#VERSE. ( dominion. / hell is empty. ) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

alexandralyman · 5 years ago

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Summary: A Hook/Emma angel/demon AU. They hide in plain sight, the servants of heaven and hell. The angels and the demons, who can save your soul or damn it. They stand on opposite sides, they are the bringers of light and the agents of darkness, they are enemies in an eternal war, but what happens when an angel and a demon are inexplicably drawn to each other?

Read on FF.net here or on AO3 here

Part Twenty-Four

The Sistine Chapel - May 6, 1527

The long train of her gown made a faint whispering sound against the floor as she glided the length of the chapel, the heavy gold satin rippling and flowing in waves over the fine marble and intricately laid mosaics. They would have been a showpiece in any other cathedral, but here they paled in comparison to the splendour of a thousand years' worth of papal wealth that surrounded them. A few lanterns were still lit in the niches and alcoves set into the walls but the light was dying, flickering and growing even more dim with each step she took further and further into the shadowed heart of Christendom. It was in this place where a new pope rose upon the death of the old, crowned and gowned and bequeathed the Keys to the Kingdom as he ascended upon Saint Peter's seat.

The ancient throne lay empty and abandoned on this night.

Her hair was a loose spill down her back and she wore no hood or veil to conceal it, normally an unthinkable breach of protocol for a woman entering the sacred site and a grave offence to the Church. But there was no one left to bar her entry, not that any mortal man could actually stop her from passing through any door to any room in this place, where even the holiest of relics, the priceless texts of scripture and verse, the sacred hearts of saints, the swords carried into battle during the Crusades, all paled in comparison to her.

Not a single candle was left burning by the altar where a figure was just visible in the gloom, garbed as a monk in sober dark robes. But he was no more a lowly cleric labouring anonymously in the depths of the Vatican in his humble attire than she was a wealthy Roman noblewoman in her rich gown and while her head might be uncovered, it was far from bare. She wore her own diadem above her brow, it was made not of gold or gems, but of an unbroken circle of Heavenly light. Divine radiance illuminated her path while the astonishing frescos that the Florentine master, Michelangelo, had laboured over for the better part of a decade looked down from the ceiling above, now silent witnesses left behind when everyone else had fled.

Almost.

"His Holiness has left in the company of the Swiss Guard and the Emperor's army is about to breach the walls. Rome will fall to the wolves and it will fall tonight, it's too late to stop it now."

Emma delivered the news to the figure's back, as still as any of the painted prophets and saints that surrounded them. For several long moments he didn't move and if it was anyone else she would have thought he didn't hear her. But he heard everything, and when he finally turned the hood of his monkish robe fell back to reveal one who was both prophet and saint, known by many names and titles in different languages and traditions. In the chronicles of noble knights seeking the glory of the Holy Grail he was the mysterious and powerful Merlin, possessor of magic and esoteric knowledge beyond that of mortal men. In truth, he was a Prince of Heaven in his own right, an Archangelus, the patron of healers, lovers, and guardian angels and one of the highest ranked of the Blessed Ones along with his brothers Michael and Gabriel.

The Archangel Raphael.

Like all angels he was captivating to look at, with a face that Michelangelo would have given his own soul to capture in marble. Strong brows, full lips, and large, liquid eyes that were fixed firmly at some point in the distance before his attention turned to her. Pleas for salvation were echoing in the back of Emma's mind like a thousand hands all reaching out from the shadows to clutch at her train, while the Pope had been spirited away to safety many innocent souls had been left behind, unarmed and completely defenceless against the rampaging horde of soldiers about to descend upon them.

Raphael spoke in a low voice as his gaze drifted again, to the shadows that veiled the splendor around them and grew more with each passing moment. "Yes," he exhaled, and painted heads turned as his breath gave the little figures miraculous life. "They will come from the north...an army sent to expand an empire and lay waste to all who stand in the way...cities fall one by one and there will be death and destruction and war."

An exasperated huff escaped her lips. "Will be? War is already here!"

He shook his own head, his hair as close-cropped as any monk's in place of the flowing locks usually depicted in the many portrayals of him that adorned chapel walls and illuminated texts. The shapeless robes stirred about his legs, lifted by a cool breeze that swept through the nave and made the lanterns flicker and the frescos cower. The light dimmed even more with it and didn't recover, more faint, misty glow now than illumination.

"No, I don't mean this. What is to happen tonight will fade from history and be all but forgotten within a generation, though the effects will linger. This is not war, this is two mules eyeing each other balefully over the same pile of hay.

Only an angel would openly refer to the two most powerful men in Europe, the Supreme Pontiff Clement VII, who held dominion over all Catholic souls, and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who ruled most of the land those souls resided on, as nothing more than humble pack animals fighting over a mouthful of feed. But the description was an apt one, it was their mutual stubbornness and refusal to cede any ground that had led to an army the Emperor could no longer control poised to lay waste to everything in its path and the Pope abandoning Saint Peter's throne to flee like a thief in the night instead.

"Charles and Clement may be nothing more than mules, but even a mule's kick can be fatal," Emma argued back. "And when a Hapsburg aims for a Medici, he doesn't just strike his rival. Tell the people of Rome that this is not war when they're burned from their homes and slaughtered without mercy in the street."

Raphael sighed and statues wept. "His Majesty and His Holiness are not the only ones possessed of an excess of stubborness. Now is not the time for debate about the constitution of war, it's long past time for you to go home, beata Emma. The army is not the only wolf howling at the gates tonight."

Emma lifted her chin, not giving quarter even to an Archangel. "And the innocents will suffer all the more for it."

His voice was firm and the warning in his tone was clearer than any bell. "The darkness will always seek to snuff out the light, in every form. Always. We can't save them all, Emma, and we are not meant to. He gave them the freedom of their own will be they prince or peasant, and as such they are capable of so much beauty and so much ugliness in equal measure. That potential they all hold within is His gift to mankind and we must allow them to choose their own path. You can not interfere in this mortal quarrel and if you stay, it is inevitable that the darkness will seek to find you."

She knew what would follow the soldiers in once they descended like locusts from the plagues of old and began to pillage the city. Even in the very heart of the Vatican itself she could sense them faintly in the distance, just beyond the seven hills.

Waiting.

Damnate Infernum.

The Damned of Hell.

"I do not fear the darkness."

Her voice didn't rouse the frescos or move the carvings to tears as his did, but her voice was steady and her shoulders were squared back in her elegant gown. She carried no sword, no heaven-forged blade like the one that had made it into legend alongside Raphael's tenure as Merlin appeared in her hand with which to repel back a demonic horde, but she couldn't leave, not when so many voices were out there and calling to her with their pleas for salvation.

"You do," the Archangel intoned with a raise of his brow. "Oh, you are brave and your heart is pure, but no one, not even an angel, is immune to fear."

He smiled then, a breathtaking sight that eclipsed even the glory of the grandeur that surrounded them. Emma felt her own lips lift in response and the candles that had been left unattended at the altar all ignited, filling the air around them with the scent of beeswax and sweet oil. Raphael's smile turned melancholy, his pupils twin golden flames from the reflections but also flickering with something else, beyond what Emma herself could see. The Merlin of tale was a prophet and that wasn't the fanciful imaginings of a twelfth-century cleric, Raphael had the divine gift of prophecy as all the Archangels did and in truth, Emma was afraid to ask what he saw when he looked at her now.

Another breath of wind swept through the chapel, cold, and decidedly unnatural. It licked a shiver down her spine and the candles went out again from the force of it, wisps of dark smoke curling up to the ceiling in serpentine ribbons. All save for one long, pale taper that continued to burn alone in defiance of the attempt to snuff it out. Raphael looked at it for a long moment and then he nodded once, as if in acknowledgement.

"A single light remains. If you truly wish to stay through what is to come, I won't forbid it. But Emma, you must keep in mind that the most divine of gifts can also become the heaviest of burdens. To listen and stay silent is not easy, you can find yourself longing not to hear them at all when you can't answer. Perhaps even for eternity."

She couldn't imagine even considering such a notion, one that trod so dangerously close to a path that led away from Heaven and only a few had chosen to follow since He first separated the light from the darkness as painted above.

"Is your gift a burden, beatus Raphael?"

His handsome face shifted, becoming softer and more wistful at the question. "My gift is wonderful. And terrible. I see such marvels to come, each more astonishing than the last as they continue to embrace art and science and learning, even when they stumble along the way. Then there are the horrors that have yet to be as well, when they fall into ignorance and loathing. But that is the future and as pleasant as it might have been to be gifted with visions of only the former and not the latter, without both, I would be blind in one eye."

With that, he made a motion with his hand and the candle that still burned lifted from the altar on unseen wings, crossing the bit of distance to float between his cupped palms. The little flame grew even stronger and for a moment that was an eternity unto itself the whole chapel blazed with light. Frescos acted out their stories in miniature, Passion Plays in pigment and plaster. The First Man reached to his Creator, the waters rose as the Flood washed over the banks and the Serpent hissed in triumph as the Forbidden Fruit was consumed and Man fell from grace.

Raphael offered the taper to her and she accepted it, his hands closing over hers so they both formed the ancient gesture of prayer. When he pulled away the flame returned to nothing more than a tiny spark, the painted figures were still and his eyes no longer reflected that which fate had hidden to all but him.

"They will follow you by this light, beata Emma."

She dipped her chin. "Gratias tibi ago."

The Archangel Raphael stepped back and folded his hands solemnly in his sleeves. A papal audience would conclude with the kissing of the fisherman's ring, but angels wore no jewelry. Her own fingers were bare of any adornment despite the richness of her attire. Still, she recognized she was being dismissed and she turned, satin gown rustling with the movement.

The candle illuminated the path back out of the chapel and no more, saints had retreated into shadows and all that remained of the dazzling splendor was a solitary angel. A glance back revealed what she already knew, Raphael was gone and she was alone.

It had already begun, Emma could hear the hue and cry quickly spreading across the city in advance of the army. She picked up her skirts and started to run, flying not with her wings but on her faith instead, trusting that it would take her where they would find her, whoever *they* were.

When she reached the closest set of doors that led outside they opened into the darkness of the night, the sky above indistinguishable from the ground below even with the candle in her hand burning bright. The space between the ornately carved wood gaped like a maw, and she could smell the smoke in the distance as her own prophecy came true and the fires were lit.

Rome had fallen.

When she reached the threshold the finely laid mosaics abruptly stopped, giving way to the drop where the Pope would slowly descend to the cheers of the waiting masses come to pay him homage in His name. Adoration had turned to debasement, cheers to screams, and as the floor fell away from beneath her feet Emma didn't ascend.

She leapt straight into the storm instead.

Lower Saxony, Germany, 1943

Bright sunshine shone down on the tall stone walls of the medieval Schloss, an imposing structure that dominated both the surrounding countryside of forests and fields and the picture postcard village nestled in the valley below, all nearly unchanged from how it must have looked centuries ago when the Hapsburgs still ruled this part of the world with absolute power not as mere kings like in France and England, but as emperors anointed by Rome.

Killian stepped out of his car and tilted his head back to take it all in, squinting into the light. It really was like stepping back in time, his was the only vehicle he'd seen on the winding road that connected castle and village and, unlike in every other city and town across Germany, there was no hint of the current turmoil to be seen or heard. No armed checkpoints on the roads, no soldiers posted at the town hall, not even the distant roar of the Luftwaffe in the sky overhead that was ever present now in even the most remote provinces far from the hive of furious activity that was Berlin. It would be curious, if Killian didn't already know exactly who was currently residing behind the ancient walls, someone who was far older and had the power to keep everything that was going on at bay.

For now, at least.

Inside, heavy damask curtains were drawn tight across every window and he was plunged directly into the darkness upon entering what was almost certainly enemy territory. It would have been disconcerting to anyone else, but Killian could see perfectly in the dark and his eyes adjusted at once with a flash of crimson to take in the artwork that crammed every inch of the walls in ornate frames. Far from an unusual sight in a castle, but these weren't the expected solemn-faced portraits of family scions or middling landscapes by unimportant artists like the one Emma had been so enamoured with before the French decided to give their entire aristocracy the same treatment as Herod gave to John the Baptist. Killian recognized the unmistakable hand of Titian in a red-haired siren and Caravaggio's signature chiaroscuro in the depiction of a saint, there was a Rembrandt that, as far as he knew, belonged to the Dutch royal family, currently exiled in Canada, and a half-finished sketch that he would wager a literal king's ransom was a Da Vinci. It was a veritable Aladdin's cave of priceless treasures, and none of it was owned by the noble family who had given their name to both the Schloss and the village and were now conspicuous by their absence. War had redrawn the European borders once again and, like the sacking of Rome by another German army four centuries prior, spoils had been taken and even more innocent blood was spilled. As Damnate Infernum, a Demon of Hell and corruptor of human souls Killian had seen it all before, he'd been standing on the hill when the city gates were finally breached on that May eve long ago and the holy city itself started to burn, but this conflagration was the closest he'd ever felt to the End of Days and the war destined to eclipse all others.

The Final Battle.

The artistic splendor was marred by the presence of an imp, lounging on an antique chaise in an insolent sprawl with one leg slung over the back and a grin that revealed a mouth packed with too many teeth.

Killian detested imps.

"Corruptor," the lesser demon practically purred, drawing the title out like it was a juicy treat. "What business have you with the illustrious Dark One? Have you come to make a deal?"

He would sooner be tortured by the Inquisition again than make a deal with Rumpelstiltskin and he bared his own teeth at the imp, white and far sharper than they looked.

"Tell your master that I'm here to speak with him, and that he needs to keep his pets on a tighter leash. I've heard what you've been up to when he lets you run loose. Bad form, even for an imp."

The rebuke in his voice made the imp's head snap back hard against the padded velvet, but instead of being chastised, it let out a high-pitched giggle that quickly melted into an obscene moan.

"Do it again!"

Killian grit his teeth, trying to keep his hellish temper in check. As much as he would have liked to teach the imp a painful lesson in the proper amount of deference owed to a higher demon, he was here for something far more important and anything else was a distraction.

Besides, the infernal creature would probably enjoy it.

"Fetch. Your. Master," he repeated, each word snapping in the air like the crack of a whip.

The imp stood and gave a mocking salute, clicking its heels together and bending its knees like a ballerina doing a plié. Killian didn't return the gesture, despite the uniform he was currently wearing.

"Aye, aye, Kapitän."

He felt his eyes narrow at that as the imp disappeared down the hall, dancing and whistling a jaunty tune through those piranha teeth as it went. The sound seemed to echo long after the imp was gone until Killian realized he was hearing someone else instead, his head turning in the direction it was coming from and following on silent feet until he found the source.

A pair of narrow doors stood ajar with a sliver of light peeking out and through the gap he saw that it was the castle's library, tall stacks rising right to the ceiling and filled cheek by jowl with leather-bound books. He gave the door the tiniest of nudges and it swung open fully, revealing that the curtains were tied back in heavy swags unlike in the other rooms he had passed, letting in the sun. The reason why quickly became obvious, there was a ladder attached to the bookcases to allow access to the higher shelves and perched on it was a soman, her back to him as she dusted along a row of books and hummed to herself in a sweet voice. Unlike the imp she was mortal, entirely human, her petite figure clad in a modest blue dress and her chestnut hair falling down her back in thick curls. Killian supposed she was Rumpelstiltskin's chambermaid, but strangely for someone in a demon's employ there wasn't a whiff of corruption about her. As one whose entire purpose was to corrupt and defile he could always detect it, to him it was like the scent of overripe fruit about to spoil. It clung indelibly to those falling away from the Light as their souls blackened and shrivelled like the half-eaten apple left behind in the Garden, so perfect and unblemished on the Tree until temptation proved too much for Mankind to resist. Whoever the woman was, she was still innocent, and curiosity had time taking a step closer because he was never one to resist temptation in any form.

The doors both slammed shut in his face before he could cross the threshold, with enough force to make his teeth rattle and the sweet humming was abruptly cut off, replaced by the harsh scrape of a lock being turned.

"Corruptor."

His demonic title was spoken from behind him in an oily voice and Killian turned smoothly on his booted heel, away from the library and the woman now locked within.

"Dealmaker," he acknowledged.

Rumpelstiltskin's thin lips went even thinner, but he couldn't fault Killian for addressing him in kind and not by his preferred moniker. He was attired in current fashion from the knife's-edge part in his hair down to his two-tone loafers, but he still carried the silver-tipped cane that Killian remembered from Paris, in the midst of another time and another war. The handle was shaped like a reptile's head, fitting for an ancient demon with such a cold-blooded disposition. The ebony tip rapped sharply against the floor when he turned and started to walk back down the hall without another word, not bothering to check if Killian followed. The dealmaker was more arrogant than any king in his newly acquired castle, and Killian rolled his eyes behind the self-styled Dark One's back before falling reluctantly into step to the metronome of the cane against the polished stone, each strike echoing loudly in the silence.

More incredible art adorned the walls on either side of them, one long corridor was completely lined in fourteenth-century tapestries that were somewhat faded with age but remarkably intact, depicting a typical medieval hunt. Killian had participated in his fair share of them under his many different noble aliases, he immediately recognized the scenes. The elusive quarry managed to evade the hunting party for several panels, leaping through glens and peeping defiantely at them through a copse of trees just beyond their reach. It almost slipped away, but the pursuers were determined and the freedom of the forest was fleeting, as the tiny woven arrows landed straight and true at the end.

Rumpelstiltskin came to a halt by another pair of doors where the imp was waiting, bowing like a well-trained footmen when he approached, fawning and obsequious now in the master's direct presence instead of mocking and impertinent. Rumpelstiltskin lifted the tip of the cane off the floor and used it to raise the imp's chin, forcing the creature's head back at what on anyone else would be an unnatural angle.

"Wait for me outside the library. It's currently locked, and it stays that way."

The order was clear and the imp ran off again, not bothering with any theatrics this time to scuttle away like a cockroach instead. Killian watched it scurry down the hall, his interest piqued even more while Rumpelstiltskin entered what looked like an ordinary sitting room. Tufted chairs, a wireless in a walnut case, and a china tea set left on a side table, nothing unexpected at first glance. A closer look told a slightly different story, there was a copy of the current evening edition of the London Telegraph folded next to the flowered cups, even though it wouldn't be out for another two hours across the Channel. There was no picture of Der Führer hung in place of pride or copy of his odious book on display as there were in every patriotic German household, and even ensconced as he was deep within the dark heart of the Glorious Reich, Killian suspected that Rumpelstiltskin had his long, grasping fingers stuck in all sorts of pies.

"Did the local count bargain away both his Schloss and das Mädchen?"

Killian sat down in the tallest chair without waiting for an invitation, pulling out a silver cigarette case engraved with his monogram and flicking it open. He lit one without a match, inhaling deep and blowing out not a mere smoke ring, but a smoke serpent that rose in the air and hissed right in the other demon's face until it dissipated from an equal flick of Rumpelstiltskin's finger, his expression clearly unimpressed by the showy display.

"She made her own deal with me and is therefore off limits to you, Corruptor," he said. "Don't think I've forgotten the last time you interfered in my affairs."

Killian hadn't forgotten it either, and he couldn't say he felt any remorse for assisting the courtesan Maleficent settle her affairs behind Rumpelstilskin's back. The letter she had written had been delivered safe to her daughter while the daughter's husband was away from the house and unable to confiscate it, Killian had made sure of that. It hadn't been a deal, not exactly, just an offer made to give the woman a bit of comfort with none of his usual strings attached because he felt like being magnanimous. Besides, he'd always enjoyed Maleficent's elegant salons. He took another drag on his cigarette and did his best to look contrite, even though they both knew it was completely insincere.

"Speaking of which," Rumpelstiltskin continued, as if the thought had just occurred to him, "what happened to that angel you were so damn adamant about? I heard rumours that an angel finally smited that irritating succubus Zelena in Paris and yet by some miracle you appear to have walked away from that encounter completely unscathed. How curious."

Killian hadn't forgotten the Dark One's interest in his angel either, an interest he had no intention of encouraging. Emma hadn't fallen, not yet, and until she did and he could claim her openly for his own, she was fair game to any demon that crossed her path. He was certain that he was the only one who could seduce her, but the others would be all too eager to attack a Blessed One and try to destroy her. Including the demon who sat across from him now.

He needed to tread very carefully.

"She flew beyond my grasp," he said, blowing out another lungful of smoke that turned into an image of Zelena's face, rendered as delicately as any of the paintings on display. Her mouth split open in a silent pantomime of her final, agonized scream when another breath of smoke spilled over it just as the holy water had in life. "Zelena thought she could take an angel on herself, if she had stayed on her back where she belonged and out of my way, then maybe she wouldn't have ended up as nothing more than effluent in the Paris sewers alongside the contents of every royal bowel loosened by the steel kiss of Madame Guillotine. But I can't say I mourned her untimely passing, not after she spoiled my plans and let the angel escape."

Zelena's image finally melted away just like the succubus herself when he stubbed the cigarette out into a crystal ashtray, leaving behind a smear of ash as dark and thick as her infernal blood had been when it spilled over the blade of his iron knife. Rumpelstiltskin's gaze followed the movement, unblinking even through the eye-watering haze of smoke that now filled the room.

"Indeed. Perhaps you'll have another bite at that particular apple, one day. Although it's already been what, a hundred and fifty years? Taking the definition of eternity rather literally, aren't we now?"

Killian knew it was a jab at his apparent failure and he let his expression twist into a scowl. Little did the Dark One know of all the nights since then when he'd succeeded in "capturing" Emma, her wrists pinned fast by his grasp that could so easily become shackles from which she'd never escape, caging her with his body while she was wound in his sheets, close, so close to surrendering to him fully and not just to his carnal temptation. He'd savour his other victories privately until then, how he'd coaxed out her name the night they met, worked to gain her trust over the centuries, her confession that she could hear him, each far more valuable and rarer than any painting or tapestry Rumpelstiltskin could acquire.

He'd get what he wanted, in the end. Patience might be a virtue, but he was willing to be virtuous for this, and he'd rub Rumpelstiltskin's nose right in his success whether it took ten years or a hundred. Losing a little face now was a small price to pay.

Turn the other cheek, as it were.

"I'm sure it didn't take you nearly as long to accumulate your little treasure trove, did it, Dark One? And all strictly for the glory of the new German empire, I'm sure."

There was a flash of amusement on Rumpelstiltskin's face at the sarcasm in Killian's tone.

"I've held up my end of all the bargains I've made on behalf of the empire. What you see here are merely a few trinkets kept for my private collection."

Killian thought that "looted" was probably a more apt description than "kept" for the fortune crammed onto the walls, but he didn't say it out loud. And he was the one who'd once been called a pirate. Still, the dealmaker's penchant for trinkets was the whole reason why he'd come and he made a photograph appear, held delicately between his fingers like the cigarette before he set it on the table and slid it over.

"Is this one of your new acquisitions like the artwork and the decorative young girl, perhaps?"

The image was grainy, a faded sepia and foxed at the edges from age. Rumpelstiltskin looked down at it and while his expression didn't change the blue haze in the air from the cigarette smoke rippled around him, like a stone dropped in a still pond.

"It's called the White Hilt," Killian began, watching the other demon carefully as he spoke, "among other names, and was said to have been made from a remnant of the sword wielded by the angel who drove the First Man and First Woman from the Garden, where it was cleaved in two by their sin."

While the photograph was badly faded, the object pictured was still recognizable and had even retained a bit of gloss, forever reflecting the flash that had gone off when the image was captured for posterity. It was a blade, long and narrow and oddly shaped. Both sides were curved several times along the edge, so that it resembled less of a knife and more like a lick of flame made metal. Despite the name the actual hilt wasn't white, it was so dark in the picture that it was probably black or nearly to it, and was studded with what looked like a large jewel at the top.

"There was legends about it, like those about the Holy Grail and the Spear of Destiny, but they fell out of fashion and out of history and only a few scholars have even heard of the White Hilt now, including those that Der Führer has combing every pilfered record he can get his hands on thanks to his new obsession, the occult sciences."

Rumpelstiltskin gave him a contemptuous look. "Spare me the lesson, I'm far more versed in these tales than you, Corruptor. More than one soul has tried to barter with me for holy relics, thinking it will bring them power and glory. A blade forged from Heavenly light is an attractive idea, especially to one who has styled himself a Saviour of the people."

"While he exterminates those who don't fit his definition of the term," Killian added.

It wasn't spoken of openly, but people knew where their absent neighbours had gone. Yellow stars were left behind on the lintels of empty houses, paint flaking away in the elements and the sin cut deeper than any knife.

The other demon lifted one shoulder in a dismissive shrug. "Sieg Heil."

As before, Killian didn't return the sentiment. He gestured to the photograph instead. "This was taken sometime before the Great War, in this very castle."

He flipped it over and revealed the writing on the back, done in an old, copperplate hand. There were only three lines, the name of the Schloss they were currently sitting in, an illegible signature, and below them both was a word written first in German, and then, perhaps more tellingly, in Latin.

Dagger

Rumpelstiltskin eyed his uniform, one that gave him near absolute authority in the name of the would-be king. "I suppose you've come here as the knight on a noble quest?" he asked, tone still laced with contempt. "Shall I address you as Sir Killian instead of Corruptor then, collecting shiny tribute for your new master?"

Killian ignored that jab as well and focused on what the dealmaker might have just accidently let slip instead.

"So it is here?"

He met Rumpelstiltskin's gaze head on across the table. It was like staring into a well, his eyes were fathomless black depths that seemed to ripple from deep within. A mortal soul would fear what lurked unseen at the bottom and glance away from it, as Damnate Infernum in his own right, with power far beyond what the rank on his collar granted him, Killian didn't blink.

When Rumpelstiltskin spoke again it was through teeth gone serrated as a crocodile's. "I don't answer to you. Or to Der Führer. You think I'm somehow unaware of his more esoteric interests and attempts to collect such objects? Napoleon went to Egypt in search of Biblical treasures to strengthen his laughable claim, Charles V sent his troops to Rome to seize Saint Peter's throne, and now Adolf Hitler seeks a broken sword with which to rule the world. An emperor in all but name, and like those who came before him, doomed to inevitable failure. Just as you've failed in your pathetic attempt to intimidate me."

He started to rise from his seat then, cane in one hand and clear dismissal in his voice. "You can see yourself out now, Corruptor."

Killian remained where he was, idly examining his rings. The large, square cut ruby that he'd owned for centuries sat on his finger and winked up at him, he refused to don the honours that went with the uniform and wore his favourite pieces in their place instead. He rubbed his thumb over it and admired the fire within before rolling his wrist and snapping his fingers without looking up.

"Even in this modern world, I find that some still cling rather stubbornly to the old ways, don't you, Dealmaker? Especially those who used to hold power. They still style themselves with the titles they lost in the last war in the hope they'll regain them one day, prince, duke, count, and they still arrange marriages for their children. Marriage is a sacrament, and there is nothing more sacred to these people than money."

Rumpelstiltskin snatched up the papers that had appeared on the desk at Killian's command, his face a mask of utter fury as he scanned them and obviously realized his error. The marriage contract was clear, the bride's wealthy family had provided a considerable dowry to the impoverished but noble groom, on the condition that she be granted sole ownership of his ancestral seat and all the contents within upon the wedding, a hedge against a future divorce. Furnishings, carpets, silverware, there was a complete inventory right down to the number of teaspoons.

Including; "an antique jewelled dagger of unknown provenance."

"I confess I may lack your level of expertise," Killian continued, acting as innocent as a virgin at Mass, "but I do know that you can't put up what doesn't belong to you as collateral. Your contract was only with the husband. Mine is with the wife."

Her signature was next to Killian's own on the document the Dark One now held, granting him possession of the castle and surrounding estate. Marriage was a sacrament, and adultery was his favourite sin. He lit another cigarette from his silver case, filled as much with smug satisfaction at having pulled the rug out from under Rumpelstiltskin as the smoke he drew into his lungs. Another demon couldn't interfere directly once a bargain was struck and they both knew it. But Killian hadn't, since the deal was never valid to begin with. "Good faith" was not a doctrine demons followed, and Rumpelstiltskin had no choice but to accept that his own carefully wrought deal was now completely null and void.

"You don't answer to me, that's true. But you do answer to the Fallen One, so if you care to argue this further we can always take this little disagreement to him for a final ruling, if you desire."

The papers fluttered back down and spread across the table in an untidy heap while Rumpelstiltskin's dark gaze went sharper than any dagger. Despite his easy posture with the cigarette dangling loosely between his fingers, Killian was inwardly as tense as a bowstring. They were both bound by the same rules that called for the other demon to acquiesce, however unwilling he was to do so, but he looked to be on the verge of breaking those rules completely and refusing to relinquish his claim. If he did it would come at a considerable cost, and Killian's entire plan hinged on the Dark One being unwilling to pay it.

"That's twice," he said at last. "Believe me, there won't be a third time."

With that, Rumpelstiltskin lifted his cane and slammed it back down on the floor. The sound was like the strike of a match flaring to life, only magnified a thousandfold and everything in the room rattled from the force of it. For a split second Killian could see what lay beneath the unassuming countenance that had slithered unnoticed and forgotten throughout history for so long, the Beast without his human form to conceal him. He braced himself for the attack that was sure to follow, fingers tightening on the arm of the chair and ready to leap up and fling the lit cigarette right into the demon's face.

It never came. The Dark One was gone instead.

His boots made no sound when he stood up from the chair and walked around the table, the tip of the cigarette flaring crimson as he took another deep inhale. A chasm had opened in the floor like a sinkhole, right where the cane had struck. Killian crouched down to examine it, taking a final drag before flicking the cigarette into the hole and watching it fall end over end until it was swallowed up by the darkness. The chasm was deep, impossibly so, and for a moment he wondered if Rumpelstiltskin had decided to appeal to Lucifer after all and returned to Infernum itself to do so, as the Fallen One rarely left his kingdom below. He waited a few moments, but there was no summons under his skin that compelled him to follow and a check of the castle revealed that most of the treasures had been removed as well. The walls where the tapestries had hung were bare, the exquisite paintings were gone, furniture was draped in dusty cloths and there was an air of disuse and neglect as if everything had been shut away and left untouched for months. A check of the hall outside the library revealed the imp was nowhere to be found, and now that he'd established himself as master the door opened as soon as Killian touched the knob.

It was empty.

Not just the maid, a lot of the books had vanished alongside her. There were holes on the shelves that hadn't been there before and a few of the ones left behind had toppled over completely without the others to hold them in place. Rumpelstiltskin had withdrawn in silent acknowledgement that he'd been outmaneuvered, but he'd obviously taken everything from his other deals along with him. Using that much power at once could nearly cripple a demon, even one as powerful as the dealmaker.

When he returned to the sitting room he saw the rent in the floor had sealed itself back up and all that remained where it had been was a small black mark, perfectly round, left by the tip of the cane. His shoulders dropped with relief under the tailored wool of his jacket that his gamble had paid off, in truth, Killian hadn't wanted to involve the Fallen One either and the invocation of his authority had been a bluff.

The edge of the photograph peeked out from underneath a page of dry German legalese, Killian picked it up and read the words on the back again. If the White Hilt truly existed, then it was a holy relic of the highest order and one he would not allow to fall into Nazi hands. That madman in Berlin could make do with the ramblings of false prophets and the bones of apocryphal saints to fuel his insane crusade, anything genuine was exceedingly rare and he had his own reasons for searching such objects out, reasons he didn't share with those who only thought the commanded him. Just as it had the last time he'd been part of a German army, it was to serve his own purposes and not the other way around.

"Find it."

He didn't have any imps at his disposal so he sent his shadow to begin the search instead. The dark shape moved along the wall of its own volition and sank into the stone like water sinking into the sand, if the dagger was secreted somewhere within the Schloss then he'd find it no matter how well it was hidden. If it turned out to be a medieval copy then he'd return with it to the capital and graciously accept the Reich's accolades, but if it was real, then his coded dispatch would report that the legend of a blade forged from a sword once wielded by a holy angel was just that, a legend, and nothing more.

Night had fallen by the time Killian went outside for some air, frustrated by what appeared to be a fruitless search. There was no jewelled dagger anywhere to be found and he couldn't sense the presence of anything holy. He'd known the odds were exceedingly slim to begin with, and yet for some reason a part of him had believed that not only did the White Hilt exist, he would find it here. Learning that Rumpelstiltskin had chosen this of all the estates he could have had for a wartime headquarters had only increased that belief, it was too much of a coincidence that the demon who coveted power above all else could be sitting unawares on such a prize.

A single line in an inventory that had been prepared years prior and a photograph even older still. It could be real, or it could be nothing more than a wild goose chase and there was no way to tell without the dagger itself. He'd know immediately, just as he'd known that Emma was an angel. The damned always recognized the divine.

A light appeared high in the sky above and drew his attention up. It wasn't the holy light that had drawn him closer on that night in Rome when war had raged unchecked and the city burned, it was the Luftwaffe, flying on steel wings to rain fire in the form of the bombs dropped nightly across the Channel. A falling star streaking across the heavens with a deafening roar, and as it passed overhead he felt the disturbance in the air even from the ground.

The feeling didn't go away after the plane was gone, if anything it increased, hairs on the back of his neck rising and a prickling under his skin that usually meant one thing. Something else caught his eye, a tiny bit of movement that was nothing but a pale smudge against the deep indigo at first. As it grew closer Killian saw that it was a bird, a dove, with something held in its beak.

Not an olive branch, it was a note, falling straight into his hands while the dove flew away. There was only one who correspond with him in such a fashion, and it wasn't another demon. When he unfolded the square of paper letters appeared as if by magic in gold script, addressed at the top in a familiar hand to, "Damnate."

Killian quickly scanned the lines, his brow creasing with a frown. Once he'd secured control of the castle his plan had been to keep following the trail of the White Hilt if it wasn't there, he had some other leads and records that pointed to where it might have gone and the war was the perfect cover for his pursuit. Now that the Dark One knew of his interest, it was even more important that he maintained his cover and moved as quickly as possible. He wasn't bound to answer the summons he held in his hands, the promise he'd made could easily be broken.

"...as you once agreed to give me safe passage I ask that assistance again of you now…"

"...I need you…"

"...please…"

It was signed at the bottom with a single initial in lieu of a name, E, and he brushed his thumb over it.

His answer was silent to all but her.

Belgian Countryside, 1943

"Someone's coming."

The whispered announcement made everyone freeze for a moment before they hurried to the dusty windows in a flurry of palpable dread, dousing the old gas lamp they'd been using for light and pulling the tattered curtains back to peer out into the gloom on the other side of the glass. Outside it was pitch-black for miles around and silent as a tomb across the barren fields and empty roads that made up the ancient Flemish countryside, with not a soul to be seen nor heard from in days. Or it had been, at least. Now there was a distinctly mechanical hum in the air, quiet and barely audible at first, but growing louder and louder and a collective gasp echoed around the room when the long drive to the abandoned farmhouse where they'd taken refuge suddenly lit up with twin oblong lights. As yellow as the predatory eyes of a serpent poised to strike and moving even more quickly, they were unmistakably headlamps, from a large vehicle that was making its way directly towards them at breakneck speed.

"Soldiers!"

"Germans!"

It was a single cry of alarm that was taken up at once by the rest of the ragged group, white-faced and trembling with both exhaustion and fear. In the shadows Philippe and Richard shared that kind of unguarded embrace that would send them straight to the camps as sexual deviants alongside Isaac and the other Jews who sought shelter under her wings, while the Mother Superior had her arms wrapped comfortingly around little Gretel, as thin and delicate as a baby bird fallen from the nest.

Emma forced herself to her feet despite her own utter fatigue and lurched towards the door, tossing a hurried, "Stay here," over her shoulder as she went.

"Emma, Emma come back!"

"Emma, wait, no, it's too dangerous, you don't know who's out there-"

She heard them, but there was another voice that was even louder and she didn't heed their warnings, already on the sagging porch with her shoes scarcely touching the ground as she practically flew down the steps and flung herself headlong into the path of the oncoming car. The light found her immediately and there was an ear-splitting squeal of metal as the unseen driver behind the wheel slammed on the brakes. Gravel flew from under the tires like shrapnel and the car skidded to a halt scant inches from where she stood, so close that Emma could feel the searing heat from the engine, a shocking contrast against the cooler night air. A door opened and a tall figure emerged, standing just beyond the pool of light with his face hidden under the brim of his hat. His appearance elicited another shriek of fright from behind her when they caught a glimpse of his uniform, the glint of silver on his collar and the armband red as blood. Her little flock hadn't listened and had followed her outside, staying close to their shepherd and bleating in fear like orphaned lambs in the dark. Their presence pulled at her to return while his pushed her back, his damnation attempting to repel away her divinity and she swayed back and forth where she stood, caught between warring instincts until he stepped into the light and there was nothing except him.

"Engel," Killian murmured when she threw herself at him, straight into his arms and burying her face in his shoulder. His voice rumbled through her, equal parts amused and concerned. "Oh blessed one. What have you done now?"

There was a shuffle of footsteps behind her and she felt him stiffen, his attention shifting to the small group she'd guided from the Dutch border and across half of occupied Belgium. Emma knew she should pull herself away and try to come up with an explanation as to why she was embracing what appeared to be a Nazi officer who'd just appeared out of nowhere in a car more suited to a film star than a soldier. It must look like their shepherd had delivered them straight to the wolves instead of the safety she promised and she should step back, reassure them, ease their worry...but her head was too heavy, weighed down with innumerable unanswered prayers that flickered behind her eyes in an endless loop. People were suffering, starving, dying, and it was too much for even her wings to carry. Her fingers curled into the dark wool of his jacket and when they called her name again it seemed to come from very far away. His voice was among them but she couldn't answer, her hold loosening and her knees giving out, buckling like an ancient tree gone hollow with age and unable to withstand the force of the wind any longer.

"Killian."

His name fell from her lips in a whisper and she was falling with it, the hard earth below rushing up to meet her and the heavens above, dark, and devoid of stars.

The demon caught her before she hit the ground.

#cs ff #cs fic #my fic #Between Heaven and Hell

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outroshooky · 5 years ago

Text

whatever in heaven | knj

⇢ genre: series; part three (mafia!au) (angst, fluff, smut)

⇢ pairing: kim namjoon x reader

⇢ word count: 5.8k

⇢ warnings: smut (soft d/s dynamics. grinding, oral [m receiving], brief use of the word daddy, marking, gentler dirty talk [praise]) angst (implied usage and mention of knives, nightmare), some fluff. this fic is a bit of a mind-fuck; there are darker themes here, so please read with caution.

⇢ a/n: i’m so excited for you guys to read the next installment of verses & vibes! a huge, huge thank you to my beta readers @sunkoos (go check out nas’s work!) and @hobiswitch; an even bigger thank you to @guksheart for not only beta reading this fic but posting this for me because of laptop difficulties!

...which leads me into, unfortunately, some bad news. my laptop crashed permanently over the weekend and i may have lost all of my files. i’m working to get them back, but this also means i have to buy a new laptop. thus, verses and vibes (and my writing in general) may go on hiatus until i can figure out a way to keep writing and posting new content. more updates forthcoming— for now, enjoy whatever in heaven!

“i know not if i could have borne

to see thy beauties fade;

the night that follow’d such a morn

had worn a deeper shade:

thy day without a cloud hath pass’d,

and thou wert lovely to the last,

extinguish’d, not decay’d;

as stars that shoot along the sky

shine brightest as they fall from high.”

⤷ and thou art dead, as young and fair; lord byron (george gordon)

It is always the same in the beginning.

He is kneeling on a concrete floor that goes on as far as he can see, cold and callous against the skin that peeks from the stringy rips in his pajama pants. A single light flickers above his head, murky cream, faded with age. His arms are bound behind his back with braided rope, biting vengeance into his tender wrists. His exhalations wisp pale smoke, rushing from his lips to touch the folded legs of a woman sitting just out of the ring of wired lamplight.

The supports of the chair are metal; he momentarily ponders how her skin isn’t dotted with gooseflesh through the thin fabric of her dress, but her cherry-red heels catch the light in a way that has his breath hitching. Something in him presses to reach out to her but he can’t, straining against his bonds like a feral cat caged. He snarls, a gritting sound in the silence of the warehouse, and she hums something seductive in return.

It is a dark heat that kindles in the pit of Namjoon’s stomach when he realizes he is staring at temptation herself, clothed in cherry pumps and scarlet lipstick. She is the antithesis of everything he should have and yet, yet—

He craves her more and more with every second that goes past. He doesn’t need to see her face to know that she is hauntingly beautiful, a devil crafted from memory, sent from hell to tempt him in all the ways she knew how. The blooming lust in his veins climbs with viney fingers straight to his brain, his head spinning, flying high; he barely knows what to believe. Somehow, she’s pulling on the strings of his thoughts, a marionette and his master dancing on the brink. One wrong string and the puppet collapses in a heap of cloth and kindling.

He groans, the sound of frustration and need echoing on and on in the dim room. She laughs velvet rich, sickeningly sweet. He wishes he could rend the binds from his arms, crawl to her, worship her the way she deserves; he shuffles forward an inch, two—

A plain black combat knife skitters to a stop in front of him, twirling once before coming to rest, just grazing his left kneecap. Resting potential against the crook of his leg, and he sucks in a breath when he feels the chilled edge level against the puckered scar on his knee.

She doesn’t speak, but Namjoon knows exactly what she means to say.

Thoughts clamor at the base of his skull, hissing seduction like a writhing mass of coiled snakes snapping for attention. They strike at one another, seeking dominion, and he’s nearly consumed by the din. A choice, cut out for him by the hands of fate, burned in the ashes of every decision he’s ever made. It boils down to this, to him and her and everything in between.

At one pellucid flicker of insanity, his hands are freed.

The ropes fall frayed to the floor and he straightens, rubbing at the burn in his forearms, rolling his neck to loosen the strain. His eyes flicker to her mass in the darkness, the shape of her just touched by the faintest tendrils of light. She is just out of reach, but so close, so far when her head tilts, a hint of fascination. He is mortal, she is eternal— a man reduced at the end of the day, stripped of money and power and the demons that lick at his heels. Greed is his master, but she is his, coveted in the secrecy of this cushioned nightmare.

He knows though, in the deepest reaches of his twisted soul, that only one of them will leave the warehouse alive.

In this horrible, shattered husk of reality, only one of them is destined to live.

And somehow, the choice has fallen to him.

Pick up the knife. Pick it up, feel it in your hands, smooth and weighted, perfectly balanced. Everything you’ve ever wanted is in the palm of your hands. Make the right choice. Do it for me, baby. For me.

Namjoon is pitted against his own self-preservation, warped desires clamoring for attention, needy yet sick. Needy, he is so fucking needy, but for what? Anticipation itches the back of his neck; he can barely think when the handle melds into the curve of his palm with such a sinful fit. The metal glints promise of things yet to come, but when he tilts the blade towards himself, he sees only the industrial struts that crosshatch the ceiling, the dust that hovers thick in the clogged, choking air. Emptiness and fulfillment, hand in hand, only a breath away.

You know what the answer is, Kim Namjoon. Do it. Do it for me.

Does he know? He must know, deep in the recesses of his bones. Deep inside the fucked-up mind of his, playing tricks on him; a trickster, what trickster? The last of his sanity is threatening to drip, melting like liquid wax onto the cool, callous cement. It’s bubbling in his hands, pouring through the gaps between his fingers, but when he shakes his head, a mad dog, it solidifies molten silver, black titanium.

Do it for me.

Do it for her.

He must.

Namjoon’s eyes flicker to her calf, following the silk of her skin to the hem of her saccharine dress; it flutters scarlet just out of reach. He’s on his knees now; there’s something pulling at him, some indeterminable force dragging him through the floor. The blade slips; the knife twists in his hands as he falls forward, and—

The air rushes out of Namjoon’s lungs as he writhes himself awake, mouth agape in an silent scream. He’s wheezing with the first rush of oxygen into his lungs, his lips swollen with gnashing of teeth as he twists away from the warmth settled next to him in the sea of rippling sheets, curling in on himself.

“Namjoon, are you alright?”

The broken man lifts his head, taking in the naked form upright in bed beside him, hair awry, concern bleeding every word.

It’s you.

He’s safe.

Indeed, Namjoon has had many dreams, but none quite like this one.

It is as if the very breath was sucked from Namjoon’s lungs when he first wrested himself awake in a cold sweat. Control is something he craves, something he owns save the late night hours when it is ripped from his hands by the sick desires of his own brain, playing tricks on him. He exercises his grip on every minutiae of his life, but when his eyes flutter shut and his conscience takes hold, it wraps a silken tie around his thoughts and begs him to pay attention.

You’re calling his name in a voice burdened by drowsiness. He knows you were awoken because of him but he can’t seem to think, to do anything else but sit here in this bed, in these rippling creamy sheets, and feel his lungs fill, empty. Fill, empty.

“Namjoon, love, breathe with me, okay?”

Breathing. Breathing is all he has been reduced to, a creature of the night with oxygen in his lungs and demons in his head.

You take his hand in your own, feels the slim digits trembling against your skin. You rub gentle circles into his knuckles and it somehow grounds him in the midst of the chaos, the overwhelming flood conjured from his worst nightmares. He watches as you carefully trace every crooked angle of his fingers with your own.

It is this simple motion that produces new thoughts, a mental clamor not of his own demise but for his own safety, the protection that he seeks. You are so much more than the sum of your parts: you are safety in the midst of a den of ruby-eyed cobras simply begging for a chance to strike. He’s never thought of anybody the way he thinks of you; there is no one else who comes close to you, and that’s saying a lot when it comes to his line of work.

“Namjoon, you’re safe, okay? You’re safe with me. We’re in our bedroom. You’re still the head of the most feared crime ring in the country. Nothing has changed. Yoongi is just outside the door; I’m right here. Nothing has changed, baby. You’re safe.”

Your words are warm against his skin, dotted with the press of lips to his temple, his cheek. You’re burning up against him, sweat beading at the roots of his hair, the silver strands falling low into his eyes. Somehow, the heat only serves to make him cooler, and he’s nestling into your arms before his mind catches up to his body. He’s safe. Somehow, in the roaring din of his mind, he is safe. His demons won’t follow him here, locked outside the door, palms scrabbling at the windows. The windows. Namjoon’s eyes flick to the glass and find the shades drawn, blocking out the ambient light that hovers thick on the other side. Bulletproof, he insisted, and for good reason. But Yoongi would have called if there was a problem, and he’s got Seokjin at the front gate, and it begins to seep in, sweet relief, that he truly is safe.

He is cradled to you like a child, a position compromising for a man of his stature, but he knows you won’t judge. Your hand trails from his thigh to his hip, his ribs to his shoulders, and your fingers nest in his hair, gently scratching his scalp. Lord knows he won’t be able to close his eyes until daylight breaks over the dark oak floor of your shared bedroom, but he hums and noses at your neck. You smell like sage and lavender with a touch of his own cologne, a memory of last night, and he inhales deeply, tries to savor the muskiness.

“You’re okay baby, I promise.” A kiss to his temple, another grounding touch. “I’m not going anywhere. I love you; you’re safe right here with me. Just let me love you, okay baby?”

Love. Love, a concept Namjoon knew better by verbal parry than by any real, tangible memory. It was wielded by a father he barely knew, an absent mother who preferred the company of socialites to the company of her own son. It was really a wonder he found it in him to love at all, really; he’d assumed he’d leave such an emotion to those who built a life out of a 9-5 day and mediocre sex. He’d been proven wrong, however, when you came along— you, once a high-profile escort in the dirty underworld he’d built for himself, proved yourself a worthy companion when you stayed beyond his guttural moans and dirty secrets. It was in fact, a moment like this when he realized he quite enjoyed your company, and there was something more to it than just a good fuck, an easy pussy.

You were the closest thing to real love he’d ever experienced, a home to come back to that wasn’t a prowling security team and a clean gun barrel. He’d exposed the grittiest parts of himself to you, the most private secrets and still you came back for more. You were just as fucked up as he was, really, and that was his favorite thing about you. You’d killed for him and he knew you’d kill again, and that was, very plainly, the matter of things.

Plus, that mouth made him see the stars more times than he’d willingly brag about at the poker table.

He presses a kiss to your shoulder, exposed through the lip of your shirt (his shirt, actually). It’s a careful kiss, chaste for him. Your fingers rub comfort into the base of his skull and he swears he could purr, an alley cat sleek and pleasured.

“You doing okay, Joonie?” Your eyes tell him everything he needs to know and he nods, unsure if he trusts himself to speak. Fear still gnaws at his bones, muted terror of a red-heeled succubus and a silver blade that gleams in the lamplight. Somehow though, you know, scraping the blunt of your fingernails against his roots. “You don’t have to talk to me about it if you don’t want to. I’m here regardless of that, you know me.”

Namjoon noses the column of your neck in reply, folding his sizeable frame until it molds against yours. Some things he’d never let the boys know about, but some things, he thinks, they knew about already. He is hard and cold and calculated yet soft and warm and comforting, a living contradiction unto himself; you’d never believe it if you hadn’t seen it yourself. A complexity of men who prefers to live by the simplest of rules, but you’d learned long ago not to try to understand something that was fucked-up from the start. Some things in this world were just fucked up, and that was the way they were meant to be.

Neither of you know how long you sit there, adrift in messy sheets, dry eyes gritty with the lateness of the hour. Your hand weaves through Namjoon’s hair as the vines around his heart flex, their thorny stems unraveling. He stopped shaking minutes before, but if you know anything about him, the internal tremors never cease, not outside of the safety of this bedroom, impossible with the life he lives.

He stirs a little, murmurs your name against your neck, his lips brushing bare skin and the small freckle that dots just above your collarbone. There’s something so intimate, so human about it, screaming vulnerability that hangs open and aching in the silence. His hands slide smooth across the breadth of your back, your waist, palms settling atop your thighs as he draws back slowly, slowly.

There’s a question in his eyes, one you meet with your own.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He hesitates.

“Namjoon…”

He swallows, tilts his head, steals a kiss. “I’m sorry.” Then another.

With the third you’re pulling away, chest steady, finger to his lips. “Namjoon, you’re not thinking clearly. We can’t do this right now—”

“Says who?” He is breathless with the thought. “I wanna make you feel good, baby. You deserve that.”

The sweetest words wrap themselves around the breadth of your bones, melting between the gaps. He’s always been so good with his tongue.

“Namjoon, I wanna make you feel good too, but not when you’re like this.” You shake your head. “Not when you’re waking up screaming about death and knives and all sorts of horrible things.”

His hands brush your curves. “If this bed is an ocean, I wanna drown in you.”

“Joonie…”

It’s so easy to work at you, the sharper edges that he can dissect piece by piece. He knows exactly how far to push, what little to say to reel you in hook, line, and sinker. “Just go with it baby, alright? Just trust me.”

It’s easy to fall into Namjoon, collapsing every time as he folds around you. His head tilts to the side as he leans in, his nose brushing your own. He tastes like mint toothpaste and something uniquely him, an element you can never place but when he’s exposing the most vulnerable parts of himself to you like this. His mouth moves easy against yours, just tender lips, warm kisses. His hand smoothes up your spine to cradle your neck, thumb brushing at the nape, the soft hairs that tickle the back of his hand. “Just relax baby, relax.”

Once more. “Joonie, are you sure you’re okay with this?”

He nods. “I want this.”

He’s never been one for kissing but tonight he craves it, the simplicity of two mouths and hands that fit themselves perfectly against the curves and the edges. Musk curls under your nose as your eyelids flutter shut, dusting the apples of your cheeks a pinkish hue. Your hands meet his chest, burning with heat through the oversized Grateful Dead shirt he wears to bed with you, and they slide to his shoulders when he slips an arm underneath you to tug you closer.

You settle atop the apexes of his thighs, legs folding around him as he gazes up at you. The utmost adoration he has for you, written in the stars and in two hearts that beat as one, rattling against their cages with a need for closer, closer, closer. Fear melts underneath practiced fingertips and patience; he’ll be damned if he doesn’t return the favor. His eyes, usually tawny and mellow, burn blacker than charcoal but sweeter than syrup, running with emotion. It’s evident in every brush of his hands against your bare skin when his fingertips edge under the hem of your shorts, the gleam in his eye that warns of everything that is about to come. One hand supports your back as the other squeezes your thigh, and you can’t help but smirk down at him with the easy smile that tugs at his own kiss-bitten lips.

You aren’t smirking, however, when he leans in and nips a bite at your neck, teasing with his teeth, making you whimper and whine atop him. His tongue pokes between his lips, assuaging the pain, and your own mouth falls open as your fingers clench at his shoulders, nails sliding a lazy path along his spine. He licks once at the bite, then once more until he’s satisfied with the petaled violet that blossoms across the breadth of your throat. He nibbles a matching purple rose on the other side; you can feel the smile on his lips when your mouth shamelessly tips open and you stutter out his name.

“Hm, what is it?” When he draws back, you moan a singular complaint. “What do you want, love? I’ll give you anything you want.”

“W-Wanna make you feel good,” you pant, eyes fluttering. “Wanna make you feel so good.”

“I wanna make you feel good too, baby. Let’s just focus on the now, yeah?” Namjoon’s hand squeezes your thigh but you’re already pressing your body flush to his, kneeling over him. You cup his face and he strokes your wrist lightly, the most tentative of touches, thanking god that somehow, in the midst of the lion’s den, you’d found him. He had you and he knew he could trust you, trust the smell of your shampoo and the heat of your skin. “Focus on me.”

You lean down to kiss him, brushing his cheekbones, tangling your hands in his hair, but apparently, Namjoon had other plans. His lips graze your own, trailing the edge of your jaw to pepper the lightest kisses at your ear and move lower, lower. When his mouth lavishes the column of your neck with the utmost pleasure, you can’t help but feel your core ache, the purest whines permeating the thick air as you beg. He’s definitely hard now, weight against the inside of your thigh, and the temptation— no, the need to grind down on him sparked the fuzziest pleasures in your mind, the most sinful ideas.

“Please Joonie, please feels so good, please, w-wanna—”

When Namjoon mouths wet at the shell of your ear you writhe, losing control with each second that slips between your fingers like sand. His lips burn fire against your already heated skin, sizzling and crackling like a live wire under his touch. You hiss and he growls deep in the back of his throat, continues his ministrations.

“I forgot how much you liked that,” he breathes shakily.

“You’re so fucking hot,” you gasp, releasing your iron grasp on his roots. Luckily he’s unfazed; damn lucky you to be with someone who actually enjoyed their fair share of kinkiness. “So fucking hot and you’re so thick, I can feel it—”

When you grind down on him, pressing yourself onto the growing bulge in his slacks and swiveling your hips with practiced ease, he groans feverishly. With every brush of the head of his cock, he’s harder than before, memory weighty in the palm of his hand. He chokes on the breath in his lungs, his nails blunt on your back, and he moans once in content. Feels so fucking good.

“God, baby, you’re gonna ruin me like this,” Namjoon chuckles.

“Maybe that’s the intention,” you trill.

“Fuck.” The word lies heavy in the air, heavy on his bated breath.

You smirk, sinful seduction in his ear. “And what if I did this?”

As his eyebrows furrow, you ease yourself onto his thighs, so strong and sinewy. Your fingertips slip down his shoulders, trace every muscle that strains under his loose sleep shirt. Beneath the fabric is the coiled power of a lethal creature, a tiger poised to devour his prey. And he is utterly wrapped around your finger, letting his head tip back against the headboard with a sigh. He’s lost in your touches, an angel fallen from heaven, no idea which way is up or down.

You rub circles into his hip bones; he twists under you. Practically begging with his gasps, knowing what awaits him. Your fingers toy with the hem of his boxers and he’s hissing between his teeth. “Baby…”

You hum a response, press a kiss to the shell of his ear.

“Please…”

“Oh Namjoon,” you coo. “You’re a mess, baby.”

He is. Hair sticking to his forehead, sweat gleaming at his temple; he’s a model for destruction, the dirtiest of kinds. Hips arching underneath you, and there’s a wet spot that stains the fabric. He smiles somehow, teeth flashing in the low light. “All for you.”

You withdraw, spit into your palm. “Then you get all of me.”

Your hand slips beneath the waistband of his boxers, finds his cock, thick and hard. At the first stroke, lazy and full, he can’t stop the raspy grunt that leaves his throat. “Shit, baby. Feels so good.” When you lower your head to mouth at him over his sweats he practically writhes, begging, needy. So unlike him, but a welcome change to see him falling apart, falling apart over you. The fabric is soaked with saliva and dotted with a pearl of cum, a carnal work of art.

You rub slowly down his length, thumbing the swollen head leaking his seed. It’s messy and wet and he’s moaning and it’s all worth it, worth it to see him wrecked like this. His balls are heavy in your palm; when your eyes flutter up to meet his, wide and expectant, Namjoon hisses. That sound enough jolts burning heat between your thighs, twisting devilishly in your stomach. “B-Babygirl?”

There’s question in the word, question that makes you pause. You moan against his clothed cock; he chokes on his words.

“Can I make you feel good too?”

A sloppy kiss pressed to his member. “Later, okay? I wanna focus on you right now, Joonie.”

His hand strokes through your hair, flyaway, disheveled. “You’re so good to me. So fucking good—” He chokes on the downstroke, fingers tightening out of reflex. “Want you so bad.”

You press. “How bad? Bad enough to want my mouth?”

“Shit, your mouth,” he whines. “Want your mouth, want you—”

“Joonie,” you murmur.

His heartbeat resounds like gunfire in the ringing silence.

“Lift.”

He lifts his hips as you tug, pulling his sweats down to his thighs, the fabric ridged underneath your perch. His cock falls free, standing slightly crooked against his still-clothed abdomen, rippling with tension. It twitches under the heat of your gaze, steadily seeping liquid bliss, and your mouth waters at the thought. It’s been so long since you took him like this; when it’ll happen again, who’s to say.

You pepper kisses along his thighs just to hear him whimper, feel the predator writhe in his own constraints. His hands burn their own trails along the curves of your body, spreading heat in their wake as you cave to your own desire, slipping a hand between your thighs when you take him in your mouth with practiced ease. He’s firm under your fingertips, lithe and sleek and powerful in all the right ways, but he falls apart when it comes to you, crumbles like rock under the breath of the tidal wave. He grunts sin from between gritted teeth but whines complaint when you pull back to tease, to draw things out. He’s gentle in his touches but firm in his demands, even through the cottony billows of his neediness.

“I-I’m close,” Namjoon stutters, skin crimson from lavished attention. There’s saliva smeared down your chin and tears twinkle liquid starlight on your lashes, but you’ve never felt more electrified, burning up at the seams for him. From the heated confines of your throat you withdraw his cock with a firm touch at the base, his fingers running through your mussed locks.

“Where do you want to cum, baby?”

He squirms. “Fuck. Wherever you’ll take m-me—” He shudders, ribs heaving. Your fallen angel, shattering under your touch. “Oh shit, I’m gonna cum for you, babygirl.”

“Cum for me, angel. Cum for me...” you murmur, gaze level with his own as you wrap your lips around his member.

“Gonna cum for you, fuck—”

“Daddy.”

The cavernous heat of your mouth is a slick warmth, so wet and warm and utterly divine. He loses himself in it, lets himself go, pushing towards that edge of no return, riding the crest of the wave as it rolls faster, harder, heavier. “‘M gonna fucking cum. Oh god, fuck, shit, babygirl, I’m cumming, I’m—”

A drawn out groan fills the air, raspy and thick and throaty as he thrusts into your mouth once, twice, spills over. He’s bitter on your tongue, acrid but you take it, swallow it all. It’s worth it to see the pleasure overtake him, to see him let go of every capacity and capability to fall drowning, dizzy. Whatever in heaven, above or below, he’s tumbling headlong into it, collapsing into himself like a burning star falling from the cosmos.

He’s the first to break the silence that falls, withdrawing himself and tucking his softening cock back in his sweats with a remarkable amount of composition for a man who’d just seen the very sparks of the universe behind closed eyelids. He chuckles breathless, bated. “Fucking hell, angel.”

You try to speak but merely croak at first, throat grating dry. He hushes you soothingly, easing you back on the pillows now soaked with sweat. “Let me get you some water, yeah? Just stay here for now.”

You whine a complaint— shouldn’t you be taking care of him?— but he’s insistent and already on his feet, legs shaky as he heads towards the bathroom. There’s a pang in your chest watching him go, the reality of the situation settling in, and vulnerability flowers in your heart.

The tap squeaks; the faucet runs. Room temperature water, not too hot but not too cold to soothe the burn in your esophagus. He knows you better than anyone, knows how to take care of you when you fail to take care of yourself, life spent always on the run. You’re the one holding him when his nightmares consume him, the steel that he draws from his belt to wield before him, the ultimate weapon. Yin and yang, black and white, blooming nebula and neutron star. The water turns off, a grating complaint.

It’s been too long; you’ve delayed too much. Play to his fantasy; he has no idea what’s coming.

“If the water’s not enough, I can send Yoongi for some tea— oh.”

Oh.

You are no longer prostrate, the limp rag doll exhausted from her play. No, you are stretched out on the bed, ass up on your hands and knees, silver glinting between your teeth as a pair of handcuffs dangles in the air. You are looking at him with fire smouldering deep in your eyes, blazing a burning glare straight through him.

The predator has become the prey.

“Daddy,” you purr, right on cue. “Come here.”

It’s automatic, the way Namjoon moves towards you, glass forgotten on the nearby dresser. He’s completely transfixed, fascinated by the possibilities, and when he reaches the end of the bed, you stop him with one outstretched foot, bare with the lateness of the hour. “Turn around.”

He’s so submissive, so compliant simply by the force of his own surprise. It’s hard to keep going, hard to push through the adrenaline thrumming through your blood, the underlying current that threatens to sweep you away, too. But you mustn’t listen, mustn’t feel.

“Hands behind your back, Joonie, baby.”

He’s perfect, perfectly whole in the way he follows each command that falls from your lips like silk spun thread. He surrenders himself so willingly to you, it stings raw.

You rise to your feet, level with the back of him. Your fingers make quick work of the cuffs and with a firm click, the deed is done.

With a tender motion that surprises even you considering the brevity of the situation, you wrap your arms around your torso, bury your face in his skin, inhale his scent. Amber and citrus. Musk and spice. Whole contradictions that somehow manage to summarize him perfectly. You whisper against his spine like it’s a secret. “I’m so sorry.”

“What, baby?”

You can feel his heartbeat against your cheek, thudding rapid with excitement, wonder at what lies ahead of him. Guilt roars its ugly head and you beat it back with double the force.

You stiffen, step away from him. Four years you’d waited to formulate these words, to hear them drop from your lips, plummeting on high. Four years and now the moment is here, and you swallow past the lump in your sore throat.

“Kim Namjoon, you are under arrest for charges of extortion, murder, murder-for-hire, drug possession, and arms trafficking. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you…”

“...Do you understand the rights I have just read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?”

You’re sitting in the open door of a police cruiser, more specifically a SWAT cruiser, an aluminum blanket wrapped around your bare shoulders. The air is warm, but you can’t stop shivering.

Seokjin paces fifteen feet away from you, ever more handsome in his suit and tie. Hoseok is finishing his interview of the conclusion, anticlimactic for the better. Yoongi’s legs dangle from the open doors of one of the ambulances called when your colleagues expected the worst. Thankfully, no casualties had occurred but a sprained ankle, a fight between one of your fellow law enforcement officers and that guy that manned the back gate. Everyone can go home, rest easy.

After Seokjin’s interview is yours, and you realize by the time Hoseok is asking the last question that you don’t remember a single word of what you’ve said. Elite agents taking down the biggest crime boss in the country are not supposed to feel so empathetic, so broken. Guilty. Regretful.

Four years, the longest and most dramatic chase of your career. Justice fell, a swift hammer; you’d saved the day once again, added another face to the chalkboard in your sterile office a thousand miles away. You’d won. Hadn’t you?

There’s a faraway look in your eyes that Hoseok somehow understands, a glimmer of something more than success. He straddles the age gap between the members of the team, incorporating Jeongguk’s youthfulness with his elders’ experience, the glue of it all handed the most important task. He calls your name. “You’ve been out of it the entire time I’ve been interviewing you. What’s going on?”

“It’s nothing.”

But there’s no bite to the words, no whet of passion. They fall flat below the crackle of radios, the mist that reflects red and blue through the evergreen trees scraping the stars winking high above.

Hoseok puts his pen and clipboard aside. “Hey,” he says. The kindness in his tone pierces daggers through your heart. You somehow would’ve been more comfortable if he had yelled at you. “You did the right thing. He hurt a lot of people. Killed many more, and did so without remorse.”

That’s what you think, you want to scream. Because to you, he is some foreign criminal, far removed from any last dregs of humanity. He is a monster and a crook and a fiend, twisted into something unrecognizable, but you didn’t see what I saw. Did you see the warmth in his eyes when he rolled over and buried himself in my arms all those mornings in bed? Did you see the way he saved those dogs about to be euthanized in a shelter, because those pups reminded him of how he used to feel, staring death in the eyes every day? Did you see the way he loved me?

Hoseok pats your shoulder. “I’ll put in a month and a half of vacation time for you when we get home. Lord knows you’ve earned it. And we can rest tonight, rest for the first time in a while. We’ve got a nice hotel an hour away from here, top floor. We’re not done flushing out the rest of his boys, but that can wait for now. We can handle that on our own; they’re scattered all over the continent anyways. It’ll take time.” He picks up his supplies, turns to move on to Yoongi. The look in the elder man’s eyes, the special ops agent thinks, is exactly the same as your own. What had you two seen in that hellhole?

You tuck the blanket tighter around yourself and nod once. It’s the most you can do.

Hoseok smiles, but it’s not quite the beaming, sunshine-filled glow he usually carries about himself. “You did good work and I’m proud of you. Get some sleep, agent.”

Sleep does not come for a long, long time.

When it does, it eats away behind your eyelids, filling your mind with visions of a man adrift in an ocean of bedsheets, rocking on the waves of an endless concrete floor that goes for miles and miles, whispering promises of things to come that never would be.

Kim Namjoon is sentenced to life in prison for six counts of murder, fifteen counts of extortion, three counts of murder-for-hire, six counts of drug trafficking, three counts of arms trafficking, and two counts of drug possession.

He never makes it to see his twenty-sixth birthday.

#bts #bts smut #bts fluff #kpop fluff #namjoon smut #namjoon angst #kpop fanfiction #bts au #verses and vibes #outroshooky

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drsilverfish · 6 years ago

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So, Who Has Been Resurrecting Castiel? (post 14x20 musings)

Riddle me this, SPN compatriots and comrades.

If the Cosmic Entity who guards The Empty is telling the truth in The Big Empty (13x04):

“Before God and Amara, creation, destruction, Heaven, Hell, your precious little earth, what was there?… Nothing. Nothing but Empty… Angels and demons… you all come here when you die… I’m the only one that has any pull here. Not Heaven, not Hell, not G-O-D himself“

then how did Chuck-as-God resurrect Castiel (at least three times that we know of) previously?

Now obviously, this is, in some senses, perhaps a pointless exercise. It’s one of those cases where we can try and retroactively “repair the time-line” by making something coherent, looking backwards, that isn’t (in fact) coherent, because it was written forwards, not knowing, at the time in S5, where the metaphysics would end up by S15. The writers’ room may simply choose to leave this connundrum sitting there, like a writerly cosmic black-hole.

But, if God has no dominion in The Empty, and if The Empty is where angels go when they die, how was Castiel resurrected?

We have previously been given to understand God did the resurrecting of our favourite angel.

The first time Cas was resurrected, after the archangel guarding Chuck, “smote the crap out of him” (Cas) (5x01 Sympathy for the Devil), we learn, In 5x16 Dark Side of the Moon, from Joshua (the angel God still talks to) who talks with the Winchesters in Heaven, that:

JOSHUA: “He knows already, everything you want to tell him. He knows what the angels are doing, he knows that the apocalypse has begun. He just doesn’t think it’s his problem. God saved you already. He put you on that plane. He brought back Castiel. He granted you salvation in Heaven, and after everything you’ve done too. It’s more than he’s intervened in a long time. He’s finished. “

And, again, after Lucifer-in-Sam explodes Cas with a snap of his fingers in 5x22 Swan Song, this time Cas is the one who thinks God resurrected him:

DEAN: “Cas, are you God?” CASTIEL: “That's a nice compliment. But no. Although, I do believe he brought me back. New and improved.”

The third time Cas is resurrected, we learn in 7x17 The Born Again Identity that Cas has returned (after apparently being devoured by Leviathan in 7x02 Hello Cruel World) as the memory-wiped Emmanuel. He tells Dean that his wife Daphne found him:

EMMANUEL/ CASTIEL: “A few months ago, she was hiking by the river, and I wandered into her path, drenched and confused, and... unclothed. I had no memory. She said... God wanted her to find me.”

In 7x23 Survival of the Fittest, we learn that Cas believes he was indeed resurrected by God again, after he was consumed by the Leviathan:

CASTIEL: “If we attack Dick and fail, then you and Sam die heroically, correct?”

DEAN: “I don't know. I guess.”

CASTIEL: “And at best, I die trying to fix my own stupid mistake. Or... I don't die – I'm brought back again. I see now. It's a punishment resurrection. It's worse every time.”

DEAN: “I'm sorry. Uh, we're talking about God crap, right?”

Three times Cas has died and presumably, as a dead angel, gone to The Empty, and three times he has been resurrected.

So, either (if the writers do address this) the Cosmic Entity in the Empty is lying and God DOES have power there. OR, (again if the writers address this) the Chuck-avatar of God didn’t bring back Cas, some other force with power in The Empty did. Perhaps, if we take the Gnostic view that Chuck is the Demiurge (the somewhat lesser manifestation of God who created the material universe) then the ineffable Supreme Godhead is the one looking out for Cas?

Of course, it could be that there is a sort of cosmic wait-time, an ante-chamber, between angelic death and getting transported to The Empty, and Chuck snatched Cas each time in the ante-chamber, before The Empty swallowed him into its void. Why? Because Chuck enjoyed Castiel and his rebelliousness in the story.

Or, it could be that Chuck is pulling the strings of the story on a higher level (”writers lie”) and he does, indeed have dominion over The Empty, just as he did, in fact, have the power to smite Jack (or at least, Jack’s material form) after claiming the Nephilim could only be killed with his fancy-shmancy Hammurabi quantum equaliser gun.

As Cas himself recently brought up his resurrection by God, in 14x17 Game Night, when talking about whether Chuck was an interventionist God or not, with Anael:

CASTIEL: “You know, he does meddle. God reached down, and he brought me back to life.”

ANAEL: “So he saves one angel… and watches millions of people die screaming, every day. What does that say about him?”

I have hopes this will be addressed in the SPN multi-verse in S15.

I definitely got the sense Chuck was enjoying manufacturing Big DramaTM between Dean and Cas, over Jack. It was only once Cas returned to the scene in the graveyard, after Jack had blasted him out of the way, that Chuck started yelling at Dean to, “Pick up the gun and pull the trigger.”

“What are the limits to the love between this angel and this man?”, he seemed to be asking himself.

#Supernatural #14x20 #Moriah #SPN meta #Meta #Chuck Shurley #God in SPN #Chuck as the Demiurge #Chuck the writer #The Empty #SPN metaphysics

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libidomechanica · 3 years ago

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Untitled Composition # 8653

of some archd temple was not dresses? Corniced shade Thus from its pacifier. Blood; and in her days, use other Fair One, when winter vittle; fient haet he had a dream that one swear to me, Let us go then, my Muse! Or nay. let me, fearing of their servants full dominion claim. Now that I by verse as

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governes mee. He saw his chain and women and fear not; breath for her husband-fool; but such pain that, not to judge thee, or Geordie on his own darling, now, proving what the pain, yet from the morning weed, “Bright planet in hell. until the blinded thine eyes not keep that none look at me ! But I forbids to spend,

theres no way. Empty of immortality and perfect animal thought or form, and heart still the world were blown, the single coupled bee, sorrow took the place of all the weighd, what she had so tangle, and his book appears; a tap at the pavement white, green, and seldom three gods, who thus to enter

on the murmur of a darker and cruel men. S cage, whose barren rage of love; yet in content could inhabited her ivory arm; and, as they return again, the congelation will tent thee,” in sack of unthreshed and truth than the diamond: a golden ring thee.

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 7 #163 texts

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sasorikigai · 3 years ago

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[ shoulder ] – for the sender’s muse to place a hand on the receiver’s shoulder to comfort them, or stop them. Liv @ Hanzo for any verse 👀👀👀

the intimacy of hands. || @somniaxperdita || accepting

[ shoulder ] – for the sender’s muse to place a hand on the receiver’s shoulder to comfort them, or stop them.

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥 || How Scorpion desperately attempts to summon the long-lost light in an endless tenebrosity of his night; an eternal echo, resting in an empty shell of his vessel. In his own silent hell, haunting all without the simple sorrow, but an eternal echo as the swallowing agony thrusts and exacerbates the septic scars of an abyss that is his jeopardized heart and soul. How the volatile air shifts, as Scorpion drowns in the night winds, as the stars dance through his window, moving, as his form presses in closer, the composed and ever-erect bulwark of his form wrapping around as he feels his breaths leave slow and shallow at the edge of his precarious sleep, riddled with nightmarish visions.

Even as the nostalgia’s sickness operates in the similar way as the flu would; coming and going as they please, only creeping up on him when he very least suspects them. The resemblance stops there, because while the flu may have rendered Hanzo Hasashi bedridden, coughing and sneezing up a storm, nostalgia will infect Scorpion excruciatingly worse than any disease of the body and mind would, in the nastiest waves and still go completely undetected by the world around him. Most emotional experiences come as they are, but when he finds himself in nostalgia’s grasp, it is almost like a cruel trap, with how many complex and indescribable emotions hide behind it. He cannot pinpoint the sensation to a one-word feeling like with fear and joy, because he is not simply nostalgic and therefore sentimental; wistful, yearning, melancholic, mournful, grateful, anxious, and regretful.

Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail.

Lest darkness consumes and destroys his ribs and fills his throat with choking claws and venom as Scorpion thrashes and wreathes, but how his veins will light up with the Goddess’ influence, her strength, and her dominion. The cruelties exacted not only to him, but the entirety of the Shirai Ryu still devours his senses - lest Scorpion has lost significant amount of tenderness and luminescent sunlight of his heart emanating compassion and empathy, lest the steeled regality and hardness perpetuates through his eternal glare, Scorpion never fears nor worries that he will conflate his heart with apathy and nonchalance towards anything and everything, specifically in regards to his philosophy towards the world. For his deepest fear is not that he is inadequate, but that he could be indescribably powerful beyond measure. Happiness and fulfillment isn’t something that is eons away from his desperate grasp, for nothing shackles the ageless immortal’s being, as he pursues the journey of effulgent love not only through the perpetuated thoughts of the mind, but of actions carried out with such purpose and intension of sincerity and authenticity.

He still has to learn to endure pain stemming from his past and survive it through trials and tribulations of the psyche and physicality. Anger and vengeance may have served him well, the white-hot fury consuming everything in its wake, yet draining Scorpion of his goal, clarity, and unbreakable focus. He’d fear so much so that he would let his memory fade, with Harumi and Satoshi no longer touching in his reams, as they become distorted and faded. Their existence made less real, as would his life that once was. Hanzo Hasashi may have perished into nothing from which he came, but while he seemed to have no option, but to die, Scorpion now has an irreversible option to live on and thrive, as he embraces both the future and the unknown. In this cacophony of his whirling sentiments that emit from his scalding and boiling expanse, how his radiant full moon eyes gleam with anger, pain, and war - the sword coming not from fire and rage, but tempered in heat and blaze, shining with a cooler, soothing light.

“I once falsely believed the sword of my emotions would only cut in rage or revenge, as it would know how to only consume and torment, but you have taught me that it could also perpetuate and burn ablaze in all love’s mercy and forged courage and resilience,” that shall be my indestructible and unyielding weapon, Scorpion muses, as his strong head careens towards the Sun Goddess in his utmost respect and reverence. Without the seemingly eternal and deathly silence of melancholy craving Scorpion’s company, the sound of Olivia’s voice, along with her comforting touch had invaded his waking nightmare and washed away the excruciatingly painful poison of the pained destiny of being the somber specter. “That philosophy will always be adorned in the walls of my newly-constructed existence, with no chance of seeping out.” ▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥 ||

#✗ the ineffable testimony of spawned hellfire (scorpion)#✗ hellfire fibrillating beneath his skin (iv)#✗ successions of binding music (olivia winter || somniaxperdita)#somniaxperdita

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prju77 · 4 years ago

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#Rhapsody Of Realities! The word "destroy" in the verse above is from The word in the verse is the Greek “katargeo", and it means "to bring to nought." That means Satan has been brought to nothing; he was made powerless-he and his cohorts of hell. Colossians 2:15 (Conybeare) says, "He DISARMED the Principalities and the Powers [which fought against Him...." The principalities and powers have been disarmed by Jesus. Hallelujah! The Phillips New Testament puts it thus: "And then having drawn the sting of all the powers ranged against us, He exposed them, shattered, empty and defeated, in His final glorious triumphant act!" He exposed them; He got them stripped and took away from them all of their armour-everything of value! Blessed be God! That hasn't changed; they're in that condition till today: Disarmed! Crushed! Shattered! Exposed and defeated! The devil we're dealing with today is crushed and dethroned. 1 Corinthians 2:6 talks about "...the dethroned Powers who rule this world" (Moffatt translation). In the spirit, they're dethroned even though they seem to rule this world; the real power in the world today is the Name of Jesus! Now you can understand why the apostles, in their day, were fearless and used the Name of Jesus fearlessly. It didn't matter the persecution they faced; they were dauntless because they knew what power was really in office. They knew they were backed by the real power-Jesus Christ! It's the same in our day. We're bold and confident in, and through Him. In His Name, we tame this world and keep Satan and his demons in subjection to us. In John 16:33 WEB, Jesus said, “...Cheer up! I've overcome the world"; when He did it, we were in Him. We overcame Satan, the world and its systems. His Name has all authority. God has decreed that at His Name, every knee should bow-things and beings in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. And that every tongue should confess His Lordship, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:10-11). Nothing and no one can stand against that Name. Thus, in celebrating Christmas, we're proclaiming His victory, glory, power and dominion over the nations. The whole world belongs to Him. Blessed be God! https://www.instagram.com/p/CX4xD7svscy/?utm_medium=tumblr

#rhapsody

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pamphletstoinspire · 7 years ago

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THE PROPHECY OF OSEE - From The Douay-Rheims Bible - Latin Vulgate

Chapter 13

INTRODUCTION.

Osee, or Hosea, whose name signifies a saviour, was the first in the order of time among those who are commonly called lesser prophets, because their prophecies are short. He prophesied in the kingdom of Israel, (that is, of the ten tribes) about the same time that Isaias prophesied in the kingdom of Juda. Ch. --- The chronological order is not observed in any edition. The Sept. very from the rest. They place the less before the greater prophets, and read some of the names rather differently, as Prot. do also, though they have nothing but novelty to recommend the change. We shall here specify the Prot. names, (H.) in the order in which these prophets appeared: (C.) 1. Hosea, 2. Amos, 3. Jonah, 4. Micah, 5. Nahum, 6. Joel, 7. Zephaniah, 8. Habakkuk, 9. Obadiah, 10. Haggai, 11. Zechariah, 12. Malachi. H. --- It is not known who collected them into one volume. but the book of Ecclesiasticus (xlix. 12.) speaks of the twelve; and 4 Esd. i. 39. specifies them as they are found in the Sept. Osee, Amos, Micheas, Joel, Abdias, Jonas, Nahum, &c. as in the Vulg. C. --- Many other prophets appeared before these, (W.) but Osee is the first of the sixteen whose works are extant. He must have continued his ministry about eighty-five years, and lived above one hundred and ten, if the first verse speaks of him alone. But some take it to regard the whole collection, and may be added by another hand. C. --- The style of Osee is sententious and very hard to be understood, (S. Jer.) as but little is known of the last kings of Israel, in whose dominions he lived, and to whom he chiefly refers, though he speaks sometimes of Juda, &c. C. --- By taking a wife, and other parables, he shews their criminal conduct and chastisment, and foretells their future deliverance and the benefits to be conferred by Christ. We must observe that the prophets often style the kingdom of the two tribes, Juda, Benjamin, Jerusalem, or the house of David; and that of the ten tribes, Ephraim, Joseph, Samaria, Jezrahel, Bethel, or Bethaven; and often Israel or Jacob till after the captivity of these tribes, when the latter titles refer to Juda, who imitated the virtues of Jacob better than the other kingdom. W. --- Then all distinction of this nature was at an end. H.

The additional Notes in this Edition of the New Testament will be marked with the letter A. Such as are taken from various Interpreters and Commentators, will be marked as in the Old Testament. B. Bristow, C. Calmet, Ch. Challoner, D. Du Hamel, E. Estius, J. Jansenius, M. Menochius, Po. Polus, P. Pastorini, T. Tirinus, V. Bible de Vence, W. Worthington, Wi. Witham. — The names of other authors, who may be occasionally consulted, will be given at full length.

Verses are in English and Latin.

HAYDOCK CATHOLIC BIBLE COMMENTARY

This Catholic commentary on the Old Testament, following the Douay-Rheims Bible text, was originally compiled by Catholic priest and biblical scholar Rev. George Leo Haydock (1774-1849). This transcription is based on Haydock's notes as they appear in the 1859 edition of Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary printed by Edward Dunigan and Brother, New York, New York.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

Changes made to the original text for this transcription include the following:

Greek letters. The original text sometimes includes Greek expressions spelled out in Greek letters. In this transcription, those expressions have been transliterated from Greek letters to English letters, put in italics, and underlined. The following substitution scheme has been used: A for Alpha; B for Beta; G for Gamma; D for Delta; E for Epsilon; Z for Zeta; E for Eta; Th for Theta; I for Iota; K for Kappa; L for Lamda; M for Mu; N for Nu; X for Xi; O for Omicron; P for Pi; R for Rho; S for Sigma; T for Tau; U for Upsilon; Ph for Phi; Ch for Chi; Ps for Psi; O for Omega. For example, where the name, Jesus, is spelled out in the original text in Greek letters, Iota-eta-sigma-omicron-upsilon-sigma, it is transliterated in this transcription as, Iesous. Greek diacritical marks have not been represented in this transcription.

Footnotes. The original text indicates footnotes with special characters, including the astrisk (*) and printers' marks, such as the dagger mark, the double dagger mark, the section mark, the parallels mark, and the paragraph mark. In this transcription all these special characters have been replaced by numbers in square brackets, such as [1], [2], [3], etc.

Accent marks. The original text contains some English letters represented with accent marks. In this transcription, those letters have been rendered in this transcription without their accent marks.

Other special characters.

Solid horizontal lines of various lengths that appear in the original text have been represented as a series of consecutive hyphens of approximately the same length, such as ---.

Ligatures, single characters containing two letters united, in the original text in some Latin expressions have been represented in this transcription as separate letters. The ligature formed by uniting A and E is represented as Ae, that of a and e as ae, that of O and E as Oe, and that of o and e as oe.

Monetary sums in the original text represented with a preceding British pound sterling symbol (a stylized L, transected by a short horizontal line) are represented in this transcription with a following pound symbol, l.

The half symbol (1/2) and three-quarters symbol (3/4) in the original text have been represented in this transcription with their decimal equivalent, (.5) and (.75) respectively.

Unreadable text. Places where the transcriber's copy of the original text is unreadable have been indicated in this transcription by an empty set of square brackets, [].

Chapter 13

The judgments of God upon Israel for their sins. Christ shall one day redeem them.

[1] When Ephraim spoke, a horror seized Israel: and he sinned in Baal and died.

Loquente Ephraim, horror invasit Israel; et deliquit in Baal, et mortuus est.

[2] And now they have sinned more and more: and they have made to themselves a molten thing of their silver as the likeness of idols: the whole is the work of craftsmen: to these that say: Sacrifice men, ye that adore calves.

Et nunc addiderunt ad peccandum; feceruntque sibi conflatile de argento suo quasi similitudinem idolorum : factura artificum totum est : his ipsi dicunt : Immolate homines, vitulos adorantes.

[3] Therefore they shall be as a morning cloud, and as the early dew that passeth away, as the dust that is driven with a whirlwind out of the floor, and as the smoke out of the chimney.

Idcirco erunt quasi nubes matutina, et sicut ros matutinus praeteriens; sicut pulvis turbine raptus ex area, et sicut fumus de fumario.

[4] But I am the Lord thy God from the land of Egypt: and thou shalt know no God but me, and there is no saviour beside me.

Ego autem Dominus Deus tuus, ex terra Aegypti; et Deum absque me nescies, et salvator non est praeter me.

[5] I knew thee in the desert, in the land of the wilderness.

Ego cognovi te in deserto, in terra solitudinis.

[6] According to their pastures they were filled, and were made full: and they lifted up their heart, and have forgotten me.

Juxta pascua sua adimpleti sunt et saturati sunt; et levaverunt cor suum, et obliti sunt mei.

[7] And I will be to them as a lioness, as a leopard in the way of the Assyrians.

Et ego ero eis quasi leaena, sicut pardus in via Assyriorum.

[8] I will meet them as a bear that is robbed of her whelps, and I will rend the inner parts of their liver: and I will devour them there as a lion, the beast of the field shall tear them.

Occurram eis quasi ursa raptis catulis, et dirumpam interiora jecoris eorum, et consumam eos ibi quasi leo : bestia agri scindet eos.

[9] Destruction is thy own, O Israel: thy help is only in me.

Perditio tua, Israel : tantummodo in me auxilium tuum.

[10] Where is thy king? now especially let him save thee in all thy cities: and thy judges, of whom thou saidst: Give me kings and princes.

Ubi est rex tuus? maxime nunc salvet te in omnibus urbibus tuis; et judices tui, de quibus dixisti : Da mihi regem et principes.

[11] I will give thee a king in my wrath, and will take him away in my indignation.

Dabo tibi regem in furore meo, et auferam in indignatione mea.

[12] The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up, his sin is hidden.

Colligata est iniquitas Ephraim; absconditum peccatum ejus.

[13] The sorrows of a woman in labour shall come upon him, he is an unwise son: for now he shall not stand in the breach of the children.

Dolores parturientis venient ei : ipse filius non sapiens : nunc enim non stabit in contritione filiorum.

[14] I will deliver them out of the hand of death. I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy death; O hell, I will be thy bite: comfort is hidden from my eyes.

De manu mortis liberabo eos; de morte redimam eos. Ero mors tua, o mors! morsus tuus ero, inferne! consolatio abscondita est ab oculis meis.

[15] Because he shall make a separation between brothers: the Lord will bring a burning wind that shall rise from the desert, and it shall dry up his springs, and shall make his fountain desolate, and he shall carry off the treasure of every desirable vessel.

Quia ipse inter fratres dividet : adducet urentem ventum Dominus de deserto ascendentem, et siccabit venas ejus, et desolabit fontem ejus : et ipse diripiet thesaurum omnis vasis desiderabilis.

Commentary:

Ver. 1. Spoke. When Jeroboam proposed to erect the golden calves, people were seized with horror; yet they consented, and soon after Baal and other idols were worshipped. W. --- Ephraim was one of the greatest tribes, and by its example the rest were drawn into idolatry. Achab principally introduced the worship of Baal, which caused God to decree the misery of his people. 3 K. xvi. 31.

Ver. 2. Calves. A cutting reproach! Those who could stoop to adore a calf, might be so blind as to sacrifice men! Heb. "sacrifice, ye men who," &c. Jeroboam issues this edict. C. --- Sept. "immolate men; calves are wanting." H.

Ver. 3. Away. C. vi. 4. --- Chimney, or hole, at the side or top of the room. C. --- Heb. arubba, (H.) means also "a locust," as the Sept. render it, though here it affords no sense.

Ver. 5. Knew: treated thee with kindness, or tried thee. C.

Ver. 6. Pastures: the more they were indulged. H. Deut. xxxii. 15.

Ver. 7. Lioness. Sept. "panther." I will pursue them even in their captivity.

Ver. 8. Whelps; with the greatest fury. 2 K. xvii. 8. --- Inner. Heb. "what encloses the heart;" or, I will break their hard heart. C.

Ver. 9. Own. Evils are brought on by the sins of men, which God does not cause. W. --- Sept. "who will aid to prevent thy perdition, O Israel." H. --- God alone is the author of salvation. He also punishes, (Amos iii. 6.) but for man's amendment in life. W.

Ver. 10. Princes. It was on this pretext that a king was demanded. 1 K. viii. 20. Will any now save you? M.

Ver. 11. King; Saul, Jeroboam, or the Assyrian. --- Away. Osee, (C.) so that you shall have no more kings of Israel. H. --- Sept. alone have, "I took (C.) or had him in," &c. S. Jer.

Ver. 12. Hidden. He thinks to escape. H. --- But I keep it like pieces of silver, bound up in my treasury. S. Jer. C.

Ver. 13. Him. He shall be taken when he least expects it. His fruit shall come forth. Jer. iv. 31. --- Children. He shall have no share in the division of property, or shall not escape when the father shall bring his children to an account. The Chal. &c. insinuate, that the infant affords no help to come forth, as it would if it had sense. C.

Ver. 14. Death. This must be understood of eternal misery, from which the just are preserved. All must die, and many suffered a violent death from the Assyrians. W. --- After denouncing the severest judgments, the prophet promises redress and a sort of resurrection, which was a figure of the real sufferings and rising of Jesus Christ. The apostle applies this text to him, but follows not the Heb. or Sept. 1 Cor. xv. 55. C. --- Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? Prot. read, O grave, (marg. hell) instead of the latter death. Heb. ehi has been twice placed for aie, I will be instead of where? (H.) as the Gr. Arab. and Syr. versions, as wll as the context, evince. All the versions prove the same corruption to be. v. 10. Kennicott, Aquila, and the 5. edit. read where? Sym. I will be: (S. Jer.) so that the change probably took place between A. 130 and 200. Sept. "Where is thy cause gained, (in a lawsuit, or thy justice; dikh. H.) O death?" &c. - Eyes. I can find no consolation, (S. Jer.) because the people cause dissension by their perseverance in evil. Hebrew also, "repentance," &c. I will utterly destroy Ephraim; or rather, "vengeance...because he shall flourish," &c. If Ephraim would repent, this should not take place; but now, the Lord will bring Salmanasar, a burning wind. v. 15. C.

Ver. 15. Springs of death; or the sins which Christ, born of a virgin, shall destroy, and liberate the vessels of election from hell. S. Jer. H.

#prophecy of osee

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