#LIKE!!!! when he talks about his dad and the circumstances of his death he sounds. so so small | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

oakbuggy · 9 months

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Liar, Liar Chapter 5

Recom!Neteyam x female OC

Summary : Tala of the Tawkami gets captured by a familiar face and to both of their misfortune, they are trapped together due to circumstance. They are extremely vexed by this and each other and also very horny.

Warnings: Minors DNI, non-con+dub-con, explicit smut, dirty talk, authority, power struggle, mentions+depictions of blood, minor violence, character death, marking, biting, scenting, ANGST

!! Each chapter will have images throughout the chapter, only the AO3 will have the NSFW-uncensored versions. Please keep this in mind as you read !!

Chapter 5 (NSFW) ~9.3k words

AO3 Link Here!

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When Lo'ak woke it was through cold shudders and violent gasps, rousing Tsireya next to him awake.

"Yawne?" She called out to him so gently, "What is wrong?" Lo'ak couldn't hear her sweet tone but still his large hands grappled for hers, finding them within the darkness of the mauri and the night sky.

He could only think of the searing gaze of the brother he thought he lost so long ago and the grip of a knife he was actually so ready to use. The sound of the waves outside, mindlessly and rhythmically tumbling against each other, gave him some peace, so he breathed out hard, pushing beaded braids out of his face.

He could hear the water, yet why did it still feel like his blue skin was getting scorched?

"Lo." Tsireya's voice was louder and she willed his attention to her, her other hand cradled his jaw. The Sully's jewel-toned eyes flickered, anchoring their gaze on her blue ones.

"Sorry." He rumbled, voice still saturated with sleep. She shook her head and smiled softly, he could tell that her eyes were tracing all the stripes on his face, the star patterned marks of his forehead.

Lo'ak always liked her eyes, they looked like the sky.

He kissed her knuckles. "Thank you."

Tsireya nodded, her sweet smile dimpled and she pressed her lips against his brow, the hair tickling her. There they were, in their shared mauri, colorful and thick blankets adorning their bedspread and their limbs still tangled together in this safe harbor.

"What did you see?"

"..." The lump in his throat was heavy and painful. "I saw him. I saw Neteyam."

The Metkayina woman gasped softly. She couldn't believe it, she remembered too well how the eldest Sully son looked as he died. How she was there all too long with him, alone, as he bled out.

They didn't know how to feel, when they heard the news from the Tawkami alchemist, (tala full name). No one did, not when they saw the signs of struggle and blood in the Compass's photo album.

"Great Mother... How was he? Are you okay?"

"I'm okay, he's... he's a completely different person now, 'Reya. Mom was there, he barely even looked at her, kept saying shit about dad and turning him in," Lo'ak covered his face with his other hand, fingers splayed as he willed himself to stop shaking. He could feel his emotions rising, he knew his tendencies now and all had seen how intensely Lo'ak blamed himself for Neteyam's death. Impulsivity, stupidity- "He hates me."

"Don't, Lo'ak. don't do this to yourself." Tsireya squeezed his hand, darker blue and with an extra digit and so comforting as it held hers.

"It's the RDA, the vrrteps [demons], they've poisoned his mind when they brought him back, just like Tala said. You know that Neteyam would never actually blame you."

Lo'ak smiled weakly. Yes, he knew his older brother, yes, the Neteyam he knew would probably stab himself again than even 'look' at his family members the way he did in the dream. In a sick way, however, Lo'ak thought he deserved it all the same.

"Enough of that. You're doing it again." His mate cut off his spiraling again and this time he chuckled, his thumb rubbed her palm.

"How'd I get so lucky with a girl like you, 'Reya?" He joked, though sincere. It's been years and he's grown, tattooed and proved himself as both warrior and adult. And yet still he didn't know exactly how to return truly how much he loved her, when her floral and oceanic skin calmed him, and her scent drove him wild.

Tsireya smiled brighter, dimples showing cutely. "How funny, I was just thinking the same thing." She answered. It made him laugh, made him pepper kisses along her cheeks and dimples, her neck and shoulder and arms.

"Now you're just being cute." He snickered and brought her dark curls to his lips again, intending to kiss every part of her and take in her scent. She calmed him, she knew it and she rested her forehead on his.

A moment. A quiet. Every moment like this felt perfect with her.

But heat still glowed in the back of Lo'ak's mind, his brain was just too active, as evident by the way his tail swayed behind him restlessly. He kissed Tsireya’s forehead again. “I’ll be right back. I just need to clear my head.”

“Alright, just don't take too long.”

Tisreya never got tired of the way he’d smile at her, fangs showing through upturned lips.

“From you? Never.”

A few more lingering looks, Lo’ak stepped onto the pathways of the camp, Txampaytsrul [Ocean Nest]]. A new wartime settlement was established between the forest na’vi and the ocean na’vi tribes, as a way to protect their homes yet keep close to Bridgehead. It made another home away from home for warriors and healers like Lo’ak and Tsireya, those from different clans that allowed their love to grow.

The Omaticayan male stared all around him, at Eywa’eveng, his brother’s words reeling in his headspace. Their dad doomed this place, this place still teeming valiantly with life and beauty despite the RDA’s efforts?

Tiny pebbles of sand became smoothened rock and Lo’ak settled onto one that hung over calmed waters. He heard something… above him, he looked up.

“Hey bro.” He greeted upon seeing Spider, hanging upside down along the fronds of the tree above the rocks. Gracefully the smaller maneuvered himself next to his younger brother.

“What’s up? You alright?” He said, jerking blond locs away from his face. Lo’ak shrugged.

“Bad dream. What are you still doing up?”

“Haven’t slept much since I ran out of Tala's sleep mix.”

“Kiri’s not good enough?”

Spider chuckled. “Tala got some secret ingredient she’s never told anyone about. Kiri said she knows it but… she doesn’t want to use it. It’s Tala’s thing, something like that.” Lo’ak hummed in agreement. It’s been many months now since the Tawkami na’vi’s capture, and thinking about Tala inevitably made him think about…

"Dream was that bad?" Spider asked, a brown-eyed comforting gaze settled on his younger brother and Lo’ak sighed.

“I saw… Neteyam. And mom. It didn’t go well, it felt real and really hot, like it was burning.”

Spider’s eyes went wide.

“How... how is he?” He said, a lump forming. It had messed him badly enough to know it took Neteyam’s death to be truly accepted into the Sully family in the parents’ eyes, it was an awful reminder to him.

“Not good. It's like I could feel what both he and mom were thinking, we all could, and it wasn't... It was bad."

“What was he thinking about?”

“About how you were probably the only one he was sure he wouldn’t kill. Because of… you know,” Lo’ak shrugged and smiled at Spider in chagrin, “Quaritch.”

“Oh…” Spider starved carving into the stone with his thumb, “fuck.”

The mention of Colonel Quaritch still hung like a dead animal in the air between them, the body gone but the stench remained. Both men understood the emotions and rationalizing behind the choice, but Lo’ak could never forget it and Spider couldn’t ever quite forgive himself, even if some days he was sure there wasn’t anything to forgive. The smaller Sully sucked in breath through his teeth.

“Bro, I–”

“Brooo!” The younger groaned, “you already said sorry like a hundred times you skxawng. It’s not like it was ever going to bring him back. It’s been years.”

Relief soared through Spider’s heart instantly and he smiled.

“Right, right, yea.”

Lo’ak leaned back, both men more relaxed and sporting warrior garb and tattoos. They were brothers, they’ve already made their peace.

“Whatever Great Mother is planning, I hope she does it soon.” Lo’ak sighed, bringing a hand to his face.

“I wanna save him. What dad’s gonna say at the family meeting tomorrow though, I don't know.” Lo’ak huffed.

“We will. But yea, the family meeting...” Spider’s words were clipped, a family meeting was often a stressful affair, Neytiri could not help but look displeased with him there or for any other more intimate function within The People. Lo’ak noticed and clapped a large hand on Spider’s back. Their fingers matched in number and scars.

“That includes you, dude. Mom’ll lay off you, I promise, she’s been… okay.”

The smaller Sully scoffed but nodded. “By okay you mean no longer cursing under her breath whenever I’m near, then sure. She’s better.” Spider shook his head, admonishing himself slightly for his bitterness, “But if she had that dream too, I don't wanna upset her more. You know I would.”

Lo’ak snorted and tapped on the glass at Spider’s forehead. He was lucky he couldn’t give him a noogie for the dumb shit he just said.

“Spider. Bro. You’re a true Sully, look at how much the RDA wants to kill you! And Neteyam, even though he’s not allowed to!” the corners of his mouth raised, a laugh ready to bellow.

"Yeah, I guess that's what it takes to be a Sully, huh?" Spider joked and the two of them laughed, some stress finally leaving their young features. As the giggles quieted down and they returned to staring at the night sky.

"Maybe this will end the war." Spider broke the silence and Lo'ak hummed, agreeing. The end of the war, the two of them hoped. The return of peace, and maybe selfishly that included the return of their brother and their family.

"You think we'll all survive it?"

At this the smaller smiled. "If even Neteyam's alive now, I don't think it's bad to hope for it,"

"We'll fight for happy times to return, and they will, you'll see."

---------------------------

Neteyam was not happy. Neteyam knew he had fucked himself over when his eyes cracked open and eh saw the long length of Tala's back, which he stared at in frustration.

He could feel his veins bursting. Fuck. Fuck. This was exactly why he avoided her, the curves of her body made him recall all too vividly the way he completely let go in front of her. How he praised and begged for her–to feel that much more of her skin on his. He tried to block it out, but the feeling of her bite, her first mark on him, triggered so many feelings of possessiveness and desire in his head and his heart–wasn’t she supposed to be helping with his headaches?

His fingers grazed over the bandages she had applied the day before, still pristine and his overall condition did technically improve. But his digits twitched, Tala’s stupid little mark was right above the injury, on the curve of his neck.

It was barely noticeable, the bruise would purple up and disappear within the day. The soldier didn’t pay too much attention to how his tail thumped softly underneath the covers.

He had a full view of her striped back, they must have disconnected sometime in the night. With his hand, which Neteyam thought assuredly he was going to use to push Tala off, he surprised himself by tracing the line down her spine. His hand hovered over the fullness of her hips, pushing down the covers to reveal more of her, and his thumbs rested on the indents of her back dimples.

Tala… Tala… Li’Tala.

Remnants of their night together reached up and stained her ass, they had made such a big mess. He tried so fucking hard not to look at those swollen pussy ips peaking between her ass cheeks because they’d only be grossly caked in old cum–

Why was he hard. Why did that make him hard.

He internally groaned and quickly covered her body back up. The only silver lining Neteyam could figure in this situation was that Tala was working marvelously as a distraction of the usual mental battles he was forced to participate in every day of existence. She was just… too effective.

And that agitated him.

With a natural poise, the soldier kneeled up and grabbed at the starched lab coat without disturbing even a wrinkle of the blanket on her body. Quickly he searched through the inner pockets, carefully rolling the tiniest crumbs of herbs and plant matter. Not necessarily satisfying his need to prove her guilt.

The first outer pocket held only hard crumbs of honey he already knew of. It made his mouth water, he truly like he was a child again when she pushed the small piece of it into his mouth.

Her smile was nearly as sweet.

“Hmmmm…” Tala stirred, as if on cue, and Neteyam immediately hid the coat behind him, buried underneath his body as he resettled onto the mattress. Something in him saw this moment as peace and didn’t want to disturb it, not even with his suspicion active.

Just… not yet.

Tala sighed and turned and rubbed sleep out of her eyes. She yawned as she swore she saw a flash of dazzling yellow and heard quick movements of fabric but when her eyes focused on his form, he was breathing peacefully and sleepily.

Great Mother… She looked at the mark she gave him on his neck, her wrists and right ear feeling heavy. What had she done? What was she thinking? She turned to face him fully.

Tala was surprised to find herself still in his bed, all things considered. This was the first time she’s woken in warmth, in comfort even, she wondered how bad was his fever that he let this happen. Regardless, all the softness of the sheets or his heat didn’t stop a tightness developing in her chest, a pressure. She didn’t truly want her place to be a thing warming his bed.

Neteyam’s nose twitched and immediately Tala had to suppress a chuckle. Oh, how long had he been awake? Somehow he’d teeter on the line of just enough being adorable that it made tiny moments like this worth it, the fun she could poke at through his militaristic exterior. It was wishful, she knew, it was just pretend.

Tala planted her cold feet quickly onto his thighs and Neteyam snapped back.

“You skxawng!” He hissed childishly, the facade abandoned and she laughed.

“It’s what you get for trying to fool me, hona tsamsiyu [adorable warrior].” Tala replied teasingly, eyes too much mirthful. Whatever scathing dither he was about to spit out was unfairly interrupted when she suddenly sat closer, supporting herself on her side as she hovered her face above his.

“Good morning.” She purred musically.

Neteyam swallowed, her curtain of hair covered him slightly and it reiginited him, he breathed in her scent. Heady healing roses and charred honey now.

He pursed his lips, “...Morning.” The taste of honey sprung forth and the fact that she was not too unlike it. Her taste.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Yes.”

His reply made the corners of her smile rise. “See what happens when you let a proper healer take care of you?” Her voice dipped low and nearly saccharine, her tail swayed behind her in self-satisfaction. The male na’vi’s nose twitched again, irritated, and he rolled his eyes. Impossible.

“Don’t get cocky.”

“Around you? Never.” Her words held an unspoken insult but her smile made it teasing and humorous, Great Mother he hated when she smiled like that.

Tala examined his injury, checking and complimenting herself on her work, and used the back of her hand to check his fever. Still warm, but not nearly as bad as before.

Meanwhile Neteyam was struggling, her leaf green eyes were so inviting and kind that he thought he was going to melt. Did she know how tenderly she was looking at him? Did she know the way her eyelashes framed them made him only want to stare longer?

He grabbed her by her shackle and those infernal green eyes only widened.

How many times did his heart find necessary to trick him into liking this woman?

“Is something wrong, Corporal?” Her using such a name made him grimace and jerk back, letting go of her wrist.

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Tawkami.” He replied, a sneer felt so much more natural to him now than soft words.

“What game?” Tala whispered. She closed her eyes and leaned forward, his eyelids too naturally closed. Except, to the utter demise of his ego, she only hovered in front of his lips.

Oh, she did deserve some fun, didn’t she?

“Would you like to kiss me?”

Damnit.

"Seems like you want me to." He murmured.

"Only if it's like last night."

"And how was it last night?"

'Like you cared for me.' Tala sighed pettily, "Fine, nevermi-"

Neteyam obliged so easily, the warm contact of her lips made him sigh, both of their bodies relaxed. He reached to bring her closer, curling his arm around her torso as Tala settled her hand on his cheek, their legs tangled together once more. Heat surged between their bodies, Neteyam almost dug his fingers into her flesh but Tala pulled back.

“No. Soft.” She whispered then pushed back into the kiss without letting him reply. He got the memo through, his hand splayed on her hips and near-affectionately massaged her softness.

Their kiss was slow, gentle, plush lips squeezed against each other. It was an entirely romantic kiss and both wholly melted into it.

Tala was as much lulled into Neteyam’s warmth as he was in hers and notes of regret and self-contempt seeped in. She knew it was wrong, her eyes peaked open when Neteyam gently held her jaw. Large and scarred hands that weren’t trapped in cuffs and surely had killed their own.

Tala was foolish, she always accepted that fact.

“Why did you call me Li’Tala last night, Neteyam?” She whispered softly into the kiss but all Neteyam heard were words that damned him.

He broke off the kiss and swallowed.

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t?” He challenged.

It made her scoff, "If you were to be my mate, why aren't you crying tears of gratitude right now?"

She remembered that? Of course she did, he did too. He chuckled dryly.

"I can call you whatever I want, you are my toy."

"You said you wanted to pretend."

He froze.

Tala closed her eyes and sighed. Of course, he wouldn’t give her an answer, it was probably too much for him to admit to wanting to feel loved, no matter how fake it was, no matter who it was with.

She pushed him and turned away and it flummoxed Neteyam. He was stunned by the quickness of cold surging through his body without her in his arms and his hands chased for her waist to hold her closely. It was as if he was the one being discarded and Tala wondered if he’d ever realize the depths of his immaturity, his neediness.

What was he doing? Neteyam couldn’t find it within himself to let go of her.

“Would you rather I call you syulang? Is that it?” He murmured meanly, a smirk on his lips, trying to distract.

“You’ve got many nicknames for me, don’t you, Corporal?” She replied with her own smirk. His dropped.

“Stop picking a fight with me, filtsyíp [little toy].” His voice had an experienced razor-sharp edge but it was tinged in pleading. Tala bristled at it all the same. She poked his nose, mockingly affectionate.

"You are needy."

Neteyam’s ears raised in complete offense, his brows went up so high, Tala couldn’t count the wrinkles on his forehead. "Needy??" He scoffed, not him! No, what the fuck?

"You are needy and stubborn and you find me irresistible, just admit it, you."

Her smile was irritating him now.

"You're crazy."

She giggled, "And you," She poked at his cock that was awake and at attention, he didn't notice before, "are hard for me."

Neteyam cursed in his head.

“That’s not for you.”

“Ahuh.”

She was supposed to be helping with his headaches, not being one.

He reversed their positions with ease, hand spread against her throat. He pushed her down by her neck and growled.

“Filtsyíp, you forget yourself.”

Her hands went up to cradle his face and it felt more like he was being ensnared. Her legs locked around his waist, bringing their hips together and Neteyam had to bite back a moan at his cock head perfectly pressing against her folds.

"Am I? Are you sure about that?~" Her singsong voice forced a shudder through his body.

Yomioang [chalice plant]. She was fucking dangerous.

Neteyam gathered his arms around her and just when Tala was thinking how predictable a man he was, he stood up, holding her, and walked towards his connected bathroom.

"Neteyam! What are you-!" He ignored her squawks and wiggling. This bathroom had a shower head affixed to the ceiling and Tala's eyes went wide. She screeched.

"Don't you dare!"

He dared. Neteyam turned the water on and it soaked them both, her tail pointed up violently, the water was so cold!

“Neteyam! What is wrong with you?! Let me go!”

He didn’t let her go, he let the freezing water ground him. He'd almost let her do whatever she wanted with him.

"Oh, poor Tala. Can't handle a little cold water?" He taunted, standing straight proudly as he cupped her ass to support her weight better. He held her up around her back, with his stupid strong arms. She closed in on his face with a petulant hiss, nails digging into his shoulders.

"Happy with yourself, soldier?"

He looked at her, watched the way the water streamed from her face, her hair, onto the valleys of her breasts and her tummy, creating a perfectly little triangle down her pelvis. He smiled, showing his fangs.

"Yes, thank you filtsyíp."

OH, he said it was such a smirk, she wanted to slap it off entirely. Great Mother, she wanted him to drop dead. Tala steamed for a good few seconds, the water slowly turning warm, and she watched dirtied water flock and swirl over the drain. Her tail was swinging back and forth, enraged.

"Seems like you needed to cool down, and took me with you because you're a..." Tala's reply devolved into grumbling curses and Neteyam laughed.

Soon the soldier turned off the water and sat her back down on his bed, now shivering. He contemplated giving back her lab coat, but it's not like the material would do much to dry her off.

He threw her an extra towel carelessly.

"Finally. You trying to get me sick now too?" Tala scathed. She continued to glower at him as she worked to dry herself off, looking away from him as she patted at her dark hair.

Neteyam rolled his eyes and walked close to her, kneeling towards her as she sat at the edge of his bed. The corners of his mouth were raised but Tala could hardly call it a smile, not with it brimming with arrogance like that.

"Want another shower, filtsyíp?"

She tightly frowned.

"Then keep that mouth shut."

Like a wet cat, Neteyam unceremoniously handed Tala off to Private Patty a few 10 minutes later.

"Corpor-aluhhhhh." Patty's composure was compromised, seeing two very wet na'vi as she stood in front of Neteyam's quarters. Her yellow eyes darted between the two, each face had irritation practically glowing from their features.

"Just take her back to Lab 12 now." He said tiredly and handed Tala off to the guard.

"Sir, yes sir."

The door closed and Tala sneered at him the second before it completely shut. She stood up straighter, a towel still covering her and she looked up at Patty.

"Do you even want to know?"

"No. Let's get going, troublemaker."

Tala sighed, her ears flat against her head in irritation. She followed Patty, casting one last glance at Neteyam's door. This was another lesson, it seemed, that she really should stop being so willful and think ahead for a second.

Because no amount of humiliation and guilt was worth the treatment of being HIS little toy. She prayed for his sake that he would not get hurt again, because surely, she would NOT be helping this time.

Neteyam fell back into his bed, slowly dressing back into his usual uniform now that that yomioang was out of his space. He wanted to welcome the usual drumming in his head, the usual migraine but Tala's scent was unfortunately everywhere still.

He wanted to punch something, so he figured getting up and getting some sparing done would do him immense good.

As Neteyam put on his headband he realized that the main source of her scent was still on his bed, her lab coat. He had forgotten to return it to her, having had too much fun mocking her towards the end.

With only little expectation now, Neteyam dug into the last pocket. Might as well, it was more about the principle than actually finding anything-

He felt the prick before he could see it and there it was… a thin and crude titanium needle, tiny and unnoticeable at the bottom of Tala’s pocket. The tips of Neteyam’s fingers held the needle in place as he excruciatingly slowly pulled it out, letting it glint even from the low light of his room.

Ah.

He should have known.

Patty turned first, hearing loud footsteps behind them as Tala walked ahead of her, wrists clasped together once more.

"Corporal Tom?"

Fingers poised as claws and it latched onto Tala's neck, her scream died as the hand began to squeeze at her windpipe. Her own hands flew to it, digging her nails into the skin but nothing deterred him.

“Change of plans, Private. I'll take her back myself." Neteyam husked and Patty knew immediately how pissed he was.

"Wha-what's wrong, sir?"

"None of your concern, Private. This won't take long." He roughly turned Tala to face him. His eyes looked like suns burning into her but he was emotionless. She was just so good at pretending, wasn’t she?

“You never did answer my questions, filtsyíp. It’s fair for me to get them now.” He discretely slid out the end of the needle from underneath his watch and Tala balked. Oh, shit.

"I-I can-"

Her words were interrupted when a larger group of prisoners shuffled across his path, a pair of guards to every few shackled na’vi. Their blue skin was drenched, still shaking and freezing from the pouring rain outside. They created large puddles as they walked on the otherwise immaculate Bridgehead flooring. There Anke’ti was, amongst the miserable group, having just returned from the dark and cloudy outside from digging useless trenches around Bridgehead. His body may have been numb to the bone but he could smell his best friend and his head snapped toward her

Green met green, Anke'ti's eyes widened at the scene he stumbled upon. That resurrected soldier, the Sully, hand squeezed around Tala's throat.

"Tala...!" He gasped, breaking the formation of the prisoners. It caused confused and agitated mumblings, hisses, from the other na'vi and the guards yelled at them to keep in line!

"Yayo!" Tala reached out for him, making Neteyam's sneer only worsen. Him again.

Against a well-rested soldier with minor injury, a starved and exhausted captive was definitely no match. Neteyam elected to sidestep Anke’ti and use the force of his leg to kick him back to the floor, next to the other prisoners. Tala screeched, a panicked voice bubbled from her constricted throat.

"Don't hurt him!"

“Don’t do this.” The soldier warned Anke'ti, ignoring Tala. He noticed another soldier about to strike at the group with a powered up baton and he opened his mouth to order them to stop when another voice bellowed out instead.

“You wanna blow out the entire facility? Turn that shit off, boy!” Quaritch’s growl and thunderous footsteps hushed the aggravated soldiers and warriors. Soldiers stood straighter, their batons turned off but at the ready as the prisoners huddled closer together, snarled and ready to strike back.

“The fuck’s going on, Tommy?” The older man barked, eyeing the entire group. An apprehensive prisoner, a strong grip around a smaller female, her smell strong on his Corporal. Oh, just great.

"I can handle this." Neteyam gruffed out. Quaritch snorted, golden eyes landing on Tala and instantly it made her cower, lowering her eyes back to Anke'ti.

"Anke, stop." She whispered hurriedly, eyes gazing at the rest of the prisoners. These were not warriors, perhaps she and Anke'ti may have been the only ones in that hallway, and that meant whatever her friend did, they would follow.

Anke'ti glanced at her, conflicted.

Neteyam noticed and with a silent huff, he let go of Tala's neck. He took a small step away, closer to the Tawkami male now, fingers lazily draped in the air.

See? Now get back in line.

Anke'ti's ears folded flat against his head, but after his friend nodded at him reassuringly, he straightened his posture. He no longer radiated aggression, and shuffled back to the group.

The other na’vi took notice, they too calmed their stances.

Quaritch sighed and jerked his head at the nearest dreamwaker. “What’re you waiting for? Take them away.”

Neteyam kept his eyes on the Tawkami long after the rest of them shambled away, though again the Colonel casted his stare on him.

He scoffed at his appearance and the little love bite, “Careful, revenge is a good motivator for a prisoner like that. A bit of stress relief ain’t supposed to get you killed.” When he called her stress relief Tala's ears pointed down, embarrassed and fearful. Was he going to tell him now about what she's done, especially about Halloway?

“We live stressful lives, Colonel. Everything we do can get us killed.” The soldier cooly replied. It made the old man's expression pinch.

“Jesus Christ, if that aint the truth… Regardless, glad to see you’re up and about, finally. That looks like that smarts.”

He glanced down, the blood through the bandage was no longer bright red.

“I’ve handled worse. If you'll excuse me, Colonel.” Neteyam glanced at Tala, who resolved to watch Anke'ti's back disappear into the distance. She was so worried now, he looked thinner still.

"Keep it short. Mission briefing’s at 0-900 hours." Quaritch started to walk away, leering at them both. "Private Eastin, follow me."

"M-me?" Patty owlishly blinked but nodded. "Sir, yes sir!" She scrambled to follow the older Recom soldier, she looked back only once at Tala and Neteyam. When they finally disappeared down the winding halls of Bridgehead, Neteyam's grip returned, now on her braid.

"Now, where were we?"

Tala hissed from the pain, forced to quickly follow the soldier's lead into an emptied and dark lab. He roughly pushed her against the wall as soon as the doors locked shut, seething. Neteyam's eyes looked like they were boiling through hers.

"Did you hope your yayo would save you now?"

The air was knocked out of her chest, his arm pushed against her harder onto the wall. The room was dark, darker than his room, and Tala felt suffocated further by the way his eyes glowed gold in the shadows.

"I-I don't know-"

Neteyam again pulled out the needle and she huffed. "That's literally nothing, Neteyam."

"It's what you used on Halloway, isn;t it? You wouldn't be dumb enough to have only one, would you?" He pulled her kuru back, making her whimper as it forced her to look up at him more.

“There’s a symbol being spread around the facility here. Was it you?”

Tala’s breath hitched, even if she hadn’t seen him for three weeks, he was still around Bridgehead. He must’ve been informed. Her brows pinched together.

"What are you even talking about?" She struggled to choke out, fingers gripping the metal wall. She tried to find any purchase, any bit of relief.

The towel fell from her shoulders and onto the floor. Without it, the na'vi was completely bare so she moved her legs closer together, only for Neteyam to kick them apart once more. He dug his knee between her thighs and she hissed at the friction, her skin against his rough camo-pants.

"You're just a little whore, aren't you, Tala? What, changed your mind? Decided you only wanted my cock?" Neteyam taunted, riding his knee further up so it directly and roughly rubbed against her cunt. Tala breathed deeply and quickly.

"J-just get to the point, Neteyam. Are you really this angry over a tiny piece of metal?" She laughed meanly, because she knew too well how to. "Or was the cold shower actually not very helpful?"

He growled above her and with both hands he forcefully dug into her hips, grinding her down against his clothed thigh. Tala mewled, shuddering violently.

Slick was already coating the waterproof material and the Omaticayan buried his face into her wet hair. He growled his amusement against her ear.

"Look at you... answer me and I can help you, little toy. It looks like you need it."

Tala squeezed her eyes shut, her fangs prodding into her bottom lip. Her handiwork, the mark she’d given him and her treatment on his chest, mocked her so vividly. She did forget herself.

"I-mmm!-I didn't..." She whined, balling her fists up against Neteyam's chest. He was fully clothed, now sporting a black tank top that let her lean against his bare neck. His scent, she hated that she was becoming addicted to the tree musk and sunlillies on his skin.

"I-there are metal scraps in-in the lab. I don't have any more." She explained, though she found it hard to focus as he continued rhythmically sliding her up and down his thigh. He was her only source of warmth now and she quivered as she chased it.

He sighed, suddenly stopping. Tala squeaked, supporting herself on her tippy toes as she gawked up at his smug expression.

"Were you planning on using it on me, little toy?" He asked, noticing though that she was struggling not to move at all. The material of his pants were driving Tala crazy, stiff wrinkles kept pressed against her sensitive vulva.

But the question knocked some sense back into her and she glared at him.

"Why would I do that after I just finished treating you? I didn't plan for you to get shot and then somehow I be available to heal you, if that's how far you're thinking."

Grumbling, Tala tried to step out of the muscled thigh. Her scent was heavy, it felt like it was almost suffocating him and Neteyam roughly held onto her ass cheeks now, commanding attention again. Her leaf-green eyes were dark, it made him think of lightning in the jungle.

"Who knows, maybe you've already flirted with some other guards while I was gone. Maybe you got yourself your own little group of rebels willing to fight for your escape. Your yayo was about to."

Tala's ears strained, his comment baffled her.

“How badly did the vrrteps mix up your mind, hm? One moment begging for me, the next stranglin–”

She couldn't finish the sentence when suddenly Neteyam forced them both into a large storage locker, he locked the cabinet from the inside and covered Tala's mouth. She was about to struggle when she heard a familiar click and whirr of the doors opening.

"So how much do we need?"

"Only like 30 kilograms, it should be somewhere around here." Tawtute voices rang through and Tala tensed.

Neteyam kneeled behind her and very slowly and silently, he led Tala's body to also kneel, able to disperse her weight on top of him--

She jumped away when she suddenly felt the delicious lick of pleasure of her hard cock against her shiny pussy lips. She whined but that only caused Neteyam's hand to clamp around her face harder.

"You hear something?"

"Huh? No?"

Tala dug her nails into her palms as they sweated against the inner metal walls of the storage locker. She tried to resist when Neteyam's other hand started forcing her down, squeezed against her clavicle and neck.

Her thighs trembled when once again the tip of his cock slid against her wet cunt, she couldn't even turn to see his expression. All she knew was that he was horny and insane and angry at her.

Slowly and carefully, the soldier moved his hand away from her face and she breathed as deeply and quietly as she could. His tail came in front to wrap around her waist, coxing her hips to lower more.

She shook her head, knowing he would be able to see her.

"You stay quiet and I'll forget the whole thing, hm? Besides," Neteyam mocked, whispering into her hair now as he embraced her from behind fully, "You like riding me, don't you?"

Tala cursed more expletives than she realized she knew in her head. Neteyam knew what he was doing was overwhelmingly unnecessary right then, that really he should have reported the entire affair and dust away any bitter feelings.

And yet, it crushed his ego to realize she was right. The cold shower did little and now her tight cunt was mere centimeters away from his weeping cock. He wanted to fuck her and fuck away all these strange feelings of betrayal, indecisiveness. All those feelings that swirled whenever he was around her.

Tala bit her lip as finally her hips lowered. Neteyam used his other hand to adjust his cock into her entrance, she stopped at the bit of resistance of her folds.

He squeezed her neck to kill her squeal as he pushed her down further on his ridged length, stretching her out in one thrust.

Her shackled arms reached in front of her, fingertips willing to not make any sound as she needed to keep her balance and sanity. Something about being in this extremely confined and dark space was making her nerves go on fire and her walls immediately squeezed around his ridges. Neteyam bit his own lips, he continued pushing her body down until her ass was flush against his hips.

Great Mother, his hard cock was pulsing warmth inside her, Tala couldn't control her inner walls spasming despite them not moving.

"Be good." He strained and Tala nodded, still unable to speak with his hand on her throat. Unknowingly, her tail wrapped around his forearm tightly. Oh, she felt like she was going to cum from him just being inside her now, what was happening.

Her eyes were fluttering open, eyes rolling back and her knees were shifting her position slightly, letting her rut tiny movements on him.

He couldn't help himself, she wasn't being good and in this situation, she would be far more mortified than he in getting caught.

So he let go of her neck, which let tiny sounds spill from her closed mouth. He brought both large hands to start playing with her tits, teasing the stiff peaks carelessly.

She hated this, she hated this. She felt so humiliated, how easily she became putty in his arms. She thought she'd gained some sort of foothold over him, but he knocked her down so easily and now his cock was so pleasurably rubbing against her sweet spot over and over, heating her up from the inside. Oh, she hated him, she hated him--

The voices outside stopped, the door whirred loudly closed and instantly Tala crumpled on top of him.

"NNnhg!" She moaned, high pitched and whiny.

"Was that the best you could do?" Neteyam teased from beneath her but before she could reply he fucked up into her harshly.

"I-MMM!" Tala brought back her bound hands to her mouth, trying to muffle the wanton moans as she tried not to fall over from his powerful thrusts. It was nothing like last night, he fucked her to dominate her even though she was on top.

"You wanted me to beg, hm? Wanted me to kiss you all nice and soft?" He pushed her face against the locked cabinet door, rutting into her even faster and rougher, their bodies smacking against each other in the dark heat.

"fuck,, fuck fuck!" She cried tightly to herself. Her tongue rolled out of her mouth, mind was getting hazy now...

"C'mon, ma'fil [my toy]. You want to do good for me, yes?" He groaned as he watched her fucked-out expression and the way her pussy squeezed and sucked in his cock hungrily. He could see all the details of her blushing flesh so easily in the dark, he enjoyed smelling their scents and their juices mixed together inside the locker.

"Ahh, ahh, mmg, gonna-gonna cum, please!" She whined, eyes rolled over. Her hands clasped together tightly, legs were beginning to shake from how roughly he was fucking her.

He just wanted to hear that pretty pussy make all of its pretty noises, wanted to make it squelch as it came from his cock.

But he had an idea, and as excruciating as it was to stop, he did. Tala gasped.

"Bu-what, please!" She whined, trying to grind her hips back on him but he suddenly fully sat down, caging her body in his arms. He leaned against her back, licking at the light sheen of sweat.

"Mmmh, please, Neteyam, please I need to---"

"Only good girls get to cum" He drawled out, he could feel his length twitching inside her and it drove him mad but he resisted.

"Good girls don't make sneaky little weapons or flirt with other men."

Tala cried out, "But-but I didn't~!" In the haze of her desire, the lies sounded extremely true even to her. Well, she never flirted with other men at least!

"Your poor yayo, wonder how he'd feel seeing you begging me now? How did he feel seeing my mark on you?" In place of his lust, Neteyam's cruel words were growing. Tala fidgeted, confusion laced in her every breath.

"W-what are-"

"Or your little mark on me?" He bit into her skin and desperately she squeezed his thick cock head inside her. It made him involuntarily buck, it's true, but it wasn't enough. Not by a long shot.

"We're not lovers, if that's what you're trying to say!" Tala huffed, frustration beading up. "M-maybe I did only want you, you inside me, okay?"

She twisted as best as she could, at least to make eye contact with him and he could see little droplets cling to her eyelashes.

"I’m your toy. Please let me cum~!" It was her final whimper, the only thing she could think to say in that moment and by Eywa, was it the best thing she could've said.

For Neteyam's yellow eyes widened, his pupils contracted even bigger as his possessive nature was stroked to perfection and he basically purred. She was his toy, wasn't she?

"Now you finally get it." His fangs gleamed even in the dark when set Tala against the floor of the locker now, ass raised up.

"OHH, MMMM!" Tala screamed when Neteyam plunged back into her hot and wet core, haggard moans and breaths punching out of her lungs.

He fucked her so hard she thought he was willing her to become part of the floor, but that didn't stop her juices from flowing out of her nonstop or her orgasm from skyrocketing.

"Ahh, ahh,-MM,MM oh, oh, great mother I’m gonna--"

"C'mon, cum for me, Li'Tala."

Tala screamed into her arm as her body convulsed, she was seeing stars as she came so hard she instantly felt numb. Neteyam growled loudly and his hips stuttered, her walls strangling his throbbing length and it coaxed his cum to coat her insides again and again.

A few moments later, Neteyam kicked open the locker door, letting in refreshing air to cool their skin as he cradled Tala against his body. They panted hard and in sync, their bodies twitching from exhaustion and ecstacy and now sticking together, sweaty.

Tala was exhausted, emotionally and physically. She didn't even register how Neteyam had entwined his tail with hers, otherwise she'd surely jump at the opportunity to tease.

"No more of these metal things." Neteyam huffed out.

"Okay..."

"Or those symbols."

"Alright..."

Neteyam shifted, nuzzling into her neck. He liked her perfume too much.

"And don't forget what you said... you're MY toy. Mine."

Tala weakly glanced at him, though his face was still hidden away in her hair. She bit her lip and looked forward, the way their legs tangled together.

"Yours..."

The word felt heavy and bitter in her mouth.

----------------

It’s been a week and Tala had found herself at an impasse.

By no means did she keep any such requests Neteyam had asked of her, Orlek’an simply insisted on her being more careful and that the Anurai woman handle the rest.

She sighed, Neteyam was becoming… overzealous. They had seen each other every day since that incident and each day increased in both intimacy and confusion.

“Something wrong?” Tala turned in her stool back to Dr. Hanson. She smiled cheekily, of all the scientists he had become her favorite. Extremely easy to annoy.

“My ass hurts.”

He choked on his coffee and Patty chortled loudly behind her. Tala sighed louder and stretched out onto the table, prompting the scientist to quickly move his coffee mug and digital pad away to make room.

“Can’t you spare me any zoslu paste? My hips feel like they’re about to break.” Tala whined softly, though truly she was not expecting any charity. Patty howled even louder and Dr. Hanson sputtered.

“I gave you advil! And Jesus Christ, get up! We still have 18 more samples and variations to look through!” Dr. Hanson yelled. Tala rolled over and looked up at him with fluttering eyes.

“Please, a break? I’ll be very cooperative after, I promise.” She asked meekly, her voice small and sad, and Dr. Hanson sighed into his mug.

“Fine. 20 minutes, and then back to work!” He grumbled. Tala smiled and purred against his arm, from 5 minutes to 20, she had done a good job wheedling him to be nicer and nicer.

She took off her new coat, for some reason Neteyam had permanently kept her old one, and laid it flat on the floor. It would be her only cushion and yet it was enough for her then anyway.

As Tala curled onto the floor, her ears could hear the soft whirring and vibrations of mechanical components and people walking and talking. She didn’t have many solid clues of how long since she’d been captured, a few months now at the very least.

It felt like a new lifetime. Eerily comfortable and constricted, Tala increasingly felt a weight settle on her chest with each new cold day she woke up to.

Tala looked down at her hands, inhibitors heavy on her wrists. How long has it been since she’s seen the skin underneath?

Why does she worry about these tawtutes, these bare acquaintances?

How much longer did she have to stay a toy for someone who obviously despised her?

Was there nothing she could do but wait for Eywa?

Tala sighed, she could feel her face heating up. Oh, she’s tried so hard not to think about any of this, she needed to compartmentalize it all, yet the moment she relaxed everything bubbled to the surface.

Not to mention everything with Neteyam. Especially after what had happened the week before, Tala wished desperately for his face to disappear from her thoughts. But it never did.

He was ruining her, though perhaps she was giving him too much credit.

The Tawkami put her focus back on listening to the machines clicking and vibrating. It was calming, she could get lost in this rhythm, she just needed to calm down. It reminded her of water and rain, and she wished she could see it again–

“GET UP, NOW!”

Patty violently hauled Tala up by her shoulder and only then did she pay attention to all the other noises. Shouting, some screams of panic. Tala snapped to Dr. Hanson who was cursing and gathering materials left and right as Patty impatiently punched in codes for the lab doors to open.

“Wh-What’s-?”

“Flooding in Sector C. It’s been raining hell for fucking days, and something’s punctured the fort!” Dr. Hanson yelled and scrambled after them as Patty dragged her to run down. Rain?

The hallways were filled with scrambling scientists and some guards barking orders, soldiers quickly clearing out rooms. Tala passed by the opposing hallway that led to the prison. “Wait!” She hissed, pulling at Patty’s kuru. The soldier yowled and glared at her.

“What the fuck!”

“Orlek’an, my friend!! What about my friend?!” Tala shouted over her. Patty made a face and looked towards the prison.

“I’m sure the guards cleared her outta there, now let’s move!”

“We have to check! Those guards are skxawngs, they barely even remember to feed us!” The Tawkami girl seethed desperately. “Please, Patty!” She begged loudly over the alarm now blaring through the compound. The lights went out and Dr. Hanson screamed more curses. She could hear Patty curse loudly. Tala yelped when she felt liquid spilling onto the floor and it only made her cling tighter to the soldier to beseech her.

“Please!”

The emergency lights came back on, shining green. Patty glanced at Dr. Hanson, obviously as scared shitless as they all were, and then back at Tala. She cursed again and hit some buttons on her wrist tech and Tala’s hands were freed apart.

“I’ve deactivated the magnets on your cuffs, and I've allowed you full access to the floor. Just hit this code on the door and you can get your friend, follow the blinking lights for the exits. My priority is the safety of Dr. Hanson.” Patty explained quickly and Tala nodded.

“Wait, you can’t just let her go-”

“We’re getting you out of here, Lloyd, no questions!”

“Patty!” Tala yelled.

She turned to Tala.

“Thank you.”

Patty’s mouth was tight as she nodded and she picked up Dr. Hanson, bounding the other way.

Tala looked for only a second until she too was running fast, making large splashes with every leap, basically tearing her lab coat off. She was trying to take care not to slip, but the water level was rising surprisingly quickly.

The water was up to her shins when Tala arrived at the prison doors and punched in the code.

“Orlek’an!!”

“Tala?!” The Anurai woman screamed out, her hands raw from scratching at the cages. Tala sped to Orlek’an, seeing her clearly for the first time.

“How did you-”

“No time!” The younger quickly punched in the code for Orlek’an’s cage and she breathed out in relief when it blinked white and the metal doors opened.

For the first time, Tala looked at her Anurai cellmate fully and wholly, she was older than her, she had already known, and beautiful. Her eyes glowed amber and quickly the two women held each other tightly.

Tala let out a watery laugh, the Anurai woman was so much taller than her, and she smelled like yovo fruit and waterfalls.

“Here, quickly.” Orlek’an handed her a bundle of darts, and bandaids to hold the sharp and rough metal by. Tala almost hesitated but gripped the darts carefully. Much bigger than the needle Neteyam had confiscated, these ones were coated in the nonlethal poison Tala managed to create behind the scientists' backs.

She nodded, finally, it was time to enact something they’d been preparing for weeks together, just them two.

“Let’s go now, young one!”

Orlek’an grabbed Tala’s hand and the two waded as quickly as possible away from the prison.

Tala strained her eyes between the dark and bright green, the lights blinking. She gestured for the Anurai to follow her and the two swam and paddled desperately.

This must be the disaster, the first one of Eywa’s Revenge. By Water.

They dove, a light at the end of the hall. When the women resurfaced at the exit, soldiers herded scientists and prisoners, scrambling all around in the chaos.

The rain made it still so difficult to breathe but Great Mother…

Tala inhaled deeply, the rain and the seawater, the mist and the dirt.

Finally, she was outside.

But only just.

Orlek’an and Tala ran behind more facilities as they made their way to the docks, which was no small feat. Though the sea wall was massive and easy for them to locate, Bridgehead was even bigger and water sloshed all around, making it difficult for any one of them to gain footholds.

The force of the waves was enough to topple over the people in large exoskeleton-machine suits and every so often, Tala or Orlek’an would throw their paralyzing darts. The rain was on their side, never did a droplet deter a dart from its trajectory and each throw left a dreamwalker or tawtute soldier falling to the ground, stunned.

When they neared the sea wall, they were not the only ones. There were multiple prisoners, each had risked their escapes by the raging ocean than by attempting a crossing of the RDA’s Kill Zone.

Tala’s eyes blinked away heavy raindrops as they strained, she turned to Orlek’an. “Why way?!”

The older woman also searched until her eyes landed upon the edge of the seawall, implanted into a rocky cliffside next to the edge of the sea itself. The older na’vi gestured for Tala to follow her as they sprinted towards the edge, losing their footing as the waves that tumbled inside Bridgehead city only increased in violence.

Tala gasped, eyes locked onto a figure already on the sea wall.

“What is it?” Orlek’an shouted.

“It’s– It’s my friend, Anke’ti!”

There he was, already deep in the water and crashing with violent waves, trying to scale over the sea wall. Each time he got closer and closer to the edge, and each time his blue body was more and more visible against the cement.

Tala clasped Orlek’an’s shoulders.

“Go on! I need to help him!!” She shouted and then hugged Orlek’an tightly.

“Goodbye, my friend. Eywa be with you.” She whispered with all her heart. She could tell tears were streaming down her face already, despite the torrent of rain. Her first friend, her only friend here.

“Eywa be with you, Tala.” Orlek’an kissed her cheek and they looked at each other for what could be the last time.

Tala squeezed Orlek’an’s hand, tried to smile, then dashed past the woman. Eywa, she prayed, she prayed deeply for all her friends to survive and to see them again.

She ran breathlessly toward the closest edge of the sea gate, enclosed by natural hills and mountains. She started climbing, feet singing as they crunched on the wild grass underneath. It was wonderful, but she could not stop to admire it! She needed to go faster!

Tala kept her eyes on Anke’ti as she climbed, he was so close, so close to reaching the edge, and – yes! Anke’ti grabbed onto the edge of the sea wall and started climbing himself up. The strain of everything, his thin body shook in both the wind and exhaustion. He had already been experiencing the pressure of rain on his back for many days now, he looked so tired.

“ANKE!” She screamed and she could feel herself smile for that briefest moment when his tail raised, ears flicked. Anke’ti continued his struggle, continued pulling himself up.

Hope filled Tala’s heart, she just needed to see him off, follow him once she knew he was over—

A spot of black in her peripheral vision, a malicious shine through the torrential rain, a gun – NO! It was pointed right at him!

Tala changed her direction towards the soldier, trying to climb faster but it simply felt too long, she felt too slow, she wasn’t going to make it in time, the soldier started to squeeze the trigger and–

Tala prayed to Eywa with a scream.

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#liar liar #avatar way of water #neteyam sully #fanart #fanfic #atwow neteyam #neteyam x oc #smut #doodle #recom neteyam #AU #rda neteyam #avatar 2

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mariacallous · 4 months

Text

Griffin Dunne has just written a book. He had been meaning to do so for ages. It was one of the items on his bucket list: learn a musical instrument, master Spanish and write his damn memoir. “One down, two to go,” he says, beaming in via video link from his home in upstate New York. The actor and film-maker turns 69 this weekend. He reckons that still leaves him time for the music and Spanish.

Dunne imagined his memoir as a family portrait in the style of David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day. He pictured something light on its toes, witty and poignant, a weave of essays and anecdotes. But then the book changed direction, as though it had a will of its own. It went where it wanted and needed to go. He says: “On some level, I knew there was this big subject ahead. And so, as I’m writing the book, I’m thinking: oh, OK, I know where this is going now.” The story leads to the scene of a 40-year-old crime. It revisits the death of Dunne’s younger sister, Dominique, and the grisly murder trial that followed.

I tell Dunne I really like the book, which sounds crass in the circumstances, but is true. While The Friday Afternoon Club is about the death of a loved one, it’s full of light, life and colour. It’s a startling tale of precarious American privilege, spotlighting a family that is blessed and cursed.

Dunne casts himself as the Hollywood prince at its centre, surrounded by famous faces, clamouring to be noticed. He tells how Sean Connery rescued him from the family swimming pool, how Billy Wilder critiqued his childhood pranks and how he roomed with Carrie Fisher before she went off to make Star Wars (“This movie is going to be a fucking disaster,” she said). Dunne was raised among storytellers (his dad and uncle were authors; Joan Didion was his aunt) and he writes with a loose, easy swagger. His memoir is tart, buoyant and playful right up to the moment it’s not.

In the early 1980s, when he was in his 20s, Dunne was hitting his stride as an actor. He had secured his breakout role in 1981’s An American Werewolf in London, playing the undead grad student Jack Goodman, doomed to haunt the adult cinemas of Soho. His 22-year-old sister was also faring well, having co-starred in 1982’s Poltergeist. But, on 30 October 1982, Dominique was strangled by her ex-boyfriend, John Sweeney, and died in hospital five days later. The trial, says Dunne, was outrageous, a farce. Implicitly, it seemed to put the Dunnes in the dock, framing the bereaved family members as frivolous dandies. Sweeney was convicted of manslaughter, but acquitted of murder. He served just three and a half years in prison.

Four decades on, Dunne’s account of events burns with rage. He is furious with the judge who intervened to block crucial evidence. He is furious with the killer’s employers (the Los Angeles restaurant Ma Maison), who stepped in to pay his legal fees. He is furious with Dominique’s then co-star, David Packer, who remained inside the house while Dominique was being attacked outside. “All the old anger got re-stoked,” he says. “I tapped right back into my vengeful side.”

During the trial, Dunne was approached by a mobster who offered to have Sweeney killed. He discussed the idea with his brother, Alex. “At that time, we would have been diagnosed as crazy people,” he says. “I told my brother that we had an opportunity to have the killer dealt with in the county jail. We decided not to kill him, but to mess him up, to have his hands smashed, like we were ordering pizza and choosing different toppings from the menu. And that was just the beginning of our madness; it carried right through. Even writing it down, I thought: I’ve got to let this go, because you can’t live in hate.”

In the end, they did nothing. Dominique’s killer changed his name after being released from prison and is likely still alive today. “I will neither forgive nor forget,” Dunne says. “But I’m not going to let that be the A-story of my sister’s life.”

Dominique was a victim, but that doesn’t make her life tragic. What is clear from the book is that people adored her. She comes across as whip-smart and droll, grounded and private. “She was a serious, substantial person,” he says. “Serious about her acting, her animals, her family. And, actually, rather intimidating, even though she was the youngest of the family.”

Dominique cared for their mother, Ellen, who had multiple sclerosis. She also cared for their father, Dominick, who was bisexual and closeted and yet confided in her. “So she was somebody we were all a bit in awe of. She was always wise beyond her years.”

She sounds like the family’s moral compass. “Yeah,” he says. “But also a bit bossy. She always knew what she wanted. My brother and I were a little fearful of her. It was like she’d been born already built.”

Dunne, by contrast, was a work in progress. In his memoir, he says that his first word was “taxi” and that he was always in a hurry – always running before he could walk. He was expelled from school for smoking pot. He was “coked to the gills” on the night Dominique was attacked. He was bumptious and entitled. His sister’s death changed him, he says, because how on earth could it not?

“For one thing, I never thought about domestic violence, the abuse of women. I grew up in Los Angeles and when I was in high school, pre-Roman Polanski, it was incredibly common for 13- or 14-year-old girls to be dating guys in their 30s. They’d go to these decadent parties in the hills and then come back and tell us all about it. And that was the culture; it felt exciting. I was unaware of what it meant. But then you have my sister, a 22-year-old girl, who finds herself in a domestic violence relationship with someone who’s twice her weight. So everything looked different to me afterwards.”

Perhaps it affected his career as well. In the mid-1980s, Dunne was on the threshold of stardom. He combined the charm and grace of a leading man with the prickly intelligence of a great character actor. The door kept swinging open, but he seemed to keep shutting it. He turned down The Fly and Sex, Lies, and Videotape in favour of making Who’s That Girl, with Madonna, and a reviled comedy, Me and Him, in which he played a yuppie architect who quarrels with his talking penis.

Dunne’s agent accused him of making “self-destructive choices”. He had always craved fame, only to find that it spooked him. “Too much attention at that time was a little fearsome for me,” he says. “I found it very stressful.” He hesitates. “And also my father,” he adds. “That had a lot to do with it, too.”

Dominick is the third main player in The Friday Afternoon Club, a high-flying producer who came to earth with a crash. He would eventually find his voice as a writer. He became Vanity Fair’s star reporter, first covering the Sweeney case, then the OJ Simpson and Claus von Bülow trials. But the in-between years were hard and humiliating. He suffered a reversal of fortune that took the whole family aback.

“I saw my father fail,” Dunne says. “I watched real failure in action in real time. He was a man who had a big house and a beautiful car and a great job and entertained the most famous actors and directors in the world. And everything was taken away from him, partly through his own actions, but nonetheless. People came out of the woodwork, kicked him when he was down.

“They were like: ‘I always hated you, I always knew you were closeted, you’ll never work again, pack your bags.’ And the effect it had on me, just entering the business as he was being destroyed in that business …” He draws a breath. “Well, it had a lot to do with the choices I made.”

In hindsight, the 1985 black comedy After Hours was his fork in the road. It’s also the picture with which he is most identified. Dunne developed the film as a co-producer and convinced Martin Scorsese to direct. He also took the lead role of repressed Paul Hackett, who embarks on a long, dark night of the soul through the streets of Lower Manhattan.

On set, Scorsese made one big stipulation. He ordered Dunne not to have sex for the duration of the shoot. I am gobsmacked by this, but the actor was unfazed. “It made perfect sense to me,” he says. “I knew what he meant. The character had to be boiling over with this unfulfilled anxiety. You had to see …” He pauses. “Not to be crude, but you had to see the semen build up to where it’s practically coming out of his eyes.”

One Saturday night, though, Dunne cracked and broke the rule. The next day of filming, Scorsese spotted the change and went berserk. “You’ve fucked up the whole picture,” he shouted. “I don’t think I can finish it now.”

Dunne says that he was probably being directed here, too. “Because now I’m afraid. I’m terrified. And it turns out that a certain level of fear is the same as not having sex. So [Scorsese’s] second piece of direction is telling me that I’ve ruined his movie. That’s excellent direction. It brought all the old anxiety back.”

It should have been a tough prospect, sitting down to write his book. Emotionally, because it meant revisiting the worst time of his life. Practically, because the Dunne family had already set the bar high. They are all dead now: his dad in 2009; his journalist-screenwriter uncle, John Gregory Dunne, in 2003; Joan Didion in 2021. But their reputations are daunting. It must have felt as though he were writing in the shadow of Mount Rushmore.

Dunne says it wasn’t that way at all. He had always assumed that writing a book would be a lonely endeavour. In fact, it felt warm, intimate and weirdly convivial. “I didn’t feel daunted, trying to write and being related to all these prominent figures. Quite the opposite. I felt their presence. When I described them, it was like I was seeing them again, living with them again. It was like I was back meeting Joan for the first time. It was as though I was spending time with her and John, my father and my sister,” he says. “They were alive to me. When I finished the book, that was the sad part. It felt like I missed them all over again.”

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thecrusadercomrade · 2 months

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How do you think the final two episodes of Season Two would've went if Sarah actually survived and not died because the writers left her on standby like and NPC? Would she have made it to The Final Season?

(Bonus if you can squeeze Luke or Nick into the equation) because they didn't deserve what they were given.

Okay! For the sake of fulfilling your bonus request, I'll say that Nick survived the trailer park. He wasn't shot, or bitten, or whatever it was that actually resulted in his death. Working together with Jane, they're able to lift the debris off of Sarah and save her life during the big walker attack.

Sarah isn't going to be doing much for the rest of episode four, since she's still basically in shock. Nick sides with Luke during the argument about whether to let Rebecca rest or set out immediately, and so the group hunkers down for a few days at the observation tower.

Wow, this is REALLY long. Adding a Read More here so that it's not taking up your entire dashboard if you don't want to read it.

During the fight with the Russians, Nick tackles Sarah to the ground to get her out of the line of fire, saving both of their lives. Due to their similar circumstances of having lost their dad/father figure and being seen as a liability by others, Nick has a soft spot for Sarah and focuses on looking out for her.

Over the course of episode five as they travel towards the half-built house, Sarah slowly starts to come out of her shell a little bit, though she only really talks with Clementine and Nick. She spends time bonding with them even as the rest of the group is falling apart, a little bit of peace even as the rest of the group falls apart. Seeing how injured everyone is, Sarah starts to express interest in learning medical skills like her dad, though of course they don't have any supplies for her to start learning at the moment.

Nick is on Luke's side for all the arguments that take place in episode five, but when Luke dies at the lake, Nick blames himself for not being able to keep the walkers at bay well enough. Nick is so angry in the aftermath, that when Kenny starts beating on Arvo, accidentally hitting Clementine and terrifying Sarah, Nick gets into a physical altercation with Kenny to make him stop. It only ends when Jane comes into the room with the duffel bags.

Skipping forward a bit, things mostly go the same with Bonnie, Mike, and Arvo stealing the supplies, though Nick also grows increasingly tense with Kenny due to their earlier fight. Nick doesn't have a much higher opinion of Jane due to her thinking Sarah is a liability.

When the fight at the rest stop happens, Sarah pretty much shuts down with fear. Nick keeps Clementine back, and he's the one to interfere in the fight instead. Rather than try to physically break things up, he fires a gun between them, forcing them to stop. The sound of the gunshot causes AJ to start crying, revealing his survival.

With Kenny having shown how dangerous he can be, and Jane's deception revealed, Nick is finally fed up. He decides that he and Sarah are leaving on their own before either of the two can get them killed, and he invites Clementine to come along as well. For the purposes of this ask, I'll say that Clementine accepts.

Jane protests, but Kenny agrees that he's no longer safe, telling them to take AJ as well and raise him right. So Nick, Sarah, Clementine, and AJ depart the rest stop together, leaving Kenny and Jane behind.

I don't want to write out all of ANF, but I'll say that Sarah learns some medical skills in the New Frontier, and when they're kicked out she apprentices under Eleanor to keep learning, earning their little group a permanent spot in Prescott. She'll be very disappointed when Eleanor betrays them all.

I'd say they have a decent chance of making it to the Final Season. Maybe Nick would die in season three, but overall ANF wasn't quite as bad about wiping out the entire cast as previous seasons, and since Clementine and her group aren't the main focus of the season, they stand a good chance of making it through. Sarah will never be some epic walker killer, but she knows how to defend herself by this point, and she's a really good medic, not to mention still really friendly. I think she'd be alright.

Sorry if this was really rambly. It ended up way longer than I expected XD.

#ask #the walking dead game #twdg #twdg sarah #twdg nick #twdg clementine #twdg luke #twdg kenny #twdg jane #twdg aj #twdg eleanor

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georgiapeach30513 · 1 year

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Victim of the Circumstance, Part 1

Summary: You were not looking for love. You had it, and it was the best thing that had ever happened to you. And it was taken away. Leaving you grieving with two kids. But you finally made it to Florida and the place he had always to retire to. Living on an orange grove when your precocious daughter befriends one of the construction workers. James Mace was not looking for love. And he definitely wasn’t looking for kids.

Pairings: James Mace X Reader

Rating: 🥺

Warnings: mentions of a character death, loss of a parent, 18+ ONLY

Word Count: 3.7K

Series Masterlist

“Mommy,” your littlest love runs full force into your bed, her giggly little face squishing up against your back. “Mommy! It’s time to wake up, Benning has got to get to school,” for four years old, and someone that didn’t go to big kid school, she was the mother hen.

“I tried waking him up, but he said he’s waiting on you.”

“I know, baby,” you groan, taking a quick peek at the alarm clock. You had five more minutes to sleep. But that child that was tapping on your back was the best way to wake up.

“Mommy!”

“I’m up. I’m up, baby,” sitting up in the bed, you take a deep yawn, stretching. Your sleepy eyes looking at your angel that required little to no sleep. “You want to grab some orange juice from Miss Hazel and Harley?”

“Harley is asleep,” she crawls onto your bed, and in your lap, giving you the sweetest kisses all over your face. For a child that had never met her father, she acted just like him. “But I can get juice from Hazel, I can. Did you know they’re starting the build today?”

“I did, and I also know that Harley built you an orange juice stand.”

“Really?” She squeals, her hands going into a tight ball and her eyes squish close with how big she was smiling. She shakes her fists around with excitement. Her whole body wiggling around with her movements.

“Yep, so you better go get our juice. I’m going to wake up bubba and make breakfast. Hurry back, okay,” she jumps off the bed, darting to the door and off to the store to bring back some fresh squeezed orange juice while you go wake up your son.

Opening the door to his bedroom, your late husband’s dog lifts his head up from the floor. “I know. He’s getting a new bed soon. It’s not my fault he hit a growth spurt, and grew you right out of the bed. Don’t look at me like that, Cannon.”

“Mom, quiet.”

“Benning, it’s time to wake up.”

“Sissy came in here before the alarm, and now you are,” just like clockwork, both yours and your son’s alarm goes off, and he grabs his phone, turning it off. “Nobody can get any sleep around here. I don’t sleep as well since Cannon can’t fit on the bed, and Mirabelle won’t quit screaming to wake me up.”

“She’s just like your dad. Early riser.”

“I don’t want to talk about him,” Mirabelle never got to meet her dad, while Benning remembered everything. Everyday it was a battle of missing him. “Get out, so I can get dressed.”

“Waffles or pancakes?”

“I don’t care. Mirabelle likes waffles best. Just make her happy.”

“Maybe we should go back to…”

“Mom, dad’s been dead for four years. I’m fine,” he didn’t sound fine. The closer it got to his birthday and his dad’s death day, the worse his attitude got. He hated going to a family counselor. Hated talking about something that ‘he couldn’t change’. And all you wanted was your happy boy that got excited to call his dad and talk about the new ultrasound pictures of his sissy.

“Mom? Go, take Cannon with you.”

“Come on, buddy, let’s get you fed, too,” you give your big boy one final look before going into the kitchen. Looking out the window quickly to see your excitable girl telling Hazel about her dream you were sure. Feeding the dog, and packing Benning’s lunch, and starting breakfast all at once.

“Miss Hazel, and then there was unicorns that exploded into butterflies, they did. What are you doing?”

“Squeezing out the orange juice. These are your mom’s favorites, Clementines. I always sneak a couple in there for her. Did you see your orange juice stand?”

“Uh huh,” Mirabelle responds, starting to peel an orange to have as a snack, watching the woman that had changed your life. “Is uncle Bill going to be there,” Hazel taps Mirabelle on the nose, starting to laugh.

“You better quit calling him that. And yes, William is going to be the foreman. Harley put your stand under the oak tree so you get lots of shade. And maybe you can entice those workers over to the store for sorbet.”

“Do I get commission for that?”

“Yes, all the sorbet you can eat. Here,” she hands the little girl her jug of orange juice, and Mirabelle swipes a small jar of marmalade, “I saw that Mirabelle. Are you out already?”

“Yep. I’ve been eating marmalade sandwiches. I’ll be back after breakfast. Benning is very crabby today.”

“I know, angel, William and Casey are coming by for supper. William will talk to him,” William Miller had been a godsend for your family. Was one of the few men that Benning would even open up and talk to. William just got it. Of course, you being married to someone in the military you didn’t, or so your son constantly reminded you of that.

“Okay, I can’t wait to see uncle Bill.”

“You better stop,” Mirabelle gives your landlord a chubby handed wave as she walks back towards your house. Giving you a wave when she spots you looking out the window at her.

Smiling when a full plate of waffle was sitting at her chair, and she hands you the jar of marmalade to open. “Why hasn’t Benning eaten?”

“Bye, mom. Bye, sissy. Sorry, I’m going to be late to the bus stop,” gone were the days of kisses to you and Mirabelle, and a walk out to the bus stop. Independent and not needing you or his sister anymore, so he thought. But you needed him. Needed him to quit growing, and to turn to you when he was missing his dad. His dad was his hero, and now all he had left was his service memorabilia.

“Hey,” you scream at him, handing his dry waffle to him and his lunchbox, “if you would stop laying in bed listening to music, you could have breakfast with us.”

“I’ll just eat this. Sissy, you want to put some marmalade on this?” With the biggest smile on her face, Mirabelle spreads out a layer of the sticky jam, handing it back ot her brother, and he does in fact give her a kiss to her head. “Thanks,” you say his name again, but he walks out the door, leaving his sister to pout, missing him already.

“You want marmalade on your waffle, too?”

“Yeah. I want my Bubba sitting in that chair tomorrow. That’s why I wake him up early. He never wants to spend time with me anymore.”

“That’s because you’re four, and he’s nearly twelve. Here, baby, eat your waffle.”

“I want some coffee, too.”

“Absolutely not. You can settle for orange juice.”

“Miss Hazel put in a couple clementines for you. She said they’re your favorites, she did,” they were your favorite. Adding just the perfect balance of sweet and tangy to it. Miss Hazel knew how to make you happy. It was the little things now. Including that messy smile you daughter was giving you from across the small kitchen table.

Mirabelle squints her eyes as she looks over to the men that were breaking ground on the newer and bigger store. She hasn’t been able to spot her uncle, but there were people everywhere, and not one was looking at her stand. They were clearly hot, it was springtime in Florida. She was hot, and she was drinking her product. How was she ever going to make money or even make commission of the sorbet if they didn’t buy her juice?

Getting fed up with being annoyed, she marches over towards the build, more like skipping because she had a plan. Getting almost there before she’s scooped up. “Let me go! Help! Kidnapper! Stop it! Uncle Bill!”

“Ow,” the man complains when he gets smacked on the head. “Easy kid.”

“Uncle Bill! I’m being tortured!”

“Hey,” the man finally says again, and Mirabelle leans back to look at him. Noting his Miller Construction shirt and she taps on the print, “You can’t be here.”

“I can.”

“No, it’s not safe. No kids allowed.”

“Why?”

“Because this is a construction zone.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re building something.”

“Why?”

The man’s eyes narrow at the little girl, and he finally sets her back down in the dirt, squatting down to get eye to eye with her, “You’re the little orange girl?”

“I’m not orange. See,” she points at her skin, starting to giggle. This man was silly. There were oranges close by. He could tell that she was not the same color as those.

“No, you’re the little girl that Will told us about. That lived in a house beside the grove.”

“Yeah, see,” she points over at the house, and he spots the adorable little orange juice stand. “That’s my house. I live there with my mom, and my brother, Benning. She does nails in there. Sometimes will work in the store instead of Miss Hazel. And that right there,” pointing at her stand, she turns to look at the funny looking man, frowning.

“That is why I am over here. I’ve been there all day.”

“It’s nine in the morning.”

“Exactly. I’ve been there all day, and not one of you has come to get juice. I am saving my money to get a new doll because my poor mom can’t afford to buy me one. Hazel and Harley have her working like Cinderella, and she barely has time for me. And you guys are out here making all this noise, and getting parched, and I have what you need over there, but nobody comes over there.”

“You’re good. You’d make a great car salesman,” the man turns back to look at his crew. It was too early for lunch break, but if this was the child he was told about, he didn’t think Will would be angry that he stopped her from coming onto the site. “Fine, take me to your stand. I will get some orange juice.”

“You will buy some orange juice. This is a business after all, it is,” holding out her hand, he gives it an odd look, before taking it in his own. Letting the girl guide them to her obvious stand. “This juice is made purely from clementines, this one is blood orange, it’s great for vampires, and this one is tangerine juice, and this is what we have every morning navel with four clementines in it. Which would you like?”

She was a character. Big vocabulary for such a small child, “I’ll take your special with navel and clementines.”

“Here you go, mister?” The tiny child hands him a cup of orange juice. Watching his every move to see how he like the drink, while also needing to know what to call him. Her hand goes to her hip, and she juts it out to the side waiting.

“James Mace. Everyone calls me Mace though. Mmm,” he takes a long drink of the juice. Licking his lips after the taste. “This is really good.”

“Has anyone told you that you look like a shaggy dog? Harley and Hazel used to have this shaggy dog. You look like that. How are you ever going to find a wife with hair like that? And this is Florida. You know it's going to get hot. It makes more sense to cut it off. It’s too hot. Summer is almost here, it is.”

“You don’t like my hair?” Making a face of disgust, she fake retches, and she shakes her head no. Mace takes another drink of the concoction before squatting down with her. “You never told me your name.”

“Mirabelle Nova Syverson. My dad gave me the first name. My brother gave me my middle name. I guess my dad gave me my last name, too. But him and mom did agree to Mirabelle. Shouldn’t you be getting back to work?”

“Yes, now stop distracting me so I can do that.”

“Okay, tell your friends about me. And also we have the world’s finest orange sorbet in the store. And today’s juice will be one dollar for one cup or three dollars for two cups, Mr. Mace,” Mace chuckles, pulling out his wallet, and rifling through the bills.

“Just Mace. How much money do you lack for your new doll?”

“She’s a really nice doll. She’s going to cost me over one hundred dollars,” Mace gives her a grin, pulling out a twenty. “You're my first customer. I can't make change, and I don’t even know how. That’s big kid math, and I’m four.”

“Keep it, kid.”

“Mirabelle.”

“Keep it, Mirabelle. I’ll be back around lunch, and make sure to bring some people with me.”

“That would be greatly appreciated. Tell Uncle Bill I said hey,” Mace starts to open his mouth explaining how there wasn’t a Bill on the crew, and the little girl points at his shirt. “Uncle Bill. He’s not my real uncle. He married my aunt Casey. Casey is my dad’s little sister. He tried to date my mom at first. Well his parents Hazel and Harley wanted him to. Mom won’t date a military man ever again, no thank you. I will see you in a few minutes Mace.”

“A couple of hours, darlin’!” Mace gives a yell to the little girl who stops her retreating and looks at him. “A couple of hours.”

“Fine, only if you come back tomorrow with better hair. It’s too hot for that much hair.”

“You’ve got a deal. I’ll bring you lots of business, too,” he gives her a nod and she bounces back to the store to help out with Hazel while Mace returns to the build. Already wiping his brow from the heat.

“Mace, this isn’t kindergarten,” William looks at his newest member of the crew, “Where have you been? I told you to follow me.”

“Met your niece. She’s selling orange juice.”

“Ahh, the little princess. My parents let that child rule the grove. Watch her. She’ll talk you out of a lot of money,” Mace chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck. Mirabelle was not some ordinary four year old. She was smart. He wouldn’t call it business savvy, but she was something. “What did she use on you? A trip to Disney is her favorite. She likes to use toys and pouts. Oh, one time it was to buy her mom a new car.”

“A doll.”

“You’ve been had by the sweetest little con artist,” Mace turns and looks towards the store, watching the little girl start to stack oranges on a rack. “Don’t take it personally. Kid’s never had a dad.”

“He ran off and left her? What kind of father does that?”

“Easy,” not that it was anyone’s business, but Mirabelle was quick to get attached to men. Craved something that kids in her twice a week pre-k talked about. “Her dad didn’t leave them on purpose. He was deployed, and was killed. Her mother was pregnant with Mirabelle. He never got to meet her. Wait until you meet her son. He remembers his dad. Hates men, and he’s a moody, almost pre-teen.”

“Why do you say he hates men?”

“Their mom and I went on what I thought was a date,” William laughs, shaking his head. “She was under no such impression. Worked out well for Benny because he hated me. Until I married their aunt. Now he tolerates me. I’m not trying to take the place of his dad. He didn’t trust me, he didn’t like the fact I was military either. Neither did the wife. Casey was a bit scared after her brother. Keep an eye on that little girl though. Make sure she stays out of trouble and doesn’t get hurt, and I won’t get so mad at you for not shadowing me, okay?”

Mace gives his boss a head nod, and follows along with him. He didn’t know what to expect moving to the sunshine state. Definitely didn’t think working on a construction crew and finding a four year old going on thirty was in his future. But here he was. Tickled at how even talking with Mirabelle was entertaining. It was the most he had talked in years.

“Mirabelle Nova Syverson!” Hazel screams, looking through the store. “Mirabelle! Mira…” she looks out the side door, seeing the girl with a lunchbox coming out of her house. “Young lady, when you leave you have to tell me where you’re going.”

“I went to get lunch for me and that guy.”

“That guy?”

“Mhmm, Mace. It’s lunch time right? I can go back?” Hazel answers yes, and Mirabelle runs as fast as her little legs can carry her back to her stand in the shade. Wiggling her legs around and pulling her jugs of orange juice out of her cooler as a wad of men come towards her.

“Uncle Bill!” William rolls his eyes, but waves at the little girl, “I can’t serve them all alone.”

“You going to pay me?”

“Nope. I’m four. You make more money than me,” standing beside the little girl, he pours while she takes money. Making excuses about change, and how she can’t subtract yet before the line dies down, “Mace! This is my uncle Bill!”

“Nobody calls me that. Nobody. Just her and her brother, so don’t start. Oh, you eating lunch out here, little bit?”

“Yep. Mace, I brought you something,” she excitedly says, pulling out her lunch box, and taps on the cooler. William’s mouth drops open, gawking at her, “Casey packed your lunch, she did. I didn’t need to bring you something.”

“Remember what I said,” William trusted Mace with his niece. He just didn’t trust his niece to not get too attached. He knew where you stood, and your need to be alone ‘for all of eternity’ because you had already once fallen in love and now your priority was the kids that Sy had left behind. And still that angelic daughter of yours was still wanting something she had never had before.

“So my mommy doesn’t know, but I took her meal prep for this week,” laying the glass container on the stand, Mace waves his hands no, “It’s just Tuesday. Mommy works from home, so she makes her lunches for the week. I didn’t ask, but do you have allergies? Owen in my class is allergic to peanuts, and Neveah is allergic to eggs, and Simon is lactose intolerant and his belly blew up like a balloon when he ate my real milk yogurt. That has yogurt in it, can you have yogurt? And there’s eggs and almonds. Oh no! And cheese. I’m sorry, I really didn’t think this through.”

“Mirabelle, you’re fine. Last I checked, I’m not allergic to anything. So you’re bringing me lunch?” Giving him a shrug, her legs kick around before opening her own box complete with a marmalade sandwich, chips, and a cupcake. “I can share that with you. Me and mommy made those last night.”

“I don’t want to take your cupcake. So this is what you do all day?”

“I can share,” she gives him a little growl, placing a chip beside him before eating a bite of her sandwich. “I know how to share. I don’t have to share with Bubba, but I know how. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I go to miss Julie’s so I’m not an awkward turtle and don’t know how to interact with kids my age. I’m still an awkward turtle and still pull my awkward balloons because I just have adults, and Bubba.”

“What are you talking about awkward balloons?” Mirabelle smiles over her full mouth, placing another chip beside him. “I don’t understand the balloons.”

“It’s just what mommy does when we’re in an awkward situation. She pulls invisible awkward balloons from the sky. The more she pulls the more awkward it is. She’s a good mommy. Um, do you like oranges.”

“They’re okay,” Mirabelle’s eyes go large, and points at the orange slices in his container. “They’re fine.”

“They’re the best. I can name all the ones we have here, I can. Hazel said if Casey doesn’t give her a grand baby that I’m the one that gets the grove, she did. I like going out with Harley in the evening and he checks to make sure that the workers did everything right. It used to be smaller, it did. They built it. Uncle Bill doesn’t care. Casey is a nurse. She doesn’t have time, but me? I pay attention, I do.”

Mirabelle is able to talk and carry on a conversation all while eating. Hardly stopping talking, but it was a nice distraction for Mace. Not having to worry about the things in his own mind, just see things from the eyes of a four year old.

“Oh! How much money did I make? Mommy is wanting to take me and Bubba to Disney World, and I need spending money. I’ve got to get a new lanyard.”

“I thought you wanted a doll?”

“Well, yeah. They have those at Disney, too. I…I…I…I don’t have a Cinderella doll, yeah. She’s missing from my collection. Dern. It’s getting hot out here, and don’t tell mommy that I said dern. And I will see you tomorrow, but it’ll be when I get back though with school. Mommy picks me up at two, so I’ll be here around 2:30. Also, there’s yummy orange sorbet in the store. Tell everyone to get some, and if I’m not there, because it might be time to meet my bubba at the bus stop, just tell them to tell Hazel that I sent you. I get a commission.”

“You swindled me for money, you little toot,” with a shrug of her shoulders, she gathers the boxes to stuff in her lunch bag. “Mirabelle?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? I’ll have some more orange juice. Have a good day. Hazel will have to help me carry this in. Goodbye!”

She was a mess. Complete mess, and she knew it. One day of knowing the little girl, and Mace was wrapped around her chubby little finger. Clearly had been around people that were older than her because she spoke like an adult. No kid should grow up without a parent. Mace would know.

Masterlist

Taglist: @tis-thedamn-season @marveloustaylortot @pono-pura-vida @sstan-hoe @softsatnin @missusbarnes-rogers @peaches1958 @seitmai @smile1318 @andydrysdalerogers @cjand10 @elrw24 @midnightramyeoncravings

#victim of the circumstance #james mace #james mace x reader #james mace x fem!reader #james mace x y/n #james mace x you #construction worker!james mace #milf!reader #james mace fanfiction #james mace fics #james mace fic #chris evans #sunshine #sunshine fanfiction

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burnwater13 · 3 months

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Cad Bane standing outside on Tatooine. From The Book of Boba Fett, Season 1, Episode 7, In the Name of Honor. Calendar by DateWorks.

Note: This story was originally published on January 16, 2024. Since this story already mentions Cad Bane, it fits today's image. Plus a cold is just kicking my butt and my head hurts (properly medicated and expect to feel better tomorrow.)

Grogu only knew what the files at the Jedi Temple had said about Cad Bane and of course the few words that Daimyo Fett would waste on him when they were sharing gorgs after their fishing expeditions. The Daimyo was surprisingly good at fishing and Grogu was glad of that. His own dad was not very good, although he tried.

That had given Grogu the opportunity to ask the Daimyo about where and when he’d learned to catch fish, given that his dad was typically wrestling with lures, lines, and leaders most of the time they were fishing at the Pica Oasis. The Daimyo told Grogu about being raised on the ocean world of Kamino.

Grogu was really impressed by that. No place was going to offer better fishing that a world covered with an ocean. The Daimyo emphasized that fishing on Kamino was nothing like fishing at the Pica oasis. Some of the fish were big enough to swallow a human whole, according to his Mandalorian friend. Others, like the krill, were so small that even Grogu would need to eat dozens of them to have a decent snack.

Eventually, the two of them got around to talking about the Daimyo’s father, Jengo Fett and the circumstances of his death. Grogu was horrified and apologized to his friend for the actions of the Jedi.

“I have had many years to consider what happened that day, little one. The Tuskens teach that when you are defending your family, your duty is to do everything you can, including giving up your life to protect them. That is what my father did and only a Jedi could end him. He did his duty by me. I bare no grudge to you for the actions of others. Your people paid an even heavier toll at the end of that whole mess. You and I have the opportunity to show people how we can be at peace with the past and work not to repeat it.”

Grogu had nodded and patted the Daimyo’s knee. Then his line tugged and he chirped in surprise. He had a strike! There was some sort of something tugging on his line and he began to reel it in, with the master bounty hunter coaching him through the whole process. It was an excellent example of cooperation, right up to the point where Din Djarin came over, got his big boot tangled up in the line and pulled the rod out of Grogu’s hands, whacking the Daimyo with it as he tried to untangle himself.

“Din Djarin, have you ever considered that fishing is not a skill you possess and until you develop mastery of it, perhaps you should leave it to Grogu and I?”

Grogu thought the Daimyo was well within his rights to say, but considered Fennec’s brisk, ‘Mando, I didn’t peg you for this much of a klutz’ to be unnecessarily harsh. His dad had clearly not been taught to fish by any of the people responsible for this education.

“You don’t become a master of things you don’t practice.” Grogu’s dad had complained at them.

“Now you sound like Cad Bane. Any little thing I didn’t do perfectly, I did until I was perfect at it. He regretted that at the end. Never teach your student enough to be the end of you.”

The Daimyo had seemed both proud and sad about that as far as Grogu could tell. Fennec had told him a little about what happened when Boba Fett’s old mentor had ended up on Tatooine trying to ‘fix’ things for some syndicate or other. By ‘fix’ things he knew that meant threaten people until they agreed to do whatever they were told to do. It was very Sith-like behavior and Grogu could not imagine the Daimyo ever agreeing to such a thing.

“Kid, you’d be surprised at the sort of things the Daimyo has agreed to do. Of course that was all before he was tossed into that sarlacc pit and then re-educated by the Tuskens. Cad Bane hadn’t planned for that and that’s where he failed. You never take on an enemy that you don’t know everything about.”

Fennec seemed to be grudgingly respectful of those changes. Grogu wondered why and asked his dad about later when they were getting ready to sleep.

“Buddy, you remember that kid, Calican? He left Fennec for dead in the desert. I thought she was dead too. But the Daimyo? He checked. She wasn’t dead yet and he took her to the person who put her back together with those… uh… modifications. Boba Fett didn’t have to do that. He chose to. Because he was once left to die in the desert and the Tuskens saved him. That sort of thing changes a man and in this case for the better. Cad Bane went after the old Boba Fett. The bounty hunter. Who he met was Daimyo Fett, the better man.”

Grogu was just glad that he got to meet ba’buir Fett, the Mandalorian who knew how to fish. His father’s son. After all, being a bounty hunter and fishing weren’t all that different, from a certain perspective.

#calendar prompt a day #the book of boba fett #din djarin #grogu #boba fett #cad bane #fennec shand #the mandalorian

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indeedcaptain · 8 months

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Regulatory Relations, chp. 13: The Children of Tarsus Redux

Hello everyone!! I hope you're having a happy Threshold Day!! Here is the big ole honkin monster of an installment for Regulatory Relations that has taken over my whole brain.

social media dry january was so much easier last year when i wasn't actively in a fandom. i just want to look at star trek memes so badly. see you all in two days!!!

Some things:

thank you so so so so much for reading. the response to this fic has been so joyful and supportive.

this story has gotten deeper and darker than originally planned, so I've officially changed the rating from "archive warnings not needed" to "graphic depictions of violence".

on that note: this is The Tarsus Chapter. content warnings for descriptions of violence, starvation, and death.

i wrote a song about Kirk and Kodos post-Tarsus :) if you're into that sort of thing I've reblogged it to this blog and the link is available here.

☆☆☆

At first, everything was dark. His room, the bed beneath him, even Spock’s hand in his--- all of it had vanished, replaced by the warm black nothing. He could not feel his body. He was not sure if he had one, here. But then he heard his name.

Jim?

Hello, Kirk said, or thought, and he sensed something that felt like Spock out in the darkness. It felt like his dry humor, his curiosity, the fierce energy of him coiled into waiting stillness. Can you hear me?

Yes, Spock said, and he sounded--- felt--- closer now. Are you in discomfort?

No, Kirk said, after a moment. But it doesn’t feel like the other times we’ve melded.

I guided your mind through what was necessary in previous circumstances. Here I have created space for you instead. Kirk felt the gesture of Spock’s mind, sweeping out around them. What you show me, I will see.

Cautiously, he thought of somewhere to start. Kirk cringed in anticipation of the nausea, the choking panic, but it did not arrive. He was uncomfortable, unhappy, flayed out and vulnerable, but he could physically continue. The Iowa farmhouse appeared, rippling out in vibrant color from the point that he thought he inhabited in this strange in-between space. The faded white wood paneling, the wide porch with the swing and its rusty chains, the windbreak row of trees, and the cornfield, stretching out as far as Spock’s mind allowed, were replicated as faithfully as if they were physically there. And then they were; Spock materialized at his side as his own body appeared beneath him.

Spock looked around. Is this where you were raised?

Yes, Kirk said, and as they watched, a child with sandy brown hair flung open the screen door, flounced down the stairs, and vanished into the cornfield. An older boy came out more slowly, accompanied by an adult woman with the same sandy hair. They talked on the porch, staring in the direction that the younger one had gone.

That was me, he said quietly. This is the beginning, I suppose. He had laid out in the cornfield for hours, watching the clouds pass through the sky as tears leaked from the corners of his eyes into the dirt beneath him. Kirk closed his eyes and pushed the memory forward, and when he opened his eyes again the sky had darkened and Jimmy was trudging out of the cornfield back to the farmhouse. He wiped the back of his nose with his forearm and let the screen door swing shut gracelessly behind him.

Akin to the strange logic of dreams, Kirk and Spock stood in the kitchen of the farmhouse without having moved. Jimmy sat at the wooden table, arms crossed protectively across his chest, as Winona Kirk pulled brochures out of a Starfleet-issue duffel bag.

“I don’t want to go to Mars,” Jimmy said.

“You don’t have to,” Winona soothed.

“I want to go with you and Dad.”

“I’m sorry, baby,” Winona said. “For this posting, that’s just not an option.” Jimmy crossed his arms more tightly across his chest.

“Can’t I stay here?”

“Not by yourself.” Winona found the brochure that she had been looking for, the glossy paper reflecting the warm light and fluttering with the movement of the ceiling fan, and pulled the chair out next to Jimmy. “Look at this one,” she said quietly, and placed the brochure on the table in front of him. He turned away, staring out the window over the sink. “It’s not like Sam’s school. It’s all hands-on, all learning by doing. You’d get to be on a farm, just like here, with other kids. Dad and I could come visit you when we get leave.” Jimmy kept his gaze locked on the window, and Winona stood after another silent minute. She kissed him on the forehead and exited. When she was gone, Jimmy turned to the brochure. He frowned at it, but he picked it up and opened it.

Kirk knew what came next. He had been enchanted against his will by the promise of the experiential Farm School, and it would become his home for two beautiful years.

I wish I could just show you the good things, Kirk said. There were good things, too.

I believe you, captain, Spock said. Show me whatever you need.

Kirk crossed to the table where Jimmy--- his younger self, and it was hard to remember that he had ever been so young--- sat, flipping through the brochure. He looked down at the shiny pictures. They didn’t do it justice. I just need--- I need you to see what I saw. I think that’s what all this is about. Spock crossed to him, standing next to him, and even in the meldspace Kirk felt the comfort of his presence.

Kirk laced his fingers through Spock’s and remembered.

☆☆☆

Tarsus IV was the fourth planet in a small system in the middle of nowhere, Beta quadrant. It was Class M, with mostly mild seasons, and by the time Jimmy arrived, it was populated with eight thousand others, entirely human. It was not a highly developed colony; humans had only been there for twenty years, and it was technologically delayed--- no replicators, no transporters, only one government-owned high-speed comms relay to the rest of the Federation. Those who lived there were agriculturalists; scientists and farmers looking to conduct their research or make a living selling crops to the traders who passed through on their way to the further-flung starbases. After Jimmy had set his narrow shoulders, gritted his teeth, and taken the brochure upstairs to his parents, they had bought him a physical copy of a traveler’s guide to Tarsus IV. He read it back to front, over and over, until the spine crumbled in his hands and they replaced it with a digital copy on his padd. Six months after he had stormed from the kitchen and into the cornfield, the shuttle containing a newly twelve years old Jimmy Kirk touched down on Tarsus. He was met at the shuttle pad by two women in their twenties. Their names were Madeleine and Natalya, and, as Starfleet Academy graduates who had elected to take elementary teaching posts instead of a commission on a ship, they were impossibly cool and rebellious to a child whose parents rarely spent more than eight months anywhere. They took him to Farm School, where he was given three rough-spun jumpsuits to wear on outside days and a tour of the grounds. There were fields, a big house that doubled as a cafeteria and dormitory, a school building with classrooms and a gymnasium, and a contingent of laboratories built for little scientists with child-sized hands.

“Do you know what you might want to study?” Natalya was tall, blonde, and strong, and she and Madeleine both had been science track at the Academy. She led Jimmy through the different buildings, wandered through a wheat field with him, and then took him to the highest point on the campus so he could look out and see the sprawl of Farm School and the town beyond.

“Everything,” Jimmy said. For the first time in his life, Jimmy was judged by his own actions and interests and not by the reputations of his family. He could raise his hand in class and be called on by a teacher who had never taught his brother. He could take extracurriculars in engineering and make mistakes without being asked, “Didn’t your mom explain this to you?” He could shadow his tutors and tell them that he wanted to be a scientist without any of them assuming that he would be a captain, like his dad. For almost two years, he learned and grew and made friends with kids who cared more about his first name than his last.

For almost two years, he was happy.

Jimmy’s second summer on Tarsus IV was the driest on record. The swimming hole where he and a few of his friends spent most afternoons after their classes were over had shrunk considerably since the spring. The sudden thunderstorms that he had grown accustomed to the previous year were few and far between.

In late August, when they were on a break from their classes, Jimmy snuck into the patch of field that they had given him for his summer project to check on his crops: a small growth, only a few square yards, of yellow corn. He had hoped to have enough to make cornbread for his classmates once it had all reached peak sweetness. He walked slowly though the fields, brushing his palms carelessly over the purple amaranth that was his friend Laika’s project, one eye on keeping his feet in the walkways and one eye on the clouds above him. The formerly teal-blue sky had darkened considerably, and though he didn’t mind the rain, the teachers got nervous when any of them were out in a storm. The soil of Tarsus had a considerably higher metallic content than Earth, and they weren’t keen on testing the survival rate of lightning strikes on the children in their care. He walked faster.

His corn had grown to the right height, but as he brushed his hands against the stalks, they bent in a way that was unfamiliar. He frowned. He had spent the first twelve years of his life running through farm fields; he had long understood the way that the laws of physics exerted themselves on the stalks of late-summer corn. The stalks moved ponderously, with less structural resilience than he was used to. The ears swung heavily and drooped down more than he had expected. Jimmy reached out and grabbed one, thinking to pull it off the stalk and peel back the silk to peer inside, but he froze when it landed in his palm. Rather than the bumpy firmness of corn, it felt as though there was goo trapped inside the shell. He hefted the mushy ear in one hand and poked at it with a finger. His finger left an indent, meeting virtually none of the expected resistance. A single drop of a deep, metallic, mercurial blue liquid oozed out of the top and dropped to the soil below. He dropped the ear, and it hung morosely from the stalk, dripping blue ooze onto the dirt.

Jimmy turned and ran for the safety of the main house as the sky broke open above him. By the time he got inside, Natalya was standing in the foyer with a towel for him.

“My corn melted,” he said, confused, dripping rain onto the pale wooden floor.

“We can check it out when the storm is over,” she said, scrubbing his drenched hair with the towel. But it was movie night, and one of the littlest kids got overtired and set off a giggling fit that derailed everyone’s attention, and by the time Jimmy laid down in his bunk bed he had forgotten about the corn entirely.

Ten days later, during their first class after the break, Madeleine took them outside to check on their summer projects. Jimmy had fallen to the back of the group, play-fighting with Tommy, when they heard a dismayed scream from the front.

Laika wailed, “What happened?” She knelt in what remained of her amaranth. The proud purple bushels had veered decidedly towards blue and lay in mushy puddles, the flower heads shedding off the stalk in her hands.

“Laika, don’t touch that, get out of the mess,” Madeleine said, and stepped away from the group to flip her comm open. She said something quietly into it, out of Jimmy’s hearing, but her face, normally split by her wide smile, was pinched with concern. Laika stood, wiping the remnants of her summer project off her hands and the knees of her jumpsuit, and frustrated tears glinted in her eyes.

“My corn,” Jimmy realized, remembering, and took off running. He heard Madeleine shout behind him, but he couldn’t hear what she said and therefore didn’t have to listen. He skidded to a halt in the dirt after a few more seconds anyway, his heartbeat pounding in his ears. The stalks still stood, half-bent, and the ears were still attached, in the loosest sense of the word. But whatever might have been growing inside had melted out, dripping down into the soil into noxious blue puddles.

Madeleine appeared over his shoulder and gaped at the oil spill that had been his summer project. “Let’s go, Jimmy,” she said, and steered him away, back towards the main house. They passed Natalya, standing with their biology teacher, Mr. Park, and the chemistry teacher, Mr. Lopez, talking next to the remains of the amaranth. Madeleine took them all inside and they played dodgeball in the gym until they were released for the afternoon. After dinner, Jimmy and some of the older kids played cards in the dorm until Madeleine called for lights out, and even Laika was pulled out of her mournful shell to play with them by the end of the night.

That was the last normal day.

One of the best parts of Farm School had been the food. There were no replicators on Tarsus, and Jimmy didn’t like the fake chemical aftertaste of most replicated food anyway. They bought food from the town and the other farmers, and got shipments from the traders that stopped through every month or so, but the majority of what they ate came from the farm itself. Over the next two weeks, the farm-grown food stopped appearing at mealtimes. Halfway through September, Natalya pulled all of the older children, thirty or so out of the one hundred at the school, aside before dinner.

“I think we all know that it was a very dry summer,” she said, and one of the boys started sniffling immediately in the back of the classroom. They had known that something was wrong after all their summer projects had died horribly, but Madeleine still showed them old Earth movies when they scored well on math tests and Natalya had taught the more flexible kids some of her gymnastics moves. The school schedule had marched on, and so, they had reasoned, things couldn’t have been too bad. But now Madeleine was here, her wide smile replaced by an unfamiliar strict line, talking to them without the littles present. It became impossible to ignore the changes that they had silently agreed not to discuss.

“Please, do not worry. We will take care of you. We’ve already talked to the governor, and help is coming, but until it arrives things are going to have to be a little different.”

The older kids voted to join the teachers in hiding the worst of the situation from the littles, and though it was not mandatory they joined the teachers in accepting limited rations to give the littles the last of the fresh produce. Jimmy sent a holo of his lab station to Sam with the caption, “still cooler than math school!!” and a message to his parents that said, “i miss you.” Over the slow civilian comms relay that the school had, neither of his messages would be received for a month at least. By then, Madeleine had said, Starfleet or one of the trade ships would have arrived and things would be back to normal. But it made him feel better to know that his messages were out in space, soaring from beacon to beacon towards his family.

“Summons from the governor,” Madeleine said cheerfully when she woke up the boys in Jimmy’s dorm room on a morning in late September. “Personalized invitations, too! Jimmy, your parents aren’t in the quadrant now, are they?”

Jimmy yawned, stretching, the morning sun warming the room through the white linen curtains. “Nope,” he said, half-asleep. “They’re still in Delta for a while, I think.”

Madeleine hummed, but she tapped something on her padd. “You and Tommy are coming with me and Natalya today.” Tommy hung his head down from his place on the top bunk.

“Me, too?”

Madeleine ruffled his hair, fluffy with gravity. “Better dress nicely. No holes in your jeans.”

“But they’re cool!”

“You say that now,” Madeleine said. “And in thirty years you’ll look back at holos of yourself and say, why was my clothing falling apart all the time?” She chucked him on the back of the head gently and left them to get ready. They rose, and dressed, and breakfast was sparse but Natalya snuck them each a cup of coffee and it helped to cut the hunger.

Farm School was on the side of a mountain, set above the main town, and its farmland was surrounded by forest. Someday, Jimmy thought, more people would live here, and there would be less forest, and Tarsus would feel less isolated from the galaxy as a whole. But he was glad to live here now, because Mr. Lopez sometimes led them on hikes deep into the woods to identify each of the birds by their song, and it was easy to forget that there was anyone else in the universe at all. Madeleine and Natalya led their parade of fifty down the hill, down the packed dirt road from Farm School that would meet the paved road that led into town. It was a familiar road; when there were holidays, or after the harvests, the governor’s office would put on festivals and the students would run down the road in packs of four and five to spend their credits on sweets and new books and clothing. The littles skipped between them, holding hands, but Jimmy and the other older kids didn’t want to waste their energy, not when they’d have to walk back up the hill in the autumn sun later.

They followed Natalya and Madeleine to the town hall. There was an auditorium there, in a drafty old hall towards the back of the brick building, where sometimes the local players would put on shows or traveling troupes would stage concerts. Today it would be nearly at capacity--- it sat almost five thousand people, and it was over half-full already. Madeleine narrowed her eyes at the presence of the governor’s security force, wearing their forest green uniforms, lining the walls and standing at the entrances, but she led them into a few rows near the back of the hall where they could all sit together. She and Natalya talked quietly with their heads close together while Laika pulled a deck of cards from her back pocket and dealt Jimmy and Tommy into a game of ratscrew. One of the littles, Kevin, stood over Tommy’s shoulder and asked too many questions, and two others, Ellie and Mira, slid themselves into Laika’s lap when it became apparent that Madeleine and Natalya would not be distracted from their conversation by their pleas for attention. The game devolved quickly from there, but the littles could be convinced to play Go Fish instead of the faster slapping game as long as the older kids pretended that it was cool. The other kids had distracted themselves similarly; a padd with books, a holofilm between two girls sharing a set of headphones, one of the younger kids with his ever-present sketchbook. The auditorium filled up around them, until the enormous wooden doors banged shut and Madeleine pulled them all to their feet to pay attention. The crowd fell silent.

A small door to the right of the stage opened, and the governor stepped out, flanked on either side by his green-shirted guards. Jimmy had seen him before, at the winter festival and harvest celebrations. He had wavy silver hair, and uncannily light brown eyes that Jimmy could see flashing in the stage lights even from where he stood in the back. Governor Kodos climbed the stairs to the waiting podium, and with a nod to someone offstage a microphone buzzed mechanically to life.

“Good morning,” he said, and gazed solemnly at them. “I appreciate every one of you taking the time to join us here today. It was short notice, but the community we’ve built here never shies away from pulling together for each other, does it?” Madeleine and Natalya exchanged glances over the heads of the kids lined between them. Madeleine rolled her eyes. Kodos continued, but Jimmy had a hard time focusing on his words. The auditorium was hot with the trapped body heat of four thousand others, and he wished that they had all sat before Kodos started talking. His attention drifted.

“...grateful for the sacrifices you have made thus far, and grateful for all those to come,” Kodos said. Madeleine’s head snapped up, and her eyes met Natalya’s. Jimmy saw, in the laser-focused line between them, that they had heard something that he had not, and the skin on the back of his neck crawled. Around them, the quiet listening stillness of the crowd shivered into an animal intensity, a predatory waiting. Natalya glanced around, and a muscle twitched in her jaw. She and Madeleine passed something invisibly, silently, through the air between them.

In the space between one breath and the next Jimmy watched as his teachers shed their masks of civility to reveal iron ferocity beneath. They might have been science track at the Academy, but they were still soldiers. The crowd’s discontented energy began to boil over. Natalya grabbed one of the littlest kids, hefted her into her arms, and marched straight at the nearest guard, standing in front of an exit. Madeleine swept backwards as she shoved Jimmy towards Natalya and the door.

“Start walking,” she hissed. “Get the littles, get to the exit, and get out!” Jimmy turned, on autopilot, and shoved at Tommy’s shoulder. Madeleine doubled back to push the second row of students towards the door, putting herself between them and the guards lining the back wall.

“Move,” he whispered to Tommy, and they shuffled towards Natalya and the guard.

“She had an accident,” Natalya said, smiling. “Excuse us. I need to change her before it starts to stink.” The little girl in her arms hid her face in her neck under the scrutiny of the guard. Their line bunched behind Natalya as the crowd behind them started to yell out.

“Quiet!” Kodos’s voice boomed out through the auditorium, and for a moment everything went perfectly still. “I have no alternative but to sentence you to death. Your execution is so ordered, signed Kodos, governor of Tarsus IV.” There was one heartbeat of pure silence.

A phaser whined and discharged on the other side of the room. Someone screamed. Then five, seven, twelve other phasers fired. Bodies dropped to the ground. The crowd surged forward, out, away from the guards or towards them, yelling and crying out. Natalya kicked her guard in the knee, grabbed for his phaser as he fell, and shot him point-blank. Even as two other guards from the back of the auditorium ran towards her, she shoved the auditorium door open, revealing the cement hallway beyond.

“Go!” Natalya roared in pain as she staggered forward, a phaser burn eating through the shoulder of her jacket and revealing the muscle fiber beneath her scorched skin. She shoved the little girl in her arms at one of the older kids pushing by and turned, raising her phaser. As Jimmy passed through the doorway, running after Tommy, his heart in his throat and the cacophony of phaser fire filling his ears, he turned back--- to look for other kids left behind, or to look for Madeleine and Natalya, he wasn’t sure. He saw the bodies of his classmates, unlucky enough to have been in the last row and in the direct line of fire of the guards lining the back of the hall, curled together on the floor by their seats. Madeleine was sprawled over them, covering them, unmoving. There were piles of people, twisted together in awful ways, in front of the guards still holding phasers. And at the head of it all, Kodos onstage, hands clasped together, watching over the scene with a terrible calm.

The last time he saw Natalya, she stood in the open doorway between her fleeing students and the advancing guards with a half-charged phaser in her hand, blood dripping down her useless arm from the hole in her shoulder.

She screamed, “Close the door!” as she fired at one of the guards. Jimmy grabbed the door and slammed it shut, and he felt the reverberation of impact as something--- phaser discharge or Natalya or both--- hit it from the other side. He backed away, watching the door, but Natalya held the line. The door didn’t open. He turned and sprinted in the direction that Tommy and the others had gone as muffled screams faded behind him.

The backstreet behind the town hall was bizarrely, unsettlingly quiet. Natalya was gone. Madeleine was gone. Half of the students that they had come down with, maybe more, had been lost to the chaos in the auditorium. As Jimmy pulled the last door shut behind him, he saw Laika’s little gasp of relief. There was a question in her eyes, but he shook his head. There would not be anyone coming out behind him. They were on their own. Jimmy wound through the crowd to stand with her and Tommy, brushing his hand over the head or shoulder of a sniffling little as he passed through them.

“We can’t stay here,” Laika whispered, and she glanced nervously over her shoulder. “Where…?”

“We have to get out of the town,” Tommy whispered back. Jimmy stared at the plain white door that separated them from the slaughter in the theatre. He saw Madeleine sprawled protectively, uselessly, over the bodies of his classmates, Natalya’s broad shoulders filling the last doorway like she could protect them all. His heart thudded painfully against his ribs. Inside his head, he was screaming and screaming and screaming, but it didn’t come out. He felt his soul splitting into two. One part of him shrieked and beat his hands bloody against the white door. The other part was as cool as porcelain, utterly disconnected from everything he had seen, unfeeling but for the desire to stay alive, to keep the last of his friends alive.

“We’ll go through the woods,” he said. Laika and Tommy looked at him, but he couldn’t meet their eyes. The white door burned in his vision. “We probably know the forest around Farm School better than anyone else. If we get into the trees we at least won’t be seen. Then we can go home and find Mr. Park and he’ll know what to do.” He finally looked at his friends, and when he met their eyes, they nodded.

“Hold hands,” Laika said. She raised her voice slightly. “Ten and ups, grab a little. Buddy system.” Their little crowd--- only thirteen of them left, out of so many more--- shifted, reaching for each other. Jimmy felt like his bones were vibrating with the effort of keeping himself steady, but a tiny hand slid into his, grabbing onto three of his fingers with a chubby grip and anchoring him. He looked down.

Kevin stared up at him with enormous brown eyes, and it was the first time that Jimmy had ever seen him at a loss for words. He squeezed, feeling the fragility of the younger boy’s hand, and settled his shoulders back, the way he’d seen his dad do, the way Sam did. If they could get back home, then Mr. Park or Mr. Lopez would be able to fix this--- whatever was still fixable. All they had to do was get home. They could do that.

“Ready?” Jimmy’s mind shut everything else out--- his own screaming, the white door, Natalya’s bloody braid, the bone of her shoulder--- except for the only thought that mattered, singing through him in time with his heartbeat: get home, get home, get home. Laika nodded. Tommy nodded, gripping the hands of twin girls who had only arrived on Tarsus a few months prior. “Let’s go.”

They ran down the back alley that stretched along the back length of the auditorium, and their footfalls echoed eerily in the silence after the deafening phaser fire. Laika, who had arrived on Tarsus before any of them and knew the town better, took the lead. They followed her sure, quick steps, and she zigged down another alley that would take them out of the town, away from the main road, into the forest. Jimmy could feel the effects of a month of rationing in the burn of his lungs and heart, the empty energy of his cup of coffee making him jittery on his feet. When Kevin lost his footing on the uneven stones, Jimmy hauled him up onto his back and stumbled on.

It was as Laika led them onto the narrow plain between the edge of town and the start of the forest that they heard shouts behind them. Jimmy whipped his head back, searching for the source, and the flash of a hunter green uniform made his stomach leap into his throat. “No, no, no, no, no,” he whispered, in time with each footfall, and sprinted as hard as he could after Laika and the others. Kevin’s arms were clenched around his neck, and he could hear the younger boy’s muffled cries against his neck. He was almost across the plain, almost to the safety of the trees, when he heard the whine and discharge of phaser fire. He flinched to the side, but he was still on his feet. He was still running. Phasers discharged again and again, and the dry grass around him caught fire as he ran haphazardly towards the trees, trying to make them both a moving target.

Jimmy flung himself and Kevin behind the trunk of the closest tree. Pieces of bark exploded around him as phaser fire hit the other side. Jimmy slid Kevin from his back, pressing him to the ground.

“Are you okay?”

Kevin nodded, eyes wide and face completely blank. Jimmy thought that his own face might have looked the same. He wanted his parents--- but, no. If he thought about them, or the farmhouse in Iowa, he would never survive. He couldn’t think about anything but getting to Farm School with the littles and finding Mr. Park. Far-off phasers fired again and again, but his tree still stood. He looked up, and Laika was there, and Tommy and two other littles.

“Where is everyone else?” Jimmy’s voice was hoarse, scratching against his dry throat. His lungs still burned from the exertion of their flight. Laika’s eyes flicked reluctantly over his shoulder, out to the bare stretch of earth behind him. He dared one look over his shoulder. There were a handful of the guards from the auditorium, their pursuers, pacing the outskirts of the town with rifles in hand, and a trail of seven little crumpled bodies between the last of the buildings and the first of the trees.

Jimmy’s stomach heaved, but nothing came up. Stomach acid burned his throat. Tears stung his eyes. He heard a thin wailing, coming from Laika. He didn’t think she was aware that she was making noise. He closed his eyes and let the stony, unfeeling half of his brain take over.

“Get home,” he said, and Laika stopped wailing with a hiccup. “All we have to do is get home. We can do that.” He took Kevin’s hand in his again and held Laika’s gaze, before holding Tommy’s. “We’ll get the littles home. Mr. Park will know what to do.”

For a moment they stared at him, and Kevin sniffled. But then they nodded, and Laika turned to look at the sun before turning back to the woods.

“You know the way best,” he said. Laika loved to go birdwatching with Mr. Park. She had spent almost every weekend wandering through the woods, even when it was cold or rainy. “You can do this.” She nodded again, and she took the hands of one of the littles, and she led them up the mountain. Far from the main road, every step took them deeper into the trees until they couldn’t hear any sound but the wind through the reddening leaves and their own unsteady breathing.

They walked for two hours, taking a meandering route as Laika cast nervous glances in the direction of what Jimmy thought was the main road. As the sun started to slide down towards the opposite horizon, Jimmy caught her eye.

“All good?”

She chewed her lip nervously, glancing over his shoulder, but then her eyes snagged on something. She nodded decisively and pointed. Behind him, high up in an enormous tree, was the Farm School treehouse. “We’re close,” she whispered, and she led them on.

Farm School was as silent as a grave when Laika led their pack of six through the back entrance to the campus. They glanced around, but there was no one in sight.

“Maybe they’re hiding,” Tommy said. “Should we split up to look?”

“No,” Jimmy and Laika said, in unison. Jimmy shook his head as Laika said, “We should stay together.” Tommy nodded, and redoubled his grip on Mira and Ellie’s hands.

“Big house first,” Jimmy said, and they scuttled across the campus, through the empty fields. The grass had been trampled down, and any remnants of the ill-fated summer projects had been ground underfoot. They slipped into the main house silently, through an unlocked backdoor. The big industrial kitchen was empty, with the cabinets and closets thrown open like someone had rummaged through.

Jimmy pushed ahead to cross into the cafeteria, but Laika slowed, considering the empty shelves. “Someone took everything that was left here,” she said. “I don’t think the teachers would have done that. There’s not even salt left.” She was right, but there was nothing else they could do. They continued on.

There was no one in the big house. Not even bodies. Half the students had stayed behind that morning; those who hadn’t received a specific invitation to the day’s event. Jimmy’s brain reared back from the implications of that idea, and he put it from his mind. One thing at a time. They had gotten home. Now they had to find Mr. Park.

But he wasn’t in the big house, and he wasn’t in the classrooms or gymnasium. Jimmy turned in a circle under the dying sun, considering the shadows sinking over the campus. “The comm system is in the labs. It was in Mr. Park’s office, I think. Maybe he’s there.”

Laika nodded. She and Tommy looked at each other, and Tommy said, “I’ll stay with the littles in the big house. We’ll be in our room. You guys go look.”

Jimmy opened his mouth, ready to stop them from separating, but Laika shook her head, almost imperceptibly. They left Tommy with the littles and stole across the darkening campus to the laboratory building.

“I thought we said we weren’t splitting up,” Jimmy hissed, as they pushed open the door into the building. Laika considered him for a minute before she said, “Just in case there’s something we don’t want the littles to see.” Jimmy’s stomach dropped.

The labs were as silent as everywhere else was, but Jimmy’s ears still rang with the echoes of the phaser blasts. They tread carefully, fearfully, but every lab was empty. Mr. Park’s door, at the end of the central hall, was ajar when they reached it, and they exchanged uneasy glances. Mr. Park was quiet, and private, and his door was never open. But the comms unit--- an enormous, outdated, clunky thing compared to the sleek Starfleet one that Jimmy’s parents had kept in their Iowa house--- was on a table within.

Laika pushed the door further open. Jimmy crept in first. There was no one visible, but the comms unit was on. The front screen emitted a soft green glow. Jimmy approached it and tapped the playback button.

Mr. Park’s voice, harsh with his labored breathing, filled the room. They both jumped. “This is Lieutenant Commander Ashton Park, retired, sending an SOS from Tarsus IV. Something--- ah--- has gone terribly wrong. At first it was just a food shortage--- they said it was some fungus, but it was nothing I’d ever--- god! I’d ever seen.” Mr. Park’s breathing grew heavier, his breath hissing between his teeth. “Kodos has the only real comms relay, and he said he called for help, but I don’t think--- I don’t think he did. I don’t think anyone’s coming. And they took the kids. God, his guards took the kids. They had a list.” Jimmy turned to look at Laika, horror building in his chest, stealing his breath, but she wasn’t looking at him or the comms station. “He’s doing something. Kodos is up to something.” Mr. Park wheezed horribly, something wet rattling in his lungs. “This is it for me, but if anyone’s out there, monitoring any of these frequencies… get to Tarsus as fast as you can. While there’s still anyone to save. Park out.” Jimmy turned around to look where Laika was looking. A pair of dirt-stained work boots and two denim-clad legs poked out from behind Mr. Park’s desk. Laika shook her head, mouthing, “No, no, no, no,” and Jimmy grabbed her by the arm, towing her backwards.

“We have to get out of here,” he said, and she let him turn him from Mr. Park’s body and away from the office. Jimmy left the comms relay on but shut the door behind them.

“We can’t stay here,” he said, as they crossed back to the big house. “Some of the guards saw us running. They’ll come back for us.”

“The treehouse,” Laika said. “We’ll take the camping stuff and stay there. We can--- there’s probably some stuff we can still forage, at least for a few weeks, and drink from the streams. We can stay out there until help arrives.” Jimmy nodded.

“We can keep the littles safe. That’s what Madeleine and Natalya would do,” Jimmy said, and Laika’s lip trembled, but she nodded too.

The sun had set by the time they returned to the big house. They told Tommy what they needed to do, took all the camping supplies that they could carry, and left Farm School behind. As the six survivors headed back into the woods, towards their treehouse, their former home receded into shadow and was gone.

The four in-between weeks were fuzzier in Kirk’s memories than the beginning and the end. Most of the days blurred together in a mess of hunger and sleep, of stripping the bark off of trees with a knife and digging out the soft wood inside to eat; of telling the littles that collecting acorns was a game and whoever found the most would win; of the bright sharp days after stealing something worth eating from the town when they were brave or dumb enough to risk getting caught by the guards who still hunted runners on the streets. Kirk let most of those memories spin by them in blurry streaks, waiting for the memories of the days that mattered.

There was the day that the littles were too weak to climb the rope ladder anymore, and the big kids were too weak to carry them up. Jimmy packed up their sleeping bags and iodine tablets and tossed them down out of the treehouse, and Laika led them to an old animal warren that she had found while scavenging. Whatever large creature had created the den in the roots of the tree was long gone, and they crawled down into it gratefully. If Jimmy was honest with himself, he wasn’t sure how many more times he could have made it up the ladder before eventually falling--- the exertion made him dizzy, and his hands were too weak to grip the rope ladder. The den was more dangerous than the treehouse had been--- closer to town, closer to the ground, and every once in a while they heard deep voices of adults echoing through the trees. But they didn’t say so out loud.

In the beginning, before there was only the hunger and then the numbness, Laika and Jimmy and Tommy had harsh, whispered conversations about trying to save their classmates. What had they been taken from Farm School for? If terrible things were happening to them, shouldn’t they try to help them? They had no weapons, no help, no way to fend off an army of Kodos’s murderous guards if they tried to free their classmates, but talking about taking action kept away the urge to lay down and die.

Then, three weeks after the massacre, Laika came back with one expired can of sweet potatoes and a haunted, ragged look that Jimmy hadn’t seen on her before. He dragged her down into the den, catching her when she stumbled on her feet. Tommy leapt up to grab her other arm, and even with both of them holding on she trembled so badly that Jimmy thought she would vibrate out of her skin and into a puddle. They set her on the ground, used one of their hunting knives to wedge the top of the can off, and split the meager amount between the six of them.

“I saw Gemma,” she whispered, later that night. Jimmy sat, back against the wall of the warren, watching the tunnel entrance. Tommy lay with his back to it, one of the littles curled up against him for warmth. Laika sat cross-legged between them, no longer shaking but with a thousand-yard stare that seemed to burn through the wall of their safe hidey-hole, like she could see all the way back to the town. “There was a house with all the doors open, and I could see the kitchen… I thought I might get in and out, that there was no one inside.”

“Gemma was in the house?”

“Her parents live here,” Laika said dully. “Or, lived. They were all dead.”

Tommy closed his eyes. Jimmy said, “Starved?”

But Laika shook her head. “I don’t think so. They didn’t have food either, like I thought they might, but there was something else wrong with them. Their skin was all gray.” Jimmy shivered. “I looked everywhere, but that was all they had,” Laika said, lifting her chin at the now-empty can. “But they weren’t going to eat it.”

They sat in silence, listening to the quiet rustling of the trees outside, until Tommy unscrewed the lid to one of their bottles of stream water and offered it to Laika. She shook her head. “I drank enough out of their faucet,” she said.

“Fancy-pants,” Jimmy said, and he took the bottle when Tommy passed it to him. Laika laid down where she had been sitting, between Tommy and the wall, and Jimmy squeezed both of their hands before moving to lay between the littles and the entrance to the den. His bones pressed uncomfortably against the ground, but he curled up next to Mira and Ellie and fell asleep.

Jimmy woke up a few hours later. It stunk of warm skin, of sickness and rot. The earth was hard beneath his body. It felt like his hip bones, his tailbone and shoulder blades, each of his knobby vertebrae, were pressing a bruise against the inside of his skin where they rested heavily against the ground. It was mostly dark out, no sunlight to illuminate the rabbit-warren tunnel, only the faint light of a waxing moon providing any visibility. The shadowed bodies of his pack lay alongside him in gentle repose. He counted them off: one was him, two was Ellie, three was Mira, four was Kevin, five was Tommy. At six, he jerked to a halt. Something wasn’t right. Before he was aware that he was moving he had scrambled across the dirt to her: Laika, her brown hair a rat’s nest of dirt and leaves, unmoving.

“No, no, no,” he whispered, and shook Tommy’s shoulder. “Tommy, wake up!” Her unnatural stillness had caught his attention: now that he was next to her, he could see more clearly the graying waxy pallor of her cheeks and lips, the immobile smoothness of her eyelids. Tommy woke with a jolt, rolling over immediately. He pushed himself up with one hand and shook Laika with the other.

“Hey,” he said, his voice growly with sleep. “Wake up.”

Jimmy grabbed her other shoulder, shaking her, the other hand coming to rest against her gaunt cheek. “Hey. Laika. It’s not funny. Wake up.” But Laika did not wake up. Her eyes did not open. Her chest did not rise.

“Jimmy, what happened?” Tommy whispered.

“I don’t know,” Jimmy said, disbelief raising his voice high like one of the little’s. “I just woke up, and I saw that---” He gagged, overwhelmed by the smell of dirty skin and death, sickness and rot. “Laika, wake up!” God, he was so tired, and so hungry, and there were only five of them now, and what would they do without her? She had been so brave, had stolen for them, had known the woods and the way around town better than anyone, and now she was so still and silent, and they couldn’t drag her back from wherever she had gone without them. He closed his eyes, and the cold, analytical half of him rose up and drowned the half of him that cried out at how unfair it all was.

“We have to move her,” Jimmy whispered as Tommy whimpered to himself, hand still mechanically rocking Laika’s shoulder.

“What? No! Why?” Tommy whispered back.

“We can’t let the littles see her like this,” he said.

“Where are we going to put her? We can’t bury her!”

“Down the mountain. Near the town. They won’t notice another body.” Jimmy hated the words as they came out of his mouth: practical, useful, awful. He wanted to lay down next to Laika, close his eyes, and follow where she had gone. But he couldn’t--- not with Tommy and the littles still here. Not with his last holo to Sam and his message to his parents still soaring through space. Tommy sniffled, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and nodded. Jimmy nodded back and shoved Tommy gently. Tommy got up, stepping carefully around the sleeping littles, and gingerly picked up Laika’s ankles. Jimmy wormed his hands under her shoulders and bent his arms under hers, picking her up off the ground. They backed up to the entrance and Jimmy went as slowly as he could, arms burning with the strain of Laika’s weight, until he felt the cool air of the night outside of their den on his back.

Together they carried her down the mountain in the worst parade of two Jimmy had ever been a part of, and they left her on the outskirts of the town. Tommy kissed her forehead and cried. They held hands as they stole quietly back to their safe hole. They crawled back inside, each refusing to let go of the other’s hand, and fell asleep curled together.

When the littles woke up the next morning, and Jimmy pulled them all into the circle of his arms and told them that Laika wasn’t coming back, they were too tired to cry. But he felt their shoulders deflate, sinking further into themselves, and he held them closer. Tommy leaned against him, keeping Jimmy from tilting over, and their broken family of five slept most of that day away, letting the sun rise and set without them.

The next day, Tommy left them in the den to scavenge acorns. He came back as the sun slipped down below the horizon, staggering with exhaustion, his empty, distended stomach painfully visible as he held his bounty in the bottom of his shirt like an apron. Using two rocks and all the strength left in their arms, he and Jimmy cracked them open and scraped the meager meat out of the shells to distribute between themselves and the littles. The underbrush had died with the changing of the seasons, and Laika had held most of their knowledge about what plants were edible. Without her, they would have to survive on acorns and tree bark and water.

The morning after that, Mira cried and wailed and refused to open her eyes, curled around herself. Ellie moaned in sympathy, and Kevin sat next to them and talked incessantly about anything that came into his mind, just to distract them. But his eyes were dim and glassy, and more often than not his sentences trailed off before he finished them. The morning after that, all three littles refused to sit up and curled together with heavy-lidded eyes.

“I’m going into town,” Jimmy said. For a second, it seemed like Tommy would argue with him, to ask him to stay. But in the end he just nodded and pulled Mira against his chest, rocking her side to side. Jimmy left them like that. If Laika was right, and something other than starvation was killing the colonists, there might be something left for them to scavenge. He would find it and bring it back to them, and the littles would sit up and talk to them, and they would survive another few days.

The leaves had begun to fall from the trees. If he had counted the days correctly, and there was no guarantee that he had, October would start soon. Last year, that meant harvest festivals and a gourd that was certainly not a pumpkin but could be carved like one to be set out on every doorstep. Gemma had won the carving contest--- but he wouldn’t think about Gemma now. He dragged his legs, step after step, down the mountain to the town.

He didn’t see another living soul, but the bodies of the colonists were everywhere. On their front stoops, laying behind houses, on the main street, their graying, decaying corpses bloated and stinking. Some of them looked emaciated, their skin shrink-wrapped to their bones. But Laika had been at least partially right: not all of the dead looked like they had starved. Jimmy felt the knobs of his own knees knocking together as he passed the grayish-blue body of a man who looked like he should have been in the peak of health, except for the fact that he was dead.

He stole from doorway to doorway, peering around corners, moving as quietly as he could. But for the first time since the day in the auditorium, he didn’t see the green-shirted law enforcement agents prowling the outskirts of the town, nor guarding the waist-high iron fence that circled the governor’s house. He ducked around another corner, closer to the center of town, and stumbled over a pair of legs in dark pants.

He reared back, his heart in his throat at the forest-green jacket on the torso, before he registered the sickly gray pallor of the body’s skin. This guard looked like Jimmy imagined he did; sunken cheeks, deep circles under his eyes, and the bones of his knuckles jutted out of the skin like mountains. “Not even guards get fed,” he muttered to himself, and he felt a savage relief that those who had not been sacrificed, who had done the sacrificing, had not been spared the horrors that they had endured. He moved to continue onward before pausing. The guard’s phaser was still tucked into his holster.

Jimmy held his breath and bent over the body. It was stiff, unmoving, as he reached with shaking fingers to unclip the strap and slide the phaser out. He watched the body nervously, but it did not awaken to grab him. He glanced at the settings on the phaser, but he didn’t know what they meant, so he left them as they were and stuck the weapon in the waistband of his ratty jeans.

He had only taken one step away from the body when there was a crackle. He spun, horrified, but the guard still hadn’t moved. The crackling noise came again.

“My chosen ones,” Kodos rasped. His voice came through an ancient portable radio, clipped on the other side of the guard’s belt. Jimmy froze as that voice pierced through the fog of hunger and exhaustion, lighting up his brain with fear and anger. Why had so many people died, why had Laika died, and Kodos still got to live? Kodos coughed. “The grand experiment must end here. There is no path forward. Forgive me.” He wheezed again, voice quieting. Jimmy hunched next to the corpse and the radio, ears straining. “If anyone is out there, heed me. We must burn it down.” He reeled back.

“Burn it down. Destroy the evidence. Cleanse this place.” Kodos coughed, and then the crackle of another radio breaking through the static interrupted him.

“I hear you, sir,” someone else’s voice muttered, weak and ragged. “I can do it.”

“I owe you… a debt of gratitude,” Kodos said. Then the radio went silent. Jimmy froze on his haunches, consumed by his anger, replaying Kodos’s message in his head. Then something clicked, and he staggered to his feet. Blood dribbled slowly back into his weak limbs, but he forced them into movement. He turned back the way he had come and heaved his starving body back home. Kodos had called to burn it all, and someone had responded.

It had been a dry summer. It hadn’t rained in weeks. His friends were in the woods.

Lungs aching, muscles cramping, swollen stomach pinching in pain, he ran. Against the wishes of every bone in his body, he ran as hard as he could, straight down the center streets of the remains of the town, back towards the den and Tommy and the littles. He had to warn them. The woods were going to light up like a matchstick after the summer they’d had. They couldn’t have starved and survived for so long for Kodos to kill them like this, impersonally, anonymously. Madeleine and Natalya didn’t die in the auditorium so that Kodos could have the final word. Jimmy broke from the town and sprinted flat-out for the cover of the woods.

Stealth didn’t matter anymore. He screamed, “Tommy!” He sucked in huge, gasping breaths as his stomach threatened to rebel and his legs cramped and his knees ached. “Tommy! Get up!” He staggered through the woods, his vision going black at the edges as his body tried to collapse, but he shoved himself up and kept going, screaming for his friend.

Finally, up ahead, the enormous tree that had sheltered them--- and from the roots of it, an addled Tommy and littles emerging into the sunlight.

“Jimmy?” Tommy rubbed one eye, dizzy in the sudden brightness. “What happened?” Jimmy opened his mouth to respond when they heard it. Further up the mountain, something snapped and popped, then rustled, then roared. The fire caught.

“Run,” Jimmy said, grabbing Kevin and swinging him onto his back as Tommy grabbed Mira and Ellie’s hands. “Run!” His body protesting every step, his spine bending under Kevin’s weight, Jimmy and Tommy fled. Something cracked, and a hot gust of wind pressed them forward, singeing their hair and burning their backs. Mira started to cry. It was still somehow better than her half-dead silence from that morning.

“What---?” Tommy gasped out, footsteps pounding in time with Jimmy’s.

“Kodos,” Jimmy spat. “Fire.” Tommy moaned with fear, but when Ellie stumbled at their speed he hefted her onto his back. Behind them, the woods that had been their shelter and salvation erupted into an inferno. The flames caught the few leaves that hadn’t fallen and spread in a crown fire over their heads as they pelted out of the forest. Out of the corner of his eye, Jimmy could see it racing down the hill, almost even with them. Tears streamed down his face from fear and the smoke, which caught in his lungs, stung his skin. He could see similar tracks running down the dirt on Tommy’s face.

They had the littles. They had each other. They broke from the cage of the treeline as the fire leapt at their heels and caught in the dry autumn grass of the open plain between them and the town. The grass blazed up immediately, and Jimmy’s legs, his hips and back and shoulders burned with it. Tommy cried out and swung Ellie up too, away from the fire, her screams drowned out by the roar of the crown fire above.

Ahead, there was one patch of unburned safety that Jimmy could see. He cut towards it. “The road!” Tommy followed him, coughing as he ran, and they covered the distance to the hard-packed dirt as fast as they could. They staggered onto the dry earth as the plain behind them sparked and hissed.

Mira moaned, and the pathetic little sound broke through Jimmy’s panic as the pain of their exertion set in. He let Kevin slide to the ground, and the friction of the little boy’s clothes against his scorched skin was like being burned all over again. Ellie had gone very, very pale, the only shock of color on her skin the angry red of her legs and feet.

Tommy wobbled, and Jimmy grabbed his elbows, keeping him upright.

“Stay with me, okay?”

“It hurts, Jimmy,” Tommy said, and Jimmy didn’t dare look down over his shoulder to his back. His clothes were sloughing off of him, destroyed. Kodos couldn’t have him like this.

“Just a few steps more,” Jimmy said. He took Kevin’s hand in his and gently picked up Mira. “Can you walk with me? Just a few more?” Tommy wavered on his feet, but Ellie slid her hand into his and he nodded.

“It’s just a little further,” Jimmy said. “Then you’ll feel better.” There was a reservoir on the other side of town; even the farm’s irrigation system had been hooked up to it. Jimmy had never prayed as hard as he did that moment for there to be water in the reservoir still. Step by excruciating step, he led them down the road for the first time since the massacre day. Tommy fell silent and his eyes sometimes slid shut, but he held Ellie’s hand and walked on. Jimmy lost the feeling in his legs, but Mira let him put her down after a few minutes and she limped alongside them. The fear of guards or Kodos never really went away, but they didn’t see another living being on the road. The fire burned on the other side of the town, its roar muted by blessed distance and halted by the paved roads. Minutes later, or maybe hours, he was peering over the stone lip of the reservoir. The drought had done its damage, but there was a few blessed feet of water within. He found the stone steps leading down into it.

Jimmy walked the littles down into the water. They stood still and quiet as he stripped their burned clothing away from them before stepping into the water with them. Then, once they were carefully ensconced in the water where it was shallow enough for them to stand, he stripped his own clothing away. The phaser he had stolen, somehow still in his jeans despite his pell-mell flight, got dropped on top of his pile of clothes along with his t-shirt before he followed the littles into the water. He didn’t know if it was clean, but he couldn’t bring himself to care: it was cool, and there was enough to stand in, and it felt like heaven. Tommy’s clothes dripped off him, shredding as he pulled his shirt over his head, and his back was a mess of dirt and singed skin. But he sloshed into the water, eyes closing in relief, and the five of them drifted as the fire burned itself out on the other side of town. Smoke billowed overhead, clouding the teal sky with the angry black smog of organic matter. The ash fell like dirty snow. They still didn’t have anything to eat, but they filled their bellies with water, and it almost felt like being full. As the sun slipped down behind the horizon, they piled together on the day-warmed terrace steps and slept.

A high, distant droning woke Jimmy from his restless sleep, early the next morning. It wormed into his dreams, filling his mind, before his subconscious recognized it and he jolted awake. Kevin tipped away from him as he shot upward, scrambling for his jeans. Tommy’s eyes opened slowly.

“Where’re you going?” His words were slurred, but Jimmy didn’t have time to wait for him to wake up. If he was right, it wouldn’t matter.

“Shuttle!” Jimmy grabbed the phaser and his t-shirt, jabbed it into the waist of his pants and dragged it over his head. “I’ll be back!” His whole body felt alight with something he almost didn’t recognize--- hope, a hope so big that it hurt to breathe. He sprinted up the terraced steps, cocking his head to one side and scanning the sky as he ran. It was just past daybreak, the true teal of the sky still warming up from the inky black of night. He ran towards what he thought was the source of the sound, straight up the road from the reservoir towards the town. Maybe he could shoot the phaser in the air and get the attention of the pilot? They had to be looking for the colonists: whether it was a trader or a rescue shuttle or even just a random traveler, they had to be looking for the people who lived here. It must have already landed; he didn’t see anything in the sky. He followed the high humming of an active engine through the town square, past the cursed town hall, past the burnt husks of houses unlucky enough to be built from wood instead of brick. The land to his right was scorched black earth, ash as far as the eye could see. Eerie black fingers of burnt trees reached for the sky. He tore down the road towards the song of the engine.

“I’m here! I’m over here!” He hollered as loud as he could until his throat burned, but he didn’t see anyone. There was no movement, but the roar of the shuttle was growing so loud that it was vibrating the air around him. A shuttle meant people. People meant help.

Jimmy skirted the outer fence of the governor’s house, running along the northernmost edge. His hand brushed the iron of the latticework, and it trembled with the force of the engine. It had to be closer. He passed the back edge of the house and skidded to a halt.

The governor’s backyard was an enormous expanse of burnt grass and bushes, and parked in the center was a black shuttle. As Jimmy’s heart pounded and he cried out in outrage and disbelief, he registered three details in stark relief.

The first was that the Kodos’s guards had exchanged their hunter-green uniforms for black ones. Two of them held up a sagging gray body between them, and a third circled them with a plasma rifle in hand.

The second was that the shuttle door was open, and a fourth guard leaned out of it, reaching for the body.

The third was that the body was staggering to its feet, lifting its head. It was Kodos. He was alive. His horrible uncanny eyes were alight in his gaunt and crevassed face.

This was a mistake. This had to be a mistake. Help could not have arrived for him, after what he had done. What about the littles? What about Tommy? What about him?

He screamed out, “Hey!” The procession of guards and the devil himself paused, all four of their heads turning to look at him. “Help us!”

Time slowed as the guards looked at him, on the other side of the fence, then looked at each other. Jimmy grabbed the fence between them, shaking with the force of his hope and disbelief, and watched as they looked away from him and kept walking.

They kept walking. They were going to put Kodos on the shuttle and take him away and leave them here. Fury like Jimmy had never felt before rose like a tsunami within him, drowning out all reason and leaving only the knowledge that Kodos did not deserve to be rescued from the ruins of the colony that he had destroyed.

There was a phaser tucked into the back of his jeans. The cool metal of the barrel dug into his back. He took it out and, like he was shooting skeet back on the farm with Sam, sighted along it. He saw Kodos’s fine gray hair and craggy face on the other side.

He fired.

The head of the nearest guard snapped up at the whine of the weapon. He locked eyes with Jimmy and, without hesitation, stepped directly in front of the bolt of energy meant for Kodos. Jimmy watched in frozen horror as the phaser fire hit the guard and tore him open. He spun and dropped to the ground. Kodos glanced blankly at the body on the ground, just another sacrifice for him, and allowed the guard in the shuttle to grab his arm and haul him in. The guard with the rifle pointed it directly at Jimmy.

He had shot at Kodos and missed. The shuttle and the people on it weren’t going to help them. Jimmy stood his ground, phaser still raised, and glared at the guard, refusing to look at the rifle aimed at his head. He was going to die, but he was going to do it without flinching. In his periphery, he saw the last guard drag the body of his comrade into the shuttle. The blood from the wound glinted against the dirt in the early-morning sun.

The other guard came back around and pushed the barrel of the rifle down. “Leave it,” he said. “Look at him. He’s almost dead anyway.” With a final sneer the rifleman turned away. They swung themselves into the black shuttle, and the door slammed shut behind them.

Jimmy watched numbly as the shuttle lifted off vertically, soaring higher and higher until it was just a black dot against the blue sky. Then it was gone. He looked down again, and saw the blood of the man that he had killed drying on the hard-packed earth.

He threw the phaser as far as he could away from himself and, turning from the scene of his violence and failure, vomited up all of the water left in his stomach. He leaned back against the sharp metal of the fence and slid to the ground, staring blankly at the blackened edge of the prairie beyond the town. He didn’t know how long he sat there for before Tommy’s voice broke through his reverie.

“What happened?” Tommy was shaking him, panic on his face, and Jimmy felt guilty. He had meant to go back to them, but he couldn’t seem to shake the whine of the phaser out of his ears. It was hard to hear anything else over it. The littles hovered over his shoulder, their drawn faces pinched with worry.

“Nothing,” Jimmy said, with a glance at the littles. He coughed, stomach acid burning in his throat, and let Tommy help him up. “I think this house is empty now, though. Let’s see if there’s anything in there to eat.”

“Isn’t this the governor’s house?” Tommy dropped his voice low as the littles straggled behind them in a line. “You don’t think he’s…?”

“He’s gone,” Jimmy said, and his own voice was rough and unfamiliar.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Jimmy said, and glanced down at the littles as Kevin snagged two of his fingers in his weakened grip. He led them into the empty house, and they walked quickly past the rooms where the bodies of guards decayed on couches and seated against walls, until they arrived in an enormous kitchen. It seemed to be made entirely of ceramic and aluminum, with two huge ovens set into the wall and a stovetop built directly into the counter. It was so different from the industrial-sized kitchen at Farm School, which managed to feel warm and cozy despite being built for mass production. This kitchen was cold and clinical. They opened all the cabinets and drawers, finding only utensils and pots and pans, before Tommy noticed a narrow door set back in a corner. He opened it, and revealed stairs leading down into a darkness that smelled like soil and rot. They both looked mistrustfully at it.

“I’ve got this one, Jimmy,” Tommy said finally, and left him standing in the kitchen with the littles. Jimmy continued to open cabinets and drawers, finding nothing but kitchen utilities, until Tommy climbed back up the stairs, wiping his hands on his already horrible pants.

“It’s awful down there,” Tommy said, but he clutched a can in his hands victoriously. “Like the summer projects all over again. But I did find this.” He wiped oily blue smears off the label, revealing a label for baked beans that had expired the year previous. They heated the beans up in a pot on the stove, reveling in the warmth from the electric burner, and the five ate directly from the pot with wooden spoons, just because they could. They dumped the pot and spoons in the sink without cleaning them.

They scavenged through the house, stealing blankets and pillows off of couches that were unoccupied, and found a room that didn’t stink too badly of decay--- a sunroom near the back of the house, through the windows of which Jimmy could see the flattened, desiccated grass where the shuttle had been. As the littles slept, their bellies not empty for once, Jimmy told Tommy, quietly, shamefully, what he had done. The sun was setting by the time he finished.

Tommy considered what he had said, turning the embroidered edge of a blanket over in his hands. Jimmy picked at the burned skin on his hands and tried not to think about the blood against the dirt.

Finally Tommy looked up, eyes flashing in fading light, and said, “Fuck ‘em. He probably deserved it.” Something in Jimmy’s heart unclenched. He and Tommy fell asleep facing each other, with a roof over their heads and the littles between them.

He awoke the next morning to shouting and movement, adults in red and blue and gold swarming into the room with phasers and comms. Jimmy flung himself upright, crouching over the littles, baring his teeth at the intruders before he recognized the familiar uniforms.

“Oh, my god,” the closest Starfleet officer said, a whirring tricorder in her hand. “You’re alive.”

The memories of the next month were a blur of pain and space. Jimmy and Tommy and the littles were beamed up together to the U.S.S. Valiant, where they were poked and prodded and tied to biobeds with IVs of fluids and nutrients. They were scanned with every machine in Medbay, it seemed, while the doctors spoke quietly to each other and refused to tell them anything about what the scans said. Not a single one of them stopped shaking for the first seventy-two hours.

After living feral for a month, adjusting to the sterility of a starship was excruciating. The littles screamed shrilly when Jimmy or Tommy were out of their vision. Jimmy ate a meal from the replicator and threw it up immediately. Tommy had to be sedated and restrained after the doctor tried to put him in the metal box of the dermal regenerator for his back. They refused to sleep apart from each other, and the whirs and beeps of the unfamiliar ship made it impossible to pretend that they were in their treehouse or the den. Jimmy whispered to Tommy that he was afraid of Kodos coming to find him, and Tommy held his hand in the dark of the room that they all shared. Under the harsh lights of the starship and after the dirt and blood and soot was washed away, their skin was an unhealthy gray, and every day medical staff took their blood and patted their heads and made nervous eye contact when they thought the children weren’t looking.

In the end, the captain and the first officer told Jimmy and Tommy, it was Lieutenant Commander Ashton Park’s last desperate call that got the Valiant to Tarsus in time. Kodos had never used the government relay to call for help, not even when the harvest first started dying.

Then there was the journey back to Earth. Tommy and their littles were shipped off to what remained of their families, and no one would tell Jimmy where they went. Jimmy’s own parents were waiting for him when he got to Earth. A week after he arrived home, Sam kicked his hospital door open and set up shop next to his bed while he slowly ingested three months’ worth of nutrients through an IV and finished regrowing his skin. Every night, he woke up screaming Kodos’s name, and his parents looked nervously at each other, and Sam stopped going home with their parents and instead dragged a cot into Jimmy’s hospital room.

Then Dr. Johns replaced the familiar Iowa family doctor that he had been seeing. Jimmy confessed that he wasn’t sleeping, couldn’t bear to be the only person breathing in a room, and he told Dr. Johns that all he could think about was Kodos coming back for him.

“Kodos is dead, Jimmy,” Dr. Johns had said kindly, reading the screen on the machine hooked up to Jimmy’s arm.

“You found him?” Jimmy sat up so suddenly he got dizzy, the hospital room swirling around him. Dr. Johns gave him an odd look.

“Governor Kodos died on Tarsus, Jimmy. In the fire that claimed everyone else.”

“No,” he said. “No, he didn’t. I told you, and I told the doctor on the Valiant. There was a shuttle! It came and got him!” Dr. Johns sat on the edge of his bed and pushed him back against the headboard with a gentle hand.

“Please, calm yourself,” he said. “You are very upset. You survived something awful. It is only natural that your thoughts are confused at this time.”

“I’m not confused,” Jimmy had insisted. “I know what I saw. And he got out.” Dr. Johns had a conversation with his parents outside his hospital room, and through the little window set into the door he saw his mother stare haughtily out the hallway window as his dad wiped a hand across his devastated face. Sam held his hand and said, “I believe you, Jimmy.” But Sam couldn’t convince their parents or Dr. Johns, and then Jimmy woke up from the same awful nightmare to find his old friends from his elementary school in Iowa standing behind his mom with balloons. They sat around him as he tried to sit up straight and felt the weakness in the muscles along his spine, and then after a painfully awkward hour they left, and he did not see them again until he started back at school the following year, when he only had to check in at the Dr. Johns’s clinic once a week for blood testing and dialysis. They said hi, and they signed each other’s yearbooks, and Jimmy skipped the school dances and football games and a lot of his classes to climb up to the roof of the high school and stare at the stars instead.

Then he got to the Academy, and he met Elise.

“We’ve been keeping an eye on you,” she said to him during their first meeting, her eyes twinkling. “We knew you were going to be special.” He talked about Kodos and Tarsus, and it helped, until it didn’t. She taught him how to hide the parts of him that the IVs and dialysis and dermal regenerators didn’t fix. He met Bones, and made friends, and he was surrounded by people who didn’t know where he had been and what it had done to him, and he was happier than he’d been in years, despite the nightmares and the panic attacks and the grief. He missed Tommy and the littles, but Elise said that she’d checked in on them and that they were doing well, and at the Academy he got to learn by doing and experimenting for himself the way he had at Farm School. Then he’d graduated, and worked his way up the ranks despite the ceaseless fear that Kodos would hunt him down someday, and eventually he became a captain and was given the Enterprise. The ghosts of Tarsus lived in him, but he had bricked them behind a wall that got thicker and thicker with every passing year.

It wasn’t until he had gone and fallen in love that he had been forced to reckon with the fact that he still carried those ghosts at all.

☆☆☆

The memory-stream faded, leaking away into the abyss. Kirk stood in the black of the meldspace. His whole soul ached with grief and remembrance, but there was a clarity to it. There was still a wound in him, one that had healed poorly, but in the telling, some of the rot in him had been finally cleaned away.

Jim, Spock said, and it was with a slight jolt of surprise that Kirk remembered that he wasn’t alone. Spock’s voice was ragged. I grieve with thee.

Kirk bowed his head, and he sensed Spock’s mind curled around his, protective, comforting.

I will take us from the meld now, Spock said. You will rest. And then we must talk about what you showed me. The rough edges of Spock’s voice were smoothed over as he reasserted his control, and Kirk felt a flicker of unease at his words. He had tried to convince the rest of the world that Kodos had escaped, and had failed each time. But then Spock said, without preamble, I believe you, captain, and one more piece of Kirk’s anxiety melted away. There was a sense of rising, as if coming up from the bottom of a deep pool, and the blackness lessened until Kirk felt himself reemerge from a very long tunnel back into his own mind.

He still lay on his side, Spock’s hand pressed to his face and clutched between his own. His arm was numb beneath him, and his eyelids were sticky with stillness. He opened his eyes as Spock pulled his hand back from his face, extending and clenching his fingers. Spock’s eyes opened as the familiar noises of the Enterprise around him floated slowly back into his awareness: the hum of the warp drive, footsteps in the corridor, faint beeping from far away.

“That’s what I saw,” Kirk said. “That’s what I did.” He rolled over onto his back and stared up at his familiar ceiling. He was tired, all the way down to his bones. He felt as though someone had wrung his brain out like a sponge. “Can we discuss this in the morning?”

“Certainly,” Spock said, after hesitating only for a second. His voice was deep with disuse. Kirk closed his eyes and waited for him to get up.

He did not get up.

Kirk opened his eyes and turned his head. Spock still lay on his side, watching him. Rather than the pity or disgust Kirk expected, Spock’s face was open and warm.

“What?”

Spock hesitated, before reaching across the space between them and resting his hand on Kirk’s bicep. “I am disquieted by the possibility of you having died before I knew of your existence in our universe.” His fingers flexed, tightening on Kirk’s arm. “I have never been more grateful for your refusal to submit to the law of large numbers.”

Kirk closed his eyes, feeling the warmth of Spock’s palm on his skin. He brought his other hand to cover it, his fingers brushing the back of Spock’s wrist. They lay next to each other, their breathing slowing until they were inhaling in tandem. The post-meld exhaustion pulled at Kirk’s mind, the gentle rhythm of Spock’s breathing lulling him to sleep.

“Jim,” said Spock quietly. Kirk forced his eyes open again, fighting the weight of his eyelids. “Would you like me to stay?” Kirk looked at him, trying to read his expression--- the Vulcan’s face was neutral, watching him in kind. But his arm was still stretched across the distance between them, his hand steady against Kirk’s arm. Spock had walked unflinchingly beside him through every memory of the worst days of his life; he did not think that he would begrudge him his company now.

“Please,” Kirk said. Spock’s hand pressed against his arm before he sat up swiftly and stood.

“I will return momentarily,” he said, and Kirk nodded. Spock crossed the room, retrieved his clothing from his half of the closet, and vanished into the bathroom. Kirk heard the air recycler kick on at his entrance, and he pressed his hands to his eyes.

Despite everything, despite his grief and trauma and the ghosts and his failures, he felt the irrepressible start of a crooked smile forcing its way onto his face. He felt lighter. He felt free. He had shared everything that Elise had told him could never be shared, and Spock had not run screaming from the room or removed him from duty. He had told Spock about Kodos and the shuttle, and Spock had believed him. Showing Spock what he had done, what he had failed to do, hadn’t been the end of the line. It was only the beginning of the conversation. And then Spock had reached out to touch him. He wasn’t alone.

Spock reentered in the tunic and pants he slept in, with his makeup gone and smelling faintly of mint. Kirk sat up. Spock met his eyes.

“You know,” Kirk said, before he could chicken out. “That couch is not the most comfortable piece of furniture to sleep on.”

“I did not object to it,” Spock said, but he clasped his hands behind his back and cocked his head slightly.

“It’s not awful, but the bed is better for a proper rest.”

“Indeed,” Spock said slowly, and Kirk saw a hint of that daring steal into his eyes, glinting in the half-dark. “What do you propose, captain?”

“I think the most logical course of action is to share the bed,” Kirk said. “It’s been a long night. And we’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

“I had assumed the day would be the same size as all other days, but I am curious to hear why you think otherwise,” Spock said, and he crossed the room to the bed. Kirk scooted backwards so he could slide beneath the comforter, and Spock joined him.

“Computer, lights to zero,” Kirk said. He tried to steady his breathing, sink into the sleep that his exhausted brain wanted, he couldn’t. Though his brain unhelpfully, unsurprisingly supplied him with the image of the shuttle taking the governor away again, and he could still feel the lingering dread and exhaustion in his limbs, the fear that Kodos would hunt him down had lost a little of its strength. Even if Kodos did find him out here, he was only human, and there was a Vulcan laying in Kirk’s bed. Spock would tear Kodos apart if he came anywhere near him again. The thought was comforting, but he still couldn’t convince his mind to rest. His memories were too close to the surface. He lay in the darkness instead, listening to Spock breathe.

“Jim.” Spock’s sudden voice spooked him.

“Yes?”

“You are unable to sleep.”

Kirk huffed out a laugh. “Something like that.” He heard Spock shift, the sheets rustling against his sleep clothes. Then a long, hot arm snaked around his torso and pulled him backwards, until he was pressed with his back to Spock’s chest, Spock’s arm over his waist.

“You find physical contact soothing,” Spock murmured, and his breath ghosted over Kirk’s ear.

“But you don’t,” Kirk said. He should pull away, allow Spock his space, but---

“I do when it is you,” Spock said, and Kirk was shocked into silence. “I appreciate the confirmation that you are near and safe.” The warmth of Spock’s chest, the steady beating of his heart against Kirk’s spine, and his even breathing against his neck was doing more for him than Bones’s sedatives ever did. His eyelids grew heavy, and the whirling images through his mind slowed and dimmed, losing their sharp edges, as he breathed in time with Spock.

“Rest now,” Spock said softly, and he did.

#spirk #spirk fan fic #k/s fan fic #star trek fan fiction #fake married #regulatory relations #my writing

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katiesautisms · 10 months

Text

Gay woman makes another fanfic about dead children, 'cus I got nothing going on today :p

TW: Some mentions of gore, but this is a mostly uplifting story, hope you like it :) <3

------------------------💖💖💖------------------------

It's so cold in here, the chilling breeze of death envelops my body. Atleast, I feel like I've died, but if that's the case then why am I still here? Why am I still aware of the pain that brought me here? Why can I still feel the harsh robotic parts peirce by organs and break my bones?

The silver lining is that I've gotten a good look at his face, the man that did this to me, the man in the costume. I'll find him one day, and I'll make him suffer infinitely more than what I've gone through. I will have my revenge, I will-

"H-hello? Is-is somebody here?"

My train of thought derailed by a frightful voice coming from beneath me. It sounds like a boy, around the same age as me. It's obvious that he had just gathered his composure after what was most likley to be crying.

"Hi." I responded, unintentionally monotone. "Who are you?" I asked.

"My-my name is Evan." The child said, nervously. "I heard my dad a little while ago, and I heard screaming again. I can't see anything, what's going on?"

This so-called "Evan" revealed so much to me in his distraught state. I decide that I should pry for some answers.

"That man was your dad?" I asked.

"Y-yes, I t-think so atleast." Evan responded

"That screaming you mentioned," I continue, "did it sound like me."

"N-now that y-you mention it, y-yes. Are...are you okay?" Evan asks in a worried tone.

"I think your father killed me by shoving me into this fredbear suit." I revealed to him.

"W-WHAT!?!" Evan exclaims, "MY DAD DID THAT!?! Oh-oh my gosh....I'm...I'm so sorry, err-"

"My name is Cassidy, and it's ok, you don't have to apologize." I reassured. "How did you get in here?" I asked.

"I...I don't know...." Evan answered meekly. "L-last thing I remember is my head being shoved into this suit's mouth. I felt alot of pain, and then I ended up here, feeling nothing."

"Maybe we're ghosts." I theorized. "Ghosts who haunt this suit thanks to the circumstances of our death."

"Wh-what?! Ghosts?!?" He replied fearfully. "B-but my Dad said there were no such things as ghosts...I was always afraid of them..."

"I don't think your father would be the type to tell the truth." I admitted, regretfully

After that was silence, soon broken by soft crying from Evan. I feel so bad for him. All I want right now is to try to make him feel atleast a little better.

"Evan, I'm sorry. This must be so tough for you." I affirm, hoping it would bring comfort.

After some sniffing and recomposure, I heard a soft "mhm"

"Hey," I spoke up, "would you like to be friends? I'm sure that we can make eachother feel better, if that's what you would like."

"Y-yeah, I would very much like that....err-"

"Cassidy," I uttered. "And so would I."

After this exchange, we talked about what we liked to do when we were alive. Evan seemed to really enjoy this resteraunt, this revelation feeding my growing sympathy for him. Despite this, the conversations we had were lovely, I have no doubts that if we were still alive, we'd become great friends despite not sharing our tragedy.

While my spirit is still filled with rage and vengence for the man that did this to me, it was clear that our presence was comforting for us both.

#writing #writers on tumblr #writeblr #fnaf #five nights at freddy's #william afton #fredbear #purple guy #evan afton #bite of 83 #freadbear #fnaf cassidy #vengeful spirit #the one you should not have killed #golden freddy

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tecceran · 28 days

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Hi Tech!!! For the music ask game, 1, 9, 10, and/or 23 :D

hello fish!! thank you for the ask!! <3

also i’m doing two for all of these because i’m indecisive, want to talk about more music, and then i can do one pjsk/vocaloid related and one otherwise. and they’re in whack order because that’s the order i answered them in.

(also strap in, this got long lol)

★ 10: A song that makes you sad

▸ one more light - linkin park

just the fact that the whole message of the song seems to be “stay alive. there’s always someone out there that cares for you. *i* care for you.” but knowing the circumstances of chester bennington’s death, this song always hits me particularly hard.

▸ cinema - ayase (YOASOBI) - performed by vivid bad squad

right off the bat had to put cinema. the blorbo feels are real. every time i read the lyrics while listening to it i want to cry (or i do cry). akito shinonome what have you done to me. (told me there’s always hope is what he did. look at him. he gave me bittersweet hope.)

★ 23:A song that you think everybody should listen to

to me there’s two ways to read this prompt. “i think everybody should listen to this because i’m obsessed with it” and then there’s “i think this is a good song for everybody to listen to”

first option ▸ “ÅMARA (the great intelligence)” - sasakure.UK!!!!!!!

i have fallen in love with the otherworldly sound and the sci-fi/post-future visuals of the MV. also miku and kaito just sound beautiful. i do appreciate very realistic vsyth tuning, but i also really like when composers lean in to the inherent electronic sound to produce something that feels incomplete when sung by humans. however i would say the MV calls for a minor body horror warning and an eye contact warning!

second option ▸ “a symptom of being human” - shinedown

shinedown is a solidly “dad rock” band, but because of my dad it’s very special to me. also i am a huge sucker for any song that’s message is “we’re all human. we’re all a little weird, but we’re all still people.“ even if it’s a little cringe i still always love it. i think everyone feels at some point like they’re somehow different than everyone else, an alien, an outsider, broken somehow. so i love any song that says “that’s OK. we have differences. but we are all still humans, and we all deserve to find happiness and peace of mind because of that.”

★ 1: A song you like with a color in the title

▸ white rabbit - egypt central

gonna be honest, i don’t know anything else by this band. think this is kinda their one big hit

▸ close to gray / infinitely grey / kagirinaku haiiro e - surii - performed by nightcord at 25:00 / 25-ji, nightcord de.

shinonome siblings’ comms never miss let me tell you. they’re also literally both me. like i relate to ena in many ways. both shinonomes mean so much to me </3

★ 9: A song that makes you happy

▸ upside down - set it off

this song is like whatever the reverse of personification is for a silly little guy. it’s a little dumb and dorky but the stupidly upbeat protagonist never fails to make me smile because it’s so hilariously optimistic. i know a lot of set it off fans (at least the ones i know irl) prefer their heavier albums (and i’m really happy with the singles they’ve been putting out since they got away from that label) but upside down always feels to me like the band themself wanted to experiment more with making lighter music, rather than them being pushed that direction by the label (which i feel happened somewhat with elsewhere)

▸ wah wah world - giga and mitchie m - performed by hatsune miku, minori hanasato, and azusawa kohane

this song is also very silly and fun. it perfectly fits minori and kohane to me. two cute girls with a lot of determination and a bit of an “edgy” side! it’s also way better than sekai (the song). sorry but it’s true idk how it happened

#tech.answering #tech.speaking #ask.game #fish.creating

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aita-blorbos · 1 year

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AITA for helping try and destroy the world (and also lying about it)

(I realize this is absolutely gonna put me on blast in some corners of the multiverse, but I don't think it matters anymore. Anyone who'd know who I am probably hates me already, which is fair.)

OK, so, there's this guy (adult M), we're gonna call him R. I (adult F) met R several years ago, when he got me out of a difficult situation, saving my life in the process. I didn't have anywhere to go and wanted to return the favor, so I decided to travel with him. He was out looking for his fiancee, "E" (adult F), because…I'm still not entirely sure how the whole thing went down, but his dad didn't approve of her, and he was a pretty big deal magically, so he...cursed her, or something like that? And R thought he could find where his dad sent E if he just kept looking for long enough.

Except, that didn't work out. Time passed, R just kept getting sadder and sadder, and I'm not the comforting type, I'm no good at stuff like that, I did my best to help him however I could but he needed E, not me.

There's this super-magical book of prophecies that generations of his family had been guarding, because it contained information on how all worlds were gonna inevitably be destroyed and could kinda kick-start that whole process. I think he thought he might be able to find her location written in there? But either way, he left one day, grabbed the book, and went completely AWOL, deciding that the worlds had no meaning and he was gonna fulfill the world-ending prophecy. I know that sounds bad, but I swear, it was the book that drove him insane, he never would've done anything like that normally! His whole personality changed! I could barely even recognize him! It wasn't his fault OK?!

…Anyway.

R was a magical powerhouse, especially with the book, but I'm more of a specialist. So, we recruited a few people the book mentioned into a small organization to help us. The elevator pitch was that R was gonna destroy the worlds and create better ones in their place, and these guys bought it. They got really excited and were absolutely willing to defend us and help kick the prophecy in gear (because apparently, multiversal annihilation has some weirdly specific prerequisites). R oversaw them, and I did admin work and some HR + recruitment on the side.

Thing is, I knew better the whole time, but I just sort of…let it all happen. I'm not gonna say I didn't do some other pretty nasty stuff, because I did, that's not in question here. But I let these people sincerely believe, with all the enthusiasm in the worlds, that this was for some kind of greater good and that they weren't just leading themselves to their own deaths. I think they even started to think of us all as friends, which I definitely wasn't planning on, but I kept perpetuating this lie and doing my job without saying a word against it, even after I started getting attached.

…Long story short, E wound up still being alive, R got together with her and they stopped the end of the world with the power of true love. Great, I guess, but the circumstances led to them both ending up…somewhere else and I don't think they're ever coming back. I haven't really spoken to my coworkers since then because I don't know how to, and I keep wondering if I could've prevented this whole mess and if he'd still be here if I'd tried a little harder. Should I have made a better argument? Been a better friend to him while he was hurting so he wouldn't have gone for the book? Should I have told the others the truth? Or, his magic is way stronger than mine, but maybe I could've at least tried to overpower him? I don't know. I did try to talk some sense into him once, after we realized E was still alive, but he got really intense about it and I just…caved, because I made a promise to help him and I wasn't about to back out of it.

So, yeah. TL;DR my closest friend went insane and tried to destroy the world, got some innocent people mixed up in it under false pretenses, and I helped/didn't try to stop it, AITA

(And you'd better not go around blaming him for this, OK?)

#aita #am i the asshole #unreality

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cherrycola27 · 2 years

Text

Strawberry Wine

Summary: You came back to your family ranch on summer break from school. You never expected to fall head over heels for the new ranch hand. When time and circumstances took you away from each other you never truly got over it. A decade later, the passing of your father brings you back home once again. This time you are in need of a new hand who can help out. You never expect that it would be him.

Pairing: Jake "Hangman" Seresin x Reader

Warnings: Eventual Language, minor character death, allusion to sex. Minor DNI. 18+

Part 2: So We Meet Again

You spent the summer in Jake arms. Sneaking away to hay lofts, his truck, or your car anytime you got the chance. One night in mid July as you two lay on a blanket by the river he told he loved you and you confessed the same.

You both knew that like the summer, the time you had was fleeting, but the love you felt deep down for each other was hotter than the Texas sun.

Then dreaded day in September came. You were going back to North Carolina and he was going to California. Over three thousand would separate the two of you. And while you wanted to cling to the hope that you two could make long distance work, you both knew it was a silly idea.

Life has a way of throwing you off your center, just when you think you're okay.

You had never had to worry about money for school, but then your father got sick, and you used your college fund to pay for his medical bills, you needed a way to finish your degree, and like a sign from God one day, a Navy recruiter was on campus. You joined on the spot.

You told yourself it was to pay for school, but deep down you hoped it might bring one Mr. Jake Seresin across your path again.

With the help of the Navy you were able to realize your dream of becoming a surgeon, and good one at that. You were successfully working in a hospital on base when you got the call.

You're father had passed, and he'd left the ranch to you, his only child. After getting an extended leave approved, you headed back to Texas to mourn your loss, and to hire some extra help.

You knew you couldn't run a ranch by yourself. And while several of your father's hands agreeded to stay and work for you, there was a handful who refused to work for a women.

This left you in need of a few good ranch hands.

You did the only thing you could think of and put an ad out, hoping some down on their luck cowboy or cowgirl in need of a job would grace you.

You tried several of them, but nothing worked out. They were either too cocky, didn't get along with you or the others, or didn't know what they were doing.

You had almost given up hope.

You sat at the kitchen table staring at your glass of tea. Why was it so hard to find some decent help?

"Doc." Your dad's ...well now your ranch boss Rhett called to your snapping you out of your thoughts.

"Yeah Rhett? Everything okay.?" You ask him.

"Yes Ma'am. When I was in town earlier I ran into an old buddy of mine and his son. The son is home on leave from the... um army I think he said for a while and was looking for some work. He said he used to be a hand for you dad a few summers ago. I told him to swing by and talk to you if that's alright." Rhett explained.

"Oh that's great Rhett. Do you remember his name?"

"No, but I remember the kid. He was pretty good when he helped out. I think he would be a good hand but I didn't want to hire him without checking with you first boss lady." Rhett chuckles as you crinkled your nose. It's strange for a man who has known you most of your life to call you his boss.

"Well once he comes by, if he seems pretty good I'll hire him." You say.

"Sounds good Ma'am. I best be getting back to the fields now." Rhett tips his hat to walk away.

"Rhett. Please stop calling me Ma'am. You've know me my whole life. Doc or Y/N... please." You say before he walks out the door.

About two hours later there is a knock on the door.

You walked to the door hoping the person on the other side would be a decent ranch hand.

Sure you had done the work before but you needed someone reliable and so far everyone else had been a let down. You sigh before opening the door.

You know Rhett had always been a good judge of character and he said this guy had worked for your father before. You wondered who it was.

You gripped the door know and plastered a smile on your face.

You opened your mouth to greet them only to have your words catch in your throat as you met the most beautiful green eyes that you hadn't seen in over a decade.

The eyes that have haunted you since that faithful summer.

"Jake?" You breath out, almost too stunned to speak.

"Hi there Y/N. Heard you were looking for a ranch hand." He smiles at you.

"I... I am... come in" you say ushering him in.

He follows you to the kitchen where you both take a seat.

"What are you doing back here?" You ask him bewildered.

"Just got back from a top secret mission. It was pretty dangerous. I actually saved the life of two of my teammates. The Navy gave us a nice long leave as a thank you." He states. "I heard about your Pa. I'm sorry." He says.

"Thanks. The Navy gave me a nice long leave too. My commanding officers loves me so." You reply.

"You joined the Navy?" It's his turn to looked bewildered.

"When Dad got sick, we used my college fund to pay for his medical bills, I needed a way to pay for school and one day a recruiter came to campus and I joined. Finished my medical degree and I have been a surgeon in Lemoore for a few years now. But when I go back I'm being stationed in Miramar. There's a surgical position coming open there and I requested to be moved closer to the beach." You explained to him

"You're going to Miramar? Like where Top Gun is?" Jake asks with wide eyes.

"Yes?" You raise your eyebrows at him.

"Well it looks like we will be seeing a lot more of each other then Ma'am." He grins at you slyly.

"Why do you say that? And what did I tell you years ago about calling me Ma'am. It's Y/N or if you want to be technical it's doctor or Lieutenant." You shoot back.

"The squad I was in on this last mission, instead of sending us back to our other bases, they are stationing us permanently at Top Gun. Looks like we will be on the same base, maybe I'll see you around. He explains with a twinkle in his eye.

"I don't think you wife would be too happy if you are seeing me because that means you're seriously injured or dying." You tell him.

"I don't have a wife sweets. Still haven't found the right girl. Now tell me is it Dr. L/N or..." he trails off.

"L/N" you confirm "no one has been able to put up with me for long enough" You tell him.

There is a beat of comfortable silence as you two look at each other. You can't believe that after ten years Jake is still single. You wonder if he is still interested in you. If his feelings never died. You know yours didn't.

"Well, if you want the job, it's yours." You tell him before he can say anything else.

"Can you start tomorrow?" You ask.

"Sure can." He responds.

"Great. Can you be here around 6am so I can get some info and get you on the payroll?"

"Absolutely. I appreciate it. Thank you" He smiles at you.

"No Jake, thank you. You're saving my ass here because it has been a nightmare trying to get some decent help." You tell him.

You both get up and you walk him to the door.

"Well, I'll see you tomorrow bright and early." You say to him as he walks onto the porch. "Goodbye"

"Bye Y/N. See you tomorrow." He waves before climbing into his truck.

Once he is out of sight you close the door and press your back too it. "Well, this is going interesting." You think before heading upstairs to figure out just what in the hell you've gotten yourself into.

Tag List: @dreamingathighaltitude @shanimallina87 @luckyladycreator2 @mak-32 @katieshook02 @samhapner6 @rosiahills22 @thedroneranger @roosterforme @blue-aconite

#top gun maverick #top gun #lt. jake seresin #jake seresin x reader #hangman seresin #jake hangman seresin #hangman top gun #hangman x y/n #hangman x reader #top gun hangman #tgm fic #tgm #tgm fanfiction #jake seresin #top gun 2 #strawberry wine

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tragically-jane-doe · 2 years

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Sometimes I just think about what would've happen if Karnak sent everyone back

Ocean could have gone to a big name school but was actually afraid to, she went to community college with constance I don't think she would go towards something that helps people one on one but something where she can help from afar i.e that bitch is going to school to become a eco lawyer, I don't know if she would stick with it or have a crisis midway thru it and look into other fields, she has a lot of difficulty finding herself in relationships but sooner or later Constance just says they're dating and she asks zero questions. She gives the vibe of the baddie bitch who ends up with a by circumstance kid (probably some really distance relative dies and ocean not having a lot of family the kid ends up in her care)

Noel most definitely will be in uranium for a long time he'll get a bartender gig In his spare time he will write the most heartbreaking books like you read it in one sitting ugly crying it'll take years but he'll end up writing a best seller he'll be on talk shows it will be made into shows/movies/plays(he also writes super smutty raunchy toe curling novels also under a fake name), He seems like a forever kinda bitch so I think he would only ever have 1 serious relationship and a handful of hookups. Him and his hubs will probably wander around Europe for a couple years. He's very 50/50 on kids he can see why they're annoying and he can see why people have em

Mischa I'm going catfish Talia for this one. He'll fly back to Ukraine to be with her and she'll ghost him he'll never get closer he'll think something awful happend to her and even when he takes it to the police nothing will come from it, he'll go back to uranium and be roommates with Noel probably be in a slump for awhile, he's going to keep doing rap probably starts doing a bit more traditional Ukraine folk music one of which will become a TikTok sound and becomes viral, he won't end up Arianna grande famous but he will be well known He'll end up questioning his sexuality a bit he'll come to the conclusion that he's attracted to whoever he's attracted too and that's enough for him, it'll take awhile for him to start dating again he's gonna have a few handfuls of short relationships and after awhile of living with noel he would just wake up and realize one day that he's head over heels deeply in love with that man it takes awhile but after some miscommunication and hijinks they end up together. He definitely wants 5 kids minimum he's going to be THAT dad the dad that's going to dress up as a fairy princess for tea partys,learn everything about baseball (or any other sport) if his kids are interested in it, all one of his kids have to do is show big puppy dog eyes and a pout and the man will fold like a wet napkin,he'll support anything his kids put their minds too, he's also the dad throwing down in the stands his kids soccer game cus another dad was talking shit, he's afraid of very little i.e his kids...

Ricky stays in uranium he'll share a apartment with constance for a bit, this boy has been writing warrior cat fanfic since he was 10 after finishing his 2millon word fanfic he starts working as a website/product designer until a small publisher finds his warrior cat fan fic and gets in contact saying change a few things he could publish it, he thinks along time on it until Ocean forces her way onto his Google doc back up of it and starts editing it herself so she can bully him into publishing it... Which she successfully does... It ends up being like game of thrones but better. Penny and him end up together like RIGHT after they all come back from "death".. She goes to furry cons with him (he's a furry she likes how creative everyone is) they end up having a army of cats and and foster children

Constance goes to community college with Ocean. She goes into politics because she love her Small Town™ but sees ways to make it better she ends up running for mayor, she wins by a landslide because the man she's running against isn't even from there and looks down his nose a lot at all uranium natives. She always wanted one of those big (invite the entire town almost) themed weddings and all Ocean wanted was a elopement with only them they met in the middle and had a small(only immediate family and friends) theme wedding

Penny as soon as she's 18 she convinces the courts that she should have custody of Ezra. She works her ass off for him and she also goes to night school to become a mortician. She loves the nitty gritty bits of the human body the grosser the better for her She puts a lot of care into prepping the body. Her and Ricky actually don't end up living together until way into their 30s. They decide not to have a biological kids. Penny has always loved kids but the idea of pregnancy is terrifying and after her experience in foster care her and Ricky end up fostering kids of all ages and are very big on the reunification of family's if possible and work very hard with the kids and parents and social workers. They also foster cats Penny is on 4 different allergy medication and she is having a blast naming the kittens

#ride the cyclone #this is coming from DEEP drafts #i just finished editing it and good god was it longer than what y'all will ever see #even still its so long #enjoy whatever this is

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thedragonchilde · 7 months

Text

G Gundam meta notes, eps 35-39:

"Showdown! Bursting Machinegun Punch"

-the first appearance of Master's death cough?

-George seems so much shallower then the others when you put it that way. I'll have to pay extra attention to him in coming eps because he's more of an enigma than he seems

-Chibodee actually seems really anguished about this, dang

-and he switches from name back to epithet to create distance, interesting

-”work with me on this!” ayup, Chibodee needs hype as a motivator

-”reflecting a tradition of calm and simplicity” sure, that sounds like Domon

-"better than he's ever been"

-”and most of all, it's for you”

-"you sure know how to make me happy"

-"CHIBODEE HAS LIT A FIRE IN DOMON'S SOUL"

-oh my god everything out of their mouths at this point, I can't keep up with listing every quote they're coming so fast

-”I can feel your dream”

-”your hunger ignited a fire within me”

-”you're a great rival!” :) gotta get that hype in there

-oooh, that fade in, did Chibs actually get knocked out for a few seconds?? Concussion check!

-you can practically see the shoujo bubbles, seriously, check the soft focus - and Domon is such an encouraging friend! It's so sweet, even if you're not a useless queer like me. In fact, it's a nice callback to their original faceoff! (And literally supportive too, even; I do love a good 'leaning on/propping up your teammate'. Although now I have to go back and note whether Domon reassures his friends on the regular or if it's just Chibodee–)

"A Knights' Pride! Gundam Rose Stolen"

-”I'm focusing solely on you” George, that's a little gay

-George talking with a rose in his mouth though, great line delivery

-"the Gundam Fight is not a sport" that's,,, hm. Certainly not how they seem to treat it. Interesting highlight of the difference between the fighters and the politicos

-hmm, it says something interesting that this is the circumstance in which we see George cry

-'knight' is a wildly anachronistic position, but there's something up here, as he clearly has some hangups about his self-worth tied up in fighting and country and,,,

-aside from Domon putting Shining to rest, this is the only other time we see someone talking to their Gundam. Rose really is George's lady, huh

-"just this one time I wish to fight only for myself" ooooh this has such juicy implications! (A ‘gilded cage’ corollary to Argo, re: fighting as freedom?)

-even at his most passionate he's still… restrained? That's not quite the right word. But like he almost doesn't know how to let himself go, even when he's clearly already gone

-"I've been devoutly loyal to x all my life (at the expense of my sense of self) but now I wanna do something for me" is so good

-it's almost like he believes fighting is the only thing he's good for. Something to dig into

"Sai Saici's New Attack! Blazing Dragon Gundam"

-Rain is so insecure about her place in Domon's life among fighters, and that's interesting, but she was never threatened before Allenby, which is understandable but somewhat less interesting

-Allenby calling Sai ‘kid’ and ‘baby boy’ like she's not closer to his age than Domon's

-damn, Domon really gets Sai

-okay Wong almost made that sound like he's somehow in on Master being sick

-man, Zuisen and Keiun keep underestimating Sai. Like, nice job breaking it hero

-Sai’s dad was hot. I'm gonna guess Sai will grow up nice ;)

-I wonder what Shin Ryusen Kochouken would be in Mandarin (or whatever Chinese dialect Sai would speak)

-There's probably some cool stuff to be said about Asian solidarity by someone more knowledgeable than me. But like. These are really bros and I love it. Need more of this dynamic tbh

-aw, Rain getting the martial artist bond (so long as it's not with Allenby I guess)

"Domon vs. Argo! Charging Bolt Gundam"

-why would Neo Russia cover up something against a criminal they'd want more against?

-Wong tortures people now, cool cool

-you don't always get to notice it, but Argo's eyes are such a pretty icy blue

-oh, it's "us" now, is it, Nastasha?

-I'm struggling with words on this one, and it might be because I've screamed over it too many times over the years (esp about things like how fucked up the hologram is, or The Date), like I feel I'm repeating myself

-or that I'm just wordlessly screaming at Argo and Nastasha because I fucking love them

-Argo just takes the whole damn fish

-Nastasha can cook!

-interesting that she notices a superstition

-they go back and forth on whether they're using Berserker

-ARGO THAT SHOUT WAS DOWNRIGHT MUSICAL

-”now we can focus solely on each other” lil gay there Domon

-GET HIM, MASTER

-”I haven't forgotten my duties as the Black Joker” mind filling us in on what those duties are?

-finally get tears from Argo and it's in flashback

-"Argo, you're awesome" :)

-"one x for the both of us" is SO GOOD, YOU GUYS

-"your fists have shown me the light to my soul" sounds kind of goofy but this situation is actually a really cool application of 'communicating with your fists' - Argo being someone who shows himself to be so respectful of life is incongruent with the incident the way Andrew remembers it, so the reality of current actions fills in the blanks of the past. This probably isn't coming out right.

"The Ultimate Attack! Duel With Master Asia"

-it's only a split second, but Argo has a nice butt

-tapping into Rain's insecurities about being needed, I see

-way to give the viewer whiplash re: Domon - show him being a jerk to Rain, then follow it with him being adorable with Fuunsaiki

-,,,he communicates with the horse better than he does with Rain

-I don't know what that says about him but it's fuel for the autistic headcanon

-”are you trying to tell me I should ride you?” Now there's something that can be taken out of context

-what a messy divorce

-I wanna know when they actually mean ‘defeat’ and when they mean ‘kill’

-oh wow, Master Asia can actually get injured?

-”I could leave you behind” yeah, but you won't

-"the one thing I never taught you",,, and then proceeds to not teach him before asking him to do it. Unless they handwaved/skipped that part for us

-oooh, motive rant! And in case we forgot about the crapsack world setup from the early episodes, y'know, more fuel for the anti-war environmentalist fire

-the horse gets a suit-up!

-you know what, Domon, I get that you were worried, but you fuckin deserve Rain leaving

#g gundam #mobile fighter g gundam #meta #thinky thoughts

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love-kurdt · 1 year

Text

Thick Skull (byler): III

word count: 3,560

warnings for this chapter: underage drinking, descriptions of racism and racially motivated violence, consensual underage... activities

Only I know where all the bodies are buried / Thought by now I'd find 'em just a little less scary Might get easier but you don't get used to it / Keep on autopilot, hey, hey

Eddie Munson and Steve Harrington arrived at the basement entrance of the Wheeler house with their construction masks and goggles on, carrying two bags full of beer and some stolen vodka from Steve’s dad’s liquor cabinet. He figured that the kids should still be able to have the typical high school party experience despite the fact that their high school had been turned into a temporary homeless shelter slash soup kitchen. The reasoning was pretty sound— well, that, and the kids harassed him until he caved. Steve and Nancy had, of course, protested the idea initially, but Eddie convinced them in the end; the world was ending, so what bad could a little alcohol do? All they had to do was keep Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler away from the basement and keep the kids within the four walls of said basement, which wouldn’t be that difficult since the gremlins were always down there anyway. So while the teens got shit-faced and Eddie supervised, Steve and Nancy helped Karen reorganize the Wheeler family scrapbook collection with Ted’s snoring serving as background music.

The kid probably most eager to get drunk was Dustin. Despite his excellent grades (with the exception of Spanish, obviously, but thanks to Suzie, that went away) and his nerdy perspective on life, Dustin Henderson was a daredevil through and through. He’d arrived on the scene convinced that everyone had an alcohol-induced alter ego, and was determined to classify everyone by the type of person they were while drunk. There were three categories: the happy and affectionate drunk, the sad and sappy drunk, and the reckless and irresponsible drunk. He had an inkling of a feeling as to which category everyone in the group fit, but in order to test his various hypotheses, he needed to see them in action.

El often kept to herself while sober. Her vocabulary was still a bit jumbled– like a robot in the process of programming. Obviously, that was due to the uncontrollable circumstances of the environment in which she was raised, and the fact that her brain blocked out trauma from that area of her life. The way Eleven spoke was a sensitive subject; she often felt self-conscious and resented the way she sometimes sounded like a six year old. Dustin figured that if her inhibitions were lowered, she’d either start talking a lot, not caring what she sounded like, or she’d stop talking altogether to prevent any further embarrassment. He hoped that El would be the happy and affectionate drunk. Having Max around would likely help.

Max was bold to begin with. She was not afraid of sharing her opinion with the group, even if she were the first or only one to mention it, because she was confident that the rest of the Party would agree with her. She found love in Lucas again, and El was back in her life, so things seemed great. But Max also had some unresolved trauma that drew Vecna to her in the first place. Her stepbrother died a gruesome death, her stepfather left, and her mom drank more alcohol than water. People like Max tended to push any type of negative thoughts onto the back burner, and in turn, it came out when they were most vulnerable; in Max’s case, six vodka shots deep. She’d probably be a sad and sappy drunk, hanging off Lucas or El’s shoulders and talking about what could have been.

It was difficult for Dustin to pinpoint which category Lucas would fall into, mostly because he seemed pretty okay. Apart from the Party’s shared experiences, Lucas had a pretty normal life. He had a loving family and a great group of friends who would stick by his side forever. Dustin knew that Lucas encountered racism on a daily basis– something no one else in the party had to endure– and that definitely influenced his behavior and personality. Lucas would often express how he was “othered” by his peers. The feeling of being othered was horrible enough without a gun in the equation. When Jason pulled a gun out and pointed it in Lucas’ face that spring night, his reality became crystal clear. Nearly being shot would change anyone, but Lucas felt like any other stereotypical Black man, facing down the barrel of a gun. And he hated the fact that the basketball guys went after his twelve year old sister and basically ended her childhood, whatever was left of it. As a result, he was more guarded than the rest of the group, and quick to come to the defensive whenever he was confronted. Which was understandable; no one in the Party could truly know what it was like to be a Black person, but they all had his back and loved him exactly the same, if not more. Dustin watched from across the room as Lucas took another shot with Max before pulling her into a kiss, and he smiled to himself. It was going well. Happy and affectionate drunk it is.

Anything that might cause harm to an individual, you name it, Will had been through it. That didn’t stop him from living his best life. Dustin believed it had something to do with dying and coming back, and having a new outlook on the world, as fucked up as their current world was. And he applauded Will for that, truly. Everyone did. It was a miracle that Will was able to hold himself together after everything involving the Upside Down, but Dustin knew that something, or rather someone, was helping him in doing so. Will was never the type of person to hate someone, but when it came to Mike, it was physically impossible. No matter how many times Mike would try to get Will to hate him, breaking his heart time and time again, he would always forgive Mike, idiocy and all. Mike Wheeler was Will’s entire world. His crush on Mike was far from obvious; he hid it pretty well. Dustin just happened to be good at analyzing people and their body language. Despite being on opposite sides of the room, and the fact that Will was talking with El on the couch with his focus on her, Will’s feet were pointed directly at Mike. The mind’s subconscious was the strangest concept. Dustin wasn’t sure how long he’d been staring at Will’s checkered Vans before he heard someone clearing their throat, and he lifted his gaze to see Will looking right back at him with a confused expression on his face. He looked away, blaming the alcohol on his prolonged staring.

Dustin grabbed a handful of small, skinny pretzels from a bowl on the table and chewed each individual pretzel into one millimeter pieces. I should call my mom and tell her thank you for saving up her hard-earned money for these pearls, he thought. He ventured across the room to the phone to call Steve’s house, only to discover that the cord was wrapped around the corner. He followed the stretched out cable into the laundry area, where Mike was seated on top of the dryer, phone in hand.

“Hey man, are you good?” Dustin asked, and Mike’s head snapped up to attention. Dustin could read Mike quicker than Fellowship of the Ring. From what he could observe, Mike was all over the map, mentally speaking. He had been since their return from Lenora. His eyes looked a little misty, and he was unconsciously swaying from side to side. How much had he had to drink?

“Shh, I’m calling Will, he might pick up this time,” he whispered, holding out his hand with his pointer finger extended, signaling Dustin to wait. Oh, so Mike was gone, gone. He’d apparently forgotten that Will was less than ten feet away from him, and had decided to call the Byers residence in California, just as he had every single day for months after they left town. Dustin concluded that Mike was most definitely the reckless and irresponsible drunk of the Party.

“Uh–” Dustin hesitated, not sure how to approach the conversation. Before he could get a word in, Mike held his free hand to the mouthpiece so “Will” wouldn’t hear him in case he picked up, and shook his head.

“There’s no way Mrs. Byers could be working at this hour.”

“Mike, I–”

“Maybe Will just hates me. Do you think he hates me?” Mike asked, his voice breaking a little with immense sadness. It hurt Dustin to see Mike like this, in such intense emotional pain and unable to name those feelings. It didn’t help that whenever the topics of Will or his breakup with El were mentioned, he’d shut down.

“No, Mike, I don’t think he hates you. Quite the opposite, actually,” Dustin reassured his friend, whose eyes filled to the brim with tears at the mere thought.

“Really?”

“Really.” Dustin slowly moved towards Mike, taking the phone from his hand and hearing the dial tone on the other end; he hadn’t even called anyone. “But let’s get back to it, huh, bud? We should get you hydrated, have a snack, maybe?”

“O-okay,” Mike whispered. Dustin held out his hand, and Mike took it, letting him help him down from the dryer and get back to the party that was… frankly, dying down.

And Dustin knew exactly what to do to keep it going.

“Guys, I have an idea.”

“It better not be to chug another one of those wine coolers, that shit is not sitting well with me,” Lucas said, eyes wide and slightly panicked. Dustin sauntered over and placed his hand on Lucas’ shoulder, addressing the group as a whole.

“No, my dear Lukey, it’s even better.” Cicadas. Could they be any less excited? “We should play spin the bottle.”

“Jesus, Dustin, you can’t be serious,” Eddie said from his spot in the corner. Dustin had almost forgotten Eddie was there, given that he was so damn quiet while writing his newest campaign. He couldn’t do much else otherwise; he was still in the process of fully healing from being mauled nearly to death by demobats. Regardless, he was supervising, and Dustin was certain that Eddie wouldn’t dare put a stop to his usual antics. He loved the kid too much.

“Actually, as a matter of fact, I’m being totally serious!” Dustin retorted, “I mean, you only live once, am I right?”

“Bold assumption, given that most of us are on our second lives,” Max said, deadpan.

“Oh, Max. My sweet, pessimistic friend…” Dustin waltzed over to Max’s side, patting his hand on her head a few times. “Do it and you’re cool. Or… you can sit this one out.”

Everybody knew Max would never turn down a challenge. That’s why they were not the least bit surprised when she squinted at Dustin with a smirk on her face. “Over my dead body.”

“That’s the spirit, Maxine! Now, everybody form a circle! Who has an empty bottle?”

What's the body count up to now, captain?

“Alright, Mike-a-Rooney, you’re up!” Dustin grinned as El and Max sat down in their respective spots in the circle. “And remember, you either take the challenge or chug!”

Oh God. Mike resisted the urge to throw up. Please be Will. Please be Will. Please be– what the fuck was he thinking? He’d essentially been praying for his own self sabotage. Would it be that horrible if he just said “pass” and ran up the stairs and through the front door and down the street and out of Hawkins? Pretty damn likely. Mike shook his thoughts out of his head and leaned forward into the circle, spinning the bottle and trying to maintain a neutral expression on his face. He didn’t even have to look up when the bottle stopped moving and everyone gasped.

“Will, do you accept?” Dustin asked, to which Will hesitated, cheeks flushed. He watched as Mike, equally red in the face, slowly ripped his eyes from the carpeted floor up to Will. He looked… embarrassed? Eager?

“Uh… sure?” he shrugged, and Mike’s immediate response was, “No!”

So much for looking neutral, Mike thought, I might as well have a neon sign that reads ‘THIS BOY IS A CLOSETED HOMOSEXUAL’ over my head.

Shit. He had to cover this up, and quickly. He cleared his throat before speaking. “I– I mean, it’s just, he hasn’t had his first kiss yet, and I don’t want to ruin his first kiss, I’d rather him have it with someone who–”

“Mike, no, it’s okay,” Will interrupted, and Mike felt his heart beat faster in his chest. Why would Will want this? How could Will want this?

“But–”

“It’s fine,” Will told him, looking calm and cool as a fucking cucumber. “I’m serious. Plus, I’d rather kiss someone I know rather than a random stranger.” Will knew he was digging his own grave, but if this was his only chance to kiss Mike in his life, like hell would he give up the opportunity.

“Okay.” The party cheered.

Mike and Will met in the middle of the circle, and Mike audibly gulped. He moved his hand up to cup Will’s face. Will nearly flinched at the contact, but his nerves were instantly calmed as he felt Mike’s thumb caress his cheekbone as if it were made of glass. He leaned in, and Will tilted his head up a little bit to accommodate Mike’s height. The kiss was light at first, just lips on lips, testing the waters.

Will became concerned for a second, because he didn’t feel anything. He definitely assumed that too soon; within a matter of seconds, the kiss was deepened, and gravity ceased to exist. Mike’s hand that wasn’t on Will’s face grabbed Will’s hip and pulled him closer, so they were almost chest to chest, and Will needed to hold onto one of Mike’s shoulders to stabilize himself. He pressed further into the kiss, but not too hard, because he wanted to savor this moment for as long as he could, but he didn’t want to seem like he was too into it—

But Mike definitely wasn’t showing any signs of holding back. In fact, the two had been at it for a whole minute and Mike hadn’t stopped. The cheers had melted into silence, very much like Will’s heartbeat that he initially felt in his ears but now he couldn’t hear at all. Mike slipped his tongue into Will’s mouth. Will ran his hand through Mike’s hair. Mike held Will in his arms and pulled him impossibly closer. Everything seemed to move at simultaneously lightning speed and in slow motion and Will couldn’t wrap his head around what the hell was happening.

That was until Mike pulled away. Will glanced over at the corner where Eddie sat, hands clasped together and over his mouth in surprise. He looked down at their friends, whose jaws fell agape, and for once in his life, Will felt like he wasn’t going completely insane. They all saw what Mike had done on his own volition. This wasn’t just a Spin the Bottle kiss. This was a real kiss. He looked back up at Mike, who ran his hand through his hair before turning back and sitting down, leaving Will standing in the circle, speechless. It wasn’t that he was surprised, per se, it was just that prior to that night, he’d only been able to dream about kissing Mike. Now he had. He returned to his own spot and ran the kiss over and over in his head while Lucas spun the bottle. Lips. Deep breaths. Hand on hip. Shoulders. Tongue. Fingers in hair. Arms.

Will snapped out of his thoughts and blinked a few times. He couldn’t let himself get too wrapped up in his wishful thinking. They were drunk. Fucking around with their friends. He’d always had to deal with the fact that Mike was straight; he was used to it by now. It was like he’d been on autopilot all these years, obeying the voice in his head that told him “no.” But that didn’t make it any easier now that his previous sliver of hope had become somewhat tangible.

Hit over the head, epiphany / Over my head, repeatedly Thick skull never did nothing for me / Same lesson again?

Spin the Bottle got old after a while. There were only so many people in the circle, and after everyone had kissed, it seemed slightly pointless to continue. Mike suggested they watch Fast Times, so the party gathered on and around the couch while Eddie bid his goodbyes and headed upstairs to Nancy and Steve. Mike rested his arms atop the back cushions and watched the television come to life. Will knocked out in seconds.

Where Will knocked out, however, was Mike’s primary concern. When Will’s head met Mike’s shoulder, he nearly jumped fifty feet in the air. He shifted a little bit, with the hope that Will would stir and realize what was happening, but of course, it only caused Will’s head to fall further down so his ear was resting on Mike’s heart. How apropos. Mike took a deep breath, as quietly as he could for both his friends’ and Will’s sake, and settled into the couch, lowering his arm from the cushions and onto Will’s shoulders. If this was all he could get, even if it made him a slight creeper, he wouldn’t take it for granted.

A few hours later, the movie ended, and everyone was passed out across the living room, leaving the two boys on the couch by themselves. Mike didn’t have the heart to wake Will. He looked way too peaceful. Part of Mike wanted to enjoy this, and the other part dreaded what would happen after the fact. Will and Mike barely spoke to each other any other given day, not since their argument on the day that Mike and El broke up. He wasn’t even sure if it had ever been cleared up that it ended well, with an even stronger friendship. Would everything just go back to normal?

Will exhaled in his sleep, a frown forming on his gorgeous face. That wouldn’t do. Mike looked around to see if anyone was watching before gently pressing his lips to Will’s forehead, running his nimble fingers down Will’s arm and back up again. This felt nice, even if it would only last for a little bit.

Or not.

Come on, give it to me Give it to me, give it to me, give it to me

Will felt something tickle his arm, causing him to shiver and wake with a start. He took in his surroundings and realized that it hadn’t been vines running up and down his biceps. It had been Mike’s fingers. He slowly lifted his head up and met Mike’s eyes, which seemed darker than usual. He went to speak, but Mike lifted his free hand to put his finger to Will’s lips. Will complied. Mike’s hand didn’t stop brushing Will’s biceps, but the hand that had been on Will’s lips found a new position on the side of Will’s head.

He sat there, lips slightly parted, watching with wide eyes as Mike’s face moved closer, and closer, and even closer, until their lips collided for the second time that night. He could feel Mike’s breath fanning on his face, and Will responded immediately. He wrapped an arm around Mike’s shoulders, guiding him into a position where Mike was now leaning over Will, legs straddling his own.

He leaned down on his forearms to reach Will’s neck, pressing kisses down until he hit the collar of Will’s shirt. He brought a hand down Will’s chest, under his shirt, and up his torso. Will wrapped a leg around Mike’s waist and he went along with it, lowering the rest of his body onto Will.

Mike returned back to Will’s lips, kissing them with all the pent up emotion he had. He wanted to feel every part of Will. He wanted to see every part of Will. Before he could stop himself, he rutted down and felt something against his own inner thigh. He was hard.

Will gasped at the contact, instantly getting hard as well. He heard Mike repress a groan. Was this a dream? This had to be a dream. It couldn’t not be a dream. All thinking came to a screeching halt when Mike’s hand that had been under Will’s shirt was suddenly dipping down into his sweatpants.

“Mike, I–”

“Do you want the others to hear? You gotta be quiet.”

Mike pulled the blanket over his head and Will felt him moving lower and lower until he felt his brain turn to putty. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed between silencing his panting with his arm and when Mike returned to meet him face to face, but he had one question burning on his mind before he succumbed to his exhaustion. So he asked.

“Is this real?”

Mike pressed a feather light kiss to Will’s lips before settling down next to him.

He brushed some hair out of his face before he replied, “No.”

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