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yellowocaballero · 4 years

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The Crocodile's Dilemma: In Which Helen exploits Michael's Labor, Michael suffers an un-identity crisis, and unpaid internships should be illegal

It’s tough being a teenage embodiment of the Spiral. Your boss/wine aunt figure Helen’s a Tory, your inattentive cousin figure Mike Crew keeps attending philosophy classes and day drinking, and you’re pretty sure that this internship doesn’t have any dental. At least it’s good job experience for your future career in...being evil? But do you even want to be evil?

This small story is technically part of my Roleswap AU, but I specifically wrote it so that no knowledge is required. Still, if you’re wondering why Michael’s an eighteen(ish) year old, Mike Crew’s an Avatar of the Spiral, and everybody is obsessed with Melanie King, check it out. Still, no need. Rest under the cut.

Maybe Helen was right.

Not that Helen was ever strictly right, much as Helen was never wrong, but Michael just had to be doing this whole fear demon thing incorrectly. If someone had explained the whole fear demon thing to them two years ago (“Okay, so it’s like you’re the semi-sentient appendage of an extradimensional force of evil that has to consume trauma relentlessly in order to propagate its own debatable existence, also you’re nonbinary now, no those things are not strictly related, probably”), then they would have called them crazy. Which, of course, they were, but that wasn’t the point. So long as the point existed. So long as anything -

An essential theorem within quantum physics was the quantum Zeno effect.

Simply put, it was the fact that a quantum state would decay if left alone, but does not decay under continuous observation. Even observing the results after the photon is produced leads to collapsing the wave function and loading a back-history as shown by delayed choice quantum eraser. If something was seen, it no longer existed; if something persisted unperceived, it would exist as long as it liked.

So it was explained to Michael by the physics professor he was torturing that day. Michael had trapped the man in the physics building of his university, lured in by one too many late nights in his office and the persistent sense that his life was going nowhere meaningful. After a few classes spent sitting in on his Physics 101 class, maintaining constant and forever eye contact, Michael had eventually tricked the man into giving a persistent and ongoing physics lecture to an empty classroom, desperately trying to explain the inexplicable to a college freshman who did not care. Truly miserable, yet ultimately harmless - Michael’s favorite kind of trick.

But, despite themself, Michael grew interested. They didn’t understand any of what the man was talking about, but that was all of the fun. Understanding ruined the magic of things; broke down the beauty of the universe into cogs and gears. No thanks. They could tell that it bothered the professor, that he said so much and yet knew nothing. That there was so much he would never know, and that he wasn’t so smart after all. How would any of his colleagues respect him?

“So photons degrade if they’re observed?” Michael asked one day, after...some period of time. They had raised their hand and everything, they were so proud of themself. Uni was just like secondary school after all. “Is that true of people too?”

The professor had sweated, deeply uncomfortable with Michael as a person and as a non-euclidean concept. “No - no, not at all. Humans are much more than photons -”

Michael grinned. It wasn’t quite right. “Are you sure?”

The professor sweated harder. “I - no, I’m not. But humans are constantly observed by - by the universe, or something.”

Michael grinned sharper. “Are you sure? Are you being observed right now? Are you sure?”

And the professor was not sure, not anymore, and the fragment of this man’s reality collapsed.

Well, Michael thought to themself, slipping out of an improbable yellow door, that’s another Statement for the Magnus Institute. Not that they would read it.

****

“Now, remember this - the first step to being a successful Avatar is presentation!”

Michael squinted at Helen dubiously. “I thought we were fear demons?”

Helen sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose with two sharp knife fingers. It looked as if it hurt quite a bit, but Michael reasoned that they had probably gone through the fifth dimension. “This is the stupidest dimension - fine, fine! Fear demons, then. It is absolutely vital that we conduct our business with style, grace, and the slightest sprinkling of pizazz!”

Just for the flourish, Helen twirled her fingers, and a faint shower of confetti came raining down from the ceiling. Michael sneezed.

“I thought it was vital that we harvest fear and trauma from people to propagate our cursed existence,” Michael said.

Helen’s eyebrow twitched. “More than two things can be vital, Michael. Please pay attention. Now, as a demonstration, I’d like you to take a gander at that man over there.”

Obediently, Michael looked across the bar. They were sitting on barstools in a high-class pub, because Helen knew her worth and never settled for anything less, with glass counters and lots of private booths. But all pubs had their sad men drinking alone, and this one was no exception.

This man wasn’t sullen and slow like a lot of them. He was wearing a nice suit and thin tie, looking straight out of Canary Wharf. Michael silently agreed with Helen’s choice - they took eat the rich very seriously, and also literally. He also seemed a little jumped up on something, with shaking hands and erratic eyes.

“He looks happy,” Michael observed. “Think it’s his birthday?”

“He’s on cocaine, Michael,” Helen said flatly. “Cocaine. We are at a posh bar, and he is currently doing a line off his watch.”

Oh! Michael suddenly felt very uncool. They had never been one of those people in secondary school who did cocaine. They hadn’t been cool. “I knew that,” Michael bluffed. “What are we going to do to him?”

“Take the teenager as your intern, they said,” Helen groused, “it’s investing in the future, they said, it’ll stop them from eating you when they grow up, they said.” She sighed, jabbing a finger at the now very obviously coked up man who was staring at the bottles behind the bartender as if they were whispering secrets of the universe into his ear. Helen liked that one. “Use your intuition. Find a good angle to squeeze. What are his weaknesses to exploit?”

Oh, Michael knew how to do this. They shifted vibrations just a bit, dropping out of what Michael liked to call the ‘mild’ spectrum into the ‘spicy’ spectrum. They were distantly aware of a patron’s glass shattering.

They squinted at the man, picking out his little fears and insecurities like Dionysus picking grapes. Maybe. Michael had gotten a C in English, but they were somewhat cognizant of the Spiral munching heavily on Bacchanalia. Sometimes they felt like some of those children who spoke in tongues and claimed to be from a past life. That had also been the Spiral.

“He owns a Nintendo NES,” Michael said confidently, absolutely sure that this was important. Helen groaned. “His house is painted white, and his girlfriend does tax fraud.”

“Something relevant?” Helen hinted desperately.

Michael just squinted at her. “Relevant to what?”

“...good point. But something useful, please.”

Picky. Michael scowled, but gave the man another good gander. “He only remembers faint details of his father’s face, and he worries that his recollections aren’t accurate,” Michael proclaimed finally.

Helen clapped, delighted, as Michael took a careful sip of their water, turning it into fizzy water. She took a sip of her own wine, turning it into champagne. Or maybe just sparkling unreality? “Wonderful. Now, how should we play this? Insert a false father into his life, completely separate from his recollections, or is that a bit too Stranger? I suppose we could do some good old-fashioned gaslighting, but sometimes that’s just a bit too Melanie, if you catch my drift -”

“Are you jealous that the Archive girls are better at gaslighting than you are?”

“Shut it, kid,” Helen hissed, before taking a long drag of her champagne. “My vote is that we convince him to top off his coke bender with some LSD. Then he hallucinates - oh, he hallucinates that he’s in a mental institution, that’s a good one -”

“Why don’t we shift everything thirty cm to the right?” Michael asked brightly.

Helen squinted at them. They beamed back.

“You are so bad at this,” Helen said.

Michael would have felt crushed if Helen didn’t express this sentiment roughly once per lunar cycle, contrariwise. As it was, they bore the criticism with a stiff upper lip. Helen had her way of harvesting fear from unsuspecting humans, and Michael had theirs. “Look, Helen, you’re being uncreative! We don’t have to traumatize people every single time.”

Helen squinted further. “We’re personifications of deceit. We eat trauma.”

“No, we eat confusion,” Michael pointed out patiently. “Look at it this way. If you give someone one really terrible experience, then they repress it for the rest of their lives and consider it a brush with Hell. One and done, see? But if you minorly inconvenience them for a really long time, then they’ll never be able to break out of it. They’ll feel as if something’s wrong, but they’ll never know it. You can keep the game going for years that way!”

The idea was very good. Michael had been working on it for a while. Truth be told, Michael felt bad traumatizing people outright and making them scream and cry and everything. They always felt as if they were doing something wrong by making other people’s existences a living nightmare. Michael much preferred rigging a corn maze so you were stuck in it for days inside the maze but only an hour outside. It was funner, and much more confusing.

But Helen just pursed her lips and stared Michael up and down, making them squirm awkwardly on their barstool. Finally, as if she was delivering a life sentence, she imperiously said, “Well, we all have our different styles, I suppose! It would be quite boring if we were both exactly the same.” Michael nodded vigorously at this, and Helen held up a scaly claw. “But! You’re my intern, which means that you’re learning from the master here. So shut up and let me teach you how to ruin lives.”

“Yes, boss,” Michael said miserably.

Helen tsked, but she patted them on the head anyway. It tasted like batteries. “Honestly, kid. A literal bleeding heart’s fun for the whole family, but a metaphorical bleeding heart will get you nowhere in life. You can’t exist as you are and feel bad for them. It ruins the point. It’s a paradox.”

“I thought we liked paradoxes, though?”

Helen shrugged, downing the rest of her wine. “Rules for thee but not for me, honey. But I’m a good boss and drunken aunt figure, so I’ll appease you today. Now come on, let’s convince this bar to vote for Brexit.”

They did. It was quite fun after all, tricking a roomful of people into doing something actively against their own interests. But something about the whole thing left a strange taste in Michael’s mouth: not the good kind of strange, or the bad kind of strange that was also good. Just strange, and undeniable, and something that couldn’t be exploited at all.

****

Maybe Helen was right.

Michael was a bad fear demon of the Spiral and Infinite Twisting and That Is Not What It Is and The Twisted Door, etc, etc, All Fear Its Name, etc etc all Hail, because they didn’t always like how their internal monologue could no longer be described through common language. Words and images and understandings were nothing but approximations for Michael now, and sometimes it was frustrating existing outside the boundaries of understanding. Which, of course, was the point, so long as the point existed, so long as anything existed -

It wasn’t always easy. Still, nobody ever got what they wanted if they weren’t willing to put the effort in. The adult world and labouring under capitalism wasn’t easy for anybody. That was what Mum had always said. Who was Michael to complain about their 9-5? Or 24/24? Or infinite/infinite? Or nothing/nothing? Or -

Was it too much to ask to have a linear thought once in a while?

Helen wouldn’t understand. There were only two other approximations of concepts that Michael knew, and Helen would hardly be any help. The other “person” would probably be a better sounding board, but there was the fact that he was kind of pretentious. Still, it was better than nothing. Well, it was nothing, but only in the sense that everything was - argh!

A yellow door appeared in a nondescript basement, and Michael appeared with it. They melted out of the “wood”, taking a second to check their outfit for this apparition - a nice vintage 50s dress with a painstaking stitch that reminded one of the oppressive nature of housewifery, nice. They elongated their curly blonde hair from a roguish mop into a nice little shag and melted into the crowd.

It must have been a passing period, because Michael was buffeted to and fro by tall white men wearing backpacks and shorter white girls hoisting strangely identical water bottles. Somewhere Northern, Michael decided, likely private and small. Not that it strictly mattered, but it helped to solidify their grip in reality a bit if they had some idea. They already knew geography was purposeless and a distraction from the real issues, like shrimp, but occasionally it could be useful. Helen had been careful to impart the central tenet of existence as a non-euclidean concept in undefinable space in the twenty seventh dimension: location, location, location!

It was obviously the Philosophy Department, because all philosophy classes were held in old basements built in the ‘60s in identical hallways. For kicks, Michael turned all of the school hallways inwards and sent them in a mobius strip, and changed all of the door numbers into a headache. The key to enjoying your job was to take initiative in the workplace environment and to just have fun with it!

Michael found themselves in front of a door identical to all of the others, with fake laminated wood, and they decided to go in. The universe had guided them to this door for a reason, and who were they to reject its call?

The small classroom was like most other small, private colleges in unpopular departments that nobody cared about. Lots of single person desks - Michael snapped their fingers and turned them all into left-handed desks - complete with a smartboard and a teacher’s podium. It was already half-full, so Michael carefully slid into a chair in the back and pretended that they had been there all along. A student wandered close, convinced that this was her seat, but Michael successfully convinced her that a different seat near the front was hers, prompting an impromptu game of musical chairs that sent ripples through the otherwise sedate classroom.

There was a blond student already sitting in the front, flipping through a spiral notebook and clicking a pen in no particular pattern. He was wearing a pea coat, jeans, and his hair was weirdly perfect. Michael wished they had a notebook. Was this what you did in university? They had never had the opportunity to go.

Actually, they had never quite graduated secondary - three months away from graduation, actually. It probably wasn’t all that important. You didn’t really need a diploma to become a trauma eating fear demon. Was there a university of eating fear? That would be funny. What would the classes be in, ‘Enforcing the Powerlessness of Capitalism 101’? What was the difference between that and a Business major?

Maybe Business majors were the real fear demons, Michael thought grandly. It was a good thought, they would have to remember to tell it to Melanie later. Melanie would approve. Hadn’t Tim been a business major? Yeah, in that case she would definitely approve.

The student sitting in the front seemed to have finally noticed the game of musical chairs, and as the professor started clearing their throat and announcing something unimportant to the class, he turned around to find Michael sitting in the back of the class. They waved cheerfully. The student scowled.

‘What are you doing here!’, the guy mouthed angrily.

‘Hi Mike!’ Michael mouthed back.

‘Go away!’ Mike mouthed back.

‘But I’m going to eat your teacher :(‘ Michael mouthed back. They didn’t actually frown.

‘ >:(!’, Mike Crew mouthed back, also without changing his facial expression.

This was probably why Mike wasn’t Michael’s biggest fan. Which was a pity, because Michael thought Mike was really cool. He had the coolest name, for one. But shorter, and snappier. Mike was the kind of name girls would call you at clubs. Michael was what, like, your Mum would say as she yelled at you to clean up your room before her book club girls came over. Why were they girls? They were, like, fifty.

Mike Crew was an Avatar of the Spiral completely unwillingly. Chosen as a child and chased throughout his life by an improbably long lasting Lichtenberg scar, he had eventually succumbed to the inevitable and transformed into an even more improbable man. Personally, Michael found it strange that ‘inevitable’ and ‘Spiral’ was in the same sentence, but - well, it had to be everything at one point. Even a melting clock was right once an endless twilight.

Strangest of all, Mike Crew was a philosophy major. The class, of course, was a high level philosophy course. Mike Crew had been in uni - well, a while - and he tended not to waste his time with the boring shit anymore. Michael listened with interest as the professor dived into the lecture.

Two minutes in, Mike subtly gathered his things and slipped into the conveniently empty chair next to Michael. He was still glaring at them, as Michael tried their best to look innocent and cute. The effect was a little ruined by the inherent maliciousness of Michael’s pores, but they liked to think it was the thought that counted.

“To continue our conversation on the topic of paradoxes,” the professor began, “I’d like to introduce a few thought experiments for your consideration as a class. I’ll mention the concept, and then allow you to break into pairs to discuss them.”

Mike leaned into Michael’s ear. “We were discussing Descartes!”

“But isn’t this more interesting?” Michael asked.

“If you give my professor a mental breakdown we’re going to fall behind on the syllabus!”

“The first paradox I’d like to bring to your attention is the Crocodile’s Dilemma.” The professor flipped to a new slide, which helpfully had a big crocodile on it. Michael admired it. They had seen a crocodile at the zoo once. “Similar to the liar’s paradox, the premise states that a crocodile, who has stolen a child, promises the parent that his or her child will be returned if and only if he or she correctly predicts what the crocodile will do next. The outcome is fairly obvious if the parent states that the crocodile will return the child, but the crocodile faces a dilemma if the parent states that the crocodile will not return the child. No matter the outcome, the crocodile is made a liar: if the crocodile decides to not give back the child then the statement proves to be true, and he ought to return the child, thereby making it false. Whatever the outcome, he still violates his terms.”

Michael raised their hand. Mike forcibly lowered their hand.

“If I give your professor a mental breakdown then you’ll have extra time for the test,” Michael whispered back. Mike seriously considered this notion.

“The next paradox is slightly related,” the professor continued. “The Infinite Hotel Paradox.” Michael’s face stretched into a grin as Mike Crew groaned. “It is demonstrated that a fully occupied hotel with infinitely many rooms may still accommodate additional guests, even infinitely many of them, and this process may be repeated infinitely often. This is what we call a veridical paradox: it leads to a counter-intuitive result that is provably true. Therefore -”

“Okay, yeah,” Mike Crew said, slumping in his seat. “You can eat him, this guy is just begging for it.”

“Yay!” Michael went in for the hug, before Mike pushed them away. Michael’s quest for a cool big brother failed yet again. “Do you want to call the -”

“They’re your hallways,” Mike said, persnickety as always. Maybe he was just jealous that he wasn’t a hallway?

Michael raised their hand, patiently waiting for the professor to call on them. He stumbled in the middle of his lecture, adjusting his thick glasses.

“Uh, yes, Miss -”

“You no longer understand gender,” Michael said pleasantly, as they always did whenever they were misgendered. It was an understandable mistake, so they didn’t do it maliciously. Frankly, they just thought it was healthy. Everyone should not understand false things. “Professor, I have a question about the Crocodile’s Dilemma.” They waited for the professor to nod, somewhat confused. “How do you know that didn’t really happen?”

The professor blinked lethargically at them. “It’s a thought experiment. It’s not real, it’s just an idea proposed by philosophers to represent -”

“What makes you so sure?” Michael asked cheerfully. “Crocodiles eat babies. Or dingoes. I think I read a story about this happening in Australia, didn’t you?”

“I - I suppose I did, yes -”

“We wouldn’t talk about it if it didn’t really happen.” Michael felt their voice fall into a rising lilt, like an attractive song that was played to a concert hall but heard only by you. They were distantly aware of Mike lulling the rest of the students into their own hazy daze: aware enough to be confused, but trapped in their seats and the fog of misunderstandings. “Fiction isn’t real. Reality is real. But a thought experiment is in between, isn’t it? Something that strains the boundaries of reality, that proves the fundamental concepts of life, told through a framework of an intrinsic lie. A paradox is a lie telling the truth. You are a truth speaker telling only lies. What you know isn’t so much as anything at all, is it? What do you really know, anyway?”

“One of us tells only the truth and the other tells only lies,” Mike Crew called out, bored. But his eyes were shining in endless refraction, infinite rooms holding infinite guests. “But is it really a lie if you had mistaken it for the truth? What lies are you living, Dr. Young?”

Dr. Young was stammering, eyes swimming, and Michael didn’t dare to break eye contact. It was a delicate spell they wove, but Michael wasn’t so bad at bringing this simmer to a boil. Cooking was about improvisation, and Michael had always been great at that.

“If your life is a lie,” Michael breathed, “then are you really alive?”

It was clear, when it happened: the professor started inhaling deep, deeper breaths, chest wracking with heaves. His eyes rolled up in his head, he clutched at his chest, and he finally slumped down on the floor. He twitched, jerking slightly, and he would continue jerking. At which point the students would become aware, and they’d call an ambulance for him, and he would be perfectly alright in the end. If a little mentally scarred.

“Damn,” Mike Crew said, almost impressed, as both he and Michael stood up. He shoved his pens in a backpack, glad to be free of his examination for another week. “What’d you do to him?”

“Made him think he was dead,” Michael said serenely. “He thought his heart had stopped beating so he had a panic attack. He’s going to have to make an appointment with a psychiatrist but he probably should anyway, work’s very stressful for him.”

“Guess I have the rest of the hour off,” Mike sighed, as he held the door open for Michael so they could slip out of the back of the classroom. It was yellow, and a little strange. “Want to grab a pint with me at the campus pub?” He paused a beat. “Wait, are you even old enough to drink?”

“I’m as old as eternity and reborn every second.” Michael paused a beat. “But I was eighteen last time I checked, and I’ll probably be eighteen for a while, so yes?”

“Great, let’s roll. I need a drink.”

****

Mike’s uni’s pub (Michael had asked the name of the uni but the information had, unfortunately, been lost in next Tuesday, so they’ll know then) was the exact opposite of the high class pub Helen had taken them to. Instead of glassy, shiny, and chromey, Mike’s pub looked strongly as if very many people had puked in it and the staff had tackled the problem somewhat half-heartedly. Michael enjoyed the sight of the puke existing in all points in time simultaneously, giving it a sort of weird yellow-ish shine. Actually, maybe all puke had that yellowish sheen?

When they asked Mike about it as they hopped up on the bar, he just sighed. He flagged the bartender down for a pint, and when the bartender squinted dubiously at Michael they revelled into the micro-confusion of ambiguous ages. Micro-feeding? Like mini muffins?

“Helen made a mistake hiring you. She’s stuck us with a perpetual teenager.”

“I’m as much a teenager as you are a uni student,” Michael said pointedly.

“I’m not an embodiment of the It Is What It Isn’t Is,” Mike said, oddly aggressively. “I’m just a normal Avatar.”

“Fear demon.”

“Melanie King isn’t always right and I don’t know why everyone thinks she is.” Big words from an honored Special Guest on her show. There were many in the fear demon community who would kill for the honor. It was a good thing she hated intruders in her Archives - otherwise they’d never leave. “But I’m no different from - that douche Peter Lukas or that stoner Elias Bouchard or that btich Annabelle, okay? I’m just a guy. Who eats trauma. Plenty of guys do that.”

“Very good denial of reality!” Michael approved. “Normally Helen tells me to go further into denying reality as a concept, though.”

“God, you hallway people are impossible to have a normal conversation with.” Mike huffed, clearly not as irritated as his words would imply. Michael also approved of the incongruity. “I’m assuming that you’re here for absolutely no reason and that you have no idea why or how you ended up at my uni.”

Michael shifted uncomfortably. “Actually, I am here for a reason.” At Mike’s extreme surprise, they hurriedly clarified, “Not with any goal, meaning, or intention in mind! But I just wanted to talk about something to someone who wasn’t technically another facet of my meaningless whole. Helen and I are as index and ring fingers on the same hand, but we don’t really get each other sometimes, you know?”

“Does that make you the pinky finger?”

“I actually had a hypothetical for you.” At Mike’s nod, Michael snagged a napkin from the stack on the sticky bar and began creasing it, somewhat anxiously. “Let’s say, hypothetically, you were a teenagerish nongendered sentient hallway intern who happens to eat trauma.”

“This isn’t much of a hypothetical,” Mike said flatly.

“I’m a hypothetical person. And I’m only a person hypothetically.” Michael started making little folds in the napkin, twisting it up into a strange origami. “So, let’s say, hypothetically, that this person - their name is Michael - enjoyed being them. It wasn’t always fun, and sometimes they kind of missed the world making sense, or at least not making sense in a familiar way. And sometimes Michael got tired of being a sentient hallway and wanted to finish secondary. And maybe even sometimes Michael grows sad that both their parents were eaten by their new boss, who is kind of a Tory! But that’s all fine. Michael’s probably happier like this than they ever were even when they did have parents.”

Mike Crew stared at them a little, slowly sipping his pint.

Michael hunched their shoulders, and folded up the napkin further and further. They had read somewhere that any piece of paper can only be folded seven times. They folded the napkin seven times, then eight, then nine, then ten. That was something nice about the way things were now, they supposed: no rules, absolute freedom. Only rules, no freedom. That was what Dr. Yung would call a paradox. “But maybe the worst part about this new job is that Michael doesn’t really like hurting people. Sometimes it’s fun to randomly make people very upset, and you always kind of end up doing it anyway, but after a while Michael feels kind of bad about it. Michael likes doing other things better, like making terrible roundabouts and rearranging the pages of books. Maybe they even like reading books. They like reading comic books backwards, from the last page to the first, so every panel is a surprise.”

“There’s lots of ways to be a fear demon,” Mike pointed out, almost gently. Maybe only because he could relate. “Look at me. I’m not feeding off anyone. Just myself.”

“But I like the way I do it,” Michael said, frustrated. “Helen keeps trying to get me to do it the way she does it, but the point is that we aren’t the same. What’s the point in having two of us if both our viewpoints are the same? We’re different in every way, but we’re the same being. I just want to be the Spiral the way I want. Not the way Helen wants.” Their voice lowered, almost unwilling to say what they were about to say. “Not the way the Spiral wants.”

Mike stared at them for a long time, slowly sipping his beer, and Michael focused their efforts on forcing this improbable napkin into something that could be beautiful. A lotus flower? A mobius strip? Or should they just let it happen as it happens, and see what form it decided to take?

Finally, Mike said, “You are the Spiral.”

“Then why am I always disagreeing with it?” Michael asked miserably.

“Why are you, Helen, and the Spiral always disagreeing?” Mike pointed out. “Maybe that’s the point. So much as anything’s a point. Isn’t it the most perfect paradox of all, to split yourself into portions that are always disagreeing and bickering? Maybe everything you’re feeling is on purpose. I mean, it’s kind of improbable that you’re feeling at all, right?”

“I retained a lot of humanity,” Michael said. “Maybe a bit too much, actually?”

“Right.” Mike nodded decisively. “Then that’s the appeal. A human mind will always strain against its confines. It will always want different, want the same, want the old and the new and the perpetual and the fleeting and the eternity and the moment. What’s more nonsensical than a human? What’s more contradictory than human nature?” A dark shadow passed over his face, just for a second. “The Spiral kidnaps us and turns us into it. One part of our minds is entrenched in its eternity, and another part is always screaming in agony. But predominantly we are the unholy mixture of human and Entity, oil forced into water. It’s so intrinsically horrifying and wrong that we just get used to it. We are both demon and human, and so we’re neither, and so we’re both. Isn’t it weird, Michael, that unlike so many other Avatars, none of us want to be here?”

“You’re a very philosophical person,” Michael said diplomatically.

“Thanks, I think too much about my lot in life.” Mike Crew sighed, slumping on his barstool and knocking back more of his pint. “I wish you and Helen would stop showing up in my life so often. When you aren’t around, I can almost pretend I’m a person.”

“That’s why we show up,” Michael felt obligated to point out.

“Yeah, I know,” Mike said glumly. “I always know. I can’t stop knowing.”

There was nothing Michael could say or do that fixed this, or that could make Mike feel better. They understood, just a little - that nostalgia for a kinder time. But maybe it was more that Mike never had those halcyon, innocent days. He had lived life since childhood in aching knowledge that his days were numbered. Maybe that’s why Mike was allowed to live life as a human even now: his human life was just as confusing and isolated as his afterlife, and that when fear stained every second of his life there was no point in ceasing it.

Maybe Michael couldn’t keep their human life because they had been happy. At the very least, they had been ignorant. That was one thing the Spiral could not abide: ignorance.

These days, Michael knew everything. They knew everything so, so much.

So, in lieu of comforting falsehoods, Michael offered Mike Crew a slightest sliver of truth. They passed Mike the little piece of origami that they had made, and let Mike cradle it in his large and smooth hands.

The origami had no shape. It wasn’t folded into anything. It was just a meaningless amalgamation of points, corners, and creased paper. It didn’t look like anything at all.

“See?” Michael pointed out. “It’s a bear.”

Mike Crew smiled weakly. “Looks like a sea goat to me.”

There was something beautiful in ambiguity. When something was nothing, it could be everything at once. That was rather Michael’s favorite thing about it.

“I think it’s a self-portrait,” Michael decided.

And that, at least, was as true as anything else.

***

Michael wandered their hallways.

On some level, they were pretty much perpetually doing that. Even as one facet of them talked with Michael in a campus pub, even as another helped Helen convince a high class pub into voting Brexit, even as they traumatized a physics professor, they wandered these hallways.

Make no mistake: everything in this story has/will/is happened/happening simultaneously.

Of course, on another level Michael was literally their hallways, and thus they were not so much wandering as existing. Pulsating, one could say. Even twisting, if one would be so bold.

There was a mirror, in the hallway. Not a funhouse mirror - although Michael did enjoy popping out from those and scaring Nikola - but just a mirror. Gilded around the edges, ornate with swirling curlicues. You could see yourself in it. You could see a lot of yourself in it. It wasn’t what you had always looked like, not really, but you just had the sense that this was what you really looked like. Maybe you had always looked like this, and everybody was just too polite to tell you. Were you really a brunette? This mirror had to be right. You had been a blonde all along. Nobody had told you. They were laughing at you. They were laughing -

But this was Michael, and Michael’s, and nothing in here could harm them. It was even comforting. They looked at themselves in the mirror, and saw themselves same as ever. Or not same as ever. They were still Michael, so far as Michael was Michael.

Shortish. Blondey. Raggedy hair. Curled as much as anything’s curled. Fun clothing that they really enjoyed. Tall shoes, because they liked feeling tall. Similar dimensions to the golden number. Non linear, but who’s counting? It was what they typically looked like.

But, just for a second, Michael even fooled themselves. They saw someone in the mirror that they were not, someone who they had never been, someone who they never will be. Someone different.

Michael, just like everyone else, couldn’t stop themselves from reaching out. Come back. Come back! Let me touch you, let me be you! Michael’s fingers brushed the shiny glass, and the world tilted sideways, and Michael fell into where the sidewalk ended.

They emerged, or maybe they had always been, inside a bedroom. It was a nice little suburban bedroom. It had a peaked ceiling and a window seat. The walls were a soft, navy blue. There was a young person, lying on the shag carpet, leafing through a book. Big headphones were over their ears, and they were bopping along to music. Disco.

Michael stood, an intruder into a familiar space, and watched the stranger. Their throat felt oddly tight, and their eyes felt strangely hot. The stranger was smiling faintly, flipping the pages of their book somewhat mindlessly. They were reading it for school. Flatland. It was just an assignment, but it was really fucking them up. It was making them think about all of these things that they didn’t normally, in new dimensions. It was really cool. All of their friends were just reading the Sparknotes, but they really wanted to talk about it with someone.

This, of course, had happened. It will happen in the future. It was happening now, as Michael watched the scene with an electric sadness. It would never happen, because the Spiral had never been here, and never would be, and always was.

A knock echoed on the door, several sharp raps. Michael didn’t notice, legs swinging to the music.

The knock on the door hit louder. “Michael!” A voice echoed from behind it. “Michael, are you ready to go?”

Michael reached up and slid off their headphones, without looking up from their book. “Coming!” They called back. “Be right there!”

The Spiral watched Michael, who hummed absentmindedly as the door knocked again. Dad was downstairs, making sure the gas was off and shutting off the lights. Mum was knocking, knocking, knocking, on a door that was and will always be wood.

“Have you packed yet?” Mum called.

“Sure I have!” Michael yelled back, glancing at the empty suitcase on the bed and the messy pile of clothes right next to it. They pushed themselves up, flipping the book shut and rising to their feet. “Be right out!”

“Hurry up,” Mum called, as the Spiral mouthed the words along with her. “We’re going to be late!”

The Bermudas aren’t going anywhere, Michael thought spitefully. They stuffed their clothes haphazardly in a suitcase, took far more care to pack their laptop and DS, and shoved Flatland in a side pocket of their backpack.

When Michael slung on his backpack, unfolded the handle from their suitcase, they were not even looking at the door they left through. They were entirely focused on managing the unruly suitcase, and walked straight through the crazed yellow door.

Of course, Michael walked out. Slightly stranger, a little better, a lot worse. Exactly the same. They were back in their hallways again, fresh from their little suburban bedroom and the child exiting one world and entering one quite different. Maybe one part of that child would always be in that bedroom, another part in these hallways, and another part always caught in that doorway and the transition.

Simultaneously, in all points in time, Mum knocked on that wood door, and Michael never let her inside. Simultaneously, at all points in time, Michael watched it all happen.

They hadn’t expected it to be so comforting. At all moments in time, in a little corner of their heart, Mum knocked on their door. If the Spiral lived in your soul and beat your heart, it was easy to find the beauty in it - the magnificence of eternity, and the joy in the moment. Mum was with them - literally, as he was pretty sure Helen was still digesting her. Maybe nothing was ever truly over - just over there.

Michael stuck their hands in their pockets, whistling a jaunty tune that highly resembled the Shepherd’s Tone. Their hallways pulsated comfortingly, and Michael carefully toed off their platform shoes and eyed down the infinite hallways. No rugs for a while.

Maybe Michael, Mike Crew, and Helen should get together more often. Just the three of them. They would drive each other batty. It would be a lot of fun.

Michael set off running down the hallway, and skidded on their socks down the hardwood floor, whooping in joy as they skidded endlessly towards eternity.

#my writing #the magnus archives #tma #the magnus archives fanfic #tma fanfic #michael the distortion #helen the distortion #michael #helen #michael shelley #helen richardson #mike crew #the distortion #the spiral #Michael views their life as an embodiment of terror and unreality as roughly equivelant to capitalism #Helen is kind of regretting hiring this kid but it's probably the only thing stopping them from eating her #Mike Crew really really really hates his fear cousins #i had to open a lot of wikipedia pages for this so you're welcome

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captaincravatthecapricious · 4 years

Text

Collapse- Prompt Fill

Jon is a Dune fan. How can picking up one book change things? Idea from a tumblr prompt and a post by @roseunspindle (permission was granted for writing this)

cw all the typical episode 160 stuff and references to nausea and of course manipulation and fainting. Some dialogue from 160, and a quote from Dune, of course!

I am still accepting bingo prompts (card by @celosiaa) Pick a prompt from the card and a character and let me know if you want art of fic! (I am much faster at art). I have several outlined that I need to write, and I will get to those... Soonish? Have an excellent day and I hope 2021 treats you well!

Jon isn’t sure why he grabbed the book. He’s read it before so it doesn’t hold the same interest it once did. He had to work on that reading habit of his in school, and now he’s managed a few rereads, but he still prefers the unknown and interesting.

But he did love this book when he read it. He was too young for it, of course. But that hadn’t mattered. He sucked the whole world into his young and greedy mind.

And now that glossy, second hand cover.... makes him pause over it. He doesn’t know how it survived evictions and his absences. He must have subconsciously stored it out of the way. But he grabs it, with a few statements, and his small collection of clothes into a very battered backpack that he’s sure once belonged to Melanie.

He wishes he had more books. Maybe once he and Martin reach the train station, he can pick up something else to read. Or maybe he can borrow some books from Martin….

He stuffs Dune into his backpack. It’s on the top, distending the fabric slightly, straining the zipper as his grandmother had always reprimanded him for when he shoved too many pleasure books into his school bag, (always to read under the desk and he was always inevitably caught and reprimanded again, but what could you do with an inattentive student who still pulled good marks?).

He boards the train with Martin. Battered and aging backpacks filled with worn clothes and statements and books and granola bars. The station had been loud and busy enough to send Jon reeling with the information spilling off a crowd of people as well as the less eldritch sensory overload. His head aching dully as they settle into their seats.

Medicine for motion sickness sends him drowsy as soon as it is effective. He spends the time before it works staring queasily out the window, clammy hands holding tightly to Martin as much to sooth his uneasy stomach as to hold Martin in this plain of reality. He nods off, hands still clasped with Martin’s. Wrapped up in the elation of having Martin with him, around him, talking to him…. almost safe.

He wakes up in a storm of hurried breaths and crashing thoughts…. precarious as the crashing waves that haunted the lonely, but far closer and more oppressive. Statements tumbling with his own crashing thoughts. Fear on his breath. His fear making him Hungry in the nauseous way of autocannibleism.

He presses his face into Martin, only just then realizing that he’s been using Martin as a pillow. Martin, who is dozing. Martin, who is still a little foggy. The last of the haze burning off with the contact. Jon can see the steam rising between them, mainly and gentle. The sun burning the fog off a meadow in the early morning.

Jon sits himself up, but stays pressed against Martin. The imprint of Jon slowly thawing Martin as the train gently sways them both.

Jon doesn’t want to sleep more. He would much prefer to read, but it is still more than a bit of a gamble for him to even medicated. But…. he’s bored.

Dune.

Right on the top of his bag. Leaning over starting to make him queasy (which doesn’t bode well for reading attempts), he pulls it out and straightens up.

He turns it over in his hands a few times, until his stomach settles. He’s fine. Just a few more minutes before the medicine works… probably anyhow.

He flips through the pages, still waiting for his breathing to calm as well.

Oh.

He remembers this words… in a half remembered haze of childhood and tracing those words on his limbs and his walls. With his eyes, and markers, and pencils. On the inside of his eyelids. Carved into the air about his bed as he repeated them to himself.

‘I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.’

Reading those words again makes his hands shake like they had when he first read them… with Mr. Spider fresh in his nightmares. Still missing the life he could never have with his parents.

Jon fumbles for a pen.

He traces them again on his forearm.

Poorly written, of course. Hands far from steady with the rocking of the train and the rocking of his stomach and the rolling of his world after the day he’s had. But he is once more too tired to focus on anything much, so he tucks his book away again, and shoves the pen in his pocket.

He tucks himself up against Martin again, using an old jumper as a blanket. He knows he is taking a bit of a liberty, but he buries his face in Martin’s neck and breathes deeply. He’s asleep again in moments.

The trip isn’t eventful. Lots of track clicking past. Lots of drowsy hours. A disappointing sandwich and a tasteless cup of tea. Jostled shoulders. Cramped restrooms. Cramped necks. Jon’s bad leg protesting the seating arrangements. Then the slightly uncomfortable walk to the safe house. Weighed down with hasty shopping and their lumpy bags. Jon limping more heavily by the time they drag themselves over the threshold.

In the domestic bliss, time stretches. Lazy afternoons on the couch Jon and Martin entwined stretch into years in the golden light of afternoon. Two weeks of cups of tea. Of trips to the store. Of statements that Jon goes through way too fast, try as he does to ration them. Frantic phone calls to Basira as Jon can’t make the trip to town anymore. More cuddling on the couch. Bickering over who does the dishes, over who makes the best eggs. Over what to have for dinner. Discussions of what counts as a sandwich and whether cereal is a soup. Jon being appalled that Martin eats cereal from the box directly with a spoon. Martin being horrified that Jon eats dry cereal from a bowl with a glass of milk. Playing footsie through dinner. “Yes Martin, another soup. Means less cooking.” Sloppy kisses over glasses of wine. Jon being too dizzy to go on walks. Jon retracing Frank Herbert’s words on to his arm. Over. And over. And over again.

“I must not fear…”

Until a package arrives.

It’s unassuming and labeled in Basira’s careful penmanship. If Jon expects to see tear-staines over a lost partner, he doesn’t see them.

Martin kisses him soundly, and leaves to take pictures of good cows.

Jon has been tucked up on the couch. Under a thick blanket. Finally in better spirits now that he has statements again, ready …so ready for his limbs to feel like his again.

He tastes copper as he started to read. The words don’t sit right in his mouth. Before he can even properly start… before his mind is lost to him, he can feel the wrongness building. And when the betrayal occurs, he can’t find it in him to be surprised or hurt. All he can feel is a hollow fear…. a hungry fear. Gaping and endless. Tearing into his skin as he tears at his clothes, his skin, the statement that does not belong to Hazel Rutter and has nothing to do with a fire. Aside from the fire in his throat and in his hand, and leaping from mark to mark as Jon learns what they actually are. A map of manipulation. A tool to make the actual tool. The wood and hammer and nails that make him the door. The door that he… that he. “ Come to us in your perfection.

Bring all that is fear and all that

is terror and all that is the awful

dread that crawls and chokes and

blinds and falls and twists and

leaves and hides and weaves and

burns and hunts and rips and bleeds

and dies!

Come to us.

I-“

“I…” Jon chokes. His eyes sliding helplessly over the room. Over many tokens of a happy life that he is never going to have. Because of this…. this… he can’t even call it a betrayal. His entire life has lead to this. Every unhappy moment. Every instinct he has ever had. Every poor choice. Every step another step towards the inevitable. His eye catches on a familiar cover. Somehow still glossy. Despite Jon having carried it around like a safety blanket for the last few weeks. And he catches those smudged and traced over words on his arm and he tears at himself, trying to stop.

“I…”

He chokes again. Around those last few words. The words that will wrench the thunder from the sky and rend it asunder.

“I…”

He breathes. Possibly for the first time since his hands ghosted over the unassuming manilla folder.

“‘I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.’”

His vision cuts out. He must have stood at some point, because he is falling. Stings cut. Nothing to manipulate. The puppet is broken.

He wakes with a head full of cotton, but a heart devoid of fear. There is a clarity in his limbs. But exhaustion sits heavily on his chest. He feels… clear. And real. And… like utter shit.

But the arms around him are solid and warm and smell like tea and toast and all the good things Jon can think of in the world. And even if Jon could bring himself to move… he wouldn’t have dreamt of doing so.

There is burnt ink in the air.

“Wha’?” Marble-mouthed. Heavy with the exhaustion of years of poor sleep, of running and fearing and the adrenaline crash of something horrifying being…over.

“It’s alright, Jon. Everything’s fine. I…. I don’t know how you did it, but you stopped reading… and I burned it. It’s gone. We’re okay.”

And Jon isn’t sure he understands…. but he doesn’t care. Because he is not afraid, and Martin told him that everything is okay. And he thinks… just Maybe. Just… maybe… that it might be.

He lets himself be tucked in. He lets himself sleep.

Jon takes up calligraphy. He hates it. Utterly despises it… but he becomes decent enough to write one thing for their mantel. In the safe house. Miles away from fear and Jonah Magnus… if the bastard is even still alive…

Framed in gold, traced out in neat and flowing calligraphy:

#the magnus archives #tma #jonmartin #fic #tma fic #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #dune #cw fainting #cw nausea #cw manipulation #my words #my fic #my writing #my art

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wu-sisyphus-gang · 4 years

Text

Motion Sickness: 5.2 Sector 7

pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq

“Alright kid, just follow my lead and stay quiet unless someone asks you something.”

“Got it.”

“Don’t screw this up for us.”

“Are you done?”

Dust crystals, weapons, and all other kinds of malicious paraphernalia were sold in the lower levels of Mistral. Beneath wired poles and under shady market stalls you could evidently buy pretty much whatever you wanted. In broad daylight. Probably pretty hard to enforce law when everyone was breaking it. The entire place was pretty openly criminal with people who were wearing masks purchasing put together bombs in full view of the sun. Or what counted for sunlight down here.

We followed a spider’s web marking on a wall into a dimly lit bar in which the only barrier between the inside and the elements was a flap with a Mistrali Flag on it. As though that was fooling anybody. It didn’t fool me and I colored myself as someone who was pretty easily fooled.

I took a look around the inside and noted several dozen people in similar purple drab. As if that weren’t enough, many people inside had that same spider web symbol tattooed to their forearms, bicep, or even their neck. I knew enough about gangs to know one when I saw one being so open.

I wheeled Qrow in.

“That's far enough now sweetheart.”

A woman sat alone at a table with two of what were clearly bodyguards on either side of her. I stopped pushing Qrow’s chair and held up my hands in surrender. I wasn’t about to start anything, even if some of the people we had passed were clearly on something and had glints in their eyes that made me want to draw my weapon.

Ether, I hoped, but perhaps even Hyper was on the table. Literally on the table as a dude did a line of white powder nearby.

I made no move towards my weapon anyways because it wasn’t like I could defend Qrow or myself in a tight space like this. We were very outnumbered and probably outgunned and entirely at the mercy of our hosts. I like to believe that I was alright in a fight, which was to say maybe I could take the lady’s two body guards if it was just the three of us and I managed something clever. This was something different. We were surrounded and they were in front of us, behind us, to either side, and, just to make things worse, above us. The place had two floors that I could see.

“Well if it isn’t Qrow Branwen. It's been a long time and you have gotten much shorter.”

“You know, you loose one fucking fight.”

“And who’s this? Some new protege or apprentice?”

The bodyguards came up to search me and I cooperatively handed over my sword and shield to the girl who staggered under its weight for a second before reclaiming her balance. “Jaune Arc.” I introduced myself as the dude patted me down. He came away with some fire crystals and an Atlas army knife. Nothing crazy for a place like this; I mean probably. I didn’t frequently search people who went to bars like this one.

“Didn’t answer my question, hun.” She probed. Jabbing at me with the spoon she held in a pudgy hand.

“He’s teaching me, yes ma’am,” I erred on polite caution.

“Good boy. You can put those arms down.” I did as she directed. “Now I’m sure you’re not here just to catch up with me, now are you?”

“I’m not no.” Qrow wiggled his stumps. I almost laughed. “I need a set of prosthetics, Atlesian or Valean or good enough for hunters.”

Would his prosthetics transform with him or-

“It’ll cost you.”

I’m sure it’ll be fine. Its magic so why not? I couldn’t think of a good reason why his new legs wouldn’t transform with him and Ozpin hadn’t said anything. Not that that meant anything.

“We don’t have much Lien.”

“Oh Mr. Branwen. Lien is how I run my business,” the spider said from her seat. She managed to glare down at Qrow still with a soft smile.

“You also run it with favors and errands.”

“A favor from the great Qrow Branwen.” She took a long drag of either tobacco or perhaps even some greens. It smelled most like tobacco, I think, though. “It would mean a lot more if he was capable of walking,” she jabbed easily. Which I think was perfectly fair.

“You provide the legs and I’ll do the walking. And if you don’t like that then the kid isn’t half bad in a fight either.”

“Hmm.” She pondered. “Okay.” She said with a sly smile. The dude handed me back my switchblade and crystals and the girl handed back my harness with my bigger blades sheathed as though that was some well rehearsed signal.

"I'll need real surgery." Qrow admitted begrudgingly. "Not those ones you just attach and pull off. I'll need them grafted on."

"Well that'll just cost you extra. Two favors.”

“Lets talk it over. Hey kid?”

“Hm?” I wondered.

“Why don’t you wait at the bar while we talk. You’re making me nervous just standing behind me.”

“Alright. Sure.” Why not?

I mosied up to the bar. The bartender in purple had a kukuri and some light armor. He didn’t card me or anything, just looked across the rosy counter towards me. “Whisky on the rocks.” Keep it familiar, keep it simple, keep it dumb, or else you’ll end up under some ganglord’s thumb.

My drink was slid towards me in a crystal patterned glass that I examined. It seemed clean enough. I had a sip. It was smooth. I had another sip.

“Who’s this Melanie?” A voice purred from behind me. A girl’s voice. I ignored it because ignoring women was my MO.

“I don’t know Miltiades, some new huntsman.”

“He’s decent looking.”

“Tall, too.”

I looked around. There were two girls looking at me. They had dark hair and pale green eyes. I looked them up and down. “Are you talking to me?” I wondered. It went against my MO. Explicitly, even. One had a pair of silver blades attached to white boots to match the overall assemble of a white dress. The other had red claws strapped to her back. The red claws matched a tighter red dress than the girl in white who could only be a sister. Maybe a cousin if I was stretching.

They looked damn near identical, though, so I was really stretching.

“Who else would we even be talking to?” I looked around, the girl in white made a fair point. There was nobody even close to me. They were to either side of me out in the open.

“So what brings a huntsman like you down here?” The girl in red asked.

“I’m with him.” I pointed to Qrow, not seeing any point to lying. I pushed him into this place afterall. Out in the open. “Need to get him back on his feet but we’re a little short on cash.”

“And what is he to you?” The girl in red asked.

“He’s not much to be completely and totally honest. Family of a friend,” I answered vaguely. “I didn’t catch your names.”

“I’m Melanie Malachite.” The girl in white introduced herself. “And this is-”

“Miltia.” The other finished. Malachite, like the woman in charge. Well I'd better be polite and not fuck things up. That was all the advice I’d been given.

“Well, can I buy the two of you a drink? Or drinks, rather?” I doubted they would be sharing.

Instead they just giggled a little at me. Cute girls laughing at me was nothing new though and after a few years it meant surprisingly little. Girls like this tended to laugh like that. It would be better for my sanity if I didn’t take it personally.

“I thought you were short on cash.” Miltia returned, hiding her smile behind a hand and failing. Probably intentionally.

“Short on cash for a pair of legs. Not for three drinks.” I lifted my glass to my lips. It was already empty and the glass clinked around in no liquid. “Make that four drinks. What’ll you two have?”

“A white russian,” Miltia said.

“A hurricane.”

I ordered for them and another whiskey for me. Then I slid the red drink to the girl in white and the white drink to the girl in red. I was sixty percent sure they were fucking with me. Somehow. And it was totally working. They were messing with my head completely and totally and probably for kicks.

But they took drinks from their cocktails with a familiarity that threw me off. Maybe they did drink these exact drinks a bit. I nursed my own, making sure to take it slower on my second glass of something straight.

The last thing Qrow and I needed was for me to be wasted.

"So where are you from?" Melanie pulled back from her red drink and bounced out the words. I hope she wasn't clumsy because that drink would stain like a nightmare on her white clothes.

"Vale. I, uh, I used to go to Beacon." I took my weapons off my back and set them on the stool to my left. The stool on my right was occupied by Miltia.

"We're from Vale too." Miltia said.

"Not really the biggest fans of Beacon students but we can make an exception."

"Lucky me." I slipped. "Well the 'ex-Beacon student' is kinda important anyways. I left that place behind after the attack."

"We left with the collapse as well." Melanie added.

"Decided it just wasn't safe enough." Miltia clarified.

"Makes sense. I was out of there in a hurry myself. How did you two get here then?"

"Airship." Miltia informed me.

"Our parents own several so we just flew." They were sisters, then.

"Must have been nice," I let myself grumble. The thought of my feet aching from walking ached.

"Sounds like there's a story to how you got here." Miltia pressed.

"I walked, rode horses, and took a train. Just extra steps comparatively. More monsters, you know?"

Melanie blinked. “You ride horses?”

“Well aren’t you a regular old fashioned knight.” She eyed me in my thick armor. She may be reading into my look and figuring some other things. They were all wrong but she was figuring some things.

"I had to learn on the way. It's not like that."

"Did Qrow Branwen teach you?"

"You two know Qrow?"

"We know about Qrow." Miltia corrected.

"Some hunters are famous like that."

"Him and his sister are both well known but there are others too."

"Winter Schnee, Glynda Goodwitch, General Ironwood." Melanie counted.

"Well Qrow didn't teach me that but I suppose he is mentoring me in other things."

"Like what?" Miltia asked.

"Like being a better fighter, I guess. He knows a lot about how to kill things, and not much else to be on the level with you." I reached the bottom of my drink and debated with myself before ordering another one. I was on the heavy side anyways, so it should be fine? "I really try not to take his advice on other things."

“You’re a heavy drinker.” Melanie watched me order more whiskey.

"Yeah. That's one of those things I really don't want to pick up from Qrow but it might be too late. I might have the sort of addictive personality that leans that way."

"You're not sure?"

"I'm really not the kind of guy that goes to bars much."

"You seem like a regular to bar or club life."

"Yeah. With the right haircut you could be a plain old ladykiller."

I blushed. "I don't think so..."

"Come on."

“I know, let us give you a makeover.”

"Nobody likes a good-looking guy with no confidence."

"Nobody likes a guy with the wrong kind of confidence either. Trust me on that one." I thought of Weiss. She really hadn’t been all that into me. Like at all. But hot girls not liking me was nothing new to my life. It was the rule and there were two redheaded exceptions. Weiss was… probably a friend? Now? I wasn’t really sure. I learned to dislike her a little as a self defense mechanism. And to be fair, while that was probably an unhealthy coping mechanism, it kept me slitting my wrists the short ways rather than the long ways. I sucked on my third drink. My vision was getting a little shaky and my lips and face a little looser. "Where did you girls train?"

"Train?"

"Get your huntswomen training, I mean."

"Huntswomen," Miltia giggled.

"I know he's so careful." Melanie laughed back.

"Listen, I have gotten my ass beat by so many women that it pays to jump through that kind of hoop. It just does."

"We don't have any formal training." Miltia returned to the previous question.

"We're from the mean streets of Vale."

"We're with the gang so…" Miltia finished.

"I see." I nodded along.

"You think it doesn't count?" Melanie prompted.

"It's probably more real than any training someone gets at like, Signal." I disagreed with her implication. "My real training came from after Beacon fell, in the wild. Hunting criminals and real Grimm instead of practice dummies or training partners."

"Plus whatever Branwen is teaching you."

"Eh." I managed. "The chair happened around the same time that I met him. Most of the training he has given me has been verbal rather than hands on. All-l, really-y." I slurred slightly.

"You seem perfectly capable anyways."

"Maybe gang life would suit you."

I watched Miltia trade drinks with Melanie. They took a pull from the others' drink in perfect synchronization. At my look she leaned over. "We don't mind sharing things." She winked.

"Uh huh." I managed stupidly. “So what kind of haircut should I get? Asking for a friend.”

“I don’t know.... What do you think Melanie?”

“Well he looks alright now but he could tame it even more. Slick it back and nice and short. Nothing to grab onto but it would be smooth.”

“Yeah, he’s sort of in between right now. Like go scruffy or comb it over. Pick one and commit.”

“Pick one and commit…?” I trailed.

‘Yeah. You’re scruffy-”

“But not full on scruffy. And you have the comb over-”

“But you didn’t commit to it. If you’d pick one and go with that one who knows what could follow.”

“No one likes a guy who’s indecisive.”

“Seems to me like you girls don’t like a lot of guys,” I cut in. “Indecisive, no confidence, wrong confidence. Boy, is there anything about me girls actually like. I’m honestly asking.”

“What should your angle be? You mean?” Miltia asked.

“Yeah? What cards do I play? I’m too nice for edgy and too honest for mysterious.”

“Well you’re tall and broad so you’ve got that going for you,” Melannie pointed out. “Everyone likes a huntsman. Who doesn’t like a huntsman?”

“Nobody.”

“Okay, I hear that. Let me ask you something. I met the most beautiful girl in the world when I was at Beacon. A smart, gorgeous huntress. Let’s say I was really trying to impress this girl and I tried everything I could think of. I tried singing. I tried asking her to the dance. I tried asking her alone and in groups and in and out of classes. I tried it all. Okay? I tried literally everything and the kitchen sink.”

“And nothing worked?” Melannie asked.

“Nothin’,” I said. “Nothin’ worked. Not a damn thing. I think she hated me.”

“Well it sounds like you were trying too hard. Nobody likes that.”

“And if you’re going to go honest you have to commit.”

“C-o-m-m-i-t,” Melanie hit the back of her hand into her palm with each letter. She spelled it out for me which was good because I’m fuckin’ stupid. “Honest is fine.”

“Honest is good, even. But if you’re dishonest in any way a smart girl will smell that from a mile away. You said she was smart right?”

“The smartest.”

“So what did you really do?”

“We can’t tell you unless you’re completely honest with us,” Melannie ordered.

“Real talk?” I asked. “I… I tried to fake my confidence… and most of my personality...”

“Yeah that’s not gonna work.”

“That’s not gonna work at all,” Miltia agreed. “You can't play the nice guy card and then try and fake it like that. A girl just knows.”

“A girl totally just knows. We would notice if you were faking it right now. It’s like a guy faking their orgasm. It’s not a thing.”

“It’s not like girls can really fake it either…” I pointed out. “It’s pretty obvious and world shaking when a girl finishes for real. And when you do it right she isn’t sure if she wants more or less. Can’t fake that. Come on.”

“He knows…” Melannie trailed.

“He’s onto our entire gender.”

“Who would have thought?”

“Scraggly, tall, and blonde has moves in the bedroom.”

“Please,” I waved off. “It’s so stupid easy to make girls come. It’s literally brain dead. If I can do it anybody can. The clitoris and G-spot are not hard to find. You can make a girl finish even when she is begging you not to.”

“Can you not with guys?” Miltia asked.

“Not a chance. It’s easy to get a guy into it but if he’s not completely into it you cannot get him off. Bet.”

“Is that a challenge?” Melannie wondered. “Are you challenging us?”

“Bet,” I repeated. I finished my drink.

"Are you done flirting." Qrow had rolled up on me without me noticing. No mean feat from the chair.

"I really wouldn't know flirting if it walked up and stabbed me in the front," I leveled against him.

"Well stop it. Come on. I worked out our favors from Lil' Miss Malachite." I said my valedictions, grabbed my tools, and wheeled him back over to the woman in charge.

"So what's the first favor?" I wondered.

"I need someone killed." She splayed her hands across the table. "Is that going to be a problem?"

"Well it depends on who it is, doesn't it."

"Does it?" She pressed me.

"Of course. It matters who it is to you too."

"Smart boy. It's a dust witch in a rival gang named Eminence Kramer. She’s been a thorn in my side for far too long and she has made it clear that she has to go."

"And the second favor?" I continued.

"I need information out of one Don Corneo." She took a long drag. "You decide the order. I don't particularly care. After that we'll get Qrow here a new set of legs and the surgery to boot."

pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq

-WG

#rwby #jaune arc #ruby rose #lancaster #weiss schnee #whiteknight #motion sickness #ruby rose x jaune arc #jaune arc x weiss schnee #jaune arc x weiss schnee x ruby rose #war of the roses #weiss schnee x ruby rose #white rose #whiterose

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rafaelswaithe-archived · 5 years

Text

Distractions

Summary: Requested by @perfectlystiles — “ opie winston + fem!reader maybe she get gets hurt in a fight and op freaks out and realizes he likes her and wants her to be his old lady?? “ Warnings: Guns, violence, language, drinking Pairing: Opie Winston (Sons of Anarchy) x Reader Word Count: 2798 Rating: M

The two of you had been doing this dance for months — since the first time that you’d come to one of the Sons’ parties with your friend.

You’d just broken up with your long-term boyfriend, the asshole having cheated on you, and you insisted that maybe this wasn’t a good idea, that you should stay home. You were sure that you wouldn’t be any fun to have around.

Still, she had insisted, telling you that you needed to get your mopey ass out of the house. You’d rolled your eyes, letting her pick out your cutest outfit and do your hair and makeup. “That piece of shit has no idea just what he’s missing,” she told you, looking you over before you headed out.

After a little less than half an hour at the party, your friend had gone off with one of the guys. She’d asked you about ten times if you were sure if it was okay, and you told her it was. Just because you were still healing from your breakup didn’t mean that she shouldn’t have a good time.

You sat at the bar, nursing your drink until soon, you felt someone slip onto the stool beside you. Glancing over, you spotted a man who despite his rough appearance, glanced back at you with soft, sweet eyes.

“Another beer, Ope?” the bartender asked, and he nodded, thanking her. He looked back at you for a moment and noticed that your glass of alcohol was nearly empty.

“And maybe another for…” he trailed off as if to ask your name.

“Y/N,” you answered, and he nodded. The bartender nodded as well, moving to make you another drink after trading out Opie’s empty beer bottle for a fresh one.

“Opie,” he spoke, offering his hand for you to shake, which you took, unable to help but notice just how much larger the male’s hands were than yours.

“Thanks… for that,” you said, gesturing to how the bartender was currently making your drink. “I was good for it, but I appreciate it.”

He gave you a small grin, “It’s not a problem. You’re a guest, after all,” he shrugged. After a moment, he spoke up again, “You’re not here alone, are you?” he questioned.

You smirked a bit at his question, shaking your head. “Technically, no. I came with a friend, but I think she’s off with one of your friends somewhere,” you replied, gesturing to the club’s logo on his kutte, as if to say that the guy your friend had walked off with was part of his club.

“Ahh, yeah. Depending on who pulled her away, your friend may be a while,” he laughed quietly. “You seem like this whole thing isn’t really your scene.”

You shrugged your shoulders, thanking the bartender quietly as she brought you your drink. “I’m in a funk lately. I’m usually a lot more fun.”

Opie’s head tilted as he looked you over, “Oh? Want to talk about it?” he asked. He kept the thoughts to himself that you looked incredibly well put together for someone who claimed to be in a funk.

You shook your head lightly, “Not really anything to talk about. Just a trash, cheating ex and the overly dramatic breakup. It’s a pretty boring story, really,” you said with a quiet laugh.

His brow furrowed at that, brow arching as you mentioned that you’d been cheated on. “That’s not boring. I’m sorry that happened to you,” he spoke.

Sure, several of the Sons still slept around, even if they had an Old Lady, but it had never been the life for him. He’d been married, and until Donna died and even afterward, he was faithful. It wasn’t until recently that he’d let himself start to have fun with other women again.

You took a long sip of your drink, nodding slowly, “You and me, both, Opie. I’m trying not to dwell on it too much, though. That’s why my friend brought me here — she thought that I needed a distraction.”

Opie hummed quietly, nodding as you spoke and he stroked his beard with the hand not holding his beer. “Well, I’d say that there’s definitely plenty to distract you here,” he replied, looking over at you with a grin.

——————————

Months later, you had made many more appearances at the club’s parties, even bringing your car to the garage when it needed a tune-up, in the off-chance that you’d see and get to talk to Opie.

The two of you had become close quickly. He found that he could confide in you without you judging him, and he gave you the same courtesy. You always seemed to make each other laugh, and you were able to calm each other down when the other was upset. You had even met and loved his kids.

It was evident to everyone around you that there were feelings between the two of you, but you were still hesitant. Part of him would always belong to Donna, and you weren’t sure if he would be able to fully give himself over to you. On top of that, it was still hard for you to trust anyone, even though he’d done nothing to break yours.

Regardless, you and Opie had been spending a lot of time together. You could always be found together when you weren’t working, and had built a true bond with one another.

Sitting on a bar stool in the clubhouse as you sipped from your drink, your eyes lit up as you saw the guys walking inside, Opie front and center with Jax and Clay. Your eyes moved over the guys’ features, trying to read if they had a good run or not, or if it was a good time to approach him.

Opie’s eyes moved over the bar, spotting you almost instantaneously. When your eyes met his, he nodded for you to come over to him. You set your drink down on the bar, moving from your stool and making your way over.

Once you were close enough, you placed your hands on his shoulders, intending to jump up and have him catch you, but he had other ideas. He stooped down once you were in arm’s reach, wrapping his arms around your legs and playfully tossing you over his shoulder.

“Opie!” you squealed, causing him and Jax to laugh while Clay rolled his eyes, continuing on his way the office. Your hands rested against his back and you tapped lightly to be put down. Once you were on your feet again, his arm remained around you, circling around your shoulders.

You moved your arm around his waist, walking toward the dorms with him to let him get cleaned up. As you were almost there, you saw one of the Crow Eaters slip into your and Opie’s path. You recognized the girl from the time that you’d spent at the clubhouse — Melanie, you thought her name was — and knew that she was especially fond of Opie.

He’d hooked up with her a few times in a drunken haze, then never again, seeing just how crazy she could be. Still, she’d never seemed to get the hint. She pushed her blond hair off of her shoulders, intending to give Opie that much better of a view of her cleavage, and you rolled your eyes.

“Hey, Ope,” she greeted, sly smile plastered onto her lips.

“Mel,” he nodded, starting to step around her to continue on his way, but she stepped into his path again.

Mel turned to you, then, “Hey sweetheart, why don’t you give Opie and I some alone time. Don’t worry, there’s plenty of other guys out there for you to choose from.”

She proceeded to reach out for him, to which he pulled away before she could touch him. “Mel, I already told you, this is never going to happen again.”

Melanie scoffed, shaking her head, “Why? Because of this bitch?” she asked, gesturing to you. Moving in closer to him again, you felt him stiffen, but you knew that he wouldn’t use force against her unless he felt that he had to. “Come on Opie. We had so much fun last time,” she drawled, voice sickeningly sweet as she dragged a finger down the center of his chest.

Your brow arched as she called you a bitch, and before you knew that you were doing it, you’d grabbed her hand from where it moved over Opie’s chest, reacting before even he did. “This bitch is about two seconds from kicking your ass if you don’t leave. Now. He said he wasn’t interested, now fuck off.”

Mel smirked, letting out an almost maniacal laugh at the thought of you kicking her ass. “You want to go? Let’s go,” she spoke, pulling a gun from her bag, pointing it at you, then Opie, then you again. “But, I fight dirty.”

Both you and Opie’s hands lifted as a sort of surrender, and he started to pull away from you, putting himself between you and Melanie, and you could tell that he was going to try and take the gun from her before she did something stupid.

“Mel.. put the gun down. Come on, don’t be stupid,” he started, keeping his hands up.

Mel shook her head, keeping the gun pointed at you, placing her finger on the trigger. “Don’t fucking call me stupid, Ope. You know, you and I could be so great together. I’m willing to bet you’ve never came as hard with her as you did with me.”

Opie shook his head, “I meant what I said, Mel. No more. You think pulling this crazy shit is going to make me want to be with you? Really?”

“Crazy is putting it mildly,” you murmured under your breath.

“What the fuck did you just say to me, bitch?” Mel spat, starting to move closer to you.

Before she could move much further, however, Opie grabbed her by the wrists, working to wrestle the gun out of her hands while her finger was still on the trigger.

Though he was stronger than most, Mel’s adrenaline had to be going a mile a minute because she fought tooth and nail to keep her hold on the gun and keep it pointed at you.

In the midst of their struggle, Mel’s finger slipped over the trigger, causing the gun to go off. Time seemed to move in slow motion as the bullet sped toward you, Opie basically tackling Mel to the ground and snatching the gun out of her reach.

“Y/N, move!” he yelled, trying to get you to move out of the line of fire in time.

As the bullet clipped your arm, you cried out in pain, falling to the floor. Of all of the places to be shot, you were sure this wasn’t nearly the worst, yet it still hurt like hell.

Several of the club members ran to investigate the gun shot, eyes widening at the scene that had unfolded. Opie’s eyes locked with Jax’s and he shoved Mel toward him, as well as her gun. “Get her ass out of here.”

Jax grabbed the gun, taking the ammunition out of it and passing it off to one of the other guys as Juice moved forward, grabbing Mel and hauling her outside.

Opie moved to your side, kneeling down beside you and pulling you into his embrace. He looked up at Jax as he removed his kutte, then his shirt, wrapping it around your wound and holding pressure. “Call Tara.”

Jax nodded, taking out his phone and dialing the doctor’s number, and Opie held you close to him.

“Hey… Y/N,” he spoke, voice soft and comforting. “Y/N, baby, you’re gonna be okay.”

He had seen plenty of people shot, and had even been the one doing the shooting, but this was different. You weren’t some gangbanger or outlaw. You were innocent. This was never supposed to happen.

“Opie…” you groaned softly, a quiet whine leaving your lips. “She fucking shot me.”

Opie bit down on his lip in the center, nodding lightly. “She did, but it’s okay. You’re going to be okay. Tara’s on the way and she’ll get you all fixed up.”

Your hand moved to cover his over your wound, turning your face into Opie’s shoulder. “Your taste in girls is questionable,” you sighed.

Opie couldn’t help but laugh at that, shaking his head. Looking down at you, his eyes scanned your features. “Not always.”

——————————

Once you’d been all stitched up and Tara cleared you, she’d given you some pain medicine and told you to take it easy. Through it all, Opie had barely left your side, and you were beyond thankful for him.

Days later, you laid in his bed in the dorms, curled up on your good side beneath his blankets as you inhaled his scent on his pillows, allowing it to comfort you.

The door opened after a few minutes, Opie letting himself into the room and closing the door behind him. Looking over your shoulder, you gave him a small smile. “Hey…”

“Hey, how are you feeling?” he asked, starting to change his clothes and get more comfortable.

You turned to look away from him again as you saw him changing clothes, wanting to give him at least a little privacy if he wanted it. “I’m okay, I guess. Still pretty sore.”

Opie nodded, changing into a pair of pajama pants and a wife beater tank. Crawling into bed beside you, he propped his head up with one hand, reaching out with the other and lightly tucking a few loose strands of hair behind your ear. “I wanna talk to you about something,” he spoke quietly.

Your head tilted at that and you nodded, “Okay… yeah, anything,” you agreed, leaning into his touch a bit as his fingers moved over your hair.

“So, the other day when everything went down, I’d actually been planning to talk to you then, but all of that kind of delayed it,” he started.

Nodding, you reached out, fingers lightly stroking over his beard, making him smile just barely as you waited for him to continue.

“All of this, it scares the shit out of me. I can deal with the guns, and drugs, and violence, and even rivalries within the club, but this is something else entirely. When I’m with you, I feel things that I haven’t felt since I was first with Donna.”

You bit down on your lip in the center as he mentioned Donna, and his thumb moved to soothe over your lower lip, lightly releasing it from your teeth. You pressed the softest of kisses to his thumb, and he let out a sigh.

“These feelings? They scare me, and I know that they scare you too,” he continued. “But, all of that the other day? It makes me see that I need to just man up and tell you how I feel.”

Your head tilted curiously as you looked at him, and you could hear and feel your heartbeat in your ears as you waited for him to go on. “And how do you feel, Opie?”

Opie sighed again, glancing down toward the bed. Hesitating for only a moment, he leaned in, pressing his lips to yours.

Your brows arched, eyes widening slightly before closing, returning his kiss with ease. Your hand lifted, cupping his cheek as you kissed him, letting out a soft moan at the feel of his lips against yours.

After several moments of kissing you, he pulled back, resting his forehead against yours. “I want you to give me a shot. I like you. You’re one of my closest friends and I care about you. I want you to be mine. Let me be yours, and let me protect you so nothing like this ever happens again.”

In all of the time that you and Opie had spent together over the last several months, you’d always had feelings for him, lying beneath the surface. When you had met, you were still getting over your ex, and you’d pushed any and all feelings down, not wanting to get hurt again. Despite all of that, Opie had still found his way into your heart.

“Yours… like be your Old Lady?” you asked.

Opie’s thumb brushed against your cheek and he nodded, “If that’s what you want.”

You hummed softly, leaning in and pressing another soft kiss to his lips. “I like you too, Ope. Let’s give this a try and see how it goes.”

At your response, he grinned widely, “And here I was thinking that the club life wasn’t your scene,” he teased.

You rolled your eyes playfully, shaking your head. “I told you, I was in a funk. You got me out of it.”

#opie winston x reader #opie winston #sons of anarchy #opie winston imagine #sons of anarchy imagine #writing: mine #i did minimal editing on this so if it sucks and has errors i'm sorry #i'll go back and read it and try and fix them later if so

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genesisarclite · 7 years

Text

Constants and Variables, Pt. VII

This chapter was a lot of fun. I laid out the rough outline first, changed my mind more than once about what would happen, then went back and spent a couple hours rewriting and expanding it. I wanted it to have a... surreal quality, like a waking dream, so I would recommend listening to something similar to this while reading, as it’s the kind of music I listened to while writing it.

note: Melanie and Kris were inspired by the krogan bickering about “Presidium fish” from Mass Effect 2. it’s a silly aside to ground this story’s increasingly surreal atmosphere.

For over a week, Morgan didn’t appear. Jason worried, sitting at his desk and staring at his terminal without seeing, while Mika, sometimes joining everyone else in the cafe, asked once where he was. Alex didn’t turn up, either. The doctors and nurses and technicians could say nothing about what had happened. Aislinn went about her rounds, and she got very good at keeping her mind off the vice president and on her tasks. The question of “where is Morgan” only rose to her lips once, when she had to visit the trauma center after slicing herself open by accident, but the nurse couldn’t answer her, only giving her a hopeless look while he patched the wound.

During that week, she didn’t bring boxes to his office, as Jason turned her away every time she approached the keypad. She worked in silence around him, noting the creases in his forehead. Whatever happy spark she’d known before was gone, a sensation shared by other execs and high-ranked personnel she came across.

By the time the end of her shift rolled around and the weekend had come, exhaustion led to her collapsing in her pod and sleeping for six straight hours.

When she woke at midnight, the sheets were tossed about and her stomach empty, so she got up.

She had never wandered around Talos this late, when the majority of employees were asleep. Most of the lights in Crew Quarters were turned low and soft, aside from some safety lighting and ambient illumination in the corners. She followed the hall past the mid-level suites, moving as quietly as she could manage, the hall lit only by recessed lights, most of the nooks filled by thick shadows that seemed to waver around her, as though slinking about, predatory. Even the central lobby lacked its normal luminance, fingers of shadow forming where the lights did not reach and slinking their way up to the tall ceiling, so dark that it looked like a gaping maw staring down at her.

It unnerved her; she hunched her shoulders on instinct, eyes darting back and forth, questioning her sanity in choosing to leave the relative safety of the pods.

The Moon and Sun were out of sight, bathing the station in darkness.

Her work boots made soft thumps on the plush carpet as she ascended the wide staircase to the Yellow Tulip balcony. All of the large lamps that usually shed brilliant golden light upon the balcony were shut off, leaving only the safety lights in the corners and along the walls. None of it quite reached the ceiling here, either, and so she walked through a haze of darkness, picking her way past flowers closed up for the night.

She looked left through the huge windows of the bar to see most of the lights turned off there, as well, aside from the faint red light of Tizzy as it floated about, tending to things here and there.

The threshold of the bar was dark; she hesitated and looked all around, rubbing her arms. The shadows were so deep in places that she felt as though something hid there, waiting for her to walk past before leaping out. The moment she let her guard down, she would be lost to the darkness.

Nerves, she told herself, but her eyes flicked back and forth all the same.

She crossed the threshold, receiving a welcoming beep from Tizzy, but it otherwise left her alone – programmed not to disturb the night shift, perhaps. In the corner, Duncan left a box for night workers to pick from if they needed a snack; she opened it and picked out a can of green tea, now at room temperature, and a bag of tomato jerky. The box was mostly full, so she didn’t worry too much about eating from it tonight.

As she sat down at a side booth, she heard the sound of a pair of footsteps approaching and glanced over to see two night workers, both women, one with light brown straight hair and the other with much darker curls. She recognized them right away as Melanie and Kris, maintenance crew who kept odd hours. They both had engineering expertise, so they rarely had an Operator in tow, and always hung around together. From what she’d been able to gather, they bickered quite a bit, yet they were good friends, and their sniping never seemed too hostile.

The curly-haired woman carried a lamp in one hand, spilling a pool of blue-white light before her. It reflected off the glass and metal of the bar, scattering it in wild patterns all around. Aislinn moved a little closer to the wall. Something about the scattered light and inky shadows disturbed her, in a primal sort of fashion, but she couldn’t place why. It made no sense – she had only been afraid of the dark as a small child, and had welcomed it when she could on Earth, enjoying the sights and sounds that came with the world’s night.

Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling. Removing a glove, she rubbed at the injection site over her eye.

The light bobbed around, disembodied, before Kris hung it on a loop jutting from the wall. The pool now bathed both women in light, casting enormous copies of their bodies in black, sharp-edged ink on the walls. “Duncan said it was back here.” Kris knelt at the back of the bar wall and withdrew a flat-headed screwdriver, which she proceeded to wedge between two panels. The screwdriver glittered in the light like a metal fang. “Gotta just pop this off.”

“I’ve got a crowbar on me. Might work better?”

“Yeah, probably. Gimme.”

Aislinn opened the bag of jerky and popped open the can. Neither sound disturbed the engineers, too busy were they at the panel to pay her any mind. Tizzy floated out from behind the bar, stared at them for a minute, then went back to whatever it had been up to, out of sight once more. The smell of green tea and ham-flavored tomatoes mingled and made her wrinkle her nose – it reminded her a little of poor-quality dog food.

“So, Kris,” Melanie said, dropping to one knee, “heard anything about Morgan?”

“No. Figured if he’s dead, they’ll tell us. Hold here.”

“I just hope he’s okay.” Melanie gripped the edge of the panel while Kris pried at it from the other side. “It bothers me so much, knowing he got hurt, but not knowing how he’s doing. Some of the other people I’ve talked to, they're just as bad. Some are really worried. Do you know Jason Chang, Morgan’s secretary? He’s not sleeping.”

“Morgan’ll be fine, I’m sure.” Kris popped the panel off. It clattered to the ground. “Why’s there another one back here?”

“You think they’d tell us if he was dead?”

“Melanie, I know you’re fascinated with Morgan. I really don’t care to hear about it right now.” Kris shoved the panel to the side and bent down further before laying flat on her stomach and turning over onto her back.

Melanie shook her head. “Can you blame me? And don’t be so insensitive, Kris. He’s the vice president. People are gonna worry, and that’s okay. I’m not as worried as some, but I still am. Can’t imagine how Alex feels...”

“I seriously don’t get your hype.”

Melanie’s lips curved into a faint smile. “Very funny.” Pause. “Wait, you don’t?”

“No.”

“Kris, have you seen him? Especially when he’s... well, working out?”

“No.”

“You’d get it if you did. Those workout clothes are something to die for on him. They let you see everything. He has some really wide shoulders, and a real deep chest. It’s good reason to work out more, just to see that. And that voice...”

“Don’t care. Hand me that wrench.”

“It’s like... melting butter. No, wait, fondue, over butter.” Melanie blinked, then muttered, “Does that work?”

“I really don’t get how you think it’s okay to fantasize about your boss.”

Aislinn took a swig of the tea and studied the bag of the bag. Since the day she had arrived, she’d heard other women fawn over Morgan, but not one had ever dared attempt to get close enough to do anything about it. None were as close as her, not even the female techs he worked alongside – at least, as far as she knew. He was the object of many a wandering eye, just far enough out of reach to be a true fantasy.

How many of those women knew she worked close with him, been seen with him, spoken extensively with him? Would they be jealous of her, or would they just not even care?

“He’s not exactly my boss. Besides, it’s not like I ever talk to him. There’s nothing wrong with appreciating him from afar, you know. His eyes are so gorgeous, you know? Color of dark chocolate. Could stare at them for hours.”

Kris growled at the second panel before popping it off. “Cool.”

“Those eyes, that voice, make me wanna–”

“Stopping there is a good idea. Ah, here’s the break he told us about. Tizzy! Shut off the tap for me over there!”

Tizzy beeped an acknowledgment. Something squeaked.

“Cool. Okay, let’s see if we can...” The wrench slipped out of her hand and banged on the fallen panel, drawing another curse from the woman. She contorted her body to avoid having to sit up, ending with a comical pose of her folded nearly sideways and stretching out with one arm, snagging the wrench with her fingertips, then carefully dragging it inch by inch back over until she could return to her original pose.

“These uniforms are pretty tight, and when he walks by... have you ever looked at him from behind?”

Kris sounded pained when she said, “Stop.”

“You can really see how much he works out when you look at him from the back. The way that bu–”

“I have a screwdriver, Melanie.”

Melanie toyed with the panel on the floor a moment. “He kind of... I don’t know, sashays when he walks. In a very, very manly way, mind you. Makes it real hard not to see he got the boo–”

“Screwdriver I has, Melanie.”

Aislinn concentrated on not choking on a mouthful of jerky. It was inappropriate to talk about the vice president that way, of course, but Melanie didn’t seem to care one whit. It was an appreciated distraction, though – a bit of humor in the middle of the night, drawing her mind away from its worries for a little while.

And Melanie only voiced the lingering thoughts in the back of her mind. While she’d never fantasized that way, nor had she ever looked him over very extensively, she wasn’t blind to his attractiveness. With the way he carried himself, the confident swagger and the cool, steady eyes, he wasn’t either.

“Oh, c’mon, Kris, you can look.”

“Apparently I gotta remind you of my fiance back on Earth, which I’m, y’know, due to visit in two months. Look, I already got the best guy in the universe to fantasize about. Drooling over our boss isn’t how I wanna spend my time. Now shut up and hand me that other wrench. Other wrench. Other wrench. Thank you.”

“Kris, he’s really sexy and you know it.”

“No, he’s attractive to some people, and I'm not one of ‘em.” Kris popped a piece of pipe off and inspected it under a light that hung from her utility belt a moment. “Go fabricate me one of these,” she said, slapping the pipe into Melanie’s hand and nudging her knee with one foot. “Go on, go.”

Melanie stood and swiped her hair behind one ear – not pulled back like it was supposed to be, maybe because there wasn’t anyone around who cared that it didn’t fit regulation. She then turned on her heel and speed-walked out, leaving Kris on her back and staring at the ceiling in silence for a long time. In the dim glow of the safety lighting, it was hard to make out more than the basics of her expression, but she seemed content to just lie there a bit.

“Sorry about Melanie,” she said suddenly, picking her head up to look at Aislinn. “She’s probably mid-cycle.”

Knowing to what she referred, Aislinn hid her smile. “It’s cool. I got it.”

“Glad you do.” She dropped her head back.

Aislinn was halfway done with the bag of jerky when Melanie returned, handing the fresh pipe piece to Kris. The curly-haired woman then set to work putting it back in place, fiddling with the fittings on either end until a piece of sealant fell off in a crumbly mess. Muttering curses, Kris produced a tube of sealant from her belt pouch, screwed the pipe in, and carefully applied a line of the stuff to the gap that had resulted.

“How could you not be attracted to him? I mean, it’s like somebody whipped up a batch of pure hotness with him.”

“Melanie, I swear on all that is good...”

“You can’t tell me you’ve never thought about it, or noticed. He’s just so–”

“I don’t care.”

“But he’s just so sexy. You’ve got weird taste.”

Kris finished sealing the pipe and inspected the rest of it. When more of the old sealant crumbled off, she muttered something and produced a small brush with stiff bristles, sweeping most of the remaining stuff away. “No.”

“You’re such a liar and you know it.”

“He’s shorter than me. And he’s younger than both of us. Quit acting like a lovestruck teen.”

“So? Shorter doesn’t mean anything. He’s smart, he’s hot, and he’s got a voice that could melt butter just from being in the same room with him. Look, I’m not the only woman who–”

“You’d sooner find a gold nugget under your pillow tomorrow morning than get him to pay attention to you.”

This time, Melanie hesitated before saying, “I... I know. All of us do.”

“Then why bother with the impossible?”

The woman shook her head again, hair sifting around her shoulders. The light scattered on the individual hairs, making them glitter like silver strands. The dance of light and shadow drew Aislinn’s eye, making her skin prickle. What was wrong with her tonight? Had something woken her, and she just couldn’t remember it?

“Alright, you win.” Melanie shifted her weight, running a fingertip across the floor. “I’m done.”

Aislinn carefully sealed what was left of the jerky and rolled up the bag, drained the rest of the can, and crushed it into a metal pancake before making her way out.

She took the can to the recycler and carried the jerky with her, but didn’t return to her pod, instead wandering into the darkened Rec Center to see what she else she could find. Everything was still, the massive television in the main seating area off, and only a few safety lights had been left on, providing just enough luminance for her to avoid stumbling around. Ignoring the stairs to the upper floor, she instead stood in the darkness for a while, arms folded, leaning against the wall, and gazed out into the main seating area in silent wonder.

The station always seemed to be brimming with life. Even now, when the shadows were long and thick, and the lights were low, she could still somehow feel the sensation of life, humming through the metal and the ever-present breeze brushing across her cheeks and through her hair. The night crew was fastidious and discreet, flitting from shadow to shadow as they worked. Even the Operators seemed to have been programmed to keep quiet, their machine songs kept to a minimum, and the station slept in peaceful quiet otherwise. It felt like a warm blanket, enveloping her and beckoning her to sleep, and the longer she stood there, the quieter her mind became, until her eyelids felt heavy.

Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that every single shadow watched it – formless, ethereal creatures, creeping along walls and ceilings, waiting for her to turn her back so they could pull her down into the darkness. Something had awoken her, she reasoned, but no matter how deep she delved into her memory, whatever dreams she’d had before waking would not return her searching. Perhaps it had been a nightmare. Perhaps it had been nothing.

It took a minute, but she made out a shape, human, on the sofa in front of the darkened television, barely visible as a dim gray outline against the black.

Her chest tightened in a swift contraction, pulse skipping, a quick intake of breath rasping down her throat, and she took a swift step backward. The suit bumped the wall before her body did, a dull thud that seemed too loud in the silence. Pulse rapid in her chest, she tried to regain control of her breathing.

For a moment – just a moment – she had slipped into some dreamlike state where every shadow was a demon.

Something had awoken her that night. But what?

Her skin prickled, and her footsteps, even dulled by the carpet, seemed far too loud, breaking the beautiful silence.

“If you’re trying to be discreet, I heard you when you first came in.”

The voice sent a jolt up her spine. The spark spread to the tips of her fingers, where they curled and uncurled at her sides. The leather of her gloves made quiet creaking sounds. She walked slowly over to the sofa and sat down on the other end, staring at the gray shape, searching for his features.

He moved then, to the corner, and switched on another safety light. Its warm golden glow provided just enough light to make out his features when he sat back down.

Seeing him again was like being punched in the stomach, hard enough to knock the wind out of her. She remembered sitting with her head in her hands, panicking until she couldn’t breathe anymore. Whatever she was to him, she knew what he had become to her, and it scared her half to death, because he was her boss, the vice president... and she had to force herself not to stare at him, not to think, not to dream. Not to want.

Because she could appreciate his features and his attention, but anything more than that–

Even to herself, she sounded like a broken record.

“Was wonderin’ how you were.”

Morgan studied her a long time, sleepy, arm resting on the back of the sofa, body canted at an angle that told her he just wanted to curl up right there and go to sleep. Except for a bit of darkness under his eyes, he seemed fine, the bruise gone from above his eye, hair back to its usual cut. “Couldn’t sleep. Bad dreams.” His brow wrinkled, lips pursing, but the expression vanished a few beats later. “It’s quiet here. Helps me think.”

“Right.” Her hands fiddled in her lap as she tried to look polite, studying him, tracing the angular bone structure and the distinct slant of each eye, the way his hair fell over his forehead in a sweep of deep brown. The strands shone gold in the light, a play of light and darkness, unsettling her all over again. The conflict of his familiar presence and the cold, deep darkness of the strange shadows made it difficult to focus.

And unfortunately, the sleepy, intimate atmosphere made it very, very difficult to ignore how very alone they were.

He blinked, leaning slightly toward her, then said, “I know you.”

She chewed the inside of her lip. “Well, I’m–”

“Wait, please.” His voice was soft, almost too low to hear, and it fit the ambiance perfectly – sweet, sleepy, warm, inviting, far from the cold eyes and metal walls she’d encountered before.

It sent a shiver up her spine.

“I know you.” The words came out a little raspy. “I do. I know you, but... I don’t know how I know you. Who... what... are you to me? How long have I known you?”

She ran her tongue over her teeth. “Aislinn Kelly, part of the maintenance sector. I stock things, like your office.”

“You stock... my office.” The frown deepened. “My office. Have we spoken before?”

Lie, her mind said. Her mouth said, “Lots of times.”

“Yes. Yes, we have. Aislinn.” Recognition spread across his features. “I... it seems I know you from a previous trial or two. I had the same sense of deja vu when I ran into some of the–” He clamped his mouth shut and looked away from her.

“I know about the trials,” she said. “Told me when you first started ‘em.”

His eyes returned to hers. “What else did I tell you?”

The breath she took this time felt chilly in her lungs. “That you wanna play the piano, and you like caramel-flavored coffee. This and that, really. That your...” Did she need to tell him this? But maybe it would be enough to convince him, and then she could leave, and sleep in peace until the station’s “dawn” arrived. “That... your middle name is Tyler, and that you don’t much like it, so you don’t go tellin’ people it.”

In the light, his eyes shone, the shadows falling across his features as soft as his voice. “You’re right, I’m not keen on telling people that name. That means... you’ve been close, to me, throughout these trials, one of the constants.”

“In a sea of variables, yeah. But I wouldn’t say... ah, ‘close’ is the right word...”

“But it’s good we ran into each other again.” He settled back into the sofa. “I’m here not just because the dreams woke me up, but also to get away from my brother. He worries, way too much. I’m still his ‘little brother’.” Closing his eyes, he let his head fall back. The light now fell across his throat and outlined his jaw – a line she followed, not unwillingly, with her wandering and appreciative eyes, down to where it melted into the uniform.

“You look like you need more sleep,” she said.

“Sleep will come later. Thinking comes now.” He folded his hands in his lap, the corner of his lips turning up. “I’ve run into you a lot, haven’t I? The trials have been going on for a long time.”

She uncurled her fingers and took a deep breath. It was just Morgan. “And I’m in your office, stackin’ things and catching you hunched over somethin’ every time, usually two or three times a week. Haven’t been up recently, since you went AWOL on us. Can’t tell me about that, though, right?”

Deep breath and soft exhale. “No, sorry.”

“Not surprised,” she muttered, lowering her head into one hand as she propped that elbow on a knee. “Funny we both couldn’t sleep and all. Didn’t have bad dreams, but I just slept for six straight hours and just... woke up. At least...” Without meaning to, she looked around again. “...I don’t think I dreamed, but I don’t... know for sure.”

“But keeping odd hours isn’t a bad thing.”

“Not... no, not usually,” she said with a nod, “but I don’t normally wake up like this.”

“You sound a little distressed. Something bothering you?”

Again, she looked around. “N... no, I’m just fine.”

“Aislinn,” he said, “you wouldn’t be jumping at shadows, literally, if you were.”

For a moment, she closed her eyes, gathering herself. She could trust him, she knew she could. The only thing holding her back was herself, and no shame existed within the desire to be comforted. “Just... the shadows, like you said. Somethin’ about them doesn’t feel right, like they’re... looking at me.”

Something flashed through his eyes as the skin around them tightened. “Looking at you?”

“I... I just... no, it’s fine. Fine.”

Without blinking, he scrutinized her, the safety light reflecting in the depths of his eyes – a golden star, suspended in the cold blackness of space, the only source of warmth. Nothing of what he thought came to the surface otherwise. She couldn’t read him, and felt unnerved by his ability to read her.

Or perhaps she was being far too obvious, and he only perceived the surface.

“Like predators,” he murmured, “climbing on the walls and ceilings, watching you, with black teeth and claws. You can’t them, but they see you. Waiting for you to turn your back. Waiting to devour you.”

Aislinn blinked, unable to think of a response.

“I know how you feel.”

Ice water ran down her spine. “Don’t wanna talk about it. I don’t. Tell me something else. Anythin’ else.”

Morgan seemed to understand, though his eyes were thick with curiosity and something else she couldn’t quite make out, before he settled back into the couch once more. “Did I ever talk much about Alex?” he said. “I’m younger than him, you see, by five and a half years. We’ve always been close, and when Mom and Dad were running off to do whatever it was they did all over the world, representing TranStar, we still had each other. I’m old enough to take care of myself, and he still acts protective, like I’m just a kid. He’s been so worried about me lately.”

Remembering what he’d told her in the cafeteria all that time ago, she smiled a little. “He’s a good brother, then.”

“The best I could hope for.” Pause, then he lifted his head and looked at her. “Have any family?”

“Yeah, a sister and my Mum. Dad died a long while back.”

He hesitated, then said, “Anyone else?”

Just as before, the meaning was clear, but now, the words felt different. The only way she could think of to describe it was “warmer”, and she didn’t know how to interpret it. But she knew how she wanted to. “No one waitin’ back home besides my parents,” she said. “Been living with them to help pay bills and all. Not exactly high class, y’see, not like you.”

“Don’t think of me like that. I’m just Morgan.”

“Easier said.” She slid off the sofa and stretched her spine. “Should get goin’.”

“Aislinn...” Shifting position, he looked at her. “...I appreciate familiar faces. Alex, Jason, you, the neuromod techs... they're all familiar to me when I ‘wake up’. I know I’ve seen all of you before, even if I don’t remember it. You might be at the bottom rung of the ladder, but you’re more important than you know.”

“Only to you,” she said, feeling her ears burn. Did she seriously say that?

“Well... yes. We’re running trials and tests that will reshape the future of mankind, and I’m the guinea pig. I signed up for it, knowing the risks, knowing about the memory loss. We’re building a future so incredible that the people who come after us will never know the problems we have, but it’s daunting. To have familiarity is... comforting. I... I wish I could tell you what we’ve been working on. It’s exciting. It’s the future.”

“Happened to be in the right place at the right time,” she said, trying to ignore the heat creeping over her ears and cheeks. “It could’ve easily been someone else.”

“True, yes, but why would you want to devalue what you are to me right now?”

Those words hung between them for only a few seconds, but it seemed longer. She knew what he meant, but what she wanted to hear was hardly something she felt like admitting. She was just a friend to him, no matter how she felt about him, and in the end, the gap between them was simply insurmountable. As long as she didn’t ever act on the feelings that curled and knotted inside her, they could stay secret.

But he was making it increasingly difficult, and he probably didn’t mean to, but in the low light, with only his gentle voice reaching out to her, she couldn’t ignore how it made her feel.

“Morgan, when you were... out...” A hand ran across her hair, pushing the bangs away from her face. “I was worried.”

The silence hung between them a while. “A lot of people were, especially my brother.”

“Sure. You’re the vice president of TranStar.”

Pause. “Yes. I am. But you make it sound like that’s the only reason anyone should care if I live or die. You don’t think anyone cares on a personal level?” Another, longer pause. “Do you care?”

She frowned. “I... of course. You’re a colleague.”

“Aislinn, don’t be like that.”

“Well, I can’t go callin’ you ‘friend’, now.” The words came out sharper than intended.

“Why not?” He rose from the sofa and moved closer. “Because we happen to be from two different social classes? Come on, Aislinn, those kinds of things don’t matter anymore. Or what, is it because I’m the vice president, and you happen to be part of the maintenance crew? That shouldn’t interfere with a friendship, not ever.”

“May– maybe.” Beginning to relent, she met his eyes when he stepped a little closer. They were the color of dark chocolate, silly as the description was. So deep. So beautiful. So intelligent. “I guess not.”

“Things on Talos are pretty horizontal,” he said. “No one will care if I make friends outside the execs. Not even Alex.”

At her sides, her hands flexed, then went to her hips. “Alright, Morgan, you win.”

“Win.” He smiled faintly. “I asked you to call me that, didn’t I?”

“What, ‘Morgan’? Yeah.”

Again fell silence, though not so uncomfortable this time. She moved enough to pluck the bag of jerky off the sofa, where she’d left it when she sat down, but went back to a folded-arms, back-straight pose and not looking at him. If she left now, she wouldn’t think about him, wouldn’t close her eyes and see him smiling back at her, wouldn’t feel a little self-satisfied at the realization that the women who fantasized would never be in the position she was now.

“You’re not supposed to be rememberin’ things,” she said, almost in a whisper. “Neurmods’re supposed to take out all the memories. Keepin’ things isn’t in the contract when you get ‘em installed.”

“I know, but they’re not... memories. They’re more like... echoes.”

“But you’re not supposed to have ‘em.”

“I’m the first person to do long-term testing of neuromods, the first to deal with frequent uninstalls and reinstalls, and the first to be cognizant of everything that’s happening. Yes, side effects can be weird, but if you saw what we were doing, you’d understand why it’s so important.” He folded his arms. “But I know what’s supposed to be what.”

She still didn’t look at him. “Okay.”

Again, silence, then, “Come find me in the cafeteria in the morning. We can talk more then.”

Just a friend. “But you can’t tell me much, Morgan. What good’s it do?”

“Do you ever think that, maybe, I just want company?”

She hesitated. “That... depends.”

“Depends on what?”

Not sure how to explain herself without sounding foolish, she finally looked at him. “Never mind.”

“Aislinn–”

“I said ‘never mind’.”

Looking taken aback, he blinked, once, twice, before hmming and turning his back. “Are you working tomorrow?”

“No, no shifts tomorrow. Got a whole weekend scheduled off for once.”

“Must be nice.”

She stared a moment. “You’re stayin’ up, then?”

“For a little while.”

“Morgan, c’mon, you need sleep. Bad dreams won’t be back.”

Instead of responding, he switched off the light again and sat down. It took a bit for her eyes to readjust enough to see his dim outline, and he wasn’t looking at her. When she still got no response, she turned and left the area, trying to set each step down gently enough not to disturb the peaceful silence.

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

Aislinn hesitated, looking over her shoulder at his outline, but from this distance – nearer the poker table and one of the big safety lights – it was too far to make out any real details. She didn’t like the weight behind those words. If he remembered her, and other people, even if vaguely, what else did he remember?

By the time she returned to her pod, she felt groggy enough to rest, so she rolled down the shutter and went back to sleep.

For a few minutes, anyway, before a sound roused her again.

Her eyes flicked open to a habitation pod zone full of thick shadows, tinged faintly purple. They wavered at the edges as though ruffled by a breeze she couldn’t feel as she swung her legs over and listened. Dead silence greeted her, except for a faint hissing sound at the edge of her hearing. In the other pods, she spied faint outlines of people, all of them asleep. Most other items in the area – the lockers and pool table, mostly – were smaller than usual, and there were fewer lockers.

Or were there? Maybe there had only ever been those many, and she just hadn’t noticed.

She slid out of the pod and landed gently, despite being up in the second row, without having to climb down like usual, a nice change from the usual rattling of joints that accompanied an exit.

Her footsteps were soft, legs slow, as though moving them through water instead of air. Her limbs felt heavy, and she saw everywhere at once, things she had never seen, the ceiling and shapes and faces. The hissing sound, ever present, changed slightly, dipping and rising and swerving, as though trying to form words. The shadows moved, still present wherever she looked, all of them still gazing at her as though she were prey.

The door was quite far from the pods to Crew Quarters, but in moments, despite her slow steps, she was in front of it and stepping over the threshold. The hall was shorter than usual, maybe half the normal length, and the lobby beyond well-lit, the purplish tinge now wavering at the edges of the shadows, but everything else seemed normal.

The hissing grew louder. They want to live inside us like a disease.

She looked all around, searching for the source of the raspy voice, but still heard nothing, so she continued on, toward the cafeteria. The journey was oddly short, yet her legs still moved as though weighed down by lead, every step laborious, her breath coming in deep, slow inhales. She smelled nothing at all, which seemed odd, as the Talos air always carried some scent of another part of the station with it.

The cafeteria looked normal, well-lit, the windows showing the normal panorama of the stars. Aislinn hesitated, then moved closer, ascending the stairs to the second floor, step by slow, arduous step, and stood in front of one of the enormous windows. It seemed odd, no Sun, only the night side of the Moon visible, and no Earth at all, but she thought nothing of it, trying to ignoring the hissing as she gazed into the cold blackness.

Maybe it was morning, and that’s why the lights were on. She hadn’t checked the time.

Her eyes moved from the stars to examine the void. She didn’t normally spend time looking between the stars. It was too deep, too cold, too far, too strange. Right now, though, she found it impossible to look away, compelled to stare. Far beyond her sight, beyond their most powerful instruments, lay an entire galaxy, a universe, of wondrous possibilities, unspeak

The darkness looked back at her in ponderous silence.

Aislinn leaned closer to the glass and pressed a hand to it. Her hand lacked a glove, and the glass felt very cold against her skin – strange, because it never did, but she ignored it for now. The darkness tugged at her, beckoning her to look deeper, and she felt it stare at her, into her eyes, into her mind and her soul.

The distinct feeling of something being there, that she couldn’t see, watching without being watched, left her cold.

Something is there. Something is absolutely there, looking at her.

Aislinn, suddenly afraid, felt a strong urge to look away, but had frozen in place, mind urging her body to move, but it did not obey, joints locked, the darkness pouring into her until she trembled head to toe. The hissing grew louder, words wandering in and out of her mind, and the longer she looked, the more the terror grew, but when she opened her mouth, no sound came, jaw moving in an unnatural fashion.

I looked into the darkness, and the darkness looked back at me.

There’s something swimming in the black.

I see you.

Her body cracked to pieces when she finally turned. A humanoid shape approached, its outline like smoke, its limbs facsimiles made of shadow. From the top of the stairs, it came toward her, formless but for the dim outline, until two white lights appeared where the head should be, spaced apart like eyes, but they were not eyes, they couldn’t be, because eyes didn’t look like that. Tendrils of smoke and shadow stretched out.

A third white light appeared below the other two, but it just grew, ever larger, too large for the head, but the head expanded into an enormous shadow that closed off all the artificial light from that direction. The maw glowed, but emitted no light, casting nothing despite its ever-increasing size.

Then it distorted, twisting, the glow breaking up into streaks of white interspersed with darkness.

Her chest hurt and her limbs shook as it came closer, the light gaping at her as the shadows reached for her. She tried to run, scream, anything, but her body would not obey her.

–immortality immortality humanity better stronger faster smarter immortal immortality immortality immortality immortality stronger better smarter IMMORTALITY–

Faint color rushed back into the world, and she cried out, tangled in something that snagged her arms and legs like a cocoon. It kept her prisoner in a box of metal, shadows still trying to wrap around her, but they began to fade. Her pulse hammered in her chest, breath coming in short, panicked gasps. Something clanged when she kicked out, the cocoon wrapped so tight around her that she panicked more, thrashing about, the mysterious paralysis finally gone.

“Aislinn! Aislinn! Hey! Aislinn!”

And after those few seconds of pure panic, she snapped into full wakefulness, the hissing shutting off like a thrown switch and the shadows gone. The blankets of her pod had become tangled around her legs, but a quick tug loosened them as the shutter for her pod suddenly rolled up, exposing a concerned female face framed in dark blonde hair, large eyes sparkling in the safety lighting as they studied her.

Aislinn felt her ears burn, but quickly dismissed her embarrassment. She hadn’t actively invited an episode of disturbed sleep, and certainly had wished no nightmares upon herself. “I’m okay now.”

“That was a pretty weird scream, you know.” It was Annalise Gallegos, someone she’d met in passing more than once, but knew little about. She didn’t even know the other woman’s position, only that she shared the habitation pod zone with her, and had barely spoken to her otherwise. “You okay, then?”

Aislinn glanced around to see several other curious faces and a few annoyed ones. “Yeah, just nightmares.”

Annalise frowned. “Nightmares, huh? This happen often?”

“No, first time I had one on Talos.”

The woman was silent for a long time. The faces went back to their pillows, shutters closing. “Well, okay. If you have more, go talk to Kohl, okay? He specializes in that sort of thing.”

“Thanks. Think I’m fine now.”

Annalise climbed down and walked away to her pod, while Aislinn laid down and tried to sleep, but the fear of going back to the nightmare realm of violet shadows and smoky demons kept her awake until the day began in earnest.

#prey #prey 2017 #constants and variables #my writing #morgan yu #this chapter seriously was a lot of fun #it's creepy and i love it #i got to delve into describing shadows like living things and it's awesome

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rockinem777 · 5 years

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Is this isn't even 30% of my life's fucking tragity & I still have the heart to do good for people and love like y'all are bitch made fr

I have been through so much fucking bullshit and deception and straight betrayals are an understatement to everything I have been through. I've lost my best friend. I have walked away from people I loved. I have let a grown man take advantage of everything in me he could and leave me with nothing but hate for myself. My best friend in high school wrote the first statement on me. My fiance in West Virginia has given up on me. I have never met anyone as solid as me. My best friend Kat Lynn fucking dumb fake ass bitch. She's causes a world of problems. Never did I once say a bad thing about her. My parents know I'm dying. They don't give a fuck. My dog is dying. Like lemme make it real fucking clear for you who doesn't seem to know who the fuck I am and wtf I've been through. I got my TBI cause I jumped out of a car cause the mfer told me I wouldn't. Well let me make it more realistic. My first love and I were fighting and his dad made me go home. In the car I wanted to jump out. He said I wouldn't and long story short I opened the door and the brakes through me out the door 55Mph I landed on my skull. I was unconscious for 9 days. I had to learn how to talk again. Like all for that first love of mine to leave as soon as I got out the hospital. All I had to talk to was myself. And that's just the beginning. I was suicidal then I'm suicidal now. I've lost every friend on my way here because they're fake liars back stabbers ect. My only friend Melanie Wade is who I could talk to. I used to watch her son and talk to her for days. She really understand me. She got shot in the head years ago. She was like my second mom. I talked and seen her more than my real mom. I ain't been the same since. My GMA and GPA knew I was gonna be homeless or kicked out of something when I was 16. They didn't let me stay at their house. Neither did my brother. The amount of times I've been beaten and thrown out this fucking house is an ungodly sin. And I don't want your fucking pity. The only reason I get to stay here now is cause I gave my mom a 75 thousand dollar check which I get 100 dollars a week of which she Hates to come up off of. which if I would have kept I bet you money id be dead. Ive moved out on my own with bfs and to drug houses like 5 times. 7th Street. Port republic. 10th St shout out to that nigga that gave me this fucking MRSA Gary lmao (this was the first house I was 16) scottsville. Norfolk. Like my first bf that was a mess. 4 years down the drain. IDK EHAT LOVE IS. 2nd bf my best friend at the time for years the only reason I dated that mfer is cause he would beg me for years so I figured id try. He ended up abusive. He ended up crazy. I ended up running out his house bleeding from stepping on the broken glass omw out walking from 7th to 250 near step-n-out. No phone. I got home cause that mfer came and got me and took me home no let him cause he promised I could go home. He used to refuse to let me leave. Throw me back into the house into the bedroom. Me and his son ooo malakii used to sleep and cuddle and rainy nights were the best with that amazing 5year old boy. Not that I know him anymore but whatever. Then we got that last one lmao wtf happened with that. Like fuck my life he told me I would see that none ofbthose mfers gaf about me and I guess I wanted to prove him wrong about a couple months ago when I lost all hope and I've became manically depressed I got a lisence plate that said, "told ya" like thanks. Soooo let's begiin on me being claimed by the KKK and forever fucking slave to some one or guy idk how it works tbh. Better than being sex trafficed right? I guess so. Like Garrette bar was the funniest and most loyal friend you could ask for and its a damn fucking shame he took his life over that fucking dumb whore cause she's the definition of vindictive and spiteful and evil. Hell yeah I love live blah blah blah loves you dillan I miss you. I should've ditched and went to hburg that nughtbeih you. Instead I've been having my hair pulled and legit hit and smacked around and screamed at by this mistake of a ex boyfriend John micheal which this should have been awarded with best human pickier me. Cause obviously I know how to pick the worse fucking ones cause up until today. I thought he loved me. I thought I could make it work. And tbh it was my last hope. He was my last hope and here we fucking are and fr I took 50 sleeping pills the other night and novlie he walked out on me and was clueless until he was dragging me around me bed by my hair and head calling me a bitch 2 days later for asking him "what he problem was now" in my sleep but he legit says I deserve it. He's called me a bitch twice today and oh yeah he pushed me off my bed into my closet which I like flew but anyway I smacked my head on the closet. And he watched me lay there for about an hour holding my head not saying a word. While he just got rude and acted like a douche. But then he picked me up off the floor and left me on the bed to tell me he was gonna leave me. Then I was ignoring him of course idk what to say cause obviously after forcing my hands off my ears while he screamed hateful shit into my ears 2xs he still grabbed me by my head and hair on my bed after throwing me ect and called me a bitch and told me about how his cousin is gonna come get him. So long story short I'm not trying to fix shit and he's laying on my floor saying he don't want me and blah blah blah long story short I wish I never fucking met the guy he popped my cherry. I hate myself for letting him docthisnto me if I could go back in time and never meet him. I would. I hate him. Up until today I swear I loved this mfer so much. Like I thought it was meant to be. Like omg if you don't want to be here anymore 😭 but I wish I was dead. But yeah but fr the way I let him treat me is disgraceful and I'm having a hard time forgiving myself for allowing it and like I'm not sure if that isn't the only reason I stayed this long like I was trying to vouch for myself for chasing after a man 2xs my age who was clearly just getting more abusive and mean and shamelessly more selfish by the day. Anyway I don't know what you think of me and I don't give a fuck honestly cause your fucking retarded if you don't know who the fuck has put in so much work and gave up so much fucking of my entire fucking life for the credit and adoration I receive. And no I don't ever remember the bad times. I have so many compressed memories. Like dude getting teeth taken out and getting brutally beat up and bitten and raped like and almost trafficed but I escaped. Like but fr I don't have a bone in my fucking body that has I'll intent for anyone. Always look for the helpful way. Always help who needs to be helped. Always there for people. I'm a good fucking person. Probably better than you. And I'm no longer interested in the position I think I had. I give people clothes and feed them and take care of who needs it. I'm a 100% spectacular human being and I'd be a jealous fucking asshole too if I had half the fucking mind to be as cruel hateful mean and selfish as almost everyone else around me seems to have.

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infinityknight25 · 8 years

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Legion episode

Legion: Dan Stevens Sydney Barrett: Rachel Keller Melanie Bird: Jean Smart Lenny Busker: Aubrey Plaza Ptonomy Wallace: Jeremie Harris Cary Loudermilk: Bill Irwin Kerry Loudermilk: Amber Midthunder Devil with yellow eyes: Quinton Boisclair Walter/ The Eye: Mackenzie Gray Logan Howlett: Tom Hardy Mystique: Nina Dobrev

Scene 1: Summerland during the day specifically the memory room a glass room with a table that has metal post like handles at each seat. Ptonomy, Melanie and David are having a session to try see if they can locate The Eye and other members of Division Three. Melanie: Okay, David remember we are not looking at memories this time. We are going to test your telepathy skills to see if you locate Walter and the rest of Division Three. David takes a deep breath clearing his mind. He takes them to a scene of deep green pine trees. It’s a forest covered in snow. The snow is still coming down. The three look around astonished at the sight. Melanie: Ptonomy. Do you recall seeing anywhere on the news about a place getting a massive snow storm? Ptonomy: Yeah. Northern Canada was supposed to get hammered this week. David why did you take us here? David looking at the two shrugged his shoulders. David: I don’t know. I cleared my mind and focused. This is where it brought us.

Suddenly two soldiers in black clothes come into the picture. Both men were carrying They are walking beside a now distinct road. Soldier 1: Where do you suspect the target could be? Soldier 2: Not sure. The Eye said he’d be hard to track and find. Last time we checked coordinates, He said we were on the right track. The two continued down the road about twenty feet when there was a loud man like roar from the trees. The two soldiers rushed into the trees. Machine guns ready. The sound of machine gun fire ensued. Followed by more of the same roar. The next thing the three seen soldier two fly out from the tree with multiple stab wounds and lacerations. More of the same man’s roar came from the forest. Ptonomy pulls the three of them back to reality in the memory room at Summerland. Melanie: I think we need to go to northern Canada and investigate what we just witnessed. David go get Sydney and be out front in ten minutes. Melanie gets up and exits the room. Scene 2: The bunk room at Summerland. David comes in to talk to Sydney. David has a mix of urgency and confusion on his face. Sydney: David what’s wrong? David appears to be lost in thought. David: Hmmmm? Oh Melanie told me to come get you. We have a mission to do in Canada. Sydney: What’s in Canada? David: Melanie thinks there is a mutant there that can be of value for the war against Division Three. Sydney: Okay…. Well I guess we had better go… Is everything okay? In David’s mind there was a flash to a white room with a bed and furnishings. Even a couch. Everything is white. Standing in the center of the room is the Devil with yellow eyes. Then it quickly flashes back to the bunk room where David and Sydney were. David: No. I’m fine. (Shrugging his shoulders) Sydney smiles and using her gloved hand grabs David’s. Sydney: Then let’s go. Scene 3: The scene from David’s mind where the two men from Division Three were. Standing at the forefront of the group were Ptonomy, Melanie, David and Sydney. Thier breath can be seen in cold air. Melanie: Ptonomy can you see what memory the road holds? Ptonomy: I will try. (Ptonomy kneels down next to the road and touches the shoulder. It pulls up a car going past. Ptonomy begins to do a rewind of the memories. Cars go by backwards. Suddenly a woman wearing a big fur coat comes back into the picture. Her face is covered by a hood. Melanie: Stop here Ptonomy. She stoops down by the road and then goes up by the trees. She looks toward the direction of the next town and starts walking. Melanie: I have a feeling there may be another team in the picture. Someone we may not yet be familiar with. We’d better hurry. The group takes off for the town in a car that wasn’t in the scene until now. Scene 4: The group is standing outside of a bar in a very small town that is made up of the bar, a grocery store and a gas station. The bar is very small and seems somewhat unkempt. The white paint is starting to peel and the Windows seem unwashed. There’s a neon sign lit but it’s still daylight out. Melanie: Okay once we are in David. I want you to seek out the one we are looking for. If you are having a hard time sensing him. Try to find someone who seems like the angry type. Kerry: What makes you think it’s a he? (Somewhat snooty tone) Melanie: I know you like to fight too Kerry. This is most definitely a man. His roars were so savage it put me on edge. Whatever we find in here it will be the most savage mutant we have come up against. The group goes inside. The bar is fairly lit.David looks around , trying to locate the mutant that had been the focus of this mission. Then he caught it. He seen him sitting at the bar. He was short but strongly built. He has a very interesting haircut. His hair is black and comes to points over his ears. David began to approach him. He felt nervous. After all hours before he seen this man destroy two men with M16 machine guns.The man is drinking a beer and smoking a cigar. Logan: (removes cigar from his mouth) Look bub, I would calm myself if I were you. Your starting to seem like your gonna wet yourself. David: (now even more nervous) Um… Look I am apart of a group.. Logan: (cutting off David and now looking at him) Not interested. Walter: What if someone told you that you didn’t have a choice. Logan: (Thoughtful face) Then I’d rip his heart out and make watch its last beat. Walter: (seeming aggravated) Your awful cocky for someone who’s all alone. Logan finishes his beer and puts his cigar in his mouth. Logan: (Stands and turns toward Walter) Funny. Your men with the high powered machine guns thought so too. (Clinches fists) Walter: (Now appearing to be slightly intimidated) Now. Now. There’s no need for violence here…. Is there David. David appears puzzled. Melanie approaches the group. Melanie: (Looking at Walter from his right side) I’m not sure why you are trying to drag David into this. Walter: (cutting off Melanie) You got involved by coming here asking him to join in on your little “war”. Don’t turn this around. This man deserves to…. Logan cuts him off. Logan: Save it pal. I can smell the deception on you. It Stinks! I can smell the scent of your goons that tried capturing me. We will just say it didn’t go as planned. Walter swallows hard. Mystique looking like a regular human walks up. Mystique: I’d say that you do good work. Melanie: Who are you? Mystique: A third option Walter looks around at the scene they are causing in the bar. Walter: Look, we are starting to draw attention. Why don’t we go somewhere else hmmm? Logan: I’m not going anywhere. (Claws slightly protrude out of his hands. Showing he means business) David is now staring at Logan’s claws. Walter: There’s no need for that. The intensity in the bar is building. David feels it and it begins to affect him. The devil with Yellow eyes appears at an empty table off to the side of the scene taking place by the bar. Cary is the first to sense that the entity is there. He begins to shiver with fear. He walks off without anyone noticing. David: Look there is no need for all of this we just want to talk to you. Logan: Yeah well bub I hate to disappoint you. But I don’t talk too much. Lenny appears behind David and strolls up to him. Lenny: Listen to this guy. He thinks he’s so tough. Guess he doesn’t know your more cracked up than bar peanuts. Guess he doesn’t know you can turn his brain into soup (she says touching the side of David’s head.) David: (out loud) Quiet! Everyone looks at David. Then Logan looks back at Melanie. Logan: What’s his problem? Lenny: Maybe I’ll just leave you and latch on to him. I could use his aggression that is clearly building up in that pint sized little body. Off to the side Cary pulls a fire alarm. The regular people began to scurry out. Walter: Okay. I’ve had enough of this. More soldiers dressed in black carrying M16s come into the bar. Logan puts his cigar out on his forearm. David notices that it’s already healing. Lenny pulling herself out of a mirror behind Logan sits on a stool. Lenny: Me too let’s all go crazy and uh start killing people. Logan looks back at her then back at the group seemingly very confused. Logan: Okay…. Who the heck is she? David: (Scratching the back of his head) Ummm very bad news. Walter: Hmmm well that will have to wait won’t it. Seize him. (Gesturing toward Logan) Logan roars and let’s out his claws. He begins stabbing man after man. David begins using his mental powers to slow down the slaughter. Many men were on the ground when Logan turned his sights on Walter. He advances toward Walter when the devil with yellow eyes appears between them smiling. Logan: What are you!?! David: No! I’ve had enough of you! (David begins using his telepathy to scramble the demon’s mind) The Devil with yellow eyes screams at David and runs at him jumping back into David. Logan: Holy crap. Logan turns back toward Walter and extends his claws. He begins to head toward Walter again, but Sydney touches Logan making them switch bodies. Logan now in Sydney’s body roaring like he was going to stab Walter. Then he realized they had switched. Logan: (As Sydney) Seriously?!!! Melanie: Please. Tell us about you. I just want to speak with you. Logan: (sighs) My name is Logan Howlett. I am a member of the U.S. Army. I’m Canadian and a mutant. Much like you all are. Melanie: So Division Three learned of you through their government channels. Logan: Yes this is my first leave from ‘Nam and I’ve spent it all killing these poorly trained bums. Melanie: They were gonna turn you into a deserter? Logan: (chuckles) Then you don’t know Division Three’s involvement in the government. Mystique: Which is why I’m here as well. I know a very powerful mutant looking to put a stop to not only division three but humans pursuing our kind as well. We are special Logan. (Turns to her blue flesh tone)We have to stick together and stop them before the next holocaust is Humans imprisoning mutants. Logan: I don’t have to do anything. I’m not anybody’s puppet. Okay? Now if you excuse me I have to report back to my base so I can ship out. Melanie: When your service is over…. Please give us a call. We can help you. Logan and Sydney switched back. Logan now in his own body, still talking wasnt no longer looking at Melanie. Logan: (pointing finger at Kerry) I dont need any help. (Logan confused lowers his finger.) But him.(Looking at David) He needs help. Seriously bub, find a priest or some frickin thing to deal with that problem of yours. David kind of smiles shyly. And gestures with his right hand. David: Yeah we are kind of working on it. Logan: mmm. Scene 5: Walter sitting in a U.S. army base meeting room at a steel table. He’s talking to someone who is cloaked in shadow. Walter: Look this man. This Logan. He’s a lost cause. His temper is out of control. He just wants to kill. He doesn’t listen well. His healing abilities are amazing. He still is a lost cause. I mean he’s…. He’s…. The man steps into the light. He’s young but in a higher rank. The name on his olive drab army suit read W. Stryker. William: He’s perfect….(stepping toward a window looking out onto the base) He will be the cornerstone of my program. He will be the face of....Weapon X. Scene 6: Mystique has chosen to take temporary refuge at Summerland in hopes that they may become alies. It's almost time for bed and all are heading to their respected sleeping quarters. Melanie: I hope you will find the bed comfortable. Mystique: (smiles) It will be nice to be using the same bed for a consecutive number of nights.... It's been a while. Sydney: Well I know that I'm happy to have you hear. I look forward to getting to know you. Mystique: (Thoughtfully) That might be nice.... David: Welcome Mystique. It's very nice to have you here. Well I'm kinda tired. So I'm just gonna go.(David pointing toward his sleep area) Mystique: Sweet dreams demon boy. Well I guess I need to turn in to ? Melanie: I think we all do. We have a big day ahead of us. The lights cut off. David closes his eyes and falls to sleep. He is now in a dream world. The world looks like a memory of his childhood room. Lenny comes in the room behind him. Lenny: Look at you still playing team member. They don't care about you. And that guy today... You should be more like him. A lone wolf ripping through everything. You have the power to lay waste to anything. To create a new utopia for your kind. To be the true ruler of this world. And you do Nothing! Lenny changes form into the Devil with yellow eyes. David falls onto the bed in the fetal position. Devil with yellow eyes: Perhaps it's time I take the reigns for a while. David: No I won't let you. You can't control me. This isn't gonna be like last time. The room changes back the the room David had at the psych ward. He's strapped to the bed. Devil with yellow eyes: No.... It WON'T!!!!! David awakes the next morning with yellow eyes. End of episode

#legion #legion fx #fx #xmen #marvel #marvel imagine #ptonomy wallace #melanie bird #sydney #devil with the yellow eyes #logan #wolverine #mystique #division three #william stryker

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