#do not think too much about the logistics of lying on that skull thing its for the meme

[aconflagrationofmyown]

A Whole Man is Hard to Find - chapter 12

An Elvis Presley Fanfic AU

I posted the AO3 link before and thought why not plop the chapter here as well. Much love ♥️

“Now, now hear me out, it’s a sensible plan but it’s got a major catch.” Elvis mumbled into Bean’s withers and got a derisive snort from his horse in return, “Nah, don’t call me a coward boyo, I’m just sayin Nevada Territory is a long ways away, Lord knows what’s even out there. What if there’s no water, huh? What would you do then?” Beans just nuzzled his leg with his impossibly soft muzzle, “Yeah, you’d look to me to get ya water but I’m not the Almighty, I can’t make something outta nothin, and then you’d die on me like er’ybody else, yes you would, don’t argue the point, you would. These are the things ya gotta think of before ridin into the sunset like you suggested. Sunsets can fry ya up, ya do know?”

Beans stretched his magnificent self lazily as he laid on his side, hoofs kicking out and shuffling round the hay they were both sat in. Every time his horse nearly drifted off to sleep he’d startle awake as if Captain Presley’s constant, four hour long monologue of romantic, spiritual and monetary woes intrigued him too much to snooze through. Or maybe it was the way the Captain’s hand would stall in its petting when he really got himself worked up recounting one betrayal or another. Either way, Beans would then shake his mighty neck in Elvis’ lap until Elvis remembered what was truly important in life and went back to braiding his mane.

“I know, I know I keep you shut up in here all the time and death in the great big desert sounds nicer than another day here, I know, I know and I’m sorry. I’m rather shit at taking care of anybody, aren’t I? Keep ‘em alive and fed but are they happy? Hell no, don’t know a single happy person or horsey in my acquaintance. Would you be happy in the desert Beans, hmm?”

Elvis let his head fall back against the rough wooden post he had his back against. He heard shuffling in the adjoining compartment next to the stables, in the boiler room, and in a few minutes voices raised.

Hymn sing. Had to be dawn by now.

His right leg was numb where Beans rested the weight of his neck, his mouth was dry as dust and his hands shook with chill, but he felt sober, rational, as much as he ever was which had always been a matter of contention with folks -was Elvis Presley naturally mad? Beans said he was, Beans said it was nothing to take to heart either. Beans understood him, except about the logistics of eloping with nothing but a horse and the shirt on your back. Beans was an idealist who didn’t think about where hay and water and the next brushing down would come from. Beans had never had to go in and apologize to a lying woman for being cruel to her. Beans didn’t know what it was like to love somebody ya didn’t really know.

Elvis ignored the pins and needles in his leg and gave himself five more minutes on the stable floor. Besides, he wasn’t finished with the braiding and you can’t leave a pretty fella like Beans half undone.

Five minutes turned to ten and he wondered idly if now that his pulse no longer ricocheted in his skull that perhaps he might catch a wink of sleep.

The swish swish of a skirt displacing hay caught his ear and he opened his eyes, raising his head to find Sister Rosetta approaching gingerly through the hay and dung, moderating her usual commanding gait as she picked a path across the stables, balancing a jug and greasy brown bag such as confectioners used.

“You sweet woman.” he murmured as he spied her goodies and she startled a little at him being awake, then smiled in gratification at the clear eyed greeting he gave her.

“How are you feeling, Captain?” she asked, gently kneeling down at Bean’s head and reaching for his shoulder.

“Lil better.” he assured her but his voice sounded like a croak.

“Did you manage any sleep?”

“No.”

“You need this.” she pushed the jug in his hands and he greedily drank down the melon water in it, his shakes calming for a minute. “And you’d best eat a little, so as to keep your strength up and your temper down.”

He wasn’t hungry but they both knew that wasn’t the point. He had removed himself from you last night in a bid to regain some fraction of sobriety and rantional before hearing a confession he was pretty certain he could recite beforehand -verbatim. But it had seemed the wise, kind, just thing to remove himself until he could hear it in a steady frame of mind. Even if it had felt a little cold to close the door on your tear stained face and “Elvis, Elvis please, don’t go!” echoing down the hall after him as you scratched at the door, sounding every bit the child he used to play with.

The half gnawed biscuit stuck to his throat and he had to gulp in more water to force it down. That alone took energy out of him. He flicked idly at the rest of it, tearing pieces and fiddling with them till they crumbled before they could reach his mouth.

“You are going to go to her, aren’t you?” Sister Rosetta asked and he was too tired to play dumb or tell her to mind her own. In fact he could use some womanly advice at the moment.

“Yeah.” he whispered.

“Jerry sent me to find you,” she went on, “the Colonel was about ready to break down the suite door, thinking you were in your room and unconscious since no answer came out. One assumes Miss Beaumont has either fainted inside or simply won’t deign a reply.”

“Oh Lord!” he exclaimed making to rise, puffing in effort to extricate himself from under Bean’s sturdy neck.

“Before you go,” she laid a delaying hand on his arm as he brushed off the hay from his trousers, “I’m not one to divulge a trust, and what that little woman told me as I dressed her last night was in strictest confidence despite her emotion, but seeing as how I have a sense you are about to make a very heavy decision in her regard, I think it excusable that I tell you a secret in her favor.”

“What’s that?” he whispered, fear and hope warring in his eyes.

Ten minutes and the damn brute still pounded on the suite door, rattling your overwrought nerves with every barrage and fruitless clamor of Elvis’ name. “My boy, my boy” again and again in that loathsome accent. You sourly hoped the Colonel’s deafening assault against the hinges stemmed from fear that he’d overdrawn the bank of life and killed his cash cow at last, as he truly almost had. You sat at the rickety vanity chair, not a bit of your outfit touched since the Captain had left you hours ago, only your boots taken off and the pretty pistol from them laying cold and heavy in your lap, pointed at the quivering door. If you were to be killed or rejected or taken to prison, you might as well have it done in the prettiest dress you had ever worn, bought by the kindest man you’d ever known. And if you killed Parker with the pistol Elvis had won for you, there was a poetic justice to it, even if he wouldn’t give you time enough to explain it.

Suddenly, there was quiet behind the door. Then the murmur of voices. You stood up and tip toed to it, pressing your ear to the wood in hopes to catch a snippet of conversation or a clue as to who had pacified Parker. You could not hear the voices clear enough, you could not make out if the pitch belonged to Elvis. You strained and held your breath, closed your eyes and tried to focus on the murmur outside, to give you some hint if he was coming in or not, if he was even there. If he was even alive.

A rattling from the famous shutters covering the windows opposite startled you out of your skin. You yelped and spun round, back pressed to the door and pistol raised at the hidden intruder currently picking the shutter’s lock after raising the window with remarkable quiet. The shutter kicked open and in streamed early morning daylight, painting a golden backdrop behind Elvis as he crouched in the window sill, hands raised and a look of pleasant surprise on his face,

“Don’t shoot, please don’t shoot.” he actually laughed.

You dropped the pistol to the floor in your shock, needing to clutch at the door handle lest you crumple to the ground on seeing him again, looking remarkably alive and whole, “I didn’t know it was you.” you explained hoarsely.

“Course, course.” he nodded, “Good girl, be it anyone else and I do expect you to blow their heads off.” he looked you up and down and took in the gala finery still laced tight and the pale color of your face, the way you stared dully at him as if you had not expected conversation to be made. Neither of you had done any sleeping, it would seem. He cleared his throat and shifted his weight on the sill, “May I come in?” he asked gently.

You frowned in confusion, “Of course.”

“Thank you.” he murmured and let himself down, knees creaking as he straightened out. “I went round the deck on the back way so as not to get caught, whole damn crew is after me with one thing to tell or ask. A-a-and I wanted to get here first.”

He was alive and stutteringly polite and your exhausted heart did not know what to make of it. While he looked like hell in many ways, he carried himself soberly, only dead beat weariness detectable in his red rimmed eyes. You had some flicker of hope that maybe he’d hear you out. A whole night to prepare and you still had no set speech, but you had an idea of how to begin it.

“I don’t deserve it,” you settled on as beginning while wringing your hands, more a gust of breath than a true voice coming out your throat, “but would you be so good as to hear me, as there was something I wished to tell you last night, and it can no wait.”

“I’ll hear ya out.” he replied gravely, his eyes had not met yours since he stepped down from the window into the room, they kept roving from the bed to the vanity to the double rataan doors. There was not an unstoried inch in the whole suite. “But first, you’ll hear me out, no, no really, you must.” he put his hand up as you went to protest and you folded meekly, too scared and tired to risk angering him. “Move dear, I wanna see that we’re alone for this.” and he motioned you away from your place by the door as he strode up to it and unlocked it with his key, flinging it open.

Seemingly satisfied that there was no one lurking, he shut it again gently and locked it once more. He picked up your pistol from the floor, putting it and the key on the dresser, his discarded overcoat flopping atop it. You now stood where he had by the windows, and he took to leaning on the dresser in his shirtsleeves, one hand rattling out a nervous staccato rhythm on its shiny top, while the other shielded his smarting eyes from the light.

Every time he looked at you it was as if his voice dried up, he wished now he had left the shutters closed, so as not to be tempted to make an inventory of the year’s toll on your face before he could get out what he needed to say.

“It’s come to my attention,” he cleared his throat gratingly, “that, that, I,” he coughed again and then straightened up, taking his hand down from his eyes and giving you the courtesy of meeting your startlingly famillair eyes, a penance for his sins he thought, “that I owe you a heartfelt apology for my horrid behavior last night.”

“You needn’t-“ you assured him in a hurry,

“No, no, I-I really must say I’m ever so ashamed, and I’m sorry.” his fingers stippled faster, “For all of it. Handlin you so rough a-a-and I dunno what all I threatened but Sister Rosetta informs me I’m an awful sorta man, t-t-to ya, and I’m sorry. I’m real sorry-“

“What did she say?” you paled, and made an aborted motion to go to him before thinking better of it, “I didn’t complain of you to her! What did she-“

“She said enough.” he ignored you gravely, “She said enough and I recall enough that I-I-I am real sorry for it, and I want you to know I didn’t mean it, that weren’t me in my right mind. I never,” his voice shook and his hand flew up to his mouth to force his lips to stop their trembling, he went on after a minute, “I’d never in a million years want to see you nothin but loved and cared for, none of that awful shit I said.”

You swallowed hard, torn between holding your peace, taking his unexpected gentleness to heart and using it to bolster your failing courage to confess, or assuring him that savage as he had been in his jealousy, you were not so deeply wronged as he thought. You were not so good as he yet maintained. You had wanted him, too.

“And for that…thing…with the Binder fella,” he interrupted your thoughts as he looked over your head, unable to keep eye contact, “I’m sorry to have embarrassed you like that. A-a-and for anything else I’ve omitted, i-I-i‘m real sorry.”

His sins were nothing, all things considered, not when measured against what you had done against him, and you felt a fool being made to listen to the apologies of a man who knew you had wronged him deeper.

“Are you -mocking me?” you asked in confusion, unable to make sense of it.

“What?” he startled, “No! Hell no, I-I-I’m very sorry. I’m askin ya to forgive me, if you can.” he added, giving you that strangely effective look from under his lashes.

“There’s nothing to forgive.” you muttered.

“There is, goddamn it!” he pounded his fist on the dresser top and you flinched, “Those days of you putting up with no good men and bastards are over, I’ve told you that! Now why won’t you listen to me? I done told you before to slap the next fella that was disrespectful to you! Why didn’t you?”

“I did.” you cringed backwards.

“You did?” he repeated comically, then looked spooked at the notion he had forgotten more of last night than he thought, “You slapped me last night?”

“Yes.”

“Well -good, good that’s, that’s good.” he rubbed his jaw nervously.

“Can I say my piece now?” you asked, timid and impatient all at once.

“Yes.” he agreed sullenly, leaning back against the dresser again, “Though we needn’t engage in dramatics or a listing of your goddamn family tree nor a drum roll reveal that you are who you are.” your heart pounded in your throat and you watched as his soured mirth turned shrewd, “Cause I know exactly who you are, Cricket.”

The shock you voiced at hearing that old nickname drop from those once familiar lips sounded closer to a sob gusting out than any word, forced out by melancholy sentimentality and a shaking relief at being known. “Oh Elvis.” you whispered, unable to think a damn thing except ‘I’ve missed you, my old friend’.

“Must've been real hard not to laugh every time you felt me trying to puzzle together why Savannah Beaumont would look so shockingly like the late Miss Maddy Hodgkins.” he went on, his cold tone and the bitter twist to his mouth stamping out your initial relief, “Bet you barely held it together every time I looked at you, asked you bout your folks, my folks, made goddamn fervent love to you, and only you knowing I was bein’ had every fuckin second of it.”

“No!” you wailed, and shook your head frantically, “No, no it wasn’t -I, I was only shy and terrified, it had been so long I didn’t know you any more!” you pleaded with him.

“You once told me you’d lost all your friends when MY women died.” he jabbed a finger at you, “What was that but a goddamn joke? MY women? That was your sister! Your mother! Those were your folks every bit as much as mine, more in fact. And my mother too, who loved you dearly a-a-and you stood there and lied about it! Said I was the one with the greater grief! Hell, you told me anythin I wanted to hear, this whole goddamn time I thought you understood and you did, oh you did but you played it, every step of the way, every hour or the day you played it.”

“No.” you moaned, “No, not, not after-“

“After what?” he demanded fiercely.

“I don’t know when! Helena maybe, or the bath, I don’t know, but I-I, when I stopped being scared, I stopped lying about, about, about the things that mattered!” you stammered.

“Oh?” he mocked, “Tell me, Miss Hodgkins, what things matter to a woman like you?”

“You!” you near screamed at him and that shook him out of his derision. You watched him swallow hard. “You, I have not lied in any of my sentiments in regards to you.” you swore solemnly, “And there has not a single passing moment I did not regret my choice to lie to you.”

He squinted hard at the full, formidable, womanly shape of you and the glare of sunshine behind you, and it was near unbearable to reconcile it all. He wanted to cry and fight and scream at heaven for making it all so warped. That this sweet child of memory should be so cruel and beguiling a lover. He had left you behind him one day a barefoot child and not thought of you since. You were stuck there, grinning and muddy in a daffodil patch, waving him farewell. His mind had buried you there, you couldn’t be the woman who saved him and goaded him and cared for him and stirred his blood.

“I’ve got this memory I’m tryin not to recall but,” he spoke up after a heavy silence, “but it’s got ya in pigtails, tooth missin so your words whistle when ya talk, barely coming up to my hip ya were, and you’re fussin over my scrapes and I-I-I shoulda seen it. Shoulda seen it the minute you couldn’t even manage to hide behind your fear that mornin I first l-I, ya just had to tend to me didn’t ya? God, I shoulda seen it, seen that lil girl in you, but see, no, no. That little girl was supposed to grow up and cause her father a little worry and her mother much pride and she was gonna make a feisty wife for some good man and she was gonna be good! Life was gonna be good to her, she was gonna have it good. She, she, she, she’s not you. She’s not this!” he swooped his hand up and down your rumpled glamor. “Not even life would be so cruel.” his voice broke and he sobbed, “God wouldn’t be so cruel, not to her.”

“Captain,” you hushed him, an impotent hand stretched out to stay his heartache though you dared not take the liberty of touching him, bewildered by the turn this had taken, “you needn’t lose your faith over this, over her. She’s happy now, can’t you see that? She has you, if she has you, then she has it good, life has been good to her at last.”

He took his fingers from his eyes and drug them down his cheeks, stretching his face into a wane pantomime of his exhaustion. “I’m sorry that I did not take more care to search for you when I returned to Memphis,” his voice shook terribly, “that I accepted your death. What’s one more? -I had thought when I heard, seemed like the world was gettin cleansed of all that I’d loved and all my kin. I just, I didn’t think of ya then. ‘Cept that, least you’d been spared growin old in this cruel world.” he laughed, mirthless and sharp, “God! God!” he screamed and thudded his fist against the dresser with each invocation.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered again, “I’m sorry but I’ve done alright,” you soothed, “I’m alive and I am here. I’m safe here, you’ve given me that!”

“Done alright?” he repeated in disbelief, “You’ve lived a lie and you’ve done murder and been sold and been defrauded and you’re so fucked in the head from it all you think that fallin in with me is a goddamn heaven sent reprieve. Ha! Fuck!”

“You didn't deserve what happened to you either, what you had to do to be here now, but I don’t see your faith crumpling in the face of it.” you struck back, miserably.

He shook his head as if trying to shake out your logic from his ear canals.

“You needn’t have lied! My god, not to me, not to me!” he looked like he was pleading with you now, as if you could go back in time and choose honesty. “I’m your, your, -Elvis.” he whispered, defeated, as he thought of all the times you’d called him Captain, never used his name even when he’d needed to hear it, even from the stranger he thought you were.

“Even if, upon being bought at a auction block, I had been tempted to tell you, to trust your hideous reputation with so demanding a truth I-“ you balled your fists and pounded them against your hips in futile frustration at your inability to impress upon him your rotten form of sincerity, “even then, Captain, I would not have been speaking much of a truth! You can call me by my given name all you wish, you can sentence me to any judgment you see fit with it written in damming ink but the truth remains that I have not answered to it in nigh on a decade! A decade! All this time you have been playing at whatever life you call this circus I have been embodying a corpse! I did not concoct this lie to hurt you, I was nearly a child when I took it on, and all I have learned of life has been in Savannah Beaumont’s skin. Who I am now, who you found in that brothel was no more the child you knew than the next whore.”

“That can’t be,” he whispered like he personally found it insufferable that you should have no recollections as clear as him, “that can’t, you must -you do- remember some of it.”

“A little.” you agreed. “But it is as if it happened to someone else. And I had not thought of it, of you as I remember you, until that afternoon in Helena. I am not myself and I am not miss Beaumont but, I-I,” your lip shook so badly you had to pause, salty tears running onto your tongue, “I I-I , or rather you, gave me the one firm notion of who I am. I am your Rosey.” you said simply, “And even if you no longer keep me, I’ll be yours all my days now you’ve made me into someone at long last. Can’t be undone, once someone’s born you can’t send them back. You cannot! Don’t, please don’t take that from me.”

You stretched your hands out to him, begging him to hear you. Understand. He looked at you through a sheet of black hair that had fallen across his forehead and into his glittering eyes. He was terrified he’d not met a mate but a mirror in you, and he didn’t know how to tell you his own soul was cracked beyond repair. The stupid, glimmering hope that maybe you were still repairable had him gentling his expression and murmuring in tender warning lest you come nearer,

“I need a reason, Cricket, give me a reason for all this, the lies, not to me but the world.” he sniffed hard and pointed towards the chair at the vanity, “Sit down dear, you’re shakin.” he commanded gently.

Obeying took you further away from him but you found it easier to breathe with the distance, and sitting felt a little less like standing before a firing squad. He was still being kind and it gave you hope for this last little test of his limitations. You forced your hands to uncurl and lay limply atop your lap. “They were going to blame Savannah Beaumont’s murder on an innocent freedman.” you summarized simply, relief palpable from sharing the weight of that truth that had been carried alone for all these years. “Not by accident or any proof, but because one of their own had done it, and they did not expect a soul to appear in his defense. They did not expect Savannah Beaumont to show in court and exonerate her supposed murderer.” it was your turn to laugh mirthlessly.

Elvis had taken to breathing out his mouth, his weeping having clogged the other route. His bottom lip shook with every inhale. “Who is ‘they’, honey?”

“Memphis City Council, a judge who was in on it, even the Secretary of State, I was later informed by Mr. Moore.”

“Why, why would you though-“

“I was asked.” you whispered simply, “The whole plantation came to the front steps and begged me to step in her place, for his defense and to keep Belle Mead. It was so outlandish it worked, all the women folk had been reclusive, none recognized her by sight save my father, the overseer. He pointed her out for slaughter in her own foyer. So you see, with the entire plantation swearing as my witnesses, those councilors looked like fools.”

“Bet you felt real clever.” his voice was flat but his eyes showed a memory of the precocious little girl you had been.

“I had a brief moment of elation when they ceded that the coloured man was to go free.” you bit your lip savagely, “Yes, yes it was very clever and I thought maybe heaven had blessed my efforts, to protect them and the place. That was before I learned the price.”

His squint eyed stare lifted and he looked suddenly gentle, worried, fearful, “And what was that?”

“My father, sir.” you stuck your chin out and smiled bitterly, “I killed my father, by my testimony if not by my own hands. You see, I had seen the murder, I saw Savannah be beaten to death by a Carpetbagger working for one of those northern investment firms, he stated his name and his occupation on the front steps as he crowed over taking away the roof and floors and last shred of hope we had. My father was with him, made me go and rouse the young heiress dying of consumption to make her come downstairs and cede the family property in person. Savannah came downstairs, sure enough,” he watched your eyes waver and then unblinking your mind went far away, “she came down and plopped all those due taxes in his hand. He’d been over hasty. My father said she was gonna die anyway, they could wait the two or three months the tuberculous needed to finish the job. No heirs to the place, it would be auctioned. But the man was in a great hurry, so many appointments, so many business ventures. I’ve never seen something so, so sudden, so unprovoked. Before or since. And when I went to stop him, I got a pair of hands around my throat for my trouble, and my father telling me over that demon’s shoulder that I could live if I would just cooperate. You may recall that is one thing I was never very good at.”

His laugh was watery and forced. This was familiar territory now, not that he knew this story, but he and countless others had lived their own version, peppered always with corruption and bribery. He nodded for you to go on, finish this, like the last death stroke to a dying pet.

“The man I meant to accuse, the man who did the deed,” was on this boat, was his friend, “he was nowhere to be found, but they had the freeman in his stead. There had to be a culprit, I had gone into that courtroom in a flurry of shock and applause only to find no one to accuse. Save one. One who had nearly let me die at the hands of a brute, who’d held me back as he turned Savannah’s brains to a melon.” you realized you’d picked your fingernail bloody when it smeared on the white silk in a pinkish stain, you met Elvis’ eyes and found him looking about as hollow as you felt, “So I told them my father had done it, for he had done enough. And you should have see the Judge’s look of relief at having scapegoat.”

“I bet.” he muttered.

“I thought I had not done such an abominable thing as it took two witnesses to hang a man and there was only me.” you began to plead, the weight of unconfessed guilt finally tumbling free. “I thought he’d only be confined!”

“But they offed him in prison, didn’t they?” he murmured in realisation, “Mr. Moore said so, but you knew why. You knew it was so they could cover the tracks of their botched scheme.”

“Yes,” you scrubbed under your nose miserably, “and they covered mine while they were at it. A mercy, that is what they called it back on the Plantation. A kind act of Providence.” you scoffed, “And so it was for all of them. Nearly ten years I lived the lie of a damned woman so they could be free, unbothered, diligent, prosperous even -once we had worked ourselves to the bone for it. And at times,” you stared hard at the floor, all of it out now, nearly all of it out, “at times I fancied God may have forgiven me, understood me, took into account the good I’d done. But, believe me, I never felt sure of it until you, you were forgiveness and reward and understanding all at once. Now I think you, after this, or life without you, that would be the cleverest judgment ever imagined.”

Sunbeams, reflecting off the river's surface, were dancing and cavorting and intertwining along the polished wood of his floors, slicing golden and playful through the rich carpets near his feet. It was the farthest your eyes could make up his figure as he stayed leaning against the dresser like a man cast up from the sea onto a rocky beach. Your eyes retreated to your own feet, pink toes sticking out from under silk. You stuck a toe out to catch a sunny fairy dancer, all it did was cast a shadow. Your lip wobbled in disappointment, then fear as the precious silence was cut by the heavy clunk of his boots closing the distance, a faint tinkling of spurs suggesting he gave some thought to fleeing in the night. As he came close and closer you watched as he trampled the sunny dancers on the carpets and then on the wood and then dark, worn cavalrymen’s boots were beside your pink toes, just short of crushing them, too.

You thought then of the princesses and the queens you’d read of who held their heads high when the executioner's ax sliced quick and cruel. You did so wonder where all your strength had gone. If you swayed forward one tiny bit you’d have your face pressed to the warm planes of his lean belly, you’d be anchored to the earth again. It was as if you spoke it into existence,

manifesting your weakness, suddenly it was a fact, your nose buried in the body warmed cotton of his shirt, the unmistakable poke of wiry hair separated by fabric coming to the fore at the wet ghost of a sob from your mouth. If you had any strength you would have wrapped your arms around his hips and clung. You wondered if his loneliness was so strong he’d take even a wretched sort of company like yours.

Your body nearly convulsed with the strength of the shudder that ripped through you when his warm hand engulfed your jaw, gently but inexorably tilting your face away from his body and up, upwards to his face, to the mirror of his feelings and my god, his face was morphing ceaselessly and his eyes churning in tormented unsurety until he saw yours. Yours was the look of a woman in pain, resigned to losing the man she loves. He would know that look, he had put it on Maddy’s face when he’d gleefully gone off to war and then found she’d had the right idea all along, nothing awaited him but strife and a dreadful weight of loss.

Here was something he could mend, could fix -that was his own intention with you all along, wasn't it? When had he gotten sidetracked and fell in line with you saving him instead? You were sent for him to mend, to forgive too, it seems, -if he could wipe away the bitter taste of seeing himself in you. That weak and sickening feeling of undeservedness in forgiving some part of his own wretchedness if he were to forgive yours. His hand spasmed against your jaw in his inner struggle, tan and elegant fingers digging into creamy plushness. To forgive you would be to forgive himself, to forgive what was necessary. What was necessary. He had never been ashamed of what he had to do, but my god he had not forgiven it. Suddenly that seemed very cruel, very childish, very lonely. He bent down, blue eyes locked on yours, closer and closer, his gripping palm searing your cheek.

He meant to say something, some absolution or assurance, but he could only choke and heave on his breaths as he bent and descended. And then his lips were slotted against yours, vigorous and unmistakably intentional. A kiss, searing and deep, his hands gripping your skull, bending your delicate neck back as he devoured you from above. A kiss of life it felt, this first interaction of your real self with another soul, and to be met with want and unashamed gusto? Your arms grew strong again and you grabbed him to you, elongating your body in your seat to push back into the kiss. Back and forth you two were grappling and kissing and plunging into the other's mouth, a near constant fight of “no, no, no you too! you too must know you are wanted!”

The chair creaked with the force of your passions, his knee pressed to the seat between your legs and you squeezed the muscle between yours, engaging every part of yourself in pouring out your devotion. He was shaking once he pulled away, just far enough to heave in necessary breaths and grip onto the back of your chair for support instead of snapping your shoulders. Your head lolled back, faint without his support. You gazed up at him dazedly, feeling small and nostalgic as he loomed over you. You savored it. Your hand, on its own accord it felt, raised to his face and you touched the gorgeous curve of his cheekbone, trailing down his jaw, his throat and down, down to his collarbones and the heaving width of his chest. You spread your palm out over the tacky skin guarding his heart.

“Is this really you, Cricket?” he took a shaky hand from the chair back and hovered it over your face, the face of a woman, the face of an old friend. He blinked rapidly. Clever and brutal and beautiful you were to him all at once. “Oh, you, you, you -you terrifying, magnificent, irresistible creature.” he thundered, hand descending to your throat and pulling you back in for another kiss.

“You see,” you gasped between his plush lipped assaults, “you see what kind of men I am used to? You see why I though I should fear you?” you had to know he understood, you had to get the whole of it out. He was pouring into you the very strength to land the final blow.

“Yes, yes I do.” he panted into your mouth, nearly crouching over you in your chair as not only his mouth but his body sought yours, “Gimme their names, and if there’s any left I’ll make ‘em scream for ya.”

“One of them is aboard.” you whispered into his ear as he attacked your neck with fervor. He went stock still. His lips pulled away from their suction listlessly. His hand tightened round your neck then dropped. He stood up in confusion.

Bleary eyes blinked down at you as his exhausted mind tore through possibilities and came up with nothing but a sinking feeling of being had.

Again . “What’s this?” he asked in a low and wounded voice, “Some goddamn riddle? Gonna quote some scripture and tell me ‘thou art the man’, hmm? Do you mean me?”

“No, my darling!” you sprang up from the chair and clasped your arms around his middle, pulling him close, “no, no never you!”

“Who then?” he asked wary, stiff in your embrace, watching as you fought with which expression to donn while delivering the truth. “No pandering or fudging now, goddamn you! Who?”

“Your benevolent colonel is the murderer, sir.” you got it out and the relief it gave you was soon replaced by dread as he looked very much as if he knew what you meant but did not agree. “Colonel Parker is the one who ought to have been hung in my father’s stead, but his contacts, your contacts, saved him. Made him vanish from the reach of justice. Ask Mr. Moore, he’ll tell you of it. The strange case of the vanishing man.”

The Captain’s eyes flitted over your face contemplatively, trying to see if he could yet define which expressions of yours were lies, truths and half truths. You had proven shrewd, and he could forgive you for that, but trusting you? That was a bit much to ask, right and good as it felt to have your arms around him. At worst you might be vindictive over the Colonel’s distaste for your presence aboard. More likely, or what he hoped was more likely, your head had been turned by the event, your memories muddy, recollections bending under the horrid strain of it. One tiny reminder and suddenly you thought you had your culprit, one stout foreigner was as likely to earn your accusation as the next.

He knew how it worked, an entire portion of his own life’s memories were very resolutely kept under lock and key, only when the Colonel hinted or Scotty accused did a searing flash of some nauseating recollection flash vibrant and unbearable across his mind and he was quick to shove it down. Many times over the years as he passed through the streets he thought he saw faces of men from hazy memory who were always faceless until they weren’t. The men had been strangers, blameless of the horror with which he recoiled from them on the sidewalk. He had learned the mind keeps back what it needs in order to go on, but it’s a delicate wardenship. He no longer recoiled from innocent pedestrians, and one day you too would grow strong enough not to suspect every foreigner of being the man who haunted your dreams.

Something of this thought process must’ve shown on his face since you began grasping at him frantically again, even as you kept a moderate tone when exclaiming, “You don’t believe me.”

“Honey,” he began, trying to keep his own voice light and pacifying as he patted your cheek, “I-I-I didn’t say that. It’s a lot to process, alright? Just, calm down and yeah, calm down, sit down.”

You let him back you towards the chair and sat yourself down again with childlike compliance. You kept your hands on his hips, loath to be separated after the emotional upheaval of the last few minutes. Every gentle touch and kind word of his had you startled, so certain had you been of his inability to forgive. After some amused deliberation on his part, looking from your hands on his trousers to your fretful face, he sat himself in your lap, sideways, as he had last night. The crushing weight of him was welcome, as was the sweet grin he gave you as he wiggled into a comfortable recline. You buried your face in his chest and tried to bite your tongue, allowing him a minute to ponder what you said. You tried to focus on breathing, on his gentleness and the heavy thud of his overworked heart beneath your ear. He rubbed your arms over the rough lace of your sleeves, just holding you and letting himself be held, biting his tongue as well.

“What on earth am I to do with you, child? Hmm?” he murmured into your hair at last.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” you observed again, miserably, forgetting why you cared now you were being stroked and petted.

“I-it’s not like that, honey, really it’s not. Time and pain -they muddle things, darlin. And I’ve known that man for the better part of a decade and now -here you come wantin me to believe somethin entirely uncharacteristic of him. This fella you’re after, why he weren’t with you for more than a few minutes! And I’ve had an entire decade with the colonel. So no, no, it ain’t a matter of believin it’s a matter of actin on it. And I can’t just act on it yet. I can’t.”

“I’m not after anyone!” you insisted, “And I don’t except you to trust me implicitly after all i've done-“

“-well that’s real sensible of you.”

“-don’t joke! Please don’t!” you begged, “I’m not after anyone, he is after me! He sat in that carriage last night and threatened my life and Cal’s!”

“What’s that now?” he pulled away so he could look down at your face and study you closely. You figured he thought he had mastered some trick to tell if you were lying or not. You were not, you had run out of lies, for good.

“He knows me, he admitted as much! And threatened Cal if I were to expose him to you!” you watched the Captain as he bit his lip and studied you, a thousand different puzzle pieces swirling in those stormy eyes, “Elvis I wouldn’t be so impertinent, so insistent that you believe me after what I’ve done if it weren’t so dire.”

“This is why you told me to watch the boy.”

“Yes! You have, haven’t you?”

“Calm down honey, yeah, checked him last night and then charged Jerry with the same. He’s fine. Now, you say the Colonel said he knew ya?” he pressed the point.

“Yes.”

“Well, darling don’t ya think,” he worried his bottom lip between his fingers and gave another moment to formulate his theory, “ain’t it likely he meant he knew who you were, that you were responsible for killin the dug up Yankee buried in your arbor? -speakin of, that case will rain down a heap of investigations on my head.” he added in a disgruntled mumble.

“No I- I don’t think he meant that.” you sighed, stroking his thigh absently, “it was all very metaphorical and shrouded but the threat was real! He knows me.”

“We don’t know what he knows!” Elvis grunted, “No, no you can’t hand me riddles an’ shit and say that you’ve been found out. You existin on this damn boat is enough reason to piss the colonel off, makin’ you a purser was sure to send him into a rage. I was hoping to give a few weeks to cool him off but then, sweet baby Jesus, you just had to have a Yankee buried in a shallow grave behind the house! Look honey, I’m real sorry he was an ass to ya but you aren’t the first, and I’d think a lil knife wielder like yourself wouldn’t be so shook by it.” he tried to tickle your neck but you reared back, you fear stoked by his maddening nonchalance.

“He threatened Cal!”

“Tell me what he said, word for word.” he asked, patient but in the manner of a professor about to explain that it isn’t the math that is wrong, but your own calculations.

You focused on his hand swooping up your arm in its comforting pace, the grounding weight of his body in your lap, the musky smell of him after a night of revelry and no soap. “He said he knew about your little causes,” you began, “and that Cal was a bright boy and that he suspected that if anything were to happen to him I’d be crushed. He then suggested that were the boy to witness some untoward behavior of the Colonel’s he counted on me to tell Cal that he did not see what he thought he saw.”

“The hell does that mean?” his eyebrow quirked in frustrated bewilderment,

“It was a threat! To put me off confessing to you.”

“You got all that outta…all that.” he waved his hand around.

“Do you not?” you cried.

“I dunno what the hell to make of it!” he declared, “After all, you two are the only ones aboard the damn boat carryin on in metaphors. You don’t see me an’ Jerry talkin in goddamn parables whenever it’s time to drop the anchor chain. A-a-and it ain’t no reason to start dreamin up threats and makin up fuckin history that you don’t share with him!”

“I didn’t make it up! You don’t have to believe me then.” you huffed resignedly, “But for god’s sake spare an eye out for Cal.”

He could see you were in a state about it, and that alone assured him you were not creating a narrative against his partner for mere vengeance sake. Your muddled little mind truly believed your own tale and he knew the Colonel well enough to fully accept that the fellow had probably tried his damndest to scare you off. This had been a long-standing habit, the Colonel running off women who got a little too comfy, domestic, protective of Elvis and he’d been successful up until now.

There were the occasional cases when Elvis himself had finally ground down their patience to nothing, and then they had gone. And that was that. Loyalty to your stalwart, though deceptive, attachment to him made Elvis more inclined to give some credence to your fears, if not your narrative. But it wouldn’t do to be hasty in a judgment of the situation, not with a cotton filled head like his own this morning.

“I’ll look into it, I will.” his tone suggested that this was the end of the discussion, his gentlemanly soothing only serving to drive you near batty with his seeming insouciance, “Now, how bout breakfast?” his grin was bright and you wanted to scream in frustration over it, “I can’t overemphasis how badly I need a half a dozen eggs and some sausages to mop up all that tonic and the maudlin display we just engaged in. Gonna take some grease to counterbalance that shit. Whadda ya say, hmm?”

“I’m not really hungry.” you admitted, watching him in a heartsick daze as he clapped his hands and rose from your lap, the topic of your greatest secret and terror shelved in favor of breakfast.

“Well, that’s cause you’re laced up within an inch o’yer spin. Get up dear, let’s give ya your stomach back.” he wagged his finger in command for you to give him access to your back lacings. “Y-you don’t mind me doing this after…ya know -after last night?” he added very softly when you turned your troubled face towards the window to give him access.

You flung your hand behind your back and grabbed one his own, bringing it over your shoulder to kiss his knuckles.

-I spent most of the night weeping over the fact I could have been a mother at this moment if I’d just allowed you- seemed too heavy a confession after all he had sustained this morning, so you held your peace and kissed his knuckles, savoring his heavy exhale that ghosted against your neck. As he worked on your fastenings you thought of that first night aboard, how tall and strong and virulent he had seemed. The way you’d braced and waited for ravaging, the way he had hummed a hymn instead.

“That first night,” you whispered, cool air hitting your back as more and more of the fancy dress began to slip off your shoulders with each of his tugs, “I thought you were going to take me, every day after I’ve been wondering when you would. And I went from dreading to wanting it. Because I’ve realized I was wrong, you’re no stranger, you’re still you.” the dress fell to your ankles and you yanked open the fastenings of your corset, taking the first full breath since last evening. You used it to tell the him, “I still love you. After all this time, I learned that I still love you, how could I not?”

Not a peep of sound came from behind you at this admission. Strangely this felt like the greatest confession of all, acknowledging you loved him. Peace came with having said it. You shucked your bloomers with more haste than decorum, leaving you in just your shift and turned to face him.

The bow of his lip was trembling in an effort to keep his mouth firm, blotchy red splashed across his face and that old pinched look around his sapphire eyes that betrayed an effort not to let the gathering tears spill. He hadn’t expected love. Not for the way he was now. A sentimental fondness and a perverse interest perhaps. Not love. Captain Presley was as little like the Elvis of your memory as Cricket was akin to Rosey. He had not expected to be loved for it.

“Child-“ he warned in a rough voice, stepping backwards.

“Elvis,” you stepped out of the pool of fabrics and followed him, hands outstretched and latching into his forearms, “I love you, I do, please, please look at me!”

Looking at you was to look at a woman, ripe curves faintly veiled through finely woven linen, cherry dark nipples always peaked when close to him, that mouth he’d taught and that throat he’d used and that face that belonged to a dead girl. He shook his head and turned his face away.

“Elvis, call me Rosey.” you demanded, fingernails biting into the meat his arm and he shuddered from it, “Please, I’m not a child, please don’t muddle this up, it’s me! Me!” you took his hand and tried to pry the stubborn fist open, to bring his hand to your breast in that old familiar way, “Please touch me.” you settled for that, voice trailing off in a whine.

You sounded like a child, desperate and petulant. If he’d just touch you would know you were forgiven. You needed him to touch you. In that way. That particular way that only he had. “You can’t teach me a language then tell me not to speak it!” you accused.

“D-don’t! I know but I-, please don’t-“ his voice sounded so near a whimper when he finally spoke you let go of his arm from pure, maternal instinct that somehow you were hurting him, “I will, if you ask me I w-w-will d-do anythin ya ask, I’ll t-t-touch, so please don’t. Please d-d-don’t ask me that. N-n-not now. N-not yet. Please, darlin. I-I-I just…” he scrubbed his face viciously, “I just want some goddamn breakfast.” he cried out into his hands.

“Of course!” you repented your selfishness ardently, backing away from the bed you’d chased him to in your wantonness. “Breakfast yes, yes, you need food. Rest, too.”

You couldn’t bear to stay staring at his shaking form and those elegant hands as they covered his face, you turned and hauled out the first sensible frock in the wardrobe and a day corset with it, intending to dress and leave him in peace. He had borne enough. And he knew you loved him. It was enough for now, it had to be.

You heard him crossing the room, away from you towards the door and your head swiveled to watch, fretful that he was leaving without another word. He opened the door with lethargic clumsiness and poked his head out again, “Bill, what’re you doin out here?” his tone was full of surprise at finding his friend in the hall, “Be a good fella an’ fetch Rosetta for me!”

“EP, you gotta listen to me, Mr. Schilling sent me to fetch you!” you heard Bill Black explain from the hall, “Says a couple of government officials are aboard and the Colonel's been giving orders to unload half the staff from the boat! Bastard just told me I won’t be needed for the coming trip, something bout not needing a House where we’re going? The hell does that mean? It’s pandemonium up there, boss.”

“You been drinkin, Bill?”

“Wha-? No man, really, all hell is breaking loose up there without ya, been trying to find you for the last hour. Thought you weren’t in here last night.”

“Who gives a damn where I was, none of y’all’s business.” Elvis snapped, “Well go on now, ya found me and delivered your message, go on and tell Rosetta to come down and dress my girl. And if Crudup doesn't have breakfast ready in fifteen minutes I will rethink his position aboard. Go!”

He shut the door with a pointed briskness and thunked his forehead against the wooden panel. He was going to need more tonic in order to endure whatever fresh hell today had in store. His stamina couldn’t take it at this rate. First few hours of the day had shown him that he’d spent that past month violating a childhood friend, how could it possibly get worse? He had a sinking feeling it could.

“You don’t need to bother Rosetta or yourself, I can dress on my own -go eat.” you whispered, already in the process of yanking up your own laces behind your back.

“No you ca-“ he turned round and his expression morphed comically from sullenness to an impressed admiration at the way you managed it solo with practiced deftness.

“I’ve been dressing myself all my life till I came aboard.” you admitted, and you saw his face fall and he rolled his eyes.

“Course ya have.” he muttered before starting to shuck his own party clothes hastily, hopping on one leg and strewing the materials about as he searched for fresh linens, “I want her down here all the same. Want her to keep an eye on you, and I want you to cooperate. You hear me?” he barked, wheeling round on your as he shimmied on fresh trousers -you couldn’t help but notice that he was finally flaccid, “If you’re sorry and if you really give a single shit about me, you’ll behave and you won’t do nothin rash, yes?”

“Yes.” you swore vigorously.

“Swear it!” he insisted, tucking in his shirt tails.

“I swear.”

“J-j-just try to stay outta trouble and d-d-don’t get killed on me, alright?” he begged, as he shrugged on a rather demurely embroidered waistcoat -silver fleur de lis on cobalt this time-, “If what you say is true, then I can’t do a damn thing about it right now, do you understand that? I can’t do nothin, my hands are tied and if I try anything hasty then we lose everything, got it? So if you wanna help, you’ll let me do it my way, test him as I tested you, and you will keep playing your part. Didn’t hurt you to do it all this time, what’s a little more, hmm?”

That stung but it was warranted. Bereft of his touch or the warmth of his spend in your mouth or the explicit admittance of his love, you were left to find contentment in his compliment of your impressive deceit. It would have to do. It was far better than you expected or deserved.

“I understand.” you murmured.

“Good.” he muttered, fully dressed now and with a hand pressed to his stomach as he tried to regulate his breathing. He picked up your dropped pistol from the sideboard and walked over to you, that same stalking gait he had when he came and kissed you earlier, but now he kept a respectable distance. “And keep this on ya,” he said, “just know, if you shoot my friend, ill not only be mad as hell but I’ll be in so much goddamn trouble with the law I might as well turn myself into the police right now, you understand?”

“Is he really so powerful?” you took it with a solemn nod, “Everyone nearly ignored him last night!”

“Liking and being beholden to are two different things, honey.”

“And to which camp do you belong?” you asked with a sad smile. He gave you one back.

“Both, I reckon, never was stupid enough to test it.”

“So he threatens you?” cold and bitter validation settled in your gut.

“He don’t have to.” he raised an eyebrow at you, “I-I-I wouldn’t speak of this to anyone else, but since you’re on the damn warpath and since you already know so much, I-I-I think you know…” his voice trailed off and his eyes flitted away from your face to, “Darlin, you gotta understand, men who’ve been where I’ve been, we don’t pull ourselves up and manage all this alone. Without him I wouldn’t have a cent to my name or the ability to hold my head up in the street. I don’t know how to disentangle that obligation, never wanted to before, not really. And I don’t know how to now, not now that I’ve got all these people who depend on me keepin on the course I’ve set. There ain’t no court of appeal! I’m sending Scotty down to Memphis to free daddy but I’m sending him with a fuckin chest of gold instead of legal arguments cause that’s the only language those damn judges speak. And that gold won’t come without what the Colonel does. And he could skip one month of payin them and arrangin contacts with them and off I go to prison -it’s simple as that, darlin. He don’t need to threaten me, he ain’t my enemy. We’re both two outsiders trying to squeeze the better folk.”

His mouth turned up in a winsome little smile, trying to prompt you to understand, but those soulful eyes were glazed and hopeless. You understood, you truly did, and it made you angrier than you’d ever been. “I’ll hold my peace.” you murmured.

He took a great breath in his relief at your submission and rubbed his eyes, “We’re gonna need him for Daddy and for the case of your Yankee buried in the arbor, we’re gonna need him real obligin and generous, you understand?”

“I’ll behave.” you insisted.

“I-I-I know it’s hard to let go, honey,” he conceded softly, as he stepped away, “but we all done things we regret, even the colonel. Maybe him more than most, but he’s done a lotta good.”

“He gambles the money you give him to do good things with.” you laughed scornfully, “And as for his job you think he does so well -Scotty says he’s keeping your father imprisoned.”

“Sweet Jesus, of course he does, he’s always had a chip on his shoulder over him.” Elvis groaned, “I’ll thank ya to behave yourself as promised, to mind your own business and to refrain from listening to Mr. Moore, ya hear me?”

If the Captain were not so exhausted and hoarse you were certain he would be shouting at you by now, his hands shook by his sides all the same.

A knock on the door saved you from a full outpouring of his wrath or the rash decision to press your point.

“What?” Elvis yelled at the harmless intruder through the door.

“There’s a Mr Binder coming up the gangplank, sir, Mr Schilling told me to send for ya!”

You and Elvis stared at each other with wide eyed horror for a good few seconds upon hearing this, both curious if the other fully remembered all the events of last evening.

“I could speak with him in your stead!” you gasped out, heartsore for him, “You need breakfast.” you added as if meals were not commonly skipped by adults weighted with responsibilities such as his.

“Sweet Rosey.” he murmured and your expression perked up hopefully at the affectionate moniker. He let out a ghost of a laugh at how easily pleased you were, “Nah, nah I’ll handle him, then I’ll eat breakfast. Ya never know, the delightful Mr Binder might have my girl’s pardon with him.” he pointed out cheerfully, though his expression suggested he doubted that to be the case.

You gave him a watery grin in return, feeling a fool for continually underestimating how easily he could multitask, how effortlessly he wore his own mask, provoking you with his unperturbed geniality when he was plotting his own rebellion all the while. It had been so long since you’d had a comrade in scheming, forever trusting only your own company on the plantation, that meekness and trust when the stakes were so dire was hard to manage. But you could see now that while he did not include you into his thoughts, Elvis was not so benign as he appeared.

“Godspeed then.” you commended him, chipper tone hiding the fear of knowing full well that Mr Bidner might be just as likely arriving with an arrest warrant.

Hands on your hips, dressed in sensible cotton with that familiarly brave grin on your face -he thought he must’ve known who you were all this time, just couldn’t stomach it until a month’s worth of gentle touches and cheerful care had somehow worn him down to this magnanimous fool who was about to risk his life to get you that pardon.

[keelywolfe]

FIC: Drifters ch.7 (spicyhoney)

Summary: Edge and Red have a brotherly dispute. It goes great.

Tags: Spicyhoney, Violence, Rescued Child, Medical Experimentation, Babybones

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Read it here!

~~*~~

Edge had gone long nights without sleep before. As a child, he’d often spent the night curled up with his brother in hidden corners and caves, struggling for any measure of warmth beneath threadbare blankets as they both kept half-awake listening for any telltale footsteps coming their way.

As an adult, he often stayed awake on his own accord. There was always work to be done, whether for the guard or simple housekeeping, and he subsisted on no more than four hours of sleep a night. It was sufficient to replenish his magic and that was all that was necessary. Armed with that knowledge, it made it very difficult to understand why caring for an infant throughout a single night seemed so much worse.

Every two hours, she woke crying for a bottle, with enough accuracy he could nearly set a clock by it. It would start with a whimper and before Edge could even throw back the blankets, her screams would reach their peak earsplitting volume. Even Stretch couldn’t sleep through those wails and the first two times, he’d been the one to stagger downstairs for a bottle. Edge was certain on the last occasion he never opened his eye sockets, and he was torn on whether teleporting in the midst of exhaustion was more or less a danger than the chance he might fall down the stairs.

Rather than test that theory, Edge went to heat the bottle the next time and if he’d thought trying to comfort the baby while waiting for her meal to arrive was difficult, standing over a pot of water trying to will it to heat faster was somehow worse. At least he could attempt to reason with a baby, physics obeyed no rules but their own.

Each time she would drain the bottle and then immediately fall back asleep. The logistics of it were so simple, retrieve bottle, feed baby, then back to sleep. She didn’t even require a diaper change like so many other infants would, so why was this so blasted exhausting. His current belief was that somehow her cry drained energy like some sort of localized version of a vampiric spell and next time he was determined to run a check on himself to ascertain the truth.

But that would have to wait until they’d all gotten some rest. After her last bottle, not only had the chore of washing it out immediately after use been abandoned, so had tucking her into her own bed. In his sleep-deprived state, Edge decided that if she slept by the wall with him between her and Stretch, then she would be safe from being squashed in the night. As a strategy it did work, for about an hour, until Stretch rolled over in his sleep, right off the edge of the mattress to the floor with a loud thump and a louder curse.

Edge managed to wake up enough to check that he hadn’t accidently dusted himself in the fall and then promptly fell back asleep. The child hadn’t woken, that was the important part, and he could only hope that sleeping children didn’t learn foul language through some form of mental osmosis.

When he woke again, it wasn’t to the baby’s cries, but a stream of artificial sunlight coming through the curtains to fall across his face. He cringed away from it, but it was too late. The light was like the angel’s finger poking him directly in the socket, the time for sleep was over, and now he needed to face the harsh light of day.

A bleary look to one side found the bed empty and what remained of the blankets looked as if a tornado struck, not of trash, but one made up of baby’s tears.

Edge peered over the side of the mattress to find Stretch still snoring on the floor. Sleep was perhaps a less accurate description than out cold, he looked as if an alarm clock set atop his skull wouldn’t wake him. On the floor under his mouth was a darkened patch of drool, he was half-tangled in one of the blankets with one bare leg sprawled out across the carpet, toes curling against the cool air, and he did not stir one single inch despite the loudly creaking bedsprings. Plus, the light couldn’t reach him down there. Edge allowed himself a brief instant of rueful resentment before rolling to the other side to deal with the child, who over the course of the evening dwindled from Stretch affectionately calling her a ‘little snow princess’ down to the simply ‘the kid’.

“It’s all right, child, he’ll do better after some rest,” Edge said blearily…to no one at all. The sheet next to him was empty and for a moment, Edge only stared at it uncomprehendingly, cold panic slowly settling in his soul at the unbearable nightmare that was unfolding before him. That Alphys had found them out and come for her, the machine not destroyed enough and instead the portal was lying wide open like a gaping wound as not one, but an army of Underfell Monsters came through.

He shook away that fear before it could take root, dismissing it as impossible. To begin with, her first step would have been to murder them as they slept. Casting aside that panic only allowed a new one to take its place, the mystery of ‘then where is she’ still unanswered.

She was too young to have crawled away, she was nowhere in the room, so that left one last possibility. Edge clambered out of the bed, stepping over Stretch’s prone body as he jerked on the bathrobe and headed out to find his brother.

Who was sitting peaceably on the sofa with his pilfered infant settled contentedly in his lap, staring up at him with wide sockets as her chubby cheek bones puffed out with every suck on her bottle.

Red didn’t even look up as Edge stormed down to stand in front of him. The fury of his glares had never been able to penetrate much through Red’s aura of casual ease. His brother was humming softly, a song that Edge knew the lyrics to quite well and could at least be grateful that Red didn’t choose to share them with the child.

“’bout time you got up, bro,” Red said, singsong sweet. He was laying back against the sofa arm with the baby cradled between his knees. “you was sleepin’ pretty hard up there. kiddo was awake and getting’ ready to start complaining’ when i came in to play fetch.” His tone was easy, but Edge did not miss the sharp censure in his glance, crimson eye lights coolly assessing.

“I wouldn’t count on it happening again,” Edge said coldly. He met his brother’s gaze unflinchingly, waiting until his brother slowly nodded. Apology accepted, as it were, and Red turned his attention back to the baby.

“this little miss is a hungry one.” He gave the bottle an idle tug, grinning as the baby made a querulous noise and clung to it, never pausing in her urgent sucking. “drinks her weight and then some, don’t she. you were the same way, never could scrape up enough chow to keep you happy.” It was fondly said, but Edge only barely kept himself from wincing. He didn’t want to remember days of going hungry, the gnawing, endless emptiness inside his soul, wanted even less to picture the same thing happening to this child.

(never, never, he wouldn’t allow it, he would not)

“I doubt that will change anytime soon. Speaking of which, if you could watch over her, I’ll be going out today.”

“huh?” That got his brother’s attention. “what the fuck for?”

“To find a job of some sort, to begin with,” Edge said, “We can hardly expect the Swap brothers’ to keep paying our way.” He didn’t have the first clue what formula cost, but he suspected that it was not cheap.

“fuck, bro, we’ve been here two minutes and you’re already polishin’ your resume?” Red groaned. “take a day to get settled in, fer cryin’ out loud!”

“There’s no time for that. I was also going to go to the librarby to find a book on childrearing—”

He broke off as Red hooted a harsh laugh. “you serious, bro? you think you’re gonna find an old copy of ‘what to expect with your skele-baby’s first year’? gonna set up some training time with the local moms, mebbe they can teach you their special parenting attacks. you’ll be captain of the childrearing guild in no time, bro, better start working on your uniform now.”

“You—” Edge began and couldn’t continue, only stood listening mutely as his brother’s laughter soured, his words going bitter.

“think i fucked up that bad with you, is that it?”

It wasn’t at all true. He knew very well that his brother did the best he could, he’d been a child himself, he never should have had to help with an infant. He knew that, they both did, but the words refused to come. Before either of them could say another word, spiteful or otherwise, another voice entered the fray, sleep-sodden and mellow.

“you two loud enough down here?” From upstairs and Edge looked up to see Stretch ambling down the stairs, still yawning and rubbing at his sockets. He was only wearing a pair of shorts, the rest of his lanky bones on display from the crown of his skull to his bare toes, and he had no right to look as simply attractive as he did despite the darkened crescents beneath his sockets.

“sorry, sleeping beauty,” Red snorted, “next time we’ll work on our charades instead, how’s this ta start?”

Stretch ignored Red’s upraised middle finger, slouching closer to peer at the baby. “where did the jammies come from?”

Red jerked his head towards the front door where a paper sack was slumped by the various shoes. “your doggo pal dropped off some clothes. didn’t seem to know what to make of me, think maybe he decided blue went for a big fashion change.”

“bet he’ll appreciate hearing about going goth at the next sentry meeting.”

The mention of pajamas made Edge take a closer look at the child. He’d been so relieved to see the baby was safe that he hadn’t even noticed her change in apparel. She looked like a proper baby now, from the cozy footie pajamas to the colorful bib around her neck. The bottle was long since empty, but she hadn’t yet surrendered on the off chance that perhaps a few last drops might yet make an appearance.

Stretch didn’t wait for her to give up on it and simply took it away, scooping her up despite Red’s disgruntled protests, and cuddled her close. “lookin’ good, sugar butt!”

He buzzed a wet, noisy kiss against her cheek bone and she squealed in delight, then hiccoughed, a dribble of milk running from her mouth that dripped down to stain the bib. “uh huh, like that is it, everybody is a critic.” He swung her gently around and Edge automatically took her as Stretch deposited her into his arms, “here, edgelord, the princess needs a bath.”

A bath. That much was certainly true after a restlessness night of milky dribbles.

Edge didn’t move, he only held her uncertainly, shuffling his feet as he reluctantly admitted, “I don’t know how.”

“it’s easy,” Stretch yawned, his spine popping as he raised both arms over his head with a groan, “just bend over. you’ll have to handle it, you’re young and flexible, my back is talking to me like a bowl of rice krispies. wash her like you’d wash your feet. not too hot on the water and there’s bubble bath under the sink. go easy on it or it’ll be like trying to grab a greased watermelon in an ice storm.”

With that direction, Stretch only stared at him expectantly. There was nothing he could say, no protest to be made, and Edge turned on his heel and went back upstairs to the bathroom. He stood by the empty tub, looking down at the baby in his arms. She looked back at him, her thumb firmly in her mouth and her eye lights wide and bright.

So small and delicate, her skull small enough to fit in the cup of his hand. A tiny being composed of fragile bones, it would be entirely too easily for some careless fool to accidentally hurt her. Even if they didn’t mean to, even if they were only trying to help.

He couldn’t do this.

Edge lurched around, heading out the door and ready to call down to Stretch to admit his uselessness when heard his brother’s voice.

“…tryin’ to tell me how to deal with my bro?” So dangerously soft, a warning rarely given for their intended recipient to take care with whatever they said next.

“actually, no, i’m not,” Stretch said. There was a creak of springs as if he’d settled to sit on the sofa. “i wouldn’t do that to you guys. it’s just, he’s not used to all this, so go easy on him, will you? he’s trying really damned hard, he doesn’t need you ragging on him right now about the kid. he thinks the world of you, you gotta know that. so bust his chops about anything else, the baby is off limits. please.”

He couldn’t see downstairs, so he could only imagine what expression was on Stretch’s face that would be enough to make his brother grumble out, “yeah, yeah, honey bun, i get it. lay off until he lands on his feet.”

“thank you. he’s got this, you know. his confidence only took a shake, happens to everyone when they take a step or two out of the comfort zone. give him a little time, he’ll be a whiz. lining up for his best dad coffee mug before we know it.”

“eh, he’s already doing pretty good, ain’t he,” Red said with obvious pride. Edge closed his sockets, swallowing against the sudden thickness in his throat as he listened. “shoulda seen him bustin’ up that lab, kid never hesitated. just grabbed up the little miss and started wreckin’ the joint.”

“i bet. sorry i missed it.” Stretch said, sincerely, and if there was a certain dark satisfaction in those words, it was certainly understandable.

In his arms, the baby began to squirm, and Edge hastily slipped back into the bathroom, quietly closing the door behind them. He settled the baby on the bathmat and turned on the taps, adding a single capful of bubble bath and cautiously checking the temperature before kneeling at her side.

“Ready for a bath?” he asked her, already working to gently strip off her pajamas.

He took her gabbling squeal as a yes and if he, and the bathroom, were nearly as wet as she was by the time she was scrubbed clean, well, that was fine. He’d do better next time.

tbc

[paddie-ut]

Soriel Week 2020 Day 1: Dance More of a subtle reference to the prompt in this one. Yes i’m back at it with the angst on day 1. The pic is just a bonus for the real entry, which is the oneshot I wrote below the cut. You can also read it here on AO3: X (TW for implied blood, death and violence. The usual stuff that comes with references to the no mercy run)

It was cold.

It was cold when he hit the tiled floor, body rapidly going to pieces. And it was cold now. Wherever he was.

Everything still ached. Like acid eating through his bones. The pain was always strangely familiar, expected. But that never stopped it from hurting.

He curled his crimson stained mitten tighter over his ribcage, not even sure if he was facing up or down. He didn’t dare open his sockets, wanting more than anything to slip away from all this into sleep. He was so unbelievably tired.

The sounds of a small child’s body repeatedly slamming into the floor and against the walls kept swimming through his skull, ruining any chance of that. Paired with the hazy visions of a gold hallway littered with bones and awash in great stains of red, it was like a cruel joke. So much for this process being peaceful.

How long had it gone on this time? How many times had he killed them?

It didn’t matter anymore. So he wished his mind would stop asking.

With every moment that passed though, he did start to notice the cold all around was losing its grip on him. Something warm had come to combat it. Something physical… soft. Something… that smelled like cinnamon… and butterscotch?

The oddity of that alone was enough to calm the chaos of his thoughts some, and convinced him to attempt to open his weary sockets. It was more effort than expected, but he managed it.

What met his eyelights then when they were able to focus was… unexpected to say the least.

Soft scarlet eyes stared down at him, set in what seemed to be a sea of white fur. Long creamy white ears framed their face and two horns crowned their head. Strangely, there were also what appeared to be shining specks in their fur, glittering like tiny stars. Those same specks were also lazily floating in the air around them, bright and twinkling against what seemed to be all encompassing blackness in every direction.

Judging from the angle he was seeing them from, he realized they were holding him in their large arms. making him feel utterly tiny… but safe. The monster shouldn’t have been familiar, yet somehow he knew exactly who she was.

“Oh thank goodness…” She sighed with relief before smiling down at him. “I was starting to worry you may not wake up!”

He just stared up at her for a few moments, mind awhirl with questions he was too tired to focus on. But he eventually managed a weak smile.

“heh… well this is new.”  Was all he could think to say, thinking aloud more than anything.

He had been expecting his brother. Surely that was who must have greeted him all the other times he’d ended up here. It only made sense. But thinking about it too much would only add a skullache to all the other aches consuming him. So he didn’t bother to question it. Worrying about the logistics of what happened in this place didn’t have much of a point.

Besides… he’d be lying if he denied seeing her didn’t stir the first positive feelings he’d felt in… gosh… how long had it been since he’d saw Papyrus’ scarf half buried in the snow at the outskirts of Snowdin? Whatever… if she was here, he must be here too.  

“Greetings, my friend.” She said warmly, though her eyes were still noticeably sad. “It is I, Toriel. I know you may not recognize me, but my voice may sound familiar to you, does it not?”

“yah. nice to see you tori.” He said, finding the words oddly natural.

She blinked in surprise at that, tilting her head a bit in a way he couldn’t help but find endearing.

“Did... did you already-?” She began to question, but he interrupted her with a few shaky coughs.

“heh, don’t worry about it.” He rasped once he could speak again. “i just started connecting the dots over time, i guess.”

It was not a full lie, but not a full truth. He knew that. Though in that moment, he couldn’t have put into words just why that was. It didn’t matter anymore anyway. Not here.

She frowned, as though upset with her past self for potentially giving away her true identity unbidden. But her attention was drawn back to him as he stiffened up and winced from another wave of pain.

As much as he wanted to keep focused on her, the wound he carried that nearly split him from shoulder to pelvis was pretty darn good at demanding his attention. He squeezed the front of his shirt tighter, feeling that it was still soaked. When he shakily lifted his free hand in front of his face, he could see the splashes of dark red staining his mitten.

For some reason it made him want to laugh, but he didn’t know why.

“Do not worry, it stops hurting after a little while.” She assured him softly, giving his arm a consoling rub.

She turned her head a bit then so he could more easily see the scar on her face. A faded, but still noticeable remnant of a gash that stretched from her cheek up to under her right eye.

His breathing went funny for a moment, as something akin to a mix of nausea and anger briefly bubbled up inside him. But it wasn’t long before he forced his weary grin back into place with practiced ease.  

“good to know.” He rasped, wheezing out a chuckle. “was worried i might end up as half the skeleton i used to be.”

As if on cue, she laughed that brilliant laugh of hers. The kind that all but left her breathless. And though it was strained with the heavier emotions no doubt pressing down on her, it caused his grin to grow so much it made his cheekbones hurt.

He’d missed this. He did the best to avoid chuckling in turn though, as the action would no doubt further aggravate the gaping slash through his ribs.

Once she had calmed down and returned her ruby red gaze back to him, he shook off his ruined mitten, lifted his trembling free hand to her, and gave the best smile he could manage.

“the names… sans.” He croaked out. “sans the skeleton.”

As usual, he slipped the whoopee cushion he always kept in his hoodie sleeve up into his hand. Maybe the red stains all over it kind of ruined the effect, but he saw no sense in spoiling his routine if he could manage it.

The sound of artificial flatulence sounded somehow more hilarious when echoing through an ethereal void, he found.

She burst into laughter again, and his soul felt light.

...

Shortly after, he found himself being carried by Toriel down some winding, faintly glowing path through the darkness. Everywhere her paws stepped, the “ground” glowed for a few moments in the shape of her footprint before fading away. It reminded him faintly of waterfall, if waterfall also had a bunch of sparkling stardust floating around.

At the end of the path, in what could maybe be called “the distance”, he could see a place that was glowing far brighter, like a city floating in the middle of a pitch black sea. He tried not to look at it, it only made a new pain lash out at his soul.

Instead he looked back up at Toriel, and found that she had been looking down at him too. She played it off and returned her gaze to their destination, but Sans could see the conflicted emotions in her eyes. He debated staying silent, maybe just closing his eyes until whatever came next, but the words seemed to tumble out of him without his permission.

“so... i figure you must of seen what happened, huh?” He asked quietly, feeling the dulling pain of his wound thrumming beneath his phalanges.

Her breathing stalled and she momentarily struggled to look at him. The soft scarlet of her eyes was awash with what he was worried he may see there, guilt.

“Yes… we all did.” She admitted, holding him a little closer and swallowing hard. “Y-you… you fought bravely, my friend. Please just rest now.”

In a move that was all too familiar to him, she worked a smile back onto her face and quickly changed the subject.

“Everyone is waiting for you. Your brother included. Not too far from here.” She said, motioning towards the bright place in the distance. “He is a wonderful monster, so cheery and kind hearted despite all that has happened. I can see why you spoke so highly of him.”

His eyelights must have given away the inner surge of emotions he felt at the mention of his brother, as she added to her statement quickly.

“Oh, he wanted to be the one to come get you of course…” She assured him. “But it seems that since I am among those who have been here the longest, it is easier for me to traverse this place. I… I do not fully understand it myself yet.”

He hummed in acknowledgement, seeing the logic in what she was saying and not bothering to question it further. He was in no shape to imagine how such things worked here, though there was some small part of him that still held that interest regardless. Even if he didn’t want to admit it. He couldn't help but think for a moment about how the other monsters must of reacted to Toriel, their long lost queen, suddenly reappearing to them in this place. Given the circumstances... if they knew all that had led to this... it was easy to imagine the majority of them would be less then pleased to see her.

 Perhaps there was more to the fact she'd come to meet him alone than it seemed. If that was the case, and even if it wasn't, he figured the best thing he could do for her was try to keep her smiling. 

“what, you weren’t just eager to see me?” He teased, wheezing out a chuckle despite his best efforts when she gave him a playful glare for it. It left his ribs freshly aching, but it was worth it.

“Well, I am very happy to finally meet you in person, my friend.” She said upon regaining her smile. “Just as I was happy to meet your brother and the others… We all have so much to talk about… and all the time in the world now to get to know one another.”

Just as quickly as it had come, her smile faltered again, and he could feel the conflicted emotions from her powerful soul radiate off her. She swallowed hard and let out a shaky sigh.

“I know… it is difficult to feel anything truly positive after all that has happened.” She said, voice noticeably trembling. “But at least… it is over now, and we will all be together. Just try to remember that.”

Sans couldn't be sure if she was really talking to him, or herself with that last bit. In any case, she kept walking, a bit faster than before. She kept her eyes on the path ahead, but he just kept his gaze fixed on her.

“right…” He responded quietly, trepidation beginning to wind tighter around his soul.

He couldn’t just keep ignoring it. No matter how much he tried to avoid the thought, it was growing like a weed and inevitably kept choking out any opposing ones.

He should keep his mouth shut. He shouldn’t say anything. He should just go to sleep and let it happen. He should spare her from this. But...

His gaze met hers again, and he felt like his soul was being squeezed.

“tori… listen…”

The words had barely left him before they both were hit by a powerful wave of... something. Strong enough to make Toriel stop in her tracks and look around in alarm. Sans didn’t know exactly what it was, but he knew what it meant. It felt like all the vitality he had left drained from him in that moment.

“What on earth was that?” Toriel asked quietly, more to herself it seemed.

“nothing good.” Sans replied, internally wincing a bit as she looked down at him in surprise.

Her gaze silently demanded to know what he meant, fear creeping bit by bit into her expression. He sighed in defeat, knowing there was no backing out of it now. He could already feel the tips of his phalanges going numb, and hear a dull whine in the far distance.

“tori, we… we aren’t gonna make it back to the others.” He said, shutting his sockets briefly.

Toriel stiffened, and he could feel the faint prick of her claws against him as they slid out of their own accord.

“Wh-what?” She stammered, clearly hoping he was setting up a joke somehow. “What do you mean?”

The hollow expression on his face no doubt banished any hope she had that this was some poor excuse for humor on his part. Even though her eyes were painful to look at then, he did his best to keep his wits long enough to explain what he could.

“tori... the stuff with the human… it goes beyond just what they did to us.” He said, ignoring the now creeping numbness in his phalanges. “they... they are causing something a lot worse to happen… i dunno what it is. but i’m pretty sure it’s happened before. i’ve uh… seen the data.”

There was no time to explain that last part, and it reminded him too much of his encounter with the kid anyway. He had to get to the point.

“for some reason… everything disappears at the end of this. and i do mean… everything.”

Toriel just stared at him in silence, mouth opening and closing but not finding any words. He could tell she wanted to argue, but surely she was feeling what was coming just as much as he did. And just as it seemed she may finally reply, another wave, stronger than the last nearly knocked her off her feet.

She staggered, clutching him tightly in an effort not to drop him. Once the initial shock had passed, her gaze quickly snapped to the lights in the distance. Sans didn’t have to look to know they’d be flickering, feeling the effects of what was coming as well. The sparkling bits of stardust around them were also winking out one by one, leaving them in further darkness every moment. It wouldn’t be long now.

It was then that it became clear Toriel wasn’t going to question things further. She didn’t fully understand, but she really didn’t need to. The idea had sunk in, as he could sense the weight of it slowly taking hold of her. Despite all her fur keeping her warm from the chill of this place, she began shivering lightly.

“i’m sorry.” He murmured without thinking, resisting a far harsher shudder of his own. “this is what happens when people like me take it easy.”

He didn’t expect a reply to that. If anything he expected anger from her, as she realized just what his failure to stop the human had truly meant. But instead it was that guilt he’d seen from her before that made itself known.

“Please, you must not blame yourself.” She implored in a dazed tone. “You... you fought so hard to stop them in the end… If anything… I am to blame for asking you to protect them…”

He closed his sockets with a soft sigh at that, all while feeling the numbness had consumed his hands and feet entirely. He considered arguing with her further, insisting his lack of earlier action against the kid far outweighed her wanting to give them a chance. But there was just no time. There were better things to focus on in what little they had. 

“well... for what it’s worth… i think your heart was in the right place, y’know?” He assured her, resting the side of his skull against her slightly. “you couldn’t have known. and i doubt the other humans were anywhere near as bad as this one, otherwise you wouldn’t have given this one a chance in the first place.”

He knew he couldn’t free her of her own guilt no more than she could free him of his. But he didn’t want her last thoughts to be those of self hatred. Not if he could help it anyway.

He tried to think of some last knock knock joke, knowing it was the only real sort of comfort he could reliably offer her. Pathetic as that was. But the increasing signs of their certain doom’s rapid approach all around them kind of made it hard to come up with any decent material.

It was her who ended up speaking again first, in a surprisingly calm tone all things considered.

“Then... this is it?” She asked, her eyes growing hazy. “Why then… why were we brought here? I..." 

She turned her head away, stifling what sounded like a sob.

"I never was even able... to find my children..." She croaked out, the words heavy with despair. "Wh-what was the point of any of this..?" 

It was a question he could never answer. It was unlikely anyone really could. But she knew that. The question was rhetorical, but he played along anyway. If only to keep from giving into the icy fear that wanted so badly to ensnare him.

“i wish i knew...” He replied weakly, breath hitching a bit. “guess it’s just... one last dance before the curtain call.”

He meant it to be that last twinge of humor he wanted to get out. But the strain in his voice robbed it of any joviality, making it humorous in a different way perhaps, but not how he intended. Maybe if his funny bone hadn’t just gone numb as well, it would have been better.

Toriel didn’t reply for a long moment, staring at where the bright lights in the distance had once been. Now they were so dull, they were barely visible amongst the sea of black. He struggled not to think of his brother and the others, frightened and having no idea of the secondary and final fate that was bearing down on them. Or perhaps that had already claimed them.

Instead Toriel’s voice brought his wavering focus back to her, as she subtly tightened her grip on him. Her face remained impressively stoic as she spoke, even as a few tears silently spilled from her eyes.

“Will I… ever see you again, my friend?” She asked softly, looking down at him as though trying to memorize every element of his face.

The question was so raw, he wondered if she’d even meant to speak it aloud. His soul got all tight in his ribcage, and he felt what may have been long withheld tears of his own wanting to well up in his sockets. But he kept his usual smile in place all the same. If only for her sake.

Part of him wanted to lie again, to give her some last comfort before the end, but for some reason… he found he just couldn’t. Not with her looking at him like that.

“can’t know that for sure.” He admitted, giving a small shake of his skull. “we don’t have any say in what comes next. but... there’s a possibility that after everything’s gone, things might... start anew... reset, y’know?”

All of his limbs had gone numb now, and his vision blurred to the point he could no longer make out her features. Whether that was from tears or from the world’s imminent destruction, he didn’t know.

“you can be sure if we end up back at the start of all this...” He gave her a wink. “i’ll come knocking again as always.”

Those statements surely must have confused her, but the sentiment seemed to be enough that he could feel that she’d stopped trembling, and a flicker of warmer emotion emanated from her soul. Like a spark in the ever growing darkness. 

“Perhaps then… there is at least a chance things will be better next time.” She said quietly, and he felt her chin rest upon the top of his skull as she held him close.

He closed his sockets and pressed a little closer to her in return, feeling his awareness starting to steadily slip away.  

As much as he would have liked to, he couldn’t share her optimism. Not after this. But she spoke with that same integrity that had made him soften enough that day at the Ruin’s door to break his personal rule against making promises. And just like back then, despite everything, she was getting to him again.

As foolish as it was, he allowed himself to hold on to that possibility as the last wave hit, eradicating everything in their world along with it.

“yah… maybe next time.”

[holy-honeybees]

Snowdrift

AO3

Rating: T+ (for swearing)

Summary: Three friends and  their dog get lost in a snowstorm while investigating the paranormal. Amidst swirling flurries of white, some lose their way and get lost in their memories, others lose sight of their friends and loved ones, and an unforgiving winter quickly fills in the footprints one would follow to get back home.

A/N: I started this back in November but sadly never finished the work. I was thinking of holding off till it started to snow again, but figured now was as good a time as any to try and finish this.The title is taken from Snail's House song "[snowdrift]" which you can check out here! Also, just in case, this chapter does feature a panic attack, though not what I would consider to be a graphic one.

Next Chapter

Chapter One 

It was late December and the Nebraska landscape was quiet in a way that only winter brings. The flat plains that stretched to either side of the roadway were barren and frozen, though the month had yet to see any snowfall. The somber atmosphere was interrupted by the steady rumble of a boxy, yellow van rolling along the empty country highway, heading north. Inside the car, music played, punctuated by soft snoring and the occasional thump of a dog’s tail that wagged in its sleep, the driver tunelessly humming along and tapping his fingers against the steering wheel, one metal and the other flesh and bone. As for conversation, it was silent, though not for lack of conscious company. Arthur Kingsmen stole a glance out of the corner of his eye at the specter he shared the front seat with, the ghost staring absentmindedly out of the window at the passing landscape. If it weren’t for the fact that they had tried—and in his own case, succeeded—to kill each other a little over a year ago, Arthur might have called it a companionable silence. As it was, the lack of conversation since Vivi had crawled into the back of the van for a nap was making him nervous. He glanced at Lewis once again before turning back to the roadway with a small sigh, rubbing tiredly at his eyes with his right hand. Things had gotten better between them. Things had been getting better for all of them. The sight alone of Mystery didn’t leave Arthur shaking, plastered to the opposite side of the van. Vivi was getting her memory back steadily, despite the occasional lapse they stumbled across. Lewis…well, Lewis wasn’t trying to kill him anymore. The purple specter didn’t even glare at him anymore. Forgiveness had been achieved despite the niggling doubts at the back of Arthur’s mind that whispered he didn’t deserve it. They had gone from enemies, to strangers, to almost-friends. They had relearned to occupy the same space, even chatting sociably on occasion without Vivi or Mystery playing mediator. It was progress, slow progress maybe, but Arthur wasn’t sure if there was any precedence for how long it might take to repair your friendship with the spirit of your once best friend. If he was being honest, he was happy just to have the chance. Vivi had wanted to celebrate their progress with a new case, one that required road tripping, though Arthur suspected that her decision was partially fueled by her exuberance and impatience at seeing them be friends again. It must have been hard for her to get her memories back at a point in time where everything had changed so much, Arthur mused, once again rubbing at his eyes as he tried to rein in his thoughts. His mind tended to wander when he was tired, and Arthur Kingsmen, certified insomniac, was always tired.

He glanced at Lewis once again, before exchanging the heat blasting out the van’s vents for cold air, shivering despite his vest being zipped up over the long-sleeved white shirt he’d swapped for his usual tee. Arthur knew Lewis would be unbothered, unable to feel the temperature change, and Vivi, bundled in the back of the van in heavy blankets and cuddled up to a fluffy dog, wasn’t likely to notice. He needed to stay awake and the chilly air would help. His coffee thermos had long since run dry, as had the conversation, and after six long hours of driving on only two hours of sleep, anything stimulating would be a welcome change. He had to stay awake, he had to keep driving, he had to be usefu—he had to stay awake. His discordant humming choked off and his fingers tightened around the wheel, ceasing their increasingly frenzied tapping. He glanced at the van’s clock, trying to calculate how much longer it would be before they could pull over in a town to rest, before giving up on the math when he realized he had no idea how far away the next stop was. His mind circled back to the silence, and he warred with himself about conversation topics, his mind buzzing with a dozen unsatisfactory attempts to break the silence. He wondered if it was his fault things were so quiet now. Had he done something wrong, said something wrong? Should he apologize, just in case? Would it be weird to start speaking again now? Would Lewis be annoyed? Arthur felt the irrational need to say something, anything begin to bubble up in his chest as his mind began to spiral out of control, taking apart the last quiet hour like an engine to see if he could figure out the trouble. He had to come up with a conversation topic soon or he would inevitably blurt out the first thing that came to mind or else launch into a long-winded babble about mechanics, robotics, or—god forbid—van maintenance. He could feel the pressure building in his chest, climbing up his throat, and did his best to weld his mouth firmly shut against any awkward attempts at small talk he might make. Then Lewis sat up abruptly, causing Arthur to jolt in his seat, a strangled noise escaping through his clamped-shut lips. Lewis was staring intently in his direction. The dire need to fill the silence was becoming too much to contend with as Arthur opened his mouth to launch into what he hoped wouldn’t be some diatribe about how the number of lug nuts didn’t necessarily equate high performance for a car, just take race cars for example—

Splat!

Arthur startled at the small sound of something hitting the windshield, whipping his head around to Lewis when he heard a soft utterance emit from his skull.

“Look.” Lewis had hunched forward in his seat, crowding his large frame into the windshield of the van, looking upwards with a dreamy expression. Arthur would be ceaselessly frustrated trying to figure out the logistics of how a skull could so effortlessly emote had the expression on the specter’s face not been so soft, so human and alive, leaving a bittersweet feeling to grow in Arthur’s chest.

“It’s snowing,” Lewis said. Arthur blinked as he comprehended the words, before likewise craning forwards in his seat and turning his face skywards. Thick, fluffy white flakes were drifting down from the pale grey sky, making a lazy descent to the world below. He gazed at the beginnings of the flurry with childlike wonder, a small smile slipping onto his face without his notice. He’d seen snow before of course, experienced it in person too, though the opportunity to do so in Tempo, Texas, hadn’t presented itself. Arthur remembered being young, before he’d come to live with his Uncle Lance, his father had tried to show him how to have a snowball fight during a winter they’d spent in Colorado. He never quite got the form right, the snow turning into powder or wet misshapen lumps between his mittens, as opposed to the seemingly perfect spheres his father made. When it came to throwing snowballs, his weak, noodle-like arms weren’t able to muster up much force, while his dad had let loose like canon fire. Arthur had taken one of the frozen projectiles to the face and immediately started crying. He still remembered his father’s large, apologetic smile as he’d laughed and ruffled his hair before he’d taken him to a local diner for hot chocolate, tears quickly forgotten by the child. It was a good memory, and he found his eyes misting over as he once again wished things could go back to the way they were before. As much as he loved his Uncle Lance, as happy as he was to have Lewis back, even in his present condition, he still wished he could turn back the clock.

“Hey, eyes on the road,” Lewis chuckled in the seat beside him, shaking Arthur free of the memory he’d been caught in. The mechanic quickly scrubbed at his eyes with his sleeves, hoping his spectral passenger hadn’t noticed. He returned his attention to the pavement ahead of him, just in time to see a pale figure standing in the road only a few feet from the front of the speeding van.

“Shit!” Arthur exclaimed, slamming his foot down on the brake, the tires screeching in protest at the sudden deceleration until the van came to a stop ten feet further down the pavement. He sat there breathing heavily in his seat, Lewis clinging to the side of the van as if he still had a life to fear for. In the back, the dog muttered choice words under his breath at the rude awakening and Vivi mumbled as she slowly became alert.

“Arthur, what the—” Lewis began from the front seat, irritation creeping into his tone. But Arthur had already thrown the driver’s side door wide open and was scrambling outside, uncaring to hear the rest of Lewis’s expletive. He stumbled along the roadway searching for the figure he had seen just moments before, hoping he wouldn’t see them lying unmoving in the middle of the road but expecting it nonetheless. His surroundings were as empty as they had been over the last few hours though.

“Shit. Shit, shit…” Arthur cursed under his breath. He’d just run somebody over, most likely killing them since he’d been strictly adhering to the fifty-five mile per hour speed limit, and this time there was nobody to blame but himself. No extenuating circumstances, no green spirits possessing him, just him and—

“Arthur, what’s going on?” Lewis spoke up suddenly from behind him, causing the shorter man to startle. 

“Th-there was somebody in the road,” Arthur responded, swallowing thickly. They had made so much progress and all of it was going to be undone because he was a murderer again. Lewis merely regarded him quietly, his look appraising. Arthur squirmed under the scrutiny.

“I-I tried to stop, but by the time I saw them there was no…there was no way…” Arthur said, an all-consuming sick-feeling opening up like a pit in his stomach as he trailed off weakly, “We need to find their…body…so we can, y-y’know…”

“Arthur,” Lewis was looking at him with a concerned expression, his head shaking slightly as he slowly said, “there wasn’t anybody in the road.”

“W-what?” Arthur said dumbly, his mouth suddenly dry, “B-but I saw…” He trailed off as he heard the telltale click of dog claws on pavement as Mystery joined them. 

“Arthur,” the disguised kitsune said calmly, “If there was anything in this vicinity that you could have struck with the van, I would have sensed it.” The dog quirked an eyebrow at him as he made to interrupt. 

“And even if you don’t find yourself able to rely on the incredible mystic abilities of a 600-year-old kitsune, my nose would detect it even without the aid of magic. There’s no one out here but us.” 

“O-Oh,” Arthur said, his shoulders slumped as he released a shaky breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, too quickly taking another, and another to refill his lungs. Two feet clad in thick blue socks entered his field of vision as he stared down at the asphalt, the fourth and final member of their group finally roused and joining where they’d gathered on the road. If Vivi had said anything upon her arrival though, it was lost to the ringing in his ears accompanied by the pounding of his heart. He massaged his sternum absently. 

“Oh,” he repeated numbly, followed by a high-pitched stressed sound that could have been mistaken for a giggle if not for the utter lack of mirth in the noise. Panic set upon him in full force then, his breath hitching as he rode out the panic attack like a wave, the fit of hyperventilation ebbing away after a few minutes, awareness of his surroundings creeping back in.

“You okay, Artie?” Vivi asked, her voice still sleepy, but her eyes sharp and focused on him, brimming with worry.

“I’m okay,” he said, almost automatically, before taking another moment to catch his breath, “Just…relieved. I-Is it bad that I feel like I’m getting better at having panic attacks?” 

“I don’t like the thought of you having that much practice at it,” Vivi mumbled, pressing in close to her friend’s side and wrapping him up in the blanket she’d dragged out with her. Arthur hummed noncommittally, grateful for the shared warmth. He felt a hand on his chin, gently tilting his head back.

“Have you been sleeping?” Lewis inquired, peering closely at Arthur’s face, though the mechanic suspected that the deep shadows and bags under his eyes didn’t require that close of an inspection to be seen.

“I know I saw something,” Arthur said half-heartedly, avoiding the question the specter had posed to him. He had been so certain he’d seen something in the road, but his friends’ reassurances were weakening his conviction. 

“Maybe I am a little tired,” he admitted sheepishly, hands once again coming up to scrub at his eyes.

“How about you let Lewis drive for a little while?” Vivi suggested, already tugging Arthur towards the back of the van, the mechanic easily lead away despite the protests he voiced. Vivi ushered him through the rear doors, depositing him on top of the sleeping bag she’d used earlier and quickly burying him under a pile of blankets.

“Just for a little while,” Arthur said tiredly, his eyelids already beginning to droop, “And no…no changing the van into…whatever it was you did to that monster truck.” He thought he heard Lewis huff a laugh as he burrowed further into the blankets, still warm from Vivi’s nap. He listened as she and Lewis climbed into the front of the van, Mystery’s legs scrambling briefly to gain purchase on the seat, a quiet conversation starting between the ghost and the girl in hushed tones undoubtedly for his own benefit. Arthur sighed as he relaxed further into the warm environment. He’d rest, just for a little while, just enough so that his eyes were clear and focused and didn’t conjure imaginary obstacles in the road.

Just a little while…

Arthur dozed off within minutes, lulled to sleep by Lewis’s voice as it rumbled through the specter’s chest and the familiar scent of blueberry shampoo on the pillow he’d borrowed.

In the distance, a single, silent figure stood, with pale skin and white hair. The snow swirled around her, the spitting snowflakes quickly worked up into a flurry, landing on her nose and blue lips, undisturbed by her lack of breath or body heat. Had one of the Mystery Skulls looked in the rearview mirror of the van, they might have caught a glimpse of her as she faded from view, blending into the wintry landscape, scentless and shapeless as the snow that fell from the sky.

[turtle-paced]

Hi!! I read somewhere that Aegon is not really a Targaryen, but some random child that Varys fed this idea to. And I was wondering what do you think about that? Because all babies kind of look the same, and there is no DNA's test on Westeros to know for sure. Could this be true? Your tumblr is amazing btw!

Thank you very much, anon!

Yeah, there’s strong evidence that the Aegon we met in ADWD isn’t the son of Rhaegar Targaryen. He’s not quite what I’d call a random child, though - again, the text thus far suggests he’s from the female line of House Blackfyre. Going to put this under a cut for length.

Let’s start with the story we’re given about Aegon’s parentage and miraculous survival.

“A true friend, our Lord Connington. He must be, to remainso fiercely loyal to the grandson of the king who took his lands andtitles and sent him into exile. A pity about that. Elsewise PrinceRhaegar’s friend might have been on hand when my father sackedKing’s Landing, to save Prince Rhaegar’s precious little son fromgetting his royal brains dashed out against a wall.”

The lad flushed. “That was not me. I told you. That was sometanner’s son from Pisswater Bend whose mother died birthing him.His father sold him to Lord Varys for a jug of Arbor gold. He hadother sons but had never tasted Arbor gold. Varys gave the Pisswaterboy to my lady mother and carried me away.”

“Aye.” Tyrion moved his elephants. “And when the pisswaterprince was safely dead, the eunuch smuggled you across the narrowsea to his fat friend the cheesemonger, who hid you on a poleboat andfound an exile lord willing to call himself your father. It does make fora splendid story, and the singers will make much of your escape onceyou take the Iron Throne …[”]

- Tyrion VI, ADWD

But how do the logistics of this play out, and how do they fit with the characters involved? Varys could probably execute this switch, it’s true. But the thing is, how was Varys to predict ahead of time that Aegon’s head would be destroyed? A lot of babies and young children look alike, but Aegon had the classic Targaryen hair. That hair would be the primary means of identification, in fact. Finding a boy of about the right age with about the right hair is still possible, but far less likely.

Then consider Elia Martell. We know for a fact that she was in the room with Aegon. Did Varys switch the babies with or without her knowledge? If it was done without Elia’s knowledge, that means she didn’t know what her son looked like. This is possible if she left Aegon’s nursing and rearing to others, but contradicts the version Aegon repeats of a direct handover between Varys and Elia. If it was done with her knowledge…

“It was Ser Amory who brought me the girl’s body, if you must know. He foundher hiding under her father’s bed, as if she believed Rhaegar could still protect her. Princess Eliaand the babe were in the nursery a floor below.”

- Tywin to Tyrion, Tyrion VI, ASoS

If this switch was done with Elia’s knowledge, then she sacrificed an infant to protect her son, while at the same time doing absolutely nothing to protect her daughter, not even attempting to find her, hide her, or have others do so, in this dangerous situation.

The inability to verify this story is itself peculiar; Elia could have put all this speculation to rest had she lived. Thing is, though, how did Varys predict she’d be murdered too? There was every reason not to kill her. This might have been the easiest thing to foresee of the lot given Tywin’s own reputation, but it is awfully convenient for anyone putting up a pretender a decade and a half later.

All in all there are a few big holes in the story. The Aegon we meet doesn’t have access to this information, but the reader and Tyrion both have enough to start thinking of some rather pointed questions.

Then there are the prophecies Dany receives.

A clothdragon swayed on poles amidst a cheering crowd.

- Dany IV, ACoK

“Hear me, Daenerys Targaryen. The glass candles are burning. Soon comes the pale mare, and after her the others. Kraken and dark flame, lion and griffin, the sun’s son and the mummer’s dragon. Trust none of them. Remember the Undying. Beware the perfumed seneschal.“

- Dany II, ADWD

The straightforward interpretation of this is that some mummer’s making a dragon (read: Targaryen) of his own, for use in his own show. Not finding. Making. This is theatre.

As for why I believe Aegon’s Illyrio’s son…

One of the first things Tyrion does in Illyrio’s manse is explore. To explore, he needs clothing.

He foundclean clothes in a cedar chest inlaid with lapis and mother-of-pearl.The clothes had been made for a small boy, he realized as he struggledinto them. The fabrics were rich enough, if a little musty[.]

- Tyrion I, ADWD

How strange that Tyrion should find a boy’s clothing in the supposedly childless Illyrio’s house. Good clothing.

“Tell me,” Tyrion said as he drank, “why should a magister ofPentos give three figs who wears the crown in Westeros? Where is thegain for you in this venture, my lord?”

The fat man dabbed grease from his lips. “I am an old man,grown weary of this world and its treacheries. Is it so strange that Ishould wish to do some good before my days are done, to help a sweetyoung girl regain her birthright?”

- Tyrion II, ADWD

Yes. Yes it is strange. Especially when it’s followed up in short order by this:

“Daenerys was half a child whenshe came to me, yet fairer even than my second wife, so lovely I wastempted to claim her for myself. Such a fearful, furtive thing,however, I knew I should get no joy from coupling with her. Instead Isummoned a bed-warmer and fucked her vigorously until the madnesspassed. If truth be told, I did not think Daenerys would survive forlong amongst the horselords.”

Somehow I do not find Illyrio’s stated motivation very convincing. Nor does Tyrion, who thinks, “There is something in this venture worthmore to you than coin or castles.”

When Tyrion meets up with Haldon and Duck, the first thing out of Illyrio’s mouth is this:

“How fares our lad?”

- Tyrion III, ADWD

Shortly afterwards,

“There is a gift for the boy in one of the chests. Some candiedginger. He was always fond of it.” Illyrio sounded oddly sad. “Ithought I might continue on to Ghoyan Drohe with you. A farewellfeast before you start downriver …”

- Tyrion III, ADWD

Children’s clothes, a boy Illyrio’s fond of and sad about not having the opportunity to see, the exposition about his late, blonde wife Serra…yeah, I think we can tell what’s in the venture for Illyrio.

But speaking of Illyrio’s late wife, whom we see a miniature of:

Illyrio thrust his righthand up his left sleeve and drew out a silver locket. Inside was apainted likeness of a woman with big blue eyes and pale golden hairstreaked by silver.

- Tyrion II, ADWD

Serra was Lysene, Illyrio tells Tyrion. Which is plausible. The better evidence comes from the people providing the armies for Aegon.

In AFFC, we’re introduced to the Golden Company of mercenaries, who are behaving quite out of character over in Essos.

“Are you aware that the Golden Company has broken its contract with Myr?” 

“Sellswords break their contracts all the time.”

“Not the Golden Company. Our word is good as gold has been their boast since the days of Bittersteel. Myr is on the point of war with Lys and Tyrosh. Why break a contract that offeredthem the prospect of good wages and good plunder?”

“Perhaps Lys offered them better wages. Or Tyrosh.”

“No,” she said. “I would believe it of any of the other free companies, yes. Most of them wouldchange sides for half a groat. The Golden Company is different. A brotherhood of exiles and thesons of exiles, united by the dream of Bittersteel. It’s home they want, as much as gold.[”]

- The Soiled Knight, AFFC

Arianne can think of only one reason why the Golden Company would break its word - a Westerosi invasion. Tyrion gives us a more thorough explanation of the Golden Company.

The Golden Company was reputedly the finest of the free companies, founded a century ago by Bittersteel, a bastard son of Aegon the Unworthy. When another of Aegon’s Great Bastards tried to seize the Iron Throne from his trueborn half-brother, Bittersteel joined the revolt. Daemon Blackfyre had perished on the Redgrass Field, however, and his rebellion with him. Those followers of the Black Dragon who survived the battle yet refused to bend the knee fled across the narrow sea, among them Daemon’s younger sons, Bittersteel, and hundreds of landless lords and knights who soon found themselves forced to sell their swords to eat. Some joined the Ragged Standard, some the Second Sons or Maiden’s Men. Bittersteel saw the strength of House Blackfyre scattering to the four winds, so he formed the Golden Company to bind the exiles together.

- Tyrion II, ADWD

Here we have an organisation specifically founded to preserve the Blackfyre cause, then.

On his deathbed, Ser Aegor Rivers hadfamously commanded his men to boil the flesh from his skull, dip it ingold, and carry it before them when they crossed the sea to retakeWesteros. His successors had followed his example.

- The Lost Lord, ADWD

The organisation’s mythos is built around the Blackfyres, and eventually retaking Westeros. So what the hell are they doing supporting Aegon Targaryen? Over and above their existing contracts, no less? Inquiring minds want to know, which again means Tyrion.

“I admire your powers of persuasion,” Tyrion told Illyrio.“How did you convince the Golden Company to take up the cause ofour sweet queen when they have spent so much of their historyfighting against the Targaryens?”

Illyrio brushed away the objection as if it were a fly. “Blackor red, a dragon is still a dragon. When Maelys the Monstrous diedupon the Stepstones, it was the end of the male line of HouseBlackfyre.” The cheesemonger smiled through his forked beard. “AndDaenerys will give the exiles what Bittersteel and the Blackfyresnever could. She will take them home.”

- Tyrion II, ADWD

Oddly specific about the male line of House Blackfyre being extinct, there. And as Illyrio said,

“Some contracts are writin ink, and some in blood. I say no more.”

- Tyrion II, ADWD

Best answer, Aegon’s no Targaryen but a Blackfyre, from the female line.

[ecotone99]

[SF] The Extravagant Execution of Edward Ernesto Ellington de Manuel - Part I

He waited until the last stretch of moonlight had passed down the length of his bed to where he liked to keep his shoes stowed away at night, before he sat up along the edge of his bed, raised the blade to the crux of his neck, and cut off his own head.

It was easier than he thought. The blood did spurt and sputter out across the room in wild streaks, but Edward Ellington had done his best to cover the floor with the towels and bed sheets stolen from the linen room closet. For once, thought Edward, his best had worked. Apart from the burst of blood stained across the face of his cabinet like children’s finger paint, most of it had landed on the linen.

The toothbrush broke early on, but the blade it was taped up to was easy to handle between his naked fingers. It made the cutting light and brisk.

The bone was the toughest part. He had cut the skin around his neck until only the thick white vertebrae of his spine remained exposed. He chewed at the pedicles with the side of his blade, but all he heard was a sharp screeching whine that shot down the length of his back. He worried.

He tried grabbing at his head, twisting it and pulling it, but he still could not get the thing off. Then he saw the distant hall light spilling into his room from the window on his door and the idea came to him. He lowered his head in the doorway, making sure to set his bottom jaw against the outside wall, before he pulled the door back as far as he could and swung. He knocked it clean off the door.

His head fell out into the hallway like an aged apple blown off its branch, rolling away with failing vigor. He chased after it, groping blindly in the dark with open palms until his foot knocked into it. He picked it up and carried it back into his room, cradling it between his fingers like some ancient icon. As he sat back down on his bed with the blood still trickling down his shoulders, he felt something move.

My neck, it bleeds.

It blinked. He could feel the eyes of the severed head blinking there on his lap as if signaling some message to him. He ran his fingers over the face, studying its misplaced nose, its rounded cheeks, and its overstretched brow, wondering how any woman could have ever loved such a hideous face, until the head clamped down on his bony finger with all its teeth and bit him.

The pain shot up through his arm. He tried to pull his hand back but his finger was stuck. It had a tight grip about the knuckle of his index finger. He could not see it, but he could feel his finger whiten from the pressure. Soon, the skin would break.

He lifted his hand up and the severed head came with it, dripping streams of blood onto his cold bony knees. He pressed his palm up against the face of the head and tried to pull his finger back, but the more he pulled, the tighter its grip became.

He rested the head back down on his lap and cupped his hand around its jaw. With his free hand, he stuck his fingers up its nostrils and pulled. It was a strange feeling, he thought, to stick one’s own fingers up one’s own nose to free one’s own finger, but with the blood starting to rush down the sides of his wrist, he was able to push aside those thoughts and pull, god damn you.

He pulled his finger free from the mouth and the head rocked back and forth, spraying specks of blood out from the bottom of its neck onto the thin black hairs of Edward’s thin long arms. Again, he worried. As the head rocked back and forth on his lap, he felt a deep rumbling within his chest—a noise.

The head let out a pitching scream. He could not hear it, but he could feel it through the rumbling of his ribs. Without thinking, he grabbed one of the towels from the floor and jammed it into the head’s mouth. He locked one wrist up against the bottom jaw of the head and with the other, pressed down on the top of its skull to keep its mouth shut. It worked.

He didn’t know what they would to him if they found him like this, sitting headless on his bed wrestling with his own severed head trying to keep its mouth shut, but he was sure it wouldn’t be good.

He pushed the head up against the side of his leg to free one of his hands and he grabbed another towel from the floor and wrapped it tight around its mouth like a bandana, making sure to leave enough room for it to breathe. After all, Edward was not a violent man. The last thing he wanted was to let this thing die. But before he could think too much about the logistics and practicalities of keeping a severed head alive in his room, he felt another deep rumbling within his chest—a distant, but familiar noise.

It was a low, muffled, tinny sound, like the soft patter of rain against deep waters’ surface, but Edward was sure of this sound—an unmistakable sound. It was the light jangling sound of Lynda Carter’s pure silver anklets dancing about her feet.

Lynda Carter was not her real name, but it was the name most people knew her by. This was not because of any physical resemblance to the famous actress, but because of her general striking allure. She was short and slender with dark brown skin and slightly oval eyes that dipped down at the sides and left strangers struggling to guess just exactly where this woman was from. And Lynda Carter knew this. She was as sure of this as she was about everything else about herself, from the spiciness of her chicken wings to the number of looks she got from men passing on the street. It was perhaps for this reason—her strong personal convictions and certitudes about any opinion she had—that she had come to be known as that wonderful woman Lynda Carter. To explain all of this in detail however, would require too much time. And as Lynda Carter started to walk down that hall, Edward Ellington realized that he did not have that much time at all.

The blood, it pools.

He rested the severed head down on his pillow and with one free foot, worked the towels around in circles while he grabbed and pulled the bed sheets closer to him with his hands. After soaking up the deepest pools, he bunched up the towels and sheets into the dark corner of his room behind his tall wooden cabinet, still smeared with streaks of blood. It was not perfect, but he felt it should do.

The rumbling in his chest grew louder and louder as Lynda Carter walked down the hall with one of her eyebrows slightly raised to the side as she peered into the slivered windows on the doors of each room with her flashlight, searching for the source of that pitching scream.

Edward crept back into bed and placed the head up on top of his neck where he thought most people’s heads sat when most people slept. But as the jangling rumble grew louder within his chest, the head started to move left and right, right and left, letting out drops of blood all across the top of his pillow until Edward clapped both hands over its ears and held it back tight against the bed. Then the jangling stopped.

The rumbling in his chest stopped, too. Almost everything in the room seemed to stop as Lynda Carter pushed open the door with great care and stood still in the doorway with her flashlight beamed directly over Edward Ellington’s headless body.

“Edward Ernesto Ellington de Manuel.”

Even without ears, he could follow the swell of her words through the rumbling of his ribs. He had always liked the sound of her voice—soft but purposeful. But now, lying back in bed with his hands still fixed around his ears, the sound of her voice shook him to his bones.

“I am not going to sit here and mother you,” she said, taking a step into his room.

Blood pumped out through the arteries on his neck and settled beneath him on his pillow as she turned off her flashlight and entered his room.

“But I am not going to let you sleep here with those dirty old shoes still on your feet.”

She walked over to the end of his bed where his feet lay bowed over the edge. He was a tall man in a small bed. She got down beside him and started to undo the knots on his laces, grabbing at the tips and pulling them through.

She held the shoes a good distance from her body as she bunched up her nose and turned her face to the side to avoid the heavy smell of his bunioned feet as she laid his shoes out at the foot of his bed where she knew he liked to keep them at night, one next to the other, until a loud woman’s voice came bursting down the hall.

“Every, fuckin’, night!”

Her voice rang up along the wall and down across the big open ceiling that connected all of their rooms. Edward had always hated that ceiling—everyone heard everything.

“Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on in there,” the woman went on, “because I do. I know exactly what’s going on in there and it has got to stop.”

Blood pooled around his neck as Lynda Carter finished with his shoes and walked over to the side of his bed. He could feel her standing there next to him, as if somehow translating the displaced air into tactile feelings felt all along his body. If he could have spoken, he would have even said that he could smell her, too.

“I think somebody’s jealous,” whispered Lynda Carter.

She laid her hand on his arm and gave him a soft squeeze that sent a shot of warm blood straight down to his toes. She smiled.

As she turned to leave the room, she noticed the large dark stain across the face of Edward’s tall wooden cabinet. She touched her finger to the cabinet and ran the tip of it over the stain, rubbing the cold dark substance between her fingers.

Beneath the grip of his long bony hands, Edward could feel the head budge left and right, right and left on his pillow, somehow sensing that this might be its last chance at freedom, but Edward held on. He pushed the head back down against the bed and pressed his thumbs deep into its earlobes. The head bit down and screamed in vain against the thick white towel stuffed inside its mouth. Not a sound was heard.

Satisfied with her investigation, Lynda Carter rubbed the substance off her fingers and walked out of his room. As she closed the door, a pour of blood rushed out of Edward’s neck as if the dam holding it all back had suddenly been lifted. It rushed about his neck and cooled quickly onto his shoulders as his heart settled to a slow, resting rhythm, spent from the long night’s work. He took his hands off the head’s ears and let his arms rest down by his sides.

He lay listening now, to the slow fall of blood as it ran down his neck, down his arms and onto the cold gray floor, illuminated only by the soft orange light at the far end of the hall. He knew he couldn’t hear it, really, and yet, he could. Somewhere within him, it sounded, as the blood drops rang with anticipation down the tips of his fingers into the shallow long pools along the uneven grout.

He woke up the next morning to the prickling warmth of sunlight crawling up the front of his legs and a dull, throbbing pain leading up to the stump on his neck. Colonies of pale, lobate microbes had already started to grow along the exposed vessels, fat and muscle all across Edward’s neck, but he could not see any of this. The area was sore and bruised, but worst of all, it itched. He raised his hand up and dug his finger into the newly formed cavity, prodding and poking into the thick wet blood, scooping up chunks of proteins and platelets that dripped off the end of his finger and splatted onto the floor, but he could still not itch that itch. He let it go.

He sat up in bed and nearly fell off it as he did. He was much lighter now without a head on his body and he needed to get used to it. He laid his legs out over the side of his bed and stretched his arm back over his pillow as he did most mornings to help wake himself up. It was then that he noticed the cool pool of blood on his pillow where the severed head should have been, but was not.

His heart thumped once and a stream of blood shot up through his neck and hissed out onto the floor like water over an open flame. He patted his hands down on the bed but found no head, only a faint streak of blood running off from the side of it onto the ground. He got down on his knees and followed the trail all the way to the edge of his room where he found the head stuck in the small space between the bottom part of the wall and the cold gray ground.

This was, after all, the third floor unit of a psychiatric hospital in a very small New England town, the south side. Here, men and women needed to be watched at all hours, from all angles and from all rooms, to ensure quality-controlled living conditions. For this reason, the walls of the rooms did not extend all the way down to the ground, allowing for a clear view of all rooms if one wanted to lie prone on the floor and look down the hall. And it was between this small space that Edward found the head, stuck trying to roll itself away to some imagined freedom, blocked only by the size of its large hawked nose.

He grabbed the head by the tuft of its hair and pulled it back from the wall and sat it back down on his bed, running his fingers over its face, its eyes and its lips. But the head did not move. Its eyes did not blink and its lips did not quiver.

To die, to sleep.

Hoping to hear some cry or scream of life, Edward pulled the towel free from the head’s mouth, but all he heard was the crack of its jaw as its mouth dropped open and its tongue slumped down to the side, shriveled and dried. He needed to act.

For ice, I thirst.

He wrapped the towel up around the bottom of its neck and set the head down on his bed. Worried about startling anyone with his bloody stump, he cleaned up whatever running blood there was from his neck and laid out a small washcloth over the top of his neck to help hide the gruesome sight of his severed veins. Then he walked out the door.

He took long, big steps down the hall, careful to walk quickly, but not too quickly so as not to attract any unneeded attention to himself. Fortunately, Edward was never one for attention and so this came rather naturally to him. What came surprisingly natural to him however, was the simple act of walking down the hall with no eyes or head. Thirteen years of pacing up and down the same south side hall had painted a very detailed map of these surroundings in his mind, and somehow, it was all still with him: the gray drab floor, the distant orange light, and the yellow crusted walls that seemed to sweat in syncopated rhythm with the cries heard down the north side hall on those humid August days, were all still perfectly visible to Edward, whether he liked it or not. And so it was with great ease that Edward walked down the hall to the nurse’s station window and knocked twice on the glass.

“Wat you need?” said the wide-hipped woman behind the desk, digging through her purse.

He stood dumb at the window, unsure exactly how to express himself. Somehow, in all of his planning, he had forgotten to plan for this—speaking. He tried lifting his hands up in the air and gesturing for a pen and paper with his fingers, but he was not convinced he was being clear enough. And besides, this woman was not even looking up at him. She was busy pulling a long and mangled pink hair tie from out of her purse and setting it down onto the counter next to several other equally mangled hair ties. So Edward knocked once more on the glass.

“Don’t wanna talk?” she asked.

It was not one of his proudest attributes, but Edward was well aware of his sometimes short fuse that was now made even shorter by standing headless in the open hallway under the cool breeze blowing down from the air duct, stinging away at his open wound, incapable of saying a thing about it. So he grabbed the left side of the sliding window and slammed it open, sending out a loud clack into the air as metal rattled against metal, startling the woman behind the desk, causing her to look up at Edward for the first time.

She sat speechless.

Edward reached his hand in through the window and fished around the desk for a pen and paper, knocking over patient charts and overstuffed files until he found what he was looking for, pulled it back across the window and set it down onto the narrow counter before him.

He scrawled out the word “ICE” in large capital letters across the sheet of loose-leaf paper. Then he slammed the paper up against the window with the palm of his hand and pointed to it for the woman to see. She looked at him, back at the paper, and then back at him.

“Dis look like a Popsicle stand ta you?” she said to him, gesturing to the humid, cluttered nurse’s station behind her. “You tinkin me got any ice back ‘ere?”

The cold wavy tone of her voice told Edward everything he needed to know. He crumpled up the paper in his hands, and just as he was about to walk away, he felt the sharp high pitched sound of the security-locked front door open, followed by the notorious rattling sound of the breakfast cart’s right back wheel as Gorgeous George pushed it down the hall.

Edward had come to know Gorgeous George as an almost exclusively farsighted individual, eager to point out any mistakes around him, yet inexplicably blind to his own shortcomings (one of which was his inability to eat a turkey club sandwich without dripping globs of mayonnaise onto his famous blue polo shirt, worn every working day). Despite this, Gorgeous George was a very prudent and scrupulous man when it came to matters of work, at least those involving other persons and other things. And with any luck, thought Edward, George would have done his job well today and brought up an ice tray on the bottom shelf of the cart along with the breakfast trays.

And so Edward snaked away from the nurse’s station window and walked in to the day hall, positioning himself in a semi-open area that would make him look neither too conspicuous nor too inconspicuous, well aware that a prevalent inconspicuousness would have inevitably attracted him that unwanted attention he so deeply despised.

In that moment, standing below the large ticking wall clock, he paused. For the first time, Edward realized that not one person had stopped him to comment on his recent transformation. Not even the woman behind the nurse’s station window had said a word about it. Edward never craved any type of special attention, but he felt it somewhat odd that not one person had tapped him on the shoulder to ask him where his head had gone. No one had said a thing to him at all until The Hunt staggered towards him with his big swollen back and his two hairy arms that seemed to follow him like an afterthought.

“Two!” yelled The Hunt.

The Hunt’s voice was one of the few things he had left, one of the few things he felt he still owned, and even that he held in tenuous grasp along with the rest of his body. They were more like agents of his mind, and he just an idle spectator, as if a passenger aboard a rocking steamboat. And so whenever The Hunt found himself thrown behind the helm in whatever weather conditions, he never missed the opportunity to scream out as loud as he could to let all around him know that he was in fact, still in control of this sprawling old yawl.

“I got two hand, two arm and two feet!” he yelled, marveling down at the coarse brown skin on his arms. “Even got me two ear!”

Edward did not understand The Hunt, but he knew him well enough to know that even the best set of ears would not have helped him much. And in many ways, he was thankful he did not have to listen to him. The Hunt was a well-known rambler, of the pacing variety that walked up and down halls and around tables and into and out of chairs, ranting on about bumboclaats and pussyclaats, rarely completing a single thought or idea, but always eager to share his innermost desires. Edward could tell however, that The Hunt’s comment was still, curiously enough, not directed at his own headlessness. He began to wonder if that small washcloth wrapped up along the top of his neck had done its duty a little too well.

But before Edward could do anything about it, the rumbling in his chest grew louder as Gorgeous George pushed the breakfast cart in to the day hall where The Hunt still stood, enchanted with the sight of his own physical form.

“Move,” said George.

“Wat?” said the Hunt, turning his head over his shoulder.

And just as quickly as he had been thrown behind the helm of his old sprawling yawl, The Hunt was shucked away from it like a seed in wind, only to be replaced by the old familiar Hunt, complete with all of his desires and none of his inhibitions. He picked his hands up and started yelling at George, calling him the names of all sorts of bodily parts and bodily functions in all types of languages, but his volume was so loud and his tongue so loose in his mouth that his speech was well near unintelligible.

Gorgeous George however, the farsighted man that he was, was not going to stand there and take insults from a man who lacked even a basic grip over his own bowels. He was going to walk towards him, with arms raised, and convince him of his own wrongdoings using reason and logic. Or so he tried. But the closer Gorgeous George walked towards him, the louder The Hunt yelled, and the louder The Hunt yelled, the closer Gorgeous George walked towards him.

Amid this growing confusion, Edward walked over to the cart, grabbed the tray off the bottom shelf and slunk down the hall towards his room unseen.

He laid the tray out on his bed, grabbed the severed head from his cabinet and placed it into the ice, neck-side first. It lay still for a great while with its eyes rolled back and its mouth hung open as if posed for a sculptor’s fingers, until the ice started to cool and the head started to stir.

It began at the mouth, like a small crevice breaking in the earth’s crust that formed at the edge of its lips and spread across its face like a violent tremor. It writhed and seized awake, gasping and screaming as it did until Edward grabbed the towel and wrapped it around its mouth. It budged on the tray and clenched its muscles, hoping to roll itself away, but Edward dug the head deeper into the ice and stood in wait.

He watched now, as head fought ice, opening and closing its eyes with the staggered rhythm of a television set changing channels. He knew he couldn’t see it, really, and yet he could. Somewhere within him, he pictured it: the small stumpy head, writhing about in that tray of ice, removed of all power it once had over him. If he could have, he would have smiled. Instead, he opened up his cabinet, picked up the tray and locked the head away.

END OF PART I

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