#cast iron guttering

[toopeanutcrown]

Sheffield Gutter Services

Our aim is to provide you with the highest quality gutter cleaning, gutter repair and gutter replacement services in Sheffield, for both residential and commercial customers.We are specialists in every type and style of guttering including uPVC plastic guttering, seamless aluminium guttering, timber gutter and cast iron gutter.

https://sheffieldgutterservices.co.uk/

[toiletchants]

Traditional Exterior Inspiration for a huge timeless beige two-story stone exterior home remodel with a hip roof

[a-court-of-fics-and-errors]

Keep Moving Forwards, Part 18

Azriel x Reader Fic

Summary: After finally deciding to leave your abusive and manipulative mate for good, you find unexpected companionship with Azriel, the Shadowsinger of the Night Court. As you navigate the aftermath of your traumatic relationship, you struggle to understand where the mating bond went wrong and contemplate your path forward, vowing never to return to the past.

Find other parts here: Master List

To follow this fic, follow tag "Keep Moving Forwards Fic" or comment to be tagged in future parts.

Content Warning: This story contains depictions of extreme emotional manipulation and abuse, detailed descriptions of direct physical abuse, and scenes of men hunting women with implied sexual assault. Please read at your own risk.

Word Count: 5.5K

Author's Note: This is a multi-part series. Unlike my previous works, this fanfiction delves deeper than just fluff, exploring complex emotional landscapes. As I navigate this new writing journey, I kindly ask for gentle feedback. The topics addressed are profoundly impactful, touching many lives with diverse experiences. Please be gentle with yourselves and others. Healing is a journey, and everyone processes it differently. Be kind to yourself. Take what resonates, and leave what doesn’t.

Please continue reading, being aware of the above content warnings, ensuring you are in a healthy headspace. Give yourself time to process and be gentle with yourself.

While you told Kai you would be going back to the inn, you didn’t feel fully comfortable entering a room where his father might still be awake, unsure how to navigate the awkward silence. Instead of heading straight back, you let yourself meander through the streets, the cold nipping at your nose, turning it a bright red as you sniffled lightly. You smiled politely at the well-dressed females wandering alongside you, their coats lined with furs and shoes polished for winter. Your own attire was more than a little worn, with a practical jacket far from fashionable but essential for survival.

As you made your way down the paths, past the baker’s square and through the arts district, where peddlers sold art worth more than everything you owned, you observed the chic, modern clothing hanging low on mannequins in fashion halls, with females of all ages drooling over the craftwork. Gradually, you found yourself wandering closer to the outskirts of the city, where things began to look familiar. The music of the city faded into the background, and wreaths became less grand, more hastily strung together with bits of wire but festive nonetheless. The streets were more iced over, clearly not as well-maintained as the inner parts of the city. Snow, scraped to the side, was dirtied and blackened from the roadway, piled high and unmelted by the afternoon sun. Your boots slapped into the slush, kicking up bits of snow onto your pants as you huddled closer into yourself. Clotheslines strung above cut through the fae light, casting long shadows.

You knew this place—the faded green awnings, now with more holes, but recognizable nonetheless. The wrought iron stairs with handrails frozen over, icicles trickling down from them, were just as familiar. You squinted down the alley where the faelight shone in small patches. Somehow, this felt much more recognizable than the squares and inner city where you and Kai had strolled. It perturbed you how little you remembered of those places, yet here, memories flooded back.

You remembered chasing bouncing balls down the street gutters as other fae yelled at you to get out of the road, the rabble of children laughing without care. You recalled sitting on the stoop of the now-closed and boarded-up café with your mother, sharing a sandwich. In your memories, this place always seemed brighter, more lively. Now, a gloom settled over the visions. Your mother, still slightly blurred, appeared skinnier, her wrists and ankles bony. The roadways, which you imagined as clean cobblestone, were now filled with more debris and waste. The rose-colored glasses of your childhood were giving way as you made the long trek down the last alley.

Windows were gated over, with faded lights scraping their way through the grime. From a few streets over, you heard a man and a woman laughing—a maniacal, crazed sound. You turned at what sounded like footsteps behind you but realized it was only snow falling from the patchwork metal roof above. Every hair on your body stood on end as the light seemed to be sucked from every shadow. The sound of your boots on the ground was the only noise besides the dripping water and the subtle murmurs of those inside their homes.

As you reached the end of the alley, the faded green door, now more brown than green, came into view, illuminated by the small flickering fae light above it. The knocker, which you remembered so vividly, now tarnished more than you recalled, stood before you. Letting out a slow breath, you watched it curl into the shadows. The knocker, a fae female with nothing more than a piece of cloth draped around her body, her curves accentuated as she smiled slyly, held the knocker below. As a child, you thought she was beautiful, often standing in the doorway just looking at her, the knocker slowly swinging in the breeze. Now, her face was more tarnished, the wood below splintered and peeling. You read the sign to the right of the door: “Titania’s Temptations & Pleasure House.”

Your heart stopped. You remembered Titania, a boisterous older woman who often took you and the other children living in the apartment on evening walks, offering candies and sweets as some of the children cried for their mothers. Titania, who your mother always referred to as Madame. Titania, who had been there for your first steps when your mother was working. Titania, who had tried to keep you and your mother from leaving, begging her to stay. It couldn’t be the same.

But it was. Your breath caught as you tried to parse through the memories. So much of your time in Velaris was spent with your mother—days and days of memories that now seemed untrustworthy. You looked back down the street, recalling how children ran about playing while their mothers and a few odd fae males sat on stoops. You always thought they enjoyed watching the children play, cheering you on in games. Now, you more clearly recalled their gaunt faces, purpled under their eyes from lack of sleep. Many were thin, wearing not much more than their undergarments as they lounged in the sun. Occasionally, a fae would come down the street, and all the children would run up, begging for sweets or coins to spend in markets, surprising the fae with their requests. Titania would holler from the upstairs windows to stop pestering them. Then, with eyes cast down, the fae would knock on Titania’s door, be let in, and leave a short while later with a rosy glint on their cheeks.

You continued to recall memories. During the day, the children weren’t allowed inside the house, and at night, you all slept in quarters with your mothers, or those who could be there. The pieces slowly came together. Your mother was never around at night, only during the day, except on odd days when she had work. When you finally asked her, she told you she washed laundry. And you, being only a child, with memories laced with lies, believed her.

Your eyes filled with hot tears as you stood on the doorstep, a sob choking through your body as you tried to shake the awful feeling rising inside. Your mother worked in a pleasure house. You were raised in a pleasure house. All your memories circled around this place where your mother sold her body. 

You shook your head, sniffling as you stared at the door knocker, now more hideous than melancholic. Why had you done this? Why did you come back here?

Turning, you descended the steps, slipping on the ice and falling hard on your tailbone, causing a sharp hiss to escape your lips as you sat, tears flowing down your face. 

You sat in the dirty snow, a few echoing sobs escaping your lips. The faint tolling of a bell sounded in the distance, eleven gongs before it subsided. Moments later, the door of the pleasure house creaked open, and out descended various fae, both male and female, none of them looking at each other as they pulled their clothing tighter around their bodies. They walked past you without a glance as you wiped the tears from your eyes.

A familiar voice behind you made you turn. Standing in the doorway was a gaunt, bony fae woman with pale, almost yellowed skin. Her hair was an unnatural, bright red, and she lounged leisurely in the doorway, wearing nothing more than a bright red silk nightgown that barely skirted past her hips. Her nails, matching the vivid red of her hair, tapped idly against the doorframe as she spoke to a male fae whose face was obscured by the collar of his jacket.

“This ain’t no charity,” she hissed. “You don’t pay, you don’t play.”

The male fae whispered back, covering his mouth, “I can get you the payment by next week.”

The woman traced a long line up the center of the male's chest with her elongated, cat-like nail. “Now you listen to me. In my eyes, you’ve already stolen from me and one of my ladies. I expect not only repayment but double. If you run off, I’ll have no problem sending someone to find you in whatever hole you’ve crawled into.” She flicked his nose with the tip of her finger. “Understand me, my love?”

The fae male nodded and walked down the steps.

“Oy, you,” the gravelly-voiced woman called out to you. You turned to her. “This ain’t public property. Get your dirty ass off my stoop.”

You quickly stood, wiping the tears from your eyes and the grime from your rear as you took a few steps forward.

You heard the door creak slightly as the woman went to close it. Without thinking, you rushed up the stairs, shoving your arm between the door and its frame. “Wait!” you called out.

The woman whipped her head around toward you as she shut the door. “Are you stupid?” she hissed. “Get the fuck out of here.” She grabbed your hand, her bony fingers pressing into your own as she pushed your arm out.

“Wait, please!” you pleaded as the door slammed in your face. You pounded one fist on it. You heard the multiple locks clicking into place as you cried out, “I’m here about Sile!”

The locks paused on the other side of the door. Then they unlocked, and the door opened slightly, held by a chain. The woman with the red hair peered out at you. “What about her?”

Panting slightly, your breath visible in the light of the hall behind the woman, you said, “I’m her daughter.”

The woman surveyed your face and then, seemingly in recognition, gasped slightly. “Y/N,” she said more than asked.

“Yes.”

The woman shut the door, unchained it, and opened it fully, peering over your shoulder slightly before beckoning you inside. “Come in, come on, you’ll be letting the draft in.” You stepped past her and, as though you had just come in from playing, wiped your feet on the mat underneath you.

“I should’ve known it was you, with that mess of hair!” the woman said as she took you in. She gripped you by your shoulders, holding you at arm's length as she surveyed you. “You look just like your mother.” She ran her hands down the length of your arms before throwing you a smile. Although her face seemed aged with time, her eyes still held a lightness that you remembered from so many years ago.

You smiled back at her. “It’s good to see you, Titania.”

Titania pulled you close and wrapped her arms around you. Awkwardly, you wrapped your own around her small, bony frame. “You too, my love,” she said, pressing a red-lipsticked kiss onto your cheek, which you knew would leave a stain. “Where’ve you been?” she asked, turning you to take your coat off your back before hanging it on the hall rack. “Come on, let’s get us some tea.” She gestured down the hallway, and you followed her, taking in the sights and sounds of your childhood.

The carpet on the floor, once a place where you lay staring at the wallpapered ceiling with its patterns of overlapping branches, now showed stains on its red cloth, and the ceiling’s paint was peeling. The walls were lined with photos of the women who worked in the house. Some you recognized, while others were unfamiliar. You looked for a photo of your mother but couldn’t find her face among the many.

You followed Titania into the small kitchen, which had not much more than an old woodstove with a few dirty pots and pans on its top, and a sink with a dripping faucet. The familiar cadence of the dripping water brought back memories of playing with dolls under the table your mother had made for you from sticks and weeds. Titania beckoned you to sit at the kitchen table, which you did, the chairs now fitting your body instead of forcing you to climb up them as you did years ago.

Titania filled the kettle as the faucet rattled water out of its spout, then placed it on the stove before coming to sit across from you at the table. Her brown eyes scanned over your face. “I never would have thought I’d see you again,” she said.

You smiled lightly. “I thought the same.”

“Why are you here?” she asked, reaching her hand out to take the one you had placed leisurely on the table.

“I’m here for the festival.”

Titania leaned back in her chair, casually tossing one skinny leg over the other. Her red nightgown barely concealed anything as she propped her elbow over the back of the chair, perching her face on her spiked nails. “Oh, so we’re just in town to visit?”

“I’m here with a friend,” you responded.

“I always wondered what happened to you,” Titania said distantly, looking intently at you.

“It’s been a few years.”

“I’d wager more than a century,” she shot back.

You nodded as the kettle started to whistle. Titania jumped up to pull the pot off, then took out two teacups, both chipped in various places, and placed them on the table, pouring the steaming liquid into each. “So,” she started as she placed the kettle down and resettled into the chair, “fill me in.”

You picked up the cup, feeling the heat push through the thin porcelain, and traced your finger around the lip. “What do you want to know?”

Titania scoffed. “Well, my love, you’re the one who’s been gone. I ain’t seen you since you came to my knee.”

“I’ve been in the mountains.”

“I could’ve figured as much,” Titania responded. “And you’ve just now decided to come pay your old lady a visit?”

“I didn’t know how to get back,” you replied, pulling the cup to your lips and taking a sip. The heat singed your flesh, and you pulled it away quickly.

Titania chuckled. “You ain’t got enough sense to ask for directions?”

“Mama told me we couldn’t come back.”

Titania rolled her eyes. “Your mother was a fool.”

You looked at her, scanning her face, which held a displeased look. “What happened?” you asked.

“With what?”

“Mama, me?”

Titania leaned forward, her gown falling open to reveal her incredibly pronounced collarbones. “What do you know?”

You shook your head lightly. “Only that she packed us up and moved us out. She told me we couldn’t come back.”

Titania nodded. “And your mother, where’s she now?”

You looked around the room. “I was hoping here.”

Titania tilted her head slightly. “You thought she was here?”

“She told me she was going back to the city. A long time ago. And then she never came back.”

Her face fell. “Oh, my love, I’m sorry. If she came back, she didn’t come here.”

You nodded, not surprised. It would have been too easy to find her here, if she was anywhere. “The last I saw of my mother was when she was leaving with me that morning.”

You let your hands cup around the warmth of the tea, looking down into the swirling browns as you asked, “Why did she leave?”

Titania shrugged, leaning back. “I don’t know. I tried to stop her, but she insisted on leaving.” She tsked, “You were so sad, cried like you’d wake the whole city when she pulled you down those steps.”

You furrowed your brow. “I don’t remember that.”

Titania nodded. “Oh for sure, you were sobbing, throwing a fit, begging for her not to take you from Gramma Nia.” Titania picked at her nails.

You shook your head. “I remember leaving and feeling excited.” Was your memory wrong?

“I can’t tell you what happened once you were down the street. But when I last saw you, those tears were as big as dewdrops.”

“And she didn’t say anything about why she had to leave?”

Titania sniffed lightly, pulling her teacup to her lips and leaving a red stain on the edge as she cleared her throat. “Your mother was a very paranoid female, always looking over her shoulder and jumping at shadows. As long as I knew her. She just kept saying it wasn’t safe to stay here.” You just peered into the cup in your hands. “You used to love it here.” Titania smiled lightly. “You’d run around the halls, singing those little songs you’d make up. I can’t tell you how many times I had to tell you to get out of the street because you were getting into other people’s garbage. You were always my little adventurer.”

You smiled. “I remember that yellow ball we had that we used to lose in the sewer gutter.”

Titania guffawed. “Oh yeah, and you’d send one of the little boys down the grate to get it back. They’d be smelling like shit for days after, but they couldn’t say no to you, or you’d wallop them.” You laughed lightly with her. “You loved that little ball, told me it was the best birthday gift you’d ever gotten.” Titania sniffled through a laugh. “Do you remember that little girl, Wren?” You shook your head no. “She was pretty little when you were around, but she would follow you around like a little puppy. You used to get so annoyed at her touching your toys you’d come running into the sitting room screaming bloody murder, ‘Gamma Nia, Wren touched my stuff!’ and then I’d go out and find little Wren with her hand in her mouth just smiling.”

You smiled. “I think I remember her now. She had that little rag doll she carried everywhere.”

Titania nodded. “That’s right! She was a sweet kid, always wanted to be just like you. You were her hero.”

The room felt warmer with the shared memories, the nostalgic laughter easing some of the tension.

You looked puzzled, “What-what do you mean?” 

Titania looked up to you through her turned down eyes, “I just-those memories, those were things we did together.” 

“You were always playing some game. And you’d rightly piss off the other children by changing the rules or bossing them around, even some of the older ones.” Titania ran her thumb over the stain on her cup. “I always told Sile that you were gonna grow up and run this place someday.” She laughed a bit louder. “I remember you used to play High Lady. You’d put on one of your mother’s entertaining gowns and shoes, and you’d go clomping down the hall ordering everyone to move out of your way.” Her laughter grew. “And then you made me take you down to our bakery so you could show off to Henri.”

You looked up at her. “Our bakery?”

Titania’s eyes shone with light. “Yeah, the little bakery on the corner. I’d take you every morning for a cuppa and a scone.”

You swallowed. You had always remembered your mother taking you.

“And Henri just loved you. He’d always tell you that you were the finest lady in all of Velaris, and you’d twirl for him in those heels.” Titania seemed lost in the memory.

“It sounds like we had a lot of fun.” You tried to smile at her.

Titania’s lips curled slightly at the corners, the smear of her lipstick much more defined. “I tried to keep you busy. Especially since you had no manners in knocking before barging through doors. Can’t tell you how furious I used to get when you’d interrupt a client and lady.”

You chuckled lightly, trying to pull any of those memories from your mind. “I wish I could remember that.”

“What do you remember?” Titania asked, leaning onto the table slightly.

You thought through the memories. “I remember walking along the river with Mama. I remember playing in the squares, and I remember the trips she would take me on into the mountains.” You laughed lightly. “I remember that when the summer storms would roll through, I would hide under the bed. And if it was night, I’d wake up and cuddle into Mama.” You looked up at Titania, whose face had hardened slightly, her brow furrowed. “What?”

Titania shook her head out of whatever trance she seemed to be in, relaxing her face. “Oh, no, nothing.” Then she smiled.

You looked at her intently. “What are you thinking about?”

Titania threw her hands up. “What are you talking about? Nothing. I was thinking about the memories.”

“Yeah,” you started, gesturing to her, “but you made a face.”

Titania made a tight-lipped smile and looked down at her cup. “Sometimes, the memories aren’t always as sweet as we think.”

You shook your head lightly. “No, no, Mama and I did those things together.”

Titania licked her lips lightly, smearing the lipstick more. “No, my love. We did those things, except the trips to the woods.”

You shook your head more. “That can’t be right.”

Titania sighed, leaning forward once more and grasping your hands in hers. “My love,” she started, “your mother was a very troubled woman.” Your face fell, brows furrowing as you listened. “And she—she would fall into these spells, where she would just sort of lie around all day. I tried to get her up, get her back to work, but she just wouldn’t. So I’d send her out.” You shook your head lightly. “If she couldn’t work, she couldn’t stay; that was the rule. So I’d tell her to go out, get herself back up, and then come back when she was ready.”

You looked down at the table. “I remember her being around.” You looked up at Titania. “I remember her being around a lot.”

Titania threw you a small, sympathetic smile. “Whenever she was around, and she was,” she paused, “when she was on the right track, she would spend all the time with you she could, but she—she had problems.”

You felt a slight rising anger. “What kind of problems? She was sad? I mean, look where she was!”

Titania’s face hardened. “Watch your tone, my love.”

“No,” you cried out, “no, you would throw her out when she wasn’t ‘performing’ to your standards!”

“I would not!” Titania shot back, her fist pounding into the table, making the cups rattle. “Your mother was troubled.”

“You keep saying that, but you're not explaining what that means. What do you mean, troubled?” You glared at her.

Titania shook her head, looking down at the table. “Your mother—she,” Titania seemed to be searching for the words, “your mother relied on certain substances to feel normal. To be able to get out of bed.”

You looked at her, puzzled. “What do you mean, substances?”

Titania sighed. “Your mother, before I found her, was making some very dangerous choices, and she’d gotten in with a rather rough group of people. She was pretty reliant on Luster.”

“Luster?” You asked.

“You haven’t heard of it?”

You shook your head.

“You must have been really deep in the mountains.” Titania chuckled. “Luster is a euphoric. Fae that use it breathe it in as a shining powder to feel like they have some sort of spark in them. It’s cheap to buy and a lot of times is laced with other drugs to make it more potent. I’ve heard them say that they feel like there’s fire in their veins and that the world suddenly seems more colorful.”

“And it’s bad to use it?”

“Fae that use it, like your mother, and a lot of the fae that work in this area, for a long time, seem to not be able to be without it for long. If they go without it, they can go through Lusterburn, and they just sort of seem to be sleeping when they’re awake, or they become enraged, everyone seems to have a different response.”

“And you would throw my mother out for using it?”

Titania’s eyes hardened. “I’d make her leave when she used it around you.”

You leaned in. “Why would you do that?” Your brows furrow in confusion and anger.

Titania’s lips tightened slightly. “I don’t want to talk about this.” She leaned back.

Your face hardened as you commanded, “Tell me.”

Titania ran her tongue over her teeth as she gazed at you. Her leg bounced nervously under the table, and her heel clicked against the floor. “I don’t want to ruin the memories you have.”

“Apparently they’re all wrong anyway.” You responded quickly.

Titania sighed, her eyes softening. “Your mother was an addict, Y/N. She did things she wasn’t proud of, but she loved you. I didn’t want you to see her like that. I didn’t want you to see her when she was down, she’d just ignore you, or scream at you, and you’d cry for hours and she just- she wouldn’t care. That’s why I made her leave when she was using. I couldn’t bear to listen to you seem to lose all hope.”

You swallowed hard, processing the revelation. “So, all those times she left...”

“She was trying to get clean,” Titania finished for you. “She wanted to be the mother you deserved.”

Tears welled up in your eyes as you realized the weight of your mother’s struggles. Titania reached out and took your hand, squeezing it gently. “She loved you more than anything, Y/N. Remember that.”

You shook your head, distraught, trying to sift through the memories that you had held so dear, that had kept you going on the darkest days. “She left me,” you whispered softly, to no one in particular. As the words left your lips, they cemented the uncertainty of years gone by, and you considered whether it would have been better to continue living in ignorance.

Titania squeezed your hand again, her eyes turning down to the table. “I’m sorry I don’t know more about what happened to her.”

Without looking at her, you just replied, in a soft whisper, “I don’t know if I want to know anymore.”

The fae across from you took a deep inhale and exhale, as though she had let something go finally, after holding it in for years and years. “She tried to do right by you, Y/N. You have to know she wanted better for you, and whenever she would go on these benders—when she would come down, she would just sob and beg you to forgive her. She really did try.”

“I wasn’t enough.”

“You were more than enough.”

You looked up through your lashes, now heavy with tears, as Titania looked down at you, her mouth fluctuating in discomfort as she tried to find words to make this better. “I wasn’t enough to make her stop. She didn’t choose me.”

“My love, we don’t know why she left you.”

You shook your head. “She didn’t come back either. Even when we were in the village, she would disappear for days, telling me she was going hunting, or to visit someone, or to go gather supplies.” You paused, “And yet, when she never came back with anything, I didn’t question her.”

Titania brushed her nail down your hand. “I know, my love.”

You looked up at her. “Why didn’t she leave me with you?”

Titania took her turn looking down, her heel still clipping on the floor. “Your mother didn’t want you to end up as a pleasure lady.”

You scoffed, “What? She didn’t want me to carry on the family business?”

Titania’s face shifted to one of slight anger. “She didn’t want you to make her mistakes.”

“But we had a good life here,” you cried, tears hitting the table in soft thuds.

“You survived,” Titania responded quickly. “I tried to keep you safe, to feed you, to educate you, but you were sick constantly. You had these fevers that would spike often, and the healers didn’t think it right to use their time and resources on you. But every night when you would lie there,” Titania stopped as if she could see you before her as a child, “you would shake with the chills, and your face would be red, and you wouldn’t speak, just smile at me. Smile like nothing was wrong. And you would ask for her, your mother. You wanted her with you to make you feel better.” Titania choked back a sob. “And when I would try to find her, between clients, to bring her to you, she would just tell me to do my best with you and that she would see you in the morning.”

You wondered if being so sick, combined with your youth, was why your memories seemed so cloudy.

Your lips quivered under the weight of the words that hung in the air like daggers. “Why didn’t you take me anywhere?”

“I tried. I tried to get your mother into a sanctuary, in the library, under the House of Wind,” she paused again, “but the females there didn’t want to take in anyone who might bring in Luster and tempt the others who hadn’t been using it. And I tried to get you to go, but you just wouldn’t. You wanted to stay with us.” She looked up at you. “I’m so sorry, my love.”

You let a sob leave your throat as it burned through you. Your head swam with confusion at everything you felt your life was and had become. You couldn’t seem to stop trying to find her, your mother, her face long since forgotten in your mind, replaced by shadows and blurs which you now thought looked more like Titania than her.

Titania looked at you, her eyes full of sorrow, the red of her lips merely more than a pink now. “She would be proud of you.”

You shook your head. “She would despise me.”

“Look at where you are. Look at who you have become.” Titania urged, her hand lifting yours off the table.

“I have become homeless. I’m mated to a male who hurt me and did things to me I can’t even force myself to think about. I ran from everything and everyone. I have nothing. I am nothing. I’m no better than her.” You shook your head.

“You are not your mother,” Titania whispered as your tears clouded over your sight.

“I don’t even know who that is.” Another sob escaped you, raw and guttural. “I’m so tired, Titania.” Your body convulsed with the force of your emotions, wracking out through coughs and sobs. “I’m so tired of running and hiding. I’m tired of being hurt and never fully healing. I just—” A fresh wave of grief surged, making you gag on the bile rising in your throat. “I’m tired of pretending like the world is anything but lies and pain.”

Titania’s voice was a fragile whisper, filled with sorrow and helplessness. “I know, my love.” Your face grew hotter and wetter, tears and snot mingling as your shoulders heaved with choppy, pain-stricken sobs. She watched you fall apart, unable to stop your anguish. “You are lost,” she finally said as your sobs turned silent, “You are lost, but you are not forgotten. And you may not know the way back, but you can’t stop trying to find it.”

“I’m so tired.” You lifted your gaze, meeting Titania’s tear-filled eyes, the kohl that lined them streaking in black drifts down her cheeks. “I’m so tired of searching for anything.”

Titania’s smile was small but filled with a fierce, enduring love. “You’re not alone, my love. Not anymore.” She squeezed your hand. “And while I won’t let you call this your home, I will always be a home for you.”

Your lip continued to quiver as you looked at her, this woman who you had forgotten but who had never stopped thinking about you. She sat across from you, so full of hope for your future, despite her own life being bleak. Her love and faith in you were palpable, a lifeline you hadn’t realized you needed.

You smiled lightly, a simple gesture that seemed to mean the world. Titania rose from her chair, dropping to her knees before you, wrapping her arms around your neck and back. She held you tight, and in that moment, you felt the promise of home. The sweet scent of peppermint, a fragment of a lost memory, washed over you. You thought of her, of Titania.

As you wrapped your arms around each other, Titania’s bony frame seemed fragile, almost breakable at your touch. “I’m not angry with what you do,” you whispered. Titania pulled back, looking at you with tear-filled eyes. “You take care of people. You offer them a home and hope.” Her lips began to quiver. “I don’t care what you or anyone else does for money. I care about what you do and have done for others, and I can’t thank you enough for what you did for me.”

Titania let another tear roll down her cheek, her gaze locked with yours. “I could have done so much more for you, my love,” she said, her voice breaking. She turned away, but you pulled her back.

“You did what you could.”

The two of you sat there for a few moments, looking into each other’s eyes, sharing a connection forged in survival. You were two survivors of a life neither of you had asked for, yet you had saved each other, drifting apart only to be brought back together by fate. In this moment, in this kitchen, you were alive and filled with hope, held together by memories that refused to fade.

To my readers, I promise this is still an Azriel fanfiction, the boy will be back. @thatacotargirl @mcuamerica @lilah-asteria @florabelll @fightmedraco @marvelbros-oneshots @mariahoedt @quinzzelx @romantasyreader28 @minnieoo @mysteriouslydeafeningwerewolf @annabethgranger123 @krowiathemythologynerd @scatteredstardustt @romantacyreader28 @caroline-books @slytherintaco @sevikas-whore @sidthedollface2 @405rry @sleepylunarwolf @acourtofbatboydreams @quiettuba @julesofvolterra @skylarkalchemist @darling006 @rhysandorian

[foursaints]

berliner remus thoughts 🤲🤲🤲🤲

yes yes that man is sitting by an open window in freezing weather eating a single hard boiled egg and flavorless pasta salad, and he can unwittingly come across as quite unsentimental or rude or blunt, and his jokes are awful and overly literal (“a werewolf? he’s sitting in my chair!!11!1”) so remus is a damp paper towel, i agree. but these same things also make him a really stereotypical berliner schnauze

in terms of modern au it's just a funny detail that makes a lot of sense (remus is in a knit turtleneck but still stomping his way through Friedrichshain in crustie doc martens), but its more interesting to me in my personal view of canon?? like this is the 70s. it's before the fall of the iron curtain, remus is growing up in a postwar city halved by the Wall, isolated from the world by the cold war, and filled with spies and punk music and poverty

in my headcanon, remus was separated from his (bavarian) family by the wall and grows up alone as a muggle in kreuzberg, west berlin. i like the idea of remus as a penniless lycanthropic preteen at the very height of Deutschpunk, cynical but still young, going to all the shows covered in scars just looking for a place to sleep. he grows up collecting gutter cigarettes and not eating enough and sharing a filthy flat with a rotating cast of sometimes-benevolent older teens with drug problems. he sees things pragmatically and he sleeps too much and spends his full moons in the abandoned train tunnels under Potsdamer Platz and he shaves his head to fit in and he loiters, eating peanuts off the bar at all the music clubs down Oranienstraße, thinking his life is dull and lonely and monotonous and grey and wishing it could maybe be something more. and then, of course, he gets his Hogwarts letter

[calicohyde]

Lady In Red: Chapter One of Curse The Messenger Draft 1.4

I reached a follower milestone hosted a poll about what I should do to celebrate, and you all voted that I should publicly post this chapter of Curse The Messenger! I'm posting this here as well as on AO3. If you prefer to read it there, click here. Listen to this WIP's playlist while you read!

Chapter Summary:

Eddie Alfaro is dissatisfied with her job as a clairvoyant private investigator. The community of witches that makes up her clientele are prejudiced against her for her gift of Seeing, and the cases are always inconsequential and boring anyway. Infidelity, stolen heirlooms, that kind of thing. On top of that she's struggling with survivor's guilt, grief, and alcoholism, and she thinks her sibling is starting to get sick of her shit.

Then a gorgeous, elegant stranger shows up on Eddie's door and offers her an interesting case - a murder with no body. The woman says the case is Eddie's to solve, provided Eddie can figure her out first.

ENTICEMENT TAGS: Horror, Detective Noir, Urban Fantasy, Modern with Magic, Murder Mystery, Suspense, Surrealism, Character(s) of Color, Queer Character(s), Autistic Character(s), Nonbinary Character(s), Neopronouns, 1990s, Private Investigators, Romance, First Meetings, Butch/Femme

CONTENT WARNINGS: Body Horror, Sleep Paralysis, Possession, Unreality, Blood, Alcohol Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Suicidal Thoughts, Smoking

All nights are dark, and a fair few are stormy too. On those nights, the trees lining the streets shake in vengeful winds. Water comes down sideways. It could soak a loyal guard cat through all the way down past its thick undercoat. It would have to swim through the intersections.

Human beings don't mind the wet so much, though. No city truly sleeps, and Cane Street still enjoys a sluggish cacophony of visitors even late on a night like this. The chatter of people - and of the things besides people that hover around them - rises above the din of the rain pattering down on the striped awnings. The soft, desaturated glow of decorative string lights in the shallow darkness casts ill-fitting halos over the heads of smoking diner patrons. Lightning snaps bright across the dark sky, forcing any wandering shadows back into place beneath their casters.

On the residential streets, the noise from the commercial block is muffled but still present under the rain. It's darker here too. There's less light pollution of course, but that's not the only thing keeping the night black. Shadows would be wise to stick a little closer when walking here. The cats watch from the trees and the quiet apartment buildings, ready to catch anything that makes itself a little too interesting.

The houses are dark for the night and just shy of uniform, each with brick porches and wrought iron banisters. But every now and then there is one that has the air of witchery about it. Lots of people have power, though there aren't many with enough to do anything with. That's luckier than not.

Barely audible to a particularly sensitive ear is the click click click of someone in heels coming nearer and nearer. Most nights, there isn't anyone there. The gutters are full with rushing water and the stench of stirred up sewage, and beady little eyes. Some of them are just rats.

There is a two family home on the corner of Seventh and Spring, right across the street from a hole in the wall bar that would never let itself be seen closed. The house is exactly the same as every other in the neighborhood - when observed with only five senses.

The pillars are square and brick. The wrought iron railing along the concrete porch steps is the same boring twists as all the others. It has two dark wood front doors, both with even darker curtains covering their thin windows. The birch tree in the yard is ostensibly for shade, but was more likely planted for the benefit of the property value.

The only thing that separates the house that two eyes can see is the lively honeysuckle vine crawling its way up the right side, the buds reading out into the cramped alley in between this house and the next. Currently, it's wilting pathetically under the onslaught of rain. Fragrant crushed petals litter the alley gravel. What makes it special is that it blooms all year round, heedless of the seasons. Rumor among the local coven says that the residents of the building were given the plant by their absent father when he left them.

Rumors are loathsome as a rule. That one is in especially poor taste.

On this particular dark and stormy night, a long-haired person in an ankle length beige skirt comes out of the right side door of the house, crying softly enough not to be heard in the rain. Another person comes out after them - Fred, the elder of the siblings that live here. Xe's dressed in xyr typical ensemble: a fitted suit in some pale color, the exact shade obscured by the darkness of the hour and the ugly yellow of the porch light.

If an observer could look with more than two eyes - as more than one might like to think can do - the house is a stinking, glowing locus of magic. The two people on the porch stand out from it with their own auras of power.

Fred gives the impression of the palest of purples, like the honeysuckle flowers growing unnaturally in xyr yard. The other person isn't as powerful as Fred, but still of note. Their metaphysical shade matches their skirt, a pleasant light tan. The two auras interact strangely with the glaring overhead porch light. Occasionally the thing flickers, throwing their faces into drastically alternating shadows and relief.

Eventually, Fred claps a hand on the stranger's shoulder, ever more personable than xyr sister. Xe steers them toward the steps. The beige person doesn't have an umbrella with them, and yet they don't seem to get wet as they walk out from underneath Fred's porch and into the downpour. Fred does not watch them go.

Inside is dry and warm, but not much quieter. The windows are open to let in the noise and the washed-clean air. The spicy, earthy scent of burned sage almost covers up the smell of grease and salt from Chinese food take-out. Eddie sits cross legged on top of the work desk.

The desk is an imposing piece of work that was given to them by their papá before he left. Unlike the bit about the honeysuckle, that's a fact. It looks just like him too - hard, brown, and square. It's more than a decade old now and it shows; it's covered in scuffs and scratches and condensation rings. There are noodles on top now too, because Eddie still can't use chopsticks for shit.

The strap of Eddie's black coveralls falls down over one of her slouched shoulders. Her thick brown hair is dry and tangled, just beginning to curl over the collar of her white t-shirt. She'll be taking to it with a pair of kitchen shears some time soon.

Eddie's aura is stronger than her sibling's. That means she's more powerful than Fred, but for unfortunates who have to perceive it, that's no blessing. Eddie's presence is angry and sour, dull even despite its strength. It's the same bloody piss shade of brown as the whisky she's gulping down in between bites of lo mein.

"'Watchtower,'" she slurs derisively, continuing on from some age old argument that deserved Fred walking out on it. Her voice is thick, both with drink and with scorn. "What are we watching, anyway? Not shit. We're a joke."

"Don't say that," Fred says quietly. Xe could stand to be a little less feather light on xyr sister, but xe won't be. Not tonight. Tonight xe will fall on her cool and gentle, like the rain as it slows.

"It's not like anyone ever asks us to do anything important," Eddie insists. "And even if they ever did it's not like we could do it. We should just give up." Before Eddie finishes speaking, her sibling is already shaking xyr head.

"Eddie," xe sighs. Xyr voice is half scolding and half preternaturally patient. It's impossible to say how xe does this. "What we do is important to our clients. We help people."

Eddie only laughs, meanly, and drinks.

The siblings sit in silence for long minutes, until all the food has been eaten and the candles have all gone out. Then Fred rises and wrestles the booze away from xyr sister. The painful routine about to unfold is familiar to them both.

Fred tugs at Eddie's shoulder, Eddie grumbling in drunken recalcitrance and refusing to stand until Fred gives up and drags her bodily off of the desk by force. Papers rustle as they're crushed and ripped under Eddie's ass. There's the dull clink of hard plastic falling to the wood floor. The siblings put all their glass away a long time ago.

Fred all but carries Eddie from the right side of the house, the headquarters of Watchtower Investigations. Past the organized chaos of crystals and candles and dubiously legal photographs, through the door with the frosted window, and across the hall to the left side apartment where they live. Fred drags Eddie through there too, and then dumps her into her bed. Xe doesn't let her see xem flinch when she turns away from xyr attempt to kiss her forehead.

It may take hours for Eddie to sink into sleep, or it may take minutes. Inebriation can make telling the difference a little difficult. The drink makes her limbs heavy and keeps her tears at bay, never mind if she might like to cry them or not. She can hardly remember what that feels like by now, after so many years of falling to bed from Fred's arms just like this. Although as drunk as she is, she can hardly remember much else either.

When at last Eddie does sleep, the sky is still dark but now clear.

The moon and the light pollution in the city together are easy to see by, even in the dirty back alleys. She can navigate them without much trouble, each one familiar to her from all her time spent here during the days. She creeps past the cracked open back door of a bar. The lights from inside fall half across her face, the smell of booze and the smoke of cigarettes gusting over her like the bar is breathing.

She expects a rancor of cheerful voices with an undercurrent of tinny rock music. Instead there is silence, heavy to near painfulness in her ears. She wants to pause in the doorway and stare, to take a moment to reconcile the sight with the lack of sound, but her gaze and her body continue on as if she is not their pilot.

Her dirty blonde hair falls into her face and she blows it away with a puff out the side of her mouth. Her hands are full with her camera in one hand and the pocket knife her girlfriend gave her in the other. Her glasses slip down her sweaty nose, and she can't push those up either. Luckily her frames are large enough that she can still see through them, for now.

Finally, a lone noise comes to her ears from up ahead. It's the muffled splat of something wet landing onto the gravel of the alley below it. It's not loud; it must have fallen - or been dropped - from a short distance.

Her heart picks up speed. She hadn't noticed it was already racing, but now it pounds painfully against her sternum, impossible to ignore. Her grip tightens on her camera, her shaking finger hovering preemptively over the shutter button as if it's the trigger of a gun.

If she's right she'll finally be able to prove it, get someone to take her seriously and do something. But if she's right - and she knows she is - that means she's in more danger than she's ever been in before, and that's not saying a little. She should turn and run. She should go back home, or even better she should go to someone else's place. Maybe she could move into Bacchanalia for a while.

But she's never been known for that kind of caution. She's wise in other ways. She takes quiet steps closer.

She's woefully, sickeningly unprepared, she realizes all of a sudden. She has all the knowledge she could possibly have (and knowledge is power; she truly believes that). Her confidence in her evidence is unflinching. When she set out tonight, she knew the pocket knife she wields now wasn't much as far as weapons but it was more than she'd usually carry and it made her feel safer. It made her feel like she could be more of a threat, if she needed to be. But now she can only feel the sucking lack of power in herself. There's a sense of absence there, an unfamiliar helplessness crawling up and down her spine chillingly. It nauseates her, like the slow slimy touch of a giant slug.

At this moment, she is only exactly as she seems. Something about that just doesn't feel right.

Still, she continues forward. She's desperate at this point to turn back. The urge wells up behind her eyes like unshed tears. No part of her pays her feelings any mind. (That, at least, is not so unusual.)

Shaking, she flattens herself against the brick to her side as the building comes to an end at a corner. She takes a deep breath that serves only to make her panic worse, sucking in the scent of damp earth and bar trash and blood, thick and tangy metallic in the air. It's more blood, she's certain - despite the ease with which she recognizes the smell - than she has ever encountered before.

The rough brick of the wall scratches against her cheek. She tightens her grip again on her pocket knife, regardless of her lack of faith in it. She raises her camera with her other hand, pointed toward the other side of the alley, the open corner, the wet redness in the dirt oozing closer to her…

It's still dark, but the darkness is impenetrable. It doesn't matter that Eddie can't see; there are no true surroundings here, no details to parse, nothing more to know than the existence of herself. There is only the weakness of her body, the numbing pain in her wrists, her cold sweat, the chill of the tile flooring against her back through the sheer fabric of her dress. The smell of blood remains.

Eddie raises her arms with great effort. They feel so heavy, and they shake. Her biceps feel the burn of the exertion within seconds, but she doesn't drop her hands. Working past the fatigue, she closes her hands around her own throat. It's hard to get a grip, her hands slippery and slick with warm wetness.

"Please," she begs aloud. Her voice comes out wrong, but familiar. A little higher, a little sweeter, softer, happier. The voice of a distant memory, a voice from her childhood. She wants so badly to take comfort from it. She wants so badly for things to go differently this time.

She tightens her grip.

"My baby, my sweet girl, please, let me live."

Eddie starts to cry, and it's such a fucking relief. Her tears are warm and salty when they fall over her lips. Her stomach roils with nauseous fear and guilt, but part of her has already accepted her fate. Part of her wants it. She continues to beg herself for her life, but she smiles her forgiveness all the while.

Her neck begins to bruise. Eddie feels the almost satisfying give under her hands and the crushing pain in her throat together. Still she squeezes down, her nails digging in to keep her grip, scraping away furrows of skin. Her voice is unaffected somehow, still light, still cheerful and gentle and kind. She gives herself no mercy, until finally she stops breathing and she is at last silenced.

Her body dies and goes stiff and cold, but Eddie remains aware. The stillness of her heart and her lungs fills her with a terror that grows inside her like the opening of a terrible maw. She wishes she could just give into it, let it swallow her up whole and crush her down into nothing. She's already dead, really, so why should she want so desperately to breathe? But she does, clinging to the facsimile of life she still has.

There is movement in the deep darkness. She sees it from the corner of her eye, but she can't turn to look closer. Dead bodies don't move. A whimper builds behind her teeth, but she doesn't have the breath to give it voice. Even if she did, she couldn't open her mouth enough to let it out. The only thing she can do is wait, and hope - that she'll be able to breathe soon, and that whatever the thing is won't make her stop again.

The thing gets close enough to see, resolving itself out of the darkness into her father. He stands over Eddie in the outfit she last saw him in. A brown tweed duster, the same style of overwear that Fred now favors, a denim shirt buttoned all the way up, thin dark brown scarf, pants and a belt and boots that match it. Apá always liked to look just so. Fuck, she misses him so much. She's glad to see him, even though she's dead and he's looking down at her like he might look at any other corpse he stumbled upon in the dark.

"Why did you do that?" he asks eventually. His tone is mild, curious, as familiar and nostalgic as the other voice that came out of her own wretched mouth as she killed herself. He sighs deeply. Eddie's crushed throat and her chest are tight and hot with the need to copy him. To breathe. "Tell me that, querida. Why would you kill your own mother?"

Eddie knows she's dreaming now. She's had this one before. She needs to wake up so that she can breathe. She needs to breathe if she wants to wake up.

If.

She could always just stay here. Maybe it would be just for a minute, but dreams always feel longer than they really are. It might even feel like forever. She could stay here with Apá. He's staring down at her with disappointment and disgust, but at least he's here.

He's wearing his dumb overthought outfit and his stubble is salted and Eddie would bet he probably smells like palo santo and fresh tobacco like he always did before. Eddie can't smell him, and she won't even if she stays, because she can't breathe. But even though her chest is painfully tight and Apá obviously hates her, she can think of worse ways to die.

More importantly, she can think of plenty worse ways to keep on living.

It doesn't matter what she wants, either way. Not in this and not in anything else either. She dies at the whim of her dreams, and she lives on the say of whatever wakes her.

Eddie wakes up.

Her eyes are closed and the darkness and her father are the only reality, and then her eyes are open and she's staring up at the plaster ceiling of her bedroom. She still can't move and she still can't breathe, but she can feel the breeze coming in from her open window tickle over her exposed face and arms. She can hear the patter of the rain. Her sheer curtains billow.

Something moves in the shadows.

Eddie stares hard into the dark, her heart racing and making her need for air even more urgent.

She sees dark hair and two dark eyes, a frown, the suggestion of broad shoulders covered in tweed.

Apá. Still glaring down at her. He mutters but Eddie can't understand what he's saying no matter how hard she strains her hearing. She tries to reach out for him, but her arms refuse to so much as twitch.

Before Eddie's tired eyes, Apá starts to melt. The lighter tones of his skin drip down onto the deep darkness of his clothing. The shadow of his hair ruins the lines of his features. The shine of his eyes in the moonlight snuffs out and his height decreases in a lopsided rush that disappears into the negative space of Eddie's unlit bedroom floor.

Eddie gasps into full wakefulness when the specter of her father is completely gone. She breathes in deep - both the air and the rush of becoming aware of her power again. The late summer air is wet and cool in her lungs; her magic feels heavy and warm like an internal weighted blanket. It would be pleasant, but Eddie can only think about Apá and how he's gone again. That hurts more than getting her throat crushed with no contest.

The nightmare is awful and familiar. It's been a recurring punishment for Eddie ever since Apá disappeared for the last time of many, nearly twelve years ago now. Eddie loses him all over again almost every night and it never hurts any less. It happens so often she might even have been able to get used to it, pain and all, if she could ever be positive he isn't really there. She can't be sure he doesn't blame her too, that he doesn't choose to leave her again and again and again.

The other parts, the sneaking around in the alley to take pictures of something dangerous and bloody… Well, that could just as easily be some random nightmare her brain decided to make up to torment her with as it could be a real premonition. They're tough to tell apart. Most of the time these days, Eddie doesn't even bother to try.

What does it matter, anyway? The nightmare she woke up to is just as real and true and any premonition, if maybe not quite as literal. And there's not a damn thing Eddie can do about either of them. There never has been, and there never will be.

When her chest has stopped heaving, and the tears she cried in her sleep have dried, Eddie rolls over towards her bedside table. Her hair falls into her face, dark brown like it's supposed to be. She pulls open the little drawer roughly and tugs out her dream journal and a pen. She ignores the crumpled pages that fall out, uncaring. There's a lamp on the table but Eddie doesn't turn in on to write, scribbling haphazardly across a page that looks like it's probably blank. She opens her hands and lets the book and pen drop to the floor when she's done, and flops onto her back.

It's supposed to help. Writing it down. Fuck knows how. But it's a habit now.

Eddie lies in bed and stares up at her ceiling. The off-white plaster looks the same now as it had minutes ago when Eddie woke up paralyzed and could only see the rest of her room by straining her peripheral vision. It's gray in the silvery moonlight. The ghostly shadows of her curtains dance across her blanket covered legs when the wind gusts them around.

Eddie holds her breath for as long as she can. Nothing steps forward out of the dim.

The fatigue and painful tightness in the chest when suffocating feels a little bit like a heart attack, Eddie muses idly. Once a client's husband had one while they were working his case. The case had only been to find the guy's long lost auntie or something, completely unrelated to his husband. But Eddie had the privilege to die with him anyway.

The bruising of her throat, her windpipe getting crushed, that could be likened to being hanged. Someone that used to go to the bar across the street had done themselves in that way once. They hadn't been working a case for them, hadn't been introduced as far as Eddie remembers, might not have even ever seen each other in passing. But still, Eddie got to die with them.

The light in the room changes slowly as the night and its storm both come to end and the sun begins the arduous process of rising. The early morning sounds of the city come in through the window with the summer breeze now. The chirping of the early birds is loud and sharp, each tweet stabbing into Eddie's ears like an ice pick. She grits her teeth and rolls away from the window, thinking hard about how badly she wants them to shut up. Maybe if she can just be annoyed enough everything will stop.

There's a prickle on the back of her neck, the feeling of being watched. She ignores it. It could be a holdover from the dream. Or maybe she has a stalker. Who gives a shit.

Soon enough, Fred gets up. Eddie listens to xem going through xyr morning routine from underneath her slightly musty pillow, held tight over her ear. She needs to do laundry soon. She needed to do laundry a week ago.

Fred sings in the shower. Eddie's throat goes tight again, her eyes hot, but no more tears come out. She can't cry when she's awake. Her grief is reserved for strangers.

She's so fucking proud and grateful that Fred can be happy. She's also wretchedly jealous. Resentful. She can't help but want that for herself, and she hates Fred every now and then for having it when she can't. She makes herself sick.

The drawers open and close in Fred's room down the hall as xe gets dressed. The creaky floorboard in the hall whines as Fred passes Eddie's room to go make breakfast for both of them. In short order, the smells of coffee and breakfast sausage join the smoke of Fred's first cigarette of the day.

Get out of bed now , Eddie tells herself. She doesn't move. Her body is so heavy and distant. It feels just as beyond her control now as it does during any premonition or nightmare, except that right now there's no reason for it. She should be able to just get the fuck out of bed . She scolds herself that Fred will want her to get out of bed on her own like a goddamn grown up for once.

Then again, Fred would probably have a better morning if xe didn't have to deal with Eddie at all, in bed or out of it.

Get out of bed , Eddie thinks, fiercer and more frustrated with every repetition. Get up. Get the fuck up. Get up. But she never manages to move.

"Eddie?" Fred asks softly from the doorway. Eddie hadn't noticed her door open, too busy trying to get herself to function. "Are you awake yet, cariño?"

Eddie wants to answer because Fred deserves to be treated nicely, but she also wants Fred to just leave her alone. She ends up splitting the difference and just grunting at xem. Fred sighs deeply, and Eddie seethes. She's not sure if she's angry at Fred or at herself. Probably both.

"C'mon, hermanita," Fred says, xyr voice growing closer as xe comes inside the room. The closer xe comes the tighter Eddie's shoulders coil, until the tension starts to hurt her neck. She dreads Fred reaching her bed without her moving and then having to tell Fred she won't get up today. Either Fred will accept that with a disappointed sight and leave her here, or xe'll insist Eddie get up. Both are equally as terrible as each other.

Eddie continues to demand of herself to get up , to fucking move , frantically now, inside her head. Still nothing happens. Fred's weight settles on the bed at Eddie's side and xyr hand cups her shoulder. Xyr touch is gentle and warm and could easily be comforting, if Eddie wasn't so fucked up that she can only feel one thing - or nothing at all or, sometimes, on bad days, some inexplicable twisted combination of the two.

"Come on, Eddie, get up," Fred says, shaking her gently. Eddie grits her teeth. If a simple urging could do it, Eddie would have been up hours ago. It's not that easy. There's no reason it should be any harder, but still it's just not that easy. She wants to shrug her sibling's grip off, but she can't even do that. She just lies still in her unwashed sheets and bears it.

"Okay," Fred sighs, and Eddie's dread builds. Now is the moment. Either Fred will leave her here all day and continue on living life without her, or xe will make her get up and she'll be forced to listlessly go through the motions of the minimum eight to ten hours before she can come back here to her stale and lonely room.

Apparently, today it's going to be the latter option. Fred tugs the pillow out of Eddie's clinging hands. Xe ignores Eddie's childish whine. Xe tosses the thing down to the foot of the bed so that Eddie would have to sit up to get it back, if she wants it badly enough. Then xe goes back to Eddie's shoulder, xyr touch much less gentle now, not intended for comfort at all. Fred pulls Eddie over onto her back, and then when she doesn't move from there except to turn her face away from xem, xe stands and looks down at her with xyr hands on xyr hips.

Eddie knows Fred probably isn't judging her, or at least not in the way she fears, but since she's not looking at xyr face she can't know for sure. She's too much of a coward to take the risk and double check.

Eddie listens as Fred moves around her bed. Xyr tread is as light as always on the hardwood floors, but the buckles on xyr boots jingle flatly with each step. Fred is like some kind of punk rock souvenir bell. Ting-ting -socialism is cool- ting .

Fred's hand circles around one of Eddie's ankles.

"You know I'll do it, Ed," xe says, and xe's not lying. Fred definitely will drag Eddie bodily out of this bed, and Eddie knows it from extensive past experience. Some days a little tussle between siblings in the morning gets the blood pumping and the rest of the requisite eight to ten hours end up with buttery yellow stripes of happiness coming in like sunlight through the broken drawn blinds of Eddie's faulty brain. Some days it's just another layer of shit on top of the festering pile that Eddie is already buried under.

Eddie tries to convince herself one more time to save them both the humiliation and frustration and just get up on her own. She can even feel the potential energy build up in her extremities; she's right on the cusp of moving, maybe, any second now. But the energy only continues to build up until Eddie feels like she's vibrating with it and her half-desperate half-hateful thoughts go buzzing around her head like angry flies.

"Okay," Fred repeats, xyr voice soft and sad. Then xe pulls.

It takes long unhappy moments to get Eddie upright. Fred does most of the work. In the case of standing on your own two feet, it's not the thought that counts at all. Fred is breathing a little heavily and xyr hair is messed up by the time Eddie is upright and standing on her own power.

Eddie mostly just wants to go right back to bed, or to melt into the floor like Apá did - or her dream of him, but who can tell the difference. The thought triggers a surge of guilt, and it compounds with the shame, making Eddie feel heavier and weaker and heavier and weaker.

Turns out she was right. Fred would have absolutely had a much better morning if not for Eddie.

"C'mon, I made breakfast," Fred tells her as xe turns to leave the room. They both know Eddie already knows that, from hearing and smelling it and from the routine. Fred always breakfast or else nobody will and the two of them will have to subsist on cigarettes and booze, respectively. Fred likes to take care of xyr body, aside from xyr one vice, and so xe makes breakfast. Xe makes enough for Eddie every time out of the goodness of xyr heart.

Eddie vacillates sluggishly between the call of food and coffee and the warmth of her bed before finally following her sibling into the kitchen. She'd love to collapse onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar, but they're too high and she's too short, so instead she has to boost herself up with a foot on the rung between the legs. It's more effort than it should be, but she does like that she can swing her feet like a kid once she's up there.

Fred has already eaten, xyr lone dish already rinsed and sitting in the sink. Xe stands between the back counter and the bar, facing Eddie as she serves herself some eggs on autopilot. They're probably cold by now, and eggs aren't her favorite thing to begin with, but she puts some into her mouth with her fingers anyway. She chews perfunctorily and swallows it down. For a moment she has the uncharitable urge to open her mouth and make a show of proving to Fred that she ate it.

Unaware of Eddie's boorish attitude, Fred makes a face at her table manners. Xe fishes a fork out of the drawer and slides it across the bar to rest at Eddie's elbow. Eddie leaves it where it is and pointedly licks grease off of her fingers. She'll live, fine, but she's not going to be polite about it. Fred sighs through xyr nose, on part exasperated and one part amused. Eddie will take one part over none.

"Jay's case won't be too difficult," Fred says. Xe slips a cigarette out of xyr shiny case and lights it up with xyr zippo lighter. Eddie picks at her food in silence, waiting for the dark and spicy scent of clove smoke to reach her across the breakfast bar. It's the same scent that used to cling to Apá's coat. Same brand and all.

Fred flips the zippo open and closed as xe takes a long, long drag. That particular lighter was a gift from Apá the last time they saw him. Fred likes to say it was for xyr nineteenth birthday, because that was the closest occasion. Eddie closes her eyes and breathes in the smell, remembering.

"Yet another stolen heirloom," Eddie mutters over her cold eggs, referring to the case in question. Jay was here last night. Eddie knows she probably made a shit first impression, though she doesn't remember it clearly. It was past dinnertime and she was well on her way to hosed in preparation for bed. "Riveting stuff. Real important."

Fred takes another long, long drag before speaking, visibly gathering xyr patience. Eddie wonders when that resource will finally run out.

"The diamond isn't just an heirloom, Eddie," xe says once xe has taken the cigarette out from between xyr lips, leaning over the breakfast bar to emphasize xemself. "It's part of an active spell. If some blockhead secular swiped it looking for a payday it could be dangerous."

Eddie doesn't answer. She knows the diamond they've been hired to track down came out of a blessing box passed down to Jay by a great great great grandmother, and that it'll have the family's magic all over it. It could react badly to being separated from the other components of the spell.

She also knows that they're Jay's last resort. Jay didn't say so, but Eddie doesn't need to hear it said to know it. Jay isn't a Clairvoyant, like the two of them are, so there's no way they were a first or second, third, or fourth choice. Eddie doesn't begrudge people their hesitance though. She'd avoid her too, if she could.

"Look, hermanita," Fred says, mostly sympathetic this time, though Eddie doesn't doubt it's at least half put-on. "We've got that little diamond Scrying ball now. I can probably just use like to find like, and you won't need to use your gift at all for this one."

Eddie laughs, bitter and sharp. It stings in her throat, like whisky coming back up.

"You and I both know Seeing isn't a gift," she counters, her mouth twisted up into a painfully wry approximation of a smile. Her dreams from the night well up behind her eyes like her mind is a backed up garbage disposal. Whoever that blonde was is probably dead by now, and all Eddie feels about it is one part gladness that she wasn't there long enough to know and one part resentment over how she has nothing to do with anything in Eddie's life and Eddie still had to feel her terror anyway. "And I don't use it. It uses me. Whether anyone needs it to or not."

Fred just sucks down the rest of xyr cigarette, looking like xe might cry when Eddie pushes aside the rest of the cold eggs and pours herself a glass of red wine instead.

It could be worse, Eddie reasons to herself as she takes a generous gulp. At least this is made of fruit.

Eddie finishes her 'breakfast' at a leisurely pace while Fred lights up another clove. Xe is always getting onto Eddie for her drinking, as if xyr vice isn't just as bad for xem. But Eddie supposes that's what older siblings are for, if you don't have parents to do the job. After the wine is gone and the last wisps of smoke are lingering near the ceiling, it's time to get to work.

The office is just next door. There are two doors out front, one to the office and one to their home, as well as one between the two inside. The door windows are frosted and tinted slightly purple, the color of Clairvoyance. At least they get to be pretty. Both office doors have the business stuck on with vinyl in the window in a compressed serif font. Watchtower Private Investigations, named so after the height of the building, unusual for the street. The hinges and the wood floor both whine in complaint at Eddie's rough treatment of them as she makes her way inside before Fred.

The office is a hodgepodge of the usual administrative office stuff and the more esoteric detritus of witchcraft. The desk is covered with meticulously labeled manila folders, though some of them have been crumpled or strewn across the floor due to Eddie's flawed dismount last night. The bookshelves are filled half with shiny paperbacks on business, finance, and law, and half with yellowed old tomes on dream-working and potion-making. There's an altar set up on cloth on top of the filing cabinet.

Eddie crosses the space, avoiding looking at the files she ruined so diligently that she steps on a few. The windows at the back of the room are still cracked open. The air in here is perpetually hazy from the smoke of Fred's cigarettes and all the incense they burn. Fragrant dust swirls around in the sunbeams from the tobacco stained glass. It's probably beautiful, in its way.

Eddie yanks the curtains closed, blocking out the light. Her head hurts enough already, and she forgot her sunglasses downstairs and across the hall.

Fred sighs through xyr nose at Eddie's heelish behavior, clicking xyr tongue in disapproval at the files on the floor. Xe visibly debates stooping to pick them up, before sighing one more time and turning away from the whole sorry scene. Xyr shoulders are strong, nearly as broad as Apá's, but they droop under xyr neatly pressed seafoam green jacket. Xe sighs so much, Eddie thinks, because she makes it harder for xem to breathe than even all that tar can manage.

While Fred's back is turned, Eddie picks up the files. She does her best to smooth out the ones her ass tore up last night, and the ones she stepped on just now. She doesn't have much luck, but then again she never really does. Except maybe with the ladies.

The wingback chair at Apá's desk is ratty and faded, but still imposing. It's one of Eddie's few joys in life to sit in it and feel it at her back, making her a little bit bigger in her britches. If she wore britches. Whatever the hell britches are. It used to be a deep, velvety blood red, but that was before Eddie was even born. Now, it's a patchy burnt orange with blooms of light mauve where the friction is highest and the pile has worn down to pale threads. The thing is sturdy, though. Sturdier than the fucking floor, apparently, since unlike the floor it doesn't creak a bit when Eddie drops herself into like ice into a glass.

The top drawer on the left has a bottle of Jack in it. Eddie's fingers alight on the drawer's handle, dancing along to the tune the whisky sings from inside. The tinkle of piano keys, of ice in a lowball, promising to bounce anything and everything else at the door. Or at least to charge it a few details to get in.

"Don't," Fred murmurs, across the room and with xyr back still turned. "At least help me with this spell first before you start."

Eddie leaves her hand on the drawer, ornery. I've already started , she thinks of saying. Or maybe, You're not my parent . But she's been childish enough for the first few hours of the day. She curls her hand into a fist, and then she tucks it under her knee.

Fred eventually joins Eddie at Apá's desk, xyr arms full with the paraphernalia of xyr intentions. A small crystal ball, a stand for it, the Scrying board, a cup full of colored chalk, a box of incense cones, and a ceramic tray to burn them on. Eddie clears the center of the desk for xem, files on either side. One of those is probably Jay's. No doubt she'll have to dig it out in a minute.

Fred sets up the Scrying altar in the center of the desk to xyr specifications. Fred's power and process is as much a mystery to Eddie as Eddie's is to Fred. Not that Eddie really has much of a process to understand.

"Like to like," Fred explains idly as xe marks symbols onto the wood of the Scrying board with the chalk. Xe came up with the symbols xemself, sigils to make the ordeal of connecting to the crystals easier, and to help xem actually do what they intend. Even with the help, often Fred still ends up connecting to something that doesn't help them. Xe has near-equal chances here to find Jay's diamond as to end up spiritually trapped in a Shane Company warehouse.

Fred's own diamond is modest, as far as crystal balls go. Just barely big enough to fill the palm of Fred's hand, smoothed into a perfect sphere but otherwise uncut. It glitters with yellow-golden flecks and black impurities, but besides those it's clearer and more reflective inside than quartz is.

Eddie lights the frankincense while Fred sets the ball into its stand. The earthy, spicy-sweet scent surrounds them quickly. Elecampane would be better for this, but it's rare and expensive and often faked. Its only use is for Clairvoyance, after all. Anyone seeking it out is probably better off with the dud. Frankincense is a good enough substitute, magically speaking. And it even smells similar, too.

Fred shoos Eddie out of the wingback chair when the set up is done, and Eddie reluctantly cedes it to xem. Xe contorts xemself into a cross-legged position in it, and then stares into xyr diamond ball intently.

To Eddie, nothing seems to happen. Not outside of Fred, anyway.

It's always a little bit scary to see Fred scry. Xe seems to disappear entirely from xemself, leaving xyr empty body behind. Xyr pupils dilate like xe've done a line. Xyr irises take on an oily purplish sheen, the something else that is controlling the operation showing through. The incense smoke curls around xem like a pet snake, overeager for affection - or for a meal.

Out loud, Fred intones, "West. Dark. Familiar."

Fred's voice is low and quiet, with an inflection that makes xem sound inhuman, but other than that it's as familiar as always. It reminds Eddie of both of their parents; the steadiness of their father, the sweetness of their mother, and the underlying croak they all have from smoking like chimneys.

Eddie writes down the insight, and then the only thing she can do is wait for the crystals to release Fred back into the living world. She leaves Fred at Apá's desk to go collect an Ensure from the minifridge, as well as the communal emergency office back and zippo. It's less because Fred will need these things in a hurry so Eddie had better have them ready, and more so that she can spend less time looking at Fred's blank, reflective eyes and the lack of a person behind them.

That's Eddie's big sibling, her protector, the person who practically raised her, and her only friend, crowded out of xyr own body and replaced with an unfeeling object. Fred is one of the lucky ones, the luckiest in the Alfaro family. Scrying is the least horrible form of Clairvoyance, and one of the safest. It's almost certain that Fred will be able to settle back into xemself with only a few tiny diamond stones to pass at worst. But the risk is never zero.

Crystals grow, after all. Some of them faster than others.

This time, as all the times before, Fred resurfaces. Xyr eyes melt into their natural dark brown and xe blinks back to awareness. Eddie lets out the breath she was holding and collapses into the wooden chair on the other side of the desk that they have for clients. She leans over the desk to offer Fred the Ensure, and then sets it down within xyr reach when Fred seems to be still too out of it to take it from her. Eddie lights a cigarette for xem next. She takes the first drag for herself.

Her hands are shaking. This shit is almost more frightening than it already would be because Fred never seems scared at all. Like it's nothing to xem if xe comes back to her or doesn't.

The scent of burning tobacco revives Fred the rest of the way. Xe gestures greedily for the cigarette first, and Eddie readily hands it over. Only after several fortifying puffs does Fred crack the seal on the Ensure. Xe takes carefully paced, delicate little sips, though Eddie knows xe'd rather gulp it down. The two of them learned that lesson the hard way when they first started this business out - with Fred on xyr knees in the bathroom and Eddie holding xyr long hair back.

Finally, Fred takes a deep breath and asks hoarsely, "Did I find it? Felt like I found it."

"Seems like you did, yeah," Eddie confirms. She slips a second cigarette out of the emergency pack and lights it for herself. She doesn't usually prefer cloves, but she needs to settle her nerves. "You said something about West? Here, I wrote it down."

Fred waves away the notepad Eddie holds out, instead beginning to ruffle sluggishly through the files on the desk. There are dozens. They don't exactly have an organizational system in here, and it's been a full decade now of accumulating them. They get pretty decent work, considering. Eddie hadn't really thought it would work, when they'd started. It had all been Fred's idea, hairbrained, and Eddie had just gone along with it because she couldn't think of anything better.

"Aha!" Fred exclaims when xe finds Jay's file, becoming more and more like xyr lively self the longer xe goes about with xyr head clear of stones. The file isn't one of the ones Eddie ruined last night, though it does have what looks like a coffee ring on one corner. That could have been either of them.

"I assume you don't remember any of what Jay said when they were here," Fred mutters as xe flips over their standard intake sheet to get to the handwritten details underneath. Eddie's stomach clenches. She wishes she could argue.

"I didn't know they were coming," she defends herself weakly.

"No," Fred agrees softly. "I know. I'm sorry." Silently, and without looking at her, xe hands Eddie the intake sheet for her to look over.

Eddie does remember most of this information; Jay's name, the date they took the case, a description of the missing diamond, bare-bones estimated timeline of the theft, how much they're charging. She stares down at the page unseeingly anyway and lets Fred hog the more interesting details. It's not really Eddie's job to come up with suspects anyway - at least not when she hasn't Seen them. She just follows whoever Fred tells her to.

"I'm thinking the niece's boyfriend," Fred says eventually, breaking a silence between them that isn't exactly uncomfortable. Eddie makes a vague noise of agreement. She doesn't remember anything about the niece's boyfriend. Fred highlights something in xyr notes, and then passes them across the desk to Eddie.

Turns out he's a college student who has been dating Jay's niece - who lives with Jay over the summers - for the last three months since the spring semester ended. A secular too, just like Fred had posited at breakfast, who likely would have no idea that the diamond in question is more than just a very expensive rock. He lives to the west from here, and from the diamond's home, in Little Italy.

"Yeah, I like him for it," Eddie agrees around the filter. "Surveillance beat?"

"Ugh," Fred groans, but xe nods. "No job right?" Eddie nods. According to the background they have, the only thing Boyfriend does all week is visit Jay's niece and effusively compliment Jay's cooking.

"A daytime stakeout," Eddie says, in unison with Fred. The siblings smile at each other briefly. They've always had something of a penchant for being on the same wavelength like that. Apá's absence, Eddie's drinking and pessimism, and Fred's apparent ability to just move on from anything may all be doing their damndest to push Fred and Eddie apart, and maybe some days it seems like they'll get their way. But sometimes, they're still the same as they were as kids. Jinxing each other, practically reading each other's minds.

"That's tomorrow," Fred says. Xe turns xyr attention back to Jay's file, shuffling the pages to xyr liking before reaching for a drawer. Eddie tenses. Fred already knows the booze is there, as evidenced from xyr admonishment earlier, but knowing that doesn't stop Eddie from feeling like she'll get in trouble if Fred sees it there.

Luckily, Fred doesn't go for that drawer. The legal pad xe needs is in the drawer above that, and xyr favorite clicky pen is in the top drawer on the other side. When xe has what xe needs, xe starts writing up the mid-investigation report for Jay. Xe delicately picks out straight, even capitals that nearly look typed, remarkably quickly for how neat they are.

Eddie leaves xem to it. She's not great with the customer-facing end of things. A little too negative, a little too blunt, acerbic. A little too to-the-point as well. Their clients want to think every case is complicated. They want to be reassured and validated in addition to having their mysteries solved. Eddie would just as soon write one sentence and be done with it, and then they'd probably lose the case because it wouldn't look like enough work to pay them for.

Eddie much prefers doing the books. She likes numbers because you don't have to interpret them. There's no nicer way to put them. They mean what they mean.

When the report is written, and the budget is calculated, the siblings make up a surveillance itinerary for tomorrow. They'll start early in the morning to make sure they don't miss him if he does go out, and take set shifts to piss or pick up food. They're already familiar with the area, so they don't have to get to know the streets and landmarks in person this time. The nearest convenience store is marked out on Fred's roughly sketched map, the best exit routes highlighted.

Jay's case is the only one Watchtower Investigations has open at the moment, so here is where the siblings separate. For Fred, the workday is done. Xe leaves the building out the front. Xe has enough friends and acquaintances that xe can meet up with someone any time.

Eddie could call it quits too, if she wanted, and she's doing so in all but name. Her mood has improved enough since the morning that she doesn't immediately want to go back to bed and pretend to never have been born, so instead she pilfers one of Fred's post-Scrying Ensures from the minifridge to serve as her lunch. Then she contorts herself into a catlike curled up position in the wingback chair. She opens the middle drawer but instead of the bottle of Jack, she pulls a battered romance novel out from underneath it.

The air from outside the still open window behind her smells green and fresh after last night's rain. There is no breeze, there never is in the summers, but the storm cooled it down enough for the humidity trapped amid the crowded city buildings to not feel so oppressive.

Afternoon sunshine drips sluggishly over Eddie's shoulder like honey, spilling gold over the book as Eddie finds her place by the page number she memorized last time she put it down. It's from Mrs. Zilbersetein, a secular from two houses down, given as part of her payment to them for the pictures of her ex-husband and his mistress that she used in her divorce. The pages are soft and thin from wear, showing how much she'd loved the book before Eddie. The cover is illustrated with a voluptuous blonde ingenue in a red dress and an imposing man with a fedora and a handgun.

Eddie makes it through two chapters and one sex scene before there's a knock at the outer door.

Eddie considers not answering; Jay is paying them well so they don't need to cram in as much work as they can at the moment. But curiosity gets the best of her, despite her general distaste for the kind of work Watchtower usually ends up doing. So, she leaves her steamy book open and upside down in the seat of the wingback and goes to see who's there.

When she swings the door open, Eddie comes face to face with an impressive set of cleavage clad in what could easily be the very same red dress from the illustrated cover she'd just put down. She stares for a moment, briefly mesmerized by the shiny liquid-like fabric draped artfully over smooth dark skin, before blinking herself back to reality and relegating her gaze up to the woman's face.

Her features are just as elegant and striking as her attire. She has a heart shaped face, near-black dark brown eyes, and loosely curled cherry red hair. Her lip color matches her dress and her hair, and her skin glows in the slowly reddening sunlight. Beyond the sight of two eyes, she looks to be secular. The concurrence of exceptionalism and mundanity is dissonant to the third. If Eddie keeps looking so closely, her headache will come back with a vengeance.

"Uh," says Eddie eloquently. "I, uh. I think you have the wrong place. Ma'am."

The woman - the lady, really; the way she's dressed surely she can't be called anything else - doesn't smile, but Eddie thinks she catches a dimple crease her cheek on one side before it's gone again.

"Watchtower Investigations? Miss Alfaro, I presume," she asks. Her voice sounds like one that could be heard at a vintage speakeasy, crooning sad slow jazz tunes to an audience of pipe smoking men in pinstripe suits.

"Yes- Sorry," Eddie says. She steps aside and holds the door for the lady like a gentleman, feeling very nearly as out of touch with herself as she ever has during a premonition. Her body takes her through the steps of this interaction as it should be, without pausing for her to think about it first.

"Don't worry yourself, doll," says the Lady in Red. "I'm overdressed, I know. I usually am." She adjusts the sheer, glittering shawl fathered at her elbows and steps past Eddie into the house. She smells, somewhat unexpectedly, like leather.

Eddie leads the Lady in Red up to the office, holding open the door with the frosted window for her too. She has the half-hysterical urge to pull out her chair as well, but there's no table to pull it from. She sits in the wooden chair in front of the desk and crosses her long legs, a high slit in her dress parting around her thigh. Eddie takes the wingback, stuffing the romance book uncomfortably between her ass and the back rather than reveal it.

"What can I- What can we do for you, Miss…?" Eddie asks leadingly. The Lady's dimple comes back, and this time it stays. Eddie tries to to feel too proud of herself, just for a little politeness. True it's not a skill of hers, and she usually doesn't even bother to try, but still.

"Miz," the Lady corrects smoothly. "Jessica. And I want you to solve a murder."

Eddie's breath catches in her throat and she swallows it down with difficulty, conflicted. The cases they usually take are… not thrilling, to say the least. But murder is maybe a bit too thrilling. Especially when taking into account that Watchtower has only ever dealt with background checks, theft, spell sourcing, and infidelity. They've never even handled a missing person.

"That's not really in our wheelhouse," Eddie admits, as gently as she can. "The police really would b-"

"Oh, I've already tried the pigs," Ms. Jessica interrupts. The disdain in her voice is palpable. Eddie can't blame her. After all, Jessica is visibly not a person cops traditionally 'protect and serve'. Eddie herself isn't one of those either. They usually take murder pretty seriously in most cases though - provided that it's not one of their own murders, and that there's someone left behind who cares enough to report it in the first place.

"I know it can seem like it's taking a long time," Eddie tries again. Jessica's foot twitches irritably, the champagne colored pump on it catching the now purplish light of the approaching dusk in the window behind Eddie.

"No," says Jessica, simple and firm, and Eddie shuts up. "They told me they're not investigating. They don't believe me."

If Eddie's interest wasn't piqued before, it certainly is now. She turns aside her reservations regarding Watchtower's qualifications - or lack thereof - and leans forward over Apá's desk to listen more intently.

"There's no body?" Jessica shakes her head. Her foot stops kicking; she must be relieved to truly have Eddie's attention. It seems likely now that, like everyone else who comes, she's here as a last resort.

"I don't think there could have been much of one left, to be honest with you," she says. Her voice is lower now, a little scratched up, but she doesn't waver. "There was a lot of-" She chokes, and for the first time looks away from Eddie. Her gaze seems to catch on the altar on top of the filing cabinet and Eddie wonders if she'll latch on to the easy subject change it might offer.

Watchtower gets very few secular clients. They're in the phone book, sure, but their business comes almost entirely from word of mouth, and witches and seculars don't tend to cross paths more than incidentally. Eddie has to wonder if that altar is something Jessica was expecting to see. Does she know what they are, or is she even now assuming they're some kind of new age hippies?

In the end, Jessica doesn't take the out, though she doesn't finish what she was going to say either. She concludes definitively, "She's dead. I know she's dead."

Jessica's eyes meet Eddie's across Apá's desk, and instantly Eddie knows Jessica has to be right. In the depths of her brown eyes, Eddie recognizes the same feeling she had when she knew Apá wouldn't be coming back this time. It's the same feeling clients have in their eyes when they already know their spouse is cheating on them, or that their trusted friend has robbed them. Intuition, maybe. Or the brief, terrible omniscience that comes from grief.

Sometimes Fred and Eddie's job is not so much to find out what happened, but why .

"I know this isn't what you usually do," Jessica adds eventually. "But my- Maddie. Maddie Ward. She deserves at least some kind of justice. I had to try. Will you consider it?"

Eddie shouldn't. She shouldn't full stop, but she especially shouldn't decide to take a client without Fred's input.

"Of course," she says.

Eddie forgot to grab a fresh intake sheet from the filing cabinet on her way to the desk when she first let Jessica in (along with the travel pack of tissues Fred always offers to a new client), but she's not willing to backtrack across the room and look foolish or bumbling in front of this elegant lady. Not to mention if she gets up there's a chance the book she's all but sitting on will be exposed. In lieu of that, Eddie drags over the nearest casefile, flips it open, and poises herself to write on the back of the topmost paper, whatever it is.

"You got a last name, Ms. Jessica?" she prompts, looking intently at her own hand wrapped around Fred's favorite fountain pen. Her name, her number. These are professional necessities. Eddie has no ulterior motives, no need for Jessica's information beyond the purposes of solving her case. More to the point, Jessica is out of Eddie's league - and probably playing a different game altogether anyway.

Jessica gathers herself, mentally and physically, and rises gracefully from the very ungraceful chair she's been occupying these last long moments of the day. Her shadow casts itself around the room in fractals not unlike any of Fred's crystals, or like the ambiguous movement of something unknown beneath rippling water. She sees herself to the door while Eddie is still mesmerized.

"Let's see if you can find that out yourself," she challenges over her bare shoulder. "Consider it an interview." Her enigmatic smile seems to imply that the interview could be for the job, or maybe for something a little more personal if Eddie performs well enough.

"Call me when you find me," Jessica says as she slips out the door. Her silhouette pauses behind the frosted window, flutters its long fingers in a coy little wave, and then fades away with the hollow clip of high heels on hardwood.

I will accept constructive criticism on this chapter from mutuals. More in this Universe: Cat's Eye View | Feline Retribution | Beer, Brandy, Belladonna

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[silvercap]

Soft launching the knight au. Can you soft launch a fic? Idk. Here, have this drabble:

-~-

The dungeon is cold as Lord Simmons descends the rough-hewn stone steps, gathering his fur cloak around him to ward off the icy chill that threatens to sink into his very bones. It's nearly freezing, his breath fogging the air as the staircase spirals downwards into the bowels of the Northern Palace, the ancient basement built long before the permafrost had settled over the Southern slopes of the Di'Eso mountain range and limited building to the aboveground for centuries upon centuries. His footsteps echo through the slim corridor, the distant sound of a strangled cry bringing a thin smirk to his lips. They keep very few criminals in the palace's dungeon itself—that's what the prison on the North end of the region is for—but it does have its uses every now and then. Especially with…

The man cries out a second time as Simmons rounds the final corner, weak and high-pitched from hours of screaming. Simmons sighs as the chilled cobblestone walkway opens up into a lovely array of dark iron cells along one cold wall—and at the very end, the unlocked wooden door that leads to his particular favorite area of the ancient space. The guard outside of it gives him a stiff nod as he passes, the single torch on the wall casting his face in harsh firelight. The torture chamber by comparison is lit with the heat of several braziers, a single window set high in the wall admitting a harsh gust of chill winter air that makes them gutter in unison.

Close to the far wall, a lithe body shudders where its wrists have been strung up above its head in a single length of iron chains, blood streaming down muscled arms from where they've begun to cut into the flesh. The man's head is bowed, golden blonde hair turned dull in the shadowed room where it hangs in a curtain over his face. He's drenched in sweat, bare torso gleaming in the firelight like the ice crystals that have formed around the window, the quivering, ragged fabric of his trousers betraying the tremors that wrack his form.

"Sir Kennedy," Simmons purrs, stalking across the room to stand in front of his prey. "Have you thought about what we talked about?"

With a moan, Leon's head tilts to the side, revealing the bruised, fair skin of his face. His eyelids flutter weakly, slivers of hazy blue just barely visible in narrow flashes. Beautiful. Simmons bathes in the utter helplessness for a moment, the symphony of Leon's ragged breaths a welcome change from the bickering and groaning of court nobles in the palace above. His knight's skin is a map of practiced cuts and blooming bruises, several deep burns visible above the cut of his waist, likely the cause of the feverish flush Simmons can see on Leon's cheeks. Hmm. He hadn't wanted his Right Hand to be quite this out-of-commission, but he supposes a hard lesson is better than none learned at all.

"M'Lord," Leon slurs, voice raspy. He winces, swallowing hard, bloodied lips parting to admit a harsh wheeze. "M'not sure what—what—"

"You know perfectly well what I mean." Simmons steps forward, gloved hand reaching out to put the barest amount of pressure on Leon's bruised shoulder, eliciting a harsh sob that echoes around the chamber. The strain of his arms must be absolute agony, for a reaction like that.

"Please," Leon begs, voice breaking. "I—I can't—"

"Tell me again why you disobeyed my orders."

"I—" Leon's chest heaves, face contorting as he attempts to lift his head with little success. Simmons fists a hand in his hair to guide it the rest of the way. "I—she was with child. She was scared."

"She was a bandit. You know how we deal with thieves in the North—I shouldn't have to tell you twice." Simmons tilts his head, watching Leon flinch at the sound of his voice. "I expect my orders to be carried out as I issue them."

"She—she was young. Pregnant. I killed the rest?" Leon repeats uncertainly. His voice is thick, half-delirious. He probably doesn't even realize what he's confessing to.

"I admit, I'm not particularly convinced that I care." Simmons releases Leon's hair as he speaks, enjoying the faint noise that hisses out of him when his chin collides with his chest. "You see, Sir Kennedy, when I order you to carry out an execution, I'm not interested in the details. I don't care if they're old, or young, or a three-headed dragon sent by the gods themself. When I tell you to do something, you do it."

Simmons crosses the room again, eyeing the metal tools warming in one of the braziers. The handle is a comfortable temperature when he lifts it, the long metal rod glowing red-hot in the chill air. Simmons has always been partial to branding—There's something permanent about it; satisfying. He turns back to Leon's slumped figure with a sigh, raising the rod a hair's breadth away from the vulnerable curve of his throat.

"Tell me, Sir Kennedy, what happens when I give you an order."

Leon groans, low and painful. "I—I'll—"

"Speak."

"I'll obey—without question," Leon manages, flinching as Simmons pulls the rod away from his throat. He raises his face towards Simmons, a remarkable feat considering the condition he's in. Perhaps a break was all he needed to recover. "I'll—I promise, I'll listen."

"That's right, mutt. You are my Right Hand, therefore you are mine to use as I see fit. Is that clear?"

Leon nods, blinking blearily. Simmons grins.

"Scream," he commands.

"What?"

Leon does, as Simmons presses the overheated metal to the side of his ribcage; a short, sharp thing that cuts off abruptly when Leon's body goes suddenly limp, eyelids fluttering as he succumbs to unconsciousness. Metal clatters on stone as Simmons drops the iron with a huff, readjusting his gloves and cloak. Very well, then.

"Loyal as a dog, and just as easily broken." He turns on his heel, gesturing to the man he'd assigned to oversee Leon's punishment. "Clean him up, and have the healer tend to him in his chambers. I'll be needing him before the week is up, and I can't have him keeling over in the middle of negotiations. Alert me the moment his fever breaks."

The torturer nods, Leon's manacles clinking as the man rushes to lower his unconscious body to the floor. Simmons doesn't spare either of them another glance, turning on his heel. He readjusts a glove, huffing. Enough nonsense. He doesn't have time to waste.

[edwinspaynes]

What is ur personal favourite, hands down recommended reading order? The way you like most, the way that's the most optimal way of reading it? According to you of course (and maybe including extra chapters) ? :))

Key:

Cassie Clare Canon -> If a short story is listed by name, it means I recommend you read it there rather than where I list the rest of the story collection. Or, you know, you could reread the story and have fun ;)

My fanfic

NOT PUBLISHED YET. Indicates a WIP that I am actively working on. I did not list WIPs that I am not actively working on.

My fanfic, but NSFW

@vwritesaus fanfic because I accept all her works as canon and also we share almost every headcanon so they fit in with all the other stuff on this list.

W/T -> Wessa

M -> Matthew

EIR -> Expert in Romantics Series

T/A -> Thomastair

TWLTB -> Together We'll Learn to Breathe Series

J/C -> Herondaisy

Note: I have only included fanfics that are fully canon compliant. I have others as does V, and you should read those too :P But these are just canon and bonus chapters.

TID

When Our Eyes Meet, Darling, I Fancy You

Have I Known You Twenty Seconds or Twenty Years? W/T

Leaves, Cider Donuts, and William Herondale W/T

Happy Birthday, My Tess W/T

Tale as Old as Time W/T

The Howling Wind W/T

My Hips and Thighs and Whispered Sighs (Oh Lord) W/T

The Whitechapel Fiend

A Tale of a Great Behemoth W/T

Nothing But Shadows

Cast Long Shadows

Come Feel This Magic I've Been Feeling Since I Met You T/A

Every Exquisite Thing

A Combination of Shock and Awe M

The Midnight Heir

The Penultimate Hours

Chain of Gold

Empty Bottles, Heavy Hearts, the Memories of Broken Dreams T & Lily

The Letter Game

Part-Time Soulmate, Full-Time Problem T/A

Chain of Iron

Chain of Thorns

Daisy, My Daisy... J/C

breathe T/A

Enouement J/C

Chrysalism T/A

Can We Dance Through an Avalanche? T/A

Serindipity Ari/Anna NOT PUBLISHED YET.

Adronitis NOT PUBLISHED YET.

A Therapeutic Chain of Events T/A TWLTB

The Closet Game A & C

The Golden Age of Something Good and Right and Real T/A

Butterflies J/C

Prices & Vices (I End Up in Crisis) M & A

Your Flower's Filled With Vitriol M & A

In the Gutter, Looking at the Stars M & A

The Name We Give Our Mistakes M

Summer Went Away (Still the Yearning Stays) M

Love Thorns All Over This Rose J/C

You Drew Scars Around My Stars T/A TWLTB

Passed Down Like Folk Songs (The Love Lasts So Long) T/A

Taffy Stuck and Tongue Tied A & Grace

It's a Love Story (Baby Just Say Yes) J/C

Soul to the Universe (Wings to the Mind) J/C, T/A, M

I Can See You (Up Against a Wall With Me) J/C

Across our Great Divide There Is a Glorious Sunrise M

Fourty-Eight M

Dreamscapes on the Wall T/A

I'm a Fire and I'll Keep Your Brittle Heart Warm T/A

The Diaries of Sir Thomas Lightwood, Age 14 T/A

what's in a kiss (by any other touch would feel just as sweet) T/A

A Troublesome Tale of Truffles & Trifles T/A

Religion in Your Lips (the Altar Is My Hips) T/A

A Dazzling Haze, A Mysterious Way About You T/A

Seeking Lapsang Souchang J/C

The Crown You Never Take Off T/A

Closets of Backlogged Dreams T/A

dear christopher T/A

Life Is Not Complex (We Are Complex) M EIR Eugenia/OC

The Cheap Severity of Abstract Ethics M & T/A

Walk, Walk, Fashion Baby M & T

Got Me Right Where You Want Me, Baby (Could I Be More Obvious?) T/A

More Than Anything: A Thomas and Alastair Drabble Collection T/A

The Besotted Couple's Guide to Half-Baked Mistakes J/C

Privacy Sign on the Whole World J/C

Until the Stars Burn Out: A James and Cordelia Drabble Collection J/C

Flying in a Dream, Stars By the Pocketful T/A

Twenty Minutes T/A

hygge T/A

Like a Candle You Burnt Out T/A

Christmas on the Balcony W/T

The Surprise T/A & C

i'm only me when i'm with you J/C

Every Tear's a Rain Parade From Hell T/A TWLTB

A Dwindling Mercurial High T/A TWLTB

Bloodsucker, Famefucker T/A TWLTB

Baby You Got Lucky Cause You're Rockin With the Best T/A

Is This the End of All the Endings? (My Broken Bones Are Mending) T/A

Dinner in the Dark T/A

For One Moment, Our Lives Met (Our Souls Touched) M EIR Ragnor/Catarina

Fashion Is Ephemeral (Art Is Eternal) Matthew EIR T/A

A Little Sincerity (A Dangerous Thing) M EIR Risa/OC

The Moon in Her Chariot of Pearl M EIR T/A

Days Future: Paris 1912 T/A

A Ribbon of Dream T/A

Kaleidoscope of Loud Heartbeats Under Coats T/A

Moonlight Sonata and I T/A

Connecting the Tide to the Sand That Was Dry T/A

Love on Ice T/A

portrait of a dissipated parisian T/A

Time, Mystical Time M

TMI 1-4

The Red Scrolls of Magic

TMI 5-6

Tales From the Shadowhunter Academy

The Bane Chronicles

TDA, if you absolutely must, but I usually recommend people don't waste their time.

Ghosts of the Shadow Market

The Lost Book of the White

Sentimental Boy Is My Nom de Plume W/T

This Beautiful Beast M T/A and Kit H

TWP

[royal-ruin]

red, white, and royal blue (rwrb) fic recs (part 5)

other rwrb fic recs here other fic recs here personal favorites are starred, by the way. everything is complete unless stated otherwise.

this is probably going to be the last part for now. hope you enjoyed the recs!

*Déjame Ver Cómo Es Que Floreces by 14carrotgold (~12k)

Oscar gets in close and bluntly asks, “Earlier. In the bathroom. Did you do it?” Alex scoffs, “No. Don't be a perv. Why would you wanna know that anyway?” Oscar rolls his eyes. “Mind out of the gutter, chamaco. Did you propose?” Ah.    Henry is introduced to the extended Diaz side of the family at their matriarch's birthday. Shenanigans (and romance and feelings) ensue.

oh my god?? a must-read.

what we might do (if we stop keeping a secret) by indomitablelove (~8k)

'This isn't how I wanted to tell people. I thought we'd get the chance to do it right.' - Red, White and Royal Blue, Casey McQuiston, p.327 or, in another world, Alex and Henry get to do it right.

Love is indomitable [Interview] by aceofsapphics (~4k)

„It definitely stays secret until after the election. And I know it’ll be messy. But if we can get ahead of the narrative, wait for the right time and do it on our own terms, I think it could be okay.” Chapter 10, page 283 “In another universe they date long distance for a couple years and then come out with a huge piece in Vanity Fair by Ronan Farrow” – Casey McQuiston, from select annotations from Red, White and Royal Blue, accessed via pagesandpugs.blog OR the coming out Henry and Alex have always deserved and always will.

i cannot fall in love (with you) by orionseye (~22k)

"One of the many nights it’s kept her up, she imagined taking the romcom approach to this. In some alternate reality, June gives Nora the grandeur she deserves. And it’s Jane Austen worthy, it’s glitter-in-your-hair, fireworks-in-the-sky, friends-to-lovers bullshit. She’d confess, obviously. Maybe there’s a boombox involved. Maybe it’s pouring rain. The setting doesn’t matter, really, because they’re both there."  even after alex and henry get their happily ever after, there's still a story left to tell. when an ironic new year’s kiss turns triggers something much more, june finds herself stuck in a messy situation. can she find the line between her personal life and her public one? what does it mean to love someone in secret? can she ever find the guts to show it?  the nora x june rwrb sequel we are all dying for

the summary said it perfectly. june's pov had me reading around the tears in my eyes.

Heaven is You by cmere (~2k)

Alex stirs. Henry trails his hand down Alex's chest, nuzzles into his neck. A low, soft noise escapes Alex's mouth; he pushes back against Henry's hips, and Henry echoes it with a noise of his own. His mind is slowly awakening, catching up to the instinctual responses of his body. His eyes cast over the two of them, tangled up under the blankets and bathed in light. Suddenly, all the implications of what the bright sunlight means—shades thrown wide open, snipers on top of buildings, long-range lenses shooting them in their most private moments—sends icy bullets through his chest. Several years later, Henry is still working through the trauma of their forced outing. Alex helps him.

Room 1071 by MaryaDmitrievnaLikesSundays (~7k) ”No,” Henry said. “I…” He trailed off, his eyes stuck somewhere behind Alex. Alex followed his gaze and felt dread settle hard in his stomach at where it landed. Pink, purple, and blue. An eagle set between red and green lines. The flags that Alex refused to be ashamed of, taken apart by Henry’s unreadable gaze. So. It was like that. Henry was like that. Or, the college au where Alex is absolutely, positively sure his roommate is homophobic.

you’re leaving (now i’m left amongst the living) by peppermintpatties (~37k)

Six years since they've been together, Alex and Henry were now a far cry from the lovestruck couple they once were when their history began. If you ask Alex, all of it was Henry’s fault. If you ask Henry, he’d agree and say that Alex was right. But before Alex could ever find out why Henry does not seem like the man he once decided to spend the rest of his life with, he already walked away from it all. Now, Henry was alone, left to deal with whatever shattered remains he could salvage from his life. Or, the one where Henry’s sick and Alex only finds out two years after they've broken up.

Please Don't Let Me Be So Understood by chamel (~20k)

“I’m glad you both see it that way,” Dr. Chen says. Then she closes her notebook and folds her hands on top of it. “I think I’m starting to get a sense of where the issues lie. The good news is that you’re both here, and you’re both willing to work on this relationship. That’s promising. Not all of the couples I see are even at that point.” “Sorry, what?” Henry says, voicing Alex’s stuttering thoughts as well. (After one too many fights at work, Henry and Alex are assigned mandatory reconciliation therapy by their boss. Except the therapist thinks they're there for couples therapy... and surely, a bet on who will break first makes more sense than actually correcting her, right?)

a fair amount of it is just them being dumb lmao

*Nova, Baby by chamel (~67k)

Agent Henry Fox-Mountchristen is an asshole. Alex is 90% sure those exact words are going in this mission report. Yeah, they’re supposed to be objective when writing this shit up, but that isn’t his opinion. It’s a fact. (CIA agent Alex Claremont-Diaz and MI6 agent Henry Fox-Mountchristen don’t exactly get along, but that doesn’t keep their respective agencies from insisting they work together as partners. Then a mission in Colombia changes everything, and their relationship begins to shift and grow into something that neither of them ever expected… and something that could have deadly consequences.)

[period-dramallama]

What's your opinion on The White Queen and the other shows in the PGCU?

*stares out of the window, eyes full of memories* The White Queen… now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time…

Ah, 2013. Springtime. I was excited for the White Queen to air through the Beeb. Since 2011 I had devoured the first four books of PG’s Cousins’ War series: The White Queen (loved it) The Red Queen (loved it even more) The Lady of the Rivers (you mean best girl Jacquetta gets her own book? RESULT!) The Kingmaker’s Daughter (whaaaat the story is completely different from another person’s POV? MIND BLOWN!)

Yes, people don’t like the role of witchcraft in the story, but I didn’t mind it at all. It made sense to me that women might practice white magic, because medieval people really did believe magic could work. And if the Tudors felt special by claiming descent from King Arthur, it made sense that descent from Melusine would feel special to Elizabeth Woodville and her family. After all, as far as back Julius Caesar people were claiming descent from heroes gods and mythological figures. And yes, it’s a cliché to have your Empowered Woman practice herbology or witchcraft etc Divine Feminine etc, but Margaret Beaufort was a HBIC while explicitly rejecting magic, and the same goes for Anne Neville.

The tabloids were already grumbling about how the show filmed in Belgium because the medieval architecture there was less intruded-upon. Then the first episodes aired and the tabloids were grumbling about zippers, straight teeth, concrete steps, guttering, handrails, Rebecca Ferguson’s accent. ‘It’s not as good as Game of Thrones’. What was this show, ‘Game of Thrones’? I felt rather envious/jealous. I wanted my show to be good. I wanted my show to get good reviews and have people enthused about it and be genuinely objectively well-made. Now I’ve moved beyond this attitude; and if a show is better than ‘my’ show I don’t resent it because there’s nothing to stop me enjoying the better show too.

(….mostly moved beyond this attitude).  

Funnily enough it was because of the White Queen that I landed upon this strangely-formatted website called ‘tumbler’. Sorry, ‘tumblr’.

Ah, the cast! I wouldn’t change a single person. Janet McTeer! James Frain! David Oakes! Rupert Graves! Amanda Hale! Veerle Baetens! Eleanor Tomlinson! Faye Marsay! Aneurin Barnard as Richard the Frodo!

Also, Leo Bill as Reginald Bray, he was great! I remember at the time saying that Reggie B and Maggie B should have their own sitcom spinoff called Saints’ Knees.

Episodes 6 and 7 were my favourite because I was a big Richard/Anne shipper. Even the reviewers came around to the show with episode 9 ‘the Princes in the Tower’.

And then the finale….how I hated it. Bosworth FIELD in a wood?? In winter?? Bullshit! Torpedoing the Richard/Anne ship with INCEST? UGH.

I particularly hated the last scene because it was such a damp squib. The show should have ended on a high note, with Margaret’s triumph, with her dream coming true, with her sheer relief that her only son has gambled his life and won. With mother and son gloriously reunited. But no, it ended with Elizabeth of York, the least interesting character in the whole show. SNORE.  I have the White Queen on DVD but idk if I’ll ever rewatch it.

Then the book The White Princess came out and W-T-F? I loved the first 4 books but the 5th book was a SLOG to get through. What was PGregs thinking?? This wasn’t Henry VII. This wasn’t Elizabeth of York. This wasn’t the Margaret of the Red Queen, with her flaws, her loves, her fears, her strength, her dreams, her humanity. I finished the White Princess but I only got through 2-5 pages of The King’s Curse before I gave up, suspecting that the book would be another 500 pages of whining about the Tudors and nothing else. Yes, it’s unfair to call Margaret Pole whiny as she had legit reasons to be unhappy, but it felt whiny.

Years passed. Empires rose and fell. Ironically, I got into Game of Thrones and read all the books. Then 2015 arrived and I watched the first episode of series 5, realised they made a huge mistake killing off a certain major character, and I was right because it was DOWNHILL ALL THE WAY.

2017. I didn’t watch the White Princess but I followed the Discourse, especially the excellent analysis by MelinaPendulum (now Princess Weekes). In theory, the show should be right up my street. A vengeful princess in love with her shady king uncle? Her shady king uncle is killed in battle and she must marry the conqueror? Vengeful princess vows to be ‘hidden and patient’? It’s enemies to lovers? The conqueror reveals hidden vulnerabilities? She realises she wants her son to be king after his father? She’s torn between her ambition, her mother’s ambition, her brother’s ambition, and her burgeoning desire for her husband, a sexy mop? She destroys her brother, the Rightful King ™? She executes her brother, just as her father executed his own brother? She finds her own power but loses a tiny and precious part of her soul in the process? SIGN ME UP.

The show should have been historically inspired fantasy. Just change the names! The costumes were more fairytale than medieval anyway! Change Richard III to Gorlois, Elizabeth to Igraine, Henry VII to Uther Pendragon.

I loved the posters for The Spanish Princess series 1 but I had no reason to watch it.

And then… The Spanish Princess series 2. What an event that show was! We didn’t know what Fraham would give us each week but we knew it would be illogical, hilarious, terrible, TASTELESS. Reading everyone’s reviews and liveblogs each week, the endless meme potential, the consensus that the show was utter shlock, so lowbrow that it made The Tudors look like Breaking Bad in comparison. The show was so stupid that it was almost beneath contempt. And there were unironically good things about it: Georgie Henley and Sai Bennett acted their socks off and I wish them all the best, I hope they get good parts in better shows. Their characters were genuinely interesting and engaging: fun, sassy, flawed. Me gusta. Maggie Pole, Lina, Oviedo… sympathetic characters with little to do, but it was nice seeing POC and ‘middle aged’ women and I wish they were the protagonists instead of poor Charlotte Hope desperately struggling to speak Spanishly. (Ruairi O’Connor also tried hard, he just wasn’t well-cast or well-written.) In a way, maybe it was more fun than Becoming Elizabeth because at least there was no wasted potential and no frustrated expectations: we expected shlock, we got shlock. The show wasn’t good but the community around the show livened up the end of a….not terrible but definitely WEIRD year of my life.

[skvaderarts]

Saudade Chapter 13: Sympathetic Succor

Chapter Thirteen: Sympathetic Succor

Note: I thought this might make a nice little warm-up while I get back in the headspace to write Petrichor. I’ve been thinking about it since I brought it up as a half-joking reply to one of the comments left by the ever-funny Temeraire101 in chapter eleven of Saudade. Bear with me, everyone. I’m getting back on the horse. Slowly.

(-~-)

It had been wise to head to the market when they had.

The last few days were marked by the continuation of the storm, its waters overflowing the gutters and soaking every surface that stood before it as water was often want to. 

The local government had issued a stay-at-home order as a temporary precaution to reduce the risk of drownings, one that proved to be redundant as anyone with any sense had opted to do so long before they’d been asked. The only motivation anyone had found to break the order had been to procure necessary resources, a violation of the order that would have occurred regardless of whether or not it had been made an exception to the rule, something that it proved to be from the get-go. After all, no one was going to remain within the walls of their home and starve, now were they?

But regardless of such orders, neither V nor Sirrus had plans to leave the house. They were content to remain where they were, cozy and warm within the brick and cast iron walls of the red-haired man’s cozy multistory flat. They’d only left briefly to grab ingredients for the recipe that Sirrus had wanted to make for him, and it had been exquisite, but the next morning they’d both awakened to something they hadn’t expected.

Sirrus had caught a cold.

Neither of them had even remotely expected that when they’d woken up the next morning and met in the kitchen, but they’d been confronted with it regardless. At first, it was just a small cold, something Sirrus asserted that he’d sleep off by the next day. But by the time the next morning had rolled around V found himself completely alone in the kitchen when he woke up in the morning and Sirrus was nowhere to be found.

Upon going to check on the red-haired man V discovered that he was much worse off now than he’d been the day before, something that Sirrus found as baffling as V found it alarming. He couldn’t exactly take something for it due to not being, well, human and its effectiveness being subject to variation, but neither of them had expected Sirrus to wake up and be worse off after a good night’s sleep.

Remaining in his room and opting to just try and take it easy for the day had seemed like the best option at the time, especially after contacting Magnolia and being advised to do just that. He’d drank some tea and opted to just take a nap, a cycle that he’d been repeating for the majority of the morning, unable to stay asleep despite being exhausted.

And during that time V had been planning. Scheming and plotting until he’d come to the only logical conclusion that he could.

He’d make Sirrus some soup.

It had been a tricky endeavor considering the fact that heading outside was a last resort, and he didn’t wish to commission some poor underpaid delivery person to risk their life on his behalf, but he’d come up with something in the end and had spend the better part of the morning both preparing it and hiding it from Sirrus. He wanted it to be a surprise.

But after several hours of preparing the meal and utterly failing to figure out where half the things in the kitchen were located due to the meticulous manner in which they’d been sorted, he sat down, exhaled heavily, and poured himself a glass of water. He needed a quick break. And he was willing to bet that Sirrus could use something to drink.

Heading over to the door with a second glass of water in hand, the young summoner knocked on the door apprehensive, hoping to catch him when he was awake and not asleep. If he was resting he would let him stay that way. But after a moment a noticeably hoarse voice from the other side of the door beckoned him inside and he obliged, stepping into the room and closing the door behind himself. Sirrus had already been awake. He could tell.

“... We shouldn’t go grocery shopping together,” Sirrus said with a soft, slightly anemic, and wet cough as he watched V approach and sit the glass down on his bedside table. He nodded gratefully through his haze, taking a moment to compose himself and catch his breathing. His cold had seemingly migrated to his chest, something that was almost as unpleasant as it sounded. And something that concerned V more than the fact that Sirrus was unwell in the first place, even though that also worried him deeply. How had this come to pass? Surely he’d caught something when they were out at the market; that much was obvious. But… how?

“I still don’t fully understand how this has happened to you,” V said as he sat down towards the middle of Sirrus’s bed. The curtains were partially open, allowing some of the stormy light from outside to filter in. It was a beautiful view, in truth, but not one that he imagined Sirrus could fully appreciate in the way that he might wish to at present. “I was laboring under the impression that you were impervious to illness.”

“Circumstantially, yes,” Sirrus said somewhat weakly, not elaborating any further. At least not initially. He exhaled heavily and looked over at V, taking note of something.

V was looking at Sirrus as though he’d just said something that didn’t make any sense to him. It was a subtle look, but it was still perceptible. He had no idea what the Adjudicator was talking about, that much was clear. And understandable. 

Chuckling and then attempting to clear his throat only to realize that his throat was dry, Sirrus sat up further in his bed. This was going to take a little bit of explaining.

“When I am at my full power, I am incapable of contracting any illness, yes. But when fully depleted, my immune system… deteriorates.” Sirrus paused to take a swig of the water that V had brought him, making a face that indicated that he wasn’t pleased with the taste in his mouth as he sat it down, abandoning his previous efforts to wet his throat. It seemed that he’d reached the stage where everything he tried to drink tasted like his cold. Wonderful. Just splendid. “While I am recovering and regaining my strength, my invulnerability inverts, and I become susceptible to more or less anything with the exception of things that are not contracted by pathogens. And I am especially vulnerable to infections.”

“So if you were to develop a blood-borne infection… “ V’s speech gradually grew slower as he trailed off towards the end of his statement, the mental picture that it painted in his head too unpleasant for him to linger on. It was best not to even risk speaking that into existence. He wouldn’t call himself suspicious, but perhaps suspicion believed in him.

“The less thought put towards that notion the better, mo chara daor.” Sirrus coughed again, this time for longer and quite a bit harder, at that. V gave him a sympathetic look, hesitating for a brief moment before placing his hand on the back of his shoulder. He’d never considered what it felt like to worry over a sick loved one before. Even when his own father had been in a coma, he’d held hope that his supreme healing factor would prevail. Part of him had utterly refused to even consider the idea that he wouldn’t be okay. And while he wasn’t laboring under the idea that Sirrus couldn’t pull through a chest cold, it was… unnerving to witness someone so utterly unkillable in such a state. The idea that he was even susceptible to a cold was disquieting to him in a way that he couldn’t quite place.

“Do you need anything from me, Sirrus?” V asked softly. He was worried and trying not to show it, and they both knew that, but he still didn’t want to worry Sirrus, and the red-haired man was genuinely touched by that, even if he didn’t need him to expend the effort on his behalf.

The man with the red hair shook his head tiredly. He understood his friend’s desire to help him out, but for the moment, he was fine. He would manage. And if he couldn’t, he had a contingency plan for that. And V. He always had V. 

With their conversation now over, V left him to rest, standing up and heading to the door. He probably needed to check on the soup anyway. It was best not to hover around someone who was sick. For both of their sakes. V couldn’t remember the last time he’d been under the weather due to non-supernatural conditions, but he wasn’t keen to make that a more simple thing to recall in the future. And for all he knew, he might somehow make his companion sicker. He would continue preparing his little surprise. That was probably the best course of action right now. For both of them.

“If you do need anything, please. Let me know.” V said from his place at the door, a genuinely bright, empathetic smile spreading across his face. He knew what it was like to suffer. To be brought low by circumstances outside of your control. Sirrus would be alright. They would both make sure of it. His dear friend had been there for him through everything that the universe could throw at him. V wasn’t going anywhere. Neither of them would if the other needed them. He was just much more accustomed to it being him and not Sirrus. “I’ll help you. It’s no trouble. I mean that.”

“I’d never doubt that you would. Thank you, V,” Sirrus said with a weary chuckle, his eyes still bright despite the obvious discomfort he felt in his chest. He just looked at V fondly for a long moment before laying back and closing his eyes, pulling the covers back up over himself and tiredly settling in. He exhaled tiredly and then went silent, the only indication that he was alive being his breathing.

V slipped out of the room quietly, closing the door behind himself. He didn’t want to wake him if he’d started to drift off. He needed the rest and the summoner had work to do. Shaking his head slightly in a grimly amused manner he chuckled to himself. If he was lucky he could be finished before Sirrus woke up. That should make them both feel better.

(-~-)

This was a fun little chapter! It helped me get back in the right headspace. I hope you enjoyed it! Let me know what you think! Fun little chapters like this are fun and I’m always looking for more ideas, especially from all of you! You have such fun ones!

The next chapter will also be a Saudade chapter for next week partially due to needing more time to get back in the swing of things and because Shadow of the Erdtree is coming out next week and AHHH! I’m streaming it at launch and the lead-up has been pure stress. That’s taking up all of my spare time at the moment. But if anyone wants to hang out and check it out with me, I updated my Profile and added a link to both it and the Discord server. Swing by if you’d like! I have a schedule posted there. Are any of you going to be playing it, too? Let me know! I’m always excited to talk about fun games lol! I’ll see you all back here next week! Take care and thanks again for reading. It feels good to be back writing something. ANYTHING! Bye bye!

[intubatedangel]

Code Red - Conclusion

I got a bit carried away with this one. It’s a long chapter, and I did consider splitting it into two, but honeslty felt it wouldn’t work as well in two pieces, it all fits together as a single unit. I really hope it is worth the read, but can’t say much else without spoilers.

I’ll be taking a break from the series after this, I’ve got some non-resus stories I want to try and write while I’m still in the groove, and I need to emotionally recover from such a heavy story.

Story Index  

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

* * * 

The sky was shrouded with a layer of grey cloud and rain pattered down, drumming lightly on the old slates. It wasn't too hard a shower, spring was more a time of drizzle and persistent light rain, rather than howling storms. Carl watched large drops splash on the ground beneath a crack in the aging cast iron gutter as he sat on the old wooden bench underneath the lean-to porch, situated next to a side door of the small, old church. Anna had often told him that she wasn't religious, but in this part of the world that didn't particularly mean much. In small villages with no other amenities beyond perhaps a pub or inn, the church was simply the place where community events took place. Festivals. Jubilee celebrations.

Weddings.

Funerals.  

Carl shivered as the memory intruded upon him again. He still hadn't been able to shake free of the images, despite counselling. Anna, laid out on the trauma bed, lifeless. Her utterly unmoving heart held between his hands. The sound too. A screaming monitor just behind him. Sarah's sobs as the young nurse cracked.

A hand on his shoulder broke him free of the grim reverie with a jump. Carl looked up to see Roger stood beside him. The nurse gazed down at him with a look in his eyes. Not quite pity, more of understanding with a sad element of helplessness. Which was more than true. They'd talked about it at length on more than one occasion since that day. Roger's presence in Trauma 3 wouldn't have changed anything, and every idea the two of them had come up with to combat the recurrent memories had been a bust. The only thing left to try was deeper, more intensive therapy.

He just had to get through today. Maybe doing that would help all by itself. Carl gave Roger a nod and pushed himself to his feet, throwing off the past and coming fully back to the present. They both stepped up to lean against different thick oak pillars, gazing out through the haze of the rain at the church's graveyard. Anna's adopted family had been a fixture of the village for untold years. There were generations of Swifts buried here.

Roger blew out a breath. "Do you know what you're going to say?" He asked.

Carl nodded, slipping a hand into the inside pocket of his black suit, pulling out a folded piece of paper. "I don't know if I'll be able to though."

"You will." The nurse said, making it seem like a simple statement of fact. A moment later he stood straighter, looking out at the road leading down to the church. Carl followed Roger's gaze, quickly locking on the long black car as it passed behind the trees. Roger turned to him, his hand landing on Carl's shoulder again. "Here she comes. We should get inside."

* * *

THE DAY OF THE ATTACK

Stelling had relented to Carl's request for 5 more minutes with a small nod, easing back from the bed to leave him to it. He turned to look at Mark, or more particularly the rapid infuser.

"Go ahead with another full round of blood products."

"This'll be all we have." The nurse warned.

"Jones will be here." Carl told him. Not that it would matter if they didn't get Anna back by the time the red bags were empty.

Through the conversation Carl's hands had continued to squeeze Anna's heart, palms and fingers pumping the otherwise inactive muscle. He feel the blood in the chambers, a glance at the monitor telling him that Anna's blood pressure, above the aortic clamp at least, was almost at a normal level. They, He, just needed that heart in his grasp to beat on its own.

He glanced at the clock. 2 of those 5 minutes had slid by already. It was so hard to tell time when everyone was so quiet. And when there was so little else to do. It also meant it had been 4 since the last round of adrenaline.

"Get me another round of epi." He said to Trish. "Inject it directly into her heart."

It was a desperate measure. It was a more desperate time. This was already one round beyond the usual maximum. She'd probably bled a few rounds out before they stopped the worst bleeding. As a justification for breaking protocol, it wasn't the best. However, the protocol was based on evidence. Any epi beyond the maximum showed no clear difference to outcomes. But if, technically, that maximum amount hadn't truly made it into her system, maybe giving her one more would make a difference.

Carl kept up the compressions while Trish filled the syringe, and stepped up beside him. "Right in there." He indicated with his finger, while still compressing. He was pointing just below where the coronary arteries branched from the aorta, and did his best to keep Trish’s target still as he made sure blood still flowed. The sheer size of the aorta would mean some, maybe even most of the drug would be sent elsewhere, but it also meant the whole heart itself would receive a decent dose at the same time.

Carl desperately hoped it would be enough.

He watched Trish guide the point of the needle towards the indicated point. Her hands were tightly controlled, not even a single tremor. The needle pierced the aorta just above the ventricle, sliding in just a tiny distance. Trish held the barrel with one hand, keeping the tip of the needle where it needed to be, and eased the plunger in with the other. Carl's massage pushed the drug into her system, and her heart.

Trish extracted the needle, stepping clear of Anna's chest, limiting any potential to accidently introduce an infection, in the increasingly vain hope that Anna would survive long enough for that to be a concern. Carl had hoped for an immediate response to the adrenaline, but Anna's heart didn't react.

Come on baby. Come on. Come back to me. Come back to me baby.

He repeated variations on that refrain in his head as he stared at her face.

He never even noticed the moment he started saying it out loud.

"Carl....Carl!"

Everything looked hazy, until he blinked away his tears. As his vision cleared he became aware of everything.

Sarah was sobbing. She'd detached the ambubag and dropped it next to Anna's head. The monitor behind him continued to scream, Anna was still asystolic. Her heart refused to even twitch. It laid there in his hands, lifeless, just like the rest of her body.

The surgeons had stopped working. He raised his head, to see Jones stood inside the trauma room, a large bag slung over one arm. His other was wrapped around Lucy as she buried her face in his shoulder. Trish laid her hand on Carl's elbow. He couldn't look at her.

Instead, his gaze drifted towards Stelling. He didn't expect it, but she looked broken. Her eyes glistened with her own tears. "Carl, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." She took a shuddering breath. "It's been 35 minutes. I...I have to call it." She looked at the clock, one hand gripping part of the sheets in a knot. "Time..." Her voice cracked. "Time of death, 04:17"

* * *

Anna was able to feel Carl's compressions. But not much else. Her abdomen no longer existed to her senses. She did not feel her lungs inflating. The pulses from those compressions had slipped beyond her. She only felt the physical squeezing of her heart by his hands. And even that was fading away from her.

Please don't stop.

Her mental voice had barely the strength of a whisper.

Don't let me go.

She felt so insignificant. She tried to cling to that feeling of her heart being massaged, but it too was beginning to fade. Even though she was in a lightless void, a greater darkness seemed to be drawing in around her.

The squeezing of her heart stopped. Not like her sense of it faded away. It simply stopped.

They had stopped.

No...

She whimpered as that final darkness started to rush in at her.

* * *

Carl's world was ending. Tears tracked down his face, soaking into his mask. He looked at her blank face, her empty eyes.

She can't be gone.

But she was. Her heart, cradled in his hands, lay totally still.

He heard others crying around him, in a far off, disconnected way. He couldn't move, his body frozen.

She's gone. Anna's gone.

* * *

I'm so sorry Carl

The rushing darkness was close to snuffing her out completely. Close to erasing everything she was. Her memories of the past. Her feelings in the present. Her hopes for the future.

No.

All those dreams of times with Carl. Of love. Family. Life.

Not like this.

She wasn't pleading.

She was pissed.

I won't leave him! You hear me! I will NOT go!

Anger had never really come easily to her. It had always seemed like a waste of energy.

Now, she raged, pulling on every memory, every emotion. Every dream.

You think I'm just going to let you take all of that from me?!

She roared at the eternal darkness.

FUCK YOU!

She drew all her rage into a single point and cast it out like a supernova, a brilliant flash in the darkness.

* * *

Anna's heart twitched in his hands. For a long moment he thought he had imagined it. Then it quivered, wriggled, and began to squirm. Carl's head snapped around to the monitor, that persistent whine had gone, replaced by the two tone alarm, and a coarse v-fib was juddering along the screen.

"Charge to 50!" He called out, spinning around to grab the wand like paddles.

"Carl..." He heard Stelling saying something, but he blocked her out. Thankfully Trish had set and charged the defib.

Carl turned to back to Anna, plunging the paddles into her open chest, placing them around her shivering heart.

"Clear!" He shouted, even though no one was touching her. They'd all stood back after giving up.

He pressed the buttons.

Anna's heart spasmed once as the shock jolted through, the muscles throughout her chest giving a tiny jerk. Time almost stopped. Anna's heart fell still. For an agonising, endless moment, it stayed still.

Then it moved.

A co-ordinated contraction, first the atria, then the ventricles.

The monitor bleeped, once, twice, three times. It continued bleeping.

And Anna's heart continued beating.

* * *

She's alive.

Carl finally breathed again, his brain buzzing as thoughts ran into one another. But that was the most important one.

Anna's alive!

"Get the vest! We need to cool her down!" He shouted. Her body was alive, he needed to keep her brain that way too. He looked beside him to Edwards, wordlessly asking for an update.

"Renal artery is grafted, it'll hold for long enough." She said. "We can pack the rest and give her a few hours at least." She said, with a relieved sigh.

"Keep that infuser going, just like you have been." Carl told Mark. It wasn't much of an apology for his earlier forcefulness, but the nurse nodded, his expression offering forgiveness.

"Carl." It was Stelling again. "You need to leave her to us."

"Not yet."

"Now." She didn't shout, but her voice held the same unyielding command he often used. Unsurprising really. He'd learned it from her. "I can forgive your actions so far. But it's time to step aside." She held his gaze for a moment, then looked down at Anna. "We'll do everything we can. I promise."

A small part of his mind snarled at that. She had literally declared the love of his life dead. But he knew the senior doctor well. Where there was real hope, she would fight for her patients. Anna had that hope now.

Finally, Carl stepped back from the bed. His knee's trembled, and he had to place a hand on the crash cart to steady himself for a moment. The last hour had been a chaotic, terrifying, adrenaline rush. With Anna back, and nothing left for him to do, it finally started to hit him. He pulled off the glasses, mask, and gloves, letting them drop to the floor as the nurses followed their orders. He only had eyes for Anna.

Before the bed got too busy he slipped around to the top of the bed, next to Sarah. The nurse was still taking shaky breaths, but she had reattached the ambu-bag. She eased to one side for him, letting him close enough to lean down over Anna's head.

"I love you Anna Swift." He breathed, as he laid a quick gentle kiss on her forehead. "I love you."

He stood straighter, moving out of the way as the nurses arranged the cooling vest. The surgeons were working both sites, packing sterile gauze into her chest and abdomen and preparing to cover the sites temporarily before they took her to the operating theatre. They left the aortic clamp in place for now. He watched on as the whole team worked together to gently lift her up enough to slide the vest underneath her, extracting her shredded clothing at the same time.

He could feel himself trembling, the shock ramping up as he found himself unable to take his eyes off the blood soaked bundle that had been dumped on the floor. He jumped when Stelling put her hand on his arm. "Carl." She said quietly, the stony voice of his boss replaced by the compassion of a friend. "Go and get cleaned up. We'll let you know if anything changes." He struggled to nod, but the comforting squeeze Stelling gave his arm helped.

His legs felt like lead, and there was a constant ringing in his ears. He had to keep glancing at the monitor to confirm it wasn't an alarm as he backed out of the trauma room. Though the windows he watched as they got the vest wrapped around Anna's body and switched the ambu bag for a ventilator. It was one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do, but he finally dragged himself down the hall enough to take her from his view.

* * *

He shuffled down the corridor, pushing through the doors and heading for the staff room. He ignored all of the stares at his bloody clothes. All the questions from nurses and doctors. The words themselves didn't penetrate, but it was clear they knew now that it was Anna in trauma 3. His lack of response probably didn't help them, but he simply couldn't.

He finally made it to the staff room. He trudged to his locker, fingers refusing to cooperate as he manipulated the lock. Eventually he pulled it open. A change of clothes hung there, but he ignored them. Instead, his hands went to his jacket, finding a small box inside one of the pockets. His hand clamped around it, pulling it out.

It was all too much. He staggered back until he managed to brace his hand on one of the sofas, then he sank down until he sat on the floor. His mind was spinning beyond his, beyond anyone’s control. He'd come so close to losing her. He still might.

 He wept.

 He didn't know how many people came through. They said things to him. Gave comforting squeezes on his shoulders. An occasional one sided hug. Some sat by him for a time. It all just passed him by. He simply stared at the bank of lockers. At one in particular. Anna's. Daylight started shining through the lone window, casting a wedge of light across the lockers. To his perception it seemed to jump across lockers in small movements as the sun rose. The rest of the time all he saw was Anna laying on the landing covered in blood. Anna mouthing three words to him. Anna staring past him. Anna with a tube shoved down her throat. Anna receiving deep compressions. Anna with her chest open and her heart in his hands.

Finally, someone managed to break through to him. They had been sat beside him for a while. And he'd been vaguely aware of a conversation between the one next to him and someone else. He just wanted them to go away. To leave him alone. But they wouldn't. The person moved to kneel in front of him.  

"Carl. Come on mate." He said, shaking Carl's shoulder, first gently then more aggressively. "Don't make me slap you."

Carl blinked, his eyes finally moving to look at Roger.

The nurse let out a breath. "Good. Listen. She's out of surgery. She's still with us. You hear me? She's still with us."

Carl tried to reply, but his mouth was dryer than the Sahara. He opted for a nod.

"That's it. They're gettin' her situated in the ICU, but you're going to have to change before they let you in, yeah?"

Carl glanced down at himself. The blood, Anna’s blood, on his clothing had dried, turning to a coppery colour. He gave another nod. Roger stood, and held out a hand, helping to haul Carl to his feet. Pain shot through his back and legs. The physical sensations helped to pull Carl back together more than the words. He must have winced or groaned.

"Yeah, 6 hours sat on the floor will do that to you." The nurse said, trying for a bit of levity.

It had been that long? Roger kept him steady as Carl found his feet. He finally parted his hands. The small box had left deep indentations in his palms, but he kept it from view. He started towards his still open locker.

"I'll get those. You get into the shower."

Carl's knees protested, but he took a step. He clapped a hand on Roger's shoulder and gave him a nod. He tried to say something but couldn't find the words. He just nodded again.

The nurse reached up and mirrored Carl's gesture. "It's ok mate. I know."

Carl slowly made his way to the shower, not letting the small box out of his grasp, as awkward as it made the process.

* * *

Carl sat beside the ICU bed. Machines whirred and whooshed and chirped around him. But he could only look at the figure on the bed. Anna looked a mess. But an alive mess. The ET tube was still held in her mouth by the tube holder, and she was wrapped up in the cooling vest. He could just see the bandages through the translucent material, taped over her chest and abdomen. But her skin had colour to it, her lips were pink.

The neurologist had been to examine her, but the findings were inconclusive. There was some damage. She'd been in cardiac arrest for more than half an hour. Nobody was getting through that unscathed. But at this point they had no way to tell just what had been affected, or how bad it was. The EEG monitor was encouraging though. A halo of electrodes ringed her hairline, the wires running to the screen that showed good steady spikes. Neurology wasn't his department, he couldn't interpret them to any significant degree, but he knew one thing. Spiky brain waves meant she wasn't brain dead.

A nurse was fluttering around the machines, checking readings, adjusting levels. Carl said nothing while she was there. He simply held Anna's hand. It chilled his fingers a little, with the vest covering her completely, but he could withstand that. Eventually the nurse wrote one last thing on the chart, and with a small smile, she slipped out of the room. Carl watched her go. Then his hand slipped into his pocket.

"I'm sorry." He said to Anna, almost pretending she wasn't unconscious. "I lied to you, earlier." He took a shuddering breath as he pulled out the small box. He shifted her hand, exposing her fingers, and cradled it as he placed the box half in his hand, half in hers. "About the accountants."

He sighed. He could feel the tears prickling his eyes again. "My grandfather. He did leave me a trust, but they didn't need managed. Not today. Or yesterday, I guess." He said with a chuckle that almost became a sob. "He left me a trust that I was only to use for three things. Education. A home. And..."

Carl looked up at Anna's face. Her beautiful face. His heart ached, desperate to see those eyes open.

"And a ring." He whispered, gently opening the small box.

Inside laid a gold band, wide, but not excessively so. With a series of small stones set into the band itself, forming a palindrome of ruby, sapphire, diamond, sapphire, ruby.

He'd seen her admiring it in the window of the jewellers. Seen her wide eyes and radiant smile. That reaction told him everything he needed to know. She wanted him just as much as he wanted her. And that ring was the perfect one for his perfect partner.

"So please. Anna, baby I'm begging you. Please wake up so I can put it on your finger."

* * *

13 MONTHS LATER

Gravel crunched beneath the wheels of the black car as it made its way down to the church. Flowers adorned the trees that lined the trail, bouquets of pink and white. It was a long trail, almost frustrating by the time it pulled up outside the main door. Anna struggled to contain her excitement as her dad stepped out and rounded the back, coming up to her door and helping her out of the vehicle. Anna hid the wince, the scars were still a little tight, but she could bare it, especially today.

"Are you ready Petal?" He asked, looking her in the eyes.

She nodded, struggling to find any appropriate words, before realising that words were mostly meaningless. She reached out and pulled him into a hug.

He chuckled. "I'm so proud of you." He said into her hair. His voice was thick, heavy with love, true pride, and tinged with the memory of how she was a year ago. " Let's go." He whispered, as they both heard the first few notes from the organ.

As they walked into the church Anna was comforted by the steadfast presence of her father. She might have been adopted, but he was her father. Her hand laid on his arm gently, but he held it firm, ready, just in case. It had been a long year, and she was still recovering. The tingles and numbness in her right side could still come unexpectedly.

They stopped just inside the outer door, beneath the stone vaulting. Literal centuries of brides had stood right there, waiting for the right moment in the music. Trish was there, along with Anna's niece and a young boy, barely even 4 years old, one of Carl's cousins. Trish was already crying, a huge smile on her face. She approached tentatively, but Anna accepted the hug without tottering. It was Trish's turn to be unable to speak. She pulled back, nodded, still with the big smile, and hugged Anna again.

"You're going to make me late..." Anna whispered to her.

Trish finally retreated with a shared grin, and the organ music launched into the main theme. Trish shepherded the children around the corner, leaving Anna and her father in the vestibule, waiting for the cue. Her dad laid his hand upon hers, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

"Let's go kiddo."

The music came around to 'the moment' and Anna stepped onto the aisle confidently. She looked around, greeted by the sight of so many familiar faces. Plenty of family, hers and Carl's. Colleagues and friends, the line there was pretty blurred. She didn't want to consider the bill for agency staff the hospital was taking. They hadn't complained though. Perhaps it was the trusts idea of a wedding gift. Even Dr Stelling was there.

It didn't matter how many times Anna told the trauma lead that she understood her actions, the senior doctor was endlessly apologetic. It was genuinely becoming annoying. Part of Anna wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her while screaming 'You don't need to apologise again! I would have done the same thing!' She was glad Stelling had allowed Carl to give her that last jolt, but...ugh, I'm over it, why aren't you, she thought.

The steady arm suddenly felt firmer, and Anna caught herself. She hoped nobody noticed. That was the biggest lingering issue. If she got distracted her mind could float off and leave her limbs behind. Totally normal, for someone who had been dead for half an hour, apparently. In time it would hopefully get better. It was still irritating.

But it did force her to focus, and what a sight it was. Carl stood before the altar, in a frankly ...mmmmfff... fitting suit. She was sure she hadn't forgotten a word, an embarrassingly common occurrence in the last year. For once she knew what she saw was beyond such petty things as words.

Many would say it was a pretty standard suit. But with Carl in it... How do you clothe the perfect man?

He'd been the first face she truly saw when she awoke. He'd held her as emotions pulled her apart and she dragged herself back together again, a beacon when communication was almost impossible. He'd held her arm as she took her first steps on wasted legs, steadied her as she relearned balance. He read her favourite books aloud to ease her off to sleep despite the beeps and bongs of various monitors. He had taken her home, to their home, and cradled her when the nightmares came. As she gradually returned to who she once was, he was there. Always waiting, ironically she reflected, patiently, until she was ready for the next step.

It had been a long year, and at times it was terribly hard. But it only served to deepen their love for each other. The ring was on her finger throughout. And, once her recovery permitted, they'd been able to have some moments of ... fun. Considering they were both employed in the medical profession, they ought to have seen it coming. They'd both been terrified when the doctor asked them to come and double check some results from a routine post-'event' exam.

Anna's hand drifted towards her belly, where the bump was only just starting to show, and Carl's joined it as she alighted the small set of steps up to the altar. His fingers lingered for only a moment though, they had ceremonial obligations to fulfil. Anna watched the embrace between Carl and her father, and realised just how bonded the two had become. If, in some bizarro universe she ever tried to divorce Carl, she had no idea who her father would choose.

Roger's presence behind Carl was also an element she would never have foreseen. They'd been colleagues, sure enough. But something around the 'event' had changed their relationship on a fundamental level. Men. They were weird.

And then Carl took her hands, and it was just the two of them. Nobody else mattered. The vicar was giving his spiel, and Anna was slyly glad she could blame the 'event' for her distraction when it came to the parts that actually needed her input. The truth was she didn't care for anything else but him. His eyes. His smile. Him, standing there before her. It took her a moment to realise what the vicar had said, until Carl unfolded a piece of paper. His voice barely wavered as he read out the handwritten vows, and Anna's heart became physically, metaphorically, and eternally, his.

THE END

* * *

There we go, didn’t want to say this upfront in case of spoiling it, but I hope I made some people reading cry as much I did when writing. It’s the ending I always had in mind but it was so intense to write. Hard but exhillirating. I was up to 2:30am doing the first draft because I was so into it. I sincerely hope everyone enjoyed this series, and I will be back with more stories from Anna and Carl eventually.

[shark-myths]

writing patterns

Rules: list the first line of your last 10 (posted) fics and see if there's a pattern!

tagged by @carbonbased000 and already cringing because i am aware of certain aspersions cast upon my writing and they're all true. every single one of these is going to be either a fragment or a run-on that thinks it's clever.

“For god’s sake, Mr. Wentz, it’s the fifth time this week.” (Fall Asleep, Phone in Hand - peterick, the pillow talk au)

“It’s a money pit,” Andy says, standing on the cracked flagstones leading to Pete’s new front door. (The House on Rosewood Lane, peterick, the way i processed my trauma about having to move with 3 days' notice)

The things you get stuck on end up defining you, I think. (a man can't stand, a man can't breathe, a man can't see - lawrusso, a fic i for some reason decided to write in FIRST PERSON, truly wild of me)

Resolution #1:  Never Kiss Patrick Stump (Promise You Anything, a charming peterick about new years' resolutions)

Driving feels so good tonight. (Made One Way, lawrusso)

If Tony took up weapons, engineering, and scotch whisky to get the approval of dear old dad, well, it doesn’t take all that long to realize his disapproval is a lower-hanging fruit. (Iron Mother, part 2 of my genderbent iron man series described by @alienfuckeronmain as "none of those words are in the bible")

You’re still dreaming of his fists. (the gutter where we found it, lawrusso, god i love writing in second person and johnny lawrence is perfect for it)

It’s the first night in their first place, just the two of them. (sorry i'm not made of sugar, girl out boy, an odd melancholy little thing)

Maybe this is where it starts. (Iron Maiden, part 1 of the abovementioned)

The worst thing about the elf ears is what they do to her hair. (merry christmas, i could care less, girl out boy, another bittersweet little look into their lives! this one was meant to cheer up dafne and uhhh probably didn't)

The pattern is punchy little lines that vary in their effectiveness as hooks, I think! But the main takeaway for me is that I adopt genre conventions enthusiastically, and you can tell from the first line most of the time what genre I'm writing in and what emotional notes I'm going for with the overarching story. Let's play with last lines next.

i tag @27-royal-teas @alienfuckeronmain @leyley09 @earlgreytea68 guys i don't know who else is writing right now! please help yourselves to this one.

[wordsandrobots]

Wishing on Space Hardware update . . . no, hang on, let's do this properly. *pulls giant comedy lever*

2023 final update

As of writing, I have just finished Epilogue 4 of fic #19 in my 20-part Iron-Blooded Orphans continuation. This leaves one remaining interlude and the final epilogue to write, and I have next week off work so it's looking very likely I'll be in a position to start posting at the end of January (following a full beginning-to-end edit).

With that in mind, this is a 'please read my two-and-a-half-years of fan-fic' post for anybody who hasn't checked it out so far. There are thrills! Spills! Terrorism! Smut! Mind-screws! And a considerable number of sundry dramatic happenings as the entire damn cast utterly fails to get over what happened in the series itself.

In short: I fix one (1) thing and run away cackling with the consequences for what will ultimately be around 650,000 words. I'm really quite proud of it. Comments etc always 100% welcome.

As for the rest of you, my dear, lovely readers who have waited patiently for the past six months, sharpening your pitch-forks over what I did at the end of fic #17, I'd like to present you with the following token of my appreciation: an early preview of the prologue to fic #19. I feel this could stand as a intro to the whole story, so it's only spoilers for Iron-Blooded Orphans itself. Nevertheless, I'll put it behind a cut to keep things tidy.

Your comments, kudos and readership in general has made this hyper-fixation utterly worth it. I wish you all a happy, healthy new year and hope to see you again when I next start posting.

Ragnarök in G Minor

Prologue – Wish

verb: to desire something unattainable

You know how the story goes. You know how it ends.

Once upon a time, there were two little boys who wanted to be kings.

For one, this was everything – the very reason of his existence. For the other, it was merely the next step on the path to some better place. They both did terrible things in pursuit of their dreams, driven onward by a blue-eyed demon whose own desires ran no deeper than the dirt beneath his feet or the new sights to which he was led. Voices that spoke against them were cast aside. Others flocked to their cause, dazzled by hope. Together, they set out to transform the world itself.

But the world refused to bend. And no matter how many lives were spent in their names, death would not take their side.

McGillis Fareed passed away in silence, so that his best friend needn't forgive his treachery.

Orga Itsuka fell in the street, back where he began, his blood in the gutter.

Their crowns were mirages, impossible to grasp. For the harsh truth is, lost little boys do not get to become kings and those who already sit upon thrones show no mercy towards challengers.

So the story goes. So it ends.

Yet, what is an ending except the point where one chooses to stop telling the tale? The storm of change McGillis craved lashes still at the pillars of all he deemed stagnant and corrupt. By Orga's final choices and upon his last command, his family continues forward into whatever comes next.

Is it failure, to snatch what remains from the ashes? Is it victory, to not see where the rocks pitched into motion come to rest?

The meaning may be judged in the moment, or years hence, by those who gained and those who lost, the bitter and the blessed. It flexes with time and place and circumstance, until the only thing that may be said of the matter is this:

Once upon a time, there were two little boys who wanted to be kings.

They knew not what they unleashed.

I saw two shooting stars last night I wished on them, but they were only satellites It's wrong to wish on space hardware I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care

From 'A New England' by Kirsty MacColl

[whatwewrotepodcast]

Lucky

               Doragru Greyfall had always considered herself lucky.

She had to have been, given the life she was born into. To have survived so long, to have lost so little. She’d spent her whole life in the Capitol, never stepping foot beyond the city limits, and yet it was not a kind city to people like her. To the Lesser. Born into poverty and oppression, growing up with the constant, unjust weight of the worst years of Olnader. The years when there was not even the faintest pretence made of fair treatment, where dwarves could be kicked and beaten like dogs with impunity. How many people had she known over the years, whisked away for the sake of a heel of bread, or a supposed short-weight of iron? Some of them taken to prisons in deep, dank places, others put to work in the quarries north of Port Sicher. Others just gone, vanished in the darkness of night.

               She had lived her life under the shadow of shattered glass shop fronts, of stolen anvils, and cold nights under threadbare blankets, but she had lived, when so many hadn’t. She had lived when others had faded into shadows of themselves, starved out of their homes, their forges. She had never had to sleep on the street, lying curled in the gutter like refuse. She had never been beaten until she couldn’t walk, like so many she knew. And she had met her husband, Thrammas, on the streets of the Forge. Had fallen for his gruff, stoic solidity, the promise of safety in a world categorised by uncertainty. She had married him for love, yes, but also for the strength of his back and for the small and ramshackle but functional smithy he’d inherited from his father. The Lutgher forge, with its peeling timber house perched precariously above the shop, like a watchful bird sitting in a nest.

It wasn’t much, but it was theirs, and Dora Lutgher felt lucky.

Thrammas was a solid smith, and the business did well enough. Enough to repair what needed repairing and pay their guild membership and tuck away a little at the end of each month, as safe keeping for the future. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Enough when tensions in the city were thrumming like a struck chord, when undercurrents of violence simmered like a pot on the boil. It was enough to have a door to close on the night, a safe place to sleep, and warm, strong arms to protect her from the darkness. It was enough even when she fell pregnant with their first child. It would be tight, they knew, but it would be enough. They would be enough. And she had a safe place to bear her baby boy, had paperwork to do, orders to fill, while Thrammas worked the forge day and night to put more into their savings, a bulwark against trouble. And their son was born healthy, ruddy cheeked and screaming, when so many where not. He grew quickly, chubby and precocious, when so many were sickly and underfed. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.

He was beautiful, and Dora felt lucky.

Their son was perfect, and the forge was doing well. Better than their close neighbours, not as well as some others. The murmurs of trouble seemed quietened for a time, and if things in the Forge were not good, at least they were not worse. The humans and half elves and others still cast them filthy looks as they passed. The guards still patrolled the streets of the Forge, looking for any excuse to cause trouble. People still disappeared, sometimes. People still came to the markets with their faces swollen and puffed with bruises. But that was just how things were. That was the life that they lived. And their little boy was charming and delightful and it seemed a shame that he should grow up alone. And so they gave him a little brother, and a little sister. And her children were happy and healthy and they had enough to feed them, and soon enough their oldest was strong enough to work in the forge with his father and he was a braw and bonny child and the pride of the neighbourhood.

They had so much, and Dora knew she was lucky.

There were rumours of war in the streets again and the city felt like a storm on the edge of breaking. The Forge prickled with electricity and the smell of ozone like the moment before the lighting strike. Business was bad, the Greater wary of stepping foot in the Forge, not wanting to give their money to the Lesser. They would rather accept lower quality wares made by human smiths than pay a dwarf, or take their business to Trock where their friends wouldn’t know where their fancy blades were made. Iron was hard to come by, trade lines disrupted. The Forge held its breath, and Dora clutched her youngest toddler to her chest and reminded herself that she had three babies full grown and another healthy infant and she should be thankful. Thankful for her eldest son, of charming smile and skilful hand, good at whatever he set his mind to and delightful enough to talk his way out of anything else. Thankful for her second son, so much like his father in his serious consideration of the world. A worker, a craftsman. Thankful for her daughter, with all the forceful personality of her big brother but none of his caution, a child always on the brink of disaster but living her life to the ragged edge. Thankful for her youngest girl, her baby, full of bubbly smiles and enthusiasm, but tempered with a seriousness and curiosity not shared by her sister.

Because Dora had always thought herself lucky.

Until she wasn’t.

Until that creeping feeling of dread, the haunting sense of waiting finally broke free like a dam bursting its banks. Until the sight of those tiny hanging bodies branded itself into the psyche of a nation. Until the tension cracked and violence exploded into civil war. Until the streets were lined with the torches of guards, marching into position around the Forge, locking it down. Beating anyone who tried to leave, who tried to move after dark. Until she found herself looking into the soft, dark eyes of her oldest son, feeling the soft-stiff bristle of his beard against her cheek as she clung to him. As she begged him not to go. Until her tears flowed like rivers as he gently pried her off him. As he turned and kissed his sister’s brow, ignoring the bright-hot light of betrayal in her eyes. Clasping his younger brother in a firm hug, murmuring words of caution in his ear. Deaf to her sobbing pleas, to his father’s soft questions. All that forceful charm turned inward and hardened into a steely determination.

Dora had always thought herself lucky, until the day her oldest son marched away to war.

Things were no longer good. The threat of violence and war hung over the Forge like a pall. She shared passing glances with other mothers as they moved down the street. A suburb of ghosts, haunted by the children, brothers, husbands, who had gone away to fight. The parents of Vovrik’s friends, who she’d once given a smile and a nod, a pause to share gossip and news. The Eversharps. The Ungarts. They didn’t meet her eyes anymore. She knew why. Vovrik was a ringleader. A lit match. She saw the question in their eyes. Would my daughter be gone now if not for your son? Will I ever see my son again, and will it be your fault? She felt the cracks inside their home as well. Once a refuge from the world outside, the house now felt like dry kindling, just waiting for a spark. Orsok and Elra always at each other’s throats. Hesi fractious and upset by the fighting of her siblings. The forge always running behind, down a strong hand before the anvil. And the little piece of Dora’s heart that had left with her oldest son, her bonny, sweet, smiling boy, throbbing with the endless pain of a mother’s grief.

Some of them came home. Eventually. Some wounded, scarred. Some injured only on the inside, in their haunted eyes and pinched mouths. Dora watched Elra spend all evening, every night, sitting on the front step, watching the empty street. Waiting. Waiting for footsteps. For a promise to be kept. The crack in her heart grew a little deeper and she knew the fractures would never heal. She grieved for her son in the only way she knew how, by convincing herself that he was dead. That he must be dead. No word ever came. No news. No one who had seen him fall.

Dora started to think those with dead children were the lucky ones. At least they knew for sure.

Any smith would tell you that once a blade has cracked, it’s near impossible to repair like new. There’s always a weakness. A flaw. A point where the old metal and the new must join. The crack never healed properly. There was a space that had never been filled. The space for knowing. For being able to grieve, for sure. It was the day after his birthday when the fatal blow fell, and the blade snapped on impact. The tension in the house was nearly as high as it had been on the streets before the war. A single misplaced word. An explosion of anger. Slamming doors, a hastily packed bag. Angry recriminations. Tears and hateful words that could never be taken back, even flung as they were in the heat of the moment. The look on her daughter’s face as she turned back in the doorway, staring red eyed and tousled haired, tears streaking on her face. Telling them she wouldn’t come back until she had found him. Found the answers. Until she had proven them all wrong. Feeling the crack in her heart spider outwards, like shattered glass. Watching as another one of her children turned her back and walked away.

               There was a time when Dora Lutgher considered herself lucky.

[skxrbrand]

Prev / 𝐁𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐋𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐆𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐒 𝐋𝐀𝐁𝐘𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐇 - 𝐈

"The Unmaker demands his due."

The Herald of Malal-Khade hissed, a shadow-thing with the suggestion of daemon-shape-- horns, claws, a maw of fangs and a pair of glinting coals for eyes. It hung before Skarbrand, much smaller but with the mien of a creature bigger and stronger than even the Reaper. A favored daemon of the hybrid-god, it displayed it's mark proudly for all assembled and seemed to dare the Exile to contest the message it brought.

Skarbrand felt his claws twitch with ire. He quashed the murderous urge by balling a fist but was unable to keep his sentiments out of the words he growled. " He need not. I am a daemon of my word."

Indeed, the ranks of Infernius had been gathered up into ranks. Mortals hopped up upon their destriers, Bloodletters upon their Juggers. Men clustered behind siege machines, pushing the iron-spiked wheels forwards. Beastmasters whipped and harried war-creatures ahead of themselves. Skarbrand tilted his head.

" And what of Khade? What numbers can he put to my own?"

The Herald snorted, as if this was a stupid question. " He is a God, Reaper; a power beyond even your own. A god in the flesh, that mortals can see, hear, obey. Legions flock to his banner, for fear of utter damnation." The creature chortled. Though it spoke it not, both of them knew Skarbrand had done much the same as the fleshlings.

" I will trust my eyes more than your words."

" When you see what he has gathered, you may not even trust those, O' Reaper." The shadow-thing laughed, it's voice fading and fluttering as it's existence guttered in and out. Skarbrand watched it float out of reach, realizing it meant to lead the Reaper and his warriors wherever they were meant to go. A distrustful pang stung his heart, but he ignored it, looking to his Blood Reapers instead. He assigned hosts, marching orders, routes to the Chaos Realm. And all the while a feeling in his chest sat and persisted.

The same feeling he had gotten when he had marched up the stairs to the zenith of the Brass Keep to strike Khorne down... Striding to the head of the largest host, the Reaper bellowed.

"MARCH! We bring blood and fire to the heart of the Witchbreed! We will show those cravens what it means to truly wage war!"

And avenge the Reaper's wounded pride.

---

The march took days, insofar as they could be measured this far north. Here, time was a dubious concept at best, one that meant less and less the closer they drew to the Empyrean. Every so often, the Reaper would look up and spy the shadow-thing, the daemon darting ahead and to the left or right, leading them every onward, winding through Nurgh-corrupted lands.

Khazaan and Kha'xanzyr followed a respectable distance behind him, the presence of the former providing some small measure of comfort. As for Kha'xanzyr...the Reaper was a keen to watch him as the shadow-thing. Skarbrand had donned his Zharr armor, and the black zharr-axes containing the Greater Daemons of the Shadow God. When they had at last been led to stretch of wasteland serving as a camp for the fused God's forces, the fact of it had gotten him looks from the Shadow Daemons.

After them, he took stock of the others the Usurper godling had gathered in the few short months after that momentous battle at the Brazen Altar. Beastmen, as always, were plentiful and milled about in their myriads. Some were black and white, in the manner of Malal's chosen, and others were bright red followers of the Red God with fierce feline features. There were no few mortals, clad in chaos armor and embossed with the rune of either, or even both, gods. Skarbrand could spy the remains of past allegiances-- brands and markings of the four paved with new, fresh brands or outright dug out of the skin with claws and blades. Lastly, there the daemons, milling about in an uneasy coexistence with the followers of Chaos. All sat beneath the shadow of a lone, black mountain, the darkness it caste broken up here and there by pyres and spits of roasted meat.

Khade had stolen these warriors from the Worship of the Ruinous Powers, and now he meant to challenge the gods themselves, using those same spoils. Even Skarbrand had to acknowledge the audacity, the boldness; if there were any questions about Khade or Malal's kinship to Khorne, they had been soundly stamped out.

" Where is Malal-Khade?" The Reaper demanded, turning his eyes to the shadow-thing. It did not answer, but something else did. The very earth, it seemed, shook and rattled in response to the question. Skarbrand looked about himself, freezing at he again noticed the lone mountain cloaking the army in darkness. It began to move, unfolding into bestial shape. It's jagged peaks became the back-spines of a monster and long, but stocky, limbs. A nest of curling horns crown it's long face, the god bearing features both felid and draconic. Eyes appeared, blues and whites and scattered liberally about it's hide. Feathers clung to the creature, the fused god shaking himself as he stood to his full height. He was enormous, much larger than when he had come to Infernius to boast about his new form.

Immediately, his followers knelt in his presence, flattening themselves to the earth. Skarbrand could even see some of his own forces cower to their knees from the corner of his eyes. Khazaan stumbled back a step and Kha'xanzyr bowed before his new patron. Only the Reaper stood firm, unimpressed. Refusing to gratify Malal-Khade with his submission.

"𝑹𝑬𝑨𝑷𝑬𝑹 𝑶𝑭 𝑳𝑬𝑮𝑬𝑵𝑫." Malal-Khade begin, speaking with two voices. " 𝒀𝑶𝑼 𝑯𝑶𝑵𝑶𝑹 𝑼𝑺 𝑰𝑵 𝑻𝑯𝑰𝑺 𝑩𝑳𝑶𝑶𝑫𝑺𝑯𝑬𝑫 𝑻𝑶 𝑪𝑶𝑴𝑬."

Skarbrand said nothing, and so the hybrid deity looked to his children. He raised both arms out to his side and from his position on the ground, it appeared as if he were holding both moons -- Mansliebb and Morsliebb, in his talons.

"𝑹𝑰𝑺𝑬 𝑴𝒀 𝑪𝑯𝑰𝑳𝑫𝑹𝑬𝑵. 𝑹𝑰𝑺𝑬 𝑨𝑵𝑫 𝑹𝑬𝑱𝑶𝑰𝑪𝑬! 𝑭𝑶𝑹 𝑩𝑬𝑯𝑰𝑵𝑫 𝑻𝑯𝑬𝑺𝑬 𝑯𝑰𝑳𝑳𝑺 𝑳𝑰𝑬 𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑮𝑹𝑬𝑨𝑻 𝑭𝑨𝑳𝑳𝑬𝑵 𝑮𝑨𝑻𝑬𝑺. 𝑨𝑵𝑫 𝑩𝑬𝒀𝑶𝑵𝑫 𝑻𝑯𝑶𝑺𝑬 𝑮𝑨𝑻𝑬𝑺, 𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑲𝑰𝑵𝑮𝑫𝑶𝑴 𝑶𝑭 𝑳𝑰𝑬𝑺 𝑹𝑼𝑳𝑬𝑫 𝑩𝒀 𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑮𝑶𝑫 𝑶𝑭 𝑫𝑬𝑪𝑬𝑷𝑻𝑰𝑶𝑵. 𝑩𝑼𝑻 𝑳𝑰𝑬𝑺 𝑫𝑶 𝑵𝑶𝑻 𝑾𝑰𝑵 𝑾𝑨𝑹𝑺 𝑨𝑵𝑫 𝑵𝑶 𝑴𝑨𝑮𝑰𝑪 𝑾𝑰𝑳𝑳 𝑩𝑬 𝑷𝑹𝑶𝑶𝑭 𝑨𝑮𝑨𝑰𝑵𝑺𝑻 𝑴𝒀 𝑷𝑶𝑾𝑬𝑹!"

At this, Malal-Khade brandished his stolen Blade, a symbol of his deeds so far and a suggestion of what he could further accomplish. His followers did as they were bid, grabbing their weapons, mounting their steeds, and marching towards the blinding not-light of the horizon. Into the mouth of the hells. The fused god begin to stride ahead of them and with a glance backwards, Skarbrand felt his own hooves shift into motion.

The coveted day had come. He would caste down Tzeentch's kingdom as he had Slaanesh before him, as he had razed the Gardens of Nurgle.

He would have his vengeance.

[tradewarehouse123]

Weather the Storm in Style: Why Cast Iron Gutters are the Ultimate Protection for Your Home

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