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skarsgard-daydreams · 3 years

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Son of Perdition

Description: Henry insists that he is an ordinary man, at least until his mind starts to unravel.

Warnings: angst, false imprisonment, religious abuse, physical and psychological torture, mild blood, threats of gun violence, mild physical violence, kidnapping, brainwashing, smoking

Notes: This story assumes that The Kid is telling the truth about his past in a parallel universe and deals with his imprisonment. It’s dark, and it has a lot of religious themes. Please mind the warnings.

Everything had unraveled so fast. He had tried to seize the threads of his life as it came apart, but they had cracked out of his grasp like a whip and stung him in the process. When the man asked him who he was, a name floated to the surface of his mind. It was limp and lifeless—a corpse bobbing face down in the water after a shipwreck. He slouched against the corner of the cage and watched the man ash a cigarette into an empty coffee tin. The smoke danced in the light of the halogen lamp illuminating the curved walls of the cistern that had been converted into a prison. The man repeated the question.

“Who are you?”

“H-Henry,” the prisoner answered. His throat felt like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together when he swallowed. He lowered his gaze to the metal tray at the man’s feet. The light glinted off the surface of a tin cup, and Henry swore he could smell the water in the air, something crisp and sweet mixed in with the acrid scent wafting off the cigarette. It was close enough he thought he could reach it if he flattened himself to the floor and stretched out his arm, but his vision blurred every time he moved and his limbs felt like they had turned to stone.

The man heaved a sigh and dropped his cigarette butt into the glass of water. “A false witness will not go unpunished,” he said, rising to his feet. He shifted the tray further from the cage with the toe of his boot. “And he who breathes out lies will not escape.”

Henry rested his forehead against the bars and winced as the metal tray scraped across the floor. “Proverbs,” he mumbled. “Chapter nineteen.” The dull recitation spilled from his lips without conscious thought. He let his eyelids slide shut as his jailor switched off the light and climbed up the ladder. The hatch overhead closed and the locking mechanism groaned and creaked, plunging the room back into pitch darkness.

In the long stretches of time when he was alone, Henry tried to put his memories in order. It seemed essential for him to maintain a timeline, though he could no longer explain why. He started with his name, which would remind him of his father, and from there a universe of memories would expand in his mind while a shrill silence filled his ears, occasionally punctuated by water dripping somewhere out of reach.

He remembered his father’s house—the lingering scent of decay as he treaded the floorboards and flicked on a light. He remembered a thrill fluttering in his stomach when his wife said she was late. He remembered how soft her hair always felt, how her skin smelled like apricots and cream. He remembered wondering if their child would be a girl or a boy. He hoped it was a boy. And then he remembered a boy in a cage, and his stomach turning sour when he heard his father’s voice crackle to life again on the cassette player, reciting the revelations of a madman.

The steady drip of water eroded his stream of thought and Henry found himself laying flat on the floor as the room seemed to spin in the darkness. Something told him this was a symptom, that he needed to find a diagnosis and a treatment. He was supposed to be good at that. He reached for his left hand and searched for his radial pulse with his right, but he could barely feel it under his skin. Every time he tried to count the beats, the sound of dripping water crashed again and made him flinch. He realized after several attempts that he would need a watch to take an accurate measurement, anyway. He couldn’t remember what had happened to it.

Time was a problem. He had tried to measure its passage from the cage, scraping tally marks into the floor with his fingernails each time the man brought him food. If he could keep track of things, maybe he could stay rational. If he could stay rational, maybe he could find a way back. Henry reasoned that two tally marks were equal to one day, except for Sundays, when the man didn’t come at all. On those days, he fasted from food, water, and any belief that he might live to see sunlight again, until he heard the scrape of metal above him and thanked fucking Christ that his jailor had returned. He guessed he had made it two and a half weeks before the man started turning off the lights when he left, leaving Henry in the dark for hours on end.

It was the kind of darkness that existed at the center of a black hole, something that consumed the whole spectrum of color and left him in a vacuum. Soon his mind became unmoored. He groped for the edges of the cage, feeling the cold metal under his hands to remind himself that there was matter around him—that he existed somewhere in this iteration of time and space. He touched his face and his body to make sure that he was still solid. He couldn’t hold onto both thoughts at the same time. When he grasped the metal walls that surrounded him, he felt himself blinking out of existence. By the time the man returned the next day, he had forgotten there ever was a tally.

Henry took a few shallow breaths and tried to ignore the dripping sound nearby. It felt like the water was hammering into his brain each time it fell. The damp, musty aroma in the air was green in color, he thought, but even as the idea formed in his head, he knew it made no sense. He had to find some way to stop his mind from slipping—to keep track of things. He had always been notoriously bad at that. His wife set up apps and reminders on his phone all the time. Didn’t she install an app that counted cycles and days? He slipped his hand into his pocket and dug around for his cell phone, but it wasn’t there, and soon he wasn’t there, falling through a rush of sound and color, into another place and time.

The phone had stopped working, anyway. He was wandering in the woods with blood still on his hands, his dark trousers dragging in the deep snow. He accidentally smeared blood on the touchscreen when he tried to get the device to turn back on, but it didn’t respond. It had been rendered useless as a brick when he’d slipped through to this other place—this other Castle Rock, where it was still 1991 and everything seemed tilted and off balance, like he might lose his footing and start floating in the air. He trudged through the snow, doubling back over his own tracks again and again as he tried to find a way to trigger the strange portal he had come through before.

It was in those woods that he first met the man. Henry was straining to hear the sound his father always spoke of, but he heard the click of a gun at his back instead. Cold fear dropped all the way down to his balls as he went into cardiac arrhythmia. The only reason he imagined someone would hold him at gunpoint was that they had noticed the well-dressed stranger wandering in and out of town and decided to rob him.

“Don’t shoot,” he said, holding his hands up. “Y-you can have my wallet, okay? And my watch.”

“Get on your knees,” the man said.

Adrenaline raced through his veins as his sympathetic nervous system kicked in to a heightened state, but Henry felt frozen. He would be dead before he could run, and he didn’t know how to fight a man with a gun. Hell, he barely knew how to throw a punch. As he lowered himself to his knees, he felt the gun travel up his spine and press against his scalp over the parietal bone. He thought of how his father had claimed to have heard the voice of God in the barrel of a gun, but he heard nothing now except his own ragged breathing and the cawing of crows overhead.

“Please, just take my money,” Henry begged. “My wife might be pregnant,” he added quickly. “She needs me.”

“I don’t want your money,” the man said.

He heard rustling and then the man gripped one of his wrists and twisted his arm behind him. Cold metal circled his wrist. Henry jerked his other arm away from the man and felt the butt of the gun crack against his skull. He fell face down in the white powder and heard a ringing in his ears as the man caught his other wrist and cuffed it behind his back. His heart began to beat even faster, thrumming wildly.

“What the fuck do you want?” he sputtered. A dark shadow bloomed at the edges of his vision as the man grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled his head back to force a piece of cloth between his teeth. The man said nothing, tying the cloth behind his head and gagging him tightly. He grabbed the collar of Henry’s coat and hauled him to his feet. Henry stood four inches taller, but the man was stocky, with a gruff demeanor that suggested he was accustomed to pushing people around. He kept a firm grip on Henry’s arm, propelling him through the snow.

Everything that followed seemed to blur together into one white hot streak of panic. Stumbling through the woods became nosing carpet fibers as he was shoved into a trunk, and then he was kicking and screaming until he heard a siren and then felt the car begin to slow. Relief flooded Henry’s system. Thank God, he thought. He was saved. He shouted as loud as he could and thumped against the roof of the trunk until someone popped it open. Both men peered down at him, and he grew quiet.

As the man talked to the cop, a cold feeling settled in Henry’s stomach. The man spoke of bloodthirsty and evil men, of the son of destruction, of Satan disguising himself as an angel of light. He said he acted in the service of God, that he intended to cast the Devil into a bottomless pit as it is written in Revelation. The cop shined a flashlight in Henry’s eyes and leaned in close to his face, staring at him. He stared back, his words muffled by the gag as he tried to plead for help.

“I’ve never seen a pair of eyes like that,” the cop said. He clicked the flashlight off and slammed the trunk shut. The rest of their conversation was casual, as if there hadn’t been anyone stuffed in the trunk of the car after all, and soon the car was moving again.

The segment of time between the car and the cistern blistered like film melting in a projector. Henry had a vague sense of being in a prison when the man freed him from the handcuffs and told him to climb down the ladder. When he didn’t move except to rub the red marks on his wrists, the pistol came out again. He didn’t know why he obeyed; the gunshot would have been the better alternative. But fear streaked like lightning in his system, and Henry climbed down into the dimly lit reservoir. He followed the man’s instructions, shrugging off his coat and unwinding the scarf from his neck. He kicked off his shoes and handed over his belt, then emptied his pockets of his phone, wallet, and keys. The man gestured for him to step into the sturdy cage against the wall. Henry swallowed.

“I’m not the Devil,” he said.

“You will not deceive me.” The man cocked the gun and leveled it at Henry, staring him down until he backed slowly into the cage. His bare foot collided with the back wall. He wanted to argue that the man was being deceived—that whatever he thought he heard wasn’t the voice of God. It was the voice of his own delusions driving him to do things that were morally reprehensible to any sane person regardless of their creed. But he wasn’t dealing with a sane person. He was dealing with his father.

The cage door creaked as the man closed it and fitted a heavy padlock into the latch. When he was done, he got down on his knees in front of a wooden stool and prayed that God would make him righteous and steadfast as he executed His instructions. Henry wrapped his hands around the bars and tested the strength of the cage, hoping that a man as crazy at this one might have made a mistake. It had no give whatsoever. The man was too caught up in his prayer to hear the metal rattling.

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places,” the man said, quoting the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Henry knew the verse well. He had often been expected to recite long passages of scripture from memory when he was a child, and even though he hadn’t set foot in a church in years, the words were still carved indelibly into his memory.

After he finished his prayer, the man sat down on the stool and considered his handiwork as he lit a cigarette and took a pensive drag. He examined Henry’s cell phone with a furrowed brow, then flipped open the wallet and took out his ID, and his business card, which listed him as Associate Professor of Neurology at Johns Hopkins University. The man turned each one over in his hands as he studied them. When he took out the photo of his wife, Henry’s grip on the bars tightened and his heart leapt to his throat.

“Please,” he said, rattling the door to the cage to get the man’s attention. “Let me keep that.”

The man’s gaze flickered back toward Henry. He sniffed the air and took a zippo lighter out of his pocket, lighting the corner of the photo on fire and dropping it into a coffee can on the floor once the flame approached his hand. Henry sank to his knees and watched the only memento he had of his wife in this fucked-up version of reality smolder and disintegrate. His hands were shaking as he pressed his palms against the floor.

“He told me you would use pity as a weapon,” the man said, lighting another cigarette and watching him coolly.

A rush of noise filled Henry’s ears and suddenly he was on his back again in the dark, trying to fill his lungs with short, shallow breaths that never seemed to satisfy him. Another symptom, possibly a dangerous one. He wondered how long it had been since he had a drink of water. Time had become nonlinear. He couldn’t keep track of it anymore. The man would visit, tempting him with food and drink like Satan in the garden of Gethsemane, and ask him who he was. Henry never gave the right answer. If he mumbled “Lucifer” or “The Antichrist,” the man would hear the lack of conviction in Henry’s voice and call him a liar. If he said his own name, he was also a liar. The man seemed determined to turn Henry into a man of honest faith in his twisted beliefs through sheer deprivation or kill him in the process. The latter felt like a very real possibility.

The hatch groaned and a moment later, it was outlined in a dim halo of light cast by the lantern the man carried. Shapes appeared in Henry’s vision, blurring so much they were almost formless as his eyes adjusted. He rolled onto his side and heard his joints cracking as he pushed himself into a sitting position and slumped against the wall of the cage, panting from the effort. The man climbed down into the cistern and turned on the halogen light, blinding Henry with its brightness. He squeezed his eyes shut and saw a riot of color behind his eyelids while he listened to the stool scrape across the floor and the Bible flop open in the man’s hand.

“And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain,” the man read aloud. Without his sight, the voice sounded like his father to Henry. He imagined he was a boy sitting in one of the hard wooden pews, listening to him preach, restless and uncomfortable in his Sunday best. “He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years,” the man continued. “He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended.”

“Revelation,” Henry mumbled. “Chapter twenty.”

“Who are you?” the man asked.

Henry licked his chapped lips and searched his mind for the right answer. “The Son of Perdition,” he said, and it felt true for once. If his own father had thought an innocent child was the Devil and locked him in a cage for twenty-seven years, maybe he was the son of hell.

His vision came into focus. He rested his forehead against the bars and stared at the man with resignation, willing to do or say anything his righteous zeal demanded if it meant he could have something to drink. The man stared back for what felt like years. He leaned down and picked up the metal cup, dumping water and ashes onto the floor. Then he reached into his bag and took out a thermos, unscrewing the lid.

The scent of the water was cold and sweet and ice blue as the man poured it into the cup. Henry grasped the bars of the cage and stared at the cup of water like he was watching a man perform a magic trick and trying to figure out how it worked. The man set the cup down and slid the tray across the floor. As it inched toward him, Henry fought the urge to reach out and grab it. He knew this man was another version of his father, just as there was another version of himself in this reality. If Henry wanted to survive, he would have to demonstrate piety and respect. He looked at the man when the tray reached the edge of the cage, and waited for him to say grace.

The man let him have water again, but he still shuttered Henry in the dark in between every other visit, perhaps to simulate the cycle of day and night in this place where the sun couldn’t reach. On Sundays, the lights never came on. Those were the worst days. By the time the man returned, Henry would be flat on the ground, his fingers laced through to bars to keep himself from spinning free of the earth's gravity well and hurtling through outer space.

He thought he could feel the dark energy of the universe calling to him from out there, a low frequency that sometimes transformed into a growl. The metal bars that surrounded him hummed with its vibrations from time to time. Everything did. He felt the man's energy radiating from him like a tremor. It was a sickly green color, with flashes of red that flared around him when he was feeling particularly cruel, or flecks of blue that mixed with the green when he was inclined to think of Henry as his son.

Henry learned to say nothing, or risk his words being interpreted as the whispered lies of the Deceiver. He leaned against the bars and became the man's confessor, listening to him read scripture, or talk about the challenges of running a prison, or the problems in his marriage. Henry parted his lips, trying to arrange the words into the right configuration one day when the man mentioned being married.

"I have a wife," he whispered slowly, as if surprised by his own revelation.

After that, he didn't taste food again for days. When Sunday came, it seemed to stretch on and on, until he felt the measure of eternity in his stomach. He tried to place events on a timeline in his mind, but he never could get further than his name before the dripping of water drilled into his ear and erased the markers he tried to use to find his way home. Still, he was certain he had a wife. He could feel her in his matter, as though particles of her clung to him and reverberated on a quantum level. But he couldn't remember the color of her eyes or the shape of her face anymore.

He was never more pliable than after the fasts imposed on him by his jailor. He would listen to the man's teachings as though he was his sole disciple and the man offered the Bread of Life. When the man asked him who he was, Henry looked at him with bloodshot eyes.

"Tell me," he whispered.

The man told him the story of his life in this world. He told him of every calamity that had ever happened in Castle Rock—how each of them could be traced through invisible spiritual markers back to Henry, how he left an imprint wherever he went in time and space, some kind of radiation or heat signature that made fruit rot on the vine. He told him he still caught Henry leaving his mark on the world, and that he knew he sometimes slipped through the bars of his prison and wandered through time, leaving chaos and pain wherever he went. Henry wanted to know more about how he could slip out of his prison and wander freely, but he remained silent.

"That is why you must be punished," the man said. Henry heard his father speaking. He remembered the verse about sparing the rod, and nodded in agreement. His father’s reasoning was sound.

"I must be punished," he repeated.

Henry sometimes imagined he was one of the anchorites who had allowed themselves to be bricked into the walls of churches during the Middle Ages, leaving only a small hole where they could pass food and excrement back and forth and tell pilgrims the messages they received from God. But he never received any divine revelations, or if he did, they weren't in a language he understood. In the darkness he could hear a sound like a raging fire at the center of the universe, something primal that crackled with life. It was always expanding, and he knew that someday it would consume them all.

There was no way of knowing how much time had passed between his incarceration and the day that the jailor reached inside the cage, tipping Henry’s chin up to better see his face. Henry remained still, staring the man as he studied him and wondering what he saw. His touch was hard and comforting at the same time. It reminded Henry that he was real.

"You haven't aged a day," the man remarked with wonder. He released Henry's face and sat down on the stool, lighting a cigarette. The skin on the man’s face seemed to sag and his hair had a few streaks of grey. Henry wanted to ask how long it had been, but the words stuck in his throat. He couldn’t remember if the man had always looked like this or not. As the man took a drag, something new emanated from him. There had often been moments when Henry tasted the man’s doubt while they sat together in his cell. He tasted it in the air now—something bitter and stale and sour, like a conviction that had gone bad.

“Someday,” the man said to him. “I will have to end this.”

Henry curled his fingers around the bars and peered out at the man. He remembered the verse that came after the one the man liked to cite so often. “When the thousand years are ended,” he said, his voice weak from lack of use. “Satan will be released from his prison.”

The man stared at him in surprise, letting the ash of his cigarette grow long. “Revelation,” he said. “Chapter twenty.”

Henry inclined his head in a slight nod as he listened to the sound of the universe howling in the distance. He spoke in a halting voice, but one which had conviction.

“I know how it will end.”

@scxrsgxrd @skrsgardspam @loomiz @sunshineandskarsgards

(Also thank you @girlinthecorner for taking an early peek at this for me. I appreciate it.)

#Castle Rock #Henry Deaver #The Kid #Castle Rock fanfiction #Henry Deaver fanfiction #The Kid fanfiction #also #just want to say #this is not what I think all religion is like #this is a fucked up character #citing religious justifications #where there shouldn't be any #gotta make sure that's clear #this is my 666th post #lmao

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teamhook · 3 years

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Hello! Finally and update!! I want to thank everyone for their patience, the @captainswanmoviemarathon, the Discord shipmates, and my lovely Beta @ultraluckycatnd and my talented artist @allons-y-to-hogwarts-713

|AO3|

|FFN|

Emma had been so disappointed after her idea was shot down. It had been a long day at work, so she only stops to get a quick snack at a 24-hour diner before heading to get some sleep. She opens the door to the hotel room she has rented for the week only to find it tossed. Her heart sinks as she runs to check for the money she had been saving to rent an apartment. The money was gone, all of it. They didn’t leave a single dollar behind. Her eyes water as she wonders what the hell she is going to do now?

Killian finally arrives home after a small detour. He is parking his motorcycle when he notices a body huddled on his steps. He removes his helmet and walks slowly to his door. The hoodie falls from the head revealing golden hair. Emma.

“Swan, is everything okay?” Killian asks as he helps her to her feet and opens the door to the apartment.

Emma sniffles as she follows close behind. She still doesn’t know why she came here. Lies. He is her closest friend, her only friend.

“Sit down, make yourself comfortable. How about a drink?” Killian asks as he pours a drink for himself and one for her.

“Yeah, I really need one.” Emma takes the offered drink and bottoms it.

Killian asks, “Do you need anything else? Swan, how can I help?”

Emma’s tears run down her face.

Bloody hell, he made her cry. “I’m sorry, lass, can you tell me what happened?”

“Someone went into my room and robbed me. I talked to the manager but he said they weren’t responsible. That I should have taken the money with me or hid it better,” Emma says. She can’t seem to stop crying.

“It’s going to be fine,” Kilian says and adds rapidly, “you can stay here.” The words are out of his mouth before he can think about it. Milah is going to kill him if she ever comes home.

“Really?” Her hopeful green eyes devoid of tears confirm this is a really good idea. “Aye, you can stay here.”

“I promise it won’t be for long, one night tops. I just need to sleep on it and figure some things out,” she smiles.

After a few drinks and a few arguments on who should take the bed, Emma is tucked in, stretched out on the daybed he has as a couch. He plays a song on the piano as she relaxes for the night.

She smiles, the music very soothing. “Killian, that is beautiful. Who wrote it?”

He smiles back. “I did.”

“That is really, really good. Do you have more?” she asks as she sits up.

“Aye, but they’re not ready to be heard,” he says as he finishes the song.

“Killian, why did you leave Boston?”

“Emma, why did you leave Maine?”

She sighs. “Well, because it didn’t feel like home anymore, and I wanted to follow my dreams.”

He smiled. “Exactly.”

“Killian, I’m really happy I don’t have to be alone tonight,” Emma said as she yawned.

“Get some sleep, love,” Killian says as he leaves the piano and closes the door to his room.

The next day, the sound of rain hitting the window wakes him up. The smell of bacon mixed with the scent of fresh-brewed coffee hits him and for a second, he is startled because he is the one that normally makes breakfast; Milah didn’t like to cook. He gets up and makes sure he is presentable.

The vision that greets him is perfect. He shakes his head as he approaches his guest. He scratches behind his ear when he notices her clothes, or lack of. She is lost in what she is doing to notice him ogling her as she simply wears a long, sleeveless shirt that barely covers her arse, her long legs on display. He was mesmerized for a minute, then clears his throat to get her attention. “Good morning, love.”

“Oh, good morning. I hope you don’t mind. It’s the least I can do,” she says, smiling.

Killian returns her smile. “It smells delicious.”

“How do you like your coffee?” she asks as she pours the liquid.

“Black, like my soul,” he answers as he takes a seat.

They start eating their food while enjoying some small talk.

Emma’s eyes drift around the room and land on one of the pictured frames. “She’s very pretty, your sister?”

Killian looks up from his food. He doesn’t need to figure out which photo she’s talking about. “Ah, that would be Milah, my fiance.”

“Wait a minute, you’re straight?” Emma stands.

“What, you thought I was gay?” Killian asks.

“Yeah, I mean you wear more eyeliner than I do. You own a daybed. What kind of guy owns one?” Emma states.

“In my defense, the eyeliner is a very straight look. Cora loves it and it works at the club,” he shrugs. “The daybed was Milah’s idea.”

“I should really put some pants on.” Emma goes to her bag to look for some jeans to put on.

“That’s probably a good idea.” He pouts as he watches her pulling on her pants.

“So where is she, your fiance?” Emma wonders.

“She’s in New York doing a play,” Killian says as he clears off the table.

“Well, since you’re not only straight but engaged, it is really weird I came to you. I should leave. I’m sorry I came here,” Emma says.

“Swan, you don’t have to go.”

“Killian, you don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

“Emma, it’s pouring outside.” He blocks the front door to prevent her from leaving.

“It’s okay, I got a plan. Could you please get the door for me?” Emma says, determinedly.

He hesitantly opens the door.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, love.”

“See you at the club.”

She steps outside, the rain coming down hard and the thundering is loud. She grabs a newspaper from the wooden chair next to the door, covers her head, and walks down the steps.

Killian looks out of his window, sighing. Bloody hell. Emma looks like a wet cat doing a poor job at staying dry. He runs out and before Emma can object, he picks her up bridal style and turns back to his place. They’re both drenched once they’re back inside.

Emma screams as soon as he puts her down. “What the hell are you doing?”

“You have nowhere to go, Swan. I have an empty couch.”

“It's just water. A little water never hurt anyone.”

“Swan, it’s a lot more than a little water, it’s pouring.”

“Killian, you’ve done enough.”

“I don’t care what you bloody say. You’re going to stay here for a few more days.” Knowing that she isn’t going to win this argument, Emma nods her agreement.

The phone rings and he smiles as he answers., “Hello, Milah. That sounds great.” He walks to his room and closes the door.

Days later at the club, the restroom is quiet until the sound of someone throwing up shatters the illusion. Cora looks underneath the stall door to see who has dared break her out of her spell. One look of the glass heels tells her she knows who it is. “Ashley, darling are you alright?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” she sniffles as she comes out of the stall.

Cora studies the girl in front of her and sighs. “Tell me you don’t have the flu.”

Ashley starts sobbing. “No, I’m pregnant.”

“Have you told Sean?”

“I haven’t, I’ve been so scared. What if he doesn’t want it? What am I going to do?” Ashley starts rambling.

“We will figure it out, but you have to tell him,” Cora says, trying to comfort the poor girl.

“Okay.” Ashley gives her boss a weak smile.

Emma continues to practice the dance routines every free moment she has because she knows a chance will come up. Her parents had always told her to have hope; that’s the only reason she is following her dream. For now, she will be the best waitress the club has ever seen.

Killian had proven to be such a good friend because he was letting her stay with him for a couple of weeks. The only problem with that is that she is enjoying his company too much. He is sweet and funny. Some days, she had to remind herself that he was taken because she was starting to yearn for something that couldn’t be.

Days later after Ashley's revelation, Cora decides to be prepared. Henry and Cora hold tryouts for a new dancer.

Emma walks in to find the stage full of potential candidates. Music is heard throughout the club; high kicks flying, hips gyrating to the music, hair flowing with each head twirl, all followed with a spiral roll into a final fan kick.

After the girls are dismissed, Cora turns to Henry with a raised eyebrow. “I didn’t love any of them. Where did all the best dancers go?” she sighs.

Henry is flipping through the portfolios for the club’s best match. He turns his attention to Cora and smiles. “They’re all Dancing with the Stars.”

The blaring of sexy music disrupts their conversation. They turn to the stage to find Emma moving her hips sensually to the music, her head flipping right and left. She is moving as if her life depends on it. Sadly she is putting her all into an unappreciated display until her intended audience dismisses her with barely a glance in her direction, followed by a disgusted flick of her wrist, halting her dance before it really even gets started.

Cora cuts the music off and starts to walk away.

“Wait a minute! I can do this, just tell me what you want!” Emma’s panicked scream halts Cora’s movement.

“It’s really sweet that you think you can. I know I don’t want someone that thinks auditioning for me is the same as a common strip club. All my dancers are professionals. What was that?” Cora said as she placed her hands on her hips.

“I know all the dance routines. I have practiced them in my spare time.”

“You have to make me believe that you belong on that stage and that no one will take it from you.”

“Alright, which number do you want to see?”

Cora stares at Emma. “You know all the numbers? Okay. Merlin, play Wagon Wheel Watusi.”

Zee, Ashley, and Tiana arrive just in time to see the audition.

The music starts and Emma moves as if her life depends on it. She twirls, shimmies her breasts, and when the music ends she stands breathless waiting for the verdict.

Cora and Henry are talking in whispers.

“You were off the last half,” Cora finally says.

“I can do better. I’ll practice every single free moment I have. I really want this. Please, I know I can do this. Didn’t anyone ever give you a chance?”

“Fine! You’ve got the job.”

Emma jumps up and down in excitement while several things happen at once.

Cora and Henry share a look.

Ashley claps excitedly.

Zee turns to Ashley. “You know she’s replacing you, right?”

Henry walks up to Emma. “Meet me in the dressing room in five minutes.”

The girls leave for lunch.

Before she can head to the dressing room, loud claps catch Emma’s attention.

Killian meets her eye and smiles. “Congratulations, love.”

“With my raise, I will be off of your couch before you know it!” She squeals in excitement as she rushes to the dressing room.

She misses the disappointment on his face.

Tag List:

@rumdrum91 @itsfabianadocarmo @xsajx @hookedonapirate @kmomof4 @searchingwardrobes @seriouslyhooked @profdanglaisstuff @let-it-raines @revanmeetra87 @snowbellewells @hollyethecurious@kymbersmith-90 @branlovestowrite @thejollyroger-writer @shireness-says @ilovemesomekillianjones @thisonesatellite @thesschesthair @winterbythesea @stahlop @resident-of-storybrooke @superchocovian @lfh1226-linda @artistic-writer @thislassishooked @shardminds @winterbaby89 @xhookswenchx @ultraluckycatnd @gingerchangeling @laschatzi @wellhellotragic @xemmaloveskillianx @courtorderedcake @pirateherokillian @optomisticgirl @darkcolinodonorgasm @sherlockianwhovian @andiirivera @djlbg @nikkiemms-deactivated20201107 @jennjenn615 @scientificapricot @officerrogers @imlaxdris71 @therealstartraveller776 @kday426 @allons-y-to-hogwarts-713 @donteattheappleshook @spacekrulesbians @lassluna @carpedzem @captainodonoghue @killian-will-do @jarienn972 @tehgreeneyes @demisexualemmaswan @queen-serena88 @swanslieutenant @tiganasummertree @whimsicallyenchantedrose @bethacaciakay @ohmakemeahercules @jonirobinson64 @klynn-stormz @mariakov81

#Captain Swan #cs ff #CSMM #Captain Swan Movie Marathon #CSMM20

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emachinescat · 3 years

Text

Title: Of Concussions and Incorrigible Cons | Fandom: Psych

Summary: AU of the pilot episode. After being reprimanded by the interim chief, Head Detective Carlton Lassiter bites off more than he can possibly chew after attempting to apologize to a concussed Spencer for the less than gentle arrest at the end of the McCallum case. Spoilers for "Domestic Pilot." Part 1 of my whumpy episodic AU series, "AU that Glitters."

Words: 1,951

TW: None

AO3 Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Humor, Episode AU: s01e01: Domestic Pilot, Whump

Year Published: 2017

Full story here or on AO3!

Head Detective Carlton Lassiter stood in front of the interim chief's door, fist poised to knock and foot tapping an anxious rhythm on the floor. Vick had been rather short with him when she'd asked him to come to her office as soon as the paperwork for the McCallum case had been taken care of. It wasn't the "I'm busy, so make it quick" kind of short, either… she was agitated about something.

Taking a deep breath, he knocked.

Her voice rang out from inside, dead serious as could be. Yeah, she was pissed about something.

He entered, and opted for the ignorant approach, which was just as well, because he really had no idea what this was about. After all, he'd already been given a stern-talking to about inter-department romance and Lucinda was in the process of being transferred. A little swell of fury rose at the thought of the man – the so-called "psychic" who had so carelessly ruined one of the only positive things he had going for him.

"Detective Lassiter. Please sit."

He sat stiffly in the proffered chair, refusing to let the cushy trappings lull him into a false sense of security. He maintained eye contact with the chief, letting her know that he was completely comfortable in the situation that he found himself in, and that he had nothing to hide. Never mind the fact that he wasn't all that comfortable with the cloak and dagger business, being left in the dark about why he was here in the first place. "Chief. What can I do for you?"

Vick's eyes may have softened the tiniest bit at his cordial greeting, but she still did not look like a happy camper.

"I'm going to be honest with you, Detective," she said bluntly. "This could have turned out much worse. As it is, I am going to have to give you an informal reprimand and warn you to be very careful in the future."

Lassiter blinked. "Uh, Chief… What…?"

"Detective, you cannot be physically aggressive toward civilians who are in your custody, unless they are resisting arrest or are posing a threat to you or others around you."

Still trying to work through the confusion, Lassiter was both offended and relieved that there had been a mistake like this, that Vick actually thought that he'd attack a non-resisting civilian. Whatever she'd heard, it was all a big mix up. "Chief, let me assure you that I would never—"

"Shawn Spencer. McCallum residence. Yesterday afternoon. Ring any bells?"

Lassiter blanched. "Spencer hardly counts as a civilian. He's a hindrance to real police work, a distraction, and at the time, he was trespassing. I had to take him in." He left the bitter, At least, until he solved my damn case, left unspoken.

"Be that as it may, Detective, your shoving him head-first into the frame of the car was a bit overboard, don't you think?"

Wait, this was what this was about? Seriously?

"He was resisting arrest, Chief. He was… flailing and pretending to have 'visions' and acting like a crazy person!"

A delicate but ferocious eyebrow lifted. "Not when you shoved him into the car. And may I remind you, he did solve the case?"

"Did he tell you this? That little…"

"Detective!" the chief cut him off before he could say anything to get himself into any more trouble, which, although he didn't appreciate at the time, he was begrudgingly thankful for after the fact. "Mr. Spencer didn't tell me anything. I was there, remember? I saw the whole thing… whatever it was."

Oh. Right. Damn that Spencer for getting into his head like this!

"He's fine, Chief," Lassiter responded, much more calmly this time. "Don't let him take advantage of you. This country is crawling with people faking injuries just to get a few thousand dollars from a lawsuit."

"I told you, Mr. Spencer said nothing to me. His father, on the other hand, called me this morning in a rage. Thankfully, I was able to calm him down and help him to see reason, but it wasn't easy."

"So he went and told his daddy that he got a boo-boo at the crime scene?" Lassiter couldn't keep the disgusted contempt out of his voice this time. "I thought they hated each other, anyway?"

"They have a… complicated relationship, and it really isn't our place to bring that under speculation. However…" She sighed. "It is my job to make sure that my officers are not allowing their emotions or anger, no matter how warranted said anger might be, to get the better of them. Especially after what Henry told me this morning. Apparently, Mr. Guster had to take Shawn to the emergency room last night after his headache peaked and he lost consciousness briefly. Mr. Spencer is being treated for a concussion, Detective, and that is why we're having this talk."

"Oh." Lassiter wasn't sure what to say beyond that, but he slapped away the little niggle of guilt that tried to burrow into him at the news. He hadn't meant to hurt Spencer, certainly not that badly. The man was being difficult, had lost Lassiter his girlfriend, his respect… had mocked him by acting like an idiot and still managing to solve the case first…

"Shawn himself is not going to press charges or file a report, though I was obligated to contact him about the matter. He said – and these are his words – that 'Mr. Grumpy Detective-Face is emotionally stunted and is just trying to express how much he likes me in the only way he knows how.'" Vick looked marginally amused as she read Spencer's response off the sheet in front of her. A muscle in Lassiter's neck twitched. "Now, those exact words could be because of the concussion…"

Lassiter fought the urge to roll his eyes. "They're not, Chief. Trust me."

Now appearing to be fighting a smile, the chief said, "Consider this your unofficial reprimand and warning to control your irritation when you are faced with a particularly difficult witness… or consultant. Because once he is feeling better, I do believe the department will be calling on Mr. Spencer again."

This time, Lassiter couldn't stop the eye roll. Or the groan. Vick smiled. "You're dismissed, Detective."

"Yes, ma—uh, I mean, Chief."

***

Shawn was woken when the doorbell rang, the sound slicing through his aching head like a butter knife through steak... or however that saying went. Without bothering to get up from where he was sprawled on the couch, he called out, "It's open."

Damn, concussions sucked. It was bad enough that Gus had practically dragged him to the hospital after he'd had some sort of dizzy spell last night, but then he'd called his dad to boot? Was this now Gus with his mom for additional parental torture? Not that he would mind seeing his mom… but he was so over worried hovering. Gus played the part of a worried mother exceptionally well, and Shawn couldn't handle two of them… Which was made irrelevant when the door opened to reveal not his mother, but…

"Detective Lassiter?"

Lassiter stepped into Shawn's apartment, keen blue eyes taking the coffee table littered with empty pudding cups, icepacks, water bottles, and prescription bottles. "You just leave your front door unlocked for anyone to come waltzing in? You're just begging to be robbed." Upon taking another look around at the untidy living space, his lip curled and he added, "Or maybe not."

Shawn struggled to sit up past the monkey playing cymbals in his head. "Your contempt for my apartment aside, what are you doing here?"

The detective hesitated. "I was just in the neighborhood and I…" Shawn watched knowingly as the detective's gaze shifted to the rather impressive bruise on his head.

"You wanted to check on me? Oh, Detective, you shouldn't have!"

"I didn't," growled Lassiter. He paused. "This was a mistake. I'll just—"

"Wait!" Shawn shifted, patting the sofa seat beside him. "Come in. Sit down. Rest your rumpus. Put your feet up. Slow your roll. Chillax your—"

With an irritated grunt, the detective passed the threshold and sat in the chair farthest away from Shawn. "Look. I didn't exactly… yesterday, when I…"

"I know, I know. You were just expressing your love for me in the only way you know how, like that little boy in school who pulls the little girl's pigtails because he thinks she's cute."

"Absolutely not."

"Okay, you got me—" Shawn winced as a particularly painful wave shot through his poor, abused noggin. "I was that kid in school. Her name was Melinda, and she had the cutest, bounciest set of—"

"Dear Lord, please stop talking."

"I was going to say pigtails, dude. Mind. Gutter. Get it out."

"This is a monumental waste of my time," the detective spat, standing up so abruptly it almost gave Shawn vertigo… Or wait, he might have already had vertigo, wasn't that a concussion symptom ? And what was vertigo, anyway? Besides an Alfred Hitchcock flick?

Past the pounding in his skull, Shawn heard footsteps stomping away, toward the door. Despite the telltale ringing in his ears, Shawn scrabbled to his feet, ignoring the dark spots dancing wildly in front of his eyes. His pulse hammered, his breath felt short and stunted, and the dizziness spiked. He knew what was going to happen seconds before it did. He was unconscious before he hit the floor.

***

When the world swam back into focus, Shawn was surprised to find that he was back on the couch, not in a heap on the floor. He noticed blearily that his hands tingled like he'd been sitting on them for a couple of weeks, and his ears were still ringing like a high school band had paraded between them and accidentally left the triangle player behind. With a groan against the horrible pounding that had overtaken his skull – the procession of drummers must've gotten left behind, too – he rolled over to see Head Detective Carlton Lassiter kneeling next to the couch.

"You passed out," the detective stated helpfully.

"I did not," Shawn argued, mostly out of obligatory need to irritate whoever was in his general vicinity. "I fell asleep, suddenly and quickly, in a very manly and not wimpy way."

"Sure you did. Just be glad I got to you before you hit the ground. You would have a matching bruise on the other side of your head."

Shawn feigned shock. "So you dashed to my side, caught me before I hit the ground, gently placed me on the sofa, and lingered over my prone body until you knew I wasn't on death's door? Detective, I'm touched."

Lassiter half-sneered, half-smirked. "You were only out for a handful of seconds. I was hoping you'd stay out of it long enough for me to escape, but of course you had to ruin that plan, too."

Shawn winced, only partly out of pain. "Look, man, I'm sorry about your girlfriend. I just—"

The detective stood hastily, popping up from the ground like a Jack-in-the-Box with a strong Irish hairline and lots of pent-up aggression. "We don't talk about that. Ever."

Shawn lifted both hands up in mock surrender. Lassiter's face softened, just the tiniest, miniscule bit. "You're okay, though? Do I need to call your father or someone—?"

"No! I would rather you leave me here to die."

Lassiter shrugged. "Works for me." He strode for the door.

Shawn hesitated, licked his lips, and then offered, "Detective? Thanks."

"Just take it easy," the detective advised.

It was as close to an apology as Shawn was going to get, and, though Shawn might not have shown it through his next words, he did in fact appreciate it.

"Lassie," Shawn said, testing out the new nickname he'd been considering since he'd met the detective. He watched with glee as the man bristled in agitation.

"What?" the detective ground out through gritted teeth.

"I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship."

The head detective had fled the apartment and slammed the door before Shawn could blink. Shawn settled back into the couch cushions and tried to will his head to stop raging against him. Or at least a plain but not drop-dead-ugly working tolerance, he amended in his head, before he drifted off to sleep.

#psych #shawn spencer #carlton lassiter #karen vick #fanfiction #fic rec #psych fanfic #episode au #friendship sort of #hurt/comfort #also sort of #usa psych #emcatwrites

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nothingeverlost · 4 years

Text

Henry Gold (Chapter 6/?)

Summary: Regina asked for Gold’s help in procuring a child, but when he held the wee boy in his arms he couldn’t give the child up. Ten years later it’s Henry Gold who arrives in Boston, looking for Emma.

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3/ Chapter 4 / Chapter 5

A/N: This chapter takes place almost entirely in the hospital. It’s about a baby girl and a John Doe

Strangely his dislike of hospitals lingered even though he had no experience with them. His cursed self remembered an accident, surgeries, and months of physical therapy. Fake memories that apparently still echoed loud enough that he paused just outside the entrance to the hospital to gather himself. Emma had called to let him know that Ashely had been found and was in labor.

Cinderella was having her baby. Just one, despite the lie she’d once tried to tell him about twins. One child she’d promised him thrice, first in a blind deal to find a new life, secondly in a lie to trap him, and again in this world. She was giving birth, but the real question of the hour wasn’t boy or girl, it was mother or not. Carrying a child did not make one a mother, he’d learned that too painfully many lifetimes ago. He had no idea if the woman Cinderella was in either world deserved the child. Though she didn’t fully understand it, the choice was in his hands. All magic had a price.

He found Emma in the waiting room pacing, as if she was the one waiting for the baby. It was an experience he’d missed with both of his sons; Bae had been almost a month old when he’d come home wounded from the training fields and Henry had been three weeks when he’d been brought to Storybrooke. There had been no pacing, no nearby distress of a woman in labor. For Emma there had been no one waiting outside her door, eager to meet her child either.

“I would offer to buy you a cup of coffee but I can’t imagine that would be a good idea.” He aimed for casual, as if this birth didn’t mean anything to him.

“I’ve never been on this side of things.” Emma nodded towards the closed doorway where they could hear shouting.

“No friends back home with little ones yet?” This world or the last one, women seemed to always gather together for a birth.

“I’m kind of a lone wolf,” she said with a shrug. He was amused at her word choice; she wasn’t the only lone wolf around, and he was beginning to wonder if two wolves might not just find each other.

“There’s nothing to be gained by waiting here; neither of us can change the coming of this babe.” He took a moment to ponder the fact that Cinderella and Snow had been pregnant at the same time. Emma and this child should have been separated in age by months, not decades. “Will you take a walk with me? There’s a pleasant distraction upstairs.”

“I can’t imagine anything in a hospital called pleasant, but sure.” She trusted him enough to follow, and to leave the princess alone. Their journey was only two stories up, but he lead her to the elevator; a flight of stairs was one thing, two flights in public were another. One never knew when a queen was lurking around corners, looking for a weakness.

“Henry’s class has a field trip today, perhaps you heard him mentioning it?” It was a short ride, once he pushed the button in the elevator.

“I remember something about a signed permission slip.” She followed him again, out of the elevator and down the hall where no one stopped them or even looked up. Gold had to wonder if it had to do with people following the same routines for 28 years, or the fact that no one he saw had ever studied a moment of medicine.

“Miss Blanchard’s class volunteers at the hospital once a month. They make cards and bring flowers and decorate. From the size of Henry’s backpack I presume that he’s snuck his book in here to read to someone.” He rounded the corner into a hospital ward full of people who had been stuck in bed far longer than they realized. From a glance he could identify one minor noble who crossed the wrong witch and a knight missing a pair of legs. This was Henry’s third visit but the first time he’d had reason to come observe. There was a ‘get well’ banner hanging on one wall. The Hatter’s girl was filling a vase with flowers, but he couldn’t see his son.

“Never heard of that before. We usually went to a museum or the zoo.” She stopped to say hello to a surprised Mary Margaret; he heard something vague about ‘a bad date’ but he was more focused on why Henry wasn’t with the other kids and why his teacher didn’t seem concerned. And then he saw his boy, through a second set of glass doors, looking at a man in a coma.

“So this is where you’ve been hidden,” he muttered to himself. He looked over his shoulder where the wife and daughter of the man in a coma spoke, not knowing each other or the man in the other room. “Asleep all this time might, indeed, be a favor.”

“Dad.” Henry had been grappling his book out of his backpack, but looked up and grinned. He dropped the bag and dodged around the bed, racing through the glass doors. From the hug one would expect it had been more than a few hours since they’d sat together at breakfast. “I found him, dad.”

“You found someone?”

“It’s Emma’s dad, my grandfather. He has the same scar as in the book, on his chin. It’s him, dad.” Henry grabbed his left hand and tugged him into the room. “Look.”

“He’s just a man in a coma, Henry.” He lied, pretending he hadn’t seen the man in the bed a hundred times. That he hadn’t trained him with swords or teased him about his love or snarled at him through prison bars. Gold glanced at the book half out of Henry’s bag. His fingers itched for magic that didn’t yet exist in this land, to find out how a book in this world knew so many of their stories. He didn’t trust it, even though he might need it.

He dreaded the day Henry realized his father’s part in the book.

“It’s the curse, keeping him and Miss Blanchard apart. We have to find a way to get them together.” Henry gestured excitedly at the princling sleeping on the bed.

“I’m sure she’s been in here before.” Gold looked over his shoulder to where Emma and Mary Margaret were still talking. Henry, noticing Emma for the first time, brightened.

“I have to show Emma.”

“Is this the best time? Your classmates are around, perhaps if you wait until you’re alone.” Emma wouldn’t believe, of course, but he was curious to see her reaction.

“We could come back later. Maybe Miss Blanchard could read the story to him and he’ll remember. He’ll wake up.” If only curses were as simple as a ten-year-old assumed.

“We can discuss it. For now I think you’re meant to be with the rest of your class.” He encouraged Henry to return to the main ward, where the children were apparently gathering to sing a song. Gold lingered for a moment when the glass doors slid closed behind his son.

“You held her for a minute, didn’t you, Charming? Months of waiting and you only got a moment.” He looked through the glass doors at Emma, who had turned to watch Henry and his classmates. He hadn’t had enough time with his Baelfire. He’d had less, so far, with Henry. And yet he had a lifetime more than the sleeping prince who would wake to find his daughter fully grown. “I never imagined that I would have a child again, much less that I would have mine because you lost yours. It wasn’t supposed to work like this.”

But he wouldn’t give up his son for anything.

“Things are changing. They’ll change for you soon enough.” He could almost feel the magic, just the echo of it trying to break free. The first child in 28 years was being born and lovers stood only a few feet apart. Things were changing.

“It’s a girl.” Emma slid into the booth across from him at Granny’s. Henry had begged to have burgers for dinner and she’d gotten a text to meet them for dinner.

“Fingers and toes all accounted for?” Gold stirred the cup of tea in front of him, almost looking uninterested in her news. He didn’t fool her, though. He wasn’t the easiest person to read but she knew a few of his tells.

“She’s healthy. Ashley…” Ashley wanted to keep her baby. Emma had seen her hold the infant and knew she was never letting go. It was why she’d never let them give her Henry.

“Emma, you’re here. Good, we can make our plan now.” Gold moved to the side as Henry scooted in next to him, his hands still damp from a trip to the bathroom. He was grinning.

“Plans?” Emma asked, curious.

“Dad didn’t tell you? I found your dad. He’s at the hospital in a coma and we need to find a way to wake him up. We need Miss Blanchard.” Damn. Henry’s stories seemed to be getting bigger.

“Why do we need Mary Margaret?” Despite the fact that Mary Margaret gave him the book she’d rather not drag Henry’s teacher into the whole fairytale conspiracy.

“Snow White, Prince Charming,” Gold held up one hand as he spoke, and then the other, slowly bringing the two together, his palms flat against each other. Emma had to give him props for not making fun of the idea. “Magic, apparently.”

“They need to remember their happy ending. The story will help,” Henry said with confidence.

“Mary Margaret’s a school teacher, I’m pretty sure she knows the story. Didn’t they dance like one time and then he kissed her when she was in a coma?” Coma. Maybe she was wrong and Henry’s story wasn’t changing, he was still just taking things and making them fit the story. Sure, originally it was Snow White in a coma but who could blame him for making a little twist; Snow White waking Prince Charming up from a coma sounded like something they’d do in a movie.

“You haven’t read any of the book yet.” Gold took a sip of his tea. “That’s not how they meet.”

“She robbed him,” Henry explained excitedly. “And he chased her on a horse. There were trolls on the bridge and...”

“And you think this is Mary Margaret we’re talking about?” She snorted to think about Mary Margaret running around stealing things like some kind of Robin Hood. Across the table Gold shrugged.

“You’ll see,” Henry promised.

It was really weird when the kid ended up being right. Not that she believed it was a curse or magic, but it turned out that the coma patient did wake up after Mary Margaret visited. She had asked Mary Margaret to visit and read to him, certain that it would be a step in the right direction proving Henry wrong. Instead they were once again in the hospital and the coma patient was sitting up in bed and talking to Dr. Whale.

“So that happened,” she commented to Mary Margaret, sitting next to her. Graham was in the room with the doctor and John Doe. Henry was half asleep on one of the chairs, or at least being very quiet. Gold had excused himself a minute ago.

“I can’t believe it happened.” Mary Margaret picked at the mud drying on the knees of her pants. “I had to redo my CPR certification for school this year, just a few months ago. It’s not the kind of thing you think you’ll actually use.”

“Lucky him.” She’d held Henry while she watched. It wasn’t the first time she’d hugged him, but it was the longest she’d held him, hoping for the best but wanting to protect him from seeing the worse. By the time they knew he was breathing Gold had caught up to them and Henry had raced to his dad, but for a minute she’d been the one holding him.

Boston was seeming farther and farther away.

“He still doesn’t remember who he is.” The door to the hospital room swung closed behind Graham. “We’ll start working on that tomorrow; someone has to know him.”

“I could help,” Emma offered. She found missing people, usually. This time they had the missing person, but not the rest of his life. Emma looked at Graham and was about to suggest that maybe they should talk more about his offer a few days ago when someone ran past her.

“David.” Emma got an impression of blond hair and disbelief as the woman crashed into the hospital room. She was out of view for a moment until Whale made her step back.

“Who is that?” She looked over at Graham to see if he knew, but the answer came from behind her.

“That’s his wife.” She knew that voice, but still hoped she was wrong when she turned. Beside her she could feel that Graham, for some reason, flinched.

“Madame Mayor.” Regina Mills was looking far too much like she’d won something. It made Emma uncomfortable. They’d barely exchanged a dozen words so far but she had no love for the woman that was almost Henry’s mother. Instinctively she looked over to where he was sitting to find that he was using his backpack as a pillow. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought someone should find John Doe’s family, and since no one else seemed bothered to do so it fell to me. Kathryn Nolan was very grateful when I offered her a ride.” Emma wondered how anyone had elected this woman, who was about as far from trustworthy as it was possible to get. All of her alarms were going off, saying she was a liar. Then again politicians, even local ones, lied.

“He’s been in a coma for years and you just so happened to find his wife today?” She didn’t dare look over at Mary Margaret, didn’t want to guess at her emotions. At least Henry was sleeping and she didn’t have to worry about him saying anything about the book.

“All thanks to you, dear. That tape you found was a stroke of genius. So we went back and looked at past tapes. Turns out Mr. Doe’s been talking in his sleep. He’s been calling out for a Kathryn. After that, it wasn’t hard to put the pieces together.” Regina nodded to the woman in the other room. “Isn’t it nice when things work out?”

“Yeah, sure.” Something felt really weird about the whole situation. She’d have to talk to Graham about it tomorrow.

“I’m sure there’s been enough excitement for tonight and the Nolan’s deserve some privacy. You should all leave,” Regina said pointedly, her gaze sweeping over all of them. She looked at henry last, and Emma had to press her lips together to keep from saying something; the look made her uncomfortable. “Whatever is Mr. Gold thinking, letting his son out so late and practically unattended?”

“He’s with me.” She didn’t quite hit Regina with her shoulder as she walked past, but she came close when she passed in front of her and bent over to shake Henry awake. “Hey kid, it’s time to go.”

“Is he okay?” Henry asked, blinking.

“The doctor says he’s going to be fine. Doesn’t know why he woke up but it looks like it’s going to stick.” She grabbed Henry’s backpack and slung it over her shoulder. “Let’s go find your dad, it’s time to go home. Mary Margaret did you need a ride?”

“No, I drove.” She still faced the hospital room where Whale was now in the corner talking to the nurse and their former coma patient was sitting up, being hugged by his wife. Emma didn’t like leaving her alone but she needed to get Henry somewhere else.

“I’ll walk down to the parking garage with her,” Graham offered. “I’ve done everything I can right now.”

“Yeah, okay.” Tomorrow she’d talk to Graham about the sudden appearance of a wife. And about a job. “Come on, kid.”

“Good-night, Miss Swan,” Regina said with sweetness dripping from her smile like poison.

The halls of the hospital were quiet. Gold left Henry under Emma’s watchful eye after they knew the princling would be fine and took the elevator down two floors. When he passed the large window of the nursery there were no babes within; the new princess must be with her mother.

The door to Ashley Boyd’s room was open, the second bed in the room unoccupied. In the corner of the room the tv cast a bluish tint on the room. Other than Cinderella and the strange plastic cradle holding a bundle of pink there was no one else around.

“I hope I’m not interrupting?” He stood in the doorway, leaning on his cane. The tramp through the woods earlier had not been a comfortable one.

“Mr. Gold.” Her eyes widened to see him, her hand going to the edge of the baby’s cradle and pulling it closer to the bed. Good. He didn’t know if it was her assault, their deal to find parents for her baby, or something deeper in her bones that frightened her, and didn’t care. She knew he was not someone to be taken lightly. “You can’t take my baby.”

“I came to offer my congratulations.” It did her some small credit that she kept her child close, her first instinct one of protection. Other mothers had done far less. He held up a small stuffed mouse he’d picked up in the hospital gift store. “I brought a present for your little one. She has a name?”

“Not yet.” Ashely leaned over the cradle and picked up her daughter, pulling the blanket of her own bed up to hide her almost completely from view. Gold stepped forward and placed the toy in the now empty cradle labeled baby girl Boyd. “I don’t have your money.”

“I didn’t imagine you would. Plus little ones are quite expensive and we wouldn’t want you to have to sleep in a pile of ashes with this one.” He let his fingers curl around the hard plastic, one finger brushing against the name card. She would pick the child’s name, and keep the child, but a deal could not be broken, not without a price neither of them could pay.

“I can pay you back but it will take time.” Her chin trembled, but she raised it, reminding him more of a maid than a princess.

“Yes, and I’m sure that extra twenty dollars a week will make all the difference, but you can keep your money.” It had never been about the money, after all.

“You don’t want anything?”

“I didn’t say that.” Even if the deal didn’t exist he couldn’t let her walk away holding everything. He tilted his head to the side, knowing that she couldn’t fail to see the gash on his forehead.

“Then what? I don’t have anything else.” She looked as miserable as a maid he met once, though she held a babe not a broom.

He paused, more for effect than anything. There was nothing Ashley Boyd could offer him, not now, but the curse would break and she would be a royal again. “Let’s call it a favor, to be claimed at a future date.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s not difficult, dearlie. When I come to you and say please you do me a favor. Deal?” He held out his hand; there was no need for a contract when one had already been signed.

“Yeah, okay.” Reluctantly she touched his hand, almost immediately pulling away. She held her daughter closer.

“The best of luck, Miss Boyd.” He smiled and turned, leaving her alone. After he was in the hallway he muttered “you’re going to need it.”

He headed down to the lobby, waiting near the elevators for Emma and Henry. His son looked tired. Emma looked like she was carrying more than Henry’s backpack on her shoulders. “Problem?”

“Madame Mayor is a smug little…” She looked down at Henry and pressed her lips together, censoring whatever she’d been about to say. Gold was certain whatever it was it was something they agreed upon. “Somehow she was able to find John Doe’s identity and his wife, all in a couple of hours. It doesn’t feel right.”

“It rarely does when she’s involved.” A wife for the prince, that was an interesting development. Not too surprising, though, considering just how invested Regina was in making sure Snow White never had her happy ending.

“It’s not real,” Henry insisted, scowling.

“I could say the same about most marriages.” Gold wrapped an arm around him. Behind him Emma snorted. “Let’s go home, son. Nothing else can be done tonight.”

As they left the hospital they crossed paths with a man running in, flowers in one hand and a pair of tiny shoes in the other. Gold huffed softly; it seemed there was more than one prince in the hospital tonight. Perhaps this one would have better luck reuniting with his lost love.

#fic: henry gold #verse: henry gold #henry gold #mr. gold #emma ruth swan #mary margaret blanchard #ashley boyd #graham humbert #my fic

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thearrangment-phff · 5 years

Text

LXXV.

June 2019

The timing of the infamous Trump state visit had meant that Isabella stayed home on maternity leave. It caused a bit of an uproar in the press that the wife of a senior royal had not participated in the state visit. Her past political comments had resurfaced until various people had to lie to the world and say that the very true statements were false. Even prestigious Yale professors had to lie about Isabella’s papers and her thesis was switched with another girl’s, who had written about the rise of technology in people’s lives.

“I feel as if I’m living a lie,” commented Isabella.

“You aren’t. But you can’t be political and those people lied to protect all of us.”

“What would’ve happened if those professors didn’t agree to lie? What would have happened if that poor girl didn’t agree to switch papers?” asked Isabella.

“Since everything worked out, who knows, and frankly we shouldn’t be dwelling,” replied Harry.

“How can I not dwell?”

Harry saw the sadness in his wife’s eyes, “We can talk about this later.”

While Isabella had gone to Luxembourg, Harry stayed in London for Trooping the Colour. Isabella along with her uncle and aunt The Grand Duke and Duchess of Luxembourg; her mother Archduchess Marie-Astrid; aunt and uncle Prince Nikolaus and Princess Margaretha of Liechtenstein; uncle Prince Jean; and siblings Archduke Alexander, Archduchesses Marie-Christine and Gabriella; and sister-in-law Archduchess Adelaide had attended a service to end the period of mourning for Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg.

For various reasons, not every family member could make it to the service. Isabella, Charlie, and Bertie’s absence in London was well known not only within the public but also the royal family. The people of the world were robbed of Charlie and Bertie’s first balcony experience.

“Harry, when are Isabella and the children coming back again?”

Harry looked behind to find his father talking with some of his grandmother’s cousins, the Kent’s. He walked over towards them finding some difficulty with a large number of people in his way, “Charlie, Bertie, and Mary-Astrid are coming back tomorrow but Isabella has to fly to France soon after. The chateau’s 500-year anniversary is going up and she is finalizing all the details on the event.”

“Your father says you will be going to France a lot of the next couple of weeks,” mentioned Princess Michael of Kent.

“Yes. Isabella has some business with her properties and we are spending some time with her family again,” replied Harry.

“Habsburgs or Bourbons?”

“Well with Isabella’s family it’s both, isn’t it?” joked Princess Michael. Harry had ignored Princess Michael’s comment.

“We hope to see your children soon. Every year it seems that it family grows larger,” smiled Prince Michael.

“Not compared to Isabella’s family. Two weddings and two pregnancies is a slow year for them.”

“Of course it is. They always had large families because they understood the importance of alliances. They don’t revolve around history, history revolves around them, it always has.”

“Perhaps you should introduce Harry to your cousin. She could teach him a little bit of what it means to marry into their family,” suggested Princess Michael.

“I don’t think Harry would be interested,” waved off Prince Michael.

“Well actually, I might. It’s been 2 years since I married Isabella and I still feel I am looking at the tip of an iceberg when it comes to knowing anything about her family.”

“My family has served them for centuries, I don’t think anyone who isn’t born into their family can truly understand them.”

“There’s no need to depress the young man Marie. I’ll put you in contact with Helene.”

Harry nodded as Prince and Princess Michael of Kent walked away and Charles had given Harry a small hug, “Here I thought Isabella would struggle to fit in with the family.”

“Isabella doesn’t have a problem fitting in anywhere,” interrupted Harry.

“It’s been 2 years Harry. You two have changed and not necessarily have fallen in love from what I’ve seen but definitely learned to care for each other. She has given me three grandchildren who I love with all my heart. I hope you understand your blessings.”

“I don’t take her for granted. Because of her I have two sons, a daughter, and a life I never would have imagined,” replied Harry.

------

The 500 anniversary of the Château de Chambord had brought together Bourbon and Habsburg royals unlike ever before. Children ran around in the gardens and champagne bottles were being emptied at a fast rate by Isabella’s relations that jokes were being passed around. While she had little to do with the actual planning of the anniversary, Isabella had named her uncle Henri Honorary President of the celebrations.

Isabella had given an interview, but many were disappointed to find she simply talked about the Château. There were mentions of the twins which please only a small number of people. The public had wanted more since both Harry and Isabella had kept them out of public view. The pictures to celebrate Charlie and Bertie’s first birthday was a very unexpected surprise. Even the simple photos of the birth of Mary-Astrid had been unexpected.

Once the celebrations were over, Isabella’s maternal cousins were called into one of the larger rooms in the Château. There was secrecy as Isabella led them up to the stairs into a private room, away from workers and guests. She had immediately noticed the lack of cousins who walked away from the group. Isabella simply couldn’t start without them, so she waited patiently.

“Belle are you going to explain why we are all in here?” asked Marie Astrid of Liechtenstein.

“Almost. Where are Felix and Louis?”

“I think they went to find a drink. But that was almost an hour ago,” answered Alexandra of Luxembourg.

The doors opened finding Felix and Louis red in the face, “Sorry we got lost and have been up and down stairs,” apologized Felix.

“We couldn’t have met on the first floor?” asked Louis.

“Maybe if you didn’t walk away from the group you would know where we were,” argued Isabella.

“Alright get on with it then!” yelled Alexander.

“Fine! I have two plans. The first is I want to talk with Marie-Esmeralda about making a documentary for the 100th anniversary of grandpapa’s birth.”

“Wait, what?!”

“Are you serious?”

“Belle you can’t be serious.”

Isabella got the wrong impression from the mumbles until finally, she heard the opposite agreement from her various cousins.

“I love it.”

“I think it’s a good idea.”

“Okay so should we take a show of hands?” asked Josef-Emanuel.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” replied Marie-Christine.

“So we do the documentary?” asked Isabella.

“I think it’s a lovely idea, Belle,” smiled Alexandra.

“Thank you. So I’ll reach out to Marie-Esmeralda?” asked Isabella getting mostly nods from the room.

“Are we going to be speaking English?” asked Guillaume.

“I don’t think so. I didn’t plan on it,” answered Isabella.

“I really don’t like speaking English,” said Gabriella.

“Not all of us are good at speaking English Belle,” spoke Marie-Astrid of Liechtenstein.

“I understand that. I’ll speak to Marie-Esmeralda to put captions so you can speak whatever language you want and the masses can still understand.”

“What are we going to do exactly just talk about him?”

“Yes. We’ll talk about his life and bring in family and friends to talk about him and his accomplishments. That sort of thing.”

“Okay so then what’s the second thing?” asked Maria Anunciata.

“Well... I sort of always wanted to create a charity together. A charity that caters to refugees like those from Yemon or Central America.”

“Belle that is controversial,” said Alexandra.

“I understand that but these are the people who need the most help. Well, everyone needs help but I feel passionate about this. Please you have to understand-” explained Isabella.

“I’m in,” interrupted Alexander, needing not to hear another word from his younger sister.

“Wait a minute,” replied Marie-Christine.

Alexander stood us addressing the room, ready as ever to defend his little sister against any opposition, “Oh come on! We all know Belle. We all knew her when she was in uni in the states and how passionate she was.. is actually. If there is anyone we should follow it should be her.”

The room had mixed feelings. While they understood how Isabella was before Harry she was now a changed woman. She was a member of the British Royal Family and the spark that Isabella had in her youth had gone out the moment Harry was introduced to the family through the act of marriage.

It was not a secret that Isabella had her issues and they were more erratic now than they have ever been. All of her cousins looked at each other, some with worried faces, others with stern faces knowing they would support Isabella in this newest project.

Isabella sensed the tension, “All my life I have wanted to help people. I wanted to right the wrong our family has done. I want to help people and that’s why I want to do this, especially now. This isn’t about nationality or religion it’s simply about the people, it always has been.”

Once again everyone looked around the room and some nodded at each other. Finally, Louis of Luxembourg had stood up, “I think we are all in agreement now. We’ll work on this, together... as a family... like we always have.”

Isabella gave the biggest smile. Since her marriage, this would be her biggest project that she would gladly put her life into, “In all honesty, these past couple of years I have lost track of who I truly am. This is a foot in the right direction.”

“This could bring us close together again,” smiled Maria-Anunciata.

“Or tear us apart,” said Constantin earning himself a couple of light hits from surrounding siblings and cousins, “Would people just stop hitting me!? I’m getting tired of it.”

“And I think we are all tired of hearing you speak sometimes Constantin,” joked Marie-Gabrielle.

“So I’ll get in contact with Marie-Esmeralda and I’ll have my private secretary draw up some things to get this charity rolling, oh this is going to be amazing!” smiled Isabella.

“So this documentary is going to be made over the next two years?” asked Wenceslaus.

“Well I think we’ll need some time to get everything set up. Maybe next year we’ll be doing interviews. I think it would be lovely to release this piece to grandpapa on the day of his birth,” answered Isabella.

“You are truly wonderful Belle.”

“Thank you. With every year our own little families get bigger or someone gets married, I thought this would bring us all back together. Just like the old times, and with this joint charity we get to help people. I’ve missed seeing smiles on people’s face like that.”

Harry looked at Isabella and in that exact moment found a woman he had rarely seen. While she never faced away from her royal duty her heart wasn’t in it some days. Harry pieced together in his head the reason why Isabella sometimes didn’t care. It was because Isabella wasn’t doing what she loved. She had shown up, shook hands, and gotten flowers from people but those engagements weren’t what her heart was into.

Going to Columbia and New Zealand, that was when Isabella felt something. Isabella’s heart was into helping immigrants and refugees and because of the political backlash, she was forbidden to put her heart into something like that. But with this new project with her cousins, she could simply saw this her name wasn’t technically apart of it, therefore, she could not be held to the notion of violating the royal family’s rule of no political interference. It was a smart job on Isabella’s part.

“So I’m guessing we will be meeting in London a lot?” asked Felix.

“No. I was thinking any meeting would be done in Geneva or Chambord. Mutal meeting ground” answered Isabella.

-----

Per family tradition, Isabella and Harry had to wrangle three children to France to spend time with Isabella’s family in Cabasson. The family had grown large over the last couple of months including new babies and new people by marriage.

In the midst of all the chaos of several dozen people on a beach, Prince Wenceslas of Nassau, Isabella’s cousin, had announced his engagement to Countess Marie-Gabrielle von und zu Acro-Zinneberg. Countess Marie-Gabrielle von und zu Acro-Zinneberg was the granddaughter of Robert, Archduke of Austria-Este and a first cousin to Luisa Maria, Amedeo, and Joachim of Belgium. Her sister Olympia also recently gotten engaged to Jean-Christophe, Prince Napoleon. The surprise engagement had confused the family since Wenceslas had already been in a relationship with another woman.

But Isabella and Harry had understood Wenceslas more than anyone else. The fast engagement and little attention to the relationship was more than enough for Harry and Isabella to pull him aside. The moment they were out of public view the act Wenceslas was putting up had stopped.

“How are you?” asked Isabella.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Wenceslas.

“I was sworn to secrecy,” answered Isabella with a hurt look. She never wanted to lie to her family but it needed to be done.

“Why did you agree to this?”

Harry stepped away knowing this was a conversation between cousins. Isabella grabbed her cousins' hands, “Because I understood the significance of a marriage between the Houses of Windsor and Habsburg.”

“I agreed to marry her because I thought it was the best thing. They explained to me what was supposed to happen. I thought if it wasn’t me then she would just marry someone else, someone horrible,” explained Wenceslas.

“So you thought she needed saving?” asked Harry.

“Not saving but I think I’m a good person. I think she’s a good person so why not just agree to their demands. We could learn to love each other.”

Isabella left out this horrid sound and the two men looked at her in confusion. It hurt Isabella to know those she loved were marrying for a title or for a dynastic marriage than marrying for love. She had come to terms with how Harry and she got together. They had grown to love each other, they had three beautiful children, and there were rough days but they got through them.

“Look, Wenceslas, trust me I understand where you are coming from and I understand the secrecy but entering this arrangement means it could go two ways. The first, you truly do fall in love and have a happy and long marriage, the second is you two hate each other. You have one or a couple of children then just divorce and can you honestly see another divorce will hurt this family. After what happened with Louis and Tessy-”

“Marie-Gabrielle is not Tessy,” interrupted Wenceslas.

“Belle! Why are you keeping Wenceslas to yourself!?”

Within seconds Wenceslas walked away to avoid talking with his younger cousin. Isabella left out a huff and rolled her eyes, “What were you expecting from that?” asked Harry.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re sort of being a hypocrite in this situation,” added Harry.

“I am not!”

“You are. You did exactly what they are doing, so I don’t know why are getting upset about this. We’re happy.”

“Yes we are happy but what if their relationship turns out to be hell,” argued Isabella.

“We could have ended up that way but we didn’t and maybe they won’t either. You know Wenceslas and you know Marie Gabrielle to a certain extent, do you honestly believe they could hate each other?”

“They could learn, but you’re right. It’s just ever since Olga’s miscarriage and her unhappy marriage, I worry. You should hear what is happening to her daughter. That poor little girl is in a custody battle between her parents.”

“I didn’t know that,” mumbled Harry.

“Olga wants to move to Switzerland and take her daughter with her. George refuses to have his daughter in another country away from him. I recently heard that now the grandparents of that poor innocent girl are now fighting for custody. Olga parents want to take her to Texas in the states and George’s mother wants to take her to Spain.”

“I didn’t know that,” repeated Harry.

“Very few know. Olga happens to call me every once in a while and vent on the situation. George should have never married her. He wanted a royal wife, he just should have chosen someone else,” argued Isabella.

“We had some choice in our arrangement. I’m sure they did too so I wouldn’t worry too much,” replied Harry.

“Well, I understand that, but sometimes I can’t help it. Look at their marriage and look at ours. Such a difference but we are examples of what could happen when entering an arrangement.”

“You’re getting emotional. We should head to bed. We’ll stop by the children’s room so you can get a look at them before we go to bed, it will be good for you to see them after a day like this.”

#prince harry fanfiction #prince harry fanfic #royal fanfiction #royal fanfic #fanfiction #Prince Harry #PHFF

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abitterlifethroughcinema · 6 years

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The Wrap, Part II: Return of the Curse of the Creature’s Ghost!

Film Reviews from the 51st Annual Sitges Fantasy/Horror Film Festival

Lucas A Cavazos

It would be of utmost denial to oneself to not take part in the occasional puff of marijuana and/or odd glass or two of red wine whilst shuffling about Sitges during this type of festival. I tell you, in this gayest of cities (and yes, I mean that in both senses of the word), nothing says loving like soaking up sun and guts while having the right side of your brain open. To quote Henry Miller…”The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”

And it is in that vein, I present to you the latest film starring Nicolas Cage, Mandy ###-1/2…Could it be that Nicolas Cage might actually have something interesting to offer now that he’s well past 50 and ready to go beyond simple nut job roles and wannabe-buff, action hits and flops? Last year, this festival premiered the currently in-run and VOD film called Mom and Dad with Selma Blair, and if that was a thing of fun and delight, which is was, this film is much more darkly mirrored and rife with psychedelic imagery, and it must be discussed. To note, it does contain ye olde, ubiquitous screaming-whilst-having-a-psychotic-fit Cage scene, doubt ye not! Set in turn of the decade 80s, Red (Cage) and Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) have removed themselves from the majority of society and live a life of slight isolation, that is until one day, Mandy is abducted by some occult-like sect with grave intentions. Linus Roach (Priest) plays Jeremiah Sands, a man who can call forth demons and demonic creatures, and when psychedelia meets rancour, flames go up and and as they do, someone in them, as well. This is where the film turns into a contemplative narrative tale on revenge and turmoil, highlighted by a tinge of hallucinogens and wasp venom, and I cannot begin to tell you how eerily creepy it is to see Linus Roach after so many years in a role like this that sends chills down your spine in ways that create sheer panic and disgust. Watching Cage take revenge is a joy and wonder, and it should be noted that the film won two of the Sitges 51st Official Selection Awards for Best Director, which went to Panos Cosmatos and Best Actress going to Andrea Riseborough, who also comes up a bit later down below. A piece of rogue psychedelic modern art on celluloid if ever there was one, tinges of Wes Craven, Heavy Metal cartoon imagery and sleep paralysis demons make this Nic Cage vehicle one of the best things he has done in simply years.

Making my way over to The Retiro in the heart of bustling Sitges to screen the noir-like film The Dark ###, I realised that I was late and upon arrival, I was quickly ushered upstairs and had to make do with a single chair propped up next to an upstairs balustrade. The Dark is an eerie piece that preys on the power of the unknown to scare the viewer into wanting to know more about its strange characters…and then the film reveals those secrets in flashback. Despite its title, there is very little in relation to darkness other than the tone of the film and its narrative of teen spirit gone horribly awry. In a former entry, I spoke of how a screened premiere entitled Zoo had encroached upon fresh zombie territory, and until recently as just over a decade ago, zombie cinema was a mostly contained affair, and reserved to a select grouping of films annually. That all changed with the mid-noughties and this latest entry into its subject matter baits us with unexplained tidbits, starting when a one Josef Hofer (Karl Markovics), described as armed and dangerous, makes his way to a rather haunting locale, where death finds him in the form of Mina, perma-resident of this cursed abode in Devil’s Den, a forestal area with a history of hauntings and Mina is that person/monster haunting those very woods. But then she discovers Alex, a blind and also-scarred teen who had been Hofer’s captive, and together the two make off for a disturbing adventure, which borders on heartfelt while also sadistic. If anything, this piece certainly toys with emotions and good cinema ought to do just that.

The Sitges Fantasy/Horror Film Fest is divided into many distinct sections, such as the main Official Selections, Noves Visions,which promotes newer filmmakers and diverse subject matter, Melies Feature and Short Film sections, Asian Focus, Animated Fare, The Orbita promoting mixed big budget and indie fare, Fanastic Discovery Features promoting obscure (and often deeper) cinema, the B and Z-grade fare of the Midnight X-Treme selections, as well as, the Critics Jury Selection. All of that to say that there is nary a specific genre within the fantasy film/horror movie genres that is NOT touched on by this film festival. Winner of the Orbita Award for Best Picture went to the US studio outfit entitled American Animals ###-1/2 and what an astounding effort it provides its audience into a peek at the rather modern mindset of the ageing millennial. Telling a 2004 real-life story by British director Bart Layton, he of the haunting 2012 film The Imposter, this 2018 effort documents how four white youths from good, hardworking families failed to fully realise a masterminded effort to steal one of, if not, the world’s most valuable book. The multi-volume Audubon Society’s Birds of America, not to mention Darwin’s first edition copy of On the Origin of Species were just two of the books to be included in a heist that Transylvania University students Spencer Reinhard and Warren Lipka (played to perfection by Barry Keoghan and Evan Peters) foolishly decided to rob from the special collections library department. To say that the subject matter is mid-level at best might be a tad harsh but only just so; that said, the way Layton maps out the mental state of these middle-to-upper middle class boys should give all of us a hint as to where these boys, and millions like them, are coming from. The plan of a heist is bred with the idea that their spoiled lives have hindered their true creative identities, and so to tell the story, the director secured interviews with the actual perpetrators and spliced that with top grade talent re-enacting the actual events. The film cannot be heralded as a thing of wonder, as it truly details the dumbest snafu of a heist ever on American soil. But what it succeeds in showing is that insecurity, lack of identity, and seeds of doubt are rife amongst today’s young adults, and if we are not fomenting stronger individuals as siblings, educators, parents, et al…we will continue to create these spoiled races of highly non-autonomous individuals. Give them some tough love, for goodness sake. Worthy of a view for any parent or educator.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT…Lars Von Trier, he of the Dogme 95 cinema movement and so many odd, jarring and sometimes good celluloid pieces…see Celebration and this film as examples please…he of the “understanding Hitler, I’m a Nazi” joke he pulled a few years back at Cannes, which then had him banned for half a decade, premiered his latest work last week at Sitges. It a doozy of a film that garnered some decent attention and a European and Spanish distributor, for sure. It’s been a hot minute since we’ve seen Matt Dillon on the big screen, and the brief time with Uma Thurman at the film’s beginning is a dark scene of beauty…and then not. Here’s the thing, as always we are dealing with the tortured mindset of a Scandinavian director who seethes out his demons onto celluloid, but that alone does not make it exceptional art, although I truly believe he thinks it is. In turn, I truly believe that von Trier is quite likely a mitigated sociopath. That said, while there is a bit of reverential awe to his masterful ways of movie manipulation, it is his use of dark comedy that sets this film apart from other recent fare he has brought us. Matt Dillon plays the titular character and while amusing at first, he soon grows languidly repetitive and chauvinistic, and while there are scenes of comedic brilliance, such as an OCD-related clean up job that leads to an incident with a policeman or the bang-down job he does trying to dispose of bodies in a freezer, it is impossible for this student and teacher of history to not associate the fact that we are watching a man, a DANISH man no less (do your research as to why I emphasise that, chirren) play out his darker inner recesses for our viewing interest, but it surely makes me aware that we are also likely dealing with his pathos. That’s what really makes The House That Jack Built ###-1/2 really scary.

Lastly this entry, Nancy ###-1/2 brings up the actress Andrea Riseborough again, and I would like to note that often at awards season and ceremonies, actors get rewarded for an individual work, which often plays testament to all the other work they’ve done in their field that year. As Riseborough won Best Actress at this year’s Sitges Fantasy/Horror Film Fest, I believe this piece was much more deserved than the aforementioned Mandy for that award. I also find it compelling that she as an actress chose to make two, back-to-back films about tortured women with their names as the movie titles. Nancy is a quasi-failed career woman tending to her mum who suffers from some neural disorder and who is unintentionally suffocating her daughter with complaints and stress…but when mum dies suddenly, what is Nancy to do but discover that she was likely abducted years earlier and soon begins to associate herself with a long lost child case never resolved that might fit her theory about herself, however strained it is. What ensues is a emotional tour de force involving the parents of the long missing child, played to award-level precision by J. Cameron Smith as Ellen and Steve Buscemi as her hubby Leo. When Nancy sets up an appointment to meet with them, they take a shining to her at once and while awaiting DNA results, take her in to stay with them, including with her cat to which Leo is allergic. As scenes go by, even though this might be more in order in an indie film fest rather than here at Sitges, you also understand that the fantastical elements lie in the mind of the titular woman, as well as, in director Christina Chloe’s softly brutal touch. A film meant for those who understand healing and suspension of (dis)belief, Nancy gives Andrea Riseborough a chance at becoming a celebrated actress to emulate.

#abitterlifethroughcinema #sitges film festival #mandymovie #TheDarkFilm #americananimals #the house that jack built #NancyFilm #matt dillon #steve buscemi #nicolas cage

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ladye11e · 6 years

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Deception pt 11

The conflict between the Assassins and the Templars is getting out of hand. Lies, deceit and subterfuge, now you must pick a side...

Wahoo! Time for Jacob! 😋

Forever tagging @geekgoddess813 @sweet-flash @ermergerd517 @i-wontgivein 💕 If anyone else would like tagging, just ask 😀

Link to the full fic so far is Here

"Connor! Thank god you're here!"

He raised his eyebrows in surprise when you grabbed him and dragged him into the shop, kicking the door shut with a bang before hugging him tightly. You had been here one, ONE day, and already your nerves were starting to fray. It was bad enough that you had been tasked with setting up the surveillance equipment in your room and trying to get it to link up with the other site closer to the warehouse, but you had also had to deal with a very ill-tempered Jacob. Evie was on the verge of killing him after he had started a fight in the pub last night, bragging how he was going to 'kick some Templar ass very soon', so he had been put on house arrest as it were, forbidden to leave the Curio shop unless he behaved. Needless to say he hadn't taken it very well, stomping about and pouting at every opportunity.

"I hoped to be here sooner (name) but my flight got delayed. How have you fared so far?"

"Not terribly well..."

You were cut off by Jacob bounding down the stairs when he had heard someone come in, strolling up to Connor and punching him in the arm then comically pretending that he had broken his hand after his fist connected.

"Hey the big man's here! Now this party can really get started!"

Connor shot you a sympathetic look when your eyes pretty much rolled into the back of your head as Jacob jumped up on the counter and began annoyingly fiddling with his gauntlet, realising quickly why you looked so riled up. Thankfully you had an idea that would keep him busy for about half an hour, plenty of time for you and Connor to catch up and start making preparations.

"Oh Jaaaacob?" You purred, flashing him your sweetest smile when he looked up and instantly knew you were after something. "Would you mind popping to the coffee shop for us? I won't tell Evie you left."

"What, I'm your errand boy now?" He scoffed irritably and continued flicking out his blade.

"Not at all, you know you're the only one I trust to get my drink. You know exactly how I like it."

His eyes widened when you leant in to whisper that last part to him, hoping to appeal to his ego to get what you wanted. It had obviously worked as when you moved back a salacious grin crept up his face and he jumped off the counter, grabbing his hat and running his hand through his hair before putting it on.

"Fine. You better not let my darling sister find out, I can't be dealing with anymore of her nagging."

You mimicked zipping your mouth shut when he eagerly left, letting out a heavy sigh as you turned back to Connor who was chuckling softly.

"That was very clever of you (name). Shall we get started while we have no distractions?"

With Connors help you had managed to get all the cameras working and get it streaming to the safe house where Henry was also monitoring everything; as you had already agreed to take it in shifts, and you were now looking at street maps to plot a route to take the money plus the guns to a safe location. You were so engrossed in what you were doing that you hadn't even noticed the time, until a large takeaway cup was placed on the desk in front of you.

"One 'just how you like it' as requested, and one... I have no idea what this is? Compost maybe?"

You bit your lips together when Jacob passed Connor his drink, his grimaced face quite the picture indeed.

"Why does everybody feel the need to criticise my beverage choices?"

"Sweetie, it looks like mud. You're kinda asking for it." You giggled when Jacob imitated throwing up as Connor started drinking it with a shrug of his shoulders.

Turning back to the map and trailing your finger over the partially marked route outlined on it, you suddenly stopped and frowned when you couldn't find the expected intersection about a mile away from the warehouse.

"Jacob, is this an old map? Where's the bank?"

Raising your eyebrows when he poked his head between you and Connor; staring at the map blankly, you rolled it up and swatted him round the head with it when you realised that he was no longer in a foul mood, his usual mischievous attitude coming back full force as he feigned mock horror when he saw where you had pointed to.

"There may have been some kind of explosion last year. So they demolished what was left and turned it into a one way system?"

You sighed and pinched the bridge of your nose as you slumped back in your chair, the entire second half of your planning now being rendered completely useless as there is no way you could use that route anymore, as it would take twice as long as you had initially predicted.

"Can I ask what caused the explosion? Or is that a stupid question?" Connor mumbled quite irritably as he eyed Jacob up when he stood there scratching his chin.

"It wasn't my fault! They were the ones who brought a stupid amount of C4 to rob the place, how was I to know?"

"Great. Just great. Well, back to square one then." You growled as you unrolled the map and prepared yourself for another tedious afternoon.

It took several hours to plan an alternate route for the mission, now that it had been completed Connor had gone to join Henry and Evie at the other site to share the rest of the intelligence he had gathered, leaving you bored to tears staring at the unchanging picture on the screen with your chin in your hands. You began flicking through the cameras absent-mindedly when you saw some kind of movement, but let out a huff and went back to the main picture when you saw it was another infernal pigeon.

"Oh someone's having fun then!"

Spinning around in your chair when you heard the usual heavy footsteps, you cocked your head when you saw that Jacob was more dishevelled than usual and slightly red-faced, wearing very unexpectedly, shorts and a hoodie.

"What have you been doing?"

"Eh? Told you I had a job now, I do boxing lessons at Toppings Gym."

"You? Teach?! Of all the things I expected, that would have been the very bottom of the list." You mumbled as you playfully wafted your hand in front of your face when he sat down next to you.

"Ha ha very funny. I remember you used to love it when I got all hot and sweaty. You should come down, I could show you a thing or two."

"I can fight perfectly well thank you very much." You pouted, narrowing your eyes at his attempted mockery.

"Those fancy pants backflips? If you say so. Althoooough, it is a lot of fun watching you."

Turning back to the monitor quickly when he gave you a cheeky wink so he wouldn't see the smile threatening to creep up your face, you scowled when you were faced with another bird literally eyeballing you through the camera.

"Go. Away! Shoo!"

Jacob roared into laughter when you poked the screen with a hiss, almost falling off his chair in hysterics when you got up and grabbed Evie's sniper rifle that was on top of its case at the foot of your bed.

"Don't you think that's kind of excessive? You'll never make that shot." Jacob chuckled when he managed to calm down slightly, only to start up again when he saw you were actually going to go through with it as you slid a bullet into the chamber.

You threw him a maniacal grin as you pushed open the window and looked through the scope, turning the dial on the side and gauging the distance between you and the feathered rat.

"It's just over a mile away, easy shot. Besides, I'm not going to kill it, just scare it off."

"First round at the pub says you don't make it."

Slowing your breathing and balancing the barrel on the sill, your eyes flickered to the trees outside so you could adjust your aim for the slight breeze, the corner of your lips tugging up when you knew for certain you had your mark.

"Deal. Second brick down from the camera, you get to check."

Before he had a chance to reply, you firmly squeezed the trigger and a deafening bang rumbled through the air, everything outside going silent apart from the flock of birds swooping into the air in fear.

"Off you go then."

"Why me?" He grumbled as he got up and joined you at the window, squinting at the late afternoon sunshine.

"Well firstly I wouldn't want you accusing me of cheating now would I. Secondly, it's about to be rush hour traffic. You'll be much faster with your rope launcher."

Jacob sighed at your logic, knowing that it was pointless arguing when you had come up with half decent reasoning. Laying the gun down on your bed when he pouted and made his way downstairs and out into the street, you returned to the window and pushed it open a little further with a wide grin as you watched him shoot out his zip line, climbing up the building over the road with ease.

"Mmmm, why does beer always taste better when someone else buys it?" You giggled, smacking your lips after taking a sip when Jacob scowled at you.

"Yeah yeah, rub it in. You know that was pure luck."

You rolled your eyes with a smile as you relaxed back in your seat, stretching out before cocking your head when Jacob started tapping his fingers on the table. Noticing he was staring at a pamphlet that had been left on the edge, you snapped it up quickly and glanced over it, letting out a heavy sigh as you dropped it back down.

"If you start another fight tonight, I'm leaving you high and dry."

"What? Dunno what you're talking about."

Poking him in the arm when he tried to hold back a grin as he picked up the paper eagerly and unfolded it, you dug out your phone and messaged Connor, telling a teeny white lie and saying that you were out with Jacob doing 'recon' tonight.

"I've covered us for a bit. If you win, we split the prize money."

"My my, since when did you become so devious? And what do you mean, if? There's no way I can lose."

Leaning over slightly so you could fully read the rules and not just get snippets of it, a wide grin spread over your face when you knew he was right. Six rounds of Texas hold em poker starting at 8pm tonight, a hundred pounds buy in, the winner walks away with every penny. It was easy money really, Jacobs eagle vision allowing him to see all of his opponents cards making any other outcome inconceivable. Before, you would have gone mad at him for even thinking about doing something like this, cheating and having an unfair advantage. But recently you had rethought a few things, and maybe you should let your hair down once in a while. Plus almost all of your assets were back in Boston, so a little something to tide you over whist you were here would help no end. Digging your purse out of your bag when Jacob sulked as he realised he didn't have enough money on him to be able to enter the game, you slapped the rest in his hand and began giggling when he jumped up enthusiastically towards the bar, finally starting to relax and feel a bit more at ease being here.

You faked nervousness as you glanced around the back room where the game had been set up, everyone else in here holding their breaths as the last hand was dealt. As expected Jacob was winning massively, the only opponent left having just a few chips in his hand. The other players that had been kicked out of the tournament had started grumbling something about him cheating somehow, but after a fifteen minute break and some lengthy searching of him, they had to be satisfied that he wasn't. You sighed when Jacob folded yet again, grimacing when you checked your watch and saw that it was nearly midnight. If he didn't finish this game up soon, you were going to have to make up an excuse for why you were late back to take over the surveillance, not something you wanted to have to explain to Evie.

Jacob turned his head to the side when he heard you clear your throat, shrugging his shoulders as if to say I know when he saw you tapping your wrist. The cards were dealt again, but this time, you noticed a slight crease in the corner of his eye. Extremely subtle as to not let on a tell, but just enough to let you know he had gotten a decent hand at last. The only problem this time was, his opponent (a rather gangly and sickly looking man) never even looked at his cards, just kept both palms on top of each other and firmly placed over them. Now Jacobs eagle vision was good, but not good enough to see through two limbs and the backs of the cards. You gulped when the man threw his few remaining chips into the middle of the table, knowing full well what was coming next. As you guessed, Jacob being the cocky ass that he is also went all in, making this the final play.

The dealer purposefully turned over the first three cards painfully slowly; revealing the king and queen of clubs, then the ace of diamonds. Neither of the men moved an inch when the fourth was placed on the table, whispers and murmurs erupting when the ace of hearts was pulled next. Even you bit your lip in anticipation as you watched the dealer's hand move across the table in something resembling movie style slow motion, your eyes flickering to Jacobs face for any sign of whether he had won or not when the last card was the ace of clubs. But he showed nothing. Not even a glimmer. Never before had you been so nervous about a game like this, but as it was your money on the line too, you thought that he would have at least been a bit more careful with it.

Your heart was beating furiously and you were more than slightly annoyed when his rival finally showed his hand with a sly grin, a two of diamonds and.. the ace of spades. Fuck! Sighing and resigning to the fact that you had lost; only a miracle able to beat a four of a kind, you suddenly jumped when Jacob slapped his hand on the table, stopping him from collecting the pot.

Everyone inched in closer when Jacob flicked over his first card and tossed it on the table - all but you as you caught his gaze and held it, your mouth curling into the same cocky grin as his when he gave you a slow wink and picked up his last card. You didn't even look at it when he placed it down next to the other one, for some reason you found yourself unable to pull away from his dancing eyes and jubilant expression. It was the sound of the man getting up and bursting out the door that finally dragged your attention away, making you chuckle when Jacob also got up and did several exaggerated bows to the rest of the room and boasting about his royal flush. Just as he was about to collect his winnings from the dealer, you froze to the spot when someone you knew caught your eye, stomping heavily and purposefully in your direction.

Stood at over six foot tall and the size of a house, John the Tosser was a well-known gang leader around here, working for none other than the Templars. Your eyes narrowed when you spotted the man who had lost peeking from behind him, with an evil smirk plastered on his face.

"You morons! You let Assassins into the tournament??" John bellowed out as soon as he spotted you and Jacob, cracking his knuckles menacingly.

"Oh."

"Shit."

#assassin's creed #assassinscreed #fanfic #modern au #jacob frye #jacob frye x reader #connor kenway #sfw #no pigeon's were harmed in the making of this fic 😁

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swanqueeneverafter · 6 years

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33. It’s Not Easy Being Green, Pt.5

Storybrooke. Present Day. Main Street. (David, Belle and Tinker Bell walk down the street.) David: “If we position someone there, there and there we’ll have the whole street covered.” Tinker Bell: “I’ll talk to Blue. See if we can get any reinforcements.” (Emma and Mary Margaret join them.) Emma: “No. You heard Zelena, she said no interference. She would order Gold to level half the block if we try something before she has a crack at her sister.” Tinker Bell: “So, they really are sisters?” Mary Margaret: “She found a letter in her vault confirming it.” David: “Where is she? Regina?” Mary Margaret: “She disappeared. Something in the letter upset her.” Tinker Bell: “Should we try to find her?” Emma: “Regina was pretty clear she didn’t want any help on this one.” David: “You’ll let her walk into this fight alone?” Emma: “No, she’s gonna get help whether she wants it or not.” Belle: “But you just said we can’t interfere.” Emma: “Because Zelena has Gold on her side we need to remove him from the equation. It’s the only way Regina has a fighting chance. We just need to get his dagger.” Mary Margaret: “You saw Zelena. She practically has it glued to her hand.” Belle: “Wait. What if I can get through to Rumple without the dagger?” Mary Margaret: “It’s worth a try. Regina can’t do this alone.” Somewhere In The Woods. (Regina reads the letter she found in her vault again. Patrolling the area, an armed Robin Hood recognizes Regina and decides to approach her.) Robin Hood: “We have to stop meeting like this.” (Turning around, Regina pockets the letter.) Regina: “Did the Charmings send you to give me a pep talk? Cause I don’t do well with pep talks.” Robin Hood: “No, nothing of the sort. After Zelena’s threat I decided to patrol the woods. In case she decided to build the ranks of her simian army. (He sits down beside Regina:) How are you holding up?” Regina: “I’m not a flying monkey if that’s what you mean.” (Robin chuckles.) Robin Hood: “So, you gonna tell me what’s in that letter you’ve been starring at?” Regina: “What letter?” Robin Hood: “This one. (Holding up the letter so that she can see he has taken it:) I’m a pickpocket by trade. I spent many years learning how to rob from magicians.” Regina: “You’re lucky I’m saving my strength for that witch.” Robin Hood: “I think, deep down you actually wanna talk about what’s in there.” Regina: “What makes you think you know me so well?” Robin Hood: “Well, for one thing I’d be charred to a crisp by now, if you didn’t.” Regina: “True.” Robin Hood: “So, can I read it?” Regina: “Not stopping you.” Robin Hood (Reading aloud:) “‘Cora, dear. I’ve finally got my hands on your first born. Never thought I’d find her, did you? Now I know why: She’s the most powerful sorceress I’ve ever encountered. Even more powerful than you. Stunning in every way.’ Rather complimentary I’d say. Why is this troubling you?” Regina: “I’ve seen that letter a hundred times before. In my darkest moments I’d go to it for comfort. For solace. For a boost when I needed it. Because I- Because I always thought it was about me.” Robin Hood: “It’s about Zelena.” Regina: “Rumpelstiltskin thinks she’s more powerful than I am.” Robin Hood: “Why care what that imp thinks?” Regina: (Downcast:) “Because, if the man who taught me everything I know about magic, thinks she is stronger than I am, then there’s no way I can win this fight.” Zelena's Farmhouse. (Belle approaches the storm cellar.) Emma: “All clear. There’s no sign of Zelena. It looks like she’s still keeping Gold in the cellar.” (Belle hurriedly enters the storm cellar.) Belle: “Rumple?” Mr. Gold: “Belle?” Belle: “I’ve come to free you.” Mr. Gold: “No, leave. Leave. You have no idea what this witch will make me do to you. She can’t see you with me.” Belle: “I’m not afraid. You would never hurt me.” Mr. Gold: “It’s futile. As long as she holds the dagger I cannot leave.” Belle: “I’m not leaving without you.” Mr. Gold: “It’s not worth the risk.” Belle: “Just try. You just have to believe in us.” (Belle offers Mr. Gold a hand and he stands up.) Mr. Gold: “Run!” Belle: (Surprised:) “What?” Mr. Gold: “Run! Go!” Zelena: (Laughing:) “Don’t mind me. Carry on. I was just enjoying the show.”(Belle flees the cellar. Emma, David and Tinker Bell are waiting outside.) Emma: “Belle?” David: “Over here.” Belle: “It was a trick. She’s toying with us.”

Mr. Gold: (Climbing out of the cellar:) “Zelena sends a message. She will face Regina without interference. The next time you try to stop her... I will kill you.” Main Street. (Citizens assemble to watch the upcoming fight.) Emma: “Have you seen Regina?” Mary Margaret: “Not since the vault.” Tinker Bell: “If she doesn’t get here soon that witch will take it out on all of us.” David: “Let’s take everybody out of here before that happens. (Turning to the crowd:) Alright, listen up. We need you to get back to your homes.” Zelena: “No one’s going anywhere. (The crowd backs away from Zelena and Mr. Gold:) This show needs an audience. (To Mr. Clark:) Out of my way, munchkin.” Mr. Clark: “I’m a dwarf.” Zelena: “That’s even worse. Where is she? Don’t tell me. She’s a coward. This isn’t good. For any of you. Who’d you wanna kill first, Rumple?” Emma: (Stepping forward:) “He’s not killing anyone. If you wanna fight someone, Zelena, fight me.” Zelena: “Sorry dear, I don’t dance with amateurs.” Emma: “I’m not an amateur. I’m the savior.” Zelena: “Looks like someone has an inflated sense of self-worth. (Zelena looks at Mr. Gold who directs his magic at Emma causing her to fall backwards:) Anybody else wanna give it a go?” Regina: “I do. (The crowd makes room for her:) Didn’t anyone tell you? Black is my color.” Zelena: (Chuckles:) “But it looks so much better on me. I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show up.” Regina: “I couldn’t let my sister off that easily.” Zelena: “So, you’ve finally accepted me into the family?” Regina: “I’ve accepted that we shared a mother, yes. But I still have one question: What the hell did I ever do to you?” Zelena: “Isn’t it obvious? You were born.” (Regina slaps her in the face.) Regina: “I’ve been waiting to do that. All day.”

Zelena: “Rumplestiltstskin can’t save you this time. He should’ve chosen me.” Regina: “That’s what this is about? You’re jealous of me?” (Regina looks up and focuses her magic at a set of traffic lights causing a pair to fall down. Zelena changes the direction of the piece so that it cannot harm her. Bystanders jump, startled.) Zelena: “You still don’t realize what you had. You never did. You got everything I ever wanted and you didn’t even deserve it. But I’m gonna take it all from you.” (Magically, Zelena jostles Regina away causing her to crash backwards into a blue car.) Doc: (Dejectedly:) “My Miata.” (Regina recovers and walks up to her sister. Again she uses magic, forming a fireball in one hand. However, before she’s able to use it, Zelena puts out the fire. Zelena lifts her sister up into the air choking her at the same time.) Zelena: “You can’t beat me, little sis. Everything Rumplestiltskin taught you, he taught me, too. But I was the better student.” (She sends Regina flying through the Clock Tower’s window, then teleports herself close to Regina.) Regina: “What are you waiting for? Kill me.” Zelena: “I never said I wanted to kill you. I said I wanted to destroy you. And to do that I need your heart. (Zelena thrusts her hand into Regina’s chest. After a moment she withdraws empty-handed:) Where is it?” Regina: “My mother taught me one thing: Never bring your heart to a witch fight. Something you’d know if she hadn’t abandoned you.” (Magically, Regina pushes Zelena backwards.) Zelena: (Angry:) “You haven’t won, Regina. I will get your heart. I will get everything you ever had.” Regina: (Smiles:) “Not today.”

(Zelena summons her broom and leaves. Emma, Mary Margaret and David join Regina.) Emma: “Regina, are you alright?” Regina: “I’m still alive, aren’t I?” David: “Gold disappeared. We thought that meant she...” Regina: “Defeated me? Hardly.” Mary Margaret: “You won?” Regina: “Don’t act so surprised. As it turns out Zelena wanted my heart. It’s a good thing I wasn’t stupid enough to bring it with me.” Emma: “What? Where is it?” Regina: “With a friend. (At Emma’s look:) With Robin Hood.” Emma: “Seriously?” David: (Cutting in:) “Any idea why she wants it?” Regina: “Well, she got your courage and wants my heart. Those are ingredients.” Emma: “For what? A curse?” Mary Margaret: “We’re already in Storybrooke. We’ve already lost our memories. What else could she do to us?” Somewhere In The Woods. (Hurriedly, Regina runs into the forest. Pointing a flashlight here and there she’s looking for something.) Robin Hood: “Did the plan work?” Regina: “That depends - is it still here?” Robin Hood: “Right where you left it.” (Nearby a tree he kneels down and begins to dig up Regina’s heart.) Regina: (Relieved:) “Then it worked. I just needed to find the one thing I had that Zelena didn’t.“ Robin Hood: “And what exactly was that?” (He hands Regina her heart back.) Regina: “My heartless mother. (She tucks her heart into a small satchel:) My sister was right about something. She said I don’t always realize what I have right in front of me.” Robin Hood: (Standing up:) “What’s that?” Regina: “Just, that I didn’t always appreciate things. (Pressing the satchel into Robin Hood’s hand:) Would you mind holding on to this for a bit longer?” Robin Hood: (In mild disbelief:) “You’re really going to entrust something so valuable to a common thief like me?” Regina: “You can’t steal something that’s been given to you. Besides, I know where to find you.” (She turns around and walks away.)

Granny’s Bed & Breakfast. Henry: “Thanks, Kilian. Maybe we can go out on your boat again sometime.” Hook: “Anytime, lad.” Emma: (Emma opens the door. She ruffles Henry’s hair:) “Hey.” (Henry enters the apartment.) Hook: “How did the Queen fare against the Witch?” Emma: “She survived. But the rest is definitely more than a doorway conversation. (Hook nods. Emma pauses and then decides to speak up once again:) Thanks for taking him.” Hook: “There’s more Bae in your boy than you realize. He needs to know about his father, Emma. You can’t just take him back to New York when this is over and pretend like none of this is real.” Emma: “Thanks again.” (She steps back inside closing the door behind her. Hook exits.) Zelena's Farmhouse. (Zelena locks Mr. Gold up.) Mr. Gold: “What, no meat pie?” (Furious, Zelena turns around with the dagger in hand. Mr. Gold doubles over in pain.) Zelena: “She’s clever, Rumple. But, so am I. Regina’s heart is somewhere in this town. It’s only a matter of time before I find it.” Mr. Gold: “Whatever twisted curse you have planned, it won’t change anything. If I had to do it all again, I’d still choose Regina.” Zelena: “Would you, now? Well, I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.” Mr. Gold: “I’m afraid, I don’t understand.” Zelena: “We are doing it all over again. What I’m casting isn’t a curse. (Chuckles:) It’s a second chance.”

The Land Of Oz. Past. The Emerald City. (Two guards try to prevent Zelena from entering the Wizard’s audience room. Using magic, she flings both of them aside and enters.) Zelena: “I learned some tricks while I was gone. You showed me my past. Now take me there. To the moment my mother abandoned me. That’s when it all went wrong. I need to go back and change it.” (The Wizard’s shadow appears on the curtain.) The Wizard: “You want to travel back in time? To change the past?” (Laughing. Flames shoot up from the ground.) Zelena: “What’s so funny?” The Wizard: “I’m afraid that’s impossible.” Zelena: “I thought, you were the Great and Terrible Oz.” The Wizard: “Even my power has its limits.” Zelena: (She rips down the curtain:) “You’re telling me.” (Dragging the Wizard towards herself.) The Wizard: “No. Don’t hurt me. Please.” Zelena: “Who are you?” Wizard: “My name is Walsh. I’m just a circus huckster. I’m a showman. I come from a distant land. A place called Kansas.” Zelena: “You’re not even a wizard?” Walsh: “It’s all part of the act. But, what I peddle is real. What you saw there is real. (Gesturing towards the ground:) Those slippers (Looking at Zelena’s shoes:) took you to the Enchanted Forest, didn’t they? I may not have magic. But the things I collect do.” Zelena: “That’s why you wanted me to bring you something of Rumplestiltskin’s. So, you could carry on this charade.” Walsh: “I didn’t mean any harm. I was just trying to help us both. What you seek doesn’t exist. No magic is that strong.” Zelena: “Well, then I have no use for you. At least not like that.” Walsh: (Standing up:) “Like what?” Zelena: “What I need is someone willing to do whatever I ask without question. (Zelena notices a poster of Walsh’s circus. A flying monkey is advertised:) Like a trained circus animal.” Walsh: “You’re evil.” Zelena: “Not evil, dear. Wicked.” Walsh: “No. No!” (He tries to flee. Green smoke covers him. As the green smoke clears, a flying monkey rises. It shrieks.) Zelena: “Much better. Now, come. (Obediently the monkey trudges after Zelena:) I’m going to find a way to change the past. I’ve got work to do. (She directs her magic at the ground. Again, Regina practices to wield magic. She succeeds. Rumplestiltskin approaches her from behind.) Rumplestiltskin: “Well done, Regina. You’ve been practicing. You’re shaping up to be the best pupil I ever had.” (Regina smiles.) Zelena: (Watching them:) “We’ll see about that. When I’m done, Regina, you’ll have never even been born.” (Zelena’s green skin color spreads further, until her whole face is entirely green.)

The End.

#sq #swanqueen #swan queen

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borisofroyalpains-blog · 6 years

Text

Merry Christmas!

Or happy winter holiday of your choice or happy New Year, as you prefer! : )

No new screenshots or quotes yet, I’m afraid - I’m stockpiling them so that if work gets really busy as it did this fall, I won’t just disappear off the face of the internet again. Ideally I plan to start posting regularly again in the new year.

In the meantime, I do have a little present for my Shadow Pond family and any other Royal Pains / Boris fans out there.

I have a few ideas that have been floating around in my head for months. I’ve written bits down here and there, but none of them are anything close to complete. So, for this holiday season, I’m going to lay out a brief summary and short snippet from five of these fic ideas and you wonderful people can tell me which one I should actually get down to writing.

Everyone - and by “everyone” I mean “anyone who reads this post” - gets two votes, and the fic with the most votes by January 8th is the one I’ll start really working on. Hopefully I’ll be able to start posting in February or March - we’ll see! (The other ideas will probably be written eventually, but I’ll give priority to the one people like best and work to get it finished.)

So let me know what sounds good to you and have a very merry Christmas / happy holiday / fun New Year’s!! Fic samples under the cut! ^_~

*Note: These are all Boris/Hank fics because that’s how I roll. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

1) The Shapeshifter AU

Wherein Boris is a shapeshifter and Shadow Pond serves as a safe haven for other shifters. When Hank crashes a party and saves the life of a guest, Boris decides he is the ideal candidate - not only to become Boris’s personal doctor, but also to help with a plan of even greater importance. Hank, meanwhile, knows that his new boss is a very private, even secretive man…but he has no idea just how much Boris is hiding. [This one has the potential to get super long, just to warn you. It mmight take longer to see any of it.]

—

“So what was the big hurry?” Evan asked as soon as Hank came onto the patio. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” Hank said as he passed him. “Just a bite.”

“A – a bite?” Evan repeated. “Like a wo– uh, a dog bite, or uh…something else?”

Hank turned slowly. Evan only got that high-pitched and agitated when he’d done something that he knew Hank wouldn’t like. “What do you mean, something else?” If this was leading up to some wild theory that Boris was a vampire…

“I, uh, nothing? I didn’t mean anything! I was just – I’m not supposed to know, I’m not supposed to say anything –”

“You tell me right now,” Hank interrupted, cutting through the babble, “or –”

“The attack wolves are really wolves!” Evan blurted. “And there are tons of other animals up there, like foxes and bobcats and probably lions and tigers and bears for all I know –”

“Oh, sure.” Hank relaxed. “Boris just has a private menagerie that roams the property and bites unsuspecting –”

“Henry, I saw them,” Evan insisted, and he looked so completely serious that Hank couldn’t help but believe him.

A few more pointed questions and the whole story came spilling out. By the end of it, Hank was simmering with righteous indignation. It didn’t matter if the housekeeper had really been bitten by a “dog” or not – Boris had obviously coached her on what to say, lied repeatedly to Hank and Evan, and then threatened Evan into lying for him!

“I’ll be back soon,” he said grimly, and started back out toward the main house.

“Henry!” Evan caught at his arm. “Look, maybe we should just let it go. What if he feeds you to his pit of alligators or something?”

“No, Ev, I’m not gonna let this go. I won’t work for someone I can’t trust.”

This time, Evan let him go with a wordless noise of frustration. Hank was well on his way when he heard Evan yell, “If you’re not back by dinner, I’m calling animal control!”

2) The Season 8 Fix-It Fic

Wherein Hank doesn’t run off to find Jill, Boris doesn’t abandon Shadow Pond, and the two of them go on a vacation together instead. [Could go shorter or longer, but I’d say at least 5-10 chapters.]

—

Hank arrived to find Boris already seated, as per usual, with a newspaper.

“Hank.”

“Hey, Boris.” Hank sat with a quiet sigh. Then he straightened in his seat as Udo put a drink in front of him, knowing immediately that something was up.

That was a bottle of beer – and not just any beer, but Hank’s favorite, the one that Boris couldn’t see without getting a look of mild disdain.

Hank looked from the beer to Boris, who was wearing his blandest expression. Hank considered his options for a moment, then picked up the bottle and took a sip.

“Okay. What’s the occasion?”

Boris looked pleased. “I have a proposal for you, Hank.”

Hank grinned in spite of himself. “Yeah, I figured as much. What kind of international intrigue is it this time?”

“Nothing so exciting,” said Boris. He paused a moment, smoothing a hand across the linen tablecloth. “I would like to offer you a vacation, anywhere you like, as long as you like. No hidden agenda. Just some time away to think about what changes you want.”

3) The Deal with a Devil AU

Crossover with the short film Love, Lots of It (starring Campbell Scott). I wrote a prompt post for this idea a while back and started writing it myself. Whoops. ^_^;; [Not sure how long this would be? Honestly this is the one that needs the most planning still.]

—

There had been a story on campus, that’s what Rob had been talking about. It always made the rounds before major exams, this story about a man (or a demon or the devil, depending on who was telling it) who would grant the requests of the desperate. For a price, of course. Hank had always thought of it as just a running joke on campus, but there had been students who insisted it was true. None of them had ever seen the man in person – it was always “this girl who was here five years ago” or “my friend’s older brother’s lab partner” – but they were convinced nonetheless.

“This is stupid,” Hank said aloud. His voice sounded dull and flat in the oppressive silence of his apartment.

You’d do anything, huh? Really anything?

He stared blankly at the TV screen, not really seeing the silent, moving figures. He could just – go for a drive. Just get out of the apartment and away from the stacks of bills for a little while. He could just drive up that road, kind of a nod to one of the quirks of his alma mater. And if he brought a box, just in case… No one would ever have to know.

4) Hank gets kidnapped; Boris is Not Pleased

When Hank substituted his blood for Boris’s in Hong Kong, neither of them thought that Guy’s mysterious employers would target Hank himself. Unfortunately, they were wrong. [Again, could go shorter or longer. Sort of hurt/comfort, I guess, but very short on the hurt - nothing really awful is going to happen to Hank.]

I don’t have a good intro clip for this one, so have a longer summary: Hank receives an offer - a whole lot of money in exchange for just a little information about his employer. Bound by doctor-patient confidentiality and his own loyalty, Hank of course refuses. Alas, he’s dealing with people who won’t take no for an answer and is subsequently kidnapped. While Hank tries to stall for time and avoid giving his captors any useful information, Boris sets a search for him in motion and tries not to completely lose it. And of course, when eventually Hank’s location is discovered, Boris insists on handling the situation personally.

And here are the lines that kicked off this idea for me: Hank called him a word that he’d once heard Dmitry call Boris when Dmitry was particularly irate. Someone backhanded him viciously, and Hank decided to take that as a compliment on his pronunciation.

5) Hank has a secret admirer

Mysterious gifts start appearing outside the guesthouse for Hank. Who could this secret admirer possibly be?? [Short and very sweet. Like that’s the entire plot, Hank getting very thoughtful presents. And maybe falling in love. With Boris. In case you couldn’t tell.]

—

Hank was hardly an artist, but the portrait didn’t look like professional work to his untrained eye. But the level of detail, the warm, happy expression on portrait-Hank’s face… It felt so personal, so – Hank struggled for words – reverential, almost, that his breath caught in his chest.

“Well that’s creepy.”

Evan’s voice came out of nowhere, and Hank twitched in surprise. “Hey, that’s my face you’re talking about!” he said defensively.

“You’re right, that’s part of the problem,” Evan said, nodding, “but I was more thinking about the fact that you clearly have some kind of stalker.”

Hank laughed. “Ev, don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m serious, Henry!” He pointed at the drawing. “Look at that – someone has been staring longingly at your face from the shadows and probably going through our trash. It’s creepy!”

Hank tilted the portrait toward his chest, feeling oddly protective of it. “You’re blowing this way out of proportion - nobody is going through our trash! I think you’re just jealous.”

“Jealous? Why would I – What –” Evan sputtered.

“Goodbye, Evan,” Hank said, making a quick exit and taking the latest gift with him.

Soooo those are the main fic ideas I have kicking around in my head right now. Tell me which two you’re most interested in reading and hopefully I’ll start posting the most popular choice in a few months. Happy holidays!

#Royal Pains #Boris Kuester von Jurgens-Ratenicz #Hank Lawson #Boris/Hank #write the fic #my comrades in lust #our Shadow Pond family #ALL the RP / Boris fans #vote now!! get fic!!#i hope all of you are doing well and i promise i'll be around more in 2018

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yetanotheremptypage · 5 years

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Happy Fanfiction Writers’ Appreciation Day!

It’s another fic rec list! Here’s last year’s, and here’s the masterpost with links to previous years’ lists. They are all amazing, so you should definitely check them out, but in the mean time, here’s some more. I tried to tag most of the ships and/or fandoms, so if you ship any of those or are in the fandom, check out the recs below the cut. Of course, there are plenty more amazing fanfictions/writers out there, and to them, I give a huge THANK YOU! Finally, for the shameless plug, if you have any interest in any of my stories, links can be found here.

all of my wrongs they lead me right to you series (Lara Jean x Peter, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before) AO3 [In-progress]

Lara Jean and Peter Kavinsky reconnect 6 years after breaking up.

Peter's hiding a secret that could change everything.

A great look at relationships and the happy ever after we all want for these two. Plus Peter as a single dad. Perfection in every story, from courtship to parenting.

And All The Devils Are Here (Rosaline x Benvolio, Still Star-Crossed) AO3 [Complete]

It's a simple story, really: Girl meets Boy. Girl hates Boy. Girl and Boy infiltrate the most popular reality dating show on television to expose its unethical treatment of contestants and have to act like they're falling in love... And suddenly, the lines get blurred between the sparks flying on screen - and the real thing that grows when the cameras stop rolling.

Did you know you needed a Rosaline x Benvolio undercover Bachelor AU? No. But you do. Trust me. It’s by the same author as Falser Than Vows Made In Wine, which I rec’ed another year, and it is just as perfect.

Close To The Ground (MCU) AO3 [Complete]

“Not done,” Tony slices a hand through the air, and Peter shuts his mouth immediately. “Because you must have done something. Last I remember, your mother wasn’t an insect.”

Peter winces, but he can’t help mumbling an “Arachnid,” under his voice.

“Excuse me?”

“Spiders are arachnids, not insects.” Mask clutched in his hands, staring at the floor, Peter decides this might just be one of the worst moments of his young, ever persisting life.

(...or the civil war biodad au that no one asked for.)

Need to recover after the Starkson feels of the recent MCU films and/or the Marvel-Sony battle? Try this on for size. It’s so well-written, though, that it could make things worse. But probably not.

Elegance Cannot Kill A Man series (Sansa x Tyrion, Games of Thrones) AO3 [In-progress]

What if a good deed resulted in Sansa and Tyrion being married before Ned Stark's death? How would this change the Game of Thrones?

A series featuring a Sansa who is strong and smart, a Varys with a plan, and a Tyrion who has no idea what he's gotten himself in for.

This series gives me SO MUCH LIFE. In a recent review, I described it as the political fantasy epic the TV series wished it could be. Everything about it is amazing. Everything. I’m on the fourth one right now and literally everything is amazing, even the sad stuff. Just do it.

Happiness Can’t Be Arranged series (Regina x Robin, Once Upon A Time) AO3 || FF [In-progress]

Set during the Regency Period, Henry and Cora arrange a marriage for their daughter in an effort to save their family’s name and estate.

I accidentally stumbled across this series due to a OUAT hyperfixation relapse, and I think the relapse occurred so I would find this fic. The characters are so well written to the point that I hear the actors’ voices in my head, guys. It’s got everything: friends to lovers, arranged marriage, mutual pining. Also, we were robbed of Henry and Roland interaction and I didn’t know it until this fic.

Home (Sybil x Tom, Downton Abbey) FF [In-progress]

The lives of Tom and Sybil Branson, both in Dublin and Yorkshire, as told through an anthology of stories. Proudly AU from 3x05 onward.

I don’t remember how I found this, but in excitement over the Downton Abbey movie, why not read a brilliant AU where Sybil Lives and she and Tom get to be happy? It is a one/two-shot series and is complete perfection.

I Wanna Mash-Up With You (Brittany x Santana, Glee) FF [In-progress]

"People think that she and Britt just fall together when they're drunk at parties, maybe in between boyfriends. And Santana lets them believe it because she isn't ready for them to know its not the falling together that does her in, it's the fact she feels like without her, she would fall apart." Brittana & Quick. Lots of Unholy Trinity & Pucktana friendship too. Canon couples.

Full disclosure: I came for the Quick, stayed for the amazing Holy Trinity relationship, and wait with bated breath for the Brittana I know will soon come alive (For realz, at least). The characterizations are on point, and I love how it explores motivations for these early Season 1 moments.

Identity series (Leia x Han, Star Wars) AO3 || FF [Complete]

A distress signal reaches Coruscant after the Empire's demise, claiming to be the beacon of Bail Organa. what would the reappearance of Leia's adoptive father mean for her life in a post ROTJ context. What would he think of Han Solo, and what could he tell her about the dark shadow of her heritage? H/L; significantly AU, I suppose.

THIS IS AN AMAZING AU AND I AM IN LOVE WITH IT. PLEASE GO READ THE SERIES. THE WORLD BUILDING IS FANTASTIC AND THE CHARACTERIZATION FLAWLESS. I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE FOR THE CAPS LOCK.

Kindle (Harry x Ginny, Harry Potter) AO3 || FF [Complete]

Life throws a lot of unexpected things Harry Potter's way, but his luck has been pretty good so far.

THE Hinny Modern Single Dad-Ish AU you must read. We’ve got Weasley shenanigans, Sirius/Jily alive and well, Teddy as the Ultimate Shipper, and Harry and Ginny being super adorable and amazing all over the place. Plus, Harry as his awkward relatable self. A 10/10 must-read.

made weak by time and fate, but strong in will (Harry Potter) AO3 [In-progress]

In one world, James Potter is wandless when he faces Voldemort.

In another, he’s not, and everything changes.

*incoherent screaming for years about how absolutely perfect this fic is: the A+ characterization, the magnificent world building, and the fantastic pacing*

Poe Organa-Solo series (Star Wars) AO3 || FF [In-progress]

“You’re Han Solo’s kid, aren’t you?” he asks.Poe has no idea how to answer that, on a foreign planet no less. There are two types of people in the galaxy - those who hear yes and want to buy him a drink, and those who hear yes and want to kill him. He doesn’t feel like finding out which type this guy is, but then again does he really have a choice?

Hi, did you know that Poe Dameron was adopted by Han and Leia after Shara and Kes’ tragic demise, Luke is Kylo Ren’s father, and Kylo Ren is directly responsible for the death of Han and Leia’s biological daughter, Breha, and deserves to die for it? No? Then you haven’t read this masterpiece. Please correct yourself.

the santiago-peralta family stories series (Amy x Jake, Brooklyn 9-9) AO3 [In-progress]

This series is goddamn amazing and follows the two most amazing detectives raising some of the most amazing kids. It’s so well written and so FLUFFY and just amazing.

we’ve been together as long as i can remember (but we only make love in the spring) (Sansa x Tyrion, Game of Thrones) AO3 [In-progress]

She is always cold. And thin, so thin. He feels her bones protruding under her pale, marble skin, even with the layer of her clothes in his way: ribs and hipbone and the sharp angles of her shoulders, shoulder-blades, the notches of her spine. He ran a finger over them, once, in one of his braver moods, almost down to the small of her back, and felt her shivering lightly under the touch. Made of steel, he had thought, then. Today, he rests one modest hand on her shoulder. She's not drunk, he knows she's not, but he won't risk her resentment in the morning.

Still, even with the privilege that is to know her bones, he wishes he had a whole harvest for her.

This whole marriage is winterbound. He wouldn't call it love.

"Thank you", she mumbles, eyes closed and face hidden on his chest. "You're a good husband".

He reaches for the tip of the nearest blanket to cover her and bows his head down to puts his lips to her forehead. "You're drunk", he answers, and she chuckles briefly, too tired to argue.

[Where all the wars are over; the Starks are starting again; and everyone waits for news of spring.]

This might be one of the absolute best versions of Sansa and Tyrion coming back to each other, with all their demons, and making something beautiful out of it, that I have ever read.

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networkingdefinition · 5 years

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Thanksgiving Quotes

Official Website: Thanksgiving Quotes

• A basic law: the more you practice the art of thankfulness, the more you have to be thankful for. – Norman Vincent Peale • A lot of Thanksgiving days have been ruined by not carving the turkey in the kitchen. – Kin Hubbard • A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue but the parent of all the other virtues. – Marcus Tullius Cicero • All across America, we gather this week with the people we love to give thanks to God for the blessings in our lives. – George W. Bush • All that I see teaches me to thank the Creator for all I cannot see. – Henrietta Mears • Always expect the unexpected. Right around Thanksgiving, when the new Alex Cross will be out. It’s called Four Blind Mice and it’s a pretty amazing story about several murders inside the military. – James Patterson • An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day. – Irv Kupcinet • And though I ebb in worth, I’ll flow in thanks. – John Taylor Ann Voskamp • Anything I cannot thank God for for the sake of Christ, I may not thank God for at all; to do so would be sin. … We cannot rightly acknowledge the gifts of God unless we acknowledge the Mediator for whose sake alone they are given to us. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer • As governor, when I visited our troops in Kuwait and Iraq, I served them Thanksgiving dinner. It was a small gesture compared to their sacrifice. – Jennifer Granholm • As much as I love crisp, clean whites, there’s always a time for rich but balanced Chardonnays with oak, especially at Thanksgiving. – Gary Vaynerchuk • As soon as someone tells me: ‘You’re rather sexy,’ I wish I could disappear. If somebody says: ‘You were voted the world’s sexiest man,’ I have no idea what that means. How do I respond? ‘Thank you’ is the best you can do. George Clooney is the world’s sexiest man, anyway. – Daniel Craig • At Thanksgiving, my mom always makes too much food, especially one item, like 700 or 800 pounds of sweet potatoes. She’s got to push it during the meal. “Did you get some sweet potatoes? There’s sweet potatoes. They’re hot. There’s more in the oven, some more in the garage. The rest are at the Johnson’s.”- Louie Anderson

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Thanksgiving', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_thanksgiving').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_thanksgiving img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Be present in all things and thankful for all things. – Maya Angelou • Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. – Oprah Winfrey Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough. • Before you go out into the world, wash your face in the clear crystal of praise. Bury each yesterday in the fine linen and spices of thankfulness. – Charles Spurgeon • Christmas is more stressful with present buying and making sure everyone gets included, but Thanksgiving is really not that. I don’t ever really get stressed out about the food. – Sandra Lee • Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • Dear Lord; we beg but one boon more: Peace in the hearts of all men living, peace in the whole world this Thanksgiving. – Joseph Auslander • Drink and be thankful to the host! What seems insignificant when you have it, is important when you need it. – Franz Grillparzer • Envy and greed starve on a steady diet of thanksgiving. – Billy Graham • Eucharisteo—thanksgiving—always precedes the miracle. – Ann Voskamp • Even though we’re a week and a half away from Thanksgiving, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.- Richard Roeper • Every day is a day to be thankful. Life’s abundance has no limit, and gratitude is what keeps that abundance flowing. In every circumstance there is something for which to be thankful. Even when there seems to be nothing else, there is hope.- Ralph Marston • Expressing gratitude for the miracles in your world is one of the best ways to make each moment of your life a special one. Happy Thanksgiving to you and your loved ones! – Wayne Dyer • For flowers that bloom about our feet; For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet; For song of bird, and hum of bee; For all things fair we hear or see, Father in heaven, we thank Thee! – Ralph Waldo Emerson • For three things I thank God every day of my life: thanks that he has vouchsafed me knowledge of his works; deep thanks that he has set in my darkness the lamp of faith; deep, deepest thanks that I have another life to look forward to–a life joyous with light and flowers and heavenly song.- Helen Keller • For what I have received may the Lord make me truly thankful. And more truly for what I have not received.- Storm Jameson • Forever on Thanksgiving Day the heart will find the pathway home. – Wilbur D. Nesbit • From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea. – Algernon Charles Swinburne • Giving thanks to God for both His temporal and spiritual blessings in our lives is not just a nice thing to do – it is the moral will of God. Failure to give Him the thanks due Him is sin. – Jerry Bridges • Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiving. – Charles Lamb • God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say ‘thank you?’ – William Arthur Ward • God gives us our relatives – thank God we can choose our friends. – Addison Mizner • God has two dwellings; one in heaven, and the other in a meek and thankful heart. – Izaak Walton • God is glorified, not by our groans, but by our thanksgivings. – Edwin Percy Whipple • God is pleased with no music below so much as with the thanksgiving songs of relieved widows and supported orphans; of rejoicing, comforted, and thankful persons. – Jeremy Taylor • God smiles when we praise and thank Him continually. Few things feel better than receiving heartfelt praise and appreciation from someone else. God loves it, too. An amazing thing happens when we offer praise and thanksgiving to God. When we give God enjoyment, our own hearts are filled with joy. – William Law • Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings.” – William Arthur Ward • Gratitude is the inward feeling of kindness received. Thankfulness is the natural impulse to express that feeling. Thanksgiving is the following of that impulse. – Henry Van Dyke • He that enjoys naught without thanksgiving is as though he robbed God. – Saint John Chrysostom • He who thanks but with the lips. Thanks but in part; the full, the true Thanksgiving. Comes from the heart. – John G. Shedd • How wonderful it would be if we could help our children and grandchildren to learn thanksgiving at an early age. Thanksgiving opens the doors. It changes a child’s personality. A child is resentful, negative, or thankful. Thankful children want to give, they radiate happiness, they draw people. – John Templeton • I absolutely adore Thanksgiving. It’s the only holiday I insist on making myself. – Ina Garten • I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite – only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety. – Henry David Thoreau • I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • I can only say thank you and thanks also to all of the great songwriters who wrote those wonderful songs that became number ones. – George Strait • I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land. – Jon Stewart • I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens . . . to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.- Abraham Lincoln • I don’t think any other holiday embraces the food of the Midwest quite like Thanksgiving. There’s roasted meat and mashed potatoes. But being here is also about heritage. Cleveland is really a giant melting pot – not only is my family a melting pot, but so is the city. – Michael Symon • I have learned that in every circumstance that comes my way, I can choose to respond in one of two ways: I can whine or I can worship! And I can’t worship without giving thanks. It just isn’t possible. When we choose the pathway of worship and giving thanks, especially in the midst of difficult circumstances, there is a fragrance, a radiance, that issues forth out of our lives to bless the Lord and others. – Nancy Leigh DeMoss • I have nothing against turkey. We eat turkey for Thanksgiving in my house. – Marc Forgione • I have often met with happiness after some imprudent step which ought to have brought ruin upon me, and although passing a vote of censure upon myself I would thank God for his mercy. – Giacomo Casanova • I haven’t had that many weird encounters with fans, thank God. – Vin Diesel • I like to stuff myself at Thanksgiving, not turkeys. – Kevin Nealon • I love chicken. I would eat chicken fingers on Thanksgiving if it were socially acceptable.- Todd Barry • I love Halloween, trick or treating and decorating the house. And I love Thanksgiving, because of the football and the fall weather. And of course, I love Christmas – that’s my favorite of all! – Joe Nichols • I love Thanksgiving because it’s a holiday that is centered around food and family, two things that are of utmost importance to me. – Marcus Samuelsson • I love Thanksgiving turkey… It’s the only time in Los Angeles that you see natural breasts. – Arnold Schwarzenegger • I see the glass half full and thank God for what I have. – Ana Monnar • I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes. – e. e. cummings • I thought that all of the sacrifices and blessings of the whole history of mankind have devolved upon me. Thank you, God. – Ben Stein • I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to come and witness my hanging.- George W. Bush • I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • If a fellow isn’t thankful for what he’s got, he isn’t likely to be thankful for what he’s going to get. – Frank A. Clark • If I were ever to go mad it would be on Thanksgiving Day, that day of guilt and grace when the family hangs upon you like an ax over a sacrificial victim, like the oven’s heat on that poor bird.- Francine du Plessix Gray If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough. – Meister Eckhart • If you are really thankful, what do you do? You share. – W. Clement Stone • If you think about a Thanksgiving dinner, it’s really like making a large chicken. – Ina Garten • If you think Independence Day is America’s defining holiday, think again. Thanksgiving deserves that title, hands-down. – Tony Snow • I’m thankful for every moment.- Al Green In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.- Albert Schweitzer • In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices. – Elizabeth Gilbert • It has been an unchallengeable American doctrine that cranberry sauce, a pink goo with overtones of sugared tomatoes, is a delectable necessity of the Thanksgiving board and that turkey is uneatable without it. – Alistair Cooke • It is impossible to be negative while we are giving thanks. – Donald Curtis • It is now common knowledge that the average American gains 7 pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. – Marilu Henner • It is therefore recommended… to set apart Thursday the eighteenth day of December next, for solemn thanksgiving and praise, that with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor.- Samuel Adams • It must be an odd feeling to be thankful to nobody in particular. Christians in public institutions often see this odd thing happening on Thanksgiving Day. Everyone in the institution seems to be thankful ‘in general.’ It’s very strange. It’s a little like being married in general. – Cornelius Plantinga • It would seem that the ingratitude, whereby a subsequent sin causes the return of sins previously forgiven, is a special sin. For, the giving of thanks belongs to counter passion, which is a necessary condition of justice. But justice is a special virtue. Therefore this ingratitude is a special sin. Thanksgiving is a special virtue. But ingratitude is opposed to thanksgiving. Therefore ingratitude is a special sin. – Thomas Aquinas • It’s a thanksgiving to God. It’s something I have wanted to do for a long time, but the record company wasn’t ready for it. So I did it myself. – Aaron Neville • Its better to pace yourself throughout a big day like Thanksgiving by having something healthful for breakfast and something light for lunch. – Marilu Henner • It’s like being at the kids’ table at Thanksgiving – you can put your elbows on it, you don’t have to talk politics… no matter how old I get, there’s always a part of me that’s sitting there. – John Hughes • It’s so warm now, and Thanksgiving came so early – is it just me, or does it not really feel like Ramadan? – David Letterman • Life without thankfulness is devoid of love and passion. Hope without thankfulness is lacking in fine perception. Faith without thankfulness lacks strength and fortitude. Every virtue divorced from thankfulness is maimed and limps along the spiritual road. – John Henry Jowett • Lord, ’tis Thy plenty-dropping hand. That soils my land, And giv’st me for my bushel sowne. Twice ten for one. All this, and better, Thou dost send. Me, to this end, That I should render, for my part, A thankful heart. – – Robert Herrick • Make it a habit to tell people thank you. To express your appreciation, sincerely and without the expectation of anything in return. Truly appreciate those around you, and you’ll soon find many others around you. Truly appreciate life, and you’ll find that you have more of it. – Ralph Marston • May your heart be an altar, from which the bright flame of unending thanksgiving ascends to heaven. – Mary Euphrasia Pelletier • May your stuffing be tasty May your turkey plump, May your potatoes and gravy Have nary a lump. May your yams be delicious And your pies take the prize, And may your Thanksgiving dinner Stay off your thighs! – Grandpa Jones My cooking is so bad my kids thought Thanksgiving was to commemorate Pearl Harbor. – Phyllis Diller • My favorite meal is turkey and mashed potatoes. I love Thanksgiving, it’s just my favorite. I can have Thanksgiving all year round. – Cindy Margolis • My restaurants are never opened on Thanksgiving; I want my staff to spend time with their family if they can. My feeling is, if I can’t figure out how to make money the rest of the year so that my workers can enjoy the holidays, then I don’t deserve to be an owner. – Michael Symon • My whole problem is that all of my favorite things at Thanksgiving are the starches, and everyone is trying to go low-carb this year, even a green vegetable has carbs in it. – Ted Allen No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks. – James Allen • No matter what our circumstance, we can find a reason to be thankful. – David Jeremiah • No people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with the gratitude to the Giver of good who has blessed us. – Theodore Roosevelt • Not to sound too much like Christopher Guest in ‘Waiting for Guffman,’ but on Thanksgiving you’re putting on a show! – Ted Allen • Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.- W. T. Purkiser • Now thank we all our God, With hearts and hands and voices; Who wondrous things hath done, In whom this world rejoices. Who, from our mother’s arms, Hath led us on our way, With countless gifts of love, And still is ours today. – Martin Rinkart • Numberless marks does man bear in his soul, that he is fallen and estranged from God; but nothing gives a greater proof thereof, than that backwardness, which every one finds within himself, to the duty of praise and thanksgiving. – George Whitefield • O Lord that lends me life, Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness! – William Shakespeare • On Thanksgiving Day we acknowledge our dependence. – William Jennings Bryan • On Thanksgiving I will stop to give thanks that my family is safe and healthy, especially because I realize that, following the tragedies of this year, it is all too real a possibility that they might not have been. – Bobby Jindal • One of my most memorable Thanksgiving memories was probably the first year that me and my two brothers decided to start our annual eating contest. We ate throughout the whole day. We started that morning and weighed ourselves, and at the very end of the night, we weighed ourselves out. And all three of us equally gained five pounds. – Charles Kelley • Our Creator shall continue to dwell above the sky, and that is where those on earth will end their thanksgiving. – Seneca the Younger • Our family holidays always include our animals. On Thanksgiving, we love to walk around our farm and visit with our rescued pigs, goats, horses, emus and many other rescued animals. We give them all special vegetables that day, and the whole family enjoys a vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner. We know that the animals are giving thanks that day, and we are also giving thanks for the joy they bring to our lives. – Noah Wyle • Our knowledge of God is perfected by gratiitude: we are thankful and rejoice in the experience of the truth that He is love. – Thomas Merton • Our rural ancestors, with little blest, Patient of labor when the end was rest, Indulged the day that housed their annual grain, With feasts, and off’rings, and a thankful strain. – Alexander Pope • Over the Thanksgiving holiday I took time to reflect on what is most important to me and realized I need to find a way to put the fun back into racing. – Kurt Busch • Pride slays thanksgiving, but a humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves. – Henry Ward Beecher • Remembering with thanks is what causes us to trust – to really believe. • Sharing in God’s blessings is at the heart of Thanksgiving and at the core of the American spirit. – William J. Clinton • So once in every year we throng Upon a day apart, to praise the Lord with feast and song in thankfulness of heart. – Arthur Guiterman • Some hae meat and canna eat, And some wad eat that want it, But we hae meat and we can eat, And sae the Lord be thankit. – Robert Burns • Some people are absolutely funny and you want to wish them Happy Thanksgiving in funniest way possible. Here is the list of Funny Thanksgiving sayings. Just chose the quote you want to wish that person. Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread and pumpkin pie. – Jim Davis • Thank you for life, and all the little ups and downs that make it worth living. – Travis Barker • ‘Thank you’ is the best prayer that anyone could say. – Alice Walker ‘Thank you’ is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding. – Alice Walker • Thank you, God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough. – Garrison Keillor • Thankfulness is not something God gives us. It is not a spiritual gift and it is not a spiritual fruit. We can receive God’s peace, joy and love, but thankfulness is something that we give to Godand to others. It is a choice that we make. Let us thank Him today with songs of celebration, hearts of strong devotion and acts of admiration. -Roy Lessin • Thanks are the highest form of thought. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence. – Erma Bombeck • Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday…The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production. – Ayn Rand • Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often. – Johnny Carson • Thanksgiving is the holiday that encompasses all others. All of them, from Martin Luther King Day to Arbor Day to Christmas to Valentine’s Day, are in one way or another about being thankful. – Jonathan Safran Foer • Thanksgiving is worry’s kryptonite. – Matt Chandler • Thanksgiving, man. Not a good day to be my pants. – Kevin James • Thanksgiving, when the Indians said, “Well, this has been fun, but we know you have a long voyage back to England”. – Jay Leno • Thanksgiving. It proved you had survived another year with its wars, inflation, unemployment, smog, presidents. It was a grand neurotic gathering of clans: loud drunks, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, screaming children, would-be suicides. And don’t forget indigestion. I wasn’t different from anyone else: There sat the 18-pound bird on my sink, dead, plucked, totally disemboweled. Iris would roast it for me. – Charles Bukowski • Thanksgiving. It’s like we didn’t even try to come up with a tradition. The tradition is, we overeat. ‘Hey, how about at Thanksgiving we just eat a lot?’ ‘But we do that every day!’ ‘Oh. What if we eat a lot with people that annoy the hell out of us?’ – Jim Gaffigan • The act is unjustifiable that either begs for a blessing, or, having succeeded gives no thanksgiving. – Merle Shain • The Christian who walks with the Lord and keeps constant communion with Him will see many reason for rejoicing and thanksgiving all day long. – Warren W. Wiersbe • The funny thing about Thanksgiving ,or any big meal, is that you spend 12 hours shopping for it then go home and cook,chop,braise and blanch. Then it’s gone in 20 minutes and everybody lies around sortof in a sugar coma and then it takes 4 hours to clean it up. – Ted Allen • The joy I get from winning a major championship doesn’t even compare to the feeling I get when a kid writes a letter saying: ‘Thank you so much. You have changed my life.’ – Tiger Woods • The observance of Thanksgiving Day-as a function-has become general of late years. The Thankfulness is not so general. This is natural. Two-thirds of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard time during the year, and this has a calming effect upon their enthusiasm. – Mark Twain • The private and personal blessings we enjoy- the blessings of immunity, safeguard, liberty and integrity- deserve the thanksgiving of a whole life. – Jeremy Taylor • The simple act of saying ‘thank you’ is a demonstration of gratitude in response to an experience that was meaningful to a customer or citizen. – Simon Mainwaring • The Spirit of prayer makes us so intimate with God that we scarcely pass through an experience before we speak to Him about it, either in supplication, in sighing, in pouring out our woes before Him, in fervent requests, or in thanksgiving and adoration.- Ole Hallesby • The thankful heart sees the best part of every situation. It sees problems and weaknesses as opportunities, struggles as refining tools, and sinners as saints in progress. – Francis Frangipane • The thankful heart will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings. – Henry Ward Beecher • The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest. – William Blake • The Thanksgiving tradition is, we gorge. Hey, what about at Thanksgiving we simply consume a considerable measure? However we do that consistently! Goodness. Imagine a scenario where we consume a ton with individuals who pester the heck out of us.- Jim Gaffigan • The turkeys that most Americans eat for Thanksgiving are turkeys – losers that are mass produced and bland.- Marian Burros • The unthankful heart… discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings! Henry Ward Beecher • The very fact that a man is thankful implies someone to be thankful to. – John Baillie • There are a lot of New York City Thanksgiving traditions. For example, a lot of New Yorkers don’t buy the frozen Thanksgiving turkey. They prefer to buy the bird live and then push it in front of a subway train. – David Letterman • There is no better opportunity to receive more than to be thankful for what you already have. Thanksgiving opens the windows of opportunity for ideas to flow your way. – Jim Rohn • There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.- O. Henry • There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American. – O. Henry • Therefore, I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. – Paul the Apostle Thinking, Dinner, Chickens • Those who survived the San Francisco earthquake said, ‘Thank God, I’m still alive.’ But, of course, those who died, their lives will never be the same again. – Barbara Boxer • Thou that hast given so much to me give me one thing more, a grateful heart: not thankful when it pleaseth me, as if Thy blessings had spare days, but such a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise. – George Herbert To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.- Victor Hugo • We can always find something to be thankful for, and there may be reasons why we ought to be thankful for even those dispensations which appear dark and frowning. – Albert C. Barnes • We celebrate Thanksgiving along with the rest of America, maybe in different ways and for different reasons. Despite everything that’s happened to us since we fed the Pilgrims, we still have our language, our culture, our distinct social system. Even in a nuclear age, we still have a tribal people. – Wilma Mankiller • We give thanks often with a tearful, doubtful voice, for our spiritual mercies positive, but what an almost infinite field there is for mercies negative! We cannot even imagine all that God has allowed us not to do, not to be. – Frances Ridley Havergal • We have so much, yet many Americans feel dissatisfied. Somehow the full table, symbol of abundance to the pilgrims, is not enough. We yearn for something far beyond the material satisfaction. Find your place in history this Thanksgiving by stretching beyond your table. Celebrate your survival by offering peace and sharing with your neighbors. Make the shift from in illogical feeling of lack to the recognition of abundance. Invite the Spirit to your feast, and prepare to feed the world. – Jennifer James • We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives. – John F. Kennedy • We ought to make the moments notes Of happy glad Thanksgiving; The hours and days, a silent praise Of music we are living. – Ella Wheeler Wilcox • We would worry less if we praised more. Thanksgiving is the enemy of discontent and dissatisfaction. – Henry Allen Ironside • Well, there’s not a day goes by when I don’t get up and say thank you to somebody. – Rod Stewart • We’re having something a little different this year for Thanksgiving. Instead of a turkey, we’re having a swan. You get more stuffing – George Carlin • What does it mean when people applaud? Should I give ’em money? Say thank you? Lift my dress? The lack of applause – that I can respond to. – Barbra Streisand • What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving? – Erma Bombeck • When I was a kid in Indiana, we thought it would be fun to get a turkey a year ahead of time and feed it and so on for the following Thanksgiving. But by the time Thanksgiving came around, we sort of thought of the turkey as a pet, so we ate the dog. Only kidding. It was the cat! – David Letterman • When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself. – Tecumseh • WHEREAS it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint Committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANKSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.” – George Washington • With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, England mourns for her dead across the sea. – Laurence Binyon • You know that just before that first Thanksgiving dinner there was one wise, old Native American woman saying, Don’t feed them. If you feed them, they’ll never leave. – Dylan Brody • You may have heard of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There’s another day you might want to know about: Giving Tuesday. The idea is pretty straightforward. On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, shoppers take a break from their gift-buying and donate what they can to charity. – Bill Gates • Your friend is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. – Khalil Gibran

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equitiesstocks · 5 years

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Thanksgiving Quotes

Official Website: Thanksgiving Quotes

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cornishbirdblog · 5 years

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In many ways the communities on the Lizard are the most isolated in Cornwall. As wild and as sparsely populated as Bodmin Moor the peninsula has an added sense of otherness and seclusion that comes perhaps from being encircled by the untamed sea.

In the early 19th century the Lizard was notorious for its lawlessness. It was a renowned haunt of highwaymen and footpads (the name given to bandits without horses!) And an isolated area of the downs near Landwednack was home to a band of notorious thiefs and sheep rustlers.

The Old Lizard Windmill

“The finest and most romantic of all Cornish windmills”. – Charles Henderson, 1935.

We are getting used to seeing the white blades of today’s modern wind turbines on the horizon but there was a time when more traditional windmills dotted the Cornish countryside.

They were mostly stone built structures with wide wooden cloth-covered sails to catch the Cornish winds. Some were used to power the pumps used in mining and others for grinding corn. Usually they were found in places where wind power was a better option than water.

Illustration from Cornish Windmill – Douch

Although always rarities in the county there are more than 50 known windmills sites in Cornwall. But in most cases all traces of those mills has vanished completely. However, a handfull do still survive. Windmill towers can still be found at Maker, Fowey, on the Isles of Scilly, at Padstow, St Minver and near Landwednack on the Lizard.

There’s even a little book about them, packed with fascinating information, Cornish Windmills written by H. L. Douch published in the 1970s.

The Lizard Windmill

The Lizard Windmill, which stands near to the Lower Predannack Downs, was built about 400 years ago. It was a manorial mill used to grind corn for Trethevas Manor and was in regular use until 1840. Built entirely of Serpentine block it had three storeys and a thatched, and then later a slate, conical roof.

The Lizard Windmill in the 1950s, credit Helston Museum

It was originally known as the Mount Herman Mill and appears as a landmark on most maps of the area. It is marked on the famous Lanhydrock Atlas of 1695 as ‘the Old Mill’, leading to the belief that it was built in about 1600. Another map c1770 depicts the ‘Old Windmill’ with the tops of the walls already crumbling and some rather tattered sails still in position. It was possible that the Lizard Windmill was used in times of water shortage to protect the Lord of the Manor’s milling rights and it is described as being in working order in 1828.

When those sails finally disintegrated completely isn’t clear but by the mid 19th century the mill was deserted and being used as a store.

A Gang of Miscreants

The area around the Lizard Mill is said to be haunted. As recently as 2000 the local farmer reported his animals behaving strangely. He had planned to use the old mill house as a shelter but his stock became agitated and point blank refused to go inside. Some put the atmosphere here down to dark deeds committed around 200 years ago.

For several years past, the district of Meneage, and the neighbourhood of Helston, have been infested by a gang of thieves, who have carried their system of plunder to an extent which has been seldom if ever equalled. Scarcely a farmer but what has been robbed; and such has been the terror in which they have been held, that they chose rather to submit to be robbed with impunity than run the risk of an unsuccessful search, which would have brought upon them the vengeance of the miscreants. – Royal Cornwall Gazette, February 1829.

The isolated mill was the hideout for the notorious Windmill Gang in the 1820s. This band of robbers, footpads and sheep stealers terrorised the area. And were probably murderers to boot. Local legend has it that a field near to the windmill is the final resting place of the unfortunate Oliver Tucker. Tucker was murdered by the gang when he foolishly threatened to give evidence against them.

The Last Days of the Windmill Gang

In 1829 the Lizard Windmill was the scene of a rather strange incident reported in the local papers. Four prize rams were stolen from Mr Silvester, a farmer near the town of Helston. The police, who probably already had an idea of who the perpetrators were, undertook searches of premises in the villages of Grade and Landwednack.

Henry Harris, Alexander Hocking of Grade and James Jose, of Landewednack were singled out. At Jose’s 82 lbs of mutton, cut up in small chunks and salted, was found, hidden in a ‘bed-tye’. At Hocking’s, a bankrupt butcher, two legs and some skins were found. Both men were arrested and Hocking soon started informing on his friends. Armed with his confession the police then went on the hunt for Stephen Jose, brother of James, William Harris, and several others.

After a fruitless search for many hours, a hue and cry was raised, in which about forty persons joined, to search the cliffs, in some of the caves of which they were supposed to have concealed themselves. Mr Andrew, the active constable of Helston, so disposed of the party as to cut off all retreat. On crossing the open common near Kynance cove, Stephen Jose and William Harris were discovered and identified. Although at a great distance. A chace immediately took place, and finding their retreat towards the country cut off by two young men (farmers) called Hosking and Hendy, they made towards the sea. Hosking arrived on the beach just in time to see them plunge into the water. He called and begged them not to drown themselves, but they paid no attention to his entreaty, and after swimming about twenty minutes they were seen to sink, and rise no more. – Royal Cornwall Gazette, 1829

The men’s bodies were never recovered. And many locally believed that the men, who were expert swimmers, were merely evading arrest by hiding in one of the sea caves they were known to use. In the coming days several other members of the gang were arrested. Although only Jose and Hocking were ever actually charged.

The Windmill Farm Nature Reserve

Windmill Farm Nature Reserve is managed by the Cornwall Wildlife Trust and covers roughly 185 acres.

The Trust has numerous small reserves around the county and this one comprises of grassland and heathland as well as a bog and some ponds. The varied habitats, together with arable crops, provide lots of opportunities for bird watching. The adult marsh fritillary butterfly can also be seen here on the wing from spring to mid-summer.

By 1965 the roof of the old mill house had been blown off in winter storms and the building was in serious need of preservation. Fortunately Cornwall Wildlife Trust was able to purchase the land and the mill with help from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Lewis Forst Memorial Fund.

Lewis Frost was a botanist, born and bred in Norfolk. He developed an interest in the Lizard area of Cornwall in the 1950s. Frost’s passion for the area lasted the rest of his life and he would visit the Lizard two or three times a year. In 1956 David Coombe and Lewis Frost published a paper on the heaths of the Cornish serpentine. Frost raised considerable funds for the Cornwall Wildlife Trust and was actually made an honorary member.

Visiting the reserve

Apart from the Lizard Windmill the reserve contains some old farm buildings, one of which is used as an information centre and dedicated to Lewis Frost. There are also some Bronze Age barrows and Second World War pill boxes. (The windmill tower found another incarnation as a look out tower for the Home Guard in the 1940s.)

View from Lizard Windmill with Tregonning Hill in the distance

These days, after extensive restoration, visitors can climb the windmill for wonderful, expansive views across the Lizard landscape. There is also a self-guided walk and some fascinating information boards.

Above all the Windmill Farm Nature Reserve is a secluded and unusual place to discover. A great place to take in the quiet of the heath, watch the wildlife or grazing cattle and absorb the peaceful atmosphere. As long as you don’t believe in ghosts perhaps!

Parking is limited, I tucked my car in the wide entrance to the lane that leads to the reserve.

*Note: there are no dogs allowed on the reserve and LOTS of adders sightings in the summer months.