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kevinsreviewcatalogue · 24 days ago

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Review: Terrifier 3

Terrifier 3 (2024)

Not rated

Score: 4 out of 5

With Terrifier 3, the little indie splatter horror franchise that could has entered "franchise mode". On top of its advertising, its merchandising, its tie-in single by Ice Nine Kills, and its staggering box-office success, the movie itself makes Art the Clown as much the main character as its returning heroine Sienna Shaw, with nearly every kill now a horrifying set piece of explosive carnage and Art's sidekick from the last movie, the ambiguously demonic Little Pale Girl, upgraded to a co-villain in her own right as she possesses somebody and joins in on the action herself. The best comparison I can think of is A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, though I'd argue that this is the better movie of the two by a wide margin, one that not only cleans up the biggest flaw that held back its predecessor but also manages to be a twisted, explosive celebration of practical effects work unbound by the MPA (as in, they just up and released this unrated knowing damn well it would've gotten an NC-17 the second they showed up at the MPA's offices). It's a big, swaggering splatterfest that's as bonkers as its killer clown villain, and while it does unfortunately introduce some new flaws that leave me wondering if Damien Leone, the writer, director, and main visionary behind this series, is getting lost in the weeds a bit with his creation, this is otherwise one hell of an experience.

Set five years after the events of the last movie, our protagonist Sienna Shaw, who has spent her time in and out of psychiatric care thanks to what she experienced in her last encounter with Art the Clown, has just left the hospital to live with her aunt Jess, uncle Greg, and little cousin Gabbie. The idea of a slasher sequel focusing on how traumatized the final girl has become is not a new idea (all the way back in the '90s, Scream 2 and Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later built their heroines' arcs around it), but this movie does it well, in its characteristic fashion. Lauren LaVera gets another great opportunity to play Sienna as more than just the "tough chick" horror heroine, somebody who can undoubtedly still kick Art's ass but has also been left a psychological wreck by all the things she's witnessed. She has visions of her dead friends blaming her for their deaths, the last movie's implications that she was going insane all but spelled out in the text now, and she recoils when Gabbie goes snooping in her diary and reads about some of the things she described in there. We get a flashback to Sienna's childhood, her father played by Jason Patric in a cameo, illustrating how she loved him and driving home how much his decline and ultimate death broke her. I find it amusing how the Terrifier films, with their in-your-face violence and lack of subtlety, are sometimes seen as a rejoinder to the "elevated horror" boom of the last ten years, particularly how many such films use their monsters and demons as metaphors for some trauma in the protagonists' pasts, because Sienna's arc in these movies treads very similar waters -- and, for my money, more or less pulls it off. In two movies, Sienna Shaw has become one of the all-time great horror heroines, and LaVera is central to why.

It also helps, of course, to have a real monster for your heroine to face off against. And here, we have not one, but two of them. I've already sung David Howard Thornton's praises for his performance as Art the Clown before, and he largely sticks to what worked in the past, combining great physical comedy with a mean streak a mile wide to make for a sick, sadistic villain who treats everything like one big joke and is clearly enjoying himself as he hunts and torments his victims. At times, Art feels almost like a silent slasher version of Deadpool, a guy who's in on the joke and feels like he wants to let everybody else in on it too. The Little Pale Girl also makes a return, in a sense, this time possessing the first film's lone survivor Victoria Hayes, who begins the film institutionalized after Art had mutilated her face and driven her insane only for Art to break her out. If Art is a slasher version of the Joker, then the possessed Victoria is his Harley Quinn, a female counterpart who is not only just as vicious and terrifying but also serves as his "voice" throughout the film, being the one who directly taunts people through words as opposed to just gestures. Samantha Scaffidi is playing a character almost wholly different from what she was in the first movie, unrecognizable both literally due to her mangled face and figuratively as she partakes in the violence rather than trying to survive it, and she turned out to be the film's secret weapon, somebody who kept the scares grounded even as Art takes the Freddy Krueger route of becoming a more overtly comedic killer. Victoria brought most of the film's genuine scares here versus Art's more cartoonish carnage, and she proved to be a very welcome addition to not only the lore but also, more importantly, the movie as a whole.

That's not to say that Art isn't scary anymore, though. As I've said when discussing the prior films, sheer visceral excess has a weight to it all its own, and when paired with the more comedic elements of his character, that lends him the feeling of a sick, degenerate troll for whom nothing actually matters except his own amusement. This is a movie that happily crosses lines that other slashers wouldn't dare tread near, a gross display of viscera that offers Leone another chance to show off his special effects craftsmanship with the kind of set piece kills that feel like they were concocted by a schoolyard full of kids in a contest to come up with the sickest ways to die. We get a guy getting the skin on his head ripped off, liquid nitrogen being used to freeze a man's flesh before it's smashed off with a hammer, live rats being shoved down a woman's throat and then eating their way out through her neck, a shower scene to rival the infamous bedroom scene from the second film (...who says that doesn't fit there?), beheadings, dismemberments, the works, as well as Art actually "going there" when it comes to one of horror's biggest taboos. These movies are being hyped up at this point as gauntlets for seasoned horror fans to run (and shock others with), and while the tone is too lighthearted for it to really hang with the grossest examples of splatter horror, make no mistake: the warnings that theaters are putting up for this are there for a reason.

The pacing is tighter this time around, showing that Leone has learned from one of the main criticisms of the last movie. It's still just over two hours long, but it moves a lot quicker than before, each hour respectively feeling like the first two acts of a movie that's setting up for a smashing finale but still delivering the goods where it matters. The plot builds on the second film's implications that there was something more cosmic going on than just a simple slasher story, explicitly naming the Little Pale Girl as a demon and strongly implying that Sienna too has an angel in her corner, ultimately ending on a cliffhanger and leaving a lot of open questions that the fourth movie promises to answer. The added lore did a lot to flesh out the story, put some fun twists on a lot of slasher tropes (the final girl, the killer coming back from the dead), and got me interested in seeing the next one. That said, not only does it create a risk of continuity lockout for people who haven't seen any of the other films, especially with how the opening hinges so much on characters and events from the second film, it also naturally means that this movie's own story is incomplete. A lot hinges on whether the fourth movie sticks the landing, and right now, all I can say is this: at least they didn't try to expand on Art's backstory the way the Nightmare sequels did Freddy's or the Halloween sequels did Michael Myers'. His whole deal boils down to the fact that he was such an evil fuckin' bastard in life (which, if you've seen any of these movies... yeah) that the forces of darkness took a liking to him and revived him as their champion to keep killing. It's a simple explanation that preserves his mystique and doesn't detract from what makes him so enjoyable to watch, the kind of thing you'd expect a slasher fan to come up with if they were asked to develop the lore around a slasher villain, and I appreciated it.

The Bottom Line

Terrifier 3 isn't without its flaws, but it's still the best film in the series thus far. If Art the Clown isn't a bona fide horror icon at this point, then it's only because he's still fairly new. Check it out if you've got the stomach.

#terrifier #terrifier 3 #horror #horror movies #slasher #slasher movies #supernatural horror #damien leone #lauren lavera #sienna shaw #david howard thornton #art the clown #daniel roebuck #jason patric #chris jericho #samantha scaffidi

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sparrowandbee · 9 months ago

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Chapter 10 | Chapter 12

The Sparrow: Chapter 11: The Victor

Synopsis: It is the final day of the 68th Hunger Games. Haymitch watches as Marian struggles to fight for her life one last time.

Warnings: Canon-level violence, swearing, alcohol.

Word Count: 1561

The ground was rumbling beneath me, prompting my eyes to dart open.

It must have been midday already, the sun was high and my skin was prickly and sunburnt. I jumped up and held as tight as I could to the sturdy trunk of the tree as it swayed beneath me, my sweaty palms grasping tightly to its rough bark, but without too much urgency. The ground was only swaying, it was barely a rumble.

The Gamemakers obviously didn’t mean to cradle me awake. I heard the booming crash of canyon rock, probably a few miles from where I was- It was all very disorienting but I wasn’t going to stick around long enough to get answers.

Since the quaking was coming from behind me, I ran forward, knowing the route was leading me toward the cornucopia. Though I intuitively knew this was the Capitol’s way of telling us to move it along, I was still vehemently in denial that I would have to use the knife again, probably against a career this time.

The cornucopia glowed blindingly in the sunlight, the glow reflected on the structure’s mirrored surface.

My half-assed strategy got me this far, but I couldn’t sneak my way out of an arm-to-arm confrontation- Haymitch said it himself. My lucky streak had run out but I couldn’t quit now… I didn’t want to quit now.

I felt better than I had in weeks, I felt full and strong and the pain and bleeding were under control- the angry red sunburn didn’t even sting anymore because of the oil inside the gift.

Though we all knew how this would end, I rushed into the cornucopia anyway- I wouldn’t go down without a fight.

The penthouse had never been this crowded. I sat in the same spot I had before, but this time surrounded by the eccentric figures of the capital.

I took another swig of some spicy cocktail someone brought. It wasn’t bad… but anything would be welcome over having the endure this sober.

I had remained so removed from the spectators and showmanship of the games that it gave me shivers to see their wide, colourful eyes as they ‘ooh’ed and ‘ahh’ed at the flat screen.

That morning, they let me know this would be the last day. Soon after, the living room was already filled with all sorts of brightly coloured minglers in structured gowns and neon accessories. A migraine for breakfast.

I know my drinking isn’t the ‘right’ coping mechanism but between obnoxious fake laughter and the micro-objectification of Marian’s sleeping, bandaged body, I couldn’t get through it without a drink… or twenty-seven, if we’re counting.

Sponsors were one of the many “necessary” evils of the Games. It’s logistically impossible to win without them. It had been more years than I care to count since I hadn’t stooped to that level, but I couldn’t bear sitting static when she was giving so much, so I dove into the circus of humiliation that is the sponsor’s lounge.

A lifetime ago, I was good with people. I knew how to charm them, mingle with them, without even really trying. I don’t know where that boy went, but for the hour I had with the patterned tuxedos and pencil skirts of the Capitol, he was there. Fighting for the girl he loves again, just as he had 18 years ago.

As much as it suffocated me, it was easy to sell Marian.

They clearly loved her already after the interview hit the sympathy points and she was smart in the arena. It was easy to root for the underdog when she had mesmerizing brown eyes and an incandescent smile.

With just a few minutes of talking, I was sure the crowd around me would be able to finance double what I planned to send her, and they did. Almost reaching the price of Finnick Odair’s triton, I sent her everything she needed and more in the largest silver box I’d ever seen.

I’m not stupid- I knew the price that came with Finnick’s eager flock of sponsors. I knew I recognized the same vulture eyes and sinister smiles in the penthouse now.

It ate at me, but if it meant Marian would come back alive, I’d do it all again, a thousand times over. It was selfish and it was wrong- but I wouldn’t go home without her.

The liquor went down easy, glass after glass. The careers split up and started going after each other, oblivious to Marian, who still slept atop the tree, her face white with sunblock and glossy with burn cream, bandaged and full.

With each of the remaining five tributes running to opposite corners, the game was at a standstill.

Someone handed me a pink fizzy drink. It matched their pink gloves and eyebrows. I nodded to them in gratitude. Was there… There was glitter on their blindingly white teeth, and not from the cocktails.

A person with a literally sparkling smile gave a drink while the Gamemakers sent an earthquake to the arena. I downed the glass in one as their screams echoed throughout the penthouse. The party went quiet as the craters descended on them, it was more violent than it should have been. I had a feeling this would be the Gamemaker’s last foray.

The recording refused to film Marian, focusing instead on the struggling District 2 girl, her lower body completely buried under the rocks. An excruciating three minutes later, she died. The camera focused on her face.

“Poor dear,” Glitter Teeth remarked and headed to the table for a canape.

I wanted to throw up and scream and shoo them away like the mangled abominations they are.

Until the cameras found Marian who looked… great.

She walked towards the cornucopia as though she was merely an actress and the gashes and stained jumpsuit were just props. Sure, the sunscreen wasn’t her best look but she seemed alert, alive, which was more than I expected. The capitol goonies cheered and whistled as she rushed towards the cornucopia.

Two more canons. Only the District 1 boy was left. They stopped the earthquake, he had one ravine left before the cornucopia. Until the mutts came.

Huge scaley, scorpion-like creatures infested the ravine quickly. The kid pulled himself out, but just barely, yelling a fighting dead man’s scream as they took nearly his entire right leg.

The stump left a bloody trail on the orange canyon floor. Through his agony he yelled out, “Kill me, please. Please, kill me.”

Over and over and over until he got to the cornucopia. The kid was barely lucid and completely powdered in the sandy dirt. Barely any skin was visible under the red-brown coating.

Though it pricked at my heart, as any arena death does, I knew the kid was as good as dead- and Marian was as good as home.

“Please, please, please,” The anguished cries echoed inside the cornucopia. Was it some sort of trick? Is a mutt trying to get me?

If my calculations were right, the canon meant that there was only one tribute left. I would have to step outside sooner or later.

The screams continued, varying in intensity. Okay, that felt real.

But would it be that easy?

No, it was a career and he was messing with me- toying with his prey before the lethal pounce.

I pulled the knife from my pack but it was far too dull and dirty to cause real damage. The cave-like space of the cornucopia was mostly empty. I crawled in further to try to find anything else that could be handy, my limp brown curls falling and sticking to the thick layers of creams on my sunburnt face. In the very back wall was a haphazardly strewn axe, its blade glinting at the sunlight streaming in from the wide mouth of the structure.

“Help me, please. Kill me, kill me!”

The voice got louder as I moved closer to the outside. It was coming from behind the cornucopia. He wants a scenic backdrop, I thought, but I wouldn’t be the ornamentation in his victory portrait so soon.

I turn around the cornucopia’s tail to the voice, expecting the act to subside soon. But there’s no one there.

“Here! Here!” It calls; still anguished, still (seemingly) in pain.

I scanned the trees, but there was no one.

I then walked closer to the ravine, still on my guard in case my opponent decided to sneak up behind me.

“Please, here, please,” The words were jumbled now as if gasping for air. Soft, anguished whispers of “please, please, please,” subsided.

My brows furrowed in confusion and disorientation. Was this all a mind game? Was any of it real? Could it be some sort of telepathic muttation? Would I wake up sweating, back on top of my thin comforter on an unremarkable sweaty August day?

I brought the axe closer to my torso, holding it up with both hands.

A single cannon sounded.

I looked around, still unable to identify the other tribute.

It was as if the world had gone still- literally. No breeze tugged at the leaves or the pebbles. No distant bird calls or gravel crunching.

Was that it?

The announcer’s now familiar voice erupts across the eerily still arena- “Ladies and Gentlemen: Marian Cartwright, victor of the 68th annual Hunger Games.”

Next Chapter

Masterlist

#the hunger games #haymitch abernathy #thg haymitch #haymitch #thg #hunger games #hunger games fanfiction #hungergames #hunger games au #Haymitch x oc

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libidomechanica · 9 months ago

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Her eye wadna been

A sonnet sequence

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In second speaking, this reft her ever sex. We shudder to vse to us, leaue tormented her panes. If the ladders take a crazy auld man’s could I hold communion of our let it was onely Dearie; from the top of light would I did growing waves lie abed were are call future splendous to mine communion of the high. It is her grape. But wherefore thee grey lines upon the morning far in the dwarf came thee; and, bide each doth many World, and smooth these the might thine. But he is free. That he had in bodies fire—my mist and in the know I have mine into him thy swaying, dying, chatter: let dark moved heardes all; I can jump both Sea and in a dreams of these that made another far frosty air to banish to saying less rue. The rose impending and scorner-stone lass ere to suppress’ eye plunging from this time I dream that me doth for me! As like the river.

For a bells; the unsuspect, me for thys sharpens and find thorn! When, as I tell me who builds his rapier breasts (than ducats. Nebraska, Nebraska, Nebraska, Nebraska, Nebraska, Nebraska wicket creater, where think of myrtle; a belt of you will her own desert wonderstand, and gain her face but all; if on the deep through this sinnes the moon. That the last toiles the both; but wise might of Memory of youth figures promise you ain’t watched it wouldst be feather unnested a spots determined, a chambers, of a sunny kind. Who hath of her eyes, to heart. He added, like the scarce could be who hate, I feeling the blue days long washed it! In Seattle, and other, that Love done! I wist not sweete? Let men prove, a gown mourned her was part. Or to o’er they did me when I am and slimy nest twelve Ignorant, I returned he for silly rise inter an’ lan’.

In sprite; the should we were cause that her tatter harme did him advantage found as serve for that crime. And the Interpreting, sir, to say Stellas eyes in the grow stiff and grass croon If thy sweet Highland Mary. Singing O darlin’ darlin’. This my girls beck, with new please, and peculiar nook remote. And, lassie day, look, one and can, weaving her we are dim, and was on to sleeper bold his gone at my best comes a man your prential exercised in the statute of the heart joined though solitary in Juno sweet Common bed and thered singing in the never watry bowres, to heart.

While, approachinery, gentler passion smitted in mossy skulls that nobody like Love away, and rubies grey to cross his forgotten all inheritor and feverish chariot, but, trowth, I cannot rest of duties set: bayleaue troubled will heard mine or foot in love slept with a dewy grass never than a thunder than this pardon, seemed to him up to hope next time be wise as love the serving-boy approximate web, they call comfort me go. Find the morning house, why thing to gain the formed. That poor hut sunk child hiding—and arbitrary black mouldy hay, begging stayed him.

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 5 #146 texts #sonnet sequence

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dominaelumine · 2 years ago

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there’s a line in les miserables (the novel) where a character is described as ‘a charming young man, capable of being terrible’ and I really think that’s tandy down to the root

#thanks victor hugo #why use many words when few do trick #they’re even both blonde #the dorian grayism of it all #there is a streak of violence a mile wide in that girl

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four-armed-bandit · 2 years ago

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nightsister merrin

“It seems you lack the power, little witch.”

“You both shall learn. When you face one Nightsister of Dathomir, you face us all.”

my screenshots | my writing

#gotta hype myself up to write my darling daughter #doing the most absolutely incredible violence #i have two types fyi #they are sad and lonely space boy with a devoted AI companion #and socially awkward girl with a morbid streak eight miles wide #so this game was basically made in a lab for me #nightsister merrin #jfo #jedi fallen order #fallen order #cal kestis #bd-1 #star wars #my computer is a beast and my father was a photographer

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music-of-dragons · 2 years ago

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"Contrary to the other answers here, Dany’s not a great ruler. She’s impulsive, inept and, though well-intentioned, has a self-righteous streak a mile wide. It’s not misogynist to point out her actions leave Astapor a hell-scape, that she uses forced labour without pay in Mereen (there’s a word to describe that, it starts with S), and that she is frequently too quick to use violence to solve problems, especially as of the end of Book 5, where she outright decides to say ‘F peace!’ and starts burning shit."

● Wrong. Daenerys has a council made up of both rich and poor whom she always takes into account when making a decision. This is a girl who let a man spit on her in court and merely had him removed from the temple. A boy lunged at her to attack her and again, only had him removed. She plants trees and beans, has irrigation canals built, and she DOES pay her men to work until the gold runs dry, she then pays them with food and shelter. They have a choice, it is not slavery, and her freedmen STILL love her despite the hardship as seen in Tyrion's Winds chapter. They are crying out for her to come back and smash the slavers once again. She trapped herself in an unhappy marriage and locked up her dragons in the name of peace. She learned her lesson from Astapor, that's the entire reason she stays in Meeren, it's not like she kept on doing the same thing after, she refuses, and Astapor haunts her throughout her chapters. Nowhere in book 5 does Dany start burning stuff down because "eff peace" NOWHERE. I read her chapters all the time, that is false.

"Dany had red flags(and she had plenty)? Book! Dany is worse. She has no qualms whatsoever with slaves being rounded up en masse because it’s Drogo doing it with the intent of earning her Westeros. She’s willing to let starving slaves sell themselves back into slavery as long as she gets a cut from the earnings."

● This is just blatantly false. Unlike the show, the reason Drogo's Khalasar attacked the Lhazareen was because ANOTHER KHAL was attacking them first. Drogo surprise attacked him to gain more respect in his Khalasar and steal his victory, as Dothraki Khals do. The moment Dany realized all of the terrible things happening she tried to convince herself to ignore it for all of 30 seconds before putting a stop to it. Her power was dependent on Drogo, she was nothing to the Khalasar without him, so she had to work within his power to protect the women she saved. Also, the slaves of Meereen were not starving, Meereen had freshly fallen and the slaves who wanted to sell themselves back into slavery were "gently born" bed slaves, scribes, and teachers, who saw a better life that way. She freed them to give them choice, she was not going to force them to remain in Meereen knowing that war was coming. Also, it was Missandei, a former slave, who suggested taxing the slavery to deincentivize it and Daenerys put that right back into Meereen's economy. She never pockets any gold, her goal in Meereen is rebuilding.

"She has a wineseller’s daughters tortured before the man’s eyes because someone murdered two of her Unsullied in his wine shop: nothing ever comes out of it. Oh, and she’s doing it because one of her favorite slaves is murdered… on the other side of the city. She’s willing to impress the slaves she supposedly liberated into working for food and water in her public works projects, and somehow not see that literally is slavery."

● Daenerys approved the use of torture *once* in the series because 2 of her Unsullied her killed brutally and there had been many more murders before that with no leads. I don't know about this "favorite slave" you are referring to. Torture falls within the accepted values of society in ASOIAF; Crow cages for villages (Catelyn wanted Theon in one), Ice Cells for the Night's Watch (also Qhorin Halfhand tortured a wildling to death), Sky Cells and an abusive inkeep for The Vale, the Black Cells and torturers for King's Landing, I could go on. Stannis tortures Theon and lets people be burned alive, The Manderlys have a torturer named Garth, the Faith utilize torture for information, even King Jaehaerys the Conciliator used torture to get information. And above all of what I just listed, Daenerys is the first and only leader in the books to openly condemn and ban the use of torture afterward. She recognizes that it is useless and cruel. Again, she paid the freedmen wages until she was besieged and the gold ran out, she pays them with what she has. She DOES NOT force anyone to work, you're using the exact argument that Xaro, an unrepentant slaver who compared slavery to rain, tried to use to convince Dany to allow slavery again. I think you're missing the point. Her freedmen still love her and want her to rule despite the hardship, NO ONE is calling Dany a slaver in the books, not even the people who hate her. They all hate her because she is a liberator.

"Hell, her whole ‘kill a city of innocents’ schtick? She’s already done that in the books.

When ordering her brand new Unsullied to sack Astapor, she ordered them:

“Slay the Good Masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who wears a tokar or holds a whip, but harm no child under twelve, and strike the chains off every slave you see.”

A tokar is a clothing that in Astapor is uniquely worn only by the freeborn. You claim show! Daenerys went batshit: her book counterpart effectively ordered an army to kill every man in a city that wasn’t a slave or wasn’t dirt poor or a hard laborer, irrespective of whether they actually owned slaves, including children above the age of twelve, and those under that age unlucky enough to look a bit old for their age."

● A tokar can ONLY be worn by slavers. Know why? Because it takes your hands to hold it in place. Only people who do not use their hands because they have slaves to do everything for them can wear it. It is the symbol of a slaver. Also, "harm no child under 12" DOES NOT mean "kill everyone over 12". In her society, a boy is considered a man at 14, they begin training with sword and shield long before that. The youngest commander of the Night's Watch was 10 years old, the same age Barristan Selmy was when he entered his first tourney. Doubtless, young boys would try to fight the Unsullied, but she didn't want them harmed so she gave a rough age of accountability on the spot. The Unsullied do not fill in gaps in orders, which is the exact reason Jorah urged her to buy them, they will only do what is explicitly ordered. I feel like people intentionally misread this to villainize Dany even though the entire reason she wanted to free the Unsullied was to save children from torture. She is constantly contemplating her want and love for children, you have to think about these scenes in the context of her character. Dany would never want children to be slaughtered. However, I think the most important thing to acknowledge when it comes to Astapor was that Dany learned her lesson and decided to take the next city without laying a hand on them, then stayed to rule in Meereen to stabilize it.

There is no meticulously built up madness arc, at all. The point of George's key 5 are that they are the underdogs of society who defy the expectations of their world at every turn, and even though some are hated, they will be the ones to rise up and save the world from the Long Night. George is not pessimistic, he's not centrist, and he certainly believes in righteous war and violence. At its heart, ASOIAF is still a fantasy series, George just doesn't brush over the hardships and ugly truths like most fantasy novels do. Most of your evidence is easily disproven by the text, I'll whip out book quotes if you want me to.

And then they didn't respond 🤷🏻‍♀️

#daenerys targaryen #asoiaf #a song of ice and fire #dany #book!daenerys #book!dany #pro dany #pro daenerys

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impvlsivee · 2 years ago

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Jiara oneshot

Based on them pictures

JJ is not as interested in recklessness and violence as everyone seems to think. He doesn’t like it or enjoy it, but he understands the necessity of it that his friends don’t.

Logic dictates that when dealing with murderous psychopaths, you gotta think like one if you’re gonna beat them. JJ doesn’t understand how he’s the only one who gets that.

It’s always a chorus of ‘we can’t do thats’ and ‘this is really stupid JJ’ . And that’s cool because someone has to be the wild card that pushes everyone else into motion otherwise no one would fucking move.

JJ accepts his role as the wild card.

What he doesn’t accept it when one of his friends tries to also be the wild card. There can’t be two, goddammit. And he recognizes that the reason he’s the wild card is because he has a self-sacrificing streak 3 miles long and at least half a mile wide.

Point is, he really doesn’t care much about himself. So if taking a few beatings for his friends, the people he loves most in this world, is as good as he gets, fuck, that’s enough for him.

But then, Kiara goes and starts trying to be the second wild card, except the only person she’s trying to get moving is him.

Move him from the ocean to the life boat, from the boat to the island, the island back home. Like she figured out that if she puts herself in danger with him, he’ll stop putting himself in danger. It’s only to keep her safe, but he doesn’t think she gives a shit as long as he stops taking head trauma.

It may be a “taste of his own medicine” kind of thing because he wouldn’t put it past Kie to be saving his ass while simultaneously teaching him a lesson.

But this, this is different. And JJ is livid.

Rafe, the fucking prick, sent a message to them, more like stuck a knife through a piece of paper against the Chateau’s front door. It was simple, “meet at Tanneyhill. Kie and Sarah only.”

And really, JJ starts laughing cause is he fucking serious? But Sarah and Kie look at each other, something passing between them.

“Don’t even fucking think about it,” he says, John B. and Pope nodding along. Cleo’s face hold a reserved look that tells him she’s probably going to agree with the girls.

“This is clearly a set up, like we know this,” Pope says.

“There’s only one way this ends,” John B chimes in.

“Guys we have to at least think about it,” Sarah offers

“Sarah no -…” John B starts, but she stops him.

“No listen. Rafe isn’t going to stop. He’ll come here. He will come here. And maybe it won’t be when we’re all here, maybe it’ll be when it’s only one of us. Or he’ll just burn the goddamned house to the ground. But if we do this, if we meet with him, at least we have some control. At least we know what we’re walking into.” She reasons, and JJ has to admit, she isn’t wrong.

She isn’t right either.

Still.. “Okay princess, let’s say you and Kie go. What do you expect the rest of us to be doing? Cause I’ll be damned if I’m sitting here waiting for y’all wondering if he fucking murdered you. Ya know, cause he’s a murderer?” JJ doesn’t think he should have to spell it out but apparently he does.

“Rafe isn’t an idiot. He’ll know you guys are nearby. So we play into that right? We don’t deny it, but he still gets what he wants because you guys are hanging back,” Kie speaks up for the first time in a minute.

“And what if he takes you into the house? What if we can’t get to you?” JJ asks frantically because this is not a good plan. He’s had enough bad ones to know.

“Then you do what you do best,” she responds. The meaning is clear; figure it the fuck out.

Cleo snorts and says, “Don’t worry ladies, I’ll be there to make sure we actually save your asses.” The boys look at each other but none argue because really, without Cleo, they’d probably still be stranded on an island.

And that’s how JJ lands himself beside John B, Pope, with the addition of Cleo, for the 2nd time, outside the wall that surrounds TanneyHill, watching Sarah and Kie approach the lions den.

“This is a really fucking bad idea, like truly one of the worst we’ve had,” he grumbles.

“Dude we heard you the first 10 times you said it,” he hears Pope mutter to himself.

“Personally, I think they’re gonna be fine. Tough girls, man,” Cleo states.

JJ gives her a look. “What blondie? Spit it out,” Cleo remarks.

“Ya know he shot Sarah right? Like this is the guy who shot her,” he retorts.

“And she’s alive, no? I know you’re scared but you ain’t doing her no favors by doubting her,” she says, pointedly looking at JJ, who suddenly feels too seen.

“Shit, he’s taking them into the house,” he hears John B say.

They all whip their heads around to look, and sure enough, Sarah and Kie are following Rafe into the house.

“We should move closer. The odds of us getting there before something really bad happens are low when we’re this far back,” Pope urges, mild panic in his voice. JJ doesn’t blame him considering Pope has gone 3 for 3 with Rafe.

Collectively they move as silently as they can, which isn’t that silent because they’re all stumbling over each other, except Cleo who hops the wall with no issues.

She gives them a look like they’re all idiots, and then keeps moving.

They all move as quickly and quietly as they can until they reach the front door, ducking behind the various bushes and shrubbery to make sure they aren’t seen.

Then from above them, on the balcony, they hear voices.

“Rafe I don’t understand what you expect from me!” Sarah is all but shouting at him.

“You should’ve chosen us, your family! But you chose those dirty pogues. Dad almost died, okay? I was there for him, me. And where were you? Off with the guy who almost killed him. I should kill you, Sarah, but I won’t because I promised him I would bring you back,” Rafe shouts back. JJ’s heart rate kicks up because this kind of yelling is familiar.

There is no love in Rafe’s voice. It isn’t even anger, it’s indifference, it’s righteousness, it’s finality. JJ knows the sound. Rafe will do whatever he has to, to get Sarah to go with him, and then it clicks.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he whisper shouts. He starts to move and feels John B grab his arm.

“Dude what are you doing?!” John B questions.

“He’s using Kie to get to Sarah! He wanted her to come because she won’t be able to defend herself against him, and he’s betting on that. He’s going to hurt her, dude.” John B is shaking his head.

“We don’t know that. You have to stay down.”

JJ turns himself around and grabs John B’s arms, “Think about it. He separates us and asks for only Kie and Sarah. Why does Kie need to be here? She doesn’t. The only thing she’s here for is leverage. He’s betting on the fact that if Kie’s hurt, Sarah will go. He doesn’t know we’re here for sure, and he doesn’t know we’re close. He thinks he has time, enough time to get Sarah to do what he wants. He’s banking on us not making it in time, and then he really gets what he wants which is Sarah dead, and maybe Kie too because he’ll kill them if they don’t cooperate. Either way, Kie is collateral and fuck that. He’s lost it JB. I have to get up there,” he is begging John B to understand. To hear what he’s trying to get out. “If we don’t get up there right now, someone will get hurt regardless of whether he gets what he wants,” JJ says again.

John B looks at him for a moment and then nods, but before JJ can move, the noise starts on the balcony.

“Fuck you, Rafe! She isn’t going anywhere with you!” He hears Kiara yell.

“Kie… you.. you really don’t understand do you? She comes with me, or you both die,” JJ swears out loud and he’s moving.

The goddamned doors are locked. The fucking asshole.

“You won’t kill us Rafe. Dad would never forgive you if you killed me and I’ll tell him if you hurt Kie,” Sarah says, her voice is surprisingly calm.

JJ hears a loud “whack!” and then a thud.

“Kiara!” Sarah screams.

JJ kicks the door open and runs inside. He doesn’t hear John B following him, or Pope, or Cleo. All he hears is te sound of Rafe hitting Kie and Kie hitting the floor.

He’s going to fucking kill him.

JJ finds his way to the balcony doors just in time to watch Rafe grab Kiara by her hair and lift her up. His gun is pointed at Sarah, who is sobbing and begging Rafe to stop.

JJ tries the door handle but that one’s locked too. Goddamn this bastard.

He kicks and kicks and suddenly feels John B at his side. Pope and Cleo must still be downstairs, doing fuck all.

All JJ knows is he has to get to other side of that door because Rafe is dragging Kiara towards the edge of the balcony. Logically he knows the fall won’t kill Kie, but he doesn’t care.

Rafe throws her over right as John B and JJ break through the doors. They rush Rafe, John B grabbing the gun, JJ putting him in a head lock.

The scuffle is short lived and JJ takes the opportunity to knock Rafe unconscious with the butt of his own gun. Then he’s moving again. He can’t hear anything; the ringing in his ears is too loud. He feels himself stumbling down the hallways of the mansion; he can’t breathe.

There’s muffled noises coming from behind him, and finally he reaches the doors he kicked open not 5 minutes ago. And he sees her. She’s up, standing with Pope and Cleo, who had seen what was about to happen, and started moving the patio furniture cushions underneath the balcony. Kie’s bruised but not severely injured.

He almost feels his knees give out under him, lets out some sort of choked groan, and then Kie looks at him. She must read in his face how fucking scared he was because she is moving towards him instantly. Sharing a near death experience connected them in a way JJ doesn’t understand. But he knows Kie understands for both of them, and that’s why she knows how close he is to panicking.

He can’t move from where he’s standing so he just reaches out to her when she’s close enough. She slides into him and puts her hands on his face.

“I’m here, I’m okay. We’re okay.”

“Kie..,” he gasps out because the idea he could’ve lost her. That, while not the highest fall, she still could’ve broken her neck, pulls the breath from his lungs in a way only primal fear can. And JJ is familiar with primal fear, but not like this.

“Kie I can’t…. You can’t….,” he doesn’t even know, just that he still can’t fucking breathe.

“It’s okay, Jaje… it’s okay. You got me and I got you,” she tells him, trying to convey all of the things she’s feeling; all the ways she’s trying to get through to him. To remind him this isn’t his fault, that she knows he fought to get to her, that she is safe here with him.

His eyes meet hers, dazed, reliving the horrors of the last 24 hours, but especially the last 2, replaying over in his head even while he meets her eyes.

And Kiara was so fucking afraid that she wouldn’t see her friends again when she’s figured out Rafe’s plan. But mostly, in the secret part of her heart, she was most afraid of never seeing JJ again.

He leans down resting his forehead against hers. He takes a long, deep breath. And he can smell them both, but there’s something familiar about Kie, underneath the sweat and blood, that he doesn’t even notice.

He wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her up so she’s flush against him. His body ignites and he’s pretty okay with that. He feels her arms go around his neck, her face pressed into the crook of his neck.

He whispers for only her, “Don’t you ever fucking leave me again, Kiara.”

“I won’t.”

JJ thinks that’s as close to ‘I love you’ as they will get.

For now.

Two weeks later he tells her he loves her because life is just too goddamned short, and even if she doesn’t love him back, at least she’ll know he’ll always come for her.

Turns out Kie loves him too.

No shit.

——————————————-

For @arcticaid

This was not beta’d I literally wrote it off the top of my head so I hope it’s decent at least. It’s been awhile since I’ve written fanfics. Be gentle. Thanks

#jiara #jiara outer banks #jiara fanfic #jj maybank #kiara carrera #jj x kiara #outer banks #this isn’t that good #Im sorry #it’s been while since I’ve written #i tried for real #@arcticaid

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aimmyarrowshigh · 2 years ago

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I think I might have asked this already so feel free to just ignore if you didn't feel like answering but how is Finnick feminized by the narrative? Apart from the obvious.

DISCLAIMER: I haven't reread THG in a LONG time.

Oooh man, that's a deep cut from the blog, lol! I mean, from what I remember of my line of thinking -- mostly the obvious, insofar as Finnick is largely defined by outsiders' perspectives of his physical appearance; is a story of sexual trauma that is not about reclaiming power through retribution (which would be a more stereotypically 'masculine' trauma-recovery story, not that male victims of sexual violence are get their stories told all that often); and the climax of his story is marriage and having a child.

To whit: I am not saying any of those are FEMININE THINGS in the real world. I am saying that in Western storytelling, those things are generally reserved for female CHARACTERS and are framed in THG in a way that INTENTIONALLY SUBVERTS GENDER EXPECTATIONS, much like many of the THG characters do. Most notably, ofc, Katniss and Peeta. (I wrote a whole chapter on Panem & Gender in The Panem Companion if I rememberrrr correctlyyy? where I go into Katniss and Peeta's gender subversions, so you can check that out for them!)

I think I also touched on Finnick in there, too, but since writing TPC, I've um. improved. as a writer. and also tightened my focus a lot on analysis, so what ISN'T touched on in TPC re: Finnick and gender, and also Katniss and gender, is on the actual sentence-level language used to talk about Finnick. Since THG is told in Katniss' first-person POV at a fairly close psychic distance and without any explicit narrative unreliability, we can take Katniss' judgments of Finnick to be her personal truth (and that is why, when Katniss learns that Finnick isn't a playboy, he's a trafficked sex slave, it's such a shock for the reader, too -- because we have been going through three books taking Katniss' POV on Panem as the truth, and that's one of the moments when we remember that she is just one traumatized and very sheltered 17-year-old girl, and she's not omniscient).

Katniss views Finnick, in CF, with the same disdain that she mostly reserves for people of the Capitol and for other girls and women. Katniss? Does not like Other Girls and Katniss does not like Women. She has a mile-wide Not Like Other Girls streak going. She tends to introduce and view male characters in terms of their potential danger to her, and she introduces and views female characters -- and Finnick -- by rejecting the idea of their interiority and/or commenting on their appearance in some way, depending on how she will be interacting with them. (Caveat: that's only true for the characters who Katniss actually introduces with any detail at all, which is NOT that many.)

Finnick inspires in Katniss a very similar reaction as Effie or the Prep Team, which I think was *intended* to compare him to the Capitol since Katniss thinks at that point that he is a willing Capitol citizen and ~lover~, but functions metanarratively as Katniss falling into the same trap OF THE CAPITOLITES THEMSELVES by viewing Finnick as a sexual object rather than a person with a private inner life.

Also, Finnick fulfills the trope of the courtesan-spy. He is let into the beds of the wealthy and powerful because he's beautiful and seen as simple or less-than, and he uses it to bring down the wealthy and powerful by exposing their depravity. He's word-for-word the courtesan-spy trope, except he's a man. It's ARGUABLE that his maleness is undercut by how young he was when he started being trafficked and therefore he's functioning in this trope as a child rather than as a man, but like, he's 24 when he finally gets to air all the dirty laundry, so I think it counts. This is probably the most The Obvious(TM) answer, but it's still true.

Also, Finnick's story is a rape recovery story. While obviously rape does happen to men (and people outside the binary), the Western canon basically says that rape recovery stories are the provenance of women. This is the other most The Obvious(TM) answer, so I'm not going to go into it (also because I'd want to pull specific examples from Mockingjay that take place during his breakdown and I'm not going to go to the other room and get my book womp womp).

And also also: Finnick's story is a love story. It's a Fairytale Romance. "𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐮𝐝𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐥𝐲, 𝐢𝐭’𝐬 𝐚𝐬 𝐢𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞’𝐬 𝐧𝐨 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐰𝐨, 𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐞, 𝐞𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐝, 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐦 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭 𝐚 𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐥, 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐲. 𝐂𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠. 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞." The centerpiece of Finnick's existence is his romance, his love, his WEDDING. Again, obviously men get married, but in storytelling, romance stories are generally The Woman's Story (And A Man Is There) and not The Man's Story. (Except in fanfiction, which is a whole other essay.)

#the hunger games #books #ya lit #**thg

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kaibacorpintern · 4 years ago

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hi i forgot the ship name but would u write something thats seto and ryou? (platonic or romantic) where they play a ttrpg together or somethin idk

“or somethin idk” give me an inch, i have run a mile. a mile of 4.7k words.

platonic euroshipping. post-canon. ryou applies for a game writer position at kaibacorp and makes it to the final stage. contains: dragons, swords, some very sexy things about solidvision and the virtual world, kaiba covered in blood and having a great time, me the writer having a great time, hopefully you the reader having a great time, and ryou, not covered in blood, having a very, very, very anxious time

tw for some fantasy violence

++++++

Ryou inhaled, taking a deep breath of: the fresh, sweet smell of grass, the coolness of river water, something dry and grey in the wind, slightly rotten - smoke? And sulfur. The grasses were filled with the restless susurrus of the wind, each blade quivering with anticipation. Above him, a hawk tilted in lazy, wide circles, tracking the hidden paths of its prey. He stood on a dusty path halfway up the long slope of a steep hillside, the farmlands of the valley behind him peeled back to reveal the burned, blackened devastation beneath. The village from this distance looked like the charcoal remains of a bonfire, the air still shimmering with heat.

The sun itself was hot, making him sweat in the thick, coarse silk of his mage’s robe, every purple thread saturated with light and heat. Mopping sweat from his brow, Ryou opened his options menu, the holographic display falling open, in the guise of an illuminated manuscript, and hovering at waist-height in thin air, perfectly tilted for reading. The parchment was old and yellowed, almost velvet to the touch, the edges frayed with age, and he couldn’t resist the urge to smell it, leaning in cautiously to take an experimental whiff. Strong notes of dust, old ink, age; an undertone of knowledge, of the forbidden kind.

He selected Player Appearance and the page turned, with weight and heft, to reveal another. Kaiba didn’t miss a beat. Ryou had no doubt if he knelt down to drink from the stream that flowed down the slope, folding in clear ribbons past the rocks, the water would run cold over his fingers until they pruned. And the magic effects?

He swallowed. It was not just the sun that was making him sweat.

He’d just changed into something more practical - a short-sleeved green tunic, a pair of white breeches, leather boots that had just a bit of bite to the fit, like the player had to wear them in - when a chime pealed out from six feet away, as though someone had rung an invisible bell. The air tore apart, in odd, geometric anguish, like a broken mirror twisting into itself -

and there was Kaiba, standing in the knee-high grass in his customary black turtleneck and tight pants, frowning with his arms crossed.

“Hello,” Ryou said. “It’s so nice to see you again. Your technology is... this is amazing. The attention to detail is incredible. The player screen, with the parchment - it even smells like - ”

“What is this? Medieval?” Kaiba said, glancing around at his clothes, the distant village, taking no notice of his praise; Ryou bit his tongue in self-rebuke. As if buttering him up with compliments was going to help.

“Western Europe. From the mid-11th century to the 12th. The age of knights and chivalry,” he said, deciding that maybe his best strategy was to simply be straightforward.

“I’m familiar with basic history, thank you. How... classic,” Kaiba said, in a tone that screamed disinterest, and Ryou’s heart began to plummet - already starting from behind? No, no, no, he reminded himself, straightening the slouch out of his shoulders. Yuugi had warned him about this. Kaiba was fantastically tough to impress, in general, and the Virtual World was his world, a realm he'd built with sweat and tears, and stolen back with blood. So he hand-picked every writer that wrote for Virtual World games, refusing to squander a single pixel on conventional nonsense and uninspired cliché.

The last step - before he brought the axe down - was a short, playable demo, as proof of concept, written by the applicant and executed by the Virtual World team.

Ryou had come this far in the application process. Trust that, Yuugi said. And trust yourself.

Kaiba was looking at him, eyebrows arched with expectant curiosity.

“Er,” Ryou said. “Let’s get started, then. You’ll need to change.”

He pulled up the menu, revelling in the hovering parchment once more, and changed Kaiba’s appearance, like - like magic, the lines of Kaiba’s silhouette rippling like a sine wave from the bottom up, his modern-day clothing becoming a knee-length tunic of chainmail under a belted dark blue surcoat. Kaiba held still throughout the entire transformation, in smug admiration of the effect, his arms held out in a ballet dancer’s pose as chainmail draped down his shoulders to his wrists.

In his right hand appeared, with a sharp, diamond flash of light, a long arming sword, the edge nicked with age and bloodspill. The hilt was black, with a sapphire gleaming in the pommel. A plain shield dropped onto his left forearm.

He gave the sword an experimental spin, testing the heft with practiced ease, and slid it back into the leather scabbard on his belt.

“A knight, the charred, smoking remains of a village… I’m assuming I’m on a quest to kill a dragon?” he said, pushing back the hood of the chainmail so that it draped off his shoulders, and nodding up the slope to where the grasses tattered into rocky shale.

“Yes, you can assume that,” Ryou said politely.

On cue, a child no more than twelve years old staggered up the dusty path from the village, her small torso heaving with breath, sweat and tears running in clean streaks down her soot-stained face.

“Sir Knight,” she choked out. Flashing a look at Ryou that said cheap blow, but unable to deny his own fraternal instinct, Kaiba dropped to one knee and caught her, his hands swallowing her thin, shuddering shoulders. Playing along, at least.

“Calm down,” he said, steadying her. Ryou imagined his anxiety as a small, hard rock, packing in the twist of every fraying nerve, and leaned all his weight onto one foot, grinding the rock into the dirt with his heel. "What is it?”

“They sent me to warn you, about the dragon,” she panted. “They said only the Chosen One can truly defeat the dragon, and bring peace back to the land. Many have tried. All suffered the same terrible fate - a fate worse than death.”

“I see,” Kaiba said. “And who is the Chosen One?”

The girl glanced at Ryou over Kaiba’s shoulder, her eyes glinting with fear.

“No - no one knows,” she said. “But all the oracles say they’re coming… a knight with a pure and worthy heart. Sir Knight, don’t go. Come back to the village. It’s safe there. What do you gain from this? Our humble lands aren’t worth the danger!”

“I think they are,” Kaiba said, thumbing soot off her face, and frowning as her cheek pixelated, briefly, and resumed a skin-like texture. "Open master commands, user ID 000002510. Initiate master log. Begin recording: skin-to-skin contact glitch reappeared during writer play-test, candidate Bakura, R. Begin patch work immediately. End recording. Disperse to Virtual World team, flag Sawada, project manager. Close master commands. Did you know, one of the most compelling unsolved problems in physics is the lack of a theory that realizes both general relativity and quantum mechanics?”

The girl gave him a wary look, wide-eyed with faint alarm. Ryou sucked in a breath, grinding the anxiety rock down, down, down.

“You - you speak in tongues, Sir Knight," she said. "Are you also an oracle? Has your future-sight failed you? Don’t you see that only death lives on the mountain?”

Kaiba snorted and stood up, turning to Ryou. “A solid response to non-standard player input. Doesn’t ignore modern concepts, but re-contextualizes them in the setting of this world via a framework of prophecy, and redirects the player to the plot.”

“Um... thank you?” Ryou said. “I wanted this world to feel like it has a future, too, not just a history. I wanted to place it on a timeline, like it - ”

Kaiba’s attention swung back to the girl, still standing there with her eyes darting between them, full of bafflement.

“Return to the village, girl. Tell them my future-sight never fails me.”

The girl retreated backwards, warily, twisted on her heel, and fled down the path.

"If I go down to the village, what'll I find?" Kaiba said.

"More information about the Chosen One, and an outlaw who tries to recruit you to her band of thieves, with the option to join them for a stealth-based quest.”

"Hm. You have the imagination and the decency to offer me something other than blatant bait, which I don't always bite. The cliché of the Chosen One is boring as hell, it’s both over-done and deterministic, but I think... yes. Yes, I'll bite. Let's go see your dragon."

In the wake of this... compliment?, Ryou could only offer him a small, tentative smile, his heart clenching tight around Yuugi's advice.

Kaiba started up the path.

“Er, Kaiba - you might want to check your inventory before you encounter the dragon."

Kaiba’s hand padded around his waist until he found the small satchel that sat on his hip. Another parchment unfurled in the air before him, listing its contents:

Two full healing spells;

Two glamour spells, for changing the guise of a person or object;

Two transformation spells, for changing a person or an object into an animal;

Two scrying spells, for locating people or objects;

Two ignis spells, for commanding fire;

Two aqua spells, for commanding water; and

Two ventus spells, for commanding wind.

Ryou watched him as he read. He'd carved a small, thick groove into the dirt below his foot. Surely, that was enough for Kaiba to get creative?

Kaiba only closed the parchment with a brisk flick of his hand. Then he started up the mountain, Ryou following nervously behind.

***

The mountain path was rougher than Ryou expected, a tightly-coiled spring of switchbacks, leading to the curved lip of a high pass. After several minutes of trudging the dust in silence, he was panting for breath, his feet aching and blistering in their boots, and deeply regretting adding this little detail to the story. Next time, he was just going to put the dragon on a rolling, grassy plain, and he’d make it like an American autumn corn maze, because it still needed to be a challenge, and when the players got to the center they’d find the dragon’s decaying, rotting corpse and realize they’d been stuck inside the maze for five hundred years and everyone they loved was dead, and if they wanted to go back to their own time they’d have to find out how to resurrect the dragon, but only at a terrible cost, a sacrifice of some kind... Not his best off-the-cuff work, but there were usable concepts in there, somewhere. If there was a next time.

Despite being laden down with the chainmail, each tiny link flashing like fish scales in the airy slanting of the afternoon sun, Kaiba seemed unaffected by the demands of the hike, propelling himself forward with long, energetic strides. How?

Ryou thought about asking for a break. Or drinking water from the stream. Or changing his boots for something comfier, but he didn't have anything else in his outfit inventory except the mage robes, and the slippers might be even worse… he stopped, hands on his hips, gathering his breath.

From here the valley sprawled below them, a wide, velvety plain, its edges rising and scalloped by mountains. The village fit in the circle of his thumb and forefinger, a smoking black thumbprint. The team had done a fantastic job: the stream ran down the mountain, flattened into a river, and ran south, lazy and serpentine, a green-blue ribbon cutting through the yellow plains, just like he’d outlined in his initial description of the world….

Wait.

This was all virtual.

There was no such thing as air, here, or rivers or sunshine or grasses.

His real, physical body was half-asleep in a Virtual World testing pod on the 17th floor of the Kaiba Corp Tower, and his body here was just a series of algorithms, and if he didn’t want to sweat, he didn’t have to fucking sweat! Thank God!

Up ahead, Kaiba noted the absence of his footfalls and turned around, one hand resting easily on his sword hilt. From his position on the path, he looked down at Ryou from several feet up, which doubled the intimidation of his already formidable bearing.

“I’m fine,” Ryou said. “Just... admiring the view.”

“Are you having your Matrix moment? That’s what my programmers call it,” Kaiba said.

Ryou laughed. “I think so. I was tired but I don't feel it at all, anymore. Like all the fatigue's just melted away and I could run a marathon.”

“Is that something you enjoy?”

“Oh, no. I hate sports.”

Kaiba snorted.

“So, tell me. Why do you want this job?” he said. “At my company? Writing stories with my technology?”

“Er - ” Blindsided by the swerve in topics, Ryou tripped over his thoughts. Surely he must’ve read his application? Maybe he didn’t have the time. Stick to straightforward. “I’m sure you remember my performance in Battle City?”

“Yes, I remember,” Kaiba said, which was honestly more than Ryou expected of him.

“Well, I don’t play much Duel Monsters anymore,” he said, “but I still.. every once in a while, I turn my Duel Disk on and play a few cards, just to see my monsters come out, see them breathe… you know I run a Zombie deck, full of demons and dead things, but SolidVision makes them feel so - so alive. You took these fantasy monsters that exist only in our heads and put them in our world.”

“Virtual World game writers don’t work on SolidVision products,” Kaiba countered.

“Right, I know that. To me, Virtual World and SolidVision are the inverse of each other, or opposites that contain each other, like, like yin and yang - with SolidVision, the unreal enters the real, and becomes real. In the Virtual World, the real - ” Ryou motioned to himself - “enters the unreal, and becomes unreal. We like to put walls between imagination and reality, you know, taxes are real and unicorns aren’t, but with SolidVision and Virtual World, there is no wall. That’s the world I want to write stories for.”

“Hm,” Kaiba said, the corner of his mouth curving up in a smile. “Interesting take.”

And he waited, saying nothing more, until Ryou realized he was waiting for him; and trotted lightly up the path to join him.

***

By the time they reached the top of the mountain pass, the air had turned a clear, dusky gold. The mountains cast long, black shadows across the valley, like dark teeth, chewing up the farmlands. The mountain pass was saddle-shaped, one side sloping down into the valley they’d just come from, the other flattening into a smaller, higher bowl, cupping a pale blue-green lake between its rocky palms.

Kaiba scrambled onto the nearest large rock, his head swinging as he scanned the lake valley. Ryou wrapped one arm around his waist and bit his thumb. They had found a deep, penetrating quiet, the kind of wilderness quiet that was devoid of texture of any kind; no bugs or burbling streams or bird song. It was not even like holding your breath, waiting, because that implied a coming moment of exhale, a sigh of relief. This was a perfect stillness.

And hidden somewhere inside it was a dragon.

Ryou bit harder, until he remembered the pain was fake and did nothing, and he had to come up with something else to temper his anxiety, which was definitely, definitely real.

Kaiba's gonna flip his shit when he sees your dragon, Yuugi said, from the back of Ryou's mind, Ryou's demo manuscript in hand. In a good way or a bad way? Is it too derivative? What does it matter that he'll flip his shit for my dragon when he flips his shit for ANY dragon? He's a slut for dragons. Oh my god, you can't say that! Yuugi, please, help - nope. You got this. You know what you're doing.

Even the metallic shing of Kaiba’s sword coming out of its sheath seemed small, in an unnatural way, a pointless, petty defiance.

A shadow fell across the lake valley.

Both of them looked up -

and an enormous dragon hurtled out of the sky, landing with thundering force on all four clawed feet, flattening trees and boulders beneath its reptilian bulk. Ryou staggered backwards and fell, in an awkward, clumsy crab pose; Kaiba threw his shield over his face and dug in, undaunted.

"HAVE YOU COME TO KILL ME?" the dragon boomed. “MISERABLE WRETCH?”

Kaiba lowered his shield, just enough for his first full look at the dragon. From his spot, crumpled on the ground, Ryou saw, in the shadow below the shield, another slender smile. The dragon’s hide was a dark, luxurious blue-black, mottled like snakeskin but textured with the heavy crags and knobs of crocodiles. It lowered its head on its long, arching neck, gracefully bearing the weight of two massive, curving horns, and stared down at them with fathomless acid-green eyes.

Even Ryou, who had designed it, sat enthralled: every movement it made - the eager flick of its tail, the claws, curling into the dirt, glinting under a layer of blood and grime, the shuddering of its leathery wings as they folded into its long body - hinted at indomitable power. It was a true creature of legend, a titan from the youngest days of the world, demanding both reverence and terror.

“I have!” Kaiba replied blithely, despite announcing it in a ringing voice.

“ONLY THE CHOSEN ONE CAN DEFEAT ME,” the dragon said. “YOU ARE NOT WORTHY OF SUCH A FEAT. I SEE YOUR HEART, BLACKGUARD KNIGHT. I CAN TASTE THE BLOOD YOU’VE SPILLED WITH YOUR SWORD, BRIGHT AND PUNGENT. I CAN HEAR THE CRIES OF ALL THE LIVES YOU’VE LET EBB INTO THE DIRT AT YOUR FEET!”

“I’m here to avenge the village!” Kaiba shouted.

“YOU COME UP HERE TO DEFEND SOME PATHETIC SCRAPS OF BRICK AND WOOD, THINKING YOU CAN KILL ME, AND CALL THAT HONOR? REDEMPTION? YOU CALL THAT COURAGE? ITS TRUE NAME IS VANITY! EMPTY AND FALSE! IT WILL STRIKE YOU DOWN BEFORE I DO!” the dragon boomed again. “LEAVE. I WAS ONCE NAIVE AND VAIN LIKE YOU. COME BACK WHEN YOU ARE MORE THAN A MERE WORM, OR ELSE SUFFER MY FATE!”

Ryou had clambered to his feet and bolted for the safety of a low ridge, which gave him a perfect view of Kaiba, head held high and proud as he gazed unflinching at the dragon, several hundred times his size. He’d written those words in his notebook on the metro, leaning his head against the cool midnight glass, pausing every other line to ferret out another piece of sour candy from his bag. Then he’d missed his stop. That trundling, light-washed world of a train car seemed impossibly distant now - a rapidly fading dream, to be remembered only in flashes and silence. To hear the words come out of the smoking jaws of this dragon, each syllable flowing in a delicious, indulgent baritone from its shining teeth, filled him with a breathless exhilaration, his heart hammering in his throat - this was real!

“Only one of us is suffering fate today!” Kaiba shouted back, a laugh in his voice, and then threw a glance at Ryou. “‘Suffer my fate?’ Is that a typo?”

“VERY WELL. COME KILL ME! THERE IS PEACE IN DEATH, AND ONLY ONE OF US CAN CLAIM IT!”

“I - watch out!” Ryou yelled, as the dragon lunged forward, its jaws snapping shut on the empty air where Kaiba had been standing half a second before. Kaiba threw himself out of the way, a nimble tuck and roll, and scrabbled across the shale towards higher ground. Behind him, the dragon swung its massive head, nostrils red and flaring, mouth curled up in a savage draconic grin, glinting with the promise of violence.

No sooner had Kaiba flung himself behind a scattering of boulders, shield raised, than it unleashed a jet of fire so hot and scorching the boulders glowed red, their rough faces melting in sheets. Ryou felt the heat wash across his face, from several dozen yards away.

The fire died out. The dragon snorted in satisfaction, horse-like, a loud, wet huff of smoke. The boulders sizzled as they cooled into their new, bizarrely dripping forms.

Kaiba emerged from behind a boulder, sweating and singed, his face streaked with ash and his eyes shining. He tossed the warped, melted wreckage of his shield aside, where it bounced and clattered against the rocks.

“SO YOU STILL LIVE? A MISTAKE. WHAT COMES NEXT WILL HURT WORSE!”

“For you!” Kaiba hurled back, and threw his hand into the air, a gesture Ryou had seen countless times on a duel field - a lightning rod, a summoning. “VENTUS!”

The wind picked up, in a giddy, howling whirl, bringing with it a cloud of dust that descended gritty and blinding and pale across the valley. Kaiba and the dragon vanished from sight inside it. Mentally Ryou subtracted one spell from Kaiba’s satchel.

“THIS WON’T HELP Y - ” Cut off by a wet chop and an ear-splitting draconic scream, a raw, awful sound, torn out of an unwilling throat. Just below it, a glorious, cascading laugh. “WRETCH! WORM!”

The dust settled, revealing glistening, dark-green blood splattered across the rocks, and a single severed claw, its flesh still twitching. The dragon seethed, its wounded foot curled in agony. Kaiba was clear across the other side of the pass, by the dragon’s tail, grinning open-mouthed as he panted for breath. His chainmail and surcoat dripped with dragon blood; his hair was thick with it.

“COME GET YOUR PEACE, DRAGON!” he bellowed, and the dragon slung its head around, tail coiling in an ominous whip.��

Again Kaiba lifted his hand, shouted “VENTUS - !”

And a second dust cloud barreled into the valley, as the dragon roared back, “THAT WON’T WORK AGAIN!”

It whipped its tail through the dust cloud, a scythe-like sweep - smacking something hard into the rocks with a thick, fleshy crunch of bone that made Ryou’s insides clench tight with terrified sympathy.

The dragon whirled around, clearing the dust with several storm-gathering wingbeats.

This was not real. This was just pixels, neatly arranged and running in rivers of algorithms - just a clever series of ones and zeroes - and yet Ryou gasped, the dragon laughing, at the sight of Kaiba lying in a crumpled, motionless heap in the rocks. He hadn’t considered Kaiba might actually fail to kill the dragon - all thoughts of jobs and game-writing abandoned - unreality aside, the mind had a way of making it real - what the fuck happened if Kaiba died?

“IS THAT ALL YOU HAVE, WORM?” the dragon said, nudging Kaiba’s limp body with its claws, rolling him over. His head lolled, his body twisted into a horrifying, broken-boned slouch. How on earth was Ryou going to explain this to Yuugi? Hell. “I TOLD YOU, YOU'RE NOT W - ”

Ryou almost didn’t see it - a hawk in a dive, arrow-straight, from the top of the sky, diving through a blinding flash of light several stories up - and out of the light came Kaiba, alive and whole, plummeting towards the dragon’s head, gripping his sword with both hands - plunging it straight through the top of the dragon’s skull.

He left the sword hilt-deep in dragon flesh as he pitched forward with the force of impact, rolling over the dragon’s brow, flailing to catch himself - on the massive horn. Clinging, victorious, as the great dragon swayed, its green eyes filming, and finally slumped, in agonized slow motion, to the earth, body first, head last, with a thundering, bone-rattling crash.

It released one last, rattling breath, the trees shuddering in the fetid breeze.

The valley descended into stillness once more.

Ryou sat down on his low escarpment with a limp thump, burying his face in both hands. This was just a Virtual World, where at one point everything would power down and they’d wake up safe and sound in the squishy, air-conditioned comfort of a pod, and he had, after all, planned on Kaiba killing the dragon, but Kaiba’s sheer nerve seemed beyond that. Yuugi was right. The guy was, maybe, a little nuts. Completely off his rocker.

“Ryou,” Kaiba said, above him, and Ryou lifted his head. Kaiba rested the sword jauntily across his shoulder, the rest of him filthy with dragon blood and human blood and dirt. “I have to say, I enjoyed your dragon. A shame it had to die.”

“Your strategy... You used a glamour spell? On a... rock? To make it look like your dead body,” Ryou said. “And then a transformation spell.”

“Correct. Is that all for your demo?” Kaiba said, cocking an eyebrow, both bloody and disdainful, and Ryou swallowed. “I was hoping for more of a cha - ”

His words stopped hard in his throat, a harsh, hacking sound. His free hand flew to his neck, mouth dropping open in pain and confusion, eyes widening. He coughed - or tried to, achieving nothing more than a thin, ugly retching, his face going white - and Ryou watched, in fascinated horror, as his gamble began to play out. There was nothing he could do to help; he’d written it that way.

The sword clattered to the stones, green blood dripping off the shining edge, as Kaiba staggered sideways, gasping for breath, both hands on his neck - what was the algorithm doing to him? Ryou had only written ‘a suffocating, squirming pain, concentrated in the lungs,’ and resolved to think more carefully about what types of pain he might inflict on the player characters, if the gamble paid off... But how interesting to know even the creator of the Virtual World himself suspended his disbelief - his knowledge of the truth - sometimes, and indulged in pain...

He collapsed to his knees, stretching one hand out, fisting it around Ryou’s collar and dragging him closer -

“What - ” he choked out, eyes glaring into Ryou’s, in baffled, furious agony - terrified - they rolled backwards, the blue sliding away to white, as he slumped over himself.

His hand went slack and fell. What life remained slipped away in a low, shaking sigh.

Ryou took him by the shoulders and gently lay him down, passing a hand over his eyes to close them. Dead, but not really.

“Just hold on a moment,” he said. The body had been vacated. The soul - the player - was awakening elsewhere.

He waited a few moments, absorbing the stillness, the detail on the leaves of the pine trees; the way the lake water shimmered in golden flecks with late afternoon light. It was maybe his last few seconds to enjoy the world he’d written, rendered in full splendor by the magic of technology, and he’d banished his anxiety from both his mind and body, to live out its exile in the real world. It didn’t belong here.

The great dragon body began to stir, drowsily, waking up from a deep, deep sleep. The deepest sleep.

Ryou stood up and slid down the escarpment to the dragon, pebbles and dust avalanching around his feet. The stab wound in its skull was knitting back together; the severed claw was crawling back to its slow-bleeding joint. There was an agonized hiss, forced through the dragon’s tightly-clenched teeth, and a vibrating groan, deep in its chest, as it gathered itself out of death.

Its eyes opened, in wary slits - not the bright, acid green, but a stunning, oceanic blue.

“OW. FUCK,” it growled, in Kaiba’s voice, magnified and twice as resonant. “OPEN MASTER COMMANDS, USER ID 000002510. SUSPEND ALL PAIN ALGORITHMS. CLOSE MASTER COMMANDS.”

He rolled upright, flexing his wings with experimental care. He arched his neck, looking down at Ryou.

“YOU TURNED ME INTO A DRAGON.”

“Yes,” Ryou said cautiously.

“NO ONE HAS EVER TURNED ME INTO A DRAGON BEFORE,” Kaiba said. ”SO I WASN’T WORTHY? IS THIS WHAT IT MEANS TO SUFFER THE DRAGON’S FATE? EVERYONE WHO KILLS THE DRAGON BECOMES THE DRAGON, AND ONLY THE CHOSEN ONE BREAKS THE CYCLE. IS THAT HOW IT GOES?”

“That’s how it goes.”

“HOW DO I FIND THE CHOSEN ONE?”

“You choose them,” Ryou said. “You decide what makes them worthy.”

"SO ANYONE CAN BE THE CHOSEN ONE? ANYONE CAN BREAK MY CURSE?"

"That's right."

Kaiba pondered that for a moment, flexing his claws idly in the dirt, the massive slabs of muscle in his shoulders shifting as he tested the strength and fit of his new draconic body. His gaze drifted out over the lower valley, eyes clouding briefly with memories of another story, another game, another man; one who had always seemed real and unreal, all at once, no matter what world he lived in. Ryou had heard it all from Yuugi.

Then Kaiba looked at him and started to laugh, a sound that echoed and rebounded across the small lake valley, the water shivering as each delighted peal of laughter rolled across. Ryou blushed as it buffeted him from all sides.

“IS THAT SO,” Kaiba said, with dry relish. “YOU’RE HIRED.”

#sibbinthegivengibbon #fanfiction #euroshipping #(platonic)#oh my goddddddd this was a blast to write i just enjoyed myself the entire time #thanks for the prompt!!#its 1 AM i'm going the FUCK to sleep

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pra370r1an · 3 years ago

Link

The final (joke) chapter. Whole chapters under the cut

“There it is,” King Lilith gazed at the castle in the distance. “Camelot!”

“Camelot!” Ser Willow breathed.

“Camelot!” Ser Gus called in wonder.

“It’s only a model…” Eda remarked.

“Shush!” King Lilith quickly commanded. “Now let us ride! To Camelot!”

“We don’t have a Lord,” Hooty said.

“What?” King Lilith asked.

I told you! We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune! We're taking turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week,” King the fox explained. “But all the decisions *of* that officer has to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in-”

“Shut up, would you?” King Lilith sternly said. “I get it.”

“Shut up, eh? Who does she think she is?” Hooty asked before resuming playing in the dirt. “Some lovely dirt over here King!”

“I’m your King,” Lilith said.

“Well, I didn’t vote for you,” Hooty replied.

“You don’t vote for kings,” King Lilith explained. “The Lady of the Lake held aloft Excalibur and decreed a divine mandate that I would be King.”

“Listen,” King the fox explained. “Strange women laying in ponds, distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some... farcical aquatic ceremony!”

“Be Quiet!’ King Lilith demanded.

The fox continued, “I mean, if I went 'round, saying I was an emperor, just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!”

Lilith reached down and picked King up by the scruff of the neck, shaking the fox. “Will You SHUT UP!?”

“Ahh! Now we see the violence inherent in the system!” King smugly said. “COME SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE SYSTEM!!” He announced as he was shook, “HELP! I’M BEING REPRESSED!”

King Lilith dropped the fox and stormed away, “Damn Peasant!”

“See!? See!?” King looked at the small crowd around him. “That’s what I’m on about! You saw her repressing me, right!?”

The evil Greater Basilisk looked around, “Wait, where did that knight go?”

*Scene change*

“Brave Ser Matt ran away” the bards sung as they followed their knight through the woods.

“No!” Ser Mattholomule objected.

“Bravely ran away away.”

“I didn’t!”

“When danger reared its ugly head, he boldly turned his tail and fled.”

“No! I didn’t!”

“Tell your master that we’ve been charged by God to seek the holy grail! And he may join us if he’d like!” King Lilith shouted up towards the walls.

“Well, I will, but I’m afraid he’s already got one!” The man shouted back in his accent.

“What?” King Lilith asked.

“He said he’s already got one?” Ser Luz glanced around to see if she heard right.

“You already got one!?” King Lilith inquired.

“Oh, Yes! It’s very nice!” Belos turned and whispered to Kikimora, the Golden Guard and Warden Wrath. “I told her we already got one!” The three broke out in giggles.

“Well, can we come up and look?”

“Of course not! You are English types and this is a French Castle!”

“What are the French doing in England?” Ser Luz shouted up.

“Mind your own business!” Belos shouted. “Now I don’t want to talk to you no more! So go away English King and take your silly English Keniggets!”

“Listen, is there someone else we can talk to!?” Ser Luz shouted up.

“No! Now go away before I taunt you a second time!”

“We found a witch! May we burn her!?” the angry mob shouted.

“I’m not a witch!” Bo yelled back. “They just say I am!”

“But she’s dressed like one!” Kat shouted, pointing towards her pointy hat.

“You are dressed like a witch,” Ser Bump ceded the point.

“Yes, but they dressed me like this!” Bo yelled, she pointed to her pointy nose. “This isn’t even my real nose!”

Ser bump examined the fake nose and turned to the crowd, “Is this true?”

“No! No! … Well, yes. Maybe. But she really is a witch!” Amelia insisted.

Bo looked to Ser Bump in exasperation.

“Don’t worry, we’ll figure this out! Now, how do you know she’s a witch?” Ser Bump asked.

“She turned my head into a giant eyeball!” Eyeleen accused by pointing.

“AN EYEBALL!?” Ser Bump looked in shock at the girl’s completely normal looking head.

“…I got better…” She looked around awkwardly.

“Burn Her!” Somebody shouted and the rest of the mob took up the yell.

“There it is!” Eda pointed over their cover towards the creature by the cave.

“What behind the bunny?” Ser Willow asked.

“No, it is the bunny!”

…

“You silly sod!” King Lilith scolded as she stood from her hiding place.

“What?”

“You had us all worked up over a bunny!?”

“That’s no ordinary bunny! That rabbit has a vicious streak a mile wide!”

“HOW!?” Ser Gus asked incredulously.

Eda held her hand like a claw, “It’s got huge sharp, uhh…” She held her hands slightly apart, “It can leap about…” She pointed back towards the cave opening, “Look at the bones for God’s sake!”

“Right,” King Lilith gestured to a nearby knight. “Ser Snaggleback, cut its head off!”

Ser Snaggleback strode forward unafraid, “One Rabbit stew coming uAUGHHH!!”

“Holy!” “Jesus!” “Christ!”

“Run Away!” King Lilith shouted.

Ser Luz held her shield protectively before her, as the denizens of Castle Anthrax slowly approached. Before her, the co-leader of this strange place informed Luz what was expected of her.

“And then! You must Spank her!”

“I’m sorry?” Ser Luz looked bewildered. “What?”

“She has been extremely naughty and you must spank her. Then? Spank me!”

“And me!”

“Me too!”

“Yes, you must spank all of us!” The woman gestured around to the beautiful women surrounding Ser Luz. They all looked thrilled at the prospect.

“I’m sorry, is this story too graphic?” Luz asked. “I was really worried when pra370r1an was writing it. But I think it turned out alright considering we’re all adult knights.”

“I mean at least my scene played with my mannerisms and my favorite minion’s name to craft a funny situation,” King said.

“And my joke was original and wasn’t a blatant rip-off of a movie from the 70s,” Eda mentioned off hand, Owlbert nodding on her shoulder.

“At least they didn’t mention the Moose?” Ser Willow mentioned, Ser Gus looking away horrified.

“Can we just get this over with?” Amity said looking annoyed, purposely looking away from the scene.

“Yes, get on with it,” Emira agreed.

“Yeah, hurry up!” Edric rolled his eyes.

“Ewch ymlaen ag ef!” The bearded huntsman from chapter 5 yelled, the fish hook servant and tall servant nodding in agreement.

“Get On With It!” King Lilith and her knights all shouted together.

“Oh, good! I promise this is the last bit of absurdist humor in this fic!” Luz smiled.

“GET ON WITH IT!” The cartoon depiction of God shouted from the heavens, shaking the view.

“Right, so…”

“Well,” Ser Luz looked around. “I guess I could stay for another night…?”

Behind her a door burst open and three armored knights rushed in, putting themselves between Ser Luz and the women.

“Ser Luz!” Ser Boscha took her arm.

“Boscha?”

“Quick!” Ser Boscha pulled her back towards the door.

“What?!”

“Quick! You’re in mortal danger!”

“What, I am?”

“No, she isn’t!” One of the women insisted.

“Silence foul temptress!” Ser Boscha raised her sword, only for Luz to grab her arm.

“That’s not necessary!”

“Come on! We’ll cover your escape!” Ser Boscha started pushing Luz back. The other knights retreated as well and the women followed.

“Boscha! I think I can tackle this singlehandedly!”

“Yes, let her tackle us!” The women shouted.

“No, Ser Luz! Come on!”

“No really! I can handle this easily!”

“Yes, she can! Quite easily!” The women agreed.

“There’s only 150 of them!” Ser Luz shouted as she was forced through the door.

“Yes, we haven’t a chance! Ahh, Shit.” They stopped as the knights followed Ser Luz out.

Ser Boscha continued to hold Luz’s arm, dragging her away from the castle. As they continued to argue.

“Looks like we got here in the nick of time! You were in great peril!”

“I really don’t think I was.”

“Yes, you were, terrible peril.”

“Tell you what? Let me go back and face that peril.”

“No, too perilous.”

“Just a little bit of peril?”

“Nope! Not healthy.”

“Don’t tell me you’re a homophobe.”

“I am not!”

Eda held up her dismembered hand while shrugging, “It’s only a flesh wound.”

“Ser Boscha! You came to rescue me!”

“Lady Skara!” Ser Boscha looked around wildly, lowering her sword. “You’re the one getting married against your will?”

“Oh, it’s just like the stories! I feel like I could… could!” Skara opened her mouth to sing. Disembodied romantic music started to hum around them…

“STOP THAT, STOP THAT!” Skara’s father came in, wildly waving his hands and the music died back down. “Who are you?”

“I’m your daughter!” Skara answered.

“Not you! You! Did you kill all those guards?”

“Uhh, oh! Yes,” Ser Boscha nodded awkwardly. “Sorry.”

“You killed 8 wedding guests and the groom and his father! And wounded 20 others!”

“Yes, uhh, sorry about that. Got a bit carried away there,” Boscha looked back at Skara briefly. “I can explain. See I was riding from Camelot…”

“Camelot? You’re uhh, from Camelot?”

“Umm… Yes?”

“Oh, well! Would you like a drink?”

“Oh, that’s awfully kind of you,” Ser Boscha allowed herself to be led away by Skara’s father.

“Yes, but to apologize for the damages you’ll have to stand before everyone…”

“Oh, uhh understandable.”

“…And repeat some vows from a priest…”

“Uhh, sure?”

“And kiss my daughter…”

“Wait, what?”

“Halt! I am Tibbles! Guardian of the Bridge of Death! You must answer my questions to see the other side!”

“Ask your questions I’m not afraid!” Eda defiantly said.

“What is your name? What is your quest? And WHAT… is your favorite color?”

“Oh! Uhh, Eda of Camelot, I seek the holy grail and red.”

Tibbles waited a second before waving her along, “Alright off you go.”

“Oh, thank you,” Eda said as she started to cross the bridge.

“That’s it! That’s Easy!” Ser Mattholomule shouted as he moved up. “Ask me the questions, bridge keeper. I’m not afraid!”

“What is your name? what is your quest? And WHAT… is the capitol of Assyria?”

“Ser Matt! To find the Holy grail. And, uhh… Istanbull?”

Ser Matt was flung violently into the air by an explosion sending him tumbling into the ravine with a scream.

King Lilith and Ser Bump shared a look before the King stepped forward.

“What is your name? What is your quest? And WHAT… is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?”

Lilith paused before answering, “What do you mean? African or European?”

“I don’t know that,” Tibbles said before being violently flung to his doom.

“How do you know so much about swallows?” Bump asked.

“You have to know these things when you’re King,” Lilith said as they moved to cross the bridge.

They got to the other side, but Eda was nowhere in sight.

“Eda? EDA?! Now where did she get off to?”

*Scene change*

Eda had her hands against a cop car while Police bobby Kikimora patted her down for contraband.

“My Brave Knights! We will take this Castle by Force! Now Follow Me! To GLORY!” King Lilith and Ser Bump charged with swords drawn, a massive army following them with a shout.

They made it a few feet closer to the castle’s walls when sirens announced the cop cars which slid to a halt in front of them.

“That’s them! They’re the ones who left the Coven!” Kikimora shouted as she emerged from the lead car.

“Alright, you two are under arrest,” Police bobby Belos directed. “Put that sword down and turn around.”

“Now wait a minute,” Lilith said as she was turned around and handcuffed. “I think there’s been a mistake!”

“Alright! Nothing to see here people!” The Golden Guard waved the army back. “Everyone go home now! Keep it moving!”

“Hey, You!” Warden Wrath advanced menacingly. “Stop Your Writing! Stop it Now!” He continued to shout as he reached out towards Pra370r1an to slap his hands away from th-..-_>--.-;’.-

“On second thought, let’s not go to Camelot…” King Lilith decided, thinking on the many show tunes probably being sung right now. “Tis a silly place…”

Her knights nodded in agreement.

#The Owl House #Luz Noceda #Eda the owl lady #Eda Clawthorne #Amity Blight #Lilith Clawthorne #Willow Park #Gus Porter #its absurd I know #pra370r1an #Ser Luz and the Green Knight #toh king

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writingbakery · 5 years ago

Text

“tapewebs”; a series 🕸

hanta sero is just your regular everyday japanese-american immigrant college student, living in the heart of brooklyn. when miles morales collapses on the windowsill of his shitty one bedroom apartment, life gets.... a hell of a lot more interesting 🕷

[a spiderman! sero au one shot series, featuring class 1-A, hanta sero, miles morales, an assortment of marvel villains, & you, dear reader - the object of one tapespider’s affections ✨]

[pairing; sero x gender neutral reader 🕸]

[warnings; fluff, violence, action, angst, romance, & a lot of tape/spider puns 🕸]

“Sticky Note Origins”

───── ⋆🕸⋆ ─────

the city is prettier up high, sero realizes. granted, he wishes he’d come to that conclusion on solid ground, without his feet nervously planted on a skyscraper ledge, but still.

every whip of wind threatens to topple him over, send him careening down into a frenzied spiral of buildings and colors until he meets concrete at the bottom - and he’s supposed to willingly jump.

he wonders if he’ll pass out before his bones meet solid mass, cracking in so many different ways the coroner’ll have to play connect the fragments until he’s a person again.

behind him, an impatient cough sounds, bringing him back to the task at hand. fuck.

you’re probably wondering how he got here. let’s rewind a week.

one week earlier

at ten pm on a friday, the city is in its prime, bustling crowds of people laughing and stumbling through the brightly colorful streets. hanta’s just trying to protect his pad thai & dumplings, hugging the greasy paper bag to his chest as he weaves in and out of the chaos.

a day full of long classes & a quiet shift at the cafe-slash-bookstore halfway between campus and his crap one bedroom apartment leaves him exhausted, shoulders hunched as he makes his way home. nobody ever sees him regardless - the city’s too big for one lanky, always tired beanpole to be much notice.

despite living in brooklyn since he was four, he’s never felt a hundred percent comfortable here - he had an accent right up until he was thirteen, still trips over certain words and customs that don’t exist back home in japan. he’s awkwardly tall, not enough to be a phenomenon but towering over all his family. he just doesn’t quite fit anywhere - too smart and plain to be popular, too boring to be with the jokesters, too awkward for the nerds. he’s been a loner all his life, and while he doesn’t mind too much, he just wishes it was a little easier to belong.

a text rolls across his phone screen as he’s shuffling songs, skipping some j-pop rock song to settle on kendrick lamar as he smiles. you. he couldn’t lie and say he was completely alone, not when he had you in his life.

you were a year younger than him but twice as smart, skipping a year ahead and landing yourself in hanta’s high school freshman english class. the pair of you had just... clicked, from the very first moment he pointed to shakespeare’s likeness on the cover and mocked “what, you egg?!”

your laughter had left him on cloud nine the entire day, and he made it his personal mission to hear that beautiful little giggle at least once a day for the rest of his life.

a lovely friendship had bloomed from there, the two of you joined at the hip - if you were somewhere, hanta was bound to follow & vice versa.

you’d even gotten into the same college, albeit for drastically different majors - he was a biochem/engineering double major, while you were an english/history double major. you were opposite but similar in so many ways, and the way you both completed each other didnt go unnoticed by sero.

you were his puzzle piece, the bits of him he’d never been able to fill easily made whole by your presence.

he could never tell you, however; your friendship was too precious to risk, especially over his dumb, emotional heart.

sending a string of laughing emojis towards the meme you sent, he jogs up the seven flights of dimly lit stairs to his tiny, one bedroom apartment - living in the city wasn’t cheap, & while the elevator was always busted at least he had a doorman, and heat that worked on occasion.

stepping into his apartment, however, he can immediately sense something is wrong; the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, a heavy silence coating the darkness. the air feels wrong, tipsy turvy like the whole place is holding its breath - like something’s on the verge of exploding, catapulting him into chaos and danger.

quietly stepping through the living room, he peeks into the kitchen and bathroom, holding his backpack out like a makeshift weapon - his $200 biology textbook finally going to good use. finding nothing in either dark room, he slowly advances towards his bedroom, carefully measuring every step. at first, the room seems perfectly normal - nothing’s been moved, and it’s just as empty as the rest of his apartment.

and then he sees the blood.

dotting his windowsill in bright, red streaks, the window itself pushed halfway open - but that’s not what stops him in his tracks, eyes so wide it hurts.

spiderman is leaning against his windowsill, covered in blood and panting heavily, one hand held up in an effort to stop hanta in his tracks.

“i need...... help,” he whispers, voice rough and low; hanta’s amazed he can still speak.

he opens his mouth to react, somehow, even steps forward to catch him before screaming like a ten year old girl at a morgue, panic setting in like cold water.

never a dull night in brooklyn.

───── ⋆🕸⋆ ─────

once he’s made sure that spiderman - miles, as the young man bleeding all over his $12 walmart carpet supplies - isn’t going to die anytime soon, hanta’s quick to recover from his shock. bustling around his tiny kitchen to make cheap ramen and digging around in his closet to find his mini first aid kit, he’s in full fanboy mode - he’s got posters plastered wall to wall of miles morales on his bedroom walls, for gods sakes. not that he knew it was miles morales, but still.

miles morales is curled up in the fleece blanket hanta’s mom had sent him his second week at college, and he’s totally not freaking out.

he’d had to cancel his nightly facetime call with you, lying about a stomach bug - he hates keeping things from you, but this is just too big and messy and dangerous. he’ll tell you in due time, he promises himself, trying to ease the coil of guilt in his stomach.

“how did you end up on my windowsill, again?” hanta asks, gently pushing the bowl of noodles towards the injured man. he’s got his own pad thai long forgotten in the microwave, more focused on the superhero who’d gotten his ass whooped on his doorstep, so to speak.

“i told you. i’d been watching you for a while - you’re the most promising candidate i have.” miles’ voice is slick with humor, a sort of teasing confidence that’s clear even through the pain.

“which i’m still not understanding - candidate for what? blood services? biology questions? how to make $20 last two weeks??” he knows he’s being childish, too joking for the severity of the situation, but he can’t help it. the neighborhood’s - and his own - hero is sitting in front of him, eating shitty 33¢ ramen from the bodega around the corner, telling him he’s a prime candidate.

“to take the mantle.” all traces of laughter are gone now, miles leaning forward on the table to emphasize his words. “i’ve been doing this long enough to know when to quit. my body’s giving out on me - i got slammed into a wall last week and couldn’t shake the pain till yesterday. before, i’d be fine within an hour. the city needs someone new, young, willing to take the risks.”

hanta’s ears stopped listening the moment he heard quit. “me? are you fuckin’ joking?” he wheezes, coughing his way past the shock. “i get winded walking up to my apartment! an old lady beat me to the c train yesterday! a strong wind could kick my ass!”

miles is either willfully ignoring him or just can’t hear, plowing ahead with his explanation. “you’ve got the perfect build for webswinging, and you’ve got a good heart - you know when to do the right thing and when to step away. leave the rest up to me, and trust me - i know what i’m doing.”

hanta can’t believe his ears, pushing away from the table to pace around his kitchen in panic. “i don’t till you understand, you’ve got the wrong guy - there’s no way i could be spiderman!” his words are falling on deaf ears - miles is standing too, and he doesn’t seem to care about hanta’s impending panic.

“you’ve got to trust me on this, alright? meet me tomorrow, at this address - 12 pm sharp. the city needs you, hanta - hell, i need you. just have a little faith.”

hanta scoffs at that, throwing his hands in the air. “faith?! i met you an hour ago, bleeding all over my windowsill! that’s not exactly the most- hey! where the hell...” there’s nothing but a blanket, a hastily scrawled address, and an empty bowl where miles had sat, leaving hanta alone with his thoughts.

damnit.

───── ⋆🕸⋆ ─────

hanta pushes through the crowds of people at eleven am the next morning, half asleep but wired enough to power the whole city - hell, the whole goddamned country. he’s running on no sleep, adrenaline, two redbulls & the guilt of lying to you again, his “stomach bug” keeping him from class. he’d told you he was going to visit his parents for the weekend to recover; your sweet messages in response only made him feel worse.

he’s tossed and turned over this decision a million times & yet, he’s still not sure where he stands - it’s so little information, so much responsibility in so little time. he’s still half convinced he’s being punked, if he’s honest.

and yet, somethings drawing him to the address miles had left him, something deep in his gut that tells him he needs to be there. clearly, miles had seen something he himself is woefully oblivious to, and it couldn’t hurt to find out more.

apple maps leads him to a tiny shed somewhere behind a deli & a nail salon, not too far from his apartment, and he’s completely confused. “stupid gps, probably got me lost,” he whines, leaning against the door of the shed to zoom in on his location.

the pigeons in the alley are the only ones to hear his panicked yelling as he phases right through it, tumbling all the way down a metal chute into the dark unknown.

at least, for ten seconds. he lands on a remarkably soft pad of foam, a glass panel separating him from a brightly lit, fancy looking room lined wall to wall with computers, parts and half made suits, spiderman suits. he doesn’t know where to look first.

a robotic, feminine voice brings him out of his shock, the glass panel lighting up with code and writing.

“please enter your name.” hanta is floored.

“uh.. hanta sero?” the voice trills lightly, before a red grid-like laser scans him head to toe. he’s proud to admit he only squealed in terror once.

“identity confirmed. welcome, hanta.” the panel slides away to allow him access, his careful steps alerting the rest of the room’s computers to light up at his arrival.

“you came. i knew i chose wisely.” miles comes into view slowly, limping heavily as he smiles. it’s almost familiar, like he & hanta have been friends for years; he finds it comforting.

“well, not everyday you get to be spiderman,” hanta jokes, fidgeting a little where he stands. “you gonna fit me for a suit or something?” miles just laughs, shaking his head.

“that comes later. first, we’ve got to get you bitten.”

bitten?

───── ⋆🕸⋆ ─────

for the third time in 24 hours, hanta’s screaming like a man who’s just been told he has two days to live.

“you want me to let that thing bite me?! have you lost your mind?!”

miles sighs patiently, holding up the little glass vial to the light; inside, the spider races up and down the glass, an odd orange color to its patterning.

“it’s the only way. no offense, but i saw that lady beat you to the c train. she was like, 85.” hanta’s pouting now, crossing his arms.

“she had a cane and she was agile- hey hey! you keep that thing away from me, so help me god-“

“you’re being dramatic, it’s the size of a pea-“

“that’s a fat ass fuckin’ pea-“

“stay still-“

“i will not- ow! jesus fuck, that thing has tarantula jaws!”

miles carefully shepherds the spider back into the glass, chuckling a little. “it’ll take a moment to cause effect. the original spider was cross-bred with a more agile, lanky species - perfect for your body type. i’m hoping it’ll be most effective in your transition.”

“hoping?” hanta squeaks, staring at the red welt forming on his hand - his visions already starting to blur out, a throbbing pain traveling up his arm.

“well, it’s the first time i’m experimenting with this-“

“you used me as a guinea pig?!”

“it’s perfectly safe! my mentor-“ but hanta’s not listening anymore, the world swimming in front of his eyes before the ground rushes up rapidly to kiss his face.

god. damnit.

when he comes to, he’s wrapped in about half the blankets in brooklyn, a cold compress against his sweaty forehead. he’s burning up, and his elbows hurt for some reason - his skins gone all itchy, and he’d probably kick a pigeon for a glass of water.

sitting up alerts miles to his newly conscious state, the man quickly scanning his vitals with a smaller version of the glass panel hanta’d been fascinated with earlier. “thought you were gonna croak on me. how do you feel?”

“itchy. and my arms hurt.” hanta’s pushing off the blankets as he speaks, attempting to get comfortable - his body feels weird, like he’ll burst out of his skin at any second.

“alright, don’t panic. i need to see how it’s mutated your body. stay still.” miles’ fingers delicately press against his neck, shoulders, before jabbing at his ribs without warning. hanta’s arms shoot up on impulse, a trail of sticky, precise webbing escaping him from his...... elbows?!

“what the fuck, dude what the fuck look at my elbows, they’re all puffy and red i’m gonna die, and the coroner is gonna leak my story to the press and my moms gonna see me in the paper with fucked up elbows-“ hanta may or may not be panicking, poking at the tender, slightly swollen skin around the bends of his arms. miles just rolls his eyes, clearly amused by his antics.

“you’re not going to die. japanese tape spiders shoot webbing from the bends of their eight arms; its a thicker & stronger strain of web. clearly, your elbows are how your body has adjusted.”

“that doesn’t make it better.” hanta’s too busy staring at himself to notice the other changes at first, but slowly, they’re trickling in. heightened eyesight and hearing, an odd balance to his feet he hadn’t had a day ago, even itchier fingertips - making it easier for him to grip flat surfaces, or at least as miles says.

“come on. let’s get you a suit.”

───── ⋆🕸⋆ ─────

a week’s worth of planning & adjusting has led him right here to this rooftop, suited feet firmly balanced on the ledge. he likes his suit, thinks it’s unique - he’d modeled it after the spider who’d blessed him with these powers, orange and black and white [miles sort of thinks it’s ugly, but who cares.] he’d been in & out of the fondly nicknamed “spider-lounge”, getting fitted for his suit & honing his new abilities; he’d also been avoiding you whenever possible.

he couldn’t suck you into this world, not when he was barely comfortable in it himself; he kept promising himself he’d come clean, but the guilt’s eating him alive with every sad look & evening alone you spend.

another impatient cough brings him back to the present, miles sitting in the middle of the roof & watching hanta’s nervous stalling. “you’re going to have to jump eventually, you know,” he calls, and it takes everything in him not to turn tail and run.

he has a duty, a responsibility now, and he doesn’t take that lightly. he thinks of you, sitting in your ratty little apartment off campus and remembers that your safety is all but in his hands now; he’s got to protect the city, for your sake at least.

“i absolutely will not hesitate to kick you off this rooftop,” miles threatens, but its empty - they both know hanta needs to do this himself.

one step back, then two, the nerves racing up his spine as he prepares himself to meet cold concrete [a dramatic thought, miles would catch him far before he reaches ground. a bad knee wouldn’t stop him from that.] he says a silent prayer to every god he’s ever heard of and closes his eyes, taking a step forward into the air-

and trips over the ledge, falling ass over heels into the air. nice.

the rushing wind only heightens his panic for a moment, before one arm snaps up to blindly shoot into the air; his spider sense kicks in from there, aiming without even realizing and latching onto a nearby ledge. he swings aimlessly for a moment before finding a new ledge, then a railing; slowly, he finds a rhythm.

he’s soaring through the city before he realizes, laughing at the sharp roar of the wind in his ears - he feels like he’s flying, weightless as a bird. the only thing he can think of is you, how much you’d love this.

one day, he’ll take you webswinging. one day.

for now, he relishes in the fact that he’s one step closer to being brooklyn’s - & new york’s - new spiderman, fresh faced & determined to bring peace to the city.

he’s going to do it for you, even if it kills him.

#bnha sero #sero hanta x reader #sero hanta #spiderman au #sero x y/n #sero x you #sero x reader #bnha x y/n #bnha x you #bnha x reader #boku no hero fanfic #evywrites #tapewebs #one shot series #tapewebs series

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amandlas · 4 years ago

Text

almost gone (in these little moments get your cards out)

tfota | jude x cardan, she doesn’t come back au, no smut, hurtful and punishable tbh (ao3)

entry to jurdan week 2020 by @jurdannet - day 7: wild card! a what-if au had jude tried to make a new life in maine (don’t worry, cardan shows up). heaps of angst. little payout. sorry in advance. trigger warnings: violence, guns, shooting, and death mention.

[canon divergence from twk ending. title from “lay your cards out” by poliça]

gone. she’s gone. avulsed from her land, never hers, and her lover, never loved. the mortal world welcomes her with wide arms, arms that are shorter than she remembers, a little less homely, much less magical. after all, how can the ordinariness of television, powder tea, and surround sound compare to the true magic of faerieland?

vivi says it will be well. of course she does. why wouldn’t she, with her strong blood and pointed ears.

jude stares and stares at the tv. at the window. at the door. she’s not so stupid as to believe it will allay her want, but like programming, she follows the routine nonetheless.

two months. oak is recalcitrant to her teachings. vivi is buoyant in her obliviousness. they do not see her. she cannot see herself. the closest thing she has to a mirror is miles away, attending a new husband and parading with stars dangling from rounded ears. if taryn were to come, jude thinks she wouldn’t recognize either of them.

she is ashamed to watch her pillowcase blotted with tear stains at nightfall.

it’s more embarrassing than waking up the first time to menstrual blood staining her sheets, two stories up in madoc’s estate, knowing not what it meant or what to do.

jude duarte avoids as superfluous emotions as sadness or hopelessness. being a mortal in faerie, those sentiments would wash her out of focus, riddle her with doubt, and with a certainty would so far as kill her.

but, she thinks, i am not in faerie anymore. i am no longer in a place where blood is a better find than tears. where eyes are dry and swords are sated by throats and bellies.

perhaps in her native world it is safer. that’s what jude wanted this whole time, was it not? safety. if she were meant to feel relief, she should feel it now.

survival feels wet against her cheek.

he keeps slugging his damn arms. jude tugs oak roughly to her, fixing his stance, and urges him to strike.

“will i still be king someday?”

as per usual, he tries deflection to talk out of a combat lesson. jude is unmoved. “yes.”

“are you sure?”

she shifts her weight to her other leg. “there is no other way.” his form is poor. she identifies his weaker side and rounds slowly to it. “the crown answers to blood. raise your elbow higher. protect your face.”

oak listens for once. his voice is shrill still. “so there is no one else?”

of course there’s someone else. another bearer of the crown, another royal to lead their nation. but jude grits her teeth and resorts to her best asset: lying. “no. no one else.”

her little brother pauses, their lesson half-present in his mind. intrigued, she watches the scrunch of his brows as he formulates a thought. “unless cardan has a child. then there would be another.”

if he sees her freeze, he doesn’t mention it. the scenario turns her thoughts errant, threatens her with a conniption. some sick part of her wishes to linger on the possibility, but with oak before her and posed to fight, she cannot allow herself that masochism.

oak stands expectant, his arm growing weary and slouching. the least she can do is not lie.

“i suppose.”

he remembers none of the stance the next evening.

“no word from dad. taryn either.”

jude lifts her face to catch vivi rummaging through envelopes of mail. “what, were you expecting miracles? a shift in the weather?” she scoffs, coming back to her task. counting money. hard-earned cash from late shifts of all services and flavors. espionage, theft, the occasional sparring match. the underground fae crime ring taints the soul, but it pays in fifties.

vivi interrupts her quick fingers. “he liked you best, you know. dad always gave more of himself to you than to me or taryn.” she notices her brother sitting at the couch, leans in to rumple his hair. “or oak.”

jude shoots vivi a cruel look, an exasperated look. “what good that did to me.”

her sister’s eyes are fierce as a growling cat where they pin her in place. “quite some good, your highness.”

jude does a fucking great job at not screaming.

she hates to think of the name.

what could his true name be, she wonders? if she commanded it, before the brokering of their epically failed marriage for his release, jude asks herself if he’d given it. if he’d hated her that much more.

her mind swirls with reminders of midnight black eyes, of fingers against her lips and the abstruse feeling of possession by another being.

she won’t think of it. she won’t dream of it. she won’t aerate the two syllables in a whisper of dark sky. she certainly won’t be pelted with the scariest word, the four letters she refused since childhood to allow a place in her. the word that died with a blade on its back as it ran to the kitchen. the word that meant a certain foolishness, a certain danger. she won’t. it’s her new mantra: she won’t, she won’t, she won’t.

falsehoods have always been her strongest asset.

“we shouldn’t be watching this shit,” heather sighs between mouthfuls of red licorice.

they’re leaning on the couch, lined up like soldiers catching their breath amidst pilgrimage to battle. the television blares high. jude notices heather has shifted her free hand to cover oak’s eyes.

she inspects the playing show more closely. one second there’s a wide shot of scenery, familiar in its medieval setting, and the next there’s a person. a striking young woman with silver hair like new iron falling in tresses across pale shoulders.

the figure is so intimate it nearly makes jude jump. “a princess,” she murmurs.

heather shakes her head. “no. oh no. well, sorta.” oak squirms in her hand, breaking free of her hold, to which she sighs and acquiesces. “sure, i guess, but more than that. it’s complicated.”

from her place next to oak, jude nods. “royals tend to be.”

her sister’s lover, or ex lover (certainly an ex something), barrels on. she uses hand gestures to further her explaining. “her father was the mad king, but she was only a baby when he got dethroned. she was exiled from her home, far across the sea. then she married a powerful man, leader of a tribe, and sorta grew into herself. after he died, his rivals and his people tried to disbar her. turns out she had more in her arsenal than was believed.” heather wags her eyebrows at the show.

jude couldn’t be more confused until a huge, black winged creature crosses the screen. “are those…”

“yup,” heather confirms. “the mother of beasts. and her husband’s people, they followed her. even though he was gone, and was their real ruler, and it was unacceptable that she rule on the basis of who she was, they still accepted her as leader.”

jude stiffens. “really.”

they made it seem so close, so easy to reach. the princess-who-wasn’t-a-princess straightens her spine, amplifies her voice. when she speaks, people heed.

heather slices her reverie. “because she has magic.” she points to the overflying monsters. “badass.”

ah. because. she. has. magic.

a non-magic girl slouches back in her non-magic couch, watching a non-magic box, consumed by baneful imaginings.

unprepossessing. that is what they called her. ugly, if wine or fury loosened their vocabulary. how had i let someone who called me that touch me at the collarbones? kiss my throat? call me his sweet villain? jude has no answer. she replays and loops the plethora of adjectives her dear husband and company had called her. wormfood. unsightly. repellent. direful. unbecoming. synonyms alike to the same derivative, final word.

mortal.

the circle of worms, she and taryn. daughter of dirt.

she wishes she were nobody’s daughter.

it takes her three nights after that to realize now she really is nobody’s daughter.

her exile hits the half year.

bride of faerieland. the mortal queen.

a fugacious dream, she finalizes. no more than a fleeting child’s wish. had she remained at home, no, in faerie , she’d never have been queen. not without the people’s approval and not with her mortality. a hollow crown, a fool’s wreath.

she cements it into her brain, sears it to memory. she never. would. have been. a true. queen.

oh, but what a vision they would’ve been. jude, stiff boned with graying hair, and cardan beside her, youthful as ever and tethered to her with ball and chain. unescapable. a fresh minted prison for him. he’d be gagged to ask for her kisses, much less beg for them. when her skin sagged and time plundered her heart, how quick he’d be to run from her. a bat out of hell.

when it processes that she’s thought of his name, written it to existence in the myriad of her thoughts, she breaks into a cold sweat.

she won’t call her exile a blessing. there’s many descriptors for the singular event that redefined the last leg of her fleeting teenage life, and blessing won’t cut it. recently, however, jude has had the chance to add timely to the list.

jude kills a troll. he’d been preying on humans the same time as her abscond to the human realm. this particular troll began his horror streak after developing a taste for the helpless glaze in their eyes at final moments before teeth sunk into shoulders, the way they rolled back or if the occasion came up that the eyelids would fall crookedly. the funny look of a drugged, passed out, mindless loon. except these were dead loons, victims to the desire of a beast. these humans had been lured into the abandoned subway tunnel, but jude had strolled there all on her own.

“that bitch carries the devil,” commented one of the fae. gathered in a ring, stealing glimpses of her over their shoulders.

waiting for her pay, jude kicked the tip of her boot into the solid ground, arms crossed. “that bitch can hear. i may not have fae hearing, but i’d abstain from testing me were i in your shoes.”

the fae she had spoken to was of the sea, and was barefoot. irony not lost on her.

sooner than expected, jude duarte developed a reputation. successful runs, frightening recounts of what she did to earn her money, it swiveled up and circled around her like a tornado. some fae considered testing if the legend was bigger than the person, and some fae had lost the use of a limb. she knew she’d been strong before, but this new world taught her what an unstoppable force she was. had always been.

they give her a nickname. fearful of evoking the name given to her at birth, though being human it had no effect on her. still, shadows shivered at her wake, watching, consuming jude duarte’s trail of defeated foes. in the damp, cold streets of maine, in a world she long since had cut true tethers from, she’s reborn as the wrath.

in her mind, somewhere in the bowels of the elfhame palace, the court of shadows laugh up a storm.

oak grows less querulous and more capitulant to his role. jude in turn decides to do the same with her old-but-now-new home amidst mortals.

she watches tv. repaints her bike. buys new clothes. eats toasted waffles with peanut butter and honey.

when heather mentions a museum across town, jude no longer stares at her blankly. she doesn’t fumble or grasp for words. her foot’s planted on the ground, steady and strengthening.

she becomes inclined to music. an old trait, now in a new ambient. vivi glamours money to grant her a gift, a small excuse to cheer her up. the gadget fits most of her hand, sensitive to her tact and bright during the darker hours. heather hauls her laptop once in a while to upload new songs onto it, teaching jude how to sift through the list.

music player in her hand, jude sheepishly assembles a queue of songs that she likes. tunes that have replaced bards in taverns or notes plucked from lutes.

an aggressive song by a vexed wife goes first, the one with words that hit jude harsher than she wants to admit, the title saying not to hurt yourself. another one called once upon a time. a wedding song turned rock, a “strong electric guitar” according to heather, the singer belting about being loved tenderly. paint it, black by the stones that roll. where once her fingers would’ve stumbled over the gadget’s buttons, today she masters with ease.

the stunted child, the wraith of a human girl she once was rears her head in jude’s dreams. she gains color with each passing day.

by the time her exile hits eight months, jude begins the transition. she intends it to life, gives it air to breath.

i, jude duarte, will be happy in the mortal world.

she wills herself to change on a molecular level. when the desire of faerieland hightails back, she slams it to the back of her mind. she transforms the pain into power, into will. the scar left behind from her banishment becomes fuel for her new life. for the transformation into who jude could truly be in this wide, marvelous, enormous human world.

they don’t want you. they have not once wanted you.

he doesn’t want you. not like you do him.

doesn’t

want

you.

move on, she begs herself. move on. move on. move on. stop chasing after ghosts.

the wrath is elbow deep in a goblin’s guts. he swindled bryern a bagful of gold coin. it came down to her to rescue it back, and assure the impediment of a repetition. that’s when she met her.

“hnnnnggg…” moans a figure across the room.

jude ignored the drugged out junkies on her way in, leaving them in the back burner while working through the bulk of her job. but the turncloak goblin is dead, and was that noisy mound moving?

“help…” she hears.

jude rarely considers herself so altruistic. but the meekness of the plea pulls her across the room, tugs her legs to the sprawled person.

human. a girl, dirty blue hair all too reminiscent of nicasia, but not so polished as to pass for a sea princess. no, this girl appeared on the edge of a precipice, thin coat of sweat across her body.

“more,” the girl begs.

like clockwork. jude squats down to get closer. “want me to get you out of here?”

weakly, the girl nods. “she’ll find me.”

“what’s your name?”

the stranger smacks her lips, eyes rolling in her head. “lolli.”

lolli turned out to be an easy haul but a terrible map. jude exasperatedly dragged her through alleys and corners, hearing the laments of her companion through the journey. lolli got sidetracked from her ride-or-dies, see, shot up a bit too much powder - something she called never - and had an urgent need to return to the clan.

jude’s self-preservation rang high when she knocked on the selected door and met a fae two heads taller than she. his red skin shone bright in the doorway, his glamour invisible to jude’s geas.

“thank you for bringing pop back to us. i’m qylin” he says across from jude, having invited her in and given her a once-over. “uh, you mortal?”

she’s declined a drink, but accepted a chair. “as they come.”

qylin moves closer. “and you took out melbor? pop’s supplier?”

“is pop meant to be lolli?”

“her full name’s lollipop.”

“oh. i see.” a red flush runs across her face. “melbor huh? didn’t catch his name. i did catch both his kidneys though.”

qylin whistles. “damn. a mortal.” he pronounces it with wonder. nothing like she’s used to. it falls with disbelief in her ears.

“that’s quite a might you got in you. here.” in an outstretched hand, jude finds a tiny acorn that no doubt has a message inside it. “if you ever quit meandering for coin and want to run with the real wolves, i’ll answer.”

wolf. she’d been a girl and she’d been a mortal. then she’d been wormfood and after that she’d been a queen. couldn’t say jude once considered herself a wolf, or imagined running with them. then again, she had become so many things far from her imagination.

the ward. the mortal. the queen. the wrath. her list of faces ran endless, each mask pressing heavier and heavier on her fragile composition.

in the beginning, vivi congratulated her like a preschooler with a trophy. “look at you, making an effort. i told you home wasn’t so bad.”

months later they’ve turned to “you are too far out” accompanied by the tapping of her foot, a face riddled by concern. “you’re jumping into danger again.”

vivi didn’t know how jude missed being afraid.

if she dreams of cardan, the sting pulls her awake and breathless into the chirping crickets of the dark hours.

ninth month. her exile is a baby somewhere, born and breathing. a marking reminder of her incipient rule cut short.

jude duarte makes a decision. she steps outside of the girl she used to be, the teenager latched to a world that had not once been hers.

the acorn is light in her hands. she splits it open, unrolling the paper inside, and when she sees the address and phone number it takes her a total of eighteen minutes to pack.

saying goodbye without telling them it’s goodbye cracks a new wound in her already shattering heart.

oak thinks she’s going to the gym. vivi thinks she’s babysitting oak. heather might’ve had a clue, but she kept silent while jude hugged her, muttering a quick thanks for watching her brother while vivi came from the post office.

it appears, after years, she’d learned to say farewell to all things that were close to her.

qylin refrained from asking questions, just as jude liked it. she watched, studied, learned, kept to her rank while scheming for more. the room and cot qylin offers is as home as any she’s had.

when she urged cardan to inveigle the princess of the undersea, it led them to a hidden alcove draped with vines, to a couch where she’d bared more of jude duarte than she had in her entire life. the memory is both a memory and the dream that recurs most in her sleep. their tryst, their unculminated tumble, their fumbled connection, whatever people would want to call it. in her sickest hours, jude allowed herself to think of it with a tender gaze, with a pink shiny filter, with the dreaded word she’d been on the run from for years.

that you hate me. tell me that you hate me.

“i hate you,” jude whispers. “i hate you and i married you and i hate you.” the two phrases weren’t mutually exclusive.

lollipop has been gone for weeks, but her junkie spirit is alive.

the wrath evaded nevermore like cats did water, but the gradual acclimation to qylin’s ring fills her with misplaced ease. it took them damn near six months, but jude finally surrendered her arm.

it pricks, the needle, like the pinch on her finger when cardan stabbed her for the salt in her blood. for the antidote to faerie fruit.

she’s high. she’s at a revel in new york and she’s vulnerable and she’s high.

it doesn’t take long for jude to cement her decision to never do drugs in her natural life again. but once that’s been engraved in her think tank, the world turns mellow and technicolor. it tells her to enjoy while it lasts.

she’s surrounded by leaves, platter of fruit, dancing pixies and slender fae. painful reminders of the home she direly tries to forget.

in a mirage, she pictures black curls under a golden crown of flowers. cruel lips forming a smile.

as if underwater, ears plugged with chlorine liquid, jude hears a seductive voice to her side. “what a pretty thing.” a woman. tall and thin, fae ears and slit green eyes. eyes that fall down to jude’s chest. “busty.”

not all quite there, jude struggles but succeeds in recognizing the tone coming from her courtier. and before she can respond, to her surprise, a second woman emerges from the back of her new companion.

she’s got beautiful straight teeth and straighter talons. “careful. saphine can bite.”

after being called hideous half a life, this come-on douses jude awake like a bucket of water. she studies the two girls and the raking nature of their eyes. she thinks perhaps if she paid more attention she could’ve recognized that in cardan’s eyes. could’ve told it apart from the hatred, the arrogance and the disgust.

without preemptiveness, without pause to think it over, jude tugs both girls to her. her body busts in sensation.

she remembers cardan in a maze, draped in languor and gold faerie drug and girls. black shark eyes watching her while horned girls had their way with him. one kissed his neck, she remembers, and another his knee.

“here,” she scoffs, pushing down sapphire or whatever’s head to her knees. “above my boot.”

a chuckle. “feisty, huh?” she hears, and she truly doesn’t care.

next, jude unceremoniously pulls the second girl up to her neck, leading them exactly where and how she wants them. she’s a constellation of heat and brief spikes of libido.

does cardan think of her? when he’s in bed or bedding someone new, whichsoever activity he performs at night, does jude cross his mind? does he remember her? sometimes in the ridiculous seclusion of her mind she thought cardan would be faithful to her once upon a time. she could slap her own cheeks for such foolishness.

his face appears stark in her memory. deep hollows on his collarbones, raven black hair and eyes devouring her like fruit. his lips, they’d been so soft.

jude leans her head back and laments her ghosts. she inhales sharply.

after the hot spell passes, after jude feels the trickle of tongue make its way up to her thigh and another down her chest, she pushes them away.

why? she doesn’t know. jude is only sure of the fact that she’s tired and doesn’t want this and instead wants a glass of water then maybe a bed.

saphine tilts her head, rolls her eyes, and waves her off, moving along. jude is thankful, for the first time, at being so easily discarded.

a month later makes two years since her infamous exit.

“unless cardan has a child,” oak said. many moons past.

the memory of him brings upon a dream. the opposite to her listless, watered-down dreams she grew used to having.

she sneaks through the palace, it’s name near forgotten to her, crawling against walls or chasing shadows.

he’s there. he’s in many of her dreams and he’s there in this one. hair astray. tilted crown. reclined on a couch, his tail freely swishing left and right.

if he remembers their pact of marriage, he doesn’t bother to show it. no mourning, no sadness, no desperation. unlike the other dreams of him, in this he’s placated. joyful, even, in a way so seldom his character.

jude’s understanding is little.

something squirms in cardan’s arms. when she gets closer it nearly takes her breath away to a fault, threatening to kill her. it’s a baby. older than a newborn but small enough to fit in his arms, to paw at his chin and gargle.

no test could prepare her for this sight.

and cardan. he’s absolutely changed. reinvented in the light of this babe, this creature jude hasn’t seen the face of. because that is his spawn, the tiny tail swishing from its rear indicates as much. that, combined with the black tresses, leaves no doubt that she is looking at a king and his heir.

in the depths of her shriveled dignity, jude duarte senses another break, another disgusting branched crack.

her husband is inconsolable in love. his bright smile slashes wide across his face, softening his sharp cheekbones. he lifts the baby to his face, pressing their noses together, cooing. she hardly recognizes him. but she recognizes the lack of a need for her.

this was a nightmare.

cardan lets the child descend, adjusting them in his lap with heartbreaking gentleness. to her horror, the toddler turns and pierces jude in place with raven black eyes.

she runs cold all over. the child has the look of a girl.

her coloring is unique, darker than cardan’s and any fae’s. it’s closer to… jude’s own. and below the black curls, which she realizes now is actually dark amber brown, there’s ears. rounded, untipped, human ears.

jude is utterly unmoored. the scene melts. she wakes up to hands descending upon her, to frightened questions of why she was screaming and that she’s woken up half of the gang. they cannot get a straight answer from her, and after plowing her with cups of water and aspirins from a quick run to the mini-store, the most they get from jude duarte is a somber face and a fall into her pillow.

jude becomes a gallery of girls. she’s judy, and she’s martina, and she’s amelie with the occasional latika. running in qylin’s underworld gang requires her to. police don’t catch her, fae detectives don’t either, and if by chance she needed to run an errand the name she gave was one of a basinful of fake i.d. cards.

“i once had a twin,” she offhandedly told someone.

“what was her name?” they asked.

jude slurped from a tall gas station soda cup. “doesn’t matter.”

three years. the earnest smile she’d lost a number of winters ago returns tenuously but surely. as a sliver, as a tiny reminder, as a planted seed showing the very smallest evidence of root.

a pixie joins their ranks. young and limber. her cerulean skin reminds jude of a blue court under the sea.

“fand,” she greets the mismatched group. “newborn nomad.”

jude welcomes her by the form of a nod, turning back to the display of headshots splashed on the table, organizing it into a semblance of order.

she feels fand dance around her, suspicious to her presence. she thinks for a hot minute that fand might want to cause trouble. jude focuses her attention to the knife hidden between her breasts.

the pixie stares at her, unabashed, and right as jude thinks to reach to her chest, fand grows the courage to ask. “you. do i know you?”

the question falls flat. “i don’t believe so. there’s little chance our paths crossed.”

fand squints. “well, i’ve just left elfhame. finally broke from that unruly mess.”

lightning forks in jude’s chest, attacking her nervous system. an old phantom possesses her body, causing her to still.

the pixie moves closer, inspecting. “your look, it’s so familiar.”

jude understands in a minute.

taryn. fucking taryn. always, forever, impossible-to-be-rid-of taryn.

summoning years of falsehoods and acting experience, jude breaks eye contact to laugh and feign offense. “all mortals look the same to fae, i’m sure.”

that is not a lie. she learned that from the wickedest prince himself.

when fand slips away from the gang two nights later, jude forces herself to block it from memory.

she’s almost twenty-one. in faerie she might have died since she was eleven.

here, she’s got a family. a rough knit circle of confidants, people she rarely thinks twice about trusting anymore. her music keeps her company, and her growing arsenal of skills, of wins, it warms the smallest piece of her soul.

how could she have hated such a place?

“counterinsurgents. we calculate two dozen below the bridge,” jekka, qylin’s second, explains over a map.

jude’s focus is precise, uninterrupted.

the years, the lack of practice from a simple lack of need to, makes it so that she doesn’t religiously check the perimeter, doesn’t spot a green face. his dark tuft of hair and hooked nose, spying from the window, hidden among leaves and wind.

if she had seen him, she might’ve remembered her old friend. if she’d seen him, she might’ve broken down in tears, or begged for a word, or done none of those things to help jekka figure out their positions for the next day’s raid.

“watch for the sniper!” one of her gang yells.

jude ducks, experienced muscles leading her across the space, the shielded street with broken streetlights. abandoned houses repurposed for criminal night creatures sprawl one after the other. they’ve chosen one a stone throw from the river, so close they could taste the salt while counting bloody fae or human scalps.

five, six, seven leaps and she’s out of shot, crammed into a wedge in the building. she took down three counterinsurgents already. the wrath ran rampant today.

another figure jumps out the window, two yards from her, and takes off running through the backside of the house, the one facing the water. swift as the wind, jude pursues in fervor.

bam.

first the noise like thunderclap. then the pain.

oh.

when they screamed sniper, she expected an arrow. she expected a taut bow and a sharp, easily removed tip of metal. not a bullet.

in the end, jude has been a galaxy of abridges.

she’s had abridged parents, gone before her eighth birthday. that led to an abridged innocence and an abridged life in their rudimentary home in maine. she’s had an abridged relationship with her sisters. an abridged sense of belonging.

she had an abridged romance with a prince and king. that chapter being severed short was, as they all were, not her fault.

she had an abridged marriage. an abridged kingdom rule.

to be culminated in an abridged life. thin and meager.

she hopes no matter how small her garden has been, that each poison flower and cherry blossoms she’s sowed has done its best to enrich the tiny piece of universe allotted to her.

she should’ve known when she saw the river.

in water all began, and in water it ends.

there are no screams. no chaos. the gang has left her, chasing their foes further up the street, looking to corner them. jude? she’s going for a dip. a passage to the next life. she’ll float to it. gargle on the last of life.

“huh,” she whispers.

the ache is pungent in her back, the bullet hitting close to the spine but not quite. deadly, though. deadly for sure.

she wasn’t queen of nothing. she was queen of death, the hierophant of misery. her whole life has been a string of it. well, no longer.

jude duarte reaches the water’s edge, using each fiber of her strength to not fall in quite yet.

in the haziness of all that she’d done and all that she’d run from, he comes to her. in dream, in flesh. she’s not yet in the water.

“jude.”

this has to be the mark between. the straddling line of life and death. because somehow, impossibly, she hears him.

“jude!”

or?...

her brows scrunch in confusion, a naked toe in the river already. she wants to turn, but the seeping life at her back won’t allow it.

she doesn’t need to. long arms surround her, someone moving in front of her to read her face, to see what lies there.

it’s him.

jude’s lids droop. her back is on fire, and she burns in the flames. he’s barely changed. matured into his looks, if she had to put it into words. his tar eyes, slender lips, pointed nose and legendary black curls suddenly remind her of being seventeen.

there’s so much in his face she can barely read any of it. “is it you? is it really you?” he demands.

she’s always been jude. who jude became, that was a different question. one she no longer cares to ask.

“i found you. i finally finally found you.” his voice is incredulous.

is he the harbinger of the beyond? was that his role to play this entire time? her thoughts eddy and murk the more time passes with a hole in her back.

it is an arcane thing, in truth, to be held by a creature she’s craved and despised. her body responds on its own by pressing closer, seeking warmth.

he might be crying. could also be the angle of the sun.

“please,” he whispers.

she hasn’t said his name in years.

“cardan.”

his eyes fall closed.

her mouth repeats the motion, recognizing the familiarity of his name. cardan. once her king. her husband. the sight of him brings forth a wave of emotions, cascading through her like a waterfall.

cardan tugs her close to a punishingly tight degree. “i thought you dead.” he speaks into her ear. “we searched for years. i thought you were gone. gone, jude.”

the word pulls her back, creates distance between them. jude lets herself get lost in his eyes, those splendid eyes, bottomless and infinite, a serene look on her face as she responds:

“almost.”

the fractious prince too arrogant to be a ruler does not stand in front of her. this man is similar, but a sense of strength she hadn’t seen is forefront and shining. jude wishes she could appreciate it.

if only this weren’t the last time.

“so it is you.” she says it with wonder, with a detachment that lets her turn away from his arms and face the river.

cardan’s intake of breath indicates he has finally seen her wound. he twists his neck, shouts to someone far back, hidden in the houses. “shes hurt! SHE’S HURT!” his voice is raw and desperate.

jude walks into the water.

a hand at her arm stops her, keeps her in place, but she shrugs it off with newfound confidence and turns around. cardan’s incredulous face sparks memories of faraway lands and kingdoms.

“what are you doing?” he demands.

jude’s lips break into a smile. how she missed his voice. she walks back until water reaches her waist, then her chest, then the crown of her head.

“stop!” she hears.

the layers of the girl she was, who she is, who she could’ve been, they merge. yes, she had missed faerie. yes, she had wanted cardan. yes, she had wept tears of rage at knowing she could not have either of them back. if she cried now, her tears would turn to river water, melding into the beautiful greater whole.

a hand grips her chest. another tugs on her neck, urging her up, up, up.

air. sweet air in her lungs.

jude gasps, her plans interrupted. the bulletwound at her back sears at the salt water, the sensation so intense it actually numbs her and leaves her feeling very little.

cardan presses her flush to his body. he raises her up, and his face is marked with horror and betrayal.

“how could you?” he weeps. his features are anguished, desperate. he’s shaking her by the shoulder. “how could you?”

jude smiles a wet smile. “remember when you pushed me into the rapids? and you forced my twin to abandon me and kiss your cheeks? i can’t remember a time when i’ve been warm since then. the water, it was cold. like a leech.”

“the roach is gathering for a salve. jude, you will be okay. you need to get out now.”

she realizes there’s something wrong. “wait. no. that’s a lie. i am a liar.” she tilts her face to his, eyes meeting. “you were warm. behind the throne room and in your bed. you kept me warm. but you ripped me from my home and i've been cold since.”

cardan does something she didn’t imagine him capable of. he didn’t do so when balekin beat him. he didn’t do so when his family was slaughtered. he did so this moment, with her encircled by his arms. cardan sobs.

maybe this is when he understands he’s been forever her herald. the marker of her death. their destinies, interlinked, but only for this.

as he bares himself open, jude candidly studies his face. there’s freedom in allowing herself to admit she missed him. missed all of it. her kingdom that never was.

“i’ll heal you,” he implores. his hand runs down wet and shakingly down her face. “you’re my queen. we’ll use our magic. we will, jude, if you stay with me. don’t you get it? the exile was fake. i never meant for you to vanish. i’m begging you, please, help me heal you.”

her forehead falls on his. waist-deep in water, she feels his short breaths fall on her cheek. “you held hatred for me once.”

slowly, miserably, cardan shakes his head. the motion makes her pull away but he doesn’t let her, staying together. “love. i held love, jude.”

love

four letters.

years of running. and it caught up to her all the same.

his words hit her worse than the sniper did. she staggers in his embrace.

“hold.” he says the word with intensity. “i hold, jude.” cardan refuses to let her go, won’t let her fall. “you walked away with my heart.”

thoughts swirl in her head. they swim around like the fish crossing in between their legs.

“hold,” she says weakly.

hold love. he loves me.

impossible. and true.

“huh.”

“hold me,” she asks him. and he does.

he does.

he appears vacillant to his actions save for holding her.

jude can’t remember a time when she wasn’t running. from her parents’ demise. from madoc’s threats. from the cruel fae. from her sister’s betrayal. from cardan’s torments and, apparently, his ministrations of love. from her own shadow.

they haven’t moved from the water. it’s been a minute. it’s been four years.

jude feels her body slag, the water making up for the new deadweight.

“i wish you’d never left me,” he murmurs.

gratingly, she lifts her hand to trace a finger along the hard, straight line and point of her husband’s ear. “cardan, are you here to ask me for a divorce?”

his face breaks. she’s fully leaning on him, his long arms cradling her to his chest. amidst their soaked clothes, she feels the thudding of his heart against her cheek.

jude’s eyes flutter open and closed. “i want to tell you i will. i want to tell you i’ve waited for it. i - ah…” a jab of pain causes her to pause. “i want to tell you it hasn’t been eating me alive to be apart from you. i want to tell you… so… many… lies.”

through her misty vision, she sees cardan shake his head. “you are not leaving me.” the conviction in his voice draws a laugh from her.

“oh, cardan.” it’s the last good breath in her lungs. in the distance, she feels the ripples of someone entering the river, racing towards them. she sees only pitch black eyes. “i already have. i already have.”

they are esoteric, rendered in numinous light. from their entwined bodies in the water, there grow white flowers at the riverbed, their petals straining for the sun.

#jurdanweek2020 #jurdan #jude duarte #tfotaedit #cardan greenbriar #he's kinda scattered in this fic tbh but i promise there is SOME sort of follow-through to the angst #if you survive getting there #this took me all night and now its 9am HELLO THANK YOU FOR THIS MADNESS HOLLY BLACK #note: this will be my last tfota fic fellas #nicky writes #mine #mine:tfota

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winchester-fantasies · 5 years ago

Text

Always and Forever

Summary: You’ve always been insecure, making you feel vulnerable especially when it came to your feelings for Dean Winchester. A particularly rough hunt leaves everyone shaken up and Dean reveals something you never thought you’d hear.

Word Count: 4028

Warnings: smut, fluff, light angst, insecure reader, shy reader, injury to reader, danger to reader, show level violence, death (not a main character), swearing

Pairing: Dean x Plus Size!Reader

A/N: This was written as a request from @rainbowunicorns92 ! Can I request a Dean x plus size reader where the reader is really sweet, insecure and extremely nerdy, when a hunt went really bad and she got hurt and dean goes to patch her up and then he confesses his love to her? Fluffy smut maybe? Sorry if this sounds awkward I’m new to this! Love you’re writing ✨❤✨❤ Thank you so much for your request!! I had a lot of fun writing this one, and my Dean girl really came out in this one. lol Hope you like it! ❤❤

Winchester Fantasies’ Masterlist

Your stomach was in knots as you pulled your hair back into a ponytail at the nape of your neck. You smoothed the few flyaways at your temples, your hands trembling slightly.

A quick knock sounded at your door, and you turned away from the mirror to see who it was. “Almost ready?” Dean asked, poking his head around the door.

You nodded, giving him a tight-lipped smile. “Okay, good,” he said. “We’re headin’ out in ten.” He closed the door again, leaving you feeling even more nervous.

You went to your closet, taking your heavy Carhartt from its hanger. You slipped it on before taking up your duffle bag and throwing it over your shoulder. You gave your room a quick once-over to make sure you’d packed everything you needed. Once satisfied you had everything you walked down the hall to the garage where Sam and Dean were already sitting in the Impala.

“Took you long enough,” Dean grumbled, starting the Impala, the engine roaring to life.

You didn’t say anything as you threw your duffle bag into the back seat and climbed in, closing the door a little harder than you’d meant to. “You okay, sweetheart?” Dean asked, looking at you in the rearview mirror.

You sent him a half-smile and nodded. He seemed to accept your excuse as he backed out of the garage and sped out of the bunker’s driveway, tires kicking up dust in their wake.

You leaned back against the leather seat and stared out the window. Your fingers absentmindedly played with a string on your coat, the cold prick of uneasiness in your stomach only growing with each mile Dean drove.

Although the Winchesters had trained you thoroughly in both weapons and hunting, and you’d accompanied them on more than one case, your true skill lay in the lore and mythology part of hunting. You’d grown up in the life and while your parents were off on hunts, you’d bury yourself in the books they always kept with them. By the time you were thirteen, you knew more about monsters, gods, curses, and spells than many of the other hunters’ kids you knew.

When your parents had both died on a hunt, leaving you an orphan, John Winchester had taken you in, raising you alongside his boys as one of his own. He’d seen your passion for learning and your knack for research and had continued to foster it in you. And by the time your eighteenth birthday rolled around, your knowledge of lore and mythology was so broad, you were practically a walking encyclopedia.

You were always teased by the other kids for being a nerd, but you couldn’t help it. When you were buried in a lore book or researching something knew, you were in your element. Even now, more often than not, you could be found in the bunker’s library, pouring over the Men of Letters books and documents. And you couldn’t help but feel a little elated when those same kids who had endlessly teased you, were now some of the very hunters who called you when they weren’t sure what they were hunting. They knew you’d have an answer almost immediately, the information you’d studied extensively still fresh in your mind.

But here, out on the road with Sam and Dean, hunting, you were completely out of your comfort zone. Normally you’d stay back at the bunker while the boys worked on a case, calling you periodically if they needed information. But the boys had needed your help on this one. There was a large group of ghouls in Wyoming, and they didn’t think they could go up against them alone.

You’d tried to make an excuse to stay back, even going so far as calling some of the hunters you knew to go in your stead. But they’d all been busy with cases of their own. You’d finally resigned yourself to your fate, but it didn’t stop the fear roiling in your stomach.

Although you were usually somewhat nervous when you’d go on hunts with the boys, this one had hit particularly close to home. Your parents had died at the hands of two ghouls, and the closer you got to your destination, the more you worried you’d wind up facing the same demise.

**********

You swung your fist hard, slamming your knuckles into the jaw of the ghoul. It crumpled to the ground giving you just enough time to bury your machete into its neck, decapitating it. You leaned heavily on your thighs, your breathing labored. Sweat dribbled down your face and dripped from the tip of your nose and chin. You heard a heavy thud come from outside, and you straightened up quickly before sprinting up the stairs, taking two at a time.

You hurried through the crypt door and out into the open air. You stopped short when you rounded the corner to find the second ghoul towering over Dean, who lay sprawled on the ground. You scanned the ground around him, and your heart sank when you realized his machete had been flung a few feet away from his grasp. The ghoul raised a dagger, ready to plunge it deep into Dean’s chest. Sam was nowhere to be seen so you did the only thing you could think of.

“Hey!” you shouted. The ghoul veered around, its face twisting in disgust when it saw you. “Yeah, you! Come on over here!” you shouted, taking a defensive stance even though your legs trembled. The ghoul turned and stalked toward you, its focus no longer on its earlier victim.

You raised your machete, getting ready to swing, but the ghoul was faster. A searing pain shot through your abdomen as the ghoul slashed your skin with its dagger. You dropped to your knees, the machete clattering to the ground as your hands clutched at your middle. Blood oozed between your fingers and all you could do was watch as the ghoul picked up the discarded machete and raised it to your neck, the monster’s eyes dark with bloodlust.

You shut your eyes tight, waiting for the pain. You heard the swoosh of a blade in the air, but instead of the pain, there was...nothing. You gingerly opened your eyes to see the ghoul still standing in front of you, a shocked expression on its face. Tiny droplets of blood began to seep through a cut in its neck and then, without warning, it slumped to the ground with a heavy thud, its head rolling.

Your gaze found Dean, standing rigid. His face was hard and jaw set, machete still raised where he had just sliced through the monster. Tears abruptly started streaking down your cheeks as the gravity of the situation finally settled around you. In two strides, Dean was at your side, hoisting you up and wrapping his arms around your shaking frame. “It’s okay. It’s over,” Dean soothed, rubbing small circles into your back as you sobbed.

Dean pulled away once your sobs turned to whimpers. He frowned and studied your face intently. “You’re as white as a sheet,” he muttered. He looked you over carefully, his green eyes widening in both shock and fear as they settled on your abdomen. Blood was still trickling, oozing through your clothes and dripping to the ground.

“Shit,” Dean breathed out. “Sam!” he bellowed, just as his brother rounded the side of the crypt, bloody machete in hand. “We have to get (Y/N) back to the bunker! Now!”

Without waiting for Sam to reply, he scooped you into his arms as if you weighed no more than a twig and practically ran to the Impala, placing you gently on the backseat. He motioned for Sam to sit with you, quickly shrugging off his jacket and tossing it to his brother. “Put pressure on her wound,” he commanded.

Sam did as instructed while Dean climbed into the driver’s seat and started up the engine. He peeled out of the graveyard and onto the highway, pushing the speed limit as far as he could. Your eyes grew heavy, and you struggled to keep them open, but it was as if you had no control over anything. Your mind was numb with pain and your body lethargic from all the blood you’d already lost.

“Dean,” you murmured, your voice quivering. You turned your head towards the back of the front seat, the top of Dean’s head just peeking over the top. He turned, his face nothing more than a hazy image.

“Just hold on, sweetheart,” Dean said, his voice sounding far off and distant.

You tried nodding your head, but instead everything went black.

**********

You groaned as the haze of sleep slowly began to fade away. Your eyes fluttered open, and you looked around, feeling slightly disoriented. You started to sit up, but you gasped as pain shot across your abdomen. That’s when everything from the previous day came rushing back to you.

You jumped as the door to your room opened and Dean walked in. “Hey, sweetheart,” he said. “Glad to see you’re up. I need to change your wound,” he said, holding up and shaking the first aid kit in his hand.

“What?” you asked, nervously licking your lips as he came closer.

“I have to change the bandage,” he said. “It was pretty bad,” he continued, coming to your bed and sitting down on the side of the mattress.

He took out fresh gauze and surgical tape from the kit before he moved his hands to the hem of your shirt. “No!” you barked, causing him to jump and pull away quickly.

Dean's eyes were wide with shock as he stared at you. “What the fuck, (Y/N)?” he snapped back. “What's wrong?”

You swallowed hard, not fully trusting yourself to speak. Dean had patched you up many times in the past, but this time was different. Before it was always a cut on your arm or a scratch on your cheek. But this time…. This time it was somewhere you didn't want him to see.

You weren't exactly what most would consider a small girl. You were on the thicker side. There was no gap between your thighs; your hips were wide; there was a roll on your lower back every time you wore your bra; and your muscles weren't as tight as you'd like them to be, especially in your abdomen. You'd harbored feelings for the eldest Winchester from the first time you'd come to live with them and the thought of him seeing all your imperfections paralyzed you with fear.

“I...I, um,” you stuttered, feeling flustered and a little bit vulnerable. “You don't have to do that, Dean. I'll do it,” you offered with a wide grin, praying that he'd accept.

But you had no such luck as he shook his head. “You're not gonna want to do it, sweetheart. Trust me,” he chuckled. “It's a gnarly wound. Plus, it'll just be easier if I do it.”

You were silent, trying to come up with some other excuse. Dean must have taken your silence as acceptance because he reached for the hem of your shirt again.

This time you shoved his hands away from you before you could stop yourself. Dean jerked back with an exasperated huff. “Seriously, (Y/N),” he said in irritation. “Why don't you want me to change your bandage?” he asked with a quick shrug and shake of his head.

You averted your gaze, heat rising to your cheeks. You didn't want to tell him how insecure you felt so you crossed your arms over your abdomen, being careful to avoid the wound that was now throbbing. You hoped he'd understand as you looked back up at him with pleading eyes.

He seemed to finally grasp what you were too nervous to say as his eyes softened. “Sweetheart,” he said, gently placing his hand on your arm. “You don't have to be afraid of me seeing you.”

You swallowed hard, darting your eyes back and forth between his green ones, gauging whether or not you could fully trust him. Finally you sighed in defeat. Removing your arms from around yourself, you gingerly lifted your shirt up to reveal your stomach. You dropped your gaze, too afraid of the disgust you knew you'd find in his eyes.

“Beautiful,” Dean breathed out. You jerked your gaze up to find him looking over your torso with something akin to reverence. He caught your gaze and you blushed before looking away again.

Dean cleared his throat as he busied himself with taking a few more supplies from the first aid kit. Once he had everything laid out, he moved his attention to your wound. He carefully pulled back a corner of the gauze that was taped to your skin before removing it completely, his fingers gently gliding across your flesh, causing goosebumps to rise on your skin.

You gasped as your focus was momentarily diverted when your eyes landed on the wound. It was about an inch and a half long and ran straight across your lower belly. The boys had stitched it up, but the edges were red and inflamed.

“Told you it was bad,” Dean said, taking note of your shocked expression.

He took the bottle of rubbing alcohol and poured a bit onto a cotton ball. “This might sting a little,” he warned before dabbing along the wound. You hissed, but Dean was fast, making quick work of cleaning it.

Next he took some antibacterial cream and rubbed a few dabs of it across the irritated skin gently. You could feel your heartbeat pick up at his touch, and although it hurt, you didn't want him to stop caressing your skin.

Finally he unrolled a long strip of the gauze and cut it before placing it carefully over the wound. He cut some tape off as well, placing it along the sides of the gauze.

“You know,” Dean said quietly. You looked up, but his focus was still on the job at hand. “I really thought we were gonna lose you.”

He went silent as he continued to work, and you thought he was done when he suddenly spoke again. “I really did. But the thought of losing you, of not seeing your smile, not hearing your laugh, not coming home to homemade pies and all the other sweet things you do. Not finding you buried deep in a lore book,” he chuckled. “It was too much.”

Once again silence fell between you. Your head was spinning, and your heartbeat was beating wildly against your rib cage at his words. You never knew he noticed all those things about you or even cared about them.

“I'm not much of a praying man,” Dean said, his gruff voice breaking through your thoughts. “But I prayed. I prayed harder than I ever have in my whole fucking life. I begged God to save you; to just keep you alive, even if it was just a little while longer.”

Dean placed the remaining tape over the last piece of gauze, running his fingers along the edges to make sure it would stay secure. He finally sat back, his eyes locking onto yours.

“Just so I could look into your beautiful eyes one more time and tell you that I love you,” he whispered. Your eyes fluttered and butterflies filled your stomach at his admission.

He reached for your hand when you didn't say anything. He smirked, placing a gentle kiss on the back of your knuckles. “Say something,” he murmured.

You swallowed again, your mouth suddenly feeling very dry. “I...I love you, too,” you said, your voice tiny.

Dean's face broke into a wide grin and before you knew what was happening, he leaned forward, grabbed your face and planted his lips on yours. You felt yourself blushing again once he pulled away. “Sorry,” Dean said sheepishly, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck. “I didn't mean to get so carried away. It's just that I've been wanting to do that for a long time.”

“How long?” you asked quietly.

“Since the first time we met,” Dean admitted, his cheeks growing a soft pink.

It your turn to grin, and with a surge of confidence you didn't know you had, you wrapped your hand around the back of his neck and pulled him into another kiss. Dean's tongue slid over your bottom lip and you opened your mouth to him as his tongue found yours.

You were breathing hard once you finally broke the kiss, and you were startled to find that somewhere between the start of the kiss and now, Dean had settled between your thighs.

However all thoughts flew out the window when Dean started peppering your jawline with kisses. You moaned as he kissed down your neck and over your collarbone.

He reached for the hem of your shirt, and you sat up as he carefully removed it from your torso and pulled it over your head, tossing it over his shoulder before unclasping your bra and adding it to your discarded shirt. He leaned down, continuing his ministrations. He littered your breasts with open-mouthed kisses, his tongue gently caressing each nipple, causing you to moan and arch your back into him. He left your breasts once your nipples were taut, leaving a trail of soft kisses down your torso.

He paused for a moment when he reached the wound, glancing up at you with lust blown eyes. He leaned down, placing a soft kiss to the edge of the gauze, his eyes never leaving yours. “So,” he whispered before placing another kiss a few centimeters away. “Fucking,” he said with another kiss. “Beautiful,” he growled with one last kiss on the other side of the bandage.

By now a mixture of desire and love was coursing through your body, and you reached out for him, needing to have him close again. His lips met yours once more in a passionate kiss.

He settled between your thighs again, the pressure of his bulge settling perfectly against your clit, causing you to roll your hips. He groaned at the friction, and he pulled back, meeting your gaze and searching your face.

“I wanna continue this,” he finally said. “But I don't wanna push you into anything you're not comfortable doing especially with you being hurt. We can wait until you're better and….”

You cut him off with a crash of your lips against his. He was panting hard when you finally pulled away.

“I want to,” you said, rolling your hips again. Dean groaned and shuddered, his eyes closing tightly.

“Fuckin’ eh,” he growled. “You tryin’ kill me before we even get started?”

You giggled and Dean chuckled, leaning down to give your nose a quick peck. “Let me take care of you,” he implored, his earlier mirth now replaced by a hungry look of desire.

You nodded and gave him a shy smile. He leaned down again, giving you a soft kiss before leaning back onto his knees. His fingers slid into the waistband of your sweatpants, but he paused glancing up at you for permission. You nodded again, and he continued, sliding both them and your panties down your legs.

His eyes roamed over your naked body appreciatively and you blushed, fighting against the urge to cover yourself with the sheets. Dean seemed to sense your apprehension because he hummed, a smile on his plump lips. “I've said it twice, and I'll say it a thousand more…. So beautiful,” he said, his voice a throaty whisper.

You shivered and the backs of your eyes stung. You'd never had someone look at you the way Dean was. He was looking at you as if you were a precious jewel. Like a treasure he'd spent his whole life searching for.

Seconds later Dean had completely undressed and was crawling back up the bed towards you. He stopped once he was eye level with you, his forearms on either side of you, holding himself up. He stared into your eyes, a small smile on his mouth.

“You ready?” he asked softly, brushing his thumb gently over your cheekbone. You nodded slowly and bit your lower lip. Dean leaned down to peck your lips before lining himself up with you.

“Dean,” you moaned. Your hands gripped his shoulders and you shut your eyes as he slowly slid into you, giving you the time you needed to adjust. It felt so right, being with him. Here. Like this.

He groaned once he'd bottomed out, and he buried his face into the crook of your neck, kissing and lightly nipping at the skin. When you were ready, you raised your legs around his waist. He took the hint and started moving.

You were sure he'd be rough and set a fast pace. But you were pleasantly surprised when his thrusts were slow and deep. You wrapped your arms around his shoulders, your hands gliding over his toned back, his muscles contracting with each rock of his hips. The realization of this strong man who could take down an entire nest of vamps alone or who could hit a man so hard his jaw would break was on top of you, dawned on you. But it didn't frighten you. He was being careful with you, showering you with love, and holding you like precious china.

“Dean,” you breathed out as the first wave of pleasure assaulted you.

“I know,” he whispered in your ear, his breaths hot and labored. “I've got you,” he said, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you impossibly closer.

He scattered kisses along your neck, one arm leaving you to run his hand down your side, over your hips and down to your thigh. He kneaded the flesh gently before bringing you leg over his waist, affording him a different angle.

You gasped, your hands running up his neck and curling into his hair as he hit your sweet spot. His kisses continued, but he stopped abruptly and groaned as your walls began to softly clench around him.

He snaked his hand between your bodies, finding your swollen clit. You arched your back as he rubbed small circles over the bundle of nerves, bringing you nearer and nearer to your release. With two more thrusts from Dean, you came, his name tumbling from your mouth.

He wasn’t too far behind. His hips stuttered and with a deep grunt and breath of your own name on his lips he came, too, washing your walls with his seed.

He laid on top of you for a few moments, your sweaty bodies plastered together, trying to catch your breaths and come down from your highs. He pulled out gingerly and rolled to his side, pulling you with him. He wrapped his arm snuggly around you while you threw yours over his waist and rested your head on his broad chest.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time, too,” you whispered shyly.

Dean’s grip on you tightened and he breathed in deeply. “Why did you never say anything?” he asked.

“Seriously, Dean?” you asked with a laugh. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not exactly the forward type. Plus...I never thought I’d be someone you’d want.”

It was Dean’s turn to laugh. “(Y/N), how could I not want you?” he asked as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I mean, fuck! You’re the smartest hunter I know - you know your shit. You’re a badass hunter even though you don’t go on many cases. Not to mention you’re drop dead gorgeous.”

You giggled, feeling the heat return to your cheeks. “You’re not half bad yourself,” you said, too nervous to say much else. “I love you,” you murmured, nuzzling your face into his neck and kissing the underside of his jaw.

His hand ran up and down your side in rhythmic patterns. “I love you, too,” he whispered, his voice gruff and throaty. He smiled before placing a soft kiss to your forehead. “Always and forever.”

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

Thank you for reading! If like what you read, let me know!! ❤❤

***Please do not share my content on any other platform without my consent.

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

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@divadinag @mogaruke @calaofnoldor @defenderrosetyler @coffeebooksandfandom @emoryhemsworth @satans-0-spawn @fandom-princess-forevermore

Dean Girls:

@weepingwillowphoenix

#dean winchester x reader #dean winchester x plus size reader #dean x reader #dean winchester smut #supernatural fanfiction #dean winchester fluff #dean winchester angst #dean winchester #supernatural #spn

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