#carson bolt

[nymphdiariesdotcom]

hideous bastard -_-

[wilcze-kudly]

So if Lin were to have Zolt's baby, said baby would absolutely be besties with Rohan, right?

But not because their parents know each other. They just randomly meet at preschool and hit it off right away. No one even knows that Lin had a baby.

[raggedyfink]

Everyday my theory of Anton Chigurh being an Addams Family member grows stronger.

[scoonsalicious]

Unwanted: Chapter 26, Unsurprising - Pt. 5

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Avenger!Fem!Reader

Summary: When your FWB relationship with your best friend Bucky Barnes turns into something more, you couldn’t be happier. That is, however, until a new Avenger sets her sights on your super soldier and he inadvertently breaks your heart. You take on a mission you might not be prepared for to put some distance between the two of you and open yourself up to past traumas. Too bad the only one who can help you heal is the one person you can no longer trust.

Warnings: (For this part only; see Story Masterlist for general Warnings) Language, mentions of miscarriage, mentions of sex.

Word Count: 1.4k

Previously On...: Nat gave you some very interesting, and disturbing news.

A/N: ::giggles like school girl::

NOTE! The tag list is a fickle bitch, so I'm not really going to be dealing with it anymore. If you want to be notified when new story parts drop, please follow @scoonsaliciousupdates

Banner By: The absolutely amazing @mrsbuckybarnes1917!

Thank you to all those who have been reading; if you like what you've read, likes, comments, and reblogs give me life, and I truly appreciate them, and you!

Taglist: (Sadly, tag list is closed; Tumblr will not let me add anyone new. If you want to be notified when I update, please Follow me for Notifications!) @jmeelee @cazellen @mrsbuckybarnes1917 @blackhawkfanatic @buckybarnessimpp @hayjat @capswife @itsteambarnes @marygoddessofmischief @sebastians-love @learisa @lethallyprotected @rabbitrabbit12321 @buckybarnesandmarvel @fanfictiongirl77 @calwitch @fantasyfootballchampion @selella @jackiehollanderr @wintercrows @sashaisready @missvelvetsstuff @angelbabyyy99 @keylimebeag @maybefoxysouls @vicmc624 @j23r23 @wintercrows @crist1216 @cjand10 @pattiemac1@les-sel @dottirose @winterslove1917 @harperkenobi @ivet4 @casey1-2007 @mrsevans90 @steeph-aniie @bean-bean2000 @beanbagbitch @peachiestevie @wintrsoldrluvr @shadowzena43

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“Buck,” you hissed, shaking his sleeping form. You hadn’t been on the phone with Nat for that long; there’s no way he should be sleeping this deeply already. “Wake the fuck up!”

He groaned and rolled over, looking at you through sleepy eyes. “Pocket?” he groaned, bringing up a hand to rub at his forehead. “I told you, I’m not just gonna fuck you if it doesn’t mean anything.”

You shoved him. “That’s not why I’m here, asshat!” you hissed. “Something’s happened!”

Bucky bolted upright and flipped on the bedside lamp. “What is it?” he asked, looking alarmed as he ran his eyes over your frame. “Are you alright? Are there complications? Do you need to go back to the hospital?” You were surprised that his immediate response was concern for your welfare, though you shouldn’t have been– Bucky had always been protective– until it came to protecting you from his actions, of course. 

“No,” you said, reassuring him, “I’m fine. Something happened at the Tower. With Carthage.” You quickly recapped what Natasha had texted you, adding the sparse details she’d provided during your call.

“So, she quit?” he asked. “That’s great!”

“No, baby,” you said, and if either one of you noticed the endearment that slipped out, you didn’t acknowledge it. “Fuck… I’m just gonna say it because I don’t know how to put it delicately: Jade’s an undercover Hydra operative and her mission was to bring you back to them so they could reclaim you as their asset.”

You weren’t sure what reaction you had expected from Bucky– shock? Anger? Tears? Any one of them, or, hell, a combination of all three, would have been more than appropriate and expected.

What you had not been expecting, however, was fucking laughter. You looked at him blankly for a minute, wondering if you’d looked this crazy when you’d started laughing after Dr. Carson had informed you of your miscarriage.

“It’s not funny, Buck,” you said, annoyed. 

“It’s fucking hilarious, doll!” Bucky gasped, tears coming to his eyes from how hard he was laughing now. “She’s a Hydra agent? She’s got TicTac followers, for Christ’s sake!”

You could feel your blood pressure rising in your veins. Oh, you were getting angry at him, now. “First of all, it’s fucking TikTok, and I don’t know why we have to keep having that conversation! And second,” you took a breath, knowing this was probably not the most appropriate time to start something, but not being able to let it go, “I cannot fucking believe that, after everything, all the bullshit you fed me tonight in the living room, you’re still taking her side, taking her word over mine, as if I would make an accusation like that without any fucking proof!”

Bucky’s demeanor sobered up in an instant, as if you’d physically knocked the laughter out of him. He reached for your hand, and you let him take it. “Oh, sweets, no– that’s not… that’s not why I’m laughin’. I believe you; trust me, I learned my lesson there. No, it’s fucking hilarious, because of course she’s a Hydra agent. It explains everything, actually.” He didn’t need to elaborate for you to catch his meaning– of course she would have only pursued him so aggressively because it was her mission objective to do so. He must have felt himself so foolish to think that she would have had real feelings for him. You thought for a second that the realization should make you angry– you hadn’t needed a secret agenda to love him, after all, but then, he probably thought you didn’t love him anymore, either; you’d certainly given no indication of it. Even now, he still viewed himself as so completely undeserving of affection, and that just made your heart heavy with sadness.

“I don’t think it was just her mission,” you said, not really sure why you were about to come to the defense of the woman who’d made your life a living hell, but also knowing that you couldn’t stand for him to think he was unloveable. “She had the perfect opportunity to incapacitate you and bring you back to them on the Russia trip.” Ugh, just saying those two words left a sick taste in your mouth. “You were alone, in their territory, and she… she had you in an extremely vulnerable position. It would have been so easy for her to incapacitate you there, deliver you to them. But she didn’t. Whatever her mission objective is, I’m pretty sure she’s got one of her own, and I think it’s just you.”

Bucky studied you quizzically. “Are you… trying to reassure me? Because trust me, Pocket, it’s no skin off my back if she never actually cared about me, though it does make me regret everything even more.”

“I just…” you struggled to find the right words. “I just don’t want you thinking the only reason someone would want you is because they were told to,” you said after a minute. “That they were pretending. I’ve seen the way she looked at you, and it drove me absolutely crazy, because I know that’s how I look at you, too. I’m just saying, in her own fucked up way, I think she does care for you, whatever that means to her.”

Bucky’s head tilted as he looked at you, eyes gone gooey. “Present tense,” he said softly.

“What?”

He held your cheek into his big hand, rubbing a thumb along the line of your cheek bone. “You said that’s how you look at me. Not looked. Present tense, not past.” 

You snorted; you’d walked right into that. “Just because I stopped trusting you doesn’t mean I ever stopped loving you,” you admitted. 

“Pocket,” he said, leaning closer to you, “I’m gonna kiss you now, okay? If you don’t want me to, just say the word, and I’ll stop.”

“What happened to not wanting to be intimate with me if it’s not going to mean anything,” you exhaled. He was impossibly close now, but you hadn’t told him to stop. Not yet.

His breath teased your lips. “I think we both know now it’s anything but meaningless,” he said. His lips brushed across yours in a whisper of a kiss. “Tell me to stop,” he said again in a final warning, but you both knew you wouldn’t. You couldn’t. All you could do was close the millimeters of distance remaining between you until his mouth was on yours, begging for you to let him in.

So you did. And it was like a sudden summer downpour after a drought. A ray of warm sunlight breaking through the chill of snow clouds. The first blossom unfurling from the ground to signal the true arrival of Spring. It was finally coming home, all encompassing and everything you’d ever needed, a promise of sweetness and new beginnings. And it was over all too soon. 

Bucky broke the kiss, chuckling as you greedily chased after his lips with your own, a pitiful whine escaping them at the loss of contact. “Come back here,” you grumbled, reaching for him to bring him closer, but Bucky leaned away from you. 

“Told you, sweetheart,” Bucky said, pulling down the covers next to him and beckoning for you to join him in the bed, “I’m not gonna have you if I can’t have all of you. Now get in bed.”

Son of a bitch. He wasn’t playing fair. “Not sure how that translates to me getting in bed with you, Barnes,” you said, definitely crossing your arms over your chest. 

Bucky rolled his eyes and picked you up, gently depositing you in the space he’d made for you inside his covers, and you couldn’t help but let out a little squeak. “If you think I’m gonna let you sleep on your own when we have no idea where Carthage is, you’re crazier than I thought,” he said, pulling the sheet and blankets up around you. “Now go to sleep.” 

If you hoped he was going to wrap you in his arms and hold you close while you drifted off, you were in for disappointment. Instead, he left a respectable distance between the two of you, then, checking behind the nightstand to make sure his gun was where he’d left it, turned off the bedside lamp. “G’night, sweets,” he called softly before settling on his side, facing away from you.

“Night, Buck,” you whispered into the dark, more confused than ever before.

<- Previous Part / Next Chapter ->

[netherfeildren]

The Cassandra Complex : Chapter XII : Venus

Series Masterlist : Moodboard

(Din Djarin x F!Reader)

A/N: I realized shortly after posting chapter 11 that I’d made a small mistake in the timeline I’m intending this to follow. I included a line from Din saying Paz had already tried to take the Darksaber from him and failed, but where we’re at now, chapter 5 of The Book of Boba Fett hasn’t happened just yet. So I’ve gone back and deleted that small detail from the previous chapter, and why am I even telling you this, idk, but if you guy could do me a solid and pretend to forget my fuck up, I’d love you forever for it. 

Writing Star Wars is hard

Also, the indomitable @dirtysouvenir has rendered the most gorgeous artwork imaginable of Din and Sithy, and I still can’t quite believe my eyes every time I look at it. Everyone please go show Jonis all the love and praise she deserves. 

Anyways… like always, forgive me for the wait. I love you all for being so patient with me. And shout out to chapter four of Someone’s Wife in the Boat of Someone’s Husband which served as inspiration for this. You will always be famous to me!

Rating: Explicit 18+

Word Count: 8.1K

Read on AO3

Tip Jar

CHAPTER XII : VENUS

What are we doing here, and why are our hearts invisible?

Anne Carson, Kinds of Water

“Just like that, yes. Good girl–keep doing what you’re doing.” His hand slides to circle your wrist, leather and the thick weave of your tunic, the slight shake of your nerves caught between. “Grip it firmly, but squeeze it gently. Yes– yes, good. You’re doing so well.”

You suck in a trembling breath, too hyper aware of the feel of his chest plate brushing against your back, the cap of his left knee gently bumping the back of your own, his arms wrapped in a loose and careful cage around your frame where he’s helping you direct the blaster at the target he’d set up several meters away for practicing. He’s got one of your wrists wrapped in the leather of his fist, the other cupping the underside of your elbow to keep your shaking arms steady. 

“I don’t know why I’ve never been very good at this,” you whisper over the sound of the burning desert winds lashing you in the brow. “It’s just never come very easy.”

“That’s alright. That’s why we’re practicing again.” The hand cupping your elbow moves slowly to your waist, all his handling of you these past few days has been so intentional, cautious and patient and aware of himself and you and your reactions. Your heart beats, thumps and thumps hard enough to make you a little dizzy, a little sick. “Keep your right arm firm, but fluid. Try not to lock your elbow, let the recoil move through you steadily.”

He’d covered your hair and face in soft white linen wraps to keep you from being scorched by the sun and sand, and his voice is so deep, head pitched low so that the modulator is vibrating right at the level of your ear, the sounds of him sluicing through the linen to curl around your ear. You shiver again, squeezing your fist too tight around the butt of the blaster. You’d asked him if he’d help you practice just before you’d made planet fall a few hours ago, and now here the two of you are. A few clicks outside of Mos Eisley, he’d found a cluster of sandstacks to land the Crest amidst for a couple hours of target practice—near an area he’d told you is called Beggar’s Canyon. 

You’re not sure if it’s just an excuse to have him touch you, but here you are now, in the circle of his arms, shivering with nerves and heat and want. The sun burns, but the places where he grips you burn worse, and your heart rings in your skull. 

“Focus your gaze between the eyeline, eventually, it’ll come naturally, your aim, but for now, use the field the blaster sets. Squeeze gentle–” He grips your now healed elbow firmly, anchoring your arm, the hand holding your wrist moves to your waist, securing you in his hold so that when you pull the trigger, the zing of the blaster bolt leaving its chamber moves through your limb, into your chest cavity, electrifying your heart, and his hold is steadying all the way through. He’s there to keep you up, keep you strong, and so it’s almost thoughtless when you do it, a gut instinct or some muscle inside your brain desperate to flex and stretch or come awake because faster than you can blink or think, you take hold of that bolt of plasma with your mind, freezing it midway between where the two of you stand and the target he’d set. 

You feel his hands flex around you, but he keeps still and silent, watching, waiting for what you’ll do next. And your heart beats faster and faster, the bright of the sun gleaming and nauseating, refracting off the sand, the plasma, your eyes. The bolt screeches and writhes and defies the laws of nature by your hand, and it does not feel good, but it does feel right. 

The first time you’ve really wielded the Force since the night you escaped. 

There’s something painful and uncomfortable and familiar about it coming back to you. Your breath goes fast within your chest, the taste of the desert on your tongue and the grit of sand sneaking beneath your clothes, sweaty line of anxiety down your spine, and his steady, calm breaths up against your back every other moment, this power inside of you that’s always been the cause of everything bad and only some things good. It vibrates in everything, moves through all living things, the Force, within you, within him. 

“Let it go, cyare. It’s okay if you miss.” You shut your eyes and let it fall away and now it’s not the Force or you or anything else, it’s only him keeping you up against the rest of everything. 

The two of you, like grief and the mountain. 

-

“How did you meet this woman again?” You ask for about the third time, seemingly unable to keep your mouth shut and your nerves to yourself. 

“She’s been keeping up maintenance on the Crest for a while now. And she helped out with the kid, watched him for me a couple times—I trust her.”

“Peli,” you repeat the name contemplatively, taking in the sight of him as he checks the pre-landing codes, flipping switches and punching toggles a little too roughly. He’s agitated, covered and swathed in it. You know he’s worried about you, the way you’ll feel being around someone else, scared you’re still feeling fragile or tired or weak. And you’re accepting it for now because you are. You are tired and you do feel fragile and you do need taking care of. If only for the time being, if only for a little bit longer. A sort of end feels very near, and you’re still working out what that such end is going to be. 

“Peli,” he sighs, hitting the last button and finally swiveling in his chair to face you, and you eye him suspiciously, you know that sigh and head tilt. “How do you feel?”

“Fine.”

“Not tired?”

“No.”

“Your shoulder?”

Hurts. “Fine.”

“Cyar’ika.”

“Din.” Another sigh. Another shake of his head. You’re sure he’s rolling his eyes at you beneath that stupid lug of metal he wears on his fat head. But you hope that he’s smiling too, and you give him a soft, small one of your own, twisting your fingers together tightly in your lap. You want to reach out for him, to go to him and sit with him and kiss him again like the other day. But you don’t feel ready again. Again, fragile, tired, a weakness of heart within you that you can’t understand the source of, or you can, but you don’t want to accept it, you want to be able to move on, to get over it, to be like you once were. But that you also know he’ll let you feel for as long as you need to.

“I promise I feel okay, and that I’ll tell you if I don’t.” The target practice had left you tired and awake, and there is something moving inside of you—a recognition of sorts you can’t pinpoint exactly, but which you know is going to show or tell you something about yourself soon, the Force, the things you’d done or the things you’d do. And there’s patience too, a waiting, a readiness to receive whatever this would be without pressure or urgency. You feel entirely strung tight, a knot about to be set loose, entirely at ease, as well. Something strange about the anxiety you carry within yourself, like it doesn’t really matter much anymore and is only waiting for the right moment to be expelled. 

He gives a soft grunt and turns back to face the control panel. The rolling golden sands of Tatooine like an ocean before you, and then there in the distance, the littered smattering of sand blighted little buildings that make up the spaceport of Mos Eisley. He directs the Razor Crest towards Hangar three-five, the ship jostling with the lowering of the landing gear. 

“What if she doesn’t like me?” You ask nervously, following him down the ladder once he’s eased the ship into the landing bay, fretting over this ordeal of having to meet someone else from his life, a friend, which wasn’t even something you were aware he knew how to have. You hear the heavy thud of his boots against the durasteel, and then his hands are circling your waist and pulling you down the rest of the way, paying no mind to your indignant squawking. 

He’d been strange with his touch, as well. As if he couldn’t help himself some moments, overcome by habit and familiarity, and then afraid and cautious in others. And you can’t understand how you feel about this either. Grateful, a sort of soft that makes your eyes smart and your cheeks bleed with heat. He’s so aware of you, so aware of what you might want or need, but then overcome, as well, needing you, wanting you. And you feel so afraid you won’t be able to give him those things—the ones he wants or needs, that you won't be able to find your way back to the way things had been between the two of you before. 

“You’ll be fine,” he says, little compassion to be found for your fretting. You stick your tongue out at the back of his head, rolling your eyes and steeling yourself as he lowers the hatch, and a chirpy little voice calls, Mando!

The plank lowers, and lowers, and lowers, and finally, a mess of springy dark curls come into view. The small woman, Peli, claps her hands excitedly and spreads her arms in wide welcome of him, and something in your heart throbs. 

A friend, indeed. 

“Peli,” he greets her, heavy, swaying gate stomping down the gangplank, voice serious and not all matching her enthusiasm. You roll your eyes at him again as the reverberations of his steps tickle your feet through the soles of your boots. 

“Hey, look everyone! It’s Mando,” she says to the chittering droids whirring around her. You follow him slowly, slinking directly behind him so that the breadth of his shoulders conceals you for a second longer before, “And who do we have here? Another unlikely companion?” 

He pivots, letting you step into full view and brave shyness, a hand coming up to hover around your waist, urging you forward, but not actually touching you. The sound of your name rings in tune to the thump of your heart through the modulator. Careful, so careful, and it makes you hurt at your own self. Wanting to touch you one moment, unable to stop himself from ripping you into his arms; another, afraid, feeling like he can’t even put a gently motioning hand on your body, and how will you ever fix this? How are you going to ever be able to get the two of you back to where you were? 

You take a hurt little step away from him, swallowing the heat in your throat several times before you can force a smile onto your face. 

His body shifts and sways towards your retreating one. 

But the small woman steps towards you, pit droids spinning and skittering frantically around her, and she claps a work hewn hand on your shoulder. “Let Peli take a good look at you.” Her gaze is cheerful, full of a youthfulness that belies her age and an even more cheerful, gap toothed smile. “Pretty girlfriend, Mando.” She waggles her bushy brows up at him. “Brought me another set of bright eyes, didn’t’cha?”

“It’s nice to meet you, Peli.” Your throat feels humiliatingly tight when she takes your hand in her smaller one, giving it a swift shake, no gentleness about the way she handles you, and there’s something comforting about the forsaking of the kid gloves. Your fracture isn’t obvious for the whole world to see, there’s still normalcy to be found for you. 

She looks up at Din as you avoid his burning gaze, laughing scowl on her sunny face. “Who woulda thought you had it in, ya, huh?” She thumps a fist on his chest plate, shaking her head and moves to take a look at the Crest. “To what do we owe the pleasure? Chasing down some elusive bounty? Carbon scoring’s worse than last time.'' She chatters a million miles a minute, pulling out some sort of electric scanner, assessing the old gunship. 

“We had a long trip,” he sighs, hands fisted on his hips as he watches her impatiently, turning his gaze back to your face every few moments. You want to bare your teeth at him in a snarl and tell him to stop fucking worrying. You want him to take you into his arms or hold your hand. 

“Long trip, sure. That’s what he always says,” she tells you over her shoulder with a roll of her eyes. “Turns out it’s usually a gun fight or something just as idiotic.”

You snicker, enjoying the easy way she handles your Mandalorian’s surliness, grateful for the cheerful buffer she provides between your own internal angst and his overzealous worrying. “It was a long trip this time, I swear. We’re coming from the Core,” he grumbles, and the two of you follow her while she inspects the damage on the ship, and in a moment of bravery or desperation for normalcy or closeness or just him, you reach up to grip two of his thick fingers in your fist. His hand immediately adjusts and curves to wrap around yours, intertwining your fingers and taking you securely in his grip. You feel him turn to look down at you questioningly, but you refuse to look back. This is normal, this is how it should be, this is what feels right even if you need the barrier of his gloves to feel like you can breathe. 

“The Core! Long way’s.” Hmm, she muses as she goes. “Got a fuel leak.” Again. He huffs. “Taking a vacation now?” She turns back with another smarmy smirk. 

“Something like that.”

“Nice little honeymoon?” She teases. “I could use one of those myself.” She scans something else, and the pit droids chatter and chirp around her, almost full her height, she’s so small. 

“Peli–” he grumbles. Your grumpy, shy boy; you wonder if he ever blushes under that thing, squeezing his hand in yours as tight as you can. 

“Yeah, yeah. No droids, I know. When are you gonna get over that nonsense, huh Mando? It’s about time, you know!” She bends to inspect something closer near the landing gear, covered in carbon scoring here too, examines her scanner again, then clips it back to her utility belt. “Alright, here’s the deal–” But he cuts her off, pivoting while pulling his blaster in one fluid motion to shoot at a poor little droid that's gotten too close. “Hey! Hey! What’ve I said before? You damage one of my droids, you’ll pay for it!” She shouts. 

“Din–” you scold, gripping the thick of his arm to pull the weapon down. 

“What’ve I told you?” He barks. 

“No droids. No droids. Blah, blah. You have got to get over that! I’m tryn’a make a deal with you here, ya womp rat.”

He jerks aggressively towards another little droid that wanders too close, sending it skittering away in terror, and you pinch his arm beneath the thick duraweave, frowning up at him, be nice, when he looks down at you, giving him a jut of your eyebrow and thrusting your chin at Peli. He groans, cursing low and grumpy in Mando’a. “Fine. What’s the deal?”

“If you let them work on the Crest–” She jerks her chin at the little pit droids quivering behind the crates strewn about the hangar in abject terror of the mean Mandalorian. 

“No,” he cuts her off, stubbornness in every line of his frame. 

“Din!” You scold again, bumping your hip into his. 

“Come on, Mando! I’ll charge you half price–”

“Deal,” he cuts her off again immediately, the cheapskate. 

“Ha!” She hoots and claps loudly. “Droids! Get to work on this lovely man’s ship. Lemme see the cash.” She holds out a grubby palm, wiggling her fingers. “He’s pretty easy, you ever notice that?” She says to you conspiratorially. 

“Constantly,” you can’t help the laugh in your voice. Your first laugh in what seems like years. 

“Loose knickered is what they used to call it back in my day.” And you have to turn your face into his arm to muffle your cackling, listening to him start up another string of curses beneath the helmet.

“I’ve literally never heard anyone say that before, ever,” he mutters sullenly. 

“Well, you’re young.”

“Not that young,” you provide helpfully, big cheesy smile that feels slightly unnatural and rusted spreading across your face. 

“Whoopee, Mando! I like this one! You really do know how to pick ‘em.” She claps him roughly on the shoulder, her little paw slapping loudly against his pauldron. “Anyway, I’ve got somewhere to be for the next couple of days, you see. I’m dating that Jawa again—the one I’d told you about,” she announces, proud as anything, big smile across her leathery face.

“A Jawa?” You repeat, making sure you heard right. 

“Don’t knock it ‘til you try it, bright eyes. They’re quite furry… very furry, but…” She clicks her teeth together, “You know…” Grins. 

You look up at Din, squeezing his arm in your grip. “Guess I gotta try it.” You’re pretty sure you hear him grumble something to the effect of over my dead body, before he’s agreeing to Peli’s deal with a clap and a shake, and the promise of two hundred and fifty Imperial credits and absolutely no harm done to her droids while she’s gone and they work on the Crest. 

“Treadwell, get in there!” She shouts, and the little pit droid chirps fretfully, trembling behind an R5 unit. “You can’t say no, you’re a droid. Oh, he’s not going to shoot you. Stop being a coward! What is this, a democracy all of a sudden?” Losing the fight, the droid wheels forward to get to work. “Yeah, thought so.” She turns back to you and Din. “You two can stay here, look after the shop while I’m gone? It’ll only be a few days.”

“We have some resupplying to do, but we’ll stay until you’re back,” he promises.

“And you’re not going to shoot my droids?”

“And I’m not going to shoot your droids,” he agrees, but later, you catch the too rough nudge he gives one of the little droids with his boot when he thinks no one’s watching. This man and his droid complex, you roll your eyes. 

“How’s the N-1 keeping up?” He asks as she’s packing up to go. 

“Just how you left her. That honey’s faster than a fathier. You should take her out while you’re here, give that baby a spin. Oh! And I added that turbonic venturi power assimilator I’d mentioned before. Remember? S’how I reconnected with my Jawa,” she nudges you with a wink. “You’re gonna be the fastest ship on the Outer Rim.” 

“You got a new ship?” You ask curiously.

“Just a side project we took up while I had some spare time.” But the way he says it is a little strange, making you pause to look up and try to read the blank face of his helmet. Ah, and he smooths that same hovering hand from before along the line of your spine, an attempt to soothe or quell your curiosity without actually giving you the gift of his touch.  

Peli leaves a few hours later, and she really does have a Jawa lover. The little critter comes to collect her right before the suns set, off to catch the sandcrawler before it journeys off into the desert, leaving you alone with only Din and the little pit droids for company. 

And suddenly, that shyness from earlier is back for some reason. The distraction of travel and the buzz of hyperspace lost to the calm silence of the quiet spaceport as the suns set over the horizon and night settles in, cool winds coming in on the sand gusts from deep in the desert. After hours of work, Din posing as the menacing overlord barking orders and complaints, intruding on their work when it isn’t up to his ridiculous standards, the droids finish up for the night, and Din engages the hangar security system, and then the ship’s, locking the two of you in safely for the night. 

“Dinner?” He asks as he moves slowly around the hull, pulling the cloak from his shoulders, a river of sand sluicing in a rain sheet onto the steel floor. The sound of it has a shiver moving through you as you lower yourself to the floor, crossing your legs beneath you at the edge of your makeshift bed. You desperately want to crawl between the covers without a shower and find the peace of evasion through sleep, secure in the knowledge that he won’t follow you into bed. He’d refused since you’d reunited, even though you’d invited him several times to share the much more comfortable pile of blankets than what you know his pilot’s chair or bunk provide. He’d not taken you up on the offer yet, and right now, fluttering heart and hot eyes and sweating nape, you’re glad for it. 

You don’t know what’s wrong with you—or you do. You’re overwhelmed with want and fear, of him, of his touch, of having lost what the two of you had before. And as you watch him start to pull his armor from his body, first one pauldron, then a vambrace, then a thigh guard, no sense of congruity to the pattern with which he divests himself of his Creed, it’s suddenly like he’s standing right in front of you, and yet you miss him anyway. Miss him in a way that makes you sick and devastated. 

You must make some sort of sound, a funny look on your face or a change in your breathing because he turns suddenly, a too worried, “What’s wrong?” on his tongue. 

“Nothing.” You look up at him from your spot on the ground, head falling back on your neck, and you can feel the wet of your eyes, trying to force yourself not to blink so that they won’t fall—the tears. “Nothing’s wrong.”

He comes to a slow crouch before you, long legs folding down, down. “What is it? Tell me.” Half missing his armor as he poses now, it’s like he’s half him, half yours, half only-man, half Mandalorian. A little bit like what you feel yourself; half, half, half. 

Pulling one glove from his hand, he lifts it, palm spread towards you, showing you his intention before he carefully cups the side of your face; thumb at your pulse, pointer and middle fingers giving your temple a soft pressure, pinky poised at the bridge of your nose. Your lashes brush against his index every time you blink, and his skin is smooth and rough at the same time, and warm—sun-hearted man. 

You press your face harder into his palm, letting him support the weight of your head, nuzzling against the rough of his calluses, blaster blister scratchy against your carotid, and heat pulses all through you from the crown of your head, sliding down the length of your, still yet, too long hair, the back of your neck, your chest, pooling to settle deep in the pit of your belly. 

And yet there’s something missing or different or off, like you feel empty but too full of trepidation to conjure up that old desire you’d always had, that need for him to fill, fill, fill you. Like the heat is there, but it’s remembered, not necessarily present. It all makes you want to cry and scream and go to sleep. 

The truth, and plainly: you’re terrified of anything that might hurt, can’t fathom the idea of it. 

Your heart beats in your throat, you taste it on your tongue, and it mixes with the sad when you say: “Do you remember when we were on Kashyyyk—when we sparred?”

“I remember,” he says, voice deep and low—through the modulator. You hate his helmet. You wish you could get beneath. You wish you were brave enough. The feeling of it coming on sudden and unexpected, thought, bitter and foul and not something you’d necessarily felt before, certainly not so viciously. It’s just that you hate that all this has happened—you want to feel the press of his lips at the crown of your head and the wash of his breath like heat moving through your hair—that you are not in the same place you once were, that you’re too afraid to move forward. 

“When we switched weapons—”

He hums: “Yes.”

“It was so green there.” You turn your face further into him so that you’re speaking into his palm now, words pooling there in the cup of it like a well of truths and fears. 

“It was.” The pointer and index stroke your temple, press once, twice, thrice—harder on the latter. It feels good, it feels real and reminding. He lets a heavy silence pass for a moment, he’s thinking of something, contemplating a push. “Do you remember—” He passes a swallow you can hear the thickness of, “Do you remember how I had you in the dirt—like a fucking animal? How you let me do whatever I wanted, however I wanted.” He gives the hardest press he’s given yet, at your temple, you think you feel the press against your brain, and you open your mouth to let the edge of your teeth dig hard into the meat of his palm. He growls a rough sound, a hungry sound, a sound like one he’d have made when he had you in the dirt like a fucking animal. 

You drag your teeth along the hill of his palm, closing your mouth at the end. You don’t give him the wet of your tongue, you don’t feel ready to taste his skin like that just yet—an assimilation of violence.

“Yes,” you finally say, realizing that he understands what you were thinking without having to say it, or knowing how to, that you’re full of memories of past desires and how badly you want them back and how out of reach that all feels, but also, that suddenly now, in a single blink, the heat in your belly isn’t remembered, but present, alive, awake. That you’re cunt clenches once, twice, thrice around nothing—harder, hungrier on the latter. That you’re wet for him. “I remember.”

“Good. I remember every single thing we’ve ever done.” You roll your face in his palm so that you can look up at him now, feeling something like brave. “Every word, every breath, I remember all of it. Alright?”

“Alright,” you say quietly. 

“And if you need me to help you remember too, then I will.”

“Alright.” And then: “What if I can’t, though?... What if we can’t ever have that again? What if I can’t remember? What if I can never give you that again?” A tear slides over the bridge of your nose, and now it’s not only truths and fears cupped in the palm of his hand but the saltwater of grief too.  

“Then we’ll find something new. A new way, a different way. We’ll do it however you want now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, cyar’ika.” It’s very much a promise, a new Creed being established here. 

“Okay.”

He nods, “Okay.”

-

The water is warm verging on hot verging on scalding. It feels incredible slithering over your tired and sore muscles, the ligatures in your arms still trembling from the blaster practice earlier today, from your overwhelm of emotions. 

You hate that you’re not good at it, that the only weapon that seems to become you is a lightsaber. 

The suds of his earthy smelling soap slide through your hair, slipping down your spine, over your ass and along your legs to pool around your feet and disappear down the drain. You shiver once, as though letting something fall away as you slide your hand down, over the swell of your belly, to cup the palmful of your cunt, wedging your hand between your thighs. You pet slowly at the wet curls there, realizing some of it is also the sticky slick of your desire. You were right, you’re wet for him and your clit pulses, slightly swollen and wanting. Your body is awake and hungry for him for the first time in what feels like eons. 

You explore slowly, your cunt slightly trembling at the feeling of being prodded and touched for the first time in you can’t remember how long. Moaning softly, you pull your fingers from between your legs, hands sliding up now to cup the weights of your breasts in each palm and squeeze tightly. Oh, you want him, you want him, you’re afraid. Your head falls back on a thump against the fresher wall, loud enough that you hear his lurking voice through the door, you okay in there? And instead of being annoyed at his overbearing caution, his hovering, you shiver again, something coming back to you now. 

Your desire. 

You shut the water off, grabbing one of the soft linens he’d slung over the warm pipe for you to wrap yourself in. He knocks a knuckle against the wobbly little door, “Cyar’ika?” 

Looking at yourself in front of the steamy mirror, too long, naiad hair, bright, strange eyes, you want him, you want him, you want to feel alive, awake, anything. You can’t deny your shortcomings, fears, whatever they might be called, but there is yet still a soft place inside of you that they’d not snuffed out, that wants Din still. 

You turn to slide the fresher door open just as he’s readying to knock again. 

He’d showered before you, after he’d fed you your soup and your disgusting fake bread he’d promised he’d find a real substitution for soon enough, and you’d needed a moment alone to sit in your grime and silence, digest your feelings. He’s clad now in one of his soft, dark undershirts, his flight pants and the helmet, opposite your towel and water dewed skin, steaming from the hot fresher. 

You watch a swallow pass through his throat, words caught, slow and heavy. He clears it once, twice, tilts his head down to take in the state of you, before he says, “You alright?”

You nod, wide eyed awake. He’s standing right in front of you and you miss him and you want to shock him wide eyed awake too. “The water was too hot. I got dizzy,” you lie, swaying towards him a little, letting your lashes flutter dramatically. 

Not all the way, but enough, just a little, as much as you can bear, that’s what you want from him right now. 

His hands come up to grip the sides of your arms immediately, his bare hands, soaking up the wet of your skin. He pulls you into himself, pressing you carefully against his chest, and you shiver and shake against him, teeth rattling with a sound entirely lacking temperance. Your blood feels like it’s boiling, there’s desire alive and writhing in your tummy, and you squeeze your thighs together tightly, shifting from one foot to another while you drip a puddle onto the cold floor. 

“Come here, sit down,” he murmurs, gently moving you to your bed, easing you down onto it slowly. “You need to take it easy,” he clucks over you, gripping your elbow to let you down carefully, keeping his hands on your bare skin until the last moment. “You’re pushing yourself too hard. You’re still tired, you’re still recovering. And you never listen. You have to listen to me when I’m trying to take care of you. You don’t eat enough, and I know your shoulder still hurts, little liar. Your elbow is barely better, and I saw you making strange faces when you were walking up the plank the other day. Your hip hurts doesn't it? Or your knee, something. No, don’t answer. I know you’ll just say no.” He talks and talks and talks, and you love him and you think that— 

There’s a name for this…

He’d told you he loved you and he’d not said it again, neither had you, it felt too huge a thing to talk about again just yet while there was still so much left to discuss and bridge, but what does it matter if your body sings or screams in pain when you have the love of this beskar titan? What could you care for all the rest of everything?

Yes, Din. Yes, Din. Whatever you say, Din, as he huffs and puffs and arranges you, brings another pillow and blanket from the bunk, his only one in there, not that he cares, lovely man. 

And it’s not only that you feel like you need to give him the things he wants or needs, because of course you do. You love him, you need to be able to give him things, everything, you want to be able to give him the whole galaxy. But it’s also that you want to. That to give him what he desires is to feed yourself, to live together, to be together, to give each other the things you need to stay alive. 

You let yourself fall back onto the soft blankets slowly, this nest where you’ve always felt so safe and so protected and so loved, even when neither of you knew it was love that was holding you here. And you watch him for a few anxious moments as he pulls the covers this way and that, tucking them here and there, trying to avoid looking at the bare expanse of your dew damp legs. But then, taking hold of his hand, you still his nervous movements, and he finally looks up at your face, letting go of his fretting, taking hold of the bravery in the palm of your hand. 

Shy—but brave. Brave—and wanting. 

“We’ll take care of each other, won’t we?” You want to tell him you love him again, but there’s something slightly terrifying, gloriously intimate and fragile about the words. 

“Always.”

“And we’ll keep each other alive?” Maker, I hope we keep each other alive. 

“Yes.”

You take hold of the edge of the linen covering you, revealing your naked body to him slowly, exposing your soft underbelly. You hear his breath hitch, exhale on a groan that sounds like dying. His grip on your hand goes tight to the point of bone crushing pain for one brief, brief moment before he remembers himself and gentles again. You shiver at the pain, belly swooping and quivering with fear and nausea and lust. 

You wish you could see his eyes, his face, his want. 

“You—” he stutters, swallows, “You don’t have to, my love.” My love. He doesn’t need to say it out loud again now with teeth and tongue, he says it in all the things he does. 

“You have to know that I want you so much. That I want you more than anything, Din.”

“I do know,” he says immediately. “I’ve never doubted that.” 

“I want to show you.”

“You don’t have to. I know—” His other hand comes up to grip yours with both of his, caging your limb within the strength of his fists—to keep himself from touching you anywhere else, you think. But you can feel the intensity of his gaze along your skin, over your bare breasts, quivering with your hitching breaths, water droplets translating the frantic beat of your heart in their trembling on the surface of your skin. The line of your belly, the slope downward to the soft place between your thighs. 

He’d seen the scarring on your hand, it was inevitable as much as you’d wished you could hide the deformity they’d left. As much as you wish you could’ve kept it from him, held an illusion for the rest of your lives together to spare him from the reminder of the things that’d been done, happened, chosen. But now… now he is to be subjected to the whole truth of it. Scars like cobwebs, strangely shimmering in silver lights beneath the surface of your skin—they’d been clever and ingenious in their torture—covering the whole circumference of your left hand up to your elbow. But also, from the lowest point of your last rib, over your right hip, traversing lower down the contours of your skin to wrap around the uppermost swell of your thigh. 

They’d left their mark like they’d intended, and it wasn't something you could ever hide from him, the reality of what’d been done, what you’d chosen. It was obvious in everything, etched into your skin, a chasm in the still present distance between the two of you. 

You feel like a bruise; tender, vulnerable, incongruously desperate to press on it harder and feel that dull throb, dark and ugly and on display. 

His hands go tight around yours again for a moment, before he’s snatching them back to grip his bent knee, white knuckled, silent anger on display when his eyes reach the scarring. 

“It’s okay,” you whisper, smoothing a hand over your hip down to your thigh to grip yourself there, digging your fingertips lightly into the plush softness. Your skin vibrates. “It doesn't hurt now.”

“What did they do?” His voice is like gravel, restrained fire-full fury. 

“They wanted to see what it’d take to leave a mark. They figured it out.” The helmet turns away sharply, a short, brutal curse spit from his mouth. The tongue of his mother, beautiful despite his violence. 

“It’s okay, Din.” You take hold of your thigh, pulling it up and apart, spreading yourself for him. Brave, wanting heart, be brave. He turns back immediately. “I want you to see how much I want you,” you whisper. “How much I still need you.” 

You let your fingertips flutter lightly over your swollen, needy sex, and you can hear the obscene, sucking sound of your wet lips spreading apart when you part your legs wide enough for your sex to bloom. Cunt hungry and weeping for him. 

Fuck, he spits, leaning closer, and his hand snaps forward to grip your ankle all the way around, pulling your foot up onto the uncompromising muscle of his thigh—your only point of contact. 

“Show me, cyar’ika. Show me how much that pretty cunt missed me,” he growls. 

You start slow, wide eyes fixed on the dark tee of his vizor, fingertips swirling around your clit slowly, it pulses and throbs and beats to the rhythm you can feel his own heart beating at within his own chest. But you pet it slowly, teasing both of you, and then feel lower down to the clenching mouth of your cunt—fuck, he spits again—slicking your fingers in your sticky wet. You start to rock your hips against the flat of your hand, the sound of your cunt, loud in the quiet hull, nothing to interrupt but the too desperate sound of your mutual panting. His fingers around your ankle are so tight they’ll leave a sore spot, and you can't think of the later hurt now, afraid it'll scare you out of this, all you can focus on is the beat of your cunt, the way it cries for him. 

You swirl your fingertips at your opening, again, again, “Put them inside. Let me see you fuck yourself.” And it’s a demand. 

You start with one, slow and tentative, a little, shocked gasp as you probe shallowly within the tight, little hole. Then further, wiggling inside until you’re impaling yourself with your own small finger, the first thing inside of you in so long, and suddenly, you wish it was him. Your eyes fill with tears at the thought, spilling over at the wish that he could’ve been the first thing inside of you after all this time, but the reality that you’re just not ready for it yet. The salted proof of your inevitable shortcomings slide back along your cheeks to drip into your ears. 

“Another,” he demands. “Oh, it sounds so pretty, little one. Give it another.” You pull your single finger out, sucking, wet-cunt sound that he groans in tune with, to press another one in, mewling at the pinch and stretch of it, the slick slide. Yes, just like that. You’re doing so well, he says, a mirror of his earlier words to you today during target practice. “Roll your hips, ride your hand.” You hitch another sob, “Don’t fucking cry,” he grits, pressing your heel hard into the meat of his thigh. “Don’t cry, don’t cry. You’re going to come for me, you’re going to let me see it.” He spreads his thighs wider in his kneeling crouch, pushing his hips forward into nothing, drawing your gaze to the heavy bulge behind the plaquette of his flight pants. He’s so hard. 

You crook your fingers inside yourself, hill of your palm against the swell of your engorged clit, fingertips against the spongey ridge at the front of your cunt, rolling your hips faster, chasing the orgasm you need to give him. Your foot feels numb in his grip, your cunt, on fire, so tight it hurts. Your belly hitches and heaves, open mouth gasping and you cry his name, moaning and writhing wantonly, your stomach slick and glistening again with sweat now instead of water. One of your palms reaches up to take hold of your breast, nipple caught between your fingers, squeezing tight, tight, tight. And suddenly he’s surging forward, letting go of your ankle to lean over you and rip his pants open, freeing his furious erection. The tip is red-purple and swollen fat, drooling a thick string of sloppy, white precum, and he wraps one massive fist around the angry thing. Din, Din, Din. He beats at his cock furiously, the sound of your name, the slick thwack, thwack, thwack of it sends you spilling into your orgasm, belly pulling tight, cunt twisting even tighter. 

“Fuck, fucking come—fucking come,” he snarls as he twists his fist cruelly around the head and the thick white viscosity of his semen starts to spill from the fat head, bubbling up and over his fist and between his fingers, splattering heavy and hot onto your spasming cunt, coating your fingers so that you’re pushing the thick of his come into yourself, slicking you further. “Yes, yes, yes, like that. Let me fucking see it…Look at what you do to me.” And there's so much furious want in his voice, and he’s so big, long and thick, and you know it’s going to hurt when he puts it inside of you for the first time again—you remember how it hurt before, how you loved it—and you’re afraid you’re not going to be able to handle any sort of pain ever again, not even the sort you’d been so hungry for before. 

But your womb pulls tight, pulses and throbs, and suddenly your two skinny fingers arent enough, you want the thick heft of his cock fucking hard and fast and deep inside of you, punching at the deepest spot within you.

His orgasm ends on a fierce groan, panting, thick chest heaving, his head hangs low between his shoulders. You pull your shaking fingers from your clenching hole, and he gives a few last lazy strokes, squeezing the last drops of come from the slick tip to splatter against your pussy. “I fucking missed this—your cunt covered in me.” His dripping cock bobs so close, and you have the sudden insane thought of him just shoving it in, holding you down prone and fucking all of his spend into your sloppy cunt, forcing you to take it and be his again. “I can’t wait to eat it. I can’t wait to fill it with my come again and eat it out of you.” There’s a part of you that might want it, that might wish for it. 

“Maker, Din…” you moan, rubbing the thick semen into your overstimulated clit, your mound, up the curve of your belly, slicking yourself in him.

 If you can’t have his touch, this is enough, and you bring your sticky, soaking fingers up to your mouth, sucking the come from them. He groans, not fair, sitting back on his knees, spent cock hanging obscenely from his open pants, wet and glistening. He reaches behind his head to tug his shirt up and off, leaving his sweaty chest bare and gleaming. Your eyes flutter shut, cupping your cunt in the palm of your hand, covering the slick curve of it, and you arch your back, spreading your thighs further, putting yourself on display for him. 

“Gorgeous, cyar’ika,” he says between pants. “So pretty, my love.” He reaches down to squeeze his half hard cock once more. “I can be patient for you, I promise. You’re so worth it.”

-

He lays beside you in the dark, stretched out long and entirely clothed, but here with you, forced and convinced to share your bed with a line of pillows as a protective moat between the two of you at his own insistence.

You’re on your side, hands folded beneath your smushed cheek, wide eyes searching fruitlessly for the shape of him in the pitch dark. You want to say something else. You want to tell him you love him again, to hear the words fall from your tongue. 

“What are you thinking?” He asks.

“Nothing.”

“Liar.” You hum a barely breathed laugh. And then, “I know you’re scared or regretful or worried that we’ll not get back to where we were,” he reads you.

“Yes.”

There’s a name for this…

He sighs long, goes quiet for longer, and then finally: “What’s happened’s happened, which is an expression of faith in the mechanics of the galaxy.”

“Fate?” You muse, a little unbelieving.

Dark red—

“Call it what you want. We met, we separated…you were—gone. We waited. Now we’re here again. It’s meaningful, isn’t it?”

“Yes. You believe in this—fate?” I didn’t think I believed in anything anymore. But I believe in you.

“Call it what you want, but yes.”

—String. 

There’s something about this that you need to consider, chew on. The fact that you’d felt, all your life, cursed to know how a thing would happen, be, end, always. Something like fate, perhaps, the whisper of it making a home for itself within the shell of your ear, and now the truth that he too believes in this thing you’ve always lived with. Destiny, what have you—you believe in the same things, you believe in each other. 

“Will you hold my hand?”

He turns over, reaching to twine his fingers through yours; large, rough palm against small, soft palm. You want to tell him you love him again, you want to hear the words for him, but they feel trapped, tender, timid. 

You’d always thought your destiny fixed, poised, on the tip of your tongue. A thing was what it was birthed unto the galaxy in perpetuity, and no amount of desire could absolve you of its sunken teeth. But this—this desire is like the creation of myth, that dark red thread that goes by the name of fate being pulled taught, humming in accord with a frequency heard only by the two of you. 

Now: “Will you kiss me?” A beat of silence, his fingers around yours going tight, tight. 

“Come here,” his voice blends with the darkness, and tugging you into himself, protective border between your bodies and his hand around your jaw, he slips a kiss onto your tongue. His mouth holds the hot recollection of being alive; the drag of his teeth against your bottom lip, the taste, your fingers weaving through his hair, your names sounding together, a pair because they belong on the same breath. 

You pull back, and it’s only a small brevity, but it’s enough, and that confusion from earlier, that shiver of letting something go or taking it back into yourself, settles. 

You’re afraid or regretful or both, yes, sure. You also find yourself to be, suddenly, forgiving, full of empathy. You won’t be able to have him unless you take possession of yourself first, and on the tail end of a comet breaking across the sky: I love him, but I must also love myself. He deserves someone who loves themself, but more than that, I deserve it too. To be able to give him the things he wants and needs: I deserve to be in love with myself. 

You let the Tartarian memory become nothing.

 Love manifests itself primarily in forgiveness.

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[april-is]

April 26, 2024: Origin Story, 1993, Adam Falkner

Origin Story, 1993 Adam Falkner

Your grandma says you look just like your cousin Frank, mostly in the eyes when you grin. They chuckle at the dinner table when there is Frankie in your hair, towhead cowlicks bolting into sky

like strands of snapped hay. No one stays long on the subject, really – just the way he lives in your laugh, your funny faces, how he smokes like a ghost from your whistle. Once, your nan

had to grip the back of a chair to keep from buckling. And he’s not dead. He just moved. They told him he had to. So he bought a blue ‘82 pickup & went to New York to “get AIDS

and die.” Which he did. But not before filling his lungs with sky the size of God country & the new-fashion baptism of a sequined, hungry life. Not before flashing

through a decade of open-mouth laughter & living room play readings, crowded apartment holidays & finally, the big breaks. Not before the coke parties & park muggings & good news to share

with the boys & dinners at diners that let you run a tab & hard news to share with the boys. Not before beach houses wind-whipped with salt & memory, where they sit arms pretzeled to watch

the sun steal into the other life. But that’s later. It is 1993. You are nine-and-a-half but going on knowing. It’s the fourth of July & everyone is here except everyone who never is. Your giggle

lingers like grease on the walls as you float the hallway, dull murmur carrying on from the kitchen & there—frozen on the dresser, like a trophy & a prayer. He kisses you back.

--

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Today in:

2023: For the Dogs Who Barked at Me on the Sidewalks in Connecticut, Hanif Abdurraqib 2022: Demeter, Midwinter, Mairead Small Staid 2021: from A Pillow Book, Suzanne Buffam 2020: Letter to My Great, Great Grandchild, J.P. Grasser 2019: After the First Child, the Second, Mary Austin Speaker 2018: A New Lifestyle, James Tate 2017: Anchorage, Joy Harjo 2016: Poem to First Love, Matthew Yeager 2015: Ode to the Reel Mower, Jim Daniels 2014: So Much Happiness, Naomi Shihab Nye 2013: Habitation, Margaret Atwood 2012: About Marriage, Denise Levertov 2011: In Praise of My Bed, Meredith Holmes 2010: Black Swan, Brigit Pegeen Kelly 2009: In Me as the Swans, Leslie Williams 2008: Gnosticism V, Anne Carson 2007: American Names, Stephen Vincent Benet 2006: since feeling is first, e.e. cummings 2005: The Second Coming, W.B. Yeats

[deathofpeaceofmiiind]

messier // two

I'm tryna tell myself I'm gonna stay away from you I should've known better, you got a way that's gonna weigh on me

Practice was terrible, just like I figured it would be. I dropped almost every pass I was given and when I saw he was watching us in the stands, I ran right into one of my teammates. My thoughts were so clouded and I hated every moment of it. This wasn’t like me to lose focus, nothing never interrupted me while I played but I could feel his eyes on me the entire time. He stayed for our whole practice, lingering even after we left the ice. I couldn’t tell if he was this dedicated to hockey or just being a creep. “Maddie, are you okay?” I looked up from my stall at Stacie as I took my skates off. “That guy we were talking about, what’s his name?” “I think his name is Matt.” She replied with a puzzled look, “please don’t tell me you wanna ask him out?” “God no.” I responded a little too quickly, fumbling with the same knot over and over on my skates. “My nephew has a new assistant coach and he fits the criteria my sister gave me.” “Yeah that’s definitely him, but don’t let him get to you though…I swear he gets off from that.” “Noted.”

After practice I threw all my stuff in the garage at home before heading upstairs to shower. He was still on my mind and couldn’t shake it off no matter how hard I tried. My eyes closed in the shower as I pictured him in that hoodie again, remembering he had a cluster of tattoos poking out under his rolled up sleeve. He had that boyish look I liked in a man, no facial hair, a sweet smile…

Maddie, snap out of it.

The water ran cold, telling me it was time to get out. I threw on a pair of biker shorts and an old Underoath shirt I got at warped tour years ago and crawled back into bed. I was so exhausted to the point that I never bothered to dry my hair. I finished the rest of my iced coffee and bagel I grabbed from Dunkin on the way home and watched reruns of The Office before I laid down for a much needed nap.

“Maddie?” My eyes flickered open as I saw my sister standing in my doorway. “Hey, what time is it?”

“It’s five, dinner’s almost ready if you want something before taking Carson to practice.” “Okay.” I replied, yawning deeply. “I’ll be down soon.” Olivia left my room and I bolted to my closet to figure out what I was going to wear. I grabbed a pair of black ripped jeans, a long sleeve grey shirt and my checkered vans. My hair was still wet so I blowdried it and threw it back into a claw clip before putting some make up on to look a bit more human. My perfume collection was a little sad so I snuck into Olivias room and sprayed myself with some of her YSL perfume. “Ew.”

I looked over at Carson who was staring at me with a scrunched up nose. He always had something to say when I put any effort into my appearance. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, most days I’m at work or playing hockey so my make up days were very far and in between. After we finished up dinner we headed to the rink, my stomach was a mix of butterflies and anxiety knowing I had to see him again.

“I don’t like him.” Carson muttered as I helped him with his skates. I turned my head and sure enough, he was standing there talking to the rest of the coaching staff. He smiled at whoever he was talking to and I tried to fight the flutters I was feeling. “I’m getting the sense a lot of people don’t like him.” “He’s so mean to me.” My eyes met my nephews and he looked like a lost puppy. I knew I had to say something because it wasn’t right for someone to have such a negative impact on a child, especially in sports. I get it when they’re a little older and need their ego deflated, but right now? Not necessary. 

Carson finished up getting ready and headed towards the ice with the rest of the team. As I was putting some of Carson’s things away, whatshisname walked back into the room, wearing what he wore earlier, this time with a clipboard and whistle around his neck. He looked taller on skates and that backwards baseball hat wasn’t helping the situation. “Oh, it’s you again.” He smirked as he looked up from his clipboard, “what are you doing here?”

“I was just helping Carson get ready, he’s my nephew.”

“Hmmm” he replied, his eyes wandering up and down my body for the second time today, “I’m his assistant coach, Matt.” We finally have a name.

“Madison.” My own name trembled past my mouth and my palms started to get sweaty the longer we stayed in this room together.

He stared at me like he was trying to analyze everything about me. The longer he looked at me, the more my body began to tingle. He smirked before turning on his heel and walking towards the ice. Just like I did this morning, I watched him walk away before I headed into the stands to watch Carson practice. Matt wasn’t exactly coach material from where I was sitting. He spent more time blowing his whistle unnecessarily and yapping to the kids. My eyes rolled so far back into my head I thought they were going to get stuck. I really wanted to know what his issue was and why he felt the need to coach on top of everything else he had going on. 

Towards the end of the practice I saw Matt skate over to the Carson, he knelt down and talked to him for a minute. I noticed Carson’s head slump a bit and he skated off the ice and towards the dressing room. I just about had enough and stormed down to find out what he said to him.

“Carson, what did he say to you?” I asked as got into the dressing room. He had his mask off and his eyes were red from the tears that fell from his eyes.

“He said I’m not starting tomorrow because I wasn’t good last weekend.” He sniffed as he took his pads off. His teammates began to trickle into the room and he was trying to not show them he was upset. Blood boiled inside of me as I waited for Matt to come back into the dressing room, but there was so sign of him, I took it upon myself to look for him instead.

As I got to the bench I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw him skating around and shooting pucks at the net. He was a damn good skate and his puck control was impeccable. I hated admitting that. My eyes followed him for a few minutes before he saw me standing there. That stupid smirk of his appeared and he skated right up to me…making me almost forget why I came out here.

“Why are you benching Carson tomorrow?”

“He lets in garbage goals, a four year old could’ve stopped more than he did last weekend.” He replied, leaning over the boards and not taking his eyes off of me. 

I began to shake my head, feeling my fight or flight mode activating. “Should I remind you he’s a kid? You don’t need to be so hard on him.”

“Really?” He sarcastically laughed as he stood back up. “Why don’t you coach him then?”

“I might if you keep treating him like this.”

I think he had just about enough of me because he slammed the bench door open and stormed right over to me, towering over my small frame. “What is your problem anyway?”

“Right now? You’re my fucking problem.”

“Is that so?” He replies, biting his lower lip. At this point I was taking baby steps backwards to get out of his magnetic force he was trying to use on me. I was about to protest but he opened his mouth again, “Then why have you been staring at my mouth this whole time?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t lie.” His voice softens as he takes another step closer to me. A gasp fell past my lips as my back made contact with the wall. He stood over me, his somber eyes locked in on me. I had nowhere to go. 

“I’m not lying.”

“That’s too bad cause I can’t stop looking at yours.” His stupid smirk showed up again as he backed away from me, “see you at Carson’s game tomorrow.”

[2-the-moon-and-2-saturn]

absolutely losing it at the fact that greta wrote carson a letter before attempting to bolt – the disaster gay representation we deserve

[haveyoureadthistransbook]

Ponyboy by Eliot Duncan

goodreads

In the first of three acts, Ponyboy’s titular narrator—a pill-popping, speed-snorting trans-masculine lightning bolt—unravels in his Paris apartment. Ponyboy is caught in a messy love triangle with Baby, a lesbian painter who can’t see herself being with someone trans, and Toni, a childhood friend who can actually see Ponyboy for who he is. Strung out, Ponyboy follows Baby to Berlin in act two, where he sinks deeper into drugs and falls for Hart, a fellow writer, all the while pursued by a megalomaniacal photographer hungry for the next hot thing. As Ponyboy’s relationships crumble, he overdoses and find himself alone in his childhood home in Nebraska. The novel’s final act follows Ponyboy to rehab, exploring the ways in which trans identity, addiction, and recovery reforge the bond between mother and child. Eliot Duncan reveals, in precise atmospheric prose reminiscent of Anne Carson and Allen Ginsberg, the innate splendor, joy, and ache of becoming oneself.

Mod Opinion: I hadn't heard of this book before, but it sounds like an interesting trans story.

[autumnwoodsdreamer]

Shadows Dancing on the Walls

Chapter Four: The Duchess

Summary: Din learns some things about Sabine’s past

Rating: Teen (‘cause we get a bit angsty)

Words: 5096

Characters: Sabine Wren, Din Djarin, Ezra Bridger, Carson Teva, Trapper Wolf

Relationships: Din/Sabine

[Read on ao3]

We just passed the time

Till we could throw ourselves open to the tide

. . . . .

Din tossed his head, looking between the officers and Sabine, the sense of something wrong—something very, very wrong—crawling up his spine and sinking like claws into his flesh.

Sabine’s eyes darted wildly, like an animal backed into a corner. She looked as liable to bolt as she was to lash out—if she escaped or if she attacked, these officers, despite each being taller than her and twice her weight, wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance on Mustafar—but she did neither.

With her trademark fusion of control and subtle grace, she took her seat.

Teva and Wolf sat opposite her. Teva lowered himself down with a groan like his knees and back weren’t welcoming the change in position; Wolf plonked down on Marida’s favourite armchair like it was his preferred spot in the cantina, sighing and spreading.

Din took a step forward. Sabine sat in the very middle of the two-seater, leaving no real room for anyone to join her, but he would stand all night if it meant staying near her and making sure—

A hand latched on his arm.

It wasn’t hard but neither was it so gentle as to be ignored, either.

“Din,” Ezra whispered and jerked a nod towards the hallway, eyes imploring. “Come on.”

Din shirked him off and Ezra didn’t fight, just quietly let go. Din made to continue on his way but, when he turned back around, he caught Sabine’s gaze and—

And it was just a flick of her eyes—side-on, not even direct—but he read her, loud and clear.

Please go.

Confused, conflicted, he froze. Somewhere in his indecision, Ezra’s hand landed on his shoulder and tugged just enough to break him away at last.

He followed his brother out the room and down the hall, his heart staying behind him, a serated feeling of shame tearing through him.

(He should stay.)

(He shouldn’t leave her.)

(She looked terrified and those Rangers didn’t help people when they were scared and suffering; no, they preferred to leave them stranded in hopeless situations and call it a favour…)

There was a curt click and the lights in Din’s room flicked on, his mind too cluttered, too preoccupied to record his entrance.

He hardly ever used the main ceiling light. It wasn’t too cold or too bright, but it leaned too close to both, casting a severe light on this space that had become his and Grogu’s.

The things he was in charge of—namely, the bed, the dresser, and a few shelves—were tight and tidy, but everything else gave away the fact that he shared the room with a small child: the drawings and paintings on flimsi stuck up all over the walls along with a scattered constellation of thin, plastoid stars that glowed in the dark; the stack of colourful flimsi books, the random gathering of stuffed animals, the desk covered in art and teaching supplies, and the—

Presently, the crib was absent, as was Grogu.

“Marida’s got him,” Ezra explained before Din could even muster his voice to ask. He nodded, pointedly, to the bed but Din didn’t take a seat. Ezra didn’t push, rather just stepped past him and commandeered the desk chair, pulling it out and turning it around without touching it.

He blew out a long sigh as he dropped down, hand absently rubbing the back of his neck.

Din clenched his fists, his heart feeling like it was somehow trapped in his strangulating grasp.

It was a mindless gesture but it wasn’t meaningless—Ezra only ever did that when he was extremely uncomfortable… or when he was about to say something he really didn’t want to say.

“What is going on?” Din asked, enunciating his words separately, mindful enough to keep his tone out of a demand, stressed enough that it trembled anyway.

Ezra’s hand slid off his neck. Bending forward, he propped his forearms across his thighs, hung then lifted his head, his gaze setting steady on Din, uncannily meeting and locking with his eyes through the blackout visor.

“What do you know of the Duchess?” he asked, his voice low and careful, his eyes taking on that old quality Din had begun to associate exclusively with Jedi.

“The Duchess of where?”

“No, not—” He cut off, his mouth pulling, his face pinching on one side. He glanced to the door as if hoping someone would come or something would happen that would extinguish the need for him to say all this. “It’s not a who; it’s a what.”

The scraps formed puzzle pieces, fusing together on their own like magnets.

A weapon, Teva had called it.

A weapon created by Sabine Wren.

Gideon had mentioned it.

Ezra apparently knew all about it.

“I don’t know anything about it,” Din admitted, blankly, shaking his head, his neck stiff and burning.

Ezra nodded, moderately. If Din’s ignorance surprised him, it didn’t faze him. “You know that Sabine was once a cadet at the Imperial academy on Mandalore.”

“Yes.”

“Did you know she was the top of the class?”

I didn’t exactly try to flunk.

Din drew in a long breath, the beskar strapped to his chest suddenly tripling in weight. “No.”

“Well, she was. She excelled in every field, but she gained particular distinction in weapons development. The Imps had the majority of the Mandalore system under their jurisdiction and they wanted to keep it that way—you can guess why. But Imps are a paranoid bunch; they worried they wouldn’t be able to control the Mandalorians indefinitely, and the risk of an uprising never died enough to calm them, so they sought… contingencies—specifically: something no Mandalorian army could hope to defeat… or survive,” he added, an apology born from empathy laid over his words.

Din turned his head, casting his gaze off Ezra and onto the wall, but it bought him no distance as his sight fell too quickly, too completely on the little purple bird hanging from a near invisible string stuck to the ceiling, paper wings twirling as a soft night breeze blew in from the windows, rustling the curtains as it rushed into the room.

(Sabine made it.)

(Sabine made such lovely, delicate things…)

“Sabine made the Arc Pulse Generator, or, as you’ve heard it dubbed: the Duchess.”

“What—?”

What did this?

Din turned his head the other way, his hands returning to the brittle fists they had never truly left. His heart pounded—cutting his breath thin, keeping it shallow, pitching the roar in his ears louder and louder.

Unbidden, a memory flashed to the front of his mind, as sharp and clear as a new blade’s first cut.

(The peel of dozens of modulated voices wailing, crying, whispering…)

(The wall of armoured bodies, the heavy, sympathetic hands clamping down on his shoulders, on his arms, trying to keep him grounded, trying to keep him from running over and seeing…)

It was a new weapon; a prototype, unlike anything we had ever seen before.

“What did the Duchess do?” he managed to ask, each word forced out on its own, his mouth dry and bitter.

“It targeted beskar,” Ezra answered, uncharacteristically succinct (or, more accurately, clipped; there was more, there had to be more, but he couldn’t or wouldn’t say the rest).

It charged up in a moment, shot something like lightning that burst far across the field and reached straight for the beskar.

“She made it and they tested it without her knowing. Her instructors kept prodding her to improve the design and, each time she did, they went and tested it again.”

The Watchmen didn’t stand a chance.

“After a few years, she learned about it, and when she did, she tried to get someone to help her undo it or fix it, at the very least get a warning out to the clans, but no one would. No one stood up… no one stood by her; not even her own family. So she went, by herself, and destroyed the prototypes, wiped the blueprints, and ran away. Din… she was fourteen.”

I’m sorry, ad…

He closed his eyes.

(He surged forward, broke free of all the hands trying to stop him, and he got to the landing field, got to the front, got to see…)

(Caskets, incomplete and inadequate, made from scrapped crates, names and clan insignias hastily painted on the sides.)

(His heart liquified and his world ended for the second time when he saw the jai’galaar, saw the name, saw…)

“Five years later, the Empire resurrected the Duchess. It wasn’t half as powerful, and Sabine said it didn’t work the same, but it was terrible enough. Tiber Saxon, the then-viceroy, turned it on Clan Wren.”

In a vague, distorted way, Din knew that already; Gideon had told him.

Lady Wren massacred most of her people.

In fact, she thinned out their ranks long before the Purge was even a dream.

He dismissed it then as the lies of a sadistic butcher.

How could it be true?

She held fast to their ways.

She wore her heritage with pride.

She latched onto her fellow tribesmen, refusing to leave his side until his child was safe.

How could such a woman ever be a clan-killer?

Din was breathing but getting no air.

His heart pumped fast and frantic.

“She—” he started but got nowhere, his throat closing itself.

His memory wrenched him back to not so long ago, when he stood on the tower deck with her. In a dizzying rush, it all connected and he understood with horrible clarity every signal she half-sent, every message she scratched whole lines out of until it became a code without a key.

“She tried to tell me,” he felt himself say.

“Her family never really forgave her,” Ezra divulged, continuing as if he hadn’t heard Din. “They said they did, but I was there…” He let out a breath and shook his head, emotion cracking his cautious tone, heated indignation shining through. “She always says she left because the Rebellion needed her, and I know she believes that, but she couldn’t stay. She held the Darksaber, she even earned the full spectrum of its rights in a duel, went all the way to liberate her people from Imperial enslavement, and still it wasn’t enough for them.”

A new memory played behind Din’s eyes.

(The incommodiously tight confines of a Kom’rk fighter.)

(People standing around in ash-coated armour, the smell of sweat and metal heavy in the air.)

(Sabine, decked in colours Din didn’t recognize: white and lavender hair cropped to follow the line of her chin, armour coated in vivid splashes of purple and plum and orange and crimson. Her face was softer, younger, and contorted in surprise and a flash of pain as an older woman with short, flame-coloured hair slammed her against the wall, armour-clad arm barred across her collar, a short blade jutting from her gauntlet, the edge pressing precariously close to Sabine’s throat…)

You’re a Mandalorian! How could you create such an abomination?

(Later, on the ground, in patchy light thrown from multiple lanterns and lamps, visors and eyes glided over them, over Sabine, chins tilted up, lips pressed tight, murmurs swapped callously as they marched on by, moving to join the throng gathering around the one she had gifted the Darksaber to.)

“Alright; enough,” Din said, shaking his head, the images and other scraps of sensory information falling away like sand through open fingers.

The memories weren’t his; they were Ezra’s, projected by those extraordinary but inexplicable Force powers. (Grogu did it sometimes, too, though usually in his sleep, when his guard was down; Ezra’s were always much clearer, much more deliberate and Din didn’t know whether to put that down to Ezra’s more honed use of those abilities or Grogu’s tendency to hold back when it came to anything involving his own past).

The memories weren’t his, but the indignation boiling up under his skin and replacing, redirecting the revulsion—that was all his own.

For a time—long, short; he didn’t know—he stood there, his mind turning over all the facts, all the memories, all the pieces while his heart kept tearing in his chest.

The old wounds bled new and raw, yes, but he didn’t hurt for just himself.

He had made mistakes.

He couldn’t count the shots he wished he hadn’t taken, the marks he wished he had missed, the signs he wished he had heeded. He had a list of errors he couldn’t rectify and sins he could never truly atone for—turning in a child for a camtono of beskar was only one of the worst things he had done; it was not the first and it certainly was not the last.

His mistakes had had consequences—some he lived with today; some he had yet to confront. But his tribe hadn’t turned their backs on him, hadn’t banished or abandoned him. Even when he brought strife down on himself, they still sprang to his rescue, and though the cost for doing so had been high, both Paz and the Armourer had offered absolution, making it as clear as the stars that they didn’t blame him.

Sabine’s tribe, on the other hand, all but exiled her for something she did as a child.

He knew something had happened; he knew there had to be a reason why she chose to live in a lonely tower on a world nowhere near her roots, why she never sought out their people, never tried to find another tribe. She had lost her clan, and that seemed to answer the riddle—Din couldn’t judge her, not when he had let his own grief drive him into isolation… isolation he ran to after—

He tore himself off that road before his foot even landed on the first step.

Still, some difficult to name emotion—or, rather, multiple emotions, blended and emulsified to the point of indistinguishableness—flushed through his veins, sapping or dampening his energy, he couldn’t tell. An artificial exhaustion overwhelmed his joints and that kind of sickness that comes from depravation set in his stomach.

Knees feeling both stiff and soft, he moved, mechanically, to the bed, and sat down heavily, beskar and gear rattling. He bent over, his head falling into his hands. He remembered his helmet only then, when the curve of the jaig eyes pressed into his hands. He took it off without a spare thought, setting it aside like it was a nuisance.

His fingers—glove-clad and yet cold—raked into his hair and stuck there, palms clamped to his temples, eyes shut as if sealed.

It was easy to feel things.

He just didn’t know what he was supposed to feel… or what he was supposed to do.

An age passed before the officers left.

In the meantime, the malaise that had pulled Din to sit stirred and swung, from heavy and disabling to heated and fuelling. He took to pacing the room, the too-little space aggravating him, winding him up tighter with every turn and repeat.

Ezra stayed in his seat. He closed his eyes and emanated calm, which only irritated Din further.

They didn’t talk again; what Ezra had shared played on a loop in Din’s mind, different parts blaring louder with each go around, different points jutting out each turn, catching his thoughts and pulling them in new directions.

There were connections he couldn’t help but make, facts not stated that he derived and inferred from the material given—it was easy; it was what he had been trained to do: work with incomplete intel, trace, track, make sense out of nonsense, find the path, find the end. But once it was there, once he knew, he wished he could paint it all back over with the ignorance he had taken for granted.

He didn’t put the helmet on again, nor did he take up his hearing aids, so he didn’t hear when the front door opened and closed, signifying the officers’ exit; he only knew something had happened because Ezra’s eyes flashed open and he broke out of his statue-like state, lifting and turning his head like a Loth-cat.

Din halted his pacing.

Ezra locked onto his gaze, raised his eyebrows and nodded, just once, to the door, directing, encouraging.

Din… hesitated.

He stared at the door, his mouth dry, his chest tight, limbs turned to stone.

What do I say? he wanted to ask. Because Ezra knew—he had grown up with Sabine, he had been there, right there beside her when she had faced all that. Really, he should be the one going to her side now; even without the shared history, words came so easy to him and he had all those Force abilities he could use to comfort—abilities that Din intrinsically lacked.

But Ezra wasn’t budging.

So Din went.

He half-expected her to have vanished already. In the clip of time it took to reach the living room, he dreaded rounding the corner and seeing the space empty (or, worse: catching a glimpse of the back of her as she left—he would want to stop her but he knew he wouldn’t be right to).

But she hadn’t flown away.

She was there.

On her feet, standing as if she had only just risen out of her seat. Her face was blank, her gaze stretched unfathomably far, fixed on some point in the distance well beyond the room.

Tenuous electricity rippled in the air—an unseen, unmeasurable thing; Din felt like one word, one step too far would overload it, spark an eruption, wreck everything.

He stopped.

Not knowing how far to go, not knowing what to say, he paused in the doorway. Absently, he realized he was blocking her exit and the thought pushed him to take a step, get in the room if only to free her escape.

She moved and Din’s breath caught midway to his lungs. But she didn’t turn towards him, didn’t look at him, didn’t try to run. She angled away from him, turning her back to him and drifting towards the sliding doors leading out to the back porch, moving like a thing without substance.

Folding her arms, she straightened and set her shoulders, nudging her chin up in a drilled motion.

“Ezra told you?” she asked the glass doors, casually, volume just high enough that he didn’t have to ask for a repeat.

He nodded, then, realizing he could see her reflection but she couldn’t see his, not at that angle, he dredged up his voice to answer a plain, too small “Yes.”

Her reflection—a thin, see-through depiction of her captured in the glass and dappled with the scene of the moonlit garden, the sea and the faint glitter of the city—nodded, her lips pressing tight, corners tugging, fighting to stay out of anything incriminating.

Din took a step he didn’t feel, drawing just close enough to paint himself in the reflection. He glimpsed himself, only really then appreciating that he had taken off the helmet, leaving his face bare and readable. He put forth effort to smooth his expression, keep it steady but not neutral.

“Sabine—”

“Who did you lose?” the ghost in the glass interrupted.

It surprised him—the suddenness, the bluntness. He blinked and frowned and quickly tried to unwind all that before she saw.

“Every Mandalorian’s lost someone because of me,” she pressed before he could find something to say. “So. Who did you lose?”

He shook his head but couldn’t speak, couldn’t find any way to answer her without lying or telling the truth—one he vowed never to do, the other he couldn’t bear.

He feared she already knew.

He had, this very night, told her what had happened to his tribe when he was eighteen; he told her the covert was attacked by Imperials and the guard was all but decimated. All she had to do was what he had done in mere moments: sew that together with the facts Ezra had shared and watch reality take a sickening turn.

That weapon—that strange weapon that shot unusual lightning which specifically targeted their trusted beskar and electrocuted them where they stood—could only be the Duchess: a weapon designed by a young Imperial cadet from Mandalore.

Ezra said she ran away when she was fourteen but the trials of the weapon had been going on for at least two years.

One of the earliest prototypes had been used on Din’s covert.

It killed his buir.

If he could figure that out, she could figure it out faster, but…

“Don’t,” he managed to croak out eventually. “Please, don’t—don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what, Din? I just asked a question.”

“You’re trying to hurt yourself.”

She scoffed and it didn’t matter that he didn’t hear it, he saw it: that derisive, broken, absolutely empty smile that split her mouth open for one slip of a second, that tiny jolt of her shoulders, that taut roll of her eyes and fling back of her head like this was ridiculous, like it was all so stupid and laughable… but in so doing, she revealed that shimmer, that faint, heartbreaking shimmer of threatening tears.

She didn’t say anything. She clearly wanted to—she took a breath, she opened her mouth and the shape of a response, perhaps a retort formed—but she gave up, her bravado depleted.

Her arms drew tighter against her chest. Din could see her hand gripping her arm fiercely, nails digging in harshly, stressing the fabric of her sleeve—a covert attempt at inflicting pain on herself.

He took another step closer, wanting to reach out and take her hand, hold it away from her, halt her self-destruction, but her head jerked to the side and the jagged motion stopped him.

She turned just that much more away from him, but she didn’t move to leave.

“You did lose someone,” she said.

He could only see a sliver of her expression in the glass but it was enough: he saw her eyes shut tight, saw her mouth twist and pull in deep, saw her drag in a sharp breath that might as well have been a blade.

She said something more but he couldn’t make it out; she couldn’t put much volume into her voice anymore and her composure crumpled too far into itself for him to decipher the shape of her words in her reflection.

With difficulty but certainty, he dropped his inhibitions and pushed himself to close the distance between them.

“Listen to me,” he implored, voice feeling strangled. “You didn’t take them from me.”

“Yes, I did!” she all but shouted, twisting sharply to throw the words at him. “I made that—”

“You were a child,” he interjected, unable to match her volume. “You were a child,” he repeated, pitching his voice lower, “and they used you.”

She shook her head, furiously, tears breaking through the barriers at last. “I knew what I was doing. I knew what I was making. They wanted—they wanted a weapon that turned beskar against us and they picked me because no one knew beskar better than I did. My clan taught me to forge and I used what they gave me to destroy them.”

“Did you?” he challenged, the edge aimed not at her but at whatever had fostered her distorted perception. “Did you build it wanting to destroy them?”

“No,” she admitted, and it was the truth, he knew, but she said it like she was making a false confession, like something in her believed she was lying. She blinked, spilling more tears as her eyes darted, trying to avoid him. “They told me they would use it only on rogue Mandalorians. On—on Maul and his followers. To keep the rest of Mandalore safe. That was all I wanted: to keep Mandalore safe. And I didn’t. I—”

“Sabine,” Din interrupted her, speaking her name in a whisper because it was all he could hold then. It was strong enough to halt her, strong enough to draw her gaze to him. “The Empire killed our people,” he told her, stressing the words as if teaching. “The Empire killed your clan. You did not.

“I’ve met clan-killers. Bounties,” he explained, tossing it in just for context. He shook his head. “They brag, they… celebrate. They don’t show remorse. They don’t hurt like this over what happened.” He let go of a soft laugh. “They don’t sit by the bedsides of their tribesmen and wait—day after day after day—for them to get well enough to stand on their own. They don’t take care of foundlings and teach them to paint.” He reached up, slowly, carefully cupping her cheek in his palm, suspended in the fear she would recoil. “I have met clan-killers; you are not one of them,” he assured her, relief overwhelming his senses when she tilted her head ever so to rest in his hand.

Her eyes set closed, sending a fresh trail of tears running down her already stained cheeks. He brought his other hand up to wipe them away in tandem.

It was not the first time he had caught her tears, and though he wished with all his might it would be the last, he was no fool: he possessed no power great enough to restrain or vanquish all the unseen, unknown things to come in the future, and these wounds already inflicted could never truly disappear—as long as she lived, she would carry them, and who knew when next something or someone would come and callously slice them open again.

He couldn’t save her, just as she couldn’t save him.

But he could catch her tears.

He could bind her wounds and stem the bleeding.

He could hold onto her and they could face the monsters together.

Anything that struck her would strike him too. Anyone who stood against her would stand against him. And anywhere one went, the other would be there—in heart if not in body.

He drew her close, gently—at the slightest tug of resistance, he was ready to release, but she didn’t pull back; she all but collapsed forward. He felt the clang of their chest plates meeting as she buried her face in his cowl, her hands at his sides, fisting in the fabric of his flightsuit peeking out from his flak vest.

He wrapped his arms around her, a hand cradling the back of her head, his cheek against her crown. He felt her breath hitch on a jagged cry and that was it—his eyes clouded with tears as well.

It was hard to believe they had been in the sky just a few short hours ago—free, untouchable, invincible, chasing each other with veins overflowing with ecstasy. Now they were here, with strained hearts and stained ledgers, each exhausted and low from dredged up grief. But he felt for her here in this pit just as he had among the stars.

He would forevermore.

“Shh, it’s alright, cyar'ika,” he murmured.

She pried herself away, just enough to turn red-tainted eyes and a surprised frown on him. “What did you call me?”

His insides did some horrible contortion. “Cyar’ika,” he repeated, doubting his pronunciation, his vocabulary, his entire perception of reality and the situation. “I… it’s just… I don’t think of you as a ‘vod’ika’ anymore.”

She cracked a smile and laughed—she was close enough that he could hear it, that soft music in her breath. “I never thought of myself as a ‘cyar’ika.’”

It shouldn’t have meant so much, but that little admission slashed at his heart.

She had really gone all these years—well over half her life—believing herself unforgivable and unlovable. What was worse was that it was not simply a case of excessive guilt or a distorted viewpoint; her family, her tribe left her to believe she was unworthy of a clan.

Suddenly, he saw no less than a hundred aspects of her in a new light, none quite as heartbreaking as her desperation to keep her crew together—they were the only kind of family she believed she could ever belong to.

He brushed his hand along her forehead and down the side of her face, dislodging a stray strand of hair that had gotten trapped in her tear tracks.

Ezra had told him about the World Between Worlds—some inexplicable dimension a being could enter and from which they could traverse time and space. Ezra himself had been in there and Din didn’t know all he had done, all he had seen, but he knew he had plucked both Ahsoka and Kanan from the jaws of death, and he had glimpsed their parents in an altered version of time where they lived on.

Din had never much pondered the concept of rewinding time and redoing things—no more than the average person, at any rate. But right here, right now, he wished he could find the doorway to that reality-defying realm.

If he could, he would search for the days when Sabine was young, when she was a child and the Empire was using her—her skills, her ambition, her innocence—to build that disgusting weapon. He would get her out of there, get her back to her clan and see her safe, see her protected and cared for as she should have been at such a young age.

That weapon would still exist in some capacity—the Empire would just find someone else to engineer it. And the Purge was, unfortunately, an inevitability. But maybe her clan wouldn’t have been such a target. Maybe the weapon wouldn’t ever have been so powerful. Maybe Jai would still be alive today.

But to undo one bad thing, you would have to sacrifice all the good forged from the same fire.

Sabine’s contributions to the Rebellion could not be overstated and Din couldn’t yet see what good his course would bring but he knew it was more important than the original trajectory of his life.

And he was happy.

Here, with her, with his son and this patched-together family, he felt like he had found something more precious than all the beskar in the ancient mines.

“Can you see yourself as a riduur?” he asked her.

“Can you?” she parried and that, seeing her spark return made him believe the storm had finally lifted.

“With you,” he said, pausing to place a kiss on her head, “I can see everything.”

Art for this chapter

Din & Grogu’s Room

Mando’a

Ad — child

Jai’galaar — shriek-hawk, used as the signet for Clan Vizsla

Cyar’ika — combination of “love” and “little” which basically means darling or sweetheart

Vod’ika — little brother/sister

Riduur — spouse

🎶 chapter playlist 🎶

She’s Crying Again — Mean Mr Mustard

Now — Pat McGee

Desperado — Diana Krall (I am a huge Eagles fan but this particular version is just perfect for Sabine)

Dark Side — Kelly Clarkson

Breathe (2AM) — Anna Nalick

I’d Like — Freshlyground (if you only listen to one song from this entire playlist, please make it this one)

Too Far Gone — Russell Crowe & Alan Doyle

Who Saved Who — Mindy Smith & Matthew Perryman Jones

For the Taking — Elenowen

Hiding Place — Elenowen

Poison & Wine — The Civil Wars

All You Need — Paper Aeroplanes

Darkest Hour — BLÜ EYES

This is Us — Noah Cyrus & Jimmie Allen

Slow Burn — J. Maya

Darling, It’ll Be Alright — Allman Brown

. . . . .

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[theblackphoenixwritings]

ɢɪᴏʀɴᴏ 𝟷𝟽 – ᴘʀᴏᴍᴘᴛs: ᴡɪɴᴅ ᴏғ ᴡᴀʀ

ᴍᴀʀɪᴜs/ᴀᴍᴀᴅᴇᴏ & ᴍᴀʀɪᴜs/ᴅᴀɴɪᴇʟ ᴀᴜ/ᴡᴇsᴛᴇʀɴ – ᴘᴀʀᴛᴇ 𝟷𝟸

They walked alongside each other, as they usually did. The journey was not very long, Mr. Carson's property was large but not very far from Cripple Creek.They were to skirt the railroad for a little while, and cross the Serpete River, and continue south, following the route that the stagecoaches and wagon trains took. They were to pass not far from the old mine, Thorne had said several people had complained of sinister noises coming out of it.

Another thing to check on, so now, in fact, they had no time. Strangely enough, the sky was cloudy, and a cloak made the air still and heavy. The sun seemed unable to pierce through the clouds that were getting darker and darker. None of that was a good sign; a bad storm was coming. Marius considered that if it did not get worse, they would barely make it home from that visit to Mr. Carson's ranch. Marius was strangely calm, he could not tell if it was the tiredness of the nightmare that still echoed in him, or if the whole situation absolutely unreal.

That satisfaction that he thought, he would feel, in knowing Mr. Carson dead for what he had done to his father, was not present in him, somehow that man, he had escaped to taste and to pay for the life he had snatched away. He was dead, and that for Marius was too little. This incensed him more, because he had not been able to bring his father's killer to justice, and he had not even been able to avenge him. "Are you all right? You look like a nervous wreck." Thorne stared perplexed and worried at Marius, he had never seen him like this and he did not like seeing him like this, this much was clear to him immediately. " I told you about my father. You and Daniel and Teskhamen are the only ones who know the truth," said Marius

Thorne nodded, yes he knew Marius' story, and he could imagine how difficult that situation was for him.

" He is dead my friend, there is not much you can or we can do. As much as your grief pains me too, if Madame Eudoxia told the truth, by now your father's 'murder is between Mr. Carson and his God," Thorne affirmed as he looked around. That silence and ghostly calm disturbed him deeply. " There is no God who might want to have anything to do with a being like Carson, but perhaps some demon might eat his putrid soul." blurted Marius. Thorne stared at him, raising an eyebrow and scratching his red beard. " Well amen my brother. They say so don't they?" asked Thorne with a grin, which was followed by a low laugh from Marius. The two friends continued on, the stretch of railroad, turned out to be deserted. Nothing to be surprised or afraid of, in fact trains passed infrequently and at specific times. Although there had been strange movements at night, everything there seemed normal. It seemed. Marius' gaze noticed something between the tracks. Thorne stopped the horse, and reminded Marius that they did not have much time to complete the mission. Marius nodded and prodded Wise, to try to speed things up.

What had caught his attention was wedged between the rails. It was a woman's dress, it looked well made, but it was torn in several places, and seemed to have patches of congealed blood, now faded. It was caught between the bolts of the rails, but in the wake of that dress, Marius saw more. And his blood froze in his veins. Thorne sensed that something was wrong and reached out to Marius. Marius stood staring in disbelief mixed with pain at the spectacle before them, Thorne took off his hat and wiped the cold sweat on his forehead. "How is it possible that we did not realize this?" asked Thorne angrily. Their eyes wandered along the tracks, the wind had begun to blow harder, a makeshift platform had been set up on which to get people off the train. There were suitcases smashed, personal belongings scattered everywhere, even broken glasses and watches thrown into the sand. Small items, combs, ladies' hats, gloves and books, small perfume bottles and even food that was now moldy. The people on the train had never arrived at their destination, and that realization struck both of them with force and dismay. Where had they taken those people? What had become of them? It was clear that there had been a struggle and that something horrible had happened there.

"We need to look for these people," said Thorne, Marius looked puzzled. "What is closest to this spot on the railroad?" asked Marius, staring into Thorne's green eyes. "Carson's ranch." retorted Thorne, Marius nodded. "There is no epidemic is there? You think it's these creatures?" asked Thorne uncertainly. "I know it's hard for you to believe, my friend, I myself if I hadn't seen them, I'd think myself crazy," said Marius " But I know what I saw, Amadeo suffered immensely because of them, and Daniel also. Now, however, someone is bringing them together. I'm afraid to even imagine what they might want to do. But we have to defend the city and we have to figure out what they are plotting. I sent a message to Zenobia, she Avicus and Mael, they are on their way here." Thorne stared at Marius curling his mouth to one side " I know my friend, but we need all the help we can get. This thing must be stopped here at all costs." said Marius. " And that's why you called bounty hunters? Dangerous and untrustworthy?" gesticulated Thorne " I know you have your reservations, but I trust them, they are friends and I know they will help us." Thorne looked nervous, but the confidence on Marius's face seemed to calm him. " Now let's go to the ranch, stay close, and have your rifle ready, we have to be extremely careful, even the smallest and most insignificant noise can be a danger. And yes please take me seriously."

Serious Thorne nodded, and they set out again, retracing their steps toward Mr. Carson's ranch. They arrived a short time later, and it was not welcome to their eyes. Where men were usually intent on work, there was no one there. Deserted. With dismay Marius noticed that there were no animals, not even the horses Carson was so proud of. The corrals were empty. The roads deserted. The small station empty, and the only sound that resonated was the wooden wheel marks wind hanging from the large cistern. The horses proceeded down the main road, the farm workers' houses had their doors wide open and you could see inside, lamps now left without oil, and broken dishes on the ground. A dreamcatcher swung in the wind spreading delicate music around.

There were abandoned tools, children's toys left in the dust. The road was pultry, however, no trace of either human or animal. The chicken coop was open but there were no chickens, just a few feathers stuck in the white wood. The cattle pen was empty, and there were a few abandoned hay bales in the middle. Pitchforks still stuck between the hay or abandoned on the ground. There were buckets of food and feed for the sheep but no sound came from the closed barn. Marius and Thorne stared at each other, was it then true that there was an epidemic of some kind? Marius shook his head, no one runs from an epidemic, you run from something you know will hurt you, from something you know you have no escape from. Marius was not sure about the animals, but the condition of the laborers' quarters was a sure clue to him. It remained to be seen how much and whether the people who lived there were involved with the terrifying creatures. Marius and Thorne walked toward the manor house. A cold sweat soaked the foreheads of both as they stopped their mounts at the white fence. Marius looked around as if assessing what to do in case of need, and something inside him shrieked that they had to get out of there.

The clouds had grown larger and darker, had completely covered the sun, which no longer filtered through. It was dark and early afternoon, and Marius thought that nothing happens by chance. Thorne made the act of getting off his horse, but Marius stopped him. Thorne looked puzzled at Marius, then his gaze moved to the white wrought-glass door, which was creaking open, revealing a figure haughty and almost regal in its hardness. Madame Eudoxia. Marius noticed how she did not leave the house entirely, but remained hidden under the porch half inside the house. Her smile had always been eerie,yet sensual, now it had something sinister and ruthless about it. " Madame Eudoxia, we are here for Mr. Carson, to ascertain the situation and assist you if you require it," tried to mediate Marius, who had realized that Thorne was staring at Madame Eudoxia with scrupulous suspicion. When the almost mad woman's laughter rang out in the hellish silence around them, the horses became nervous and Mariue and Thorne reflexively brought their hands to their belts.

"What do you think guns can be used for? Against a poor widow?" asked Madame Eudoxia but her tone was not distressed at all. "Are you all right Madame? Come forward, there is little light but at least we can look at you and make sure you are all right," proposed Marius, watchful and cautious, something was extremely out of place. " Oh sheriff, you never cared about my health, let alone my husband's," retorted Madame Eudoxia in a mean voice. Thorne drew his gun, his instincts knowing what he had before him was not a helpless woman. Again the evil laughter reverberated but was followed by a drawl from inside the house. Slowly from the darkness inside the house shadows came forward around Madame Eudoxia. Eyes shone in that darkness. They were yellow, and they promised a slow and unpleasant death. "But now sheriff you need not worry any longer. Your enemy is dead, and I offer you the chance to join us." said, Madame Eudoxia, her beautiful face distorted into a ghoulish smile. "Where are the people who were on the train? What have you done with them? And the laborers?" asked Marius, trying to keep calm.

" If you're not with us you're against us, and all we need is a place to start to create our empire, where you inferior beings are just food, animals for slaughter, like the very animals you look after in your pens," huffed Madame Eudoxia " Unfortunately, my beloved husband didn't understand what he had a chance to become, while I did, and she chose me," she was delirious. "Now sheriff you can join me and take an active part in the birth of the nation of darkness, or you can run to your little town, and die with all its useless inhabitants, for that is what will happen to you.In three days, as soon as our power is at its maximum, we will come.What do you choose sheriff immortal life in blood or death in dust?" Marius spurred the horse, Thorne did the same, and as they both launched into a wild gallop to reach the town, Marius shouted: "Neither!!!" and he and Thorne launched into a relentless gallop and got the hell out of there. Cripple Creek was about to be swept away.

[nymphdiariesdotcom]

he's so fucking ugly

[a-drop-of-nightshade]

Of course, just his luck he gets cornered in a mall, most the floor was cleared because of who he was facing, Robert Carson, the most powerful man in the universe because of his immense money load. He backed up into the railing and glanced at the drop down behind him, he was three floors up, when he looked back he was given two options: come willingly or by force. L took a breath, “I choose option three.” He said before throwing himself backwards over the railing, he tumbled and barely got himself the right way before he spotted some people, “HEADS UP!” He bellowed in warning, yet right before he hit the ground he whipped his hand out and boosted his kinesis module to full to create a recoil that jerked his entire body but it broke his fall safe enough. He quickly got to his feet and whirled to look up, seeing Carson glaring he flipped him off: “OPTION THREE: FUCK YOU YA OLD CUNT!” He yelled before turning and running right past Alice.

However he waited until he was sure they couldn’t see him and quickly looped, he slipped back into the looping lower floor and then just ran straight into the first shop he saw, bolting for the changing room he didn’t think as he just barrelled in and slammed the door shut before freezing as he was face to face with someone, a very half naked someone. He went bright red and quickly covered his eyes, “Oh my god I’m sorry but please just let me hide here!” He blurted out, his heart absolutely hammering he was trembling his kinesis module sparking, he then kept his eyes shut but grabbed his shoulder and jerked as there was a crack as he popped it back into place. “Please.” He said very quietly, keeping his eyes closed, he had scars all over his hands and a few on his face, one particular scar would be clear as day, a mark left by a slashed that ran up his back to his face.

@izzyfromdeadspace

[transbookoftheday]

Ponyboy by Eliot Duncan

An evocative debut novel of trans-masculinity, addiction, and the pain and joy of becoming.

In the first of three acts, Ponyboy’s titular narrator—a pill-popping, speed-snorting trans-masculine lightning bolt—unravels in his Paris apartment. Ponyboy is caught in a messy love triangle with Baby, a lesbian painter who can’t see herself being with someone trans, and Toni, a childhood friend who can actually see Ponyboy for who he is. Strung out, Ponyboy follows Baby to Berlin in act two, where he sinks deeper into drugs and falls for Hart, a fellow writer, all the while pursued by a megalomaniacal photographer hungry for the next hot thing. As Ponyboy’s relationships crumble, he overdoses and find himself alone in his childhood home in Nebraska. The novel’s final act follows Ponyboy to rehab, exploring the ways in which trans identity, addiction, and recovery reforge the bond between mother and child. Eliot Duncan reveals, in precise atmospheric prose reminiscent of Anne Carson and Allen Ginsberg, the innate splendor, joy, and ache of becoming oneself.

[ll-but-its-random]

"I was Zach, Carson, and then Bolt, which was the last name I got to pick before Rey started choosing them."

-Number Five.

[emeraldcitynerdfighter]

Drabble prompts! I'm going to pair 38 with 92! Set in the gusts universe? Or not!

Not gonna lie, this one threw me a bit, but I think I made something work! I liked the challenge.

set in the ‘gusts’ universe, fall of 1959, after Greta and Carson's conversation about Maggie's future

//

Greta stood before two figures shrouded in darkness, flanking a beam of pure light and innocence.

“She’s your sister. You have to help her."

The figures, emanating apathy and carelessness, swallowed the light, then everything else around them. And then they came for Greta.

Greta sat bolt upright, panting, startling Scout off the end of the bed. Carson, it seemed, had also been plagued by nightmares.

Greta looked to her, her vision going blurry.

“I had a dream last night about—"

“Me, too.”

“We have to do this, Carson.”

Carson laid a hand on Greta’s, their wedding rings overlapping.

“Okay.”