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sweetrevxnge · 2 years

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Ghosts In The Snow

Chapter Five

Pairing: Vampire!Kylo Ren x Reader AU

Summary: Six long years had passed under the reign of the First Order. The bitter winters grew longer, and as they did, hope faded from the hearts of the citizens of Hosnian Prime. As a lieutenant in the Resistance cavalry, it was your duty to nurture that ember of hope. After a mission takes an unexpected turn, you are taken prisoner by a commander in the First Order, a mysterious man with an insatiable appetite—for violence, power, and you. In the coming days, you must keep the spark of your own hope alive from the dark confines of the Commander's castle.

Warnings: sexual content, violence, blood kink, gore, mentions/descriptions of injury and death

*concurrently being published on AO3 and Wattpad as well!

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Next Chapter

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Word count: 3k

Chapter-specific CW: compulsion, light emotional manipulation (but it's ok bc he's a hot vampire)

A/N: "how am I supposed to live laugh love under these conditions?" -y/n to kylo probably

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“After you, my dear.”

The threshold of the doorway was all that stood between you and the prospect of freedom. Or at least, so you thought.

Moonlight peaked through the dark clouds above, flooding the spacious courtyard Ren had brought you to with silver light. Disappointment sank through you like a stone—not that you were expecting him to loosen your invisible lead enough to allow you to roam an open area of the castle’s property. All things considered, this was generous.

Tentatively, you stepped out into the night, disregarding your lack of footwear as you followed the ivory tiles lining the path. Short, frostbitten hedges surrounded you, perfectly manicured despite their leaves being brittle and sparse. Snowflakes dusted the earth, falling like tiny, frozen kisses on your skin.

Woven throughout the foliage were dozens of rosebushes, their thorns now all that remained of their beauty. It wasn’t difficult to imagine the garden in bloom, with rays of sunlight bathing the roses until their petals unfurled, inviting bees to collect pollen from each colorful bundle. But spring had long since passed. The stems had morphed into skeletons, their wilted petals cracking under the blanket of frost. It was oddly beautiful; something that was once so vibrant, now faded and cold, preserved by winter’s embrace.

Around you stood the high walls of the castle, with elegant archways and stained windows. Everything felt venerable, even down to the footsteps immortalized in the tile from centuries of tread, aging the fortress well beyond the Empire’s rule. Judging by the weathered state of the walls encasing you, the castle was likely constructed during the Grand Republic’s reign, dating it beyond the past three hundred years. To think that there was a time when its halls had been occupied by diplomats—ones who placed the interests of the people above their own aspirations. Much like the garden, their memory had faded in the presence of the First Order.

You stopped in front of two black iron benches arranged in the center of the court. They accented the focal piece of the garden: a pond, sheathed by a layer of glistening ice. You pictured a family of ducks paddling through it in the summer, creating tiny ripples as they splashed the cool water onto their feathers. The irony of peace existing in a place of such violence.

“What do you think?” Ren asked behind you, joining you in observation of the frozen water.

Releasing a long breath, you answered bluntly, “It’s hard to say. Everything’s dead.”

He chuckled at your honesty. “Yes. But even now, there is a certain beauty to it, wouldn’t you agree?” He stepped closer, pressing his chest flush against your back, offering you no heat. There was nothing warm or soft about him. For all you knew, he was made of marble beneath the layer of black fabric—his body temperature suggesting as much.

You instinctively pulled away, turning to face him. Quick breaths passed through your lips, the wisps of vapor lingering in the air like ghosts. Ren was frightening and beautiful, making him the most dangerous kind of monster. Not the kind that mothers warned their children of through tales, hoping to deter them from venturing too far into the woods, but the kind that the ladies at court would gossip about. The handsome devil.

“From a certain point of view, I suppose,” you finally said, turning your back on him once again. You didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of agreeing—even if he had heard your inner dialogue earlier.

Ren walked alongside you as you continued to meander through the garden. Even the slightest brush of his arm made the hair on the back of your neck stand. Although, in fairness, the culprit could very well have been the winter air, too.

You considered making conversation with him, less because you were interested in what he had to say, but rather as a pleasantry in return for the change of scenery. When you opened your mouth to speak, you found that the words were lodged in your throat, impossible to push out. Perhaps it was the icy air burning your airway, or another force entirely. Regardless, you continued to walk in silence, sorting through your thoughts—as you suspected he was, too.

It seemed as if the tile path had transformed into shards of glass by the way your feet ached, each step sending a wave of pain through your nerves. Determined to stay outside as long as possible, you ignored it, slowing your pace to accommodate.

“You’re shivering,” Ren stated, as if you were somehow unaware of your chattering teeth.

“Yes, I know.”

“Would you like to go inside?”

You froze in place, but unlike in the forest, this was not his doing. He came to stand in front of you, tracing your face with eyes as black as obsidian.

“I doubt that decision is mine to make,” you countered. The illusion of free will—as if you weren’t trapped in this castle because of him.

“You would be dead if it weren’t for me.”

You let out an incredulous laugh. “Oh, yes, how could I forget? The man who slaughtered my entire squadron—my savior.”

His jaw tensed. “It’s not as if I was acting of my volition. I was merely protecting my men, keeping my oath. Surely that is something you can understand.”

Of course it was. But you had failed to do that, and now you would spend a lifetime being haunted by it.

“Enough,” you said, tearing your eyes away from him as you turned to face the withering garden. The frayed threads holding you together snapped, allowing the flood of emotions to pour in. As it did, you wondered if it would always be like this. Reminded of the carnage every time you laid eyes on him. Sentenced to a miserable existence with the man responsible for your nightmares.

A hand came to rest on your shoulder. You shuddered at the touch. “For what it’s worth, their deaths were wholly unnecessary.” There was a trace of remorse in his words, quickly replaced by his usual tone. “But such is the nature of war, my dear.”

You squeezed your eyes shut, biting your tongue before you could say anything else. When you opened them again, Ren was standing in front of you, close enough to hide the moonlight behind him.

“Why did you do it?” Your voice cracked as you spoke, fighting desperately to hold back your frustration.

He furrowed his brows, confused by your question. “The Supreme Leader’s orders were clear–”

“No,” you snapped, a harsh edge replacing the weakness in your voice. “I mean, why did you capture me? How is it fair that I should be the only survivor, condemned to live out the rest of my days under your thumb?”

As soon as the words had left your mouth, you wished you could reach out and shove them back into the depths of your mind. He didn’t deserve to see you like this, brimming with raw emotion. It was a state you reserved only for those closest to you, those who you would likely never see again.

Ren was silent, stoic. In a moment like this, you wished you possessed his ability to probe minds. Instead of offering you an answer, he cupped your face, brushing his thumb over your cheekbone and jaw, tracing a line as light as a whisper over your skin.

Immediately, the tension in your shoulders dissolved, washed away along with every concern occupying your mind. Despite his cool touch, warmth rose to your cheeks.

“Have you ever considered the possibility that this arrangement could liberate you in ways you’ve never imagined?” His voice was silky, falling on your ears like a symphony of angels. A soft cloud settled over you, eliciting a strange feeling within your chest as you gazed up at him, searching his black eyes for an answer to his question.

“I have not, my lord,” you whispered, the words leaving your tongue like a prayer.

Ren’s lips parted, revealing brilliant white teeth as he grinned, amused by your response. “Of course not. And why should you have? Such thoughts have no place in a mind as troubled as yours.” He swept his fingers over your cheek again, soothing you.

You nodded into his hand. The cold that gnawed at your fingers and toes was nothing more than a distant sensation, an ache quelled by his touch. He glanced down at your figure, frowning at the sight of your dress. In the time that the two of you had been standing outside, a light layer of snow had melted into the thin fabric of your gown, clinging to your skin. With deft fingers, he tied the strings of your cloak into a small knot and smoothed the fabric over your shoulders.

“Now, let’s go inside. I can’t have my bride freezing to death,” he said in a low tone, leaning closer to your lips. “Next time, I advise you to wear more fitting attire.”

Next time. Intoxicated by his words, you nodded in agreement, your eyes still fixed on his.

As if you were a sack of feathers, he hoisted you off the ground, holding you as he did in the forest. Only this time, there was no fear in your heart, no panic closing off your throat. With your hands clasped behind his neck, he carried you back into the castle, moving swiftly through the courtyard. Although the taste of freedom was dwindling with every step he took, you were content—almost pleased—to be returning to the safety of your chambers.

Your head felt as light as the cushions of the chaise lounge as Ren set you down upon it. The memory of where his hands had gripped you remained after he released you, leaving your skin tingling at each spot. In the darkness, it was nearly impossible to see him moving through your chambers, an issue remedied by a fire roaring to life in the hearth.

Satisfied with his work, Ren stood behind the sofa, peering down at you laying across it. Golden flames flickered in his eyes, softening his strong features. Your cloak had shifted, exposing more of your nightwear than you would’ve preferred. But you didn’t mind. In fact, you liked it—how the sleeves had fallen past your shoulders and the hem of the dress had gathered above your knees. You felt ethereal, basking in the glow radiating from the hearth. You couldn’t recall the last time you’d been this relaxed.

You sighed, closing your eyes as you relished the warmth spreading through your toes. “Who should I thank for starting this fire—you or your magic?” You made a vague gesture with your hands, wiggling your fingers as if you were casting a spell.

He chuckled quietly, moving to sit in the chair across from yours. “Neither. Thank the tinderbox that was left on the mantle.”

Propping yourself up with your elbow, you turned to face him, letting your dress drape over your hips. The knot at your neck loosened with every movement you made until you finally grew tired and pulled it free, shedding your cloak onto the sofa. Under any other circumstance, you would be scrambling to cover yourself. This was completely unlike you—to allow anyone other than your handmaid to see you like this. Harlot, your mother would say in her scolding tone, coupled with a scowl. But she wasn’t here—only Commander Ren.

“I find it hard to believe that you’re incapable of starting a fire, given everything else you can do.”

“Unfortunately, I was never any good at it,” he said, his eyes wandering to the golden flames. “Pyromancy, however, has always been one of my strongest suits.”

The conversation stalled for a moment as you watched his fingers glide over the armrest, hypnotized by the patterns he traced in the black velvet. His veins mingled with tendons as he moved—an intricate dance beneath his ivory skin. Somewhere deep within you, an ember flickered to life, its warmth spreading throughout your being. It was unusual, but not unwelcome.

“How can you do these things?” you asked, your voice floating through the air like the wisps of a dandelion.

He sighed, rolling his tongue over his teeth in thought. Finally, he said, “I was raised by witches.”

Your eyes widened—not in shock at his answer, but because he had answered at all. Rey’s words echoed in your mind. Commander Ren is a very private man.

“Witches? As in, multiple?”

He snickered softly. “Just two.”

“I see,” you whispered, watching him intently. There was something inherently alluring about him, an appeal that had drawn you in the instant you laid eyes on his portrait. An indescribable—yet persisting—quality. A charm.

After the success of your first question, you found the courage to pose another. “What were they like?”

A beat passed before he spoke, unease filling your stomach as you waited. The look in his eyes told you that your valiant effort was in vain. “What else did the handmaid tell you?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned back in his seat.

His words hit your chest like a thousand stones, shattering your confidence. Rey had warned you—begged you—to not discuss the matter of the Commander, fearing the consequences awaiting her if she did. Guilt crashed into you.

“Nothing. She said nothing else,” you stammered, pushing yourself up to a sitting position. With pleading eyes, you turned to him. “I swear it by all the gods.”

Ren stood to his feet, shushing you as he strode toward you. “There’s no need to call upon the gods, dear. I believe you.” His long fingers caressed your jaw, tilting your head up to meet his intense gaze. “I also believe that the girl is sensible enough to want to keep her head attached to her body. You asked her about me, didn’t you?”

Your heart slammed into your ribs, as if it were attempting to leap out and crawl into Ren’s hands. There was no use in arguing—he already knew the truth. The outcome of your fate depended on any ounce of respect you could earn from him. Lying now would be a disservice to everyone involved.

“Yes, I admit, I asked her to tell me what she knew of you, but she refused. It was only after I continued pressing the matter that she finally answered. Please, have mercy on her, she is innocent–”

He silenced you by pressing a finger against your lips. “If I beheaded every servant who spoke ill of me, the castle would be swept by ghosts.”

You said nothing, an unspoken understanding passing between you. While you believed him, there was also validity in Rey’s fear. Even the servant boy cowered in his presence. If one thing were true in this life, it was that rumors carried weight, and at times, merit.

“Why do they fear you so much?” you asked as his thumb brushed over your chin.

Ren let out a long sigh as he ran his fingers down your neck, pausing at your pulse point. “People fear what they do not understand.”

The air grew thick in the silence. A familiar sensation embraced you, igniting every fiber of your being under his touch. Much like the fire in front of you, the ember in your belly became an inferno. Your gaze fell to his pillowy lips, imagining what they would feel like against yours—what they would feel like on every inch of your skin. As soft as sin, probably. His eyes were coals, twinkling in the amber light, a tell that your thoughts were not as quiet as you had hoped.

“What do you fear most, darling?” he asked, his voice low and inviting. “I imagine that a woman like yourself doesn’t fear much, but everyone has their weakness.” He tilted your head slightly to the side, eyes wandering down your neck. “What is yours?”

Blood rushed in your ears, making you dizzy. Through the haze in your mind, a tiny voice broke through, begging you to resist him—resist the urge to bend to his will. But it was becoming increasingly difficult to barricade your thoughts, and as his eyes bore into yours, irises now a deep shade of red, his devilry won.

“Purpose.” The word passed through your lips like a specter, carrying a cadence that was foreign to your ears. “I fear a life without purpose.”

Satisfaction radiated off of Ren. “I see. And that is exactly why you were the only survivor.” He stretched his hand over your throat, applying gentle pressure to either side of your neck. The rhythmic drumming of your heart pulsed through his fingertips. “Because your purpose is so much greater than serving the Resistance.”

“What do you believe my purpose is, Commander?”

The backlight of the hearth cast a halo around him, deifying him. Ignoring your inquiry, he said, “The night is almost over. I suggest you get some rest.”

With that, he left you, somehow more cold and alone than you had been before. As the latch clicked shut, the haze lifted, quickly replaced by dread. Your vision tunneled on the fire in front of you, the black edges snuffing out your surroundings, narrowing your view to only the flames dancing over the logs.

As you stood from the lounge, your knees buckled, forcing you to summon all your strength to reach the bed before collapsing. Chest heaving, you stared up at the canopy, hoping to find anything but flecks of light dancing across your eyes. The voice in your head was shouting now, building to a deafening pitch, its message clear.

In the wake of his presence, two things remained: your distrust of Commander Ren and the strange warmth that had settled in your stomach.

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paleodictyoptera · 1 year

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Plight of the Windigo

An apparition stood ahead among the trees, staring silently, the snow laden wind losing its voice in their presence but blowing no lesser for it. Unnaturally tall and lanky, with arms and legs too long for their girth; that along with a skin filled with pinkish-purple sores and greyish-blue bruises all over, one painting the right third of its chest a sickly half-black, it looked half-dead from malnutrition.

The part that made it fully dead was how it was encrusted with ice and decay. Freezing rain caked their scalp like a helmet, running down over their right ear; that is, if they did have a right ear. The other was clearly frostbitten to shreds. Shards of icicles jutted from the hips, some looking like they grew from the skin; the others looked like they'd been stabbed in.

While much of the right side of the body showed ice front and center, little peeks of rot could be seen here and there. Frost crystals and mold blended together like fur on its skin, with a blemish in the cheek making it look hollow, like some of the bone was missing. The left side of the body was much more dedicated to rot and decay. The left foot was gangrenous and falling apart, two toes already missing and another not far off from falling away too. Further up, the abdomen was painted black with necrotic flesh, partly scabby as it forced its way over the ribs.

It was clearly a windigo, spirit of ice and greed; and most notably, cannibalism. Jared knew better than to trust anything undead, let alone be near it. Just treat it like any other predator, back up slowly-

"Wait." The mouth opened, but did not move with the speech. It slowly raised its arm, creaking uncomfortably loud in the near silence, like a large tree in a strong wind.

Just keep backing up, the cabin's only 500 feet away or so.

"Please, just hear what I have to say." It held out its hand, three fingers caked and bleeding, frozen mud in the creases. It looked ready to chase him.

Jared stopped moving. He barely dared to breathe, the cold becoming ever more harsh, stinging his nose bitterly.

Its hand fell slowly, creaking again. "You must tell people that you have seen a windigo. Warn them in the proper way, yes. But also tell them what I looked like." Their teeth were too large, stark white against impossibly blood red gums. "Too many of my kin are succumbing to the white man, to their corruption of our ilk." Its head turned with a rustling noise, eyes both milky and bloodshot staring at the green of the conifers surrounding them. "You will not understand, white man, but you will spread my warning."

The head snapped back with lightning precision, pupils appearing suddenly out of the depths and filling them with mad, burning predatory rage.

"Or else."

Jared stopped caring about how to avoid predators and ran.

~~~

It watched as the swaddled youth ran away, too scared to scream. It felt ever so hungry and wrathful watching prey escape like that, but the greedy pig not only deserved a lesson, but it itself had a favor to ask. Hard to get a favor when you eat the person you're seeking one from.

The boy was selfish and physically crude, yes, but paired with the talent to lie, it knew they had a great ability to tell stories. And the windigo had much need of a story teller among the europeans.

The creatures of spirit have their ancient sources, but the seed is nourished and shaped by where it grows. And the windigo? Too many stories from the colonizers had started to warp them. It itself was strong and had mostly stayed true to the ancestors, but so many other cannibal kin were beginning to change: their mystery, change to simple horror; their greed, change to only bloodlust. Some were even starting to grow antlers, their skulls stretching into animal shapes as the West beat them out like tanning a hide to sell.

It hated all living flesh. It hated in general. But it hated these new, these 'modern' men the most. The power they wielded was undeserved. It was supposed to have been a curse, to be filled with insatiable greed and desire to destroy the environment, so that they destroyed themselves. But they had proven too resourceful, too familiar with being cut off from nature for it to cut them all down quickly enough, and soon they not only became immune, but used the power of the Windigo to run their society.

Even now it could feel the pull; the burning fire of combustion engines and the disrespect for land by paving it with tar and stone, not too far from this spot. Spreading across the countryside like a thread of mold, searching for new life to feed on. And further away, the dumping of poison into river and wind in equal measure. The cries of the poor against the not so much the rich, but the greedy, their weakness drowned by cruel strength and the feeling of hunger and greed, of ever wanting, more, more, more-

It pulled itself back. It understood why the others were so easily shaped by the newcomers. Their culture, everpresent, embodied the windigo, all the way down to its frozen heart and soul. Feeding on its victims with blind hunger, cannibalizing them to stave off inevitably eating itself.

It ultimately did not care whether men put off the curse or devoured themselves as a result of their act of theft, and neither did it care whether it disappeared with them. But to steal their power, then turn around and warp their image… no. That must not go uncorrected.

And so it watched the child of the white men escape into their log house, feeling the cold and the rot and the hunger and the psychotic glee within itself with perfect clarity. It watched, and it whispered, to no one, and thus to the world:

Run child. Run, and with your lies, tell the story of the truth.

#windigo #anti capitalism #short story #long post #felt inspired after seeing a media analysis #tell me if its offensive

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persephoneleon · 4 years

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WARM BODIES PART II || SELF PARA

tw: it’s disturbing but i dont know how to describe the exact trigger and last time i tried people thought i killed a hamster. there’s a body, it’s intense. let’s leave it at that. like be prepared, is all.

at age seventeen, percy found herself alone in a cave that felt too small.

there was a frost under her fingertips, was it numbness ?? no. she could feel her heart beating in her throat, could feel the way the world grew smaller around her in her line of vision until it was just her and a body. and a body. and a body. percy and antigone.

percy and a body. another warm body she hadn't been able to save, she felt it in the way anti felt not under percy's fingertips, but under her lips. her mouth on the girl's cheek, a kiss, as if it was some last send off, as if there was any dignity in death. was there ?? antigone didn't look different. she was still warm, could have been asleep if her pulse had been there still and if percy had felt anything but the cold under her fingers. this was antigone, anti had deserved better than whatever death had to offer her, despite how accepting the girl had been of leaving in the first place. persephone was sure she'd heard hades whisper it sometime, dead meant gone. dead meant gone. the curly-haired girl before her was gone. but she was still warm.

no, that was wrong. persephone had tasted the warm blood on her lips in front of the cornucopia, had heard the screams of those who'd have clung onto this life if only given the opportunity. but they weren't antigone. persephone hadn't pondered on their death, hadn't been faced with their bodies beyond what their corpses meant to her own achievements. they hadn't been warm, not really, just their blood had been. a sign percy was alive. antigone lay before her and she was warm, some utterly twisted way of conveying that she could have been here still, could have been alive if only persephone had tried harder. she hadn't tried hard enough. she hadn't tried hard enough.

she needed to try harder. persephone was tiny and faced with a punching bag double her size and the realisation she'd never be strong enough. what was she fighting for ?? what was there to fight for beyond the empty vessel she possessed, this beating heart that only pulsed because of the anger she pumped into it ?? it couldn't be that. no, as much as persephone protected herself, her soul, from anyone trying to intrude, whatever shell she was hosted in held no value to her beyond that. her broken bones and bruised knuckles were a testament to it: her body was a means to an end. what was she protecting still, if not whatever was left of her inside of the empty training room ??

persephone was just-gone-sixteen and faced with her disbelief that anything made from the same cloth as her could perish. she'd grown from whatever her parents had bothered to plant in the ground, a wildflower blossoming beyond what had been intended. persephone was just-gone-sixteen and she watched an empty casket go down into the ground, like all things returned to the earth and even persephone would eventually only breathe in the soil.

no, no, no, no, no, no, no. persephone couldn't be dragged underground, buried there like a confession to everything empty she'd become. persephone was a fire, she burned everything to ash and walked atop it. she wasn't strong, but she was fierce, and she hit this punching bag for all it was worth, as if anyone was watching her train still. her father wandered the top floors of their house, her mother wandered whatever was left of percy's mind. her mother, her mother, her mother, her mother.

antigone lay dead before her and all that remained of her was another reminder of what persephone hadn't been able to save. what had percy been trying to save, still ?? from the moment she got on the train to the capitol, from the moment she met antigone, persephone knew there was nothing to save but herself. and yet, here she was, collecting the ashes of her own destruction as if she could make everything whole again somehow. the ashes weren't smouldering, though antigone was warm still. no. no. no. no. no. no. no.

that wasn't right.

no. no. no. no. no.

bodies were cold.

no. no. no. no. no.

bodies were cold.

persephone was just-gone-sixteen and had nothing to believe in but what she made up for herself. like she was some princess in a fairytale still, longing for the saviour she'd either expected useless penny to be or the saving only percy herself could provide. she was the strongest, she was the only capable one left, the last man standing between her heart and the world. she was only what she believed in, the determination she held inside of her, and she believed in everything other people hadn't. she believed she could win, standing at five feet at most. she believed she was meant for so much more than the world had provided her with, and she'd fight for it. she believed whatever she'd grown from couldn't be forced underground.

she believed her mother was alive.

no. no. no. no. no. no.

she shook at antigone's shoulders like percy's sheer force of will could breathe the life back into her. like nobody was dead and gone until percy herself had decided it so. like the warmth of her body meant there was still some chance, still some way for all of this to be a bad dream that percy would forget. like percy could pretend that her fingers weren't frostbitten as she felt antigone's skin beneath her, the confirmation despite its untruthfulness. antigone wasn't there anymore. but her body was still warm. why did percy feel so cold ??

no. no. no. no. no. no.

just a blanket from the basement. just a blanket from whatever lay beyond the locked basement door, and it would quench persephone's thirst enough to not return there again. it had been cold, winter, and persephone wanted a blanket and an answer as to why the basement she and hades had stolen their beers from before now had a lock on it. was that part of their childhood so far behind them already ?? persephone just-gone-sixteen, and stood in front of the only door in their house that had a physical lock on it, despite it feeling like all the other doors were closed as well. it was just her and her father now, both pacing the halls at different times to make space for the ghosts each of them had to face. just a blanket from the basement.

and percy had sat in her bathtub before, to try and rid herself from the cold, the utter emptiness. she'd washed herself until she was her own empty shell again, until there was nothing left of her but whatever rage had managed to cling to her skin. only the dangerous survived out here, persephone was dangerous. antigone had wanted to die, antigone hadn't had it in her to survive. antigone was dead and antigone was getting colder, and persephone was getting colder, and persephone could never wash it off her like she'd done before. like she'd done before. like she'd done before.

the creak of the stairs filled the hollow room like it was restarting a heartbeat of sorts, like there was anything left alive among the stuffed deers and beheaded game her father hadn't killed himself. he was a coward, persephone had always known that. she'd taken after her mother, was prouder of that than she could've ever been of resembling her father. her eyes, her hair. not her heart, though. persephone had never been sure whether her or her mother possessed less heart, but they weren't the same. persephone would burn the heart out of herself if it became convenient, her mother desperately tried to cling onto whatever was left of hers. the soft whispers when she thought percy's father wouldn't hear, the silent 'i love you's muttered into percy's ear. no, percy had promised herself she'd never love that weakly, she'd rather not love at all. she'd burn the heart out of herself before it became an issue.

but fire was warm, burning in her throat, down into her lungs, like every fibre of her being was set alight. this wasn’t warm. anti was still warm, though getting colder. percy wasn’t warm. percy wasn’t warm. percy was cold.

just a blanket and an answer to her question. just a blanket from the sofa. just a blanket from the sofa in the basement and her father would never even know she'd been down there at all. no one came down here anymore. only hades was allowed to pick the lock if percy's father needed to show off some dusty trophy he'd have long forgotten about if he hadn't percy's tendency to brag. percy could pick locks too. perhaps her father had forgotten this.

it was just going to be a blanket, until percy noticed that the freezer was plugged in.

the freezer in the basement that didn't keep penny and percy's traditions anymore, the beers they never drank. the freezer in the basement that nobody went down into anymore. the freezer in the basement was plugged in.

percy beat her fists on the ground of the cave. wake up, wake up, wake up.

percy beat her fists on the punching bag. wake up, wake up, wake up.

percy beat her fists on the freezer. wake up.

wake up.

no. no. no. no. no.

percy and a body.

a body in the freezer.

ah. she should have looked here sooner. her father kept all his dead things in the basement.

she traced lines on her mother's skin like there was something holy in the way she'd been preserved. like the unnatural angle at which she was folded into the freezer lost any sense of dread in comparison to the strange relief of reunion. percy took after her mother, after all. the way the woman's skin had gone icy was almost a reflection of herself.

she was dead, though. percy knew that. percy realised when she had to pull her hand away because the ice had started stinging her fingers. death was cold, bodies were cold, and her mother was dead.

and percy wasn't sure how alive she was, when she folded herself into that freezer with her mother. when she heard the creaking of the stairs again and her house suddenly came to life with a bloodthirst persephone thought she was the only one in the family to taste on her tongue. when she felt her heart beating in her throat as the only sign of her mortality still, as she hid in the freezer and the walls closed in on her. and the walls closed in on her. and the walls closed in on her.

her father would have to face what he'd done if he wanted to find her in the basement then, as he trailed around the freezer but pretended to not see the way it was opened just enough for percy to breathe. percy knew he wouldn't. her father was a coward. so was percy, holding onto the remains of the mother she hadn't been strong enough to save. hiding in a freezer when she could've proven her resolve, tried to murder her father like he had her mother. no, percy was a coward and her body was growing colder and the walls were closing in around her.

she didn't realise he'd left until she heard the door slam shut. the freezer's hum had become a scream in her ears, some perverse melody accompanying the beating of her heart. the walls were closing in, still. percy was in the freezer and it was getting smaller and smaller, and for a moment she wondered if maybe she'd deserved this all along. if this was the only fitting ending for someone with as much fire as percy held in every fibre of her being -- to freeze. she couldn't feel her fingers, they were numb as she traced over her mother's cheek. frost under her fingertips. dead meant gone. dead bodies were cold. percy grew colder and was sure she'd died, too.

no. no. no. no. no. no.

her breath was raspy now, she coughed the cold out of her. all she had left was her voice, the way she shouted and insulted and screamed. persephone realised then, as she scrambled away from antigone's body, it too cold under her touch. too confronting. persephone was a coward. persephone was a coward. persephone was a coward like her father and she'd forgotten.

mom. mom. mom. mom. mom.

she mouthed the words as if the ghost of her tone could reach the shell her mother had left behind. no. no, percy couldn't stay. she needed to get out. persephone was a coward and couldn't stay in the freezer with the walls too close and her heartbeat too loud and whatever sins she'd needed to atone for clinging to her skin like a tongue would stick to ice. she ripped herself away from whatever she had been before as she tumbled out of the freezer. and she ran. she ran back up the stairs, away from what she'd discovered in the basement. to be locked back up again like her father had done before her. for percy to wander the same halls he had.

she ran. persephone ran once again. persephone ran and ran from the bodies that left a trail behind her in the hopes she'd never have to look back. antigone was one of them now. for a fleeting moment, she wondered if hades would be next. if she could forget them just as easily as she'd forgotten her mother. if the realisation would feel different this time.

persephone had never burned the heart out of her chest.

her heart lay frozen somewhere in a basement freezer and persephone had hoped she'd never have to go near it again.

#tw: intense stuff #tw: dead body?#self para #warm bodies part ii #seriously i think this is quite intense so like be careful folks

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mischiefandspirits · 4 years

Text

Living Phantom

Danny Fenton was fourteen and at the tail end of his freshman year of high school when his parents finished their life's work, a portal to the world of ghosts. There was one thing they overlooked when activating the portal, however: An emergency measure within the portal meant to disable it. A measure that was accidentally turned on while they plugged the machine in. A measure that was accidentally turned off while Danny was looking around the inside of the portal at his friends' instance.

A measure that caused Danny's death, but only for an instant.

But an instant was all it took.

In a small town in Minnesota, underneath a two-story home that was capped by a metal monstrosity, a trio of teenagers stood in a basement laboratory.

One, an African American boy with dark hair hidden under a red beret and green eyes peeking through glasses, was looking over some instruments scattered over the countertops. The second, a fair boy with black hair that fell over blue eyes and a flurry of freckles, was standing nervously near a tall metal tunnel with a hazmat suit in his hands. The last, a tanned girl with her sidecut hair dyed to match her purple contacts and amethyst fake nose stud, was holding up her phone.

“Smile!” Sam Manson said and took a picture as soon as Danny Fenton looked towards her.

The blue-eyed boy blinked the lights from his eyes. “Okay, I showed you the Portal. Can we get out of here now? My parents could be back here any minute.” He glanced at the tunnel with a frown and a shiver. “Besides, they say it doesn’t work anyway.”

Sam walked up to the tunnel’s entrance and snapped a picture of the inside.

Tucker Foley nudged Danny and he sent the dark-skinned boy a glare, but the boys followed her over.

“Come on, Danny,” Sam said, taking another picture. “A Ghost Zone? Aren’t you curious? You gotta check it out.”

Danny shivered again as he looked in. His parent’s inventions had always given him goosebumps -- a reaction to the ectoplasm they infused into the devices, his mom theorized, combined with a sensitivity he must have inherited from his father -- and the portal to the Ghost Zone was the worst of the lot. There was just something… foreboding about it.

It was hardly something he was going to tell his friends, though. Not if he didn’t want them teasing him for the next month. Besides, the faster he did this, the faster they’d get bored, and then they could go upstairs and watch movies like he’d told his parents they would.

There also might have been a small part of him that was honestly curious about the whole idea.

“You know what? You’re right. Who knows what kinds of things exist on the other side of that portal?” He smiled at his friends and stepped back to pull on the jumpsuit his parents had made for him.

“What are you doing?” Tucker asked.

“I’m going to put on the suit.”

“Dude, that thing is hideous.”

Sam snorted and grabbed the front of the suit, which had his dad’s face on the chest. “You can’t go walking around with that on your chest.”

Danny shrugged. “Mom and Dad say we have to wear them for protection.”

“It doesn’t even cover your head though,” Tucker pointed out. “How much protection does it really give? Just wear the gloves.”

Suit yourself, Danny thought with a shrug and pulled the gloves off the suit to put them on. He turned to the tunnel and gave another shiver.

Suddenly something fell over his head.

He blinked and pulled it off to see it was Sam’s pleather jacket.

“You looked cold,” she said with a smirk.

He shot her a look and blushed. “I’m not wearing your jacket.”

“Relax. I got it off the men’s rack. The women’s jackets sit weird.”

Danny hesitated, then slipped it on. He did admittedly feel better, having something more substantial on over his shirt as he stepped into the tunnel. He cautiously stepped over wires and glanced over his shoulder at the others. As he got further in and the tunnel grew darker, his hand went to the wall so he could catch himself if he fell.

The wall sank under his hand and a beep sounded.

Before he could do anything, the world became a swirl of green and Danny felt like someone had set a fire inside him. There was a blazing inferno within his abdomen that was burning him alive from the inside out, moving outwards from a place just under his sternum in a pulse of agony that left a stinging cold in its wake. At the same time, there was a numbness rushing up his arm, his shoulder, his collar-chest-face. He could hear his pulse beating rapidly in his ears until it was swallowed up by the numbness and everything froze.

Danny’s gaze went white and he knew he was dying -- was dead -- could feel himself slipping away.

Then the fire flowed through his chest and an almighty thump sounded from the frostbitten wasteland it left behind. His body jerked once, twice, then the thump sounded again and continued sounding.

The numbness gave way as stinging zaps settled over his body -- through his skin -- filling it and keeping the blaze inside like an electric fence.

Later he would think back on the accident and realize those events must have happened in less than a second. The portal turned on and the flow of electricity killed him before the ectoplasmic energy restarted his heart like a defibrillator. At the time, however, it felt torturously slow, which was reflected in the harsh wail he let out as soon as his consciousness snapped back into his body and the pain hit him once more.

He wailed and wailed as the lightning settled in his skin as a gentle buzz, the fires curled up into a warm glow, and the frozen wasteland within became a chilling void. Slowly the world returned to him and his wail died out. He gave one last gasp, then nothing.

He opened his eyes and looked down, surprised to see he was still standing. He raised his hands and his once bright orange gloves were now dark grey.

The gloves disappeared, then so did his flesh, then his bones, then there was nothing before his gloves snapped back into view.

He looked up and everything was swirling green, but there was a darkness behind him and he staggered towards it, slumping against a metal wall before falling out of the mists and onto a concrete floor.

~~~~~~~~~~B~~~~~0~~~~~0~~~~~~~~~~

Sam felt her heart stop as her best friend disappeared behind a flash of green, the only sign he was still there being the awful scream coming from the portal.

“Turn it off,” she whispered. She grabbed Tucker’s arm and shook him. “TURN IT OFF!”

“I-I don’t know how,” Tucker whimpered, not taking his eyes off the portal. “Oh, man. Oh, man. Oh, man. Oh, man! Oh, man! Oh, man!”

“TUCKER!”

“SAM!”

The screaming stopped and Sam froze.

Tucker sucked in a breath.

There was a moment of silence, then something tumbled out of the portal.

Tucker shrieked and leaped away, but Sam just stared.

The thing -- person -- slowly got onto hands and knees. Its skin was grey which contrasted with its bright white hair. It wore dark grey jeans and black hightops as well as a black hooded shirt underneath a white jacket.

A familiar white jacket, though the color was new.

“D-Danny?” she asked, taking half a step towards the person.

The glowing person. The glowing person with pointed ears. The glowing person who, when they looked up, had eyes and freckles that shined the same bright green as the portal behind them.

“Sssammm,” they slurred, blinking sluggishly.

“Danny!” Tucker gasped and Sam took another few steps towards him.

“Are-are you okay?” she asked hesitantly.

“Okay? OKAY?” Tucker muttered in a high voice. “He’s glowing! He’s… What if he’s… Oh man, is he a ghost? Did we just kill Danny? Oh, man!”

“Ghost?” Danny sat up slowly and looked down at himself. His eyes -- glowing, glowing green like the portal, eyes shouldn’t glow like that! -- widened as he took himself in. “I’m a-I’m a ghost?”

“We killed Danny!”

“Danny?” Sam whispered, taking another step towards him. She reached out to grab him. She had to grab him. Because if she could grab him, that would mean he was there. He couldn’t be just some apparition, right? You couldn’t touch ghosts, right?

“I can’t be a ghost. No, no, no, no, no -”

“Danny’s dead! Oh man, Danny’s dead! Danny’s -”

“- no, no, no, no no, no, no, no no, no, no, no no, no, no, no -”

“- dead! Danny’s dead! We killed him! He’s dead! Danny’s -”

“SHUT UP, TUCKER!”

Danny flinched back from Sam, falling backward.

Sam grabbed him and pulled him towards her because he was falling TOWARDS THE PORTAL! The portal that had just KILLED HIM!

Except no, it didn’t. It can’t have killed him. Danny can’t have died. Oh please, please, please! Don’t be dead.

“S-Sam?” he whispered, staring up at her. This close she could see that his freckles twinkled like stars and his canines were just the slightest bit too long, too sharp.

Her hand was wrapped around his arm. She had touched him. He couldn’t be a ghost.

Her hand slipped through his arm as he collapsed back on the ground.

No!

Tears filled her eyes and she dropped to the ground. She threw her arms around his shoulders and buried her face into his neck.

His skin was solid, but it sent a tingle through her like a static shock. He also felt warm, but at the same time, her face was cold where it was pressed into his skin.

“Danny’s dead,” Tucker said, quieter than he’d been before.

“I’m dead,” Danny mumbled.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Sam sobbed. “I should never have made you go in there. I’m sorry.”

“I can’t be dead. I can’t be a ghost. My parents… Oh man, my parents!” Danny shouted suddenly. “They’re going to kill me!”

Sam fell to the floor as Danny’s body disappeared from under her. She rolled over to see him floating just above her, shaking.

“Danny’s dead. You can’t kill someone who’s dead,” Tucker muttered, eyes unfocused and staring at nothing.

“My parents hunt ghosts. I can’t be a ghost. They’ll trap me. Kill me. I can-can’t be a ghost.” His eyes closed and he grabbed at his hair, hunching over in midair. “I can’t be a ghost. I can’t be a ghost. I can’t be a ghost.”

“Danny, we’re home! You kids in your room?” came Mrs. Fenton’s voice from upstairs.

“Can’t be. Can’t be. Can’t be.”

“We gotta get him out of here,” Sam hissed, climbing to her feet.

“Kids?”

“Can’t be. Can’t be. Can’t be.”

“How?” Tucker whispered back.

“Danny?” Mr. Fenton called.

“Can’t be. Can-”

A white light appeared at Danny’s waist, growing outward into a ring of light.

Like a halo, Sam thought and briefly wondered if humans could turn into angels when they died.

If anyone could, it would be Danny.

Then the ring split into two, one going up him and the other going down.

Danny collapsed to the ground at Sam’s feet, looking exactly as he had when he’d first gone into the portal.

No, not exactly, because there was also the Lichtenberg figure burn going up the side of his neck and face.

There was half a second where all three teens just stared at each other, then Danny gave a loud yelp and rolled onto his right side, clutching his left arm.

“Danny!” his parents shouted and came running down the stairs.

“What happened?” Mrs. Fenton asked, dropping down next to her son.

“Th-the portal…” Tucker stuttered, glancing between Sam, Danny, and the device.

“The portal? The portal!” Mr. Fenton cheered when he looked at the portal and saw it running. “Maddie, it’s working!”

“Jack,” Maddie snapped before turning back to Danny and carefully checking his face. “These look like electrical burns. What happened?”

“He-he was showing us the portal and it-it turned on,” Sam said, her own eyes never leaving Danny. “Is he okay?”

Of course not, he’s a ghost.

But he’s not glowing anymore.

Mrs. Fenton set one hand on his neck and the other on his chest, trying to get him to sit still. “Danny honey, I need you to calm down, please. Jack, get the first aid kit.”

“Right.”

As Mr. Fenton ran off to the side of the lab, Mrs. Fenton looked over Danny’s face. “Danny, please, deep breaths. Can you tell me what happened?”

“Sh-sh-shock, I th-think,” he panted, sitting up slowly. “Was looking at the portal.”

“You must have bumped a wire. You know you need to be more careful around our inventions.”

“Was wearing gloves.”

“That’s good, but it’s not always enough.”

“Sorry.”

Mr. Fanton returned with a white toolbox with a red plus drawn on the side and Mrs. Fenton helped Danny carefully pull off first his gloves, then his jacket, and finally his shirt.

Tucker spun around when the last piece started to come off, but Sam couldn’t pull her gaze away even at the sight of the binder hidden underneath.

The Lichtenberg figures trailed down onto his collar bone, around his chest, across his left arm, and ended -- started -- on his palm.

Mrs. Fenton took out a stethoscope and started checking his chest. “Your breathing and heartbeat are a little fast, but nothing more than what you’d get from a scare,” she sighed finally.

He nodded and shared a relieved look with Sam.

Mrs. Fenton looked up at her as well. “Did he pass out? Any spasms?”

She shook her head, trying not to think about how he’d been grey and glowing only moments earlier.

He was alive. Mrs. Fenton said he had a pulse.

The scientist turned back to Danny. “Any muscle pain or numbness? Nausea?”

“No, it just stings.”

“That’s good.”

“I’m okay then?” Danny asked hesitantly.

“Hopefully. We’ll need to keep an eye on you. Electrical shocks are not to be taken lightly.”

He nodded quickly. “I know. I’m sorry.”

Mrs. Fenton rubbed his unhurt shoulder for a moment, then tapped the binder. “You’re going to have to take this off so we can clean your burns.”

Sam finally looked away, a small blush on her cheeks. That put Mr. Fenton in her sights, who glanced at her with a frown.

“Maybe you two should head home,” he said seriously.

Mrs. Fenton agreed, “Danny’s going to need to rest after we get him cleaned up, and then we’re going to have a long discussion about the lab safety rules.”

“I’ll see you at school tomorrow,” Danny called as Mr. Fenton led Tucker and her to the stairs and they both said their goodbyes before heading up.

They paused once they were alone in the living room.

“I’m not crazy, right?” Tucker whispered. “Danny was… For a moment there, Danny was…”

“You’re definitely crazy, but yeah. Danny looked… like a ghost.”

They shared horrified looks.

“But he’s fine now. Mrs. Fenton even said so.”

“Yeah. Yeah. He has to be. We’ll… Let’s talk about this tomorrow. With Danny.”

Tucker nodded and they left.

They didn’t get to talk to Danny that next day. Danny’s sister, Jazz, met them before school to tell them Danny was staying home so their parents could keep an eye on him, just in case. He was also grounded so they gathered his missed schoolwork and gave it to Jazz to take home. As it was Friday, they didn’t get to see Danny again until the following week.

Thanks to a lucky break (and maybe a bit of secret bribery on Sam’s part) the three’s lockers were all next to each other, which meant that’s where Tucker and Sam were waiting when Danny met them Monday morning. He was pale, even for him, which made the soft pink scars curling up the side of his face stick out a little more. They’d clearly healed enough not to need covering, but Sam noticed his left hand was wrapped in bandages when he grabbed her and Tucker to pull them along.

“Woah, Fenturd, what happened to your face?” Dash Baxter jeered as they passed.

“He looks like he’s got a bush growing inside his face,” Kwan Yu laughed along.

“Loser probably got it in his parents’ freaky lab,” Valerie Gray added. “It looks like a weird burn.”

“Hideous is what it looks like,” Paulina Sanchez scoffed.

Danny blushed and ducked his head, but otherwise ignored the group of popular kids as he pulled his friends into an alcove. “It happened again.”

“You… turned into a ghost?” Sam asked and he nodded.

“Dude, what’d your parents say?” Tucker asked.

“Nothing. They don’t know. It didn’t happen in front of them and I couldn’t tell them. I don’t even know what I’d tell them.”

Without thinking, Sam’s hand rose to his neck. She blushed, but didn’t pull away until she felt the telltale beating beneath her fingers. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’ve been doing the same thing,” Danny said, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s always been there when I check, except…”

“When you’re a ghost?” Tucker suggested and Danny flinched.

Sam smacked the back of the geek’s head.

“It’s not just the transforming either. I… sometimes I…” Danny bit his lip then closed his eyes. His face scrunched up, then his body turned transparent. He opened his eyes again as he started sinking into the ground.

All three of them gasped. Tucker and Sam tried to grab him, but their hands went right through him. Danny made an aborted movement, like he was trying to jump, and he shot into the air. He hovered a foot off the ground for a moment before his body turned opaque once more and he dropped like a rock. Sam grabbed him when he stumbled over the landing and he gave her a grateful smile.

“I’m guessing that’s not what you were talking about,” Sam said as he righted himself.

“It was, kind of, but I was trying to turn invisible.”

“Wait,” Tucker said, a smile slipping onto his face. “You can turn invisible. And just now, that was intangibility. Dude, you’ve got superpowers!”

Sam shushed him and glanced out of the alcove, but no one was paying them any attention. When she turned back to the boys, Tucker was bouncing slightly.

“And you can transform into a ghost at will. It’s like you’re part ghost. Half ghost! That’s so cool!”

“It’s not cool, it’s freaky,” Danny argued. “And it’s not at will. I don’t know how I’m doing it. What if someone sees?”

“Well, we’ll just have to help you figure out how not to do it,” Sam said simply.

Although, it sounded anything but simple. How on earth do ghost powers even work? How do humans even get ghost powers?

Apparently by getting blasted by a ghost portal.

But Danny wasn't dead and it wasn’t her fault. She could help him. She had to. Please, just let his heart keep beating.

This is going to be a bit of a different reworking to canon because I'm going to be mixing up the order of events for a variety of reasons. Episodes will be out of order and their events might be changed anywhere from subtly to drastically. There's been a change to a certain someone's relationship to someone else. This is more a passion project than anything. It's headcanons, theories, and plot concepts getting merged together. If that's not your cup of tea, I get it. I hope you liked the pilot at least!

#danny phantom #danny fenton #sam manson #tucker foley #portal accident #living phantom

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grapefruitsketches · 4 years

Text

Untamed Spring Fest 2020 - Day 6: Breeze

(honestly, who else could be “breeze” but XXC?)

Part of my Songxiao post-canon fix-it fic series (this is the “XXC Prequel”):

Also available AO3: link

2,883 Words

Songxiao, Xiao Xingchen Centric, hurt/comfort; Post Yi City Arc, I don’t care how XXC survives/is revived, I just know he does/is.

“Say something. Say something. Can’t you say something?” the wind had shifted, the dead stayed silent, and he felt himself shatter, leaving only frozen shards of the disgusting joke he’d turned out to be.

He was moving. More intriguing, though, was that he was. But what was he exactly? He remembered being whole, but this was not that. Whole was light, sounds, smells, taste, touch. Whole could even be without some of those sensations, but he didn’t know what to make of being without any of them.

Yet he knew he was moving, so he knew he was something.

He drifted, musing that this must be what it was like to be like leaves on the breeze. No… not leaves… something else in the breeze. He was… he was…

A memory of cold light piercing the dark, creating dancing shadows through the branches swaying in the breeze. He reached and melded with the answer, which had been floating next to, and now was once again part of, him.

The Moon in the Breeze.

That had been him. But that couldn’t be true now. The breeze couldn’t be moved. The breeze was the one that moved. And certainly his movement right now was not of his own doing. The air around him compressed and he became aware of walls around him which were now contracting, squeezed by some force larger and outside of the world he now occupied.

Zichen.

He felt a rush at that name - he did not have to reach as answers to questions he had forgotten rushed to him from all around. He - whatever he was - grew as the pieces merged together. How could he have forgotten the Gentry despite the Frost?

Zichen had been his first guide in a world totally unfamiliar to him. He had known from their first meeting that he could always count on Song Lan to follow him, wherever the breeze might take him, without that promise ever having to be said aloud. Xiao Xingchen - for with Zichen’s name had come his own - had been able follow trails to any number of disasters, and Zichen would always be close behind him. Xingchen had been prepared to roam the world alone ever since the day he gave his farewells to the mountains he had grown up in, but Zichen had made sure he always had someone by his side.

So it was no surprise, then, that Zichen would be the one sheltering his growing awareness.

He was content. Existing only in the warmth and knowledge that Zichen was by his side, protecting him.

But this contentment wavered. There was something else in here. Something else that, like the other pieces he had merged with, was him. But this other-something was not warm. It was not light. He wanted to retreat from it, hide, remain in this safe bubble he had formed for himself, under Zichen’s protection. But even as the instinct to hide grew, so it became apparent that this was impossible. The darkness drew close, vibrating dangerously, electric, reaching to rejoin the spirit it belonged to. This too, was a part of him. And resistance was only temporary denial.

He let it in.

A shock, like the feeling of removing a slipper to expose the frostbitten foot hiding beneath to the open air.

You couldn’t do anything. You’ve failed miserably. You’re the only one to blame. You asked for all of this!

He felt himself flicker, and it was all he could do to prevent his fragile light of awareness from falling apart once more as his darkness joined the light.

He remembered that the voice was right about him before he had even remembered who the voice belonged to. Its dangerous vibration was now part of him and he trembled violently, almost missing that the movement of the spirit bag - for he now understood where he must be - moved him up, no longer merely the light jostling that came with Zichen’s gait. His trembling softened. Something occurred to him, despite Xue Yang’s echoing voice. Zichen was still alive? Perhaps his failure had destroyed less than he had imagined? But then… why had Fuxue attacked him? The feel of the cold metal, the engraved characters in the sword, were clear in his memory.

He was confused, but a tightening pressure on the spirit bag felt somehow reassuring. Was Zichen… hugging him?

He wanted to sob, he wanted to yell, he wanted, above all, to return Zichen’s embrace. But here he was - useless, trapped in this dispersed form and only grateful that the mercy he was subjected to was of someone who would never hurt him.

But how?

It had been Fuxue that had tried to attack him, before he had let his own Shuanghua finish the job. Zichen would never do that to him, so he had known that his cultivation partner must have been under Xue Yang’s control. And then, Xue Yang had all but told him that he had killed Zichen himself. No matter how hard he tried to break off the part of himself that remembered, Xingchen knew that he had driven Shanghua through the silent form of the one he tried to protect above all, before casually greeting the foe he had thought was a friend. He had soon found out that the silent form had not been a corpse at all. At least, not until Xingchen had intervened.

The pressure placed by the hands on the bag increased. This was… not even forgiveness but…concern? Love? Despite everything, Zichen didn’t even blame him? But… Xiaochen had been everything Xue Yang had accused him of - a stupid, naïve, dumb idiot. He had killed innocents. He should have stayed on the mountain, as his Master had urged. The only one who had deserved Shuanghua’s blade had been himself, and yet… here Zichen still was. Why?

You were trying to do the right thing.

A voice came from another fragment of himself as it joined his core. The voice was Baoshan Sanren’s. He was 8 and he had brought her a baby bird that had fallen from a tree. He had been in the middle of asking her what he should do to help heal it, when it had died in his hands. His Master had sat him down and gently explained that it had died of shock, that it might have been ok if it had been left alone. She explained that once the bird had met the world outside the nest, it couldn’t truly return to its home. Master Baoshan had told him hat sometimes, the best thing we could do was to stand aside, to let nature take its course. Perhaps the bird’s mother would have come back, perhaps not. But, she had said, he should not feel too bad - even though he now held the dead bird’s body in his hands - he had been trying to do the right thing, after all.

He remembered the baby bird. Its shivering form, the odd angle of its wing, its panicked look as it searched for the edges of the nest that were its sole context for the world. Its final shudder, and its sudden stillness.

His Master’s pitying but resigned look had been echoed when, years later, he had decided that he should take the lessons he had learned from her and try to help heal the world with them.

Baoshan Sanren had taken a sip from her tea, the bitter scent one that he had never smelled again once he had left the mountain, and told him that he could not expect hijs actions to heal the world. That there were some things that were best left alone and others that, no matter how he intervened, would stubbornly persist in the damage they caused. He had known of the fights between clans, of the needless bloodshed of innocents that these disputes had caused. He had thought that if he stayed out of it, he could avoid the tragedies that Baoshan Sanren, in her relationship with Lan Yi, or Cangse Sanren, in her relationship with Wei Changze (and by extension, the Jiang clan) had experienced. He had vowed to remain independent.

He had caused the massacre of Baixue Temple anyway.

You were trying to do the right thing.

Of course he knew that - he had pursued Xue Yang, who had, in the absence of clan politics, taken it upon himself to exterminate various minor clans. He had seen the bodies, the remains of whole cities, the families, the children! He had tried to end it. He had only tried to end the murders. Did that relieve him of responsibility for the lives lost in Yi City by his own hand? He must have spoken to some of them - asked for directions, for a good price on potatoes. They had been innocent. His sword, the one he had sworn to use only to do save the world, had ended their innocent lives.

But what was the cause?

He was 10. He had found, hidden behind a panel in the library, a scroll, It had looked like a diary. It outlined a theory on the use of talismans to subdue demons. This was not what had drawn his attention though. Instead, it had been the notes scrawled in the corners, seemingly unrelated to the scroll’s general premise, musing about the relationship between the cultivator and the outcome for the souls they sought to soothe. The comments wondered whether it was the cultivator’s job to put the spirit to rest, whether it was only their job to try to put the spirit to rest, or whether it was merely their job to try and return peace to whatever environment the spirit was aggravating at the time, regardless of the outcome for the spirit itself? What was the original cause of the disruption? The scribbles had underlined this final line several times.

The scroll had been signed Cangse Sanren. Xingchen had wondered why she had cared so much - didn’t it matter just as much if you played a role in disaster as if you had started it? Either way, you could have stopped it.

Only if you knew that was what you were doing.

This voice… it didn’t have a specific source that he could recall. It seemed, instead, to be coming from within. He paused on this thought. What had he known?

He thought back.

He had known that he belonged by Song Lan’s side. He had known that it was his place at Zichen’s side that had led to the massacre at Baixue Temple. He had known that his continued presence by Zichen’s side could only hurt them both, that all he could do to repay Zichen for the harm that he had caused was to give Song Lan his eyes back. He knew that blindness was hardly even a loss compared to what Zichen must have felt, coming back to Baixue Temple to the carefully and conspicuously organized bodies of the people he had grown up with.

Xingchen had also known that he was helping A-Qing - that the two of them would work better as a pair than they could alone. He had known that the man they had found on the banks of the river had needed their help, that he couldn’t survive without them. He understood that this man had suffered, that everyone deserved some kindness, some gentle treatment in their lives. That providing some candy was a small gesture that would mean a lot to this person. He had known - or thought he had known - that Zichen would be better without him. He believed that the best Xingchen could do for this Song Lan, who had shown him so much compassion, only to be repaid in so much tragedy, was to pay his kindness forward, to provide for those who had no one they could rely on.

He had known all this, had acted based on it. So… he felt the bag clench again from outside forces and realized that he had once again become agitated. He leaned into the pressure. Did he truly deserve to suffer when he had been acting only to bring more kindness to the world? What, as Cangse Sanren had asked, had been the cause?

Xiao Xingchen had never been one to deny responsibility. In fact, his reputation in the cultivation world revealed the opposite: he was one who would accept responsibility even where there was little if any connection to his actions. And yet, he was still a man of reason. From here, feeling the affection coming through the gentle touch of Zichen’s hands on the spirit bag, and reflecting on the events leading to the massacre in Yi City, he could not find his misstep. He could not identify a moment where he could have done differently. The man who had set him on the course of bringing tragedy to the City had done so by preying on Xingchen’s drive to save the world, not some secret need to destroy it.

The darkness, that had seemed so huge, so all-encompassing, as it had joined his form, seemed to shrink, made small through the combination of the affection flowing from the pressure on the spirit bag with the growing strength of the light of the essence that made up most of his spirit. It still hurt, it no doubt always would. But it hurt like a bad memory, like a nostalgia for a time before one knew of the bad things in the world. It no longer felt sharp, was no longer a pang of guilt and self-hatred, a feeling that but for him, the world would be a better place.

If he could forgive Xue Yang, one who had committed murders on purpose, as a victim of circumstance, could he not afford himself at least a fraction of the same courtesy? Leaning into the hand he knew was at the walls of the spirit bag, he felt that maybe he could.

It took some time. He could not speak, he could not do much but make himself brighter, or expand slightly. He hoped, he prayed, that Zichen might notice. Eventually, he was able to expand himself to reach every corner of the bag he occupied, to push against the edges of the space he occupied, to brighten, to flicker. He was rewarded for his efforts. He heard a grunt of surprise, then excitement. He understood that the bag had been hugged close to a chest. He heard a whoosh, and understood that he and Zichen were in the air, flying, urgently, somewhere.

There were voices - not Zichen’s, which Xiao Xingchen had not heard since that terrible day at Baixue Temple - but others… was that Wei Wuxian? What had been the cause, that boy’s mother had once asked. Wasn’t Wei Wuxian dead? What did Xingchen know? He was so disconnected from the world. All he knew was that sadness turned to cruelty. Xiao Xingchen had concluded that this had been the cause of his own situation, but he suspected that this might explain many other tragedies. He had resolved himself to avoid this treacherous path, of assuming the worst in others. It could only cause further harm. Perhaps there had been more to Wei Wuxian’s story?

“Good luck.” This was the voice of Lan Wangji, recognizable as a voice Xiao Xingchen had only heard when it had something important to say. What was Zichen up to?

Xiao Xingchen didn’t dare to hope - it was enough to exist by Zichen’s side, was it not? To know he was ok, that he was living the legacies of Xiao Xingchen’s mountain home and Baixue Temple in his own way. But still… Xingchen could not deny it would be nice to feel Zichen’s touch yet again, to ask and know that he let himself feel happy sometimes.

The bag opened, and for the first time in a long time, XIngchen felt himself move along the path of a breeze, along a path of least resistance, to a familiar home inside a form he thought was lost to him forever.

He let out a breath. A true and pure breath of clean air. He had rediscovered the use of fingers, had started rotating his wrists when a weight fell across his now rising and falling chest.

“Zichen” he breathed, happy that that could be the first word to pass his lips after all this time. He felt warmth on his cheeks as the tears he could not cry as he had lingered in the spirit bag were unleashed all at once. He regained feeling in an arm and moved it to embrace, as he had longed to do for so long, the shaking figure draped over him. “Zichen” he repeated, feeling both disbelief and a profound understanding that there was nowhere else he should be right now.

There was much they had to figure out - apologies that would flow both ways, new obstacles they would have to overcome. But for now, Xingchen thought as he held his Zichen’s sobbing shape close to him for the first time in over two decades, this would be enough.

I have ideas for a companion Song Lan piece (probably day 18?) and possibly a joint XXC/SL piece later this month! Let me know if you’re interested, I’ll post them here and on AO3 (same username) :)

#untamed spring fest #the untamed #mdzs #songxiao #xiao xingchen #song lan #apparently I had a lot of songxiao feelings #my writing #songxiao fix it series

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irrfahrer · 3 years

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‘ frostbitten ’

The snowstorm followed Ziv like a hunting carnivore, a thick wall of whiteness that was not fast but still cruely fast enough to come closer and closer and closer. It was seldomly not snowing on Hoth but in the hours before the snowstorm the snow and the coldness had become even for Ziv who was born toswim for the frigid, frozen oceans of Tynna unbearable. The wind stabbed through her parka and layers of thick fur like sharp, icy needles yet for beeings without a protective pelt it was even worse so the Tynnan was not suprised that in the last outpost of the base that already lay behind her Ziv had needed to amputee fingers before she had send the rebels away to seek out for shelter in the base. Now there was only one outpost left, yet the path to the base was already swallowed by the thick whiteness of the storm like by an eager mouth full of sharp, frozen teeth.

The second she reached the outpost the snowstorm pressed against her back like clawed hands and the speeder she hopped off was promptly blown out ofreach and swallowed by the icy whiteness. Ziv felt anakin more than she saw him as he came towards her, the snow fell yb now so thickly everything around them was white. "No, kriff off, no kriffing smalltalk right now!", Ziv yelled against the howling wind, not stopping in her tracks a single second. She was ten steps away, the snowstorm seemed to scream in her back. She was eight steps away, the Tynnan grabbed for a fistbig boundle of branches- toola-thistle- and a lighter she had carried in her backpack. She was two steps away, with all her strenght she pushed the boundle of branches deep into the snow and then pushed again, not with her paws but still she reached out and pushed the ball of Toola-Thistle with the Force through layers of snow until it hit frozen earth like a massive wall. Toola- Thistle reacted to heat like dynamite to a flame as Toola itself was a iceplanet and the plant only had the chance to grow and spread its pollen with warmth so as soon as it came in contact with certaine temperature the thistle grew with the force of a explosion, pushed away its pollen with the last of its energy and then died out again which was also the reason why Whipids made sure the thirtle woud not come into contact with Toolas hot springs as this would mean the area would be overgrown in the manner oof the blink of an eye with generations of the thistle growing and dying in seconds. Therefor Ziv did not hestiated to throw the lighter inside the deep hole were it drew a pale yellow line along the meteres of snow until it eventually after the long fall hit the thistle. The sudden heat by the Thistle promptly worked and the plant exploded in branches that pressed the snow to the side and up again, pushing the snow away and digging a broad, deep hole in the frozen layers of snow. A second later the Toola-Thistle died again, branches falling clattering like a dead bodies bones to the now visible, frozen earth. Ziv did not waited, took the last step, grabbed the man around the waist and let herself fall down into the hole. The fall was short but soft, it only needed a small push with the Force to turn the rush down into a soft swaying like from feathers caught in a breeze.

The second her hindpaws touched the frozen earth, the snowstorm swept like a white, frozen wave over them. Inside the hole the wind and neither the snowflaes rushing through the air like small, icy needles did not touched them, but the howling of the storm was even down hear deafening as if one was screaming into Zivs ears. “Ah, yes, kriffing lovely weather you chosed for a outpost check, Skywalker.”, the young woman scoffed and turned to the former Jedi, already grabbing for her backpack: “Now since we will not freeze our krififng asses off, how about you show me what parts of you are already freezed? Just making sure you will not drop anymore kriffing limbs here.”

[ @sithdestined ]

#sithdestined #AFTER MONTHS THE THING LAY IN MY DRAFTS I FINALLY WROTE THE BEGINNING #MWAHAHA #V: On Telemachus Trace

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bluepenguinstories · 4 years

Text

Remoras Full Chapter XXI: Sunny Side Up

Everyone was to meet up by the end and make our trip back home. Earlier in the morning, the cubes with the tents were placed in Ray’s pocket. He and Tigershark would at least be fine, at the very least. Those two got their head start. As for me…

I thought we’d make it out all together. We had won, hadn’t we?

“Come on, you two! Let’s go! For real this time!” I called to Demetria and Remora. D&R, like ‘doctor’, which was something I was sure we all needed. There I went, going on about names and acronyms like I was delirious. Then again, I probably was.

After all, I walked ahead of them. I must have figured that they would follow behind, if they weren’t following behind already. But I must have been halfway in, my mind so focused on returning to Ray and Tigershark, when I looked behind and couldn’t see them. At one point, I thought I heard Demetria call out to me, but it was faint, and I couldn’t be sure. Fuck it. Being sure had nothing to do with it. If there was some reason why they weren’t following behind, I had to know what that reason was.

I tried to run back toward them, but the ceiling above began to crumble and it came crashing down ahead of me.

Maybe with my trusty brass knuckles I can break through the rocks and save them…

It was wishful thinking. Granted, that was the best kind of thinking. Much better than wistful thinking, which still had its time and place. All that rubble beaten and broken through, and there was still more. I wanted to keep going, not give up, but the ceiling continued to fall around me. Stone fell over me and scratched my arms and legs. I jumped back, then ran off.

Cowardice. If I didn’t run out of there, I would have been trapped as well. As well? No. I don’t want to believe they’re trapped in there. There has to be another way out.

Once I made it out, I leaned over to catch my breath. When I looked back, the cave had collapsed and I gasped.

No. By some miracle, or whatever, they must have made it out. I don’t want it to be like when I first came back after almost a year away and assume they died.

When I looked forward, I had trouble seeing anything. Winds swept the landscape and made it near-impossible to see just about anything around me.

“Ray!” I cupped my hands and yelled out into the air. “Tigershark!”

No answer. None at first. All I could do was move forward, even though I didn’t know where ‘forward’ was. Soon, I heard a voice in the distance to my left.

“Hun?” It was that same wispy and soft, plain as day voice that I knew so well; that Ray of Sunshine. I ran over and saw him and Tigershark, seated together next to a tent. That emotion of seeing something so familiar and so dear overtook me and I couldn’t help myself as I tackled him to the ground and wrapped my arms around him.

“Ack. Careful. I’m supposed to be dead,” he groaned. I released him from my grip and sat next to him. Tigershark then went for the tackle, herself. I welcomed it, hell, even staggered back in surprise of her strength.

“It’s so hard to see! It’s scary!” Tigershark exclaimed. I nodded.

“It certainly gives off a feeling, doesn’t it. But there’s a comfort in it, don’t you think? The mysterious? Despite the current state of the weather, it doesn’t seem to bring us any harm. Rather, even if it’s something to be cautious around...it feels right. Natural, even.”

“Uh…” Tigershark looked away. “It’s still scary, though.”

I hope she’s not reminded of the blizzard, I thought, remembering what was said about Tigershark’s parents. To think that the thing that took them was a deliberate manipulation, even if I didn’t fully understand it. Some kind of power to control the environment, create temporary blizzards at any time...was there any sort of explanation that could be made for such a thing?

“I know how this day must have been a frightening experience for you,” I gave her a nod. “But we’re safe now. We have shelter.”

“I’m not saying I’m scared! I’m just saying it’s scary!” She stood up and put her hands on her hips as she declared.

As much as I still had my worries about the two missing from our group, I couldn’t help but let out a laugh.

“Sure. You are a brave one. Strong, too.”

Hearing those words, she grinned. I was glad to see such a smile. My thoughts drifted once more to the two I became separated from, however, and I looked away from the two I was reunited with.

“Where is Remora and Demetria, by the way?” Ray asked. He must have seen through me. If there was one fault with either of us in relation to each other, it was that neither of us could get anything past the other.

“I walked ahead of them. I thought they would follow behind. I went a long way before looking back, and I know that was a bad call, but maybe I felt overconfident, sure they were close…” My voice trailed off. I had to clear my throat before I spoke up again. “There was a cave in. As far as I knew, there was only one way out of there.”

I looked down. Through my peripheral, I could see Ray nod.

“You think they didn’t make it?” He inquired.

I shook my head.

“No, I have to believe they did,” I concluded. It was a selfish thought, almost as selfish as believing that I had left them behind. But nonetheless, it felt like the right line of thinking to have.

“But it’s very likely they couldn’t have, right? Not if there was only one way out. No matter how strong they are, both of them are only human, right?” He continued to ask. Maybe he wanted to test my resolve. Hell, I wouldn’t have blamed him. But again, I shook my head.

“We’re talking about someone who not only survived a monster, a burning building, and a forest fire, and still managed to walk all the way back here on her own. I assumed she died, and at the time, I had good reason to believe so. Then there’s Remora. We both know she’s a different beast entirely. True, she’s human, but if she wanted to, I’m sure she’d find a way to survive. Even though there’s a chance they didn’t make it, I have to believe otherwise, not because I prefer to be optimistic, but because I need to have faith in them.”

“I see. I hope you’re right,” he looked up. He let slip a smile, then continued. “As much as I like it being just the three of us, I do find the dynamic when we’re all together to be quite amusing.”

Such a thought on the fun we all had together resonated with me and I sat closer to Ray and placed my hand over his as I looked up as well. He locked his fingers in with mine.

“...And if they did die, I’d be real mad!” Tigershark chimed in. “I’d go find their corpses and yell at them!”

Now that I had no doubt about.

When the sky cleared up, we made our trek back down to where we believed the diner to be. Still no sign of those two. We set up camp once it grew dark, all three of us hungry and huddled together in one tent. The next day, we continued down and reached the diner in the afternoon. We all scrambled to the heat and wrapped ourselves in blankets. Ray didn’t take long to warm up and he decided to take it upon himself to fix us some soup. Tigershark got up and ran into the kitchen, as I suppose she felt well enough to help. Rather, she may have thought that Ray wouldn’t be able to handle it well as he was still taking some time to get used to things. In any case, I’m sure he appreciated it.

I continued to look out the window. If they didn’t show up sooner or later, I swore that I would go out and search for them. Whatever the outcome, I needed to know for sure. If that meant searching, I would.

Silence. Time slipped by. Darker.

Evening came and I was so sure I would continue to see no sign of them. But it was just as my eyes began to flutter down and my head bobbed, ready to drift off into dreamland that the front door slammed against the walls and jolted me wide awake. I steered myself in the direction of the door and my body must have been confused as to whether to grin or gasp because my mouth went to form a grin and instead I hiccuped.

There they stood, huddled together, both blue in the face. For once, even if it was for such a painful moment, they were totally in sync with each other. Their hair both a total mess, along with their clothes, as they were both torn and dirty. Together, they shivered and staggered over to the nearest booths.

“Guys?!” Startled, yet relieved, I stood and hurried up to them. “Are you alright?!”

“Take-a-wild-ass-guess,” Demetria rasped through chattered teeth and short breaths.

“No,” Remora turned to me, her cheeks looked locked in place and her mouth opened just a crack, like a window begging for fresh air.

At least she can answer. That’s something.

Both of them looked worse for wear, frostbitten, even. But alive. That was a good place to start, at least.

“Ray! Tigershark!” I cupped my hands and yelled to the kitchen. “Prepare some miso soup and elk stew! Stat!”

They sat next to each other, a sight I wasn’t yet used to, even if they had already done so in some capacity during the camping trip. In unison, their heads fell onto the table and the shivering festival continued.

“We could have had a puppy…” Demetria whined. Okay, maybe she was in better shape than I thought, if she was able to whine. Though whatever she was on about, I had no fuckin’ clue.

“Will you stop going on about that? If Tigershark hears, she’s going to get ideas,” hissed Remora through shivers and little twitches.

“Seems you two are recovering already,” I remarked, trying to offer words of comfort.

“No. I’m just used to this,” Remora muttered.

Demetria lifted her head up little by little as if her head had become a boulder. She glared at Remora.

“Sh-sh-sh-show off,” she struggled to get the words out as she continued to shiver uncontrollably.

“How am I showing off? Just because I’m used to it doesn’t mean I’m comfortable with it.”

Against all odds (and logic) they continued to banter like that and I gave a blank stare as I tried to take it all in.

Is it wrong to think that they act like an old married couple? Yeah, probably. I won’t say anything.

“Well, sit tight, I’ll get you guys both some blankets. Ray and Tigershark are making you guys food,” I assured them. That prompted Remora to look up at me with a dead expression on her face.

“I can’t pay,” she replied, flat and monotone. Say what you will, but I rather missed the lack of expression in her voice. It was something familiar. As for the reply...I was confused. Maybe just a tad.

“You don’t have to. You’re not a customer, you’re…” Family? A friend? I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. At last, I found a word to settle on. “Special.”

“Why?” She asked.

Numerous reasons, silly. Such as…

Instead of listing reasons why, as I found I lacked a proper answer, I instead smiled real wide and said, “I don’t know. Isn’t it better just to be for its own sake?”

No. That wasn’t a good answer. It was for me, but for her, that wouldn’t have satisfied. By now I knew that she needed a concrete answer, and one that made sense to her. I just couldn’t be the one to satisfy, as I didn’t have a concrete answer to give.

To her credit, she said nothing in response and lowered her head back onto the table. Dissatisfied or otherwise, it would seem that she too was at a loss for any real response.

I motioned over to the little window behind the counter that overlooked the kitchen. I leaned up to it and told Ray, “those aren’t customers. This meal’s on the house.”

“Yeah, I saw,” he let out a sigh. “Here I was hoping I could get some money out of people.”

I wanted to elbow him but he was just out of reach.

“C’mon! Aren’t you happy to see that they’re back?”

“Happy? I’m not sure. Relieved? Most definitely. It warms my heart, or at least as much as it can at this point,” his voice was had some grit to it and yet I understood that he spoke in earnest. It seemed I needed to “speak his language,” so to speak.

“This place really can be harsh, can’t it? It’s not easy to keep a positive attitude in a place like this,” I shook my head and smiled as I spoke such words.

“Yes, but it can be a beautiful place as well, full of wonder,” he replied, his voice softening. “Joy and comfort can be found even in a place like this.”

Sometimes it seemed in order to help the both of us, we needed to sort of “swap” with each other. After we traded off energies, then we could level out and continue on.

“That reminds me,” he added. “After their meal, I’d like to make myself a hot cup of chamomile tea to soothe my tired soul.”

“I second that motion,” I nodded, then made my way to the back and grabbed a blanket for the two. Once I returned to the dining hall, two bowls of soup were situated at the table and both recipients had already begun to dig in. As I approached them, I noticed they were in the middle of a conversation:

“What if I had a different name?” Remora asked.

“Then I’d think of you the same. I thought that was obvious,” Demetria replied without so much of a second thought.

“I see. Say, if there was an alternate version of yourself, what kind of life would you like to live?” Remora quizzed Demetria again. I didn’t know what prompted such a discussion, or if it was some oddly specific game of 20 questions.

“I don’t know,” Demetria shrugged. “That’s a rather broad question. I mean, if there’s a limitless amount of universes and there’s the potential for a limitless different versions of me, then I could do anything.”

“But if there was an alternate path your life led, what kind of life would you like to lead?”

“I don’t know. Maybe an assassin? What about you?”

“I think I’d like to be a school teacher,” Remora answered, something which surprised me.

“You, a school teacher?”

“What? If I had a choice, why not?”

While I still didn’t know what prompted such a discussion, nor why she would choose that of all things, I found it interesting nonetheless.

“Here’s your blanket, you guys,” I greeted them as I passed them a thick blanket. To think just a little over a week ago there was another two seated who had been stranded out in the cold and needed a blanket.

“Thank you,” Remora looked up and told me with her dull voice. I couldn’t help but grin.

I turned my attention toward the empty seat across from the two.

“Mind if I sit?” I asked them. They both shrugged. As I took my seat, I took note of the two; there was a slight bit of distance between the two. If Tigershark were to crawl under the table, she could’ve squeezed in between them. Their heads were both focused more on their respective meals than each other. Of course, that was all too understandable. Still, the question cropped up in my mind, what thoughts stir through the ripples of their soup?

“So what happened to you guys?” I questioned them. As glad as I was to see them back, there was still the slightest bit of concern which hung from the edges of my mind.

“Remora suffered some injuries and I wasn’t just going to leave her behind. I tried to call out to you to help, but you must not have heard, so I tried to take it upon myself. We just barely made it out and the whole thing collapsed after that,” Demetria explained to me. I was a little astonished to hear such things, not just because of how impressive such a feat was, but the fact that they had made it out at all when from my end, it had caved in.

“I heard, actually,” I replied, a sour taste in my mouth as I did so. “I tried to make it back to you guys, but I was blocked. You must have come out from a different end, if there even was one,” I then suggested.

“That could have been it,” Remora seemed to agree. “In any case, we all made it back. What’s done is done.”

“Still, you guys don’t look in very good shape,” I pointed out. Considering the whole ordeal with Ray, I wasn’t about to let something like that go.

“I’d have been just fine going out on my own, but she insisted on staying behind with me,” Remora dismissed my concerns.

“You were so convinced you were going to die. I couldn’t just let that happen,” Demetria argued.

“Yeah. What do you think I meant by ‘going out on my own’?”

Demetria fell silent, opting instead to look away. I gulped, not realizing that I would dredge up some kind of tension.

Big oopsie.

“I don’t think you should talk that way…” Demetria then muttered as she continued to look away.

“Why?”

I felt like butting in, going “so guys, how’s the soup?” But I resisted.

“Because I care about you,” she answered, her words dry and strained.

“Wh – I see. Thank you.”

I began to whistle, as I really wasn’t good at moments like those. Especially when I wasn’t involved with them.

“Stop making noises. It’s distracting me from eating,” Remora scolded. I piped down. Really, it was fine just to watch them. Did I need anything else? I didn’t think so.

Not long after the quiet set in, it was taken over by Ray and Tigershark’s presence as they both approached the table. Tigershark lunged out and plopped down on Remora’s lap. Remora made an audible “oof” sound, but allowed it. Now that I thought of it, both Remora and Demetria must’ve been sore and in a great deal of pain. Though I could imagine Remora was more used to it.

“You know, it really is good to see you two again,” Ray greeted. “It just feels complete.”

“Yes,” Remora looked up and added. What ever happened to ‘let me eat soup’?

“At the same time, it does feel weird to think that it’s all over now. We don’t have to worry about any more attacks, there’s no more mystery to solve. Now we might finally see people return, or at the very least be at peace. But it goes without saying, where do we go from here?” Ray mused...no, that may have been the way he talked in the past, but there was now an earnest uncertainty.

“Well, you’re in luck, then. I don’t think our problems are over. Only delayed. That monster in the mansion, there being attacks up here from one man with little note or explanation, neither of those are a coincidence. When I faced that guy after you fled, he mentioned working for, or with, someone. I think the motivation for this person, or group of people, is based partly on a desire for revenge. But the fact that they’d kill others, just for being around, tells me that it’s more than personal – they just want to kill. No matter how complex they may see themselves, I can’t help but think their reasoning is anything other than shallow.”

“I see. So you’re saying our accomplishment was pointless?”

“No, not pointless. It needed to happen, just as that mansion needed to burn down. It removes one obstacle, and things may die down for a while, but I would expect something else to crop up, and probably from the same person or group of people.”

“It’s just a little bitter how there’s been so many attacks and deaths and all we’ve done is chip away at something we still don’t understand.”

“Even so, I don’t think I could have done this trip without you guys. For that, thank you. However…” She cupped her palms over her forehead and looked down, almost like she was ashamed at what she was going to say next. “I still tricked you guys.”

“How so? We were all in on it. Well, there was Demetria, but other than that –” Ray began, before being interrupted.

“No, that’s not what I mean. I told you guys that upon successful completion of this, I would split all the money I had between you guys. Well, all the money I have is...no money. See, a while back, my house was burned down. I presume from the same guy who was responsible for those attacks. Along with my house and the money I had stored, several of my possessions, including my teleportation device, barrier projectors, as well as other tools were destroyed. I’ve known this for some time now and stayed here, not wishing to tell anyone.”

She talked like she expected some big shock amongst ourselves. Perhaps if we were all a different group, we would have been appalled, but instead, I waved it off.

“Oh well, it’s not like Ray or I needed the money. Besides, it’s the journey, not the destination, isn’t it?” I smiled and reassured her.

“I could’ve used the money…” Demetria muttered. Ray concurred, even if he took it a little more seriously than I had.

“This affected all of us,” he informed Remora. “We would have helped regardless. I’m more concerned that you felt you needed to trick us in order to receive help.”

Upon hearing this, she wasn’t much reassured, but hung her head lower.

“Yes, I realize that in all likelihood, making such empty promises were unnecessary. I should know you all better by now and trust you all. Maybe I’m just so fixed on what’s worked before for me, so it makes sense for me to act that way. But I know if it was someone else who did that, I would have told them off. That’s the thing...I can tell all the flaws of others and call them out, yet am prone to the same mistakes. I say I value honesty, but am dishonest.”

“Well, I can understand that in certain situations, it may be necessary,” Ray empathized. “To you, it may seem that you only do what you believe is necessary or justified. I won’t fault that line of thinking.”

“Indeed. I will strive to be more open with all of you.”

“Remora, you can stay here as long as you need to, you know,” I tried to assure her once more.

She shook her head.

“I’ve never needed a home in the first place. So it’s not a huge loss for me.”

Even if that much was true, or what she believed, it must have affected her in some way. In her old life she had what I imagine was a great deal of money at her disposal and whenever she wanted, she could just warp to wherever she wanted. Whether she realized it or not, things would be different for her. If being around people was already a great adjustment for her, being without many of her resources was going to be even more of one.

“I agree with my wife. We’re happy to help in any way we can. You’ve got friends here.”

She looked up now, her eyes wide and mouth ajar, like she was shaken by a great revelation.

“What? Since whe –” She began, before cutting herself off and retracting. “Thank you. I don’t understand, but I appreciate it.”

Ray smiled. “It’s good to have you back.”

He went on about his way, perhaps to make that cup of tea he so wanted. Tigershark also jumped down and went off to the back of the diner. Soon after, both of the two ladies next to me finished their bowls and I took them. Any other time, that would’ve been Demetria’s job, but I figured she had been through enough and needed to relax a little. When I returned from placing the bowls in the kitchen sink, there was only Demetria. Remora must’ve gone back to her room, but she stayed where she was, for whatever reason.

“Hey hun, what’cha doin’ all by yourself?” I checked up on her. Her face was fixated on the window, but it didn’t look like she was looking out, and just wanted to look away.

“I was hoping I could talk to you,” she replied. “Alone.”

“Oh?” I sat down and figured I was in for something. Some kind of heart-to-heart.

“You know as well as I do that I first came here for shallow reasons,” she began, still facing away.

“Well, I’m not sure if I’d call it shallow...even a swimming pool has substances at the bottom of it.”

First came a heavy sigh, then, “look, I’m not good with metaphors, Sunny.”

Oh wow. She said my name. This must be serious.

“It’s obvious that I came here because of my crush on Remora,” she continued.

“Yeah, and I think that’s beautiful,” I countered. She glared and that was my cue to just let her talk.

“Back then, I hate to admit this, but I don’t think I really saw her as a person. I idolized her and thought of her as this larger than life figure. No doubt, she is beautiful, but thinking back, it was more like I thought of her as a fictional character. Just something straight out of a comic book. Maybe this way you can understand it – I didn’t know what kind of life she led, but I figured if I followed her, I would be dropped into a world of action and excitement. It certainly has been that, too, but the longer time has went on, the more clear it is that she’s a person.”

I wonder if Remora herself would’ve liked to hear that seeing as she at times had trouble seeing herself as a person, what with struggling to understand others.

“What I’m saying is, I don’t think it’s a crush anymore, and I don’t know what I feel,” she included.

“How do you figure that?” I asked.

“Well, for starters, I just said I see her now as more of a person. I also care about her. People with crushes don’t care about the person they have a crush on, do they?”

“I mean...the two aren’t mutually exclusive. You totally can.”

“Huh,” she replied, although if she were surprised, she kept focus on where her thoughts were instead. “There’s something there, that much I know. I’ve told you how it was meeting her at the aquarium, my impression of her, not wanting to be ordinary. How I made her into my motivation for anything. If there’s one thing I fear, it’s losing interest in her, but at the same time, I think my interest has already shifted. At least in the sense that I don’t see her the same way.”

“That doesn’t have to be a bad thing though, right?”

“No, but...I just don’t know how to place how I feel anymore. It was easier when I was more...that. But now it’s like she’s still important to me, but it’s different. I was thinking you could help me out with that.”

Man, I recalled how things were on our adventure, but I really wasn’t good with things like that. If only she had gone to Ray. But maybe she just related more to me because of the adventure…

“I appreciate you coming to me,” I cleared my throat as I told her. “But I don’t really know what to tell you. It’s probably not what you want to hear, but I can’t really say where your feelings lie. It’s really up to you. I’ve always just let my feelings take me wherever and worried later. Seems like the better option, anyway.”

She slumped down. Her face hadn’t brightened at all. I really wished I had been of more help.

“I thought you’d have some kind of answer for me…” She rasped.

“I’m not really sure, and that would be wonderful if I was, wouldn’t it? But that said, however you feel, I don’t think it’s a bad thing.”

“I hope not. I just wish I had words I could put for it.”

“Hey,” I stuck my thumb up. “Just take some time here and there to think about it. You might just be pleased with whatever conclusion you come to. If nothing else, I think it’s a good sign that you care about her!”

I left her with that, unsure where else to go. If I was better with such things I could have been ‘it’s love’ or ‘it’s friendship’ but instead I was just like ‘thank you, but hell if I know.’

Maybe that was just the sign I needed. I’ve spent a while back at home really getting to know and spend time with everyone, but with things calming down and Ray recovered, I felt it was due time to head off once again and embark on another adventure.

Even though that itch had return, I had to rein it in. There wasn’t any word of treasure to find or any destination in mind. Nothing slated in the works. Ah, but I knew what the solution was. First, a good night’s rest was in order. Then I would explore my options.

Oh boy!

Once morning came around and I had myself a hearty breakfast consisting of an omelet with bacon, sausage, five different kinds of cheeses (cheddar, pepper jack, gouda, feta, and gorgonzola), pickles, onions (red, green, white), spinach, olives, and last but not least, salmon, I was ready and raring to go.

“Hey Ray! What kinda requests we got?” I charged through the back door and slammed it against the wall as I announced my presence. He looked up.

“Please be more gentle with our home,” he stated before he looked back down at his desk and grabbed the stack of papers. He held it out and I snatched them from him as I shuffled through one by one. He leaned over and I caught his gaze.

“Does this mean we’re back on for doing this? Missions and what not?”

“It is if I can find something good!” I couldn’t stress that enough. Many of them I skipped through while looking and hoping for inspiration until at last I found one that interested me. It wasn’t even one that suited me (it might have been more suited for Remora) but it was the closest I could find to one that piqued my interest. It read:

There have been reports of unexplained killings happening in Chicago, Illinois. Sightings of a tall figure basked in the darkness of night carrying large bladed weapons might be suspect. Other signs point to a blue-tinted hair without a match to anyone in the city’s database. Upon successful identification and elimination of the killer, a lump sum of $100,000 will be mailed.

“Wow. Short,” I commented. No details on the bodies? Not who had been killed or possible reasons why? Some help that was. Still, if it meant exploring and uncovering a mystery, I was game.

“What is it?” Ray asked. I handed the request to him and he scanned through, then shook his head. “Reads like a police report. Was never a fan of those guys.”

“Obviously I’m right there with you, but still, this is something! This could be fun!”

“What? Murder?”

I shook my head with such vigor it was a miracle it didn’t fall off.

“No! Mystery solving! And then murder, I guess. But I mean, if it’s someone who’s already going around killing others, they’re probably bad, anyway, right? So I’d just be killing a killer.”

“If you want to, be my guest. You just don’t strike me as the kind of person into that kind of work,” he argued.

I thought it over. Yeah, he was right. Exploring? Yes. Some mystery? Yes. But taking a life? Hmm…

“Well, it’s not like we need the money, I just wanna go out. Besides, what if it turns out that upon finding this person, they’ve got a pretty good reason and instead I convince them to come to our diner?”

He laughed.

“That sounds like a me thing. But do as you will, just try and be careful. As long as you’re having fun, I can’t complain,” he relented, then scratched his chin. “There’s little I can argue against when it comes to your happiness. I’ll go ahead and give Cybele a call, let her know where you’ll be heading.”

“Thanks hun! I’ll try not to be gone too long, but you know how I can be when I get distracted!” My excitement was too great for any reassurances. But just to top it all off, I leaned over and kissed his forehead.

Right as I was about to run out, Demetria came out of her room and she must’ve overheard the commotion.

“What are you up to?” She demanded to know. I pointed to the paper in hand before explaining:

“I’m off to go find and kill someone.”

She gave off an incredulous look, then scoffed.

“I get that you’re all tough and stuff, but have you ever taken a life before?” She questioned.

“Let’s just put it this way: you know how when I go on adventures there’ll be bad guys shooting at me on bridges, and I use my wit to make those bridges fall? Well, often times, I’m pretty sure those guys don’t have fall with a smooth landing.”

She stared once again, though rather than incredulous, she looked just a tad disgusted.

“Uhh...okay then.”

“I’ll be fine, really!” I pushed past any concern she may have had and ran off, ready to set foot in the windy city.

Once the plane landed down on a rooftop, I jumped out, then waved bye to Cybele.

“I’ll call you when I’m done!” I yelled to her.

She yelled back, but I didn’t catch what she said. At least I was sure she didn’t catch what I said, either, so no big deal.

From the rooftop, I scaled down from the ledge and descended little by little until I made it to the sidewalk where I plopped down. As far as I could tell, no one batted an eyelash, so it must not have been all that out of the ordinary.

“Wow,” I mouthed the words as the crisp air drifted along. Oh, sure, crisp, but nothing quite as bone-chilling as where I was from. It felt more like a gentle breeze, instead. While I watched small crowds go by and the smell of food carts and restaurants nearby mingled with musty odors of trash bins scattered about the sidewalk, I felt a shove against my shoulder. I turned and someone walked past, hands in their pocket and grumbling about how I wouldn’t move over.

“Oh yeah,” I commented. “That’s why I don’t go to cities often.”

As I stomped along at a roadrunner’s pace against the crowded sidewalks, I thought of what little I knew.

So night is the most likely time I would find this person. Right now it’s a bright and cloudy day. Goals right there. Though the cloudy day is a little overshadowed by the skyscrapers muddying everything out. Not so goals.

There weren’t huge crowds, just swathes of people in drips and drabs. Some in small groups, some going on about their business. As much as there was a steady stream of people, it wasn’t a large mass with no room to breathe. There were gaps in between. Similar were the traffic. Little groups at all times, but no long lines waiting to go.

I checked my phone. It was a little before the evening, an hour or so before sunset. Just after rush hour must have ended.

Since I had no clues and ‘large bladed weapons’ along with ‘blue-tinted hair’ was far too vague, I decided to enjoy myself a bit; ferry tours, stops at pizza shops, and listening to jazz bands at a nearby bar. While listening along and shoving a slice of a deep dish pizza as far into my mouth as I could, I turned the bartender and swallowed.

“Hear any rumors as of late?” I tried to nudge the bartender’s beefy tattooed shoulders, but the counter was too wide. She leaned in while polishing a glass.

“What do you wanna know?” She inquired, a sharp smile on her face. It reminded me so much of Ray’s whole persona. However, this person was younger and looked to be entwined with the city’s culture.

I almost asked “Anyone tall with colored hair?” Until I realized that didn’t really narrow it down much.

Instead, a smile spread across my face as I thought of what I wanted to ask.

“Like any abandoned places around here? I’m somewhat of an urban explorer and looking for my next fix.”

She placed her finger on her chin and tapped her foot. I took another chomp at my pizza. Such gooey pepperoni, anchovy, and pineapple goodness, all in a thick layer.

“There’s this office building at the docks that’s been sitting around for lord knows how long. Couple’a folks I know say they’ve passed by and expressed interest in breaking in, but you know…” She trailed off, as if I was supposed to catch her drift.

“Nah, I don’t. What?”

“Oh c’mon, are you a cop?”

Upon hearing that, a couple of sardonic thoughts on what to say played through my head: 1) Sis, my husband’s got ties with time traveling mobsters and likes to cheat billionaires out of their money just for fun. 2) Wanna feel under my shirt for wires? Shit, I don’t even have a gun. All’s I got is a lasso and some brass knuckles.

Instead I did the least convincing thing I could have done: shoved the rest of my pizza into my mouth and told her (while my mouth was full of food), “I’m just ignorant.”

I swallowed then took a big gulp of water.

“Sorry ‘bout that. Anyway, no need to worry about me. Now, I’m guessing there’s gangs and homeless people who like to hang about, then there’s teenagers who’ve already broken in before?” I suggested.

“Mm-hmm. Pretty much. Though I dunno about the dumb kids part. Mostly the folks I’ve talked to said they’ve seen lights turn off and on in different parts of the building. No shadow or sign of anyone, though.”

Huh. So maybe it was a ghost.

“Oh, and just a fair warning: there’s been rumors of this shadowy figure roaming about around those parts. Some say that same figure’s also the one responsible for some killings as of late.”

“Oh? Like what?” My interest was piqued. In such a big city and I already had my lead.

“No one important. Just a few cops and a landlord. Oh, and I think the CEO of a construction company. But that’s it. I’m sure give it a few days and more deaths will be attributed to this mysterious person. Give it another day and people will have moved on. I’m betting whoever this person is, they don’t even have anything to do with these deaths.”

Even if that does turn out to be the case, I have to know for sure, I mulled it over, and decided to listen to a few of the jazz performers, but vowed to investigate the building as soon as closing time came around.

By the time I left that bar, however, I had forgotten all about the mission.

“Man, I could listen to those saxophones all week!” I cackled as I exited. “I’ve gotta bring home a saxophone when all this is said and done!”

When I looked into the sky and saw a pale moon obscured by a thin layer of gray clouds, I drew a breath of air and the cloud that formed from my breath was a lighter shade than the ones in the sky.

What am I doing again? I went to get a bite to eat, and now I’m a little buzzed and hazy. Should I go to a motel? Or...well, there was that abandoned office building the bartender told me about. Good enough place to sleep as any, right?

Then it clicked: that was the place I needed to check out, anyway.

Excited, I rubbed my hands together and ran down the street and headed for the office building. For how long I ran, I didn’t know, as I was lost in the trance of the night. Every action was an after thought from the initial run down to me taking a leap over the fence.

When I made it over, I stopped and the world had caught up with me as I felt its stillness take over. Everything from then on was more clear: I stood in the dark of the night in front of a tall building while people lay scattered around, some huddled in sleeping bags, others in tents. Some close together. Off to my left was the smoke from a makeshift fire. There were a few folks who paced about or went on about their business, making conversation with or propositioning others.

None of them seemed to notice me. I motioned closer to the building as I inspected the windows and doors; all boarded up, no sign of entry.

How did the bartender’s friends see anything through the windows if they’re all boarded up? Unless they were only recently boarded up.

Right when I made my way to circle around in order to find a way in, I was stopped.

“Hey lady. What are you doin’ here?” I heard the gruff voice of a man with curly white hair and a brown leather cap. half-tired was his voice, weary, with just a bit of grit.

“Trying to get in here,” I replied and figured I had nothing to lose by being honest.

“What do you want in there for?”

I reached to my hip where I kept a rope and hook fastened. Beats me why I didn’t think to do so sooner.

“Hey!” Alarmed, he took a step back. “What you reachin’ for?”

“Relax. Just some rope,” I replied, then held the hook in my hand, ready to throw it up to the roof so I could pull myself up. “As for why I want in, mostly just to see what I can find.”

In the corner of my eye, I could see him shake his head.

“There’s nothin’ of value you’ll find there,” he grunted. That was a response I couldn’t help but find odd.

“Who says there’s not value in seeing for myself?” I flashed him a grin, then threw the hook and watched as it landed on the roof. If there was no way in, I’d make a way, and what better way in than down?

Once I pulled myself up, I saw a door that hadn’t been boarded.

“Ah, so this must be how this person’s getting in,” I muttered. Although I must have made all sorts of noise climbing up, now that I was up, I wanted to be as silent as possible.

When I turned to open the door, I found that it was locked. Without further delay, I fished out a hairclip and jostled it in the keyhole. After I heard a click, I turned the handle and was met with...a brick wall.

You’ve got to be kidding me. Sealed out?

I shook my head. It was as if I had been put in some elaborate prank, except no one popped out to announce “you’ve been punk’d!”

I paced about and tapped my foot against the concrete floor. One spot in particular felt weaker than the other.

I’d like to think my legs are strong as well, but I’d hate to kick down and crash all the way to the bottom.

I fastened my brass knuckles on each hand and knelt beside the weakened concrete. Then, with a raised fist and a swift punch to the floor, a crack formed. One more punch, then the floor collapsed next to me and I heard the crash as the concrete collided with the next floor below. It seemed to stop before it got too far, as I didn’t hear such a long series of crashes. With a sigh of relief, I clicked a small flashlight and saw the outline of a hallway along with the hole in the floor that I had caused.

After dropping below, I pointed the flashlight as I scanned around the area. Doors, which when opened, held empty rooms. Some held filing cabinets with empty drawers. Some had desks and chairs, but nothing within or on either. Through the empty halls, I traced each pace with careful movements, every footstep a crawl’s pace.

At the end of the hallway was a rundown elevator. I thought that I could use it to reach the lower floors, but I couldn’t pry the elevator doors open, so after a good struggle and no budge, I left it alone and headed back where the hole in the floor lay. I dropped down and as I did so heard what sounded like crackling electricity in the distance. Like wires broken, but with a charge.

I preferred the silence.

I kept close to the wall and approached the sound. Since my descent, there had been no indication of any traps to avoid. Just the thought made me miss my trips to ancient temples. Soon, the hallway opened up into a large space with carpeted floor and many doors against the walls. At one point in time, I could picture a series of cubicles. Through those doors were offices. This building had a history and although such a history was unknown to me, the pieces to its story was there.

All movement from me had ceased. My flashlight dropped upon seeing someone crouched down against a panel on the far end of the wall, their back turned to me. The drop of my flashlight echoed throughout the halls. I couldn’t make out many of their features, save for their height and dark clothing, along with a helmet over their head.

I don’t think I’m seeing a ghost. Not only that, but this person must have noticed me. Any chance of sneaking has gone out the window. Oh, who am I kidding? The crash of the ceiling should have given me away before I even entered.

Since there was little else I could do, any movement would have given me more away whether forward or back, I watched; a spark of light displayed their hands, gloved, and nearby, a light turned on in one of the rooms. Then another light. No other lights turned on and at last, the person spoke:

“Damn. Still not enough,” cursed the figure in a harsh, yet wispy voice. Almost like a breeze, but less gentle and more brisk.

“What are you doing?” My words forced themselves out in a hoarse, reluctant question. Sure, I was curious, but if this was the person I needed to kill, then I had to get right into the action.

“Trying to bring power to this place. Electricity can provide light. Heat. Power,” came the reply, a breathy one at that. In spite of its seriousness, their pitch was on the higher end.

“Renovation?” I suggested.

Without so much as turning to me, the figure replied with a nod.

“There are many rooms here. It can provide shelter to many. It’s illegal to use electricity without paying the electric company. It’s also illegal to enter abandoned and unused property. But then again, it’s also illegal to be homeless. Some crimes cannot be helped.”

“Indeed,” I agreed, then added to it, “so is murder.”

To that, the figure stopped what they were doing and got up. I heard the clang as their helmet fell to the floor. Its metallic features and shape became illuminated by the small amount of light brought on by my dropped flashlight. Also illuminated were the figure’s legs, both bulky and well-toned muscles.

Muscular. I can respect that, at least.

While I could tell their stature from what little light there was, their face remained obscured by the darkness.

“As I said: some crimes cannot be helped,” tight spoken words, a hint of anger.

I took a step back and got into a fighting stance. That all but confirmed that I had found the killer.

“Are you the shadowy figure who’s been murdering people?” I raised my voice, not out of anger, but just to make sure we were both on the same page.

“I am, and I take it that you’re someone of authority, come to bring me to justice?”

“Close,” my smile widened. No sound of weapons drawn, but I needed to be ready, nonetheless. “But I’m just doing this because I want to.”

I charged in, fist raised, and threw it forward, only for figure to swerve out of the way. So I elbowed back and felt their grip against my arm squeeze in.

Such a tight grip, holy hell.

Although I struggled, I managed to push back and spun back. They had let go and I heard their footstep take a skip back.

“See, that’s just not a good reason,” returned their voice, more pronounced now. Rather than the breezy voice before, it was more husky in tone and carried a bite to it.

I reached for the rope and hook once more and spun it around, then flung it forward. Whether I would miss or hit, what I didn’t expect was to feel a tug against the hook and the rope cut from it. Then, footsteps tapped at an alarming speed, and although I managed move out of the way, the hook slashed across and made cuts against my arm.

“I would say you’re foolish, but no: you’re just impulsive,” they spoke again, almost analytical in tone now.

Another slash soon came, and I heard the blow of the swing in time for me to move, then I reached for the other side of my hip from where the rope had been and pulled out a whip, then crackled it against my enemy’s hand as the hook they had taken from me fell out and I heard a grunt in pain. While disarmed, I thought I could throw a punch in, but my fist was caught with their palm, and the grip tightened in.

I can’t let them have their hands free, I then threw my other fist in and we were both locked in now. Our strengths seemed a near match as we kept pushing each other back and forth, a tug-of-war with our respective strengths. Then, as I pushed forward, I managed to push them far enough back that the sparks from the open panel they had been at illuminated their face. No, her face.

An audible gasp escaped me. There it was, the blue-tinted hair, with a matchstick in her mouth.

“Rhea? Is that you?” I uttered in shock, the resemblance, with what little light I could tell, was uncanny. Her smile spread, then gave her reply.

“Heh. Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in years.”

She then raised her knee and kicked me away. I fell back. Next to me was my hook from the rope. Well, I could undo the knot in my lasso and use that as a replacement. Damn, maybe I really did have a thing for ropes and whips.

I grabbed the hook and picked myself up, ready to strike. Even if she was this person who...who I thought had died, or who I thought Remora was, well...I still had a job to do.

“There was a request for your death,” I explained.

“So you fancy yourself some kind of bounty hunter, then?” She mused, almost as playful as I.

I nodded, then slashed across with the hook, but she jumped back. She then grabbed the wires and plunged them against my wrist. The shock coursed through me and I fell back.

Although my heart was in a rush, I still had plenty of wind left in me. As I struggled up, she slid a long sword from a sheath and held it out, pointed at me.

“Don’t move a muscle. I could kill you right now,” that playful, but icy voice rang through my ears. It lingered and created goosebumps against my shoulders and the voice carried like an aftertaste. Rather than do what she could have done, she sheathed her blade.

I drew a breath and tried to pick myself up, but then she grabbed me by my neck. Only inches in the air, I was still surprised to be lifted at all as she looked me in the eyes and flashed a toothy grin.

“I could kill you, but instead, I think I’ll give you just enough strength to go back wherever you came from as a warning.”

Fair deal. It’s just too bad I don’t go down that easily.

I swung myself forward and hoped to kick her so I could be released, but it took her no time at all to catch on to what I tried and she unsheathed her sword once more and plunged it into my kneecap. Just as fast as she had done so, she pulled it out and held her blade close to her. I let out a piercing cry of pain as I knelt down, blood trickling down my jeans and onto the floor.

“I’m allowing you to walk away. How are you going to do that if you don’t walk?” She asked and sounded too bored to know the answer to such a question.

Although I struggled, I leaned against the wall and tried to move closer to her. Even as I limped, I wasn’t ready to give up. I’d throw every last punch I could. Rather than give me such a chance, she took her sword and rather than stab me once again, held it back and pushed the hilt against my shoulder. I fell back once more.

“Now. I won’t doubt that you could have put up more of a fight, but you’re at a disadvantage. You can hardly see. You’ve already taken some serious injuries. You didn’t know who you were up against.”

“Heh. No pain no gain,” I rasped out the words. Already lightheaded, I felt myself soon to lose consciousness.

“Yes. But something tells me you’ll need a break.”

Damn. Yeah. A nice bath, some patching up, a few days and I’d be back at it for another fight, and then I’d be more prepared. There wasn’t any reason to give up…

“Here’s what will happen next: I will take you back to the rooftop, you will make whatever call you need to, and then you will leave so that you may tell whoever you need to not to come here. Understand?”

I was in no position to object. Rather, the only oddness I found was that for a killer, she sure seemed generous. Ugh, but it sure was a blow to the ego to have to return home. Still...Ray and the others needed to hear about it, so I tried to take it in stride.

When Cybele found me on my back and a bloody mess, she fell into a panic. I had to be the calm one and reassure her that yes, I’d survive, and I’ve had worse injuries in the past. Despite such words, she continued to fret through the ride home and I walked her through how to treat such injuries as best as she could with what was available. Poor girl still had trouble calming herself down even when I told her that she did a fine job and that I would be fine.

Once I arrived home, it was about midday the next day and I was in good enough of a state to limp through the door and into the back.

If Cybele wasn’t bad enough, everyone else gave me frightful looks. Less so with Remora, but she looked like she didn’t know what kind of look to give.

I winced, but managed a smile as I sunk into a chair and leaned back. Ray, at his desk, got up.

“Honey, what happened?” He urged for my answer, a profound upset reverberated.

I just got carried away. That’s all.

“I saw...I saw…” I heaved and stuttered out the words, surprised by my own shock. At last, I told them, “I saw Rhea.”

“What? How is that possible?”

“Uh, didn’t she die? Also, we’re really doing this again, after the whole thing with the cave just the other day,” Demetria added in her own two cents. At least the place was lively.

“She had blueish hair and a matchstick in her mouth. Similar build. I…” Really, I didn’t understand what I saw any better than I could describe it.

“What shade?” Remora asked at last, and it was her input I was most interested in. “Also, did she shiver? What was her fighting style?”

So many questions…

“I couldn’t tell. It was dark. No shiver. And...she had a sword.”

Remora leaned her head back and her eyes widened. She turned her head just as I noticed her face tightened, then she muttered, “that wasn’t Rhea.”

“Who was it, then?” I asked her.

“I don’t know, but Rhea didn’t use swords. Anyway, just leave that person alone. They’re no one important and there’s nothing to worry about. Probably.”

“You know something, don’t you?” I pressed.

“I just know who it isn’t, and so it’s probably nothing. Just forget about it.”

Demetria’s face grew serious, a scowl formed. She turned to Ray.

“Do I have permission to get a plane ride there?” It wasn’t a beg, nor a plead, just a confirmation, as if she were already set.

“If you wish,” Ray replied, despite the concern he had displayed.

“Why? What is for you there?” Remora interrogated. “Money? Curiosity? Violence?”

“I just need to know,” Demetria replied before taking off. Remora didn’t try to stop her or press further, it was a surprise at all that she showed any sign of objection.

As Demetria took off, Ray faced Remora.

“What about being more open with us?” He echoed her earlier words. “If you know something, you should tell us.”

Remora lowed her head further and replied:

“I don’t know anything for certain and it sounds like nothing important. So we can move on from this.”

She then strode over to her room and I blinked.

“What about you?” Ray inquired.

“I’ll be fine. Just gimme a few days and I’ll go on another adventure.”

“Please rest longer if you need to,” he added.

“I’ll do my best,” I assured him.

As I continued to sit in that chair, my thoughts stewed on how unusual everything was. How unusual that person had been. How unusual Remora’s reaction was. How unusual Demetria’s reaction was as well. There were so many questions and no conclusion came to mind. Most of all, what I wanted to know was whether I still had it in me to do those dangerous adventures and come out on top or if time had begun to catch up with me.

#remoras full #writing #adventure #drama #action #chicago #stories #fiction #sunny #remora #deep dish pizza

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wayward-lives · 5 years

Note

For your stucky prompts you could do that stark had also kept looking for Bucky and he managed to find him before hydra but Steve still went under so when Bucky wakes up they have to break it to him that he’s a super soldier and that Steve is dead

This is dark as SHIT and I love it

It was dark, at the bottom of the valley. Cold. He didn't know how long he'd been there, unable to move, the only warmth coming from the hot blood dripping down into the hollow of his neck, but even that stopped, after a while. His eyes were open, but unseeing - white surrounded him, covered his senses in a thick blanket that made it impossible for him to do anything. Dying was agony - at first it was hot, searing hot like a red-hot poker had been taken to the left side of his body. Then it grew colder, and colder, until it was so frigid that it burned just as bad as the poker.

He didn't know how long he lay there for, paralysed in agony. It could have been days. The howls of the creatures that lived in the ravine grew closer, and it grew to the point that he tried to scream out, to lead them to him just so they could tear at his flesh and quicken his demise. Anything was better than this slow horror.

Finally, after days of suffering, he heard the tell-tale sound of feet in snow. He could have sobbed in happiness - he'd been found. The animals had found him. They would rip him limb from limb and he would finally be free.

The animals talked to each other, in a language that was familiar, and grasped him with hands that felt like they'd touched his skin before. A woman's face appeared above him - a beautiful woman, with red lips and dark hair and tears in her eyes. He wondered if she was an angel, finally descended from Heaven to take his soul. But why would he go to Heaven? He may not know much, in his pain-addled state, but he knew he was not a good man. A good man would not have such perverse thoughts, do such unholy things, allow another man to kiss him and worship his body like the most sacred of texts.

"Get him into the plane!" a voice yelled - he realised it came from the angel. Why would the angel have a plane? He thought those were human contraptions, certainly not something a celestial would use.

Hands gripped him, and he was lifted into the air. He couldn't see much apart from cold and snow, but in the middle of the white was a blooming flower of red. It was beautiful, he realised - the scarlet painting the blank canvas in such a pretty colour. In the middle of the bloom lay a mangled arm, wrapped in bloodied blue fabric and pale as the driven snow.

----

The first thing Bucky was aware of when he woke up was the comfort. He was enveloped by warmth, soft fabrics brushing against his frostbitten skin and wrapping him in a gentle embrace. He shifted slightly in the nest, enthralled by the way the fabric moved with the slightest friction, and voices he hadn't been aware of abruptly ceased. A warm palm was placed on his head, and Bucky leaned into it as much as he could.

"Rest, Sergeant," a woman's voice said softly, sweetly. "You had quite the fall."

Arnim Zola. The train. The mission. Gabe. Falling. Steve.

Steve.

Bucky opened his eyes, and for the first few seconds, he couldn't see anything but bright light. The light slowly receded and revealed the woman who'd spoken to him, sitting at his bedside. Peggy Carter.

The first thing Bucky noticed about Peggy was her appearance. For the two years he'd known her, Bucky had never known Peggy to look anything other than flawless. Her lips were always the same shade of red, she never had a hair out of place, and she carried herself with a confidence that was envied or lusted after by every and all members of the SSR. But the Peggy sitting at his bedside looked ragged. Her hair hung loosely around her face, lank and lifeless and lacking its usual lustre. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her shoulders slumped, her face completely devoid of makeup. Still, she smiled at him.

"How are you feeling?" she asked softly. Bucky opened his mouth, tried to speak, but all that came out was a rasping cough. Peggy reached to something out of his line of sight and brought back a cup. She tipped it to his mouth, and he felt water touch his lips. He greedily drank it all, and when she pulled away he slumped back against the bed, exhausted.

"Steve," he managed to croak out, and Peggy's face crumpled into an expression of absolute misery.

"Sleep, James," she whispered. Bucky could do nothing but comply.

------

Bucky didn't know how long it took before he was able to stay awake for longer than a few minutes. He'd woken up a few times after the first, and there had always been someone with him. Sometimes it was Peggy, stroking the hair back from his face and quietly talking to doctors who come into the room. The Howlies came often, no more than two in the room at a time, and even Colonel Phillips had appeared, his usual gruff demeanour firmly in place. Howard Stark had taken to coming in, and Bucky found it quite relaxing to listen to the other man's ramblings without needing to contribute anything to the conversation. He still didn't see Steve.

Finally, when Bucky was able to speak more than one word without passing out, he asked.

"Where's Steve?"

Howard froze, mid-way through a story about his latest conquest, his hands still mid-flail. Bucky watched, wary, as the inventor slowly lowered his hands, not looking at Bucky.

"There are some things we need to tell you," Howard said quietly. Bucky watched him, his brows furrowing in confusion. What was there to tell? He'd fallen off the side of a train, into a ravine, somehow survived, and his best friend was nowhere to be found.

Maybe Steve only came when he was asleep, Bucky mused as he was helped into a wheelchair by a couple of nurses and wheeled down the corridor. He didn't know how much he slept, and it could just be that Steve always caught him when he was asleep.

The place that Bucky had assumed to be a hospital turned out to be another SSR base, although Bucky wasn't sure which one. Were they still in France, or were they in England again? Were they even in Europe at all?

Howard walked beside him, uncharacteristically silent. It wasn't until they walked through a set of doors to a small conference room that Howard spoke, and it wasn't to him.

"Fetch the Howling Commandoes and Agent Carter," Howard said to one of the nurses. The woman nodded, and hurried out of the room. The other nurse started fussing over Bucky, checking his pulse and temperature and examining the bandages over the stump of his arm, her manner brisk but not unkind. Howard started pacing, fiddling with something in his hands that emitted a whirring noise every time he twisted its dials.

It wasn't long before Peggy strode into the room, her heels making loud clicking noises on the hard floor. Ever since that first time, Bucky had only ever seen her dressed as impeccably as he remembered. He wondered if it was just a dream. She was quickly followed by Dum Dum, Gabe, Morita, Falsworth and Dernier, each of them giving Bucky a smile. When they got close enough, Dum Dum playfully whacked Bucky's good shoulder.

"What's this about, Howard?" Peggy asked briskly, folding her arms across her chest. "I'm in the middle of something quite important, and-" She cut herself off when she met Bucky's eyes, and all the fight seemed to drain out of her. "Oh. Well, I suppose it needs to happen eventually."

"What needs to happen?" Bucky asked. His voice was still raspy from however long it had been since he fell.

"Sarge, what do you remember about the accident?" Gabe asked gently.

"Uh..." Bucky wracked his brain. "We were on a mission to capture Arnim Zola. You, me and Steve used a zipline to get onto the train, and we split up into two groups. You went one way, Steve and I went the other." Bucky suddenly felt very cold, and shivered. The nurse draped a blanket over his shoulders, and he gripped it with his one hand and smiled at her gratefully. Dum Dum’s hand rested back on his shoulder.

"Anything else?" Gabe asked, his dark eyes kind.

"There was.. a soldier, I guess. He had those guns, the ones powered by the cube? He blew a hole in the side of the train, and blasted me out of it before Steve could bring him down." Bucky licked his lips absentmindedly. "I hung onto the side. Steve couldn't reach me in time."

"James, do you know why you survived?" Peggy asked gently.

"Luck?"

"Sarge, no offence, but that was a thousand-foot drop, at least," Morita murmured. "No regular human could survive that."

"The only ones who probably could would be Captain Rogers or Johann Schmidt, or someone with a form of the serum," Peggy continued. "James, do you remember anything being different after coming back from Azzano?"

"I don't... I don't know, that was two years ago," Bucky mumbled. "So Zola gave me a serum, I survived. I don't care - where's Steve?"

The room went silent.

"He doesn't know?" Falsworth asked incredulously.

"He's been too sick-" the nurse started.

"It's about Steve!" Falsworth snapped. "He deserves to be the first to know, not the last person in the whole damned country!"

"He wasn't ready," Howard protested. "A shock like that could have caused his heart to stop, permanently! We weren't going to risk it when there was a chance he could die."

Dernier fired off rapid French, his face red and almost spitting with rage. Dum Dum's hand tightened on Bucky's shoulder.

"What's this about?" Bucky found his voice was wavering. "Why won't you tell me where Steve is?"

"Kid-" Dum Dum started, but Bucky shrugged off his hand, standing up shakily. The nurse made an aborted move towards him as if to force him back into his seat, but he glared at her fiercely enough for her to take a couple of steps back.

"Where's Steve?" Bucky snarled. Peggy closed her eyes, let out a breath. When she looked at him again, Bucky was shocked to see tears in her eyes.

"Captain Rogers, in an effort to stop the Red Skull, jumped aboard the Nazi warplane known as the Valkyrie," Howard said quietly, his eyes trained on the floor. "He defeated Schmidt but realised that the Valkyrie was carrying nuclear bombs, one for each of the major cities in Western control. In order to stop the bombing, he crashed the plane somewhere in the Arctic circle."

Howard took a deep breath, and when he looked up, his expression was full of regret. "We haven't found a body."

The world disappeared behind Bucky in a funnel, nothing existing except Howard's face and the words that had just come out of his mouth. We haven't found a body.

A body.

Steve was dead.

A hand rested on his shoulder, and Bucky didn't bother shrugging it off again. He couldn't take his eyes off Howard, his mind off the words that still circulated through his head and through the room like a bitter smoke, a foul disease. The words that Bucky had been dreading since he was a child and realised that Steve might not live through the next illness.

Steve Rogers is dead.

A chilling wail pierced the air, and Bucky felt arms around him, holding him upright. The wail persisted, soaked through the walls and shaking Bucky to the bone, before it finally broke off into sobs, huge, wracking sounds that made the whole world shake. It wasn't until Bucky felt the tears on his cheeks that he realised the sounds were coming from him.

Because Steve Rogers was dead.

And Bucky may as well have been, too.

#bucky barnes #marvel #stucky #steve rogers #peggy carter #fanfic #angst

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shachihata · 4 years

Text

Ivan Valentinovich is born of ice.

He wakes up in the biting frost of winter, the wind dancing around him, the cold wreathing his eyelashes and his face with shivering kisses like a long-lost mother greeting a newborn child. Something pounds in his head. Something echoes in his chest. He is heavy, weighed down with sheets of sleet that slide off of him in chunks when he rises to his feet, his breath the quick exhales of a man who’d slid like a fish out of the cold grasp of death for the tenth -- hundredth -- thousandth --

His coat is stiff like a cutting board and snowflakes fall heavy on his collar, like an inexplicable gravitational force is somehow drawing them there, but he does not feel the bite of the cold. His hands are bare and he spreads his fingers wide, feeling the winter call his name, Ivan Valentinovich, the singing of violin strings in an empty concert hall.

Household lights gleam in the distance. Under the moonlight, Ivan follows their glare.

---

Changeling, they whisper.

Ivan Valentinovich does not know what the word means.

He listens to the steppe grass sleeping under the thick snow, soaks in the sunlight that creates overcast clouds out of an overcast sea, falls into the torpor of sleeping bears curled up in their caves after having been fattened by the rich blood and milk and honey of the summer land that he has so disdainfully been rejected from. He smiles at the people he passes by, but his frost spreads unwillingly and unwittingly like a disease to the adults who deign to listen to him. He walks the dirt roads and listens to the men and women whispering changeling behind his back and does not know if, to them, there is a truth to what they cannot understand.

“Changeling, changeling,” the children chant, with unseeing eyes and speaking mouths, whenever they see his stiff brown coat pass over the snow in the wind. “Tell us a story, please.”

“I work in trades,” Ivan replies, simply. “I work in truths.”

And so the children give him chestnuts and frozen flowers and the dead animals that their cats bring home as offerings to the family, smiling, understanding yet unseeing of the life and color and memories that they grant a colorless man like Ivan. He, in turn, lets them remember what they could not and should not possibly remember -- they feel the lifeblood of elk running thin after the snap of the hunter’s bow, the flick of siren’s fin as she darts through the floes of the arctic ocean, the fierce satisfaction of the fearful hawk as its talons pierce its fearful target. They shout changeling to his face and he knows that, to them, there is no truth to what they cannot understand.

“I have a gift for you,” a child says, once. She holds out her tightly-closed fists expectantly.

“I work in trades,” Ivan replies. “I work in truths.”

“Then let me give you one of mine,” the girl says.

Ivan crouches to meet the girl’s eyes and holds out his hands, carefully cupped, fearing that his own frost will spread to her fingers unwillingly and unwittingly like a disease. “I will give you something in return. It’s only fair, devochka.”

“That’s what you just told me,” the girl says. She opens her hands, and from them fall a handful of chrysanthemum petals, red and white, blood on fresh snow. “Aren’t these pretty, changeling?”

“Very much so.”

“I buy these flowers for my brother. I don’t know what he does with them.”

“Would you like to know?”

“It’s not your truth to tell,” the girl pouts, and Ivan smiles. “Tell me something that only wise men like you could know. I know what is true to me.”

“There are many men wiser than I am, devochka.”

“But they live differently from you, changeling. Tell me a story -- you promised to, anyway.”

“Let me think,” Ivan says, the chrysanthemum petals burning holes through the skin of his hands. “I know the story of a man -- one who was whispered to by the seasons.”

“What did they tell him?”

“The spring brought him their flowers, and he bloomed under their bright colors. The summer brought him their sun, and he grew tall under an everpresent sky. The autumn brought him their leaves, and he learned how to preserve his warmth under the chilling bite of cold.”

“And the winter?”

“The winter brings death.” Ivan closes his eyes. “But this man was given -- a name, a body, and a life, instead.”

“Did the winter choose him?”

“Perhaps.”

“What does he want to use that life for?”

“To work in trades,” Ivan says, opening his eyes again. “To work in truths.”

The winter wind falls around them, and Ivan gets to his feet, crushing the chrysanthemum petals in his bare hands that do not feel the bite of the cold.

“Is this your truth, changeling?” she asks.

“Tell your family that I wish for them to have good health,” Ivan replies, instead. “Run along, now.”

“And what truth will be mine?”

“It will grow within you -- as long as you have patience,” he says. “Simply remember to see -- to listen -- and finally, to speak.”

---

Ivan coaxes an abandoned campfire back to life using the dead twigs of the winter trees, letting the night fall over him like a funeral shroud. The forest trees shudder at his presence; they give up their lost, give up their fallen, let him feel their cold roots clinging stubbornly to life underneath the freezing permafrost, waiting for the spring flowers to return to the earth and sky where they belong and he doesn’t.

“Ivan Valentinovich,” he says, tasting the name on his tongue. It tells him who he was, tells him who his father was. Now, he doesn’t know if he needs it; he is born of ice, after all. And yet -- a name is so little to ask for from the greater world around him, isn’t it?

Ivan Valentinovich, the trees whisper back, the susurration of the falling branches around him singing like violin strings as they give up their dead for Ivan to burn into frostbitten ash. Ivan tears himself away from the spiderweb of trees and voices and tends to his material needs.

He hears the man’s boots crunching over the snow before he hears him speak.

“Changeling,” the man says. His hands must be warm under those thick leather gloves. He wears a fur-lined cloak that clings like a shadow to the contours of his figure, moving as supplely as a freshly-dead animal.

“Ivan Valentinovich, actually,” Ivan says, lazily, tipping his head back to meet the man’s eyes from where he’s sitting cross-legged in the snow. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Matvei Dmitrievich Alexeyev.”

Matvei’s name had been humming through the branches of the trees long before he’d even started to speak -- he is a brother, a son, a man in thick leather gloves and a fur-lined coat, who starts when he hears Ivan’s response.

“You know my name?”

“The forest does.”

“I do not understand.”

“Listen closely, Matvei Dmitrievich.”

Matvei pauses, for a minute -- but he only hears the crackling fire, dead wood burning into frostbitten ash.

“You offered my sister the truth,” Matvei says, instead. “I would like to know it as well.” He approaches Ivan, crouches at his side like he is approaching a hurt animal, his eyes sparkling in the light of the fire that casts Ivan’s eyes in shadow like pale milk and moonshine. Ivan thinks that perhaps he will never know, he will never understand, that Matvei can have his seeing eyes and speaking mouth but he will not feel the waves of steppe grass, feel the drops of water in those overcast clouds, sleep in the torpor of the bears curled up in their underground dens after having been fattened upon the blood and milk and honey of the summer land.

“I offered your sister a truth. It’s not a race,” Ivan says, simply. “Nothing is, really. I have learned throughout many lives to see -- to listen -- and finally, to speak.”

“I would like to learn from you,” Matvei says. He stares at the fire instead of the firs, warms his hands under his thick leather gloves.

“You already know and see your own truth,” Ivan says. He stares at the firs instead of the fire, but his hands stray unwillingly and unwittingly towards the cinders, watching the embers shy away from his fingers. “You simply do not understand them, not entirely.”

“I would not consider that sight at all, Ivan Valentinovich.”

“Blindness isn’t a sin. I don’t judge the children who beg for stories and beliefs on the cobblestone paths.”

“I’m not asking for a moral judgement; I’m asking for your gift.”

“I work in trades,” Ivan says. “I work in truths.”

“Tell me, Ivan Valentinovich, what you value. I will find it for you -- I will search the steppe grass, watch over the freezing oceans, hunt the sleeping bears with holy arrows and hawk’s feather.”

Ivan spreads his arms wide, lets snow fall between his fingertips. “I value what has value to you, Matvei Dmitrievich. In return, I can only show you my world and my truth -- within them, you will still have to discover your own.”

“What kind of world and truth do you see, Ivan Valentinovich?”

“They are both as cold as the winter wind.”

---

Matvei returns the following sunrise with a book of dried flowers, colors staining its dirty pages, dusty leaves leaving a trail that leads the town towards him as surely as a trail of blood leads a hunter towards its prey.

“This is the truth I have to offer,” Matvei says, presenting the book to Ivan by the light of the steadily-waning fire, by the light of the steadily-waxing dawn. “A collection of dried chrysanthemums -- gifts from my sister, who buys them from peddlers and merchants whenever they pass through the town, and gives them to me. It is a collection of the years gone by -- the colors, the memories, the life that lives within.”

“Is this the sister that I offered the truth to, Matvei Dmitrievich?”

“Her name is Olga Dmitrievna.”

“She is a nice girl,” Ivan says, “who offered me petals of the same flower.” He takes the book delicately in his hands, watches his fingers of white frost creep over the leather binding, cracks it open in a heavy puff of pollen, lets snow settle into the creases between heavy folios of aged paper. Red and white chrysanthemums stare at him from between the pages. There is no water left in them for Ivan’s touch to freeze.

“She is,” Matvei agrees. “You’ve met her -- you would know.”

“You are giving me her life, Matvei Dmitrievich?”

“A portion of it -- a reflection of it. Something that is part of her, but something that she is not part of anymore.”

“A fair distinction to make.”

“A truth, then, Ivan Valentinovich?”

There is a silence. Ivan flips through the pages of the book, deliberately, like he’s trying to absorb the colors on each page with only his eyes. Matvei listens to the crackling fire, dead wood burning into frostbitten ash, before Ivan finally speaks.

“Look at the sky,” Ivan says, raising his head to stare off at the distant stars. “Trace the constellations -- the Hunters, the Fish, the hundreds of spirits that haunt the heavens above us. They tell stories with more meaning than that which I told your sister.”

Matvei follows Ivan’s gaze, but he only sees the black expanse of a starless night, the void of a new moon. He doesn’t reply.

“Learn to recognize the patterns,” Ivan says, with finality. “Then, you will begin to see.”

Matvei leaves Ivan with a book of dried flowers and watches him drain their colors with the sheer intensity of his gaze. He hugs his coat tightly around himself, allowing it to cling like a shadow to the contours of his figure, and trudges back into the snow, following his hunter’s-trail of dried leaves back to the town where he came from, staring up at the black sky that covers the earth like a funeral shroud.

---

“I have looked,” Matvei says. His coat absorbs the cool, silvery glow of the waxing night; his eyes glimmer in the light of the waning fire. “But it is not enough. I have returned with a question, and another trade, if you are willing to accept it, Ivan Valentinovich.”

“I always am,” Ivan replies. The book of chrysanthemums is carefully put out of reach of the flaring cinders. There is no color in his dark eyes and his dark hair, plated in the caress of silver that makes him look like a creature that’d somehow managed to escape from the grasp of the earth that supports him. “Ask, Matvei.”

“I see the sky for what it is,” Matvei begins, carefully, tracing the lines connecting the stars with a clinical gaze. “The Hunter chases the Scorpion across the ethereal unreality of space; the Zodiac circles endlessly, month after month, a wheel of fortune that never ceases to spin onwards; the Eagle aids the Waterbearer with wing and with talon on their journeys into the heavens. I see the colors, the memories of worlds and lives that are not my own, but I have already given my own colors to you. Why is this, Ivan Valentinovich?”

“A truth does not always have to be given away, Matvei,” Ivan says. “Just because something is taught does not mean that it is irreversibly lost from its original student.”

“You still have no color in your eyes or your hair, though,” Matvei observes. “Was my truth really a shared experience, then?”

“I am the winter,” Ivan says, simply. “I can only learn as much as the winter allows me to. I exist, with or without the memories, the life, the red blood that runs through humanity.”

“Tell me, Ivan Valentinovich, what you have learned from our trade.”

“I learned that chrysanthemums are a very pretty flower.” The corners of Ivan’s mouth quirk upwards, like he’s trying to hide a smile.

“The next time the peddlers come through town, then, I will bring them to you -- in more colors than just red and white. You’ve surely seen more blood on fresh snow than any man rightly needs to see within a single lifetime, Ivan Valentinovich.”

“Life is a constant -- as I have become.”

“All mortal men would wish to claim the same.”

“Well, that’s a shared truth between the two of us.”

“You deal in trades, you deal in truths,” Matvei echoes. “But now, I wish for a truth that neither of us have sought to recognize yet, Ivan Valentinovich.”

Ivan watches as Matvei pulls out a bundle wrapped in white cloth, before he sits down next to him in the winter frost, crossing his legs neatly, his back straight, a primary-school student at the beckon of their strict teacher. He unravels the package carefully and reveals a loaf of bread. There are lumps where it should be smooth, boils where there should be hard crust, three slashes across the top that’d parted irregularly to reveal a broken, crumbling interior.

“Bread,” Matvei says. “I will break it with you. This is my truth.”

“I do not understand, Matvei.”

“I am offering you the vulnerability of a first attempt, the promise of company, a hand extended outwards and inwards to the winter snow. I offered you the shadow of the colors in Olga Dmitrievna’s life, and now I offer you the presence of mine.”

“You are offering me bread.”

“I am offering you bread, broken by a friend.”

“The winter will not protect you, Matvei Dmitrievich,” Ivan says, warningly.

“I seek no protection.”

“I have no control over the sleet that freezes the steppe grass, the ice floes that sink the greatest of ships, the frost that kills sleeping bears and watches the world grow white around it. I am no blizzard, stepping around the figure you cut in the winter haze; I am the cloud that brings it.”

“I have called upon you nonetheless, wishing to see a world and a truth as cold as the winter wind. I have brought my coat, you have brought your fire, and we will outlast each other.”

“Then listen to the forest, Matvei. Run alongside the elk, drink from the rivers that gave it life, allow the earth to provide for you as you have provided for me. Watch the stars, and they will turn for you. Allow yourself the space to see, to listen, and finally, to speak. A truth will come to you immediately -- a truth will come to you in time. Neither is more important than the other.”

Matvei breaks bread, and the storm falls silent around them.

---

“I have listened,” Matvei announces. His hands are sticky with the blood of a successful hunt; they are no longer reddened, but Ivan can feel the electricity crackling in the air, like Matvei’s life had been inexorably intertwined with the life of something both greater and lesser than he is, that’d occupied an entirely unique place in the world and still managed to pull Matvei towards it like an inexplicable gravitational force.

“What have you heard, Matvei?”

“I heard the calls of hawks -- the whisper of the steppe grass, the crashing of waves against a beach, the gentle breathing of animals, nestled in dens far away from the rush of human life. I hunted with arrows fletched with hawk’s feather, I watched sunrise and moonrise over the mountains, I returned lifeblood to the earth and shared lifeblood with those that I love. I see the winter wind cutting through the spring, bringing both death and life to the men that grasp at its heels. I see roots twining together between the stars and the skies, lines between my hands and my heart and the trees that grow thick around the town. Tell me, Ivan, is this the truth I was meant to see?”

“There is no deception in what you describe.”

“And did my bread provide a truth, as well?”

“Company is comforting,” Ivan says, instead. He smiles. “But you have still returned.”

“I merely spoke of the truth that came to me immediately. I offer one more gift -- for the truth that comes in time.”

“I work in trades,” Ivan replies. “I work in truths.”

“Take my coat,” Matvei says, decisively, shedding his pelt like an insect sheds its skin. He holds it over the fire and it slumps as supplely as a freshly-dead animal; Matvei cuts a rift through the funeral shroud of winter darkness with his sheer presence alone. “It is protection; it is warmth; it is a line between my hand and my heart. I no longer need a shield against what I used to fear.”

Ivan laughs, and the fire glows like the sun.

“Then take mine in return, Matvei,” Ivan says. He casts off his own coat and holds it over the fire and it’s as stiff as a cutting board; Ivan wraps the funeral shroud of winter darkness around him like a man condemned to life. “The fairest of trades -- a shield for a shield.”

They exchange hands. Matvei puts on Ivan’s coat and it brings with it the frost of winter, the cutting divide of ice, sleet laced between its thin lining and its thicker outer layers. Snowflakes fall heavy on his collar, like an inexplicable gravitational force is somehow drawing them there, but he does not feel the bite of the cold.

“The truth, Ivan?”

“Wear my coat for a week,” Ivan promises. “Feel the winter’s chill, and tell me whether spring is on the horizon.”

“I will not return without an answer.”

---

“Tell me,” Ivan asks. He is the first to speak, for once, having already heard the man’s boots crunching through the snow. “What did you see, Matvei?”

“I saw many things,” Matvei begins, slowly, “and I still do.” He closes his eyes, but Ivan steadies him. “I see snowflakes, falling from an overcast sky; I see a door being slammed open by a sudden cold draft; snow drifting through the cracks of open windows; icicles forming and falling from the heavy eaves of buildings. I see the steppe grass that buried you and the steppe grass that birthed you, the clouds rising from their liquid sleep into their liquid sky, the torpor of the bears nesting in their dens after having been fattened on the blood and milk and honey of the earth of the summer land that you have so disdainfully been rejected from. I see the warmth of fire, having been coaxed to life by a man who was whispered to by the seasons, who was gifted with a world and a truth as cold as the winter wind.”

“Tell me more.”

“I finally see you,” Matvei whispers.

The fallen branches around them sing their names, violin strings in an empty concert hall. Ivan Valentinovich, born of ice, smiles like a summer’s breeze.

“Is this your truth, Matvei?”

“There is no deception in what I describe.”

“I can offer you no truth of my own that you have not already heard.”

“You don’t have to,” Matvei says, firmly. “I know what is true to me.”

Matvei takes Ivan’s hand and leads him out of the snow-laden woods, away from the dying campfire that’d shied away from Ivan’s fingers, under the gaze of the Hunter as it chases the Scorpion across the ethereal unreality of space. The lifeblood of the earth thrums underneath their feet; the darkness of the forest clings to their coats; the bright moonlight wreathes their faces in its heavenly breath. There is color there, twining around them like starlight, red and white chrysanthemums blooming where their fingertips meet. There is memory there, hovering on the edges of their consciousnesses, like their lives had been inexorably intertwined with each other, neither one greater nor lesser, each of which had occupied an entirely unique place in the world and had pulled themselves towards each other like they were drawn together by an inexplicable gravitational force.

Household lights gleam in the distance. Under the moonlight, Ivan Valentinovich closes his eyes, allows Matvei Dmitrievich to lead him away from the winter, follows Matvei Dmitrievich into the spring, thinks that this is truth, this is life, this is --

#writin #writeblr #prose #please god format right im begging you :pensive:#anyway yall ever just [takes the concept of the intimacy of breaking bread and just runs with it]

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daydreaming-jessi · 5 years

Text

I hope you’re ready for a story about death. Beware, this will mention suicide and some gross things like bones cracking. Y’all said you wanted to hear it so I decided to go ahead and post it! The story of how Juno met Beetlejuice’s father and how she came to become the demon she is when we see her. It’s a mix of a fanfic with a lil comic in between because i drew it before I wrote this lmao and I wanted to include it but there wasn’t really a great way to do that. It’s a long boy, so the story’s under the cut. Hopefully it works, I don’t wanna clog anyone’s dash ^^’

Once, in a time long before cable tv was even a pipe dream much less when it was considered to be on its deathbed, there was a city where all thought it would reign endlessly. In that city there was a woman, long tormented by those above her. She felt powerless, that her fate was never in her own hands. She chased off all men that tried to marry her and control her even further, cut herself off from others that tried to subdue her. She was jeered at and made a pariah. She despised it all. She cursed the gods for bringing her to a world where she held no autonomy, she pleaded for something to change, something to give. It seemed that she would receive no aid though.

One night, she felt it was all too much. Drunk on gluttonous amounts of wine, she decided there was no hope for her. She took a knife, and one last time, despaired. “If I hold no freedom in life, then I shall seek it in the underworld, gods be damned!” And sliced her throat open. Her blood soaked the ground.

When she awoke again, she found herself not in what is described as the underworld. Instead, it was an endless void, with few shadowy wisps wandering the inky, black scape.

There the woman wandered, her wound on her throat constantly aching, forever reminding her of her deeds, though most everything else of her life was long forgotten in the void. Far did she walk, for there was no time to keep, no exhaustion or desire to hold her back, as she searched for anything. It was not until the darkness became a misty white did she take pause, wondering if any of this was worthwhile.

Then, she heard a noise. A groan, the shuffle of something large moving, and she felt that something with an endless gaze was watching her.

“Hey, that something has a name thanks! Also, you make me sound creepy, I’m just looking at the lady that’s wandered onto my turf, narrator!”

The woman startled, it had been so long since she’d heard another speak in a tongue she understood.

“Why so serious, eh? I thought this was supposed to be a funny story! Like, I know this story has a suicide in it and stuff, but man is this a downer. Ever heard of dark comedy?”

“Who’s there?” The woman asked, her voice a croak from long disuse, the air hissing out of her throat.

“What, you can’t see me yet? Are you blind or something? Oh crap, wait are you blind? This will be awkward if you’re actually blind, shit,” the voice responded.

The woman squinted her eyes, seeing a towering mass in the mist, just out of sight, sending a chill of terror down her spine. “Are you a god? A beast? Here to finish me off finally?” The woman tried to hide her fear, standing behind a mask of pride.

“Ha, God! That’s a good one. Beast is probably closer. Here, lemme just, don’t wanna scare this one off…”

The mass twisted and the sound of bones cracking and bloody flesh squelching filled the air. The woman tripped backwards hastily, watching as the creature moved inhumanly. Finally, a man stepped forward, a man much bigger than her, both physically and seeming mentally, wearing clothes the woman had never seen before, strangely tailored to his body in a way she had couldn’t quite comprehend. His hair flared out wildly, seeming to be a sort of black with green tint that seemed to be… moving. His eyes were the most startling of all, a bright luminescent green that seemed to pierce into the woman’s very soul.

“How do ya do? Been a while since one of you newly dead’s wandered all the way out here. Usually it’s just me and my two buds,” the man grinned, revealing sharp teeth that belonged more to a predator than a man.

The woman swallowed thickly. “Buds?” She asked, trying to keep her body from shaking.

“Yeah, Tunk and Harley. They’re a riot,” the man said, jutting a thumb to two boulders that seemed to suddenly appear from the mist.

The woman blinked, taken aback by this man, thing, creature’s attitude.

“Speaking of, what about you? What’s yer handle?” The man was suddenly at the woman’s side, eyes darting over her in a quick one over. The woman startled away, gasping. His skin was almost translucent, and he reeked of sulfur.

She took a deep breath, composing herself, before the question hit her. Who was she? She almost crumbled to her feet upon realizing that she had no answer.

“Ah, jeez, they sent another fainter. Here, sit on Harley, she doesn’t mind the weight,” the man helped the unnamed woman onto the bigger of the two boulders.

The man plopped onto the other one in a most undignified state, picking at his sharp teeth with fingers that, upon a second look, were not human hands. It was as if his fingertips were frostbitten, but rather than fall off, they grew claws that belonged to a bear.

“What is this place?” The woman finally asked, desperate for some sort of answer to all this madness she’d been subjected to.

“Ah, there’s that thousand dollar question. You, my friend, are the lucky new inhabitant of the netherworld! Applause may be had now,” an uproarious applause filled the air, as streamers and balloons manifested as well, though how the unnamed woman knew what these things are was uncertain. The man crossed his legs, twice. With a third leg.

“Now, you may be wondering, Netherworld? But I thought the afterlife was ‘insert belief here’, and I’m here to tell you everything you knew was wrong! There’s no god, no cycle, no anything! It’s all one big ol’ void! Welcome, to the rest of your afterlife! Drifting around nowhere forever, until you finally dissolve into that nothing. Exciting isn’t it?” The man continued.

The woman’s head spun. Nothing? No gods? No underworld? No judgement? Only a void? It sounded so... chaotic. “But, but how could there be nothing? How could there be no gods? We-we came from something how could we dissolve into nothing?” She asked.

The man shrugged, still seeming quite chipper about the whole thing. “Don’t ask me. I just live here.”

“But, but… what about you? Aren’t you going to fade away as well?” The woman asked, desperate.

“Oh I can’t. I’m technically not dead! No I’m a shoggoth, and we just... Live here. Rents cheap, restaurants are alright, and just lookit all this space! Can’t complain, I guess.”

“But, but, how can you live? Why must I die? What is the difference between you and I? Dammit! Dammit all, it’s just as unfair in death as it is life! Damn everything, damn it all to oblivion with me!” The woman stood, rage filling her empty veins. All of the suffering, it was never ending. She would never find peace.

The man, the shoggoth, watched the woman with interested eyes. A plan was forming in his mind, a plan he’d long since been thinking. “It is unfair, isn’t it? Man everyone hates it! No point to doing anything, it’s all for naught. We’re all gonna waste away. Well, you are. I won’t. I’ll just be stuck here in the boring old Netherworld. Forever. Chatting with rocks and making mist puppets.” He demonstrated this skill with a beautiful puppet recreation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

The woman paused in her ranting, looking over to him. “There must be a way, there must be a way to change this.”

Hiding a smirk, the shoggoth stood. “Well… there could be. Might be. Possibly be. It all depends, I guess.”

“Enough of your riddles. What is it you have schemed, I can see for myself you know a way.”

The shoggoth blinked, caught off guard by the woman’s rushing through his theatrics. He quickly shook himself back to his plan.

“Alright, smart woman I see. So, I’m a shoggoth. A powerful, unstoppable beast. I can crush cities, move mountains, do whatever I want. But I’m trapped here. No shoggoth can leave the netherworld. And newly deads? They’re powerless wimpy lil things, but. If they were to have the power of a shoggoth, well, I always thought you lil air suckers are pretty unstoppable. No way could the netherworld hold you back if you had the right tools to get outta here. So! I think, maybe we should form a deal!” He held his hand out to the woman, trying to smile charmingly, emphasis on trying.

The woman stared at him flatly, unsure. “A… deal…” she said.

“Yes’m, a deal! Just one little itty bitty deal that combines my powers with your soul, giving you the power to do as you please, and giving me the ability to finally go where I please. All we have to do is share a name, giving us a connection.”

He could see that she was hesitant. It was time to put on the charm. Humans like nicknames, right?

Power filled the air. The woman, now Juno, felt her body tear itself apart molecule by molecule, and repiece itself back together. She wasn’t sure if she screamed or if it was the sound of the world around them bending to the shoggoth’s will.

After what felt like eternity, Juno opened her eyes. Abdul looked back worriedly. Upon seeing her moving, he breathed a breath of relief. “Oh good! I thought you were like, dead squared.”

“What... is this...?” Juno brought her hand to her face. Already her thoughts were filled to the brim, she knew the ins and outs of the netherworld, how to manipulate it, to control it. Energy hummed under her skin, the sensation of her slashed throat long in the past. Slowly, she moved her hand, the mist formed into a ball before her. Slowly, a smile filled her face.

“This is having control over your own soul. Looks like we’re not powerless anymore!” Abdul grinned, reaching a hand down. Juno took it and he helped her stand up, and she slowly moved forward, marveling at the way everything looked now. She understood what it all was, what Abdul was, what she was.

“So, partner! Ready to take the world by storm?” Abdul asked. Juno turned back to him, and for a single second Abdul felt a flicker of hesitance. Something was different. For one moment, Abdul saw something in Juno’s now red eyes, and for the first time ever he felt a shadow of fear.

But then Juno smiled coolly, looking normal once more. “A demon and a shoggoth together are unstoppable. It is time to bring order to the netherworld. A system. We cannot have souls wandering around so freely. What if they found shoggoths as well? We can’t have everyone have this power, lest one starts to take it away from others for themselves. Come, Abdul. Let’s get to work.”

Abdul watched as she started off, back to where the souls came into netherworld. “Hey, narrator... is this really a happy ending? I’m not so sure. I mean, Juno seems nice and all. Just, is this really what she should have?” he muttered.

I cannot answer.

Abdul sighed, unhappy at the lack of response, and started after Juno. “Probably just overthinking. I always overthink, y’know? Who cares. Soon I’ll be able to see earth. I’ll be able to see what the humans like about life so much. Hell yeah. Yeah! Wait up Juno!” He hurried after her, leaving Tunk and Harley in the mist.

#beetlejuice musical #beetlejuice broadway #beetlejuice the broadway musical #beetlejuice #fanfiction #fanfic #juno shoggoth #juno #shoggoth #digital comic #digital doodle #digital sketch #digit #jessi doodles #abdul shoggoth

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thatonebirbnerd · 5 years

Text

Giving In

Word count: 2295

Trigger warnings: Suicide (but not exactly?), body horror, mind control, amputation, vomiting, a little swearing. Contains depictions of severe frostbite on a nonhuman, death, and mild body horror.

The Dream and Nightmare protect sylvari from corruption by elder dragons, but when someone like Siocánta (sho-KAHN-ta) rejects both, it's only a matter of time. She dreamed of Jormag, and her love of the cold and morbid curiosity may get her more than what she bargained for as she ventures north toward the dragon beckoning her. Sons of Svanir be damned: she'll find a way to be cold enough, even if it kills her.

So this is what I’ve been hinting at for the past few days. I really thought it couldn’t happen, but here we are!

AO3 link

It seems so long ago that I first heard its voice. No, not Mordremoth’s. We all heard that. No, I mean Jormag; for in my mind, the voice of one dragon was merely replaced with another.

I’d left the Nightmare Court by then, and was well into the Shiverpeaks, desperate to leave the stifling heat of both sylvari territory and civilization. As much as I liked the ideal of rejecting the laws of life and morality, I couldn’t believe how many of the courtiers genuinely enjoyed torturing neophytes - or how much I overheated even in the coolest reaches of its territory.

Even after Mordremoth’s death, a whisper nagged at the back of my mind, too quiet to hear. Was this the remnants of my link to the Dream of Dreams, trying to rekindle itself and find a lost soul? I certainly assumed as much. But as I reveled in the cold around me - finally, somewhere that didn’t feel like it was killing me slowly! - I felt pulled toward every shard of corrupted ice I encountered on my way northward. No, it was just the call of the void.

Well, it might have been, until it grew louder as I made my way into a Svanir-infested cave.

To be blunt, I realized I’d made a fatal mistake after it was too late to turn back. The cultists called me a wench and a slave to a dead, heretical dragon - but they figured that either I’d die here, or I’d become their minion if this somehow worked. What a fucked-up win-win situation that would be. But it somehow meant that they didn’t butcher me on the spot. Instead, they led me over to a secluded patch of frozen ground. Spikes of magic-clouded ice, gleaming blue and purple, surrounded me. As the Sons of Svanir bragged about their plans for me, for the first time, I could understand something the faint whisper said.

Let me help you.

Against all the judgement I had, be it better or worse, I let the cold creep in as I listened to what this strange new presence had to say.

I must have been in that cavern for hours, maybe even days. I sat there, alone and numb, with the inklings of words infiltrating my consciousness to keep me company. Every surface around me was covered in ice, and I saw myself change in each shimmering wall and crystal. The frost touched every corner of me with its magic, curling leaves and petals and tracing filigrees over my fading bark. Most of my armor fell off, dead and dry. I stared into the clearest facet I could find, refusing to blink as my once-green irises shifted to the bright turquoise of my surroundings.

But at some point, I simply gave up. Nothing had come to me to bargain. I was still alive, still sane, and apparently intact. I walked out - straight into a Vigil patrol.

Their norn leader spoke up first, a burly dark-bearded man. “C’mon. Get up. What’s a sylvari like you doing in a Svanir den? You’ve gotta have a death wish.”

A sandy-furred charr replied to him. “Hold on. She’s as frozen over as one of them. How does that…”

A sylvari - and let me tell you, I did not want to see another one here in the mountains - interrupted the charr. “We plants get frost. Figure this one’s no exception.”

“She’s not in good shape,” they continued. “And I’ve never seen eyes the color of that ice before, but hers are so bright I’m worried she’s genuinely turned. I don’t think camp has enough resources for what she needs. Get her to Hoelbrak.”

“I’m still a pathetic grandchild of Mordremoth, much to my chagrin,” I retorted. “I’m not quite sure what took me into that cave, but hell, I’m in one piece, and that’s what matters to you folk.”

The charr signaled me to climb on her back. “I’ve carried rucksacks bigger than you,” she wisecracked. “We’ve got no spare gear, and I figure you shouldn’t be in the snow even for another hour.” That bad, eh?

You can’t trust them. Kill her. No. Why would I bite the hand that feeds me? Couldn’t do that.

Which was probably a good thing, because my condition was that bad. Lost most of my fingers, and nearly my legs below the knee, but got away with just some toes missing. They’d grow back, but no telling how slowly. The charr got some of her friends to make what they joked were the smallest combat prosthetics they’d ever made, a pair of metal gloves with articulated fingers. Moving what remained of my hands let me control the gloves to grip things and do simple enough tasks - and at least I could fight.

---

But enough about my reckless four-years-ago self. It’s not even worth bringing up how I got this big old doofus of an ice drake. Thing is, I’m a lot further north now. I have the Vigil to thank for taking me on the long road up. And here, the whispers are a hell of a lot louder. They are now a voice. Jormag’s voice.

I’ve seen others of your kind here. Curious things, you sylvari are. Every single one of you is desperate for control over your own lives. I can give you that. And so much more.

After spending nearly a year stationed in Frostgorge Sound, I’ve finally made it to the edge of the world, as far north as anyone can go: Bjora Marches. Once the norn heartland, now the den of the ice dragon’s champion, Drakkar.

It’s so cold here. Yet not cold enough, even as I walk amongst glaciers. Everyone here can hear the dragon. It’s disturbingly soothing. Alluring, even. Its voice is androgynous, and able to morph into anything, usually the reassuring voice of a loved one. I cut all my ties long ago, but sometimes I hear the voice of a friend from the Court, and wonder what went wrong. Why did you leave? You could have brought so many with you.

You can’t trust the soldiers, Jormag tells me. They will say they want to help. They don’t. You’re better with me. But I’m not ready to believe that yet. Instead, I wander off.

The inland sea to the west of Jora’s Keep and the kodan settlement of Still Waters Speaking, once called Drakkar Lake, is completely icebound. I follow the frozen waters southward, past crystalline cliffs and treacherous crags. The lake is still at night, empty of kodan fishers, but I still have to evade Svanir as I duck into a lonely passage - one that leads to a moonlit cave.

It’s beautiful. And it’s… familiar. I saw this in my Dream, the Dream I swore to forget. Here, Jormag’s voice presses on my mind nearly as much as Mordremoth’s did. No, more than that. But instead of a headache, its presence exhausts me, in a way that just makes me want to fall into a deep, refreshing sleep.

Now that I think about it, I could sleep here. Give in. Sleep.

I could rest. Yes. Rest.

It’s freezing, but I feel warm. Hot, even. I take my coat and boots off, and snap off my gloves. I stretch what remains of my hands. You could stay here forever. Maybe I could.

I lie down, spreading myself over the smooth, icy floor. Some repressed instinct inside of me makes my bark scream in pain, threatening to spill its blackening death into my heartwood. Then it dulls as I go numb, and I let my consciousness slip away. For a moment, I hope it doesn’t come back. Why would you ever leave this place? But instead, for the first time in a decade and a half, I dream - a dragon’s dream.

---

I find myself in… is this the same cave? No. I’m still looking up at the sky, but in every other way, it’s different. A deeper voice growls around me, echoing against the walls, deafening yet near unintelligible aside from a single phrase: You are here…

There’s even more ice here, and it’s… green. How strange. I talk as I stir. My voice is not mine. My voice is the dragon’s. Something rises inside me, forcing the words out of my frost-chapped lips.

You have done well, child. I will give you the strength you seek. But you must first let go.

I stagger to my feet. My leaves are as frostbitten as they were in that Svanir den. My fingers and toes are still stubs. Every movement I make is wrong, every joint at once tense and limp. My head clings to my neck at an odd angle. It could snap, and I could fall down. I am a puppet. Jormag’s puppet.

Ice fortifies. Ice protects. Yet you still fear that which can save you?

My veins are still. My sap is frozen, expanding, ready to burst out. The cold fills every cavity of my body.

I limp to a gleaming wall, smooth and polished as a mirror. I see myself. I am not myself.

This is what you could be. With me.

Don’t you like it?

I can’t respond. The chill creeps up through my throat, seizing my tongue.

My limbs creak, laden with ice, as I reach for my neck in a panic. Then I keel over, tipped off balance, as my head swings forward. For a moment I can see my hands growing back, corrupted crystals pushing through the bark, the new digits covered in rime, before everything goes black.

Then I wake up, gasping for air, still the same old me, in the same place I was before I drifted off.

Jormag continues to plead to me as I put my armor back on. Don’t you want this? Don’t you want what you lost?

The stumps of my hands and feet have lost feeling, and darkened to an ugly shade of blue-black. I can’t lose more of myself and still fight.

I have no choice but to say yes.

Then I will take you, child, to the place where the ice is green.

---

The frostbite is bad enough that it’s hard to walk. But if Jormag says I’m not going very far, then I should trust it and push on.

Indeed, I only have to retrace my steps back to the center of Drakkar Lake. There is a tunnel leading beneath the surface. No one has gone in and come back alive, short of Sons of Svanir. I think I know why.

Everything in the tunnel averts its gaze from me. Must be Jormag’s blessing - because I’d be too slow not to get caught by any of its minions in here.

I’m stumbling, now, as I wind through this strange new cavern. But it isn’t long before I see it: green ice. Not this chamber. Not yet. Soon.

I’m warm again. I leave my armor and gloves behind. My arms and legs are numb. I have to crawl.

Just a bit more. Come on. Not much longer. But the entrance to this chamber, the one I dreamed of, is a ledge. It must be a twenty-foot drop to the ground below, and I can’t walk, let alone climb-

Jump.

If you say so, Jormag.

It takes all my strength to get to my feet and brace myself. I fall, and for a moment I’m aware that my head is… in the wrong place -

---

Is this the end?

No. Not for you. I have plans for you.

Get up.

I’m… awake? So cold. Talking. Not my voice. Familiar… that dream… YOU ARE HERE. I’m moving. Stiff. Ice all over me. Ice inside me. Neck feels… wrong. Cold is good. Finally enough. But need my coat…

My arms… they… hurt! Not numb anymore. Not black anymore? Trying to scream. Something in my throat. Can’t… breathe!… no… don’t need to breathe. Wait - my hands, they’re…?!

Calm down, child. Let it take hold. Take your weapons.

They’re so… beautiful. I can… move my fingers. One by one.

Your dagger broke. But you can do better than that.

AGH! - still choking back something - a spike of ice is… coming out of my hand. There are more coming… all over my wrists. The reason they hurt. They’re so… swollen…

Take the big one. Snap it off. See? It’s a new dagger. You’re welcome.

Thank… you…

Need to bend over. My neck - oh, no. Have to… fix that. There we go. Something in my mouth. I gotta… urgh.

Everything inside… the shards… won’t stop coming. There’s spit frozen on my lip. I try to talk to Jormag. The only one who will listen now. All that comes out is ice.

Now go home. They will let you in. Then you kill them.

---

“I’m not sure what happened to that strange sylvari, the one with the mechanical hands who kept insisting she liked the cold. She came back to camp last night in a silent daze after wandering off a few days ago, leaving her drake behind. We placed her in the infirmary immediately, as her frostbite seemed so severe, she should have been dead. I say “should have” because she summoned icy daggers out of nowhere and utterly butchered the medics who were about to save what they could, then fled. Someone told me there were crystals all over her arms. I heard someone else say that she opened her mouth to speak, but frozen flowers and petals fell out instead. She’s… she’s a sylvari. She can’t be icebrood. Can she?

“Spirits save us from her deranged wrath, but we can’t speak of her anymore. For as the kodan say, her voice is not her own.”

- Final notes in a fallen Vigil soldier’s notebook

#guild wars 2 #gw2 #gw2 fanfiction #fanfic #tyriaslibrary #sylvari #kestrel writes #siocanta #suicide //#body horror //#mind control //#amputation //#vomit //#language //

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teamdoesminecraft · 6 years

Note

Everything about the pokemon au is perfect... is there lore???

oh you know me of COURSE there’s lore

It’s all kind of tangled together and hard to explain right now, so this post is gonna be a little less narratively-written and a little more expository. but as always, shoutout to @crystalfloe for being my partner in crime in developing this!

Some of the Ninetales dex entries say that it “came into being when nine wizards merged into one.” Naturally, we took this and ran with it: you know how illusioners are a sort of “secret mob” in Minecraft that were never actually implemented? Hundreds of years ago, in this lore, nine illusioners (possibly the last of their kind) met together in secret to preserve themselves. After a lengthy process of spellcasting, all of them gave up their physical forms and agency to create a new, pokemon spellcaster: Seto. Seto is his own person, not a conglomerate of nine, and he never really feels that he’s not; sometimes, though, when he argues with himself, it feels like there’s nine voices in his head all with different opinions. Being based on a kitsune and also having access to magic and curses in this AU still, he can shapeshift/illusion himself into a nearly human form-- he can’t/won’t get rid of the tails though, ever.

In these hundreds of years ago, Seto did some travelling, and his illager background eventually brought him to a wooden mansion. He lived there for a while, learning new magic under an evoker, and developing a gradual distaste for most other “humans” because of everything negative the illagers had to say about it. One lone adventurer, though, as they always do, stumbled upon the mansion, and found their way inside. Many illagers were asleep at this point in the night, but Seto wasn’t; he was the one who “greeted” the intruder firsthand. Said intruder wasn’t the nicest person either; they lashed out and tried to grab Seto’s tail to hold him down in a fight.

More Ninetales dex entries will tell you that “grabbing one of its tails will result in a 1,000-year curse on you and your descendants.”

Said adventurer lived and died uneventfully after that, but their descendants bore the burden. Sneaking around at night, looking to steal from illagers, and digging their way through the frostbitten winter woods, the family line was cursed with Weavile aspects; the original adventurer was doomed to slowly become one, even losing their mind in the body. Their bloodline wasn’t quite as unfortunate, but became a version of werewolf; were-weaviles, technically. Looking at too much moonlight at any one time causes them to transform and be mentally “replaced” by a far more animalistic version of themselves.

That’s why SSundee wears his glasses; they block out any excess moonlight. Of course, on the full moon, he has no choice but to close every curtain, because at that point there’s just too much to avoid. SSundee lives a rather quiet life, running a pastry shop in a no-name village, keeping his transformations to a minimum. He somehow inherited the original map that led to the mansion in the first place; he keeps ahold of it just as a reminder to not go there, ever.

SSundee’s got a friend, though, who’s willing to do anything for easy money.

Husky took the map, and ignoring SSun’s protests as just standard-SSun-paranoia, went to find the mansion to dig up any potential treasure there. Once inside, he was pursued by illagers, and fell between the walls; in the darkness, he reached for what he thought was a rope. It wasn’t, of course, and Seto had a whole new curse to lay. Husky had never been a fan of rain, surfing, or even baths as much as showers; Seto thought it would be the funniest thing to ruin the experience for him even more. (do I really gotta specify what pokemon Husky is) Husky’s started down the path of slow transformation, with an extra wrench in the formula; if any part of him gets touched by water, that part takes on more kip-like traits until he dries it. He found out while using SSun’s shower, and blamed it on him like it was some sort of shitty prank; when SSun wasn’t open about what he thought happened, Husky threw the door open.

It was a full moon that night (because of course) and Husky was terrified for a short while (because of course), running as far as he could. SSun, before he lost it, was even more terrified, because as far as he knew Weavile were nothing but predators; he doesn’t know much about Weavile, though, and what he neglected to learn was that Weavile are pack bonders, and that he had already built up a strong friendship with Husky. In summary, Husky spent that night trying to avoid being force-fed dead sandshrew by this terrifying demonic weavile that was also still somehow the mom friend.

BACK TO SETO, he has 1 (one) friend who isn’t an illager: a fellow troublemaking fox. Lox is a lonesome zorua who somehow wormed his way into the mansion (because doesn’t everyone eventually) and learned how to control his illusions by watching Seto in secret. Lox uses these illusions, generally, to fuck with people; it doesn’t help that Seto finds it absolutely hilarious. Eventually, Lox learned to create his own individual human form to cast, and learned sign language; he set out on his own just to explore, planning to find more people to mess with. Lox eventually discovered a small cottage in the woods, and was ready to just completely ruin this person’s day by unveiling that Deep Pokemon Magic--

--but True was, unfortunately, already a pokemon fanatic.

Even disregarding Tepig and Zubat, True tends to a bazillion wild pokemon, all the time, constantly. He’s invested in learning everything he can (scientifically) about how they work, especially their ties back to humans. (True is, in this AU, the one person who would be 1000% on board with being part pokemon, and also the one person who never will be.) When Lox tried to mess with him by impersonating people, True immediately recognized him as a Zorua, and tugged him inside for interrogation. True was relentless in his efforts to understand, poring over books, tests, and learning sign language to communicate with Lox better. Lox eventually mentioned that he didn’t want to be pinned down to one location, and didn’t plan on living forever in True’s little house; True realized this, of course, and waved him off, saying Lox was free to go wherever he wanted. Once away, Lox realized that though he liked the outside, he had enjoyed his time with True almost just as much; now Lox looks for any excuse he has to come back, and pops in from time to time for no reason.

One big excuse to come back, of course, is discovering another human-pokemon anomaly; when Lox saw a man with golden horns quietly using telekinesis to steal a lunch in a market square, he intercepted him and led him all the way back to the cottage. Sky was, understandably, confused and a little distressed; eventually after True sat him down they were able to have an actual conversation.

Sky’s history is (surprise surprise) Mary-Sueish. He’s a shiny hoopa (the only hoopa, so technically nobody knows he’s shiny?), and in this world, all legendaries have the ability to form-shift between pokemon and human. He was created by two other legends-- Notch (Arceus) and Herobrine (Giratina) to assist in preserving/expanding/helping the world. They both act as sort of guides for him in this AU, with neither really being evil or omnipotent. After creating Sky, they realized that while he was powerful, he had no experience in the world; they set him in a mostly-human form and instructed him to travel the world, meeting new people, and understand how humans and pokemon interacted and got along. They also, via a certain amount of magic, prevented him from saying what he or his history was; they didn’t want anyone finding out about the legendary child and trying to kidnap/control him. One notable ability of Sky’s is wish-granting; Hoopa being based on a djinn, we had to give him the magical bullshit. He can only grant one a day, though, in total, and he has plenty of restrictions on them-- no time travel, changing things that already happened, etc, etc.

While Sky couldn’t tell True any of his actual history, True has been helping him learn more about his abilities and is 100% willing to travel with him anywhere to learn more about him.

SPEAKING OF NOTCH ARCEUS did you know he had a bastard son?? And that son was Xephos? YEAH THATS RIGHT TC/YOGS CROSSOVER AND I DONT GIVE A SHIT

Respawning doesn’t exist in this AU, so the yoglabs complex serves a real purpose via the cloning machines. Xephos doesn’t actually know he has any Arceus genes in him; they’re locked away and not apparent at all. That’s not why we’re looking at yoglabs right now, though: we’re here for Bajan.

Backtracking once again, Bajan grew up in a relatively decent-sized village, watching Wizard of Oz (Poke-Oz?) and absolutely loving the Infernape character. When he was about eight, his village was raided by pillagers; he had to run, as fast and as far as he could. Eventually he stumbled into the mountains, and up to Xephos and Honeydew, who were conducting a relatively boring test compared to normal, and YES i’m saying that Bajan’s gay dads are from the yogscast, nothing matters anymore

Bajan was adopted into the compound and was a very curious and energetic child. So curious and energetic, in fact, that he stole a transformation talisman and used it without calibrating it first; he passed out and was given two weeks to live, with his human DNA in constant conflict with the over-abundance of non-specified Pokemon DNA. Not wanting to support child murder, Xephos developed a particular method that he severely hoped would prevent Bajan from dying; he had Bajan pulled out of his safety-fluid-tank for a few hours so he and Dew could talk to him. They explained the procedure and asked if he had any requests-- Bajan still loved Infernape, so that was the first thing out of his mouth.

In the experiment, of course, they had to use Chimchar DNA to more closely match Bajan’s youth, but the procedure worked; he was given a very specifically calculated transformation talisman to wear to prevent him from becoming unstable again. (He was a little miffed that he had been given the “baby” form, but hey, what could you do.) Bajan lived for the next few years as a poke-human hybrid in the labs, generally being a good, if destructive, kid, practicing his firey abilities. On his birthday, he committed a small act of mischief; he lied to Dew and was able to go outside the labs for the first time since he got there.

Bajan fucken loved the outdoors, because who wouldn’t, and went running around way past his curfew before he got lost. While lost, he stumbled upon an absol-- Jerome had been on the run for as long as he could remember, because of the human superstition of absols causing natural disasters. After enough poking and prodding, Jerome eventually agreed to lead Bajan back to the vault door; on the way back, he locked up and refused to move. Bajan followed his gaze and realized that Jerome had sensed an avalanche before it could even begin-- there was no way they were going to outrun it. Bajan positioned himself between the oncoming snow and his new friend, and put every effort he could think of into spitting out the most powerful flamethrower he ever would--

--and he evolved. Bajan had never realized he could evolve before, and spent the next five minutes in complete and utter glee before yanking Jerome back to the labs to show off his new form and his new friend. The yogs weren’t as excited as he was to bring an absol into a place prone to nuclear disaster; he was grounded for lying, staying out past curfew, and the aforementioned absol-napping; Xephos took a mild amount of pity on Jerome, though, and agreed to test whether or not he was actually the cause of natural disasters. Eventually, when nothing really proved that he was, Jerome was allowed to talk to Bajan again-- at which point Jerome asked Bajan to translate his request to the yogs.

Jerome had lived his life being unable to enter human society, even as a pet, because of the superstition around absol; seeing Bajan, a healthy and happy human-pokemon hybrid, had give him an idea. As Bajan translated, Jerome himself wanted to be a hybrid, so he could talk and interact with people. Xephos, though skeptical, was never one to turn down a scientific opportunity, and eventually was able to complete the procedure. Armed with a new half-human friend, a newly evolved form, and an advanced understanding of maturity, Bajan approached both Xephos and Dew one night with a request: he wanted to go outside the labs, with Jerome, and explore the world on his own to participate in battles. Eventually, they conceded; Bajan was abso-fucking-lutely ecstatic, and so was Jerome, to be travelling with someone for the first time ever. They currently roam the world as a duo, picking fights and having fun.

The entire team will eventually meet up, either through Sky’s wish-granting, Bajan and Jerome’s roaming, or Lox’s people-hunting; maybe a combination of all three. From then on they can travel the world together, working hand-in-hand to discover new things about each other and help one another as some of the only of their kind in this world.

Xephos, however, still sits in the labs, working on understanding pokemon in a much less communication-based way than True. Every time he re-clones himself, some piece gets lost, sending his mind into a darker spiral... it’s only a matter of time before he discovers his locked Arceus genes, and uses them in a way he definitely never should have.

#team crafted #minecraft #yogscast #pokemon #yoglabs #au tag #lore #ask #long post #Anonymous

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anuknowha · 6 years

Text

Mouth of the Devil.

Title: Mouth of the Devil - Mother Mother.

Genre: Romance, Smut, Horror

Warning: Severe and very detailed amounts of gore, please turn back if this in any way affect you.

Pairing: demon!Michael Langdon x Reader

Rating: R

Word Count: 5,342

Characters: 27,162 W/o spaces: 21,835

You and Michael meet for the first time, but he ends up letting the more demonic side of him take over.

It hadn't been long since the apocalypse started. I'd been separated from family and friends through their very graphic and violent deaths. The atmosphere has been quite lonely, quite empty.

It's winter here, and it felt cold, colder than it's ever felt before. The trees are coated in layers of white snow, and the ground is about a foot deep of tiny clear crystals packed against each other to create a giant white mass that could be seen for miles. I could see it from my window, and I could feel it through my walls. I feel the chills that ran through the room in my veins and bones. They leaked from the cracked windows, and under my sheets that were made from 100% cotton. I could hear the sound of the hard winds hitting against the window and flurrying through the air in a sound of what sounded like twisted moans. It made the light blue curtains that covered the windows sway. The breeze tugged at my ears which felt almost frostbitten at this point. The room was dark. I grabbed the blanket and threw it over my head, than using my hands I rub them over my ears to try and warm them up. Within five minutes I grew annoyed, and had sat up with the cover still around me. I turn so that my feet hang freely off the bed. Stuffing my feet in my cold shoes I find myself standing up almost stiffly. I shuffled my way to the window where I yanked the curtains shut even more only for them to come back open. I small grumble left my throat as I move towards my door. I make it through the doorway and down the hall to my stairs. The dreaded things were always a nuisance to me, but I find myself walking down them everyday to get some breakfast or even leave the house. The leveled floor was cooler than the one above, and I could just feel the freezing air consume the blanket and me. It left my breath foggy and my teeth chattering. I quickly found my way over to the fireplace, where I threw in a piece of wood. I had used the lighter in my pocket to set a fire and before you know it, a tiny flame began to kindle. I threw in yet another piece of wood and watched as a bigger flame started to form in front of me. Satisfied, I danced to the kitchen to find myself something to eat. I check the fridge and look through its contents. My stomach starts to growl, so I find myself grabbing a bowl for some cereal. Milk and a box of Frosted Flakes manage to find their way to the table. Pouring myself a bowl, I stare out the window to my left, watching the snowfall heavily outside. I grab my bowl and get up, walking towards the window to get a better look. I find myself sitting on the window ledge staring out blankly at the houses that lined up across from mine while I stuffed my face with cereal. A sigh left my throat, knowing that I was the only one left on my block, and probably in my town for that matter, but the outside world didn't know that. When the apocalypse started months ago, I remember being with my mother, father, and two siblings in this house. We were full of joy, and so was this house. But one day they came. On the other side of town, we heard a bomb had dropped. It left us shaken as we feared for our lives. Within hours at least another 3 bombs were dropped within a small radius of the town. They had stopped by midnight, and by that time we thought it was all over. We were wrong. The next morning, before sunrise, we were awoken to the sounds of gunshots that sounded like they had been fired nearby. Mom took the liberty to look out the window, which she soon found a mistakes. With a streak of horror she watched as dozens of people ran through the streets trying to flee men arms with guns. She awoke my father and us and told me and my siblings to hide in the basement until it let's up. We all hurried into the basement and secured the door tightly as the outside world filled with chaos. Into a few minutes of hiding they came to our home kicking down the door and turning over every piece of furniture that was perfectly graced around our house. They were hungry for blood, and I knew they were. I held my little sister close in my arms as our mother and father watched the door. That's when the noise came. They started kicking at the basement door. They found us. I held my sister tighter as my parents tried to get us to hide in the small door connected to the wall. We denied them this, and watched as the burst through the wooden door and started firing shoots at our parents. I quickly covered my sister's ears and eyes as me and my older brother watched from the corner of the room. I couldn't turn away as I watched them shoot a bullet directly through our father's skull. My eyes followed it with fear as it went through the back of his head and came out a bloody mess. He was dead on impact, and his body fell backwards down the stairs, landing only feet away from us. I turned my head but my brother watched the pool of blood form other our father's head. Our mother couldn't help but cry and scream. That didn't last long though. They shot her in the chest; an injury she managed to survive as she collapsed to the floor but I could tell she couldn't hang on to life forever. She tried crawling towards us before they shot her through the neck, which I'm sure punctured an artery. It caused her blood to spray on us before she too collapsed to the ground, dead and bloody. I hurried to wipe the blood off of my sister's face to prevent her from screaming as the men came over to take us away. We were scared out of wits end, shaking, fighting our tears, fighting everything in our power not to act in such a way that might get us killed. My brother gripped us tight. "When I count to three, you guys run to the door, leave. Hide, and protect our little sister. Please Y/N." He whispered. I nodded, and but our sister over my shoulder as I got ready to run. "One... two... three!" He almost murmured. And on three I ran past them, Lillian wrapped tight in my arms quietly crying. One of them started shooting at us, but every bullet missed. We ran out the house and ran to the backyard where we found some bushes to hide behind. Shots rang from the neighboring yards but none came from our house. I noticed from the corner of my eye they took him hostage. Our brother along with some others. And I couldn't stop him. A few more hours of gunshots and bombs followed this incident and it left the neighborhood in shambles. By early morning, everything lay quiet. My sister had cried herself to sleep on my shoulder, but I sat awake and alert. I sat her down gently as the son came up, and went to check around to see if the coast was clear. I walked out to the streets and my mouth lay agape. For both directions I look, there were bodies laying across the ground with blood puddled underneath them. I walk past and stare at each body as they lay uniquely across each other or just sprayed out on the hot summer's ground. I knew I had to get out of here, but not till after my sister wakes. Looking up the sky was no longer the bright color of blue but instead a more stained red, as if the blood on the surface somehow was consumed by the sky to leave a depressing undertone. I take this time to head back into the house, a time to actually see the damage that was done, which wasn't much. I decided to go into the basement, where I came across my parent's dead bodies still laying there and growing cold. I clench my fists and start to cry, but I knew I couldn't just let their bodies lay in our house to rot. I built up enough courage to drag both of their bodies up the stairs and out the door into the street, but not within eye distance, in order to protect my sister. Next I found myself cleaning up the mess of blood to the best of my ability, a lot of the bleach, and a little water, still left the floor stained but made it less obvious. After these tedious tasks, I grew tired, and went back to my sister who I fell asleep next to. Later she had awoken, and started crying. I was startled awake by her outburst but I could tell she was hungry. I took her back into the the slightly battered house to get a meal. Day in and day out, we would take care of each other. The time we spent together was almost never ending. Well that's what it felt like, like an eternity. Us two walking together for a while. When we passed the bodies, I'd shelter her eyes and we'd hold our breath. Enjoying a talk, and speaking about our parents and the fun we shared as a family. Sometimes when she was tired while walking, I would pick her up and carry her. The local store wasn't far, just a bit of a walk. And it was a walk we would prefer to take before sundown. The first time we left out, we had enough food to last about 6 months, but she started stress eating. She couldn't help it. The trauma slightly got to her, and I would find her shivering in my arms and crying almost to the point of choking on her own saliva. She would have nightmares and wake up screaming to the top of her lungs. Within 3 months she had gained almost 50 pounds. A skinny healthy 10 year old girl gained weight quickly and it made her heavier to carry. It made her sick, and I tried my best to take care of her. About a month ago we left out together for the last time. She passed out as soon as we left the house. I left her at the door, wrapped up tight and ran to the store as quick as I could. I ran back with the last bit of groceries that were still good enough for consumption. The food the mice hadn't managed to find their way to. As I return, I could feel something wrong, I left the food in a wagon and darted towards her slumping body. I put my ear towards her chest and noticed her heart wasn't beating. I touch her head, and her body was cold. Tears formed at the corners of my eyes, and I screamed as loud as I could while I grabbed her close and held her against my chest. I cried until I had no more tears, I took the food inside and dragged her body to lay next to mom and dad's almost completely decomposed bodies. I ran back to the house and locked the door with a bookshelf.

I noticed my food supply was getting low a lot quicker than I expected, for I did not want to venture out into this snow. I was hoping to be able to last through the winter but I was greatly wrong. And although I was alone, for what seemed like miles, I didn’t want to leave this house. I didn’t have the right clothes to go through miles of snow to find another store that was packed with food. But with doubt in my mind I found myself throwing my heaviest winter coat on, and zipping it as far up as it would go, almost choking myself. I grabbed a hat, and put it on my head as tightly as I could. I shuffled through my closet to find a pair of thick black gloves and some knee high boots that were built for weather just like this. I zipped the boots all the way up my calf and stuffed my pajama pants inside. My hands slipped into the gloves with ease and I grabbed a few snacks off the counter before grabbing my blanket and draping it around my shoulders. I went towards the front door, with the past in mind, and took a glance around the house. I remember the last time I went out with my sister, was the last time I had set foot into the outside world. And after she had died, I wasn’t expecting to last much longer than I have been. My shaky hands help me steady myself as I push a bookshelf from in front of the door, almost letting it fling open in response. I took one step out, and felt my foot sink into the snow. I felt the snow quickly pound the blanket that I had wrapped around my body. It felt rough, almost like hail pellets landing on me. I keep taking steps into the snow, one by one, until I feel something almost break underneath my footing. It was than I realized I was stepping on the bones of the innocent, and it was not the best route to go. With that in mind, I started walking along the houses, closer to their walls to avoid desecrating their frozen graves. And within what seemed like hours, I believe I managed to get out of my town. I didn’t know where I was going, or how long it would take but it was so hard to find a way by the amount of snow on the ground. I felt myself walking for about 4 hours, before needing to take a rest. My feet hurt, my body ached and I felt myself getting frostbite around my face. I plopped down next to what seemed to be a tree and closed my eyes expecting the worse. I fainted.

I woke up warm, startled by a bold crackling fire that sat only a foot away from my face. I jumped back, noticing that I was covered by a nice warm blanket. I was about to scream but instead I quickly look around and observe my surroundings. This was a room I’ve never seen before, luxurious, clean, and it smelled like perfume. I sat up, the blanket still wrapped around me and stared straight into the fire.

“Nice to see you’re awake.” A voice greeted me, from what only seemed like feet away. I suddenly grew chills up my spine, and I turn to see the face of the man who spoke to me but his back was turned.

“Who are you?! And where am I?!” I finally get to see the rest of the room. A nice bed with red silk sheets. A desk, that was very neat, but had a laptop on it. He was sitting at said desk. He had blonde locks, that went to his ear just about. He was wearing all black, and a red tie. He seemed dressed to impress, and impress he did, but nonetheless he still seemed frightening.

He closed his laptop quickly and chuckled and he turned to face me. “You in my room, I had found you laying in the snow almost dead. I was going to leave you there but I noticed how beautiful you were and decided to take you in for myself.”

You grew angry, “What did you do to me!?”

“Nothing.” the man motioned. But you never let your eyes leave his for some reason. They were momentarily lost in his blue orbs. “Would you like some food?”

I take a second to answer, for I didn’t want to have myself trapped in a rock and a hard place. I felt my stomach grumble at the thought, but I didn’t know who he was and therefore, me wanting food was less of an importance. He raised a brow at me, I’m guessing he heard the thoughts of my inner turmoil through the lack of my stomach’s contents. He got up to leave the room and my body grew stiff as if I were paralyzed by fear. I couldn’t move. I just watched as he walked out the door, I just sat there waiting for him to return. And within a few minutes he did, and he brought a guy in, who was wheeling in a tray with many golden domes spread out across the top. He lifted the lid up to one of them to reveal a hot steaming lobster with a side of butter. My eyes lit up with excitement, and drool started to drip down the side of my mouth. I had never seen a plate so beautifully filled with such expensive meats, except for on television. My family wasn't exactly poor, we had exactly enough to get what we needed and a little more, but most of that "more" was spent on vacation for all of us, so we weren't always stuck in the house forever. I inched closer to the food, staring it down and debating with myself if this could be poison. My gut told me to eat anyway, and if it was at least I tried to survive longer. I get to my feet and walk over to the hefty meal. I grab the lobster and dip it, all the while this strange blonde man and his "servant" were watching me almost as if they were waiting for me to croak. I took one bite and waited a minute to see if the "poison" was going to take effect. To my surprise it did not at all taste suspicious, in fact it was the most delicious thing I've ever had. I stuffed the rest of the meat from the shell into my mouth and gobbled it down as if I was starving. He motioned the servant of his away and pushed a seat to the serving tray so I could get more comfortable to eat. Soon he found himself back at his seat in front of his laptop, but he stared at me the whole time. His blue eyes piercing, feeling as if they went through my very skin. It made me uncomfortable, and set me at unease but I didn't stop eating, I didn't even slow down. A small smirk appeared on his face as plate after plate became empty until all were almost licked clean. "Hope you enjoyed your meal." He purred. "Your appetite seemed to increase after the first bite and you seem absolutely full. So, since you asked about me, what were you doing in the middle of the snow?" I wanted to make up a story, ones he'd believe. I didn't want to seem poor, he sure wasn't. He looks like he was too well off, as if he wasn't affected by the destruction that went on around him. By the way his room was he seemed to be one of the higher. I took a second to fabricate something false that made me seem like I was more than I let on. "I had went to play in the snow..." Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what happened. "Are you so sure about that?" Turning from me he opened up his laptop once again and started to type something. I didn't pay much attention to what he was looking for but it didn't matter much to me. "Um ye...?" I stutter, face palming internally. "You sure you didn't pass out on the way to going to get yourself some more food? Weren't you out there dying miss Y/N?" He brought his hand down to stroke his chin, or that's what it seemed like from this angle. How did he know that?! Something about him was off, and I didn't like it. "H-how'd you know...?" I stutter, feeling the food in my stomach want to come back up. "Well, don't you want to know, Miss Y/N?" "And how do you know my name?!" I fell out my chair, feeling my life was at stake. I couldn't breathe. "Who are you..." Folding his hands he placed them under his chin, he crossed his legs and spun his chair to face towards me. "I am Michael Langdon. The Antichrist, and this here is my room." I never was a religious person so I let my guard down with a laugh. I couldn't bare to believe him. I laughed so hard I almost cried at the thought. His eyes narrowed at me though, as if he was pissed off at my response. "I- I'm sorry I never heard of an Antichrist, I'm not a fan of religion." Within the blink of an eye he was looming over me. "H-how...?" "I told you who I am. Do you not believe me yet?" "Pfft! I wouldn't believe you regardless." He placed his hand on my forehead and our eyes met. Imagery flickered in front of me, glimpses of my family from the day my brother was born, and past the day they died. Some imagery of what happened to my brother flashed past my eyes and I started to cry. He let go from my forehead and I looked at him wiping my eyes. "M-my brother is dead too...? How do you know all this? How were you able to show me all this?" I was barely able to speak, I felt sick to my stomach. "I'm the Antichrist I told you, and although I don't care if you believe me or not." I try to stop the tears from flowing but you couldn't help it. I use the blanket around me to dry my eyes. "I can't believe he didn't make it... My brother... My sister. Mom, dad, all gone because of this apocalypse. And I couldn't save any of them. And it breaks my heart that I couldn't do a single thing." I look down staring at the palms of my hands, the lines in between and how I thought they were signs of failure. I've never felt so hopeless before, I thought at least one of them were safe. I guess he could feel my pain, he stroked my cheek softly in his palm and my tears dripped on his hand. He wasn't at all disgusted and his expression seemed to form signs of sympathy. I couldn't bring myself to look at him, a stranger, while my eyes were flooded with pain. But I thought that I didn't have to when he let go of my face and walked towards his desk. I assumed he was going to go back to whatever he was doing on his laptop. Instead he lifted his laptop and moved it to his bed. Walking over to me slowly, he stopped right in front of me. He pulled me to him and kept me in a loving hug. One that I didn't expect to be in but came to love. He pulled away just enough so our lips were inches apart and our eyes locked. He ran his fingers through my hair and cupped my cheek before moving in to press his lips against mine. I kissed back and started to pull at his tie, which came undone easily. It was soon on the floor. He took the time to push me to his desk. My ass pressed against the desk so I situated myself so that I was now sitting on top of it. His lips continued to press against mine, and he slid his tongue out, past my lips and into my mouth. I sucked on it, lustfully and pulled him closer as he slid his hands under my shirt to unhook my bra. It collapsed on my lap and I took it, and tossed it to the side. His eyes never left my body, as he pulled my shirt up and above my head. From there he trailed a valley of kisses on both sides of my neck. They felt like butterflies. He kissed down my chest, and in between my breasts which caused me to let out a subtle moan. It made me feel so good. He unbuttoned my pants but instead ripped them off along with my underwear. When I looked up at him, he started taking off the rest of his own clothing without me even asking and pulled me back into a loving kiss. His hands caressed my body, and ran over every inch before I felt bites on my ear. With every second he touched me I felt myself getting lost in ecstasy. I fell in love with him more and more. He pushed me back so my back was against the cold top of his desk. He kissed down my stomach. "Fuck... Devil daddy. Shit..." "Isn't this what you wanted love? To have me become one with you? To have me with you, for me to love you like you love me? I know how lonely you've been these past few months, after your parents died, after your brother and your sister died right in your arms. You needed the comfort I gave you. You needed someone to care and hold you like they use to and like you use to do to your sister." His tongue left an invisible trail of saliva down your stomach and to your cunt which he only licked once; the whole time you had your hands running through his hair. "Michael, please... I love you, I want to be one with you, please take me." I almost cried. And so he did, he slide his hardened cock into me slowly and started thrusting at an even pace. My fingers drifted down to hold his hands and he held mine. He kept himself steady as I felt him move in and out of me lovingly. It was calm and he even leaned down to kiss my neck a few times, leaving a few hickeys on my neck as he went along. A few minutes past and I feel myself about to cum, I tighten my grip around his hands and let myself come undone underneath him. "Michael!!" I scream as I arch my back and my vision grows fuzzy. As I was continuing to catch my breath he started to speed up his thrusts. I thought he was getting close. The sound of our skin fills my ears with joy and happiness. I no longer felt like I was fighting my loneliness, I felt like I was giving in. I felt like it was getting swept away into the winter winds that I knew were still outside this place, but were quiet. It wasn't all white for miles anymore, there was a sun, melting away the snow and creating a path for me to walk down. It was a bright sun, with no smell of lingering death from the neighbors or dead carcasses of animals discarded around my feet. It felt as if I was being lifted, and held in the arms of an angel. As if all my troubles fade away. I actually for once lost track of time in this world and maybe even the next world over. "I love you Y/N." Words that I never heard since my sister passed. But this time it was different and it brought my heart to a racing speed. In the middle of having sex me, I felt his demeanor and physical appearance changed. His nails grew longer and to a point, his eyes turned a deep black, black wings seem to appear on his back and spread out widely blocking my view of everything behind me. His teeth all became like ice shards ready to fall and pierce my body. It was like he became angry, demonic, hungry and completely lost in greed. He never stopped fucking me the whole time, his penis seemed to have grown and started ripping the tissue from the walls of my vagina. And everytime he pulled out, my blood sprayed across my thighs and down my legs. It was covering his dick and dripping on the floor with each thrust. He ripped off my right breast with his teeth and left me screaming. I was in pain but I was also intoxicated by love. I couldn't tell him to stop. My body craved to be ripped apart piece by piece under his name. It hurt so bad, but it felt so good. His nails dug into my stomach and started forming holes that blood started seeping through and onto his hands. I only watched as he started ripping me in half. He stopped and took his fist right through my chest cavity, on the side where my heart was, causing me to gasp and arching my back towards the upward position he's pulling me in. I was dying, and I gasped for my last breaths of air. I knew he didn't mean to do this, but I know it was all done in the name of love. He left. You died that night with a soul damned to hell. Your eyes were wide open and your lips only slightly parted from your last gasp of air. A path of blood ran from your mouth and down your cheek. Your skin was already pale and almost as white as the snow you once trailed in. By the time he was done with you, your chest was separated from your waist. Your intestines were in between the top half and bottom half of your body forming a bridge that connected the flesh that hung off your bones. Your right breast was ripped from your chest and the tissue from it was laying bloody on the floor. Your stomach was laid to your side, the organ ripped in half and the contents of your last meal, as if it were vomit, a mix of dark brown and red bits had spilled out. It was thick. One of your hands didn't remain intact, he had bitten off your finger on your left hand leaving a jagged bloody bone exposed. Tiny chunks of your flesh still hanging on for dear life. A gigantic pool of blood was under you and it completely coated the desktop, so much that some of it started dripping off the sides of the desk onto the floor. Drip. Drip. The sound of blood hitting the wood below couldn't be heard by the outside doors but it could be felt in the surrounding room. It was heavy at once but began to slow down after he left your body there for hours letting it empty itself out. Your blood formed into the shape of a pentagram around his desk, which was the mark that only made him stronger. The room lay completely silent and your blood completely still. And the room smelled of very sour excrement. There lay your body, ripped in half completely, and a mess that was scattered across the table. You were sweet, and your organs balanced out for a healthy meal for a demon such as him. The last thing you saw wasn't even his face, but instead the head of a goat, covered in what you assume was your blood and demonic wings that seemed to engulf you in darkness. And in the darkness you saw your brother who held his hand out motioning for you to join him. You were his meal, and maybe his most delectable one. And now, you too, have fallen to the mouth of the devil.

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weremembertheholocaust · 6 years

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This Day in History

26-29th January 1945: KÖNIGSBERG DEATH MARCH and PALMNICKEN MASSACRE: 7,000 inmates of Stutthof concentration camp are forced by German troops to march from the town of Königsberg to Palmnicken, in the Soviet Union. Some 3,000 die en route; the survivors are forced to flee into the icy Baltic Sea, where they are cut down by automatic weapons. Only a few survive; the Soviets later hide all traces of the massacre, which is not revealed until 1998. - The Holocaust Encyclopedia by Walter Laqueur

An article from the NY Times from 2000:

Yantarny Journal; Russians Awaken to a Forgotten SS Atrocity

By MICHAEL WINES JAN. 31, 2000

At the start of the death march in Konigsberg, they numbered about 7,000 -- the vast bulk of them women, most quite young, all clad in wooden-soled shoes, thin rags emblazoned with yellow six-pointed stars and telephone wire belts on which were strung their cups and tin-can bowls.

By the time they reached a vacant lock factory in this nondescript seaside village, after two days and 25 miles of brutal winter weather, there may have been 4,000 left. They remained perhaps four days, then were herded down a bucolic cobblestone lane and past dilapidated workers' cottages to an abandoned amber mine on the shore of the Baltic Sea.

It was there, 55 years ago Monday night, that SS guards split them into packs of 50, sent them fleeing down the beach and on to the ice-covered water itself, then mowed them down with machine guns. Others were escorted to the mine and shot point-blank.

Auschwitz had been liberated four days before. ''Never forget,'' the civilized world said.

But the world forgot about the massacre of Jewish innocents at Palmnicken, now the Russian town of Yantarny, until today. Today, on the beach, a roaring gale whipped the sleet into needles and raised towering whitecaps on a sea the color of wet cement. At the base of the amber mine, a steep concrete-buttressed cliff resembling a battlement, about 200 mourners dedicated a small pyramid of stones and a plaque to the victims of the Konigsberg march and the Palmnicken massacre.

They were the first tangible recognition that the march and massacre had ever occurred. Until today, there was no memorial to Holocaust victims anywhere in Konigsberg -- known now as Russian Kaliningrad -- even though it was home to several small concentration camps.

Astoundingly, the whole of the Kaliningrad region -- a million people, the eldest of whom fought valiantly to defeat Hitler's army in World War II -- was utterly unaware until a year ago that the massacre had ever taken place. ''As far as I know, no one needed this,'' Rabbi David Shvedik of the Jewish Community of Kaliningrad said in an interview. ''For the authorities in Yantarny and in the region, it was not at all interesting to them to remember 7,000 dead Jews.''

The story of the massacre, and of Kaliningrad's slow awakening to it, is at once riveting and chilling. Put simply, the victorious Soviet Union closed the book on Nazi atrocities once it seized Konigsberg from the Germans at the end of World War II. Thousands of Germans were deported in rail cars to be replaced by Russian immigrants; Jewish Holocaust victims were reburied as ''Soviet heroes,'' stripped, here and elsewhere on Soviet soil, of religious identity. Red Army reports on the massacre and on the discovery of mass graves were written, filed and classified.

Kaliningrad became a Soviet naval base and a closed region, steeped in secrecy. Horrific memories half-lived into rumor, then myth, then taboo enforced by the Kremlin's own unspoken, unofficial anti-Semitism.

''As far as I know, not a single person was ever sentenced for this,'' said Aleksandr Aderichin, the investigative editor for the Kaliningrad newspaper Dvornik, which helped awaken the region to the massacre story more than a year ago.

That Kaliningrad awakened at all may be credited to Christians -- a German and an American -- who grew up near Palmnicken and would not suppress their own memories of the slaughter. The German, Martin Bergau, witnessed the executions of some women and gave harrowing testimony to them in a German-language book and in a submission to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem.

The American, Gunter Nitsch, had only heard stories of the killings as a boy. But as an adult, he was so haunted by the massacre's specter that he was compelled to track down the truth -- and in the process, to unleash the long-hidden accounts of what happened.

''I feel awful,'' Mr. Nitsch said last week in a long telephone interview. ''These were my people. Most of the people in my family were members of the Nazi Party. Whatever happened cannot be changed. But it must not be forgotten.''

Mr. Nitsch, now 62, was a 7-year-old when the Red Army stormed through Poland and into Konigsberg in early 1945. As the Communists moved north, the Nazis began vacating a network of 30 camps ringing Poland's Stutthof concentration camp, moving 20,000 Jews away from the advancing army. Ninety percent were women and most were from Hungary and Lithuania.

The fate of all 20,000 is unknown. What is clear is that roughly 7,000, by the latest estimate, wound up at a sub-camp in Konigsberg, a Baltic port, in January weather so unusually bitter that ice floes stretched hundreds of feet from the shore. On Jan. 26, Nazi guards began marching the crowd, clad only in rags, 25 miles northwest to Palmnicken.

Perhaps one to two thousand or more died along the way, either of exhaustion or execution as they tried to flee their torturers. ''We marched in heavy snow,'' Dora Hauptman, one of the captives, told Yad Vashem in 1994. ''The cold was fierce, and a freezing wind blew.''

The frostbitten survivors were imprisoned in the Palmnicken locksmith's factory and, after three or four days, marched five abreast to the seashore. Some were taken to an open-pit amber crater. Mr. Bergau, then a 15-year-old member of a German home-defense force, watched in agony as they knelt and were shot in the back of the neck with pistols.

Other women were less fortunate. In his testimony, Mr. Bergau recalled riding a horse in the area a week later, hearing gunshots and sprinting in panic toward the seashore. ''My chestnut suddenly stopped short in his tracks, hesitated and snorted,'' he wrote in 1994. ''I could not believe my eyes. Between the ice floes, near the shore, the water was thick with countless floating bodies. They were bobbing like swimmers in the swell.'' He fled, he said, ''in cold horror.''

Of the estimated 7,000, there were 13 known survivors. One of them, Ms. Hauptman, had dived into the sea after a man told her that ''someone must survive to describe their barbarity.'' Shot once in the hand, she crawled ashore and was taken in by a heroic German woman, Bertha Pulver, who hid her until the Red Army arrived on April 15.

Mr. Nitsch saw none of this, but his Lutheran grandfather did. The victorious Soviets commandeered German civilians that summer to exhume the sand-covered bodies and transport them to mass graves and cemeteries for reburial.

''He couldn't believe it had happened,'' Mr. Nitsch said. ''It just blew him apart. For the first few weeks, he couldn't talk at all. All he did when he came home was to read the Bible. He lost a lot of weight. And within a couple of months, he died.''

Though a child, Mr. Nitsch worked too, weeding and painting a cemetery where the victims had been reburied. Soon his family was deported to East Germany; later, he fled to West Germany. And in 1964, he moved to the United States.

But he did not forget. Friends said he imagined the killings. But at a German book fair in New York City, he found a volume with a chapter on Palmnicken and, he wrote, ''felt vindicated.'' Still later, he found Mr. Bergau's book with its eyewitness account of the murders. Working on a still-unpublished book, he asked the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Yad Vashem for files on the Palmnicken slaughter, and received Ms. Hauptman's account, among others.

In 1998, he flew to Kaliningrad and asked regional officials for help. A state archivist listened, then said he must be mistaken; no such event could have occurred and been erased from history. Nor was there any trace of the Jewish cemetery where he once weeded graves.

''This thing had been forgotten,'' he said last week. ''I could accept that they didn't know where the cemetery was, but to find out they didn't know about the massacre at all was mind-boggling.'' Not until the archivist sent Mr. Nitsch to journalists like Mr. Aderichin of Dvornik did the truth emerge. A spate of articles led to an observance of the massacre last year; this year, fund raisers collected enough for a memorial.

The region's governor spoke at its dedication today, something remarkable in a society where Jewish suffering in World War II was little acknowledged even a decade ago.

There is a new question now: how to investigate rumors that 8,000 more Jews were marched to the nearby town of Baltisk, sealed in a barracks and then killed in a huge explosion.

''The fact that we gathered here instills hope that something like this won't happen again,'' Rabbi Shvedik said today, shouting into a bullhorn to be heard above the wind.

Later, in the rundown kindergarten that is his congregation's temple, he recalled a woman who walked past the little memorial as it was being completed this month.

''She came by with her children,'' he said, ''and then she asked: 'Why are you putting up a monument to Jews here? Why not a monument to the Russians?'''

The monument in Yantarny mentioned in the above article.

The Palmnicken affair did not end with the ghastly slaughter on the beach. At the village of Kraxtepellen northwest of Palmnicken, rumors spread about what had been perpetrated not far from there, and it was said that some Jewish prisoners had managed to escape and were roaming the 124 ∙ The System Disintegrates district in search of shelter. A remorseless hunt was launched, and most of them were apparently caught and cruelly murdered, as the Red Army commission reported: Inspection of the sites of the savage extermination and burial . . . uncovered 263 bodies, of them 50 bodies of men, and 204 bodies of women, all of them aged 16– 25. These bodies were laid in rows, in three to four layers; here and there however bodies were thrown haphazardly into the ditch measuring 1.6 × 2 × 3 meters. . . . Clothing on the bodies were rags and tatters of the kind characteristic of the camps— striped, with the numbers sewn on the front, and six- pointed stars on the back and the sleeves. Most of the bodies had foot- gear made of wood (sabotes) on them, though some legs were wrapped in rags. All the bodies were infested with vermin and completely emaciated. For the most part all the bodies of men exhibited injuries to the skull caused by shooting; splintered bones of the skull indicating shooting at close range. Some bodies bore marks of more than one bullet wound which indicates that the killing was carried out by an automatic weapon shooting detonating bullets. The skulls and the bones of the extremities of the bodies of most of the women were splintered, which indicates savage killing by blows with blunt instruments. The undergarments of some of the young women’s bodies were torn and pulled down their thighs, whereas some bodies of the women were found in the posture of cynical abuse, their legs pulled up behind their heads, without any undergarments.246 This report was not composed for political propaganda purposes. The Red Army investigators, who included physicians, pathologists, forensic medicine experts, and several senior officers, checked and recorded what they saw with cool professionalism. Several local people displayed humanity in the midst of this bloodbath. One of them, Günter Hartmann, hid several women prisoners, who had succeeded in escaping the massacre, in his barn, and several other local residents opened their homes to escaping prisoners. These were a handful of the survivors of the Palmnicken slaughter.247 All in all, the number of survivors was estimated at some 200, 50 to 100 who escaped the shooting on the beach and the remainder prisoners who made their escape before the transportation to the beach, and found shelter in forests or in local homes. - The Death Marches - The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide by Daniel Blatman

#cover up #russian history #german history #jewish history #holocaust #mass execution #genocide #violence against women #red army #nazi #nazi history #racism #antisemitism #death march #palmnicken #Königsberg

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