#Bullet the blue sky topic

[homeslong]

Bullet the blue sky topic

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Hyperdimension Neptunia the Animation has an end credits theme that has a soundalike of Brian Culbertson's "Colors of Love", entitled "Neptune Sagashite" by Afilia Saga.The Second Raid switches it out for " Shissou ", a piece suspiciously similar to the theme from Airwolf. "Tokku Yarou" is also used in Fumoffu for the next episode preview.

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Also, in Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu, the ending song, "Kimi Ni Fuku Kaze" sounds VERY similar to Santana and Michelle Branch's "The Game of Love.".

Lampshaded with a cameo as a cellphone ring tone and someone says it sounds like an old American TV show (which indeed was called Tokkou Yarou A-Chiimu when broadcast in Japan). The title is actually "Tokkou Yarou?" / 「特攻野郎？」(yes, with question mark) which means something along the lines of "Gung-ho guys".

Full Metal Panic!: "Tokkou Yarou", a background theme used in that series is incredibly similar to the theme from The A-Team.

Nandemo Q was a children's television show which aired on NHK between 19 that featured educational Suspiciously Similar Songs of popular western songs that often featured Pun Based Titles such as " Hotaru California ".

The track "Ikamino Gekiban" sounds like the theme song from The Simpsons for some reason.

The second episode uses a parody of Metallica's "Sad but True.".

For whatever reason, Gojou Shioji from Excel♡Saga appears to have " Another One Bites the Dust" as his theme song, with a few courtesy notes thrown in.

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The theme "Nunnally" from Code Geass uses the same melody, same lead instrument, SAME KEY, and a similar chord progression to the main theme from an obscure Ennio Morricone-scored film, Malena.

Bomberman Jetters: Mujoe's theme sounds more like a Shout-Out to the Seinfeld theme, as it uses ALL the instruments and arrangement of the infamous theme, but with just little changes on some notes.

The opening to Sarutobi, the Third Hokage's Battle Theme Music, is an almost exact copy of Ozzy Osbourne's 'Bark at the Moon'.

Orochimaru's theme in Naruto borrows part of its melody from Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor.

The lyrics of the song " Golgo 13 and I " sung by Cindy Wood from the 1983 anime film Golgo 13 sounds closely familiar to the 1970 spaghetti western Opening theme of Indio Black/Adios Sabata composed by Bruno Nicolai.

" Uprising " sung by the English rock band Muse takes its inspiration from the song Pray For You sung by Cindy Wood from the Opening of the 1983 anime film Golgo 13.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

1968 [Chapter 1: Ares, God Of War]

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 5.7k

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Let’s begin with a definition.

Disaster is a noun derived from Ancient Greek: dus, a prefix meaning “bad,” and aster, or “star.” In the time when humans worshipped Zeus and Hera, Hephaestus and Aphrodite, it was believed that tragedies resulted from the inauspicious positioning of celestial bodies: a volcano erupts because of Jupiter, a returning comet brings with it a flood. There is a certain helplessness inherent in this mythology. There is predestined suffering that lies in wait until all the jewels of the sky have malignantly aligned.

Have you ever met someone who made you ache to change the stars?

~~~~~~~~~~

Gunshots explode through the lobby of the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida; you feel the wind of the bullets as they clip by, fragmented metallic rage. Aemond is on the marble floor, blood pouring down his face, blood all over the white shirt beneath his navy blue suit jacket when you rip it open, tearing a button loose. He’s reaching for you through the jostling and the screams, leaving crimson handprints on your mint green dress. And you think: He just won the Florida primary. He’s not supposed to die. He’s supposed to be the president.

“What happened?” Aemond murmurs, his right eye dazed and only half-open; the left has vanished beneath a cloudburst of gore. Perhaps ten yards away, people have caught the assailant and pinned him against one of the vast Venetian windows until the police arrive. They’re roaring at him in red-faced fury, their closed fists strike his ribs and his cheekbones, their knuckles paint him scarlet and indigo.

“You’re alright, you’re alright.” You brace both palms over the maroon stain spreading rapidly across Aemond’s chest and press down as hard as you can. Your fingers are drenched in seconds, warm fading life. He’s bleeding to death. You shriek through the turmoil: “Criston?!”

“Is he okay?” Aemond asks faintly. He means the baby; you’re six months pregnant with his first child, his greatest treasure, his Atlantis, his Holy Grail. Aemond has already decided that it’s a boy. Sometimes you fear what will happen if he’s wrong.

“Yes, honey, the baby’s fine, don’t worry. Criston!”

Aegon is here instead, sweating out rum and ruin like he always is, hair too long, veins full of pills, colliding with you and pawing at his dying brother with untrustworthy hands. “Aemond?!”

You shove Aegon away, splattering him with blood. “Get back, he needs air!”

“Where’s he shot?! Let me see—”

“I told you to get back!”

“Goddammit, you don’t own him! He’s mine too!”

Criston has battled his way to you and is yanking Aegon back by the collar of his frayed olive green army jacket, stolen from Daeron when he visited home after basic training, a uniform of embittered revolution worn by a man who’s never fought for anything. “Aegon, make sure someone’s called for an ambulance, then meet the paramedics at the door and help them find us.”

“But—”

“Go!” Criston yells, and Aegon scrambles to his feet and is lost within the crowd. You can hear Otto bellowing at journalists and hotel employees to make space for the fallen senator; there are flashes of cameras and prayers shouted aloud. Above your head are crystal chandeliers and a vaulted ceiling hand-painted by 75 Italian artists in the 1920s; swimming in your skull are visions of Jackie Kennedy in the pink suit filthy with her husband’s brains. It’s just before midnight on Tuesday, May 28th. Upstairs in their oceanfront Imperial Suites, nannies will be shaking awake the absent adults of the Targaryen dynasty, who retired with the children before Aemond made his victory speech in the hotel ballroom: Alicent, Helaena, Fosco, Mimi.

Criston’s hands—larger, stronger—replace yours over the gushing wound in Aemond’s chest. What did the bullet hit? His lung, his heart? He’s not speaking anymore, his right eye is closed. His bloodied hands rest open and empty on the floor. “Criston, he’s dying,” you sob.

“No he’s not. We’re not going to let him.”

“What’s the closest hospital?”

“Good Samaritan is just across the bridge on the mainland.” It’s Criston’s job to know these things, though he had been thinking of you when he plotted his meticulous notes in his day planner: in case you eat a bad cheeseburger, or trip on the stairs, or catch the flu and start burning up with fever. Aemond worries about the baby. Aegon has five children, Helaena has three, and Aemond will feel that he has been robbed of something if he does not swiftly procure a family of his own. He needs you on the campaign trail, but still, he worries.

Across the lobby, the police have arrived to arrest the aspiring assassin. He puts up a fight when they try to handcuff him and earns a nightstick to the gut, an elbow to the nose. He is choking on his own blood. Perhaps he is drowning in it. Good, you think.

“Don’t kill him!” Otto booms at the officers. “I want him alive for trial! I want him to ride the lighting up in Raiford, you keep that son of a bitch alive!”

“Aemond?” You thread your fingers through his blood-soaked hair. What happened to his left eye? Is it somewhere underneath all that carnage, or is it gone? “Please wake up. Please stay with me. We need you. The baby and I need you.”

“He’s going to live,” Criston promises, both hands still clamped over the bullet wound to slow the hemorrhaging.

“Aemond, please…” How can he be the president with only one eye?

An old woman in a yellow striped skirt suit is lumbering close with a homemade prayer rope clenched in her fist. “A komboskini for the senator!” For his last rites. For his soul.

“He doesn’t need it!” Criston says. “He’s not dying! No one is dying tonight!”

Still, you take the komboskini from the lady, each of the 100 knots a prayer unspoken. She is a devotee of Aemond, and you must show her gratitude. “Efcharistó, aderfí. O Theós na se evlogeí.” They are some of the few Greek words you’ve mastered; you’ve used them often since Aemond announced that he was running for president. Thank you, sister. God bless you.

The paramedics arrive, splitting the crowd like a laceration, white uniforms and a stretcher to ferry Aemond away. People are wailing, cursing, swearing vengeance. Aegon has returned and is peering down at Aemond with those large, glassy, muddled eyes, afraid to ask. “Is he…is he still…?”

“He has a pulse,” Criston replies. He helps the paramedics drag Aemond onto the stretcher and strap him to it. Your husband’s shirt is now drenched in red like garnet, like cinnabar, like the poppies that commemorate the boys butchered in World War I, like the wasted blood being spilled in Vietnam, men reduced to memory. “Good Samaritan?” Criston confirms with the paramedics.

“Yes sir,” the most senior one agrees. And then to you, with great deference, with compassion that transcends what somebody can harbor for strangers: “Ma’am, there’s a place for you if you want it.”

“I do,” you say, tear-streaked face, hands bathed in blood. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

The ambulance is idling outside the main entranceway of the hotel. Criston grasps your hand to steady you as you step up into the back, and you take a seat on the red leather bench beside the stretcher. The paramedics are placing IVs, holding an oxygen mask to Aemond’s face, muttering urgently into their radio, abbreviations and code words you can’t understand, a secret language of organic calamities. High above the stars are crystalline and radiant in a clear sky. In your own chest—unshredded by metal, unpierced by rage—your intact heart is pounding.

The lead paramedic turns to you again and says: “We can fit one more person.”

It’s your decision. You are the senator’s wife; you were supposed to be the next first lady of the United States. You look through the ambulance’s open doors. Aegon stares back expectantly, his hair falling in his face, his arms thrown wide, petulant, combative, useless, drunk. “Criston.”

“Bitch!” Aegon hisses at you as Criston climbs into the vehicle. The doors slam shut, the engine rumbles, the siren squeals as the ambulance races westbound on Breakers Row towards County Road, which connects with Flagler Memorial Bridge and the mainland.

Through the rear window you watch Aegon as he stands in the white-gold hotel luminescence, becoming smaller and smaller until he vanishes, and all you can see are streetlights, and all you can smell is blood.

~~~~~~~~~~

Every story needs its cast of characters. Here are the major players in the summer of 1968.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson is in the White House watching the clocks tick towards November 5th, when his successor will be ordained. He has chosen not to seek reelection. Since his ascension upon Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Johnson’s domestic focus has been unprecedented civil rights legislation and his War On Poverty, yet what has infected the media like blood poisoning is the war in Vietnam. On the television are napalm bombs incinerating Vietnamese peasants, caskets draped with American flags, riots being beaten down by police, college students torching draft cards and chanting “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Now the president is sick in body, in spirit, in heart, and this is not a metaphor: he suffered a near-fatal cardiac arrest in 1955 and another shortly after John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, Texas. He will die almost exactly four years after leaving office. Had he sought another term, he would have been unlikely to survive it. The public eye is something like a snake bite; it sinks its fangs in and you hope the venom burns clean before it can curse you with clots or hemorrhages or paralysis, before it can drown you in the dark waters of infamy.

In the void left by President Johnson’s surrender, four factions have emerged within the Democratic Party. The old guard—the same labor unions, congressmen, and local political machines who have steered the platform since the days of Franklin D. Roosvelt’s New Deal—has flocked to current Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey is competent yet uninspiring, a mid-fifties Midwesterner who flinches at the unpolished fury of antiwar protests and sedately lectures Black Power activists on the dangers of “reverse racism.” He is not a threat. He is a sheep in sheep’s clothing, and this is the time for wolves.

Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota is unapologetically opposed to the Vietnam War, a moral crusader, a reluctant warrior, a man who wears his lack of taste for the presidency like a badge of honor. He feels compelled to run, but he does not crave it. He thinks this makes him a saint; but Joan of Arc was burned at the stake and Saint Lawrence was roasted alive. Like Halloween candy plunked into a child’s neon orange plastic pumpkin, McCarthy has collected his own coalition, college students and posh urbanites who believe themselves to be the future of the Democratic Party. In 2016, people will conjure McCarthy’s ghost when drawing comparisons to a controversial left-wing senator from Vermont named Bernie Sanders.

If McCarthy is the future and Humphrey is the past, then former governor of Alabama George Wallace is downright archaic. He is the candidate of choice for Southern white supremacists, averse to Republicans since Lincoln and still reverent of Depression-era New Deal programs that kept them from starving to death. Wallace is best known for his promise of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” and pledges to end the chaos that has besieged America through strict law and order. Provided he loses the Democratic primary, Wallace plans to run in the general election as an Independent, hoping to peel away enough support from the major party candidates to force the House of Representatives to declare the winner and then leverage his votes to negotiate an end to federal desegregation efforts in the South. His devoted wife Lurleen just died of uterine cancer, a diagnosis which Wallace kept hidden from her for years; doctors are in the habit of informing husbands of their wives’ ailments and giving them carte blanche control over the treatment plan, which unfortunately in Lurleen’s case was nothing. She was 41 years old.

In his short-lived castle of red corridors like the marrow rivers of bones, President Johnson hides from the hippies who jeer and spit; Humphrey frowns at them, McCarthy tries to appease them, Wallace says the only four-letter words they don’t know are “w-o-r-k” and “s-o-a-p.” But Aemond climbs down from podiums to meet them like old friends. He is young, only 36. He has a brother serving in the swamps of Vietnam. He is focused, determined, insatiable; he devours every scrap of news that is printed about him and writes his speeches by hand. As the self-admitted runt of the Targaryen family, Aemond knows what it is like to be underestimated. He wants a better America, and he wants to be the president, and he wants these things in equal, relentless measure, each fueling the other until these ambitions become inseparable. He has grown up hearing slurs against Greeks and consequently has no tolerance for discrimination, which he contends is antithetical to the American Dream. He attends civil rights marches in labyrinthian cities, antiwar protests on college campuses, union meetings in coal mining towns of West Virginia and Kentucky and Wyoming, music festivals crowded with long unwashed hair and braless women, fundraisers flush with the deep pockets of the Northeastern elite. Aemond’s coalition grows each day, bleeding away strength from his rivals like a Medieval surgeon. Their flesh turns cold and anemic, while Aemond’s heart pumps scalding torrents of blood.

If Aemond wins the Democratic primary at the convention in August, his opponent will almost certainly be the Republican frontrunner Richard Nixon of California. Nixon wants the White House just as badly, and he’s much smarter than he looks. He was Eisenhower’s vice president for eight years in the 1950s and lost to the ill-fated John F. Kennedy in 1960 by a whisker; some say he did not lose at all, but instead was cheated out of 100,000 votes by Kennedy’s mafia connections in Chicago. But with the Democrats divided and their incumbent president floundering, Nixon’s timing has never been better. He was once a poor boy with two dead brothers who earned a scholarship to Duke Law. Now he will become whoever he needs to be to win the presidency of the United States.

1968 is the year of wolves. The fangs are sharp, and the bellies ache with hunger.

~~~~~~~~~~

A local deli has opened early and sent sandwiches to Good Samaritan Medical Center for the family and friends of the senator from New Jersey: ham and Swiss, cucumber and cream cheese, tuna salad, egg salad, pimento cheese, BLTs, Cubans. The lobby is filling up with bouquets of flowers and handwritten notes. You pace and count the knots of the komboskini over and over again as you wait; Aemond has been in surgery for hours. The nurses periodically bring you Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate, scalding watered-down sweetness to distract you from the fact that some surgeon is currently rooting around inside your husband’s ribcage.

Alicent—a convert to the Greek Orthodox faith just as you are, though far more zealous, far more sincere if you dared to admit it—is pleading for God to save her son as she clasps her own prayer rope. Helaena is seated beside her, eerily calm. Helaena’s husband Fosco is wandering around boredly and inflicting small talk upon the nurses, ogling out the third-story windows, playing with his red Duncan yo-yo. Otto is making a series of calls using one of the phones at the nurses’ station. Criston is there too, leaning over the countertop and speaking with Otto in low conspiratorial whispers.

Aegon is sitting alone and glaring at you. He takes a rattling bottle of pills—prescriptions that doctors are too afraid not to write for him when he asks—out of a pocket on the front of his green army jacket, spotted like a leopard with your bloody handprints. He opens the amber-colored, cylindrical container and pours two, no, three tiny white tablets into his palm. He tosses them into his mouth and washes them down with a swallow of his own mediocre hot chocolate, still glaring. You ignore him.

“How could this have happened?” Mimi says again from where she’s slumped in her chair. Aegon’s wife has a Snow White sort of beauty, but with a perpetual ruddiness in her nose and cheeks from the gin she sips constantly. You suppose it would make anyone a drunk, being married to a man like that. Her maiden name was Marina Marceline Leroux, but everyone has always called her Mimi, even the press on the rare occasions when she makes an appearance. Her children—Orion, Spiro, Violeta, Thaddeus, and little Cosmo, only five years old—are all back at the Breakers Hotel with the nannies, the same as Helaena’s. Mimi blubbers to nobody in particular: “How…? Who…? Who would want to hurt Aemond…?”

Someone needs to sober her up. You fetch a BLT off the platter of sandwiches and offer it to her. “Here. Eat.”

“I’m not hungry. Who on earth could be hungry at a time like this? I’m absolutely nauseated, I’ll never want food again—”

“Mimi, eat the sandwich.”

“Fine, fine,” she slurs morosely, then takes an unenthusiastic bite. She listens to you, all the women do. They listen to you, and you listen to Aemond, and the circle is closed and complete.

Criston is walking over now. You turn to him, needing good news, bad news, any news. “It was a Wallace supporter,” Criston says. From his seat, Aegon is watching Criston with his slow drugged gaze, listening intently. “Some bell pepper farmer from up by Jacksonville.”

“He’s been taken to the local jail for holding?” you ask, and then add: “Alive?”

“Yeah, and he already has a record. Assault and battery. His brother-in-law is apparently a Grand Dragon in the Klan.”

“What the hell is a Grand Dragon?”

“Well, it’s higher than a Goblin, but not as illustrious as an Imperial Wizard, does that answer your question?”

“Perfectly.” You smile at Criston, a pained, wry smile. He returns it and places a palm over your belly. You are still wearing the mint green dress Aemond picked out for you this morning, before he won the Florida primary, before he was shot twice by the disciple of a political adversary and laid at death’s doorstep. You are still covered in your husband’s blood.

“You’re feeling alright?” Then Criston smirks, knowing how ridiculous he must sound. “You know. All things considered.”

“We’re both fine. The baby’s moving around, I can feel it.”

“You can feel him, you mean,” Criston teases, knowing Aemond’s preoccupation with his unborn son; but you can’t bring yourself to appreciate the joke.

Aegon says to you suddenly: “How the fuck did you let this happen?”

“What?” you answer, stunned.

Aegon stands and approaches, lurching, raging. “You always have to be right beside him, in the photographs, in the headlines, in the soundbites, but you let some psychopath run up and shoot him? Twice?!”

“I thought he just wanted to shake Aemond’s hand, or maybe get a quote for an article—”

“You didn’t notice the gun?!”

“Aegon, sit down,” Criston orders.

“It happened in seconds,” you say. “You think you would have done better? You and your Valium, and your Librium, and your Percodan? You think your reaction time would have been so superior to mine?”

“Please,” Alicent moans, mopping tears from her pink cheeks with a handkerchief. “Please, don’t fight, not now…”

“We are all friends here,” Fosco adds in his thick Italian accent, yo-yoing by a window.

“You want to be the first lady so bad but you can’t handle it!” Aegon shouts, his voice echoing through the lobby. “You’re not some prodigy, you don’t have all the answers, you’re just a girl who stitched yourself to Aemond and then you let him get shot, he’s being operated on right now, maybe he’s even dying, and you still act like you’re so fucking perfect—”

“You’re mad because you know that everybody here is thinking the same thing,” you tell Aegon, cold and cruel. “That if someone had to get killed tonight it should have been you.”

Aegon’s mouth drops open; he stares at you with that slippery, opaque, stoned woundedness, pathetic, infuriating, illogically childish. Everyone else pretends they haven’t heard you. Alicent sniffles into her handkerchief. Fosco begins humming I Want To Hold Your Hand. Mimi chews sluggishly on her BLT. From the nurses’ station, Otto says, holding the phone to his chest: “It’s George Wallace. He’s calling for Aemond’s wife.” Then he waits to see if you’ll agree to take it.

Of course you will. You have to. You are acting in your husband’s stead. You go to the nurses’ station and grab the handset when Otto passes it to you. “This is Mrs. Targaryen.”

“Ma’am, I just wanted to offer you my sincerest condolences.” He has a pronounced drawl, born and raised in what he has praised as the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland. You animal, you think. You braindead bigot. “I do hope the senator makes a hasty recovery. I sure would like to beat him at the ballot box, but I have no stomach for anarchy. An act like this is repugnant to me, as it should be to any red-blooded American.”

“It was one of yours, do you know that?” you say, dripping venom. “One of your hateful ghouls.”

“I have no such knowledge. But if the shooter does turn out to be a supporter of my campaign, I disavow him utterly. He deserves a nice long sit in Old Sparky and then to meet his maker.”

“You inspire men to commit violence, and then you renounce them when they spill blood. I’m still wearing my husband’s. It’s on my hands, it’s on my dress, and I will not absolve you of blame. You are a gardener of discord. You grow it like roses or wheat. You tend to it until it blooms.” Otto is studying you, bushy eyebrows raised. “If you’d truly like to repent, perhaps dropping out of the Democratic primary would be a good start. And then you could find something useful to do, like drowning yourself.”

From whatever office he’s currently lounging comfortably in, his shoes kicked up on the desk, Wallace chuckles. “Aemond is very fortunate to have as ardent a defender as you, my dear.”

“Yes, a devoted wife is such a treasure. It’s a shame you killed yours.”

“Ma’am, once again, I just wanted to express how terribly sorry I am for your family’s hardship. I would never wish for an incident like this—”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be emboldening white supremacists then!” You slam the phone as you hang up.

Otto looks at you. He says: “Did it go well?”

The heavy double doors leading to the operating theater swing open, and a surgeon steps through them, still drying his hands with a dark blue towel. He has changed his scrubs and washed his skin, but you notice a spot he missed: a fleck of half-dried blood up by his temple. That’s Aemond, you think. That’s a piece of him.

Everyone rushes to gather around the doctor, even Mimi; she lists like a ship taking on water as she walks, gnawing at all that remains of her BLT, just a sliver of white toast crust.

“The senator is alive,” the doctor says, and Alicent cries out in relief. Criston rests a palm on her shoulder. “But we could not save the eye.”

“He’s half-blind?” you ask. There’s never been a half-blind president. There’s never been a Greek one either. And the only reason this is stuck in your mind is because you know it will consume Aemond’s.

The doctor nods. “We had to remove it. The bullet that struck Senator Targaryen in the head, fortunately, was more of a graze. It ricocheted off his skull and didn’t cause any trauma to the brain, but his eye was…” He hesitates, trying to find a more polite word than shredded, macerated, pulverized. “Destroyed.”

“You stopped the bleeding?” Aegon says, astonished. “He’s okay? He’s really okay?”

“The second bullet pierced the thoracic cavity and was lodged less than an inch from his heart. He was very lucky. We repaired the damage to the best of our ability, and I am optimistic that the senator will make a full recovery. He’s resting comfortably now, but he should be awake soon.”

“Oh, thank God,” Alicent says, glistening dark eyes raised to heaven. The salient points gathered, Fosco wanders off again, his yo-yo dangling from its string.

Otto asks: “When can he resume campaigning?”

The doctor is caught off-guard; it takes him a moment to answer. “That will depend on the senator’s stamina as he regains his strength. If he chooses to stay in the race at all.”

Otto scoffs. “Of course he’ll stay in. This is what he lives for. You really can’t give me a ballpark figure?”

The doctor is determinately impassive. “I would estimate a month or two before he can withstand the rigors of the campaign trail again.”

“California is June 4th,” Otto recalls, counting off dates on his fingers. “Illinois is the 11th, New York is the 18th…”

“Look, there are people outside!” Fosco announces excitedly as he peers through one of the windows. “Hello! Hello everybody!”

“Fosco, you idiot, stop waving,” Otto snaps. “Go sit down.”

“But they are cheering.”

“Not for you.”

Fosco, somewhat deflated, grabs an egg salad sandwich off the platter and plops into a chair to eat it. He’s dressed in a green plaid sport coat and tight white trousers, very chic, very European. You’ve never been able to imagine Fosco and Helaena being passionately romantic with each other. They’re both a bit too doll-like for that, closer to Barbie and Ken than flesh and blood, blank stares and vague ambitions.

“Someone should talk to them,” Alicent says softly. She means the crowd that is forming in front of the hospital: journalists, cops, local politicians, mutilated veterans, college kids, farmers, fishermen, women and children, the future and the past. Everyone turns to look at you.

“I’ll do it,” you volunteer. You will, you must. Aemond could have chosen a hundred similarly suited women to be his wife, but he chose you, and when he did your vows became a blood oath.

Criston accompanies you downstairs to where the crowd has gathered just outside the front entrance of Good Samaritan Medical Center. The night air is warm and humid, the stars bright. You had thought of so many things to tell these people as you’d stood in the elevator as it descended, but now your mind is empty, fearful. There are photographers with blinding camera flashes and apostles waiting with famished eyes. From the depths of injustice and poverty and war, they have come to pay their respects to the man they believe is destined to save not just themselves but their world. What should I say? What would Aemond want me to say?

“I am very pleased to share with you all that Senator Targaryen is out of surgery and regaining his strength.”

There are cheers and applause and prayers; you are still clutching the komboskini that the old woman gave you in the lobby of the Breakers Hotel. You see more prayer ropes in this flock, and rosaries too, Bibles and dog tags, copies of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Joanne Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

“We would like to thank you for your heartfelt support. Aemond and I are so very grateful, and he is looking forward to being back on the campaign trail soon.”

More clapping and whistling, and then the crowd waits. You aren’t sure what they want to hear as you stand in the glow of the hospital luminance; your hands are trembling wildly, so you clasp them together as you hold the komboskini. Criston glances over at you, concerned. You settle on the truth.

“The man who tried to kill my husband tonight is a supporter of former Alabama governor George Wallace and an avowed white supremacist. Any ideology that advocates for violence and prejudice is a threat to our bodies, our nation, and our souls. We will not surrender to it, not even when our lives are in jeopardy. We will not concede that hope for a better world is lost. We will press ever onward with the knowledge that God is on our side, and that the future of this country is worth fighting for.”

You are bathed in flashbulb lightning; your ears ring with the thunder of the applause. You are shaking hands now, nodding, beaming, Criston following you like a shadow as you move through the congregation. You stop to listen to a middle-aged woman in a floral dress who wants to give you marriage advice: never get bossy, don’t become selfish, remember that you are his safe harbor in the storms of life. It is your job to gift her your momentary veneration. You have beauty, but she has wisdom; or at least, that is the bargain that has been struck, that is the presumption everyone agrees upon. She must have some advantage over you, otherwise the decades she has spent in service of her parents and husband and children have been wasted, she has carved away pieces of herself to feed hungry mouths until she vanished like the doomed nymph Echo. In return, she tries not to envy you too much, not to dismiss you as foolish or frivolous or lustful. Sometimes you think that women are filled with such vicious, relentless self-loathing that it feels good to direct it at someone else for a while, to pick apart another body, to tally up the deficits of her spirit.

“Aemond is so lucky to have you,” the woman says. You can barely hear her over the roar of the crowd.

And you smile as you dutifully reply: “I think it’s the other way around.”

~~~~~~~~~~

There is a television mounted on the wall in Aemond’s room. The news coverage, the volume turned way down low, oscillates between his own near-assassination and the stalled peace talks in Paris. Representatives of the United States and North Vietnam cannot agree, and so each day more body bags are flown home to return the bones of the nation’s sons and fathers to Missouri, Alabama, Idaho, Maine, Wisconsin, Maryland, Arizona, California, New Jersey, everywhere else. Someone has to end it. Aemond will end it.

“I dreamed I won Florida,” your husband mumbles, and that’s how you know he’s awake, here in a hospital bed and wearing IVs like strings of Christmas lights around a pine tree.

“You did,” you tell him, gently smoothing back his hair from his forehead. His left eye—where his left eye used to be—is bandaged; his words are soft and labored. “Humphrey was second. Wallace got third. But you won. And you’re going to be okay.”

“McCarthy?”

“It seems you’re devouring his coalition.”

Aemond’s lips slowly curl into a grin, triumphant. “It is God’s will.” And this is what he always says. It is God’s will that he survives, it is God’s will that he wins the presidency, it is God’s will that you give him sons.

“Yes,” you agree, lifting his right hand to kiss his knuckles. Then you press the komboskini you’re still carrying into his weak grasp. It means more to Aemond than it does to you. “Yes it is.”

Aemond sinks into unconsciousness again, morphine and dreams that blur with reality. There will be pain soon, and plenty of it, but he is free from that impending truth for now. You rise from your chair to tell the rest of the family that Aemond is beginning to wake up. Alicent and Criston will want to speak with him.

When you open the door, Aegon is standing there: an eavesdropper, a trespasser. He glares at you with his large wet ocean-blue eyes, hazy with pills, glinting with resentment. Reluctantly, you step aside to let him in. Aegon wobbles as he passes you and has to grab onto the doorframe to steady himself, scrabbling like a trapped animal.

“You’re a disaster,” you say, caustic like acid, biting, repulsed.

Aegon whirls and jabs his index finger against your chest, bloodstained mint green wool bouclé by Chanel. “You’re a vessel. You’re a cow. And one day he’ll be done with you.”

You feel something hitting you like a bullet, cracking ribs, piercing lungs, tearing muscles and ligaments. Your lips have parted, but you can’t fathom words. Aegon has said many things to you—bitter things, belittling things, things in mixed company, things when you’re alone—but never this. For the first time since you met him two years ago, he has won one of your sparring matches. He has the upper hand. He has wounded you.

Aegon can see this, certainly. But he doesn’t seem pleased with himself. He looks a little shellshocked, like he can’t quite believe he said the words, like maybe if given the chance again he wouldn’t take it. But the moment is over now, and you can’t get time back, it is a thread that unspools until every inch is gone, spent, tangled in a thousand webs.

Aegon staggers into the hospital room. You flee from it. Out in the lobby the phone at the nurses’ station is ringing again. They’ll all be calling now to give their requisite sympathies. Humphrey counsels prudence, McCarthy prays for peace, LBJ offers the empathy of someone who has felt the cold gaze of Death in his own doorway, Nixon praises Aemond’s resilience and quotes the ancient philosopher Seneca: “There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.”

[magic-hcs]

*climbs out of a manhole* hello!, a few minutes ago I got hooked on a song called “be around me”, and I think if ut sans, ht sans, uf sans us sans called s/o baby by accident, kinda they still aren't dating...yet ;)

Thank you for the ask! I've listened to the song and I hope this scenario is what you had in mind. its short.

Bear; Horrortale Sans

Red: Underfell Sans

Sky: Underswap Sans

Time to cast some magic and see what we'll get!✨

✨✨

Sans: You’re very lucky if he didn’t shortcut out of there the second you said “what..?”. You’re also lucky if he did stay and didn’t just deflect and avoid the topic like he avoids picking up his sock. 

In a perfect scenario Sans openly will explain why he called you that. But this isn’t a perfect scenario. So your best bet to get any answers as to why Sans called you that is to ask Papyrus. And what you’ll do with the information you’ve acquired is something only you can decide.

✨✨

Bear: Perfect copy of that meme that goes:

“What?

“what?” 

He could’ve gotten away with it if his bone cheeks didn’t slightly flush that faded blue and if he didn’t sweat like he always does when he feels like he wants to be everywhere except here. Please help the poor Bear. 

✨✨

Red: Man is sweating bullets internally but looking smug on the outside. You see, Red has an advantage, and that advantage is that he always flirts. He’s flirty, even with friends, using nicknames like ‘doll’, ‘darlin’, ‘snack’, etc. He just hadn’t used ‘babe’ before.  It just slipped to be honest. So if he just pretends that it's just another nickname he’ll be in the green…As long as you don’t mind the nickname that is.

Stars, Red really wants to shortcut the fuck out of this conversation, but it will be suspicious if he does. So stuck toughing it out it is. 

There won’t really be any change to the relationship between you, unless you mention it. 

✨✨

Sky: Sky is committed to what he says, he made his bed and he’s going to lie in it. And hope for the best mainly. If you missed it, he’ll just go along with that. But if you did hear it, Sky won’t deny what he said. 

He’s the only one you’ll be getting an honest confession from without needing to prod. Sky leaves the ball in your court. 

✨✨

✨✨

Thank you for participating in this spell, I hope it was to your satisfaction.

[nevadancitizen]

-> O LORD, O LORD (WATCH OVER ME)

synopsis: joshua graham talks an awful lot about god and his blessings, and it leaves you curious as to what prayer is actually like.

word count: 1.8k

characters: joshua graham, courier six! reader

trigger warnings: mormonism, discussions of god + jesus christ

notes: this can be read as platonic or romantic, wasn't sure what direction i wanted this to go in :P also it was really hard to find information on mormonism without touching any mormon-affiliated sites but i rekindled my love for wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit!! everyone say thank you wikipedia <3333

The Lords of post-apocalyptic America are usually the ones with the most money, the most influence, the most soldiers on the ground. There is no bearded man in the sky, no Adam and no Eve, no christenings and no afterlife. When you die, you die, and there’s nothing beyond that. Nothing. Nothing remains. Someone might remember you for a little while after, but not for long. 

And yet, somewhere in the cracks and caves of the canyon of Zion, there is still worship. There is still prayer and reverence and love for God and Jesus Christ and all his children. 

But this is the first time you’ve heard of this mysterious “Jesus Christ” character and the weird way Joshua Graham talks when speaking of him.

He’s usually straightforward and blunt with his (and the Dead Horses’) needs and words, but when the topic of God comes around, he speaks in an almost poetic way – flowery, ornate. You usually only hear that type of talk from someone that’s day-tripping on Mentats, trying to sound smarter than they actually are.

But Joshua is smart. He’s a translator, with knowledge of language pouring over the cusp of his lips. His people are entranced by the inner workings of a professionally-crafted firearm, and he’s no different. He’s the prodigal son of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints. He’s basically a goddamn genius – in multiple fields, no less. 

It’s only reasonable that you’d want to pick his brain as you sit, cross-legged, on the ground of Angel Cave, loading bullets into magazines. Joshua sits a few feet away, meticulously checking the numerous .45 pistols that lay across the table over and over again.

You clear your throat and the sound echoes a little in the small cave. “Graham?”

He glances at you, then returns his gaze to the guns in front of him. “Yes?”

“Is it – uh, this God thing…” You scratch the side of your nose. “You… I don’t really understand it. I mean, following a few laws and receiving eternal salvation and all that sounds good, but I just… don’t get it.”

“I understand,” Joshua says. He flips the empty pistol in his hand so that he’s looking down the barrel and pulls the trigger. A dull click. “Most survivors think that there is nothing more to this world: just a well-trodden trail that they’re supposed to walk, from the house of Birth to the house of Death.”

He flips the pistol so that he’s holding the grip and slides the magazine back in. “Those looking for faith had simply been trying to find offshoots in this path, other houses to occupy. That is, if they ever actually felt the calling of God, even if it was the voice of a false one. They say that there are only two houses, and only dirt connecting them. But this is untrue.”

You continue thumbing bullets into the magazine. “How do you know? I mean, I don’t want to be disrespectful, but…”

“It’s nothing I haven’t heard before,” Joshua reassures. “I’ve met a menagerie of people, seen grotesque creatures that were birthed from mutations and chems instead of God’s perfect hands. I appreciate that you’re approaching this with an air of curiosity rather than judgement.”

Joshua sets the pistol on the side of the table of the pistols he’s already checked. He turns in his chair so that he’s facing you and sets his elbows on his knees. The pale blue of his eyes are stark against the burn scars of his skin as he looks down at you. “What would you like to know?”

Clips of his voice flash through your mind – “You’re a good neighbor to us,” “Good news is our most valuable commodity,” “The fire that had kept me alive was love. Their love. God’s love.” – but it settles on one: “It never stops burning. My skin. Every day, I have to unwind the bandages and replace them with fresh ones. Exposing my body to the air is like living through it again. But it's better to be clean than comfortable.”

“Well…” You shift under Joshua’s piercing gaze. “You’ve stayed loyal to God, right? All your life. You worshipped and prayed and… yeah.”

Your eyes flicker up to meet Joshua’s. The bandages that cover him in his entirety give nothing away. “So why did he let you be burned like that? If he’s, y’know, all-loving, all-forgiving, shouldn’t he have guided you away from Caesar? Or, let… let you die?”

Joshua stares at you, then blinks once, twice. It’s like he wants to be sure of his words before he actually speaks. “There are some things that you don’t want to do and you pledge to yourself that you won’t do. You forbid yourself, and then, suddenly…”

His eyebrows furrow. “They happen all by themselves. You don’t even have time to think about them: they just happen and that’s it. Then you’re left just watching yourself with surprise – disgust – and convincing yourself that it wasn’t your fault, it just happened all by itself.” 

Joshua’s hands come together and the bandages make an abrasive sound as he folds his hands, his elbows still on his knees. “But things don’t happen by themselves. The Legion didn’t build itself – I had a hand in it. And so this is my punishment. My atonement for not noticing how things were changing day-to-day. Not noticing how translating became giving orders, how giving orders became leading in battle, how leading in battle became training, punishing, terrorizing.

“I am a wicked man, with a wicked soul. I can only pray to God that this is enough for everything I’ve done.”

Your eyes return to the half-loaded magazine in your hand, and the bullet in the other. You roll the bullet in your fingers as you think. It’s… weird, to you, Joshua’s relationship with God. He doesn’t sound all that loving and forgiving. So why worship him? Why make and keep covenants with him? It sounds contradictory and hypocritical.

“Okay.” You look up at Joshua again as you thumb the bullet into the magazine. “Then… praying. What’s praying? I mean, I’ve seen you doing the…” You set the magazine in your lap and bring your hands together, palm-to-palm. “Before eating. I know that’s part of prayer, ‘cause you told me. But can you, like, hear him? Or is it like talking to a wall?”

“I cannot hear him, no,” Joshua says. “But I know he is listening, and I offer every prayer in the name of Jesus Christ, who is a medium through which man can converse with God. I feel him touch my heart, and guide my mind with his blessings and counsel.”

“Blessings and counsel sound nice,” you say. “But what do they look like? Like, how do they manifest?”

Joshua tilts his head slightly, the bandages on his neck making a soft sound. “Rain in a time of drought. Dryness in a time of flooding. A bullet that makes contact in just the right place. A bullet that just barely misses. God’s blessings are diverse and many.”

“Sounds like I could use some of those blessings.” You laugh under your breath as you go back to loading the magazine. A few seconds pass as you fill it, then move on to filling the next. An idea pops into your head as your hands continue their repetitive actions. 

Why shouldn’t you be able to get a blessing? From what you understand, it only takes a few words and an invocation of a holy name. It should be easy to get one – right? Or maybe not. Either way, you’d need it, especially with the way Joshua described the examples of blessings. Divine intervention sounds like it could literally be a lifesaver.

“What if, uh…” You scratch your cheek. “What if I want one of these blessings?”

Joshua narrows his eyes, the reddish burns of his skin cutting into the blue of his irises. “Do you… wish to pray? Do you want me to pray over you?”

“Yeah, I guess,” you say. You glance up at Joshua, then look down at the magazine. Your hands fumble a bit, then correct themselves. “I don’t… really know how to, though.”

“I will lead you in prayer, if that’s what you truly want,” Joshua says.

All it takes from you is a single nod.

He gets up out of his chair and kneels before you, resting on the heels of his boots. You look up at him, and he’s looking down at you. You could swear he’s looking at you with some kind of hope in his eyes, but it’s hard to tell in the low light of the torches that illuminate the cave.

“Come on. Up on your knees.” Joshua takes the magazine from your hands and sets it aside.

You sit up on your knees, resting on your heels, mimicking Joshua. You clear your throat nervously. “I don’t know what to do.”

“It’s okay.” Joshua takes your hands in his, cradling your fingers with his and resting his thumbs on your knuckles. The bandages on his fingers are abrasive, but in a comforting type of way. “As I said, I’ll lead. Now bow your head and close your eyes.”

You do as he says, and his rumbling voice starts the prayer. 

“Dear God, I thank you for this day, and I thank you for your allowance for life to continue prospering in this wasteland. Now, allow me to direct your attention to one of your creations: the one I’m praying with right now.

“Allow me to pray over this courier. I pray that no matter where they go, no matter how far off the trail of fate they fall, you will watch over them. Even if they fall to temptation – any temptation – that you will still protect them with all that you can, for I know you are merciful, and I know you are loving. 

“In this world filled with defilement and savagery and violence and barbarity, the only comfort I can turn to is you. Allow me this comfort. Allow me to know that this courier, no matter what they do, no matter what sin they fall to or transgression they commit, is safe. In Jesus Christ’s name, amen.”

Joshua lets go of your fingers and brings his hands away from yours. 

You open your eyes and look up at him. You glance around the cave – nothing’s different. Everything seems to be exactly the same.

“Is that it?” You ask, then register how disrespectful that sounds. “I mean – I just didn’t think it would be that easy.”

“Yes, the prayer is over.” Joshua stands, then holds out his hand to help you up. You take it.

“Now, please, make yourself sparse.” He glances at you, then his eyes flicker over to the table stacked with .45 pistols. “I have some of my own praying to do.”

[moreausturtles]

"the orange sun in the blue sky"

a/n: hi guys this is a rly rly old weirdly made draft that I made during my rly bad hyperfixation on the rise movie; i thought i might share it with y'all bc im somewhat proud of it? pls dont mind any mistakes i wrote it in a rush i think...? gl to everyone reading hahaha lmk what u think pls dont be mean

summary: leo and mikey are the only ones alive. they finally defeat the last of the kraang, but at a cost.

warnings: unchecked + unedited weird bullet point format; slight mentions of death/blood; one swear word?; very angsty and sad sorry :((

word count: ~1k

(imagine FINALLY defeating Krang 1 as a mission success)

- the baja blast duo fight the krang, lots of hard hits and close calls and they have the LUCKIEST breakthrough.

- krang 1 is on the ground and no longer able to move, all its tentacles are severed. its hanging on by a thread, one that leo is more than happy to cut.

- “this is for my family.” leo whispers, looking down at the krang in disdain.

- he jabs his sword into the krang's body under his foot, killing it in one motion.

- and just like that, it was over.

- leo takes a moment to breathe, like his body wasn’t letting him before.

- he allows himself to think, to process, to take in the fact that they had just won the war.

they won.

- a small smile grows on his face and a quick rush of excitement takes over his body

- “we did it…” he whispers, “mikey, we did it!” he repeats it, a part of him still in denial and acting like saying it again was going to convince him that the worst was over.

- but the worst was far from it.

- he turns around to mikey excitedly, who he thought was just quiet because he was just as shocked as he was

- but boy was he stupidly wrong

- mikey stood there, a hand on the side of his plastron with blood dripping from it then to the ground

“mikey…?”

- he tries to give leo a smile, but fails as his body drops to the ground

- leo’s heart drops along with him, he calls out his name and runs to him quickly and takes him in his arms

- mikey, even before his mystic powers, always had this signature orange glow radiating off of him. but this time, leo was afraid it was going to become very dim very soon.

- leo took his baby brother’s head in his hand—he didn’t care if mikey was fucking older than him (hc no thanks to his excessive use of mystic power), he was still his baby brother

- mikey needed medical attention fast. but they were in the middle of nowhere. no medical team. no backup. no hamato.

- “we did it, leo…?” mike manages to whisper out and smiled up at his older brother.

- “yeah buddy, we did…” the sniffling soon came as leo tried to fight back tears. he had known this would happen; could you really blame a guy whose family got picked off one by one during the apocalypse to think that way?

“i’m sorry, leo...”

- god, mikey’s voice shattered leo’s heart into pieces. so weak and trying.

- “hey,” leo uttered, trying to change the topic, “remember the time when you thought the gumbus was real?”

- this earned a very weak, wheezed chuckle from the mystic turtle, who had his eyes closed to visualize the fond memory

- “you did too…” leo laughed bitterly at that, feeling his little brother’s breathing pattern slow.

- “i did, yeah. it’s one of my favorite memories.” said leo.

- “mine too…” mikey opened his eyes, the memory ending, and looked up to see leo’s face drenched in tears. a pang hit mikey’s chest as he realized he was going to leave his brother soon.

- “hey, leo?”

- “yeah, miguel?” a playful nickname he hadn’t heard in years.

“you were always my favorite brother.”

leo laughed, genuinely laughed even though it felt like he was being stabbed in the chest tenfold.

- “don’t tell donnie or raph.”

- “i think they know.”

- both of them pause for a moment, neither of them knowing what to say or do. there wasn’t really anything else to do but wait. Each second leo spent trying to figure out what words he wanted to tell mikey. “I’m sorry.” “Say hi to them for me.” “Please don’t leave me alone.”

- mikey was his partner in crime and now he was just… fading. His little brother was dying.

- leo knew their time was running short from the way he was listening to mikey’s labored breaths. slow and trying. mikey thought about using his mystic power for one last push, to stay with leo, to make do with what was left of the world.

- they could rebuild it. it was easy for him to make things out of thin air. leo knows how to build and farm and haul and everything you could think of.

- but the mystic warrior was tired. they had been fighting for decades. he couldn’t lift a single finger even if he tried, and that was fine with him. he honestlyhadn’t felt relaxed like that in years.

- maybe they were better off not saying a word, mikey needed to save any air he could take in. leo kept his mouth shut just so he could spent just a little bit more time together in this bittersweet silence.

- suddenly he sees mikey’s lips open a little bit, and the next words that come out would forever leave leo wounded.

“I love you, big brother.”

- it took everything in leo to not break out in full sobs right then and there. he wanted to scream, beg, plead to the God that did this to mikey— if one even existed.

- leo swallowed the lump in his throat, forming the best—and last— smile he could muster for mikey, mimicking him the way he used to do it for him and his older brothers so they wouldn’t have to worry.

“I love you too, little bro.”

- leo’s little ray of hope slowly went limp in his arms. and he was all alone.

- leo kept mikey in his arms, still and unmoving. maybe it was his punishment for putting mikey in this whole mess. for destroying the world and his entire family. maybe a God did exist, it was just never in his favor no matter how hard he fought to appease it.

leonardo, the last one standing of the hamatos, defeated the Krang and lived, while mikey took his place in the sky as leo’s ray of sunshine.

[ddostoyevskyy]

LOVING THE MOON

ALTERNATIVE TITLE: WHEN THE NIGHT APPEARS

Dazai Osamu

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒... f!reader, suicide ideation, PM!reader, PM!Dazai, major character death, written in 1st person's point of view (use of I and me), romanticization of suicide, sensitive topics, reader is described long haired for plot purposes.

𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄... I feel worse, so I have to write it off. A short drabble. I'm sorry if this is nowhere near Dazai's character, I just need to get this out of my system before I kms. Don’t hesitate to request, my request box is always open:)

𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐒... 2.124k

MASTERLIST.

There is a boy I have watched from afar. A boy with brown, curly hair and dark eyes. I watched him through the shadows where I'm certain he can never see me through those bandages wrapped around his head, covering one of his vision. He's ruthless with his subordinates; despite his slender figure yet broad shoulders that was draped by his dark coat and set of bandages covering his arms where his longsleeve, white button-up shows — he can throw a hell of a punch and kicks.

Mori Ougai, as I remembered my boss' name assigned me to watch over his youngest executive in the darkness where I am always out of reach; my ability were as black as my clothes and the dark circles around my eyes because of the sleepless nights with countless nightmares and horrors of screams are always haunting me to sleep. Mori Ougai told me to be aware as the boy I've been watching from afar became more fearless and formidable.

And, I always told to myself that someone as strong as him is not fitted for the Port Mafia. He can be something more. His strength and capability of surviving in the middle of fights and gunfires are admirable, that I know I cannot do life like him nor survive in such thing called life. I watched him through the darkness where it looks like he is the light; the form of strength and beauty at the same time despite clouding with grey clouds that never rains.

I have heard of his ability and I think he can help me tame those beasts in my nightmares.

But, I think he could only murder me in my sleep if I dare to.

He looks so out of reach despite being near in sight.

Moon.

That's what he reminds me of.

My whole world stayed still, heart pacing in such waves of emotions when one day, his dark eyes averted to the darkness where I've always been for the past four years since he and I were fifteen. My breath caught on my throat, but I held back my voice. His brown eyes held little to no emotion, but I could see a hint of confusion and amusement.

He saw me.

For the first time in my life, someone saw me despite hidden in the dark —hidden in the depths of my ability.

My silent gasp surely had reach his ears by the way he’s now intently looking at me without blinking, a slight smirk mused on his lips. “What do we have here? Are you real? I’m not hallucinating that there’s a pretty woman staring back at me, am I?”

The men in black glances at him with furrowed eyebrows as they averted their gazes to where the dark haired man staring at. That’s impossible, did he really saw me? Or maybe he’s really just hallucinating the way he called me... pretty. Nevertheless, I bit back my voice and stayed silent in the darkness of my ability, but his dark eyes never left me the whole time process of their assigned mission.

“Dazai?” A man’s voice appeared, Oda Sakunosuke, a Port Mafia member who never shot any bullet from his gun, a man with morals. His hair is dark maroon while his eyes are in a shade of sky blue with a stubble face. “Where are you looking at?”

He pointed in my direction as I stayed quiet. “Do we have a new Port Mafia member?”

Oda’s eyebrow furrowed, “None that I know. Why?”

“Is there any ability user who use shadows?”

“There’s one, I think the boss has been keeping and another high ranked like you, but I don’t really know any details. I was told this upper rank is only active at night.” Oda answered as he stared where Dazai has been looking too and I internally screamed. Did that man noticed me too? I’ve been hiding and watching him for four years, and now, he have taken notice of my presence.

“Do you see her? There,” Dazai pointed on my direction again as I shifted on my position, the darkness following me whenever I move, whenever I go and even in my sleep as they appear in my dreams. “She’s moving away, Odasaku! Let’s catch her.”

Shit! I hissed under my breath. Mori Ougai told me that if this man ever notice my presence, I should never face him.

But just like the moonlight shining through the darkness of the night, I can’t escape its light even if I hide through its own darkness; through its own shadows.

My breath were caught when a surprisingly warm hand despite his cold demeanor had caught my wrist as I abruptly stopped when a green dust of light appeared before my eyes and all those darkness I’ve been hiding from disappeared, the coldness I’ve felt for almost my whole life momentarily fading.

“See, I told you, Odasaku! I’m not hallucinating!” He said, enthusiastically and I frowned, a shaky sigh escapes my lips as I kept my head lowered while his fingers wrapped around my wrist in a firm grip. It was so warm as though soaked in a summer sun with an evident of rough fingertips that sent tingling jolts on my spine. Warm, that is only the thing on my mind.

Why don’t night can’t feel like this? Like the touch of his hand; like the sudden momentarily sparks of euphoria in my system. Night always feels cold and scary and I can’t enjoy the dose of the daylight because I’m always hiding in the dark. It burns in my skin as if my flesh is on flame as he tugged me near the sunlight as I hissed.

My eyes averted to the man with maroon hair as he stared back at me with furrowed eyebrows.

“(Name)?” My name escapes his lips and I pursed mine.

“You know her? (Name)?”

“I thought you were dead, (Name).” Dazai momentarily let go of my wrist, yet I felt him tug on the hem of my dark coat’s sleeve as Oda stepped closer to me. I have known him, Oda Sakunosuke. He’s also the reason why I am not eaten properly by my own ability and now he had found me once again.

“I thought so too... Sakunosuke.” My voice came off as whisper.

“You look worse than the last time I saw you,” He retorted and my lips formed in a small pout. He didn’t have to tell me the obvious, but I feel warmer than I expected as he put a hand on top of my head before softly patting. “But I’m glad, you’re alright.”

My lips softly parted as I breathed. He sounds like a father scolding his daughter now, and I don’t blame him for that.

I was too drawn to the moon that I never realized I finally liking the night.

Oda managed to pull me out of the darkness again with the help of him; the man who made me love the moon again. I can’t help but to appreciate such short time Dazai Osamu and I known each other — even though, I’ve known him for years, there’s nothing to compare to when he’s already been aware of my presence even in darkness. I viewed him as the moon — shining so bright in the dark, despite his dark eyes. Or maybe I’m just too lonely that I seek his warmth that he made me feel in just a touch of a hand.

I am addicted to the moon and its scent.

The sparkles of the moon in the dark sky is something I never adored. But this moment when Dazai and I coincidentally met on the rooftop of the Port Mafia’s headquarters. His scent alcohol mixed with cigarettes, both sending tingling sensation on my sense of smell.

“The boss told me I could find you here,” He leaned on the railings with both of his arms folded as I am seated at the edge of railings. “Penny for thoughts of a pretty lady?”

A random thought came across in my mind as I glance at him, his dark eyes already looking at me. Despite its hollow and emptiness, it sparkles under the bright full moon and it made my heart flutter as my gaze softened, my lips parting slowly as I licked my lips before I raise my arm, letting go one of my will to live as my other hand gripping the railings.

I finally caressed the moon.

My hand planted on his dark hair that was surprisingly soft in my fingertips. I could feel him halt on my touch as I grab a few strands of his hair covering his face.

“I want to cut my hair this short and I want to buy a pretty white dress, so I will look beautiful when I die.”

The moon is also looking back at me.

He turned completely silent as he stared at me, examining my face as his gaze hovers on my lips before his brown eyes came back to mine. He let me caress his hair as I brush it away from his handsome face.

“You’re drown to death too?” He muttered, voice basking with the wind as though caressing me in such a gentle manner — but there’s no gentle in his manners, nor mercy with his beauty caressed by the moon.

“Maybe,” I answered with honestly. “My life has been slipping away eversince Mister Mori asked me to watch over you. I have been stucked in my ability which conquers me to the darkness for all my life.”

The moon smiles at me.

Although, not a heartwarming smile, he gave me a smile that made my heart shivered.

“How do I look?” He grinned and my heart can’t do it anymore.

I called the moon pretty.

“Pretty.” I mindlessly said as his grin fade a little, his reaction really caught off guard but his smile came back again as he shook his head.

“Someone had called me bastard and stupid, but I never thought I will encounter someone who’ll call me something unexpected.” He marveled at the way my face flushed in shade of embarrassment as I pull my hand away from caressing his hair.

“(Name), if I give you a reason to live, will you take it and live with me?”

The moon gave me a reason to live.

My eyes darted on him, almost a glare with furrowed eyebrows as he anticipated my answer, but I fell silent like my sleepless night without my horrors of screams as though my nightmares are already calm, the waves of my emotions are already tamed; that I am no longer in the dark. He grabbed my wrist like he did when he had nullified my ability of darkness — tonight, he grabbed my wrist to pull me away from death.

“The moon is beautiful, isn’t it?”

The only thing I could muster to say to the moon as it stared back at me with those dark eyes that held emotion I didn’t understand at first. But, when I realized it after he left — after a friend had died, I hid with the darkness again where I belonged before he pulled me into the light of his own darkness.

The moon brought light to me as it also push me to the pit of darkness again, darkness I called warmth as he gazed at me.

He made me love the moon; the moon that he is — illuminating and dominating against those multiple stars that I never noticed until my heart chose to. If that what makes him the moon, I can be the stars — shining in the dark sky and blinded in the moonlight. Both planets and orbits lined up in the universe and in the middle of it, there’s the moon that gave me the reason to live. I realized how much of an impact he emotionally gave me unconsciously.

The day he left, the day I appreciated the full moon; the moon that resembles Dazai Osamu — the mysterious man who made me leave the dark I am used to. And, the day he left, he brought my heart with him.

My moon.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

All Rights Reserved 2023 © ddostoyevskyy. Do not repost without permission or plagiarized.

[cookies-over-yonder]

Walk in the Park

CO-WRITTEN BY @silverlistenstothings

Nicky chooses the wrong dialogue option while chatting with Taylor.

Part 22 of The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Roommates

ao3

Maybe kicking a ball around was a no-go for Taylor, but the park still seemed like a good idea, no sports required. It’s a nice day, slightly cloudy and not too hot, so it’s as good a time as ever to take Taylor out for a little picnic, Nicky figures. He even planned ahead this time, though he’s starting to think he should have planned more. But creating a bullet list of conversation topics to bring up with your son is definitely lame, right?”

"So, um, how's school?"

Is that what people are supposed to ask their kids? Nicky wonders, sitting at a park bench with Taylor, who's finishing up his takeout sushi from a restaurant nearby.

 

"'S fine,” Taylor says around a mouthful of rice. 

 

"That's good, uh…"

 

How are you doing?

 

Are you holding up okay after everything?

 

"What do you think of the blue sky?"

 

"Uhh, it's weird,” Taylor responds, glancing balefully up at it. 

 

"I grew up with it looking like this, you know."

 

"Mm,” Taylor hums. He’s losing him. 

 

"Do you… miss it being red?"

 

"I guess, yeah… I dunno. It's weird, because technically this sky is the—" he does air quotes, " normal sky, but I don't… like it… I mean—sorry—I dunno—"

 

Taylor scratches at the back of his neck and directs his gaze to the empty takeout container on his lap.

 

"That's okay, kiddo,” Nicky reassures. “I get it, you know?"

 

"Mm."

 

Taylor is biting at his lip now, staring back up at the sky.

 

"I mean, everything was like, uh, super weird for me when the sky turned red, so, like, yeah."

 

There's a look of unease on Taylor's face—furrowed eyebrows and a slight frown—and he's got this faraway gaze that wasn't there before.

 

Nicky concludes that attempting this conversation was a bad idea, if his silence is any indication.

 

Fuck. He’s blowing this so bad already. 

 

Then Taylor's head tilts, as a bird flies by, and he's following it with his gaze. It’s small and brown, kind of orange around the head and the base of its tail. He’s sure that Sparrow told him what it was in another lifetime, but Nicky has no idea now. 

 

"I think that's a, uh… california towhee,” Taylor offers, a bit weakly, trying to regain his usual confidence. It doesn’t really work, but Nicky is more than willing to take the distraction. 

 

"Do you like birds?"

 

"Hermie does,” Taylor corrects, relaxing a little.

 

“Oh yeah?” Nicky wouldn’t have guessed that. They always seemed to be the other kind of nerd. 

 

“Yeah. They were telling me about sparrows the other day,” Taylor confirms, smiling slightly. “They’re really smart, they know a lot about birds.” 

 

Nicky hums, and they lapses back into silence, paying slightly closer attention to the sounds of the birds around them this time. 

 

A gust of wind blows through, and Taylor shivers. Nicky knows better than anyone how cold-sensitive being part-demon makes you. 

 

"Say, you wanna head back to my place and watch some anime?"

 

Taylor locks eyes with Nicky, and they're so full of light. The vacancy from earlier seems to have left them completely… or the light is bright enough to hide it.

 

“Hell yeah,” Taylor says with a grin. 

 

And so they leave, and Nicky resolves to save his earlier line of conversation for another time. He should check up on his son, and he will, just not right now.

 

Definitely.

[cjb0404]

Original Content Short Writing 1/2: Drafting an Essay

When I draft an essay I usually start with a thesis and an outline. When I’m writing an essay it helps me with my writing and understanding of the topic when the essay has a main focus and a few main points. I’ll start with a simple question such as “Why is the sky blue?,” and then I’ll add points to that question and make it into a statement such as “The sky is blue because of the size of blue light waves, how those waves travel, and the scattering of light.” After that I’ll make bullet points for my main topic (the blue sky) and my supporting points.

[melpomeneprose]

July 12, 1804

Read here.

Tagging: @nauticql & @historiavn.

Alexander’s POV:

Number ten, paces, fire! Click boom! It is merely a moment but it feels like an eternity, his very existence flashing before his eyes. From Nevis to Yorktown, to New York. In a brief moment, he can see it all, Elizabeth, Angelica, even Maria who had unknowingly scandalized the nation with their affair, and of course his John Laurens. He can feel the blood pouring out of the wound, feel his breath become shallower and shallower. He sees his Betsey and then, it is quiet, and then… a yellow sky, like a hurricane's eye, and then… to no avail, he does not survive this. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da—

Betsey’s POV:

He had said he would return, he had said it was but a morning political meeting. Elizabeth didn’t know what to make of the scene, she cried, she wailed, and she wept. She holds Alexander one more time. She can see very evidently the bullet wound he won’t come back from. She can feel the life leaving him, the once energetic young ginger full of opinions being tormented with every shuddery breath he takes.

“Shhh,” Betsey whispers comfortingly, lacing their hands together as Alexander’s hands grow limp and cold and deathly. She presses one last kiss to Alexander’s forehead and then, as he goes gently into a long sleep, she knows an eternity box, funeral and burial will soon follow.

Betsey does what she knows how, and opening a desk drawer she takes out Alexander’s letter to her, “This letter, my very dear Eliza, will not be delivered to you, unless I shall first have terminated my earthly career; to begin, as I humbly hope from redeeming grace and divine mercy, a happy immortality.

If it had been possible for me to have avoided the interview, my love for you and my precious children would have been alone a decisive motive. But it was not possible, without sacrifices which would have rendered me unworthy of your esteem. I need not tell you of the pangs I feel, from the idea of quitting you and exposing you to the anguish which I know you would feel. Nor could I dwell on the topic lest it should unman me.

The consolations of Religion, my beloved, can alone support you; and these you have a right to enjoy. Fly to the bosom of your God and be comforted. With my last idea; I shall cherish the sweet hope of meeting you in a better world.

Adieu best of wives and best of Women. Embrace all my darling Children for me.

Ever yours

A H

July 4. 1804

Mrs. Hamilton”

Then, she trades her blue for black, locks herself away for an hour and screams and cries to heaven, oh, Alexander, Alexander! If only we had more time.

Benjamin’s POV:

It is well past the occurrence of Hamiton’s passing that he hears the news. Of course, as a New York congressman, he attends the funeral.

Tallmadge isn’t entirely sure what to say, or how to console the widowed Mrs. Hamilton so he resigns himself to putting pen to paper and observing in silence.

Diary of Benjamin Tallmadge, July 1804:

“Alexander Hamilton was a well-intentioned man, but not always the picture of virtue or justice. Opinionated… we served in the continental army together and he assisted dear Mary, and me in business after the dreadful war. Often clever, he knew how to present himself certainly, never boring, but could get on one’s nerves at times. Faired well in the company of anyone, the late Hamilton either spoke too frankly or not frankly enough. An ally, a friend, and I believe we lack a bit of Nevis sunlight without him. I pray to the good God that Betsey and his children are aided well and that in time, he is remembered with all his dues.”

[annawayne]

🎁 💭🧪💎💌

-Also Clouds bc I kinda commissioned those asks as a favor

Thank you once again for asking, you have no idea how I appreciate it <3 🎁 Have a piece of a WIP you want to share? Oh, well, chapter 2 of "My yellow light in your soft whispers" is going to be quite a ride :)

She saw the sea for the first time when the ship of Marley left for Paradis.  Standing on the deck, Annie gazed into the vast blue expanse that played with the smoky sky on the horizon when it was difficult to draw the line between them. The repetitive, on the verge of the irritating, sound of the gasping waves crashing against the ship’s hull almost erased the voices of Bertholdt, Reiner, and Marcel beside her, and the salty breeze brushed her face and tousled her hair, covering the dullness of her eyes. And while the three boys around her seemed to be captivated by the solace of the quavering sea in from of them and excitedly chatting about the mission, her mind was occupied with the words of the man, that called himself her father.  Forgive me, he pleaded on his knees. For what?  Annie didn’t understand it at that time, she didn’t even know the concept of being hurt, not with physical wounds, existed. She didn’t understand, so she obeyed. She forgave him at that moment. Everything I taught you had been wrong, he wailed through his tears. Why? She became the Warrior, the pride of the nation, and the shifter of the Female Titan. He became an Honorary Marleyan, with the solid guarantee of her being dead within thirteen years and a peaceful life with praise and money. Like everything it was supposed to be.  Annie didn’t understand why it was wrong when the goal of many years finally being achieved was wrong. She didn’t understand, so she obeyed. Everything she was, everything she knew, from now was a mistake. She was a mistake.  Please, come back to me, his voice was cracked by foreign emotions.  What’s the purpose of it? Annie didn’t understand, but…he saw her as her daughter, even if she was a mistake. At least, this is what she wanted to think of it at that moment.  She didn’t understand, so she obeyed. I will, I promise, she said, leaving the rusty anchor full of poison in Liberio.  The swirling currents of the ever-changing hues of blue kept crawling with its dormant strength, and their vessel destined for a deadly mission confidently took its course. Annie didn’t care about the large mass of water, she even hated it as its magnificence and power were inherited, given by nature, and she needed to go through blood and tears to gain something, someplace in this world. So the same second her small feet felt the sand of the land of devils, the open sea became just another goal, another step toward her way back home.

💭 What inspires you and your writing? Oh, well, I guess, a lot of things. For example, MYLYSW was born just from one of my art WIPs (yeah, it's going to be a part of the story too!), then all these ideas that were in my head for some time lined up into one story. But in general, I guess it's just what is interesting to me - some fanfics, that I admire, sometimes, it's music, sometimes it's just my own sketch for future artwork, even my own feelings sometimes work as inspiration because my writing is also my own reflection on topics that are important to me. 🧪 Do you research for your fics? Y E S Depending on fics, of course, some topics are quite familiar to me, some are the whole new world. Well, for MYLYSW I researched some bullets injuries to understand what I could do with Armin :D 💎 Do you often write about a relationship or focus on an individual? Hm, I would say - individuals in relationships. I don't really like the idea of dissolving in one another, so even if my characters share an enormous bond - they are still in the first place themselves. Their love is just a part of themselves, and not them entirely. That's why I always try to give my characters some "ordinary, simple" things, describing them VERY specifically to show the reader that they're alive. Like, for example, Annie loves not just sweets in general, she loves blueberry cupcakes. Armin doesn't smoke just because he wants to be sexy at 29 years old, it's an imitation of relaxation or just a few minutes just for himself or with Annie (who, yeah, through the year embraced this new habit of his, but not right at the beginning), it's like a ritual among the chaotic days. 💌 Is there a favorite trope you like to write? Oh, HEH, I guess My yellow light it's the whole tribute to the trope "Character A in danger, character B is losing it" :D So, yeah, I guess it's definitely one of my favorites. But to be honest, I don't really rely on tropes. Maybe, I have them, but I just don't recognize them as tropes.

[iwoll]

The Tragic Tale of the Demolition Lovers: A Song Analysis

Gerard Way, lead singer of American rock band My Chemical Romance (MCR), is a master storyteller. Author of numerous bestselling comic books, Way spins tragic tales of damned lovers, dystopian futures, and science fiction failures. These topics bleed heavily not only into his solo music but also his band’s concept songs and albums, particularly the song titled “Demolition Lovers” from MCR’s debut album I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love. “Demolition Lovers” is a prequel to MCR’s second studio album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, which tells a tale of two seemingly star-crossed lovers who are pushed to folie à deux. This cautionary tale warns the audience-- through the instrumentals, lyrics, and tonal inflection-- not to confuse infatuation with love, a mix-up that may end in demise.

For songwriters, the lyrical content of a song is one of, if not the most, vital forms of expression; thus, total dissection of each word or phrase is necessary. “Demolition Lovers” is no different. For the sake of congruence, this couple consists of a man and a woman with the former being the narrator. The song begins with “hand ‘in mine, into your icy blues” (MCR 0:21) setting the scene of the “demolition lovers.” The man admires the cold, blue eyes of his lover—as if her soul is frozen or dead. He goes on to say, “’We could take to the highway/With this trunk of ammunition, too’/I'd end my days with you, in a hail of bullets” (MCR 0:28) implying the lovers are running from something, prophesizing their tragic outcome. The man knows the situation they are in is the beginning of the end, saying to his lover that he would rather die by her beloved hands than be killed by those from whom they are running. The line, “A liquor store or two keeps the gas tank full” (MCR 1:08) provides the exposition: they have robbed a liquor store and are on the run from the police. He goes on to say, “As snow falls on desert sky” (MCR 1:34) explaining he will love her through all the impossibilities of life and death. The man tries to finish his thought, saying, “Until the end of every—” (MCR 2:47) but is abruptly cut off. He philosophizes an existential thought, saying, “All we are is bullets, I mean this” (MCR 3:33). The man is trying to describe that, as bullets are made only to kill or harm people, so are humans—or, in the very least, him and his lover. Alone, bullets are harmless; however, when loaded into a gun, bullets are lethal. The man is her catalyst; as a gun to a bullet, he causes her death. As the police begin firing at the two, he cries, “Like scarecrows that fuel this flame/we’re burning forever and ever” (MCR 5:12), reiterating the notion that the burning infatuation between them that will always exist and cannot be stopped. Fatally shot, the two fall to the ground. As they bleed out together, lying in a mix of each other’s blood, they graze hands. In his final moments, the man stares into his lover’s lifeless blue eyes one last time, just as he did in the beginning.

The instrumentals of songs help an audience understand the emotion the artist’s emotional message. Bass, drums, and guitar play a monumental role in what makes a good song good; especially with MCR, emotions are dripping from the melancholy riffs, gritty basslines, and the dissonant high-hat. “Demolition Lovers” begins with a lonely guitar picking a minor chord, creating a sense of chilled eeriness. Like a child on a rollercoaster, the listener enters the ride. Energy starts to spill over as the listener is strapped in, and the bass and drums are added on. On every downbeat, a tap on the high-hat adds emphasis to the tone of absolute adoration, even madness, which this song provides. As the man starts to express his undying “love” to the woman, the instruments all get louder and harsher. The instruments crescendo until the listener is at the top of the hill, waiting to fall. At 1:46, the listener flies down the tracks. This high energy section is soon ended abruptly at 2:47 to signify a slow in time, a moment of clarity. After a beat of silence, slow melodic guitar begins. The four lines of B♭ sustained chords to G major chords create a sense of unease. Using the rollercoaster analogy, this would be the moments one is left zero-G whilst coming down from a loop-de-loop. In the final stretch of the song, the tone becomes more fearful, almost as if the instruments know what must happen to these victims of infatuation. As the narrative comes to an end, everything goes silent, the song ends on a sharp dissonant note and a bash of the drums, signaling the struggle is over: their lives, their infatuation, and their story.

Tonal inflections are important in artistic expression, and Way uses an array of inflections to extend the depth of the lyrics. “Demolition Lovers” begins with a low, distant voice breaking through deep guitar. Way sings in a pendular method that switches from very soft to harsh and maniacal. In the beginning, the man, soft spoken and romantic, is partially sane in his confession of love. Once the two are on the run, he loses his mind. He is manic in his proclamation of adoration. This is an example of the “folie” in the folie à deux trope; he has gone mad with infatuation. As the end swiftly approaches, the man has a moment of clarity where he acknowledges his faults. He thinks repeatedly to himself, “All we are is bullets” (MCR 3:33), acknowledging he caused this tragedy. Faced with death, he snaps back to reality: their end approaches and he knows it. Frantic and sorrowful, he tells his faux lover that this charade needs to happen, reasoning, “Like a bed of roses, there’s a dozen reasons in this gun!” (MCR 5:27). The insanity must come to an end; the two were never meant to exist together.

The song “Demolition Lovers” by My Chemical Romance uses methods such as lyrical content, instrumentals, and tonal inflection to support the idea that mistaking infatuation with love can lead to catastrophe. Searing visual imagery creates a cinematic masterpiece of love gone mad. Screaming guitars become gunshots straight to the heart; one feels as if they are beside the couple, bleeding. Theatric cadence offers no hope, moving from agonizing ballads to utter chaos. The final image of the song, “As lead rains, moving through our phantoms forever and ever” (MCR 5:08) does not provide a respite from their suffering, even in death. The release of heavy and painful emotions provides catharsis to the listener who is now willing to endure the pain not as a spectator, but as a participant.

[makeste]

plOt twIST! Star applied a rule to herself: "New Order cannot be taken by All for One!!" (I don't believe in Hori enough to actually believe this though lol)

so here's the thing, and I say this as someone who would very much prefer it if Horikoshi didn't kill/maim/incapacitate yet another badass female character. narratively, there has to be some reason why Star was introduced. this is a manga; brand new characters don't just show up out of the blue days before the final battle and dominate the story for more than a month without there being some sort of purpose to it. so either

Horikoshi decided he needed to hype up TomurAFO some more before the final battle (as if the War arc didn't hype him up enough already?), or

Horikoshi decided the good guys weren't capable of beating TomurAFO as things currently stand, and he decided the best way to resolve this was to bring in a random new character from America to lead the final battle (sorry Deku we decided to go with an outside hire), or

Horikoshi decided he needed to have a four-chapters-long battle with fighter jets and lasers and giant sky people for literally no reason because he has completely lost the plot, OR

this battle is not actually about S&S at all, but about S&S's quirk.

because New Order isn't the type of quirk you can just bring into the story without completely breaking the power balance, because it's just way too powerful. if he'd introduced it earlier, every single arc from that point on would have been marred by "WHY DON'T THEY JUST CALL STAR" discourse every single week. why didn't they just fly the eagles to Mordor; why didn't Ariel just write a letter to Prince Eric; why didn't Kate Winslet let Leo share her floating door (they showed on MythBusters that it was possible!!), etc. "because it's a story and sometimes you need to handwave things in order to create conflict" usually doesn't go over very well regardless of whether or not it's true, lol.

but anyway. so he couldn't introduce NO earlier without fucking up the story. and now that he's finally ready for it, he can't figure out a way for it to not feel completely forced (because in hindsight he should have foreshadowed it at least a little), and so he basically says "fuck it" and decides he might as well at least have some fun. and so we get this fight, and he throws some crumbs at the readers who have been waiting for some info on the international hero scene, and he also gets an opportunity to show and explain exactly how NO works, which is important since it's easily the most complicated quirk in the entire series to date.

were there better ways to do it? 1000% yes. is NO really even necessary in the first place? well, that one we can't really answer yet, because we don't know how exactly Horikoshi plans to use it. that said, here are a few possibilities:

having NO makes AFO overconfident enough to decide that he doesn't need to wait the full three days until his body's transformation is complete, and motivates him to attack U.A. early (in other words it's the difference between them facing a 99% TomurAFO, and a 100% version -- and that 1% difference could be everything).

having NO introduces a way to potentially separate Tomura from AFO again (AFO never did like to share).

having NO introduces the potential for some OFA plot twists in the 11th hour. if I'm AFO, one of the first things I'm going to ask myself once I obtain a quirk which lets me bend reality to my will, is "hey, so will this shit finally let me steal the unstealable quirk?" even if it turns out that it Doesn't Work Like That, I imagine he's going to have a hard time passing up the chance to find out.

and continuing from there (because "OFA plot twist shenanigans" is way too expansive of a topic to fit all in one bullet point), the very specific rules of NO introduce the possibility of a Rule having unexpected consequences, particularly if you don't get the names right. there's a ton of potential there for some monkey's-paw-style twists, especially since the true nature of OFA is still somewhat obscured right now. not to mention AFO and Tomura's merging identities might also throw a wrench into things.

and all of this is shit that I'm 100% down for, tbh. does it mean I'll be happy if and when Star goes down? no. does it mean I think this was executed well? very much no, lol. but that being said, I think there's a lot of potential here to make the final battle much more entertaining, and on top of that, NO may be just the plot device we need in order to finally force the answers to some of the series' most persistent questions. and if that happens, I will be more than happy to do some of that aforementioned handwaving.

unfortunately though, all of this pretty much means that AFO has to wind up with S&S's quirk somehow at the end of the day. which means things are not looking very good for her. and if for some reason he doesn't wind up getting it, then you have to ask yourself what exactly the point of this entire past month has been, and unfortunately I can't come up with any real answers to that. so yeah. much as I hate it, I think the story actually works better if AFO does take the quirk. which is fucked up, but yeah.

[ms-demeanor]

Just because capitalism is bad doesn't make rioting a good or effective means of change.

As much as I hate cops I feel like it pretty much proves my point to START with the article in the cop magazine about how the Rodney King riots changed policing in LA:

Shortly after the riot, Chief Willie Williams was sworn in as the first outside police chief in 45 years. The voters created a new system where the chief could serve only a five-year term, renewable once at the city's option. On two occasions so far, the city has sent the chief packing after five years.

(Police Mag April 2012)

Here’s Anaheim City Councilman Stephen Fassell talking about changes after riots in Anaheim due to police shooting people:

We now have a representative government that we did not have before. We now have a city government that listens more. We’re only six or seven months into this, so we still have to learn our way around. Overall, the city is taking a renewed interest in that neighborhood (Anna Drive) and others. Neighborhoods, in general, have higher visibility in the eyes of the city government from one end to another.

(OC Register, July 2017)

Here’s some historians talking to Vox about rioting:

The 1960s unrest, for example, led to the Kerner Commission, which reviewed the cause of the uprisings and pushed reforms in local police departments. The changes to police ended up taking various forms: more active hiring of minority police officers, civilian review boards of cases in which police use force, and residency requirements that force officers to live in the communities they police."

This is one of the greatest ironies. People would say that this kind of level of upheaval in the streets and this kind of chaos in the streets is counterproductive," Thompson said. "The fact of the matter is that it was after every major city in the urban north exploded in the 1960s that we get the first massive probe into what was going on — known as the Kerner Commission."

(Vox, September 2016)

This is from an abstract of a study done on the 1992 LA riots

Contrary to some expectations from the academic literature and the popular press, we find that the riot caused a marked liberal shift in policy support at the polls. Investigating the sources of this shift, we find that it was likely the result of increased mobilization of both African American and white voters. Remarkably, this mobilization endures over a decade later.

(American Political Science Review, 2019)

There’s a whole-ass article about this in Jacobin this week

Even the case of the 1960s is more complicated than the liberal story about scared white Nixon voters suggests. For one thing, there is substantial evidence that the riots led to higher government expenditures in the deprived cities where they erupted. James W. Button’s pathbreaking 1978 book Black Violence documented the ways the riots forced policymakers to pay attention to the effects of their policies on the urban poor, a group they had been happy to neglect previously. At a time when many social scientists viewed even protest movements as a kind of mass psychosis, Button showed that riots were a rational response to being ignored. Later research showed that riots could increase welfare expenditures, even in areas where white racism was strongest. In other words, even if riots pushed white public opinion in a conservative direction, they also brought important benefits to the areas where they occurred.

(Jacobin, June 2020)

And here is the full 17-page PDF of an article published by the American Political Science Association in their journal, I’m linking to the whole thing but I’m only going to reproduce the conclusion here:

We focus on violent protest as a political tool for a low-status group in the United States. While other scholarship has examined other forms of political action and asked if it is efficacious for racial minorities and other low-status groups, the scholarly literature has largely failed to ask whether rioting is a useful tool for building policy support, even though, from the perspective of the rioters, this question is paramount. Here we show that violent political protest can spur political participation among people who share an identity with the rioters.

Although it often seems extreme from the American perspective, political violence is not isolated to particular regions or eras and is still common in many parts of the world. Moreover, the implicit threat of violence underlies the relationship between governments and citizens in many places. As the use of violence continues to be an active feature of our political system, our findings and approach may help future scholars better understand this important topic.

(American Political Science Review, June 2019)

And also just because riots may or may not be politically expedient doesn’t prevent them.

I want to talk for a second about the concept of a state monopoly on violence.

The deal is that in most states (here meaning countries or governments, not US States) the State (or government) is the only entity that is allowed to be violent. You’re not allowed to break down your neighbor’s door, your partner isn’t allowed to hit you, you’re not allowed to smash your boss’s windshield. The state and its agents are the only things allowed to be violent and their violence is supposed to be used to curtail societal violence. The cops outnumber your partner and have the legal power to lock them in a cage if your partner hits you, this is in theory supposed to prevent your partner from hitting you. Fear of state violence is supposed to act as a deterrent to crime and interpersonal violence.

BUT there are supposed to be rules. The state is the only one allowed to be violent but they’re not allowed to be wantonly, willfully violent. The state doesn’t get to hit you with no evidence of a crime, the cops aren’t supposed to smash in your windshield, sheriffs aren’t supposed to break down your door if you haven’t committed a crime that warrants a violent response from the state.

The state isn’t holding up its end of the bargain.

The state has lost its right to a monopoly on violence.

Yes, the violence is unfortunate. Yes, the violence is not ideal. No, I’m not applauding when people set fire to local businesses.

I am maybe applauding a little when they set fire to a massive corporation that has utilized the violence of the state against citizens while working hard to protect itself against workers (Target) and I’m applauding the destruction of symbols of inequality and institutionalized racism (Rodeo Drive in LA and the Market House in NC and all the statues of racists on this list) and I’ma be real here, I kind of always think police stations should be torn down brick by brick or forcibly converted into libraries or low income housing.

So while the violence is not ideal I don’t think that it’s illegitimate. The state has lost its right to a monopoly on violence and a violent response is certainly one way to make that point.

But here’s the other thing:

All these riots started with peaceful protests against state violence. There are thousands of photos and videos of peaceful protestors peacefully protesting and having speeches and asking for change.

And there are hundreds of videos and photos of cops launching tear gas and rubber bullets at these peaceful protestors. There is a staggering amount of evidence that in city after city police escalated tensions and introduced violence to peaceful protests.

(and please let’s remember: all of this started in response to an act of police violence. These riots didn’t fall out of a clear blue sky, they are a direct reaction to four police officers killing a man by kneeling on his neck for eight minutes while he begged for his mother and his life. That is, in my opinion, something completely worth burning down a police station over even if that act never accomplishes anything further than burning down that police station)

[djadins]

aurora glow | thrawn x f!reader — part one

An alien ship lands on Earth after electrical failure. You have been surviving alone, the planet being struck by an EMP-like solar flare years prior. What happens when you meet the inhabitants of this ship on your travels?

warnings: violence, explicit language, canon divergence

rating: T

word count: 2.8k

a/n: Thrawn probably is and will be OOC during this series. also, as the story progresses i’m definitely bound to get things wrong and probably accidentally add something that’s actually from star trek (so apologies!) loosely inspired by the Voyager episode ‘Gravity’ and a book I recently finished!

You saw the crash before you heard the explosion.

It had been a long time since something had lit up the sky that wasn’t the moon, sun or auroras. You weren’t very far away from the crash site, you could tell. Although, admittedly, you were still bad at measuring distances. It was on your way southbound anyways - as it was fall, and winter and the first snow would be fast approaching.

You arms tightened around the smooth handle of your walking stick, one of your favorite found items. You preferred to think of them in this manner, rather than “looting” or “stealing”. Could they even be considered that if their owner was no longer there to use them? You didn’t think so, at least.

It took twenty minutes before you were close enough to see the smoke rising out of the giant space... ship. You felt a shudder rip through your body. You know exactly what you saw but it was still a concept you had to wrap your brain around. Believing for nearly your whole life that out there, somewhere, other life had to exist... and actually seeing it with your own eyes were two different things.

You instinctually began walking lower to the ground, closer to the shrubbery and trees, checking your hip for the well hidden, small 9mm you kept on you at all times. You knew you had few bullets left and would not use it unless you really needed to. There was a knife in the inside of your boot that you would try to use instead but only if the situation called for it.

You could make out many white, helmeted figures from here. At least, you assumed that was armor and not their actual bodies. There was also one, deep, calm voice alongside a fair amount of shouting that you couldn’t quite see. You walked in a semi circle, closer to the voices. There was a lot of brush, thankfully, that you could hide yourself in.

When you were close enough to see the event that was unfolding, you instinctively held your breath. There was the spaceship, in all her glory, smoking and partially buried in the ground. You were surprised there wasn’t more outward and obvious damage, but you weren’t sure of the full extent of the electrical failure or how far from the planet it had reach. Many of those white figures were scattered around, holding some sort of weapon in the direction of the action.

The shouting figures, which were now only a few feet from you, were holding weapons you recognized. Even with their backs fully or partially turned from you, you could tell that the three of them were human. Two men, who had their weapons pointed towards select armored white aliens, and one woman. She had a short-barreled shotgun that was pointed at the tallest of the aliens.

His crimson eyes caught your attention first and you released your breath at the sight of them. They were dark, reminding you of the Red Delicious apples you had stored in your pack. His vibrant blue skin contrasted harshly against his eyes and his pitch colored hair and uniform. His hair was short and slicked back but a few strands were hanging over his face. He seemed humanoid apart from his angular face, but even with that, if he wasn’t blue he might actually pass for human.

You realized the woman wasn’t shouting at him, but the uniformed men around him. Their weapons were pointed at the three humans but they were taking no action.

“We want all the food and supplies out of that ship, now!” she shouted. “If we don’t get it in five minutes, I’ll take big blue here down!”

You were close enough to see the jaw in the tall blue alien’s mouth tighten. He pinched his lips together tightly before responding in a cool, calm voice. “As I have already stated, my men will not respond to your demands. Neither will I, for that matter.”

The woman began shouting again. You bit your lip and wondered if you had gone mad for what you were considering doing. You didn’t even give yourself time to think if this was the smart move before you picked up the palm-sized rock that was on the ground beside you. There was a large, wooden warehouse on your right where one of the human men had been standing beside, weapon ready. You were about 30 feet away from it from your current position.

You wound your arm back and threw that rock with everything you had. It smashed through a wood panel, making a sharp cracking noise. All heads momentarily turned, except for the blue alien, who’s line of sight was now firmly focused in your direction. You had already taken off from the bushes, walking stick in hand, when you realized he was looking directly at you.

While everyone else’s attention was still focused on the dilapidated warehouse, you spun your walking stick behind your back and then quickly whipped it back in front of you, hitting the woman with the shotgun square in the head. Your walking stick shattered where it connected with her. She crashed into the ground with a bloodcurdling scream and you grabbed the shotgun she dropped. All eyes were now on you as you pointed it at her.

“Drop your weapons, you two,” you yelled, partially out of breath, eyes still focused on the woman on the ground. You poked her with the barrel of the gun. “Tell them,” you warned her.

She nodded her head and looked around at the two men. You heard the familiar crunch of grass as the two weapons were dropped, but your eyes were still focused on her. Then you heard the shrieks of the men and a sickening crunching sound that followed. Two of the white armored men now approached either side of you, weapons drawn. The blue alien was still silent, but he put his hand up towards his men. They lowered their weapons instantly.

He motioned for you to back up and you did just that. The two armored men flung their weapons behind their backs and went towards the woman on the ground. They restrained her before you finally drew your attention fully to the tall man in front of you. He had stepped closed to you now that you were hanging onto the shotgun with one loose hand, the barrel almost brushing against the grass.

He held a large, cerulean hand out to you. His eyes had seemed to lighten. “If I may,” he started, “it will take my men off edge.”

You nodded and passed the weapon over to him. He held it in both hands, studying it for a moment, before handing it to one of his men.

“Why did you betray your people?”

You looked from his hands back up to his eyes, your voice suddenly gone.

You bit your lip and looked around you, fully realizing the situation you had now put yourself in.

A handful of the armored men had restrained the three humans but the rest were looking at you and the alien. They still had their weapons drawn, and although they weren’t pointed in your direction, you knew that they easily could be.

“Th.. they weren’t my people,” you stammered, looking back into his vibrant eyes.

He tilted his head slightly. “Hmm.” He took his time, looking you up and down before doing the same to them. “They resemble you. Are you of a different race?”

“N.. no. I, uh,” you struggled on how to explain. You bit your lip again. “We are all humans, from this planet, yes. But I do not know them personally.”

Another hmm escaped his lips as you wondered how on this good earth you could even understand what he was saying to you. “I am still perplexed,” he admitted. “What would compel you to help me?”

You looked down at your feet after he asked you this. You honestly weren’t sure what surged through you in what had only happened moments earlier. You looked back up at him, directly in his eyes. “I’m not sure,” you answered honestly. “I have never seen an alien before and I didn’t want you to think we were all bad.”

His eyebrows scrunched together at your response, giving you what you could only describe as a quizzical look. It was as if he was trying to figure you out entirely by solely examining you. He took a step towards you.

“You have never met another who wasn’t from your own planet?”

You shook you head. “Before the blackout, it was a widely debated topic whether or not there was extraterrestrial life somewhere in space.”

He smiled at your response. “Well, I’m happy to inform you, there are many different life forms, spread across millions of light years.”

He watched your eyes light up at this statement. You couldn’t help but look up at the sky above you. You felt infinitesimally small in that moment.

“I am Thrawn, Captain of the Thunder Wasp.”

You looked back at him and gave your name.

“I am unsure of how your people greet one another, however it is a pleasure, nonetheless.”

You held you hand out towards him without thinking at his response. Some of his men tightened their grip on their weapons at your action and you flinched. He looked towards them and shook his head. He slowly mimicked your action, bringing his hand out but not quite touching you.

You grasped his hand, slow enough that he could pull back if he was uncomfortable. You looked in his eyes and smiled, slowly shaking his hand up and down. His hand was large, enveloping yours easily. He was incredibly warm to the touch. “Nice to meet you, Captain.”

He caught on to your action, bringing his hand up and down in a synchronous motion with you. When you both released your light grip, he smiled back at you. “Please, Thrawn is sufficient. I am not your commanding officer, but a visitor to your planet.”

After this interaction, Thrawn’s men separated, leaving the two of you to yourselves. There were still four guards with the other humans and only then did you bring your attention to them.

“Dirty bitch,” the woman spat at you and as soon as she did, one of the guards knocked her in the back of the head. A shudder ripped through your body after witnessing this.

Thrawn called out your name and you focused your attention back to him. “If I could borrow you a moment, I have some questions I would like to ask.”

You shook your head in affirmation. He turned on his heel, hands firmly clasped behind his back as he walked towards his ship. You left your walking stick on the ground as you followed behind him.

The ship was tilted sideways slightly, it’s nose buried in the ground while it’s backside was raised a little above. You approached the side of the ship, where two of his soldiers were standing in position beside a door.

At the Captain’s approach, they grasped what appeared to be suction cups on each individual door. The pulled and the door split open in the middle and Thrawn walked towards it, taking a large step up into the ship easily with his elongated legs. Upon realizing you would struggle a lot more to get in than he would, he bent down and reached a hand out towards you.

You didn’t hesitate as you put your hand into his and one foot on the floor of the ship. It was angled just above your waist and you could feel the stretch burn the back of your thigh. The sensation didn’t last long as Thrawn hoisted you into the ship, seemingly using little energy on his part. He dropped your hand as soon as you were steady and the doors were manually shut behind you.

The corridors were lit with dim red lights along the wall. Shadows bounced as you and Thrawn navigated through the ship. His skin looked almost iridescent in here.

You followed him through many different corridors until he paused in front of a door. He pulled a card out from somewhere in his uniform that he swiped against the panel next to the door and it slide open automatically. Same at the doors outside, just without someone manually pulling it apart.

You looked around as you followed behind him. You were in a large room that resembled an office and had another closed door leading to somewhere else along the wall. There were many different pieces of what you would describe as art scattered through the room along with a giant desk. It had two large, comfortable looking chairs settled on either side.

Thrawn pulled out the chair that had its back facing the door you had just entered, clearly made for whoever was visiting the owner of this desk, which you could only assume was the man in front of you himself. Once you had settled in the chair, which threatened to swallow you whole, Thrawn settled into the seat across from you.

He started by asking you what exactly you had meant by the ‘blackout’ you had mentioned earlier. You did your best to explain what little you knew of it, telling him that a few years prior the sun had sent out a solar flare strong enough to act as an EMP, effectively wiping out all electronics, everywhere, and sending humans back to the stone age. Thrawn listened to you intently, without interruptions as you did your best to work through what information you had gathered through the years. You ended your long explanation by telling him that approximately once every 30 days, another solar flare would hit the Earth for roughly 12 hours and restore most of the electronics during that time. You could tell it was approaching by the aurora that would brighten the sky the night before.

You both sat silently as Thrawn chewed through the information you had just given him. Finally, he simply said, “That explains some things.”

You waited patiently for his next question while he formulated it. You had trouble keeping your eyes off of him, but didn’t want to come off as rude, so you looked around the room every once in a while.

Thrawn called out your name softly while you were staring at a painting situated over his left shoulder. If it wasn’t eerily silent on the ship, you might not have heard it. You looked over at him. He was examining you as if you were that painting hung on the wall. Finally, after a minute that seemed like an hour, he asked what your plans were.

“Well, winter is fast approaching. I aim to keep heading south where it will be warm during the season.” You looked down at your feet. “I have found it best to keep migrating through the years. Staying in one place invites danger,” you practically whispered.

“Are you all alone?”

You held back the emotional outburst that threatened to rip through you at that question. You shook your head in confirmation.

“How long?”

You swallowed hard. “7, maybe 8 seasons.”

You could feel Thrawn’s pity even if you weren’t looking at him, even though if you had looked at him you would have only outwardly seen stoicism.

“When do you expect the next flare to hit?” he asked you after a few silent moments.

You looked up at him for the first time in a while. His red eyes were soft, the color nearly washed out compared to the first time you saw him. He had folded his hands on top of his desk and was hunched over — or what a military man like him probably considered hunched over. His back was still pretty stick straight.

You pondered his question. “If I had to guess, 10... maybe 12 days. I don’t keep track very well anymore and sometimes it doesn’t follow an exact pattern. But it always happens, eventually.”

Thrawn nodded. “Would you be willing to stay with us while we repair the ship?”

Your mouth fell open. Sensing your confusion he added, “You are the only one who knows this planet, we could use your expertise.”

You bit your lip so hard you tasted metal.

Thrawn continued, voice near a whisper. “I will take you off this dying planet in return.”

His transition from ‘us’ to ‘I’ didn’t go unnoticed by you. You still sat there, silently processing his question.

You took a sharp breath in and let it out shakily. Tears prickled at your eyes.

How could you leave the only home you had ever known, if Thrawn and his men could even get their ship working again in the first place?

How could you survive out there, in space? A place you didn’t know... none of your people really knew, where you didn’t belong.

Where would you go? What would you do?

But you had no one and nothing left here.

You gave him your answer and you could have swore you saw the corners of his mouth twitch upwards in response.

[naminethewriter]

A Fateful Encounter

Another ship week, here we go! 🥳🥳 My second time participating in Intrulogical Week and I’m so excited! This is technically part of my Pirate!AU but that hasn’t been written yet, so go ahead and read it, no context required.

@intrulogicalweek2021

Here on Ao3

Masterpost | Intrulogical Week 2021 Masterpost

Characters: Remus, Logan

Relationship: platonic Intrulogical

Rating: T

Words: 1,513

Summary: Remus expected the island to be uninhibited. He did not expect to be startled by the same guy twice.

Remus ducked under another tree branch, one hand holding onto his hat to make sure he didn’t lose it. It took him forever to find one he liked and he wasn’t keen on raiding another fifteen ships to replace this one. He made his way further through the tick jungle that seemed to encompass most of the unchartered island his crew had landed on. They hadn’t needed to stop necessarily; their supplies should last for at least two more weeks on sea but Remus always liked exploration and it wasn’t very common to stumble upon unchartered islands.

So far it hadn’t been the most exciting trip he’d taken, he saw some animals and plants he had never seen before but that’s it. He was almost bored. But one thing that kept him moving forward was the few paths he had found. It seemed like he wasn’t the first human on this island after all and he was curious as to where these paths lead. They weren’t as defined so not travelled along a lot but still. Remus was always too curious for his own good.

 Soon he found himself at the edge of a chasm. It wasn’t very wide but deep with many jagged rocks along its walls. If he threw someone down there, how many bones would they break before hitting the bottom, he wondered. He took another step closer to try and get a better look.

 “I would advise you to stay away from the edge. The ground is rather unstable.” Remus quickly turned, hand flying towards the pistol holster at his hip, startled by the sudden voice beside him. He had told his crew to stay at the ship and he didn’t recognize the voice. A few feet away stood a man, tall and lean. His clothes were worn down but rather clean. He had glasses and deep black hair like the feathers of a crow. He regarded Remus with a neutral expression, his blue eyes never wavering.

 “Where the fuck did you come from?” Remus asked, still a bit shocked. The other cocked his head slightly but his expression didn’t change.

 “From my camp. I was on my way to check on a bird’s nest that I am observing. Where did you come from?” Remus vaguely gestured into the direction he had come from while slowly moving towards there. He didn’t like being stuck between a chasm and a guy who seemed to live on an otherwise seemingly deserted island. His hand remained at his hip even though the other didn’t seem to be armed.

 “You live here?”

 “Yes.”

 “Alone?”

 “Yes.”

 “Why?”

 “Because there are species living on this island that I wanted to research.” The man didn’t seem perturbed by his questions or the fact that he was holding onto a weapon. Instead he looked away from Remus, seemed to spot something and moved closer to the chasm though he didn’t go as near as Remus had been only moments prior.

 “You a scientist or something?” The man’s eyes flickered back to him but soon focused back on a spot on the ground. Remus didn’t like this guy. He was too calm.

 “Indeed. And you are a pirate, I presume?” Again with the nonchalance! He acted like pirates were harmless. Something was off, way off. Remus hand grabbed the pistol but he didn’t draw, not yet.

 “What off it?”

 “Nothing. I was merely attempting to converse with you. But I am not particularly interested in your business here.” Remus narrowed his eyes.

 “Then why approach me at all?”

 “Because I feared you might fall.”

 “The fuck do you care if I fall or not?”

 “I simply do, is that so surprising?” The man stood, apparently done with inspecting the ground. Remus huffed.

 “Pretty much. Never met anybody who cared about a stranger getting hurt just ‘cause.”

 “Well, there is a first time for everything, I suppose. So what brings you here, pirate?”

 “Thought you weren’t interested in my business here.”

 “Again, attempt at conversation but if you do not wish to share-“

 “I don’t”

 “- then I will not ask further.” Remus grip on his pistol tightened, still very uncomfortable with the situation. All his instincts were telling him that man was dangerous despite him not being armed and seemingly having no muscles whatsoever. The other wasn’t bothered by his silence, simply watched him for a few moments before speaking again.

 “If you are here to hide treasure, please take care to not disturb the wildlife.” Finally, Remus snapped. Why exactly he wasn’t sure. Maybe it was the talk of treasure but within seconds he pulled up his pistol, aimed and shot the man in the shoulder. He hadn’t aimed to kill but the recoil send the man stumbling closer to the chasm, the ground gave away and he tumbled over the edge. Remus stood frozen, listening to the sounds of the body colliding with stone several times before a loud crunch announced its arrival at the bottom. There was no way he survived that but Remus didn’t chance a look. Instead he surveyed the sky, noting that the sun was close to setting.

 “Time to get back to the ship,” he mumbled. He pulled out his compass to make sure he didn’t get lost and headed back toward the shore.

   The next day, Remus left alone again. A storm seemed to be brewing in the distance so he decided to postpone their departure until the next day and gave the crew a day off. A few accompanied him to shore, to swim and explore a bit but Remus went off to the deeper parts of the jungle alone. Nobody questioned him, they learned a long time ago that it was pointless.

 Heading a different direction this time, Remus focused more on finding a good spot to hide the wooded box he carried, hidden from his crew. A bounty off a ship they raided not so long ago that could land all of them in trouble if it were found in their possession. It was for the best to get rid of it. Fast.

 It took almost three hours until Remus stumbled over the entrance to a cave. It was small and dark and he contemplated if he should try to squeeze in there when he was once again startled by a voice.

 “You will not fit in there.” In a very reminiscent way, Remus spun around to face… the guy from yesterday? They stared at each other before Remus finally found his voice.

 “Wha- How? I killed you!”

 “Technically it was the injuries of the fall that killed me, not your… bullet I believe they are called?” Remus just stared at him, unbelieving.

 “Who the fuck cares how, you still died!”

 “Yes. I do not see your problem.”

 “How are you here if you died?” Again the man cocked his head to the side.

 “Do you not know the legends of Immortals? When I was young they were quite common.”

 “Of course I know the legends!” Remus sputtered. “But they’re just that: legends! Like I expect some random guy I shot to just come back to life!” The man nodded as if this was a typical discussion topic and he hadn’t just turned Remus’ entire world view on its head.

 “I suppose that is true. But considering the existence of other mystical creatures is well known and the elemental spirits have been proven to exist as well, I am a bit surprised that this comes as a shock to you.” Remus was once again at a loss for words. Sure, as many other had, he had hoped the stories were true, that humans could gain immortality like the sirens had but there was never any proof. And the elemental spirits were known to dislike humans once the lands were taken over and many forests destroyed. It was one reason why the seas had become so dangerous to travel, the spirits would not let the humans take any more control.

 For an immortal to be in front of him now… it was a dream come true. And suddenly, like a switch was flipped, the excitement overrode the shock, the doubt, and the carefulness. A grin broke across his face and with quick steps he made his way over to the man who now was the one to look startled.

 “That means you met the spirits? They approved of you? You really can’t die???” Their faces were now inches apart. The man blinked at him, the sudden change in demeanour throwing him off before he took a step back and cleared his throat.

 “Yes to all of those questions. Unless the council deems me no longer useful, I will revive no matter the injuries.” Remus’ grin grew impossibly wide and he let out a cackle. Then he grabbed the man’s hand and shook it widely.

 “Name’s Remus and you’re going to tell me everything now.” The man eyed him for a moment before pulling his hand back and rightening his glasses.

 “Logan. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

[hauntedelation]

Seize The Throne

(Picture found on Google, I don’t own.)

Description: He was always so reckless, drawn and following the darkest paths in life. You can’t help but chase after him with stars in your eyes and a bizarre thrill churning your gut. Maybe this time things were too heavy for you.

Pairing: Black Female Reader x Will Shaw

A/N: I recently watched one of my favorite mob movies, Goodfellas, and fell back in love with that gritty image. A good friend of mine, @hope-to-hell, had already created her world of Mob!Will and has several parts out featuring him and his chaotic ways. Part one, part two, and part three explore so many depths to him and that heart-pounding life. I strongly suggest reading!

Her writing of this version of Will was my most favorite and I really wanted to try to pay homage to that. I hope I did good love, 🥺💗

Word Count: 5.7k

Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, gore and blood play, minor character death, reader sustains injuries, some fluff if you squint. I do not recommend if you happen to be sensitive to these topics. Please heed the warnings.

Proofread as much as I could, Please enjoy guys!

➽─────────────❥

The bottle is sat down next to your leg with a soft clink. Sand and sporadic rocks mold around the glass, holding the claret drink inside upright.

You feel your body hum pleasantly. The vibrations stem from the top of your head, down through your thighs, and settle in your toes, which are currently sunken into the warm clasp of the shore.

Salt and a hint of cinder brush your face and press through your hair, tousling the tight ringlets out of your eyes and behind your ear. You take in a breath while the wind dies down. To the very depth of your lungs, you allow the night to enter you. 

The water is cool; blue as can be. It just about matched the sky earlier that morning, save for the bunching of storm clouds trailing toward the horizon. 

It’s a wonderful feeling against your feverish skin, but it doesn’t fail to sting the cuts on your feet. You don’t move a muscle, not any closer to the swirling foam, but you ponder, maybe it will help.

You're unwound and you had been ever since you came closer to the sand. Head dancing blissfully and filling with each drop of the piquant wine, your visions were growing far more spirited than they had been for the last several hours.

The deal with Holford went to shit. 

➽─────────────❥

You weren't sure why you were strung along with this one. Will had been disrupted, true, but he was always that way whenever a deal this significant came along. The other guys were unknown, fresh in the game but garnered enough reputation to be talked to. He insisted that you were to not be left at the house, too much risk, he couldn’t see you.

Much of the originally agreed amount was lost, the usual inquiry and loaded threats were slung from either side. Forty thousand was at stake, and the bastards dared to show up with only a quarter of that. 

You were there resting two rooms down in a decaying office, listening to those voices, Will’s, Syverson, and maybe another. There was a restive silence,  before a guttural shout and a bang was sent out, followed by an explosion of more. You felt your heart throb clear in your throat.

It was difficult to keep track, and the walls of that building were already so abysmally thin. There was a good possibility that if a punch was thrown, it would put a hole right in the plaster.

Bullets went through the drywall and sprinkled chalky dust into your hair. You had the right mind to jerk away and hit the floor. The concrete was chilly and layered with the filth that reminded you of a public subway. Upon impact, you were no doubt painted with inky marks on your knees and elbows.

You didn't cry out, none of it could be heard anyway. Yet, you did a fine job keeping whatever you wanted to scream out on the inside. You held your breath and ducked your head to the lowest point of the room. 

It all tumbled over, that composure, soon after witnessing the man protecting you get his insides blown out.

From under the table, those projectiles continued to whizz in and out of the walls. Daniel, you think the kid’s name was, though he was only four years younger than you he had the face of a youth. He was always polite, getting you whatever it was that you wanted, afraid of disappointing.

They should have known he wasn't ready, wasn't skilled enough for any of this. 

The door was kicked at, the brass lock weakening and soon falling away. Daniel whipped around, his machine gun tucked against his armpit and trembling finger on the trigger. He let out a few shots at a sharp speed, laying more holes in the door before dashing to the side. 

He was panting, his big brown eyes glancing to you before pulling out another magazine from his pocket. 

A deafening boom went through the wood, and the door flew open revealing colossal-sized boots stomping in. You don’t recall a second shot. Everything had been stunned, from your ability to move to any volume in your ears. All that was, had been ringing.

That gunshot indeed came, because you saw the kid fall back. 

Crimson rained down over you and you felt the warmth dot your skin, covering the shade of your nail polish. Your eyes reopened and picked up far more carnage—tiny pieces of him all over the vicinity. Bone and flesh, some landing near your hands on the floor. 

His body toppled to the ground. You remember how he landed, head smacking against the solid concrete and his eyes opened wider than saucers. 

He was in shock, gurgling and spitting up blood down his chin. His fingers desperately scrambled for the handle of his machine gun, but it was kicked far out of his reach.

The faceless gunman placed Daniel’s chest under his boot, crushing the torn hole in his middle and forcing more distressed wails from the young man. Before the kid was able to cry any longer, he was cut off by another boom.

There wasn't much time to respond then. Your longtime guard was desecrated, all the life drained from him the instant the third shot was sent from the twelve gauge.

And all that you continued to hear, was ringing.

As that cliché says: time slowed to a standstill. Bullets pelted the surfaces, nonstop and in every direction. Devastation surged, wood chips and old papers swept up, and heavy footsteps trudged all throughout the concrete floors. You spent your lifetime under that table, cowering away from the turmoil. 

Along your cheeks, and falling to your hands you saw the clear, salty liquid bend and mix with that young man’s blood

The make-shift shelter lasted a mere five minutes, then it was flipped over. Glasses and other items shattered onto the ground and spread to every corner of the room. 

Directly after, your wrist was snatched in a viselike grip.

He had nails, this beast holding on to you. They were long, jagged, and digging far into your flesh. You sucked in the mucid air, holding back everything in your throat: bile, sobs, whatever it was. The man dictated something in your ear, along the lines of, 

‘Keep that pretty fucking mouth shut before I pack it full with lead.’

It was more than a motivator. He adjusted his hold and dragged you toward the entryway of the room, pushing aside Daniel's lifeless body. Your free hand braced against the ground, but your legs were left dragging. It was grueling, finding leverage to move with the man.

With each manipulation the brute had on your body, each step of his feet and yank to your wrist, your legs caught shards of the glass and were sliced open. Amid this, the lacerations on your wrist gradually formed under his nails and began to drip hot down your arm. He was moving with purpose until he stalled right near the doorframe.

More bellows and pops of machine guns echoed against the stone.

The man was waiting, probably for the next cue. Or, maybe he was considering that last threat to you, should he go through with it?

How could you know?

After a while, you couldn’t feel anything at all. You couldn't feel the barrel of the gun pressed against your temple, your vein pumping against the hot surface, and the circulation around your wrist anymore. Your skin grew cold, vision drawing away. The lights in the room dimmed and you finally lept in a dark tunnel.

The weight between your shoulders slumped toward the ground.

 .

 .

 .

 It was shortly thereafter, seconds later, that those same voices came much closer than before. Your wrist ached but no longer were you under that crushing grip. The steaming metal of the shotgun was absent from your skin, though the pressure would forever be burned against your skull. 

The only sensation that remained were calluses grazing against your skin.

There were no longer any gunshots, no more footsteps, or even glass shattering. The masculine tones in your ears surfaced and started to be particularly familiar. Those hands on your body, the clammy palms securing your jaw, it was real.

You felt how damp the thumb pads were and the sticky residue that was left behind along the line of your cheek. 

Opening your lids was taxing, but you saw dark curls stuck to a creased forehead. A fresh gash was drawn on an eyebrow and dozens of bruises on that handsome face. A pink lip painfully split nearly in two. 

The light was beaming around his head and the source was different than the one in that previous room. There were more windows. Natural light revealed one side of his form, highlighting his dewy skin and the dampness of his shirt. 

The deep red splotches covering his body.

Your pupils dilated and centered on his face. He was panting, tongue swiping at that cut on his bottom lip. His voice read a steadied, but fraught question.

‘Hey—hey, Doll. You’re here with me, yeah?’

Will’s focus was dashing across your face and the rest of your body. His breathing jolted when he caught your pupils, but never did he lose grip of that solid poise. He reached up and his fingers smeared more pungent liquid on your face, forcing the iron-laced odor into your nostrils. 

You coughed, grunting at the rough scratch along your throat. Your lips pressed together before you forced your head to nod weakly. You were sore, and you didn't really wish to move your legs at the moment. The hairs of his arm grazed against your fingertips. With a flex to your good wrist, you took hold of him.

You were breathing. You could see, you could hear, and while every bit of your nerves flared and pinched—you...were alive.

Will released a sigh low within his chest and out of his nose. The strain in his shoulders released a fraction, yet the muscles in his back maintained the stiff shape. His eyes were cognitive and lingered keenly on yours. He didn't choose to say anything else, and neither did you. 

Your throat and your lungs felt as if they were packed with dust. And, what was there to say?

He dismissed a question that was brought up by a ragged-looking Sy. The veteran stopped his pacing by a blown-out window and shook his head. In a blur behind Will, you saw him remove his cap and use his stained shirt to wipe at the sweat on his buzzed head. 

The air around Will's head was spiraling, the remnants of the firefight clinging to the air around you. You squinted and looked past the fog to see mutilated bodies, with thousands of bullet casings littering the floor. 

Limbs twisted around, mangled, with pools of blood swallowing up each of the remains.

Every member of the Holford group was dressed in matching tan-colored suits, the corpses' jackets now drawn with scarlet. You weren't sure if you could answer the question, which man had been the one who grabbed you? Who killed Daniel?

Maybe he was one that slipped away.

Your braids moved from your face, the soft hairs by your forehead pushed back and smoothed away. Will's fingers, thoroughly slick with blood, left behind glistening streaks in their wake. 

 .

 .

 .

 Following a short phone call made by Syverson, you three and the remaining number of Will’s men vacated the building. Duffle bags of cash and anything else that was of importance was secured.

While you made your way out of the structure, you caught the sight of armed workers, nudging the bodies of Holford’s group and aiming the end of their guns down at their heads.

The pops that rang out were sent past your mind. The air outside washed over you, fresh almost jarring. Under the occasional shots fired in the building, you could pick up the hum of insects and birds. 

Your eyes fluttered under the tepid sunlight, and instead, you occupied yourself with the feeling of that. Just for those short seconds, you were under those rays.

Will was hot on your heels with a vigilant hand on your lower back, his other arm providing support for your shaky footfall. He was still running on hot, that look in his eye reflecting off far away from here.

He directed you toward a black truck and carefully helped you slip into the back passenger seat. After clicking the seatbelt over your lap, he dragged his eyes over you one last time, persisting on your wounds. He drummed his fingers on the palm of your hand and parted from you a promise, 

‘It will be a little while, but I will be back. Sy will be taking us back to the house...we're gonna get you cleaned up.’

Through your lids and out the window of the vehicle, you observed the men’s work. Their actions were swift and it was clear to see that disposal of certain events was in their expertise.  

A few of the guards were gathering red gallons of gasoline, entering the building, and dousing every surface on the interior. Others were negotiating with Syverson and Will, the latter man speaking with venom falling from his mouth. The last worker exited the archway and tossed the red bin in behind him.

Your legs ached. Minutes trickled by, and at first, you withheld moving. But it was as if each laceration was prying open. You took your eyes from the scene outside the truck and grit your teeth to readjust your body. 

The window bore the weight of your head.

Will took a prolonged look at the decrepit building, his arms crossed and locked over his chest. The tendons in his jaw were spasming like a coiled knot and his mouth set at a firm line.

Whatever thoughts broke down in his mind, they were intensively racing and reflecting the failure of today. He sent a final nod to Sy before turning and making his way to the vehicle you were residing in.

Another man fished a lighter and cigarette out of his pocket, adjusting the strap of the rifle on his shoulder. He then flicked open the metal casting, lighting the end of the stick. Without closing the lid, he threw the lighter into the broken window of the building.

 .

 .

 .

That drive was long. Despite the many twisting roads and turns, you noticed the flames shredding their way through the sky several miles away.

There behind you, Will's lips pressed to the crown of your head, with your body tucked into his chest. In your lap, you watched his torn knuckles flex. He formed a fist and would do so every couple of seconds, tremoring and taut. Eventually, he would ease up and relax those fingers, still shaking, but it would return. 

Repeatedly, open and close...

 open and close,

 open and close.

➽─────────────❥

You flinched as Syverson carefully picked the glass out of your legs. You were sat on the granite countertop, bruised knees hooking over the edge and your foot resting in his camo-clad lap. 

He was in a chair located directly in front of you, with his cap sitting on the counter and an assortment of tools surrounding it 

Your wrist was the first that was looked at. It was throbbing, hardly able to be moved but the bleeding clogged. He cleaned it as much as he could and set it into a makeshift splint. Syverson then notified you that you most likely suffered fractures.

He would have a friend come tomorrow to properly take care of it. 

The tweezers were skinny and almost disappeared under his thick fingers. He had his palm wrapped around your calf, and with an attentive eye, he leaned closer to dislodge more shards from your skin. 

You wince as a jagged edge is plucked from your calf.

"Stop squirmin' little lady."

You tilt your head to the side and cradle your injured wrist in your lap. Your braids tangled and fell just over your shoulder. In a corner of your mind, you thought about a hot shower, scrubbing your skin, and taking the damn things down. To wash everything away. 

It was absolutely anticipated.

Sy resumed his work, wetting his lips and holding back that vexatious grin.

The only sound resonating throughout the kitchen was the clink of the splinters hitting the plastic bowl, and the music of a film playing on T.V. Here and there you could make out Will's voice in the other room, his timbre suppressing an unhinged man. 

How could he not? You knew how much today went south, it wasn't expected, but you didn't make an attempt to eavesdrop anymore.

Really, you didn't venture to do anything but sit and wait until the soldier at your feet was finished. 

Will had entered the house before you and with not another step further, he conveyed to his partner that same pithy look. The point of your shoulder was gently tapped and under his bushy beard, the southern man offered you an apologetic look.

Sy was nothing but meticulous. He had a way about his movements that indicated his substantial experience. While he was working, your eyes glanced over that brawny man, taking in the thick slabs of muscle on his shoulders. You had to figure he possessed more scars than five men combined. 

He had the look of a man who had seen a lot in his life and could destroy everything in his path, but to you, he was the sweetest he can be.

You withheld a moment longer, additional pieces of shrapnel were dug and removed from your limbs. He pulled back and sat down those tweezers, promptly moving his fingers to wrap around a cheap bottle of alcohol.

He doused a fresh white cloth with the clear drink and patted each of your opened wounds.

"Mwell...You're lucky you don't need any stitches, sweetheart," he husked.

Your lip quirked at his tone. He peered up at you with a ghost of a sanguine reflection in his eye. Remarkably, he was always the one to find a smile out of you, always after those wearisome days. You decided to indulge the man, forcing a curl to your lips. You then turned away and watched the images flash over the television screen. 

His fingers lingered on a bigger cut on the top of your knee, clearing his throat. The muscles of your thigh tensed, like acid on flesh. Your nails clutched the surface of the granite and scratched shallowly. 

Sy's thumb rubbed at the outside of your leg in return, applying a little more pressure to the wound before ultimately removing his fingers.

Your attention drifted away from the screen, you knit your brows down at your legs. You were sure that you would adorn some scars from today, the unfortunate memory coming in at each glance to your body. 

The bottle of alcohol was placed between Syverson's legs, tucked close to his groin. You clocked your eye from his face back to the container. He was occupied wrapping bandages over your wounds, soon finishing off the last one before catching your look. 

He took his hands from your legs, and palmed the neck of the bottle, unscrewing the cap. He tipped his bushy jaw back and poured the biting liquid down. Sy offered the drink to you with a crinkle of his nose. It was unspoken, but you chewed on your lip.

"Do we have anything else?"

➽─────────────❥

The bubbling of the ocean, that sparkling shore, and the break in the clouds, all of it was transfixing. You wanted to see the moonlight, to breathe the fresh air, and genuinely feel that you were alive. 

So you slipped into something willowy. You couldn't pinpoint where it came from exactly. The tag was black and stitched gold in a foreign language, far too small to discern without a magnifier. From a closer look at the skew of the words, you could guess it came from somewhere in southern Europe. 

The fabric was silk, completely pearly white with a sheer design layering over your chest. It was revealing, rightfully so though it was currently the dead of summer.

Moreover, it worked well to not agitate your wounds. 

You passed by the living room where Sy had his feet kicked up on the coffee table, fingers rubbing at the bridge of his nose. The man was slumped as far as he could on that couch, all grime, perspiration, and fatigue.

You made sure to not close the glass-sliding door all the way.

Behind the sepia-colored bottle, you scanned about your surroundings. The palm trees strewn about the property swayed lazily in the wind, welcoming, disclosing to you: It's alright, you can relax now.

There was a blur of grey standing against the greenery, men in slacks with glimmering metal-encased by their arms. Those silent watchdogs weren't new to you, their presence would vanish from your mind from time to time. And even more so, the image of them called: It's alright, everything is okay now. 

Except it wasn't, it wouldn't be for as long as you would remember today, but ever since arriving at this location you had been trying to convince yourself otherwise. Best practice was to acknowledge, right? You wouldn't pretend that today never happened, that you didn't come a hair's breadth away from perishing.

Being wasted away far before you should.

It's not hard to think about. This lifestyle, the outlook, and the expiration date of it all. You've known about it ever since you were a teenage girl. 

The missing people that would show up in undisclosed locations, how strict your mother was with making friends, the luxury items in your home, and all of the days your father would be away, it didn't make sense until much later.

Securing all of your family's secrets followed quickly with your adulthood.

You think back to before everything split apart before you broke away. And now you stand outside of a clandestine house in God-knows-what country, you reflect.

It was never meant to last forever.

These nights you thought about many faces, strangers to the person you are now but people that blotched their fingerprints in your brain. Your mother comes around, stops during those times when you grow the most imaginative. 

She would adorn a knowing look on her face but waited until you asked her for advice. 

If you could just talk to her now. She'd probably kiss her teeth, cross her arms, and her heart breaking the longer she watched you. The dismay gone—no, she'd never forget what you did to the family, how you could give away your father like that with no further thought.

You hope that she would find it in her to understand, that she would look into you and see why you did everything. 

If you opened your eyes and saw her standing before you in the sand, you'd take her hands in yours and ask her—just how to navigate. How do you go day by day and still feel alive?

For the first time in your life, you had no clue what she would reply with.

You were close to lifting your foot off the stone porch and making your way through the sand until the slide of the patio door reached your ears. 

He sauntered out wielding a cup of amber, hair damp and pushed back from his forehead, his clothes changed to something fresh, new. He had just as much gauze wound around his body as you did, but he walked as comfortably as any man. 

Will was born for this life. 

He sat down by the outdoor dining table, placing his glass down and stretching his legs wide and relaxed in the chair. His fingers slid down the length of his shorts, stopping at his knees and staying there. 

You wrapped the gown around your body and brushed away the bumps rising on your skin.

There was a gale that blew through whenever he was near, more submerging than the humid air around you. Something close to those storms that frightened you as a child, the imminence and the pause between claps of thunder.

Yet, every time that they came, you ever ran away to hide. 

Will's brows creased, and he removed his attention from the undisturbed tide straight to you. His right hand moved back on his leg and pat the top of his thigh,

"Come here."

You were slow with approaching him. The bottle in your hands was replaced with his shoulders, the container clinking dismissively close by his drink. Will's arms opened up the moment you stepped between his thighs. His head tilted back, peering up at you. He wound his fingers behind your thighs and settled you astride his lap.

The way that you drew into him, there wasn't much helping it. 

You could feel him on your neck, your cheeks and your lashes, Will's breaths, and his utmost tutelage. Maybe this was your favorite. From your position, you could look down at him just right, draw the light in his covert eyes. 

You were able to capture all of the lines on his face, the shade of his skin, and those dots that appeared after being out in the sun. You could study this man, searching for whatever you wanted. Each and every time you tried discovering something new.

With all of the secrets he locked away from you, there were about a dozen escaping every other day. Tales whispered amongst the other members and strangers, lingering eyes on Will's back whenever he walked by. He carried himself as if he was grasping at direction, but it was well known how untamed he used to be.

No, he was still a wild animal in his soul, you knew that part about him wouldn't ever change. You bet if you took his hand in yours there would still be dried-up blood stuck under his nails. You knew this but here you are, towering over him and you still can't quite read the shadows in his eyes.

These times? Unfortunately, they were few and far between. 

Right now, he held onto you like you wouldn’t be slipping away anytime soon.

“Y/n.”

Will was mindful of your wounds, fingertips gliding over the sides of your legs and taking a cautious hold of your bound wrist. The bruising feeling shot through the crushed bones. Will gingerly placed his lips along the top of your thumb and followed the bandage wraps down your wrist. 

"How're you feeling?"

He didn't blink, and for an important reason, you wouldn't look away from him. He wanted from you, your reply, whether or not it was one-hundred percent.

"I'm okay."

Your coils moved with your head, a chary nod. You knew that you shouldn't think too deeply about that question. You were patched up, scrubbed clean from all of the stains today, his skin was there and warm under your hand. 

So you scooted closer to Will, brushing your chest against his, and laced your fingers around the back of his neck. 

He focused on your natural hair, how the tresses flowed down your back and framed your face. You made good on your promise to yourself on cutting the old-style away. There wasn't anything quite like that feeling, that weight falling away and nothing but an utterly new look.

You turned your eyes toward the horizon, catching the distant twinkling of fishing ships and airplanes. The red and white were faint, and sometimes those lights blended in with the stars. But never had they been any closer than several dozen miles. 

On the shell of your ear and down your jaw, Will's facial hair started stroking and prodding.

"Doll…"

Your lips pulled tight. You carded your nails through his damp ringlets and twirled a few strands around, fidgeting. 

"Don't you go soft on me."

His fingertips sunk lightly into the flesh of your lower back and bottom. You heard him sniff quietly. For a second there, you thought he was going to apologize to you. Though, Will's thumb hooked under your jaw, caressing with a tender stroke before leading you to him. 

And he kissed you, real slow.

More than he ever had with you. Will was always messy—greedy, a palm on the nape of your neck and draining the oxygen from your lungs. 

He kissed you as if you were about to fall into pieces. You pulled away from him after a long while, still dazed. It was before you could slide off that white gown and unlace the waistband of his shorts. All in front of those men in the shade. It wouldn't be the first time, nor the last.

He was reluctant, his palms residual on your body, but you slotted your fingers through his and detached them from your hips. 

Will carried somewhat of a smile slanting his face. In the low light, you can catch a glimpse of it, how his cut lip stretched. You braced your hand midway on his chest and lifted yourself up from him. You then palmed the wine in one hand, tossing a look from over your shoulder before setting on your way. 

He didn't get up or try to chase after you, but the movement behind his eyes did. 

You went on to do what you originally wished to, feeling the salt and the sand. You had been neglected of this for forever it seemed, months, years maybe. Just like through the window of the bedroom there was still a spell of sorts being cast on the beach, you weren't going to fight it.

All the way to the mouth of the shore you went, taking in sips of wine and filling your vision with the stars. 

Never did he take his eyes from you.

"How's she holding up?"

Sy stood about two feet away with a towel draped around his shoulders and his back leaning against the patio door. Will turned his head to glance at the soldier, before returning to you.

"She's... she'll be alright."

Will sat up in his chair, sweeping his eyes through the backyard once again. 

"We lost five guys today, three including the guys from the inner circle, two others were regulars...Still have over  27K to retrieve," Sy reflected. 

He set his elbow on the armrest, rubbing his fingers over the stubble on his face and surrounding his lips.

"It's a shame what happened to that kid. I'll take care of his grandparents...send them a severance."

Christ, he was actually feeling a bit of guilt, more so with how the kid went out. But, he knew what this job was. He was told about the repressions and what was expected.

Daniel was a few months shy of his next birthday if Will had that right. And, now he wouldn't even be able to have an opened casket for his funeral. Not that this mattered in the end, though.

He wouldn’t have a casket at all.

"...They've fucking lost it if they think this is all forgotten."

Syverson nodded his head, already preparing his mind for any possible retaliation. No doubt much of the next few days will be filled with planning, making calls, and ordering more supplies. Maybe a few all-nighters just to get the deal straight, spending money just to make triple the return. He thinks that he might phone up Walker, the caliber of this situation had blown up in that man's range anyway.

"You have guys surrounding the perimeter?"

"Don't you go sweet on me, Will," Sy laughed. Of course, there were men around the perimeter. Not one spot was left open.

Will wrapped his fingers around the glass and took a small sip of the drink. His jaw twitched once again at that phrase, it just about mirrored yours, "I'm not." 

There was a brief silence between the men, Will wasn't looking at Sy but both of them had somewhat of the same thought winding through their worn-out minds. The soldier followed his partner's eyes, down the shore and to where those tan grains disappeared in the water.

"Then why are you sitting outside, watching her like a hawk?"

Will did not say anything in return. His tongue prodded again at the cut on his lower lip. He slowly lifted his glass and knocked back the rest of the liquor in his cup. The water and the trees moved in the wind and the sound filled their ears. Those low clouds were picked up by the gust and eventually revealed the moon. 

That cool blue light spilled down and radiated off your bronze skin. It was like you glowed, drawing Will's unreadable gaze. 

You were pushing your feet toward the ocean, just barely letting the water touch. Your fingers wrapped around the neck of the bottle, not moving the container but, letting your nails pick at the ridges in the glass. Will stared at how your head tilted to the side, and your lashes closing, taking in the breeze blowing through you.

There he was dwelling, fingertips tapping on his knee and another bracing on his face, ruminating through those long corridors in his mind. As he watched you he couldn't help but think in the past, back when he first laid eyes on you and took in that fear entangled in your soul.

He thinks back to your inconceivable proposition, you were on your knees for him, begging for a chance to show him what you got. You were dead serious in the end and you slid to him that folded up paper with the keys to the universe.

He shook his head and scratched at his hair, Will's brain repeated those words that your father said to him. Through grit teeth, spitting, and bloodshot orbs, his voice echoed that foreboding line up to Will.

‘Listen, son, you fall asleep at night with the visions of the world twirling in your palms. You are hungry for it and you run rampant with the darkness that resides in every man. You don’t lock yourself back and you will stumble. The time will come where your dominion crumbles and knocks the crown off of your head. And when you wake, a phantom won’t take you, but you will be rasping for it when you watch everything you breathe for get torn to shreds.’

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