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elmidol · 4 years

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It’s Not About You (NSFW)

Three Blind Tooke Part Three Death Is An Art

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Three Blind Tooke

Part Three: Death is an Art

Chapter Sixty: It’s Not About You

I second guess my life, my death;

I second guess saying it’s time to rest.

I don’t want to be the one to say goodbye,

I don’t want to give pain nor end your life.

Rain trickled from the clouds in the overcast sky. The droplets drummed against the helmet that you wore, the sound echoing in your ears though it was distorted by the insulation that the gear provided. Superstitious individuals may have claimed that this was the heavens crying. Bodies were strewn across the battlefield. Ash dampened by the rain smeared with each step you took. The soot clung to your clothing the same as to that of the three Knights of Ren who had accompanied you. Alongside the shuttle that had carried your small crew were two transports of Force sensitive stormtroopers. Their red armor darkened with the filth. Weak flames were doused. They hissed in their death, smoke trails dancing along the sky.

You walked through the filth and mud. Your boots stuck a handful of times, requiring you to exert more strength to keep moving. As you moved, your eyes shifted to take in the entirety of the devastation that lay before you. What had once been a Resistance Base was now a graveyard. Your lips parted behind your helmet; you were grateful for the mouthpiece with its filtration system that kept you from choking on the scent of death. Vicrul, having kept pace, turned and broke away from your side to investigate a new section. Meanwhile you lowered yourself down to one knee, genuflecting and touching three fingers to a singed jacket that was caked in gore. The untarnished portion contained a name, albeit one that was not intimately known by you.

Ap’lek had not been pulled from the bacta tank despite the passing of sixteen days. It was him you thought of as you traced the letters of the name on the jacket. There was a longing for him to be there. He would have had more of a connection to the dead that were present than any of these other three Knights. You would have felt less out of place. Not that your loyalties were questioned--Supreme Leader Kylo Ren would not have sanctioned this mission with you as lead if that were the case. He had walked amongst them, though, just as you had. These Resistance fighters and technicians who had been slaughtered by the First Order.

The enlargement of the raindrops resulted in louder taps hitting off your helmet. The first one caused the fingers of your left hand to twitch. You curled the digits towards your palm then pulled away from the fallen Resistance fighter. Twisting at your torso, you considered the Order of Ren ‘troopers. Their objective was to locate and salvage any usable supplies and information that could assist in countering the First Order. The Knights of Ren were more focused on potential artifacts to do with the Force. That, and to protect you. It was unspoken, however you were not an idiot. Kylo would not have allowed you out of his sights without any of the Knights. Things were coming to a head in the war.

Supreme Leader Armitage Hux had been targeting Force sensitives with the knowledge that they had been a part of a contingency plan by the late Emperor, ergo a threat to his power. The technological powers that had also been developed by the Empire to counter those capable of wielding the Force had been more to his liking. Palpatine had been greedy, hoping to keep the power to himself or to others that he could place under his control.

Cardo journeyed past you to inspect another corpse that was a little over a yard away from your current location. You observed him with a growing sense of numbness. His hands skimmed along the body in search of anything useful. If he was looking for something specific, that had not been stated. He did shove a handful of things into a pouch that he had been carrying since arriving on the planet. You turned away from the looting. Reminded yourself that you, too, had done the same. Not that you were feeling anything ill towards the Knights.

The level of slaughter depicted a rather vivid picture; the First Order had conducted a full raid on this base. You twisted one way then another to scan the level of devastation that had taken place. It was calculated, not as haphazard as it would have been with an airstrike. Ground troops, perhaps with aerial cover to prevent escape.

“Are you searching for your mother?” Trudgen asked. You blinked thrice at the sound of his voice. It possessed a different depth when you wore the helmet that Cardo had made for you. His question caused you pause as you considered the answer, having been unsure if that had been one of your motivations for examining each corpse you passed.

Finger running along the length of the blaster you had your hip, you offered a shrug. In a way, you had been searching for any familiar face. Your mother. Poe Dameron. Finn. Rose Tico. General Leia Organa; although, for her, Kylo would have sensed her death and would have come himself. You moved away from the bodies and headed for the destroyed tents in search of any Nabooian objects that you could salvage. Anything at all, no matter how small, they were all the galaxy had of your home planet. That was why you had come to walk amongst the dead and and all the destruction. Eventually you would search any body that none of the Knights or Order of Ren did.

It felt surreal to strip pieces of clothing from the bodies of your former allies, however over time you began to mentally dissociate. You stopped checking faces and names. They were dead, gone; they may have hated you or tried to kill you if they had not perished and you had met on the battlefield. You could not dwell on them. More and more you were understanding how it was that Kylo Ren had become the man you had met, the once-upon-a-time creature that had pierced your body with his lightsaber. All of that detachment, it was the one true way to make ones way through war. Had you not done the same but to a lesser degree?

It’s stranger when I used to walk among them. You dipped down to pick up a tiny trinket with a metal flower that was native to Naboo. He grew up with many of these people. To distance himself and not be sentimental stemmed from more than Snoke’s influence. It was equally interesting and odd for you to realize the variety of things people brought with them in the war. Trinkets. Books. Photographs. Tangible objects that reminded them of what they were fighting for.

When you returned to the quarters that you shared with Kylo, you discovered that he was there. His eyes drifted down to the small object clipped to the bag that was filled with salvaged Nabooian objects. The electronic pet had dead batteries. That or it was broken, which you would learn after you showered and acquired a new set of batteries to tuck into it. You placed the bag on the floor near the end of the bed then walked towards the refresher, discarding your clothes along the way. Exhaustion was creeping into your limbs, else you would have said something more than the muttered hello to Kylo.

You sat on the floor of the shower slightly away from the spray as it warmed. Footsteps echoed off the walls. The sounds brought a smile to your face, as did his question, “Are you building a collection of electronic pets?” With the travels you had done recently, you were now up to four. One was broken, its screen cracked, although it powered on with a high pitched squeal. Due to this you had removed the batteries and placed them into another, which had failed to turn on at all despite its outwardly pristine condition.

He was undressing. Material being shuffled was too familiar a sound, one that you had come to enjoy hearing when it was from him. You scooted nearer to the corner so that when he stepped in his foot did not hit your body. Kylo’s gaze was on you from the start. There was no transition in which he had to look down to locate where you were. Tilting your head, you leaned it against the wall and sucked your lips into your mouth while raising your eyebrows. The door to the shower slid closed as he moved to where he was blocking the spray of water with his body. You traced the scars on his skin with your eyes beginning with those on his face and ending with the ones near his thighs.

“What if I am?” you asked in unison with reaching forward to trail your hands along his legs starting from his knees and rising up to where you could press your palms together and cup his cock. You chewed on your bottom lip while shifting into a more comfortable position. “We never talked about it.” A noise of curiosity from him to acknowledge that he was listening. “Kylo, we ate a human heart.” Is this what all-consuming love feels like?

“Hmm.” He cupped the sides of your face and tilted back your head. “Do you consider those monsters to be human, my little tooke?” Your breath hitched at the sound of the question and the light--and darkness--it shed on the reality of things. As he spoke, Kylo moved down so that his legs caged you against the wall. His large frame continued to block the spray of water though some droplets managed to splash past and caused you to blink. His thumbs hooked towards your mouth. You parted your lips. Felt those pads move inside and begin to skim along your teeth. The teeth that had first bitten into the muscle before he had joined you. “They’re beasts, they’re nothing.” He pressed one of the thumbs in further, using it to pin down your tongue. The hunger in his eyes, that he had for you, was something less savage.

Through the bond you shared, you felt only a sense of inner peace that thrummed throughout your entire body. An understanding that he had torn the heart from the fallen First Order officer to dye himself in blood as a means of erasing the horror he had felt from you. Handing the organ to you, a gesture of love. Consuming it to prevent you from going through that temporary insanity alone. In fact he had eaten the majority of the heart, as though lessening whatever burden it would cause you once your faculties were restored.

You sealed your lips around his thumbs while undulating your tongue as best you could with the pressure remaining. Kylo relented, lifting the digit so that you could explore and taste it. He dragged the second out before using that entire hand to begin caressing your body. It paused at a breast, palming it. He pinched the nipple, alternating between a gentle touch and something more demanding. You felt jolts of pleasure spike through you each time that he assaulted the bud. Kylo ducked to where he could mouth its twin, his teeth more demanding than his hand. You closed your eyes as the water sprayed against it and as your body clenched in pure want.

“I would eat another for you,” he said against your flesh. Wetness pooled from your body, your cunt growing slick. You whimpered around his thumb, which then downpressed your tongue and held it captive. “First I will devour you.” You shuddered with an awareness of how it would feel in the next few minutes.

His hands enveloped you after abandoning your mouth and breast, and he laid you out upon the floor of the shower. The spray pattered against your flesh. This sensation sent yet more tingles dancing along your body just as Kylo began to run the underside of his tongue from your throat to your cunt. His nose brushed against your clit, an action that earned him a moan from you. He pushed open your legs more, stopping only when you hooked them over his shoulders. Your heels dug into his back with the first swipe of his tongue.

His tongue danced along your folds while his fingers bit into your inner thighs. His nose brushed against your clit once more as he flattened his tongue against you and drew all he could into his mouth. You reached down and grabbed at his hair, tugging him as close as possible to your cunt. You rocked your hips as he thrust his tongue inside of you, starting to fuck you in earnest. You pulled at his hair and ground down. His tongue squirmed within you, swirling. He worked a finger inside of you, the long digit easily finding the area inside of you that siphoned the breath out of your lungs. The wet sounds of slurping had you feeling flush. Water splashed along your face. You tried blinking past the spray to watch Kylo, but found that the endeavor was meeting with a frustrating failure. As a second finger was added, you allowed yourself to succumb fully to a sort of blind pleasure.

It was as Kylo was working in a third finger, scissoring and stretching you open to accommodate still more, that you understood his intention. “O-oh,” you said. Your fingers grasped more tightly on his hair. It had to be uncomfortable for him, you passively thought; such considerations were eliminated with the insertion of that fourth finger. He toyed with your clit using his tongue, rocking it up and down then manipulating it into small circles. You were opened so widely for him. His fingers stroking you from within, those calloused pads skimming the surface of your inner walls. Your jaw dropped, your eyelashes fluttering.

His entire fist shifted into you, leaving you with the impression that not a single part was left untouched. The pressure on your g-spot had you arching your back. Kylo sealed his lips around your clit. His sucking coupled with his thrusting drew whimpers and moans, which increased in volume. Your hands moved frantically in his hair then scrambled on your thighs, upwards until you were pulling your own hair with one hand and biting down on the knuckles of the other.

The sudden feeling of emptiness assaulted you just as you had been on the brink of orgasm. You cried out. Teeth caught on the edge of your flesh, blood pooling from your knuckle onto your tongue then down the length of your body as you desperately reached for him. Kylo chuckled. His hands were both on your legs, tugging you along the shower floor until his cock was nestled between your outer lips. He rolled his hips, fucking against you instead of inside of you. Your body clenched--stars, you felt so empty, so desperate to be filled once more. Kylo leaned down and captured your mouth. You whined into the kiss. Raked your nails along his back with only a fraction of awareness that you were leaving marks on him.

“I need you to fuck me,” you managed to say between moans and breaths after turning your head to keep him from silencing you with kisses.

“Oh.” A huffed out breath, the word not immediately registering as being anything more than a random sound. You knit your eyebrows towards one another. You could feel just how aroused he was, how his body reacted to yours. His self-control was superb. It was different than it had been in the past as well, these moments of disinterest and passivity more genuine. A side effect of his having used that Sith artifact to regain his vision. Kylo tilted his head to the right. His eyes wandered along your face, a sight you could appreciate now that his body was again shielding you from the water.

You reached up to cup a hand over his mouth. Not that you knew what you were silencing until you had spoken. “Oh.” You attempted to sound just as he had, to match the tone. His lips shifted behind your hand. Amusement from him had been one of the last things you were looking for. “You know--” You released a strangled noise of confusion as his muffled murmurs tickled your palm.

“I was wondering where the blood came from,” he repeated after you removed your hand. You tilted your wrist to consider the knuckle, which gave tiny droplets of blood intermittently. “You bit yourself.” A question rose in your mind: had he thought he was imagining the blood? A second question as to whether he often did so. Kylo ran the tip of his tongue along his lips in a slow venture that caused your abdominal muscles to tighten. “Mm.”

That grunt was the only warning you were given before he resumed where he had left off. The thick head of his cock began to push into you, stretching you once more as you had been craving. You felt opened inch by inch, your body clenching around him. Wanting more. Feeling equally full and empty, the conflicting sensations almost leading you to hyperventilate as your mind tried to work through them.

“Please, more,” you moaned. His hair weaved between your fingers as you caressed the back of his head. His breath and voice were at your ear. My greedy little tooke. Your body was on fire. Tendrils of the Force coiled around you beginning at your wrists before coiling around your torso and limbs. Along your neck, a light pressure on the sides so that you began to feel a sense of vertigo. You knew that he could feel how you were clenching; around him, under him, everywhere. The way you grew wetter with each phantom touch and every thrust of his cock within you.

Kylo encircled the wrist of your injured knuckle and dragged your hand down to where your bodies met. “I can sense what you’re thinking, what you’re wondering.” You trembled at his words--in delight, in anticipation of what he was going to do now that he had learned more of you through the bond you shared. “Would you like to see?”

“Will I be scared?” you countered, noting how his movements had slowed without coming to a complete halt.

His wet hair was beginning to stick to his face, starting to drip. His lips were redder than usual from the kissing you had done, from how he had sucked on your clit. “You may be.” This truth failed to inspire fear in you though your heart nevertheless hammered more quickly. Your eyes widened. For him to ask permission before using the Force on you. You nodded twice. “Keep your hand there. Play with your clit.” As he spoke, the hand around your wrist relinquished its hold and journeyed up to the side of your head. His fingertips stroked along your scalp. Brushing, petting. You leaned into his touch and felt your breath stolen for what felt like the millionth time.

The spray of the water disappeared though the sensation of its warmth did not. The walls leaked red, a deep crimson that you well knew. It lacked the more grotesque gore that you had seen earlier on the decimated Resistance Base. Here there was only blood and ash flowing from the sky around you. The ash swirled as it fluttered down towards the blood on the walls and floor. Your body and Kylo’s were stained in streaks that pinked as the invisible water diluted it. There was a wetness on his face that was not red nor pink. The illusion of tears flickered in and out of focus.

Kylo repeated his earlier demand. “Play with your clit.” You obeyed now without question, rolling the nub and feeling its smoothness with the rough pads of your fingers. You had fucked in bloodier circumstances, however those had not been the wounds of his soul. His hand found your throat though the images of blood failed to fade away. He started to cut off your air and blood supply, relenting in waves, in time with the undulation of his body against and within yours. You clenched around him in unison with those movements, your body and his together in this dance of souls and bodies. His other hand found yours. He entwined your fingers together, setting the limbs beside your head. Your tears were not an illusion. They were joy, a lack of hair, sorrow, pleasure, exaltation and despair. You came, your vision blackening around the edges.

The stars were bright, were popping, going nova, turning into black holes that threatened to swallow you as you felt the strongest ecstasy you had ever experienced rush through you. His joy matched yours. Kylo’s name--Kylo, Kylo, Kylo--a repetition, a mantra, a prayer.

You could feel him continue to slam into you repeatedly. His thrusts were frantic and shallow, hips jerking as he sought his own release. He growled as he came, his cum filling you then dripping from you as he pulled out. Only then was your vision beginning to correct itself.

“I would be a monster without you.”

The difficulty was that you were not certain if he had spoken those words or if you had. His body enveloped yours, Kylo pulled you into his arms and rolling to where he was sitting on the shower floor with you cuddled against him. He stretched out with a hand to summon the soaps and shampoo with the Force. The illusion of blood faded, the red thinning into pink then translucent fluids. Water poured from the showerhead and there were no traces of tears on Kylo Ren’s face. You used your injured knuckle to wipe at the salty residue of your tears. It stung, but not enough to truly bother you or encourage you to stop.

His hands, one holding a washcloth lathered in soap, roamed your body. You sank into the sensation of being simultaneously cleaned and explored. The water had gradually cooled, the hot now warm. The temperature remained comfortable throughout the time it took for Kylo to wash you clean and for you to return the favor. You studied the marks you had left on his back with your nails. Combed through his hair with your fingers. Stared into those eyes, marveling at the depth to them, these windows of his soul. They were guarded, albeit less so when he returned your gaze and opened himself up to you.

Kylo assisted you when you were ready to stand; your legs were less supportive than they had been before your activities with him, a welcome sort of pain. He shifted you to sit on the toilet then handed you a towel. Both you and he patted yourselves dry without speaking. This silence that clung was one of understanding and peace. After you were dried off, you preceded Kylo into the bedroom.

You wobbled over to where you had dropped the bag, working the electronic pet off so that you could at last learn if it was still in working order or not. You had a towel wrapped around your body and no desire to dress in clothes just then. Kylo was different in that respect. He walked past you and pulled on a pair of pants. You had managed to open the electronic toy by the time that he returned with a fresh battery, which he deposited on the bed within your reach.

“Ap’lek has been removed from the tank,” he said quietly as you put the new battery into the toy and resealed it. You did not react immediately. There was much to process with what he had said. Being removed from the bacta tank could be a good thing or else something negative, an indication that death was imminent. It was difficult for you to decide whether or not to ask. This was a man that Kylo had known for years now, a part of his found family after the turmoil he had been through with Luke attempting to kill him and his parents essentially abandoning him. You looked up from the electronic pet to observe his facial expressions. It was not as easy a task as it had been prior to the Sith artifact, however you did know him well enough to easily spot the tiniest of details within seconds.

You returned your gaze to the toy. “He will regain consciousness, I believe it.” Kylo nodded, murmuring that he could still feel Ap’lek in the Force. It felt like a hand clenching around your heart to know that he had reached out to sense the other. You angled your body nearer to his, allowing him to accept or reject the gesture of physical comfort. He chose to move into it, his chest at your back much as it had been in the shower. “It works.”

The device powered on with a high pitched noise that was normal for its design. That sound faded into one lower in volume as you were taken to a selection screen. This particular pet allowed you to choose from three different creatures. One was a fathier, the second a galoomp, and the final was a bursa. Your attention lingered on the second two creatures, both of which were native to Naboo--had been native, you corrected yourself--although the galoomp was also known to dwell on Tatooine. It struck you again that so much life had been lost with the destruction of your birth planet. Not only the people, the local fauna and flora. You swiped your thumb along the pixelated pictures of the creatures on the tiny device.

Instead of choosing one of the creatures, you hard pressed on the buttons necessary to put the game into sleep mode and made a mental note to remove the battery later rather than allow it to run dry. You stashed the electronic toy in the same location that you had the others. Kylo silently observed these actions without comment. It was difficult to not wonder what he was thinking; it would likely have nothing to do with your growing collection, which seemed to amuse him. There were other matters to preoccupy him. Each one of those held more importance than toys.

Next you selected loose clothing to at long last dress in. There was no comment made in regards to you snatching one of Kylo’s shirts, although this did earn you a grunt of acknowledgment. You wanted to rest; it was the wisest move given that no one could predict when next a mission or an attack would arise.

“You should eat.” You frowned at the suggestion, more because your body agreed at the sudden awareness of its hunger than at his words. Kylo did not say another word as you climbed into bed, tugging the sheets over yourself and laying your head on the pillow. He audibly sighed and shifted over to his commlink to order food to be brought to his quarters. There was no option offered nor a prolonged conversation; together, these two factors indicated that Kylo had been aware of the possibility and had made arrangements for food earlier. You appreciated his forethought.

Bending your legs at the knees, your vision of him was obscured until he walked to the bed and joined you. The pair of you lay in silence for a number of minutes before you rolled onto your side to look at him. He had the appearance of someone who had not slept well. There were bags forming under his eyes. You reached for him, running your hand gently along the area so that his eyelids fluttered closed. The temptation to leave your hand there nagged at you due to the likelihood that he would reopen his eyes the moment your limb left. You shifted it all the same and rested your palm on his chest. He was warm to the touch, the effects of the shower still in play. In this moment you were struck by the similarities between mother and son--though you had not seen her often, after you had returned to the Resistance you had noted that Leia Organa frequently looked tired. Both were the leaders of their factions in the war. All you could hope was that Armitage Hux was equally, if not more, tired than the pair.

“Will you rest with me?” you asked, suddenly quite afraid that he would reject the request. There was much he had to run, countless tasks and missions that required his attention. The Knights of Ren had not yet spoken to him in regards to whatever mission had been theirs on the planet. Kylo said nothing, although this did not surprise you. The door to his quarters had opened to permit the stormtrooper entrance. They set the platter of food onto the bedside table before leaving. You twisted around to check what had been brought. There were two drinks, both sealed, present. You lifted the lid off the platter and this revealed two small plates of identical portions. It comforted you to know that he was planning to at least share a meal with you even if he wound up leaving his quarters afterwards.

You scooted upwards, slipping into a sitting position, and pulled the drink you knew to be yours into your lap. Next you grabbed his drink. As you were doing this, you felt the mattress shift in indication that he, too, was adjusting his posture. You handed him his plate after giving him the drink, and finally you pulled your food to yourself.

“I’ve been dreaming about things that happened,” you said once you had consumed the first bite. You felt his gaze upon you though he said nothing; his mouth was full of food at the time, and you would rather he did not talk in that case. “Is it stupid that a part of me feels so sick at the thought of destroying the ship Hux is on?”

You looked directly at his face to find him furrowing his brow and narrowing his eyes. “What?”

“Millicent,” you murmured, ducking your head. His gaze softened in understanding. “I want to take her, not kill her. She gave me comfort when I would visit his quarters. She was one of the reasons it was so easy to view him as a human instead of a monster. Is that weird--that she’s his humanity to me?”

His thick fingers skimmed the circumference of the plate he held. While you studied his face, Kylo inspected his food. The question you had asked was layered, you supposed. It could also be that he was refraining from mentioning how many creatures Hux had slaughtered with the destruction of Naboo and even before then. Even after then. The death of a single animal should not be a wound you feared, not in this context. Yet it did hurt you to think of. It twisted dreams of the past into nightmares of the future. Where you had subconsciously searched the faces of those in the Resistance for individuals you had known, you consciously dreaded happening upon the small body in any setting and thus avoided those thoughts until they lashed violently at the corners of your mind, demanding attention.

For want of something, anything, to do, you took another bite of your food and began to chew at an exaggeratedly slow pace. Your mind began to wander. This time you allowed it to do so. You ran over the items that you had obtained on the mission, focusing ultimately on the electronic pet. You could save pixelated creatures, could revive them with batteries. Except in the cases where the devices themselves were broken. You frowned while swallowing.

“If I get the chance, I’m going to steal her. Rescue her.” You faced Kylo headon to gauge his reaction. Not only did you have the impact of his stare, but his emotions filtered through the bond. He did not wish to dissuade you from clinging onto hope, however he believed your self-appointed quest was a fool’s errand. “I won’t be stupid about it. I promise.” His lips twitching towards a smirk told you that he believed it was already toeing the lines of stupidity.

Kylo popped another bite into his mouth. It was amusing to you that he was not exactly putting up an argument. Ultimately he did have a say in what missions you were allowed on. He had a spy somewhere in the First Order, you remembered. Perhaps that individual could steal away Millicent, bring her to a designated area where a Knight or a trusted member of the Order of Ren could accept her and bring her to you. As far as officially proposing this scenario to Kylo went, you opened your mouth then closed it immediately. He grunted. There would be no getting around it. You spoke softly. Toyed with the food on your plate as you explained the plan that you had begun to devise.

“You wish to risk lives and resources for a cat.” It stung, the cold logic of his words as he delivered reality into the setting of your fantasy. His lips pushed forward momentarily before he rolled his neck and stared at you. You still had yet to look up, observing him only in your peripheral vision. “Aris, an officer, and a stormtrooper.” You eyebrows drew towards one another. Was this the beginning of a joke? “Ushar is on a mission to retrieve them.” This was no joke, no laughing matter. You envisioned the young pantoran female working to gain access to a ship--Maker, she was reckless. She was a child.

Kylo’s hand on your chest stopped you from surging forward. You were all too ready to spring to your feet. The exhaustion in your limbs was combated by the adrenaline that began to course through you. This was a reason that children did not belong in the war. Though you had proposed something so foolish and reckless, asked to steal away Millicent, you were not rushing for that. You did not blindly go for it, risking who knew how many lives in the process. You brushed away his hand while exhaling and closing your eyes. You had to recenter yourself. He had waited to tell you until you had showered and eaten for a reason. You were in no condition to do anything. Ushar was already on his way, you mentally repeated.

“Did she use the Force on the officer and stormtrooper?” He shook his head, unsure. You angrily took another bite. Replenishing your energy was more important to you than before. “How do you plan to punish her?” His lips parted though no words emerged. It was different than if an adult had been the one to behave as such. An example could be made. Not that he was incapable of doing the same with Aris, however it would do more harm than could. She was a child. “Send her to her room with no dessert.” It was not a laughing matter. You simply needed something positive to take your mind off of the possible negative outcomes. Wanted to comfort Kylo in any way that you could. He had signed up to be a leader and, in some respects, a teacher. Not a babysitter, not a father. “Would you like me to help?”

“You would tell her the realities of war?” You nodded without hesitation. A puff of air escaped him and after a short pause he nodded, granting you permission. Any weight that you could lift from his shoulders, you would. The blood in the shower, you could lessen its volume. Separately you both risked becoming monsters, bloodthirsty and inhuman. Together you were not. You maintained your humanity and balanced one another.

Incapable of doing anything until Ushar returned, hopefully with the three in tow, you finished eating and set the two plates onto the platter. You slipped back into your previous position, ready to nap though your mind was not quieting. Your body was physically tired more than it had been before. The last of your energy drained as adrenaline dwindled down. You curled towards Kylo’s body, gradually scooting closer until he turned and allowed you to spoon him. It did not take long for you to fall asleep, thoughts and dreams swirling along the edge of your consciousness.

It was the Naboo of your childhood, each of the younglings possessing a familiar face and each holding a tiny version of some creature or another. The miniature galoomp walked in circles on one child’s palm. You observed its mundane actions, finding that it did nothing of note. As you walked away from the child, you came to the realization that you were wearing your wedding dress. It flowed behind you the entire time you walked in the direction of the water. At the edge rested a creature that you had never before seen. It sat hunched over with a clawed hand to its chest, which was no more than an open, empty cavity.

“I will still devour the galaxy,” it growled out. “That was but a taste of my loyalty.” The creature turned its head to you. Its muzzle contorted as it grinned, baring its fangs. Its eyes glowed white. “There are thousands more, and we will eat you.” Bloodied foam dripped from its mouth as it began to salivate. With a cackle, it sprang into motion.

You jumped backwards to avoid assault only to realize your mistake too late. You had not been the target. The monstrous creature raced past you and headed for the younglings with their miniature creatures. You tried to run, to catch it, screamed and then…

...and then you woke up with a cry spilling from you, a shout tearing from your throat in the waking world as Kylo cradled your face between both of his hands. You shook your head, shoved at his wrists to break his hold. He did not stop you. Kylo drew away from you, stepped backwards, and watched as you sat up. You pressed the backs of your hands against your eyes. Struggled to control your breathing and will your heart to beat at its normal pace.

You had had similar nightmares before, had them since joining the Resistance and seeing battle. There were always things that prompted these nightmares. Sights. Concerns. With this, you knew it was your worry concerning Aris and the heart that you had eaten. “Has Ushar returned?” How long have I been asleep?

Kylo Ren was fully clothed. The reduction of bags under his eyes meant that he had slept before dressing. Which meant, you reasoned, that you had been unconscious for a considerable amount of time. You pushed the blankets off of yourself while searching him for an answer to the question you had asked. Kylo held up his left hand, gesturing with two fingers towards himself. Swallowing, you moved off the bed and set a hand on the bedside table to keep from tilting over. It took you another few seconds to compose yourself and fully waken. Only then did Kylo begin walking in the direction of the refresher.

The first thing that you noticed was that the door was closed. You dreaded what you would find. Had Aris been injured? She would be in medbay, not the refresher, you scolded yourself. Shaking your head, you nodded the next moment to let him know that you were ready. Kylo pushed open the door partway, slipping inside and making another gesture for you to follow suit. You scowled. It was a nuisance to not open the door entirely, however you soon learned why. I’m still asleep.

You pinched your right cheek, wincing at the very real pain you felt. Hiding behind the toilet, peeking out at both you and Kylo was the small feline that you had asked for. This was not something that Kylo would have ordered, not as Supreme Leader, unless there were already people in a position where they had to escape Armitage Hux and the First Order. You lowered into a crouch, shoving at the door with your foot so that it slammed closed. There were many questions that you could ask, but instead you accepted the thick blanket of silence for as long as you could.

Your chest rose and fell with each heavy breath. Your hands curled and uncurled, forming fists only to flatten out. “What happened?” your voice cracked as you spoke. This fact did not embarrass or anger you as it might have in other situations with other audiences.

“The First Order captured the three. The officer was executed immediately, the stormtrooper and Aris taken captive. Ushar would have been taken as well had our spy not acted. The scrambled comm devices that your technician friend in the Resistance made… The Order of Ren worked to design some.” Ushar had communicated with him, you surmised, following along. “Our spy was already revealed, our resources already expended. It was nothing to grab this one. The stormtrooper was killed during the escape. The spy killed himself to allow the others to escape; this was not the First Order flagship, which makes Millicent’s presence there curious. I suspect a recent visitation from Hux.”

“Where are Aris and Ushar?”

“Medbay.” Kylo Ren crouched down, gesturing with a single finger towards the hiding feline. “There was a datachip clipped to her collar. It contains copies of Imperial records that list families with known Force sensitivity lineage along with their birth planets. Naboo was frequently mentioned on that list as were two others. The destruction of Naboo had been in Hux’s design since before we eliminated Phasma.” He lowered his hand. “Should I praise her for inadvertently assisting us? Punish her?” He was emotionally detached.

You did not know what to tell him. A part of you believed that both should be implemented, however you were left with the knowledge that you did not know her current condition. Both Aris and Ushar were in medbay, and that was all you knew. Three people were dead. The list of family members and planets might save more lives. It would offer a chance to counter moves the First Order may be plotting. This was a terrible position to be in, to weigh if the lives lost had been worth it all. What made a good death?

The finger you had used to pull the trigger during your time with the Resistance twitched. You curled it inward, pressed your thumb on it to create a minor sensation of pain. This was a game that all pieces in the war played. A worthy sacrifice. Is it time for him to die? Is it time for her to be spared? Is it time that they enter the battle? Therein was the issue, the reason why you did not want to visit medbay. To see the extent of damage done meant that you might also be saying farewell. If you did not go, you would lose that chance.

What if they’re mortally injured and it’s up to me to say when it’s time? You had been in that position before. Sat at the bedside of an ally with the awareness that no family member was on the base to witness their final moments. You had been there to comfort them. To whisper softly, to tell them that it was alright if they were ready to let go. Their hand in yours--when still they had such limbs--and those impossibly wide eyes--when they had eyes--on your face. The silent plea, the contradiction: let me die please don’t let me die oh please kill me and end this pain I don’t want to die I’m not ready. You did not want to prolong their suffering and you also did not want to let them go too early. The angel of death remained an executioner. Mercy was a plague.

It hit you in that moment why you had grown numb on the Resistance base with the three Knights of Ren with you. There had been no one left alive as you had feared. You had known that, if any person was choking, was in their death throes, you would have gone to them and knelt at their side. Done what you could to ease them in their final moments.

Your eyes journeyed along Kylo’s back, which was rigid. Your mind was wandering back to the shared shower and how he had permitted you a chance to see the blood that tainted his soul. The tears that threatened to cascade if only it was not a sign of vulnerability. Even then he had been aware that Aris and the others had been headed for the First Order. He had already sent Ushar after them, potentially to his death. All the while Ap’lek was on a bed in medbay. Not conscious; he would have told you if the Knight of Ren had regained consciousness. You shifted up onto your knees and shuffled over to him until you could rest your forehead against his spine. Your arms wrapped around his stomach, your hands on him. He commanded the entire Order of Ren.

I would be a monster without you.

Sending others on missions that could result in their deaths. Ordering what was viewed by the opposing sides as slaughter. Farewell, humanity. The monster slayer uglied their own soul, tainted themselves, and only in death did they find release.

I am made of clay, I am made of paper. I am a star that shines, a star that dims. I am a monster slayer. I am a monster. I am human. I am what I make myself to be.

With each thought, you traced a letter with your fingers onto Kylo’s abdomen. You spelled your name, branding him as he had branded you. He stood, pulling you along with him. Not once did your lettering cease. Your name and then his. You murmured the words that you had thought, substituting the I with We, pluralising each line.

We are made of clay, we are made of paper. We are stars that shine, stars that dim. We are monster slayers. We are monsters. We are human. We are what we make ourselves to be.

To know that you had momentarily weighed the life of a feline against those that might have been lost, that reality had latched onto the idea and made it so, caused your head to spin. Kylo moved a single hand atop both of yours. His limb stilled your movements; it was the only thing that could have stopped you from again writing out your name and his. How well they joined together, flowing from one to the other without cessation, feeling natural as though they had never been separate.

“I believe in you,” you whispered. The hand atop yours trembled then clenched more tightly. It kept yours against his body. He held onto you as though you were an anchor. “You know what you have to do...and you don’t have to do it alone. Never. I’m here with you, for you.”

There was no such thing as too young to die, not in war. Not in life. The young and old alike perished each day. Kylo Ren himself had taken the lives of--stars, how many had there been? This one shook him. He saw his father in himself in that moment for a child that did not belong to him. Death was not a certainty for her, however its likelihood was what shackled him to that refresher with you.

Should I praise her for inadvertently assisting us? Punish her? The detachment made more sense to you. His inability to properly feel the emotions that he might have had he not regained his eyesight through the Dark side of the Force bothered him. He knew that it was not a normal response.

“Both.” The single word flowed over you. There was no second of unease for you. It was all that you had expected. Ap’lek and Aris both would be unplugged from the machines that were assisting their bodies. A means of checking if they stood a chance. Were their lives worth having Millicent, worth having the chip that contained that list of names? Was this their good deaths for the war? Sacrificed for the cause. Or they could survive yet be removed from active status. “Ushar said that Aris spoke of a vision through the Force. There was a need for her to go. Ironic that your own stupid obsession with the cat would echo these sentiments.”

“The Force wills it,” you murmured. They were not words that you had often spoken. In fact, it was rare enough that you could not remember when last you had said them. Their sound had Kylo twisting around in your embrace then stepping backwards, breaking contact. You rocked forward a step, caught yourself, and straightened your posture. “It’s no comfort if they die. Then we ask if the Force wanted their deaths. We ask ourselves what mistakes we made. I’ll say it for the both of us: I don’t want them to die.” A vulnerability, one that he could not allow himself.

Kylo’s expression was guarded, which would not change until he was entirely alone. Even then it would be an internal struggle that ate away at his resolve before he gave in if only to keep his sanity. You refrained from commenting on it at all. Checking yourself over in the mirror, you worked to make yourself more presentable. Only when you were done with this did you exit the refresher. You slipped on socks and shoes. Kylo had, during that time, strode to the door of the quarters. The pair of you exited together and walked in silence towards medbay.

Droid and human physicians alike hovered by two beds. The pantoran female was stretched across one. Her blue skin was marked with areas of black. The clothes she had worn were sheared away in patches, allowing you to see the burns. Beside her beeped the machines that read off her vitals. Across from her rested Ap’lek. He, too, was attached to several machines that fed him oxygen and monitored him. His injuries were all internal. You knew the reason that the physicians would refuse to place Aris in the bacta tank; the initial scans were not as favorable as Ap’lek’s had been. Even then he, too, was facing potential death.

“Can the Force bring someone back from the dead?” The question left you before you could catch yourself and you instantly regretted it. Wincing, you looked to Kylo with the intention of apologizing. His eyes abandoned your face without a response. He walked past the bed that held Ushar, who seemed to have sustained minor injuries aside from broken bones in his hand and a broken clavicle along with a sprained ankle. With a huff, you followed along after Kylo. He had gone to Aris’s bed. His glare would have made her shrink in embarrassment and fear had she been awake. You felt ill at such thoughts. She might never awaken again.

You slid her hand into yours. She looked even younger, much smaller, on this bed in medbay. One of the droids moved a chair behind you, which allowed you to sit without releasing Aris. What a foolish girl. A reckless child. You sucked your lips into your mouth, biting down on them and holding your breath as the physician walked to the machine. If Aris displayed signs of thriving, she would be moved into the bacta tank. They had waited for their Supreme Leader, likely utilizing the time it took him to return to work on her and ensure she was in a stable enough condition to try. At least that was your assumption--you were no medic, you understood life and death from a different angle.

The beep, beep-beep was drowned out by the sound of your own pulse in your ears. Phantom fingers walked up your spine and settling on your neck. There they tapped out a steady rhythm. This was not Kylo, not the Force. It was your mind trying to push away from the moment. It was you subconsciously working to dissociate. As you became aware of this, you shook your head and forced yourself to resume breathing. Reminded yourself that you had to be present in that moment no matter the outcome.

You could save all the electronic toys in the galaxy, but what would it do without hands to hold them? Her pulse was weak. It was beating against your skin. Her breaths were so shallow. What if the Force demanded you pick only one life to spare? What if it denied you both?

When you had died, you had held onto your father’s hand. Who would be holding Aris’s when she died? Kylo had said that he had been in darkness. You did not want this child to be alone. This stupid girl. This reckless child. If she was to die, what would you say to her? Would you ask her why, or would that question be directed only at the Force?

Someone was saying your name. It clicked only then that you were alone with Aris. The others, the physicians and Kylo had gone to Ap’lek. Ushar had clumsily risen from his bed, much to the chagrin of the physicians. One life was regaining strength. The other was fading away. The crawling sensation along your spine danced along the entirety of your back. You swayed, nearly pitching off the chair. How you caught yourself, you were not certain. Your focus had begun to waver near immediately.

I don’t want to know when it’s time to let death come. I don’t want to say that it’s being merciful. I don’t want that power. I don’t want that position.

It was easier when you were pulling the trigger. Not when it was the life of someone that you loved. Did the world stop fighting for them because the resources were expended? Was it selfishness? Was it selflessness?

The Force wills it. Light and dark. Life and death. A balance, a cycle, hand in hand.

Your gaze dropped down to the hand that you were holding. So small, yet it had held a weapon. So tiny and young, but it had helped serve in this war. The echo of memory, Kylo’s voice saying that you had armed a child. Had that been the moment that her fate was sealed? Your actions may have been the catalyst. Could you ask her to keep fighting? Whisper to her now, plead with her and the Force and anything and everything. Apologize for giving her the blade, because surely you were the one that had encouraged her to be reckless, to be stupid, to embrace this war like it was nothing more than a game.

And if you could save her life, what would you give in return? Who would you choose to take her place? To state the name of your enemy would be far too easy.

You had consumed a heart, had taken life into your barren body, and now you could offer nothing but death. It was nearly enough to make you jerk your hand away. Nearly, but not quite. Your father had held your hand when you had died. You had to hold hers. “You need to come back,” you said, your tone not unlike the one that your father had used before he had released your hand to return you to this world, to the living. You leaned in. “Stupid. If you’re ready to…” You swallowed thickly, feeling a lump in your throat. “If you’re ready to go, you can let go.” These words you had said in the past with your allies. The next ones you had not. “But if you’re not, I’m here. You aren’t alone, I’m here with you...for as long as you need. For as long as you can fight.” Your voice cracked when you tried to speak again, tears spilling down your face. "No matter what, you're not wrong. You're not alone. I'm here, I promise."

It was not very much longer that you sat there holding onto her hand until the Force gave its final answer. Her hand fell limp, her pulse fading away completely. You ground your teeth together. Anger welled up inside of you. Turning your head, however, you saw proof that the Force was capable of saying more than just no. Ap'lek's chest rose and fell steadily without the assistance of the machines. Ushar was nodding as one of the physicians spoke. They had all moved on, you realized, not because they did not care for Aris. They had entrusted her to you, had given you privacy and called your name only on the occasions that you had started to succumb to despair. In the end you had had the right words to say. That was not a position that Kylo could have filled, nor was it one he wanted.

Life would not pause for you to properly mourn the young pantoran just as it had never done so in the past when you had lost your Resistance allies on the battlefield. It was slightly kinder in this instance, permitting you the opportunity to sit with her body until the physicians pulled you away so that they could do their job. Such a cold thing, what occurred in these durasteel walls. She would be taken to a furnace, would be burned. You exited medbay with a buzzing sensation assaulting your mind and along your spine. You returned to the quarters that you shared with Kylo alone. Walked into the refresher and collapsed against the door, sliding down its frame and staring at the cat concealed by the toilet.

She did not slink over to you until after a full cycle had passed, during which time you had exited the refresher on only three occasions. The first had been when Kylo had insisted you eat and rest. The second when Ap’lek had regained consciousness. The third had been to assist him in walking to Kylo’s quarters and with you into the refresher. He had been there on the mission from the Resistance, had seen who the girl had been before you had put the knife into her hands. As Navrin, he had worked to protect those children from the First Order. It was Ap’lek that you believed, albeit reluctantly, when he said that you had not done this to Aris.

Millicent crawled over to the pair of you. She brushed her head along your hand then tentatively sniffed at Ap’lek’s hand. He was not fit for combat according to the physicians; first he would be required to undergo a series of physical therapy sessions. Not that there was much to do in the meanwhile--Kylo Ren had sent reconnaissance parties at the locations of the other two planets that had appeared most frequently on the list alongside Naboo. This would serve as confirmation and the counterstrike could begin. Though the Order of Ren had been successfully in dismantling the weapon that had destroyed Naboo, not a one of you were underestimating the might of the First Order nor the resourcefulness of its Supreme Leader. You tugged Millicent into your lap, feeling her squirm before she settled down.

“It was easy to blame you when Kylo died.” You turned your head to consider Ap’lek. He was staring at the cat. “You’re blaming yourself partly because you don’t want to blame the others. Why didn’t the doctors do more? Why didn’t Kylo order them to put her into the bacta tank? Why did the Force do this?” You averted your gaze and clenched your jaw. Ap’lek took a heavy breath. He raised his arms, crossing them behind himself and resting his head on them. “You need to consider that maybe it has nothing to do with you at all. That you need to stop asking those questions.”

Maker, you wanted to...what? Punch him? Cry? Your mind was simultaneously emotional and emotionally drained. The cat you were holding began to pur, which you knew to be for self-soothing purposes in this case.

“It would have happened without you there. It’s not about whether you’re hurting or not. It was her life.”

“She threw it away!”

“Says you,” Ap’lek intoned. “You’ll never know what she felt about it. That’s what bothers you. Maybe she was ready to be free of that pain. You told her she could, that you were there for her regardless, didn’t you? All that’s left, it’s your pain. You are turning her death into your choice, into something that defines you.” You opened your mouth to argue. “You can hurt. Just...stop. Cry. I don’t care.” You released Millicent and allowed her to scramble back to the toilet where she could hide. “She was a child, and she did more for this war that some of the adults here. She had a vision and she followed through, aware on at least some level of what the risks were. Aris had seen death. What she did was stupid.

“She could have spoken with Kylo. But she didn’t. Somehow that still allowed us to get hold of that chip. If she had been an adult, we would call her a hero, a martyr. Because she was a child, it’s a greater tragedy.” Ap’lek leaned over, wincing at the discomfort of the movement, and knocked into you. “You held her hand in her final moments. She may not have been conscious. She was fading into the Force, slipping away. Probably scared. But she knew that she was not alone, and you let her know that it was okay to let go. She did not have to fight that losing battle just to prove something. She did not have to cling to pain or misery. It was not you choosing to let her die. It was not the physicians or Kylo choosing to let her die. It was everyone being fully aware that her surviving was nothing more than prolonged suffering. Even if you cared, it was the selfish part of you that wanted her to remain. Admitting that was not wrong.” You bit down on your lip. “I could hear you. I heard a lot of what was said in medbay when I was in the bacta tank and then after I was out.”

His hand stroked along your head, down your neck and to your shoulder. He held you in a loose embrace that you melted into, curling your body against his though careful so as to not cause him pain. The bitterness and hurt of Aris’s death did not disappear entirely, however it lessened in its intensity. You knew that what Ap’lek was telling you was the truth, and the words he used were not dissimilar to ones that Ip had told you when you had trained with the splinter cell of the Resistance. These facts transcended war. They were of the balance between life and death, both of which were mysterious, kind, and cruel.

“You’re my favorite Knight of Ren,” you murmured against him. His thumb skimmed back and forth along your shoulder. You rolled your eyes as he referred to you as super tooke. “I want to celebrate her life and the victory she has given us.” You were determined that this next mission meet with success. Aris had seen the importance of her going to the First Order in a vision. You wanted more than anything to believe in her, in the Force, in these decisions that had, as Ap’lek stated, nothing to do with you--not aside from you being a player in the same war. “I was so scared that I would lose both of you.”

“You still might,” he said in a rather chipper tone. Your eyes bulged and you twisted around quickly, jarring him so that he winced. “Not a funny joke.” You could have laughed, you could have cried. Instead you uttered nonsensical sounds that had him chuckling. Kylo’s footsteps on the other side of the door helped to sober the both of you. His return meant that the scouts had reported back. Ap’lek would rest and you would, hopefully, be joining Kylo on the next mission to fight against the First Order. You wanted more than ever to eliminate the monster known as Armitage Hux.

#kylo ren x reader #kylo x reader #kylo ren smut #kylo ren imagine #three blind tooke #death is an art

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blankdblank · 4 years

Text

Next Caller Pt 47

“How about an herb garden out front?” Thorin hummed out the question somehow powered by the nerve he’d gotten in confirming you’d let him order the bed frames you had wanted in a stolen message while you were on lunch.

“You want an herb garden out front? If you like. Hadn’t paid much mind to the front to be honest.”

“Well, I will start looking into it. Put my afternoons into working the front garden to something nice to show off to the neighbors, with a bench, or a swing.” Making you smirk again at his spreading excited grin.

“So, how did it go?”

He nodded, “I think it went well. They seem to fit in with my family. Telling stories and sharing jokes. I think they like us.”

“How could they not, all short and scowls, why they liked me.” Making him smirk at you through another chuckle to your teasing giggle.

Tucked warm in bed you closed your eyes focusing on trying to sleep so that you wouldn’t be tired and jittery knowing your family would be here to listen. Everything seemed to be going well so far and even if they were trying to just be nice you would be able to tell. Hope that things would go well from here out so things could progress with you and your Mug Dealer who seemed to be a bit shocked at how easy things had gone on their first clan meet. Warmly in his own bed Thorin stretched out grinning at the fact he had a good chance to secure the courtship announcement his clan eagerly saw coming up close.

“I made waffle monsters.” The term had you smiling after its hummed announcement and wiggling out of bed following Cirdan back to your kitchen where Thorin found you starting to brew up some tea flashing him a sleepy grin after his glance at the odd folded over waffles with small omelets inside them like creatures eating mouthfuls with diced tomatoes for eyes and teeth. With hash browns and sausage patties laying over the back of it as its furry body.

Cirnaven chuckled saying in settling a plate in front of Thorin at the table, “Here, have a waffle monster.”

Cirdan said, “Don’t mock the monster it’s packed with flavor and protein to power you through the day.”

Thorin shook his head, “Not mocking the monsters. Thank you.” Settling into his seat watching you using his floating duck and your whale infuser to brew up some tea as Cirnaven poured some juice for him and his brother after raiding for some jams.

“You can have as much jam as you like.”

Cirdan chuckled, “You do have a good spread. We could ship some home, wanted to fly you some melons, did not work.”

Cirnaven, “No clue what the airline industry has against produce,”

Cirdan smiled watching your grin in removing the infusers you emptied and rinsed under Thorin’s adoring watch, “I mean I understand the seed dilemma but how am I to take over the Dwarf market with four of my square melons?”

“Ooh, you got the square mastered?”

Cirdan, “Yes, finally, only had to add two thirds more water in my evenings to help them soak it in overnight to fill out those pesky corners.” He glanced at Thorin carrying the final monsters to the table while you carried the mugs, “Used to have pentagons.”

Thorin asked, “And melons are your passion?”

Cirdan chuckled lowly, “One of them, I also work with glass. Jewels loves melons though, used to comment on how the supply in markets were unstable for her tastes. One of the hobbies I used to build our friendship. Best melons she could find on the table half the year with ample winter veg to tide her over till spring.” Sitting down on the other side of you smiling at his grin your way glad to see you melt into a steady warm conversation with Thorin.

Ori and Shari showed up again and with the duo watching got to finishing up the coloring again and scanning the images into the system while you were in your booth. Silently Mal sat stealing glances over the desk to your uncle until Thorin came back from showering, changing and finalizing calls to his clan who was flying in shortly, to be prepared for bonding with your clan as you were at work. He kept chatting with the duo between bouts of grinning through listening in to your show between BamBam’s eager trots through the room now free of his cast and cart with excited snorts.

While you changed however for work Cirnaven asked, “You never mentioned this little guy in your application.”

Mal smirked saying, “Well he came into the shelter and I couldn’t just let them put him down so I paid for his cast and wheels, not realizing he was a Mortar Boar cub, but Thorin’s cousin is meeting me at the station. I’m taking him to Iron Hills, Dain’s got a female, Truffles, who can’t have anymore and she’s adopting him now that his leg’s healed.”

Cirnaven smiled wider and Cirdan asked, “Need a lift?”

She shook her head, “I have my scooter, thank you though.” A glance at her chiming phone had her saying, “Oh I gotta go.”

He nodded saying, “I’ll walk you out.” Following her to the door once she lifted the cub into his carrier. Just in time she made it and on the other station Dain beamed brightly with a balloon he tied to the carrier handle eager to get the little guy settled with a few hours for Mal to aid in enjoying the welcoming party his relatives had come to throw.

Flawless and tactful the meeting between the clans again at Dis and Vili’s home came less with shared emotional pasts from the duo on your past and more for actual sharing of traditions. Photos of their properties in sharing their esteemed lineage and territories gained through the ages hoping to show security for your future and protection. Fully taking the imagined role of an interview each of them took turns staking their own claim to what they brought to the table and before long lunch turned to dinner where the brothers tried to show the clan pushing so hard to win them over their main focus was your happiness.

Sharing coincidences between you and the ways Thorin had secured your trust blended soon into the plans your family had for the summer especially calming them greatly as they had taken it for a subtle sign that they had passed the test as Thorin had put it for the females to come for their own clan meetings in the summer. Hopefully a sign that Thorin could propose by or around the summer break when the Findis clan would ensure that you did indeed have another vacation to aid any question Thorin might feel up to asking.

Smiling to themselves the brothers once back again showered in turns, laying out on the bed again for a nap to be awake for both your returning dinner and breakfast. Though expectations of having you head to bed between the two found you moving to your living room to cuddle up between the two brothers eventually falling asleep anyways. Contently shimmering with glowing clan marks spread across your skin between the brothers with clan markers of their own showing, a peaceful moment caught by Thorin to be printed later. Ending however regrettably to later stir oddly against Thorin’s side where they had moved you to ready your breakfast to fill your belly to fuel the date day ahead.

The move spreading a grin across the Dwarf’s face clearly for him obvious proof that they approved of your courtship by placing you in his arms. Even not yet marked as your kin officially the new bond with the duo had Thorin feeling the bittersweet completion of the waffle monster you had been served in this last family meal.

“I’m gonna miss you.” The sentiment rippled through tight hugs and both stole glances at Thorin only to lure chuckles from him at them pulling him into hugs as well.

“We will miss you too Thorin.” They repeated stealing glances and another hug each once at their rental you walked them to. Right up to your ear in his final hug Cirdan murmured, “We love you, and give our approval.”

Across your lips a grin stretched and Cirnaven said walking around the rental, “Enjoy your date tonight, you two.”

The door was eased shut after their car had pulled away and smiling again Thorin melted at the step you took into his bare chest nestling there for a warm hug, in which he hummed, “Is this happy or sad cuddling?”

“I can’t just cuddle?” You teased making him chuckle and nuzzle closer around you.

“Cuddle all you like. Dis warned she’d be here by nine, up for a film?” You nodded and subtly his arm dropped to lift your legs at his side to carry you to the living room to keep you in his arms. Onto the couch he settled you letting go only to light a fire then come back to wrap around you under the blanket he draped over your laps tucking you between his legs. Gladly nestling his head beside yours with the blanket he inched over your shoulders watching you pick a film that lured his sleepy grin out knowing by your shared content sighs that surely a nap was coming on. Nice and welcome tangled up in front of the warm fire you cuddled up soaking in what nap you could to soak up energy for your date tonight.

Loud and clear Dot released a screech making your eyes snap open and his arms tighten around you in the realizing grumble let out in your turn over to cuddle closer into his chest and side trying to sleep again. The warning message from Thorin’s phone on the impending arrivals however had you shutting off the screen and to his eyes adorably trudging off to your room pouting at the end of cuddling. Meant to be warm comfortably without any jeans clean shorts was what you pulled on under same tank top you pulled a flannel on over. To the bath you went readying for the day, including a combing of your curls you left down but added a couple hair ties to your wrist just in case you needed them later. Your converse were the last to be added while you returned to the living room Thorin was still sitting in.

Scooted closer to your side he smiled easing your hair back then wider at the head tilt welcoming his warm peck to your cheek. “Wonderful as always, Mafioso.”

“What are you up to this morning?”

“Fenrir needs an ally for some more work at his place. For certain I will be back on time, we have timers warning for our timers.” Gaining a weak chuckle from you in his lean into your side nestling head to head enjoying the rest of the cuddling time until the doorbell parting you again.

He was off to change while you went to open the door finding Tili there with a grin, “Dis is in the van.”

“You brought a van?” You asked stepping out closing the door behind you shouldering the bag hung up on your way.

“Diaa hired the van so we could relax, since Balin’s Wife, Gorgo and Dis are carrying.”

“Wow, broke out everyone,”

She smirked looping her arm in yours saying, “Everyone is excited to help you fill that closet of yours.”

“I just need a dress.”

She chuckled saying, “Oh trust me, one date leads to two and there will be need for more than one dress.”

“Please tell me we’re going to a second hand shop at least.”

“We know a lovely consignment shop even we enjoy rummaging through, we wouldn’t go full designer row on your first trip out with us.”

“Thank you.” She grinned releasing your arm allowing you to climb up into the van joining the smiling group of Dams ready for the morning of shopping. Greetings came from the L shaped bench that you claimed the corner of at Tili’s insistence to be in the center.

Dis asked in the pull out of the van, “Decided on a color yet?”

“No, not really.”

Mili smirked saying, “I think silver,”

Gorgo said, “Or a Magenta would be nice.”

Balin’s Wife, “Gold did look lovely on you at the festival.”

Tili, “Or classic black.”

“As long as it’s comfy and isn’t too flashy anything should be fine.”

Chatter on various styles and events to dress up for nearing the sprawling mall like consignment shop you’d always heard about in ads on the radio. Parked up front you joined the ladies in exiting and found Dis taking your side with Mili on the other side of you both flashing you wide grins. Coats were first and beside the cart you strolled making the chatting group smirk at your inch to inspect the blouses. A couple sleeveless options, once the tags were checked making the Dams nip at their lips to keep from urging you on too strong ensuring you would still choose some things when you reached the dresses.

“This is pretty,” Balin’s Wife said bringing it to your view only to sigh seeing it wasn’t close to your size.

“It is,” you mused putting down a choice of your own that wasn’t the right size either. Two more blouses, this time long sleeved, were added to the cart on the way past the trousers to the skirts. “Ooh,” you said lifting a pencil skirt that in the distance seemed cute only to have your brows furrowing, “Is it supposed to be neck to knee?”

Dis giggled as Tili said, “Unfortunately I don’t think you have the legs for that.”

Mili, “Looked so nice from back there,” watching you put it down and start to ease through the choices. Pencil to flowing with layers was soon joined with a beautiful black silk painted skirt with blue and white flowers across it to go with a yellow and black checkered one. The latter stirring up curious smirks as to what else you might pick in the bold color yet to be added by anything overly green.

Dresses were next and from a stunning off the shoulder low v cut pencil styled pastel pink shockingly in your size, to a trio of long sleeved lace dresses to the knee in red, navy and yellow, the cart selection continued to grow. Some solid sleeveless dresses covering the chest joined a few more playful numbers with halter neck sheer panels above the cleavage teasing bell skirt dresses. One black fully covered the chest with the entire back open except for the ribbon securing it in place, where you might wear it you had no clue but something said to buy it all the same. The final dress that caught your eye was a purple off the shoulder painted on bandage dress to go with the silver one etched with patterned thread all across it to accent a more curvier petite figure like yours.

Each item while you chose the final two were already rung up by an eager attendant wishing to aid your group with anything you might need gladly claiming the final two while Gorgo took your arm saying, “Now, time for shoes!”

For the third time you had glanced at Balin’s wife making her brow inch up as Mili and Tili glanced at one another confirming they had caught your glance at the expecting Dam who smoothed her hand over her fluffing sideburns asking, “Something wrong, Jaqi?”

“Well,” you replied after wetting your lower lip anxiously, “I just, you don’t want to sit down?”

Shaking her head she chuckled saying with a pat of her hand on her sweater coated belly, “No, I am quite sturdy to go hours yet before requiring rest.”

“Ok,”

You replied and Gorgo asked, “Why?”

After a glance at her you said, “Well she’s got a day ahead of her,” you glanced over the group and you sighed, “You can’t tell can you?”

Dis, “Tell?”

They all glanced at Balin’s wife who smoothed a hand over her belly curious what you could mean, then back to you as you said, “Again with the spoiling. You have an, please don’t take this as a comment on your hygiene because it is a lovely scent really, you smell like cucumbers and honey,” making her eyes narrow a moment uncertain of when she had ever eaten that combination of foods. “To my kin at least mothers close to labor give off that scent.”

Gorgo, “You can tell that?”

“Maiar genes, fun times. Usually it’s the day before so as long as you feel fine you shouldn’t worry it’s just a natural, musk, if that’s the term.”

Creeping wider her smile spread and she moved closer to loop her arm in yours, “I spotted some wedges you will love, shoes first we must get you prepped.”

Keeping the news to themselves knowing the clan would call for an assembling of relatives spoiling your date they simply silently conspired to ask the elder Dams to a tea tomorrow to do half the job ensuring the elders would linger a bit longer to conveniently be around while the birth was to happen. Trusting fully the same subtle signals your more sensitive self had picked up on alerting them to the miracle pebble in the first place.

Four pairs of shoes were brought over for you and as you sat to trade your sneaker for the first option with a curious jumble of straps and a decorative confusing zipper. Mili asked trying on her own pair, as Tili came over with her own pair. “How did your family take having to leave?”

“Good, they enjoyed the trip. Always enjoy snooping and they liked the rooms. Loved meeting the flock.” Standing up you halfway tiptoed to the mirror while Dis readied the next choices ribbon secures for you as you tiptoed back.

Dis asked, “That’s all they said?”

Smirking to yourself you held back your giggle sitting again replying, “Are you asking what they thought of Thorin, your clan or their impression of the courtship?”

All the Dams answered at once making you giggle to yourself, “All of it.”

“They had fun meeting your clan, said perhaps the difference in cultures might have made it a bit timid,” making them all inhale or wet their lips anxiously, “Not in a bad way, it goes both ways nobody wants to step on toes or issue insult or add confusion to things.”

Balin’s wife, “Was there a main point of confusion?”

“Not in a bad way, it seemed a bit like an I suppose full disclosure of your clan history and territories I think which would be a Dwarf tradition.”

Dis, “Was that too much?”

“No,” you replied trying not to giggle in her bear puppy dog stare, “They loved hearing about your clan and, I suppose the term would be, security offered. More than that they preferred when you all relaxed, when it wasn’t so much like an interview. You all did well, please don’t doubt that,”

You said trading shoes with Dis. “What about Thorin?”

“They like him, I keep saying like but it’s a deeper thing than it sound in our culture. They trust him and are glad he’s so at home in the house since moving in and how we mesh together and that he’s nudging me on filling it more. And said when they were leaving if we needed their blessing we have it.”

Excitedly the women squeaked and Gorgo stated, “So the elders can announce you finally!” Shaking the shoes in her hands in an excited bounce on her toes.

“Is there anything special that has to be done with that?”

Dis shook her head, “Not really, Gran no doubt will send a photographer to have a portrait snapped of you both and your ravens, no doubt your Great Owl and hummingbirds can be in it too. That would be published with an announcement for papers and magazines.”

“How many magazines?”

You asked and Dis chuckled replying glancing at Mili and Tili, “Ten? For me and Vili?”

Tili nodded and Gorgo giggled saying, “My Adad demanded fifteen. Took months to just get our cohabitation papers done but Gimli worked up a deal with five newspapers to print a full declaration of intentions and Adad was willing to hear his compromises.”

“I wanna say that’s so sweet,” you giggled out making her giggle again.

“It was!” She answered with a wide smile, “So sweet and thought it up on his own. Not that hard seeing as the press wanted to know all about how far we’d gotten and when he anticipated being allowed to ask for cohabitation...”

“So that’s normal? Cohabitation first before engaged?”

Dis, “It depends, Vili and I waited but we were designing the house and overseeing the building together and when it was done he proposed with the keys.”

Balin’s wife said, “Balin and I were in a sort betrothed as children, our Amad’s grew up together and noticed we have matching marks so we were allowed to cohabitate and had our courtship completed by the time we were able to live and work on our own. We eloped after that, I have six sisters and Adad was a bit stretched thin on wedding planning after my four elder sisters had left the nest to homes of their own.” Your lips parted and she waved a hand, “I was never one for the center of attention, too much Hobbit in me. And we had a lovely reception. Everyone was pleased in the end.”

“How’s Gimli taking the news?”

She smiled saying, “Same way every Dwarf child does, they miss being the baby, however he’s nearly to independent adulthood in another decade, so much better than others.”

Balin’s wife chuckled, “Billi is a bit stubborn at the moment, however once she sees baby she will be thrilled.”

Dis said, “Most often it has to do with the wait, Baby is coming but not for years, so it’s prolonging the wait of having a sibling and then you have to wait to be able to have them old enough to play with.”

Tili asked, “How did you take it?”

Your brows lifted and you said, “I was happy for Naneth, so happy. I knew babies were coming eventually and I was fully grown so I was ready to help. I have 43 half cousins and they have children but we were so insulated we never got to talk or see each other until we snuck out. I suppose like Kuu it was interesting to sort of stare at them and find out how to treat and behave with a baby. If that’s not too out there.”

They shook their heads and Mili patted your hand saying, “Makes perfect sense, Vili stared at us for two weeks, just stared Amad has tapes. Like we had five heads, even we go through that phase with our first infant relative. Perfectly normal.”

“But here was no jealousy, and I know Naneth was glad to have me there to help mind them. It was another sort of healing, making certain they were safe and had more freedom and knew that wouldn’t change. We wanted to be better, for them. And for us, but they deserved happy family to build memories.” At your grin easing out they smirked, “But I think she might be carrying again, Cinnamon said she’s picked up mangoes again, which she craves through carrying. I hope she is, she doesn’t say it but she wants more babies.”

Dis chuckled as Balin’s wife said, “We always want more babies.”

Lacing up the next pair you stood eyeing yourself in the heels subtly against Dis, close to Thorin’s height, still leaving you barely to her shoulder from your adorable 4 ft 2 and a quarter stature leaving you smirking at the easier task of stealing kisses if you so wished. The next oddly tin foil ruffled next pair was taken back as they just looked odd out of the box. A peach and mint pair were added to the mix with a classic black pair with an adorable blue bow on the ankle strap you just couldn’t leave there. And the cheerful group turned to guide you back to the register where you pulled out your card that while signing the receipt you bit the inside of your lip even at the drastically reduced price from their original designer purchase amounts sold for.

Bags galore held your purchases and outside while the group helped to carry them you glanced at the Dwarves with cameras snapping pictures and then to the Hobbit photographer popping out from the mix asking, “Planning on a trip, Miss Pear?”

“No, just have plans later and realized few days back I had nothing to wear for it, now I have options.”

The Hobbit chuckled watching as you looked away to trot over a small concrete barrier in the walkway realizing you were headed straight for a planter. The van pulled up and the driver came out to own the door for Balin’s wife in the front of the line then made sure the cameras kept at a few feet as you all climbed in. One of them however asked, “Miss Pear?” Your brow inched up glancing at him in the doorway, “You wouldn’t happen to know two pink haired Elves, would you?”

“My Ada and Uncle.”

“Thank you,” he said smirking in a step back dialing the phone he pulled from his pocket supposedly calling the answer off to his gossip site he worked for signaling your turn to comb in and take your seat.

Another called out before the driver could close the door, “Any chance of talks of a possible Bunny Show Book?!”

Smirking back you said, “Well if one was on the horizons then the Durins certainly would be the ones putting it out.”

“Miss Gorgo?!”

The men called out making her giggle and smile saying, “Venture Publishing’s has had discussions with Miss Bunny herself,” dropping their jaws and she said, “But anything concrete for public announcement is still yet to be determined. When there is a date or project completed for distribution we will announce it.”

When the door closed and the driver pulled away from the curb you asked, “Was that okay?”

She smiled at you saying, “That was perfectly fine, we’ve been getting calls nonstop since we’re nearly over halfway to the first shipment being printed it was decided to throw them a bone. And they loved the commercial.”

“Oh good, ya I can finish the other one this week, the bed frames are coming tomorrow and I doubt Thorin would let them sit long so I’ll help him with that or he’ll be lost halfway through the instructions on his own,” their brows inched up and you said, “Another kit from past Lindon.”

“Ah,” rippled around and Dis asked, “Did you want us to call some relatives to help you?”

“We should be able to manage it. If not we can finish the one and have them out to help with the next three.”

Mili said, “Well I can’t wait to see them. Thorin hasn’t set any game nights yet.”

“Well, poke him about it, or something,” making her giggle and nod, “I’ve just been letting him set the pace on that. Since he knows the pace of how things should go with the clan and all.” After a moment you asked, “Does your clan do group things alone? Or is it all, meshed now?”

She smirked saying, “It depends. Birthdays and births are welcome to those closest while weddings are mainly combining both clans, unless invitations state otherwise. Our clan does have dinners on its own. It can be confusing to some, it’s been years in the making on how we make it work.”

Gorgo, “I know my clan mainly stays in the Blue Mountains, sending gifts but they don’t like to travel often, so every other year we fly out to celebrate our anniversary. They would travel for a wedding if asked, can’t resist a wedding. But, no pressure that when you and Thorin get to that stage of planning the wedding you wouldn’t be forced to invite them.”

Mili and Tili shook their heads, “Or ours.”

“That wasn’t what I was going after.”

Gorgo, “Oh we know. I know it was daunting with my ceremony with Gimli, his family is daunting but my Amad has two Hobbit clans she’s from who expect equal representation while Adad is from a Hobbit line and a Dwarf line, also wanting equal representation. Ended up having a Hobbit ceremony and another for a Dwarf one in a three day sort of, sprawl. Awkward, but lovely. Your Ada mentioned the private ceremony for you, and I know Thorin mentioned perhaps a double reception?”

“Seems like we might have to do that. Thorin said after the courthouse for the eloping the Dwarf Reception could have the traditional welcoming and such, the next day would have the reception for my Naneth’s dress.”

Balin’s Wife said, “I think it sounds lovely, I can’t wait to see the both of them.”

Dis reached over stroking your arm, “I know it will be, and we will do what we can to help make it perfect for the both of you.”

“Either way, today is the first date, weddings and all that is a long way off, who knows if he wouldn’t-,”

The Dams all said, “He’s marrying you.”

“Already be planning, is what I meant. I know we’re marked as betrothed, he’s under contract.”

Dis chuckled catching your meaning while the others grinned at the Dwarf taken meaning of that as something far more romantic to say over being unable to do anything but what he had signed for. “How is it you wrote such romantic scenes for Dwarf audiences without knowing the details of our culture exactly?”

“Well, honestly I tried to make it as complicated and as aggravating as possible.” Making the women laugh as you giggled out, “Basically Hobbit courting times a thousand with as much obstacles I could put in between the couples.”

Gorgo giggled out, “Certainly will build up some fuel to see the duo make it to the alter.”

Mili said, “I do love the outside perspective, how it’s spoken of as so mysterious why Durin is like this or doing this and we know the reason and meaning but it’s somehow endearing to Bunny who seems to never get the explanation.”

“Just makes it more fun. It’s a very, very slow burn.”

Questions on the show bubbled up and eventually stopped again your head turned seeing you were home again, with smiles the ladies walked with you to settle everything on your bed to un-tag everything as they headed out again to aid in prepping for the pre-warned birth. Alone at home from locking the front door you turned to let out a breath and turn to grab the purple dress you’d chosen for tonight. To the greenhouse you went to give it a barrel wash with plenty time to let it dry gently in the dryer leaving it nice and warm to cool on the hanger smoothed by your fingers from the few folds sure to vanish when put on. The rest of your new purchases were left to hang in the greenhouse drying slowly while you removed the tags from your new shoes added to the shoe cubbies in the spacious closet. The single thought of the topic of a distant wedding leading to shaking your head to the notion of sharing this closet.

To your studio you went with alarm set using your few hours to good use of sketching out the comic of Bunny through her hospital bed ridden days to create the book you had written. Muddled with snapshots of scenes from your show so far fans loved the most. Hints of Durin and her friends egging her rebellious ways on blended through it for a surprisingly simply sketched out idea with sketches for color markup sheets for the teen duo who might still be up for the job of coloring these in.

Smirking to yourself you sat once completed with a new idea you wrote up a comic strip for of Durin trying to make a promo for the book only to keep being interrupted. Bunny kept stepping in luring adoring but irritated scowls and furrowed brows at his puzzling guest while the Countess tried to give him pointers on his next try for a take. An adjusted coat here, shifted collar there and a moving of his ‘really cool sword’ to lay against his chest behind the book set he was holding before one Raven was called over soon joined by his adorable Mate and clutch proudly perched across the shoulders of the scowling Dwarf King whom after a picture by Bunny was taken flatly stated, “Bunny wrote this, read it or else.”

For anyone else it might have been taken out of context for their characters where as Gorgo’s call responding to the pictures of the comic strip you had sent her was filled with laughter from her and the group with her adoring the new idea to add to the mix. Ori and Shari among them couldn’t wait to get started on once done with the bunny filled commercial to get started on this new one and possibly any more, loving how endless your inspiration seemed to stretch for promoting this book to the masses.

Thorin all the while stood next to his younger brother working up possible conversation points in case he got stumped on the date for what to say. Not that it was ever hard talking to you, but he knew himself and planning, though often not to his best advantage as his words often became jumbled around you, still it was his best option at the moment. After all a single sentence from Dwalin and he had openly complimented your breasts in his shop. Wide eyed mentally rambling he paused making Frerin smirk seeing his brother now in panic mode as he could only think of your perfect breasts so complimenting every stunning inch of the body of his perfect betrothed with whom he was going out on a date with tonight surely opening him up for a chance to claim a kiss on the lips if he dared. Sure to last far more than that if he had his way absolutely with cuddling and more kissing to follow.

Up his hands rose to rub his face, groaning lowly mentally retracing every curve that had been molded to his body on a few occasions now. The very first especially the worst to recall right now of you in your intimates not helping his mind on what you might choose to wear, hopefully through the date not dipping to what you were wearing underneath it. Younger brother to the rescue reeled him back in to focus on the show coming up and points to discuss on that front through dinner and the drive from there to the show.

Pt 48

#Thorin x Reader OC #Hobbit #lotr #Tea Shop AU

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simp4cas · 4 years

Text

It Was Never Us

Masterlist

Dean Winchester × Reader

Chapter 1- Dean Winchester is a Kidnapper

It was the first time that your sleep was dreamless. There was no pain, no death. Just you. It had been a long time since you had a peaceful sleep.

Nightmares were regular to you because of the death and destruction caused by Micheal, the archangel. For the last fifteen years, you'd been fighting against him- not even completing your eleventh grade. But not completing your education had been the least of your worries then.

When the Apocalypse first began with Micheal and Lucifer fighting each other, there was this huge surge of power that fried all of your electronics. Electricity was out, cutting out communication, and at that time, you didn't know that two archangels were fighting each other. It was all pretty quiet from then, only minor earthquakes.

Food and water started to run out and your parents would make supply runs to the store close to your house every two weeks.

Then, the riots began. Hordes of people carrying weapons raided houses and stores for food and water, killing anyone who may stop them. It was then that you noticed real human behavior. Your parents had gone for a supply run and never came back.

Everything pretty much went downhill from there. You had no food in the house and no protection. You would hide in a nook on your roof, afraid that people would break into your house. Eventually, when you came out and left the house, you had been too numb to notice no one on the streets, the debris everywhere.

Fast-forward to fifteen years later, with camps fighting against Micheal and his army of angels. Along the way, you met and lost so many people. Innocent people who had so much of their lives left to them.

You had gone human scouting since you were sick of sitting in boring Resistance meetings and tending to the sick and dying people in camp. It wasn't that you didn't like helping people- your heart just wasn't in it. Lately, you'd been feeling that nothing really mattered anymore.

You and the other people were caught and then they kidnapped Charlie.

Charlie?

Shit, Charlie!

You bolt up in a sitting position, your sleep disrupted by the thought of redhead. Your mind floods with what had happened before- the angels took Charlie to the Northern Camp and left you with another angel. Someone saved you. Some guy wearing layers and another guy in a tactical suit- that honestly made him look like an idiot.

You had accompanied the strange men and gone to the camp, mainly cause they gave you a Glock that was way sleeker than any other gun you'd seen. You frown, remembering what Layers- you didn't remember his name- said to you. Something about them being from an alternate universe and you being dead there. As much as you wanted to believe them, you didn't have the liberty of bringing your hopes high.

A world without Micheal? The first time you imagined a world like that, it had been brought you to tears. A few years later, it was pretty obvious that the humans were losing the war against the angels and it was pretty obvious that all of you were going to die. So the next times you visualized it, you showed no trace of emotion on your face.

You bring your hands up, cradling your head as the memories flood faster and faster. You guys broke Charlie out from the camp but you had been hit in the frenzy of all the people shooting at the angels. Before everything went black, you remembered looking down at your hands dripping with your blood, staining the white snow and your clothes, Layers and Charlie running towards you.

You finally open your eyes, your heart beating quickly in your chest. Your hand immediately goes to your side, where you'd been shot and you feel nothing. It's didn't pain at all.

In a span of 30 seconds, you lifted your dirty gray tank top up to look at your smooth skin and scanned the room you were in.

It was- to you- beautiful. The walls were made with red bricks, only half of it cemented. There was a wooden table to the side with a few books that looked new- no damage or burns. The bed you were on- God, the bed you were on was heavenly. Not the tattered with springs-sticking-out mattresses or the uncomfortable hammocks at camp. It was an actual, comfortable-as-hell mattress on a bed. You scoff in disbelief, lifting the clean white sheet off you.

Wherever you were, it wasn't a camp. Couldn't be one. Either the angels kidnapped cause who knows the luxuries they kept to themselves. You hadn't seen a place that wasn't raided or had at least a few bullet holes in the walls in a long, long time.

What happened after you blacked out? And did Charlie actually leave you?

You scoff, shaking your head. She was one of the people you would give your life for- and that was saying a lot. You couldn't jump to conclusions. Not until you figured out where you were. You feel light-headed for a second as you swing your body of the bed, stretching your toes onto the hard wooden floor.

Your eyes scan the room for weapons, finally setting onto the lamp on your bedside table. You yank the plug out and wrap the wire around the stem of the lamp, widening your eyes at the weight of it. Cautiously, after eyeing the room one more time, you turn the doorknob, surprised to hear it click and open. That was strange. If it was angels that kidnapped you, why would they leave the door unlocked?

The hallway extended to your sides, with simple white walls half-covered with gray tiles. It was a huge place with at least 10 doors in the walls. You raise your eyebrows, wondering how big the place would be.

The floor was cold under your bare feet and you growl in anger. They took your shoes!

With your blood pounding in your ears you pass every door, fearing that one would open and an angel would walk out. You pass an archway that led to what looked like a kitchen with a small dining table, an island, a stove, and a few metal cabinets with black handles on them.

Your body tenses when you hear people speaking in the next room. You try slowing down your breath. You shouldn't be checking it out- if it was an angel, you had no weapon to kill it. But your legs moved on their own accord to the right.

You walk into a room that had a huge table in the middle with a map of the world on it. A few control panels were towards the side of the walls, with bright buttons and dials. It connected to a library and by the looks of it- and a huge one- lavishly decorated with leather chairs and weapons like swords and katanas. In front of you was a black staircase, leading up to a balcony that overlooked the room.

There were two men in the library. A man wearing a tan coat had his back facing you and to his left was another man with tall hair, wearing flannel. Who wore flannel anymore?

"Hello boys," a woman's voice speaks in a Scottish accent and you frown, tensing up more. Were there three people? But it sounded muffled- like she was speaking from a walkie-talkie.

Or a phone.

No, that wasn't possible. All the phones had gotten fried and only a few of them had been salvaged.

"I'm very sure I've done nothing that you know of to make you want to call but so good to hear from you," she continues in a silky voice as ripples of music play in the background- a piano and a harp.

Where were you?

"Rowena, that's not- um- we-"

"You have to speak up," the woman cuts the flannel dude as he leans back in his chair, sighing. You take a small step back, hoping he didn't see you.

"We need your help," another man says in a deep voice- a voice that was familiar to you. Your frown deepens and your heart beats faster as you try placing that voice.

"Really?"

"We must assemble our most powerful allies to save our family and confront the archangel Micheal," the man pauses. This voice was monotone and it definitely wasn't the flannel dude speaking since you could see him. So that meant that there was another man in the room. The man who asked for help- you couldn't see him from where you were. He was probably hidden by the huge beam that led the 'battle' room to the library. "Now, he's from an alternate universe so..."

Alternate universes? Another Micheal? Who spoke that bullshit to you last. Layers. Shit, did he kidnap you or something?

"Oh, the handsome angel is there, isn't he? Hello, cutie pie!"

The man in the coat stands straighter and you assume he was the 'handsome angel'. You swear inwardly. There was an angel here. You should be searching for a weapon to kill him but you remained standing there, listening to the conversation and trying to place that goddamned voice.

"Oh... Hello."

"Lads, obviously I ought to help after what you- Sam did for me but I'm in the damn North Pacific West right now working on my own little project."

"Project?" the man you couldn't see asks.

"What project?"

"Oh, nothing about you to worry about. Just checking off items from my little 'to-do' list."

"Sure, that doesn't sound ominous."

"Rowena," Flannel starts off, "are you at a party... or something?"

"I am but I'm surprised you recognize the sounds of a party since how you're all work and no play."

"We didn't call to talk... Look, the world is in danger, Rowena," the unseen man sighs.

"I'm currently surrounded by art that makes me think the world should be in danger. Best of luck to you boys, my three little Musketeers," she cuts the call after making a 'muah'.

"Damn it."

"You know, she's right. You never go to parties."

Great. All you got to know was that they were talking to a Scottish woman named Rowena who may or may not be evil and that they never go to parties?! There had to be something else-

The scraping of a chair against the wood makes you inhale sharply and hold the lamp closer to your body.

"I'm going to check on Y/n," the gravelly-voice says again. You freeze up but take the chance to step forward and confront them. Something like in a movie- timing and all.

You step out from behind the wall and freeze when you see the man walking down the stairs of the library, head inclining up to look at you.

The same green eyes of the man that saved you from the angel on the bridge. Not knowing his name, you frown, swearing at your forgetfulness. You didn't think knowing his name would be important!

"Layers?"

"I will not sit!" You say loudly, the lamp still extended. Dean- he told you his name after frowning at what you called him- looks down at your 'weapon' and you shake your head.

"That lamp won't do much," he says, raising an eyebrow.

"Shut up," you say and look at the man in the tan coat who stood in the library, the furthest from you, looking at everybody uncomfortably. "Why are you with an angel? And- and who's he?" you ask, looking at the freakishly tall man who stood behind Dean.

"This is my brother, Sam. That's Cas- he's our friend. You can trust him," Dean reassures and for a second, you wonder why you weren't killing all of them.

"I can assure you I will not hurt you," the angel- Cas says and you shake your head.

"I don't need an angel's assurance. All you guys do is take and take." Your voice cracks slightly and you turn to Dean who looked at the exchange between you and the angel. "Where have you brought me? Where's Charlie?"

"Y/n, just sit down-"

"Dean," Sam cuts his off and you look at him, feeling tears pool at your eyes. You quickly blink them back, not allowing yourself to feel any fear. You would get out of whatever place this was.

Dean stops talking and looks at his brother. "Look," he sighs and looks back at you, "you were dying there and I had to save you. Your camp was too far and you were bleeding out too fast."

You frown, waiting for him to continue, warily glancing at the angel again. He looked almost sad. But that impossible. Angels were ruthless killing machines and they didn't care about anyone other than themselves.

"We're in a world without Micheal, Y/n. You're safe here."

"A world without Micheal," you scoff and look at the three, trying to spot the crack in the lie. But Sam and Cas looked at you with sincere expressions and Dean- well, every time he looked at you, there was something in his eyes- something that made it look like he didn't want to look at you at all.

"A world without Micheal," Sam says this time in a reassuring voice. "Cas healed you up when you came. You're safe here, Y/n," he continues, furrowing his eyebrows and making puppy dog eyes.

"It's actually a world without Micheal," you scoff again, your heart soaring in your chest. "A world- a world without Micheal. That was a phone in your hand," you say, now smiling ear to ear, laughing. "It's a world without Micheal!"

"Yeah," Dean says, a judging look on his face.

Your smile falls, though, as quickly as it came. "What about Charlie? And the others?"

Dean looks down. "She wanted to stay back."

Guilt brings your heart down, making it beat erratically. You shouldn't even be here. You should be there with Charlie and the others like Bobby and Tyler.

"Wait, you only- no. No, no, no. They need me there," you say as your eyes dart around the room. They finally settle on Dean. "You need to take me back."

A world without Micheal. A world where you could live peacefully, not having to live in constant fear all the time, worrying when the angels would attack again. A world where angels were apparently good. A world where you could be happy. But not living in a world with the people you loved and cared about... You were willing to throw away the perfect world for them.

"We can't," Cas says in his monotone voice this time and just him speaking irritates you. You shouldn't be rude to the angel since he was the one who saved you- it still surprised you that an angel did that- but it was just instinct.

"What do you mean you can't?" Your irritation seeped into your voice, earning a slightly surprised look from Sam and Dean.

"The ingredients we need to open the door," Sam continues, glancing at Dean, "we don't have them right now."

Your eyes widen and your mouth hung but you quickly shut it, clenching your jaw. "You brought me here," you speak, voice getting louder with every word, "with no plan of taking me back?"

"Y/n, it's not like that," Sam says but you shake your head, just wanting them to stop talking.

"How do I know you're not lying- that I'm actually in an alternate universe?" You look at Dean, with your brows knit together as a smile graces his lips.

Tags: @bi-danvers0

#dean winchester×reader #dean winchester #sam winchester #castiel #the bunker

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rex101111 · 4 years

Text

Following Orders.

Rating: E

Warning: Gore, blood, body horror, Mentioned attempted suicide, Holocaust mentions, civilians getting shot by nazi soldiers (the usual awful things).

Right so I recently got into The Magnus Archives so I had to contribute something :D blame @imbeccablee she introduced me to it. You should check it out it’s REALLY fun if you into horror and podcasts and horror podcasts :D

Anyway enjoy!

"Statement of; Johan Hess. Regarding an encounter in France during his time in the German army around the Normandy landings.

Statement Originally taken: December 15th, 1981

Recording by Jonathan Sims, head archivist of the Magnus Institute.

Statement begins;"

-_-

The phrase "I was just following orders" is the emptiest thing a soldier could say. It is a pathetic, cowardly attempt to dodge responsibility by pinning it on your superiors. You throw away your choice, the option that you could have done different, by claiming you had no choice at all from the moment you placed yourself in uniform and became just another face in a firing line.

Of course I shot those civilians, I was following orders.

Of course I burned that house down, I was following orders.

Everyone was following orders, everyone was shooting each other and walking in lockstep as they were told to march, march forward onto hell and onto death and onto the enemy's bullets and bayonets without a thought.

We were all just. Following orders.

It's the excuse, and that it all it will ever be, an excuse, given by soldiers in the Great War when questioned about the mustard gas in the trenches. It's the answer you'll get from the soldiers that came back from Vietnam with mud between their fingers and blood in their teeth.

And it was the excuse I used, every single day of my life, from the moment I joined the German Military during World War Two. It is the excuse I use to get up from my bed in the morning, the one I used when I hugged my wife and had to convince myself I had the right to say that I loved her, the one I used day in and day out even after the true scope of what the Fuhrer had done to the morals of my country and the values we held dear.

I know it is a lie, that the cause for that war was corrupt and cruel from the very beginning, I have always known, but that lie is the only reason I managed to keep the barrel of my gun out of my mouth after we saw the...footage.

Have you ever seen pictures of the survivors of the death camps? Those gaunt figures with their bones nearly sticking out of their skin? Bodies, dressed in filthy rags, so emaciated that they barely appeared to be human? Their eyes filled with pain and fear?

How about film? Even in black and white, the way they moved, as if struggling against the wind lest it folded them in two, spoke to the depth of the horror and cruelty those people endured.

My people did that, my countrymen did that to those people. My neighbors and friends dragged them out of their homes, shaved them bald, starved them, beat them, put them into rooms filled with death, stripped them of everything that made them human until all was left was a massive hole in the ground filled with meat and blood.

And I allowed it to happen, me and every other soldier in that army when we put on those uniforms. As we swept through Europe like a hive of locusts, stripping the land bare and dragging people kicking and screaming from their homes and gave Hitler and his sycophants more power and territory. I was not one of those animals, those soulless demons of the SS, but the blood on my hands was the same as the blood on theirs.

Both of us allowed those terrors to happen. The only difference between them and I is that they did of that all directly, with full knowledge of what would happen to those poor Jews and Blacks and anyone deemed lesser. I was a fool, placing my fingers in my ears and refusing to see things as they were.

My fellow soldiers were the same, high on patriotic fervor that blinded them to what our fatherland had become. I didn't join the Wehrmacht to kill people, though I knew that it would be asked of me, I joined because the thought of my friends and family dying out there alone made me sick. I wanted to do my part, and every article in the newspaper and every poster on the streets and every speech on the radio convinced me that my part was to hold a gun and shot until I was either dead or we won.

Even as we turned on the Russians and operation Barbarossa failed miserably, even as the Americans started landing on the beaches of France, even as more and more of my fellow soldiers died around me, I was convinced that I needed to do my part.

That all changed in a single night.

I was stationed in France, near the Eawy forest, on June 13, a week after the Allies began landing on Normandy. I was sent to France almost as soon as I finished my training, almost two years previous, and had been to many places in that time. France is a beautiful place, its cities gleamed and its nature spanned wide and far in many places.

It pained me in a way I refuse to say out loud to have to visit this place with guns and tanks.

I was a part of a unit made to combat partisans and French rebels hiding in the forest, rooting out encampments between the trees and keeping the local population in line and stop them from thinking to do anything as foolish as fighting back.

My unit passed through many villages in the forests of France, burning and pillaging as we went. Our commander, Heinrich Werner, was a vicious man who believed the word of Hitler down to his bones. He ordered us to take every Jewish civilian we could find in every village we passed, gather them in the town square, and shoot them were they stood.

He often complained aloud at how unsatisfied he was at his position and placement, only growing louder as news of the Americans landing on the beaches reached us and we all stayed put. I suspect he exercised this cruelty to prove himself in some way, to show he should be fighting the allies instead of hunting in the forest for rebels with rusty weapons. If that was true than he failed miserably, and only grew more and more cruel as time wore on.

Man, woman, child, elder, Werner wanted them all dead to the last. It mattered not that they screamed or begged, his voice was calm and steely as he ordered us to bring our rifles to bare.

And no matter how they screamed and pleaded and cried, we all did as he said, we all followed our orders.

None of us hesitated, none of us questioned, none of us were shot for disobedience. Every time, we lined up our rifles, steadied our grip, and pulled our triggers as one. You never appreciate how loud a gunshot could be until you put your hands on an actual firearm. Movies will try, but the sheer noise a gun makes when you tell it to help you take a life is something that can't be replicated.

Imagine a wall of noise, slamming into the center of your chest. For a split second, every single one of your bones rattle inside your flesh. The liquid in your eyes shivers from the shock, blurring your world for a long moment.

And then, nothing. Your shot echoes out, slowly dying in the air, but all you hear is nothing. The world is a void of sound and noise, the shot ringing in your ears is gone almost as soon as it arrived. When you are part of a firing line, you not only have to suffer the shock from your own weapon, but the weapons to your sides as well, walls of the noise crushing you from all directions at once.

It deafens you, even after your ears either adjust to the noise or are so damaged by constant gunfire that it no longer stings, those walls of noise steal every sound from the world for a few moments.

Just long enough for you to hear the bodies of your targets fall to the earth. You shot someone while they stand and they fall apart from the bottom up. First their legs give out, lacking the strength to hold up the weight, and then they slump forward or backwards, laying on the ground as if their strings were cut.

The thud of flesh hitting the ground, be it mud or cobblestone or bricks, is unavoidable. You can't escape it. Even if you fill the air with so much noise and fire and death that you can't even hear your thoughts from the lead all around you, you can always feel the moment someone hits the ground and begins staining it with blood.

And if your bullet is the one that caused it, the thud echoes. It reverberates through your chest and lodges itself between your lungs, and for a long time after you hear it with every breath you manage to pull.

The nights after we raided a village were always quiet after that, each of us making sure not to look each other in the eyes as we ate our rations and crawled into our sleeping bags.

Until one night, when Werner started screaming at us to get up, "On your feet! Everyone in uniform! NOW! EVERYONE OF YOU GET UP!" I remember those words exactly, even after all those years, like he had just shouted them right in my ear. It was the first time I ever heard anything other than cold satisfaction or cruel excitement from the man. This time, every single word he spoke was quivering with shock, even as he tried to hide it with his orders.

It was a rush of people in the dark, elbowing me and hissing at me to hurry up as I shook the sleep from my bones and put my uniform on in a near blind panic. I was the last to get ready and follow the rest of the soldiers to the center of our makeshift camp.

I was not very close with many of the soldiers in my unit, despite how long we spent together. I was never an overtly social person even back home, so I exceled at making sure I never stepped on anyone's toes, but suffice it to say no one there considered me a friend and I extended them the same courtesy.

None of that made the sight of a mangled pile of body parts any less shocking to me. Least of all because I recognized the soldier it had once been. It was Karl, one of the riflemen that always seemed to be the most eager to file into a firing line when Werner started barking orders.

He was pulled apart like an old doll, each of his limbs bleeding profusely from ragged stumps on the torso they were arranged on, with his head on the very top of the pile as some sort of vicious centerpiece.

And his face. His face was the worst of it, instead of a blank stare like that of a drowning fish, or the twist of dying agony and terror I had so grown used to over the two years of my service, instead his face was the very picture of fathomless sorrow. His eyes were as if on the verge of weeping, his mouth closed in a mournful grimace.

I felt myself drawn into those eyes, the clear blue of it glinting in the moonlight as I stared. I could swear they were filling up with unshed tears as I continued to gaze in numb horror and felt a deep, shredding dread cutting up the pit of my stomach.

I could hear more than a few of my fellows retching at the sight, and I was barely able to hold back my own bile as Karl's blood continued to pool around the flesh of his mangled corpse.

Werner was pacing back and forth, breathing heavily through his nose as he glared at us. "Who did this?" He asked us, voice trembling with some mix of anger and fear. "One of you must have heard something, did anyone see?"

We all looked at each other uneasily, none of us having heard a thing before Werner had started screaming. He started shouting at us again, calling us all idiots, pathetic excuses for soldiers if someone could just walk into our camp and kill one of our own and get away with it.

He continued shouting meaningless insults for another full minute, wildly gesturing with every word as he seemed to try and wring out his own fear, before he stopped abruptly, leaning his ears towards the deep, dark woods.

We did the same, and all of us flinched at once when a deep, loud noise rumbled from between the tree trunks. Nothing human could have made that sound, and I heard no animal capable of anything like it either. It was something between the growl of a bear and the dying gasp of our many victims, echoing with a mix of anger and hate, and it made the dread in my stomach burn more and more brightly.

Werner snapped at us once more, barking at us to gather our rifles and flashlights, and to march with him into the woods to hunt down whatever was, "making a fool of him." His face was twisted with anger and denial, as if the murder of his soldier and the noise was accusing him of something, and his pride was refusing to take it laying down.

It said something of German Military discipline when there was only a short moment of hesitation before we all began to gather our equipment, all of us defaulting to the one thing our basic training had drilled into our heads in the face of this horror.

We followed our orders.

Again, I had fallen a bit behind, only one of the other soldiers, Wilhelm, waiting for me for a moment before continuing on to the group gathering in front of the woods with Werner. My hands were still shaking from the pile of body parts, unable to stop myself from stealing glances at it as I gathered my things.

As I finished attaching the bayonet to my rifle, something caught my eye near what was once Karl. A piece of paper, resting on the palm of one of the hands, not flying off in the breeze despite the fingers being spread open.

I walked over to the paper almost without thinking, the sounds of Werner shouting orders and warnings to the other soldiers sounding muffled, as if through water. With every step I took towards it, Werner sounded further and further away, finally falling silent as I stood right next to the outstretched, severed palm of my fellow soldier.

It was a note, on it a single word, scrawled in French, the letters scratched and thin.

I learned more than a little French back at home, my mother being from Paris, and the word on that note was unmistakable.

In the beginning, the Jews we executed merely whimpered at us, begging for their lives. As time wore on, as the French people became more emboldened by the resistance and the allies pushing us back, they began shouting at us in rage and anger.

They shouted many things, but one word kept repeating, over and over, the children screaming first, before their parents joined in. The word echoing in my ears even as the gunshots died on the wind.

The same word on that note, the letters changing color from ink black to a familiar red as I stared at it, burning themselves in my mind as the note started to bleed from them.

Monsters.

I was suddenly wrenched from my trance when I heard Wilhelm calling out to me, the rest of the unit, 29 men in all including myself, Wilhelm and Werner, already deep in the woods. I looked back at Karl's palm for a moment, and saw that it was empty.

I shook my head and followed Wilhelm's call, barely hearing Werner shouting marching orders at the head of the party. I took a breath and marched forward with clenched teeth, feeling the woods swallow me whole.

Forests at night were a terrible thing. Without the sunlight filtering through the canopy, they were utterly pitch black in every direction, only the occasional ray of light from the moon piercing through to barely illuminate anything.

You could hear every little sound in the night, owls flying between branches, insects and lizards scrabbling up the bark, the trees attempting to deafen you while you were blind. Only the solid footfalls of my unit walking together gave me some sense of place, and whenever I looked away, the dark seemed to stretch out for miles.

The Eawy Forest is one of the largest in France, over six and a half thousand hectares of forest, a border of trees on the northern edge of Pays de Bray. You could literally walk for miles, hours, weeks in these woods if you got turned around. And in the dark, the trees stretch out into the abyss no matter how hard you look.

You could hide a body in these woods, and it would be months before anyone found what was left of it. There could be an enemy hiding behind every trunk, every errant bush, and the possibility of that seemed to finally enter Werner's head as we walked on and into the woods.

More than once, a loud snap would sound from a direction, and every one of us would whip our rifles to shot whatever made the foolish decision to be alive and moving within our sight. Every time, there was nothing, and Werner would growl at us to keep our wits and keep marching, his voice losing more and more of its edge with each repetition.

I don't know how long we moved through those pitch black trees, at some point my mind was panicking over why we hadn't seen the sun yet, thinking we must have walked for hours now.

Me feet ached, but I dared not complain, not even as a matter of discipline, but more that the thought struck me that if something in these woods heard me admit a weakness, it would be the last thing I would ever do.

And so we walked, deeper and deeper, almost in a trance, not a single one of us daring to speak a word, fingers tight around our weapons. In that silence, I noticed the sounds of the woods stopped as well. Wilhelm looking over his shoulder at me, a ray of moon light illuminating his face just enough for me to catch the worry in his pinched brow.

I could only shrug helplessly at whatever silent question he threw at me, and he turned away with a silent grimace.

All of a sudden, we stopped, Werner having apparently seen something and ordered a halt. One by one, the unit began to spread out wide and forward, with me at the very back I could only see why when the motion reached me about a minute or so later.

We reached a clearing, large enough to fit all thirty of us and still leave room to spread our arms out. The moon was shining brightly, perfectly lighting up the clearing even though it had almost completely waned.

I looked around at the rest of the unit, seeing them all stare ahead at something at the far end of the clearing, all of them still perfectly silent with Werner the furthest in. I leaned my head up to see what it was, not trusting my voice enough to risk breaking whatever heavy silence had fallen on us all with a question, and then felt the bile rise again in my throat as I caught the smell.

The acrid scent of old, stagnant blood filled the air. Every breath I took was laced with the pungent odor of rotting, fetid meat, and the source was right in front of me, but I could not see. Images of torn city streets flashed in my mind, bodies strewn about haphazardly and left to bleed and rot in the sun, crows and maggots picking at their flesh.

Some force of morbid curiosity pulled me forward, the same mindless walk that led me to the note in Karl's hand, and I was about 10 feet away from Werner when I saw what he was staring at.

And saw him shaking like a leaf in the wind, whimpering like a child.

It was a pool, about 30 feet wide and stretching out into the dark of the forest, it's surface calm and smooth as glass, and the moon light blooming in the clearing reflected of it perfectly.

The smell, fetid and stagnant and rotten, was the strongest right at the lip of the pool, and the moonlight made it impossible to miss the deep, red color of the water.

No, not water, the more I looked the more I was certain that not a single drop of water was in that pool. The bile rose in my throat and burned it as I stared at this huge pool of blood, smelling of decay and sorrow so strongly it nearly knocked me off feet, and so thick I could not see through it.

I desperately wanted to look away, to hold my nose and turn on my heel and flee from this place with all my might, but I was rooted to the spot. Despite my horror, something else rose in my chest, a crushing feeling of guilt stuck itself between my lungs and stopped me from breathing, and tears started welling up in my eyes as I continued to stare at this massive pool of red.

A Knowing grew in my head, a certainty that would have dragged me to my knees had I been able to move. I spilt this blood, I filled this pool to the brim with every trigger I pulled, I couldn't look away, I had no right to look away. All I could do was weep and feel the bile I could not vomit churn in the back of my throat.

I could vaguely hear the soldiers around me whimpering along with Werner and myself, some of them whispering desperate apologies and gagging on their own vomit as we stared at this pool of gore we all made.

After what felt like an eternity of begging for forgiveness and staring unblinking at that pool of blood, the glass like surface of the pool began to ripple outwards from the center, something moving just below the blood.

The ripples began inching closer and closer to the edge of the pool, closer to us, before stopping dead and vanishing all at once. We all fell silent and held our breaths as we stared at where the ripples were, waiting for…something.

Almost without warning, an arm shot out of the crimson pool, and started clawing at the grass. Before we could fully understand what we were seeing, a second arm joined the first, and together they started pulling at the ground, dragging something, someone, out of the blood.

It stood up slowly, painfully, blood dripping off in rivulets and pooling near its feet instead of sinking into the ground. It was barely the size of a child, limbs thin and muscles emaciated. They wore bloody rags, the cloth sticking to its skin, through which I could see bones nearly bulging out, bent at odd angles.

Its hair was shaved in irregular patterns, and what hair it had was soaked with blood like the rest of it. It kept its head down, taking deep, ragged breaths. Every inch of me was screaming at me to run, that what I was seeing was wrong, that staying where I was meant death in every sense.

But I did not move, the Knowing that told me I made the pool told me that this is where I needed to be, and I could do nothing but stay, and wait.

It raised its head, and it wore the face of a child, the face of every child. The face of every child I saw while I went to school, the face of every child I saw dragged kicking and screaming to the trains, the face of every child I saw at the far end of my rifle.

Its eyes were a deep brown flecked with red, mud on a rainy battlefield, and the sheer depth of hatred in its eyes made me feel like someone was ripping me in two. It hated us, this thing from the pool, hated us all, personally, on the deepest level possible. It hated me, for everything that I was, everything that I am, for everything that I ever did in that pointless, cruel war.

Its jaw started twitching, wrenching open with a sickening sound of stretching flesh, and a sound began coming out of its throat, slowly forming into a word.

I knew the word before it said it, before it scowled at us and its face twisted into an overwhelming expression of sheer rage. I could feel the word burning in my mind as it took a deep, wet breath between its blood stained, jagged, broken teeth.

Monsters.

It spoke with the voice of a little girl, word dry and ragged in the air like it hadn't had a drop of water for years, and it echoed deep into the woods and deep in my bones and I could not argue with it at all.

It said it again, and again, and again, the same word, the same accusation, over and over and over.

It called us monsters, in French, in German, in Hebrew, and more and more and even when it spoke in a language I had never heard before I knew what it said, knew every implication and every nuance and every inch of hate in the words it used.

And I knew, know, that it, that she, was right.

We were monsters, every single one of one of us, and we had earned the hate in her eyes. Every. Last. Inch of it.

I felt myself fall to my knees, tears of shame and fear and sorrow running down my face as the words flowed through my blood and strangled my heart. I heard the soldiers around me do the same, their whimpers replaced with broken sobbing as the words sank into the trees behind us and went on, on into the wind until all was silent again.

She stood there for a moment, sweeping a hateful, furious scowl all around the clearing as she took us all in. And she scoffed, but said nothing in response to the weeping and sobbing of the men, cowards, monsters, around her.

She began walking forward, her steps landing in a loud squelch of wet dirt, the blood dripping off her form never seeming to end as she closed the distance between her and the sobbing mess that was Heinrich Werner.

She stood in front of the bawling man for a long moment, staring down at him as he fell apart under her burning hateful gaze. He said nothing intelligible, all he could manage was a long string of blubbering and tear soaked pleas for mercy. His voice went on and on, growing more and more hoarse until I was sure I started to see blood mix with his spit from the strain and yet he kept begging her. Begging her to spare him.

Even as she ripped off his right arm, gripping it with boney fingers and slowly ripping the flesh away from him he continued to beg.

She ripped off his other arm, his legs, cut open his stomach to let his entrails spread across the grass, and yet he kept begging.

She grabbed his head with both hands, her broken teeth grinding together as she started to pull, and only then did he stopped begging, and started screaming.

His head screamed and screamed, even as the last strips of flesh connecting his neck to his skull snapped away with a wet sound. It screamed and screamed and screamed, the sound ringing in my ears and rattling the teeth in my head, before she crushed it between her palms, the gore of Werner flying off in odd directions, spraying me and the other soldiers in blood and liquids I dare not name.

She grabbed the body parts she pulled from Werner, and dragged them to the pool, tossing them into the deep, dark red with a careless gesture. The ripples died almost as soon as they started, the opaque blood swallowing the meat ravenously until nothing remained.

And then she went to Wilhelm, and the begging, the tearing, the screaming, it all started again.

And again with the next.

And the next.

All around me the soldiers begged and then screamed and then were devoured by the pool as she ripped them apart one by one. I could not move, not to run, not to look over my shoulder to see her claiming her pound of flesh from us. All I could do was sit on my knees, the tears continuing to fall down my face, and wait.

Soon, the last soldier screamed their last behind me, and she walked passed me to TOSS the meat into the pool. She stood in front of it for a long moment, the wind whispering between us as I waited.

Slowly, painfully slowly, she turned to face me, the hate in her eyes burning just as brightly as when she first emerged. She pinned me down, stopping my shaking and crying and even my breathing as her face twisted into a soundless snarl.

I blinked and she was right in front of me.

She waited, waited for me to beg, to scream, to plead.

I opened and closed my mouth, trying to say the same as the rest of my unit, but my voice refused to leave my throat to say them. I was a monster, just like they were, I deserved no less and no more than what she did to them.

But when I finally spoke, when my voice finally formed into words, all I could manage was a sob.

I took one last breath, and using strength I did not have, by the force of a will I did not deserve, I looked right into her eyes, her burning, piercing eyes, and said, "I'm sorry."

No excuses, no begging, no pleading for mercy or cries of fear. Nothing more than apology, weightless and pointless in the face of my sins, but it was all I could manage to say.

For a moment, for a single second, the hate in her eyes were replaced with shock, her face dropping the burning scowl she's had from the beginning. I could see her for the first time, truly see the young girl behind the gore and blood that called us all monsters with such conviction. And the guilt sunk in my chest again, and the Knowing came back and told me that I did this to her, and more tears fell again.

As soon as that Knowing passed through my mind, the hate returned to her eyes, twice hot and making my heart drop to the bottom of my stomach, before I could say another word, a plea or another worthless apology, her fingers clenched the flesh of my shoulder and pulled, ripping my arm without a hint of resistance.

The pain blitzed through every inch of me, burning so bright I couldn't even scream, but the urge to do so blared in my mind so brightly it nearly blinded me. Before I could even fully comprehend the pain, she grabbed me by the collar of my uniform shirt, and started beating me furiously about the head and face.

She did so soundlessly, no grunts of exertion, no growls of anger, but in the brief moment before she landed each blow, I could see her face. The scowl was still there, still as accusing and raging as it had been since the beginning. But between her beating my face to a pulp I could see something reflecting the moon light off her cheeks, and in the delirium of pain I realized they were tears.

The beating went on for what felt like hours, but soon she dropped my bloodied form on the grass. She looked down at me like I was a piece of filth stuck to her shoe, face impassive as I spat red stained spit and teeth on the ground.

My vision began to blur, but before oblivion could embrace me fully, she grabbed me by the shortened hair on my bleeding scalp and began dragging me towards the pool. I dared not struggle, knowing, Knowing, that she was pulling me to a fate I deserved.

I think I managed one more blood soaked apology before I blacked out, but I was never sure.

Next thing I remember; I was in a field hospital in the village of Ventes-Saint-Remy, with a missing arm and nearly my entire body covered in bandages. My head especially was heavily wrapped in gauze with the exception of a single eye.

A nurse was the first thing that I was able to focus on, she was speaking to me in calming, gentle French, asking for my name.

Without thinking, I answered in French, and she smiled at me with kindness I will never deserve.

I did not tell her I was a German soldier, and she did not think I was. Apparently I was found in the woods by a couple of young boys, naked as the day I was born and covered in wounds. That was months ago.

It was December, she told me with a grateful and tearful smile, and the Germans were losing.

If you asked me why I didn't tell her who I truly was, or what had happened to me, the only answer I could give you is that I was a coward. That I am a coward. But whatever the reason was, I spent the rest of the war in that hospital, slowly regaining my strength under the care of that nurse.

Her name was Irene, and her kindness and heart were more than I will ever deserve.

As the war ended, I found my way back to Germany, and saw my home in ruins. I did not live in Berlin or anywhere that far east, so I was somehow spared having Stalin and his Soviets watching my every move.

But I never forgot that night in the forest, where my whole company payed the price they owed for being monsters. I spent years waiting for a court martial, or for someone to unearth some document that proved I was the unit that burned lives and towns in France and for an angry mob to demand my head.

But it never came, it was like I never fired a gun or served in the army a day in my life. Whenever I asked my parents about it, they acted like I spoke nonsense, that I never spent a day in France, much less as a member of the Wehrmacht. They said my injuries were because of some car accident, or the result of a building fire, every time I asked they were confused as to why I didn't remember and refused to speak further of the matter.

I started to believe that perhaps I imagined it all, that perhaps my nightmare in the French forest was just that. A nightmare.

Years passed, I started a family, had children, and tried to ignore that alien feeling of guilt that sliced up my stomach whenever I passed a Jewish temple. It was a nightmare, it had to be, and that was what I was able to convince myself.

Until the pictures started coming out, until the trial in Israel began appearing in the newspapers. Until footage of the full scale of what would be known as the Holocaust became public knowledge.

I went to a newly opened museum in my home town, and with every display, with every picture, with every frame of film, the terror I remember from that night returned to me in full force.

Gaunt figures, broken teeth, shaved heads, every one of them a reminder of that blood filled night in the forest.

I can still remember that moment, that instant where I recognized a face in a group photo, a young girl in rags. The face nearly made me vomit in the hall, but when I saw the caption of the picture, saying it was taken in France, I collapsed then and there and rushed to a hospital.

I never told my family the truth that I could no longer deny. Not my wife, not my children, not my grandchildren. Even as I had irrevocable prove of the punishment I had suffered, I could never find the courage to admit to the ones I loved that I was a monster.

I spent the last few years applying myself to charities for the survivors of what my people did. I spent back breaking hours in soup kitchens and rallies, I devoted every second I had to make the apology I breathed in the forest air mean something.

It was never enough, even as people received help and money and hugged me so fiercely I thought they would snap me in half it was never enough. And I never told a soul that I wore the same uniform as those that treated them like animals.

Until today.

Understand, I did not come here for absolution, or aide, this was simply a long needed confession from me. It is getting harder and harder to get out of bed, my wife passed away years back, and my children and their children barely keep in touch with me anymore.

I have run out of excuses, I can no longer hide behind the orders that told me to commit such horrible sins. I will forever be a monster, no amount of charity or apologies will change that, but me being a coward? That is something firmly within my control.

I do not expect you to find anything, or even believe this crazy, one armed man who suddenly appeared on your doorstep. That's okay, giving me a chance to write this story down, even if no one will ever read it, was more than enough.

Thank you, all the same. And for the tea.

It may seem small to you, but to a monster like me? It's more than I will ever deserve.

-_-

"Statement ends. Johan Hess died two months after giving this statement, so any chance of a personal follow up is impossible as this point.

Further, considering that he recounted events that happens forty years previous, even Gertrude could not find much with what little investigation she did. According to German Military records that have survived from the French Occupation, no unit such as the one that Hess claimed he belonged to ever existed, at least not anywhere near Eawy Forest.

In fact, there is indeed no document stating that Mr. Hess served during the war at all, so nobody remembering he went to France is no big surprise.

There is a picture of him included in the statement, which does show an extensive amount of injuries to his face along with a missing left arm, but that hardly proves anything. Finding anything about any building fires or car accidents that could have given him those injuries have also turned up nothing.

He didn't lie about his contributions to charity work to support Holocaust survivors, and there was a report of him being rushed to the hospital after collapsing in a museum, but that's where anything solid about what is said in this statement stops.

I would dismiss this report entirely, if not for one thing regarding his death. The death itself was not as…visceral as what had allegedly happened to his unit, simply a heart attack in his sleep. But his neighbor, who had reported his death to the police and called an ambulance, found something clenched in his hand.

It was a note, written in French. The neighbor, as well as the rest of the tenets in the building where Mr. Hess was staying, does not speak a word of French, and handwriting analysis determined that Mr. Hess did not write it himself. Translated, it reads as follows:

Not a monster. Not anymore.

End Recording."

#The Magnus Archives #stuff rex wrote #Following Orders #went for a s1 vibe #Statement fics are fun :D

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yr-hen-ogledd · 4 years

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Have you got any Iron Tusks lore lying around, or are they a completed project? I've been scrolling through the tag snapping up those gorgeous in-universe fluff snippets, and it's made me really curious about their backstory.

Ok so first of all thanks for saying a nice thing about my writing, which I have much less confidence in than I do in my painting. I’m super happy it grabbed your interest!

As for the Great Iron Tusks Fluff Bible… Well, for most of this evening I thought it’d been lost when I upgraded to my new(er) PC. But apparently I never delete anything ever and having done a bit of digging, well: here’s just about the entire history of the chapter, up to end of the 41st millenium & the creation of the Great Rift. Delve beneath the cut if you dare.

Caveats: I read the background for the Warhammer 40,000 universe back in, like, 1996? ‘97? I haven’t paid too much attention since. I much prefer to just make shit up. I dip in here & there but you may find bits in here that seem to contradict actual canon - roll with it, I guess? It’s a big universe governed by an unreliable megabureaucracy; there’s room for more than one version of the truth.

++REF::CS+IRON_TUSKS

ADT.ASTARTES.DES.IRON.TUSKS

>IRON TUSKS: Adeptus Astartes chapter. Founded 738.M41 using Ultramarines gene-seed on Khaskal IV, Ultima Segmentum. Supervising officer Capt. Jun Harkenas (ex-Silver Skulls), subordinate officers including Capt. Astor Valk (ex-Silver Skulls), Capt. Haral Gor (ex-Carcharodon Astra), Reclusiarch Bron Ovidor (ex-Doom Eagles), Sgt. Torias Telion (Ultramarines, secondment), assisted by advisory council led by Barad Valur Arendt & other tribal elders.

On advice of Capt. Gor and the elders of the laghun, attending hiero-scrivenor Gorganaeus grants permission to Captain Harkenas to alter original ministorum designation BLACK PALADINS to IRON TUSKS in recognition of indigenous ursid life-forms known locally as Roortagha. Harkenas also orders chapter livery changed to deep crimson to fit with native blood rituals and warrior traditions. The Adeptus Terra’s initial audit detects minor mutations of the oolitic kidney, Betcher’s gland & the mucranoid gland, producing a moderately toxic & caustic airborne suspension when the marines’ sweat evaporates. The mutation falls well within acceptable levels of deviation and the founding is consecrated. The chapter is officially armed on St. Burden’s Day, 744.M41, fighting strength 350 scouts, 250 marines, plus command staff and various supporting elements including 3 strike cruisers. Captain Harkenas is named First Marshall, Captain Valk is named 2nd Company Marshall ; Master of the Armoury, Captain Gor is named 3rd Company Marshall ; Master of Recruits ; Bron Ovidor becomes High Chaplain. Sgt. Telion returns to Macragge.

745.M41: Hive Fleet Behemoth descends upon Ultima Segmentum. The Great Devourer carves a bloody path through the Imperium’s suprised and confused defenders leaving only lifeless rocks in its wake. Bio-ships appear at system terminus without warning after listening posts on Brennan’s World and Valentina are overrun by hostile xenoforms. Massively outnumbered, First Marshall Harkenas orders Khaskal IV evacuated and the chapter’s gene-seed secured aboard the strike cruiser Silverback. Harkenas and Ovidor lead half the chapter’s evocatii in a forlorn delaying action. Behemoth is eventually stopped at enormous cost, but Khaskal is stripped of all life weeks beforehand. The surviving brothers make a final return to salvage what equipment & armour they can, but leave the system within a week of arrival.

The Iron Tusks, now fleet-based, appear to drift between campaigns for several years, intervening in battles at Verrae, St. Nazaire, Xavierus and Sacristan. At Xavierus, Major-General Valdestin of the 120th Cadian Expeditionary records the Iron Tusks deploying “4 companies in good order, though unorthodox in equipment.” At Sacristan, Captain Serrus of the Star Phantoms notes the Iron Tusks battlefleet joining their own with 5 ships of the line, “three of which had clearly been reclaimed from unsanctioned sources.” Both commanders describe their allies scavenging war materiel from their enemies and after Sacristan, in which the combined Astartes forces drive off a raiding force of Red Corsairs traitors, the Iron Tusks (apparently now under the command of Haral Gor) pursue the traitors into the Maelstrom “with relish.”

The following decades paint a confusing picture: in 786.M41 they appear in the journal of the Rogue Trader Jelena diVerre as masters of Loghain’s Cross, a feudal world to the galactic south of Baal. Certainly, a number of imperial records from this time period make mention of the Iron Tusks fighting numerous battles against the orks raiding out of the Galatian Belt and against eldar pirates on Barre. But by the time Waaagh! Gormug makes a ruin of several Imperial worlds in 802, the Iron Tusks have apparently moved on. While the Blood Angels defend Loghain’s Cross, the Iron Tusks are recorded fighting “at chapter strength” against the bloody, Alpha Legion-led rebellion on Vittkenstein

“Though all who know the space marines know the essential diversity bred by their independent formations, I declare I never encountered a body of fighting men of such strange attitudes as these - leastways not as allies. The Irontusks (sic) seem to view their vocation almost as a great sport. They count kills upon their armour, they swear a great deal, they make indecipherable guestures toward the enemy (many of which I suspect are lewd in character!). Throne preserve us, at one juncture I visited a defensive position to inspect the conditions and found one of them sat in the cupola of his tank, smoking a lho-stick of very ill flavour. And yet who can complain of their devotion to the Emperor’s cause? After every raid they return with fallen comrades over their shoulders, bloodied banners of the enemy and grotesque smiles across scarred faces. One of their officers asked me if the regiment had encountered foes such as these before and when I answered him in the affirmative he declared that his men would be following us home.”- Colonel Ferdinand Maxwell-Gray, Mordian 18th.

Certainly the Iron Tusks do seem to have moved erratically toward the Mordian system for a time, but their route is difficult to ascertain. The war on Vittkenstein lasts another 4 years, but after that various naval records refer to the Iron Tusks retiring to a number of different homeworlds: Ironhold, Merite, Kyushin II, Jara-na-vere-ko, Elva XI and as many as 8 other planets are recorded as the chapter’s home base. Furthermore, having reached Mordian they seem to have moved on shortly after in the direction of the Cadian Gate and the Eye of Terror. More informatively, we can say with certainty the date at which they did so. Having claimed the death world of Morsava sometime before 984.M41, they subsequently sell the planet in 999.M41 to the governor-militant of Mordian for the perfunctory sum of 1 Imperial Credit - three days after the onslaught of the 13th Black Crusade. At this time Battlefleet Obscurus naval records indicate a fleet of 7 strike cruisers, one battle barge (designated Tough Love) and numerous escorts, bulk haulers and sundry other ships leaving the Mordian subsector and bearing galactic south-west.

++RECORD ENDS++

++THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: A CLOSED MIND IS WELL-DEFENDED

It would appear that the Iron Tusks have adopted a modus operandi by which they occupy any world which they are able to take from enemy forces, staying long enough to recover losses in men and materiel, before abandoning it in the event that better ‘sport’ presents itself elsewhere. It is a pattern which has seen battle companies attach themselves frequently to Imperial army groups unsolicited, apparently to involve themselves in more violence.They seem to act without any thought to wider Imperial strategy, or to collateral damage. Can their wilful disregard for authority be tolerated? More gravely, is their pursuit of violence for violence’s sake not a well-worn trail on the path to damnation? My Lord, I must recommend an immediate Inquisitorial audit be carried out on these rogues - lest rogues be left to turn altogether renegade.

I remain your humble and obedient servant,

There you have it. The rest of it gets written as & when models & projects inspire me to get typing. You’ve seen glimpses of the Tusks post-rift activities - stranded on the wrong side of the sky-scar, scavenging the debris of fallen worlds, occasionally finding gold dust on shattered hulks that float out of the few relatively stable shipping routes across the Cicatrix Maledictum, and sometimes adopting new friends of mysterious origin from the beleaguered worlds of the Imperium Nihilus. There will probably be more in the future! No project is ever really finished until you run out of ideas.

#daddyfantastic #iron tusks #space marines #warhammer 40000 #40K #I came this close to painting more Iron Tusks watching the first few episdoes of the Mandalorian #but events conspired against me and the moment passed

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lonepower · 4 years

Note

I just saw your tags in the AU post about D2 after The Red War and I just wanna say S A M E. What is even going on in the game any more?

RIGHT? Like.... I really enjoyed their approach to story construction (if not all of the story itself) during the Red War—I thought they were a lot better about presenting a linear narrative where we did things because of events that were set into motion by the narrarive, rather than just "go here and shoot stuff because of reasons that you need a separate app to fully learn about"—and ever since then, their trajectory has been plummeting steadily downhill.

Curse of Osiris was a waste of everyone's time and money; Warmind was underwhelming (one of the five great w(y/o)rms should be a raid boss, not a plot mission that one Guardian can solo!) and subjected Zavala to a sudden, rampant, undeserved character assassination (remember in D1 how he was one of the biggest proponents of allying with Rasputin? And don't get me started on the blatant contradiction of "Rasputin was always here"—there was literally a mission (The Buried City) and a strike (Dust Palace) where we helped him take and maintain control of the Mars Warmind, which had gone dead!); Forsaken...had a lot of cool stuff, but the Dreaming City came out of nowhere and made no sense, the arbitrary morality they attempted to impose on us made me abjectly furious (how is killing a bunch of crime lords working under the influence of an ahamkara to bring about general ruin somehow morally worse than hunting down the House of Wolves solely and explicitly because Queen Mara promised to pay us for it?), and I still haven't forgiven them for killing Cayde and generally retconning a whole bunch of stuff that ttk established. (confirming Candal as canon can stay though. that bit was good.)

On top of all that, the story seemed to be heading consistently away from what I consider to be the very point of D1, which is a rejection of grimdark, a reaffirmation of hope in the face of adversity, and the value of a happy ending. Going the "but what if he is evil?!?!" route with Rasputin in contradiction to D1's "he's batshit insane but he's also very much a defender of humanity", the futility of killing Xol (although that at least is canon-compliant—aiat), killing Cayde off for no real narrative purpose BECAUSE THE SCORN WERE ALREADY VERY MUCH A GENUINE THREAT, YOU GUYS... it spat in the face of everything the first game stood for. Like, you even had Stoner McSogynist write a whole twee little credits song about it!!!! Come on!!!!

...And then Shadowkeep happened. It went back to so much of what I loved about D1, bringing back things like Eris, ‘a decent score,’ and that feeling of brushing up against the fringes of cosmic horror but coming out the brighter... and then they tanked it all with one minute-long cutscene. I get that it's ambiguous, that it could mean anything, blah blah, but even setting up the possibility that Eris might be corrupted or evil after everything you've done to show us that she's healing, that she's good, that she's the brightest and strongest of all of us—

That was the last straw. It genuinely felt like having rectification for the previous narrative mistakes dangled over my head only to have them laugh and snatch it away. Which probably indicates that I'm taking it way, way too personally, but... I'm not going to play a game that continues to upset me with every single choice it makes. I'll just stick to D1, where they don't string the player along for shock value and the Hunter armor isn't hideous.

(Also, I don't care what Savathûn says. The worm gods are the eldest ahamkara and the entire d2 dev team physically manifesting in my living room to explain their retconning would not change my mind on this.)

#deepermadness #replies #long post #so yeah if anyone is or knows of any solely d1 blogs that would be great bc half my dash is filtered right now #I'm not tagging this so i hope it doesn't end up in the tag but gomen if it does....not here to rain on anyone's parade i'm just salty #...actually i'm putting this under a readmore it's pretty long lmao

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voidsentprinces · 5 years

Photo

When mortally wounded by Ser Zephirin’s spear of light, all that time ago. Haurchefant never dreamed to awake from death’s door in the First. Immediately seeking out the Crystal Exarch, he ventured out to protect the new realm he found himself in. As any noble knight of Ishgard would, he found and defeated sineaters that besieged the Crystarium. Eventually, through valiance and determination he would go on to slay a Lightwarden, himself. But, as too often is the story. Once the greater sineater was fallen, its essence took up new residence in this champion of House Fortemps. And so, he waited and bided his time. Keeping his senses through loyalty and discipline until the Crystal Exarch would inevitably summon his friend and companion, the Warrior of Light. Whom he would gladly give his life to, for a second time. If the Lightwarden inside him didn’t force him to cross blades with his ally.

Sineater Encounter: Hauchefant Greystone “I have sacrificed myself once for you, come let me do so once more.” TITLE. Loyalty - a strong feeling of support or allegiance

THEME.

youtube

PHASE 2 - 3 THEME.

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PHASE O1 ⤑ 100% - 75% “Here I come!”

In this phase, Hauchefant will summon up two shields that protect him from the party’s attacks. Only once broken can the Lightwarden be damaged, at which point the Main Tank and Offtank get a buff called The Forgotten Knight decreasing damage taken for the first phase. From here, the Lightwarden will use the following attacks: Siegebreaker: Tankbuster Winds of Coerthas: Raid Wide AoE cannot be avoided, heal through. Sword of Ishgard: Loyalty will throw swords up into the area, avoid aoes that appear on the ground. Dragon Hunt: Loyalty will throw spears in the air, like Tsukuyomi’s fans they will land at the outter edges of the arena and the center. Upon each landing, they will begin erupting with light. Increasing vulnerability to those caught in it. To avoid, go to the last one that lands and wait for them to erupt to avoid damage. Overpower: A cone of damage in front of the Lightwarden PHASE O2 ⤑ 75-45% “Some wounds never heal...“

Loyalty collapses as fallen knights of Ishgard scatter throughout the arena. In addition the shades of the Heavens Ward appear in the room, Ser Zephirin at the center will begin charging a lightspear. The party must burst down the other knights before the charge is complete. Upon succeeding the Fallen Knights rise up and Ser Zephirin launches his spear into the sky. Raining down a barrage of spears and damaging the party but the knights rise up, block and are subsequently impaled on the spears instead of the party member. As soon as the light fades, two of the spears are caught by the Lightwarden. The main tank must go to the indicator and enter a limit activation sequence. Where Haurchefant bursts forth and chains the raid in a Holmgang and lunges at the main tank. The Forgotten Knight shield becomes grabbable and the two enter a struggle to stop the blade. Upon succeeding it, the shield will shatter and throw the first tank back, whereby the Off tank must now enter the designated area and repeat the process. Whereby succeeding Loyalty is pushed back instead.

DPS FAILED. “I have failed you.” If the DPS fails the shades of the Heavensward vanish and the visage of Ser Zephirin also disappears. The Lightwarden will proceed to launch the spear into the air raining down a barrage of lightspears wiping the party.

PHASE O3 ⤑ 45-10% “On my back foot, I would have it no other way!”

Once the check and time sequences are completed. The arena shifts and appears to be floating above Ishgard. After being pushed back, the Lightwarden will gain “Weak Breathing” stunning him and granting addition damage done to him for 10 seconds. After he recovers, he leaps up and slams the ground with his axe causing the outter ring of the arena to be covered in a light fire which will stack a burn debuff on any caught in it. He will then proceed with attacks from his previous phase with a few additional abilities.

Blizzard Tempest: A small AoE around him that he damages all caught around. Follows this up after the last spear of Dragon Hunt lands. Dragon’s Eye: Targets a random player with an eye indicator over their head. The selected victim will be placed in Sable Price. Break them out before it finish casting. If party members don’t look away from the Lightwarden they will become dazed for 3 seconds.

ENRAGE ⤑ 10-0% “Almost there...just a little further, my friend.”

Loyalty throws his axe up into the air causing a raid wide AoE to erupt. Immediately afterwards his old sword and shield appear in his hand and he rushes whoever holds his aggro. Knocking them into the ring of fire from the outter ring of the arena. Whereby, he’ll step back to the other side of the arena, just outside the ring of fire and cast Knight’s Lament. Causing all the arena in front of him to light up, upon completing he launches an attack hurting anyone still caught in the damage radius. He’ll begin to mix up his previous attacks making it a little more annoying.

“My life...is yours.”

At 1%, the Lightwarden will charge a lightspear, the tank will gain a trial action. Upon use, the player will lung at Loyalty. Grabbing the spear out of his grasp and thrusting it forward, the Knight will block the spear valiantly but eventually his shield will give way. As you run him through.

Tagged by: No one

Tagging: @placesyoucallhome or anyone else who’d like to do it.

Created by: @ritsuka-aoki

#{ I wanted to make the encounter as heartwrenching as possible }#{ something that would really get someone to cry at the end or something }#lightwarden #haurchefant

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chiseler · 4 years

Text

A Palestinian Guide to Surviving a Quarantine: On Faith, Humor and ‘Dutch Candy’

Call it a ‘quarantine’, a ‘shelter-in-place’, a ‘lockdown’ or a ‘curfew’, we Palestinians have experienced them all, though not at all voluntarily.

Personally, the first 23 years of my life were lived in virtual ‘lockdown’. My father’s ‘quarantine’ was experienced much earlier, as did his father’s ‘shelter-in-place’ before him. They both died and were buried in Gaza’s cemeteries without ever experiencing true freedom outside of their refugee camp in Gaza.

Currently in Gaza, the quarantine has a different name. We call it ‘siege’, also known as ‘blockade’.

In fact, all of Palestine has been in a state of ‘lockdown’ since the late 1940s when Israel became a state and the Palestinian homeland was erased by Zionist colonialists with the support of their Western benefactors.

That lockdown intensified in 1967 when Israel, now a powerful state with a large army and strong allies, occupied the remaining parts of Palestine - East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Under this lockdown, the Palestinian freedom of movement was curtailed

to the extent that Palestinians required permits from the Israeli military to leave the Occupied Territories or to return home, to move about from one town to the other, and, at times, to cross a single Israeli military checkpoint or a fortified wall.

In Palestine, we don’t call our imprisonment a lockdown, but a ‘military occupation’ and ‘apartheid’.

As for ‘shelter-in-place’, in Palestine, we have a different name for it. We call it a ‘military curfew’.

Since I was a child, I learned to listen intently to orders barked out by Israeli military officers as they swept through our refugee camp in Gaza declaring or easing military curfews. This ritual often happened late at night.

“People of Nuseirat, per orders of the Israeli military you are now under curfew. Anyone who violates orders will be shot immediately,” the terrifying words, always communicated through a loudspeaker in broken Arabic, were a staple during the First Palestinian Uprising (Intifada) of 1987.

The period between 1987 to 1993 was a virtual ‘lockdown’. Thousands of people, mostly children, were killed for failing to respect the rules of their collective imprisonment.

In Gaza, even when a full military curfew was not in place, we rarely left our small and crowded neighborhoods, let alone our refugee camps. We were all haunted by the fear that we may not be able to make it home by 8p.m., the time designated by the Israeli military for all of us to return home.

Every day, ten or fifteen minutes after the nightly curfew set in, we would hear the crackling and hissing of bullets as they whistled through the air from various distances. Automatically, we would conclude that some poor soul - a worker, a teacher, or a rowdy teenager - missed his chance by a few minutes, and paid a price for it.

Now that nearly half of the population of planet Earth are experiencing some form of ‘curfew’ or another, I would like to share a few suggestions on how to survive the prolonged confinement, the Palestinian way.

Think Ahead

Since we knew that a complete lockdown, or a military curfew, was always pending, we tried to anticipate the intensity and duration of it and prepare accordingly.

For example, when the Israeli army killed one or more refugees, we knew in advance that mass protests would follow, thus more killings. In these situations, a curfew was imminent.

Number one priority was to ensure that all family members congregated at home or stayed within close proximity so that they could rush in as fast as possible when the caravan of Israeli military jeeps and tanks came thundering, opening fire at anyone or anything within sight.

Lesson number one: Always think ahead and prepare for a longer lockdown than the initial one declared by your city or state.

Stay Calm

My father had a bad temper, although a very kind heart. When curfews were about to start, he would enter into a near-panic state. A chain smoker with obsessive, although rational fear that one of his five boys would eventually be killed, he would walk around the house in a useless rush, not knowing what to do next.

Typically, my mother would come in, rational and calculating. She would storm the kitchen to assess what basic supplies were missing, starting with the flour, sugar and olive oil.

Knowing that the first crackdown by the Israelis would be on water supplies and electricity, she would fill several plastic containers of water, designating some for tea, coffee and cooking, and others for dishes and washing clothes.

Per her orders, we would rush to the nearby stores to make small but necessary purchases - batteries for the flashlight and the transistor radio, cigarettes for my dad, and a few VHS videotapes which we would watch over and again, whether the curfew lasted for a few days or a few weeks.

Lesson number two: Take control of the situation - do not panic - and assign specific responsibilities to every family member. This strengthens the family unit and sets the stage for collective solidarity desperately required under these circumstances.

Preserve Your Water

I cannot emphasize this enough. Even if you think that a water crisis is not impending, do not take chances.

It is easy to feel invincible and fully prepared on the first day of quarantine - or military curfew. Many times, we lived to regret that false sense of readiness, as we drank too much tea or squandered our dishwashing water supplies too quickly.

In this case, you have a serious problem, especially during the summer months when you cannot count on rainwater to make up for the deficit.

Years after the end of the Intifada, my father revealed to us that many a time, him and mom used the rainwater they collected in buckets throughout the house, including the leaked roofs for our drinking supplies, even when there was no electricity or gas to boil the water beforehand.

In retrospect, this explains the many bouts of diarrhea we experienced, despite his assurances that they had painstakingly removed all bird droppings from the salvaged water.

Lesson number three: Cautiously use your water supplies during a quarantine, and never, under any circumstance, drink rainwater or, at least, keep diarrhea pills handy.

Ration Your Food

The same logic that applies to water applies to food. It goes without saying that any acquired food would have to cover the basics first. For example, flour, which we used to make bread, comes before bananas, and sugar, which we consumed abundantly with tea, comes before Dutch candy.

I made that mistake more than once, not because of my love for the imported Dutch candy which we purchased from Abu Sa’dad’s store, located in the center of the camp. The truth is, my brothers and I played a strange form of candy poker which kept us entertained for many hours. I dreaded running out of my precious supplies before the curfew was over, thus subjugating myself to potential humiliation of having to auction everything else I owned - including my small radio - to stay in the game.

My poor mother was devastated numerous times by the horrible choices we made when we rushed to buy ‘essentials’.

Lesson number four: Agree in advance on what classifies as ‘essential food’, and consume your food in a rational way. Also, if you are lucky enough to locate Dutch candy in whatever version of the Abu Sa’dad’s store, in your town, do not gamble it all in one day.

Find Sources of Entertainment

If electricity is still available, then you still have the option of watching television. For us, Indian movies, especially those starring Amitabh Bachchan, were the number one option. Imagine my disappointment when our beloved movie star, who helped us through numerous military curfews in Gaza, was photographed grinning with right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the latter’s visit to India in 2018.

If electricity is cut off, be ready with alternative options: books, free wrestling, living-room soccer (with the ball preferably made from stuffed-up socks contributed by all family members), and, of course, candy poker.

Lesson number five: The key is to have more than one form of entertainment and to be prepared for every eventuality, including power outages as a form of collective punishment.

Find the Humor in Grim Situations

Don’t focus on the negatives; there is no point or wisdom in that. Emphasizing the grimness of a situation can only contribute to the feeling of defeat and powerlessness that are already generated by the lockdown. There will be plenty of time in which you can look back, reflect, and even bemoan your unfortunate circumstance.

But, during the curfew itself is when you actually need your sense of humor most. Take things lightly - laugh at your miserable situation, if you must. Forgive yourself for not being perfect, for panicking when you should have been composed, or for forcing your younger brother to gamble his underwear when he runs out of Dutch candy.

Difficult situations can offer the kind of scenarios that can be interpreted in two extreme ways: either extremely tragic or extremely funny; opt for the latter whenever you can, because as long as you laugh, as long as your spirit remains unbroken, your humanity remains intact.

Lesson number six: Be funny, don’t take life too seriously, share a laugh with others, and let humor inject hope in every hour and every day of your quarantine.

Hold Tighter to Your Faith

Whether you are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or any other faith; whether you are an atheist, agnostic, or practice any form of spirituality, philosophy or belief system, find comfort in your faith and beliefs.

Since all mosques in our refugee camp were shut down, if not raided during a military curfew, the call for prayer, which we heard five times during each day, was permanently silenced.

To keep the call for prayer going, we would sneak to the roof of our houses, carefully scan the area for any Israeli soldiers, and collectively make the call for prayer whenever it was required. Volunteers included my English teacher, who was communist and claimed that he did not believe in God, myself, and Nabil, the neighbor boy with the massive head and the most unpleasant voice.

In curfews, we developed a different relationship with God: He became a personal and more intimate companion, as we often prayed in total darkness, whispered our verses so very cautiously as not to be heard by pesky soldiers. And, even those who hardly prayed before the curfew kept up with all five prayers during the lockdown.

Lesson number seven: Let your values guide you during your hours of loneliness. And if you volunteer to make a call for prayer (or recite your religious hymns) please be honest with yourself: if you have no sense of rhythm or if your voice has the pitch of an angry alley cat, for God’s sake, leave the job to someone else.

In Conclusion ..

I hope that under no circumstances you will ever hear these ominous words: “You are now under curfew. Anyone who violates orders will be shot immediately.” I also hope that this COVID-19 quarantine will make us kinder to each other and will make us emerge from our homes better people, ready to take on global challenges while united in our common faith, collective pain and a renewed sense of love for our environment.

And when it’s all over, think of Palestine, for her people have been ‘quarantined’ for 71 years and counting.

by Ramzy Baroud

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writtenwordsoffic · 5 years

Text

Hiding - Grizz x Sam

A random dribble on a situation that's plausible for season 2 (ugh let there be a season 2...). Next fic will be Will x reader request.

Words: 2113 Warnings: None

Masterlist

@idle-lanes @sgarrett49 @moonlight53 @redhairedoddity @the-achievementhunter@superoptimist1997 @gswritings @misskarynie@pancakefancake @alwaysthefangirl @theserpentsqueen

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Grizz quickly pushed Sam to the side of the walkway.

"Move...", He gave a whisper without thought to Sam hearing his volume.

Sam barely saw Grizz’s mouth as a nearby street light was the only illumination around them. Grizz grabbed Sam by the arm, moving him into an alleyway off of Mainstreet.

Both boys were out of breath, Sam more than Grizz. They made it as far as they could out of the house - trying to make as minimal noise as possible.

Sam leaned over his knees - trying to get his heartbeat to a normal pace. “Do you hear them?”, he signed to Grizz hoping he could see enough of his hands in the shadows of the night.

Grizz shook his head no while his index and middle finger met his thumb. Grizz walked in a small circle, looking out of the alleyway, trying to listen for a car. “Do you think Gordie and Bean made it okay?”.

Sam squinted at Grizz’s lips, making out what he could. He nodded, “they’re smart”. Grizz gave a reluctant nod as his lips pursed with the displeasure of their situation.

It had been a week since Grizz had returned from the venture of finding land - and with it, New Ham had gone corrupt. Moments before, Campbell had sent out his loyal lemmings to do his bidding - and anyone that had sided with Allie was in trouble - especially those closest to her.

Grizz saw the flashlight first at the house - the kitchen containing Gordie, Bean, Sam and himself figuring out how to help Allie and Will. They quickly split up, hoping it would increase their chances of escape. It was also the first time Sam and he had seen each other since he had left for his exhibition.

Sam had finally caught his breath as he found himself pacing through the alleyway, looking at doors around them of the small abandoned shops.

“I didn’t think...”, Grizz tapped Sam’s arm to get his attention. “I didn’t think it would get this bad so quickly”.

Sam seemed heated as he looked to Grizz, “I told you, he’s smart. Allie should have done something about him before”.

Grizz heard something in the distance, quickly putting his finger to his mouth for Sam to be quiet. They quickly went to the back of the alleyway, hiding behind a green dumpster - hunched over. Sam’s back was to the green metal behind him, giving small hope to that no one would find the two of them. Grizz had his face turned away, slightly peaking around the side of the dumpster looking for a light and listening for more sounds. Grizz began to hear an engine rev, he quickly looked to Sam and grabbed the hand closest to his. “Car”. Grizz gave a quick breath as Sam began to hold his own.

Grizz could hear the engine pass them, speeding in a hurry and not looking detailed enough. The silence began to take the wind again, Grizz giving out a large exhale. He looked down, seeing Sam’s hand clenched with his own still. Unintentionally giving a smile to the feeling.

Sam looked down, letting go of Grizz’s hand. Grizz looked to Sam’s face, seeing the word ‘sorry’ being signed back to him.

Grizz shook off the thoughts of what Sam’s eyes made him feel. He had to be in the moment - he had to be on his guard.

“I think we can make it to the hospital”.

“Did Kelly respond?”.

Grizz nodded, “she’s got it locked up. No sign of Gordie or Bean yet”.

Sam breathed a bit, the cold being warmed by his air. Sam’s nerves were on high for multiple reasons - he tried to relinquish continuous ideas of what he wanted to say to Grizz - fearful that one of them wouldn’t make the night.

A small light glimmered from Grizz’s pocket. He checked his phone quickly, “Kelly says to stay out of sight for a few hours and then make it to her”.

Sam nodded, giving a sign of if they should get up.

“Hold on”. Grizz’s nature was naturally protective - especially of those who he cared about. He got up from behind the dumpster slowly. He walked to the edge of the alleyway, hearing and seeing nothing that would be a danger to them. Grizz made a motion for Sam to come out - knowing that he was watching his every move. He looked to the side door that led to the coffee shop. Sam stood up, following Grizz to the door.

Grizz tried the handle - it opened thanks to teens in the first week wanting to raid everything.

Sam followed in as Grizz closed the door gently behind them. Sam quickly grabbed a chair to block the door, Grizz doing the same to the front entrance.

Grizz led them both as he ventured to the back, finding an office. It wasn't a large office, but it had a small window that was close to the ceiling. Helpful enough to see if someone was coming. Grizz locked the door behind Sam as Sam found a seat in a generic metal fold up chair. "You think we can stay here for a little?". Sam kept his voice low as he signed.

Grizz gave a knock with his fist as he nodded. "I think it's best for them to have some time to give up for a bit. Then we'll make a run to the hospital".

Sam looked over to Grizz's chest, seeing a mark come from his sweatshirt. "You okay?"

Grizz looked down, finally realizing there was blood on his shirt. He gently touched the area and flinched a little. "Must have happened when we jumped that barbed gate".

Sam gave a sigh, getting up from his seat. "Sit down, let me see if there's something to clean you up".

Sam unlocked the door as Grizz took a seat on the office table. Sam walked slowly and stayed low to the ground as he made his way behind the coffee bar. He quickly found a white first aid kit and made his way back to the office.

"Found this", Sam closed the door gently behind him, relocking it. "Take off your shirt", a small amount of silence followed his direction, tension lingering between the pair of them.

"I can do it my...", Grizz winced as he tried to get up too quickly.

Sam gave a judgemental quirk to his face, Grizz nodding knowing Sam was right to help him.

Grizz lifted his sweatshirt first, revealing a white tank, one that was slowly being soaked with blood near his abdomen.

Sam pulled the chair over to get a better look at Grizz's wound.

Sam ruffled through the first aid kit, finding some gauze and a small cloth to clean up the area. Grizz pulled his tank over his chest giving another wince of pain in the process. Sam applied pressure to the wound with the cloth, his hands lightly touching around the wound.

Grizz gave a small laugh, Sam looking up questionably.

"Your hands are cold", Grizz tried to keep his smile to himself.

"Sorry", Sam was short with his response as he was on too much of an edge still. Sam found some antiseptic cream in the kit. "It isn't bleeding any more. I'm going to put this on", he kept his eyes off of Grizz as thoughts encompassed him. Sam used a cleansing wipe, getting rid of some dried blood and then gently tapped some ointment into the wound. He then continued to use some gauze to bandage the rest of it up.

Grizz pushed his tank back down as Sam gave the sign for finished - all the while seeing Sam's expressions.

"How'd you know how to do that?".

Sam shrugged, "you know how too".

"Yeah but I was a boy scout...". Grizz tried to get Sam's attention again as Sam seemed to be somewhere else in his mind.

Sam met Grizz's eyes, "practice".

Grizz gave thought to the word, the explanation. Remembering months ago of the story that Sam had told the group of them. "Sam, can I ask you something?".

Sam had already moved his chair back, Grizz still towering over him by sitting on the desk. Sam just nodded in response.

"Was that bird...was it the only time you saw Campbell violent?". Grizz's eyes were locked onto Sam's.

Sam shook his head no, his eyes darting away from Grizz for a moment.

"Why didn't you tell us that too? Or...me?”, Grizz tried to not to make it about the lingering relationship between the two of them - one that had yet to be resolved.

"He didn't have control here. Not with Cassandra and not with Allie. And it's been a few years since....". Sam began to get tears in his eyes as he reflected back on his childhood. Words escaping him - inner courage resisting himself to shed a tear.

Grizz's heart began to sink. Taking in mind what kind of person Campbell was, terrified of what had happened to Sam over the years. Grizz got up, a wave of anger rising in him, deflecting the pain in his abdomen as he paced throughout the room.

Sam stood up, grasping Grizz’s hand to stop him. “I’m okay”.

“We’re hiding out in an abandoned coffee shop because of the guy!”, Grizz realized he yelled quite quickly - looking to the window to make sure nothing new was around them. Grizz’s nose went up as it sniffled looking back to Sam.

Sam’s hand still had Grizz’s in a grip - “I’m okay now”.

Grizz nodded, “okay”. Grizz looked down as their fingers intertwined.

"Sam...".

Sam looked at Grizz with soft eyes, appreciating how much care Grizz still had for him.

Grizz grabbed Sam at his back, bringing him closer to his body, his right hand going to Sam's cheek to pull in.

Their lips met, nerves shooting through both of them as they were anxious about their situation. Grizz leaned back to the edge of the desk, bringing Sam with him as their heights became closer.

Sam gently rubbed the side of Grizz's bare arm, Sam's body in between the opening of Grizz's legs. Quick kisses exchanged between them, an eagerness of pace heightening.

Their lips separated as Grizz gave a small hum while Sam kissed his jaw. Sam moved his mouth down to Grizz's neck.

Grizz gave a small gasp as he could feel Sam's tongue on his skin, his hands gripping Sam tighter.

A light beamed from Grizz's sweatshirt, still on the edge of the table.

"Sam...". Grizz didn't want to stop but he knew the situation they were in was more vital. Grizz pushed Sam off gently, making sure he could see him.

Sam looked questionable, a little afraid that he was doing something Grizz didn't want.

"My phone", Grizz pointed over to his sweatshirt.

Sam moved away, reaching the back of his neck, body turned away from Grizz.

Grizz reached for his phone, as he saw a new message from Kelly. He quickly tapped Sam's shoulder for him to turn around.

"Gordie and Bean made it. She says there haven't been cars around for a while. We should go now...". Grizz gave a reluctant sigh as he said the last of his words.

Sam nodded, turning away from Grizz again.

"Hey", Grizz reached for Sam's hand this time for him to turn back. Sam's eyes looked saddened as if he felt his actions weren't wanted. "We will figure this out when we're safe, okay?"

"We aren't safe with him in charge".

Grizz gave a nod. "Okay, we'll figure this out when we get to the hospital".

"I've made it too complicated. It's too much".

Grizz shook his head, lips pursing in disagreement. "That's how life is. Especially with it in a place like here. We'll talk later, but we have to make it to the hospital first". Grizz reached for his sweatshirt, putting it back on slowly as the pain came back to him while he stretched.

"Gordie can find medicine for that". Sam tried to keep his thoughts focused on leaving now.

Sam unlocked the door as Grizz followed him out.

Grizz reached for Sam's hand once again, as they both were low to the ground going through the hallway. "Sam. It's all complicated".

Sam shook his head, "this isn't the time".

"No but...", Grizz gave thought to his words as he knew what his heartfelt for the blue-eyed boy in front of him. "I wanted that too, in there". Grizz gave a small smile of reassurance. "Let's get out of here".

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