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angelaiswriting · 4 years

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Lyudmyla | Blitz x fem!OC x Tachanka

[link with credits below]

✏️ Pairing: Blitz x fem!OC x Tachanka

✏️ Summary: in which Lyudmyla is no lady, despite what people might think, and she’s always down for some casual good times.

✏️ A/N: I... don’t know what happened haha apart from @kind-wolf throwing all kinds of new crushes at me 😈 the important disclaimer is: I’ve never played this game, I’ll most likely never have the chance to, either, but I was hit hard when I least expected it, so here I am. Let me know if anything is OOC: I read these people’s Wikia, but that’s it.

✏️ Warnings: 18+ ONLY (some language, mentions of weed and alcohol + sex: fingering, oral m/r and f/r, public sex (I have no shame), sex with quite the age difference, unprotected sex, mentions of a threesome)

✏️ Word-count: 10,075 (sorry?)

✏️ Translations: tesoro (Italian) = darling // mudak (Russian), stronzo (Italian) = dick/asshole/jerk // ptichka (Russian) = birdie

<< Part One: Elias (masterlist > rainbow six) <<

LYUDMYLA

“Lady.” Slightly taller than her, bald, confined inside an anonymous black suit, the man was smiling at her one of those smiles that could mean nothing and anything at the same time. “That’s quite the delicate codename around here.”

Someone coughed when passing behind her and when Lyuda turned her head to the side, Elias shot her a look. Need help? or so the look in his eyes seemed to ask. She shook her head once, though, the movement short and almost tense and even though she was more than capable of handling a ‘Bureau man’, as she called them, on her own, her German colleague stopped at her side.

“If she had a penny for every time she heard that line…” he chuckled, posture composed and almost standing at attention. Despite the chuckle, there wasn’t a single trace of amusement in his stance, nor on his face, at what he had just heard.

The man’s smile thinned. Lyudmyla had never been that good at reading people, but she thought she knew how to spot an annoyed man from miles away. “I meant no harm,” he said, cold gray eyes moving away from the operator to look at the woman in front of him again. “It’s a delight to see that there are delicate operators among our lines.”

Boring. Boring and presumptuous — almost as though caring about one’s physical appearance took away from the hits one had under one’s belt and made them… less lethal, less dangerous on the job. As fragile and as delicate as a flower — ha! It couldn’t have been farther from the truth in Lyuda’s case, but then again, she hadn’t shown up at that poor excuse for an International Meeting (TM, because they were mostly a waste of time these days anyway) expecting for people that didn’t know her to take her seriously.

She had been through it already, and so many times that she had not only lost count, but she had also stopped caring. It stung, and it was annoying as fuck, but there wasn’t much she could do and at the end of the day, ignoring the remarks was by far the easiest way out of possibly highly angering situations. And she didn’t do well with anger.

“It’s a pity that you have to-”

But she interrupted him mid-sentence. “Have you ever heard of Lyudmyla Pavlichenko, Mr.…”

“Porter. Mark Porter,” he grinned, extending his right hand just before retracting it a moment later, when it became fully clear that she had absolutely no intentions of shaking it — nor of reading the identification tag he had appointed to his suit jacket. “And I’m afraid I haven’t, no.”

Lyuda’s lips stretched and for a moment, they matched the man’s grin, even though her eyes remained untouched. “My father named me after her when I was born. And then, when I was made to join RAINBOW, my comrades named me after her once again. She was a fine sniper back during World War 2, had three hundred and nine killings under her name. But she wasn’t called Lady, and neither am I. The name is Lady Death.”

From the corner of her eye, she could see Blitz trying to contain his laughter, barely able to hide a chuckle behind a closed fist in a mock and poorly failed attempt at coughing again.

She was more interested in the tensing jaw of the man in front of her, though, and even if the wish to deepen his uneasiness was tickling the back of her throat, she smiled sweetly — very lady-like, if she wanted to put it that way, just to mock the way others mocked her — and that was that.

“Have a good rest of the day, Mr. Porter.” She motioned in her colleague’s direction with a nod of her head, then, and dropped her smile until all that was left wasn’t but a shadow of what it had once been. “I’m afraid my duties are demanding my attention now, but a fine man like you will spot another lady to find entertainment in, I’m sure.”

With those words, she turned on her heels — uncomfortable after the last three weeks spent on the field — and made her way toward the exit.

“How do you manage to stand them?” Elias had caught up and was walking towards the elevators with her.

They had… bonded, if so one wanted to put it. It had happened just a few weeks before the mission they had just come back from, and it had been nothing sentimental, really. Lyudmyla might come off as a lady, but she truly was anything but — or so her mother still complained to her about, every time they spoke on the phone — less and less these days, but even ten minutes at the end of the month seemed to be worse than the most boring of missions.

So, no strings attached. Just two consenting adults that could die the day after and that needed a way to remember about the fact that they were made of flesh and bone, and not of tactic gear and shields and an M24 strapped to the back.

Her middle finger pressed the call button of the elevator and for a moment she stood there, staring at a decently manicured nail. There were still faint traces of blood underneath it and her breath hitched in her throat, albeit for just a second. She had scrubbed and scrubbed, and then scrubbed some more, to the point where she had feared her skin would be left raw and of an angry-red color. But the blood had come off, and she could only see it because she knew where to look.

“Myla?” Elias called and in a flash, she was back to the reality of the conference center floor. “You okay?”

“I don’t,” she replied, barely aware of the question she had just been asked, for her mind still had his How do you manage to stand them? on loop. “Stand them,” she voiced when all she was met with was his puzzled gaze. “I don’t stand them. It hurts, in a way. Hurts my pride. But then again, they can think whatever the hell they want. I come off as delicate and feminine and whatever they want to label me with, but at the end of the day, they are the fucks that have to rely on us for their missions. And that includes me in the package. I still get the job done, Lady or not.”

The elevator dinged. The doors opened with a breathy whoosh, barely audible above the elevator music, and they stepped inside. She didn’t complain when Elias pressed the button for the ground floor, even though all she wanted was a nap, and after a look at the guests’ faces, neither did the liftman.

“Maybe I should have beaten Tachanka’s ass when he found it amusing to bring up Lyudmyla again,” she chuckled, Russian rolling much more easily on her tongue than English ever did.

It was a luck that her friend spoke the language. It was nice to revert back to it whenever someone was around and she didn’t feel like flashing her business for the world to see, and it was much easier than dusting off her shallow German knowledge. Multilingualism was on Blitz’s resume, after all, not exactly on hers.

“He’s twice your age, and probably three times your size,” he laughed, staring ahead at the closed doors and shaking his head slowly. “But the mental picture surely seems to promise good fun.”

Her snort made him turn his head slightly to the side to stare down at her. She, too, shook her head for a moment before composing herself again. “He doomed me with that name. Two words; who the fuck has a two-word codename among us?”

“You’re asking the wrong questions.” He made a noise, then, a tsk that distracted even the liftman from his thoughts and made him lift his gaze on the two people in the elevator with him.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

He shrugged. Big and tall as he was, and he still shrugged and managed to seem just as imposing as always. Not as Sanya, of course — that man was a fucking mountain. “Why didn’t you insist on it being shortened to just Death?”

Witty bastard, she thought, for he was right.

The hall of the hotel was bustling with life when they crossed it, Lyudmyla closely following Elias towards the bar. She seemed to recognize some of the people that had been present at the NATO meeting just less than an hour ago, but then again, she had been too busy napping and trying not to get caught that she couldn’t be so sure. They were all there for a reason she couldn’t exactly remember — she was still jet-lagged from the mission, and she just… wasn’t interested. She never was when official meetings were involved: they implied all kinds of formalities, uncomfortable clothes she wasn’t used to anymore, dickheads that wanted to withdraw financial support from the very organizations that kept them on their chairs; and she truly didn’t have time for all that. But she had received an informal reprimand by Six in person — sort of, if ‘video call’ could be considered an ‘in-person meeting’ — and so she had to behave.

The bar was the opposite of busy, even though it wasn’t empty either. It was a grand room, with tall windows on one side that offered a picturesque view on the city below, and a full wall covered in mirrors on the other. There were round tables, their surface made of crystal-clear glass, and elegant people that had nothing to do with the meeting she had just come out of sat and chatted in an environment that was the opposite to what Lyuda was used to.

“Did the others even make it to the meeting?” she asked when Elias leaned against the counter of the bar to catch the barwoman’s attention. “I don’t think I saw them.”

He shot her an amused look before he chuckled. “Mein Gott, no! Maestro is still pissed that we’re here in the first place, and Tachanka joined in with him. They said they would hit the bar,” he replied, but a look around the room revealed that the two men were missing. “Bandit is probably still in his room, ‘tending to his wound’.”

Completely ignoring the fact that her friend was still partially in mission mode, if the use of their field names could be considered an indicator, she laughed at the last thing he said. “I thought that wasn’t but a ‘bruise on his body’,” she recalled. She had managed to take out the offender from four hundred yards away, laying on her higher ground, but a bullet had already been shot and Dominic had been hit. It had been a week ago, and the man had carried on with their mission like nothing had happened, but guilt was still simmering in the pit of her stomach. Half a second too late, focused as she was on something that moved a few degrees from where the enemy sniper had been hiding, and her colleague had been hit.

“You know how he is,” he shrugged, handing her their good-morning whiskey before he grabbed his own glass. “He hates these things just as much as we do.”

She hummed, taking a sip from her drink as she listened to Elias ask the barista if she had seen ‘two disruptive men, this big, ugly military faces and with probably more alcohol in their hands than a human liver could stand’.

“Why didn’t you stay back as well?” she wondered out loud, downing the alcohol before asking for a refill. “I had ‘please Six this time’ as my excuse, what was yours?”

The right corner of his lips rose in an amused smirk and, raptured, she stared as he sipped on his drink, the ice cubes clinking against the glass. The tip of his tongue came out then — and truly, it was an innocent and instinctual movement to lick away that droplet that had almost rolled down his lip, she was sure, but all she could think of was the last time he had gone down on her and how ardently she craved that contact again, now that her body felt closer to exhaustion than she would ever admit.

“I had to make sure no one found you sleeping surrounded by heads of state and RAINBOW officials reporting on our missions.” There it was, that shit-eating grin of his that always made her want to scoff and laugh at the same time. “Plus, I was hoping we could sneak out somewhere, have some fun, and for as much as I care about the guys, I’m not sure I’m into being dicked down by Alexsandr.”

She snorted out a laughter this time and her hand came down to slap his shoulder. “You are terrible,” she laughed, walking away from the counter when he got a new drink and pointed his glass towards the French windows that opened onto the panoramic terrace. “But you could have told me. Could’ve sneaked into the restroom before heading for the elevators.”

Still navigating around the tables, she turned her head in his direction when she didn’t receive an answer and she found him staring, lost in his own thoughts, his tumbler half-way to his lips. “Hadn’t that dude stopped you like that, I definitely would have.”

The terrace was slightly busier than the bar. It had a view on the city and on the lake — and the dozens of press reporters buzzing around the entrance of the hotel as they waited to report on some actual news.

“There you are, motherfuckers!” Alexsandr’s booming exclamation caught everyone’s attention, and a couple of kids sitting at a table for a late breakfast with their parents burst into giggles under Mommy and Daddy’s scowls.

“How much did you have to drink already, old bear?” she chuckled when she reached him, grabbing the bottle he and Adriano had on their table — Dragon Bleu. Her eyebrows arched. “French vodka?” she asked as she sat down in the chair to his right, amusement curving the corners of her mouth upward.

“I’m keeping the good shit for tonight,” he simply said, implying that he had plans and those plans involved getting hammered just so that he could avoid whatever meeting they should be attending to the next day as well. “So, did you two do all your homework like the good pupils you are?” he snickered, lifting his right hand to his lips to take a drag from his cigarette.

“Oh, fuck off,” Elias groaned, eyes rolling upwards under Tachanka and Maestro’s amused gazes.

“Nice teamwork, abandoning the two of us to the vultures,” Lyuda chirped in before taking a sip of vodka straight from the bottle.

“Tesoro, you know these things are not for people like us.” Adriano was in a good mood, but even though she was fairly sure he had spent the morning drinking with his Russian friend, there was still sleep laced in his voice. “We do the dirty job and they,” he gestured vaguely at the people standing or sitting on the terrace but everyone knew who he was really referring to, “take to the talking and hand-shaking. That’s how the world rolls.”

“The Italian mudak is right,” was nodding Sanya, completely ignoring Adriano’s half-amused, half-pissed Who the fuck are you calling ‘mudak’, stronzo? “Plus, I’m sure your pretty face is a much nicer sight than our rugged mugs, da?”

They always played around her Lady nickname, but when it came to her friends and colleagues, it never mattered as much. It didn’t irk her, didn’t bother her, for she knew they were playful but still respectful — and even though Bandit had gotten a graze from a bullet on his arm, she knew they valued and respected her abilities, whether it came to a long-distance rifle or a gun.

“News from Dom?” she asked instead, accepting the cig Alexsandr was handing her. The smoke tickled her nostrils more than it did her throat, for her mind had wandered back to that goddamn sniper and the luck they had had when that gust of wind had unexpectedly risen.

“Probably watching porn at the expenses of RAINBOW,” the man to her left snickered, hitting his closed fist with Maestro’s.

“You should stop worrying,” the Italian said, putting out his cigarette butt before lighting up a new one. He took a sip from his drink and smiled at her as a hand came up to rub at a beard-covered cheek. “It really is just a bruise. Bandit just likes to rub it in everyone’s face to avoid boring-ass meetings, not because he’s in pain.”

She sighed, a hand scrunching up and massaging her forehead as she looked down at the metal surface of the table. It was gray and almost sparkly under the bright, almost midday sun, and the light reflecting off of it felt like a finger in both eyes when they were still tired and sore. “I know,” she huffed and almost tensed when Elias’ hand squeezed her knee under the table in a reassuring gesture she hadn’t expected. “I just…”

“Nothing happened, Lyudka.” Tachanka knew how to be menacing — he was huge and imposing, a real mountain in human form, and he could be equally terrifying both with and without his helmet. But the look on his face was so sincere, and the half-smile he was throwing her way so sweet and reassuring, that she couldn’t not believe him.

“But it could have,” she insisted, inhaling a sharp drag of smoke. “It almost did. Half a second earlier, and Dominic wouldn’t have a head anymore now. I should’ve seen that guy, I should’ve-”

“You shot him down, that’s what matters,” Elias intervened, tipping his glass back to finish his drink. “Dom is fine. Shit, he’s great! And he loves you just the same.”

“Kid’s right. ‘Terrorist’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘incompetent asshole’,” Adriano smiled. “Some of them do their job just as well as we do. Aria got a bullet in her leg because of me once, and we’re still good. Mistakes happen, and you shouldn’t spend so much time brooding over a ‘what if’ when things already went the other way.”

Defeated, Lyudmyla sighed. She sipped on her drink, smoked Alexsandr’s cigarette, and a second before a message made Adriano’s phone beep, she nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“Anyway, buzzkill. We’re going out tonight,” Sanya declared and by the tone of his voice, she knew there was little to no room to complain about the plan he had come up with for the whole group. It was a way to keep the feeling of camaraderie going for a little longer, before the post-op high and exhaustion faded away and they went back to a half-idle wait for a new mission. “We’re all getting some pussy.” His grin widened and his eyes closed as he inhaled sharply from his nose before exhaling even more noisily from his mouth. “Or dick,” he added, eyes shooting open when he turned to look at her. “Or both.”

The way he stared at her made a shiver run down her spine and for a long minute, before Dominic joined them with a beer in one hand and his phone in the other, she couldn’t look away from the stormy blue of his eyes.

The knocking on her door was what woke her up at three thirty-seven in the afternoon. Lyudmyla had slept for less than two hours, but she felt better than she had in what could have very well been forever. Her back arched as her arms stretched toward the headboard, and a drawled-out moan of satisfaction crawled up her throat and almost made her lips tingle.

It took her a while before her still-sleepy brain put two and two together and she fully registered the knocking and the voice calling her name from the corridor.

“I’m going to put my hands on the door pad if you don’t come, Lyuda!”

Dominic’s insistence made her chuckle but a moment later she managed to yell out a Wait a sec! The light throbbing in the muscles of her legs showed up again when she stood from the bed after successfully managing to untangle her feet from the mess the blankets had become while she slept.

“The plan was to take a bath when I woke up,” she half-heartedly complained when she opened the door to reveal the man she had almost got killed. “Not to babysit you, Dom.”

Laughter seemed to rumble directly in his chest when he put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her backward to step into her room. “No one is stopping you, Schatzi. What, are you suddenly shy? After that emergency shower we had to take back in Syria?”

“You are so full of yourself sometimes.” But it was said in a light voice, and Bandit knew she didn’t mean it in a negative way.

He stood there as she made her bed, and he barely moved out of her way when she reached the window he was standing in front of so that she could open the curtains. Light entered the room again, and the creamy colors of the furniture seemed to turn a bit more welcoming than they had looked in the half-darkness.

“We were worried,” he said after a while, when she indeed started to fill up the bathtub to soak into that bubble bath they all shared the need and wish for in their fantasy. “You didn’t show up at lunch.”

When she turned around, after dropping some of the hotel’s complimentary body wash into the tub, she found him leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed against his chest. He wasn’t wearing a bandage on his arm anymore, but she knew there was band-aid tape on the stitched wound on his left bicep.

“I was tired,” she shrugged, turning around to face away from him so that she could take her shirt off. He was right — he had seen her naked, so she couldn’t see a problem in doing just as he had proposed. They joked and bantered, but there was nothing more than friendship between them and for once, it was perfect that way. “I didn’t sleep much last night, and that fucking meeting got my breakfast stuck in my stomach.”

From behind her, she heard his amused chuckle. “Burger King truly does sound like a light lunch after all…” he joked, hinting at the empty box that laid forgotten on the table.

“Oh, shut up,” she tried not to scoff.

She dared a look over her shoulder when her hands reached the clasp of her bra, but she found him staring the other way, back into the bedroom. Not a word left her lips on the topic, but she mentally thanked him as she finished undressing and climbed into the tub.

“You hurried away right after noon,” he spoke again, this time fully walking into the bathroom to come and sit down on the floor next to her. He had his back against the side of the tub, the back of his neck resting right against the edge, and for a moment they found themselves staring into each other’s eyes. “You sure you’re okay?”

A soft sigh on her part, and then her lips came down to press a kiss to his forehead. “I’m just… so very sorry,” she admitted. “And before you start, too, the guys have already tried to talk me out of it.”

“Yeah, too bad your skull is too thick.”

“Oh, shut it!” They laughed together for a moment, and it was good to be light again, with not a worry in the world but what Sanya had planned to drag them into that night. “I’m serious, though. I almost cost you your life, and all because I looked in the right direction a moment too late.”

He turned around, and one hand slipped down underneath the surface of the water for a moment before he moved it back up on the edge of the tub. “What can I do to make you stop worrying about it, ptisha?”

Her lips parted to reply back, but then his words registered and she furrowed her brows. “What? What’s that?”

“What? Ain’t that how Glaz calls you?” he shrugged.

It took her a moment to realize what he meant and when she did, laughter bubbled up again. “Ptichka, oh my God!” she corrected him, and added a playful slap to the back of his head for good measure.

“Yeah, exactly what I said.” He tried his best puppy dog eyes on her, but if there was one sure thing, it was how badly they always failed. He was big and rough, and the scar he had on his head didn’t help him any, and so, instead of relying on them to have things done his way, he used them on her to make her laugh.

After that, they sat in comfortable silence, both their backs pressed against the wall. He even let her play with his left hand in hers. She dipped it into the bubbly water and then picked it out again, removed the bubbles with her forefinger — the one she used to pull the trigger — and then started again. It was relaxing, a nice way to empty both their minds after the hectic days they’d had on their mission.

“Are you going back home once we’re done here?” she asked after a while, when he knelt by the tub to rub shampoo in her hair. She didn’t really need to wash it again, but it was nice to have someone pamper her every once in a while, and so she let him do.

His answer was a hum as he massaged her scalp. Her eyes were closed and that was how she missed the comically focused expression on his face. “Are you?”

She sighed in contentment at his touch and it took her half a minute to reply, relaxed as she was in the warm water and the cozy atmosphere of the bathroom. “No, I’m probably going back to the base. I don’t feel like going back and have my mother over. You should leave that absurd job and do something more appropriate for someone like you, that’s what she’d say.” And then, when he pointed out that he spoke no Russian and that she should speak a more comprehensible language, she translated. “I was born into a military family, I don’t understand what she expected me to become. A kindergarten teacher? Knowing my father, I probably even held a gun before I held a book.”

“You’re a full adult, fuck what the old woman says!” His exclamation made her tremble with laughter and he had to tell her to keep still or he’d get water in her eyes. A moment later, he started washing the shampoo out. “Come to Berlin with me,” he proposed. “I’ll introduce you to my brother and the kids, and you’ll have the chance to pay me back for this head wash.”

It was truly something, the way he made her feel — light and weightless, with butterflies inside that weren’t due to some form of crush or physical attraction. From different groups and yet, she sometimes felt closer to him than she did her Russians. It was easy — spending time with him was easy, it made all her worries and thoughts leave her mind in peace.

“C’mon, ptisha,” he joked again, grabbing the towel from the hanger with one hand and extending the other for her to grab so that he could help her out. “Let’s not replay the broken nose you got in Syria.”

As it turned out, Alexsandr had rented a nice convertible at the expenses of the organization and had dragged them around the city before reaching his destination. Black and sleek, driving in it had felt like it just glided on the asphalt as she had sat there, in the passenger seat, with the wind moving her hair all over the place and laughter spilling from her lips. Even now, in the high-end nightclub Sanya had been recommended by God knows who, there was still that same kind of excitement making her fingertips tingle.

Four shots into the night, Lyuda was free. The loud music felt like the weirdest kind of contrast to the new routine of the latest mission and as she danced, it seemed to loosen up all of the knots she had carried in her muscles till that night. Dominic’s injury, the hostages, the terrorists, it all faded into a blurry chaos that got drowned out by the people around her and left her mind pleasantly empty.

The Germans were still sitting in their corner, she was sure of it — smoking weed when she was fairly certain they shouldn’t be allowed to, but they didn’t care. The initial plan had concerned both Tachanka and Maestro, but only the latter had accepted and shown to be down with trying. Sanya had scowled, said he needed no weed to relax and enjoy the party and had kept on muttering under his breath until she had dragged him to the bar before dumping him there.

A drink will do him good — or so she had thought — still did. She had left him there without thinking and had joined all those strangers on the dance floor, letting go to the unknown song the DJ was playing up in her booth.

She didn’t jolt when a pair of hands placed themselves on her hips and someone breathed down her neck, lips barely brushing against her skin. She had danced with a couple of guys already — no one worth mentioning, just good distractions that kept her mind as far as possible from RAINBOW and NATO and the meeting that was going to be held the morning after. One had tried to touch her, though, to let his hands go down her hips to the hem of the mini dress her friends had dropped in her hands when Dom had left her hotel room and then back up underneath the cool, almost silk-like material, and it was then that she had moved away, too relaxed to be bothered and put up a fight — one she knew she’d win.

But she was thinking about Elias — about his hand on her knee that morning and the Why don’t you blow me? he had whispered in her ear before leaving the hotel, an amused reply to the I’ll blow your knees out she had let out at a stupid punchline he had come up with. She had hoped he’d join her, that he’d moan dirty German she couldn’t understand right against her skin, and then maybe throw her over his shoulder and carry her someplace quiet, show her a good time. It made her feel bad, the way she thought of him as a ‘good fuck’ because Elias was really a nice person, one she admired and cared for, but that was the reality of things. Both for her and for him — it was a thing that went both ways, that was matched by both parties, and for the time being, it was good.

The man she was grinding against wasn’t Blitz, though, she noticed with a gasp when she turned around.

Alexsandr was staring down at her, an amused and tipsy smirk plastered on his lips. It was a surprise, to find him there, against her, his hands now down on her buttcheeks, gently pawing at them. He was twice her age, just as Elias had reminded her that morning in the elevator, but she’d be lying if she said the thought of him had never crossed her mind. Fucking massive and resilient, and yet ever so delicate when it came to his weapons; always saying things how he saw and thought them, and she did find that attractive.

He twirled her around. Lost in her thoughts as she was, with the alcohol in her system pleasantly making her head float just a few inches higher than normal, she almost lost her balance as his antics made her chuckle out loud. It lasted for a heartbeat, and then she was back to square one, her back against his chest and his arms caging her in this time, his hands on her hips making them sway.

“Everything alright with Bandit?” he yelled in her ear as one of his hands trailed up her side and somehow stopped on the front of her throat.

It was… hot, somehow. His warm skin against hers seemed to burn her sweat away, and his lips moving right against her earlobe made the baby hairs on the back of her head stand up on their ends.

She nodded against him, suddenly brought back to the guilt she had felt for how things had gone with Dominic. But he had assured her — more than once — that things were just as peachy as always between them, and she had no reason to doubt his words, not when nothing at all seemed to have changed — in the way he talked to her, looked at her, simply acted around her. He had made her promise she’d go to Berlin with him, and she had playfully told him that she wouldn’t keep that promise, but both knew they’d soon be on the same plane, headed towards the same destination.

Dom wasn’t on her mind for long, though, not when Sanya was grinding right back against her. And she could feel him. God, she could feel him, confined as he was in his black pants, almost nestled between her buttcheeks. The feel of him, the way he was moving, breathing down her neck, his lips ghosting against her skin — her eyes closed, her eyelids heavy, and she rested her head back against him, a soft sigh of contentment and pure peace slipping past her lips.

The music faded away, and at the same time, it seemed to buzz in her veins, to beat right in her temples as her arms came up and she placed her hands on the sides of his neck. There seemed to be nothing else for a moment or two, until his right hand moved away from her hip and slipped down her thigh much like that nameless man had done earlier. Her eyes shot open then, and the nightclub was back where it had always been, with its DJ and her music and all those unaware people dancing the night away.

Suddenly hyper-aware of every touch of his, her hand moved away from his neck for a second, almost shooting down to stop his out of instinct, before she brought it back where it was.

He kissed the side of her neck — he truly did, this time; it wasn’t just the ghost of a kiss, with his lips being but a feather against her skin. He kissed her neck, one-day stubble grazing her skin, and his hand slipped past the hem of her dress, his fingers trailed up her inner thigh before they reached her clothed core.

Her heartbeat was louder than the music, she could have bet her right hand on it, and it almost felt as though her heart had jumped up in her throat, making it hard to keep her breathing steady and slow. That thump-thump was in her temples, in her eardrums, and even down in the pit of her stomach as one of his fingers traced a line on her panties — so loud that she didn’t catch what he yelled in her ear.

Then, without notice, lulled as she was by the movement of his hips still gently swaying against hers, his hand came up to her stomach and then slid underneath the elastic band of her underwear.

She tensed against him, tried to turn around and tell him something along the lines of not here, not now, but one of his fingers slipped between her folds and teased her for a moment before swiftly nudging her clit.

“Nobody will see anything,” were the words in her ear as she ground her hips back and despite — or probably because of — the thrill mounting inside her, she blindly chose to trust him.

The place was packed, sure, but anyone could turn around and catch him with an arm across her body, his hand between her paralyzed legs. It was thrilling in a way, almost exhilarating, and she tilted her head to the side to grant him access to her neck.

Then, a thought crossed her mind like a meteor. She didn’t exactly know what happened to RAINBOW operators that had feelings for each other, or that were simply caught while getting down to business. A nightclub didn’t grant the same level of privacy a hotel room did, and for a moment — before his middle finger pushed inside her and she decided that she truly didn’t care — she wondered if someone ever checked the security tape of the places they went to.

Sanya’s finger was thick, the fingertip slightly calloused by use. Its slow and steady pumping made her toes curl in her sneakers and her head press back against him as she felt him smile against her neck.

It was a slow teasing, unhurried, proving a patience Lyuda didn’t know Alexsandr had. It made her insides tense, her breathing come out ragged and uneven, completely uncontrolled when he added another finger. She felt the stretch then — hot and delicious, in a way, making blood rush to her skin and burn in her cheeks. His thumb was on her clit, and its movements were lazy and irregular as he focused on fingering her, gently scissoring his fingers as her walls contracted around them.

“Sanya.” It was a groan, and although he felt the vibrations under his lips, he didn’t hear it above the scream of the music.

So close. Oh God, she thought — so close to losing it in the middle of a nightclub, with someone twice her age edging her closer and closer to an orgasm that was making her body hum in anticipation.

The idea that he had somehow — sometimes — thought of her was enough to almost make her feel delirious. It was easy, to forget about anything else when you were on the job, with a loaded weapon in your hands, even more strapped to your body, and a plan to follow, an objective to hit. Your focus was all there, on the very center of the target, and thoughts of anything else didn’t even knock on your mind’s door. But then, when you stepped back, mission accomplished and the permission to go back home for a while in your hands…

She pulled his hand out from inside her and as she did so, her eyes rolled to the back of her head, air coming in sharply from her nose as she tried her best to get a grip back on herself. One deep breath in, one deep breath out — and it was good to know he wasn’t insisting on keeping his hand where it had been for the past minutes, that he was respecting her spaces — she wouldn’t have expected anything else from someone like him.

But then she turned around, lips parted and cheeks bright, his hand still in hers, big and warm and finger wet and sticky. She brought them to her lips, kissed the fingertips of his middle and ring fingers before pulling them into her mouth and sucking them clean.

The smirk was still on his face and under the ever-changing lights of the club, his expression seemed to constantly change as well as he stared at her, eyes set on hers and never leaving.

He had her pressed against a wall in a matter of minutes, her back to the solid surface and her legs wrapped around his hips as he ever so slowly thrust up into her pussy — and neither of them knew exactly how they had come to find themselves in that position, in that dark corner with people less than five meters away.

The music was a blessing — probably the cause for a headache in the morning, but at that moment a blessing no doubt, concealing all her whimpers and moans as his dick stretched her open.

He was big — and on that there had never been a doubt. Proportionate — that was the word her old high school friend Nina would have used to describe him —, no doubt taking the first place among the men she had ever been with. The stretch was delicious, and the feel of him — heavy and thick inside her — was enough to make her eyes roll as her nails scratched at his neck.

She was panting when his hipbones pressed against hers and he was fully sheathed inside her; panting and whimpering as she felt herself clamp down on him. And his breath was scorching hot against the side of her neck, his right temple pressing against her shoulder.

His hips moved back, then, and the drag of him inside her made her head fall back against the wall as she fought to breathe when he pushed back in. It was a slow rhythm — slow but slowly mounting, making her mind and her body dance closer and closer to the delirious climax he seemed to promise her. At some point, when his hands moved down to grab her thighs and he tilted his hips up in a slightly different angle, a low moan scratched up her throat as the tip of his cock hit deeper inside her.

She was whimpering his name, a litany of Sanya, Sanya, Sanya that he couldn’t hear but that he could read on her lips as he stared at them, his own lips parted as he grunted, thrusts growing more and more unfocused the closer he was to orgasm.

Less than a minute later, as pleasure went off in her body and behind her closed eyelids, she would have seen Elias stare at her with a smirk on his lips had she had her eyes open.

The morning after Lyudmyla was sitting next to Elias at the very back of the conference room, where she knew they wouldn’t be attracting anybody’s attention in case one of them were to take a nap. And although she was as uninterested as the day before and had passed a sleepless night after they had got back to the hotel at around two in the morning, tired as they were, she couldn’t seem to be able to fall asleep again.

Eyes set on the spokesperson talking non-stop at the other end of the room, the pleasant soreness in her muscles was the only thing she could actually focus on.

Sanya had bruised her, that night — she had found his handprints on her thighs when she took a shower before bed. Big, red handprints on her outer thighs that had kept her awake all night as she replayed the nightclub quickie she could still feel in her very core over and over again. His lips on her, and then his tongue on her neck, his fingers — on her clit, inside her, on her throat, her thighs — and then…

“Myla.”

It was by pure miracle that she didn’t moan out loud when Elias whispered her name in her ear, his lips close enough to be perceived but not felt. He had moved a hand on her thigh, and his thumb gently soothing her inner thigh from above her pants made her lungs squeeze, the air come out hot and quick from her nose.

God, was the only word that kept on bouncing around inside her head. God. Her mind wandered, as it had been wandering all morning already, and for a moment she experienced the first actual thought of the day: What would it be like, to have both Elias and Alexsandr in her bed, even just for once?

And at that, there came another one: What would he — Elias — say if he knew about what she had done that night? What would he do? They weren’t exclusive, she didn’t belong to him just as he didn’t belong to her, but it would be a lie to say that she wasn’t curious.

His nose brushed against the shell of her ear, then, and all thoughts fled from her mind. “Are you still thinking about his cock?”

She gasped, but the sound was low enough to only be heard from the few people sitting close to them. When she turned around — to answer honestly or to just stare at him in shock, she wasn’t sure —, she found him staring ahead and even though his hand was still on her leg, it was now in a position more befitting to their surroundings and the seriousness of the meeting.

Her gaze trailed back towards the stage of the room, her breathing now a little labored as she took in the new person speaking — someone from RAINBOW, but at that moment she couldn’t remember his name for the life of her.

The muscles in her thighs tensed. Her mind was running a mile a minute, but without producing actual thoughts. It was just Sanya’s thrusts up into her as she clenched down on him and Elias’ awareness of what had happened, and they were both on loop, overlapping until their edges got too blurred to be recognized.

He opened his legs a little wider, then, and she caught the movement from the corner of her eye. As his knee pressed into her leg, the fabric of his pants stretched tight on his thigh and the only thing she could think of, was that time he had made her ride it, the day before Dominic had got hit.

She wanted to leave. She felt the need to stand up, grab his hands and drag him down the corridor — to the restroom or the elevator and then up to one of their rooms, she hadn’t made a decision yet — and get things going. But she didn’t want another call from upstairs, and so she resolved on staying put and just moved her hand over his to grip it.

“Is that why you couldn’t look at him in the eye at breakfast?” Elias asked when the debate started and there was enough noise in the room for him to murmur those words, everybody’s attention now fully set on something concrete. His hand didn’t move from where it laid on her thigh and although for the better, it slowed her brain down. “Because you kept on thinking about him fucking you against a wall?”

Her gaze came down to frantically look at his watch, just to then remember he barely ever wore one, just like she.

She shook her head and absentmindedly, her legs opened a bit wider, his left one pressing right into his knee. “No,” but her voice trembled when she spoke.

He chuckled.

It was a tense half-hour the one that followed. They both sat there, listening to what people said and proposed, but Lyuda’s mind was somewhere else — with someone else. Her gaze kept on flickering to her left as she checked Elias out from the corner of her eye. It was excruciating, to have him there next to her, an amused smirk on his lips, when he was talking about someone else fucking the sanity out of her.

God. Fuck. Hadn’t it been for Six, she would have left that room. And hadn’t it been for that stupid high-level meeting, she would have her hands on him and his on hers. And for no reason other than how much she enjoyed being with him.

His hand cupped her from above her pants and she lost it. Almost. She gripped his wrist, blunt nails digging into his flesh, and the soreness and the feeling of Sanya inside her came back.

“Let’s leave,” she whispered as she sat there, on the edge of her seat and turned into an absolute bundle of nerves. Her eyes didn’t meet his and instead, they remained set on the window wall in front of her. Why were they brought there, to this absurd event that barely had anything to do with them? Why did she have to let herself get involved with him in the first place? “God, Elias, let’s leave.”

She had her jaw set, her right hand wrapped into a fist at her side, on the chair, and her thighs clenched and trapped his hand in-between them.

“The meeting’s not over yet,” he replied.

When she turned to look at him, eyes wide and lips tight, half a curse starting to form on the tip of her tongue, people started to stand up and he quickly freed his hand from her hold.

They stood, shook hands with a few people as they eyed those from the organization to have a nod of confirmation that allowed them to leave. And when they received one, she grabbed his hand in hers and dragged him outside, and on their way to the elevator, she almost crashed into that very Mark Porter that had committed the mistake of underestimating her the day prior.

“Relax, Myla,” Elias said when the doors of the elevator closed and the liftman pressed the button for her floor. He had one hand on her hip as he stood right behind her, his left leg pressing into the back of her right. “What got you so worked up?”

He was smirking, she was sure of it, she could hear it in his voice as he pressed that half-erection of his against her rear end, lucky in the fact that he was being discreet and that the liftman was minding his own business, probably too hypnotized by how many hours he spent in there with the same elevator music in his ears.

“You’re a dick,” but they both knew she didn’t really mean it.

Back in her room, the electronic keycard thrown blindly on the table, he pulled her to him and kissed her breathless. His lips were insistent, just as hungry as always, even if they had all the time in the world in this hotel. He pulled on her lower lip and then kissed down her cheek to her jaw, and then down her neck, one hand quickly unbuttoning her pants to slip into her panties.

“You like them older?” he groaned against her as the pad of his middle finger massaged her clit. Her hands moved to his hair, nails gently scraping his scalp as her body seemed to purr against his. “Or was it the thrill of a public place?”

One of his legs moved in-between hers and she had to do her best not to cave in and grind herself down against it.

It was when he pulled back to look at her, a grin plastered on his lips, that she came back to reality and took his hands out of her pants.

“What, Elias?” she smirked, pushing him back until the back of his legs hit her bed and he fell down to sitting. She bent down and pecked his lips as her hand trailed down the front of his button-down shirt to his crotch. A hum left her lips right against his as they stared into each other’s eye. “Did it make you hard?”

Her fingers traced his outline downward before her hand flattened against him.

“Did the sight of Alexsandr fucking me get you going?”

She kissed his neck as he choked on a chuckle, his hands trailing up to her hips until he managed to pull her down onto his thigh.

“Did you spend the night thinking about it?” she moaned, lips moving up the side of his neck to gently suckle right underneath his ear.

“I never thought I’d be into sharing,” he confessed, turning his head to meet her lips in a kiss. It was soft and slow this time, and a hum crawled its way up Lyuda’s throat as her free hand moved to cradle the back of his head. “But shit, that was fucking hot.”

She chuckled a yeah when she slid off his thigh and knelt between his legs. Her actions were slow and deliberate when she pulled down his zipper, eyes set on his as he stared down at her, breath almost hitching in his throat when he pushed his weight up with his hands to let her take his pants and briefs down to his ankles.

“Maybe we should call Sanya,” she hummed, breath hot against the sensitive skin of his dick. She licked a stripe up, from balls to tip, before she smirked. “Ask him if he’s up for a threesome…”

Her lips wrapped around his head and his breath hissed, his reply got stuck in his throat. He didn’t lie down when she took him in her mouth for a moment before pulling back to lick at his underside. Instead, he kept his eyes on hers and Lyuda could feel them even without seeing them.

She kissed and licked him, got him wet before she started using her hand. Her movements were slow and controlled and when her mouth came down again to suck him off, both his hands came up to her head to keep her in place.

The more she teased him, tongue swiping over his frenulum, the more labored his breathing got, and when his hips started to thrust up a little, he pulled her head up and begged her to stop in a whisper, eyes almost closed and brows furrowed in concentration.

“Undress and lay down,” he asked, hands still cradling her head as she looked up at him.

It made her burst with pride each time, the way she managed to work him up. Elias was an entertaining lover to have, if so he could be described, and she loved watching him fall to his feet in front of her.

And instead of teasing him, of keeping up the game, she stood up and made a deliberate decision to strip down for him. Slow and teasing, and she watched him take himself in his hand the second after tearing his shirt off his body as he stared at her.

He bruised you? There was no need to ask it out loud, for she saw the question in his eyes, in the knitting of his brows. Elias had never bruised her — maybe once, but he was very careful not to leave marks behind. Uncomfortable questions were the last thing either of them wanted, so the unspoken rule begged for no bruises and no hickeys.

When she laid down, he was quick at moving over her body, kissing up from her abdomen to her lips, and his tongue came out to tease her nipples in passing, drawing a sigh from her.

“Was he harsh?” he hummed against her neck, one hand trailing down her side before moving between her legs.

She shook her head no and brought his lips back on hers just as he touched her. “But I’m still a bit sore,” she confessed, right thigh tensing when he brushed two fingers between her folds.

He kissed down her body again then, and this time his lips moved past her navel and he licked all the way up her slit to her clit. “I’ll be gentle, then.”

And it did feel like a promise when he started going down on her, one finger and then two slowly pumping into her as he focused on her clit.

She could feel the noise his fingers made inside her — and then those groans of his that just made her toes curl.

He built her up slowly, almost as though they had all day to spend bunkered up in that room, just the two of them. And then, just as she felt herself getting closer and closer to her release, he slowed down, fingers still inside her but lips leaving kisses to her right inner thigh.

It wasn’t common, to have her beg for him, but this time was an exception. With Sanya’s rough fuck now in the back of her mind, her thoughts were all on the man between her legs and on the way she knew he could worship her body.

She hissed slightly when he pushed into her and it took her a moment or two to realize that he had stopped dead in his tracks and was now staring down at her.

“Do you want me to stop?” His voice trembled when she contracted around him, but there was a serious look in his eyes and she knew, then and there, that he’d follow through with whatever she felt more comfortable with.

It squeezed her heart, really, and she found herself smiling. “No, just start off slow.”

That he did. He pulled his hips back and then slowly eased himself back into her, and every time he reached a bit deeper. Hands covering the bruises another man had left on her thighs, his lips were on her breasts, tongue teasing and mouth sucking until her hands were on his back, pressing against his muscles as her back arched.

He moaned when her lips latched on his neck, on that sweet spot right on his pulse point, and she smiled into the action. He laid down flush against her when she pulled him down, and his hands moved from her thighs to underneath her butt as his thrusts deepened.

She called his name, voice trembling and faint as she closed her eyes and swore she could see stars. She had never felt closer to him than right now, with him moving slowly against her — and so deep that she would swear she felt him in her soul.

Her legs wrapped tighter around his waist and as she did so, he angled her hips a bit better.

Elias — and then she was gone, nails scratching down his back as she came, back arching and breasts pressing into him, thighs locking against his sides. A few thrusts more, and then he followed suit, grunting his orgasm into her neck as his thrusts turned snappier, and then sloppier. And then, when they both came down from their highs and their breathing was back under control, they both gasped at the condom they had forgotten to use.

He cleaned her up when he pulled out and she heard him chuckle to himself on his way back to the bathroom when she squealed out of happiness. He had given her the all-clear about the whole Sanya situation and so, as she waited for him, she picked up her phone from the nightstand where she had left it all morning and texted Alexsandr. She was promising for a good time now that they finally had some time off — he even more, since he never showed up to the meetings — and she knew that Sanya would never turn such an offer down.

Still, she watched powerless as her text got read — just read.

“Is he coming?” Elias asked when he walked back and lay down next to her.

He was strong and warm, and Lyuda felt herself relax in his arms as he played with her hair.

“I don’t know, but I hope so.” She was looking into his eyes as he repeatedly pecked her lips, and the laughter that bubbled up was hard to contain. “I’ll just need you to remind him to take it easy on me if I can’t talk.”

She let him kiss her, arched up against him as she molded into his arms, and that You have nothing to worry about of his seemed to linger in the hot air around them for a little longer, until someone knocked on the door and shattered the magic of the moment.

It’s me. Open up, read the message she received right after.

[ Original pic used for the banner: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photo-of-plant-4630020/ ]

TAGS (to be added to or to be removed from any list, shoot me an ASK)

Everything: @idhrenniel @saibh29 @fuckthatfeeling @aya-fay @pebblesz892 @mblaqgi @becs-bunker

#angelaiswriting #rainbow six siege #rainbow six #rainbow six x oc #tachanka #tachanka x oc #tachanka imagine #alexsandr senaviev #blitz #blitz x oc #blitz imagine #elias kötz #tachanka smut #blitz smut #alice is the sole responsible of the majority of my crushes. she hits you hard with military men and you just cant say no to them lol

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lamalefix · 4 years

Text

A whisper of smoke 3/5

[Buddie fic; Heavy Angst; Angst with a Happy Ending; Hurt/Comfort; Emotional Hurt/Comfort; Established Relationship; Major Character Injury; Blood and Injury; Eddie’s POV; I don’t know how to English; I Don’t Even Know how to tag; I don’t even know why; Author.exe has stopped working]

read ch1; ch 2

[read this work on ao3]

Eddie doesn’t know how it happened. What changed that Friday all those weeks ago. He only knows that when he went to get Christopher at the hospital that evening, Maddie told him that they couldn’t give up, not yet.

They didn’t have the courage, both of them, to give themselves that ultimatum. They didn’t have the heart to end hope. And maybe yes, it was Christopher, the one who actually changed Maddie’s mind, the fact that he loves Buck unconditionally, that although he understood, because he is a smart kid and knew very well the severity of his Bucky’s situation, he fights. Christopher doesn’t give up. She started to talk about him meeting her daughter, whatever her name is, Eddie knows it, the name, but it seems not to want to stay in his mind. He has even seen the beautiful baby girl at some point, but he’s so much focused on Buck that he really can’t function. Just can’t.

And Eddie doesn’t really know how it happened, but then they let days, weeks go by, and continued to float in this muddy river of uncertainties, without the possibility of going upstream, without being able to reach a shore.

And yet.

Yet there have been tiny developments, so small that it seemed to be going round in circles, tiny improvements which, however, have ignited hope even in Maddie, who has stopped talking about organ donation for a few days. Evan who occasionally moves his fingers, Evan who occasionally moves his eyes under his eyelids. But to every small improvement, every tiny answer, always follows a flat calm made up of evoked potentials that give no answer, if not a small or large deterioration. But every now and then Evan reacts to the stimuli, every now and then his fingers barely move, when they touch the palm of his hand, in a grasping reflex that is increasingly unexpected. There is a minimum of activity and to that, to that tiny activity Eddie hangs on with his nails and teeth. But as the sixth month of coma approached, doctors began talking. And there is this extremely young and harsh neurologist who has started saying things, frightening things. Without evident brain damage, without a specific cause to be attributed to his brain, it is necessary to diagnose a permanent vegetative state. He began to talk about withdrawing nutritional support, to remove life support, in slow steps so he doesn’t feel any pain or discomfort, and as long as his organs are still serviceable, donate them. They started throwing in the towel too, everyone except the old doctor and the young surgeon, and Eddie is so tired and so angry because Buck is there, he has these tiny reflexes, and those must be enough for them to fight. Even Maddie has started to talk about organ donation, again, she started to say that those are just reflexes and that aren’t that unusual, that the rest of the reactions that Evan should give are important, and he doesn’t answer, he doesn’t react.

And Evan is so thin now, so fucking thin, tiny, so pale, and if they run his hand through his hair, tiny locks remain entangled between their fingers. If Evan is reacting, his body is quickly letting go. And Eddie knows that he has no more time to hope, and that little time he has left with him, he must begin to understand how he will go on later on, when Eddie will give in and consent, giving permission to disconnect the life support and let him go.

He is so irritable, Eddie, so unmotivated to even go there in that little room to sit near him, near Evan who doesn’t look like Evan anymore. He is breathing hard now when he enters the room, his heart rumbling in his chest and his breath shortening at every single step. He already couldn’t sleep, it took forever to fall asleep, but now his sleep is broken all night, and there are strange nightmares that take away his breath, he as an old man who sees his life as a viewer, as he isn’t allowed to live that life, a life in black and white, weak, and every time he wakes up he is even more tired and empty.

He loses patience easily, and is often one step away from scolding Christopher, and it’s so fucking frightening, finding himself being short with his family. It also happens with his colleagues, but in the end, it’s also their fault, it’s also the fault of his found family if he and Evan no longer have time.

The little he eats remains on his stomach, he has this strange low-grade stomach ache all the time, it feels like having butterflies in his stomach, but they look more like wasps, who are banging from one side to the other.

And if only he were less in control, he would be able to cry a little, a little more. And Frank says he should do it, let go and let go of everything he feels, it’s normal that it hurts so much, it’s physiological, it’s chemical, it’s everything and nothing. But he feels so empty, so detached from reality, and continues to go on with his days by the sheer force of inertia, mechanically, because if he let himself go, if he answered really emotionally, if he really connected to reality, he wouldn’t be able to remain at afloat.

He’s just empty. Simply empty.

His head is empty, his heart is dry, and when he enters there everything falls on him. When he sees Evan not responding, who occasionally moves his fingers when he takes his hand, who seems to listen to him when he speaks, when he sees that he is no longer colourful, cheerful, sunny, that is only a spectre, a ghost of what, of who he was, everything falls on him. His Buck wouldn’t want to live like this. And Eddie can’t be really selfish enough to keep him there again and again, even now that his body is letting go.

He doesn’t have the courage to stay there when they move him to avoid pressure ulcers, and as much as he has learned to gently exercising his joints to prevent them becoming tight, he has gradually begun to feel a frightening panic, now that his wrists are so thin and he could swear to hear the patella move on the meniscus. And so when the nurses are there to do those treatments, when they change the catheter, when they clean his mouth and teeth, when they do all those little manoeuvres to clean him, to move him, Eddie stays out of that little room.

Eddie visits the hospital chapel from time to time, when Maddie is up with him or when nurses take care of what is called supportive treatment. He isn’t a religious type, although raised in a very traditional family, very attached to religion, although he wears a medal of a saint around his neck as a good luck charm, he has seen too many bad things to believe in God, yet he has had his miracles in some way. So he decidedes to proceed with this perhaps bigoted hope, and even if he doesn’t know what to ask, if he no longer knows how to pray, if he doesn’t know which saint to turn to, he is there and looks at the wooden coffered ceiling, looks at the cross, looks at the candles. Abuela often goes there to pray for Evan, and knows for sure that she lights a candle for him every time. And he would like a miracle, of course, he would like to wake up one morning with a million unanswered calls on his phone, he would like to get to the hospital and find him awake, responsive, with bright eyes and a sparkling smile.

But most of the time his head goes somewhere else and the thing he prays for, or rather for which he speaks senselessly with himself, is to find courage and not ask whoever it is, for a miracle. He is there waiting in that room to look for that little sign of awakening, that little clue of reaction. And he tries to feel different, every time, he tries to feel new, to silence what he feel, and to control himself. Science fiction, stories, which bend reality. He can’t forget how much he loves him, not like that, not snapping his fingers, not praying in a fucking chapel, no prayer could unbreak his heart new.

And so he needs courage, to give up hope and let him go, he needs control, he needs courage to kiss him goodbye, and bid farewell to a part of him with Evan.

And when he returns home it is unusually silent, and when he arrives at the station everything is unusually off. Eddie lives and works mechanically, emptied. He had to learn to do it by force, at the beginning even the smallest thing made him snap, and even now he is irritable, insufferable. After the week he had spent compulsorily off duty, for his little injury, at least on paper, but mostly for his state of mind, arriving at the station and finding everything in its place and all oddly different, had been atrocious. Evan’s nameplate was still there, this time there was no paper tape with a name written on it, it was all there, his locker with the usual combination, a part of his spare gear, his bag, it was all there. Everything except him.

Then his replacement had arrived. For a while they had stumbled with double shifts to cover his absence, but they couldn’t go on for so long. And as much as Bobby said he didn’t want to substitute him, that guy, Nate or whatever his name is, Buck’s fill-in is a substitute. A five-feet happy-go-lucky guy from Maine with a strange inflection dialect, tall and strong, extremely kind, is in every way a replacement, as if Evan could be replaced.

Then this guy started clicking well with the rest of the group, cooking with Bobby, sitting in Buck’s place and chatting. He talks, talks and talks. And all Eddie can think of, whenever this Nate or whatever the hell is his name, is that he would like to silence him with a punch, a punch well placed in the centre of the face. Both this poor fellow who has done absolutely nothing except the fact that he is replacing Buck, but above all to Bobby. Bobby who is extremely attentive to all group dynamics, who is directive and severe but only up to a certain point, who is ready to intervene in case of danger. Who didn’t intervene that time.

It’s hard to ignore the fact that the station is unlit, figuratively speaking, empty. He must try again to enjoy the lunches with the team, now that there is that substitute who sits next to him and not Buck, he must have the courage to stay a minute longer in the locker room, and look up at that locker that was his and now there is the plate and not the scotch of paper, nothing temporary, which says that there is someone else there, in his place.

The tag and Evan’s belongings are in a box now, in Chim’s trunk or maybe at his and Maddie’s house, because Eddie didn’t have the courage to empty that part, that little big part of Evan’s life and put it in a box. Eddie hurries past his locker. He also stopped imagining Evan, there, in the locker room with him, who tells him about this other absurdity that he learned about this or that phenomenon, a human encyclopaedia stuffed with most absurd facts, that little smile on his lips, before blowing a kiss on his forehead.

It’s been so long, yet the absence there is always so pressing, both at home and at the station.

And today is just a bad day, and the neurologist, the young and stern one, this morning said that they must decide, that with a diagnosis of a permanent vegetative state, recovery is extremely rare but not impossible. And Maddie is pressing him, and Eddie is there about to decide and at the same time he doesn’t have the courage to decide, he will never have it.

But then again, if one can wake up that is Evan, but it is also true it is so hard to see him that, if it is almost impossible for him to wake up then it’s no longer worth let him wither like that. He can still do a lot for many other people, he can still save lives. And maybe they should just let him go. He’ll tell Christopher tonight, and tomorrow they’ll say goodbye and let go of his hand, let go of him.

He sent a message to Maddie before entering. I’m not ready. And it is the truth because he will never be, he will never be ready to let him go, he will be materially to end his life, he will never overcome it. But he has to do it for him, he must have the courage. Tonight he will go in that room and talk to him, do as Abuela and recommend, there will not be parting words, there will not be goodbyes, because maybe they will have luck in another life, and there will not be goodbyes because Evan will always stay with him. As long as he breathes.

So, today more than any other day, he feels underwater with that tremendous new awareness of the time slipping away from his fingers, hope shrivelling in his heart. Eddie just wants to finish his job mechanically, maybe a series of beautiful interventions could help him not to think for a while and then go back to the hospital and find courage, find the right words, put his heart in peace and remember how different Evan is from what he was, how frightening it is to see him wither, how much it will hurt to let him go. But when he enters the station there are balloons, garlands, there is noise.

“Eddie come on, we’re celebrating,” someone shouts, but Eddie proceeds quickly towards the lockers and sits there looking at something in front of him.

Usually Bobby is the one who goes down there to retrieve him and force him to have lunch with them, he tries to weave a conversation with him. And every single time Eddie doesn’t have the strength to replicate, or maybe he does have it, but he doesn’t have enough nerve to avoid bursting, snapping. He’s tired, he’s so tired of drifting his emotions, without a guiding star to lighten his sailing, because his north star is in a hospital bed and is gradually turning off that mighty light. And he would like to let off steam and lose control, take Bobby and slam him on the wall, he who first gave instructions to stop with the compressions, who gave up on him, who ordered to leave him under that house in that hell of smoke and flames, who practically did nothing but deny him the support he wanted, if not to leave him on the bench, without telling him anything, without giving him the right explanations. Bobby who now behaves like a good captain, who teaches cooking to the substitute, who spends his days trying to start a conversation, who goes to the hospital once a week, who perhaps prays a bit for Evan in the evening too, or perhaps he prays only for himself, to clear his conscience.

“Hey Diaz, it’s my birthday, let’s celebrate!” someone mumbles, but Eddie doesn’t hear, or maybe he hears but decides not to react, because his reaction would be the wrong one, and he needs to work, not so much to pay Evan’s hospital bills, which apparently are covered by the excellent health fund that he has stipulated, in addition to their insurance, or from his father, whoever he is, this mysterious occult partner of their life, but to disconnect, to forget his feelings, to keep his head busy. He stretches his legs and hopes that the damned siren will ring. He even hopes for a cat stuck in a tree, all to avoid being there.

“Eddie?” this time the voice is Hen’s. “Do you want a piece of cake?”.

And Eddie moves his head to look at her. “Have you ever noticed that we didn’t throw him a party when he came back?”.

“You say after the lawsuit?” she asks taking a seat at his side.

“Yeah,” nods . “He just wanted to come back to work and we were pieces of shit. He still says sorry sometimes. Said sorry…” he corrects himself with a weird huff. “He was always here when we needed him and yet… we were pieces of shit”.

“We didn’t give our best, back then...” she agrees.

Eddie purses his lips. “I’m not hungry, I don’t want the cake, I don’t want to celebrate… I don’t... you should go up with the others and enjoy this moment...” he shakes his head.

“Eddie...” Hen begins to say, her voice soft.

And he sighs. “A party. I didn’t think we were even celebrating birthdays here”.

“He wanted to do something nice, you know... there is tense air here... you can cut the atmosphere with a knife so tans and cold…” he sighs. “Nate just wants to be part of the group, you know”.

Eddie snorts. “With a party”.

“Yeah,” she sighs. “What do you say, you don’t have to celebrate, but at least eat a slice of cake?” she keeps saying.

He shrugs. “You go, I don’t... I’m not in the mood”.

“I guess.” Hen sighs.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be in the mood. That guy is taking his place. And if Buck knew, Dios, how pissed he would be, and hurt and...” he shakes his head and smiles at himself, if he imagines him complaining in bed, or on the sofa, if he imagines him working twice as hard to get back to them. And the smile remains bitter on his lips and shakes his head, while tears swell at the corners of his eyes.

“He will never take its place,” Hen replies, her tone gentle, optimistic as always.

“Tell Bobby.” Eddie snorts a half bitter sigh.

And she looks at him, curling her eyebrows and purses her lips before speaking “Eddie everyone lives with pain in his own way”.

“He didn’t do anything, Hen. He didn’t do a thing, he didn’t allow us to do anything. And now he’s over there and teaches cooking to that guy?” he grumbles.

Hen sighs, squeezes her hand on his shoulder, but this gesture only makes him stiffen more. “Eddie... Nate has nothing to do with it”.

“It’s a bad day, I should have taken today off. I should have been with him today,” he murmurs with a whisper. Today could be the last day I will spend with him and... I’m not ready I’m not ready I’m not ready I’m not ready.

“You can go there later. I thought I would come too, maybe next Tuesday, you know... I found some articles that I think would interest him a lot. Karen has prepared a small summary of NASA’s new discoveries and updates that will surely please him and...” she continues to say.

“You should go today. You too, maybe Tuesday will be late...” he replies.

“Late?” Hen repeats, her brows furrowed. “What are you saying, Eddie?”.

Eddie purses his lips and rolls his eyes, wrinkling his nose. He would have expected a lot more support from them, everyone knows, right? “Chim knows it, so you know it too. And if you know it, Athena knows it too, and if Athena knows it, Bobby knows it too. I just have to sign those papers and... let him go”.

“What papers? Eddie are you talking about?” she mumbles.

Eddie swallows and turns his gaze to his locker. “Who knows what was in there to make him calm down every time, I would like to know, I would like to understand... I can’t ask him anymore”.

“Eddie?” she continues to say. “What are you saying, he will wake up you know, right?”.

He slowly glances over her, heaves a sigh and relaxes his shoulders. “His new neurologist, the young one, wrote... they diagnosed... on his file there is now written permanent vegetative state. And Maddie wants to turn off the life support”.

Hen’s eyes widen, his glasses glaze over. “What?”.

“She’s been saying it over and over again, it’s been months now…” Eddie shrugs.

And the paramedic moves over him. “And what do you think?”.

Eddie doesn’t know how to say it, what he thinks. “Now with this diagnosis... this diagnosis is final, Hen, and he doesn’t react...” he murmurs as he shakes his head slowly, and his stomach tightens from how much his tone sounds pliant. “Evan is no longer there. The small movements he makes, he makes them because the nerves are... because...” and his voice becomes thin and feeble as a whisper. “I don’t even know how to explain and... he’s so thin, Hen, slender... his hair remains in your hand if you caress it and...” he sniffs and looks at her. “His body is giving up and Maddie... Maddie is right. It’s right to make him make one last heroic gesture”.

“Donate his organs?” she realizes. “Eddie... but he’s still alive he... he moves every now and then, his fingers will...”.

“The evoked potentials... brain activity is almost non-existent, Hen. Buck, Evan would never want to live like this. And I don’t know how to do it anymore, because I would fight with my nails and my teeth, again and again to bring him home with me, but... his body is giving up, and I don’t know how much it hurts, maybe he doesn’t feel anything and... but maybe he’s afraid and it hurts and I don’t... I can’t... I can’t be so selfish, I can’t force him to survive...” he mutters, confusedly. “I will never be ready but, but before he goes into septicaemia, he… he would like to save other lives. He stayed in there because we heard a scream, but I think he was one of those whispers of smoke... and he pushed me out because he’s like this, he’s like this, he wants to save everyone and...” he shakes his head. “And he would like to donate organs, he would like this. If he could choose, Evan would choose this”.

And she slowly nods the tears that swell in her eyes. “Of course, he is a hero, he doesn’t even need a cape”.

“Chris says he’s like Captain America, who sleeps in the ice and will come back to us, to do the right thing once again...” adds Eddie, with a small inexplicable smile, which remains again so bitter on his lips. “I don’t know how to tell him that hope disappears at some point, and you can’t fight anymore. I would never want to teach my son this thing...” he mumbles.

Hen reaches out to embrace him. “I’m sorry Eddie, living with this awareness... I... I didn’t know... why didn’t you tell us? You know you could come to us, right?”.

Eddie sighs. He never wanted to talk about it, saying it out loud is like making it come true and reality is scary. “I thought Chim told you, I thought you all knew it”.

“I don’t think he wanted to tell me about it, I would have said what I think about it, I would have said that I don’t agree, that he is a sleepyhead that... that you should give him more time. I don’t agree, but it’s not my choice to make. Every situation is different, every situation is…” she shakes her head and tightens her grip on Eddie. “But he would like this, you’re right. Saving other lives,” she mumbles with a certain fondness in her voice. “He is a hero”.

Eddie nods softly. “I just have to find the courage to let him go”.

“It takes a lot of courage, but we will be here for you, you know it” she replies taking his face in her hands, in a maternal, kind, affectionate gesture.

“Ah,” hisses mockingly. “If he’s gone, I have no reason to be here. I’ll go back to my mother, my family in El Paso. I already have all the papers ready, it’s just a little form to sign, nothing more”.

“Eddie!” she begins to say, but the siren begins to ring. “We will finish this later”.

Turns out that they can’t finish that talk, later.

The shift worsens gradually, without giving them breath, and Eddie thanks a bit that it is such a busy and demanding day, so his head remains clear and doesn’t think. He doesn’t think about Evan and the fact that Maddie will be there today with Christopher, like every Friday, that she has the day off and for his kid this means spending a lot of time with his Bucky. Because Chris is so good, and he will always wait for him. As he waited for Eddie and Shannon.

And Eddie doesn’t think about him, or maybe he actually thinks about him, thinks about what he would have done differently, he thinks about how much Buck would have been scolded if he had jumped on the roof of a house and not that guy from Maine, he thinks he could hear him laughing, when they are all whole in the truck and ready for another emergency, if he can imagine Evan planning their weekend. But in the truck in his place is that substitute who keeps on talking, who tries to start a conversation with Eddie. And Eddie has reached a point of no return, he has reached a point where he no longer listens to anything, a point where he no longer wants to hear anything, in any sense. His life proceeds by the sheer force of inertia, and he gets emptier with every step, his knees weaker and heart too. Buck would have understood that he had to shut up, Buck would reach out and caress his thigh with that gentle and reassuring touch.

Two accidents and two tamed fire later, and Eddie is sitting on the sofa, eyes closed, trying to control his breathing, trying to calm down. That internal anger that mounts in his throat every time they are all around the table has taken away his appetite today too.

There are still a few hours until the end of their shift and he suddenly feels that ancient need, like an itch under his skin. He feels the urge to fight, something that seemed dormant now. But perhaps it would help him get back in control, back at the helm of his life. Buck wouldn’t judge him anyway, whether he was there or not, Evan would still love him, in any case, beyond any circumstance, any prediction, any bad thought, beyond any wrong choice. Buck would love him anyway. How he loved him unconditionally, for all that short time they have been together, as he knows perfectly well that he still loves him, even in his non-slumber sleep.

“Eddie,” grumbles Bobby. “We need to talk”.

And maybe a small part of him expected it, talking to Hen also meant that. That she would confide this burden to Athena and that somehow it would reach Bobby’s ears.

Eddie gets up and drags himself into the captain’s office. He doesn’t know how tired or how angry he is looking at him, but he knows that resentment is like gall in his veins.

“Sit down,” Bobby tells him, fatherly.

And they had an excellent relationship, they on paper have an excellent relationship. And surely if Eddie listened to his head, his rationality, he would understand that Bobby tried to do the best, even that day. But the best isn’t always enough. It wasn’t enough, not this time.

“Who told you?” he asks slowly, without taking a seat.

“Athena. She went to see him today. And she read the medical record. How long have you known?” mutters Bobby, also standing in his place.

Eddie purses his lips. “This morning, but it was in the air since long before”.

And now Bobby sits down and looks at him. “Eddie I...” he begins to say.

“I think I’ll resign, Bobby. Not with immediate effect because I want Chris to end his elementary school here, but...” he shakes his head. “At the end of his school year we will return to El Paso, I would like you to move me to another station, or to change my shift. I don’t want to work with you”.

“Eddie” tries again to say.

“We will turn off the life support, we will donate his organs. Athena may not know this. We’ll probably take the machines off tomorrow and proceed to organ donation and...” he sighs. "He’ll be the hero one last time. A hero, what you know he does best,” he adds and walks back to the door, his eyes stingy and burning with tears.

"Eddie?" Bobby repeats, the voice sounding like a whisper.

And when Eddie turns around, maybe he has an expression so upset that he stops Bobby on the spot. He can see the captain swallowing, looking down.

“He’s a fighter,” Bobby then says, in a low voice, a strange affection, a pride that inflates his voice. “He always fights, and he will make it, he will come out of it. In a while he will be back in the truck with us. He reacts, right? You have to give him some time more”.

Eddie is tired. He’s tired of hearing him talk, he’s tired of hearing everyone talk about how strong Evan is. He knows how strong he is, how good, how amazing he is, he knows how much of a fighter he is. But, they all have to be honest and face reality. Evan really thinks it isn’t worth fighting for him, that it isn’t worth fighting, and Eddie is afraid that he is now too tired of fighting, too tired of rolling up his sleeves every time and trying to get back there, on that truck, in that station with them, with his family, with the family he chose. And his body is giving up and he doesn’t react to stimuli as he should and... and it’s scary and hurts and he knows that Evan is one who doesn’t give up, but if his body gives up before him, there is no much more to do.

And he would like to get angry, he would like Evan to get angry with them, with all of them, for not having supported him enough, for not having told him how important he is, how vital he is for the team. He has a heart of gold, and they will never be, Eddie will never be enough for him. And if he is lucky, if they are lucky and he survives, and fights a bit more, and his body reacts and he manages to return, things must change. All of them must change for him. And maybe Eddie will also have time to dismantle all his beliefs, all his resistances. Maybe he will make him feel loved enough, he will make him feel worthy enough, maybe he will be able to give him all this and much more. Or maybe it’s late and the only thing they have to do is let him be a hero one last time.

“You know I couldn’t get you in. You have a son waiting for you at home...” he hears Bobby say.

And Eddie no longer sees it, he loses his composure. He no longer has control. Christopher isn’t an excuse, he isn’t a mitigating factor. He didn’t do enough, nobody there, did enough that day. And maybe it’s not just that day, they haven’t done enough, in general since he knows Evan, since Buck is his colleague, they have always been little supportive with him. Everyone, including Eddie, who has included him in his and in his son’s lives, perhaps he hasn’t done enough. He didn’t do enough for Evan to start thinking he was worthy, worthy of being helped, worthy of being supported, worthy of being loved, worthy of a family, worthy of having time to live.

“Evan has a son waiting for him at home as much as I do, a son who goes to the hospital and reads his favourite books to him. A son who wants to ask Santa to wake up his Bucky because he managed to give him this gift other times, when asked for my return, when asked for Shannon to be home… a son that loves Buck more than I can ever love.” he shakes his head with his eyes closed, not to let a tear leave his eyelids, and tries to control himself, because under his skin there is that ancient call that reminds him of the arena, the cage, the noise, fighting for his own good.

“Eddie, I just thought about limiting the damage,” Bobby mumbles. The way he repeats his name might seem aggressive, if someone else did it, it certainly would have sounded aggressive, but Bobby seems to be pleading him, begging him to see with his own eyes, his vision of things.

And Eddie doesn’t want to humanize him, doesn’t want to hear him, doesn’t want to understand. He is too angry and empty at the same time. “You didn’t make us intervene. In these cases, the timing is vital. And he stopped breathing, his heart stopped beating and... and there was so much blood in his lungs that he couldn’t breathe and... and I can’t get it out of my head that it’s your fault too, Bobby.” He adds, this time it looks more like a growl. “I don’t want to work with you anymore. I no longer trust your judgment or mine, if I work with you. I am too angry and sorry, because rationally, rationally I know that you have done the best for us, but it wasn’t enough. Not for Evan.” he reiterates trying to get back in control, at the helm of his emotions.

“Eddie, take some time. Surely when Buck gets better...” Bobby starts to say.

“He will never get better. We will let him go. I will have to explain to my son that we have to let him go and I will have to hope that he doesn’t hate me as much as I hate myself, for giving up. But Buck… Evan wouldn’t want to live like this.” he adds in a low voice. “Take it as a warning. After he leaves, I will take my bereavement two days leave and then I’ll use all my off work days. And when I’ll be back I’d like you to move me to another station or at least another shift. I am not going to play happy family with all of you. No more, never more” and before he can say anything more the siren rings, alerting them of another emergency.

And Eddie is already on the stairs, ready for action.

In the truck he doesn’t listen, in the truck he just thinks. He thinks and rethinks about today, what will happen today and then tomorrow, and what will happen from tomorrow onwards.

When he’ll go to the hospital today, he will talk to him about his day, he will talk to him about today’s emergencies. He will tell him how that tutorial on youtube didn’t help him at all not to burn their toast this morning. He will describe the sunset and the drawings of the clouds in the sky. He will recommend him not to do anything stupid wherever he goes, and will hold his hand until he begins to understand how to do it, how to live without him, how to leave his hand.

A change of air, returning to El Paso could be another fresh start. But he doesn’t want a brand new start, he won’t get a brand new start from the pieces torn apart. Eddie wants to feel that pain and doesn’t want to forget it. Because a lot of love corresponds to the same pain, and even if more months have passed in that muddy limbo, of uncertainties and time that flows away from the fingers, rather than those they have actually spent together loving each other, with all their heart, with their whole bodies, with their whole minds, Evan will leave an unbridgeable void. But he needs someone, someone who will keep him afloat in the future, otherwise he will bring his son, his tiny ray of sunshine, down into his pitch black abyss.

It is a young couple, the one woven into the sheet-metal of a Saab. She who cries out in pain, the horrible awareness that he is not breathing on her.

She comes out intact, she, as Eddie got out unscathed that day. While he, whose life is hanging by a thread, quickly fizzles on the stretcher, before reaching the ambulance. And he protected her, he took all the shock when he noticed the other car, which was about to take them in full. And he played the hero like Buck and life, bastard, took him away, like is taking Evan away.

It’s almost the end of his shift when that phone call arrives. They just finished recovering their tools and got back on the truck, leaving behind the place of an accident where not only devastation hovers, but the vague memory, a tremendous understanding, an inalienable judgment. They haven’t done enough, they haven’t been there on time, they haven’t be enough, like that other day. Sorrow overshadow Eddie’s heart.

So, Eddie answers almost without thinking, without looking at the screen. And he hears someone sniffling, breathing heavily. “Daddy?”.

“Hey buddy, what’s going on? You never call me when I’m at work.” he hums, trying not to read as much in his kid’s voice, like his grief is only a shadow that walks with him today, more than any other day. “Chris? What’s going on, mijo?”.

“Daddy...” he repeats again and hears him sobbing.

And his heart becomes so small in his chest. “Chris, Chris? Let me talk to Maddie, alright, buddy?” he mumbles and glances at Bobby who is already facing him. And he does everything in his power to breathe slowly, he does everything he can not to panic.

“Eddie, Eddie you have to come here right away... Evan... collapsed...” says Maddie, breathless.

“What?”. Eddie doesn’t even hear himself saying it, he couldn’t be a judge of how painfully that sound rings in his ears.

“We were with him, inside and... suddenly the saturation dropped all together. They sent us out... Eddie I’m afraid that...” she starts to explain.

“Don’t say it” He blocks her. And he knows, he knows that if she says it out loud his heart will break into a thousand pieces, but then there is Christopher there and he still hasn’t explained anything to him, he hasn’t explained to him what will happen when they let him go. “Not in front of Christopher, not yet, okay? I’m coming, give me time, I’m coming,” he tells her and begins to silently pray for time. Time to see him one last time and hope one last time.

“What’s going on Eddie?” asks Bobby.

“Evan. He... I have to go to the hospital. The saturation dropped” he replies mechanically, trying to control himself, but in his head there is only that silent and boundless prayer.

He will be late, he knows it. It’s already late. The sun is setting and he is not ready. He wanted more time, he was still thinking about what to tell him, because he knows that Evan hears him, he knows that he can hear him. He could hear his voice. And now?

Throughout the stretch of road, he continued to think, think and rethink. They will not see Christopher grow in the wonderful man he will be, they will not grey together bickering in the backyard, they will not look at the stars together, they will not see the sunset together. They will not have the good immense luck to marry, they will not love and fight, and reconcile. Take and get lost in each other. They have not had this immense luck, of being able to love each other for a long time, of being able to get used to the idea of not having a future together. Their nights together were a trickle, numbered, like the days they spent together, work a distant memory, pain and suffering, the continuous not being enough to save lives.

Eddie feels so drained when he gets there. When the noise of the hospital swallows his thoughts. And there is this storm that is swelling in his chest.

Buck was there when he started his new life, he was a constant. His presence has been a constant even when they have been far away, the need to have him in his life, in his daily life has broken a monotony, a schematic, pragmatic routine, forged by his mental state and his past. And there were little things, little big things in their days, little steps that became brighter and happier. The problem with people is that they often forget that it’s the little things that matter most, and Evan is the light, and the oxygen, he’s his way home, he is all the little big things that made his life better. And Eddie knows that he will have to go on, that his life must go on, anyway, grit his teeth and walk, proceed along the road of his life, even without having Evan next to him, without being able to reach out and hold his hand and find comfort, safety, anchoring. He has always been there in this new part of his life, and Eddie could now divide his life into a before and an after. In a before and after Buck. And his brief while has already come to an end. Their numbered nights. Their numbered days.

And it’s late, it’s late, it’s late. It’s so fucking late. Buck who was there even before he felt the need, Evan who has become an integral, crucial part of his life, and who will now leave an infinite void. Until his heart stops hurting. Because one day it will stop, and Eddie is afraid right now of when that day will come, when he will stop feeling this incredible void.

He knows the hospital by heart, and when he gets out of the truck his legs are going for him, his body moving autonomously, and his mind, his mind traveling fast towards that day, towards that day when he will thank goodness, and fear takes his heart. One person can’t disappear like this, Eddie can’t stop feeling that pain. He still misses Shannon, sometimes, so hard that it breaks his heart. He still misses the mother she could have become, the wonderful woman who did her best. Eventually over time all the mistakes disappear, all the quarrels, all the fights become little nothings and only the good things remain, and perhaps the therapy helped him a little. With Buck, with Evan he didn’t have the time to build those memories, yet his warmth in his life was so great, his colours so bright, his affection so essential.

Eddie walks past the chapel and looks at the cross and the candles that shine at the bottom on the altar from the small mosaic window. And prays, prays, to have some more time at least for the latest recommendations, to tell him how much he loves him, at least one last time. He won’t be able to demonstrate all that love to him, he won’t be able to operate that love, he won’t be able to give it voice.

And then he proceeds, walks quickly, steps heavy and knees that seem to tremble.

And when he arrives in the waiting room there is Christopher holding his book tightly against his chest and his head down and Maddie trying to calm him.

“I got here as fast as I could” murmurs Eddie, the turnout coat and the pants and braces that weigh him down now, all together.

“Daddy!” peeps Christopher throwing himself into his arms. “We have to wait for him some more, right? We wait for him?”.

Maddie takes a choked breath between her clenched teeth.

“Okay mijo, you and I need to talk about something, okay?” he babbles cupping his son’s face with his hand before hurrying to take off his coat and those heavy trousers, to remain with his station uniform, his thin blue trousers and his T-shirt. And then he looks over at Maddie, and smiles softly before turning his attention again to his kid. He kneels down in front of him, and takes a deep breath.

“But we fight with him, do─don’t we? We─We don’t stop fighting, do we? Because if we stop… he stops too,” Chris murmurs sobbing quietly, his eyes are reddened by tears.

And Eddie then leans over to him and takes his little face between his fingers and smiles softly, wrinkling his nose, before pulling him into a tight tight hug. “You know your Buck always fights, don’t you? But there is a time when we can no longer fight for him, and we can no longer ask him to fight.” he says softly. “He wants to do fight like Ironman now. Snap his fingers and save lives, but you know what this means...” he mumbles and is amazed at how simple it is to say it this way, an allegory. And he hears Christopher nod as he sniffles. “And you know that I would never want him to snap his fingers and decide for us, but...”.

Christopher nods and lowers his gaze, his shoulders trembling. “Like Iron -man? But if he snap his fingers...”.

“Look at me Christopher,” Eddie says softly and picks up his tiny face again between his fingers, and tries to stretch a smile, even if his eyes are burning and he feels like crying and would never want to do this speech. “It won’t erase him from our hearts, it’s normal to feel sad, he will always love us even if we stop fighting and let him be the hero. He will always be with us, like mommy, huh? And we will love him anyway even if he has decided to be a hero and snap his fingers, and to go away and save many other people if he does”. He adds swallowing a thick lump in his throat. “You know he is a hero and... and we would have loved him anyway that he was a superhero or a supervillain, because Buck is Buck”.

“But I... I haven’t finished reading the book to him,” Christopher adds with his trembling voice. “I pro─promised to read it to him, to finish it... few pages... only one chapter to go”.

And Eddie doesn’t know what to say, and just hugs him before looking at Maddie. And then move his gaze to something else, anything else.

And then he hears footsteps, a brisk, quick step. A nurse who enters the waiting room. “Family of an Evan Buckley?”.

And Eddie looks at Maddie and silently entrusts Christopher to her. “I’m going to talk to the doctor, okay? I’ll be right back, stay with aunt Maddie, the others are coming soon,” he adds before reaching the nurse.

And he pretends not to feel that emptiness, which falls upon him as soon as he lets go of his son.

The nurse walks quickly towards the panic doors of the ICU and hurries to say many things, she speaks all out of breath, but the only thing he can understand is that the doctor, the one whose name Eddie has never learned, but sounds in a strangely familiar way, wants to talk to him. And they pass in front of Evan’s little room and he is not there. And there is an attendant, who is arranging the bed and has already begun to detach all the photos and drawings from the wall, to place them in a box with his name and a number written in a black sharpie. And Eddie’s head is emptied of all possible thoughts and scenarios, of all words and sees the light fade away, and for a moment it is hard to remember the way Evan laughed, or the warmth of his hands, or the full body grasp of his hugs.

And a small void hollows out in his heart, and then all around it, he could swear to feel emptied, almost completely when he finally sees the doctor, who is at the door of a duty nurse office and is disinfecting his hands.

“Oh, Edmundo!” he says in this extremely friendly tone.

And Eddie remains motionless for a moment, and watches him and then the words reappear at the bottom of the throat. “We want to donate his organs, is it possible to donate his organs? I... I temporised… It’s my fault… I just wanted him to wake up but it’s not... it’s not possible anymore is it? So... please, please... his sister and I agree, if I have to sign something” he finds himself saying, his words a river in flood. “Let me sign, he... Evan would like to save lives, donate organs. If they are still good, if it is still possible”.

The doctor looks at him with wide eyes and seems to be evaluating his mental state. “No... it’s not possible to donate organs, Eddie,”.

And the world collapses on him. He didn’t get there on time. He also failed to honour Evan. Damn it! He just wanted to be an hero, Evan just wanted to save people, one last time, with all he had. “I’d like to see him then. Please I... I have to see him before you put it in the morgue and...”.

“Morgue? But Nurse Josie, what did she tell you?” the doctor babbles, his wrinkles that seem thinner now, less hollowed out, and when he smiles, it’s a smile that doesn’t have that scary taste of pity.

Eddie stops and looks at this old man’s calm face and then moves to look for the nurse who is no longer there. “He collapsed, didn’t he? He can’t go on like this, if he’s got worse, we are ready, we throw in the towel, we give up, we let him go. And I’m sure some organs will still be good,” he continues to say, and his breath shortens in the back of his throat and feels his heart racing and echo in his chest.

And the doctor approaches him and places a hand on his shoulder. “Eddie, breathe. Slow down, please. You definitely can collapse, now” he mumbles, smiling softly. “You should have got Madeline come here with you,” he says gently. “Would you like to sit down for a moment? So you can catch a breath”.

“I have to see him,” Eddie manages to say.

“And you will see it, sure, but now I have to talk to you because I have to tell you things and I have to explain them well and you must not be panicking, it will not do anyone any good if you panic” the doctor adds, with a kind tone and makes him approach a bench in the medication room, the one usually used to put shoe covers on.

“I saw that... I saw that they took his things out of the room. I saw that they have... a box of his things…” Eddie says shaking his head and closing his eyes.

“Eddie sit down,” he says, and Eddie executes the order like the good soldier he was in another life, in another before, before Buck, and only then does the doctor sit in front of him. “Breathe slowly, you can’t collapse, not now. I knew you didn’t want to follow the group therapies that are there to support families... but Madeline told me that you have your own therapist so... you all have your own therapist,” he adds.

“Has he collapsed? What have you done? Have you stabilized him? He... Evan doesn’t want to live on life support... we waited too long and I…” he mutters, standing up. “I must see him and you must... you really must─”.

“Okay you really have to listen to me” the doctor says stern, and Eddie just hushes, and lets his head drop.

The doctor waits for a moment, instructing him with calculated short breaths.

And when finally Eddie seems a bit more in control, he starts talking again. “He is breathing, Eddie. Independently. He breathes and opened his eyes. It wasn’t a collapse, he rejected the endotracheal tube,” he simply says. “It took us a while to do the first tranche of exams and tests, and he will have to do many more and a lot of therapy, physical and psychological, maybe a bit of logopaedic therapy, but... he breathes and is awake, not exactly alert, but he has opened his eyes and has is reacting good, really”.

“He breathes? Evan? Evan is… On his own?” Eddie repeats with a small voice and feels his knees give in, the adrenaline abandoning him completely, his breath breaks in his throat and it takes a moment for him to find his balance and remain standing straight, and he must reach out with his back the first wall available to support himself. “He breathes?”.

“Yes, we had noticed small reflexes, but in these cases, it is impossible to predict the chances of someone in a state of impaired consciousness improving. Some improve gradually, others stay in a state of impaired consciousness for years.” he begins to say .

Eddie looks at him incredulously. He must have hit his head, very hard, this is his first thought, or he is dreaming. “The other doctor said...”.

“I have my theory and I think Evan has heard of ending his life and is back to kick us in the ass, Eddie,” he replies, pursing his lips in an awkward smile.

“And he is awake, like now?” he asks slowly, he needs a lot more time to process all this informations.

“Recovering from coma is a gradual process, starting with the person opening eyes, and responding to pain and speech.” the doctor says, smiling softly “We are currently performing an MRI and a couple more exams. The length of a coma is the most accurate predictor of long-term symptoms. You know, right?” he adds with a murmur.

Eddie nods. “The longer the coma, the greater likelihood of residual symptoms” they repeated it like a mantra, so it’s like a mantra for Eddie and Maddie too. “You made it pretty clear”.

The doctor moves to grasp Eddie’s harm with his hand. “Glasgow scale 8, right now. He’s improving very fast. So we guess he wasn’t in that deep coma he seemed to be, the past few days at least. Or we could call it a miracle. Either way he is awake, now”.

“He is tough” Eddie says a little smirk on his lips, while his eyes are full of tears. “He is a survivor”.

“He surely is,” the doctor hums in agreement. “Okay, now, after the MRI they are going to move him in his new room, in our sub-intensive care unit. I’ll take you there, now”.

“Isn’t it a bit early, moving him around like that? In another unit, he could...” he starts to say, but then the doctor looks at him with this confident face.

“Eddie he is awake, very grumpy but, awake and breathing, and as his recovery proceeds like this, he’ll be up and kicking our ass in a blink of an eye. He can’t talk right now, due to the intubation, but he opens his eyes in response to voice, withdraws from painful stimuli. He can’t lift his hands as much as we hoped right now but does pull away when he is pinched. That makes him very grumpy, so I suggest you not to do it…” he adds. “And we are keeping an eye on him there, like a very close eye. I guess doctor Green wants to write an article about his miraculous recovery so, there are going to be at least three nurses and a lot of residents and interns around him monitoring him. And I guess he’ll get even grumpier”.

Eddie seems to be quite content with this answer. “Can I see him?”.

The doctor smiles softly. “Yeah, you may be a good support, as I said…”.

“He is a very cranky patient.” Eddie nods, his legs now tremble for the wait, for the excitement. He’s going to see him. No matter how big and scary his residual symptoms are, he is going to see him. He has more time, he has more time to live with him.

The doctor slowly accompanies him down the corridor, towards what they call a sub-intensive care unit.

Here the walls are brighter, the usual straw yellow but it seems freshly painted, and here and there is stained by large splashes of colour which are perhaps stylized flowers. But Eddie’s heart is in his throat and this time he doesn’t want to focus on the details. He doesn’t even read the room number, and he’ll have to do it later, when he calls Christopher and Maddie, because he’ll have to bring them back here, he’ll have to bring them to him.

There are doctors around the bed, and there is an almost sacred silence again. The heart monitor still marks time in its own way. But then he hears it, that sound, a sound strangled like a moan, and then a half-voiced, distressed rumbling.

“You will have to help him drink with a teaspoon, Evan has been extubated for about three hours now, and can’t ingest large quantities of water, but it could give him some relief.” he hears the doctor say before he approaches the other doctors around the bed. And he begins to speak in a gentle tone to Evan and he hears him inciting him with an almost fatherly attitude. “There is a surprise for you here, now I bring him closer and you try to open your eyes, huh? Do you understand Evan?” he then says and gestures to Eddie to come closer.

And it takes a moment for Eddie to notice that his legs are moving on their own accord, towards the bed and the doctor leaves him the space to get closer, and entrusts Evan’s hand in his.

And he does not even have time to start talking that he sees those tiny movements of his eyes under the eyelids. And when they tighten, his heart swells in his chest, waiting, eager.

It takes Evan a moment, his fingers twitching in Eddie’s hand. But then he opens slowly, painfully his eyes. And it’s a bright blue, the one that looks out of the slits, of his half-open eyes. He blinks slowly and Eddie draws a choked breath between his teeth.

And his legs give way to him and if there wasn’t that chair nearby, he would be kneeling near the bed, his face on the mattress and his shoulders trembling with his sobs.

And now yes, now yes that sobs come scratching his throat, now yes that he can lose control.

He doesn’t even notice that the doctor begins to push away all those other doctors, who now move like white shadows in the periphery of his field of vision, while Eddie drinks that blue sea, and then moves his gaze when Evan just tightens his grip of him, weakly yet so dearly. And then he sees the nasal respirator that serves to give him the right supply of oxygen without being too invasive, now that he breathes alone, and chapped lips and that little smile.

“Hey” is all Eddie manages to say and his voice is like a whisper.

And Evan just closes his eyes and stretches his smile a little wider, and moves his hand away from Eddie’s hovering over his forearm until he grasps the lateral head of his left bicep, and it is as if he is asking Eddie to move closer. When he reopens his eyes are full of tears and he looks so tired.

“Hey, I’m here, I’m here and you’re here. And you’re... you’re alive, you’ve been so good, you are… oh fuck Evan you are so good!” he says and makes him a smile brighter. “You really are a fighter, I’m so proud of you. You are amazing, you are… so fucking good”.

Evan tightens his grip on his arm and mumbles something, the sound is hoarse and deaf, but he has always been so good at communicating without having to speak. And Eddie barely looks at the doctor, who is still there by the door as if asking for permission and when he nods as if to say go ahead, Eddie approaches and bends down just to rest a kiss on the corner of Buck’s mouth.

And as soon as he hears Evan moan, gasping a sound that seems almost a whimper, Eddie moves away. And with a not so fluid and almost heavy gesture as if his hand weighed, Evan brings his free hand at the base of his trachea.

“Yes, I know. I know, mi amor. Your throat is very irritated, your vocal cords are sore, but it will take a blink of an eye to start talking again, I know” Eddie nods with the voice so gentle that almost terrifies him, and moves to rest his lips on Buck’s forehead, to reduce the space that divides them.

Evan groans softly.

“You don’t need words with me, huh? You know?” he adds as he straightens up on his seat and brings Buck’s hand to his mouth, then, to kiss the knuckles and the fingertips and the palm softly.

And Evan moves slowly to brush Eddie’s cheek, to wipe away that fugitive tear that has escaped from the tear ducts. And he seems to frown for a moment before muttering something again. And it sounds like don’t cry to Eddie’s ears.

“They are tears of joy. You are awake, you are finally awake.” he explains, the words that roll up on his tongue and he wouldn’t even know how they sound to his ears, as he is busy looking at him, so busy finally feeling him living. “Don’t do it again, mh? You know that I can’t live without you anymore” he adds, holding Evan’s hand in that position, supporting it with his own and reducing more the space between their faces, so as to ease his awkward caress.

And Evan’s fingers tremble on his cheekbone.

And now Eddie looks at him better and even though his eyes are bright and a little wet with unshed tears, and this big soft smile sparkles on his lips, he seems so immensely tired and battered and pale and thin. The respirator in his nostrils must bother him enough because he occasionally wrinkles his nose and closes an eye when he runs his tongue over his chapped lips. But he smiles, and looks at him and his fingers are warm, and the way he clings to Eddie, the way he caresses him, it’s all so reassuring.

Eddie can’t help but look at him with such satisfaction, with such affection, with so much fondness and pride. He is alive. And he struggled all by himself to stay there. And surely as soon as he knows, as soon as they tell him how they were giving up on him, he will kick them and get pissed enough. And honestly Eddie can’t wait to hear him grumble, to see him pissed off, to have to make up with him and kissing him better.

“Hey, you scared us so much, but now you’re here and... you know your sister is looking forward to seeing you and... Christopher, Christopher wants to see you and...” he continues to say and the words escape his throat with a strange sound, his voice trembling.

And Evan curls his eyebrows, and swallows hard and tries to open his mouth, tries to let out some sound, but the only thing that comes out is still that little dull sound, that whimper that looks like a cry.

And Eddie rediscovers himself with tears in his eyes, with shortness of breath at the bottom of his throat, with his breath broken by ugly sobs, and he didn’t believe he had more tears, or that he could cry more. But this is joy, a strange joy that falls upon him transcendent, such a great relief, such satisfaction. And his heart almost hurts in his chest, as he bends down once more to kiss him slowly. And Evan curls his station shirt between his fingers, as if to mimic a kind of hug, as if holding him tightly.

“It’s all right, sorry. Sorry... I was losing hope... but you... you... you are formidable that’s what you are, you are incredible and… fuck” he manages to say, his lips still on his skin, again at that corner of his mouth and then sliding on his lips. “And you know I’m not good at talking... I...”.

And he hears him make a vaguely strangled but unmistakable sound. It’s his laugh, although it doesn’t seem like a laugh at the moment, but that’s definitely a chuckle, pleased and mocking.

Eddie pulls himself up and collects his face in his hands . “Argh, you laugh huh?”.

Evan closes his eyes with some satisfaction and curls his lips in one of his wry smiles.

“You make fun of me, you’re terrible!” Eddie grumbles and still has tears in his eyes but he laughs and it seems an eternity that didn’t happen, that he didn’t laugh. “I have to go tell your sister you’re awake, I have to tell Christopher!” he says, and he already knows that Christopher will want to see him, but maybe it’s not the time yet, maybe Evan is too tired, but he asks him anyway. “Do you want to see Christopher?”.

And Evan lights up and moves his head very slowly in a tiny assent.

“So I’ll go now, huh? I’ll be right back, stay awake, will you? Did you understand? Don’t try anything, no funny business, Evan. You know I’m old and my heart doesn’t hold up this time.” he mutters bending over to give him another little kiss on the edge of his forehead before entrusting him to the doctor.

The doctor just smiles at him, in such a paternal way. And Eddie must definitely learn his name, at some point, months have passed and he still can’t associate his face with a name.

But it has other priorities now, definitely other priorities. “I’ll be right back, I’m going to call Maddie, can I get her here? With our son, he... he... can our son come here? Or is it too early? Surely Buck, Evan would like it...”.

“He definitely can,” the doctor says, smiling. “We continue with the last battery tests for now. And then I talk to the nurses, I guess you will stay here to keep him company in the next evenings,”.

Eddie nods vigorously, his eyes burning at the mere idea of having more time, more time to live with him. Time.

Before going, he takes another look at the bed. Evan still has his eyes open and still seems focused on him, and slowly waves his fingers as if to greet him. And Eddie feels the tears rise in his eyes as he waves back, what he does with Christopher, repeatedly closing his fingers of his right hand, before jumping into the corridor.

He repeats the road by heart and gradually his breath becomes shorter. He still has to carburate, he still has to understand, he still has to actually assimilate that information.

And every step he thinks and rethinks, that they were giving up on him, that they were letting him go, that they were throwing in the towel. And Evan who is so stubborn, tenacious, a fighter and has some pretty hard bark on him, has surprised them once again.

And his heart becomes small in his chest.

He wipes his tears again, which seem to not want to stop gushing, before reaching the waiting room.

“Eddie!” Maddie still has Christopher in her arms, and his son is still clutching the book to his chest.

“Hey!” he mumbles, sniffing, but smiling. And he bends down to reach for Christopher, without doing much if not spreading his arms and waiting for his kid to hug him.

“The others are coming soon, I also called your abuela and Josephina, and Carla... I don’t know how we want to organize this and...” Maddie starts to say.

Eddie holds Christopher tight against him and then reaches out to hug Maddie. “He hasn’t collapsed. It wasn’t a collapse. It scared us a lot but...” Eddie murmurs.

Maddie shakes her head. “Eddie he...”.

“He woke up, Maddie. He woke up... it wasn’t a collapse he just started breathing on his own... he is awake. A little confused and battered... and he doesn’t speak but... he moves, he is awake and opens his eyes and he recognized me and..." he continues to say and looks at Christopher who has not made a sound.

“Like Captain America,” Christopher murmurs with his eyes big and sparkly. “Can I see him?”.

“Of course, when I told him I was going to pick you up he was so happy!” he says and caresses his son’s face and takes the crutches with one arm but leaves everything else there, the rest of his gear, all there on that armchair in a waiting room.

And she hears Maddie sobbing.

“Come on, huh? We warn the others afterwards, he is having a bit of a hard time staying awake and... he is all grumpy...” Eddie continues to say.

And Maddie reaches out to take Christopher’s crutches and retrieves her bag and says nothing but wipe away the tears.

“Buck is always cranky when he’s sick,” says Chris, tightening his arms around Eddie’s neck.

“Oh, yeah, it’s true,” Maddie scoffs and sobs altogether, doing to retrieve Eddie’s things.

“Come on, don’t think about it, I don’t care about that stuff, we have other priorities." he says and stretches out to her his free hand.

And they set off down the corridor, all the energy he seemed to have lost is in every fibre of him again, now that he is rushing towards Evan’s new room.

Eddie stops a few steps from what he remembers to be Buck’s room, there is still that cloud of doctors who are in there to visit him.

“So he can’t really speak now, he does some sounds but…” he says to Christopher, but he says so for himself to remember. “It’s like when we have a sore throat and we make those weird sounds... he does something like that” he mutters. “But he understands everything, I told you he heard us, when we talked to him, do you remember it?” he waits for his son to nod before continuing, with a small fond smile. “I’m sure he heard you read and can’t wait to hear how the book ends”.

“Can I read it to him when─when he gets better?” Christopher asks, his eyes sparkling and a bright little smirk curving his lips.

“Sure! You can read this and many others to him, he knows that you have become super good at reading aloud!” adds Eddie and glances at Maddie.

And she takes another choked breath between her teeth. “Eddie I…”.

“Let’s not talk about it now.” he replies categorically. “Let’s go in. Then we organize the shifts, as always”.

And when they enter Buck is busy pushing this doctor’s hand with one foot, his bad leg flexed in this unnatural way and he seems really stressed by this situation, his tongue between his gritted teeth and his expression contracted. He grunts what appears to be a feeble smear and then relaxes completely in bed.

“Enough,” decides the doctor. “Enough for now, let’s continue later. There are visits for you.” he mumbles and gestures to the other doctors to go out, and moves near Eddie and Maddie “I spoke with the nurses, and we moved his things here, I’m sure we can paper the room with all the drawings of this young man, mh?” he adds, reaching out to caress Christopher’s back. “Don’t tire him, huh?” it’s his last recommendation before going out.

And Maddie hurries to release Eddie’s hand and reach for the bed. Leaving her bag and Chris’s crutches on near the box with his things, placed on a tiny table. “Hi!” she says, slowly, the breath that is louder than her voice and reaches out to gather Evan’s face and he seems so small, so thin now that Eddie looks at him with his eyes always veiled by an emotion, a great unnamed sentiment.

There are strangled sounds, those of Evan’s throat all parched and battered by the endotracheal tube.

Maddie sits on the bed and takes his hand and when he squeezes her slowly, and closes his eyes and smiles, a sob escapes her lips.

“He made us a surprise, right Maddie?” Eddie mumbles, deciding to stay there a moment longer and give the two of them that extra minute, that moment of intimacy.

But she looks up and reaches out to Eddie, and gestures for him to come closer. And when he enters Evan’s field of vision, Evan smiles and slowly extends his arm too.

“Bucky!” peeps Christopher.

“Hey now, slow okay? He is all battered, remember” Eddie warns softly, before bending over and placing her son on the bed.

And there was no need for that recommendation, because Chris slowly approaches his Bucky and reaches out only to gently caress his cheek. “It will be all right, kid.” he murmurs with a tiny fond smile.

And Buck gasps, and grasps Chris’s shirt to make him move closer and Christopher looks at Eddie with his wide, sparkling eyes, like asking for permission, as Eddie did with the doctor only a few minutes ago.

“Go ahead, kid” he says softly, and moves the chair to take a seat near the bed and support Christopher and hold Evan’s shoulder in his grasp.

So his son moves to snuggle in his Bucky side, leaning close but slowly, like Evan could break under his touch.

And Evan smiles, softly when all the three of them are around him touching him and he slowly closes his eyes.

“It will be all right,” Christopher reiterates looking at Eddie and Maddie with this big smile. “I told you daddy, that Buck is like Captain America”.

And Buck makes that sound again, what Eddie has understood by now that it’s a chuckle and he laughs too. “Oh you’re right, mijo. You always are, he’s a superhero”.

As always, stay safe and take care of you!

tagging @buckleystrand; @sparksfly-buddie; @chrrlees; @lieselfh; @themoonyloveenvy and whoever wants to be tagged!

#buddie fic #9 1 1 fic #evan buck buckley #eddie diaz #heavy angst #angst with happy ending #this isn't your happy ending yet but we are so near! really!#hurt/comfort #emotional hurt/comfort #established relationship #major character injury #lamalefixwrites #freaking long things #over 12k words #author.exe stopped working

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ask-de-writer · 4 years

Text

LOST TIME (part 2 of 3) A fantasy of Flocking Bay.

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to Flocking Bay

LOST TIME

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

5556 words

written 2003 by Glen Ten-Eyck

Reproduction in any form, physical, electronic or digital is prohibited without the express written consent of the author or proper copyright holder.

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Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights. They may reblog the story. They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions. I will allow those who do commission art works to charge for their images.

All sorts of Fan Activity, fiction, art, cosplay, music or anything else is ACTIVELY encouraged!

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Morton Hewitt did not last. He bought the house for back taxes in 1944. He lived there for a week. He painted the hardwood floors and then hanged himself in the garage the next day.

Byron Thomas bought the house from Hewitt’s estate. He was a grave digger for Trinity Graveyard. He updated the plumbing and lived there quietly for several years. Apparently he liked his work a little too well. He buried two people who were not yet dead. One of them lived. He was adjudged sane at his trial and hanged for his crime.

Mark Altman bought the house next. He was a reclusive sort and lived there for a quite a number of years before it was discovered that he’d had some visitors who had never left. He died in prison while awaiting trial. There was an interesting hand written note attached to the autopsy report which stated that the coroner had ruled out both suicide and homicide but refused to pronounce the death natural.

Dora Greene got the place next. She was Mark’s sister. Like Mark, she lived there quietly for years. One day she walked into town and set fire to the school, killing five and maiming six more. She spent her last years in a lunatic asylum, setting three more fires and killing two more people. She herself died in her last fire.

While she was in the asylum, one Tony Fisk, age twelve, urged on by several other urchins, had thrown some stones at the windows of the Vekin place. He had missed. Becoming angry, he took careful aim and they all watched the flight of the stone. In the young malefactor’s words, “It went away without falling.”

It would not have been worthy of a news story, except for the fact that each of the children who had watched the stone had gone severely and permanently cross-eyed. In a small town like Flocking Bay, that many kids going cross-eyed at once could not be hidden.

George Abbot bought the house and rented it at a very low price to a Michael Farley. The two had been feuding, down-state, and the house was supposed to have been a peace offering. Farley stayed only a few weeks. He went out and dynamited Abbot’s automobile. Farley was quite mad and lived out his life in an asylum for the criminally insane. The county coroner ruled Abbot’s death to be suicide. After all, he had known the history of the house and had knowingly rented that house to an enemy.

Cornelius Baker took the house next. He upgraded the kitchen and installed modern wiring. He lived there quietly and apparently got on well for about five years. He was a long-haul truck driver. Bodies followed him about the country. Finally, he was caught with one in his truck. He drove his truck into a bridge abutment at over ninety miles per hour rather than be taken alive.

Now, I had the place. I mentally withdrew my blessing. He had not been a good man at all.

Lois saw that I was finished with the file and making good inroads on my sandwich. She asked, “Did you sleep there, last night?”

“Yes, I did. Most restful sleep I have had in years.”

“What is your full name?”

“Vandervekken,” I replied, getting out my driver’s license. I was used to this. “No first name or middle initial. Just Vandervekken.”

“How old are you?”

“I don’t know, at least seventy.”

“You don’t know how old you are? Seventy? You look like you’re in your early twenties,” she said incredulously. “I told you that things connected with the Vekin place get interesting.”

“I got a head-wound during the war. Traumatic amnesia.”

“Viet Nam wasn’t that long ago. It would only make you in your fifties.”

“Not Viet Nam, Lois. WW II. Apparently, I was helping the French Underground.” I handed her the military fingerprint record. Her eyes widened as she realized that I was serious. “The amnesia’s been permanent, so far. I have language skills . . . too many. I’m a fluent, accentless polyglot. I even speak Basque. I know how to do an amazing number of things . . . no trace of name or personal past. No ID either.”

“Couldn’t they trace you by these fingerprints or something?”

“They tried. I was found among the bodies of a wiped-out unit of the French Underground during the German withdrawal from Paris in 1944. Someone from another unit was able to say that I was an American volunteer with a name that he could neither remember nor pronounce ... something sort of Dutch. That inspired my current name. I got back with a temporary ID and that military fingerprint record, which I still carry.”

“That’s sad, and eerie, too. What’s it feel like?”

“I’ve thought about that a lot. I think the best way to describe it is like a house that’s furnished but nobody is home. Empty. Alone.”

“So, how does that relate to your choice of name? You must know what having only one name does to our systems for indexing things and people.”

“True. I want to stand out, in case somebody recognizes who I am. As for Vandervekken, he was the Flying Dutchman, who swore that he would take his ship around the Cape of Good Hope, against a gale, if it took until Judgment Day. That was in the Seventeenth Century and he is still sailing. His ghost is seen as a Dutch East India Co. galleon with all sails set, sailing into the teeth of a gale. He can’t get home either.”

“I see,” Lois said, adding to her notes. “What brought you to Flocking Bay?”

“I was just passing through. I like small towns, so I avoid the main highways and big cities whenever I can. I liked the atmosphere of Flocking Bay enough to inquire about the possibility of settling here.”

“Look, we both know that small towns are dying. You could have had your pick from any of a dozen houses. Why the Vekin place?”

“I was shown fourteen places, actually. I know that it seems a bit forbidding at first, but it felt good. Like a warm glove on a cool morning. Have you ever actually been there?”

She shuddered, “No, and before you, I have never heard of anyone who said that the Vekin place felt good ... You say that you are a writer. What have you written?”

“Charles said it very well, ’Pseudonyms are great for privacy.’ My own writing aside, I do translations but you won’t find my name on most of them. Archaeologists like to take credit for their finds. I mentioned that I’m a polyglot? I sight read ancient languages as well as modern.”

I extended my hand to Lois and invited, “Would you like to come and see for yourself this house of dark history? I promise that you will find it worth your while. In all of those stories, not once was the interior of Vekin House described. Do come.”

“I have to return the file and get my camera,” she responded gamely.

“I shall await you in my auto, in front of the Voice,” I answered. As I walked her back across the street, I had the pleasure of seeing her stare at Lilitu.

“If that’s what I think its, I’ll ride with you anywhere!” she called over her shoulder as she entered the Voice’s office. True to her word, she emerged in a few minutes with a camera. Not one of those tiny little cameras that have become fashionable, but a business-like press camera. I opened the car door and gave her a hand up.

As I got into the driver’s seat, she asked, wonder in her voice, “Is this really a Packard V-12 Touring Car?”

We pulled away with the almost uncannily quiet, vibration-free ride that the car was famous for. I replied, “You bet she is. Lois, meet Lilitu. Lilitu, meet Lois. After the war, there were still quite a few of them to be had, and I liked both the ride and the durability, so I hunted one down and had it fixed up like new. I’ve kept her that way ever since. She’s only had two owners in over two-million miles. The first owner only put on about sixty-thousand of them.”

“You drive a lot,” she stated.

“I was looking for something ... I think that Flocking Bay has it. My turn for a few questions , if you don’t mind.”

“Fire away. If I don’t like the question, I won’t answer it.”

“What did you do before you took up the Voice?”

“The same thing that I still do. The stock and futures markets. I’m good at it. I got out of college with a degree in the sociology of medieval witchcraft. I got a job as a waitress on the strength of my looks. I put my first fifty dollars in tips into a risky stock that kited way up. On a hunch, I dumped it three days after I bought it. It nosedived shortly after I sold out. After commissions, I had three hundred and fifty dollars. I rolled it over the same way. The rest is history. So far, my hunches have always worked for me.”

“What brought you to Flocking Bay?”

“Like you, I was passing through. I was on my way to Lakeside Resort about three years ago. I got a hunch that I should stay, so I did. The Voice was failing. When a small town loses its paper, the end is in sight. I didn’t want the end to come, so I bought the paper. Here I am.”

“And here we are,” I said with a flourish as I pulled up in front of the house. We both stared. The yard was neatly trimmed, though the bushes and trees still retained a slightly forbidding aspect. Going up the path to the front door, I noticed that the flagstones had been leveled, the weeds removed and the joints and refilled with fresh sand. The iron fence and balustrades had been cleaned of rust.

“You’ve been busy,” was Lois’s comment.

“That’s just it,” I replied, puzzled. “I didn’t do it. I thought that stocking the fridge and setting out a snack last night was something that the real-estate agent arranged. Sort of a welcome wagon. This is beyond the call of duty.” Opening the front door, I felt that comfortable, welcoming feeling that had caused me to buy the house in the first place. Impulsively, I said, “Hello, house, you certainly look nice today.”

Lois looked at me quizzically and asked, “Do you talk to everything, or is this special?”

I thought for a moment before answering, “Actually I only talk to things that have personality enough to warrant a name, like Lilitu, my car, or Drachen, my typewriter.”

“Typewriter? You do like antiques, don't you? What are you going to call the house, then?”

“I’m not sure,” I answered. “Something good ... What does the place feel like to you?”

“The place actually looks and feels . . . well . . .” Lois groped for the right word, “I’d have to say . . . happy. Not what I expected, at all. It feels like what you see when a pup that loves its master is greeting him. No wonder you slept well, if it feels as good to you as it does to me . . .” She sort of trailed off. “I wouldn’t normally say this, but I’m getting a hunch about this place . . .” she trailed off again.

“I guess that the house was just waiting for the right kind of person,” I responded. “It was pretty rough on everyone else. I’m glad that you like it too.”

“Look at these floors,” she mused, “They were beautiful before Hewitt painted them over. You can still make out some traces of the parquetry patterns. If he hadn’t already hanged himself, I’d help you to do it.”

<==Previous Next==>

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to Flocking Bay

#LOST TIME #Part 2 of 3 #Flocking Bay #Written by De Writer

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mental-health-advice · 5 years

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Do you have any information or pages on abuse? Don't worry about it if not

Hello.

At the moment we currently do not have any pages on abuse I am afraid, but I do have some information on abuse for you which I can hopefully help. I’d just like to say before I begin that with abuse there is a grey area which makes it really difficult in determining whether something is abuse or not. There isn’t a clear line on what is abuse and what isn’t as there is a whole variety of things that can determine whether it is or isn’t.

There are many different types of abuse that can be catergorised and I will explain some of them below..

Emotional abuse

Control which can include things such as threats such as ‘if you don’t do this then I will do xyz’, wanting to know where you are and who you are with at all times, checking your phone, text messages, social media etc, giving orders ‘get my food on the table now’ for example, having your financial information and being in control of your money and what you spend, treating you like a child by telling you what to wear, who to see etc.

Blaming which can include jealousy (accusing you of cheating, flirting with others), denying something you know is true (an abuser will deny that an argument or even an agreement took place. This is called gaslighting. It’s meant to make you question your own memory and sanity), using guilt (they might say something like, “You owe me this. Look at all I’ve done for you,” in an attempt to get their way), denying their abuse and blame you for overreacting.

Emotional neglect can include stopping you from socialising with others, withhold affection from you so won’t touch you, try to come between family and friends, calling you needy. When you’re really down and out and reach out for support, they’ll tell you you’re too needy or the world can’t stop turning for your little problems, interrupting. You’re on the phone or texting and they get in your face to let you know your attention should be on them, disputing your feelings. Whatever you feel, they’ll say you’re wrong to feel that way or that’s not really what you feel at all.

An old admin also wrote a very informative post about emotional abuse which can be found here.

Physical abuse

Physical abuse in a relationship often starts gradually, such as with a push or a slap, and then becomes progressively worse over time. It involves a person using physical force against you, which causes, or could cause, you harm.

Types of physical abuse can include:

scratching or biting

pushing or shoving

slapping

kicking

choking or strangling

throwing things

force feeding or denying you food

using weapons or objects that could hurt you

physically restraining you (such as pinning you against a wall, floor, bed, etc.)

reckless driving

other acts that hurt or threaten you.

You might also feel..

afraid of a particular person

you steer clear of certain topics to avoid making them angry

you feel like you can’t do anything right, or that you’re walking on eggshells because of their anger and rage.

Financial abuse

Financial abuse is defined as..

Someone taking or misusing someone else’s money or belongings for their own gain

Harming, depriving or disadvantaging the victim

Controlling someone’s purchases or access to money

Often associated with other forms of abuseDoesn’t always involve a crime like theft or fraud

Types of financial abuse..

Borrowing money and not giving it back

Stealing money or belongings

Taking pension payments or other benefit away from someone

Taking money as payment for coming to visit or spending time together

Forcing someone to sell their home or assets without consent

Tricking someone into bad investments

Forcing someone to make changes in wills, property or inheritance

Signs of financial abuse..

Unexplained money loss

Lack of money to pay for essentials such as rent, bills and food

Inability to access or check bank accounts and bank balance

Changes or deterioration in standards of living e.g. not having items or things they would usually have

Unusual or inappropriate purchases in bank statements

Isolation and withdrawal from friends and family

Lack of things you’d expect someone to be able to afford e.g. TV, grooming items, clothing

(source)

*Those are the main ones , but like I said its a grey area and there are other types/symptoms.*

I also recommend if you feel as though you are getting abused to speak to someone. Having someone to talk to can really help and they can be there for you whenever things are bad. They will also be able to give you some advice on the situation, keeping it all to yourself will be harder. Also i you could also consider talking to a therapist or another professional about abuse if its effecting you mentally.

You are also more than welcome to send in another ask in regards to abuse and the situation and I will be able to help you further as the above response was based off general information about abuse, so if you send an ask in me or another one of our admins will be able to help more.

Take care.

Ariel xo

#mhaariel #abuse #mental health advice #advice #mental health #advice blog #Anonymous

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rosalind-of-arden · 5 years

Text

Sword and Pen Reread, chapter 5

Time to cry over Morgan.

Here’s our first hint that Morgan isn’t going to survive. The journal entry is “Archived to the Codex under interdict until her death.” I don’t think we’ve had ephemera from any of the main characters labeled that way before.

So Morgan’s journal was published after her death. She gets that form of immortality along with the ring. But, of course, this is a lot of very personal, emotional stuff to make public while she still exists in a way that allows her to be aware of it. Also, if Jess reads it, so many feels for him.

Morgan’s emotions in this journal are just so real for someone her age. She’s 18, she’s been through hell, and she doesn’t even know what to make of it all. It’s heartbreaking that she wants comfort so badly and questions herself for wanting it.

“What happened in the Colosseum feels like an ending.” This line felt jarring the first time I read it, since in her last POV chapter in Smoke and Iron, Morgan seemed to decide that she definitely loved Jess. But she felt that when she thought they were about to die, and that was before Brendan’s death. Morgan, extremely vulnerable after just escaping the Iron Tower and only just reunited with Jess, just saw Jess fall apart over his brother, too consumed by grief to think about her. She just saw that as intense as their feelings for each other have been, Jess has other relationships that are more established that have a huge impact on his life. That’s not either of their fault, but it’s got to hurt.

Also, consider the difference in Jess’s response to Brendan’s death and Morgan’s response to her father’s death. Not exactly the same situation, but still, close if complicated family relationship. Jess withdraws and can’t even take care of himself right after Brendan dies. Morgan keeps going after her father dies: trying to escape, checking on her friends... if she had any period of shock or withdrawal, it’s off page where we don’t see it. She may be hurt by Jess’s grief because it’s so different from her own that she can’t understand it.

Morgan recognizes that the things that have happened have changed her and Jess both. They really haven’t had the time to establish a relationship strong enough to last through those changes. Wolfe and Santi obviously have. Khalila and Dario had six months of peace together. Jess and Morgan had a lot of mutual pining and very little actual time. No wonder Morgan’s questioning things.

Morgan is a tea person. She drinks it unsweetened, apparently, since it’s bitter. Cooling, too. Morgan is the type to leave the tea in the cup and forget about it.

Morgan and Thomas both know ancient Greek.

In some ways, putting Morgan and Thomas on the same project is as bad as having Jess and Wolfe work together. Neither of them believes in getting adequate sleep when there’s work to do.

Ancient harbor defense mechanism was an Artifex-Obscurist collaboration designed by Heron.

Obscurists can bond people to automata. This seems like the sort of thing that has a lot of potential both for interesting problem solving and for absolute horror.

Medica-brewed energy potions are a thing. And Morgan’s preferred caffeine source might be tea, but she’ll grab an energy drink before she’ll consider sleeping.

Morgan and Thomas, taking a break from work to debate whether and how people can change.

“This is why I prefer my machines. Far easier to fix a broken automaton than a broken person.” My fucking heart, Thomas.

“His smile felt as warm as summer sun, and for a moment she forgot they weren’t just two students, debating.” My fucking heart, Morgan.

Seriously. Thomas: “I’m broken and can’t fix myself” *smiles* Morgan: “omg is this what it’s like to be normal students?” Children, neither of you is ok.

What does it take to make Morgan sleep? Knowing she’ll have to use lots of Obscurist power for a job.

Thomas has been assigned an office but no sleeping quarters. Odds that without outside intervention, he just ends up sleeping in his office?

Changes in Morgan’s power: what she grew up with was “a steady, slow trickle from the world around her” enough for elemental manipulation and rewriting scripts. Now it’s sizzling, “dark and glorious,” and even after using a lot at the Colosseum, she still feels like she’s “bursting with it.”

More hints at hidden Obscurist communities, maybe in/around Oxford? “She’d spent most of her life in hiding.” Assuming her father was in on it - an Obscurist himself (weak power, probably?), or a parent who would rather live in hiding than give his child up? And there’s how he was recruited to the Burners. A community of hidden Obscurists is going to be both an appealing and an easy target for them, and a siege could be the thing that pushes them into joining the Burners instead of hiding. Scholar Tyler could have been part of it too, a Scholar who sympathized with the hidden Obscurists enough to risk trying to help them.

Eskander, hiding magic rings is not an appropriate way to give them to people. Are you trying to be fucking Gandalf or something?

There is nothing ominous at all about an ancient ring stamped with the seal of the Great Library that radiates power.

Morgan has so completely adopted Wolfe as her father that she doesn’t hesitate to think of Eskander as a grandfather.

Eskander has spent the past 40 years locked in his room. Eskander is wearing “boots that had seen years of use.” Old pre-Iron Tower boots of his? Or has Eskander spent the past 40 years pacing around his room with boots on? Raided the Iron Tower’s clothing storage and grabbed himself a pair of old boots instead of new ones?

“A lean, strong elder with long, curling gray hair.” Caine throws a bone to Eskander smut writers with this bit of description, I think. Morgan: sees Eskander, notices how good he looks, immediately thinks of adopted family relationships.

So quintessence is the power that’s in everything in this world. Apeiron encompasses other realities as well.

“This particular ring was created by the Obscurist Magnus Gargi Vachaknavi over five thousand years ago.” As Maz has so brilliantly pointed out, there is no fucking way that this entire statement is true. Ephemera later in the book says Gargi was Archivist. So... could be Gargi was Obscurist Magnus and/or Archivist, but not actually 5,000 years ago. Great Library seal on the ring points toward this interpretation: that suggests it was made after the Library was founded. Or we go with the theory we’ve discussed on Discord. The Library claims to date back 5,000 years, treating ancient institutions in Egypt, Greece, etc as part of itself, retroactively applying titles like Archivist or Obscurist to people who wouldn’t have called himself that. Gargi was neither an Obscurist Magnus nor an Archivist, but those titles were retroactively assigned to her. The symbol was added to the ring later.

Or, for something a little more horrifying. Gargi made the ring 5,000 years ago. She has been using it to either share or steal bodies, and has thus been able to be an Obscurist Magnus and an Archivist, just not in her original body. She put the Library symbol on the ring whenever she joined up with the Library.

Eskander: You made me come out of hiding, now I’m training you to replace me. Suck it up, kid, this is nobody’s fault but your own. I mean, it’s a douche move to stick her with the job like that... but I kinda sympathize.

Morgan: My power is corrupted again, so maybe we should think about safety here? Eskander: No safety. Put the ring on. For science!

I think Eskander really is trying to help here. He knows Morgan isn’t using her power safely. He knows he can’t keep fixing her when she corrupts herself. The ring is the only thing that might work. But he is truly atrocious at communicating that, and he doesn’t seem to understand that bullying her into it isn’t right. 40 years of isolation plus most of his life in the Iron Tower - that’s not going to give him a healthy understanding of communication or consent.

Morgan’s power is repaired again when she puts on the ring. And upgraded.

The ring was put away because it disagreed with what the Library was doing. So Eskander finds this ring that’s probably been locked up somewhere, maybe labeled as dangerous... and unless it comes with an instruction manual, presumably, he puts the damn thing on. How else would he learn what it is? And Gargi tells him to fuck off and find someone better to wear her? Or maybe every Obscurist Magnus inherits it, tries it on, gets rejected, stashes it until the next Obscurist Magnus comes along? But maybe Keria slipped it to Eskander instead, keeping Gregory from getting it. Maybe Eskander even wore it a bit, until Gargi got tired of him doing nothing and told him to fuck off. Maybe the ring is how Keria and Eskander even figured out how to un-corrupt power.

Ring stays on the wearer until it decides it’s ready to come off. So, yeah, really not something you should have coerced Morgan into, Eskander.

Ring is messing with Morgan’s head already. Giving her dreams telling her she can stop the Archivist but it would kill her too, planting thoughts in her head, affecting feelings.

“Annis was very fond of Eskander.” For all the Annis/Eskander shippers.

“Scholar Wolfe, looking tired and drawn.” More to add to the Wolfe Is Not Ok pile.

Wolfe has two dying kids and available medical care isn’t helping. Who does he go to? The kid who he watches heal Santi, of course. He knows what Morgan is capable of.

Obscurist vision takes power to use. Morgan sees Glain’s body “mapped in flows of reds, blues, golds... and a steady expanding darkness.” Touching Glain lets Morgan feel what Glain is feeling and see the inside of her body.

The ring helps Morgan drain small amounts of power from everyone around her. It sends increasingly strong warnings as she uses too much power. Progresses to sharp stabs of pain, then catching fire.

Dad Wolfe is there to catch Morgan when she falls. Energy Vampire Morgan finds him tasty. Did this happen in/after Philadelphia too?

Morgan has seen Wolfe freaked out before. So it’s really saying something that here, he’s “terrified in a way she couldn’t remember ever seeing him.” I would really, really like to know how this compares to the Mesmer.

This tense little moment with Wolfe and Morgan before she leaves. She’s so scared of hurting him. He knows he just hurt her by asking her to save Glain. They both know how dangerous her corruption is. From Wolfe’s perspective, this is probably a lot like how he felt after Jess breathed the poison. He’s watching his kids kill themselves to accomplish their goals, and he can’t stop asking them to take the risks because there’s no other way to get things done. It’s Philadelphia all over again.

With her eyes closed, Morgan can perceive the garden, including fish in the pond. She can sense that Jess is dying.

The ring differentiates between consequences of choices and injuries inflicted by others. Choice and consent matter to Gargi, but she doesn’t consider the circumstances in which choices were made. Neither Morgan nor Jess had any good options when they made the choices that are killing them. Gargi doesn’t care about that.

Breakup time. Poor babies, they’re both so badly hurt, they don’t have anything left for each other, and they’re blaming themselves for that.

#the great library #sword and pen reread #long post #very long post

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juleswolverton-hyde · 5 years

Text

Comfort is coming (YG x Reader)

Genre: Fluff, College/University AU

Pairing: Student!Yoongi x Student!Reader

Warnings: No warnings apply

Summary: Hard academic labour deserves to be rewarded with a treat every once in a while. For example, with holding a marathon of a favourite series while eating a tub of ice cream.

And the unsuspected company in the form of the silent force under the same roof.

There are times when life is hard, when it knows periods wherein every single thing that is normally so ordinary now forms an extraordinary addition to the amalgamation of educational stress. Each day is filled with nothing but typing on the flat slightly illuminated keyboard of the matte silver MacBook filled with academic files, hoping to finish that close reading essay that was thought of too easily, when a heavily caffeinated mind is not occupied by trying to process every bit of information eyes framed by glass absorb from paper. It always is the same song and yet its dance can never be learned.

Day in, day out.

Sigh after sigh.

Nevertheless, they pass, eventually, invoking feelings of tremendous relief, mental devastation and exhausted defeat to flow throughout a learning being again and again. Today is one of those moments in which this memorable potion is drunk after completing the deadline and cramping up with pain inflicted by ink in a most powerful tool and chaotic panic at not understanding the capability of the human intellect despite cramming hours on end.

The leather bag is thrown onto the floor at the entrance of the apartment shared with a silent stoic raven-haired force who composes music in the hush habitual to the residence, headphones always on in the bedroom functioning more as a studio even when nobody is home. In fact, it is not unlikely to think the padding of toes merely clad in socks goes unnoticed, the noise-isolating padding tuning them out immediately after removing nightly black and crisp white Adidas sneakers in the tiny entryway and putting them into the shoe closet next to the entrance.

It is not minded since it is part of the routine, the only moments of really enjoying each other’s company being dinner and occasional mutual trips to the supermarket to stock up for the coming week. Lunch is never shared because either party picks up something in the cafeteria of the university building they have to be for a seminar or lecture or somewhere in the big concrete jungle, alone or with a friend. Breakfast is also rarely a moment of true friendship, Yoongi skipping it on a daily basis yet always nagging the curiously accepted housemate when there is a risk of giving into the same habit. It has gotten to the point of being forced to wait until the musician finishes his characteristic double espresso and preparing a decent enough meal for one likely running late for class whenever the scenario presents itself, nonchalantly blocking the way in every instance feet try to slip away from the scene to crack on or sending empty threats behind a turned back.

Although, in hindsight, the same happens in the event of dinner and not feeling too hungry if at all.

Withal, skipping a meal will have to be excused for the day because when bone tired limbs have exchanged the complicated outfit - consisting of onyx leggings matching the same-toned dress underneath a denim jacket and above knee-height light brown leather boots - for dusk-shaded Puma sweatpants and a plain ivory V-neck shirt, nothing will be done anymore. Bare feet crawl under the alabaster thick sheets after wrapping them in the blanket coloured in a murky earth and mossy tone, moonlight-shaded MacBook opened to the downloaded Game of Thrones episodes the quiet strangely kind power roaming the same house shared by email at accidentally discovering a mutual love for the series during a boring lecture, sharing earphones to watch season one painfully unfold all over again because, apparently, Yoongi had just started it.

And, although already having seen the first few batches that were sent by digital means before illegally online, they nevertheless bring a grateful smile to tired lips each time because it is due to this sharing of documents a splendid opportunity has been steadily formed to indulge in a marathon to withdraw from the world in silent celebration of a liberation from stress.

However, it would appear the musician has stopped watching recently since conversations have led more often to forbidding giving any spoilers for season four and further. Though, when asking to brand new seasons bought on DVD on the hard drive to add to the little nerdy collection on the bedside table also functioning as a headboard, Yoongi gladly rips the files and sends them over email thus adding both to the personal collection and that of a soul glad for the kindness in spite of the more stranding chit chats since there have not been many moments of bonding since moving in four months ago. Other than the series, there is little to talk about that which has been discovered as common interest let alone bond over and both working and hanging out with different people besides the study does also not greatly help in forming a deeper meaning to the fragile friendship.

Just as a comfortable position is taken up and noise-cancelling white headphones put on, a digit hovering above the touchpad for the cursor to start from the very beginning of the visual version of “A Song of Ice and Fire”, a dimly audible knock is followed by an immediate opening of the door to the private haven. Obviously disregarding the polite pause to wait for consent, Yoongi stands on the threshold, bangs as dark as ink covering a pale forehead and the light skin of the resident stoic silent force further accentuated by the overall casual outfit of ripped jeans and a T-shirt that could blend easily into the shadows. ‘Judging by your appearance, I wager it’s either that time of the month again where you get grumpy at me for no good reason and act like a drama queen or you just made your exams and deadlines.’

‘Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be composing or something? You normally ignore me until before dinner.’ The constraints on hearing are removed while eyes wander to the bright green slightly translucent plastic convenience store bag held by bony skillful fingers, light up at registering what the item within it is and seeing a comforting sympathetic curve on lips having lost every sense of mocking when looking back at the unexpected visitor. ‘Why the ice cream?’

‘I never ignore you, Y/N. I know I don’t say much and we don’t have much of a relationship, but ever since you’ve been here I’ve had no choice but to observe you on a daily basis, looking as shabby a-’ An offended palm lashes out as the flatmate sits down on the edge of the mattress - a bed frame a disturbance to the overall minimalist aesthetic - on the cedar floor and puts the bag down, the sharp slap of skin on skin resonating in the temporary hush. The hit has a deceivingly powerful impact because a red outline already begins to form and makes the baffled young man cover it protectively in the instant the imprint is noticed. ‘What the- Y/N! What the hell?’

‘That’s for calling me shabby. It’s not, it’s comfy.’ The pout in which the last statement is made returns clear amusement with a caring undertone to the other’s shocked expression. The digits reaching out to pat locks depicting the aftermath of academic stress are swatted away, arms crossing in defiance afterwards while an unforgiving glare holds a warning strengthening the one made in a voice that cannot sound entirely angry due to the gratefulness towards the pale onyx-haired lad for checking up on an exhausted somewhat friend. ‘Don’t touch me. I’ll bite your fingers off if you try again.’

‘Fine. Here I was, thinking I’d cheer you up with the ice cream you always buy when you’re like this, but apparently, it isn’t appreciated. Guess I’ll give it to Joon or Jimin, instead.’ An attempt at getting up is made yet stopped directly by apologetic palms at the ends of uncrossed arms clad in too long sleeves, a tug on the wrist asking to return while also not being able to help but glance longingly at the icy cinnamon roll treat that threatens to leave alongside the present company. ‘Oh, so now you want it, huh?’

‘I’m sorry, if that’s what you want to hear.’ Albeit reluctantly, an apology for the defiance is given, knowing full well the playful mocking attitude of the fellow student though personal pride was still damaged at being called badly composed style-wise.

‘You’re forgiven. Look, I’ve gotten to know your personality through actions. In university, you’re the independent hard-working calm girl while at home you’re one giant ball of stress who’ll get frustrated with deadlines again the day following a bit of rest. But it is days like this one that you’re happy and it’s annoyingly rubbing off on me.’ The tub in the plastic bag is put in the lap covered by the thick alabaster duvet. ‘Making me want to see you be a little content hermit. Here, eat up and relax. You’ve earned it.’

Brows furrow in played confusion, teasing like him howbeit in retaliation for the insult earlier in spite of the oddly satisfying confession at not being a mere invisible force like the musician. ‘How am I supposed to eat this without a spoon?’

A contemplating nod, acknowledging the treat cannot be enjoyed without otherwise and should have been brought along from the beginning. ‘Right... I’ll get you one.’

‘Can you make it two?’

‘What?’ The surprise at the request raises the indifferent husky voice by a few tones.

‘I can’t eat this all by myself, though. So, do you-’ Doubtful irises shift from the favourite ice cream to the screen, awkwardly moving on the mattress thanks to the self-made constraints on wrapped feet, and back to Yoongi whose expression briefly transforms into characteristic stoicism before showing a ghost of a rare gummy smile. ‘Do you want to watch Game of Thrones with me?’

‘Sure. Which season, though?’

‘Three. Where are you?’

Sheepishly, the creative genius rubs the back of the neck in obvious hesitance to admit something. Regardless, as always, what needs to be said, is said is as serious a tone as possible. ‘I’ve kinda forgotten since I think I stopped halfway. Although, I’ve seen the Red-’

‘We. Do. Not! Talk about The Red Wedding.’ An accusing finger rises in offence at bringing up the sensitive subject about a most traumatic and tragic event in Westeros. ‘Not a single word more about it, Min Yoongi.’

‘I forgot how immersed you are in the series.’ A roll of the eyes goes accompanied by an amused sigh as palms plant themselves on hips and a headshake emphasizes the entertainment at the, perhaps, too extravagant reaction. ‘Alright, I’ll shut up. You start up the point from which you want to watch, but no further than the event we just spoke about, and I’ll get the spoons. So you can shovel the ice cream in.’

‘One more degrading comment and I’ll have your head!’ The empty threat is shrugged off by the leaving flatmate who has always laughed off these types of statements, either frustratingly coaxing more out or merely mumbling something along the terms of being cute which, in turn, raises more protest that, again, gets treated in the same manner. It is a viscous endless circle.

‘Who are you? Geoffrey Baratheon?’ A smug glance over the shoulder invites a new discussion that on one hand wants to be held while, on the other, the aftermath of educational stress does not allow it.

Henceforth, it is hoped to be ended with a final deciding futile violent phrasing. ‘I will be if you don’t get the bloody spoons.’

A reflecting tilt of the head, raven locks partially covering up the devious expression of the annoying yet beloved musician. ‘Maybe Cersei.’

‘Go.’ The command comes out between gritted teeth, absolutely done with the subject and too eager to attack the tub of cinnamon roll goodness before it is all melted.

‘As my lady commands.’

Vaguely in the distance sounds the barely audible padding of bare feet towards the kitchen after the flatmate has left the room, leaving a small crack in the door in the wake filled with endeavours at soothing kindness. Although it might mean inherently nothing, the tight grip on the edge of the warm duvet cannot be helped as the heart flutters with innocent joyous sentiments bordering on a deeper version of themselves. Especially when Sense comes in to calculate the outcome of the sum of caring behaviours and recalled mental transcripts of past conversations, however trivial, alongside the little gestures in the studying composer’s absence in the form of song recommendations on post-it notes or sharing earbuds inconspicuously during boring lectures or seminars to listen to the same song.

The clinking of the cutlery drawer being searched, looking for the right spoons.

The sound of a metal wave when the loud impact of the momentum makes the insides shake in unison when it is being slammed shut despite the mechanism ensuring a gentle closing.

Returning bare toes underneath a delighted sliver of a grin as slim pianist fingers present the retrieved items, one of them handed over with a broad smile that is glad to see the eagerness with which it is accepted and the tub opened to attack immediately.

Once more Yoongi strikes down on the edge of the mattress but this time to look for a comfortable position to sit in and getting incredibly close while doing so. It is not unusual to be fairly intimate during educational hours, but this is a whole new sort as the onyx-haired man tries to secure a seat just in front of the night table functioning as a headboard, thus placing an utterly confused girl between black pepper and ink scented legs. ‘Scoot over. And don’t you dare eat that whole tub by yourself. You always get me worried for your health when you do. I enjoy seeing you eat, but you shouldn’t overdo it.’

‘It’s only 360 calories and I’m an adult. I can do what I want.’ Awkwardly, an attempt is made at putting a bit of distance between bodies by trying to ease into a lying position next to the curiously intimate flatmate so that only shoulders touch.

However, the composer does not allow it and makes use of the clumsy unbalanced shuffling to pull the spine flush against a soft warm chest, locking the captured party by grabbing the laptop from the side and placing it on top of the two-person lap which has just been created and locking ankles in place after rearranging the warm sheets to cover both parties.

Both friends.

Or more, though that remains to be seen when the confusion will be explained by the course of Time.

As if nothing unusual has happened, blatantly ignoring burning ashamed crimson cheeks, the cursor flies over the screen to start up one of the episodes without knowing the exact point from which an original beginning of the marathon wanted to be made. ‘Where do we start?’

Hands still wrapped about the cinnamon ice cream carton, spoon balanced between nimble fingers, grab the treat a little bit harder to calm down while speech clearly portrays being affected by the sudden show of closeness. ‘Season three, episode- no, wait. Season one, episode one.’

The best way to remember all that has transpired in the politics of Westeros after escaping the realm for a while is to watch the game of thrones unfold all over again despite almost being able to recite every scene by heart. ‘That’s where we’ll start.’

‘I think I still rec-‘ The considering protest is broken off by a spoonful of cinnamon ice cream from the rapidly opened carton box, tired of having to wait to finally kick back and relax in, apparently, good human company.

‘Shut up, Lannister, and just start the series.’ The nicknames from the houses each individual supposedly belongs to have become a sort of inside joke to refer to one another and it would be a lie to say it was not missed in rare actual conversations. It brings back the memories of that first moment of watching this exact same beginning to the turbulent fantastical political chaos, huddled together while plainly ignoring the professor talking about a subject undoubtedly important for the exam but which at the time did not matter whatsoever. Perfectly content watching the battle for The Iron Throne unfold and taking a quiz to figure out where one would be in Westeros was it the real world.

The topic of the lecture did matter, as would be discovered, for the close reading.

‘Okay, fine, Tully, we can still cha-’ Another icy bite cuts Yoongi off again before irises return to the screen and a weary head lies down on the top side of a cushiony stomach in splendid delight, eating ice cream while regarding a bloody imaginary history.

Winter is coming.

But comfort is already here.

#BTS #hyunglinenetwork #hyungline #btsguild #Yoongi #SUGA #Agust D #Min Yoongi #BTS fanfiction #BTS fluff #BTS College Au #BTS University AU

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schmuwuwu · 5 years

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A Bitter Sweetness

Synopsis:

An original love story of a picturesque couple, who were expected to be the perfect pair.

Today is the first day of spring. This means that my second year of dating my current boyfriend has been a success. I remember two years ago when I confessed to him. I was such a nervous wreck in front of him that I delayed the confession after failing to start the conversation. I remembered his encouraging smile as he egged me on with such patient eyes. I walk down the path to our usual spot in the park where we’ll start our day of celebrating our 2nd anniversary. My face naturally stretched into a grin as I skip down the cherry blossom-covered path. Its pink and white purity reminds me of the past two years, how we were so awkward with each other that we didn’t know how to kiss compared to now when we would joke whenever we make mistakes.

As I turn the last corner leading to the park, I spot him waiting at our usual tree. I smile in delight as I watch his nervous demeanour. Though he isn’t a macho or muscular man, he definitely has a certain charm to him. His kind heart and his softness for everyone around him make up his individualism. I walk towards him, a slight skip in my walk. He looks up at the sound of me coming. He dons his adorable smile that shows all of his teeth. I smile back, feeling the excitement bubbling inside me. But somehow, I feel that something about him was different. I push my doubts and worried aside, determined not to have any negative thoughts while on our anniversary date.

He offers his right hand to me as usual and I responded as usual by taking it. He leads me to the pet café that we frequent to a lot. We have been discussing about getting a pet ever since six months ago. I have started to think about a name for a cat and a dog and what breeds they would be lately. We enter the café and order our usual meals, disappointed once again about not meeting the right pet. Due to the location of the café, it is usually quite expensive for us to always afford it. But when we do, we would share meals. I always thought he just wanted to be closer to me. His polite behaviour to others would tend to make me jealous. A stab of pain shot through my heart when I think about how polite he was being, to me and to others. It seems to me that he was treating me like he would to others. And it had already worried me ever since we started dating.

I suddenly feel disappointed and it probably showed on my face because he concernedly peers down on my face. The worry in his eyes seem to be genuine so I let go of the thoughts that held doubt within me. But I couldn’t shake off the insecurity that had already lodged itself in my heart. We leave the café after a wonderful lunch and proceed to stroll around the shopping district. As the contents in our stomach settle, our minds also wander. I could never know what he thinks during these silences. It’s never awkward and it’s comfortable even when we don’t talk about anything. But now I feel insecure. I can’t shake the feeling of not being important of him off my aching heart. Why couldn’t I ignore the insecurity this time like normal? Is it because of how… different he looked when he was waiting for me? My mind wandered further down the rabbit hole.

Then, it occur to me that there has been nothing intimate that happened during the relationship. He never went the extra mile to give me lasting presents and we never had any matching possessions. Was he always prepared to break off the relationship? At this point, I can’t ignore it any longer. This bottomless pit of doubt and distrust that continue to corrode my faith in him. As we walk back to the park as we always do, he takes a sudden turn. With my hand still in his, I am forced to go along with his sudden change in mind. My heart suddenly starts to race. Is he going to put his foot down and renew his loyalty or are my worst fears coming true? He slows to a stop at the willow tree that stares longingly down into the lake.

What’s wrong, he asks with worry in his eyes. His voice filled with kindness now hurt me. I avoid looking into his eyes. His eyes, clear and red. I had thought his eyes were beautiful because the red represented the forward passion of his love for me. Now, I can’t bear looking at his eyes. Not only his eyes but his face and his body. I look at my hands and slowly withdraw them from his. I take in a shaky breath. Why? I ask. Why, what? he asked back. I can only shake my head and swept a hand around us. Why are you so kind to others just as you are to me? You are never selfish with me. I say. Words that I want to say—scream at him—lodge themselves in my throat and my eyes blurred as I think back to the previous two years. Why is it today that I can’t ignore them? Why did I have to listen to them only today?

He was never selfish with me. He never asked for anything more and took everything from me with a sorry instead of a thank you. I kept working hard so that one day he was comfortable enough with me to say a thank you but that day never came. Maybe I was already disheartened ever since the confession. I knew I had pushed him to make a decision due to my timid nature and he probably couldn’t deny me. Just thinking that made my tears suddenly ran down my cheeks. I am jealous that my old self to be able to cry so freely, without any shame. Now, I can only stare down at the ground guiltily and avoid looking up. He stands there in silence, flabbergasted at the sight of my tears. The sun begins to merge into the horizon. As the seconds tick by, the sun carries all my hopes away together with it. He didn’t answer. I close my eyes, trying to steel myself against his words.

He opens his mouth and closes it again, trying to find all the right words to say. It’s okay, I say. I’m sorry if you felt like you had an obligation to fulfil when you accepted my confession. Can you forget all about it? I don’t mind if we stay as friends. I’ve grown tired of waiting for you to come around and treat me as something special. I say with a shaking voice. I am surprised myself for being able to say all of that without breaking down even further. What would traumatise me to never fall in love again was his next few words and what he would never do to me.

Okay. I’m sorry that you had to wait for me but… I also grew tired of waiting for you to come out of your shell. You never expressed your opinions. He replies. Each syllable hit me straight to the heart. He didn’t hold back when he said it. I look up to meet his eyes and could see pity in his eyes. For me? No, it was for him to break up with a girlfriend of two years in a picture-perfect relationship. Sensing that we were over and that we were finally done, I hug him, knowing somehow we will never get to interact ever again anymore. That in the first place, we weren’t meant to meet. Then, I sprint away from him, away from the lone willow tree and away from the setting sun. Away from what was my dream. I slam the door of my bedroom, ignoring the annoyed protests from my brother who I live with.

As I sit on my bed, gazing listlessly outside my window out at the willow tree and to the setting sun, I see his silhouette still standing there, unmoving. Then, I begin to cry again, this time without expecting them to stop. My tears have a mind of their own. They flow non-stop, carrying the brunt of reality along with it. I feel as though suspended in the cold presence of a vacuum, no longer able to feel anything. Loneliness seep into my heart as the doubts and distrust begin to fade away. I no longer feel burdened about having a relationship but I felt that I had destroyed an irreparable relationship. A relationship that would never be recovered, only meant to be buried. I look back at the past two years again, before closing them off from my heart. I don’t want to remember them again. My first and a hopefully successful relationship has ended as a failure.

What hurts more than the fact that it was consented is that he never returned that last hug. He had already let go of me before today. I remember the nervous look on his face before he showed me his picture-perfect smile. I only realise, in my stupidity and being blinded in love and hope, his smile was to cover up the discomfort he had felt while he was with me. He never wanted to stay in this relationship. How naïve was I that I didn't notice how he was feeling? Was I really that blinded by love? If love has blinded me to the point of naivety, I don’t want that anymore. If this naivety would cause me pain anyway, I might as well bear this ever-lasting pain that I will feel from this failure for all my life instead of reliving it.

I wish I broke off the relationship sooner. I wish I noticed his discomfort and paid attention to my doubts. I only woke up today. The dreamy state of being in love was like being an illusion that I had destroyed with just one sentence and another from him. I guess that is how fragile love is. I never should have trusted my heart. This deceitful heart which could never find solace. I’m done listening to it. I should have stopped when I noticed just how blue and black I have already become. This painful failure will forever etch the feeling of loneliness in the abyss of my heart, its grip on me eternal and the scar of failure that has stopped my heart from ever beating again. I hope it never recovers from this. If it does, I’m sure I should just let go. Again. Before I break again. Forever.

#romance #original #breakup #short story #boyxgirl

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mrslittletall · 6 years

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Title: A Storm is coming (Chapter 4) Fandom: Dark Souls Characters: Chosen Undead/Dragon Slayer Ornstein (eventual romance), Dark Sun GwyndolinWord Count: 2.443 AO3-Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16603610/chapters/41826608 Previous chapter: https://mrslittletall.tumblr.com/post/182351536699/title-a-storm-is-coming-chapter-3-fandom-dark

Summary: Tempest and Ornstein have some kind of talk. Gwyndolin takes care of Ornstein.

(Author's note: I will admit it right away, writing these parts is difficult. The characters are extremely stubborn, especially Ornstein, and I feel like I have to bend and twist with them so that they act in favour of the story. Please stay with these dorks, I promise they will get better.)

Tempest squeaked in surprise and tried to withdraw his arm, but the grip of the dragon slayer was too strong and he couldn't move a single inch. His hand was still clutching the braid.

“Don't ever think about touching me again.”, the dragon slayer growled.

“I am sorry.”, Tempest squealed. “Would you let me go? You are hurting me.”

“First let go of my hair.”, the knight said and jerked up. Then he suddenly let go of Tempest arm, murmuring “Mistake...”, clasped a hand over his mouth and Tempest instantly knew what the bucket was for and handed it to the dragon slayer just in time before he could soil his blankets. Tempest stepped a few steps back from the bed, releasing the braid, asking himself if he should have hold it nonetheless as he watched the dragon slayer noisily puking into the bucket.

When the dragon slayer was finished, he was fumbling for the jar of water on the night stand and used it to clean out his mouth. He then carefully laid back in the pillows, glaring at Tempest.

“This is your fault.”, he said.

“I thought you wouldn't wake up.”, Tempest said, staring anywhere but into the eyes of the knight.

“How couldn't I wake up when you were so close to me and touching me without my consent?”, the dragon slayer asked. “What were you thinking?”

“...I wanted to know how it feels like...”, Tempest said. “It looked so soft.”

“You could have at least asked first.”

“Would you have allowed it then?”

“No.” The dragon slayer crossed his arms in front of his chest, grumbling a bit, then unfolded them again as if the position had been uncomfortable. “Where's Gwyndolin?”, he asked.

“They asked me to watch over you while they rested.”, Tempest truthfully said.

“Great, so they left me alone with the idiot?”, the dragon slayer murmured.

“I have a name, you know.”, Tempest said.

“Don't care, idiot will suffice for now.” The dragon slayer had a sardonically grin on his face.

“Well then, dragon slayer.”, Tempest said, putting as much coldness in the last words as possible, and sat down on the chair, feeling the glare off the dragon slayer still on him. Well, that felt uncomfortable. It felt like Tempest should do or say anything, getting some small talk started, so that this awkward silence between them would cease.

“So, how was it feeling like having to guard the cathedral for around a hundred years with a cannibalistic brute?”, he asked in as much of a casual tone as possible.

Tempest started to suggest this question had been a mistake, when he didn't get an answer right away. He slowly turned his head to look at the dragon slayer and was greeted by a face which was hardly able to contain the fury of its owner.

“Leave.”, the dragon slayer said between clenched teeth. Tempest shot up, the chair falling down in the process. His gaze fell on the bucket.

“I, uh, I think I will clean this up.”, he said and quickly ran out of the room.

When Tempest returned to the room, the dragon slayer had laid back down in the pillows, but was still awake. Tempest placed the bucket next to the bed, raised the chair and tiptoed away, sitting down at one of the chairs at the table, at a reasonable distance of the knight.

“I think I told you to leave.”, the dragon slayer said coldly.

“Look, I am sorry.”, Tempest said. “I have said something wrong. But the dark sun wants me to watch over you, so I can't leave. I won't talk to you anymore, I promise.”

He heard a deep sigh coming from the dragon slayer. “We need to talk when I am supposed to help you out.”, he said. “Why do you think that what you have said was wrong?”

“Uh, because you clearly were upset about it?”

“You called him a brute.”

Who? Oh, he was talking about the executioner. Wait a moment... from every story he had heard, it always had been said that Ornstein, the dragon slayer and Smough, the executioner hated each other. Smough, because he had never been granted knighthood and Ornstein, because he despised the cannibalistic ways of the executioner.

“...Was that, like, a misconception?”, Tempest asked.

“Smough was so much more then what people depicted him as.”, the dragon slayer started. “He was kind, understanding, soft, cute and... the light of my life.” He clenched his fists. “And then you came along and killed him.”, he hissed. “And you failed to kill me. This is unforgivable.”

Tempest blinked once, then twice, then shot up. “Wait, WHAT?”, he shouted. “You and Smough were like, a COUPLE?” He could hardly believe his own ears. He would blame it on feeling hollowed out, but right now Tempest was in his human form and his ears were working amazingly well.

“Yes.”, the dragon slayer just answered. “So I guess now you'll know why I reacted this way. If I just would have been able to follow him...”

Tempest sat down again: “I am sorry, I had no idea...” The rest of the words was lost when he tried to make sense of all of this.

So, Ornstein, the dragon slayer, and Smough, the executioner, had loved each other. And he supposed they had been happy with each other, as happy as possible living in a dying city at last. And then Tempest had come along and killed one of them. By the lord, would that have happened to him, he would be pissed and devastated too. And nonetheless, the dark sun was expecting them to work with each other? Tempest put his head on the table and sighed. What had he gotten himself into? Should he try and apologize for this? What good would this do? As he was still pondering his option, the dark sun came back into the room.

“Oh, Ornstein, you are awake. How about some food?”, they asked. They noticed Tempest sitting at the table. “Are you two getting along?”, they asked.

Tempest was in the process to open his mouth but closed it again, unsure about what to say, when the dragon slayer spoke: “Don't worry, we will manage.” Tempest saw him smile at the Dark Sun, but it felt kinda pained. Tempest just raised his hand in a thumbs up gesture.

“Some food would be fine, but nothing to heavy.”, the dragon slayer said. Tempest almost offered his help at cooking the meal, but the Dark Sun vanished quickly, muttering “Let's see what I can do.”

Tempest sighed and strolled over to the bed, sitting down on the chair.

“I am sorry.”, he said. “But in my defense, I didn't knew you weren't dead. I thought after the executioner had crushed you, you would be gone for good.”

Tempest could feel the glare of the dragon slayer on him. “And it didn't occur to you to check if maybe the job needed to be finished? Aren't you an elite knight of Astora?” He gestured at Tempest's armour.

Tempest looked down at him, straightening the blue tabard. “Oh, this? It isn't my armour. I picked it up in the Dark Root Garden, it was laying around there on a corpse. I am from Astora, but I never have been a knight. I just couldn't resist putting this thing on, wearing that armour is pretty much every young Astoran's dream.”, he explained.

“Oh...”, the dragon slayer said. “I should have figured this out on my own. Still...”, the eyes of the dragon slayer pretty much pierced into Tempest. “I resent that you didn't check and left me to bleed out and to... survive...” The knight averted his gaze from Tempest and stared at the wall instead.

“I am sorry.”, Tempest said again, not knowing what else to say.

“Apologizing won't help.”, the dragon slayer murmured. “Just let me heal up, try to stay out of my sight and let us get this done as quickly as possible.”

Tempest considered their talk to be over and retreated to the table. A few minutes later the Dark Sun came with a bowl of steaming oatmeal and handed it to the dragon slayer. Tempest watched them sit down next to the dragon slayer and keeping him company while eating. Tempest in the meantime, wondered if he would be able to taste the oatmeal now that he had regained his human form for the moment? Since he had become undead, he didn't had experienced any hunger and when he tried to eat something, it tasted like nothing, but that had been in his hollowed out form. Usually, drinking estus was all he needed. It was also a thing he could taste, even though it pretty much tasted like something had put fire and ashes into a bottle. With nothing better to do, Tempest grabbed for the emerald flask at his belt and inspected the liquid inside. What really was it? It got filled up whenever he touched a bonfire, so was it like, liquid bonfire? His thoughts got interrupted when he heard the Dark Sun say:

“It is time to change your bandages, Ornstein.”

With the estus flask still in hand, Tempest rushed over to the bed. “Wait a moment.”, he said, excitedly waving around the bottle. “Why can't we use my estus? It heals any wound in seconds.” His excitement abated when he felt both the gaze of the dragon slayer and the dark sun on him.

“Idiot, that stuff doesn't work on us. It is an Undead thing.”, the lion knight said.

“Oh...”, Tempest said and then perked up again. “But, what about miracles? That is a god thing, right?”

“When my sister still would be here...”, the dark sun said. “I am not very skilled in them, my field has always been moonlight magic.”

“Crap..”, Tempest said and took a few steps away from the bed. “Sorry, I just wanted to help.”

“Well, I wanted to change Ornstein's bandages now, you can help by getting his hair out of the way.”, the dark sun said. Both Tempest and the dragon slayer froze.

“I... don't think that is a good idea...”, Tempest stammered.

“Yeah...”, the dragon slayer added. “I don't want him to touch me. It makes me uncomfortable.”

“Oh, I should have figured, I am sorry for being so tactless, Ornstein.”, the dark sun said. “But like, feel free to stay here, maybe you learn a thing or two about bandaging wounds. Are you fine with this Ornstein?”

“Ugh, alright.”, the dragon slayer said and Tempest went around to stay at the foot of the bed, inspecting the work of the dark sun.

They started with the bandage around the dragon slayer's head and as soon as it was off, Tempest had to gasp at how bad this wound looked, terribly swollen and bruised along a laceration which had been stitched. It was no wonder the dragon slayer was feeling sick with that, his brain probably had gotten a good shaking. Tempest once more wondered how in the world he had manage to survive this blow? Tempest never had been able to survive a blow with the hammer when he already had been hurt. He watched the dark sun carefully cleaning the wound, making the dragon slayer wince, it surely must had hurt, before applying a fresh bandage. The next thing that happened, was the dragon slayer undressing himself and as soon as Tempest realized that, he turned red under his helmet, averting his gaze, asking himself why he did that, why he felt like that and forced himself to look back.

A slight disappointment and a bit of guilt washed over Tempest when he saw the chest of the dragon slayer wrapped in thick bandages. Both legs too, Tempest remembered that they had been a main focus for him, first because the dragon slayer was twice his size and second to rob him of his mobility. The dark sun was changing the bandages on the legs first, but Tempest was more distracted by the countless scars on the dragon slayer's body, a lot of them clearly burns, a particular large one seemed to adorn the left side of his body, probably even going down the back, but he couldn't see it from his position.

“Don't stare at me like that.”, the dragon slayer hissed, face slightly flushed, and Tempest muttered a quick apology, focusing on the work of the dark sun. Most of the cuts on the legs were already healing good, but one or two were also stitched and it explained why the dragon slayer had stand on so shaky legs when he had first encountered him in the hallway in front of the tomb.

Now that both legs had wrapped into fresh bandages, the dark sun started to unwrap the one on his chest. Tempest did hold in a breath when he saw the large wound, the one he had inflicted, the one that had made the dragon slayer collapse, but exhaled sharply when he saw the big bare chest which was originally covered by the bandages. It was built so well, probably a result from endless battle, but for some reason, it also gave some soft vibes. An urge to touch it washed through Tempest and he quickly had to avert his gaze, after how badly the dragon slayer had reacted to getting touched at his hair, Tempest didn't want to know his reaction when he would touch his bare chest. Especially when the latter wasn't asleep.

Tempest face flushed and he felt a certain hotness rise in his head. Oh no, did he found the dragon slayer to be hot? A guy who could crush him easily with his size and in fact did crush him several times in a fight to the death? Tempest could barely believe this and just muttered “I have to get out of here.”, before rushing out of the room, the hotness in his head feeling like it would spill out any moment. Outside of the tomb he removed his helmet, put his hand against his nose and saw the blood dripping on his gauntlet.

“Oh great.”, Tempest said, leaning against the wall, fumbling for his Estus to take care of his nosebleed. “He doesn't even like you, you fool, and you already are attracted to him...” Next chapter: https://mrslittletall.tumblr.com/post/183652108349/title-a-storm-is-coming-chapter-5-fandom-dark

#dark souls #fanfiction #dragon slayer ornstein #chosen undead #chosen undead oc #dark sun gwyndolin #orndead kinda #littlewritesstuff

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outoftheforestshow · 6 years

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Letter From Birmingham Jail A U G U S T 1 9 6 3 by Martin Luther King, Jr

From the Birmingham jail, where he was imprisoned as a participant in nonviolent demonstrations against segregation, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote in longhand the letter which follows. It was his response to a public statement of concern and caution issued by eight white religious leaders of the South. Dr. King, who was born in 1929, did his undergraduate work at Morehouse College; attended the integrated Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, one of six black pupils among a hundred students, and the president of his class; and won a fellowship to Boston University for his Ph.D. WHILE confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms. I think I should give the reason for my being in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the argument of "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every Southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliate organizations all across the South, one being the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Whenever necessary and possible, we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago our local affiliate here in Birmingham invited us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promises. So I am here, along with several members of my staff, because we were invited here. I am here because I have basic organizational ties here. Beyond this, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth-century prophets left their little villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their hometowns; and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Greco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid. Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider. You deplore the demonstrations that are presently taking place in Birmingham. But I am sorry that your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being. I am sure that each of you would want to go beyond the superficial social analyst who looks merely at effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. I would not hesitate to say that it is unfortunate that so-called demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham at this time, but I would say in more emphatic terms that it is even more unfortunate that the white power structure of this city left the Negro community with no other alternative. IN ANY nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive, negotiation, self-purification, and direct action. We have gone through all of these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying of the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of this country. Its unjust treatment of Negroes in the courts is a notorious reality. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in this nation. These are the hard, brutal, and unbelievable facts. On the basis of them, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the political leaders consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation. Then came the opportunity last September to talk with some of the leaders of the economic community. In these negotiating sessions certain promises were made by the merchants, such as the promise to remove the humiliating racial signs from the stores. On the basis of these promises, Reverend Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to call a moratorium on any type of demonstration. As the weeks and months unfolded, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. The signs remained. As in so many experiences of the past, we were confronted with blasted hopes, and the dark shadow of a deep disappointment settled upon us. So we had no alternative except that of preparing for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and national community. We were not unmindful of the difficulties involved. So we decided to go through a process of self-purification. We Letter From Birmingham Jail 2 started having workshops on nonviolence and repeatedly asked ourselves the questions, "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" and "Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?" We decided to set our direct-action program around the Easter season, realizing that, with exception of Christmas, this was the largest shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic withdrawal program would be the by-product of direct action, we felt that this was the best time to bring pressure on the merchants for the needed changes. Then it occurred to us that the March election was ahead, and so we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that Mr. Conner was in the runoff, we decided again to postpone action so that the demonstration could not be used to cloud the issues. At this time we agreed to begin our nonviolent witness the day after the runoff. This reveals that we did not move irresponsibly into direct action. We, too, wanted to see Mr. Conner defeated, so we went through postponement after postponement to aid in this community need. After this we felt that direct action could be delayed no longer. You may well ask, "Why direct action, why sit-ins, marches, and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. I just referred to the creation of tension as a part of the work of the nonviolent resister. This may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. So, the purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. We therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in the tragic attempt to live in monologue rather than dialogue. One of the basic points in your statement is that our acts are untimely. Some have asked, "Why didn't you give the new administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this inquiry is that the new administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one before it acts. We will be sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Mr. Boutwell will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is much more articulate and gentle than Mr. Conner, they are both segregationists, dedicated to the task of maintaining the status quo. The hope I see in Mr. Boutwell is that he will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from the devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct-action movement that was "well timed" according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "wait." It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This "wait" has almost always meant "never." It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied." We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say "wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger" and your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodyness" -- then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Letter From Birmingham Jail 3 YOU express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask, "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "An unjust law is no law at all." Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. To use the words of Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher, segregation substitutes an "I - it" relationship for the "I - thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. So segregation is not only politically, economically, and sociologically unsound, but it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Isn't segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, an expression of his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? So I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court because it is morally right, and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances because they are morally wrong. Let us turn to a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself. This is difference made legal. On the other hand, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow, and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. Let me give another explanation. An unjust law is a code inflicted upon a minority which that minority had no part in enacting or creating because it did not have the unhampered right to vote. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up the segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout the state of Alabama all types of conniving methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties without a single Negro registered to vote, despite the fact that the Negroes constitute a majority of the population. Can any law set up in such a state be considered democratically structured? These are just a few examples of unjust and just laws. There are some instances when a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I was arrested Friday on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong with an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade, but when the ordinance is used to preserve segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and peaceful protest, then it becomes unjust. Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. But I am sure that if I had lived in Germany during that time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal. If I lived in a Communist country today where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate disobeying these anti-religious laws. I MUST make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. In your statement you asserted that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But can this assertion be logically made? Isn't this like condemning the robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical delvings precipitated the misguided popular mind to make him drink the hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because His unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to His will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see, as federal courts have consistently affirmed, that it is immoral to urge an individual to withdraw his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest precipitates violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. Letter From Birmingham Jail 4 I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth of time. I received a letter this morning from a white brother in Texas which said, "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but is it possible that you are in too great of a religious hurry? It has taken Christianity almost 2000 years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time. It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. YOU spoke of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I started thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency made up of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, have been so completely drained of self-respect and a sense of "somebodyness" that they have adjusted to segregation, and, on the other hand, of a few Negroes in the middle class who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because at points they profit by segregation, have unconsciously become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred and comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up over the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. This movement is nourished by the contemporary frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination. It is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incurable devil. I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need not follow the do-nothingism of the complacent or the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. There is a more excellent way, of love and nonviolent protest. I'm grateful to God that, through the Negro church, the dimension of nonviolence entered our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, I am convinced that by now many streets of the South would be flowing with floods of blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who are working through the channels of nonviolent direct action and refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes, out of frustration and despair, will seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies, a development that will lead inevitably to a frightening racial nightmare. Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for freedom will eventually come. This is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom; something without has reminded him that he can gain it. Consciously and unconsciously, he has been swept in by what the Germans call the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America, and the Caribbean, he is moving with a sense of cosmic urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. Recognizing this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand public demonstrations. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations. He has to get them out. So let him march sometime; let him have his prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; understand why he must have sitins and freedom rides. If his repressed emotions do not come out in these nonviolent ways, they will come out in ominous expressions of violence. This is not a threat; it is a fact of history. So I have not said to my people, "Get rid of your discontent." But I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled through the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. Now this approach is being dismissed as extremist. I must admit that I was initially disappointed in being so categorized. But as I continued to think about the matter, I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist. Was not Jesus an extremist in love? -- "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice? -- "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ? -- "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist? -- "Here I stand; I can do no other so help me God." Was not John Bunyan an extremist? -- "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a mockery of my conscience." Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist? -- "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist? -- "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice? I had hoped that the white moderate would see this. Maybe I was too optimistic. Maybe I expected too much. I guess I should have realized that few members of a race that has oppressed another race can understand or appreciate the deep groans and passionate yearnings of those that have been oppressed, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent, and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too small in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some, like Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, and James Dabbs, have written about our struggle in eloquent, prophetic, and understanding terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They sat in with us at lunch counters and rode in with us on the freedom rides. They have languished in filthy roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of angry policemen who see them as "dirty nigger lovers." They, unlike many of their moderate brothers, have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful "action" antidotes to combat the disease of segregation. Letter From Birmingham Jail 5 LET me rush on to mention my other disappointment. I have been disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand this past Sunday in welcoming Negroes to your Baptist Church worship service on a nonsegregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Springhill College several years ago. But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say that as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say it as a minister of the gospel who loves the church, who was nurtured in its bosom, who has been sustained by its Spiritual blessings, and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen. I had the strange feeling when I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery several years ago that we would have the support of the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests, and rabbis of the South would be some of our strongest allies. Instead, some few have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows. In spite of my shattered dreams of the past, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and with deep moral concern serve as the channel through which our just grievances could get to the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed. I have heard numerous religious leaders of the South call upon their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers say, follow this decree because integration is morally right and the Negro is your brother. In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sidelines and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, "Those are social issues which the gospel has nothing to do with," and I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely otherworldly religion which made a strange distinction between bodies and souls, the sacred and the secular. There was a time when the church was very powerful. It was during that period that the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was the thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators." But they went on with the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven" and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest. Things are different now. The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's often vocal sanction of things as they are. But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. I meet young people every day whose disappointment with the church has risen to outright disgust. I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are presently misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America. Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson scratched across the pages of history the majestic word of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. For more than two centuries our foreparents labored here without wages; they made cotton king; and they built the homes of their masters in the midst of brutal injustice and shameful humiliation -- and yet out of a bottomless vitality our people continue to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands. I must close now. But before closing I am impelled to mention one other point in your statement that troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I don't believe you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its angry violent dogs literally biting six unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I don't believe you would so quickly commend the policemen if you would observe their ugly and inhuman treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you would watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you would see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys, if you would observe them, as they did on two occasions, refusing to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I'm sorry that I can't join you in your praise for the police department. Letter From Birmingham Jail 6 It is true that they have been rather disciplined in their public handling of the demonstrators. In this sense they have been publicly "nonviolent." But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the last few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. So I have tried to make it clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or even more, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. I wish you had commended the Negro demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer, and their amazing discipline in the midst of the most inhuman provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, courageously and with a majestic sense of purpose facing jeering and hostile mobs and the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman of Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride the segregated buses, and responded to one who inquired about her tiredness with ungrammatical profundity, "My feets is tired, but my soul is rested." They will be young high school and college students, young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience's sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage. Never before have I written a letter this long -- or should I say a book? I'm afraid that it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else is there to do when you are alone for days in the dull monotony of a narrow jail cell other than write long letters, think strange thoughts, and pray long prayers? If I have said anything in this letter that is an understatement of the truth and is indicative of an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything in this letter that is an overstatement of the truth and is indicative of my having a patience that makes me patient with anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me. Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood, MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright © 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. All rights reserved. The Atlantic Monthly; August 1963; The Negro Is Your Brother; Volume 212, No. 2; pages 78 - 88.

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Lost in Time Ch. 5: Memories - An Elder Scrolls Fanfic

Chapter Summary: Ma’zurah and Fayrl have a much needed conversation that cements their alliance, and Fayrl learns more than he ever expected to know about Ma’zurah.

Cross posted from Ao3. Chapter Rating: M for language, non-explicit sexual situations, and brief accounts of attempted assault and sexual harassment.

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Lost in Time Chapter 5: Memories

Ma'zurah held open the door to the inn and she and Fayrl walked inside to the sound of a lute and a cheerful greeting from the bar. Ma'zurah made her way toward the bar to inquire after a room.

Fayrl trailed very leisurely behind her, taking in all of the patrons around. There was already a bard here; that wouldn't do. He needed to find a way to earn more coin. He made a note to speak with the fellow when he took a break from his next set.

He could see there seemed to be mercenaries here too. Useful to note as well.

As Ma'zurah busied herself with the innkeeper, the bard took a bow to scattered applause and made his way to a table for a break. Fayrl smiled. How fortuitous, he thought as he slipped past the other patrons around the fire and slid in front of the man, seating himself on the table in front of the bard.

"You play beautifully," Fayrl said with a smile like a cat waiting for a fish.

Ma'zurah discovered that although her Khajiit-ness was suspect, her coin was acceptable, and she paid for a room, then turned to find Fayrl. She discovered him near the bard with a predatory look in his face. What was he up to now? She swiftly walked toward him and took his elbow. "Oh husband dear, they have a room for us. Pester the bard some other time." She gave him a tight smile and started trying to drag him by the arm toward the stairs.

The bard seemed to be intrigued by the interest, but not particularly sorry to see Fayrl dragged away. "I'll find you later, my muse!" Fayrl called to him.

Once they were out of sight, Fayrl dropped the act and followed without any problem. "Sorry, I am just so desperate to have a lute back in my hands."

Ma'zurah closed the door to their room firmly behind them. "Ma'zurah is sure that Fayrl can find a lute without doing whatever it is he was planning on doing to that poor bard. Now. Fayrl and Ma'zurah need to have a little chat." Ma'zurah crossed her arms.

Fayrl sighed. He did like the look of the lute, but the sound could have been richer. He would have to find a lute maker instead. "Of course, what should we discuss?"

"First off, what the fuck is this?" Ma'zurah gestured between herself and Fayrl. "Ma'zurah does not appreciate such blatant falsehoods without her consent."

Fayrl raised an eyebrow. "There's no need for harsh language. I am simply lubricating the social interactions. If we appear have a romantic connection, then there are many questions which no one will ask. It is simply a matter of easing our passing through." Fayrl spoke as if this was the most obvious and natural fact in the world.

Ma'zurah narrowed her eyes at him. "The best lies are ninety percent truth. Ma'zurah wonders if Fayrl wishes to be caught. Ma'zurah cannot keep track of every single story Fayrl tells! And she questions the need for lies here in the first place! We are in a new place with no idea what is going on! Better to stick to the truth whenever possible so we do not accidentally cross one another. Does Fayrl wish to be allies or no?"

Fayrl reached behind his head and began to remove the many pins and clips holding his hair in place, letting it down before he spoke. He placed the many items on the table in near Ma'zurah.

"Where I come from there is nothing safe,” he explained. “There is always someone trying to drop something in your drink, a blade they wish to stick in you, a spell they wish you to succumb to. I do not tell lies which matter to the people I am telling them to. I have stuck to the same story for those we will see again while we are here, but knowing these people and the lives they lead, they won't recall one way or the other after they've had their next round of mead."

He picked up one of the hairpins, spinning it between his fingers. "I will not lie to you about anything to do with our survival or finding a way out of this time. My success depends on yours. Allying myself to you is my only hope of escape."

He slid the end off the pin to reveal a sharpened tip that looked coated in something. "If anyone grows suspicious, I have ways to keep them from turning on us."

Ma'zurah took Fayrl's wrist and took the pin out of his hand carefully, putting it back on the table. "Ma'zurah has seen enough death. Ma'zurah would rather not see more. Especially before we know what our situation truly is.”

Fayrl made no move to stop her as she took the pin from him. "It is a sleeping draught. I never said anything about murder. I have dream elixirs and truth serums. All manner of little potions to convince naughty Nords to do as we need."

Ma’zurah pressed her lips together. “You know, Fayrl does make a good point. His survival does depend on Ma'zurah. But so far, he has not done much to make Ma'zurah trust him. This place is not the place Fayrl came from. Nobody knows us here." Ma'zurah sat on the bed and patted the spot next to her. "So come. Tell Ma'zurah who Fayrl is without the web of intrigue he had surrounded himself with. Without the friends or enemies or resources."

Fayrl thought about trust. It was a funny thing indeed. It was needed to survive, yet giving it to the wrong person for even a moment could be disastrous.

He laughed suddenly. "You are right not to trust me. I am a shifty fellow. I make my living by spinning lies and soothing secrets out of others. I rarely do anything worth placing trust in." He sighed at the thought. "Though I suppose that is little comfort for you right now." He sat down beside her on the bed. "Would you even be able to believe me if I told you the truth? I think the lies are easier to swallow. More believable too."

Ma’zurah tapped her nose in thought. "Ma'zurah asked Fayrl why she should trust him, and he replied that he must be allies with her in order to survive, and Ma'zurah believes this. Ma'zurah also believes she does not need Fayrl in order to survive. It is therefore in Fayrl's best interest to be as honest as possible with Ma'zurah. However, if Fayrl is hesitant to do so, Ma'zurah will tell him something about herself that may make it easier for him to trust Ma’zurah."

Ma'zurah took off her necklace and unclasped it, withdrawing two rings and slipping them onto her fingers before placing the necklace back around her neck. She held out her hand to Fayrl. "What does Fayrl see?"

The first of the rings looked familiar to Fayrl. A stylized silver oval with a midnight blue stone at the center, flecked with spots of white like stars. He had seen it in a history book somewhere perhaps? The ring felt like something important that he just could not quite recall.

But the other--he almost recoiled from the sight of it. There was no way it could be before him. His mother had spoken of the ring when she taught him as a boy from the stories the Ashlanders had told to her. He had seen pictures of it: a crescent moon with a five pointed star superimposed over the widest part. He’d heard its tales.

Suddenly everything came together, like a fog lifting. He inhaled sharply. "Who are you?"

"How familiar is Fayrl with the prophecies of the Velothi people?"

"I have certainly spoken with Velothi before and heard tales here or there."

Ma'zurah paused and sighed. "Ma'zurah's full name is Indoril Hlaalu Ma'zurah Nerevar Mora, depending on who you ask, and if you want to be technical."

Fayrl stared at her. "I don't understand." He tried to figure out how all of those elements might somehow come together. No matter how he tried, he couldn't. His mind rejected the conclusion it kept drawing.

Ma'zurah sighed in frustration. "Ma'zurah hoped Fayrl would understand better, especially since he is a follower of the True Tribunal. But Ma'zurah can be more explicit. Ma'zurah is the child of Azurah. The Incarnate. Indoril Nerevar reborn." She watched Fayrl’s reaction carefully.

Fayrl put his hands up to his face and rubbed his temples. "Are there any other connections to deities I should be aware of before we continue?"

If she was telling him the truth, which, by the Three, it was a big pill to swallow, then all his actions... Oh, he didn't even want to think of how rude he had been. Claiming to be husband to the child of his god, the ancestor of his own ancestors. Wait, that would make them related to some degree, wouldn't it?

Suddenly his own complicated background seemed less so.

Ma'zurah coughed. "Ai, well… That depends on what Fayrl means by connections. And deities. This one defeated the Sharmat. This one was also forced to kill Almalexia when she went insane and murdered Sotha Sil. And this one considers Vivec to be a great companion, albeit an untrustworthy one." Ma'zurah looked uncomfortable. "And this one honors all of the True Tribunal, not just Azurah. But Ma'zurah was also raised to honor the ways of the Khajiiti Clan Mothers, and shows reverence to all gods as is appropriate. This one has spoken to many gods."

Fayrl couldn't understand. "Almalexia is dead?!" He could feel his heart racing. She was the one who had sent him on his last mission to kill the traitors in exchange for his life. He has spoken to her not so very long ago. Though now centuries had passed. The great "Mother Morrowind", now no more.

He tried to let that sink in, but there was so much. "She killed Sotha Sil? Is… is Almsivi no more?"

He had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, he did not believe they deserved the power they had stolen. But they were still gods. Almalexia had kept his city safe. His father reported directly to her. He had spent a great deal of time in her presence; fought in her army under her command.

He may not have followed her spiritually, but for the good of his home and his people he did follow her. He was torn about this news. Far more than he would ever have suspected himself to possibly be.

"If not Almsivi, then who are our people following? Vivec alone?" He could not even listen to this, it was too much.

Worse, there was a very real possibility he was stranded here. Left in the future for good. What had become of his family? His son? Oh, by the Three, what would happen to Sildras if he could not return? If the Tribunal Temple collapsed, surely his House would fall apart. It was remotely possible that in Ma'zurah's time his son could still be alive, though quite aged. But... was he? He could not speak further. He could not ask that question, though she might not know his son regardless of his fate.

"Ma'zurah was in the process of assisting Vivec in returning the people's faith to the True Tribunal," Ma’zurah answered gently. Seeing Fayrl's distress she scooted closer to him and put one arm around him and took his hand.

Fayrl tried to understand what she was telling him. Then he felt Ma’zurah’s touch, and a series of images began to flash before his eyes. His body froze stiff, as Ma’zurah’s memories began to take over his consciousness.

He was being cast out. Exiled for something he couldn’t help. He looked over his shoulder at the small jungle village along the waterway. He was overtaken with a crippling sense of loneliness. An elderly Khajiit woman led him away as he cried silent tears of grief.

The elderly Khajiit woman lay dead in her bed. He sobbed over her body, feeling grief stricken and utterly alone in the world.

He was kissing an Imperial boy. The boy began groping his breasts and taking his clothes off. He eagerly assisted, and began taking off his trousers, exposing white furred thighs and a stiff, pink-skinned erection. The boy became angry. He didn’t understand. The boy tried to hit him. He cast an invisibility spell and fled, angry, lonely, and afraid.

He awoke on a boat, scared. He did not know where the boat was taking him. He did not know why he was there. A Dunmer with a scarred face and a missing eye tried to soothe him. They had just arrived in Morrowind, the Dunmer said; he was sure they would let them go. It was not comforting.

A figure with three eyes in a golden mask shaped like a sunburst taunted him and tortured him in his dreams. Deep bells tolled. He awoke naked, sweating, with damp fur, only to be attacked by a creature that used to be a mer, now with only a grotesque hollow where its eyes and nose should be.

A handsome Dunmer was yelling at him, calling him n’wah, accusing him of being a traitor, a spy for his enemies. “You betrayed me, and I will never forgive you!” the mer screamed. He felt heartbroken and angry at the same time.

He was angry. So incredibly angry. The handsome Dunmer had been taunting him! He decided to taunt the Dunmer right back. He took off his clothes and masturbated in the mer’s face. The mer hid in his bedroll. He went to his own bedroll and lay there for a while with an uncomfortable erection before sighing and finished himself off. He sobbed for half the night, feeling heartsick and utterly lonely.

He had a horrible illness. He was going to die. No one ever survived. His fur was falling out in chunks, and his skin was covered in boils. He couldn’t even think. The handsome Dunmer looked at him in horror and poorly disguised disgust, and he felt like he was becoming a monster. He did not want to die alone.

He was at a party, but the guests were all dead. Another dream. Another attack. Another horrible creature. And bells. Always bells!

He was in a cave. A horrifying enemy with tentacles instead of a face fought him. He was hurt badly. The handsome Dunmer dragged him to safety and ran back in to defeat the creature.

He was running frantically through a foyada in an ash storm. His fur was caked with ash. His clothes were covered in ash. He was crying and his tears were filled with ash. He was sick with worry. He swiped the tears from his face frantically, trying to continue searching the walls of the foyada through ash reddened eyes.

He was in a cave. A swarm of ghosts were attacking the handsome Dunmer. He screamed at them to stop, terrified for the mer. The ghosts demanded blood.

Bells haunted his dreams over and over, always heralding the arrival of another attacker in the waking world. He forced himself to wake up and fight.

He awoke suddenly, with a creeping sense of dread and the certain knowledge that he and his lovers were not the only ones in the room. He glanced at the handsome Dunmer and the beautiful Dunmer girl with long red hair who lay naked beside him. They were exactly where they were supposed to be, sleeping peacefully, but an assassin in the dark still stalked him. He cast a shield just in time to block the first blow.

He was in the crater of a volcano. Red Mountain. There was magma far below him, and a huge animunculi rising from the center of the crater. Four other people accompanied him, including the handsome Dunmer and the beautiful Dunmer girl, all with and grim expressions. The figure in the golden mask attacked them. “What a fool you are!” the figure mocked in a voice that reverberated in his skull and rattled his teeth. “I am a god! How can you kill a god? What a grand and intoxicating innocence. How could you be so naive? There is no escape.” He was terrified.

Sotha Sil, dead. Strung up by long wires in his own Clockwork City. Horror gripped him. There was a voice behind him--Almalexia in her war mask. “Here it ends. This Clockwork City was to be your death. You were to be my greatest martyr!”

Almalexia, dead on the ground. He reached out one white furred hand and removed her war mask. Her face was so vulnerable underneath. So mortal. The handsome Dunmer skittishly stalked Almalexia’s body as though he thought she might come to life again. Beside him the beautiful Dunmer girl with long red hair wept on her knees. He wept as well.

He awoke slowly, filled with a prickling horror. He wasn’t where he had gone to sleep. He opened his eyes to see a figure twirling a spear. The figure had a head like the skull of a deer. He listened to the figure with horror. He was still in his sleeping clothes. He had no weapon except his magicka. He had been kidnapped. He was trapped. He was prey. He was going to be hunted.

He was in a huge ice cave. He fought an ice giant by himself. His sleeping clothes were torn and dirty. He still had no weapon except his magicka. The ice giant fell. The figure with the head like the skull of a deer appeared again. Now he had to fight the figure too. That was even more terrifying than the ice giant. He was exhausted. He was not sure he could survive any longer.

Fayrl did not speak. His body shook slightly in Ma’zurah’s arms. Tears welled in his eyes and his face contorted in anguish. He gave a soft hiccuping sob. Ma'zurah drew back and looked at him. "Fayrl? Are you alright?"

Fayrl only stared ahead at nothing, trembling imperceptibly. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

Ma'zurah peered into Fayrl's eyes worriedly. "Was it something Ma'zurah said?"

Fayrl gasped suddenly, as though he had just surfaced from a long underwater dive. His chest heaved and he drew in ragged breaths. He shook his head, unable to speak as he caught his breath again.

He opened his mouth, but a sob came out instead of words. He reached into his satchel and pulled out a small flask, downing the contents. It seemed to get him under control.

"I am very sorry. I have not had such an intense reaction in a very long time, and I was not prepared. You must forgive me. I did not mean to worry you."

Ma'zurah blinked at him, confused and concerned. "Alright..."

"I am afraid that you have unwittingly shared far more with me than you may have meant to."

He looked away from her. The sight of her face pulled at the memories that were still dissipating from his mind. He could still feel her anguish.

"I have been granted a gift, though it is not an easy one to bear. And from it I see the secrets, the hurts, and the sins, of other people through their own memories when I touch their skin."

Comprehension dawned on her face and she leaned back, wrapping her arms around herself, and looking away, embarrassed. "Ai... Ma’zurah is sorry... she would not wish her worst experiences on anyone else. She meant to comfort, not hurt."

Fayrl wiped the tears from his cheeks, a smile already twitching at his lips. He set a hand upon her shoulder.

"I am sorry for the pain you have suffered in your life. I can see why you feel the need to have me prove my trustworthiness. And as much as I can trust a person who I have only known a few hours and have traveled to the wrong century with, I do trust you, Ma'zurah."

He pulled from under his tunic the pendant of Azura which his mother had given him to protect him. It had protected her, and she had given it to him when he had completed his apprenticeship and officially become an adult.

"I have little with which to show my trust, save this. It was mother's." He placed it around her neck. So long as you have this, I will do as you ask. It is the most precious thing I have besides my life. I promise I will answer any of your questions honestly."

Ma'zurah blinked in surprise. "Thank you..." She touched the pendant and examined it, then glanced back up at him. She couldn't be angry at him for lying anymore. She smiled hesitantly, and reached out to him, but paused. "It doesn't happen everytime you touch someone, does it?"

Fayrl's smile widened. "After the initial time it does not affect me unless I permit it to. It is the strongest the first time."

"Okay!" She hugged him.

Fayrl was surprised by the action, but the feeling of her warm arms around him was nice; comfortable.

Ma'zurah drew back, smiling. "Alright. So. What should Ma'zurah know about Fayrl?"

Fayrl look a breath. "Where should I even begin? My full name is Indoril Fayrl Indoril, son of Indoril Mehra Indoril. My wife Urtisa, may the Three have no mercy upon her devious soul, plotted against me and my House. She was of House Hlaalu. She tried to control me, and when I would not cooperate, she attempted to have me assassinated. I escaped to Skyrim, where I spent six years before encountering my brother by chance and learning I had a son by her who she was submitting to the same controlling fate. I returned and denounced her, and reclaimed custody of my son, Sildras. My wife is now sentenced into the service to Almalexia until she dies, and I have been continuing to work for the Temple ever since."

Ma'zurah nodded. "As a spy and assassin?" She glanced at the hair ornaments on the table. It seemed like the only reasonable conclusion she could draw based on what he had told her thus far.

He nodded. "Indeed. A position I had held within the House for many decades before that."

"Ma'zurah understands. She was an Imperial Blade for a while, even if she was not the greatest at keeping it secret. What else?"

Fayrl was surprised by how quickly Ma'zurah seemed to accept all of this. "I don’t know, what else there is? I follow the True Tribunal, but my personal affiliation is to Mephala. It is she who granted me the gift which you saw earlier. And, if all goes well, my loyalty to her will give us a shot at returning home. The boy in the keep--he has some connection to Mephala, I felt the strong pull of her touch upon him."

Ma'zurah grinned. "Excellent. Ma'zurah would like to come when Fayrl goes to see him. Does Fayrl have any questions for Ma'zurah?"

Fayrl immediately thought of one question, though he worried it might be insensitive, so he decided to talk around it.

"Is there anyone you left back in your time? Anyone you wish were here with you now?"

Ma'zurah immediately sobered. "Ma'zurah has a girlfriend and a fiance, and she has friends she wishes she could see."

"Then I am sorry you do not have their company now." That answered the question of who it was he had seen in the memories.

He did have one other very sobering question. "Ma'zurah, do you think there is any chance we may actually be able to get back to our own times?"

"Of course! Ma'zurah will break down the doors to all the Daedric realms if she has to. She has killed two gods and defeated a third, she does not fear Daedra."

Fayrl was a bit unsettled by her confidence. She seemed to truly believe that she could do it. And if she had killed two gods and defeated a third... he needed to follow her instructions. He had seen what Almalexia could do to a mortal body. He had watched a mer ripped apart by her divine light from the inside out once. If Ma'zurah could take her on and win, he stood no chance against her.

Ma'zurah glanced around the room. "We still have to figure out when we are, and honestly, Ma'zurah is not even sure what the hour is right now. We could ask around for a calendar or an almanac or something, or go to that Companion place, or meet this boy you mentioned. Ma'zurah thinks we should stay together though. If one of us finds a way back, the other one does not need to become stranded."

Fayrl nodded. "The Companions invited us for dinner. I say we see what we can learn while being given a full belly of food. If they are anything like they were in my time, a good song of their glories in battle and they will be like dogs on a lead."

Ma'zurah raised her eyebrows. "Maybe do not say that to their face.”

"Obviously I would never say such things to their face. You are a friend, so I am merely sharing some information."

Ma'zurah nodded. “So you are a bard? Ma'zurah was in training to become a Wise Woman with the Ahemmusa, but she is not sure how useful that will be in Skyrim."

Fayrl reached into his bag again and pulled out a comb and began to run it through his hair. "I have been a bard, almost as long as I have been a spy. It is one of the ways I make money. If I had a lute, I would play a song for you. Alas, my beautiful lute is back in my time."

He stopped combing to throw himself dramatically back upon the mattress. "I am sure that it will have been stolen by now, along with Tel, my guar, and all of the rest of my belongings. Maaah, I am so naked without it!"

Ma'zurah snorted. "Your guar is named Tel? Is he very tall?" She eyed the comb jealously.

Fayrl laughed, sitting up and holding the comb lightly in his hand. "Truth be told, I was given him with the name already. He is not so much taller than other guar, but I can attest to his standing out amongst guar. He has good stamina and speed, as well as power. And a good temperament to boot."

Noticing Ma'zurah's gaze, he offered the comb to her. "Did you need a comb?"

Ma'zurah swiped the comb and ran it through her hair and fur. "Many thanks. Ma'zurah does not have any of her grooming brushes with her. She did not expect to be in Oblivion long enough!" She carefully sleeked down the fur of her face, and her tribal scars, a line of dots under her eyes, became more apparent once her fur was more in order.

Fayrl smiled and pulled out a soft bristled brush as well. "If there is anything else you need, I have oils and conditioners as well as perfumes."

He took out the small kit of vials and slid one side of it off, putting the other one back in. There was a variety of small containers and vials. "This is all of my oils and makeup, if you should have need for it. But I would advise staying away from the other side. The poisons and potions are labeled so as to mislead."

"The thing Ma'zurah needs the most is probably a curry comb. But smaller than the kind they use for horses. It is the most useful tool for keeping Khajiit clean when water is not available..." She brightened. "Oh! Ma'zurah saw a Khajiit caravan camped outside! They may have one. Ma'zurah wishes she could go check, but she doubts the guard would let her back in... and... now that she thinks about it, it is probably dangerous here for Ma'zurah on her own. Gods... Why Skyrim, Azurah?"

Fayrl recognized Ma’zurah’s look. It reminded him of his husband, Qau-dar, not long after they had first met. He remembered the kit of combs and brushes he kept for his fur, and how fastidious he was about keeping it clean. "I don't have anything like that on me, but I am sure we could search the markets to find something." Fayrl did not know what else to say to help ease her distress, so he tried a joke. "Could be worse, we could be on the Emerald Isles."

"The where now? Is that in Summerset?" Ma'zurah took a soft bristled brush and began smoothing down the fur of her tail.

It was a poor joke, he had known that. But it went over even worse than he had thought. Fayrl thought he should offer some comfort; it hadn't been as though she had meant to send them here. How they even ended up in the same time and place in Oblivion was its own mystery.

He reached out and hesitated. "If it is alright, I could massage your shoulders. It’s one of my hard earned talents that hardly sees any use to those who deserve them."

Ma'zurah smiled and looked down. "That sounds lovely." She turned around with her back toward him and removed her tightly woven scarf from around her neck.

"If Fayrl doesn't mind her asking, may Ma'zurah inquire what Fayrl was doing before he got trapped in Oblivion?"

Fayrl got on his knees behind her, using his thumb to work the base of her neck, the rest of his fingers wrapped over her shoulders and working with slightly less pressure there.

Fayrl paused when he heard the question, then continued. "I hope you will not think poorly of me, but I was disposing of the evidence of a crime I had committed."

Ma'zurah laughed. "That depends on the crime and why. What did Fayrl do? Steal an Elder Scroll? Free slaves? Infiltrate a Telvanni Master's tower?"

Fayrl took a deep breath, moving his hands across her shoulders. "I killed a man."

"Ma'zurah has done that too. Though they were usually smugglers. Or slavers. What did that one do?" Ma'zurah leaned into Fayrl's hands.

"He was selling information to our enemies in exchange for slaves which he would sell to the same people he was extracting secrets from. He also sold young, naive Pact citizens to brothels in the Convenient." Fayrl switched from using his thumbs against the knots in her shoulder to the base of his palm, working deeper into the muscles.

He moved back towards the spine and walked his palms down to the small of her back, glided them up to her shoulders before repeating again. "He was convinced I was a potential target he could bring out to a secluded area, drug, and then sell."

Fayrl could still remember the joy the man had every time he tricked some poor young mer or Argonian or Nord into coming with him under promises of a job or cheap opportunities to travel, or any number of similar excuses. He could feel the fear that each of those slaves had once that bastard had them shackled and began to evaluate them for market, taking his chance to test their various abilities if he so chose. He could feel those greasy hands on his body.

"I switched our glasses and pretended to succumb to his paralysis potion. And then when it took effect on him instead, I got up and I slit his throat. I had touched him, and I saw enough that I may have been rather angry with him. There was little left to recognize when I dumped his body in the ruins for the cultists to use as they like." A shiver ran through him.

"He sounds disgusting. Ma'zurah hardly thinks that was a crime."

"He was worth less than the air he breathed or the ground upon which he trod."

He had to let the thoughts of the vile man go and concentrate on the task at hand. He worked in wider lines, going further out over Ma'zurah's back.

Ma'zurah began purring. "Ma'zurah does not know too much about the Ebonheart Pact. Ma'zurah mostly studied only magickal history at the Arcane University, not political history. Something about Morrowind being invaded by the Akaviri, so the Argonians, Dunmer, and Nords banded together and drove them out. Not much more than that." She sighed at the relief Fayrl's hands were working on her body.

"Yes, the Pact was formed after Akaviri invaders tried to capture Skyrim. They took Windhelm, but were pushed out by a force led by King Jorunn, so they made a deeper bid for Morrowind. Perhaps they didn’t expect the Nords to pursue them into Morrowind. Almalexia's armies were joined by reinforcements from the Nords and Argonians, and managed to run the entire fetching horde into the sea.”

“After that, we agreed as peoples to come together to defend against future need. Morrowind agreed, as part of the signing, to release their slaves. The Telvanni refused to be a part of the Pact, and the Dres managed to convince the grand council that they only needed to release the slaves that were a part of the Pact, while turning their former slaves into servants, who they treat no better than before. Skyrim was also divided. Only four of the holds joined us. Black Marsh joined for the chance to earn their freedom, though it has been a slow process to dissolve the occupational government."

"Hmpf,” Ma’zurah scoffed. “The Houses in Morrowind that Ma'zurah knows are honestly not much better. At least the Dres were not on Vvardenfell. Ma'zurah joined the Hlaalu when she first got to Vvardenfell because they were supposed to be the most friendly. Hah. No, their leadership had been corrupted by the Camonna Tong. When Ma'zurah became Hortator, she got rid of that corruption by getting rid of the Camonna Tong leader. There is still rumors though about increased writs against Redoran for some reason. No idea. Ma'zurah spent most of her time in the Ashlands or the Grazelands at that point. She was more interested in the Velothi."

Fayrl sighed. Sometimes he wished he had grown up in the Ashlands instead of the city. "I do not know how time has changed them, but the Hlaalu in my time were always two faced and ready to support any two-bit organization that would bolster their power base. They were money hungry and power greedy. It is a surprise they managed to subsist into your time at all."

Fayrl did not hold back the tension in his voice. He had a scar on his shoulder from where a Hlaalu assassin had tried to kill him. The poison had kept it from healing entirely. It was the first time he had ever come face to face with any of those attempting to take his life. The fetcher had been hired by a Hlaalu who did not appreciate the way his mother was voting in the grand council.

"Ma'zurah half wishes she never joined at all. Indoril and Hlaalu both claim her, and there is no convincing either out of it. Nobody needs a Hortator anymore, the Sharmat is gone. The only good Ma'zurah was doing was religious guidance."

"Morrowind must be a very different place. In my time if you are part of a House, you are only part of that one. If you switch, you are supposed to swear your loyalty over to the other, though in your situation, I can't imagine what the rules might be."

Ma’zurah sighed and moved to stand up. "Perhaps we should at least walk around the market. Ma'zurah is dying of curiosity to find out about the world here."

Fayrl released his hold on Ma'zurah, getting to his feet to let her off the bed. "That is a good idea. We should procure your combs before shops close for the night. One second, let me fix my hair."

Ma’zurah watched as Fayrl carefully put all the pins back into his hair. She fidgeted, smoothing the fur of her tail. "No, see Indoril claims this one because of Nerevar, and Hlaalu claims this one because of Ma'zurah even though she has never been particularly active in the House. It is all just a mess, and this one would rather wash her hands of it."

"Well, I suppose so long as we are here, you don't have to worry about it." He offered her his arm. “Shall we?”

Ma'zurah smiled and hooked her hand under Fayrl's arm, and the pair walked out of their room.

As soon as they got downstairs, Fayrl spotted the bard again. He was leaning back at his table with the lute slung over the back of the empty chair besides him. It would be so easy to just go over there and take it for himself.

Ma'zurah leaned in closer. "Ma'zurah sees Fayrl eyeing the bard's lute. Ma'zurah is sure they have other lutes in this city. Fayrl has not even checked."

Fayrl pouted, mostly for show. "But that one would be easy to take. Besides, how can I be the inn's bard if he and his lute are already occupying the position?"

Ma’zurah looked amused and led them around the fire. Fayrl did not protest. "I suppose I will look elsewhere for one," he sighed as they walked out into the late afternoon sunlight.

Ma'zurah raised a whiskered brow at him. "Elsweyr is rather far to look. How about that shop Ma'zurah sees there." She nodded to a building across the market labeled general goods.

Fayrl laughed. "As you say," he replied and gestured for her to lead on. He would gladly follow her unless she planned to sabotage his efforts to return home.

Ma’zurah bit her lip. “Does Fayrl think perhaps the guards will let us back into the city if we were to try to visit the Khajiiti caravan?”

"It may be risky to get back in once the guards see us leave. If you think of a way to get back in, I know I can slip past them." If the same guard was still on duty as before, she would not let them back in. She had that look about her.

Ma’zurah sighed. "Not unless we want to climb the wall."

Fayrl chuckled. "I was planning to slip by unseen, but nothing like climbing a wall to get you ready for the evening, I suppose."

Ma’zurah began walking across the market square, but was intercepted by one of the Companions, Ria, the young Imperial girl who had been fighting the giant. She called out to them.

"Oh! Hey! I was just coming to find you! I didn't know if you knew where to go. Would you like me to walk you to Jorrvaskr?"

Fayrl looked between the Ma'zurah and the new arrival. "Well hello, Companion. Hail and well met! We were just perusing the market for a good host gift before we headed over to Jorrvaskr. Though, we would certainly be happy for your assistance." He looked at Ma'zurah for help. He really did want to go shopping.

Ria laughed. "Oh no no, that's fine! You don't need to get us a gift! You can just head over now if you like."

Ma'zurah skipped forward. "Certainly! Ma'zurah has not eaten all day she thinks." She paused and turned to Fayrl. "Is Fayrl coming?"

"But dear, don't you think it would be rude not to bring something? They have been so kind to us so far." Just a peek into the shops would be enough to tell him if they had a lute.

Ma'zurah rolled her eyes and took Fayrl’s hand. "Ma'zurah thinks if that one says we should come now, then we should come now."

Fayrl sighed and allowed himself to be led through the city to the hall of the Companions.

End Notes:

Fayrl’s tumblr: @talldarkandroguesome

Fayrl’s husband, Qau-dar, belongs to @warmsandstraveler. Fayrl’s author has an ongoing, publically available RP going with him and several other people in an alternate timeline in which nobody gets lost in time.

You can read the journal of Fayrl’s ‘brother’, Avon, at @avon-m-dunaag. He participates in the ongoing, publically available RP with Fayrl, though his updates are not nearly as frequent.

Some of the memories of Ma'zurah's past that Fayrl accesses are stories that have not yet been written, but one of them can be read about in the story Betrayal and Reconciliation here.

Screenshot of Fayrl Screenshot of Ma’zurah Check out my art tag for more pictures of Fayrl and Ma’zurah.

Constructive criticism is welcome. We also really like it if you leave comments on Ao3.

#TES #Elder Scrolls Lore #Skyrim #ESO #Morrowind #My Writing #Fanfic #Lost In Time TES Fanfic #Fayrl Indoril #Ma'zurah the Khajiit #Rated M

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