it was inappropriate and thank her for her concern, but he said something completely different.

"If anyone catches us, you'll have to become my wife. You know that, don't you?" He asked lowly, and she felt heat between her thighs and some kind of pulsing, her cheeks flushed.

She thought he was just teasing her, that he would never propose to her.

"Hmm." He hummed under his breath as he approached her slowly, extending his hand to her. She grasped it tentatively and he led her to his bed.

She could feel her heart pounding, how inappropriate what they were doing now was, but all she wanted was to be by his side on this difficult day, she herself not wanting to be alone after what she had found out, which she could not share with any one else.

She lay down on the edge of the bed, sliding under the sheets, lying with her back to him, looking towards the window, seeing the clear shape of a crescent moon and stars.

She swallowed hard and shuddered when she felt him lay down behind her.

He did not touch her.

His warm breath was wrapping around her neck, making goosebumps run down her spine, something inside her clenched pleasurably again, she felt her whole body tense up.

What was happening to her?

She pressed her fingers against the fabric of the sheet, clenching her thighs and rubbing them against each other. She drew in the air with difficulty when she felt how her movement made a wave of pleasure pass through her, some kind of sticky wetness running down her skin.

She wasn't sure if she would be able to fall asleep.

She shuddered when she heard him twist behind her and grunt quietly, sensing for certain that she was awake.

"Can't you fall asleep?" He whispered, though they both knew that those few minutes were too soon for either of them to fall asleep, even more so in these conditions.

She swallowed quietly, gathering her courage and turned onto her back, turning her gaze towards him, surprise painted on his face that she dared to move so close to him.

"I think I should go back to my room after all." She said quietly, softly, fiddling with the string from the tying of her nightgown in a nervous gesture. She saw him looking at her intensely and swallowed hard before he managed to force anything out.

"Why?" He asked uncertainly and she felt heat spreading through her body, she had the feeling that her cheeks were burning. They stared at each other for a moment, both breathing heavily through their noses, as if they had just run somewhere very fast.

"I feel uncomfortable. I'm tense and I'm warm." She said embarrassedly, lowering her gaze, clenching her thighs once more, feeling something inside her pulse again as she said this.

She saw his gaze escape greedily downwards feeling her move under the sheets, saw his lips part slightly. When his gaze returned to her face he was looking at her in a way that sent shivers through her.

It seemed to her that his iris was completely black.

"Where?" He asked in a strangely determined, sharp manner in which there was no aggression but some kind of excitement, through which her chest rose and fell rapidly, she clenched her fingers in her palms, unable to look away from him.

"What do you ask, sir?" She muttered in a trembling, uncertain voice, feeling as if her heart would leap out of her chest, the place between her thighs pulsed and clenched, strangely hot and wet, she even felt a kind of discomfort and pain.

He was silent for a long moment, just looking at her as if he was fighting with himself, knowing that what he would say would be less than appropriate.

"I'm asking about where you feel tense." He whispered, squeezing his lower lip involuntarily as he said the words, they stared at each other with wide eyes, no longer breathing through their noses, but through their mouths.

She furrowed her eyebrows as if in worry, blinking rapidly, the feeling between her legs seemed unbearable to her. She thought she shouldn't tell him about it, but some strange feminine conviction told her that he knew perfectly well what was happening to her and that was what excited him the most.

She realised that she had never known such a feeling before, it was only his closeness that affected her in this way. However, she didn't know why this was happening or what to do to feel relief.

"Down. It's like a tickle." She mumbled out with difficulty, embarrassed, lowering her gaze as she felt a shudder run through his whole body, fingers of his hand that lay next to her began to rub against each other in an anxious, impatient gesture.

"It tickles you very much?" He asked in a strangely weak, quiet, hoarse voice from which a shiver went through her whole body, her thighs clenched tightly, she could feel the wet stain on her nightgown under her buttocks. She only nodded her head, helpless, feeling that she was about to cry.

She heard him swallow his saliva loudly.

"Do you want me to show you how you can relieve yourself?" He asked in a trembling voice so quietly that she barely heard him. She drew in the air loudly, not daring to look at him, she was so hot she could feel droplets of sweat running down her back, her heart was beating so hard she had a feeling he could hear it.

"How would you show it to me?" She choked out with difficulty, heard the quiet click of his tongue as he licked his lips, not taking his eyes off her.

"I would direct your hand. There's nothing to be ashamed of. It's natural." He whispered, as if trying to convince not only her but himself that this inopportune, ambiguous conversation should be happening at all.

She breathed loudly through her mouth, undecided, wanting it and at the same time wondering if she should just run away. She recognised, however, that even if she ran away the feeling between her thighs would remain and she wouldn't know what to do with it. She thought that if he was merely to guide her own hand, to help her like a true friend, then perhaps there was nothing wrong with that.

She nodded her head.

She heard him sigh loudly in disbelief, his large, trembling hand lifted and placed on her own. For a moment he just stroked her warm skin with his thumb, as if to reassure her.

"If you feel uncomfortable, say so, and we'll stop. All right?" He asked in a trembling, low voice, moving a little closer to her, and she just nodded quickly, unable to look at his face, all red with embarrassment.

She had the feeling that her mind was foggy, that she wasn't thinking soberly, the only thing she was able to focus on was that unbearable tension between her legs.

They both drew in a loud breath as his hand slid down a little, pulling the material of her nightdress up so that her naked body was touching the bedclothes. She could feel it, however they were both covered by the duvet and could not see anything, so she did not feel completely exposed and tried to reassure herself with this thought.

She swallowed loudly when she felt his hand on hers again, this time he lifted her with a soft, respectful movement and together with his he slid her lower and lower until she reached her place of suffering.

As they both felt how hot and wet she was they let out a pathetic, high-pitched sigh on the verge of a moan, she felt his quick breath on her face, involuntarily his nose pressed against her hot cheek, and she pressed her temple against his forehead, seeking protection, help, safety.

Neither of them said anything when his fingers sank her hand into her own juices, intertwined their fingertips so that his skin ran over them too, a low moan came from his throat, as if what they were doing was causing him as much pain as it was causing her.

She began to breathe faster and faster and closed her eyes as, with each, circular movement he forced her fingers to make, trailing them around the spot from which the waves of pleasure were passing through her, her insides pulsed more and more, her heart pounding so fast she felt like she was about to die.

It wasn't until he hushed her, running his nose along her cheek that she realised that a quiet, helpless whines had begun to come from her mouth, her thighs spread apart in some natural reflex, her body arching backwards and pushing against their entwined hands with every shiver of heat that flowed through her as he teased her pearl again.

"− I − I can't −" She mewled helplessly as she felt the tickling between her legs become unbearable, she felt like her whole body was on fire, her hips began to move to the movements of their fingers, searching for any source of more intense rubbing. She moaned in surprise when she felt his lips on her neck, placing shameless, slow, wet kisses on her skin.

"− just a moment longer − hold on − shhh −" He whispered and she felt his words, the touch of his lips between her legs, felt something approaching, that something was about to happen to her, she pulled her hand away from his and pressed his fingers to her womanhood, wanting to feel him, him, him.

They both stifled surprised, excited moans, his kisses on her neck increasingly pawsome, he sucked her skin between his lips, leaving sticky, wet marks on her, she held her hand on his wrist as his fingers massaged her with a sure, intense motion with the loud, embarrassing click of her moisture.

"− please − oh, God −" Broke out from her mouth like a plea as she furrowed her eyebrows, feeling something like pain from the tension, and then suddenly came complete relief and relaxation, a hot, tickling pleasure she hadn't known before in her life spilled over her insides, shaking her body, her mouth open wide in a sigh of relief and bliss, his fingers carried her through her elation with slow, steady movements.

"− that's it −" He praised her, kissing her higher and higher, his lips clinging to her jaw just below her ear. "− that's it −"

She felt as if she had suddenly become lighter, her body soft and numb, her walls pulsing pleasurably, slower and slower, until her breathing had calmed completely. She felt his hand from between her thighs lay on her womb.

She opened her eyes, as if suddenly brought back to reality, hearing only his loud, anxious breathing against her ear. She turned her face towards him and felt herself shudder when she met his gaze so close to hers, something in his eyes that made her hot.

Desire.

Before she had time to say or do anything his mouth was already on hers, throbbing, thirsty, swollen, wet, her fingers tightening on his hair, letting him slide his tongue deep down her throat.

She had a feeling that this one kiss was more lewd than anything they had done a moment ago.

They pulled away from each other, looking at each other in horror, as if only now realising what had happened between them. Only then did what they had known all along come over them like a blade cut.

Overpowering shame.

She pulled herself together suddenly, adjusting her chemise, breathing hard, she saw him rise quickly to sit down, looking at her with parted lips, terrified.

He was afraid she would tell her father about what they had done.

"I will not tell anyone about this. Please, forgive me, sir −"

"− I −" He began, but she would not let him finish.

"− but I'm afraid we can no longer be friends." She mumbled out and literally ran out of his room with tears in her eyes, opening her door and locking it behind her, turning it with the key.

She laid down on her bed and began to cry loudly, terrified and shaken, hugging her face into her pillow, only now understanding what she had done and what consequences it might have.

She felt like a sinner and a harlot, a shameless empty girl from whom God and the whole world would now turn away.

She knew that from now on she would be cursed and stigmatised.

That if anyone found out about this, no self-respecting man would ever want her as his wife.

_____

Taglist 1

@its-actually-minicika @notnormalthings-blog @nikstrange @zenka69 @bellaisasleep @k-y-r-a-1 @g-cf2020 @melsunshine @opheliaas-stuff @chainsawsangel @iiamthehybrid @tinykryptonitewerewolf @namoreno @malfoytargaryen @qyburnsghost @aemondsdelight @persephonerinyes @fan-goddess

[sailorrhansol]

One in the Grave | 01

❀ Pairing: Vampire!Vernon x Dhampir!Reader (f) 

❀ Summary: Immortal problems require immortal solutions, but you never expected the unlikely help from a vampire lord and the destruction that might come with it. 

❀ Series Word Count: 8,143

❀ Genre: Supernatural, Dystopian,

❀ Type: Unlikely allies to lovers, slow burn, angst, eventual smut

❀ Rating: 18+ Minors are strictly prohibited from engaging in and reading this content. It contains explicit content and any minors discovered reading or engaging with this work will be blocked immediately.

❀ Chapter Warnings: My baby girl has PTSD!!! Very much forgetting where she is sometimes and thinking she’s back in The Bad Place, mentions of past torture and abuse (recalls someone breaking her bones over and over), mentions of mind control/compulsion, mentions of murder, gross ass vampires being killed grossly and sometimes the word choice is icky like did I need to use the word sinew? No but I did. A lot of references to Trauma and Being Traumatized, Jeonghan is funny but also diabolical about said Trauma, lots of blood because this is a vampire fic, fight scenes that idk if they make sense, mentions of disease, like hints of mentions of there being like DiRtY bLoOd classism what else… reader hates herself and it’s Saur Obvious. Reader sort of has an accidental terminator setting when she gets too into fighting and goes Sicko Mode and punches through a vampires chest to rip its heart out idk thats kind graphic

❀ A/N: This chapter took me forever to write because I re-wrote sections so many times, but I'm finally happy with where I ended up. I deviated from my outline almost immediately, but this beginning to this story feels more natural than the original! I am so excited to be writing this and to take you on a very dramatic journey through this vampiric, dystopian world.

A/N 2: Huge thank you to the best beta team a girlie can ask for in @daechwitatamic and @eoieopda because without them, so much of this would not make sense.

❀ Disclaimer: Disclaimer: All members of Seventeen are faces and name claims for stories. Any scenarios or representations of the people and places mentioned in works are not representative of real-life scenarios. Moreover, none of my works accurately reflect, represent or take a stance on the nuances of Korean culture, cities, people etc. Seventeen members are not Seventeen culturally, intellectually, physically, or representationally in my stories, and should be considered name and face stand-ins for made up characters.

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I need not fear the dark. I need not fear the pain. In the dark, I was made. In pain, I become anew. I am the Grim. 

Darkness seeps from the damp walls next to you. The air is foul and wet, leaving a sour taste on your tongue, nearly cloying the back of your throat. There’s no part of the Undercity that isn’t dripping with rot. It clings to your boots as you slip through the tunnels, settling on your skin as you turn a corner.

Water drips in several of the tunnels. You can hear the soft splash as the drops hit the puddles, the only sound in the deep dark. You frown - you know you’re not alone. The underground paths leading to the heart of the Undercity might seem empty, but they are never what they appear to be.

On instinct, you take a left. Even in the dark, you can see the general lay of the land, a complex network of abandoned, vampire-made passageways under the city of Black Harbor. The tunnels go farther than the city walls, stretching beneath the human districts in the Tombstones and ending at random stop points in the Wilds. 

Another left and you’ll be heading east toward the coast. Even the old vampires would lose their way in the tunnels - everything looks and smells the same. You’re not one of them, though, and you’ve learned these tunnels by heart. Could navigate them even without your sharp vision. 

A wet step catches your attention. You stop and crouch low, looking ahead. Dark shapes blend together. Even with enhanced vision, you can only see so far in the Undercity, the general darkness blending together. 

But you can hear. 

Another wet step catches your ears. You close your eyes and focus on the sounds. The steady drip drip drip of the pipes brackets the sound of a soft hissing - not hissing. Sniffing. Scenting.

Without wind in the Undercity, you don’t have to worry about the breeze carrying your scent. Still, the things lurking in the dark, especially recently, are better at smelling the difference between what’s alive and what’s dead. You straddle the line between, but you’re alive enough. 

Slowly, your hand reaches up behind your back, grasping the leather handle of your blade. The scenting stops and you hear a soft grinding sound, like teeth gnashing, followed by slow steps. You pull your blade out the rest of the way, twisting it in your hand and taking a slow, deep breath. 

The steps stop for a moment - and then something is running, the wet slap deafening in the silence of the tunnels. You poise yourself, leaning a little forward, ready to throw your weight into your strike. You’ll need to be fast.

Out of the darkness, a loping humanoid shape appears. The Rabid looks more or less human from a distance, but as it gets closer, you see everything wrong with it: crimson eyes as a result of broken blood vessels, bulging veins as a result of swelling before the host died, rows of serrated teeth, and twitching, dislocated limbs.

Nothing about a Rabid is human. Nothing about a Rabid is really a vampire, either. Though they’re a vampire species, they lack the fundamental ability for cognitive function, and are thus only driven by the need to feed insatiably. 

Human-shaped but twisted by post-mortem metamorphosis, whatever person they used to be before Red Fever infected them and killed them is gone. In the place of what used to be a person is a genderless cryptid with muscular, half-rotted bodies and nails like talons. They’re more bedtime story monsters than they are anything else, and you’re running around their home in the dark. 

The feral hunger works in your favor. The Rabid misses on its first swing as you duck, throwing your weight into your thrust as you plunge the sword through the creature’s abdomen. It screams, striking at you again but you’re already moving, keeping your momentum going as you pull the weapon with you, the sucking sound of the blade pulling from its stomach sickening. 

It isn’t the worst sound you’ve heard, and you don’t let it stop you as you spin on your heel, slicing wickedly at the Rabid’s head. It ducks, though, sensing the attack as it scrambles away from you, curling inward as it bleeds from the middle. The wound won’t kill it, but making them bleed is key.

Blood is imperative to a Rabid’s strength. The more blood they’ve ingested recently, the stronger they are. Severing limbs and damaging the heart that pumps blood through the system - or removing it entirely - is important. 

The creature turns to face you again. You spin the blade, point it toward the Rabid and take a wide stance, one foot forward and one foot backward with your weight centered on the back foot. Any other foe with a thinking, calculating sense would try to assess. The Rabid does not, driving forward again with a snarl, jaw extending beyond a normal human’s with the intention to bite down wherever it can. 

Spinning to the side, your sword arm follows your momentum, coming down hard on the back of the Rabid’s neck. You hear the crack of bone as it cuts, your sword carving easily. The head separates from the rest of the body, thudding against the wet floor of the tunnel. 

There’s no time to worry about burning the body yet. More hisses slither up the tunnel and the wet slap of feet rushing toward you is warning enough that other Rabids have been alerted. 

That’s fine. You step away from the slain beast and face the source of the noise, taking your stance again, muscles coiled, heart pounding as your blood rushes. You feel the adrenaline mount, hitting your system like a high, pulse throbbing, focus narrowing.  

Kill. Kill. 

The impulse is fleeting, there and gone again. You grimace and swallow down the instinct to fall into a blind rage. Using bloodlust to fuel your fighting is a side effect of how you’ve been conditioned and taught - one you’re trying to get rid of. It might make you fight better, but it’s hard to escape the undercurrent of the frenzy once you let it pull you under. 

They charge, hissing and snarling as they go. There is nothing planned or in sync about their attack. Rabids may sometimes linger near one another or nest together, but there’s no pack mentality, no strategy to the way they move. It makes it easy to take them down, but easy to get overwhelmed if there are too many.

Three isn’t bad. You cut through them with concise, sharp movements. Fighting Rabids isn’t like fighting sentient creatures. It’s not a dance, but there is a chopping rhythm to it, a hack and step that feels like a pattern as you go. 

Step step slash. Step step stab. Step step duck. Step step slash. 

When it’s done, sweat beads at the back of your neck. Silence falls in the damp passageways of the Undercity. You stand, hardly winded with your sword dripping in ichor, looking down both of the hallways that bracket you on either side. 

Nothing else comes. 

You flick your sword hand, freeing it from some of the gore before digging into one of your pockets, fishing out a small bottle and cloth. Carefully you uncap the bottle and tilt your blade point down, pommel near your face. You squeeze liquid out over the metal, hearing the hiss as the antiseptic eats at the foul blood on the weapon before stoppering and putting it back in your pocket. 

With delicacy, you wipe the cloth on the flat of the blade, cleaning it. Sheathing the blade, you reach into another pocket, pulling out a small tablet of firestarter. You snap it in half and toss it onto the pile of bodies, flames catching immediately. 

The sudden light makes your vision flash white for just a moment before it adjusts. The darkness hovers at the edge of the light like a hungry, creeping thing. In the firelight, you see the dispatched bodies of the dead, once victims to the virus that killed them and turned them into the mindless, frenzied creatures that lurk in the Undercity tunnels and the Wilds. 

Not even the rats come down here. At least, the uninfected ones don’t. Even a rat makes a good meal for the feral creatures of the Undercity. 

There was a time when you would have fed on the rats in the Undercity. A time you were so hungry, you gave into your primal instincts. A time when you were so hungry for love and approval from your master that you would do - and did - anything for it. Giving into bloodlust when fighting and becoming a mindless tool was easy, back then. 

Fresh air greets you as you climb the rusty, iron ladder to the surface. It’s cold outside, autumn wind stinging the sweat on the back of your neck when you finally pull yourself out of the hole and flip the heavy, metal lid over one of many entrances to the Undercity. 

An empty quad of an abandoned school surrounds you, crumbling brick buildings empty save for rotted furniture and dust, walls blown in and cracked from some skirmish during The Fall. The schoolyard grass is overgrown, brushing against your hips as you begin your routine, movements down to a science. 

First, you pull the bottle of antiseptic out of your pocket and clean your hands before pulling out cleaning supplies from your pack. Then, you pull off all your clothes, cool air making the hair on your arms stand on end. The cold gets worse when you begin to wipe your skin with sticky antiseptic pads, tossing them into a pile on the ground as you go. 

The routine is robotic. Disinfect. Take off your clothes. Disinfect. Put on new clothes. Disinfect. Put old clothes in a bio-safe bag to clean them later and burn the wipes. 

Getting the virus isn’t likely for you, but you never take the chance, especially living in the human districts on the outskirts of the city. Red Fever hasn’t plagued the mortal population in a few years, but a single outbreak could make the community collapse.

And the vampires in the city wouldn’t help. They never do, even as those living under their jurisdiction get picked off by Rabids, vampires undermining the law, and other things lurking in the ruins just outside of Black Harbor. 

No blood tax, no protection.

The sentiment makes you grit your teeth as you watch the antiseptic wipes turn to flames, then to embers, then to ashes. You can smell the fumes fade with the wind, along with the sound of a soft footfall. 

You wheel around, unsheathing the weapon at your feet as you spin, pointing the tip of your blade at the figure behind you. Jeonghan seems unphased, looking down the sharp edge of the sword with a lopsided grin. 

“Sloppy, little sister.”

“Oh fuck you.” Your muscles unclench and you spin the weapon, sheathing it. Jeonghan’s hands are in his pockets, eyes twinkling as he watches you. “What do you want?” 

“I can’t check up on you?”

“Not usually, no.”

Jeonghan doesn’t check up on you. At least, not in the way you imagine normal siblings might. Jeonghan isn’t a normal sibling, though. He’s hardly a sibling at all - you share a bloodsire, not a biological parent. Blood kin would be a more apt term for the familial bond between you.

Still, when you think back on your life, Jeonghan has always been there. Fills the corners of your memories as a steady hand, a vicious thorn in your side, a confidant, an enemy, a rival.

“You like visiting the Undercity these days. Perhaps I, too, am nostalgic.” 

“I don’t visit for nostalgia,” you snap. You strap the sword belt across your chest, the weight against your back a great comfort. “Don’t goad me.” 

Jeonghan looks the same as he always has in the last hundred or some odd years. He’d stopped aging - as most dhampirs do - sometime in his thirties. His round, youthful face, and gentle eyes hide the demon within. Hundreds have fallen prey to Jeonghan’s saccharine smile and false, gentle disposition. 

Wolf in lamb’s clothing. 

“You’re no fun. Junhui is so much nicer to me when I visit.”

“Jun is nice to everyone.” 

“Maybe you should take notes. Your neighbors might like you more.” You pause, looking at him with narrowed eyes. His grin spreads. “You think I don’t know where you live?” 

“What do you want?” 

“I need your assistance.” 

“Doubt it.”

“Not everyone is a monster-slaying machine like you are. Some of us actually take the time to enjoy our freedom.”

Freedom. 

A word you don’t quite understand. You might have gotten rid of the master holding your leash, but her influence is still heavy enough to control everything you do, even now. Freedom doesn’t exist for someone like you. Not really. You’re shackled by your inability to make your own choices, and the only things you’re good at are the things Lilith made you learn. 

I need not fear the dark. I need not fear the pain. In the dark, I was made. In pain, I become anew. I am the Grim. 

Most of your life has been spent in the service of killing your blood mother’s enemies, helping her carve her empire out in the world left over from the destruction of humankind. You’d also helped defeat her, but the absolution of ridding the world of her is not nearly enough to wipe out the long list of foul deeds to your name.

“You don’t have to help me.” Jeonghan’s voice brings you out of your thoughts. “However, I do not like the idea of going into a Rabid nest alone.”

“You want my help with a Rabid nest? Why?”

“There’s something inside of the building that a client needs. Some Rabids happen to have made it a home.”

You study him. He’s dressed in all-black dress pants and a black button-up, an equally black blazer thrown on over it. Jeonghan looks the part of casual elegance, a fine piece of art that is out of place in the middle of the abandoned bones of what was once a school, you think.

“Why me?”

“I need a weapon.” His mouth quirks. “Plus, I like you.”

“No, you don’t.” 

“I do! You’re my favorite sister.” 

“I’m the only sister you have that’s still alive.”

He holds up a finger to present his counterargument. “I killed our last sister but I haven’t killed you. If that’s not favoritism, what is?” 

You walk past him, heading toward Black Harbor. “I want half of whatever you’re being paid.”

“Thirty percent.” 

“Thirty-five.”

“Deal.”

Jeonghan catches up to you easily, hands still tucked into his pockets in that casual way of his. His hair is a little longer than you remember, tucked behind his ears as he smiles, happy to have you onboard for whatever it is he’s roped you into. 

It isn’t the first time he’s sought you out for assistance - especially for killing - and you know it won’t be the last. Of all your blood kin, Jeonghan is the one who keeps in contact with you the most. Junhui might be sweet and fond of you, as is his way, but you’re too volatile for him, made to be loved at a distance. 

None of your siblings love you, though. You don’t think any of the children of Lilith have the ability to love. It was bred out of you early and punished if it tried to crawl back in. Even loyalty to anyone but your master in the Undercity was punished. 

Neither of you asks how the other is. Jeonghan won’t answer you honestly and you suspect he knows exactly how you’ve been. The not-so-retired spymaster has a network of little spiders in his web, scrambling back and forth to feed him information on any number of people. 

You wonder if this is what freedom means to him. After living his entire life in the service of your shared sire, Jeonghan seems to have mastered his destiny, using the skills he was taught to climb the ranks among the vampires of Black Harbor and sit pretty. Still, in a way, he’s reverted to old habits just like you have, buying and selling secrets to keep himself safe like he did in the old days.

Maybe freedom is an illusion. 

The blasted landscape around you doesn’t change as you walk eastward. Nameless buildings and road structures spread out in either direction. Cracked, broken, and decayed is an apt description for most things outside of the city, especially the closer you get to the Wild. 

You turn northeast, heading toward the bridge that leads into Black Harbor. It’s roughly an hour's walk directly into the city from the abandoned schoolyard where you entered the Undercity. It isn’t the only entrance to the underground network, nor is it the closest, but it’s the most reliable and you don’t have to worry about anyone sneaking up on you.

Unless they’re a former resident themself, which are in rare numbers. 

“Where is this Rabid nest?” you ask as the night deepens. The cool air kisses the back of your neck and lifts strands of Jeonghan’s inky hair. Above, the moon is swollen and momentarily hidden behind thick clouds. 

“The old museum right outside the West End.” 

You glance sideways at him. “That museum was an epicenter of outbreaks. No wonder there’s a nest.” 

“Good thing we’re immune then, hmm?”

“We’re not immune, Jeonghan. Resistant and immune aren’t the same thing.” 

He shrugs his shoulders. “I survived the disease for two hundred years in the Undercity. And you have your nice little disinfectant wipes, don’t you?” Jeonghan pauses and looks you up and down, pointing at the ashes of your burnt pile. “Why do you do that, by the way? To protect that fragile little human community you live in?”

Yes, you want to say. Instead, you say nothing at all. Jeonghan might be half-human like you, but he has little empathy for them in general, unlike you. He tends to align himself with whoever he benefits the most from, and the humans have certainly never been in a position to help him out. 

Not that they would. Most humans don’t assign a difference between vampires and dhampir. Your human neighbors might tolerate your presence, but it’s just that - tolerance. As soon as they feel threatened by you, they’ll hire someone to try and kill you, as is the way in the Tombstones.  

Jeonghan scoffs. “Glad to see you haven’t lost your sentiment.”

“Rather auspicious for you, wouldn’t you say brother?” 

He grins but doesn’t respond, tilting his head up toward the sky. 

Gravel crunches beneath your feet. You keep a sweeping gaze on the quiet world around you. Crickets quiet as you pass, waiting until you’re out of range before taking up their song again. When the clouds move away from the moon, the world turns grey. 

Nothing disturbs the two of you on your walk. You spot a feral pack of cats with sharp eyes watching from the long grass. You can sense them assessing you, deciding if you’re prey or predator. They remain in their clutch of darkness. Predator, then. 

Jeonghan doesn’t strike up a conversation again as you walk. Instead of trying to get him to divulge details, you go through what you know about the old museum near the West End. It was a hot spot for breakouts early on during The Fall, and after Black Harbor became a city-state, it remained an issue under the jurisdiction of the Chwe family for years. 

A center of resources, it had been targeted early on as humans tried to build communities and safeholds in a rapidly apocalyptic world. The museum has the space to house the  resources, and protection that people brought to form a community, turning it into a quarantine zone at the very start of The Fall. Any building large enough to house a community center had people flocking to build safe zones, eager to recommission the square footage and walls into quarantined housing and living centers.

And they fell just as quickly. 

Disease has no consideration for isolation, though. Particularly one as contagious and debilitating as Red Fever. In most cases, people killed themselves once they realized they had the fever. Suffering through the hemorrhaging and the madness wasn’t worth the small chance of turning into a vampire post-death, and carriers were too dangerous to be kept alive anyway. Accusations of sickness were as deadly as catching the virus itself. 

The museum still remained a problem even after the collapse of its original community. Humans like to stick to what they know, rebuilding on old ground and trying to salvage what was left before them. Perhaps the human communities there could have flourished if the guard in the West End did anything to keep the Rabids and the rogue bands of vampires from decimating them, but anything outside of the official city limits of Black Harbor was only under the jurisdiction of the Chwe family, not the protection.

Those who wanted to be saved had to pay the blood tax, and most people weren’t even eligible for the blood tax, as picky as the vampires were with their qualifications and standards for clean, safe blood. 

Salt tinged the air as you approached the official demarcation line of the Tombstones. It wasn’t an official name, but there was no point in giving it a real name - it was expendable ground, as far as Lord Chwe and his family were concerned. 

Old, rusted piles of metal were pushed to the edges of the pavement to make way for the few operational vehicles that dared to travel outside of the city, creating the illusion that the road was lined by dead, decayed beetles. 

Sounds from the city drift over the water and toward you. Lights in the distance glitter over the wall, skyscrapers bright against the dark swath of sky. The dichotomy between visions of human destruction and vampiric ascension always strikes you, the discordant images the perfect depiction of your two worlds.

“Why don’t you visit Jun anymore?” Jeonghan’s question catches you off guard. You tear your eyes away from the shimmering city to look at the dhampir next to you. His hands are still tucked in his pocket, the picture of cool and casual. 

“I don’t think he wants me to.” 

Jeonghan frowns. “That seems unlikely.” 

“I assumed I reminded him too much of ho- of the Undercity.” 

“I still think of it as home too, sometimes.” You don’t answer for a moment, unsure where the conversation is leading. Jeonghan is a storm of unpredictability, his desires changing direction with the wind. “Is it because you feel guilty?” 

“You ask a lot of questions for someone who wants my help.”

“I’m in the business of asking questions, little sister. Consider it the desire to see my siblings happy. One seems dead set on never shedding the victimhood of her past and one is too afraid to tell his siblings he’s lonely out of fear of rejection.” 

You ignore the barb. “Good. Loneliness is temporary. He’s better off without me around.”

He makes a sound of disgust. “You were always such a self-righteous wretch. Spare me the I have done evil and should avoid the world speech.” 

“You asked me!” 

“I thought after fifty years you might be less insufferable!” He shoots back, taking his hands out of his pocket to throw them up. “I should have known better. Now come on, if you’re so hellbent on living your life in permanent apology, you can come kill these Rabids for me.”

“I’m insufferable?” 

Irritation shoots through you as Jeonghan speeds up, ignoring your question. The wind is stronger near the coast, ripping at the end of his blazer and lifting his hair. You scowl behind him, fists clenching and aching to punch him in the back of the head.

Jeonghan thinks everything is so easy. You’ve never known him to feel things as trivial as guilt or empathy, able to rationalize his way out of feeling a modicum of responsibility for anything he does. 

So why do you help him? You always find yourself asking the same question every time he appears with a task or to poke at you. The answer, you think, is simple enough: he’s a constant. He was there when you were born, he was there when you were molded, and he was there when you suffered. 

Suffered together. 

Despite the way Jeonghan trivializes your grief, there are few people left in the world who can relate to you. Junhui shares the same past, but you don’t know how to face him. Don’t know how to look the gentlest of your siblings in the eye without feeling like you’re reminding him of everything he’s suffered.

And Jeonghan’s presence is comforting, in a way. The familiarity makes you feel easy, though dealing with him is anything but. 

You don’t know whether he feels the same sense of attachment to you or not. You’re unsure most days whether he sticks his nose in your business for the brief familiarity of it or because he considers you an asset to his growing power. 

The latter is the most likely. 

Wind scatters leaves across the pavement. Ahead, the museum looms like a skeleton bathed grey in the night. Somewhere, metal groans and creaks as it moves in the breeze. It makes you think of a phantom moaning, a shiver sliding down your spine as Jeonghan walks straight for the doors of the building. 

The doors to the museum are shattered. Glass and gravel crack beneath Jeonghan’s feet as he climbs the steps and stops just beyond the entryway, his hands tucked into his pocket as he cranes his neck upward to assess the full scope of the building. 

You pause next to him. You inhale again. You don’t get much of a scent on anything but the ocean air, but it doesn’t mean there’s not something deep in the guts of the building. 

“Well?” you ask, looking at Jeonghan. “Do you know where in this building you need to look? It’s pretty large.” 

“Hall of Human Life.”

“That’s… ironic.”

His grin is beatific. “Shall we?” 

As someone who frequents a variety of abandoned buildings, you’ve always been of the opinion that all empty buildings have the same dead, empty feel to them. You’ve long thought that none was more or less creepy than the others, but now you know you were decidedly incorrect. 

There is something haunting about the museum. Evidence of human life is everywhere as you pass destroyed exhibits on life and science, but also sections you can tell were made for the communities that tried to set up here. 

Sections of the building had been remade to house living quarters and even what appears to be a botanical section. Untended, the plant life has consumed the west end of the building, mostly weeds and unuseful vines stretching their fingers across cracked tiled and concrete. 

Your swordhand flexes, ready to reach behind your back at a moment’s notice. You don’t hear or smell Rabids, but you come across the evidence of them soon enough - scattered bones and human carcasses, rotted blood stains on the floors and steps as you descend deeper into the darkness of the building. 

It’s hard to discern what any of the exhibits used to be. Time and civilization have erased all but the bones of each, leaving you to guess what they are as you pass. You’re about to ask Jeonghan if he has any idea where the Hall of Human Life is when you smell it.

“Blood,” you murmur, hand going to your blade and pulling it silent from the sheath. “East.” 

He glances at you and sniffs. “I don’t smell anything.” 

“You aren’t a trained bloodhound.” 

You’d trust Jeonghan if he were profiling someone and detailing every part of their life, psychology and desires. His skill has always been of a manipulation and information collecting sort, not the hunting and stick-a-knife-in-someone sort. 

He follows you silently, slipping a deadly throwing star from his sleeve. You raise a brow. “I’m surprised you're armed.”

“I’m always armed, little sister.”

The sound of something snapping catches your attention and you hold out your hand, stopping him. Even he knows to obey you here. You listen and hear the sounds of crunching. Something breaking. Chewing, you realize. It is the sound of bones being snapped and the grind of teeth. 

For a second, you’re not in the museum anymore. You’re in a dark room, the snap of bone sharp and loud against your ears. The sensation is worse than the sound, though. You feel the bolt of sharp, uncontrolled pain shoot through your leg from your thigh to your hip. It is agonizing, stopping you from thinking of anything else but the outrageous pulse of pain. 

Your hand shoots to your thigh, feeling the phantom pressure of the foot as it fractures your femur again, the sneered voice telling you to stop your screaming as it steps down again, broken bone stabbing-

Jeonghan’s voice startles you. “You’re not there.”

Glancing to the side, you see Jeonghan watching you. His expression is unreadable, dark eyes pinning you to the place you stand. You realize your hand is hovering over your leg and you swear you feel the ghost of pain from the break. From the sound of the snap. 

You don’t remember Jeonghan being there for that. Lilith had ordered Silas to break your bones over and over again. To make you used to the pain. To rebreak them when they healed. If you were ever captured and tortured, you needed to know pain. It needed to be an old friend, not something that could break you. 

Then again, you’re sure Jeonghan’s been broken too. All of your siblings have known the torture of Silas, the perfect tool of to train Lilith’s children to develop no fear against pain. 

There’s a flicker of kinship with Jeonghan until he mutters, “Experience trauma on your own time. I need you focused.”

Right. You’re here to help him do a job for money, not because you’re spending time together bonding as blood kin. When you really think about it, little adventures full of violence are the way you two often bond, even when you were under the thumb of Lilith. 

Instead of shooting an insult at him, you creep forward, knees slightly bent and ready to spring. He follows you, a lithe shadow as you slip into the darkness.

Blood permeates the air in the underground level of the museum. At the foot of an unlit staircase, you step into a lobby of sorts. There are multiple metal, double doors leading into a room beyond. Over the doorway is a broken sign with missing letters: all man Li. 

You snort and Jeonghan gives you a questioning look. You point toward the letters with your sword and whisper, “All man lie. All men lie.”

“Poetic. I suppose it was once Hall of Human Life.” You nod. “Rather inconvenient.” 

Here, the sounds of multiple mouths chewing on flesh is louder. Wetter. You grimace and hope that the victims were dead long before they were dragged back to be made a meal of. Most Rabids won’t bring food back to a nest, too hungry and eager to eat right when they kill.

Blood is heavy in the air. Jeonghan’s nose flares and you know he smells it too. The scent is sweet like mulled wine with a hint of underlying fruit. Human. They always smelled sweet to you, something about them fragrant. A flicker of hunger burns through you and then is snuffed out. You don’t need blood and you don’t want it, especially with no way of knowing where it’s been or who it's from. 

Getting infected doesn’t matter to Rabids. They’ve already suffered Red Fever and died, turning into  mindless, feral vampires. To you, making sure you don’t contaminate yourself will be important, no matter how high your tolerance to the disease is. 

Jeonghan taps his wrist as though he’s wearing a watch. You hold out a hand to tell him to be patient. You don’t know how many Rabids are on the other side of the doors, but from the grunting and amount of blood you can smell, you think it’s at least five. Maybe more. 

Freshly fed Rabids will be a bitch to fight. You’ve never been inside the Hall of Human Life, but you don’t like the idea of walking into the nest blind and trying to fight without knowing how much space you have to fight. You also don’t want to fight where they have access to blood when they need it. 

You settle on an idea, though you don’t like it much. 

“Do you know what you’re looking for?” He doesn’t answer, side eyeing you. “I just need to know how long you think it will take once you’re in the room.” 

“I know what I’m looking for.” 

“Great. Go hide in that far corner by the bathrooms.”

He frowns. “Why - what are you doing?” 

Without a second thought, you bring your free hand up to the sword and run your palm across it. You barely feel the sting of the cut, watching as the blood pools in your palm, welling up. 

Silence. 

Jeonghan realizes it too, bolting from the foot of the stairs to the dark corner of the lobby and into the bathrooms just as the sound of hissing rises up behind the doors. You take a step backward, foot on the bottom stair as you watch the door. You need the Rabids to frenzy and hunt you  - you should be able to make it to the main lobby or outside, giving you room to fight and -

They burst through the doors. You turn on your heel and jump, clearing the steps easily. They’re snarling behind you, tripping over themselves as they chase after the scent of live, fresh blood. 

You squeeze your fist as you go, making sure to keep them on your trail while you tear through the museum the way you came. It has the desired effect, working up the monsters into a violent mania as they close in on you. 

Looking over your shoulder to see how many of them isn’t an option. You just keep running, nearing the front of the museum as you take a corner, skidding as you go. The front doors are just ahead, the moonlit world just beyond. You pump your legs harder, tearing over the concrete floor.

Just as you vault over the threshold of the door, something hits you from the side. The force is jarring, your teeth snapping together in an explosion of pain as you hit the ground, sword slipping from your grasp. You barely manage to avoid cracking your head on concrete.

Instinct takes over. You thrust a hand forward, catching the Rabid by the throat as it gnashes its teeth at you. The others are at the door now, screaming and howling like a savage pack of wolves. Even dazed, you find the sense to throw your weight against the creature, rolling over and throwing it off of you.

Your attacker hits the steps but scrambles back toward you. It doesn’t matter. You only need a moment to roll and collect your discarded sword, swiveling on a knee as it lurches at you. Steel connects with flesh and severs the head easily. 

There’s no time to celebrate. You dive from the stairs, careful not to stab yourself in the stomach as another Rabid swings a clawed hand at you. Panting, you get to your feet, turning to face them as you skip backward toward the street. 

Ten Rabids fan out on the steps, but they pause their attack. You grip your sword, waiting for them to keep the feral pursuit. Instead, they seem to be waiting for something, swiveling their heads and looking around. 

You don’t like that. Rabids don’t hunt in packs, despite sometimes sharing a nest, and the image of them all hesitating together in sync is alarming. Worse, you realize they’re starting to make sounds, an intonation deep in their throat that almost reminds you of frogs in the rain during summer. Their heads pivot, looking at you and then looking at one another as they softly call to one another like they’re… talking. 

A chill runs through you. You’ve never seen them talk before, and certainly not before attacking. They should be in a blood frenzy, killing each other to get to you, even. 

One of them lets out the loudest shriek you’ve ever heard, your ears ringing. You nearly drop your sword in surprise. You take several steps back, suddenly unsure of your situation. 

The Rabids begin to slink down the steps. As they do, a figure appears on the roof, its shadow dark against the brightness of the moon. For a split second you think it might be Jeonghan, but then it leaps, flying over the heads of the skulking Rabids to land only a few feet away from you.

“What the fuck are you?” you mutter, pointing your sword at it. 

And it is an it. You have no idea what it is. The creature looks like a Rabid. It has blotchy skin where the fever bursted capillaries and blood red eyes, but it stands straighter than Rabids, eerily still, regarding you - and there’s a crude sword at its hip. 

You’ve never seen them carry weapons before - they shouldn’t know how to use them. They were named Rabids because they lack the function of their frontal and parietal lobes, making them lesser vampires that can only operate on base animal instinct, driven entirely by the vampiric nature to consume. 

Rabids communicating is alien enough, but carrying a sword? You have no idea if it knows how to use the weapon, but when it unsheathes the sword and takes a stance, you can’t help but feel a tiny pulse of doubt. It uses that moment to attack, striking forward stiffly as though to gut you. 

At the same time, the non-intelligent Rabids attack. Cursing, you dodge the stab and run, trying to put distance between you. The leader stalks after you, weapon in hand; its gait smoother than the broken movements typical of the species but not exactly fast. 

One of the non-intelligent ones gives chase to your flight, giving in to bloodlust. You face it and sidestep easily, bring your sword down on the back of its neck as you do. It cleaves cleanly, blood spraying upward. Two more of them lose their grip on logic and follow suit, only to join their slain nestmate on the ground.

The leader snarls angrily - not at you but at the other Rabids. They chatter and skitter back, letting the one with the sword take charge again, flanking it like they’ve been chastised. 

You keep your weapon pointed at the leader. They attack together again. This time, you’re ready for it, meeting your opponent’s blow. The ring of metal echoes and you feel the force of the hit vibrate down your arm. You don’t let it stop your momentum, leaning to plant a hard kick in one of the other’s chests.

A rib cage cracks. You don’t stop. You duck under a claw and parry another attack, always moving, always fluid. You dispose of another Rabid before blocking another sword swing.

With a growl, you push your weight into the block, surging against the lead Rabid. It’s not a good swordsman, and though its reflexes are better than its wild counterparts, you shove the lead Rabid several feet away from you, tripping it up and sending it careening. You can’t take the opportunity to finish it off as the non-intelligent Rabids press in. Thankfully one gets too close and you cut through its neck.

Something zings past your head, hitting one of the remaining creatures in the throat. It cuts through easily, the body and head falling in separate directions. You turn around to see Jeonghan on the stairs, silver shurikens flashing in his hands. 

“Your friend has a sword,” he calls, looking at the intelligent Rabid and pointing. “How did it get a sword?” 

“Let me ask,” you call back. Some of the Rabids slink toward your brother, splitting up to fight both threats. “Hey, where did you get the sword?”

The lead Rabid doesn’t answer. “He didn’t say!” you shout back to Jeonghan over your shoulder. “Should I ask in Lilin or-”

The lead Rabid cuts you off as it attacks, swinging blindingly fast, grunting as it does. It manages to strike your ribcage, sword too dull to pierce skin but you feel the rupture of blinding pain as it breaks your ribs. A wild shriek of rage escapes your throat as you stumble away from it, gasping. 

Breathing hurts, the stabbing ache stunning you for a second. The Rabid seems to be satisfied - if they can feel at all - and it enrages you. Better creatures and fighters have never landed a blow on you, and a thoughtless creature catching you off guard is…

Shameful. 

If this were another time, you’d have been beaten for this kind of embarrassment. Letting a less skilled opponent get the jump on you because you were joking is unacceptable. The shame quickly gives way to anger. Anger gives way to wrath. Your shaking hands still suddenly, and you feel your rage center your focus to a needle-thin point. 

You’re no longer in the middle of the street fighting a nest of Rabids. Now, you’re in the cold undertow of something you try to never let out, that you try to keep buried down deep within you. 

Kill kill kill.

Metal meets metal. You barely remember lifting your sword to attack, slamming your weapon down into the lead Rabid’s sword so hard that the beast makes a sound of surprise, dancing away from you a few feet. You stride toward it, undeterred, a vice grip on your weapon as you stalk forward. 

Kill kill kill.

Another blow sends your opponent's sword flying. You don’t follow through with your weapon. Instead, you punch forward with your free hand, barely feeling the crack of bone against bone. You break through muscle and sinew, feel the scrape of ribs as your fist bursts through the lead Rabid’s chest. 

Its heart only pulses for a moment in your hand, throbbing faster than your own heartbeat. The lead Rabid doesn’t move, body frozen as the source needed to pump its blood is suddenly gone. It dies on your arm, the deadweight pulling your limb down as you slide it off of you. 

Kill kill kill.

You turn and see Jeonghan fighting admirably despite being outnumbered. You prowl toward the Rabids, hissing and drawing the attention of the ones closest to you as you go. 

You hate them. You want to destroy them. You want to win and kill and-

One leaps at you and you cleave downward. It isn’t an elegant swing, but it’s efficient and strong. Blood wets your skin and you swing again, hearing metal meet flesh. A high-pitched whining rings in your ears. You taste ichor in your mouth but you don’t care, sliding to a knee as you cut through the leg of a Rabid. It goes down and you follow through with the neck. 

Kill kill kill. 

You hack through its neck again. And again and again and again.

Suddenly the Rabid isn’t a Rabid. It’s a cherub face with red painted lips and sleepy, green eyes. It’s apple cheekbones and pearly fangs. It’s silky auburn hair and the smell of sugar and vanilla. 

Lilith. 

You hack again and again and again. 

Kill kill kill. 

If you don’t kill her, she’ll own you forever. It has to be permanent, but making it permanent is so hard. Her command to spare her burns through you, liquid hell in your veins as she says your name, over and over and over, trying to grip your thoughts and -

Someone shouts your name. 

The memory fades. You aren’t killing Lilith and you aren’t in the palace of the Undercity. You’re not a scared little dhampir trying to claw her way free from mind control. But you are covered in blood and your thoughts are a little hazy as you look up, dazed. 

Jeonghan stands a few feet away from you. Right. Jeonghan. Jeonghan is here with you and you are helping him retrieve something from a Rabid nest. You’re not there, you are here. Above ground. And Lilith’s dead.

“Get up,” Jeonghan mutters through clenched teeth. For a second, you think he’s disgusted with you. That he’s realized how deep your inability to control your fear and memories goes. Then he flicks his eyes toward the city. “The West End guard is here.” 

When you turn toward the city, shocked, you realize Jeonghan is right. Members of the city guard loyal to the Chwe family step into the ring of carnage, all six of them quiet and poised. The one at the point is tall and broad, dark hair swept neatly out of his tan face, his hand resting on the hilt of his blade. You’d think he was handsome if didn’t look like he was going to kill you. 

“Well,” the guard chuckles. “Looks like this Rabid frenzied and killed the rest of them before we got here. That makes this easy.”

It takes a moment for his words to register. To lock in what he means. Rabid. They think you’re a Rabid.

“I’m-” your voice is raw and broken. You heave in air and then gasp when it feels like a knife has slipped between your ribs, remembering they’re broken. You immediately fall into a triage routine, regulating your breathing to ensure none of your breaths are too deep or too often. “Not Rabid.”

The guard at the front unsheathes his sword. It’s beautifully made, and you see the Chwe family crest glint on the hilt. “I know a Rabid when I see one.” 

“Really, Mingyu?” a new voice asks, deep and soft. “Have you ever heard a Rabid speak? Then again, they’re apparently wielding swords.” 

A man steps around the guard - Mingyu - and looks you up and down. He’s made up of midnight - dark hair, darker eyes, dark presence, though his skin is smooth and pale as the moon. His mouth quirks to the side and he tilts his head, watching you with mild interest. A lock of dark hair falls into his eyes.

He’s beautiful. It’s your first thought and you immediately hate him for it. Vampires that look like him know what they look like, and they use it to their full advantage. The Undercity was swimming with ethereal faces and diabolical desires. 

“Dhampirs,” the pretty one muses. “Huh. How fascinating.” 

“A dhampir?” Mingyu asks again, face scrunched up and unsure.

“Use that big nose of yours,” one of the other guards taunts Mingyu. “You can smell the blood.”

“Shut up, Chan. I can’t smell anything but that fucking awful cologne you wear.” 

“My cologne is not awful!”

The pretty vampire glances at his bickering guards and then back to you. “You’ll have to excuse the manners.” His eyes dart to your chest and he looks puzzled. “Your heart is beating too fast for a dhampir. Perhaps you are infected.”  

“She’s broken a fair few of her ribs and her wrist.” You look up in surprise, almost having forgotten Jeognhan was there. He is stone still, face unreadable as his gaze darts back and forth between them all. “She also just killed about eight of those things - bit of an adrenaline junky, this one. I’d like to take her to a blood bank to assist with her healing process, if I may, My Lord.”

He would? How Not-Jeonghan of him. Your realization of him using my lord is delayed, the word choice hitting you as the pretty vampire waves his hand. “We’ve got blood; we can treat her. If you don’t mind, we’d like to ask some questions about… well, this. The offer for treatment is contingent that neither of you are infected, of course.” 

Jeonghan’s expression is tight but he bows his head, posture stiff. “Your timing is auspicious and your kindness a welcome gift. You have our most eternal gratitude. We would be happy to answer questions, Lord Chwe.” 

“Vernon,” the vampire says, gaze flickering back to you and darkening a little. “You can call me Vernon.” 

TAG LIST:

@hipsdofangirl @jacixbliss @chronicfic @jespecially @asyre @todorokiskitten

[rayroseu]

I think the reason why Rollo can't attend Alchemy Class is because of Grim since he never has a buddy before...✨

So I have this headcanon that for the 3 years this game existed without Grim Buddy/Alchemy Class, I'd just imagine theyre taking introductory class or some Prerequisites for Alchemy😂📖🐈‍⬛ since Yuu is from another world-- I love to think that TWST's science won't be the same as ours since its coupled with Magic-

THOUGH its really funny that its Rollo that's Grim's first Buddy,😆 the one who's probably had the least time to get to know Yuu and Grim‼️😂 rather than Ace Deuce or Malleus... KDJWKJDJDJS

Although I know Yuu and Grim actually attends Alchemy as shown in Leona's Lab Story though~~~~

My Yuu, Citrine would love this guy, she likes cleaning, perfect for the dilapidated mansion ‼️and he cleans the Bell and Gargoyles consistently right??? OKAYY new cleaner for Ramshackle 👌👌👌✨✨✨✨

I know we're just taking Rollo on a tour in NRC and not yk trapped in Ramshackle with us because anywhere in NRC is filled with magic,,,,, but its funny how he's calm with Yuu (when with everyone else he dislikes talking) because theyre the only Magicless person here ✨😂 The true Yuu stan.... omg? ✨✨‼️

I actually love that he duos with Grim. They stayed true to his character✅ and didn't force him to duo with any nrc student (he tried to kill them??? i dont see him using magic with them AT ALL??) since his whole character heavily states he FREAKING DESPISE MAGICIANS🔥🔥🔥 Or.... maybe I just want a real HATER from this series... (pls never change rollo) XD

these are tombstones I'm referring to-

I think the most memorable part he did was when he plunge us to the tunnel... like WOW FINALLY?? A TRUE EVIL IN A VILLAIN STORY AJDJJA (but i feel like OB Jamil who catapult us to the ends of a dimension is more evil though, I dont know how WE survived that 💀)

i just know Malleus would never forget that falling moment🤺 so upon hearing the news that he's grouped with Grim and consequently Yuu....

And next thing you know, Sebek and Silver are frequently visiting Ramshackle and Deuce and Epel stays a bit longer than usual!!!

Lilia is glad his children are finally hanging out with other people often!!! ✨ and Ace is just confused why Deuce and Epel are iffy about this visiting churchboy, isnt he just another strict "shorty" ???

(Rollo you might be 170+ cm in info but for me youre Riddle-height😭 it fits more✨👌)

Rollo stans are so strong, to be able to make TWST release an SSR of him....🙌✨ I like his pre-groovy art more thoughhh the evil smirk... and his intricate bell staff 👌💖💖 congrats rollo nation✨✨✨

overfeeding him with all the honeys ✨✨✨✨✨✨

[exactlycleverpirate]

This has been updated. See the new version here:

Part 1

Part 2

Really rough timeline from Xavier's perspective:

(Spoilers for main story, anecdotes, and character myths. I haven't finished the myths yet, so some things could change)

Xavier is born on Philos. Clearly someone important, as he is constantly under guard. Life is connected to the core of Philos, making him and most people on Philos immortal while the planet remains.

Xavier went to school with MC in year 214, which is 214 years after the destruction of earth. MC has a fatal heart condition.

MC gives him the star charm and dies in his arms. Xavier promises to seek her out in her future lives.

(Rafayel and Zayne's myths on Philos?)

Xavier meets MC again at a Philos Academy as knights in training, sometime near the end of Philos’ life as a planet. Jeremiah goes to the Academy too. Xavier is now a prince (was he from the start?), though he rejects the role. He has a trial in the forest that changes his attitude/demeanor noticeably.

The king dies, and Xavier disappears for about 200 years. MC and Xavier meet up again while investigating the suspicious forest full of Wanderers. Jeremiah is part of MC’s squad.

At some point MC becomes Queen and Xavier her knight.

Xavier leaves MC’s service, and she fakes his death, claiming he died with honors.

Timejump to the past.

1834 Xavier, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Noah, and others stranded on Earth (Part of a team called the Backtrackers? Were on a Backtrack mission when something went wrong in the Deepsace tunnel.)

2018 Xavier checks out a book in the library that MC will check out 30 years later.

2021 Zayne born Sept 5th.

2024 Rafayel born March 6th.

2026 MC born.

At some point in MC and Rafayel's childhood, she saves him and they makes a vow. Also, Rafayel is tricked and his people, the Lemurians, are slaughtered. Some few survivors go into hiding living on land among humans, including his Aunt Talia.

2032 Xavier joins Arthur's police team.

2033 That winter, Noah contacts Xavier for information to make a new identity. Noah mentions wanting to be an ordinary person in this timeline and that he fell in love. Xavier fakes his death as a police officer and encounters a lost little girl. Fights Isaiah in Linkon city in a fight that makes the whole city go dark.

2034 Deepspace tunnel appears and Chronorift Catastrophe (timespace anomaly in Linkon city). Lemurian ruins discovered. MC is 8, taken in by Grandma. Caleb is also adopted by Grandma. MC has protocore shards in her heart. Her first heart doctor is Dr. Noah. 12 year old Zayne loses control of his Evol at the end of summer and has a nightmare about the Grim Reaper for the first time.

Zayne spends 8 years in med school program (about 2037 (age 16?) to 2045 (age 24?)

2045 Xavier meets Arthur at his tombstone. (Zayne’s (age 24?) mission to the Arctic?)

Rafayel seeking revenge overseas, not painting. He then moves to Linkon city and resumes painting again.

Rafayel becomes a lecturer at Linkon University where MC is attending.

Thomas becomes Rafayel’s agent.

Zayne begins working at Akon hospital, eventually as MC’s doctor.

2048 Story begins. MC is about 22. Rafayel says he is 24. Zayne is 27. Xavier claims to be 23.

Thoughts? What am I missing? What did I get wrong? It's a lot to process.