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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 5 months ago

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Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 8: She's The Salt Of The Earth And She's Dangerous]

A/N: Be sure to vote in the poll pinned to the top of my blog AFTER you finish reading!!! 🥰

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

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

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

Chapter title is a lyric from: “She's A Rebel” by Green Day.

Word count: 7.4k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

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“I’m sorry if I was a creep when we first met,” Aegon says. He’s been oddly philosophical since he was burned. “I hadn’t seen a hot single chick in a while, and I wanted to fuck you.”

Cregan siphoned just enough gas from a decrepit Chrysler Sebring in Merna to take the Tahoe two and a half hours west to Little Thunder Bay Campground on the shores of Lake McConaughy, a manmade reservoir and New Deal project from the 1930s. You glance over at Aegon dubiously, amused. “Do I count as hot?”

“Yeah, Chippendales, you’re hot. In like a…you live in a cabin and knit sweaters by a crackling fireplace kind of way.”

You smile. “So you got over that.”

“Oh no, I still want to fuck you. Now I just know you better, so I wouldn’t want to offend you by being obnoxious about it.”

“That’s sweet, I guess. I appreciate your discretion.”

“No problem. If you ever decide you want to take a ride on a less distinguished Targaryen brother, let me know.”

The two of you are fishing from a boat launch, dry splintering planks of wood, opaque rippling water, soft wind and bright sunshine from an aquamarine, cloudless sky. Cregan found the fishing poles in the abandoned RV you’ve moved into, a Winnebago Spirit with one of those stick figure family decals on the back window, Mom, Dad, four lovely children and a dog too, all of whom are perhaps alive but more likely dead and in any case nowhere to be found here in this tranquil corner of western Nebraska, 150 miles from the Wyoming border. Helaena digs worms from the earth, then Rhaena slices them into wriggling segments with a hunting knife and brings them to you and Aegon to be impaled on barbed hooks. Aemond, Rio, Daeron, Luke, and Cregan are swimming about twenty yards down the beach, soaked boxer shorts and nothing else, splashing each other and scrubbing the grime off their skin from a morning spent gathering wood for the firepit and the grill; Ice is paddling joyfully alongside them. Baela floats on her back and peers vacantly up into the vast blue nothingness. Aegon is not permitted in the water, as his leg is an open wound beneath his bandages. You ask him as you recast your fishing line: “Why are you like this?”

“Like what?”

You shrug, smirking guiltily. You thought it was obvious.

Aegon throws back his head and cackles, slow and lazy. “Oh, I get it. A loser.”

“I didn’t say loser.”

“You thought loser.”

“I implied loser.”

“It’s alright. I’ve been called worse things by people I admire much less.” He contemplates his answer as he gazes down into the water, sluggish stoned reverie. Aemond must be almost out of morphine by now. At last Aegon says: “I think the first thing I ever learned was that no matter how hard I tried, no one was ever going to love me. Not in a normal kind of way, Disney movie love, Christmas rom-com love. So I stopped trying. Mother wanted me to play piano, so I bombed the recital. Father wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer, so I skipped class, went golfing and yachting, didn’t even bother to pay someone to write halfway decent essays for me. If they couldn’t love me unconditionally, I wasn’t interested in meeting their conditions.” Then he chuckles, the breeze combing through his hair, ninety degrees and only getting hotter. “I refused to work. All you’ve ever done is work. You must hate me.”

“No, I get it.” You reel in your line; a fish has stolen the worm from your hook, tiny clandestine nibbles. You impale a slimy new victim and recast. “No one wants to be used.”

“Yeah. Exactly. I wasn’t going to spend my life doing shit I didn’t want to do so my parents could brag about me to their insufferable friends and absolve themselves of their mistakes. Mother married a man who didn’t give a fuck about her, Father ignored us all. Me being a success story would have given them the impression they did something right. I couldn’t have that.”

So Aemond had to be the success story instead. You glance down the beach at where he is bursting through the water and slicking back his dripping hair from his face, showing Luke a bone he found in the muddy silt of Lake McConaughy, hopefully not human.

Aegon follows your eyeline. “Aemond went the other way, I guess. Always so pathetically desperate for their approval. Scrabbling for crumbs of it like a rat. That’s what the thing with Alys was all about, it’s the only explanation I have. Older woman, surrogate mother, comforting but chilly, fawning but forbidden, always keeping him at an arm’s length and rewarding his tricks with treats.” He smirks flirtatiously, then sees that he’s hurt you. “Oh, um, I mean…look, it wasn’t…it wasn’t a good thing, you know? He wasn’t happy. It was a seven-year-long psychotic episode, not a relationship.”

“You mentioned that Criston likes Aemond,” you say, pivoting. “The…what is he? A family friend, an assistant?”

“My mother’s personal security guard. And yeah, he cares about Aemond. He’s proud of him, he trust him, he thinks he’s more capable than any of the rest of us, and that’s probably true. It’s definitely true compared to me. But that doesn’t mean Criston always knows how to express it.”

You look out over the water, trying not to imagine Aemond touching Alys, this woman you hate without knowing her face. You wonder if he ever wishes you were more like her: older, clever, entrancing, masterful. “It must have been a strange way to grow up.”

“Cold,” Aegon says. “Hollow. Holidays, birthdays, vacations, everything. You go through the motions but something’s always missing. When you’re little, you think it’s your fault, and then eventually you realize that they’re going to be miserable whether you’re there or not. But you can get out if you’re willing to run far enough.” He scratches at his forearm, and your eyes catch fleetingly on the black ink of his tattoo: It’s not over ‘til you’re underground. You had told Rio something similar when you were stranded on that transmission tower in Catawissa, Pennsylvania. “This is fucked up, and I don’t mean that I don’t feel bad about what happened to Jace, and I get that millions of people have died agonizing deaths, and that all sucks, believe me, I know, but this…” He gestures vaguely, to the zombies and the desolation and the collapse of everything you’ve ever known. “It was kind of my Get Out Of Jail Free card. And in a weird way…sometimes I feel like I’ve been happier since the world ended than I ever was before.”

You smile. You know what he means. “Even if your leg gets infected and we have to saw it off without anesthesia like you’re a Civil War soldier?”

Aegon laughs and shakes his head, his hair flopping around. It’s almost long enough for him to have a man bun like Cregan’s if he wanted one “No, probably not. Also, what’s the Civil War?”

“Forget it.”

“No, now I want to know.”

“It’s kind of a long story.”

“Aemond said something interesting this morning while you were picking blackberries with our favorite Trump supporter,” Aegon tells you, salacious and sly, offering a tantalizing morsel he knows you’re powerless to refuse. He pauses and waits for you to admit it to yourself.

“Fine. Okay. What?”

“He said that when you and Cregan are standing next to each other, you look like you belong together.”

You groan, quite loudly. “I have zero interest in Cregan romantically. Literally zero. I don’t think he sees me that way either.”

Aegon shrugs. “The dating pool is awfully small nowadays, Banana Chip. Anyone who’s not a corpse or an immediate blood relative starts to look tasty.”

“So that’s why you like me.”

Aegon grins, teeth he shows often and easily, so unlike Aemond in every way. “No. I think I’d like you anywhere.” He tugs languidly on his fishing pole. “I want a new golf club.” He forgot his at the house in Broken Bow where Jace died.

“We’ll see.”

“I want new shoes too.” One of his Sperry Bahama sneakers was burned beyond repair and filled with shreds of his own singed flesh, scraps like soft bacon fused with the padding and insole. “And some polos.”

“I’m not a Big Lots.”

“Who the fuck shops at Big Lots?” Aegon’s fishing line jerks, and he yanks hard on the pole before reeling in his catch. Suspended at the end is a long green creature, yellowish spots and a villainous angular face. “That is one ugly bitch.”

“It’s a pike,” you say, and then when you grab it you observe that the misfortunate fish has the barb of the hook piercing not through its lip but one of its bulging, glassy eyes. “Oh my God!”

Aegon squeals, horrified. He offers no meaningful assistance. “That’s so gross, that’s so gross, what are we going to do?!”

“We have to, like, I don’t know, grab the back of the hook from inside its mouth and pull it out of the eyeball, I guess…?!”

“Yeah, awesome. Good luck with that.”

You reach tentatively into the pike’s gaping mouth. Its jaws snap shut, needlelike teeth stinging your wrist. “Ow!”

“Cregan!” Aegon bellows. “Cregan, help!”

Now the others are running to the boat launch to see what’s going on, Helaena and Rhaena from the shore, everyone else from the lake, Luke helping Baela wring the water from her sundress and Ice galloping alongside Cregan. He gets a look at the pike and guffaws, loud and rumbling.

“Poor little guy. That’s some bad luck he’s got.”

“Can you get the hook out?” you ask, eager to surrender the fish, which is still thrashing franticly and gnashing its teeth, mindless cold-blooded death throes.

“Of course I can.” Cregan plucks the pike from your grasp, shoves his massive hand into its mouth, and rips the hook out with one effortless maneuver. The pike is freed, but its eyeball remains speared on the hook. Then Cregan spies blood on your wrist. “You okay there, Miss Chips?”

“Oh yeah. I’m fine.”

“Freaking disgusting, man,” Aegon mutters; he and Rio are ogling the disembodied eyeball, complete with a frayed optic nerve like a tail, with identical, stunned revulsion.

You turn to smile up at Aemond, but he doesn’t notice you. He is staring at Cregan, his sole blue eye narrow and fixed and flat like still water.

~~~~~~~~~~

“The closest town is Ogallala,” Aegon says as he lays his map across the wooden picnic table. The rest of you are seated around him and picking flaky white meat from between the thin, fragile bones of the pike, which Cregan has gutted and cooked on the large metal grill that careless camping families once roasted marshmallows and hotdogs over. Helaena is at the edge of the table and writing in her spider notebook, elegant loops of cursive. Ice is lying on her belly and gnawing on a rabbit she killed for herself, its doomed black eyes gazing up at you.

“That has to be what, ten miles south?” Rio says apprehensively.

Aegon licks grease from his fingers. “Yup. A little more, probably.”

“What about Lemoyne?” Daeron says, pointing. “Or Keystone, or even Belmar? They’re all closer.”

“See how small the names are written?” Aegon tells him. “That means they’re not actual communities. They’re like a few stop signs and maybe a Dollar General and that’s it.”

“I love Dollar General,” Cregan says, nostalgic. “Man, do y’all remember Chicken in a Biskit? I used to park myself in front of the tv and eat boxes and boxes—”

“It has to be Ogallala,” Aemond insists. “We need pharmacies and grocery stores and cars to siphon gas from, we need a real town.”

Rhaena chews her lower lip anxiously. “The Tahoe is empty. We have maybe half a gallon left and that’s it. Just enough to get down to Ogallala if we’re lucky, but not back.”

“So we’ll drive until it dies and then we’ll walk. Cregan has a gas can in the back, if we find fuel we can bring some back to the Tahoe and continue from there.”

“Walk, huh?” Aegon says, looking down at his bandaged left leg, which he can’t put any weight on. He gets around by hopping, leaning against other people (oftentimes against their will), and being carried by Rio.

“Well, you’re not going,” Aemond tells him. “And Baela isn’t either.”

Baela, gazing blankly down at the map, says nothing. A brown striped snake darts through the grass only a few feet from the picnic table, moving swiftly towards the lake, and there are alarmed gasps and yelps.

“Northern water snake,” Helaena says, glancing up from her notebook. “Not venomous.”

“Good,” Rhaena replies with a shudder.

Luke says fearfully as he reads the map: “Aemond, last time we went into a town that big was Broken Bow, and…Jace…the farmhouse…”

Aemond slams his fists down on the table. “We have to, okay? We need food and water. We need bullets. I need more pain meds and bandages for Aegon, I need antiseptic and Neosporin, and Vaseline for when he’s healing, and supplies for when Baela goes into labor too, since I’ve had to use everything I had saved.”

“We need pads and tampons too,” Helaena says as she examines the black-ink inventory in her notebook. “And Advil, lip balm, bars of soap, hair ties, and socks and underwear. And that green jelly aloe vera stuff for Aegon’s sunburn.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Aemond agrees. “We need a lot of things. And we have to refuel so we can keep moving west.”

“We could stay here,” Baela says, so softly that at first you aren’t sure if you heard her right.

“What, Baela?” Rhaena asks gently.

“I want to stay here.” Baela is more resolute now. “I want to have the baby here.”

Nobody knows how to respond. Rio gives you a troubled glance. You nod in agreement, so subtly you doubt anyone else notices. Not an option.

Aemond is calm but unwavering. “Baela, I’m sorry, but that’s not possible.”

She pleads her case. “I like the Winnebago. I like the lake. I’m comfortable here, and we’re out in the middle of nowhere, and I…I think we could make this our home for a while, now that we’ve found someplace like this. Someplace quiet and safe.”

“We’re not safe here, Baela,” Aemond says. “It feels like we’re safe, but we’re not. We aren’t a big enough group to reliably be able to defend ourselves. We don’t have adequate supplies. We have a lake to our backs, sure, but the rest of the shoreline is open for anybody to walk right into, and our visibility is blocked by trees. No one has stumbled across us yet, but that doesn’t mean they won’t. And if they do we’re extremely vulnerable. But when we get to the west coast, we’ll be home.”

“I’m tired of running. I’m tired of being afraid.”

“I understand. I am too.”

“It’s different,” Baela says, abruptly fierce. “You don’t know what this feels like. None of you do. I’ve never given up and I’ve never asked to be taken care of, I’ve always been the strong one, but I’m so goddamn tired, and I want to have my baby here, and I…I…” Her large dark eyes are glistening, haunted. “Every time we’re driving I feel like I see him sitting next to me, or standing out in the middle of the road, and then I have to remember what happened all over again, and…I just…I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Rhaena takes Baela’s hands in her own, skims her thumbs across Baela’s knuckles; Luke rubs her back reassuringly. The rest of you can only offer silent, pitying looks. There are no easy answers, no fortuitous gold strikes, no shortcuts. The only way out is through.

“Whatever you guys decide, I’m leaving either way,” Rio says. “Sophie’s waiting for me in Oregon. I can’t just hang out in Nebraska forever. I’ll walk if I have to.”

“It’s over a thousand miles,” Aegon tells him.

“Doesn’t matter, man. I gotta do it.”

You add: “Obviously, I’d have to go with Rio.”

Both Aemond and Aegon appear startled. “We’ll be on the road again soon,” Aemond promises. “Tomorrow, if we can find gas in Ogallala.”

“I’m not going,” Baela whispers.

“We have to, Baela,” Rhaena implores. “It’ll be alright. We’ll take care of you, and the baby too when the time comes.”

Baela stands, strides to the Winnebago, disappears inside and slams the door behind her.

“She’ll be okay,” Rhaena tells the rest of you. “She’s…you know, she’s shaken up. She’s not thinking clearly. But she’ll realize this was the right decision. The only decision, really.”

“It’s best if we can get set up somewhere permanent before she goes into labor,” Aemond says, as if he’s defending himself. “Traveling with a baby…Baela recovering…it would be very dangerous for all of us.”

“Luke and I are thinking the same things, Aemond. We agree with you.”

He gives Rhaena an appreciative smile, very small but sincere. Then he turns to Daeron. “Baela and Aegon will have to wait here when I go south to Ogallala, since they can’t walk in the event the Tahoe runs out of gas. You’re going to stay behind to protect them.”

“Got it,” Daeron says soberly. All the bullets are gone; his compound bow, fed with arrows fashioned from sticks, is the best weapon you have left. Cregan has his axe, Rio still prefers to bash skulls with the butt of his Remington shotgun, everyone else must make do with hunting knives from that cellar back in Pennsylvania and kayak paddles found here at Lake McConaughy.

Aemond looks around the table. “I’ll need Rio, Cregan, and Luke.”

“And our beloved furball Blue Raspberry Icee,” Aegon says, smirking. “To sniff out any zombies.”

“Yes. Ice too.”

“What about me?” you say, staring incredulously at Aemond.

“Not you. You’re staying here in the RV.”

“If you and Rio are going, I’m going.”

“No, you’re not,” Aemond says. “You’re the best shot, and we all agree about that, but we’re fresh out of bullets. You therefore have no advantage tactically.”

“What’s Luke’s advantage?”

There are awkward chuckles. Aemond leaves the picnic table and gestures for you to follow him. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Why?”

Aemond doesn’t answer; he keeps walking until he’s hidden amongst a small grove of Kentucky coffeetrees, oval emerald leaves and umber seed pods that hang from branches, reminding you of skate egg cases—what some people call mermaid’s purses—you once found washed up on the beach outside Djibouti City. Rio teases you: “Ohhh, you’re in troubleee…”

You swat him on the back of the head; his hair is getting long too, dark curls that flutter in the breeze that comes in off the lake, hot and humid, the infinite wildness of July. “If I’m not going, you have to swear that you’ll—”

“I got it, I got it,” Rio says, blasé and jolly. “I’ll look underneath things, I’ll look on top of things, I’ll look everywhere. Okay?”

Aegon kicks him with his good foot. “Get me a golf club.”

“I’m not a Dick’s!”

“Dicks?! Who brought up dicks, you sicko…?!”

You go after Aemond and meet him in the shade, an island of twilight in the omnipotent golden morning. He pushes you against one of the Kentucky coffeetrees—rough bark to your back, prodding you through your t-shirt—and nuzzles your throat as he presses his hips to yours, blissful clandestine surrender as your knees weaken and you gaze dizzily up into the canopy of leaves.

You sigh: “This is not an explanation. This is a distraction. A very enjoyable one, but a distraction nonetheless.”

“Daeron is good with a bow, but he’s young,” Aemond murmurs. “I need you to help him protect the others.”

“You’ve managed to make this sound like a promotion.”

“And,” Aemond continues. “When things get risky and chaotic, and I’m trying to make sure everyone is safe…I find you being around to be…distracting.”

“Rio doesn’t think I’m a distraction.”

He chuckles, avoidant. “That’s not an equivalent situation.”

“I get that Luke has binoculars, but I am also perfectly capable of using binoculars, and I could borrow his and he could stay here. I really don’t think he’d mind being benched, he’d probably prefer it—”

“I always ask you to stay near Rio, and you never do, and then I have to worry about you getting lost or bitten or imperiled in any one of a million other ways.”

“Because it’s not that simple! Rio gets it, I have to be able to improvise—”

Suddenly, Aemond pulls away and asks: “Do you trust me?”

You are bewildered. “What?”

“Because I could understand if you don’t.”

You search his scarred face; he has that look like he’s trying not to reveal too much of himself, to show that he’s nervous or vulnerable or afraid. You touch your palm to his ravaged cheek, your voice soft. “I trust you, Aemond.”

He seems relived. “Good. Then please stay here.”

“You’ll watch out for Rio?” you say threateningly.

“Of course.”

“And yourself too.”

He grins, those small secretive teeth he loves to hide. “That’s the plan.”

“And you’ll check under things and on top of things, and you’ll remember what I said about the racks? When you go into stores and you’re rummaging through—?”

Aemond kisses you, warm and slow and kind, the curve of his lips pleased and mischievous. “It’s flattering that you’re so concerned.”

“And don’t forget the pads and tampons.”

His scarred eyebrow rises half an inch. “Oh?”

“I’m already having pre-period cramps. I’ll need supplies in a few days.”

“You’ll have them. Don’t fear.” Then he studies you, concerned, his brow furrowing and his palm testing your cheek and forehead. “You feeling okay? You’re sure that’s all it is?”

“Oh yeah, totally. It’s very routine at this point, I’ve had a decade to get accustomed.”

“Alright. If there’s anything else you think of before we head out, I’ll add it to the list.” He takes your hand and examines the shallow scratches left on your wrist by the needlelike teeth of the pike. “Let me clean and wrap that up for you. I think I have just enough bandages left.”

“Your worst nightmare came true,” you joke. “I was bitten after all.”

Aemond doesn’t laugh, doesn’t even smile.

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s long after nightfall and you and Aegon are keeping watch just outside the Winnebago Spirit, slumped in folding camping chairs people once told their legends from: scary stories, workplace grievances, familial mythology. In the firepit, logs split and pop, and embers glow a bloody red. You’re waiting for the Tahoe to return and trying not to think about the possibility it might not.

“These suck,” Aegon says, garbled by a mouthful of Cheddar Whales, grimacing at the bright blue box. “Why do you and Rio eat these? They’re like…dodgy Goldfish.”

“Are you kidding?! They’re way better than Goldfish! Goldfish don’t taste like anything.”

“And Cheddar Whales taste like salty cardboard. The American Dream.” Aegon passes the box back to you. “They better come back with some SpaghettiOs or Rice-A-Roni or something. I can’t survive on Cregan’s overcooked fish.” He lights a Marlboro Gold cigarette by sticking it into the fire and takes a deep drag, looking up at the stars. Aemond gave him the last of the morphine before he left, and Aegon is floating on a feathery, narcotic cloud.

You say after at last working up the nerve: “So you’re a slut, right?”

He snickers, firelight dancing on his sunburned face. “Slut, loser, you’ve got me all figured out.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yeah, I guess I’m a slut. Why?”

“Have you ever had trouble…” Your hands flail around aimlessly; it’s so awkward to say out loud. “You know…getting it in?”

“No, not really. But I’m hung like a hamster.” He looks over at you, curious shimmering stoned blue eyes. “Technical difficulties, Chip And Dip? Not enough dipping going on?”

“Forget it. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“You’re probably just nervous. Aemond’s a doctor, he’d be able to tell if you had something wonky down there, like those chicks who are born without a vagina. Or with two vaginas. Jesus Christ, can you imagine the possibilities? Why can’t I meet someone like that?”

You stare into the fire, discouraged. “I’m going to ruin everything.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that. Aemond will assume it’s his fault. He thinks everything is his fault.”

Through the darkness, you spot headlights bobbing as the Tahoe approaches on bumpy dirt roads. “Oh, thank God. They’re back.”

“About time. If Rio didn’t find me a new golf club, I’m going to drown him in the lake.”

“He could break you in half.”

“But he wouldn’t.”

“No.”

“Because he likes me too much.”

“Right.”

“Maybe you like me too,” Aegon says as he exhales smoke, his glazed eyes listing to you, his grin crooked and drowsy. “Just a little bit.”

You smile reluctantly. “I might.”

“Cool.” He beams up at the stars, and then says again: “Cool.”

As the massive SUV rolls to a halt, the headlights cascading over you and so bright they’re nearly blinding, you notice the red letters on the grill: GMC. “That’s not the Tahoe,” you say, panicked.

“What? Then who is it?”

“I don’t know.” You stand up, instinctively reaching for one of your M9s; but they’re both empty. All the guns are. Your hand drops to your side.

Aegon, unable to rise on his own, remains in his chair and grips the armrests tightly. He whispers: “Should we go inside…?!”

“They’ve already seen us. But they don’t know who’s in the RV.” Rhaena, Baela, Helaena. With a shiver like a bolt of cold lightning, you recall what Aemond said at the bowling alley back in Shenandoah, Ohio: I don’t want them to know we have women with us.

The GMC Yukon is still running when two men step out, the headlights disorientingly bright. They are both armed, you see immediately, pistols that you’d guess are Colts. Aegon’s hand juts out and closes around your forearm as the strangers approach. They are both young, maybe twenty, and wearing jeans, camo jackets, and baseball hats like they’re going hunting. They stand in the yellow-white glow of the headlights as they watch you.

“Hi,” you say congenially, forcing a smile.

The men glance at each other, then one greets you with a nod. “Howdy.”

“We’re set up here,” you say. “But it’s a big campground. You’re welcome to any of the other spots.”

The man who spoke earlier chuckles and scratches at his short beard. You steal a glimpse back at Aegon: his eyes are huge and horrified.

“It’s real quiet on the lake,” you continue. “We haven’t had any problems, and we’ve been here a few days. It’s a good place. We’re happy to share it. We don’t…” You deliberate what words to use. “We aren’t interested in making trouble. We just want to be left alone.”

The man replies: “I camped here every single summer growing up, learned to fish here, swam in the water with my cousins, brought my girlfriends here to fuck. And now you’re inviting me to stay? You’re not from here. I can tell by your accent. This is my backyard. You’re the one who should be asking for permission.”

Aegon is making a low, whimpering sound; his fingernails are digging into the defenseless, downy underside of your forearm. “We don’t have anything of value,” you say, your voice trembling.

“Uh huh.” The stranger’s gaze flicks to the Winnebago.

“We found it. There’s no gas, no keys. Two of the tires are flat. It’s just shelter.”

“Who else is in the RV?”

“No one.”

The second man is squinting at Aegon. “Is he a cripple?”

“He was burned. That’s why we’re resting here for a while, so he can heal.”

The first man points to the bandage on your wrist. “Did you try to kill yourself? My neighbor did that when her kid got eaten. Slit her veins open out in the middle of the street. Bad scene.”

“I got mauled by a fish,” you reply numbly.

He laughs, a slow, rolling, mocking sort of sound, not taking his eyes off you. Then they drop to the Beretta M9s you have holstered at your waist. “Are those loaded?”

“Yes.”

He signals to the nearest Kentucky coffeetree. “Prove it. Shoot that tree.” You stare at its trunk, stark in the headlights of the strangers’ SUV. Long seconds tick by, the only sound the idling of the engine and the crackling of the firepit. “You can’t,” the man says, grinning. “Because you’re out of bullets. But I’m not.”

He raises his pistol and fires, a thunderclap, a mechanical roar. A small circular wound appears in the tree. Aegon shrieks and tries to stand; he tumbles to the earth when the raw, weeping flesh beneath his bandages betrays him. The RV door flies open and Daeron is the first one out, clutching his compound bow but still blinking his way out of the dreams he was jolted from. He won’t be able to nock one of his makeshift arrows before they shoot him.

“What the hell’s going on—?!”

“Drop it!” the stranger shouts, and both he and his companion aim their pistols at Daeron. He freezes. Baela, Rhaena, and Helaena exit the RV and begin screaming, clinging to each other.

“Do what they ask,” you tell Daeron, trying to remain calm. With great hesitancy, he sets his bow on the earth and puts his empty palms in the air. There are hunting knives inside the RV, you think. Where did we store them? In a drawer, in a cabinet?

The men are now herding you all into the RV, jabbing the barrels of their pistols against your backs and bellies. “Let’s go, everybody in,” the first one says. The second man hooks an arm forcefully under one of Aegon’s and drags him through the threshold, Aegon yowling as his burned leg smacks against the doorframe. The second man forces Aegon and Daeron to kneel on the floor at the front of the RV near the driver’s seat; the other one arranges the women at gunpoint, instructing you to squeeze together to sit in a row on the floral couch. Helaena—farthest from you and closest to the kitchenette booth—is sobbing and covering her ears. Rhaena appears to be hyperventilating. Baela’s head is held high, her face furious and defiant.

Aemond, Rio, Cregan, please come back…

“Now this is interesting,” the first man is saying to his friend. He uses his pistol to indicate to each of you. “We’ve got G.I. Jane, this delicate little sweetheart, a pregnant lady, and Cinderella. Where should we begin…?”

You glance at Rhaena, catch her wide frenzied eyes, then look meaningfully at the drawers across the aisle near the kitchenette stove and sink. Knife? you mouth.

It takes her a moment to realize what you mean, then she inclines her head, an elusive nod. She remembers where they are, where they were stored once she cleaned them this afternoon in the lake water. That’s good; but in order for Rhaena to grab a large serrated hunting knife, the men will need to be distracted.

“There’s a bed in the back,” the second man is saying. “I can see it from here, down the hallway…”

Your gaze is darting around the Winnebago. Aegon is yelling something; the second man pistol-whips him, fortunately not hard enough to fracture his skull.

“Don’t worry,” the first man tells Aegon, background noise you try to ignore as you search for an opportunity. “You’ll get to watch…”

Helaena is trying to get your attention, staring at you with her wide, gleaming blue eyes. You furrow your brow at her, not understanding…and then you see the burlap strap she’s looped around her wrist. Her messenger bag must be in the kitchenette booth beside her. And as you watch, and only for a second, she arranges her fingers in the shape of a gun.

The Ruger, you realize, amazed, that tiny revolver she was always so repelled by. Helaena never used it, but she still has it. And it’s loaded.

Baela is arguing with the men, words you tune out. Helaena points to you, but you shake your head. There’s no way for her to get the Ruger to you without them seeing. You mouth to Helaena, your face severe: You have to do it. Then you look to the first man, presently waving his pistol in Baela’s face.

“I’d like to go first,” you say casually, and all the noise stops.

“No, no, no, I’ll do it,” Aegon tells the men. “You want a blowjob? You want to fuck me in the ass? I’m down. I’m not scared of no dick. I experimented in college.”

Both strangers burst into hysterical laughter. “That’s a mighty generous offer,” the second one says, swiping a tear from his eye. “But that’s not the team we’re on, is it, Wesley?”

The first man, Wesley, is smiling down at you. His gaze sweeps over your body, from your bare feet to your eyes, calm and level. “Why do you want to go first, darling?”

Shoot him, Helaena. Shoot him right now. “I’ve never done it before. I figure I should give it a try before it’s too late.”

Helaena whips the Ruger out of her burlap messenger bag and opens fire. She winces each time it goes off, and her aim is terrible; bullets pierce the ceiling and the walls, striking nowhere near Wesley or his accomplice, but their panicked ducking buys valuable seconds. Daeron and Aegon tackle the man closest to them and wrestle the pistol from his hands. Aegon presses the barrel to his skull, pulls the trigger, kills him instantly. Rhaena flies to one of the drawers and yanks out a hunting knife ten inches long. She buries it in Wesley’s throat, the blade disappearing until the hilt rests on his collarbone. When she rips it free, scarlet blood jets from his severed carotid artery, spraying you, soaking you. Blood is in your eyes and nostrils, hot coppery carnage; when you scream, you can taste it in your mouth.

People are reaching for you and telling you to calm down, that they’ll help you, but you can’t wait. You use your t-shirt to mop as much of the blood as you can from your face and bolt through the door of the RV, running towards the lake. You drop to your knees on the sand and splash yourself, cool moonlit rivulets that wash the blood away. You’re trembling, you’re crying, and when somebody grabs you by the arm you scream and strike out at them, clawing like an animal.

“It’s me,” Aemond says, and only then do you get a good look at him, blood and lake water beading on your eyelashes. He’s wiping blood off your face with his palms, he’s inspecting you for fresh wounds. “Don’t fight, it’s me, it’s me, whose blood is this, what happened—?!”

“You were right,” Baela says to Aemond from where she stands on the sand, a hand resting on her belly. Drifting from the RV are the voices of the others who have just returned: Rio, Cregan, Luke. “We’re not safe here.”

~~~~~~~~~~

The next night, rain falls as you lie entangled with Aemond in the attic bedroom of a ranch house in Red Desert, Wyoming, flashing lightning and flickering candles illuminating bare skin. You are kissing feverishly, your hands all over each other, and Aemond is pushing himself into you; or, rather, he is trying to. There is pain, and you can feel your body turning treasonous, rejecting him, shrinking away from him, fearing that you’ll never be able to satisfy him.

No, no no no…

His voice is hushed and gentle as his lips brush your ear. “Hey, you’re shaking, why are you shaking?”

“I’m okay, I’m fine, keep going.” And then, when he stops: “No, Aemond, don’t—”

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You have to. I’ll be okay, I promise.”

Instead, he lies down beside you and turns your face to his, fingerprints on the slope of your jaw. He asks again, more firmly: “Why are you shaking?”

All the walls and arches of you collapse, stones tumbling to crack against the earth. You are suddenly fighting tears. Your words come out in a whisper. “I want this to be real.”

He studies your face, distressed. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t want to ruin it. I don’t want to lose you. I never thought I’d have something like this and now I’m so afraid of fucking it up.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“That’s what Jace thought.”

Aemond pulls you against his chest and holds you as you sink through him into dark, cold, watery dreams, and doesn’t make any more promises he can’t keep.

~~~~~~~~~~

“What time is it on the East Coast right now?” you ask Rio. It’s May and almost a hundred degrees every day in Djibouti City—arid, rainless, sun glare and dust that sting your eyes—so the Navy has you building at night when they won’t have to deal with quite so many Seabees dropping over from heatstroke. Outside the day is turning to a soft lavender dusk and your shift will begin soon. You are dressed—sand-colored t-shirt, camo pants, work boots—and toweling off your hair, still wet from the shower.

Rio is sprawled across the floor of your room, taking up almost all of it; housing at Camp Lemonnier consists of converted shipping containers, each outfitted with its own perpetually whirring air conditioning unit. He is reading Fifty Shades Of Grey. “Like seven hours behind here, so early afternoon, I guess.” Then he looks up at you, suspicious. “Why?”

“I should probably call.”

“Should you really?”

“I want to. I’ll feel guilty if I don’t.”

Rio shakes his head and returns his attention to his reading material. “I’m not going to tell you what to do.”

“You love telling me what to do.”

“I wish you loved listening.” He flips a page, puzzled. “Why the fuck does Sophie like this book so much…?”

You open Facebook Messenger on your phone and make a call. The wifi isn’t good for videos, but old-fashioned audio calls usually work okay. There is an answer on the fourth ring.

“Yeah?” she says, and you can hear the entire house when she turns on speakerphone: the squeaking of the recliner, the droning of a talk show, indistinct speech and chuckling from other people, glass—cups, bottles, baking dishes, ashtrays—clinking sharply.

“Hi, Mama! Happy Mother’s Day!”

“Aw, ain’t you sweet to call.” And you are testing her voice like water from a tap, icy cold, hot enough to scald. At the moment, Mama sounds perfectly lukewarm. “I didn’t count on hearing from you. I know how busy you are.”

That’s a landmine that you step gingerly around. “We definitely have a lot going on here, and there’s the time difference and everything…but I wanted to make sure to say hi, even if I can’t talk for long. What are you up to today?”

“Oh, nothing much.” You hear her smoking: breathe in, breathe out, a cunning sort of pause as she decides how to proceed. Of course there were no extravagant festivities planned. Nothing ever felt like a real holiday at home: Mama getting sloshed and burning the turkey on Thanksgiving, Christmas presents that had to be returned for grocery and gas money, fistfights and doors ripped off hinges on New Year’s Eve. You had decided years ago that Hallmark channel magic was pure fiction…but sometimes you get glimpses of it now. Thanksgiving dinner in some unceremonious chow hall with Rio and your other friends feels more like a holiday than anything else you’ve ever known. “You still in Africa?”

“It’s Djibouti, Mama, I told you. It’s on the Horn. Across the sea is Yemen and Saudi Arabia.”

“Why can’t they put y’all to work in your own goddamn country?”

“Well, we do that too sometimes.” You stall, listening to her smoking. Rio glances up at you from where he’s still reading on the floor. “They have some incredible beaches here. Yesterday morning we went down to the water and there were all these cute kids playing, and they only spoke French but Rio showed them how to play tic-tac-toe by drawing a board in the sand—”

“I like the beach,” she says, and you know you’ve made a mistake. “You remember that?”

Deflated now: “Yeah, Mama. I remember. Are the boys going to take you to Virginia Beach this summer?”

She scoffs. “We’ll see, but I doubt it. It’s expensive, girl.”

You sigh deeply. Rio was right. I shouldn’t have called. “We talked about this. I need to be saving up to get my own house one day, and my own car, and all those things I’ll need to have a life when I get out of the Navy—”

“And what about my house?!” Mama cries, damn near wails. “I’m gonna lose it! I can’t make the payments!”

You reply calmly: “Mama, that’s your house. That’s your business. And you’ve got more than one kid still living at home long after they’ve turned eighteen, so they need to be the people you’re asking to help, not me.”

“You’re gonna let your Mama be homeless? Is that what you called to tell me on Mother’s Day? What the hell kind of daughter are you?”

“I got out!” you shout into the phone, and Rio is scrambling off the floor to rush to you. “I’m learning things and I’m making money and I’m building schools and hospitals on the other side of the fucking planet, and you can’t be proud of me because you think it means you’ve failed, but the truth is that you could have gotten out too! All of you could have! But you didn’t, it was me, it was just me, and now you hate me for it!”

“You need to come home now,” Mama says. “You gotta take care of me, take care of your Mama. You only got one and she needs you, so you gotta heed me. That’s what’s right.”

“I am not going to spend the rest of my life watching you get wasted in that filthy house, and I’d work where, at the Dollar General? At Arby’s? And get knocked up by the first guy who shows any interest?”

“You’re giving me heart palpitations. I’m gonna have to go to the emergency room and it’s all your fault.”

Rio is whispering into your other ear, one of his massive palms resting on the back of your neck: “Just hang up. It’s not worth it. You can hang up, just hang up…”

“I want things to be normal,” you tell Mama, you plead, tears stinging in your eyes. “I’ve tried so hard to get along with everyone, and help you as much as I can, but no matter what I do it’s not enough, and you’re always mad at me, and you’re always fighting with me—”

“You’re damn right I’m fighting with you, because you’re a spiteful, selfish child.”

“Hang up,” Rio is murmuring. “Hang up, hang up, hang up…”

“Mama,” you say, your voice strangled. “I’m sorry. I have to go now.”

“When I’m homeless, you know you got no one but yourself to blame—”

You hit the red button to end the call, throw your phone down onto the bed, stare at the wall and swallow noisily, choking back sobs. You won’t let yourself cry. You’ve cried enough for them already. You have to keep moving forward. The only way out is through. “You were right,” you say to Rio at last, quiet and raspy. Your hands are trembling. “I shouldn’t have called.”

“Hey.” He grabs your face roughly, forces you to look at him with your miserable shimmering eyes, grins hugely. “I’m your mom now, bitch.”

You laugh as tears spill down your cheeks, let him bury you in one of his smothering bear hugs, cling to him like a life raft in a storm.

#aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen #aemond x you #aemond x reader #aemond targaryen x y/n #aemond targaryen x you #aemond fanfiction

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pcttrailsidereader · 1 year ago

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What's It Like to Hike the PCT This Year? "Grueling" Say Hikers

This is an excerpt of an article in the San Francisco Chronicle written by Gregory Thomas. The basic message is the one that we have been anticipating for months and hearing for weeks. The huge Sierra snowpack has created significant challenges for all but the most fit and experienced hikers.

Coming over Walker Pass in the southern tail of the Sierra Nevada is a view that has turned hundreds of hikers off of the Pacific Crest Trail this year: an endless landscape of undulating snow punctuated by jagged granite peaks and ridges extending as far as the eye can see.

Venturing there means traversing the slushy, crunchy, treacherous remnants of winter’s historic snowpack coating the High Sierra all the way to Lake Tahoe along a remote 400-mile stretch with mortally threatening pitfalls and few easy exits. Under such intimidating circumstances, most long-distance PCT hikers have opted to bail in the Bishop area and skip the Sierra until later in the year or abandon it altogether.

But where many see misery, a small class of gritty mountain walkers sees a tempting challenge.

“I got goosebumps” soaking in the scene at Walker Pass, said Abraham Espinoza, a 29-year-old school counselor in Sacramento who goes by the trail name Snow Leopard. “It’s not like I’m pioneering, but with all the fear surrounding this record-high snow year, I felt this cosmic calling to step into that unknown.”

Espinoza embarked in early May, when the snow was still high and deep even in the valleys, and spent a month grinding through the mountains alone. He arrived at Sonora Pass many pounds lighter and with a scraggly goatee, earning credit as the first PCT thru-hiker to make it across the High Sierra this year.

Other intrepid backpackers have since crossed successfully, but their numbers are down substantially from years past. Fewer than 200 — mostly Europeans, notably — have signed into a logbook at a Sonora Pass resort considered the unofficial record of thru-hiker arrivals, according to a manager there. Last year, by comparison, nearly 800 hikers marked the book.

Most hikers this year have taken a month to cross the range. For their trouble, they can claim to have experienced a world-class landscape few people have seen in its unique condition.

The High Sierra, with its dramatic granite peaks, cobalt lakes and lush alpine meadows, is arguably the pinnacle highlight of the PCT. Summertime thru-hikers often contend with snow at the higher elevations, but typically they follow a gravelly footpath, flecked at points with bright wildflowers, and enjoy leisurely detours to shimmering lakes.

Brian “Travelinbeat” York traverses the iconic and treacherous ice chute on Forester Pass, the highest point on the Pacific Crest Trail, ahead of Caleb “Rabbit” Sparks. Jess Cooper

But in early summer this year there was no trail; it was buried under snow deep enough in places to conceal all but the crown of a Douglas fir. Hikers carried the tools of mountaineering — ice axes, crampons — or trudged along in snowshoes and navigated icy expanses and mountain passes primarily by hewing to pixelated trail lines shown in their smartphone apps and GPS watches. Lacking bootpack to follow, some at times resorted to directional hand compasses and old-fashioned dead reckoning.

Lakes were ice rinks. Streams flowed high and fast. Critical footbridges had been badly mangled by the winter’s heavy snow loads. Flat stretches that in other years offer hikers relief from the constant ups and downs of mountain walking had melted and refrozen into an ossified ocean of rolling snowdrifts pocked with honeycomb minefields of ankle-turning depressions called suncups.

“The Sierra this year was categorically light-years beyond the hardest hiking I’ve ever done — physically and psychologically grueling,” said Brian York, a 39-year-old bartender from Virginia.

York, who goes by the trail name Travelinbeat, hiked the Continental Divide Trail last year and the Appalachian Trail the summer before — both solo. For the Sierra, he buddied up with two other hikers “for safety and sanity’s sake.”

An estimated 1 million hikers, backpackers and day visitors set foot on the PCT each year, according to the Pacific Crest Trail Association. But this season, closed roads, trails and campgrounds have kept the High Sierra virtually out of reach.

Suncups — honeycomb minefields of ankle-turning depressions in snowdrifts — were in abundance on the snowy Pacific Crest Trail route and a constant nuisance to hikers. Brian York

The price of those moments was “battling attrition,” York said.

“You’re not really hiking. It’s very severe Type-2 advanced hiking,” said Jess Cooper, a 20-year-old UCLA student whose trail name is Shade and was one of York’s trail buddies. “The people who have gone through were dead-set on going. It’s this mix of pride, stubbornness and determination.”

Hiking past about 2 p.m. was infeasible because the afternoon heat would cook the ground into slush, hikers said. They’d compensate by waking in the middle of the night — strapping on frozen clothing and rolling up soggy tents — and starting their hikes at 2 a.m. to get the benefit of hardened ice underfoot.

Some said they consumed 6,000 calories per day yet came out of the mountains having shed 10 or 15 pounds.

The most challenging part of Cooper’s journey came while crossing 12,000-foot Glen Pass in the backcountry of Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park. To descend its steep north side, Cooper and her hiking partners had to face the slope and kick a snow ladder down a face of deteriorating ice one step at a time.

Brian “Travelinbeat” York slowly descends the steep slope of Glen Pass. It was “a very terrifying experience,” said Jess Cooper, one of York’s hiking partners.Jess Cooper

Partway down, the snow became soft and sloppy, making a self-arrest extremely difficult if a hiker were to slip and fall, Cooper said.

“You’re either going to slide a few thousand feet into a frozen lake where you can die, or hit a rock on the way,” she said.

“I personally really hated a lot of the steep traverses because they took so long that your mind would go wild with thoughts like, ‘Why am I doing this? There’s no need to be here doing this,’ ” she said.

Cooper’s trio crossed Glen Pass without issue, but a group behind them wasn’t as fortunate. After slipping and tumbling down the slope, a hiker dislocated his shoulder and had to be airlifted out by emergency responders, according to posts on PCT Facebook groups. He reportedly wasn’t wearing crampons.

Espinoza, the first through the High Sierra, fell into a tree well coming down a ravine and heard the creek below raging just under the soft snow.

“That was a close call,” he said.

Upon signing into the hiker register at Sonora Pass in June, he was written up in the Union Democrat newspaper and has become a minor trail celebrity. For a while, thru-hikers would stop and ask for selfies with the man who conquered the Sierra solo.

“It was very rewarding to get those reactions and have an ice-breaker with people because I was alone for so long,” Espinoza said. “But it’s settled down now to where I’m just an average PCT hiker.”

#snow #snowpack #Abraham Espinoza #Sierra

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