#Genuinely this would turn me into a barely functional puddle that will do whatever they want

[esmeislewd]

Mommy feeders are so unreasonably wonderful~

Constantly fussing over you and readjusting clothes that don't fit

"aww baby you're looking hungry, here I made this for you"

Saying that you never eat enough and they're worried you'll starve despite you being the heaviest you've ever been

Sitting you on their lap to cuddle and feed you snacks

"have you grown again?" and pinching your sides.

Always calling me their little girl, no matter how big I get 💖💖💖💖

"you've got to finish your plate otherwise you won't grow up big and strong"

Packing you lunches and snacks if you go out so you can stay fed all day

"Don't worry baby, let mommy take of that" whenever I try to get up to do something or need to get off~

Cupping your chin and lifting your face a little so they can wipe something off your face~

milk

Thank you for coming to my ted talk

[ollieofthebeholder]

leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall): a TMA fanfic

Read from the beginning on Tumblr || Also on AO3

Chapter 48: Sasha

“Yes, of course. I’ll—I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Sasha disconnects the call and stares at her cell phone for a long moment. She’s worked at the Magnus Institute for almost seven years now, been in the Archives for almost two. She honestly thought she’d lost the ability to be afraid of anything the mundane world could dish up anymore.

But that phone call…

“You okay, Sash?” Melanie’s voice seems to be coming from a long distance away.

With difficulty, Sasha pulls herself together and looks up. It’s just the two of them in the Archives right now, since Martin and Tim are both at lunch; Melanie’s already taken hers, and Sasha will go as soon as one of the others gets back. She’s not really hungry anymore, though.

“I’m fine,” she lies, then stops. They’re trying, they’re all making the effort not to lie to one another or downplay when things are bad. Tim and Martin both know her well enough to call her on it when she does it, and they’re also connected to the Eye well enough to be able to at least get a sense when she does. Melanie doesn’t and isn’t, and it’s not fair to her to keep her in the dark. “It’s my uncle.”

Something in Melanie’s face shifts, and she half-closes her laptop. “Is he sick?”

“No—I don’t know. He just said he has something he needs to talk to me about in person. They’re making an exception for me to come see him today.” Sasha rubs her forehead. “That’s not normal, Mel.”

“O…kay,” Melanie says slowly. “You usually…can’t visit him whenever you want? What, is it a prison or something?”

Sasha winces, remembering that Melanie wasn’t part of the team when she told them. “Yes, actually. He’s in HMP Pentonville.”

Melanie covers her mouth with a hand. “Oh, God, Sasha, why didn’t you shut me up? My big mouth—”

“It’s fine. You didn’t know.” Sasha manages a smile. “But yeah. I don’t know what he’s in for, but if he wants to see me today, and they’re letting me…whatever’s going on can’t be good.”

“Can you, like—” Melanie wiggles her fingers in the universal gesture of mystical bullshit. “—Know what it is?”

“I mean…maybe? I’m trying really hard not to use that outside of…you know, work. I don’t want to risk falling too deeply into it, or—or hurting myself, or someone else.” Sasha sighs. “I think it might be too far away, though. Honestly, I think the only way to find out what’s going on is to go out there myself.”

“Go out where?”

The voice makes both Sasha and Melanie jump. She looks up quickly to see Martin coming towards them, a bag of leftovers dangling from one hand. He looks about like he’s looked since Jon left—tired, worried, and faintly stressed. “Martin, Jesus. Heard from Jon yet?”

“Yeah, did you not see the text?” Martin frowns at her slightly. “I thought he sent it to the group chat.”

Now that she thinks about it, Sasha remembers hearing a slight beep while she was on her phone call, but she didn’t think about it twice. She checks her phone and sees two new texts—one from Jon saying he was changing buses, one from Tim asking what he was changing them into. Rolling her eyes fondly, she sets it down. “No, I—I was on the phone. My uncle called. He wants to see me today.”

“Oh.” Martin’s expression is one of mingled sympathy and concern. “Is everything okay?”

“I don’t know. That’s what we were talking about. I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t want to…you know.” Sasha makes the same gesture Melanie made a few moments ago.

Martin nods in understanding. “Did you have anything time-sensitive you were doing today?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Then I don’t think Jon would mind you taking the rest of the day off. I know you won’t be able to get to Pentonville and back in the span of your lunch break, and this seems…kind of important.” Martin reaches over and squeezes Sasha’s hand gently. “Let us know if you need anything.”

Sasha smiles and squeezes back. “Thanks, Martin. I’ll keep you all posted.”

An hour later, she’s seated in a room at the prison, jiggling her foot nervously and waiting. It’s one of the small, private rooms usually set aside for attorneys to consult with their clients, which is unusual; normally she has to conduct her visits in a loud, noisy room with a Plexiglas divider between them. A private conversation, on a weekday, out of the clear blue sky? Either something has gone terribly wrong or she’s been lied to.

There’s a familiar whirring sound, and Sasha reaches into her pocket to pull out the tape recorder. She very most definitely did not have this with her when she left; she shut it in her desk drawer before heading out, and it hadn’t been in her pocket when they searched her. She hopes she won’t get in trouble for having it.

As the thought crosses her mind, the door opens and, with a clank of chains, a figure is escorted in. A gruff voice instructs her to buzz for help if there’s an issue, and then the door closes and leaves the two of them alone together.

There’s another clank as the man leans forward, smiling hopefully. “Sasha.”

Sasha smiles back, genuinely pleased but worried at the same time. “Hello, Uncle Wade.”

The family resemblance between them is obvious. Both of them have the same facial structure, the same shape to their eyes, the same skin tone. They’d looked enough alike once to switch places, when Sasha was eighteen and going through a phase and shaved her head. Now, though, after almost a decade in prison, Wade Copper looks old enough to be her father—gaunt, thin, his once-dark hair almost solid grey despite the fact that he’s only in his mid-forties. Every time she’s seen him, he’s tried to smile for her, tried to stay cheerful as he asks about her work, tried to convince her things aren’t so bad for him, but she knows. She can see the weight of imprisonment bearing him down.

Today, though, is different. Today his eyes are sparkling, his smile seems real, and he seems to be barely keeping something contained. She has no idea what it is, but it seems like he’s…excited.

Sudden panic strikes her, and she very quickly throws up those mental blocks Jon Prime has been teaching them. The absolute last thing she wants is to take the surprise away from the man who’s had so few to give her over the years.

“Is everything okay?” she asks instead. “You said we needed to talk and—”

“No, no, everything’s fine. Everything’s fine,” Wade assures her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—I wasn’t trying to scare you. I just had some news for you. It could have—are you on your lunch break? Do we need to—”

“I took the afternoon off. My boss is out of town at the moment, so the three—well, the four of us, we’ve got a new coworker—we’re sort of running things ourselves. When the others found out you wanted to talk to me, they suggested I just call it a day. We’ve got all the time in the world.” Sasha smiles. “What’s going on?”

Wade’s smile broadens. “I’m coming home.”

It takes Sasha a second to process that, and then she sits up straighter. “You’re getting released?”

“I heard back from the parole board this morning. I didn’t tell you I was going up because I didn’t want to get your hopes up, but I had the hearing a few weeks ago. Today I got word that they’ve decided I’m a good candidate for release.”

“That’s—that’s wonderful!” Sasha says.

Wade’s smile slips, just a little. “You don’t sound so sure about that. What’s the matter, Puddle-Duck?”

It’s been forever and a day since he called her that—an old family nickname bestowed on her after her favorite bedtime story, the one she used to beg to be read over and over. She’d trailed after her Uncle Wade “like a little duckling” from the time she could walk, and the “duckling” nickname had eventually morphed into Puddle-Duck. He hasn’t used it since she was about twelve, though, and hearing it now almost makes her cry.

“Nothing,” she says, unconvincingly. “It’s just—there’s a lot going on. That’s all.”

“I won’t be an imposition,” Wade says earnestly. “I’ve managed to save up a bit while I’ve been in here from the work I’ve been doing in the prison library. I should be able to get a place. I won’t be in your way—”

“No, it’s not that at all!” Sasha feels horribly guilty. “I’d be happy to have you stay with me. Of course I would. I’ve got loads of space and—and I’ve missed you so much. It’s just that…”

It’s just that the world might end in a year if they can’t stop it. It’s just that she’s trying to figure out a way to pretend to stop a ritual that she knows won’t succeed even if they do nothing without letting the man who does have a ritual that will work know she knows it. It’s just that she’s developing incredibly invasive psychic powers and doesn’t know if she can live with another person who doesn’t know about it. It’s just that the world is objectively terrifying and she doesn’t know if she can lie about it to the only family she has left or let him believe he’s safe.

“It’s just that there’s been a lot going on in the world since you’ve been in here,” she finally says. “I—I worry that you might—that it might be a lot for you to adjust to.”

“Hey, I raised you, didn’t I?” Wade teases. “If I can handle losing my sister and my parents in one fell swoop, especially to…that, and then turn a six-year-old into a relatively functional adult despite barely having passed my A-levels when I started, I think I can handle anything the world thinks it can throw at me. Bring it on.”

Sasha’s whole body tingles. She clasps her hands together tightly to hide the shaking and focuses very hard on that mental block. There’s something there. A secret. A story. Something in the way he said that has the Eye’s attention and it wants to use her. She can’t let it, she can’t…

“Sasha? Sasha, what’s wrong? Are you—Christ, I’m sorry.” Wade reaches for her hands, manacles jangling, then grunts as the chain binding him to the table stops them halfway. “I shouldn’t have brought that up, I shouldn’t have—are you still having that nightmare?”

Sasha can’t help the slightly brittle laugh that escapes her lips. “I don’t have room for my own nightmares anymore, Uncle Wade. Especially ones in red-on-black binary.”

Wade frowns at her in evident confusion. “What do you mean? Who else’s nightmares would you have?”

Shit, Sasha thinks. “It’s a long story. And I don’t think you’d believe it.”

“It’s you, Sash. I’d believe you if you said the sky was green. Anyway, after what I’ve seen, trust me, there’s not much that’s unbelievable.”

Sasha looks hard at her uncle, then glances at the recorder, spinning away. She should have known. Should have realized that if it’s turning on, there’s something he’s seen. He’s been touched by one of the Fears. And she can’t—she can’t—

“It’s got to do with work,” she finally says. “Part of the Archive job—when I, when I listen to people tell me about something they’ve encountered or seen or, or done, if it’s something that really happened…I end up dreaming about it. I’ve only got a couple, but…it does mean I haven’t had any dreams of my own since I started doing that.”

Wade blinks at her. Softly, he says, “So it is real. I knew it.”

“What, the paranormal?”

“Not just that.” Wade hesitates. “I never—I never told you how I wound up here, did I?”

“No, just—you said it was something to do with you hacking into something you shouldn’t have,” Sasha says slowly. “You never explained.”

“Truthfully, I never fully understood it much beyond what I told you. I don’t even know exactly what I did hack into,” Wade says, a bit ruefully. “I suppose it was the culmination of a project, in a sense, but—it wasn’t intentional.”

“What do you mean?”

Wade takes a deep breath. “The short version? I was hunting a computer virus, trying to trace where it came from. I suppose the path led through something I shouldn’t have been looking at and I got arrested. It fell enough under the Official Secrets Act that they could justify locking me up for it. But I swear, Sash, just like I’ve been telling everyone for years, I wasn’t hacking for secrets. I was trying to save lives.”

“I believe you,” Sasha says, because she does. If there’s anyone in the world she trusts completely, it’s her uncle. And really, this is the most mundane thing she’s been asked to believe in ages. “I just don’t—I don’t understand how tracing a computer virus can save lives. Unless it was infecting hospital computers or something like that.”

“No, that would have made sense.” Wade sighs. “Computer viruses aren’t supposed to be able to infect humans, but…this one did. O-or something like that. I honestly don’t know how to explain it, but…well, if working at that institute of yours is giving you other people’s nightmares, maybe you’ll know better than I do.” He ponders for a moment. “That’s probably a big part of why I got locked up, honestly. I couldn’t explain why I was hunting the computer virus without sounding insane, so I didn’t try. I mean, what was I supposed to say? ‘Yes, Your Honor, I wasn’t even aware of what system I was in, I was just looking for the origin of a bit of coding that killed my entire family’?”

Sasha freezes. The static in her mind gets louder and more insistent. “I don’t understand,” she says with difficulty, rather afraid that she does. He’s right, computer viruses aren’t supposed to infect humans, so if one did…it must belong to one of the Fears. She just can’t imagine which one.

Wade hesitates. “I—I don’t—Sasha, Puddle-Duck, if you don’t—you don’t remember what happened, do you?”

“To Mum and Dad? No.” The doctor said it was to be expected; she was six years old at the time, and it had been a rough experience. She had blacked out most of it, and honestly a lot of her memories from before that point as well. She remembers huddling in a closet with her teddy bear clutched tightly to her chest, hearing her uncle screaming her name, clinging to him tightly after he found her, both of them sobbing as he promised over and over that he would protect her, that he would never leave her, but for the life of her, she can’t remember what she was hiding from. The nightmare she had for years, one that made her wake up screaming almost until she left for uni, hadn’t been specific. She just remembers strings of ones and zeros in constantly shifting columns, blood-red on a black background, scrolling past her vision, but something in the code is terrifying and wrong…

“I don’t want you to have those nightmares.” Wade reaches for her hands again, looking conflicted. “You deserve to know, but…but if your job means that if people tell you those stories, you’ll dream about them too—I’ve had to train myself out of waking up screaming. It’s bad. I don’t want to do that to you, too.”

“It’s not—it’s not exactly like that.” Sasha wonders how to phrase it, then decides, to hell with it. He says he’ll believe her. She might as well tell the truth. It’s not like they’re being recorded by anything other than the spooling tapes, and there aren’t exactly eyes around for Elias to watch through, as far as she knows. She takes her uncle’s hands. “There’s a being…a thing that thrives on fear. I mean, there are a lot of them, but there’s one in particular that lives off of the fear of—of knowledge and secrets being exposed and being watched and all that.”

Wade gives a bitter laugh. “It must love prisons then.”

“In fact, the Institute is built over the remains of the old Millbank Prison, probably right where Smirke was testing out the panopticon design. And that’s the thing. The Institute…kind of belongs to that being. Which means I do, too.” Sasha takes a deep breath. “Sometimes I can—I can tell secrets without trying. I’m not right now,” she adds hastily. “I’ve been working on not…accidentally reading people’s minds or whatever. But the other part of it is the statements. When people tell us their stories and we dream about them? We’re not taking the place of the person dreaming about them. We’re…watching, I guess. Observing. We’re just…there.” She squeezes Wade’s hands. “So if you tell me, Uncle Wade, and I do end up sharing your nightmares, maybe it’ll be better. Because then you won’t have to look at them alone.”

Wade stares at her for a long moment, then nods slowly. “Okay,” he whispers. “Okay. I’ll tell you. You need to know, anyway.”

Sasha smiles, as reassuringly as she can, and glances at the tape recorder. “Do you want to make this…official? I can do, um, I can do the whole spiel we do at the Institute. Put it on the record. We can do some research, maybe.”

“Will it help?”

“It might.”

“Then…okay. Lay it on me.”

Sasha puts the tape recorder between them and takes her uncle’s hands again. Clearly, she says, “Statement of Wade Copper, regarding a murderous computer virus. Recorded direct from subject, twenty-first March, 2017.” She nods at her uncle. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Wade swallows. “Right. Well, you know I’ve always been into computers. I loved coding and programming and seeing what I could do. One of my favorite things to code up were the games, especially interactive fiction. I subscribed to a couple magazines where people would publish the codes for games they’d developed, and I would put them in and play them. I owned a couple that I bought commercially, too. One of the ones I had that I was most excited about was The Hound of Shadows. The story sounded right up my alley—a proper creepy one—but it turned out to have one of the worst parsers I’ve ever seen, and I struggled to finish it. I was crushed.

“I was looking around for something that was like that but…better? Tried my hand at coding it myself, but you know me, I’ve never been all that at coming up with a story of my own. Did a couple reasonably decent games based on a few of the stories I liked, but it wasn’t the same. Around the time I was finishing up my A-levels, some classmates and I were talking about interactive fiction, and I was complaining about Hound. That’s when one of my mates told me about a game he’d recently come across. He said he couldn’t finish it because it was too scary for him, but he thought I’d like it. It was called The Conqueror Worm.”

As he talks, Wade’s eyes go vacant and his shoulders slack; it’s like the words are pouring out of him independent of his will. Sasha never takes her eyes off him. The story fills her the same way Basira’s did, the same way Tim and Martin’s tale of the Not-Them did, the same way that man with the dog’s story did last week. She’s just aware enough of the situation to feel guilty about it, but she can’t stop him now if she tries.

“I managed to get my hands on a copy,” Wade continues. “As soon as I’d finished my exams, but while I was still waiting for the results to come back, I loaded it up on our computer. My friend was right—it was exactly what I was looking for. Interactive fiction. According to the cover, it was ‘loosely’ based on the Edgar Allan Poe poem, which I’d never heard at that point, but if it was Poe I knew it’d be spooky. The story was wonderful, the parser was the best I’d ever seen. Sometimes it was like talking to a real person—like that one Sergey Ushanka bot you and I spent the evening with when you were eight, you remember?” Sasha nods. “Anyway, I was really into it. The idea was that you were the manager of a theater that was putting on a new play, but something was trying to sabotage it, something inhuman and unholy. Started off normal enough, got creepy right fast. I had this constant sense of creeping dread. I loved it.

“The weird thing about this one, though, was that every so often you’d start to do something and suddenly three pixels would turn red. Always three, two in one row and one in between them in the row immediately above or below, and then they’d switch places a few times before disappearing. At first I thought it was a glitch. Then I realized it was intentional, that it was something to do with commands. I finally figured out that if the pixels appeared, you’d done something right.

“I started tracking the commands and decisions that got the wiggling pixels to appear, then started doing them more. Better. Started getting two, three, four at a time. I was sure it meant I was going to win. By the time I got to ‘opening night’ of the play, I could generally make upwards of ten appear every time I made the right choices.  The thing is that ‘opening night’ was the big climax of the game, and there was only one command you could type: ‘The Show Must Go On’. Once you typed that, the play started and you watched to see if you got it right. You wanted to see the ‘play’, but I knew it was a horror game, so I told you to let me watch it first, and if it wasn’t too scary, you and I would play on Saturday. You pretended to accept that, but I knew you were angry. I could hear you yelling halfway across the house. At the time, I kind of thought it was funny, actually.”

Sasha vaguely remembers this now. She was bitterly disappointed—Uncle Wade always let her “help” with his games—so she waited until she was out of the room, then stomped off to the living room where her parents and grandparents were playing a card game and loudly declared that he was the meanest meanie to ever mean. Her mother laughed and said he was always like that, and her grandfather swept her onto his lap and offered to let her be his partner, until…

“What happened then?” she asks.

Wade takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I typed in the command, and I watched. The ‘play’ started, and…there was a voice. Reciting a poem. I guess it was the Poe poem. The ‘actors’ were performing along to the words, but then I noticed the wiggling pixels. One by one, slowly at first, then more and more. They started in the corners, then gradually started moving inwards. But see, amid the mimic rout, a crawling shape intrude. While I was watching, the wiggling pixels crept in an ever-increasing wave towards the ‘stage.’ That’s when I realized it was all the ones I’d been rewarded with for making the right choices. The voice got louder and more desperate-sounding, and then the pixels—I finally realized they were supposed to be worms—swarmed the ‘actors’ and…the screen went red, and then it went black. All the while the voice was still talking. And then it was just the black screen, with the text in blood red, appearing as the voice spoke the words.”

He swallows hard. “I—I looked up the poem. Later. It’s a real poem, ‘The Conqueror Worm’. The plot does follow the…events of the final scene of the game, up to a point. It’s a play, and then a worm—or in the game’s case, many worms—shows up and eats all the actors. The last four lines are…chilling.” He closes his eyes and recites, “And the angels, all pallid and wan, / Uprising, unveiling, affirm / That the play is the tragedy ‘Man,’ / And its hero the Conqueror Worm.”

A chill runs up Sasha’s spine. “I know that poem. He used it in ‘Ligeia’.”

“Maybe. But what got me…what really spooked me at the time, was that the words on the screen weren’t…right. I didn’t know that at the time. I thought it odd. But the voice spoke them, exactly as they appeared on the screen. Instead of ‘The play is the tragedy “Man”’…it said, ‘The play is the tragedy “Guy Copper.”’ The voice even said Dad’s name. I remember thinking that was a creepy coincidence. And then…”  Wade takes another deep breath, and there are tears in his eyes. “I heard a noise from another room, like someone shouting. I turned to look, and when I turned back, the words were changing, morphing almost. Computers didn’t work like that back then, Sash, the graphics weren’t—I know you know that. But it was like the name blurred. And then the voice said those four lines again, but with the new name. And the angels, all pallid and wan, / Uprising, unveiling, affirm / That the play is the tragedy ‘Mary Copper,’ / And its hero the Conqueror Worm.”

The memories are starting to come back. A red wash fills her mind, then the screaming, then her mother pushing her away…oh, God. “And the next name—the next name was ‘Marjorie James’?”

“Yes,” Wade whispers. “And that’s when the screaming started. I was screaming, too. I was—I was convinced it was the game, that it was—I kept hitting keys, backspacing over and over, typing EXIT and hitting the Escape key and—nothing worked. It shifted from Margie’s name to Hugh’s, and…I thought about how many worms had been on the screen, how many ‘successes’ I thought I’d had, and I was suddenly terrified. It started to change again, and I—I dove under the table and I pulled the plug. The sound died. The light died. The screaming stopped, all at once.

“I went running and—and I found them. Mum and Dad, Margie and Hugh, all sprawled around the card table. They were all dead. They were—they were full of worms, Sasha. Blood-red ones. I didn’t know if they’d been red before they…” Wade inhales shakily and looks away. The tears are rolling down his face now. “I called 999, I was trying to tell them what had happened, but—but then I realized I couldn’t find you. I shouted at the poor woman to hurry and I dropped the phone and went looking for you. I was terrified that I’d been too late…but there you were, hiding in my closet with your teddy bear. You had blood on your arms and chest, but you weren’t hurt, and I—oh, God, Sasha. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Sasha whispers. “It’s not. I wish—I’m so sorry, Uncle Wade.”

They both cling to each other’s hands for a moment, crying silently. Finally, Wade takes a deep breath and frees one hand to wipe his eyes. “Anyway, that’s…I couldn’t really explain it to people when they showed up. Just that I’d heard screaming and…the worms were gone by then, but it was obvious. I told a few lies about how old I was and managed to get them to let me take care of you instead of putting you in a home, and for a while everything was fine. Then…just after you left for uni, I was debugging a computer for someone who’d downloaded a game off an FTP server and picked up some sort of virus. When I went into the code, I discovered a secondary virus underneath the main one and went to dig it out. I thought it was a dead-man switch of some kind—you know, remove the main virus, trigger the second one—so I was going to take that one out first. But then I realized it was just some metadata. I would have just deleted it without a second thought, except that I recognized the words. It was those same four lines, the last lines of ‘The Conqueror Worm’, except that it had a name I didn’t know as the name of the ‘play’.”

Another chill runs up Sasha’s spine. “You’re sure you didn’t know it?”

“I didn’t, but my client did. I asked him about it when I gave him his computer back, and he said it was his girlfriend’s name, she was out of town on a trip. I told him to give her a call, and he looked at me kind of funny, but said he would.” Wade sighs. “I looked her up a couple times. Two days later her obituary popped up.”

“You’re saying—”

“I’m saying that once is happenstance, twice is coincidence. But I kept my eyes open, and a few months later, I saw the words again. Different computer, different name, same results,” Wade tells her. “I started tracing it. It’s a—well, it’s a worm, in the truest sense of the word, but I was sure if I could trace its path, figure out where it came from, I could stop it from spreading. Seven or eight years ago, though, I…guess I went through something I wasn’t supposed to, got caught, and wound up here.” He sighs heavily and sits back, blinking. “And…that’s it. I still call it the Conqueror Worm, but…I couldn’t stop it. It’s still out there.”

“I don’t think you can stop it,” Sasha says slowly. Several things slot into place in her mind. When Tim looked at all of them and described the colors he saw on them, he’d mentioned that Sasha had the same sick yellow-green as Martin and Jon Prime faintly woven over her upper torso, but she had just assumed it was from her encounter with Timothy Hodge, the first night she met Michael. Now she realizes the mark he described is too big to be from a single worm, and that the Corruption marked her much more thoroughly than that. She might have to get Tim to take a look at the tape now that she’s made it, but…she’s pretty sure she’s right.  “I think this thing came from—from one of the other fear beings. I’d have to look in the Archives to see if there’s a way to destroy it. There might be, I don’t know. But I do know that you wouldn’t have been able to destroy it on your own. Not without succumbing to the power that it fuels.”

“Sash.” Wade grips her hand tightly. “Are you in danger? If you…belong to one of these powers. Will it hurt you?”

“Maybe. Probably,” Sasha admits. “Someday. I don’t know. It’s—it’s all a bit complicated. I don’t know for sure.” She pauses and reconsiders. “I don’t think it will actively hurt me. But I don’t think it cares if I live or die, in the long run.”

Wade’s face was a study in fear and sorrow. “And it’s from working at the Magnus Institute,” he says. It’s not really a question. “You never would have done that if it wasn’t for me. I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t know about that,” Sasha says. “Maybe. Maybe not. My project with the EPCC was shutting down anyway, so I don’t know where I would have ended up, but the Magnus Institute was hiring. Maybe I wouldn’t have stayed as long as I did, maybe I’d have looked for another job outside of London eventually, but…honestly, Uncle Wade, as much as I’ve always loved snooping and ferreting out secrets? I think I would have ended up bound to it anyway. At least this way I kind of know what’s going on enough to mitigate the damage.”

Wade shakes his head slowly. “I just…don’t want to lose you.”

“You won’t,” Sasha promises, even though she knows she can’t really promise that. But he’s all the family she has left, he gave up his future so that she could have one, and she’ll do anything she can to make sure she doesn’t waste that. “I’ll tell you everything when you come home. When will that be?”

“Two weeks. The first of April. Is that enough time for—I mean, will you be okay if I—”

“Yes,” Sasha interrupts him. “Of course. Tell me what you need and I’ll get it all set up.”

Wade smiles slowly, the hopeful look back in his eyes. He laces his fingers through hers and squeezes.

“We’ll be all right,” he tells her. “Family looks out for each other. I promise, Puddle-Duck, I will do anything I can to protect you.”

Sasha smiles back and returns the squeeze. She doesn’t tell her uncle that she’s grown up a little beyond his ability to protect her, or that she might need to be the one protecting him. Right about now, she really wants to let him wrap her in a blanket and a hug and promise her that everything will be all right again.

She might even let herself believe him.

[zayray030]

Do you even care?

Summary: Damian gets stabbed and beaten up by a few bullies at school and is left to die at a back alleyway. While he's bleeding out he thinks of his 'family', his 'friends' and his 'team'

Damian gritted his teeth against the pain in his rib and closed his eyes and tried to keep his breathing steady.

He wonders if his brothers would care if they found him. Found him lying in a puddle of his own blood, bones broken and looking like death had come.

He wonders if any of them would show up at his funeral. He wonders if they would cry. Would they even care to show up? Probably not. They would probably celebrate him going away.

Maybe his father would care. It was after all his idea. His idea for Damian not to fight those bullies. To just let them be. And look where that had landed him.

Broken and bleeding to death in some back alleyway. This really wasn't how he had thought he would die. A second time anyway. He had thought he would die by some huge foe. Or maybe of age. Or another natural cause.

Not because some bully had overpowered him and his friends had taken turns beating the shit out of him. He had wanted to fight back so badly but he hadn't wanted his father to shoot him a disappointed look. He hadn't wanted his brothers or sister to look at him in disgust for hurting the ‘innocent’.

Tt. Says so much about them.

While Damian was bleeding out from a knife wound the bully had given using a rusty pocket knife, he began thinking. About his ‘family’, his ‘friends’ and his ‘team’.

To be fair he didn't even think his family was his… family. They barely even functioned together on a good day. Hell, half of them  if not all, hated him. Drake barely gives him the time of day and he continues to think of him as an assassin even after he changed. Even after he proved himself time and time again that he wasn't an assassin.

Todd. Well Todd barely speaks to him as it is. Only to insult him or to ask where the others are. Had he even apologised for shooting him? Probably. Or probably not. Damian couldn't remember with how much blood he was losing. He let out a small humourless laugh.

His father barely even gave him the time of day as it was. He hadn't even remembered his 13th birthday. He hadn't even bothered to ask him normal questions a father asks his son. But Damian couldn't blame his father. He had been the unexpected one. The unplanned one. The unwanted one.

Grayson was another story. He would probably actually care. If he wasn't focusing on someone else. Maybe he was still comforting Wallace after Damian had almost killed him. He couldn't blame Grayson, though. Grayson was very well liked and he attracted people to him like how the planets were attracted to the sun. But Damian was selfish. He just wanted someone to love him. Was that so bad? Probably coming from an assassin like him.

Pennyworth. Now this man Damian knew loved him, no matter his flaws. He would miss their talks and those times they had tea together. Those were the most pleasant moments ever. He would definitely miss those over anything.

Kyle. He would miss her. She had been nice, even though her and his mother hadn't gotten along and he was his father's bastard child. Those two had shared some secrets that they would never tell the others and he had thought that maybe they could get close enough for him to call her mother. Guess it was too late for that.

He then thought of his actual mother. She would think him weak just like grandfather will think. She would probably be disappointed that she hadn't had the honour of killing him again.

He let out a sharp gasp as he tried to shift his body to a more comfortable position but that just agitated the wound worse and Damian couldn't help but feel like crying.

He thought back longer and couldn't help but think about Jonathan. The boy-man-  whatever the hell he was now, hated his guts. Well that's what he assumed. People who like you don't normally call you baby Hitler, but who knows? Maybe that's just another thing that's different here and Damian is just a freak for not knowing it.

He thought about the first time they met and the last time they saw each other. Neither had been good. It went, like how Todd would normally say, shit.

He wasn't even surprised though. He couldn't blame anyone for not wanting anything to do with him. If anything Jon was lucky that he got away as quick as he had. He saved himself a shit ton of time being wasted on an assassin.

He thought of his other friends. Colin had been adopted earlier and even though those two had been keeping contact Damian could tell that Colin was happier in his new, normal life away from his. So he cut him off. That's probably the nicest thing he had ever done to someone. Colin’s probably grateful for Damian doing this.

Maps parents have banned her from hanging out with him, not wanting their daughter to be associated with Damian Wayne. He couldn't blame them, really. He honestly thought it was the best decision they made for her and he keeps telling himself that when he sees Maps in the hallways of Gotham Academy and sees her talking to those who make his life a living hell.

Surren was focusing on the magical world and he had barely been giving Damian the time of day. At least when Damian dies then he wouldn't feel hurt. He would probably not even remember him.

Maya had travelled to Africa over a year ago and her and Damian hadn't spoken since after they had had a nasty argument before she had left. Damian felt guilt, knowing for a fact that even though he was a monster, Maya would still feel so bad. Why couldn't he do anything right?

Damian’s train of thought quickly turned to his team and by that time his vision had begun to become glazed and wobbly and he could barely even concentrate on anything without a huge headache. He let out a humourless chuckle and ignored the intense pain the vibrations had sent.

His team was a joke. Him being their leader was a joke. They barely even tolerate him as it was. They hate his guts and Damian could understand that. He would hate him too. They would probably be glad that they could have someone else be their leader instead of him being their leader. Probably be overjoyed at the fact that he had died in the most undignified way possible. Old and New would probably make it an anniversary party.

He thought of Wallace and couldn't help the tears. He had thought what he was doing was the right thing but instead it had done the complete opposite. He wished he could go back in time like the speedster could and apologies for being a nuisance. For being a pain. For being the worst person alive.

His old team had abandoned him the first moment they got, happier with his older brothers, far away away from him. And no matter how badly he wanted to blame them he knew they had every right to want to leave him. He just wished it didn't hurt so much.

Black spots began invading his vision every time he tried to focus on something and it truly was starting to grate on Damian’s nerves.

Suddenly he felt a rush of air next to him and heard a couple of thuds and horrified gasps.

“What the fuck happened!!?!” that voice sounded oddly like Todd and it sounded… worried.

“Todd?”

“And us baby bat.” said Grayson somewhere near him but Damian was too out of it to notice where.

“Don't forget us.” that sounded oddly like Wallace.

“What-what are you doing here?” he asked between gritted teeth as he tried his hardest not to scream in pain.

“Rescuing you, of course! What else!” that sounded like…Jonathan.

“I thought a baby Hitler wasn't worth saving.” he snarled as much as he could considering his circumstances. Shit why the fuck did he suddenly feel cold.

“I’ll deal with you later Kent! For now Damian is my priority.” snapped someone but he couldn't pinpoint who they were.

“Shouldn't all of you be glad?” He was genuinely confused. Why weren't they congratulating Jon.

“Why would we be glad?”

“Cause I'll be dead soon. You all hate me and now that I'm finally gone you won't have to deal with me anymore. It'll be like how all of you wanted.” he didn't know if it was the blood loss making him out of it that he would say that but he knew he didn't have much blood left to blush.

“We don't hate you!”

“Could have fooled me.” another sharp pain shot through him. “Oh shit, that's not good.”

“West, take him to the med bay at the watchtower.”

“Ye sir. How did this even happen?”

“Cause you all told me to let it happen.” when he heard his brothers confused noises he elaborated. “You all told me I should let the bullies do whatever. That I shouldn't use my strength against the ‘innocent’.”

“Fuck we-”

“Not now. Wally watchtower now. Oracle, find the footage. We have brats to hurt.”

And suddenly he was being woodshed away.

Damian couldn't help but think that maybe they did care. Maybe they do love him. Maybe they don't hate him. Maybe Jon still wants to be his best friend. Maybe his teammates don't hate him.

But probably not.

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

[winteratdusk]

“Bucky’s been at war too long. A year after the fight at Azzano, he’s still plagued by memories, both of the battlefield and of his time in captivity. He’s been trying to deal with it all himself, but sleeplessness and fear are starting to get the better of him. At least Steve is there to make sure Bucky doesn’t have to go it alone.”

(warnings for depictions of illness, PTSD, nightmares, panic attacks, past torture)

I’ve been wanting to post more to this blog, but my fics are all kind of obnoxiously long and don’t fit well into Tumblr posts. Figured I’d compromise and post the first part of this one here - the rest can be read at the link above! ——————————————————– Bucky was tired of the goddamned rain. 

It was a constant presence in northern Italy during that slow transition from fall to winter, and Bucky was tired of it, tired of the perpetually gray sky that broke open every few hours into downpours that chilled him to the bone. He was tired of the cold, tired of the way the freezing water that gathered on the ground always seemed to leach into his socks and leave him shivering and wet even in the brief moments when the weather relented and allowed them a few hours of clear sky. 

Even more so, he was tired of the shiver that seemed to run through his brain every time he had to splash through mud puddles up to his knees, not from the cold but from the memories it brought back of the last time he’d spent fall in Italy — of the fetid water that gathered on the floors of the trenches, of the reek of illness mixed with gunpowder mixed with fear, of the 107th trapped and outnumbered on the battlefields of Azzano, watching their rations dwindle and their friends fall one by one as they waited for backup that would never come. 

Beyond that, he was just tired. It was hard to fucking sleep when letting his guard down and closing his eyes inevitably sent him spiralling back to the hell he’d endured after the fight at Azzano, after the mud and the cold and the trenches. He’d take being jumpy and exhausted but awake over having to even think about what had happened on that HYDRA doctor’s table. 

So he was tired in more ways than he could count, really, but it was easier just to blame it on the rain.

Bucky curled and uncurled his toes in his damp boots, trying in vain to restore feeling to toes that had long since gone numb. He’d been out in the rain for hours, stationed on a forested outcropping near the place where the Commandos had set up camp for their latest mission, ceaselessly scanning the terrain beyond for anything out of the ordinary. His eyelids were getting increasingly heavy for want of sleep, and kept trying to drift shut of their own accord, but that was nothing a quick pinch to his arm and a shake of his head couldn’t fix. There was an important job to be done, and he was the only one doing it. 

(Steve had told him not to worry, that his ears were so sharp he’d be able to hear it if there was a threat nearby, but Bucky knew better. They’d been caught unawares at Azzano. Bucky wasn’t ever going to let something like that happen again.)

The sky was just beginning to fade to dark, and the rain that had been plaguing them on and off all day was starting up again. Bucky bowed his head against it, watching droplets fall to meet his boots as he tried to shield his eyes from the stinging water. He realized a moment too late that the position only served to expose the back of his neck to the elements. He yanked his head back up, but not before a couple of icy raindrops had splattered against his bare skin, finding their way under his collar and running down his back. The feeling was dreadfully similar to that of cold, gloved fingers probing at him, and Bucky screwed his eyes shut, trying to block out the rush of memories as they flooded back to him —

He’s on a table, immobilized by some sedative they’ve pumped into the crook of his arm, but he can still feel. He feels everything. 

“Just hold still, relax. This won’t hurt a bit.” The doctor’s talking to him, trying to calm him down, but he’s lying. He always does. It always hurts. 

They’re doing something to him, and Bucky can’t see it, but his blood is turning to fire inside him and he’s screaming and he knows he’s dying but the doctor is smiling he’s smiling and his teeth are so fucking sharp and this is the last goddamn thing Bucky’s ever going to see and oh god why won’t it stop —

“Hey, sarge!”

Bucky whipped around so fast he felt his neck crack, fumbling for the rifle he had balanced on his shoulder with fingers too wet and numb to function. (God he’d been stupid, so stupid, he should have had the thing ready, should have known they were coming back for him…)

“Barnes?” 

Bucky stopped panicking over his gun long enough to really look at the person talking to him. It was only Morita, standing frozen with his hands up in a half-mocking, half-genuine gesture of surrender. 

“Just me, man,” he said warily, eyeing the spot where Bucky’s shaking fingers were white-knuckling his rifle. “Supposed to come tell you Cap wants you back at camp.”

Bucky nodded jerkily, heart still going a mile a minute. He was painfully overaware of every shadow around him, every blind spot that might be concealing an enemy. 

“What about…” Bucky gestured to the forest around them, the post that would be left unguarded and vulnerable if he headed back to camp. 

“Think Cap’s got it covered. Y’know, super hearing, or whatever. And he said not to take no for an answer, so…”

So Bucky’s fate was sealed. He knew from experience that nothing good came of trying to stand in the way of Steve and his unyielding stubbornness. 

Still, even as he turned to head back to camp, the back of Bucky’s neck was prickling, adrenaline pumping wildly just under his crawling skin. He couldn’t help thinking that there was something out there, something that, for whatever reason, nobody else could see, but something real and terrible nonetheless. He kept throwing quick, furtive glances over his shoulder, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever it was, but every time he looked there was nothing. Just shadows and the unrelenting rain. ——————————————————– Check out the rest on AO3!

[deathduty]

I Sidhe You || Lydia & Deirdre

TIMING: In the distant past...at some point before Lydia’s attack  PARTIES: @inspirationdivine & @deathduty SUMMARY: Lydia and Deirdre have a fun time in the mirrored district. Until Jerry.... WARNINGS: Some light stabbing, as a treat 

Lydia had found an excellent puddle. Puddles under the right moonlight were much easier to get through than mirrors that had to be perfectly aligned to get the angle of sunlight just right, but the lunar puddles were rarer throughout the month. At least once they were correct, they were correct for the whole night. Not that it mattered on the other side, where it could be sunlight or a different lunar phase, or possibly even a different century. Lydia looked up, and grinned as she spotted her beautiful friend. Good lord, she desperately hoped this went better than their last fae escapades.  

There were few places more scared to the fae than their aos sí; their communities, where life could be lived by their traditions. Deirdre's ancestors detailed the rise of humanity, their spreading like disease of the lands. And the importance of the aos sí, a place to exist as they were. Home. Deirdre's tether to her fae identity might have been confused, but she was happy to right it and could think of no better person to help her than Lydia—the kind of fae that had every right to be proud. "Hey," she waved at her as she approached, smiling happily under the moonlight. This wouldn't be like Emma, she wanted to say, but didn't think Lydia cared about that now. They were friends, even if Deirdre still worried Lydia might suddenly realize she wasn't fae-enough anymore. And friends were probably just happy to spend time together, like Deirdre was. Gleefully happy. "Is that the puddle?" She gestured. "It looks a little small. Is this a 'tuck your hands and feet in so they don't get chopped off' kind of deal? Teleportation?" She approached Lydia, eager to jump, itching to move—having to gently lay her hand against Lydia's arm to keep herself from plunging in. The idea of visiting an aos sí was magnetic. "You know….I've always wondered why you don't live in an aos sí."

“Hello darling!” Lydia greeted with a wide grin, giving Deirdre a quick hug in greeting. Emma also clung to her mind, but she didn’t see any sign of concern or worry in Deirdre’s features. She looked down at the puddle. “I don’t thin it will be a problem for either of us. I was entirely unprepared when Felix pulled me in. I flailed rather spectacularly, and wasn’t harmed. It’s more important we go together.” She offered her hand to Deirdre, to help guide her in. She looked up at the moon with a wide grin. “When I have children, I will. Many fae in Aos Sí are too… exclusive to other species by even my stands.” When she had Deirdr’e hand, she winked at the other woman, stepped into the puddle, and pulled Deirdre towards her hard as the floor gave way beneath her. 

“Felix took you inside?” Deirdre shifted, “why does he never take me anywhere fun?” But that was a problem she’d take up with Felix after. For now, there was a puddle, and an aos sí to plunge themselves into. “Exclusive to other species---AH!” Her question was halted by a shout, barely subdued to keep its destructive property at bay. She tried to scold Lydia, remind her that surprising a banshee was a very deafening thing to do, but she couldn’t speak. Or move. Or do anything but fall. Her slow beating heart leapt up, as if trying to find an edge to hold. But whatever her body tried to grab for was simply not there, she fell and fell and then the sky was at her feet and she wasn’t falling so much as feeling like she was. “This--” She wasn’t afraid of heights by any stretches, but she enjoyed how grounding reality looked around her. This was not reality. “The---everything is flipped.” It sounded dumb as soon as she said it. “I mean, okay, I guess that’s why it’s called the mirrored district. But it’s---” With lingering nausea, she clung closer to Lydia. “How long until I get used to this?”

Lydia plunged through the water, and gasped in delight as she did every time. The world shrank and shrank around them until it would fit in a snowglobe, then popped and began to grow again, inside out and upside down. She held tight to Deirdre if only so that they wouldn’t be separated as the sky fell in place around them. Lydia laughed and laughed as the world settled, and she looked at the bridge leading them to the other side of town. Fairy lights twinkled in the evening air, and everything around them made her chest hum. Here, the grass, the fish, the birds in the sky, all of it was fae. Not too far away, a gold eyed woman waved at them. “Welcome cousins!” Lydia grinned and returned the greeting, only to hold Deirdre closer to herself. “A while. Don’t worry. I won’t let go of you while we’re here.” Deirdre could bind her to that. “Shall we explore?”

“Oh, are you two related or---” Deirdre thought about it, she looked at the fae Lydia was greeting and then Lydia. Definitely not related. Every aos sí had some number of quirks to them; ways to weed out the others and keep the members close. This place had a number of quirks she was only grasping at understanding. “Hello cousin,” she greeted back awkwardly, swallowing as chill after chill trickled down her back. Fae, fae everywhere. She wasn’t expecting anything less, but it was thrilling to see nonetheless. “Oh good, I’m still worried I might fall down…” Deirdre glanced at the floor...or what should have been the floor. She decided to keep her eyes on Lydia instead. “Lead the way. What’s there to do here?”  

“Not like that,” Lydia agreed, “but we’re so interconnected, it looks like this place takes it more seriously than most.” She gave Deirdre’s arm a reassuring squeeze when Deirdre returned the cousin greeting. Here and there, other visitors dotted the streets, only identifiable by the wonder in their eyes. Sometimes that wonder held trepidation too, or downright fear. That was smart, but they didn’t have to be. Lydia chuckled. “Felix and I didn’t fall. Although, I have to say, every time I’ve been here, my stomach has felt completely out of place.” She held Deirdre’s gaze with a soft gaze. “There’s a beautiful flower garden. Or we could go to the shopping street, with cute artisanal fae things. Or the cemetery, if that’s more your thing,” Lydia winked, genuinely happy to go anywhere, as long as it was with Deirdre. 

Deirdre smiled, "we are, aren't we?" That interconnection was exactly why she wanted to come here, and one of her favorite parts of being fae. "If that's how you look when your stomach is out of place well…" Deirdre grinned again and trailed off. Lydia seemed at ease, then again, she always seemed to. But her happiness rubbed off on Deirdre, and her eyes lit up at the mention of a cemetery. "That," she pointed out, "I want the cemetery. That—why would you even bother listing anything else? Of course I want the cemetery, I always want the cemetery." Since she stepped foot in the district, she wondered if death felt the same here, of course she did. She was a banshee after all, and a creature of habit just like anyone else. "Let's go there first. Maybe some shopping after. I'd love to buy something to take out to the...uh, other side." She gestured for Lydia to lead them, eager to get on. 

“You know me, I’d never show even if it did bother me.” Lydia said softly. The incident with Marley had rattled her a little, which made her all the more determined to come across as pristine, always. She did laugh, joyfully, as Deirdre lit up in delight. “That sounds like an excellent idea, my love.” Lydia had, of course, only suggested the cemetery because it was Deirdre she was with. She lead her along what should have been a cobbled path, but the cobbles hovered above them, creaking ever so slightly with each of their steps. Little yellow lights danced alongside them as they stepped into the necropolis. It wasn’t too big, considering how few people were buried there relative to the graves in the rest of the town, but the monuments to the dead, well, Fae did that best. Each tombstone was a tree. Not carved in any way, but grown carefully so that over the years the bark would reflect the name and species of the individual entombed. Some tombstones were vines, intricately wrapped together. Some were great oaks, will gnolls like faces looking over them. It wasn’t covered in grass cut into submission, but a beautiful meadow, everything growing wild - clumps of hungry grass and stray sod abound. “Is this what you expected?”

“But you can,” Deirdre started in a small voice, realizing how strange she must have sounded; no one wanted to share that vulnerability, least of all a fae. “If you wanted to. It’s just us.” Or it wasn’t really, catching the hubbub of fae around her. She coughed and moved the conversation along, eager to see what the cemetery here had to offer. She pulled away from Lydia, mouth agape and eyes wide. The forest that surrounded Deirdre’s family estate was a necropolis itself, the trees stood tall and stalwart, though hundreds of years of no longer being a functioning graveyard let nature claim the land, and the markings of fae were buried under grass and flowers, as if they’d never existed there at all. By comparison, her family catacombs were filled with rigid stone structures, skulls and engravings. Neither of those places were like this, and her chest thrummed with the call of death, easily awash with the fae around her. She felt peace. “It’s lovely.” She moved forwards, running her hands along the twisted bark of the nearest tree. This was a resting place and a standing memory for fae as any should be--the perfect balance of wild yet tamed. This was how the fae were meant to live, at peace with nature. “I never know what to expect when I come into places of death, that’s the fun of it.” She turned to Lydia, “I can almost get over the fact that this place looks like trees growing out of the sky. It’s beautiful.” Deirdre glanced around with awe. “Fates, I wish Regan wasn’t so bound by idiotic human understandings of life, she’d really like this too; if she could just get over the fact that the ground is the sky.” Deirdre sighed, wistful. “Do you ever miss---” Rustling broke her sentence. “Did you hear that?” The banshee snapped her gaze around, trying to find the source, there was no telltale pull of a fae. “Does this place have animals?” 

Lydia smiled wrily. “You’re one of my dearest friends, Deirdre,” she said simply. They both knew better than to expect more than that. Her composure was as much a shield from the world as her glamour. Without it, she’d walk into endless fae word traps, lose herself in her own vanity, and become altogether much too human. She could control herself, mostly, so why oughtn’t she? Deirdre looked serene as they walked through the cemetery, looking over the trees and markings, and presumably steeped in the feeling of death. Lydia laughed. “I’m just trying to work out where the coffins are. They must be somewhere, but I certainly can’t see them.” Then again, Lydia wasn’t looking too hard. Her stomach wouldn’t entirely handle it if a cloud shifted and revealed a mostly decayed corpse. “She would love it. Someday she will,” Lydia replied softly, but her eyes narrowed as the sound of someone or something nearby. “Fae animals, certainly. Foireaux cats, mummers, that sort of thing. I don’t know about anything else,” Lydia replied hesitantly. Not all fae creatures were as kindly to other fae as Foireaux cats. She couldn’t imagine that redcaps would be allowed to live here, but, well, something was hiding behind that tree there. Lydia slid her hand into her purse. She looked to Deirdre as they walked around where the noise was. She could hear trembling breathing. Pulling her pistol out, she pointed it to the source. “Come on out, whoever you are. Are you spying on us?”

And then Lydia pulled a gun. “Fates,” Deirdre’s eyes grew wide. “Why do you have a---” Deirdre gawked at it, the glinting metal against the odd mirror district reflections and Lydia’s hands wrapped around it. Guns were taboo in her family, whether it was the blade's sacred role or the offense of another loud, screaming object that made a deafening noise, she didn’t know. But there was always a particular shock she felt when seeing one. 

“P-p-please don’t shoot me,” a weepy voice filtered out behind the stumpy tree before an equally stumpy man stepped out from behind it. He was trying to hold his hands up, but he was shaking so much it looked like he was dancing. “I j-j-just want to go h-h-home.” He started to cry, but he was so sweaty that Deirdre had trouble discerning what was droplets of tears and what was perspiration. He was human. Deirdre didn’t need to verify by triple-checking the absence of her tingling fae senses, she knew that because he was pathetic in that way only humans were. Which was very pathetic. His white dress shirt was completely soaked through with sweat, clinging to every quiver of his body. His pants were rolled up, in what Deirdre assumed was an attempt to cool down, though it obviously hadn’t worked. Sweat pooled in each wrinkle on his face and his peppery hair laid flat on his head. Deirdre hated him. “Please--” he sniffed ineffectively at the snot dripping out of his nose, “--help me.” And then he started wailing.

Deirdre cringed, picking up a nearby stick and poking him with it. “There, there, uh, poor human-sweat-creature.” She glanced back at Lydia expectantly, as if she would know what to do because she was, somehow, infinitely more wise. Or, as Deirdre hoped, would just shoot him. 

"Because I need something with a little further range than kissing people when I need to protect myself." Lydia replied drily, but she was cut short as the man stepped out from behind the treestump. Her lip curled with disgust as he spoke, his body odor palpable even from here. Humans. They disgusted her on their best days, but the look she gave him now was like she’d found maggots in her wine. Doubly so when he began to wail. Lydia stepped back, and met Deirdre’s gaze. “Let’s leave him for a glaistig or something to finish off. If he didn’t want to be in danger, he shouldn’t have wandered somewhere he didn’t belong. I imagine that’s a new feeling, for him. Come on. I have so much more to show you!” Lydia smiled again, turning so sharply that her clothes swished in the wind, and began to walk away, Deirdre in tow. 

“Can’t you just...spit?” Deirdre asked, though it probably wasn’t the point right now. She was raised to treasure fae abilities as their tools and weapons, anything else was just tacky. Then again, Deirdre had a scream far more potent than a gun. “Ugh, fine, I guess.” She turned to walk with Lydia, but found resistance. She tried to move her foot; it was frozen. She glanced back. “Please don’t leave me!” The man bellowed, hugging Deirdre’s leg. “I have dogs! I need to go home to my babies! What are they going to do without me!” Deirdre hissed, trying to shake him off, “let go of me!” But the more she shook, the harder he clung to her and the louder he begged. “Someone’s going to hear you!” And then find them, and then see some human wrapped around her leg and how was she supposed to explain that? He looked up at her pleadingly, continuing to repeat something about dogs and how they were named Ben and Jerry but not to be confused with his name, which was also Jerry. And they were chihuahuas, and they needed him. “Fuck,” Deirdre groaned, giving up, “fine! Fates, just let go of me and shut up.” Jerry obliged and Deirdre turned pitifully to Lydia. “It wouldn’t be so bad if we just...helped him out for a bit, right?” 

Lydia smirked at the idea that she might be able to spit as far as she could shoot. This was very much not the case, she wasn’t a llama, but it was the most amusing type of image. Her turn to pull Deirdre away from the man was rudely cut short. She sneered at the man. “On the one hand, I do so love seeing humans grovelling on their knees. On the other, for goodness sake, we’re in a cemetery. Do try to have some inkling of dignity.” Lydia said scathingly, ignoring his pleas. Dear god, chihuahuas didn’t need foot massages, why on earth was he blathering on as if they did? Deirdre surrendered far too easily, and Lydia didn’t quite manage to hide her irritation in time.  “Or I could make him drown himself in a cloud,” she said blasély, as if suggesting what they might have for dinner, then remembered their last encounter with human death. “Or just tell him to stay here silently.”

When was it that senselessly killing humans started to seem wrong to Deirdre? Was it before or after Emma? Before or after falling in love with a human? She grimaced at Lydia’s plan, then flinched as she expected some kind of outburst at her facial expressions. It didn’t come, and then she waited as the man continued to grovel and wail and beg. Deirdre continued to drag him along on her leg until he quieted enough for Deirdre to speak. “Or we could help him,” she asked Lydia quietly. Not as another fae, but as a friend. “Just this once. Just...maybe we can atone for Emma, in some small way.” Emma was, of course, a beloved student and daughter. This older man seemed like his only family were two poorly named dogs that he insisted needed daily massages, bedtime stories and a kiss goodnight or else they would be absolutely inconsolable. “Please, Lydia…” It wasn’t right, it wasn’t even what she should be doing. She didn’t even care about humans, let alone carry any desire to save them. But this one, just this once, she thought it might be the right thing to do. 

If Deirdre had been anyone else, Lydia might have shook her head and moved on with their day. They would have forgotten the human under the enthralling nature of everything else they had to do here. Even for a human, he was a pathetic, unsightly specimen. He grovelled and begged, but Lydia didn’t care about that. She cared about the way Deirdre had flinched, just for having a contrary opinion. That fear, expressed, that Lydia would punish her. It wasn’t the first time Lydia had seen her flinch like this. Fae wanted to belong even with their strangest idiosyncrasies, and neither of them were any different. Someone, somewhere along the way had made that flinch necessary. It might even have been Lydia, who was not thrifty with her harsh words. Deirdre said please, and Lydia gently cupped the other woman’s face. “For you, fine,” she said softly, and press a small kiss to Deirdre’s cheek, safe in the knowledge that it wouldn’t hurt her, and would provide the comfort Lydia’s own affectionate traditions wouldn’t. “Let us find ourselves another puddle.”

Deirdre swelled with happiness. She grinned wide and perked up, flushing with affection under Lydia’s kiss. She had never had a friend quite like her, and she treasured every second of it. She didn’t know a fae that was better than Lydia, and she didn’t want to. “You’re the best, you know that right?” She beamed, then raised her voice to dramatism--if only to avoid sounding overly sentimental. “I just don’t know what I’d do without you, oh great Lydia. I would be hopelessly lost. I might even adopt two chihuahuas and become a very sweaty man.” She eyed the human, who was struggling to stand up now on account of all his sweating. She didn’t help him. “If he cries like that again, I’ll personally drown him.” She stood between Lydia and the sweaty human--Jerry, not to be confused with his dog Jerry, he kept trying to tell them--as they walked. She couldn’t figure out how to thank Lydia with her words, for all that Lydia was and for all that she had done, but she hoped her delight might have said it for her. 

“I do try,” Lydia said, brightening up just under the influence of Deirdre’s cheer. If it was so easy to make her so happy, why didn’t she do this all the time? What was saving one paltry human when it could do this for Deirdre? She elbowed Deirdre at the dramatics, but the smile she was biting away was far from fake. And then her gaze turned to the miserable wreck of a man on the ground, waiting impatiently for him to stand up. He had a briefcase, she noticed with a groan. Not even real leather, and the seams were fraying at the edges. The classic way for white collar men to stroke their own ego and over value their own importance, to make themselves seem more valuable than they were. It was disgusting. She didn’t see how this would balance out for Emma in the slightest, but it was what it was. Because even here up was still down and left was still wrong, she held on to Deirdre’s arm tightly as they began looking for a way back to the other world. “Look, there.” Lydia wondered if they might push him through and be on their way, but they had no idea what part of town he might emerge in. 

Jerry was insufferable. This was quickly apparent in the way he tried to wrench himself between Deirdre and Lydia, afraid that if they couldn’t see him, they would forget about him. When he realized he couldn’t do that, even with trying to swing his briefcase out, he started talking loudly instead. Mostly about his dogs, but occasionally about his new girlfriend, Jerri---with an ‘i’ he said, so it wasn’t confusing. It was with great relief that Deirdre took to observing the gateway out. "Look there sweat-boy, just go through that and you're done!" Jerry approached cautiously, glancing back at the two women. He asked where it led, Deirdre shrugged. "Outside, obviously. Who knows where. That's not our concern." And then he started to cry again. "I hate him," Deirdre turned to Lydia, "he's like a fully-grown baby! Fates, let me just push him in." With great reluctance, she untangled herself from Lydia and approached Jerry, who she then began to shove towards the exit. "Just. Get. In. There." But Jerry kicked and screamed and when his foot fell through the other side, he gripped Deirdre and dragged her down with him. 

Jerry with a y was so intolerable Lydia briefly considered stealing his girlfriend Jerri with an I, and giving his dogs Ben and Jerry (also with a y) to Jared for safe keeping. In short, the more he talked, the more Lydia day dreamed about leaving him to the pixies to eat on. But Deirdre has wanted this, and Deirdre was the one batting him away every time he tried to squeeze between them. Lydia just held Deirdre closer until  their shoulders were pressed together. "Oh, for God sake man! Pull yourself together. This is what a rescue looks like!" Lydia snapped - but it was too late. He grabbed Deirdre, yanking her right out of Lydia's grasp, and into the puddle. Lydia winced at Deirdre's fall, because it looked painful and terrifying, and being grabbed by that man seemed as disgusting as wading through a swamp. Lydia hesitated, then jumped in after them. Unfortunately for her, that second's hesitation had stretched into an hour on the other side of town. 

“I’M GOING TO KILL YOU AND FEED YOU TO YOUR DOGS. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? YOU’RE DEAD, JERRY. DE---Oh, hello, Lydia.” Deirdre grinned, happily holding a knife above Jerry with one hand while Jerry’s sweaty dress shirt was bunched in her other. She hadn’t been expecting Lydia to join her. Life on the other side was an unimaginable nightmare. Deirdre watched and waited for Lydia to pop out, then considered that she wouldn’t---because why would she? There was a whole fae district for her to explore. And so she turned to Jerry, who had taken to looking around. “You know,” he started, “I actually think this might be the forest behind my house. Look! I can see my backyard from here.” And then Deirdre lost it. She could barely remember how exactly she’d spent her hour, but Jerry was crying and Deirdre hair and clothing were disheveled. Her dress was muddy, as was Jerry’s sweat-stained attire. She could remember chasing him around and throwing rocks and sticks in anger, all of it culminating in tackling him to the floor in front of the puddle they popped out of with a knife in her hand and murderous intent in her voice. “How fun for you to finally join me. Did you stop to do a little shopping or---” Jerry whimpered as Deirdre spoke and she slapped him. “I said cut that out! Fates--Do you know where we are Lydia? Jerry, tell her where we are.” He sniffled, “b-behind my house.” 

Lydia took in the scene in front of her with a startled look. The knife raised, the mud, the leaf dangling from Deirdre's hair. How had so much happened in the blink of an eye? "H-Hi Deirdre," she replied, flummoxed as she stepped off the puddle and into the forest, momentarily thrown by the shift of the floor back where it ought to be and the pop in her ear that was always disorientating upon return. "Finally join you? Shopping? Deirdre. What?" Lydia replied with a long stare. The stare became even longer at his reply. "In your back garden? You miserly shrimp. We helped you and you dragged us to just behind your house? You really do top the dung heap don't you?" She pinched her the bridge of her nose. The trees filtered out the moonlight, so this puddle wouldn’t work anymore. Their trip to the mirrored district was thoroughly scuppered. “I don’t care whether you kill him or not, but this puddle is dead.but the night’s still young if you’d like to find some fun around town.”

Deirdre snapped her gaze back to Jerry like a crazed animal. He and dragged her down because he was afraid of where he's end up, and where he ended up was right behind his fucking house. Deirdre wanted to kill him so badly she nearly frothed at the mouth about it. One hour she chased this fool around, and one hour she wrestled with the desire to just scream and end him. "Look at my dress," she said, "look at my hair. I sincerely doubt I'll be able to enjoy a night on the town while I look like I just enjoyed a night pretending to be a pig." Jerry whimpered in her grip; she hated him. And so, she stabbed him. Three times. In the shoulder. She dropped him and staggered back. "I should kill you," she prefaced, "but I went through so much effort to save you. So, let's call ourselves even, right?" Jerry nodded. "And I need a promise you won't tell anyone about me, or her." Jerry promised. "Well then," Deirdre kicked him, "get on with it." Jerry, clutching his shoulder, scrambled away. Deirdre pulled the handkerchief she kept out and began wiping blood away. "You were gone for a while, Lydia. I didn't think you'd follow. Not that I'd blame you if you wanted some more fun in the aos sí." She smiled gratefully at her friend. "If you'd still like some fun, I'm sure I can steal someone's shower and a change of clothes. I don't really mind…" she slipped her knife away. "As long as I'm with you, my friend. That's the only place I'd like to be."

Deirdre was unnervingly unpredictable at times. It was extremely fae of her, perhaps more fae of her than Lydia, if they were both honest with themselves, but that didn’t change how unnerving it was to have heard just minutes ago (from Lydia’s perspective) that Deirdre wanted to make up for Emma’s death, only to watch her stab him, the blood immediately staining his soaked shirt, spreading faster through the cloth because it was already so sweat stained. She didn’t say anything as Deirdre made the promises, only stepping away to give Jerry a wide birth as he scampered away. Deirdre cleaned her knife methodically as Lydia walked over to her, concerned. She touched Deirdre’s muddy shoulder, careful to avoid the worst of the mud but also to offer reassurance. “I came right after you. I promise, I wasn’t trying to leave you with him. I’m so sorry, Deirdre. Especially for your dress and hair.” She smiled conspiratorially, and took Deirdre’s hand again. “Why don’t we go back to mine. You can shower, borrow one of my dresses… it’ll be a little short on your legs, but you have ever such nice legs, and then we can decide what we want to do for the rest of the evening.”

"Hey, I'm not mad at you about it, Lydia. Even if you were trying to leave me with him. I don't mind. You came out in the end after all, anyway. And you're here now, and that's what matters to me." Deirdre smiled, her anger had dissipated with the stabbing, and couldn't find a foothold under Lydia's reassurance. But there was...one thing she thought she might do anyway. With her free hand, she wiped up a glob of mud off her dress and held it. "Mhm, sounds great to me, friend." She grinned madly, holding up the mud. "You know, it'd be such a shame if I was the only one showering, right?" And with all the mischief of a fae, she chased Lydia around, threatening muddy demise. 

[kbox-in-the-box]

Austin Kingsley: Star Prodigy — Episode 1, “Saving Alexandria,” Part 2

The cheery yellow 1971 Honda Z600 puttered to a stop in front of the imposingly monolithic warehouse, surrounded on all sides by a manufacturing park that had long since fallen into disrepair.

The driver stepped gingerly through the shallow puddles that dotted the grimy pavement, not wanting to muddy either her broken-in but still mostly white Adidas sneakers or her hot pink leg warmers.

“According to this, this is the place,” Mitzi Klingfeld confirmed, brushing back her billowy blonde hair as her bright blue eyes skimmed through the folder of loosely organized documents that Ms. Van Doren had handed her. “Building 49-A in the Hammersmith Industrial Development ... God, who would want to set up shop in the middle of the Engine Block?” she wondered, tugging at the loose neckline of her oversized sweater to keep it from falling off her shoulders.

As her sweater settled back down to its normal level, Mitzi spotted a small, seemingly hand-carved wooden sign, next to the structure's only visible entrance, whose homey and ornately rustic charm felt incongruous with the featureless exterior of the inner-city facility.

“The Bookhouse,” Mitzi read aloud, tracing her fingertips along the rough grain of the letters, before she fished a key out of the sheaf of paperwork with which Ms. Van Doren had entrusted her.

“Hello?” Mitzi called out nervously, as she was struck by the stark contrast between the sun outside, nearing its midday height in the Southwestern sky, and the murky darkness inside, punctuated only by perplexing, intermittently flashing, tiny chirping computer lights. As her eyes adjusted, she could make out towering shelves stocked with an eclectic mix of antique museum pieces and futuristic-looking devices whose functions she couldn't even begin to guess at. “Jeez, it's like the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark in here.”

“Quest Tracker recording, Star Point Portal experiment 51,” a man's voice announced, from further in the depths of the labyrinthine shelves. As Mitzi followed the voice to its source, she suddenly found herself facing the backside of a naked young man, standing inside a large upright ring, spreading his legs to plant his bare feet firmly at its base, as he extended his arms horizontally for his hands to grip the ring. Even as Mitzi quickly averted her stunned stare, she couldn't help but be reminded, by the pose of his body, of a five-pointed star.

“This is Austin Imhotep Kingsley, conducting scientist and guinea pig,” his voice reported for posterity, with enough of a wry tone that Mitzi could practically see his smirk, even as he continued to face away from her, “attempting to activate the Ouroboros on its own, minus the key of the star segments, by redirecting my recently received energies into the artifact.” As the ring's glow grew, Mitzi traced the light trails of its wires and tubes to a much smaller ring, an engraved stone relic on which the metallic model appeared to have been based.

“And with that, I suppose all that's left to say is ... Desperta Ferres,” Austin Kingsley declared tremulously, as his naked skin lit up with neon yellow symbols and patterns, whose energy pulsed and flowed, first into the larger ring, then into what Mitzi guessed must be the Ouroboros, illuminating them both with a rising hum, until crackling sparks flew from where Austin's hands and feet made contact with the ring, and an explosive force blew him backward, out of the ring and into the nearest row of shelves, where Mitzi had hidden to spy on him.

“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh,” Mitzi repeated frantically, even as she immediately rushed out to grab the glaringly red extinguisher off its wall mounting and douse the flurry of flames that had replaced the shower of sparks coming from the ring, before she turned to Austin, who'd been knocked out by the blast. “Mister Kingsley?” she patted his face anxiously, hoping to revive him, while pulling a heavy wool blanket from the floor around him for warmth. “Please say you're okay.”

Austin coughed himself awake, to discover his head resting in Mitzi's miniskirted lap. He blinked his wide blue eyes at her, and she realized that his smooth, handsome young face made for a fitting match with his sleek, attractive body ... not that she'd been looking, of course.

“It didn't work, did it?” Austin checked, his tone so despondent that she couldn't resist brushing his silky, sandy brown bangs back from his knitted brow.

Mitzi shook her head with regret. “Whatever you were trying to do, I don't think it happened.” Curiosity overcame her. “What does 'Desperta Ferres' mean?”

“It's a Medieval Catalan battle cry,” Austin grunted as he rose to his feet, sloughing off the rough blanket like a snake shedding its skin, which compelled Mitzi to grudgingly turn her appraising gaze away yet again. “It means, 'Awake, iron,' which couldn't help but seem appropriate under the circumstances.” When he turned back to address her, he noticed her attention was fixed intently on the ceiling, her arms crossed tight over her broad chest. “Why are you ... oh, right. Western culture, nudity taboos. Sorry. I still forget sometimes.”

“Yeah, think you could take care of that? Thanks,” Mitzi requested curtly, and instantly felt a twinge of guilt over her mild abruptness, as Austin slipped on the same pair of black casual pants and matching utilitarian top he'd apparently been wearing before his experiment. The band collar with the gold trim opened into a low but narrow neckline, that allowed him to slip it over his head while barely mussing up his floppy mop of hair, and only exposed glimpses of the peach fuzz on his chest to those who were genuinely trying to catch sight of it.

Mitzi cleared her throat, as much to rouse herself from her reverie as to attract Austin's attention. "Look, I'm sure whatever you're doing here is super-important, and it's not like I'm in any position to judge how anyone else does their business, so if you could just fill out these forms, that Ms. Van Doren sent me over here to get completed, I promise I'll leave you alone, to strip down and electrocute yourself to your heart's content."

Austin rolled up his gold-hemmed sleeves as he scanned rapidly through the thick stack of expense inquiries. “Of course Nora sent you,” he muttered, as much to himself as to Mitzi. “Only seven keys in all of creation can open the doors of the Bookhouse, and they can't be duplicated.” He stopped short, in the midst of his nimble fingers flitting quickly through the overstuffed binder, to separate out a single sheet of paper from the pile. “This belongs to you, actually. It's your résumé from ... Trust-E Temps? And you might as well return the rest of Nora's tedious attempts at bookkeeping to the Athenæum on your way out. Please tell her I have no time to be nickel-and-dimed by the same company my parents started and her family stole.”

“Tell her yourself, Buster!” Mitzi slapped Austin's proffered paperwork against his chest, her temper finally flaring. “I'm tired of you two treating me like one of those little plastic players on a foosball table, and I couldn't care less about whatever sordid soap opera drama you've got going on between you!” She sighed wearily, her shoulders slumping so low that she briefly resembled a deflating balloon. “If you send me back there empty-handed, then Nora, or Ms. Van Doren, or whatever I'm supposed to call her? She'll call my agency, and I'll get a bad eval, and I'll be out of a job. And I've got a little girl to take care of, so that is just not going to happen, okay?” Mitzi mostly succeeded in keeping the tremor of impending tears out of her voice.

Austin so obviously had no idea how to handle such an outburst that Mitzi almost felt sorry for him, until he broke into a giddy grin that did little to reassure her. “Wait ... ah, why didn't I see it before? Stupid, Austin! Um ... Mitzi, is it? Or Ms. Klingfeld, if you prefer? If all you need is a new employer, then I could just hire you to help me out here! Oh, you'd be perfect!”

Mitzi winced reflexively. “It's not that I don't appreciate the vote of confidence, but ... well, I've been in enough bad relationships already that the absolute last thing I need in my life right now is to nursemaid yet another crazy person who's trying to kill themselves. No offense.”

“Two minutes,” Austin cajoled, holding up two fingers. “Give me just two minutes, maybe three, to give your perspective a paradigm shift ... and I'll fill out Nora's forms for you, regardless of your decision,” he exhaled heavily at the apparent weight of his concession. “Please.”

“Two minutes?” Mitzi checked skeptically.

“Maybe three,” Austin repeated, before venturing, “Possibly four?”

“Let's make this simple,” Mitzi held up her hand, before fetching her burgeoning purse from where she'd set it on the floor. “Lucky for you, I'm a sucker for hopeless headcases.” She fished through the depths of her handbag until she found her Walkman, the cord of its headphones still wound round it securely, to keep its cassette from popping out. “I've never been able to resist giving at least a single dance to just about any fella who can work up the nerve to ask. If he knocks my socks off, we keep on dancing. If he doesn't, I thank him kindly, and he still gets to say he got a free dance from a classy gal.”

This time, it was Austin's turn to pull a befuddled expression. “I ... never really learned how to dance.”

“That figures,” Mitzi snorted, before retrieving the tape marked “Heart: Alone/Barracuda” from the player, and holding it up to Austin's line of sight. “I'm guessing this'll be your first lesson on the Wilson sisters too, then.” She replaced the tape in the player, snapped its lid shut, hung its headphones around Austin's neck, and dialed their volume to maximum, before holstering the Walkman on the waist of her miniskirt. “I picked up this single during the summer. I've practically worn out the A-side since then. The song's about three and a half minutes, and you'll pardon the pun, but I know it by heart.”

“And I have the length of this song to make my case,” Austin grasped, as Mitzi noted that he seemed suddenly invigorated by being assigned such concrete parameters.

Mitzi beamed with approval in spite of herself. “Clever boy, Mister Kingsley.”