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angelinasway · 3 years ago

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Regaining Hope

Chapter Eight

Pairing: Clark Kent/Buffy Summers Warnings/Triggers:Torture, Violence, Mention's of Major Character Death, Bad Language, Sexual Tension, Eventual Smut, Mentions of Sexual Assault Summary: Takes place during Man of Steel. When Buffy discovers the U.S Military trying to keep quiet about an object buried in a twenty thousand year old glacier, she immediately thinks the worst. However, when a surprise visit to the Canadian Arctic puts her in the path of a mysterious stranger her whole world is changed forever. Authors Notes: Thank you all so much for being so very supportive. You guys have been absolutely wonderful. Seriously I couldn't ask for a better group of readers. I need to warn you all that this chapter has quite the graphic and gruesome scene in it, so if that's not your thing I highly recommend skipping the part where Clark starts to watch the video. Some major questions answered here. Hope you all enjoy, and keep the reviews coming. Special thanks to my ever amazing beta Hipkarma. She always helps and inspires me. Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

Previous Chapters: [Chapter One] [Chapter Two] [Chapter Three] [Chapter Four] [Chapter Five] [Chapter Six] [Chapter Seven]

[TTH] [AO3] [FFN]

Chapter Eight

Dawn smirked as she saw the caller ID flash. So, Buffy had talked to Wes. That was good. She really didn’t want to have to break into the Watchers Council just because she was nosy and worried for her sister. Buffy hadn’t told her much when they talked yesterday, just that there was some sort of prophecy about her and this Clark guy, which just raised all sorts of red flags for her. Dawn had insisted on seeing a copy of the prophecy and her hackles raised even more when she found out how quiet Wes and Willow were trying to keep this. Looks like big sis came through however, and now it was time to give the man on the other line hell for keeping something this important from her.

“Xand, honey, can you take Abby? Wes is on the phone and it’s time for her nap anyway.” Dawn said, reaching for the phone.

“No!” Her one and a half your old screeched at the top of her lungs, making Dawn cringe. When they coined the phrase, ‘children are your parents secret revenge,’ they weren’t lying. Abigail was just like her too, even in looks.

Xander came out of their shared office, a crooked and amused smile on his lips. “You should know by now not to say that word in front of her,” He said, kissing Dawn on the forehead before reaching out and swooping up their toddler. “Come on Abby,” he said as Dawn answered her call. “Daddy will read you your favorite story.”

“Try to get Joyce down too,” She added, before saying into the phone, “Hello Wes, so good of you to finally call me.”

She heard the groan on the other end of the line and smiled. “How much do you know?”

“That there’s a prophecy about my sister and some uber-powerful guy she’s been spending time with, on your instruction I might add.” Dawn said in a mockingly sweet voice.

She heard him sigh. “Yes, that is all true. Look Dawn, I’m going to send you a copy of the prophecy through your secure fax now. We’ve been able to translate some of it, but there are certain areas where…I don’t think the language is of this world. It’s nothing like we’ve ever seen in any human or demon writings before.”

Dawn got up and walked into the office, a frown on her face. “You mean like interdimensional, there’s gotta be a reference somewhere Wes.”

There was silence over the line and for a second and she thought Wes had hung up. She’d just opened her mouth to see if he was still there, when he finally said, “No Dawn, that’s not what I meant at all.”

Her frown deepened as the first page spat out of the machine. She slid it off the rack and looked at the prophecy. There were several different languages written on the copy, Etruscan, Ancient Sumerian, Ancient Greek, and Latin. At the top were strange symbols unlike anything she’d ever seen before, almost flowing together like cursive. The next page that came out was Wesley and Willow’s translation of that page. She bit her lip, walking over to her desk and went to work making sure what they had translated so far was correct.

“So,” she began casually, “what I’m getting from the first page is that this guy is much farther from home than just another dimension.” She paused, huffing in annoyance as she snootily added,” It was Sun God by the way, not Star God.” She sighed. “Who are you using anyway, Basile?”

“Vonten,” He answered and Dawn rolled her eyes. Of course, he was using that moron’s guide.

“Vonten is an arrogant prick Wes, that book confuses people more than it helps. Burn it, it’s better as kindling. Bachman is the best at Etruscan and Ancient Sumerian, and you already know Ancient Greek and Latin enough not to need a reference.” She said, before frowning as she came to the part about the soulbond. “Wes, what the hell is a soulbond, and why is this referencing my sister and Mr. E.T. having one?”

As Wesley began to explain what they knew so far, Dawn's face began to pale. Oh, this was not of the good. Buffy was gonna wig to the nth degree when she found out.

"Does she know any of this?" Dawn asked, turning around and grabbing more of the pages that were still spitting out of her printer.

"She knows about the bond. I told her this morning." He answered.

"And what, you’re waiting until she gets pregnant before you tell her the rest?" Dawn asked angrily. "You know this is gonna freak her out..."

"Which is why I decided not to tell her." Wes interrupted.

"If you'd let me finish," Dawn snapped, slamming her hand on the desk. "I was going to say this is gonna freak her out, but it would be better if you tell her now." She huffed in frustration. "This just proves how little you guys know my sister. She absolutely will freak and she'll probably fight it at first. Just the idea of her own children having to live the life she has, is not gonna be a happy, joyous moment for her. She's already worried that Joyce or Abby, or maybe even both will be called one day.” Dawn said, before emphasizing her next words, "However, my sister is not stupid, and when push comes to shove, she'll make the right decision like she always does. I get that you’re worried about the Slayer line Wes, we all are, but keeping this from her is not the right way to go about it.”

She heard Wes’s sigh, “I realize that Dawn, but with the bond itself needing to be fulfilled, I thought that was more than enough for both of them to handle at this time.”

Dawn looked at the pages covered in the strange flowing script, similar to the symbols on the first page. Wes was right, it was a language. "We need to find a way to translate this. Do you think this is Clark's language from his home world?"

The line was silent for a moment, before he said in annoyance, “Yes, that’s what I meant when I said I don’t think the language is of this world.”

“Do you think Clark knows how to read it?” Dawn asked.

A sigh came over the line, “I honestly don’t know. I believe he just discovered where he came from, so I don’t see how he could.” He paused in thought and then murmured to himself, “But even if he can’t, perhaps the ship has a historical archive or maybe there is some form of AI technology that could translate it for us.”

Dawn frowned, “What ship?”

As Wesley explained how Buffy and Clark met and the danger Buffy had recklessly put herself in, Dawn found her ire sparking at Buffy’s stupidity. “I’m gonna kill her!” Dawn growled. “She hasn’t done something that reckless since Joyce was born. God fucking dammit, she promised me!”

Wesley sighed. “In her defense, it could have very well been her fate that made her act so rashly.” He paused before saying, “In any case, Clark was there and according to Buffy, he saved her and watched over her after she went into a healing sleep.”

Dawn was quiet as she processed that information. So, she didn’t die, which meant Buffy actively tried to stop it from happening. That was good, she was still getting smacked when Dawn saw her, but at least she hadn’t completely broken her promise from three and a half years ago. It was also good to see that this godlike Champion the prophecy spoke of wasn’t just a creature with a penchant for destruction playing at being a white hat because of a curse. That was a nice change.

“What else do you know about him?” Dawn asked. “I’m assuming you started trying to find him as soon as you started translating this.”

“Well,” Wesley began, “We first caught wind of a possible candidate about a year ago. We’d been monitoring airwave chatter for possible beings with superhuman strength when we caught a lead. A distress call came in about an oil rig off the coast of Canada in flames and about to explode. In that communication there was talk of a man rescuing the crew members aboard the rig and preventing the tower from collapsing on the rescue helicopter with his bare hands.” He paused for a moment, before saying. “We managed to find a few other incidents of him saving people, one that happened when he was thirteen. According to the incident report, his school bus went off a bridge and into the river. Three witnesses stated that a young Clark Kent managed to push the bus out of the water and rescue his classmate.”

Dawn whistled, “So this guy really is the real deal white knight, huh?”

“It would appear so.” He sighed.

“Wes we’re gonna need to access that ship.” Dawn said, looking over a small section of Sumerian that talked about a trial of choice. The rest of the page was in the alien script however, so any clue as to what that meant was beyond her.

“I know,” Wesley agreed.

“Which means, we’re gonna have to tell Buffy and Clark everything.” Dawn reiterated.

She heard Wesley groan, but he conceded nonetheless. “Alright fine, Willow needs to bring them some pendants to stave off the worst of the compulsion the bond is creating. I’ll have her stop by and get you on her way, unless you want me to tell Buffy myself, that is.”

Dawn shook her head, “No, no. I think it will be safer for everyone if I’m the one to do it.” Then she bit her lip in thought, “And don’t bother with Willow, just call me when she gets back. I think I need to do this one on my own.”

“Very well,” Wes agreed. “Willow should be finished within the next few hours. I’ll call you as soon as I know she’s returned.”

“Alright, in the meantime I’m gonna go over this and make sure all the parts I can read are translated correctly.” Dawn said, adding, "Talk in a few," before hanging up.

She sighed, rubbing her fingers along her forehead. "Well fuck," she muttered to herself.

"Everything alright?" Xander asked, coming into the office.

"No, not really," she answered handing him the translated first page of the prophecy.

She watched his eye scan the words before he blew out a breath. "So, this guys an alien?"

"Looks like." She answered.

Xander snorted, "Man the Buffster really knows how to pick 'em, doesn't she?"

Dawn mock glared, before she couldn't contain her amusement at the absurdity of the situation. "Well, you know Buffy. She doesn't do anything by halves."

****<S>**<S>****

As Clark followed Buffy down the hallway, his thoughts were a jumbled mess. He knew she had been trying to reassure him, but her words only had the opposite effect. Were they only feeling any of what they were because of the prophecy and furthermore, given the choice, would she even choose him? She had basically confessed to falling in love with her best friend. The history they had both shared, as disturbing as it was, was an important one to her. She had cared very deeply for this man. How could he ever live up to the memory of a man who had essentially changed a piece of himself for her? Part of him wanted to erase Spike’s memory from her mind, to do whatever he could to drive this man, this demon from her past and another part of him just felt wholly lost. He didn’t want to be anyone’s second best and he certainly didn’t want her to want him only because some guy thousands of years ago decided they were destined. God, he wished his dad was still alive. This would definitely be the type of thing his dad could help him through.

She stopped at a large set of double doors and turned, catching his expression before he had time to school it into a much more neutral one. She blinked in surprise, "Clark...what’s wrong?"

He shook his head, “It’s nothing Buffy.”

Her frown deepened, “Oh no, you definitely have something face. Talk to me. I promise whatever it is, I’ll try to understand.”

Clark shifted uncomfortably, before finally admitting, “I’m just feeling a little unsure about all this.”

Her eyes widened slightly, “Because of Spike?”

Clark sighed, “Well I mean think about it Buffy. You basically told me that you fell in love with your best friend and were willing to marry him for eternity, but the only reason you didn’t is because you were too scared. Would you even look twice at me if he was here now? Are the feelings I’m having for you even real, or is this just destiny trying to force us together?”

Realization flooded her expression, and she quickly shook her head. “I can’t speak for what-ifs, because I would be lying if I answered that either way…” She swallowed, “As for how you’re feeling, I’ve been under love spells before and granted you usually don’t know you’re under one when you are, but if the feeling’s part was being fabricated, we…we wouldn’t be able to fight this like we are. We would have probably already slept together.” She blushed, looking down. “Fabricated feelings they’re false obviously, but they’re very strong…strong enough to make people dangerous. If what we were feeling was a manifestation, you wouldn’t have these doubts Clark, you wouldn’t even realize there was doubts to be had.” She met his eyes then, her expression serious and stoic. “And as for the fear part, I didn’t want to get into it because…” She sighed again. “You remember how I told you that Angelus showed up right when I was starting to get my life back together?”

Clark nodded, “I remember.”

“Well, what I didn’t say is that I was planning on retiring.” She rolled her eyes, “I had this grand plan of going back to school and getting a degree in Art History and moving to Hawaii to open a gallery.” She shook her head, “It was stupid, I know.”

He immediately shook his head, “That doesn’t sound stupid at all.”

Buffy blushed. “I just mean it was stupid that I ever thought it could happen.” She shook her head, “Anyway, I started training a girl named Rayanne when we were first getting the new Watchers Council on its feet. She was bright, witty, resourceful and she already had the makings of someone who could be an excellent leader.” She looked at her feet, her hands clenching. “Me and Giles had agreed, in three-years-time, when Ray was eighteen, she would step in and fill my shoes. Faith didn’t want the position and the only other possible candidate that actually did, I flat out refused due to her inability to get along with just about anyone but Willow. I mentored Ray for over a year and she became…well, like a little sister to me. After the whole General Voll fiasco, I was ready to promote her to Senior Slayer status. She had been on it more than any other girl at the compound, helpful and demanding when need be. She’d fought through a horde of zombies and we came out of it with zero losses. The attack was completely unexpected and if she hadn’t been there, I don’t know what I would have done.” She met his eyes, “I was so proud of her.” Buffy sighed, “A few months later is when the first girl, Alicia went missing, and by the time Ray disappeared, there were already six that seemed to have just dropped off the planet.” She swallowed, “Angelus revealed himself and killed Giles a few weeks later, and almost three weeks after is when we found Alicia. She was the first and youngest to go missing and she was the first he dropped on our doorstep.” Buffy shook her head squeezing her eyes shut, “I knew what he was doing to Rayanne then, and that she would probably get the worst of it because of her association with me. Alicia was just a taste of what Angelus was capable of.” She opened her eyes, meeting his. “I wanted to have Spike claim me so we would be strong enough to save her and the rest of them, and I was scared because I knew I’d be asking for the wrong reasons. I was afraid Spike would know it too and I would only hurt him by asking. Does that make sense?”

It was Clark’s turn to avert his eyes. “Yes,” he said quietly.

She pulled out her phone and began to scroll through it, “Well just in case you have any doubts…” She swallowed, “I don’t even know why I kept this. Angelus loved tormenting me and we didn’t know it at the time but there were several Watchers from the old regime who were very unhappy with the way we were running things. Some of them made deals with Angelus, gave out my email and phone number and my location.” She looked at him, her lips pursed in anger. “One of them would even take video or pictures, documenting my pain for him when he couldn’t be there hiding in the shadows to see it.” She handed him her phone, “I’ve never watched this one, it’s the morning I found Rayanne, he saved her for last. I don’t need to see it, I lived it.” She nodded at her phone, “When he sent it, I didn’t even open it. I just dropped it in an archive and it’s been there ever since.” She shook her head, “I highly recommend only opening the third video file, the one that says, ‘Are you broken yet?’ She met his eyes then, “The first two will be what he did to her. So, unless you feel like throwing up, I would skip those.” She gestured with her chin at the double doors. “I’ll be in there beating on a bag, meet me when you’re done.”

She turned without another word and went through the double doors not looking back. Clark looked down at the phone swallowing heavily, before opening the file. The video began with the image of the front of a house, not unlike the one they were in now, except there was a large tree in front and something very obviously dangling from it. It looked to be sometime in the middle of the night or perhaps early morning, but he couldn't tell either way due to the lights on the house illuminating everything.

The person carrying the camera ran towards the house and a refined British voice in distress yelled, "Ms. Summers, come quickly. I think it may be Miss Stevenson."

The front door flew open and there she was, except she looked nothing like she did now, her eyes were wild, feral even, and she was so pale and sucked up. She looked hollow, worn-down, nothing like the girl he’d spent the last couple of days getting to know. The scream that tore from her lips and the look on her face when she saw what was hanging from the tree, tore through him like a tidal wave of emotion. Clark felt himself growing angry at the Watcher, who was obviously playing both sides. Another man with bleached hair and nothing on but a pair of black jeans came flying through the door next, his eyes wild and worried.

The camera panned and followed Buffy as she ran out to the tree, falling to her knees and screaming again. Clark saw what was in the tree then and his stomach almost rebelled right then and there. It was a young girl, no older than sixteen and the only skin left on her body was on her beautiful face and near her pelvic region. The girl’s expression was frozen in a horrified scream that no one who cared ever had the chance to hear. A large white sheet wrapped itself tightly around the girl’s wrists and tied over the lowest branch, the excess linen draping behind the dead girl as some sort of sick backdrop silhouette for the body hanging lifelessly from the tree. There was hardly any blood to speak of, just a pinkish residue from where the body had touched the clean white linen, which told Clark she had been dead for more than a few hours. It wouldn’t be visible to a human through the recording, but because of his enhanced vision Clark could even see puncture wounds in places and deep gashes from where the girl had been restrained.

The blond man came into the picture then and the Watcher came towards them, circling around so he could see Buffy’s expression, or at least that’s what he assumed the person with the camera was doing. Buffy's mouth was open in silent gulping sobs, giant tears dripping down her cheeks.

“Love,” The blond man whispered in an apparent British accent not nearly as refined as the Watchers Clark had heard so far. The man fell to his knees behind her looking up at the tree. He shuddered as tears sprang to his electric blue eyes. “Don’t look Buffy…please kitten, please go back in the house.”

The man placed his hand on her shoulder, and Buffy turned at the gesture and Clark could no longer see her face as she flung herself into the man’s arms and began to sob harder. “It’s Ray,” she howled. “Oh god, it’s Ray.”

“Shh,” The blond man hushed, rubbing hands along her back in a comforting gesture. “I know,” He choked. “I know, love.”

“We…we can’t leave her like that.” She sobbed. “I-I have to get her down.”

Clark watched the blond man close his eyes and shake his head, “I’ll do it. Go back in the house, please Slayer.”

“No,” Buffy shook her head as Clark caught the silhouette of another man flying from the house and over to them. The sound of retching could be heard, and it took Clark a second to realize the sound came from whomever had just come from the house and seen the body. “It has to be me. Don’t you see, don’t you get it? I knew,” she sobbed. “I knew what he was doing to her and I didn’t do anything.”

“Oh, sweet girl, you’ve been trying to find her. We all have. This isn’t your fault.” The man choked.

“It’s not good enough,” She screamed, shoving away from him and falling on her rear, “And it is my fault, all of it! They were called because of me, because I was too chicken shit to just except the power that was offered to me!”

A sob broke from her lips, and she turned looking directly at the cameraman a sudden realization dawning in her hollow eyes. “You!” She snarled, her eyes flashing. “It’s you, isn’t it?” She started marching towards the cameraman.

“Ms.…Ms. Summers,” Whomever was holding the camera stuttered and then she was there, a well-aimed kick flying towards the camera before Clark saw sky for a few seconds.

“I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch!” She screamed suddenly hovering over the man, the wild fury in her eyes telling Clark that she had every intention of killing this man, and part of Clark couldn’t agree more. “No one else but an Angelus minion would have called me out here for Rayanne! Everyone else would know better!”

Clark watched as she threw a punch, the sickening sound of cartilage breaking ringing through the speaker as the guy howled in pain. The way her arms were angled next and the gurgling sound through the phone told him she was choking the man before three sets of arms suddenly grabbed her, pulling her off. Clark could hear the man wheeze as he tried to catch his breath while Buffy screamed and fought the three people who had pulled her away. Faith was one of them, and then the blond man, which Clark was pretty sure by now was Spike, and another man, tall, brunet, with an eyepatch. He saw Willow in the distance coming towards them and when she reached them, she touched Buffy’s shoulder before she could react and muttered a few words that sounded like Latin. Buffy suddenly collapsed and Clark realized Willow had put her to sleep. All eyes then turned towards the cameraman.

“Get her in the house, Xander.” Spike growled.

“Uh, Spike–” Xander started to say when Spike turned on him.

“Get her in the bloody fucking house, now!” He snarled, a sound like grinding bone emanating from the man as his voice altered to something more sinister. “I’m not going to kill him.” He said turning back towards the camera as two glowing amber eyes stared at Clark.

“Speak for yourself,” Faith said marching towards the man. “I’ve been getting those fucking emails too.”

“So have I,” Willow said, her eyes black as she stared the camera down.

“We won’t have to kill him,” Spike clarified as he fell in step with Faith. “Angelus will do that for us.”

“How you figure?” Faith asked, her eyes just as enraged as Buffy’s had been.

Spike suddenly sprung forward, his arm reaching out and a ripping sound emanated as the man screamed. His hand came back with what looked like a wad of hair. “This enough Red?”

“Plenty,” Willow said, sudden realization dawning in her black eyes.

“Now,” Spike said, a sinister grin stretching his fanged mouth, to the whimpering man. “The way I figure it, you got three options. The first being, you can go back to Angelus and give him this tape, at which point he finds out we now have a way to track you, and oh trust me Marcus, he will most definitely kill you for that.” Clark heard the man begin to sob, and part of him wanted to turn off the video at that point but couldn’t look away at the furious amber eyes that stared back at the camera. “Option number two, you can destroy the tape and run, which if we’re being honest would be the preferable of the three, but I’m sure you are well aware of the kind of wrath he would bring down on you if he didn’t get to see his almost masterpiece complete, so I’m sure you won’t.” Spike’s hand suddenly flew forward and the man screamed in pain, “Or option three,” He growled, “Where you run like a coward and keep the tape for leverage, hoping that your usefulness hasn’t run its course.”

He suddenly had the camera in his hands, staring directly into the screen his eyes burning into the lens. “Looks like your mole got ousted. This is your last one, Angelus. We’re coming for you and when we’re done there won’t be anything left.” The screen suddenly went black as the video cut off.

Clark let out a trembling breath looking around him and realizing he had slid to the floor at some point, his heart pounding in his chest. God, he didn’t know, he didn’t understand until that moment. That poor girl, no wonder Buffy was desperate. How many girls did she find like that before this one was left for her? How many videos did she force herself to endure before this one was sent, even Faith and Willow had said this wasn’t the first one? Clark squeezed his eyes shut, she had told him, so had Gunn but to see it. She was driven half-crazy by what that vampire had done and he could not blame her for that. What would he do if it was his mother in that position? God, he could only imagine.

He shakily got to his feet, listening as he heard the sound of a fist hitting leather, he walked to the doors and threw them open, not stopping when she paused to look at him. He had to reassure himself that she was okay, that she wasn’t that angry creature that he saw in the video. He went straight to her, his arms coming around her in a crushing embrace before his lips met hers. God, she was so strong, he didn’t realize how much until that moment. Buffy immediately melted into him, her lips parting for him as he slid his tongue into her mouth. She was such a small woman, everything about her was deceptively tiny, except her strength and fortitude both physically and emotionally. To go through what she had and still be able to function on a normal level was just short of a miracle.

He pulled away and looked down into her green eyes, haunted by her past but not dead and hateful like in the video. He bent down and laid his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. “I…” He started, “I didn’t…I’m so sorry Buffy.” He whispered, and he could still feel himself trembling. “I didn’t… You hear words like torture, rape, and murder but–”

“They’re not real until you see it for yourself.” She finished in understanding.

Clark sighed, hugging her closely, her head resting against his chest. “I get it now, not…but I understand how desperate you must have been to try and save the girls from that.”

He heard her sniffle, “I didn’t know what else to do. I watched all the others you know, even…even what he did to them. It was my fault, you see; those girls lost their lives because they had a connection to me.” She shook her head, “If they hadn’t been called, they would still be alive today.”

Clark pulled away and used his hand to raise her chin so he could see her eyes, “You blame yourself for every one of them that dies no matter how it happens, don’t you?”

She closed her eyes a shuddering breath hissing through her lips, before she opened them, meeting his gaze head on. “How can I not?”

He sighed, hugging her close again and shook his head. He had no response to that; he didn’t think she should. He didn’t think it was healthy, but he didn’t want to get in an argument about it with her right now either.

They stayed like that for a little while before she whispered, “You’re shaking.”

Clark nodded. “I know, the video…I’m still upset.”

She pulled away, meeting his eyes again. “Do you want me to show you how to throw a punch properly? The heavy bags have been warded well, we can start there.” She looked down, “It will…it will help relieve some of what you’re feeling at least.”

“Yeah,” He nodded in agreement. “Yeah, okay.”

****<S>**<S>****

To say Clark was a fast learner when it came to training would have been the understatement of the year. He was an absolute natural. He moved with precision and grace, sometimes striking so fast she almost didn't see him move.

As of now she was simply holding the bag for him as he got comfortable with the rhythm of landing punches and even with the wards on the bag, she could feel the impact of his strikes. At this rate she would need her suit within a few days to let him get the feel of fighting a moving target. At some point she might even bring him back to Cleveland to put him up against multiple fighters and see how he did.

"Remember to move your feet,” She reminded. "A moving target is harder to hit."

He nodded, bounced on the balls of his feet and struck, the impact of the punch making her bones rattle. "Whoa, nice one Clark." She laughed, "Felt that one in my toes."

He grinned, striking the bag again harder. "You were right," he said casually in between punches. "This does help."

She grinned, "Nothing like getting your aggression out with a bit of violence." And then she blushed, smirking, "Well almost nothing."

He chuckled as he threw a few more punches in quick succession, his own smirk forming on his lips. He had a mischievous look in his eyes and had just opened his mouth to comment when Buffy’s phone rang.

Buffy sighed, releasing the bag. "That will either be Wes or Willow."

It was now around three in the afternoon; Clark had told her he had to pick his mom up at six and it was an hour drive to Smallville from where they were. So, she was grateful that they were going to be able to get this taken care of before meeting his mom.

Buffy walked over to her phone and answered. "Hey Wes," she said in greeting. "What's the haps?"

He was silent for a moment and she could almost hear him roll his eyes at her butchering of the English language. "Willow," He began, "should be there shortly. Dawn would also like to see you. I told her I would call her once Willow was done securing the pendants."

Buffy frowned, “What? Why?”

“Dawn and I have come to the conclusion that one of the languages in the prophecy that I have been unable to identify, is most likely written in the script of Clark’s home world.” He paused, “We are going to need access to the ship, unless of course Clark can read it.”

Buffy looked at Clark and raised an eyebrow, but he quickly shook his head. “Only a few words,” He confirmed. “I think the computer on the ship might be able to translate it though.”

“That’s a negative, Wes,” Buffy answered, beginning to pace. “But he agrees that the computer on the ship should be able to do the job.”

“Very well, I’ll inform Dawn to dress accordingly. The ship is still in the same location I presume?” He asked.

“Whoa,” Buffy said halting her steps, realizing what he was suggesting. “You want us to go tonight? Clark has to pick up his mom from work, Wes.”

“I think it would be for the best. The sooner we get this prophecy translated, the better.” He paused. “Lorne told me I needed to send out more Slayers to India, Kansas, and Metropolis within the next two weeks and I would very much like to know if I should be sending two or a few hundred. If this prophecy gives any indication of what’s to come, I would very much like to know what it is.”

Buffy and Clark exchanged worried looks. “He only told me something was coming for Clark, and we’re gonna need all hands-on deck when it does.”

Buffy watched Clark swallow nervously. “He told me my time for hiding was almost up, but he said it was in the coming month.” His eyes widened in realization. “We need to translate that prophecy.”

Buffy nodded in agreement, “And I need to train you harder than just beating on a bag, which means it’s gonna be eight-hour days from here on out.” Clark opened his mouth to argue and she held up her hand, “We’ll get as much as we need to do in the mornings done, but if for whatever reason we can’t, I would loan you the money before I would let you lose your home.”

Clark frowned, “Buffy–”

“Take it from someone who knows what those kinda money troubles feel like,” She interrupted again. “I think in the scheme of things saving the world is a little more important than pride, don’t you?”

His frown deepened. “You think it’s going to be that big?”

“Lorne said all hands-on deck and it’s you. Someone coming after you has got to be as powerful, if not more.” She watched his face fall and reached out her hand out running it down his arm, “You’ll be ready, and now that we have a general idea of where this stuff might take place, we’ll all be even more prepared.”

“Wes,” she said, addressing the Watcher once more. “Were gonna need Willow to keep close, and I would call Illyria back from Cairo.”

“I agree,” Wesley said, just as a portal opened up and Willow walked through. Her smile melting away at the look on both Buffy and Clark’s faces.

“Uh-oh,” Willow said nervously. “I know that face.”

“Is that Willow?” Wesley asked over the line.

“Yeah,” Buffy said.

“Let me speak with her, please.”

Buffy held out the phone to Willow, who frowned but took it anyway. “Hey Wes,” Willow said in greeting as Buffy walked over to where Clark was standing looking more than a little worried.

“Hey,” she said quietly.

He attempted to smile but he couldn’t pull it off. “Hey, yourself.”

She bit her lip watching him, seeing the turmoil play across his face of having an unknown enemy out there that could be responsible for hurting others when they decided to rear their ugly heads. She didn’t blame him, if she needed to pull out her big guns as Lorne hinted then it could definitely get bad. She was optimistic however, because of what she’d had to face in her past. Clark didn’t have that same luxury.

“I-I know you’re not exactly used to going up against big bads, or having to fight gods,” she started. “But I promise you Clark, no matter what it is we’ll deal with it together. Tonight, I’ll have my sister meet us at your place and we’ll go to the ship and find out what this prophecy says. Whatever’s coming, we’ll deal. I promise you; we won’t lose.”

“How do you know?” He asked, a bit of hope showing in his eyes.

She stared at him seriously, “Because I don’t lose when it’s the world.”

His lips quirked slightly, and he opened his mouth to say something when Willow walked up to them. “Wes wants me to fit you for a suit,” She said to Clark, handing Buffy her phone before saying, “And, he wants to talk to you.”

As Buffy reached for the phone Clark said, “I already have a suit and it’s Kryptonian.”

Both Buffy and Willow blinked in surprise at his words, their voices ringing out in unison. “You do?”

He nodded, “Yeah, it’s on the ship still, but I have one.”

Willow smiled, “Well then, that’s gonna make this quicker. Can you bring it to me? I can enhance it with magic, add some safety features and protect you against the mystical.”

“Will that still work, even if the material isn’t of Earth?” He asked.

“Yeah Wes,” Buffy finally said into her phone, pulling herself away from the conversation. So, Clark already had a suit, she wondered what it looked like.

“So, for the time being I’m going to send fifty Slayers to each location, but keep the others on standby incase things go pear-shaped.” He said, already planning ahead. “I’ll also be moving quite a few closer to all three locations, that way all the girls have backup nearby. I think Willow should stay there at the safehouse that way she’s not far from either of you.”

“And Dawn, Xander, and the kids? They live in Metropolis after all.” Buffy asked.

“Perhaps you should explain the situation to her when she gets there. Staying there at the safe house with Willow might also be a wise move for them.” Wes said, adding, “As well as a few Slayers. I know Faith’s been itching to get out of Cleveland for a mission, maybe she and a few of the other girls should accompany her.”

“Just as long as it’s not Tanya, that girl’s a liability and she doesn’t listen to anyone.” Buffy said.

“I concur,” Wesley agreed. “Only the girls who are focused and dedicated will be allowed to participate in this mission. I would like as little casualties as possible.”

“I agree,” Buffy nodded, “What about the mystics, how many of those can we tap?”

“I have sixty-eight on file, I’ll start making phone calls now.” He sighed. “I’m just glad we have this much to go on.”

“Me too,” Buffy agreed. “I’ll call Dawn when Willow gets done here and tell her where to meet us and to put on her suit and a warm hat.”

“Very well,” he said. “Call me when you know more and I’ll begin the preparations.”

Buffy hung up, walking back over to Willow and Clark as they spoke to each other a bit awkwardly. “So, let’s get this over with Wills.”

Willow quickly nodded opening a small bag she brought with her. “So,” she said quickly. “These were a bit difficult to make since from what we’ve read the compulsion itself seems to be based purely on hormones as well as a need to unite your souls.” She looked at them both, “It took me a little while to find what I needed and even longer to put the spell together.” She sighed, “The pendants themselves will be made out of several crystals used to block compulsion, amethyst, ametrine, chrysocolla, and ruby.”

Willow pulled out two small corked vials filled with multicolored stones and handed them to both Buffy and Clark. “Now, hold out your hands and link your free ones together.”

Buffy and Clark did as she asked, holding their hands out palm up. Willow placed a vial in each of their hands and then covered them with her own hands, closing her eyes and beginning to chant. Buffy immediately began to feel her hand heat up and for a second it almost became unbearable and Buffy even watched Clark wince from the heat. It was gone just as quickly however and in its place were two hard looking marble like multicolored stones with a dark metallic chain that would hang from each of their necks. Buffy heard Willow mutter one more spell that she recognized to be a ward against breaking.

“Well go on.” Willow said smiling happily at her work. “Try them on, see if it worked.”

Buffy quickly slipped the necklace over her head and a sigh of relief left her lips. The sexual tension that had never fully abated her all day finally easing enough to where she wasn’t thinking about sex every few seconds.

Clark had a similar reaction, his face seeming to ease slightly, but Buffy was surprised when he turned to Willow and asked, “You said the compulsion is only based on hormones, does that mean any feeling we have that aren’t sexual are real?”

Willow nodded, “Of course, real love is something that can only be based off of free will. Its why love spells don’t ever work. You can’t force someone to love you.”

Buffy watched amused as Clark seemed to sigh in relief, and then quickly blushed when he noticed her watching him. “Come on stud,” she said hooking her arm through his and dragging him towards the door of the training room. “Let me go grab my stuff before we go get your mom,” a grin creeping over her face as she turned and wished Willow a good night and a promise to catch up tomorrow. “And for the record”, she added quietly as they walked out of the training room. “I still want to jump you, that hasn’t changed even with the necklace on.”

He quickly reached out to grab her arm, but she easily dodged him and took off down the hallway, a blush and a giggle leaving her lips.

Clark was suddenly there in front of her, a crooked and devilish smile on his lips. “Is that so?” And then his lips were on hers, his tongue sliding into her mouth as she squealed in surprise.

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westernhoodrat · 3 years ago

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Meet Dani

The following is an excerpt from my first book that I recently self published on amazon. If you’re interested in science fiction, adventure, or just a good story? Give it a read, let me know what you think and consider checking out The Map: Book One of the Edwina Chronicles.

Chapter 4

August 4th, 3108 AA

Olympus, Gaea (Colonial Capitol City)

The warehouse was grubby, grease-coated and run down; piles of star ship parts sat idly all about it. The lights were dim and the air was stale with the scent of old oil and a haze of drifting dust. It was like a giant mouse nest, that had been patched together out of scrap metal and broken engines. In the middle of this vast stillness, something stirred, tussling through the dust, occasionally clanging parts together and hammering on metal. Beneath the layers of scrap and decay was a small blonde girl toiling away at a fighter engine, mumbling to herself. She wore a tattered old blue mechanic’s jumper and oil-soaked leather boots. Her fingers seemed held together by various bandages and bits of gauze and they were currently clinging tightly to a hammer and pair of pliers. She had a small, but lean face with a long nose and jawline. A pair of round brass colored goggles clung tightly over her bright blue eyes. Her hair was unkempt and long, the only thing holding the thicket in place was a pair of green welding goggles and a bit of wire tying it back into a ponytail. A small patch on the right breast of her jumpsuit read “Dani.”

Dani was arguably the best mechanic ever to be dishonorably discharged from the Colonial Corps, and she had worked her whole life to be so. Her father had been a mechanic, her father’s father before him and so on for almost eight generations. But unfortunately Dani had a fondness for making unorthodox modifications to regulation equipment; one such modification had literally blown up in her face. Now, she found herself stuck in an enormous warehouse on a dead planet, trying to piece together old ships and sell scrap just to get by.

“Be an ace mechanic Dani!” she muttered to herself, mocking the advice her father had given her years before. “It’s a great career oppawtunity!” she balked in her heavy Gaean accent. She angrily ratcheted a nut on to a bolt. “This war’ll never end! Don’t you worry love! You’ll always ’ave me!” She shook the parts in her hand. “Then the old geezer goes an’ dies!” She let out a heavy sigh, looking around at the enormity of the pile around her. She was a small speck in a sea of particles and shadow, trying to swim her way out. She rubbed her forehead vigorously “You’re alright Dani, deep breafs old girl, deep breafs.”

She had been just a girl of eight when the war started. Her father was arguably the best human mechanic in the galaxy at the time, so he joined up and for nearly eight years Dani and her father “lived off the fat,” as he used to call it. But when she turned sixteen it was her turn. She was at the top of her class in basic, outpacing her fellow students by light-years. It wasn’t fair really Dani had practically grown up inside an engine block. To her it was as comforting as her mother’s womb. She had advanced to deployment nine months ahead of schedule and at his request served in her father’s division. But her father never lived to see the Colonial victory. It turned out that stomach and lung cancer were the reward for all his hard work in the war effort and for the first time that she could remember, Dani was alone. She became angry and over time her skills were overshadowed by her grief. She began to experiment and modify things out of boredom and frustration. Then one day she’d managed to modify an engine on board a frigate without the proper authorization, it had exploded, almost killing all two hundred and eighty crew members on board. They discharged her, instead of sentencing her to a penal colony, leaving her to rot on the surface of the rotting corpse of Gaea.

It had been hard at first. When she’d stepped back on the surface from Gaea’s orbital blockade she didn’t understand what had happened to humanity. Before she had gone into orbit the planet was lush and green, but when she came back, all victory had won mankind was a homeworld that couldn’t give anymore in the way of resources. Gaea had been stripped and mined and farmed to the point of exhaustion. The soil was sterile, the water was poisoned and they lived in a constant, storming, dust-ridden wasteland. But the war had been won. The soil was sterile, the water was poisoned, and humans lived in a constant, dust-ridden wasteland. But the war had been won.

There had been more people on Gaea when she’d first stepped back on the ground. Some were just trying to get by and others were eating them alive, sometimes quite literally. Roving gangs of violent, broken men, back from the farthest reaches of the galaxy had taken what they learned in war and turned on the very people they’d been fighting for. The learning curve had been steep in the beginning, but over time she’d learned that it was survival of the fittest. She hadn’t killed anyone, she didn’t want to for that matter, but she had given a number of fellows a good clout on the head with a wrench when they came around trying to take her things, steal her water or worse, she never let them though, not once. After a while the gangs in her area figured out that they better not come around the old warehouse looking for trouble, because Dani could take care of herself. After she’d established those boundaries life got a little easier. She managed to sell what little scrap she could to folks looking to patch up homes and huts after the storms, she’d rewire engines to provide heat or cold as needed. But that didn’t stop her from thinking, dreaming, hoping that some day she’d get out.

Suddenly she heard a loud crash from the far side of the hangar.

“What the ’ell was that?” she whispered as she shot up and began looking around frantically. Another clank came from her left, echoing through the large building. She grabbed her large pipe wrench and went running in the direction of the noise. She slowed her pace as she came to a corner near the building’s entrance, pressing her back to the wall, raising the wrench to her chest and gripping it tightly.

No. she thought. Not again, her heart began to race as the thought of fighting off the gangs and robbers made her fear for her life, made her wonder if they had grown bold enough to attack her again, or worse, managed to find real weapons, guns and the like. It made her wonder if today was the day they’d get her.

She gently peeked around the corner to find a heavily armed man and what appeared to be a dog with a bomb strapped to its chest.

Robbers! she thought as she bit her lip. The man was glancing around the room as the dog seemed to almost mutter at him with a series of groans and whimpers.

“It’s alright Nugget, I think the computer was right, we just need to have a look round. Try to relax.” He turned and smiled at it before it barked back at him in response. His accent was different than how any of the thieves she know spoke. He sounded like the people in the High Command, the big-wig military types who were the only ones allowed out of the muck and mire on Gaea. They lived in a great black tower complex which was guarded like a fortress and had access to what few resources were left on the doomed planet. For a split second the pair unknowingly turned their backs to her.

Alright Dani girl, ’ere’s your chance, she thought, taking a deep breath and leaping out from behind the wall, flying at the man and swinging the pipe at his head.

Quickly and without warning the man turned around, reached out and caught the wrench with a thud, just before it reached his temple. “Oh hello!” he said with a devilish smile. He ripped the wrench from her hands and pushed Dani to the ground with his boot, dropping her weapon with a dust laden thud. Dani crashed flat on her back with her legs in the air. The force of her landing made her fuzzy as she tried to draw focus back to the pair. The dog was snarling, hackles up, poised to strike. The man looked down at her in delight.

“Who the ’ell are you?!?!” Dani shouted at them.

The man placed his hand on his chest. “I am Captain Ashley Odessa Cumberge and this is Nugget.” He gestured towards the dog, who was still snarling at her, its eyes nearly popping out of its skull. “Nugget?” She looked up at him. “Heel.” He smiled at her as she immediately relaxed and moved to a seated position. He stood up straight and extended his hand to help her up. “Sorry about that, but you were about to hit me in the head with a rather large wrench.” He grinned. “I don’t know about you, but I’d say that’s just a little rude.” Dani eyed him skeptically until she took his hand, pulling herself up.

“What do you want gov?” She shrugged at him wiping her hands on her pant legs.

“Ah! Yes, well we are looking for a mechanic.” He pulled a small, blue handkerchief from his breast pocket and offered it to her.

“Well you’ve found one.” She grimaced at him, blowing her nose with his hanky.

“Indeed.” Ash nodded. Now it appeared it was his turn for skepticism. “But we are looking for a very specific mechanic. Specialist Daniel Colbert, so if you could perhaps point us in his direction it would be much appreciated,” he finished as she handed him back his hanky. Ash stared at it for a moment in minor disgust. “Please, call it a gift.”

“Thanks,” she replied, shoving it into her pocket. “Well that’s me mate,” she said, still dusting herself off, only half paying attention to him.

Ash paused for a moment and eyeing her with a frown. “You?” he raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah.” She replied looking down at Nugget. “Hi doggy!” She smiled as Nugget began to wag her tail.

“Daniel?” Ash continued his eyes glancing around.

“Yeah,” she repeated, rolling her eyes. “My dad was brilliant wiv a wrench, but he couldn’t spell to save ’is life. So he wanted a Danielle, got a Daniel. But call me Dani.” She stuck her hand out to shake his. Ash shot her a fleeting, half-hearted smile before gingerly shaking hers.

“Specialist.” Despite the smile, his face went slack and his doubts about her identity floated in the air, as heavy as the dust between them.

“What’s wrong?” she scoffed at him.

“You’re a world class, ex-military mechanic?” He forced another smile as his brows drew together.

“Yeah why?” She sassily put her hands on her hips, cocking them to the right.

Ash eyed the thin, mousey girl, with the rats nest of hair on her head, long crooked nose and obnoxious demeanor. He seemed taken aback. In his experience all the top military mechanics were broad shouldered, square-chinned men and while a woman in the service wasn’t out of the ordinary, one had to be particularly well educated to work on star ships. A slight, young girl whose name wasn’t spelled correctly and who spoke in a manner consistent with that of the rabble who now inhabited what remained of Gaea didn’t seem right. Her mannerisms and appearance were slovenly and simply not in keeping with military standards.

“I apologize.” He said softly. “I believe I have made a mistake.” He turned to exit the building.

“Wait a minute!” she shouted, grabbing him by the shoulder, spinning him around and sticking her index finger in his face. “You can't just march in 'ere with this adorable little dog, ask me one stupid question an' expect to walk off without explainin' yourself!” She grabbed him by his collar. “Now what do you want fancy man?”

“My dear,” he let out a little laugh and a smile, raising his palms. “I need the best mechanic in the universe to maintain my ship. It is unlike any other that has ever traveled through space. Your name was at the top of the list when I looked through the Colonial database. But now that I’ve met you, I dare say they can’t be right. No offense.” he said, grabbing her wrist and pulling his collar out of her clutches.

“A mistake?” she said, raising both eyebrows and rocking back on her heels, crossing her arms. “Oh really? You don’t fink someone like me couldn’t be the best mechanic in the whole universe? Why? Because I’m a girl?” Dani was turning red, as she began to tap her foot.

Ash again raised his eyebrow and shrugged. “Well…,” he began to explain.

“Right well let me tell you somethin’ Cap’n Ashwin Odooly Cabbage!” she pointed her finger at him. “My father only ever taught me ‘ow to do one fing in ‘is world an’ at was ‘ow to take care of starships!” She threw her hands in the air, waving them at him. “My entire life people ’ave tried to tell me I am not who I say I am! But I swear on me father's grave an’ ’is father’s before ’im that there ain't an engine in the universe I can’t fix!” She pointed at him again as her eyes widened. “And if you fink that you can judge ’is book by its cover an' walk out without a piece of me mind you’ve got it all wrong!”

Ash stood in aghast, eyeing her for a moment. “Cumberge.” he said sharply.

“What?” she snapped at him.

“My name is Cumberge, Specialist.” He stood at attention. “What do you know about maintenance on a zero point energy engine?”

“I know ’em inside an’ out if yew really 'ave one? I heard they was too expensive to put on most military ships. Even so, we was trained at length on ’em. The principal construction is the same as a combustion, but it only works if you've got it paired wiv a jump drive an’ everyone knows they don't exist.” She calmed down as she spoke, her face turning back to the pale color it normally was, her attitude now shifting from one of anger to arrogance.

“Hmmmm…” Ash responded. “What if I told you we’ve got one?”

“Right! Now who’s tellin’ lies?” She laughed. “You’ve got a ship outfitted wiv a jump drive?” she asked skeptically.

“We do.” Ash smiled looking at Nugget.

“And I'm supposed to believe you because you’ve got all those guns an’ medals, eh?” She let out a laugh. “Besides you ain’t no captain anyway.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Look at that old bomber. Blue and gold ain’t the Colonial colors no more, everybody knows ‘at. They’re black an’ red now.” She turned up her lip in a sneer. “So tell me another one ‘captain’.”

“Oh yes, just as I am supposed to believe you are the best mechanic in the universe because you’re covered in dust and oil? If I’m not mistaken you’re wearing the same colors as I.”

“You’re damn right I am!” She pointed a finger at him before thumbing her chest. “An ’is is my father’s jumper you geezer so don’t you tell I’m wearing the wrong colors.”

A pause followed between them as the mood grew sullen. They eyed each other a while longer, each having just as much cause to mistrust the other. Ash looked down at Nugget, who whimpered at him. “Look I don’t know if you are who you say you are but if you can get my ship to work, I can offer you a place on board.”

“Oh yeah? What's in it for me?”

“Well I can’t promise much, nor can I guarantee your safety, but I can promise that it’s a damn sight better than this place.” He looked around at the piles of junk.

Dani paused then and thought about the years she had been there, how long it had been since she had worked aboard an actual star ship, how much she missed her father and how badly she wanted to redeem herself.

“What are you doin’ wiv the ship?” she questioned. After all, this fellow was awfully strange and seemed to appear out of no place; for all she knew it could be some sort of trap or ploy to get her out of the hangar, kill her and take her stuff, or sell her into slavery. But then she remembered that nobody had guns on Gaea, except the big wigs in the tower of course, especially ones like the one this fellow had.

Ash paused for a moment, seeming to choose his words with care. “That information my dear is on a need to know basis; however, in the very near future we are looking to acquire a very special map.” He raised an eyebrow and smiled. “Does that suffice?”

Dani thought again for a brief moment. “Anything illegal?” she eyed him.

“Ah. Well there might be a bit of trouble involved, but nothing serious.” Ash replied looking down at his dog, who squeaked back.

Dani looked down at her dirty boots for a half second of hesitation then said. “Alright Captain. I’ll take a look at your ship, but no funny business?”

“I would never dream of it.”

“An’ first I 'ave one more question, before we go.”

“Yes?”

She pointed to Nugget. “Why do you ’ave explosives strapped to your dog?!?!” She shouted, her brow furrowing. “She’s a cute dog an’ you don’t see many of them runnin’ around now do ya?” Dani did have an affinity for cute things and this dog was the cutest thing she’d seen in years, even if it was ready to attack her.

Ash smiled. “She’s not a dog.“ He shook his head. “She’s a bomb.” He turned and began to walk away, Dani exchanged a look with the mutt who seemingly shrugged at her. “Come Nugget.” The dog followed him quickly as the two put distance between themselves and Dani.

“What?” Dani shouted, shaking her head and wrinkling her nose.

“Coming Specialist?” Ash called.

Dani looked around at the hangar one last time, with a sigh and then ran after them without the slightest notion of what was to come next.

#scifi #self publishing #fiction #write #first book #writerscorner

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ladytrelaw · 4 years ago

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Chapter 4: To Survive in a Cruel World

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25432372/chapters/62799148

(sorry for the weird formatting tumblr is having a moment but here! is chapter 4!)

At that moment a voice rings out from behind him, a stranger’s voice. All thoughts of Crimson Lethe or sinking ships or even Grinpayne himself are wiped from his mind as he registers the strange accent, and whirls around to meet its owner.

“Crack the skies…”

Ursus scrambles to his feet almost before his brain has registered the threat. Grinpayne stays on his hands and knees, still disoriented from the crimson lethe and making a groggy noise of questioning at Ursus’ sudden movement, but Ursus ignores him, planting his body between Grinpayne and the stranger who has appeared as if from smoke. He’s probably half Ursus’ age and slightly taller, dressed in a dark shirt and trousers that seem to have been patched several times. A ragged maroon cloth is knotted around his neck in a loose impersonation of a tie, and he’s staring past Ursus at Grinpayne as though transfixed. There’s a look in his eyes that Ursus has never seen anyone direct at Grinpayne before. As though he’s almost… impressed.

“Your face…” he breathes, and Ursus hears a sharp inhale behind him as Grinpayne finally registers that they’re no longer alone. “Incredible-”

“Who are you?” Ursus interrupts tersely, blanching a fraction of a second later what he registers what the man had said. The stranger looks at Ursus as though just remembering he’s there, and smiles widely.

“They call me Osric! Well, they call me lots of things, but Osric’s the one I like best.” His eyes dart back to Grinpayne, who has forced himself up on unsteady legs behind Ursus.

“Have you always been like that, laddie?”

It’s absolutely not what Ursus expected him to say, and certainly not in a voice so strangely soft, strangely kind. Nonetheless he feels Grinpayne freeze and duck a little further behind him automatically, the tension rolling off him in waves. He squares his shoulders protectively, glaring at this stranger whose empathy is so unsettling.

“He was cut as a boy, if you must know.”

Osric raises his eyebrows a little, but nods, taking the hint from Urus’ gruff tone not to press for further details.

“I was born with mine!” he says cheerfully instead, holding up a hand. Ursus tries not to recoil as he realises it is a shrivelled, deformed thing; three fingers curled over in a permanent claw and the skin twisting around his wrist until it disappears under his shirtsleeve. He shrugs, smiling gently at Grinpayne in a way that makes Ursus’ hackles rise. “I have a friend like you though, she doesn’t speak either and she taught me some-”

“I’m not a mute.” Grinpayne interrupts in a quiet, clipped voice, and Ursus is relieved that he’s lucid enough to be offended. Osric is thrown for only the briefest of moments, barely blinking in surprise before he recovers and holds up both hands, shrunken and normal, in apology.

“My mistake, lad, no harm meant-”

“Who are you?” Ursus interrupts, watching Osric’s eyes flick up to meet his own. He laughs slightly in confusion.

“I told you, I’m-”

“No. I mean, who are you? What are you doing here?”

Why are you being so gentle towards him? The unspoken question hangs in the air, borne of years of Ursus doing his best to protect the boy behind him from angry words and horrified stares. Why aren’t you afraid?

Osric blinks. “I was trying to hunt, although I think there might be a deer 10 miles away that didn’t hear you two havin’ a square go at each other, in case you wanted to scare that one off too.”

He offers a smile that Ursus does not return, and after a moment of heavy silence he answers Ursus’ real question with a strange hesitation.

“I run a... fair. A travelling show, for people like us.” He gestures at himself and Grinpayne, and it takes a moment for Ursus to understand what he means. When he does, his blood runs cold.

“A freak show?”

“Well, I don’t like to call it that, but-”

“Stay the hell away from us” Ursus growls, tightening his grip on his bow as his heart rate skyrockets. “We’re armed, if you even think-”

“Woah, woah, woah!” Osric says quickly, taking a step back and holding up his hands in supplication. “What do you think I’m going to do? Stage a kidnap?” He laughs a little nervously, as though the idea is absurd. Ursus doesn’t move.

“Look,” Osric says in an overly level voice, as though he’s trying to calm a wild animal. “I’m not going to pretend I’m not… interested.” He looks at Grinpayne again, addressing him directly, though Ursus notices he keeps his eyes slightly lowered. “I’ve never met anyone like you before, and trust me, that’s saying something. If you wanted to, you’d do well in the fair.”

Behind him, Grinpayne shifts uncomfortably, although Ursus couldn’t begin to guess what he’s thinking. Osric sighs.

“I promise, I just came about the noise, I didn’t mean any harm. Sorry to have startled you. Just, keep it down, alright?” He smiles gently. “I’ve got a lot of wee mouths to feed and they’re not gonna be best pleased if I come back empty handed.”

He inclines his head politely and turns to go, but falters, as though he’s remembered something.

“By the way, I wouldnae go back to the road for a while. When I left, the Duke’s men were harassing some lassie in another cart. It’s probably for the best if they don’t see you.”

“Lassie?” Ursus questions, the word strange and unfamiliar on his tongue, even as his heart is already sinking because some part of him already knows…

“A girl,” Osric clarifies. “They’d only just got there by the looks of it, still all on their horses. I’d have got involved but besides the fact it’s not worth it on my own, she seemed to be holding her ground. Quite fierce for such a tiny wee thing, and she had this huge dog with her...”

Ursus turns, and Grinpayne’s wide eyes reflect the abject terror already coursing through his veins; a horror so strong it is almost paralysing.

Dea.

***

The undergrowth is thick and cumbersome, fingers of brambles and thistle snagging Grinpayne’s clothes and pulling him backwards, but he crashes his way through like a creature possessed; faster than he’d run from the soldiers at the river; faster perhaps than he’s ever run before. He can’t catch enough breath, and his heart is pounding a frantic, bruising beat on his ribs, but none of it matters. All he can see is Dea.

Dea, dragged crying from their cart. Mojo, dear brave Mojo jumping to defend her, and the terrible howl as he lands on a soldier’s sword. Dea in chains, Dea with a noose around her neck, a sword in her heart, Dea, Dea, Dea...

Something bangs against his arm, pulling him backwards and jolting him so violently out of his thoughts that he yelps in shock. He stumbles at the sudden jarring stop and almost crashes to the floor, but the hand that grabbed him yanks him upright and before he can process anything he’s pulled sideways and slammed into a tree. His quiver crushes painfully into his back and he struggles, snarling in fury, but the strange man from the woods - Osric? - cuts him off.

“You cannae come screaming out of the woods and hurling yourself straight at a Duke, are you mad?!” He’s panting, and it’s making his strange accent even harder for Grinpayne to make out. Behind him, Ursus staggers to a stop, holding up a hand to silence Grinpayne’s protests before he’s even given them breath.

“He’s right, lad, and you know it,” he says, urgency and fear blending together in his voice. “We’re no use to her if they shoot us on sight.”

I’ll kill them, Grinpayne thinks wildly, chest heaving. I’m armed too; if they’ve hurt her, if they’ve so much as touched her, I will kill them even with a thousand arrows in my heart.

But he can’t deny the truth of what Ursus said, and when Osric warily lets go of his arm he resists the urge to sprint towards the road again. The three men move through the woods as fast as they dare, purposefully standing on dead leaves and branches so that their approach is audible, stepping nimbly between the briar patches that are at least growing mercifully thinner as they approach the road. Grinpayne strains his ears, listening for any sign, any signal that might tell him if Dea’s ok, but in the end he sees Ursus react before he hears it himself. Barely there, at the edge of hearing, the low rumble of a wolf growling, and the distinctively high, familiar voice growing clearer with each hurried step.

***

“-don’t even know what a ‘familiar’ is!”

“Well I don’t care what your kind call them these days, if it comes one step closer then I’m going to-”

“Good evening, my lord!” Osric calls as he steps out of the forest, Grinpayne hot on his heels. His heart gives a sickening lurch as Dea’s pale face turns towards the unexpected voice. She’s standing a little way behind their cart, silver eyes wide, hands sunk deep into the scruff of Mojo’s neck where he’s crouched before her on the dusty road. His teeth are pulled back in a snarl, hackles raised, and Grinpayne is flooded with a fierce affection for the creature that has saved their lives more times than he cares to count. Standing before them on the road are two men: the soldier who gad threatened Mojo standing with his hand on the hilt of a frighteningly large sword, and a large red-cheeked man with a pinched frown sitting astride the fattest horse Grinpayne has ever seen. The second man is dressed far too flamboyantly for the road, in a crushed velvet gown that skims the edges of his calf-length leather boots and sweeps down over the haunches of his steed, a silver wig completing the look as it wobbles precariously atop his head. The Duke.

But not, Grinpayne realises distantly, the Duke of Oxford, who he’d assumed Osric had been referring to. They must have crossed into a new territory without realising it; so eager to put Oxford far behind them that they’d travelled faster and further than usual. Behind the Duke are a further two soldiers, picking like vultures through the contents of the green cart that have been strewn carelessly about the road. There’s something heart-wrenching, something degrading and offensive about the sight of a stranger pawing over their possessions, but Grinpayne ignores them for now, turning his attention back to Dea. She’s not bruised or bleeding as far as he can tell, and she’s holding her chin up fiercely towards the men that she can’t see, her mouth set in a firm line. Still, he knows her well enough to read the things her face isn’t showing; the tension in her shoulders, her tight grip in Mojo’s fur. She’s terrified. He longs to run straight to her, to slip his hand into hers and tell her with a touch that everything will be alright, communicating in silence in the way only they can. But the soldier is still holding his sword half-raised in the direction of Mojo’s snarling fangs, and Grinpayne dare not move until he knows he won’t be seen as a threat.

He could call out, should call out. Dea must think she is completely alone among strangers and Osric’s voice with its unfamiliar twang will have done nothing to reassure her. But as the Duke and his soldiers turn to see the group of men emerging from the woods, a familiar tightness spreads through Grinpayne’s chest, quickening his breath. He watches their eyes slip quickly from Osric to Ursus before landing on him; familiar expressions of shock and fear and suspicion flying in tandem across their faces as they register his bandages. The shame of cowardice burns in his cheeks as he drops his eyes, and says nothing.

“Can I help you with anything? My wagon’s not blocking your way is it?” Osric continues cheerfully, climbing the last few steps up the grassy bank to the road and pausing a few feet away from the Duke. Grinpayne feels a thrill of frustration at his words, watching as Dea blinks in confusion and surprise as this unfamiliar voice confidently claims all of their worldly possessions as his own. He doesn’t trust this stranger, who appears to be attempting to improvise his way out of a situation that doesn’t even concern him, but it’s too late to backtrack now.

"Your wagon?” The Duke sniffs pompously, staring down his nose at them from atop his huge white horse. Behind him, the other two soldiers have abandoned the cart and are skulking up to the road, drawing their own swords almost lazily. Sweat drips down the back of Grinpayne’s neck.

“Well,” Osric laughs, the very picture of relaxation, as though he likes nothing more than to return home to find his cart being raided by armed soldiers, “I suppose technically it belongs to my friend here, but I run the Fair so in a sense, all the wagons we travel with are mine.”

“It’s mine,” Ursus offers gruffly, “I’m the druggist.” Across the road, Dea visibly startles at the unexpected familiar voice, and Grinpayne’s pounding heart clenches.

“Wait, wait,” says the Duke, flapping an impatient hand. “What do you mean, what other wagons? What fair? All I can see is this little witch selling potions and voodoo dolls on the roadside.”

Grinpayne forgets how to breathe for a moment, but Osric seems unfazed.

“Witch?” he scoffs, letting out a barking laugh so sudden that it startles some birds into flight form a nearby tree. “Nae my lord, she’s no witch, she’s a…” he pauses for a fraction of a second, and Grinpayne sees him read and register the lettering on the side of their cart and change tack without missing a beat. “A performer!”

“They’re not dolls, they’re puppets, I told you.” Dea cuts in, folding her arms over her chest and scowling. Fear and pride rush through Grinpayne in equal measure; she’s being so brave, but he wishes she’d stay silent. She might not know the level of danger she’s in, but if they think she’s a witch…

Osric laughs again, a little more nervously after Dea’s contribution. “Exactly, she’s my best, ah, puppeteer! No sorcery or witchcraft to it, none at all, so if you wouldnae mind lowering your weapons there…?”

The three soldiers shift uneasily, sharing glances, but they don’t sheath their swords. The Duke, however, looks intrigued.

“What is this fair you speak of?”

Osric grins widely. “The Stokes Croft Fair, m’lord! I’m known as Osric the Freak Wrangler, for what I hope are obvious reasons!” He gestures to Dea, and Grinpayne watches, horrified, as Osric’s shrunken hand sweeps back to include him too.

“We’re a travelling freak show. The rest of the wagons are just up the road a little way. We stopped to hunt so we left young, eh, Mary here to look after the cart.”

The lord nods thoughtfully.

“A silly thing to do, that. A creature like this left alone with all of these tonics and that frightful animal, there’s the obvious assumption-“

“I see that now, my lord, an easy mistake to make,” Osric interrupts, bowing graciously. “But I assure you, she’s just a puppeteer.” He pauses, a charming smile spreading over his features, a glint in his eye. “If she was a witch perhaps we’d have had more luck in our hunting!”

The lord doesn’t laugh, and turns to look at Grinpayne, who drops his gaze to the floor, his heart thumping.

He knows what’s coming, but maybe, if he doesn’t catch his eye-

“And who’s this? Another of your… acts?”

“Quite right, my lord!” Osric says cheerfully, clapping Grinpayne’s shoulder. He tries not to flinch. “A-”

“Another puppeteer” Ursus steps in, clearing his throat uncomfortably. “My son.”

Grinpayne tries not to focus on the way his heart thumps a little harder at that.

“We perform Beauty and The Beast together” Dea pipes up, and for a moment the Duke looks at her blankly, clearly having completely forgotten she was there. Then he roars with laughter, his piggy eyes squeezing shut with the exertion of it.

“Of course you do, of course.” He wheezes, chortling. “So this is yours then, is it, boy?”

Grinpayne looks up, keeping his hands from curling into fists of anger with some difficulty as he sees the Duke holding out puppet of the prince, his puppet. He nods mutely, and the Duke raises an eyebrow.

“And what’s wrong with your face?”

Grinpayne opens his mouth, but the tightness in his chest has spread to his throat, and he realises with a sluggish panic that the words won’t come. He looks helplessly to Ursus, but it’s Osric who steps in, a flair of showmanship about him. Distantly, Grinpayne wonders if there is some part of him that’s enjoying this.

‘Disfigured as a child, my lord! Of everyone in my fair he’s-”

“Show me.”

Grinpayne feels bile rising in his throat, but Osric has already clamped an arm around his shoulders and is marching him forward, towards the Duke. “Of course, your lordship!”

“No!” Grinpayne mumbles desperately, pulling himself out of Osric’s grip, dimly aware that his fingers are shaking. “No, I don’t-“

“I know you don’t want to, ah, spoil the surprise, laddie” Osric cuts him off, a warning glint in his eye as his smile becomes slightly fixed. “But this is the Duke we’re talking about…?”

They’re close enough now to the Duke in question that Grinpayne can smell the sweat rolling off him as he smirks down at them, a scent poorly concealed by cloying wafts of lavender perfume. Grinpayne shoots a glance at Ursus, then at Dea, whose face is pinched with worry. There’s something about the set of her jaw that grounds him though, and he steels himself. She’s barely more than a child, and she’s been so brilliant, so brave. He can be brave too. If this is what keeps her safe, then so be it.

With trembling fingers he reaches back to the soft fabric nestled in his hair, the knot slipping undone easily under his hands. He turns away from Osric, facing the Duke and the Duke alone, and lets the bandage fall softly into his palms.

The Duke’s reaction is instantaneous. He recoils, then, like any child who has ever tasted something horribly sour, comes back for more, leaning precariously over the neck of his horse for a closer look. “Fascinating,” he breathes, his eyes roving over the jagged nightmare of Grinpayne’s face, taking in each twist of flesh, each bulge of scar tissue. Finally, after what feels like an age, he leans back, looking over Grinpayne’s head to Osric.

“So the witch and this freak are both part of your fair?”

Grinpayne ignores the familiar jab, taking the opportunity as soon as the Duke’s attention has shifted to tie his mask back over his mouth. His fingers feel oddly numb. Osric, meanwhile, is nodding.

“Aye, my lord, though, as I said before, she’s not a witch-“

“When you come to Swindon, you will perform in my court.” The Duke says decisively, silencing Osric with a flick of his hand. “My jesters grow boring and tiresome; they need inspiration, something new, something unique.”

He adjusts his seat, and motions to his soldiers, who sheath their swords reluctantly and slink to the edge of the forest to untie their own horses.

“I look forward to seeing the rest of your band of monsters, sir.” The Duke says, smiling icily as he inclines his head in what could almost be a respectful nod. “An unexpected pleasure.”

With that, the Duke takes off at a lumbering trot down the road through some considerable effort from his potbellied steed, his men following behind him. “Of course, your lordship!” Osric shouts cheerfully at their retreating backs, his good hand raised high above his head to wave them off.

***

Barely have the soldiers moved away from their cart before Grinpayne is rushing to Dea, taking her tiny shoulders in his hands as his voice returns to him in a frightened, garbled flood.

“Dea! Are you alright? Did they hurt you? Did they-”

“It’s ok, I’m alright, Grinpayne I’m alright,” she soothes, snatching gently at his hands as he fusses over her, checking everywhere he can see for injuries before pulling her into a hug and closing his eyes, burying his nose in her hair.

“We shouldn’t have left you.” He murmurs, squeezing her even tighter. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, if anything had happened-”

“A blind puppeteer?” Osric says in disbelief, staring bemused from Grinpayne and Dea to Ursus. “You have got to be joking.”

Ursus, ignoring his question, turns on him with a wild gleam in his eyes.

“What the hell was that?!” He snarls, a crackling thunderstorm of a man. “I told you we want nothing to do with you, and then you go and tell the Duke that we’re part of your fair?!”

“I was trying to help,” Osric counters quickly, raising his hands placatingly but standing his ground. “I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to plan and, by the way, some warning that your daughter was a blind puppeteer would have been helpful-”

“Who are you?” Dea interrupts, squirming out of Grinpayne’s arms, much to his disapproval.

“He’s nobody.” Ursus spits, glaring at Osric like he’s something vile that he’s stepped in. “A vulture, someone who preys on people down on their luck.”

Osric’s eyes harden, his gaze growing cold. “If you’re talking about the acts in my fair-“

“Of course I’m talking about your acts!” Ursus explodes, jamming a finger at Osric’s chest. Osric, to his credit, doesn’t back away. “I’ve met men like you before, men who make money from other people’s misery, who parade cripples and broken souls around like you own them! You knew exactly what you were doing when you told the Duke they’d perform for him, you wanted Grinpayne from the second you saw him, well you can’t have him! You can’t have either of them!”

None of them move for a moment, frozen by the tension between the two men who seem moments away from a fist fight. Unconsciously, Grinpayne brings his hands to rest on Dea’s shoulders.

“I promise” Osric says slowly, “I didnae have any sort of grand plan. I couldn’t have known that the Duke would ask them to perform; I just know from experience that people like him prefer it when people like us all stick together in one neat little group. I was right; you saw how he relaxed when I said you were with me.” He pauses, and when he continues there is a steely undercurrent to his voice, something fiercely protective that Grinpayne hadn’t anticipated.

“The ‘freak-wrangler’ thing, it’s an act for the rich, it’s not real. My fair is nothing like that, not on the inside. We’re a family. We look after each other.”

Well,” Ursus says, scoffing, “we already are a family. And we don’t need looking after by the likes of you.” He pushes past the younger man and trudges towards the edge of the road where their horse is grazing quietly by the trees, unperturbed. “Grinpayne, Dea.”

Grinpayne takes a step towards the cart, understanding the unvoiced instruction, but Osric’s sharp rebuttal stops him in his tracks.

“You can’t leave.” He says, in a voice of barely disguised frustration. “The Duke will be expecting you when we get to Swindon; if you’re not with the fair, he’ll send his men after you. You heard what he said, didn’t you? If I hadn’t covered for you he would have arrested you all for witchcraft.”

“He won’t bother with us for long.” Ursus says gruffly, trying unsuccessfully to untie the thick rope tethering their horse to the tree. Osric is unimpressed.

“You already can’t go back to Oxford; that much was clear from your wee domestic in the woods. Do you want to add another city to your list?” He snaps, taking an angry step forward. “He might not send men, if you’re lucky, but word will definitely get around, and you do not want an accusation of witchcraft following you around the country, trust me. Not to mention that the next nearest cities to here are twice as far away as Swindon, and seeing as your hunting trip went so spectacularly well I get the sense you’re not exactly stocked up on supplies!”

Ursus says nothing, his hands stilling on the rope. Grinpayne, suddenly reminded of the fact that he hasn’t eaten a proper meal since they left Oxford, swallows nervously.

“Come and stay with us tonight, do one show with us in Swindon, and then you can leave.” Osric continues, his voice softer now. “But I want you to consider that we could really help each other out here. I promise, performing with us, owning the thing that makes them fear you, taking back the control… there’s a power in it. A strength.”

Something in his words makes Grinpayne feel odd, like something is coming unstitched in his chest and floating away from his body. As Osric continues, Dea’s fingers silently edge towards Grinpayne’s, finding his hand and squeezing it.

“We don’t have anything like these two in the fair. They’d be a huge draw, and we’d both make more money, plus you get the safety of travelling in numbers. It’s a win win.”

He hesitates, watching Ursus’ back with cautious eyes.

“I’m not going to force you to join us permanently; no one in the fair is there by anything out of choice, no matter what we tell the customers. But I meant what I said in the woods. You’d do well in the fair.” His eyes flick to Grinpayne, who shifts uncomfortably despite himself, subconsciously edging closer to Dea. “Really well.”

Ursus, having finally untied their horse from the tree, lets out a long, slow exhale.

“I’m not the one you need to ask.” He says eventually, turning to face them with a furrowed brow.

“Grinpayne, Dea. It’s your performance. What do you think?”

Grinpayne feels his heart clench, surprised at Ursus giving them, giving him the choice. He’s more exhausted than he ever remembers being, and the emotional and physical toll of the past few days is making it difficult to think clearly. The thought of performing their little puppet show for someone like the Duke, as part of a travelling freak show of all things, is frightening. But Dea’s hand is so small and delicate in his, and he worries about her when the summer starts to fade like this, when the freezing wind and the rain threaten to bite. She needs food, real food, not the tough dried meat and watered-down oats that they’ve been rationing for the past few days, and Grinpayne can’t pretend that the thought of a hot meal for himself is isn’t tempting.

He taps the back of Dea’s knuckles with his finger; a question. She rubs her thumb gently against the side of his palm in response, her touch feather-light.

That’s settled, then.

Grinpayne looks up, meeting Ursus’ gaze and holding it.

“I want to go with him, Father,” he says softly, and Dea nods her head to show the agreement already silently made with Grinpayne. “It’s only one performance.”

Ursus nods slowly, then sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “Alright, my boy. If you’re sure.”

Osric grins. “You just wait till you see how much money you can make from gullible idiots with more riches than sense. Then you’ll change your tune.”

He turns, clapping his hands together before gesturing up the road as if announcing a headline act. “In the meantime, ladies and gentlemen, may I be the first to issue you the warmest invitation to all the glory and madness that is dinner with the Stokes-Croft Fair!”

#Ursus' lotions potions and puppetry #potions and puppetry #tgm fic #the grinning man

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kevrocksicehouse · 4 years ago

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Walt Disney, whose frozen head (allegedly) turns 120 today, has been delighting (and frightening and traumatizing) children for generations. A few of his classics.

Pinocchio (1940). A puppet is brought to life by the Blue Fairy when his creator Gepetto wishes on a star. He is told that he will become a real boy if he proves himself “brave, truthful and unselfish.” He does but not before being caged by an evil circus owner, almost turned into a donkey ( in the terrifying Pleasure Island sequence) eaten by a giant whale and drowned when he bravely helps his family escape. The darkness of this movie on its way to the obligatory happy ending is one reason it may be Disney’s best. Like the storytellers he adapts (some say bowdlerizes), he knows just how far he can go to frighten his audience before bringing them back from the edge.

Bambi (1942). More than a few kids might have learned about death from this brilliant movie about a young deer growing up and dealing with loss and change. The unseen villain, the one who takes Bambi’s mother is MAN (in other words, us) and I wonder how many kids this movie dissuaded from sport hunting. While the Keane eyes and high voices of woodland creatures Thumper the rabbit and Flower the skunk are almost a parody of cuteness, the animators painstakingly copied the movements of real forest animals. It was a big step up for animation.

The Jungle Book (1967). This adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling stories about Mowgli the man-cub raised by wolves should raise the hackles of anyone who decries the “Disneyfication” of literature but the movie is just too much fun for hand-wringing. Casting smooth-voiced comic hipster Phil Harris as Baloo the Bear was inspired, and having Louis Prima as Louie, King of the Apes (and Swingers) voice “I Wanna Be Like You” was a stroke of genius (when Prima is singing, Baloo, too busy dancing to help Bagheera the Panther rescue Mowgli ‘I’m gone, solid gone’) We also get George Sanders as an elegant, sinister tiger, a snake with neo-psychedelic eyes and vultures with Beatle wigs. This was the last film Disney produced before his death and it’s safe to say he went down swinging.

#walt disney #pinocchio #bambi #the jungle book #kevrock

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veliseraptor · 5 years ago

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Opinion which may or may not be unpopular in fandom but disagrees with narrative: Joleta wasn’t a “bad survivor” who deserved shit because she dealt with trauma the wrong way

strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree

god!!! I mean, I’m always going to go hard for the “bad victims” or “bad survivors” in fiction, I really am, because - augh, I mean, trauma is ugly and people don’t always deal with it well and I have...a lot of sympathy for that, I really do. for, like. personal reasons.

(me! I wouldn’t call anything of mine ‘trauma’ but boy were my worst depression years not pretty for anyone unlucky enough to be around me at the time! there was definitely collateral damage! I would like to think that doesn’t mean I somehow ‘deserved to suffer’ or whatever.)

anyway all personal nonsense aside: Joleta’s life sucked and she was a child. she had basically no support structure, her life was defined by her brother who was using her for his own ends (even if we don’t get into the power dynamics involved in that incest, like, clearly Gabriel doesn’t give two shits about her as soon as she gets in his way)...clearly, yes, she was fucked up and hurt people, badly, in the throes of her being fucked up.

but that doesn’t mean she deserved to suffer, or deserved to die, or deserved to be hurt, or deserved to be treated as poorly by Lymond as she was.

I think - I think in general, actually (again! generalizing statements, they make me nervous!) I just get wigged out by statements about characters ‘deserving’ bad things happening to them. it just makes my hackles go all the way up.

#lymond chronicles #stripedroseandsketchpads #conversating #lise memes #unpopular opinions meme

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think-blot · 5 years ago

Text

Tired but Loved (Natasha Romanoff x Reader)

Request by @lucdarling: request for reader being sweet with Natasha in private but also exhausted because you've both been doing overtime for Fury's projects (set pre-Avengers)

Summary: Europe is the most romantic place to be when you’re with your loved one. Except when you’re a different person every night and the only time you can interact is when you’re fighting the bad guy of the month. It gets tiring very quickly.

Word Count: 1519

The countryside of France was nowhere near as romantic as the brochures had you believe. You sat at a rusty table with lukewarm coffee and the smell of cow shit in your nose with none of the offenders in sight. The only thing that made it worth it was when you leaned your head slightly to the left and, in the very corner of your eye, you were able to see a glimpse of red hair. "You keep doing that and our cover is gonna be blown," Nat whispered into her mic. You sighed, looking straight ahead into an empty field once more and went back to pretending you were a tourist admiring the scenery.

"Italy was better." You leave it at that, not able to risk long sentences as she could. It seemed a bit unfair that she was allowed to read a book while you had nothing but she was supposed to be a regular. Regulars read, tourists awe. There was a hum of agreement in your air and you found yourself smiling at the sky. The two of you had found a moment of peace in Italy, something rare ever since you stepped foot in Europe. Even though you were still on a mission, there was always a mission it seemed, you had to be a couple to find your target. She had worn a long, brown wig that skimmed the bottom of her back and a red dress that reminded you of her signature color. She spoke in another language the entire night, wrapped in your arms as the two of you moved across the dance floor and pretended to be enamored by only each other and not looking for Shield's most wanted. It was hard to know how she felt, what was fake and what was real, but you were sure that you weren't the only one who got a little lost as you danced the night away. It only took two weeks, another country, and a small hum for your suspicions to be proven right.

The small bubble that had surrounded the café you were at popped suddenly when a group of sleazy men walked in. You refrained from rolling your eyes at the sight of them. It was one thing to be a bad guy but it was almost worse to be such a stereotype and look the part. You sipped your drink calmly as you watched them approach Nat, pushing your protective side down and letting her handle the situation until she said the code word. "Do you speak English, mon ange?"

You roll your eyes then, his fake French accent leaving you no other choice. It was almost sad how easy these missions were and all because men seemed to think with what was in their pants instead of what was in their heads. Fury sent the two of you out because you were the perfect combo of beautiful and deadly so even if they didn't take the bait, which so far hadn't happened, you'd be able to get the job done. "Almost as good as you." She giggled, no doubt pushing her fake glasses up further to seem nervous.

The second sleazy man stepped closer, standing behind Natasha without her knowing and you felt your hackles rise. But you waited. The first man leaned forward, grabbing a strand of her hair and tugging slightly like a third-grader, "Come with me and maybe I'll show you a thing or two." You heard the whirr of a weapon behind you but both you and Natasha pretended you didn't. There was someone in Europe smuggling alien tech and the two of you had spent months jumping from country to country collecting the stolen weapons and getting closer to the main source. These two idiots were the last ones before the boss, you had to be careful.

"But, I'm still on chapter four." She pouted to the man above her though mischief glinted in her eyes. In the blink of an eye, you stood up with mug in hand and slammed it into the second guy's head. At the exact moment, Natasha had slammed the first guys head down onto the steel table and you understood that he was hers to deal with. Which meant you had to get the weapon. You ducked as he threw a punch, lunging for his other hand that he seemed to forget about in the heat of the moment. He wrapped around you the moment you were close, keeping you to his chest with an arm clamped around your neck. They were always so predictable. You brought your head forward, pushing back as hard as you could, effectively breaking his nose. He flinched, dropping the weapon into your waiting hand as he stepped back. As the cherry on top, you swept his feet from under him and held him under your foot, staring him down as the blood pooled from his face.

"I'd say that was pretty easy, love. How about you?" The first man made his way into your sight as she kicked him into the chair she once sat in.

"Walk in the park." She smirked. She leaned towards the man, much like he did minutes ago, and the confidence in both of them faded quickly. "Now, tell us where your boss is."

You pointed the weapon towards the man under you and watched him shiver in fear. You wouldn't use it, you needed them alive and well, but fear was the easiest way to get answers. "You heard the lady. Talk."

----

It took three months before you were allowed back to base. Someone had warned the smuggler and he had stopped all business, leading the two of you on a wild goose chase from Poland to Ukraine. You stepped off the Quinjet, pushing the smuggler roughly into some lower level's arms, and headed towards the exit. "Y/L/N, Fury requires a debrief of your mission!" The lower level, Mark might've been his name, yelled after you. You almost felt bad with how panic he sounded, not knowing what to do with a wanted criminal in his care and disobedient agents. He had to learn one way or another.

"Don't lose that asshole and that's all the debrief he'll need!" You responded, not even looking back to know that Nat was following right behind you. The two of you were tired, physically and of Fury's bullshit, and the only thing you wanted to do was go home and take a nap. Fury had other ideas.

Coulson stood in front of you, blocking the exit with nothing but his attitude, and you wanted to scream. It had been half a year of smelly hotel rooms and stupid men, you just wanted to make dinner for your girlfriend that wasn't frozen. "We need Romanoff."

"Like hell you do." You weren't one to talk back, you had always been the one to stay silent and glare when things weren't going your way. Even Nat was surprised, never seeing you so exhausted.

"Agent." Coulson's voice didn't waver but you knew that you were about to cross a line if you continued. No one called you Agent unless you were in deep shit. You couldn't find it in yourself to care.

"You have your big bad, that's all you need." You grabbed Nat's hand, a rare display of affection as if that would stop them from taking her. "Now, if you'll excuse us, we're heading home and she won't be available until next week." You walked past Coulson, not seeing the smirk shared between Nat and him as you did, and headed to wherever your car was.

"He's gonna be upset," Nat said after a while, not letting go of your hand as the two of you walked through the compound. It was almost funny how many people did double-takes to see if what they saw was real; the two most ruthless spies shield had, holding hands? Impossible.

"He can tell me all about it when the week is up." You smiled, kissing her temple as the two of you made it to your car.

"And what exactly do you have planned?" She leered, or at least tried to. It was a sweet sentiment and while any other time you would jump at the chance to be with her intimately, all you really wanted was to sleep forever while holding her in your arms. You leaned over the gearshift, kissing her gently as a promise, and when you pulled back the mask she kept on for too long was finally gone. In almost an instant, the bags beneath her eyes became more defined and her shoulders slumped as she looked at you with a soft smile. The two of you never needed words. "I'd like that." She whispered. She kissed you quickly and settled against the window where she would no doubt fall asleep on the way home. You smiled, beyond happy that you had her in every part of your life, and started the car. The two of you wouldn't be going to Europe again any time soon.

#natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff x you #Black Widow #black widow x reader #black widow x you #marvel #mcu

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ofstormsandwolves · 5 years ago

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The Fire

Part of Sunnydale 2019 Verse (after The New Girl)

Giles/Joyce

Buffy, Faith, Willow, Xander

Buffy finds herself facing a serious problem: how does she explain to her new friends the reasons for moving to Sunnydale? And will they desert her when they know the truth?

Read on AO3

“So you guys are still coming to mine after school?” Buffy asked as she sat down with Willow, Xander, and Faith in the cafeteria.

“Hell yeah,” Faith grinned. “Free food!”

Xander echoed her sentiments, and Willow rolled her eyes. “Yeah, we are,” she assured Buffy. Then, a little more softly, she asked: “Are you ok?”

Buffy forced a smile. “I’m fine. Still getting used to the new school, that’s all.”

Willow, to her credit, didn’t look like she bought that for a second, but seemed to let it slide.

“What are we doing at your place then, B?” Faith asked as she snagged some chips from the packet Xander had in his hand.

“Just hanging out,” Buffy shrugged awkwardly. “You know, hanging, chatting, that sort of thing.”

Faith’s eyes narrowed as she surveyed Buffy, and the blonde shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Willow seemed to notice this.

“Did you guys see the posters are up for this year’s science fair?” she asked hurriedly. “I was thinking of entering. Did any of you want to do a group project or something? I’d be happy to help.”

That was enough to tear Faith’s gaze away from Buffy. “No thanks,” Faith shrugged. “Science isn’t really my thing.”

Catching Willow’s eye, Buffy mouthed a ‘thank you’.

By the time the last bell rang, Buffy was a nervous wreck. She knew her parents were right, and that talking to her new friends sooner rather than later would be better for all involved. But it was embarrassing, and scary, and she wasn’t sure what she’d do if they turned their backs on her. She was fairly certain she had no chance at getting in with Cordelia’s group now that she had been seen with Willow and Xander, and although she didn’t want to be friends with Cordelia, it would have been nice to have that safety net. Instead there was... Nothing.

The walk to Revello Drive was tense and awkward, even though Buffy was certain Xander and Faith weren’t really picking up on it. The house was empty when they got there, with Giles still at the school and Joyce at the gallery, and Buffy unlocked the door to usher them all in.

“Now what?” Faith asked as she flopped onto the sofa, rucksack abandoned by the front door. “You gonna spill?”

Buffy blinked. “What?”

Faith fixed her with a look. “Are you gonna tell us what’s been bothering you?”

“Yeah,” Xander agreed as he flopped down on the opposite end of the sofa to Faith, “you’ve been acting weird all day. I know I’ve only known you a day, but even I could tell something was up.”

Buffy bit her lip, taking in her new friends, all of whom were watching her with concern. “You have to promise to let me finish before you completely wig, ok?”

“Sure, Buff,” Willow said, giving her a concerned smile as she settled herself on the floor.

Buffy sighed and sat down next to Willow, facing the sofa. “I need to explain a little about who I was in LA.”

This wasn’t going to be like junior high. She was better than that. Buffy Anne Summers had had enough of being the cutesy kid who got overlooked. She was a high schooler now, and she had to make her mark somehow.

Already she was planning on signing up for the cheer team, but she knew she had to do more than that to become popular. It wasn’t that she’d been unpopular in junior high, and she’d had a nice group of friends, but things changed. When you got to high school you changed. Buffy didn’t want to just blend in, she wanted to be better than that. She wanted to be in with the popular crowd.

The cheerleading tryouts went better than she could have dreamed, and she even made the team. In fact, her tryout was so good that she soon had the older cheerleaders approaching her in the corridors.

“Buffy,” Natasha Collins greeted with a smug grin. “I want to talk to you.”

Well, Natasha was the head cheerleader, and a senior, and Buffy wasn’t about to jeopardise her place on the team by saying no. So she nodded and followed Natasha and her friends to the bathroom.

“We know you’re new to the squad,” Natasha said once they’d all gathered in the bathroom, “but you need to maintain a certain image if you’re going to be on the cheer squad.”

Buffy bristled a little at that, but kept her mouth shut.

One of the junior year cheerleaders nodded at that. Buffy thought her name was Brooke. “Yeah. You need to learn to stand up for yourself. Nobody messes with us, ok?”

“I do stand up for myself,” Buffy responded with a frown.

“Do you though?” asked another girl. “Because this isn’t about only standing up for yourself when someone calls you a name, Buffy. It’s more than that. You’re on the squad now, and you need to make it clear that you’re not to be messed with.”

“What we’re saying,” Natasha explained with a cruel smile, “is that you need to make it clear that you’re the boss. Knock a few people down, critique a few outfits on your way to class, make it clear that you’re stronger than the rest of them. We can’t have weak people on the squad.”

Buffy swallowed, but nodded. She wanted to be on the team. She wanted to be popular. It wasn’t a big deal, was it?

“Ok.”

“Geez,” Faith muttered as Buffy finished explaining her first few weeks on the Hemery High cheer squad.

“I know,” Buffy grimaced. “And it kinda gets worse. I... I picked on quite a few people. It was made clear to me that that was part of being on the cheer squad, and I was so scared they’d kick me out, so I just went along with it. I managed to avoid the social media stuff, told them that my mom regularly checked my accounts. They tried to get me to set up fake accounts, but I kept making excuses.”

She took a deep breath. “I couldn’t get out of it at school, though. The rest of the team would follow me, and they’d wait in the corridor while I picked someone out to mock. I hated it. I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t know what to do. It happened so often the teachers must have known, but nothing ever seemed to happen. And if I’d told my mom or Giles, I’d have to tell them what was going on. So I never let on to them. I lied about what was going on at school, who I was hanging out with, who my friends were. I didn’t even tell them when I started dating a guy, because he was in his junior year, and he’d only looked in my direction because of how I acted at school. He’d thought I was cool and pretty, and he liked it when I made fun of people. And I liked that he liked me, so I thought ‘why not keep doing this?’”

It had been so easy to lie. Painfully easy.

“Where have you been?”

“I was at Bridgette’s house, Mom. I told you last week.”

“Oh. Well, call next time.”

“Ok.”

The lies kept coming and coming. Once she’d started it was like she couldn’t stop.

“I’m going to the movies on Friday night.”

“Have you asked your mother?”

“Yes, Giles.”

“Good. Who are you going with?”

My new boyfriend. “Just some girls from drama class.”

“Well, have fun.”

They never seemed to notice. Or if they did, then they didn’t care. At least that was the way Buffy saw it. Her parents didn’t care what she did, so why did it matter if she lied? She was fifteen, she was old enough to make her own decisions. She didn’t need Giles’s concerned looks or her mom’s disapproving glare. So what if she was hanging out with older girls? So what if her boyfriend was seventeen? So what, so what, so what?

It was easier for everyone if her parents didn’t know. Her real dad didn’t care anyway, he hardly ever came to see her. He was always working. Of course, Buffy knew that what he was actually doing was getting off with his secretary. Her parents didn’t know that she knew that.

At the end of the day, she had fun with her new friends, and her mom and Giles didn’t seem too fussed about what she was doing, so why should it matter? It wasn’t like anybody was really getting hurt.

Ok, there were the occasional harsh comments. The occasional girl crying in the bathroom because of something Buffy had said. And she felt bad about it, but her new friends were always watching, always waiting. One wrong move and they’d be on her like a pack of dogs. She had to prove she was strong. She had to prove she belonged.

She did belong. Right?

Willow and Xander had been silent, just staring at Buffy with wide eyes.

“You... You don’t still think like that, do you?” Willow asked nervously.

“No,” Buffy said quickly, shaking her head. “It’s why I’m telling you, though. I deleted everyone off my social media accounts after I left Hemery, and I don’t talk to any of them. But there’s still a chance people might find out this stuff, if they dig deep enough, and I didn’t want you guys to hear about it through rumours.”

“Is this why you got kicked out?” Xander asked with a frown. “For bullying?”

Buffy shook her head. “No. But the reason I got kicked out feeds into the bullying thing.”

“Hey, Buffy,” Tyler greeted as he bent down to press a kiss to Buffy’s lips.

She tried to ignore the whoops and cheers of the other football players and cheerleaders watching them. Then, Tyler broke the kiss and climbed up over the bleachers to sit behind her. Instinctively, she leaned back against him.

“Me and the others were thinking of having a little fun tonight if you’re interested,” he told her in an easy manner.

Buffy looked up at her boyfriend with a small frown as the others cheered and whooped again. “Doing what?” she asked.

Tyler smirked and quirked his eyebrow at her. “Are you scared?”

“No,” Buffy retorted quickly.

But some of Tyler’s friends started laughing then, as did some of the other cheerleaders who were hanging off the players’ arms.

“I’m not,” Buffy insisted again.

“Leave her alone,” Tyler said, although he was laughing too. “She’s only a freshman after all. She can’t compete with us juniors just yet.”

There was more laughing, and Buffy felt her hackles rise. They always talked down to her. Always seemed to think she was a kid. She wasn’t. She was fifteen. That wasn’t a kid.

“Whatever it is, I wanna come,” she told Tyler, turning to look him in the eyes.

Tyler smirked. “Good. I’ll pick you up at eight.”

Tyler did as he said he would. At eight pm sharp, Buffy climbed out her bedroom window and met Tyler at their usual meeting point at the end of the street. It was better her mom and Giles didn’t know about her sneaking out.

“Where are we going?” she asked as they made their way along the street.

“To have some fun,” Tyler told her with a grin. “C’mon. Josh is picking us up on the corner of Maple and Grosvenor.”

Buffy didn’t really like the fact Tyler wouldn’t tell her what was going on, but if she asked more questions he might start thinking she’d gotten cold feet. She hadn’t, she just wanted to know what was going on.

They got into Josh’s car, Buffy squashed on Tyler’s lap in the back of the car, Matt and Cody also in the back with them. Up front were Josh and Dylan.

“Pike’s meeting us there,” Matt announced with a grin as Josh sped along the roads. “So are the girls.”

“Why?” Buffy asked with a frown.

Pike was a senior, and often hung around with the football team despite not actually being on the team himself. He had a slightly dangerous air about him, with his motorcycle and leather jacket. Buffy supposed that in another life she might have had a crush on him.

“Why d’you want to know?” Matt leered.

Arching an eyebrow at him, Buffy stared back. “Because I want to know what’s going on.”

Tyler sniggered underneath her. “Patience, Buffy,” he teased. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

Buffy felt sick. Pike had met them at the school, and had immediately helped unload stuff from the trunk of Josh’s car. Buffy had been made to stand with the girls- Brooke, and Natasha, and a few other cheerleaders. She couldn’t shake the feeling that everyone knew what was going on except her.

“Come on then, boys,” Tyler grinned as he started towards the gym.

As he got closer to Buffy, she could see he was carrying a plastic box filled with cans of spray paint. Oh. She felt herself deflate a little at that. It was just a bit of paint. Nobody was going to get hurt, nothing really bad was going to happen. And if it just took a little bit of spray paint to make everyone think she was cool, where was the harm in that? After that, she felt herself relax a little, and even accepted one of the cans Tyler tossed towards her. Neon pink. Nice.

Between the twelve of them, they were soon busy spraying the brick wall of the gym. Some of them opted for designs, but a few of the boys opted to simply spray paint swear words onto the wall in neon paint.

After nearly half an hour, Pike stepped back to admire his work, pulling his cigarettes and a box of matches from his pocket. “Not bad,” he told them as he stepped closer again, cigarette between his lips as he fumbled for a match.

He managed to strike one, and lit his cigarette before flicking the used match away.

“Give me those matches,” Josh said, holding out his hand.

Pike shrugged, and handed the box over. “Don’t use them all.”

But Josh just snorted and ignored him. Within moments, he had a match lit, and only a second after that, Matt and he were creating flamethrowers out of the unused spray paint, laughing all the while.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Buffy told Tyler worriedly.

Tyler just laughed. “Oh, lighten up. It’s fine. We do this stuff all the time.”

Somehow, that didn’t exactly calm Buffy. But there was nothing she could do, nobody would listen to her. Pike was watching the scene with disdain, cigarette between his lips as he eyed the juniors. He didn’t seem too pleased either, but he wasn’t stepping in. Just as Buffy was about to say something, there was a scream, and she looked around to see that the can in Matt’s hands had caught fire.

Panicking, he threw it as hard as it could, and it shattered the window of the gym. Within moments, fire could be seen raging in the windows.

“Oh, dude,” Cody laughed, “I think you set the banners on fire!”

There was a sudden bang, like the can had exploded, and smoke started billowing from windows.

“Shit!” Tyler yelled, scrambling away from the gym.

Pike grabbed Buffy by the arm and hauled her away, as everyone started scrambling towards the parking lot. Buffy found herself bundled into the back of Josh’s car, and by the time the adrenaline wore off, she was standing on her front lawn as the car sped off into the distance.

“The Police came round later that night,” Buffy admitted quietly. “Some people who worked in a store opposite the school saw everything and called the police. Mom and Giles were furious with me, and there was a whole court thing, and I got kicked out of school.”

“Fuck,” Faith murmured, eyes wide. Her expression was somewhere between shock and excitement. Buffy wasn’t sure she liked that.

“Yeah. I didn’t actually get charged with the burning down of the gym, seeing as it was Matt and Josh who were doing the whole ‘setting-fire-to-stuff’ thing. But I still got in trouble for the spray painting. Mom and Giles had to pay a fine. I’m still trying to pay it back.”

Xander was looking almost as eager as Faith. “How much was it? The fine?”

Buffy grimaced. “Loads. Like, thousands. Giles has family money, and he ended up using some of that. I felt awful. And my dad didn’t even contribute a dollar to it. Said it was Mom’s fault for not keeping a closer eye on me.” She rolled her eyes at that. “And it all happened because I wanted to be popular.”

There was an awkward silence then, and Buffy stared down at her lap. Then, she felt a hand on her arm. Looking up, she saw Willow smiling uncertainly at her.

“It’s ok, Buffy,” Willow told her gently. “You made a mistake. We’ve all done it. I mean, we haven’t all burned down the school, but, but we’re not perfect either.”

“Yeah,” Xander chimed in, “I’m not one for setting the gym on fire, but if you want to hang out and do less flammable things I’m down with that.”

“I’m all for fire, by the way,” Faith shrugged with a grin. “But I’m down for anything if there’s snacks.” She waggled her eyebrows at Buffy, who sighed and got to her feet.

“I think my mom left snacks in the kitchen,” she told them. “Wanna go see what we can find?”

And as Xander and Faith raced their way to the kitchen, Buffy shared a smile with Willow. Everything was going to be ok.

#Sunnydale 2019 verse #buffy fanfic #buffy summers #faith lehane #willow rosenberg #xander harris

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nellygwyn · 6 years ago

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It is half past noon, or it appeared to be so when the chairman let you alight at Covent Garden Piazza and gestured vaguely at the church clock, and you, a stranger to this time and place, walking briskly, nervously and with no apparent direction or purpose observe suddenly that you have come to a junction. It is unlike any other you have yet seen. Seven roads are converging, and crowning them all in the centre is a tall, Doric pillar, supported on a plinth and stretching up and up. It is the only thing that appears to be escaping to the sky and to the light: every other building in your immediate sight appears to be obscuring its neighbour, leaning into it, and vice versa. What is this pillar for? Something sits atop of it but you cannot see it, lest the afternoon mid-summer glare of the sun blind you.

‘La Pyramide.’

Frenchified tones, coming from a finely dressed middle aged man, with a meticulously powdered bag-wig who loiters near the plinth and twists paper around the stem of a clay-pipe.

‘Teez La Pyramide’ he says again.

‘But what is it?’ you ask, for this is certainly no pyramid, no matter what the gentleman says.

‘Teez a sundial. The sundial of Seven Dials’

Seven Dials. You know it. You were here before. Or rather, you have been here after, in the future. However such a thing works. It lies, or at least WILL lie, near Shaftesbury Avenue and Piccadilly Circus.

‘Where are you going? Are you lost, mademoiselle?’ he continues.

‘I don’t know. No. Or...yes. Where should I go from here? I need a room at an inn.’

‘Teez no fit place for a lady, teez no fit place for a stranger’

‘Even so...’

And he points you in the direction of an inn he knows and trusts, up through Mercer Street onto Monmouth Street, and near enough to the church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. But he urges caution.

‘Teez the rookery of St. Giles that way, comprende? Nothing but cutpurses and whores.’

Rookery. What does he mean? Is that not a nest for birds?

‘Teez a slum. Teez London’s shame. They call it New Rome, its depravity stretches like empire’

He is right about the slum part and how it stretches like an empire, never-ending. As you move up Monmouth Street and into what the ragged stone street marking calls ‘Lyons Court,’ it is the rancid smell that hits you first and then the never-ending dilapidation. The cobbles are drenched in piss and shit, and perhaps, if you stood to make closer inspection, vomit and the leftovers of disembowelment. Houses fall into each other, seemingly suspended by nothing, but somehow standing anyway. And everything looks the same, street upon street, alley upon alley. The rooftops lean in so the sunlight, which seemed so pleasant, so bright before, does not and cannot reach you. In a word, it is dingy, it seems that it is where ‘dinginess’ came from. There are windows, glass hatches, everywhere, as if...as if every room of every house is occupied to bursting, as if every inch is taken up by someone who clamours for the window’s passage to putrid air.

And it is eerily quiet. You slow your pace out of fear, curiosity and vague confusion, but you merely observe a few shabby dressed tenants moving between their dwellings, the public house and back again. You wonder if it is the sort of place that comes alive at night, when its imperfections are blurred and its hackles are up. But then again, if one wanted to commit a crime here, who could stop it? Who would see?

As if on cue, you feel a tugging at your elbow. You turn like a flash, expecting to see the glint of a knife. Are you being robbed? Are you being hurt?

But it is only a young woman, only mildly pretty and dressed shabby but done up to the nines with stark white paint and red rouge and blush, who, now she has your attention, holds her palm outstretched. Every exposed piece of skin is made up in this painted way, and covered in tiny black patches, many shaped like stars, though she has a moon near the left corner of her mouth and two dainty hearts resting symmetrically on each ample breast. If you look close enough, you can see where she has forgotten to conceal her many hairpieces.

‘Not to bother ya, miss, but I needs a nip of gin. Steady my nerves, as it goes. Spare us some bobstick, will’ee?’

You don’t know what bobstick is but you assume she’s after money. You reach for the pocket attached inside your skirts and fish her some change you got from the chair journey. You pray its enough for the drink.

‘Tis right proper nice of thee, that. My thanks. I’d earn it meself but it ain’t half dead today. Not a pintle in sight.’

It appears to be alright. She slides it into her own pocket. You watch her.

‘Steady your nerves for what?’ you ask, rather suddenly and surprising even yourself. As if it’s any of your business. But she shares cheerfully.

‘Well, ‘tis nearly an hour till the hanging cart comes this way, for Tyburn. I’ve a dear friend on it, do’ee see? She’ll get her St. Giles Bowl. I’d wager at the Cock and Pye. And then off to the hangman.’

She does not look sad, only mildly troubled, as if her dear friend is merely off on a long holiday, and not about to drop into oblivion. This throws you.

'Hangman?' you splutter out. It is all you can manage.

The woman.....no, the girl raises an eyebrow, her powder wrinkling. But she does not change tack.

'Indeed. Thievery from a cull.'

She slides an enamelled tin through the slit in her skirts, opens it, pinches her fingertips inside it and inhales a substance. She takes your look of bewilderment for one of expectation and offers you her 'jaded snuff.' One proper whiff of it and you realise it’s somehow more insufferable than the constant sweet & putrid tang of animal shit in the air. And now, your head's all askance, so you politely decline.

'Just as well' she says, 'Don't want to end up nuzzled in the stuff like Snuffy Queen Charlotte.'

'What did she steal? Your friend, I mean' you continue.

'A pair of shoe-buckles. Or so he says, though I never took her for a handsy one. And why covet a gent's buckles?'

Horror.

'But that's nothing!'

'Believe me, you'll swing for a lot less than that here.'

Even amongst the degradation up until this point, there was an air of mystery, of excitement, of a secret waiting to be unspooled, of newfangled pleasures and the thrill of the unseen. It's why you came here in the first place. But now, inch by inch, the mask of glamour slips and you realise now that it is, and perhaps always was, only bedazzled with paste jewels.

#i wrote this short piece ages ago but only decided to share now sjdiaojdao #i thought it sucked at first and then i was like 'no........this is gud'#kinda inspired by john gay's trivia but also??????????????#my writing #long post #might make this a choose your own story thing #where do you (the protag) wanna go next?#do you want the nice snuff-addicted young girl to accompany you?

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dustedmagazine · 6 years ago

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Dust Volume 5, Number 3

Photo by Rene Block, Courtesy of the John Cage Trust

In like a lion, that’s how we’ll do March at Dusted, which is to say in a gigantic leap, with blood and innards trailing from a toothy predator’s mouth. Well, that’s the hope, but actually, we’ll probably just listen to some music and write some reviews. Case in point: this edition’s Dust candidates, which include sci-fi techno, a blissed out dub version of “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” a Portuguese guitar duel, some churning stomach fluids and a percussive interpretation of koan-like John Cage. This time, the team was limited—just Bill Meyer, Jennifer Kelly, Jonathan Shaw and Peter Taber—but mostly enthusiastic. We hope you’ll find something to like, too.

CMD — Obscure Worlds (Several Reasons)

Obscure Worlds by CMD

On the face of it, CMD’s Obscure Worlds is a sci fi-themed techno album, which doesn’t do much to separate it from the broader genre. Scratch the surface, and you find an album of detailed techno vignettes that refuse to stand still. In less than three minutes, “Uneven Landing” layers crushed static onto knocking digital debris, with a rapid-fire kick added to the mix two minutes in. On “Obscure Manifestation” a foundation of pulsing static sets the stage for otherworldly peals of feedback. “Death of a Galaxy” reaches toward the undulating bass engineering of an Yves de Mey track. “Through the Wormhole” hints at industrial fuzz a la AnD while maintaining a bit more restraint, with a switch-up in the kick pattern four minutes in that isn’t exactly characteristic for techno. Given the density of musical ideas, many of the tracks could have been extended, but they last long enough to satisfy. If the album’s concept was intended to prompt a creative, concise set of techno variations, it did the trick. Obscure Worlds feels like getting a glimpse into a techno sound-design obsessive’s sketchbook, in the best possible way.

Peter Taber

Julien Desprez / Luís Lopes—Boa Tarde (Shhpuma)

youtube

The title translates from Portuguese as Good Afternoon, and from the sound of this record it was. Both Julien Desprez and Luís Lopes are known for bringing the electricity to jazz ensembles, but when you put a couple of guitarists together it’s possible that they will connect around the instrument, not any particular genre. So it is here, but just what instrument are we talking about? The electric guitar? The amplifier? The pedals? Or all of the above? Let’s go with the latter, because this music is more about the interplay of timbres, textures, contours and sound waves than melodies, harmonies or beats. Imagine the jousting of train sounds issuing from converging valleys, the shudder of twin flexing suspension bridges or maybe just the shared sweet spots of a couple guys who probably wore out more than one CD player spinning Thurston Moore and Nels Cline’s Pillow Wand. Or don’t imagine at all, just listen to this artifact of one good afternoon in Lisbon.

Bill Meyer

Carol Genetti / Gwyneth Zeleny Anderson — Chyme (Suppedeneum)

Carol Genetti’s vocals operate beyond the boundaries of language. On Chyme, which is named after that gurgling stuff that sloshes around in your stomach after you eat, she electronically manipulates and juxtaposes sounds that humans have been making since before they thought up the first words. You might get disoriented trying to make sense of her pre-lingual exhalations and utterances, so visual artist Gwyneth Zeleny Anderson has prepared a listening score for each of the CD’s four tracks. Each score is a vibrantly colored, circuitously shaped paper cutout, the handling of which will put you (back?) in touch with the experience of pre-GPS, map-based navigation. Anderson’s combination of vibrant colors and text cues prod you out of passive listening and into a vocal / visual interaction with the sounds, which are by turns eerily beautiful and absolutely hackle raising. You will not encounter another record like Chyme.

Bill Meyer

Golden Daze—Simpatico (Autumn Tone)

Simpatico by Golden Daze

Hold up, you don’t need musical difficulty all of the time. No, there are hours and days and (occasionally) weeks when you don’t want propulsion or tension or contradictory impulses in your tunes. Life itself is full of that shit. You want something easy. You want something like Golden Daze’s Simpatico, an edgeless, frictionless, limpid pool of baroque pop, with soft whispery vocals and sumptuous clouds of guitar flurries and bright bars of electronic keyboards, unending prettiness, unconflicted lemon-y wistfulness. “Blue Bell,” the single, is like the Clientele with the bones picked out, an enveloping haze of pastel colored sound. There’s a bit of drumming in a song called “Drift,” but it only seems to heightened the disembodied floating-ness of the song’s breathy sway. “Simpatico,” at the end, emerges out of haze and fog, with warm, brushes of guitar and soft, dreaming verses, then slips out of sight. Golden Daze indeed.

Jennifer Kelly

Golia, Kaiser, Moses, Smith, Walter — Astral Plane Crash (Balance Point Acoustics)

BPA 18 Astral Plane Crash by Golia / Kaiser / Moses / Smith / Walter

p>Henry Kaiser, Damon Smith and Weasel Walter are Plane Crash, a guitar-bass-drums trio tough enough that it doesn’t have to act tough. The musicians’ common bonds are an appreciation for the atomized activity of vintage English free improvisation and a shared determination to communicate intensity through intent and focus, not bluster. Things get cosmic when you bring in West coast woodwind veteran Vinny Golia and drummer Ra Kalam Bob Moses, who played with Rahsaan Roland Kirk at an age when most kids are first trying to cadge their parents’ car keys. Moses and Golia had never played together, but they roomed in the 1960s, and their presence complicates Astral Plane Crash’s prevailing MO of quick micro-interaction in interesting ways. The flutes and saxophones run thick and slow under APC’s dust devil swirl. And Moses and Walter sound like their having a blast making like converging storm clouds, each pelting hail stones from a different direction so there’s no way you won’t get a chill down your neck. At two tracks and a hair under 80 minutes, this is all-in stuff, but when the changes come as quick and compelling as they do here that’s a feature, not a bug.

Bill Meyer

Matt Hannafin / John Cage—Four Realizations For Solo Percussion (Notice Recordings)

Four Realizations for Solo Percussion by John Cage & Matt Hannafin

In a life of ideas that spans 79 years, a guy might change his mind. John Cage famously expressed disregard for jazz, the most notable American manifestation of musical improvisation in the 20th century. But his problem was more with corrosive expressions of the self and human prejudice than it was with improvisation per se, thus his preference for chance operations. You can’t impose your personal bullshit when you submit to the random. Near the end of his life he dropped his opposition enough to write compositions that invited improvisation, which was distinct from chance operations. If that sounds like a convoluted process, consider the name of this tape’s first piece. “c Ȼomposed Improvisation for One-Sided Drums with or without Jangles” reads like a koan, which makes some sense given Cage’s engagement with Buddhist teachings. That’s just one of the four pieces that Oregonian percussionist Matt Hannafin recorded for this tape (or download, which is probably a more Buddhist format than a tape). In his hands, Cage’s music becomes a vehicle for feeling both the presence of a healthy blow and the unoccupied presence of the variably proportioned spaces where Hannafin isn’t hitting anything.

Bill Meyer

Gerrit Hatcher — Parables for the Tenor (Astral Spirits)

Parables For The Tenor by Gerrit Hatcher

One listener’s marvelously wigged-out sound is another’s torture. An audience member’s transformative listening experience might be in response to a sound producer’s moment of hollow display. You might hate a person’s most sincere expression or be deeply moved by something they do with their fingers and lungs while they try to remember where they left their bottle opener. Chicago-based tenor saxophonist Gerrit Hatcher had these existential quandaries in mind as he recorded the six solo tracks on this tape, and who’s to say if that’s why this music has such bite? Maybe it’s better to note that he makes sounds that feel linked to the work of certain Sun Ra associates and Archie Shepp into statements that don’t sound irrelevant at the tail end of the second decade of the 21st century. Hang with him while he blows and you might be changed, either because he’s ripping transformative shapes in the air or because that’s already where you’re taking yourself. Either way, what do you have to lose?

Bill Meyer

Hübsch Martel Zoubek — Otherwise (Insub)

Otherwise by Hübsch, Martel, Zoubek

There’s a world of improvised music that never crosses that precious Yankee border, and this is group is part of that world. Take one German tuba player, one Canadian viola da gamba player and another German on piano, throw in some pitch pipes and a synthesizer and what do you have? You have the raw material for a session of highly refined interaction. On the spectrum from process-oriented to outcome-oriented improvisation, these musicians tend more to the latter pole. The piano has been prepared to render gamelan-in-a-box sonorities, the tuba’s tones consistently gravitate towards ground-liquifying depths and the strings buzz in splintered contrast. The music unfolds patiently, never lapsing into clutter or confusion, and yet it never telegraphs the next move.

Bill Meyer

Jäh Division—Dub Will Tear Us Apart…Again (Ernest Jenning)

Dub Will Tear Us Apart...Again by Jäh Division

A jokey side hustle with an aughts all-star psychedelic pedigree, Jäh Division grooved hard, if obscurely, joining a love of dub, a reverence for Joy Division and a clutch of old keyboard gear. The line-up well exceeded solid with Brad Truax on booming, reverb drenched dub bass, Barry London manning a garage sales’ worth of vintage electronics (Roland RS-09, Realistic Concertmate MG-1, a Moog) and Kid Millions busting up organic and synthetic drums. This disc collects songs from a 2004 12-inch, plus bonus material including covers of Desmond Dekker’s “Fu Manchu” and Jackie Mittoo’s “Champion of the Arena.” These two are trippily wonderful, but the heart of this goofy fever dream is a nodding, pulsing, synth wreathed version of “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” It’s a jam that could go on for days or last only a second (technically it goes ong a bit over four minutes), as it distills post-punk and reggae and experimental art rock into an unending now.

Jennifer Kelly

Miscarriage — Imminent Horror (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Imminent Horror by Miscarriage

Much alike Stormy Daniels’ description of the Chief Executive’s fungoid phallic member, the world didn’t really need this tape from international doom metal crew Miscarriage (who hail from Sweden and the United States) — but now that Imminent Horror is here, it’s sort of hard to ignore. And once you’ve heard it, you’ll have a hard time removing it from your memory, much as you might like to. Lots of metal bands like to talk about how “disgusting” and “putrid” their music is. Miscarriage do more than talk. The noises they make sound and feel like a huge bubble of noxious gas painfully working its way through a diseased intestinal track. It’s slow. It’s gross. It doesn’t create any sort of pleasure. It’s only minimally more coherent than listening to the aforementioned Chief Executive attempt to speak in complete sentences. In all those ways, Miscarriage have made music for our times. Good luck to us all.

Jonathan Shaw

Shady Bug—Lemon Lime (Exploding in Sound)

Lemon Lime by Shady Bug

Shady Bug, out of St. Louis, makes a mathy pop so stretchy and bendable that you expect a bo-oi-oi-ing when its wandering melodies snap back into place. Under the guidance of classically trained Hannah Rainey, the band sets up intricate, jerry-rigged machinations that work by their own logic. Yet though complicated, these tunes have a vulnerable sweetness to them, mainly due to Raines’ hiccupy sincere delivery, which tips and lists as the wind blows. “Make It Up,” the single floods the sonic plane with power-washing blasts of amplified guitar, then cuts to a jittery next-to-nothing of angling, cross-cutting guitar lines. It’ll remind you of Pavement and, more recently, Speedy Ortiz, except in a fetching, kid-sibling-ish way that tugs at your sleeve and your heart.

Jennifer Kelly

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