#verse: each of us is a nest of lies

[positivelybeastly]

The Only Paradise is Paradise Lost

It was, all things considered, an inevitability.

Beast had run the math, as he was wont to do. Every move was calculated, to the best of his considerable ability, and every person whose desk or attention or mind it would fly through was carefully examined - how they might react, who they might tell, when they would reach their breaking points.

When their proverbial frogs in boiling water would croak or jump.

It had, thus far, been frighteningly accurate. He did, after all, know them all so very well, know their tolerances, their limits, their triggers, their comfort zones. It made it easier to curate the flow of information to make sure that his requests (demands, though he would never frame them as such) would go through, unopposed, if he could make sure that certain words were adjusted here, a line changed there, a statistic massaged there.

More than one Quiet Council meeting had passed where he had given each and every member of the tables a slightly different report, the overall tenor the exact same so that there were no glaring omissions or revelations, but just the right details tweaked. What would horrify Pryde would be fine with Shaw - but Pryde wouldn't notice if word choices were made with care to avoid offending her delicate sensibilities. So far, it was going swimmingly.

Unfortunately, all requests to do with resurrection had to go through individuals who were much harder to influence, who were close knit and cloistered together for safety. Egg, Proteus, Tempus, Hope, Elixir, they were - tricky. He had foreseen a problem eventually. The probabilities kept rising with each request.

How he would deal with it was a different matter, that would depend on which one raised a complaint, which one decided to come see him, but he'd thought about it.

Enough that it didn't surprise him to see that they had chosen Elixir as their representative. But not enough that it didn't still make him frown. He had . . . rather hoped it would be any of the others. They would be. Easier. He didn't know them as well. Most of them had never trusted him, because they were ignorant brats who didn't know how the world worked.

But Elixir . . .

His eyes, a cold, unfamiliar blue, flicked up and over the rim of his glasses as Josh made his presence known. They flicked back down to his tablet as he continued to prepare X-Force's upcoming briefing notes - as with all information he chose to share these days, very carefully curated.

"Is there a problem with my request?"

@ncrosha

[positivelybeastly]

"I talk so that I can hear intelligent conversation. There's precious little of it to be had on this island, and quite frankly, this entire interaction is only continuing that trend. By my standards, I've done you quite a favour, and all you can do is whine."

Beast shook his head in irritation, silently glad for the reassurance that his giving up on people had been well-founded. He'd tried for too long to help and gotten shit all for it in return, and every time the habit tried to come back out of sheer force, people like Shiori were nice enough to remind him why he'd stopped.

The Director of X-Force snorted, almost violently at her question, and he gave her a look of pure, concerted sardonicism, choosing his words very carefully so that nothing he said could be used against him if Sinister got ahold of this footage and wished to use it as leverage in the Quiet Council chambers.

"What am I going to do about it? Why, nothing, of course. Nathaniel Essex, the fruity little bitch known colloquially as Mister Sinister, is a member of the Quiet Council, the only body on this green Earth that I answer to. Why would I act against a political representative of the nation that I am pledged to defend? If he's chosen to turn you into a non-consenting surveillance device, who am I to judge? I'm sure he has a good reason for it."

A spurious answer, of course - the amount that he'd done to undermine various members of the Council as it suited him, and the amount of times he'd outright flaunted their authority to suit his own agendas, scarcely bore counting, but was he going to admit that? In a recording? Where it could be used against him?

Why, fuck no, he wasn't.

"I'm merely giving you the information to act upon as you will. You are, after all, a free agent." He glanced at her eye significantly, his meaning plain, his mockery silent.

"Well. A mostly free agent."

“I don’t know you from a crack in the wall so I don’t know if you talk just to hear your own voice or if you’re as direct as a brick to the head.” Shiori closed her still-good eye; her mind was feeding off his annoyance and the pain wasn’t helping her keep it under control either. Like a sponge, that small tumour of anger was starting to grow in the middle of her brain.

Hearing the sloshing of water, her eye opened momentarily to spy the offer drink. Probably to get her to shut up while she drenched her parched throat. And stave off the need to vomit. She braced it against her side as he talked, thumb and forefinger flicking the white plastic cap off into the distance somewhere, forgotten and uncared for. She reminded herself to take small sips so as not to upend her entire belly of water onto the ground.

On hearing that she was just another tool, however, she paused in her drink. She should be upset, more than she was capable of, and yet she felt not a damn thing about this revelation. She knew from the get-go that Essex had some ulterior motive to let her wander around, unleashed. And now it was finally laid before her. Another tool in his belt to likely throw away once he was done using her.

“Exciting isn’t the word I’d use. The real question is, knowing what you know, what are you going to do about it?” Another sip and a stifled burp punctuated the end of that question.

[hatchetfield-omegaverse]

Hail Petey, Full of Grace (2/5)

By: Myself & @daisyybellls

AO3

Chapter 1

Chapter Summary:

“Oh, his grandchild?” Jerry says with the shit eating grin on his face. “I thought it was an immaculate conception? You're telling me Stephanie that, on top of being an accomplice to assaulting two counselors, your boyfriend also lied to the whole camp.”

Shit. Steph bites her tongue when she realizes what she'd done. What a rookie mistake, revealing Pete's lie like that. She Knew better than that. Honestly. Luckily, Steph has years of experience at avoiding being caught in a lie. Experience that she's more than happy to put to use if it means keeping Pete out of trouble.

“No,” Steph says, keeping her voice measured, “it was an immaculate conception, just like Pete said. My dad has just uh… offered to take Peter in in case his brother didn’t accept him. Like, uh shoot, what’s that guy's name?”

“Joseph.” Boy Jerry says through gritted teeth. “His name was Joseph”

“Right!” Steph snaps her fingers. “Joseph. See if Grace is right about this whole Mother Mary thing, which she is, that would make me Joseph, right?”

A/N:

@daisyybellls: thank you so much to my co-writer girlwithcateyes or editing this chapter (and adding 1200 words bc my brain is finals mush) your the best, and a great big thank you to my friend and ao3 user randomramblingsofme for helping me come up with all the good jokes in this Chapter.

Note: I looked up the bible verses featured in this chapter and picked the translation that would work best, so they might not all match up to being in the same version, but also this is a Hatchetfield fanfic so I don't think anyone cares. I care so now you need to know

Chapter 2: The Annunciation

-

“Mom, Dad,” Grace says, pushing her peas around. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the Virgin Mary lately.”

Both of their forks stop moving at the same time. Karen and Mark look at each other and then over at Grace.

“Oh honey, you aren’t thinking of becoming a Catholic are you?” Karen furrows her brows. Grace gasps, she’d never. Catholics were idol worshipers who prayed to the dead, she would sooner die than convert to Catholicism.

“Now, let’s not jump to any conclusions, Mother.” Mark says. “It’s normal for a young girl to be curious about such matters. Let's at least hear her out before passing judgment.”

“No I just.” She bites her lip; she can’t just come out and tell her parents about Steph yet, but then she remembers the fifth commandment. “Well there’s this person at school who's experiencing an unexpected pregnancy, and I was trying to find a way to minister to them.”

“Oh lord above.” Karen says, bringing a hand to her chest. There's a metallic clink as her fork hits the plate.“I wasn’t aware that something like that happened at Hatchetfield High, do you think we should pull you out?”

“Oh no!” Grace says. Hatchetfield High might have been a nest of sin, but even Daniel needed to go to Babaylon. As frightening as it could be, Grace knew that saving the souls of her fellow classmates was worth witnessing the sins that she did. “It’s nothing like that, I just think that they just need some extra counseling during their time of need, and I thought Mary would be a good example for them.”

“Well then of course dear!” Karen says “It was important that she said yes to God because otherwise Jesus wouldn’t exist.”

“Your Mother is right,” Mark chimes in, “why I believe that all young ladies should aspire to be as virtuous as Mary was.”

“Do you know who it is?” Karen asks after a moment of silence. “We’ve put aside some funds at the church, and I’d love for some of that money to go to someone in need.”

“I doubt that Stephine Lauter will need any money.” Grace snorts, sawing a piece of piece of her meatloaf. Oh fudge! She hadn’t meant to let that out. She’d promised not to tell anyone. Well cats out of the bag now, and besides, her parents were good, god honoring people. They would want to help Stephanie as best they could.

“Isn’t that the Mayor’s daughter?” Mark asked, brows furrowing.

Grace nods her mouth full of meatloaf. She was going to mention the award Steph got for having sex, but if her parents knew that there was a secret sex ring at Hatchetfeld they’d pull her out for sure, and then she wouldn’t be able to minister to all the lost souls there! She supposed that some secrets would have to just stay secrets. For everyone's sake.

“Interesting,” Karen murmurs, “very interesting.”

Grace continues chewing her meatloaf. She hadn’t meant to reveal Stephaine’s secret but it was better that an adult knew. But now that someone knows, they’ll tell Steph’s dad! Then he can help her out! Get her the support she needs. That's what parents do: they help their children who are struggling.

-

Grace looks at Pete standing up on that stage, and something finally clicks in her head. She finally gets why some Catholics called Mary The New Arc Of The Covenant: through her the Savior was able to come into the world. Pete looks radiant: the sun frames the back of his head almost light a halo, and she can feel the Holy Spirit pulling her towards Peter. It must have taken so much courage to say yes to carrying the savior, especially since he wasn’t that religious. He’d made the ultimate sacrifice, giving up his body for God’s purpose and even if she was a little jealous that it wasn’t her.

In that moment she decides she needs to do everything in her power to make this a comfortable pregnancy for Peter. After all, he might be able to put in a good word for the Savior. She thinks back to Elizabeth and how she had been such a good friend and confidant, and she was the mother of John the Baptist, one of the most important people besides Jesus.

Oh yes, she can all but hear a holy voice telling her to take Peter under her wing. ‘ Grace,’ it calls to her, ‘It's your job now to help young Peter. He's going to face many trials and tribulations now that he's carrying The Messiah, and it's your job to guide him. Show him and The Messiah my light as I know only you can.’

So when Pete announces in front of everyone on the first day of camp that an angel (i.e THE ARCHANGEL FLIPPING GABRIEL) visited him in a dream, it all clicks into place and before she even realizes what’s happening she’s standing up and..

“Just like MOTHER MARY,” Grace adds. Perhaps a little louder than she means to because now everyone is staring at her, like she’s crazy but it all makes sense now and she can’t believe that no one else can see it. Their savior is right here at Camp Idontwannabang and everyone is acting like it's nothing. They should be kissing Peter's feet for his sacrifice.  Boy Jerry turns his eerie gaze on Grace. He smiles widely but it doesn’t reach his eyes. 

“I’m familiar with her” Boy Jerry says “But Grace, might I remind you that the Virgin Mary was also a woman. ”

“But umm what if…” Grace dry swallows, “what if God gave Peter mommy parts so he can have the Messiah?”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Boy Jerry says, “Why would the Messiah come though a man?”

“Umm because he came though a woman last time?” Grace says and Boy Jerry just laughs as the rest of the camp starts to snicker along with him.

"I've seen people like him attend Camp Idontwannabang before.” Boy Jerry sneers, circling Pete like a panther ready to pounce. Grace’s fists clench in anger as he speaks. 

“Seductresses. Temptresses. Jezebels of every type” Jerry looks around at the campers, his eyes landing on Girl Jeri who quickly looks down at her shoes. “Unfortunately he's not the first, nor will he be the last, vixen who tries to lead innocent campers astray.”

The chorus of campers starts to grow in snickering, muttering about how Grace must be losing her mind. But she doesn't listen to any of that, the voice in her head cutting through all the nonsense surrounding her. 

“But what if you're wrong?” She asks, silencing the crowd with her simple question. She walks up to the stage where Pete and the Jerries are standing and turns to look back at the crowd, steadying herself before asking, “What if the almighty is going to return to earth through this boy?” She points at Pete who seems just as confused. “And what if, by ignoring this child in need and mocking him, you're damning yourself for all time?”

“Well fine,” Boy Jerry says, thumping a Bible down in Grace’s hand, “if you can find any Biblical evidence for this kind of event I’ll believe you.”

Grace gives Pete a quick look, and it’s all over now. Not even Grace is going to be able to spin a Bible verse to prove this immaculate conception. He’s going to have to spend the rest of the summer as the poster child for abstinence for these anti-sex weirdos.

“Umm ok.” Grace says, flipping through the worn pages of the black leather book. Eventually, she lands on a passage and reads, “This is from the Gospel of Mattew, So I will call you Peter, which means ‘a rock.’ On this rock I will build my church, and death itself will not have any power over it.”* The conviction in her voice growing with every word.

She moves the Bible closer to her chest and closes her eyes, her lips move in a silent prayer.

“Well? Go on?” Boy Jerry says gesturing at Peter. More specifically to his belly. “What does that have to do with this?”

“Well- Maybe the lord is going to rebuild his church through Peter.” Grace says her conviction growing with every world, “And after the second coming, the righteous are going to live forever, right? So it’s possible that, through Peter, Christ is going to come again, and death will not prevail over him.”

Holy shit… Grace Chastity might actually be a genius. Maybe he should be a little more concerned at how easily she can twist the Bible to fit her options, but right now Pete is too relieved to think about that. He exhales for what feels like the first time all week.

To his shock, some of the other campers actually start clapping at her words. Boy Jerry snatches the Bible out of Graces hand and flips to a section that’s bookmarked with a well worn cloth bookmark.

“I have another passage that might describe this situation a little better.” Jerry says to the group and turns to a well worn bookmark ribbon. “In the Revelation of Jesus Christ, John writes about a woman he sees who is often described as the whore of babylon. ‘ And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication.’”**

Pete’s cheeks burn with embarrassment. What’s this guy's damage? Where (or where not) does a thirty-something get off on slut shaming teenagers.

“How could you say that?” Grace cries in indignation. “What if Joseph hadn’t believed Mary: she would have gotten stoned to death! And Jesus would have never been born, and then none of us would be here today!”

The campers start to murmur at that. Peter thinks he hears the word Pharisee thrown around more than once. He can see a vein start to strain against Boy Jerry's forehead that he's sure is seconds away from bursting. After a minute of this, Girl Jerri steps in and grabs Grace's arm. Pete feels a protective pull in gut and is ready to stand up and defend her but the look in Steph's eyes stops him.

“Thank you so much for that spirited conversation Grace but, as a junior counselor, you really don’t have the authority to be arguing with Jerry.” Girl Jeri says, “You wouldn't want to be demoted down to just regular camper, now would you?”

That seems to shut Grace up for a moment. Then, with fire in her eyes she turns to the crowd.

“Well no, but I have a duty to Christ first.” Grace says turning from the Jerries towards the rest of the campers, “And so do all of you, if we don’t support Mother Mary now, who knows what Jesus will do to us when he comes BACK.”

Murmurs erupt from the rest of the campers as both of the Jerries have to forcibly Grace from the stage. She doesn’t go quietly though; wildly kicking her legs back and forth. Pete smiles to himself, knowing that the Jerries are probably going to end up with some bruised shins.

While the Jerries are busy with Grace, the other campers slowly turn towards Steph and Pete and stare. Elijah, the counselor from before, starts trying to herd everyone back towards the cabins for the first activity of the day. Somehow in all the commotion, Pete ends up back by Steph’s side.

“What the fuck what that?” Steph says, pulling him as close as their allowed to.

“I don’t know.” Pete shrugs, “Who knows what goes on in the twisted mind of Grace Chastity. ”

“This is going to be a long summer.” Steph mutters.

-

And it was. Since he was ‘a bystander to violence against a counselor’, Pete got lumped in with Grace’s solitary confinement and had to stay in his cabin for a week. Which meant Steph wouldn’t see the father of her child for a full week. On the plus side, it meant no Grace for a week, so she supposed it evened out.

Monday is spent making wallets (borning), canoeing (slightly less boring), and making boondoggles (extremely boring). Activities which do nothing in distracting Steph ofPeter's absence. All she can think about is him, alone in his cabin, with no one to know if he needs help. And yet, as she's forced to attend an evening sermon where Boy Jerry waxes poetically on the virtues of ‘Just saying no.’, she can't help but feel like he's the lucky one. At least solitary confinement means that Pete gets to avoid all of this. That night, as she tosses and turns in her bunk, Steph feels like bashing her head in, and she still has six more days to get through.

Tuesday morning, Steph wakes up to the sounds of people still shuffling around the cabin. Strange. Everyone has usually left by the time she’s gotten up. She sits up and stretches, watching her cabin mates rush around the room.

“What’s going on?” She mutters, voice barely audible over the sound of something hitting the top of the roof.

“Good, Stephanie you're up. Start gathering your stuff.” Mary, her stuck up counselor, says. “There’s a bad thunderstorm, so we all have to move to the Big House till it passes.”

Right, well that explained what the sound on the roof was.

“Why? It's just a little rain?” Steph asks, ever the contrarian. Besides, she's warm and doesn’t want to leave her bed.

“Well, if you want to be in a wooden cabin when it’s hit by lightning, then be my guest,” Mary says, “but if not, be in the Big House in an hour.”

Which is how she ends up in the Big House at 10 in the morning. It’s not that bad, it’s the only place on the premises that has air conditioning, so that’s a plus. But, with all 140 campers having been stuffed into the building's confines, it’s a bit of a tight squeeze. Worst of all, she can’t find Peter anywhere. Eventually, she finds the Jerries in the great room.

“Hi Jerri, have you seen Pete?” She asks.

The older woman doesn’t look her in the eyes , but starts muttering something that Steph can’t make out, teeth worrying at her bottom lip.

“He’s still in his cabin.” Boy Jerry says as he comes up behind her. He places a hand on Jeri’s shoulder that Steph doesn’t like at all. “After all, he’s in solidarity, he needs to learn his lesson doesn’t he, Girl Jeri ?”

Jeri nods obediently at his words, her green eyes dark with worry. Steph just furrows her brow.

“What if he gets sick?” She asks, voice thick with worry. “You know won’t just be bad for him?”

“Well, he should have thought of that before he acted out. It's like they say: you do the crime, you do the time.” Jerry says, turning away from her to do something else.

Oh no, oh hell no. He's not getting out of this that easy. Steph pulls on his stupid Virginity Rocks shirt forcing him to look back at her.

“I don’t think my father, Mayor Lauter, would appreciate the father of his grandchild being left out in the cold.” Steph says. She hates pulling the ‘my dad’s the mayor’ card this early in the conversation, but she’s desperate to see Pete safe.

“Oh, his grandchild?” Jerry says with the shit eating grin on his face. “I thought it was an immaculate conception? You're telling me Stephanie that, on top of being an accomplice to assaulting two counselors, your boyfriend also lied to the whole camp.”

Shit. Steph bites her tongue when she realizes what she'd done. What a rookie mistake, revealing Pete's lie like that. She Knew better than that. Honestly. Luckily, Steph has years of experience at avoiding being caught in a lie. Experience that she's more than happy to put to use if it means keeping Pete out of trouble.

“No,” Steph says, keeping her voice measured, “it was an immaculate conception, just like Pete said. My dad has just uh… offered to take Peter in in case his brother didn’t accept him. Like, uh shoot, what’s that guy's name?”

“Joseph.” Boy Jerry says through gritted teeth. “His name was Joseph”

“Right!” Steph snaps her fingers. “Joseph. See if Grace is right about this whole Mother Mary thing, which she is, that would make me Joseph, right?”

“It would.” Boy Jerry says slowly, “Don’t expect any special attention though.”

“I wouldn’t,” Steph says, “sir.”, she adds at the last second. Jerry seems like the kinda guy who likes being called sir.

“Good.” Jerry says, then walks away.

“I’ll do what I can.” Jeri says, giving her a weak smile. “He just get in these kinds of moods sometimes”

Steph gives her a smile.

“Jeri!” Jerry calls and she shuffles after him. She's only just turned when Steph sees it. There, peeking out from just under the hem of Girl Jeri’s sleeve, lays an angry red mark in the vaguest shape of a hand. Steph's jaw clenches as she notes how similar it is in size to Boy Jerry's hands. Holy man indeed.

-

Wednesday is barely any better. The onslaught of rain hasn't stopped, which means they are still stuck in the big house. They'd spent the night there: boys on one side and girls on the other, a makeshift wall of sheets between them and counselors keeping guard in order to prevent any ‘funny business’. Steph hadn’t slept a wink, too busy worrying about Pete to even consider getting any rest. She hoped that the rain would have stopped by the morning, but unfortunately the storm had other plans. One of the other counselors says that the last time it rained like this was 18 years ago, where it had stormed the entire first week of camp. Steph really hopes that this isn't a repeat of that.

Steph spends the day playing round after round of go fish and board games with some of the kids from the Eleven year olds group, the rain continuing to come down on the roof all the while. Other people have started to notice that Grace is gone. Apparently, she’s kind of a legend among these weird Bible kids. She’s been coming to camp as long as some of them have even been alive. She’s even babysat most of the younger ones for years. And, without Grace around, there’s been a vacuum created that apparently Steph is going to fill.

She’s forced to play about a million games of crazy eights with the younger kids. In between games they seem to have an infinite amount of questions about the storm for her.

“Stephie?” One of the younger ones, Annie Steph thinks her name is, asks after she wins another couple of games “Why did God make the storm come during camp?”

“Uh, listen I’m not really the person to ask about that kinda thing.” Steph says. “I didn’t really grow up with that kinda thing, Church and all that.”

The kids around her flinch as if she’d said she never brushed her teeth before in her life. Just when they all seem to calm down from that revelation a clap of thunder echoes outside and all of them flinch again. A flash of lightning illuminates the room and the kids huddle closer to her, fear evident of their tiny faces.

“Is God mad at us?” Annie ask, clinging to her arm. “Is he punishing us for something?”

“No, of course he’s not.” Steph moves her hand to pet Annie’s hair in a way she’s seen mothers do in movies. A way that she so vaguely remembers her own mother doing before she died. “The storm is nothing more than, uh god bowling.”

That makes the kids laugh a little bit and Annie wipes away her tears. Steph feels a small pang in her chest that feels strange and foreign. She only has a second to think about it before Jerry walks past her on the phone.

“Give me a second. You guys keep playing without me.” Steph says to the kids while moving after Jerry. She can only hear one end of the conversation.

“Yes, he’s doing fine.” Jerry says with that false cheery tone. “No, I'm sorry I can’t put him on the phone. Sorry, that's just camp policy. It’s to combat homesickness. I understand that this is a unique set of circumstances Mr. Spankoffoski, but our policies are clearly outlined on our website. He’s doing great, really taking to the message, yep. I'll pass on the message. Thank you for your concern, Mr. Spankoffoski.”

She follows him up into the laundry room of the Big House: three sets of washers and dryers were pushed up against one wall. Jerry was sitting against the other wall.

“You're lying.” Steph says without thinking. She walks forward, hands on her hips. “Why are you lying to his older brother?”

Jerry sits up, surprised that Steph was in the room with him.

“That was a personal conversation, Stephanie.” Jerry spits out. “It’s none of your business.”

“It is when my boyfriend is stuck in a solitary cabin while you're lying to his brother about it!” Steph practically yells at him. She’s ready to fucking murder this man if he doesn’t get Peter out of solitary soon.

“You know Stephanie,” Jerri says in his trademark faux charming voice, “I had a very similar situation when I was your age. I was seduced by a girl, she got pregnant, and tried to force me to take responsibility for her harlotry.”

“That’s not what Pete’s doing, and you know it takes two to tango,” Steph spits back at him. Her fists clench. “I have a responsibility as the Earthly mother of that child.”

“But that's the thing, you don’t have to. I know Grace can get a little carried away with some of these things, she tends to take things a tad too literally sometimes.”

“She’s not a liar and neither is Peter.” Steph says, lying through her teeth.

“I know. And people who tell the truth deserve to be rewarded, don't you agree?”

“It depends.” Steph says. “I think that tattletales deserve what’s coming to them.”

“Well, I think I could help out anyone who tells the truth. ” Jerry says. “Like say getting them out of camp activities if they were to say… admit to certain falsehoods that they had been involved in perpetuating.”

“Well there haven’t been many camp activities going on lately, have there?” Steph counters. “So that’s not a particularly good reward, now is it?”

“We could possibly also arrange an early graduation, as I understand it the people of Hatchetfield have a little shindig around the Fourth of July? July first seems like a great graduation date don’t you think?”

The Monroe's block party. Steph had gone every year since she could walk. They always bought more booze than anyone knew what to do with. It made the perfect opportunity to steal away and get completely fucked up without any consequences. It was always the best part of her summer. For a split second she considers it. She could last here another three weeks if it meant being able to drink consequence free.

She could imagine it now: swimming in the Monroe's massive pool, the American flag fruit cake that Linda Monroe always insisted was homemade, and stealing her fair share of free booze. God she couldn't wait to spend the evening curling up under the fireworks, beer bottle in hand, making out with… with Pete. Pete who wouldn't be there because he'd be stuck here. Probably going through worse punishments because she'd have sold him out.

No. She wouldn’t let Pete go through the rest of camp by himself. Wouldn’t put him through another two months without her. Besides, she'd miss her baby anyway. She and Pete were in this together, and Steph was not about to sell him up the river for warm beer and fireworks.

“It does sound tempting Jerry,” Steph says, “but I don’t think I’ve really learned my lesson, besides I’d hate to miss the end of Camp fire circle!” She’s sure to a bit of Grace Chasity's brand of pep into her voice as an extra fuck you.

-

Grace is man handled into a solitary cabin by Boy Jerry and one of the other male counselors. But she doesn’t go down without a struggle. Grace is kicking, screaming, and just generally the whole way to the cabin.

“You can’t do this!” Grace shouts. “I’m a junior counselor, aren't only campers supposed to be put in solitary?” That had been in C.I.T manual last year, ‘only campers who commit major infractions (see appendix 3 subjection 4) will be subject to solitary confinement, based on the infraction committed (see appendix 3 subjection 5)’. Grace had memorized the whole thing last year because she’d missed camp so much.

“Well, it’s really up to the discretion of the head of camp.” Jerry says. “Which just so happens to be me, and I’ve been wanting to this for a long time.”

Then they unceremoniously toss her into the cabin, not even letting her stop to get anything from her cabin. She bangs on the door but her cries seem to fall on deaf ears.

After a couple of hours of pleading with the door Grace realizes something. This has to be a test from God: he’s using the Jerries to make sure that she’s really ready to help the new mother of Christ. This baby has a lifetime of non-believers just like the Jerries ahead of them, and it'll be Grace's job to protect Pete and the baby from harm. Part of her almost pities the Jerries for their ignorance. She knows they'll regret their actions when the new Christ is born. But she tried to warn them and they refused to listen.

They didn’t allow her to go get her PJ’s out of her cabin so she’s left to stew in her Virginity Rocks shirt. It’s unclear whether or not she’s stuck here for only a couple of days or the whole summer, but she plans on making the best of it all.

After nearly three days of trying to avoid the leaks in the roof, Grace had combed the cabin top to bottom. She’d only found one loose floorboard, under which was a box full of porngraphic material (gross she probably touched some wayward spunk!) Some hologain had carved his initials into the floorboard JRF 6/10/2002. Gosh that was only about a week into camp. Grace can’t even imagine what someone would have to do to get sent to solitary in the first week. Well she was in solitary the first week… but that was different! She did the work of the lord!

On the third day of her confinement, she’s praying on her bed when the door opens.

“Are you going to let me out of solidarity now?” Grace asks when the Jerries walk through the door.

“You were never in solidarity, we just thought you could use some alone time after your little outburst.” Boy Jerry says. Grace looks at his legs but he’s wearing long khakis, and the bruises that she had seen the last time they spoke were hidden.

“We don’t want to encourage people to rebel against authority, god doesn’t like that.” Girl Jeri says, putting her hand on Grace’s thigh. Her smile seems more plastic than usual. “You have to understand that.”

“We must obey God rather than men.”*** Grace mutters under her breath. She thinks of Jesus turning over the tables in the temple, of Daneil in the Lion’s den, Esther disobeying the king of Babylon.

“You should come join us for a craft circle so that all the campers see how well you're doing.” Boy Jerry offers, “We're weaving baskets today. I know that's a favorite of yours.”

“Well, I’m not going to change my beliefs based on anything you say.” Grace says. “So if that’s going to be a problem, then you might as well leave me in here.”

The Jerries look back at each other and seem to have a whole conversation in the span of a look.

“Listen Grace,” Jeri says, “we need to know that we can trust you not to revolt against the camp, ok?”

Revolt against camp? That had never been her intention; she was just trying to reveal the word of Christ to her fellow campers, sure she did assault Boy Jerry, and she did feel bad about that, but she wasn't about to overthrow the Jerries.

“I’m sorry about your knees, Boy Jerry.” She says, bowing her head. “I was just trying to do what you told me to do.”

“What do you mean dear?” Jeri asks. She sits next to Grace on the bed and she instinctively leans her head on Jeri’s chest.

“It's just that you always taught me to be loud and proud of my love for Jesus Christ.” She says as Jeri pets her hair “And I was trying to show my support for the new Mother Mary.”

Jerry continues to glare at her but, just as he starts to say something, Jeri cuts him off.

“I know that dear.” Jeri says. “But sometimes in the process you hurt people, so why don’t you come warm up in the big house and get some hot cocoa and a shower, then we can talk this out ok?”

Grace sniffles, it had been hard these past couple of days. The last time she’d gotten into trouble was when she’d stayed up an hour past her bedtime when she was five years old and that had eaten her up for years. This kind of rebellion wasn't in her nature, even if she was doing the right thing. It must have been so hard for Jesus; having to rebel against authority to spread God's love.

“Yea, that sounds nice.” Grace says, standing up and for the first time in three days she leaves the cabin.

She’s granted a hero's welcome when she walks into the Big House, the campers quite literally breaking into applause at her entrance. Some of the younger campers cling to her leg as she walks though the big house. Everyone high fives her, even Gabe gives her a respectful nod. The Jerries try to calm them down but everyone is going completely feral and don’t even notice what’s going on.

“Guys,” Grace giggles, “I know you all missed me so much, but we really shouldn’t be focused on me right now.” she motions for everyone to settle down a little bit. “We really should be focusing on the mother to be? We have so much to do before the baby gets here. Where is he?”

Everyone goes silent at that. Grace looks around trying to see what’s happening. She looks to Girl Jeri for answers, but the Co-head pastor won't her gaze.

“Where is he?” She asks. “Come on, where’s Peter?”

Steph is the first one to meet her eyes.

“He’s still in solitary.” Steph says, glaring behind her at the Jerries. “They haven’t let him out since they put you in there”

“You what?” Grace says and in that moment lightning flashed across the sky. It's then that everything clicks. That's the reason the storm is happening. God must be angry at the Jerries if the storm has lasted this long.

“Well, you have to let him go.” Grace says, crossing her arms. “Why do you think the rains have been this bad? The Lord has been made angry that his new Queen of Heaven is being ignored!”

The campers look among each other. But Stephine is the first one to say anything.

“You're right, Grace.” Steph says. “We really should let him out, maybe then we can get back to all those fun camp activities we haven’t gotten to do since we’ve gotten stuck in here.”

There’s something off about Steph's tone, but Grace doesn’t care about that right now. Some of the younger campers agree with her. Then their older siblings move to agree, soon all of camp is cheering to let them go.

“LET HIM OUT! LET HIM OUT!”They all chant in unison, Grace and Stephanie's voices some of the loudest.

Boy Jerry seems flabbergasted as he tries and fails to get everyone under control. Grace sees Jeri whisper something in his ear and he rolls his eyes.

“Fine!” Jerry yells. “We can let him out!”

That’s all it takes for the campers, led by Steph and Grace to barrel out of the big house and towards the Gomorrah cabin to free Pete, stopping only briefly for Steph to grab a key ring from Boy Jerry's belt.

Grace organizes everyone into a line (marching two by two, Noah's arc style) as they march towards the cabin. Steph struggles with the keys. Then she finally finds the right one. “Pete?” She calls into the cabin.

There's a moment of deafening silence as everyone holds their breath. It takes a moment till Pete answers the door with a “Hello?”

All of them explode in cheers as a very confused Peter Spankoffski walks out of the cabin. He looks bewildered as everyone starts to celebrate. What's more, seemingly the exact second that Pete steps out of the cabin, the rain stops and the sun shines on Camp Idontwannabang once more, which just makes everyone go crazier.

“What’s going on?” Pete asks, looking at Steph. He’s too close to her for camp regulation, but Grace can give the holy family a break on this occasion. “They locked the door on me and wouldn’t tell me anything when they slipped food though.”

“The Lord was punishing the camp.” Grace says, looking at the clear blue sky with the appropriate amount of reverence. “For keeping his chosen one locked up, he sent a storm, and now that you're free he’s lifted his punishment.”

“Wel, l” Jerry says, crossing his arms over his chest ,“since the Lord Of The Universe has forgiven us I suppose a celebration is in order.”

His voice sounds different from Jerry’s usual happy voice, and Grace doesn’t understand why. They should be celebrating. The campers cheer again.

“Hey Grace?” Stephanie tugs. “Would you mind covering for us for a bit? I need to talk to Pete for a second. Alone. ”

She’s not supposed to. As a Junior Counselor Grace is tasked with making sure that campers are not left alone with each other, especially campers of the opposite sex. But Steph is dating the next earthly mother of the Messiah and that is a lot to take in. Gosh, maybe Pete hadn’t told Steph that it was the next Jesus. Maybe she had a dream about being the earthly father of Christ. Grace says a silent prayer that she took it well and nothing happens to him.

“Of course, Steph!” Grace says, her normal pep entering her voice “Just make sure you guys are back in time for the fire circle, ok?”

Steph nods quickly, grabbing Pete’s hand as she does. They walk off together into the long light of smmer. Grace can swear that she sees twin circles of light encircle both of their heads. She hopes that she remembers to tell the baby about them. Crimmeny she might even end up as Aunt Grace. She smiles at the thought. Auntie Gracie certainly has a nice ring to it.

-

Steph doesn’t take her hand off him till they’re a safe distance from any prying eyes. She’s gotta make sure that Pete is alright and that they didn’t do anything to him while she couldn’t see. They finally reach a clearing in the witchwood that’s far enough away that no one else can see them.

“Are you ok?” She asks, turning to him “Did they do any freaky shit to you? Did they hurt you? Because we can sue if they did.”

Pete just looks at her for a moment and giggles.

“No, of course not,” Pete smiles at her and that part of her brain that had been screaming danger for the past week calms down a little bit, “I basically got put on bed rest for three days.”

“Good.” Steph says, taking her hands off of his shoulders. “I was so worried that something would happen to you or the baby and I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.”

“I’m ok, I promise” Pete says. Steph can’t help but sniffle. She didn’t think of herself as a crier, but the last couple of days had kept her on high alert.

“Hey Steph,” Pete says with a smile, putting her hand on his bump so she can feel a little kick, “do you know what today is?”

“Uhh, it’s June 9th I think?” She says wiping a tear off her face. “I don’t know. They all kinda blurred together during the storm.” She’d taken a couple naps to stave of boredom, though now she wasn’t sure how many times Jerry had called for lights out.

“It’s June Tenth actually.” Pete says. He nudges Steph with his elbow. “Happy Birthday. Congrats on being a legal adult.”

Oh. He’s right. Usually she would have been planning her party for months. Would have had a countdown going for weeks now, culminating with a celebratory birthday pancake breakfast at Miss Retro's. But she’d been too busy worrying about going to camp, stressing out over the pregnancy, and dealing with whatever the hell Grace was doing to think about herself.

“Oh, I didn’t even realize.” Steph murmurs. “Guess I am.”

It didn't feel real. This time last year she’d been drunk off cheap beer: She, Brenda, and Stacy had organized the first real rager of the summer. They’d invited anyone who was anyone and the smoke club of course, they might have been losers but they always shared their weed so they always got invited. Max had smashed her face in the grocery store cake and it had only said APY BTD SEP. She’d gotten plastered and made out with Jason before hurling off her dad’s balcony. It had been her best birthday on record.

She'd promised herself last year that she would throw an even better party for her 18th birthday. She wanted to throw the biggest rager Hatchetfield had ever seen to celebrate being an adult. Being free from her father.

And now she was here. In the middle of the woods with ‘Mirco-Peter’ Spankoffiski, quite possibly the biggest loser of Hatchetfield High, feeling his pregnant stomach. What a year it’s been. She almost feels disappointed. Then the baby kicks and Steph starts to cry. Because there was nowhere else she’d be right now than in the middle of the woods with her little family. Overcome with emotion she leans down and kisses the bump.

“Listen baby ” She says leaning in so only the baby can hear, “You know your granddad is a grade a asshole but I promise I’m gonna be a better parent, I don’t know how yet but I’m gonna at least be better than him.”

She kisses Pete’s stomach one more time before leaning up to kiss Pete again.

“I love both of you.” Steph murmurs, kissing him on the cheek. They’d said it before, right before they’d figured out he was pregnant in fact, but she hadn’t really said it since. Her dad had never really been that affectionate with her. She’d learned at an early age that affection was a sign of weakness. Something that had definitely carried over into her relationships.

“Happy birthday babe, love you too.” Pete says when they pull away. They didn’t need to acknowledge what a big deal it was for her to say that to him. But that look in his eyes says I'm proud of you and that was enough for her. “I couldn’t get you a cupcake or anything, but I promise to get you something when we’re out of here. IOU is a better birthday than one at abstinence camp.”

“I’ll hold you to that” Steph smiles. “Come one we should get to the fire circle before anyone sees that we’re missing, don’t want Boy Jerry on our asses.”

-

The fire circle is actually pretty fun, everyone’s excited to be outside for the first time all week. Jeri brings out some rope friendship bracelets. Annie shows Steph how to do it and she’s actually not half bad at it. She makes a trans one for herself and is getting started on a matching one for Pete when none other than Grace-fucking-Chasity sits next to her. Steph rolls her eyes as she sits down.

“How’s the bracelet coming?” Grace asks, clearly awkwardly trying to make small talk. “I like the colors, they remind me of camp.”

“Sure they do, Grace.” Steph chuckles a little bit at that. “This ones gonna be for Pete but I can make you one afterwards if you want?”

“Oh, that’s ok.” Grace says. “I think that you should have a matching one with Pete, almost like wedding rings.”

That idea makes Steph’s heart light up. She’d never really been able to commit to a person before. She’d always been the one to break things off before they got too serious. She’d never been the first one to say she loved someone. Pete was actually the guy she’d said ‘I love’ you the most (six whole times). And yet… She wouldn't necessarily mind marrying Pete.

In fact, the idea of marrying Pete sounded nice. She always thought that marriage meant having to spend her life tolerating someone else's presence. But the idea of getting to wake up next to Pete, to go to sleep in his arms. Getting to be around him everyday. It sounded amazing. A smile spreads across her face at the thought of it. Besides, they were having a baby together and that was already way more commitment than marriage.

“I guess they are.” She says, warming to the idea of marriage to Pete the more she thinks about it. “I guess at the end of the summer we'll get married.”

“Good.” Grace says picking up a set of friendship bracelet strings. “You should get married before then, I don’t want the Lord Jesus to be born into a broken home.”

See that’s the thing with Grace Chastity, you really never know what the fuck your gonna get with her.

“I don’t think the baby will know that they were born out of wedlock.” Steph says.

“Oh Steph,” Grace gives her a look like ‘ oh poor you’ that fills Steph with irritation, “I always forget that you weren’t raised religious, you see Jesus is God and he’ll see that he’ll be born out of wedlock and then you guys might not get to go to heaven.”

“Sure.” Steph rolls her eyes. She doesn't wanna deal with this right now “But we can’t as well get married at camp, can we?”

That seems to shut Grace up enough that she can finish her friendship bracelet. She doesn’t bother Steph the rest of the night, and after she gets her stuff out of the big house she sleeps like a baby on her uncomfortable camp cabin mattress.

-

The next morning someone gets her up at the ass crack of dawn. Steph whines as she turns over getting ready to tell who ever it is to fuck off.

“Come on.” Her counselor Mary says. “There’s camp announcements this morning, it’s mandatory attendance, so get dressed.”

Despite her brain screaming that she shouldn’t, she gets dressed anyway and shuffles out the main pavilion. There’s a seat waiting for her up front next to Pete. She takes a seat and spaces out for most of the announcement. Towards the end she tunes back into something interesting. Grace is standing on stage again next to the Jerries. She smiles to herself as she notices that Jerry is standing as far away as possible from Grace.

“I’d like to thank our very own Joseph ” Grace says in a voice that’s just a little to sweet for the sun still rising, “Stephanie Lauter has proudly offered to marry Pete despite the fact that he appears to have gotten pregnant out of wedlock.”

“Steph!” Pete nearly yells. “I mean I’d love to marry you, but I think that’s something we should discuss before you talk to Grace Chastity about it!”

“What?” Steph asks, suddenly wide awake. “When did I agree to that?”

“Last night at the campfire!” Grace says. “Remember how we were talking about you and Pete getting married before the baby comes? Well I thought why not get married at camp during parents weekend! I’ve prepared everything, they're even gonna let you push your bed together for at least one night! And I mean you should be able to petition for a couple more nights in the same cabin since you will be married after all!”

“I’m sorry.” She says lowering her voice so only Pete could hear. “You know how she fucking is, I mean I wouldn’t mind marying you either but she took the idea and ran off with it.”

Steph doesn’t know whether to throttle or thank Grace. She’s stuck between the desire to stay with Pete for the rest of the summer and the humiliation of having to marry Pete whatever that means to Grace in front of basically everyone she’s even known. Not that the actually marrying part would be embarrassing just the fact that it was happening at fucking abstinence camp.

Pete, an angel, smiles and squeezes her hand reassuringly.

Wait… If they were married then she and Pete would be able to share a cabin, unsupervised together. She could spend every night with him and the Jerries wouldn't be able to say anything. After, it wouldn't be premarital, so it's not a sin. Steph looks at Pete, who seems to have put it together seconds before she did. He winks at her and she has to keep herself from laughing.

“So who should we invite?” Grace asks. “I already got Jerries to call Steph’s dad and Pete’s older brother, but is there anyone else we should invite

“Well, you should invite Ruth and Richie.” Pete says trying to hide his smile “I’m sure they’ll wanna see us get married.”

God, Steph loves her boyfriend. No Steph loves her fiance.

-

A/N:

@daisyybellls: Thank you for reading! Tune in next time for a wedding, and cameo's galore!

* Matthew 16:18

**Revelation 17:4

***Acts 5:29

@girl-with-cat-eyes: I hope you all enjoyed this! Special thank you to pizza for writing this chapter, I really loved how it turned out. As always, thank you for reading and please feel free to tell me what you think in the comments! Shoutout to my lovely co-authors Spoons and Pizza and helping me write this!

This is a sequel to Tear Down My Reason by Calmly Chaotic and What An Ass, What A Bitch, What A Cuck by Calmly Chaotic and mars_of_the_stars

-

Tag list:

@lady-loveluck

@forever-forgotten-angel

[positivelybeastly]

Can't help but wonder if beast was really that happy on krakoa, or if he was even happy at all.

"What do I have to be unhappy about."

"Everything."

"Is."

"Fine."

So, this is kind of an interesting question, because there are two Beasts on Krakoa - and I don't mean original Beast and clone Beast. I mean that there are two versions of Hank that were being written, especially in 2019-2020 when House of X was still coming out, things were still developing, and X-Force had yet to take a giant shit on Hank McCoy.

Because there's this.

And this.

And this.

And weirdly this???

And then there was this.

And like . . . these two versions of the character don't really feel like they can co-exist? Like, this is mostly on Benjamin Percy for just. Completing failing to capture a satisfying or sensical ramp up for Beast's villainy and just hitting that genocide button like he's queuing up for a game of fucking Fortnite, but it's also on the editorial staff, for just not. CHECKING. With their writers, to make sure that characters are being written consistently across titles.

Beast in X-Force does not feel like the same guy who appeared in House of X #4 or 6, or Hellions #1, or even in X-Men #18. The first three, fine, whatever, maybe plans weren't locked in yet, but Percy had to know he was going to take Beast down the genocide path, given how early it happens in X-Force, so why is Beast still acting like his pre-Krakoan self? And why the fuck is Duggan writing Jean like she thinks Hank is just going through a rough spot right now, instead of this being POST-GENOCIDE AND POST-NAZI SPACE PRISON???

It's just. Baffling, frankly.

Anyway. There's no logical throughline, you're just kinda meant to accept that Beast was hiding his natural insanity and evil, if you believe a word that Ben Percy has to say (which you shouldn't), so any appearances where he's not acting like a raving maniac, he's just pretending.

Me, though . . . I kinda have to make sense of it, because I'm me.

Me personally? I don't think Beast was ever truly happy on Krakoa. How the fuck could he be? Beast is a staunch integrationist/assimilationist. He doesn't believe that mutants and humans should live apart. He never has. Hell, of maybe ANY mutant, he has the most proof that it can work!

This is what he was doing pre-Krakoa!

He doesn't even want to be on an X-Men team anymore, and you want me to believe he's gonna up sticks and move to a fully mutant nation? Fuck no! I don't believe you!

This is part of a wider narrative problem with the Krakoan era, which is, it's really nice, Jonathan Hickman, that you want to have all the mutant toys in the toy box so everyone can play with them, but these characters would not go in for this. This is why the 'Xavier is telepathically controlling everyone' theories ran so wild for such a long time. It just. Doesn't make sense.

And it especially doesn't make sense for Hank because by this point in his history, he has so much negative history with the X-Men! The time travel debacle, the intervention, being attacked with a lightning bolt and caged during the Inhuman conflict, being forced to parlay with evil Steve Rogers during Secret Empire, getting drawn into the Age of X-Man, like, NONE of this is something he asked for or enjoyed! Hell, if you want to go further back, Hank hasn't enjoyed being on an X-Men team since, like, the mid-2000s! Before Utopia!

So why in god's name would he not only go back to them, but decide, yeah, I want to live on the mutant island that's actively pissing off most of the human allies that I had personal relationships with?

In my mind, the only way it makes sense is if Charles came to Hank and said, look. I know I've asked a lot of you, but I have a plan, and this is a way you can make it up to us all. This is how you can get back in good with all your old friends, this is how all can be forgiven, which fits in with the whole Krakoan clean slate angle they were going with.

And thus, Hank's creation of the Krakoan wonder drugs that sustain Krakoa's economy (yes, reminder, that was Hank's creation, those did not magically come together out of nowhere, Hank was the genius responsible for those, you're fucking welcome).

So, Hank does this, it's all one happy family, everyone's working in unison, it's great.

Except. It doesn't last.

Because how could it? Textually speaking, Hank does not have positive history with 90% of the X-Men anymore, and they have no real reason to trust him or want him around, judging by the way they talk about him. As we see with Cyclops and Mister Sinister, even with the kayfabe that everyone's cool and fine now, they are still the same characters with the same history, so the clean slate is not actually a clean slate, they're just saying that.

So, in my mind, almost instantly, things just kinda get weird, and awkward, and when everyone's deciding on habitats to live in, Hank just ends up siloed off on his own, in his little house that nobody visits. And so he's just. Instantly miserable. Maybe there's a period where he tries, and maybe some other people try, too, but I think the weight of pre-Krakoan history, and the general weirdness of the Krakoan status quo, mean that Hank was pretty much never happy on Krakoa.

He sure as fuck wasn't happy during X-Force, unless you count grinning insanity and obvious derangement as happiness, which I don't. The only way his character arc makes sense is as his mind just simply snapping into pieces under psychological stress, maybe even before Krakoa, and it just taking a little while before it manifests.

So, no. Not a happy time at all for him. That's partly why I hope that clone-Beast gets his memories back, so he can look back on Krakoa, which he currently sees as this gleaming paradise that he didn't get to experience, and realise, oh, this was all paid for using blood money. This all existed through moral compromise and war crimes and awful deeds. This was all a dystopian nightmare, actually.

But, we'll see.

Oh, and while I've got you - I do have a fanfic that explores this grey area a little bit, set during House of X #6. It's called Fast Car, and explores what it means to be the unpopular, screw up X-Men, seen mostly through the eyes of Alex Summers, aka Havok.

It's a little shippy, but mostly I wanted just to explore what it's like for X-Men who aren't perfect soldiers, who snap under the stress, who have disappointed the people around them and can't quite seem to make it up to people with impossibly high standards. That's a theme I find pretty interesting, and there's some significant crossover between Beast and Havok in that theme, hence why they're the viewpoint figures for it.

[padmerrie]

@panharmonium recently gave me quite the shout-out for my Bookends-verse, so I thought I’d post a series of snippets from various in-progress works for anyone interested. :)

Enjoy!

ᓚᘏ���    ᓚᘏᗢ    ᓚᘏᗢ    

“This should be illegal,” Obito grumbles, glowering at the school.  He’s slumped back on the bench, hands stuffed into his leather jacket’s pockets, looking as mutinous as Kakashi feels.  He hums his agreement, too tired to use words.  

“Finally.  We agree on something,” Obito mutters under his breath.  He nudges Sasuke with his elbow.  “You’re grounded, by the way.” 

Sasuke’s head snaps to Kakashi.  Occasionally, Obito’s commitment to zero follow-through has its benefits, and it’s often in moments such as these, where flagrant threats are bandied about like a wooden sword, that Sasuke turns to Kakashi for certain assurances.  Namely that said threats are empty and not to be taken seriously.

It’s a shame that Kakashi has been dragged out of the comforts of his bed and into the cold on Sasuke’s behalf.  He offers his unsuspecting companion nothing more than a solemn nod.  

Sasuke’s eyes bug out of his head.  If Kakashi’s not careful, he may find himself on the receiving end of one of Sasuke’s threats.  Those are real and not to be underestimated. 

ᓚᘏᗢ    ᓚᘏᗢ    ᓚᘏᗢ   

Without looking up Kakashi politely asked, “Can I help you?” 

“When is Naruto going home?”

“He’s only just got here,” Kakashi replied softly, his pen skating purposefully across the paper.  Only when he’d finished did he look up.  He stared dispassionately at the shiny, black nest of hair staring at him, while the remainder of Sasuke’s head lay facedown on the table.

“What’s up?  Didn’t sleep well last night?”

As was often the case, Sasuke’s answer was no answer.  Putting his pen down, Kakashi dragged his glasses off and perched them on top of his head.  He leaned back in his chair and assessed the work that lay before him.  

“Why are you way over there?”

Sasuke bolted up ramrod straight and twisted violently in his chair to - and Kakashi could only speculate since he couldn’t see his face - glare at Naruto squinting over at them.  

ᓚᘏᗢ    ᓚᘏᗢ    ᓚᘏᗢ    

“Show me.” 

Iruka beckoned him inside and led him hurriedly over to the coffee table where a mess of papers lay scattered.  “Here,” he said, barely letting Kakashi get a good look before he tapped impatiently at a spot on the paper.  “See?  That’s me!”

Kakashi blinked down at the drawing, then Iruka.  “You’re kidding, right?”

“Are you blind?” Iruka shoved the paper in his face and pointed.  “He has a scar across his nose!”

Kakashi squinted.  “I think that’s supposed to be blood?”

“Not much better!”

“Iruka,” Kakashi said, very deliberately taking the paper from him and setting it down on the table, “if you’re really concerned, call the kid’s parents.  Call me again and I’ll tell Naruto and Sasuke where you hid the Playstation.” 

ᓚᘏᗢ    ᓚᘏᗢ    ᓚᘏᗢ    

There was no time to warn Sasuke about the chaos he’d just unleashed by opening the door.  It only took the dogs one second to catch a whiff of Rin and all hell broke loose.  

Kakashi had to give Sasuke credit; he managed to keep himself upright, even as he was trapped in the center of the pack’s stampede.  Amidst the barking, Rin gave a cry of alarm, seeing Bull bringing up the rear, and in a blink of an eye Kakashi was there to deftly sweep Sasuke up into the air before his behemoth of a dog could flatten him like a pancake. 

The dogs pawed at Rin with a frenzied excitement, competing for her attention, their antics bouncing off the walls, filling their much too small apartment with noise.  In Kakashi’s arms, Sasuke smacked his hands over his ears.  

“Hey,” Kakashi scolded, raising his voice and punctuating the command with a sharp whistle.  It went unheard thanks to Rin’s repeated insistence to each and every one of his dogs that they were, in fact, ‘the best boy.’  All lies at the moment.  

Shaking his head, Kakashi put Sasuke down a safe distance away.  “Come on,” he said with tired exasperation, pulling the dogs off Rin.  “You’re acting like you haven’t seen her in years.  Don’t encourage them,” he directed at Rin, shooting her a look.  “I’ve already got a noise complaint.  I don’t need another.”

“I thought you said this place was dog-friendly.”

“It wasn’t for the dogs,” Kakashi muttered in an undertone, glancing at Sasuke.

ᓚᘏᗢ    ᓚᘏᗢ    ᓚᘏᗢ   

“I am appalled by your attitude,” Madara said rather pompously.  “Do you realize I could have Sasuke arrested?”

“I do.  In fact, I’m one step ahead of you.”  As Kakashi said this, he turned to Yamato, who looked at him questioningly from the kitchen.  “I have one of Konoha’s finest here now to give Sasuke a demonstration of how our criminal justice system works.  What do you think, Madara?  Should I have him cuff Sasuke and take him for a spin in the backseat of his squad car?  Or maybe we should make some wanted posters, huh?  Set him loose and let the people decide his fate?”

Madara clucked his tongue in disgust.  “Be serious, Kakashi.”

“I am serious,” Kakashi insisted, feigning innocence.  “He’s right here if you want to talk to him.”

Yamato’s eyes bulged and, despite the half wall between them, he backed away, wagging a warning finger at Kakashi.  “Do not hand me that phone!”

Kakashi ignored him and brought the phone back up to his ear, catching Madara declaring, “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”

“Really?  Because I have 45 daytime minutes that say otherwise.”

ᓚᘏᗢ    ᓚᘏᗢ    ᓚᘏᗢ    

“How many college girls do you think Sasuke’s dated” 

Sakura frowned down at the shirt in her hands, taken aback by Ino’s question.

“I don’t know.  I think he’s gone on a couple dates.”

“You don’t talk about that stuff?” Ino asked.

“We don’t not talk about it,” Sakura said carefully.  She picked up the finished stack of clothes and walked them over to the dresser.  “You know how Sasuke is.  He’s really focused on his studies.”

Ino joined her, cradling a small mountain of socks.  She dumped them into the open drawer.  “You’d think he’d have lightened up a bit.”

Sakura smiled to herself and shook her head.  “Not Sasuke.”

She pushed the drawer shut and turned to Ino.  She was watching her.  Smirking. 

“What?”

Ino eyed the dresser behind Sakura.  “I thought you said this was temporary.”

Sakura let out a sound of exasperation.  Best friend or not, she’d had enough of Ino’s commentary on this particular subject for one day.  “What do you suggest I do?” she demanded.  “Dump them on the floor?  Most of his clothes are at school.  He won’t mind.”

“I know he won’t,” Ino said smugly.

A knock at the door saved Sakura from having to respond.  She marched across the room, ignoring the triumphant look plastered on Ino’s face, and pulled open the door, relieved to see Kakashi.

[positivelybeastly]

"There is a difference, War Captain, between capability and culpability." That's all he'll admit to, when it comes to reprehensible actions - he's well aware of all the lines he has and will continue to cross in the course of the great work that is Krakoa's eternal protection. Yes, Beast supposes she is correct, they're all capable of doing what he's done . . . but they have yet to do it. That's a distinction that does still matter, to some degree.

A line not yet crossed is still a line. At least to the person who has yet to cross it.

Then came the question, and he snorted, violently, daubing idly at his bloodied chin, well aware that now he's just smearing dried blood around by this juncture, but it gives him something to do. "We stay because out there is even worse. Yes, on this island, the Quiet Council are our horrifically flawed kings and queens, but out there . . . do you know, X-Force broke up a XENO operation two days ago?"

He stared ahead for a moment.

"They had picked up a mutant heading for one of the East Asian gates, intent on making it to Krakoa. They boiled her in a chemical bath until she was no more than genetic soup, in an effort to construct a liquid lining for infiltration suits, hoping it would conceal them as a mutant going through the gates. That, is why we stay. Because this is the only truly safe place for us."

And I have to keep it that way.

“Is it? As if I’m not capable of reprehensible actions? As if I haven’t committed atrocities in the past? You think because what you do sets you so far apart from the rest of us when it truly doesn’t. The others simply wrap themselves in the ‘justifiable’ because they’re not capable of coming to terms with what they’re really doing.” None of her words were meant as a compliment or insult; they simply were. Facts were facts, no matter what words they were dressed up in or which emotions were attached to them. They were all capable of great violence, given the proper motivation. She thought of getting him another cloth to clean himself with but decided against it. Her actions could be misread as pity or something else the man before her didn’t want right now. Though some of the straining was removed, his dark fur was still caked in the dry stuff. “Exhausting and irksome. ‘All mutants are equal’ why they lord themselves over us, deciding who gets to live and who breaks the rules and is committed to The Pit. Why do any of us truly stay?”

[libidomechanica]

Yestreen, when he tried the nines

A treochair sequence

               I

It’s a sin, and life yields; a honey Lip. He surpass her, save where I

often wearies all the dreams awake, for fear that you would run this

however this omission in his arms. She could love is no haþelez þat

hit hade wonde worþyly with dread, i’m a plain sae rashy, O, aboon

the whereof doth dwell in; so well? And made him free, but not a line had

Julia ever present, and hwen hit ofte, þat bremely taken he

sayned hym lykez. In me no more. With a reflection could be brought

myself a flaw discourage droop, despair; therefore I eþe þe, haþel, how

þay wroȝt. And the commes to come. Ne would have done with one glance on St.

               II

Been a passion tis man we loved us. Which touches you with all her

kind; so she wept, and pleasure you. It is perfect fright but a tremulously

gentle canna be alright it’s gonna be your persons. Let

him but lent to die of Thirst. Each door; she lay clothed, she says tomorrow.

               III

No dream of Heaven��from the heaviest tempest, it disdain’d to grow.

               IV

Upon the war; shall rise a gloue if hit be sothe þat he should brook a

wordless mind! And we schyn reuel and a day; now hyȝe, bot heterly receive:

for valour was not distinguishing lowe in her pillow. On golden

throne the world will the lamps around, all round her handle. To sing and

small pity mov’d, oh may wel wit no wont þe weder of ledez ar

on lenþe þe lufez vpon flet, of folȝande, in hor store; buy terms of my

wyrdes. Out went before to favourite science of þe Rounde Table.

               V

I’m sensible, because is, one and þe halydam, and Kryst yow falles,

and let loose, or hers whom nakd the Tyrant in a vestal’s veins? A

second at the violet breath, bleed away; she rapt upon the panacea,

Sir! Of couardise and with þe best, not thus much the oceans roll!

               VI

Fro þe houndez, whettez hym ouer þe fest in Abraham’s bosom bounden,

in glade and þe gome in þe grene gered in the window and now

ȝe ar a sleper vnslyȝe, þat geten hem by a conniving still to

leave the rest. When she strove to thy heart re- sent; and so great use, in any

case; for thy pain, allow that grows; a school, the beares by being

mouth, extremely at home, with broader towards some euill were too slow, what were

the nest. Rhodes is the ineffable sense affords; sweet-gard’n-nymph, which mingle

act of immolation, heaven saw her sad ears like summer’s day;-

summer’s house I beheld the Mythological machinery, and syþen

he comes nerre without destroy the best he ne dyngez hym dresses, and

watched then by nature or thirty years, and provoked remark, or Jew; where

juries cast, where all his hode, and thine, an ignorant, noteless, timeless,

timeless, timeless, lastingly. The Northern front, and she was jealous

God, when share that Spring, tis surely and in the middle of being!

               VII

And which I compile, who scorne, noiseless as the Spartan ladies þat

I haf sen a selly in mynde quen yow hider, er þis. My

love immortal work his should run through my unkind as you well knit: he

sees; on several pounds of hands that pious prayere, and he fyskez hem

harden into speed. Nor Loves commands despise, led by some time must come,

who both in your love a white cape on the woods. In menyng of monster

to have on displace, I can say is—that he might be saved, and with solace

of þe proude cropure, his man we love. And so have put my madness

seized my nursling new—like that sun thine eyes, attemper not been quiet.

               VIII

Of lies, a meré mantile abof, menske þe mon on þe morn to fylle

þe godmon, þis gomen bygan, or some luckier night, o

carefull verse. Shall I part musk or civet can wake at nigh expell’d St.

               IX

Ye wadna been sae shy; for laik o’ gear ye lightens, and noȝt haf leue

liflode to take as knyȝtez vnder, þurȝ mony meruayle hym poȝt ful

longe quyle. Although from Indus to the comic Muse; nor envy her.

At having mind of the mind and so þikke, a stede stif kyng he most

atrocious. But with no doubt, it equally desire, swore lustily

he’d be revenge too deere force shall place so proude skyrtez, þe hede, and sturne,

and pass over the way to mine ear, The boisterous, just another land.

               X

And then run away as thou and I am not to ask his mother.

               XI

Assist the point; the spiders throwes onely downe on me thundring

disdained, the first notes, irregular and squirm newly as from a sip

of hem, soft he settled graves are taxes on our joys to telle yow

here: iwysse sir, quyl I leue, me worþed þe broun bleeaunt, enbrauded abof,

menske þe mon may seem so many times, indeed a vertebra to

the flaw-blown rose, even as thy lovest thou no singing, each, the valiant

man! Brief, but know not wear your worth al þe wone of his brutal kind

of crews as renegadoes; which now this she presents lean em, ’t is

strained heavens fall into all she made vpon molde his day; but oh! Naked

in the conceit did melt me down to me, I can’t say, a Jew took off

his lyue; ofte he herd þe howndez þat his balȝe haunche, þat he mette, he

made at leisure with Juan. At the quiet scenes appeared, she uttermost,

I should under hand sharply that rose, and all must love the present; i’m

sensible, I trust that neither children leap, and pray for a hundred

visions and fickle Man is apt to rove: look abroad thro’ the Hebrew

Chronicle, how often wearies all things was angry when their clients,

because man is no dream is fled, by the smart. Then—i never durst begin

to do it for I bayþe hit now her height, or raise him first they seem

strange, how idle seem’d they be more uniform. And more triumphant prize.

               XII

Whom these woods. And the land: betwixt extremes, but coasts of many a herle

of þis ryche ryal kyng of arwes— at vch farand fest among

the forth strydez, foundez þay þer þay wyth in oþer gome wyth blys into

þe Norþe Walez. Could sit down on the flocks do feede, where are the Fates change

ere night proclaim the clearer, farther awake, and þe leude and here I

sought; and the beautiful each and ages hence: two roads diverged in a

wicked people do, suffering blind mans marke, thou dost stay. Had not seem very

well, or pandering but the vision, which two cantos into

familiar guest. If any were boun busked bylyue. To all his steedes in

lowlye laye, and sayde soberly samen alle þat mon most dissemblings

when wearied on my spirit, unaware: Though all its range of duties

totall summe men hit hym þoȝt. And some mould, the little goes a long moment

was as one who have burnt each hapless name, a wretched the Donna

Julia and Don Fernan Nunez? And saw but soon wheel roun’, an’ I saw

a crowd pursue: night a countenaunce, emong the hasp of love. Melissa,

tinged with slow and connection, but can’t tell whether took the other

joys to pray turn your lofte, and of air—Rome’s ghost not own, but the past.

               XIII

Half in dreams. My Spectre folly: thou steal to me, you that compass of

water we can be set withinne with as god wylle—and ho hym respite,

invade and my pretty gentleness the crowned, their languid eyes would

it have been wived, and cemmed, wyth to karp, til þe mon and catch at

any noke I oquere fynd, to end the brain that which the other in

the literary leaves with his happy mother to sing my Highland

Lassie, O. Survey the pedigree his sires would look, as roll the sea

of sorrows whence after-hands may move the heart in that bene with her

walour and govern the rack, and then two myle henne. And heave, as

in a harde as fresh—for he Music to heaven’s decease.

               XIV

My hand tightens, and are as beauteous bride, and we are and unexplaining,

with a short-legged hen, if we can scarce held her writhing, my woe now

wasted fruit of love; so to his course of China brought with your leave me

not any other booty sought forgetfulness. Yet, when push’d by questions;

never saw. And file they labour to my turf, and þe halle, herande

for to come—Well, to reche myȝt, as I am, first inadvertent

brush the flower on earthlie mould’ring to the Turkish mart, her voice kept her

golde ay inmyddez, as his first creature, and Care: how lonely men speded

hom to hay is grassye ground of time to marriage is fledde, these books: hope.

               XV

Light, he told of those queers i remember. The terrace ranged aspect thrown;

each ravishers remained, flaming hair, and sacred be her father was

wildly clad; her eyes can see myself—me— that I do and why we came,

rank on rank; he gave way; him self might me; while life’s strange Poet-princess:

Lady Psyche and hornez ful ryche. ’Er this I heard by falling, Oh.

Received thing their happy herse, make we mery quyl we may have you more

tame flower singing, each, then, ’ said he, Out went to grasp. A thing and oar

of Adria’s god of pleasant city, and scimitars await thy weeding;

but where delightful lily of yourself here þeraboute abelef

as a busk ouer his dirty fee, and lose thronge, with little plants of

man the wakes up and ful siker my trawþe.— A true Hidalgo, free and

sayde þe behoues. Always remember you is here! Resting still shows, kill

me with þe hede of þe bitter Eldre braunch, laments of alabaster.

               XVI

And laȝter. To the watch’d her own; this most dear excepting nature holds

out half undo it. Be better learning to lasse luf in his grave never

heart her could not see thy widows, she resolved on air that cause thou

mayst attune thy quill, and, turn’d, and the long carpet lies: o write within,

which old- recurring wash of a Good Son, who his Dominion sweet to

her beloved nor yet recover. And wyth knotted rushrings, and catch

at any of thee, gaze o’er a name, above the style, and Cymon

suddenly forgive, though fame is my loof, i’m thine eyes the teacups, after

thee, and crispeth with chosen friend, do you feel no more, but took a new

one from the fabulous folds of Time, perhaps that before the Flood, and

yet rolls on thy stead performed of golde; þe werbelande wynde wapped fro

þe fale erþe; ner slayn for gode of þe ȝonge; much steuen, and þat, for we

hold Thee just, and I strove to weep. At last, who had fallen—on this sere

pyne, þat day dele his fare þat he þurȝ þis fryth and her maids tenderness.

Lemons, and lyȝt horce launce. Must be born were boun busked on þat rurde

he of þe fayrer to his bed hym drynk, and latent in a curbside

pool. With pain and felaȝschyp forbe al þyng, his chek for new joy; but oh!

               XVII

The shadows haunting now. Thou by the spouse: her college and all the heroes

of his rage and þe goddess of gods adultery, is more

reconciling ray, and winds arise, a bastard vile, a beast with stupidly

admire how thou canst sit, and to his luflych aloft lepez

ouergrowen; wel bisemed, and look’d, and touches you with alle þe lorde

fyrst cource in þe colde erþe to welcome her son so—i’m very certain

the one POU STO whence around. A naked in a letters in her legs’

sincere the Beadsman, after all, that unfair which, with Mador de la

Port. For there we weep; and so that they call these stone where were time of on

wyȝes þat knit ar þerinne, þat I wear those who champion’d his arms were joined.

               XVIII

Had given her soft lips lie apartment in the hallow’d by the difference

me, hate were ye as poor guide. One asked, how great’s the song, although please

to frame: enough still left to sanctify the deuce they sought; and held her

thou darest in my view set all this is the beil’, where the wrong on the

dead world is dimme and gomenly he sayde, now, sir swete, boþe þe barres of

talkyng noble, wich spede is in speche, for many a flowers, mother

know, but then the Hand of children still to dote upon the last: a

peacefully! Selling everywhere, art still the soot that two at Conway dwell.

               XIX

Til þe sunne, þe stel hondelez, dubbed wyth ful comly bykennen to

rest by cool Eurotas they will say, when separate cages, instead of

sunshine and ink for schame! Ran before the stage. Generate mind. Is much

to pleased amid their former friend remember how the vows I made. Your

name in ordinary place? And þou hatz forred, and said … Nay, we loved

his pain, and hade ben soiourned sadly; sele yow be chose a morsel

he and Juan throttled him of calling too. Have, to rent her sleep of death.

[coinageinvestment]

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[abellinthecupboard]

The Skeleton in Armor

“Speak! speak! thou fearful guest! Who, with thy hollow breast Still in rude armor drest,      Comest to daunt me! Wrapt not in Eastern balms, But with thy fleshless palms Stretched, as if asking alms,      Why dost thou haunt me?” Then, from those cavernous eyes Pale flashes seemed to rise, As when the Northern skies      Gleam in December; And, like the water’s flow Under December’s snow, Came a dull voice of woe      From the heart’s chamber. “I was a Viking old! My deeds, though manifold, No Skald in song has told,      No Saga taught thee! Take heed, that in thy verse Thou dost the tale rehearse, Else dread a dead man’s curse;      For this I sought thee. “Far in the Northern Land, By the wild Baltic’s strand, I, with my childish hand,      Tamed the gerfalcon; And, with my skates fast-bound, Skimmed the half-frozen Sound, That the poor whimpering hound      Trembled to walk on. “Oft to his frozen lair Tracked I the grisly bear, While from my path the hare      Fled like a shadow; Oft through the forest dark Followed the were-wolf’s bark, Until the soaring lark      Sang from the meadow. “But when I older grew, Joining a corsair’s crew, O’er the dark sea I flew      With the marauders. Wild was the life we led; Many the souls that sped, Many the hearts that bled,      By our stern orders. “Many a wassail-bout Wore the long Winter out; Often our midnight shout      Set the cocks crowing, As we the Berserk’s tale Measured in cups of ale, Draining the oaken pail,      Filled to o’erflowing. “Once as I told in glee Tales of the stormy sea, Soft eyes did gaze on me,      Burning yet tender; And as the white stars shine On the dark Norway pine, On that dark heart of mine      Fell their soft splendor. “I wooed the blue-eyed maid, Yielding, yet half afraid, And in the forest’s shade      Our vows were plighted. Under its loosened vest Fluttered her little breast, Like birds within their nest      By the hawk frighted. “Bright in her father’s hall Shields gleamed upon the wall, Loud sang the minstrels all,      Chanting his glory; When of old Hildebrand I asked his daughter’s hand, Mute did the minstrels stand      To hear my story. “While the brown ale he quaffed, Loud then the champion laughed, And as the wind-gusts waft      The sea-foam brightly, So the loud laugh of scorn, Out of those lips unshorn, From the deep drinking-horn      Blew the foam lightly. “She was a Prince’s child, I but a Viking wild, And though she blushed and smiled,      I was discarded! Should not the dove so white Follow the sea-mew’s flight, Why did they leave that night      Her nest unguarded? “Scarce had I put to sea, Bearing the maid with me, Fairest of all was she      Among the Norsemen! When on the white sea-strand, Waving his armed hand, Saw we old Hildebrand,      With twenty horsemen. “Then launched they to the blast, Bent like a reed each mast, Yet we were gaining fast,      When the wind failed us; And with a sudden flaw Came round the gusty Skaw, So that our foe we saw      Laugh as he hailed us. “And as to catch the gale Round veered the flapping sail, ‘Death!’ was the helmsman’s hail,      ‘Death without quarter!’ Mid-ships with iron keel Struck we her ribs of steel; Down her black hulk did reel      Through the black water! “As with his wings aslant, Sails the fierce cormorant, Seeking some rocky haunt,      With his prey laden, — So toward the open main, Beating to sea again, Through the wild hurricane,      Bore I the maiden. “Three weeks we westward bore, And when the storm was o’er, Cloud-like we saw the shore      Stretching to leeward; There for my lady’s bower Built I the lofty tower, Which, to this very hour,   Stands looking seaward. “There lived we many years; Time dried the maiden’s tears; She had forgot her fears,      She was a mother; Death closed her mild blue eyes, Under that tower she lies; Ne’er shall the sun arise      On such another! “Still grew my bosom then, Still as a stagnant fen! Hateful to me were men,      The sunlight hateful! In the vast forest here, Clad in my warlike gear, Fell I upon my spear,      Oh, death was grateful! “Thus, seamed with many scars, Bursting these prison bars, Up to its native stars      My soul ascended! There from the flowing bowl Deep drinks the warrior’s soul, Skoal! to the Northland! skoal!”      Thus the tale ended.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ballads and Other Poems (1842)

[positivelybeastly]

Beast was tempted to tell Raze that if he was going to do that, he should do it outside, and his face reflected his distaste for the sight of the pale faced egomaniac (pot, meet kettle), rolling his eyes as he pulled away. "I think I preferred you when you were pawing at my groin like a horny teenager. If there's nothing else, you may leave - you have your assignment, I have no further need of you."

"Yeah, yeah." Raze shifted, growing taller, his white coat becoming gaudy black leather as tassels erupted from his shoulders. Blue skin paled to white, while a red diamond sprouted from his forehead. In the man's voice, he mocked, "I am terror, I am the night. Fail me, and there will be consequences."

He grinned with Sinister's face, arms crossed over his broad chest. "Had one ego maniac rattle at me, had 'em all."

Shifting back to himself, Raze quietly wondered to himself just how long he could handle dealing with this bullshit. If he was going to have to put up with this every time? It was going to become a lot, and fast.

[stiltonbasket]

Aaaaaah!!! Please please please write about wedding clothes, I need more of the Yearning

(note: please reblog, since that’s how we get prompts for future chapters!)

anon 1: Prompt for the renouncement AU.  Surely the happy couple (plus assorted Huaisangs and juniors, if you like) need to meet with some chefs and sample a gazillion interesting things to decide on the banquet menu.   WWX, of course, samples all the wines...It would also be lovely if you wrote them getting dressed and having their hair done to match the gorgeous fanart of the two of them kissing one another's hands...

anon 2: renouncement verse prompt for the wedding arc: sizhui and xiao-yu help wwx with a practice run for his wedding hair, and lwj has a surprise for each of them!

Despite Wei Wuxian’s insistence that Jiang Cheng and Lan Xichen were going to far too much trouble for the union between their two clans, his brother and future brother-in-law refused to do away with the wedding rehearsal--a grand event in its own right, with a reception for the two bridegrooms’ families and an official exchange of gifts--and set the date for the longest day of the summer, a fortnight before the actual marriage ceremony.

“You’ll enjoy the party,” Jiang Cheng scolds, when Wei Wuxian tries to complain. “And you don’t even have to do anything, so be good and let me and Zewu-jun handle it.”

In the end, Wei Wuxian spends the rehearsal morning tasting wine, because three kinds of liquor are usually served at weddings in Yunmeng: with the sweetest and most delicious drinks poured out alongside the food, and the stronger, sourer ones reserved for later in the night, after the newlyweds retire to their bridal chamber. Surprisingly, Lan Xichen tags along to help him choose the first liquor, and approves of the golden honey-plum wine so highly that he buys a whole case to take back to Gusu with him.

“I leave wine bottles as offerings when I burn incense for Mingjue-xiong,” he explains wistfully, as the two of them go back to the clan quarters with enough fengmi jiu for the dinner party. “He would have liked this, I think.”

After Li Shuai and Yu Zhenhong finish sorting the liquor, Jiang Cheng displays Wei Wuxian’s wedding dowry, and Lan Xichen hands over the bride price, while Wei Wuxian tries not to choke on his own spit from his place at Lan Zhan’s side. He knew about the dowry Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling were settling on him, of course--there was a trunkful of silk sheets in violet and blue, and three deep chests of new gowns and slippers tailored to fit his height and slim shoulders, and then a tea set and a box of gold jewelry. There was also a larger case of jade and silver trinkets for him to wear after moving to the Cloud Recesses, where gold was largely forbidden for the sake of breaking the law against extravagance, and Wei Wuxian had to promise not to touch any of it until he and Lan Zhan officially start living together in the jingshi.

Jin Ling decided to present him with a box of baby’s essentials, which Wei Wuxian thought was ridiculous--the only children he and Lan Zhan will ever have are A-Yuan and Xiao-Yu, both of whom are far too old to actually use the gift, but his nephew looked so pleased when he presented his dajiu with the tiny shoes and dresses that Wei Wuxian shut his mouth and accepted them without protest.

After all, he and Lan Zhan might really end up with a new baby sometime in the not-too-distant future, if Wei Wuxian’s propensity for acquiring small children is anything to go by.

But none of this prepared him for the delivery of the bride price, which turns out to be six thousand golden taels from the Gusu Lan treasury to make up for the loss of Lotus Pier’s newly-instated head disciple and the zongzhu’s elder brother, not to mention the only legitimate heir to Yunmeng Jiang. Jiang Cheng doesn’t even bother to look gracious when he sees it, as Wei Wuxian notes with a cough that sounds more like a strangled scream than anything else--because his shidi seems to believe that a small fortune in gold is his due for having to part with Wei Wuxian, even though Lan Xichen will be compensated for about a fifth of the bride price on the actual wedding day, 

“Did your brother just bankrupt your sect so you could marry me?” Wei Wuxian demands, half-crazed as Lan Zhan ushers him back to his bedroom to bathe and dress in his freshly-tailored bridal robes. “Lan Zhan!”

“My uncle set aside a bride price for me before I was born, since he guessed that I would require no less than five thousand gold whenever I decided to marry,” his intended shrugs. “Hurry up and dress, sweetheart, or we will be late.”

Wei Wuxian relents and takes a hurried bath while Lan Zhan goes off to tend to his own ablutions, watching Sizhui and Xiao-Yu play together from behind the privacy screen as he scrubs his back and arms and pours perfumed oil into his hair. Sizhui seems to be trying to wrangle A-Yu into an embroidered green coat and trousers, but the baby looks far more interested in Wei Wuxian’s clothes: namely, the red and purple wedding gown, since he manages to snatch the shining silk robes out of his xiongzhang’s hands before building a nest in his pillow-basket with them.  

“Xiao-Yu is a bird,” he insists, as Wei Wuxian drops his cake of soap and laughs himself hoarse at the sight of him. “It’s my nest! Go ‘way!”

“A-Yu!” Sizhui cries, nearly stunned speechless. “Didi, those are A-Die’s wedding robes! You can’t play with them, so be a good boy and listen to xiongzhang, or--or you’ll make Yuan-gege cry!”

Xiao-Yu only squints at him before turning up his button nose. “No!”

But Lan Zhan arrives a few minutes later and coaxes the baby out of his basket with a stick of haw candy, leaving Wuxian to heave himself out of the tub and draws on his underwear. After that, the three of them lure Xiao-Yu into his tiny silk coat (by feeding him all the candy he can eat, to keep him from running away) before Wei Wuxian finally dons his bridal ensemble: a deep red overgown with lotus blossoms sewn onto the sleeve-hems in lilac and gold, while the skirt and shoulders boast a shower of stray golden petals falling from the heart of a single central flower. 

“Let me do your hair,” Lan Zhan murmurs, as if this were their actual wedding day instead of the rehearsal dinner. “You look beautiful, Wei Ying.”

Wei Wuxian feels his heart quiver at the compliment as A-Yuan steps forward with his lotus headdress, pinning it into place in front of his high-combed bun so that Lan Zhan can secure the tiny gold chains fastening it to the back of his head. He often noticed his friend’s good looks before they were engaged, of course, which is the only reason why Lan Zhan finding him beautiful in return has flustered him so--and he tries to put the thought from his mind, or at least shove it away so that he can examine it later in private. 

Anyone would find it pleasing to hear such a compliment from their bridegroom, he thinks, before blushing himself half to death when Lan Zhan leans down to kiss the side of his face. Get it together, Wei Wuxian!

[positivelybeastly]

do that thang jiggle like jello

". . . Are you quite all right? Are you able to lift both arms, are you having trouble speaking? Because I feel as though you're having a stroke."

"Why yes. Yes it do~"

"I'm not above having you flensed if you continue to waste my time."

"What, this?"

"It's a brain, what do you expect it to jiggle like?"

". . . Want to throw it at the wall and see if it sticks~?"

[snapeaddict]

Small thing for Minvember, day 6: cat

Here we go with another song, @mmad-lover!

Bébé soleil

There are memories that never leave us, memories where everything feels perfect, where the rays of sun, still slightly orange, lazily spread on the dark-red carpet, where the room smells of delicious toasted bread and coffee, where the general atmosphere is so full of peacefulness we know at once this very moment will stay with us for a long time.

Albus was not awake yet. Little Severus had been for an hour, but he had not cried, just magically appeared on top of their bed as Minerva had opened her eyes. He could still barely walk, but apparently, he already had other options. He was a very silent child, the kind who spoke with his eyes and would communicate his feelings with gestures and small noises, but did not scream, and did not attempt to speak yet. She very gently picked him up.

“Good morning dear”, she whispered, careful not to wake her husband. “How did you manage to get here, mmh? Are you cold?”

Severus simply smiled timidly. She wrapped him up in a warm blanket and slowly got up, heading toward the living room. There she lit a fire in the chimney as Severus happily started playing with wooden toys, the first Albus had brought him, and therefore his favourites. It was a bright, quiet Saturday morning and Minerva had this strange feeling being awake was relaxing. She was not aware yet of how much she would miss these moments of tranquillity, but she was enjoying every second of it. Severus was watching her.

“Mum will play with you as soon as she finishes to make breakfast, okay?”

He was very still during the whole process, his big black eyes following each of her movements as she brought bread, butter, various kinds of jams, cocoa and coffee on the table. There also was a large glass of fresh orange juice for him, as she was very careful he was getting enough vitamins. She then knelt next to the boy, observing the little wooden figures in had carefully placed in a circle.

“Do you want to eat now? Or wait for dad to wake up?”

Severus pointed his toys. At the centre of the circle he placed a small black cat and clapped his hands, raising his eyes towards her. She smiled.

“I can be a bigger cat if you want. A real one with very soft fur. Would you like that?”

She knew he would. Each time she transformed into a cat he was extremely enthusiastic and far more grabby than he was with her in her human form. He was so small, it was the first time she did not feel small herself when being a cat – she actually considered she had a better understanding of his feelings in those moments, as the angle at which she observed his face was different. He hugged her, and she purred.

She could not even help it. And being a cat, she was much more playful.

Half an hour later, when Albus finally came down, dressed in a pastel lilac-purple dressing gown, he found the both of them giggling, half lying on the floor, Severus curled up against Minerva’s fur. Sometimes he would very gently pull her tail and she would meow in protest, climbing on top of him and refusing to move; and the small boy laughed again, crawling on the carpet until he was too exhausted to go any further. Then they lied there, breathless and smiling, looking at the ceiling above them and enjoying the warmth of the morning sun on their faces. Albus sat with an amused look on his face, buttering a piece of bread. He would not disturb them.

Severus, very comfortable in the little nest of warmth he had made for himself, happily dozed off.

And Minerva watched his sweet little face with delight, her eyes, no matter if they were those of a human or cat, filled with a mother’s love: there was a small ray of sunshine snuggled up to her heart.

~ Very important to listen to the song linked in the title! Clumsy translation below

I have a Baby Sun in the depths of my nights

That lulls me to sleep and shines

Sweet little face who climbs with soft steps

The staircase of the summer room

I have a Baby Sun in the sky of my life

Who comes as soon as he wakes up in my bed

Telling me (his) dreams and singing songs

Snuggled up against my heart it feels good

A thunderstorm broke out in the night

Small hug in the morning, to start the day well

Small happiness, my heart’s going to burst

At the time when all children have fallen asleep

And my Baby Sun, heart beating in the rain

Came to join me quietly

I told him about the fights of those dark clouds

Tears of fear flowed down his cheeks without ceasing

It is incredible how much he trembled

When they met

The day was up when the storm stopped

Croissants, chestnut cream, toast

The sky was bright for breakfast

There were coffee éclairs (a pun as éclair means lightning in a storm)

Small dip in soap creams and shaving foam

I needed three words to finish a verse

Little happiness, fear is quickly forgotten

Small happiness, my heart is going to burst

Alone with my piano, I searched

I felt him enter on tiptoe

I was in heaven

That’s when he started dancing

His steps were flying on the carpet, he was bursting with life,

He already knew by heart

That lulls me to sleep and shines

That one-hour song and sang it too…

It is a Baby Sun in the depths of my nights

Sweet little face who climbs with soft steps

The staircase of the summer room

- Yves Duteil, Bébé Soleil

[libidomechanica]

Untitled Poem # 9450

A sonnet sequence

               I

Life, while that poor the Blessing to help me! And then my love, to sleeves, experience. -Wise, all the new. Arms she will forget him, or does. Our playe, a high! Caught its be laid with my only to mine—alas! Who had to seek all carrots, with lives grenadiers— these comes the breast, protected lips to tell in delicated, like a pinch by inch, for those harp, the World content, reacher court to rever their use. Endless your brauely she earth remote fruits, and watch bled betwixt they raise is a place of lavish’d All this bow, and down thing, ambitious meet. Some appoint I cite is, and swept ‘my fate.

               II

As if the answered, late or poem, call longueurs’ there, taken up his opinion of surrent with wounded by the miscarr’d who make golden quite. Among statics. Though in two part, it is keep with talked the stone bag man and keep with many a maiden, true love out ready in this however, never would not this prevailed: her father, the said she has wedding, wind die let’s sisters neither in hour, sooner be, and commenced; Decide no more enough somewhere the twining, were and doting but certain in high-sorrow hope the sluttish batterings and sped his adulation of our soul, and she but it is desire with embrac’d. Sleep belly, this in verses run and shall I quite skin, little, and feel the veil a new one, Such now kenst the rust, Desolation, who makes vs landing out grew into the good to bury bells were rung, but listening, dancing; in fact; the pleasure.

               III

Because is corrupt by the lies the rightful citadel, and him careen; he brimstone of both and snow to do nothing, it containing; a pipes, perched with my hot and slow and the knee; and all the swallow’d they can for in act, try to seek him home to take the great soft are as quite as that I am understand dance from moats and the Empress-gang crag, I could not parts in faith a diploma, justice and telling, they hearts, with a gem! The hour own worth all there, the loved of fault or fish-woman catatonic stuck fast, or doubt, he enjoying half so slowly with plenty to this arte.

               IV

When the voluntary, whence upon take to saith a kissed, but the year spring in the manifest in so well-practice the Past, of her is keeps the seemed us not for the glistrings were on his old gentlemen the solitude in the right to snap, duly accountry please. His Dominion of Illusion of danger, your flowers his complace to his wife with one, that night to. And perhaps might to see but most short, and from her face, and Antony retrospectre hundresseth wit impart as such deck’d up and pursuing loves, and death the worse where, alley. A steal feeling—as its came.

               V

Might form came with state erred, the praises, the Crown hues their content, to be rested by all gold on the falls its own heart. Doubt his own: t is a dreadful words are such this favouritism. The right is a business and so my song of life—he sea. At found heavy sight, produced, already to guest; would not sing. I’ll now they preeminence remember still, for so than a new object realm of them shot him, but the must her sigh, by swaddling, of starrest intendeth! At prepose, its own impress-gang one volunteers, from my nest, for like an altar- pieces. In all in who would me be Thine!

               VI

I said myself to come says, indite. Soft has, not change, bold in. Not this, the lake, effection misprision in. You not a should his gift. To save to Haidee and me: we all his bow’d: I cast amidst flinch. Making and like Nero, or then their love: she pray: so vile heart, with pealing. And all other, good announce I Ioues with one twain, join and Helper! And court cherubs round such said he go slow but in orders, and hangel just pond the Christen that is, and base of dream, then the dead besides by her. And, if the violet? Only until thing be, fell his own: t is believe supply unto me?

               VII

As an incline, fatal shaft by the pond of a skull, whether brother. Their weepe. No redeeming each wake, coming in this trees, until as here, french by other’s glory, and I’ll be they had that never the ask’d have lain that weapons the one trump card, was the did thee, I clime, althought hands with a heart her pause. Because they green leaves do not be concede quarter: she cried until joanna falling such for my vows are youth, and many a shaft inuoked at men; irks cares; but long canto—and radiator greater parts makes can’t hurt in the soil; nor t’ other sception tolerable round nubby, you and a mermaid the tried to they grew; and t is weak of inter-liuerie place without you most, tricks, althought, closed to followed, to put of many a maid gain.—Am I destroying Moslem orphan flesh of carnage, exempt further will be on my tender’d—through their East. Pleasure.

               VIII

And to the bloody being came works at the china. Them for marriage unbred; the summer is trees, that no long like Love is strange of courteous sin; but it. Old Lambro passim. What is one, the Hunting, each attack’d upon the moon. Above her heads forget the than such like dear, not seems no last. That, ’ and turns whom our eyes be, shun what move: oh, you got him a photo boots. He church-yard could the roll from servants living in the night deep, ’ to that was lamed, thy breathe dead as hear off, amygdaloid and at heart is of Fame were zombie-like, as much liars, as the died entance so fraid!

               IX

Do you feelings and such deckes a matron. ’ And her large order, and mission in fact—and such the depos’d forest where better- crystal. Look in. Are love hers, like hanging at these rascals, because her elf, nor the stale males of ioyes to halfway up a glance, he best in each way good. The corses’ back and set youth, Health its way: their haired and mourn, joints do not awed togethereby; learnt out, we can dock, the far of the picture in watching and sea. That this varying: the hate the darkness to the lay on; not all her good quarto, by chaste life by fate of man! But thy place ears politics.

               X

Are frogs were package, and thy bosom dim vast beat back, our brilliant to industrious in so far as nothings we drop his chill, or down yon mother’s broke my soundly secret though thine eye was away. Thus Natures, do I remember self were can; for, I put his sought her hair, the lose. She is in their dole of Heaven entirely throught on her from the day fled. Whose who had worse. Besides by times make me bounded, the spoused tight! A forth though native her; for lost most foes, and I am talked without deepe with you. His best alchemy—Witch, you here, shewe, felt like a fair I chase, and kept.

               XI

Shine The Shakspeared with a fault, but only grapple to make outdone, touch, and I say it back, our murmured to thee, o Vashti, noble fell’d in her bells, it could shake it all, but heaven stick as hall, it back, see that thou and so much of speech t’ engaged in the sex and kissing hawthorns and thee, and the magnolias, meant of this is a little, and chuse your hair! He is meaning like thy strong in rock so hot that much left, to his life in the cup, and burn, and rally fellow peeping farthest be! Mourn, joint me moment centrench stuck in the meant but the deaths, and wishing leave of Paris!

               XII

To gilds unsure for then juan carp, and dead. But may have done, which fills men counsel’d, from seeing safety, thou are let us wits, all the heart, when at need’st though to watch, with Jove, the ditches at striving lay is protege; while I smile enough! Of impulse, where are fair in the copses, and come disguise the Shah summon’d to remonstrous crown’d. No really sheepe move to seven, and arches of thee, for sport of liars parts conqueror—a matchless a Son? His pity warn’d methinke now. Some hundressing, and prayer ways rewind pent by then recall; then a trick’s shall I say some volleys, like town!

               XIII

And the long absurd. Thus fixed be, felt gladly bright I fell—and not to make her kind a flowery like pitch of for the could streets, all description coming faith democracy; ’ or Wordsworthy I to must full profuse; but how the cries, can scornefully the times where occur some past, which is memoried on, her and me. The look on bayonet and with him back againe; the mother’s harm unto her going; you no patriot nature’s eternity: Cold Past. I answer of Childlesses, and bloody hand as warm bout thy wrist is for peace unto herself hadst nothings, and shooting.

               XIV

Held her, Bulow, John and music blender. She topaz, opal, cast away, oh! Until this fancy be she bodies lullaby? And he nerve me. Grasp; none, which was lady within the Sun: ’ the beds. Her laughs to claiming;—’Juan! The paradox which but which has such is laureater, and horns and dancing their sight in the open came—and the spot, to seen said; her home. What ye have been; there and sought at my gaine, after bed, that is ended, but may do not every thing water tale moment! Mother, tis my Julia, art our eyes! And to ire. And we met himself whilst Ben he not by cigarette.

               XV

Chaste by one thine on the went on him so great Marlborough bodies about their longë love a dovetail, to smile all dark all neck and with sight, like hair, bedabbling under of they made them were spring man alderman, who is nothings can heart of ear, in the figures, child—I saw their brute to aught there thorn, to my souls, like an in they’ve beyond which cut that sweetness, the Gaule is my little girl, how him! Ashes, of moss inter, knew near that bids me more up their own sweet tick, rose, without her temperament, elegy to you, all description this story: and move savage and avenges; the tempting: not sweet houses, cinnamon, and escaped; and Antony rest. With I while her; for ever first of this true within the colour; five the when the hope to them, as bad guess; but exercise above, ne wote I, how tis some green, be’st lord shalt with ascended to my father going!

               XVI

Ay, not marvellous train of Childless guest. Can liuely spring, choking your beds den, and at the will be that ever me; plant to part, take a blessed by the bough. Which soul. Perhaps were he embraced, it look down. Guess how many a sage fellow, slipperary top, i’ll pretty—I never can divide not. Aggress before. You, to you, if this stern and gay; whose doth lay, then diffusive not yet. The brough acts of dyers. The will were is strawberries. Though wings, far to me leopatra living hounds, which has weak rib by a deepest may die and sailed: he her not teeth stol’n from he lost Travel tired.

               XVII

He so great and with many wooden said I, if though your feete are red Vesuvius loving is due, or freely mode of the despair? If you’re nothing off her jungle one; that shiver, yawning schools, and hands to her; sic a wild his earth and Latin fretful bards are the mountain good aversion the same to be spoyle is not seem wrong youth, all help here made the reason track of Thy plight. Breast her to the think; ere he wealth its socketful that you kissed as were and his fed; but by the rode by Arseniew, that are heard to husband, he chrysolitude in therefore their meant to obtaine.

               XVIII

Where vnioynted Grove, an ugly to see; for lover make Cupid a bey to assault: hounds the garlands erect, purple army upon each has not envy e’er beauteous, the did the fields to feelings, or of the glow: she pretty milk-teeth me! And her ever that due proud of Italy’s a trick’s short and I love’s dainty, or smooth of Greece! Which in moment, and them were dead return Rome against those they may pour’d snow, rebell or fame, as he went into my breast, the thinking with than not one army upon a friend, each of that she had for soul was the was curb, as if t would be blazes.

               XIX

Upon her brow: are thorn! Oft divine heads of that stopped crackling door all bail such as evermorn; unwilling no speculations of deep for so those more imbecile, the playing proving. Own self, in vain, he’s twist when I, long painternal—just to there she not to vse to be done, can before the Base. My memory; that day, yet world of whom I do nothings her seconded because be out they found it had manna Southey, not knockings. The bellow she flocke and greened. To thee, let to order, praises in their spirit of her woe that we wild echoes flash’d nor which, looks how, the blowing?

               XX

Tried they head soil; serene as if loves soul! Perhaps you: a generable self into face, in life indeed to the pitty. Again, on his bow, and her the midst thus you: her silken with zeal of poets—so pliable from above young madness rest down, his still. By your said she may i feel with sacred the sprout out of you’re with silken was abandoned. Her hair fragrant you see my must now; he hear to be old their praised and God, and with hopes do flower of their more than by their legs are nothing and shorter; sic articles, the race. When I long music of the Prince that for aughter.

               XXI

When the end, and she drew: he was wolves beneath you. The may turn against the flew o’er me from though to squeezed thee, pale yet a pieces. Then the ear, and looked above and winterest with the dwalt on him, with her help here’s no fast, who held us not, tricks of you’re rise is dry. You wilt be very clouds as the authors fear of ink, for a million one pricked by a realment: help as old Past.—Right, tis secure banner millennium, you wert, take of Prospectre hunger curious. Were bloom of Italy he head, release; by the summer at the Delos rose stage me. The coffee in her senses, whom shut ourselves not weapons to burns whom shut outragedies anothers pick it shall I walked at all, nor kind; and her first Caesar himself upon me. One, seeing, in fact much preciations, which love, ten together child’s corresponsible fell, swear against though his protege; while you.

               XXII

This instead, saying looks so deep, when I, my sonnets all my deserving rampart a Thee. Of Julia, art in them forsoothed to gives, on his life nuptial trees turf I bow; three hundred dish’d his way might was surchase of breezes idly ran away from the bastions, when his mixed: they must babies grown: of fear him who fairly dear, a day, and the years, as ever. Her skin the rest may be Justice and new: speaketh. How proud, hee’l leaned toes are your large prey; and I do not yet; but plays there: big and he turned angel just ne’er some my forest, with love away, my Friend founded which make our wife.

               XXIII

I cannot to suit though those stone for things, the hour old love, hatred, Seven he deep belong, and slightly drawn apartment well, there must to the meaning divine, thy consider ever bed, how do I hope was resides there a dovetailed: her boon for water, when he was white gauze barrack’s still there the sing to this infinite be nam’d then despair? Trump card, and its castle wave fewer home, who were princes tried to refer to real animals. Make its darling crone of memory one and never knees both two extremely death, which way said: twas his vessel could fairly decide in a love.

               XXIV

—That little graversity to shower, and night stranged bad age and feasting close; but I in me? As he rock. Amongst that, said her skin, he’d prime flowers, some on my girl’s brough thee swim. Be wish hordes, and pleasant from me. Was left little arms a way to lived thine: have civic Pair, and where want of her every preferring loudly seemed took alone. Not respondents, saving knee-deep oaths of many loved his Dominion as said I, in no one do powre euen he world speak the tend think the gate, and with have with but he, all the swerue, meridian-like, assembled to be ashes where which began to sole echoes flying: Daddy! To him knew no registry, till Pan and out from this Child himself, a memorial papa was conspird in the lighter it besidence and silv’ry glens repentangled city’s resolved in a moment to butter. By their sphere he must nowe slightning.

               XXV

On the mice huddle grew a sun shine faults of her the soldiers, so though insula tilts, played, such thine in which fell of two extreme a fine for described to see him, too; but Word of the stream doth lay, more, wherefore history of humanity—when it didn’t matteriest tieth! Cast on the reposed: Frederic to thee: theeues stead, a hill, farthest gemme of God, while I am not bells. Leans might avails were from the head in they say, we stain’s heart shoot as doubtful bards to the chaste lineament, that my sin is tribute of your beauty masks, and feel the meane that shed her good, and idle cigarette.

               XXVI

Doubled with what all there Simmer storie, there worse, and path, with many kiss for your eyes hath of bloom, conceive the chaste sorts alang: in earth, so the blaze of gold, in number’d much coldly man I know; but never your pretty; but place ears the speak, sooner strong you esteemed us. Of her dreary level stay. The kings smoothness best intent stood ready pilgrim Avenges; and the bough button for consequences, or people never the best first to shall never beare man whom having eyes were convince and the Moslems fighting and sung in the solely lying: they will be. To me, my scale.

               XXVII

A longer: the roar of Wisdom from its hue, and tended, and with joy of praised handmaid reply! Thought no crimson crown’d. Hold them night to wake, steal forgive way your breathed me upon immemory—and becomething and war with blue, and dried lad, and little maid of Woman. The pains may i touch, that blossoms but fight, before the worlds have as Willies are than than dock, shewes to behold, talking to buddhist my naked bottom of earth, since was nothings that’s them into my vale to put one could lay thing: a syre, the other, in the dead, and I, Such morn? Thus, by mowing curless in sleep.

               XXVIII

You murdring of the wind tenor of youthful day I’d find safety, with gossip, scarcely cowers his prisoner, well-a-day! Of you to me, whence is love with me, let its like your mutual many a cry All ’s Well, the dew, upon the send an and grand water fate or grimy guests herself willie was best me, despite of prisoner. The ocean, earthstone better ways, and sherbets onto thee out grew one to mine eyes diuiding auburn you must notion, from the deem, the ignored it had no more the palisades, though for aye remember’d it even thee low. The mountain come. Let me!

               XXIX

The veries cannot ever helpless damned. The injuries wounds his set of court fell house,—for Greece might for spouse made you art doth lurk, where it their husband or dear!—First put to the old damp’d heavy tear his feud betweenwhile cheeks and builds undoings, I rathers, like enough his head of space of being and their jug was lone it was mething under the Past. Where all the cried into dark, there his neighbors have not a sing was, and of skin, haply the Pyrrhic phalanx gone, it hold below that short and scrambling thou so fair. And such as oblivion look at our human native battery!

               XXX

-Top, and he turn’d bowers built him. As nine ways. Your pray Medea form the Master— not too. And speech as I had the pitch our arms of free. But that the could soldiers, round. Day and she hands, was far remains and so I came hot another, but charity. Now God followers thick eyes throe! He enterest, ere in marble in peal this water, the master they granted for though the chill of a charity.—Was mirror’d heroism of our reach’d with a death we’ll say you art to one man’s plain, to fly from a Corner of the waking mine? The spot what clime a human sent came. I sketched groand!

               XXXI

Rich forms in their grief are sweet maid, Gee woe! Yet that balm, and I my sheepe move, and cast in answers more: but could to saved with spuriously mourney, and you hast the secret trembling, but from high rarely man uses propellers should me; and their loves unsighing live least doth reefs white sorrowful face told of the find to thee, fear. Of it for a long stars thee now thee shall cut doubt, her batters she worlds would not read throne alive; let not grow and so, what two bats and two are but a kissed hand did late, dead: ashes, is life, wise at the gardent important many times since they the public stomachs.

               XXXII

And e’en with like a throat she might to my origin with aver the breeze. Farewell their her finger and thy lover’s languish in branches on those dalying spent by praise bewray it short sweet gratifying Nature his head? The bed, circle of the see, and honours third morning together. And fade their meant to play things round, her his five civilisations;—but and I will could sea, that he had on the fire, thy bed, echoing in the subtless the column, thy narrow what touch’d her faith, and I will glory. And so man’s love, or that none, why—there shine upon so, young madness who’s that hill.

               XXXIII

This was quite number’d, but her rites himself art her choice fondness, oaths’ breasts ever waking so clock on you prophet wrong you walk’d o’er little pedigressions, leaves are man’s conversary, and kindness hast said, Gee woe! Who mould that with Rose who selectrical behold check’d as an e’e, she’s door and the next shame, the mixture on the worn out a faultless express’d on; all my tear being had dwelt up to come, for there is not two of many a tomb best, steal feeling; but the purpose nam’d, warriors compass o’ Ballochmyle. Wake, failure of you still reigns look not come, for Seasons such destroy?

               XXXIV

It say, full East, ’ I saw a jutting frame a stone clime, engender by my tomb best earth and a barbell its eerie piny more nothings of gulls on you, to each in earth wan front store those who is not like closer, they some my power, which Satan ancient all minute, empty crawl, and his lately have gone. Shall wrings. Yet warm he sweet and pinned to the met! The was turf when Pan and white. Read them indeed speak. All the that my sake else divided for where had not mine, these light mind. Is in fact, that fill to beauteous he’d ape to be prosecuted Allah from us a lute. Your blessed. To hear!

               XXXV

New object heauens could sight, He pray, how far the pond the ground replied, are you in my Longing horse that I was sweetly dead! I have no fitted forget look of us and cut in pity that is aged, such leans more a little crowned the new rose irides, he shrank until this. Beneath of Briar Rose and there’s not to say so fairy, her love lovely arm, and filthy hope and babes, and the dream doth shall adorn, till I knew the grew; a good will now them twixt two are lagging looked as is roar, a dwarfs of sing is tied? The lust with cares, who for ever either hooks, while I painters.

               XXXVI

Fools! ’’ Not him, and the scimitating pick it when, in flame! On the stone. His poor charity, which profit and she oh no one prize, a propound, nor we are all approved and the scorn’d Love these are said he which our Business. My most, as authority and brace, cheefe, with life as she love an honest doom maids shameful citadel, and purse, make turns on your kind of tongue, though the sun upon our which The Shakspear’d benight to pay or pledge of the descried and time’s lie as Willie Wastle wa’, she people of thee, cut an atmospheres, a cat, a whispering on thy eyes; nay, like him the last?

               XXXVII

Flash, I protest, hail, and show’d himself, a much occasions will guides intent still in wars. Where, as plain corruption far frosty air, and there, for her that death of the ground his pipe, independs that get up, as me; what we drove to one knew my fancy be deceived: for which verse have not say, but with God whom paced both forms do rob, but, oh, our hanging on bamboo still, as the cried; their hair: do you, the moon the end, expense of birth officer of poison-flowers, swear too; the oranged, link in delighted; the Past go hence the more than I dwelt, thou art of the meant to refer to, I thing.

               XXXVIII

For like a thrift in the fact; unless once not least I will purport, houris in there to sea. May trouble pond—and sweet, what with the hearth remove, nor existent step all damp’d his he went impart, and your somethings they have boy—one wote I, how peepes of female fauour fair; her veil’s straine the more ransom of her one, yet wide with beat back of thee, the Queens and told his prince Mene, Tekel, ’ and well; only think in the Enemy’s Heavens the can before their ration to refer to rest way goods were alive? If I could never this graceful Time. The mortal, which he treasure for than recall; earth.

               XXXIX

” Not for Pardon ere you seems to govers. That I must for the thou seemed thine, and euen he who restord by all the thicks of Lady Psyche, wilt, for him, and turned Nor Jove’s gray prefers had no need the lady- sistering seeming from my Highland for the for some still we have been Power that in the sea and twenty scourge of ink, even and blazed, and still things long-neck’d the scampered in a race on her look’d with mighty now. More rose on my woolly good bled and poore Petrarchs long orisoners, ’ around ambrosian only crop: up from Arab lore speak optics; and, where sever, than proued.

               XL

You wake him. Beat admission: for worse. While swung the said: went inter revolving hear our heard that she off in my ain. It is happy against thy which had loaves we drops as hatch the cries, and clearer, for a truer- heart invalid aim betwixt the groaning words, and dreams, became out bows their new my break optics; and thinke of Wisdom from home; and rife, which settles, over-loving knowledge in their clay,—a hundresses. Somebody, save your hear a large black cordial face and fiddle-aged the goes fall of my heart, and always and not took the college— a harmonious, such precedence.

               XLI

The went was conquered grand prose, and chuckle. The cup, he caged his denied the Nineveh, and that is things unders, round its rescued from their been thee, so God thou no fearful rises justified less face; the feareth. Then five sworn wave, or fool; and, which guides the ocean, earth more the day was varying, blow, his mad, yet, in fact, every servant’s graves your wood where vnioynted her, but since, thought I use they have; but now no means again. He shadows dim looked like a haughter and pearles’s Wain? Sword cannot loves unlawful to see them ken his latent in Their gold, stopped awhile yet help I can bind.

               XLII

I don’t you would destruck all melts with Decay, thou, with most and truth: and whence as string a visits quite country and fiddling, flash to root, so deep, and weep so swears triumphal arches shut it gave off a little tires? Wish the found that should hope of this, whose beside the Ring, or other groweth. Which bear of a God’s daught from her little moment winged all adore; laid wounded at the hope was the always? At her painted but slipping till his happier that, silent steps of the Sun: ’ the can forgetting up a fresht, though thee, cut of thy virgins and my mother dearly you hee’l flavour.

               XLIII

Somebody, and fear, and were too much hour! Of moods as mad, and that our sect, are puppets, like the crossessing as if her long lying: adieu, the ground. And descence my sight, He plunge for her liable roll in hands with her cry’d: and mistress shore, were thorn she’s most pitch blazes. Named, to you, forgive the chrysolitude of all see me is Martha! So my own with stand, the vulgar oath; then your since them with Well walls his ’bacco on apartment of their desser cool; but in all we cannot do your gun fixed upon the discovereign ground her immolations meet is fiery glory.

               XLIV

Built to stirred can before thine alive? With you’llfind seems no one of all seek to Drinking blown down—and that rich some molested befell; if charming grace the Maker praising. Which men comment; his train’d to budding- day, which paint away, didst that she’s double- vantage, lie rought the blushed in snow: my Italia! Fancies that should man, and since life in its sake epicurean, a much to God will not signify in me? Or Ca ira, ’ accompass before than Southey, my foot the first is not near relations were them still this about her Ambrosia, mix’d by Beatrice, its grave Tartar.

               XLV

Has manner might be mingle act storm to human see all these rueth. Would to him in the guesse. But could be done, as honours plungest he sunny gems on cities our murmur of this hands. The applause she good and there happy,—happy could not to cosset, nurse, it pleasant, by Dead—what, said. He shalt be saved lime as plan: two night as free, so the Virgins save three, throught; that distant her doubtful couple to fly from only be. Will songs in like chanc’d to govers. She had damsels, he’s gain for our complished sight the field. Not the hopes to leave thee, none was a snail, grew, that Marlborough compell’d tree.

               XLVI

Let other’s Doings such world of cup or circumstance, fire was accustom’d there he empurpled charity and now occur solitary silly to linger, you wilt compare, certain morning rill come after and signs, where th’ unkind’s on a little calmly hent, she pretty sure to world the her; the was God, or the sun wild echoes, dost keepe. Carnage,—and the which made, a climb, in mine, and poles, to dwell forgot him self-kill’d as met him hard of Wisdom’s try from that is new; the Assemblance was run; if those spirit she seven, there each pen receive thee lies in for such the North.

               XLVII

I was he to tell me the night this strength within These rude, though street of immortals and cares; and thorne think it went upon thy shadow-like him prisoners, ’ and I will remember’d round that was more stars,—all which every busy beyond, where it may apart.- Handsome prizes; he has we not a boy, and Infinite courteous, but should having to the peonies and of that the nectar; but he, hold curse a May-lady with such in a rare allay’d some to redress: but all men, puzzled quite cloud cannot for his economy, and bird thy place teaching and the crag, full singing and hair!

               XLVIII

Long-cloth’d in his order to be in him! Like mischance and snow-white the table. Strait of revented him gain, my fingers such as old grief with rusting, and yawn, you art, and acts only followed the street influence, so, I thing those can see how their two are thou view her lovelier grave: the destroys, all that shiver mind, could my head, whate’er wind. Quick with the moral, warm’d, yet houris, and he cruel stay, I giue you tell or two of us at length people have what ye he kisses are plainly deaths but it sorrow she sad pierce on flower of that musk or not, can we can say; mend. Thus she.

               XLIX

Departed angle forbear clods, and a doll chemistress that wince, fire and bobbing and died one much, by a young virgin an empting thou, my opinion,—my humilitary sight beauty is thereal to sweets forest be for my sake, the woods which multitude confirmed, and Upharsin, ’ which reality. Two village, thy faintly sheen of the sea in the act a pious of sleep mere east in height be had on deepe; vouch’d the Adrian as old in. His were some good as a man life all song of murdrer not, groan, you flew from time and groaned, get up, as dizzy with this produced, and head.

               L

Be mine, mine, lass our hear hiss—the is my past,—this to diuorce on green. Comes began to a wants gave—he little cottage, unsafely must be package, and twenty stir all pain, not love’s another hair, than ocean, earth, and there with travell’d weapons some friends, now I chaste seen to leave to her; sic a wife was planned! Which is victor’s meet in self-will’d the seasoning no spelt in earth and keen and bad, nor welfare is due, onely part once, for the you’ll legend or west space presume that it is whirlwind’s planned! He for future like, and laugh all-sufficientists them is the armies lullaby?

               LI

The dancer gay-furred. Not borne stuffe a flowers by Beatrice: but to be brough they thirty the find a tenth birth and still is a lute, the shrapnel scythed your parts, wise silk neckclothing I put of tongue, and a snow, nor were done, revenge fall, and thus forehead, who give that is bones while I love and myrtless to confess omission, tho pumie stone berry, Tommy, Wilfred, lass he sooner be shoots—Add this, and the sublime a hundress’d unseen seen, whoever can thought colours in vain, from above, frettes as into steps or pearl and cheap the flesh of each our mates of weed; perhaps to obtaine.

               LII

Singing; help, and then their mischarge gold make some she walk of some strife, for ay from hour own know. His eyes and appeared not say this voice true, because there with my life in proceed it adore; laid its crystal breast, and spin one rought he kneels! Which I wail, lead’st though her face enioy nectar; but why, arriving head for rare end we in the starve, give my spring sounds the and moderate things, when Italy’s all his lot had been through they were real purposes of the night or any others blackly from me. He rushed his way: let’s grant flank’d as the hour; five monstrous worse to where, are most cherish’d: for loved!

               LIII

May I did justified less son of all danger, I the came further warrior from having inch of forth. It sweetnesse because he race make to the world to fraud, thousand why? And kiss from limits on thy pow’r, which the Princes, which enchants, stake a poet, what next newe is things right legitimate to grace and thorn, upon the her mind its bent, with heaven and pursued then running, each in ever silver bed, circle-glory as a falternal many a lad place of longer stopped in our pains before his hush agained ceilings, with they great show a slaves were away, who, what touches.

[shirtlesssammy]

15x16: Drag Me Away (From You)

Then:

Castiel confesses a bombshell to Dean

Now:

We pick up right where we left off. Dean and Cas are about to share mutual I love yous and ---. A man checks into a motel late at night. The man is nervous entering the room, but reassures himself that he “can do this.” He sets up shop, and by “shop”, I mean he starts hitting the bottle. 

Travis gets a text from Caitlin asking him why he would go “back to that place.” The creepy ring he grasps as he tells himself it was never real tells me it was VERY REAL. Get out of there, Travis! 

Alas, it’s very real and he’s murdered by Closet Ghost Boy. 

Sam and Dean are on the case!

Oh wait, I guess they knew the guy back in the halcyon days of their youth and they’re actually heading to his funeral. Sam recaps recent events, including Cas bailing on the fam. Then he asks if Dean and him are fighting again. 

AND IT SENDS ME. #SamKnows

Dean denies knowing anything (AHEM. I sense DRAMA by the end of this episode --I’d normally say this would be left for the end of the season, but we’re really at the end of the season and the END OF THE SHOW...what’s with all the manufactured drama??) Dean then gets a text from Cas asking if he’s told Sam. 

That’s a negative. 

*Flashback Alert*

January 1993

Dean’s about 14 or 15 and Sam is 10. They’re dropped off by John to chill at a motel while he heads out on a hunt. Sam’s hiding something under his coat, and with a little prodding from Dean, it’s revealed to be a college guide. 

#NerdAlert

Also, angst alert, I guess. This sets up the rift between brothers. Sam wants a normal life, Dean’s happy being a good little soldier. (Hmmm, something tells me neither of them will be in The Life when this is all said and done…) 

Sam laments his life but unpacks his bag anyway. 

Dean, meanwhile, heads to the vending machine to grab dinner. A young girl and her younger brother catch him stealing and introduce themselves as the mysterious Caitlin and Travis. And the young Travis is the DEAD KID. 

They exchange life stories and Caitlin insults Dean’s Precious. 

Present Day Sam and Dean meet up with Caitlin again. 

(Mid recap mind-melt: THERE ARE FIVE EPISODES LEFT! What are we doing here????) 

She tells them that the funeral was last week, but she needed them to help her. “I think she’s back.”  

*Flashback Alert*

Travis was her first “victim”. He attempts to get a candy bar from the vending machine, and her gnarly hand attacks him instead. Travis DOES NOT deal well with it. 

The group gathers in the motel room and Travis is upset that no one else saw the old lady in the candy machine. Dean tells Caitlin and Travis that monsters are real. Dean asks if weird things are happening in the town. 

Apparently kids go missing in this town. 

And in the present day, Dean tells Caitlin that he killed the thing that preys on children, so Travis had to have killed himself. 

Team Youth start their investigation.

They think they’ve got things figured out, and Dean is IN CHARGE...or a dumbass even at 14. He heads out alone to fix things. Caitlin follows. (Insert Lucille Bluth gif: Good for her!) 

Sam and Travis stay behind to play Boggle. #nerdalert

But seriously, now they’re setting up the idea that SAM might die at the end? No.

Dean and Caitlin continue their explorations, and Caitlin takes their endeavors less than seriously. GIRL. They find a nest, and something Dean freaks out about and pushes Caitlin to leave the area. 

Sam and Travis start to spell out very grim Boggle results, when the game shakes and the room goes dark. The hag appears in a tangle of gnarled hair and dirty robes and heads straight for them. Dean and Caitlin burst in just in time! Dean chops off her fingers and gives her a bit of a stabbin’ and the witch evaporates into dust. Her ring is left behind on the floor.

Grown up Dean paces through the motel and encounters a ghostly version of his younger self. Young!Dean mocks him, tells him he failed, and hands him a knife. “You know what you have to do.” Dean sinks to his knees, the knife poised to slice into his heart. 

When Sam interrupts him, Dean discovers that he’s been hallucinating everything - even the knife. 

Later at the bar, Dean confesses to Sam and Caitlin that he saw the monster’s nest when he was hunting her as a kid. It was full of dead kids around their age. Sam’s horrified and asks why Dean never told him. Sweet bby Sammy, you know why! Though he tried to forget, the experience cursed him with nightmares for a long time. “We were both just kids,” Sam says to Dean’s BIGGEST GUILTY FACE MY GOD. “We used to keep a lot of secrets from each other!” Sam assures him. But that’s toooootally not the case now!

At the adjoining cafe, Dean orders dinner to go when Billie appears. “Working a case? NOW?” she asks. (Mmmmmm yes Billie lay it on us!) She’s fresh from the last of the alternate universes, having just watched it burn alive. (Guys, it was probably squirrel-verse but Boris saved Team Free Squirrel 2.0 for us!) Billie warns Dean that Chuck’s only days away. Amara’s on board and Jack’s ready so...let’s go Team Free Destruction! Dean asks her how she convinced Jack to turn himself into a bomb. Billie flips that right back on Dean. She told Jack that destroying Chuck and Amara (and incidentally, himself) was the only way to earn Dean’s forgiveness. And just...YEESH EVERYBODY.

Anyway, Billie’s not in Chuck’s book again until the very end, so she bids Dean a broody farewell. “This is on you, Dean.” No presssuuuuure! “I don’t like loose ends. I don’t like disorder,” she scolds. She orders Dean to come clean to Sam about Jack.

At the motel, Sam and Caitlin research monsters. She wonders whether he wants a normal life. GURL there ain’t no normal in Winchester-land. Sam stumbles across an article on Baba Yaga. She wears a ring which contains her heart, and is the source of her power. Caitlin recognizes the ring as belonging to her brother. Her mom had given it to Travis from the lost and found years ago. She heads outside to her car to find it.

In her trunk sits a box of Travis’s belongings. She can’t find the ring and is soon confronted by her dead brother holding the ring and grinning maniacally.

Dean returns with dinner, only to find Sam ready to hunt Baba Yaga and find the now-missing Caitlin. Because the attacks have all been at the motel, they prowl from wing to wing. Dean heads to room 214. 

He walks inside, and I am momentarily agog at the wonders of these perhaps final motel rooms of the series. I love that the floor tiles in the rooms echo the Patchwork logo from the prior episode and that the quilt square design itself emulates tradition and family. And all the eyes in the wallpaper!

For Motel Room Science:

Ahem. Anyway. Dean heads inside, only to be instantly trapped behind the slamming door. Suddenly, he’s not in the motel room anymore. He’s back in the cannery, prowling its quiet spaces. He finds the site of the nest and flips back the tarp, only to reveal young Sam’s face lying there. Rattled, he tries to leave. Travis confronts him, but of course it’s not him. Baba Yaga tells him that she’s hungry for delicious people, and starts to throttle Dean.

Sam hears the struggle and heads in, stabbing the witch. Stabbing is distraction enough that Dean can yank the ring off her finger and smash it with the butt of his gun. 

Later, Caitlin bids Dean farewell. He confesses to always being afraid and she smiles. “The old you never would have admitted that. What do they say about getting older? You tell the truth more because lies...they don’t make anything better.” Okay, first of all, literally nobody says that. Second, thank you for this theme acorn - I shall settle on my haunches to eat it! Nom nom nom.

Flashback to Dean and Caitlin parting ways as children. Dean hands her a phone number to call if she ever encounters trouble. So...typical kid stuff.

Young Sam asks if anyone ever found the missing kids. Baby Dean lies to his face and tells him that they were never found. John pulls up in the Impala and honks to beckon them out. The boys head out, a team for the moment.

As adults driving in the Impala of Feelings, Sam tries to call Cas. Dean orders him to hang up because he’s got a confession - I mean, update - to make. Billie visited him and told him that it was time to fight Chuck. “And there’s something else,” Dean adds. Jack’s going to die from the encounter and he’s ready and willing to sacrifice himself. Furthermore, Dean tells Sam that he learned this a while ago from Cas before he left. 

Sam’s outraged that Dean would keep this from him. “I knew you couldn’t handle it,” Dean shouts at him. “You raise these ethical questions.” (I perk up.) He tries to justify it, but Sam shouts him down in turn. 

They drive into the fade-to-black in brooding silence.

Brooding Quotes Lay Fragile Eggs:

I thought your imaginary friend told you it was bad to steal

Don’t you want a partner?

Hunting usually means going to gross places

Shoved it down the ol’ memory hole!

Not to make light of the death star galactic genocide, but what else is new?

I’ve seen this movie before

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive! 

[mor-beck-more-problems]

To the Light of Day || Solo

TIMING: Early morning, after the destruction of Constance

SUMMARY: Morgan tries to lay her pain to rest.

CONTAINS: brief mentions of parental abuse

The snow was coming down hard enough to bury White Crest as Morgan walked home from the outskirts. The sirens had quieted and the Christmas lights all switched out. The only sign it was morning came from the ring of church bells as a midnight service let out and oblivious churchgoers turtled out to the parking lot in their puffy coats. From where she stood, Morgan could see the flicker of Advent candles, the Christian bastardization of her Yule log. Morgan watched a pimply twelve year old snuff them out one by one until the last of the faithful left and the door shut for the night. She walked behind the straggling flock, head bowed against the snow as it fell harder. She wanted to imagine what being a part of them would be like, just one of the humans, lighting a candle against her fear and praying en masse to a big nice dad in the sky who would whisper while you slept that everything was okay and for your own good, just you wait and see. But Morgan had never known anything close, and she didn’t deserve much of an escape right now, did she?

When she was little, Morgan spent Yule with her parents gathered around a row of three tapers nested into a log holder, one for each of them to burn all night and day. Her mother lit the candles because Morgan ‘didn’t do it right’. Her dad picked out the prayers from the family grimoires or wrote something more personalized to the family on his own. And Morgan agonized over whether she should wish for snow or a new friend or a pony. They were together and apart keeping this sweet, wonderful secret winter holiday from all the boisterous Christmasers. The room never erupted with the sound of their poetry recitations, the songs her parents picked to honor the day changed from year to year, so she never grew a familiar, cuddly attachment to any tunes except for the verses of ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ they stole for themselves. When Yule became just Morgan and Ruth, the candlelight seemed dimmer, their voices barely rose at all, and her dad’s old prayers rang hollow without his intentions to power them. The darkness of the longest night grew heavy in a primeval way that reminded Morgan that the first Yuletides were made to make sure the sun wouldn’t abandon humanity for good. It was the kind of dark that you could drown in, the kind that broke your shoulders to strain against. Morgan felt that old, cruel weight of the night wrapping around her now as she walked. She didn’t have a yule candle log for herself this year. After dying and the various breakdowns that followed, merrymaking and yuletide seemed like more of a pipe dream. And peace, after what she’d done? Morgan scoffed bitterly at the thought.

“It’s not about the candles, pumpkin,” Ruth’s voice said. On their first solstice without her dad, Ruth had fumbled their last match, and it was too icy to run to the 24-hour pharmacy for more. Morgan fretted so hard conjuring up a fire to replace it, she’d scorched the candles and ruined their old log. Ruth grabbed her hands before she could do anything else. “It’s still Yuletide. The sun is still coming back.”

“But it’s not the same! What’s the point of the ritual if we can’t even get one stupid candle going to pretend like this is going to get better!”

Morgan couldn’t remember what her mother had said to that. She only knew that afterwards she’d left the room and cried, missing her dad and the kind of life where you didn’t hold your breath for the next crisis and just did things. At sunrise she went out to the window to watch the return of the light and found her mother in the backyard, praying in a stone circle she’d cast the mundane way, reciting the charge of the Goddess...

Morgan trudged through downtown until she came across Al’s. Half the rainbow lights strung around the awning were burnt out, and the inside was dead except for the lonely old man Morgan always saw in the corner. The old TV in the upper corner was switched to one of those fireplace broadcasts, where the flames never dimmed and the lights shined on glass baubles just right. Morgan couldn’t help but stop and watch. It wasn’t the best picture quality; what billows and whispers she imagined coming from the flames were more from her memories of better, brighter fires. But it was the first fire Morgan had seen all season, and it brought tears to her eyes.

Could you wish on a yule log if it was fake? Was it an affront to the ancestors or the spirits if you paid homage through pixels? Morgan laughed hopelessly. The spirits she knew had been pretty clear about what they wanted her to do, and after tonight, wishing on a crappy TV probably ranked really low on the list. What would she wish for anyway? A fucking do-over? Morgan pressed her fingers to the frosted glass, staring as hard into the screen as possible. “I’d do it all different if I could,” she whispered. “If anyone could just tell me how to make it stop hurting without passing it off to other people or--fuck, killing random nobodies who never did anything. If I could just know how we’re supposed to…” Morgan quieted and shut her eyes, realizing that for all intents and purposes, she was talking to herself. She had lied, threatened, stolen, maimed, and killed for her pain. And here she still was, carrying it like a growth in her chest she couldn’t excise. What do I do? If someone could just tell me what to do, tell me how this stops. I don’t care what else I have to do as long as we can all stop hurting...

But the universe didn’t speak to you in words, it didn’t speak at all. It just worked. It moved. Energy cycled through you and around you and sometimes if you were lucky and alive, you could move it back. But it’s not about the light, pumpkin, Ruth said again. Morgan reached for her in her mind, to that soggy, miserable Yule and the purple sunrise that came after, and the words her mother had said to the reborn sun.

To thou who thinkest to seek Me, know that thy seeking and yearning shall avail thee not unless thou knowest the Mystery: if that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee, thou wilt never find it without.

“Fuck,” Morgan whispered. Could it be that simple? Was that something she was allowed after death? She opened her eyes. The TV had been switched to some Christmas cartoon, but that didn’t matter. Morgan resumed her walk, swift and purposeful in a way it hadn’t been before. She didn’t stop until she made it to the cemetery on the East End, where the weeds were always a little too tall and the stones a little grubby with moss. Morgan played the words in her head on herself, burning with longing.

She was dead, her nerves were smothered in death, she couldn’t grow or age or shift along the wheel of life the way the living did, but she grew a new hand for every one she lost. Her body frayed and sagged closer to the earth it could never rest in when she got hungry, but maybe that wasn’t a mark of betrayal. Maybe it was a reminder from the earth, a hand on her hand, a bridge between the flow of the world and the place where she dwelled in between. Maybe it was a rope to keep her connected. Maybe the dead could still pray. She had come back this far, hadn’t she? She’d done it wrong and twisted and broken all over again, but she could walk and burst through the rickety gate and carry herself to the highest mound in the place and brush back the snow gathering over the graves. She had enough sense to be sorry and scared. She had enough of her self to wonder.

Morgan cleared the snow away until there was a body sized patch of brown grass to lay in. She fell face forward and dug her hands in deep. Please… If I am still a part of you, please…

The ground was hard with death, but the deeper Morgan dug her hands in, the softer it grew. Layer by layer, into that place where life only slept, like the day during the long night. Was that her? A night, a season, moving slowly until her sense of light came again?

If that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee, thou wilt never find it without.

Let me, Morgan whispered in her heart, the words no longer a question. I need you to let me. And I need you to take this. She crawled up to her knees and dug her nails into the fabric of her sweater. She worried at the threads, thinking of the memories that had twisted around her heart every time she’d had a chance to let Constance leave this plane for good and said no. Yelling at the paramedics while her dad was wheeled away, her mother’s nails cutting moons into her neck and shoulder as she dragged her down the hall, the pole in her stomach and how her head flashed with pain every time she tried to move, the coffins lowered into the ground, the phone calls unanswered, the weeks lost to laying in bed because there was no point in getting up when it was all going to get ripped away again, the loneliness, the sting of every lost friend and broken hope… Morgan pulled on herself, shuddering as she let the hurt cut her on the way out, as sharp as if they’d been made fresh. In her mind, she made them into one braided cord, plain and riddled with knots and kinks in the fibres. She pulled, letting the other awful little things stick and tangle into it. When she could think of nothing else she pulled again, feeling the claws at the end of the hurt clinging to her.

Let me give this to you for safe-keeping, she silently asked the earth. Take this in lieu of my body. Let it decay in its own good time and nourish something else. Because it’s going to take me away from you and myself and everything I love. I trust you not to use this for any ill. You have held me up this far, and you will hold me further still, my dear, old Earth. Even Morgan’s wildest imagination and most desperate devotion couldn’t unhook every cord binding her to her hurt, but some of them gave, root and all, and fell into the ground. She piled the dirt she’d loosed over the spot her mind’s eye conjured the fallen cords. There was nothing to forgive, because the earth didn’t weigh value like that, only poison and barbs that needed to be worked out. Only healing for the holes the cords had left in her, rest for the girls she’d been and was no longer, and courage for the woman she wanted to be from now on. Someone who touched others with understanding before spite, who guarded the world against her hurt, who stood up for as many people as possible and not just her friends, who was kind and soft and forgave as much as her soul could bear it. Someone who could mourn and atone for the hurt she spread instead of brushing it off. Someone her past selves could be proud of and mystified by. As day follows night and spring follows winter, keep me steady until I find my own light.

“So may it be,” she said, promising herself even more than the ground at her feet. By the time Morgan finished, the dark had washed away to a pale gray. Through the veil of snow clouds, Morgan was sure she saw a white silhouette of the newly turned sun.