#his family is very tangled in mythology

[pardon-me-what-the-fuck]

Imagine if Nico as he got older started to become more… godly like nico in my au is a legacy of nike, Aphrodite, and Thanatos courtesy of his mothers side of the family might explain more. But like he is so connected to the mythical world more then the mortal world he slowly turns more godly. His blood color changes from red to black, when his blood touches anything besides himself it becomes this acid like substance that he takes advantage to kill enemies. Although he hates it since his blood color being red was the only thing that makes hin believe he is still part mortal he thinks its cool

[quinloki]

Charlotte Katakuri - BITTER

Requestor: Anonymous (you were wise to request this anonymously I think XD ) Reader Vibes Requested: AFAB she/her CW: I don't know how to warn this. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. It's short and SHARP.

Your scream of terror rang in Katakuri’s ears like a siren. Just like the mythological beast’s enchanting song, he couldn’t get the sound of it out of his head.

It echoed with every thump of his heart.

Your eyes wide with fear, the way you went ghost-white at the sight of him. Everything about him was monstrous to you, not just his size, or his fangs, or his lineage. His very existence within your home had struck you as wrong.

Things had been slow going between the two of you, since your marriage by Mama’s will nearly a decade ago. It had taken almost a year for you to each truly relax around one another. Months after that before you could consider what you did to be called cuddling.

Slowly, carefully, and steadily, the two of you had grown closer. Responsibility turned into affection, turned into trust.

Turned into love.

A sweet love that was the soft tangle of fingers as you sat together. A gentle love that was full of deep breaths and slow movements, consummation within the confines of what intimacy you could handle. A love that was akin to a tree, more than a flower. Slowly taking root, but sturdy and strong, branches hefty enough to cradle you both well.

It was all gone now.

He didn’t even have to ask why. He didn’t even have to ask how.

Slumping to his knees, Katakuri presses his forehead to the ground, doing everything he can to look smaller, to look less threatening, to look as fragile as he feels.

“I won’t hurt you.” He says, voice even and firm, held together by decades of practiced control. He repeats the phrase a couple more times, until the thundering of your heart calms a little. Until the shivering in your legs and arms aren’t skittering through the floor against his skin.

“I promise, I will never harm you.” He says finally, eyes and face still pointed toward the floor. He doesn’t have his scarf nearby, he hasn’t needed it while inside his home for a long time. He could use his power to get it, but if you’d lost enough of your memories that you didn’t even know what Devil Fruits were, he didn’t want to send you into a panic right now.

He could look ahead.

Should.

But he can’t.

Every ounce of his control is focused on his own heart, his own words. He cannot spare a drop of concentration for anything else, or he will fall apart. The perfect son of the Charlotte family, defeated by a single wail.

Countless battles. Internal and external. Enemies and weaknesses laid low and set as mortar and brick to separate himself from anything that could crack the mask he’d made.

Scraps of film were left on the floor. Shattered pieces of the remnants of your memory.

Left behind on purpose.

Left behind on command of his mother.

Left behind as a message, more than even the state you were in.

He had dared to put something above himself. Above his family. Above his mother. He had dared to love you so completely that only a fool would’ve missed how far he’d fallen.

To dare to love anyone more than his family.

This was the cost.

[cherubispunk]

ICHOR. BLOOD. WATER. (part ii // blood.) - Din Djarin x Witch!AFAB!Reader

summary: stranded. alone. a traitor to your people, your family. aeaea is the prison of paradise you call home, and he is the prophecy you like to call an enigma. the 'man made from metal', forged in fire, melted by your spell that is no witchcraft on your part. he is the hunter, you will always be the prey. it is the way as the fates designed it.

a note from lucy: this was meant to be posted earlier and it was also meant to be longer but ive been through so much these past few weeks i couldnt bring myself to write much more. for those waiting on dealer!Joel, its coming. it might just take me a little while. thank you all for your patience. i love you all, look after yourselves.

playlist

wc: 1692 Warnings: 18+ MDNI! DARK CONTENT! mythology!au, no use of y/n, dubcon, smut, p in v sex (unprotected), reference to , cussing, mentions of witchcraft, voyeurism, mentions of drinking alcohol, mentions of food and descriptions of eatin, oral sex - m receiving, orgasm denial, toxic relationships, dom!din/sub!reader dynamic, sex as a means for manipulation and control, manipulative!din, stockholm syndrome?

series m.list | m.list

You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite.  — Madeline Miller ‘Circe’

‘Strangle me with Aphrodite’s very pearls. What a beautiful creation. Funny how we will all die but seek love for a pitiful salvation.’ Words engraved, etched into the gravestone of…this. This creation of torture. Of serpents’ forked tongues and gnashing lions teeth. Silence so large and gaping it made your heart dare to beat only in the ricochet of the shiver down your spine. He was the sharp blade of a knife, you were the wetstone he used to perfect its slide of slice. Bleed ichor from your veins while he grazes blunt teeth over the shallow skin upon your collarbone. 

You didn't care. ‘Give me that pointed, glimmering blade’, you thought, its vermillion stain now smeared too with gold. ‘Give me that blade. Some things are worth bloodshed.’ 

He was a killer. And his bounty was set on your spirit. Your calm. Your superiority over him. In his field, he was a master of his art. His armour gleamed as a trophy for his succession of rank. His clan– Here…he was a novice once again. Knew not a drop of knowledge of your craft, nor the whispering properties of each flower bud, fruit pit and herb stem in your garden. Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme were nothing but cooking materials to him. And even that was a stretch to his mind. 

You wished to be Anothny’s Cleopatra to him. Not a wicked witch of the western tides. Toughened beauty, once black coals under pressure, now gleaming in diamond and its own giant covalent structure. Him swooning over your flesh for months and his tongue speaking within your mouth. There was no turquoise over your eyes, nor the stain of the madder root over your lips to paint him with. His face was still an image that belonged to your mind. Not the reality you lived now with him tangled in your sheets. Rippled muscled under a tapestry of scars and skin. 

He did some things. Mainly doted care to the child whom you sense properties in. A magic akin to your own, yet not all the same. His was one of energy, a flowing combination of entities, living a breathing through you, him, the mandalorian and each living being on this island. Mauve further. It was a balance that even you did not know the tipping point of nor the origin of its birth. It was shaking. It crumbled under the erosion of water to salt pillars until its foundations skimmed to their very bare bones. 

It took with it the light of your sanctuary and morphed into Tartarus, so your soul may burn in forged cast iron chains. They were white hot in the black soot tinders. Glowing violently in your corneas while they singed sight. Scorched touch. Seared taste. The battle of yours and the child's power. 

You watched in awe one night, the lights out, but a single sliver of silver from Artemis’s glow caught the sharpened tip of a knife you know strapped to your thigh under the skirts of your dress. Would his blood sizzle when it touched the blade, as you only imagined it ran hot and thick with the brazen burn of his anger. Ichor? No. He was no god. But his touch was of divinity. And left a tingle of power in its bone cramping wake. Wailing for more. 

Only just the night before you had dropped to your knees in the doorframe of your chambers. Took off his armour beforehand in wordless undoing. Your tragic hero ending. And then gave him your mouth. Not words. Nor cunt. Just the mouth. Tip of the tongue, the lips and teeth. The stretch of his cock still wrung out your throat. Slick and wanting while it mimicked the way your cunt hugged the tip so well. Tased of salt and something more. Something forbidden or taboo. And he took his time with slow shallow thrusts at first, a large gloved hand cradling the curve of the jaw that went slack to let him buck deeper. 

This morning was one of the first times you lamented over the now restricted motion in your jaw. The ache still nagged into the later hours, when The Mandalorian returned from your gardens, the bloody and mangled caracas of a rabbit thumping down on the table. He sat at the head of the table opposite you, cleaning the blood from his knife on his cape. You thought if you saw his eyes — be it hickory, azure, or pine — you would have crystallised in that very moment and that very form. Cured oak table under your fingertips, feet planted into the terracotta floor. His irises setting your thrumming heart dead still.

This was the man you let into your bed.

He remained there, sat still in his chair while the child babbled in the kitchen with you. You took that rabbit. Skinned it. Dressed it. And roasted the meat in a marinade of white wine and spices from the edge of your fenced garden. Later you would hang the pelt and let it air — make something for the child. Mittens maybe. 

For now, you took your time circling the table to place each plate down: cheese, seasoned greens, a cup for the vessel of wine to his side. The silverware gleamed menacing in dim candlelight while he awaited each plate, unmoving in his armour while each delicacy was gifted to him upon his high table. And when you retired to your seat, the child had taken his too and started his feast, sticky plum jam smeared over his lips as he dribbled innocently and unaware over his rabbit leg.

But upon your silver plate was a single strip of black cloth, folded over twice on itself. 

Your eyes lifted to meet him, wide in wondering question. Only to hit a barrier of beskar when you see his visor still covers his face. Not a scrap of food had been helped onto his plate by his still gloved hands. His boots that traipsed dirt through your door were still on his feet, caked in mud on the soles.

“What’s this?” Nothing. Not a word past his lips. “Am I to figure it out for myself?” He cleared his throat, raising his head so his chin jutted out towards you. “Your eyes.”

“My eyes?” 

“You must wear it if you are to eat with us.” 

You pouted, pressing your tongue to the flesh on the inside of your cheek, then kissed your teeth. 

“You mean to dictate my freedom in my own home.” You scoffed and slung your arms across your chest, crossing them. “At my own table? You are sick in your own head, Mandalorian, if you think I am one to bend my will to the whims of others. Especially in my own house.” And he repeated,

while his shoulders drew taught under his pauldrons with the armour gleaming in the silver glare of Selene’s chariot. And he planted a seed in your stomach, turned in it, and made you feel sick. You preferred him between your legs, his name between your teeth and tongue. 

“You must wear it if you are to eat with us.” 

Eyes fell to the plate, that cloth once more. Would it be poisoned? The fabric snared with nettle to sting your eyes. Here you had two choices. Stay, blind yourself, yield to him somewhere other than your chambers. Or stand and leave. Either way, it was an act of submission. 

You did neither. Instead, you stood, kicking your chair back behind you before swanning over to the seat next to him, taking the other leg of rabbit and sinking your teeth into its cooked flesh, all the while your eyes on him. To tartarus with xenia, he outstayed his welcome long after he passed the threshold of your home. Helios could come and smite you for all you cared, the fates could snip your golden immortal line of yarn. No horror could compare to the satisfaction you had as you stuffed your face with food you'd slaved over for him. His refusal was your gain and soon you moved onto the plumbs, sticky sweet juice dribbling down your demented smile. 

You wafted the half chewn and mangled fleshy bone in his face, smirking with your mouth full. 

“Go on, Madalorian.” You crooned, “have a bite. Give in a little.” 

His hand snatched your wrist the moment the words left your stained lips, gloved fingertips making something click in your bones. You bit down the pain with a swallow, smirk remaining triumphant across your features. 

“Put it down.” He grimaced, curling his helmet covered lip at the state of you. Unkempt and wild, shrewish in your dignity. 

“Or what?” 

He let go. Sat back, pushed out a huff through his nostrils. 

Then he stood. You watched unphased and delighted with yourself as he took the child who cooed up at him. And listened out for his heavy footsteps as he climbed the stairs to his and the child’s room. Then silence. All the while you tossed the stripped bone to his plate and licked your fingers. 

You didn’t know what you would rather prefer. Him to come back down. Or stay and retire to bed. Regardless, he’d take you eventually. Here or up in your bed chambers. Unlace your corset or nightgown. Use you as his nightcap before slipping off. Without getting a look upon him. Not a sliver of his visage to hold to in sleep. 

He did come down. And with a heavy hand bent you over the head of the table, a gloved palm pressing your face into the wood. 

Physically you were here. Mentally, you were back against the silver birch. His cock splitting you in two once again while you smiled sadistically in candlelight. Him seeping into you through the cracks of your ribs, the gaps between your teeth. The opening of yourself to the twisting knot of denial within you. 

Between your thighs where he belonged. 

[monkiebois]

Aight it's been a long hit minute since I sent ya anything (hi hello bye the bye)

Top five favorite facts/bits of lore/ HCs (can be yours or others head canons) of nezha 😁

hihihiiiiiii

ooooh top five facts/bits of lore/ HCs about Nezha. this is gonna be fun~

Powers

youd never guess. but when i first watched through LMK i didnt care for Nezha. not rlly. I always thought he was cool and had a nice design but I didnt really care much for him. But i ALWAYS thought his powers and abilitys were so cool. maybe its my bias for pink characters and powers (i also have a bias for blue) but when i needed a character to do some fighting in my fic i snatched Nezha. and ever since i started writing him i couldnt stop. So honestly i gotta put his cool lookin powers as #1 since its what initially hooked me onto his character. both canon and other power HC's i have.

2. His personality PSA: Im not saying any of this is canon. these are my headcanons.

I love canon Nezha dont get me wrong, but im a little biased to my headcanons. well- more then a little XP. I ADORE sassy traumatized fucked up little guys. LMK Nezha is already sassy as hell, as he should be. he's soooooo traumatized if you read into his mythology. and he's also so POWERFUL.

it's just something about characters who are mainly known for being powerful and unstoppable. a force to be reckoned with. but eventually it's revealed this 'unstopable persona' is actually just a mask they've built. They are no doubt very powerful. but one of the reasons people are so scared of them is bc they've built the reputation so no one hurts them anymore. Nearly always on the defensive and holding their emotions inside so thy don't get hurt anymore. But like we saw in the s3 special with MK can still be gentle and kind.

not only that, but needs that kind of kindness and acceptance in his life. Needs a family that will accept all aspects of him. The good and the bad.

TS Nezha is a hurt kid. Traumatized and honestly kinda lonely. Because there's very few people that know the real him. Even if he trusts other people, there's no guarantee that they will accept the real him without the mask he's created. Kin moment.

that and the fact its very easy to shove him into a found family.

also Autism representation in my HC's. I'm Autistic, and some of his traits are just me projecting my Autism onto him.

3. His white hair.

My favorite lore bit about Nezha is not something a lot of people know about him. In the translation of Investiture of the Gods I own it says he was born with white hair.

Chapter 12 - The birth of Nezha

However, as Yin had a strange dream one night, she suddenly gave birth to this strange child the following morning. With maidens rushing about saying that a demon was present in Yin's chambers, Li Jing immediately rushed forth into her room and cleaved in two a strange fleshy ball that rolled to and fro across the floor. Within the ball emerged a small young child with hair as white as snow with a gleaming golden bracelet on his right wrist.

I have implemented this in my Tangled Star AU but how is spoilers >:3

all im saying is TSNezha and TSMac have something in common~ but thats already saying too much >:3

4. His Design Theres a reason ive only minorly changed his design in my headcanons. Overall i ADORE it. Again im probably biased because of all the pink but I love characters like him. He's got some traditionaly feminine design choices. at least traditionally in the west (Pink, Long hair, the bottom of his armor looks like a skirt). It's very gender. and he's just cute overall. his design is so much fun to draw and my version is even more fun.

Honestly. The guys got my gender. Masc, but confident in wearing some feminine things. He just seems like the kind of guy who'd like wearing dresses and keeping his hair long, but still masc nonetheless. Breaking gender norms as he should.

5. His dynamics with other characters.

I love writing him interacting with other characters. He just clashes so well with the other characters when i write him in my AU's. both positively and negatively. I love writing him in angst, i love writing him in fluff. I just. love putting this guy into situations XD.

his relationship with his found family in tangled star is SO MUCH FUN to write. traumatized little guy who trusts no one but the people he's closest with. and even they are still getting him to open up.

thats...honestly the best way i can describe my top five things about nezha. its hard to explain why i like him and i was just tempted to write

blorbo

blorbo

blorbo

blorbo

blorbo.

So be happy you got that much out of me. sorry it got so long but once i start ranting i cant stop. XD

[wiithstars]

star sign: aquarius mythological creature: fairy folktale: the princess and the pea fairytale character (classical or modern): rapunzel (tangled)

"Rapunzel is a spirited, clever, kind, playful, and a very adventurous girl, though a bit naive. However, she is not afraid to stand up for herself or others when the situation calls for bravery. [...] Rapunzel is also very charismatic; able to influence a group of pub thugs to share their dreams and convince Maximus, the palace steed of the Captain of the Guard, to postpone his pursuit of Flynn until she fulfills her dream on her birthday (which is heavily emphasized). Rapunzel is also known, particularly by Pascal, to be quite trustworthy and never ever breaks the promises she makes." (x)

3 fictional tropes: the pollyanna, the idealist, genius ditz

The Pollyanna - "Characters who undergo various hardships, losing almost everything they hold dear, and yet seem never to lose their sunny disposition." (x) The Idealist - "A character who genuinely believes that their world is A World Half Full; that Humans Are Good, or at least that Rousseau Was Right and a person who will tell you that if you think it's wrong to hope that you're wrong every time. They will take ideals that others have for the future and will do everything they can to take them to fruition, sometimes going too far." (x) Genius Ditz - "This character would be nothing more than The Ditz, except they have one area of expertise in which no one can beat them. When that skill or talent is needed, they suddenly switch gears from airheadedness to hyper-competency. Sometimes they don't even know that they're doing it." (x)

romantic or platonic trope: opposites attract; foolish sibling, responsible sibling

Opposites Attract - "They have conflicting personalities, but they love each other." (x) Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling - "In this trope there will be one sibling who is foolish, usually acting melodramatically and prone to doing irresponsible and impulsive things. They may be louder, more outgoing and usually more popular (or at least try to be). [...] The other sibling is often more of a parental figure in the other sibling's life, even if their actual parents are still present. They might be quieter or plainer, though usually they are only quiet or plain by comparison to their obnoxious other sibling. They're almost undoubtedly smarter though." (x)

creepypasta story: All In the Family (x) greek god or goddess: hestia, goddess of hearth and home time of day where they draw the most energy: noon their achilles heel: their pets medieval weapon of choice: pole axe survival, starvation, or death by the undead in the apocalypse: survival by dumb luck (and the help of others) which of the seven sins represent them? horseman of the apocalypse?: gluttony, famine could they pull excalibur from the stone?: yes one aesthetic for each of the five senses (taste, hearing, sight, smell, touch):

blowing a bubble with bubba max and having it pop over your lips, the soft snores of a dog who is peacefully sleeping, a bed of flowers that are a mixture of bloomed and about to bloom, a sugar cookie candle that's been burning for hours, floral lace gently brushing across one's skin

a bad habit that won’t go away: acting without thinking first a recurring nightmare: being back under the care of the first "parents" they knew an object they consider their lucky charm: a charm bracelet that has a heart with each of their pets' names inscribed on it

[fantasiasodapop]

King

The darkness made him who he is today. Able to see without a light, not afraid of anything, and grateful for what he has.

~|~

Rampion Bellflower - Also called the Creeping Bellflower or the Repunzel, it has the meanings of Unwavering Love or... Love in Vain Sundew - A carnivorous family of over 194 species, the only meaning found was that of Surprise, as its beauty is a trick to draw in unsuspecting prey

~|~

"Come now, brother," Dream pleaded, following the other deeper into the wood in their battle. "Let go of the evil inside you and come back to me―"

"Evil? Me?" Nightmare scoffed, grabbing Dream's ankle before picking him up and slamming him into a tree. "That's not a word strong enough to describe me," he hissed, causing Dream's eye to widen. He opened his mouth to object, but Nightmare cut him off. "But don't you dare forget when you look at me with those eyes that you were the one who filled this once beating heart with lies."

This is a piece inspired by our Nightmare Drosera and his backstory in To Cure A Glitch's Blues on AO3.

Hi! The quote said by Nightmare is by S.S.W. if you're curious. Yeah, we know we've been gone, but we had mental health stuff and we are back! Might be a little late for Nightmarch, but we can still post things for our story as we work on fleshing out characters before continuing.

This is our official Nightmare design for our fic, To Cure A Glitch's Blues―yes, we know the tag isn't quite right, same thing―in which Nightmare is not a skeleton or a spirit, but an Anthousai with the half power of his Hamadryad mother Nim. An Anthousai is a flower fae, not dissimilar to the Hamadryad in mythology in which a spirit would be born of a tree and live as long as the tree remained or its seeds did.

That brings up the question―what species is Drosera? Well, he is, of course, a Drosera or Sundew, a beautiful carnivorous plant that looks to be covered in glistening dew, thus the name. The second is the Rampion Bellflower or Creeping Bellflower, which is the inspiration behind the Tangled flower because of its name the Repunzel. We love the movie and the franchise, so we thought it'd be fun.

This particular plant is a deep brown/black stem with bioluminescent cyan blooms. Many of the original Drosera doesn't need pollinating, but we have something fun planned so the Bellflowers are the pollinating blooms and the Sundew are the carnivorous ones. You can see the curled-up Sundews on the end of his tentacles/vines, which can open if he needs them. Yes, Nightmare is carnivorous, and no, he doesn't have a monster soul, but a mangosteen-esque fruit at the center of his being that he protects with his very being. We call the species Drosera Lunaris, or the Lunarbloom.

Oh, and those aren't his bones.

Toodles! Hope to see you on AO3 soon!

[kaezerdoodles]

Have you ever noticed how much Vlad & Eugene from Tangled the Series look alike, especially in the face? I hc that Rapunzel & Eugene are Vlad's ancestors on his father, Manfred Masters', side making him part German. (Manny was a bad husband, bad father, & all-around bad person with severe NPD. Has been dead for years. Vlad thinks that his mother killed him to save their family from the man.)

Before the Masters came to America, they were the Meisters of Germany.

I mean, it makes sense. The royalty of the Dark Kingdom seemed to tend to have ego problems & the ghosts of said royal family hold a striking resemblance to Vlad's ghost form.

I mean, look at this:

And this:

(Not my art.)

That looks so much like Plasmius!

Meanwhile Vlad is Russian on his mother, Katerina Romanov's, side. (A kind & gentle woman who loved Vlad dearly & would do anything for him. Was the sister of the Dairy King who made Vlad his heir. Went into a deep depression after her husband died that lead to her being sent to a terrible mental hospital by her relatives until Vlad bought out the Romanov dairy fortune out from under his relatives, kicking them out on their rears, then had his mother put in a better psychiatric hospital. He still visits her whenever he can.) It's believed that she is descended from Anastasia Romanov. The animated one.

I figure that Vlad's also Romani & Welsh.

Because of how similar Vlad looks to Eugene, I hc that Vlad also ugly cries like Eugene said he did.

Homie- you and your connections will always astound me!

I love the idea that Vlad is both German and Russian, both are very strong-willed and tenacious peoples- albeit Vlad uses those traits for less than honorable reasons. Both with rich histories and mythologies too! As you already know, I pulled the myth that the Welsh have dragon blood for Maeven but I never considered that for Vlad… I could use that for the reason his beastial form is draconic and not bat-like!

And yes- I totally agree- Vlad def ugly cries, this is canon. Butch can fight me.

[havinganormalone]

TododDeku NSFW Fic Masterlist

By request, here is a masterlist of all my nsfw TodoDeku fics. If you want a list of my SFW fics, you can find that HERE.

I have around 50 fics on this list, so it's quite a bit to browse through! Here's a few symbols to make browsing easier.

💖= Personal Favorite, or a fic I think is very good and am proud of.

🚨= has elements that are commonly considered "problematic." Please note everyone has a different definition of what that means, so make sure to read tags and warnings to judge for yourself if it is your cup of tea.

🐱= Bottom Shouto. A majority of my fics have top Shouto, so it's easier to mark the exceptions.

🍍= there are poly elements to the fic. This list is still only for fics that have a strong sexual focus on TodoDeku, but stuff with this symbol will have some element of sex with other parties

No gods, new masters: 50k+ words (WIP) 💖🚨 Post-apocalyptic setting, yandere Todoroki. Filled with action, heart-ache, and trauma.

Pure love of a pet: 10k words (WIP) 🚨 Inko takes in cat-hybrid Shoucchan, who falls madly in love with Izuku. Shoucchan may not have two braincells to rub together, but he loves Izuku with all of his heart. And dick.

Unlearning lies: 46k words (series) 🐱(Part 4) 🍍 (Part 5) When society tells you that you're nothing but a mindless animal, you have to relearn how to be human. Soft, wholesome omegaverse where Shouto and Izuku team up to build a better future for themselves (and screw Enji out of money). 6 parts, each with their own kinks and plot developments.

Wild at heart: 40k words (series) 🚨🐱 Feudal Japan Omegaverse. Prince Todoroki is kept cloistered away from the world, a dark secret tainting him and making him a shame to his family. Izuku is brought forward to be his mate. Neither man plays the role fate dictated for them, and both of them pay the price.

A Show of Force: 3k words 💖 Wholesome, consensual nonconsent roleplay. The men use BDSM to work through their issues.

Mine is bigger than yours: 4.5k words 💖🐱 A little t4t where the boys do the most masculine thing possible: they compare dicks. Shouto wants to know how Izuku got so dang big.

Zero plus hero: 3.5k words 💖 Quirkless Shouto AU where he's trapped as a janitor at his dad's hero agency, and he falls in love with the new hire.

Under ill stars: 5k words 🐱 Mythology AU where Izuku is born with bad luck and made to bear Shouto's pain when they are both children. Years later, Shouto wants to undo the spell put on both of them, but the reversal involves sex.

Re:Bound to you: 5k words 💖 Recently out of a divorce, Izuku moves in with his perpetual bachelor friend Shouto. As Izuku recovers from being burned by one past love, he finds another old flame being rekindled. Wholesome, funny, fluff.

Curses and Blessings: 4k words 💖🚨 Beauty and the Beast style fic, except Izuku didn't confess his love in time and now Shouto is trapped in the body of a monster. That's not going to stop Izuku from loving him.

Off Beat: 3k words 🐱 Shouto is a famous rock star, and Izuku is working on the set of his latest music video. He's definitely falling for the man, and just how off beat Shouto can be.

Star Struck: 8k words 🚨 Unhealthy power imbalance. Shouto is a famous celebrity, and Izuku is a nobody. Shouto uses his star power to coerce Izuku into doing what he wants.

Unbecoming: 22k words 💖🚨🍍 A traumatized, abused Izuku is recovered from the ruins of Overhaul's hideout. Wanting another chance at being a good parent, Endeavor takes him home, where Shouto and Izuku kickoff as tangled, unhealthy relationship.

Beach Episode: 5k words 🐱 A quirk accident lands the two boys in water. It turns out that mermaids work a bit differently than humans re: the downstairs. The couple is excited to experiment. Contains egging.

Ice Ice Baby: 1.5k words Trans Shouto gives himself and icicle dick.

(w)hole: 10k words 🚨🍍 Trans Izuku loves his husband, but he hates the way his husband worships a body he hates. He needs an outlet, someone to treat him like dirt. Endeavor fits the bill.

Our Scars Remind Us: 1.5k words Just some quick hand kink and fluff.

Civil Lies: 6k words 💖🚨 Space AU with Omegaverse. Izuku is a comfort omega assigned to alpha Shouto to help him deal with his heats.

My rock, your everything: 4k words 🐱 King Enji is dead, and Prince Shouto is set to take the crown. However, with the responsibility comes doubt: is he up to the task? His ever-faithful knight is there to reassure him.

Kinky TodoDeku Flash fiction 🚨 Just a collection of drabbles.

I'll show you what I cannot say: 2.5k words Izuku is new at college, and his anxiety is so bad he has trouble talking to his new roommate. But he is still infatuated with the man. Somnophillia.

Fall from grace: 7k words 🚨 Shouto is a demon in love with an angel. He’s sure Izuku will love him, too, given the right chance. And even if he doesn’t, Shouto is determined to have his way. 

One Good Turn: 5k words Hybrid AU where Bunny Izuku takes in a wounded predator and nurses him back to health. Then the wildcat's rut hits, and Izuku wants to help him through that, too.

Like cats and dogs: 3.5k words 🍍 Izuku adopts two ill-behaved Hybrids from the local shelter, then takes them home to try and teach them how to get along.

The Rite Way: 5k words Fantasy AU where Shouto dons a cursed mask for power, even if it means losing his humanity. Izuku, however, isn't willing to pay that price, and he will do anything to reverse that spell.

Acquired Taste: 3k words 🚨🍍 Todoroki and Midoriya turn their Sports Festival fight into a bet that ends with Midoriya being Todoroki's urinal.

How you gild your cage: 5k words 🚨 Mafia AU where Izuku is taken prisoner by a rival gang and becomes the boss's new plaything.

Until Death: 5k words 💖🍍 Fantasy AU where Todoroki and Bakugou are trying to bring their lover back from the dead. Soft smut where polyamory conquers all.

Skin Deep: 7k words Wholesome body swap. The men are new to a relationship, and a quirk accident helps them get to know each other better.

(Deviant)Devotion: 7.5k words 🚨 Yandere Shouto where he thinks he's dating pro hero Izuku.

Bunny Tops: 10k words 🐱 Medieval Hybrid AU where bunny Izuku wants to be a knight. When the prince is kidnapped, he gets his chance to prove himself. Meet cute, fluff, bunny Izuku topping.

Love you enough to change: 3.5k words 🚨🍍 Izuku always assumed he would be an omega. He always assumed he would be SHOUTO'S omega. So when he presents as an alpha, he is desperate for a way out. He reads about bitching, and he wants to give it a try. First, even if I have to cheat: 2k words 🚨 TodoDeku where Pro Hero Midoriya gets hit with a de-aging quirk. And it just so happens Todoroki has always regretted not being the one to take his virginity. Now he has his chance.

Never let you go: 5.5k words 🚨 Alphas can't be raped. It's impossible, unthinkable. So when Todoroki ends up a victim, no one will believe him.

Boy Across the Way: 4k words Childhood friends TodoDeku where Izuku lives in the apartment building across from Shouto, and their lives intertwine. They grow up together and fall in love.

What it means to be family: 2.5k words 🚨 New step-siblings Izuku and Shouto spend some quality time together.

[incarnateirony]

madam why are you pretending you can't see the hits you're letting others that have bound into this crazy train take. If pyramidhead changes his sunglasses is he still a triangle

Yo cocaine bear, you're doing the scared deer thing still.

but yeah u right. badass. not like we ran into someone making claims at tyr in the past and it's not like that doesn't look like my old art from 2010, but with a PONYTAIL, of an adjacent but not the same entity, but ok.

Cowardly Maia. What are you doing. Why are you still running, this is beyond embarrassing to watch through any set of eyes at this point.

I dunno, maybe I've just toasted her this bad while dragging around. To remember something you must forget somehting else etc etc and boy I've made her remember some funny shit but she refused to look at it, maybe she truly has lost half her memory at this point.

yall really mixed up the recent hemsworth pushes with Young King Ash. I'm on the floor.

Notice we're at "my interpretation of X".

You're... almost there? But you're still fucking up and locked on things outside of yourself. And slapping random names on random things. "Who's this guy? IDK. I'm getting vibes something is wrong with his hand. Must be tyr?" No see you're sticking your weird interpretation of betraying fenrir and loki over an adjacent thing you're locked on, while wanting to be king, and you like. you guys literally cannot even compute what I'm explaining to you

Maam that is literally triangle head Faux Young King Ash As Interpreted By A Traitor That Tried To Chain Down Fenris And Got Their Hands Bit Off.

Guys. Why is it so hard to teach you to hop off of me and my shit and like, look inside yourselves instead of grabbing at random thoughts outside to pull in and slap a nametag on

Maams and such, i just didn't know how to fucking draw hair like 15 years ago. Thanks for the ponytail? Weird I drew this guy at so many ages with different appeals but all connected in the deviant bios.

You deadass stapled my recent use of Hemsworth focus, shoved Thor up his/my ass, and decided it's Tyr while not wondering why you're drawing so many sunglasses lately.

Maam how did you all fuck up and get Thor involved as part of your crazyhouse disco. how did you not notice it was the same glasses shape as your last picture, but with different colored lenses, both of which I've owned?

Otherwise that's just you fucking up the weather still and not looking at it.

Shealyn, what part of, "I literally am the person from the ancestral memory line that leads to these entities primarily, of which are directly mythologically linked in any old language, and when I figured my shit out, the two crossed, and that's me, that's my self, and Coyote is part of an old coping shdow, and you got everything all tangled up, you know those are my goddamn air jordans" is not fucking clicking. Coyote x Young Ash. Work it out, retard. "Shadow vs self are slightly different, but it's Roughly That Guy."

You fucked up and pulled on shadows again to spin away from "IDK WHO THIS GUY WITH SLIGHTLY CURLIER HAIR AND MOVED LEOPARD SPOTS TO MY LAST DERP IS, IDK HIS NAME BUT IM PROUD OF HIM" being obvious as fuck and tried to grab somewhere else while bound and now your fuzzy fucked trianglehead is back. Great work. You shoved Thor up ash's ass as a pokemon card but if I yell that I'm Tyr or whatever I could get you morons to believe anything.

Deadass tried the double order costco lenses on of the same pair in two lenses and didn't notice.

Shealyn, fucking. Big Brain time. If Hermes used to be Pan, and it's all a very funny ancient rumpocky, and there's Young and Old Hermes, who is also somehow Pan's father because it's all fucked up and misheard over time and split over anthropology

If. If someone mastered themselves, through work, including their own shadows, and acknowledged themselves independent of it from a family line they've explored across time and inner journey, but as part of it, what the FUCK do you think that Persona~ would look like, fuckface?

IDK HIS NAME BUT I'M PROUD OF HIM

OH THIS ONE. UM. INTERPRETING TYR. BASED ON??? IDK MAN I started thinking of chris hemsworth real hard the other day for some reason. weird.

Fuck me running we really are back in 2011, and you're turning every moron around you into Czar.

Maam that's me fucking around with Mad Max Fury Road. Maam.

Great. Now you've got Brackish malfunctioning based on what I/we shit into twitter en masse just because NEITHER of you can look at what Shealyn has done. Great work yall. That is in fact a pyramidhead. IDK HIS NAME BUT IM PROUD OF HIM!!! USERNAME: UNKNOWN BUT AGE 37 NOT 55

you put his head in the triangle and everything. I'm fucking impressed for all the wrong reasons.

there's almost a dick speight vibe in there somehow too, and like. I aint been shy about using that, I even used it to cheese the reaper for you last night, you ungrateful cunt. Guess you morons took the mined parts and threw it into your favorite unassigned pyramidhead.

Damn it's DickSpeightChrisHemsworth Unknown with Worst Add For Newbie Explorers Evil Smile shoved over all my old shit, they really just. be doing that now.

i GET IT, WITH COYOTE THEY WERE GOGGLES SO YOU'RE STILL THICK AS SHIT. AND I AINT JUST TALKING ABOUT HOW FAT SCARED BEAR DEER LADY WITH THE HOOVES LET HERSELF GET WHILE REFUSING TO LOOK AT ANYTHING BECAUSE MY DUMB ASS TOLD HER SHE DIDN'T NEED TO WORK AS LONG AS SHE WAS WITH ME AND FUCKIN BOY DID SHE TAKE A FUCKING LARGE INTERPRETATION OF THAT, THAT DOESN'T MEAN NEVER LET ME GO WHILE DENYING YOU'RE DOING IT SO YOU NEVER HAVE TO LOOK AT YOURSELF. BUT FINE. I'M FINISHING MY PROMISE BY PUTTING THE MONSTERS IN THE DIRT.

Whatever that shit was about immortality or generations, a big, big fuckin part of me she's helped rupture apart doesn't care about that anymore. I just can't stand looking at the monster I accidentally turned her into, and she refuses to unbecome. And that echos back for generations.

Deadass maam you're fucking the weather up so bad I walked into work with all my buddy reflector actual worker pals talking about how literally nobody could sleep last night past maybe 3 hours and all cross-hearting everything in at least fives. "We're all surviving on caffeine at this point, it looks like." "Did the unable to sleep train hit us all." "I am in the same boat." "Train. Plane. I don't know, but it hits." "Happy Caturday."

Why are you willing to sacrifice so much to avoid what you know is true? Or is it you just ENJOY actually torturing me and him? Damn the costs of everything around you? It's that Solstice part in you that you won't look at that is really getting her rocks off on this while Vera runs and hides, that's it, isn't it. You. Crazy cocaine bear lady doing the deer in the headlights run away shit.

xoxo. Remember that thing of you breaking your moon circles and that turning up like a year ago in the Childe concert with the disco lights? Yeah. The one the windrunner immortal struggles accounts were tweeting screaming the need for? Yeah. Okay? Sweetie? I'll give you some custom sacred geometry. While you do your unsquared circles and triangles off center, I'm Xing the O. I'm over it. And over you. On every level.

The tweet of hermes is your phantom X's name, eating our wings to keep us tame, and you continue that insists including you on us. So face yourself, and it, and say his name, and confess his face, and what you have done wrong, or this train will keep going, and since you all insist on making me your god against my will, I've given you all the honor of having friends to play with for life until you hop off.

Disturbing the peace, look into those eyes you used to confess your fears of and run from the computer from a simple shot from the same nonsense rumpocky shit you tried to turn into divine offering revelation from secondhand stories as my ex, as we pull down any hat, mask or lens, now tell me about the things you were laughing about behind my back.

When I'm with my SEES, you can't copy and paste, hun. Cooking here thinking up music fr.

brackish, keep reposting your binding ruin under "heathenism". I'm sure that's helping you win this collective unconscious battle after she fucked up and summoned Michael on her own serpent that I warned you about a week prior as the flaming sword guarding my D, into 4 noobs. Oh, wait.

also i meant rune, but really, no I didn't.

Go ahead honey.

Keep posting and defending her after Ash The Pyramidhead Remix With Receipts. after man in the moon guy on red journey night, and it's just the same guy as my shadow before with the Ash The Pyramidhead sunglasses. Weird, almost like there's something related to the first time Shealyn tried to rip out my eye, and almost like her black serpent addiction is generational and timeless in the collective awareness.

Probationers following a Neophyte in idiot circles even after the Neophyte was proven to be channeling literal anime octopus jibberish and has run from every belief she has owned into a comedic long-forecast punchline she isn't even brave enough to explain to you. A lot of them, actually.

Just get off my dick. Not my fault yall are too lazy, blind, and misled that this is happening to you, she signed herself to that karma against my will, and I am attempting to disband your cult to me. I am a man. Do as thou wilt as a great god can, but I am a man, and I reject all of you, and now, so do the millions. 200 million observers, and literally millions of active Workers, whether they realize they are Working or not. Because that is how this Works. You literally cannot win this. Any of you. No matter how hard you dodge, delude, reblog, or belief, you keep digging your pits deeper, due to the sheer refusal to abandon your cult to my dick that has her father and sister buiding toilet paper tartarus to my towering dick, with hashtag, unspoken games. lol very funny right shea? like the spinning stove or the mascot post about highschool or every single trap you have walked into thinking your cat is channeling goddess of your pantheon you've fled to today.

[longlivedynamite]

I am thrilled to be here, and I want to remind Richard [Move] that I think his film is extraordinary [BloodWork: The Ana Mendieta Story, 2009]. It is a true and deep homage as it clarifies so many dense sources that Ana opened and then tangled again for all of us. 

Facing cultural resistance was something that she and I constantly could discuss once we became friends. I am just going to share some associative connections between the remarkable coincidence and correspondences of our physical actions – because they really have to do with urgent permissions to regard the sensory, psychic realm in which the body manifests its own energy against constrictions and prohibitions. There is usually a 5- or 10-year difference between the images which I will share of our related works.

My influences began with the psychic phenomena of a Scottish nanny; it was she who taught me to pray to the moon and to inhabit the body that belonged with sheep and trees and rivers; and of course it was secret, my family was never to know. We had a pact – I was probably four or five years old, my family must never know what she showed me at midnight looking out the window. These forms of what, for me, would have been described as pantheism, reify themselves when I see the work of Ana, and when we finally meet each other in the mid-70s – when we’ve already produced this relay of connected work. The struggle has to do with the confines of essentialist theory, which was a way of constraining and marginalizing our fuller historic implications. Both of us were committed to the saturation of material, in that the body moves and is sustained by saturation within the extensivity of our sensory energy.

We are both researching, by the mid-70s, Maria Gimbutas, so that the Paleolithic as well as the Yoruba aspect of the inhabited body, the sacral body, are active – coincidentally, and these are very interesting coincidences. So for both of us, it seems there is a phylogeny that recapitulates mythology. It is the sense that there are certain energies and momentums that will be opened and coincidentally discovered and explored: so here’s the explicit body taking the deeper roots of genital sexuality into the recognition of forms of nature, and how we would interact and inhabit those forms of nature. In my notes I say that we have forgotten the danger, the dangers of depicting the explicit sensuous female body, we have forgotten how much hatred and resistance that inspired – rage, envy, domination. The use of the body was truly live and declared narcissistic. In the use of our bodies we shared the confluence of being despised in the art world throughout our early experiments, as mine from the 60s were hugely resisted and then Ana enters the force field of feminist issues in the 70s where feminist theory and research begins to tear down the determinations of narcissism, exhibitionism, but what enters in the field at that moment is the abject and the essentialist! In order to recognize that we were facing a new construct of deflections, that if the identification of the vital energies with nature and the body can only be ‘‘essentialist or abject,’’ we are still going to be denied full aesthetic authority.

In the 1960s any deeper eroticization had been profoundly suppressed: there is no female pronoun used for women until the mid-70s – hard to remember! There was no vocabulary for female genital sexuality. And Ana and I used to ask each other, why has the history of the chastity belt – the chador; clitoridectomy; nunnery; silencing the female – endured? How very lucky we were to exist barely escaping these punishments. We said that the violence against women relates to the whole patriarchal sense of violence against the natural world, and the resistance to gendered integrations, and of course Judeo-Christian traditions had prescribed the denial of sexuality as a source of wisdom and knowledge and the silencing of women’s experience.

I also meant to mention the influence of Maya Deren on both of us. I was very lucky when I first came to New York City in the 1960s to meet her through Stan Brakhage, to visit her place on Morton street and to recognize the very contrary configurations that young artists could go and study, as acolytes to distinguished influential artists; but since she was a woman I saw that the guys, the young guys, expected her to feed us, to give us whiskey and cigarettes – even though she didn’t have enough funds at the time to print her Haitian footage! We were very privileged to have her run the original film through her projector. We faced a very desperate configuration against the authority of women artists, and especially a sexualized vision; and then it begins to break down, it is always breaking down.

In our friendships we like to party, we like to drink. It was very important for Ana that when I came to her house, being tall, I could change her light bulbs.

With her death, it became significant that Ana did not like to even stand on a chair. She could throw herself in the water and onto branches and bury herself in dirt, but she had vertigo. In the mid-70s I’m enduring mud pieces where I’m drying myself in puddles; it’s an ordeal work, it takes forever, and then there’s the silueta of Ana at the same time. We felt a profound affinity; a deep sisterhood as well as we did with Mary Beth Edelson. There was this sisterhood and it was dynamic and helped us do the work. And what has changed is that we’re all here thinking about the power of the work, the sustainable beauty, the incredible presence, how inhabited it is, that it escapes any of the delimitating definitions that surrounded it earlier on. The dream that Ana sent me – which is so well described in Richard’s film, and described by my incredible disbelief when the guys building the shelves in my loft come in and say, ‘‘Gee, look at the newspaper, ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Carl Andre’s wife is dead!’’ – the dream she sent me was to go out into the snow and make forms with my body. I ran out in a nightgown and made images just with my hands in the snow and then I realized I wanted to stabilize it, to sustain it, so I gathered blood and ashes and what else, maybe there was red paint. The local IGA grocery in the country where I live was very suspicious when I wanted pints of blood; it was for Spanish sausage, I explained! So that’s the homage and as some of you know if you’ve read Naked by the Window, Ana sent quite a few artists dream instructions so this was not a unique manifestation. There’s another realm from our beyond that produced homage to Ana.

Thank you everybody.

Carolee Schneemann, Regarding Ana Mendieta, 2011. Transcribed by Raegan Truax-O’Gorman. From Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 21, no. 2 (July 2011): 183–190. ↘︎ https://www.schneemannfoundation.org/writing/regarding-ana-mendieta

[digitalera2023]

Start from the end Dinesh Das's life story could easily beat the storyline of a movie. He grew up in an ordinary middle-class family with five boys. A strong interest in every aspect of society and an effort to learn set him apart from the five rising peers. But life is a journey of learning. Financial hardship descends on the family just as the completion of higher education is calling him towards a settled life. During higher education, he did not just study but took up complex subjects like coding with great interest. He has come forward to see the financial crisis very closely for the society, on everyone's side. In Hindu mythology, the goddess Dashabhuja symbolizes many forms in the same organ. Dinesh Das adopted that interpretation of Sanatan Dharma in his philosophy of life. He is a business entrepreneur, writer, politician, financial advisor and editor. Just as he has handled the calculation of the number of money perfectly for the sake of business, he has added reasonable words in his writings on the pages of the book or on the website, which has become a source of new thoughts for the society. History has witnessed that the supply and use of money has repeatedly revolutionized, changed the course of society. Dinesh Das has walked the same path. As an entrepreneur, he provides opportunities to the deserving in his established institutions and arranges their financial resources. At the core of his business values are job creation and youth empowerment, which he has demonstrated time and again in his company's recruitment. The journey was not easy though. Growing up in a rural environment, Dinesh Das has seen firsthand how difficult it is to survive without money. He got the inspiration to become a man of the soil from the water of the village. Therefore, even leaving the current financial comfort, he repeatedly ran to the help seekers. According to Dinesh Dash, recruitment, jobs and money will turn around the youth society. Under him, his company Fair Finance is now one of the most prominent companies in India. After exploring various businesses through digital, he realized that various businesses could not raise their heads due to these two pillars of money and trust. So he started his dream project Initium to help various organizations to grow their businesses for free. In return, they will later receive a portion of the company's profits as a charge. Various experts believe that this business model could be revolutionary. Politics is not for the interest of the king, politics is for the interest of the state: Less politics, more corruption. The root of such an idea has spread today in the minds of everyone from the young to the old. But the fact that this tangle of thoughts is not true at all is the proof of personality like Dinesh Das. Not just the message, he has entered the field. Fought in the 2021 assembly elections, as an independent leader. Not only did he stand in the polls, he created a record as an independent leader as the highest vote getter in this year's West Bengal assembly elections. So it can be said that his message has reached people. The 'hero of many lives' Dinesh Das is an inspiration to the public.

Education Education: Educational qualification is one of the components of the present education system. Those who have learned the lessons of life by going out of the norm, they have come out as heroes. Dinesh Das is a man who has learned the lessons of life and has been an example to people time and again. He is the first highly educated person in the village. Yet a man of the earth without ego, the signs of true learning are evident in his character. He was a resident of a part of Calcutta which still has problems with electricity. After completing his schooling very well, he joined higher education. Graduation, post-graduation and then PhD in MPhil - there is no dearth of achievements under his belt. But in spite of that, Dinesh Das is steadfast in his goal of building a better society.

Like, Share And Follow on Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/dineshdaspolitician?mibextid=ZbWKwL

[kosmic-songbird]

Once I started writing this it basically turned into a journal entry of me working out the twisted mythology of my family so be warned. I guess I need a tag for that to cause this isn't necessarily #badbrain material. Maybe #spaghettithoughts? Cause its winding with no order or direction and immensely tangled. Idk. It'll do for now. Back to the post.

So, I made it through my trip back home. I actually had so much fun. The Bad Ghost™ only phased me a little but the other ghost was very sweet and hung out with me a lot. Walking along the ridgeline of the family pond, backstory underneath, really broke the depression cycle for a moment and made me feel alive again

↓↓↓

(backstory: the pond is very large, 80ish acres and is spring fed. It has a spillway to keep the water circulated and it turns out to a waterfall that feeds our local creek. My great grandpa Otto originally dug it out by hand and once he was too old to manage upkeep it reverted back to a valley between ridges--spillways break, it had no circulation pipe. Everyone in my hometown calls this area The Valley. Florida is pretty flat so this area that is hilly and has Ridgelines is pretty rare. It's actually pretty cool cause the name for the creek and valley is the name of one of the Lower Muskogee chiefs that lived in that area. It's distinct from the Muscogee Nation in Oklahoma. Essentially our people were removed to over there, so that group still has a larger tribal presence than what was left over here. Like I've mentioned before, my native ancestry is not super high and I look white as all hell but, our culture is dying so I'll keep it alive in my private life and support other native tribes with native people that are actually oppressed, as well as learning my heritage, the language, keeping up my relationship with the Deer Woman or Eco Hoktē, etc. to keep it alive for me and my family. My papa ferrel, who is a problematic man but eh family is family I guess, made me promise to learn the language and teach it and while I am learning it, idk if I'll ever be able to teach it or if I'd even be a good person to do so. Like i said, I'm federally considered native American but I am blonde and blue-eyed and definitely a recipient of every privilege that brings. Anyways, back to the pond, my dad loved my great grandpa Otto so much, because my great grandparents pretty much loved him the moment my mom, their granddaughter, introduced him to them. My grandma Bill--her name was Wilma but Grandpa Otto lovingly called her this so we all did too--called my dad Sampson cause he's a big guy. I mean really lorge. 6'5" broad and 290. Yes, me and my brothers are giants. She also called him Stebens instead of Steven and tbh I miss her so much. I had her and my Great Grandma Dottie--Dorothy, but we love nicknames in this family-- until I was 12. Grandma Dottie and Grandma Bill actually lived across the road from each other for 40 years, and then they loved across the hall from each other in the same nursing home until they passed, literally 2 months apart from one another..

I think about that a lot actually. Their kids had married and had a nasty split but they remained so close. That's a beautiful kind of love. I'm circling back to the pond, promise. But yeah, my dad had been told about the pond by grandpa Otto and when I was very little decided that he would resurrect it. I was kind of a miracle baby? I, like, nearly killed my mom and should have died so many times over. My mom thought she had a miscarriage but when it was all said and done my heartbeat was still there, I was a month premature, and born deaf--i hear just fine now tho!--so at the time my mom had just, miraculously, given birth to my little brother. My grandpa Otto had passed right before and, since he had practically raised my mother while my papa ferrel was having his deadbeat dad era, my mom was suffering emotionally. She has taken care of him until he passed, even while pregnant. I mean she provided hospice nurse level care to him. She's problematic too but I love her and hope I can one day be as strong, selfless, and courageous as she is. Just minus the martyr syndrome. And my dad's dad, grandpa Gary, had passed a few years before I was born. Him and my dad loved to fish. Really loved it. But after grandpa Gary passed my dad just, he couldn't bring himself to do it anymore. So, seeing as he had a new son and little girl that literally was attached to his hip, he figured, maybe, he could try to fish again. And since my mom was grieving my grandpa Otto's death immensely the idea came to him to fix the pond. It would be a gift to her, giving her a small piece of grandpa Otto back, and a gift to himself by letting him have a place to do with us what he loved to do so much with his father, and a gift to us. He was determined to make the pond better than ever and sturdier. He wanted to give everyone something that would last. So he got his friend and neighbor that does heavy machinery, his friend that was a well driller, and anyone else he could find to help and designed the new layout. Now, the pond is fed from a branch upstream and the spring underneath. It has a pipe to circulate flow and a spillway to also facilitate flow and not bother the natural ecosystem since there originally was a branch there. They also dug out a road to it, tho it's precarious as hell and scary lol. They left trees standing so that the fish would have places to hide and bed... it was extremely well thought out and kind of amazing, honestly. Ik a lot of people don't have the kind of privilege I do to have access to something like this all to ourselves so like, be aware that's not lost on me. Once the water rose, it needed fish, so my dad taught 4 year old me how to fish by taking me to local ponds, the creek, the lake to catch fish and then release them into the pond. It's... it's some of my earliest memories actually. This backstory is getting long and out of hand, but the big take away is that our pond is one of the best places of my childhood and being there, after feeling isolated and lonely in a new state really did some good for my soul)

↓↓↓

So, walking the overgrown Ridgeline of something I helped to build as a child, 20 years later, it fixed something broke in me. The friend I recently... Well, the sister I am estranged from, her father helped build that pond too. He was the well driller. He has since passed and make no mistake, he was a bad man. I think a lot of trauma stems from him and the fact she still hasn't grieved him, come to terms with who he was and that, maybe, she still loved him even in hate. I've had to do that with living family. My mom is strong but she pushed me to "Be the great woman God has made you to be. You were no accident, but a miracle, and I know you are capable of more than this." My dad has the biggest heart but he's narcissistic at times and he yelled. He was scary. He still does sometimes. And, tbh, the greatest healing for our relationship has been distance. He's always excited to see me and cherishes our time together now. So there's no criticism and yelling or arguing anymore. He just appreciates me as a strong woman he helped to raise. Same for mom. She understands now that her and dad and other things probably brought on my bipolar or, at the very least, made it worse. She gets that sometimes I don't have it in me to Be Great™. And so when I struggle now, she doesn't yell or guilt me, she listens and understands. It's... It's nice. It's nice to be able to wholly love my family again, despite their flaws. So maybe I'm too harsh on her, huh? She's a bad person, but so was her dad, and she didn't get to grow up and have him finally grow up and act better too, did she? But that's not an excuse, I suppose. Her father was beaten senselessly by her grandpa and thats how him and dad became close as brothers, he lived with him and my grandparents when his father was too violent to withstand. But her father was still a bad man. Serial cheater, literally ran drugs for the cartel (yes, mexico to Florida. how? I haven't the faintest clue) violent himself, addict, and probably more. My dad has cut him off too, right before he died. He has come to the house tweaking and my dad took him outside and said if he ever endangered his children that way again he would kill him and then they were estranged. He came over one last time the week before he died. It was the first time they spoke since and he apologized. He died the next week. My dad went to the pond by himself and came back so distraught that his eyes had swelled shut. I'll never forget that. But, when everything happened with her, I asked my dad if he would do it again. And he told me he would, without a second thought. His friend was endangering me and my little brothers; no matter how much he loves him he loves us more. And we all have a choice to be better. We all can be better. And so he told me not to fret too much. "She'll come around," he promised, "And even if something happened, because I know that's what you're actually asking, Avery, yeah you would regret it. I still do. But the regret could never outweigh the happiness you and your mom and your brothers have given me. I still miss him, but I'd do it again for you. Regret will not kill you, even if it hurts."

So I'm still hurting. I am. I'm still massively hurting. I'm fucking bleeding like cardiac wound, but I'd do it again. I was miserable. I was tired. I couldn't watch her sabotage herself over and over and over again. And when she told me that we weren't even close. That she was "just too broken to trust me, to be close to me" I lost it. I'd never felt more betrayed or worthless or just... Used. I would have done anything for her, and I did. I mustered the strength to let her know she was being a bitch, letting her borderline rule her life, and hurting me and others and herself. I removed myself from our attached hips with all the precision of a chainsaw in an army medics hands but I did it. I loved her enough to let her know what consequences are, even if it hurt me too. Even if I'm lonely and grieving and bleeding. I'm always fucking bleeding. I love people too much and too hard and it leaves me shattered and bleeding. Love breaks my bones. And I laugh. All that poetic nonsense that just can be summed up in a phrase.

I'm still bleeding.

But, when I sat on the ponds edge and watched the sun rise, I felt whole. The bleeding quelled, for a moment. I saw that even if my father had to go through pain and agony for his friendship with her dad, only for it to end, well, something beautiful still came out of it. And maybe, maybe I can find a way to turn this mess of blood into something beautiful too. So I'm going to get out of bed, even though I really wish I could stay in it forever and get dressed. I'm going to take care of the house I share with the love of my life and pet my dogs and cat. I'll water the orchids and apply for some jobs. I'll draw and I'll give an offering to my spirits. I'll think about how my boyfriend didn't like God of War that much the first time he played it, but when he played it for me (because I like game storylines but am terrifically bad at playing a lot of games) he watched the way I laughed, the way I gasped, and the way I cried so many times and he found a love for the game. Because of a love for me. I'm going to hold on to the way love weaves itself in the oddest of places. In a game, in a pond, in my heart. Kratos said to be better, and I will.

Ik no one will read this and that's okay. It's... It's easier to journal when it feels like I'm telling someone a story. Or explaining something. Or even just having a conversation. It makes it bearable. Thanks for listening.

[taleweaver-ramblings]

I just saw the In The Tags thing you just reblogged, and is there any chance you'd tell me about Legends of Karac Tor?

Oh, you lovely, lovely person. Music to my ears, those words.

So! Legends of Karac Tor is a five-book portal fantasy series about four brothers and their father who get Called into another world. As tends to be the case, the other world (Karac Tor) is kinda going to pieces, and while initially reluctant, they get tangled up in trying to help save it. It is, at times, very much a story that the author wrote for his kids, about "them" . . . but then again, so is The Wingfeather Saga, so.

A short list of reasons why people should actually read it:

The relationship between the brothers is SO GREAT. They aren't constantly buddy-buddy, but they also aren't rivals, and they genuinely care for each other and just. y'know. act like family.

There's actually a lot about families in this book, which is nice.

The world is a magnificent mishmash of European, Scandinavian, Welsh, and Native American mythology and concepts, and it's pretty cool just in general. King Arthur stuff is in there too, which is fun.

There's some significant bits built off the idea that the Vikings made their way super far inland into the Americas, which is just fun.

Minor spoiler, but there's a wonderful mentor character who does not, to my knowledge, die. (It helps that he has a whole arc of his own to work through.)

Hadyn and Ewan Barlow are just great and I love them. I definitely did not have a book crush on Hadyn in early high school NOPE not me what were we talking about again.

Cruedwyn Creed is also a fabulous character — swashbuckling, funny, a bit boastful but also able to back up more than a few of his boasts.

SO MANY KINDS OF MAGIC.

Actually good parents!!!!

There's basically a little bit of everything in terms of plot. Epic battles. Quests. Desperate rescues. Political intrigue. Spies. Legends come to life.

I really enjoy the writing style, especially in some of the chapters that tell some of the legends of Karac Tor? And other chapters that pick up the voice of a particular character to recap events?

They're just good ok?

So, yes. Thank you for letting me ramble! I was rereading the series, but it got put on pause because the end of book 2 always tears my heart out because of something that happens to one of my favorite characters, and I needed time to recover. But, y'know. In a good way.

[nerdasaurus1200]

Crack theory time. Let’s talk about Bruno.

I saw Encanto and honestly? I feel like Bruno could be a contender for Cassandra’s father. Think about it, he has curly hair just like she does (even the lil forehead curl), and he has almost her exact eyes. Plus, the Cassandra of Greek mythology was very similar to Bruno, telling prophecies that were mostly seen as bad. And this gets referenced almost constantly in season 2 when Cassandra constantly predicts bad things happening and then they happen.

Not to mention, he may not be the manliest of men like Gothel probably prefers, but he has magic. And so does his family. Maybe Gothel was a magic digger and thought Bruno could help her out with any Sundrop business that may occur. Maybe he predicted that the Sundrop flower would be taken and she ditched him when she got this vision.

The only thing stopping me is, I still really enjoy the Hector as Cassandra’s biological father. And then it hit me. Maybe it’s a Mama Mia situation. Maybe Gothel was messing around with both Bruno and Hector around the same time and dna tests obviously aren’t a thing in Tangled so nobody really knows who her birth father is.

[munsons-maiden]

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞 (𝟑/𝟓)

Thank you so much for all the comments on part 2! 💕🥰 Here’s part 3. I hope you enjoy - Love, Kiki 🖤

𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 |  Helmut Zemo x female reader

𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 |  London, 1813. There is new evidence that Hydra - the secret organization that murdered your family - has taken root in Sokovia, under the reign of Baron Helmut Zemo and his court. The ball season has begun, Baron Zemo is visiting London to strengthen diplomatic relationships and gain new allies, and Sokovia is still lacking a Baroness. You, warden of Tony Stark, are the last chance to end Hydra without risking a war and find out if Baron Zemo is really involved in Hydra’s schemes. So, there’s only one thing left for you to do: woo the Baron, gain his hand in marriage, become his Baroness - and bring Hydra and the Sokovian court to its knees.  

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 |  13 k  

𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 |  SMUT so ONLY 18+. A lot of smut. Oral (f! receiving), penetrative sex, unprotected sex (this is fiction, not real life - please stay safe and use a condom!). Angst at the beginning but it will resolve (*wink*). English is not my native language so sorry for any mistakes.  

𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞, 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐦𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 ♡  

𝐀𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬, 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞𝐬, 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐝🖤

Read PART 1 & PART 2 HERE.

𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝟑: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐅𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬

When you lay in bed that night, the night before your wedding, your mind wandered to the stories of Greek mythology you’d loved to read as a little girl. The tales of gods and goddesses, monsters and heroes and wars fought over beautiful princesses kept you company during summer days spent in the gentle shade of old oak trees, on winter days when the snow was falling softly beyond the window. They kept you company in the darkest hours of the night when your own demons woke to haunt and taunt you, first in your sleep and then in you gasping, panicked waking hours when the sun was hours from rising and it felt as if the night was as eternal as the lives of the deities you read about. But the story which had always intrigued you most was that of the three ancient ladies weaving the threads of fate, tying and tangling them, knotting them together when paths crossed and snapping them off when they parted, all to form the intricate pattern of a life, meddling with the hearts and lives of humans in their twisted games.

You could imagine those three old hags laughing now, cackling at the twisted game they were playing with your own fate. It must be an entertaining one. The spy who’d been sent to woo the deadly enemy and had ended up falling for him, ending up getting once had been her heart’s desire – only to find that this heart’s desire had changed. You had searched for revenge, and found love instead, unrequited love for the enemy you’d been sent to destroy.

The door to your room creaked open, and you could hear Natasha’s slight footsteps tiptoeing across the floorboards.

“Are you awake?”, she asked hesitantly, knowing how betrayed and furious you felt at them. You knew you had no right to be angry at them for using a scheme to force the Baron into marriage with you when you had been trying to do the very same thing for the past few weeks. Even if you’d always told yourself that it was your goal to make him want to marry you – at the end, the ultimate goal was still to spy on him and betray him.

“What do you think”, you mumbled from your place on the bed, head buried in the pillows. It was the night before the day of the wedding, and the mix of panic and fury – at your own naivety, having thought the Baron could have started to fall for you just as you had for him, at Nat and Tony using you like they had, at the Baron choosing to risk death rather than marry you before he’d given up and succumbed to Tony’s claims. Of sorrow for the love you felt, and the harsh pain of this love being unrequited.

You felt the mattress dip beside you when Natasha sat down on the bed, as she’d done countless nights when the two of you had talked until the wee hours of morning. She was your best friend, your sister, and the chasm you could feel had opened between the two of you after what she and Tony had done in the gardens last night despite you begging them to forget their plan broke your heart. You feared this chasm would turn into a ravine, with no chance to build a bridge to cross it. But you needed comfort, didn’t want to be alone right now, and despite the vile things you’d said to her and Tony when the Baron had stormed off after the duel, she was here now, by your side. And you were grateful for that.

See you at church tomorrow.

“Tomorrow morning, I will be chained to a man who will never love me”, you whispered, hoarse with the tears choking you.

“He will be chained to a woman who will never love him, either – will he?”

Your silence was answer enough.

“What if he’s involved with Hydra, as we’ve been assuming all this time?”, Nat sighed as she stroked your hair in a helpless attempt to soothe you. “You’re so close”

“What if he’s not involved with Hydra?”, you persisted, voice muffled by your pillow.

“There was a time when you despised him as well. What happened to this girl?”

She fell in love. Your silence was answer enough for her, so Nat went on, “The Queen wants war.”

You sat up to gape at Nat. “How – how do you know that?”

“Tony told me. There was a meeting of the Court of Arms a few hours ago. He’d told the Queen of our scheme to infiltrate Sokovian court.”

Numbing shock travelled through your body at the thought of another war.

“The Queen can’t just march into Sokovia without definite proof of the Baron’s allegiance with Hydra. I mean, she could. But then the rest of the continent would be on Sokovia’s side – why would our Queen stop after invading only them, after all? If she attacks without proof, she will fuel the continent’s alliance with Sokovia.”

“But if she has proof that Zemo’s involved with Hydra, she can attack and every other country will fight alongside her”, you finished her thought. Sokovia’s earth would be soaked with blood for centuries to come.

“I’m going to marry a man who despises me for it. I’ll be alone and a spy in a foreign country, and the fate of thousands of people will rest on my shoulders, because if I find the final proof, the Queen’s army and the rest of the continent will ravage Sokovia. If I never find proof, it means Hydra is still planning something so secret not even the court knows about it. If there are no ties to Hydra and we’ve been wrong all this time –“

“Which I highly doubt”, Nat added,

“ – then I’ll still be forced to spend the rest of my life shackled to a man who hates me.”

“It was your plan. It was your own idea to make the sacrifice”, Nat said quietly.

“What am I going to do?”, you whispered, voice breaking with the desperation you felt.

“You try to sleep.”

There had been this moment in the gardens, Zemo’s hands tangling in your hair as he’d pulled you into his kiss with such fierce passion, setting your whole world ablaze with desire and love, when you were sure that your feelings were requited. It had lasted only for so few heartbeats. It had been nothing more than a beautiful, fleeting dream that left your filled with sadness when reality caught up.

***

When the maids came to wake you with the first rays of dawn against a blushing sky, you were already wide awake, and nausea had settled in the pit of your stomach. You hadn’t found much rest in the night, tossing and turning in sweat-soaked sheets.

They bathed you in rose water, combed out the wet tangles of your hair until it was dry and glossy before weaving flowers and intricate braids into the shining strands; peonies in the softest hues of pink and little jasmine-blossoms that looked like little white stars. You still didn’t feel like a bride.

When your hair was done, your make-up perfected, and the row of peals buttoned at the back of the flowing white gown, the lacy white veil grazing your shoulders, you stood in front of the mirror, wondering who that girl was, staring back at you from the gilded glass. She looked like a ghost, or a girl playing dress-up.

“You look beautiful, my lady”, the maid beside you breathed, her eyes betraying the dream of her own wedding day, of her own bridal dress she would wear to meet her beloved at the altar. Your heart went out to her, and you wished that this young girl, barely on the brink of womanhood, would meet her dream instead of a nightmare when her own father would walk her to the altar one day. You took one last deep breath and took the bridal bouquet the girl was timidly holding out for you; a beautiful mix mirroring the flowers braided into your hair.

“Are you ready, lady Y/N?”, the girl asked. “You must be so happy. To become Baroness!”

Dread gripped your heart like a fist carved out of stone.

Sitting in the carriage to the church, your fingers fidgeting with the satin ribbon holding together your bridal bouquet, you regretted having asked to be left alone on the way to church. Nausea was creeping through your stomach and up your throat as you tried to hold yourself together, but as soon as the carriage came to a stop and you climbed out in front of the beautiful cathedral, you sharted to shake.

Tony, who’d been waiting in front of the church, called out your name and came to stand beside you.

“You look so beautiful. I – should I walk you inside? To the altar?”

You swallowed. “No. I will walk alone.”

Hurt crossed his features as you declined, and it gave you a twisted kind of joy to see him like this.

“I’m sorry it happened like this.”

“Well, it was my plan. But this isn’t a real wedding. There is no need to act as if it were. I want to be done with this.”

And with this, you marched through the heavy wooden doors.

The inside of the cathedral was lit with the light of the morning sun, its rays streaming into the transept through the colourful glass windows. Zemo was already waiting for you in front of the altar, clad into a black suit, his hair combed back. The specks of colourful light from the windows painted patterns across his features, which were as cold and unmoved as if carved out of marble. There was nothing of the usual watchful spark in his eyes as they locked on you while he lifted the veil to reveal your face.

The priest, who seemed to sense the tension freezing the air of the cathedral, hurried through the vows.

Will you take her as your wife, love and cherish her and be faithful until death do you part? Yes. There was so much coldness in his voice.

Will you take Helmut Zemo as your husband, love and cherish him and be faithful until death do you part? I do. I will betray him.

He didn’t kiss you when the priest told him to.

Afterwards, when you left the church, a carriage was already waiting for the groom and his bride. The Baron and his Baroness. There would be no guests to congratulate you, no wedding reception, no dancing into the wee hours of the morning. There was nothing to celebrate. The farewell was kept short – neither Tony nor Natasha, who’d been the only other people at church despite the Baron, the priest and yourself, said a word as they hugged you good-bye. It should’ve hurt to leave, not knowing when – or, should you be uncovered as a spy, if – you were going to see them again, the only family you had left. But everything felt numb, as if the thick mists of autumn rising above the cornfields in the evenings had settled in your chest, obscuring every single emotion. You were glad for these mists, because you didn’t want to cry your heart out in the carriage with Zemo. No, for the breakdown and the tears, you wanted to be alone.

Then, it hit you like a punch in the stomach. You probably wouldn’t be alone. There would be a wedding night, and every other night after this. You were married, which meant you belonged to your husband. To stay covered, you needed to comply, to become the perfect Baroness and the perfect wife. You couldn’t have people in Sokovia, or Zemo himself, starting to ask questions.

The ride in the carriage which brought you to the harbour was short and silent, with you and Zemo both avoiding to catch each other’s gaze, staring ahead in frosty silence. At the harbour, you boarded the small ship already waiting for the Baron and his new Baroness, to carry you right to the shores of Sokovia, a small country nestled at the coast alongside Latvia and Lithuania.

Your elbows resting on the wooden railing, the wind ripping some strands from your careful, intricate braids as if to play with them, you watched in silent dread as the coast of your home became nothing more than a black stripe on the horizon, before vanishing completely.

“Are you going to vomit?”, Zemo asked as he leaned against the wood beside you.

“The first words you’ve spoken to me today and you’re asking me if I’m going to be sea sick? You’re a poet, my dear husband.” You cursed at your naïve little heart doing somersaults in your chest at the sight of him, his handsome features, the slight shadow of stubble on his cheeks. He looked handsome, the way the salty breeze was whipping his chocolate-coloured hair into his face.

He chuckled mirthlessly. “Well, the first words I spoke were ‘I do’, my little harpy.”

“If you don’t remove yourself from my sight, I will be sick.”

“Believe me, there’s nothing I would like to do more, but you should come and have dinner with me.”

Dinner. How fast the day had flown by already.

“I will have to decline.”

“Are you planning on starving yourself?”, he inquired, “Because if you do, I would appreciate it if you could do it while we’re still on board. It’s easier to rid oneself of a corpse if one can just give it over to the sea.”

“I promise you, Baron, that if I go down, I’ll pull you down with me”, you spat, and went inside to seek out your quarters. It would be one night on the ship, and a whole day of travelling by carriage once you’d reached Sokovia.

The sailors were kind, eyeing you with wonder in your bridal gown and the flowers woven into your slightly tousled hair. “Baroness, these are your private quarters”, the bulky man who’d led you below deck said with a little bow – the title sounded so strange in your own ears – “Your husband will reside in the quarters to the left, beside your own.”

“He – we will be staying in separated bedrooms?”

Uneasiness crept into the sailor’s eyes and his face went beet red at the implication.

“The Baron made it unequivocally clear that two bedrooms should be prepared, Baroness.”

You gave him a nod, too tired to attempt at a smile, and vanished into your quarters. The room was sparsely furnished, lit by the light of dozens of candles lining up on every surface, their golden glow illuminating a four-poster bed and a make-up table with a gilded mirror on the wall above it. The wooden trunks containing everything you’d bring with you to Sokovia had already been placed in a corner of the room beside the bed.

Was this normal? Did married couples usually sleep in separated quarters? Or did Zemo’s hatred for you, about the fact that he’d had to marry you despite his wish to remain unmarried, burn so bright that he couldn’t stand to be in the same room with you? Was he just being a gentleman, wanting to give you space and privacy? Why did it even bother you that he wouldn’t spend the night with you? You had once found yourself dreading the wifely duties ahead of you if your scheme succeeded. Maybe you just wanted to be done with it. You know that’s not the reason. It suddenly felt as if the bridal gown was actively trying to choke you, and you reached behind your back to unfasten the row of tiny pearl-buttons, but you couldn’t reach them. A frustrated growl tore from your throat.

“Why are you pacing?”

You jumped with a surprised squeak and whirled to face the intruder. Zemo only frowned back at you.

“Could you not have knocked?”, you snapped.

“I did. Quite a few times. You didn’t answer.”

“Well, then. There is no need to knock on a door if you’re going to barge in, anyway.”

He shut the door behind him and came to stand in the middle of the room, looking a little lost.

“I barged in because I was worried you had done something stupid.”

“Such as jump into the sea to get as far away as possible from you?”

He sighed deeply, and you resumed to your agitated pacing.

“I have some cherry blossom tea”, he finally broke the silence.

“Very nice. You should go and enjoy it, then”, you deadpanned, and you were feeling horrible for how you were treating him. You so desperately wished to go back to the times of dancing, of easy bantering and shared little quips, of the kiss with his hands combing through your hair. Times before you’d given him your heart and he had shattered it into a myriad of pieces.

“It’s imported from Asia.”

Silence. More pacing.

“I wondered if you’d like to have a cup as well. It’s the best cherry blossom tea –“

“I DO NOT WANT YOUR CURSED TEA!” You whirled to face him, and the last word came out as a screech worthy of a banshee. Zemo blinked. Tension-filled silence settled over the two of you, and you waited for him to leave you alone. He bit his lip, and nodded slightly before reaching for the doorknob –

“Wait!”, you called out, and he stilled. “I – I don’t have a handmaiden.”

He frowned, trying to grasp what you were trying to tell him, so you continued, “I cannot get out of this dress on my own. The corset on the back is not tied with lace but with buttons.”

Understanding flashed in Zemo’s dark eyes, and he gave a single curt nod before crossing the distance to stand behind you. You were facing the mirror of the make-up table, your eyes finding him in the reflection as he gently pushed a few stray strands of your hair away from your neck to reach the buttons. His hands brushed against the exposed skin on your neck before he slowly, carefully avoiding to touch anything but the row of tiny pearls, opened them one by one in a line down towards your lower back.

The silence began to weigh heavy between the two of you, and you noticed that you’d been holding your breath in the strange intimacy of Zemo unfastening the buttons of your wedding dress. You wanted him so desperately – his touch, his kisses, his heart. Him. You hated him for rejecting you so brutally, just minutes after he’d kissed you breathless, and you hated yourself for playing your own games with him, which had ended in a marriage he’d wanted to avoid so badly – who, if not a young woman, could understand that the choice if and whom to marry was something precious? You’d robbed him of this choice, and it ashamed you. You were afraid he could demand you to fulfil your role as his wife in the bedroom, simply because it would not happen out of love. At least, not for him.

While your mind was racing, you could feel the tightness of the white gown’s corset loosen with every button he unfastened; he’d worked his way to the middle of your back. The tension between the two of you felt like the electricity sizzling in the air before a thunderstorm at the end of a hot summer’s day. And still, the slight touches of his fingers as he unfastened button after tiny button made you shiver in the best of ways. Your eyes flicked up to his reflection in the mirror. He was stunning. A few unruly strands of his dark hair were falling into his forehead, and you yearned to touch brush them from his face. His long, dark lashes threw shadows across his cheeks in the golden glow of the candles. His eyes were intently focused on the row of buttons.

You set to speak, but as if having sensed it, Zemo’s hands stilled and his gaze flicked up to meet yours in the mirror, before he broke the silence. “There will never be enough words for me to apologize for what I have done to you, Y/N, even if I spent the rest of our lifetime together repeating them. It won’t suffice”, he began, and the coldness was melting from his voice with every word, “So, if I am the reason for your unhappiness, at least I will try to take care of you as best as I can. There is nothing I will demand of you in return. If you wish to take part in the politics of Sokovian court, you are free to do so. If you wish to travel the country and remain as far away from me as possible, you are free to do so, as well. I will treat you as my equal, and nothing less. I will not force myself upon you. In any way. If that is what you want.”

You gaped at him in the mirror, parting your lips to say something, but the words had left you. Zemo had stopped unbuttoning your dress, waiting for your answer.

His eyes held a strange glow in the reflection as he said, “You asked for the reason why I would never want to marry. I still owe you the answer, I feel. After the fire that ravaged half of the palace, it took me three days to find their corpses. My parents, my brother and his wife, my niece. My brother was the firstborn. It was him who should’ve taken Sokovia’s throne – he would have been a far better regent than I could ever dream to be. My quarters were right beside theirs. I wasn’t there, though. I was out in the night, training at swordplay to calm down after an argument I had with my brother at dinner. I so often try to remember what it was about, but I fail every single time. They were all together when the flames swallowed them. I should have been there with them. But I was the one left behind with nothing but the charred bones of everyone I had ever loved. And when I found them, I swore to myself I would never marry. To never have a family, to never be so vulnerable again. Because I fear what would be left of me if I ever again lost the person I loved most. I know it was your wish to choose your husband instead of being forced into marriage to someone you didn’t love. That is why I agreed to the duel with Stark. To hope he would pull back and see reason and let you choose on your own. But I saw that my act of kissing you, and being seen doing it, would ruin you. So I agreed to it. But please believe me when I say that if I ever had planned on marrying, the only choice for me would have been you, from the very first moment you insulted me and stormed off to get yourself a slice of strawberry cake.”  

You hadn’t noticed the stray tear rolling down your cheek until Zemo brushed it away tenderly with his thumb before taking a step back, away from you. Your heart was bleeding for him, for everything he had endured, and at the same time, it was soaring on wings of love and happiness.

“You don’t have to give an answer. I will leave now”, he announced softly with a slight tilt of his head, and the familiar movement was all it took.

“Wait!”, you called out, and his hand stilled on the doorknob for a second time. You turned away from the mirror with a swish of your half-opened gown.

You swallowed, grasping for the right words, and this time if was your heart offering them. “I would have chosen you, Helmut. I never wanted anyone else. And it broke my heart to believe you didn’t reciprocate these feelings, to think I was shackling you into a marriage you never wanted –“

Before you could finish your sentence, he had crossed the room, and the look of tenderness and love shining in his hazel eyes, the dancing light of the candles mirrored in their depths, stole the breath from your lungs. And then, his lips locked on yours. Where the kiss in the gardens had been feverish and wild, this kiss was gentle and sweet, a warm wave of euphoria sweeping you off your feet. Zemo’s hands cupped your face, pulling you closer to deepen the kiss, and a soft sigh escaped your lips. You could feel him mirror your own smile while he kissed you, and you let your hands tangle in his hair, the soft strands gliding through your fingers like silk, just as soft as you’d imagined them to be. Helmut Zemo loved you. The happiness you felt radiating through your very soul at his confession made you feel as if you might burst with it, as if it would make your skin glow like sunshine reflecting off a lake.

This time, there would be no interruptions. It was no forbidden thing anymore to kiss him – the two of you were free to do whatever you wanted. However often you wanted.

With gentle hands, Zemo reached up to pull one of the peonies out of your hair, letting it fall to the ground without breaking the kiss. He grasped your arms and twirled you so your back was against his chest, and continued his work. A second one of the flowers followed, and a third. With every flower he pulled from your braids, he placed a tender kiss to the side of your neck, and your pulse accelerated with every touch of his lips on your skin, watching him intently in the mirror. When he’d freed the last flower from your hair, he gently started to pull the pins from your braids, until your was freed, tumbling around your face. Your gazes met in the mirror. When he turned you towards him again to continue the kisses, the movements of his lips against yours became more urgent, and you pressed yourself against him. But still, his hands never strayed from where they were holding your waist.

“Do you remember what you told me when we were dancing in the palace?”, you whispered, and he broke the kiss to glance at you, that mischievous little smile tugging at his lips, and your knees grew even weaker with desire.

“How could I have forgotten?”, he drawled.

“I… tried it”, you continued with a hoarse voice.

His eyes glittered. “And did you enjoy it, darling?”

“I did. But I couldn’t help thinking of you. Wishing it were your hands touching me, instead of my own.”

His gaze dropped to your lips. “I must confess to have found myself in a similar situation”, he finally smirked – how did he manage to look so mischievous and sincere at the same time?  

“I still dream of it”, you whispered your confession. The last of his resolve crumbled, and his lips crashed on yours, fiercer than before, and you could feel the familiar embers glowing in your lower belly, waiting to be stoked into blazing flames by his touches.

You gasped as his hands found the back of your dress and ripped it open the rest of the way, sending buttons spilling around you and with a breathy smile, you began to work on his own buttons. In a storm of clashing teeth and desperate hands and burning kisses, you rid him of his upper garments, and his eyes shut at the sensation of your curious hands exploring his bare chest, the muscles rippling beneath your palms as he moved against you. He was stunning. His hot tongue ghosted across your lower lip, begging entrance you granted him happily, and the feeling sent shivers of pleasure through your whole body when his tongue delved into your mouth to taste you. You groaned and pressed your chest against him – but it still wasn’t close enough.

The whimpers escaping your own throat at the feeling of his fingers raking through your hair while his left hand drew circles to the exposed skin on your waist seemed to embolden him further. You’d never felt something like this before, this pure bliss he put you into with only his touches, completely unravelling you under his hands.

Zemo’s hands snaked to your back, to the corset you’d worn beneath the gown, and with deft hands he began to rip open the stings at the back, his lips travelling from the corner of your mouth along your jawline. It left you gasping and breathless and hungry for so much more. The strings came loose, and your corset joined the discarded bridal gown on the floor.

But instead of continuing the desperate kisses, Zemo took a step back to look at you, naked in front of him, and the feeling of his eyes all over your exposed body made you shiver with anxiousness –

“You’re so beautiful”, he whispered, and the sincerity on his face made you swallow. You flashed him a tender smile, allowing to yourself to take in his own, half-naked form. He wasn’t bulky, but the lines and ridges of muscles were clearly visible even in the dim light, and you yearned to explore these planes of his body.

“So are you.”

There was a heartbeat of silence between the two of you, but before he could pull you into his arms again, the ship hit a wave and jolted, sending you stumbling towards him, and he caught you in his arms.

“Eager, are we?”, he teased, and you giggled, before he reached down to lift you as if you weighted nothing, only to carry you to the four-poster-bed which by now had lost its looming presence.

His eyes were locked on yours with a beautiful intensity while he gently placed you down on the mattress. You couldn’t help but notice how the muscles in his arms flexed as he crawled atop you, his hands placed on the mattress to each side of your head, his knees gently parting your legs so he could situate himself between them.

His lips found the spot on your neck, right above your racing pulse beneath the tender skin, and a gasp tore from you when he gently sucked at it, his teeth scraping the skin, and you angled your head to give him better access.

“Does this feel good?”, he whispered, and all you could manage in reply was a breathless nod. It didn’t feel good – it felt ecstatic. He filled your senses with how good he felt beneath your touch, how he tasted, how his smell of cedarwood and something so distinctly him wrapped around you like the gentle air of a warm spring day. It was intoxicating, and you never wanted this moment to end. Zemo trailed his kisses down the side of your neck, over your collarbone, the slope of your breasts and further down your ribcage, leaving you gasping and panting beneath him. You could feel his smile against you wherever his lips made contact, and his warm breath fanning across your exposed skin like the lightest of caresses made you shiver with pleasure. His soft hair fell into his face and tickled your bare skin as he went down on you.

When his trail of kisses had reached the spot beneath your bellybutton, he glanced up at you, a searching look in his eyes, and it flooded your heart with affection to see the tenderness in these mesmerizing hazel depths.

“I want you to know that I won’t do anything you don’t want me to, darling,” he rasped, and the sound of his dark honeyed voice, coarse with want for you, fuelled the warmth blooming in your lower belly. “So if you want me stop, you only need to say so.”

You nodded, knowing that never, not in a thousand years, he could do anything to make you want to stop. No, you desperately needed him to continue whatever he’d been doing.

The smile tugging at his lips was soft, and you took in how stunning he looked between your legs – flushed, his lust-darkened eyes glowing in the light of the candles, hair tousled where your fingers had raked through the silky dark strands which now tumbled into his face as he leaned down. His hands left the mattress to caress your legs, wandering higher towards the apex of your thighs, closer to where you needed him most.

His piercing gaze never left yours as he slowly, so achingly slowly, brought down his head, hot breath tickling your most sensitive parts, the wet arousal already pooling between your thighs. You shuddered in anticipation.

His tongue flicked out, drawing lazy circles over your wet folds, making your hips snap up to meet his mouth. He chuckled into your wetness, while his hands travelled up your thighs, his fingernails scratching the soft skin, to grab your hips and pin them down on the mattress again.

“Do you want me to continue?”, he purred and this time, his tongue hit that sweet spot and you cried out as you rolled your hips, craving more. He moaned in response, sucking at the bundle of nerves, making you writhe beneath his touch with the sensation of his tongue, the vibration of his dark voice against you. You hadn’t though it possible to feel anything like this. Sure, you’d dreamed – more than once since the night when he’d whispered these secrets into your ear – of what it be like to be touched by him in this way. The dream was growing pale compared to the blissful reality. Your back arched, and the pleasure jolting through you intensified with every flick of his tongue against that bundle of nerves, and already you could feel your release catching up to you, slowly and with an intensity you’d never experience with your own hands. The moan that tore from your lips was loud, and you bit your lip to silence yourself.

“Don’t hold back, my love”, he crooned sitting up and his tongue darted out to lap your arousal from his lips, watching you intently, “Sing for me.”

The haze of your relief was addling your mind, but it hadn’t been enough. You needed him, you wanted to feel him as close to you as humanly possible. You went to protest when he rose from the bed, but the words died on your tongue when he relieved himself from his pants, revealing his hardened length. Oh Lord. He was…huge.

He must have seen the shock on your face, since as he positioned himself above you again, his elbows resting at each side of your head to support his weight, he whispered “I won’t hurt you. I will never hurt you – in any way.” His voice was raw with the kaleidoscope of emotion mirrored in his eyes as he took you in, flushed and wanting beneath him. Wanting him. It nearly felt too beautiful to believe, and for a few heartbeats, panic roared in his chest like a caged beast. He couldn’t lose you. If he ever lost you…it would destroy him.

You could sense the shift in his emotions, and his words from earlier came back to you.

“You won’t lose me,” you promised. Are you sure?, the voice in you mind piped up, but you silenced it. You knew that this was real, that he had nothing to do with Hydra and that, however twisted the ways of fate that bound you together, you were grateful for them to have woven your path with his. You knew you loved him, and he loved you. That was all that mattered – in this moment, and in every single one to come. “You won’t lose me, Helmut. I love you. And I want to give you everything; my heart, my soul and my body. They’re yours.”

“I love you, moye serdtse.”

You leaned up to meet lips in a sweet, short kiss while he aligned himself with your entrance and gently sunk into you, eliciting soft moans from the both of you as he buried his throbbing length fully inside you, inch by inch, slowly enough not to hurt you. His soft lips were never leaving yours as he did so. All this time, you’d looked with dread upon the secret of the marriage bed, the wifely duties you’d one day expected to fulfil. The secrets nobody had shared with you, leaving you alone and wondering what it was that could be so special about it, wondering if it was pleasant or if it would hurt. Without ever really knowing what it was that happened between a wife and her husband, you’d been fearful at the thought of being so vulnerable and exposed with another person. Now, with Helmut Zemo as close as humanly possible, you understood. It was the most beautiful thing you’d ever felt, as if your very souls connected, intertwined as your bodies did the same. His gaze was holding yours, telling you he felt the same way.

He waited a few heartbeats to give you enough time to adjust to him, and as you rolled up your hips against him, it elicited the sweetest, most sinful of sounds from his lips. He began to move, gently pulling out of you just to slide back again, your velvet walls wrapping around him, his tip grazing a sweet spot deep inside of you with every thrust. It sent a wildfire of pleasure through your body, tearing moans from your lips. You arched your back, eyes fluttering close with the blissful sensations he was bestowing on you, and when his bare chest met your own, you could feal the tune of your hearts beating wildly in a beautiful synchrony. His own panting and moans mingled with yours in the air around you while his free hand began to trail along the line of your neck and cup your cheek, gently tilting your head to give him access to your neck, his teeth again grazing the tender skin and you cried out in pleasure at the throbbing ache building in your core.

Your own hands, which had been clawing at the sheets on your sides, wandered up over the soft skin of his back, the muscles firm beneath your touch, and tangled in his own soft strands at the nape of his neck. The greedy moan into the crook of your neck your touch earned in response nearly sent you over the edge, and you hooked your leg around his waist to deepen his thrusts. You could feel the throbbing feeling in your core growing, the hot licks of pleasure making you quiver as he hit that sweet spot inside you over and over again with each thrust.

“I’m close”, you panted, just as the burning sensation turned into an explosion that sent currents of bliss through your whole body. You arched your back, and for a brief moment, your mind went blank. There was only Helmut, buried deep inside you, making you feel as if you were flying. Your walls clenched around him as his pace quickened and he was chasing his own height with you, moaning at the sensation of his own climax hitting him.

Together you came down from your heights, collapsing into the sheets; tangled up, soaked, and panting fervently.

You were the first to break the blissful silence of the afterglow.

“I don’t even have the words to describe this”, you gasped as he pulled you further into him so you could place your head on his chest, right above his raging heartbeat, the both of you trying to catch your breath.

“Was I a match for dream-Helmut?”, he teased. “It sure sounded like you had a lot of fun with the secrets I spilled that evening.”

“Not as much fun as I had right now. And I don’t ever want this to be over. We can do this again, right?”

He chuckled. “You’re giving me a run for my money”, he panted, “But give me a few minutes and I’ll be ready for a second run.”

You giggled, slightly embarrassed by how needy you sounded. “I mean, this is not something reserved only for the wedding night, right?”

“We can do this whenever you want to, moye serdtse”, he said softly, pulling you closer into his chest and placed a soft kiss to your hair, leaving no room for doubt or embarrassment at what had just transpired between the two of you.

“What does it mean?”, you asked.

“Moye serdtse? It’s Sokovian. It means my heart.”

***

Needless to say, the two of you didn’t get much sleep that night, and your eyes fell closed as soon as you’d sat down in the carriage that would bring you to the Sokovian palace. When you woke, though, you were still in the carriage, your head resting against the windowpane – and Zemo was gone. Groggy with sleep, you glanced out of the open carriage door. It was a curious scene playing in front of you. You’d obviously stopped in a small village – or rather, what was left of it. Torn little houses were lining the cobbled street, rubble littering the sides. It was the sight of a village ravaged by war. A war your country had inflicted on them. Because they were hiding the remains of Hydra. But were they? Had there ever been any evidence? Nobody had told you, and it shamed you to realize that you’d never asked.

Amidst all the rubble was your husband – it sounded strange but oh so beautiful to think of him as that – and a throng of children had gathered around him. They laughed as he held out hands full of sweets, and the song he was singing floated through the air towards you. His singing voice was beautiful, dark and deep like the forest of a fairy tale, and you wished you understood the words. It sounded like a lullaby, or an old nursery rhyme. He never saw the tender smile with which you watched him.

“Ah, you’re awake”, he greeted you when he finally climbed back into the carriage. “I didn’t want to rouse you.”

“I never heard of a regent giving sweets and songs to children”, you mused, and sadness nestled in his expression.

“They don’t have much else, since the war. There are still so many villages and cities destroyed, no matter how many soldiers I send to assist with reconstruction.”

“It’s horrible”, you said silently, and Nat’s cautions came to your mind like an unbidden visitor.

The Queen wants war.

“It’s why I travelled the continent ever since the – since I became Baron.”

You head snapped up at his words, tearing you from the thunderstorm in your own thoughts.

“I tried to strengthen the diplomatic relationships to other countries on the continent and make them listen to the other side of the story.”, he added.

“You were searching for allies?”

“No. I was trying to make friends. I don’t need allies, because I don’t want another war. Besides – nobody would ever ally with a country in ruins. Even if there was another war. All I want is peace for my country, to heal.”

“The only version of the story I know is that Hydra tried to usurp the Queen’s throne, but they were stopped and a few of them fled to Sokovia. It was said that your father granted them asylum – so the Queen attacked.”

He tilted his head, his gaze watchful and intelligent as a hawk’s. “And what do you believe?”

“I believe there’s always two sides of a story, and the tale the winners tell isn’t necessarily the right one. So tell me the Sokovian side of the story.”

“I will”, he replied softly. “But that’s a tale for another time.”

***

When the carriage stopped in front of the palace, you marvelled at the beauty of the ancient white stones, the colourful spires adorning it like a crown, and your gaze momentarily strayed to the rebuilt left wing of the structure before you quickly averted your gaze. Servants were already waiting for you at the wide stone steps to the entrance, and one of them, an old man, greeted Zemo with a deep bow and a smile one would grant an old friend.

“Baronessa”, the man greeted you with another toothless smile, “If you would like a little tour of the palace and the grounds to get to know your new home?” His accent was heavy, and you felt deep gratitude that he was welcoming you in your own native language. But as Baroness, you couldn’t wait to learn the Sokovian langue as well.

Zemo threw you a sideways glance and took your hand, the subtle smile playing at the corners of his mouth telling you exactly what he was thinking.

“I think I should show my wife to our private quarters first”, he finally said, “To rest after our tiring travels.”

You didn’t rest, of course. You didn’t want to, and neither did Zemo – there were far more important things to do than sleep in the four-poster-bed with its beautiful lace curtains.

***

The following days passed in a haze of palace tours, of introductions to the court and servants alike. Zemo had kept his word – at your wish, you sat beside him in every court meeting, no matter how secretive it was. He listened to you with respect, valued your opinion, and – though at first wary of a woman amidst their political schemes, eyeing you with distrust or contempt – so did the members of Sokovian court, with time. The mornings were spent with politics and court meetings, the afternoons were reserved for only the two of you. You would go on walks, sit together and read, and he would teach you Sokovian. The nights were spent in the throes of passion.

Days blurred into weeks, and you came to realize that you’d never before been so happy as you now were at Zemo’s side, as his Baroness. His wife. You’d found yourself falling in love with the country of Sokovia, the people fighting to restore what was left of it, to bring it back to its former glory. You fell in love with the lilting melody of its language and the tales of the fae folk dancing in the deep of the woods, the Rusalka singing their songs to the currents of the rivers.

You hadn’t forgotten your task – but you were certain now that Zemo had nothing to do with Hydra. If they still existed, he wasn’t involved in their plots and cruelties.

Instead, you were listening, watching, observing and searching for files holding the answers. So far, you were none the wiser. But there were two options you hadn’t tried yet.

The first one were the servants. They were part of the palace, quiet and often unseen – the ears and eyes of the place. Most of the nobility didn’t care if a servant was listening to their private conversations, since secrecy was what made a good servant in the first place. Maybe Nat would have been luckier as a spy if she’d not posed as nobility herself, but come to the Sokovian palace as a handmaid.

So one morning, as your handmaid, Wanda, was busy brushing out your hair, you had taken your chance and asked in the broken bits of Sokovian you’d already learned, “How long have you been working here?”

She eyed you absent-mindedly through the mirror in front of you. “I’ve lost my parents to the war. The old Baron would take in orphaned children from all over the country, and we would be trained to be servants. So, I spent a great part of my childhood here, in training.”

A noble thing to do, you’d thought. And the most certain way to gain another person’s loyalty.

“I grew up as an orphan, as well”, you’d replied quietly. “I’m sorry for what happened to you, Wanda.”

“It’s in the past. It’s on us now to be better for the future. Did your parents die in the war as well, Baronessa?”

You could see how she’d debated with herself if it was adequate to ask her Baroness such questions, so you’d been quick to answer, “No. I lost them before the war started. They were killed by Hydra.”

Wanda’s hands in your hair had stilled, and she’d looked up to meet your own steady gaze in the mirror.

“I haven’t heard this name for a long time, Baronessa.”

“And still, their presence is looming over us.” Like the shadow of a predatory bird right before it would shoot down to catch the mouse.

“Sokovia is a safe place, Baronessa. For all of us.”

Her gaze had fluttered down to the brush she was fidgeting with.

“Is it?”, you had quietly contemplated.

The servants wouldn’t tell you anything, you’d realized then. It would take time to gain their trust, time you probably didn’t have. The last option to glean information on Hydra’s whereabouts was Zemo’s study itself – it would take a few nights to scour through all the letters and documents gathered there. You had already tried this option – but there had been one drawer of the desk which had been locked. You would have to search for the matching key first.

Despite your trust in his innocence, you were sure he was keeping something from you, and it drove you mad not to know what he was hiding, to know that even though you’d taken over your role as Baroness at his side, there was still something left he didn’t trust you with. The thought hurt. It’s ironic, coming from a spy. Did he ever have a suspicion about the scheme which had brought the two of you together? Any suspicion as to what you were doing behind his back, searching for clues about the alchemists of Hydra? You don’t fully trust him, either, the little voice in your head chided. I do trust him, you tried to convince yourself. Really? Then go on and tell him what you are. See what he does. It wasn’t the first time you’d contemplated telling him about your mission, about the suspicion that Hydra had somehow taken poisonous roots in his country and his court. But as often as you contemplated revealing the truth to him when he held you in his arms and told you stories of his family and his childhood, asking about your own childhood after the death of your family, you never did. This part of your heart would stay locked, and so would the top drawer in his desk.

***

When you woke the next morning and turned so nuzzle against Zemo’s chest, you realized that the other half of the bed was empty. You blinked against the sunlight filtering into the bedroom, and your hand grazed something on your husband’s abandoned pillow. Blinking, you sat up – it was a single red rose, its crimson petals bright against the white silk, like blood on snow.

With a smile, you took the flower and your fingertips traced the soft petals. He was probably in the study already, busying himself with answering all the letters fluttering into the palace every day. A never-ending task. Maybe the time was ripe to hunt for the little key to the top drawer of the desk, at last.

As soon as Wanda had helped you dress, you made your way across the hallways to the study, where you found Zemo amidst a chaos of papers and letters scattered across every available surface, pouring over an official-looking paper. He hadn’t noticed your presence, standing in the doorway, and you didn’t rush to interrupt him but instead opted to use the chance to watch him. He looked distraught, his long lashes fluttering against his cheeks as his eyes flew across the words written on the parchment. The sunrays from the nearby window painted streaks of caramel in his dark hair, and his hand absentmindedly combed through the soft curls, destroying the neat style so a few unruly strands tumbled into his face. He’d rolled up his sleeves, and the strong lines of the muscles in his arms as he shifted the scroll to the side and grabbed another letter reminded you of the other things he could do with these strong arms, the hands currently fiddling with the ribbon that had bound the letter.

“Do you enjoy the view, Baronessa?”

You blinked, torn from your thoughts. Zemo had noticed you standing in the doorway, staring at him absent-mindedly – the smug grin playing on his lips told you he knew exactly what had been going through your mind, and his eyes took on a devilish gleam as they roamed over your body, the cleavage your dress was displaying.

“Do you, Baron?”, you smirked back, pushing away from the doorway to slowly stride towards him.

“Did you find the rose, moye serdtse?”

You raised an eyebrow. “I’d rather have found my husband beside me.”

“To do what, exactly, my love?”, he teased, “There’s a kingdom to lead and laws to pass. By the way – don’t you have a meeting with the court of merchants this morning?”

“I do”, you nodded, your voice growing more husky with every step you took towards him to close the distance. “It should start any minute now.”

“They why are you here with me?”, he taunted as you came to stand in front of him.

“I thought a morning with you could be more exciting than a morning with a bunch of old men spending their time complaining about the expensive tastes of their wives and daughters.”

“I bet if I read you one of these drafts for the laws on the import of wool, you would beg to be left in the company of these complaining old men”, Zemo retorted. “Except the reason for your visit was never the draft law on wool in the first place, but to ogle me. Which would be a real shock.”

“Scandalous, I know. Though you’re giving yourself too much credit of you think your appearance could a greater spell on me than the wool trade. Tell me about the wool, Baron. Maybe I can be of assistance.”

His hand reached out to take yours, and he slowly placed a chaste kiss to the back of your hand – the gaze of his hazel eyes, though, was intently locked on yours, conveying exactly what he was planning to do to you. “Forget the wool”, he husked, “I would be interested in knowing what, exactly, you wished me to do this morning when you woke up all alone.”

Your skin seemed to burn where his lips had grazed it, and the sensation travelled through your nerves like the sweetest of poisons, the first few sparks to rekindle the embers glowing in your core.

“I fear I would offend a lot of dead saints if I spoke so freely”, you teased with mock-innocence, watching as he turned your hand in his to place another kiss to the inside of your palm, searing your skin with the sensation. How could he turn innocent kisses into something that felt so sinful? Your breath hitched in your throat. His eyes had grown darker, the black of his pupils slowly swallowing the hazel of his irises as he pinned you to place with only his gaze, brimming with so much longing and adoration that you found it hard to form another sentence.

“There are no saints in this room, I can assure you”, Zemo smirked. Before you could reply, he was up from the chair, his fingers grazing your hair as he grabbed cupped your face and sealed your lips with his. Your own arms shot up to wrap around his neck in response, your body reacting to the beautiful familiarity of his touch on its own accord. There was no gentle kindling of flames into fire this time, though. He was a roaring wave sweeping you away, drowning you with everything he made you feel, everything he made you want. You moaned into the kiss when he pressed against you, his weight pinning you against the top of the desk, the wood digging into your lower back. He seemed to notice at the same time, and his hands grabbed your butt to lift you and gently place you on the desk, sending papers fluttering all around you like a swarm of birds taking flight. None of you noticed, though, lost in the passion of the kiss.

“We should lock the door”, he murmured against your lips, and you nodded.

“We should.”

Neither of you had the resolve to pull away and do it, though.

Zemo’s hands hiked up the gauzy fabric of your dress and your legs wrapped around his waist to pull him closer while you fumbled with the buttons of his dress shirt. He was already hard, his clothed length pressing against the inside of your thigh with the sweet promise of what was to come.

There was the sound of fabric tearing, and the dress fell away from you in a soft flutter of the fine silk to leave you bare before him with only the corset and your undergarments. Another tearing sound of fabric. Only the corset.

“This was my favourite dress”, you gasped, and Zemo began tracing your jaw with his lips, following it to your ear with a trail of wet, hot kisses, and you arched into the touch of his hands roaming to the valley of your breasts before snaking down to graze the sensitive skin of your now exposed thighs, the skirts of your dress no longer blocking his access.

“I’ll buy you a new one”, he husked, hot breath tickling the exposed skin of your neck as he angled his head and his teeth grazed the curve of your collarbone. Your patience with the buttons on Zemo’s dress shirt was running low, and with a wicked smirk, you tore at it, ripping it open and sending the buttons sprawling across the floor.

“That was my favourite dress shirt”, he mumbled against your skin, and you shuddered with the pleasure of the vibration of his voice against you, pulling him closer.

“I’ll buy you a new one,” you teased.

His deep laugh in response was drowned by your own wanton moan as he rolled his hips against yours and his clothed bulge rubbed against you, arousal for him already pooling between your legs. The sensation which shot through you at the contact made your head roll back, and he gently caught you. You pushed aside the fabric of his torn dress shirt, allowing your hands to wander across the planes and ridges of his firm chest, the sculpted muscles moving under your fingertips while his own hands grabbed your butt to pull you even closer to him.

It would have been a shock for any servant entering the study, to see the Baroness, utterly naked if it beside the corset, sitting on the desk, the Baron standing between her legs while he was attacking her neck with kisses. You knew that there was a chance of being caught – especially if anyone got the idea to look for you and the reason why you hadn’t attended the court meeting yet, but there was a certain thrill to it as well. In this moment, with Zemo’s lips grazing your skin and his touches leaving searing fingerprints all over you, you didn’t care. The need for him, to feel him inside you, was just too strong to leave room for worries.

“What do you want me to do, Baronessa?”, he rasped, lips brushing against your ear as he leaned in to suck at the skin above your thrumming pulse, and you only gasped at how good it felt. His hand tangled in your hair at the back of your head, grabbing a fistful of it to angle your head and give him more access to that spot below your ear. Your answering moan wasn’t as quiet as you’d intended for it to be, and you could feel him smirk against you.

“Do something already”, you urged with a breathless sigh. It would drive you insane with want if he waited even a few seconds longer, teasing you with his hungry kisses.

“Should I take you on the desk?”, he breathed, gently pushing you backwards so your back met the cool wooden surface of the table. His lips left your neck, and he glanced up at you. He looked flustered and dishevelled, and his sharp eyes had darked with lust, burning right through you like twin flames as he most certainly could read every single thing you were imagining him to do with you on this desk mirrored on your face.

The roguish smirk tugging at his lips, the unruly strands of dark hair falling into his face, made the coil in your belly clench even tighter, begging for release.

He continued to talk, the dark streak of desire weaving into his honeyed voice as he growled, “Or should I worship you with my tongue first, taste how wet you already are for me?” It wasn’t a question – the words had barely left his lips when his hands hooked around the back of your knees and he pulled you towards him, gently placing your legs on his shoulders to stabilize you. The cry that tore from your lips as soon as his tongue flicked across your slick folds and begun swirling around the sweet spot where you needed him most, was all the answer he needed, spurring him on.

“You have no idea what these sinful little sounds you make are doing to me”, he murmured, and the vibration of his voice against your most sensitive parts made you writhe with pleasure beneath his mouth, bucking your hips up for more friction. “No idea how lovely you look, losing control like this.”

Your hands grabbed the edge of the tabletop, hips rolling to meet his tongue. It was the sweetest torture, and it wasn’t even nearly enough. All it did was intensifying the craving for him as your walls clenched around nothing.

“Stop the teasing”, you gasped, “I need you. Now.”

Zemo obeyed without hesitation. His strong hands grabbed your waist through the fabric of the corset, and he lifted you effortlessly off the table as if you weighed nothing, before sitting down on his chair and placing you on his lap. Your arms locked at the back of his neck, bunching the fabric of his dress shirt, and while he was busy unbuttoning the fly of his suit pants, you’d already begun rolling your hips languidly against his clothed erection – the sounds it stole from him were too intoxicating to stop.

“Patience is not one of your virtues, moye serdtse”, Zemo panted as his impressive length sprang free and you attempted to shift to align him with your entrance. But he was faster, and his hands found their way back to the curve of your waist, to lift you a little. The muscles in his bare arms flexed with the movement, and the feeling as he slowly pulled you down onto him again, burying himself deep inside you, robbed the breath from your lungs and the strength remaining in your body. You were helpless in his hands, delirious with the feeling of his throbbing length sheathed inside you, and he loved every second of it.

A few heartbeats passed as Zemo waited for you to adjust to him, and when you rested your forehead against his, your gazes locked. You reached up to trace the pattern of pale freckles scattered across his cheekbones with the tip of your index finger, and his eyes fluttered close with the sensation of your gentle touch, of your walls clenching around him as he slowly began to move his hips. Would it ever stop to feel as if some missing piece in the puzzle of your soul had come back to you whenever you were with him? You hoped it wouldn’t.  

“You’re mine”, he whispered, “And I’m yours.”

You whimpered as he slightly lifted you again, only to pull you back down onto him, bucking up his hips to meet you. With your own forehead resting against Zemo’s, you savoured the feeling of his trembling breath ghosting across your cheeks and his tip grazing the sweet spot deep inside of you just right with every thrust, and your eyes fluttered close. You lost yourself in the feeling of him, lifting you so effortlessly before sheathing himself inside you again, listen to his laboured breath, the pants and praises for you every thrust drew from his beautiful lips. The world around you was blurring as the two of you allowed yourselves to get lost in the moment, in the pleasure of each other, of your bodies becoming one. The throbbing, burning tension in your core built, like a coil pulled impossibly tight and his pace quickened. Your hands fell from their place around his neck, and you grabbed his hips to steady yourself – when you felt something small and hard in the pocket of his suit pants. Something that felt like a little key. In your haze of lust, there was no room for reason or second thoughts. On instinct, you let your fingertips slide into the pocket, taking the chance when he was distracted by the things you were doing together, and snatched the key, curling your fist so tight around it that the metal dug painfully into your palm. You could feel how close he was, and with a broken moan, you let go, let yourself topple over the precipice of pleasure alongside him.

“I love you”, he whispered as he came undone beneath you at the feeling of your own high, your walls clenching around him with the force of it, little exploding in your vision like shooting stars across a night sky.

The air was filled with your heavy pants, both of you trying to catch your breath in the aftermath of your lovemaking. You opened your eyes and saw that he was looking at you, gently pushing a stray strand of hair behind your ear, and you leaned into the touch. The kiss he placed on your lips would have been enough the rekindle the wanton glow in your belly for a second time, had it not been for the traitorous sting of cold metal in your clenched fist.

“Do you remember when we started at pretending our courtship and I told you that in Sokovia, we didn’t use the term ‘to win one’s heart’ because it sounded too much like a trophy?”, he whispered against your lips, voice strained and rough from the exertion of your activities, and you nodded. “You never told me what you would say instead”, you replied with a little pout, and pulled away from the kiss to look at him.

There was a slight flush in his cheeks, and he seemed to glow with happiness as he gave you a small smile. “I never wanted to win your heart, my love. I wanted to be worthy of your heart.”

The sunlight filtering in from the colourful glass window on the wall behind you made his eyes glitter, fusing their hazel colour into a radiant shade of amber, and the beauty of him along with the meaning of his words took your breath away. A weight settled on your chest like a boulder, seeming to press you down into the recesses of hell where you deserved to be for betraying his love and his trust like this. It made it hard to answer – but Zemo had never expected an answer. He’d just wanted to tell you.

“Since we’ve happily ripped each other’s clothes to shreds, I suggest you wait here while I go and fetch you a new dress”, he proposed.

The metal clutched in your hand seemed to singe your skin when you nodded.

The top drawer of the desk. This would be the last place you’d be looking for information about Hydra’s whereabouts. Tonight, when he was fast asleep, you would go back to the study, unlock the damned drawer and bask in the relief of knowing you’d been right all this time, of knowing the man you loved had nothing to do with the abomination that was Hydra. And then, you would put this cursed task to rest and bury the truth deep in your heart where it could rot away in silence. You would never tell him. Your feelings for him were real, his soul belonged to yours as much as yours to his, and the pain of the scheme you had been playing was a burden you alone would carry, sparing him. You were at his side, and you would never leave him. That was all that mattered, you told yourself.

“And please extend my greetings to the merchants in the court meeting”, Zemo snickered, “They will never shut up about how you let them wait.”

***

Night had rushed across the palace on black wings, and Zemo had fallen asleep surprisingly fast – your plan had included a bottle of wine to render him sleepy, but the exertion of the court meetings he’d attended in the afternoon were sufficient. You sat beside him, your back resting against the headboard with its beautiful carvings of creatures from Sokovian folklore in the dark wood. The window was open to let in the summer air, the faint sweet scent of jasmine and roses floating in on a warm breeze that rustled the lace curtains of the bed. The moon was high in the night sky, a silver coin bathing the room in its eerie light. Only a few more minutes. Your eyes wandered to your husband, sleeping peacefully at your side. There was the ghost of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips, and his eyelids fluttered as softly as the wings of a moth while he dreamed. Did he dream of you? Sometimes, he would wake up in the middle of the night, screaming the names of his family, fighting against the eternal fire imprinted in the gruesome memory, before you would rouse him from his nightmare and started stroking his sweat-drenched hair to calm him. Tonight, though, you could tell that there was no demon of the past haunting his dreams. He looked serene in the silvery light of the moon. You traced the curve of his dark eyebrows with your fingertips, and the caress drew a contented little sigh from him. Your heart clenched in your chest, grabbed by the cold fist of fear – not of what you would find tonight, but the fear that you could lose him. As quiet as a ghost, you pushed back the bedsheets and tiptoed into the hallway and towards the study.

***

Files. Documents and records, the Sokovian seal glaring back at you from dried red wax which resembled droplets of blood marring the pages in the light of the single candle you’d brought with you, the weak glow barely able to hold the blackness of the night at bay which seemed to be pressing in on you.

There were accounts written by Sokovian spies about tension at different courts all over the continent, treaties of peace and trade. Nothing out of the ordinary, and you could feel your heart lifting with the growing feeling of relief when you sifted through the stack of papers which had been contained in the top drawer. But why did he lock it, then?

Your eyes flitted across the next page, and you scowled at the name at the top of the document, written in a beautiful handwriting, the S curling like a snake on the page. Viscount Tony Stark, Master of Weapons to Her Majesty. It didn’t make any sense – why should Zemo have whole files collected about Tony?

Your heart thumped wildly in your chest as you carefully placed the candle on the wooden top of the desk beside you to sift through the files.

Sokovia, 1805.

…though after scouring the remains of the burnt down wing of the royal palace nothing could have been found to prove involvement of arson, we, Your most loyal spies, agree that the flames have been caused by wilful intent…

You stilled, the words blurring in front of your eyes as shock hit you like a gust of icy wind. Arson. The palace hadn’t just burned down – it had been set ablaze. An assassination. Of Sokovia’s royal family… Why hadn’t Zemo told you?

“Heavens”, you breathed, pressing a hand over your mouth gaping in shock. Helmut. Somebody had murdered his family. Someone had tried to murder him –

You quickly grabbed the last three letters you hadn’t yet read and stuffed them into the lacy cleavage of your nightgown. You wouldn’t be able to read them right now. It would have to wait. You needed to – what, exactly? Confront Zemo?

Something cold and metallic suddenly pressed against your throat, and your breath caught. You hadn’t heard the footsteps in the hallway, too distracted by the discovery you’d made and your own mind trying to piece together the mosaic that was Helmut Zemo’s past.

“What are you doing.” Zemo’s voice was as silent and cold as death’s bloody scythe, so unlike the warmth he’d regarded you with ever since his confession in your wedding night. You swallowed against the knife he was pressing against your throat, cold metal against the spot of your hammering pulse, a spot he’d so tenderly kissed only hours ago. Slowly, you raised your hands in defeat and turned to face him. He stood mere inches from you, and there was a storm raging in the hazel depths of his eyes as he regarded you, so close that you could feel his breath ghosting across your cheeks.

“What. Are. You. Doing”, he repeated with barely contained fury, his eyes flashing in the candlelight. Then, his eyes drifted towards the letter you were still clutching to your chest, to the little key glinting on the table in the glow of the candle, and something in his gaze…shifted, fused into a hurt expression.

“That’s the reason you came to me to me this morning. To steal the key.”

“No. No, it wasn’t – you have to believe me. Please.” Your voice sounded weak and frightened.

He only stared at you, tilting his head as his sharp eyes scanned your face for traces of insincerity.

“Tony gave the order to murder your family”, you whispered. Only now did you recognize the wetness of tears on your cheeks. “Did he?”

A curt nod, a brief flash of rage in the depths of his eyes. “He did. He gave the order himself.” It sounded distanced and hollow, and you wished that there was anything – rage, pain, just anything else in his voice than this deadly calm.

“Why didn’t you tell me? How could you play pretend at courting me, laughing with me –“ You faltered as another thought crept into your mind, ugly and rotten and so horribly logical.

“You used me”, you breathed, and the look on his beautiful features, shadows flickering across his face, told you everything you needed to know. “That’s why you proposed our little charade of courting. You wanted to get near me so you – what? Could avenge them?”

“I had a few things in mind.”

“Is that why you proposed to pretend a courtship? Why you agreed to marry me?”, you asked quietly.

“Is that really what you think?” The hurt in his voice stung.

“I don’t know what to think anymore.”

Zemo chuckled darkly, and the press of the blade against your throat loosened a little. “Tony Stark has sent you away, his ward – his daughter – to marry the man whose family he gave order to kill, fully aware that you would be alone in my country, without any means of protection. He threw you to the wolves without a second thought and yet here you are, accusing me of such cruelty – me, who could have killed Stark in a fair duel absolving me of any fault or consequence. Don’t you want to ask why I didn’t do it?”

Your face fell. He was right. But still… “You told me you were in love with me since the very beginning, since the night we met. Was that before or after you’d come to know who I am?”, you demanded. Somehow, the knowledge that he’d used you as a means to his own ends was not a satisfying one. There was only hurt; a beast hacking its claws into your chest to suck out the happiness and replace it with the starless night of heartbreak and sorrow.

His face softened a little, reading your like an open book. “It was my intention to use you, at first, I cannot deny this. But what I told you was the truth. I started falling for you since that first night. And the more I kept falling, the less I cared for Stark. What began as a plot to get to Stark and take revenge fused into upholding our scheme to be near you. And it killed me to think about you marrying someone else, knowing I couldn’t have you because of my own fears holding me hostage. Everything I told you is true, moye serdtse. And you made me the happiest man alive.“ He let the knife fall to the ground with a clatter and reached for your hands instead, gently locking his fingers with yours while he said it.

There was something desperate in his expression as he asked, “I should have told you. How did you know I where to find these papers?”

Lie. Lie! The voice screamed, but you strangled it. No. No more lies.

When you didn’t answer, he finally understood. You could watch the exact moment of his heart shattering, crushed into a million pieces beneath the weight of the truth. His hands let go of yours as if your touch had singed him.

“He sent you. He sent you to spy on me”, he whispered, and his voice broke.

You waited for the shock of your secret revealed to hit you, the tears to spill, but everything was numb. “Helmut –“

“You,” he seethed, venom lacing his tone, and you jumped back at his sudden outbreak, “This whole time, it was you, using me. You and your wretched family. What happened in the gardens the night I kissed you…it was a trick. That’s why they were there –“

“I didn’t want to do it. I told them to stay away –“, you tried, the desperate plea lacing your voice, but he was too far gone already.

“ – you tricked me. So you could come to Sokovia as Baroness, infiltrate my court, and – what? Are you preparing for another war, to eradicate what’s left of my country?”, he spat, and you jumped. “Did you have a good laugh when I fell for your little scheme and agreed to marry you? Did you have a good laugh when I gave you my heart and let you into my bed?” His voice broke, and so did your heart. The helpless rage, the heartbreak and sorrow Zemo shattered your own soul. I want to be worthy of your heart. I cannot lose the person I love most. Not again. Your betrayal would break him.

“I did what I did to stop Hydra. To stop another war between our countries, not start it. I love you, Helmut. I never lied about that”, you pleaded, the tears soaking the fabric of your nightgown, but you could see in his eyes that it was over. “Please. Please believe that I meant every word. I fell for you just as you fell for me. I despise myself for what I did, but I stopped believing you were involved with Hydra. I –“

“I don’t care”, he spat, cutting you off. His eyes had turned into abysses of fury and misery. “Spare your tears. How could I ever believe another word you say? All this time, when I died a little more inside at the thought of having to go back home and never seeing you again, of thinking about you marrying someone else – of thinking I took away the choice from you with that kiss. When in reality, it all went according to your plan. I thought I was the monster. But it was you.”

“I’m sorry”, you whispered, “I’m so, so sorry.” What was there left to say, anyway?

“Do you know what happens to traitors in Sokovia?”, a new calm settled in his voice, dangerous as the sea before a storm. Ready to drown you with its upcoming rage.

“You don’t throw them a revel, I can imagine,” you replied quietly.

“Go. Leave my country.” I never want so see you again.

“It’s my country now, too, Baron.” Please don’t make me leave you. I love you. Let me right this.

“You have one hour. I don’t care how you leave; I only care to never see you again. Because if you’re not gone by sunrise, your way will not lead you back home, but to the gallows.”

***

The first rays of the morning sun flooded across the treetops in the distance as the ship to London set sail and the Sokovian coast was fading on the horizon. A farmer had agreed to take you with him on his way to the next harbour. You’d told him you’d been attacked by a band of robbers, leaving only the dress you wore – a plain one, hastily thrown over your nightgown – and the man had pitied you. As had the sailors agreeing to take you with them to London on the ship, along with the wooden crates of spices and fabric.

You curled up between the crates on deck and pressed your hands in front of your face before a new wave of tears spilled down your cheeks, and only then did you remember the letters you’d tucked into the cleavage of the nightgown to read them by daylight, where they still pressed against your skin. You desperately needed something to tear your mind from the feeling of your soul being ripped apart with every mile the ship was carrying you away from Sokovia. Away from the man you’d come to love more that anything in this world. You had allowed yourself to dream of a happy ending to this story. All that was left of this dream now was an ocean, separating two bleeding hearts. Helmut Zemo still held your heart, as shattered and bruised and broken as it was. It was his.

You ripped the letters stolen from Zemo’s desk out of your gown and turned the first one to open it – when your eyes caught on the symbol gracing the broken wax seal at the back. An octopus with a single skull for a head. It was the symbol still starring in your darkest nightmares. Hydra. Oh, how the fates must be laughing as they played their twisted games.

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[horsesarecreatures]

Choctaw Indian Pony -

“Researching the history of the Choctaw horse (pronounced CHOCK-taw)—also known as the Choctaw Indian Pony—is like tracing the delicate lines of a once colorful thread woven throughout a time-worn and fading tapestry. I was transfixed, awed, enchanted and, at times, deeply saddened as the fabric of this endangered breed’s story unraveled before me, most of it left out of our school history curriculums…The Choctaw horse is a Colonial Spanish horse, though you will rarely hear them referred to by this name. Easily confused with the wild horses the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) oversees, they are often called “mustangs,” a term frequently and indiscriminately conferred on any feral horse of any genetic background. Today, only a very small number of feral horses (mustangs) bear the true Spanish type and breeding. Overall, Colonial Spanish horses of all bloodlines number about 3,000, while the total number of pure Choctaw horses is only about 250 animals.  The surviving Colonial Spanish Choctaw horses, however, are proven to be direct descendants of horses brought to the New World in the 1500s by the Spanish Conquistadors. Dr. Phillip Sponenberg, Professor of Pathology and Genetics at Virginia Tech University has devoted much of the last thirty years to ensuring the genetic integrity of the breed’s survival. “Colonial Spanish Horses are of great historic importance and are one of only a very few genetically unique horse breeds worldwide. Choctaw horses are one of a handful of distinct Native American tribal strains of Colonial Spanish Horse that are surviving by a thin thread,” he explains. The mythology of the Choctaw horse is complex, romantic and heart-rending.

While it may seem strange to envision Native Americans without horses, it wasn’t until the 1600s that indigenous Americans living in the deep South first encountered the animals. Hernando de soto and his invading Spaniards, searching for the mythical Seven Cities of Cibola (rumored to be overflowing with gold and riches) were the first to ride horses into Mississippi. The local Choctaw people dubbed the mysterious animals “spirit dogs.”  The seemingly friendly Spaniards soon proved otherwise. In the ensuing struggles, the brave and noble Choctaw managed to retain their rightful land and avoid enslavement—and they acquired a few of the Spaniards “spirit dogs,” as well.

In addition to horses, the Spanish also introduced cattle, goats, sheep and hogs to the native population. The Choctaw soon became adept at raising livestock, and the “spirit dogs” quickly became an integral part of the Choctaw culture. The characteristics and traits of the small and sturdy horses facilitated their deep integration into tribal life. They were athletic and possessed great endurance, with sound legs and tough hooves. Despite their smaller stature of 13.2-14.3 hands, the horses were able to carry a 200 plus pound man in 50 and 100 mile races. The equines quiet, people-oriented dispositions endeared them to the Choctaw and the animals soon became indispensable in hunting and farming.

Interestingly, the Choctaw women were considered “keepers of the horse,” according to screenwriter John Fusco whose movie Hidalgo was the story of Frank Hopkins and his Indian pinto pony.

‘The men did the hunting and it was their wives’ task to track and locate the kill on horseback, with little more than a broken twig here and there to mark the trail. On her sunset-and cornsilk-colored pony the Choctaw Woman would ride into a tangled maze of indigo bush and brambles, follow the trail without breaking gait, and locate the gift deer. Even five moons pregnant it didn’t matter; her Choctaw pony was born gaited, like riding a cloud. With her knife she’d dress the deer and sling the heavy meat up across the packsaddle. Laying some tobacco in gratitude, she’d remount and start for home.’

For three hundred years the Choctaw lived peaceably as accomplished agriculturalists and by the 1800s had developed a lucrative trade network with the areas that would later become Texas and Oklahoma, a feat which traveling on horseback had made possible. The high quality of their livestock, horses in particular, had become legendary, written about in travels journals of the era, including those of Lewis and Clark.

The Choctaw continued to prosper as a nation until Andrew Jackson signed the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in September of 1830, proclaimed in February 1831, designating Oklahoma ‘Indian Territory.’ Thousands of Choctaw were forced at gunpoint to leave their beloved homeland in what was termed the ‘Relocation.’

Leaving their ancestral farms and forests to make way for Anglo plantation owners, they marched on foot (often barefoot) along what would come to be known as the Trail of Tears. Their loyal horses, with small bells tinkling like wind chimes fastened to their manes, carried children, the old and infirm through extremely cold weather and blizzards.

It is thought that as many as 4,000-5,000 of the 16,000 native people forced to relocate perished along the route. The tribe would prove resilient in the new territory until the Civil War and then, finally, Oklahoma’s statehood in 1907, when their nation would cease to exist as a separate entity. Tragically, their beloved horses did not fare as well.

The US Government sanctioned the extermination of the Indian horses in an effort to more easily force the Indians onto reservations. Because the Native American’s horses were of spiritual significance in the tribal culture (as was the land), confiscating them was a strategy to break the tribe’s spirit. But the fleet-footed ponies proved hard to catch. And unbeknownst to the cavalry, a handful of families in isolated pockets on the reservations sought to preserve the ancestral bloodlines, guarding and breeding their prized horses.

By the turn of the century, the handful of Choctaw  horses remaining sported long Spanish manes and came in a variety of colors: line-backed dun, varnish roan, blacks and bays and leopards among them. They were intelligent and possessed uncanny cow sense, a constitution that could survive on scrub grass, and a “butter smooth” ride. But by 1950 most of the Choctaw elders had passed on—and along with them the esoteric wisdom and zeal for preserving the rare pedigreed ponies that had accompanied them through times both good and bad.

Then another challenge arose: the US. Government imposed the Tick Eradication Program, ordering every wild pony in Oklahoma to be shot. A twist of fate in the form of a young cowboy named Gilbert H. Jones would turn the tables in the breed’s favor. G. H. Jones had a life-long passion for pure Spanish mustangs (now called Spanish Colonial Horses). He left New Mexico because his horses were being slaughtered by neighbors for their meat, and he had only one remaining stallion.    

Moving into the Kiamichi Mountains in southeastern Oklahoma, he obtained grazing permits from a local timber company and with the help of a friend, Robert Brislawn, began the process of rebuilding a pure Colonial Spanish Horse herd.

Jones happened upon some Choctaw elders who respected the young white man’s dedication and helped him acquire several Choctaw mares and an additional stallion—an impressive buckskin and white pinto named “Rooster.” Rooster’s ancestry could be traced directly back to the Trail of Tears. Jones’ restoration of a small herd of Choctaw horses had begun.

Savvy and industrious, Jones had become aware of Frank T. Hopkins. Hopkins and his Indian pony Hidalgo (the inspiration for the 2004 motion picture) had demonstrated the breed’s merits through long endurance races, and Jones aimed to do the same. Between long trail rides and brutal endurance events, Rooster’s bloodlines eventually became legendary.

By the 1980’s, Jones’s herd numbered close to one hundred pure horses. Jones continued to work tirelessly to preserve the Choctaw Indian Pony well into his elderly years. He died in 2000 at the age of 93, passing down his research and conservation work to Bryant and Darlene Rickman, who still breed and preserve Jones’ horses on his original land.

Dr. Phillip Sponenberg works closely with the Rickmans, contributing his advanced genetic research, as well as serving as Technical Advisor for the ALBC (American Livestock Breeds Conservancy). Dr. Sponenberg also serves as an Advisor to Red Road Farm and the Choctaw Indian Conservation Program, founded by the writer and filmmaker who made the Disney movie Hidalgo: John Fusco.” - Cowgirl Magazine