#story: nothing's wrong with dale

[moonshine-nightlight]

NWWD: Divergent Revelations 2

Side story for NWWD, AU starting mid Chapter 23. Fanfic of my own story that asks: what if an honest conversation was had earlier? (spoiler: slow burn is much less slow)

During the fight with assassins, you and Dale are forced to confront the truth of what you each know about Dale's nature. How does the fight change to have this come about? How will the conversation about these revelations go when there's still more than a week before the wedding?

Main Story 'Nothing's Wrong with Dale': [Part One]

Status: Complete

AO3: NWWD: Divergent Revelations

[Part One] Part Two

You murmur as polite a ‘good night’ as you can to your maid before your door finally shuts, blocking out the rest of the Governor’s house, with all its people who can’t stop asking you question after question, hovering over you. Blessed silence fills your bed chamber. You lean back against that now shut door and try to breathe. Grandmother’s going to be alright, you remind yourself, no one seems to suspect Dale. He simply…hasn’t returned yet.

You tried to apologize to Grandfather for not anticipating that Dale would go after Two, but he’d waved off your ‘sorry’s with a worn, but sincere smile. His absolution was appreciated as was the way he seemed to have left all suspicion behind. Still you knew you’d not feel better until you saw Dale once again.

That’s holding true now. The waiting and hours you passed have been valiantly fought through with your highest caffeinated tea, but you were shuffled away to your private chambers after the last strike of the clock, though you can’t remember how many it was.

Nervous energy still buzzes through your veins, a heady mix of worry and adrenaline that makes you want to pace or hide or do something, anything useful. Instead, you walk over to your vanity where an array of candles is, their light reflected back and throughout the room. Aided by the full moon, your room is lit as well as it ever could be so deep into the night. 

Halfheartedly, you pick at the bowl of nuts and dried fruit your maid had persuaded you to take with you. You itch to have those books of Dale’s Bilmont had snuck to you, but they’re all back in Northridge. Neither of you had wanted to alert Dale to your perusal nor risk being found with them by keeping them for days or traveling with them, but if you did have the books then maybe you could prepare to do something in case Dale was hurt in a manner that could not be treated by a doctor.

He’d come to you, right? If he needed help? It’s all out in the open now. What you both already knew but still had pretended not to. Although, as long as he could control himself, he should go to the trained physician. But what if someone else found him? What if this had all been a trick by Two to get Dale to go somewhere else where a trap lay in wait? What if Dale had won, but was injured and vulnerable out in the night somewhere? What if Two manages to possess Dale? What if—

You sit down heavily on your vanity chair, shaking your head to try to dissipate such dire thoughts. Dale had been winning the fight, had managed to drive Two off, and had seemed to have no true injuries when he went after them. Morning would come. Dale will have returned while you slept and he will be fine. He has to be.

You look into the mirror, past and behind yourself to the bed. Speaking of sleep, you’ve no idea how you’ll manage it tonight. You suppose you could brew some sleepy tea, but would that truly work when you still feel your anxiety and nerves as significantly as you do? With the effects of your caffeinated tea still going? Do you even want to sleep? 

You know you should. It’s what you had told the others you would do. It's what you would have told yourself to do, if you were another person. It's the best course of action so you are well rested and ready to face tomorrow. Nothing good will come of worrying away the hours deeper into the night.

Yet you know yourself. You’ll not be able to manage it. Taking the tea would only leave you in a half-asleep state, constantly drifting off and waking from nightmares you’d not be able to tell from reality. 

Not wanting to bother moving the candles from in front of the large mirror at your vanity, you instead go to your desk and bring over your journal with the magnifier. Setting them up, you turn to a fresh page. The most useful thing you can think to do is to write down everything you can remember the assassins said so as to better find who hired them. Given the layers of who can know what, you decide to write down the truth in your personal shorthand, knowing between your handwriting and the few changes you made, it’ll be nigh indecipherable to anyone but you. It should be the best way to keep the actual facts straight for yourself so you can discuss with Dale, or obfuscate with Grandfather and Grandmother. Most of what Two said will only make sense if you know what Dale is and you’ll not be the one to ruin the facade.

You concentrate on getting everything down while managing your flickering light. The sound of your door closing takes a second to register. The next second has you on your feet, your hand dropping your pen in favor of your busk knife. You whirl towards the door, heart hammering in your chest.

A dark figure, more outline than person given how far they are from the miniscule light, is all you can make out. For a split second, you’re convinced Two has come back for you, until another step closer finally allows you to distinguish, “Dale!” 

You drop your hand to the table, body sagging in relief, both at the lack of threat and the confirmation he’s alive. “You frightened me half-to-death!”

“My apologies,” Dale replies, voice low and wary, but unmistakably his own.

You beckon him closer, needing a better look even if many of your fears are assuaged with his presence. “Are you alright? What happened?”

He comes more fully into your circle of light and you can see he has no obvious wounds, only a small bandage on his jaw. “I already spoke to Grandfather and the doctor.” You step closer as he speaks, hand drifting up to the bandage. “I’ve no serious injuries, only some bruisings and cuts. I caught up to Two and ensured they’ll do us no more harm.”

“Are you certain?” Your eyes search his form, noting his damaged jacket is nowhere to be seen. No blood stains or broken bones are obvious. Still, there could be damage under the surface, your eyes on his torso and then up to that single bandage. “The stonework was strong and Two was very adept at—”

“Yes, I am sure.” Dale catches your hand before you can touch him. 

Heat rises to your cheeks at the reminder of your impropriety, which only mounts as you fully realize that Dale is alone with you, in your bedchambers, at night. No one to see him here. Complete privacy. You in your nightclothes and robe, he in only a shirt and trousers. “Good,” you manage before you attempt to clear your throat. What do demons care of human impropriety? Dale’s played along well enough, but he’s not beholden to such petty sensibilities. “I’m relieved.”

“Yes,” Dale murmurs, continuing to stare at you as if you might be the one who needs a physical. “You do truly appear to be.”

“What…?” You blink up at him confused. Some of your concern fades to frustration. You give him an incredulous look. “Of course, I am. It was a foolish thing to chase after Two into the night. Who knows what they might have done to you.” Did he think himself infallible? Or you too oblivious to notice the toll the fight took on him? “I’ve been worried.”

“Curious,” Dale says, tilting his head to the side. His eyes begin to glow. A third one pops open on his forehead. The shadows cast by your candles gutter. “I’ve never had a human express such concern over me. Not when they knew what I was.” He blinks and all his eyes focus on you. “Yet, you appear sincere.”

“Oh,” your voice is small, but you’ve no notion of how to respond, how to actually have this conversation.

“I was not sure what I would be returning to,” Dale confesses, his voice lower and quieter. Instinctively, you lean closer to hear him better. You hold your breath to see what else he might say, now that it appears you are finally addressing the elephant in the room. “Would you have told Grandfather and the Captain? Would they greet me only to catch me in a binding circle?”

“What?” Your stomach drops at the mere thought. “No, of course not.” Alarm rises with your nerves, that Dale might still worry of this outcome. As if he still thought it a possibility for you to have done so. Does he think so little of your regard for him? Has he not understood where you stand despite your attempts to make that clear? You turn your wrist in his grasp and he lets you, but seems surprised when you clasp it more securely in your own. “Dale, I’d never—I don’t plan on revealing you. I thought that’d be obvious.”

Dale looks down at your hand on his and just as you start to worry it had been the wrong move, he turns his own in your grasp to hold your hand in return. “I suppose that appears to be the case.” His gaze moves from your fingers to tentatively meet your gaze. “It does not illuminate why you would do such a thing.”

“I…” you struggle for how to articulate your thoughts. Somehow all your imagined conversations with Dale had been focused on him and his secrets, motivations, thoughts—not your own. “I am aware that perhaps my actions appear…unusual.” You do your best to rally your thoughts and Dale lets you, no haste or frustration in his stance or expression. That patience helps you say, “However, you’ve never acted in a manner that made me worry for my safety or the safety of others. You have not tried to do harm to those around us, physically or with the power you could wield as heir to Northridge.” 

You stare down at your hand and his, unable to keep track of your thoughts when your eyes are locked on his. The flickering candlelight reflects strangely in his blue eyes that he looks more demonic than usual, but also more striking. You want him to think well of you, but you don’t want him to doubt your sincerity. “I’d not known the first Dale for very long. I think I’ve known you longer now. I confess, I had concerns about that Dale, prior to your arrival.” 

You chance a glance up at him and see some surprise in his expression. You’re rather pleased to have been able to surprise him since he’s managed to do the same to you at so many turns. Hopefully, like you, he doesn’t find the surprise bad. “Human concerns, but significant ones. The worries I have for you are different, but less.”

“Truly?” Dale’s voice contains even more of the surprise you’d seen in his face earlier, but no doubt or disbelief. “How could a human, who has always been who he is, worry you more than a stranger in his body?”

“Lord Dale was…arrogant, entitled, and selfish,” you admit, remembering back to your first talk with him. You remember your first meeting with Grandfather and with the other prospects that came up. “And he was the best marriage offer I received.” You frown, trying to articulate why you’d taken a chance with that Dale, aware now that you’re relieved more than anything that he’d been replaced in the end. “I believed he would consider me to be… an extension of himself in a manner that would shield me from some of his faults, so long as I did not interfere with his goals. However, that is certainly not a stable place to begin a marriage, although I had considered it worth the risk at the time.”

“And myself?” Dale asks softly.

You smile to yourself because how often had you asked yourself the same thing: about him and about why he might tolerate you. “You were an unknown,” you say slowly, “in so many ways—I admit you still are. However, you’ve not shown that callous self-interest. You appear… interested in m—the thoughts of others, dutiful to Northridge in a manner I recognize in myself.” You’d been preparing to take up the mantle of Northridge’s care yourself. You’d liked the idea of such a challenge, to an extent. You were eager to prove yourself. To be the one in control of your life. But it would have been lonely and you would have had to juggle Dale’s own plans for the fief. You hadn’t thought there was a better option other than hoping perhaps the original Dale might come around. That isn’t your worry with this Dale.

You take a deep breath and look back up at him. “You did not have to stay and playact the role Dale handed you with his identity. You could have left with his body to strike out on your own.” You hate how much the thought fills you with true fear, not just trepidation or frustration as might have before you got to know this Dale. If he has been genuine with you, you would fear for him out in the world on his own. “I don’t know if you still might do so, but that is my worry, not that you’ll mismanage what you have. I simply feel there is more common ground between us than between myself and the original Dale.” You swallow, suddenly all too aware you’ve been speaking for what feels like ages on end without Dale saying a word. You reach with your free hand to brush some of your hair behind your ear. “That could all be wishful thinking on my side. We’ve not had many chances for honest conversation, excepting now, I suppose.”

Dale finally blinks and stares down at you in a sort of confusion that you hope is fond and not frustrated. “I did not know what to expect when I arrived on the surface,” he confesses slowly, “though I was relieved not to have to contest for autonomy. My recovery from the ordeal was when I knew I would be most vulnerable and thought I might be discovered, necessitating my departure.” His fingers tighten briefly around your own before a small smile spreads across his face. “Thank you again, for your aid.

“I was relieved to be able to stay. I’ve no plans to leave unless forced.” Dale looks past you briefly, to the candles and the mirror behind you. “I have spent my life searching for a stable territory—a home.” His eyes fix on yours once more. “I’ve not had much in the way of surviving family and so find myself inclined to appreciate Grandmother and Grandfather, particularly with Dale’s memories.” His eyes unfocus as if viewing those memories now.

You allow him some time and shortly Dale pulls himself out of those thoughts with a rueful shake of his head. “The memories are both outside of myself and of myself in a rather confusing manner. I’ve not the language or nuance to explain well, truth be told. All of Northridge feels as if it was waiting for me and I’d be a fool not to seize the opportunity. Even you,” he strokes his thumb across the back of your hand, sending a thrill through you, “a lovely mate, was here, like a delightful dream. I’ve not earned any of this,” Dale continues, looking a bit sheepish, a bit chagrined, and a bit like he’s expecting your judgment. “And yet, I’ve had enough ill fortune in my life not let a stroke of good pass me by.”

Your relief at hearing him say he plans to stay is only matched by your understanding. “Even with his flaws, Dale had appeared to be good luck to me at the time. Now, you seem to suit me far better as a partner. Strange as it is to say, I was sometimes more convinced there must be a trick about when I felt we understood each other. It seemed too fortunate.” You take another deep breath as you try to think of what words might solidify Dale’s decision to stay with you, to be with you. The memory of the way he’d said your name only hours ago, the layers of meaning he’d somehow communicated, gives you the strength to say, “For what it's worth, if you’ve been sincere and wish to stay, to be Dale of Northridge, then I’m happy you are here above any other.”

“I have,” Dale is quick to say, catching your other hand in his. He brings your hands in his together and up, dusting your knuckles with a kiss, “and I do. I feel the same.” Your breath catches in your throat. Your heart hammers in your chest due to the warmth and release of tension you feel because you believe him. That Dale might want this too, with you, is hardly more than you can conceive. You haven’t even had to convince and persuade and demonstrate the value of such an arrangement over months as you’d begun to plan for first Dale. Weeks of uncertainty melt away in the face of his straightforward words. You must be smiling like a fool, but you don’t care.

Dale tilts his head to the side, bemused. “Is that common, among human pairs, to understand each other so quickly? Is that why these strange methods are employed? I admit many aspects of human society elude me, including mating rituals.”

“Not all do, but that is the hope of most,” you reply, before leaning forward, unable to help your curiosity. “Wh—” You wince when the movement jars your back and Dale frowns. You absentmindedly pull your clothes away from your bruised back. “Apologies, I am still somewhat sore after this evening's events.”

Dale glances around before leading you over to your bed. “Let us sit.”

“You were the one who fought,” you protest weakly, but the image of Dale on your bed is very enticing. Since you still have your curtains open by the bed, the moonlight has the opportunity to lend strength to the blue-ness of his eyes. You still feel some of the echo of adrenaline brimming in your veins, but it has nowhere to go with the night so late and Dale finally within reach. 

“And I am tired as well,” he agrees, giving a little tug to your hand before sitting down himself as if to be a good example. 

You’re certain that’s true and you’ve no real objection. If anything the mild impropriety makes your stomach flutter excitedly. You carefully sit down beside him, arranging your robe as you do so with only one hand, not wanting to let go of Dale quite yet. He’s only just come back to you.

He turns, bringing his knee up onto the bed in order to face you better as you tuck yourself against the footboard for stability. Dale looks boyish in such a pose. With some of the excitement and fear out of the way, your conversation begins to remind you more of sneaking between dormitory rooms at school. 

You try to bring your mind back to the conversation you were having instead of childish conversations and not so childish games. “How does courting work for your… society?”

Dale smiles, a little crooked, like he too finds your description of anything demonic as a ‘society’ amusing. “Truthfully, there are many varieties in how different demons approach such matters. Perhaps the original strange thing to me was how many humans approach it the same.”

“There is variety,” you consider, actually giving it some thought. So much of your life had built to where you were now, you’d not contemplated the process itself since you were a child. Primarily, fears about your ability to participate at all were what had dominated your thoughts then. “That variety tends to be geographic, however a culture evolved. This continent was once under the rule of a single large empire, before it fractured and so shares certain traits across country borders. The continent to the direct south is similar within itself. To the east across the Narrow Sea, there is still one empire. Only the more distant continents were never united—to my knowledge—and so I believe have a greater variety to their customs.”

“I see,” Dale nods. “The Depths is a very…scattered and varied place, physically and among demons themselves. No one group of any kind has ever controlled a large portion, not in the history I’m aware of. Still, there are trends among similar demons or those who live close to one another, customs that bleed into one another. The demons I am most familiar with either live in tight-knit clans and generally don’t mate outside of it or are solitary. Both consider time to become familiar with each other a critical component.”

You nod. “Many people who end up marrying have known each other all their lives, due to circumstances, or because they were neighbors, or because their parents decided years ago to link their families and lands.” Pivoting since you’re not sure demons have nobility, you continue, “According to those I know who aren’t nobility, that’s also far more common among the common people. Nobility enjoys overthinking, or at least that’s what my father says. A lot of marriage decision making is based on utility, alliances, and finances—not to mention tradition and honor. Tolerance of one's spouse is the expectation with companionship over time. Partnership or true affection as an ideal to hope for. Although, it is custom to play at appearing happily situated, regardless of one's internal feelings on the matter.”

“Surely you had more options than Dale,” the demon with his name protests, as if he’d been meaning to make the argument since you first mentioned such a thing and could no longer contain himself. “Sometimes his thoughts or memories—impressions of people or situations—occur to me. I admit I dislike many of them. I disagree with many of them.”

You’d known this was part of how demonic possession worked but it was still strange to hear of. “I’m certain his of me were not flattering nor were there many of them—one of the few commonalities we had was likely our rather poor opinion of each other,” you confess. “I doubt he suspected my true feelings. He agreed to marry me because he needed to in order to inherit, because I seemed amenable to his influence. Not to mention because I came with a larger than is typical dowry for a fifth child. I’m sure he thought me generally acceptable, if a bit disappointing—he told me as much. However, that was his fault for letting rumors reach the ears of potential spouses or at least their parents.”

The way Dale tightens his lips, but doesn’t disagree confirms your suspicions. He gives a small huff before saying, “Yes, I can recall. He was quite frustrated with the reputation he’d found when he made his way back home. At the very least he wished he’d been able to marry before they spread. I think he’d underestimated how many would not want to be associated with demonic research. Not to mention the more dramatic tales of carousing he and his compatriots got up to on their tour.” He rolls his eyes as he continues to list reasons why Dale’s marriage prospects had diminished. “How many of them would pair off with each other as they did, and so on. He believed he could have turned his reputation around in order to have a spouse he saw as more…” Dale winces, clearly trying to find the least offensive word, before giving up, “worthy, but was aware such an endeavor would take time he did not want to spend.”

“Yes,” you acknowledge because isn’t that what you suspected all along? In some ways it's hard to care much about what the original Dale thought, not when he was dead, but you find you hate the idea of echoes of those thoughts sounding through this Dale’s head. You care about his opinion. You want him to think well of you. You push those fears aside to focus on the conversation you are having. “In that way, we were compatible. We did confirm what we expected from this marriage along with what was required for our engagement to be initiated. It's simply that those items of import were easily discovered on paper and with minimal interaction in person.”

“You were engaged before you met,” Dale says, shaking his head in either disbelief or disapproval. “Truly mystifying.”

“What sort of traits are valued in your courtships?” you ask, wanting to meet him where you could. Everything so far has been how humans do such things. You want him to feel comfortable with you and your relationship. You want a chance to show him Dale’s lingering thoughts shouldn’t matter to him. You can’t find more time to spend together with the wedding so close. You can’t change how you only met shortly ago, but hopefully there are other elements you could honor. “I would be happy to participate in any rituals I could, as we have fulfilled the majority of the human ones already.”

Dale blinks at you with such surprise you worry for a second that you might have just made a foolish offer. Since you were in fact referring to demonic rituals that was likely a given. No, you remind yourself, you trust Dale. Dale closes his mouth within a second or two, and admits, almost ruefully, “In truth, many such questions and information have already been answered. What would take demons time and trust to reveal, humanity seems more free with, particularly over these last few weeks of intensity and socializing. My parents courted for years but saw each other far less than we have over the course of that time.”

“What sorts of things?” you can’t help but press, eager for anything to work with.

“General compatibility,” Dale begins to list with a shrug, “socialization, familial connections, and expectations. The majority of courtship negotiations for my parents was spent on territory and fitness to defend said territory, with the others learned as that progressed.”

“If the ability to defend territory is a sought after quality,” you say, wanting to fidget out of self-consciousness and holding still out of sheer self-determination, “I must be sorely lacking as a candidate.”

Dale immediately shakes his head. “No, it is a balance. I trained to fight and defend. It is a skill I can bring, not one that I expected any partner to possess. I would not have refused such a mate, but I hadn’t been seeking one out either. The terms of survival are different on the Surface.”

He leans back, bracing himself on one hand as he frowns in concentration. You resist the urge to lean after him, to maintain any closeness you’ve gained. He looks so distant in the moonlight, foreign with his demonic eyes on full display—there are two more than before—and with shadows moving as if in a gentle breeze around him. “My parent had staked out a large territory in alliance with another demon, who died soon before they met my mother. They were initially very hostile to the others settling nearby, including her. She managed to negotiate with them for her smaller spot and slowly they came to see they would enjoy being together. Since my parent had a lot of territory, my mother had to prove her worth as a defender. Even my parent had to prove their territory borders were sustainable with all the new interlopers.”

You try to even picture such an existence. It seems so solitary. You had often felt lonely as a child, and even after, but there were always people around, you simply didn’t have any connections with them. You weren’t actually alone. Perhaps you are missing something. “And it was just them?”

“Yes,” Dale replies, eyes softening as if he could hear your true question. “Shades are generally solitary and while my mother came from a clan, she preferred solitude as well. That was one reason for her departure.”

“And you’re a shade?” He certainly seems to be one, given his facility with shadows. Had he spent so much of his life in similar solitude? “The past few weeks of gatherings must have been overwhelming for you.” He’d not seemed to be. However, perhaps he was a better actor than you’ve given him credit for. He was coming from such a different place of experience.

Dale shook his head. “I’m only part-shade and even so, I’ve always enjoyed being around others. I’ve been to the Surface before and know how close you all tend to live.” It was so odd to hear him acknowledge all this out loud, to hear him say “you all” and know he meant “humans”. That he wasn’t included with them. “Even in the Depths I traveled, as many young demons do before they settle on their own territory. I have worked with others and even temporarily joined a handful of clans. Nothing ever fit or stuck. My first time on the Surface, as chaotic and overwhelming and confusing as it was, felt right. After one final attempt in the Depths to find a place to suit me failed, I knew what I wanted was up here.”

You want to ask for every detail, for every nuance and failed alliance he alludes to. At the same time, you don’t want to scare him off, by asking for more than he feels comfortable revealing. If you’ve already rushed the timing, you don’t want to push even more, not at the risk of driving him away. You want to hold this new honesty with both hands and protect it. You want to never let it go. In the end, you settle on a sincere, but generic, “I confess, the tales of the Depths make it sound fearsome,” in the hopes that he’ll tell more if he wished, but would not feel pressured if he did not.

“It is.” Dale has closed all of his eyes, clearly remembering. “It is lonely and dangerous.” He blinks open his eyes and they’re glowing once more, enhanced by the strong moonlight that falls on his face. “There are dangers here too, but so many more opportunities and ways of living. Not merely survival.”

You shake your head. “I’ve no notion of such a life. I’m pleased you are here and that we can offer you that.” Today has more than proven that Dale can defend himself and that you are certainly winning no accolades in such an arena, and yet you feel protective of him. You want to shield him from the harsh life he clearly led before this, fighting for so much of his life. You want to make a home where he can rest and enjoy life.

“Thank you,” Dale smiles, as if your simple words mean something to him. “I admit I’d been prejudiced against informing you of my true nature due to past experience.” 

He said he had been on the Surface before. You recall his trepidation, his fear as you now recognize it, both in the aftermath of the destroyed study and even when he first was in your rooms. What experience might that have been to caution him so? 

“It is freeing to be able to speak of this with you,” Dale continues with a smile you reflexively return. “To feel there is no curtain of confusion between us. My own hope had been for such a mate, a confidant.” You squeeze the hand still clasped with his because that is all you wanted as well. He squeezes back. “I’m not sure how we got here while taking such a stilted and quite frankly, human route. It is so far from what I would have expected and gone by so quickly.”

“The time has flown,” you agree, “and yet it also seems a lifetime ago I stood in your rooms after the incident and tried to meet you anew.”

Dale looks startled. “Did you know even then?” He runs his free hand through his hair, baffled. “But we’d no chance to truly even meet, for me to demonstrate any sort of trustworthiness. You knew then?”

“I suspected then,” you correct. “You were strange, but kind. It seemed very unlike the Dale I had only just started to get to know. He’d been acting oddly the night he must have summoned you. He did set the summoning in motion himself, yes?” Dale nods, still wide-eyed with interest and surprise. The effect is compounded by the five eyes he has with which to look back at you. “I knew of his studies with the demonic, I knew of his anticipation for the night, and then the sudden illness.” You shrug. “Well, I went to see him—you—on purpose. But all I could truly discern is that something demonic had happened. I didn’t know if he was still part of you and I’d frightfully little knowledge of demonology to leverage. It wasn’t until a few days later that my understanding solidified.”

Dale just shakes his head. “You knew all this time…”

“Were you not aware?” you can’t help but ask, nearly as surprised by the notion as Dale seems to be that you did know.

“I…No,” he frowns. “At times I thought you might. Later that first evening, I worried my reaction to the willowbark had been too vehement or that I’d said something strange while my memories and Dale’s were sorting themselves out. During the tournament, when you sought me out regarding Eastmount—that was when I came closest to thinking you knew what I was.”

“But you changed your mind,” you continue for him. You can see it in his face. “Why?”

“You assisted me,” he says plainly, lifting his eyebrows as if it were obvious. “You didn’t confront me or accuse me or try to leverage any sort of secret knowledge of what I was for your own gain. You didn’t turn me in or ask for my aid to advantage you or threaten me.”

“You thought so ill of me?” You can’t help the hurt that blossoms in your voice. “That I might do such a thing?” Hadn’t he known enough of you by then? You thought he’d understood, that he had seen who you were quicker than anyone else you’d known. Your hand starts to pull out of his without you meaning to. Unable to resist drawing back from him.

“That is what humans do with demons,” he says, almost pleading, pressing your hand to the bed to halt your movement, but not pulling it back towards himself. “Even if you were not one who sought selfish gain, then as a righteous human, you should have raised the alarm, formed a trap, done something to expunge the demon from your midst.” His vehemence is surprising, you feel caught out because he wasn’t wrong. Those are the two expected reactions. “I had thought I’d misjudged you since you had seemed to know, but not do any of those things. I was waiting for the demand of what you wished for in exchange for your silence. It never came.” Dale shakes his head again. “I concluded you didn’t know. It was the only explanation that fit. That, at most, you suspected Dale had enhanced himself with demonics and were willing to aid him in his one-upmanship with Eastmount.”

“I see.” On one hand you do truly understand his caution. He is a feared stranger in a foreign land, which goes doubly for Northridge given Grandmother’s attitude. You know plenty who would have done as he suggested, but… You also know some who would not have. Surely he must have Dale’s own memories of humans mixed up in demonology that wouldn’t have reacted so poorly. It's such a specific fear. “Has…has that happened before? When someone found out you were possessing a different human in the past?”

“I…” He freezes, all of his extra eyes closing up, although the two that remain are still glowing, black all but gone from them. “Yes. It has.”

A bolt of anger on Dale’s behalf straightens your spine, even though you know how humans react to demons. It's not even unwarranted most of the time. But this is Dale, your fiancé—your Dale. Did they simply not know him? From all the stories you’ve heard, most demons make their true intent, if it is destruction, known quite quickly. It’s why you’ve become more comfortable with Dale as time has passed. “I don’t know what circumstances there were, but you’ve not behaved in a way that would cause me to betr—to react in such a manner. 

“I would not have blamed you. Demons can be quick to turn on each other as well.” His voice was strangely soft and earnest as he spoke, as he tried to absolve you of these potential feelings and actions against him. “It’s not humans alone who have decided that it would be better to no longer act in concert with me before.”

It breaks your heart, to hear him say it so plainly, so gently. You can see now you are working against a lifetime of betrayal, or so it seems to you. You search for something, anything, to communicate your sincerity. A reason to push any lingering fear of such possibility in the future as far from his mind as you can. 

“You saved my life tonight, Grandmother’s life.” It’s the most tangible, most straightforward reason you could see that he might believe for your trust in him. You wait, but he doesn’t disagree. You have his rapt attention. “We are working towards the same goal, are we not? You’ve more than proven your dedication to Northridge tonight, to my satisfaction.” You don’t see it so plainly, so unemotionally, but you want to impress upon him that you are aligned together. You wait for his slow nod of acknowledgment. 

“Nothing you have done has persuaded me otherwise,” you work hard to make your voice as steady and sure as you can. “It never crossed my mind to try to entrap or exorcize you tonight.” You hope by focusing on now, he won’t try to argue this specific point. You don’t have such concrete reasons for your feelings before and so you’re not sure he’d believe you’d never really had the inclination once you actually met him. Otherwise, he’s right: some things need that time to grow and solidify. You want to make damn sure you’re starting on the right foot. You will gain the rest of his trust going forward.

Dale leans closer, an eye opening up. He tightens his grip on your hand as he does so. You wait on pins on needles for his response. “I believe you. Thank you.”

You want to shift the topic back to lighter matters, but you’re unsure of how to do so. “Demons truly have turned on you as humans have?” is what comes out instead. You wince.

Dale doesn’t seem to take offense. “Yes, as I was not born into a group that survived, I sought to join others.” You want to ask so much more about that, but you can tell by the way Dale is moving past this part of his past, that he doesn’t want to share that now. It’s late. It's been an incredibly long day, you understand. You’ll be able to ask him for details on all of this because you’re getting married. You’ll have your whole lives to learn everything about him. He’s staying, you reiterate to yourself. You can no longer picture your future without him.

“The majority of demonic clans are very insular and do not take kindly to outsiders,” he says with a frown. “They see nothing wrong with treating said outsiders with little…regard or integrity. This is why the courting ritual I described is spread out. To allow time to pass without betrayal or shifts in alliances to occur. To demonstrate the connection can weather time and outside forces.”

“And to feel confident in telling anything more personal to their prospective spouse,” you add, nodding. Sure there is gossip and alliances and even violence within the nobility on the Surface—tonight’s more than proved that—but not on the scale Dale’s describing. You’re abruptly very grateful for the world you live in. You’d likely not survived his.

“Precisely,” Dale confirms. “Information that might have been construed as weaknesses to be exploited, but not can be trusted to not be taken advantage of.”

This does fit with the rumors and heresy you’ve heard about demonic ways of life. It’s a wonder any of them manage to mate at all. Still, you’d hoped for something else, something you could do besides ‘not betray him’. For Dale. To show that you accept him. To demonstrate your sincerity to the marriage. To signify your clarity who he is. You know that marriage is with a demon and you want him, not anyoneelse. You want him to know that before the night’s through. “So there aren’t any other differences in courting that you are surprised about? Or that we have not participated in?”

Dale frowns as he thinks. You try to determine if it's the moonlight and wind painting strange shadows on his form or just him without pretense. He’s mesmerizing either way. “Couple’s often take a journey together or begin to merge their territories prior to being bound as formal mates. You’ve already come to live in our territory and we’ll be taking our tour after the wedding. I don’t believe much can be done to accelerate that at this point.”

“No,” you have to agree, although you understand now why Dale had been so eager for the tour and are doubly glad to be doing it. “Not in our circumstance.”

“We already discussed and covered so many compatibility topics that there is not much left that I’d have wished to know about a potential mate. Well, I suppose it is unusual to have done little beyond dance,” Dale admitted, all but two of his eyes looking sidelong out the window now. “Physical compatibility in such matters is also considered relatively strongly. I suppose that has more weight for demons given our variety.” He sounds on the fence about how true he feels that statement is. As if he is giving you an excuse to brush past this topic and move on.

“Oh?” You hope that sounded calm. You hope your expression isn’t giving you away if your voice did not. “I, I do not mind, if you wanted, or rather,” you can’t get the words out in a coherent manner, too intrigued despite yourself, and your inability to talk sensibly is only making you more flustered. Memories of your fumble at a festival as well as memories dancing with Dale distract you. “If there was something else you wished to discover regarding our compatibility, I would not be opposed.”

Dale blinks at you in surprise, but without judgment. That lack of judgment is always one of the primary differences between who is Dale is now and who Dale was. It is the quality you appreciate the most. “Oh, you would not?” He sounds mildly intrigued and unflustered as he runs a few fingers through his hair. It’s unkempt and dark enough to melt into the shadows around you both, but you think it looks longer than it did even a few minutes ago. As if the strands spent more time tangled around his fingers this time around. “I constantly find myself torn between what Dale has experienced informally, what I know human society seems to expect, and what I would consider a reasonable level of intimacy for those who plan to join together permanently in merely a week.”

“Of course.” You can hardly keep the typical social rules straight, let alone your own memories and another persons and another society’s set of expectations. It’d drive you a little mad, you think. “I imagine such conflicting knowledge must be confusing.”

“It is,” Dales says emphatically, looking relieved to finally be able to speak openly. Then he sighs, looking mildly embarrassed for possibly the first time you’ve seen. “And I know I do not always play my part correctly.”

You feel a little bad for having had the same thought because, well, he isn’t wrong, is he? Nothing much you can say to that. Still, you want to reassure him. “When we are in private, you don’t need to worry about playacting correctly. You’ll wear yourself to the bone if you tried to keep up a facade constantly.”

“I appreciate your saying so,” he says with a tentative smile you’ve not seen before. It’s sweet. It would have looked out of place on the original Dale’s face and yet it suits this one so well. “It can be tiring. Not always and there are times when even in public, with you, I still feel as I do now.”

You smile, pleased with yourself at having made him feel even somewhat comfortable in a land so alien to him. “It’s not as if I’ve not felt out of place before, although not to the same extent, but I want us to help each other. That’s why I wish for you to feel comfortable here and now, with me and our courtship. We are to be married and I want that to mean a partnership, mates, a true couple. No matter our differences and the strange circumstances we’ve found ourselves in.”

“As do I,” Dale murmurs, leaning closer. At first you think he’s simply relaxing his posture, until his hand reaches out to put a finger under your chin. His eyes are dark as they stare at your lips and you recall what turn the conversation had started to take before being sidelined. “So, you would not mind if I…?” 

Evidently Dale wishes to push the conversation back on track. His intent is obvious and he gives you plenty of time to pull away, but you still reply, only a little breathily, “I would not” before his lips cover your own. It’s a far more tentative and gentle kiss than the one human Dale had taken from you. Less awkward than your first kiss had been. You melt into his hold as he cups your cheek more firmly, angling the kiss just so. His lips are cool, but soft.

Dale parts from you only to press another kiss to your lips the next second. Kiss after kiss, the rest of the world melts away until there is only the two of you in the faint light, safe in this room. Your hands end up grasping the front of his shirt to keep him close, not that he seems intent on going anywhere. His hand tangles itself in your hair, cupping the base of your head while his other splays along your side to better pull you closer. 

He deepens the next kiss and you can taste him on your tongue, like coffee and cinnamon. You relax into his hold even as he seems to get hungrier, as he steals the breath from your lungs and every stray thought from your mind. Dale pulls an appreciative noise from the back of your throat. Your hands, still fisted in his shirt, slowly release their grip to press against his chest. He’s wonderfully solid beneath them, safe and whole and home. 

Dale belongs with you and you won’t let anything keep him from you.

You bury a hand in his hair, the cool, silky strands almost wrap around your fingers in return. Eventually, you have to use your hold to pull him back enough to breathe, but you don’t give him more than the space to allow you to do so. Dale pants against your lips. “Breathing is so…” Dale starts to mutter, almost absentmindedly, before he leans back in to dot kisses along your jaw.

You hum in agreement, pleased with his attention. Desire zips through your veins. Shadows move like flames in the moonlight, shifting across Dale’s body and around him. You swear you can almost feel them, like velvet against your skin. This night feels like a wonderful dream.

Dale’s large hands land on your hips, strong and sure. He makes his way back to your mouth, determined that neither of you can truly catch your breath, and starts pushing you further onto the bed, away from the end. Your feet leave the ground while he moves after you. Your own hands are occupied, holding his strong jaw, buried in his luscious, dark hair. At some point, while stealing your thoughts with his nimble tongue, he lifts you entirely from the sheets to maneuver you fully into the middle of bed. Even when he sets you back down, you're only kept even remotely upright by your hold on him.

“Sana…” Dale pants against your lips when he pulls back just enough for your lungs to remember their job. His voice is raspy and deep as he speaks through his own breaths. You meet as many of his eyes as you can, half-lidded but rapt with attention. “I have been wanting, no,” Dale corrects himself, “needing to familiarize myself with your scent.” He runs his nose down the column of your throat before burying his face in the crook of your neck. You feel his words against your skin nearly as much as you hear them. “As your touch, your appearance, your voice are already solidified in my mind. All brief glimpses of scent I managed to steal pitiable and meager until now.”

Your mind struggles to think of a coherent response. Is this part of demon courting? Having Dale wrapped around you, against you so intimately? The desire to know you by every sense. “Oh?” If so, you want more. Even if it’s merely something Dale wants, he’s welcome to it, to you.

“Your taste…” he pressed an open-mouthed kiss to your collarbone. “Half-remembered, filtered through that imbecile’s mind.” His derision for Dale’s opinion helps chase away your insecurities that he might be swayed by them. He scrapes his teeth against your skin and your mind fogs over. “I knew it to be a poor imitation of reality, but if I had known how poor, I’m not sure I would have been able to resist for so long. Want. More,” he says around licks and kisses to your sternum where he’s pushing against the barrier of your chemise.

“You, if you,” you stutter around the words, trying to string your thoughts together. You’d had daydreams about a fiancé you trusted enough and who felt passionately enough that you’d preempt your wedding night, like in so many hushed romantic stories. “Yes, you can, if you wa-ant.” When Dale merely continues to nose at your hem, you finally manage to say as plainly as you can, “Simply remove it.”

“Gladly,” Dale replies, eager hands already set on the task of riding you of your remaining clothing. It’s so freeing to be able to say exactly what you mean, what you want, and have Dale hear you. To have him immediately act on what you say. Your robe had fallen off at some point after his first kiss so there is only your chemise. He manages to divest you of it in record time, making sure the fabric doesn’t catch on your bandages. 

He stills to take in the sight of you, but only for a few seconds. As soon as the slightest inclination towards embarrassed self-consciousness starts to make themselves heard, Dale says, “Thank you,” so emphatically, you feel heat rise to your face and gather between your legs. 

“I—” Whatever you were going to say is lost as Dale immediately starts trailing kisses down from your neck to your chest. His other hand lands on your upper thigh and starts to massage and stroke at the skin there. You moan, eyelids slamming closed to better enjoy the sensations he’s provoking throughout your body. It's so much after so long of only dances and holding hands, but you feel as greedy as Dale is acting. With the taunt of courtship over, you want to be as close to him as you possibly can. 

He envelops a nipple in his mouth and lightning races down your spine to strike your core. You can feel yourself getting wetter as he continues. You ache for some friction between your legs but you don’t want to risk Dale stopping. As he switches sides, his hand coming up to tweak and rub your damp skin, you moan shamelessly. You want to drown in the sensation of Dale moving so eagerly against you. He’s ravenous.

Dale’s attentions push you back and you place a hand on the bed to try to steady yourself. It's not quite enough, not given your injured arm. You do your best to control your descent down on your side. Dale gropes at your hip as if to try to help keep you up before he realizes what you're doing and helps guide you down instead. 

His shirt disappears as you reposition yourselves. You move quickly to explore the skin now bared to you, feeling strange stripes of velvet mixed with soft human skin. The difference in textures reminds you of who you are with even though you can’t see his inhuman nature with your eyes squeezed shut in an attempt to weather the heat he’s stoking within your body.

Dale pushes you further back and you go with the motion until you feel the sheets against your bruised back. Flinching, your hands scramble against Dale’s skin as you arch away from the bed. “S-Sorry,” you pant, “Bruised. My back.” 

Dale’s already tipped you back onto your side and you see a tail with two eyes arc over your shoulder. He growls at whatever he can see in the dark. Shadow tendrils brace you between your shoulder blades and on your lower back so that you can relieve some pressure from your side and relax more in this position. His teeth seem sharper as he says, “I should have torn them to pieces for touching you. For hurting you.”

“You did,” you reply, not wanting to derail the mood even if the reminder of Dale’s defense of you certainly isn’t drawing you out of it. You don’t want Dale consumed by anger. You selfishly want his focus to be on you. “It’s treated as best it can be.” When that doesn’t seem to be enough, you cup his cheek, “Make me forget about it.”

Dale’s eyes ignite at the challenge and you feel a corresponding pulse between your legs. “Yesss, sana,” he hisses in agreement, pressing a kiss to that hand. He resumes his mission to memorize you with all his senses with renewed zeal. It’s easy to let him do so. With him pressed to your front and his shadow tails wrapped around to brace your back, you feel wonderfully enveloped by him. Safe from the world. Safe with him. 

“You seem like something I shouldn’t be allowed to have,” Dale murmurs, voice strange, distant and echoing. He presses more kisses further down your body. Even with nearly all his focus on the physical, he can’t help but think aloud with whatever part of him isn’t consumed with you. “Shouldn’t be allowed to keep.” 

The shadow tails supporting your back spread and his hands fasten securely to your hips. “Smoke in the wind,” a kiss to your stomach, “water in the hand,” a kiss above the thatch of hair you have, “a dream before waking.” He looks up the length of you, his eyes blue and dark and as hypnotizing as ever. “Fighting for this—you and Northridge—for this life tonight has made it feel so much more a reality rather than a far-off wish.” He presses another absentminded kiss to you. His thumbs stroke your skin and your hips roll in his hold involuntarily. “Something I would never truly be able to grasp.”

“You can,” you tell him, feeling nearly as desperate as he’s been acting, voice breaking on the words. Desire clogging up your throat. “If you d-desire… Dale,” you wail his name when he finally puts his mouth on you.

You lace the fingers of one hand into his hair, not able to judge what was too tight while your hips jitter in his hold. Overwhelmed by the sensation of that long adroit tongue dipping in for a better taste. Your head tips back as you try to push into him. He groans encouragingly as his hands move to your thighs and pry them apart to give him more space to work. The improved angle gives him more access, more contact, more ways to make you mewl with pleasure.

True to his words when he first began, Dale is ravenous for your taste, licking and sucking with an intensity that makes you little able to do more than take it. Unleashed, he must have truly been holding himself back before. The fight, that kiss, has broken some self-restraint he’d clearly been tightly holding onto. 

Dale devours you. He devours you until you’re a sweating, moaning, mess held firmly in his grasp. Until a final wave of pleasure pulls you under. 

You come back to yourself slowly to find Dale still between your thighs, carefully licking up every last drop of desire he’s managed to wring from you. You hope he’s satisfied with you. You hope he’s never satisfied. You hope he’s willing to make a meal of you again and again. “Dale,” you breathe out. Glittering, bright eyes look up at you, half-lidded and gratified, but still hungry.

Heat begins to rekindle in your veins as he lowers his gaze back down. As he begins to plant kisses and leave little sucking marks on your skin. As he works his way back up your body. You stroke through his hair encouragingly, languid and content to let him do as he pleases. He’s certainly proved himself worthy of the leeway. He pulls you upright as he goes and your free hand lands on his strong shoulder.

You don’t hesitate to pull him into a kiss once you're close enough. His mouth is wet with you still and you find yourself delighted with the evidence of his indulgence, his base appetite. When he pulls you into his lap, you take advantage of the additional height to lead the kiss. Dale gives way under you easily, letting you press your advantage and finally do some taking yourself.

You don’t break the kiss until Dale situates you perfectly in his lap to let his cock rock against your cunt. Your moan and instant attempt at grinding down against him leave you gasping. His large hands, spanning your hips and with fingers that dig into your ass, encourage your movements as he groans.

“You…” you try to give voice to the thought that’s been building in your mind without you realizing it, “the way you said my name…” You can still hear it echoing in your memory, but you need to hear it aloud. It’s what had helped stabilize your trust in him and you ache to hear it now. “After the fight…”

Dale shudders, something rolling through him, before he opens his mouth to breathe your name in that same resounding tone, the one that seemed to carry with it so much more than a single word ever could. Your eyelids flutter, as you feel that same comfort as before, but it has evolved. Now cinnamon spice and crimson tart berry streaked through that yellow warm honey. You feel it along your nerves, buzzing through your veins like warm, mulled wine. “Dale,” you gasp back, hoping you can convey something similar in return. 

Air flows from him like a breeze and his shadows gutter around him while he closes his eyes to the sensation. When he presses you back down against him there's a rumble you first mistake for a growl only to realize it’s a purr. “May I…?” His cock ruts against your entrance as if there was any doubt as to what he was asking for.

You're lost in this moment, in this feeling, and yet in that second, he takes to ask the real world breaks through. You bury your head in the crook of his neck, craving his own scent nearly as much as his craving for your own had sparked this fire into motion. “Yes, please, Dale—I need you.”

“Yes, sana, I do as well. I need you so very much,” Dale pants as he guides the head of his cock to where it needs to be and begins to push inside. 

Gods, he feels big. You remind yourself to relax, let yourself be pliable, and allow him in. One of his hands leaves your hip to stroke soothingly through your hair while he thoughtlessly babbles, “Yeeesss, so hot, so tight. Lights above, you feel better than… So good. Thank you, pretty, pretty mate for…for this, for this allowance, for this gift, f-fuck.” His words make you shudder and you must be dripping from them given how much more easily he makes his way inside.

Once he’s finally hilted in you, you both need the extra few seconds to take a breath. Him overwhelmed by you surrounding him judging by his scattered words and you for the stretch. The ache of being first too empty and then nearly too full. Soon you deliberately clench around him and he groans. You press a kiss to his neck to let him know he’s alright to move and then set to making it a mark on his skin.

Dale murmurs your name again, a faint echo of how he’d said it earlier. Shuddering, your teeth graze the mark you’re worrying on his skin. Instinctively, he thrusts in even though he’s only pulled halfway out which pulls a groan from deep in your throat.

The sound seems to set Dale off because soon he’s thrusting at a rhythmic pace, half with his own hips, half lifting you up in counterpoint to his movements. Your heat throbs at the demonstration of his strength. You pull your head back to take him in in the moonlight. Your demonic fiancé, demonic mate.

As you can feel another peak building, the pulsing between your legs getting stronger, Dale’s thrusts become more erratic. As soon as you notice, his thumb lands on your clit, obviously determined to push you over the edge with him. 

Dale buries his face in the crook of your neck. His voice resonates against you as he says, “I… I could…I should…” He starts to lift you off of him. “We’re not—”

His words are cut off with a loud moan when you push back against him, hands on his shoulders, muscles throbbing around him. To keep him inside you where he belongs. 

“No, no,” you say, mind overwhelmed with pleasure, but also coherent to understand he’s trying to cater to you even if it's not what you want, what you crave with a strength that would surprise you if you gave it a moment’s consideration. “Please. I trust you.” You know Dale wouldn’t leave you now. As far as you're concerned, you’re already married. He’ll never leave you again. “Please, stay inside.”

He growls your name in response and pulls you back fully onto his cock without needing further encouragement. His hands stroke up and down your sides, shadow tendrils controlling the pace of his thrusts. The additional sensation of his hands on your skin, on your chest, your nipples, combined with the kisses and marks he’s attempting to suck on your skin drive you to the final heights you need to climax, convulsing around his cock. Dale falls over the edge with you.

Bliss spreads through your body as Dale collapses backward, you sprawled on his chest. You’re sweaty and overcome and the most satisfied, most content you’ve been in… You let the thought fizzle out and merely sigh happily instead. What more could you ever need than Dale with you in your bed?

Languid sleep laps at your mind, but when Dale prompts you, you go through the motions of nighttime ritual. He murmurs an apology when you shudder from the feel of tepid water and sigh from any movement at all that’s not horizontal. Soon enough you’re clad in a fresh shift, Dale in only his own shirt, standing by the bed. He looks, with hesitation at the door.

“Do not leave, not until you must,” you say as you lean against him, hand over his heart. Not an ask, but not a demand.

“I won’t,” Dale replies, the solemnity of an oath, the fervor of a declaration of love—more powerful in the dark of your bedroom. He shuffles you over to the bed until you’re lying down against his chest once more. “There’s nowhere else I’d want to be.”

That warmth of belonging wraps around you at his words and you gently kiss his neck in answer, before mustering the sleep-weary words to say, “There’s no one else I’d want.” It’s so easy to admit now, so freeing to say aloud. 

Dale presses a kiss to your head. He echoes, “Only you.”

[moonshine-nightlight]

Should be doing work but would rather being doing anything else so here we are

WIP File Names:

Nothing's Wrong with Dale: 7. Scene 3 - Fight

Nothing's Wrong with Dale: 7. Scene 4 - Aftermath

Demonic Romance Nonsense: DSM- Bonus Tattoo

Sci-Fi Romantic Nonsense: Snapped Part 3

Demonic Romance Nonsense: Courtship Confusion - Part 1

Snippet from NWWD Fight:

“What is this?” Dale asks, his voice hard as he takes stock of the situation.

“Northridges simply enjoy asking after the obvious, do they not?” Clen asks. “This is a kidnapping, your lordship. If you don’t cooperate with us, your fiance and grandmother are forfeit.” His crossbow is back in his hands and aimed directly at you. Instantly you tense, ready to drop to your knees and out of range, except that would leave Grandmother a free target.

Keeping your dagger in your strong hand, you grope blindly on the desk for something to use as a shield, curing yourself for not thinking of such a thing earlier. As your fingers close around the ink mat, a sturdy leather mat to absorb any ink that might seep through when writing, your eyes meet Dale’s. You can almost see a cold certainty enter them before they slide back to Clen.

WIP Wednesday Game

It’s WIP Wednesday, time for a little accountability, sharing your work, and getting a kick in the pants.

Here’s how it works:

In a reblog (or new post w/ rules attached), post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names.

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to post!

After you’ve posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file. If the filename is one you can't share from (for example, an event fic), write 3 sentences on it anyway, and then 3 more on another to share.

That’s it! You can invite others to join in, or just post. If you tag me in your post, I will send you an ask request!

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Requested/Friend event mentions under the cut! If you'd like to be pinged next week, let me know!

friends @fiore-della-valle @redbirdblogs @greenbergsays @idkfandomwhatever @luckyspike @obaewankenope @mad-madam-m @sleepymccoy @eriquin @sosobriquet @qprstobin @spacebarrette @andavs @zainclaw @anonymousdandelion @flameraven @fractalgeometry / Requests @aparticularbandit @madnessfromthemountains @makeroftherunes @not-orpheus @1attheedge

[deansapplepie]

Period .

Summary: The one time you were glad you had your period, and the one time you weren’t.

Warnings: young Daryl (just in the first part), mentions of pregnancy, period, blood, sexual themes, mentions of creampie, mentions of impregnating, little angsty in the end. Minors do not Interact, 18+.

A/N: it was supposed to be a small drabble, but it turned out longer than I imagined. 🤭 Period is something important in the story, but the main focus is really about pregnancy.

Also, there’s no smut just little thoughts of Daryl.

The Quarry, Atlanta

You were fucked you knew you were, but so was Daryl and that was the problem. You had been dating for only a few months before the outbreak and even though your relationship was new, you knew his temper pretty well being neighbors for many years.

Your period was late, it already was when the world ended, but just a few days, so you didn’t worry about it. Now, it had been almost a month and you were worried as fuck. You tried to fake normalcy, pretend there wasn’t anything wrong. But your constant lip biting and unquiet legs denounced to the hunter how nervous you were. “Spill it.” He said.

“What?” He took you by surprise, you were so into in your mind that you didn’t even know he had been observing for the last half hour.

“There’s somethin’ worrying ya. Just say it.” He didn’t take his eyes from you as he waited for you ti say something.

“My period. It’s late. I’m worried.” You threw averting his eyes.

In his mind a million of thoughts were running, but mainly 1. why did you have to feel so amazing wrapped around him that sometimes he couldn’t just control himself and just finish inside of you? 2. why did he still used no condoms? 3. he couldn’t be a father, he didn’t have this ability.

“Just that?” He asked nonchalantly pretending it didn’t affect him. “Want me to go to town and pick a pregnancy test?”

You looked at him amused. How could he be so calm when you were panicking? Part of you were glad he wasn’t fuming in rage like you imagined he would be, but the other part was frustrated with him acting like it was nothing. “Seriously?” You gave him an incredulous look. “Don’t need to. Let’s wait a little more.” You got up and left to the lake, frustrated, fuming and just needing to calm yourself down.

Days passed and nothing happened. Until the day Daryl woke up tired of not knowing if he would have to raise a child in this fucked up world or not. When you woke up he was already brewing something on the fire, Merle with him. “I’m going to town. Want something?” He asked.

“What are you going to do in town?” You didn’t understand, you had everything. Food and hygiene supplies, what else could you need?

“I’m gonna get the thing. We already waited too much.” He seemed nervous, finally one small demonstration of feelings.

“Are ya two gonna talk in codes now?” Merle complained feeling left out.

You ignored him and replied Daryl. “Ok. Just let me go the bathroom, gonna think if we need anything else.” You left in the direction of the RV, not everyone used it, but most of you. Especially the women and the kids, Daryl and Merle preferred to go into the woods as to not get the dirty looks everyone gave them, but you were different, you were polite and would smile sometimes. Also, you got along well with Dale and the women in the camp.

You distributed ‘good mornings’ along the way and when you got to the RV you encountered Dale, Ami and Andrea having breakfast. You greeted them and excused yourself to the bathroom, and there it was… your answer. No test needed. A pool of blood on your panties. You felt wet earlier, but the last weeks you felt it many times and it was always nothing, so you didn’t mind. You were relieved. The world was pure chaos and you couldn’t imagine raising a child in it. Yet, there was an uneasy feeling inside of you.

You went back to your tent and the small fire the brothers had done. “You don’t need to go.” It was as the only thing you said.

“Ugh?” He grunted confused.

“I’m on my period.” You said, and fuck if Merle was listening.

“Were ya talking in codes because ya thought you were pregnant?” Merle almost yelled. “And you were hiding it from me? The uncle?”

“Shut up Merle, nobody needs to know, and stop complaining about an inexistent baby.” You answered mood swinging immediately. There it was, you had seen the signals, you just didn’t want to read them.

Daryl stayed silent while you went inside the tent to take clean panties, pads or tampons to change. When you came out Daryl was the same way he was before, millions of thoughts inside his head.

“Are you going to say something or are you going to pretend there wasn’t anything going on just like when I told you my worries?” You snapped, the last days you had thought over and over again about his non reaction the day you told him, and that’s not that you wanted him to have fought or screamed at you, you didn’t, but you wanted him to share his worries with you and to be able to share yours with him.

“What do ya want me to say?” He asked, dryly. “Thank God? ‘Cause I don’t believe in one. Or do you want me to say I feel really sorry ‘cause we’re not putting a child in this fucked up world?” He had snapped. You were angry at him, but at least it was a reaction of some sort.

“You’re an asshole.” You threw at him and left, he thought about retorting you with a sassy answer, but he bit his tongue.

“Ya messed bad, lil bro… ya know nothing about women. How was ya able to catch a girl like her?” Merle couldn’t contain his mouth and spoke.

“Shut up, Merle! Mind your own business!” He replied, taking his things and living grumpily.

Later that day he returned with chocolate and painkillers, which he left on your side of the sleeping bed without saying anything.

Alexandria, Virginia

You were out in the woods, close to Alexandria. You had been hunting with Daryl, your husband. Yes, your husband. So many things have changed along the years, that some times you couldn’t believe how things were different. But one thing hadn’t change, you were still reckless about sex, not that you had options to prevent a pregnancy in the end of the world.

And that was the reason you were distracted while you hunted, also the reason you were not being silent like he taught you to be and were cracking every and all stick on the way. “Wha’s the problem, sweetheart?” He stopped and turned to you.

Distracted, you continued to walk and bumped into him. “Sorry.” You looked up at him and saw concern in his eyes.

“What’s troubling ya?” He asked his hands resting on your shoulders. “And don’t try to lie, I know ya.”

You sighed. “I’m late.” You’ve been late many times during the time you and Daryl have been together, but most of the times your worries would be taken away as soon as they started to build. But that time at the quarry and now, it had been a long time.

Now he already knew what you meant, and it didn’t worry him this much anymore. To be honest, he even thought about impregnating you during the last years. It all started when his Lil Ass Kicker was born, and then how he saw you taking care of her and interacting with kids. So… he considered having kids with you many times.

“Just that?” He threw the same question back at that day in the quarry. Anger started bubbling in you and then he just stroke you with his words. “Ya shouldn’t worry. If it happens, we’ll take responsibility and do our best. It’s our baby we’re talking about.”

“Daryl… aren’t you mad? Or worried?” You looked at him disarmed now that you realized he wasn’t going to be a dick.

“If ya’re expecting, I helped making this baby and I dun think it would be so terrible the idea of having a baby made of us.” Yeah, you had all changed a lot. You didn’t know one day you could desire him even more, but just the thought of him thinking it wouldn’t be bad to have babies with you… made you want to jump on him.

“Should we grab a pregnancy test with Denise or something?” You suggested grabbing one of his hands.

“Let’s wait a little more and I take them.” He started to walk and intertwined your fingers. “Now, let’s hunt dinner.”

Daryl had finally gone on a run to find some pregnancy tests, Denise unfortunately had none. When he arrived he hoped to see you in the kitchen with Carol, but his friend was alone. She saw his confused face and she knew he was looking for you. “She’s at the bedroom. She arrived and a little while after… she didn’t look well. I think you should see her.” Carol advised him. She knew there was something upsetting you and she was almost sure of what it was, but you had said nothing to her, so she decided it was better to not push.

“Thanks, ‘m gonna check on her.” He said before he left to your shared bedroom.

After he descended the stairs to your room in the basement, he found you on bed laying on your side. He kicked his shoes off before joining you in bed. “Hey babe”

“Hey” you replied and didn’t turn to look at him.

He laid on his side, spooning you and sneaking his arm around you. He rested his hand on your lower stomach, an habit he had developed recently. He’d do it when you got your period and felt cramps, but in the last days he had done it for another reason. “Can you take your hand from there?” You asked.

“Why? Don’t ya wanna me to touch ya?” He wanted to understand what was troubling your mind.

“There’s nothing there. Just my uterus. My stupid bleeding uterus.” Here it was. He wouldn’t deny he was a little upset, he had some hope on you being pregnant. He was even excited.

“Ok. Look at me.” He turned you so you’d be facing him. You had teary eyes and a small pout on your lips. “You wanted this baby, didn’t ya?”

“Is it this obvious?” Yes, it was. It was visible on your face.

“I wanted it too.” He confessed, his fingers running on your hair.

“I’ve been wanting for a long time already… since Jude was born and I saw her in your arms. When I have Jude in my arms or little Hershel, I wish I had a baby.” While you spoke, your eyes welled with tears and they started falling.

He gently wiped your tears, he could understand your feelings in his own way, because he felt them too. “Me too. When I see you with the kids, I wish we had one.” ‘And to put a baby inside of you’, completed in his mind. “Do ya want me to give you a baby?”

Your eyes sparkled at his words, and it wasn’t just because of the tears threatening to fall again. “Would you?” You looked in his eyes and he felt like you could see his soul. But, yes… you could. You could always see him, even when he couldn’t.

“As many as ya want.” He said and the tears you were holding just bursted from your eyes. “Stop crying, I didn’t say it so you’d cry. If you continue to cry, I’m not giving ya babies…”

“Don’t you dare Daryl Dixon! I’m crying because I’m happy, ok?” You cupped his face with your hands, making a pout appear on his face.

“Ok.” He spoke the best he could with your hands cupping his face and restraining his lips from moving. You kissed his lips and released his face.

He brought you closer and hugged you, your face hiding on his chest. He was happy. You weren’t feeling like shit anymore, you were feeling like the luckiest woman in the damn end of the world.

You were trying for babies as soon as possible. That was what he thought, a smile on his face while he held you in his arms.

Wanna be added to my tag list? Let me know. (Please tell me if you want to be tagged on everything or just specific series) Everything Taglist: @lilyevanstan1325

[daryltwdixon]

The Ruins of Us: Chapter 27

summary: As tensions rise in the group over Randy’s fate, you find yourself caught in a web of difficult choices and long-buried truths. In a flashback, a quiet night leads to violence as Daryl faces an ambush, realizing he's being targeted to send a message—one tied to his past choices and his unresolved guilt.

no warnings apply, but lmk if you think I missed any

x flash forward x

You climb the stairs to the house, each step heavier than the last, your chest tightening with the sadness of Randy’s fate. The wind feels colder against your skin, and it mirrors the dread in your heart. You wonder, briefly, if Dale could manage to sway anyone’s mind. Would someone else stand up for Randy’s life? But deep down, you know. It’s dangerous to send him back, no matter how "good" he might seem. Thirty men showing up to the farm—it wouldn’t be survival. It would be a massacre. And if Randy’s story was true, the things they would do to you all… Your fingers tremble slightly at the thought. Although you can’t help the lingering feeling of what might happen if he was dropped in the middle of nowhere, to fend for himself, miles away. The options mulled in your brain, there had to be a way. It would rip this group apart if someone didn’t act.

As you reach the porch, your eyes lock on Shane’s. They aren’t dark or filled with the intensity you’ve come to expect. Instead, there’s a dullness, almost a boredom, like he doesn’t understand why this conversation even needs to happen.

“You two keep wanderin’ off,” he says, pointedly. His voice cuts through the cool air, but you barely hear it over the weight in your chest.

You avoid his gaze, your voice quiet, but firm. “Ain’t none of your concern, Shane,” you say, stepping past him, feeling his stare linger on your back.

The screen door slams behind Daryl as he trails behind you and everyone else. As you step into the cozy warmth of the sitting room, it feels wrong—like a room that should hold peace but instead holds only the weight of impossible decisions. The beautiful fireplace, the soft light casting golden hues on the couches—it’s all just a backdrop for the tension that presses down on everyone like a vice.

Daryl’s fingers gently wrap around yours, pulling you to the side before you enter the room. You look up at him, searching his eyes. There’s something unspoken there—a shared sadness, a quiet apology for what he fears might be inevitable. He holds your gaze, the moment stretching out longer than usual, and for a second, you wonder what he’s thinking. Maybe it’s regret for coming back. Maybe it’s sadness because you knew Randy before all this, and now that connection means nothing in a world gone dark. He lets go after a reassuring squeeze, and looks to the group, leaning against an entry table. You want to ask, but Glenn’s soft voice pulls you both back to the grim reality.

“So, how do we do this?” he says gently, his black hair shining in the golden light that casts through the windows, “Just take a vote?”

Andrea looks to Rick, asking if the vote needs to be unanimous. Some people speak up, Lori saying it should be majority rules, but Rick stops them, “Let’s just see where everybody stands, then we can talk through the options,” his voice is gentle, kind. He wants this to be an open room of discussion. 

Of course, Shane speaks up first, his gruff Georgia accent ringing through the room with clarity, “Well, where I sit, there’s only one way to move forward,” you’re not sure how you didn’t see it when he had you at the barn, but his face is pockmarked from what looks like a punches, asphalt burns, and cuts. You wonder briefly about how yesterday went, when Rick and him took Randy to drop him in a safe spot.

Dale speaks up immediately following him, “Killing him, right?” he demands, bewilderment clouding his voice, “I mean why even bother to even take a vote? It’s clear the way the winds blowing,” 

You bite your lip, looking to Daryl. You really did feel for Dale, his need for justice–for fairness. You wished you were back in the real world where Randy would actually get a fair trial. But this was the real world now. Violent. Risky. You were afraid having him here put you all in danger regardless. His group could be out there trying to find them, tracking him down and finding you all here with him tied up. 

Daryl glances up to meet your eye as he chews the inside of his lip too. You’re mirrors of each other for a moment before your attention turns back to Dale.

“Well,” Rick says, his tone getting more frustrated, “if the people believe we should spare him, I wanna know,” his hand is up, directing, serious.

“Well, I can tell you it’s a small group,” Dale says sadly, “Maybe just me…Glenn and Y/N,” 

Your head snaps up at the mention of your name, eyes going wide. Glenn looks up at Dale, but you can’t see his expression. Dale’s face falls as he looks at him.

“Look I–” Glenn begins, hesitating, “I think you’re pretty much right about everything–all the time–but this–” 

Dale cuts him off, “They’ve got you scared!”

Glenn’s arm points out toward the window, “He’s not one of us,” he says, “And we’ve lost too many people already,”

Then Dale meets your wide eyed look, still frozen, unsure what you did that gave him hope. You feel everyone’s eyes on you. You don’t say anything, just waiting for Dale to explain himself.

Dale’s eyes are wide with determination as he looks around the room. "Y/N knows him! Knows he's a good kid!" His voice is louder now, cutting through the gasps and whispers spreading around the room.

"You knew this kid?" Shane's snarl breaks the silence, his eyes narrowing as they settle on you, heat rising in his voice.

Your throat tightens under the weight of everyone’s stares. You can practically feel their eyes boring into you. Rick’s voice is low but sharp as he steps closer, his tone one of quiet betrayal. "What the hell, Y/N? And you didn’t say anything?"

You take a steadying breath, your heart pounding as you glare at Dale before turning to Rick. "I only knew him for about 30 minutes, at a college party," you explain, trying to keep your voice even. Your eyes shift back to Dale, your patience wearing thin. You still don’t know how the hell he figured this out—nosy old man.

"I knew him for one night, and yeah, he was a good kid back then ," you continue, turning your attention back to Rick. "But that was before everything went to hell. This world changes people. We can’t risk his people showing up here either way. We don’t want him bringing them down on us, but what if they find us first?"

Shane’s eyes are still locked on you, burning with suspicion. You feel your own frustration rise as his glare deepens.

"And don’t you give me that look," you snap at Shane, unable to hold back any longer. "You were there too, remember? You broke up the damn party that night, but you were too busy being smug and obsessed with me to even notice the kid. Save for the fact you thought I was gonna slut it up and go home with him."

The second the words leave your mouth, you know you’ve said too much. The room goes deathly quiet, the tension thickening like a storm cloud ready to burst. Daryl stiffens beside you. Everyone else is frozen, glancing between you and Shane, piecing together the history you hadn’t meant to spill out so carelessly. You knew people had an inclination of it, hell when he was actually nice a few weeks ago it wouldn’t have mattered what people knew or thought. 

Rick finally clears his throat, trying to reel the room back in before it spirals. His tone is measured, but there’s a new edge to it. “This isn’t about your past with Shane,” he says, looking directly at you. “We’re here to figure out what to do with Randall,”

The room doesn’t quite recover its focus. The unspoken knowledge of your history with Shane lingers, adding a layer of tension to the decision ahead. But with Rick steering things back to Randy, the discussion moves on—though you can feel the weight of everyone’s silent judgments, questions, and curiosities hanging thick in the air.

Dale is fidgeting with his hat in his hand, and asks Maggie what she thinks. She looks around, then quietly asks Rick, “Couldn’t we continue keepin’ ‘em prisoner?” 

“Just another mouth to feed,” Daryl grumbles beside you.

“It may be a lean winter,” Hershel pipes up. There’s talks about rationing better, keeping Randall as an asset to work the farm. Someone mentions an escort always on him, and you huff a laugh, like anyone would want that job .

“I don’t think anyone should be walking around with this guy,” Rick says, raising his hand to silence everyone. Daryl leans back against the entry table, arms folded over his chest. You bump him quietly with your shoulder, trying to read him. He glances at you, his face unchanging before he looks back to the group.

“We can’t exactly put chains around his ankles–sentence him to hard labor,” Andrea says, and she’s right. You couldn’t do that to another human being. 

“Look,” Shane says, softer now, “Say we let 'em join us, right? Maybe–maybe he’s helpful, maybe he’s nice ,” he makes a sarcastic face like even he wouldn’t believe it, “We let our guard down and maybe he runs off, brings back his thirty men,”

You watch as Daryl studies him with a hardness outlining his features. He’s thinking hard about something. You wish you could ask him now.

“So the answer is to kill him?” Dale demands, “to prevent a crime he may never even attempt?

“If we do this, we’re saying there’s no hope, rule of law is dead, there is no civilization.” Dale goes on, his tone frustrated, hopeless, angry. You hear Shane mutter under his breath, rolling his eyes. There’s talk of driving him off further, leaving him further away. 

“What’s up?” you whisper to Daryl. He looks at you biting the inside of his lip. You glance between his lips and his eyes, waiting for him to answer. He shakes his head, but keeps his eyes on you, softening. Later, you almost hear him say. Your eyes stay on him, searching, questioning. But eventually you nod.

Your ears prick back to the discussion at the topic of what to do with a body .

“Woah, hold on, hold on!” Daryl calls, “you’re talking about this like it’s already been decided!”

“We could talk about it all day,” Daryl finally says, “going around in circles, you just wanna go around in circles again?”

“THIS IS A YOUNG MAN’S LIFE!” Dale yells, “And it is worth more than a five minute conversation.” his voice raises, ending sharply on the last word. He goes on and on, he’s upset for the kid, you really do understand. And he’s trying to do the right thing. There’s bickering back and forth, no real answers coming from anything. 

“Stop it!” Carol’s shaky voice shoots through the mix of voices, “Just stop it. I’m sick of everybody arguing and fighting. I didn’t ask for this. You can't ask us to decide something like this. Please, decide. Either of you, both of you. Leave me out of it,” 

Dale begins to retort back, but Rick holds his hand to stop him. He asks if anyone wants the floor to state their case for once and for all. Everyone is silent, and your thoughts race at the million arguments that can be made for him. Keep him, and his group can come looking for him. Or he takes the chance to run off to them, bringing them here himself. Release him, and he dies all alone, but he at least would have a chance at survival. 

Of course it’s Dale who steps forward, claiming we don’t kill the living. That if we do this, the world we knew is dead. Survival of the fittest. He’s pleading now, his eyes misty. 

“This isn’t who we are,” he says finally.

You lean into Daryl without thinking, your head coming to rest against his shoulder. It’s too much to have on anyone’s shoulders, to decide a man’s fate. You feel Daryl lower his head to yours, his presence steady, but you can sense the tension still humming through him. The room is still, save for Dale’s pleading words, but they are falling on deaf ears. In your heart, you want to side with Dale. You wish for the world he’s fighting to protect—a world of fairness, justice, and hope. But you can’t. The images of Randy’s people flash through your mind, and you see death, destruction, cruelty. Dale’s world is gone, and you know it.

“He’s right,” Andrea says softly, “we should try to find another way,” 

Dale leaves on the note of disappointment, disgust, and sadness when he says his final words, the rest of the group in quiet resignation of their answer. As he’s passing you and Daryl by the door, he stops, and puts his hand on Daryl’s shoulder, “You’re right, this group is broken,”

x flashback x 

Daryl 

The night was quiet as Daryl made his way lazily down the street. He couldn’t sleep, too many thoughts buzzing through his head. It must've been around 2AM, but he hadn’t checked. His boots scraped against the cracked pavement, each step slow and heavy, the weight of everything pressing down on his shoulders. He jammed his hands deep into his pockets, feeling the rough edges of his lighter pressing against his fingers. Another cigarette wasn’t going to help, but hell, nothing would. Not after that phone call.

Weeks—you’d been calling for weeks. And when he finally picked up, he could barely say a damn thing. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to talk to you—he did. More than anything. But the words had stuck in his throat, the guilt curling tight in his chest until it choked him. He knew pushing you away was the only way to keep you safe, to keep you out of Merle’s mess, but that didn’t make it easier. He replayed the conversation over and over in his head, your voice small on the other end, asking if he was okay, asking why he hadn’t called back. He had nothing for you. Just silence.

His jaw clenched as he walked, the humid air sticking to his skin. He needed to clear his head, but all he could think about was you. The way you sounded so hurt, the way he had nothing to give. Pushing you away had felt like shit, but what else could he do?

Up ahead, the faint glow of headlights caught his eye. There was a car idling near the curb, engine low and rumbling in the otherwise still night. Daryl slowed his pace, eyes narrowing as he approached. Something about the car felt off. The street was practically dead—there was no reason for anyone to be sitting around this late. His instincts kicked in, telling him to be careful, but he kept moving forward, his fingers itching for the knife he always kept strapped to his belt.

As he drew closer, the car door creaked open, and two guys stepped out. They moved slowly, deliberately, like they’d been waiting for him. Daryl’s muscles tensed, but he kept his pace steady, not giving them the satisfaction of seeing him react. He didn’t recognize them, but it didn’t matter. He could smell trouble on them a mile away. They weren’t rushing, but they were coming for him—that much was clear. The first guy, tall and wiry, had a cocky swagger to his step. The second one hung back, broader, his eyes dark and assessing.

Daryl kept his head down, his pace steady. But a voice cut through the silence.

“You one of them Dixon brothers?” the wiry one said, his tone low and taunting.

Daryl stopped, his eyes flicking between the two men. His blood ran hot, anger already rising. He didn’t know these guys, but their intent was written all over their faces. They were looking for trouble, and he wasn’t about to back down.

Daryl kept his eyes on them, but didn’t stop walking. “Who’s askin’?”

The two men exchanged a glance, a smirk playing on the lips of the taller one. “Doesn’t matter who’s askin’. We’re here to send you a message.”

Daryl’s jaw clenched, heart rate picking up as he scanned the street around him. No one else in sight. Just him, these two, and whatever they were about to bring. A part of him bristled at the idea of being sent a message, like he was some kind of errand boy who had to answer to anyone.

He stopped a few paces away, his eyes narrowing as the first guy stepped forward. “A message, huh?” he growled, the words sharp in his throat. “From who?”

The guy shrugged, his smirk widening. “Doesn’t matter. Just need to make sure you get the point.”

Daryl felt a flicker of something dark in his gut. He didn’t know who these guys were, or why they were sent after him, but he didn’t care. His fists curled tighter at his sides, the frustration he’d been trying to bury now bubbling to the surface. The guilt about you, the weight of protecting Merle, all of it was starting to burn through him, and these guys had picked the wrong night to mess with him.

“You think I’m gonna stand here and listen to this shit?” Daryl spat, his voice low and cold. “Tell whoever sent you they can come say it themselves.”

The second guy laughed, stepping closer. “You think this is a conversation? Nah, man. We ain’t here to talk.”

Daryl’s lips curled into a sneer. “Yeah, figured. So let’s get this over with.”

The first guy’s eyes darkened, and he took another step toward Daryl, his tone turning more menacing. “Listen, we don’t care if you got a death wish, Dixon. We’re just here to set you straight,”

Daryl’s heartbeat kicked up, but his feet stayed planted, defiant. He couldn’t tell if this was tied to Merle or something else, but either way, it didn’t matter. The threat didn’t scare him—it only pissed him off. Before he could say anything else, both guys tensed, their eyes locking on him. They didn’t wait any longer.

They lunged.

[hiro--aoki]

TWD X TUMBLR Chapter One: Where The Story Starts

TW: No trigger warnings out of the usual twd stuff, you know the drill

A/n: and. here. we. go.

Next Chapter

“Hello? Hello, can anyone hear my voice? Over”

Everyone’s heads turn towards the radio. There hasn’t been a transmission since they bombed Atlanta. Everyone rushes over, Amy getting there first, dropping the sticks she had gathered for the fire.

She grabs the radio with a shaky hand, nearly dropping it, “Hey. Hello?”

“Can anyone hear my voice?” The person on the other end continues.

“Yes, you’re coming through. I can hear your voice. Over.” She says, excitement filling her voice.

“If anyone reads, please respond.” The voice continues.

People start to crowd around Amy and the radio. Her faces falls, as she realises, she isn’t coming through to the person.

“Broadcasting on emergency channel. Will be approaching Atlanta on highway 85. If anybody reads, please respond.”

“We’re just outside the city- “But Amy’s interrupted by radio static.

“Damn it.” She mutters, “Hello? Hello? He couldn’t hear me; I couldn’t warn him.”

“Try to raise him again,” Dale offers, “C’mon son, you know best how to work this thing.”

Dale gestures to Shane. Shane slams his hatchet down onto the wooden log the radio is resting on, before kneeling and taking the radio from Amy’s hand.

“Hello, hello. Is the person who called still on the air?”

Everyone listens for a moment, only to hear static yet again.

“This is officer Shane Walsh, responding to person unknown, please respond.”

Another moment of nothing before Shane puts down the radio, “He’s gone.”

Lori breaks the silence, “There are others, it’s not just us.”

“We knew there would be, right?” Shane replies, “That’s why we left the C.B. on.”

“Lot of good it’s been doing. I’ve been saying for a week, we ought to  put signs up on 85 and warn people away from the city.” Lori points out.

“She’s not wrong, Shane.” Lily calls out from her spot with Carl, Kayden and Delilah.

“Folks got no idea what they’re getting into.” Amy adds.

“Well,” Shane says as he stands, “We haven’t had time.”

“I think we need to make time.” Lori says, firmer than before.

“That’s a luxury we can’t afford. We are surviving here; we are day to day.”

“And who the hell would you propose we send?” Dale asks, trying to calm the atmosphere.

“I’ll go. Give me a vehicle.” Lori says countering again.

“I’ll come too.” Lily adds.

“And me!” Delilah demands.

“Nobody goes anywhere alone, and I’m not letting you take two children as support.” Shane answers, leaving no room for arguments.

Lori stays silent for a minute, before mumbling a “Yes sir,” as she walks back to her tent.

Carl goes to follow, holding Kayden’s hand, bringing her too.

“Hey, hey, hey, take a seat kiddos. You’re alright, c’mon.” Shane stops them.

Carl and Kayden stand there for a minute, before Carl continues walking ignoring Shane’s command. Lily follows, stopping them.

“Kay, can you help ‘Lilah, sort the firewood?” She asks.

Kayden nods and runs over to Delilah who is sorting through the sticks Amy had found, as Delilah explains which ones are good to burn, and which ones aren’t.

“Mom?” Carl calls out to Lori.

Shane walks out of the tent first, “Sup, buddy, she’s in there, go on.”

As Shane walks away, he passes Lily who mumbles, “I’m not a kid.”

“Hey,” Lori says to Carl, “I don’t want you or Lily to worry, mama’s not going anywhere, okay?”

Carl nods, with his innocent grin.

“Go finish your chores.” She smiles.

“Okay.” He waddles off to help Delilah and Kayden.

_______Later That Day_______

Amy, followed by Delilah, carries a bucket of fungi to Lori.

“Get a lot?” Lori queries.

“How do we know if they’re poison?” Amy asks as she tips the bucket towards Lori to show her the contents.

Lori holds out a bowl, and Amy tips them in.

“Uh, there’s only one sure way I know of.” Lori says, as she starts to fumble around with a mushroom.

Delilah lifts one to her mouth.

“Don’t.” Lori warns.

Amy crouches down next to the fire, “Ask Shane when he gets back?”

“Yeah.” Lori stands, picking up the bucket.

As she starts to walk to the forest, she calls out to Dale, “Dale. I’m headin’ out.”

She then turns to Carl, “Sweetheart, I want you to stay where Dale or Lily can see you, okay?”

“Yes, mom.” Carl says as he continues to play with Kayden.

“You too! Don’t wander too far; stay within shouting distance, and if you see anything, holler. Okay?” Dale says, his protectiveness showing through his tone of voice.

“Yes mom.” Lori mumbles sarcastically as she walks into the forest.

After she disappears into the forest, Lily calls out to Carl, Kayden, Sophia and Delilah.

“Do you guys wanna hear a story?”

This excites them easily, even Delilah, and they all scramble to sit in front of her.

“Have you heard the story of the big bad wolf and the three little pigs?”

“This story again? You told this one a few nights ago. I came here for energy, creativity, a masterpiece, if you will. This is why Glenn is our story teller. Get your mind in the game, Lils.” Delilah complains.

“You got a better idea, ‘Mrs Rhee’?” Lily asks, with a grin.

“What about a story about a dinosaur?” Carl asks.

“In outer space.” Kayden adds.

“And maker the dinosaur a fairy warrior princess!” Delilah smiles.

_______Meanwhile_______

Rick climbs out of the tank, pushing and shooting walkers away, while he follows the instructions the two voices over the radio had said.

He quickly finds the alley, seeing something moving, points his gun up.

“Woah! Not dead! Not dead!” The Korean says.

“C’mon, hurry.” The lady says.

All three run down the alley to a ladder.  The lady climbs up first, then the guy.

“What are you doing?!” Hurry up!” The man hisses at Rick.

The walkers below growl and grunt as they climb higher onto the building.

The three of them reach a ledge. They lean against the railing as they catch their breathe.

“Nice moves there, Clint Eastwood. You the new sheriff?” The mystery man asks, taking in Rick’s uniform, “Come riding in to clean up the town?”

“Wasn’t my intention-“

“Yeah whatever.” The lady interrupts.

“Well, yee haw, you’re still a dumbass.” The man adds.

There’s another moment of silence before Rick offers the man his hand, “Rick. Thanks.”

The man looks at his hand for a second before shaking it, “Glenn, you’re welcome.”

Rick then offers his hand to the lady.

She shakes his hand, “Artemis.”

“Oh no,” Glenn says, as he peers over the railing at the walkers, who are blocking one two ways off the balcony.

The three of them glance up at the ladder that takes them further up the building.

“Bright side: it’ll be the fall that kills us.” Glenn says.

This earns a look from Rick.

“He’s a glass half full kinda guy.” Artemis chuckles.

This time, Glenn climbs up the ladder first, then Artemis, and finally, after stealing a glance at the decaying nightmares, Rick.

Taglist:

@kookiekult @smutinlove @far-cry-from-finality @zomb-1-egutzz @shadowybasementmiracle @vaniniweenie

@frankcastleautism @hisdahlia @carlslvr @zzombiegirl @lunarnightt @carlmipololo @herrera2k @txrasbae @sleep-queen

[jalenay]

Nothing's Wrong with Dale - Publishing Update May 4 2024

So my work work is starting to relax - it'll be 'normal' working hours after May 15, but i'm manifesting some early additional free time (by ignoring some of the things i still have left to do) and i thought i'd give an update on my current NWWD plan to fill you guys in (if anyone wants to know) and to motivate myself to, you know, do it.

let me know what you think and if you have any questions! or if there's anything else you want to know!

So the overall plan is as follows:

First Rough Edit - this is basically just changing the POV from 2nd POV to 3rd POV. This is very tedious and currently what I'm doing right now. I'm also making a list as I go for high level updates/changes i want to make. Just thinking about the story as a whole and what tweaks i want to make now that the whole thing is finally done (primarily moving exposition around, if there's anything extra i can remove, timing of when certain things are discussed, and so on).

My Main Edit - this will be more time consuming but probably more fun as i do my main revise and edit of the story as a whole. i'll likely print the entire story out, make edits on hard copy, and then type up all the edits. I will also probably be sending the updated chapters to my main beta, for her opinion. (this would be the person i first texted about Dale in Dec 2021, she deserves first look lol)

Editor - After I'm happy with what I've done, i'll send the entire thing over to my editors, the main ones who worked on DSM. This will likely take a good amount of time (DSM took one month) but in many ways involves less effort from me lol. Just nerves.

Cover, Self-publishing Details - while my editors have the manuscript, I'll be narrowing down what I want the cover to look like and hiring a cover artist. (i've got a short list of artists right now, but i'll probably continue to refine that). I'm bad a visualizing covers and so this will be hard for me, although i have some basic ideas. i'll need to gather reference photos too and then work with the artist. I also want to publish more widely than just Amazon and will hopefully get DSM out to other places as well as a test run before NWWD. Look into more marketing? This is the most miscellaneous of the steps.

Process Edits - actually go through all the edits and notes given to me by my editor. This takes a lot of time (and is mentally taxing - no one likes to read pages of people telling you what you need to fix about what you wrote even if its overall extremely helpful and necessary)

Finalizing - I'll send the edited version to my first beta and another ARC reader/friend. I'll work on the formatting for the book. Coordinating where it will be published and when.

Publishing!

This is a loose list of steps that I mostly defined right now, but are similar to what i did with DSM. As i said, I'm in step one, currently just finished Chapter 25 of 36 of that rough edit.

I'll try to provide some updates on the process at it moves along, if people are interested in hearing about that. I'll most likely keep those updates on this blog, along with any other publishing specific commentary. if any one has any questions or thoughts on the whole thing, please feel free to send them to this blog or comment on this post.

I'm very excited to really dig into publishing NWWD and looking forward to sharing it with you!

Thanks to everyone for all their support - I wouldn't even be considering this (i probably wouldn't have even had a finished draft) with you!

[theblackhate]

Home Is Where The Heart Is | Negan Smith

check the other parts here!

Summary:

There is no longer a home, no place of comfort in that world. One survives to live, risking life to move forward and protect one's people.

But there are always two sides of the same coin. So, is the villain truly the villain? Or is He just the villain in your story?

Pairing: Negan Smith x reader

Word Count: 5.8k

No Heaven, Only Trouble

"We can’t do this!" Delilah dropped into a chair by the campfire. "As much as I find it disturbing, it's not our place, nor our decision to make."

The group fell into silence. Some agreed with the young girl, others did not. Hours had passed since they discovered the barn, and the peace they'd briefly found had vanished into thin air. Lori held Carl close, staring at the flames dancing before her eyes.

She looked up to meet her eldest daughter’s gaze, stifling a sigh when she found nothing in them. She was worried about Delilah—worried because the once vibrant teenager, full of life and promise, had lost her spark, her expression now empty and blank.

But what she hated the most was that, due to wrong choices, the mother-daughter bond was lost forever. She could no longer comfort her. Delilah pushed her away.

Carl was the only one who still seemed to love her unconditionally. Lori fought back tears, closing her eyes and resting her head on Carl's, gently stroking his back while the group resumed their heated debate.

"We’re not safe! We have to do something, or those doors will give way, and in the middle of the night, we’ll be torn apart by the dead."

Delilah’s patience was wearing thin. Lately, she felt like she was losing her mind. "Shane, does anything I say go in one ear and out the other? Damn it! We can’t just do whatever the hell we want, especially when Hershel wants us out of here as soon as possible!"

Shane turned to her, furious. "You have no right to make decisions, kid. These are adult matters! You can’t understand what’s best for the group. If we followed your idea, we'd all be dead by tomorrow morning!"

"Stop!" Dale stood up, stepping between them. "There’s no need to get worked up. We have to stay united," he sighed, taking off his hat and running a hand through what little hair remained.

Shane, still furious, sat down on one of the logs. The silence that settled over the group only made Delilah more anxious. She glanced around, trying to calm herself. She knew that snapping back at Shane, especially in his current state, wouldn’t lead to anything productive, so she bit her tongue, forcing herself to think about something else.

She reached out to stroke Orion, who was sleeping next to her chair.

After a long silence, Rick stood up and headed toward the house. No one asked him what he was going to do; instead, they all remained in their places as if any movement might spell disaster.

Delilah fixated on the flames, watching their mesmerizing dance. If she concentrated hard enough, she could make out shapes moving hypnotically within the fire.

And that’s how she fell asleep—watching the figures dance in the flames, while Orion curled up on her lap, shielding her from the early November chill. The days had grown short, colder, and the group's concern was how they'd keep warm if Hershel refused to let them into the house.

"What the hell are you doing?" Delilah jolted awake, jumping out of her chair. The sudden movement sent sharp pain through her stiff muscles. The brief peace and tranquility she'd enjoyed while half-asleep vanished as the surrounding noise rushed back to her all at once.

Orion, still sounding like a puppy, began barking at the distant commotion and his owner’s sudden movement. Delilah looked around, confused, until she spotted her group rushing toward the barn in the distance, beyond the fence.

What she saw next confused her even more. "What the hell..." She shook off her drowsiness and sprinted toward the group, now gathered in front of a chilling scene that sent a shiver down her spine.

Her father was leading a walker on a leash.

She couldn't hear the conversation yet, still too far away, with Orion following closely behind her. Her heart pounded wildly as she saw Shane pull out a gun and shoot the walker her father was leading, right in the head.

Delilah froze in her tracks, watching the scene unfold before her eyes.

The cold, dry November air clung to her skin, her breath quick and shallow as she watched an old family friend open the barn doors, releasing a small herd of walkers into the open.

Shane was the first to open fire. Moments later, Andrea grabbed a rifle, and a few others followed suit, taking the same initiative to finally put down those who the Greene family had once considered part of them.

Delilah wanted to feel something—anything—when Beth’s screams pierced the air, or when she saw the blonde girl lay down beside the body she believed to be her mother, clinging to the last shred of hope that these people could somehow return to who they once were.

But what made Delilah’s breath catch wasn’t Beth’s cries or the moment the body beside her tried to bite her. It was when the entire group’s attention snapped back toward the barn doors.

She wanted to join them, to cross the fence and hear what they were saying, to better understand what was happening. She bent down to scoop up Orion when he began whimpering and trembling, holding him tightly in her arms as another wail of despair cut through the air.

This time, it was Carol who collapsed to the ground, falling to her knees, supported by Lori. The group blocked Delilah’s view, preventing her from seeing what had caused such a reaction in the woman who was already so broken by life.

But maybe it was something Delilah didn’t want to see.

The apocalypse had changed her, just as it had changed everyone. It had hardened her, made her more pessimistic, perhaps even more indifferent than she’d been before the world fell apart. Yet, when she saw the fragile figure emerge from the barn, she felt a sharp pain in her chest.

Sophia, or what remained of her, limped out of the half-open door. The once youthful, terrified face had been reduced to decaying flesh, slowly rotting away.

Delilah didn’t want to imagine what the scene looked like up close because, even from this distance, she could see how badly the young girl had deteriorated. Carol’s sobs grew louder, not stopping until Delilah’s father, after glancing around for a moment, approached Sophia and placed the barrel of his gun to the back of her head.

A single gunshot echoed across the field, startling Orion in her arms.

When Delilah saw Carol break free from Lori’s embrace and rush to her daughter’s lifeless body, she turned away, heading back to her small spot by the fire, unable to watch the heartbreaking scene of a mother grieving over her child.

Lately, Delilah’s coping mechanism seemed to be avoidance. She no longer asked questions or involved herself in conversations, especially after her last argument with Shane. As the days went by, she spoke less and less, often spending entire days in the company of Orion, and occasionally, Carl.

Carl. Delilah had noticed his change too—a preteen forced to survive in a world like this for months. What worried her wasn’t that he was in danger—she knew Carl was tough—but that he might be shutting down emotionally, just like she was.

Since Sophia's official death, Carl had become cold toward everyone. He no longer spoke to Shane and avoided his presence altogether, snapping back at Lori and acting in ways that were entirely unlike him.

Delilah had always been good at observing people, and recently, it seemed like that was all she could do. Tensions were at an all-time high since the barn incident, and she was exhausted—exhausted by the awful situation, tired of the people around her, and weary at the thought of having to find another place to stay once her father and Glenn returned with Hershel.

Yet, perhaps she wasn’t as observant as she thought, because she hadn’t noticed Shane leave, nor had she seen him return with her mother until they parked. Confused, Delilah got up from her chair and approached them.

Andrea immediately rushed to hug Lori. "Oh my God, are you okay? We were so worried!"

Delilah eyed her mother warily before stepping aside when Carl elbowed past her to run into Lori’s arms. She lifted him off the ground, holding him tightly. "Yes, I’m fine. I was in an accident."

"She was attacked," Shane corrected, standing uncomfortably close to Lori, much to Delilah’s displeasure. Lori rolled her eyes, setting Carl back on the ground before glancing around, searching for someone in the small crowd that had gathered.

"I’m fine. Really. Where’s Rick?" she asked, worry filling her voice when she didn’t see him. She looked at Andrea, then at Maggie, who had stepped out of the house to check on the situation.

Her gaze finally landed on Delilah, distant and unfocused, as if she were looking at her from far away. "Haven’t they come back yet?"

"Not yet," Delilah replied, pulling her red leather jacket tighter around herself and stifling a yawn.

Not in the mood to stand around waiting for her father and Glenn to return, Delilah turned on her heel, ready to head back to the makeshift camp. But she was stopped by the sound of her mother’s frustrated, angry voice.

"You bastard."

"Lori—"

"He’s my husband!" she shouted, shoving Shane. The small group watched, confused and on edge, ready to intervene if Shane reacted poorly.

"Lori, I’ll go look for him!" Shane’s raised voice drew out the rest of the Greene family from the house, all of them watching nervously, fearing there was some imminent danger.

What none of them seemed to realize was that the danger was already right in front of them—one of their own. Dale glanced at Delilah, then back at the escalating scene before them.

Delilah’s body flooded with rage when Shane grabbed her mother’s arm, causing Lori to wince from the force of his grip. Before she could think, Delilah launched herself at him, grabbing his arm.

"Don’t you dare touch her, you asshole!" she growled through clenched teeth, but within seconds, she found herself on the ground. The left side of her face stung sharply, like an injection, and her ear rang for a few seconds, disorienting her. It all happened so quickly that Delilah didn’t even realize what had hit her, though hearing her mother’s screams and the shock from those around her made it easy to figure out.

A metallic taste filled her mouth as a pair of hands helped her up to her knees. Her mother knelt in front of her, reaching for her face, but Delilah recoiled, a sharp pain shooting through her left side.

"Get away," Lori snarled at someone behind her daughter. Footsteps retreated from the scene. "Are you okay, honey? I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry," she whispered in Delilah’s ear, wrapping her arms around her and stroking her hair, just as she had when Delilah was little.

━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━

In the fading light of late afternoon, the room was enveloped in a heavy, almost palpable silence. The old Dale crouched slowly toward Lori, holding a damp cloth. Her face, marked with faint scratches from the incident earlier, was fixed on Delilah, who in turn glanced at Carl standing beside her, his face tight with worry.

At twelve years old, Carl’s large, innocent eyes, which had already seen too much, betrayed a barely concealed anxiety. He kept his gaze fixed on his mother, trying to be strong as if his mere presence could ease Lori’s pain. 

“Don’t worry, Carl,” Lori murmured as Dale handed her the cloth so she could gently tend to her wounds herself. “It’s nothing serious.”

Carl nodded, but his expression remained unconvinced. He watched every move Lori made, as though fearing that even a slight touch could cause her more harm. Lori attempted to smile at him, but the tension in the air made any reassurance seem inadequate.

His eyes darted from his mother to his older sister, who sat across from him in an armchair, her expression betraying nothing. Delilah watched the scene with her arms crossed, her face flushed with the lingering anger from the earlier argument. Her irritation was not just for Lori, but for herself as well. Shane had hit her—a family friend she had once considered almost like an uncle. Her mind replayed the moment she had tried to intervene, to stop the explosive argument, and the violent response she received in return.

She had known Shane was a danger for a long time, but the fact that he had escalated to hitting her was a different matter. Shane was a ticking time bomb, and the moment when he would explode seemed closer than ever.

The silence between them was thick, and Carl couldn’t help but notice the palpable tension emanating from his older sister. He moved closer to Lori and took her hand, a simple gesture that seemed to promise his unwavering support.

Lori sighed slightly, drawing everyone’s attention. “I can’t believe Shane would do something like this,” she said finally, her voice heavy with bitterness.

“He’ll do worse,” Delilah snapped, lifting her gaze to meet her mother’s eyes. Her voice was sharp, brimming with barely contained rage. She couldn’t understand whether Lori was truly blind to Shane’s danger or too infatuated with him to see it. “He’s a threat. One of these days, he’ll do something that gets us all killed.”

Lori fell silent for a moment, her expression strained but composed. She tried to maintain a facade of calm, but the tension between them was undeniable, and Delilah could sense it. Carl, meanwhile, had not taken his eyes off his mother, his face reflecting the weight of something he didn’t fully understand.

Dale looked up from his task, his wise and weary eyes meeting Delilah’s. There was no need for words between them. Delilah knew he understood, that he shared her concerns. There was a silent understanding between them, a bond forged over time, perhaps because Dale had never been as naive as Lori seemed to be.

“Shane has his issues,” Dale said slowly, his voice calm but with a gravity that left no room for disagreement. The tone, though measured, was a warning. “But hitting someone… that’s not justifiable.”

Delilah pressed her lips together, her heart pounding. That wasn’t the point, not entirely. “It’s not just that, Dale,” she said, her voice trembling with the intensity of her emotions. “Shane is unstable. He always seems on the verge of… exploding. You can’t tell me you don’t see that too.”

Lori clenched her hands, trying to stay in control. “Delilah, it’s not that simple—”

“Yes, it is!” Delilah interrupted, her words flowing like a flood. “Lori, you refuse to see it. You want to protect everyone, but he’s a ticking time bomb, and when he explodes… we won’t be ready.”

Carl lowered his gaze, visibly shaken by his sister’s harsh words, and Lori seemed about to respond, but it was Dale who spoke up before another argument could erupt.

Delilah’s words had clearly hurt Lori, who had realized she had lost her child the moment she called her by name.

“Delilah is right about one thing,” Dale said slowly, locking eyes with Lori. “Shane is going through a rough patch, and if we’re not careful, that rough patch could become dangerous for all of us.”

Lori closed her eyes for a moment, the weight of Dale’s and Delilah’s words pressing down on her like a stone. When she opened them again, she seemed more weary. “I won’t let him hurt anyone,” she finally said, her voice low but firm. “I’ll handle it.”

The girl couldn’t hold back a laugh. “Oh really? And how?” Delilah’s tone was sharp, biting—nothing good could come from it. “I’m not sure your approach is quite suitable right now, don’t you think?”

A heavy silence filled the room, broken only by the distant ticking of a clock. Dale looked down at the floor for a moment before slowly rising, as if his bones were burdened with unbearable weight. He exited the room, unwilling to participate in the family argument he had tried to avoid.

“Delilah—”

“No!” she exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air and leaping out of the chair. “No! You can’t say anything! You’re putting yourself and Carl in danger just because you can’t control yourself! None of this would have happened if you hadn’t gotten so close to him in a moment of weakness!”

Lori’s eyes filled with tears, humiliated by her daughter’s words. But the harshness didn’t stop there. “Because that’s what you are. Weak.” Delilah jabbed her finger at Lori’s chest before storming out of the room, her anger surging through her veins as she slammed the front door behind her, ignoring Orion’s cheerful greeting on the porch.

She sat on the porch steps, stroking Orion’s soft fur and shivering as she heard footsteps approaching, too familiar to ignore. She didn’t need to look up to know who it was. Shane stopped briefly in front of her before passing by without a word and entering the house.

She watched him go, the door closing behind him, and made herself a promise. 

If Shane wasn’t dead by the end of the weekend, she would ensure it herself. And that’s how she fell asleep, plotting the death of someone who had once been a core part of her life.

The next morning, Delilah woke up still sitting on the porch steps as a car approached and stopped a few meters away from her. It took her a moment to adjust her vision to the sunlight, but as soon as she recognized her father emerging from the car, she sprang to her feet, ignoring the slight dizziness she felt, and rushed to meet him.

Rick enveloped her in his arms, pressing a kiss to her head. "You're here," Delilah whispered against her father's chest, her voice cracking with exhaustion and emotion. For a moment, all the pain, anger, and fear seemed to dissipate. In that instant, she was simply a daughter in her father's arms, finding a safe haven in a world that seemed increasingly unstable.

Rick held her tightly, sensing the tension in her body. He was tired too, weighed down by everything that had been happening, but he tried not to show it. "Everything will be okay," he murmured in a deep, reassuring voice. "I'm back."

Delilah clung to those words, as if they could really bring order to the chaos surrounding them. But deep down, she knew Rick's return wouldn't solve everything. Not with Shane, not with the mounting tensions. Still, in that moment, it didn’t matter.

Within seconds, the sound of the engine and Rick's presence woke the rest of the group. The doors of the house flew open, and those who had been outside rushed to meet them. Lori was the first to arrive, with Carl right behind her, his face a mix of anxiousness and hope. From the porch, Dale descended with a calmer pace, but there was a look of relief in his weary eyes.

Delilah slowly detached herself from Rick's embrace and turned just in time to see Glenn stepping out of the car, visibly exhausted but relieved. He pushed back the sweat-soaked hair from his forehead and gave a nod to the others, a half-smile that couldn’t completely hide his fatigue.

From the passenger seat, Hershel emerged more slowly. His gnarled hands braced against the doorframe for leverage as he climbed out with a serious but determined expression. The journey seemed to have taken its toll on him, but his confident gaze at Rick and the others spoke of his commitment to help, just as he always had.

Lori moved closer to Rick and hugged him tightly, while Carl clung to his father's jacket, seeking comfort. "You found Hershel," Lori murmured, her voice a mix of relief and concern.

Rick nodded, looking intently at his wife. "Yes, he's with us. We have a lot to discuss."

Glenn approached Delilah, giving her a light pat on the shoulder, a silent gesture of support. "Everything okay here?" he asked softly, noticing the faint bruise forming on her cheek, though his attentive gaze sought answers in the expressions of those who had stayed behind.

As Rick tried to recover from the intensity of the moment and Hershel approached slowly with Glenn by his side, a growing tension began to permeate the group. Lori, Dale, and Carl exchanged questioning glances, noting that Rick, Glenn, and Hershel seemed more worried than expected.

It was Delilah who first noticed something strange. The car trunk wasn’t completely closed, and a faint vibration was coming from inside. She moved closer, her heart pounding in her chest. As she reached for the trunk to open it fully, Glenn tried to stop her with a quick "Wait!" — but it was too late.

The trunk swung open entirely, revealing a young man inside, bound and with a dirty cloth around his mouth. His eyes were wide with terror, and he struggled weakly to free himself. Delilah took a step back in shock, and in an instant, the rest of the group gathered around the trunk, their faces a mix of disbelief and concern.

“Who the hell is this?” Dale asked, his voice rough and incredulous, his face etched with concern.

Rick stepped forward, his expression tight. “His name is Randall,” he said, keeping his gaze fixed on the young prisoner.

Lori’s voice was filled with disbelief. “Rick, what’s going on?”

Hershel spoke up, calm but with a serious tone. “He was involved in a bad incident; we had to help him… but the problem is, he’s not alone.”

Delilah stared at the young man, her heart pounding even harder. “What do you mean? Where does he come from?”

Glenn cleared his throat, searching for the right words. “He’s from a group… an armed group. We don’t know how many there are or where they are exactly, but we have reason to believe they could be dangerous.”

Carl, who had been silent until then, stepped forward, looking at Randall with wide eyes. “And what are we going to do with him?” he asked, his voice full of curiosity as he watched the young man lose consciousness.

Rick clenched his jaw. “We need to decide. We can’t just let him go without knowing if he’ll bring his group here.”

A heavy silence fell over the group. Each member looked at Randall, but also at each other, searching for answers that no one seemed ready to give.

In the living room of the house, the atmosphere was charged with tension. Everyone had gathered around the central table, except for Delilah, who stood in a corner of the room with her arms crossed and her gaze fixed on the group.

Her father’s face was marked by worry, while Rick took his place at the center, his expression grave.

Randall had been locked in the cabin a short distance from the house, at a safe distance, after Hershel had to tend to a deep wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding.

“We can’t let him go,” Rick said firmly, breaking the silence. His tone was authoritative but heavy with responsibility. “If we do, he might return to his group and lead them here. We don’t know how many there are or what they’re capable of.”

Glenn, sitting next to him, nodded. “Rick’s right. We can’t take the risk. His group could kill us all. We need to think about our safety.”

“The bar, in town,” the old man began, “we heard them talking. They seem to be a large, disorganized group. We can’t underestimate them.”

Dale clasped his hands, his face pale with anxiety. “But we can’t kill him. We can’t... become like that,” he said, his voice trembling yet resolute. He looked at Rick with intensity, as if searching for a shred of humanity in this desperate situation. “There’s always another solution.”

“What solution, Dale?” Shane interjected, leaning against the wall, his gaze fixed defiantly on Rick. “There’s no time for half measures. This kid knows where the farm is. If we let him go, it’s only a matter of time before he returns with armed men. We need to do what’s necessary.”

Lori, sitting next to her husband, removed her hand from her mouth and looked at Shane in confusion. “How do you know that?”

Rick looked to Hershel, the head of the household, waiting for him to confirm what he had told them in the car. “Randall knows our family, or at least he knows Beth and where she lives. They went to school together and he’s from the area. It didn’t take him long to recognize me despite the severe blood loss.”

Delilah, in the corner of the room, followed the conversation with keen eyes, saying nothing. She was there, a silent and invisible presence, but every word echoed in her mind. She bit her lower lip, her hands pressed tightly against her chest. Shane, as always, was direct, but there was something unsettling in his manner. It wasn’t just concern for safety. It was something darker.

It was a thirst for control and power over everything and everyone.

Dale raised his hand, cutting through the argument. “Hold on a minute.” His voice was calm but laden with a wisdom that could not be ignored. “We can’t make a decision like this so quickly. We’re still human, or at least we should be. Killing this boy... it’s not justifiable. We don’t even know if his group will come looking for him.”

“We can’t afford to make mistakes,” Shane retorted, his tone growing harsher. “Dale, you’re living in the past. We’re not in that world anymore. We need to protect ourselves. We have to be realistic.”

Then T-Dog spoke up, his voice low but resolute. “Maybe we can find a remote place and leave him there. Without means to return or dangerous weapons. We give him a chance, but not enough to pose a threat.”

Rick considered those words for a moment, but Shane shook his head in disapproval. “That’s just another waste of time. He could still survive and come back with others.”

The debate continued, with voices rising, creating a whirlwind of conflicting emotions.

Delilah, however, remained silent, watching the chaos unfold before her. Inside, she felt a mix of fear and anger. Her heart pounded harder every time Shane spoke. There was something wrong with him, something that made her increasingly uneasy.

Eventually, Rick stood up from his chair, his decision etched on his drawn face. “We’ll decide tomorrow morning,” he said with a firm tone, looking at each of them. “Tonight, we keep him locked up. No one does anything until we’re all in agreement.”

The voices quieted, but the atmosphere in the room remained tense, as if an inexorable time bomb was ticking away.

The next day arrived with an eerie stillness. The morning air was crisp, but there was a palpable tension hanging over the house. 

No one had slept well, and each step seemed heavier than usual, laden with the weight of the decisions they had to face. The sunlight filtered hesitantly through the windows, almost reluctant to illuminate the scene that was about to unfold.

In the living room, Rick, Lori, Shane, Dale, Glenn, and Hershel had gathered again. Delilah was already there, as she had been the night before, seated in the corner and watching in silence.

She had spent the night in a state of wakefulness, her thoughts in turmoil. The idea that everything was on the verge of collapsing wouldn’t leave her mind. And damn, if her intuition wasn’t spot on.

Rick was the first to speak, his voice heavy and resolute. “We’ve all had time to think about this,” he said, looking at each face present. “We can’t ignore the risk. Randall knows our location, knows where we are. But we can’t make a decision without considering the consequences.”

Shane, who had never had much patience for long discussions, stood up abruptly, shaking his head. “We’ve already talked enough, Rick. Randall has to die. End of story. If we let him go, we’re all dead. He’s a threat, and you know it.”

Dale, as he had the day before, raised his hand to stop Shane. “Hold on, Shane. Killing a kid like this, in cold blood... we can’t do it. It would make us monsters. We need to find an alternative.”

The tension between the two men was palpable, as if each word could spark a dangerous flashpoint. Rick looked between them, trying to find a balance between their positions. But it was clear that the decision was wearing him down.

Delilah was exhausted. Exhausted by the arguments, the increasingly difficult moral choices, the people around her who seemed incapable of seeing what was really happening. It was as if no one wanted to admit that, in the end, they had all changed. Their humanity was fragile, hanging by a thread, and she no longer knew what to cling to.

She slowly stood up from her chair in the corner of the room, trying not to draw attention. No one noticed her movement. They were all too engrossed in discussing Randall, the risk he posed, and what they should do.

Delilah quietly slipped out the door, closing it softly behind her. She took a deep breath, savoring the fresh morning air. A day away from it all. She needed to escape, even if just for a few hours.

Outside, Orion was waiting for her. She petted him on the head, feeling his soft fur between her fingers. “Let’s go, buddy,” she whispered, and together they headed towards the woods surrounding the Greene farm.

The sun climbed high in the sky as Delilah walked through the forest, finally feeling some semblance of peace. The leaves crunched under her feet, and the wind rustled the trees above her. Orion ran ahead, exploring, his tongue lolling out in excitement. 

Delilah no longer thought about the tension in the house. She no longer thought about Shane, Rick, or the moral dilemma regarding Randall. She was alone, at least for a while, and that was enough.

She spent the day wandering aimlessly, following the winding trails of the woods. She sat by a stream to drink some water, watching Orion play with the stones in the water. Time seemed to stand still.

But as the sun began to set, an odd sensation crossed her skin. A sudden shiver. She looked around, noticing the forest growing darker, and with it, a sense of danger seeped into her heart.

“It’s time to go back,” Delilah whispered, her voice almost breaking the silence around her. Orion, her loyal pup, followed immediately, but there was something strange in the air. Something... wrong.

Every step she took towards the farm seemed heavier, as if the forest itself were closing in on her. The familiar sounds of the wind through the leaves had changed. There were no birds singing anymore, only the unsettling rustling of branches.

The air had grown thick, suffocating. Then she heard it: a low, guttural groan. Her blood ran cold. It was a sound she knew all too well.

She froze, her heart pounding in her chest. A walker.

Without thinking, she began to walk faster, trying to hold back the panic rising within her like a dark wave. Her steps quickened, but not fast enough.

Another groan. This time, it was closer. Too close. Orion began to growl, his hackles raised. Delilah spun around, and what she saw took her breath away: two walkers were emerging from the trees, their grotesque, twisted forms illuminated by the last rays of the dying sun.

Terror struck her like a punch to the stomach. "Run!" she screamed internally, but the voice in her head sounded too weak, smothered by horror. With Orion by her side, she started to run, but the ghastly groans of the walkers never ceased. Each step felt more arduous, more painful. The sound of the walkers dragging through the dry branches was an unshakable nightmare.

Her heart pounded so violently she feared it might burst. She leaped over tangled roots, dodged branches whipping her face, but the walkers never stopped. They were slow, yes, but relentless. Every time she looked back, they were there, getting closer. Their twisted hands reached out toward her, hungry for flesh.

When she finally glimpsed the farmhouse in the distance, relief swiftly turned to horror. Flames. She saw them even from afar, enormous and voracious. The tongues of fire enveloped the house, consuming everything.

Her breath caught in her throat, and her legs trembled. "Dad!" she cried out in desperation, but her voice was swallowed by the crackling flames. "Lori! Carl!" No response. Only the chilling sound of the fire devouring everything and the hissing wind carrying the acrid smell of ash.

Delilah ran, ignoring the pain burning her muscles and the tight knot in her chest. When she reached the yard, the scene that greeted her was worse than any nightmare.

Walkers wandered amidst the flames, stumbling like infernal shadows, grotesque and made more monstrous by the firelight. The farmhouse was devastated. There was no one. No sign of the group. Only destruction and death.

Orion barked furiously, trying to keep the walkers at bay, but Delilah couldn’t focus. The world around her was a distorted chaos. Where was her father? Where was Lori? What the hell had happened?

She searched desperately through the debris, her hands trembling as she rummaged through the charred remains. Every corner of the farmhouse was a heap of wreckage. The barns had collapsed, and the animals were gone. Smoke burned her throat; each breath felt like a fiery assault on her lungs.

But what was most suffocating of all was the silence. An eerie silence, broken only by the guttural sounds of the walkers and the relentless crackle of the flames. She was alone. Completely alone.

Orion continued to growl, but Delilah could no longer think clearly. The horror, fear, and anguish overwhelmed her. As the flames grew higher and the walkers drew nearer, she realized that this world had collapsed. There was nothing left. Nothing and no one.

She looked around with the dreadful awareness that she would die there, in that moment, if she didn't leave, but she couldn't risk abandoning her family behind. Assuming they were still alive.

She tried calling out their names again, but to no avail. Until she heard the distant rumble of an engine.

For half a second, a huge smile spread across her face, comforted by not being left behind, until she saw the camper heading in the opposite direction. She screamed at the top of her lungs, running towards the camper and waving frantically to be seen, but the white vehicle just accelerated away.

They had abandoned her.

Now, it was just her, the fire, and the encroaching darkness.

[shift-shaping]

How many of these wolves are actually 'dreaded'?

The Dalish and wolf statues go hand-in-hand (hand-in-paw?). All the way back to Origins we see depictions of wolves sitting outside Dalish camps, warning them that Fen'Harel is always lurking about to tempt them with Evil, or something. We also find these handsome beasts outside of and at the entrance to various elven temples and fortifications (see: Lost Temple of Dirthamen, Suledin Keep, etc.), as well as looming over the entire region in the Exalted Plains.

When asked about the ubiquity of wolf statues, David Gaider had this to say:

You have to remember that the Dalish honor Fen’Harel just as they do the rest of the elven pantheon — they simply do so differently. Statues/shrines to the other elven gods would be found within the clan’s camp, while a statue of Fen’Harel would be placed outside the camp, facing away. There’s no point in lugging around that statue with them if it wasn’t still a way of honoring him. Work backwards, and you’ll see a version of that in the Dales when the elves still ruled there. Monuments to Fen’Harel would still exist, and would be far more common outside of the settlements than within them. Or it was one of the placeables that the artists made for their “elven complement”, and they only had so many and thus had to use it often. Take your pick. :) EDIT: I should point out that the Dales regions were Sheryl Chee’s handiwork, and it’s entirely possible there’s a completely different lore reason for the wolf statues which has nothing to do with Fen’Harel (despite my assumption). If so, she’s the one who would know, and not I.

Okay, cool. So based on all of this information, which is documented on the DA wiki, I assumed that all of the wolf statues we see are depictions of Fen'Harel. But now I'm replaying DAI, and I got this codex entry (Knight's Guardian) in the Emerald Graves:

Traveling through the Emerald Graves in the Dales, one will see dozens of carven stone wolves. The Dalish call these the Knights’ Guardians. In the days of elven Halamshiral, wolf companions walked alongside Emerald Knights, never leaving the side of their chosen knight. Wolf and elf would fight together, eat together, and when the knights slept, wolves would guard them. The statues were erected in memory of their unbreakable bond. —An excerpt from In Pursuit of Knowledge: The Travels of a Chantry Scholar by Brother Genitivi

Maybe Brother Genitivi is just wrong? It feels like a pretty specific thing to be wrong about, but codex entries are meant to be subjective. There is no obvious difference between the wolf statues in the Emerald Graves and the wolf statues anywhere else in Inquisition (maybe for technical reasons). So what is going on here?

Brother Genitivi is wrong; these are actually depictions of Fen'Harel

Gaider is wrong, as his edit allows; many of the wolf statues we find outside the Emerald Graves are actually depictions of Knight's Guardians

Both are sort of right; only the wolf statues in the Emerald Graves depict Knight's Guardians, the others depict Fen'Harel. Maybe the wolf statues in the Emerald Graves are supposed to have a different look, but don't due to technical/development reasons.

I think it's easy to forget that the elves have had two nations by the time of Inquisition: Arlathan, which we talk about more often in part because Solas, and the Dales. We know about how the current Dalish (and to some extent alienage) elves feel about Fen'Harel, but what about the original Dalish elves? The story of The Courser and the Wolf, as relayed by Merrill in DA2, is relatively recent, speaking of clans and Keepers. When did the Dalish turn their back on wolves? What did the original Dalish elves think about Fen'Harel and the other members of the elven pantheon?

When did all of the wolves become dreaded?

[v-arbellanaris]

I have no idea why but I absolutely hate how Ameridan' story was handled, they basically dumbed it down to him worshipping both the creators and andraste/chant of light, which kind of proved Cassandra's dumb (and incredibly disrespectful) point of an inquisitor having "room for another god". It's also so unfair how they made the evanuris to just be power hungry slavers and tyrants, my only hope is that if the creators were disproving then I hope it would be the same for the chant of light and maker (seeing asnit was solas who made the veil and not the creator) I really hate how centrist the game has gotten, like flat out, whenever I hear the words grey morality and nuance I can't help burn cringe, that's how much dragon age has ruined it for me.

It's also so incredibly funny how the devs are genuinely surprised that most of the players are pro mage, like of course we are?

i think it's particularly extremely aggravating, the way bioware writers write about a pantheon as if polytheistic religions are simply a thing of the past and dead and some kind of mystery/mythology. according to bioware, this kind of writing for polytheistic religions is fine because no real religion these days would everrrrrrr worship multiple gods /sarcasm. (note that the links are just some examples and not comprehensive in the least)

there's a lot of writing choices i quite simply disagree with in dai, and there's some that are just... i don't even disagree with them because that implies it's something to argue about. some of their writing choices are just wrong. after borrowing so heavily from ethnic groups to shape their fictional histories, the disrespect of writing their fictional oppressed minorities as being responsible for their own oppression because they were not "open" enough to include/absorb expy christianity into their religious beliefs and fought back against violent colonialism. the resulting clumsy collation between isr*el and the indigenous people of the americas wanting to reclaim their lands stolen from them by white colonisers makes my blood boil.

ameridan is just another piece of the puzzle that makes me seethe. we have a man who apparently ~existed before hostilities between the elves and the humans~ which is now the fault of drakon's son who invaded the dales after ameridan was long gone. that's already absolute bullshit because ameridan lived in the fucking dales. elves only started living in the dales AFTER ANDRASTE'S REBELLION. after the fall of arlathan, and hundreds of years of enslavement at the hands of tevinter humans???

additionally, the battle of red crossing happened in 2:9 glory, but tensions between the elves and humans had been building up since the second blight. drakon the first died in 1:45 but the elves apparently did "nothing" to help montsimmard when it was overrun by darkspawn in 1:25 divine - twenty years before his death, there was already simmering resentment. additionally, it was drakon the first that expanded the orlesian empire and the orlesian chantry - wotv2 notes his battles against the darkspawn did more to spread the chant of light (specifically, the orlesian chant of light which he, yknow, fucking made up) than any of his other attempts. by the time the exalted march on the dales happens, over three quarters of thedas is under orlesian rule. maferath himself handed the dales to the surviving elves from andraste's campaign in -165 ancient and the elves lived in the dales peacefully until the orlesian chantry was salivating at its borders. and the orlesian chantry has a history of wiping out "cults" - i.e. other sects of their own religion that differ from belief, no matter how minor, to their own. including, notably, the wholesale genocide of a non-violent sect centered around fertility rituals and, later, the dragon worshipping sect in haven off their own land. (and i'm willing to BET MONEY that they were originally alamarri themselves, considering that andraste was brought there to rest, and considering how cultural variance in religion usually occurs [i.e. through the blending/adoption of folk beliefs or the cultural/religious practices from Before]. so the andrastians slaughtered the cult AND THEN TOOK THEIR FUCKING LAND.)

the entire way andrastianism is treated in inquisition makes me violent. and unfortunately, it does not look like it's going to change - there's been multiple statements about how the maker's existence will continue to remain "a mystery" out of a reluctance to confirm or deny the existence of a One True God which, coupled with how they've shat on every other religion in the game - the tevinter chantry, the qun, the stone, the elven pantheon, every other sect worshipping the maker/andraste - gives me absolutely no hope that the writing team is going to get their heads out of their asses about it.

[elialys]

I’ve finished season 2 of The Newsreader two hours and a half ago, and I’ve yet to be able to talk about my feels with ANYONE, so I’m doing what I do in most cases when I have too many feels about something—opening a new word document to write things down.

This season genuinely surprised me so many times. I had no actual expectations, but I had thoughts on what might happen from the season promo and the episodes' synopses. Most of the time, turned out I was absolutely wrong, and I’ve never been happier to be wrong.

This is not very coherent, more ‘string of thoughts’ than anything else, and I’m skipping soooo many things but here are my main thoughts/emotions on each episode:

Episode 3 Greed and Fear

I knew it would be about Helen’s past being dug out and was so worried. Didn’t expect to be laughing so much?? Like, only a couple of scenes but god those were genuinely funny. Gerry’s wife telling Helen’s about her torn vagina from giving birth? Lindsay’s song about Charlie being hit hard in the economic crash? Absolute gold.

The "hey let’s get married to give that columnist something else to write about” idea from Dale and Helen’s reaction to it went about as well as I expected it to go.

I have to say, I did not expect the Helen & Charlie’s interactions to get that real that fast but I…kinda liked it? I still think Charlie’s a shit head but I loved that they made him feel like an actual human? Genuinely fond of that scene of him and Helen in his office waiting for midnight, with her on his couch telling him about her past, it just felt genuine.

Don’t get me started on Helen and Dale on HER couch at the end of the episode though. Just, I want to live there, in that scene. With them cuddling on that couch, and nothing bad ever ever happening to their couple, ever.

Episode 4 The Hungry Truth

This episode was a punch in the gut. The way the approached the Bicentennial event and the Aboriginal side of the story was so poignant and heartbreaking. That shot of them watching the cheery News at Six promo at the end instead of the planned interview with Lynus was captivating in a ‘I feel sick in the stomach’ kind of way.

Helen’s convictions and hard work being cast aside and spat on again at the last second was infuriating, she tries SO HARD to stand up for those who don’t have a voice and she hits walls every step of the way.

Dale’s real proposal? I'm still recovering. When I read the initial synopsis, I worried he was going to do something *big*, but he didn’t. It was intimate and romantic and sincere, and holy hell couldn’t have happened at a worse time ??? I know there was no way for him to really ‘hide’ his preparations from Helen at that point but ugh.

That end scene had me in tears tbh, both Sam and Anna just killed me. Because you can tell Helen loves Dale and he loves her yet she turns him down and everything hurts?

Episode 5 A Model Daughter

Let me just say I’ve loved Kay’s character. I love the extra depth it brought to the Walters family, and I love how she allowed for the very real issue of heroin addiction to be explored this season. And obviously, I love how her story intertwined with Helen’s and the way it made this episode unfold, like, DAAAAMN.

But first of all, Helen and Dale. Oh the pain. Oh the sweet sweet pain. I binged so I barely had time to process any of my feelings, but I felt all the feelings. It was dramatic without being overdramatic. Again, all of it felt so human. I wish we’d seen more actual conversation between Helen and Dale with Helen explaining exactly why she doesn’t want marriage and why she broke it off completely, but there’s enough there to get it and just hurt with them.

That scene of them in the make up room, after Dale realizes there’s been some ‘flirting’ going on between her and Charlie? SO many things are said without them needing to actually say them, it just hangs in the air and OH THE DELICIOUS PAIN.

That award party was so good, they were all so drunk and I was so worried about Dale. And then the whole Gerry, Tim, Dale thing was wholesome for about two and half seconds. I wasn’t sure when the ‘gay club’ scene would happen or how Dale would end up there, I didn’t expect things to happen that way, it was like watching a car crash in slow motion. I feel sad for people who ship Dale and Tim because I’m sure this is not how they hoped Tim’s character would come back—and that the random dude Dale wakes up next to is not who they were hoping for. Dale’s whole spiraling out this episode was just painful in a painfully perfect way.

Everything about Kay’s interview, every character involved…ugh so damn good. The interview itself made me cry, but that’s probably because of my own issues haha. Kay going to Helen and begging her to take her part off the story, not knowing Lindsay decided to make the story ALL about her and her parents against Helen’s assurances that they wouldn't do that.

Helen’s demeanor sitting at that desk, finally deciding that enough is enough. HELEN STANDING UP, GETTING THE TAPES AND DESTROYING THE TAPES WHILE WALKING OUT.

Actual Queen. Might be my favorite sequence in the entire season, but don’t take my word for it yet. Of course she goes to Charlie and jumps on him right after that but everyone’s human hahahaaaaa.

Episode 6 Fireworks

I don’t even know what to say, I’m still trying to process this. They gave us time with everyone, and I loved every second of it, but I still begged for more time with Helen and Dale, individually and together. Now I get what Sam meant by ‘Dead Dale’. Oh yes he’s the Big Guy now with the Big House, King of News and all that but he’s clearly dead inside too, so that’s nice I guess.

The way they resolved the issue of “Helen and Charlie” being a thing in under 3 minutes combined was beautiful to be honest. I was losing it watching that short, extremely distressing montage of Charlie and Helen like, might have clawed at my face a bit. But the way she threw him out of her life the second he dared say some shit about Dale? Beautiful.

Lindsay needs to die in a fire though. I’m so glad Dennis punched him in the face but someone needs to push him in front of a bus. That scene between him and Helen in his office was just VILE. What a pathetic excuse for a human being, all these things he did to her and SAID to her, I am not okay. And him sabotaging her at her new job like, DIE ALREADY OMG.

Was it really Gerry who told the columnist about Tim though??? Because that scene between Gerry and Dale, all unspoken? GOD. This damn show.

Gotta end with Helen and Dale. I am so upset. I think/hope they will find their way back together WHEN we get a 3rd season, and I believe them learning to live apart is needed and necessary, BUT GOD I AM GENUINELY HURTING. Helen’s desperate proposal was so upsetting. The fact that Dale was too dead inside to tell her more than “no” and “just do your job” like.

I don’t even blame him because he’s a hot mess trapped in his own catatonia but THE PAIN. That airport scene, someone put me out of my misery please, how dare they use THAT song (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, anyone??). Also, I realize I’m extremely biased given how much I love Anna Torv but??? She doesn’t say a single word in that scene as she watches Dale on the tv yet you know exactly what she’s thinking and feeling and everything hurts.

Noelene and Rob? So sorry I didn’t mention you at all in this post yet, you were so lovely and precious and so necessary for my emotional sanity, absolutely love how they “mirrored” and contrasted Helen and Dale, even if it adds to my pain as a Helen/Dale shipper who just watched three failed proposals in the span of 8 hours.

This show better be renewed. I need them to fix this mess. Wonderfully crafted mess but still a mess.

[princess-of-the-corner]

Toontown: Rewritten Recap: February 2003 (Party Crashing)

And those last few posts in January were setting up February’s first arc.

February 1, 2003

Fat McStink was ready to throw a party, one he declared would be the greatest party in the Tooniverse!

And unlike Doglet, Improvaganza, and his hilariously depressing birthday “party”, he KNEW people were actually going to show up and have fun!

A scientist approached him (as a scientist has done for MOST of the major players in this story, actually) with some drawings for “The Greatest Party in the Tooniverse”. The drawing showed attractions like cannons, streamers, and trampolines.

The entrance to the party? An oversized party hat.

And thus, party hat-shaped Party Gates had been installed in every Neighborhood’s Playground (except for Goofy Speedway and Chip ‘n Dale’s Acorn Acres), each one staffed by two Party Planners.

At launch, parties included the following features:

Trampolines that bounce partygoers into the sky (with toons winning more Jellybeans the higher they bounce).

The Jukebox to set the soundtrack to one of various in-game songs (both 20 song and 40 song variants were available-yet-mutually-exclusive).

A Grand Fireworks Display to wrap it all up (works just like the Playground fireworks, but the Toons teleport back to the last Playground they were in after the fireworks finish).

As Alpha was coming to a close, Muddy Paws announced the FINAL Daily Votes. This time, toons would be voting on which party features to add next.

Also, Fat McStink specifically shouted out Sir Max as NOT being invited. Turns out that he can read morse.

(Also, the Toontown Times apparently declared “Improvaganza” to be “too confusing to be offensive”.)

And before I forget, when parties were first added, one could plan a party WITHOUT spending any Jellybeans!

Nothing could go wrong!

February 2, 2003

Cannons won the daily vote!

But Sir Max stole them and tried to use them to crash Fat McStink’s party, but only succeeded in crashing the Party Gate, keeping people from participating in parties.

Thus, Party Decorations were implemented instead.

February 3, 2003

Hawkheart revealed that, as they’re out of gunpowder thanks to Sir Max’s stunt, they’ve decided to implement Dance Floors instead.

Why?

Hawkheart just REALLY likes dancing, so much that the update came 20 minutes late, and he forgot to let everyone into Toontown the day prior.

How do Dance Floors work?

Think like a free-style version of Match Minnie. If the sequence of arrow keys you press corresponds to one of the dance moves, your Toon will perform that dance. If not, your Toon will slip.

You can have either a 10-move or 20-move Dance Floor.

The better you dance, the more Jellybeans you earn.

February 4, 2003

Fat McStink complained about a lot of issues plaguing his party, forcing the team to delay the daily vote again.

Mostly due to explosives being found in several bits of the equipment, but Trampoline springs were snapping (causing a crash), the Party Clock wasn’t ticking right (causing parties to not end at the right time), and the Party Gates wouldn’t show the correct populations of parties.

Also, Sir Max gave Fat McStink TNT for his birthday.

Muddy Paws and Hawkheart fixed everything up, though, so Fat McStink was optimistic that he’d have the perfect party within the next 3 days.

February 5, 2003

Sir Max, after breaking all of the cannons from the Party Supply Store (he tried to fire dynamite out of them, which only lead to them blowing up), decided to take a couple of cannons from an unattended truck.

He loaded himself into a cannon which had been loaded into another cannon, took aim at the party gate, and FIRED!

The cannons blew up, covering him in soot.

February 6, 2003

Cannons were delayed again, as the delivery truck driver somehow lost all his cannons when he left his truck parked outside the Chortle Café. Another shipment was due the next day.

An oblivious Fat McStink remarked on how well-behaved Sir Max was in his timeout.

As the other Toon Troopers were called out to work on various projects, they were the only ones still in town.

February 7, 2003

Sir Max had been working on a master plan to FINALLY crash Fat McStink’s party. While the others were working on something else, he fine-tuned the trajectory of the first cannon, applied anti-explosives to the second, wrapped himself in a titanium mold, and was thanked by Fat McStink for finding the missing cannons.

As a show of gratitude, Fat McStink invited a thoroughly befuddled Sir Max to his party.

Sir Max then claimed this was his master plan all-along!

Also, cannons were FINALLY added as a party activity.

Just load yourself into the cannon, take aim at the clouds, and try to bounce off of as many as possible before you hit the ground. You can earn 3 Jellybeans per cloud bounced, with a hard cap of 200 Jellybeans per flight.

February 8, 2003

Sir Max had a grim announcement, tidings of a horrible doomsday: The Toon Troop were taking another break.

Why?

They had some out-of-town obligations, and Sir Max and Fat McStink had only stuck around as long as they did because SOMEONE needed to finish up work on parties.

In fact, Sir Max’s Taxi Driver was getting very impatient with him.

Also, the 20-song Jukebox was renamed “the Jukebox” and the 40-song Jukebox was renamed “the Deluxe Jukebox”.

Regardless, they would all be preoccupied for the next week.

-

Goodness gracious how many things can go wrong at once?

[all-eyes-lead-to-the-truth]

All Eyes Lead to the Truth | Season Five Master Post

From fan-favorite monsters to big players behind the conspiracy to the people closest to Mulder and Scully, season five has been one of the most fun yet!

Check out this thread to see all the characters we got to meet this season!

Redux (5x01) | Section Chief Scott Blevins

He had no vested interest in Mulder and his quest, but he was part of the machine, the same as everyone else dressed in suits, skulking around in dark, smoke-filled rooms.

Redux II (5x02) | Dr. Zuckerman

Dr. Zuckerman recalls Dana telling him that this man, her best friend, was the first person to help her absorb cancer's painful blow. It seems fitting that he be the first to feel the relief in its aftermath alongside her.

Unusual Suspects (5x03) | Detective John Munch

“Listening to those three talk makes me feel like I need to go be strapped down to a hospital bed. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a great story, but that’s all it is.” The captain was up their asses about this case, but as far as Munch knew, watching one too many science fiction movies wasn’t a crime.

Detour (5x04) | Special Agent Stonecypher

Communicating with those two was more difficult than some interrogations she’d been a part of, but she kept trying. They didn’t call her Tough as Rocks Stonecypher for nothing.

Post-Modern Prometheus (5x05) | Izzy Berkowitz

The simple folk of this rural Indiana town are no different than the man they’d called Monster and chased with pitchforks.

Maybe they’re all monsters.

Izzy kind of likes that.

Christmas Carol (5x06) | Bill Scully Jr.

Maybe that’s what pissed him off so much. Mulder does blame himself. There’s nothing Bill could ever say to that man that he hadn’t said to himself a thousand times over.

Emily (5x07) | Detective John Kresge

He recognizes her toughness, her resilience. The very thing he’d fought against at the start is exactly the thing that makes her a good agent. But in this moment he can see her humanity, something he knows makes her a good person, too. He wishes he’d had the chance to get to know her better.

Kitsunegari (5x08) | Linda Bowman

With clenched fists, Linda Bowman walks away from her dead twin, revenge stoking the hot flame of rage burning in her chest.

It’s time for this fox hunt to end.

Schizogeny (5x09) | Lisa Baiocchi

Karin continued on, seemingly oblivious to the tree limbs knocking against the window, begging to be let in. “It’s natural for kids who have been in your situation to wish that their parent was dead.”

Chinga (5x10) | Chief Jack Bonsaint

All the talk of witches around these parts has always been just that to Jack: talk. Chatter. He doesn’t pay it much mind. He lives in the real world, not the realm of fantasy and hokum.

But if someone like Agent Scully can believe…

Kill Switch (5x11) | Esther Nairn (Invisigoth)

They’d thought they would change the face of technology, the world, even. She’d been young and in love. Not for a second did she think that would be the very thing that ruined all of it.

Bad Blood (5x12) | Sheriff Lucius Hartwell

His salvatory glands were working in overdrive between all this blood-talk and the assault of Agent Scully's intoxicating scent. It was taking his full concentration to keep his fangs from dropping into place.

Patient X (5x13) | Cassandra Spender

Some of the others fear the Light, dread it, but Cassandra welcomes it. To her it is no harbinger of doom; it’s a sign that she’ll be gone again soon, swept away from this place that has brought her nothing but pain.

The Red and the Black (5x14) | Special Agent Jeffrey Spender

Jeffrey hadn’t known anything about aliens until his mother had explained to him that they lived on planets far from their own. Jeffrey believed everything she told him, because why wouldn’t he? She was his mother, the center of his universe, and he’d never had any reason to doubt her before.

Travelers (5x15) | Special Agent Arthur Dales

Arthur plucks the bottle of Jim Beam from behind a container of his blood pressure pills. The fine layer of dust coating the bourbon’s glass reminds him how long it’s been since he’s drowned himself in sorrow. About as long as it’s been since he’s thought about the X-Files.

Mind's Eye (5x16) | Marty Glenn

People seem to think her lack of vision inhibits her; that without it, she’s unable to see.

But Marty sees plenty.

All Souls (5x17) | Emily Sim

Emily is lucky. She doesn’t have just one mommy, she has two. There’s the mommy who she’d known her whole life, the one who had taken care of her when she was sick and who is here with her now, and then there’s her other mommy who isn’t here yet.

Pine Bluff Variant (5x18) | August Bremer

Silence stretches for a long time. Nothing but the crinkle of med-grade wrappers and the burbling of water from what sounds like a fish tank drifts through the headphones. August may be on the outside listening in, but he can practically feel the tension from here.

Folie à Deux (5x19) | Nancy Aaronson

Gary always looked like he had an elephant sitting on his chest, and every time he heard the VinylRight rigmarole, the elephant shifted. For some reason, it felt like he thought she could help him relieve the weight.

The End (5x20) | Gibson Praise

They had no idea what it was like to realize that the manager at a grocery store was stealing money from the safe in the back room when you were all the way up at the cash registers. Or what it was like to pick out the kid in a stadium full of people who was mad at his mother for making him wear his least comfortable pants. No one needed to know those things, but he knew them.

Gibson heard all of it, whether he wanted to or not.

Stay tuned for more perspectives coming in Season Six!

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

[silenthillmutual]

☕️ How do you feel about horror films in the 2010's? What were some of the best and worst to come out of that decade in your opinion?

oh hmmmmm let's look at what i've seen that came out in the 2010s

great, really loved - tucker & dale vs evil (horror comedy that will always be famous. to me.); get out (i like us and nope as well but get out to me is like the tightest writing of the three. and then nope and then us.); it ch1 (i have a fond memory of seeing this on my birthday so i have a bias for it :]); annihilation (i love sci-fi horror films so fucking much. ik there's big differences between the book and the film but i cannot wait to read the book anyway!); mandy (i have got to get high and watch this. epic film)

good, decent film - black swan (i do not get what the discourse is around this movie. no it's not the most mind-blowing film experience but idk ppl act like there's nothing worth redeeming in it.); the cabin in the woods (this is a p good movie, do not get me wrong, but it would've been better without the joss whedon stink on it); paranorman (will probably get bumped up a notch once i've rewatched it tbh); what we do in the shadows (mockumentaries i love u); crimson peak (can i just take a sec to say media literacy is ass on this site bc of that one post about crimson peak.); green room (wanna rewatch this one bc its premise is right up my alley); the boy (benefits from Better Than I Was Expecting); happy death day (groundhog day plots are really hit or miss for me but i did like this one. i support women's wrongs.); a quiet place (i need to see the sequels bc i hear day one is good but this was def a unique premise and i liked how the end product turned out); color out of space (goes on a touch too long imo but i'd love to watch it again); us (i still enjoy us just not as much as get out or nope. there's some clunkiness in us.)

a little mediocre but i'll put it on - my soul to take (no real notes on this one other than not being big happy w its ending); grave encounters (probs a little higher up on the meter bc i do enjoy saying 'im lance preston and this is grave encounters' at random); american mary (also on the higher up side bc i'd like it to have been. idk. gorier? also the ending felt kinda anticlimactic.); the babadook (film got spoiled for me long before i sat down to watch it. my partner despises it. i just wanna know why no one has pointed out that the kid is obviously autistic and him being presented as a burden is kinda fucked up); hereditary (i think this is a decent melodrama, and ari aster is not untalented, but oh my gooooood people piss me off about this movie lmao and the mom sounds exactly like my mother.); mom and dad (the parts w the parents i think are much stronger than the parts w the kids but interesting concept for a short story.); it ch2 (i think it doesn't quite match up to pt 1 but it's not bad. i might rewatch it and see how i feel.), ready or not (i'd love to rewatch this one and have my mind changed on it)

i don't remember this one love and light - the woman in black (i'll give this a rewatch later); the purge (i only have the vaguest memories of what happens in this one bc i watched it at 2 am w some classmates while studying abroad); it follows (i see both a lot of love and a lot of hate for this movie so i kinda wanna rewatch before i settle on an opinion)

boring - fright night (i watched this in high school bc i really liked david tennant but i tried rewatching it as an adult and i couldn't get hooked); the conjuring (i'm so sorry to everyone who loves these films but i could NOT get into this.); the witch (sorry.)

i dont recommend tbh - saw 3d (not one on my rewatch list in the series but it's also not the worst film in the set on account of it not being jigsaw or spiral); in fear (i watched this while studying abroad in scotland and i got very let down at just how little was going on in this film.); tusk (parts of this movie i was struggling not to laugh at. didn't feel bad for the main character in the least. not nearly as disturbing as everyone kept making it out ot be imo.); the love witch (i thought 'oh this has to be a critique of rad feminism it's too campy to be taken seriously' but alas i was wrong); midsommar (i am keeping my mouth shut on my real opinion of this movie.)

abysmal. sorry. - dark shadows (i will admit there are burton films that i still find joy in but this is definitely not one of them. really weird movie from what i remember); silent hill: revelation 3d (idk how they fucked up worse than christoph gans but they did!); jigsaw (how the fuck do you make a saw movie that's BORING. booo logan we hate ur pussy!)

woah sorry i just looked a t a list sorry this is like a massive wall of text.

[forthedancingandthethriving]

Abyssal: Caffeine never keeps me awake while I work, so instead, I have CPU periodically send me a message saying ‘we need to talk.’

Abyssal: It gives me the right amount of adrenaline and fear I need to keep going.

----

Bob: Get in the Halloween spirit and make a ghost!

Boopkins: That’s called murder and I heard somewhere that it was illegal.

----

Domain: *raises eyebrows*

SMG3: Put those back down!

----

SMG4: Why do I always try to tell people we're cool? We are so very uncool.

----

Meggy: I’m telling you, we're competent!

Boopkins, rushing in: Meggy! Mario tried to make pasta in the coffee pot and now it's broken!

----

Abyss: “Ladies and gentlemen” is unnecessarily gendered, overly formal, lengthy, and honestly, I’m falling asleep already. “Cowards” on the other hand, is inclusive to all genders, to the point, and dramatic.

----

Tulip: Sometimes I wonder if I’m hearing voices.

Tulip: Then I remember that’s the last bit of sanity I have trying to get me to fall asleep at a reasonable time instead of staying in a dark shop for 42 hours.

----

Mario, shakily: Please, just tell me what the book is about. The plot, please.

Luigi, reading an annotation on the cover of a book, unfazed: A subversive masterpiece. A deep and touching story. New York Times Bestseller.

Luigi, now looking directly at Mario: Die.

----

Bowser Jr: BWWAAAAAAAAAA! Oh, you hear that? That's the wrong opinion alarm.

Cody: That is not something you actually have installed.

Bowser Jr: Sorry, say again? I couldn't hear you over my alarm that YOU SET OFF with your WRONG OPINION.

----

Commander Valiant: Your majesty, Tama, I love y’all and all, but can I ask what in the hell are you doing?

Queen Melody, stabilizing a tower of folding chairs where Tama sits atop: Oh nothing much.

Tama: Fun!

----

Tulip: How are you today?

Juliano: Please don’t make me think about my life.

----

Domain: The path to inner peace begins with four words… not my fucking problem.

----

Ambrosia: Oh my Bliss... Do you know what this is?

Nimbus: It’s a book. There’s a lot of those in here, this is a library.

----

*post revolution and all that. Dale got to see him for a few moments*

Dale: You’re alive.

Andrew: No need to sound so disappointed.

----

Bob: Hey, sis, have you seen that photographer? The one that ran off with everyone's money?

Marcy: Nope. Have you seen the meat tenderizer?

Bob: Wait, what?

Marcy, grabbing the meat tenderizer out of the drawer: Don't worry about it.

----

Lil Coding: I got an idea!

Cody: Does it involve breaking the law?

LC: By now don’t you think that’s a given?

Cody: I was just trying to be optimistic.

LC: Don’t bother.

----

Juliano: Whenever I wake up on a meetup day, there is a few moments where I wonder what would happen if I didn't show up.

*distant sounds of screaming*

Juliano: And then I remember that Swag is usually in town, and I'd like some of the kingdom to stay intact.

[faerunsbest]

🪄🪄🪄

I got this and forgot what it was for lol literally spaced in what songs I've ever heard in my LIFE

Any who

"Then tell me how this happened, what I did wrong, tell me why.

Can't we just go home, Shi, and forget this dreadful night?"

This is from repo the genetic opera

Out of context it makes no sense but if you seen the movie it matters a lot

Also that librarian from Buffy has some pipes! Link here

------

You sent three little thingies so here's another one

"Guileless Son, I'll shape your belief And you'll always know that your father's a thief And you won't understand the cause of your grief"

I'm a nerd so here's Heather dales "mordreds lullaby"

because I love the story it tells but right here it becomes clear that no one really cares about the kid in question

And the last one

"Say it once, tell me twice

Are you certain I'm alright?

Just a sign, to remind me

That tomorrow's worth the fight"

This one is from shinedown, miracle

When writing romance stuff I tend to lean on the vibes in this song a lot.

___

On an unrelated note almost nothing I listen to is in English anymore, I be out here just chewing on ~vibes~

[moonshine-nightlight]

Nothing's Wrong with Dale - Part Thirty-Four

It’s been a week, but you’re fairly certain your fiancé accidentally got himself replaced by an eldritch being from the Depths. Deciding  that he’s certainly not worse than your original fiancé, you endeavor to keep the engagement and his new non-human state to yourself.

However, this might prove harder than you originally thought.

Fantasy, arranged marriage, malemonsterxfemalereader, M/F

AO3: Nothing's Wrong with Dale Chapter 34

[Part One] [Part Two] [Part Three] [Part Four] [Part Five] [Part Six] [Part Seven] [Part Seven.5] [Part Eight] [Part Nine] [Part Ten]  [Part Eleven] [Part Twelve] [Part Thirteen] [Part Fourteen] [Part Fifteen] [Part Sixteen] [Part Seventeen] [Part Eighteen] [Part Nineteen] [Part Twenty] [Part Twenty-One] [Part Twenty-Two][Part Twenty-Three] [Part Twenty-Four] [Part Twenty-Five] [Part Twenty-Six][Part Twenty-Seven] [Part Twenty-Eight] [Part Twenty-Nine] [Part Thirty] [Part Thirty-One] [Part Thirty-Two] [Part Thirty-Three] Part Thirty-Four [Part Thirty-Five]

“So,” he says, after a sip of tea, “where would you like to begin?”

“I’m not certain,” you admit. Your mind’s been spinning with questions for weeks and yet now that Dale is availing himself to said questions, you find it blank. You grasp for anything to start. Nothing comes to mind besides the very beginning.

“You said earlier… that the original Dale was killed in his summoning attempt?”

“Yes,” the demon inhabiting his body replies. He sets down his cup of tea. “He attempted a summoning ritual, planning to bind a powerful, but unintelligent demonic spirit to him so he might use its strength and other inhuman abilities for his own gain.” That tracked with what you would have expected the original Dale to want. He seemed to have contempt for both demons and his grandparents’ rules, while craving more power for himself. 

You’re not surprised it went wrong either as Dale is clearing an intelligent demon. Even while traveling abroad from Northridge, the human Dale likely needed to be covert about his studies and plans. Given the host of misinformation out in the world, well, that probably led to some bad information. His own arrogance likely blinded him to that fact or he overestimated his ability to filter such misinformation out resulting in, well… Summoning demons is very dangerous.

“Unfortunately, he miscalculated in a number of ways,” Dale immediately confirms for you. “Such as how deep he threw his lure down into the portal he opened being the gravest as it meant he underestimated the vitality of his offering. Or rather, if he’d only gone as deep as he planned, it perhaps might have been sufficient. However, since he tried to go too deep, the offering was used up and he’d not set the proper parameters on the summoning circle to prevent an overreach demand.”

Your confusion must show on your face. This is all so far over your head. All your research since discovering this situation with Dale had been regarding what to do with a demon that was present, not how to find or bind one. You’re trying to follow along though and you’re sort of managing, even if you’ve no idea about the mechanics of how to do any of what Dale is describing.

Dale elaborates, “It needed more fuel to the fire so to speak in order to reach as deep as he specified, which was in error. After the offering, the closest source of potential energy was him. Not his body, but his—” Dale made a sound, a hissing air filled noise that you’d never be able to replicate “—, er, his life’s energy? I’m not too sure of the mechanisms myself to be honest. Most of what I know is gleaned from memories of humans who I’ve possessed and that knowledge is incomplete.”

“From what I can tell,” you offer, uncomfortable with speaking on something you’ve not studied deeply, but wanting to contribute something—or at least reassure Dale that you’re no expert nor expecting him to be one. Most of the studies you’ve had covered the Depths as part of history, not science. “There seem to be waves or cycles with knowledge of the Depths. There will be a build up of knowledge in one civilization, an increase in daily interaction between the planes, and then some big shift—a nation-wide purge, a crater where a city once was—wipes out a lot of that gained insight. The topic becomes taboo again, until slowly interest and tolerance builds once more.”

“Fascinating,” Dale says, leaning forward with rapt attention. “I’d not noticed, but I think you’re correct—the sources of information my hosts recall do seem to be clustered in certain years. The cycle isn’t obvious in the Depths because of how time is distorted.” 

“I’d imagine so,” you say, enjoying how animated Dale is on the topic. You hope your intrigue is not obvious as you surreptitiously study the two additional eyes which have opened up on his forehead. They’re identical to Dale’s human eyes, despite their placement.

Dale leans back, perhaps you were too obvious, but the eyes do stay. “Something to be explored at a later date,” Dale says sheepishly, seemingly to have recalled his original train of an explanation. “There are some things that are common knowledge among demons—passed on and around as information does even with the Depths’ fractured communities. If a human is drained of energy, there is a small window of opportunity where a demon can leap into their body. We can give it a kick to get it moving again—reignite the spark of life and animation with our own.” 

You’d heard of both types of possession–shared and solitary, but you never knew why or how they happened. You’re only grateful that the demon didn’t have to fight the original Dale–you feel guilty, but you can’t help but be glad you’ve only this Dale now.

He waves dismissively. “Of course you can possess a human body with the human’s energy still intact—you’ve met Two—but it's a much more delicate proposition. Often such a prospect involves a fight or negotiation. That’s why so many of the older cults would purposely use a human as an offering. Then the demon they wish to summon won’t have any trouble finding or possessing a vessel.” He again seems to get nervous with such mentions—as if you’ll suddenly remember that you should be afraid of him—and hastens on, “Anyways, there are also ways to do the reverse—to limit a casting, so if the offering is used up, it stops. Dale did not do that properly. He didn’t set the lure right either, which is why he didn’t attract demons that are more akin to animals than humans.”

“I suspected he might attempt something like this,” you admit, remembering your trepidation as the original Dale’s inability to conceal his anticipation had grown. “He was not subtle in his studies around anyone besides his grandparents, but I’m still horrified to think he did so in the estate. If anything went wrong—as it did—who knows who could have been hurt? Is there a way to limit the number of demons that can, can follow or catch the lure?” Your mind is filled with visions of multiple demons, with no regard for the humans already here or even merely not in control of themselves as many animal-like demons often were. It would be like suddenly having a pack of wolves in your bed chamber.

“There is and he managed that much,” Dale confirms and even though the casting is over a month ago, you still feel some relief that you weren't quite so close to complete chaos. “Once I had the lure, I merely had to keep hold of it as these are set to pull in the demon once one suiting the parameters comes into contact with it. He’d made—not noise—but something similar enough that there were a number of interested parties in the area. Luck made me one of the closest once he cast down.”

“But you’d come to see if the noise was a way to the Surface on purpose,” you guess, reading between the lines. You think back to the mood Dale had been in when he’d ‘recovered’ and was showing up to more than a meal an evening. He’d been happy. He’d wanted to be there.

“Yes,” Dale nods. “I’d been looking for the opportunity for long enough. It was a great relief to win the race and fight for the chance. I wasn’t going to let such a lucky circumstance slip through my fingers.”

“How many times had you been to the Surface before?” you ask, caught up so much information. He clearly knew a lot about summoning from Dale’s memories, his personal experiences—but possibly even from other humans. To want to be here strongly enough to fight for the chance he must have known what he was getting himself into—or been in such a rough spot in the Depths anything seemed better. You hoped it was the former.

“A few times,” Dale confirms. He leans back in his chair, his pupils darker in a fascinating way. Not larger, but deeper. You have to watch yourself so you don’t lean forward to see better, like you might find understanding if you fell into his eyes long enough. You force your gaze away and take a sip of tea. 

“The first time was by accident,” Dale confesses. “A very skilled summoner from Anjou pulled me and a couple others up. Bound us to her soldiers. It was enough to let me see and experience what it was like here. And to start my fascination.” He shrugs. “Sure, I’d heard of the Surface and humans before, but I’d never seen anything or anyone.”

“It’s not pure darkness in the Depths—I’ve no notion how such rumors began up here—but there’s nothing like the sun and sunlight and its warmth.” He closes his eyes and turns his face towards the window, even though the sun is almost done setting. “Everything feels freer here somehow, less weighed down. As if I’d been moving through water or smog my whole life, in more ways than one—not that that’s quite right either.” He frowns at his inability to describe the experience and opens his eyes to meet yours with perfect accuracy. “My apologies, I seem to lack the vocabulary to explain some of the differences as the effects, the experiences, are not ones that translate well.”

You don’t think he’s giving himself enough credit. “No, no—I think I understand as well as I’d be able without going there myself.”

“I’m not sure you’d like it,” he immediately cautions. Before you can begin to reply that wasn’t what you meant, he’s already hurrying to deter you. “Do not misunderstand me, there are many parts of living in the Depths that I liked. Having my own body and not having to use a vessel. There’s a certain beauty in landscapes and locations that cannot exist here. Comfort in the familiarity of it all. Not to mention the lack of constant deception. However, I’m not certain you would enjoy it.”

“That’s alright,” you reassure him. I have no plans to visit the Depths–you just want Dale to stay here.

“Good, good. It’s…” Dale’s at a loss of words as he tries to convey whatever he wants to. “Well, it’s very dangerous, more wild.” You shiver at the thought, having only lived in cities or large estates in your life–tamed in a manner that you can tell Dale means the opposite to. 

Dale frowns, glancing at you and out the window at the nearly set sun before going over to start a fire. You don’t clarify his misinterpretation because the light will be helpful to you, as you know Dale has excellent night vision. Besides, it's early enough in summer that nights can still carry a chill. 

Dale continues to talk as he arranges the logs, his voice clear despite his facing away and crouching down, “There are far more animals, for lack of a better word, than intelligent beings. And the intelligent demons are very territorial, in tight-knit clans that exclude outsiders, or in family groups, or solitary. None of these larger communities like humans, with their travel and attempts at civil interaction.”

“What sort are you from?” you can’t help but ask. He seems to enjoy being part of Northridge. He’d talked weeks ago of it as his ‘territory’ but you noticed he hasn’t mentioned anyone else. No one person was mentioned as an aspect of the Depths that he misses.

He straightens up from the fire, picking up his cup of tea for a drink. “That’s complicated.” He sets down the cup holds up his right hand as he explains, “One of my parents was pure shade, but they had been injured defending their territory. During that time they met an ambyani who’d left her family territory to make her own and had settled next to their territory.” He holds up his other hand to represent that parent, before frowning at your blank stare at the word. 

You know there are many races of demons, far more varied than any humans are from one another. Some are more famous—infamous— than others. You’ve never heard that word before. 

“Ambyani would remind you of humans in a broad sense—most intelligent demons have a form that’s similar enough to humans—but with features that would bring to mind salamanders and birds.” You nod, which you limit yourself to only because you can tell Dale has other things to say besides simply continuing to describe such a creature in greater detail as you wish he would. You wonder if he’s any talent for drawing that he might better illustrate what they would look like. “A courtship developed between them over the years. Eventually they became mates and began to have children.”

Does he mean his parents courted for years before marrying? Perhaps he is interested in such things, but merely expects a longer time frame. You can’t decide whether or not that makes you hopeful or dismayed, so you focus elsewhere. “So different races of demons can have children together?” you ask, even though you suppose he’d already told you as much. You’d grown up hearing about all sorts of demons—wild and strange in so many ways. They seemed too different to be able to have children together.

“Yes, although not always easily and often in adapted manners,” Dale replies. He fidgets, looking as if he’s going to start pacing again, before he sits instead. “The offspring tend to be a mix of parental traits, although the level of influence varies. For example, when a human has children with a possessed human, it is as though the child has three parents, with traits from all, but will end up primarily human because there is more influence from humans. Demons have overlap in their traits, even when different races, and those common traits show up more prominently in offspring.”

You try to absorb what he’s saying about demons, but your mind is a little stuck on the human part, since it's most applicable to you. Another problem for another time, you try to remind yourself. After all, it's not like that information is likely to be relevant to anything happening tonight. Forcibly, you remind yourself that Dale is attempting to explain his own parentage, which you do want to know about and which might help you learn more about him. You’re not sure if your mind can believe that having control over shadows is like hair color, but perhaps it was for demons.

“Shades spawn in swarms with or without partners,” Dale says, not having noticed your mind briefly get off on the wrong track, “while ambyani lay eggs.” You can’t help but notice neither of those methods is how humans reproduce. You try desperately not to picture what mating or sex would be like between such different demons if only because you want to keep listening to Dale. “It can be harder to reproduce between very different races, but my parents were able to raise a clutch with deliberate action, all of whom inherited from both parents.” You’re nodding until he says, “I was not one of them.”

“What do you mean?” Were those two not his parents after all?

“Myself and a handful of other siblings were formed on accident, with a greater portion of shade than ambyani,” Dale says, still not filling in many of the gaps to your mind. You didn’t want to interrupt him with more questions about how that happened in case he was talking around the exact circumstances on purpose. “As such, we grew up as shade do, wandering about in large swarms. We did combine and recombine with less frequency than usual due to our mother’s contribution.”

“But a swarm of bats or a flock of birds are still separate animals,” you can’t help but point out. “You’re saying that shade young are not fully separate?”

“Correct, usually a swarm solidifies into one shade after time passes, if they survive.” Dale sounds wistful as he explains, “However, rather than eventually dying off entirely, being subsumed by a larger swarm, or forming one shade being, we solidified into a group of siblings when younger than is typical for boundaries like that to form. Because we wandered as young shade do, we had strayed far from our parents' territory. We traveled throughout different demons’ territories, never able to stay long and always in danger from predators. Once old enough, we decided to find our parents. I was the only one to survive the journey home.”

Your heart goes out to Dale and you can see that he feels the loss of his siblings at such a young age. You can’t even imagine it. “I’m so sorry.”

Dale smiles sadly. “Thank you.” He fidgets in his chair before standing up. Waving his hand, he tries to downplay the loss, “It’s a blur, to be honest—little moments stick out but I was very young. Still, I missed them and being part of a family. I was quite eager to join my parents.” You’ve got a sinking feeling in your gut, given how Dale is and the sad tone this story has taken, that his eagerness may have been misplaced. “Unfortunately, by the time I returned, I had grown enough that my parent thought I was an unrelated shade, looking to steal their territory and family. I was able to communicate who I was eventually, but they never fully trusted me.”

You wrap your hand around the low footboard of the bed to resist the urge to comfort him with an embrace. He seems too full of nervous energy to appreciate it and this conversation, while relatable in some ways, is also throwing in your face how different you are. Perhaps he wouldn’t want a hug, even if you want to give him one. “Why not?”

Dale sighs, leaning against the vanity. He looks older, more tired. “Between growing away from them and how we—I—was formed, my mother felt there wasn’t enough ambyani in me. She barely believed I was hers. My parent saw me as too shade to be trusted—family means very little to them on its own. He could never truly be convinced I was not a rival to him. My other siblings were quite different from me and followed their lead.” All of Dale’s extra eyes have vanished and the shadows are very still around. His voice is clipped as he says, “After an incident, I realized it’d be best if I struck out on my own.”

You’re not sure what sort of incident he could mean, but given his parents distrust it could have been anything. People looking for a threat tend to find one, no matter how warranted. “Oh, Dale.”  He shrugs and turns to stare into the fire, the light casting strangely deep shadows on his face. He barely looks like his namesake in this moment. He looks too far from human. 

You want to shake him from this melancholy. It’s not the same, but you know what it's like to feel like a stranger, someone outside looking in, in your own home and with your own family. Your age difference would have been enough to do that to some extent, nevermind your illness. But your parents and siblings had always been around, had always known you were family. Now here Dale is once more outside of his ‘family’, a demon among humans. He had very little from his original identity he could reveal, even if you hope sharing with you will help. The thought occurs to you and you tentatively ask, “I suppose that reminds me of another question, do you wish for me to call you by another name?”

“Hm?” He half turns towards you, but continues to look so clearly inhuman. It's fascinating what light and shadow can do to change a person.

You’re not scared of him, but you are somewhat intimidated by the gap in your experiences. By how much you still don’t know of him as even this basic question demonstrates. “I only meant for when we’re alone, of course. But you must have a name besides ‘Dale’?” As soon as you clarify, you start to second guess yourself. What did you know of demons and their naming conventions? You’ve heard tell that names mean something to them. Or that they use them differently? But what was rumor or fact, you’ve no notion.

“Oh!” Dale turns fully away from the fire, looking startled, and it seems to shock him back to looking fairly human. His eyes, only the two at the moment and in the proper place, still must be the hardest to control. They still seem to have a glimmer of firelight in them. As he recovers from his surprise, he appears to give the question a brief few seconds of thought before shaking his head. “No, I don’t mind Dale.” You breathe out a sigh of relief that you hadn’t accidentally offended him. He continues, “We didn’t have names as such in the Depths, not permanent ones. Names, however someone was referring to you, were to reflect who you were in a context. In this context, I am Dale of Northridge.”

“If you’re happy with that,” you reassure him, even as he gets up to make himself a fresh cup of tea, “then I’m pleased to continue to call you ‘Dale’.” You hand him another packet of tea and he refills your own cup with fresh hot water. “I just want to make sure you’re aware you can share things with me, as yourself.”

“Thank you, sana.” His smile is small, full of sharp teeth, and quite sincere. “I believe I’m starting to get that through my mind,” Dale says as he salutes you with his fresh cup of tea. “It merely seems so novel. Humans are so fearful of the Depths and demons, which is not unwarranted.”

He frowns thoughtfully at you, pausing as he stirs his tea. He squints, a third eye mimicking the motion. “You’re quite smart, and compassionate, and—well, cautious isn’t quite right. Deliberate? Hm.” You wait with bated breath for whatever else he might say of your character. You’ve been wondering how he truly saw you for so long, what he made of such a silly human, and yet he seems far too complementary. “What I mean to say is that you are very sensible and that seems at odds with, well, this,” he motions between the two of you. “Your reaction to me when compared with others. I admit I still do not fully understand it.”

“I’m pleased you think I’m sensible,” you say before frowning because while you’re flattered, you also don’t want Dale to have a false image of you in his head. “But I don’t truly think I am. Sensible, that is. I mostly just see myself as a worrier, but it’s true that I worry a similar amount about what others might see as inconsequential or as monumental.” You shrug helplessly, trying to articulate what you mean. “I think I’m just better at pretending, or rather… I grew up oddly, because of my illness and isolation, in a manner such that the things others saw as mundane were far more to me. And now that I am healthier, I think sometimes because my mind has elevated the ordinary to extraordinary, I don’t find the strange so strange, or the risk as risky.” You wander back to the bed and sit down as you try to pull your thoughts into order.

“It’s true, marrying a demon is risky,” you’ve never actually said it out loud. The closest you came was with Steward Bilmont. It does sound incredibly foolish, even with Dale patiently waiting for you to keep talking, the picture of normalcy—baring the now three additional eyes. “But so is marrying anyone, to some extent. Certainly so is marrying an ambitious lordling who dabbles in forces he overestimates his abilities in. I knew what he was like when we entered into our betrothal, but considered it a price I’d pay, a risk I’d take. I wanted to attempt to run a fief and have a family of my own where my decisions held weight. My other options had not had such possibilities.”

You think back to when you figured out what was going on and what Dale was. What you wanted to do. “You were a new player to account for, but I already knew Dale wasn’t a prize himself. You could have been anything—for good or ill—and Dale was already part of the marriage to bear, not what I was looking forward to. Given the other alternatives, I thought seeing if you would at least be as tolerable as him would be worth the risk. If it did not work out well, I would deal with it then.” You shrug helplessly. “I think I’m just too stubborn by half and twice as foolhardy. A month ago, when this part of everything began, seems so long ago. But I’m very happy with where we are now and with you.”

“Is that so?” Dale can’t seem to help himself from asking.

“Yes.” Luckily telling him so gets easier every time.

He leans forward to peer at you, unblinking in his examination. Your breath catches in your chest as you wait him out. 

“So strange, you really seem to mean it.” He looks away to stir his tea. 

You find you’ve leaned towards him and are in danger of falling off the bed. You hurriedly hoist yourself back a sensible distance so you don’t look quite so eager. Hopefully by the time he looks back at you the heat in your cheeks can be blamed on the fire and tea. 

“Some humans have used me as a tool, others a weapon. Some were civil about it, others were not—whether using bribery or punishment to attempt to deal with me. None dealt with me as an equal.” He says so casually enough it takes an additional second for the pang of sorrow for his sake to hit you. 

He looks back up, that earnest light in his eyes. “Despite all that, I still wanted so badly to be here. After the first taste, I tried to learn everything I could of the Surface. I’d not managed to join a new clan or other group by then, so I started trying to mark out my own territory in the shallows. Where I might see more of the Surface. I even attempted to find a way to go it alone up here, but shades are just a bit too… delicate? We need an anchor—a vessel—or we fade.”

“So you focused on humans who cut holes into the Depths,” you surmise, even if you feel a pang of disappointment that you’ll never see him without Dale’s human body, on his own. You wonder if the brief glimpses you saw during his fight with Two were close to what he looked like naturally. Maybe you could still see some of what he was underneath.

“Precisely,” Dale replies. “I learned better how to spot the lures humans dropped, how to tell who they were aimed at and how powerful the one casting them was and so on. Not that I was always correct in my estimation and there are others—other demons—who want to go to the surface as well. Even ones who might be able to in their own forms tend to still prefer to travel up a line a human dropped to ascend. Competition was fierce.”

You try to think of what to ask, without making it obvious you want to know everything he could tell you. Hopefully he would, eventually, but what did you want to know tonight? “Were there any other journeys here that you thought might have been what you wanted?”

Dale frowns before he slowly nods. “One. Time moves differently between the planes and matters less in the Depths, passes differently too so I can’t say for certain how long ago it was. Decades on the Surface,” he settles on, “but less than one below.” He sighs and there’s a little whistle to it that makes it sound more like the wind than a human letting out some breath. The whistle is eerie and pretty at the same. You want to know what other sounds Dale can make. “It did not work out as I’d hoped, but it was the closest I’d come.”

This is the most wistful you think you’ve ever heard Dale and you are so eager to learn more. “What happened?”

“You truly wish to know?” Dale’s not arguing with you, but you can see he doesn’t understand your interest in this. You’d thought this is what he wanted to share, but maybe he was expecting questions more along the lines of the specifics of what he is or what his plans are. After this morning and the wedding, you’re not nearly as anxious about that as you were yesterday. You don’t need reassurances he’s not going to hurt you or leave. You merely want to know him better.

“It has no bearing on the current state of affairs. I promise I’ve no desire for another life,” Dale reiterates, looking earnestly at you. “As I said, this was the finest stroke of luck I’ve ever come across.”

You can’t help but smile because honestly, his arrival ended up being a pretty perfect stroke of good luck for you too. “I believe you,” you reply, hoping to soothe him. You’re not deterred. “But these events had an impact on you, did they not? A strong impact.”

“Yes,” he allows. “They did.”

“I only want to get to know you,” you say, hoping your unadorned words will help him understand you.

“Very well.”

You frown at his continued reluctance. “If you do not wish to tell the tale, I’ve no desire to force you.”

“No, no.” He shakes his head, his hand brushing some of the hair that’s escaped his tie back from his face. “It might clarify some of my actions to you.” You still are not convinced he wants to speak to you of this. You can have patience. You open your mouth to say so, but Dale admits, anticipating your words, “And I’ve never had the opportunity to tell this story to anyone. So if you wish to listen, I will gladly tell of it.”

You are getting better at reading him after all, you realize, be cause you believe him. You relax back onto the bed. “Yes, please.”

“It was in Khinat, though the group was not entirely from there,” Dale says, setting the scene. The far off look is back in his eyes, the shadows’ movements more rhythmic than the typical chaos from a fire. “They were a band of thieves, who wanted to steal, well, a number of precious items from a palace.” He gives one slow blink, as if giving you a second to object to such criminal behavior. As if you weren’t aware most dabbling in demonology that weren’t scientists were mercenaries and the like. You doubt he had much choice in the matter and theft was always more palatable to you than harm caused unto others—not that they couldn’t overlap.

When you only wait patiently, Dale continues, “They wanted more than human advantages on their side. Their caster bound myself and two others to three of their fellows. My vessel, he did first. He’d not been sure of how much energy it would take to get the depths he wanted and so he had that human written in as a secondary sacrifice. Sure enough, he’d not provided enough energy and the human’s life energy was drained in the summoning process. It was the first time I’d been in a vessel with no mind to compete with beyond memories.”

“That caster had been a foul man, callous and arrogant,” Dale flexes one of his hands angrily at the memory before clenching it into a fist. “He bound me tight in that body. The other two demons he summoned were controlled by their humans with excessive strength. One human was able to handle it properly. The other was not and did survive to the end of the quest. The one who survived kept the demon bound to him as his reward while I was told that I could have the human body and my freedom if I cooperated. I saw this as a great opportunity, even if I disliked most of the other members of the group."

“I can understand why," you acknowledge. It was obviously more appealing for Dale to not have to share a body, even if it meant someone else died—at least it was not by his own actions. It certainly painted the humans involved in a negative light, cruel to sacrifice someone in such a test and then use their body after their death. And while you know demons can be violent too, this manner of binding stinks of slavery to you. "Even if they sound like a reprehensible crew."

“Yes. There was one who had been, not captured as the one who became my vessel had been, but coerced to a high degree,” Dale says. You sit up straighter at the gentler tone that has entered his voice. "She was the appraiser—the one who could tell the decoy artifacts from the genuine. Rather than wait until after the heist, the leader compelled her to join with a combination of bribery and threats. She needed the money, and wished to keep her life, and so complied." 

Dale seems to be lost in his memory and so you only need to nod to prompt him to continue.

"I performed reconnaissance and scouting. She utilized that information to ensure we had the correct targets. We became close over the time spent together, preferring each other's company to the rest," Dale's voice gets even softer and you hate the insecurity it sparks through you because you can see where this is heading. You don't like discovering you're a jealous spouse—you hadn't been with the original Dale, but then again, you'd not truly wanted him, or wanted him to want you, the way you did with this Dale. "She knew the terms of my service, that I would get only my freedom and nothing more, so she invited me to return with her to her hometown and then beyond. She was taking this payment and leaving her life in the city behind. A fresh start for both of us, she said.”

You could see why such a prospect appealed to Dale, and possibly even to this woman, who sounded like she had found herself in far over her head. You’re waiting though, balanced on the edge of a cliff, because you know by virtue of Dale standing here with you, that this story will not end well.

"It was the longest I'd been on the surface for and had full control,” Dale says, lost in the memories. “I learned and enjoyed as much as I could, even under the circumstances.” 

You can picture Dale, not having to hide his nature with the crew, and testing his limits with the same eager attitude he sometimes displayed. 

“Not that the lessons learned from the rest of the group were useless,” Dale adds, coming back to the present somewhat. “I’ve been applying some of those skills recently to the investigation into the assassins.”

You blink, pulled out of Dale's story. "You have?”

"Yes," Dale says, as if still worried what you might think of this part of his past. Like he wants to show he's useful beyond his impersonation of Dale, which has never something you needed convincing on. "Of course, I’ve been trying to pull what useful information I can from Dale’s memories, his knowledge, of his network of informants, and so on, but I do know something on my own of information gathering, of meeting with unsavory characters and how they operate. Ensuring those I have contact with can and cannot tell I am Dale as appropriate."

"I'm glad you've had the experience because I don't know where I would have begun," you admit because you are and you want him to know that you value what responsibilities he’s taken on. "My family might help if I had asked, but they are busy with their own matters. I certainly have no network of contacts, especially not for figuring out who might have hired assassins."

"Yes, well, you would not have acted in a manner that would prompt someone to send assassins after you." 

You smile at the affront you hear in Dale's voice. "I'm glad you think so. I don't think if you'd been Dale at the time that you would have either."

Dale gives you a lopsided smile. "I'm pleased you think so, but I'm not so certain. There's still much I'm learning and my experience, my loaned memories—they are not always the correct preparation. I'm grateful to your aid and Grandmother and Grandfather for their clear expectations. Besides, as you've pointed out—rightfully so—my control still needs fine-tuning. Within Northridge, that’s the greater concern.”

While you've worried over the same thing yourself these weeks, here in this room—with Dale, and honesty, and your marriage—you no longer feel like that’s a true looming threat. “Now that we can work together, I’m certain we can prevent that from happening.”

“Thank you for your confidence,” Dale says, pleased. “I’ve simply never been able to stay and so inherently find the prospect hard to trust in.”

“I’d imagine so,” you reply. “From your story, it seemed like a true possibility, but you weren’t able to stay, were you?”

“No,” Dale sighs. “It was a lovely month—my longest stay until now. We did succeed to the leader’s satisfaction and he paid us both as promised. Even the journey to her home was uneventful. At first. That’s when it all fell apart.” 

Even knowing that something was going to go wrong, it still made your heart clench at the despair in Dale’s voice. That he was here now, meant that he couldn’t have stayed then, and you selfishly want to be the one—want this life to be the one—that makes him happy. You still hurt for the hope you can see he had and lost.

“While I thought she understood my situation,” Dale continues, “it turns out she had not.” You frown, what did he— “She thought I was like the other two, a human sharing a body with the demon, except that I hadn’t asked for it the way the other two had. She thought freedom meant the caster had rid me of the demon, not that I was the demon being given a body. She thought she’d been talking with a human the entire time.”

Oh, your first thought is once you’ve digested that, no wonder he hadn’t thought you knew. He’d deceived this other woman by accident. Perhaps that is even why he seemed so careless—why he’d called humans oblivious. He’d said before he’d been testing his limits of what he could do and she’d still not caught on. She must have been shocked, particularly if her experience with demons had been tainted by the other members of the group. “Oh, oh no.”

Dale nods, resigned sorrow in the lines of his face, aging him. “When I finally realized what was happening, I told her the truth.” His voice flattens, “She did not take it well. Refused to believe me at first. She was angry and unsettled and—but then,” the corners of his mouth lift in a facsimile of a smile, “she seemed to accept that I had been myself the entire time. That our relationship was genuine. She was a little more standoffish, more hesitant, than before but she was a good person. Forgiving. She still wanted me to come home with her. She didn’t abandon me.” You can hear a lot in that statement, thinking back on his family.

“I thought given time,” Dale continues softly, “she would be able to accept me. And so I followed her home, right into an exorcism.”

Your eyes widen and you can’t help but get to your feet. Carefully, you approach Dale. He watches you with wary eyes, but doesn’t move away, doesn’t ask you to stop. “She’d written home ahead of time,” he blurts out and you reach out your hand to entwine your fingers with his, giving his hand a squeeze. You know he can appreciate this much at least. “Her mother, a sanctif, set everything up. She believed I’d deceived her purposely and was still attempting to use her to some nefarious end. I was shoved back down into the Depths within the day.”

“Dale…” You say, running your free hand down his arm in what you hoped was a comforting gesture, but you’ve no idea what else to say. No wonder he hadn’t believed you knew.

“I thought I was so clear with who I was!” Dale exclaims, looking frustrated and sad. The shadows flicker, and his teeth grow sharp, and his hair seems to have burst from its tie entirely. His fingers stay entangled with your own and his grip is so light. It’s primarily you holding on to him. “And she was so kind, so understanding. We’d known each other for weeks. She saw me—” 

He cuts himself off with a frustrated growl. You feel the sound through the close air between you and through his body. You don’t know how to make him feel better. Had he said he’d never even spoken to anyone of this? It all must be so bottled up inside him. You hope talking about, telling you, is releasing some of the pressure. You want to pull him into an embrace so badly, but you don’t think he wants much more contact than this. 

He inhales, a shiver that goes through his entire body before he stills. He pulls his inhuman influence back into himself that the room seems more static than before, like a painting of a room instead of a true one—Dale, a statue. He looks down at you with his glowing blue eyes, only two of them, and mostly looks forlorn. “And she was convinced that she did what had to be done, I could see it, once trapped. The righteousness in her. Looking back, I should have realized her concerns over what we were doing, how the demons were used by the other humans—she had been disgusted with the use of them, of me. I simply thought it was the binding, the control over another, she disagreed with. In the end, I think she was a purist, who thought none should cross the planes and all should stay in their own realm.”

It was a popular belief, one that waxed and waned throughout the centuries but never truly went away. You sigh and keep your hand on Dale’s arm, not his cheek. “I’ve heard of that school of thought. I’ve never studied much about the planes or demons, not enough to have a strong opinion. I know there is a lot of danger when realms mix, but I also think that those are the instances everyone hears about because if there are demons here or humans Below that are doing just fine, well, there’s nothing to say or hear about, is there?”

Dale relaxes at your every word, at the way you continue to hold his hand, stay close—not move an inch from his side. “Yes, that’s my stance as well.” He frowns, “Do not misunderstand me, there are plenty of dangerous individuals who are a perilous risk to all around them, regardless of where they are and what they are. Demons have done serious harm on the Surface, but humans have been to the Depths and done damage too.” 

That’s not something you’d considered, though you’ve heard tales and speculation of those who ventured there. You know Dale knows this, but he must feel so defensive given the attitudes of so many, including that woman and his grandparents. 

“In the end, I can only speak for myself. And I wish to live here.”

You take his other hand in yours and clasp them both. “You do live here now. We’ll work together to make sure it stays that way. I can help so much better now that we are on the same page, I promise.”

“Thank you, sana,” Dale replies warmly, stroking the back of your hand with his thumb. “I now know you’ve already been doing more than I ever expected. I admit I didn’t entirely follow all of what you said about what aid you have provided over this past month—besides the holy water. I take it that now it was your intention to be the primary target?”

“Yes, I didn’t know Grandfather had holy water,” you admit with a shrug “but the gesture, the fall… It struck me as suspect so I reacted without thinking.”

“How else have you helped?” he asks, heartfelt gratitude in his voice. “I have done my best, but I’m still learning. Dale’s memories—my own from my other visits—are a great aid, but I can’t always understand why certain things are done or what human limits are. I estimate the correct action as well as I can and hope small slips do not arouse too much suspicion.” He shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“I imagine so, I would never be able to maintain any such deceit of my own person.” The very idea of spending the rest of your life pretending to be someone you’re not is exhausting, but somehow helping Dale do the same seems so much more manageable. “I’m happy to aid you.”

“When else have you, if you don’t mind my asking?” Dale insists. “If I’m far more oblivious than I’m beginning to suspect, you need not enumerate all such instances if you’d prefer to go to sleep at some point tonight.”

You smile at his self-deprecating joke, but you’re not one to boast of your own accomplishments and you’ve no desire to make Dale feel worse—your reaction this morning had been quite enough. “I…” You want to fidget but you don’t want to let go of Dale’s hands. “I tried to help where I could as an unfamiliar person to give you time to work through your memories. Then as you said, your control isn’t perfect. Most of what I did was merely misdirecting others from noticing additional eyes, strange shadows, hungry shadow tails with a penchant for cheese.” You give him a significant look at that one and he looks mischievously unrepentant.

“I get hungry!” he defends himself. “I need a lot of fuel to keep myself and this body running smoothly.”

“Clearly,” you reply dryly, although you note it for later. “Other than that, some of Grandfather’s attempts to prove I’d cursed you were aimed at me, but some were aimed at both of us or were in danger of affecting both of us. You managed the High Sanctif fine on your own, but I did ensure we were away from Dr. Louisa and Grandfather after you touched her detecting gloves.”

“Her what?” Dale asks, baffled and curious. An additional eye opens below one of the usual ones, already trained on you. 

“She’d just given a demonstration before you and Grandfather joined us. Your hands were stained due to some substance she developed.”

“Oh.” All his eyes blink. “Now that you say so, I did notice a bit of a stain when I retired for the evening, but I thought that was from ink. No wonder I couldn’t recall when it had happened.”

“Quite.” You search your mind, for other instances, feeling strange laying them out after working so hard to conceal them. “I tried to help you gauge your strength with the games before the tournament so you did draw suspicion with the jousting itself. Not telling everyone what else I saw of you during the fight with the assassins wasn’t a challenge—especially since I didn’t see that much as it was. I did try to ensure I helped treat your injuries first, in case you needed the time to regain your control or were injured in some inexplicable manner.”

“I appreciate that, sana,” Dale says with a warm smile and an emphasis on your ‘healer’ nickname, “but I did make sure not to return until I was entirely human, knowing I might be under heightened scrutiny. In some ways it was easier that night since I was tired from having used so much of my demon attributes in the fight and chase. Too tired and I’ll get sloppy—that’s why I only was in public for short periods right after taking control of Dale’s body—but there’s a sweet spot, or so it seems.”

“I’m relieved you’ve managed as well as you have then,” you reply with a crooked smile, “even without exhausting yourself.” 

“Still, obviously I have not been doing as well as I’d presumed.” Dale frowns, “My sense of what humans will notice is obviously skewed. I’d appreciate your help in—”

A crackle and pop from the fire as a log shifts and falls in the pile cuts Dale off. He lets out a strange noise, a growl but lower register and more of a continuous, less rough sound. Like a hiss. The shadows writhe around him. He lets go of your hands to put himself between you and the fire, one shadow in particular shoots out like another limb or a tail to wrap loosely around your shoulders, the end of it facing the danger. 

Hearting beating wildly from the noise and Dale’s reaction, you try to calm your breathing. “Just the fire,” you say, then fear creeps down your spine. “Right?”

Dale looks at the fireplace for an extra second, before he deflates, pulling back in on himself. “Yes.” He looks at you cautiously, as if wondering if you’ll judge him for overreacting or for showing so much of himself when you were just discussing how he needed to do better at just that. “I apologize. My form is quite instinctive.”

“It’s alright.” You place your hand on Dale’s upper arm, turning him back towards you. “I think we’ve both been on edge these last few days.” You want to get back to where you were, sharing and together. You want him calm once more because he deserves to be after the journey to get here. “What do you mean by instinctive?” you ask, wanting to know more, wanting to figure out the right way to tell him that it was okay. You didn’t mind. His inhuman traits might still surprise you, but they never frighten you. He’s mesmerizing and thrilling and so much more than human. It's actually one of your favorite things about Dale.

He takes a measured breath, clearly wanting to follow you back to normality. Well, normality for you two. “While anchored to this body, my essence is still mine to command as well. It flexes and forms according to my desires and instincts as it did when I was only a shade. I try to keep that within or hidden, however...

You wait with baited breath, so interested in anything to help you understand the most obviously inhuman part of him.

“If I am curious, I create more eyes with which to observe. If I need more reach, I grow more limbs.” His lips quirk, as if remembering what you said earlier, “If I am hungry, more mouths.” You smile in recognition. Dale continues, a frown you recognize as one where he’s trying to translate what this means for him into meaning you can parse, “In many ways, trying to control such manifestations is anathema. Attempting to maintain a neutral facial expression when someone is trying to make you laugh.”

“I see.” It’s a helpful comparison. You remember the games you played in your dorm—including that one. Everything thinking of ridiculous or scandalous things to say in order to make the others break and laugh. It also makes his reaction of putting himself between you and potential danger all the sweeter. “Then perhaps I have not given you credit for the control you do have.”

“I’m sure you’ve given me precisely the credit I deserve,” Dale says wryly, some stress leaving him as he speaks. “It sounds like this is the aspect of my deception you’ve helped most with and I’m grateful for it. I’m grateful to be here, with you.”

“Me too.” You stare up at him, feeling the firm muscle of his arm under your hand, the tightly wound tension still present despite your attempts at reassurance and distraction. You want to truly take his mind away from everything, more than you want that for yourself. You want to relieve the stress you’ve both been under, enjoy what you now have. You want to make Dale not just grateful for not being betrayed, but truly happy—with you.

A clock strikes the hour, obvious as it breaks the silence between you. Dale steps back, picking up his forgotten cup of tea. “It’s getting late, I don’t mean to keep you awake after such an eventful day.”

“I’m not—” you start to protest before cutting yourself off. If Dale wanted a polite path out of tonight’s typical obligations, you should let him. You muster up a small smile, hoping what disappointment and frustration you feel reads as exhaustion. “Yes, I suppose it has certainly been a long day.”

You walk over to the tea table to put down your cup, gathering your leftover supplies. Telling yourself you’re not stalling in the hopes he changes his mind and wants you as a spouse and not simply a confidant, however much you’re enjoying being one to him. 

As you move, you’re uncomfortably aware of your chemise. Despite being soft and well made as it is, you feel awkward in your nightclothes. A pretty, but slipshod attempt to make this night something Dale never wanted. He’s still in his waistcoat, for star’s sake. 

The garter you’ve on around your thigh is the most uncomfortable and you try to remember if your maid had actually tied it with a purity knot. With a pang, you recall her checking it was still tight when she helped you out of your other clothes after arriving here. Surely, you could figure it out on your own despite its supposed notoriety for being unable to be done by a person who can’t see the knot itself. That’s why it was tradition to do up a betrothed’s garter with it. 

But what if you couldn’t? What would be worse? To ask Dale for his help now so you might leave with some dignity after it was undone? Or to leave and have to return for his aid then? No, worst would be to do neither and have your maid be the one to untie it in the morning and know you weren’t enticing enough to tempt your husband into doing so himself.

Regretfully, you turn around, back to where you’d been sitting earlier. “Before I go to bed,” you start, lifting your foot to place it on the ottoman at the foot of his bed.

“What are you doing?” Dale cuts you off, his voice raising in alarm at the end of his sentence when you begin lifting the hem of your chemise.

You give him the driest look you can manage, hoping it hides your embarrassment. “It’s our wedding night, Dale. No one else knows we’re discussing your inhuman nature. They’ll assume we were occupied elsewise. And they’ll ask you about it.”

“Ask—,” Dale sounds personally offended, as if he’s forgotten how certain people will act—because they’re nosey or crude or lack tact. “Not in any sort of—,” he stops and starts again, staying rooted to where he stands instead of making himself useful. “You don’t need to—”

“The garter was tied with a purity knot,” you cut him off before he can continue to prove all your communication issues are not over by not taking a hint and damaging your ego at the same time. You try to remind yourself of all the compliments he’s paid you instead reading into the look of mild panic on his face now when confronted by the mere sight of your bare leg. “I need your help taking it off.”

“You do?” his voice sounds a bit weak, almost reluctant, and you swallow down another wave of disappointment and embarrassment. 

“It was tied very tightly and specifically,” you say, grateful your voice, while a little strained, is otherwise close enough to how it typically sounds. “I can’t manage the knot, especially since it’s behind me. You should probably have it regardless.”

Dale blinks and some of his frozen posture thaws. He has that look you’ve seen multiple times, especially in the last few hours—he’s remembered some bit of human knowledge. Hopefully, he chalks this whole experience up to an oddity of humanity and nothing further. “Of course, yes. I don’t know how I forgot about this. One of my cousins tried to convince me to wear one as well this very morning—Grandfather didn’t leave me alone once I told him I would be getting married after all.”

You have to work hard to keep your facial expression from showing how pleasing you find the image of Dale with a matching yellow garter on his leg that you would have gotten to carefully untie, like a present on Midwinter. 

He walks over to you, less nervous, but still cautious. You resume pulling your chemise up, hoping he doesn’t think this is some sort of deliberate seduction—caught between hoping you don’t look foolish and wishing he at least found you somewhat pleasing.

Carefully, you hold up the hem to just above the garter, the lace feeling even tighter to your skin. You have to suppress a shiver when you see Dale’s eyes on your bared skin. He reaches for you, a single finger twirling in the dark blue ribbon—which matches his own suit. His eyes dart up to your own for a split second, his pupils already noticeably dark and blown wider. You know they don’t react like humans do, and probably only mean he’s trying to see in better detail, but you feel goosebumps break out across your skin. 

He finally grasps the garter itself and gives a little tug to turn it so the knot is towards the front. It’s tight enough that he moves your leg more than the garter. You murmur an apology, one hand on the low footboard of the bed to try to hold yourself steady.

He shakes his head, waving off your apology. “Why on the Surface is this so tight? My apologies for not helping you with it sooner.”

Your own dismissal of his apology is cut short when he wraps the fingers of his right hand around your upper calf, right below your knee and tries again to turn the garter. His grip is strong and unyielding, keeping you in place for him to work and making desire pulse through you at the obvious display of strength. He gives up when the garter’s only made a quarter turn. Since he’s at your side, that must be helpful enough. 

You swallow down a bereft noise when he lets go of your calf to use both fingers on the laces. Carefully, he pulls out the ties’ ends from where they were woven back into the garter—another reason they’re hard to undo by oneself. Then he sets to work on the knot itself, his fingers continuously brushing your skin as he tugs and pulls. 

He’s so close to you like this, practically looming over you, crowding you against this end of the bed. It would be so easy to fall and bring him with you, on top of you. A knot of a sort twists itself between your legs from his proximity and his touch. You desperately want him to untangle that one too. 

He leans closer to see better and it's so unfair. Why has the universe let you get so close to what you want but left you unable to grasp it?

Dale’s noise of triumph causes you to look back down at him as he slides the garter down and, with even more room, off. “There we go,” Dale says, his voice low and soft, with a little bit of smug pride at having finished his task. Before you can lower your leg, he hisses in sympathy. You look down to see lines pressed into your skin, a stark reminder of where the garter had been. 

You can feel blood flowing back into that area and it hurts more than it had before Dale had untied the garter. Dale reaches back out for you and rubs his fingers over the marks. “This must have hurt, my apologies once more.”

You shake your head as you fight to keep your eyes from fluttering in appreciation of Dale’s strong fingers massaging that part of your upper thigh back to life. “Thank yo—” you cut yourself off with a gasp when Dale’s fingers drift to the inside of your thigh, which is far more sensitive—not to mention how much closer it begins Dale to where your appreciation is making itself known, gathering at the apex of your thighs and threatening to drip down to where Dale can’t help but notice.

Another stroke of his thumb provokes a hum of pleasure from deep in your chest that you can’t contain. Dale breathes deeply before he finally looks away from your thigh to meet your eyes. You can’t even see any white left in his eyes: his irises are a vibrant blue, glowing with soft light, surrounding dark, wide pupils. 

He’s not breathing at all anymore, which you only notice because you have to resist the urge to pant. Then he lets out a sigh, his voice like the wind as he breathes, “You’re so beautiful.”

“You, what?” your voice is high and breathless as he leans closer. “Truly?”

“Yes,” his reply is swift, barely having to think about it. “Of course.” At your continued look of wide eyed surprise, he elaborates, “I was nearly ready to retract my calling off the wedding, no matter my attempt at being better than my nature, when you came to see me simply from how you looked alone. The reminder of what I was giving up.” 

His eyes slide up and down your form, before he leans so close your foreheads are nearly touching. His voice is low and almost distracted as he says, “Dressed up so pretty for me.” He moves one hand from your leg to tuck one of your curls behind your ear. “My healing ray of sunshine.”

Heat shoots through your veins at his half-lidded gaze, at his words, at his breath on your lips. “Dale…” Your voice is pleading to a degree that surprises even you. You don’t have time to feel self-conscious about how needy you sound when Dale groans in response, his lips covering yours the next instant.

Soft but insistent, he pushes everything away except for the feel of him pressed against you. The hand still on your thigh, gives a little squeeze, while his other hand cups your cheek, as he’d tried to this morning. He pulls away for a second and your hands wrap themselves in his waistcoat to keep him near. He seemingly needs no persuading as he goes in for another kiss. 

His teeth, sharp as they are, tug only gently on your bottom lip, little pinpricks of sensation that send shivers down your spine. You push your hands up his chest and onto his shoulders as you open up to him with a sigh.

His tongue is hotter than the rest of him as it slides into your mouth and you melt in his grasp, wrapping your arms more fully around his neck to keep yourself some semblance of upright. Your pulse thrums with desire as he moves against you and it's all you can do to hold on tight. The flick of his tongue sets your blood simmering. His thorough kiss ignites a hunger in your bones. He pulls back eventually, remembering you both need to breathe, but you don’t care. 

You’ve spent so much time at his side, unable to go after what you truly wanted, ask for what you truly want to, that you tighten your hold on him as best you can so he can’t drift away again. Without realizing it, the word “please” falls from your lips to linger in the shared air between you.

Dale’s head tilts back, which is the opposite of what you want, but it seems it’s only to better look you in the eye. “Yes?” He looks startled, despite how you’ve been acting, but eager.

“Yes.” You nod emphatically, past the point about appearing foolish as long as he understands.

“You’d taken this so well,” he says, that same bewildered hope that had sprung up when you said you wanted to marry him back in his eyes. He kisses your skin just below your ear while his hand slides up your side. “I didn’t want to press my luck.”

He captures your mouth in another deep kiss, seemingly unable to help himself

“Uh-uh,” you say once you have a moment to breathe and the wherewithal to speak. You feel drunk on his kisses, the rest of the world and its concerns lost in this heady haze. “This is my reward for getting us here.” Somewhere within, you find the courage to ask, “Haven’t we earned it?”

“More than twice over,” Dale breathes before he sits down on the bed and holds out a hand, “Come here.”