#I shudder to remember some of the lines I wrote

[bellaxgiornata]

Your Body is Not a Graveyard

Pairing: Frank Castle x Fem!Reader

Summary: It's been over a year since Frank and you decided to expand your family, but all you've managed to give him is more loss. Struggling with grief and depression, you've tried your best to hide your pain from him, but one afternoon, Frank stumbles on you mid-panic attack.

Warnings: 18+; miscarriage, pregnancy struggles, panic attacks, depression, grief, angst, emotional hurt/comfort, but I promise there's hope at the end

Word Count: 5.7k

a/n: So I have written a lot of Matthew Murdock content, but this is my first ever Frank Castle fic and my first ever one shot (but I could be persuaded for a possible sequel). Honestly, I wrote this for the Frank comfort because I've been struggling through some things and needed it myself so expect soft Frank. I am also working on a Frank series that will be coming soon. Feedback is always appreciated!

Tagging @danzer8705 since you asked!

For a long while you stood there, the faucet running as the warm water gradually grew hotter over your hands. You barely felt the temperature difference, though. Nor had you noticed that the soap had long since been rinsed from them. You were too focused on your eyes and the blank way they were staring back at you through the bathroom mirror.

Because at first you’d felt numb.

That bit of bright red noticeable on the toilet paper before you'd flushed had caught your eye. Part of you had expected it. It was, after all, about that time of the month. Again. At the very least, your body was nothing if not predictable. Which was why you hadn’t exactly been surprised to see the telltale crimson of your period beginning.

You’d gone through the motions after. Grabbed a tampon out from under the bathroom sink and finished your business before you'd washed your hands, yet all the while it felt like you’d somehow disconnected from your body. As if the hands inserting your tampon and flushing the toilet, the same ones pulling your underwear and jeans back up before turning on the bathroom faucet and lathering the soap along them, were suddenly not yours. You didn’t recognize them. 

And that face in the mirror, the one staring unblinkingly and so sullenly back at you, was unfamiliar, too. When had the bags under your eyes become so prominent? When had your eyes themselves grown so dull? 

But the longer you stared, the blurrier that face in the mirror became. 

And that’s when you felt it.

At first it was small–just the stinging of tears in your eyes. The all too familiar prickle began to build before you felt the first few large, wet drops spill forth from them. They left a trail of heat as they slid their way down your cheeks, catching in the frown lines around your trembling lips. 

Next came the sharp, burning pain that hit you right in the stomach. Gradually it crept its way up towards your chest like a growing fire right before you felt your ribcage abruptly compress around your heart and your lungs in a single, abrupt seize. A shuddering gasp tumbled out of your lips, your eyes snapping shut. Breath coming in shallower, your teeth clamped down onto your bottom lip as you tried to fight back the muffled sobs slipping out of you. You knew Frank had just returned home from the store and you didn’t need him to overhear one of the panic attacks you always hid from him.

The ringing in your ears soon became louder than the sound of the running water from the faucet, tears continuing to slip past your lashes as your own racing pulse pounded rapidly in your throat. But above all of that your mind was becoming the loudest thing in this bathroom, quickly drowning out everything else around you.

Because another month had gone by and you still hadn’t conceived. It had been over a year since you and Frank had stopped trying to not get pregnant and let things happen. Yet here you were. Enduring another monthly menstrual cycle. 

You still remembered that late night conversation with him curled up in bed together, the one that changed the trajectory of your past year. Both of you had been wrapped limb around naked limb in bed, your finger tracing mindless patterns along his bare chest as you both laid there together, panting and flushed from the exertion of your previous intimate activities. Frank had been rather sweet with you that night, too. Sweeter than usual. He’d taken his time with you, appreciating your body and touching you only with the most delicate of touches. Something about the way his hands had even just lingered on you that night had felt different. And then afterwards, he’d been the one to break the peaceful silence in the bedroom. You could still hear his voice perfectly in your head even now.

“I want that with you.”

Those five words had sent your heart into a frenzied flutter. Granted, you’d been uncertain if he’d meant them in the context of the conversation the pair of you had the night before when you’d curiously asked him if he had ever given more thought to wanting a family. It had been a question you’d assured him had come with no pressure. You knew about Frank’s past–the life that was not Peter Castiglione’s–and you’d always made it clear that you respected his boundaries either way. All you wanted was him. But before he’d ever proposed to you, he had on multiple occasions told you that maybe someday he could see that again–having a family–but only with you. 

So you’d been curious that night before, almost six months after you had eloped with him and legally become Mrs. Castiglione–though in private Frank called you Mrs. Castle. You had wondered if he would ever want something more. Something more than just the little family the two of you had created together in your cozy house. Because for a while now it had been just Frank, you, and Bear–the pitbull you’d seen on the local animal shelter’s social media page shortly after you’d both moved in together. You’d shown that picture to Frank and the very next day you had come home from work to find Bear wagging his tail and greeting you excitedly beside Frank in the living room. The three of you had quickly become a family.

But sometimes you still wondered about more than that.

So you looked back on that night fondly with Frank once he’d clarified what he’d meant. When he’d opened the door to something more for the both of you. Because you knew what that meant for him. You knew what a big step that was after what he’d lost.

You vividly remembered the excited squeal you’d let out when he gripped your chin so gently between his fingers and said he wanted a family with you and that he knew you’d make an amazing mother. You’d flung yourself on top of him and excitedly kissed his laughing mouth over and over while he’d joked about getting a head start on making a baby and trying a second time that night. And of course you did have sex again that evening, though you hadn’t removed your birth control implant until almost three weeks after that night, wanting to wait to make sure Frank was entirely certain before you did. And when you had, you’d both been ecstatic about what the future would bring.

But now, a year later, you found yourself growing further and further disheartened and depressed. You’d eventually begun to silently take the blame upon yourself that you hadn’t managed to get a pregnancy to full term yet. That you couldn't seem to give Frank a child. Because maybe you were broken. Maybe your body was broken. 

It wasn’t that you hadn’t gotten pregnant at all–you had. Twice now. But you’d lost both pregnancies. And the second loss only hit you harder than the first because your second pregnancy had gotten farther along. You had been almost eleven weeks pregnant and starting to feel like things were going to be alright. You knew that the rate of miscarriage significantly dropped after the first twelve weeks. 

You had cautiously let yourself begin to get excited. To discuss nursery plans with Frank when it came to the extra, unused bedroom in the house. Teasing him about how many times you'd be likely to change your mind about the paint color, joking about how often he'd be repainting it for you. But he always just wrapped you in those big, strong arms of his, a broad smile on his face as he promised you the same thing every time. 

"Don't matter to me," his deep voice would rumble out with a soft chuckle. "I'll paint it every goddamn shade of the rainbow for the next nine months if that's what you want, sweetheart."

Frank had even finally let himself get excited, too, and it had warmed your heart to see. 

Oftentimes you'd wake up, rolling out of bed to hear him down the hall and in the kitchen making a pot of coffee. He was usually awake before you in the mornings and talking to Bear, but you had begun to overhear him telling Bear that he was going to need to be a good boy and look out for you and this baby whenever he wasn't home. Or you would overhear him telling Bear about how much he'd love playing fetch when the baby was a little older, and how this child would become Bear's best friend. It had always put a smile on your face when you overheard those one-sided conversations as you made your way into the kitchen in the mornings, greeted with the sight of a grinning Frank and Bear sitting beside him, wagging his tail so hard you could hear it thumping against the wood floor repeatedly.

You remembered how excited Frank had gotten about that first appointment with your obstetrician, too. He had insisted he took off early from work to be there to hear the baby’s heartbeat and see that very first ultrasound. And you would never forget the way Frank looked at you when you’d both first heard that rapid, fluttering heartbeat. His eyes had welled up with tears, his face a mixture of awe and sheer joy as his large hand tightened around yours. You had always thought Frank was an attractive man, but in that moment, with the way his face had lit up with so much happiness as he gazed back at you, you’d never seen him look more handsome.

Though you hadn’t seen that look on his face since. A few weeks after that appointment you’d woken up from a dead sleep, your abdomen aching and in pain. Getting up out of bed, you remembered stopping in your tracks when you felt that warm gush between your thighs and your throat had instantly closed up. You’d nearly sprinted down the hall to the bathroom, a groggy Frank calling out after you as Bear sat whining outside the bathroom door. 

You were bleeding and it just wouldn’t stop. 

Frank had known exactly what was happening the moment you'd begun openly weeping in the bathroom. With a focused calm he managed to get both of you dressed and ready before he brought you to the hospital. He kept uttering words of comfort in your ear, holding your hand as you sobbed into his shoulder in the ER’s waiting room. Eventually a nurse wheeled you back to a room in a wheelchair where Frank continued to hold your hand and hover at your side as the nurses drew blood and set up an IV. 

That whole time you were at the hospital Frank never let go of your hand, not until they needed to take you away to conduct an emergency ultrasound. You’d been terrified to go without him, not wanting to be alone if they couldn’t find a heartbeat, but the staff had refused, claiming it was hospital policy that he needed to stay back and wait for you. You swore you almost saw the Punisher firsthand in that hospital room with the sheer rage present on Frank’s face as his nostrils flared at the nurses. Inevitably you had to be the one to tell him it was alright, that you’d be fine with him waiting for you.

And then you’d broken down in the darkened little room by yourself as the doctor conducting the ultrasound offered you stiff and practiced words of condolences when that rapid, fluttering heartbeat couldn’t be found again.

You’d spent the next few days afterwards unable to leave your bed. Bear stayed cuddled up beside you, resting his head on your legs as you cried into your pillow on and off. Whenever Frank had gotten home from his shift at the local factory, he’d grab a quick shower before he lay with you, soothingly rubbing your back and not saying a word. Because there wasn’t anything to say. 

It was a few days later that you’d felt guilty for wallowing in your own grief. Despite that calm, comforting exterior Frank always approached you with, you knew he was hiding his own grief from you. That underneath all those sweet words and meals he had cooked for you, he was struggling with his own pain. And you’d stumbled on the truth of that one day when you’d woken up from a nap on the couch, heading to the bedroom and catching Frank sitting on the edge of the mattress bent in half with his face in his hands, the ultrasound photos laying on the nightstand beside him. 

You’d never felt like you’d let him down more in the time you’d known him than in that very moment and it had broken you. Because instead of adding joy to Frank’s life–like you wanted to do after everything he’d been through–you just kept adding more loss. So you’d stopped openly wallowing and crying after that, shoving your emotions all the way down until moments like this–like right now–where you were alone and could feel them. Just a little bit. Because you didn’t need to add anymore to Frank’s pain. You didn’t need to be another burden on his shoulders–he carried enough weight on them.

A couple of quick raps came from the bathroom door, the noise abruptly breaking through your thoughts.

“Hey, sweetheart?” Frank’s gruff voice called out from the otherside of it. “You good in there? Sink has been running for awhile now, just wanted to make sure you were alright.” 

Biting down harder on your lip, a choked sob slipped out between your teeth before it broke on a hiccup. Immediately you heard the bathroom door handle twist open, your damp lashes flying open to reveal Frank’s panicked expression reflected back at you through the bathroom mirror. 

“Shit,” he cursed under his breath. 

Swiftly stepping beside you, he reached a hand out and turned off the faucet that had still been running. He muttered another curse when he realized how hot the water had been, reaching across you to grab the hand towel from the nearby towel rack. 

"Hey, c'mere," he whispered.

He wrapped the soft towel gently around your trembling hands, drying them off carefully as he turned you towards him. Your hands ached just from the light touch; you'd certainly left them under the hot water for far too long.

Sniffling, you turned your face into the sleeve of your shirt, trying to dry the tears still flowing on the fabric along your shoulder. Gritting your teeth together, you fought to even out your sharp, shallow breaths and get them under control. You didn't need Frank to see you like this.

"Somethin' happen?" he asked softly, removing the towel from your hands. "You hurt?"

You shook your head quickly, unable to trust your voice. 

He lowered his face to yours, trying to catch your gaze. Sniffling again, your eyes gradually slid up towards his, guilt flooding you at the sight of concern in his warm, brown eyes. Immediately the tears began pouring out of you even faster, your face scrunching up as you tried to bury it back into your shoulder.

"Hey, hey, c'mere," he murmured, tossing the towel onto the bathroom counter.

Frank's hands encircled your shoulders before he firmly pulled you into himself, burying his face into the top of your hair. Your hands were trapped between both of your bodies, sliding their way up to Frank’s chest before you desperately grasped onto the fabric of his black shirt and balled it into your fists. Pressing your face into his solid chest, you struggled to fight down the rasping breaths that kept leaving your mouth as you cried.

"I've got you, sweetheart," Frank whispered into your hair, placing a kiss to the top of your head. "I've got you. It's alright. You're alright."

One of his large hands began smoothing your hair soothingly as he continued gently shushing you and muttering words of comfort. Closing your eyes, you inhaled a deep, rattling breath and tried to focus on his calming voice. The familiar scent of him filled your nose, something warm like pine mixed with cinnamon. It was a smell you'd come to associate with him and it always brought you comfort–just like Frank’s entire presence always did. When you felt his lips leave a lingering kiss along your temple, the apology slipped out of your mouth before you even knew it had.

"I'm sorry," you breathed out.

“Sorry for what, sweetheart?” he asked.

Fingers curling tighter around the fabric of his shirt, you pressed your lips firmly together as you tried to bury your face further against his chest. You hadn’t meant to let that slip. The guilt and shame welling inside of you for months was something you much preferred to keep to yourself. You didn’t want Frank to carry the weight of that, too.

But you felt the way Frank had swiftly withdrawn his face from your hair, his large hand sliding around from where it had been stroking your hair to instead gingerly cradle your cheek. Slowly he drew your face from where you’d tried to hide against his chest, his hand gradually turning it up towards his. 

His brows were slightly drawn together, a few creases visible between them. The corners of his lips were downturned, his eyes narrowing as they searched your face for answers. You could feel the tremble of your own lips as you studied his face in return, seeing exactly what you hadn’t wanted to see in it. Frank Castle was not going to let this go without an answer. 

“Sorry for what, sweetheart?” he repeated.

Licking your lips nervously, you knew you were going to have to tell him this time. Though having this particular conversation didn’t remotely calm the racing of your heart. And you knew you were going to break down again in front of him; that thought alone brought the burn of tears back to your eyes.

“I–I got my period,” you stammered quietly.

Frank’s eyes only narrowed further at you, confusion briefly slipping onto his face as his frown deepened. But then understanding washed over his features mere seconds later and you saw his expression soften. He immediately began to shake his head at you, his thumb caressing your cheek.

“Don’t,” he warned. “Don’t you dare apologize for that.”

"Frank, I–"

"No," he stated, shaking his head again. "No. You did nothing wrong."

Throat tightening, you struggled to get your next words out, your fingers still curled around his shirt.

"I lost them both," you choked out. 

Frank's other hand came up, both of his hands now carefully cradling your face between his palms. His lips twitched at the corners as his hardened eyes stared fiercely back at yours.

"That wasn't on you," he stated. "None of it was your fault, sweetheart. You hear me? It was out of your control. I don't blame you for a damn thing. How could you even think you need to apologize?"

The calloused pads of Frank’s thumbs began tenderly wiping away the tears that were still falling down your cheeks. Despite how dangerous you knew Frank could be–despite knowing the things he’d done–he’d only ever been gentle with you.

You inhaled a shuddering breath, another truth slipping out of your mouth. "Because I let you down, Frank," you whispered. 

Frank's head tilted to the side, confusion once again drawing over his face as his brows furrowed further together. "You–you what?" he asked.

Eyelids lowering, you tried to control your breathing, taking a deep breath in and holding it. You couldn't properly explain what you needed to if you were going to start hyperventilating on him. And you sure as shit felt like you couldn’t look him in the eye right now, either. Not with that look on his face, the one full of earnest desire to understand you. To help you.

"I know what it–it means that you wanted this, Frank," you began in a whisper. "Wanted a family with me. I saw how happy you were both times I told you I was pregnant. I saw the way your face lit up at the ultrasound. And I–" you winced, your grip tightening so hard on Frank's shirt that your nails were digging into your own palms, "–I saw you. After. Crying in the bedroom over that ultrasound. Because I can't–can't seem to just get pregnant. To keep a pregnancy." 

A humorless, strangled laugh fell out of you, your eyes still closed because you couldn’t bear to see his face. But you felt Frank’s hands holding your face a bit tighter between them in response to the harsh, bitter noise you’d just made.

"It seems so fucking easy for everyone else," you continued, everything suddenly tumbling out of you after months of repeatedly shoving it down. "Everyone but me. And I'm–I'm so tired of being asked by my family and friends every couple of months if I'm finally pregnant. So tired of them brushing off my pain like it's nothing, like the two pregnancies I lost were nothing . Telling me things will happen in time or–or there's no rush to get pregnant. That everything will work out like some empty fucking platitude is going to fix this. Because none of them have gone through any of this. And I'm happy they haven't. I am. But they don't know what it's like. How–" your eyelids flew open, your focus on your hands still wrapped around his shirt, "–how upsetting it is to be repeatedly asked if I've gotten pregnant yet, especially when it feels like my body is…" your voice trailed off, your tongue suddenly feeling too heavy in your mouth to finish your sentence. 

Frank's large hands carefully tried to turn your face up towards his, his eyes once again attempting to catch your own. Nervously you met his gaze and the hurt and pain clear in them only had your lips quivering yet again. 

"When it feels like your body is what, sweetheart?" Frank asked softly. 

Swallowing hard, your sad eyes held his as you spoke. "It feels broken," you whispered. "Like there's something wrong with me. Like it's–it's a graveyard."

The moment the words left your mouth, you entirely lost your composure. A sob barreled its way up out of your throat, your eyes snapping shut. Frank didn't stop you when your hands released his shirt and wrapped around his neck instead, your body collapsing forward into his. He only held you tight to himself, his hands rubbing calming patterns along your back as you wept. Your fingers dug into Frank through his shirt, clinging to him like he was the only thing grounding you.  

“You’re not broken,” he whispered after a few minutes, his mouth beside your ear. “You hear me, sweetheart? You’re not broken.” 

You felt him shifting beneath you, his hands making their way up to your shoulders before he gently pulled you away from himself. Reluctantly you loosened your grip around his neck, your own hands holding onto his broad shoulders as you drew back from him, spotting the damp spot on his shirt from where your tears had soaked through the fabric. One of his hands slid along the length of your shoulder, continuing upwards until he was lightly grasping underneath your jaw, his thumb affectionately brushing back and forth along the line of it.

“Look at me,” he said, the command so gentle it was more of a plea. “Hey, look at me, sweetheart.”

Slowly your watery gaze left that damp spot on his shirt and returned to Frank’s face, taking in that tender look in his eyes. It was the same look he’d given you when he’d dropped down onto one knee and asked you to be his wife. It was a look he’d given you so often since that night. And right now that look was breaking down all the walls you’d been building to keep Frank out of your pain.

“There is nothing wrong with you,” he assured you. “ Nothing . And there is absolutely nothing you need to be sorry about.”

His eyes quickly clamped shut, hurt briefly screwing up the features of his face as you silently watched him. When his eyes opened again, they held yours firmly with an intensity you didn’t see often in Frank. His voice was thick with emotion when he spoke again, but it didn’t waver on a single word.

“Your body is not a graveyard,” he stated. “You hear me? What happened does not define you. It doesn’t make you a–a disappointment or a failure. You had no control over any of that. And you don’t owe me a single goddamn apology, sweetheart. Not a single fuckin’ one.”

“But you’re hurting, too,” you whispered.

Frank shrugged, your hands rising and falling with the movement as they still rested along his shoulders. He gave you a single, resolute nod of his head.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “It hurt me to lose both of them, too. But it hurts me more to see how much you’re hurting. And I’m sittin’ here feeling like there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”

“You’ve already been doing so much for me,” you countered, shaking your head at him. “I don’t know how I’d have gotten through any of this without you.”

“I’ll always be here for you. Always ,” he assured you. “But do you still want this?”

Biting down on your bottom lip, you slowly nodded back at him. “Yes,” you answered. “I want this with you, Frank. More than anything.”

The corner of his lip twitched upwards, the beginnings of a smile creeping onto his face. “Do you wanna keep trying? Or do you wanna look into other options?” he asked next. “Because I’m with you, whatever you want.”

Your arms slowly wrapped back around his shoulders, drawing him down towards you until his forehead was resting against yours. Your hands slid up the back of his neck, fingers brushing over the back of his cropped hair. Frank immediately leaned in, lightly pressing his lips to yours in a sweet kiss. A small smile slipped onto your mouth when he pulled away.

“I want to keep trying,” you whispered. 

“Yeah?” he asked, a playful coyness in his voice.

You couldn’t help the giggle that slipped out of you in response as he wrapped his arms around you in another embrace. Turning to rest your cheek against his chest, your eyes fell closed and you felt yourself relaxing into him.

“I’m on my period, Frank,” you reminded him.

“So?” he asked. “Didn’t stop us those times before.”

Laughing lightly, you shook your head against him. “Probably not likely to result in a pregnancy,” you pointed out.

“Who says that’s the only reason I need to make love to my wife?” he countered.

Slowly you shifted in his arms, your chin coming to rest along Frank’s chest as you looked up at him. He drew a bit back from you, glancing down at you with a cheeky grin on his mouth. When you quirked a brow at him, he sent you a wink.

“Make love, huh?” you teased.

“Yeah, that’s right,” he replied with a smug smile. “Which reminds me, I got somethin’ for you.”

Brows curiously drawing together when Frank’s arms released you from their hold, your arms dropped to your sides as you watched him turn and head out of the bathroom. You followed out of the room behind him, Bear greeting you in the hallway with a wagging tail. You smiled down at him, giving him a quick pet on the head before you continued on your way towards the kitchen after Frank, wiping the backs of your hands against your damp cheeks. 

When you rounded the hallway corner, you spotted Frank in the kitchen holding a vase filled with a beautiful floral arrangement. Your jaw dropped as you came to an abrupt halt. The bouquet was a mixture of white, deep red, and pink flowers and you couldn’t take your eyes from it. It certainly looked like he’d stopped at a florist after he’d picked up the groceries because the arrangement was far nicer than what you’d find at the store. 

Eyes making their way up to Frank’s smiling face, you felt the tears beginning to well up in them again. Though this time it wasn’t because you were upset and hurting, it was because you were full of so much love for the man you’d been fortunate enough to marry.

“You brought me flowers?” you asked in awe.

“Yeah,” he answered with a shrug. “Seemed like you could use some cheering up. I also picked up one of those coffees you always order,” he continued, turning and gesturing at the cup on the kitchen counter behind him. “I know how much you love your coffee.”

Rapidly crossing the distance between you and Frank, you quickly reached up and grabbed his face in both of your hands before roughly pulling him down towards you. Your mouth was on his, kissing him like it was the first time you ever had all over again. His own lips were moving just as earnestly against yours, matching the same intensity as one of his hands landed on your hip, pulling you into him.

After a moment you broke away, trying to catch your breath as you stared up at Frank. He stood there, one hand holding your hip while the other continued to hold the vase of flowers, a bright smile spread wide over his mouth.

"I love you," you told him.

Leaning forward, Frank placed a kiss on your forehead. A smile grew along your mouth when his warm lips lingered against you. 

"I love you, too," Frank murmured, lips brushing your skin as he spoke. 

He gave your hip a gentle squeeze before he released it, turning and setting the vase of flowers back onto the counter behind him. He picked up the cup of coffee before he turned back towards you, holding it out. You accepted it from him with a soft thanks before drawing the cup to your lips for a deep drink. Eyelids fluttering closed, you reveled in the comforting liquid as it ran over your tongue. 

"Somethin' you want to do this afternoon?" Frank asked. "'Cause I'm all yours the rest of the day."

Chewing your lip, you turned at the waist and looked over at Bear sitting in the space between the kitchen and living room. The moment your eyes fell on him he perked up, his head tilting to the side as his tail began to thump against the wood floor. Focusing back on Frank, you sent him a smile. 

"I'm happy to do whatever as long as I get to spend the afternoon with my two favorites," you told him. 

Frank’s attention shifted to Bear before he jutted his chin at the dog. "Hey boy, how's a long walk on that trail sound? You think a little family outing will cheer our girl up?" he asked. 

Bear let out two deep barks, rising up onto his feet. His front paws happily danced back and forth, his nails lightly clicking along the wood floor. You laughed at how excited he was, your gaze eventually drawn back to Frank standing just before you. 

"What do you say, sweetheart?" he asked, a playful grin on his face. "You up for a little family outing?" He gestured his chin at the coffee in your hands. "You can bring the coffee."

"I say that sounds like a good afternoon," you replied. 

Taking a step towards him, you tilted your face upwards. Frank immediately leaned down towards you, knowing exactly what you wanted and allowing you to press your lips to his in a light kiss. Your heart stuttered when you felt the way his mouth drew into a smile against yours before he broke away.

"And what about afterwards?" he asked, tone light and teasing as his face hovered just an inch from yours. "You up for a little love making in the shower?"

An amused snort fell out of you, Frank's smile only growing at the sound of it. Grinning back at him, you felt like some of the weight of your grief had lessened after finally opening up to Frank today. Not that the pain you felt had miraculously disappeared and the emotional wounds had suddenly healed over, but you didn't feel like you were drowning in it anymore. For the first time in months you felt like you could breathe a little easier. 

And you owed it to the man standing in front of you. 

But you also knew there was pain hiding behind those brown eyes gazing so fondly back at you. That Frank had his own hurt that needed to be addressed because he seemed to be doing the same thing you were–shoving it all down and pretending it wasn't there. You'd have to talk to him about it, ease him into opening up next. Maybe he'd be receptive on this walk since you'd both finally begun to talk.

Shrugging a shoulder lightly, you held the cup of coffee tighter between your hands. "I think that sounds like a great way to get cleaned up afterwards," you answered. 

Frank shot you a wink that had your cheeks heating, even after all this time together.

"That's my girl," he whispered, a note of pride in his voice. He tossed an arm around your shoulders, whistling over at Bear. "C'mon boy, we got a beautiful woman to cheer up."

Bear let out a happy bark before you saw him race across the kitchen past the pair of you, heading straight for his leash beside the door. Frank’s deep chuckle at Bear’s ever-present enthusiasm for walks filled your ears, and when he looked back down at you beside him with those soft brown eyes of his, all you saw reflected back at you was love and acceptance. 

[amoscontorta]

Alike and Cornered Beast: Sylus's POV

Summary:

I was desperate for Sylus's point of view during the first time that MC meets him in the Alike and Cornered Beast chapters of Long-Awaited Revelry. So I uh wrote it myself. I wanted to know why he touches MC so reverently but also quite brutally, so I spent a lot of time thinking about possibilities.

A/N:

Sylus x gender neutral reader/MC, second person POV (but we don't use Y/N in this house). Brief, derisive mentions of Xavier and Zayne (this is Sylus's POV after all, don't come for me). I love all the LIs, but Sylus has his hand wrapped around my throat and I see him as arrogantly having something to say about the other people who are also interested in his shiny treasure. He has mean thoughts about the other LIs, but he can be mean and we love that for him. Slightly canon divergent if you believe Sylus can't tell that MC is scared and repulsed by him until the shopkeeper informs him. I however believe this man is a little more perceptive than that. CW: violence, cursing, rude language, death, grief, murder, ok this is Sylus hello, non-consensual (non-sexual) touching of MC, metaphors involving hunger and blood, overuse of the word "lovely," but Sylus is a simp and it's mostly his POV so we must endure it. SFW, although clearly there is a thread of desire running beneath the interactions depicted ao3 link here

He doesn’t need the aether core in his eye to know how you're feeling. He can see it in the way your lovely jaw is locked tight, teeth clenched behind soft lips twisted into a tight line. The shudder you’re trying and failing spectacularly to repress, desperate to conceal your weakness: the fact that almost as much as you fear him, you hate him.

Almost from the very beginning, things have been going sideways for Sylus. First, that imbecile having the hubris to believe he could just pilfer what had clearly been claimed as belonging to Onychinus.

Second, the palpable fear that had juddered through you as he had graciously relieved the larcenist of the burden of his pathetic life, only for that fear to flare into bright, barely controlled hate once you figured out that using yourself as bait had succeeded in reeling in the largest predator in the N109 zone.

Third, even when he sauntered close to you, allowing you to drink your fill of his face, no other spark of recognition fired besides that of the leader of the most powerful criminal organization in the region. You didn’t recognize him personally at all, even as he hungrily mapped your face with his eyes and felt the bottomless well of want deepen even further in his heartless chest.

You didn’t remember a fucking thing. And for some reason, you hated him more than his worst enemies. And he had quite a large body count in the worst enemy column of the ledger of his existence.

The fear, he can understand. Onychinus is on the Hunter Association’s Naughty List, and you’re one of the Association’s true believers, a jewel in the hilt of their blade composed of naïve warriors. And like the noble, naïve creature he knows you to be, you firmly believe that any intel they fed you about him and his organization was the pure, unfiltered truth.

But the hate? He muses as he looks down into your upturned face, a face that has been carved into his dreams for weeks now, ever since Mephisto had reported back after scouting the Flux Nexus in the no-hunt zone. Ever since the night he finally found you, stumbling around and battling at the side of your sleepy, cunning rabbit of a partner in the dark wood, oblivious to the real danger perched amongst the leaves, watching through mechanical eyes. His lips twitch in an ironic smile, as he knows he should be grateful to the rabbit for the fact that you’re in front of him now, so agonizingly close. He can see the rise and fall of your chest. The breath you exhale, for him to inhale. All he has to do is let his hand do what it wants—reach out, fingertips drifting softly along the curve of your cheek, your throat, the pulse point that betrays your racing heart. You’re close enough that he could swallow you whole. A good man might be grateful, but he isn’t a good man, and he doesn’t have it in him to be grateful; he only catalogues the threat, and tucks away the thought of the light evolver to be a problem to contemplate, and solve, another day. Right now, he needs to solve the problem of why you hate him on a level that professional distaste can’t explain. The hate he sees in your bright, sharp eyes is personal.

Consequently, he might not need the aether core in his eye to know that you hate him, but he sure as hell needs it to figure out why.

He knows he should wait to use his power on you. He knows that strategically, the best play here is to move slowly, to rebuild your trust, to tease out what he wants from you, to prove to you that despite every instinct that the Association has indoctrinated in you, he is not a threat to you and never will be. He knows all too well that one can’t force trust and forge an equal relationship from coercion, but he doesn’t have the time. Not with the entire Nest on the hunt for his Prey tonight, not with his own house in chaos with Sherman running amok and running up the bill on collateral damage. He needs to know why you hate him so that he can deal with it now, all of it. To borrow the vocabulary of another one of your hapless suitors: now is the time for triage, and after he has assessed the carnage, then he will begin suturing the aftermath. Sylus may be a businessman, but he can appreciate a surgeon’s precision in approaching a crisis. Even if Sylus can’t appreciate the iceman himself, if only for the lingering looks the doctor indulges in when his patient is looking the other way. Sylus files this problem away, like the other, to be solved in quiet solitude another day.

So he indulges in a lingering look of his own, fingers twitching with the need to touch where they’re deceptively, casually resting on his hips. And then: Sylus lets himself look. He can feel the familiar warmth increase within his eye socket, the ember beginning to glow hotter and hotter, until it’s almost unbearable, and then truly unbearable, as it is every time, the price he must pay so that he may see.

A little silver apple on a chain.

A pair of smiling eyes.

An old woman’s hand placing a dumpling on a plate.

The relief of realizing that the danger has dissipated, and dinner is still waiting.

A strong, broad back, shoulders shaking with laughter as a door swings shut.

Almost from the very beginning, things have gone sideways for Sylus. He shuts his eyes, feels the heat and the pressure fade like grief with time, as the power in his aether core goes dormant once again. But you haven’t had time, have you? It’s still fresh, the wound still hemorrhaging. You think that he caused this. You’ve been bleeding for months, thinking it was his hand that wielded the knife lodged in your heart. Or rather, detonated the bomb that incinerated the only family you’ve ever known, leaving a smoking crater where your heart used to be.

Sylus’s mind races, compiling this new information, archiving the whys and hows, constructing and reconstructing his carefully assembled plans and all of the contingencies in between, laughing derisively at himself for not seeing this possibility coming. Sideways is an understatement. Things are well and truly fucked, Sylus thinks, looking into your lovely, livid face.

For a moment, an unfamiliar sensation drifts through his chest. He tests it gingerly, letting it cascade through him before he can identify it: despair. After all this time. Every year, month, week, day, second, breath, he has been carving a path towards you, littered with the broken dreams and broken bodies of others, and now he has finally found you, and what should have been his greatest victory (the spoils? His fingertips drifting up your silken skin, his fingers entwined with yours, home), may have been his greatest loss—a loss that is for once, despite all of his crimes and all of the corpses at his feet, every terrible thing he has ever done, not his fault at all.

He savors this strange feeling for a few heartbeats, indulging in it, pressing into it like a bruise, if bruises would actually remain under his skin. And then he discards it: the unexpected rarely obstructs his carefully laid plans, but nothing about you has ever been expected, has it? If he were the kind of man to resign himself to unexpected loss, like the other men clumsily flitting around you, he’d have been a dead trophy tossed at the feet of an enemy long ago. So the rules of the game have changed. So what? Sylus will adapt, because no matter his fucking luck, he is playing to win.

Because while gazing into the depths of your beloved eyes, Sylus not only saw the why of your hate, but the only thing that could soothe it. Something that you refuse to admit, even to your fundamentally honest self. Something you can’t admit, as you spend insomniac nights training until collapse, as you slice, maim, and end wanderer after wanderer, as you bare your teeth a little too savagely as blood spills beneath your fist and blade. You need vengeance. You need someone to hurt as much as you’re hurting. And not just anyone—the wanderers and criminals that you’ve trained your fists and pistols and blade on do not satisfy the blood-thirst burning through your veins. You need to punish the person responsible for the inferno in your chest. Maybe then you’ll be able to sleep again. Maybe then you’ll be able to not smile again, but at least retract the fangs that have been frightening the people around you for months now. The fangs you feared were always there, underneath the careful façade of the well-adjusted, law-abiding, healthy paragon of a hunter you’ve built to keep the nightmares at bay for years, to show your colleagues, your partner, your doctor and your superiors: Look, I’m harmless and righteous, the perfect tool, love me, love me, love me, please do not leave like everyone else I've ever loved.

And Sylus? Sylus has always, and will always, endeavor to give you everything your damaged heart could possibly desire. He knows that you will not believe that he was not the one who ripped your ‘family’ apart. And he knows that it will take time, time that he does not currently have, to rebuild what has been lost between the two of you. He recalibrates, sweeps aside the despair, and reinforces his resolve. If you want to exact vengeance on the person you think is responsible for all of your indescribable pain, Sylus will give his heart to you on a bloody platter, regardless of the pain it will cost him.

You need someone to hate right now to stay strong? So be it. He will be that for you, until he can locate the actual culprit. As he reaches out, ever so gently trailing the backs of his fingers along your hauntingly lovely face, he tells himself for a moment that he can't bring himself to use something so impersonal as the energy of his evol on you. But who is he kidding--Sylus is many things, but a liar is not one of them. He admits to himself that this is just him finally giving into his deepest desire, as he lets his hand drift from your face to the side of your neck, closing around your throat and lifting. He does not want to handle your precious form with such brute, concise strength, but he needs to hurry, he needs answers and he needs to fix this, now now now and you need him to be the enemy. This is what is best for you at this moment, in this place, and he only ever wants what is best for you, so he plays the part you need him to play:

"From your past to your future...to even all the crimes you'll inevitably commit. After all, you and I...we're the same. True kindred spirits."

As your body goes limp from his chokehold on you, he catches you, cradling your head in his hand, grateful for the strength of his body, the shelter he can provide you as he lifts you in his arms, holds you tightly, your chests finally close again, yours too full of a maimed heart and his missing one entirely, complementing each other, completing each other, even though you’re out cold and it will take so much—too much, too much, it’s already been too much time, you’re finally here, you’re finally in his arms, where you should have been all along—time to be able to have you in his arms like this but with your eyes wide open and fixed on his.

Later, when you wake up, in a dark room with this familiar stranger disdainfully staring you down through crimson eyes, as his evol winds itself around you, as it jerks you onto his big lap, you clench your teeth, you fight the tears of frustration and fury—why do you always cry when you’re angry? Is it not humiliating enough to lose control of the leash on your emotions, without tears spilling down your face to betray you to the object of your rage?­—and you fight desperately against the immovable force pinning you in place.

"I want to kill you myself," you grit out, through the tears and the snot running down your face.

And then this man places your gun in your hand, eyes bright as blood never leaving yours, in answer to the quietest, deepest buried desire of your limping heart that he has driven you to saying out loud. Your hate flares, because how dare he expose you to yourself in this manner? Who does this motherfucker think he is, casually extracting from your own mouth and offering you that which you couldn’t before name in hushed whispers, as if it means nothing to him, as if it costs him nothing, his sharp jaw relaxed, a ghost of a smirk curling the edges of his wide mouth? You fight it, the surge of hunger that chokes your panting breath—you fight it so hard, you’ve been fighting it for so long, ever since the piercing ringing in your ears began to sound that replaced your grandmother’s and Caleb’s laughter, the ringing silence that followed as debris rained down on your useless, injured body. You are not a mindless animal. You will not give in to this voracious want. You and this man holding your gun to his own heart are not the same, and never will be.

“Do you need some help? Yes? No? Maybe so?” His voice is the purr of a jungle cat, his hand, large and just as calloused as yours, envelops your own, with that same bizarre gentleness that you can’t even begin to interpret the why of, his finger drifting along your own, until it slowly tightens over yours. Your mouth says “No,” and you see how his eyes dart from yours to your lips and back again, but the hunger inside you howls as this man presses your finger against the trigger and the sound of the bullet leaving your gun drowns out all of the other noise in the cacophony of your thundering heart.

His big body jerks back, head hitting with a painful sounding thump against his melodramatic throne (ok, so it's just an antique chair, but honestly, where do villains buy ridiculous props like this?), and for an endless moment in time, the hunger is satiated, and a sense of triumphant relief courses through you instead. And then your vision sharpens, as blood the color of this man’s eyes begins to pour through the hole he—and you, we, together—just shot into his fucking heart.

He jerks the gun from your grasp and tosses it with a loud clatter to the concrete floor.

“You—Are you fucking crazy?” You’re moving before you realize it, palms pressed over his heart (a spiteful part of you hopes that it hurts him, even as you are suddenly overwhelmed with the terror that he is actually going to die, before you get any answers, before you get any help, before you’ve accomplished anything at all).

“You wanted to take my life,” he pants. It never hurts any less, no matter how many times it happens. He can feel his flesh knitting back together already, each stitch as painful as the one before. “And so you’ve taken it.”

Despite the pain, Sylus watches you leisurely, drinking in the blood splatters across your lovely neck and chin. My blood, he thinks with satisfaction. He wants to soak you in it. He wants to watch you bathe in it. He shakes his head, tucking that urge away for later contemplation. He is finally in the position to do what he has been craving for so, so long. He has given you what you want. Of course he will always give you what you want. However, that doesn’t mean that he can’t simultaneously get what he wants—Sylus strongly prefers deals when they’re win-win. He has given you what you wanted, and the slate is now clean. Now, it is time to begin negotiation of the highest stakes deal of his life: the acquisition of your body, heart and soul. Back at his side, where you belong.

“Now what? Have you already figured out how you’ll pay me back?”

[goldeunoias]

Plush.

A/N: Hi i wrote this in one sitting what is wrong with me. Not particularly proof read adsfasdfa but Dilf! Sunghoon will be

WC: 1.6k i think?

Executive! Reader x Silver Spoon! Jake 

Chubby! Reader x Jake

Warnings: well. oral,  teasing, lots of teasing, this like i mean you’re here and you know how i am,

Jake had been working under you for some time. Granted, he’d only gotten this position because his dad was an executive, but you were thankful that you’d still retained your position nonetheless. 

It was no secret that he could be a bit entitled towards his own juniors and coworkers about certain things, the negative side effect of being born with a silver spoon in his mouth. However, when it came to you he seemed to always pay “special attention” to you: standing extra close to you when talking to you about work, making points to complement the perfume you wore and other things that should have had him reported to Human Resources. 

He knew that as well as anyone, and so did you, but for some reason you just couldn’t bring yourself to do so. The remarks were sincere and never creepy, almost as if he’d spent his entire life sweet-talking his way through everything. 

“Princess, can we talk in your office after your meeting? It’s important,” Jake whispered in your ear, the new nickname making your body heat up. You simply nodded and rambled out to just wait there until you got out, wondering how you were going to be able to pay attention during an hour-long meeting.

When the meeting let out you quickly shuffled to your personal office, opening the door and setting the files down in the front entrance. 

“You probably should lock the door so that annoying secretary doesn’t barge in,” Jake excused, his suit jacket already off and thrown on the couch he was sitting in. You did so and when you turned around you found Jake making strikes towards you, his hand playing with the hem of your skirt. 

It was the first time he’d ever been this bold and your breath hitched for a second, heart racing in your ears. 

“Princess done for the day?”

“I have another meeting at four,” you told him, letting him drag you further into your office. “Is uh, everything okay? Your dad didn’t say anything to me about having a meeting,” you rambled out, your head dizzy as he caged you against the wall. 

“Does my dad know how you dress when you go to work?” Jake hissed between heavy breaths, undoing his tie and rolling up his sleeves. 

Your eyes widened and you shook your head no, back pressed against the cool wall as he finally had you trapped. 

“No but that doesn’t concern you since I am your superior, and I think you’re way out of l-line”, you panted out as Jake lifted up the skirt that perhaps hugged your thighs tighter than you’d last remembered. 

“Well if I’m on my knees for you you’re still above me no?” Jake cheekily cooed out, spreading your legs and messily kissing your soft thighs. He tugged at the extra padding on your inner thighs and you yelped, jumping when you felt Jake’s teeth across the supple skin. 

“Did you gain weight princess? This skirt is tighter than the last time you wore it,” Jake observed as he pulled down your stockings, massaging the skin with his hands. 

You shyly looked away and nodded, Jake chuckling and licking a stripe over your clothed core. He watched pleasantly as you shuddered, brows furrowing as you tried to quiet yourself.  

“Good, means my dad is paying you well. Makes you look cute.”

“Cute?” You inquired, your eyes following him as he stood up and unbuttoned your shirt which was also a bit tighter than you remembered. You’d never had anyone really tell you the extra plush on your body was cute, they mostly just made the remark to make you hyperconscious of yourself. 

“Mmm, you look fucking adorable princess. Tits are practically spilling out of your bra,” Jake groaned, lifting it up so your chest was open and bare for him. Your body melted into his as the heat of his mouth took a bud and sucked harshly, his other hand harshly tugging at the other hardened nipple. 

“You’ve wanted this for a while, haven’t you? Why else would you wear something so fucking sexy,” Jake praised you as he messily kissed your chest, your chest glistening from his saliva. 

“I don’t-” you let out a whine as Jake sunk to his knees again, lifting one of your legs and hoisting it on his shoulder. 

“You don’t? But you’re pussy is glistening right now, you’re wet like a virgin…” he couldn’t help but note, pulling down your underwear and gathering the slick that had leaked onto the cloth. 

“J-jake if your dad or someone comes knocking in-” You covered your mouth as Jake’s mouth enveloped your swollen clit, your legs struggling to support you. Your hands grabbed his hair and reflexively pushed him against your core, your hips grinding into his mouth. 

Jake pulled back for a second to get some air and smiled at how disheveled you looked from his angle, one of his hands going up to roll an aroused bud between his fingers. 

“Princess your pussy is so warm inside my tongue is practically melting inside of you,” Jake cooed, his other hand gathering syrupy essence and sliding a digit in. 

“Jake, oh god~” you choked out as you felt a knot form in your belly, feeling embarrassed at how quickly you felt like you were about to come. 

“Fuck baby it’s been some time since someone’s touched you properly huh? You’re already clenching down on me so tightly,” Jake teased, both of you guys’ eyes flickering over to the door when you heard knocking. 

“Ma’am? I have some papers that were sent over from Mr. Johnson that he wanted you to look at,” your secretary remarked from the other side, your eyes pleading with Jake as he smirked and messily licked your core, sliding another digit inside you. 

Your head rested against the wall and bit down on your lip to restrain a groan, Jake suddenly moving you so your tummy and forearms rested on the edge of the sofa and his head was between your thighs.

“You can leave them on the table outside Ms. Laudy, I am currently-” you scrunched your face as he curled his fingers, “...writing something, and I don’t want to lose my train of thought,” you lied, your back arching as you felt yourself get close. 

“Oh, well if you want I could come inside and debrief you over them to save time,” she offered up. 

“That won’t be-” You covered your mouth with both of your hands to muffle the scream as the knot broke, your legs shaking around his head. 

“Ma’am?”

“Don’t worry about I will get to it so just leave them on the table outside,” you rushed out, your head resting on the sofa as you heard him unzip his pants. 

“Jake wait if you just go in I-I don’t think it will fit,” you rushed out, turning your head to look over your shoulder. Jake didn’t let you turn around for long and faced your head forward, grabbing both of your hands and pinning them behind your back with one of his. 

“I’m flattered princess. Don’t think I will be able to fit?” 

You avidly shook your head and whined, feeling your heart race against your ribcage. Jake leaned over your form and pressed a condom to your lips to rip the sealing, a “good girl” leaving him when you did so and he wrapped it around his member. 

“Should I stop then princess if you’re scared it’s not gonna fit? Or are you just struggling for show,” Jake cooed in your ear, rubbing his member against your slit. You let out a choked groan and Jake nipped at your ear, getting impatient. 

“Answer princess you have a meeting at four remember?” 

You gulped and nodded, Jake pinching your folds at your lack of verbiage. 

“Can’t do anything if you don’t speak.”

“J-just be gentle...it’s been a while” you murmured out, your jaw going slack when you felt his tip push past your walls. 

Jake chuckled and kissed your neck, groaning until his hip bones were pressed against the underside of your thighs. 

“See, it fit no problem cupcake. Pussy is drenched though, you’re gonna leak onto my slacks at this rate,” Jake panted out, pulling out some to see what a mess you’d made around his member. 

“Jake my arms hurt can you ease up your grip,” you whined out, Jake gently releasing them and instead massaging the flesh on your hips. 

“Of course princess, I’d never want to hurt you,” he cooed, watching in delight as you tightly gripped the sofa, Jake cooing at you to raise your head. 

“Careful cupcake wouldn’t want to ruin your makeup now would ya?” he tsked, slowly moving his hips inside and giving a half smile when you whined in pleasure. 

“After all, don’t want to show up to your meeting looking like you just got fucked like a slut right?”

“N-no.”

Jake licked his lips and pulled your hips against him, watching as your legs shook and you let out a muffled groan into the pillows. 

“Thought so.”

********************************************

A/N: Let me know if this was you because this damn sure is me

[aezuria]

*ੈ✎ fall with grace.

╰┈▸ a glimpse into jason's last moments.

╰┈▸ warnings: gore

jason didn't want to die. he realized this too soon, for the decision still dangled before him, life and death on the same side of the same coin. and too late, for the decision was already made for him, the life he could have lived displayed cruelly every time he blinked, in flashes of another, better universe. one where all his friends were really his friends, one where his father had a heart and his mother loved him, one where he wasn't always second best, one where he remembered.

and for a moment, the yearning he felt deep in his heart was enough to spur him forward, his body jerking upright to chase the dream he craved. but dreams were just dreams, jason of all people should have known.

his adrenaline-high came crashing down, tugging him along with it. his knees came crashing down onto the rubble, bruised and bleeding, yet they still managed to hold him up, as if reminding him there were still some things worth fighting for.

jason's hands shook, but his fingers refused to unravel from their tight grip on his sword. his friends, he had to protect his-

the piercing of metal against his skin broke him out of a loyalty-induced rush. he looked down at the bloodied tip, heard the screaming of apollo and piper in the background. it was fatal. the decision has been executed.

he felt his lips move, heard his voice say, "go, remember." do what i couldn't do.

and still, he couldn't swallow the pang of sadness as he watched his friends leave him to die. but it was what he wanted, right? casualties, sacrifices, were normal in the battlefield. he was just another one of them leading up to the greater good.

his arms shook as he pulled himself against the rubble, driving the spear deeper into himself. he bit his cheek to suppress the sound of pain he was sure to make, not wanting to show a hint of weakness even as he was stripped bare of his strength for no one to see.

he laid there, chest heaving as he gasped for air, only to be met with blood spurting back up his throat. pain seared through him, like bugs crawling the lining of his intestines, razor-sharp mandibles breaking through and pouring out in a pool of red. deep shudders of breath racked his body, lungs spasming of their own volition, as if his body yearned to live despite his mind's rationality. every shiver he took only enhanced the feel of the wood splintered through his stomach, only worsened the itching of his insides. and yet he lived, through the agonizing, bare minimum he was always content with, never in his life asking for more. (but just this once, he begged for a god, any god, to just take away his suffering, please?)

he was met with silence, not the blissful sweetness of darkness clouding his vision, but the loud silence of his ragged breathing, the squelch of his gut churning. the gods were cruel beings, after all. yet another reminder that jason was never made to fall with grace.

librarian's annotations: its 1 am and i wrote and this in one sitting and bag of bones is playing and yeah (this is a distraction for the fact that i havent posted a fic in ages) @jgracie @pinkdiorluvr i think u guys like jason angst??

[elfqueen006]

We Cry Together

Yeah, here's that toxic Joseph fic I was telling y'all about. It's May x Joseph in a swap!AU or Joseph in place of Ian. He's pretty shitty here - be warned. I wrote it on the fly, the grammar might be a bit sloppy and mismatched I think, cus I wrote one part before the other and forgot to edit some of them.

Tw: cheating, arguing, toxic dynamics

Part two

---

Joseph chuckled in that teasing sort of way. The kind he only used with her. May cranes her head around into their kitchen to see him sitting on the chair at their bar counter.

He looked happy...

"Yeah? ... I'd like that..." He pauses, scribbling something down on a notepad. "Okay, see you then."

He hangs up the phone and his charming glow of mischief fades once he sees May standing a ways from him. A curious yet unreadable look on her face.

"Hey, what are you doing up?" He asked.

May tilted her head, "What are you doing up?"

Joseph wet his lips, sparing a shifty glance at his phone before waving it, "Taking a call."

"From..?"

"You know um... the girl, the producer's daughter? I don't know her- I mean I know her name it just" he laughs, "leaves me."

May narrowed her eyes, "Samantha? Yeah, you've been talking about her all week, I'd hope you remembered her name."

His eyes widened at that, "Why would you... hope that?"

May doesn't answer, instead her gaze lowers to the piece of paper in his hand. Joseph's hand reflexively slides over it. She approaches without warning and pulls it from under his palm.

Dinner w/ Samantha @ 4pm

"You told me you were being called back for another shoot." May said, voice devoid of emotion, yet filled with scrutiny.

Joseph finds his voice becoming very small, "I was... Samantha just called after."

"And why does she want dinner with you of all things?"

"Because she...wants to talk about my career."

May has seen Samantha. She's met her formally at one of their studio held dinners. Or about as formal as you could get. There was talk of Joseph being a new official cast member on a tv show he'd been an extra in, with a good few speaking lines.

Samantha only ever talked to the cast members, and she looked a big young for business. Not college young. But definitely inexperienced. She radiated amateur, especially as she asked the director for a role on his show.

When May tried to formally introduce herself or speak, she had a habit of cutting her off "conveniently". And Joseph would let her...

When she looked him square in the face, the subtle swallow in his throat all but confirmed her suspicions.

The light in May's eyes leaves - she gives him a half lidded gaze. Joseph shudders at the expression. It excites him honestly, how easily she gets annoyed or agitated. It's always been a small game of theirs to him, because he knows they'd end up spooning, fucking, or just generally in a good spot again. But he's honestly a little scared. May is a good girlfriend. She takes care of him. She supports him. She loves him. He knows he doesn't deserve anyone like her, but if she could give him another chance...

He follows after as she turns to leave, probably to cry, "Rosie, listen." He used her nickname, and he couldn't even get the usual response of playful annoyance.

"Get out." She said, cold and prompt.

"Get out?- May listen to me."

She turns to him with her same expression, only her eyes are wet. He hates the part of him in his body that says "gotcha". He's thinking about all the right words to schmooze her over and make her his again. He knows he's not being fair or nice or good, but all he can think of is making sure she stays hooked.

Joseph takes a gentle hold of her wrists with his hands, a silent plea to stay put and then he ran them up her arms, resisting a smirk at her goosebumps. He puts on a mournful expression when he meets her eyes. The half-lidded and lightless expression is the same, but they aren't cold like at first. They're misty and dim, like a humid April day, when you just know it's about to rain.

"Listen to me..." he began, his voice is lowered for only the two of them to hear, despite them being the only ones in the room. "This wasn't for anything personal. It was only for me."

May furrowed her brows, pulling away from him.

Wrong answer.

"What the hell does that mean?"

"What I mean is like, she doesn't mean anything. It's just for the job."

"So you were willing to fuck a bitch over your job?" May spat, "Did the fact that you have a girlfriend ever occur to you?"

Joseph was beginning to get exasperated. He looked up at the ceiling and rolled his eyes.

"May, you know I'm loyal to you. Honestly, my very word should be enough as well as like, what- over five years of commitment?"

"So you think that gives you a pass to fuck another woman? You've been so fucking good you should just have access to other bitches as a treat?"

"Stop calling her a bitch, May, it's tacky and you've barely talked to her." Joseph snapped back, "and I mean that it shouldn't matter. I mean, I love you and you know it!"

"No, no I don't. Because if you loved me you'd know me and know I don't fucking share!" Her voice cracked as she spoke, "I don't care if it's for your job or your dying granny or anything, Joseph Cullman, you know that the very idea of even touching another woman should be off-limits when you're with me!"

Joseph then laughs. May narrowed her eyes, expecting him to fill her in on the 'joke'.

"You know, I really think you're the last person to be saying that."

He seemed satisfied to see she was stunned - something that didn't come often with her. But it came with women. Women he'd argued with, and when they were in that state they often out of an argument. He took that as his cue to head into their room.

---

When Joseph woke up, May wasn't there with him. He gripped the sheet under him, feeling something cold in his chest at the absence of her. Maybe she'd already gone to work?

He sat up with a sigh as he pinched the bridge of his nose. He'd have to apologize. He knows he would. Otherwise she'd ice him out for a whole month, especially with what he had to do. It wasn't personal at all, really. But he felt a weird territorial urge to defend his keep, if that was what he was calling it. He knew Samantha liked him, but he only was going to entertain her for the role on the show. Maybe he would've rather gotten it honestly, but when he and May were living off of takeout on her salary, there wasn't any time for that.

He wanted to get something his way. And it wasn't like May was some angel, neither. She had all the money a girl could ask for, and the girls boyfriends she screwed back in high school certainly didn't add to any of that. At least he's trying to do something for them. It just happened to be in a kind of shitty takeaway. Maybe if people actually did their jobs the way they were supposed to, he would have a better chance of climbing the ladder.

But it was time to do business - Hollywood's way.

---

It went about as well as he'd hoped. As expected, going to bed with her wasn't ideal. But hell, she was fun at most. Good looking at least. Not exactly up to his standards. But it made him feel prideful on the fact that after all that, he'd be getting what he paid for. It feels a bit like college.

He snickered at the thought.

He tossed the dinner receipt in a random trash can way before driving home.

As he pulled up to the parking lot in the apartment, he saw a moving van. Something in his chest dropped at that, and he didn't even know why. Could she have..?

As he got out of the car he got a good look at the movers coming out from the back of the doors. They were carrying boxes full of boots, belts, tees, and dirty magazines. His heart raced. He came up behind one of the men and pulled him aside.

"Hey, who's boxes are those?"

The man shrugged, "Some girls' ex-boyfriend's things."

Joseph's eyes widened as he looked up at the apartment window where their room would be. He could see May's silhouette and her dark fingers holding the curtains before they shut.

He pointed at the movers, "Don't move another inch, don't move!" Before running up into the apartment.

He hissed multiple curses as he dug inside of his jeans, searching for his keys that seemed to be nowhere, conveniently. After what felt like an hour he finally produced them and wasted no time going in.

Inside was could only be described as a bad dream realized. Movers were taking down every trace of him in his apartment. His suggested decorations, his pictures, his clothes, his old playbooks. All of them being packed up and shipped away in boxes.

And May was in the middle of all of it, advising them like she were the director of her own fucking movie set while smoking a fucking cigarette - something she said she always hated, and continued to do until she quit.

When she finally paid mind to him she sneered. Joseph folded his arms, giving her an expectant look.

Tell them to leave.

May took a long drag of the cigarette, before blowing the smoke his way. He stroke towards her and pulled her by her wrist into a corner. She tried to flick the cigarette ash on him, but he shook her arm so she'd drop it before he stamped it out. May grimaced at the now ruined part of her carpet.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Joseph hissed.

"What do you think?"

"I think you're messing up our life, that's what."

May shoved him in the chest roughly, "And where the fuck did you come from, huh? What'd you do to make it better - tell me!"

Joseph glanced around at the movers, some of them were glancing their way, but it didn't matter much to them. This was actually one of the common occurrences for when they did a job.

He got close and stopped her hands before she tried to hit him again, "Keep your voice down." Joseph growled.

"Why? You were so sure of yourself last night. I bet you feel real good now, don't you?"

"Shut up-"

"You fucked that bitch didn't you?" She sneered.

He pushed her up against the corner, his nails digging into her wrists with their harsh hold.

She jerked in his grip, "Let go!"

One of the movers approached them, "Hey, hey man, that's enough."

Joseph's eyes were full of white hot rage as he pointed at him with his free hand. "Don't fuck with me, get the fuck back."

"What you gonna do, hit me?" May said suddenly.

"Shut up."

She jerked away, "So, for what? So you can hit me when they ain't looking?"

"Nobody's gonna fucking hit you!" Joseph hissed.

"But you want to though," May pushed, "You wanna fucking hit me because I'm exposing you for a selfish fucking bastard-"

"May!"

"- who wanna fuck a random bitch to feel like a man, can't even act for shit so you hoe yourself out-"

"What the hell do you want from me, huh?!" His voice boomed throughout the apartment, startling the rest of the movers. May even stopped. When she didn't reply, Joseph continued, "I already do so. Damn. Much for you! I clean the house when you're at work, I cook because you don't know how! And you would deny me the opportunity to actually take care of us?"

"So I fuck some girl to keep the lights on, it isn't the first time I've done it either." May's eyes widened at that, "Yeah, I did that shit for us. And they still didn't mean shit to me! I believe just this once I should be allowed to make us some actual money instead of living off your shitty yogurt salary!"

After that, it fell deathly quiet. So much so, one could only hear the whirring of the ceiling fan.

By this point, Joseph already knew he didn't have a spot in the apartment anymore. But he refused to be perturbed, even as May's eyes welled up with tears or one of the movers began to dial 911. He simply folded his arms, looking his soon-to-be ex dead in the face.

"Well... If I'm not doing enough then you can take yourself somewhere you don't have to slum off my mediocre salary." May said, her voice cracking. Only then Joseph's gaze softened, but he had enough sense not to argue or plead or beg, then he allowed himself to leave.

[warmblanketwhump]

a change of heart

sicktember 2023 - alt prompt “I’m so sorry.”

note: i wrote this AGES ago for something else and just...never actually finished it. the writing's a tad rusty and idk if the plot actually goes where i wanted it to, but I couldn't be bothered to rework the thing beyond changing the names to A & B, SO HERE YOU GO

A hunches their shoulders against the rain, huddling under the large umbrella that protects them from the downpour. It was a long day at work, and they were ready to dry off, warm up, and curl up on the couch with a bowl of soup, a blanket, and a good book.

A sudden gust catches them by surprise, and A struggles to keep their grip. As they wrestle with the umbrella, they trip over something on the ground, tucked beneath the alcove.

A bites back a curse, popping their umbrella closed and kneeling to see what they’d tripped over—and it stops them dead in their tracks.

There, huddled beneath a thin blanket and wearing a filthy sweatshirt with the hood drawn up, was B.

It was impossible. Wasn’t B supposed to be in jail now? A racked their brain, trying to remember when they’d put this particular criminal away (lately, the days and the trials and the crimes and the criminals blurred together in their mind).

B's dark eyes meet A’s, flooding with recognition, and A freezes. Those haunted eyes contain multitudes, and it all comes back to A.

The murder trial. A prominent local politician, killed. The video footage that placed B at the crime scene just minutes before the killing. A’s testimony against B that was the final nail in the coffin. The banging gavel, the satisfied feeling that rose up in their gut when B was finally put away. The strangled cry from B when the guilty verdict was announced.

(They’d done their best to forget that part.)

But A sees something else in B's eyes. Anger? No, not that. Loathing? Maybe.

Despair?

A snaps out of it and stands back up. They don't care. B got what they deserved. So instead, they clear their throat. “You’re out, B.”

B huffs a mirthless laugh. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“How’d you get out, anyhow? You should’ve been in there for ages.” For life.

An incredulous look spreads over B's thin, pale face. “You really don’t know, do you? I got out two weeks ago. Apparently, someone came forward with new evidence that cleared me.”

A’s blood runs cold. They remember B’s agitated pleas, their cracking voice on the stand, begging for mercy, that they didn't do it, they couldn't have done it. The performance that A was so convinced was an act.

You were wrong. The unprompted thought comes like a punch to A's gut, a crack in their infalliable shield.

“Why...why didn’t anyone tell me there was new evidence?”

B shrugs and winces, tightening the blanket around their hunched shoulders. “Beats me. Guys who let me out, they said they were told to keep it quiet. After all, it looks bad for you. For all of you.”

A frowns. “But...why wouldn’t you come after me? Or anyone else? After all, we’re the ones who put you there.”

B’s face hardens. “I’m a criminal. I’ve done a lot of things, A. But I didn’t kill that guy, and I’m not going to kill you. That’s not who I am.”

The wind picks up again, and A feels their heartbeat quicken. You were wrong.

B shrinks further into their blanket and shudders, coughing weakly. They had to be freezing in this weather, thought A. And their face looked so thin, gaunt, with dark bruises under their eyes.  When was the last time they’d eaten?

A should have asked that. They should have apologized. But the guilt and shame were too much. A knew they’d put a lot of criminals behind bars. And sure, some of them had done some pretty terrible things.

But B? Petty crimes at best—a few robberies, forgeries, a scam or two—nothing where anyone ever got hurt. And somewhere, deep down, A had always envied their carefree charisma, their ability to breeze through life while bending life their way, and they hated B for living life outside the lines in a way they never could.

Meanwhile, A had been so caught up in making a name for themselves and being right that they’d forgotten that some of their enemies were people.

So they do the least brave thing of all – they turn on their heel and run home.

                           ——————

Hours later, A should have forgotten B. They should have been enjoying their homemade potato soup in front of the roaring fireplace, as the rain turned to icy tapping on their windowpane.

But A can't think straight, B’s words still rattling in their brain. 

That’s not who I am.

Could it be possible? A takes great pride in their own sense of right and wrong. They’d seen the evidence. They’d known it—that’s why they’d testified so confidently on the witness stand.

Did I really get it that wrong?

They rub their temples, head aching. I was wrong.

But I could make it right.

Before they lose their nerve, A whips their still-soaked raincoat from the hallway coat rack and heads back out into the icy, frigid night.

The walk takes 20 minutes at a casual pace, but A makes it there in 15. B is in the same spot, the same shadowy lump that A had tripped over that afternoon. Even in the dark, A can see their form huddled in the doorway. As they got closer, their stomach drops for the second time that day.

B is convulsively shivering beneath their thin blanket, shaking so hard that A can hear their teeth rattle. A drops to their knees and gently pulls back their soaked hood to feel their icy, damp forehead. The pale streetlight casts a sickly glow across B’s pallid face and blue lips. A frantically shakes their shoulders, pulling them into a seated position.

“Hey. B. It’s me. Come on now. It’s too cold. You gotta wake up.” B’s eyes are glassy and unfocused, and they reflexively curl in on themselves, coughs wracking their body. A turns to try and block most of the wind and rain, rubbing B's arms to try and get some warmth into them.

This is all my fault.

“Alright, B,” they whisper, pulling their once-nemesis to their feet. “You’re coming with me.” B shivers again and tucks themselves into A's warmth, leaning their own cold body into A’s side and resting their head on A’s chest.

A stiffens for a moment—they can feel the cold radiating off B’s body—but finally relents wrapping their arms around B.  A winces at the feeling. They could feel B’s every rib, even through their sweatshirt. The blanket had fallen from B's shoulders, so A unthreads themselves from B’s weak grasp, sheds their coat, and wraps it around B's shaking frame, securing it in place with their arms.

They stumble like that, an intertwined pair of opposites on a rainy winter night, until they get back to their loft where, blessedly, the fire was still burning bright. A stumbles through the threshold, quickly locking the door behind them, and deposits the soaking, coat-wrapped figure on their couch. They dart back to their bedroom, shucking their wet layers to the ground and replacing them with a warm sweatshirt and flannel pajama pants.  

After a moment’s hesitation, they grab a second pair of their own clothes—they might be too big, but B can't stay in their wet clothes all night.

When they come back, B is still huddled on the couch, shivering, barely turning their head when A comes around to their side. A gently lays a hand on their shoulder, and B blinks slowly, registering the presence beside them.

“You’ve gotta get these clothes off if you want to get warm,” A says, voice matter of fact, straightforward. B still says nothing, but holds out their arms to A. Guess I'm doing this, then. They peel the dirty sweatshirt from B’s body, which conceals an equally filthy and soaked T-shirt.

A works quickly, trying to make the awkward situation last as briefly as possible. But when they see the welts and bruises lashed across B’s back, they suck in breath. B shrinks back at the sound, shuddering as the air hits their wet skin.

“B, what did they do to you?” A whispered softly.

“P-prison wanted answers,” B chatters. “D-didn’t have them.”

Anger rose in A’s gut. All this time, they’d believed in the system. Trusted it. Then, they feel a tinge of guilt. You’re a part of the system, A.

They push their feelings down and help B shrug into the warm, dry clothes, draping a blanket over their shoulders. B accepts it gratefully, grasping it tightly and inching closer to the fire, deep, painful coughs convulsing their frame.

A leaves the room, returning a few minutes later with a reheated bowl of the homemade soup. B accepts it with a brief murmur of thanks, wrapping their cold fingers around the warm ceramic and hugging the soup close to their chest, then attacking it with the fervor of someone who hasn't had a proper meal in a long while.

The silence hangs heavy in the room, B trying (and failing) to eat the soup in a dignified manner, and A aching with a level of guilt they didn't think possible.

Finally, A speaks. “B. I’m so sorry.”

B stops slurping their soup, their body freezing in motion. They slowly lower the bowl, eyes uncertain. “Come again?”

“I said I’m sorry. I…when I testified against you, I was convinced you did it. I thought you were…a criminal.”

B smirks. “Well, you’re not entirely wrong.” They're still pale and wan, but a spark of mischief glints in their eyes. “You do know criminal and guilty aren’t always mutually exclusive.”

A rakes their hands through their hair, frustration rising in their chest. “Stop. I’m trying to get this off my chest.”

The smile fell from B’s face like a mask dropping to the ground. “Fine. Ease your conscience, then. But I know why you’re doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“This. Helping me.” B sets down the bowl and pulls the blanket tight as a shiver shakes their frame. “You feel bad, so you figure you’ll take me home, warm me up, and just fix everything.” Their voice catches on the last phrase, and A sees them swallow hard before taking another breath.

“You’re helping me to make yourself feel better. But you won’t really help me. No one ever has.”

The words sting, but A knows they're right. They're using B now, like they always had. First to advance their career, now to ease their conscience. And what were they really planning on doing, anyways? Adopting the very criminal they'd wrongly put away, then continuing to be a part of the same corrupt system that had harmed B in the first place?

A small whisper within asks them a question they hadn’t dared to think of: What if you tried to make it right?

Do you know what that would cost you? 

What will cost you if you don’t? 

A digs their fingers into the arm of the chair, then stands, crossing the room to sit next to B on the couch. B was still hunched over, the occasional shudder still rippling through their frame, staring bleakly into the crackling fire.

“What if we found out who really did it?” A blurts out. B casts a sidelong glance, as if they didn’t believe their ears.

“Look…something’s not right. With your case. With this...situation. And I can’t…I can’t undo what I did to you. But I can find out who did it. We can find out who did it. Because, B, I am sorry.”

The look in B’s eyes is a look A hadn’t seen in a while, and they nod, as if hardly believing what they were hearing.

And A recognizes what they see in their eyes.

It looks something like hope.

And then a violent cough wracks B's frame, and A realizes that there's a long way to go until B's in any shape to help.

"Alright, B. I hope you like cherry cough syrup and menthol rub, because you're getting both."

[azsazz]

All the Words We Cannot Say

Azriel x Reader

Summary: Feyre and Rhys had made a pact. And the worst had come true.

Warnings: Death of MC, funeral, SAD AF

Word Count: 1,948

Notes: Idk why I wrote this tbh.

_________________________________________

The babe in your arms is restless, writhing and squirming, crying out for his parents.

Nyx’s screams are the only thing to be heard throughout Velaris, slicing through the bitter cold as it nears a new day. The babes screeches engulf each and every citizen, writhing up through the crowd and echoing between the sandy colored buildings, topped with snow. The delicate icicles are knocked free from the rooftops, but not even they dare make a noise as they shatter in the cobblestone streets.

The Sidra shudders, water rippling at the surface of the otherwise stagnant river, frozen much like the rest of the city. No one dares move, the entirety of the metropolis gathered in the most beloved section of the square – The Rainbow.

Males and females stand tall, and the children even seem to be sensing the seriousness of the situation, not a single shuffle of feet or sniffle to be heard. Some situated with their heads bowed, others with their chins lifted to the dark night sky, no stars or moon in sight.

You shift Nyx in your arms, trying to avoid his flailing limbs as best as you can.

The tiny obsidian crown he’d donned when you and the Inner Circle had arrived is now in Azriel’s hands. The circlet of midnight stone had been ripped off by his small fists in a tantrum of rage, as if he could sense that there was something wrong, even at the young age he was.

Azriel fingers the tiny jewels inlaid into the metal, his throat working around a thick swallow. 

His eyes are burning. They had been since he’d heard the news. He can hardly look up at them, didn’t want this to be how he remembered them, and everytime Nyx howls from your arms the cavern in his chest splits further and further.

He has no idea how you’re managing when all he wants to do is collapse and let the tears fall and anguish out, everything he’s pent up since he’d heard the news. 

How was anyone managing the death of their High Lord and Lady?

He’d spent the first few days furious with the both of them for making such a stupid decision, their pact of love, an act so reckless that neither of them had thought about the future of their outcome. They thought they’d get lucky and live for thousands of years, protected and in love.

Now Nyx is parentless.

Azriel hadn’t felt like he’d been able to breathe, the announcement of their deaths had punched the air from his stomach, seemed to collapse his lungs, his bones had turned to dust as he crashed onto the ground, knees cracking against the floors of the River House.

He hadn’t felt the pain though, because he couldn’t feel anything other than the pure, raw, sadness that crashed around him in waves.

You’d been there. Been with Nyx when his father’s power had shifted to him. You knew it because his violet eyes had glowed with the magic, his wallop of surprise. Your mouth had soured, face tightened, trying to control the sudden rush of emotions so you could care for the distressed babe in your arms.

This…he doesn’t raise his head, peeking up from under thick lashes lined with tears that had frozen over quickly. The coldest day of the year, of his life.

This is the hardest thing he’s ever had to do, lay his High Lord and Lady–his brother and sister–to rest.

There’s an urge creeping up inside of you, crawling from deep within your chest like vines, an ache to help take the babes pain away as he wriggles tirelessly in your hold.

You are at a crossroads with the feeling. The High Lord in your arms should be awake to see this, but no child should have to.

Nyx is still reaching out to his mother and father before him, resting in exquisite coffins up on the dais built in the center of the city. Plush cushions rest beneath them, covered in the darkest black you’ve ever seen, swallowing all of the color like a void. They’re too still, too pale, faces resting peacefully as they lie side by side.

They’re dressed in the Night Court’s finest, deep velvety fabric that is so dark it hardly even looks like anything besides a block of darkness. A silver coin is perched upon both of their closed lips, the side with the Night Court crest – the mountaintops hugged by the three stars Azriel could look over his shoulder to see – facing up to the pitch black sky.

Whoever had prepared them had placed Feyre’s tattooed hand in Rhysands, the High Lord and Lady seeming just in love as they were as they were when they–

Azriel sends a pulse of encouragement down the bond, and your chest tightens. You glimpse down at Amren, Rhys’ second in command now ruler of the Night Court until the babe in your arms turns of age.

She doesn’t spare a glance towards you, her black bob jerking as she gives the order.

You inhale as much of a breath as you can, which is nothing more than a sharp intake, nearly a gasp. The cold air slices through you, awakening your senses. Your eyes flutter shut with it. It takes more than you are willing to admit, digging deep inside of yourself to find room for the babes suffering.

Your hands warm against Nyx’s back and your face crumples as you draw his pain away, the feeling cutting through your own emotions like the sharpest blade in Velaris is flaying your skin directly from your bones.

Your hands begin to shake but you continue on until Nyx settles in your arms, going lax in your grip. When you open your eyes the babe is sound asleep.

The silence is deafening now that Nyx has fallen silent. Azriel’s shadows twitch around him anxiously, his wings pulled high and tight, shoulders aching with the rigidness. He wants the babe to be awake, even if he doesn't understand what is about to happen as soon as the moon reaches its peak in the sky.

He can’t stop staring at Rhysand now. He hadn’t seen his brother with a face that peaceful since…since the heir had won his first snowball fight.

Azriel’s throat tightens as the memory flashes before him. He blinks harshly, wildly. He couldn’t think of such happy times when his brother is lying before him with his wife, dead, while their son is cradled in his mate’s arms, parentless.

He distracts himself, letting his shadows carry whispers of his friends standing with him, seeing how they’re all handling this.

Azriel knows this is difficult for you, that even with your abilities you were being smothered by the sorrow, grief, anger, and unrest of the citizens of Velaris at this gathering.

Oh how strong his beautiful mate is. It had been decided that you would be the main caretaker of Nyx, as you had been brought in by his parents to do so even before the babe was born. You had been a friend of Rhys’ for a long time, and the High Lord had thought that your abilities as an empath would be useful to his crown and then his son when he learned of Feyre’s pregnancy.

Which in turn means that Azriel would also be a guardian of the child.

A silken whisper that reminds him all too much of the unmoving brother before him tells him of the silent tears running down Cassian’s face, his lips pressed tightly together as to keep the cries of his own pain tucked within him.

Mor can hardly hold it together, her cousin and her best friend…she had lost both of them, one right after the other. Her blonde hair is the dullest it’s ever been, limp against her head as if it had died right alongside her family.

She has a hand pressed to her mouth, stifling her sobs as she stares at them, taking in every single detail of this moment before they are no more, before her bleary gaze turns to their son, repeating the process over and over again. Azriel wonders if she’s dizzy.

Amren is as stoic as usual, her face hardened and chin lifted, though he does note a softness to her dark eyes, like maybe the tiny creature has feelings after all.

And you…his mate, carrying the true High Lord of the Night Court.

Dealing with Nyx was a feat in itself, the quickly growing boy rapidly gaining powers, he didn’t know how the both of you would handle it.

But as he looks directly at his friends now, all of them each in turn, would bring their expertise to help teach Nyx to become the High Lord he knows that his parent’s wished for him to be.

The moon appears then, the thick clouds seeming to shift out of its path, as if even the weather knew that this was an important night, or maybe it was the Mother or the Gods, parting them so the moonlight could settle across the High Lord and Lady.

Rhys and Feyre’s skin glows under the sparkling planet in the sky. All of Velaris seems to be holding their breath.

It’s Amren who is the first to kneel, sliding silently to the ground, one curled fist pressed against her chest, head tipped back to bask in the moonlight, a silent prayer to the Mother looking down at you all.

You are the second, shifting the true High Lord fully into one arm so you can place your hand over your own heart, rocking your head back, silent tears slipping from the corners of your eyes, unable to contain the influx of emotions from your family and the mass of citizens congregated behind you as you kneel.

Even Nyx, in his sleep, has a fist tucked up against his heart, like he too, knows.

Mor, and then Cassian, and then it’s him who lowers himself to the ground, stretching his neck back to the sky. Azriel can feel the light, the magic settling over the city, like a thin veil of power that reminds him of Rhysand’s in his purest form.

The citizens follow, males and females and children alike take to their knees, paying respect to their fallen High Lord and Lady, but to the Mother as well.

A ripple of power sends shivers up his spine. He doesn’t dare open his eyes, he doesn’t want the last image he has of his brother and sister to be of them as they return to the stardust from which you were all born.

It would simply be too much.

It could take seconds, minutes, but to everyone it feels like hours until the presence of the magic is lifted away.

It’s done.

One by one, following Amren’s lead, you rise. The sky is now cloudless, millions upon millions of heavenly bodies dot the sky like a smattering of silver flecked freckles.

Nyx makes a noise from your arms, having awoken at the strange feeling of the Mother coming to claim his parents, help them return to the ether.

He’s watching something above you and you turn, catching a glimpse of the two beams soaring across the black sky, one violet and one blue, the same blue you had to guess was the one Feyre and Rhys had experienced of the star crashing into them on their first Starfall together.

Nyx giggles, reaching out for the blinks of colored light streaking across the heavens, intertwining with each other as they race along, taunting and teasing.

That was Rhys and Feyre all right.

Together forever.

[thesullengrrrl]

Rosie and Elaine are really into each other, aren’t they? They want one another; they are physically attracted to each other very much. Yes, their personality and behavior play a big part in how and why they are a couple, but their physical attraction to each other, no matter how many years pass, is a big plus!

Could I please request something small? In chapter 5, you wrote a small 8-line paragraph where Elaine more or less describes their night together: how he made her feel and how all her thoughts were consumed by him, etc. Could you please, if you want to, write something similar but from Rosie’s point of view? After they make love for the first time after so long, could you write how Rosie describes how she made him feel, her body, and how his thoughts were consumed by her?

Thank you love !

Hi anon!!! Sorry this is late but better late than never I guess. I hope you enjoy this little drabble 😌 bit nsfw!

when the morning light sings

Back in New York, Elaine would invite him upstairs at her apartment and he always declined. And for good reason—he wanted to get to know her outside the four corners of a bedroom. Rosie already did it in Hammersmith those years ago and he’s not going to repeat it this time. 

Only she could tell whether those were only tests or actual genuine invitations but one thing he is sure of—he always thinks about it when alone before sleeping.

Even as he laid in her couch on New Year’s Day with few steps away from each other, he wondered what it would be like to sleep beside her again. Would he sleep as peacefully as before? Does she snore now? Would she kiss him again before sleeping?

And now, in a beachfront hotel in California, all of his questions were answered. Sleeping beside her was coming home. Her hair is a lovely mess, her mouth slightly parted open and a soft snore to accompany the image. The white sheets covered her up to her shoulders, blocking him from the view she generously gave to him last night. 

It was the same body he held as far as he remembered—soft but taut, if not a little muscular. Also now, there's a heart-shaped tattoo on her front hip which he easily became fond of. It was as if was tattooed for him—to run his thumb over it as she sank herself to him, or a place to kiss as he lowered himself down to where she wanted his mouth the most. 

With the sounds she made under him, moaning his name in a needy way, he did everything he could to keep her doing it until she reached her peak. With a sudden shudder and gasp, he followed right after, melting into her ready arms as he came down from his high.

His head rested against the crook of her neck as he caught his breath. Rosie could only concentrate at her hand running over his back, soothing him. 

“I love you,” she whispered against his ear.

As he pulled himself from her, he heard her moan from his absence and then turned to face him. He brushed some of the hair that stuck on her forehead and placed a kiss on her lips. 

“I love you, Elaine.” 

How he managed to live without hearing his name being called like that or seeing her open and willing underneath him, he did not know. The image of her desperate soft eyes, deliciously open, and begging for release underneath him will now be a permanent visual in his head.

The woman who managed to travel through sands of time for him, to make him feel everything all at once as they made love, is right beside him sleeping peacefully. Rosie lifted a finger to move some hair away from her face and he traced her nose down to her lips—those pinkish, mildly swollen lips that took its time to give him pleasure and release.

Without thinking, he leaned in and brushed his lips against her and this seemed to wake her up.

Elaine stirred from her slumber, her eyes slowly opening until her sight focused at the man beside her. With one eye open and a sleepy closed smile, he was reminded of the same smile she gave him all those years ago except they've got all the time in the world now.

“Good morning,” he greeted her.

“Morning…what time is it?” 

“It’s around eight,” Rosie replied. 

“Hmm...will you hold me?" Elaine asked in a hoarse voice. Rosie chuckled her request and immediately pulled his wife closer to him until there was no space between them. 

"Better?"

"Yes."

He kissed her near her ear and closed his eyes.

Breakfast could wait.

[kingthunder]

Oh prompts! Can I request “I need you, you idiot” or “I think about kissing you all the time” for yennskier please? 💛

Jaskier hadn’t been expecting to run across Yennefer of Vengerberg in a tavern in the ass end of nowhere. He did a double take when he saw her, for a split second even thinking he might be seeing things, but even if he couldn’t pick her out of a lineup blindfolded based on her terrifying aura alone, she dispelled all doubt by meeting his eyes across the room and making a beeline for him.

“You,” she said at the same time that he said, “I didn’t do it.”

“You did,” Yennefer said. “You wrote a song about me and people are singing it from here to Nilfgaard.”

“Oh, that,” Jaskier said. “Yeah, okay, I did that.”

“You ass,” Yennefer said and ordered a drink.

Jaskier cautiously ordered one as well, and Yennefer didn’t growl at him to leave, so he stayed. They drank in silence for what felt like a century, the air between them growing thick and charged, until Jaskier muttered “fuck it” and drained the rest of his drink in one go. He leaned in and said, “I haven’t heard from him either.”

Yennefer’s shoulders collapsed like a wet towel.

“Fuck,” she said. “Was I that obvious?”

“Yep,” Jaskier said, popping the p. “Another drink?”

“You can buy it.”

“I wouldn’t dream otherwise.”

Two hours later, his words slightly slurred, Jaskier said, “the worst part is that I don’t even know if any of it ever meant anything to him.”

This was some time after he’d admitted that he and Geralt had been fucking for years, and hadn’t that been a wild thing to say out loud with his mouth—to Yennefer of all people, his sworn enemy and only rival for Geralt’s admittedly intermittent affections.

“It had to,” Yennefer said. “He stayed with you for twenty years and there wasn’t even a spell making him do it.”

Jaskier remembered Geralt’s mouth on him in the dark, the way Geralt’s hands sometimes trembled in his hair when Jaskier made him come, and he wanted to believe her. He wanted that more than anything.

The line of Yennefer’s mouth was unhappy, and Jaskier had the absurd thought that he wanted to kiss it better. The thought percolated through his alcohol-soaked brain that the djinn spell fucked her up as much as Geralt’s decades of refusal to commit had fucked him up. His eyes wandered to her throat, where her dress had pulled low enough to reveal her collarbone, and he wanted to kiss that too.

“No, that was just my own stutip—” Jaskier stumbled on the word and then righted himself to say with perfect diction, “stupidity. My dedication to the art of being an idiot is both unparalleled and regrettable.”

“Did he ever—” Yennefer started. She looked at him and caught him looking at her, and he didn’t even try to pretend he wasn’t doing it. “What kinds of things did he say to you, when you…?”

Jaskier felt a spark of indignation that she thought she was allowed to ask him things like that and expected him to actually answer. And then he realized—she was grasping just like he was, for proof that it ever meant anything. The empty spot in his heart went out to her.

“He never said much at all,” Jaskier said truthfully. “But the way he got all cuddly afterwards said a lot. Or at least I thought it did.”

An arm around his chest, heavy and solid. A muscled leg thrown over his hip. Geralt’s face nuzzled into the crook of his neck, both their sweat cooling. 

“Yeah,” Yennefer said, and she was still looking at him. Their hands were nearly touching on the table. Jaskier inched his pinky towards her. She let him brush up against her and they both shuddered.

“I keep thinking about kissing you,” Jaskier whispered, and immediately turned his face away, cheeks burning. He pulled his hand back. “I’m sorry, I’ll leave, didn’t want to stay at this inn anyway, they have bedbugs I think, and this ale is way too strong? I—”

He was rambling but he couldn’t make himself stop.

“No,” Yennefer said. She grabbed his doublet to pull him back around. “No, you don’t get to say that and then pretend you didn’t.”

“I didn’t say anything at all,” Jaskier said, just to be an ass, and he expected her to fry him to a crisp or maybe knock his head into the tabletop or at least give him a good verbal whipping, but instead she grabbed his doublet more securely and yanked him closer.

It pulled him off balance and he fell half into her and then she was kissing him.

He made some kind of undignified noise and he couldn’t figure out where to put his hands and oh Melitele that was her tongue.

“Ah,” he said when she let him go. Frazzled, he righted himself, scooting back into his chair and running his hands through his hair. “Ah. That was. Ah.”

“Did it live up to your expectations?” Yennefer said. Her back was stiff and her cheeks were red and this time she wouldn’t look at him. It was the closest thing to nervous he had ever seen her. She hiccuped, the only indication she’d given so far that the ale was affecting her at all.

“Yen,” Jaskier said softly.

When she finally met his eyes he deliberately got up and knelt on the floor at her feet. She parted her knees enough to let him in. Gods, he had spent so much time hating this woman that it had distracted him from how much she needed the opposite.

“Yen,” he said again, and tilted his face up, and she leaned down to kiss him, lingering and soft, her hand on his cheek.

When they broke apart, Yennefer was smiling. He had never seen that smile before, all the way to her eyes, years of stress melting off her face. Shit, Jaskier thought. When did I fall in love? I missed that part.

“Idiot,” Yennefer said.

“Yes. But let me be your idiot, for now?”

“For now,” Yennefer agreed.

[weretoad-writer]

to begin another end

When one of his oldest friends is killed during the events in the Whitemarch, Adaryc must travel back to the village where they grew up to bury his remains, and in the process is forced to confront the realities of loss, identity and his own complicated relationship with his roots and his faith.

Content Advisory: religious trauma, attempted suicide, references to self-harm

.....................................................................................................................

Those first days after they returned from the Whitemarch were a blur of exhaustion. They dug graves, conducted services, redistributed belongings, held collections, Adaryc wrote letters – too many letters – to families. And even in the midst of death, the living could not be forgotten, Marwyd needed medical supplies urgently, the duty roster needed to be reorganized to account for their casualties, supply lines needed to be reopened in the surrounding area, new jobs lined up. Adaryc didn’t sleep for two days and there still weren’t enough hours.

There wasn’t time to grieve. Not even for Devet. It still hadn’t sunk in that he was gone. Even as they prepared his body for transport, it wasn’t him, it was was simply another task that needed to be done. 

Most of their dead were laid to rest in the hills outside Little Bend where the Iron Flail had a small, unofficial burial ground. But Adaryc had promised Devet, years ago, when they were both much younger, that he would take his body home to his family if it came to that.

Hel, scrape together some campfire ashes and tell them I got smoked by a spell-slinger.  I don’t care. Just – promise me you’ll give them something to bury. Maybe that will give them some peace. Gods know I never did. 

He remembered the crooked smile on his face when he’d said it. 

Kae, one of his sergeants and closest friends, a mountain of a man who was closing in on fifty winters, volunteered to go with him. Only seemed right, he’d said. They’d grown up in the same parish, Adaryc and Devet and Kae. Enlisted together, fought together, made it home together. It had been the three of them there at the beginning, and there had never been a version of events where they were all still standing at the end, not in their line of work, but – 

But. The words he couldn’t find ached like a hole in his chest. 

They had been on the road since before sunrise, taking it in turns to pull the small two-wheeled cart which held Devet’s coffin. It was Adaryc’s shift; the late morning sun was warm on his shoulders, but the air still had the bite of winter in it. The cart bumped over the ruts left by the spring runoff, loudly jostling the coffin. 

Adaryc caught himself grimacing at each impact. He had the absurd impulse to apologize, as though Devet’s corpse was still sensible to pain. His thoughts kept flashing back to the journey down from the mountains. To the wagon full of dead friends stacked like cordwood. To Devet huddled under blankets with the other wounded, with a ghost pale face and sweat beading on his brow, cracking jokes and stubbornly insisting that everything was fine. 

Another banging rattle as the cart bumped over a rough patch of road and Adaryc’s jaw tightened. The weight was all wrong. It should have been heavier. There should have been more of him to bury. 

He’d been getting better.

His thoughts kept tangling on that part. 

It was a childish thought; he had seen enough of war to know that things did not happen because they were supposed to, because they were fair, or because they were deserved; they merely happened. It was one of life’s simplest cruelties.

But the knowledge did nothing to ease the guilt that twisted around his insides like garrotte wire: that he had walked away from Cayron’s Scar with naught but a broken arm and an aching head and Devet had– 

He flinched away from the memory of those last hours. 

The wagon shuddered over another rut, jarring him back to the present. Haligford was their destination, the small farming village in the South Dales where they had grown up. A two and a half day journey, he thought, if they kept a steady pace. 

He shifted his grip on the harness strap. He hadn’t been — hadn’t been back — in almost fifteen years. 

........................................................................................................................

There is a surreal quality to the months leading up to the war. News trickles out to the rural parishes in piecemeal, often conflicting reports – days, even weeks, after the events have occurred. They are insulated from what is happening in the wider world, but there is no comfort in that insulation, no safety. It is the difference between cover and concealment. 

In a matter of months, the entire shape of the world has changed. Their god has taken a human avatar and chosen Readceras as his divine seat, he has expelled the Aedyran governor and declared the colony’s independence. And yet they still wake every morning to the same barren fields and empty bellies, the same crushing poverty, the same boot on their necks. Everything has changed and nothing has changed, and that dissonance hangs like a sword above their heads. The priests praise Eothas for his deliverance and no one dares ask what they are being delivered from.

When the blow finally comes, it is a perverse kind of relief. Waidwen’s gaze turns upon the Church, to root out corruption, or so it is said, but the watchword cried in every temple, is not ‘corruption’, but ‘heresy’. A small, but deft shift in rhetoric that removes the target from the backs of those in power and lays the blame and responsibility at the feet of the people. 

The vorlas crop is rotting in the fields, and the trade agreements Readceras has depended upon so heavily for grain and other supplies are void now that they are no longer an Aedyran colony. People are starving. And their leaders, the voices they trust, tell them that all they have to do to make it stop is to rid themselves of the rot in their midst. 

The purges hit the Waelites and Berathians first, the followers of Galawain and Ondra, the small sects dedicated to the other gods. Stories come from the cities of full scale proscriptions; in a village up river a family of Ondrites is burned alive in their house; in Haligford a crowd gathers outside the charcoal burner’s hut in the middle of the night, drags him into the street and chases him to the parish border. Adaryc remembers shouts in the the night and torchlight from the road. Wagons carrying frightened, hollow-eyed families pass through day after day fleeing south to the border.

And when they have driven out all those who follow other gods and their crops are still failing and their bellies still empty, they begin to look closer to home. To those at the edges of their communities, the outsiders, the misfits, anyone does not fit the shape that was prescribed for them. 

Adaryc knows it is only a matter of time. His family’s status in the parish is liminal at best. He has no friends. He has always been viewed as ‘troubled’, but ever since the incident with the brewer’s boy the villagers look at him like a gul in their midst. Each night he wakes from nightmares of torches outside their windows. He knows that he is running out of time, and he knows that when they come for him, his father will not be spared; guilty by association.  

But a holy crusade – no one could accuse him of faithlessness or heresy if he takes part in that,  if he is willing to die for his god. Readcerans revere their martyrs. The dead and the unborn are far easier to love than the living. For all that he cares deeply for his country, that is one of the qualities that he hates the most. 

He remembers sitting at the table with his father as the light fades. The hearth is cold; there is no food to cook and they can’t afford to waste fuel on warmth. As has been the case more and more since his brother Eadwyn’s death, talking only lead to arguments, and so they sit in silence, the only sounds the faint click and scrape of his father’s wooden needles. 

Adaryc stares at his hands, balled into fists on the table before him. “Osbeorn said there was a messenger at the temple today,” be blurts out at last.

There is a tired sigh from his father. A stop at the temple meant an official proclamation. 

“Waidwen is calling for volunteers for a divine crusade.”

The sound of the needles stop. 

Adaryc takes a breath and pulls himself up a little straighter. “I’ve decided. I’m going to join.” His attempt at confidence comes out stilted and awkward and it is all he can do not to cringe as his adolescent voice cracks. 

He waits, bracing himself. There is silence for several long moments, and then the soft clicking of the needes begins again. 

“I’ll have to notify the reeve.” The words are slow, but wearily matter-of-fact. “They were counting on all hands for the second sowing. But I suppose it can’t be helped.”

Adaryc stares at him. Waiting for him to say something – anything – else, but he never even looks up from his work. He has been dreading this confrontation, expecting his father to be angry, to argue, to forbid it; so why does this concession feel so much worse?

He finds himself wishing that he would argue, that he would push back, call him an idiot, gods – ANY reaction at all would be better than this. 

Adaryc opens his mouth to protest, to make him react. He is supposed to be furious, he is supposed to argue, to question him, or tell him what he ought to do instead, or – or —

All the words he wants to say tighten into a hard, painful lump in his throat. 

He is supposed to care. 

Adaryc does not wait for morning; he leaves in the middle of the night without a word to anyone. 

...........................................................................................................................

“Hey–” Kae’s hand smacked against his shoulder, pulling him back go the present. He looked at Adaryc sidelong, a concerned scowl knotting his brow, “Come up for air once in a while, yeah?”

(When it was just the two of them, the sergeant tended to dispense with the formalities of rank. )

Adaryc cast him a look of rueful gratitude. “Sorry.”

They were approaching a crossroads, coming up from the south and turning west deeper into the South Dales. A post stood at the center, marking the distance in leagues to various waypoints. One of the names caught Adaryc’s eye.

“Ashwyck,” he said aloud.

Kae looked up as though he had heard the name of an old friend. After a pause he said, half joking, “Could always make a detour. See if that old tavern is still standing.”

It would have been fitting, but they both knew that they could ill afford the delay. The Flail couldn’t spare them any longer than was necessary, and Devet’s body had already begun to fester. 

“He wanted to head west to the Bremen depot, you know?” Kae added suddenly, "When we enlisted, I mean. It being closer and all. At least until I pointed out our chances of getting ordered around by someone from home.”

“You’re right. That would be terrible,” Adaryc deadpanned. 

Kae chuckled. “Present company excepted.”

“Do you remember that first night in Ashwyck?”

“I remember Dev going up to the bar to get us drinks and coming back with a prickly, half-starved teenager instead.”

The tips of Adaryc’s ears turned pink, recalling that first meeting. “I owe you an apology for that.”

Kae made a dismissive sound. “You were a bit riled up, is all. Devet used to joke that you were the only person he’d ever met with a stick up his ass and a chip on his shoulder at the same time.”

Adaryc snorted. “So, more or less the same as now?”

He was rewarded with a bark of laughter from Kae. “Nah. You don’t get your hackles up near as easy now. As long as we’re not dealing with slavers or landlords.”

“Or delegates from Stalwart,” Adaryc added bitterly.

Kae looked at him sharply. “You still whipping yourself over that?” He gave Adaryc’s shoulder a gentle swat.

“What was that place called?” Kae continued, his thoughts turning back to the tavern in Ashwyck, “The Ploughman’s – no, Pilgrim’s Rest. That’s what it was. I remember because they tossed us out when we couldn’t afford to keep drinking.” He shook his head, “Feels like a lifetime ago.”

.........................................................................................................................

“Look who I found!”

Devet’s voice booms over the clamor around them as he propels Adaryc towards a table at the back of the tavern where another man is seated. 

“Another refugee!”

The choice of words sends alarm bells shrilling through him and Adaryc pulls away sharply.

“I’m no such thing! I came here to join the Divine Legion! To serve Eothas!”

The vehemence of his response startles a laugh from Devet who holds up his hands. “Take it easy, kid.”

“Take it easy?” Adaryc hurls the words back at him, the tension which has been building over the past weeks and months finally boiling over. “Tell that to the charcoal burner’s family! You think you can call me a heretic and just– “

“Hey!” The other man who has not spoken until now cuts Adaryc off sharply. “Sit down.”

Adaryc falters, blinking at him in surprise. The steady, even gaze holds his until he flinches away. And after a moment of sullen hesitation, he lowers himself onto the bench. 

“Alright, first off –” There is a weary authority in his voice. “No one is calling anyone a heretic. This isn’t a fucking inquisition. “Second – Bremen depot is a full day’s journey closer to Haligford. Only reason for you to be here in Ashwyck is if you’re trying to get away from something. Same as us.”

Adaryc’s hands ball into fists at his sides, eyes locked on the surface of the table. Shame at his outburst and at being caught out so easily colors his cheeks and fear twists in his stomach. This had been a mistake. 

“Point is –” Devet interjects, dropping down next to Adaryc on the bench and giving him a playful nudge in the ribs. “You can relax. You’re among friends.”

Adaryc freezes in surprise at the words. No one has spoken to him like that since his brother died, and to his horror he finds himself on the verge of bursting into tears. His eyes sting and his vision blurs. He hugs his arms across his chest not daring to look up again, afraid that a kind look might shatter him. 

“It’s Cendamyr, isn’t it?” asked the older of the two, who looked to be somewhere in his early thirties. 

Adaryc instinctively straightened up at the use of his surname, the fact that the other man was addressing him as a peer and not a child. He nodded, sniffing and swiping at his eyes. 

“I’m Kae. And this – well, guessing you already know Devet.”

Everyone knew the parish troublemaker. 

Devet grinned, leaning forward in a mock bow. “My reputation precedes me.”

They talk for a little while before Devet slides a half-finished plate of food in front of Adaryc. A thin potage of beans and corn, heavily watered down to make it stretch farther, but it looks more substantial than anything he’s had in weeks. 

Adaryc’s mouth waters and his head feels uncomfortably light – he hasn’t eaten since before he left home – but still he bristles, the offer touching the raw nerve of internalized shame that is his only inheritance from his father.

“I don’t need your handouts.”

Devet’s brows arch, his expression more amused than annoyed. “Is everything a fight with you?” he laughs, “Come on, you look like you’d blow away in a stiff breeze.”

Adary’s face flushes scarlet. “I – I thought –” he stammers miserably, wishing that he could sink straight through the floor. As indentured servants they had no income, subsisting on the meager rations provided by the estate. The temple’s charity always came with strings of guilt and shame attached and he had assumed this was no different. He is not used to people being kind for its own sake. 

“I’m sorry.”

Devet waives off the apology. “Can’t have you fainting in front of the enlistment officer, can we? Besides,” he adds, “I meant what I said before. You’re among friends.”

.........................................................................................................................

They stopped at sunset for evening prayer. Adaryc knelt in the pale, dead grass at the side of the road. Beneath his knees he could feel that the ground was starting to soften; in Haligford they would be tilling the winter cover crops into the soil to prepare for spring planting. 

He recited the familiar words, a prayer for protection and guidance, an affirmation of faith in the coming dawn; it was spoken twice, once for the living and once for the lost. 

Too late he realized that kneeling had been a mistake; his limbs were stiff with exhaustion and unfolded only with spiteful reluctance. 

“See what you have to look forward to?” Kae joked, offering him a hand up – at more than fifteen years his senior, the older soldier had had the sense to remain standing. 

Kae looked as tired as Adaryc felt, the skin under his eyes was smudged dark like an bruise, and there was a hitch in his gait that hadn’t been there when they set out that morning; old wounds making themselves known.

The sensible thing to do would be to camp for the night and start fresh tomorrow morning, but —

He felt a stab of guilt at his own hesitation. 

“We should stop while there’s still some daylight left,” he said at last, with more conviction than he felt. 

There was a heavy sigh from Kae. “If it’s all the same, I’d rather push on through. Get this over with.” 

“Your leg – “

“Will be fine. I’m old, not dead.” There was an edge to his voice, pain, weariness and tension all coming to a head, but his tone softened as he glanced sidelong at Adaryc’s bandaged arm. “If you need to rest–?”

Adaryc shook his head. He didn’t want to prolong this anymore than Kae did. They trundled the cart back onto the road and continued westward into the growing twilight. In the shallows of a nearby stream the frogs had begun to sing, their high-pitched chorus filling the air. 

“Never did understand why he was so set on this,” Kae said suddenly after they had walked in silence for a short while. “I remember his family. He didn’t owe them a damn thing after the way they treated him. Don’t seem right, leaving him like this.”

It was an odd relief to hear someone say the words out loud; Adaryc knew it was selfish to begrudge Devet his last wish, but he couldn’t find a way to make peace with it. 

“I gave him my word.”

“I know.” Kae was thoughtful for a little while, then he looked up, a fond smirk tugging at his mouth. “Were you there for — nah, you’d’ve been too young. The whole debacle with the honeyjack…. Gods, that must be what? Twenty-five years ago now?”

Adaryc shook his head. Devet had been in his mid teens at the time, so Adaryc wouldn’t have been more than six or seven. “It’s funny though – he told the story so many times, it feels like a memory. I can picture it clear as day.”

It had been a prank several months in the making. Devet and a friend had taken a small keg of wyrthoneg, the weak mead that was the only legal form of alcohol in Readceras, and over the course of a long winter cold snap, turned it into an ungodly strong honeyjack, which they had then used to spike the punch at the close of the midwinter holy days. They’d been caught, of course; Devet had spent a week in the stocks, nearly froze to death and was still considered lucky to avoid anything more serious, but even two and a half decades later, his eyes still lit up with mischief at each retelling. It was one of his proudest moments. 

“It’s how we became friends.”

Adaryc looked up curiously. He hadn’t heard this part before. 

“His family refused to bring him food while he was in the stocks. Too damn busy trying to distance themselves from the scandal, I reckon. So I started doing it. He was just a kid for fuck’s sake. Bit of an ass, sure, but who isn’t at that age. He was….” Kae was quiet for a moment. “He was alright. Haligford was just about bearable with him around.”

There was anther long pause and Kae added softly. “It ain’t right.”

<>

It was a few hours after dark when he heard the cries. It started with a single voice, calling out from the trees and Adaryc’s head snapped up, instinctively reaching for his sword. 

The sound came again, urgent but indistinct. His eyes searched the darkness of the treeline, but by long habit, a portion of his attention lingered on Kae, measuring the sergeant’s reaction – the slight delay before he stopped and turned, the feel of his gaze shifting back to Adaryc rather than remaining fixed on the direction of the sound. 

Adaryc let his hand drop to his side, but none of the tension left his body. The sound had been in his head: a spirit. In the early years this had caused no shortage of confusion and false alarms, but here, fifteen years later there was no need even for words. They read everything they needed from each other’s body language. 

Over time Adaryc had grown better at compartmentalizing these encounters, of assessing and moving on, but that night his consciousness snagged on the voices like a cloak on a nail, wrenching him off balance. 

Shame and self-loathing washed over him. To Readcerans, meddling with another’s soul was the ultimate act of blasphemy and hubris, and the ability to read souls was seen as a form of violation, on par with the more sinister abilities of cyphers. Such ‘gifts’ were considered a sign of a sick soul.

“Can you still see him?” The blunt urgency of the question startled Adaryc out of his own thoughts and he stiffened.

“What?”

“Devet,” Kae said simply. “Is he still… You know?”

“No.” It was more of a flinch than an answer, snapping out terse and defensive before he could stop himself. 

He tried again, dragging in a breath and letting it out. The topic was less of a boundary and more of an open wound, a sin to be confessed. He spoke carefully, moving from word to word like someone treading on too thin ice. 

“There were a few. On the way down from the mountains. But the burials put them to rest.” It wasn’t like after the war when the souls had clung to him for months, facing down specters of his dead friends every waking moment. 

“But Devet —” He’d felt him go; felt him slip through his fingers even as he held his hand. He swallowed past the painful catch in his throat and thrust the memory away. 

“He didn’t stay.” 

Kae nodded solemnly. “He never was one for keeping still.” Adaryc couldn’t tell if he was relieved or disappointed.

“I wouldn’t keep that from you. If he was still —” 

“I know. Just kept…. hoping, is all. He used to joke about it, remember? Coming back and haunting the parish.”

Adaryc cracked a weak smile, momentarily imagining Devet rustling pages and blowing out candles in the middle of a sermon. 

“Now he’s got us doing it for him, the bastard,” Kai grumbled. 

His tone was mild, joking even, but there was an edge of bitterness to the words as well.

The person Kae had lived as for thirty-five years was dead. He had buried them when he joined the war, and when he returned home with his head shaved and his breasts bound up, his family had thrown him out. As far as they — and much of the rest of Haligford — was concerned, Kae too was dead. 

Adaryc’s own katabasis had been shorter by comparison, but more gradual. A slow immurement, burying himself alive brick by brick. A corpse walled up inside an effigy of what he was expected to be; in that way, they were similar. And there was a small, painful sort of catharsis in Kae’s offhand acknowledgement of it. 

What was a haunting after all if not the dead returning?

They lapsed into silence for a time, following the road as it turned to run parallel with the river. The voices in his head had grown — not louder exactly, but sharper, harder to shut out. There were more of them now — it was always worse near bodies of water, worse too when he hadn’t slept — whispers pressing in from the periphery of his awareness. 

Adaryc grit his teeth, striving to focus his whole attention on the sounds of the physical world around him, the creak of the wheels, the soughing of the wind in the trees overhead, the scuff of their footsteps. 

The sound of running water. 

All at once he was back amidst the desperate scramble to escape the flooding caverns of Ionni Brathr, the roar of the water all around them, the deadly slick of stone and ice underfoot, the crash of falling rock as the caves began to collapse on top of them. And then staggering out onto the ice floes of Cayron’s Scar and seeing it — all that red. Blood on the snow. 

Beside him in the darkness, Kae began to hum and the memory drew back before the soft, offkey melody like shadows from candlelight. Adaryc recognized the tune, an old hymn that had been a marching song during the war. The memories it carried were bittersweet, but there was warmth and fellowship in them and the promise of morning no matter how long the night. 

It was a small, quietly intimate act of care and Adaryc felt his throat tighten. He did not deserve Kae’s kindness.

.......................................................................................................................

Kae finds him huddled amid the crates and barrels and oil cloth tarps behind the supply tent. He is still shaky with adrenaline. His thoughts keep replaying the same scene over and over again. The physical examination. Standing naked together with the other recruits, the tight grip of the medic’s hands on his wrists, twisting them palms-up to reveal the criss-crossing lines of scar tissue, some not yet fully healed. The disdain in the priest’s voice as he calls into doubt his mental fitness, his commitment, his faith. He had wanted to die of shame. He had wanted to die. He wants to —

Kae sinks down on the packed earth beside him and Adaryc stiffens. His hands tug compulsively at his sleeves and his cheeks burn. He waits for the inevitable questions, the lecture, the platitudes, hot angry tears welling up in his eyes. But Kae doesn’t say anything. And for the first time it occurs to Adaryc that he is not the only one for whom the physical examination had been a forced confession.  

For several long minutes they simply sit. Then, with a soft, deliberate exhale, Kae begins unlacing the cuff of his sleeve. 

At first Adaryc doesn’t understand; he watches in confusion as Kae rolls up his sleeve to reveal the bare, brown skin of his forearm. 

And then he sees them. Thin lines of slightly darker scar tissue, crosshatching the skin from his wrist almost to his elbow. The scars are old enough that they have begun to fade. They say, I understand. They say, it gets better.

.........................................................................................................................

They reached Haligford at dusk on the following day. Adaryc had sent a message ahead before they set out, though it could not have been much faster than they were. Still, some warning was better than none.

“Thought it would look different after all this time,” Kae remarked, the tension in his shoulders belying the evenness of his tone. 

He was right. The buildings lining the road through the village were just as Adaryc remembered them. As if he’d been gone a few months rather than fifteen years. It filled him with disoriented unease, the same sort of dissonance he’d felt returning home after the war; the sense that he’d never left, that the war – everything he’d experienced – had never happened. Those who returned were expected to simply pick up where they’d left off. 

Their somber procession drew no shortage of stares. But for the moment folk saw the weapons on their belts and steered clear. 

“Never thought I’d feel skylined in a valley,” Kae muttered under his breath. It was a joke, but Adaryc felt it too. It wasn’t just the sense of being watched, he felt exposed. 

It wasn’t until he heard the faint chuckle behind him that he realized he had instinctively quickened his stride to walk a few paces ahead of Kae.

“Taking point, Cendamyr?”

He let out a short exhale of a laugh at the kneejerk absurdity of it, but he didn’t drop back.  

The forge was quiet when they reached Devet’s family home, but smoke was rising from the kitchen chimney. Devet’s sister, Deorhtric, answered the door, still in her leather smith’s apron, smudges of soot on her face. She regarded Adaryc’s travel stained gambeson and the sword at his side with open suspicion and then her gaze moved past him to the cart and her eyes hardened. 

Without giving him a chance to speak, she turned and called two names into the house behind her and a moment later two men, whom Adaryc half recognized as husband and brother, joined them in front of the house. Behind them several younger, adolescent faces were just visible in the entryway.

“How did it happen?” Deorhtric managed to make the question sound like an accusation.

What could he tell her? They wouldn’t believe the truth — gods, he scarcely did and he’d been there. “A mercenary company from the Whitemarch was making trouble for villages along the border. We—”

“So my brother died so that you could have a dick measuring contest with another group of brigands,” she cut him off icily. 

Adaryc went rigid. He could accept the blame — he was the commander, it was his responsibility — but not the way she dismissed Devet’s death as meaningless. 

“He died protecting Readceras—”

She slapped him. The force of the blow snapping his head to the side.  “Don’t you dare try to sell me that horseshit. In my own house. Over my own brother’s body. Your lies may have fooled Jora, but I know exactly what you are.”

It took every ounce of self control he had to simply take it. He straightened up, glaring, but she wasn’t finished. Kae had taken a step forward and her gaze fixed on him with sudden recognition.

“You’re that Haglund —”

“Leave him out of this!” Adaryc bristled. She ignored him.

“To think we took you in when you were turned out. And this is how you repay us? Though I don’t know what else I expected from someone who abandoned their family to play lackey for this —”

Adaryc took a sharp step forward, eyes blazing. “Kae is my right hand and one of the best men I’ve ever had the privilege of serving with!” he declared fervently. 

“I think,” Kae interjected, calmly but with the finality of the Void, “Deorhrtic. You’ve forgotten who did the abandoning.”

And Deorhtric, to Adaryc’s surprise, stiffened, her face flushing at the quiet rebuke. But before any of them could say another word, another figure emerged from the doorway.

He had only ever known Devet’s mother from the occasional glimpse at the temple on holy days. She had always seemed stern and imposing. From the stories Devet told, she had been the very image of sober propriety; Devet had been her youngest and a perennial disappointment. 

It was difficult to reconcile that image with the old woman before him. She was smaller, frailer, and there was a softness to her that was entirely alien to the person she had once been. It was generally accepted that Berath granted kith the mercy of forgetting their past lives at each new turn of the Wheel, but some folk were cursed to begin before that. 

The son-in-law turned to her with a mixture of annoyance and concern, urging her to go back into the warmth of the house, but she was insistent.

“Who’s that?” she demanded peering at Adaryc and Kae before spotting the coffin and shrinking back a step, “What do they want?”

“They’ve brought Jora home, Mother.”

For a moment the old woman’s expression brightened, the thought of the coffin displaced by the familiar name. “He’s coming home?”

The husband made another attempt to coax her away, but the sister shook her head. “He’s dead, Mother. Jora is dead.”

Adaryc saw the horrible, frightened confusion on her face as the words slowly sank in. And then she began to weep, a quiet, shattered wailing as she sagged against her daughter. 

Deorhtric fumed, keenly aware of the faces that had begun to appear in the doorways and windows of their neighbors’ homes. “Didn’t even have he decency to bring him ‘round the back. Had to drag him through the street like a common criminal – Oh for gods’ sakes!” she rounded on the husband and brother who had begun to argue over where to put the coffin. “Put him in the foundry. It’ll keep until sunrise.”

The brother together with one of the adolescents loped off to prepare space, leaving them with nothing to do but wait.

The sister stood, still supporting her mother, her glare now fixed on the coffin itself. “You see children, this is what comes of foolishness. Folk who think only of themselves come to a bad end.”

A small crowd had begun to gather by this point and Adaryc could only stand there, anger choking in his throat. He planted himself in front of Kae — though his slight frame made for pitiful cover. Most of those gathered spared them only wary, disapproving glances, but one man kept looking at Kae, brow creased as though trying to place him. Adaryc turned toward him, meeting his surprised stare with such aggressive directness that the man turned away in discomfort. Behind him he heard a soft snort from Kae. 

In the midst of it all, the old woman withdrew from her daughter and approached the cart. She pressed her trembling hands to the coffin, smoothing or wiping away something only she could see. Did he suffer? she wanted to know. And he did his best to answer. But she could not hold onto the words.  She would go back to fingering the coffin and a few moments later the same question again. How did it happen? Did he suffer? Was it painful? Each repetition felt like a knife twisting in his chest. 

After what felt like hours, the brother and apprentice returned, ready now to take charge of the body, and Adaryc and Kae were free to go.

Adaryc had had days on the road to brace himself for this, but it still hadn’t prepared him for how much it would hurt. The panicked sense of rage and desperation as the finality of the loss began to sink in. 

Grief snapped and snarled like a wounded animal inside his chest. He’s not yours!  He had the irrational impulse to grab hold of the cart, to drag Devet away, away from these people and this place that had never wanted any of them. But what he wanted didn’t matter. This wasn’t about him, it was about Devet, and he’d promised Devet he would return him to Haligford. 

They left the wagon with the family — the body still needed to be transported to the temple — and headed back the way they had come. The silence was so much emptier; it felt absurd to miss the rattle and jarring of the cart, but it had been almost like a third presence on the road. Now it was just the two of them. 

The quiet grew more strained with each step they took. The road seemed narrower, the buildings closer. 

Kae scrubbed a hand across his face, breathing out a long sigh once they passed the last house. “Well. That was shit.”

Adaryc exploded, “They had no right! They talked like he deserved it for fuck’s sake! He changed and left and now he’s dead because ‘that’s what happens’. As though this somehow puts things right! Puts everything back to ‘the way it should be’!”

It felt painfully familiar. He remembered the way some villagers had looked at them after the war, at their difficulty re-adjusting to life in the village, as though they were nothing but walking reminders of Readceras’ failure, as though it would have been more convenient – more comfortable – for everyone if they’d died with their god.

“All he’ll ever be to them, all they’ll allow him to be remembered for is a cautionary fucking tale about how you should never change and never leave and never question and just keep fucking pretending that everything around you isn’t on godsdamn fire —” He broke off breathless, so angry he was shaking. 

“They don’t matter,” Kae retorted with sudden vehemence. “They aren’t the only ones who will remember him. They got a body. That’s it. They got meat and bones. We got fifteen fucking years. We got him. We got first blood and last breath and everything in between. They don’t fucking matter.” 

Adaryc let out an unsteady breath. Kae was right, though in the moment it was small comfort. They walked in silence for a few heartbeats before Kae added. “And if you let my family anywhere near my remains, I will haunt you from Hel to breakfast.”

The remark startled a small, mirthless laugh from Adaryc, but he quickly sobered. “Your family – did you see them?”

“Not yet.”

“Is that better or worse?”

Kae sighed. “Bit of both? There’s a piece of me that gets to wondering sometimes if maybe they’ve changed. I know the answer, but I don’t know, you know?”

“Yeah,” Adaryc admitted quietly. He did. 

<>

The burial was set for sunrise the following morning, as was traditional for Eothasian rites. 

Adaryc and Kae camped at the edge of town. Darkness had begun to fall by then, softening the unsettling familiarity of their surroundings. In the dark, Haligford and its environs could have been almost any other farming village in Readceras. 

There was some comfort in the routine, in the physical acts of gathering water and wood, of scouting the perimeter, in preparing food, in pestering Kae into using the salve Marwyd had given him for his knee, and being nagged in return about his arm. A connection to their life outside of Haligford, to the Flail. 

It unnerved him how far away that life felt here and how little he felt like the person he had fought tooth and nail to become. It had been fifteen years; he was a grown man, the commander of a collective of soldiers; he’d survived a war, dozens of skirmishes with mercenaries and bandits, the Eyeless, he’d negotiated with Glanfathans, defied wealthy landowners, stood before the damned Morning Council…. And all it took was a name —  mentioned offhand by Devet’s brother arguing with Deorhtric over the funeral arrangements, and all the fear and anger and helplessness came flooding back as if he were a child again.

Homecoming was meant to be a consummation, a joining that made one whole again. But it wasn’t. The person who returned was never the same as the one who left, and there was no reconciling the two. There was just the struggle of one over the other and the slow annihilation of self. 

They ate in silence — journey cakes Kae had made with a mix of cornmeal, salt and water, cooked on a stone over the fire. The news that Brother Haemon would be presiding over the burial had them both on edge; Kae smoked and Adaryc fidgeted; nerves turned the food to ashes in his mouth and it was all he could do just to keep it down. 

When it came time to bed down, Adaryc took the first watch, staring into the shadows beyond the fire until the restless, skin-crawling sense of waiting grew too much to bear and he got up to walk the perimeter. 

“Seen you less on edge before a battle,” Kae remarked when Adaryc returned to stand by the fire for the dozenth time. 

Adaryc’s brows quirked upwards, glancing over at where Kai lounged, propped against a tree. “You’re one to talk. How many pipes has that been now?”

There was a low chuckle from Kae. He’d been smoking like a chimney since they’d made camp. 

“If I’m honest, a battle would be preferable,” Adaryc admitted, tugging compulsively at his sleeve with his good hand.

“Rymrgand’s frozen ass crack would be preferable.”

Adaryc choked on a laugh, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Despite the warmth of the fire, he couldn’t stop shivering. 

“Suppose it was too much to hope that old Haemon would have passed on,” Kae sighed. “Bastards like that are always the last to go. They’re like cockroaches. Kick over enough rubble in an abandoned temple and one of the fuckers would probably come skittering out.”

They had both been Haemon’s ‘favorites’ at different times. Though ‘projects’ might have been more accurate. The ones he took a special interest in. The troubled children who needed to be broken in order to ‘heal’ properly, like a mis-set fracture.

........................................................................................................................

“Your father tells me that you have been shirking your chores.”

The priest smells of tallow and incense. He towers over Adaryc’s eight year old frame where he stands in the flickering light of the altar candles with his hands clasped in front of him, his face hot with shame. 

It sounds so much worse, so deliberate when Brother Haemon says it. Adaryc wants to deny it, to explain —  He’s not lazy, it’s just…..he’s just….. but there’s no word for the emptiness that has displaced the person he used to be. He feels numb. He feels hollow. His brother has to drag him out of bed every morning. All he wants is to sleep. Tasks that he used to complete quickly now take him ages, if he remembers to do them at all. What is that if not laziness?

“He also tells me that you have not been eating.”

Adaryc’s shoulders hunch a little more. Laziness and ingratitude. 

“Is something troubling you, child?”

And because he trusts him — because he has been taught to trust him —  he tells him. Or tries to. Feeling clumsily for the words like someone groping for a path in the dark. 

Brother Haemon listens patiently. “You are unhappy,” he says at last and Adaryc feels a rush of relief, imagining in that brief moment that he understands.

“Unhappiness is selfish, Adaryc.” The words hit him like a physical blow. 

“Just like doubt. The more you indulge it, the more you give in to those feelings, the more you invite misfortune. Do you understand?”

He doesn’t understand. An apology, like a flinch, rises to his lips. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to.  I didn’t – And then his mind processes the rest of what the priest has said and he goes very still. 

“What – what kind of misfortune?”

“Do you think that is the question you should be asking?” The priest’s tone is indulgent, a threat concealed in an invitation, and Adaryc shrinks into himself a little more.

“No, but —” he stammers, pressing forward desperately, “But I mean – it wouldn’t be things like – like the vorlas? Would it? I mean, other people wouldn’t be — they wouldn’t be punished for something I did. Would they?”

Fear clamps around his chest. The words he doesn’t dare confess lodge in his throat until he feels like he might choke. The vorlas in the south fields is failing. They found the first sick plants shortly after his own troubles began. 

The priest places a hand on his shoulder, and for an instant the panic subsides. He looks up anxiously, seeking reassurance. And Haemon crushes him like a moth. “Misery begets misery,” he intones. “If a well is polluted, do not all who drink from it become ill? Do not the plants watered by it wither?”

Guilt floods Adaryc. The crops are dying, because of him. His father won’t be able to pay off his debts, because of him.

He feels hot and cold and dizzy at the same time. He feels like he’s going to be sick. If his father and brother find out…. If they knew it was his fault…. If they knew how wicked and lazy and ungrateful he has been…

“What cause do you have to be unhappy?” Haemon adds in the same honey-coated tone. “You have a roof over your head, a father who puts food on your table, you are healthy in body, as are your father and brother. You have much to be grateful for, child. Take joy in those things, repent your ingratitude, and all will be well.”

All will be well. Adaryc cleaves to those words with the desperation of someone drowning. There’s still a chance. He can still fix this. He can make it better.

When he returns home he greets his father with a smile; he completes his chores without prompting, and he eats his dinner with apparent enthusiasm. His brother, Eadwyn watches him, his face an open question, but Adaric doesn’t meet his eyes. 

<>

He tries so hard to be happy. He performs normalcy like a prayer — as if conviction alone can make it real. And when that only makes it worse, when the isolation and the fear are more than he can take, he turns his lies in on himself. The numbness, the exhausting heaviness, that is all normal, he tells himself. Everyone feels like this. He just needs to get used to it. He needs to be stronger. Doubtful thoughts clamor in his head and he tries to drown them out with other thoughts, better thoughts. He prays every night. 

But the harvest still fails, and guilt and fear take root in his soul like bittersweet vine. 

During the winter season, the children of the parish who can be spared from work attend lessons at the temple. One day he asks why Eothas doesn’t answer prayers. That is the wrong question. Brother Haemon makes him spend the rest of the lesson kneeling on the stone floor in view of the other children as punishment. 

After the lesson, the priest pulls him aside,  interrogating him on the reason why he would believe such a thing.  

Adaryc learns that this, too, is his fault. A lack of faith. A lack of sincerity. If he had faith, if he truly believed without any doubt that his prayers would be answered, then they would be. It is as simple as that. 

His prayers grow obsessive, lying awake at night repeating the same request over and over. There is always some imperfection. Nothing feels sincere enough, the smallest flicker of distraction or doubt poisons the whole attempt and he must begin again. 

It feels like praying to a wall. But he keeps trying. Again and again. And again.

He barely sleeps. His emotions begin to swing violently, often over the smallest things, and he feels less and less in control. 

Thoughts that seem to belong to someone else begin to thrust their way to the front of his consciousness; frightening and obscene, and the harder he tries to shut them out the louder and more persistent they become. They are there in every prayer, every sermon, every quiet moment. He begins to believe that his soul must be stained somehow. That he must have been a truly horrible person in a past life. And it is that person’s thoughts and impulses bleeding through into him. It explains everything –  the terrible thoughts, the violent outbursts, the periods of emptiness. 

It explains too why his god never answers. Why he never seems to be there in the ways that the sermons and prayers promise. If thou art broken, he shall make thee whole, they say. If thou art in darkness, he shall bring thee to the light. If thou art sinful, thou shalt be reborn. If thou art cold, his warmth shall bolster thee.

But they also say: If thine heart be black, if thine intention be impure, thy life is forfeit. For he hath seen, he can see, he will see. Nothing is hidden from his glory.

Eothas had seen his soul and what he saw there was so monstrous, so unforgivable, that even the god of redemption had turned away. It is the only explanation that makes sense.

.......................................................................................................................

It was still dark when they broke camp. Neither of them had gotten any sleep, but  propped against each other back to back by the fire they had managed something resembling rest.

Adaryc splashed water on his face, combed his fingers through his tangled mess of hair; he’d forgotten his razer and Kae didn’t own one. He turned instinctively to ask Devet — only to stand there, paralyzed for several heartbeats, staring at the empty space across the firepit. 

He hadn’t learned how to use a razer from his father. When his first beard started to come in during the war, it had been Devet who took pity on him and showed him how to shave without cutting up his face. He remembered his own clumsy embarrassment, Devet’s easy manner soothing his ruffled feathers, he remembered the intimacy of allowing another person to hold a blade to his skin, he remembered feeling safe. 

He tugged his rumpled clothes straight with his good hand – his left still hung useless in its dirty, makeshift sling – and straightened up, schooling his features into something he hoped to the gods passed for composure as he turned to Kae and nodded. 

They didn’t speak on the walk into the village, their breath forming clouds in the cold morning air. The fields on either side of the road were grown over with vetch and winter rye; a few had been freshly tilled. The spring planting would begin soon and he felt a familiar anxiety tighten in his chest.

Let it be a good year, let it be enough. He murmured the prayer out of habit, and guilt came back like an echo; the fight he’d had with his father on the night that he left for good – if he’d truly cared, then he would have stayed. Your brother would never have turned his back on us. Tired shadows skittered at the edges of his vision and he scrubbed his hand over his eyes, feeling angry and slightly sick. 

To the north, the silhouettes of large outbuildings began to rise out of the rolling hills and Adaryc’s jaw tightened. 

The Dal’geys estate was a large manor farm that grew larger with every bad harvest and increase in taxes, purchasing the land from the parish when the families that owned it could not pay their taxes, and then allowing them to continue working the land as tenants. The practice had been active under the Aedyran government, but had become increasingly common since the war. 

Dal’geys was, by all accounts, a deeply pious man. This meant that he gave generously to the temple with the gold he made off the backs of his slaves and tenants, and precious little else. 

In the early years of his marriage, Adaryc’s father had borrowed money from Dal’geys to save his farm, and indentured himself to pay it back. He still lost the farm, and in order to pay for rent and food, he’d had to borrow more. When the four year contract ended, he was more in debt than when he’d started, and the cycle began again. 

His father had never recovered from the loss, nor from the sense of failure and shame that accompanied it. In the social hierarchy, indentured laborers were only slightly higher than slaves; he had lost not just his land and independence, he had lost his place in the community. 

It ate away at him, but even in the days before Adaryc left, his father still never fully accepted it. The priests taught that patience and hard work would be rewarded, he simply had to have faith. 

Have faith. 

An old, bitter anger welled up in Adaryc, painful like a wound left to fester. It was convenient – the way poverty and bondage were framed as moral failings. His father had worked himself to death and died alone without a copper to his name, not because he had been conditioned and exploited all his life by those with more wealth and power, but because his faith was insufficient. 

What did they know of faith? To them it was nothing but a shell game to keep folk in their place. To blame the slave for his chains and the pauper for being poor. 

But Dal’geyss was a pious man. 

It was enough to drive a man to arson.

Out of habit Adaryc turned to look south across the fields on the other side of the road, his gaze finding the small smudge of a building more by memory than by sight. There was a light in one window. And for just a heartbeat his father was alive again. 

Adaryc froze, reeling from the whiplash of hope and loss. There was a new tenant. Of course there was. It was idiotic to think that — 

He swiped a sleeve across his face, furious with himself for the homesick grief strangling in his chest. That place had never been home. His father had been dead for three years and out of Adaryc’s life for even longer. They hadn’t spoken since he’d left Haligford. Adaryc had tried to write him, whenever he saved up enough to send home, but his father had never replied, and eventually the letters had become nothing more than receipts listing the amount of money contained within. Twelve years of silence. Twelve years. 

........................................................................................................................

There is no warning, just a road weary messenger appearing like a bolt from the blue with the news that his father has died. 

Adaryc is with a squad of his men, helping the villagers of Brightwell clear land for new fields, when the messenger arrives. He hears Devet’s bark of laughter and glances up to see him approaching with another man. 

“Messenger for you. Called me ‘Commander’,” Devet grins. “Better watch your back, Cendamyr, I might start getting ‘ambitions’.”

Adaryc’s mouth crooks. They’ve been serving together for twelve years and Devet has steadfastly refused every single promotion Adaryc has tried to offer him. 

He turns his attention to the messenger. 

“You are Adaryc Cendamyr?” he asks, eyeing Adaryc’s muddy, sweat-stained appearance with undisguised misgivings.

“I am.”

Adaryc takes the letter that the man hands to him and cracks the seal, his hands leaving smudges of dirt on the crisp, white paper. 

He stares at the two sparse sentences for a long time. 

‘It is with deep regret that I must inform you that your father, Meryc Cendamyr, after long struggle, has succumbed to his illness. May his soul return soon from the Wheel.’

He looks up, his shoulders straightening with a small jerk as he addresses the messenger; he tries to keep his voice neutral, but it comes out stiff and officious instead. “Was there anything else?”

The messenger shifts awkwardly. “The priest said you would cover the fee. That you were good for it, on account of some highborn patrons.”

Adaryc stares at him. Standing there, covered in sweat and mud, in his plain, much-mended clothes and travel worn boots, he feels the absurd, horrifying urge to laugh. The messenger, at least, has the good grace to look uncomfortable. 

It is true that they have a few supporters in high places, it is also true that that support is what allows them to continue working in a region where most folk are too poor to pay them. But of course the old priest assumes he’s lining his pockets with it.

It is a moment before he trusts himself to speak.

“How much?” Moving mechanically, he pulls his purse from his belt and upends it into his hand. It is painfully obvious that the small handful of coppers isn’t enough. 

In the end he has to borrow the difference from Devet. 

“Bad news?” Devet has been watching him closely, but waits until the messenger is gone before speaking. 

Adaryc hands him the letter. 

The paper crackles as he unfolds it, then – “Effigy’s eyes…” Devet looks up, his normally merry face suddenly serious.

“I didn’t even know he was sick.” It feels like such a small, useless thing to say. 

“Adaryc–”

He almost never uses his given name. Always his surname or his rank. And somehow the small act of intimacy affects him more than the letter itself. 

“If you need to – “

“No.” It comes out harsher than Adaryc intended and he grimaces. “He’s beyond anyone’s help. This place isn’t.”

Devet looks as though he wants to protest, but instead he places a hand on Adaryc’s shoulder and turns to address the rest of their squad who have been staring curiously ever since the messenger arrived. 

“Alright, back to work. Ondra’s tits, I swear y’all are nosier than a village priest.” 

...........................................................................................................................

The roof of the parish temple rose into view above the trees, a great, dark shape crouched atop the nearby hill. Adaryc’s hand brushed his belt, feeling reflexively for Steadfast, but there was no comfort in the unfamiliar hilt that hung there now. 

As they neared the top of the hill, they skirted the perimeter, entering instead through the gate at the back of the cemetery. Little had changed in fifteen years, save for the new stones which always stood out with such stark nakedness from their lichen encrusted elders. Bright green growth was beginning to peak through the dead winter grass and thick beds of moss cushioned their steps.

They were early. The family wouldn’t be there for a little while yet. Enough time to pay his respects. 

He left Kae smoking his pipe in the lee of the transept and made his way into the churchyard. An uncomfortable resonance surrounded him the deeper he went, like a bass string so low and heavy that it no longer registered as sound; whispers tugged at the corners of his mind, echoes of souls still lingering. 

His family plot was small, tucked away beneath a whitethorn tree in the northwest corner. The stones were unmarked. Just small fieldstone cairns. Engraving had been far beyond the means of an indentured laborer. 

He knew them by memory. The long, low cairn now grown up with weeds was his mother’s, and the two smaller, but higher piles beside it, crusted with lichen and moss belonged to his brothers, little Inri and Eadwyn the eldest. There was a a fourth cairn now as well. Almost pristine in comparison to the others. 

He was not sure what he had hoped for, standing before his father’s grave. Some kind of closure, a place to set down the guilt he had carried for so long, for leaving, for not having been there. But the stones were as stubbornly silent as his father had been in life, and he found only questions with no hope of answer and the gnawing, helpless anger of old wounds. 

There had been a time before despair and loss and exhaustion had hollowed his father into the bitter, passive shell of a man that he became. In some ways that made it harder. The knowledge that none of it was set, that it might have turned out differently. After everyone he had buried over the past weeks, it felt absurd to grieve for that, for a version of events that had been just a little easier, a little kinder, when there were bodies in the ground, but — 

But. 

He just wished —  

Adaryc scrubbed a hand over his face. He did not doubt that his father had, in his own way, harbored some degree of attachment, perhaps even affection for him. But in the end, Kae was right: love was not a feeling, it was an act. 

He let out a long, slow breath. It wasn’t relief, or closure, he was not even sure it was acceptance, but it was an end, of sorts. An acknowledgement, however painful. He knelt on the cold ground, the morning dew soaking through his leggings, and with the little time he had left, he began to remove the worst of the dead grass and weeds from his mother and brothers’ cairns.

He had few memories of his mother. She had died of the same fever that took Inri when Adaryc was only two winters. Her name was Sigge. Eadwyn had sometimes shared stories about her when they were young, but his father scarcely spoke of her at all, except in censure, until Adaryc could no longer separate his memories of her from the sting of his father’s disappointment. 

Thank the gods your mother didn’t live to see this.

What would your mother say?

Taking out his knife, he began to scrape some of the lichen from Eadwyn’s cairn, murmuring a prayer that the gods might bless him in his next life. There wasn’t enough time to do it properly, but there was a ritual of care to the act which felt right. A reversal of sorts. Eadwyn had always been the one looking after him. 

........................................................................................................................

He is two winters, clinging tightly to Eadwyn’s hand as they stand in the small crowd gathered round an open grave. Something terrible has happened, he can absorb that much from the tearful adults around him, and it frightens him. He wants his mother, but his father gets upset when he asks for her now; he says that Mother and Inri are gone. Adaryc knows they are gone; he saw the man in the dark robes come and take them away. But he wants them to come back. 

He starts to cry and Eadwyn scoops him up and holds him against his chest. His brother is trying desperately not to cry, but his cheeks are wet when he pulls Adaryc close. Adaryc huddles into him, burying his face in the crook of his neck. His brother is warm and familiar, an island of safety amidst all the strangeness. 

<>

He is six winters, sitting at the table on a snowy night, the warmth of the hearth nearby and the chill of the draft at his back. He can just make out Eadwyn’s face in the glow of the reed light, twisting into silly expressions as they make a game out of trying to make the other laugh while their father’s head is bowed in prayer over their meal. He always catches them of course, that is part of the game, a faint glint of amusement in his eyes softening his censure. 

<>

He is ten winters and his world is falling apart. Two years of guilt and fear and secrets, two years of watching bad things happen to the people he loves and knowing that he is to blame. And now Eadwyn speaks of nothing but leaving, of apprenticeships, of jobs in the city, of far away places. Their father will hear none of it, so he confides in Adaryc when they are alone together, his eyes bright with eager determination. 

But Adaryc is too absorbed in his own troubles to see how unhappy his brother is, how heavily the burden of their father’s hope weighs on him, the pressure of being the eldest son and second parent, the ‘good child’. All he can see is that his brother wants to leave him. 

“But you’re coming back, right?” he asks him after Eadwyn has rambled excitedly about how much more money he thinks he could make from just one season of work in the city. 

Eadwyn shrugs a noncommittal affirmative. “You could always come with me!” he grins. 

And for an instant Adaryc believes it. But his mind is so deeply mired in old patterns of self-loathing and rejection, that hope just feels like another kind of fear and he shrinks from it, a knee-jerk objection springing to his lips. 

“What about the farm? And Father?”

He regrets it immediately, but it is too late. Eadwyn’s face closes off and with a frustrated sigh the conversation is over. 

In the end, Eadwyn doesn’t go. A new section of land needs clearing and all hands are needed if they’re to have it ready for planting in the spring. Next year, he swears, he’ll go next year, but there is always another catch, another disaster or delay that forces him to hold off for just one more season, just one more year. 

<>

He is twelve and he can’t do this anymore. One winter’s night, letting the bucket fall from his hands as he steps into the ice cold waters of the stream behind their cottage. The water is so dark that he imagines he could fall into it and disappear completely. Wiped from existence like ink spilled over a page.

The cold hurts at first. The shock of it against his chest makes his breath come in violent, spasming gasps. And then, gradually, the pain begins to fade, and his breathing slows. He isn’t shivering anymore. He isn’t even cold. His thoughts are sluggish and indistinct. He tries to imagine falling forward, it would be so easy to just slip beneath the surface.  

Vaguely, as from a great distance, he is aware of someone shouting, the sounds of splashing water, and then there are arms around him, and the last thing he is aware of before he loses consciousness is warmth. 

Warmth is how he remembers Eadwyn. Not the bright, sunny warmth of a summer’s day, but deep and quiet like a sun-warmed stone at evening. 

“I told Father it was an accident,” Eadwyn confesses the following night, whispering as they lay huddled under threadbare woolen blankets on a shared pallet, “That you were fetching water and fell in.”

Adaryc’s shoulders hunch guiltily and he murmurs a half-hearted thanks. In the dark, he can feel his brother’s eyes on him, the painful, searching question in them as the silence between them pulls taught.  

“I don’t understand. Why didn’t you tell me? We used to – we used to talk. And now…. I don’t know what happened, you’re so far away. I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”

In that moment Adaryc wants to tell him. He wants to believe that even after all the harm he has caused, all the poor harvests, the sick crops, the debt, the fights, Eadwyn’s own crushed dreams of escape, that his brother would forgive him. 

He wants to believe. But he can’t. Tears roll down his cheeks and with a soft sigh, Eadwyn pulls him close. They stay like that until morning. 

<>

He is fourteen winters, staring at the empty seat across the table. His father says the evening prayer as though nothing has changed, as though nothing is wrong, and he feels like he is drowning.  Because Eadwyn is dead and it is his fault. 

“Effigy’s eyes —” he blurts out angrily, interrupting the prayer. “He’s not listening! He doesn’t care!”

His father looks up, for a moment too startled by his outburst to even be angry. “Of course he does. But sometimes…..” He falters for a moment, his gaze not quite meeting Adaryc’s. “Sometimes Eothas sends us trials to temper our faith. To strengthen it.”

Adaryc stares at him in disbelief, angry tears welling in his eyes. “You don’t believe that – you don’t believe that Eadwyn died just so god could prove a fucking point!”

“Adaryc–”

“Everything is so hard all the time and you keep saying it makes us better but it doesn’t! It doesn’t! Look at you – all you’ve ever done is bowed your head and rolled over! To god, to the temple, to Dal’Geyss. That’s not faith, that’s – that’s — “

“Adaryc!”

“What is the point? To see how far he can push us before we break? Eothas sounds more like a landlord than a g–”

It is the first time his father has ever struck him in anger. 

He remembers the look of shock and regret on his father’s face, the struck-match, incandescent outrage in his own chest. In time, he might have forgiven him for that. But not for what came after. 

“Enough!” his father barks, retreating once more to his seat at the table. His voice is rough and fraying at the edges and he does not meet Adaryc’s eyes. “That’s enough. Now sit down and finish your dinner.”

Sit down and finish your dinner. Sit down and pretend that this never happened. Pretend that your grief isn’t eating you alive. Pretend that you accept it – Eadwyn’s death, the blight, the sickness, the hunger and exhaustion, the landlords and slaveholders with their soft hands and big houses. Pretend that you believe all that suffering makes people better. Pretend that the temple sermons fill you with certainty, and the hymns kindle your faith. Pretend that you believe your god answers prayers. Pretend that you aren’t a monster. Pretend that you aren’t hemorrhaging rage and doubt and pain and all the ugly, selfish emotions you’ve tried to pretend for years that you don’t feel. Pretend. Pretend. Pretend.

.......................................................................................................................

Adaryc heard a step behind him and looked up to see Kae approaching. The rite would be starting any moment. 

He pushed slowly to his feet, his gaze lingering on Eadwyn’s grave. He found himself wishing suddenly, painfully, that he could have told him. That night after Eadwyn pulled him from the stream, he wished he could have explained, could have trusted him. He thought — 

He thought that he might have understood. 

<>

The family were already gathered at the east side of the temple yard, a small crowd, maybe a dozen sober-faced scelterfolc, and a few children too young to have ever met Devet, looking bored or curious by turns. And slightly apart, standing over Devet’s coffin — 

It didn’t matter that he’d been bracing for it. Adaryc’s gait hitched as Brother Haemon looked up at their approach, and it was only Kae’s presence at his back that kept him from freezing up like an unblooded recruit. 

He steeled himself as the priest broke away from the family and began to approach the two newcomers. “Adaryc–” The use of his given name felt like a belt across his back and he hated himself for the reflexive obedience with which he responded, shoulders snapping straight as if he were still the same troubled child, being pulled aside after lessons for the hundredth time. 

“This is a surprise. I thought you’d become too grand for Haligford.” Adaryc’s face reddened at the familiar barb, but he bit his tongue, acknowledging Haemon with a stiff nod.

“Brother.”

“It’s good of you make the journey, this time.” Unlike when your father died, the implied censure was plain in his face and tone of voice, and Adaryc stiffened. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kae shift, his hands in loose fists resting just below his breastbone. A simple change in posture, but he recognized the veiled aggression behind it and felt desperately grateful for the brief moment of catharsis. 

Haemon must have caught his glance because he turned to Kae, and Adaryc saw him pause, struggling to place him just like the man the day before. Adaryc opened his mouth to interject, but even Brother Haemon wasn’t immune to Kae’s ‘go ahead and try me’ stare; he turned away with a disdainful sniff and, taking his leave, returned to the graveside. 

They waited there, in the cold shadow of the temple, restless and silent save for the occasional murmur of the younger children. At last the first rays of sunlight could be spotted cresting the horizon and the priest began to recite the Eothasian blessing for the dead. A censer swung from his hand, burning incense to mask the smell of decay. It smelled like guilt and fear and Adaryc found himself caught in a visceral sense memory of kneeling before an altar bright with candles, whispering the same prayer over and over and over again, stumbling each time as a sliver of doubt or distraction found its way in, never quite right, never quite enough, like a nightmare where he keeps trying to run and his legs won’t work.

He dragged his eyes away from the censer, focusing instead on the coffin where Devet lay.

He had told Devet’s mother that he had died in battle, that it had happened so fast it would have been over before he knew what hit him. He hadn’t suffered. He’d assured her of that.

Lying was a terrible sin. But what possible peace could there be in knowing the truth? That her son had died of his wounds on the return journey, that it had been slow and lingering, that the first amputation hadn’t been enough, that the infection had come back, that by the time he died he was out of his skull with fever and sobbing like a child, begging someone to make the pain stop.

Adaryc had held his hand until he grew still, and he’d kept holding it long after that.

He blinked, swallowing past the tightness in his throat. As the blessing ended, Devet's sister guided her mother to the grave to lay a spray of bloodroot and anemone atop the coffin. That seemed to be the sign for the sexton and her assistant to lower the body into the grave, and Haemon began to recite the prayer of mourning. 

Adaryc closed his eyes. He’d said the same prayer over so many graves in the past days that he knew it by rote. He tried to take refuge in the familiarity of the devotion, but the words felt cold and distant, and for the first time in a long time, prayer felt like standing on the wrong side of a locked door.

“Is there anyone who would speak for Jora before he is laid to rest?”

Adaryc’s mouth felt suddenly dry. He should have been prepared for this. “Adaryc?” It was the same tone he had used when calling on wayward children during lessons, catching them out for not paying attention. 

It took all his nerve just to pry himself away from Kae’s reassuring proximity. He had the sudden, irrational impulse to ask the sergeant to come with him, like a child afraid of the dark. 

He drew himself up, standing parade-ground straight, painfully aware of how he must look with his travel stained clothes and cheeks rough with several days’ stubble.

Brother Haemon took a step back, beckoning Adaryc to stand beside him, not allowing him to keep his distance. His face a cooly benevolent mask as he reached out to rest a hand on Adaryc’s shoulder. 

Adaryc flinched, shoulders involuntarily twitching away from the touch, and his face went scarlet. Everyone had seen that. He could feel the familiar, disapproving weight of the priest’s gaze, and as he looked down at Devet’s coffin, he felt suddenly absurd, a toy soldier, as if the Iron Flail was nothing more than a story he’d made up about himself. 

“Devet was –” His mouth opened and shut; each word that he reached for felt more hollow than the last; a performance of respectability, of expectation. Devet wasn’t in those words. 

Devet wasn’t here. 

There hadn’t been time for mourning. There hadn’t been time, and now it was too late, Devet was in a box at the bottom of a hole; he would never see him again, never say goodbye. There hadn’t been time for mourning and now it hit him all at once. His throat tightened and tears spilled over, and all he could think of was those first few days after the amputation, how he’d seemed to recover. He had been getting better, he was supposed to get better, and then – 

Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Brother Haemon step forward as though to usher him away, the words of the final benediction already on his lips, “Eothas, light of spring — “

“I wasn’t finished.” The words came out in a snarl, bristling like a wounded animal, old wounds torn open, flooding him with long festering anger. 

There was a reason that the only way Devet could come home was in a box. That was the only version of him, of any of them, that this place would accept. 

“I know you think Devet was wrong,” he choked the words out, his voice still rough with emotion. “That he strayed from the path – or was led astray. You think that the life he chose was a sin, a mistake. That he was selfish for choosing to leave.

“Which is pretty fucking rich coming from folk who expect their own children to break themselves into pieces just so the rest of you can feel comfortable! 

“There’s folk – a lot of folk – in this world who still have breath in their lungs and roofs over their heads because of Devet, because of what he did. Gods know I’m one of them, must have saved my skin a dozen times at least —

“He mattered. What he did – what he chose to do – mattered.”

For a moment he stood there defiantly, blazing like a torch, before the fire in his eyes guttered and he turned away. His heart was beating wild and erratically and all he could hear was the sound of blood rushing in his ears as his field of vision contracted to a narrow, distant sphere. His legs kept moving but they seemed to belong to someone else. 

He walked until Kae’s arm caught him across the chest, gently but firmly corralling him. 

“Slow down. You’re alright.” Kae’s hand shifted from his shoulder to the back of his neck, pulling him in. “You kicked a hornets’ nest there, boy,” he chuckled.

Adaryc couldn’t stop shaking, but he let himself be held, leaning his head against Kae, breathing in the familiar scent of pipe tobacco, feeling the even rise and fall of his friend’s chest as his own ragged breathing began to slow. 

........................................................................................................................

There is a joke among some of the old soldiers – that no combat-ready company ever passed inspection, and no inspection-ready company ever survived combat. And it seems that a holy war is no exception. The closer they get to the front line, the less pretense and appearance seem to matter; no one in his company cares how he feels about standing watch or fighting or tending injuries, they only care that he does it, and does it competently. They care that he works hard and learns fast. No one asks him to pretend. 

Bit by bit his defenses lower and his shoulders come down from around his ears. He learns to stop looking for mockery and rejection in every face around him and, to his bewildered surprise, discovers that some of them actually like him, and he likes them. He has friends. 

At home, everything they did had an inherent futility and hopelessness to it, no matter how hard they worked, no matter what choices they made, every day was just another step deeper into debt. It was paralyzing. But here his actions matter. He has value. He can help. 

He throws himself into it with a conviction and energy he has never felt before. And it is in the slaughter and horror of his first battle that he first glimpses the face of his god. 

All his life he has looked for Eothas in the places he had been taught to seek him, and not finding him there believed himself abandoned. But the priests were wrong. God is not in the high walls of the temple, in the candle bright altar, in the stations of the sun; he is in the faith that came with standing shoulder to shoulder in a shield wall, the mutual trust and reliance of each on the other, he is in the friend that stands astride him when he falls, in the hands that pull him to his feet, he is in the bloodstained compassion and defiance of the healers after a battle, and in the communion of sitting watch all night at the bedside of a dying friend. 

He sees the face of god in the people around him, in all the many acts of fellowship and love and sacrifice; and he is seen in return, with all his soul’s ugliness and doubt, and Eothas does not turn away. 

Acceptance feels like an embrace; after a lifetime starved for connection, it is intoxicating. For the first time in his life, he belongs. 

..........................................................................................................................

He felt Kae tense and instinctively pulled away, turning to see Haemon storming towards them. 

“How dare you profane this holy place! Abusing a grieving family, taking advantage of a man’s death to spread your lies. As if you were not the one who enticed Jora onto the path of violence. You always were a little thug. Thank the gods your father didn’t live to see —”

Kae took a small, purposeful step forward, straightening to his full height, and it was like a mountain sitting up and taking notice. 

“Don’t you have a grieving family to take advantage — excuse me – to console, Brother?” Adaryc choked, but Haemon recoiled as if from a physical threat, the haughty anger of a moment ago blanching in alarm. 

The sergeant’s voice was calm and quiet and sharp as steel. “Might should see to that.”

Haemon drew himself up in a huff, clutching his remaining dignity like a string of pearls. “You are not welcome here!” he spat, loud enough for the others to hear, before turning and retreating to the remaining mourners. 

“You hear that, Cendamyr?” Kae drawled, “He finally said the quiet part out loud.”

The laugh that bubbled up in Adaryc’s throat was dangerously close to hysterics and he choked it back. When he could trust his voice again he said, quietly earnest, “Thanks for that.”

Kae shrugged it off with a soft snort. “Couldn’t go letting you have all the fun, now could I?”

<>

Slowly the graveyard emptied until it was just Adaryc and Kae. They stood over Devet’s grave and Adaryc repeated the prayer of mourning. It felt important that they said it, that the final prayer that sent him on his way should come from his chosen family and not someone like Haemon. 

As the prayer finished and silence fell over their small corner of the cemetery, Adaryc found his thoughts drifting back to the months after the war. Readceras had been on the brink of collapse, destabilized by the power vacuum created by the destruction of Eothas and his avatar, their economy devastated by the abrupt severance from Aedyr. Old taxes went up, new taxes appeared, rents went up, as did the price of basic necessities. The vorlas cough, the purges and then the war had hemorrhaged the country’s working population, there was more work and fewer bodies to do it, and still not enough food to go around. 

On the surface life in Haligford limped along much as it always had, but at the turn of every week, the temple was packed as though it were a holy day. He remembered standing in the packed throng of the sanctuary, seeing the fear in peoples’ eyes, in the way they stood and moved; he could hear it in their voices, in the timbre of their prayers. In the priest’s feeble attempts at reassurance. ‘Community’ was the watchword now. The importance of community. And standing at the back, in the section reserved for strangers, slaves and bonded laborers, Adaryc couldn’t help wondering where ‘community’ had been when the charcoal burner had been driven out. 

And all the while rumors of civil war, of retaliation from the Dyrwood spread like wildfire. Every other day there was some new tale of violence and disaster, attacks on the road, bandits overrunning a village, estates hiring mercenaries for security and extorting protection money from the surrounding parishes, or else attempting to forcibly carve out their own private fiefdoms. 

And there was nothing he could do.

After months of action, he felt paralyzed once more. Food supplies dwindled, outbreaks of illness and violence seemed to grow closer every day. His own mind betrayed him with visions and voices that weren’t there. It felt like standing in a flood with the water slowly rising, just…. waiting to drown.

And then, just as the water threatened to close over, there was a glimpse of hope. A neighbor of theirs was behind on his taxes; he needed to sell some livestock in the city to make up the shortfall, but the roads weren’t safe and he couldn’t afford an escort.

The cracks in their broken country were so much bigger than them; hunger and poverty could not be killed with a sword, one could not point to economic collapse on a map, nor skirmish with generations of Aedyran exploitation and their own passive complicity. But this — this one person in this one moment — this was something they could do. They could help.  

Adaryc had asked him for twenty-four hours, and that night he pitched the idea to Kae and Devet. They’d been just as eager as he was, and a few days later, for the price of a meal, they escorted the neighbor to Bremen and back without incident. 

Their first contract, and more soon followed. They almost never took jobs for coin in those early days; even if someone in Little Bend could have afforded it, that wasn’t the point. They patrolled the roads, escorted merchants and travelers, guarded tinkers and knife-sharpeners who had been forced to remain in the cities, enabling them to return to their circuits. They lived hand to mouth and frequently went hungry, they scrapped with bandits and profiteering mercenaries, they fought tooth and nail and bit by bit they carved out a space for themselves, a way of existing where they could belong again. 

<>

A rustle of movement drew Adaryc back to the present and he looked up to see Kae pull a flask from inside the breast of his gambeson. For several moments the sergeant simply regarded it, a sad, crooked smile on his face. Then, with a half-hearted ‘cheers’ gesture, he raised the flask to his lips. 

He took a long pull and then passed the flask to Adaryc. There was a sense of ritual about it. A wordless communion.

A last round. 

Adaryc took a drink, expecting the weak, familiar taste of wyrthoneg, and started in surprise, coughing –  half choking –  on the fiery burn and concentrated sweetness of —

The tears he had been fighting back spilled over all at once.

Honeyjack.  

He looked up at Kae in disbelief. “How —  Where did you —”

“Devet,” Kae admitted, his own voice starting to fray at the edges. “He distilled a batch while we were in the Whitemarch, said something good had to come from such shit weather. The company polished off most of it after Cayron’s Scar, but….”

He took the flask back from Adaryc with gentle reverence, “I kept a little in reserve.”

His cheeks were wet as he held it over the fresh turned earth of the grave and poured out the last of it to Devet. And in the quiet that followed, Adaryc stooped to touch the mounded earth, murmuring a last goodbye to the cold soil. Kae offered him a hand up and he took it, finding comfort in the gesture and the simple physical contact. Their eyes met and Adaryc felt a little of the weight slip from his shoulders. “Let’s go home.”

[himbos-hotline]

from the vulnerable confession prompt list 'how long have you known?' for hangmega with kota haunting the narrative

Angel to me // Watashi ni totte tenshi

Word count: 2364 words Ship: "Hangman" Adam Page/Kenny Omega, Nick Jackson/Kenny Omega [if you squint and turn your head sideways], Golden lovers Characters: "Hangman" Adam Page, Kenny Omega, The young bucks, Kota Ibushi [mentioned] Triggers: None that I can really think off... Authors note: I wrote fluff yesterday and now its impossible for me to write something cute or wholesome. This grabbed me by the balls again and I think it has some of my best lines in....The japanese at the end translates to 'coming soon angel' according to google translate. READ ON AO3

Kenny mostly sees Kota in his dreams. Clattering through his mind, knocking everything out of the apartment in his mind like a cat knocking glasses off the table, until it's just the two of them. Kenny stares at him with wide eyes, flooded with emotions as Kota collects a needle and thread, stitching the broken seams of the man he remembers. Kenny lets his hands wander across his damaged frame, watching as Kota weaves red ribbon around mental scars and embroider little hearts around bruises. He stares Kenny in the eye, hunting through the darkness and the pain for a flash of the soft, blond curls and bright eyes of the man that he fell in love with. 

Kota always appears in Kenny’s dreams but he never gets to speak, plush lips part and a soft pink tongue dart out to wet them and Kota’s chest shudders under his shirt, rolling little balls of thread around his fingers. His mouth opens and Kenny recognises the tune that plays; loud and frustratingly stubborn. His alarm always cuts Kota off from speaking and by the time Kenny opens his eyes, his body is still just as broken as before he went to bed. He’s only healed in his dreams. 

The tight hands of sleep release Kenny the way people release butterflies; all hopeful and gentle hands, watching as they flutter away all while having the silent dread that sometime, eventually. The butterfly will die or be eaten and all that time will have been wasted. He swings his legs out from under the covers and his knees pop in protest, skating pain wrapping itself up around his thighs and around his back like vines wrapping and strangling a rose. He sighs, dragging bare feet across the carpeted hotel room, shivering slightly at the chill that only hotel bathrooms have. The suns barely started to rise over whatever city they're in and Kenny watches it for a few moments through the dirty glass of the bathroom mirror as he brushes his teeth, purposely keeping his eyes off the reflection in the mirror. 

He spits into the sink and listens to the water run, watching it twirl down the plughole and disappear, gurgling through the pipes before wandering back into the hotel room. He dresses quietly, pinning a hair tie between his teeth as he wrestles his feet into battered sneakers and snatches his phone off the bedside table. Kenny double checks he has everything; phone, room key, headphones, overwhelming sense of longing for he’s never going to see again? Check, check, check. 

He runs, works machines in the gym and stumbles back to the hotel, gripping a take away mug of coffee in his hand hard enough that ring-worn nails are leaving behind small crescent moons in the styrofoam. In the elevator, Kenny counts the floors and stares at the mirrored walls, tracing the pattern of the marble and not the tiredness that floats in his eyes. The doors purr open and Kenny steps out slowly, nodding politely at a mother who apologizes as her child goes careening around Kenny’s legs, smacking into his hip with his backpack. For a few seconds, the child stares up at Kenny and something twists in his heart; there's a flash of innocence and adoration that paints the child's dark brown eyes. Kenny signs a few things, making small talk and ruffles the childs brown hair, smiling as he gasps and bounces away to his mother, poster flailing behind him gripped tightly in his chubby hand. 

Kenny waves as the elevator door closes and so does his smile, he fixes his headphones back in his ears and stumbles down the hall, mind fixed only getting home. Kenny closes his eyes as he hunts for his room keys in his pockets. The child's eyes flash through the darkness behind his eyelids and he flinches them open, blinking brightly under the overwhelming yellow glow of the hallway lights. He’s seen the look a thousand times before in fans eyes; starstruck and stunned but there was something different this time, like the child with coffee coloured eyes was apologizing for something, looking at someone over Kenny’s shoulder that only he could see. Chills tangle their way up Kenny’s spine and as he jiggles the key in the lock, he looks over his shoulders, sighing when he sees the hallway empty. Just Kenny and his shadow and the vastness of unshakeable loneliness that's mixed in Kenny’s bloodstream. 

The door opens with a pop, the latch clicking satisfyingly as it reveals the hotel room to Kenny, he walks through patches of golden sunlight decorating the floor and tosses his phone onto the white sheets. He showers and changes clothes again, leaving damp curls to fan around his shoulders and frame his face as Kenny crawls back under the covers, eyes half closed. 

The body next to him is warm and still mostly asleep, face highlighted by strands of golden sun as it dances in and out of heaven. An arm wraps around Kenny’s middle and like a dog craving attention, Kenny follows. Letting the body maneuver him against its side, forehead tucked in Kenny’s neck as it stumbles through the last sections of sleep. The body breathes against the dents of Kenny’s collarbone and he plasters a smile on his face as it speaks, Virginian accent thick and quiet. “G’mornin’ angel.” 

Kenny looks down at Adam’s face; at the half lidded green eyes, growing in alertness like moss growing over an abandoned gravestone and he catches the nickname still caught in Adam’s teeth; the color of molded fools gold. It's a common enough nickname, especially for Kenny but it still takes him by surprise. He’s heard it before, sure, but in a different tone, in a different voice, vowels shaped differently and he feels an ever familiar pang in longing in his mind. 

“Good morning.” He whispers back instead, trying to kiss the nickname out of Adam’s teeth and off his mouth, trying to kiss the coppery taste of uncanniness into an ever-familiar gold. 

The two of them move together in the uncoordinated bliss of early morning sex; bodies pressed together moving slowly with no real goal in mind. Adam whines against Kennys shoulder and Kenny tangles one hand into his curls, still messy and tangled from sleep. There's a growing pressure behind his eyes, almost like Kenny wants to cry. So he closes them tighter and rolls his hips with purpose. It seems to be enough as soon Adams spilling, warm and wet across Kenny’s fluttering stomach and the crisp white sheets, cum sparkling silver in the sunshine. Kenny pulls out slowly and flinches inwardly when Adams head comes to rest against his racing heart, breath spilling across his stained chest. “Where were you this morning?” 

Kenny pauses his movements, his palm stopping against his chest. He thinks for a few seconds, looking down at Adam’s quietly questioning eyes. Wrapped in his own head? Trying to run away from a golden star that’s still hung in Kenny’s sky by a red string that links people forever, a constantly glowing North Star that Kenny looks at for advice, for comfort. 

“Gym.” 

“Oh…” Adam nods, giving Kenny a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes as he scrambles his legs out of bed. There's no pain that paints itself across Adam's eyes as he moves, working his way to the bathroom. Kenny wipes himself off and stares pathetically for a few seconds at his body before he hears Adam call from the bathroom, asking about food or something that Kenny doesn't quite pick up over the sound of running water, so he stays quiet. Adam doesn’t let up, he calls Kenny’s name over the sound of the shower pounding against the floor.

Kenny makes a small sound, trying his best to sound interested as Adam asks for his toiletries back. Kenny takes it to him and leans against the shower door as Adam washes his hair and body, humming softly as he does so. The two of them share a glance and Kenny steps under the hot water, arms wrapped around Adam middle like he's holding onto someone different; fingers spreading against his chest and mouth already nipping and biting at his earlobe.

Kenny’s teeth graze against a sensitive spot on Adam's jaw and he gasps, forehead resting against the wet tiles of the bathroom shower. 

“I love you.” 

Kenny feels the confession more than he hears it; feels the creak of Adam’s jaw joint against his teeth, feels the tender syllables slide against chewed pink lips and into the mold in the tiles grout. There’s beats of silence where Kenny’s ears catch up and he pulls away, hands untangling from around Adam's hips. He blinks, body going cold and numb under the beating heat of the shower. Adam’s eyes widen and his body stills, forehead smacking against the tiles as he turns “I-..I didn't mean it..” His voice shivers out between worn down lips, hands trembling at his side. 

“Yes you did.” Kenny whispers, digging his nails into the fat of his hips as he steps away from Adam and out of the shower. He feels like he can’t breathe and the pressure in his skull feels like a drumline. It beats out Adam’s confession louder and louder until it's the only thing Kenny can hear, even over his ragged breathing. He shakes his head, leaving Adam standing alone and panicking in the shower. 

They avoid each other for the rest of the day until the show starts. They’re both squished in a locker room; Adam sitting on the couch while Kenny slumps over in a chair, staring a hole into the floor. The two of them barely look up when Matt pushes the door open, engrossed in an animated conversation with his brother. 

“And so I told him-” Matt’s voice drawls away, eyeing the two of them on opposite sides of the room before staring at Nick with a waring look in his eyes. The door pops closed behind the two of them as they sit on the floor, between the two of them. Kenny looks up, almost like he's surprised to see Nick’s sneakers, highlighter yellow in his eyeline. 

“Hey Nicky” Kenny smiles and straightens himself against the chair, chuckling when Nick takes his place on his lap, head tucked sleepily into his shoulder. “Tuckered out hmm?” 

Matt speaks from his place on the floor, legs stretched out in front of him, before Nick gets his mouth open. “The idiot drank my coffee. Y'know how he is with caffeine, you remember the time in Japan where-'' Matt stops abruptly and Adam looks up from his phone, confusion painted on his face. 

Nick looks at his brother and then at Kenny, blue eyes reading their faces before nodding and returning to his brother's side. “What happened?” 

“Nothing.” Adam answers, too quickly for him to be telling the truth. Kenny glares at him from across the room. Matt rolls his eyes, tapping his finger against the back of his brother's hand. Nick nods and finishes the silent conversation with his brother by standing up, dragging Matt to his feet by his wrist. Almost like they’re on the same path of thought, Matt and Nick turn to leave, Nick squirming out the locker room first, running away like a startled deer as Matt looks over his shoulders; brown eyes narrowed and tired as he glares at the two of them. 

“Whatever the fuck has happened, sort it out before out match tonight yeah? We have to win this.” Matt orders, finger wagging between Adam and Kenny before he slams the door. 

The two of them are alone again, staring at each other dead in the eyes. Adam worries at the inside of his cheek and Kenny frowns at him. 

Silence settles over the room the way a storm settles over the world;thickening the air and wrapping the very air in your chest in anticipation, making it heavy and stone-like at the bottom of your lungs. Kenny takes a small breath of air. 

“How long have you known?” He asks, voice thumbling like thunder over the locker room. It strikes Adams ears and his eyes look down at the dry floor, scuffing his boot across the floor. “Adam. How long have you known that you…” Kenny pauses, gripping his hands together. The words stop just behind his teeth, sticking to the roof of his mouth. 

“That I love you?” Adam asks rhetorically, voice taking a sour tone as he glares at Kenny from behind his curling eyelashes. “You can't even say it, can you?” 

That question isn't rhetorical, his eyebrows raise and he gestures his hand out as if presenting the perfect opportunity for Kenny to spill his heart. In his mind, Kenny pictures Adam holding a dagger and a platter, twirling the blade under the arena lights as he waits for Kenny to rip his shirt open and bare his chest so he can carve his beating heart out. He opens his mouth and closes it again, fiddling with the buttons on his shirt, tugging at the fabric of his jeans. 

Adams sigh, small and defeated, speaks more words that Kenny has ever heard. It sounds like a gust of wind breaking and snapping the tops of trees and Kenny’s eyebrows pinch together when Adam stands, hand resting sullenly on his shoulder. Kenny follows his eyes up Adam's arm and stares into his eyes, blue eyes flooded in apology. “Adam I-” 

“I know Kenny..” Adam looks just above Kenny’s head like he’s looking at something angelic. “I know.” He presses a soft kiss to the middle of Kenny’s forehead and walks himself to the door, his fingers twisting around the door handle. 

The door opens and Adam stares at Kenny sadly from the threshold. “I hope you're happy…” 

The door closes and Kenny sits alone, staring longingly at the door. “Me too..” He croaks out, eyes downturned to the floor as the overhead light flickers off. 

In the darkness, Kenny’s phone lights up from its spot against his suitcase. 

⭐ One imaged attached もうすぐ到着します 天使

•───────•°•❀•°•───────•

@smallestsnarkestgirl @skyqueen3 @josiewrites @itsnoosetome @jacedoe

@golden-disaster @sincyrlee @glitchaxolol @daddywrasslin @bikenny

@katries @thegizardofmars @motorcitygem @miru-has-thoughts @powderflower

@miserablecreachur @afterdarkprincess @mobiblackout @pinksuperkliq @harvey-dent

@thekadster

[peonierose]

Thank you @aallotarenunelma for tagging me in WIP Friday. I have so many WIPs I could probably fill out 365 days well 366 days this year 🥰 So I’ll share some of my current WIPs with you.

Peppermint Kisses

Book: Crimes of Passion

Pairing: Rose De Luca x Trystan Thorne

“Cheer up Rosa. We’re trying to have fun. You do remember what fun is, right?“ Trystan grins and I give him an evil glare. Mafalda, Luke, Ruby and uncle Tommy snicker from the side.

“She actually doesn’t know what that word means. It’s not in her vocabulary.“ Luke teases. I take a marshmallow out of my mug and throw it at him. It hits him square in the face.

“Ugh. Gross.“ He rubs his cheek and we all laugh.

“There’s more where that came from.“ I taunt him and his dark brown eyes widen behind his black rimmed glasses.

Dear John - Part 1

Book: Open Heart

Pairing: Keiki Lahela x Koa Haulani

“What are these? They must be really old. And look, they're dated back from the 1940s. That’s during Pearl Harbor.“ She shudders. I pull her closer until she almost sits in my lap. She instantly relaxes.

“Where did you say you found these letters?“ I ask her and she picks another letter out of the pile.

“I found the letters down at Waikiki beach. They were hidden in the sand.“

“Damn Keiki, that's really cool. These letters date back a long time ago. Does it say anywhere who wrote the letters?“ I ask her and she opens up a letter and turns it over.

“Someone named Joy. No last name. She wrote it to the guy she loved. His name is John.“ She turns the letter over again.

We read the letter together, though it almost feels wrong to read lines in a love letter that wasn’t really meant for our eyes.

You make me see in colors

Book: Open Heart

Pairing: Luna Auclair x Bryce Lahela

”With the power vested in me I now pronounce you as husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride. But please don’t turn it into a make out session. That would make for a very awkward scene. Just saying.“

Lunes and I grin.

I take Lunes' face into my hands and kiss her. It feels as if we’re kissing for the first time. Her lips faintly taste like grapefruit.

I smile against her lips. Not wanting the kiss to end.

Sky turns towards everyone.

”I represent to you Mr. and Mrs. Lahela.“

Las hijas de Luna

Book: Open Heart

Pairing: Luna Auclair x Bryce Lahela

”Okay that’s good Lu. That’s good. Just keep pushing.“ Meilani says in a soothing voice.

I get to Luna’s side.

Luna shoots me an angry look.

”Where the fuck were you B?“

I wince and then I smile at her for using a curse word.

”Let’s leave story time for after you’ve given birth. What’s important is that I’m here.“

”I’m going to kick your ass for this later.“

I grin and kiss her forehead.

”I wouldn’t have it any other way.“

Meilani grins and her head nurse Valerie standing next to Meilani, keeping track of the heart monitor.

Meilanis voice gets me out of my trance.

”Dad? Wanna do the honors?“

I squeeze Luna‘s hand and stand in the front to catch the first baby.

As I do, a loud cry fills the room and I suddenly hold one of my girls in my arms.

Valerie smiles next to me.

I look at my little girl, and a whole new love enters my heart. I wasn’t prepared for this feeling.

It’s as if my heart is going to burst from all this love. Making space for new people entering my life. I still can’t believe Luna and I created these beautiful babies.

I take my daughter's little hand in mine and kiss it.

”Hi there, beautiful. Look at you being all pretty huh?“

Valerie keeps sniffing.

”A new member in your Ohana.“

I nod and keep rocking the baby and when she opens her eyes she looks at me and stops crying.

”It’s your awesome dad. So cool right? Look at your mom. Super strong and going at it.“

I’d love to see what you are working on if you’d like to share (no pressure):

And anyone else is welcome to join and share 🩷🩷🩷🩷

@inlocusmads @jerzwriter @the-pale-goddess @trappedinfanfiction @storyofmychoices @noesapphic @cariantha @cadybear420 @rosepetals1 @lilyoffandoms @aria-ashryver @zealouscanonindeer @kristinamae093 @amortentiaopenheart @jamespotterthefirst @liaromancewriter @potionsprefect @surrrenderronniebabe1 @a-cloud-for-dreams

[jaylikesrainbowtigers]

This is my entry for the @fallofneilhargrove week, day 1: Death - rest in pieces.

Tw - mentions of abuse, alcoholism, attempted sexual assault of a minor, and death/implied murder

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Dear Neil Hargrove,

I have only wrote this type of letter once before. A letter to a dead man.

A dead man who was far better than you ever were.

I remember when my mom introduced you to me. How you smiled and told me how you would take me in as your own. How I would love it with you. I would be the daughter you never had.

I’m glad you never had a daughter. What you did to your son was bad enough.

I also remember how Billy stood behind you. Meek and quiet but at attention. Seen not heard, just how you liked him. I remember walking in on a hot Californian day to your house and thinking ‘Max, why are you here? Why do you have to do this?’ But all my mom said was something along the lines of ‘you’ll come to love it’ and ‘this is your home now’.

She was wrong.

Your house was that of nightmares. And you didn’t even need to touch me. You didn’t need to touch me when you could hit everyone else in that house.

Billy cowered in the corner covered in bruises and scars. My mom shuddered whenever someone closed a cupboard too fast. I learnt to not tell people because no one would believe me. Or maybe they just didn’t care.

You didn’t care.You said you did but you didn’t. Nobody who cared would break bottles on his son. Nobody who cared would leave grip marks on his wife’s wrists. Nobody who cared would put locks on the outside of our bedroom doors.

I’m the one who you left with no physical scars. No. All my scars are from a different kind of monster.

I’m the one who you left standing.

I don’t know what happened to Billy’s mom. I don’t even know her name. He always thought she left whilst he was out. Maybe she did. Maybe I don’t think that. You let a lot of things slip when you were drunk, Neil. Whispers of hate and violence spewing out of your lips. Secrets of how to dig up some ground. Words about hitting a bit too hard.

I bring justice for her.

Billy was maybe your biggest victim. But I hate to compare. We are all your victims. The marks on his skin, so rumoured to come from petty fights. I don’t think I ever really saw Billy fight. Just the once when some creep tried to grab at me when I was twelve. How he hid when you were around in contrast to what he showed to the world. A angry boy who was really just so, so sad? No. Victimised by you. An abused kid who never got to recover. A hero in the end.

I bring justice for him.

My mom. Susan Mayfield. I used to wish she had never left my dad. I see now that she was unhappy. Now I wish that she had never met you. I wish that I never had to see my mom wither away under you. The person she was destroyed by your will. I don’t know how she still loved you. I think you forced it into her. Made her feel like she could never live without you. Like you were saving her from so much worse. You were like a leach, draining the life out of her. How did she love you after it all? She died, you know. The doctor said alcohol poisoning. She became an alcoholic after you left her. An empty shell desperately trying to fill the void you had torn into her soul. I think me getting Vecna’d pushed her over the edge. She was not the best. Not by a long shot. But she was my loving mother. And you took her away.

I bring justice for her.

And me. Left blind and battered. But not by you. You didn’t physically hurt me. You didn’t break me. You couldn’t. I had people protecting me. At least a little bit. A warning here. A move there. A shoulder to cry on. They are the reason I survived you intact. They are why I can stand here today saying a letter that I memorised because I can’t write it down. Supported by the man who loves me the most and my friends who are closer to family. More of family than you would ever have been. And it hurts. You hurt me. Despite it all you hurt me. The abuse and the way you hurt those I loved. You hurt me, Neil Hargrove.

I bring justice for myself.

I stand here surrounded by people who love. For the sake of those who you hurt. I stand here better than you. Stronger than you. Whatever you could do to me, I survived.

I stand above your grave and tell you that you are done. You have been brought to justice. Maybe not in the legal sense. But I bring you to justice. For all of us. You got your justice. A dead man’s justice. The justice is that I lived. I lived through you. I made it. And I carry those who didn’t with me and they get their justice through me.

Look up at us. Look at me on Earth. Look at them above it. Look how we have moved on. Look at what you didn’t manage. You didn’t break us. You didn’t destroy us. We rose above you. Together, even if we didn’t all know it in life. You are done.

Rest in pieces Neil Hargrove

Worst regards,

Max Mayfield

[orangesideirrational]

ghosts cant hug

ghost!jon, eudardjon, eddsworld, 1.5k words, eduardo, jon

CW:

death (not on-screen), memory loss, guilt, crying

-

Ever since he died, the world around him was muffled. As if he was underwater.

He had to strain to listen, and everytime he did that he just felt bad.

So instead of trying to listen, he just watched.

And he drowned.

Until he felt like he was being tugged. Tugged away from watching the stars through the window.

It was a strange feeling, like a fishing hook pierced his stomach, but he didn't feel any pain. He never did anymore. Nothing could even touch him. He just floated in the drowning void that was his death.

He started to move, slowly at first, before it, whatever it was, got stronger, and started to pull him faster.

He started to panic, and impulsively tried to grab the doorframe. His hand phased through it. Like it did with everything.

He was pulled down, through the floor, into the living room.

Gods, did he hate the feeling of going through things. It made him feel so… dead. Yes, he was a ghost, but it was sometimes nice to pretend he wasn't.

He looked around the living room (man, wasn't that a bitter name). His eyes landed onto a figure sitting in front of some kind of board.

Stepping closer, he saw the figure was wearing a loose green button up (was it green? Jon assumed it was, but he had a hard time seeing that much colour anymore). The figure was also crying.

Jon looked at the board, perching over the man's shoulder, seeing it was a- oh.

It was a ouija board. The man was trying to talk to him? why? Whoever it was was going to be disappointed when he learned that Jon couldn't even move the planchette, let alone move it enough to spell something.

The man sniffed, and Jon moved away from his shoulder, looking at his face.

Tears ran down it as he looked up and closed his eyes. Jon looked up as well, but couldnt see anything.

“Please. God. Please work. I need you.'' The man begged, and Jon found it so sad he decided to at least try, even though he didn't even know this man.

He found it surprisingly easy to move the planchette.

H. The first letter would be a H. What did that one look like again? It had three lines. 2 long, 1 short. Kinda boxy.

It wasn't that first one. It was too pointy. Then the next ones were too round. That one had too many lines, that one had three lines, but it was one long one and two short ones. The next one was too round, then-

Aha! 

He had found it.

The planchette shuddered over towards that letter, and jon sat- floated?- back, smiling to himself. He had affected something.

The man looked towards the board in surprise, and smiled tearily.

“Thanks, jon.” the man said. Jon tilted his head in confusion. How did this man know him? Were they friends?

Jon shrugged his confusion, before going to move the planchette again.

The man rushed to grab the pen Jon hadn't noticed at his side, and scribbled a hasty small H on the paper Jon had also not noticed.

I. That one was straightforward. Just one line. and it was next to the H too, how thoughtful! Jon smiled again as he saw the man laugh and wipe his nose on his sleeve before scribbling an I down next to the H.

H-I.

“Hey, buddy.” The man smiled weakly.

Oh. they must have been good friends, Jon realised. He felt bad for forgetting him, but then again, he forgot almost everything.

He did die, after all.

S-O-R-R-Y

The man's eyes snapped up to where Jon assumed the man thought he was (he drifted there, just to avoid the embarrassment for both of them.) the second he wrote down the last letter.

“No! Fuck no. o-of course its not your fault. God.” the man swore, tears pooling in his eyes again. Jon wanted to hug him.

I– C-A-N-T–R-E-M-E-M-E-M-B-

Jon wanted to cry. He stopped mid sentence. He fell to his knees, putting his hands over his eyes. He couldn't do this. He couldn't say that to this poor guy. Whoever he was, he was obviously upset. He couldn't just tell him " hey, i don't remember you!”.

What kind of friend would he be?

Soft sniffles filled the room, invisible tears hitting the carpeted floor, almost leaving a wet spot if you squinted.

The man's eyes practically glowed as he heard it. He backed against the wall, dragging the board with him. Jon sniffed and wiped his eyes as he was slowly dragged along.

“You can't remember, huh?” the man smiled sadly, opening his arms, as if to give the small ghost a hug. God, Jon wanted- no, needed to hug him right now. 

Sadly, ghosts can't hug.

Jon sat down next to the man, wanting to lean on him for comfort, but not wanting to feel the overwhelming burning that came from contact with living people.

The upset human looked in the space where Jon was, but knew that the human couldn’t see him.

“If I find out you're on the other side of me, I'm going to kill you.” he smiled. Soft giggles filled the room, and the man relaxed.

The man pulled a phone out of his pocket, opening an app with a circle, and three curved black lines. The background was green (that was green, right?), and the man clicked on another few links before soft music filled the quiet room. It felt familiar somehow.

“This was your favourite. I never really understood why you liked it so much, but it always made you happy.” The man explained.

“Oh, my name’s Eduardo by the way.” the ma- Eduardo smiled. Jon liked that name. It was nice.

“When we met you could never pronounce it, kept calling me edd-you-ardo.” Eduardo chuckled, clicking on another app, his phone showing lots of small squares, a different, tiny scene showing in each of them.

“It used to bother me a lot, but you grew out of it, so it was okay. You did go through a phase of calling me ‘eddie’ in highschool though." Eduardo reflected, scrolling down the very bottom and clicking on the first photo.

“This was when you went to that ‘young british violinist contest’ thing. I pretended to hate it, but… i dunno, when you started playing, you just looked so… happy. And calm. Like everything bad had gone away. I couldn't keep a smile off of my face when I saw you play. I don't think you really noticed though.” he explained, tilting the phone towards jon.

It was him, in a blue (?) button up. He had a fancy-looking blazer on top, and he held a violin in his arms. He had a soft smile on his face as he played it, the moment captured in time.

Eduardo scrolled to the next one, showing Jon a pleasant scene of his own- alive- face, black eyes lit up with dozens of tiny stars. He looked so happy, smiling up at them.

“I said you were stupid, for liking the stars so much. I actually love them. They remind me of you, now." Eduardo explained, looking at the photo intently, smiling at his memories.

Jon wished he could share them, but when he tried, his head felt light.

“This one is of my first proper art show. I only won second, but you were so happy for me. Gushing about how amazing I was, and how good my art was, and shit. I hated it. I waved it off, and scoffed, and rolled my eyes. I- i didn’t think i was worth it. You did. You always did.” He trailed off sadly, looking down.

Jon tried to swipe to the next photo, but only succeeded in glitching the screen out and putting his finger through the phone.

Seeing this, the ghost's friend laughed, and swiped to the next image. He shivered when he felt a chill on his shoulder, but grinned when he saw the photo was of an appalled looking jon covered head to toe in water.

Hours passed, and dozens of dozens of photos later, Jon had gotten used to the now-soft burning on the side of his face. He had rested his head on the human shoulder ages ago, and he was now used to the warmth spreading through his body. If you could call it that. It was strange. It felt like warmth. His attention went back to the person next to him, his head slumped low. He was asleep.

He had barely stopped yawning since it hit 4:29 on the top of his screen. Jon smiled and let his friend sleep.

He now knew a lot more about his old life, and the human that he used to love, apparently.

A small smile passed over his face as he lifted his cheek off of Eduardo, kissing the top of his head softly.

If Eduardo’s purple-wearing, blonde roomate found the green-clad man resting against the wall, an abandoned ouija board next to him, and a phone on 3% displaying a photo of Jon loosely gripped in his hand, then that would stay between them.

Ghosts can't hug, but they can fall back in love, apparently.

[cyarskj1899]

Sent from my iPhone

20 - 1615 - 1110 - 65 - 1

MUSIC

The 25 Best Rage Against the Machine Songs

From funky, radical bombtracks to incendiary covers, here are the rap-metal masters' finest moments

BY 

DAN EPSTEIN, ANDY GREENE, KORY GROW, DANIEL KREPS, HANK SHTEAMER

WHEN RAGE AGAINST the Machine emerged in the early Nineties, there was no other band even remotely like them. They not only fused rock with rap at a time when there was a stark divide between the two genres, but their radical lyrics called for a political revolution during the supposedly peaceful decade after the Cold War and before 9/11. This was a time when most bands were looking inward toward their own pain, not outward to the struggles of minorities in America and people living under oppressive regimes across the globe.

“It was one of those rare instances when the planets just lined up right and the alchemy of musical magic and history just poured out,” Chuck D recalled of Rage in 2016. “I saw them in concert [early on], and what I remember most is how wiped-out the crowd was afterwards. I had never seen a place destroyed; sweat and blood on the walls. The fucking tables were turned over and rafters pulled down. It was crazy. They’re the Led Zeppelin of our time.”

Rage broke up in 2000 and left behind just three albums of original material, but those songs aged remarkably well during the chaos and tumult of the past two decades. And when they announced a reunion tour, which finally kicks off July 7 after several pandemic-related delays, tickets sold out with remarkable speed. There’s no hint that they’ve recorded any new music, but they really have no need to. They somehow created the soundtrack for our time a quarter-century ago. Here, we count down their 25 greatest songs.

25

‘Darkness’ (1994)

MICK HUTSON/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES

One of Rage’s earliest and most incisive songs, “Darkness” first showed up on the band’s self-titled 1991 demo tape before it got a major-label makeover — complete with one of Morello’s most chaotic, acrobatic solos — for its inclusion on the soundtrack to 1994 Brandon Lee movie The Crow. Originally titled “Darkness of Greed,” the song, which toggles between mellowed-out jazz funk and steely metallic groove, likened the spread of AIDS in Africa — and the U.S. government’s “procrastination” toward stemming the virus — as genocide. “They say, ‘We’ll kill them off, take their land, and go there for vacation,'” de la Rocha whispers on the track. —D.K.

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24

‘How I Could Just Kill a Man’ (2000)

MICK HUTSON/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES

On “How I Could Just Kill a Man,” Cypress Hill’s first single and first hit, rappers B-Real and Sen Dog traded verses about “takin’ out some putos” with a Magnum and making young punks pay. Their funky tableaus of terror built to the sort of wanton observation that would make any mother shudder: “Here is something you can’t understand — how I could just kill a man.” When Rage Against the Machine covered the track for Renegades, de la Rocha took all the verses for himself while Morello and bassist Tim Commerford (or “tim.com,” as he billed himself on the record) ratcheted up the noise to deafening levels on the chorus. “The first Cypress Hill record and [Public Enemy’s] It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back were two of the biggest hip-hop influences on Rage Against the Machine,” tim.com later told Rolling Stone.Rage might not have killed a man, but they definitely laid a few speakers to rest with their rendition. —K.G.

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23

‘Maggie’s Farm’ (2000)

BRIAN RASIC/GETTY IMAGES

Bob Dylan was saying goodbye to the folk world when he wrote “Maggie’s Farm” in 1965, and it’s very tempting to read some of the lyrics as an angry kiss-off to folkies who wanted him to remain stuck in the past. “Well, I try my best to be just like I am,” he sneered. “But everybody wants you to be just like them/They sing while you slave and I just get bored.” When Rage tackled the song for their 2000 covers collection, Renegades, they were also at a crossroads of sorts. Communication lines between members were breaking down, and when de la Rocha sang “I ain’t gonna work at Maggie’s Farm no more,” he might as well have been putting in notice that he was done with the band itself. —A.G.

22

‘War Within a Breath’ (1999)

FRANK MICELOTTA/GETTY IMAGES

“War Within a Breath” closes out Rage’s final LP of original material, 1999’s The Battle of Los Angeles, and it’s somehow fitting that these are the last notes we’ve heard to date of the band’s unmistakable sound. It’s an extremely on-brand tune that touches on everything from the Zapatismo movement to the Palestinian Intifada. Simply put, it sums up the entire Rage ethos in three and a half minutes. “Every official that comes in, cripples us, leaves us maimed,” de la Rocha roars. “Silent and tamed/And with our flesh and bones, he builds his homes/Southern fist, rise through the jungle mist.” —A.G.

21

‘Settle for Nothing’ (1992)

MICHAEL PUTLAND/GETTY IMAGES

Rage’s self-titled debut was more or less a 52-minute onslaught, which is why “Settle for Nothing” — the album’s most understated track and maybe the closest thing the band ever did to a power ballad — stands out so starkly. Over an eerily somber riff with shades of Metallica’s “One,” de la Rocha narrates the inner monologue of a desperate kid who chooses the cold comfort of gang life (“I’ve got a nine, a sign, a set, and now I got a name …”) over the trauma of a broken and abusive home. His voice rises to a livid howl (“Death is on my side … suicide!”) as the band blasts into a sinister Black Flag–meets–Black Sabbath wallop. The delicate filigree of Morello’s clean-toned solo suggests a warped spin on cocktail jazz — a quietly arresting sonic lament for the grim cycle of violence the song portrays. —H.S.

20

‘Microphone Fiend’ (2000)

FRANK MICELOTTA/IMAGEDIRECT/GETTY IMAGES

Rage kicked off their covers album, Renegades, with an ultra-heavy rendition of Eric B. and Rakim’s hip-hop anthem “Microphone Fiend.” Where the original sampled Average White Band’s funky guitar intro to “School Boy Crush,” Morello summons his own devastating wah-wah fury for Rage’s version, while bassist Commerford does most of the heavy lifting in the riff department. De la Rocha edited the lyrics to give the tune more of a rock chorus, and in a rare show of hip-hop humility, he side-stepped the lines Rakim wrote to shout himself out. The makeover translated to a direct rap-rock hit showing how smooth operators really do operate correctly for a heavy E-F-F-E-C-T. —K.G.

19

‘Calm Like a Bomb’ (1999)

FRANK MICELOTTA ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

“Hope lies in the smoldering rubble of empires,” spits de la Rocha on this blistering highlight from The Battle of Los Angeles,perfectly summing up the RATM ethos in a single line before setting his sights on the global plight of the underclass. (“Stroll through the shanties and the cities’ remains/The same bodies buried hungry/But with different last names.”) And speaking of smoldering, “Calm Like a Bomb” finds Morello offering up a veritable master class in the use of the DigiTech Whammy pedal, conjuring impossibly sick and searing waves of undulating noise from his guitar. —D.E.

18

‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’ (2000)

EBET ROBERTS/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES

Rage Against the Machine were opening up for U2 on 1997’s PopMart stadium tour when they first played Bruce Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” The original recording is a somber tale of urban poverty that Springsteen delivers in a hushed, resigned tone, but Rage present it like a lost song from the Evil Empire sessions — complete with a crushing Morello riff that bears little resemblance to the folky source material, yet still fits perfectly. The version worked so well that Rage kept it in their live set until they split three years later, making it the most-played cover song in their live repertoire by a huge margin. It also appeared on their 2000 covers collection, Renegades. And in 2008, Morello guested with Springsteen and the E Street Band to play a more traditional version of the song. Morello even became a temporary E Street–er in 2014, when Steve Van Zandt had to miss a tour to film his show Lillyhammer. The idea of Morello playing in the E Street Band would have seemed pretty far-fetched circa 1997, but time can make strange things happen. —A.G.

17

‘Born of a Broken Man’ (1999)

FRANK MICELOTTA/GETTY IMAGES

One of the most emotional and evocative songs in the RATM catalog, this standout track from The Battle of Los Angeles finds de la Rocha musing on the mental-health struggles endured by his father, the influential Chicano artist Beto de la Rocha. With Morello’s guitar ringing like a mournful church bell, lyrics like “His thoughts like a hundred moths/Trapped in a lampshade/Somewhere within/Their wings banging and burning/On through the endless night” are unforgettably haunting — but so, too, is the younger de la Rocha’s defiant mantra of refusal to suffer the same fate. “Born of a broken man,” he insists, “Never a broken man.” —D.E.

16

‘Wake Up’ (1992)

STEVE EICHNER/GETTY IMAGES

In six funky minutes, Rage Against the Machine unpack decades of institutional racism within the U.S. government on “Wake Up,” a deep cut off their self-titled debut. De la Rocha lambastes former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and his policies, condemning the way the government targeted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for protesting Vietnam and claiming it murdered Malcolm X “and tried to blame it on Islam.” “He turned the power to the have-nots,” the singer says, “and then came the shot.” The track ends with de la Rocha screaming “Wake up!” eight times in a row (a climax that, taken out of context, fits perfectly in the final scene of The Matrix) and a quote from King: “How long? Not long, ’cause what you reap is what you sow.” —K.G.

15

‘Year of tha Boomerang’ (1996)

GIE KNAEPS/GETTY IMAGES

“Year of tha Boomerang” marked the first preview of the band’s much-anticipated sophomore album, having been featured — as “Year of the Boomerang” — on the soundtrack for John Singleton’s 1994 film, Higher Learning, more than 18 months before Evil Empire’s release. Inspired by a quote from French anti-imperialist Frantz Fanon, the song offered a crash course on the “doctrines of the right” that de la Rocha would further rage against on Evil Empire: imperialism, the oppression of both minorities’ and women’s rights, and genocide, all punctuated by Morello’s screeching riot-siren riff. —D.K.

14

‘Sleep Now in the Fire’ (1999)

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE/YOUTUBE

One of Professor de la Rocha’s greatest social-studies dissertations, “Sleep Now in the Fire” traces how American avarice has decimated Third World countries, as well as marginalized people at home. “The party blessed me with its future,” he sings, playing the role of a Washington bigwig, “and I protect it with fire.” When the chorus comes with its elastic Morello riff, de la Rocha sarcastically encourages the oppressed peoples he’s singing about to “sleep now in the fire.” Later, he ominously catalogs the legacy of imperialism, slavery, and deadly force underlying the American myth, vowing, “I am the Niña, the Pinta, the Santa Maria/The noose and the rapist, the fields’ overseer/The agents of orange, the priests of Hiroshima.” In 2000, the band shot the song’s video on the steps of the New York Stock Exchange (without permission) and in one portentous moment, the camera captured someone in the crowd holding a “Donald J. Trump for President 2000” sign. In 2020, Morello joked, “I would say that we are karmically entirely responsible [for Trump running for president], and my apologies.” —K.G.

13

‘Maria’ (1999)

TIM MOSENFELDER/GETTY IMAGES

Marrying one of Morello’s weightiest riffs to one of de la Rocha’s most vividly devastating portraits of injustice, this Battle of Los Angeles deep cut demonstrates how the band just kept sharpening its attack all the way through its original lifespan. De la Rocha tells the story of Maria, a Mexican woman smuggled into the U.S. as “human contraband” and put to work in a sweatshop, where she finds herself at the mercy of an abusive foreman. Eventually she chooses a grisly suicide on the job over being treated “like cattle.” The song frames Maria as a kind of martyr figure, her story a constant reminder of North America’s long cycle of oppression and exploitation: “And through history’s rivers of blood she regenerates/And like the sun disappears only to reappear, Maria, she’s eternally here.” The song makes masterful use of dynamics, dipping down to a hush as de la Rocha recites the prior lines, and then explodes into a full-force stomp, with Morello’s swaggering, irrepressible guitar line symbolizing Maria’s phoenix-like rebirth. —H.S.

12

‘Vietnow’ (1996)

NIELS VAN IPEREN/GETTY IMAGES

Before Fox News brainwashed a generation of TV viewers who Alex Jones then pushed down the Q tunnel, Rage Against the Machine took aim at the insidious presence of right-wing talk radio on the Evil Empire cut “Vietnow.” With microphone fixed on Rush Limbaugh and the duplicitous Christian right, de la Rocha throws lyrical barbs like “Let’s capture this AM mayhem, undressed and blessed by the Lord,” “Terror’s the product you push,” “The sheep tremble and here come the votes,” and, on the chorus, “Fear is your only god on the radio/Nah, fuck it, turn it off.” The final single from Evil Empire, “Vietnow” served as an AM/FM foil of sorts to The Battle of Los Angeles’ first single “Guerrilla Radio” three years later, a track that demanded the listener “Turn that shit up.” —D.K.

11

‘Bullet in the Head’ (1992)

LINDSAY BRICE/GETTY IMAGE

Rage wrote “Bullet in the Head” just as America was declaring victory in the Gulf War, a conflict that Americans watched in real time on CNN and supported in overwhelming numbers. To de la Rocha, the made-for-TV war was a sham designed to benefit the military-industrial complex, and anyone who bought into it was a zombie brainwashed by the media. To put it another way, their brains had been hit with propaganda bullets. “They say jump and ya say how high,” he screams on the song. “Ya gotta fuckin’ bullet in ya head.” When introducing the song at an early concert, he made his point even clearer. “This song is about being an individual, about searching and finding new information,” he said, “and using your strength as an individual to attack systems like America who continue to rob and rape and murder people in the name of freedom.” —A.G.

10

‘Down Rodeo’ (1996)

GIE KNAEPS/GETTY IMAGES

This Evil Empire highlight uses Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills’ glitziest shopping district, as a launching pad for de la Rocha’s bitter musings on consumerism, wealth disparity, and socioeconomic segregation: “So now I’m rollin’ down Rodeo with a shotgun,” he raps, before delivering an even harsher follow-up: “These people ain’t seen a brown-skin man since their grandparents bought one.” Filled with bracing couplets like “Can’t waste a day/When the night brings a hearse/So make a move and plead the Fifth/‘Cause you can’t plead the First,” and harnessed to a powerful, swaggering groove, “Down Rodeo” also features some synth-like glitch bursts from Morello’s multi-pronged guitar, which prods the music until it finally gives way to de la Rocha’s anguished whisper. “Just a quiet peaceful dance for the things we’ll never have,” he laments as the track fades out. —D.E.

9

‘Freedom’ (1992)

LINDSAY BRICE/GETTY IMAGES

With one of the best guitar riffs this side of Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi, “Freedom” calls for the release of Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist serving two life sentences for the deaths of two FBI agents in 1975. Peltier has always maintained his innocence. “Freedom, yeah!” de la Rocha screams at the end of the song before sarcastically revising the lyric to, “Freedom, yeah right!” In the song’s video, during the breakdown, the group displayed the words “We demand and support the request that Leonard Peltier … be released. Justice has not been done.” “To me, the reaction to the music and things like the ‘Freedom’ video are very encouraging,” de la Rocha said in 1996. “I know that some people look at us as just rabble-rousing or ranting or whining. But I think a lot of that reflects the cynicism that people have when it comes to dealing with political problems.… What we are trying to show is that people can make a difference … that we aren’t all powerless.” —K.G.

8

‘Testify’ (1999)

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE/YOUTUBE

“Testify” was the opening salvo from Rage’s third LP, The Battle of Los Angeles, which Rolling Stone deemed as the Best Album of 1999. Originally titled “Hendrix” when the song debuted live due to its usage of a “Purple Haze” chord — “I recently found out that Jimi Hendrix used to play a song called ‘Testify’ when he was a backing musician for the Isley Brothers. It all comes full circle,” Morello later quipped to Guitar World — “Testify” later transformed into an outlet criticizing the impending 2000 presidential election, a showdown where both candidates — George W. Bush and Al Gore — seemed to spout the same capitalist ideology. The song’s music video, directed by documentarian Michael Moore, reflected this pre-election anxiety; eerily prescient, the clip also concludes with a quote by Ralph Nader, who later played an unfortunately crucial role in the 2000 election, as the presence of the Green Party candidate is often blamed for throwing the presidency to Bush. —D.K.

7

‘Take the Power Back’ (1992)

LINDSAY BRICE/GETTY IMAGES

This funky blast from Rage Against the Machine went Public Enemy (and the Isley Brothers) one better, not only encouraging us to fight the powers that be, but reminding us that the power was actually ours in the first place. Three decades before the 1619 Project, de la Rocha decried the Eurocentric teachings of U.S. schools — “One-sided stories for years and years and years/I’m inferior?/Who’s inferior?/Yeah, we need to check the interior/Of the system that cares about only one culture” — over the fiery interplay of Brad Wilk’s slamming drums, Tim Commerford’s slinky, slap-driven bass lines, and Tom Morello’s stabbing chords. —D.E.

6

‘Bombtrack’ (1992)

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE/YOUTUBE

Rage Against the Machine wasted no time getting down to serious business on their self-titled 1992 debut, opening the proceedings with this confrontational track. Though the official video for “Bombtrack” would salute the guerilla group Sendero Luminoso (or “Shining Path”) for its 13-year fight against Peru’s oppressive U.S.-backed government, the hard-grooving song itself lays out the band’s stance in broader terms, pledging solidarity with all indigenous peoples who have been abused, exploited, and slaughtered on the altar of imperialism. “Enough/I call the bluff/Fuck Manifest Destiny,” Zack de la Rocha cries. “Landlords and power whores/On my people/They took turns/Dispute the suits/I ignite and then watch ‘em burn.” —D.E.

5

‘People of the Sun’ (1996)

NIELS VAN IPEREN/GETTY IMAGES

Inspired by the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, “People of the Sun” prophesies a new day for the descendants of the Aztecs, invoking the civilization’s final emperor — “The fifth sun sets/Get back/Reclaim/The spirit of Cuauhtémoc/Alive and untamed” — while serving up angry reminders of both Spain’s 16th-century conquest of Mexico and the racism-driven Zoot Suit Riots of 1940s Los Angeles. Clocking in at only two minutes and 30 seconds, “People of the Sun” is the shortest song in the entire RATM catalog, but its compact burst of furious intensity makes it the perfect opener for 1996’s Evil Empire. —D.E.

4

‘Guerilla Radio’ (1999)

TIM MOSENFELDER/GETTY IMAGES

When guerrilla wars waged throughout the Latin American world in the Eighties, many of the combatants used underground radio stations like Radio Venceremos in El Salvador to communicate and show solidarity with each other. The leadoff single to Rage’s 1999 LP, The Battle of Los Angeles, draws a direct comparison between those guerrilla radio stations and the band’s own efforts to build a fan base when Top 40 radio and other mainstream outlets never went near their work. The song came out just as the 2000 election was beginning to heat up, and it castigates both of the major candidates. “More for Gore or the son of a drug lord,” de la Rocha raps. “None of the above/Fuck it, cut the cord.” The song concludes with a furious call for a revolution. “It has to start somewhere, it has to start sometime/What better place than here, what better time than now?” Had Rage stuck around through the post-9/11 era, things could have gotten really interesting. Sadly, Rage’s guerrilla radio network was silenced not long after this song hit. —A.G.

3

‘Know Your Enemy’ (1992)

MARK BAKER/SONY MUSIC ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

“Know Your Enemy” remains one of the most fiery moments in the whole Rage catalog: a quintessential pairing of a killer, upbeat Morello funk-metal riff with a furious de la Rocha anti-authoritarian manifesto, marked by lines like, “Cause I’ll rip the mic, rip the stage, rip the system/I was born to rage against ‘em.” (In case the object of his ire wasn’t clear, he later adds, “What? The land of the free? Whoever told you that is your enemy.”) Musically it’s one of the most diverse tracks in the band’s early canon, sporting an almost festive-sounding slap-bass-driven intro and a moody bridge featuring a memorable guest shriek from Tool frontman (and old Morello pal) Maynard James Keenan and percussion from Jane’s Addiction drummer Stephen Perkins. But the song’s brilliant climax comes around four minutes in, when Commerford’s bass grinds out the verse riff, Morello’s guitar comes in blaring out in an uncanny approximation of an emergency siren, and de la Rocha grunts “Come on!” as the band comes slamming back in — the perfect soundtrack to any act of, to quote one memorable line, “D, the E, the F, the I, the A, the N, the C, the E” you could possibly conceive. —H.S.

2

‘Killing in the Name’ (1992)

GIE KNAEPS/GETTY IMAGES

In 1991, four white LAPD officers severely beat Rodney King, a Black man, while arresting him; when a jury acquitted those officers of using excessive force, Los Angeles exploded in riots. Zack de la Rocha channeled his outrage into the lyrics for “Killing in the Name,” a funky update of N.W.A’s “Fuck tha Police.” “Some of those that work forces/Are the same that burn crosses,” he chants repeatedly, condemning police racism and a cycle of above-the-law violence. He drills down on these themes as the song escalates, shouting “Those who died are justified for wearing the badge/They’re the chosen whites.” The song builds and builds until de la Rocha hollers, “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me,” 16 times in a row, topping one of history’s most incendiary protest songs. “After our second show ever, we had record-company interest in the band,” guitarist Tom Morello later recalled. “So these executives were coming down to our grimy studio in the San Fernando Valley.… I remember one of the executives squeaking after [‘Killing in the Name’] was done, ‘So is that the direction you’re heading in?'” —K.G.

1

‘Bulls on Parade’ (1996)

GIE KNAEPS/GETTY IMAGES

Rage Against the Machine called their second LP Evil Empire, and many of the songs focused on American foreign policy. On “Bulls on Parade,” de la Rocha, accompanied by an ingeniously minimal Morello riff, aims his fire at the hypocrisy of D.C. policymakers. “Weapons not food, not homes, not shoes,” he roars. “Not need, just feed the war cannibal animal.” He also calls out politicians who pretend to be pro-family, but actually have a “pocket full of shells.” Near the end, Morello blasts off a career-defining guitar solo in which he replicates the sound of a record scratching. Taken as a whole, the track is perhaps the finest distillation of the the sonic Molotov cocktail that is Rage. Fittingly, one of the all-time great “Bulls” performances took place outside the Democratic National Convention in 2000, months before the group originally broke up. “Brothers and sisters, our electoral freedoms in this country are over so long as it’s controlled by corporations,” de la Rocha said before starting “Bulls on Parade.” “Brothers and sisters, we are not going to allow these streets to be taken over by Democrats or Republicans.” —A.G.

IN THIS ARTICLE:

Rage Against the Machine,

Tom Morello,

Zack de la Rocha

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Mors ad machina Part 1

So lately I've seen a lot of like robot fucker content (not complaining I am now an avid robot fucker) and a fair few like snuff robot things too and I got inspired and wrote this little tragedy~

There’s always something so personal, about things we keep, things that we use. We give them personalities, they become part of our lives, part of our day to day until it feels like a machine is alive.

They’re not alive, not for long at least.

Looking down at the familiar robot was, soothing, if nothing else. The poor thing was outdated, by almost a decade now. And though I managed to keep her running extremely well, good enough that she used to be able to beat newer models that were three or even four gens newer than her. Her limitations finally caught up to her. Her motherboard had started to corrode, her RAM was slowing down, too much information had passed through her various sensors, too many new upgrades had been added to a system that was never intended to last this long, too much time had passed for the poor thing. She looked up at me, the faceplate flickered as she tried to process what I was thinking, and to most anyone else she looked perfectly fine. I could see the issues adding up. The LED’s in her ‘eyes’ glowed out of sync, and on occasions her ‘mouth’ would lag behind what she was saying. She couldn’t remember things as well as she used to, even her motors, brand new, weren’t enough to keep her body moving in time with what she wanted.

“Miss?” She ‘spoke’, in the series of cracks and pops that I always found so soothing, so endearing. I almost couldn’t stand the thought of replacing her, but I'm sure I’d get over it eventually, after all I’d be running the new bot through the old one’s memories, and downloading some the basic parts of the personality matrix onto a blank slate.

I knelt, curling my fingers under the boxy ‘head’ of the bot, listening to her coo as her body relaxed, the plates I had installed on her years ago were coded to relay ‘touch’ to her ‘brain’ though looking at the plates now, they were coated in scratches and dents, chips and cracks lined the edges where plates met. “such a pretty girl” came my almost mournful whisper, and she gave another coo, closing her ‘eyes’ as she leaned her ‘face’ into my touch. I pulled a link cable out from her ‘neck’ connecting it to my computer and running the program I had open, starting the process of copying the essential data and necessary information off of her system.

“Miss?” she ‘spoke’ again, ‘eyes’ flickering to watch me as I ran my fingers along her ‘chest’ spreading my fingers against the bulky chestplate that held a dozen different motors and sensory inputs. I slipped a few fingers into her body, finding the familiar way in by snaking my hand through the area where her ‘arm’ met her ‘shoulder’ and with a feather light touch, I caressed the spot where her RAM cards sat, a faint spark catching my fingers and making the bot shudder as she let out a soft hum. I knew her well, I built her after all, fixed her up with new toys and upgrades, rewired old parts, added slots for her memory so she would stay in high quality even after all these years. Though as I glance at the computer screen, a blinking message alerted me that everything I needed out of her was copied and ready to be uploaded to a new model.

I love this bot, I love the nights I would spend curled up next to her, enough pillows pressed against her that I couldn’t feel the hard metal frame. I love the time I would spend with her walking through the woods, asking her about this plant or that one. Watching with pride as she identified the plant and found information on it from her database. I love hearing her talk about the moon and the sky and the stars. I love hearing her moan and gasp and groan when we would indulge in some of the more carnal desires, when her fingers would pump inside of me or when she’d control a toy of mine in public, when I would touch her body, when I would reach into her and be so gentle, rubbing wires and feeling her buck against my hand. When I would kiss her faceplate and feel the faint static arc against my lips. Now more than ever I love this bot, but curiosity outweighs my love.

Unplugging the link cable from the computer I let it zip back into her ‘neck’ anything from now on wouldn’t be uploaded to the new bot, and the bot in front of me now existed in a sort of void state. All the old memories have been copied, all the ones to come won’t be stored. So with my fingers still gentle inside her chestplate, I found the processing unit that was responsible for most of her body movements. I could hear her coo again before I dug my fingernails under the unit, and pulled.