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yesimwriting · 3 years

Text

Searing Starlight (chapter 3)

A/n I CANNOT believe how many people have supported this story,, I’m so excited to continue it with you guys :))

Just a reminder that while this is based off the show i hope to blend in some book aspects/vibes and this is just a fanfic and it won’t be completely accurate/follow the show 100% and any changes I make/parts I chose not to focus on are for the sake of the story I’m trying to tell

I can’t tell if I wish Kaz had let me go with Inej or not. She’s faster than I am, and considering that I have no real reason to be loyal to them, I’m a flight risk. That means I’m stuck here with only the Kaz Brekker and Jesper, who I tricked. I hadn’t exactly befriended Inej entirely in the few minutes I was alone with her, but she seemed more trustworthy than them. More susceptible to reason. And when she heard where I was from, who was responsible for raising me, something in the way she watched me changed. It was the oddest combination--a look of both tired sympathy and cautious admiration.

“What I don’t understand…” Jesper breaks the silence. “Is why you all go back there. He lets you leave, he gives you money--there’s no reason to return.”

I try not to let the question anger me. I shift awkwardly, scratching at my palm. “We tried leaving.” My stomach knots. “Once.” How do I make them understand? “He caught us because we young and stupid, and then he…” I exhale slowly. They’re just words. They don’t change anything. Whether I speak them or not, the events of my history aren’t different. “He picked the youngest, a girl only six months younger than me, and he slit her throat from ear to ear and took a finger of anyone that flinched as her blood splattered onto them. He said her blood was our penance and to live with knowing what we did to her would be our punishment.”

I don’t tell them that I was twelve. I don’t tell them Anya lied about my birthday on the records. I don’t tell them I’m missing the very tip of my pinky--a small punishment for the twitch of my lip. “When Kenya is truly angry, he never hurts you--he hurts those around you.” No one responds to that. They’re making me seem like such a bummer. “It’s not awful all the time...he borders on agreeable when you listen to him.”

Most days we have peace, left to our own devices as long as we accomplish certain goals. Their silence does little to unnerve me. After speaking so freely of such a nightmare, the desire to be rid of the taste of those words from my mouth is almost overwhelming, but I hold to the silence.

“Why has he never sold you to the grisha that are so desperate for you?”

Of course Kaz Brekker would ask a question like that. “He isn’t the business of money, he’s in the business of creating gods. He indentures people he thinks could one day become saints or something else entirely. He wants to be owed by the heavens.”

I watch Kaz carefully, a part of me curious about how someone like him could react to a goal like that. I can see him understanding the ambition of it all, but I can’t imagine himself a person of faith. Perhaps he’ll think it a clever trick. Perhaps he’ll even agree with Kenya.

He nods once; something I get nothing from.

Whatever. He can be coy and distant this entire time. They all can. I’ll be out of here soon enough, and I’ll find Anya. And if I can stop something bad from happening to Alina then that’s a bonus I’m willing to take risks for.

“That man is awful.”

Inej’s voice comes from right behind me. I snap my head around. “You’re in here.”

She nods once, oblivious to how shocking her sudden appearance is. She hands me a knapsack casually, staring at Kaz. “What’s the plan? We have six hours.”

I look around the room, only seeing one closed window and one closed door. “There’s one door in this room.”

“We take the Inferni to the ship.” He doesn’t even bother looking in my direction.

Okay, they can be mean to be all they want but they can’t ignore me. I don’t think I’ve ever been ignored in my entire life. Gods in the making get attention. It may be the cruel attention of fate, but it’s something.

“Did she come in through the window?”

Again, I am ignored.

“And then what, boss?” Jesper casually crosses the room, sitting down next to me on the small couch. It’s like I’m not even here. “We’d need to break into the Little Palace to get Alina.”

What? “You guys are going to--” No. No. I am not kidnapping Alina. And there’s no way she’d be in the Little Palace. “First off--if you want to kidnap Alina Starkov for whatever insane ploy you’re all playing at, you’d never find her at Little Palace. She’s not a Grisha and second--” I cut myself off, standing from my seat. “Why am I even telling you this? I shouldn’t be helping you kidnap her.”

Kaz’s eyes dart to me boredly. At least it’s some kind of acknowledgement of my existence. “I thought you two weren’t close.”

I seriously consider scorching him. Just a little. Not even enough to scar him, just enough to get him to shut up. “She’s still a person who has a right to her body and what happens to it.”

“Not that it’s any of your concern, but if we pull this off we get one million kruge.”

What does he think I’m going to say? ‘Okay, well as long as you’re doing it for a good reason.’ Is that the response he expects. “Okay, well that makes it fair.”

His eyes narrow skeptically, but Jesper is the one to ask, “Really?”

“No,” I scoff, slumping back into my seat, “I was being sarcastic.”

I drop my head back, neck craning over the back of the small couch. It isn’t exactly comfortable, but at least it makes it easier to ignore them. I’ve kept worse company for less. There’s an odd silence for a long second. I look forward without moving, I see Kaz vaguely gesture in Inej’s direction.

“Y/n,” Inej’s voice is refreshingly measured, “I think after the kinds of things we’ve gone through we understand that there’s some relativity in morality.”

I shift my head to the right so I can look at her. “...Yes, but you’re just forcing another girl into a similar situation.” Why is Alina even worth so much? “And why would anyone pay so much for Alina?”

Inej hesitates, glancing at Kaz and then back at me. “She’s a Sun Summoner.”

On instinct, I straighten entirely, my body rigid. They’re insane. “You all are cracked if you think Alina’s a Sun Summoner.” No. No. It couldn’t be her. “Bless your hearts, seriously, she’s--she was trained to be a map maker--she’s not…” None of them relax, none of them shift in any way. What good would lying about this bring them? They have no reason to lie about this. “Saints, I should have had more to drink while downstairs.”

So what if she’s a Sun Summoner? She didn’t ask to be one. She doesn’t deserve this. I cross my arms. “It doesn’t make this okay.”

“And would it make it okay if you were getting a cut of the profit?” What?

Kaz is looking at me in that tactful way. It takes all of my focus to not let myself become unnerved. “What?”

“If I offered you a cut, would you be able to push aside more protests in order to make working with you easier?”

Could I do it? Could I betray Alina? I drop my gaze away from his, opting to focus on the forgotten lantern on the coffee table in front of me. It flickers to life with no conscious prompting on my part. The flame is low and blue. Still though, Kaz notices it. What doesn’t he notice?

“I can help you do what I agreed to.” I swallow around a lump in my throat, “But I cannot help you kidnap Alina.”

The corner of his mouth tugs downwards. “We’re just going to get her to work with us.”

“Work with you?”

“We never said anything about taking her, and if Alina is really your friend you should know that the entire world is after her. Better us who can get her out of an unwanted situation quickly than the brutal General Kirigan who will hold her hostage until she does what he wants.”

...I guess he has a point. “Oh.” I’m not naive enough to think that their methods will revolve around making Alina comfortable, but perhaps it’s not as dark as I assumed. “Maybe I was a little quick to assume…” I trail off awkwardly, looking at Inej for some type of reassurance. She avoids my gaze.

I scratch the back of my arm, feeling like a spiraling child. I pick up my knapsack and place it on my lap, fiddling with the strap.

“Come on,” Kaz stands, adjusting his grip on his cane, “We only have until sunrise.”

As I stand, I pull down the skirt of my dress, suddenly aware of how inappropriate my clothing is for this late in the night. “Can--can I change first?”

It’s a sheepish question, leaving me feeling like a child.

“Five minutes,” Kaz offers, stepping out of the room with the rest of them.

Inej leaves last, feet more silent than a cat. She offers me the tiniest hint of a smile. Despite my reservations, I beam at her. Something about me finds her politeness endearing despite it all. I think she closes the door loudly on purpose, to assure me of privacy.

Normally changing in a building so full of drunk men would leave me nervous, but knowing Inej is outside leaves me feeling safe. I may not trust her with my life but something about her being tells me she values personal autonomy enough to protect it.

I sift through the belongings Inej brought me. Clean underwear I try not think of her searching for, a thin white dress, comfortable pants, shorts, a few casual shirts, my red hood, and a nightgown. When I get to the bottom of the bag, and I see the personal belongings Inej smuggled back for me, I’m moved so powerfully my hand flies to my mouth on instinct. She had brought the folded up piece of paper with the only information I’ve been able to find about Kamil, the book I left on my nightstand, the small candle holder Alina had given me the day before I was taken away, the blade Mal had given me the day I left, the deck of playing cards Anya had first taught me to play with, and my mother’s necklace. The silver north star on a long chain.

Before I can become too emotional, I take off the Crow’s Club T-shirt Inej had given me when I looked cold. I change into black pants, tucking the small blade Mal had given me into the pocket. The shirt I put on is pale blue, breaking the dark theme of everything around me. I fasten my red hood over my shoulders, basking in the familiar fabric. Lastly, I pull the north star necklace over my head, watching the blue orb with a black dot at its center blink at me in the light. I always found the stone at the pendant’s center odd. I'm quick to walk towards the door, nervous about what wasting their time could mean.

“Let’s do this,” I sigh, pushing open the door.

They all pause. Or maybe they were never moving. I try to imagine them interacting normally, but it’s hard to picture them as anything but intense and unflinching. There’s something odd about them, though, Jesper practically sulking and Kaz dropping his head despite Inej’s harsh stare.

“What kind of stone is in your necklace?”

I swear to the Saints that if Kaz Brekker tries to steal it I’ll melt those leather gloves into his hands. “Try to take it and--”

“That’s what I get for trying to make ‘polite conversation.’” He throws a look at Inej as he speaks the last two words.

Wait--did Inej tell him to try to make polite conversation? Wait--more importantly, did he just kind of, almost say something that borders on casual?

Wrinkling my nose, I let out a slight sigh. “Sorry.”

His eyebrows draw together quizzically. “Did you just apologize for assuming I’d steal from you?”

Great. Now I’m fully embarrassed. “Can we just go?”

“Not before meeting me, I hope.” The stranger’s voice means nothing to me, but the others tense at it immediately. What? The man continues to walk forward, his steps too casual and confident for me to trust. The stranger is quick to respond to the question on my face, “Pekka Rollins.”

Taglist: @ambrosia-v-black @fandomstuffff @boxofteenageideas @losers-club6 @cityofstaars @stillreadingfantasy @slatersbrekker @xoxo-aclown @alzawas-plug @nuwanda-greaser @swearingsolemnly @-thatgirloverthere-

General Taglist: @theincredibledeadlyviper @grishaverse7

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arofili · 4 years

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number one with the kidnap fam??! I love me some soft family content

1. Abandonment Issues

Maglor’s away, trading for supplies a village over, which means when the children start crying loud enough for Maedhros to hear several rooms away, it’s his responsibility to comfort them.

He lies still in his bed—he hadn’t been sleeping, but the ritual of scheduled rest is something his warrior’s body can’t quite shake even when his prisoner’s mind won’t let him relax—for a few moments longer than he should, in the vain wish that the weeping will cease on its own. It doesn’t, of course, and he forces himself to rise, not sure if it’s the bedframe or his bones that creak at the movement.

He turns the doorknob (it’s not locked; Maglor told them it was but he’d stopped bothering weeks ago when it was clear the children were too terrified to attempt an escape) and pokes his head inside the small room. It’s drab and empty of anything save a bed and what could pass for toys in a place like this.

Maedhros finds himself yearning for Amon Ereb once more, but that fortress had been abandoned after Sirion when it became clear that the amount of their people who had died or deserted had depleted their forces too much to maintain a strong defense there. Thus this ramshackle burned-out village, far too close to the shoreline for anyone’s comfort, has become their new...not home. Camp, perhaps; or...base. For now.

The crying ceases the second he steps inside. Two sets of wide silver eyes stare at him in mute terror. They’re so like his own eyes (and he knows what his eyes look like, has seen them staring back at him glittering with malice, set in a perfect handsome face that hasn’t been his in a long time—) that he stops in his tracks, sent back to Angband for just a moment.

But then the color in the twins’ eyes shifts, a talent passed down from their Maia ancestress, and now one has their mother’s soft brown (though she could change it too; Maedhros remembered her pupils expanding, consuming the whites of her eyes, as she screamed and leapt into the water) and the other their father’s piercing, Nolofinwëan blue. Maedhros bites his lip and tries hard not to think about the last time he saw eyes that blue.

“What’s wrong?” he rasps.

“M-Maglor?” stammers one of them. Maedhros wishes he could tell them apart.

“He’s not here,” Maedhros says shortly. “I am. What’s wrong?”

“Elros had a nightmare,” whispers the other twin—Elrond, then.

Maedhros grimaces. “Well, I know what nightmares are like,” he says, awkwardly sitting at the foot of the bed they share. “You did not wake me with your crying because I was not asleep for fear of them.” That’s not exactly the truth, at least not all of it, but something in Elros’ eyes seems to soften.

“But you’re the scariest thing in the world,” Elrond blurts out. “What are you afraid of?”

Maedhros closes his eyes. “Many things,” he rumbles. “There are more fearsome creatures than myself in this world, and once I was their captive. I fear those memories, and a return to their clutches.”

The boys shrink away from him. Damn it, that had not been at all comforting.

“I am also afraid of—” he coughs, then admits— “of being alone.”

“Oh,” Elros says. “Me too.” He glances to Elrond, who clutches his arm tightly.

“I won’t leave you,” Elrond promises.

Elros doesn’t return the vow. Just as well, Maedhros thinks bitterly; oaths cannot be counted to keep brothers together, not in dark times like these.

“Do you miss Maglor?” Elros asks.

Maedhros blinks. “...Yes,” he says, though he knows his brother will return in the morning. “And—others.” Those who had left him, for good, whether they wanted to or not.

“We miss him too,” Elros murmurs, and Elrond squeezes his arm until he yelps, hissing, “What? It’s true!”

“We’re not supposed to...” But Elrond trails off, glancing up worriedly to Maedhros.

“It’s alright.” Maedhros shrugs. “We are quite literally monsters from a nightmare. If it was me you dreamed of, covered in blood and ash and burning down your home...I would not blame you. It is only natural.”

“You—” Elros squeaks. Then he sticks out his chin. “It wasn’t you. It was—it was Nana.”

Nana? Oh—Elwing. Elros’ chin wobbles, and instinctively, Maedhros opens his arms. (As much as his body cannot forget he is a warrior, nor his mind that he was a prisoner, his spirit cannot forget he is an older brother before all else.)

To his astonishment, Elros falls into his embrace, weeping openly. “She left us,” he sobs, “and she—in my dream she told me she wasn’t coming back. She’s not coming back, Elrond, we’re alone...”

Now Elrond is crying too, worming his way into Maedhros’ arms, and for a moment he’s back in Valinor again comforting the Ambarussat after a bad dream. It’s second nature to murmur assurances that everything will be alright, that the children are loved, but his throat closes up when he tries to tell them Elwing will return.

She won’t. He knows she won’t. She soared away on swan’s wings, and if she somehow managed to turn herself back, she will never surrender the Silmaril. She made that much clear.

“We’re here,” he whispers instead, astonished by the rush of love that overcomes him; “we’re here, Maglor and I, and we won’t leave you. You aren’t alone, little ones, you’ll never be alone...”

After a few minutes they cry themselves into sniffles. They don’t leave his arms, and Maedhros suddenly finds he is exhausted after all. Elros is already snoring, and Elrond yawns as he tries to lay the children back down in their bed.

“Don’t go,” Elrond whispers, grabbing his arm when he makes to leave. “You...you said...”

Maedhros sinks back down, tears budding in his eyes. He doesn’t deserve such comforts, such trust, not when he has not earned it—but he said he wouldn’t leave them, so he won’t.

“I’ll stay,” he murmurs, tucking one twin under each arm and lying down with them. His legs hang off the edge of their small bed, and they’re practically on top of him, but he hasn’t felt this needed in years. Decades.

“I’ll stay,” he repeats, his eyes fluttering shut. I will, I always will.

#maedhros #elrond #elros #kidnap dads #kidnap fam #prompts #my writing #my fic #tefain nin #thatfeanorian #answers #silm #ask games #love grew after between them

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penguintransporter · 4 years

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This little thing came to my head few nights ago, and because I always put so much research in a player that I am writing it for, I decided to skip it because I didn’t want to waste any time in case the idea got lost. It’s a bit angsty, but I love my emotional roller-coaster. Anyway, read, enjoy and tell me who you imagined when reading it. 💗

◾◾◾

Masochistic.

You’ve heard this term many times before, and you finally knew what it meant and how it felt because there was no other word that could describe you and what you were doing to yourself in that very moment. Walking through the large oak doors – clutching a small box with a golden bow in your hands, wearing dress more fitting for a funeral than a birthday.

Your eyes roam the room, looking for the person that invited you to his birthday party, but deep down you know that your eyes are looking for someone else.

You were looking for him.

It’s been more than eight months since you last saw him in blood and flesh – that afternoon when you, fed up with the pain in your chest, spilled all of your feelings in front of him as if they were a jug of milk in slippery hands.

More than eight months since he walked out, confused and angry at the same time. It’s been more than eight months since he slammed the doors of your apartment on his way out, only to never walk back through them – not even to retrieve some of his belongings and random things he kept at your place – purposefully or unintentionally.

A battered Thomas Mann book, a toothbrush in the spare bathroom cupboard and a pair of old cleats that still hung in the hallway, next to your jacket.

You’ve heard that he was doing fine whenever you asked about him, and it was no surprise – after all, he had nothing to feel bad about; nothing to move on from.

It was you who suffered, trying to pick up the pieces of your cracked heart.

It was you who cried countless nights, blaming herself for even uttering those words.

It was you. Not him.

“Y/N?” you hear behind your back and with a blink you let your thoughts slide away as you turn around. “I didn’t expect…” your mutual friend and the birthday boy trails off, nervously fixing his tie. “You look, well… different. Your hair…”

“Hi,” you speak softly, ignoring the comment about how different you look. You know that you do, even without people pointing it out. “I hope you don’t mind me being here? Wasn’t sure if you invited me out of politeness, but, yeah…” You force a smile, outstretching the hand that held the present towards him. “Happy Birthday! I had no time to get you something proper, but I remembered you said you like truffle chocolate.”

He chuckles as he takes the box, twisting it in his hands. “It’s even my favourite brand,” he comments as he looks over your shoulder - eyes moving over the crowd. “Thank you, Y/N. Can I offer you something to drink?”

“Thank you.”

You let him lead you to the long table in the middle of the big room, littered with expensive bottles and glasses. Politely, you converse about the last season – the very same season you couldn’t bring yourself to follow after that afternoon. You ask about his parents as you accept a glass of expensive red wine before he excuses himself to greet some other guests, leaving you alone.

You didn’t expect anything else.

Out of place.

You weren’t used on that kind of feeling – being surrounded with people who you vaguely knew and who vaguely knew you. The very same faces that some times ago, recognised you as you waited for him after the match – ready to drive him home because he was always so tired after being out on the pitch. The very same faces that two of you partied with after important wins or sat in silence as you mourned lost matches.

Now, they seem to be oblivious to your presence – whether because you looked different or because they knew how and why the friendship between two of you ended.

You hoped it was the first.

It didn’t take you too long to finally spot him among the familiar faces – after all he always had this power to pull people in, to maintain eye-contact, whether you were a stranger or someone familiar.

Just for a second, you enjoy the wrench of your emotions as you watch him, but then you see a girl next to him, and suddenly you feel nothing. Eyes flutter close for a moment as an invisible dagger twists in your chest, and you turn around scared, but you feel it – he saw you too.

Coming here was a stupid idea.

Masochistic.

Stupid.

But you cannot bring yourself to leave.

Instead, you walk away from the table, trying to blend in the crowd as you nervously pull at your earring – something you find yourself doing whenever the anxiety starts to kick in. Suddenly, your dress feels too tight, heels uncomfortable and you want to shed your skin away – breaths becoming shallow, hands shaky.

“Y/N?”

More than eight months since you last heard him say your name.

“You cannot be fucking serious Y/N?!”

For a moment, you don’t move but you know that eventually you will have to turn around, so you do so. And there he was, standing in front of you, handsome as always.

Nothing comes out of your months as you watch him, the same way nothing came out of his mouth after you told him you love him, knowing that he doesn’t feel the same way; knowing that at that time he was seeing someone else and was ready to propose.

“H/N,” you acknowledge in a soft voice.

He opens his mouth to speak, but quickly stops himself as he looks down at you – those eyes piercing you with their intensity.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you here,” he finally says, sticking his hands in the pockets of his pressed trousers before you had the chance to see if he was wearing a ring.

The way he pronounced your full name after years of using the nickname he had for you.

“I’d be lying if I said the same,” you respond, trying to smile, but it doesn’t really work so you opt for looking at the splash of wine in your glass. “I knew you’d be here.”

“Does it bother you?” he asks and you can swear you hear the tiniest bit of compassion in his voice. Or was it pity?

Quickly, you shake your head, looking at some of the people who decided to watch the two of you interact – not even trying to hide their curiosity.

Including his beautiful date in a sparkly, silver dress.

“No,” you start, “if anything, you have more right to be here than I do, no?”

“You cut your—,” he stops for a moment, ignoring your question, and you nod, letting him know that it is okay to continue, “—your hair.” He’s looking at you now, properly – eyes moving painfully slow over your face as if he was trying to memorise a page of a book. “It suits you.”

His face is expressionless hard to read. You used to be so good at it, but now, after putting the wedge called ‘unrequited love’ between the two of you, you lost that ability.

“How have you been?” you ask, bringing the glass to your lips, but you never take a sip.

“Good, good,” he answers quickly, folding his arms on his chest and you notice that he still wore the watch that you bought him. “Y/N, can we talk?” A clear of his throat, a nervous ran of a hand through his hair – eyes glancing in both directions before settling back on yours. “Somewhere private?”

The hold on your glass loosens a little as you blink up at him. “I don’t think I am someone who can help you with your problems. It’s been more than eigh—,” you stop now, gathering a breath in your lungs, “well, you know what I mean. You’ve been there after all.”

“And what if the problem is you?”

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Do you like my banner? Do you like the imagine?

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that-one-girl-behind-you · 3 years

Text

Illicio 22/?

Part 21

CW: apocalypse terribleness, JGM under duress, etc

He's free now, he knows.

In this new world ruled by the Watcher, his ultimate 'prize' is to not be tied to Jon anymore. There's a place with his name on it, just like Martin said. There, he could thrive, an eternal existence as a reward for- for pushing Jon towards this.

Gertrude's eyes blink accusingly at him from where he remembers planting the carrots, and Gerry scoffs.

"Of course I'm not going to. Don't be an idiot." Gerry rolls his eyes. There just. There has to be a way to reverse it, no matter-

'No. I don’t think so. Once an Entity fully manifested, I doubt it would be keen to fully relinquish its grip on reality. And as for those unlucky enough to survive its rule… I don’t think they’d be in a state to do anything about it.'

Gerry sighs. Ever the optimist, the old hag.

He feels the cabin creaking and shifting, feasting on the sorrow that thinking of Gertrude brings him, even after years and deceptions.

XXII

Click.

"It can't be as bad as it looks. Nothing could be this bad." There's humour in the man's voice, a sort of fond amusement as he enunciates the words, the beginning of a joke.

"I think we might be looking at different Archives, Tim." The answering voice is dry and unenthusiastic, but the first man chuckles like it's the punchline to his setup.

"There's three of us, we'll figure it out." Some fabric rustles, a disgruntled huff, another chuckle. "Let's go, Sasha should be done already, we said we'd go get drinks."

A long-suffering sigh. "If you insist."

"I do! It's the last time we're going out as coworkers, Boss."

"I'd say this is your last chance to get in my hair, if I didn't know better." Steps growing fainter, as the speakers walk away.

"But you do know better."

Another sigh, a lot less long-suffering, and a lot more amused. "I do."

Click.

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

"We need to get going," Martin says. It feels like the thousandth time he's said it, and maybe it is. Time feels... weird, lately, and memory much more so.

"I'm..." Gerry sighs, also for what feels like thousandth time. "You're not wrong."

"Of course I'm not." Martin crosses his arms over his chest. Gerry's eyes -they look dangerously bright lately, but Martin doesn't fear them as much as he fears the sad, unspoken truth they carry- are searching for his, and for all that Martin tries to stand strong, he gives in eventually, and goes to sit by his side with a tired sigh of his own. "I know, I know."

"You do?" Gerry comes to rest heavily against his side, and after a couple moments, Martin drapes an arm around his shoulders. It's- it's not Gerry's fault, he thinks. It's not anyone's fault. "It's someone's fault."

"Well, yes. Elias', but still-" Martin lets out a low exhale. "I should have done it."

"If you're going to blame yourelf-" Gerry nudges his leg with his knee, "-you'd be good blaming me as well. Blaming Jon."

"Why would I blame you?" Martin asks dryly. "You were going to kill him when I couldn't. You would've done it."

"Yes, to keep you safe." Gerry shrugs. "Not wanting to kill a man doesn't make you a coward, Martin."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to."

Martin purses his lips. "If I had-"

"It wasn't Elias that put that statement there," Gerry interrupts him before he can even form the thought. "You know that."

"No, I don't!" Martin snaps. "You keep saying that, Jon said that, but I don't! A- and even if I did, am I not supposed to feel guilty that I was under- that they used me to push Jon into starting the apocalypse?!"

"Welcome to the club," Gerry says dryly, and Martin stops so abruptly in his tirade that he very nearly bites his tongue off.

Especially with how well he served his purpose.

Elias' words, written in Martin's own unwitting hand, are burned in his mind.

"I- uh-"

"It's okay." Gerry runs a hand over his hair, his lips pressed in a tight line.

"...It's really not." Martin says after a while. "I- it's not- how can you be so calm?"

"I'm not, I just-" Gerry's eyes are far-off, lost in the depths of the cottage, a door that doesn't open anymore, unless one of them opens it first. "I'm focusing on the two of you right now. Otherwise it's too much."

"How- how does it feel for you?" Martin asks quietly.

"It feels... good, I suppose. Like this is where I'm meant to be, which I suppose is true, being a- a monster of the Eye or whatever. I don't like it."

Martin pulls him a bit tighter against his side, though it makes the part of him that is not quite human roar in discomfort. "You're not a monster of the Eye."

"Agree to disagree, won't we?" Gerry smiles. It's the same gesture he normally uses to rile him up, playful and amused and now tinged with a hint of sadness, and it makes Martin so mad, the unfairness of it all. "Is it different for you?"

"I just- there's a place I 'should' go to. A place where I'd be alone."

"Is that why you want to leave?" Gerry arches an eyebrow.

"Of course not. I'm- I want to fix this but Gerry, I don't know if we can fix it. I don't know how any of this works."

Gerry nods once, a slow tilt of his head like the weight of it all is too much, before he springs back up. It's a gesture so inherently him that Martin feels a fierce rush of protectiveness surge up in him.

They deserved better. They still do.

"I- if we-" Gerry starts, then stops to sigh again. "Jon would be safe if we left. I think we both would be too, but I'm not sure, and-"

"And we aren't leaving him." Martin completes the thought. Gerry nods again, even more exhausted this time. "What are we supposed to do, then? Just wait until he's done torturing himself with those tapes?"

A few notes of a discordant birthday song seep from under the door to reach his ears faintly, the ghost of a memory that he shouldn't be able to hear from this far away, but Martin guesses it's one of those things he's meant to experience precisely because it will hurt him.

"I'm- I don't know, Martin. I really don't."

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

Click.

"Are you on?" A few static-laden taps. "Test, test, testing prehistoric equipment? Okay, yes. How should I... oh, I know. Recording by Sasha James, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute... Hah"

A small chuckle, before the woman speaks again. "Well, the payrise isn't that great anyways, and at least I don't have to pretend I'm a prick all the time, like Jon does." A sigh. "Tim's starting to get tired of it, but I think Jon just- it's tough starting as a boss. I think he's mostly posturing for Martin? When it's just the three of us, it feels just like when we were back at research. He'll get over it, I'm sure."

Another chuckle, a bit embarrassed this time. "I don't know why I'm telling you this. I guess it just feels nice to say it aloud knowing no one will hear it."

Silence. Papers shuffling, the clicking of a stapler, and a sound like someone sliding something heavy across a flat surface.

Thoughtful tapping against wood.

"I'm- it's not like I'm angry at him, I know he thinks that too. I just... I guess it's disappointing to be passed over. I've been thinking of looking for something el-"

"Hey there!" A new voice. Deeper and amused, warm. "Are you done?"

"Almost. I forgot it was Friday. You and Jon ready?"

"I'm... I was actually thinking it could be just us tonight."

"Oh."

"If you want, I mean. If not, there's still time to tell him, or we don't have to go at all." The man's voice hasn't come closer, and a door creaks like someone is shifting against it.

A long moment of silence, before the woman speaks again.

"Mr. Stoker, are you suggesting an office affair?" The woman's smile is audible in her tone, and there's a far off sound like a sigh of an exhale.

"Well, I think these archives have been far too peaceful for far too long, don't you?"

An amused huff.

"It's not a very wise thing to do."

"We don't have to."

Laughter, this time. "No, we're gonna. Let me get my coat."

Click.

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

"She never liked you," Jon says. His voice sounds hoarse with disuse as he glares resentfully at the whirring tape recorder in his hand. "I wonder how it would've manifested for her."

The device doesn't respond, of course. Just sits there, recording, watching. Its intentions, good or bad, have no effect on what it can and cannot do. It was made for a purpose, and that is that.

"I guess it's moot, though." If he's to believe Elias, and there's really no reason why he'd keep lying after achieving his goal, Jon was ripe for the picking decades before even considering setting foot on the Institute.

He can see them now, the hair-thin threads of silver wrapped around him, innocuous in appearance even though he can feel their pull.

Jon knows what the Mother wants of him now, hears it all around him in the creaking of the cottage, the screaming in the wind, in Martin and Gerry's insistence.

He won't give it to her.

Like the Spiral or the Stranger, the Web doesn't enjoy being Seen, and Jon feels it pushing him to not think too much about it or its motives.

He lets it, for the time being. He has other things to focus on, things he hasn't allowed himself to dwell on yet, with Sasha and Tim's voices still swimming in his mind.

"...I did think she resented me," he says after a pause. He closes his eyes, and he sees what would've been. Sees her covered in scars, terrified, hurt. Making the wrong choice time and time again, no matter how hard she tries. "I never- I'm glad it wasn't her."

The fate that befell Sasha wasn't gentle, but at least it was swift. At least she didn't live to see herself turn the world into this cesspool of suffering. To enjoy it.

"They think... They want to leave. Both of them." Sasha was right, it is easier to talk to the tapes, even if Jon is not under any false notion regarding whether or not he's being listened. "They- Martin thinks we can undo this. That there's a way to turn things back."

Jon doesn't know if there is, but- if there's a chance, what right does he have to attempt it, after what he did? Gerry just- he tries to keep things light, but Jon knows he's growing tired of mediating between appeasing Martin's urgencies, and giving Jon the time he thinks he needs.

"I'm- I just-" Jon sighs, clears his throat. "Recording ends."

But it doesn't. It never does anymore.

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

"Still nothing," Georgie sighs as she drops on the couch next to her.

"I expected as much." Melanie lifts the hand not sunk in the Admiral's fur, and Georgie tangles their fingers together. "What were you trying now? Calling again?"

"No, I... I used the recorder app. I thought it might reach him, but no luck."

"It was a good idea." Melanie shrugs. "But these things and technology just don't mix too well. I'm surprised your phone is even working at all."

"I mean, it's not. It's just working enough to get me frustrated, which I guess is the point."

Melanie chuckles. "The point is actually to make you scared, but that's not going to fly with you, and it makes them angry." The entities are nothing if not petty.

"What about you?" Georgie's hand tightens in her. "You can be scared."

"I'm not," Melanie says. It's- she's worried, but as long as she and Georgie are together... "The Eye can't see me."

Gerry once told her words carried power, and these ones hold truth. The Eye no longer has a claim on her, as much as it resents it.

"But the others can?" Georgie asks. Melanie can picture her expression perfectly, a thick eyebrow raised in question.

"They should be able to." She shrugs "I'm guessing the reason none of them have snatched me up is because I'm in your… aura? Blind spot? Anyways, I don't think I'll try going out on my own anytime soon."

"Probably not a good idea, no… What are we going to do, then? If we can't contact them-"

"I think- I think they'll be coming this way. Or I hope so, at least." They have to. They wouldn't just... If there's a way to turn it back, it will be here at London, at Magnus' tower. They'll come, and then they can take him on together. "I think we wait."

It feels odd, to actively choose inaction. Melanie has spent her whole life on the move, for new stories, for more adventure, for something that makes her clench her hands into fists.

"...we wait, then."

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

Click.

"Hi, Jon. I- I hope you don't mind that I'm recording. I thought-" a long, tired sigh "-I don't know what I thought. They just... they remind me of you. It felt right."

A sound of fabric shifting, something soft being patted. "There, that ought to be more comfortable. You're starting to look a bit pale, I'm- I'll ask the nurse if we can move your bed closer to the window so you get some sun. You'd probably hate that, but you need it, Jon," the man chuckles a little.

A long beat.

"I miss you."

Silence. Heavy, tense. A slow, deep inhale. The man clears his throat, and resumes speaking, as casually as before.

"Peter Lukas offered me a new position at the Institute. He- Elias left him in charge, don't ask me how that works legally, but... he wants me to be his assistant." A pause, a scoff, a little chuckle. "Yes, yes I know it is a trap, alright? I'm not stupid, Jon!"

Another chuckle, though this one takes a hint of fondness at the end.

"I know. But... we got attacked, just last month. The Flesh. Melanie managed to drive them back, but we- we lost three people. Emily from Research, Duke from the Library, and Len from Accounting. They didn't even care that they were normal employees, they just-"

The man's voice cracks, and he gives himself a moment, another slow intake of breath. "Lukas says he can protect the Institute. With- with what we know about the Lonely, I don't doubt it. There's... There's something else he isn't telling me. I- I'm not sure what it is, but I can guess it won't end well for me."

The silence that follows stretches for far longer than its predecessors, until the man sighs again.

"Not like I care much, anyways." A chair creaking, as the man atop it shifts. "I'm... I'm starting to understand you're not going to wake up. Wh- who would've thought I'd be the last one, huh?"

A flat, humourless chuckle.

"Guess... guess it's what I deserve, for staying behind every. Single. Time."

Minutes tick by after his words, in a seemingly endless silence, almost like the tape ran out of battery or somehow stopped recording without announcing it.

The chair creaks again.

"Goodbye, Jon."

Click

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

"I just- why do you keep listening to them?" Martin is asking as Gerry enters the bedroom, his voice not quite snappy, but coated with the same deep weariness that's permeated his every interaction with Jon for a while now.

"Because there has to be a reason why they're here. Why-"

"Jon, they're here because Elias wants to rub it in your face. He wants to hurt you even more, and- and you're going along with it! What could there possibly be in them that you don't already know?"

Gerry sighs, shoulders heavy with his own exhaustion as he looks out the window. The eyeballs growing out of the carefully tilled earth turn to stare back at him.

He's free now, he knows.

Gertrude's eyes blink accusingly at him from where he remembers planting the carrots, and Gerry scoffs.

"Of course I'm not going to. Don't be an idiot." Gerry rolls his eyes. There just. There has to be a way to reverse it, no matter-

Gerry sighs. Ever the optimist, the old hag.

He feels the cabin creaking and shifting, feasting on the sorrow that thinking of Gertrude brings him, even after years and deceptions.

It can't consume them, he Knows. None of them are human anymore, not completely. The cabin is just... a memory granted teeth, a place that haunts its occupants instead of the other way around. What hurts them -or him, at least- is the fact that what was supposed to be a sanctuary became a prison, and the only fear to be found here is, Gerry thinks, the fear that this will be the thing to break them apart, with Jon locked in the bedroom listening to his ghosts, with Martin pushing and pulling at him and Jon snapping back like a wounded dog.

It's decent fear. The fact that Gerry doesn't know which one of them to side with only makes it worse.

He understands Jon's reticence, the feeling that if he tries again, it will only make things even worse. He understands he's hurt, and scared, that now more than ever, he doesn't want the power Elias forced on him.

He also understands Martin, the- the need to fight back, to keep moving. To not be a fucking piece on a chessboard again.

Melanie's eyes, scarred and blind, turn to look at him.

"...I know. We're- I know."

Slowly, reluctantly, Gerry pushes away from the window.

This is not a conversation he wants to have, but...

Well, at least Martin will be happy that Gerry's siding with him, and Jon... Jon will understand.

Hopefully.

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

Click.

Statement of Jonathan Sims, the Archive, regarding the current state of affairs.

It is time you take a look at the world you have created, you have put it off for long enough.

You can feel it with awful clarity, even when you pretend the opposite, for their sake. Or is it for yours, desperate to hide the kind of being you are from the ones whose opinion you value the most? All around you, here in this space that is made safe only by your presence, suffering is the course du jour, tailor-made for each and every innocent you have condemned to this life that is not a life as much as it is the bare shadow of an existence.

You do not hear the screaming as much as you Know it -what don't you Know now?-, resonating in your mind every second of every day, if those things existed anymore.

Despite yourself, you sometimes wish that the screamers would choke on their own blood, that their lungs would collapse with the force of their anguished crying, that they could reach into their own ribcage and pull out their heart to squeeze the life out of it, out of themselves.

You want to think that way at least they would be free.

You know better of course. The rules of this new reality you have imposed on everyone are clearly outlined before you, like a neat bullet point list you've learned by heart. The first of these points is the worst, and it's the one that keeps you up at night when you're unable to wake the ones you love from their frantic nightmares, when they toss and trash on the bed, calling out for people who aren't there.

'You made this. This is for you.'

And when you wish fervently for the deaths of innocents, when you pray for each breath to be their last, you try, but can't quite keep out the satisfaction, the delight that comes from Knowing all this fear.

The world is in agony, but it will never die.

You hide here in this cottage that was home because it held the ones you love, clinging desperately to the idea that it can still be a shelter, if you only wish hard enough. You know the thought is as futile as the feeling, love did not make you holy, and it won't consecrate this place.

The cottage feeds on your fear and your doubt, on their tired eyes and strained smiles, and it whispers into your ear that it is only here that you will find peace. Wasn't this your happy ending, wasn't this all that you wanted? A cozy place to end your story with the ones you call your heart?

They hate it here almost as much as you wish they would hate you, but they stay for your sake. Have any of you ever done things for yourselves? All the three of you know is self-sacrifice, and how little it pays. You feel that this place that is not a home is feeding on you, and you relish on it, because it's the only penance you will find in this world that has made you untouchable.

The ones you love want to leave, want to fight; you wish you had an ounce of the hope they still nurse at their core, because you are as afraid to leave as you are of the cottage consuming you if you don't. Every day your interactions are more stilted, more tense, and you wonder which one will crack first.

And that's what it all boils down to, doesn't it? Fear. You're scared of seizing what's yours. Of facing this world of your making.

You're terrified of what awaits you out there, of what awaits you in here. The Pupil wasn't mistaken when he called you an Archive of fear, and it is time that you come back.

You can feel the call at your chest, like a bestial instinct that wills your bones to move, to go back to your place of power. You've been feeling it for a few days now (there are no days anymore, not in the world you've created), but it grows stronger every moment, more recognizable. You followed it once already, traversing a labyrinth like the map to it was burned on the inside of your eyelids.

You've tried futilely to ignore the call, just like you've tried to ignore the silk wrapped choking tight around your throat, pulling at you like it has done all your life. Was there ever a chance for things to work out, or were they just the delusions of a monster that thought -hoped- that maybe if he loved enough, he'd become a man again?

You know the answer to that, of course. You Know everything. What was it that she called it? Ineluctability. Swimming frantically upstream only to be pushed back in the end, because your limbs will get tired a lot sooner than the tide.

You are exhausted, and you have been for a while.

Statement ends.

Steps, slow and unsteady, and the creaking of a door. Some heavy breathing, like the breather has just run a marathon, or had the air choked out of him. A broken, slightly hysterical laugh, no longer the Archivist, but merely a broken man.

I don't want to go.

Click

A moment of silence that seems to stretch for an eternity, as the two of them look at the lone recorder.

"Martin, go get your backpack."

"I'm on it. Meet you outside."

#illicio #jongerrymartin #vit writes #jongerry #gerrymartin #jonmartin

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im-the-punk-who · 4 years

Text

Black Sails as John Silver's SuperVillain Origin Story

Okay so I recently got asked about my views on Silver in a roundabout way so HERE ARE SOME OF THEM. I don’t often post about him because honestly I just really dislike him but he’s an extremely well written character and one of the best ‘villains’ I have ever seen portrayed. The reason Black Sails is such a compelling prequel to Treasure Island is that it does not just say ‘John Silver is a villain because he does bad things.’ Like all the characters in Black Sails he is complex, with deep and thoughtful motivations for the things he does. We see him as a villain because Black Sails sets his goals up in opposition to those of the protagonists we want to succeed - Flint and Madi - but he is not villainous in his own right.

But it is the effects of those motivations on himself that, to me, are the most interesting.

And just up front because I know this is a touchy subject - especially coming from, well, me, lmao. This is how I read Silver. If you disagree, that’s cool. Like literally everything else in Black Sails(and fiction in general), Silver’s character is mutable based on your views and experiences. Tomato/Tomato.

So! To me, the most important thing about John Silver’s character in Black Sails, is who he is in Treasure Island. Black Sails is a prequel, and Silver is a major character in Treasure Island. We see his actions in the book(albeit through the story of the man who survives him, and, oof, isn’t that a bit of a kicker). We know that in this future Silver is still a lying, manipulative and mysterious person, hard not to like but hard to know.

That consistency is the most important part of Long John Silver’s character to me: he doesn’t really change from the beginning of Black Sails to the end, because he’s not really meant to.

Silver may not exactly like the person he is but there is no point in trying or wanting to change. In his view, who he is is just as immutable as the world he exists in.

And that's the brilliance of Black Sails.

Silver isn’t the way he is because he is ‘evil,’ or because he wants to intentionally cause harm. He is the way he is because it is the only way he’s worked out to survive. It is “the only state in which he can function.” He does not believe in a cosmic story, in a grand design or justice in the world - and because of that he does not see the point in trying to change something that has kept him alive thus far to appease it.

The entirety of the beach flashbacks is, to me, the summation of both Flint and Silver’s characters but this in particular I feel is important:

-Do you really imagine a few weeks of this is going to make much of a difference? Am I not what I am at this point?

-It's better than nothing.

In the grand scheme, Flint and Silver only know each other for about six months.

Their relationship - especially to Silver - is a transient one. A handful of weeks. Was it ever enough to expect it to make any bit of difference?

But not so for Flint. He truly believes humans are capable of change, and he believes even the smallest bit of progress is worth the effort. Flint takes the things that happen to him and make them a part of him.

But for Silver,

I've come to peace with the knowledge...that there is no storyteller imposing any coherence, nor sense, nor grace upon those events.

Therefore, there's no duty on my part to search for it.

Silver refuses to acknowledge his own story and so is unable or unwilling to see himself as capable of change throughout it. Or even really the need for change. And that’s not said as a negative - that is who he is. That is who his past - whatever it was - has taught him.

And so he consistently acts solely for his own gain, benefit, and safety. Because if he doesn’t, who else is going to?

And this continues the differences between Flint and Silver.

While Silver is very wrong that his past is irrelevant, he is correct in that it doesn't matter. It doesn’t matter what his past is, because we can clearly see the effects of it. We don't NEED to know his past to understand his actions.

However, without knowing Flint’s backstory - Thomas, Miranda, England’s betrayal - his actions don't make sense. They are erratic: they seem villainous and vile and like the acts of a tyrant or a madman. Because his actions are tied to his story.

But from the very first moment we see Silver fight the cook over what he presumes is a chance at living, Silver is clearly trying to figure out what is best for him.

He doesn’t care about Flint’s war, or what the treasure could fund. He doesn’t care about the pardons, and he doesn't care about England. He doesn’t care about piracy. All he cares about at first is the life the treasure could buy him. But when he loses his leg, suddenly the thing he literally spent two seasons fucking everyone over for becomes completely inconsequential, because it no longer benefits him.

It is without relevance.

And through the very last time we see him speaking him to Madi, he is doing the same thing.

That's not to say he doesn't form friendships or care about people. He is, indeed, a hard man not to like, and I think he also genuinely likes people as well. But that doesn’t mean he changes because of them. The friendships he forms with Flint - with Billy, with Muldoon and Randall and the other crew members - the relationship he forms with Madi. They are all real, but they are also all expendable to ensure his own comfort and survival.

In the first episode of season 2 we’re told point blank:

It’s likely that if our interests were averse, I’d betray you to save myself.

And of course at this point Silver and Flint are little more than necessary enemies, Silver has no reason to want Flint alive. But the pattern holds throughout the whole show.

Later in season 2, when Flint is thinking about changing tactics to prioritize the pardons over the gold, Silver has no problem screwing over the entire crew(minus the two men he’s recruited) to meet his own ends. It’s what’s best for him, and Silver operates on this assumption that every person needs to look out for themselves.

And then again, in the finale of season 2 - he saves the crew because it also means saving himself. When Vincent brings up leaving, Silver says that they would likely be killed if they tried - he’s already considered that option and rejected it because his odds of survival are higher sticking with the crew.

And then of course, in season three, in the maroon cages - you can bet that the fact that flint’s psyche basically controlled whether they all - including him - lived or died was a major driving force behind his dedication to getting Flint to come up with a plan better than Billy’s in which - again - they all likely end up dead.

His relationships with Madi and Flint in particular are deep, and so it is the worst thought possible when he realizes that they are starting to agree with each other, but not with him. When Madi agrees with Flint over trading the cache for the fort, I read this as the true end of Silver’s support of the war because the war now threatens his personal ‘safety.’

Because at that moment, the thing most important to him is keeping Madi - who he not only has come to care for but who supports him. And she makes him know she supports him. And the prospect of losing that is what ultimately I think drives him to planning to send Flint away, rather than bring Thomas there or some other plan.

And again it isn’t maliciousness - not outright. He is doing what he thinks he needs to to survive, because he cannot have enough faith in either Flint or Madi to think they won’t drop him the moment he stops being invaluable. And in the end, that lack of faith is what spells the end for any chance he has at having them in his life.

When he thinks Madi might die if they continue, he doesn’t care if she hates him. He doesn’t care if Flint hates him. He doesn’t care if the relationship is destroyed if he gets what he wants out of it. Madi’s survival. The end of the war. An end to Flint and Madi’s relationship so that he can ‘protect’ her from death and choose how he ‘loses’ her. It is always less painful to be the one doing the leaving.

Based on his world view - that you must protect what is in your own interests and the only person you can count on is yourself - that is the right thing to do.

Over and over we see that Silver is mostly interested in other people through the guise of his interest in keeping himself alive. And I also think that because of that, he views himself as expendable to other people as well.

When Muldoon insists that the crew would take care of him if he needed that, it’s clear that Silver doesn’t believe him. He still believes himself to be expendable unless he is useful. He is constantly managing his image, managing how people see him, managing the things he allows others to see and what dangers or threats they pose to him, because he believes these are the things that keep him safe. Not his friendships, but what he brings to them.

Part of what’s so heartbreaking about Silver’s arc in season 4 is how terrifyingly close he comes to believing himself worthy. He wants the war because the two people who mean the most to him, who he sees as vital to his own survival - Flint and Madi - are both committed to it. And he’s committed to them. But I also think that just for a second, he starts to see their vision.

When things are going well, when he can’t see the body count, he comes so close. But then of course, when everything falls apart and he is forced to confront once again the horrors of the world, he retreats.

That line he has:

And as long as (I have his true friendship) he is going to have mine.

I see that get thrown around a lot as a declaration of love, of deep feelings - and it is, to an extent. But it is also a sign of the deep mistrust that Silver harbors even when he is not looking to.

Even in this moment when he has Madi, when it must seem like they are nigh unstoppable and Silver himself is poised at the head of this great thing - when he and Flint are closest and when, I assume, Flint couldn’t fathom betraying him. Silver is still thinking in the eventuality that it will happen.

I have his true friendship, and as long as that is true, he is going to have mine.

Silver’s love is always conditional. And that doesn’t make it any less ‘real’. It doesn’t make it any less important. But it does make it easier to take back. And that’s important for him!! It’s important for Silver’s own safety that he never rely on someone so much that he cannot cut them loose if they pose a ‘danger’ to him.

And to me, that’s the most important thing to realize about Silver. He is a ‘villain’ - and again I use the term loosely because he is ONLY a ‘villain’ because our protagonist’s stories are set in opposition to his - because he will always put himself above the grander goal.

We see this in Black Sails, and we see this in Treasure Island. John Silver betrays Jim even though he feels conflicted about it. It isn’t until the very end, until Silver sees once again the same opportunity flash before his eyes where someone he loves is in danger and he cannot live with their death, that the treasure itself becomes unimportant again. Black Sails does an incredible job of giving us an antagonist whose defining trait is that he cannot see himself being meaningful in any way that matters.

Silver ends up destroying just about every relationship he has because of this inability. Time and again when he is faced with an opportunity for growth that comes with hard decisions, he chooses to destroy himself. Because it is easy.

It is easy to destroy the thing you do not care about, it is easy to destroy yourself if you don't value yourself. To call it winning because at least you are still alive and the things you’ve had to sacrifice are merely unimportant - inconsequential. But thinking like that hurts not only ourselves, but others too.

And it is not that Silver puts himself first, plenty of other characters do that as well - Miranda, Jack, Max. It is the fact that Silver must deny himself in the process that makes him the villain not just in Black Sails, but in his own story. And THAT is the origins of his supervillain story. That he is, in fact, his own.

#black sails #john silver #milos black sails meta #black sails discourse #black sails meta #we'll see how this goes over lmao anyway CATCH ME ALWAYS SAYING THAT THE WHOLE POINT IS THAT SILVERS INABILITY TO CENTER HIMSELF #/MAKES HIM THE VILLAIN/ AND THATS FUCKING BEAUTIFUL #long post

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yuvon-writes-letters · 3 years

Note

To all,

In the few hours of planning, I have witnessed a letter appear in our shared mailbox, on a Tuesday.

For the record, I do not believe any of this nonsense, you could very easily be lying, both Yu, and whoever that “entity” is.

But Rai insists that it is all true, and despite his fragility, he always had this uncanny ability to tell when someone is spreading falsehoods or not, a knack for feeling if something is going wrong. The fact that he hasn’t quit sending these letters means that he wholeheartedly believes this, sci-fi narrative.

I trust him, so I’ll play along for now.

Trust me, this does not mean I trust you. For the time being, Rai will not be sending any letters, because he has apparently made himself a target, I cannot have that.

My name is. Actually, you don’t get to know my full name, it’s bad enough that you know my first anyways.

To, the entity, the letter that that was sent was matted in dirt, the words “I see you” were written in what is most likely blood, it was stuffed in an envelope along with the lily.

To Yu, Yuvon, thank you for being there for Rai these past few weeks, and fuck you, for making his life so much harder than it needs to be. He should be worried about portioning his time right to get more sleep, and doing his best to earn a living, not trying to keep a cursed pen-pal alive. Unfortunately, if what you do say is true, then I cannot blame you for his woes, you reached out, and like the hero he is, he takes the call for help.

I am currently in the process of reading the letters that were sent between you all, but, if you want to be in my good graces, a summary would help much more than hours of reading, I will not take kindly to secrets (Jake).

I will await a response.

Skie

Skie,

Most of the evidence I'd usually offer to assure people I'm not lying doesn't apply to you. It'll be a little more clear why when I get into the summary later, but I'm reeling a bit and I'm trying to take things one thing at a time.

Yeah. It's probably best if Rai at least isn't the first one to open these letters for a while. Please be careful too. I seriously don't know what this thing is capable of or what it wants, but it's very clearly violent. And entities (that's what we call these things, for lack of a better word) getting violent ends very, very poorly.

Best if we don't do full names, I agree. We've all sort of set a precedent where we use nicknames or screen names instead of our actual names.

(The ink turns dark enough that it seems to suck in the light around it.) My thanks for the description.

...Right. That just happened. I'm never going to get used to that.

You're welcome and I'm sorry. Truthfully, I've been pretty worried about Rai as well, and I sincerely apologize for any and all parts I played in Rai's problems.

Alright. Recap. This is gonna be long.

One day before I sent my first letter, I woke up in a clearing in a forest, with a note that told me that I could send letters to alternate universes with other people in the same situation I had left before arriving to the clearing on the ground in front of me. I marked the direction I was facing when I appeared and arbitrarily declared it "north". I did some exploring, and discovered that there was an invisible barrier all around the clearing, and that there were trees as far as the eye could see when I climbed a tree inside the barrier. After the first day, I sent my first letter.

Rai, though he went by Rainer then, was actually the first person to write to me, two days later. He was doubtful, obviously, but I shared specific details of the shared experiences that connect us across universes, and so did he, so we believed each other. We talked metaphysics and theories about what was going on for a bit, and Rai asked for details about my circumstances. I learned there were eight rooms off the central clearing, but five disturbed me so much that I lied and said that only three existed: a library (south), a game room (east), and a "comfy room" (west) with pillows and mattresses and blankets, etc.

Eventually, I realized there was an anomaly we've tentatively been calling the stasis over my version of the Duskwood group, where they went on with their lives but nothing actually changed. They didn't start to come to terms with emotional events that happened, they made no progress in their investigations, they didn't talk about anything important. Things were happening, but nothing HAPPENED, if that makes sense.

Rai encouraged me to tell one particular person from the Duskwood group I trust whole-heartedly, Jake, about my circumstances. That broke the stasis on him, and from then on, he and I started to work together.

We determined that the trees around my clearing are elder trees (symbolic of life/death/rebirth cycle) and completely generic trees. I theorized that I was stuck between a symbolic "death" and "rebirth", in a stasis of my own. I remain convinced of this theory.

On Father's Day, I spoke to the Duskwood group and lied to them in the process of cancelling an event I'd planned on that day for fear of giving myself away. Unbeknownst to me, that began to shake them out of their stasis slowly.

Someone named Liska contacted me then, informing me that they were sort of in an inverse situation as my own: They had normal contact with their friends and family outside of Duskwood, and they hadn't been kidnapped like I was, but Duskwood itself was almost completely frozen. There was some other weird stuff happening with the stasis, but that's not so relevant.

Lis started to get threatening calls from the perpetrator in the Duskwood case, worrying pretty much everyone, plus she didn't trust me, though I cleared the distrust up fairly quickly.

This is about when Rai started having issues, and warned us he wouldn't be able to write letters as often.

I sorta got stuck for a while, and Lis kept getting threatened. I figured out that someone would eventually join me in the clearing, but not who, how, or when, so I was obsessing over that. About then, Lis pointed out a small detail that showed I was lying about something, and that turned into a confession about the other five rooms. In brief:

North: A room with a countdown to when I can leave

Northwest: Another clearing where everything was dead with a silver goblet at the end, whole area gave off a magical sense of dread, I left without investigating further

Southeast: Altar w/ bloodstains, symbolism and text suggesting I could sacrifice my life to kill the ass terrorizing my version of the group (an alternate version of the asshole stalking Lis)

Northeast: Knife in the middle of a glade, can cut almost anything in here but the invisible barrier.

Southwest: 3 upside-down torches, one on each wall that wasn't an entrance, floor was a field of white lilies. Refused to enter initially due to overdose of symbols of death.

I discovered that my old family and my few non-Duskwood friends had all completely forgotten who I was. They still haven't remembered, but that's besides the point. I'm not just whining here, this becomes important later.

Anyhow, I started getting really worried about Rai, because he mentioned his head feeling fuzzy, he was having trouble understanding things, and his writing was disjointed. You probably know about when that was on the recent timeline.

Lis's next letter was concerning, and I asked in a cipher I won't disclose because at least one entity can't seem to understand it whether she was alright and offered a code for her to tell us if she was being watched.

Lis then sent two letters back to back: one where she used the code, and one when she wasn't being watched: she had been kidnapped by the stalker. We also made first contact with an entity we're calling "Goldie" or "Aur" (first few letters of their name) who is benevolent and has done their utmost to help Lis.

In addition, her Jake spoke to her over Tumblr, promising to help find her, and I got print-outs of the screenshots in an envelope. I contacted him as well, offering what advice I could, especially as we'd begun to theorize there was an entity working against Lis as well.

It wasn't enough. Lis was shot. And died.

And then her entity sent her back in time, alive, and with her Jake freed from the stasis much earlier.

As Lis started recovering mentally from that, I started messing on this plane again. Lis convinced me to test out the death symbol room and see if it was actually dangerous, so I first tried cutting my way out of the barrier with the knife (it failed) and then I started sorta using the Robin Crusoe method of testing the room for death, which meant I went very slowly.

During this, Rai finally admitted he hadn't been sleeping enough, and I tried to encourage him to actually fucking sleep and not worry so much about writing the damn letters.

Then

Okay, I'm not proud of this bit. Behind one of the torches in the room with the lilies and torches I'd been testing, there was a sheet of paper with a blood ritual on it. It promised an end result I'd like, and none of the other schmuck baits up to that point had actually hurt me, so I gave it a try. Imagine my shock when Jake appeared in the clearing. He's still here, by the way, we don't know how to get him back any more than me.

Rai brought up a theory (later confirmed) that the ritual brought Jake because he was what I most wanted to have with me right then. I began to work on trying to deconstruct the ritual and understand how it worked so I could confirm or deny, but was interrupted when I discovered that the Duskwood group had broken out of stasis, and I had to play damage control. They also became semi-aware the stasis had happened.

Lis sent another letter, and Jake came to the conclusion that her workplace is unsafe, and urged her to take a vacation, especially in the wake of further threats from the kidnapper. Also, Lis's stasis started to weaken, and she began passing messages between my version of Jake and her's. They proved to be surprisingly different.

At that point, someone named Jessy sent a letter in, who is one of the Duskwood crew. She was from a year in my future, shortly after her version of me, named Matt, was killed by the kidnapper and Jake was framed for it.

At this point, Jake raised the theory that Rai, Lis, Matt, myself, and all other counterparts across universes are somehow cursed, or gain more attention than we should from entities, and that's why so many horrible things happen to us. It... makes a lot of sense, honestly.

About here is when I started getting together a plan to get out. I was worried I might be mindread, though, so I went to slightly extreme measures to make sure my thoughts wouldn't give me away.

Then Jessy wrote again, and tried to convince Lis and I to run away from our respective Jakes out of concern. Along the way, she accidentally implied that her universe's Jake was being tortured in his incarceration, and I admittedly lashed out at her a bit in my response to her letter. It made me furious, obviously, and scared and upset, so I used those emotions to focus.

Lis grew concerned when I denied I had a plan. Repeatedly. And unconvincingly. Okay, it was more of a mantra. I sort of wrote "I have no plan" all over the paper and then didn't erase well enough, so you can see why she was concerned.

Now, I don't know everything that went down right there, but I'll take a guess. The entity, unable to interpret the ciphered messages I'd sent to Lis explaining why I was so insistent that I had no plan, asked Lis what my plan was, pretending to be benevolent like Goldie. Lis didn't believe it, and annoyed the entity in the process. It taunted her, claiming that Jake and I would be hurt because of her noncompliance, which was bullshit because the entity would've done what it did anyhow. Lis tried to send us warnings, but the entity blocked them and taunted her more publicly.

Unless it's essential, I'd rather not go into detail about what exactly happened when I tried to execute my plan. There's a letter that describes most of it somewhere in the past two weeks or more. Suffice it to say, I fell into a probably magic-induced coma for a few days, my face is still scarred to hell, and there's a small chunk missing from my right arm, though that's filling in because enhanced/faster healing here.

After the incident, while I was unconscious, everyone wrote in letters asking after me or offering advice, including Lis's Jake and Jessy, and Jake pretended to be me to keep the Duskwood group from suspecting anything. One of them figured it out, but she was sympathetic to both Jake and myself, so she kept the secret. In the meantime, Lis took a vacation and got out of danger, hopefully.

When I woke up, I was able to just... know a few minor facts about the entity. I still don't know how or why.

Anyway, I just sorta recovered and caught up for a bit.

Max contacted us to basically let us know that Lis was doing better (she was really torn up with guilt over the incident :( )

Very recently, Jessy contacted my parents, trying to determine if I was alright, and discovered that they didn't know who I was. That spawned a confession from me when I was confronted; that whole group is now in the know. Jake is still not entirely pleased with my decision, but I think he's mostly over it.

Then that new entity apparently sent out the letter, you contacted us for the first time, and now we’re back to the present moment.

Oh. One more thing that seems pretty important in hindsight. Rai sent me a crayon as an experiment. It arrived three different colors in one crayon: brown, green, and white. Take a wild guess what it was called.

Yep. White lily.

This is sort of reminding me of a character I made a million years ago, but the powers don't match up. It doesn't sound like the M.O. does either. Still, that character was a nasty piece of work. I hope it's all just a coincidence.

Anyhow. That's all for now. Talk to you later. Write to you later. Whatever.

—Yuvon

(The letter tucks itself in the paper clip with the others.)

#duskwood letter game #yuvon writes letters #duskwood #duskwood game #duskwood everbyte #duskwood jake #duskwood jessy #rai #skie #lis #lis's jake #lis's entity #jessy #the entity #lily #recap

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curiosity-killed · 4 years

Text

a bow for the bad decisions

canon-divergent AU from ep. 24 (on ao3)

Nerves tumble through him, all delighted energy racing in his veins in place of blood. His robes are new, a surprise from Wen Qing, Granny, and two of the aunties. Ink-dark clouds bloom over rich blue silk the color of the first bruising brush of night, a deep red robe rustling underneath. Running his fingertips down along the neat folds, he bites back a shaking smile. He’s going to meet his nephew. He’s going to see shijie and Jiang Cheng and he’s finally going to meet his first baby nephew. If excitement were an animal, his would be a hundred gilded canaries flocking and whirling behind his ribs. He’s inundated, suffused. Joy is such a vibrant rush that it blots out all else. Under the sun-white glow of it, he can think of little else but the excitement of the day. There is no room for his worries: whether the sects will ever let the Wens go in peace to a new home; how Uncle Four and Granny are going to get through the worst days of winter; what it means that the back of his hip keeps going funny lately, like the threads holding it in place are slowly unraveling. Sliding a small wooden box into his robes over his heart, he steps outside. Wen Qing’s waiting, clearly pretending she’s not by studying the lotus pond like it holds some secret message. By her side, Wen Ning holds a-Yuan on his lap, listening seriously as the boy chatters and waves one of his spinning toys through the air. Wen Qing straightens first. “How do I look?” Wei Wuxian asks with a grin.

Pursing her lips, Wen Qing studies him with a sharp eye and her hands on her hips. “Like a nuisance,” she says and reaches over to tug a strand of hair into place. “Hey!” Wei Wuxian yelps, only a little faked. Wen Qing pulls back to fold her hands at her waist. Her expression goes a little soft, the way it sometimes does when she looks over all of them gathered for dinner in the firelight. Wen Ning has stood and come to stand at her shoulder now, and he manages a tremulous smile. He’s worked hard over this year, to get back his emotions. He can’t blush or cry anymore, but he’s gotten the hang of inflection again, and he can pull up these little smiles. In another year or two, perhaps, he’ll be able to grin and laugh once more. “Behave for your sister,” Wen Qing says and holds out a small pouch of silver, “and pick out something nice for your nephew.” He can’t help the way his smile goes soft and a little sappy. Wen Qing looks skyward as if for patience, but before either can say more, there’s an insistent tug on his skirts. “Xian-gege,” a-Yuan says, frowning like a Yunmeng thunderstorm, “why do you have to go to the baby?” His voice is so petulant, so full of little kid frustration with the wide world. Wei Wuxian fights back a laugh. “Ah, a-Yuan, don’t you want to meet my shijie’s baby?” he asks. “He can be your little cousin a-Ling.” “Don’t want a little cousin,” a-Yuan pouts. “Xian-gege promised older brothers and sisters.” He pauses and tilts his head to look up at Wei Wuxian sideways through his lashes, rubbing his nose with one finger. It is a preposterous expression on a four-year-old face, and Wei Wuxian has to bite his lips to keep in his laughter. “Maybe we can sell him with the radishes?” His voice is so hopeful, the question so absurd — Wei Wuxian lets his laughter peal out of him and swoops down to scoop him up in his arms. His back twinges, briefly, but he ignores it. A-Yuan’s eyes brighten as if he thinks he’s getting his way. “A-Yuan, so cruel!” he scolds, delighted. “How could we sell my very first nephew?” “We could trade him,” a-Yuan suggests solemnly, “and plant a big brother instead.” It’s too cute; too much happiness is flooding him all at once, and Wei Wuxian squeezes him close even as he pinches his cheek. “Ai, truly the son of the dread Yiling laozu,” he teases before leaning in to kiss his cheek. “And so cute!” Shaking her head, Wen Qing tries to stifle a smile, but it’s still there in the corners of her mouth as she reaches out and plucks a-Yuan from his arms. He looks briefly disappointed, but he laughs in surprise when Wei Wuxian chucks his chin gently and ruffles his hair. “Go on,” Wen Qing says, nodding toward the path down the mountain. “You don’t want to be late.” Grinning, Wei Wuxian waves an idle goodbye as he starts down the trail with Wen Ning at his side. Granny and Auntie Three tell him to take care when they pass, and Uncle Six wishes them safe travels as he returns from gathering water. Wei Wuxian could nearly skip all the way to Lanling with the way joy bubbles effervescent in his veins, but he settles for spinning Chenqing between his fingers and humming along to a song he half-remembers from childhood. They’ve left with enough time to fly to and from Lanling twice with rest on either end, but then, Wei Wuxian’s not flying anywhere. Suibian sits propped on a shelf in his cave, where it’s lain since they arrived. He cleans the blade as he has to, out of respect to the spirit that still thrums through it and to the bond he once shared with the sword, but otherwise, he pretends he cannot see it lying there. He doesn’t regret it. There is no world in which he could ever wish he’d made another choice, but—

He’d told Wen Qing he understood the consequences. That he knew the risks and the weight of giving up his golden core. He would forever be mediocre, destined to live out a shorter life and to never fulfill the great dreams he’d had in his adolescence. Such broad declarations could not fathom the painful prick of everyday loss. He no longer reaches for spiritual energy that isn’t there, but sometimes he dreams, and he still knows that familiar river-rush song of power at his center. It still feels right, still feels like the song his soul has known since he was twelve and he felt a seed of something strong and glowing deep within him. He wakes bereft, empty-handed, hollowed. It’s not even the dreams he misses most — those grand heroics were always stories, and his home has been in Lotus Pier alongside his duty for most of his remembered life. It’s the little things, the things he had taken for granted: being able to help when someone was ill or injured, being able to soar up on Suibian and see the tumbling world splayed out before him. He will never regret his choice. If anything, he’s been proven right over and over in how Jiang Cheng has led Yunmeng Jiang through the war and into this new reconstruction. Lotus Pier needed its leader, and Jiang Cheng has always been destined for that mantle. So, no, he will never regret his decision. But, sometimes, he grieves. It’s a selfish sorrow, to lie with his hand flat on his chest in the night-quiet and feel the resounding hollowness echo through him. There’s still spiritual energy lingering in him, enough to power a talisman or a weak spell, but it diminishes day by day, eaten away by the resentment hooking claws into his bones. Guilt does its best to drown the grief. He has no right to feel sorrow for a sacrifice willingly made. If he does not regret the decision, what reason is there for hurt? He should just be able to set it aside and move forward, onward. He tries. It works most days. They stop in Yiling to pick up a token with the money Wen Qing sent, and Wei Wuxian eyes the whole supply, running his fingers along the jade, weighing the heft of them in his palm. It’s only adornment, a small trinket to accompany his real gift, but he wants it to be perfect, too. Outside, Wen Ning waits patiently. He’s dressed in his best as well, neat black robes that don’t mark him as any sect but are carefully pleated and tied. Wei Wuxian grins and holds out the tassel for examination. “What do you think?” he asks. “It is very pretty, Master Wei,” Wen Ning affirms. “Is this your gift for young Jin Rulan?” Wei Wuxian scoffs and reaches into the folds of his robe to pull out the lacquered box. As if he would give his nephew something so small as a tassel and say that was sufficient. He passes the box to Wen Ning, who cradles it in his hands like a bird’s egg. Wei Wuxian waits, trying carefully not to preen, as he lifts the lid to examine the gift. “It’s warded,” he blurts out anyway, because he’s never been very good at bottling up excitement. “Low level ghosts and monsters won’t be able to come near him as long as my nephew wears it.” “I can feel it,” Wen Ning says, his hand hovering carefully away from the beads. The bracelet has taken hours of work and planning, the kind of mental challenge that is at once exhilarating and exhausting; he loves the strain of it, the puzzle in how to determine the right characters and imbue it with the proper strength, but it also required more planning and detail work than comes naturally. He can’t count the number of times he checked and re-checked his work to make sure he didn’t miss something tiny and vital. Wen Ning moves to touch the bracelet, and panic flashes through Wei Wuxian as he half-lunges to stop him. “Ah don’t touch it!” he yelps. He manages to reign himself back in as Wen Ning stops short and turns to him with something like alarm. “I’m not sure what it’ll do.” He tries not to wince as he says it; he hadn’t wanted to point it out at all. Despite his placid face, Wen Ning’s shoulders stoop a little, and Wei Wuxian’s heart squeezes painfully. He shouldn’t have to worry about this, shouldn’t have to think about how he’s been made into a monster. It’s not his fault, not something he had any say in, and guilt sours deep in Wei Wuxian’s belly at the way that he still has to carry the burden even when it was forced upon him in the first place. “Come on,” Wei Wuxian says, clapping Wen Ning on the shoulder once the box is stowed once more. He gives a smile of reassurance, apology, and Wen Ning quirks up his lips in his own smile. “Of course, Wei-gongzi,” he says. It’s a long walk to Koi Tower. Wei Wuxian almost wishes they had chosen to split up the trip between two days, but it’s not like they would have been able to afford an inn and a bath if they had. He spends the walk teasing Wen Ning and chattering. Wen Ning’s still a little demure, but he’s gotten better at teasing and understanding when Wei Wuxian is joking over the year. It’s nice in a way few things are anymore; Wen Ning knows, like Wen Qing, and Wei Wuxian doesn’t have to pretend around him. He cradled Wei Wuxian’s head as his sister pulled out the thrumming golden core at his heart, kept his shoulders pinned to the ground as he screamed. He understands in a way shijie or Jiang Cheng or Lan Zhan never can. They have done terrible violence to each other for the sake of their siblings, and they can laugh and talk and tease in the sunlight. It’s the kind of light that falls through cracks in ancient ruins, that illuminates and softens the ragged edges of history. They plan to pause and rest on the far side of Qiongqi Pass, Wen Ning’s enforcement of his sister’s order. “It would make Lady Jiang upset if you overexerted yourself before the celebrations,” Wen Ning says. That is certainly not how Wen Qing phrased it. Wei Wuxian accepts it with only a little complaining, to keep up appearances. It can’t get out that he can be persuaded so easily after all; his reputation would never survive.

#mdzs #cql #the untamed #untamed fic #wei wuxian #wen ning #wen qing #my writing #and the sads being

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keepyourpantsongohan · 5 years

Text

Green Around the Gills

Grown-ups are idiots. (Chapter 622) | Discord Secret Santa 2019 for @lunarcatninja.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“A shinobi must be disciplined in body and mind,” begins Tobirama, his voice muffled, “and that will allow him to overcome any obstacle that might arise.”

Hashirama, the lout that he is, laughs. “Who are you lecturing, Tobirama?”

“You,” says Tobirama, with all the dignity he can muster.

His companion tilts his head. “Could you repeat that?” Hashirama asks, and Tobirama cannot tell if he’s teasing. He tucks the blankets further up underneath his brother’s chin. By this point, Tobirama is more sheet than shinobi. “You seem to be losing your voice.”

“I’m not sick, Anija,” Tobirama insists, obstinate; certain; coughing.

“You sneezed on the General of the Land of Iron this morning,” Hashirama points out, laying a warm cloth on the other’s forehead.

“He was being impertinent,” Tobirama says, before his brother shoves a spoonful of soup in his mouth.

Hashirama sighs. “It’s not your usual kind of diplomacy. And here you’re always telling me you’re the even-tempered one.”

Another spoonful of soup cuts off Tobirama’s ability to reply, but he make sure to convey a look that would deter almost any shinobi in the village. To Tobirama’s dismay, he is constantly aiming it at the only two men in Konohagakure immune.

“Hashirama, you must release me,” Tobirama demands, when he is finally free to speak again. “If we don’t complete the proposal for the trade route to Sunagakure today—”

“—You might come dangerously to getting some rest.” Hashirama finishes with a stern look. It is unusual for his brother to take such a reprimanding tone. It abates Tobirama’s ire briefly.

Tobirama attempts to school his face into something less petulant. He closes his eyes, letting his brother guide him into leaning his head back. “You are being far too overprotective,” he mutters.

“It’s my job to protect the people of this village, and one of my most trusted advisors,” is the sincere reply.

Tobirama cracks one eye open. “Is it also your job to be a nuisance?”

Though he’s facing the doorway, there is a smile in Hashirama’s voice when he answers. “That too, Otōto.”

Tobirama finds himself unceremoniously awakened to his brother trying to shove him into a sweater. “What,” he begins with a mouthful of fleece, “are you doing?”

“You were shivering in your sleep,” says Hashirama, as if this is at all a rational justification for smothering his airway.

“So why not put another blanket over me?” Tobirama tries to say, with fabric covering half of his face.

Hashirama puts his hands on his hips. “They weren’t warming you up enough!”

“It’s December,” Tobirama remarks, at last yanking the sweater neck over himself. “Nothing is warm.” He punctuates this notion with a sneeze, and curses silently at his own body’s betrayal.

“Exactly my point,” Hashirama says determinedly. “Now are you going to eat the flaxseed I set out for you, or shall I feed that to you too?”

Tobirama eyes the bowl at his bowl at his bedside suspiciously. “That’s a remedy for constipation.”

“Muscle spasms are muscle spasms,” Hashirama says, with so much conviction Tobirama could almost believe it.

Tobirama groans. “I’ll start trusting your diagnoses when you become a medic. I have entertained your lunacy long enough. The trade plans—”

“Madara and I will complete them,” Hashirama dismisses, waving a hand.

Tobirama starts to sit up. Hashirama pokes him once firmly, and that is enough to knock him right back into lying down. “That’s hardly reassuring,” Tobirama grumbles. “You know how he looks down on the Kazekage.”

“That’s why we’ll do it together. You should have more faith in your comrades, Tobirama,” Hashirama muses, good-naturedly. “In all respects. I may not be a medic, but as you know, I'm no stranger to healing myself. I don’t even use hand signs anymore.” From anyone else, such words might be boastful, but from Hashirama, it is merely a statement of fact.

“It’s not a lack of faith,” Tobirama counters, only just chastened. “It’s... your attitude.”

Hashirama has the gall to laugh. “My attitude?”

“You’re far too easygoing,” Tobirama replies. With a pause and a darting glance at the flaxseed, he says, “In most things.”

“One of us has to be,” says Hashirama, smiling. He picks up the bowl. “If you won’t eat this, I’ll get you something else.”

Tobirama would call it a victory, if he weren’t more worried about what might be found in the kitchen. A healer, indeed.

“If you’re such a master of healing, Anija,” Tobirama says, narrowing his eyes at his brother, “Why is it that your jutsu can’t cure cough and cold?”

Hashirama pats him on the head. “Maybe it’s your attitude.”

When Tobirama sneezes on him, it is only half an accident.

Despite Tobirama’s best efforts, Hashirama does feed him again, a horrifying concoction of cod liver oil, thyme, cherries, peppermint and Valerian root. Whether by the power of the tincture or as a defence mechanism, he sleeps.

When Tobirama wakes up again, he hefts himself out of bed. It is a lucky thing his elder brother is not in the room, for Tobirama’s body is so stiff and aching that he nearly falls to floor trying to get his knees to bend. “Alright, I’m a little ill,” he admits quietly under his breath, throwing a blanket over his shoulders. He does so only because he knows Hashirama cannot hear him.

In the sitting room, he finds a world transformed. Gone is all the paperwork and research left out on his and Hashirama’s desks, and instead the room closely resembles what their mother’s study had looked like many years ago, when they piled every object without a sharp edge in it in front of the fireplace to usher in the morning of Kawarama’s birthday. How Hashirama has managed to adapt a fireplace to this space, Tobirama doesn’t know, because they certainly don’t have a chimney.

“This room is a fire hazard,” Tobirama declares upon the sight of it, but his smile undermines him immediately.

“If you won’t sleep, at least take a break,” Hashirama says, with his back to Tobirama. He sits directly in front of the fire, and holds out a steaming mug beside him.

Tobirama takes the drink. It isn’t overly sweet, and his throat welcomes the warmth. “Thank you.”

“I meant what I said before.” Hashirama murmurs.

Raising one silver eyebrow, Tobirama asks, “About my bad attitude?”

Hashirama laughs, clapping him on the back. As tired as Tobirama is, the motion nearly sends him careening into the fireplace, so the same hand pulls him back. With an embarrassed chuckle, Hashirama replies, “About you being a trusted advisor. I don’t take your contributions lightly, Tobirama. Madara and I may have founded this village, but it would not prosper without you. I only wish that you would remember to give yourself a little leave.”

“I like research,” Tobirama says.

“And you like drinking something warm, and reading about legendary battles, and seeing which of us can keep a spinning top going the longest,” Hashirama says, nudging him. “What makes you so certain your only hobbies should be your work?”

That finally draws a laugh out of Tobirama. “Years of practice.” He gestures to his mug. The lip of it is cracked, and it doesn’t do a good job protecting his hands from the heat of his beverage, but it’s one of the few possessions they’ve managed to keep with them over the years. “I’m resting now. You might even call ‘talking’ a hobby.”

“‘Arguing,’” corrects his brother. “You still haven’t admitted to being unwell.”

“Diplomacy is all about compromise, Anija,” Tobirama maintains. “We don’t agree about how much I should rest, but you’ve made this place more restful. So now, we both can both take a moment away from all the fuss.”

There is a glint in Hashirama’s eye that means nothing good. “I can’t take all the credit,” Hashirama says, entirely too cheerful. “It was Madara’s idea.”

Tobirama makes a derisive sound, which turns into an acute wheeze. “Uchiha Madara? Well, that is unexpected.”

“Your doubt is insulting,” says a voice from the doorway.

“Madara. Did no one ever teach you to knock before entering someone else’s home?” Tobirama asks, but it lacks any bite.

“Hashirama let me in,” Madara says, and Tobirama wonders whether his not noticing is a testament to illness or familiarity. “How do you think that flame has been containing itself? Hashirama has never been good at harnessing fire jutsu.”

“Fair point,” Tobirama concedes, while Hashirama pouts. “But why are you here?”

Madara snorts. “You were practically unconscious in this morning’s meeting. I would hardly be a good friend if I let Hashirama fret himself to death. Besides,” he says, offering a pointed look at Tobirama, “I told him I’ve learned a thing or two about managing unruly clan members.”

Tobirama huffs. “Unruly— I’ll tell you what’s unruly—”

“It’s not nice to tease the ill,” interjects Hashirama, smiling into his mug. “Have a seat, Madara.”

Tobirama expects him to sit in the empty space beside Hashirama, but to the other man’s surprise, Madara plops himself down right between them. “What is it?” he demands, when Tobirama looks at him askance.

Tobirama rolls his eyes, bringing his drink back up to his lips. “Don’t blame me if you get sick.”

(The fire burns brightly all night, until the break of dawn, when Madara lets out a single, abrupt, high-pitched sneeze.)

#lunarcatninja #sloaners secret santa #tobirama senju #hashirama senju #madara uchiha #naruto series #ayesha talks anime #mine #surprise!#second year in a row of writing a gift for you lunar jhkjghg #fanfiction #long post #⁽ᵗʰᵉ ᵗᶦᵗˡᵉ ᶦˢ ᵃ ʲᵒᵏᵉ ᵃᵇᵒᵘᵗ ᵗᵒᵇᶦʳᵃᵐᵃ ᵇᵉᶦⁿᵍ ᵗʰᵉ ᵍʳᶦⁿᶜʰ⁾#[ᵗᵒᵇᶦʳᵃᵐᵃ ᵃˢ ᵗʰᵉ ᵍʳᶦⁿᶜʰ ᵛᵒᶦᶜᵉ] ʰᵉˡᵖ ᵐᵉ ᶦ'ᵐ ᶠᵉᵉˡᶦⁿᵍ

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sassaetcie · 4 years

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Silver x Idia (The Molten Charcoal) chapter 6

I genuinely do not know how to schedule what’s going on in my brain, especially since that fic has been over for a while

-I'm sorry, I don't really understand what you said. Though... I know I don't find it awful to hear.

This was one of the numerous neutral ends to be expected for sure. He was too nice to tear my heart apart, and yet not in love. I was probably... lucky in a sense. How could this prince made of alabaster, no, dragging himself, no... climbing a mount of alabaster he had forged by himself... How could he even look at me without being shaken by disgust? I should have swooned for even being looked at and not mocked... No! No... I don't deserve something bad because of them... As long as I... I'm sorry Ortho... Why am I the one living? Why aren't you the one who has lived on... You always have been so lively and outgoing... I'm just... I've always have been like this but... your death made me understood that I wasn't just introvert as fuck... I just hurt everyone no matter what I do...

-That being said... I don't really understand feelings, especially stronger ones like the one you seemed to describe. You really made a line on each of my feature, didn't you? That's praise-worthy. I would like to understand them... with you by my side. We are both lost, this should be easier if one of us suddenly understand. Of course, this only works if you agree with my proposition... I hope I am not being harsh. I don't intend on hurting you.

-H-huh? Does t-t-t-t-t-hat mean you... w-w-want us to meet again? Later? Again?

-Yes, I want us to meet again. I hope I will not fall asleep before, though.

-Oo-o-oh, speaking of this... We may l-look for an... antidote? For your... huh... sleeping troubles... O-only if you want me to h-h-h-help, of course! I would understand if you feel like I'm pitiying you, but I s-s-swear I'm not, I really just want to help even if it's probably some means to only satisfy myself, I'm...

-...It is true that I never truly saw you help other people. That makes me even more curious. Hmm, I will just need some time when Old... Lilia Vanrouge and Sebek are available to watch over Mal... Draconia. I cannot let my guard down, after all. I know nothing happened yet but... It could, probably.

-O-o-o-okay, p-please tell me whenever you a-are ready to s-s-s-s-see me again, t-t-t-hen... You can tell Ortho for sure... I think?

I made sure one ending was pushed away by another strategy. Of course, I shoud stop thinking of this as a endings-crossroad but... My... love for Silver is different, without a doubt. Not especially better, or worse. It's just... not something I can explain with... love. Do I deserve to call this... love, anyway? I could just lack affection to this point or want to make a reality ouf ot fiction. But I need to dream too. If I don't, I'll be... like them, once again. Yet... if I... need to dream and don't dream on my own, I am lying too. But was this "love" invented by adults or non-adults, anyway?

-I see. Thanks for this... date. It was interesting, and I am... glad, I think. That you talked to me with such expressiveness. I wish I could thank my Old Man the way you told me all of these things.

-H-hm... I will n-n-n-n-n-need to first update Ortho's memory... But... we can... maybe? Meet again... Like... huh...

-Well, not during my timetable for sure. I cannot afford to ashame the family, all this stuff... even if I think I really should not. My Old Man is a kind man and I don't want to betray him.

-O-oo-okay... wh-hen do you t-t-think you'll be free... then?

He could have run away using this option. He was the one handling them between these perfect phalanx born from the sea. ...He wasn't the only one, of course. Luck... Luck? Did luck exist to this point... Azul certainly did beat up luck itself. I guess luck is some kind of laziness from myself, lol... Probably only for and from myself... Luck would be reflected differently in this water I see only blue and grey, I guess.

-Hmm... I'll tell you when I am sure my timetable will not change.

Or did he take another ending? Telling one lie to say the truth right after, or the other way round... He could tell two lies, or tell the truth forever. But... doubting him was already a stupid thing to do, actually. I mean, why should I have doubt him? If he didn't like me.. Fine by me... That was what I expected in most cases anyway. But if he didn't tell me he actually couldn't stand me? Then, it was... probably alright. I didn't need to doubt him that much, did I? Or that would mean betraying myself again. Yeah... boring af.

-O-okay! I... huh... hope you'll have a good day...

I can't remember if I really wished from all of my body, from top to toe... Or if it was some formal greeting I tried on him. I guess I wanted him to be happy nonetheless yet did I feel it this way? I can't remember. No feeling has shaken me neither my heart nor my brain. So, was it a kind lie of some kind, or some strange truth? I cannot recall. Or is there anything to be recalled, anyway? Perhaps I cannot reminisce because it never happened in the first place. His icy hair floated outside the shadow, and didn't melt, yeah. His hands of soft mid-water went away with him. His eyes of ocean, he brought them away as well. Or perhaps was he a sailor of some other world in the end? Surely most people were fusing along this ocean and stars, but he wasn't. So was I... somewhere else but some kind of... sailor as well? This sea of feelings was one my eyes I couldn't set on. Or was he... Sure, I wanted to ride over this space of water. See my reflection... my reflection. Maybe seeing this hair... wet. All of these flames, engulfed in some bubbles I couldn't touch... yet? I remembered trying to gather my limbs when Silver was nowhere to be seen. I guess I didn't collapse because no one was there as well... Or at least, my eyes didn't catch anyone as I was getting away from the tree restored to its original role. Apple trees only. No apple was on the ground, or yet at least. None of the red shining was separated from the green shining. They were together... Happy together, right? Somehow. Well, more like because apples were not ripe yet but. As soon at this apple was on its own, it would... live a few days. And rot away. They were... happy together. Unhappy separated. Would I...? Since I was unhappy of... this hair which never had been mine... Could I be... blessed with happiness, visited by happiness, granted happiness, if I were to cut off this blazing "blood"? I... just slept again, once I was back in the heat.

[Started Recording at : 1PM : Eighth ? Day]

-Big Bro! Big Bro! Please open the door, I have some really good news!

-Huuuh? What the... O-o-o-o—ortHO? Did something bad happen but you try to see it as good?!

-No, no, I really mean it! It's a... good piece of news!

-T-Then you can say... it t-t-through the door, right? I'm in the middle of something and I

-You're not! You usually let me open the door even if you're in the middle of a game, don't you? :(

-Ehhh?!

-I'm going in!

The door was not invaded by Hell, no matter what Hell was. No stains invaded the black and white limbs made of illusory obsidian. A superficial obsidian, yet made out of idealism. Five fingers touched the door, even if it could very likely open up by a presence. Nothing burned the prosthesis. Blue and purple lights crossed each other between figures and mangas piled up, whether by chronological order, graphic preferences and reflections, randomness or significance. Yet only these two lights, as full of shades as they are, shared no more shades. A ridiculous prairie-green, a small yellow-sun, a azure-sky, lights... were not used, yet, probably. The heatwave's spirit was sitting on a bed, chained up by his unfortunate owner. The Ignihyde bed was being sat on. The blanket was barely away between the ten asynchronous fingers.

-Were you sleeping, Big Bro?!

-... Y-yeah... I tried to... I was kind... of... exhausted... and my head felt dizzy as fuck so I-I just...

-So that makes two good news today!!!

-I... guess s-s-so... S-s-s-so what... why did... you come here?

The little brother closed the door anyway.

-Silver told me that he was free on tomorrow!

-Huh? W-w-w-w-wait, he's already free?! I-i-I don't mean t-t-t-t-t-t-hat I don't want to see h-h—him and all! Just that... I thought he would... have been longer?

-He told me he was very curious to see you again so he tried to be free as soon as possible! He also told me he was... ahem! "Sorry if I fail to understand your feelings by being too fast when it comes to see you again".

His fingers for sure made the blanket fly some centimeters, then go back to wrapping them. Two phalanx hid before going out again, then replaced by some others. Perhaps would it end when all hands were to be outside or inside. The friction definitely did not throng through his headphone, at least the thing he could handle for sure. Wasn't he choosing which sounds were going back and forth right now? Whether he was confused, happy or sad was hard to see. Or maybe both, actually? One hand disappeared while the other aired him. His hand ventilated him, then. A tight smile pierced the frozen yet burning blue lips, covering a range of shark teeth that didn't fit all of this. He... grabbed one of his other hand.

-Are you alright... big bro? You didn't answer and now you're acting... weird, if I may say so.

-I'm... Uuuuh...! I feel stupid but... This is my hand! And this one too! They're... mine!

-Well... this is your body, so yes.

-I mean... I know! But... m-m-my hands... My mouth feels weird, but not my hands...

-And yet you're smiling, Big Bro? O-o

-I AM?!

Idia raised his arms toward the smile going out of range. Why was it acting on its own, and not his hands? He spread himself in his own fingers, fiddling with the anomaly which was truly one, among the body getting rid of these things. He was made of these hundred anomalies before. So now... there were "these" ones left. But these were only "fixed". The others would probably keep on acting on their own... Or was it supposed to? Some water escaped through two symetrical curiosities, painted blue by some inheritance as well.

-Big Bro, should I tell you that you're crying as well? Are you sure everything's okay? I can tell Silver to postpone the date if necessary... :(

-N-n-n-no! I'm... I'm alright. This is just weird to explain. I'll try to explain to him first and then I'll tell you what the fuck happened... okay? I think. Is that okay? Am I being weird, right now?!

-...Okay so I'll tell him that you're available tomorrow on 6pm?

-Y-yes... t-thanks, Ortho. Where would be the date, though?

-Near the apple tree to "begin with", as he told me.

-"To begin with"?! I... I'm scared now... But I shouldn't, right, right? It's Silver we're talking about, he probably miscommunicated... Like I usually do... 6pm by the apple tree, the one where we met... He will be alone, right, right?

-...well, yes. Why should he be accompanied, big bro?

-I-i-i-I dunno! I just was worried about stuff and... I'm just huh... That's all? I asked everything I had to ask?

-I... guess so! So I'll be off, big bro! Please call me if something goes wrong!

-Y-yes... H-huh! Wait... Did you... have... had some troubles with your memory?

Shroud coerced his hands into forming one, to escape from anxiety or hide something else. The tears were already dried, but surely he would not mind crying again if needed. But maybe not now.

-I don't think so, Big Bro! Please don't worry about me for the moment, let's be sure you end up in a healthy relationship with Silver to ensure you two a beautiful ever-after!

-Are you s

The one who desired to acquire a different type of water, who did not see water as such, put away his feet walking on the ground, flying through the doors opening themselves in the magical technology they knew so well.

-...I guess Ortho didn't want to be updated today... He w-w-w-wouldn't be lying to me, right... right.

[Ended Recording at : 1h15 PM : Eighth? Day]

I didn't really know what to do. I mean, that's obvious I didn't, right... I have one day to gather myself and know what I should expect... But what should I even expect? Will we talk again, like nothing happened? No, right, right? He told me my... hair... comforted him... or did I get him wrong? He's also having troubles to communicate... So... What if he... made a mistake? He may have meant... that the warm flames comforted him, but that the blue hue made him uncomfortable... Or he didn't want to hurt me! He's as anxious as me, maybe...? Or at least he got troubles with expressing his feelings, like me for sure. But it can be in a different way... Maybe in a "normal" way? Perhaps...? He always stated what he wanted to tell me, tho. Or did he... really like it? Does he really like it? Is he fond of it? Does he love it? Does he think it's funny, like probably most of people? Or is he...?! Is he some kind of perverse who likes stuff people usually don't...! No, that wouldn't be some kind of perverse stuff. I mean... if being different is being perverse, I need to wash my fucking brain with bleach, lol. But then... what should I expect? We can't possibly sit again under the same tree and wait for an answer, can we? So... what should I do? No, what should I tell Ortho... Wait, should I tell Ortho first so that he can warn Silver about what I want to do?! Wouldn't I be impatient and selfish, though... I don't want to impose but he may also be waiting for me to suggest something for us to do... Or does he want to know more about myself, too?! Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm... Maybe I should go with something simple, but not too simple, too?! What if... I can't really bring one of my console, huuuh... He could think I just want to listen to him as a lo-fi playlist NONONONONONO?! So games are out of place... and I don't want to bring a board game... he could think the same, even if he plays along... Suff suff suff...! No. So... Maybe... drawing with him? No, no, no way. So many people think it's something we do on our own... and we don't talk much usually, nonononono... But I could also show it to him to prove him that it's a wrong way of thinking and... isn't that twisted? I'm sorry Ortho, I'm sorry... Ain't I going back to where I shouldn't?! SuffocationsuffocationsUFFOCATIONSUFFSUFFSUFFSUFFSUFFSUFF

no no no. That's alright. He may ask me something, or may chose something on his own. I just need to be sure it's something I want to do as well, right, right? No videogames, no games, no drawing... Just speaking won't solve the problem, especially if I don't know how to start a conversation and I can't watch tutorials on Youtube, I'll just sound so phony and all... I mean... the most obvious and... normal thing to do would be to invite him to a karaoke or a thing like this? He probably doesn't sing extremely well... so I shouldn't be too ashamed, right? Well, if he does, that would be dangerous because it could endanger my whole Prince Charming's balance stuff... But if he does? That would just be so cool... Yeah... I should go for a karaoke session... But where should I bring him? I can't possibly bring him to my room... right?

I played some games (mostly RPGs lol) to see if there could a good place for a date but... I don't really want it to turn out like an absolutely planned date? A beautiful woodland, a shore where seagulls are singing peacefully, a town above water and full of falling stars... That would really sound like I'm scheming something... So... maybe my room wouldn't be that weird, actually? As long as I don't lock the door it shouldn't sound weird... If Ortho is telling... No, he's obviously telling the truth. Nobody should try to go in as long as Ortho helps me... How long will he need to help me, though... I'm... already the reason why we were separated... and yet he keeps on helping me. Is it because I made him that way? My guilt will never be enough, I know that... I should at least... go with Silver. I'll be less of a burden for him. He'll be... able to walk on his two legs like he wanted to. So... my room would be the best choice. It won't be a fake fancy place... It won't be an expensive stuff I'll do to show off... It won't a place crowded with people where I will throw up or collapse or go insane or screech or become weird or... SuffSUFFSUFFSUFFSUFF No nononono. Let's not think about this one. I guess it would prove him how courageous and all I am but... I can't do this. My Eloquence skill is far too damaged when I'm among people. So... my room would definitely, absolutely be the best choice... And I should be able to play with the speakers so that he spends a good time... Yeah. We got the best wi-fi as well. I should be able to search for lost stuff if he needs me to... Let's... tell Ortho about this. For the last time, I will tell him something that only shows how selfish I am...

#twisted wonderland #twst #twisted wonderland fanfiction #twst fanfiction #idia x silver

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lavenderbones22 · 6 years

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Birthday Surprise - Ben Hardy

Summary: It's Ben's girlfriend's birthday and he can't wait to give her a special present.

Requested: 'Idk if you do kink smuts or stuff like that, but can you do an imagine where it's your birthday and after your party at the club ben says that he has his last surprise and he gets so kinky like "call me daddy" and he tie you up and puts like ice cream or something like that on your body while you're blindfolded?'

Word Count: 3640

A/N This is what I imagine Ben wearing in this. Let’s pretend this is him with you behind him walking outside of the club. hehe. gif credit to @benhardyispretty loving your page hun! x

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

I couldn't feel my feet in the sky high heels I was wearing. They were very high but they were even more expensive.

Christian Louboutin.

Ben had got them for me for my birthday and I nearly screamed loud enough to burst his ear drums when he handed me the bag this morning.

"I was going to wrap them but I thought it looked so much better in the bag than any shitty wrapping I would do," he laughed nervously.

I'd proceeded to bowl him over to the ground when I pulled the red bottom's out of their box. They were the most perfect shoes I'd wanted for ages now.

"You'll get the rest later tonight," he said with a cheeky grin.

I smiled to myself at the memory from this morning as I made my way through the club. My boyfriend was the greatest. Speaking of which, where the heck was he? I took a sip of my amaretto sour and looked around the packed venue. It was my absolute favourite drink that I insisted on drinking throughout all of tonight. Except for tequila shots, yep, amaretto sour cocktails and tequila shots were my jam for tonight.

"Seen Ben?" I snaked my arm around Rami's waist. He was standing in line at the bar and the only one from our group of friends I could find.

Since Ben had been filming Bohemian Rhapsody he had become really good friends with all of his cast mates which in turn meant I became good friends with them all also. They had wrapped filming a week ago and as well as it being a celebration of my birth, they considered tonight a celebration of all their hard work too.

I never liked to share my birthday celebrations but I supposed this was a good enough reason.

"Last I saw he was heading that way with Gwil," Rami pointed to our left out where the beer garden was. I thanked him with a kiss on the cheek and sauntered off in search of Ben.

When I found him he was skulling a pint of beer, along with Joe. They had Gwil, Lucy and a few of our other friends cheering them on.

"What the hell," I mumbled to myself, laughing at the sight in front of me. Ben slammed his pint down before Joe, standing up with his hands in the air and yelling out that Joe owed him fifty pound. People were looking at them, some laughing, others shaking their heads. Joe was immediately at it with the excuses. 'Ben got a head start' and 'I don't measure my manhood by the time it takes for me to skull a beer.'

I was giggling while I tried to light my cigarette and walk up to the table they were seated at, my boyfriend's eyes spotting me and lighting up.

"There's my birthday girl!"

He was still yelling loudly.

Okay, he was wasted.

"Here I am!" I took a puff of my fag, blowing out the smoke before Ben pulled me to him and pressed his lips onto mine.

"Love you," he spoke against my lips.

"Love you more."

He sat back down and pulled me onto his lap where we shared my cigarette. His hand was wrapped around my lower back, softly stroking the top of my bare thigh. Along with my shoes being new, my dress was too. A short, silver silk dress with slits up the side that Ben couldn't get enough of.

"I cannot wait to get you out of this later," he spoke thickly against my ear, nibbling at my earlobe right after. It sent shivers down my spine and I couldn't help but moan. I knew Ben nearly better than I knew myself which meant that I was pretty sure he had some things up his sleeve to keep our night going once we got home.

My arm was wrapped around his neck, moving up occasionally to run through his hair and along his recently shaved sides. I loved his new hairstyle. It made me so hot for him.

I leaned down and kissed his sharp jawline.

"Calm down horn dogs!" Joe's thick American accent pulled me away from my lover, his displeased face making me giggle. "Don't need to see you two making babies. I'm drunk, but not drunk enough to forget that!"

"Oh shush it mate, you're just jealous!" Ben spat jokingly.

"Yes! Yes Ben I am and I certainly don't appreciate your girlfriend here waving you in front of my face like she's been doing all night!"

Joe looked at me. "And don't you think I haven't noticed missy!" His face was as straight as an arrow and as much as I was trying to play along and act serious, I just couldn't, he was too funny. I broke out into laughter. This was why they were actors and I was not.

"See and now she's laughing at my misfortune. Poor form my dear," he shook his head, eventually looking up and blowing me a kiss.

"How 'bout we go dance!?" Lucy suggested, standing up and holding her hand out for me. I took her invitation and looked back at Ben who audibly groaned when I left his lap.

"Coming?" I asked him.

He smirked. "Yep. Just about."

I rolled my eyes, choosing to ignore his innuendo and followed Lucy back into the club and onto the middle of the dance floor.

The music was blaring through the relatively small place. It was past midnight now and everybody in the venue was absolutely wrecked. Myself included. Lucy and I had been dancing for a few songs now and I half expected Ben to have found me already but he hadn't.

Lucy's hazy eyes smiled at me as she twirled me around. A completely inappropriate dance move for the ASAP Rocky song that was playing but we were too drunk and having too much fun to care.

"I need those hips grinding up against me right now," Ben's deep voice radiated through me, even with the consuming sounds of the music around us. It was always that way whenever he was nearby. Whether it be his voice, his footsteps or the way that he smelled, I was always hyper sensitive to him.

"Well you were no where to be found," I retorted, turning around in his arms that were wrapped around my neck.

"I'm here now," he smirked, cupping my chin and pulling my lips to his. He tasted like beer and cigarettes, my mouth becoming the same as our tongues intertwined. My hands on his waist gripped tight at the brown leather jacket he was wearing. God, I needed him to fuck me so bad. "I have one last birthday surprise for you when we get home."

I groaned, knowing without a doubt that the surprise he was insinuating would be sexual. I let my head fall against his muscular chest.

"When is an appropriate time to leave my own birthday party?" I spoke titillatingly against his plump lips, shaded a deeper pink from clashing with mine. Also, probably my lipstick.

"Your birthday, your rules baby," he responded casually. "But can I suggest we make it soon, I'm already hard as hell."

I accidentally moaned out loud at the thought of his hard cock right there only separated by his jeans and my dress. Pulling him closer, I pushed myself into him, easily feeling just how hard he was.

"Alright, lets go." I couldn't take it anymore. So grabbing Ben's hand I said goodbye to Lucy and Rami who were dancing right next to us and went out back to say goodbye to the rest of our group. Other than the final 'happy birthday's' being thrown my way and the 'see you later's', we were barraged by the knowing looks of just why it was that we were leaving so soon. 1am was relatively early I supposed although I considered it a decent time to leave.

"They all knew we were going home to fuck," Ben laughed as we headed out of the club and into the cold air of London. "And I'm definitely not ashamed of that fact!" He added.

"Neither am I! Besides, birthday sex is some of the best sex one can have!"

"Cheers to that babygirl!" He pulled me back into his warmth while we waited for our Uber. "But not now because I need to get you home, out of that dress and onto my cock as soon as humanly possible."

It took fifteen minutes from when we were stood on the footpath outside the club until I was lying wanting and naked on our bed.

"Hurry uppppp," I grumbled at Ben while he was rummaging through something in the wardrobe.

"Hold tight darlin', just getting some things!" His voice was teasing and like I had suspected, he was up to something.

Suddenly he appeared out of the wardrobe, his hands behind his back with some things obviously in them.

"So remember a few weeks ago we were watching that fifty shades movie..."

"Oh Ben..." I laughed nervously. "If you plan to hang me from chains or make me do some fucking weird shit I swear-"

"No babe," he interrupted me. "Nothing' like that I promise. Just a few things I thought we could have fun with."

He walked closer to me and I watched him very carefully. He was shirtless, his muscles making me drool in the dim light that we had illuminating the bedroom. "Close your eyes," he said.

I did as told, nervous butterflies raging in my stomach. It wasn't that I was actually nervous or didn't trust Ben, it was more nervous anticipation; what was about to happen.

I felt him slip a blindfold over my eyes and tie it at the back. I giggled, this was fun already.

"You look so hot when you can't see anything," Ben commented. "I need you to sit up a little,"he helped me move and shuffled me further up the bed. I heard some fumbling of his pants, thankful they were finally coming off. But instead of hearing them drop and feeling him hovering over the top of me, I felt leather being tied around my wrists.

Oh.

Yes.

"Put your arms above your head baby and lie back," his rough hands (that had become rougher recently due to playing the drums) bound my wrists with the leather belt and tied them to the headboard.

We'd tied each other up before so that was nothing new. The blindfold though, we'd never done that and in all honesty I couldn't believe we hadn't; it was thrilling. That paired with the bound wrists, I knew that I was in for a hell of a time.

"Get comfy my love, I'll be right back!" His voice was deeper, sexier, hungrier when I was lacking a sense and it only made me want him so much more. I heard his footsteps leave the room and walk down the hall. I was already feeling exhilarated and I wondered what else he had planned.

He returned moments later not saying a word and I could hear him begin to take the rest of his clothes off. All that sounded the room was the slight wind against the window and my heavy breaths of anticipation.

"You ready baby?" His voice made me jump, not expecting him to speak at that moment.

We both laughed.

"Yep, let's get this show on the road!"

Chuckling lowly, I heard his footsteps approach the bed. He stopped for a moment and it sounded like he had something else in his hands that he was fiddling with. "Ben?"

"Right here!" He assured me.

Seconds later I felt his side of the bed dip and I could sense him above my midsection.

"This might be cold," he warned me and before I had a chance to respond I heard the unmistakable sound of whipped cream coming out of the bottle.

I squeaked when I felt the cold sensation of what I guessed was the cream around my left nipple. I squirmed as best I could with my arms bound to the headboard, giggling continually as he went on and did the same to my other nipple.

"Fuck yeah," he practically moaned. I could imagine him leaning above me, pupils dilated fully with desire as he soaked me in with his eyes. "So fucking sexy."

"It's so cold!" I bit my lip feeling more turned on by the second as I got used to the feeling of the cold cream on my nipples. I could also feel myself becoming extremely wet.

"Hold on a second, I got an idea!" I felt Ben's weight leave the bed and heard him rummaging around the room once more. Not a minute later his weight was back on the bed but this time more towards the end, closer to where my feet were.

"Ben, what are you doing?"

"Taking a photo," he answered without missing a beat.

"Christ, really?"

"Yes really. I'll keep these for when I'm off next filming somewhere," I heard the click of the polaroid camera and the sound of the picture printing. "Besides, I have been meaning to update the wank bank and this is perfect baby!" He laughed.

"For fuck sake!" I kicked what I think was his thigh playfully and rolled my eyes underneath the blindfold. "You are disgusting."

"Not disgusting my love, just a horny guy who has an incredibly sexy girlfriend."

After a few more photos, Ben put the camera down (I assumed) and started spraying more cream onto my body. My belly button, both of my hipbones and the spot I was most excited about, my pussy.

"Fuck," I moaned when the coldness of the cream hit the warmth of my wetness. It was the most perfection juxtaposition of feelings.

After a few more photos (I sure as hell hoped nobody ever found them), Ben leaned down and kissed me passionately. It was the first point of the night where I wished I was able to put my arms around him. His lips moved from mine down to my neck, biting and sucking as he continued his journey. Goosebumps alined my body as his kisses became more heated. Licking along my collarbone demandingly and leaving soft kisses along the top of my breasts.

When his mouth wrapped around my nipple, I shivered. "Fuck," I moaned, tilting my head back further into the pillow. He closed his mouth around it entirely and sucked it clean. The feeling literally sent electric shocks throughout my entire body, collecting right in my pussy. It felt so fucking good.

He repeated the process on the other nipple while he massaged my other breast. "Do you like it," he whispered gruffly.

"I fucking love it," I murmured. Once again, I wanted more than anything to run my hands through his blonde locks while he ravished me like this. But he made sure that wasn't going to happen. Not tonight.

"I can tell you do," I knew he was smiling by the way he spoke. He kissed each of my nipples, both of them fully hard from the attention he had been giving them.

He then moved down to my belly button, licking down my sternum whilst on his way. I shivered again, more violently this time while he licked the cold, sugary cream out of my belly button and then each hipbone. His fingers dropped down to my crotch and he ran two through my wet centre. "You're so wet baby...so fuckin' wet...I love it."

I grinned widely and moaned. I was seriously loving every second of this and he hadn't even properly started.

He was up at my face again, fingers still moving about in my pussy, purposely avoiding my clit. Cheeky shit. "I've been thinking about this all day," he whispered against my lips, placing a soft kiss against them before advancing back.

He ran his lips down my neck, over my breasts and my belly before finally reaching his rightful place between my legs. "Spread them, baby," he mumbled, hands on the inside of each thigh as I moved them apart for him. He didn't even need to ask, don't know why he did. Oh right, I couldn't see.

Since I couldn't use my hands to run over his back, I used my feet instead. Moving them up over his shoulders and over his silky skin while he ran his tongue through my pussy. I pulled on the belt binding me and felt my legs jerk. I was already a huge fan of being eaten out but this, holy shit, this was on another level.

"Fuckkkkk," I practically screamed, Ben laid a hand on my belly to keep me in place while he ate me out like a starved man. "Ben," I moaned.

He looked up from where he was, finger replacing his tongue on my clit for a second. "Not tonight," he spoke seriously. I knew what he meant, we did this every so often.

"Sorry daddy," I apologised innocently. A smirk and a wink and he was back licking between my folds.

"Oh my god," I moaned loudly. "Fuck daddy, it feels so good," I cried. My wrists were starting to hurt in the bind because of all the pulling but it really did just heighten everything I was currently feeling.

"Feeling good?" He mumbled against me.

"Yes," I breathed, the vibration of his words creating yet another incredible feeling.

I heard him grab the can and spray more of the cream onto my clit, giggling as the coldness shocked me once more but that quickly turned into a moan when he licked and sucked it right off.

My toes were digging into his shoulders, arms pulling roughly against the belt holding them there, Ben was going at it a million miles an hour and I was about to cum. "Be-I mean daddy, fuck, I'm about to come!"

"Come on baby, come for daddy!" He coaxed me, now inserting two fingers into me and fucking me with them while he continued to beat away at my clit.

"Fuckkkkk," I moaned loudly. "Oh my god!" He removed his fingers and ran his hands up the back of my thighs, lifting me off the bed slightly and pushing me further into his mouth. The change in position triggered me and I came hard into his mouth. Lapping me up I started to giggle at the over sensitised feeling as I was coming back down from my high.

"Fuck me already daddy, I need you," I begged, licking my lips at what I knew was quite a sight in front of me. Ben... red faced, sweat beads glistening on his forehead and chest, out of breath with me all over his lips. He chuckled and climbed up my body, kissing me aggressively and I could taste myself on his tongue mixed with the sugary sweetness of the cream.

"You're being such a good girl for daddy I might take off your blindfold, let me see those pretty eyes," his words were husky, full of sex. I was so fucking turned on it was beyond right now.

I bit my bottom lip and nodded while Ben slipped the blindfold off and I nearly cried when I could finally see his beautiful face.

"I love you," he said sweetly, breaking the dominant character he was playing for the night.

"I love you," I repeated back to him softly.

With a last kiss to my lips, he pinned me down to the pillows, nudging my legs apart once more and directed himself into me.

We groaned loudly in sync. Relief after so much hype and anticipation all night; we were connected.

He leaned his forehead against mine when he'd pushed in all the way, easy with how wet I was and the remnants of the whipped cream. Our eyes were locked and he started to move. A groan, a struggle of my hands that were still bound; this felt too good. I knew I was going to come again pretty soon and I guessed Ben was in the same situation. He had one hand supporting himself right next to my shoulder and the other running up the side of my heated body while he rammed into me like there was no tomorrow.

"I'm gonna come again daddy," I warned him, wrapping my legs around his lower waist and resting my feet on his butt. He kissed me again as he kept thrusting, the squelch of where we connected only fuelling each of our desire.

"Do it, come for daddy," he encouraged me for the second time that night, his voice so strained and deep it kinda shocked me. Pushing into me a few more times I fell off the edge, groaning and writhing underneath Ben's weight, the muscles in my legs spasming and twitching as I fell back down to earth.

Ben kept fucking me through my orgasm relentlessly trying to reach his end. "Fuck," he groaned over and over as his thrusts became messier and less rhythmic. One thing I could credit the movie to was how his new found drum skills made him a better lover. The rhythm he could keep when he was fucking me these days was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. I always had at least two orgasms every time we fucked.

I moved my legs higher up his waist so he could go deeper, which he did and a few seconds later he slowed down, dropping his head against my chest as he came hard as hell into me. His breaths were ragged and he chuckled as he lifted his head and kissed me.

"Fuck, I love you," he smiled and placed his hand on my cheek as we made out for a few seconds.

"Love you daddy," I purred.

"I think we need to use sugar during sex more often," he mumbled, peppering my face with kisses. "Happy birthday princess."

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

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 5 years

Text

Witches, Chapter 17: Blackquill wants to fight an orca; Phoenix wants to fight Blackquill; Athena contains within her a multitude of whale facts.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

----

Phoenix leaves early, tells Trucy he’ll meet her at the courthouse, and stops by the office first. The computer wakes up slowly and when it finally does, it’s as blank as Phoenix left it last night, not a word of assistance or encouragement. So he’s on his own. All right. Fine.

On his way out through the front, he stops. The lid over the piano keys is opened, something lying directly on the keys. His old badge, weighing down the corner of Lotta’s photograph, a snapshot out of time, poorly planned, Phoenix and Larry both jostled about by Maya, and Edgeworth almost smiling at that, and Gumshoe the only one who’s timed it right, with confetti fluttering through the air fallen from his hand. If he squints with the Sight from the right angle and distance, like it’s one of those illusion puzzles, sometimes he’ll see Mia standing to the side, smiling.

“I can take a hint,” he says, setting it back down on the piano. He can’t see her in the photo today, but it’s okay because it being here, not on his desk, and his badge here and not in his desk, means that she’s here, not frozen in a photo. “All right. I get it. I can do it, and I’m not alone.” He has people to help and to keep him in check. He’s not going to lose a second badge.

At the courthouse he smacks himself in the face with cold water, hoping to knock sleep out of his eyes and with it, clear out the dust from eight years of not playing the lead. Athena bounds into the defendant lobby sounding as cheery as ever and announcing that she ran a few laps around the building to get ready, but tired bags hang beneath her eyes and he tells her such when he asks her if she got any sleep. “Do I really look that bad?” she asks, prodding at the skin below her eyes. “I’d better do something about that. Prosecutor Blackquill gives me shit over everything and I can’t leave another opening. Hey, Trucy!” she calls, as the other two members of the agency enter with Pearl. “You don’t happen to have concealer, do you? Or Apollo, do you? I need to look like I actually slept soundly and I’m desperate.”

“Sorry,” Apollo says. “The only cosmetics I use are hair gel.”

“You mean it doesn’t naturally do that?” Pearl gasps. “I thought for sure…”

“Concealer, coming right up!” Trucy produces a round makeup compact from her Magic Panties - she carries those around in a purse and everything that would normally be found in a purse goes into them - and holds it up to Athena’s face. “No, that’s not the right shade. Hold on.” She plunges her hand back into the waistband and pulls out what appears to Phoenix to be pretty much the same, but comparing it against Athena’s skin, Trucy nods, satisfied.

“Since when do you wear makeup?” Phoenix asks. They’ve had talks about this topic. Why is it all so expensive. Why is this a scam industry that breeds insecurities. No I’m not buying you lipstick. You can buy it yourself when you’re much older. Yes I’ll buy you that lip gloss that’s in a narwhal-shaped container. That’s not really makeup.

“I don’t,” Trucy says. “This is old stage show stuff we still had!”

“We” being the Gramaryes, surely. She pats away the dark circles under Athena’s eyes and with a wave, wishes them both luck, and skips off for the gallery with Apollo and Pearl in tow.

Leaving Phoenix to enter behind the bench, chat with this judge for the first time in a year. If he really thinks about it, this judge - this man, he was going to think, but after all these years he’s not really quite sure how to assess what the judge is or isn’t and whether he’s a being that exists in any capacity outside of the courthouse - has seen him at his lowest, to rise as high as he could, and crash again, sink lower than that, and now here he is again. This judge has presided over all three trials where Phoenix has been accused of murder. He saw Phoenix’s first trial and his last and now he’ll see this second first.

He tells Phoenix that standing here as a lawyer makes him look younger. Phoenix thanks him and decides not to mention that it’s definitely shaving that makes him look younger. Might as well just take the compliment, if it’s a compliment, and not another “baby-faced” jab.

“And you look as young as ever, Your Honor,” he replies, and it’s true, really - his face hasn’t changed a bit since Phoenix first met him. No more wrinkles, and no less. Eternal, unchanging, a fixture of the courtroom who Phoenix knows how to work with.

And then there’s the prosecutor. The latest prosecutorial mystery for Phoenix to unravel. Another one to save.

Prosecutor Simon Blackquill has an even more frightening visage staring at him at level across the courtroom, rather than looking down on him from up safe in the gallery. Not that safe isn’t anything but relative when it comes to a man who throws silvery slices of wind with the slash of a finger and whose hawk flaps about as it pleases, but in the gallery Phoenix is just one of a sea of faces merely observing. Down here at the bench? He’s the man who offered to defend an orca, with nowhere to hide and nowhere to run from the man who brought an orca to trial.

Funny how all this works.

Blackquill berates Phoenix for bringing this case to court, never mind that it’s Blackquill who actually brought this to court - and the poor judge got this case late last night and skimmed it and missed the part that the defendant is an orca. But otherwise Blackquill seems - to be taking this seriously? Enough to speech-ify on the fact that they have an orca to be prosecuted here.

“Though she cannot be present in the courtroom, nor speak for herself, we will treat this defendant as any other,” he says, casting a glance toward the screen being set up behind the witness stand; hopefully in a few minutes Sasha will have Orla on video phone, introducing the defendant to the court and perhaps charming then with her cuteness. Phoenix has had enough witnesses try and play cute to turn the judge and gallery against the defense - it’s about time he gets to have that power on his side. “Man or beast, we stand equal with the same value to our souls.” He pauses, eyes narrowing at his own words. The hawk on his shoulder ruffles its feathers. That’s a loaded word, for someone who knows magic: humans have souls, fae don’t, animals don’t, and fae animals certainly don’t. A soul or lack of one is no indication of moral judgment or standing. It’s just an extra piece of the self that can be cut loose and used in magic, and this seems to be what Blackquill is pondering, and his bird getting at, because he amends himself. “To our lives and hearts. Take Taka, as much a person in spirit as the rest of us who stand here today.”

Phoenix would love to know what Taka is, whether it’s just an ordinary bird, a fae creature, or a familiar - Blackquill doesn’t give a hint, and Phoenix doesn’t know what the difference between a fae animal and specifically a familiar looks like. And even if he did he can’t see through Blackquill’s twisted aura to know.

The Twisted Samurai distorts everything around him, that even if Phoenix wants to test his eyes on Athena next to him, he can’t. The courtroom falls into darkness when he tries, inconsistent silver light throwing the colors off where they aren’t inverted. Athena’s wide eyes appear nearly gray, not blue, and her hair dulls similarly; he sees double of her, sometimes, like he’s dazed or cross-eyed. And across the courtroom Blackquill has eyes almost straight white, and nothing else of him the same. His shape twists and breaks like his reflection in a wavy funhouse mirror has been reflected into a rippling pond, his hair changing lengths, his skin all the depth of white tissue paper, veins and blood and bones below, a dead man walking. At his steadiest, his entire body simply trembles at the edges, like energy barely contained in a vessel too small for it, a person held together in a form that doesn’t naturally belong to them; and all of him either stark white or black, and mostly white, patterned like a photonegative of himself.

Phoenix closes his eyes and gives himself a moment to reset and readjust to the regular world that he’ll see when he opens them.

“The question, then,” Blackquill continues, while Athena squints in confusion at Phoenix because he’s been squinting at her with the Sight, “is what one - what our orca, in this case - has done with that life, and how stained and shriveled their heart.”

Then he decides to prove that the greatest monster in the room is him, immediately after the first witness testimony - from Norma DePlume, who is as much of a terror as Phoenix expected, and she and Blackquill as nasty to each other as he could have imagined - when he demands the judge give his verdict, because they’ve heard everything they need to, and, “deliver your judgement so that I may carry out the sentence.”

“Objection! Hold it!” What the fuck! “You aren’t - you aren’t planning on killing Orla yourself, are you?” Beside him, Athena can’t keep her “what the fuck!” contained, or rather Widget warbles it out, and Phoenix really, really wants to know who programmed the robot to say fuck. “Is that what you’re implying—”

Blackquill says nothing, merely smirks, and Phoenix decides that he absolutely, definitely, does not want to actually know the answer. If Edgeworth wants him to defend this man, which he does, that’s not an “if”, Phoenix would rather not think that this case only went to trial because Blackquill wanted to take a literal stab at fighting a whale. He’d like to think it’s because he and Athena and Pearl found some decent proof, reasonable doubt, and because of what Blackquill said there in his opening statement, that animals have value and deserve a fair chance, too.

(Maybe he just said that to get it on the record hoping for reasonable doubt of his own and a fair trial for Taka when that goddamn bird inevitably hauls off and claws someone’s eyes out.)

(Edgeworth didn’t even warn him that Prosecutor Blackquill had a murder bird! Is the logical conclusion that Edgeworth didn’t know about the bird? Points toward fae creature, a la Gavin’s hound, except who the hell is managing to summon any fae anyone in prison? That place is iron for a reason. Or maybe after everything else, Edgeworth figured this is nothing to Phoenix.)

“We have a right to cross-examine!” Athena’s shrill and rightfully indignant cry rings out over a shriek from Taka that sounds like laughter. “We’re always allowed to, you know!”

“I simply hope to spare us all the waste of time that comes as consequence of your methods,” Blackquill replies, directed more at Phoenix than Athena, who like last trial he seems to mostly be ignoring, “and spare you the heartbreak of burning yourself to ash in a fight for a ‘Not Guilty’ you will not win.”

Like yesterday, Phoenix wonders if they’re talking about an orca, or something else. About Blackquill himself, and the task regarding him that Phoenix has been given. Does Blackquill know what Edgeworth has asked of Phoenix? It sort of sounds like he does.

“Okay, but I’m still going to cross-examine,” Phoenix says. And maybe drag it out a little more than usual, just to let Blackquill know he’s not intimidated.

And DePlume likes the sound of her own voice, so maybe they’ll learn something new from her, some piece of information she hadn’t meant to let slip, if they push on her every statement.

What Phoenix learns instead is that Blackquill likes penguins and thinks them the only part of the aquarium actually worth anyone’s time, and apparently no one told DePlume that the victim died of blunt force trauma, not being bitten by the orca. Not that it helps; there’s more security footage than the short looped bit that they saw behind Fulbright’s back, and that does actually show that Orla had the victim in her jaws, and Blackquill can put a good - bad - spin on it. Sure, it wasn’t when the victim was killed, but it certainly was proof of her malicious intent, toying with a corpse like she’s a cat caught the canary - Blackquill stares Athena dead in the eye as he makes that analogy - but not even hungry to eat it, just taking another life between her teeth as a game.

A game, and singing the while she does it. The theory, working from their preliminary autopsy report that Jack Shipley died instantaneously from a brain contusion, is that Orla headbutted him into the glass of the tank. DePlume didn’t see any moment of actual impact - that was what Phoenix saw on the security footage, Orla with her head tipped out of sight behind some tank decorations - but came to the conclusion that this was definitely the exact time of the victim’s death. A conclusion extrapolated from something that Phoenix really, really wishes Sasha had mentioned: a year ago, another orca trainer at Shipshape Aquarium died under such similar circumstances.

DePlume wrote a whole damn book about it. Sasha entirely neglected this critical fact. Phoenix is going to scream. Maybe faint, instead, get just a little wobbly in the knee area, because Blackquill has this all in the palm of his hand, all under control, and what a horrible mess he would make of a jury trial. Start with them biased against him on basis of that tricky little matter, convicted murderer, and end with them swayed however he wants them to, just as he plays the gallery, but they aren’t the ones making the final call.

(Edgeworth fretted often about what a particularly charismatic and manipulative lawyer could do to the jurist system, and Phoenix thought he was worrying over Klavier, his charm, his glamours, his celebrity status. How likely instead that he was concerned with Blackquill, already planning ahead to when he would place him back in court?)

Though if Phoenix is going to faint for any actual reason, it’s the picture that Blackquill has projected up for the court. A page from DePlume’s book, half the sheet taken up by a glossy color photograph of the dead orca trainer - so that’s the kind of writer DePlume is, a sensationalist one, like some others he could name. The unfortunate girl was probably around Sasha’s age; her body lay on the edge of the show pool, water puddling beneath her and dripping from her long dark hair. Her shirt has flowing puffy pirate sleeves in a soft powder blue fabric. Almost the color of Trucy’s show cape, and it’s hard not to think of his daughter, but it’s even harder not to think of someone else wearing that color and killed while performing at her profession. It was a rehearsal, not a live show, when Thalassa died, but—

Reflections, reflections. He keeps running up against familiar faces on the corpses in this case.

“Athena! Phoenix! Please!” Sasha pleads from somewhere out-of-sight, while Orla, centered in the screen, chirrups in confusion, but when she makes sound, she shows off her powerful jaws full of teeth. “Orla didn’t kill anyone! Please, we’re begging for your help!”

Orla waves a flipper, the gravity of the situation not really clear to her.

The trainer who died last year - if Orla really did everything DePlume says, biting and headbutting, they should see marks of that, blood and bruises, and there’s nothing. Logic himself out of fear, that’s right, he can do that - Orla can’t speak, but she understands them, and Sasha in part understands her. Sasha has faith in her. Phoenix has to have faith in Sasha.

“You’d be better off saving your breath, you sad slippery pup.” Blackquill leans forward, elbows on the bench, laughing, and Phoenix really, really does not like that. “Perhaps you did not see his face, but allow me to tell you - when he saw that photograph, he turned even paler than me. You were yourself rather afraid of the orca then, weren’t you, Wright-dono?”

Not enough for him to play the judge and gallery against the defendant, now he’s trying to turn lawyer and client against each other, make them lose faith in the other. How discouraged must Sasha feel, to be told Phoenix is doubting too?

“For shame, to take up the matter of a client who you have neither the courage nor drive to defend, and further crush them under the false hope you’ve given.”

“Nothing about my defense is ‘false’, Prosecutor Blackquill.” Keep his face and voice calm and level, don’t give Blackquill an inch or a twitch to work from. “If you’re hoping for an easy win by talking me into giving up, I assure you, it’s not going to happen. Orla is my client, and I don’t give up on my clients.” Whether or not she can speak to him doesn’t matter. That she’s an orca doesn’t matter. You can never truly know if your client is innocent or not, Mia said once, a very long time ago. And she’s right, and was always right, because even Truth can get subjective and messy, be talked around, and relying wholly on it made him an arrogant idiot. All you can do is fight with everything you have.

And he’s going to. He’s going to do Mia proud, orca or no.

“I see the trust that Sasha has put in Orla, and I respect that.” He sympathizes, after all the nightmarish cases when he’s had to trust someone that no one else would, or trust someone who didn’t even trust himself. “So I’m willing to have faith in Orla, too.”

“Yet you do not know the first thing about orcas, do you?”

“Is that relevant?” Phoenix asks.

He relishes the surprise that grips Blackquill’s features. Time to find out whether the Twisted Samurai, master manipulator, is smart enough to not be taken in by a tactic Phoenix has had seven years to perfect, playing the idiot and being underestimated. If it can’t get him anything about this particular case maybe he’ll learn something more about Blackquill himself that can help Edgeworth.

“Do you know why they are also known as ‘killer whales’?”

What kind of trick question, and how actually relevant—? “Uh, because people have a tendency to fear what they don’t understand, and because they didn’t understand orcas and just saw their teeth, they presumed that these creatures were out to get them too?”

That’s basically a psychology explanation, right? He’s basically working on Athena and Blackquill’s level, in their wheelhouse, now, right?

Blackquill stares at him. One of his eyes twitches. Taka scratches its head. The question is written plainly across his features, the icy stare and the cold scowl: how did you pass the Bar, twice?

Joke’s on him; Phoenix doesn’t know either.

“No,” Blackquill says. “That is not it.”

“It was a good attempt,” Phoenix says, glancing to Athena for confirmation. She shrugs, her teeth pressed together in a failure at forcing a smile, and she sharply sucks in her breath. Okay. Ouch. That noncommittal of an answer is a hell of an answer of itself.

“The reason,” Blackquill says, stressing the word, now acting along the belief that yes, Phoenix is a fucking idiot who needs to be addressed accordingly, “is that they are cunning and merciless predators known to hunt and kill even true whales. They are also known as ‘wolves of the sea’ for that same reason, that they are clever, powerful, and dangerous creatures who hunt in packs.” How, in the midst of going over the case, preparing witnesses, and filling in the gaps of the evidence Fulbright had, did he, from prison, have the time and resources to do this much research on orcas, down to etymology of the name? “Tell me, does that sound innocent to you? Does that not sound like the creature we have here on stand today, and her capacity to so efficiently kill a man before entertaining herself with that corpse?”

So he thinks orcas are smart enough to ascribe malicious intent to, and he’s doing his damndest to convince everyone else of the same. “My goodness,” the judge says. “So they truly are ‘killers’? Though may I ask, what do you mean by ‘true’ whales?”

Phoenix wondered the same, but if there’s time for a tangent then he’d rather use it to reconvene with Athena, steady themselves, and figure out how to work past this huge gap in their knowledge. It looks really bad, all the pieces they weren’t aware of. They need a new angle of approach as everything they’ve done so far has been smacked down—

“Oh, I can help you with that!” Athena says brightly, and her ponytail sways from side to side as she bobs up and down with uncontained glee. “Technically, if we want to get pedantic, which we do” - spoken like a true lawyer; Phoenix could shed a tear with pride - “what’s known as a ‘whale’” - she makes quotation marks with her fingers in the air - “is different in our informal everyday usage than in taxonomy. You traditionally wouldn’t call a dolphin a whale, right?”

Maybe Phoenix won’t have an opportunity to confer with Athena and will just ponder how dire this case has gotten on his own, while Athena spouts Whale Facts. If Blackquill meant to distract her, it’s working, but Phoenix is not honestly sure he could’ve expected this to happen, or the judge to ask. Either way, Blackquill hasn’t turned his back bored on the tangent yet; he has stepped back from the bench, arms crossed, the chain between his cuffs tangled up around them, eyes half closed, maybe glad for the break.

“But,” Athena continues, “you could! Technically! So from, like, primary school biology we know that classification in taxonomy goes, kingdom phylum class order genus species, but there are orders within orders and suborders—”

“Athena,” Phoenix says, not sure she can even hear anyone else but herself right now, “I don’t think His Honor needs this much detail.”

“Yes, do stop her,” DePlume says with a roll of her eyes.

Which makes Phoenix immediately want to change his stance and tell Athena to continue talking, but someone else gets to it first. “Let the lass go on,” Blackquill says dryly. “Don’t crush her spirit. I’ll do enough of that myself when we get to the next testimony and the sentencing.”

“—and so there’s a smaller order known as Cetaceans, that’s literally just, derived from Ancient Greek for ‘whale’. But this whales order contains two more even smaller orders, and those are toothed whales and baleen whales. Baleen whales are what you’d consider ‘true whales’, basically, like blue whales and humpback whales, and they’re probably what you think of if you were asked to picture a whale. But toothed whales include dolphins and orcas and narwhals—”

“Wait,” Phoenix says. “Narwhals aren’t giant fucked-up seals?”

Blackquill closes his eyes entirely.

“Nope! They don’t have a fin on their back, so maybe that’s why you got confused, but belugas don’t either, and they’re whales as much as narwhals are! But the short of the orca matter” - wasn’t the judge’s question about what a true whale is, not how orcas are taxonomically classified? - “is that they are actually classified within the dolphin family. Orcas are dolphins! So if you’d call a bottlenose dolphin a whale, you can call an orca a whale. They’re both the same amount of whale! Or informally you can just keep using the words ‘dolphin’ and ‘whale’ however, with no regards to which animals are genetically most similar, and people will get what you mean, because words mean what we’ve made them mean and that’s how we use them. But since you wanted to know, now you know!”

“I - yes.” The judge is slightly taken aback by her enthusiasm. “Thank you, Ms Cykes. You really have done your research for this case.”

Phoenix somehow has the feeling that she knew that long before this case.

“And yet.” Blackquill leans forward, his eyes alight and alive, a point ready to be made even off the back of something not case-relevant. “You dispute and explain the ‘whale’ part, but never once say a thing to refute the ‘killer’.”

“I - but, I—” Athena turns helplessly to Phoenix, her mouth opening and closing without any more words coming through.

“I simply cannot bear to hear more such drivel from the defense about trusting a killer,” he continues. “Can you, either, Your Baldness?”

Phoenix would’ve been thrown out of the court after bringing a bird in (or a whip, or for throwing an enchanted coffee mug across the room), or for even half of this amount of contempt for the judge - the rules have always been more lenient for prosecutors, he’s always known that, but there’s never been such a stark demonstration of it. Once this trial is over, he’ll take that up with Edgeworth. Far from the most important action to take to level the field, not by a long shot, but might as well make a note of it.

“Funny that he’s talking shit on ‘trusting a killer’,” Phoenix mutters, “when he’s the convicted killer here, asking the judge to trust his case.” He snorts, but Athena doesn’t laugh or make a sound. She stares across at Blackquill, drumming her fingers on her collarbone right next to Widget. The one to laugh is Blackquill himself, even though Phoenix was taking care that he wouldn’t be heard by anyone but Athena, to keep that from being an on-the-record statement when he’s said enough bullshit that already will be going into a transcript. (Goddamn narwhals.)

As if Blackquill wasn’t enough of an uncomfortable, inscrutable mystery. Where’s his damned bird? Taka isn’t close to Phoenix, but it isn’t right with Blackquill, either; it splits the distance, and Phoenix doesn’t know how good a hawk’s hearing is. Pretty good, he thinks. He’ll ask Kay if she knows. And Taka heard, what was his name, the tanuki from Mayor Tenma’s trial, talking to them in the lobby after, and what Taka heard got to Blackquill, got to Edgeworth. Is that how this works?

“I’ve been told I can’t take a hint,” Phoenix says, louder, and Taka circles over the room and decides to settle now on the judge’s head. “And I certainly am not going to take this hint of yours to give up, Prosecutor Blackquill, because I’ve also been told I don’t know when to quit.”

“Your self-awareness does no credit to you,” Blackquill says. “Very well. Witness, tell them what you saw, and what you heard. Deliver the fatal blow to their deluded determination.”

Back to work.

It’s touch and go, like every case, every time, just like Phoenix remembers, but they work through DePlume’s testimony, keep pressing the possibility of a human killer. Suggest that Orla was manipulated, given the command to start singing by a human culprit who wanted to draw attention to her, frame her, and create a witness. He’s pushing the bloody coin at the court as much as he shows his badge to witnesses during an investigation - and he’s not gonna stop doing the latter any time soon, not now that he’s got a new badge to be proud of because it means he survived and that’s worth announcing to everyone, right? - but the judge is coming around, surely—

And Blackquill is not; Blackquill’s a damn tricky bastard who has a blood-covered burlap bag, the exact piece of evidence Phoenix desperately wanted to find. He has the bag, he knows Phoenix wanted it for proof, but since he’s known of it since yesterday he’s had time to spin a tale that keeps Orla as the perpetrator. He’s prepared it to the point that it’s not even a bluff: he has Marlon Rimes as a witness to confirm that something happened, a loud clattering noise from the orca pool room that Blackquill argues is the moment that Orla, by pulling on a flag lying underneath them, upended four-hundred pounds of show props all precariously stacked, right down onto the victim’s head.

When Rimes said he had come here on Sasha’s behalf, because she had to stay behind with Orla - that wasn’t the full truth, clearly.

Not that Rimes is exactly happy to testify for Blackquill, either. The story is dragged out of him: he was up in the staff room around 10:10 am, roughly the time that DePlume saw Orla with the captain’s body, when he heard a crashing and peered into the room to see the props had all fallen, after they had been cleaned up neatly the prior night. “Just to clarify,” Phoenix says, already certain that Rimes is lying about the timing of this, but he wants to get the most information he can from this fake story if it might help him figure out why Rimes is lying. “You heard the sound, couldn’t go in the room because you need a security key for that” - Rimes nods - “but peeked in and couldn’t see the victim” - Rimes nods a second time - “but could see the props?”

Rimes nods a third time. “Yeah. The rest of the stuff mighta been blocking my view of the captain, but I could see a bunch of those gold coins lying all about everywhere.”

And the current running theory is that the gold coins, via bag, are the murder weapon. Phoenix has staked the case for a human culprit on those coins. “I suppose it fits as a certain tragic thematic,” Blackquill says. Phoenix braces himself for tasteless remarks. “With the pirate theme that the victim pursued for his aquarium, and consider how many pirates lost their lives in pursuit of gold. Perhaps it’s faery gold; I’ve heard that unfailingly claims lives. Or perhaps the orca wished to be compensated for her labor, and saw fit to take the matter between her own teeth.”

There it goes. There’s the cruel biting words, the nasty chuckle, Blackquill laughing with himself when no one else is. “We all deserve to be properly paid for our work, do we not? And I myself shall have a fine meal tonight.”

Several questions arise, none relevant to the case: how exactly is Blackquill paid? He’s a prisoner on death row; money isn’t exactly an issue, or worth anything, to him. Maybe he’s compensated with better food than standard prison fare. Maybe that’s what he means. Maybe it’s that and not the alarming, outlandish, prospect Phoenix can’t shake, not when Blackquill wears that cloying smirk across his face, the one that suggests he knows something more than he’s letting on, and he took the time at the beginning of the trial saying that he wanted to “carry out the sentence” - read: kill, because if Orla was guilty she’s going to be put down.

So, well, knowing Maya for as long as he has, there’s no way for him to discount the possibility that Blackquill, talking about dinner, means that he wants to kill and eat an orca.

(He’s tried for a while to figure out what it is that drives Maya’s appetite. Does she just think human food tastes better? Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around, that faery food tastes so exquisite that after having it, anything else is ashes in a human’s mouth? Is that even true? Something else to ask Thalassa. But for Maya, he’s not ever figured out whether it was just a trait she was born with, an insatiable void within that she’s driven to fill, or a way that she revels in the human world, that to get food here it’s a simple price of money, with no debt incurred, no complex magically binding rules of hospitality. Eating plastic packaging, though - the Gavins’ hellhound does the same, swallowed a whole takeout container that Phoenix offered it as a gesture of “please don’t kill me” - he’s got even less an idea.)

If this, though - this with Blackquill right here, the insinuation that might say more about Phoenix than Blackquill, about what he’s dealt with on a regular basis and how every place he turns these past two days he sees it - if this could be how he gets the answer to the “is he human or fae” question, so help him—

(If it’s anything for Blackquill, if he’s anything like Maya, then this is a thing about dominance, about being the one at the top of the food chain. About having any ounce of control over someone’s life, even if his own is out of his hands, and he on death row. Hey, is that analytical psychology? Everything that Athena refers to as “analytical psychology” means Phoenix doesn’t have a clue what it’s actually supposed to be.)

“Good to clear that up, Mr Rimes, thank you,” Phoenix says. Blackquill’s grin widens. He knows Phoenix is deliberately, consciously ignoring him. He knows that he’s gotten under his skin.

(Hell, he’s been there for months already, but more in the way of a faint itch, and now he’s plainly a knife jammed through Phoenix’s chest. Isn’t stabbing someone a way of getting under their skin, both literally and metaphorically? And he wouldn’t put it past Blackquill to stab him, literally. With magic, sure, but still.)

“Now,” Phoenix continues. “The trouble is, Mr Rimes, that there’s no way you could’ve been in the staff room at that time. Is there not a certain young woman whose acquaintance you made yesterday, in the food prep room, at this same time that you claim to have been in the staff room?”

Another thing to bring up with Edgeworth, in terms of legal reform: maybe some sort of public service announcements about the consequences of perjury? Make some informative posters to put up at bus stops and subway stations. That couldn’t hurt.

“Sasha’s under enough stress now, y’know? I didn’t want her to have to come in and testify. Figured if anyone should have to go up on the stand, it shoulda been me.”

“That’s a very…” Phoenix pinches the bridge of his nose. Very noble? Very stupid? Why not both? “Very kindly meant, thing to do, Mr Rimes, but that’s still perjury.”

“Yeah,” Athena says. “It seems like a lot of trouble to go to just so that Sasha didn’t have to come in and say yeah, she heard a noise. And now she’s got to come in anyway, and you’re in trouble too now. Why would you go to that extent?”

Why indeed.

He tells them. The calendar they thought was his, the one Pearl accidentally picked up, the one that tells them that the victim met with someone at the pool - that wasn’t his. He thinks it’s Sasha’s. He worried suspicion would fall on Sasha.

And now Phoenix is worried by that prospect, too.

He didn’t miss this part of being a lawyer, not at all. Damn all of it.

Rimes leaves to return to the aquarium, take over orca-sitting while Sasha has to testify, and that leaves Phoenix and Athena to pace around the lobby like fish swimming circles in a tank for the rest of the recess. Just waiting, helplessly, to know what horrible new revelation will come next.

Sasha’s testimony is about the same as Rimes’, except for the part where it’s actually true. Orla kicked up a fuss, DePlume started screaming, which of these happened first she doesn’t remember, because finding your boss dead in an orca tank doesn’t help one maintain a firm, linear thought process to exactly recall it later. No surprises there. Lacking any other strategy, Phoenix nitpicks and nitpicks at her testimony until even she is annoyed with it, even though he’s the lawyer she came to for help and she knew from the start that he cross-examined a parrot so she should expect that this is the strategy and the strategy is bluffing and bullshitting.

But it gets them places. It gets them information about the way the props fell over the victim, that Orla couldn’t have dragged him into the pool after they fell because that would’ve disturbed the scarf that landed on top of his body, the way that once again Phoenix’s entire theory is wrong and he’s got to dispute his own suggestion that he built this case on, the bloody coin as the murder weapon. It’s not. He disproves his own bluff that got the case to trial in the first place.

His real argument, his unwavering stance, is simply that Orla was not the killer, and against everything new they pull from Sasha, that holds true. The victim most likely fell to his death in the drained orca pool. Orla was manipulated, using one of the new tricks she’s learning, to grab the victim’s body and bring him back up to the surface. Sasha and Rimes get her to demonstrate, on the video phone, with a practice dummy. Blackquill’s case about a killer whale is losing ground, fast; Orla’s too endearing. “The whole gallery loves her!” Athena says brightly, and her voice and stance both turn smug as she adds, “And Prosecutor Blackquill’s shut right up!”

Planning a counterattack is well within the realm of possibility for why he’s silent. He might also be convincing himself that whale meat would taste nasty anyway. Or Phoenix might be terribly uncharitable, and Blackquill never intended to eat the orca. He never said it outright. He just had a look about him that didn’t seem innocent, if he’s ever seemed innocent, which Phoenix does not believe he has. Probably shouldn’t say that about a sort-of client, but here they are.

Also here they are, with the judge agreeing, ordering an investigation be done of the bottom of the orca pool, and Blackquill still sullenly silent, the trial inexorably rolling to its final conclusion, a verdict, Orla saved—

“Prosecutor Blackquill!” Fulbright makes a loud reappearance, waving a manilla envelope with one hand and with the other trying to extract a paper from the envelope, and he isn’t really doing either with any dignity. “The thing you ordered has come in.”

“Hmph.” Blackquill doesn’t raise his arm to accept the paper - finally extracted from the envelope - Fulbright offers him. He doesn’t move in any way, doesn’t make a sound or an indication of a command, and Taka alights from his shoulder, snatching the page from Fulbright, talons piercing through it, and circling up to the judge. “If you would read that out to the court, Your Baldness.”

“Ah - and what is this, exactly?” The judge slowly pulls the sheet lose, care made to avoid his hands getting close to Taka’s talons, but also to not rip the paper even further.

“An updated autopsy report,” Blackquill replies.

“God damn it!” Phoenix should not say that so loudly, and saying it out loud at any volume is too loud with Athena around, especially when he’s been over Courtroom Manners 101 with her and had the lesson basically boil down to don’t challenge the prosecution to a fistfight by the dumpsters in the back lot and don’t curse on the record. But the words escape from him anyway, like air knocked from his lungs when the prosecution roundhouse-kicked him straight in the gut. “Why now? Just when it’s going good for us—”

“During the recess, a particular thought occurred to me,” Blackquill says. He’s the one ignoring Phoenix, now, though there’s nothing smug about it, only chilly disdainful professionalism. “I asked the body to be reexamined, bearing in mind what had been nagging at me. Now.” He jerks his head to the side, directed at the judge.

“Very well.” The judge casts one last cautious glance at Taka before he allows his attention to turn to the paper. “Let’s see here… The cause of death, blunt force trauma, shown to be consistent with - with a fall? A fall of around sixty feet? But the orca pool is sixty-five feet deep! This report backs up the defense’s claims!”

Blackquill nods once.

“What?” Phoenix’s yelp is even louder this time, never mind that this is good news. It’s good news. It’s solid evidence in favor of his claim and his client. Why does it feel like someone still has a foot on his chest?

“The orca could not possibly be involved with what happened with an empty pool,” the judge says. “This autopsy report proves her complete innocence!”

“Yes,” Blackquill says, at length. Even it being his autopsy report, it takes him several seconds to finally acquise. “I suppose it does.”

Taka spreads its wings and flaps back to Blackquill’s shoulder.

“Then we did it!” Athena bounces again, her excitement bubbling over into obvious physical expression, just as her every other emotion refuses to be contained. “Prosecutor Blackquill can’t even object! He isn’t even trying! You’ve done it, Boss! You saved Orla!”

His agreement with her, they’ve done it, Orla’s safe, emerges as a sticky click from the back of his throat. Words don’t come, and another choked attempt at response is lost against the clack of the judge’s gavel. “This court finds the defendant, Ora Shipley” - right, Phoenix had entirely forgotten that Orla’s “legal” name is something different than what she’s called - “not guilty!”

An expected Objection! doesn’t follow, not from Blackquill, not from a different witness, not anyone. Beside him, Athena woops and throws her hands in the air, extended a bit toward Sasha, who pumps her fist in the air in return. “Phoenix! Athena! Thank you both so much!” She springs out from behind the witness stand and calls over to the video phone, “Hey, Marlon! Give Orla some celebratory snacks!”

“Sure thing! Congrats, Sasha!” Orla on screen is pelted by a hail of fish, catching only about half of them, like someone flung a whole bucket at her. He probably did, in fact.

The judge clears his throat, taps his gavel once. “That concludes today’s—” He taps the gavel again, raises his voice a little more. “Today’s proceedings!” Court’s never going to be officially dismissed at this rate, with the hubbub; Athena’s leaning over the bench now, grinning, saying something to Sasha, and Orla chattering loudly. She’s so caught up in the fervor, but Phoenix still waits for the other shoe to drop, always is waiting for that, and he still concentrates enough that he hears, over the sound of her and Sasha’s laughter, a low, throaty chuckle drift across the courtroom.

Then Blackquill slams his palm on the bench, and the courtroom goes quiet enough to listen to the rattle of the chain echo into silence. Athena, basically lying sprawled across the bench , pushes herself up. Sasha has frozen.

For a moment, Blackquill doesn’t move, his eyes fixed down on his hand on the bench. Then he raises his eyes up, his face alight with smug triumph. “My sincerest thanks, Wright-dono.”

“Huh?” There’s no way this goes that’s good, is there? Maybe Blackquill could surprise him, like the updated autopsy report surprised him, or maybe he’s going to have to ask Athena how many languages she knows and how to say oh fuck in all of them. (She knows German, right? He could pull double time with that, between swearing in court, and driving a few people he knows up the wall.)

“For your work in drawing out the truth.”

If Blackquill had a personal stake in wanting to know the truth behind this case, that would be one thing, but—

“Now, Fool Bright. Arrest this woman.”

“Certainly!” Fulbright throws up a jaunty salute with two fingers. He and Blackquill are the only ones moving, like they’re the only ones alive, everyone else turned to stone, unable to do anything but wait. “Sasha Buckler, you are under arrest for the murder of Jack Shipley!”

“What?” Sasha springs backwards, knocking into the bench and grabbing onto the edge of it to hold herself up.

“No! I don’t believe it!” Athena smacks both of her palms down on the bench, pushing herself up entirely off of her feet, suspending herself in an attempt to be taller.

The shoe dropped. “For what reason—”

Blackquill cuts him off before he finishes asking the question. “Come now. You must have had some idea in your sorry sad head that this would be the outcome. The drained pool in the orca room accessible only by key card - the orca being framed with its show commands. Who else had access and ability to be on the scene and properly manipulate the orca? She and the victim are the only two who participate in the training and commanding of the orca, and her security card, last night, had the last recorded usage until the body was discovered yesterday morning.”

“Yesterday, we requested security card logs from the company that handles them,” Fulbright says. “Apparently, the aquarium employees don’t know the card usage is tracked. Come along now, Ms Buckler. It’s time we have a nice long chat down at the station.”

Card usage records, think Phoenix think; he’s run up against this kind of thing at least once before. What are all his theories and bluffs to get around that? If employees didn’t know that their ins and outs were recorded, someone who had their own card would probably use it, but a culprit who didn’t have a card would still have to steal it, even if they didn’t know they could frame someone that way.

Objecting at this point won’t stop what’s in motion. Fulbright takes Sasha by the upper arm, escorting her away, and she follows in a dazed trace. But Phoenix is not going to not object, if he sees any way to, and Sasha is his client about as much as Orla is, and Athena is indignant and seething beside him. “Why would Ms Buckler have come to us for help with Orla’s case if she intended to frame Orla?” he demands. “Why wouldn’t she just let Orla be blamed and escape the scrutiny?”

Blackquill snorts. “She’s quite the performer, acting the part of such a worried girl concerned for the life of her friend. Perhaps she thought to even better sell her concern this way, knowing all the while with a witness, the margins of victory were quite slim for you. I of course suspected her from the start. That the orca may have been a malicious killer, or may have been a pawn and victim herself of someone so heartless as to place the blame upon the unwitting - I considered both possibilities.”

Phoenix should have figured something was up, that he had another culprit ready to blame, when the update to the autopsy report arrived. If Blackquill ordered the body reexamined for - what, exactly? The differing patterns of blunt force trauma for being slammed by an orca against glass versus falling a long distance? Squish versus splat? - then did he expect that the defense was going to find that angle? If he wanted the examiners to specifically consider falling, then that meant he realized Orla was innocent. And if she was innocent, then he could just switch targets. He was waiting for this since they put Sasha on the stand.

He had unwitting pawns of his own.

“I really must thank you again.” Blackquill is undeniably enjoying rubbing salt into the wound. “I surely could not have done this without your assistance. After all, you were the one who put the witness so at ease as to bring forth the information about the orca’s lifesaver trick.”

This is not the kind of defense-prosecution collaboration that Phoenix signed up for.

“Wait - wait!” Sasha wakes to the reality of her situation, snaps out of the confused daze the accusation put her in, and starts dragging her feet, not slowing hers and Fulbright’s trajectory out of the courtroom in any way, but succeeding at making a horrible squealing noise of her shoes on the polished courtroom floor. “I didn’t kill the captain! I would never do anything that would hurt Orla! I - oof!” Fulbright seems about two seconds from lifting her off the ground and simply hauling her from the courtroom that way. “Please! Phoenix! Athena! I—”

Her voice fades and a door slams.

“Sasha—” Athena has her feet back solidly on the ground, her hands still pressed against the bench, fingers curled under her palms to form trembling fists. She doesn’t speak again, doesn’t move again. Even once the judge has adjourned the court - this is Orla’s trial, after all, and she is resoundingly innocent - she remains still, her eyes fixed blankly out into space. Phoenix has to tap her on the shoulder to get her moving, and even then, when she does, she walks with the same slow cadence that Sasha did as she tried to figure out what was happening. Widget is still lit up, displaying its sad purple-bluish face, but Athena might as well have shut herself off.

“What a horrible end to a trial,” Trucy says, shaking her head. They’re already in the lobby waiting, she and Apollo and Pearl, all serious and solemn and surprisingly quiet. “It was going so good! I was so excited for you both! And then—!”

“She didn’t do it!” Athena blurts. Widget snaps to red. “I believe that with my whole heart, I know it, Sasha didn’t do it! Her voice and her heart were both saying the exact same thing, that she didn’t! And no one listened!” Her anger teeters on the edge of tears. “The whole court should’ve listened and no one - no one—”

“Well, obviously you listened,” Apollo says. He looks pretty uncomfortable with her distress, drawing himself back, his arms tightly folded together, but as he speaks, Athena’s body snaps up straight, her head level again, eyes wide, like she was just doused in cold water to finally wake her.

“I - Boss!” She spins around to face Phoenix. “Boss, we have to defend Sasha! We have to get to the detention center to see her, right now! Right now!”

“The police aren’t even going to be back at the detention center yet,” Phoenix says. “They do have to drive there, you know. It’s not like it’s - wormholes or anything.” He deliberately goes for a word far from fae connotations, far from something that will give Pearl, Athena, or Trucy any ideas. “We’ll go back to the office and regroup, figure out how we approach today’s investigation at the aquarium, and we’ll go there—”

“But you’re going to be defending Sasha too, right, Boss?” Athena demands. “If you’re not, then - then I - and—” She looks to Apollo and Trucy, her words all tangled up, but the intent clear: she’ll do it with or without him.

“Of course I will be,” Phoenix says. “But the police will be interrogating her for a while, probably, so we should do some investigating first, so we’re not just waiting around at the detention center, and so we can have something actually helpful to tell her, because…” He drags a hand through his hair. It’s the way this always goes, the up-and-down trajectory where after every crescendo there’s a further place to fall, and if he ever proves innocence in one matter for certain, something else waits in the wings to tell him he lost a different round he didn’t know he was playing.

“Because what, Daddy?” Trucy asks. “You think she’s going to want a different lawyer? You proved Orla didn’t do it! She sounded really grateful to you and Athena! Of course she’d want you as her lawyer!”

“I should’ve seen this coming,” Phoenix says. That’s the trouble: Blackquill said he must surely have had some idea of how this would end, and he did, and he pushed it away, and it caught up to him. “And figured out - some way around it, asked Sasha what her alibi was and what she was doing because if we were proving a human culprit then of course the prosecution could turn it around to—”

“But how could you have seen that coming?” Athena glares at him like he’s a lying witness on the stand, and she, ready to tear him apart verbally and physically. “That Prosecutor Blackquill would - ugh! Prosecutor Blackquill.” She says his name like a curse, the tone that Maya always used on Edgeworth’s name at the beginning. (Then he stopped being such a pain in the ass and became their friend and she stopped using his name at all.)

“How could you have even thought to ask Ms Buckler those questions?” Trucy says. “Like ‘hey you were the only one to use the security key in the past 12 hours right’? Or ‘did you leak any of your top-secret orca whistle patterns to anyone else’ or ‘how do we break into police files to get the full security camera footage’ or—”

“I get it, Truce,” Phoenix says. She squints doubtfully at him. “No, I do, really. But the thing is—”

She rolls her eyes and turns silently to Apollo, the obvious sentiment conveyed that this further objection is him further not actually getting it, and Apollo snorts, and Phoenix’s heart clenches up with a vice around it that they’ve only had a year and not a lifetime to perfect their silent, condescending, sibling communication and they don’t even know that’s what this is. It’s the same way Edgeworth and Franziska can cast the briefest glance at each other but convey three levels of disdain and mockery and coordinate a savage teardown of whatever sorry fool has earned their ire—

Where was his original thought going?

“The thing is - this happens all the time, to me, with my cases. Where everything I do to prove my client innocent just further pushes them, or someone else they love, closer to drowning. Just makes it worse.” Edgeworth’s new confession, an accusation against Ema. A last accusation against Maya, her own mother. Phoenix’s own badge because he tried too hard to save someone with it. Just the highlight reel. “And it’s kind of horribly crushing every time. I didn’t want you to have to go through that, Athena.” Look how badly it affected her. She asked him something like that back when they first met, didn’t she: what happens if no one listens to you? And here it went, and hurt her badly.

All four of the kids stare at him, unblinking, confused. “But then you would’ve had to defend and investigate all on your own!” Athena protests. “And - and then you’d have no one to share the crushing despair with!”

“I don’t want to share that,” Phoenix interrupts. “I’m pretty sure I’m cursed.” And like the other ways he’s cursed, he’s afraid that sooner or later it will take one of his kids as victim. Less horrible than Death catching up to them, of course, but still. He’s put them all through enough.

Pearl studies him intently, chewing at her thumbnail again. She concentrates hard enough that her glamour starts slipping from her eyes, turning them red. “I don’t see anything,” she says. “I mean, Misfortune could do it, but you only got that when you stopped being a lawyer.”

Apollo recoils. He knows exactly where that one came from.

“But your win record is still kickass!” Athena punches her fist into her opposite palm. “So even if it happens you still pull it off! And I want to learn how to do that! From Apollo and from you, too!” In his logical, detached brain, he can keep a good distance from her, and then when she’s staring him in the face reminding him of why he became a lawyer and the good things he’s done - it’s that much harder. “C’mon, if we’re going to the office we’d better go now! We’ve got investigation to do!”

“You know,” Pearl says as they head for Athena’s car, “you sure do know a lot about orcas. And I didn’t get to learn much about Orla at the aquarium, unfortunately, and I know she’s not the point of contention in court anymore—”

“Do you want me to tell you more orca facts?” Athena interrupts. As though she honestly needs the excuse that Pearl was going to offer her, of teaching them things they can use in court to defend Orla. Pearl nods.

On the drive back to the office, Phoenix gets the other front seat, and Apollo, Trucy, and Pearl squish themselves into the back. Athena chatters animatedly to the rearview mirror the whole time.

“Was there something you wanted to say to me, Athena? Or show me? That’s a very large book you have, there.”

“...Junie brought it to me from the school library. Since I haven’t been able to go in lately.”

“She did? That’s very kind of her. And what is it - An Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals. Very nice.”

“Mhm. I’m nearly done reading it.”

“You’re reading the whole thing? Cover to cover?”

“Don’t you do that with books? Um… being a lawyer is a lot of reading, isn’t it? You should read it all. To make sure that you don’t catch an innocent person by mistake.”

“I do, don’t worry. I wouldn’t want any person sent to the gallows for something they didn’t do.”

“Then why don’t you read whole books?”

“I don’t read entire encyclopedias. You know, a lot of libraries don’t let you take them home with you at all. You just look up what you want to know while you’re there.”

“But I want to know everything that’s in this encyclopedia.”

“Well, then I suppose you know better than I and I shouldn’t be telling you what to do, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Do you want to hear something I’ve learned so far? Um, since you’re always taking time to, to teach me what you’re learning.”

“I’ve heard it said, and found it myself to be true, that by teaching something you learn it better yourself, too. It helps us both that way. It’s very efficient. Go ahead, tell me something about marine mammals.”

“I’ll try and find something you wouldn’t already know.”

“I’m a law and psychology student, not a marine biologist. I don’t know anything. How about you tell me about - penguins?”

“Birds aren’t mammals, silly! But I can tell you about orcas. They’re black and white like you and penguins are, too! They’re the largest member of the dolphin family - they’re not whales at all!”

“Killer whales aren’t whales?”

“Nope! And the ‘killer’ part, is because sailors would observe them hunting and killing baleen whales, and they were first known as ‘whale killers’ and then that got flipped, somehow. And now people tend to think of them as vicious killers, but they aren’t! Wild orcas have never killed a human! They’re just strong and hungry.”

“That they gained that reputation is unfortunate but not surprising. Humans have that tendency to fear what they don’t understand, and to not bother understanding so much of the world around them. To presume that their impressions of the world constitute its one objective truth.”

“...”

“I’m sorry. The cases I’ve been studying lately have me pondering this sort of matter quite a bit, lately. This and worse.”

“Do you want to talk about those? That might make you feel better?”

“...how about you explain to me what a ‘baleen whale’ is.”

“They don’t have teeth - they’re the ones like humpback and blue whales that have, like, bristles in their mouth that they filter in plankton through. That’s what baleen is! It looks sort of like my hairbrush over there.”

“Speaking of, you certainly don’t look like you brushed your hair at all today.”

“No? I… Mom’s been busy all day working, and I was busy reading so I didn’t think I…”

“How about I go get it and fix your hair so that you look presentable, and you tell me more about orcas.”

“I look fine!”

“You look like it was arranged by nesting birds looking to make a comfortable place to raise their young.”

“Pbbbbft! Oh, but did you know that orcas are one of the only species of mammal besides humans and other primates that undergo menopause? Female orcas who can no longer have babies stick around to help raise other babies and take charge of the group. Different populations of orca tend to live in different-sized pods but for most of them, the babies even once grown up don’t leave on their own and instead they’ll stay with their moms for their whole lives—”

#roddy fanfics #fic: the witches of los angeles

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galadrieljones · 5 years

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The Lily Farm - Chapter 33

AO3 | Masterpost

Rating: M (Mature) - sexual content, violence, and adult themes

Summary: To help her process Sean’s death, Mary Beth asks Arthur to take her on a hunting trip, somewhere far away. He agrees, and on their journey to the north, they find quietude and take comfort in their easy bond. They’ve been friends for a while now, but life, like the wilderness, is full of uncertainty and complications, and as they embark on their desperate search for meaning together, they endure many trials, some small, some big—all of which bring them closer to one another, and to their future.

Chapter 33: Faith, Hope and Love, Pt. 2

It was the first of October and unseasonably warm in the state of New Hanover. The day before, the Reverend and the Mother Superior had stopped in Rhodes to see the red clay dirt and to talk of God and his many shapes and formulas. Swanson wanted to study the marriage vows as well, as it had been a long time since he’d performed any such ritual and even longer since he had thought about the meaning of love. They walked through the town, silently, getting the red dust on their boots, and they gave money to a sad veteran and then they found a little wedding going on at the chapel, between a very young man and a very young woman who both looked about eighteen years old. The young woman had a pregnant belly under her modest blue dress and there was nobody else in attendance except for them and a few worshippers only half-listening in the pews. It didn’t seem to affect anything about the way that they looked at each other. They were in love.

Swanson wondered if they had run away or if they were orphaned or what was going on. It put him in distress. He thought of Arthur as a very young man and all that had happened to him. A couple of times, he had gone with Arthur to see Isaac, when Arthur was only maybe 25. He was not the only one who had met Isaac back in those days. Hosea, too, had gone to meet the boy, and even John. Swanson couldn’t remember whether Dutch had ever gone or not, but he strongly remembered Dutch urging Arthur to bring them both back to the gang with him, where he could keep an eye on things. Dutch didn’t see anything good coming out of Eliza living alone. Of course, he had been right. He was often right in those days, but those days had gone south some time ago.

Isaac had been a serious child, and very sweet. He was shy and sensitive. But he was not sad. He just preferred caution, and solitude. He liked crayons and paper, and he liked to sing. He was happy, and he always remembered Swanson and Hosea when they came. He liked kites. Swanson remembered Isaac and Arthur going into town once to purchase a kite, and then flying the kite together on the lawn. It was a magnificent shade of red against the bright blue sky. Isaac had a very thick head of dirty blond hair, like Arthur, but Eliza’s dark eyes, and he trusted Arthur, idolized him even, despite Arthur’s limited presence in his life. Eliza trusted Arthur, too. Eliza and Arthur were good friends, it seemed, and maybe they were trying to reignite something, but Swanson did not remember them being in love. Arthur had already started up with Mary at this point, though it was new and not something anyone spoke of. Whatever he had with Eliza, it was responsibility. It was trying for a very adult arrangement, in a way, and of this, Swanson remembered being proud. Arthur tried very hard. He did the best that he could for as long as he could.

The last day Arthur went to see them, the gang was camped nearby, and he was supposed to just be gone for the night, but he never came back. Nobody knew what was going on. He was gone for several days with no word. Finally Dutch went out to find him, and Swanson and Hosea went along because they were very worried. Bad things had been happening. The O’Driscolls were a different animal in those days, and the blood feud was fresh in Annabelle's wake. They searched for a long time. When they finally found Arthur, he was lying in a creek with all his clothes off, and he hadn’t eaten, and he was half-dead with whiskey. At first, they thought he’d been kidnapped and left for dead, but that was not the case. He couldn’t speak through the booze or the weeping, but eventually he did manage a few words. They got em, he said. Got em both.

Dutch and Hosea hauled him up and got him dressed and Swanson helped Dutch ride him home while Hosea went into Butte to see what the hell was going on. When he came back a day later, he said he’d gone and found Eliza's father, learned that she and the boy were dead, robbed and killed—maybe by bandits, but it could have been debt collectors. Nobody was sure, and there was no way to know, and Arthur couldn’t tell them anything.

Nobody blamed Arthur for their deaths—other than Arthur. Eliza’s father, it turned out, had always liked Arthur. He was sick, and they were a poor silver mining family, and they didn’t think much for the law as it had provided them with very little in those days, and so he thought that Arthur, despite his reputation, was decent for all he provided to his daughter—monetarily, and in the way of companionship. It wasn’t long then before Dutch went on his vendetta, trying to find the men responsible. Of course, he failed. The men responsible were not O’Driscolls. They were nobodies, in the wind. They were ghosts, and you cannot catch ghosts or shoot them in the back.

Swanson thought about their deaths almost every day now. How random, and how needless they had been. He remembered Mary staying away for a long time after that. One night, she came, a couple of weeks after it happened, and Arthur could not face her properly because of the booze. Hosea’s wife, Bessie—she had a kind streak, and she was the one to send her away. Mary seemed ashamed and upset with herself as if the whole thing were somehow her fault. Swanson found her crying near the camp, and he asked her if she was okay and needed a place to sleep, but she just got stoic and rode away and did not come back for a long time. She was not too self-sufficient when it came to dames, and Swanson worried for her safety, but he didn’t know she had a family. One day she came back, and it was okay again. Arthur came out to see her. He was nearly sober, and it all changed, very slowly, but he never really recovered. Not for years. Swanson was certain that this had been what poisoned his relationship with Mary—more so than her father, or any of that nonsense about his lifestyle. He would have left the life. He wanted to marry her, but she couldn’t make the choice. She begged him for a child, so he could make the choice for her, but he wanted a promise, a guarantee. Few people knew this about what happened between them. Reverend Swanson was one of the few.

That day, back in Rhodes, he and the Mother Superior left the chapel wedding and went to the saloon, where they shared a pitcher of lemonade, and continued their discussion:

“Love is about more than repopulation of the earth,” said Sister Calderón, taking a big drink. “Not all those in love will have children, but that does not take away the fact that their love is true. Love is like a tree. It fills the air with life. It is necessity to living.”

That night, they took the red-eye train overnight to Emerald Station. Arthur’s money had been enough to buy them both tickets and a meal in the dining car. When they were too tired to continue, they sat in separate rows, and though Swanson slept very little, Sister Calderón seemed to fall away into dreaming with hardly any trying at all. He wondered what that must be like, to be so safe inside your faith that you slept without fear.

Swanson leaned with his forehead against the cool glass, watching the hills and the plains and the meadows go by. He thought of Mary Beth. In the days when he was so drunk he could hardly see, Mary Beth had been kind to him. She was a kind girl. She was a little like Eliza, a little like Bessie, a little like Annabelle. All of them, he thought, but she was not them. She was loud and openminded, and she didn’t get dour, but she did get pensive, and she was no moral paragon, but she got pissed off when men said the untrue thing. She brought him coffee all the time. She would try to set him straight. Get it together, Reverend. We need you, she would say. She had a good head on her shoulders. She was even teaching that O'Driscoll to read. He did not know if she was lying all those times she told him he was valuable to the gang, but even if she was, it helped. It always did. She was good for Arthur. Sometimes, he worried that after Eliza, and then Mary, Arthur would be alone forever. He had a talent for self-punishment of the likes the Reverend had never seen—outside himself, of course. The drinking, the loneliness. But now, he was not going to be alone anymore.

Eventually, Swanson drifted off to sleep with the sunrise, feeling hungry but cleansed from the day. They made an early morning stop in Valentine, where the train idled for a little while and many passengers boarded on their way up north. Swanson awoke to Sister Calderón shaking his shoulders and the loud sound of the train whistle, like a foghorn.

“Reverend,” she said as she nudged him, ceaseless. “Reverend, wake up. I cannot carry you to Mr. Morgan’s wedding. You must carry yourself!”

He sat straight up. “I am ready,” he said, feeling like he was facing fifty directions at once. “I am ready, Sister.”

“Of course you are,” said Sister Calderón. “That much was never in doubt. Now, let’s go, quickly. I need to stretch my legs! It is a beautiful day!”

Meanwhile, Arthur was out with Lawrence Winterson in the barn, feeding the hounds their lunch and talking about the minor complexities of their lives.

“It feels like the closer we get to leaving,” said Arthur, sitting in a wooden table chair, scrubbing one of the pretty mutts behind the ears, “the more loose ends we’ve got to tie. There are responsibilities pulling at me from all sides. And all of this…uncertainty.”

He watched as Lawrence finished pouring the kibble in the red bowls. The hounds all went to the bowls upon the noise. There were five in all. Lawrence was a thin man but hale, his hair very gray and peppery. He stood up and dusted his hands together. “I thought you would have been accustomed to uncertainty by now, given what I know about your life. I mean that realistically, not as an insult.”

“I understand,” said Arthur, looking down at his knuckles. “And I am accustomed to uncertainty. Just not like this.”

“You mean Mary Beth?”

“Yes.” He thought he should be asking Hosea about all this in the end, but it was too messed up. Too close to home. He was looking for objectivity. “I went from—beating down debtors for money, robbing small town banks, and just a whole hell of a lot of…what you might call mercenary work…to this. To getting married, having a baby with a girl I’ve known for four years. You know I never been able to make it work before, a better life—whatever that means—but I never really gave it the try it deserved. I should have. Many years ago. I’ve had…a lot of chances that I blew. I blew em real bad. But now, it’s different, and part of that is because Mary Beth, she’s in it with me. This—predicament. She ain’t like me. She’s innocent to a whole lot, but she’s still a outlaw. She still runs with wanted men, and she don’t got the price on her head, but she does have this sort of…thing about her.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, she’s wanted in three locals west of the Mississippi. For thieving. All petty stuff. They’d never hang her. But still. It’s all she knows. She was orphaned at twelve, almost the same as me, lived on the streets. She never had no chance. She’s lucky she made it this far. We both are. And we owe Dutch, and Hosea. They—gave us everything that we got. I mean hell, they taught me to read. They took care of me. Now, getting free—it’s like we’re untangling the roots of a thousand year old oak tree, trying to dig it up with our bare hands. It ain’t even about the money, I mean—I got money. For us. Me and John, together, we got just enough. But there are so many more. There are good people. Innocents and people who got nothing and nowhere to turn to but the goddam gang. It’s been the only family a lot of us have ever known. We leave them behind, exposed, in the lurch, I know that we will never be able to outrun that, and the guilt, it’ll tear us apart.” He took a deep breath. He’d never been able to see things so clearly in all his life, and yet the path was hidden.

Lawrence sighed and placed his hands in his pockets. He leaned against one of the heavy, load-bearing beams of the barn. He did not seem overwhelmed by any of this. He was so calm, so even as a man. “You seem very wise to your predicament, Arthur,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re looking for. It seems you know exactly what you have to do.”

“I do?”

“All I can say is,” said Lawrence, “consult Mary Beth. And remember that from here on out, you’re partners. Whatever decisions you make about your lives, like the kind of decision on whether or not you think you can leave people behind, just make sure you do it together, and that both of you are all in. You might be surprised at what happens.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, do you think I expected to end up owning a bed and breakfast in New Hanover?”

Arthur thought on it. He slouched back in the chair, placed his hands on his belt. “What was you expecting?”

“Something far more exciting, I assure you,” said Lawrence, smiling. “Then again, I’ve met you. And I’ve met Dutch van der Linde. Excitement comes in all forms, I suppose.”

Arthur found this to be tremendously funny. He took a toothpick from behind his ear and set it between his teeth as he laughed. “Well, that is true.”

The hounds finished their eating, licking their paws. Some of them licked their bowls. But then, all at once then as if on some sort of cue, they perked up and went for the barn door, scratching and barking. Lawrence slung the shotgun over his shoulder. He threw open the doors but whistled for them to disperse. They sped up the grass toward the two familiar faces coming in on foot, but then they split off, going in all directions. A few came back to lick their bowls. The rest disappeared into the tree line.

“Is that your Reverend?” said Lawrence, taking off his glasses to clean them.

Arthur stood, vindicated. “That is him.”

“Who’s that with him? A sister of the church?”

“Yeah,” said Arthur, standing now. “That there is Sister Calderón, Mother Superior at the Catholic church in St. Denis. I’m not sure what she’s doing here, but I guess it’s a good thing.”

“Another blessing, perhaps?” said Lawrence.

Arthur was chewing that toothpick to little splinters. He waved. They waved back. Sister Calderón was rushing toward him. “It’s nothing less than a blessing, I assume.”

“Mr. Morgan!” she said. She dropped her valise as soon as she got to him. To his surprise, she hugged him. Quick, but tight. She held his hands in both of hers. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you, Sister,” he said. “Now don’t shoot me, but I must say I am mighty surprised to see you here.”

“She’s with me. I hope it's all right,” said Swanson, wiping the sweat from his brow with a white handkerchief from his pocket. “She’s here for…guidance.”

Arthur placed his hand on Swanson’s shoulder. “I knew you’d come, and of course it's all right.”

“Thank you, Arthur. It is an honor.”

Arthur introduced Lawrence then who saw them both inside. But Arthur stayed out for a little while. He went to water the horses and then to brush out Sarah’s mane, as he assumed Mary Beth was busy, and he didn’t much feel like any more idle chit chat with anyone other than her. He leaned against Sarah and put some braids in her mane, and he smoked a cigarette for his nerves.

“What do I do, girl?” he said to her, patting her behind the ear. “What do I do?” She nuzzled him. He fed her a sugar cube, which she enjoyed. He smiled, comforted. Horses were simple.

Hamish arrived. He tied up Buell and came up holding a fishing tackle box that he had filled with a few things for the trip. He did not carry many earthly goods with him. A random weary traveler looking for a bed had come through as well the night before—a man by the name of Kelly—and so the Wintersons, with the unexpected presence of the Mother Superior, were one room short. John and Abigail offered to bunk in the kids’ room with Jack, but Hamish called it unnecessary. He said he’d just set up his tent and sleep on the lawn. Everyone thought he was kidding except for Arthur, who found it totally in character.

For an altar, John nailed together a cross with pieces of sawed lumber from the shed. Abigail decorated it with some wildflowers that Jack had gathered from the edges of the property, all while Lizette helped Mary Beth into her dress, and she braided her hair and kept things very simple, but pretty. Hosea gave Arthur a horseshoe he’d found in the stable and some little sleigh bells from Lizette’s sewing drawer to keep in his front pocket. “For good luck,” he said. Dutch gave to Arthur the tailored silver jacket, which immediately solved Arthur’s lack of certainty over what to wear.

“It’s…wonderful,” said Arthur, admiring himself in the mirror in Lizette’s sewing room—the same room where Lawrence had stitched up his arm many weeks before. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, my boy,” said Dutch, smoking his pipe. “A man needs to look his best on a day like this.”

“I hope you didn’t pay too much.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’d spare no cost.”

Arthur sighed. Accepting the jacket from Dutch was difficult for him. It put guilt inside him, even as he wanted to believe that it was provided free of condition. It got him so messed up. Arthur allowed himself to be flattered either way. He was impressed by how Dutch had estimated his measurements, and the jacket truly was beautiful. He didn't want to make room in his chest for more questions, even as they forced in against his will. He swallowed it all down. Learning the truth about Annabelle had made Arthur sympathize with Dutch in the way of men rather than to see him as a father, and in some ways, this made things even more difficult than before. He wanted to talk to Dutch, as friends, comrades. He wished they could find a way to unravel the many layers of subterfuge and showmanship surrounding their relationship, but he didn't know when, or how. It was so hard, planning a confrontation like that. He didn't know how, and it was not the right time. His only recourse on that day was to ask neither Dutch nor Hosea to stand beside him during the ceremony. He asked only John.

Because even after so many years of being at odds with one another, John was true. Arthur knew this, and unlike anything with Dutch, he knew he could count on it. John was uncomplicated in his loyalty to Arthur, and once he made a choice, the choice was made. Arthur wasn't great at communicating his appreciation for this, but he tried. He did. He hoped that choosing him for a groomsman would show John that he was serious—about leaving, about their friendship, about everything.

The ceremony was held at sundown. It was very simple and pretty. John stood beside Arthur, looking proud and young. Abigail stood beside Mary Beth. The rest of them all stood around watching in a half-circle with their hands clasped in front of them or behind their backs, or their hands in their pockets. There was a breeze coming through to cool their cheeks. The sky was red.

“Love is patient,” said the Reverend. He was nervous, but he was so happy for Arthur and clear with sobriety that day that he found himself growing sentimental at almost every turn. “Love is kind. It does not envy, and it does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others. It is not self-seeking, nor is it easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does—it does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.” He looked at Mary Beth then. She looked very young but beautiful in her dress. She was sort of silly, he thought. She liked to have fun. That day, she looked at Arthur like she was both relieved and also excited. She seemed to hurry along the Reverend with her posture, standing up on her tip-toes even though she did not have to, like she was eager to get it over with so she could kiss her groom and get on with her life. She wore no veil, only a modest crown of daisies, made for her by Jack. She took an eyelash off of Arthur’s cheek, which amused Arthur. She held it out to him, and he blew it off her finger for a wish.

“Love always protects,” Swanson continued, smiling, adjusting his collar, addressing his notes, and his Bible. Arthur and Mary Beth both looked at him as the wind rustled through their hair and Mary Beth's dress. “It always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” He then addressed his congregation, suddenly infused with a strange confidence. “A very wise woman once taught me that love is about more than procreating the earth.” He looked at Sister Calderón. She was excited. She waved at him, urging him forward. He nodded once, cleared his throat. “She said, ‘Love is like a tree.’ It is life-giving. That is what she meant. It provides. All life must end, but a life full of love is a life provided for. It affirms who we are, what we want, what we’re made of, our potential.” He looked at Arthur. Arthur was very calm. You could sort of see the gears turning behind his eyes as he contemplated this day, but it was all slow. It was very slow and even. “Love can be lost,” said Swanson, thinking of his own life, thinking of Isaac. “But it can be found again, as we witness today the union of two lost souls who have, in the time since they’ve met, found completion within one another. Life is—it is ever trying. But we cannot give up.” He blinked. He saw Dutch, standing near the front, his eyes heavy, cast down to the earth. “We cannot give up,” said Swanson. He closed his own eyes. Then he looked at Arthur once more, and Arthur nodded.

Swanson continued on to the rings after that. The rest of the ceremony came to him easily. He didn't fumble for the words, nor did he have to look at his notes. Arthur had a very pretty ring with a purple stone for Mary Beth, and Mary Beth surprised everyone, including Arthur, by having a ring for him as well, one that she had stowed away in the pocket of her dress. It was a gold band.

“I bought this,” she said to Arthur as she fitted the ring on his finger, “from an estate sale in Blackwater. Boy, that seems like another life now, don't it? Anyway, I thought it was fine, because it has a pretty filigree on the metal, and I kept it in a jewelry box, because I thought maybe one day I’d get to give it to a man that I loved. I wouldn’t wanna give him contraband. I was always dreaming. The day after you proposed, I put it in Watson’s saddlebag so that I’d always have it. I was ready for this day.” She was smiling, holding his hand in both of hers. “I didn’t know it would fit though," she continued. "That’s a nice surprise.”

Everyone laughed, even Arthur, who was looking down at the ring. He was not a man prone to ornamental decoration, but this was okay. It was pretty, and it was from her. He looked at the Reverend, full of decision then, the first real decision he had ever made in his adult life. He cleared his throat. “Let’s get on with it,” he said. “Read the vows, Reverend.”

The sun was almost down now, leaving a ring of gold over the trees.

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tres-spades-hotel · 6 years

Text

Top 10 Things That I Love About You

It’s Eisuke’s birthday in just a few days and I’m waiting for his present to arrive. Ever since the hotel opened up in New York, life has been even more hectic than normal. Lately, I see Eisuke less and less because of the ever-growing work as both the CEO of the Ichinomiya Group and as the owner of multiple hotels across the globe. My fiancé is being over-worked and, at first, I had no idea what to do to relieve him for a while. If only we could go to an isolated island for years. It would be bliss.

The others aren’t much help either. They just continue to tease us as a couple but I know they see Eisuke being more stressed than usual. I know they mean well so I just laugh and brush it off. That’s when I got an idea.

I went out on a day off to look for a bookshop. I’ve been reading Eisuke’s book that he used for learning business and I’ve become interested and invested into becoming a business-woman for Eisuke. I know that it’s a long shot, but I would like to help Eisuke out. If I know the inner workings of business, I can take some of Eisuke’s work off of his shoulders.

I found an old bookshop further out from where the hotel is. I found many books that I wanted. Some romance books, information books, magazines and many books about business that I could use. While in the romance section of the shop, I found a few short novels and poetry books written by wives and husbands for their significant others. When I was stumped for ideas for a present, this gave me a perfect idea. After paying for the books, I rushed out and headed for a department store to find craft materials.

There are two halves of my beloved’s present. I had already ordered a his and her set of bangles. One for me which says, ‘His Queen’ in rose gold, and the other, in metallic black which says, ‘Her King’. I specifically ordered them to have a crown symbol and a spade symbol. I just can’t wait to see Eisuke wearing it, because I want people to see exactly who he belongs to.

The next part of his present, I decided, will be a small booklet detailing all of things that I love about Eisuke. And this list goes to the horizon. Once I sat down to write a small list, it became more of a happy pass-time to remember all of our sweet and sexy moments since 5 years. Then I realise just how much love I have for Eisuke and how much more I will give. Soon this list became a lot more than a simple small booklet. It became a book of memories of my love for Eisuke. Sakiko and Chisato have helped me to make my booklet and I have written down everything that needs to go in.

The A5 booklet is Eisuke’s signature lavender purple and I have tried to write in a neat handwriting. Key word: tried. On the front cover is a large black spade symbol and, written in a silver colour pen, Eisuke’s name in the middle. At the top, ‘To My Billionaire,’ and at the bottom ‘From Your Love, for Eternity’. Inside is a little introduction by me, then I wanted it to go on to many bullets describing everything that I love about Eisuke. Instead, I decided to make it a ‘Top 10’ things that I love about Eisuke.

Everything is in it. All the littlest things that I love. All the bigger things that I love. Every desire and every part of my love is in this small booklet and I cannot wait for Eisuke to see it. He always wants to know things about me. Why I smile when nothing happens. In this, he will get to know everything.

Eisuke’s POV

It’s morning. The sunlight streams through the open windows. Every day, Vivian asks me why we don’t have curtains for the windows. But considering the penthouse is on the top floor, I don’t think we need it. Her attention should always be on me and not on the outside but she just laughs at me and says I’m ridiculously “cute”. She’s the ‘ridiculous’ one but she’s become everything to me.

She’s lying next to me now. Wrapped up in the silk sheets and sleeping in my arms. I tried to get up a while ago but her grip on me became tighter and I couldn’t leave her. Vivian lays her head on my chest and her arm over my stomach. She calls me cute, but she is cuter.

I sigh, knowing that it will be a while before I can fully get up out of bed. So I look to the bedside table and find the book that Vivian gave me for my birthday. As I reach out to get it, the bangle that she gave me shines in the sunlight. It says ‘Her King’ with a spade on it. I’m sure she mostly bought the matching couples bangles for herself more than anything. But I don’t dislike it. It’s exactly the kind of thing I would give her but not one for myself. It just shows how far we’ve come.

That not only does she belong to me, but I belong to her.

I haven’t been able to read it since we were up all night celebrating my birthday, not that I like celebrating it. But when I’m with Vivian, I know that I don’t have to hate my birthday; it’s no longer a nuisance to me.

I open the sweet cover and read.

Dear Eisuke,

Happy Birthday! I can’t believe we have been together for 5 years now, that we get to celebrate our birthdays with each other. I hope you get what you want, although I think we know exactly what that is.

I know you like and accept anything that I make for you. So I made this. I want you to know exactly how much I love you and for what reasons that I do. We both know that you’re flawed, but to me, you’re perfect. An arrogant perfectionist is what you are to the world but a sweet and soft man is what you are to me.

I decided to make a list of absolutely everything that I love about you. Here, you’ll get to know about all my top 10 desires. Everything that makes you mine. I hope you gain amusement out of this and see why words are just as important as actions.

I love you so much,

Yours forever,

Vivian

Her small letter fills me up inside. We have been through much together. I made her mine when we met, then she made me hers straight after. I thought I knew why she loves me, but the list does show exactly what she loves about me.

1. First off, your heart. I know how caring you really are, even if you don’t admit to it. When I’m hurt, frustrated or insecure, you are always there at my side. And not only me, I see how caring you are with the others. Even if they are annoying as hell, you always want to know if everything is in order. That nothing is wrong. None of you will admit it (except maybe for a particular fedora-loving thief), but as a family, everyone cares about everyone. You may say it is because they work for you, that you don’t want them to start lacking or to deteriorate in their work-load but I know that it’s something more. A desire to know everything, right and wrong, good and bad. Some may say you have an ‘odd’ way of showing it, but I can tell it’s there.

2. How protective you are. Sometimes I’m not sure whether this is protection or your possessiveness but I love it either way. I don’t need to fear anything knowing that you’re my shield. That you have my back like I have yours. I feel safe in your arms, in your presence, in your home. If I’m ever in danger, I know you will come to save me. And that you’ll take me home and shower me with love, to show me that I’m safe and that I’m loved.

3. Your lips. This isn’t a joke. I love your kisses. If there’s anything that I could do for the rest of my life, it would be staying attached to your lips. Your kisses are sweet, just like you. I can never count how many times we’ve kissed or made out but I know it’s a lot and I can’t wait to spend my life kissing you.

4. Your actions. Almost everyone questions them, and regrettably, I do to. I love that whatever you do, it is done with good intentions. Even if those actions are questionable or wrong, you do have the best intentions within you. But I also know that your actions are done with care and precision. That you have thought very thoroughly about the consequences of your actions.

5. Your body. Is that even a suprise? I love how you cross your legs, how you smirk at me, how deliciously good you are when you make love to me, how handsome and hot you are, how sexy you look in your suits, how beautiful your eyes are, how large and delicate your hands are. Every night I can’t wait for you to make love to me, no matter how embarrassed I get. When you make love to me, I feel full. I feel loved. I feel everything that you want me to know. Alongside your kisses, I want to spend the rest of life making love with you. I never want any other. Only you.

6. Your stubbornness. We’re both stubborn. Extremely stubborn. Maybe that’s why I love it. When we both don’t back down and you always say what’s on your mind. When you tell me that if I have something to say, I should say it. And you know that I do. At least, I try to. I love how you speak your mind, for better or worse, and never holding back (among other things).

7. When you reveal your true feelings. I like to hear you say sweet words to me. When you say you love me. That you need me. That I’m the only one you see and look at. That you can’t be without me. That I’ve wrapped you around my finger. That it’s my fault you got hooked onto me, and that I can’t let go of you now. Those words will always be my most treasured memories.

8. Your personality. How arrogant you can be. How sure you are that you’re the king. And that I’m your queen. How nothing sways you, how calm you are in dangerous situations. Your subtle caring nature. Your love for sweet things (me and coffee). Your love for animals. Your hatred of peas. Your love of the value of hard work. How possessive you are with me.

9. Your appearance. You have many suits. You always wear a different one wherever we go. I love it because they look so good on you. You always look your best in whatever situation you find yourself in. It shows that you’re hard-working. That you built your empire through your own work and not that of others.

10. This book may say 10, but there are many more things that I love about you. I just wouldn’t be able to get it all down before I come up with one more reason to love you. So here’s the last in this book: I love how you love me. Your love is precious to me. Everything you do, everything you love, everything that makes you whole. They’re all things that make me love you. Your love fills me up with joy. That you chose me to be your one and only. To be your wife. To be the mother of your children. To be your life partner. They’re all that I want. When you love me, I know that I don’t need anything else. You are the only one for me.

I know the list will grow as the years go by. I just can’t help but wonder what else she loves about me. But we have forever to find those out.

So? Did you like it? I have much more love to share with you Eisuke. I can’t live without you now. You’ve made me obsessed. You’ve made me crazy for your love. Crazy for your body. Crazy for your affection. I want to never be without you. Let me stay by your side and I’ll show you exactly who you belong to.

For you, I will do anything. Happy Birthday honey. I love you so much.

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

Happy Birthday Eisuke!!! 💜

It’s officially 12am here in England! 🕛

My King, I love you so much! Your recent story drew me to tears. Don’t make me feel like I could lose you because I don’t want to think about it. I can’t wait to see what 2019 has in store for you. I hope you get so much love that you don’t know what to do with it (unless you buy a warehouse and store it there?!). 😘

When I first saw you in the prologue of Kissed By The Baddest Bidder, I knew I was going to love you. That my type is a particular hot, brunette billionaire who deserves all the love in the world. After reading your first season main stories, I was hooked. I fell down the dark black (or purple) hole of Eisuke and I don’t want to ever come out. That’s how much I love you. You take over my thoughts all the time. 🤗

I can’t believe I’m in love with a fictional man! ❤️ Why can’t you be real?! 😭

I can’t wait to buy your Season 5.5 and see exactly how much love you have!

Once again, Happy Birthday! 🎁🎉🎊🎈

#eisuke ichinomiya #kbtbb eisuke #kissed by the baddest bidder #eisuke's birthday

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rgr-pop · 6 years

Photo

On New Year’s Day this year I was putting away all my makeup from the night before (big night for makeup) and I decided that I would put all the makeup I use in a bag until the bag fills up, to see what I actually use. Well, color cosmetics, by which I mean non-base products, which is not what “color cosmetics” means but I’m my own boss. And this isn’t really everything, just stuff I wore out or to see people--which, to be fair, I don’t like to wear makeup unless I’m gonna be seen, and I don’t photograph my face anymore, so. Not bad for a shut-in though! I am ready to put my things back in order and reflect! Ft. night photos.

What’s shown above is just the stuff I reached back into the bag for over and over again (cheating? I am my own boss, remember), and stuff that featured in some of my best or most memorable looks this year. The rest will follow.

As you can see I leaned into pantone candid coral, lol, but coral is, always, my primary color for everything on my face. I had really imagined to use coral with a lot of grey lavenders, and I’m pleased to say I returned to that over and over again and came into loving it. It’s the classic for me. I had also planned to do a lot of coral + gold and coral + periwinkle but I rarely did!

COMMENTARY AFTER THE CUT even though I think you should be forced to read it

The original UD Naked palette @laskyjedneplavovlasky handed me down to keep me from buying it when it got discontinued just because it is now Retro and she knew I’d regret it. I like it! I’m gladder I didn’t spend money on it! The thing about me is that I don’t know how to wear or use “neutrals,” so I am learning and growing more with this palette than anything else I have. I expect we’ll see some interesting developments over the next few weeks. As for shimmery neutrals, I still think UD has the best, and I’ve long been a Sin fan. I use this Sin--I have it in like three other palettes--wet. My favorite thing to do with it is to wet a brush--weirdly I love the one that came with this thing--and use it to lay sin vertically down the center of my lid going over the crease, so it looks like actual silk.

NYX Ultimate Mult-Finish palette in Sugar High. These palettes are underwhelming for the price (didn’t I gift you a different colorway of this @madmoths? do you agree that it’s finnicky?) but the shades here are too ideal and I use some combination of them constantly. If I were some “one palette only” rich bitch I’d get whatever the Nars equivalent of this is and just be like that forever.

Some other coral bits: Nars Orgasm blush, Benefit ultra plush lip gloss in Coralista (I still love these to death! you can’t get them!), Stila watercolor blush in Water Lily (another great thing you can’t get anymore but if you covet it it’s just a knockoff of many Korean products). That blush is Model Co’s blush cheek powder in Peach Bellini, it only recently went back into circulation because I had to repress it after breaking it four the literal third time but I could not find my alcohol spray bottle for umm two months. This is one of the nicest blushes I own just in terms of beauty and application, I need to see how long it lasts to be able to determine whether it’s top five. Happy to see you can still buy it.

That cream palette is an ancient Stila lip and cheek palette that I am determined to use “up” this year. Still smells and works great. I’ve been using those corals, obviously, but I’m reminded now how gorgeous that plum is. I didn’t really lean heavily into my black cherry victorian winter look, like I normally do, so maybe for spring? I’m thinking the next wave is black cherry + dark green for spring. Maybe with... mustard? Will report back.

That Colourpop eyeshadow is Erotic, one of the first products I ever got from them, miraculously still functioning although I can tell it’s kind of on its last legs. I need to use it up, I mean, I’m going to use it up, because it’s one of my favorite eyeshadows ever. I am hunting a perfect dupe! That shade is precisely the coral that I mean when I talk about coral.

Colourpop’s Chasing Rainbows palette. I never would have picked this out for myself but Lucas got sucked into a display at Ulta at Christmas and thought this was very cool, and, he was right? It’s so nice and I really recommend it. But I’m sure you can tell what I’ve been using most... I think if those teals had been something else (a baby blue?) and there was one more slightly shifty shimmer in a translucent base, this would be a basically perfect palette.

That Huda sapphire palette is....we’re trying to work it out. I am trying to like it at all. (I actually love the silver glitter that temptalia gave an F, lol. She rates on claims but if you use it with only your fingers and a tacky tacky base it looks very neat on the lid.)

I’ve had a rocky relationship with that MUFE palette (for a minute I thought it was the only thing temptalia had ever steered me wrong on!) but I’ve really come around on it. I use that suite of purples all the time and they are very luxe and dreamy on me, even if I wanted them to be opaque “colors” when I got them. I also use that blush in the center as a “transition shade” to blend out the edges of anything else I do with this palette.

I forgot to open that little TheBalm single, it’s a promotional single (lol!) from their Nude Dude palette. I can’t imagine spending money on the fucking TheBalm schitck, oh my god. This thing is a beauty though, a really nice purpley nude that was almost made just for me. I just cannot, no matter what I do, work any kind of “nude” into my every day life. I can’t. I want to pan this but.. I will not.

The tiny tube is a Bare Minerals Marvelous Moxie lipstick in Get Ready. This was some kind of free birthday gift years ago? I never wore it because it is marginally “nude” so I did not learn until after they discontinued it that it is the best! I would buy a full size of this! (Well, I like the shade well enough--it’s really more of a medium pink than a nude--but I’d likely look for something bolder if I did.) It feels and smells almost exactly like the nicest Tom Ford lipsticks. I will have to try their new lipstick line--but their shit is all nude now! They have such nice formulas of dumb fucking nude everything!!

Colourpop Flexitarian highlighter is my favorite highlighter. The hurus are not lying! Below that is Anastasia’s Aurora palette--for ages I used the green all the time, but I’ve been using the peach-pinks and purples a lot more, as you could guess. I’m really aching for a straightforward pink highlighter. Then we have THE MAYBELLINE PUMA HIGHLIGHTER. What is it actually called? Chrome Highlight in Knockout. I cannot remember anything before this highlight. See, I know a lot of people like this line, but I had never been driven to try them, and I only got this because I got sucked into the whole thing, and I am strongly undisappointed. It’s not exactly unique but unique to my collection, and is the only kind of gold like that I have, and it has a slight rosy-purple base that is perfect for me and for the coral-lavender thing I’ve been doing.

In the lower right corner is a little bit of a pink look--nothing new for me, I use that hot pink NYX Primal pigment all the time and have for years. It’s not the very best on the market but it’s buildable and the absolute perfect pink, so I’d say it’s probably the best for the price. The lip products are newer to me, a NYX “Slide On Glide On” lip pencil in Disco Rage (!) that Lucas got me for Christmas, which is great? Turns out the $10 lipliner is nicer than the $3 lipliner? Hate that! And a lipstick from a recent limited edition Revlon glitter collection in SE purple tubes--I had a very Collector moment about these and had to have one. This one 100 Watts Pink. I really kind of want more but I have restraint (a glittery pink is practical and everyday wearable!), that shit is getting expensive... HOWEVER! This reminds me that I fell back in love with some other Revlon Super Lustrous lipsticks, particularly FIRE AND ICE (!), thanks to temptalia revisiting them this year. Where did I put that?...

The colourpop super shock shadow on the bottom is Daddy. One of my best looks this month was, well, I had planned something entirely different but I put on youtube while I was getting dressed and Chloe Morello posted this so I had to reroute. She looks unbelievable, it’s a great look. This took a lot of building but it looked so fucking good, I wore it with the CP blue mascara (below), cobalt + bright lavender is a very good combination.

There are some more greige lavenders down there, Revlon’s Illuminance cream shadow palette in Wild Orchids--this maybe doesn’t wear that long but as an...item? concept? it’s one of my favorites ever. That glitter tube is a J.Cat holographic 3D eye topper thing, the shade is Unicorn Hype. I have two of these and would buy more. This was Tati’s influence! I love this brand and like this product, still wanna get the mousse ones but they were always sold out when she was hyping them last year. This one is, however, starting to get a slightly concerning chemical smell that will probably not keep me from putting it on my eyelids.

Aaaand... imho the product of the year is this CP mascaras. I got the red and the blue. IIRC the red is a little finnicky and the blue wears very nicely but they are by far the most vibrant and pigmented and beautiful colored mascaras I’ve ever used and I could not recommend them more highly. I especially adore the blue for all the time wear but I do think other brands have come out with great blue mascars. But what are you gonna do.... pick up some other red mascara? You’re not! (Well, I’m hoping the impact of these trickles down!!) You don’t need a white base under these at all, and they are definitely more of a volumizing and clumping formula vs. lengthening.

#makeup #color stories

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welcometothepenumbra · 6 years

Text

JUNO STEEL AND THE STOLEN CITY (PART TWO)

SOUND: RAIN. TRAIN ARRIVES, CREAKS TO A STOP. DOOR CLANKS OPEN.

CONDUCTOR: Ah, good evening, Traveler. And welcome… to The Penumbra. Take your seat, please, take your seat.

MUSIC: STARTS.

SOUND: DOOR CLANKS SHUT.

The junction lies just ahead, Traveler. If you’ll allow me just a moment.

SOUND: TRAIN WHISTLE.

(CHUCKLES) Well, next stop? Hyperion City.

SOUND: TRAIN MOVING.

A life fighting crime cannot come without a few deaths, but the last month has been responsible for more of them than Detective Steel is ready to account for. The Proctor, Yasmin Swift… and now Barton Pollack, security guard at the Museum of Colonized History. In the face of that much misery, all our detective wants to do is stop moving, lest he cause any more. But there’s no time for that. Six more lives are on the line now, hostages captured by a piranha-faced gangster and Mayor Pilot Pereyra. Detective Steel and Captain Khan have to move, and quickly, or even more may be lost in this bloody pursuit.

SOUND: TRAIN BRAKES. DOOR CLANKS OPEN, RAIN.

Our next stop: Juno Steel and the Stolen City.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

***

JUNO (NARRATOR): Here’s a good one: a cop and an ex-cop get lost in a room full of maps.

MUSIC: STARTS.

Sorry. Guess I’m not in a funny mood. Tends to happen right after you get a guy killed.

KHAN: You see anything, Steel?

JUNO: Workin’ on it. A lot of this junk’s interfering with the Theia’s heat scan, but I think I might be picking up somethin’ from that side-office there.

KHAN: Yeah, me too, genius. Picking it up with my damn ears. Let’s see if we can get closer without murdering someone this time.

JUNO (NARRATOR): That guy’s name is Omar Khan. He’s the cop. Captain of the HCPD’s hundred-and-fifty-first precinct. My name’s Juno Steel. I’m the ex-cop. Captain of screw-ups, responsible for more dead bodies in the last two months than I’d rather count. They were accidents, not that it matters.

But believe it or not, I wasn’t even the worst one in the Museum of Colonized History’s Hall of Maps that night. That honor might have gone to the piranha-faced gangster who just shot the guard in question, or it might have gone to Pilot Pereyra, crime boss mayor of Hyperion City.

PEREYRA: …And if you’re recording the message and thinking one of your points needs a little more oomph, slap a hostage around a little. Get the family going and the 24-hour news cycle will spread this as far as we need.

PIRANHA: Yeah, I’ve filmed a few demands, thanks.

JUNO (NARRATOR): A lot of names to keep track of on this case. But while I watched the Piranha get ready for her close up, there was only one name I could think about: Barton Pollock. The security guard we’d killed. He had a name, and it was Barton Pollock, and now he was dead.

And that was our fault. Some more than others, but… still.

MUSIC: ENDS.

PIRANHA: Roll it, Mikey.

SOUND: TWO QUICK BEEPS.

Hey there, creeps. We’re just pleased as punch that you’ve decided to listen to reason here, and in return we kept our requests real simple. You get around to ‘em toot-sweet and maybe our hostages don’t have to lose more’n few eyebrows. (CACKLES) We got a hoverhauler set to autopilot to the museum roof in thirty minutes exactly. Sixteen-by-eight-by-eight, violet as violets and yellow as a thousand-watt lemon. You’re gonna clear a way for it, see? It comes early? Someone gets it. It comes late? Two someones gets it. And don’t even ask what happens if we see a copper.

SOUND: TWO QUICK BEEPS.

PEREYRA: Well done. A real economy of language you have there. Now. Throw me the comms.

PIRANHA: We’ve only got thirty minutes!

PEREYRA: My associates here aren’t worried about time. Are you?

VOICE 1: Nope.

VOICE 2: Only one I think’s got to be worried here is her.

PEREYRA: Hey, hey, now. No reason to get mean… yet. So. Give me the comms.

PIRANHA: (GROWLS)

PEREYRA: Your threat about seeing cops was cute. Good for that big, tough look you’re so worried about. But it’s never going to happen, so I want to make sure the cops who do show are the right ones. “See?”

KHAN: If I can just figure out how many hostages they got in there… it’s a slim chance, but still, we got a shot…

JUNO: Six hostages.

KHAN: Hrm?

JUNO: Heat sigs through the wall say there are eleven people in there. One just handed another a comms, so that’s the Piranha and Pilot; three more are standing around, that’s probably the muscle; then six on the floor.

KHAN: They all breathing?

JUNO: Looks like. Hard to tell.

KHAN: That’s something, anyways.

PEREYRA: Target’s right where we left it. You can’t miss it: it’s ten feet tall and heavy as your mother’s conscience. Now if you don’t mind? I’m gonna need the office.

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

Officer Yang! It’s been too long. Listen, buddy, I’m gonna need a quick favor from you, and I’ll pay a hundred creds for every question you don’t ask, okay?

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING.

PIRANHA: Alright, you heard the mayor. Places. Mikey, you’re up. We’ll meet you by the target. You two help me with the hostages.

SOUND: MULTIPLE SETS OF FOOTSTEPS.

KHAN: Ten feet tall, huh? Handed us that lead on a silver pooter.

JUNO: Ugh—

KHAN: Shut up, I know what I said.

JUNO: That’s probably not even enough info to go off of, Captain. If we don’t know where the target is we’re gonna spend all night looking for it.

KHAN: Yeah, wow. Going in without intel sure sounds like a pain in the kielbasa, doesn’t it? Good thing nobody duped anybody else into going into a goddamn heist bust blind, deaf, and blind.

JUNO: Look, I’m sorry. Give me my comms back and I’ll make it up to you.

KHAN: Ha!

JUNO: Remember Rita? My secretary? She called with intel last time we met and she probably talked your ear off? Based on the info we’ve got she could have the name, make, model, artist, location, and favorite color of that big map thing in a second.

KHAN: Yeah, no thanks. Feeling pretty done with your leads for today, Steel. Feeling a little like every time I trust you you take my good will and shove it all in my face, get it up my nose like pool chlorine, burns like a father.

JUNO: Listen, Khan, I’m not a bad guy—

KHAN: You know, I don’t care. I don’t care! Because if you’re not a bad guy, then you’re something worse, Steel: reckless! Impatient! And any cop who’s ready to blow the sting of the century so he can get back at some petty gangster might not be dirty, but he’s sure as hell a moron.

JUNO: But—

KHAN: Now shut up. I’m on the comms.

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

Loo? I want you to run a scan on everything in the museum. We’re looking for something ten feet tall, heavy as hell, in the Hall of Maps.

Yes, I know the museum is big.

Yes, I know it’s really, really big! Now shut up and do it!

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

Says it’s gonna take about ten minutes.

JUNO: Rita could do it in ten seconds.

KHAN: You feel like trying something useful? My Sonia doesn’t whine as much as you, Steel, and she’s a baby.

Listen. We’ve already messed up here once, alright? And that’s on both of us. We acted too fast. I didn’t check the facts.

JUNO: Too fast? This heist was gonna happen tonight whether or not we—

KHAN: Someone died because of us, Steel. Cram that in your skull and smoke it. But not again. We’re gonna gather intel, we’re gonna confirm it, and we’re not gonna move an inch until we can guarantee that nobody gets hurt.

JUNO: Khan, that doesn’t exist. There aren’t any guarantees here. Five thugs in there means too many guns, six hostages means too many places for those guns to point. We could prep for a thousand years and not get a guarantee.

KHAN: We just need information.

JUNO: We have half an hour. I’m not just gonna wait around while—

KHAN: I’m not gonna let some dirty ex-cop stumble around and get someone dead, Steel, and that’s it! Look, make yourself useful and get whatever intel you can on our opposition. And stay where I can see you. Got it?

JUNO: Got it.

JUNO (NARRATOR): I walked to the corner and peeked through an office window. It was pitch dark, for a few seconds.

THEIA: Night-vision mode. Activated.

SOUND: SOFT ELECTRIC HUM.

JUNO (NARRATOR): I closed my real eye so I could focus on what the Theia showed. Between the thick plastic of the windows and my pondscum-green night vision, the office looked like the kind of fish tank you’d see in the waiting room for hell.

Besides the Piranha there were two other goons in there: one with trillion-colored dreadlocks like a sea anemone, and the other with a catfish mustache and wobbling, wet lips. The hostages seemed like a mixed bag of unlucky security guards and people grabbed off the street. Fishlips was tying them together and raiding their pockets; he nudged Anemone to show her someone’s watch and she crushed his toes with her boot. All three of them were wearing night-vision shades big enough to cover everything from their teeth to their hairlines.

I heard something thud behind me.

SOUND: THUD.

When I turned I saw the third one, Quiet Mike, lumbering off in the distance. While Loo was fumbling around on their keyboard, these burglars were gonna rob this museum blind.

Because there’s no such thing as a guarantee in this line of work. Sometimes you can do everything right and people still die. It’s rough, but without it, hey, you’d never be able to beat yourself up about the times it really was your fault. Like Yasmin Swift. Like Benten Steel.

I looked back at Khan.

KHAN: “The Lingerie of Commander Robert Cohen?” That’s the wrong wing, you idiot! I don’t care how many snaps and clasps and flaps it’s got, we’re looking for maps!

JUNO (NARRATOR): We were about to let this become our fault. Quiet Mike was alone, this was our chance to start taking them out one by one, and Captain Khan was going to blow it talking to his subordinate about underwear.

Khan was. Not me. So while Khan was distracted, I followed Quiet Mike, quietly.

And maybe I couldn’t get intel from Rita, but that didn’t mean I was alone.

SOUND: THEIA ELECTRONIC CHIME.

THEIA: Now displaying. Museum of Colonized History. Map.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Who said intel needed to be slow? Khan could waste as much time as he wanted, but I didn’t have to: I had night-vision, I had a map of the museum, and I had the world at my retina.

…Until suddenly, I didn’t.

SOUND: STATIC GLITCH.

THEIA: Ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-night vision mo-mode error 3 4 4 3 6 2.

JUNO: What.

THEIA: Restoring to most recent backu-u-up. Sh-sh-shutting down.

SOUND: POWERING DOWN.

JUNO: Damn it, come back, come back!

JUNO (NARRATOR): But it wouldn’t come back. The image was frozen – and that meant that eye was stuck on what it had been looking at a few seconds ago. I opened my other eye and regretted it immediately.

JUNO: (GASPS IN PAIN)

JUNO (NARRATOR): It was headsplitting, both in that it hurt a lot and it felt like the two halves of my head were about three feet apart: one in the past, one in the dark. I’d only had the Theia for a month and this was the first time I’d lost it. Parts of my mind that hadn’t even been there before I met Ramses suddenly felt… lost, flailing… and alone.

Then it hit me. My vision was frozen, and that meant the map was still stuck there. If I could figure out where Quiet Mike was headed, I still had a shot. Nonsense names for wings and exhibits jumped out: Early Infrastructure of the Sewers and the Old Subway, Prison Atlas, Middle-Corruption Era Census of Living Tombs. From the name alone I’d never be able to pick out what they were looking for. Then I saw the room, and it all clicked. With my hand on the wall guiding me, I followed the map the old-fashioned way.

SOUND: SLOW FOOTSTEPS.

JUNO: Two lefts, one right… two lefts, one right…

JUNO (NARRATOR): Until finally I rounded a corner and saw a sliver of light just ahead of me, the words “STAFF ONLY – SUPPLIES AND MAINTENANCE” in a moony silver glow on the door. It was quiet, but I knew who was inside. In fact, that was why I knew who was inside.

SOUND: CREAK, ROLLING.

Quiet Mike was pulling out a hover-dolly from the storeroom. They didn’t have anything to transport that giant map with in the hostage room, and Quiet Mike was big, but not that big. Now I’d gotten the drop on him.

So I picked up a wrench by the door and dropped him.

SOUND: CLUNK.

MIKE: Oww–! Hey, that smarts!

SOUND: CLANG.

(MOANS)

SOUND: HEAVY THUD.

JUNO: Huh. So he can talk. Well, one down, four to—

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING.

KHAN: Alright, hands up and let go of the P.I., you big—

Steel! You got Handsome Mike!

JUNO: Yeah, I… wait, who?

KHAN: Well, his name’s Mike, isn’t it? And look at that figure. Big, powerful stomach. Some arms. Ideal body type.

JUNO: Now that you mention it, you are about the same size as him, aren’t you?

KHAN: Don’t distract me! You’re still in the junk, Steel! You’re on my spitlist! (SPITS)

JUNO: Ugh!

KHAN: The hell were you thinking, wandering off like that? I had to crawl around on my damn hands and knees with a UV light two inches from my face trying to track the stuff I smeared on your shoes before we got here, worried myself nauseous. You could’ve gotten yourself killed!

JUNO: But I didn’t get killed. And in fact, we’re down one goon. Closer to that guarantee you wanted, and you had time to get the intel from Loo. You did get the intel from Loo, right?

KHAN: ‘Course I did. Know exactly what they’re gonna steal and where.

JUNO: You’re welcome, then.

KHAN: You’re the only person I know who I like less when you do something nice for me, Steel.

JUNO: I’ll try never to do it again. Anyway, you got any plans from here?

KHAN: You’re telling me you don’t even have a plan!

JUNO: No, I’ve got one, you’re just not gonna like it. What size pants are you?

KHAN: That’s none of your business, creepo!

JUNO: Forty-two waist, thirty long?

KHAN: That’s…! Th– that’s amazing. How—?

JUNO: Quiet– sorry, Handsome Mike’s tag is sticking out of his pants, and you look about the same size. Exactly, in fact.

KHAN: Flatter me all you want, Steel. I mean it. It’s a good boost for—

Hang on, you’re right. I don’t like this plan.

JUNO: It’s called a disguise, Captain.

KHAN: So because you pulled another one of your shoot-first-call-your-lawyer-later plans, you get to play dress-up with me like I’m some kinda Action Time Marco with all the accessories?

JUNO: I’d say it’s more because you blew ten minutes and haven’t done anything but complain since. We only have twenty minutes until the hoverhauler shows up.

KHAN: There’s a lot wrong with this plan, Steel.

JUNO: There’s a lot wrong with doing nothing, too. These hostages have seen the mayor robbing a museum. You really think they get to live after this?

KHAN: Alright, fine, fine! We’ll do it your way. But I don’t like it.

JUNO: Just shut up and put on the pants, Khan. You can tell me what map we’re saving on the way there.

***

JUNO (NARRATOR): Quiet Mike’s clothes fit Khan perfectly, I think. To be honest, it was kind of hard to tell. Half my sight was still lost somewhere else in the museum and my head felt ready to explode. So we made it as convincing as we could – pulled Mike’s hat down and positioned the night-vision shades to cover as much of Khan’s face as possible. Then Khan pushed the cart and I followed, in the dark, behind.

KHAN: According to Loo the only map that fits their target’s description is the Thinking Column of First Voyage. Should be over this way. It’s ten feet of solid computer, the navigations system of the first terraforming probe, and get this: to make the processors as conductive as possible, the thing’s guts are made of hypercondensed gold. You melt that down and let it expand? Five hundred billion creds of twenty-four karat, that’s what Loo thinks. And that’s if a collector wouldn’t be willing to pay more.

JUNO: And if that thing gets destroyed, do we have to pay the bill? ‘Cause it’d take me a while to put together half a trillion.

KHAN: This isn’t something we joke about, Steel.

JUNO: I’m not joking. My whole plan kind of relied on pushing this heavy column thing and turning the goons into fish-paste.

KHAN: Hang on, gotta clean out my ears. Did you just threaten to use a priceless piece of history as a murder weapon in front of a cop?

JUNO: You’re gonna go to bat for a bunch of gangsters?

KHAN: ‘Course I am! This is what we’ve got the damn courts for, isn’t it? And you’re not gonna destroy that map, either!

JUNO: The map? Who cares if we destroy the stupid map? The people who made it are dead! These hostages are alive!

KHAN: I’m not saying we take the map before the hostages, I’m saying you’re pretty quick to assume we only get to choose one, Steel.

JUNO: You can’t save everything, Khan.

KHAN: That map means something, Steel! This city’s old! It’s been around a long time! Like old people!

JUNO: Yeah, I know what “old” means, thanks—

KHAN: That wasn’t a definition, you moron, it was a, whaddayacallit, similar. Simile. Smiler. Simile! Old matters because it means you’ve seen a lot. It’s not enough to take down Pereyra: we have to make sure there aren’t any more Pereyras in the future. That means writing things down. Keeping track of them. But it isn’t gonna be worth a cred if a couple’a chuckleskulls two hundred years from now decide our record isn’t worth saving!

Hyperion City is the first human colony off Earth. Do you know what that means?

JUNO: That it doesn’t use any of the infrastructural solutions to poverty and crime that have been invented in the millenia since, and that it never will, because all of the people rich enough to do something about the way the city’s planned know how to make a buck off all its flaws.

KHAN: That’s… a very nuanced take, and surprisingly succinct!

I liked it better when you played dumb.

JUNO: Me too. Can we go back to that? Because so long as we’re doing dumb things like risking a bunch of hostages’ lives to keep some ancient art-project safe, I’d really prefer to complete that role.

KHAN: Alright. So is there a next step to this plan, or do I just keep playing Handsome Mike until he retires in fifteen years?

JUNO: You just got all upset about my next step, actually, so we’re gonna go with one you’ll like even less: improvise.

KHAN: Steel!

JUNO: Go in there and follow their plan until you see an opening. Signal me, I’ll set up a distraction outside, and while they’re busy, you free the hostages.

KHAN: So what’s the signal? And the distraction?

JUNO: That’s the improv.

KHAN: Aghhh… of course it is. Can’t that stupid cyber-eye you’re so proud of do something? X-ray vision or shoot a laser or whatever?

JUNO: It’s… uh…

No. Uh, not-not… not right now.

KHAN: Figures. Only works when it can get you in trouble.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

PEREYRA: Michelangelo! It’s about time you got back. What, did you take a bathroom break or something?

KHAN: Actually, I—

JUNO: Shht!

PEREYRA: What was that?

Well, bring that cart in and let’s get moving. The hauler should be here soon.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING.

JUNO: That was close. Haven’t you ever gone undercover before?

KHAN: Really more of a public figure, Steel.

JUNO: Of course you are. Fine… fine, just remember your motivation: talking is bad, human life is worthless, and you want a lot of money.

PEREYRA: Mike?

JUNO: Now go!

KHAN: (COUGHING) Uh… sor— (CLEARS THROAT)

JUNO (NARRATOR): Khan followed Pilot into a windowless room… and all I could do was listen.

PIRANHA: About time you joined us, Mikey. Pull that cart over here and help us hoist this, see?

SOUND: ROLLING, GRUNTS, HEAVY CLUNK.

PEREYRA: There it is! Good work, gang. Now, put some elbow grease into this and get us onto the roof, eh? Don’t want to miss our ride.

SOUND: MORE GRUNTS. FOOTSTEPS.

JUNO (NARRATOR): I could see them when they left the office, just barely, in the dull yellow glow of the Thinking Tower. They looked like some ancient caravan, selling weapons and wares and people: the hostages tied together in a line closest to me, marching to death; then the Piranha, Fishlips, and Khan pushing the captives with their guns; and furthest away Anemone pushed the golden Thinking Column while Pilot Pereyra walked behind, hands in their pastel pockets.

I’ve seen a lot in this line of work, but that… that was a nightmare. And Pilot, our mayor, was smiling.

PEREYRA: Come on, come on, step it up. Move them like you mean it, let’s go.

PIRANHA: It’d go a little faster if you helped, Pilot.

PEREYRA: No can do, pal. I’m pushing this big old thing.

PIRANHA: You ain’t even touchin’ it! She is!

VOICE 2 (ANEMONE): You keep talking back to the boss like that and I’ll drop you off the roof, get me?

PIRANHA: You want to try it, clown-hair?

SOUND: SEVERAL GUNS COCKING.

JUNO (NARRATOR): With a sound like someone shuffling a tin deck of cards I heard them all draw their guns, and in the red light of their laser-targeters I could almost see them. The Piranha with her gun out at Anemone; Anemone and Fishlips with guns out at the Piranha. A classic Neptunian Standoff… if you ignored Captain Khan, standing around and looking like he’d been caught with Quiet Mike’s pants around his ankles.

ANEMONE: Where’d your guts go, Mike? Boss Pilot’s crew runs on loyalty. I’m not gonna keep listening to her backtalk.

KHAN: Uhh— (COUGHING FIT)

PEREYRA: Michelangelo is loyal – the most loyal person I see here, in fact. This is my job, and so far only he’s kept his cool. Learn from him.

ANEMONE: Oh, uh… sure thing, boss. Sorry.

Good work… Mike.

PIRANHA: I guess you weren’t kidding, Pilot. Your crew really is loyal.

PEREYRA: Well-paid, too. Change your tune a little and you might find out how well-paid. (CHUCKLES)

JUNO (NARRATOR): I thought Khan glanced at me – it was hard to tell in the dark. And when he raised his gun to the Piranha, I could tell two things: one, that Quiet Khan had a plan; and two, it wasn’t the plan we’d agreed on.

Well, I asked for improvisation, I guess. Can’t complain that I got it.

KHAN: Yeah, hey, let’s, you know, shoot her and stuff. Right in the ding-dang eyeballs, right? I can’t be the only one, huh? Right?

JUNO (NARRATOR): Only, uh… this might sound a little hypocritical? But… it would’ve been nice if he’d done his research. Or, y’know, acted like anyone besides Omar Khan.

ANEMONE: Uh… what was that?

VOICE 1 (FISHLIPS): Holy cow, Mike, you can talk?

PEREYRA: Have to say, it’s news to me, too. I’m… disappointed, Michelangelo.

FISHLIPS: That he drew his gun, or that he can talk?

JUNO (NARRATOR): While they bickered, I tried to figure out what the hell Khan’s plan was. I couldn’t see any way drawing this much attention worked out for us, not while some hostages might get caught in the crossfire. And he wasn’t doing anything about it, either: just shuffling awkwardly on his feet like he was about to ask Pilot out for coffee.

ANEMONE: Who cares? Mike’s said the first thing tonight that makes any sense.

SOUND: GUN COCKING.

PEREYRA: Put. That. Down.

PIRANHA: Drop the gun or I’ll drop you right here and now, Rainbow.

ANEMONE: Try me.

KHAN: Hey, wow, got real tough-and-rumble quickly. Whew! Why don’t we all set our guns to stun first? It’ll be like laser-tag! Unless… does anyone have a heart condition? ‘Cause then we should do, uh, the Mike special, where instead of trying to hit each other we try to miss.

FISHLIPS: You okay, Mikey? You don’t sound so good.

PEREYRA: No… he doesn’t.

Take off your night-vision shades, Michelangelo. Let us see your face.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Khan was sweating bullets, and still shuffling nervously on his feet. All eyes were on him.

PEREYRA: Don’t back away, Mike. Give me. Your shades.

KHAN: Hey, uh, how about that laser tag? Why don’t I take the first shot?

PIRANHA: Put the gun down, Mikey!

JUNO (NARRATOR): And then I realized Khan wasn’t just shuffling: he was moving, slowly. Past Pilot, past Anemone. So that no matter who shot at him – Pilot, Fishlips, Anemone, the Piranha – they couldn’t catch the hostages in the crossfire.

It was impulsive. It was stupid. And you know what? It turns out I liked Khan’s style.

And just as Khan thought, they all aimed their guns at him.

SOUND: GUNS COCKING.

So Khan aimed his gun at the ceiling.

SOUND: GUN COCKING.

And I aimed myself at the hostages.

KHAN: Let’s try it now: threetwoonego!

SOUND: BLASTER FIRE. RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Khan dove behind a support column, and then the firefight started.

FISHLIPS: That’s not Mikey! Mike wouldn’t… he wouldn’t!

PEREYRA: Yes, I think we’ve all just about figured that out, thank you. Get him!

JUNO (NARRATOR): While they were distracted I ran in and untied some hostages.

JUNO: Go! Just run and hide, it doesn’t matter where. And stay away from the cops!

ANEMONE: Boss, the hostages!

PIRANHA: Some plan, Pilot. Got any other ways for it to go wrong?

PEREYRA: Keep your cool until you lose, alright? You, take that big gold thing. We’ll clean up.

JUNO (NARRATOR): I untied the fifth hostage, last in line, and they ran off, but something was wrong. I could feel it… even if I didn’t have time to think about it just then.

FISHLIPS: Found one!

JUNO: Whoa!

FISHLIPS: Come on out, boss. I’ve got one in my crosshairs.

JUNO (NARRATOR): It was Fishlips, with a gun in my face, rubbing the two ends of his long, long mustache together with one hand. He smiled. In the dark, a shadow stepped up behind him.

FISHLIPS: Boss?

KHAN: You have a heart condition?

FISHLIPS: What? No. Wh-what?

SOUND: BLASTER SHOT, THUD. RUSTLING.

KHAN: Whew! Pulse still going. Omar, you old dachshund, you’ve done it again!

JUNO: You know that even in people with heart conditions a stun blast only does lasting damage once every ten billion times, right?

KHAN: Don’t exaggerate. It’s nine-point-five billion. Anyway, I saved your rear from Twiddles McMustache five seconds ago, and this is the thanks I get?

JUNO: Just drop it, alright? We’ll talk about why I’m right later. Let’s get to the roof, find Pilot, and—

KHAN: …Steel?

JUNO (NARRATOR): I’d just realized what felt so wrong.

I’d untied five sets of hands. But back in the office, there’d been six hostages.

KHAN: S-steel, you in there?

JUNO: They didn’t leave any hostages back in that room, did they?

KHAN: Uh… no. Why the hell would they?

JUNO: We have to go.

KHAN: What? Jeez, we know where they’re going. Can’t I take two seconds to catch my—

JUNO: They still have a hostage, Captain! Roof, now.

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

KHAN: Steel? Steel, hold up!

JUNO (NARRATOR): They’d deactivated the elevator by the time we got to it, so we had to take the stairs.

SOUND: ECHOING FOOTSTEPS. PANTING, GASPING.

KHAN: Stop, stop… just a second, I need a breath… The roof better be close, Steel…

JUNO: Just four more floors. Keep going.

KHAN: Damn it! This is what happens when you go in without a plan!

JUNO: Actually, Captain, we had a plan. You’re the one who went off-script. And honestly, it’s the first thing all night that’s worked.

KHAN: Alright. Fine. Let’s do it again, then. Take my gun.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS STOP.

JUNO: What?

KHAN: Just do it! You’re a better shot and we both know it. Besides, you’ve got that fancy eye to help you. I’m improvising. Happy?

JUNO (NARRATOR): I didn’t have time to explain the eye to Khan, didn’t have time to tell him how it felt to have half your vision ripped back thirty minutes in the past, so I didn’t. He wanted to talk. I wanted to move. So I took his gun and moved, and he followed.

Before we even made it to the roof I could hear it close by: the hoverhauler the Piranha had mentioned. They were gonna get away, and we were going to lose them. Again.

We got onto the roof just in time to see Anemone close the back hatch to the hauler. She was fast: she’d turned and drawn her rifle by the time I’d raised Khan’s gun.

ANEMONE: So. There were two of you. I knew Mike would’ve drawn his gun.

(SIMULTANEOUSLY) JUNO: Put the gun down, Anemone! KHAN: Hands where I can see ‘em, Anemone!

ANEMONE: What did you just call me?

JUNO: Huh. We agreed on that one.

KHAN: I mean, she just looks like an anemone. Some people do.

ANEMONE: Shut up!

Shut. Up. Or else… this poor sap gets it.

JUNO (NARRATOR): She pointed her rifle in through the window and grinned.

KHAN: What do you want?

ANEMONE: I’m getting in the hoverhauler, now, and I’m flying us out of here. And you two are going to stay put.

JUNO (NARRATOR): She crept around the truck. Slowly. I could shoot her. That’d be the quick thing to do: shoot her, hope she wasn’t really aiming at the hostage, cross my fingers. But… I didn’t want to risk it.

What options did I have? The car door was open; I wouldn’t have time while she opened it. The only moment I saw when I could guarantee she wouldn’t be aiming at the hostage was when she couldn’t point through the window anymore – the quarter-second while she moved the rifle’s sight from the back window to the driver’s window.

I could never make that shot. Not alone. With the Theia boosting my reaction time, maybe, but the Theia was gone, and I was useless. And in the meantime there I was, doing exactly what I’d called Khan an idiot for doing: waiting for a sure thing that was never gonna come.

She got closer to the break between windows. And then, like a miracle, it happened.

SOUND: ELECTRONIC BEEPS.

THEIA: The Theia Spectrum is now online.

JUNO (NARRATOR): My sight was back. And I could feel the eye worming into my brain again, making me faster, stronger. And Anemone had no idea.

THEIA: Request received. Increasing reaction time. Fire in three. Two. One.

SOUND: SUPER SLOW-MOTION GUNSHOT.

ANEMONE: Aughh!

SOUND: THUD.

KHAN: Nice shot. I’ll check her pulse, you stop the hauler.

JUNO: One out of every nine b—! Fine, whatever!

SOUND: QUICK FOOTSTEPS. MUFFLED YELLS.

JUNO: What the hell?

KHAN: Anemone’s good! You got Pilot?

Steel?

JUNO: They’re not here, Khan. Not Pilot, not the Piranha. Just the hostage.

KHAN: What?! That can’t be right!

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

Loo. It’s Khan. …What?

JUNO: Turn it up, already. I can’t hear ‘em.

SOUND: THREE SETS OF BEEPS, INCREASINGLY LOUDER.

KHAN: Say– say that one more time, Lieutenant.

LOO (FROM COMMS): I said the map is gone, Captain! The map is gone!

KHAN: No it’s not. I’m lookin’ at it right now.

LOO: With all the noise from the first alarm I missed it, but… another alarm went off about a minute after your firefight, Captain. Another map – they took a different map!

JUNO: What map?

LOO: And now there’s an APB out for two vigilantes in the Museum who killed a guard! You gotta get out of there!

JUNO: Damn it, just tell us what map!

KHAN: Don’t yell at them!

Where’s Pilot?

LOO: There’s footage… one of the security cameras by the back door was still active. Mayor Pereyra and some gangster ran out together.

KHAN: Didn’t they get caught by the blockade?

LOO: Those officers just didn’t show up, Captain. Mayor Pereyra slipped right through.

KHAN: Of course they did. And what map did they take?

LOO: The plans to the First Hyperion Subway system. It’s all on a little drive, fit in your pocket easily, but… it covers the whole city.

KHAN: Worth anything?

LOO: Not that I know of. Not beyond historical value, anyway.

KHAN: Alright. Loo, I need you to pick us up on the roof pronto. Use the squad car to blend in. I’ll pretend to arrest Steel and then we’ll get the hell out of here before anyone can process him.

LOO: Yes, Captain!

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

JUNO: Khan, I’m… I’m sorry.

KHAN: Hrmm? For what?

JUNO: It happened just like you said it would. I blew your sting.

KHAN: Little too busy for a pity-party, Steel. Save it.

JUNO: But—

KHAN: You’re not the only one feeling guilty now. So suck it up.

Look, if we hadn’t rushed in, they would’ve gotten away with both maps and six lives. I’ve been stalling this op for months, waiting for my guarantee. Would’ve kept waiting for years, probably. You’re the only reason this sting even got stung in the first place.

JUNO: But I blew it.

KHAN: Sometimes people who get things done blow it, Steel. Sometimes they don’t. Maybe next time we’ll be in column B. But sitting around and criticizing instead of acting? Didn’t do any goddamn good, either.

Here’s your comms. I’m gonna lay low with the family for a while until Loo can smooth this over.

SOUND: POLICE SIREN APPROACHING.

I’m gonna recommend you do the same. Let’s never work together again, alright? You sizzle my damn giblets, I swear.

JUNO: Yeah. Same. I… I think?

JUNO (NARRATOR): I sent Khan and Ramses copies of the recording I’d taken that started this whole mess, then spent a day with Rita to do some research on the map that Pilot and the Piranha had stolen. It was the last clue we needed for everything to slide into place: The Proctor, Yasmin Swift, Barton Pollock. The whole train of victims Pilot left in their wake… that I helped them leave.

I made my final preparations. A few updates on the Theia. A few calls. Then I went over to Oldtown.

Oldtown was the only part of Hyperion City that still had a connection to the old subway, behind a boarded-up door in a nondescript office building. So I went there. And I waited. And Ramses called.

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

RAMSES (FROM COMMS): Juno. It took some doing, but I have the intel you asked for.

JUNO: Go ahead.

RAMSES: First: I’ve sent the Theia some internal research on the Free Domers. Does this really seem like the time to brush up on your conspiracy theories?

JUNO: Only a conspiracy theory until it’s proven true, Ramses. Then it’s just a conspiracy.

RAMSES: Follow all leads, I suppose. Detective knows best. (CLEARS THROAT) Second: the Theia. The techs completed the scans you asked for. They can’t find the source of any malfunction. They think it’s possible that stun blast you took shorted something, or it could have been the head trauma, or the lack of rest, or the information overload in the Museum, or all those things combined. This new update should be more stable, but…

JUNO: They don’t know. Great.

RAMSES: I’m sorry this has pushed you so far, Juno. I really am.

JUNO: Yeah, well. The election’s in three days. At least there’s a finish line.

And the third thing?

RAMSES: Right. Esta Swift.

JUNO: You found her?

RAMSES: She is the daughter of my park’s security director, Juno. Of course I found her. I would have paid for her operation whether or not you asked, would even have paid if Yasmin had just asked me, but…

It’s all accounted for now.

JUNO: All she had to do was ask?

How the hell did we get here, Ramses?

RAMSES: Where do you mean?

JUNO: All these people dying who never had to… I killed her. I didn’t mean to do it. It was a mistake that took half a second and it’ll haunt that kid forever. I killed her for nothing, and now you’re saying she killed those three people for nothing, and…

How the hell do you make sense of that? It just doesn’t end, does it? We’re just all locked into this loop of hurting each other, killing each other for no good reason… forever.

RAMSES: It seems that way, yes. But, soldiering on in spite of how things seem is what hope is for, I think.

JUNO: Maybe. But don’t you ever feel like hope is pointless, Ramses? Just a lot of…

RAMSES: Like a lot of squirming when you’re already underneath the boot. Flailing for nothing.

JUNO: Yeah. Yeah, actually.

RAMSES: Yasmin Swift was a tragedy. Both what she did and what was done to her – by you, and by every invisible force that made Esta’s care more than she could afford. This city, this planet… they’re old, Juno. Barbaric, in a lot of ways. Without the infrastructural solutions to crime and poverty that have been invented in the millennia since Mars was colonized, some people will always be crushed here. Yasmin Swift would never ask for help because the way things are built, she reasonably thought she’d never get it. The wealthy could fix these problems, could build a better city, whenever they wanted. They haven’t. And so it’s up to us.

JUNO: Us.

That sounds pretty smart, Ramses. I wish it was true.

RAMSES: Juno. I never had a child. I’ve never wanted one before and I don’t want one now. A link of blood, or genes, or a few short decades you may not even have enjoyed… it’s never held any value for me.

JUNO: But I feel like your child to you. Yeah, I get it.

RAMSES: No. You don’t. I said I don’t want a child. Listen, please. You won’t get this from me again.

I’ve never wanted a child because a link of blood and years doesn’t mean anything. But a link of respect, ideals…

I hired you looking for a bodyguard. I found a partner in good. Be safe. I don’t want to be done with you yet… no matter which way this election goes.

JUNO: You’re that worried about it, huh?

RAMSES: Worry is caused by how much is at risk, not how likely failure is. Home is on the line. You expect me to be calm? (CHUCKLES) I’ll win. Of course I’ll win. But first: I’ll worry. Just be careful down there, Juno. I’ll see you when you’ve caught the crook.

JUNO: And I’ll see you when you’re even closer to a mummy than you already are.

RAMSES & JUNO: (LAUGH)

RAMSES: Goodbye, Juno.

JUNO: Bye… Mayor O’Flaherty.

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Even when Ramses was off the line, I kept waiting. I wasn’t gonna go down there alone. The whole Miasma mess had taught me that I couldn’t let my ego get in the way of the job. Because a lone wolf might sound cool, but when the stakes are high, who do you want? The lone wolf, or the pack?

So, I’d called for help. From someone I’d worked well with before. Real well. And now all I had to do was wait, and stare at the neighborhood I’d grown up in, and wonder why I hadn’t noticed what Pilot was doing sooner.

Actually, I can tell you why I hadn’t noticed it before. It’s like when your brother dies and suddenly all you can see is families. In the park, on the streams, in the paper. And they were always there, but they don’t jump out at you until you have that angle. Well, I had that angle now, and it was all I could see. Foreclosed apartment buildings, papered in campaign posters. People sleeping on the sidewalks underneath “Leave It To The Pilot” banners. Loo’s call. Noor Khan’s letter. Babbling Brook Realty. Little things I’d completely missed on the first go-around… but now, they’d shown just how big they were. Something was happening. Something bigger than a heist. And Pilot was at its root.

If anybody else noticed that, they didn’t care. Why would they? We had recorded footage of Pilot waving a gun at hostages and nobody batted an eye.

RADIO VOICE: Pilot Pereyra’s cabinet issued a statement today explaining the mayor’s participation in the recent robbery of the Museum of Colonized History. They said, quote, “Mayor Pereyra’s dedication to understanding, and thereby stopping, crime goes beyond things like experts and books; they’ve always liked to get their hands dirty,” end quote.

The cabinet also reassured our sources that, quote, “Once all is said and done, we’ll see that Pilot was vital in catching these thieves – not to mention the vigilantes responsible for the death of security guard Barton Pollock, who remain at large,” end quote. The polls have not been updated since this incident, but analysts predict little change in Pilot’s significant lead.

JUNO (NARRATOR): The end of an election can feel like the end of the world. Whether you win or lose, election day means the death of the old world of hope and promises, and where it was lies only the dregs of the promises that can actually be kept. And this here was supposed to be the end of this case – I had Pilot cornered in the subway now, and either I’d get them and stop their real estate scheme or I’d get got. This was supposed to be the end.

But it didn’t feel like one.

Not when I thought about how long it’d take to clean up those banners, to get those people under roofs again. Not when I saw the man under the lamppost, wearing a beat-up brown jacket, glaring at me with two onyx eyes. I recognized him, I realized. I’d seen him yesterday morning, when I was on the roof and he was on the street, under another lamppost by the Museum. And here he was, watching me again.

I took a step towards him and got distracted when a cab almost hit me.

SOUND: BRAKES SQUEALING.

When I looked up again, the man in the brown jacket was gone.

VOICE: Thirty creds.

JUNO: The hell? You expect me to pay you for trying to splatter me?

ALESSANDRA STRONG: He was talking about my ride, Steel.

JUNO (NARRATOR): And then… she stepped out.

STRONG: But you are paying him for me. Says “all expenses paid” right on the invoice, remember? You taught me that one.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Alessandra Strong. Private eye.

In the months since we’d worked together she’d built up quite the reputation in the P.I. Registry. Maybe it was bad luck to start or maybe it was choice, but even before I met her every case Alessandra had taken had been a suicide mission, guaranteed death. And she’d survived every single one of ‘em. And why not? She’d survived the War. She’d survived fighting in the foxholes. They called her “Cockroach Strong” these days because no matter how many times she should have died, she always seemed to make it out.

That skill seemed pretty useful, given what I’d just signed up for.

SOUND: BEEPS.

VOICE (CAB DRIVER): Thanks, pal. Take it easy, alright?

JUNO: Don’t count on it.

SOUND: CAR ENGINE STARTS.

STRONG: So. This was just about the vaguest job offer I’ve ever been given. Message on my comms in the middle of the night: “Hey, it’s Steel. You said to call if I ever got in over my head. Well, that.”

JUNO: You can say no, if you want. You’re not gonna like it.

MUSIC: STARTS.

STRONG: Hell of a salesman, Steel. Just pitch the damn case, already.

JUNO: Well, I can’t tell you who we’re working for; we’re probably gonna die; and if we don’t, you might end up in a history book as a terrorist for… well, forever, basically.

STRONG: Yeah, no, I don’t like that.

JUNO: Didn’t think you would.

STRONG: Why the hell should I take that stupid case?

JUNO: Because if you don’t, a whole lot of people are gonna lose their homes and a few who don’t deserve it are going to get very rich, very quickly.

STRONG: I mean, that’s all tempting, but I don’t see how it’s any different from—

JUNO: Also, you need a lot of money within twenty days. I’m guessing a hundred K, maybe a little more?

STRONG: How did you know that? Did you have Rita look into me?

JUNO: Nope. But if you come along I’ll tell you how I figured it out.

STRONG: …Ughhh! Fine, I’m in. Of course.

JUNO: Knew you would be. I’ll give you the details while we walk. You ready?

STRONG: Yeah. Only… look, no offense, but… we barely know each other. Two days, months ago. This sounds like a lot of trust to put in someone you don’t even know. So why me?

JUNO: Easy. You were the only P.I. I could afford.

STRONG: Nevermind. Sorry I asked.

JUNO: Yeah, well. If you have any goodbyes, any last-calls, I’d recommend you make ‘em now, Alessandra.

STRONG: Already made ‘em.

JUNO: Alright, then. Let’s go do some good together.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

JUNO (NARRATOR): We took the stairs one by one. Oldtown got quiet behind us, and quieter, and quieter; then, silent.

It was the last time I’d ever hear it.

MUSIC: ENDS.

***

SOUND: TRAIN MOVING, MUSIC.

CONDUCTOR: If you’ve enjoyed this tale, please consider donating to The Penumbra on Patreon. Our artists work tirelessly to bring you these stories, and if you have the means, we hope you will support our efforts. Every dollar helps. You can find that page at patreon.com/thepenumbrapodcast. If you support us on Patreon at the $10 level or higher, you’ll receive access to commentary tracks like this one, from actors Kate Jones and Simon Moody, and co-creators Sophie Kaner and Kevin Vibert:

SOUND: TRAIN STOPS, DOOR SLIDES OPEN, RAIN.

SOPHIE: …very tacky, very ostentatious.

SIMON: Smooth and smarmy.

SOPHIE: Yes, and like– but sells it. And, like, makes it work. Which is, I think, why we talk about Eddie Izzard, because… I mean– an– like, y’know, no shade to Eddie Izzard, like his clothing choices are always horrible, but it’s great. Like, it’s great.

SIMON: Early– early period Eddie Izzard. ‘Cause later on he did the whole like power suit—

SOPHIE: That’s true.

SIMON: —and the, the tie and everything.

SOPHIE: But, I mean it used to just be so egregious. But, but he made it work. And that was what I loved so much…

SOUND: DOOR SLIDES SHUT.

CONDUCTOR: You can also support The Penumbra by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter @thepenumbrapod, following us on Tumblr @thepenumbrapodcast, telling your friends about us, telling your friends to tell their friends about us, and especially by rating and reviewing our podcast on iTunes. Every rating, comment, and kind word spreads our stories further and inspires us to keep creating more and better tales to come.

We would like to give special thanks to all who support us on Patreon, but especially to Francie Liana, Charlie Spiegel, Minchowski, Lynné Herman, Jaimie Gunter, and the Princess and the Scrivener for their incredibly generous contributions per episode. Thank you.

This tale, Juno Steel and the Stolen City, was told by the following people: Joshua Ilon as Juno Steel, Elliot Sicard as Captain Omar Khan, Avi Meehan as Lieutenant Loo, Simon Moody as Mayor Pilot Pereyra, Sophie Kaner as the Piranha, Matthew Zahnzinger as Ramses O’Flaherty, Kate Jones as Fishlips and Anemone, and Kat Buckingham as Alessandra Strong.

On staff at The Penumbra: Kevin Vibert is our lead writer and recording engineer. Sophie Kaner is our director and sound designer. Grahame Turner is our script editor. Noah Simes is our production manager. Alice Chung is our designer and financial manager. Original music by Ryan Vibert. Promotional art by Mikaela Buckley.

The Penumbra is created and produced by Sophie Kaner and Kevin Vibert.

I’m afraid this is the end of the line for today, dear Traveler. We hope you will ride with The Penumbra again soon.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

#juno steel

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