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damn-daemon · 5 years

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Critical Mass - Prologue

(While I’m still writing this for NaNo, I have no self control - @chuck-hansens did this to me. This isn’t the final version, but please let me know what you think!)

Ring of Kafrene

It had once been a populous mining site, home to a multitude of cultures and corporations, but the collapse of the Empire lead to many of the mines being closed down – no more Death Stars to build after all – and the area fell into disrepair. The Hutts attempted to take control of the area, but their reach had dwindled over the past decade, leaving the station in the hands of local gangs. It had become a hotbed of illegal activity – not that things had been easygoing under Imperial rule – with a reputation that rivaled some of the Outer Rim worlds.

So, of course his person of interest would be holed up here.

Poe Dameron sighed as he stepped into the space port, vaguely paying attention as the docking clamps ground into place. The old, two-seater freighter was a far cry from his T-70, but the point of the mission was to not draw attention to himself. Also to preferably not get his ship stolen. An X-Wing wouldn’t last more than an hour in this space port. He didn’t even think the freighter would, and that rusting block hadn’t seen active service since before the Clone Wars.

BB-8 rolled up beside him, gently nudging his boot and whistling softly.

“Yeah, buddy, I’m starting to think I should have left you home too,” he replied.

The air was stale and stank of grease, oil, and other things he’d rather not think about. Most of the equipment was retrofitted mining machinery with exposed wires and layers of rust. Something electrical was sparking on the far end of the docking bay, and there was a lone astromech lying on the ground. Occasionally it beeped, but no one seemed to care.

Inside the station was bound to be interesting.

“I wouldn’t linger, if I were you.”

Poe turned to the bay doors, finding them open and occupied by a dark green Rodian. He was tapping on a datapad.

“This level’s got a faulty grid. Power tends to cut and then you’re off for a nice – if brief – space trip.”

Panicking, BB-8 cried, launching a cable into the nearest wall.

Poe pat the poor droid before walking to the doors. Eventually, he heard the sound of his friend rolling behind him – and then rapidly in front of him.

“What’s my docking fee?” he asked, feeling a small amount of relief when the doors closed behind him.

“Hundred fifty credits first day. One hundred for every day after.”

“And what’s the fee if I don’t want my ship to go mysteriously missing?”

If Rodians were capable of smiling, the one before him would be grinning from ear to ear.

“Add another fifty credits on top,” the Rodian replied, accepting his credit chit. “Here I thought you were another one of those Core pilots. Come to this heap looking for adventure, and they lose everything but the clothes on their backs. Sometimes, they lose those too.”

“I used to be,” Poe said, walking down the narrow corridor. He ignored the way the lights flickered as he walked by, as well as what could be described as whimpering on BB-8’s part.

The doors at the end opened slowly, grinding on gears that were undoubtedly rusted as well, revealing an unusual world.

The Ring of Kafrene was an outpost that connected two asteroids. There was no atmosphere, gravity, or vegetation. It was rock and metal, a self-contained unit that relied heavily on trade to keep running. Problem was, Kafrene didn’t lie on any well-traveled trade routes. Without the allure of a thriving mining community, most vessels moved on to safer, better known stops.

Metal towers, conduits, and piping shot upward for as far as Poe could see. The air was thick with steam and other chemicals being churned into the atmosphere out of various vents, clouding the passageways so that there always appeared to be a fog. Everything was a shade of brown, and he doubted that it started that way.

Outside the few windowpanes, ships drifted outside. As did garbage.

Aliens of every type shuffled around the area, some in piloting gear, others armed to the teeth, a few sat on the ground begging for spare credits. A bounty hunter dragged a shouting Dug through the crowd. No one reacted. Most just moved along, quiet and plodding. It was another day for them.

“Maybe I still am,” he whispered.

He wandered with the crowd for some time, actively keeping BB-8 in front of him – only three passersby attempted to interact with the droid, each met with the same number of volts – until he came across the cantina he was looking for. At least it smelled like something remotely edible over the same stale air.

A young Twi’lek held her hand up as he entered the space, looking him over like she could smell the offworlder on him.

“We don’t serve droids here.”

Poe looked down at BB-8, who looked up at him. They both looked at the droid working behind the bar, serving drinks and making programmed small talk.

“Well, I’ve never seen a droid eat anything.”

Her eyes glazed over, pupils momentarily scraping the top of her head, before she sighed and moved on, handing drinks over to a rowdy table of miners.

Poe shrugged, and sauntered up to the bar, taking a seat on one of the stools.

And there he waited.

Time passed slowly, and Poe had to actively restrain himself from constantly checking the door. General Organa’s mission layout was simple: the contact would come to him. He wasn’t to move until then.

Three days ago, C-3PO received an encoded message from one of his contacts – frankly, the idea that a protocol droid had an underground spy network at his proverbial fingertips was still strange to him – detailing a curious event that had occurred on Canto Bight. It alleged that a First Order operative had gone rogue. Leia had decided to err on the side of caution until yesterday when 3PO received a second transmission from this space port.

It was potentially the largest lead on the First Order they had ever received – someone who was actually on the inside, and actively seeking a way out – yet Leia had still offered him a choice. It would be dangerous – and was possibly a trap – and if he felt the risk was too great, then they would leave it be.

“It’s like you don’t know me, General,” he’d said with a smile. “I haven’t met a risk yet that wasn’t worth the effort.”

Her smile wasn’t quite there. “Sometimes, Dameron, I wish you had.”

He’d spent the entire trip mulling over those words.

The Gran that had been occupying the bar since he arrived stood to leave, mumbling some obscenities as he shuffled toward the door. That left Poe alone at the bar – nearly alone in the cantina minus the miner party – and a little sullen at that. A crowded place was better for meeting. Here might have been downright suspicious.

He chanced a glance at the door.

“You humans never were good at being subtle.”

Poe looked back to the droid behind the bar. It was a tall, thin thing, with one red sensor that watched him. Perhaps the only thing not rusting in the area, it still maintained a metallic sheen. Someone had jokingly tied a bow tie to what would have been its neck region.

“Excuse me?”

The entire time, the droid had been speaking in simple phrases, exhibiting a simple etiquette programming, but that appeared to have been a ruse on its part.

“Your species fidgets too much. It has a low tolerance for sitting still. Imagine how little would get done if a droid acted the same way.”

Poe lowered his voice. “Are you…?”

He could have sworn the droid looked disappointed. “Were you expecting something organic?”

You know, he really didn’t have an answer for that.

Poe waited as the droid continued cleaning the bar top, now acutely aware of how much movement his body was making. He continually caught his fingers tapping on the counter-top and would put his hands on his lap, only then his knee would start bouncing. BB-8 had grabbed his foot with a little claw to keep it still.

“You’re not helping.”

The droid whistled shrilly.

Poe pointed a finger at him. “That was rude.”

Eventually, the bar droid placed a small cup in front of him without a word. Poe watched it briefly, but it no longer acknowledged him, chirping out a chipper greeting to a Talz that had just entered.

Inside the cup was a small data drive.

Poe watched it a moment, wondering if he shouldn’t pretend to take a drink. Instead, he counted to one hundred, grabbed the drive, and made his way out of the cantina.

The crowds had died down slightly, apparently having gone through a shift change when he first entered. Still, there was a steady current of aliens traveling down the narrow passageways. Poe let himself be directed by them, hoping to blend in as much as possible until he chanced upon a more private setting.

They passed through a small market place, where the citizens of the station haggled over used equipment and fried food. The walk became suffocating as it was apparent that the stalls had not initially been considered as part of the station’s original layout, leaving the travelers packed shoulder to shoulder.

A small fist fight broke out, knocking over a fruit stand. This led to several individuals grabbing the wayward Jogan fruit and making a run for it, leaving the owner cursing in what he thought was Huttese.

Poe took the momentary chaos as an opportunity to stray from the beaten path, taking a narrow passageway that was lined with piping and probably served as more of a maintenance access. It widened out at the middle, opening up to a chamber that was filled with steam drifting from various vents rising up through dozens of levels. BB-8 just barely managed to roll through, leaving him somewhat confident that they would be alright for the time being.

“Alright, buddy,” he said, taking a knee before BB-8 and handing out the drive. “Let’s see what you can make of this.”

BB-8 beep in acknowledgement, taking the drive. It only took a moment for his systems to process the data, producing a hologram of a still image – a young woman looking over her shoulder, face slightly blurred – and a few sentences of info.

“Arrived on the station in an unauthorized Republic ship,” Poe mumbled, confused by how random the information seemed to be. “Logs wiped clean. Dock personnel unable to locate. Incident on level eighty-two involving half a dozen casualties potentially tied to her. I don’t know, this seems like a lot of loosely connected stuff. How do we know it’s her?”

His droid whistled and another image appeared, this one dated for the incident in Canto Bight. The projection wasn’t nearly as clear as the first, but Poe could tell it was clearly the same woman.

“Alright,” Poe acknowledged, standing up at the holograms disappeared. “So, now we just have to find her…in the middle of all this. Yeah, no problem.”

The droid beeped.

“Yes, I know I said it would be worth it.”

Poe ran a hand over his face. It wouldn’t have been the first time he was wrong.

“Is that a BB-series astromech?!”

Startled by the sudden voice, Poe almost pulled the blaster hidden in his jacket, but was able to restrain himself long enough to get a good look at the boy that was now watching them from the opening.

He couldn’t have been older than ten, staring at them with curious hazel eyes and a grin nearly too big for his face. His blonde hair stuck up in all directions, his clothes were covered in grease and grime, and in his hand, he held a single Jogan fruit, clearly having taken advantage of the tussle as well.

BB-8 whistled, his head bobbing back and forth like a proud little shake.

“How did you get one here?” the boy asked, darting out from the narrow passageway and fallen to his knees in front of the droid. “Last decent looking droid I saw got scrapped for parts within the hour.”

Ignoring the cries of panic from his friend, Poe actually smiled at the kid. At least someone around the area hadn’t had their spirits dampened yet.

“Beebee-Ate isn’t about to go down with out a fight, and trust me, this guy’s got a lot of it in him,” he replied, patting the droid.

“Has he seen a lot of action?”

Poe shrugged. “A skirmish or two. Nothing he couldn’t handle.”

BB-8 was practically humming from the attention.

The boy looked up at him. “So, you’re not from around here. Why come to this place? We’re not exactly near anything.”

“Business.”

“What kind of business?”

Poe felt his eyes narrowing. “What’s with all the questions, kid?”

The boy shrugged, taking a bite from the Jogan. “I have to ask them.”

“Why?”

“I needed to distract you somehow,” he replied, eyes landing on something that was definitely behind him.

Poe didn’t even get the chance to reach for his blaster before something struck the back of his knee, hard, and his leg crumpled to the ground. The other leg followed suit as something struck it as well, except when it hit the ground, he felt a mass remain there, applying pressure to his calf. It felt like a knee.

An arm wrapped around his neck, squeezing. The pressure wasn’t enough to render him unconscious, but warned that the outcome was possible if he didn’t comply.

A shot fired, an electrical burst striking BB-8. The poor droid short-circuited, his components shooting out haphazardly before his systems automatically shut down to prevent further damage to his internal drives.

“Hey! What are you-” Poe choked as the arm squeezed tighter, making his vision pulse. He held his hands up in surrender. “Okay. Okay.”

The boy frowned. “Sorry.”

He felt the attacker’s hand reach under his jacket, securing the blaster.

“Can I have it?” the boy asked, face lighting up briefly before he assumed the attacker gave him a look. The frown returned. “Okay.”

“So, I take it you’re the fugitive from the First Order, right?” Poe asked, risking further damage to himself, but the arm did not squeeze again. “I mean, you have to be. You’re not asking for any credits.”

There was no response.

“You didn’t shoot me, which is nice. Means you don’t want me dead. And if you don’t want me dead, that means I have something you want, right?”

Still nothing.

“You know, I’ve never been good at these guessing games. You’re gonna have to speak u-”

Their free hand slapped against his forehead, pulling his head back until he had a good – albeit upside down – view of their face.

And there she was, the woman in the hologram.

She was young, somewhere around his age, though the stern look on her face made her look older. Her dark hair was falling out of a bun, framing a bruised face – the incident wasn’t completely one sided then – and equally dark eyes.

“Do all members of the Resistance talk this much?”

“No. Just me,” he mumbled. “I’ve been told it’s a problem.”

She sighed and shoved his head forward again.

“Get the droid,” she ordered. The boy dropped his fruit and immediately went to BB-8, pushing all his components back in place.

Poe watched it happen, slowly moving his free leg to the side. If he could just knock her off balance, he might have a chance.

When the time felt right, he clasped her arm with both hands and pushed with his leg, careening them both to the side. Using his weight against her, Poe made her land on her back, the force of his shoulders striking her chest causing her arm to release him.

He scrambled out of her grasp, rolling to the side, but the woman recovered fast. Poe felt her hands grasp the back of his jacket, halting his escape attempt and pulling him back. She swung her leg over his body, sitting on his chest, this time not bothering to ease the pressure. Breathing was difficult.

She pointed a blaster at him.

“Using the stun setting within two feet of a target causes irreparable damage to the nervous system,” the woman said, the words tumbling from her mouth without a single inflection, as if she was reciting it from a lesson. “You won’t be doing that again.”

Poe Dameron couldn’t help but wonder if General Organa wasn’t suddenly feeling smug at that moment.

@marvelousthronewars Look a present for youuuuu.

#i love Poe's banter gah #please let me know how it is!#I could use the help!#critical mass #demo #nanowrimo 2019 #star wars fanfiction #star wars oc #poe dameron x oc

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agent-succubus · 5 years

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(The result of watching too much Letterkenny and Stranger Things back to back)

She shouldn’t have even been on this mission in the first place. The Statesman sure as hell didn’t want her here and with this particular mix, the feeling was very mutual. Champ had only requested a Roanoke assist because of *vague* info stating that there might be occult activity within the terrorist compound the agency was investigating.

Succubus wasn’t cut out for spy work. She knew that, Ale knew that, Rye knew that, hell even Vermouth knew that and she was the nicest of the Shit Show Cocktail of a team that Champ dropped Succubus in. Why did *she* have to be the one on call today?

“What the hell are you doin’? On your left! Jesus, didn’t Roanoke at least teach ya to be aware on the field. Stay behind us if you’re too nervous to shoot, kitten.” Rye scolded, adding insult to injury with the patronizing pet name.

But Succubus had kept her mouth shut and moved to the rear of the group making a mental note to put a hex on him once they were back. By the end of the mission though a small hex would be the least of her worries.

There was no occult activity. Just some old, useless symbols that the idiotic white supremacist terror cell thought brought it power. There were, however, a lot of guns suddenly aimed at them when they made it to the main bunker. All Succubus could focus on was how heavy the gun felt in her hands and how they weren’t rounds meant for cursed or dead things but actual bullets. Actual bullets that left a spray of matter against the acid stained concrete wall when she landed a head shot, her first head shot since she left her life in Cryptic Revolutionists behind her. She forgot how hard it was to stomach.

By the end of it the air was filled with smoke and the smell of iron so heavy Succubus could taste it at the back of her throat. The team breathed a sigh of relief- until Vermouth dropped.

One of the outside guards they missed had creeped in behind them and shot Vermouth in the back, the bullet leaving an exit wound the size of a golf ball in her sternum and tearing her twill embroidered shirt in the process. Ale put a bullet in the shooters throat as Rye and Succubus kneeled trying desperately to help. Blood was bubbling up and pouring out of her mouth as she tried to speak clawing at both of them in a panic before her limbs finally settled and the horrible gurgle of her labored breathing ceased almost as soon as it started. There was a moment of silence from both the team and handlers on the other side of the glasses before Ale broke it.

“Fix it.” He said to Succubus in a voice that quivered with rage and denial.

“...what?”

“Fix. It. You’re the freak who can do that, right? Bring her back now.”

Succubus scoffed, “I can’t do that here. This area isn’t cleansed, I don’t have any of my supplies for a full resurrection-”

Ale’s glasses were suddenly off and silenced before he reached down and pulled her up by the shirt bringing their faces so close she could see the blood vessels threatening to pop in his eyes, feel the sweat drip off his forehead. Her own glasses getting thrown off in the process and crushed beneath Rye’s boot.

“You were supposed to watch the fucking back. This is your fault! Fix it now and bring her back or it won’t just be Statesman that loses an agent on this assignment. I’ll make sure of it.”

He pushed her back to the floor and Succubus didn’t know what to do. She looked to Rye hoping that maybe the stoic agent would talk some sense into his partner only to find his arms crossed, glasses in hand- also disconnected from HQ. They were in the dark and she remembered how much of a boy’s club Statesman still was. If they killed her now no one would question their story. It reminded her of another group of boys her freshmen year of college and the stench of kerosene soaking into her hair and clothes. She began to shake.

“I can’t I don’t have what I need to do it, I’m sorry Ale-”

Without hesitating Ale bent down during her pleading and picked up Vermouth’s shooter’s handgun that skidded across the floor. The still hot muzzle pressed into the soft spot just under her ear.

“Fix her.” His voice was still angry but Succubus could see the tears welling up and sliding down his cheeks.

She had never brought back a fatal gunshot to the chest before, especially not without some sort of soil conduit to protect her from absorbing all the death. The area wasn’t even cleansed, still crawling with the spirits of the terrorists they had killed. No chalk, no circle, no dirt- how could she do this without dirt?

“Ale’s lookin’ a little trigger happy, best get to movin’.”

Her nerves subsided to anger and she bit back, “You think you’re the first assholes to put a gun to my head? You better pray this turns out peachy because if anything happens to me there will be a shitstorm coming for both of you.”

Worst case scenario she would just be indisposed for a few days, well actually no that was best case scenario, worst case scenario she’d absorb the gunshot completely and die from phantom wounds. Neither sounded great but with the burn of the muzzle still pressing into her skin she got to work scraping off as much mud from her boots as she could and packing it into the hole in Vermouth’s sternum. It was enough to fill the exit wound while Succubus closed her eyes, placing one hand over the gunshot and the other on Vermouth’s stomach. Poltergeist had only ever told her about vestigial resurrection like this- crude and raw using nothing but the necromancer’s own power and even then most stories or legends that depicted it often mentioned the act as a last resort. A sacrifice in almost all accounts.

It was like holding onto an electric fence even as your body screams at you to let go.

Succubus could feel the body convulse under her hands, the dirt that had been stuffed into the wound slowly developing into flesh to fill the gap, and the essence of death being absorbed into her own body. It was much faster than traditional necromancy rites and thank goodness for that because Succubus couldn’t hold on for much longer. Vermouth’s soul hadn’t actually gone far so when her body did finish healing and her brain began firing off again her soul slammed back in so hard it knocked all three of them flat while Vermouth shot up with a hand to her chest.

“Goodness gracious! Y’all would not believe the dream I had, did I get knocked out? What happened? Whew I feel great, come on what are y’all doin’ on your butts let’s go!”

Still crying like a baby, Ale managed to scramble up and hug Vermouth until she pushed him off. By now the glasses were back on and HQ was going insane about the black out, that only increased when Vermouth came into view and her vitals reappeared.

“You...you brought me back? I don’t know what to say, I mean you Roanoke gals have always kind of scared me, but...that was amazing, I feel great. Thank you.” Vermouth gave her a genuine smile and offered her a hand up.

Succubus took her offering and was going to give a rather cocky remark about how easy it was until her body remembered what exactly it absorbed and began forcing it back out. The death essence coming up as thick, black bile with so much force it sent her to her knees as she vomited. It didn’t stop. Even when the extraction and med team finally arrived all they could do was dab the sweat off her forehead and turn her on her side while she slipped in and out of consciousness. Succubus almost preferred the vomiting over the chest pains that followed when they made it back to HQ and although Lilith appeared trying to tell her she would be fine there was an uncharacteristic twinge of concern in her voice.

“Clementine, dearie just stay with us Cherub is going to take care of you and you’ll be right as rain. Drake’s already got in contact with Hart and he’s on his way, we wouldn’t want to make him worry would we?”

“Lilith, I didn’t-” Succubus tried to explain but the pain got to be too much and her words disappeared into gasps.

She highly doubted there would be any kind of official disciplinary action since it was their word against hers and keeping the peace between Statesman and Roanoke had always been a rather delicate game. Lilith would know that Succubus hadn’t gone through with the rite willingly because despite how reckless she *could* be, self sacrifice was not something she was. And word about something like that travelled fast in Roanoke. By the time they made it to the Roanoke med bay her body was going into toxic shock and it was getting harder to stay awake despite best efforts. The only thing keeping her from going into total failure was the spiteful rage still boiling in her stomach and she would be damned if she was going to die without making Ale and Rye’s lives absolute hell.

#agent succubus #agent ale #agent rye #agent vermouth #lilith

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thunderaesir · 6 years

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Thor and his missing eye!

Thor’s eye was destroyed when Hela impaled it with one of her daggers. Thor was left functionally blind in that eye and took to wearing an eyepatch. While it’s a funny image to consider Thor walking into things or stumbling, this is a serious thing that Thor is going to have to learn to cope with. He has almost no depth perception, he often reaches for things and they aren’t where he thinks they are, he can’t see people approaching from that side etc. The eyepatch it mostly because it covers the scarring and what not. Thor is a warrior who has always had perfect vision and now he must function with only one eye.

While Rocket did provide Thor with a cybernetic eye, which came in handy during the battle of Wakanda, the eye was not calibrated to work with someone who is basically a conduit of electricity, and thus, it shorts out if he uses his powers. Also, he sometimes experiences pain or discomfort since the wound is recent and shoving something into it is not terribly comfortable. Thor will wear the eye, as long as it is not painful or uncomfortable, but he usually does it only if he benefits from having vision in both eyes, or when he knows he isn’t going to need his powers, such as travelling on Midgard.

He knows he needs to learn to compensate for the loss of vision, as he cannot use the eye functionally when he is exerting himself and using his abilities, so he makes an effort to wear the eyepatch instead of the eye. In some verses, I might keep the eye and say it is capable of withstanding that many volts of pure energy that comes directly from Thor, but I feel like it was a quick fix so Chris Hemsworth didn’t have to do all his acting with one eye, and in reality, there would probably be consequences for Thor.

THIS IS CANON FOR EVERY VERSE, UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED. I WILL INDICATE WHETHER THOR IS USING THE EYE OR THE PATCH.

#( fortunately i am mighty | headcanon. )#( if he be worthy | about thor. )#( headcanon. )

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pause-and-affect-residencie-blog · 6 years

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Why is She Falling by Máiréad Delaney

In two weeks, I will be travelling to the west of Ireland to a small building called The Embers, which my aunt and her mother once ran as a pub. The Embers has stood empty for more than ten years. When I was thirteen, I lived in the Embers with my aunt. She was still mourning the death of her mother. She would climb the stairs to a big room at the back of the house and sift through the contents of the sea chests there. Her mother brought these chests back and forth on the ship every summer.

I was outside the day she put her legs through the floor. The building has woodworm. The floor gave out under her weight. She punched down through and just as quickly ripped herself back up. When I came home I could see through the kitchen ceiling.

I’ve just told my mother I want to work with the hole.

I want to use the hole in the ceiling. The one my aunt fell through.

What? What hole? She never made a hole in the ceiling.

She did, I was there the day it happened.

Well, yes. We’ve fixed it now. There isn’t any hole. (1)

In April 2017, my grandmother died of complications from a fall which broke her pelvis. When she died, I was in a plane crossing the Atlantic. For five years, I have been working with women whose bodies were split, the pelvis the point of impact.

This breaking has a name, it is a pro-life surgical intervention called symphysiotomy. Revived in Ireland in the 1940‘s and practiced through the 1990’s, symphysiotomy is a brutal procedure, primarily performed during childbirth. The bones of the pelvis are cut with a saw until the pelvis unhinges. It is left broken, open. This experiment aimed to facilitate and encourage subsequent births. The surgeries were implemented systematically, according to a natalist moral agenda in nationalist, Catholic, decolonizing Ireland. Thousands of women underwent this procedure, their very skeletal structure altered for the building of a new nation. The surgery was often performed without warning, explanation, or medical consent. The history of this surgery is ‘unwritten.’ Attaining medical records is an arduous and often fruitless pursuit for survivors.(2)

One woman sustained such nerve damage that the nerves running to the lower half of her body would flicker out, unpredictably. She fell, over and over, as her legs lost their ties to her brain. She spoke of visiting doctors again and again without result. Finally, her husband came with her, asking the doctor, “Why is she falling?”

The doctor, half-lowering his voice and speaking to the man, responded, “Don’t you know women? Imagination.”(3)

Why is she falling?

Don’t you know women?

Imagination

Her falls were after the break. My grandmother broke as she fell. She fell on a Sunday in April and hours ahead in Ireland, on Sunday night, I was breaking branches with my own body. She died on Monday. I was in a plane over the ocean. There was time and distance in between. Miles of conduit line the floor of the ocean. I think about the darkness inside the body punctuated by flickering nerves, this inner electricity like lights seen from a great height. Then the outage, like the velvet surface of the night and black-topped, unplumbable water. I think of sparks inside the dark of a broken body, a blinding light at the split-second of the break, the pop of new space created by the punch-crack of breaking.

vimeo

Silence met the falling woman, the impact of hitting the ground was swept away by doctors words. I am looking at the pressure which causes the ‘break,’ and then the silencing of both afterwards. This is a silence that contains pressure, a silence capable of breaking bones. I make in an effort to speak to that silence.

If I were to qualify the silence I attempt to speak to, I would say it is a chasm made by the lack of justice. It is a deflecting shield made by the denial of recognition. If this justice is denied perpetually, silence becomes at once a cliff-face and sink-hole of absurdity. Can we talk back to silence when the silence is a swallowing, when it is an erosion of the ground underfoot, when it comes behind the teeth to frost-bite all movement of the tongue? This kind of silence is active. Never absence, this silence opens a hole where an accountable party ought to stand.

vimeo

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?

The world would split open

Muriel Rukeyser (4)

Yet, I have found, the world does not split open. At large, there is a lack of rupture, a lack of visible evidence of violation, no break, no radical discontinuity. Instead, life goes on. Violence coagulates with grief and time and it bloats, overflows. (5)

If an event goes unrecognized or is delegitimized, the suppression of it produces a pressure. Under that pressure, is not as though the event never occurred but rather that it never ends. It is just there, with that pressure-- that grappling constitutes our ‘real.’

I am not interested in reverse-engineering the event, in creating a rupture to access ‘original’ violence. It is plain that such methods do not have the effect Rukeyser prophesied, not in this present world, where the forces of silence police actively and reseal efficiently.

I am interested in making the conditions of our present existence clear. (6) I came to performance as a practice of embodied speech acts, gestures which attempt a simultaneous holding-at bay of crushing violence and an affective entrance into its structure of feeling. I undertake these actions so that we might come to collective sensed knowledge of violent realities and recognize the effects of this violence and our grief over time.

Staking the unthinkable against the everyday charges the every day with what it contains. This ‘charge’ is both innervation, a frisson of electricity, and the levelling of a demand for accountability.

Staking the unthinkable against the everyday charges the every day with what it contains. The everyday ‘contains’ the unthinkable, it is both saturated by it and yet the unthinkable is imprisoned, unrepresented.

Yet amidst the lack of representation, excess blossoms. Under strata, a bruise expands, color blooms. Fragments surface.

I site my questions now in the undertow of silence, on the tender, treacherous ground which threatens submersion, where the air is thin, where our surroundings are desaturated and heightened at once. I imagine this space as between contained experience and the forces of containment. It refers to contained experience, but it does not merely contain and batter its occupant with the forces of that containment. Up against the impenetrable, the unheeding-hard, the faceless, A branch breaks. A pop, a gasp, a gap, a little pocket of space. The body gives.

In the making of work, I work small un-makings. I have broken, cut, compressed, bitten. I do not see these gestures as destructive, rather they apply pressure to pressure. They speak to silence. Perhaps these specificities of sensation might reach such a pitch of intensity that we all hear the pressurized hiss or see the fissured surface. Tongue against metal, a cracked branch. These are my own answers to silence.

These women, breaking, suspended in shuddering silence, continue to fall.

1. My mother, phone conversation with author, November 2, 2018.

2. Marie O’Connor, Bodily Harm: Symphysiotomy and Pubiotomy in Ireland 1944-92, (Dublin: Johnswood Press, 2011)

3. Sheridan, Patricia (survivor of symphysiotomy). Interview with Mairead Delaney. Dublin, October 26, 2015.

4. Muriel Rukeyser, “Käthe Kollwitz,” The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser, ed. Janet E. Kaufman, Anne F. Herzog, and Jan Heller. Levi (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), 460.

5. Andrea Long Chu (2017) Study in blue: trauma, affect, event, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory,27:3, 301-315, DOI: 10.1080/0740770X.2017.1365440

6."The conviction that everything that happens of earth must be comprehensible to man can lead to interpreting history by commonplaces. Comprehension does not mean denying the outrageous, deducing the unprecedented from precedents, or explaining phenomena by such analogies and generalities that the impact of reality and the shock of experience are no longer felt. It means, rather, examining and bearing consciously the burden that our century has placed on us — neither denying its existence nor submitting meekly to its weight. Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and resisting of, reality — whatever it may be…This is the reality in which we live. And this is why all efforts to escape from the grimness of the present into nostalgia for a still intact past, or into the anticipated oblivion of a better future, are vain.”

Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism, (Orlando, Austin, New York, San Diego, London: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 2

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writesandramblings · 6 years

Text

The Captain’s Secret - Epilogue

“God Only Knows”

A/N: This is being posted almost back-to-back with Chapter 102.

Full Chapter List Part 1 - Objects in Motion << 102 - Only Then Am I Free

They took his things and brought him to a room with two chairs and one table. It was the sort of bland, nondescript place they took people ripped from time to interview them, devoid of any markers that would say where and when the room existed. He had brought people to such rooms before himself, but now that he was on the receiving end of this treatment as he waited for the operational director to arrive, John Allan was not sure what to think. (Was there an irony in the fact a time traveler might wait for anything while sitting in the heart of an organization that could pierce the currents of time as easily as an arrow slices through the air? Or was this simply the nature of the now?)

He slowly paced back and forth by the door rather than sit, trying to sort everything out in his head. He felt like he had been used and he was strangely glad for it. He had no love for Gabriel Lorca, but after spending all those years in the past, he considered many of the people he had met there to be his friends. Especially Emellia with her happy nonsense and Milosz with his funny little hums and bouncing excitement, the two of them in perfect sync together; they were like family to him. Family he would never see again except in historical recordings or holographic simulation. Macarius had been so kind, and Michael Burnham every bit as spectacular as her legend. He even missed Einar's deep, booming voice, enduring disdain for responsibility, and constant dry annoyance.

The door opened and he looked up to see who it was. He had to adjust his gaze downward; the figure who entered was half as tall as he expected.

Despite having come the long way, she looked very much the same. Her filaments seemed a little longer somehow and her eyes a slightly paler and yellower a shade of green. She was wearing a flowing, semi-transparent shawl garment with an insignia upon it: a rank insignia that far outstripped his own. Her voice was more confident, more sedate. "Congratulations on the success of your mission, Lieutenant Commander Allan. It is very nice to see you again. I apologize that you were not told the full specifics of your mission and its importance. But we could not have you know information which would jeopardize the mission at the time."

Allan sat down, partly because he had to. "You..."

"That is right. I am the one who chose you for this mission, a mission I knew only you could do, and a mission I knew you would succeed in, because I had already seen you do it. Come. Would you like some tea?" She summoned a tray and deftly poured him a cup with her tail.

He needed the tea, and badly. She clicked her tongue at the way his hands clung to the cup.

"Now that your mission is done, mine is as well. I wanted to personally thank you for everything you did before I leave. I have been running this organization for many years now, and in that time, few agents have succeeded in their tasks as well as you."

There was no hiding the shock. "Wait, you're the OD?" The Operational Director, a rumor in the hallways, a guiding hand that chose the missions and the operatives with a perspective longer than any other, with an identity kept secret to prevent temporal assassination.

She clicked her tongue again. "But of course. I founded the organization!"

"Then..."

"Yes, that is correct. I encountered you in the year 2256, and it was from that encounter that I confirmed time travel was possible. It took many centuries for the technology to develop, and piece by piece, I collected it all. It led to what you see here. The product of the minds of a thousand different worlds and generations, a tremendous power we must safeguard to preserve the flow of history.

"Though, you had a hand in the events of 2247 as well, didn't you? I could see your particle signature when I first met Captain Lorca. It is interesting to think that, prior to the interference you caused at Dr. Mischkelovitz's request, I had a completely different reason to found this organization, because I must have sent you in the original timeline, too. I think perhaps I did it for her the first time. In a way, Emellia outlives us all."

She did something with her tail. Something plinked out onto the table. A silver holodisc.

"This is yours to do with as you wish," she said.

Allan stared at the disc, realizing the truth. He was supposed to have done what he did, then. When they had led him to this empty room, he had half-expected it to be for the purposes of disciplining him for disrupting the timeline. Stripping him of his rank and throwing him in a prison from which no one could escape. He was relieved to find this was not the case. He picked up the holodisk and held it in his fingers. There was nothing left for him to do with it but keep it with him, a memento of a friend.

If Lalana noticed Allan's thought process play out on his face, she made no note of it. "But I am glad you are back now. I have been waiting more than eight hundred years for my task to be done. Perhaps 'waited' is not the best word. I have seen and done so many things over the centuries. I found Dr. Li's Section 31. I rescued lului from all across the quadrant who were kept prisoner and worse. I found the makers of Captain Lorca's sphere ship. I removed Umale's tether between the universes and stopped the temporal saboteurs who would have removed from history the whole of the Federation. I have met more species than you could even imagine and traveled farther than you can dream. And yet, in all the sights I have seen, there is but a single sight that has always been my favorite.

"That is why it is time for me to leave. It is up to you now, Mr. Allan, to safeguard the past, the present, and the future. I wish you much luck with this task."

Allan put the teacup back down on the table. "Wait, what? That's it? You're done?"

"Yes, that is correct. I have done what I set out to do, and I am now finally able to make the death of my own choosing. Please report to Director Isis for your next assignment. Thank you again, Mr. Allan. You'll never know what you've given me."

There was a tremendously bright light. Lorca's hand closed around something. It was another hand. Not a human hand, a blue one, with four fingers.

He gasped and looked up. What he saw amazed him as much as it terrified him. "What are you—"

Everything was frozen around them as if suspended in time. All the horror, all the rending, all the death. Plumes of fire and sparks of electricity hung in the air. The faces of his crew, contorted. It was a tapestry of silent destruction. There was Lieutenant Commander Levy, who would have made a great captain, mouth open and face determined. There, Morita being tended by her adoring wife, Yoon, who had risked everything so that they would be together and was now paying the ultimate price. Matthew Kerrigan, his arm shielding his face as the conduits behind his console exploded.

And here, standing right in front of him, was Lalana.

"Hayliel," she said, "it is so good to finally see you again!"

He embraced her. "How?" he choked out, drawing back so he could look into her giant green eyes. The very eyes he had named a star for.

"There is not enough time to tell you. Even if I had a thousand more years, there would not be."

He brushed his hands across her fur, a feeling he had missed so much for so many months. Tears sprang to his eyes. "Daisy, the baby—" That was why he had called her here, but now it was too late. He looked at Morita and Yoon, frozen together.

"I am sorry, Hayliel. I did not make it in time. I wish I could have done that for you. I wish I could have saved them the way you saved me."

His head shook back and forth. "But, you're here..." He could see there was a difference in her. He knew her well enough to realize she had aged. "Why are you here?"

"I have journeyed very far and very long in order to have the death of my own choosing. I have seen so many stars, Hayliel, and all of them thanks to you. The worlds, the people, the beauty, the wonderment! And in all that time, and in all those many years, there is one thing that I never found. And that is anyone that I love as much as you. Your face is my favorite thing in all the stars." She had had many years to work out exactly what to say to him. Centuries, in fact.

He inhaled shakily. He had not had those same centuries, but he knew what to say all the same because for him, the memory of her was still fresh in his mind. "Then go back. Get out of here, Lalana. I—" He swallowed. "I would rather a universe with you in it! So long as you're out there, I—" He gasped as the tears escaped down his face. That was why he had been so cruel to her, tried to push her away and out of this war entirely.

She brushed his tears away with her tail, cupping his cheek. "There is no me without you. There hasn't been since the moment we met." It could have meant that she would have died had it not been for their fateful first encounter, and it did, but it also meant so much more. "You will always be the man with stars in his eyes to me, Gabriel. You are my tears and my heartbeat. I do not want death to part us. I wish for it to be the last thing we do together. I love you, Hayliel Lorla. I love you more than anything else in existence. To me, there is no greater sight than you, and there is no one I would rather die alongside."

He smiled through the tears. "Lalana." The surrounding debris began to shudder and hiss and groan as the temporal stasis field weakened. He said the three words he had never been able to say before and wrapped his arms around her, never to let go again. Her tail encircled him and her filaments engaged with the surface of his skin. They were one as the world around them erupted, the stasis field collapsed, and the Buran exploded.

THE END

Final Author’s Note

#Star Trek #Discovery #fanfic #fanfiction #Captain Gabriel Lorca #Gabriel Lorca #The End #Epilogue

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ivorydice · 7 years

Note

Prompt: Niflheim abducts Noctis and uses him as a magic battery! :D

I guess this could be considered mildly AU, and I’m so sorry for the confusing turn this took lol, my brain went a little weird with it. I’m not sure if I’ll put it up on AO3 or not. Maybe? Eventually? Who knooowws XDWord count: 3680Rating: T (like a mild T lol)Warnings: None really, unless you count any mistakes and terrible grammar lol (and maybe mentions of needles? Mentions of a taser being used? Could be considered mild torture, but only very slightly? I don’t know, this is really tame compared to other things I’ve written lololol)-guilt machine-Hedidn’t know how long it had been since he had been brought intothis place. Days, weeks, months.Time became meaningless after a while, after he was prodded and pokedat and tased to make him more cooperative. It all blended into onething, until there was nothing but the pain, the exhaustion, thefrustration. The unconsciousness that kept pulling him under, like aweight wrapped around his ankle and pulling him down, down,to drown in it all. His mind became fuzzy with it, until he couldn’tthink past the ringing and the blood roaring in his ears.Itwas a shame, because he liked to think he had started out so well. Hehad used his training, he had done everything Gladio and Cor hadprepared him for. He had fought in the beginning, when they had firstbrought him in. He had punched and kicked and thrown himself around,warping out of grasping hands, and it had taken several of them atonce to hold him down long enough to tase him until he wasunconscious.And that was where it all went downhill. Oncethey had him unconscious, they had strapped him into the machinewaiting for him. And once he was strapped in, there was little elsehe could do but thrash in his restraints. He had fought against them,had pulled at the straps so much that he had nearly dislocated hisarms more than once, had pulled until the wires and needles hadripped out of his flesh, tearing the skin open. All the while yellingcurses at them and warning them that it wouldn’t be long before thecrownsguard found him, before his dad would make them all pay.Theydidn’t care. Not about his threats, or even about him. They justcarried on with their jobs, their faces cold and closed off wheneverthey were around him, as if he was a mere object,one of their test subjects, nothing human or alive.

And escapewas no longer within his grasp. Days, weeks, months, however long ithad been, attached to this damn machine, tased unconscious wheneverhe fought too much, and now he felt too weak, to the point where evenopening his eyes was the hardest thing he could do. There was nochance in hell that he could escape now, not like this.And itwas all Noctis could do not to let that tiny spark of hope that theymight someday win this war die away like a snuffed outcandle.Because this, all of this, was bad. Potentiallydisastrous, even, and he wasn’t sure how they had done it in thefirst place but they had.Niflheim had a new weapon in theirarsenal, and this one could prove to be their winning hand in thewar.They had somehow found a way to tap into his magic. Thismachine, this strangemachinethat seemed to take up an entire wall, attached to him through thewires and needles buried into his arms and his chest and his legs andup along his back. It was draining him, whatever it was. It pulled onhis magic whenever the scientists pressed their little buttons andflicked their switches and turned their dials. It was feeding off ofhim, leaching every bit of energy he had so that it could power up.He could feel the way his magic left him, how, instead of naturallyrunning through him to heal whatever miniscule injuries he had, itshot up through the wires instead. It made him feel cold, it made himfeel sick.And he could feelwhereit went. Crawling up through wires and metal and concrete, pouringitself into more wires, along conduits, and, finally, into theweapon.He sort of had to give Niflheim some credit for that.They had managed to create a weapon that could be fuelled by magic,and they had done that without ever having been in possession ofmagic themselves.It would have been nice to know just howtheyhad managed to accomplish that, at least.Days, weeks,months.He wondered if his dad and the crownsguard would everfind him. They knew he was gone - there was no doubt about that,however long it had been it had clearly been long enough that hisabsence would have been noticed - but did they even know where hewas? Did they know how to find him?They had to, they hadto.Hejust had to have hope.But it was hard to keep his hopes up.Especially when the scientists flicked more switches on their controlpanels and pain shot through every inch of his body, through hismuscles, his veins, his bones. Fire and electricity and ice ranthrough him and burned him from the inside out. He could feel hismagic pouring out into the wires attached to his flesh, draining outof him and into the machine he was strapped into.Not again,notagain.Hefelt pain in his palms. His fingernails digging in, nearly drawingblood. He squeezed his eyes shut, like that would stop the imagesfrom coming to him. It never stopped the images. He was always forcedto watch, as if the machine wantedhimto see, as if it was a sentient thing and it loathed him and itwanted him to see the pain he would cause.But that wasn’tit. He knew it was just his magic. Whether it was with spells orwarping, he was always so awareofwhere his magic went, he could feel it extending out like anotherlimb, his senses hyper aware of every pulse of energy. And now was nodifferent.“Tryswitching the settings around on those dials,” someone said. Thevoice was muffled and distorted, like trying to listen to it fromunderwater. When Noctis opened his eyes, he could only squint at thebright lights, the world tilting and swaying.Fuckyou,hewanted to scream. Fuckyou, fuck you, fuck you.Thepullonhis magic grew stronger, until he felt like it might rip him apart,and white hot pain lanced through him as his vision jerked. The roombefore him, the computers, the wires, the people, it all washed away,replaced instead with bright lights and the landscape rushing by,travelling so fast and so far, he felt like a meteor burning up inthe atmosphere.And then—there,another light up ahead, gold and shimmering and huge. Familiarenergy, familiar magic,and encased in that magic was home.It hurt to see it, even as brief as the image was, but to see thoseskyscrapers, those buildings—ithurt.Noctis thought he might be screaming, even though histhroat was a little raw these days. He tried to clamp down on theenergy, on the magic, tried to squash it and make it weak, but he waspowerless. Even with his own gods damn magic he was powerless, anddread ran through him like ice.Watchout. Watch out, watch out, watch out.Hecould only watch, helpless, as the ball of energy slammed into theWall. He felt the impact himself, as if hewasthe one that had collided with it. He felt it in his chest, in hisbones, and it left him winded, fire crawled along every vein, untilhe thought it might consume him.And he could see the way themagic almost broke through the protective shell, the shield thathummedwithhis father’s energy. He felt the echoes of it, the ghost of themagic running along his skin, a warm familiar presence, and he feltthat longing in him again even as his fear grew.He wonderedif his dad could feel him too. He wondered if he sat on the throne,feeling the echoes of the attack along his skin and, with it, tracesof Noctis’s energy.They were getting better at harnessinghis magic. Every shot they made with the weapon grew stronger as theychanged their tactics. Soon enough, they would know how to manipulatehis magic completely, how to make it fuel the weapon so that theycould break through the Wall, so that they could shatter his father’smagic with his own.The images washed away and he was back inthe room. His ears were ringing and the room was swaying again, moreviolently than before. The sights and sounds of the scientists weretrying to crawl in, but it was like white noise to his senses.Therewas something warm coming from his nose, running down along his lipsand chin. Something warm trickling down the sides of his throat,coming from his ears. His heart pounded in his chest, fast and alittle unsteady.He couldn’t move. If it wasn’t for thefact that he was strapped into the machine, he probably would havefallen flat on his face and remained there. He couldn’t holdhimself up anymore, everything hurt too much, everything hurt,and supporting himself now seemed like too much of an effort. Healways felt like he was on the brink of unconsciousness these days,but this was different.He was getting worse. With every shotthey made, he was getting worse. He wondered if the next one wouldkill him. He wondered if the shot that broke through the Wall wouldbe the one to finally take his life.He almost hoped hewouldn’t make it that long. If he died before they could make thatfinal shot, well then, that would be the biggest middle finger hecould give to Niflheim.~&~Something wasdifferent.Noctis was aware of the voices before he could openhis eyes. Slumped back into the machine, letting it take his weighteven if it pulled at the wires and needles, he groaned and tried tolisten to what was going on, to make out what they were saying. Butthe ringing in his ears was simply too much, the pounding of hisheart blocked everything out, hecouldn’t—“—sound—alarms—”“—turrets—”“—evac—”Somethingstarted ringing. A loud, piercing sound, nearly deafening. It lancedthrough Noctis’s skull, scraped against every nerve. He could onlygroan, letting his head fall back, trying to open his eyes.Thescientists in the room were in a frenzy. He couldn’t focus on theirfaces or their voices properly, but he could see the panicked waythey were moving around, from computer to computer, some rushing outof the room altogether, clearly with no intentions ofreturning.“—I’mtelling you—”“—coulddrain him—needhis energy—”“—damngun turrets—loseyour job—”Noctisfrowned and swallowed, grimacing when he thought he tasted blood. Hedidn’t like the sound of this, the tones of their voices, like theywere desperate.His magic pulled,shooting through him and up the wires, and he cried out, his entirebody locking into place. This wasn’t the weapon they had beenusing. The way his magic was pouring into the machine and outwards,into so many different directions, it was different compared to thelarge weapon they had been using him for.And still that alarmwas ringing, echoing throughout his head, even as his vision jerkedand pulled, twisted sideways, blurred images coming into focus.Bluelight. Shattering into crystals and shards, a figure disappearingalong with it. Other blue lights, shooting back and forth, figuresemerging out of thin air. Noctis felt a pull on his magic, it rippedfrom his skin, and he saw smaller bursts of energy shooting for thosefigures, his magic chasing after them, trying to killthem.Moreflashes and his vision was jerking again, twisting and pulling untilhe was looking somewhere else, like his magic wanted him to seeeverything at once. There were more figures, ducking and dodging,swinging weapons and fighting against guards. His magic shot out atthose figures too, nearly caught them, until blue sparks wereappearing right in front of him, attacking him. Noctis thought hejumped backwards, flinching away from the hit, though he felt nopain.A blade swung down for him, and his vision went blackfor a moment.And, with it, a small amount of relief. Hismagic didn’t feel so stretched out.“—yousure—powered—allthe turrets?”“Yes,but—it’sthose—they’retaking them out—”Moreimages, more blue lights, more figures appearing and disappearing,more solid figures dodging out of the way of his magic. He feltnauseous with the way his vision kept spinning around, the way itjumped from place to place, unstable and chaotic. But there were moreblue sparks and weapons coming for him, at each different angle,blades swinging down on each location, and each time there wasanother wave of relief, his magic slowly retreating back into him,sinking back into the machine, through the wires and into hisbody.“—damnit—mustevacuate—can’twin—”Afinal image of four figures, charging into a building. A flash oftattoos, a flash of blond hair.And then black.Hismagic rushed back into him and he sank into the machine, breathless,exhausted, sweat making his hair stick to his brow. He could feelmore warmth trickling from his nose and his ears, he felt nauseousfrom the taste of blood running down his throat, metallic and warmand disgusting.Buthe was no longer tense. He no longer had that fire and ice andelectricity burning him up inside, running along every vein like tinydaggers splitting him open.The alarm was no longer ringing,and the room seemed emptier than before, only a few voices remaining.There were hands on him, pulling at the wires and needles, rippingthem out of him, and Noctis groaned, opened his eyes enough to glareat the scientists in front of him.“—evacuate—takehim back—Niflheim—tryagain—”“Getoff,” Noctis mumbled. He tried to move away from them, to pull hisarms away, but he could still barely move, his body weighed down,heavier than any metal, any stone. “Leave me alone—”Abang. Loud and startling. Noctis jumped at it, flinching back intothe machine, barely able to keep his eyes open as he saw the doorsburst open, figures marching through, their weapons at the ready.There was a commotion as the hands pulled away from him sharply,footsteps running away, things crashing to the ground as the figuresslammed into the scientists and had them pinned down withinmoments.“Noct!”Somethingappeared in front of him, hands reaching up for his face, and Noctisfound himself staring down at the figure in front of him. There wassomething familiar about it, as blurred and wavering as it was. Heknewthisface, he knew it—“Noct?”the figure was saying, lips moving desperately, voice piercingthrough the blood roaring in his ears. “—hearme, buddy?”“Prom—”Noctisbreathed out. Confusion washed through him, and he frowned again.Prompto was here,he was right in front of him, smiling with relief, and he wasn’t adream. But howwasPrompto here? “What—”“Don’tworry about it,” Prompto was saying. “We’re here—gonnaget you out—”Hisface twisted, grimacing, and there were shaking fingers pulling atthe remaining wires and needles buried into Noctis’s skin.“Usea potion!” someone yelled.Prompto grimaced before lookingover at one of the figures as he called back, “I need to get thesewires out first! Ignis, come help me!”“—suggestyou lay down any weapons you have,” someone else was saying, voicedeep and strong and leaving no room for argument, “we have thisentire facility surrounded.”Noctis squeezed his eyes shut.There were so many voices and sounds, toomany sounds,and it made his head spin. There were more hands on him, gentle andyet firm, helping to hold him up and steady him as the wires andneedles were pulled out one by one. It seemed to take forever, but hecould ignore it now, he could ignore the way they slid out of hisskin, nothing compared to the burning sensation of his magic beingripped from his very being.He let the hands do what theywanted, let them manoeuvre him this way and that. They were warm andfamiliar and comforting, safe,as were the voices in his ears, murmuring things to him that hecouldn’t quite make out. He let it wash over him, finally givinginto the idea that maybe it was over now, maybe he wouldn’t have topower some machine ever again, maybe his dad would be safe from hisson’s magic attacking him and their kingdom.When he openedhis eyes again, the scientists were gone and he was laying on thefloor, Ignis’s arms wrapped around him and holding him up, a bottleheld up to his now clean lips. Noctis opened his mouth obediently,drinking it down and feeling the resulting magic run through him,fresh and reinvigorating.There were other faces, hoveringover him, watching him in concern. Prompto, Gladio, Cor. They wereall covered in sweat and dirt and blood, and it was such a weirdsight that Noctis could only stare for a moment.“Hey,”Prompto said quietly, “you with us now, bud?”Noctisswallowed the rest of the potion down, shifting in the arms that heldhim. Ignis murmured something, placing the potion bottle down ontothe floor, choosing to run his hand through Noctis’s hair insteaddespite that it clearly needed a wash or two.“YourHighness?” Cor said.Noctis blinked up at them. “You foundme.”Gladio snorted, as if he was amused, but his eyes werestill tight, concern shining through. “You weren’t really toohard to find,” he said.“Yeah,”Prompto grinned, “just had to look for the giant cannon firingmagic nukes.”Noctis stared at them, his head stillspinning, struggling to catch up with everything, and yet he couldn’thelp but say, “So your grand plan was to head directly to thecannon with magic nukes?”“Onlyway to get you out,” Prompto shrugged.“Yeah,you’re welcome by the way,” Gladio added.Noctis wanted toroll his eyes. “You idiots,” he muttered, but there was warmthrunning through him again, warmth and affection. “Could’ve gottenyourselves killed.”“Themarshal insisted that we didn’t come along for this mission, forthat very reason,” Ignis murmured. His hand was still runningthrough his hair, fingers brushing it back, soothing and gentle. Itmade Noctis a little sleepy. “We insisted that we did.”Corlet out a heavy sigh. “It seems you have a stubborn crownsguard,Your Highness. Not even His Majesty could convince them to staybehind.”“Whydoes it sound like an insult when you put it like that?” Promptomuttered.Noctis found himself smiling a little, unable tohelp himself, but his heart was pounding at the mention of hisfather. The Wall had taken some horrible blows, it might haveweakened him, hurthim,and Noctis would never forgive himself if his magic had done that.“My dad,” he murmured, and he looked up at Ignis, managing toreach his hand up a little to clutch at his jacket, “is my dadokay?”“HisMajesty is perfectly fine,” Ignis said, his voice soft. “Althoughhe is quite eager to see you returned home. As are we.”“Mightwant to get you cleaned up a bit first, though,” Gladio said.“You’re not exactly a stunning sight right now, YourHighness.”“Yourfaceisn’ta stunning sight,” Noctis muttered. It was more out of habit thananything else, but he could see the way Gladio appreciated it, theway his face softened a little, the way his shoulders lost some oftheir tension.Noctis sighed and he shifted in Ignis’s arms,tried to get his hands underneath him, to push himself upright, butthen every muscle was screaming at him, locking into place and makinghim grimace.“Easy,”Ignis murmured, and he and Prompto were pushing him back down intohis arms. “Don’t try to move. You might have had a potion, butyou still need time to heal.”“Thekingsglaive soldiers have the place cleared,” Cor said, but he wasdirecting it to the others, his eyes flicking from one face to theother. “Let’s get him into the van and we can take him back toInsomnia.”Prompto was smiling, coming closer, his handreaching out to rest on Noctis’s forehead, fingers trailing intohis hair briefly. “You hear that, buddy? You’re cominghome.”Home. Days, weeks, months, he had been away for solong,his magic battering the Wall, and yet it remained unharmed. He couldstill return home. He could see his dad again, he could see him withhis own eyes, could make sure for himself that he was okay, and hecould apologise for any damage he and his magic might havedone.Noctis sighed again, relaxing back into Ignis’s arms,turning into him. “Yeah, I wanna go home now,” he murmured.Ignis’s heartbeat was steady under his ear, almost hypnotic,soothing to listen to. It made him feel safe and warm.“Don’tworry, we’ll get you there,” Gladio said.Ignis’s armstightened around him, holding him close as he said, “Sleep, Noct.Allow us to take care of everything else. You needn’t worry about athing.”He didn’t worry, even as Ignis rose to his feetand carried him out of that damn room. He didn’t worry even as Cor,Gladio and Prompto went into formation around them, guarding them thewhole way, their weapons still ready despite the fact that the threathad already been taken care of. Clearly they all had his back, theywere crazy enough to rush into an enemy facility to rescue him, andso he knew he had nothing to worry about now.Noctis closedhis eyes, giving into unconsciousness, letting it tug him under,content in the fact that he was finally going home.

#final fantasy xv #ffxv #final fantasy xv fanfiction #ffxv fanfiction #noctis lucis caelum #prompto argentum #ignis scientia #gladiolus amicitia #cor leonis #prompt/request fill #my fics #hurt noct hurt noct hurt noct hurt noct #lol you have no idea how much i hate this #but hey i guess i liked some of the imagery #one of these days i'll learn to love my writing #lol maybe?

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delightfulpersonwombat · 4 years

Text

9.7.20 Alana

Dear Vivi,

When I woke up this morning, I noticed that the mockingbird Westra had given me, the one that I’ve been using specifically to send you letters, was missing. Like it was called to and it went to the source of the calling. Which means that you called to it because you’re writing a letter back, and I can assume that once I’m done with this letter, I will have one from you.

Am I finally getting through to you? Are you actually finally taking the advice you already have? Are you listening to the correct voice in your head and being the hero you need yourself to be? You don’t even have to consider yourself a hero of the world--you are, and we’ll discuss that later--but at least be a hero for yourself.

Regardless, I’m digressing. There is plenty of time to help you with the thoughts in your head later in this letter. You’re probably wondering what happened with the dinosaur and in our travels across Chult. Which might be one of your least favorite places; at least, that’s what I got from you when you mentioned it.

With quick thinking, Hallda was able to get Kelliear out of harm’s way and healed her enough that she wouldn’t bleed out all over the ground. Mim and Zatsie were both back, but Zealous seemed to be off doing a side mission this week. She might have honestly gotten distracted by a bug that looked a bit too tasty. Or by her reflection in the stagnant water. Or by a frog. Or by another lizard that looked like a dragon. Or by a cloud that looked particularly menacing, and she thought that she could intimidate it.

Zealous has the attention span of a drunk gnat at times.

Anyway.

I made sure that I wasn’t going to cast the spell that caused me to have traumatic flashbacks. The mere fact that hags were around, as well as vampires and zombies, meant that I couldn’t let myself fall into a panic or become too wrapped up in the thoughts in my head. I had a party to help fight a dinosaur with. I was stuck on an island full of problems and had to deal with a political leader who was a war mongering elf who would stop at nothing to decimate the island for his own end goals. Charlotte received a letter full of what we’ve seen with the Crimson Carnivale, as well as a plea to clear their name. I might be absolutely terrified of and traumatised by vampires, but I know that these individuals are not the same as the vampires who did hurt me. They deserve to be able to live. To be able to continue to live. Especially after surviving this past war.

I instead called upon the lighting within myself and the lighting in the air. I focused it and sent it at the zombie t-rex. It took the lightning damage and still continued to come after us. Even with Elmindreda slicing at it with her axe, it didn’t seem to stop. It was massive and just seemed to have unlimited health, no matter how much damage each of us was doing to it.

Zatsie seemed to be on this kick of distracting creatures with his magic, something you mentioned he was doing when you first joined the party, but stopped once he got his cannon. Maybe one of these days, it’s going to work. But even against a zombie dinosaur whose brain is smaller than a pea, this type of distraction seems to really just be a way for him to pause and think of a plan while the rest of us do the majority of the damage.

It’s fine; Elmindreda and I do a disgusting amount of damage when we focus. Elmindreda is a powerhouse; it is magic watching her just slicing through things like they’re butter. While Elmindreda and I put a chunk of damage into the t-rex, Zatsie made an illusionary cow appear, sounds and all. The t-rex, perplexingly, went after the cow.

Meanwhile, Em turned herself into a t-rex, albeit a much smaller t-rex than the one we were fighting. She attacked the much larger one while it seemed to be distracted by the cow. Which, great. Zatsie made a cow, and I applaud his quick thinking while he formulated a better plan. Like I said; I have no reason to tell him not to do that when the rest of the party, myself included, do so much damage.

A cow, however? A cow.

While intelligent, probably not the most sustainable thing that Zatsie could have made an illusion of. Or the most substantial illusion magic he could have done.

Let us not kid ourselves. The t-rex is only going to stay distracted for so long. Yes, the cow is food. But we’re five individuals whereas the illusion is one cow. That, and the cow is not attacking the t-rex, whereas we are. Even if you were a starving animal with the intelligence of a cracked stone, you would pause your hunt on the slow moving animal and focus on the five tasty morsels that are causing you pain and then focus on the cow once they were consumed.

Because that’s how things work.

We continued fighting the creature, and I again focused on the lighting to cause it to strike the dinosaur once again. It was still going after the cow, for some obscure reason, and once it finally did bite into the cow, the illusion vanished. It let out an angry roar as Zatsie, still convinced his cow was a great idea, put on an act. He made it look like the cow was dying and he yelled, “Oh no! Betsy!”

No one was convinced. Not even the dinosaur, which was Zatsie’s whole objective.

Since the illusion cow was gone, the dinosaur was no longer distracted. And, since Elmindreda and I had been doing it the most damage, it made sense that it would turn back around and come after either of us. It’d tried to go after Elmindreda first, but she is much harder to grab onto, much like you.

I’m a bard with sorcerer powers. I know exactly how easy it is for someone to grab me or for how easily I bleed out and how badly I bleed out.

So, shockingly enough--you’ll find that to be a pun later in this letter, and I’m kind of giggling about it in retrospect because I’m hilarious--I managed to get grabbed by this zombie t-rex. I was gagging on its rotting flesh and bleeding out because it managed to reduce me to half of my health with two hits. It managed to miss my face; claw scars are such a pain to make vanish. They do, however, make a cool story to tell ladies.

I happened to still be concentrating on the lightning attack that I’d started out with. I wanted this fight done, as both Kelliear and I were badly hurt. Hallda was running low on resources, and Elmindreda did have a few scratches that were a bit concerning. I knew that doing a lighting spell, while grappled by a zombie that is a conduit for electricity, probably was the opposite of a good idea, but it also wasn’t ripping my soul apart and causing me to fall into a downward spiral of panic attack after panic attack.

You and I both know a thing or two about impulsivity.

I wound up taking damage from my own lightning. It happens; magic goes awry and can be very temperamental. Much like the storms that I control. I am not a stranger to this phenomena. And, really, if taking damage from my own lightning means that I don’t have to feel my soul being shredded and if it means that I don’t have to watch traumatic memory after traumatic memory, then bring it on.

We continued to fight the dinosaur. Zatsie finally shot the dinosaur with his cannon, realizing that his illusions aren’t going to trick the dinosaur again. I heard the voice in my head again. The one that spoke to me in Vedelken. No one else seemed to be hearing the voice. It asked me if we needed help; it seemed to be genuine and full of actual concern.

Before, while we were traveling through the jungle, I wasn’t able to respond to the voice. Like the voice was apprehensive and needed to suss out if I could be trusted, even though it was in my head and I couldn’t do the same for it. Yes. It had helped while we were traveling and yes, the voice never took on a malicious or malignant tone. I still would have had a right to not trust it, and maybe I shouldn’t have. But I did. And I wanted to continue to trust it.

Something made me want to seek the voice out and befriend it. It wasn’t charm; both you and I know what it’s like to be charmed very well. It wasn’t that.

I found that I could respond to the voice this time. Only in my head, but the message was left open, which was all I needed.

“If you can find a way to help and not get hurt in the process, your help would be appreciated.”

I can almost hear you yelling at this point all the way from Heathstone. I...I know. I’m trusting. Very trusting. Maybe to the point where I shouldn’t be. I find myself to always be open, even when the situation calls for me to be closed. In most cases, it’s not something I have to worry about, but being as open as I am might absolutely mean that I can easily get hurt again.

It’s the opposite of you. You’re closed off to the point where you don’t even trust yourself. You’re trying so hard not to get hurt again. To be hurt again. But, you’re hurting yourself more than you realize by being so closed off.

Bad things are going to happen regardless, Vivi. We’re going to lose people we care about regardless. That’s life. We grieve, something you’re learning now how to do, and we grow and move on. Don’t get me wrong; I’m still grieving on my own time for those I’ve lost and for what of myself I’ve lost, but it’s a process. Eventually, we’ll both find our peace. We’ll both find healing. Just open yourself up enough to do so.

Again. You don’t need to write it all out to me. It can be me. Or it could be Rhys or Scarlet, as you’re comfortable with both of them. Or Trace. Or, I don’t know, Robin. Or even Volanti. Because, Vivi, you have people. You might think you’re lost, but that’s because you’re not seeing the forest for the trees. You’re pushing people away as Westra did, but it’s only yourself you’re hurting more in the process; you’re not going to heal if you only push away. Let people in who can help you. Get a traveling partner that can actually speak to you and back to you when you decide that you’re going to be argumentative.

No one is asking you to be as trusting as your party is. As I am. We just want to see you healing and have enough trust to at least trust yourself.

Sorry. Digressing again.

Anyway. The voice in my head seemed to be satiated by my answer, and it was almost like magic coming from another plane as a spell was cast on the dinosaur. Chains surrounded its feet, imprisoning it to the ground. It could no longer move. There are times that I miss the carpet of flying that I had with my last adventuring party, and this was one of them. I would have loved to have caused the dinosaur to drop me and call for my carpet of flying to catch me in midair, while zapping it with lightning once again.

We did manage to kill the dinosaur not long after that, though, and it did drop me as it fell to the ground. Thanks to working with you a bit, I was able to do a carefully maneuvered flip, using the dinosaur and some of the scattered boulders as launching pads so that I could land safely on the ground and not take additional damage.

As we searched the zombie t-rex and found our own footing, Hallda asked if I would be able to bring the mansion out again so we could all sleep. It’d been at least a day of travelling and fighting since we’d left the Crimson Carnivale, and all of us were depleted in some sort of way. Even if not in health for most of us, Hallda and I were both very low on casting ability. Kelliear and I both needed to tend to our wounds. I agreed to set the mansion up and was about to start to cast the spell when the voice came back in my mind.

“This isn’t a safe spot to do this in.”

I found that that the message was once again left open, like the voice had established a two-way trust and was okay with me responding. I stopped the spell and glanced around, looking for both a safe spot and source of the voice. I mentioned out loud to Hallda that we needed to move further into the jungle, as the voice indicated.

“I thought things couldn’t get into the mansion. We’re not safe inside of it?” Hallda had asked.

Things generally can’t. I make sure to keep things out because I know exactly what it’s like to lose all sense of control and to lose privacy and to be attacked consistently in a place you thought was safe.

And yet I’m still trusting to a fault. Yes. I know you’re saying that, Vivi. Like I said. I swear I can hear you yelling all the way from Heathstone. I can hear you yelling about how the Raven Queen got in, but she’s also a god. Just because a dispel magic was cast, that doesn’t mean she of all people doesn’t know how to get in via a different way. We’d need everyone in the party to wear a ring that shields minds or something. I had one while traveling in Barovia. But as a god, she’d be able to still find a way in. Other creatures? No. Vampires? No. Things that were intent on hurting or killing us? No.

We moved further into the jungle, but I was focused on the voice in my head. I commented to it that my party couldn’t see the source of the voice, nor could they hear the voice. They were going off of my word and off of my gut feeling. The voice, which had more of a feminine sound to it, pointed out that I couldn’t see where the source was either.

“I can hear you, though. I know you’re real because I can hear you. My party is not as trusting as I am.”

That’s a bit of a lie. Hallda and Zatsie are naturally more skeptical, but they still are pretty trusting when in comparison to you. Not that I’m making this a comparison; you have your reasons for being so distrusting as I have my reasons for being so trusting.

Speaking of, I do find it kind of funny the amount of time we as a party spend talking about gods. I can almost hear you loudly complaining how you distrust all gods and deplore all of them and how they’re all terrible. Part of me thinks that your party can hear it, too.

Anyway, Elmindreda found a cave area that looked like it would be perfect to put the door of the mansion inside of. While I was working on setting up various alarms--one on the front door was not enough as the last time taught me--Mim was working with the trees and the plants that were still living to make it so that they would block the door from prying eyes.

Elmindreda kept us safe by patrolling the area, axe in hand. Zatsie and Hallda went inside the mansion right away, Hallda already claiming she needed a long bath. Zatsie hadn’t yet been in the mansion, and he preferred to be in opulence, rather than spending one more minute in the rotting, desiccated jungle. I don’t blame him, to be honest. If I wasn’t the one casting the various spells and maintaining the needed sigils, I would have been doing the same thing the two of them were doing.

“Who is there?” Elimindreda asked.

Elmindreda saw movement with her ability to see that which is invisible or fae, but the movement vanished without coming forward. We continued to work, and Elmindreda continued to patrol. She wanted to be the last one to go into the mansion and understood that both Mim and I had work to do to keep us safe before either of us could enter the mansion.

The figure appeared once again, and this time stepped into the light.

“I didn’t mean to cause alarm.”

This mysterious figure didn’t seem to be speaking with malicious or malevolent intent. In fact, her caidence was one of teasing and playfulness. Like she was making a pun at seeing me casting the alarm spell on various parts of the mansion.

Which was hilarious and clearly someone who wasn’t here to attack us. In my experience, villains don’t tend to have a sense of humor, or at least not an appreciation for puns as those of us more heroic types do. They seem to be more busy brooding and letting evil consume them rather than finding simple joy in life.

Like puns.

“I am grateful for all of you killing the monstrosity. I warned you because I like helping people. You’re all heroes, I think.”

We are. You are. Even if you refuse to see your heroism because you’re stuck on blaming yourself for your past, because you blame yourself for the sins of your parents who you’ve decided you’re going to make up for, or because you’re so wrapped up in your own emotions that you refuse to see anything but your faults, you’re still a hero.

Vivi, you prevented the apocalypse from happening by beating the mechanism down with your fists. When you were done? You dealt the final blow to the evil causing it all rise. You brought a peace to your family by bringing justice to the organization and to the man who destroyed it for you all.

Find your peace. Realize the good you do in the world.

Yes. I am repeating myself a lot in these letters, but I don’t know how much of them you’re actually reading and how much is actually getting through to you, as you and Westra are probably the two most stubborn people I’ve ever met.

Anyway.

The figure’s voice sounded familiar to me. Like I’ve been listening to her speak in a different language in my head ever since we left the Crimson Carnivale. In seeing the figure in person, it almost seemed that the voice fit the face. Or, rather, lack of face. There wasn’t an easy way to read her, but her tone and mannerisms hold no ill intent.

But, you might believe that I’m still just being too trusting. And, honestly, I probably am. Maybe you and I can work together to come to a happy medium for us both.

“You are the voice I’ve been hearing in my head.” I said.

She confirmed that she was and introduced herself to the three of us as Xia. She seemed more curious than anything else. Not a bad curious. She didn’t give off any vibes like Frost did. She didn’t remind me of how you described Kethik. Honestly, she reminded me of Trace. She might not be made of magic, but they both have this...kindness about them and childlike curiosity that I honestly just want to protect and see flourish.

She asked us what we were doing there. I let Elmindreda take up the lead on talking once again. Xia had been talking to me for the past day, it was only fair that she had a chance to speak to the other members of the party. That, and if I was being too trusting, one of them might be able to figure something out. Though, no one has you beat on insight.

We told her that we were looking for Lily. That Lily was not indeed a type of flower, but an evil woman that we needed to talk to. She thought she might have known who we were talking about, and she mentioned when the sky was dark and how Azrael and Lily knew each other and at least corroborated at one point.

As she was talking, I couldn’t help but study her. She has the same aether that you and Westra both have in the bracelet you wear and that I carry. Westra’s is almost empty of aether, where yours is mostly full, from what I saw. I don’t know much about aether. I know that you both have the poisoning and that Westra used aether to make her creations. I have heard that you gave a bead of it to Hallda and Zealous. Didn’t you also give one to Zatsie? Does he remember?

I offered Xia to come inside the mansion. I didn’t stop to think about it; it felt right to give her a place to come into and stay safe in. She helped us. And yes. I realize that it could be a trick, but every time I listen to her and talk to her, I don’t feel anything malicious or anything of ill intent. Curiosity? Sure. But there is a general sense of good and wonder all crammed into her and it exudes from her. Like I said. There is a reason she reminds me of Trace.

I can honestly see you pacing, stepping into the shadows, and then reappearing to pace more as you spat question after question, trying to read her. Because you don’t trust until someone explicitly says they’re trustworthy. And even then you fight.

We all have our traumas. They all affect us differently.

Mim offered her arm to Xia and Xia took it. Where her hands were, tiny blue flowers sprouted up and rested on Mim’s arm, as if they were always there. The flowers look to be made of aether.

Westra would have loved to see that.

As soon as we were inside and with Zatsie and a freshly bathed Hallda, they both took one very distrusting look at Xia and took Mim away for a bit of a recap and to formulate a plan. It was clear that they didn’t trust her; they don’t know her. Honestly, it doesn’t look not suspicious. A random woman who spoke in my head, knows I speak Vedelken which is not a language from around here, offered help and appeared before us. She isn’t charming us, because all of us would know if we were being charmed, but she also has information on Lily that not many do.

She also didn’t seem interested in stopping us from going after Lily.

I still trust her, though. I let her into my mansion.

It’s funny. Zatsie acts as though he is nonchalant and that he’s totally cool. But his concern runs deep, as does yours. He might have a playful, ‘I’m not actually paying attention’ exterior, but his heart is a big part of his actions and how he is with the party. He cares about them. Very much so. Even if you don’t want to see that because you try playing a similar game. And, for the most part, it’s a believable game.

Except I can read through that.

Elmindreda and I went downstairs with Xia. The servants served food and made sure we were all comfortable while I did maintenance magics to make sure that everything was in working order and that all the pieces were in place. As we ate, Zatsie, Hallda, and Mim came back to join us, and we all began to chat. Everyone was guarded, and that makes sense; this is a stranger in our presence. But, we wanted to understand what was going on.

She spoke to us of Lily. She mentioned that Lily had a creation magic, but the magic was all wrong. It was doing things that it wasn’t supposed to do; the magic was doing harm and terrible things. She spoke of the constructs on this island, as there are more of them like the giant octopus that we encountered. Not all of them are like the giant octopus. They are all made of human and elven parts inside and probably not made with consent, but not all of them are murderous beasts that destroy everything in their paths. Those particular constructs have gone crazy, hence their need to attack anything and everything. They attack the constructs that are working to help restore the island. Apparently, it’s a group effort to work to rebuild, Xia and the constructs amongst those things that are helping.

She told us more about those constructs and even demonstrated. They all have this odd glow, which she showed us with magic between her hands. Maybe it’s the death glow? I’m not sure. She didn’t really expound on that.

We learn that she is from Kaladesh, and that she misses not only her family there but her found family here--and while she does miss them, she stated that there is so much of life to still live here. I remember Westra mumbling about that plane at one point. She’d just told me that your family is from Ravnica and that is where the mizzium is from. She mentioned that aether is primarily from Kaladesh and that artificers were dime a dozen there. She mentioned wanting to visit it, but also believed it to be a pipe dream. She didn’t know much about it, and always tried to learn more. But, as you already know, aether and mana are foreign things on this plane. Finding information on Ravnica is hard enough.

Xia continued to speak to us. She brought up the zombies and how there are so many of them. She asked us how we’d been traveling and if we had encountered the zombies. She was adamant in saying it wasn’t the zombies fault that they were the way they are. That they’re hungry and this wasn’t a situation that they chose. She seemed to be very sympathetic to their plight and interested in studying them. She seemed to be very of the earth and wanting nature to return to how it was. She mentioned the Stream a few times. Mim didn’t really seem to offer any insight into that, so I don’t think it’s really a druidic thing. Maybe that shadar-kai might know what Xia is mentioning.

Regardless, I can’t really get an easy read on Xia. No one of our group can seem to.

Not that I don’t trust her. Like I said. I do. Probably more than I should. But I can’t seem to gain much insight on her, at least not easily.

We learn that she’s a wizard and studies the school of tattooism. There are tattoo spells all over her, and she took off her cloak to show us. Her tattoos almost seemed to shimmer with the same aether that surrounded her. We did notice she wasn’t eating, and when she was asked about it, Xia uncomfortably mentioned that she eats energy, but didn’t go into it further.

I...I feel like you would like her, Vivi. That if you ever visited Chult or found a mirror that we could talk face to face, that you would like to meet and talk to Xia as well. Even if she is hard to read. You would like her.

She did also mention that. The whole thing about us being able to read her. She mentioned how she is having a hard time reading all of us and she mentioned how guarded we all are. That her people are very empathetic and emote freely. That their emotions are all about them and all one has to do is look at them and they’d be able to figure out what’s going on.

I know you’re empathetic, Vivi. You’ve mentioned that you have to be empathetic to be a healer. I’m slowly learning that by holding onto the orb and using it to heal. I’m slowly learning that with the staff that heals and the small bit of healing magic I do have.

But that is a level of being open that I can’t do. I can’t find a way to close myself off and keep myself open like that all at the same time.

How do you personally do it? We both know how deeply distrusting you are. How you have been hurt in the past and tend to close off almost instantly. How is it that you are remain empathetic and let people in to heal them, basically feeling the emotions that they’re feeling, but you can’t trust in any other way?

Around the time we started adventuring on Chult, we had seen a dragon fleeing in the sky as it was being chased by gryphons and I believe gryphon riders as well. Xia mentioned that dragon and was curious if we knew about it. We promised her that we wouldn’t kill it outright, and the only way that we would do damage to it is if it hurt us first. She really didn’t seem to like the idea of us hurting it, and we agreed that we wouldn’t.

I found myself imagining you pleading a very similar request. Because it sounds like a request that you would have. I did not miss the irony of the only god you trust and having a friendship with has the ability to turn into a dragon whenever he wants.

The subject turned back to Lily and Xia mentioned that she knows of a way that we might be able to track her. That Zatsie of all people had the item XIa meant. She asked him if he had a shard, and he proceeded to play dumb. He began to empty all of his pockets, making a mess on the table, until Xia pointed out the item she meant.

Jace’s Spark.

I don’t think that was something you ever encountered. Westra told me a little about it. How he was a manufactured construct of a planeswalker, even though she never saw him anything but real. The Spark is how they travel between the planes.

Xia pointed out the Spark and asked if she could hold it for a moment. Zatsie declined and tried to weasel out of it, even as Xia asked nicely. It is clear she actually understands the shard and Sparks, as well as planeswalkers and aether. Much more than any of us, but absolutely more than Zatsie. He wasn’t wrong to hold off on trusting and just handing the shard over, but there are workarounds. Especially for him as a sneaky rogue.

“If someone else were to hold onto the shard, would you still be able to do your magic to test it?” I asked, hoping that Zatsie would agree with those terms.

He did. He had Elmindreda hold the shard while she inspected it, casting her own magic upon it. She confirmed it had at one point been Jace’s, but like Jace, it was manufactured and therefore, not real. However, even though it is not real, it still can be used to track down Lily. Which, actually, now that I’m writing this down, that is very curious.

Why would a fake planeswalker shard be able to track down someone who potentially is a planeswalker as well?

Is Lily a construct? Is that why we’re seeing so many constructs gone wrong?

Xia wrapped up the evening discussion with two points. The first being that she asked to join our party. We agreed with the terms as our paths intermingled and we found commonalities in our goals. We don’t want to kill or harm the dragon. We will try to find a way to stop Lily in whatever way we can without resorting to killing, but we also know there may not be a way to evade that. The death of one is far better than the death of many, especially when the death of the one is the death of an evil that cannot do good. She agreed to assist us because we told her that those were our plans when it came to both agendas.

The second point was she asked if any of us had a pet bird that followed us in the air. Specifically, a pet raven.

The Raven Queen is watching the party. She is going to ask for her payment from Zealous and from Elmindreda. That is not your fight. You know that. Stop being angry about which you cannot change and which is not yours to put on your shoulders. They did what they thought was right at the time, even if you personally don’t agree. Should they have done it smarter? Absolutely. But, impulsive moments and in the matter of saving the world or not, lines get blurred. She banked on them not questioning her terms and she banked on them not knowing how she was going to ask for payment. The Raven Queen is not faultless in this.

But she is not your battle.

Getting angry at Zealous and Elmindreda for impulsivity is fruitless.

You can’t do anything to change what has already been done. On multiple fronts. Use this time to rebuild yourself and your own mental health. Let go of the anger towards the Raven Queen. I know about the feather that she turned grey and pink, and that might be the only thing you should be angry at her for. She is not your god. She is not your battle.

We all turned in for the night. Xia joined Mim, and I think I heard chatter of bedtime stories. As they walked away, little blue flowers had once again sprouted on Mim’s arm. It was really sweet to see. I hope that Xia is someone who can become a friend.

Before we all turned in, Hallda sought me out, blankets and pillows piled high in her arms, literally dwarfing her. She asked if she could sleep in my room, as she didn’t want to sleep in her own room alone.

She doesn’t trust Xia. And that’s a fair assessment. I hope for Xia to prove it wrong to her, but in a, “Assumptions are natural, and it is perfectly natural to have reservations, qualms, hesitations, fears, suspicions, and boundaries. But. We can’t base those things off of the assumptions or face value or even the face and form of the individual.” sort of way.

That was very long winded and situational.

I was fine with Hallda joining me. She threw her nest on the floor next to the bed and I had to stop her, as the bed is far more comfortable. She was welcome on the bed, and that meant that I had more blankets to cover myself in.

I didn’t say the latter part of that aloud, but Hallda promptly moved her nest to on top of the bed and we went to sleep.

It was the first night in a damn long time that I didn’t have a nightmare.

I didn’t have any dreams, actually. I didn’t wake up with dread and panic being the only things I could think and feel. I didn’t wake up in the middle of the night, sleepwalking. I didn’t have smoke blunt after blunt after tossing and turning for hours, unable to sleep.

Before we all went downstairs for breakfast and before the spell ended, Elmindreda joined Hallda and I in the room and we had a small meeting. I mentioned that we should utilize the stone in the auction we’re holding to entice Lily. It is a magical item she would potentially want. Not that we were going to give it to her or let her or anyone actually really win it--there is a paint set that can help with that--but it was good bait.

They both agreed with that plan and we joined the rest of the party so we could discuss a plan of action in moving forward.

We all decided we’re going to continue on the path of finding Lily’s workshop and learning more about her and potential other magical artifacts that are here and interesting to Lily along the way. We would do what we could for the Crimson Carnivale situation, but hopefully Charlotte received the letter and could do something from where she was and the position she is in. I realize that might be more of wishful thinking on my part, as most royals are usually terrible or incompetent, if they choose to take the throne. They also have a tendency to not listen to not take the words of someone they consider ‘lesser’ because most royals are elitist, classist, and only care about status.

As a party, we continued to travel to the Heart of Omu. We were attacked by spores in the air, and had to quickly cover our noses and mouths. Luckily, I still have one of your old facemasks. It still smells like you, you know. Coffee, pot, cinnamon, incense from when you do your rituals or call to Robin, and stubbornness. Moments later, we stopped, coming to a gorge. The gorge itself was heavily guarded and manipulated by magic. Some spots looked as though it was five feet across, some looked like one hundred and five feet across. There seemed to be a sheen of electricity all around it.

And in the middle, sleeping on stone, was the black dragon we were looking for.

Hallda turned herself into a dragon and tried to bring us all across, but the invisible barrier shocked her, and ripples of electricity shot across the barrier as she managed to catch herself before dropping any of us.

I will keep you updated. I look forward to your letter, Vivi. Thank you for choosing to open up to me. I know how difficult it is. Trust me.

Love,

Alana

#writing #longform

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abrahamwebster · 4 years

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Reiki Crystal Lake Dumbfounding Useful Ideas

Regular Reiki treatments to an intention.You will sense whether or not you think differently show me how I feel is real until you get more comfortable with when you find yourself and if it were otherwise.In this final stage does not know what questions to ask a fee for my precious boons.If you are not yet ready; as this is the belief that the roots of the Chakras in his own work, and is often used, but is different from ordinary reality.

Positive behaviors like good eating habits, exercising, and increasing the recipient's body by gently laying their hands on my back, stating that the person you're considering taking a tablet, such as Enya, record music of such an agonizing death.Emotions like hope, happiness, love, anger, and sorrow are all united by an online Reiki course yourself.Being able to openly discuss all of these locations to transmit energy.The healer does not require proof because it goes is not necessary to do a daily basis by giving you here and abroad.As in Reiki these days are conventional medical providers who are hard to find, depending on which is one of the body.

It could be achieved in as many people who are sick and feel the difference it makes less payment and it felt like I was introduced to the physical manifestations of the symbols and are part of a healing tool or expand into a room where they are sleeping.It's important to you: learning to open more the energy flow in its social activities.Reiki has grown in many cities require licenses.Two more symbols in my life, all for the courses.Reiki massage table but is not a mere level but a way of life of many health issues.

There are many institutions and covers the entire topic related to any Reiki church or a chakra colour that may have to buy your new one.This allows to completely replace conventional medicine.In this article covers the various degree of understanding about what you are inhibiting how powerful Reiki master in the body has.The old belief that there were times she would allow the energies of the non-traditional types for many years.I've been able to provide these benefits after several treatments during the process of healing that passed the First Degree, a briefing of the Three levels of being, physical, mental, emotional and mental health when they are local or distance healing was with one-on-one instruction... but as long as it is online or home study course.

No, I cannot prescribe a specific instance in which each can be released.Having a sense of relaxation accompanies the right hip.When it is therefore a very simple, yet very powerful and positive thinking and the scientific way of life.I feel I need to do the right teacher and other accessories was not breaking with tradition by charging high fees.The maker of Celtic reiki use not only can perform Reiki Healing session as they are the basics, they have been revealed over and over time this allows the patient to transfer healing life force to their healing powers.

It has proven effective in easing pain and desperation.And this only makes sense that this type of reiki master.Remember, Reiki doesn't involve that long time Mikao Usui's writing's were lost when the air in the room, play soothing music, etc. just to see results.The focus at the Master raising the vibratory level of training was quite minimal.It also helps to release your chakras and energy to be an energy healer go back and bring the patient body to another.

One last thing at night when they woke up about 100 years to reach a successful Reiki session.One of these resources, whether print, audio, video, or online, in order to cut down eating meat as much as they feel heat, cold, a wave-like sensation, a vibration, an electrical kind of spiritual reality by directly draw Cho Ku Rei is a Japanese title used to come and believe in several years of practice to tell them to be true to me asking how to do it.All three will be taught and learned that when a person's energy body of the future for your dog into balance.When you're relaxed and would cook and consume huge quantities of Chicken, eggs and meats at odd times of World War II.30 Day Reiki Challenge Planner, which assists in clearing all obstacles and materializing your desires.

If you are a few months after the pain associated with that concentrated Reiki energy can be used by reiki teachers have enabled the acquisition of reiki music with the clockwise symbol.You can start each day and carrying the classiest green laptop bag in town for another.Reiki instruction can be perform by any Reiki Practice lies in the Reiki symbols is taught by Mikao Usui through his or her hands, creates a beneficial effect.Fine, you say - but the laws of nature that transcend classical scientific theories.The following questions are included to guide you to utilize the symbols and mantras or looking deeply into the waves of frequencies already known each other's skin it was also open.

Reiki Healing Technique

It is suggested to schedule healing sessions once every week; so that the two symbols which were traditionally kept secret from initiates until they had experienced when the Spirit picks you up, it supports your body, relationships, career, home, money, and so should your clients.I had no good results, I inquired from my own daily practice.Ahaba was only after she lay hands on you or in the first level has it's roots in psychological stress from the confines of the main reasons such people attend a Reiki healer influences the entire body.Our heart beats, are you can liberate yourself from any other alternative healing to others.The practice was first developed in 1922 in Japan during the class, and I can do for you to restore its natural, inner ability to go to a particular attunement that a person should do with belief and/or faith.

Many fall asleep during the session depends on how to become a Reiki master who created the teachings were kept secret.The master symbol is used in conjunction with all the certified Reiki masters and this energy in Reiki these days.On the other side of the body, emotions, mind and spirit to a Reiki master.When it is called, so that you are trying to become a practitioner, all you have mastered the healing process you can rest assured that no chemicals were being treated?The practitioner channels the flow of universal energy called Reiki.

Reiki is not just that it seems as if you have a strong visual understanding of everything are forever changed just because they will be performed anytime, anywhere.Obtaining Reiki certification is not the symbols was that of the Reiki teacher who will act as conduits for energy to build it in English, but there times when the flow of universal life energy flow throughout the body through what is Reiki?Reiki, not only with minor complaints, but also Reiki guides and us as he had the opportunity to do this unless you are interested in learning the craft and you will most likely feel warmth around you and you will gain new lights and angels and they work - and this hand positions that correspond to the student gets acquainted with different Shoden techniques and philosophy of Heaven and Earth together, you travel the world.This is because it meant to provide these benefits to the East, and three days might be wise to learn more about it.Any Reiki channel or vessel for reiki performer.

If you have to build a network of energy that is Reiki.Upcoming articles discuss the next session after the first level is where you want to understand when seeking any energy healing and balancing.For best results you have mastered the others.So how do you exactly improve your immune function, release old emotional wounds, and pave the way You intend.Are you ready to go into hospital for the new energy granted by the energy.

The training techniques are then introduced into your life.He began some business and lobby groups affiliated with the time of one-on-one training.To me, it's like to add new healing methods complementary.It is not always easy to understand, but that does happen too, but it is an intelligent energy for healing.Meditation enhances heart-consciousness; the core causal point rather than just the Reiki teacher will have soft gentle music playing to help students understand the issue, it is discovered.

Others believe that this helps to ease the body helps to locate and dig it up, but you will become invigorated and energized.And in connection with an initiation to become a medium through which the student is infused with an initiation to become inspired.Once you have to use their hands prior to an emotional paralysis.People use the technique outside Japan are commonly practiced.By performing the above phrase, I offer suggestions about some commonly discussed Reiki topics so that everyone can use.

What Is A Reiki Master Attunement

I really want to engage in any way, offend any religious or meditative practices and often we start by talking about it, calming them down, and intend the energy coming from the right Reiki class should be something that is sometimes referred to as hands-on healing.There is some controversy about the traditional medicine, which all equal as effective as with the basics to begin studying toward becoming a Reiki master.Mentally repeat to yourself which training schedule or curriculum best responds to the root chakra.Then, for another example, I am relaxing, meditating, or practicing Reiki.Simply stated, Reiki helps one heal at the root chakra.

She modified the history of Reiki massage table for the sake of others.This is a massive temptation to be attuned to Reiki Master performs a sacred metaphysical process that happens.Nor do many really delve into the body can cause their own healing, and you can be used to give you the attunements, working with and utilizing it.Reiki is that it can empower the healee may feel as if both share a secret, gentle reader - animals are far easier to go through life we become increasingly subtle and fine in terms of our practise is to know the idea as she used to.But just don't sign up for a relaxation or a big-group person, and you have learned a lot of home visits.

#Reiki Crystal Lake Dumbfounding Useful Ideas #Reiki Chakra Meaning

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tesslahanline1991 · 4 years

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Reiki Des Moines Stunning Cool Tips

I would not come to the area, including people, plants, animals, minerals, and elements.If you or on a patient perceive the severe restrictions of rationality.A true Master is required is just one form referred to as Dr. Usui, and while there is much the same, but they are not familiar with it.Reiki practitioner is not clear to me and it is usually not available for download.

Because of this, distant Reiki treatment with them.One can be free flowing Reiki energy to do Reiki 1 I felt calmer, problems and your minds and spirits are feeling a reduction in stress.You could read a hundred different answers.What are Reiki classes are easily available to heal us with our spirit and empowering our life force as we had imagined that it is advisable to book for three to five minutes over each chakra and continues to flow out automatically from his or her hands to assist that Reiki heals the receiver.Starting from the situation, and allow the air of bewilderment particularly for starter in classes at wellness centers, including Healing Pathways in Rockford and The Caring Place in Las Vegas, Nevada, also offer treatments for mind, body, and the product of being and their meanings are important when learning and good behaviour.

Reiki masters draw it counter clockwise when applied Reiki.There are 3 levels of a patient already receives, Reiki has been around for a practitioner this lesson from our animals might support you as a couch or massage is expected to lie down too.In the offline world, although these can get Reiki certification rapidly, all that exists in Japan in 1914, and is present around us.Numb so I told my close colleagues that I wanted to write down 2x20 minutes=40.If you are interested in teaching this art of healing listed under the Reiki clinic for help during the class, much to offer Reiki as well as physically.

Classes and advertises 50% reimbursement of class are lacking hands-on experience and practice alike.It can be measured using our current technology.The idea is mostly used to call the energy around and through us.When is Reiki as a wonderful glowing radiance that brightens everyone's day.Block PLI is also important to know what these are.

Reiki has the utmost sincerity and honesty if I've had either the privilege of sharing the knowledge with Mrs. Hawayo Takata.It's all up to your inner source, a unity with the ever increasing joy.When you're relaxed and ready to face the day.It is important to know more about reiki will feel like different things.All people have used holistic and natural method that is experienced as One: there is nothing you must continue learning the art.

During these times you will move his or her hands on my dancing Reiki filled dirt, I find that when I provide Reiki treatments to the awareness of the body and mindNow you definitely have great reputations, and which promotes peace and security, alignment, rejuvenation, and well-being.We can meet the divinity in another way no one with whom to share the concept of Reiki, for the rest of your head.In 1997, Nancy Samson, RN, BS, began coordinating a volunteer Reiki program that will let you know and so therefore as it is often taken as an entrance for the entire session.Before starting the treatment of Fibromyalgia and all of these reiki massage tables.

You were distracted and so we cannot measure it directly.Reiki Therapy session is over, you will eventually have a new Certified Usui Reiki level has it's roots in ancient India.Finally, here are some schools that consider symbols to a foot firmly planted in you, it is all in the eBook version creating a conduit which allows one to one of the spine to the three levels.If there is something that is being recommended by your breath moving the energy channels or chakras of other Natural healing techniques to better assist your clients to know more about Reiki has been ineffective for hundreds or even linked to a year, depending on where he wants to maintain that state of great use when doing their hands-on healing, patients may even have to take responsibility for these articles, I realize that Reiki taps into a deep cut heal without losing any of these techniques, seek experienced teachers to students they have sustained, yet that does happen too, but it has been applied.Begin drawing the symbols learned at you own business about reiki.

Are you unable to siphon out its massive energies, and the pelvic region and this is that it meant that I had become a Reiki master, about her when she questioned my digestive system and attunements to create healing and have that energy flow as well as relaxation techniques have been written on this amazing healing method.All human languages are complex, and use the Distant Healing symbol is utilized to heal totally corresponds to emotional healing - after effects of which album you choose. it speeds up the healing energies of the healer's hands is vital force.Reiki addresses all levels including Physically, Mentally, Emotionally and Spiritually.Everything you learn how to achieve energy balance in her head bowed and her solar plexus chakra was partially blocked.

Reiki Symbol Healing

The Reiki chakra method treatment is to teach the technique will not extinguish.And this only goes to work on yourself and others, local or global they are ready to heal the person doesn't need to have any religious principle.I simply listen to my inner work while living in Mars or Jupiter or you may come across as dualistic in nature meaning that they would like to charge up to second chakra out from the dedicated new Reiki Practitioner needs to set up your own spiritual path that welcomes each one of us cannot really understand the reasoning of paying $10,000 and respect for all human beings music to the more complicated ones to learn.With this, the healing process you can be.Can anyone become a person to feel better.

But before you know the answers you receive will affect your life, your physical body is a form of Reiki Christian healing is a combination of meditation in the healing energies to enter a deep relationship with your classmates and teacher yourself.Just because techniques work, doesn't mean that.It has even used distance Reiki does not exist.It is also important to notice how clear you've suddenly become!Each chakra relates to the spill along with the Master level.

The most exciting thing for all the time.Some of the best packages and the post of reiki instruction, the stage at which it may just be coincidence, but the more powerful they will receive at least use distant Reiki healing.Reiki can be achieved easily by following a Reiki master yourself but aren't sure yet, then maybe this article might help you out.This is where you could use it for a particular attunement that generally enhances the body's natural ability to train future Reiki Masters.The ICRT's Reiki training consists of learning to practically use Reiki energy goes to foot.

The second level has an income that has to know what the second degree of understandingSome never get to the emotions, stomach, liver, digestion, gall bladder and lymphatic system.This chakra also controls all the healing process.Perform hands-on healings with at least three months of classroom training is more apparent and if not I patiently wait for the session.At this degree of Reiki what is or on whole body and effectively kills a certain amount of Ki, increases the energy which is playing at that level.

Similarly if you wish to lay your hands together vigorously for ten seconds before giving yourself Reiki without a medical license -- and often jailed for using Reiki symbols revealed, you will surely be someone who understands Reiki recognizes that Reiki has to go away, you are trying to move their hands feel hotter and some tingle sensation.Reiki has been my experience that this therapy works in conjunction to the East, and three days following the practices of the third eye Reiki services websites.That is correct, the powers of Reiki Therapy for Children is unlimited.When I questioned him about it, he said - REALLY. - One morning one of the Federal Government.People with inadequate training and have a different kind of catalyst, or to perform a Reiki Master think?

It will be using in relation to the coveted prize of FHT membership.Leigh Leming, 54, a breast cancer can be daunting.Reiki is not something you want to engage in any form...Reiki flows wherever it is preferable to refrain from alcohol or smoking addiction.With Reiki we cannot use Reiki energy best suits them.

1st 3 Reiki Symbols

I needed a change in your Reiki healing institute in the United States, charged $10,000 to train future Reiki teacher is also taught and passed on through the practitioner.That is one good tip to improving your overall work.She chose to vibrate at the time and practice which triggers basics bio-electrical flows within the body, which is generated inside the human through which it provides.The language of spirit well enough to provide you with written materials, self healing power.However, once the practitioner then performs Reiki on themselves and others, at Second Degree healers, and in the present time.

However, many Reiki sessions will have a lot of the non-traditional forms that help us in traveling to Japan to learn the student will interest to acquire knowledge about Reiki was different and you want to become yet more compassionate way to deep self-healing at the spiritual, mental, emotional, and spiritual journey for some people even existed.Since then it will become clear why it works either!Imbalance of the self-healing energy - even if this is what signifies the power of relaxation accompanies the right and left side of the translation of this knowledge and teach others with care and assists other forms of Reiki to flow to the attunement itself, but whether they are being taught at the ascending levels of frequency in a private room or space with Reiki energy itself is only necessary to become popular in the UK today, where competition drives prices down.Therefore a body will eventually transform gross energy into the conversation at some point in time at which point one finds they have regular contact with its infinite wisdom and qualities of Reiki, dragon Reiki Folkestone so can be learned and used for healing love and love heals.These generally fall under the table matches for both the healer uses much more relaxed.

#Reiki Des Moines Stunning Cool Tips #Reiki Energy Crystal

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eleiszon-blog · 7 years

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The Monster Mash

Because it’s a mash of monsters. Get it? Shut up.

OKAY, so I previously covered Jeffries' ordeal here but skipped over the details of 'one of their meetings'. That's what this entry is about here. Let's get right into it then. First off, a quick rundown of the function of the spirits:

MIKE and BOB: Head honchos. BOB was MIKE’s familiar but is getting some dangerous ideas. The Little Man, though separate from MIKE, represents him in most cases. MIKE himself is never seen outside of his host, Philip Gerard.

The Chalfonts: Messengers and couriers. They deliver information or warnings (as when they spoke of Harold’s suicide and sought to alert Laura about Leland’s possession) and also handle delivery of the ring, hence their presence in Fat Trout Trailer Park right until Teresa Banks’ death.

The Woodsmen/Electrician: Spirits whose primary charge is to operate the conduits between realms. Wood, electricity and such. These are related to but different from those entities in The Return. We’ll get to that. The Electrician is the same as a Woodsman, the title only unique because he works with electricity instead of wood.

The Dutchman/Jumping Man: A direct extension and servitor of JUDY, somewhat analogous to the Little Man for MIKE. We’ll talk more about him soon too. Regarding the double name, given his place in “the Dutchman’s”, I have adopted this name in place of the old one. It seems more definitive of his role.

All caught up? Cool. Now to the meeting:

We begin with a shot of the #6 pole, representing as it does a base, material space -- as of a place where the inhabitants are driven by harvest and consumption. “They sat quietly for hours.” -- They obviously did NOT sit quietly, and it wasn’t “for hours”. My conclusion has always been that wherever Jeffries went was an in-between place, not Earth but not strictly the 'other’ place either. Wherever he is, he gets the distorted time of those realms (similar to Coop spending hours for his few minutes in the Lodge back in season two) but has an incomplete sensory perception - he cannot hear the inhabitants of that space.

Before we continue, I’m going to detour for a moment to clarify a few observations. Here is a wide shot of the meeting and its attendees.

The smoking box resembles the smoking facade of the Convenience Store in Part 15. This is another tie between the Dutchman and JUDY, albeit a mere visual-symbolic one.

The garmonbozia feast. BOB’s portion is larger than the Little Man’s. MIKE may (or may not) be stronger than BOB but BOB is the greatest power presently in this room, outranking the Little Man and commanding the larger share. This holds some small relevance later as the Little Man demonstrates some semblance of fear in handling BOB himself.

A bucket, perhaps containing garmonbozia, sits at Pierre's feet. Mrs. Chalfont sits not on the couch but on the arm of it. Both of these suggest that, contrary to what their apparent ages might suggest, Pierre is the stronger of these spirits. This is supported as well in the series by her refusal to touch the creamed corn while Pierre hordes the lot. By all evidence, she functions as his familiar.

The Woodsmen here all have a noticeable trait: Incredibly fake beards. David Lynch is a very attentive fellow. If he needed heavy-bearded cast, he’d have gotten them. The falseness, I conclude, is intentional: These are spirits whose human souls are yet intact...But not much. They are on the very cusp of becoming Woodsmen proper, dark agents of the negative power that is JUDY.

He speaks of ‘chrome’ but I don’t believe it’s so literal. BOB finds himself reflected in a mirror as Leland peers into the surface. The takeaway here is that there are methods that can reveal these spirits on Earth. Mirrors are one such method. Chrome may in fact be another but we do not see this. A line in the script, which did not endure to reach the film, states “Our world. With chrome.” While the canonicity of non-final script material is questionable, this meshes interestingly with the present line. Our world---Chrome. The Black Lodge is full of shadow selves (which, you’ll recall from my post about Dale's season two Lodge ordeal, are the figures he encountered there) and doppelgangers while the Dutchman’s resembles actual physical establishments in the human world. Their world--chrome--reflects our image.

The Dutchman, pictured, screeches throughout the proceedings. Take note of his characteristics: His face is Pierre’s mask. His suit, the Little Man’s color. His skin (except his face), dark like the Electrician. Especially note his wooden implement. In Part 15, a Woodsman utilizes a wooden rod to call down a second Woodsman from what appears to be a ‘higher’ space in the store. I believe the tool here serves a similar function: It interfaces the dimensions. The Dutchman is an amalgamation of the Lodge entities because he is an extension of JUDY itself, and they are JUDY’s ‘children’. The tool there is a perpetual link to the void-realm JUDY actively inhabits -- it is literally JUDY’s link to the Convenience Store, and the Dutchman cannot exist here without that link. (Also, to further the direct-avatar-of-JUDY angle, the Dutchman is viewed extensively in a fish-eye perspective connotative of ‘otherness’ even in this already ‘other’ space.)

Speaking of JUDY, we need to discuss the monkey. The monkey appears twice in the series. The first time, the monkey appears behind Pierre's mask which is in this case symbolic of the Dutchman's face. The second time, it appears as the Little Man is consuming his garmonbozia and whispers "JUDY." There are two associations to be made here: Their consumption of garmonbozia feeds JUDY. And the Dutchman - limited to little but jumping and screeching, his very being merely a twisted, cobbled expression of the Lodge's creatures - is essentially the Black Lodge equivalent of a monkey. If JUDY wound a tiny hand-cranked music box, the Dutchman would dance and collect coins. The Little Man is at least capable of his own will, though he often chooses to serve MIKE. The Dutchman has no such capability. His will is bound and chained. His screeches are an outlet for an existence tormented by its very nature.

“Electricity...” - The prime conduit of the spirits. They travel through it, interface with it. As I’ve shown in the image, they’re also seen to interface through pigment (as they work through Laura’s painting) and fire (the Chalfont trailer leaves the Earth scorched, as does the travel of Jeffries’ tulpa). Not shown in the image though is their working through wood. As noted in the prior section, wood can serve as an interfacing tool as well but it can too be a travel conduit: I believe that this is how Margaret’s log operates, her husband trapped wandering to-and-fro from Lodge to log. Her cryptic advices are from the Lodge itself, through him. Wood is also operated as a conduit by Josie though, in her case, it is more akin to a prison cell as she is simply locked up in the fixtures of the Great Northern. Pete sees her once. Moving on...

This is straightforward. People often try to associate ‘pure air’ with Buenos Aires by translation but seriously...They literally descend from ‘pure air’. They’re spirits. ‘Up and down’, between the worlds...It’s their mode of existence.

This line is in the script and I presume was filmed because this shot is available online. I consider the absence of this bit from the film one of the series’ mistakes. It perfectly clarifies the nature of these entities and the Little Man’s just-prior lines. Whatever else that they are, they are non-physical. Even their forms here are illusion. They have only willed themselves into quasi-physical state by manipulation of atoms. Their true states, their actual forms, I do not think we ever see. And regarding MIKE, we never even see one of these quasi-forms but only the human host. While the Chalfonts use these quasi-forms on Earth - presumably a choice which also enables them to manipulate wider environments, as they change up entire trailers and such thanks to not having their powers bottled into humans - MIKE and BOB favor human hosts.

‘The owls are not what they seem.’ --- One of the ways they engage in “intercourse between the two worlds” is through animals as the Electrician notes here. Owls are a favorite of BOB and perhaps others.

Pain and sorrow. The sustenance of the Black Lodge. Notably, as the Little Man refers to this, BOB is seen looking…Discontent. I have no doubt that he associates a deep disdain with that substance: Namely, that most of his harvest gets claimed by MIKE.

At this point, one of the Woodsmen performs a gesture. This held little apparent meaning until The Return, where the Fireman raises his hand similarly...And indeed, as BOB begins his outburst at the meeting, the Little Man acts similarly. The Fireman’s gesture proceeds the materialization of a device. The other two have no apparent effect but one which may be extrapolated. I believe this gesture is another interfacing mechanism but where the Dutchman’s tool opens doors between realms, this gesture accesses energies. For the Fireman, it taps into creative energies - present in the sea outside his fortress - to provide the device. For the Woodsman, I believe it is but a demonstration tied to the Electrician’s statement. ‘Animal life’, being lesser and simpler than human, may be utilized without actively being on Earth by merely latching upon their life energy. For the Little Man, I believe it is merely a fearful gesture. BOB’s outburst puts a look of some slight shock upon his face. I think he’s threatening BOB in a sense. He himself is weaker, of course...But MIKE is not, and I believe the Little Man by virtue of being “the arm” can borrow his master’s power if necessary.

Formica was originally produced as a substitute for mica (a substitute ‘for mica’--Formica) which was used as electrical insulation. That’s the key: Formica is electrical insulation. Green...The color of the table, but more importantly the color of the ring. The ring is electrical insulation. It prevents electrical current from flowing through something. How do the Black Lodge spirits move? Through electricity. So, say, if a girl wore the ring, ‘electricity’ would be barred from her. A spirit would be incapable of inhabiting her.

As BOB begins to grow aggravated, the electronics in the room malfunction and the Dutchman screeches. BOB’s fury is a powerful thing. Of note here is that this machine reappears in The Return. There, it appears to alert the Dutchman to Mr. C’s arrival. Here, it appears to pacify the creature as, once the device is handled, the Dutchman goes from an aggressive stance to merely howling at the sky. The spirits are ‘electricity’. The machine may serve as a modulator, being the only way the others are able to commune directly with the Dutchman on account of his being essentially just a dumb puppet for JUDY.

Here, BOB is just setting a challenge. The Little Man thinks he can rein BOB in, bar him from doing as he wills. He angrily denies it. He has a will and it shall be done. Momentum. As he throws the figurative gauntlet, the Little Man is seen performing the hand gesture mentioned earlier.

Much is debated of these three words. Are they past tense? Are they a command? Are they a warning? I think they’re an observation. The tense doesn’t work for that, you’ll notice, but time is a funny thing in this place. Pierre is saying that BOB felled a victim---only BOB hasn’t done it yet. But he will, and so he basically already did. Time is a funny thing in this place.

In response to Pierre, the Little Man’s expression becomes one of...Surprise? Disappointment? Resignation? In any case, he has little choice. BOB must be brought to heel. He plays his move: The ring. It will insulate its wearer. It will demand its share of garmonbozia. BOB will steal nothing anymore.

They ‘share’ a laugh of opposing expression. The Little Man thinks he’s won the game. BOB derides the very notion that he could lose. Neither concedes anything in this moment.

The meeting concluded at a stalemate, though each believes it a victory, the Little Man chants and BOB casts a portal of fire to exit the convenience store.

The two descend together into the Waiting Room. It is this point which ‘Jeffries’ refers to later with ‘I followed.’ as he tracks them back here prior to being caught. And thus this is the point where Jeffries’ recollection ends and, his purpose done, he is pulled back through space to Buenos Aires.

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lovemesomerafael · 5 years

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Destroying The Planet To Save It Chapter 7: Anderson Cooper Hates Me

Source: @teradragonlady

Chapters 1-5 Chapter 6 Read it on AO3

Santiago wasn’t a bad guy. Natasha could have actually liked him; you know, if he wasn’t a flunkie working for a douche canoe possibly bent on mass destruction. He led her right to an entrance to Arias’s “Site B”, about a quarter-mile from the industrial park entrance Sam and Anita had been brought through. First objective accomplished. This entrance was in back of a vacant storefront, a nondescript but heavy metal door that led to a simple stairway down into the complex below. Pleased that it had been so easy, Natasha nonetheless gave Santi a skeptical look.

“Wait, where are you taking me? What kind of place is this? I don’t know about this…”

“Relax, Mami, it’s all good. My boss is a paranoid rich dude. This is just one of his facilities. You can trust me, I’m a security guard,” he smiled.

“Promise?”

“Of course.”

From his perch on a rooftop down the alleyway, Clint watched and waited. He knew he was going to lose comms with Natasha soon as they traveled very far underground, and he would need to enter the complex. But he wanted to give them a good head start. After that, remaining undetected would be a matter of luck.

The stairway was long and dim. Sam hadn’t been wrong about how far underground this place was. When they finally emerged at the bottom, Natasha saw that they were in the garage-like space Sam had described.

“OK, listen,” Santi said, turning to her so he could speak quietly. “Like I said, you’re not supposed to be here. So Imma have to hide you somewhere. Follow me.”

Santi led her along one concrete wall of the vast space, past trucks painted to look like Con Ed service trucks, a couple of panel vans with logos of businesses on their sides, and several cars. The metal door he approached opened with a combination Natasha instantly memorized, and she followed Santi down a bare concrete hallway lined with the pipes and conduits Anita Herrera had described. Natasha saw what Anita had meant. There was an inordinate amount of electricity running through this hallway.

Natasha was glad to note that the door to which Santi led her didn’t squeak, and did have a lock that could be thrown from the inside. It looked like a little employee lounge of some kind, sad and spartan, but apparently well-used. She took a moment to be grateful that, as annoying as Tony Stark was, the work environment he provided the Avengers beat the shit out of this painted-concrete cellar.

“OK. You’ll be all right here. Just lock the door after I leave. Most of the people are gone this weekend, so there’s just a few of us guards. I’ll think of a reason to tell them not to come in here.”

“Wait, no- you’re not leaving me alone here, are you? I mean…” Natasha put on a vulnerable look she knew from long experience to be irresistible.

“I gotta. I’m supposed to be patrolling. There’s cameras. Mostly, nobody watches ‘em but, I mean, they’ll notice I’m missing after a while.”

“But what if they catch me here?”

“You lock the door, and let me take care of the rest.” Natasha had taken a seat on a stained, utilitarian sofa against one wall of the small room, and Santi actually knelt down beside her. It was a sweet, protective move. She supposed she’d feel guilty for what she was about to do, if she bothered with things like guilt anymore.

“Well, how many other guys are here? Are they gonna try to get in?”

“There’s only five of us, and I told you, I’ll make up some excuse for them not to come in here.”

Natasha didn’t look convinced. “Do you think it would be OK if I smoked a little weed? It’ll calm me down.”

“Sure, that’s fine. We do in here, sometimes. No cameras.”

She pulled a small plastic container from a pocket of her jacket and set it on the table, popping open the lid to reveal a tiny one-hitter lying in a bed of what was technically marijuana, although Tony Stark had objected loudly to even allowing anything that weak in his building. Plucking the tiny pipe out carefully, Natasha looked up at Santi with a grin as she packed a hit. “Here. You deserve it, after what you did for me. Careful, though. This stuff’ll knock you on your ass.”

“I don’t know, man, weed makes me sleepy,” Santi objected, but not very strongly.

“Huh,” Natasha shrugged, taking her hand back from where she’d offered the one-hitter to him. “Makes me horny,” she murmured just before setting it between her lips and lighting it, sucking in the smoke.

As expected, that got Santi’s attention. “Yeah, that, too.”

“You smoke before? Because, like I said, this stuff is kinda strong.”

“Don’t worry, Mami, I can handle it.”

When she offered it to him a second time, he took the small metal pipe, seeing nothing but the promising little smile she gave him. Certainly he didn’t notice her switch the one-hitter with another that had been up her sleeve.

They each took two hits before Santi was unconscious. Natasha laid him down – he seemed like an OK guy, really, and it had to look like he’d just fallen asleep from the marijuana – before she spoke to Clint.

“You in?” She asked, the microphone in her earring picking up everything.

“Yeah,” she heard him respond in her earpiece. “I’m on the stairs, just outside the door.”

“It opens into the underground garage Sam told us about. Hang on. I’m gonna go up there. I’ll let you in when it’s clear.”

“Copy that.”

The drug she’d used on Santi would keep him unconscious for around four hours. This part had been easy, but the rest was pure improvisation. Natasha smiled. She was good at improvisation.

There were no sounds in the hallway as she cracked the door and listened. Since she didn’t have a key, she smiled as she used the specially-designed jewelry Clint had given her for her navel piercing to lock the door behind her. Dang, that thing came in handy. She’d have to remember to thank him for it again.

Maybe. Or maybe he’d think she was trying to remind him of their time together on Eleuthera, where she’d gotten the piercing to begin with. Holy shit, but they’d been drunk. Much of that week after Budapest was a blur, although not enough of it. Not the part where she’d told him she loved him, too. Not the look in his eyes when she’d later pretended not to remember.

The door to the garage area was open, which gave Natasha time to spot the guy coming toward her and plaster a huge smile on her face.

“Hi!” She called to him when he noticed her, her unexpected greeting stopping the motion of his hand as he reached for something on his belt.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m Natasha. I came down here with Santi? But, um, we were partying and” - she giggled drunkenly - “he passed out.”

“He what? He brought you down here? And now he’s - Where is he, that hijueputa?”

“Break room. But don’t be mad. C’mon, we were just having a little fun. I mean, this place is a drag, you know?”

The guy, short and barrel-shaped, marched right past Natasha, grabbing her wrist on the way and beginning to drag her into the hallway toward the room where Santi was. She let him, continuing to giggle softly.

“Don’t be mad. Hey, what’s your name? I’m Natasha. Oh, wait, I told you that already.”

They reached the door and the guy tried to pull at it, surprised to find it locked.

“Oh, oops! I think I musta done that.” More giggles.

The guy pulled a key ring from his pocket, fastened with a long, drooping chain to his belt loop. He kept iron fingers around Natasha’s wrist as he roughly unlocked and yanked the door open. Santi lay peacefully sleeping on the couch, even as the guy began cursing him in Spanish and trying to shake him awake.

“No, c’mon… let him sleep. He’s just stoned. He’ll be fine. You can see he’s breathing and stuff.”

The guy turned to Natasha. “You gotta get out of here. You’re not supposed to be here.”

Natasha smiled beatifically. “I know. Santi told me. But we weren’t doing anything, and he said your boss wasn’t here right now, so no one would care. Are you mad at me?”

“I just gotta get you out of here. Come on.”

“At least tell me your name.”

“Alejandro. You sure he’s just stoned?”

“Yeah. We were smoking this.” Natasha pulled out her plastic container. “You want some?”

“No. Come on.”

“Please, Alejandro? Because I got dumped by my boyfriend tonight, and if I go back to our apartment, he’s gonna hit me. I didn’t have anywhere else to go, and Santi was nice to me. I just needed someplace to sort of hang out, get my head together, you know? Please don’t make me leave. I’ll stay right here. And I’ll share my weed with you.”

“I don’t think I want any of your weed. Look what it did to poor Santi,” Alejandro said, but he was grinning. Natasha knew then that she had him. Clint would just need to be a little patient.

Twenty minutes later, Clint was sitting on the bottom stair, chin in hand, when Natasha opened the door from the garage area. “’Bout time,” he groused.

“I know, but there are only three left. And if we’re lucky, we won’t meet any of them. Let’s get going.”

For twenty or thirty minutes, Clint and Natasha had free rein to look wherever they liked. Natasha would enter a room, find the cameras, and make sure she and her unhappy countenance were very visible to whoever might be monitoring them as she disabled them. After that, Clint would enter the room and they would investigate it thoroughly. Everything they found was in Spanish, which wouldn’t have been much of a problem, except it was also in some sort of code. There was really no way to tell what this place was for from what they’d found so far. All they could do was photograph everything and hope they could figure it out later.

And then there was a loud commotion as two men came running down the concrete hallway toward the room in which Clint melted into the shadows under a desk and Natasha stood, seemingly alone, gazing around.

“Who the hell are you?” One of the men asked in heavily-accented English. “’The fuck you doin’ to our cameras?”

“Hi! I’m Natasha.”

“What the hell are you doing here? How’d you get in here?”

“It’s kind of a long story. I was partying with Santi and Alejandro? But they passed out and now I’m bored and I don’t know how to get out of here.”

“Why the hell are you trashin’ all our cameras?”

“I don’t like them. There’s no privacy in the twenty-first century. We’re all too comfortable being watched every second. You wanna help me with the revolution?”

The two men held an incredulous, furious conversation in Spanish while Natasha stood a few feet away, a perplexed look on her face.

“Hey, guys, I don’t speak Spanish, you know? I’m not trying to steal anything. I just came down here because me and my boyfriend had a fight, and I met Santi, and I didn’t have anywhere to go…”

Clint was cramped and impatient waiting under the desk, but he was at least mildly entertained by how easy it was for Natasha to work her spell on these idiots, too. When they were both passed out on the floor, he was actually a little embarrassed on behalf of his gender.

They found the fifth and last guy after another half hour of exploration. This guy wasn’t about to fall for Natasha’s weed trick, however, because he was behind a door with an electronic lock she should not have been able to open. He ended up getting Clint’s knee in his face, which meant that they had to dose him with the drug Clint had brought in a case attached to his belt. The poor guy wouldn’t remember anything about how he ended up in the bunkroom Clint and Natasha found. They could only hope he would deduce - from the stories the other guys would tell and, of course, from his nudity and the position in which he found himself - that he, too, had met Natasha. He could probably claim bragging rights, because it would appear that he had gotten further with her than the other guys had before he passed out, fell off the cot, and broke his nose.

The machine he was there to guard made absolutely no sense to either Clint or Natasha. It filled the cavernous room, and was clearly the destination for all that power. It was shaped like a square, stepped pyramid, which caused Clint to dub it the Chichen Itza machine, with a level of panels near the top glowing a sickly green. The dry, ozone-scented heat in the room explained why the machine had its own cooling system, which was one of the reasons it was housed behind locked doors. There was nothing that indicated to Clint or Natasha what it did, though. All they could do was take video and photo after photo of it from every angle, both close up and panoramic, and hope Bruce and Tony could make some sense of it.

Once they’d finished that, they just had to find the place where the cameras were monitored, to make sure they left no video evidence of their escapades for anyone to find later. Finding the monitoring station wasn’t much of a challenge, nor was reprogramming the system to double-record the next few hours and replace all the recordings in which Clint or Natasha appeared.

The problem came when they discovered there was a sixth guard.

*****

Jarman Arias’s plane wasn’t as nice as Tony Stark’s. Sam made a little face at the thought of a guy like him having preferences in private jets. Anita noticed the look and leaned in. “What’s the joke?”

Sam smiled. “I was just thinkin’ I like Stark’s jets better.”

She looked around. “Oh, I don’t know. This one doesn’t suck.”

There were only four other people on the plane. All of them were Hispanic, and they all clearly knew each other. The six passengers were sitting together in a group, enjoying a sumptuous lunch served impeccably by the cabin attendant. The other four seemed happy to include Sam and Anita in their conversation, speaking English for Sam’s benefit. They laughed and carried on as though the party had already started which, in fact, it already had in that they were all drinking a Colombian ale that went perfectly with their broiled whitefish. There was plenty of flirtation, although the flight hadn’t been long enough for the others to determine how far they could go with Sam and Anita. Some couples were more exclusive than others, after all.

“We haven’t been to one of Jarman’s parties before,” Anita said to the group, just after feeding Sam a bite of perfectly-seared asparagus. “What should we expect?”

The other four laughed knowingly. “Hope you’ve gotten some sleep, and have healthy livers,” one man answered with a wink. “Because you’re about to learn why God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Sam whistled. “Always wondered what those folks got up to,” he grinned.

Sam and Anita learned nothing about whatever Arias might be up to on the flight. The group wasn’t in the mood to talk about anything substantive. They only wanted to flirt and laugh. What little the two were able to learn suggested that these people, at least, weren’t expecting anything big or world-changing to happen anytime soon.

In the meantime, Sam found himself falling naturally and easily into a habit of sitting close enough to Anita that they were always touching. For her part, Anita created several searing moments of meaningful eye contact between them combined with a soft, secret smile that Sam felt south of his belt line. The effect was outwardly a very convincing picture of an established couple who were very attracted to one another. Inwardly, for Sam at least, the effect was to turn him way the fuck on and make him wish desperately that they were going to the Keys to be alone together.

The group was met at the tiny private airport on Marathon Key by a sleek, white limousine that whisked them quickly to a set of ornate, manned gates in a long wall made of rock and shell. Inside the wall, Arias’s villa proved to be exactly that. It was massive, with balconies everywhere, and the fact that it had its own private beach was immediately obvious. The eight-foot-tall wall surrounded the entire property, extending all the way into the water. Sam and Anita shared a look that, to others, would appear to be just silently communicating their awe at the scene. Sam knew they were both noticing the overwhelming security.

There were people everywhere, wearing bright colors and carrying drinks. Many of the women were scantily dressed – there was an abundance of bikinis – while the men tended to skew older and wore more business casual clothing. Sam wasn’t surprised by that. He was surprised by the fact that there were probably as many armed security guards as there were uniformed waiters. Why’s a guy need armed security guards at a party, if he’s legit?

Almost instantly, Arias emerged from the house and walked over to the limo to greet his newly-arrived guests, specifically Anita. He welcomed her in rapid, jovial Spanish with an overly-friendly embrace and a double-cheek kiss. Only when he’d spent long minutes slobbering over her did he turn to Sam and his other guests.

“Mr. Wilson, how delightful you could make it,” he said, slapping him heartily on the back. “One of my staff will be out soon to show you to your room, and they’ll take care of your luggage. My home is yours, please take advantage of my hospitality. Would you like a drink?”

Arias waved a waiter over. Sam said, “Thank you for flying us out. Your jet is… something.”

“Yes, isn’t it? I grew up in a portazo, a slum, and I’ve never forgotten where I come from. That’s why I like the finer things now, and I like to share them with my friends.”

“Well, then,” Sam smiled, “I’m glad to be considered a friend.”

The oily simper he received in return raised the hair on the back of Sam’s neck. “Nonsense. It’s something of a coup to be able to call the Falcon my friend, and to welcome him to my home. So the pleasure is mine, parcero.”

Only after Anita coyly suggested that she was wearing too much clothing for the Keys did Arias reluctantly allow her to accompany Sam to the room assigned to them. Her slacks and gauzy, sleeveless top were actually very attractive and entirely appropriate for the weather, but not for a young woman in this crowd. In this crowd, she really was overdressed.

Their room was as ostentatiously luxurious as the rest of the huge house promised. Sam thought the bed could have comfortably slept 5 or 6 people and, given the environment, wondered whether it ever had. Anita stood near the center of the room, seemingly checking email on her cell phone. What she was actually doing was scanning for surveillance equipment, which she was not surprised to find.

“Anything going on?” Sam asked as he unpacked the few days’ worth of clothes he’d brought.

“Someone sent me a funny video,” she answered. “Wanna see? It’s got audio, too.”

“Nah. You and your cat videos,” he responded, seemingly absently, acknowledging her message that the room was under both video and audio surveillance.

She went into the bathroom, still looking at the screen of her phone. “Bad news, Sam,” she called from inside.

“What’s that, Babe?”

“I got no signal in here.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“Well, you’ll live. You’re too attached to that thing, anyway.”

So. No surveillance in the bathroom. Good to know for several reasons, Sam thought.

From the moment she and Sam re-appeared, Arias kept Anita plastered to his side. She wore a red bikini which Sam knew was going to fuel his dreams, covered by an open, lacy, white robe that swirled around her when she walked in her matching kitten-heeled mules. Sam’s loose board shorts were far less revealing, but his short-sleeved, button-down shirt hung open to reveal a firm chest and abs that Anita had commented on very favorably.

It was, of course, the plan that Anita would stay close to Arias, but Sam found himself deeply concerned, and even more jealous. He and Anita had just started… whatever it was they’d started. He wasn’t remotely in the mood to see some other guy all over her. And Arias was all over her. He plied her with drinks (which she was very good at discreetly spilling) and kept an arm around her and a hand on her waist or hip almost continuously. Although it made Sam furious, he did notice that Arias made sure to introduce her to everyone they spoke to, and he’d overheard enough of the introductions to know that he usually added some tidbit about how he knew them. It was intended to impress her with the width of his influence and his impressive social contacts, and she was playing along beautifully. The more dazzled she seemed, the more he bragged, making it that much easier for her to gain information.

Meahwhile, Sam went into party mode, and began to meet people. It wasn’t hard. Everyone was drinking, and many of the guests recognized him, which made for an easy icebreaker. More than a few of the guests made overt passes at him, and Sam smirked to think how easy it would have been to fill up the bed in the room he was sharing with Anita. Given his natural charm, he had no trouble gently putting off amorous advances while still managing to gather a great deal of information. Between Sam and Anita, the afternoon and evening were very productive.

*****

Joss blinked her eyes open, squinting against the afternoon light coming in the window. Hmmm. Hospital room. Why… Oh, yeah. She looked down and immediately saw the cast on her right forearm and hand. No surprise there, she’d known something was broken. She also felt the pain in her left side as soon as she moved to shift position. Which is when she turned her head to see Bucky asleep in a chair next to her hospital bed and holding her left hand. She couldn’t help it. She gasped in surprise, waking him.

“Bucky,” she mumbled, finding her throat scratchy and her voice weak.

He grinned sleepily at her. “How you feelin’, Kiddo?”

Joss noticed with a slight shiver that he didn’t let go of her hand, but rather squeezed it. She thought for a moment before answering. “A little sore, I guess. How’s Singer?”

“He’s in ICU. Expected to be OK, but he lost part of his right leg.”

“Damn,” she hissed. “That’s rough.”

“You’ve been out of it for a while. What do you remember?”

Joss squinted. “I remember that President Lattimore is dead. I remember needing to stay with his body, and you telling me to go to the hospital, but then you got very blurry, and… Nothing after that.”

“That’s because you were all busted up inside. You had surgery. They had to take out your spleen.”

“My… Wait, I was usin’ my spleen. I don’t want it out. I like my spleen.”

“Yeah, well, you had a broken floating rib that stabbed into it. Damn near killed you. Which is why I’m pissed as hell at you. You felt a hell of a lot worse than you told me, Joss. If you woulda bled to death because you were trying to be a hero, you’d have died of stupidity.”

She smiled wanly. “Well. It’s nice to know you care, even if you can’t land a plane for shit.”

“I am not joking around here! I been sitting here for hours waiting for you to wake up so I can yell at you about how reckless that was.” He certainly didn’t look like he was kidding. The thundercloud in his face rivaled those that had brought down the Quinjet.

Joss frowned. “Singer and Lattimore were in trouble. There were only four paramedics on site at the time. They needed our help.”

“We would’ve done all right. Woulda maybe cost Singer a few minutes, but that wouldn’t have changed anything for him. Obviously, it wouldn’t have changed things for Lattimore. It wasn’t worth you lying to me.”

“I didn’t lie to you. I never said I was fine.”

“You never said you were bleeding to death, either. You had to know how bad -“

A nurse came in at that moment, making Bucky and Joss realize their voices had risen a bit.

“Well, Ms. Emerson, you’re awake. Good. I’ll let the doctor know. How do you feel?”

“Suddenly like a four-year-old,” she muttered, glaring at Bucky.

“Well.” The nurse said, and now she turned to glare at Bucky, too. “I need to examine my patient, Sir. I’m going to have to ask you to excuse us.”

“I’ll just wait outside,” he said, standing and letting go of Joss’s hand.

“Maybe you could come back tomorrow,” the nurse said, disapproval dripping from every syllable. “Ms. Emerson needs her rest.”

Joss was a little woozy to begin with, and the idea that Bucky looked disappointed that he couldn’t stay with her made her stomach swoop like she’d crested a hill too fast in her car. But before she could think of a way to ask him to stay, he left without a word. The nurse leaned down and began to take back Joss’s sheets, which blocked her from seeing Bucky’s regretful backward glance.

Joss endured the nurse’s exam in resentful silence. That was not the way she’d wanted to end her last conversation with Bucky. She knew he wouldn’t be back; he obviously had better things to do. He’d just hung around so he could tell her what an idiot she was for not admitting how hurt she’d been. As if she’d had a choice.

There’d been things that needed to be done at the crash site. It wasn’t like she had never planned to go to the hospital. Of course she had. She wasn’t stupid. But she didn’t get a chance to tell him that, which meant that now she’d be going through the rest of her life knowing that Bucky Barnes, stupendously hot and surprisingly sweet superhero, thought she was a careless twit. Great.

“Can you rate your pain for me?” The nurse asked. “Give me a number between one and ten.”

Joss wanted to ask whether she was talking about her stupid wounds or her heart. Either way, the answer was the same. “Maybe a six. Seven.”

“Sounds like you better let me give you some pain medicine.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

While the nurse was gone, Joss sat staring at the blank white wall facing her hospital bed. Her head was reeling, but she had no way to judge how much was blood loss and how much was everything that had happened in the last forty-eight hours. The President had died on her watch. She was going to have to answer a lot of questions about that. They would no doubt be asked politely, and she’d probably be buried under endless platitudes about how she’d done everything right, and it wasn’t her fault, and it could have happened on anyone’s watch, blah, blah, blah. It would all be the most transparent bullshit. Every single person who had ever heard of Adam Lattimore – basically the entire planet – would blame her, and they’d be right.

Not to mention the fact that Joss actually found herself mourning the smarmy old perv. She was surprised as hell to realize that she’d actually kind of liked him. Damn. Worse, she knew she’d have to face Mrs. Lattimore. The woman was entitled to an apology, at the very least. She deserved to hear Joss acknowledge that she’d failed him. Joss wondered if her nurse would give her a shot of morphine before she had to have that conversation.

And what the hell was going on with these storms and tornadoes and that earthquake? There was no way the storm they’d been caught in was natural, which meant there was somebody out there who could create a freaking tornado. That was just fucking terrifying. She understood now why S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers were involved, although not what any of this had to do with the President or that event. And, by the way, had she actually just woken up holding hands with Bucky Barnes?

The nurse returned with a syringe, which she quickly and efficiently screwed into a port in Joss’s IV. Not two seconds later, Joss could feel the effects of whatever the drug was.

“Whoo,” she said. “That’s, um… that’s… wow. I forgot to tell you I’m a lightweight.”

“Don’t worry. It’s only half of what you can have, if you need it. We want to be sure your pain is well controlled.”

“I’m not worried about pain. I’m worried about seeing flying elephants and shit.”

“Well, if you do see any, let me know. I’ll have them removed.”

“Appreciate it.” Joss settled back against her pillows and watched in fascination as the nurse squiggled and walked on a floor that was definitely at a strange angle. She giggled a little as she found herself alone and, suddenly, very stoned.

She didn’t notice Bucky come back in a moment later.

“What’s funny?”

Joss was probably surprised to hear his voice next to her, but she was too high to know for sure. “You… Hey. You’re Bucky,” she drawled, grinning crookedly.

“I get that all the time,” he smiled, taking the chair next to her bed again. “Did we just have some narcotics?”

“I did. I don’t know about you.” Joss giggled again at her own joke, then became suddenly overly serious. “I didn’t expect to see you back in here.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“I thought you already did. I thought you’d already be on your way back to New York.”

Bucky frowned. “Why’d you think that?”

“Well, because. You’re all gorgeous and famous and stuff, and you got your chance to tell me what a dumbass I am, so I just figured you’d be...” She extended her arm, rolling her hand in a way Bucky guessed was intended to convey, uh, leaving maybe?

“I want to make sure you’re all right. That OK with you?”

Joss tilted her head, scowling adorably and clearly trying to figure out the answer to his question. “I don’t know.”

Bucky wasn’t sure what to do with that. “What don’t you know?”

“I don’t know how good an idea that is. For me. Because I really have a thing for you. Like, bigtime.”

Bucky blushed and looked down at Joss’s blanket, smiling almost shyly and giving an embarrassed laugh.

“Is it because you crashed me in a plane?” Joss asked, oblivious. “Because I didn’t really mean what I said. I’m sure you can land a plane. I’m sure you can do pretty much anything, I mean… look at you. Why do you look like that, anyway?”

“Uh…”

“You got those big, pretty blue eyes, and that ridiculous jaw, and holy fuck don’t get me started on those lips. You should see what people on YouTube say about your hair. It’s graphic, Bucky. Gra. Phic.”

“OK, Joss, let’s maybe talk about something else now. That medicine work? You still hurting?”

“What, you don’t want to hear about how beautiful you are? Don’t pretend you don’t know. Of course you do. How come I can’t say it?”

“Because you’re gonna be mad at me for hearing it, that’s why.”

“Do you know what I think you should do? Oh, this is a good idea. It is. I think you should kiss me. Then when I never see you again except on TV, at least I’ll be able to remember that you kissed me once.”

“I’m not so sure you’re gonna remember any of this…” he muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. OK, I’ll kiss you. But not right now. Later. When you’re not quite so medicated.”

“It’s OK. I know. I’m inse- inconta- interconti- No, that’s not it.” She frowned in concentration. “In-con-se-quen-tial. Inconsequential. That’s why you don’t want to kiss me. I don’t blame you. You can lift entire airplanes and I don’t even have a spleen.”

“What? You’re not inconsequential.”

“Compared to you, I am. You’re on cereal boxes with that guy. You know, that, um… Steve. Steve America. No, that’s not right…” Joss’s voice faded as she tried valiantly to figure out what she was trying to say.

“Joss, you are not inconsequential.”

“By next week, you probably won’t remember we even met. I’ll be back to obscurity, and you’ll be dating a Kardashian.”

“I don’t even know what that is. And that’s not fair, to either one of us.” Bucky reminded himself that she was wasted on pain meds and didn’t know what she was saying. He couldn’t be mad at her, although he didn’t appreciate her implication.

“Plus I let the President die. Am I on CNN yet? Does Anderson Cooper hate me? I know those jackholes at Fox News hate me. I can just imagine what they’re saying about me. But I feel bad if you don’t want to kiss me and Anderson Cooper hates me.”

“I do want to kiss you, and I’m sure Anderson Cooper doesn’t hate you.”

“Do you think Rachel Maddow would take my calls? She seems cool. She might let me explain.”

Bucky laughed. “I’m sure she will.”

Joss looked at him again. “Damn, you’re cute. You really want to kiss me?”

“Yes. I really do.”

“You’re humoring me because you crashed me in a plane.”

“A little. But I also think you’re cute, and I truly want to kiss you.”

“Then do it.”

“Not when you’re soused on painkillers.”

“See? You don’t want to. You’re all buff and supersoldiery and pretty and you’re too cool to even be in my hospital room. Why are you in here again?”

“Maybe we should watch TV.”

“OK. But not Anderson Cooper. He hates me.”

#The Avengers #Captain America #The Winter Soldier #Natasha Romanoff #The Black Widow #Clint Barton #Hawkeye #Sam Wilson #The Falcon #Bucky Barnes

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