#albrecht is right about to cry again

[theoniprince]

He is killing me... q3q

(looks pretty elegant)

[lycanlovingvampyre]

MAG 118 Relisten

Activity on my first listen: cutting apples. Again...

Ah, I remember very well when I listened to this episode the first time. Texted my sister twice right there at the start about Martin being sassy! ("Statement ends, I guess" and "Sorry, Elias. I can’t hear you. There’s – a door in the way.")

Trying to get the episodes of the burned statements by memory. Ivo Lensik is MAG 8 Burned Out, Harold Silvana is MAG 35 Old Passages. Dylan Anderson... MAG 103 Cruelty Free?

ELIAS: "Martin, I do not have time for this." MARTIN: "Then maybe you should make time." This is exactly what this is though. Stalling.

JON: "There’s no such thing as just cobwebs." Everybody sighs, but he is right. Usually in horror cobwebs are just a way to say "Hey, nobody's really been here in a long time, Oooohooo". In TMA though, it's never just that.

Benjamin Hatendi. MAG 86? Definitely the blanket episode though. God, what's it called... Tucked In?

MARTIN: "Oh, so that’s it, isn’t it. Martin’s just acting out. I mean, Daisy’s a “rabid dog,” and Melanie’s a potential killer, Tim’s a – a rogue element, but Martin, oh Martin’s just acting out. He’ll have a cry, and a lie down, and feel much better." Ah yes. He's not being taken seriously and wholly underestimated.

Albrecht von Closen is easy, MAG 23 Schwarzwald.

ELIAS: [TAKES A DEEP BREATH.] "Did Jon put you up to this?" I mean, kind of. In MAG 103 Jon asked Daisy if they could somehow get Elias arrested. Martin was the one, who found a way to actually get to the evidence.

ELIAS: "Please get to the point, Martin." MARTIN: "Maybe there isn’t one. Alright? Maybe –" ELIAS: "Maybe you’re just wasting my time." MARTIN: "Yeah. Yeah, maybe." Haha, exactly that. But Elias knew this already.

JON: "Oh god… Oh god, they’re not waxworks." Haha, classic 2005 House of Wax.

I don't quite understand why Jon suddenly wants to see what's going on in the auditorium though. Is Snoop God sniffing out potential fear if they look at the entire horror of it?

TIM: "Holy –" JON: "Yes. I suppose it is." Ok this... was not a joke on Jon's part I think... I mean, Tim also said that dancing performance Grimaldi and his brother was beautiful. And even if Jon's trying to do his best to keep his humanity, he is still aligned with a terrifying Eldritch entity. He also finds the Mortal Garden beautiful, if I remember correctly (tbh, I also thought that was pretty rad...)

JON: "And I guess you don’t need skin to sing." (shaky breath) "To join the choir." ... Is everyone thinking what I'm thinking... Was Danny in the choir?

MARTIN: "Not even close. Because, I – (composes himself) I’ve been thinking. It’s not like you got this all-seeing thing recently. You’ve had it the whole time. I remember the way you looked at Sasha after the attack. You knew it wasn’t her. And I reckon you knew Prentiss was lurking under the Institute, too, and you did nothing. Why?" On my first listen I thought, okay, when it's being addressed in the show, there's no way these are plotholes...

MARTIN: "Well, I hope you’ve got something better than that pathetic dig at my feelings for Jon." ELIAS: "It’s baffling, really. Such loyalty to someone who really treats you very badly." MARTIN: "Oh, is that supposed to be, what, a revelation?" ELIAS: "You know, I really should have gone for that. Found something that would finally manage to shatter that precious image you have of him. But, as you say I am very busy at the moment. So I suppose I’ll have to go with what I had prepared." Nah, Elias is also rooting for them. And he doesn't need to poke any further, he's got Peter on the job for that. And the bit about "who really treats you very badly"? Yes, Jon did. Past tense. Jon really did a 180 on that front by the end of S2. Still, it's a good way for further manipulation. Sowing seeds of doubt, that Jon still doesn't like him.

ELIAS: "The thing is, though, Martin. If you ever do want to know exactly what your father looked like… All you have to do is look in a mirror. The resemblance is quite uncanny. The face of the man she hates, who destroyed her life, watching over her." This is something I have asked myself, like, how often something like this actually happens in rl. I'm guessing it's a huge taboo. Losing your partner and getting reminded of them everytime you see your child(ren). Doesn't have to be hate, like in this instance. Grief will also do. Or turn it around. Everytime the child sees a photograph of themself, they are reminded of the parent because of their resemblance. There's something similar explored in The Babadook (2014). The father died in a car accident while driving his wife in labor to the hospital. And she resents the child. Blames him for the death of her husband. It's great (I mean, not in rl), I love it when bad relationships get explored in fiction. And especially parent-children structures make it so difficult, because the child is completely dependent on the parent. That just adds another layer to it.

Alex does such a good job at that terrified crying...

I think this was one of the strongest scenes in all TMA. Writing- and acting-wise.

JON: "I knew none of us might be coming back, and I’m not going to let anyone get killed for nothing!" TIM: "Well, except for those people in there." JON: "They’re already dead!" TIM: "Not all of them." Ah yes, TMA and the trolley problem.

JON: (sudden yell, followed by immediate realization of need to whisper) "I am not losing you as well!" T_T

That warped "Aaahh" from the Archives crew. The music picking up. It is absolutely clear what's happening there. Like being hit by a Weirdness Bubble.

In these last moments Jon seems to still have some remaining clarity. While the others are already confused, he still knows who Daisy is for example. And he seems to still have some sense of self ("Daisy, it's me"). So yeah, Elias preparation to See has worked quite well, Jon did have it a bit easier. I mean, this is all or nothing.

@a-mag-a-day

[siren-queen-imagines]

After the Storm Hits

Back at it again with a Jason story! This one takes place in 2001 before Jason joined the marines and cell phones were still pretty new (crazy, right?). This one was just a quick idea I had and wanted to write it while it was fresh in my mind. It's got angst so get ready!

Pairing: Jason Kolchek x Reader

Masterlist

SPOILER ALERT FOR JASON'S BACKSTORY!!

(gif by me)

Kolchek/Y/L/N Household, September 10, 2001

“I literally can’t have a conversation with you without it turning into an argument!” You told your boyfriend.

“It’s not like you’re easy to talk to anymore either!” Jason yelled back.

“I just---” Your voice wavered so you cut yourself off. No. You needed to stand firm. “I can’t keep taking care of you when you’re busy getting high all day. I can’t keep spending my money on bills while yours goes to weed all the time. I can’t keep this up by myself, Jason. I’m just asking for a little bit of help here.”

Jason didn’t say anything. You knew it. You knew you shouldn’t have even bothered, he’s pretty stoned right now to even maintain a conversation, let alone argue. He’s busy in his head right now, zoned out while watching the muted TV.

“Jason!” You called out to him, snapping him out of his thoughts.

“What?” Jason asked, trying to keep his attention on you.

“I don’t know if I can keep doing this. I think we need to end this.”

You saw Jason take a deep breath and sit down, his head in his hands before his fingers ran through his hair.

“Then go.” He told you, irritably.

You fought back the tears as you nodded. Part of you hoped that he would have put up some sort of fight, make an attempt to change...but he didn’t. You loved him so much but you couldn’t keep struggling to keep the two of you afloat.

“I’ll, uh...I’ll be back for my stuff after work tomorrow.” You told him before you headed to the door.

You turned back to see him grabbing the remote to the TV and unmuting it. A tear fell down your cheek as you walked out the door. Jason sat still for a moment, stewing in what just happened...you broke up with him.

“Fuck!” Jason cried out, throwing the remote.

He wished he would’ve heard you out. But he had to just zone out while you were talking. And now he lost the one he loved. This sobered him up a little bit and that was too much for him already.

He grabbed his pipe and packed it with the fresh buds he bought earlier in the day. He didn’t want to feel anything right now so he’d just smoke until he went numb. Three years...three years gone in just minutes...seconds….

You had heard him curse when you hit the parking lot. God, did you wanna go back...just take back the break up....you loved him but love was not enough to keep enabling him and love wasn’t gonna pay the bills. You took your cell phone from your pocket….who would’ve guessed that phones could be carried around like this?...and called your best friend.

____________-------------------------

Penny Albrecht's Home, September 10, 2001

Your best friend, Penny, opened the door, greeting you with a hug.

“Oohhh honey.” Penny said, squeezing you tight.

No. Not here. You were not gonna break down. You didn’t like crying in front of people and you were hoping to hold it together until you could be alone.

“You okay?” Penny asked.

“Hanging in there.” You replied with a shrug.

“I called Becky and she’s on her way.” Penny led you inside and to her couch. “We’re gonna get through this breakup together.”

You didn’t say anything as you sat down. Taking a deep breath, you held onto your tears. You had to fight calling Jason to see if he was doing okay….but who were you kidding, you were sure he was getting stoned again.

Before you knew it, Becky was over and you guys were talking about the breakup.

“I always thought you could do better than him anyway.” Becky said, taking a sip of her wine. “He’s always smoking, how did you even put up with that?”

“Don’t answer that, anyway….” Penny interrupted, trying to change the subject. “Do you know what you’re gonna do now?”

You chugged your glass of wine, polishing off the rest.

“I don’t know yet. I told him I was gonna get my stuff tomorrow but I gotta figure out where I’m gonna take it.”

“I have plenty of room. You can move in with me.” Becky suggested, offering you a comforting smile.

You lightly nodded, returning Becky’s smile but yours didn’t reach your eyes.

“What about after?” Penny pushed.

“I don’t know.” You replied with a sigh. “Just keep doing what I’m doing, I guess. Just single now.”

“You know, there is a common saying about the calm before the storm…but no one ever talks about the deafening silence after the storm hits. I just wish I knew what to say to make you feel better.”

You nodded again before breaking down into tears. This is what you were hoping to avoid but with alcohol in your system? Should’ve seen it coming.

“It’s gonna get better, Y/N. We’ll be there with you every step of the way.” Becky said as he scooted closer to you, wrapping her arms around you.

____________-------------------------

Kolchek Household, September 18, 2001

Wait, what the hell? Planes hit the twin towers last week? Where--how--?

How did he not hear or see anything about this until now? Jason tried to go through the events of his last week...but nothing came up. Well, besides the breakup. He was stoned beyond belief. Last time he did that, it was with some friends for a concert...Y/N was not happy when he got home.

It wasn’t until now he realized that he smoked too much...and because of this, he had no job. No future...no significant other….he was going nowhere. God, you were right to break up with him, he sees that now.

Jason had a press conference for President George W. Bush as background noise as he spoke of the attacks on September 11….the day after you broke up with him. He wanted so badly to call you, probably go as far as begging you to take him back with promises of changing.

His eyes found the TV again.

No.

He would join the military. That would help to ensure that he would get his shit together. And on top of that, he’d be fighting for a cause.

To be honest though, mostly he’d be getting his shit together. Maybe if that happened or you saw him at least trying, he’d be able to win you back. He remembered that there was a recruitment office for the Marines 10 minutes away. Maybe this was happening too fast but Jason knew he needed to act on it now before he talked himself out of it only to fall back into old habits again.

But first, he went over to his landline, dialing your phone number. You didn’t answer, which he figured it might be because you were at work.

“Hey, Y/N, it’s me.” Jason started. “Look, I know I fucked up. I won’t argue with that. I just wanted to tell you that...I’m gonna change. I’m about to go to the recruitment office and enlist in the Marines….I, uh....I’m sorry that it took this long to see that I was wrong. I’m gonna do better. I’m gonna be better. I’ll...I hope I’ll see you around, Y/N. I'm sorry. I love you.”

[mariamermaid]

I put a spell on you

Sherlock Holmes (19th century) x fem dancer Reader

Summary: After his brother´s persuasion, Sherlock agrees to go to the Ballet with him and is mesmerized by the dancer…

Words: 1.9k

A/N: This is more for the movies/ enola holmes movie, since it´ll take place in the late 19th century. I´m not too familiar with the ballet, so let´s ignore the accuracy.

 Halloween Masterlist

 Théophile Gautier´s ballet “Giselle” was an absolute success. Even years after the ballet was first performed in Paris, the London theater decided to bring the play back. An act that brought Mycroft Holmes into liberating excitement, much to his brother´s concern. The fog these days laid thick in London and Sherlock, who had just solved an exhausting case, that ended with a dangerous pursuit, in which he broke his arm, wasn´t practically excited. But the younger brother wasn´t left with many options. “God, Sherlock, what happened this time?”

Mycroft pointed towards his arm, hanging in a sling to his side, above his shirt. The jacket was loosely thrown on top of his shoulders, Sherlock shrugged not paying much attention to Mycroft´s needless worries. Around him were a few men gathered and Sherlock found himself falling for simple, but plain and boring small talk. Sighing, he followed his brother into the hall and braced himself for boring hours. But then, the classical music started, Sherlock expected it to be the best part, until he saw you entering the stage. It was the first act and you played the Giselle in the village. Giselle was portrayed as a young, innocent but endearing girl. The white long tutu graced your figure perfectly and throughout the act, you danced across the stage with ease. The forester Hilarion and the prince Albrecht are both in love with Giselle, but after Hilarion unmasks Albrecht´s disguise as a farmer, the girl is led into a disaster. Heartbroken after finding out about Albrecht’s true identity, she falls into his sword and dies. In that scene, Sherlock found himself clinging onto the seat and when the light went out to announce the break, he realized how hard he had grabbed the armrests. His tongue slid across his lips, trying to relax his jaw. He then joined his brother and his entourage outside at the bar for a drink, but the picture of you in the white tutu floating across the stage as if it was nothing, didn´t left his mind. “She´s stunning”, he admitted and the men around him nodded.

“Who? Y/n, she´s a natural”, Mycroft added slightly smiling. “You know her?” Sherlock asked interested and the men echoed in laughter. William Grey, a friend of Mycroft and well-known man in London, grinned. “Your brother, Mr. Holmes, is one of the many men running after Miss Y/L/N.”

Mycroft cleared his throat, he hated admitting that he failed. “I never ran after her.” To Sherlock´s despise, the topic was then dropped. He wanted, no he needed more information about you. While the men gathered for a second round of whiskey, Sherlock did what he did best; research and investigate. He unobtrusively glided through the doors leading to the rooms behind the stage. And there you stood, one hand against the wooden bar and practicing your posture. You had changed costumes, after Giselle´s death, you now wore a blood red tutu and your lips were painted in the same color. Sherlock felt goosebumps raising on his skin, in the soft light of the mere headlights behind the stage, the dry dust floating in the air, you did indeed like a ghost. But a stunning ghost, so beautiful, Sherlock just stopped in his tracks to stare at you.

A man, who worked behind the scenes and was just arranging a background piece, bumped against Sherlock. “Man, don´t stand around!” He eyed Sherlock suspiciously. “No spectators behind the stage”, he added and his low went low. “I…” He didn´t know what to answer, his eyes were still glued onto you. A man, as far as Sherlock guessed he was the regisseur, came to talk you and you nodded to whatever he was saying. You then turned to get your hair checked again, but you noticed the unknown man standing around. His tall figure with his neat clothes, his eyes meeting yours. For a second, you stood still, admiring his dark locks and his angular features. But then you remembered the work and disappeared within the crowd of people running around. “Didn´t you hear what I just said?” Sherlock jerked, as the man spoke up again, louder and clearly angry.

“Sorry, I must´ve taken a wrong door somewhere.”

As quick as he appeared behind the stage, he vanished again. Sherlock found his seat next to his brother, who eyed him confused. “Where have you been?” Luckily, the lights went out before he could think of an excuse.

 The second act started, the forester Hilarion waits at Giselle´s death bed, until the nature ghosts and their queen Myrtha appear to welcome Giselle in their realm. Sherlock couldn´t tear his eyes of you, you were pale with powder and your once white gown, was now black as the night. Albrecht finds the ghost as well and follows Giselle into the woods. Myrtha and her wilas, dance around Hilarion until he drops with exhaustion and dies. Myrtha shortly after finds Albrecht, but he is protected by Giselle´s love. At dawn, the queen loses her power and Giselle forgives Albrecht, before she vanishes.

The whole act was preposterous, the dance of the dead ghosts and in between them; you. Sherlock saw the light of life in your eyes glistening. You looked magical to him; he couldn’t describe any other way. The hall echoed with applause and Sherlock even joined in the standing ovation, your performance was outstanding. He then waited outside with his brother again; some men with wife´s went home, but Sherlock waited with anticipation. It was almost an hour later, when he finally saw you. The stage make-up was gone and you looked exhausted, but happy. You had a coat thrown over your shoulder and a dark red, rather simple dress. Your hair was loosened, but remained closed. People quickly approached you, congratulating on the success and praising your abilities and talent. But you had spotted Mycroft within the crowd, and with him the man who had caught your attention earlier. You slipped away and made your way to them. “Mycroft.” You smiled as he greeted you, leaning down and placing a delicate kiss on your hand. “Y/N, extraordinary and perfect as always.” A faint blush was on your cheeks, but then your glance wandered to Sherlock.

“Who is your companion, Mycroft?” It was almost awkward, how Sherlock couldn´t do anything but stand around and stare at you, his brother chuckled. The sight was rare, but welcomed for him. “You´ve heard of him, my brother Sherlock!” A grin crept on your rosy lips and you put out your hand to greet him as well. Sherlock could´ve punched himself, a lady like you holding her hand out first; what kind of gentleman he was! He took it softly and did his brother equal, placing a kiss on your hand. “Mr. Holmes, are you working on a case right now?” Sherlock stopped, raising his eyebrow confused.

“It seemed like you nosed around behind the stage in the break, are you looking for a thief?” The assumption you made was perfectly fine, but your tone stated differently. You knew he wasn´t there for a case and Mycroft snickered. “You have to excuse my brother, Y/n. Snooping around runs in his veins.” Sherlock breathed out, a slight annoyance rising. He didn´t like the way his brother was able to interact with you, not unless he was able to do so as well.

Mycroft changed the subject; “My birthday, Y/n, next week, I hoped you would come?” Your eyes left Sherlock and jealousy rose in him, a feeling he wasn´t very familiar with. “I have a performance, but I will try to sneak away afterwards.”

William Grey interrupted your group, saying his goodbye´s for the evening and you cleared your throat. “I´m going home as well, training and rehearsals are getting the better of me.” For once this night, Sherlock was quicker than his brother. “Can I walk you home, Miss Y/L/N?”

You grabbed your bag a little tighter, hanging over your shoulder and he noted how hard to read your expression was. “I don´t need a man to protect me, Mr. Holmes. But I´m willing to let you accompany me in exchange for some details about your solved cases, I´m quite a fan if you will.” Sherlock smiled and tilted his head proudly.

“So, you recognized the murderer due to his shoes?” You asked interested as the two of you walked through the dark streets of London. The light from the lanterns fell softly to the ground, but the air laid silent. It was late, barely any light left in most houses. Sherlock nodded, lurking down to you. “That´s fascinating, Mr. Holmes.” “You can call me Sherlock.”

For the first time, you actually blushed. “Willing to solve some riddles for me, Sherlock?” A shiver ran down his spine as you called him by his name, but he nodded. “When the water comes down, it rains. I go up, what am I?” Sherlock paused for a second, but a grin spread on his lips. “An umbrella.”

“I can fly but I have no wings. I can cry but I have no eyes.” “A cloud.”

"I dance as the night rises and a wooden pole accompanies me; what am I?” He chuckled confident.

“A ballerina.”

You stopped on the street and behind you laid a park, dark and the silhouettes of trees and bushes rose like giants in the night. “A witch, Mr. Holmes. A witch on her broom.”

Sherlock stopped in his tracks, behind you walked a black cat and the coincidence let him shiver. He usually wasn´t a superstitious type, but you were not to be underestimated; he was sure of it. He swallowed realizing how you had been able to distract him from the logical solution. “As far as I´m concerned, I have bewitched your mind, Sherlock.” From your coat you pulled out a notepad, his notepad. All notes on previous cases and current observations were written down. “How-“

“For a detective, you´re not very good at sneaking around, behind the stage.” You fell into his word, before he was able to ask questions. He wondered how on earth you had stolen his notepad, maybe due to his lack of movement with the broken arm? You were absolutely right however; you did drive him insane. Laughing, you held his notepad still up. “Don´t worry, you´ll get your notes back, if you solve my last riddle.”

His tongue glided over his lips. “A party, but the ballerina doesn´t want to dance.”

He anticipated more, but you closed your mouth, grinning. “I´ll see you next week, Sherlock.”

Sherlock hadn´t realized that you had reached your destination and you turned to leave him standing in the middle of the street. “How did you steal my notes?”

You laughed out loud as you hurried into a dark alley, he guessed that the entrance to your apartment laid there.

“I put a spell on you, Sherlock Holmes.”

He hurried after you, but as he entered the alley, a dead end as he realized, you were gone. There was no door and no windows at the wall surrounding him, you had basically vanished into thin air. Sherlock smiled in excitement; the evening turned out so much better than he ever imagined. He lit himself a pipe and strolled to his own home. A party, but the ballerina doesn´t want to dance, your words repeated in his mind. I´ll see you next week. Mycroft´s birthday party and you don´t want to dance. What does a lady do, that gets invited by someone, who she doesn´t want to dance with? She arrives accompanied by a different man.

[jiejie-eonni-onee-sama]

THE BASTERDS’S ANGELS

A few weeks later.

Gathered in a clearing, the Basterds enjoyed their new victory against the army of the IIIe Reich. Their last encounter with a German patrol was successful, as always. Indeed, they managed to kill ten soldiers and make four prisoners.

As Hirschberg and Wicki kept an eye on the prisoners, the other adults collected the scalps and different belongings from the corpses.

As for Maddie, she sat on a dead tree and took notes in a small notebook.

She asked:

"How many scalps do you have, Utivich?"

"Five!"

"Noted!" she replied.

Indeed, as Maddie did not have to pay back the "scalp debt" to Aldo, she has to count the scalps and see who was close to paying back his debt.

Once everyone finished his job, all sat and waited for Aldo to interrogate a prisoner.

"So, who are ya?" asked the Lieutenant.

"Officer Bruno Albrecht!" replied the German soldier.

"Alright, Bruno. Maybe do ya know who we are?"

"You're Aldo the Apache, and your friends must be the Basterds!" said Bruno with a contemptuous look.

All cheered and mockingly clapped. As for the leader, he smirked.

"Ya damn right! I see that ya heard of us that's good! So, ya may know that we ain't in the prisoner-takin' business; we in the killin' Nazi business. And cousin, business is a-boomin'!"

"Sure, boss!" laughed Simon.

Winona arrived and sat next to Aldo.

"Guess who am I if you're so clever?"

"You're Winona, the Cherokee Amazon. I've heard of you."

"Well, if you heard about my husband and his men, you obviously heard about me too." she snickered.

Aldo gently kissed his wife's hand before he unfolded a map and showed it to his prisoner.

"Now, be useful once in yer goddamn life and tell me where the next patrol is going! And don't lie!"

The German soldier snickered.

"And you really think that I am going to betray my fellow soldiers? I thought you were smarter than that, Lieutenant Raine!"

Suddenly, a shot near his feet startled him. 

He looked up at Ada, who held him at gunpoint, her rifle still smoking in her hands.

"Right now, you're the stupid one. In case you haven't figured it out yet, Aldo is allowing you to stay alive. So do what he says!"

Bruno had an arrogant pout.

"I don't take orders from a Jewess like you!"

"No doubt, but it's actually the Jewess who can shoot you if you don't show cooperation, you Kraut!"

Hugo added

"If I were you, I wouldn't piss her off anymore. She's already taken out 30 Nazis like you since she joined the team. Believe me, she's very efficient!"

"Yeah, long live Ada!" exclaimed Utivich, followed by the other Basterds.

Aldo resumed his questioning.

"I'll ask ya one last time: which route the next patrol will take? Hurry up and answer me!"

But the German soldier decided not to say anything and replied in an arrogant tone:

"I'd rather die."

"Are you serious? They're getting more and more stubborn!" sighed Andy.

"At least we'll have some excitement. Right, Lieutenant?" smirked Wicki.

"Ya bet we will have some fun! Donny, come over here!"

The Lieutenant turned to Maddie and said:

"Maddie Dolly, do me a favor and give Donny his bat, would ya?"

"Alright, sir!" replied the little girl as she took the baseball bat.

"Please, don't call me sir: you're allowed to call me Aldo!" grinned the American man.

"Okay, Sir Aldo!"

This cute reply made all the Basterds laugh while Maddie moved to the tunnel where Donny went for his epic entrance.

Clearing her throat, the little girl called:

"Donny? Can you come here, please?"

Footsteps were heard from everyone before a hand came out of the shadows and a booming voice asked:

"Ya have my bat?"

Smiling, Maddie hid the bat behind her back and said:

"No, no, no! You have to say the magic word!"

"What? A magic word?"

The other Basterds laughed while the German soldiers looked at each other with fear and puzzlement.

"C'mon, Donny: you know what the magic word is!" laughed Michael.

The tall man feigned to think:

"Mmmh, I wonder what the magic word is? Aw, come on: gimme a clue, Maddie!"

"Alright. What do you say to your mum when you want something?"

Grinning, Donny replied:

"I would say please!"

"That's right! Here's your bat!" Maddie laughed as she handed the bat to Donny.

The Bostonian took his favorite weapon and gently patted the head of the little girl.

"Thank ya, pretty head. Now, go back to your auntie: it's showtime!"

"I go!" said the little girl who turned back and went to Ada, who took her niece in her arms.

"Now, Maddie, you know the rules: you close your eyes, and you cover your ears, okay?"

"Oui, tata." (Yes, auntie) answered the little girl.

Indeed, the Basterds had decided that Maddie would never see Donny slaughter the Germans with a baseball bat. The rest of her innocence had to be preserved by any means necessary.

And as the little girl closed her eyes and covered her ears with her hands, Donny made his entrance, terrorizing the German soldiers who began to whimper in fear.

Only Bruno tried to maintain some semblance of dignity, but deep inside, he was scared to death.

For their part, the Basterds cheered for the man the Nazis called "The Bear Jew."

Donny walked over to Bruno and sneered:

"So, what we have here? Another one who thinks he's smarter than the rest?"

"Smash his noggin, Don’!" exclaimed Gerold.

A smile appeared on the American's face.

"But I'm counting on it!"

He looked up at his superior.

"Lieutenant, anytime!"

Aldo smiled mockingly.

"But please, Sergeant. Oblige him!"

"With pleasure!"

And with that, Donny began to beat the German soldier, who could not fight back. Soon his skull was a bloody mess.

Meanwhile, the other Basterds cheered and applauded their friend:

"GO, DONNY!"

"YOU'RE THE BEST, DON!"

As for the other prisoners, they were horrified by the demise of their superior.

When he finished, Donny roared with excitement:

"WHO'S NEXT? BATTER'S UP!"

Still grinning, Aldo glanced at the other German soldiers and said:

"Now, THIS is awaiting for ya if ya don't talk! Am I clear?"

The captives nodded, terrified.

"Good. Now, are any of you three ready to talk?"

At the same time, Maddie asked:

"Is that okay? Can I open my eyes now?"

"Oh heck! I almost forgot!" exclaimed Aldo.

"That's okay, honey. You can open your eyes!" answered Winona.

"Ah, finally! I was beginning to find the time long!"

"You're an impatient little one, aren't you?" chuckled Wicki.

Suddenly, one of the prisoners shoved Hirschberg, who fell to the ground, before fleeing into the woods.

"HE RUNS AWAY!" screamed Maddie.

Ada grabbed her rifle and aimed at the fugitive, followed by the other shooters in the group.

"Save your bullets! She's got it covered!" ordered Aldo.

"Who?" asked Archie.

Meanwhile, the fugitive tried to get away as far as possible. Never mind if Tom was to be taken for a coward by his comrades, but he owed his skin first!

But suddenly, a tomahawk blow in the abdomen stopped him in his tracks. Spitting blood, he fell to his knees on the ground, pressing his hands against the wound. As he tried to stop the bleeding, the German soldier heard footsteps coming toward him. 

Looking up, he saw with horror that Winona Raine was walking towards him with a determined step and a murderous glint in her eye.

He was beginning to understand why the other soldiers called her "The Cherokee Amazon."

She may have been just a woman, but she was arguably the most formidable warrior the Third Reich had ever faced.

But as he tried to back away, Winona grabbed the tomahawk and yanked it in a spray of blood. 

As she had managed to pin him against a rock, the young woman stood in front of him with a sadistic smile before saying:

"Abschied, asshole!"

Then, with a warlike cry, she decapitated him with a sharp blow. Once this was done, she left the body shaken by spasms and went towards the head. Then she grabbed her knife and began to methodically scalp him.

After that, Winona returned to the camp with the scalp of her victim attached to her belt.

The two surviving Germans gasped in terror at the young woman's sinister trophy.

As for Aldo, he felt as if he had fallen in love with his wife all over again. He thought she was so beautiful when she was slaughtering Nazis!

"Honey, you're amazing!"

He turned to the prisoners and said:

"Now ya know what will happen to you if you try to escape! Well, do any of you wanna talk?"

Surprisingly, the two Germans were more cooperative than their colleagues and gave all the information they had at their disposal. 

Satisfied, Lieutenant Raine declared:

"Perfect! See, ya can be useful people!"

One of the prisoners exclaimed:

"We've told you everything you wanted to know! Now let us go!"

"Shut up!" growled Hugo, who slapped him on the head.

Simon replied:

"Unlike you, we have principles. And since you've been reasonable, we're going to release you. Well, not right away!"

"What do you mean?" asked the other soldier, his voice trembling with fear.

"What our dear medic is trying to tell ya is that we're going to leave ya with a little indelible memory. Just to make sure everyone knows ya were on the wrong side of history!" chuckled Aldo, pulling out his impressive hunting knife.

Before they knew it, Archie and Michael were slamming them to the ground as Aldo carved a swastika into their foreheads.

At the same time, Ada covered Maddie's ears so that the prisoners' cries of pain would not terrify her.

Once this was done, the two Germans were taken far away to be released. They were released far from the camp, so they could not give their position.

After that, the whole commando made its way to another place to sleep. As soon as they found a sheltered clearing, they set up their equipment and prepared a meal with their provisions and those they stole from their victims.

Then they prepared to sleep because the next day promised to be long and hazardous.

Sitting next to her sleeping bag, Maddie hesitated to go and give them an evening kiss. She had always had this habit with her family, and she missed doing it.

Even if the Basterd were always nice with her, Maddie did not know if they would be okay with it.

Taking her courage in both hands, she got up and walked towards Aldo, who was putting away his rifle.

When he finished, he turned around and saw the little girl standing next to him.

"Is everything okay, Maddie?"

"Can I say good night?"

Amused by this question, the American soldier replied:

"Permission granted, kiddo!"

With a big smile, the little girl leaned over and gave the Lieutenant a kiss on the cheek, leaving him speechless.

"Good night, Aldo!" said Maddie before heading towards the other Basterds.

Touching the spot where he had been kissed, Aldo watched in amusement as the youngest member of the team kissed the other soldiers on the cheek. They were both surprised and touched by this adorable attention.

At the same time, Ada returned with the water bottles full of water.

"It is good, everything is ready for tomorrow... Lieutenant?"

Raine turned around.

"Yes, Ada?"

"What's going on?"

"Well, what's going on is that your niece is giving us our evening kiss!"

The young woman was stunned by this.

"Oh, I hope you didn't mind!"

"Not at all! In fact, I have to admit it's pretty sweet of her!"

He glanced at his soldiers with amusement.

"And I think the guys like it too!"

"Well, that puts my mind at ease!" smiled Ada.

At the same time, Maddie walked over to Hugo, who was getting ready to sleep.

"Hugo?"

Everyone turned around in panic. How would Hugo react?

"Oh no! He's going to kill her!" yelped Hirschberg.

"Maybe he won't kill her, but for sure, she would get hauled over the coals!" replied Archie.

Meanwhile, Hugo straightened up and looked at Maddie with a surprised expression.

"What do you want, Maddie?"

The little girl answered with a shy pout.

"I just wanted to say good night!"

The Wehrmacht deserter couldn't believe it: he hadn't expected such an answer!

He shrugged his shoulders:

"All right. Well, good night to you too!"

Smiling, Maddie gave him a kiss on the cheek before going back to her sleeping bag.

Then, she snuggled into her aunt's arms and fell asleep.

Hugo stood speechless by this gesture. However, he could not help but smile, like his comrades.

After all, Maddie enlightened their lives like a ray of sunshine among the grey skies. And they swore to keep their ray of sunshine far from any harm.

But, as they all laid asleep, they were not aware that in Paris, someone was patiently waiting for them...

Someone that would hunt them down, even in the depths of hell.

And here is the second chapter of this story!

I hope you will like it!

Do not hesitate to leave a review, a like or a comment!

Thanks for all and take care! 😘🥰😍💖

Tags: @sergeant-donny-donowitz @fandoms-are-my-friends-1321 @knives-out17 @marilynmonroefanfics @jokersqueenofchaos @ocfairygodmother @redrosewritingsstuff @empress-writes @multific @multifandomfix @velvet-waltz @cherryplasmids @dancingwith-sunflowers​

[septic-dr-schneep]

JSE - Given Time (Part 12)

Previous chapters: [x]

A/N: You know how I said I would wait to post this? I lied

Three and a half weeks.

Three and a half weeks since Marvin had wrenched awake with a ragged scream, feeling like someone had punched a hole in his chest.

Three and a half weeks since he’d half-stumbled, half-crawled from his room to the others, everything in his body singing, Wrong! Wrong! Danger!

Three and a half weeks since they had broken down Chase’s door to find nothing but his hat, phone and wristwatch strewn on the floor. Weeks of terror, rage, grief and determination warring within Marvin as he drilled through every tome on his shelf, searching and scanning for answers in every line, for some kind of sign.

By only the sixth day his fingers were bloody with papercuts and burnt from entangling too many spells at once but the others knew better than to try stopping him. They were far too busy with their own search methods.

Jackieboy had scoured the city, cashed in as many favors as he could spare, dragged as many police officers as he could get his hands on into the search. It was a testament to how much of their faith he had earned, working with them over the years. “He’s my friend,” he said, and that was all they needed to know.

Schneep contacted every hospital, every urgent care, every house caller he could think of in the city, then as many as he knew in the Ipliers’ city. Dr. Iplier had sworn he would do what he could on his end, though who knew how much?

Whenever he wasn’t on the phone, Henrik was crying into scarred, shaking hands. “I wish it were me. If the monster has him, if Chase must endure what I did…” There were nightmares and horrors in his eyes that wouldn’t let him elaborate. “I wish it were me. I would take his place, I would endure it all again if it would spare him!”

Jameson, meanwhile, did the work that was left by the wayside: food, water, blankets when the others finally passed out with their desks as their pillows. After the initial panic he seemed to go into shock. China-pale and puffy-eyed, he drifted from task to task in a daze. His speech slides were scarce, his signs nonexistent. On the rare occasion that he rested, he prayed.

There were no traces of static lingering in Chase’s room—not a speck, not a flicker. Emergency calls and hospital reports of stab wounds came up empty. Chase’s gun was still in its locked drawer, as were the bullets. There was no note to detail a goodbye. When Marvin grit his teeth, swallowed his pride and bitterness and called Stacy, she said that neither she nor the children had heard from Chase in a couple of months.

That should have been a relief, a sign that this wasn’t another attempt. Chase wouldn’t dare try to leave this world again without telling Brianna and Connor that he loved them one last time. Nevertheless the fear churned, always, in the back of Marvin’s mind.

What if he did try to reach the kids but couldn’t get through, so he gave up? What if he doesn’t have his gun because he’s going to try some other way? What if he took the note with him so it would be on his body when he’s found?

No. No. I would know. I would have felt it.

That tether he held, that thin lifeline tangled up around Chase’s soul was all that Marvin could count on every day. Chase’s face card, the King of Clubs, could not locate him, aimlessly fluttering up and down the streets. With every dead end the card’s enchantment found, Marvin was taken back to the days of watching Schneep’s card tumble in the wind, unable to reach him in the pocket dimension where Anti had stashed him away.

That train of thought found a new track.

Three and a half weeks since this new twist of their living nightmare began and at long, long last, they had found something solid to stand on.

Marvin’s plan had been to utilize his soul bond with Chase from the start, combing through dimensions one by one, searching for any pang, any sensation. Yesterday afternoon, however, Dr. Iplier had called Henrik to pass on a message.

“The Host is well aware of the Septic Egos’ trouble. Marvin the Magnificent approaches it on too small a scale. Pocket dimensions will prove trivial, fruitless…but the Host Sees beyond. For the price of a future favor, he may be of assistance in locating Chase Brody’s thread of reality.”

It was the easiest debt they could ever agree to. Another nine months with a hole in their household was not an option.

Marvin emerged on the opposite side of the portal, the opposite side of the universe, with Jackieboy tensed for a fight beside him. Schneep was quick on their heels, machete raised for an upswing, and Jameson had his sword cane drawn before his feet even hit the rocks. It wavered in his hand, however, as he laid eyes on the city in the middle distance.

“Jeepers…That truly is Elvery Heights. It’s the spitting image of our own…yet darker,” he murmured in wary disbelief.

“I don’t understand. Should this portal not have taken us straight where we should be? We are on the outskirts,” Schneep demanded.

“The Host wasn’t about to do all our work for us—and it’s probably better that we haven’t been dropped into the middle of a fight,” Jackie pointed out. “We know nothing about this place. We should find our bearings first.”

“We should find Chase; he’s waiting for us somewhere in there and I’m not going to waste any time sightseeing! We need to get in, get out and get him home!” Marvin snapped, pushing past him into a jog toward the far street. “I’m going to West General, Schneep; if he’s hurt, the Anti of this universe would probably dump him there for you to find!”

He had hardly sprinted ten feet before Jackieboy caught up with him. “Marvin,” he began in a warning voice.

“I feel him now. He’s here and he’s frightened,” Marvin snarled, dodging the hand that grabbed for his shoulder. “Isn’t this how you felt when Schneep was gone? Can’t you understand, you of all people?! Wouldn’t you do anything to get him back, no matter the risks? You would’ve plowed right in too if you knew where he was and I will not hesitate to do the same! Chase is—”

“I know. I know, Marvin.” Jackie matched pace with him, gaze steady, low voice unfaltering. “But even if I had found out where Anti kept Henrik, I would’ve been an idiot to go alone, with no reconnaissance and no plan. I don’t doubt for even a second that I would’ve gotten us both killed.”

“I don’t plan to make that mistake.”

“It would be an even bigger mistake to leave us behind! He’s not just your brother. You think JJ wouldn’t do whatever it takes to save his dad right now? But he’s keeping it together and coming along with a level head. We’re all here to help you.”

Muscles twitching in his jaw, Marvin quickened his stride. I’m coming, Chase. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Just hold on.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

All of the buildings, the streets, the parks, shops and walkways—They all seemed to be “right” but Henrik couldn’t shiver away this uneasy chill from his back as he followed Marvin and Jackieboy toward the hospital. It was his hospital. Shouldn’t he feel at ease, knowing this street so well? But as intricate as the familiar surroundings may be, they didn’t hold up well when he truly looked. It was like an optical illusion or a spot-the-difference game, everything further skewed as he ventured further in.

The passing cars were few and far between, the pedestrians dotted across the street so rarely that it was startling to see one. None of them smiled. None of them even seemed to care about each other’s existence. Unlike the civilians at home, these people didn’t give a second glance to the “quadruplet” Egos passing them. They didn’t bat a lash at their attire, didn’t bother meeting their eyes.

“You feel it creeping up on you too, doc?” Jameson shivered beside him, leaning on his sheathed cane to keep up. “The cold? The strangeness of it all? I can’t rightly put my finger on why but this place feels…ill, like the heart has drained from it. I find myself hoping that the hospital will show happier signs of life!”

“I hope that too.” Thanks to those words his patients’ faces were already flashing in his mind as they stopped before the double doors. “Okay…it looks normal enough, the way I know it…”

“You’re obviously the one who can get in and check around for any sign of him the fastest without being suspected,” Marvin announced, wasting no time to steer him forward by the shoulder. “You know where they keep the patient logs, right?”

“If they keep them where they do at home, yes, but that is an ‘if’,” he reminded him tersely. “This is a different world, Marvin; we do not know if I even work here, if I have ever worked here. Hopefully my coat and expert doctoring will let me pass through at a glance but if it doesn’t—”

“Henrik? Is that you standing dillydally around I see? I thought you were scurrying out to fetch our coffee twenty minutes ago!”

All other fears fled his mind at the call and left him paralyzed at the sound of that voice. Marvin and Jameson retreated a few feet, taken aback, but Jackieboy wasted no time shouldering defensively between him and the approaching figure.

“What’s going on? Henrik?” Albrecht repeated, glancing curiously between the rigid pair. “If you don’t hurry to the shop, our break will be over before you’re back.”

Henrik could only stare at his old enemy, openmouthed, drawing a blank on any possible response. The mere fact that Albrecht was unmasked, ungloved and clean of any bloodstains was enough to render him speechless. Jackieboy didn’t suffer that malady.

“What are you doing here, Doll Maker?” he barked.

“That’s the Doll Maker?” Marvin breathed, glancing at Jameson as he tightened white knuckles around the head of his cane.

“Well?” Jackie spat, eyes burning. “Have you been waiting for us to arrive? Are you the one who’s taken him?”

A snort of bewildered concern escaped Albrecht as he shifted back, hands lifted placatingly. “Very sorry, sir, but I imagine you think of someone else. I have never heard of any ‘Doll Maker’; I do not know why you call me that. Do you need a doctor’s help? Who was taken from you?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know? Are you trying to mock us?”

“Not at all! If you are looking for a patient, you can ask the front desk in there—or if you would like to wait just a tick, my friend Dr. Schneeplestein and I can gladly listen to your story and see if there is anything we can—”

A nearby crash, splash and clatter cut him off before he could finish, making them jump. As he spun sideways Albrecht lit up, calling out, “Oh, hello! There is the coffee! I—”

“Schneep,” Marvin whispered.

Jameson flinched. Jackie swore.

Albrecht wavered uncertainly, glancing to and fro with the same disbelief mirrored on the others’ faces. “W-Wait. Wait a moment…How can there be—?”

As the steaming brew collected in a puddle that stretched for his shoes, Henrik remained absolutely still, unable to breathe. On the other side of that gap, his other self, bony, pallid and haggard, stared him down with sunken eyes that still shone as cold and sharp as razorblades.

“What is this?” he hissed.

___________________________________________________

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@egopocalypse 

[sims2bellaswan]

pas de deux VI [Bruno Bucciarati x Reader | Risotto Nero x Reader]

[SFW]

AO3 VERSION

PREVIOUS CHAPTER | NEXT CHAPTER

You’ve worked your whole life to earn a place in the Rome ballet company, yet everyone seems to work against you.

Between the stress of working to match the other dancers to unforeseen romantic issues, problems just seem to pile up.

Trish’s cigarette hung from her lip as she listened to the other dancers gossip. Her appearance greatly contrasted that at the party the night before; her face showed signs of exhaustion and a hangover. Ballerinas were not permitted to smoke, but that hadn’t stopped any of the girls from doing so on their lunch break.

They spoke, quickly, about many topics. Some pointed out news articles to their wiry, little friends, while others simply gossiped by word of mouth. Trish did not take part in this ritual, too stubborn to engage and far too disillusioned to care. Though, her ears would pick up words of interest when necessary. She was much like her father in that sense.

This afternoon, the girls prattled on about how a famous ballerino’s daughter was put in jail two days ago, how those two dancers from Japan were to get married soon, and how one of the newer company dancers was supposedly sleeping with the ballet master.

That was a word of interest, yes. Trish took the cigarette from her lips, keeping it at knee level between her pointer and middle finger. “What was that?” Her brows creased the middle of her forehead.

“I’m sorry?” The dancer that had mentioned it was bewildered that she was even showing an interest in gossip. The younger prima hardly spoke if it wasn’t a necessity.

“What did you say?” Trish spoke slightly firmer, making it a point that she wanted to hear gossip. Both wildly out of character and not her cup of tea, the other ballerinas paused their conversations to hear the news as well.

“Oh,” The woman laughed, breathlessly and awkwardly, “I had just heard one of the newer members was sleeping with the ballet master.” She croaked like a frog under Trish’s scrutinizing gaze. “I don’t know who, though, no one seems to know which one it is anymore.”

“I hope it isn’t one of the boys.” Another ballerina added, sighing into her palm. “Master Nero is kind of cute, I’d be heartbroken if he were gay or something.” Her friend slapped her arm, then they both laughed.

Trish found this information odd. The conversation continued around her, girls chatting now about which person they found most attractive in the company. Yet, she could only consider how Risotto Nero wouldn’t do something as stupid as that. She had known Signore Nero when he was still a dancer and she was still a child; he worked with, then under, her father for a very long time. He wasn’t the type to seduce a dancer into ruining her career like that.

Evening settled onto the world like a warm blanket. Trish extinguished her cigarette, dropping it in a cup on the windowsill and spitting out the window. Light slowly brightened the city from windows and streetlamps, bouncing off the stone streets and shimmering to the naked eye. The wind slowed down from that afternoon and while it was said that there would be rain, couples still walked hand-in-hand down the street.

Evening for you, however, meant the start of a tumultuous night spent working. You couldn’t go home, eat dinner, and spend the rest of the night lounging about on the couch in your apartment. You had to go dance more than you already have. With a man that you’re certain despises you.

The doors to the company looked more decrepit at night. This was a fact you thought you'd understand, yet as you stood before the large wooden doors, you found yourself shivering. Maybe it was the cooler night air, but something was wrong right now. The vibes felt off. With a start, you pushed them open.

The lights were still on inside. As you walked, you found dancers strewn about the place like dolls. Some slept on their friends’ shoulder, others were arguing over phones or looking up Uber prices. You supposed some dancers stayed later than others. You kept your distance.

Fearful like being caught for a crime you didn't commit, you quietly made your way to the studio room. You opened the door to find your ballet master, mid stretch, in front of the mirror. His form was almost godlike, his flexibility hardly fading with age or lack of practice. You admired in awe for a moment, then cleared your throat. Your phone said 7:02. You hoped you weren’t too late.

He sat up, giving you a quick glance over. You hadn’t kept your leotard on, you thought leggings and a tank top would work fine. He said nothing but his expression wasn’t one you liked. You’d have to get used to it. He stood, clearing the floor so you could change your shoes.

“Wear your pointe shoes. You’ll be en pointe for this.” He stated, his back to you. You were not in the mood to be en pointe, but in this room, whatever the ballet master says, goes. You slid on your shoes, quickly tying the ribbon.

Even without his civilian shoes, Risotto stood at least a head over you. You felt like a child next to him, which was probably how he felt as well, considering how lowly he thought of you. You stood at the ready, in first position, for him to begin his instructions.

“You will be learning the pas de deux from act two of Giselle, understand?” He finally turns to you, watching as you find the center of the studio floor. He finds a similar position behind you.

He says a form, you take it. En pointe, you take little steps backwards, as per his instructions. You knew the Giselle pas de deux, not well but it’s more than nothing. It’s an intimate dance, with lots of lifting and touching your partner. Normally, you’d love to dance the technically difficult piece but with him? You tried to determine his level of seriousness as you finished the move in his arms, hands wrapped at your waist.

You catch the two of you in the mirror, his expression matches yours in it’s solemn nature. You lose sight of yourself as you lift your leg and arms, once again per his instructions. Risotto is quiet for a moment as he spins you, softly. Your head turned away from both him and the mirror, you can’t see his expression anymore, cant check if it's morphed from the sadness he showed to disdain for you. It made you nervous.

“Good,” is the only thing he has said so far, beyond choreography. It imbues something in your chest, whether that be spite or pride is hard to tell anymore. Risotto pushed your torso down, now level with your hips. “Lift your leg higher, straighter.” His voice is quiet. The room is so serene.

You rise back up, your extended leg wraps around his hips and your head falls into the crook of his neck. His firm hand stays at your waist as he flourishes with his free one. You open your eyes again to catch another glimpse in the mirror. He looks so professional, his brows scrunched in the anguish Albrecht felt, lips parted slightly in a frown.

You move away from his chest, extending your leg further. Both his hands on your waist, you move your leg for a moment then return to the ground.

“Ready?” He asks, again, so quietly. You nod, not leaving your position. You know what comes next, you have to nail several lifts, returning to arabesque everytime he sets you down.

Risotto lifts you like you weigh nothing, as you mime a grand jete. He lifts you again, this time completely over his head and you bend your back as much as humanly possible to get your legs as straight as humanly possible. You land in an arabesque.

“Stop.” He lets your waist go. If it weren’t for the balance you spent years perfecting, you would’ve fallen on your ass.

You huffed, slightly, “What was wrong with that? That was the best lift I’ve ever done!”

“No, it was sloppy.” He stands in front of you, between yourself and the mirror. Risotto sighs, he’s tired. “You were so focused on your legs, you forgot every other part of your body.” His tone grew more frustrated as he continued. “Your arms were all over the place. Your bend was too far.” You had to hold back something in you that wanted to punch him.

“So? You can't see my hands and back on the stage, but my legs are on full view.” Your hands flew to your hips. Your own tone suddenly took a frustrated note as well.

He stepped closer to you, emphasizing his words. “So, it’s not correct.”

You bit at the raw flesh of your inner cheek. You were no longer sure if you felt more of a need to storm out or cry. “It was never a problem before.” Your voice firm, your resolve steeled, you felt a wave of confidence flood over you as the words simply left your mouth.

Risotto closed his eyes, “It is now.” Oh, look, there went your confidence, right out the door. He moved back to the center of the floor. “Again. From the top.” You, dejectedly, return to your position and begin again.

He had you do the entire first quarter of the Giselle Act II pas de deux seventeen times. The two minute section felt longer every time you did it. But, each time you did it, he found something different to critique. You think it was the 6th repeat that you caught his eye in the mirror and he had looked away quickly. You were sure you had caught him looking for things to scrutinize.

As even he began to feel tired, the night slowed down. He slowly stopped barking orders at you and actually started to show you what to do. You would stand at the barre, him behind you, and his hands would adjust you slightly.

Finally, the session ended around 11pm. You never wanted to have to do that again, yet somehow you don’t think you’ll get a choice.

You collapsed on to your bed, almost too tired to turn your alarm on early so you could shower in the morning. Sweat could definitely wait for every muscle in your body to stop aching.

The stars shone through the curtain, wind softly touching them and causing a billow across your room. Had you been awake, you would’ve remarked how as a kid you would’ve thought it looked like a dancer’s skirt. It would have been a very creative and astute observation. But, you slept soundly, seeing neither the stars nor the bubbling curtains.

[kingofthereapers]

(A few years before....)

It almost didn't matter what year you were looking at, Lula and Travis could be found in the same predicaments year after year almost as long as they'd known each other. This particular occasion had the two lovers entwined for hours, just repeating those mind blowing waves of pleasure that they could only achieve with each other. A lull had them panting and laying in his bed with sheets and blankets strewn about the room, right along with the clothing they'd gone into this session with. Travis' body ached in all the best ways as he looked up at the ceiling trying to catch his breath. He seemed to stay like that for a while until there was a small buzz of his cell phone coming from wherever it had landed in the throws of passion. With a grunt, he shifted to an upright position and reached down to where he heard the phone initially rumbling against the floorboards. One of his grasps connected and he lifted the cell phone to see just who was messaging him on a weeknight just after 8pm. The message was from Bethany Albrecht. That kind of message might have been strange in the past, but over the last few weeks he’d found himself in a position he’d never been in before, at least not with the wife of a best friend. He was running around with Bethany behind Lincoln’s back and no one had found out yet. 

Beth: Travis, I need to talk to you NOW......get over here.

The message wasn't the type that he usually took kindly to, or even bothered responding to, but having been in her bed over the last few weeks made him take to her a bit more than he'd used to. Without responding, the dark haired man stood up from the bed and began to silently shuffle around the room to find some clothes to put on. Didn't really matter that he smelled like sex, or that he needed something to eat at that point. Nothing too much mattered but taking care of business. By the time he'd gotten fully dressed he could feel Lula's wandering eyes on him now that she'd also recovered from their romp. "I'll be back." That was all he said to her with a passing glance, before he took the steps two at a time down the rickety stairs to the first floor of his much too large house. Travis paused for a moment to give his dog Poe a pat or two on the head, and then he  went right out the front door. Moments after the front door slammed shut the rumble of his Harley could be heard and then it faded away into the distance until he'd arrived at the Albrecht home across town. 

Travis sauntered up to the front door and knocked twice with his knuckles against the well built door before it was yanked open by Bethany. The woman looked panicked to say the least as she ushered the towering man into her home. The height difference between the two was rather comical. Sure, Travis was tall, but on the other end of the spectrum Bethany was quite petite at 5 foot 1. The small woman had grown more shapely over the years that Travis had known her, especially after becoming a mother some months before. Even during the awkward phases they’d had growing up, she was one of those that just always was naturally so beautiful and there was a peace about her that only came with wisdom. Getting caught up with Travis was one of her worst mistakes though. She looked up at him for a few moments with wide blue eyes before she tucked her brown tresses behind her ears and took a deep breath. "I'm pregnant." She whispered to which one of Travis' eyebrows rose slightly. There was always a chance it could be Lincoln's kid after all, I mean after all these years Travis didn't have any kids of his own running around town and he wouldn't have been able to tell you how many loads he'd blown straight into countless women over the years. Being sterile would have been a gift to the world if it had been true. What he didn't know was all the abortions that happened on his account. 

"The fuck does that have to do with me?" Travis asked, stepping further into the house and taking a seat in the nearest recliner as he watched Bethany pace about the floor in front of him. Bethany boldly scoffed at him and rolled her eyes as she glared at him with eyes brimming with tears. "It could be yours you idiot!" She snapped, crossing her arms over her chest for a few beats and then taking a deep breath. "Well, go get it taken care of then." He muttered simply as if that were the obvious option. She seemed to feel physical pain from his words as her hands went to her still flat belly. “I can’t do that…” Her voice grew very soft as both her hands were touching at her stomach that harbored the child that would have been his if she’d gotten to carry it to term. “I have standards, Travis.” She added, those all too caring blue eyes raising from looking down at her stomach. It was now his turn to scoff and roll his eyes. “I don’t want kids.” He said simply, not an ounce of regret or uncertainty in his deep voice. “Well, it’s not just your choice.” She said, going to move past him in the recliner while muttering to herself. “I should have waited on the DNA test before I brought you into this.” He grabbed her arm roughly as she passed him, yanking her back. A cry came from her mouth as she reached for his hand with her other hand to try and loosen his grasp on her thin arm. “Ouch, you’re hurting me, Travis!” She growled at him as she scrambled to try to get out of his grip. 

“I’m gonna call Link.” She said softly, still pulling desperately to get away. “I can’t keep this from him anymore.” That was the second mistake she’d made that night, and it would likely be her last by the look in Travis’ icy blue  hues. None of her clawing even phased him, so his grip didn’t loosen as he stood up and pulled her with him into the kitchen area. By now she was sobbing and trying to make herself as much dead weight as possible on the floor to slow his path to the kitchen, but she was only drawing out the process. Pulling her along flailing behind him was like working with a child throwing a tantrum. It was difficult, but not nearly close to impossible. Finally Travis threw her against the lower cabinets in the kitchen and she whimpered, looking up at him with teary eyes, arms wrapped protectively around her stomach. “Please, don’t do this.” She begged, trying her best to crawl away to where she’d left her cell phone in the other room. Maybe she could call for help before he did his worst. He was much too quick for that though.

One of his large leather boots came to rest on her thigh as she struggled to get away, all the while Travis was glancing around to find the knife block. When he didn’t find one right away he began to pull open the drawers roughly. One of the drawers came off its track and ended up tumbling to the floor, spraying silverware all over the tile. Bethany screamed at the commotion and in another part of the house the cry of a baby could be heard after Beth’s outburst. “Oh my God, please, Travis. I’ll do whatever you want.” She pleaded, tears streaming down her face by now while she still struggled against him. Finally through his searching, the heavily tattooed man found a large butcher's knife that he held up, to Bethany’s horror. His eyes never showed any sort of regret or pity for the woman he was about to torture. Carefully Travis ended up on top of her after a decent amount of struggle as he held the knife backwards in his grip so the blade faced away from his victim and he only had one hand to subdue her with. She’d gotten a few good swipes in and he had a few little trails of blood from his arms and along his chest from her fingernails, but it didn’t stop him. 

Once he’d pinned her legs down and he was sitting on her hips with one of her hands pinned down at her side with his thigh and her other hand back in his grasp again, the burly man flipped the blade in his grasp so it was facing her now. In a second struggle he ended up with his knee on her front, just above her crotch and the foot of his other leg holding her hand pinned to the floor so he was in a kneeling position looming over her. “Calm the fuck down.” He grumbled to which she struggled against him some more to no avail. She tried kicking him with her free legs but it did little to the sturdy man, and it brought her pain from the pressure he was putting on her pelvis to begin with. It  seemed like the struggle was a build up to all of this, but Travis skipped the most intense part of it all. He plunged the blade into her stomach, just above where his knee was holding her, where her child was growing. She screamed out in pain, struggling some more as he pulled away the blood stained blade. “Too bad I didn’t go to medical school.” He muttered with a faint smirk tugging at his lips as he looked down at the blood pooling from the gaping wound in her low stomach. “I could do this whole procedure for you, and you might just survive it.” He continued talking, although she’d passed out from the shock of things and he went to town a little bit more since she wasn’t fighting or screaming anymore. Travis ended up opening up that wound some more and beginning the process of pulling out anything he could reach and easily remove. 

The majority of what he’d emptied from the lower cavity of her body were her intestines, but in the bloody mess of things he found a pear shaped mass that wasn’t at all like the intestines he’d been pulling out. Without a second thought, he cut all the ties to anything holding her uterus in her body and he dropped it on the kitchen floor to add to the gore. What a fitting way for his own child to die; by the hands of his father. Once that was done he slowly got up, set the knife in the kitchen sink and wiped his bloody hands on his jeans. His eyes trailed around the bloody mess that was the kitchen now and Travis turned to the sink where he took the time to clean the knife he’d just used to start the disembowelment process. There wasn’t a sign of any blood on the knife once he’d finished and he used a nearby kitchen towel to hold the blade while he washed the handle thoroughly before tossing the knife on the floor in a bold display of his thoughts about the police in this town. Bethany was still just barely alive, but if she didn’t get immediate medical attention there was no chance for her. He looked down at her for a few moments, wondering if he should call or not and instead he decided to head back home. The roar of his Harley could be heard leaving the Albrecht home and pulling up in front of his house again. The weeds, overgrown trees and bushes loomed around the house in the darkness, but they were familiar shadows to Travis, so he didn’t blink twice as he walked to the front door. 

The door creaked open and slammed shut much like it had when he’d left. He didn’t head for the stairs though, instead he went into the kitchen and opened the fridge to grab a beer. With blood splattered on his clothes, face and mostly still covering his hands Travis proceeded to drink down the cool, refreshing beverage right there in front of the light of the fridge. Overhead he could hear the floor creaking, giving away the fact that Lula was on her way down the stairs to investigate. It had been not even an hour since he’d left and he looked a little bit different. Sure, Travis had always been a little bit off and very few people felt comfortable being alone with him, but they had no good reason to think they wouldn’t be safe. Now things would change though. This was the first time he’d gone far enough to end a life, let alone that of his closest friend’s wife. It took a lot to shake up the man standing in front of the fridge, but as the adrenaline began to wear off he noticed his hand was trembling and he felt rather hollow. This was just the beginning of his downfall though. Travis’ darkness was clawing its way out of where it had hidden for all of his life. People had seen it deep down there at times, but now it wanted to come out to play. 

[soveryanon]

Four weeks later, reviewing time for MAG139 /o/

-I’m still crying over how the first time Tim ever spoke on tape, he pointed out so many mistakes/typos/misreadings from statements that were faaar from being one-liner but actually… Big Mysteries that are still relevant now. Amongst those:

(MAG033) TIM: Um… oh, and here, in Miss Montauk’s statement about her father’s killings. You refer to case, um, 9220611 as case, um, 1106922. Oh, and don’t get me started on the other case numbers around the Hill Top hauntings, they’re a mess! […] So, in case 8163103… it isn’t clear if Albrecht’s wife is called “Clara” or “Carla”, ‘cause you keep switching back and forth…

Aaaand it was in that episode that we heard about “Peter Lukas” for the first time ever. I miss Tim and gdi, he had a good nose…

- I want to say a word about Jon’s reading of the statement in itself: “Jon, what the FUCK.” Part of why it was so sneakily terrifying was… how much Jon was into it? He totally ran with the sheer glee and cruelty, especially, I felt, in these moments:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “It’s hard to say how much I’ve got left in me; how much longer my sacrifices can buy me. But when I go… you better believe I’m going big – and it is going to hurt. […] And I hurt so very many people… A building fire is a dreadful thing – but so much more dreadful when it’s shining out into that night. It was the first of my crimes, but not the last, and arson has always been my thing. It’s such a simple way to destroy everything someone has built, both literally, and figuratively. […] I was to secure her sacrifices. I would spare you the details, but I do not wish to~”

Presumably, the dramatic reading is still a Jon Thing and not intrinsically spooky, but w o w Jon, you didn’t have to take that edge for a sadistic serial killer.

- YEAH OKAY, and Eugene was terrifying per se. Why are all Desolation people Like That. And Eugene started… very young:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “So, me? I was born in ’36 […]. But now, staggering through the ruins of his life, the look I saw on his face… it woke something in me. Something… truly awful… Anyone who talks about “the Blitz spirit” wasn’t there, or wants to paper over their fear with nostalgia. Terrible things happened in the Blackout, and we hurt each other just as much as the Germans hurt us. And I hurt so very many people…”

He… wasn’t even ten, back then…

;; Aaaand once again, demonstration that spooks tend to go for the easy, vulnerable targets:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “I took foreign workers, mostly. Those with the fewest immediate connections to complicate matters, and the most hopeful dreams of what their life might be. They were the ones that provided Agnes the most satisfying nourishment. I would wait for them to be alone, and then I would catch them unawares.”

Gerry had commented about the fact that the world becoming a Factory Farm for a Fear God would mean being able to snatch everything (MAG111: “right now all the entities have to act like a hunter, they pick off the weak ones around the edges, the ones that wander too close, and the rest of the time they have to just graze on whatever fear we all passively give away.”) but it’s always upsetting when we get Spooks describing their preferred targets… ;;

Eugene said that he was already seventy, he’s now eighty, Jon had found hints that he was probably still active (MAG139, Jon: “looking at the details for the British Steel Plant in Scunthorpe, it does seem like Eugene is still around. So I can only assume… some sort of equilibrium was found. Given what happened when I met Jude Perry, I’m not in any rush to track him or… any of them down myself.”), but given how Eugene had promised that he would be “going big” at the end of his life, it… probably won’t be pretty.

(And I totally understand that Jon feels like it’s not his own battle! But at every little concession, my heart breaks a bit. There are still people in the coffin; Eugene is probably still taking foreign workers even after Agnes’s death, for his own sacrifices… and it’s true that it’s not the Archive team’s role to save them, that they have bigger things to focus on? But they know what is happening, and that still means that innocents are getting killed and/or consumed and they… let it happen. It feels so Beholding, to know and to allow it, feeding from the scraps of the surviving witnesses’ tales…? They’re not actively allowing these terrible things to happen but they take advantage of that whole system…)

Eugene also highlighted how in the end, the cults/clusters/congregations of people worshipping the same concept are… human-made. There doesn’t seem to be any special instructions or a divine revelation about how they should proceed; they scramble and try things out, but it’s mostly coming from punctual decisions, in the same way that Robert Smirke made arbitrary decisions regarding his Architecture of the Fears.

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “I found my God through my own path, served It in my own way; and when Arthur and Diego found me, told me there were others that shared my devotion… Well, I can’t say it doesn’t feel nice to belong. Even if we do have our… little disagreements. […] But a longing… is not the same thing as an instruction. We’d all been touched and warped by proximity to the holy Burning Fire, but none of us had any special knowledge, no matter what Diego claims he might have read. […] Some objected, said that unless the child was conceived of the Flame, it could never be a true incarnation. But they had no idea of how such a conception could possibly even work, so it was decided that it would have to be enough to birth the child by fire. […] There was some… division amongst us as to the best course of action, something that will surely not surprise you at this stage.”

It’s kind of impressive that the Lightless Flame managed to be a small cult, that Rayner attracted people around his own “religion”, and that the Magnus Institute apparently managed to establish itself around something its people shared (given that there are the international canals, the Usher Foundation and the Pu Songling Research Centre, who knew about the Archivist’s powers, and Jon was identified in Beijing, Elias was clearly familiar to Xiaolin, etc.). It makes sense, in that regard, that even when feeling like they “belong” and are worshipping the same concept, spooks tend to give their same patrons so many different names – like different aspects of it. I wonder if there are also divisions amongst the Beholding people about their ritual and how they should try to go about it? Outside of the fact that some (Jon…? Please, Jon, confirm that you still don’t want That.) might refuse to partake in it altogether because they’re satisfied with the world as is, like Jared demonstrated in MAG131 in his refusal to join in The Last Feast.

- I wonder to which extent we’re going to hear about the history of the Lightless Flame again, because… it sounds like there are still so many mysteries (even more than before this episode?) and I have no idea if they’ll fall into the left-in-the-air-for-us-to-guess/wonder category (Jonny did promise that we won’t get spoon-fed all the answers, iirc?), or if this will all get cleared up later.

* First, everything around Diego Molina (Malina? Not the first time his name has popped up, but each of his episodes are floating in the no-official-transcript void): 

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “We all felt the calling, the dreams, pulling us ever closer to a world of fire and loss, a place of burning, and agony, when we remade the world in the image of the Lightless Flame, the one Diego called “Asag”. […] none of us had any special knowledge, no matter what Diego claims he might have read. […] Arthur has told us not to harm you yet, but this whole thing has really rather weakened his authority, and many of us are now looking towards Diego for leadership. But we shall see, I suppose.”

[…] ARCHIVIST: “Diego”, I assume to be Diego Molina, who Basira crossed paths with back in her Section’d days, and “Arthur”… could be Arthur Nolan – though, going from… the head of a cult to watching over Jane Prentiss as a landlord… does seem like something of a demotion. … God knows. It’s not like I don’t have my own office politics to keep track of.

Jon remembered Basira’s account of her encounter with Diego (when she had been able to tell his name), from MAG043, which gave us an official description of him. He had been involved in the case which got her to sign her first Section 31 form, regarding a fire near Clapham in August 2011, and resulting in the death of a fellow (racist) officer:

(MAG043) BASIRA: He was… a Hispanic male. Probably mid to late forties, heavyset with a completely shaved head. […] I realised for the first time the bald guy’s saying something. Not loud, but intensely. I mean, this was years ago so I don’t remember exactly what he was saying, but it definitely involved the words “cleansing fire”, “all shall be ash”, and the name “Asag”? Which, I later learned, is some kind of Sumerian demon. So that’s fun. […] Our arsonist’s name was Diego Molina. He was assistant curator at some Mexican museum, come over with a loan to the Natural History Museum, but… they hadn’t heard from him for a few weeks. […] The only thing Diego Molina had on him, when we brought him in, was a small book, bound in red leather. They caught Spencer in storage, trying to destroy it with a zippo lighter. […] They told me he killed himself when he got home. Apparently, he’d somehow filled the bath full of boiling water and just… just got in. Official story was he’d somehow done it using a kettle, which… that’s, that’s just about the weakest cover-up I ever heard.

And the description she gave, and the focus on “Asag”, is of course putting to mind the mysterious man from MAG012 who was transported to Lesere Saraki’s service on the night of the 23rd December of 2011 (so six months after Basira’s case), and who had apparently been fighting with Gerry Keay, before Gerry killed him for good in the hospital:

(MAG012, Lesere Saraki) “Apparently the fire brigade had responded to reports of a blaze in a building site near St Mary’s churchyard, and had turned up to find the two men lying unconscious. There had been no fire, although the ground they lay on showed several burn marks and a metal bar that had been lying nearby appeared to have bent slightly as if from great heat. […] the more I heard, the more it sounded like most of them weren’t in English. The first sounded like “Asak” or “Asag”, then “Veepalach” and finally in English “The Lightless Flame”. The last part was very clear, and I assumed he was talking about whatever burned him, but he said it with such intensity that the words made me feel quite uncomfortable.”

[…] ARCHIVIST: As far as the mystery man’s chanting goes, if it was indeed “Asag” that he was saying, then that’s quite interesting. Asag is the name of a demon in Sumerian mythology associated with disease and corruption, which doesn’t really seem to have much relevance to this statement except that it was also fabled that Asag was able to boil fish alive in their rivers. Admittedly in Sumerian myth this was because he was monstrously ugly but a curious coincidence nonetheless. “Veepalach” might also be a mishearing of the Polish word “wypalać”, according to Martin, which means to cauterize or brand. Admittedly, if Martin speaks Polish in the same way he “speaks Latin” then he might be talking nonsense again, but I’ve looked it up and it appears to check out.

* Tangent about Gerry but mMMmm, there is one item I had absolutely forgotten about that was mentioned in this episode?

(MAG012, Lesere Saraki) “He was in almost identical shape to the first, except for the fact that the burns seemed to stop at his neck, along a clear line. It was as though he’d been wearing a choker that the damage couldn’t get above but his neck was bare. […] Like the first, he was completely covered in almost uniform second-degree burns, except for what at first I thought were small black scorch marks. Looking closer, I saw that they were eyes. Small, tattooed eyes on every one of his joints: his knees, his elbows and even his knuckles, as well as just over his heart. I would have expected the burns to have almost destroyed tattoos that small but instead they were unblemished and the skin about a centimetre around each one also didn’t seem to have been affected. […] After a few seconds of awkward silence, Gerard spoke. He asked me if the paramedics had brought any items in with them. Specifically, he was after a small book bound in red leather and a brass pendant he had been wearing. He didn’t say what design had been on the pendant but I guessed it had been an eye. I told him that neither of those things had been brought in with him, and he was quiet for a long time.”

With the descriptions of his wounds and how the Eyes had apparently protected him from the burning, and how there was specifically a clear delimitation after his neck, and how he had lost a pendant… it looks like he had a(n Eye?) pendant acting as a protection, which was pretty efficient? Given Gerry’s reaction, was it actually… from Eric’s…? (I doubt he would have been apparently stunned into silence like this if it had just been something from Mary?)

Plus, I’m not sure about a few things but they’re quite interesting to think about: Why had Gerry apparently been fighting against Diego? In MAG111, he mainly described his activities around Leitner books at the time, and we spotted him casually saving or giving hints to a few statement-givers here and there, helping them to survive, but this was the only time we heard of him him… actively fighting and killing a Spook. Had they been fighting over the “small book bound in red leather”? Given how Eugene mentioned Diego’s reading in MAG139, that Basira remembered they had retrieved a book on him in MAG043, and that Gerry was after one that matched its description in MAG012, he was tied to at least that one, so… I would say it was either a (proto)Leitner, either a Smirke book covering some thoughts about the rituals? Did Diego become a Spook thanks to it, à la Mike Crew and Jared Hopworth? (Though in their cases, they got rid of their own books once they acquired their powers…)

(Given Gertrude’s personal history with the Lightless Flame, I first thought, very excitedly, that Gerry had tried to neutralise someone who was threatening direct harm to Gertrude. Technically, unless small retcon, it can’t be the case: Mary Keay was stated to have died in September 2008 (MAG004), Gerry explained that she had “haunted” him for five years after that (MAG111) until Gertrude found him and got rid of Mary, and that Gerry had only begun working with her after that. There is a very small discrepancy here (that would mean that Gertrude made Mary disappear in 2013 and Gerry said he then proceeded to work with her “for a few years”… but he died in late 2014) but, technically, with the information we’ve got, Mary was still haunting Gerry at the time of his hospitalisation in 2011… and sadly, was probably indeed the person who came to fetch Gerry (MAG012, Lesere Saraki: “Gerard Keay was treated for a further four days in the hospital before being discharged into the care of his mother.”). When Jon had highlighted how he had the feeling that Gertrude drew a sick pleasure from pretending to be Gerry’s mom (MAG107), my first instinct was to scream “gERTRUDE…” about MAG012… but nop, doesn’t appear to work. Damnit.)

* Anyway, back to Diego: he was apparently the Scholar-like of the group (was the one calling their god “Asag”, was the one to tell the others that their ideal world was called “The Scoured Earth”), and he was definitely tied to that book in red leather, and Basira did mention that John Spencer hadn’t managed to burn it, and HUUUU, I remembered having thought, with “They caught Spencer in storage, trying to destroy it with a zippo lighter.” (MAG043) that there were lots of lighters involved (Gerry’s, Jon’s…) but… specifically there, given the Very Tense relationship between The Web and The Desolation, I wonder if this might have in fact been the same one with the web design that would later end up in Jon’s hands – the Web trying to use someone to get rid of a Desolation-related item, to put another dent into the Lightless Flame’s activities, a few years after Agnes’s death?

* It’s REALLY interesting that Diego was obsessed with calling their god “Asag”, given how Jon highlighted that it was more linked to “corruption” (MAG012: “Asag is the name of a demon in Sumerian mythology associated with disease and corruption, which doesn’t really seem to have much relevance to this statement except that it was also fabled that Asag was able to boil fish alive in their rivers.”)… and how Arthur Nolan was apparently punished, or cast away, stuck with the Hive:

(MAG032, Jane Prentiss) “I don’t know how long the nest has been there. It’s not even my house, I just live there. Some sweaty old man thinks he owns it, taking money for my presence as though it will save him. […] Now I know that whatever the old man thinks, as he passes about the house with brow crinkled and mouth puckered in disapproval, it is not his. It has a thousand truer owners who shift and live and sing within the very walls of the building. He does not even know about the wasps’ nest. I wonder how long he has not known. How many years it has been there. Have you ever heard of the filarial worm? Mosquitoes gift it with their kiss and it grows and grows. It stops water moving round the human body right, makes limbs and bellies swell and sag with fluid. Now, when I look at that fat, sweaty sack, I think about it, and the voice sings of showing him what a real parasite can do.”

(MAG055) JORDAN: […] a couple of years ago, I was called in to deal with a wasps’ nest. […] The landlord’s name was Arthur Nolan. He was a short man with a constant scowl, thinning white hair and a well-chewed cigar. It looked like his denim shirt once contained quite an athletic build, but it long since settled. […] After he hit me with a look of disappointment, he nodded and began to walk down the hall. I followed him, desperate for answers, but he ignored my questions about what the hell was going on and kept walking down the stairs towards his flat. At one point, he shook his head and mumbled something about hoping it wouldn’t get this far, but he didn’t seem to be saying it to me.”

(Jane Prentiss gave her statement on February 23rd 2014, and Jordan Kennedy mentioned that he had met Arthur shortly after, in February or March 2014.)

Was there a prior “architecture” of the Fears where the Desolation and Corruption might have been lumped in together, through the name “Asag”…? The Hive, at least, sounded very, uh, eager to show how Special it was (to Arthur, in the same way that it was hissing at Beholding in Jane’s statement). Was Arthur tied to The Hive, given how he immolated himself right after Jordan “killed” the nest…? (Jon mentioned that they found Arthur’s body after the fire, in MAG032’s post-statement.) Was he supposed to be punished by getting consummated by it, and tried to throw Jane to it as fodder instead…? Given how there was apparently that Diego-Arthur rivalry and how Arthur (unlike Eugene) knew what had happened to Agnes at Hill Top Road, I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up finding a statement left by Arthur somewhere, when he was “demoted”…?

- Alright, so we got official confirmation that Hill Top Road initially belonged to The Web:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “The compromise we came to… was Hill Top Road. We knew it was a stronghold of The Web, full of other children Agnes’s age […], though if we’d known exactly how powerful The Web was in that place, perhaps we would have reconsidered. […] it seems the fight scarred the place in a way far deeper than simple fire. A scar in reality, that I believe has since been compounded by the interferences of other powers.”

Sarah Baldwin had described the taxidermy shop as a “place of power” for The Stranger, Breekon had referred to the Institute as The Eye’s “pedestal”, Elias pointed out Ny-Ålesund as a “stronghold” of The Dark.

(MAG096) ARCHIVIST: There are, er… there, there are dozens of deliveries recorded here by Breekon and Hope. What were they delivering? What is the significance of this place? SARAH: Nothing, except what people give it. But they give it a lot, make it a place of power for us. Enough to keep certain items here.

(MAG128, Breekon) “That was the first time we saw what would become this place, The Eye’s Pedestal.”

(MAG135) ELIAS: I don’t know the details. Ny-Ålesund is a stronghold of The Dark, meaning I can’t see inside.

(Plus, potentially: somewhere in the sea and/or the graveyard Naomi encountered in MAG013 for The Lonely, given Carter Chilcott’s dreams in MAG057; Point Nemo for The End?; the remains of The Maria Fairchild encountered in MAG051 for The Vast?)

Interestingly, Eugene used “stronghold” and Elias referred to Ny-Ålesund for The Dark in the same way, so it seems to be the Right Word to describe the concept, no need to beat around the bush. Hill Top Road used to be Web, and, as we got a glimpse in MAG008, at least The Desolation (the glimpses of Agnes’s ghost, the burning) and most likely The Spiral (through Ivo Lensik, Father Edwin Burroughs, and/or Anya Villette) have been around that place – is it still powerful, but too chaotic to be definitely claimed…? Jon had said that he didn’t think it would be wise to go there (MAG114: “I’ve half a mind to just go down and have a look at it myself, but… I don’t know. Ever since it first came up I’ve felt like it would be… just a very bad idea.”), but. Was that genuine concern because he Learned From Poking Into Danger (which sounds ludicrous, it’s Jon we’re talking about), or the spiders nudging him to not go because ~obviously, he doesn’t want to go, he’s absolutely not being held by strings, what do you mean~.

- You fucked up a perfectly simple place, is what you did, Agnes. Look. You gave it reality bending.

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “I was… not one of those assigned to watch our chosen one, so I can’t say much about exactly what happened within the walls of that house, but it seems the fight scarred the place in a way far deeper than simple fire. A scar in reality, that I believe has since been compounded by the interferences of other powers.”

Since then, there had been at least, uuh… Desolation and Spiral which have been spotted there (MAG008) + some timeline problems, with Ray and Agnes’s ghosts appearing. Anya Villette (MAG114) seemed to say that The Web might possibly be re-emerging? And there is the problem of Anya Villette herself – was the reality-getting-messed-up-around-her an effect of The Spiral, did she come from a parallel dimension, did she ever exist at all, etc.

- There is something fundamentally hilarious about the fact that the cultists of the Lightless Flame tried to guess how to raise Agnes and failed utterly, because she was… a child. No, wait, it was sad and heartbreaking.

But the fact that they sent her to Hill Top Road because it “was a stronghold of The Web, full of other children Agnes’s age” when they were late teenagers, and she was ten-to-eleven? What a bunch of idiots, holy Mew. (I’m sad for Agnes but also covering my face snickering at these idiots trying to raise a Messiah and having no idea how to deal with a child. No wonder she was “prone to fits of violent rage”, you weren’t giving her the environment she needed……………)

- Iiiiii don’t know what to think about Jack Barnabas. On the one hand:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “That stupid coffeeshop twit. I honestly don’t know why Arthur allowed it, or why Jude didn’t step in – she’s usually so jealous! But Agnes… [SIGH] Maybe Agnes asked them to leave him alone…! Or maybe they were just surprised by her interest in this… boring, unremarkable fool. […] We have allowed Jude free rein on what happens to the coffeeshop boy, though Agnes asked her… not to interfere. She has not yet harmed him, but I cannot imagine what is going through her mind. The misery, and pain, he has brought upon himself. For all her anger, she is not rash, and I fear her quiet consideration far more than I worry about her temper. It may be he lives the remainder of his natural life – but she will make sure he is never happy, and never without pain.”

Eugene was sure that he would be getting hell. And it is indeed what Jack lived… for a while, right after the events (March 2007):

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “I lost almost everything after that. I never had much to begin with, and after I was let go at the café, I couldn’t afford to keep my home. They didn’t even try to pretend it wasn’t because my burned face would scare away customers. I’ve ended up living with my father again, who has been… understanding about the situation though… even he can’t bring himself to meet my eye most days.”

But Jon had also mentioned in his post-statement (January 2017) that his situation had gotten much better:

(MAG067) ARCHIVIST: […] Martin has been able to make contact with Mr. Barnabas by email. He’s apparently been doing much better in the years since his statement, having received some reasonably successful plastic surgery.

;; I had assumed it was a genuine improvement, I really hope it is… and not, like, a small respite before Jude comes after him again to strip him of what he managed to get back.

- Eugene was probably That One Guy With The Candles spotted by Jack Barnabas the night of Agnes’s death:

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “They were all dressed in rough work clothes and wore severe expressions. One of them, a big guy with a shaved head, was holding an unlit lantern, and speaking to the others that I think was Spanish or Portuguese. Another held a bag that seemed to be full of candles, while a third had a clear plastic container filled with hundred of tiny spiders. None of them paid me any attention, and I was rapidly feeling like I was falling into something that I really didn’t want to.”

Diego Molina, Eugene Vanderstock and… probably Arthur Nolan with the spiders? Jon had identified Arthur in the group but without tangential proof (though MAG055 had associated him with burning and fire):

(MAG067) ARCHIVIST: […] If the bald man with the lantern is as I suspect Diego Molina, it would indicate a link between his notable obsession with burning, and… Agnes, who apparently had not inconsiderable abilities in that area. I can’t help but wonder if Arthur Nolan, The Hive’s landlord, was one of the other members of that little group.

* Small fuuuunny thing: there had been a few mentions here and there that Agnes didn’t eat regular food, before Eugene confirmed that she needed another kind of sustenance:

(MAG059, Ronald Sinclair) “She never came to church, though; never sat around the dinner table when it was uncovered.”

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “She never actually put any milk in it. She never even drank it. […] What was her life, that every Tuesday at 3’ in the afternoon, she came into the same café, and didn’t drink a black coffee? […] We went to the park a couple more times; had a meal in an Italian restaurant where she didn’t eat anything; we even went to see a film.”

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “I took foreign workers, mostly. Those with the fewest immediate connections to complicate matters, and the most hopeful dreams of what their life might be. They were the ones that provided Agnes the most satisfying nourishment. […] Agnes would take them to her small, empty flat, lay them on the floor and light them. Over the many hours these candles burned, she would crane over them, so Arthur tells me, inhaling all the agony, suffering, and loss from which they were created. Or he could’ve been lying to me, just keeping me busy with torture and murder so I didn’t get in the way of anything. I don’t think I’d have minded that, actually. At least, I felt useful.”

- HEY, YOU KNOW WHAT WAS ABSOLUTELY ABSENT OF EUGENE’S STATEMENT REGARDING AGNES’S DEATH? SPIDERS. Probably-Arthur had been bringing some on the night of her death. There were SPIDERS in Jack’s flat (that Agnes’s presence burned):

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “It was as I was doing this, I noticed kind of an odd smell? Like when you turn on an electric heater for the first time in a while and you get a whiff of all the burning dust. I looked up, and noticed within the corner of the room, where there had been a spider’s web this morning, there was just a faint wisp of smoke. It was weird, but I had more important things on my mind.”

And also, THE FUCKING TREE at Hill Top Road, which prompted Agnes’s death on November 23rd 2006. Eugene made it sound like Agnes had slowly come to the conclusion that she couldn’t carry out the ritual because of her “doubt” but… we know that her death was tied to the tree at Hill Top Road, the night Ivo Lensik was compelled to unroot it (and to free spiders):

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “[…] I heard Agnes gasp. I turned to see her gripping her chest as though in sudden pain, and she told me we had to go. I followed her as she… staggered out of the park and over to a phone booth where she made a panicked call. She said something about a tree falling, and that they… had to finish something. Then she hung up. She leaned on my arm as we walked back to her flat. […] Agnes turned to me and apologized, told me goodbye, and thank you. There was such a sense of finality to it that I felt like my heart stopped.”

Eugene knew that Hill Top Road had been a stronghold of The Web, but I’m not sure that he understood how much The Web might have possibly been still hanging around? It had struck me, in MAG067, how Jack… had suddenly decided to go talk to Agnes, and how he had described her:

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “But she was so beautiful, she… she was tall, with long straight auburn hair, and these eyes that… when they looked at you, it didn’t feel like she was seeing you so much as… was trapping you. […] I was… drawn to her in a way I can’t… even explain. […] That was the moment I decided to try and talk to Agnes. Seeing her interact with someone else, even in such a weird way, unblocked something in my mind. The following Tuesday, when she came in and ordered her coffee, I asked her name. She looked at me in surprise and, for a second, I felt like I’d made a terrible mistake, but then she… told me, very matter-of-factly. And then I asked her out on a date. I don’t know how it happened, it just… tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop it. […] I worried I was boring her, but every time I looked over, she had that same expression on, which… by then I was pretty sure was a smile. I’d catch her eye and that feeling would flood though me – I… I still don’t know quite how to describe it, but whatever it was, it was powerful. […] I… I don’t know if I would have had it in me to resist. I just couldn’t avoid being drawn in, like a moth to the flame.”

Except for that last image, the way Agnes was attracting him… sounds super Webby to me? And as mentioned above, we know there were spiders in Jack’s flat. I don’t think that his crush was Web-induced, but his decision to go talk to her could perhaps have been due to a string…? (I’m really not sure but one my personal takes would be: The Web’s presence at Hill Top Road was diminished because of the tree, but it eroded over time and/or something made the seal weaken; the spiders used Jack’s crush and pushed him to confess, humouring Agnes and/or giving her a pretext to officialise that she wouldn’t do the ritual (making it sound like she couldn’t, rather than admitting that she didn’t want to); the spiders got Ivo Lensik to “kill” the tree, freeing The Web’s influence… and it was back as a contender for the ownership of the place. Possibly: it’s also what allowed Annabelle to be born as an avatar, a few years later, as Raymond Fielding had been dead for a long while and Neil Lagorio was growing old and incapacitated?)

- Regarding Agnes’s timeline, some bits are now a bit clearer, others still blurry:

* Agnes was sent to Hill Top Road to deal with The Web sometime around 1965, when Ronald Sinclair was turning 18 (he said he was born in the late 40s). Agnes was described as “younger than the other kids, maybe ten or eleven years old, and didn’t talk much”. She (playfully) freed Ronald from Raymond Fielding’s influence. (MAG059)

* The house got slowly depopulated until only Agnes and Raymond remained; Raymond disappeared when Agnes “must have been 18 or 19”, Agnes claiming that “he had gone away and that the house was hers” (Ivo Lensik, MAG008).

* In 1974, a five-year-old boy goes missing in the area. People are suspicious of Agnes, the house burns, Ray’s body is found, missing his right hand, and there is no sign of Agnes. (MAG008)

* Agnes apparently got stuck in the place (MAG139: “As far as we could tell, she had destroyed the place utterly. And yet, she remained bound to it, tied to it in some vital way. I knew, when Arthur told she had kept Raymond Fielding’s hand, that he was worried.”)

* In 1989, Jude met Agnes and the others. (MAG089)

* Gertrude did something tying Agnes to the place (MAG139, Eugene: “Jude simply flies into a rage when it’s brought up. I assume it’s why we were waiting, biding our time for decades, unable to bring our designs to any culmination. Jude had only just joined at the time”), Agnes kept Ray’s hand.

* Agnes began to frequent the Canyon Café in the 90s as, by November 2006, she had been visiting for “a decade and a half” (MAG067). She waited, they all waited.

* In autumn 2006, Jack Barnabas confessed to Agnes and they went on a few dates. (MAG067)

* On November 23rd 2006, Ivo Lensik uprooted the tree at Hill Top Road, freeing spiders from the apple buried under it; Agnes felt it, said that she had to finish something, gathered the members of the cult, and at her request, they hanged her, with Ray’s hand tied to her waist. (MAG008/MAG067/MAG139)

The Web binds and traps, so it might have been its way to get back at Agnes, before Gertrude did… something, fifteen years later? I would have assumed that Gertrude had struck around the time of Ray’s death, but no, Eugene said that it was around the time Jude had joined them, and Jude was absolutely crystal clear that she joined in 1989.

- … I’m still side-eying (ha) a loooot Agnes’s stance on the candles, given that Eugene never actually saw her inhaling them (it was more of a Jude thing, to like incense?), and that Arthur was the one to say she was using them. It sounds like there is room for her to… not have used them at all. And, actually, to not have been that much into serving the Desolation in the first place.

It’s impressive how much Agnes herself still remains a Mystery, despite the fact that we’ve now learned about her birth and how she was raised. Interestingly (and I really doubt it was a coincidence), all the titbits we got about her were people who were either infatuated with her (Jude, Jack), either barely knew her and were unable to decipher her (Ronald), either saw her as a symbol more than a person (Eugene). The only time we heard about what she might have thought or felt was through Jack, and very briefly:

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “She was talking about… some sort of job, and whether Agnes was going to be able to do it. At first, I thought it was a job interview, and… then she started talking about Agnes being released from something. Agnes just… said something softly, and shook her head. She looked sad, an expression I’d never seen on her face before. The other woman sighed, clearly unhappy with the answer, and stood up to leave. Before she went, she took out a brown paper envelope and handed it over; said that she’d give it to her now so she didn’t forget later. She called it “a collection”, and it looked like the envelope might have been full of money. Agnes put it in her jacket and returned to staring out the window, as her intimidating companion left with a frustrated expression.”

(And we still don’t know what was in that envelope! You could technically put small candles in an envelope but they would still be too big for a jacket…? (Were there spiders inside of it.) Was the other woman Jude, since it was “a collection” and Eugene mentioned she might come “to collect” after Gertrude…? Perhaps he wasn’t being metaphorical.)

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “We sat on a bench as the sun went down, watching the sky redden, and Agnes asked me a question. It was the first time she’d said anything more than a few words since we left my flat. [STATIC:] She asked me if I had a destiny. [/STATIC] I don’t need to tell you the question caught me off-guard. I don’t know if I’ve given the impression clearly enough yet, being a single guy in my early thirties still working the tiller to Sheffield Café, but I don’t really see myself as having much of a destiny. Hell, I’m not even sure I believe in destiny. I certainly don’t believe in God, and I feel that’s… kind of linked. So I told her this. She looked at me with the same sadness I had seen on her face before. “That must be nice,” she said, and went back to staring into the sunset.”

It sounds like Agnes might have been much more reluctant about The Lightless Flame’s ritual than Eugene wanted to believe…? Whether or not we get a statement left by Arthur, I’m pretty confident that we might have one left by Agnes herself – or possibly a recording of her talking with Gertrude. There have been lots of people talking about Agnes without us getting to hear Agnes’s voice and intentions directly, and I doubt that this has been a coincidence? Eugene explicitly said that Gertrude did something to Agnes – is it possible that they agreed on something together, with Agnes more or less trying to spare her extended family’s feelings while ensuring that she couldn’t get used by them…?

(It would sound super positive for the series, which tends to give characters darker sides too, but… Agnes’s story has sounded very tragic so far? Just like Gerry – being programmed to be Something by their own mother, getting involved with spooks and fundamentally twisted, unable to escape, until they would reach their bitter end?)

(- There is something very poetic in the idea that… we’ll see about it, but maybe Agnes, whose whole life was programmed, who had a “Destiny” inflicted to her, actually gained agency for the first time in the house of the Web, which is known for its mind-control?)

- … Okay, so the Fears/Dread Powers/Outer Gods definitely are able to touch people more easily through their dreams.

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “We all felt the calling, the dreams, pulling us ever closer to a world of fire and loss, a place of burning, and agony, when we remade the world in the image of the Lightless Flame, the one Diego called “Asag”. We all felt it. Longed for it.”

Jane mentioned her “crawling and many-legged” dreams (MAG032), Annabelle had reported “several unsettling dreams about spiders” (MAG069); there were Oliver’s dreams (MAG011, MAG121); Adelard mentioned his own nightmares (MAG113); Lucia was pursued by some (MAG130); it’s unclear how Garland Hillier got his “revelations” but it could have happened through his dreams (MAG134); Robert Smirke had seen the Fears, and ultimately Beholding, in his dreams (MAG138); and of course, there are Jon’s dreams, which… seem more active than most of the others (given that Daisy confirmed that she was seeing him back, and that the way Elias described them in MAG120, Jon was inflicting anguish on the victims and was identified as the cause of their suffering).

- Regarding how the Lightless Flame proceeded and how Manuela designed The Dark’s ritual… the overall guidelines seem to be to Believe In It Very Hard, And It Will Happen?

(MAG135, Manuela Dominguez) “Scientifically, it was nonsense of course. Dark energy and the like don’t work like that, not even remotely. But that wasn’t important. What mattered was that it felt like science, and that was all I needed. To do my work, to create the Black Star would need a parody, an aping mockery of science. But it would also need the deepest of darknesses. When I told Maxwell what I actually needed, he told me such a thing was impossible, but I insisted. And so he began his work on the Daedalus. […] My experiments continued largely uninterrupted, pushing the boundaries of light, darkness and fear. It was dangerous work and more than once, I got too close to the light and it almost destroyed me. But it didn’t. I could regale you with the technical terms or scientific disciplines I played with and rendered meaningless, but in the end all you actually need to know is that I succeeded. A tiny, terrible sun of the pitchest black, shining beautiful Darkness all around it.”

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “But a longing… is not the same thing as an instruction. We’d all been touched and warped by proximity to the holy Burning Fire, but none of us had any special knowledge, no matter what Diego claims he might have read. He wanted a Grand Inferno, a ritual of apocalyptic burning that would make the firebombing of Dresden look like a sparkler. Which sounded… amazing! […] And that’s when Arthur proposed his own plan: a Chosen One. We would create a messiah, the Flame Incarnate, one who could usher in this new world and lead us in what Diego called “The Scoured Earth”. […] Some objected, said that unless the child was conceived of the Flame, it could never be a true incarnation. But they had no idea of how such a conception could possibly even work, so it was decided that it would have to be enough to birth the child by fire. […] And in the centre of the pyre, a hollow, where Eileen was to lay. We prayed, and sacrificed, and anointed her body with holy oil and a crown of kindling. I protested the last one, felt we could do better than to ape the Christians, but I was shouted down.”

It looks like The Lightless Flame improvised… basically everything, by picking here and there symbols and ritualistic gestures that belonged to other cults – so the baffling thing is that it worked, and it’s probably because they thought/hoped/believed it would.

- Whiiiich directly raises the question of The Rite of the Watcher’s Crown, as Jon implicitly seemed to think – or, at least, he has been shown voicing some interrogations about why he was there.

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: Why were we chosen? Agnes was created – crafted with a specific purpose so finely tuned that even a grain of uncertainty threatened the entirety of her being. [CHORTLING] But I’m so full of doubt it feels like there’s no room for anything else, and… I’m sure Martin is the same…! Is there “destiny” here? B–bloodlines and… prophecies, or did we just… stumble into this? Maybe we’re the opposite of Agnes; maybe our doubts are exactly what we need. I–if that’s the case, I’m a… an amazing chosen one. … [LONG EXHALE] Don’t know how that would work, though.

And indeed: how is this ritual meant to work, if the Archivists tend to not be so keen to see the world warped…? Elias pointed out in MAG092 how fitting Jon is for the role and, indeed, his personality matches his powers, which seem to be… compensating for things he is lacking: compulsion means getting the truth out of people (while Jon is prone to paranoia), Knowing comes in handy given that he has so many questions, being able to get formatted statements help to satiate his curiosity… And precisely, because Jon is prone to doubt, he’ll push forward to know. But that doesn’t mean that he would be ready to doom the world and inflict fears on people, especially when Elias pushed him to stop another apocalypse (MAG102, “I should have thought preventing the horrific transformation of our world is not solely my concern!” YEAH, DEFINE WHAT IS AND ISN’T “HORRIFIC”, ELIAS). So what is it Elias saw in Jon that led him to think that Jon might be up for it, if his plans are indeed to carry out The Watcher’s Crown…?

I’m surprised that Jon would mention “bloodlines” in the list of potential reasons for them to be here, given how… it hasn’t been the case for any of the characters we’ve met so far, except Gerry – who, precisely, told Jon that blood didn’t matter (except if you’re a Lukas and use family structure as a tool to shape more believers)?

Overall, there is a non-systematic but still notable trend, amongst the Archival staff, to have encountered Spooks before joining the Institute in order to try and find out more about it:

(* Michael Shelley: lost a friend to The Spiral when he was young, which pushed him to join the Institute to understand what had happened, according to MAG101.)

* Jon had met The Web as a kid, probably never truly got away from it even though he did not die right away. Georgie highlighted how, personality-wise, he was perfect for the job:

(MAG093) GEORGIE: That does at least explain why he picked you. ARCHIVIST: Uh? GEORGIE: If your job is asking questions, I mean. You were always the one who pushed too far, and asked smart-arse, awkward questions. I always was surprised you never got punched.

* We heard Melanie’s recruitment live, though the reasons are still a bit unclear:

(MAG084) ELIAS: Do you want the job, Melanie? MELANIE: Oh… Um, I…Well, it’s, it’s rather sudden, but… er, I mean, sure. Yes. Yes, I do.

(MAG106) MELANIE: Threaten, then. I’ve got nothing. ELIAS: That’s… almost true. Your life is indeed shockingly absent of any meaningful connections. That’s actually one of the reasons I chose you for this job.

(Melanie had had various Spooky encounters at this point: she witnessed a fight between agents of the Stranger and of the… Flesh? Slaughter? (MAG028), got wounded on the shoulder by a Slaughter ghost (MAG076), and was already infected by a bullet from another Slaugher ghost (MAG117) when Elias recruited her. Static was even heard when he was talking to her, so he definitely did something, whether it was… seeing the bullet, or compelling her to think about the reasons for accepting? But why did he want her in the team – was it because she was leaning towards Beholding, in her quest for seeing things that could destroy her/being a witness overall/working with cameras and recording supernatural events? Was it because of the Slaughter wounds, set-up for Jon?)

* Same for Basira and Daisy: officially, Elias needed to neutralise Daisy and to be able to use her “competences” in dealing with Spooks, hence the trapping of Basira as blackmail material. Both had large amounts of Spooky encounters beforehand, as Section 31-signee officers (including the showdown with Rayner). Given recent development, it’s possible that Elias mostly just wanted Basira in the team, but her being good at investigating and “suit[ing] the academic life” (MAG102) might also just have been a happy coincidence – unlike the other Beholding folks, Basira has demonstrated that she’s able to call things quit when she is done with them, such as with her quitting the police.

* It’s unclear whether Jon had personally asked Sasha to be transferred to the Archives when he was appointed as Head Archivist (he liked Sasha a lot! She was getting a free pass on everything!). He did mention that “her working here seems the natural progression of her lifelong interest in the paranormal (MAG048), but it’s unclear whether that bit was Sasha-Sasha… or something rewritten by the Not!Them ;; (Since from what we knew it season 1, Sasha was pretty short on money and even hated Artefact Storage when she was working there but “couldn’t afford to quit”… so it might be that the real Sasha had just been desperate for a job, like Martin.)

* We know, however, quite a lot about Tim: he followed Danny and became an unwilling spectator to Grimaldi/Nikola’s skinning and dancing; he joined the Institute shortly afterwards in order to try and track down the Circus and get answers about what had happened to his brother (he even became a Smirke specialist in just two years!). We know that Jon specifically asked him to come with him to the Archives:

(MAG065) TIM: No. No, you listen for once. I was fine in research, happy. Then you asked me to be transferred here, and suddenly it’s all monsters and killers and secret passages, oh my!

(Plus, the whole thing with how he hadn’t managed to move but only watch in the Covent Garden theatre (MAG104) sounded verrryy much like Jon watching his bully disappear behind the door. Watching until the end, unable to do anything to stop events – but not closing their eyes either. Beholding-compatible.)

* AND MARTIN IS STILL OUR BIG MYSTERY, but of all things, we know that Elias was the one to interview him when he was applied with a fake CV, which UHOH.

(MAG056) MARTIN: I… … I lied on my CV. ARCHIVIST: … What? MARTIN: I don’t have a Master’s in parapsychology, I don’t even have a degree. […] So I… I just kinda started to lie on my applications, sending them out to just about anywhere. For some reason, my lie about parapsychology got me an interview with Elias and, and then a job here. M–most of my employment details are made up, I’m only 29!

(Unclear whether this happened when Martin was 17 or a little later, but he was at any rate already employed at the Institute in 2009, at age 22.) More specifically about working in the Archives, it doesn’t sound like Jon asked Martin to follow him there – firstly, Jon was super dismissive of him in season 1, and secondly, there was Martin’s awkward silence when he and Tim discussed that:

(MAG098) MARTIN: […] [Jon] said he doesn’t want to lose anyone else. Like, y’know, it’s his fault. TIM: Isn’t it? MARTIN: No! No, it isn’t! I mean, you heard Elias… We never really stood a chance. TIM: Yeah. Maybe. But Elias wasn’t actually the one who offered me the job down here. MARTIN: No, I– Sure. …

So either he volunteered, either he might have been sent down there by Elias… which just raises another “why”. It was a bit weird how Jon, in MAG139, immediately segued from Martin to the question of why they had been “chosen” to be there (why did thinking about Martin prompt that?), but on the other hand, it’s still an enigma why Elias hired Martin. Could be that everything was absolutely accidental, could be the Spiders at work, could be that Elias did have specific plans about Martin (because Elias didn’t especially like Martin…? He’s always very casually talking him down), who knows.

*SHAKES ELIAS AGAIN, SPIT WHAT YOU KNOW YOU INSUFFERABLE GRINNING EX-HEAD*

(Other option of why they were chosen: their isolation. Jon’s parents died when he was a kid, and his grandmother died around the time he began working at the Institute, in 2012; Tim’s only family member mentioned was his brother, who had died before he joined the Institute; Martin’s only family member mentioned around him was his mother, and given that he had to care for her when he was only 17, it is implied that he might not have had many family members around or close; Basira only mentioned her father, and in past tense; Melanie’s parents are both dead and Elias pointed out she didn’t have any real anchor anymore; Daisy’s “last connection to humanity” was stated to be Basira. Could be Elias being a vulture, or a bit of classism, targeting people in need/from poor upbringings, assuming that they would be more influenceable and easy to handle?)

- À propos of Martin, this episode also reminded of One Big Important Question:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “And that’s when Arthur proposed his own plan: a Chosen One. We would create a messiah, the Flame Incarnate […]. When we finally decided, it was Eileen Montague who came forward as a volunteer. She was five months pregnant at the time, and had already taken care of the father in the usual manner of our little congregation. […] We baptized her with the boiling water of Asag and named her… “Agnes”, as had been her mother’s final request.”

IS THERE A SINGLE GOOD MOTHER IN TMA. I’m snorting and weeping over the fact that:

(MAG067) ARCHIVIST: […] [Jack Barnabas] was unable to provide much more information on the above but, upon Martin’s asking if Agnes had mentioned her childhood at all, he did recall her briefly alluding to being adopted.

L-O-L YES, SHE WAS ADOPTED… by so many different people. By the cult of the Lightless Flame after her birth, and then by Raymond Fielding (kind of) when they sent her off to fight the Spiders as a kid.

We don’t have Stellar Parenting overall, very true, but I can still think of a few fathers who sacrificed themselves to save a child – Jason North was implied to have immolated himself to save his son from his own curse in MAG037, and YEAH OKAY, ROBERT MONTAUK WAS A SERIAL KILLER but he was also good towards Julia in MAG009 (and we will probably hear a bit more about their family’s story, about Julia’s mother… but I had gotten the feeling that Robert probably did what he did in order to avenge his wife and/or to protect Julia from the same fate?). Plus, Gerry mentioned that he thinks that his father might have wanted to help raise, him before Mary decided to get rid of the problem. Not role models, sure, but not-failing-as-parents. Meanwhile, almost every time we see a mother or hear about her feelings (ie, excluding for example Andrea Nunis’s mother, who was an anchor to her, but who wasn’t a character in herself), it’s Bad News. As MAG139 demonstrated, Agnes’s mother imposed the Destiny on her daughter before she was even born. See also: Mary friggin’ Keay to Gerry, and not-his-mother-but-was-apparently-getting-a-kick-out-of-being-mistaken-for-it Gertrude. Do I need to mention Martin’s mother.

It’s a great subversion of the idea that mothers are inherently nurturing and kind but they’re also… the Rarest Species in this series, uh.

- Hey hey hey, alright, I deserve tomatoes to be thrown at me, but on the subject of Martin Lukas Keay von Closen Son Of Puppets Blackwood. So. Martin and spiders have a loving relationship, but this episode also reminded me that another of his loves is also…

(MAG117) MARTIN: This way I finally get to do something. It’s gonna hurt, but… I’m ready. And I want to. Also, I get to burn some stuff, so that cool!

(MAG118) ELIAS: Tell me what you’re doing, and why. MARTIN: I just thought I’d, y’know, drop a couple of ideas in the old suggestion box! Turns out my suggestion is… fire! [LIGHTER ON]

… arson, so on the list of “what the heck is Martin Blackwood”, what about Unholy Grandchild of Web and Desolation or something through his dad.)

- Gertrude’s death was sneakily pushed back to the forefront again:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “And he’s probably right. Just as well you are not here. Smart move on your part. But they always are, aren’t they? Smart moves. Someday, you’re gonna push your luck too far, and when you do… Well, you just better hope it isn’t Jude who comes to collect. […] As for you… Whatever you did, and whatever protection it might have afforded you is severed, with Agnes’s death. Arthur has told us not to harm you yet, but this whole thing has really rather weakened his authority, and many of us are now looking towards Diego for leadership. But we shall see, I suppose. I hope, when it is time, we may burn you forever, Gertrude.

[…] ARCHIVIST: […] Nice to see Gertrude [EXHALE] also used to get a lot of threats. So far it doesn’t seem that any went… desperately well. Except for Elias, of course. But he didn’t threaten, did he? He just… did it.

And I still feel like we might be missing a few things about the circumstances surrounding it – if Gertrude was pursued by so many people and so cautious about it, how come Elias managed to get rid of her in the end…? Is it because he was kind of a blind spot (ha) and she had been underestimating him…? Is it because, so focused on Spooks, she didn’t consider mundane means…? But she was well-aware of the power of regular, non-paranormal weapons! She used so many explosives…

I wonder if the Reminder that Gertrude had a long list of would-be killers, that she had managed to avoid for so long until Elias got to her, is supposed to mean that we’ll hear more about the Elias-Gertrude relationship… Oliver had mentioned that she had many things going after her, in MAG121; Peter mentioned that he wouldn’t have been against offing her himself in MAG134; and now, again, we’re getting another mention in MAG139…

- Jon is still gathering information about past rituals and we can add another name for the Desolation: “The Scoured Earth”, which should have been carried out by Agnes… and was left on standby and/or cancelled entirely for this round. We’re only missing the name and description for The Lonely (though we know from MAG134 that Gertrude successfully derailed it already), The Corruption (was it whatever Jane tried against the Institute?), and everything about The Vast. Jon didn’t say how and where and why he found Eugene’s statement in particular: whether he was drawn to this one, or found it cobwebs-wrapped, or Knew he had to read it?

(And The Corruption still hasn’t had any statement in season 4! Oh worms.)

- Jon gave us updates on the Archival staff, and it is various shades of sob. Chronologically, by order of mentions:

* Basira still hasn’t spilled the beannnns ;_;

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: The others are doing… better, I think. Basira’s busy doing research for something secretive, unsurprisingly. But she seems to be adjusting to, uh… the new Daisy.

So, on the one hand: Basira is still Hiding Everything from Jon… but on the other hand, it sounds like it’s going better between her and Daisy? … but WELP, if their relationship is pacifying, it means that it’s becoming Something That Could Be Taken Away from us and from them / it’s giving Jonny an opportunity to hurt us a whole lot if one of them dies. Let me be happy about them, gdi?!

* I Have Reclamations To Make About Jon’s mentions of Daisy:

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: I actually like Daisy now, which is a… really weird feeling. [INHALE]

Like, on the one hand, I get that becoming kind of bff with Daisy is throwing you off, Jon, but don’t you dare lie to Us/The Tape Recorder: you liked Daisy and sharing your fantastic shitty sense of humour with her, I Have Receipts:

(MAG096) DAISY: Come on. Before the Met get here. ARCHIVIST: Whatever you say~ DAISY: And wipe that grin off your face.

Plus, you’ve been listening to THE ARCHERS in her company, probably to indulge her, and you went out for drinks with her; there are limits to pity, you’ve been way into Friendship territory for a while now, don’t try to bluff!! :w

Also, a bit saddened that he’s describing her as “the new Daisy” because… it doesn’t really seem accurate? According to Daisy, this was her all along/her true self, and we indeed could see glimpses of it in season 3, like how she gladly accepted the nickname “Daisy” (MAG082, Elias: “Everyone calls me Daisy. I like that because it sounds so gentle […] It makes me feel strong, to know that the soft nickname everyone calls me comes from a bloody wound.”) (But at the same time… ;; It’s very easy to picture Elias waltzing in at some point to highlight that ahah, but the rabid dog was the real you all along, too…)

* Melanie is “quiet”.

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: Melanie’s quiet, but I think therapy’s helping.

And given that the identity of her therapist is still undetermined, I’m filled with dread… The Web is known for making people come off as “quiet”……………

(MAG059, Ronald Sinclair) “The other kids living there were the same – at least, I think they were. I remember them being kind of dull, not that they were… boring, exactly, […] but there was something about them, as though… there were some things that they said and did without anything behind them. Occasionally there would be flashes of something. […] mostly they were quiet, almost placid. I’m sure they’d have said the same things about me, but at the time, nothing seemed amiss. I did what I did because it was what I was supposed to do, and it never struck me to question it. I’m not sure I really recognise who I became while living at that house.”

Please, be just fine and healing, Melanie…? ;;

* Helen is… *LOUD SOB*

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: Haven’t seen Helen much. The door is… sometimes there, sometimes not. … I haven’t knocked. I’m never going to trust it. Trust… her. … Trust it. [DRY EXHALE] And I shouldn’t. Whatever its relationship to the person who was or is Helen… assuming that I can ever know its motivations is a mistake.

Damniiiiiiiiiiiiiit… Extra-aouch that Helen directly told Jon that she wasn’t super-fond of the “it” in MAG131 (and given how Melanie, who seems to be the closest to Helen?, used “she”), and that Jon is… very pointedly choosing to still using “It” anyway after some hesitation (reflex to call The Distortion “it”, then remembering his discussion with Helen and going for “she”, then reaffirming his distrust with “it”?).

I’m really not surprised that Jon is having trouble with her door (Jon has a History of doors that should stay closed, and specifically got bad experiences with Michael’s), I’m saddened that he is choosing to not trust Helen, although… I can imagine why. But is it through an intrinsically personal decision (The Distortion is supposed to lie and deceive; maybe it’s currently trustworthy only because of his lack of trust? Is it because he still feels guilty over what happened to the human Helen Richardson, who got snatched right before him? Is it because he still resents Michael?), or is it also because of the Beholding in him – pushing him to not trust what he can’t know…?

I wonder how Helen being around will end up causing harm (because surely, it will): will it be because Jon will finally decide to trust her because he has no choice left, and immediately be given reason to regret? Is it because Jon will adamantly refuse to trust her when she could be preventing another disaster…?

* And theeeeeeeeeeeeen…

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: And that just leaves Martin, which…

[SAD PAUSE OF ARCHIVIST DESPERATELY PINING] Jon, p l z. If you’re beginning to reach Martin Level of concern/pining/worrying, then Oh No.

(MAG117) MARTIN: I suppose you can get used to anything, but… [PAUSE] It feels different. I need them to be safe. I need him to be okay. … So–sorry, hum. I–I’m not afraid for me, though. Isn’t that weird…? […] I just… really hope everyone makes it back. … And I want to win on my own. Oh, and I hope the world doesn’t end. Obviously. [SIGH] Just… [SIGH] Just don't die, Jon. … O–or Tim, or Basira, or… Daisy, I guess. Just… just everyone please, make it back home…?

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: … [SIGH] I’m just worried about Martin. … Christ… Every other Avatar gets to have their feelings… burned right out of them, but me? I’ve… just got to sit in mine. … I know he said he had everything under control. I need… to trust him; whatever he’s doing with Peter, he’s… he knows what he’s doing. Probably. I just– … [VERY FAST] I need him to be okay. I just do.

(I’m still not sure whether the “I need him to be okay” was a conscious reference to MAG117 from him, or just a coincidence to convey that these two tragic idiots are reaching the same point independently. We have clues that Jon had heard Tim’s testament from that episode, potentially Melanie’s as well since she gave her statement about the Ghost Bullet; but they weren’t dated from the same day, and not on the same tapes if the official description (“A-F”) is any indication, so…)

Anyway. Please, Jon, don’t wish for your feelings to disappear. There is something very delicious and entertaining about Jon complaining that he has FEELINGS, URK, IT SUCKS, but at the same time, This Is That Kind Of Series. Please, enjoy your sad pining and your concern and your worrying, Jon. (;wwwwwwwww; for Jon still trying to put some reason in his own mind; explaining what is the problem, and at the same time still holding to his decision to trust Martin…)

(- There was something very… “SO WHO IS HAVING A CRUSH, NOW, UH.” with that Martin mention, given that Eugene’s statement referred to Jack Barnabas and… back in MAG067, Jon hadn’t been fundamentally kind towards the latter’s story:

(MAG067) ARCHIVIST: Statement of Jack Barnabas, regarding a short-lived courtship with Agnes Montague in the autumn of 2006. […] A rather different perspective on the woman known as Agnes Montague or… Agnes Fielding, depending on who you ask. Although hardly a reliable account, steeped as it is in messy obsessions and confusion.

HEY JON, WHAT’S GOOD, and who is the one pining, now.

(Although of course, more seriously: there is kind of an echo between Jack and Agnes, and Martin and Jon…? Someone Normal harbouring feelings for an avatar who was Chosen and burdened with a specific role in their little society and who had met The Web in their youth, and after a while, the avatar growing fondness in return – though the nature of their feelings is unclear. In Jon’s case, not sure whether his worries and concern for Martin are derailing anything Beholding-related or… just part of the Bigger Plan. Though Jack&Agnes, and Martin&Jon, could also all be… part of The Web’s plans overall. Too many spiders.))

(Following: bits typed down before MAG140 was released:)

- Big question is what happened at the end of the episode exactly?

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: … If I… Knew… what his plan was… If I knew what Peter was doing, if I just– [WHISPERING] … Can I…? [LOW RUMBLING SOUND, STATIC RISES] [CRIES OF PAIN] [VERY SHARP SQUEAL OF DISTORTION STEADILY RISING] [NOISE OF SOMETHING-OR-JON FALLING] [SQUEAL OF DISTORTION DECREASES] [MUMBLING] End… E–end recording…! [CLICK.]

1°) See, Jon: assuming you’re on a first name basis with “Peter” is a bad idea, and karma went right back at you.

2°) Re: the noise of something falling. Was it Jon falling off his chair AGAIN, JON, YOU ALREADY DID THAT IN MAG128. Did Jon manage to get a concussion by trying to Know too hard. Does it count as his Lonely scar. Is Elias laughing hysterically in his cell because Jon is such an Embarrassment.

3°) Okay, so, unlike the other times Jon got to Know about something or purposely used that power… there was, on top of the usual static, Peter’s trademark “squeal of distortion” (I am using the way the official transcript introduced it, in MAG100, and it’s been the same sound surrounding Peter’s appearances since then). So, whatever happened was definitely Lonely-related, but: was it because Jon can’t pierce through the Lonely, in the same way he didn’t manage to peak through The Dark in MAG135? Was it Peter hiding himself a bit deeper in reaction to Jon’s attempt, feeling (or SEEING, if he was… right in the room with Jon) what Jon was trying to do? … Another possibility is that it was that Jon couldn’t access Martin because of MARTIN himself (ie: he’s a bit too much into the Lonely, or worse… is beginning to use Lonely powers), but I’m leaning towards Peter here. With The Dark and now The Lonely, that makes a lot of Power Walls that Jon isn’t yet able to bypass…

4°) Did Jon manage to Know something through the experience, or… not at all? I got the impression that he had just hit the wall of squealing sounds, bounced back, and… didn’t get anything at all.

5°) Obligatory “JON used Beholding powers! JON’s attack missed. JON hurt himself in his confusion. JON fainted!” joke here.

Speculation for MAG140 based on the title (20/05/19):

A PRETTY ONE, and uuuuh, smells of… alchemy? JOHN FLAMSTEED? So either about another way of interpreting the powers before Smirke, in general (Gerry had put them on the same level in MAG111), either, more specifically… about The Dark, and its previous ritual attempt (and then, could also be about Edmond Halley, since Basira had linked the two in MAG108)? Or could be about The Vast? Second meaning… could be about a ~sky~, so Basira explaining her current activities/researches…? Will she finally tell Jon about the fact that The Dark is potentially planning something in Svalbard…?

(17/06/19: AHAHAHA sob.)

[biointernet]

Hourglass 93, 94 couple small wooden

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Text, Time, MHC Extinction Rebellion – Time against Life The End of Time Hourglass and Death on St Thomas’ Church Hourglass – symbol of Death Death does not Exist Hourglass and Skeleton “Hourglass and Cards” Exhibition Father and Mother of Time Time Hub Time Philosophy Time synonyms Time perception and Sense of Time Time Travel + Time Management = Time Travel Management The Hourglass, Hourglass History Hourglass symbolism Hourglass Figure Hourglass Tattoo Symbols of Time Beauty Bio-Net Father Time Department Father Time and Mother Nature Lunar calendar and Moon’s phases Time Management Time Management tools Time Travel Management MHC SM: MHC Flikr, MHC Pinterest, MHC Facebook, MHC Instagram, MHC YouTube, MHC Twitter Extinction Rebellion is a global environmental movement with the stated aim of using nonviolent civil disobedience to compel government action to avoid tipping points in the climate system, biodiversity loss, and the risk of social and ecological collapse. Extinction Rebellion – Time against Life Hourglass 93, 94 Hourglass 93, 94 couple small wooden Read the full article

[aelixandra]

Dreaming On Your Feet

Read on Ao3!

Summary: Aelin Galathynius is one of the newest company members of the Rifthold Ballet Theatre, and she is eager to make all of her dreams a reality. She has the talent, the ambition, the walls no one can get past, and the thick skin that no one can get under. Except for new principal dancer Rowan Whitethorn. He’s arrogant, talented, and infuriating - and they just might have more in common than they think.

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Chapter 6: Fresh Starts

He was back at his apartment in Doranelle.

In his old apartment, lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling.

An untouched newspaper lay on the table next to him. He didn’t need to look at the headline; he had it memorized by now.

BALLERINA KILLED IN SUBWAY ROBBERY GONE WRONG

He knew the story.

A Doranelle ballerina had been waiting for the subway on a crowded Saturday night. A cry rang out; someone was chasing someone else. The first man, a robber in black, pushed his way through the crowd, shoved the ballerina off the platform –

And into the path of an oncoming train.

It still struck him numb. They had been in rehearsal for Giselle just that afternoon.

And now Lyria was just – gone.

He wished he had been there.

He wished he could have gotten the chance to kill that man.

He wished it had been him instead of her.

He wished he had –

*

Rowan jerked awake to his alarm, his breathing heavy. He wiped a sheen of sweat off of his forehead with the back of his hand.

For the past two nights, those images, that nightmare, had returned.

Since his encounter with Aelin in the studio.

Just as the guilt threatened to wash over him again, he yanked himself out of bed and into the shower.

It was Monday morning.

A fresh week, a fresh start.

But Rowan couldn’t shake the feeling that everything was different.

----------

Aelin was the first one in the studio this morning.

She tried not to think of the last time she had been in a studio alone.

She pulled out a barre and set it in its normal location, tossing her bag on the floor next to it. Putting her headphones in her ears, she started up her Lindsey Stirling playlist, laid on the floor, and began stretching gently.

It had been twenty minutes when the door opened.

Aelin couldn’t help it; she bolted upright.

Aedion and Lysandra entered the studio, closely followed by Dorian.

Aelin exhaled sharply and went back to her routine, trying to calm her racing heart. “How were your weekends?” she asked, trying to sound as casual as possible.

Lysandra looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “Aelin, I live with you.”

“The question was meant for all of you,” Aelin clarified, giving Lysandra a look that clearly said, Don’t push me today.

Lysandra gave her the smallest of nods to let her know she understood. But luckily, Aedion jumped in to answer. “Lys and I went bowling on Saturday, and yesterday afternoon I treated myself to a massage at that place around the corner from the apartments.”

Lysandra rolled her eyes, a smile playing at the corner of her lips. “Apparently me with a granite rolling pin isn’t enough.”

Aedion laced his fingers with hers and gently tugged her close to him. “I’d prefer your hands other –”

Dorian put his hands over his ears with a groan. “It’s Monday morning, Aedion, seriously!” Aedion laughed and pressed a kiss to the top of Lysandra’s head before the two of them set down their bags, preparing for class.

Aelin laughed with them, but once again, that stupid pang of sadness and loneliness pressed against her heart. With a last, forced smile at her cousin and friends, she threw herself back into her warmup, rolling onto her side for her next exercise.

And naturally, it was at that very moment that Rowan Whitethorn walked through the door.

Destroying any chance she had at having a good day.

----------

She was the first thing Rowan saw when he walked into the studio.

Which inevitably brought the images of Saturday night straight to the front of his mind. Not really how he wanted to start his dance week, especially after the last two nights.

Her face was unreadable, but he caught the haze of memory that flashed across her turquoise eyes before she turned away from him.

He had no one to tell about Saturday night, and he doubted she had told any of her friends.

Good. I’d prefer it stayed that way.

Pushing an amber-silhouetted profile from his mind, he hastened to his barre spot to begin his own warmup.

It was bad enough that there was partnering again today, so Rowan prayed that this Monday wouldn’t get any worse.

----------

Eudora led the company through the reverence, the last combination of class. Once they had applauded, however, she motioned for them to be quiet for a moment. Aelin shot a glance at Lysandra, who simply shook her head, her brow furrowed.

“I know you’ve all been curious about the season and, of course, casting,” she began, that gleam in her sharp, silver eyes as they surveyed the company. “Before partnering today, maybe during your break right now, you may want to check the notice board in the lounge.” She clapped her hands as she made her way out of the room. “You’re dismissed!”

Aelin’s heart pounded. Come on, she told herself. You’re in the corps de ballet. You’re a swan or a noblewoman or a peasant girl. You’re not that special yet.

“Well, come on!” Aedion called back to her as the group filed out towards the lounge. Without thinking, Aelin had remained rooted to her spot.

And, she noticed, so had Rowan Whitethorn.

Those pine-green eyes merely gazed out the door. But it wasn’t long before she felt them turn to her. She tensed immediately, praying he hadn’t noticed.

“Aren’t you going to look?” he asked quietly.

“In case you’ve forgotten, Whitethorn, I’m in the corps. A first-year company member,” Aelin said irritably, finally turning her eyes to him. “And since I’m tall, I’m going to be in the back of the ensemble of every ballet they’ve decided to put us through this year.” She shrugged. “That’s just how it goes.”

A corner of his mouth tugged upward ever so slightly, but it was gone as soon as it came. “Well, then.” He gestured to the door with one arm. “After you, Princess.”

It should have bothered her. That stupid name should have bothered her.

But it didn’t.

Before she could think about it, she hurried out of the room after the rest of the company.

*

Aelin headed for the chatter she knew was coming from the lounge. When she entered the room, she saw everything from laughter and congratulations to frustration and even indifference.

This was a scene she knew well, she thought as she looked over the group. Some dancers were happy, some were not. But no one would complain or gloat here – that would happen tonight over drinks that had the purpose of either being celebratory or being there to drown sorrows in.

This was the hardest part of being an artist. No matter how hard you worked, how much you sweat and how much your feet bled, your fate was always ultimately in someone else’s hands.

All you could do was work as hard as possible – and then you did a lot of praying.

Aelin didn’t know what to expect from the pieces of paper tacked on the board. Her focus had been on dancing; in fact, she hadn’t worried about impressing anyone since that first day.

Too much had already happened.

When she saw Giselle listed as the first performance, her heart tightened a bit.

It was one of her favorites, being a story about love. It was a tragedy, but what Aelin loved was its underlying message about the endurance of love and forgiveness.

She scanned the lists of peasants and Wilis, expecting to see her name.

But it wasn’t there.

No, her name was at the top.

As Nehemia’s understudy.

For the role of Giselle.

----------

Rowan let Aelin go ahead and see the list first. She didn’t turn to him after looking at it; she instead made her way to Nehemia. The two women exchanged some words before Nehemia pulled Aelin into a hug, a proud smile on her face.

He continued shouldering his way through the crowd of dancers towards the bulletin board.

Even though he was a principal, he was new, and he didn’t expect anything. His eyes still found the top of the list first.

Rowan felt his heart in his throat as his thoughts began to race.

Giselle.

Of all the possible. . .

He hadn’t danced any part of it since that day.

And there was his name, under the leading role of Albrecht, the prince.

It was the last time he had danced with Lyria, the last time he had held her.

Now, here he was in a new city, a new company, with people and dancers who didn’t know him at all, cast in the role of the prince who loses all he loves and receives forgiveness he doesn’t deserve.

Rowan swallowed as he realized that over the next few weeks of rehearsals, all of his ghosts, all of his past would come rising to the surface.

And he was not prepared.

[mariamermaid]

The Heir of Silberstein; luftige Turbulenzen (ch. 3)

“breezy turbulences”

Fred Weasley x fem Reader

Summary: As a new school year approaches in Hogwarts, the students are surprised when Dumbledore introduces a group of German siblings joining the school. The royal family of fortress Silberstein is now sent to Hogwarts to learn the matters of a normal teenager life. …

Words: 3.k

Masterlist

Having siblings, especially brothers wasn´t always easy.

But the true meaning of how different Hendrik´s and August´s thinking, wasn´t fully apprehended by you until the Quidditch game two days later. The impact of the letter hadn´t left your body.

In the two days, you hadn´t talked to either of them. You hadn´t even seen them, they avoided each other as well as you and Ruth. The youngest of the four of you, grasped the situation barely. It didn´t help that she felt even more left out. Hendrik and August were stubborn in their own ways and knowing you couldn´t convince them to talk, you at least decided to show up to the Quidditch game. Ruth sat with you in the Gryffindor tower, together you shared a bowl of salted caramel popcorn, which your little sister happily munched on.

The tower wasn´t as filled as the week before, the game between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, but the true Quidditch fans still showed up. However, it still surprised you when Fred and George joined you.

“Oh Ruth, this is Fred and George Weasley, friends of mine.” You turned to the Twins and gestured towards your sister. “Guys, you know my sister Ruth, right?”

Gentlemen-like in a humorous way, just like their personalities, they shook her small hand. “Pleasure meeting the second princess”, Fred smiled. “Always at your service!”

Ruth blushed and giggled; you could already tell, that she liked them.

“How´s the game going anyways, Y/n?” Fred now asked while George tried to steal popcorn from your sister. You peered over the pitch, furrowing your eyebrows. Last week at the game, it had been warm and sunny, but today? Thick, gray clouds hung over the school and individual, cold droplets of rain started falling. The wind was hollering around the towers and felt like a whip against your skin.

“They play back and forth, but it´s not really coming together.” Fred followed your eyes and shrugged. “They had worse weather conditions before, I´m sure they handle it.”

“No, there is something else going on between them”, you shook your head and Fred, who noticed your wary eyes on your brothers, raised his eyebrow. He could only guess that some kind of argument had involved between August and Hendrik, but he realized, that you didn´t want to talk about it. At least not with Ruth there. A look of worry spread in his face and you pressed your lips to a thin line, not knowing how to answer it.

Soon the rain became thicker and gusting wind pushed the players around. Hendrik, who had apparently caught sight of something, which you only guessed as the golden snitch, August left his position to follow him. Draco, Slytherin´s actual keeper seemed to shout something at him, but you couldn´t hear the words. August continued to ignore him and follow his brother. Shoulder to shoulder they bumped into each other and Ruth hissed in fear they´d crash.

“Solche Idioten!”, you muttered in between breaths. (What idiots!)

The entire audience watched captivated. Whatever was happening, it didn´t have much to do with the actual game.

“Vielleicht solltest du einmal auf mich hören, jedenfalls bevor du deinen Arsch auf den Thron platzierst!“ August huffed and Hendrik´s eye shot angrily at him. (Maybe you should listen at least once to me, before sitting down your ass on the throne!)

“Albrecht wird uns ausstoßen noch bevor Vater es merken wird, siehst du das etwa nicht?“ (Albrecht is going to expel us before father will even realize, don’t you see it?)

He continued while they circled the towers. Hendrik tried to get rid of him, but August was determined.

“Das ist Schwachsinn, Albrecht hat kein Recht auf die Krone und das weiß jeder! Nur weil du ihn nicht leiden kannst, ist er nicht gleich der Bösewicht!“ (That´s nonsense! Albrecht has no right for the crown and everybody knows it! Just because you don´t like him, doesn´t mean he is a villain!)

„Und Vaters Krankheit, die aus dem nichts auftauchte?“ (And father´s illness, which showed up out of nowhere?)

August took a run-up, before crashing into Hendrik again. The oldest lost his balance, not completely, but enough to knock him off his course. The game was put in the rear for them.

“Unterstellst du seinem treuesten Diener ihn zu vergiften?! Das ist verrückt!“ (Do you ascribe his most loyal servant, to poison him? It´s madness!)

„Denk doch nach, es ist die einzige Erklärung! Vaters plötzliche Krankheit, uns wegzuschicken, damit er die Krone an sich krallen kann!“ (Think about it, it´s most logical explanation! Father´s sudden sickness, shipping us away, so he can clutch the crown for himself?)

„Du hast nicht ein Beweis dafür!“ (You have not a single proof for it!)

„Er hat Mutters Ring!“ (He has mother´s ring!)

Quiet, sudden and unexpected. None of you ever talked about it, not that there was much to talk. The two brothers floated in the air, still and starring, as if somebody had pushed a pause bottom.

It had been a night like this, stormy and dark. Rain was falling cold as ice daggers; Ruth was barely a year old. Queen Johanna was on a trip with her Pegasus, but time passed and she didn´t come back in the evening.

Two days passed and the whole kingdom searched for her, all they found were last rags of her dress and a deadbeat Pegasus, that was barely breathing. It laid at the side of the river, where the deadly streams came to an end and the waterfalls left nothing, but a breeze in the air. Severe injuries and a trauma, which caused all happiness to seize within the once relentless creature.

Queen Johanna died in an accident.

She left behind a broken king beneath a heavy crown and four siblings as half-orphans. It felt like an even deeper bond was formed in the family, but in reality, you drove apart.

The bond was nothing, but a façade and the crown was nothing but pure pressure.

“Du Lügner!” (You liar!) Hendrik screamed and he pushed himself forward on his broomstick. He smashed right into August, who was taken by surprise by his sudden rage. August couldn´t grab the broomstick in time, falling off and trying to hold onto Hendrik. But the oldest was blind in rage.

They spun and twisted around, quickly sailing towards the ground.

Ruth, the Weasley twins and you, as well as many other spectators, jumped off their seats. You barely heard the yell that escaped Ruth´s lips, you watched in horror as the two tumbled into the depths. Shock captivated you, leaving your body numb and unable to fulfill any commando from your brain. All you did was stand there and watch.

You were sure, that you heard the collision with the ground, even though you were hundredths of feet away and flinched at the hard sound. A gasp for air left your mouth and your lunges inflated.

The prior shock rolled of your body and finally, your feet reacted. As fast as possible, you´re legs almost felt like leaving the ground, you sprinted towards the two boys. None of them moved a muscle. Madame Hooch was already at their side, inspecting the incident and several players from both teams joined her. Ruth, who wasn´t half as fast as you, approached with the twins dogging her. She immediately started crying, but Madame Hooch was quick to make her statement; a few broken bones and a heavy concussion, that knocked them out.

They would heal.

But that was none of your concern. Whatever had happened between them, it was important enough to make Hendrik snap. It was important enough, to make them go against the Quidditch game, not to mention in front of the entire school. It was important enough, to fall into a potential death just to prove a point.

It constituted a supreme importance.

And the only two people, who knew what it was, laid unconsciously in the dirty grass.  

Ruth, who was kneeling besides her two brothers, tears still in their eyes, didn´t noticed how you stepped away from the scene. George had taken your place at her side, putting an arm carefully around her. But Fred realized you leaving and started following you. To say you were angry, was an understatement.

“Y/N, what happened there?” He asked, while trying to catch up with you. You were incredible fast to his surprise and even angrier. Something was seething inside you.

“I don´t know exactly!”

He grabbed your wrist to stop you from further escaping. People often were afraid of touching you, fearing it would end in a punishment, but Fred didn´t care. Or at least he didn´t have the time to give it much thought.

“But you do know something?”

He paused, eyeing you; the wind had messed up your neat hair and your face was convulsed with anger. You didn´t look like the princess he had first seen, you looked like the storm brewing in the skies, waiting to collapse down to earth.

“You all do, you´re hiding it.”

You waited seconds and even minutes, avoiding his glance and pondering, how much you should tell.

“Our father, the king, he´s ill. Very ill.”

Fred raised his eyebrow, not comprehending how bad the situation actually was.

“We don´t how long he will survive anymore.”

 And as simple as that, you blurted everything out. From your father´s sudden sickness and the idea to form a new school. How you felt this apprehension towards Albrecht and how Hendrik prepared for his new title.

Fred Weasley stayed quiet and for the first time, he suddenly looked smaller next to you. He just began realizing, or at least grasping, of how much weight was on your shoulders.

When you came to an end, he was left speechless and not knowing what else to do, he pulled you into a tight hug. Pressing your head against his chest and he felt your constant shivering.

“I don´t know what to do, Freddy.”

You admitted quietly, barely a whisper. His hand came up to the back of your head, softly stroking down to your back. “I don´t like saying it, but you might be right.”

You sniffled and lurked up to him, he replied with an apologetic smile. “Well after your bad feeling towards this Albrecht guy-.“ The German name sounded only poorly pronounced. “And the fight between Hendrik and August, something is most definitely wrong.”

A soft chuckled escaped your lips, even in this seemingly hopeless situation, he made you laugh.

“So, what do you recon I shall do?”

Carefully, just now realizing, how close he had come, hell Fred Weasley was touching a real-life princess! His hands gently stroke your cheek to finally cup your face.

“You won´t be doing anything, at least not alone!”

 “So, tell me again, what exactly are we doing?” George asked nervously, while walking up and down in front of the infirmary. Obviously, Fred and you told him.

“We need to know what August said”, you repeated calmy. The second twin, who had just recently found out about the heap of secrets and potential threats, was clearly caught off guard.

“Why do you think it was August, who drew the final straw?”

“I know Hendrik and what he thinks, if he knew anything of great importance, he would´ve told me.” George nodded understanding; he was coming to understand the plan.

“But if there is an actual threat, we just do what?” He then asked tensed, his brother shrugged nonchalantly. “We go to Germany!”

You threw a warning glance at Fred, making him go quiet at the end of the sentence. This had to be handled with care.

“Breaking the school rules?!” George exclaimed even louder and you rolled your eyes.

“What, are you afraid Weasley? After playing pranks and breaking rules since your birth?” Your daring and ironic comment shut up him up. You knew it was a lot to comprehend within only minutes. It had been a few hours since the game, Fred and you had made up the plan in the mean-time.

“What are you doing here?” Hermione and Harry suddenly approached and even though her questions wasn´t directed on the tense atmosphere, she very well took notice of it.

“We´re waiting for my brothers to wake up”, you answered frantic. Harry furrowed his eyebrows; he knew the anticipating thrill of an upcoming adventure.

“Don´t worry, Y/N, I´m sure they´ll be fine. Boys are naturally stupid.”

Harry threw his head into his friends’ directions, making him lose focus on your intentions.

“Hey!”

Hermione rolled her eyes and pushed the book in her hands into Harry´s arms. “Go on and at least make yourself useful.”

She gave you an excusing smile, before turning to leave towards the library. Just before they turned the next corner, you suddenly sprinted towards her again. “Hermione!”

“Fred and George wanted to show me a few places this weekend, so don´t worry, if I´ll be late or anything”, you tried to explain as casual sounding as possible. Her brown eyes wandered back and forth between you and the twins, until she gave up sighing.

“Don´t do anything stupid or get caught.”

As you stepped back to the twins, Madame Pomfrey quitted from the infirmary.

“Oh Miss Silberstein, your brother, August is just awakening!”

Fred eyed you warry from the side. “Do you want us to come with you?”, he asked whispering, but you shook your head. “No, this is family business. Anyways I´m sure they would get angry, if they found out I told you. We don´t have to aggravate something that´s bad enough on it´s own.”

You entered the large room with beds placed into rows. August was laid in the back, while you caught a glance of Hendrik sleeping behind a curtain in the front. The distance between the two beds was awfully noticeable.

August was pale and seemed confused, but as he sat up, he noticed you approaching. His eyes winced, forming even smaller slits and his lips became a thin line.

“Good you´re up, how are you feeling?” The politeness in your voice never felt so fake. But as his sister it was your job to ask about his condition. August saw right through you, not that you gave much of a try to hide it, but he decided to play along. Years of formal etiquette and behavior had shaped you into a concept for society. Perfect and pleasing to the observer.

“Head still hurts as well as my arm, but I´ve had worse.”

Silence settled, while you nodded. Before you could make another polite comment, he spoke up again. “Ask. Ask me. It´s why you´re here.”

It hurt you, that he assumed, that you only came for the sake of information. It made it worse that he was right.

“What did you tell him? What do you know?”

August sighed; the whole scene was as uncomfortable to him as it was to you. But he was aware, that you would believe him. He didn´t show it, but in this very moment, he couldn´t be more grateful. Yes, he showed his cold not-caring exterior, but he relied deeply on you.

“Albrecht, the night before we left, I saw him talking to one of the ostlers. He had mother´s ring.”

Unwanted, a gasp left your lips and you gripped onto the side of the bed. Whatever you had expected, you clearly hadn´t braced yourself well enough.

“August, are you sure, it couldn´t…” He nodded steady, ignoring your stutter.

“I didn´t believe my own eyes at the time.”

“She was wearing the ring when it happened, the ring disappeared with her…”

Your breathing was irregular and the thoughts inside your head were racing at the speed of lightning. If Albrecht had the ring, your mother wore when she had the accident, then he must´ve been with her. He lied, saying he was filling papers the entire day and no one even scrutinized it.

If he was with her, he knew what happened. Maybe he was the reason it happened…

 Neither August nor you noticed how Hendrik´s eyes opened and inaudible, he turned his side into your direction. Behind the curtain, you didn´t see him, how he starred at the blank fabric. How his jaw tensed, when he remembered your father with Albrecht at his side, entering the family´s private wing. Tears formed in his eyes just like then, he knew something was wrong by their faces. That day, the world collapsed right beneath his feet and ever since then, he tried his best to put it back together. He wanted it to be over, but everything came rushing back. It felt like the day where your mother died, haunted him and your family. He didn´t wanted to believe what his brother said, but he knew what it meant.

“I didn´t tell you this before, let´s not be stupid”, August finally spoke up. He could only imagine what chaos was still pelting inside your head. The sentence was surprisingly mature for August and his usual temper. “It could be a weird coincidence.”

August was right, it could be. But there was something inside you that told you, it wasn´t.

August was right, you shouldn´t be stupid. But you had a promise to keep your family safe.

So, you nodded slowly.

“We´ll wait, till Hendrik awakes and I send an owl home, making sure he won´t get it. Then we can discuss it. We have to be careful.” You had to play perfectly to make him believe. Each movement you made, each breath you took, it had to look innocently. It had to look real.

“You should rest and try not to kill Hendrik, or get killed, when he awakes.”

August chuckled and you offered a small grin. “I´ll take care of it.”

You stepped away from his bed, giving him a nod, then leaving the room. A small glance towards Hendrik; eyes closed and steady breathing. When he was to wake up, you´d be gone.

Miles away, hopefully as close to Silberstein as you possibly could, before someone would get wind of it.

“So, how does it look?”

“I hope you´re as good in sneaking away, as you are at playing pranks.”

Fred and George exchanged looks.

“We´re going to Silberstein.”

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tags: @ britishspidey @ perfectlysane24  @ acoolnight