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marsandchariot · 3 years

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Fixed signs in angular houses

Fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius) in angular houses (1, 4, 7, 10) may struggle with sources of permission to change their ideas of who they are, where “who they are” is something they view as an intrinsic, unchangeable foundation. These types have mutable signs in their 8th houses and cardinal signs in their 12th houses. With cardinal qualities in a cadent house (challenges) and mutable qualities in a succedent house (resources at our disposal), processes of change and ideas of beginning again represent key factors in evolving one's self-perception. One must re-learn to be “themselves” or reconstitute the self in the face of loss, especially when what is lost is something or someone viewed not just as an integral part of one's life, but a basis of their identity. Fixed sign types can go through this process of loss many times without it imparting any stronger a relationship with the cardinal (beginning) or mutable (changing) parts of themselves—they may continue to value most the parts of themselves that are “unchangeable,” seeing these qualities as who they “truly” are, relegating the parts of themselves that feel doubt and vulnerability as less “real,” even when the experiences that incite these feelings of instability or rupture are key to growth and conviction. Or, they may crystallize experiences of loss as self-defining, without being willing to metabolize this experience as anything other than its literal or original appearance in their lives. For fixed sign types, loss must be reconfigured as something mutable so it can assist in the process of regeneration.

Fixed sign types may have to accept that change is not purely that which is imposed upon us from negative or coercive experience; not an external prescriptive authority but a strength to stay “with the trouble” within—-where the trouble is not what’s wrong out there, but what feels cracked or unsettled inside us. Don’t wait—-investigate. Your 8th and 12th houses will show snags in the depths of your self-experience (I would also include the 4th, but its association with roots and family makes it feel like a separate project). The 8th house speaks to journeys to the underworld from which we return with new knowledge; it speaks to inheritance, or what resources come to us through loss. The 12th house speaks to transformation, rebirth; the bottoming-out, the last stop from which return is impossible, only continuation onward. Taurus rising will have fire in the 8th and 12th—-the necessity is to act. For Leo rising, with water in these houses, the answer is interior experience, that which cannot be surveyed by others, but is the place where you become yourself. For Scorpio rising (air in 8H and 12H), a trust in the immaterial and imagined possibility of the future is the best strategy to move towards that future, to make it real. For Aquarius rising, the work (earth 8H and 12H) of belief and faith are more rewarding than the static boundary of skepticism—-the deification of “objective reality” is not serving you (nor is it serving reality). Those with Taurus on the ascendant, Sagittarius in the 8th house, and Aries in the 12th can expand their inner landscape through consolidating and validating their own practice through consistency rather than waiting for their practice to “become” legitimate by resembling the work of others. Be atheistic; do not look to a single source of authority for what you do. Disparate representations of your personal practice and experience should not threaten the validity of what you offer, but allow you to better see yourself in a variegated context or community of approaches. You are hesitant to build your authority when your authority doesn’t look exactly like someone else’s (or conversely, you may fear you are too similar to be “unique”), but consensus is not what authority is for; authority is for creating a beacon bright enough for others to find you, and to exist within a lineage of those who do the same. The world should work in a way where there is an infinity of replenishing signals like these, so everyone can find their way. There should never be just one, nor should there only be a few. By seeing your difference as a necessary, guiding light among many—-and seeing your likeness to others as contributing to the haven an identifiable community—-you can better envision yourself within a lineage, even if the past and future of this lineage are not yet apparent to you. You will not know your lineage until you know your practice, and you will not know your practice until you trust your habits enough to guide them. Identify less with a “lack” of consistency and more with your embrace of adjustment, with your ability to put conviction and the currency of ego aside (Aries 12th) and re-align with the consistently changing flow of reality according to your own interests (Sag 8th).

For Leo rising, with Pisces 8H and Cancer 12H, you have to trust in the validity of expression as it plays a role in changing reality. To speak something is to give it form. Once something has a form—-even in language—-it becomes a player on the board. The idea that something should not be communicated or made real is an idea that the thing that needs to be expressed will by counteracted or denied by reality; not expressing a vulnerable feeling or idea, by your logic, may be what keeps it safe or intact (or that protects yourself and others from it). With Cancer in 12th, the relationship to difficult emotions is like the parent that over-shelters their child; the child is kept inside because they are too sickly for the world, but their sickly disposition is actually developed from never leaving the darkness of their bedroom. By evaluating their vulnerability as an inherent and unchangeable weakness, Leo risings prevent their emotional pressure points from undergoing the same strength-building activities as other aspects of their personality that they are much more comfortable flexing with others—-those qualities that feel inherently useful, agreeable, entertaining and resolved. An over-performance of “being fine” prevents you from accepting invitations to heal. The parts of you that you worry are “too much” are actually suffering from a lack of exposure. These are things you maybe don’t allow to reach even in your conscious awareness. Pisces 8H may make you feel that if you allow yourself to go deeper, you won’t be able to return, to swim back to the surface, or that that surface on which you rely to be “yourself” won’t survive this kind of deep self-interrogation. But 8H journeys allow us to bring back something useful from the darkness, whether material or not. Luke Skywalker, in the cave, sees his father wearing his (Luke’s) own face. This experience was not immediately positive but it was obviously necessary; the strength of Luke’s ego, of his understanding of the binary of light and dark, right and wrong, was actually getting in the way of understanding the skills he needed to develop in opposition to his father’s legacy. Your change/transformation resource may lie in learning to relax the tension that keeps your fears hidden from yourself, because once you see your fear, you will be able to name your need.

Scorpio rising, with Gemini 8H and Libra 12H, needs a safe way to imagine a future outside of material circumstances. They need to imagine people they’ve never met, relationships and support they’ve never had, and ways of knowing themselves that undermine their own self-understanding. This is less out of the need to develop a more empathic approach and more because it is difficult for fixed types to stray from what they already know is possible and available, which makes it difficult to change habits and to bring them into contact with different people and experiences (which becomes an issue when they find themselves encountering the same issues in relationships, jobs etc. over and over again). The twins in the 8H speak to shadow work—reintegrating the abject self. What version of yourself have you created through the periodic rejection of certain inherent qualities? Piece by piece, you have constructed a complete, suppressed other You—-a shadow, a legitimate complementary half of yourself—-that you need to accept in order to accept also the invitations that are seeking to include you on the basis of your whole self. The invitations that seek to value this wholeness will not come or will not be available to you until you are present in a condition prepared to receive them. Libra 12H speaks to a reluctance to be seen as “needing help,” and to resentment towards those we feel are trying to “counterbalance” or “absolve” us rather than simply trying to include our shadow in their embrace of us. The shadow is not comprised definitively of weaknesses, vices or “dark” behaviors, but of whatever parts of us that we consciously castigate or reject. Our capacity to love, or to accept happiness, if we suppress these, can be shadows. Libra 12H may give you the impression that people are trying to “change” or “correct” you, but they are only attempting to listen to the parts of yourself you’ve put away.

Aquarius rising, with 8H Virgo and 12H Capricorn, may struggle with feeling their views are being taken seriously while at the same time resisting taking the views of others seriously if they cannot see the logic or share in the belief that motivates those views. They see themselves as approaching problems objectively, and frame their feelings as logical reactions. Just as they wait for logic to validate their emotional experience, they wait for material (not necessarily scientific) phenomena to trigger their belief. These types may feel that in challenging others to explain dissonant viewpoints, they are protecting themselves (and protecting the sacred principle of Reason) from falsity and dogma. They experience faith less as a process and more as a single conclusive result; not the road leading to conviction but the moment when conviction becomes unshakable. What this quality or pose of discernment actually creates is a universal and therefore inflexible standard of value. Instead of seeing their knowledge as something sacred that they protect behind a fortress against the slings and arrows of misinformation, Aquarius risings might operate more dynamically and adaptably by locating their knowledge in an image of bricklaying—-in the act of building the fortress, not as the thing within it; the ongoing process of fitting pieces together to create something coherent. The incorporation and swapping in and out of small units to build something stable—-rather than using a pre-constructed wall to keep things out—-allows Aquarius risings to mindfully participate in the changing nature of their knowledge system, rather than working to gatekeep or defend it.

#leorising scorpiorising aquariusrising taurusrising fixedsigns angularhouses

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missfay49 · 4 years

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Who is Orange?

Disclaimer: Please enjoy? Accept? Beware? This… Thing that started out as character analysis and turned into a deranged fanfic, because I experienced a literal revelation mid-way through free writing. I did not clean this up much because I’m still reeling from the theory implications myself. I cursed a lot.

What does Orange Side represent?

What do we know?

Orange is a “Dark Side”, defined as being one of the Sides hidden from C!Thomas.

The other Hidden Sides were Janus, Remus, and Virgil.

All the Hidden Sides were hidden due to a key aspect of their character that C!Thomas had to first acknowledge and then accept. Virgil required C!Thomas to acknowledge that he had heightened anxiety and accept that anxiety isn’t inherently wrong, just a different form of information that can be processed. Remus required C!Thomas to acknowledge that he had intrusive thoughts and accept that those thoughts don’t make him evil; they’re just thoughts. Janus required C!Thomas to acknowledge that he was capable of lying and accept that acting “selfishly” sometimes isn’t just okay, but actually critically important to managing stress.

What are the common themes here?

Confronting the reality about ourselves instead of pretending some traits don’t exist.

Understanding ourselves to be more complex than ‘good’ and ‘evil’.

Addressing mental health.

Orange Side is still hidden, but we can expect him to be something C!Thomas doesn’t want to (or isn’t ready to) acknowledge. Something that would be difficult to accept about oneself. All Hidden Sides fall under the jurisdiction of Janus, so let’s take another look at him.

In “Can Lying Be Good?” we get a lot of information about what Janus’ purpose is:

Roman: It you really don’t want to know something, he… can keep our mouths shut.

Logan: You don’t want to believe it. That’s where his power comes from. Things that you want to believe. Things that you wish were true. And things that you wish weren’t.

Deceit: What you don’t know can’t hurt you.

This all means that Orange Side is something that would cause C!Thomas distress to learn and something he subconsciously wishes weren’t true. This is not new information to most of you: the spin-off interpretations of Apathy and Pride are widely popular fandom theories, traits that are typically viewed as negative in large doses.

But the Hidden Sides being seen as something negative isn’t their only defining characteristic. They typically involve an aspect a mental health, involve societal expectations, and... what is it...

Janus is the umbrella over all the other Hidden Sides, sheltering and obscuring them from view. He is the gatekeeper in a very literal sense. What is he gatekeeping?

What is it? What is it what is it, why? What does he do? What seems bad but isn’t? What can he do? What issue is actually useful? What’s useful what’s useful WHATS USEFUL WHATS USEFUL?! WHY DOES IT HAVE TO USEFUL?

shitshitSHITSHISTHISTSTs

I KEPT ASKING MYSELF, WHAT’S USEFUL? WHAT TRAIT COULD IT BE THAT APPEARS BAD, BUT ISN’T BAD, IS ACTUALLY USEFUL. ANIEXTY WAS OKAY BECAUSE HE WAS JUST LOOKING OUT FOR US. LYING WAS OKAY BECAUSE HE JUST WANTED TO PUT C!THOMAS FIRST. INTRUSIVE CREATIVITY WAS OKAY BECAUSE DARK IDEAS OPEN UP NEW PATHS.

But the whole GODDAMN POINT is ACCEPTANCE!

You don’t HAVE to be useful to be accepted. You – yuo just BE. YOU BE!

PEOPLE don’t have to prove their Usefulness to you before you can treat them with respect. Our WORTH does not depend on what we PRODUCE. YE GODS, THE COGNITIVE DISSONANCE I JUST BROKE-

~~~

C!Thomas comes back from his self-care stay-cation. He’s ready to start production, he is rested and refreshed. BUT JUST LIKE EVERY PREVIOUS DILEMMA, it isn’t Good enough, Original enough, Fast enough. He’s done everything right, why is it still wrong? He’s accepted his anxiety, he’s accepted that things aren’t just black and white, he’s Accepted That It’s OKAY to have Dark Thoughts, he Has ACCEPTED SELF_CARE. Why Isn’t IT ENOUGH?!

“Fuck it.”

C!Thomas spins in his chair, looking at a man that looks just like him, but not quite.

“What?”

“Fuck it. Fuck them.”

“You sound like Remus,” Thomas jokes. He’s lying, of course. He’s nervous. The Side looks like a normal guy, but something about him is unsettling. The unidentified Side just presses his lips together, unimpressed.

“Um, ef w-who, exactly?” Thomas asks, but part of him already knows.

“All of them. Every person who isn’t you. Every person who expects something from you.”

“Now, you sound like Janus.” Thomas looks back at the computer screen, but the Side’s retort has him spinning around again.

“Janus is a short-sighted pseudo-rebellious minion of a capitalistic society, just like the rest of them.”

“Uh, excuse me?!”

“Isn’t it obvious? They’re all obsessed with Success. Whether they want to play by the rules, or manipulate them, or break them, whether it’s making money or pumping out good deeds, they’re still just trying to make you be successful within the framework of a system that prioritizes production over a human life.”

Thomas just stares for a moment before he can find his voice.

“Who are you?”

“Dude, seriously?” He waves his hands, palms up and presenting himself. “I’m Achilleus. I’m your motivation.”

~~~

Take a deep breath and follow me down the research black hole, where every topic I looked up was more and more terrifyingly appropriate:

Freedom

noun

the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.

Self-Determination

noun

the process by which a person controls their own life.

Autonomy

noun

(in Kantian moral philosophy) the capacity of an agent to act in accordance with objective morality rather than under the influence of desires.

Autonomic Nervous System (because i believe each Hidden Side is closer to the subconscious)

noun

the part of the nervous system responsible for control of the bodily functions not consciously directed, such as breathing, the heartbeat, and digestive processes.

Inherent Value

“inherent value in the case of animal ethics can be described as the value an animal possesses in its own right, as an end-in-itself” – Animal Rights – Inherent Value, by Saahil Papar

Intrinsic Value

“Intrinsic value has traditionally been thought to lie at the heart of ethics. Philosophers use a number of terms to refer to such value. The intrinsic value of something is said to be the value that that thing has “in itself,” or “for its own sake,” or “as such,” or “in its own right.”” – Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value, by Michael J. Zimmerman and Ben Bradley

“Finally, his sense of respect for the intrinsic value of entities, including the non-sentient, is the Kantian notion of the inherent value of all Being. This is based on the notion that a universe without moral evaluators (e.g. humans) would still be morally valuable, and there is no reason not to regard Being as inherently morally good.” – Technology and the Trajectory of Myth, by David Grant, Lyria Bennett Moses

Motivation

“Another way to conceptualize motivation is through Self-Determination Theory … which is concerned with intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation happens when someone does something for its inherent satisfaction.” – Second Language Acquisition Myths: Applying Second Language Research to Classroom Teaching, by Steven Brown, Jenifer Larson-Hall

Capitalism

“The flowery language of the United States Declaration of Independence would have you believe that human life has an inherent value, one that includes inalienable rights such as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” But in America, a major indicator of value is actually placed on being a productive member of society, which typically means working a job that creates monetary revenue (especially if the end result is accumulated wealth and suffering was inherently involved in the process).” – The Diminished Value of Human Life in a Capitalistic Society, by Seren Sensei

Religion

“At the heart of the debate between Calvinism and Arminianism lay the insurmountable chasm between God’s sovereign election versus human self-determination.” – Sovereignty vs. Self-determination: Two Versions of Ephesians 1:3-14, by Reformed Theology

Mythology

“In Classical Greece, Achilles was widely admired as a paragon of male excellence and virtue. Later, during the height of the Roman Empire, his name became synonymous with uncontrollable rage and barbarism… He chooses kleos (glory) over life itself, and he owes his heroic identity to this kleos. He achieves the major goal of the hero: to have his identity put permanently on record through kleos…

“But is this really an accurate characterization of Achilles' pivotal decision? Is he really driven to sacrifice his life by an obsessive quest for honor and glory? One scene in the Iliad suggests the answer to both questions is no.

“When Achilles leaves the battlefield after his dispute with Agamemnon, the Trojans gain the upper hand on the Greeks. Desperate to convince their best warrior to return, Agamemnon sends an envoy of Achilles' closest friends to his tent to persuade him to reconsider his decision. During this scene, Achilles calmly informs his friends that he is no longer interested in giving up his life for the sake of heroic ideals. His exact words are below:

“The same honor waits for the coward and the brave. They both go down to Death, the fighter who shirks, the one who works to exhaustion (IX 386-388)…

“Not only does Achilles reject the envoy's offers of material reward, but he rejects the entire premise that glory is worth a man's life.” – making sense of a hero’s motivation, by Patrick Garvey

Achilles (/əˈkɪliːz/ ə-KIL-eez) or Achilleus (Ancient Greek: Ἀχιλλεύς, [a.kʰilˈleu̯s])

Achilles realizes his own inherent self-worth, thereby freeing himself from the expectations of others; societal or otherwise. Only once we are free can we find the balance between our own needs and the needs of others in a way that breeds neither anger nor resentment in either.

~~~

But that’s... that’s just... a theory. Huh.

#sanders sides theory #orange side #orange side theory #sanders sides #character thomas #cursing tw #swearing tw #dark sides #the others #janus sanders #virgil sanders #remus sanders #orange sanders #caps tw #name theory #long post #missfay #my writing

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goldleafacrossyourlips · 4 years

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Uneasy Lies the Head - Dark Lord/OC - Chapter 8

Chapters - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13

Chapter 8 - Mandrake’s Shriek

Samara liked to consider herself strong. She had survived her mother’s abuse. She had lived through Blackwood’s unwanted advances. But she was able to admit that she had one teensy little flaw. She liked to run. When the world got too much, Samara would flee to a safe place. Some people could face their problems head on, but more often than not, Samara couldn’t. Perhaps that’s why she had her Shadows. They could fight for her when she herself just couldn’t.

So after her family had caught her up on everything she’d missed during her little snooze; like Sabrina restoring Roz’ vision, Sabrina doing magick without spells or runes, and all that they had done during the angels’ visit. Samara had waited for everyone to leave either to their homes or their rooms and then she’d gathered Phlox and teleported to her little cottage.

The minute her feet landed in her sitting room, she’d collapsed to her knees. Falling back onto her bottom, she’d wrapped her arms around her knees and buried her face into them. Phlox had leaned his weight against her side and snuffled his snout under her arm and licked her cheek. Samara’s world zoned out and her only point of contact was Phlox. What could have lasted longer only lasted a few moments with Phlox’ incessant nudging and licking. Samara slowly raised her head and her hand played with the fur of his one ear. She tilted her head and rested her cheek on her knee.

She felt as the same something as before began to fill her. Not the power, but the presence. The icy cold, overheatedness of her body drained and the achy tightness of her chest eased. Gentle warmth began to fill the emptiness inside her. She heaved a deep sigh, her eyes slipping closed. What felt like a finger trailed down the back of her neck to across her shoulder down to gently grip her upper arm. Content assurance tickled the back of her mind. Her eyes fluttered open, to see what she knew wouldn’t be there.

Some disappointment filled her when she confirmed that she was alone other than her familiar. She could see her Shadows dancing along the walls, stirred up from her actions. She remained on the floor and simply watched as they flowed to a melody only they could sense. A brave Shadow skimmed along the floor until it could wrap around her ankle. Samara smiled softly and stroked along the skin it held, feeling the room shudder around her.

As the moon continued to move through the sky, going down for it’s nap and the sun began to wake up, Samara reflected. During the discussions her family and friends had held during the night she knew that Sabrina was deeply unsettled by what had happened. And Samara did hold pity for her cousin. No 16-17 year old girl should have to worry about the things she had to. She deserved to fully enjoy her childhood, by having friends and learning as much as she could either at Baxter High or at the Academy. She should be worrying about lovers and parties and other frivolous stuff. But what she deserved and what she was dealt were two entirely different things.

Samara knew her cousin, or at least she knew the version of her before Samara had left. She knew that Sabrina wouldn’t simply go along with the prophecy. She was too bound to the mortal world and her friends to let the Apocalypse happen. She knew that Sabrina would do whatever it took to make sure the Apocalypse was stopped. Something stupid and dangerous probably; but always with good intentions. And that’s what it was at its base. Good. Sabrina was wholly and intrinsically good. Whatever higher being that meddled in the Dark Lord’s plans had been smart. Hard to bring about the Apocalypse when one of its catalysts refused to do it.

Did Samara want to bring about the Apocalypse? Now that she thought about it, not really. She wasn’t overly fond of mortals but she didn’t hate them. Plus, she liked Earth how it was right now. But what really threw her through a whirl was the little royalty part. Her? Queen? The only thing she had dominion over was her garden and that was laughable at best. How did anyone expect her to rule over anything? Let alone people? Perhaps whoever had translated the prophecy had gotten it wrong. Her wrong at least. That had to be it. Why in the Heaven would Lucifer Morningstar want her as Queen? The only thing she was exceptional at was potion-making and baking!

Samara shook her head, realizing she was spiraling. The last thing she needed was to sit there and despair. No, the world had enough people that could wallow in their self-pity and confusion. She was a Spellman for Satan’s sake! Maybe not in blood but in everything that counts. She was going to plan and plot, just like she knew the rest of her family was doing. She was sure her cousin was figuring out a way to stop the Apocalypse. So that’s what she’d do. In case Sabrina failed, she’d have a back up plan.

So Samara picked herself up off the ground, dusted off her bottom and went to her workshop. Digging through her extra wares, she found the vial she was looking for and flicked it open. Taking 3 small sips of the minty concoction, she felt as her mind cleared and began to focus. It was time to put her brain to work.

After what felt like days but were really only hours, Samara resurfaced to reality. She had a tentative plan. While it wasn’t something that her cousin would concoct full of bravery and blatant flourishes, it could work. She hoped it would at least. She also sort of hoped that it wouldn’t come down to her plan.

Phlox had spent his time waiting for her curled up across the room on the armchair he had claimed years ago. His dark eyes had watched her unblinkingly but Samara was used to his overly-intelligent stare. She stood up and approached him, stroked a hand through his plush fur.

“Thank you, my friend. For putting up with my antics and always standing by my side.” She had whispered before sighing. “I suppose we should head back before everyone starts to worry. My mirror has been pinging for a few hours now. I think they’ve noticed our escape.”

She shouldn’t have been surprised by that honestly. The sun was just starting to descend over the horizon and exhaustion weighed heavily on her, depicting the time that had passed. Even though she had just woken up from such a long sleep the day before, she was still wiped. She made sure to pocket the rest of the invigorating potion she had sipped earlier. She had a feeling she’d need it today. Hopefully she could slip in the house unnoticed and take a nap before she announced her presence to the group.

She stood in the center of her sitting room and Phlox was quick to join her. She smiled down at him and then chanted her words to teleport. Landing roughly in her room at the Spellman’s house, Samara looked towards her bed wistfully. Just as she was about to step in its direction she felt her Shadows jolt in discord. Something was wrong. She looked around her and saw them crowding towards her door. The problem was downstairs then. She cast a longing look towards her bed before sipping her potion once again and slowly stalked out of the room. She could hear humming downstairs.

She rounded the stairs and followed the sounds into the botanical room, where Sabrina stood looking amongst the flora. She was wearing a plaid dress that Samara had never seen her in before. She continued to glance around and didn’t see what would’ve caused her Shadows to react so violently. She shrugged and approached her cousin.

“‘Brina?” The girl in question whipped around, sending a blinding smile her way.

“‘Mara! Where have you been?! I’ve missed you!” Sabrina exclaimed and wrapped Samara in a tight hug. Some guilt echoed throughout Samara at her cousin’s words, and she returned the embrace.

“Sorry, Cousin. I’ve just had a lot going on in my mind and I wanted to sort it all out. I’m back now though.” Samara reassured, stroking a hand across her cousin’s back. She felt the girl stiffen and pulled back in concern. To her shock Sabrina was glaring up at her.

“Are you though? You always leave! I needed you here and you left me! I was so scared and alone and I just wanted my Samara here to help me. But like always you were gone! Don’t worry, I have a way where you’ll never leave me ever again.” Sabrina spat out and her eyes began glowing white. Before Samara’s own powers or Shadows could even react she was engulfed in bright light and knew no more.

“Samara! Wake up. Come on come on come on. Please! Wake up!” There were voices shouting at her before she took a gasping breath and the fresh air flooded her lungs. She was freezing! Blinking her eyes open she saw drooping red columbine flowers beside her. Then her eyes refocused on the blurry figures behind them and saw the worried faces of her cousins.

“‘Mara! You’re okay but we have a problem. Come on, let’s get inside and warm you up.” Sabrina helped her twist out of the vines that surrounded her and get up. She looked around the garden in confusion. She didn’t remember taking a nap out there.

Her cousins were quick to wrap a blanket around her shivering frame and a cup of tea soon entered her hands, warming her. She took a sip as she assessed herself. She felt relatively fine other than being cold, and dirty apparently. She looked up into the anxious faces of her cousins.

“What happened?” Her voice was gravely and croaky. Samara coughed into her arm and looked at them. They both shifted uneasily.

“Well, in an effort to stop the impending Apocalypse, I convinced Ambrose to help me with the Mandrake conversion. And we were successful.” Samara’s stomach dropped, her cousin was now a mortal. Her Aunties were going to be furious. Heaven, she was furious!

“Sabrina-” Before she could finish, Sabrina rushed out words that took a moment to decipher.

“It worked too well and now the Mandrake has gone around trying to recreate everyone in my life into Mandrakes themselves. And she was successful with your Mandrake.” Sabrina hurried out and worried her lip between her teeth.

Samara felt her breath leave her. The Mandrake was successful? She closed her eyes and tried to pulse out her magick to find Phlox. Her eyebrows furrowed when she couldn’t. Her eyes snapped open wide and she looked at the edges of the room. Sorrow ripped through her chest as she took in the shadows that remained still and static. Where were her Shadows?! The companions she’d had since the beginning of time! What had saved her countless times!

“I’m mortal.” The words were whispered but seemed like a scream in the silent room. Sabrina collapsed to her knees beside her and gripped her arm.

“I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. I’ll fix this.”

“How can you? You’re mortal now too.” Samara mumbled, shooting a sharp look at her cousin. Sabrina bowed her head.

“We do have a plan to deal with the Mandrakes for now at least. We’re going to have an old-fashioned duel. Pistols and everything.” Ambrose tried to soothe. Samara stared down at her tea, her thumb rubbing up and down the handle. Her brain whirring as her heart continued to shatter in her chest. Unlike before, her soothing presence didn’t come to her. Instead she remained alone and desolate.

“With powers like we have….had, they need to be killed. So we’re cheating at the duel. Pulling early. I’m sorry to ask this of you but I can’t face them alone.” Sabrina explained, tears pooling in her eyes. Samara glanced at her out of the corner of her eye and gave a small nod. Ambrose and Sabrina sighed in relief. They began to explain more of the plan to her but she listened with half an ear, her eyes instead intent on the corners of the room that remained still but should’ve been swirling with her companions. Nothing would ever be the same.

The grove where Sabrina was born held an eerie feeling as the three cousins entered it. Or maybe it was just as normal as it had always been, just now Samara didn’t have the powers to protect from the bumps in the night.

Two figures stood at the stone in the middle of the clearing. They became clearer as the group of 3 approached. As they stopped at the stone, Samara found herself looking into a mirror. Rather, a mirror image. Piercing silver eyes and flowing black hair. Had she always been that tiny? She just reached Mandrake Sabrina’s nose. Samara watched as her Mandrake’s eyes shot through with lightning in a display of power. Envy and sorrow shot through her again. Those were hers!

“Sabrina, Samara. You came. Did you bring the weapons?” Mandrake Sabrina asked.

“Yes.” Samara answered, her eyes glowering at her own Mandrake.

“And there’s no other way this can play out?” Her Mandrake sighed, shaking her head.

“I wish there were. For all of our sakes.” The real Sabrina answered as everyone took a pistol from Ambrose.

“The rules are this. You’ll turn your backs to one another, count ten paces. On ten, turn, shoot. May the best trigger fingers win.” The girls all turned their backs on one another, pistols gripped in their hands. Samara closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then Ambrose began to count.

“One.” Step.

“Two.” Step.

“Three.” Step.

“Four.” Step.

“Five.” Step.

“Six.” Step.

“Seven.” Step.

“Eight.” Step.

“Nine.” BANG! BANG! The sound was deafening but Samara could still hear the gasp of pain and betrayal in her Mandrake’s voice. The shot Mandrakes both turned and looked towards the mortal girls.

“You shot early. That’s not fair.” The Mandrakes spoke as one before falling to the ground. Sabrina shook her head, tears in her eyes.

“No. No, it’s not.” She said and began running towards her Mandrake. Samara set down her pistol and kept her eyes on her gasping Mandrake. As she approached her Mandrake she could hear Sabrina soothing her own. Samara knelt down beside hers and looked into her eyes. She set both of her hands on the chest of the oozing Mandrake and leaned close to her face.

“You have something that doesn’t belong to you. Something that’s mine. And you’re gonna give it back to me.” Samara whispered, her words laced with cruelty before she bared her teeth. It felt strange, to be pushing and pulling for magick that was no longer contained in her. But she could feel it swarming within this Mandrake. It reacted to her touch, trying to get to what was familiar. She looked into the panic wide eyes of the Mandrake as she realized what she was doing. Samara’s lips curled with a wicked grin before she plunged her hands into the collapsing chest of the Mandrake, another choked gasp leaving its lips. She grasped the heart before it stopped beating, its warmth and goo filling her hand. She kept eye contact as her grip firmed and she slowly pulled the heart from her chest. She raised the still beating, orange, organ into the air, and set it before her lips. Her cruel smile parted to reveal sharp, pearly teeth that eagerly bit into the pulpy mess. The Mandrake gave a screaming groan as Samara ripped off the piece in her mouth, chewed and swallowed. As the piece moved down her throat to settle in her stomach, the Mandrake stilled, breath leaving her lips.

Samara dropped the pulp in her hand onto the body below her as she stood. As she reached her full height she sighed in content. She could see them! Her Shadows! She could feel as her magick flooded her veins, stretching out along her body like a weighted blanket. She flexed her hands and laughed in delight as her Shadows swirled up her body, encompassing her in darkness.

“Sabrina! Samara!” Nick shouted as he ran into the clearing, a woman following close behind. Samara turned to look at the others. Her cousin still sat on the ground, her Mandrake in her lap. Ambrose stood before them, formerly soothing her other cousin. Nick and the woman looked out of breath and disheveled. Although Samara knew she looked a sight. Her Mandrake lay at her feet, it’s heart ripped out of its chest and bitten, she was sure her eyes were glowing and her Shadows blurred parts of her.

“Nick. Ms. Wardwell. It’s over.” Sabrina answered in a tear-choked voice. The two looked at them in horror.

“Sabrina, that was the last step...to complete the prophecy.” Nick breathed out. Samara stared towards him as Sabrina turned.

“Killing yourself. It was the final perversion.” Ms. Wardwell chimed in as Sabrina’s face fell. Samara’s head tiled in interest, her new companions sending worried glances her way.

“What are you saying?” Tears still fell from Sabrina’s eyes but for a different reason than sorrow for her Mandrake.

The group besides Samara startled as lightning struck around them including the stone just behind them.

“The prophecy is being fulfilled. The End of Days is upon us. The Dark Lord will walk the Earth in His true form. The Gates of Hell will open. And Samara will sit by his side and rule as His Queen while Sabrina, their Sword, will enact their will.” Ms. Wardwell answered in a grave voice. Thunder and lightning continued to strike around them. One final strike highlighted the faces of the girls and the roles they’d play. Eyes glowing. Menace on Sabrina’s face. A crown towering on Samara’s head. Anticipation soaked the air.

#Chilling Adventures of Sabrina #caos #Lucifer Morningstar #lucifer morningstar x reader #lucifer morningstar x oc #lucifer morningstar x ofc #dark lord #dark lord x reader #dark lord x oc #satan x oc #sabrina #satan x reader #satan x ofc #ambrose #spellman #hilda #zelda #is it currently 3:30am and I'm still writing? yes

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solautumn · 4 years

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7. [ Hunger ]

“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.” ― Jelaluddin Rumi

The world was shifting once again. Scourge hordes began to attack territories in the south-central regions of the Eastern Kingdoms, and north-central regions of Kalimdor, but it seemed as though overnight, they spread more on a global scale. Silvermoon City was no exception, and it felt as though old, repressed fears of another Scourge invasion were coming back full force. The city’s guard numbers seemed ill prepared for the droves that came, and many citizens were bolstering their efforts. A call of arms came forward from the Argent Tournament grounds in Ice Crown, and Solarian knew something big was happening. As the fears mounted all around him, he tried his best to keep his wits about him. It wouldn’t do to feed the shadows that lurked inside.

Solarian was thankful for having come across Toadie and the priestess Emilia in the forest days ago. Perhaps the loa did funnily enough have an eye on the elf-- enough that not only had Toadie crossed his path for a fourth time, but this time brought the company of someone else. Someone who could sense the shadow magic that gripped the young priest as he slept curled against the gnarled roots of an evergold tree in the woods near Sunstrider Isle. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep then, but having avoided sleep for days, weariness caught up to him, and his nightmares came back with a vengeance.

Emilia had a commanding presence, and a firm grip on the type of powers that were at play. Were it not for her, Solarian wouldn’t have a physical visual of the thing-- a rider, she called it-- that latched on to his soul, feeding off of the energy between his strong emotions of fear and panic. The priestess’s timely intervention awoke him, and chastised the creature, allowing Solarian to get a grip on it where before, he’d only speculated that he was hearing some kind of calling to the grave.

Days later, in the shade of the Tirisfal forest where the veil between the realm of the living and the shadows seemed thin, she showed him again. It was a descent into the shadows he’d never explored before, like learning how to paddle-swim when all he’d ever known before was how to fly. Under her guidance, he commanded the shadow to once again spill from him and coalesce into the shadow fiend that he knew wanted to prey on him. Facing it, he banished some of that fear of the unknown, and gave it much less control over him.

The Light is always in my heart, but the shadows are in my mind. It’s okay for them to work together, just as it is okay for them to work separately.

It was difficult leaving his heart behind to focus on the mind, when his whole existence was tied so intrinsically to his emotions. What did he actually know about the mind? What could someone like him possibly know about mental fortitude.

But once again, his last meeting with Toadie echoed in his mind.

The only thing stopping me is me.

He was firm and commanding, shoulders and back straight as he took command of the shadow creature that sought to feed on him. It would do so no longer, but to banish it was to risk the delicate balance he held with the Light, too. He had to master this force and use it to protect. Light and Shadow were not absolute good and absolute evil. Those were labels given to them by those who understood little.

“What will you do instead?”

Emilia pulled the answers from him like weeds from a garden. They were answers he knew deep down inside but had never really given himself the freedom to think about. When the shadows hunger, so must he for something. Some who gave themselves to the shadows walked in the path of the Void so deeply that they themselves became Void. That was not what he wanted. To hold the delicate balance, he would feed those shadows the energy between the emotions of the wicked as their judge-- he would inflict terror upon them, and when necessary, he would be the executioner to send their souls to the other side. To aspire to be Justice itself was a heavy burden and a tall order considering his inexperience, but Solarian was not without knowledge, in spite of everything else.

︵‿︵‿୨0୧‿︵‿︵

When Toadie sent Solarian a letter, he knew this would be an excellent opportunity for him to learn something. He eagerly prepared himself for the journey to the humid swamps of Nazmir, bringing only the bare necessities to travel lightly. Dressed in dark green light leathers and a black cowl to hide his golden curls, he arrived ready for almost anything, although that did little to mentally prepare him for what was coming.

“If joo gotta problem wit blood, den maybe dis not be da test for ya... Or maybe it be da most important test." Toadie clicked his tongue and let out a soft huff through his nose. "Joo not be a child, so I'm not gonna be one ta treat joo like one."

Solarian had long ago tired of being treated like a child, and hearing that from the Zandalari was important. He was being taken seriously, and he appreciated it more than he could say. He watched as the earth moved around Toadie’s hands, giving him the answers he sought. It demanded retribution, and that was exactly what the Zandalari came here to do.

It wasn’t blood that made Solarian nervous. He was a trained medic, after all. Death was familiar to him, having on occasion had life slip away between his fingers after doing all he could to heal someone. Some battles couldn’t be won, no matter how hard one tried to mend a body, but the effort on wings of hope still had to be made.

But what was wrong, and what was right? When a life was devoted to defiling, destruction, cutting down innocents and boasting about it, of killing nature herself, when it warranted the killing of loa and gave way to madness that fed on the land like a cancer, was it not the duty of the righteous to cull them? Was it not the duty of a mender to remove a necrotic limb so that the body may properly heal? It was the shadow that would give him the power to hunt the wicked. It was a dangerous path, but one he would temper with his heart.

The Light is with you.

It all happened quickly. When Solarian gave in to it, when he really let it stretch its tendrils, he calculated a strategy that was ruthless and fast. A part of him feared where it came from, how he’d known it, why he hadn’t faltered as he froze his enemies in place with terrorizing fear before sending their souls to Bwonsamdi. He wasn’t alone. Toadie lurked at the edges of his peripheral vision, prowling and jumping in to shred through their enemies. His form was something truly to behold, looking more natural and true to him than the body of a troll. He lashed, teeth gnashing into flesh, tearing through sinew and cracking bone. The druid was a fearsome predator, a true hunter, and these swamp rats would pay in blood for what they’d done. Meanwhile, Solarian called down the Light, smiting his enemies as well as draining them with shadow magic, resisting the urging whispers to steal from the alchemy of the blood trolls.

It could be useful. That is not why we are here. Who would know? I would know. The loa would know. And which loa do you serve, little elf? I ... don’t. But you serve ME.

It was a test. Questions, temptations to trip him up. Solarian knew it was a test and that the creature would try to get away from him in the heat of battle, or see to what extent it could pull. There were two battles happening. One without, and one within. Outside, he let the shadow fiend feast, gorging on the terror cultivated from the lives being culled in the process, but within, he tugged at the reins of control. It was gluttonous, seeking to go beyond the boundaries of that village, and in the moment he was distracted, trying to reel the creature back to him.

That was all the distraction that lurking trolls needed to pounce like swamp crawgs on a lost rabbit. His roar only served to pull more, and Solarian froze momentarily, dread filling him. One winded him, striking him across the back with a spear and sailing into the mud face first. When he realized that Toadie wasn’t jumping in to save him, he gathered his wits, scrambling back up to his feet. He ducked down from their attacks and pushed back, clubbing with his staff and making calculated stabs right in the liver of his nearest attacker, eliciting a spray of blood as he moved to the next target. He felt feverish, his pounding heart like a wardrum in his ears as he moved. Muddy and bloodied, he wasn’t ready to die yet.

Solarian was nauseous when it was all over, huffing for breath and lamenting his broken staff, but he was alive and it felt... good. Once he pulled the shadow fiend back into himself, there was an unsettling sense of satisfaction he couldn’t quite name. Toadie got them out of there, though, and once they were safe, he ruminated on Solarian’s hiccup. Slipping back into his natural troll form-- a form that somehow seemed less natural to him than that of a voracious raptor, at least if you asked Sol-- he drew closer. Uncomfortably close, as if peering into his soul through those eyes that nearly crossed from staying focused on the raptor skull mask the druid wore. Solarian glanced at the carved and painted tusks, then back toward the dark sockets of the raptor’s mask. Was he truly prepared to become a hunter, to do this time and again-- a culling that barely scratched the surface of the sickness that plagued the world? Would this go against his nature, or was this a part of his true nature all along?

The priest believed himself to be ready. He stood as tall as his short frame would allow and declared his intent to continue, if nothing he felt emboldened by their endeavors that evening. Solarian knew he would fuck up eventually. There was no such thing as a perfect scholar. He knew that at some point or another, he would misstep, but he was ready to do his best to avoid said mistakes, to remember the feeling just before that one step that went too far, and to hold on to it for dear life. He was eager to learn more, hungry for it in the same way his rider hungered. He was walking forward into this and never looking back.

“Good... Joo be knowin' the weight of what joo do. Remembah dat weight... Joo be makin' mistakes, but from what I know dere be a price ta pay for de folks what lose concentration. Remembah dis lesson, little hunter. Joo be losin' perspective an de hunter becomes de hunted. Joo could'a died."

There was a real warning that Solarian heeded lurking beneath the smiling veneer. He certainly could have died-- and would have without Toadie’s guidance.

"An if joo did... Joo would'a been jus anotha body in da swamp. A failed huntah... De strong be arrogant an make mistakes. Don' be maki' dem mistakes, cause nobody gonna save joo. An if joo be losin' ta dat hunger what gonna be burnin' in ya belly? Den a bigger hunter gonna be takin' joo down. Dats how it works."

Arrogance could be his undoing if he didn’t watch himself. Sin’dorei were susceptible to pride after all, and he needed to learn his limits. Solarian was much more powerful than he believed himself to be, as evidenced by their hunt that night, but neither was he invincible. He needed to learn many things, and much of that training would come with time and experience. One thing was certain, however. He wanted to keep that hunger. Solarian refused to be the hunted. He was not the rabbit others believed him to be, and he would prove it.

🌱🌱🌱

(Toadaluk written by @myymsie!)

#Gore TW #Violence TW #Solarian Autumnsong #WRA RP #WRA Horde RP #my writing #c: Toadie #c: Emilia

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jimmyandthegiraffes · 4 years

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“Oh. Very well”: Alexander Waverly in Exploitation and Backstories

Waverly... bothers me. I think he’s a fascinating character and wonderfully portrayed and he’s a very intrinsic element of The Man From UNCLE that makes the show what it is, but he’s deeply and fascinatingly flawed and Damn do I want to talk about that!

Disclaimer: This is all based on my headcanons, not on concrete evidence from the show; I’m just speculating.

Disclaimer 2: I’m going to briefly reference real historical events. I do not intend to go into great detail because the last thing I want to do is to turn these into fuel for fanfiction without at least due respect to the victims of these events and their families. The 1930s and the 1950s were not really that long ago. How and if fandom should treat these kinds of tragedies is another debate, but for now: some events are still with us and I am conscious that while what I’m doing here is having fun with character analysis, not all of this is fiction. I’ve done my best to do what research I can, but if something I’ve said sounds off or disrespectful, please tell me and I will do my best to correct myself.

Waverly gives me the heebiejeebies. Whether it’s his matter-of-fact statement that his agents are expendable, his deceptions and manipulation of them, the fact that he regularly keeps them in the dark in ways that endanger them, or the fact that despite all of this they show him ultimate and unflinching loyalty - something about him throws me off.

Now the things I’m about to say about Napoleon and Illya’s pasts prior to joining UNCLE are headcanon, sometimes with basis in canon, sometimes just pulled out of nowhere for the fun of it or because I thought it fit. They might not, probably don’t, fit everyone’s headcanons. Napoleon and Illya are always shady about their pasts and I’m glad of it - it means we get So Much variety in transformative fandom. There is also a point to me getting into Napoleon and Illya’s backstories in order to talk about Waverly, and I will get to it.

I headcanon Napoleon as the only child of a fairly well off family. We know his grandfathers may have been an admiral and an ambassador respectively, although of course taking Napoleon’s word on anything is risky business. For the sake of argument, though, I’m going to say that’s canon. Napoleon is likeable and has a lot of friends. He does okay in school, but not well enough, I don’t think. He’s sporty and popular but not overly academic. He doesn’t go to college (this is arguably disputable; he states in Cherry Blossom that he threw the javelin in college - but I think that’s just him talking nonsense to get attention from girls. Pretty standard for Napoleon really!), or if he does go to college, he drops out and joins the army. I think Napoleon lying about his age in order to join up is so believably something he would do. He’s young, overconfident and desperate for a cause. We see in Secret Sceptre how he’s clung to Morgan’s ideals and assurance that the cause they’re fighting for is just, and how distraught he is to learn that his old mentor is not the moral safe ground he thought. How this must lead Napoleon to revisit his time in Korea with a new perspective - one of corruption and greed and futility! He wants reassurance that he’s doing, has done, the right thing. It’s an insecurity he masks well, but it’s there. I’d argue you can see it again in Seven Wonders of the World, for example, and even throughout season 4: war is never over, good never triumphs fully, good and evil are not black and white, how do we know that our ideals are the right ones?

I headcanon that Napoleon met his wife before he left for Korea, although I don’t think they were married until after he returned. They were both too young to get married; Napoleon in particular is immature and impulsive. Napoleon’s family did not approve. Still, I think that for what time they had together they were very poor and very happy. Whether this would have lasted, who knows? I headcanon that she died in a car crash, and that Napoleon wasn’t there when it happened. He’s home from a war he never understood, he’s full of grief and guilt, and his life is not what he thought it was going to be. What a time for Waverly to appear, to tell him that there is a concrete Good and Evil and that there are Good Guys and Bad Guys, that there’s a simple cause and Napoleon can find a career in joining it. Napoleon’s not stupid - but it’s not going to be hard at this stage in his life for Waverly to make UNCLE sound like a godsend.

How Waverly gets hold of Illya in my headcanon is if anything more unsettling. He’s born into genocide and famine, and I headcanon that he was 8 when his parents died. That he lived with a Romani family is also firmly set in fanon for many and has some good canon basis and I very much subscribe to that. What his childhood was like is frequently speculated and I haven’t come to too many conclusions myself but it’s safe to say that Illya’s childhood has taught him to be resourceful, self-reliant and wary of close connections. So he goes to Cambridge, does his Masters, does his PhD., goes back to the USSR and joins the Navy, then somehow goes from the Navy to UNCLE (in an implausibly short space of time). That’s not my concern here - what I am interested in is how his transfer from the Soviet branch of UNCLE to the New York HQ is effected.

To me, Illya is a gay character. I’d go so far as to say he’s coded as such, even if not deliberately. I won’t go into detail about that because I could write a whole post about it I think. Somehow, I think he is outed during his time with the Soviet UNCLE branch; this puts him in danger. He’s a good agent - one of their best - Waverly will have heard of him. Where Beldon fits into all this I’m not quite sure, because I got so carried away with making these headcanons that I forgot about him! But I’m sure he fits in somewhere. But I digress. UNCLE in the USSR are at a loss what to do with Illya: they can’t keep him, but he’s too valuable an asset to lose. It’s like Christmas has come early for Waverly! I’m sure he can’t get in there fast enough, to say oh well I can take him off your hands, there’s an opening in Research here in New York, or something along those lines. Maybe Illya is sent to Beldon first; but I do think Beldon and Waverly are in cahoots about getting Illya over to the USA. They probably fight over him a bit; he’s highly qualified, has excellent Survival School records, can pull the Weirdest stunts, speaks God knows how many languages.

Illya is undoubtedly in a terrifying situation; not only is his career on the line, but potentially his life as well. I don’t think anyone at the New York UNCLE branch knows he’s An Homosexual, barring Waverly (and Napoleon, eventually, of course) - but this places Waverly in a position of extreme power over Illya - and yet how can Illya be anything but loyal to this benefactor? Illya knows he is in Waverly’s debt, and that his entire position depends on Waverly’s discretion. Illya had been in danger; communications were made from East to West and back again, strings were pulled, and Illya has been quickly and quietly removed from the USSR and joined the ranks of Waverly’s remarkably devoted base of agents. It’s a win-win-win situation: Illya is saved from awkwardness at best and physical danger at worst and has a chance to put his talents as an Enforcement Agent to better use; the Soviet UNCLE folks have got rid of their outed gay agent without a scandal; Waverly has a shiny new agent. And sure, then Illya is partnered with Napoleon, everyone lives happily ever after.

But it’s Waverly’s motives that bother me; I can only speak about Illya and Napoleon because we don’t know much about any other agents, but he’s taken them both at times of great vulnerability and placed them undeniably in his debt. He’s indoctrinated Napoleon with his own ideals at a time when Napoleon was desperate for ideals, and he’s placed himself in a position of power over Illya by being his sole rescuer. He’s effectively secured both their loyalties. On a scale of Albus Dumbledore to Harold Dobey, Alexander Waverly is firmly up there with Dumbledore.

I don’t believe UNCLE is an ideologically pure organisation. I’m sure it was started with the best of intentions, but its entire motive runs on one perspective of right vs. wrong. World peace is a worthy goal - I’m sure it’s what Napoleon signed up for when he joined. But Waverly is a hard-moulded spy left over from the war. Espionage to him is uncompromising; he’ll do anything, and sacrifice anything, for the cause. For what he sees as right. He sees no need to bother his agents with trivial details: all they need to know, as is frequently demonstrated in the show (I’m thinking very much of Foxes and Hounds and Deep Six here but there are many many other examples), is what their orders are. Any superfluous information is unnecessary. He keeps them in the dark, hides, lies, deflects.

When Napoleon comes to Waverly in Concrete Overcoat, he almost has to beg for his partner’s life; Illya is collateral damage in Waverly’s plan, and Napoleon’s faith in the man is, in my opinion, irreparably damaged. When Napoleon is reported dead, by his partner of four years, in The Maze Affair, Waverly’s response is first one of shock, and then one of mild inconvenience.

“Oh. Very well,” he says.

#tl;dr. waverly's agents are tools to him and if they get hurt its collateral #did u guess that i dont like waverly much??#no fr i think he's a great character #mfu #the man from uncle #meta #alexander waverly #napoleon solo #illya kuryakin

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bubonickitten · 4 years

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Summary: After leaving the Web's domain, Martin and Jon both get a little lost in their own heads. Or: Time to put the apocalypse on hold again for another Web-related navel-gazing session.

This is part of a series, but can be read as a standalone. (Part 1: tumblr // AO3)

Full text & content warnings under the cut.

CW: canon-typical spiders & arachnophobia; substance abuse (cigarette smoking & nicotine dependence); self-loathing re: addiction and obsessive-compulsive behavior; rejection sensitive dysphoria rearing its ugly head; internalized ableism & victim blaming; brief instance of (very passive) suicidal ideation; Web-typical paranoia; spoilers up to and including MAG 172.

“Yeah, screw this place,” Martin says. “Never liked the theatre anyway.”

And with that, he turns and makes a beeline for the nearest exit. Jon stands there for a moment, outstretched hand still lingering where he had offered it to Martin. A familiar gloom settles over him, stealing the air from his lungs – a sharp twinge in his chest, a cold weight dropping into his gut, a hard lump in his throat – all because of the merest hint of rejection.

Don’t take it personally, he scolds himself. Martin probably just… didn’t notice his hand. He was distracted. He's unsettled, he’s frightened, he needs to be away from here. It’s fine. Jon is just being self-centered. Again.

But as he trails Martin, several steps behind, he gets lost in his own head.

It's concerning, this pattern of Jon getting so absorbed in statements that Martin cannot reach him - and it isn't fair to Martin, left adrift and alienated in a nightmare realm that Jon brought into existence, all so Jon can take a moment to bask in the terror. Yes, Jon hates it. He hates how the fear and agony are filtered through him, even though he's become so accustomed to it - so much so that he fears eventually growing numb to it all, losing that last human spark he still curls himself around with possessive, protective fervor. Even more, though, he hates that alien thing in his head that likes it, that forces him to like it, that insists all of this is right and good and natural.

It's destroying him, it's destroying everyone around him, and he wants all of it to just stop. Except, there's a loud part of him that doesn't. He wants nothing more than to choke the life out of it.

He wishes he could go back to a time when he didn't want or need this, when he wasn't comforted by this thing hollowing him out like a tunneling worm. When did things go so wrong? Did it start when he was a child, when he found the book? Was the point of no return much later, when he became the Archivist? Or was he always doomed to be this, born with self-destruction and impulsivity encoded into his DNA, impossible to separate from himself and still remain himself?

Precisely how much of the statement did Martin overhear? Was it enough to draw the parallels that Jon himself is outlining now?

Jon never has time to process a statement while he’s in the midst of recording it. The human part of him is shelved so the Archive can go about its impartial curation without the interference of Jon's feverish running commentary. Once the trance wears off, though, Jon has time to think. To ruminate, as Martin says. To record his supplemental and dutifully file it away in the Archive, because the knowledge is not complete without Jon's lived experience to bring it to life.

FRANCIS: Please. Let me go. Just let me go.

THE SPIDER: Oh, Francis. It’s such a shame that I couldn’t do such a thing even if I wanted to. The man in the audience saw to that. I am no more free than you are, little puppet.

Not for the first time, Jon wonders about the significance of the statements he’s been channeling since the end of the world. How does the subject – victim, the still-human part of him admonishes – get selected? Does the Eye direct his focus, like choosing from a menu? Is it the choice of the Entity whose domain they're passing through? Or is it just chance – whatever instance of terror gets Beheld in that fraction of a second before the tape recorder clicks on to demand its offering?

He can’t shake the feeling that the Web did have a hand in selecting the particular show he was set to narrate just now, if only because it felt so perfectly tailored and pointed.

FRANCIS: Please. Please god, not again. I don’t want it to happen again.

THE SPIDER: Then walk away, Francis, just turn and leave. All that is required is a little bit of willpower. You have a little bit of willpower, don’t you?

Free will again, of course. Choice versus control. That thorny, sticky weed of a question that took up residence in his mind and spread its roots through every part of him, feeding and growing and seeding more iterations of itself with every passing moment of doubt. He's been over this, he's been over this; why can't he just let it go?

“Jon, we’ve been over this," Basira told him. "The key is to not force people to feed you their trauma. You know – just don’t do it?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“No, it is. Or I put you down.”

Jon remembers how, the first time he tried to quit smoking, it was framed in exactly that way: Just stop. At the time, it had seemed so simple that when he found he couldn’t manage it, he felt like an abject failure. Beyond that, though, it was like having a sinkhole open beneath his feet. Long-suppressed doubts about his own will and self-control were dredged up to the surface, where they've stayed front-and-center ever since.

He’s always had an obsessive streak, always had trouble letting go, always had difficulties with impulse control. It shouldn’t have been a surprise when just one cigarette ultimately led to an on-again, off-again addiction that he struggled with right up until the end of the world. Whether it’s nicotine or insatiable curiosity, he’s always been predisposed to fixation, hasn't he? And Beholding, well - it easily overshadowed the rest. It evolved so smoothly from routine to habit to dependence to basic sustenance, and now it’s such an intrinsic part of who he is that he doesn’t know who he would be without it.

Why didn't he see the warning signs? Or did he see them and opt to ignore them, to barrel on ahead through every red flag and concerned intervention attempt in his haste to do, to see, to know, to experience?

THE SPIDER: I want what you want, deep, deep down in the hidden bit of you you’ve tried so hard to kill. You can’t wait for the dance to conclude.

FRANCIS: I don’t want that anymore. It’s different now. I’m different now. I’ve worked so hard.

THE SPIDER: I don’t care.

Jon doesn’t want this. He doesn’t. But he does. But he doesn’t.

It’s complicated.

Jonathan Sims, human, feels nothing but despair and shame. The entire world has become a looping nightmare with no end in sight, and it’s his fault – all because, like a moth to a flame, he’s never known when to just stop. In the back of his mind burns that incessant what-if: Would it have been better had he never woken up from the coma? With his death, the others would have been free to quit; he never would have fed on his victims; he never would have opened the door. How much better would the world have been without him in it?

The Archivist, on the other hand, feels every stab of fear and pain as any human would, but along with that torment comes a perverse satisfaction in it all. Can he legitimately call himself a victim if he himself is complicit in his trauma? A steady diet of terror is what sustains him now, even as it eats away at him from the inside out. He is dependent on that which destroys him, and he hates it, and he likes it, and he needs it, and he dreads it, and he’s tired.

Meanwhile, the Archive feels only detached fascination and a deep conviction that everything is exactly as it should be. This is the role it was born to serve. This is the world in which it was so carefully engineered to thrive. This is the whole of its definition and the whole of its being and the whole of its nature, and it will record and catalog and curate and preserve every single moment for as long as it survives. Nothing lasts forever, but the Archive spares no thought for the inevitable end of its existence. There’s so much to See here, now.

The fear consumes him. The fear feeds him. The fear just is, and the Archive is here to witness and preserve every motion and every perspective and every detail.

“When has your guilt, or your sadness, or your hand-wringing ever actually stopped you from doing what it wants?” Helen said with a wicked grin.

“ I have not been taking statements.”

"You’ve sworn off other people’s trauma for now, because you’re caught. Because continuing would endanger you. But other than that, when has your discomfort ever actually stopped you walking the path of the Beholding?”

"I… I don’t know.”

Jonathan Sims can kick and scream all he wants, thrashing impotently in the corners of this shared mind. His cries will be drowned out by a cacophonous litany of horror and dread, and the Archive will pay him no mind. It has more interesting things to concern itself with than the useless self-loathing of the original owner of this vessel, still so stubbornly refusing to embrace the role for which he was so carefully groomed.

Jon has always made everything so difficult, hasn't he? Incapable of sitting still, of shutting up, of listening, of just slowing down and stopping for once. Always pushing, pushing, pushing, even when he knew the outcome would only hurt. Anything to keep moving, to secure that heady little rush that rewarded him whenever he happened upon something new and untapped. Voracious for anything to stave off the boredom and channel his restless energy.

He wants to stop. He can't stop. He did stop. He tried. He put so much distance between himself and that toxic thing to which he was beholden, and it found him again anyway. Jonah Magnus -

It does not matter. Jon's consent was never necessary. He will submit regardless. He always has.

FRANCIS only has a desire, an itch in their bones that flows into them, drip by oily drip, down the glistening strands that suspend them, guide them, hold them…. They don’t want to want it, but…

Pause for laughter.

He doesn’t want it. Except that he does.

He doesn’t want to want it. But he does anyway.

It’s horrible, but it feels right.

“Can the Web control another avatar, one that serves another power?” Jon asked, desperate and ashamed.

Pause for Helen’s laughter.

“Make them do things they don’t want to, make them – feed –”

Pause for Helen’s laughter.

“Oh, perhaps,” Helen said, delighted to watch him squirm. “Perhaps not. Would that make life easier for you? Are you so sure you didn’t want to?”

Pause for Helen’s laughter.

He did want to. Jonathan Sims may not have wanted to, but the Archivist? The Archivist would have continued hunting and preying, and he would have cycled through as many rationalizations as needed to continue the routine. But the Archivist is Jon is the Archivist; there's no use in distancing himself from accountability.

How had Jon lost himself so quickly, so easily?

When he woke up after the Unknowing, he was terrified. He didn’t know what he was becoming versus what he had already become, or the extent to which he was beyond the point of no return. Georgie had been right, when she told him that he needed people in his life to remind him of his humanity – and now he needed that more than ever.

But none of them had wasted any time in labeling him a monster.

Jon doesn’t blame them, of course. Tim was dead, Daisy was gone, Martin was Lonely, Melanie was being consumed by the Slaughter, and Basira had been left to pick up the pieces by herself. Everyone had changed; everyone had been through trauma; everyone was coping alone; everyone was afraid and angry in the face of being trapped and manipulated and exploited.

And so, so much of it was Jon’s fault, all because he couldn't just stop.

“Jon, focus,” Basira said. “Are you getting any sense of anything? Can you See anything?”

“No, I’m just seeing what you’re seeing. Still a bit weak from my trip up north, to be honest.”

“Sorry we couldn’t stop for a snack,” Melanie snapped.

Basira had laughed, then, and Jon had wanted to be angry, but all he felt was icy guilt wrapped in a layer of dull hunger.

Basira valued practicality. She simply didn't have the luxury for anything else. Jon was dangerous, and maybe a day would come when he could no longer be suffered to live, but until then, he could also be an asset. Basira asked him to Know and See when it would help their goals; she prompted him to Ask questions when they needed to interrogate someone; she wanted him at full power whenever they were heading into danger. She, like Tim, thought they would all be better off if Jon acted more like Gertrude – until he did, and they both saw the all-too-human monstrosity inherent in Gertrude’s flavor of utilitarianism.

“She got the job done,” Jon said, “and she didn’t care about the cost.”

“But I thought you did.”

He did, didn't he? When had that changed?

“I had to know, Basira.”

It's a poor excuse.

“It wasn’t right.”

No, it wasn't.

“You could have stopped me. But you wanted to know as well, didn’t you?”

She did want to know. Most people did. And that was what he was for, now, wasn’t it? The others could reap whatever benefits Jon could manage to wrest from his new inhuman existence, and all the while they could remain insulated, assured of their own moral high ground and their own humanity when compared to him.

Except that's a cop-out, isn't it? He would have hunted for statements regardless of whether it had any strategic benefit, taken over by instinct and hunger and need. No one is responsible for his actions except for himself.

Jon couldn't blame the others for how they treated him back then. But sometimes, a distant part of his mind would rail against the unfairness of it all, the double standards, the unclear and inconsistent demands. He was expected to be the Archivist - to sacrifice his humanity - whenever it was convenient, and then shamed back into submission the moment that power was no longer of immediate use. Too human and he wasn’t useful enough; too monstrous and he was an unacceptable risk. He was carving off pieces of himself to fit a mold that changed by the hour, until eventually he couldn’t recognize himself anymore.

And always there was that wrenching pang somewhere deep inside him whenever he failed to meet those expectations. It had been there since he was a child, and it had only gotten worse in recent years. He couldn’t justify his continued existence if he couldn’t prove himself useful, and now, being useful meant... well, drowning.

Excuses, excuses. He could have just stopped. He had choices, and at every watershed moment he chose to continue digging. If he had hit rock bottom, would he have stopped? Would he have even noticed?

“You knew, didn’t you? You knew the sorts of things she did, and you let her.”

“No,” Basira said. “Not exactly. I thought… it’s not that simple.”

"It never is. But that doesn’t make it okay.”

“None of us are who we were, Jon.”

It was cruel of him to put her on the spot like that, he knows. Basira had a much deeper bond with Daisy; of course she would be more willing to see and acknowledge the complexities of Daisy’s struggle. It’s… normal, to see the people you love in a rosier light than the people you distrust. Likewise, Martin still holds a grudge against Daisy for how she treated him in her interrogation, for what she did to Jon. Sometimes Martin's fingers will brush against the scar on Jon's throat and just for a moment, Jon will see a quiet, protective fury in Martin's eyes. He cannot understand how almost overnight, Jon came to see Daisy as a friend. Martin wonders sometimes whether it was just another clever way Jon had found to hurt himself, to punish himself, to put himself in danger.

But Martin didn’t get to spend much time with Daisy after the Buried. He didn’t get to see how hard she was trying to get better. Just like Basira didn't get to witness Jon’s efforts.

In fact, come to think of it… back then, Jon and Daisy both hid their weakest moments from everyone except each other, didn’t they? God, he misses her. No one else really understood what it was like to spend every waking moment resisting the call of a thing that could never be vanquished, which is exactly why sometimes Jon felt his hackles raise when they were held to different standards – especially when Daisy herself hated it just as much as he did.

None of that mattered, though. Everyone already thought him a monster, and he agreed with them. What was the point in pretending otherwise? He may as well be the monster, so no one else had to do it. (Excuses, excuses, excuses.) And besides, he liked it, didn’t he? He hated that about himself, but that didn’t make it any less true. So, he would make himself useful. If he got too dangerous, he doubted any of the others would have any qualms about putting him down. It shouldn't have been a comforting thought, but it was. Somewhere along the line, wanting to live had started to feel selfish. When had that happened?

But then… Martin.

Talk to him, said the note. An outstretched hand in the form of three simple words. A belief that he wasn’t too far gone. No, not just a belief. An expectation. He was more than what he was becoming. Or, he could be.

Martin always saw him, didn’t he? Even when Jon didn’t deserve it –

He doesn’t notice Martin’s abrupt stop until he crashes headlong into him, bouncing off his sturdy frame and onto the dusty ground with a quiet oof.

“Martin?” Jon scrambles upright.

“Yeah, I’m – I’m okay, I’m –”

Martin is standing rigidly, staring off to the side, but Jon can still see the wild, frantic look in his eyes, the slightest sheen of tears there, the way he’s gnawing on his bottom lip.

“Martin?” Jon asks again, more intent this time. Pushing himself to his feet, he reaches out a hand – and then falters halfway, leaves it trembling in the air between them. Martin sways somewhat on his feet. “Martin.”

“I – what?” Martin turns unfocused eyes on him. "Jon?"

“Martin, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, it’s – I’m just – it’s –”

“You’re bleeding,” Jon murmurs, closing the gap between them and reaching up to brush his thumb over Martin’s lip. He half-expects Martin to pull away. When the rejection doesn’t come, Jon is nearly swept away by relief.

“Oh.” Martin looks down and his eyes widen, as though he’s just now seeing Jon.

“Tell me what’s on your mind,” Jon says evenly, careful to keep the compulsion out of his voice. He moves his hand to cradle Martin’s face, and Martin leans into his touch on reflex.

“It’s… I keep thinking.”

“Yes?”

“I… it felt so much like curiosity, Jon.”

“Ah.” Jon thinks he senses where this is going.

“I – I didn’t realize until just now how it – I’m – I’m so sorry.” Martin chokes on the last word and a tear slides down his cheek.

“Come here,” Jon says, lowering himself to the ground again and pulling Martin down after him. Martin sags against him, his breath coming in quiet hiccups, and Jon curls an arm around his shoulders. “Breathe. What are you sorry for?”

“I thought I understood. About the Web.” Martin’s breath hitches. “I used to think it was – maybe exaggerated, how you felt? Or, no, that’s not the right word – I mean –”

“More like a phobia than a rational fear.”

“It’s – not that it isn’t rational, it’s just –”

“Martin, it’s fine,” Jon says, running his fingers through Martin’s hair. “I have a history of paranoia and phobias, and – and I know I obsess, I overthink things. If I was looking at me from the outside, I’d think I was overreacting, too. I probably am sometimes. Which is what the Web wants.”

“I didn’t say you were overreacting, I just thought – I thought maybe the actual threat was…” Martin bites his lip again. “That maybe it wasn’t as imminent as you were afraid it was. Or not as – as pervasive? I figured, if at least some of it was in your own head, I could actually…”

“Actually what?”

“That I could make it better,” Martin says meekly, a fresh wave of tears rolling down his cheeks. “I thought I could do something to protect you for once.”

“You already do that."

"How do you mean?" Martin laughs bitterly. "The only reason I'm still alive is because of you."

"I think I could say the same," Jon says quietly.

"You'd survive just fine on your own."

"I don't want to just survive." It comes out harsher than he intended, and Jon forces gentleness back into his tone. "You are my reason, remember? And... and besides. You do protect me." Martin rolls his eyes, and Jon rallies again. "Yes, fine, there isn't much that could physically harm me here."

Martin nods sullenly, an unspoken I told you so.

"But, I - I'm prone to self-sabotage, if you haven't noticed."

"Yeah." Martin sniffles, averting his eyes.

"You make me want to be better. You... you believe that's possible for me, even when no one else does, even when I don't believe it myself. Even when I don't deserve it." Jon shakes his head, his quiet laugh full of wonder and disbelief. "You see me in a way that I quite honestly don't understand, but it... it makes me want to be that person for you."

"You don't really need me, though."

"I do need you," Jon says fiercely. Then, softer: "And - and even if I didn't, I want you with me." Jon coaxes Martin's chin up to look him in the eye. "I'm quite fond of you, you know."

Martin chuckles half-heartedly and rubs at his eyes.

"There's something else bothering you, I think," Jon says hesitantly. "I - I didn't Know anything, I promise, I just... it seems like there's more?"

"It's fine." Martin clears his throat, and when he continues, it's with a tone that could almost be considered composed if it wasn't for the way he steadfastly avoids eye contact. "Just, you know. The Web."

"I'd like to listen, if you're willing to talk."

"You don't have to -"

"Let me take care of you?"

They've talked about this before. Martin's always been a caretaker. He's compassionate, and Jon will always be in awe of how adept he is at showing he cares with the simplest of gestures. Martin finds it fulfilling, prides himself on putting comfort into the world when it seems like none can exist. But he habitually prioritizes others at the cost of his own well-being, routinely blurs the line between compassion and destructive self-sacrifice. He never learned that cliché tenet of putting on his own oxygen mask before helping others with theirs. He doesn't know how to let himself be cared for, rarely even takes the time for self-care, and usually doesn't believe he deserves it in the first place. He feels an acute need to justify his existence by being useful, and for most of his life, it was the only way he knew to measure his own worth. The same could be said for Jon, really; it just manifested somewhat differently in his case.

But they've discussed it. They've been working on it.

Martin opens his mouth, starts to mouth the reflexive phrase - I'm fine - but capitulates when Jon says again, resolute: "I'd like to take care of you. Please let me."

"Um. I... okay. Okay. I just - give me a minute."

"Take all the time you need," Jon says, and returns to playing with Martin's hair. They're exposed here, but Jon would have ample foreknowledge of any approaching danger. Besides, this is an in-between space between domains, and Jon Knows that few things will go out of their way to seek out a confrontation with the Archive, especially outside of their own turf.

A few minutes pass before Martin begins to speak, starting slow before unraveling into a frantic confession.

“I’ve – I’ve never felt in control of my life, not really, but I’ve also never felt like I was being puppeted. It was just – circumstances outside of my control, or my own shortcomings, not – not some literal other mind pulling the strings.” One of Martin’s hands comes to rest on Jon’s knee, and he grips tightly, as if to remind himself of Jon's physical presence. “And – and if that’s a thing that actually happens, if it might be happening to me, how am I supposed to trust anything I do or think or feel? How do I – how do I know I won’t lose you, or – or betray you, or –”

“You don’t.” Jon gives him a very small smile, a cross between wry and rueful. He shifts his position until he can touch their foreheads together, moving one hand to cup the back of Martin's neck. “We can never know for sure whether we’re being controlled. We could sit here, I suppose – take no action at all, wrap ourselves in doubt and fear.” Jon nudges Martin's nose with his own, urging Martin to meet his eyes. “But then we’ll also have to wonder if that was the Web’s plan all along.”

“Oh, god, I’m dragging you back down the rabbit hole –”

“No, listen. It’s…” Jon gives a considering hum and leans away slightly. “Actually, there’s one part of Annabelle’s statement that sits with me in a good way.”

“What?” Martin says incredulously.

“Just listen. ‘We all have forces that drive us, circumstances that direct us,’” Jon recites from memory, “‘and even if we choose to ignore these and act against all logic, just to prove that we can – is that not simply allowing the existential terror of our own powerlessness to control us instead?’”

“And – and what about that do you find comforting?”

“It’s… hmm." Jon takes a beat as he hunts for a way to best convey his meaning. "Do you remember the story I told you, about Mr. Spider?”

“Of course,” Martin says softly, rubbing his thumb back and forth on Jon’s knee in a soothing, repetitive motion. Jon grounds himself in the touch and takes a deep breath before he continues.

“So - to this day, I still have the sense memory of being a passenger in my body. Like my veins were puppet strings, filled with - with hundreds of thousands of tiny scuttling legs. Like being pulled forward by a thousand minds and none of them my own.” Jon closes his eyes and swallows hard. This next part, he's never spoken aloud. “Worse, though, was the aftermath. I couldn’t stop thinking about the possibility that maybe they had never left. That maybe they had just let the strings go slack for the time being. I was always waiting for a moment when the threads would be pulled taut, and I would realize that the Spider never actually let go. Sometimes I - I still feel the crawling, the tugging. It's my imagination, I know - just a tactile hallucination - but still, it can be... rather convincing at times.”

“That’s… horrible," Martin says, and he means it, but there's a note of confusion there: he's not entirely sure where Jon is going with this.

“The Web managed to cover a lot of bases when it marked me. Fear of spiders and cobwebs, yes, but deeper than that. That split second before opening a door where my heart stops because I can never really be certain that I know what’s behind it.” Jon realizes suddenly that this is the first time he’s ever put words to that fear, let alone admitted it to another person. He shakes his head and forces himself to continue. “Being watched, being manipulated. Being controlled, or being unable to control myself, and being unable to tell the difference between the two. Infectious self-doubt, and the fear that I’ll never be free of it.”

“What does that have to do with –”

“‘Is that not simply allowing the existential terror of our own powerlessness to control us instead?’” Jon repeats, staring ahead into the barren wasteland. “It makes me think… maybe there’s some freedom to be found in giving up the illusion of control.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ll always be afraid of the loss of control, whether it comes from the Web or from my own mind. And if I let that fear immobilize me, well… that’s also a loss of control. Same outcome.” He combs his fingers through the soft, curly hair at the base of Martin's skull. “What the Web feeds on is that fear of being manipulated. It doesn’t matter what you think is controlling you or how you react to it. It doesn’t matter whether you’re frozen in place like a fly caught in a web, or if you're unable to stop at all, stuck in a loop of - of obsession or addiction or panic. The Web can feast on all of it equally.”

“You do realize that none of this is especially comforting, right?” Martin says with a nervous, breathless laugh.

“I’m getting there,” Jon promises. “The Web is an unknown variable. That's what makes it so terrifying. The only way I can think to fight back against that sort of power is to just… accept the idea that you’re not always in control, and that you’ll never know for sure the moments when you aren’t. To tolerate the ambiguity, and try to keep moving anyway. It dilutes the fear, somewhat. You aren’t as tasty a meal if you put a name to what scares you and shine a light on it.” Jon smirks. “If nothing else, it’s a ‘screw you’ to the Spider.”

Martin closes his eyes for a long few minutes, and Jon sits with the silence. Finally, Martin looks up and meets Jon's eyes again and gives him a weak smile.

"I know it doesn't solve everything," Jon says. "I still have my regular Web-related, uh... thought spirals, for lack of a better term. But I think it helps, to talk about it. The Web thrives best when its victims isolate themselves, lose themselves in hypotheticals and paranoia until they're paralyzed with doubt. It's harder to manipulate someone when they have someone to untangle them when they get stuck."

"It did help," Martin says after a moment, and Jon is relieved to hear the sincerity underlying the words. "Thank you."

“Well, the only reason I managed to come to any of this in the first place is because you gave me a stick and a dirt canvas and let me rant myself hoarse about it.”

Martin laughs, still sounding just a little raw and tearful. “I guess the conspiracy corkboard idea worked?”

“Yes, Martin.” Jon rolls his eyes, but his demeanor is thoroughly fond. “Though I think blindsiding me with the concept of 'love as a choice we make' is what got me over the line in the end. Very poetic.”

“And here I thought you didn’t like poetry.”

“Speaking of that…" Jon fixes Martin with a look of faux reproach. "Did you really imply that you hate the theatre back there? After giving me so much grief about disliking poetry?”

“I think I did more than imply it,” Martin says, and there’s a goading edge to his tone now.

“That’s…” Jon shakes his head. “Okay. Explain, please.”

“I’ve just never been a fan.” Martin shrugs, but the nonchalance falls apart as Martin tries and fails not to grin at Jon's dismay.

“Theatre is - it's such a broad umbrella, there’s no way you don’t care for all of it –”

“Poetry is a broad umbrella, too.”

“Yes, fine,” Jon says grudgingly. “Shakespeare was a poet, surely you can appreciate some of his contributions to theatre.”

“You’ve spent your whole life hating poetry, Jon. You don’t get to imply that I'm uncultured.”

“I don’t hate all poetry. Just most of it.”

“You still haven’t told me what changed your mind,” Martin says with a teasing smirk. “I wonder. Could it have been –”

“Yes, Martin.” Jon heaves an exaggerated sigh, but doesn’t bother to hide the fondness in his tone. “It was you. Obviously.”

“Just wanted to hear you say it,” Martin replies, absolutely preening at the admission. “I –”

Jon leans in and covers Martin’s lopsided smile with a kiss before he can get another blasphemous word in. The apocalypse can spare them a few more minutes.

End Notes:

Title is from Mitski's "Francis Forever".

Any of the indented bits involving Francis or the Spider are from MAG 172.

The others are from, in order: MAG 148; MAG 152; MAG 146; MAG 147; MAG 141; MAG 155.

And of course the quote from Annabelle's statement is from MAG 147 as well.

#the magnus archives #mag 172 #jonmartin #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #tma #tma fic #long post #tma spoilers

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foramomentonly · 4 years

Text

Nail in My Coffin, Part 8a

Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five Part Six

Part Seven

Summary: Alex and Kyle are fashion designers on a Next In Fashion style reality show. Michael is their model. Dom/sub elements. Prompt courtesy of @signoraviolettavalery .

Michael and Alex go public. Takes place between Parts 5/6 and Part 7.

TW: Semi-public sex, restraints

Author’s Note: This one got LONG. So this is part A and part B will be posted simultaneously and is a direct continuation.

Read on AO3

The swagger with which Michael enters the studio in Alex’s Air Force t-shirt can only be described as excessive.

He’s worn it before, of course, usually half-concealed under a jacket or one of his endless denim or flannel button-downs—for a man working in the fashion industry he has shockingly little interest in personal style and grooming. But today, when he throws open the heavy double doors on set and ambles in looking like the cat fucking drowning in cream, the shirt is on full display, logo across the chest pulled a little less taut than it would be on Alex’s frame, but bold and obvious nonetheless. Alex smirks, trying and utterly failing not to stare as Michael locks eyes with him across the studio and sets off toward his station like a bloodhound. Kyle notices, notices Alex noticing, and shoots him a quizzical look.

“What’s he doing?” he asks. “He’s working with Liz and Rosa again today, isn’t he?”

“I think he’s coming to say hello,” Alex says, shaking his head in amusement and unable to keep his eyes off of Michael as he weaves between stations, equipment, and people. “We had a...talk the other night.”

He turns as Michael approaches, leaning back casually against the drafting table and waiting. And with zero hesitation Michael steps into Alex’s space, crowding him against the table with his arms on either side of Alex’s hips and captures his lips in a wet, open-mouthed, not-even-remotely-appropriate-for-public kiss. Alex slides his hands into Michael’s curls and tugs, biting at his bottom lip and laughing into the kiss as Michael moans exaggeratedly, and half the room whoops and burst into applause. Alex pulls back a little self-consciously, but he can’t stop smiling, and Michael is looking at him like he’s forgotten he was putting on an elaborate show not thirty seconds ago.

“Hi,” he whispers, and sneaks back in to peck Alex once more, light and sincere.

“Nice shirt,” Alex replies lightly, and Michael grins wide.

“Oh, it’s not mine,” he shakes his head, voice teasing, but eyes intent. “It’s my boyfriend’s.”

“Okay,” says a brash voice to their left, “you know everyone’s only clapping cuz they don’t have to watch you two pretend to sneak around anymore, right?”

They turn their heads to find Rosa, hip cocked, arms crossed, and dark eyes narrow. Her stare is severe, but there’s a glint in her eyes, and her full lips are quirked in a playful smirk.

“Let’s go, güey,” she says to Michael. “You got a lot to make up to me and we started when you still had your tongue down your boyfriend’s throat.”

Michael grins one last time and darts forward, pressing a dry kiss to Alex’s cheek before he turns dutifully toward Rosa.

“Take him,” Kyle says, disgusted, waving his hand as if to shoo Michael away. “Take them both. How is it worse now that you're not sneaking around?"

"Really, dude?" Rosa laughs as she turns back to her own station, confident Michael will follow. "Did you think they'd tone it down?"

***

Being open about their relationship is better because it’s clearly better for Michael. He’s basking in it, preening for no damn reason, so secure in the knowledge that everyone knows he belongs to Alex. And Alex is happy to see Michael so content, he really is. But as the day goes on, Alex’s mood grows darker, and he can’t seem to grasp why Michael’s barking laugh, his bright eyes and flashing teeth seem to haunt Alex as he struggles to maintain some semblance of professional focus and integrity.

Alex is working on the hem of their model’s shorts—it’s always the fucking hem—and watching Michael out of the corner of his eye. He’s laughing with Liz, Rosa rolling her eyes dramatically, but smiling. She pushes his shoulder and gestures at his torso, and Michael easily lifts Alex’s shirt over his head and drapes it over the garment rack to his left. Alex glowers at Michael’s tan, bare chest and the sharp curve of his hips, now on full display for the whole studio to see. Alex burns, arousal flushing his cheeks and something dark and unforgiving heating the blood in his veins. His next pass of the needle is a touch too aggressive, and his model gives a yelp as it pricks her thigh.

“I’m so sorry, Maria,” Alex says, leaning back as she bends over to inspect her leg.

“It’s all right,” she assures him, straightening again and gesturing for Alex to continue his work. “It was a pinch, that’s all.”

Alex shakes his head and he takes the garment back in hand, hyperfocused on his next stitch.

“It was stupid,” he insists. “I’m just—I’m distracted today.”

"I noticed,” Maria quips, laughter in her voice.

Alex looks up at her and she smirks knowingly, eyes traveling deliberately to where Michael is—oh, fuck—dramatically dropping his pants, standing smugly in tiny red briefs as Rosa gags and Liz covers her mouth, half gaping, half giggling. Maria’s gaze returns to Alex and she raises a perfect brow.

“He's a lot to look at,” she grins. “Believe me, I know."

She gives him a conspiratorial wink, and Alex blinks. When he doesn't respond, her brow furrows and she begins to chew her lip nervously.

"O-oh, I'm sorry," she says. "Did you not know he–or that we used to–"

Alex comes back to himself and smiles quickly, reassuringly.

"No, no," he assures her. "You're fine. I mean, I didn't know about your, um, history, but don't worry. You didn't say anything wrong."

She smiles weakly at him and clears her throat, eyes fixed ahead and very much not on either Alex or Michael.

And, objectively, it really, absolutely is fine. Of course Michael has a sexual history, and Alex has always known it includes both women and men. He's been in this industry long enough to know that the social scene in any given fashion hub is insular and smaller than you might think. He's not at all surprised Michael has slept with another model from the show. They are some of the most beautiful people in the world by trade; it's natural that they’d seek out sex with one another. Alex would never begrudge Michael his history, not even when he currently has a hand on its very long, very soft, toned leg.

But he can't fight the dark, hot roil in the pit of his stomach that is growling mine.

***

Liz and Rosa finally let Michael go around three o’clock, confident they won’t need him again until the final fitting before runway the next day. He re-dresses hurriedly, eyes drifting shut as he tugs Alex’s shirt over his head and catches the scent of Alex’s detergent, his body wash, the heady smell of his skin. Michael runs a hand down his own torso under the guise of smoothing the wrinkles out of his shirt, but in reality, he’s worked up, on edge, and while it’s not his own hands he wants to feel dragging across his body, any touch helps to ground and focus him. He needs to find Alex, who's been conspicuously absent from his station since he let Maria go fifteen minutes ago.

Michael groans as he carefully fastens his jeans. He’s been half-hard all day long, Alex’s gaze a tangible thing, hot and heavy on the back of his neck. It’s been awkward, given the joke underwear he threw on to fuck with Rosa. It’s also unsettling. He's used to working for it, drawing Alex's focus from across the room slowly, painstakingly, with flourish. He's used to earning Alex's attention. Today, it has seemed to haunt him, and there's a hollow pit in his stomach and a dark voice in his ear whispering, You fucked up.

As soon as he's out of range of Rosa's prying eyes, he pulls his phone from his pocket and sends Alex a text.

M: Where are you rn?

He doesn’t expect Alex to answer quickly; Alex isn’t the type to jump for every buzz of his phone. But his reply comes almost immediately.

A:Dressing room.

The show isn’t nearly high profile enough for individual designers or models to have their own space, but they do have one dingy, communal “dressing room” set up for general purposes. Private phone calls, crying and bitching sessions, even panic attacks are not out of the ordinary. It’s a space designed to be out of reach of cameras and mics. That Alex is using it now pushes Michael from unsettled to concerned.

M: You okay?

A: Yes.

Michael is considering a response, his desire to respect Alex’s privacy battling with his need for reassurance, to wrap himself in the warm security of Alex’s touch and voice, when his phone vibrates again in his hand.

A: Wanna play?

Oh. Oh.

Michael licks his lips, pulse quickening. He’d sensed Alex’s restlessness, the steady strum of tension between them, and fell back into old habits. Presumed the worst, accepted fault, assumed he had failed on some intrinsic level. But this is not Michael disappointing Alex; this is Michael overwhelming him.

Michael grins.

M: On my way, Captain.

#malex #malex fic #rnm #rnm fic #malex fashion au #d/s elements #alex manes #michael guerin #kyle valenti #rosa ortecho #maria deluca #tw: semi-public sex #tw: restraints #my fic

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tarysande · 5 years

Note

Hello, I love your lucifer thoughts, and if you want to write it I would love to now your thoughts on lucifer using names/nicknames

I’ve thought about this a lot. I even touched on my personal headcanon about it in the last chapter of Taking the Fall :)

Obviously, Lucifer uses nicknames or alternative names a lot. I think he says the word “Chloe” less than a dozen times across three seasons, while he uses “Detective” or “the Detective” hundreds. She’s even saved as “the Detective” in his phone.

So, let’s start at the beginning. (In the beginning...) The show has drawn from many sources to construct Lucifer Morningstar as we know him. Obviously, we’ve got the comics. Personally, I see a bit more of Neil Gaiman’s Lucifer than Mike Carey’s (and, to be completely honest, I feel like a bit of Gaiman’s Crowley may be mixed in there as well). In Carey’s comics, Lucifer is much more able to think in the Very Long Term, for example, and is essentially always acting on a Plan of his own (which creates a neat parallel between God and Lucifer, but I digress). Gaiman’s Lucifer is the one who is Done with Hell and basically hands over the keys; he’s also the one who cuts off his wings; he’s the one who speaks the great lines the show used to such effect--about not being responsible for humanity’s sins and disliking that he’s blamed for things he’s not responsible for. He’s also the one who retires to LA, starts a nightclub called Lux, and really has a thing for sunsets. Gaiman was also the one who established that Lucifer was once called Samael. Gaiman’s Lucifer is heavily influenced by Milton’s Paradise Lost iteration of Lucifer (he of “It’s better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven” fame; Milton’s Lucifer gets all the best lines). He’s not distinctly (or solely) comprised of Christian or Jewish mythologies, though both influence the character.

In his short story, “Murder Mysteries,” (which features the same Lucifer he incorporated into the Sandman comics) Gaiman establishes at length how angels are named. First, they include “el”, which means, “of God.” The other part of their name indicates their purpose. Samael, depending on the translation, can mean venom, poison, or blindness of God. I don’t know about you, but if my name was Poison, I’d probably feel like I got the short end of the naming stick. This is contrasted, of course, by the same angel carrying the name (or perhaps title), Lucifer. When Gaiman introduces him, it’s by another character saying, “He was the Creator's finest creation: the angel Samael, called Lucifer. It means ‘the bringer of light.’ Of all the angels he was the wisest, the most beautiful, the most powerful. Saving only his Creator, he is, perhaps, the most powerful being there is.”

When Lucifer Fell, he abandoned the name Samael. He rejected it. Poison or not, he was no longer “of God.” Whether out of spite or anger or truth, Lucifer rejects the name his Father gave him in favor of the title. He identifies himself as Bringer of Light; this is the name he chooses. In the show, we witness Lucifer’s reaction to Samael when Linda speaks it. It angers him. Upsets him. After all this time, he is not indifferent to it. And though he claims not to care about many things related to his past, the name is very obviously a match to very dry tinder.

Names, to Lucifer, mean something beyond just monikers to identify one individual instead of another. Names having power is pretty common in mythology. The show also indicates that angels, specifically, can be summoned by prayer--presumably invoking their names with intention; Lucifer summons both Amenadiel and Uriel this way. It’s unknown whether Lucifer can still be summoned (or hear) prayers. It’s also unknown whether that prayer would have to be directed at his of-God angel name; still, I think there are many reasons why Lucifer holds names at arm’s length.

Names are also intimate; knowing them and using them can indicate deeper relationships, connections. Even with all the growth we’ve seen in Lucifer, he is still leery (if not afraid, though he’d never put it that way) of intimacy, friendship, connection. Lucifer has, for almost the entirety of his existence, been alone. Even when he wasn’t physically alone, his relationships have been marked by power imbalances. In Heaven, he was “of God”--created for a purpose and pretty unrepentantly “part of God’s plan.” In Hell, he was Lord and Master; Maze is/was the closest thing he had to a friend, and we continue to see how unbalanced that relationship was. You can’t truly be friends with someone when you see them as an underling, an employee, as belonging to you in a manner that implies use.

This question of usefulness is a huge one, and probably deserving of its own meta, but since it also comes back to names, I’ll touch on it quickly: Again, from the beginning of his existence, Lucifer has existed to be of use--first, as God’s brightest angel; then, as Lord of Hell. This notion of usefulness as balance or quid pro quo is woven so intrinsically into Lucifer’s understanding of himself that it very nearly becomes his definition. Balance, justice, an eye for an eye--all of these things are irrevocably part of the fabric of Lucifer. When he desires something, he doesn’t just take; he trades. To be certain the trade is equal, he asks what the subject of his desire desires, essentially asking, “What can I give you that’s equal to what I wish to take from you?” It’s also the basis of his favors: “If I do this for you, you owe me in equal measure; this is non-negotiable.”

Because Samael was, in his mind, treated unfairly, Lucifer (light-bringer meaning both physical light and the light of truth) has unbreakable codes of fairness. They may not always look like a human understanding of fairness, but Lucifer’s internal morality (ironically) is pretty sacrosanct. Essentially, he may be judge and jury and punisher, but he does make sure the trial is fair. In Sandman, Hell builds itself around Lucifer. This may not be explicitly stated on the show, but the notion of hell-loops and guilt and punishment equaling the crime are all very Luciferian. Did Hell alter itself to suit his sense of justice? Or did Hell’s justice affect Lucifer? (Given that we do know at least a little about pre-Hell Samael/Lucifer, I think it’s more the former.)

So, nicknames. Lucifer uses positive nicknames and negative ones. The tone is important. Brother can be scornful, angry, frustrated, almost spiteful. And sometimes, especially as Lucifer and Amenadiel’s relationship changes over time, it can be genuine and even grateful. Brother/sister/Mum are actually really important, I think. These are family relationships that have been all but severed for an unfathomable amount of time, but Lucifer still uses them (and not always sarcastically or with derision). Tellingly, his family still uses brother/son with him, as well. Lucifer still wants connection, but he no longer trusts it; it can be taken from him. Using nicknames/epithets is a way to keep people at a distance--he makes them their job, their position (the Detective, obviously, but also Dr. Linda); in some cases, he keeps things formal (Ms. Lopez); in others, the nickname is openly scornful (Detective Douche; sneering Cain--the secret name; the murderer’s name--instead of using Pierce).

Lucifer diminutizes names when he’s lording over people or displaying superiority (Pierce becomes Piercy; Reece becomes Reecy. Reece actually has a bunch of nicknames, and you can always tell how Lucifer feels about the guy at any given moment based on how he refers to him). He calls criminals by their crimes (“Hello, murderer.”), relegating them to their crimes, their sins, their actions, and taking away the humanity of a name full-stop. Sometimes Lucifer’s nicknames are tools, sometimes they’re weapons; I think sometimes they’re even gifts, or at least an attempt to create a connection even though the most intimate or closest avenue (just using their name) is still too much for him (Dr. Linda is not the very formal Dr. Martin; Ms. Lopez is very occasionally ‘dear Ella’; he uses darling, love, lovely a lot--mostly positive, but again, tone is a factor. I’d hate to be on the wrong end of a scornful or hateful darling).

Also related to power/superiority is his insistence that people use his name--the name he chose, that he adopted. Ella swiftly changes Luce to Lucifer. Similarly, he is very open about the identity he adopted--the Devil. When things arise to question that identity or poke at it too hard, he becomes unsettled, even untethered. The wings/devil face of S3 was all about this notion of forced rather than chosen identity (at least as he saw it).

Though he is initially scornful, however, he does let his family use nicknames--again, I think that’s part of some long-buried part of him that wants to belong but just does not want to belong as Samael (that is, on his father’s terms). So, Amenadiel calls him Luci. Azrael calls him Lu. Neither gets the violent, visceral response of Linda’s Samael.

Obviously, a whole separate essay could be written on Lucifer’s use (and not use) of Chloe/the Detective. He uses her name when he’s at his most desperate and his happiest. He uses her name, in short, when he’s at his most vulnerable. Sometimes, he’s accepting of this vulnerability (when he’s praying to his father) and sometimes, I don’t think he realizes how vulnerable he is (when he’s just announced to Maze and Mum that he and Chloe are real). In essence, he treats her name as something near-holy, almost sacred. She holds power over him, whether he’s conscious of it or not; her immunity to his power is part of it--she is, in essence, unknowable because he cannot fall back on the familiar to understand her. His feelings for her, obviously, are another part of it; this is a very particular and uncomfortable kind of vulnerability that he both craves and is terrified of (caring about something that much means it can hurt you, and the last time he cared, he was hurt beyond all belief--and certainly, in his mind, in a manner committed the unforgivable crime of being unjust).

So, after all this discussion, I think the takeaway is that Lucifer uses nicknames as weapons to wield or consolidate power, shields to keep himself at a distance and defend himself from hurt, jokes to deflect, arrows to wound (and, ironically, usually those harsh nicknames are poison-tipped). And all of this is rooted in his own very complicated history with names--and with how names have been used to influence him or inflict pain, especially concerning power/powerlessness, control, and choice.

#lucifer on netflix #lucifer morningstar #lucifer meta #lucifer thoughts #lucifer analysis #asks and answers #Anonymous #long text post #if brevity is the soul of wit i'm doomed #i could've gone on for fifty more pages

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whiskeyworen · 5 years

Text

Fateful Encounter

She moved through the heat-baked walls of the facility with a fluidity and confidence she didn't feel inside. How could she? Not with that-- nnghhh! The moment her mind turned its focus away from its goal, Moryggan felt the vicious mental slap across her psyche. The pain was shaped in just such a way, drawn from her own memories. Memories of the lightning lash that had stripped a permanent scar along her face, those few terrible years ago. The memory alone was enough to trigger shakes in her sword arm, and make her temple and cheek throb with sympathetic pain. Every time she disobeyed, It lashed her with the memory of that pain. The trauma, divested of the physical damage, but still intrinsically tied to the sensation of it. The perfect leash. She tried to whimper, pausing to lean against the sooty, scorched panels that made up the hallway she'd broken into, but It changed her reaction into a grunt and a grimace, before pulling her away from the wall. Continue, child. It's voice echoed in her mind. The first time she'd heard It, in the days after the Breachmaker went down, it had been a gutteral growl that shook her to her bones. It hadn't even spoken tyrian to her until a few hours later, and even then It was short with her.

Find it. Destroy it. It demanded. Whatever it was, It didn't declare what needed to be destroyed... only that it needed to be. And then It began to pull her along, like a child's toy on a string.

She'd been pulled, pulled so far from the Pale Tree. So far from home. Moryggan had crossed field and dale in Queensdale, Kessex Hills. She'd scaled the mountain paths through the hidden routes of Lornar's Pass at It's beckoning; the less people saw of her, the less someone might be inclined to ask her where she was going or why.

It wasn't that It wasn't capable of lying. It fully could and would. It merely felt no need to draw attention to her, and by proxy, Itself. Better to minimize contact.

At some point, frozen glacier had given way to scorched, ravaged landscape. Broken ruins, shattered walls, burned forests... she'd crossed them all without thinking clearly. Her mind was fuzzy with pain as It tugged her string. There were a few clear memories though.

She was reasonably sure, for instance, that somewhere in one of those scorched, ashen forests, she'd slipped up on a squad of Flame Legion and annihilated them without a second thought. There was the distinct impression in her mind of the smell of Charr blood as she'd drawn both her swords across the muscled neck of an opponent that had never seen her coming. Memories of staring across as her phantasms and magical clones did the same to the survivors of that squad.

The entire time, that thing in her head merely chuckled darkly, and then tugged her one way with the string it was pulling...and lashed her from the other side, to ensure her movement.

That string had grown into many, as it bound up her mind in its will and began to more directly control its puppet. Moryggan had tried to rail against it, tried to break away from the path she was being sent on, but as It became more familiar with her mind and body, her resistance began to abate. No...not abate. It was supressed under the weight of the Shadow in her mind. Its terrible, cruel weight.

She had to break free. But how? Moryggan tried to think clearly, to think of a plan before the next mental lashing. Her body was barely under her control. As long as she went where It ordered, it didn't lash her. It only spoke in a language she didn't understand, and she could feel its evil, vile tendrils stroking her mind and soul as if in affection; a reward for obeying properly. Moryggan grimaced, her hands reflexively going to her twinned swords and snapping them out of their belt loops. With a sharp flick of both wrists, the folded, jointed blades extended to their full length, their segments locking together with mechanical precision and presenting unified blade edges. There was something in the chamber ahead that It wanted gone. And there was someone there as well.

Find it. Destroy it. Kill any who stand in your way. It said in her mind as she silently stepped into the chamber. This time, the voice was much, much closer to her own in her head...

****

It stank. One thing he hated was when someplace stank. It was hard to compare, but situating a base above a lavapool, even as heavily vented and scrubbed as the air was, it still reeked of sulphur. The heat was phenomenal as well. Since the base had been abandoned, its coolant systems had been turned down to almost nil, so the air was a stifling furnace. If it weren't for the coolant systems in his suit, Cyrus would have been boiling. In a twist of irony, the temperature was just right for his pets; Dangles the jungle prowler and Dribbles the Cave Spider both came from high temperature environments, so other than disliking the smell of the place, they were both fairly comfortable. Cyrus put the data crystal in the console and immediately began bypassing the security controls. Scarlet had upgraded her systems since the last time he'd been there, and from the looks of things she'd left some nasty surprises for anyone trying to access them without permission.

Thankfully, some sane part of her mind had decided to leave his own accesses unhindered, though he had to navigate very carefully. One wrong move and the console would shut down. Then the security systems would engage with Lethal Vector protocols, and he REALLY didn't want to face down a thirty-foot tall segmented screaming doll with flamethrowers and chainsaws for hands. At least, not alone. As he worked, he glanced over at Dangles, who sat beside the console, grooming himself. "...Keep on guard, buddy. This might take a while and I really don't want to be distracted." The jungle cat murphed and sat up, looking around. Whether he was really being alert, or was just being a cat was up for debate. Knowing this fundamental nature of felines, Cyrus sighed and reached a hand up to his shoulder, so that his pet spider could climb onto it from its hidden den in his shoulder guard. "You too, Dribbles. I need you to watch my back, okay little fella?" The 'little' jungle spider, the size of his fist, squeaked in that unsettling, almost electronic squeal way spiders do, and wiggled its mandibles in an approximation of an affirmation. It scurried from his shoulder and settled onto his back. Due to its coloration, shape, and how it spread its legs to cling to his gear, Dribbles almost appeared to merge against the darkened metal. It nestled between two heat sink vents just below Cyrus's shoulder blades, hiding in plain sight. In its small head the trio of eyes tracked in three separate directions for a threat.

As Cyrus worked at breaking through the firewalls of the computer system, he idly reflected on the facility. It had once been an Inquest outpost, but had been 'acquired' by Scarlet during her dealings with them. It sat uncomfortably deep inside basaltic rock, somewhere in Fireheart Rise, over a natural magma lake. The Inquest had merely used the void to build their base, but Scarlet had rebuilt it into a manufactory. Where the Inquest had rerouted lava flows to part around their structures, the Mad Sylvari had used those flows to power geothermal turbines, and fed the liquid metal and stone into various subsurface, self-contained factory units she'd built. There, the molten metal would be separated from the stone, to be smelted, forged, and formed into all the various mechanisms she filled her world with. At a facility much like this one, teams of Molten Alliance had made vast sheets of Dredge metal; nigh-indestructable metal only seconded to Deldrimor Steel, the Dredge metal had been used to form the hulls of the Aetherblade airships and ultimately the Breachmaker itself.

Thoughts of the Breachmaker made Cyrus frown, and he doubled his efforts to get into the computer. This place was one of perhaps a dozen places where Scarlet had stored some of her designs. Designs Cyrus very much wanted.

"Come on..." He muttered as he finally got through the logins and files began to open up. "Just come on... Let's see. Marionette blueprints -- not going to need THAT. Requirements for Steam beast portals -- Yeah, right. If I needed that I'd just steal a Steambrain... Where are they? Where are the plans?!" In response to his query, whether through tapped commands or responding to his voice and authorizations, a new data stream opened up. As each file opened, the primary blueprints for them popped up in the holo imager. "Ah! There we go!" Cyrus chuckled darkly, pulling out a second data crystal -- this one was blank. The one in the system already had had all the authorizations he'd been given. This new one was to be a repository; for all intents and purposes, it was just a storage device. "Mmm... Aether-powered ion beam cannon prototypes... Aetherwarp transit engine Mk.1 designs... Plasma weapons, Artificial intelligence core programming..." He stepped back, surprised at his own smile. "It's all here. I didn't think she was being truthful, but it's all here. Now I just need engineers and a factory..." At the word 'Factory' a new folder opened, displaying a set of coordinates. There were more than the usual two sets of coordinates for location; there were FIVE. Cyrus stared at it, wonderingly. Where in the hell did you stash this, Scarlet? Did you really build it out there?...

His thoughts were broken off suddenly by an almost electronic squeal, and a sharp jab in his side from Dribbles. There was someone else here.

****

There. Kill him. Kill him. Him. He dies. Kill him. It demanded, gripping her mind in a vice of thought and squeezing. Obey. Kill the human. Destroy the machine.

Moryggan felt a snarl forming on her face as she silent stalked towards the figure at the podium. How dare he be in her path? Interloper. Thief. It would only take her a few moments to cross the distance between them and end his life. This would be quick. She also belatedly noticed the large jungle cat that was curled up beside him. As soon as it saw her it stood up, ears perking, yet made no move to attack her. Perhaps she would spare the animal after she killed its master?...

Then she heard the hiss. It came from directly in her path, where the man stood, his back facing her. What was it? It was a squeal, a trill of some kind, but did he make it? Why was that sound so familiar? "I would advise you to stop approaching me, stranger." The man suddenly announced, his head slowly coming up, though he made no move to turn around. He reached out and gave the cat a skritch on the top of its head. The stripey jungle cat made an approving sound, and then settled back to the floorplates. "This is private property and you're violating my territory. If you don't want trouble, then move on." She stood there, shocked into immobility; he was addressing her like he'd always known she was there and had merely been polite enough to ignore her! Her shock only lasted a second or two, followed by irritation that was greatly fed by the Thing in her mind. End him! End him now! Destroy the machine! Obey! "You can't beat me, human." She growled at him, raising her collapsible sabers. "Especially when you can't even see me." "I don't need to see you. Sylvari." He chuckled. "I can hear it in your accent. And the fact you called me human, and you don't sound short." Idly Cyrus continued clicking keys on the console. "You have about seven seconds to disappear before I decide to express my annoyance." "Why you..." Moryggan began to start for him. She only got three steps before his hand shot up, finger pointed upward. "Might want to watch your step, my dear." He replied cryptically. "You could have a very bad time." It was at that moment she heard a click from underfoot. She glanced down immediately, seeing the handsized disc spotted with holes. Already, a green gas was leaking from those holes, as her foot shifted on the trigger mechanism. Venom! Moryggan's mind screamed as she instinctively teleported backwards, reappearing over ten meters to the side. Now that her foot was no longer on the trigger, the trap sprung entirely; with a loud click, the vents fully opened and the noxious green and purple gas was forcefully vented outward. The thick roiling cloud didn't spread very far, just from the whiff she'd gotten from the fumes, it was something damned potent.

The man finally turned to face her, having heard his trap deploy. He shifted his glasses back up his nose and frowned. "...Now where did she?..." The cat murphed, and indicated where Moryggan had teleported to. "Ah, I see. A Mesmer. Just wonderful." The sarcasm in his voice was thick as his hands went to his weapons. "Frickin' mind-melters." "....You've laid traps in here?" She asked, indicating the floor between them. The glow of the lava came up through the metal grates, the heat shimmer making it hard to see precisely. "Wouldn't that be detrimental to you as well?" Cyrus smirked and began to walk towards her, giving his sword and axe a preparatory swirl and twirl. His foot came down on one of his own traps, and with a click, the green/purple gas was vented once more, entirely enveloping him. Moryggan almost laughed; the cocky human had gotten caught in his own poison trap. She relaxed for a moment....until a steady shape emerged confidently from the thick gas, the smirk still on his face.

"But... how?!" She demanded, feeling the voice digging into her mind again. Move faster. It said.

"Funny thing about Miasma." Cyrus pointed out, rolling his neck a little, and taking a deep breath of tainted air. "... it doesn't affect you if you've been permanently innoculated against it."

They launched themselves at each other, swords clanging heavily as they collided. Moryggan grit her teeth, trying to hook her second sword under his guard to stab, but he kept deflecting it with quick swings of his axe. They were practically face to face with each other; her carefully oiled blade sparked against the purple energy field of his asuran peacemaker sword, but neither was budging.

"Innoculated? No one is immune to the Scarlet's Miasma! The Orders had to use gas masks! Those decayed by the HOUR!" She growled at him, pressing closer. If she could get past him, she could smash the console and at least get some mental relief.

"Scarlet's troops were innoculated." Cyrus replied simply. "Mechanically or biologically, they were immunized against it." He grinned and tilted his head, exposing the glowing green veins that had risen against his skin when he'd entered the gas. "I helped design the concept; of course she'd give me the Treatment." "You were Aetherblade..." Moryggan's eyes widened. Suddenly the voice was screaming in her head, crushing her thoughts with one overwhelming demand: KILL. HIM.

She drew back a step, breaking their contact for an instant. As he continued to move towards her, Moryggan rallied and lunged forward again. At least, that's how it looked. As she began to move, there was a bright flash of purple magic that erupted from all around her, hiding her in its flare. It was bright enough that she could see Cyrus's eyes squint as he brought his axe back for another swing, presumably to block her own sword from cutting into his side. Their weapons met once again in a clash of metal, but there was a difference this time. It wasn't truly Moryggan he was clashing with anymore. She'd summoned a clone during the flash, hiding herself in a light-reflective shield of mesmeric magic while her duplicate took her place perfectly. Instead, she dashed around to the side, planning to plunge both of her blades into his back and end this annoying human. All she needed was two seconds of movement...

There was something wrong.

They say that when times are stressful, when you are under threat, that how you percieve time cuts down. Instead of thinking hours ahead, you think minutes. If you can't think minutes, you think seconds ahead. And if you can't manage that, time seems to slow enough that mere moments become long and drawn out.

She had to take only four steps, after her swap with her clone. Four steps around him, hidden beneath mesmer magic while he battled a pointless clone. Another quarter second to draw back her blades, and two more to bisect him as the voice in her head demanded she do.

First step.

Moryggan glanced up at his face as she passed at a distance that would have let her fronds brush against his cheek. She glanced only to make sure he was focused on her diversion; that her vanishing had been total.

Second step. He was still looking ahead, teeth gritted as his axe met her clone's immaterial blade. To an outsider, her clone would be perfect; unlike a phantasm which would appear hollow and glow with energy, a clone was a perfect physical mimic, though it only lasted a short time.

His eye shifted to look at her. In that frozen moment in time, she could visibly see him turn his gaze from the clone, over his shoulder, to where she was passing by him. There's no way he could see her though; she was still cloaked!

Third Step.

It was impossible. There's no way he could see her; she'd evaded Risen, Krait, Icebrood. She'd hidden in plain sight in crowded city streets. She'd snuck up on fellow mesmers and ended them using the same tricks they used! There's no way he could see her. That's what she told herself, though she didn't have time to form the thought properly in that instant. In that instant that his eye continued to track her. He had begun to shift his entire body; the heavily armored, studded shoulder guard began to descend as he dropped into a lower posture. The axe in his left hand flicked the sword of the clone aside for a moment, distracting it, while he dropped that right shoulder. Moryggan, already committed to the fourth step and her own inertia, couldn't change her own trajectory. That ugly, steel plated shoulderplate, laced with strange magitech glowing panels, lowered until it was almost even with her body as she rounded him.

Fourth Ste--

She never made the last step. As her foot began to descend, as she began to twist her body to round him, he shoulder-charged her. He didn't move far to do it, Cyrus had redirected the weight of his entire suit into the shoulder charge, and the impact struck Moryggan directly, knocking her away violently. The moment of impact shattered her fragile shield of invisibility as she was launched to skid across the slick, hot metal flooring. She felt herself bounce over a few of those damned trap pods, which immediately spread their noxious miasma. There's no way she could avoid breathing in a lungful of the vile stuff. Cyrus immediately dispatched the clone, an underhanded, dismissive flick of the axe rending it up the chest, spilling immaterial 'blood' in a swirling arc. The clone had a moment to scream in pain before shattering like glass, the shards evaporating as the magic binding it broke. Even the blood, still arcing through the air, shattered into a billion mirror shards before fading away. "You almost had me, sprout." He commended her, straightening up and stepping closer as she gasped in the purple-green mist. He smirked. "That purple flash actually blinded me for a moment there! It's been a while since I've had to fight a talented mesmer." Moryggan gasped deeply, coughing, eyes watering as the miasma took hold. Horrible shadowy creatures stalked closer, appearing from nowhere. Terrible whispers, different from that voice in her head, told her vile things and whispered promises and terrors. From her hands her swords dropped, clanking dully to the metal floor as she wept openly. The voice in her head roared in displeasure, retreating in the face of the miasma, until she couldn't feel it in her mind anymore. It was... gone! But for how long? Till the gas wore off? Would she lose all control then?

Cyrus reached her and knelt down, sniffing at the miasma. He could see the tears streaking her face, and felt pity for a moment. He had no idea where this sylvari woman had come from, or what she wanted. But she'd tried to kill him. Still...why was she crying? "Hey now. Come on. You lost. I'll even let you go if you leave me alone, okay?" He offered. He had no idea how badly the Miasma was affecting her. He'd seen people rendered into curled balls of terror, and others lashing out at things only they could see. This woman seemed, for all her confidence and toughness, to be on the edge of becoming the former, rather than the latter.

"Kill me. Please." She whispered, covering her face carefully. The horrors of the Miasma were too much. They weren't nearly as bad as the voice, but they were unnerving to look at. She could almost FEEL them on her skin. And the sounds... "Quickly! Please! Kill me before the voice takes me over again!" He froze, the smile vanishing from his face in an instant. She's not referring to a miasma voice... he realized as she repeated her demand, louder and even more anxious. When she pulled her hands away from her eyes, they widened in horror; the mist was disippating. "The Voice?" "Yes! The Voice! I-It pulls, and yanks, and screams in my mind! It forced me to come here!" She looked at him, eyes wide. "I didn't WANT to be here! I barely know where I am right now! And the only thing keeping it from taking over, from hurting me again... from hurting YOU... is the Miasma! When it's gone I'm.. I'm going to..." Oh god. Cyrus paled. There was way too much honesty in her face right now. In her eyes. He could see the horror in them, the absolute terror that had nothing to do with the hallucenogenic gas. Is she already affected by it?! How much time to I have? There is NO way I'm dealing with another Scarlet. "Dribbles!" He yelled. The little spider detached from his back and skittered down his arm to rest on his bracer. "Bind and subdue! No kill! Just sleep." The spider squeaked and leapt onto Moryggan's body, rapidly racing back and forth over her, spitting glue-like thread and trailing steel hard filaments behind it. While it did that, Cyrus reached over and picked up one of the nearby untriggered traps. With a single move, he flipped it over and bashed it against the floor, triggering the simple pressure plate on its top. As the Miasma thickened, he looked through it at Moryggan. "That voice. Can you tell me how close it feels to you? How much can you resist it?" She took a deep breath of mist, shuddering as goosebumps broke out from the instant flight-or-fight response it triggered in her. She braced herself and answered slowly, carefully. "It's still there, but it's pulled back as much as it can. It really, really doesn't like Miasma for some reason. I don't understand why. But if it stays so far away, or buried deep in my mind... I think I can manage for a bit..." Cyrus chuckled humorlessly. "The reason it doesn't like the Miasma is because this shit was specifically designed to fuck it up." He smiled at her confused expresson. "If that voice you hear is what I think it is... then yeah. We designed and bred Nightmare Bloom trees to give it the worst headache imaginable." The spider stopped spinning its webbing, and squeaked again. Cyrus picked it up and laid it next to her neck; she had been bound from there down entirely in spider-silk.

"This will probably hurt a little, but Dribbles is actually pretty good at being careful when he needs to be." Cyrus offered, shrugging. He put a fresh miasma trap on her chest, just below her chin, and carefully opened the flues on it after disabling the mechanism, to let the fumes out in a controlled manner. The spider, on the other hand, inched towards her neck, laying its two largest front legs on her flesh. "Sorry about this. But I'm going to see if there's anything I can do to help you." "Why?" She asked, as the spider bit in, and paralytic venom began to draw her into unconsciousness. "Why help me at all?..." As her eyes slowly closed, she barely heard him say "Because I watched another go the route you're going...and I couldn't stop it."

****

Moryggan hurt. All over, she hurt.

Her chest and shoulder ached, one from the miasma she'd inhaled, and both from the painful shoulder charge that had knocked her on her rear. Her neck throbbed from the spider bite... and her lungs felt like they were on fire. How long had she been out?

She opened her eyes onto a very different view. Moryggan was on her back, looking up at more of that dreadful soot-stained stone ceiling. But the air in the room was clean and scentless. Scentless.... The Miasma!!

Her heart hitched as she realized the miasma was entirely missing. Oh no... She grimaced, feeling the tears well up again. The voice would be back, no doubt very soon now that she was awake. The pain would start again. Except. She couldn't sense it anymore. Moryggan blinked in surprise, as she realized that the dull roar, the constant hiss, the sensation of being glared at in hatred was gone from inside her skull. But...how?...

With one hand, she reached up to touch her head -- only to jolt in surprise at the sight of her own arm. Where she'd fallen unconscious wearing sleek bracers and gloves, the devices on her arms now were heavy, bulky, and glowing with contained power and magic. There was almost something soothing about the blue glow coming off the curved crystals along the back of the forearm, and from the spikey crystals that hovered just off the armlets in the grasp of some kind of field. That's when she recognized she was also seeing things through some kind of tinted lens as well. A helmet? She felt around, afraid to find out the extent of it, and was relieved to find it only covered the top of her head and face, like a typical helmet. Her mouth was entirely free in the front. From the feel of it, the sharp angles and diamond patterns she could make out with her hands, at least one Asura had been involved in its design.

"I wouldn't remove that if I were you." She heard a now familiar voice call from nearby. Laying where she was, she turned her head, the metal of the helmet rasping against whatever surface she was on. Apparently she was on some kind of table, whether operating or otherwise. Nearby, his back turned to her, Cyrus finished writing something down, before turning to her. "Right now that helmet and those armguards -- and the shoulder guards you can't see right now -- are the only thing keeping you from being taken control of." Moryggan went to sit up, groaning in pain as new soreness opened up on her body. "What... what happened?" "The miasma trap wore out before I could get you to the infirmary here." He replied, crossing his arms. "You probably feel a bit more sore than you did after our fight, right?" She nodded.

He humphed and shook his head. "Sorry about that. You started to come around at one point, and the only way I could keep you on the table was to have Dangles here sit on you, pinning you down." He gestured to the big jungle cat that sat beside him, scritching behind its ear with one finger. The cat purred in response, before looking at her and blinking. "While he did that, Dribbles dosed you with venom again, putting you out. That gave me enough time to find the designs." "What... designs?" She asked, sliding off the table slowly, before she ran a hand along the gauntlets, feeling the electric tingle of the energy field. "Just what are these?" Cyrus smiled wistfully. "A remnant of Scarlet. One of her first ideas, but one of the last she ever made...for reasons I think you understand more than most." He indicated the helmet. "The Pact call it 'Scarlet's Veil', but they don't understand what it is. After all, the only one they ever saw was destroyed when Scarlet died and the Breachmaker blew up." Moryggan's lips peeled back in a sneer. "Scarlet? Ugh. Why would I want anything on me that psycho made? Why shouldn't I just take them off, huh?" She looked at her hands now like they were covered in filth. He frowned. "Because she made them to save her own mind from the predations of the Elder Dragon. The one that ended up taking her sanity because its sleeping mind did...hideous things to her psyche." He pointed at the nose of the helmet. "Like I said, the Pact has no idea what these are. They think they were just some kind of armor she wore. But they weren't. She was trying to save herself from becoming something....else." "Hmmph. Whatever." Cyrus's eyes narrowed. "Tell me: do you hear the voice anymore? Do you feel, as you called it when you screamed it last time you woke up, that your 'strings are being pulled'?" She shivered, and shook her head. Just the thought, the memory of what that felt like was going to give her nightmares.

"That's because those -- We call them Psi-Nullifier Amplification Gear -- has cut you entirely off from it." He stared at her for a moment. ".... tell me, do you normally sense the Dream? the one the sylvari talk about all the time?" "Well yes, I always feel the Dre--" She paused, her eyes widening. It's not there. It's not there it's not there it's not there!!! "WHERE IS IT?!"

"Like I said; Psi. Nullifier. Amplification. It's designed to cut you off from psychic influences that would normally affect your mind. Unfortunately it seems the Dream counts, but..." He waved his hand dismissively. "That can be adjusted for. Once the programs built into it can isolate it from the Call of the Dragon, it'll let your precious Dream come back." "B-but what am I supposed to do until then?!" Moryggan demanded. She felt physically sick. At no point in her short life had she ever been cut off from the Dream. Even Soundless still heard the Dream even if they ignored it. But this emptiness... "My purpose; my DREAM. It's gone!" "It'll be back." Cyrus shrugged, stepping off to one side and pouring a cup of tea for each of them. "Maybe not too soon, but sooner than you think. For now, though, you'll be just like us 'dreamless' humans. And Norn. And Charr. And Asura." He pondered. "Pretty much every race, really." Moryggan reluctantly accepted the tea, sipping it under the edge of the helmet. "....why didn't these help Scarlet, if she designed them to?" Cyrus took a sip, and closed his eyes. "...Because even though she designed them the moment she came out of Omadd's machine, she...got distracted. She never made them until too late, and the mark the Dragon had left in her mind had started to mature. It was working from within, corrupting her plans, her thoughts." He opened his eyes, pinched in grief. "It's one of the reasons I left early. Her plans were advancing, but she'd forgotten the purpose of the Plan itself. Of what she had originally intended to do. And that damned voice convinced her she was still on the path." "....And what was this 'Plan'?" She asked, curious. Everyone knew the story of Scarlet Briar, or at least what the Pact had figured out about the crazed sylvari. But this human apparently had a different view of her. It was...enlightening if it were true.

"To save the sylvari, and the rest of Tyria from the Elder Dragon." Cyrus told her flatly. He looked into her eyes, the grief replaced with ironhard rage. "Mordremoth; father of the Pale Tree, grandfather of all sylvari. Her plan, the moment she realized what had almost destroyed her mind, was to kill the dragon as fast as possible." Moryggan blinked in surprise at the vehemence in his voice. "Scarlet wanted to kill the Dragon? That's a load of dolyak shit!" She countered, putting the cup down. "She terrorized Tyria! Her weapons of destruction tore up entire regions! That blasted Marionette of hers, and whatever its weapon was, killed every living, sentient thing in Timberline Falls!! The burials went on for DAYS!" "I know, damnit!" Cyrus yelled back, clenching his fists. "She... none of that was supposed to happen. The original goal was to enlist the aid of the nations to build the mechanized army, and have that storm into the Dragon's realm. But all five nations turned her down, so she had to enlist... others. Less than reputable sources of technology, power, money. Ones you can't trust with your back turned. The Nightmare tower was a prototype for a weapon to be used against the Dragon's control!" He pointed at her. "You, of all people right now, know how effective Miasma is against it! You told me yourself it retreated from your mind the moment you breathed it in!" "I-I...!" She stuttered for a second, put off. He was right; the voice had disappearred with the arrival of the Miasma. But, if Scarlet had been working for the Dragon, then why design a weapon against it? "But... I don't understand! Why would that work anyway?" "Near as we can tell... could tell..." Cyrus's mood softened slightly with the past tense. "The Elder Dragon of the Jungle is a thing of plant and mind. The Miasma was designed to interrupt that with hallucinations and terror. The Tower -- towers, if we could have made the pods big enough -- would have been area denial weapons. Wherever they dropped and grew, the Dragon would be unable to control either itself or its minions."

"But the Watchwork Nightmares --"

"Assault troops. Send them in first to clear the path with chainsaw and flame." Cyrus looked away for a moment. "Their spidery form was supposed to be for enhanced mobility. The menders would keep them repaired as they cut and burned a path towards the Dragon and destroyed whatever defenses it had." "Aetherblades?" "Aerial troops. More area denial; fire-based weapons to burn entire swaths of jungle to ash. Etherwarp drives in case the Dragon got frisky and tried to swat them from the sky. Hard to hit something if it just disappears in front of you and reappears a mile away." He offered a weak grin. "That engine is one of the reasons I'm here in this base today. I want one, and there's none left intact after Lion's Arch."

Moryggan pursed her lips. "But...what about the Marionette? the Breachmaker that destroyed Lion's Arch and woke the Dragon? I heard the Call. I felt it..." She touched the faceplate of the helmet she now wore. "At least, until today I felt it." "Both the Breachmaker and the Marionette came from the same project, but different tactics, so far as I can tell." Cyrus shrugged. He reached for the counter and picked up a holoslate with the data crystal in it. A few finger-flicks later, he pulled up both designs. "The Breachmaker was originally just going to be a heavily armored transport for the Marionette, as you can see here." He pointed at the designs. "The idea was to lower the Marionette from a safe height and have it go toe-to-whatever with the Dragon itself." He chuckled. "It would have been a great fistfight I think."

He indicated the second design, the one of the drill-equipped Breachmaker. "Somewhere in its development, Scarlet came up with the Aethercannon. It's not so much a cannon as it is a highly focused charge of energy of a particular signal that is similar to what the Miasma produces at a very minor level, only magnified to ridiculous scale. When she realized what she could do with it, she had the entire ship recommissioned into a battleship." The new design had thicker plating and was almost twice the size of the one carrying the Marionette.

Moryggan stared at the drill on the end, and the diagram's pulsing internal glow that indicated its weapons' power distribution. She'd never seen the real thing, but she had seen bits of the wreckage around the ruins of Lion's Arch. "So... what would that do?" "It was supposed to find leyline hubs -- hubs of natural magical energy that flow in certain paths under or on the surface -- and forcibly breach them, injecting what was supposed to be a 'tainted' form of magic. Unpalatable, possibly poisonous for the Dragon." He sighed. "If it worked, the ship would have moved from hub to hub, cutting the Dragon off from its food supply. Possibly wounding it on the way. If we got really, really lucky, a tainted burst would give the damned monster the equivalent of a heart attack. Or quickly starve it to death." There was a warped kind of logic to it. On some level, Moryggan could almost understand what he was saying -- what Scarlet's original plan had been -- which almost made it tragic that it went so horribly awry. "So... she made all of it to kill the Dragon...but didn't give herself enough protection from it." She mulled it over in her mind, pursing her lips. "Or it tricked her into not giving her enough." "Yeah..."

"Where does that leave me though?"

"It depends. According to the computers in this place, it'll take the better part of a week to permanently lock that voice out of your mind for good." Her face seemed to brighten under the helmet. "After that, it'll be up to you what you want to do." "And what about you?" He shrugged. "I'm still going to go with the Plan. The original one. Find a way to kill the Dragon. I won't do what Scarlet did, but I sure as hell will use as much of her knowledge and tech as I can." He gave her an odd look, questioning. "I can't do it alone. I know we just fought, and neither one of us has much of a reason to trust each other but..."

"What are you asking?" Moryggan asked, though she could almost see the answer -- the Question -- written in his face. She tried to hide the smile she could feel growing on her face at the thought.

"Do you want to kill a Dragon with me? Maybe save the sylvari and the rest of Tyria as a bonus?" He asked, smirking.

"Oh yes... I think I very much want to do that." Her smile was like a shark's grin.

Her grin made his smirk widen, and he offered her his hand. "In that case, my name is Cyrus Sigismund. Late of the Priory, Late of the Aetherblades. And yourself?" "Moryggan Deraleth, of the Dawn. Lightbringer of the Order of Whispers...though you didn't hear that from me." She accepted his hand in her armored grasp. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Cyrus." "The pleasure is all mine, Moryggan. Welcome to the team." ---- Author’s note: This was supposed to have been a SHORT story. A five minute story. It didn’t end up that way. I hope it’s enjoyable. It fits more the ‘desperation’ more than the ‘hope’, but I hope the end lends itself to the idea of Hope. This is phenomenally late for Week 1. LoL. I’m almost embarassed.

#gw2 fanfiction #tyriaslibrary #my characters #Cyrus Sigismund #Moryggan Deraleth #scarlet briar #Breachmaker #Twisted Nightmare #desperation/hope #violence cw #cw mental trauma #pain #My stories #long story

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thesinglesjukebox · 5 years

Video

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FULL TAC FT. LIL MARIKO - WHERE'S MY JUUL??

[6.11]

Do we choose rule, or do we choose suck?

Alex Clifton: Juuls. Juuls. Juuls. Oh my god, Juuls. [7]

Katie Gill: It's a little bit telling how all the comments on the YouTube video are comparing this song to other meme songs and not talking about the merits of the song itself. Still, there will always be a place in the world for meme songs that are serviceable memes but less than serviceable songs that teenagers can obnoxiously quote on the bus. "Where's My Juul" fits that niche perfectly. I expect a fleet of TikToks featuring people lip-syncing to this and will be very disappointed when this inevitably doesn't happen because I am out of touch with the youth. [6]

Kalani Leblanc: I can see there's already an abundance of blurbs submitted for this song, and the number will have risen by the time I finish this. After thinking so hard about how to go about being the fifteenth person to say "It sounds like "Shoes"," I'm realizing it's not really "Shoes" anyway. While they're both jokes that bear a resemblance in the thrash of a breakdown, "Where's My Juul??" is also listenable. The comparison is getting tired because it's like did anyone listen to "Shoes"? As a song? In earnest??? While this is not an entirely impressive piece, no concerto or FKA Twigs production, it's enough. Since 2006, we've been making everything into jokes, so it makes perfect sense. Nicotine-induced freakouts would've been the subject of an after school special ten years ago, but now they're joke material for hypebeasts and others on Twitter. Lil Mariko makes an impressive case while trying to find her Juul; I can't find anything this song did wrong, sorry. [8]

Will Adams: The mid-song 0-to-11 ramp is what takes this past the mean-spiritedness of "#Selfie" and the meme-spiritedness of "Phone" into effortless "Shoes"/"Let Me Borrow That Top" absurdity. The Juul is a placeholder; sub in any other monosyllabic cultural artifact, and Lil Mariko's rage against Full Tac's electroclash-y beat would cut through just as effectively. "Sorry, guys!" she says at the end, except there's nothing to apologize for. [7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I wrote 20 pages about Juul culture in 2018 so I should in theory be the exact target audience for this. Yet "Where's My Juul??" doesn't really click for me. It's charming and funny in parts (Lil Mariko's spoken verses, which transmit nervy anxiety and barely restrained fury effectively) but the hook, which takes up most of the very long minute-forty-five, is comedy via brute force principles: repeat a phrase enough and it will transfigure into a joke. [5]

Brad Shoup: About as funny as the related TikTok meme, though not as menacing, surprisingly. I wish so badly that Full Tac had gone full hardcore -- or even brostep! -- but am glad that Lil Mariko's Danny Brownian ad-libs and sudden reversals grind "#SELFIE" into the dirt. [7]

Oliver Maier: I need not catalogue the myriad ways in which this is transparently designed to blast off on TikTok -- you would probably know better than me -- but that cynicism detracts from "Where's My Juul??" for me. There's none of the spontaneity or sense of genuine fun that animates certain other genre-agnostic, threat-spewing, extremely online weirdo duos, more savvy than it is genuinely silly. It's not badly executed, but I felt like I got the picture before even hitting play. [4]

Will Rivitz: I get this is supposed to be more meme than song, but I so wish it had leaned into the latter for more than half its runtime. The "FUCK!!!" at the beginning of its second chorus is worth at least a [7] on its own, and its redlining nu-metal production is such a tight fusion of XXXTENTACION's sonic fingerprint and simplified TikTok trap that I'm surprised the "oh my God" ad-libs aren't followed by a "Ronny." As it stands, "Where's My Juul??" and its just-a-little-too-long interludes that grate after listen number four or so functions as a sort of "Thrift Shop" for the current day, a track defined by its novelty that we as an Internet music-Twitter hivemind all agree was genuinely good about five years after it's exited the public consciousness. It deserves more. [8]

Ian Mathers: Both less musically compelling and with less of a point than "Can I Get a Box?". [5]

Katherine St Asaph: It's kind of amazing how it took seven years for Rebecca Martinson to release her debut. [1]

Nortey Dowuona: Lil Mariko is actually kinda weird in the lol so random funny way that people think that [insert overrated white comic who had a Comedy Central show] is and has a really great metal screaming voice. I don't know who made this dull approximation of Kenny Beats and Pi'erre Bourne, nor do I care. Lil Mariko will hopefully get a recurring cameo role on Nora From Queens and get her own show from that. [5]

Mo Kim: The best joke here is the escalation of nonchalance (hey, where's my Juul?) into something desperate, and therefore dangerous: it hits like the drop in a rollercoaster when Lil Mariko finally breaks out the deep-throated metal screams, but the moment wouldn't have half the thrill without the masterful way she gradually ups the heat on the song's first chorus before that. Both of her spoken monologues, where she merges Valley Girl affect with murderous menace, only sweeten the deal. [8]

Ryo Miyauchi: "Where's My Juul??" gets spiked with an infectious dose of adrenaline when it suddenly turns a lot more aggro than you'd expect from a meme-y cross-section of Rico Nasty's mosh-pop and PC Music's ironic bubblegum. The demented beat stings with a pungent metallic sourness, and while her Valley Girl accent scans as an obvious put-on, Lil Mariko's blood-curdling scream is legitimately hair-raising. The song rapidly combusts, ensuring the joke doesn't overstay its welcome. [7]

Joshua Lu: Yes, hearing the unassuming Lil Mariko scream and snarl over a missing Juul is intrinsically funny, especially accompanied by a music video that knows exactly how to push the limits of its concept. But the real strength of "Where's My Juul??" lies in its sheer relatability. The title could be anything -- where's my wallet, my phone, my eraser -- because anyone who has ever misplaced anything can relate to the escalating panic and rage in not only the cataclysmic vocals, but also Full Tac's discordant production. Also crucial to the song is its sense of plot, as it steadily progresses from confusion to blame to outright violence. The ending, though predictable (Lizzo used the exact same twist not that long ago), is a necessary denouement, as it provides the moment where everyone involved can look back on the last minute and a half of chaos and laugh. [8]

Iain Mew: As a song structure trick, I love the fake-out final verse, those ones that seem like something slowly developing before the artist brutally cuts it off for the chorus or instrumental to come back stronger than ever; the "Don't Speak" and "Your Best American Girl" kind of thing. The key moment of "Where's My Juul??" comes in taking that same trick to a ludicrous, brilliant extreme. It has a drawn-out, jittery verse, a cartoon scowl of a chorus, and then one question into verse two it veers straight into swearing, screaming and fucking everything up. That's perfect enough that it would ideally be even shorter than it ends up. [7]

Kylo Nocom: Full Tac and Lil Mariko do in less than two minutes what took Justice five. The gimmick is the least fun part, and judging by my sample size of BigKlit's "Liar" and Full Tac's very own "CHOP" the producers behind this might not even be as funny as this video would imply. But I've long settled with music that's good on the merits of just being fun; when the production here is layered with discordant guitar sampling, analog drum kits, and distant screams of "piss!" and "fuck," I'm willing to buy into the ugliness. [8]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Full Tac returns with another take on "Liar," succeeding because the goofy conceit here finds an appropriately goofy (that is, unexpected) vocal performance. Part of the appeal is how "Where's My Juul??" could sit comfortably alongside songs from Rico Nasty and Rina Sawayama, but has the appeal of shoddy viral videos from yesteryear. It's that "Kombucha Girl"-type reaction it's striving to elicit, and it accomplishes that as soon as the screaming starts. The best detail, though, is the most subtle: the moment Lil Mariko stops herself from saying "who" and politely asks "have you seen it?" [7]

Michael Hong: Have you ever been dragged to a party only for your only friend to disappear, leaving you to mingle with a group of people you don't know? And one person makes a comment so absurd that you just giggle along with the rest of the group even though you're not really sure if they're layering their statement with even a hint of irony or if there's something much more unsettling lurking underneath? But the jokes are getting more and more uncomfortable and suddenly fewer people are laughing along, instead furtively glancing across each other with an exasperated look as if to say "is this person for real?" And instead of backing away, that person instead starts doubling down, getting more and more aggressive, screaming across the room for what feels like hours and surely people must be ready to head out. Instead, when you finally catch a moment to glance down at your phone, you find that only two minutes have elapsed since you arrived and you realize that not even a quarter of the time has passed before your ride will come and you can leave this godforsaken party. You have absolutely no choice but to continue standing in the group in discomfort, waiting for this moment that feels like an eternity to finally finish, with the only background noise being the stereos blaring what sounds like someone's first attempt at using GarageBand. [0]

Crystal Leww: While I was digging through "likes" on SoundCloud, I noticed that a friend of mine had liked "Baby Let Me Know" by Full Tac, which sounds like the synth heavy dreamy pop that was popular at the beginning of last decade. I did not stick around for "Where's My Juul??" so imagine my surprise today when I turned this on and it's umm, screaming. A consistent genre as an essential part of an up-and-coming artist's brand is less essential than ever, especially in an age where (waves hands) dance music has eaten itself alive in its swirling storm of troll energy. Chaos in and of itself is a brand -- from 100 gecs to Alice Longyu Gao's dueling sister tracks "Rich Bitch Juice"/"Dumb Bitch Juice" to any DJ Bus Replacement Service set, it has fully infiltrated dance music. How this goes from sweetly threatening to full-on psychotic and back to cutely apologetic is chaotic so yes, I think Full Tac could make some noise (both in creating a fanbase and also like literally) with this. [8]

[Read and comment on The Singles Jukebox]

#Full Tac #Lil Mariko #pop #meme #music #music review

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the-desolated-quill · 5 years

Text

Okay, Enough With The Live Action/CGI Hybrids - Quill’s Scribbles

So the trailer for the upcoming Sonic The Hedgehog movie came out...

Do I really need to say it? Everyone and their mums have already said it. Hell, you’re probably saying it right now.

Sigh. Okay. Fuck it. I’ll say it.

Who the fuck thought this was a good idea?!?!

The trailer itself is shockingly bad. It looks bland and generic with almost nothing in common with the games. The jokes are forced and painfully unfunny (why are the people in the airport more concerned that the ‘child’ in the bag isn’t James Marsden’s rather than that there’s a fucking child in the bag in the first place?!), Jim Carrey is being his usual obnoxious self and is plain and simply a terrible choice for Doctor Eggman (isn’t the whole point of Doctor Eggman that he’s supposed to, you know, look like an egg?), and the soundtrack is utterly cringeworthy (Gangsta’s Paradise? Really?!?!). But that all pales in comparison to by far and away the biggest problem with the trailer. And I think you can all guess what that is.

Yes I’m of course referring to the noticeable absence of Team Chaotix. An artistic decision so despicable, it’s practically a hate crime. For shame! Everyone knows that Charmy Bee is the best character in the franchise and yet they don’t have the guts to put him in the movie! Fucking philistines!

...

Oh yeah, and Sonic the Hedgehog looks like a monstrous abomination concocted from the fever dreams of Doctor Frankenstein and Walt Disney.

It’s hard to know where to start when talking about just how grotesque and disgusting this CGI Sonic is. He looks like what your computer would produce if it caught pneumonia. What I especially don’t understand is why they veered away so heavily from the original, iconic design. I mean...

I don’t know about you, but I’d honestly have no problem if the movie just kept this look from the games. Hell, I think even giving him realistic fur would be pushing it. This is perfectly fine. I could totally see this design working in a movie. Instead we get the secret love child of Gollum and Papa Smurf.

He just looks so weird with human proportions. The leg muscles, the two eyes, the human looking teeth. Apparently the filmmakers wanted this Sonic to look as realistic as possible. Because when I pay to see a movie about an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog that can run at supersonic speeds, that’s my first thought. ‘Is it realistic?’

... Jesus Christ.

But of course the main problem with this live action Sonic movie is that it exists in the first place. When it was first announced, I assumed in my naivety that it would be an animated movie. Because that would make sense, right? There have been movie and TV adaptations before and they were all animated. Imagine a big budget computer animated Sonic movie. That would be really cool. But it was not to be. In Hollywood’s infinite wisdom, they decided to go the live action route because... Actually why did they choose to go the live action route? Well that’s what I hope to address in this very Scribble.

Live action adaptations and remakes are nothing new of course. Disney had tried it a few times in the past with movies like 101 Dalmations, there have been other live action versions of animated or illustrated characters such as the Grinch and the Cat In The Hat, Garfield, the Smurfs and Alvin and the Chipmunks, and there was of course the infamous Super Mario Bros movie, which answered the question of what it would be like if the Mushroom Kingdom took place in the same universe as Judge Dredd. But this is the first time live action/CGI hybrids have been huge money spinners. Disney struck gold back in 2010 when Tim Burton’s version of Alice In Wonderland made a billion dollars at the box office and now the company is mining through their back catalogue of Disney classics and giving all their movies the live action treatment. Initially I was okay with this because in the case of Alice In Wonderland and Maleficent they were at least trying to reinterpret the original films and put a new spin on them, but now they just seem to be copying the movies verbatim. Making live action remakes just for the sake of making live action remakes.

Now other studios are trying their hand at, the most notable being Pokemon: Detective Pikachu. Here’s a picture of the original Pikachu:

Cute, right?

Now here’s a picture of the live action Pikachu:

Can you see the problem here?

(also why the hell is Ryan Reynolds the voice of Pikachu? I honestly can’t think of anyone more inappropriate for the role. It’s like casting Samuel L. Jackson as a Powerpuff Girl)

The fact of the matter is some things just don’t work in live action. Sonic the Hedgehog and Pokemon work in their respective universes because they’re animated creatures in an animated world, and their anatomy and design fit that world. In the real world, it just doesn’t work. Pikachu looks strange and kind of creepy in the real world. The same is true of the other Pokemon. Jigglypuff looks utterly adorable in the games and animated show with its spherical body and cartoon eyes and you just want to take one to bed with you and cuddle them like a teddy bear, but in the real world it looks fucking scary!

I wouldn’t want to cuddle that thing! It looks like it would go for my throat given the opportunity!

The same is true of Sonic. Paramount’s attempts to make him look more ‘realistic’ just makes him look incredibly alien and out of place.

Another example I like to bring up is the film Christopher Robin. Now we all know Winnie the Pooh. Silly ol’ bear. Charming, cuddly and endearing, right? Just look at him.

How can you not fall in love with him?

Now here’s the live action version:

When I first saw the trailer, I was utterly creeped out. He looks like something out of a horror movie. Add to that that they got the original voice actor from the Disney cartoons to reprise the role, and Winnie the Pooh pretty much became the source of all my nightmares for the next couple of weeks. That lovable voice should not be coming out of that... thing.

It’s a pattern that repeats itself over and over again. Look:

Charming and lovable.

Weird and unsettling.

Creative and fun.

Photoshop disaster.

Sweet and likeable.

Fetch my crucifix and holy water.

Emotional and expressive.

So ‘realistic’ to the point where he looks like he has the emotional range of a teaspoon.

Now I recognise this largely comes down to subjective opinion. If you like these CGI redesigns, that’s great. More power to you. But I know for a fact I’m not the only one getting increasingly weirded out by these computer generated demons from Hell.

So why does Hollywood keep making these films. Well obviously in the case of Disney it’s because they’ve ran out of original ideas and want to make a quick buck by exploiting their audience’s nostalgia. (the same can be said of the Star Wars sequel trilogy). But what about other studios? Yes they’re financially motivated too, but there’s got to be more to it than that.

I think it’s largely down to the stigma of animated movies. Animation has become synonymous with children. When you hear the term ‘animated movie’, you automatically associate it with ‘kid’s film’. And ‘kid’s film’ is often used in a negative context. Like it’s somehow lesser than quote/unquote ‘proper’ movies. Live action suggests a certain pedigree. A sense of prestige. But that’s obviously bollocks. The quality of a film isn’t dictated by whether it’s live action or animated. It’s determined by the writing, directing and acting. There have been live action films made for kids and animated films made for adults. And I’m not talking about Sausage Party. I’m talking about Finding Nemo.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Finding Nemo? Isn’t that a kid’s film? No. It’s a family film. And that right there is the problem. You heard me say Finding Nemo, an animated film about talking fish, and you automatically associated it with a kids film. But the thing is Finding Nemo deals with some very dark and adult themes and its moral message of not being overprotective and allowing children to take risks is intended for the parents, not the kids. Obviously kids can still watch and enjoy Finding Nemo, but it’s the parents who are clearly the target here. The same is true of Toy Story 3. Children can still watch and enjoy it, but the film is clearly intended for people who watched the original Toy Story when they were a kid and are now grown up. When you stop and think about it, it’s really sad that family movies are associated with kids movies. Not that there’s anything wrong with kids movies obviously. But why do people assume that family movies are meant for kids? Why can’t they be adult stories that are also accessible to children? Books have done it. The Artemis Fowl series is kid friendly, but its tone, themes and style suggest the author has an older and more sophisticated target audience in mind. A Series Of Unfortunate Events is popular with kids, but it’s adults that get the full experience because of the way Lemony Snicket uses postmodern and meta-textual elements in the books, which would sail clean over the head of a kid reading it. The idea that a live action remake is somehow more ‘grown-up’ than an animated movie is just absurd. The original Lion King was very grown up, thank you very much. There are lots of bright colours and fun songs for the kids, but it also doesn’t sugarcoat the darker themes such as death, betrayal, corruption and abuse of power. Mufaser’s death isn’t going to be made any more impactful in live action. The animated version was more than heartbreaking.

Shifting the conversation back to Sonic, this is also intrinsically linked with another problem with Hollywood at the moment. Movie adaptations of video games. And again, it’s a similar problem. People, especially critics, view video games as being lesser than movies. Roger Ebert famously said that video games will never be considered art. But that’s nonsense. There have been loads of video games that could be and have been considered art. BioShock, for instance, which scrutinises and criticises both objectivism and capitalism. There’s the Mass Effect trilogy, which is often described as this generation’s Star Wars. The Last Of Us is widely considered to be a masterpiece by gamers and literacy scholars alike. Hell, the fact that Hollywood wants to make movie adaptations of video games at all suggests that games do in fact have some inherent artistic value after all. And it’s not as if I’m wholly against making movies based on video games. There are some games that could translate really well to films, Sonic being one of them. (I personally loved the Ratchet & Clank movie, for example. It’s just a shame nobody else fucking watched it due to the almost non-existent marketing). However there’s an inherent problem with translating video games to movies as opposed to, say, translating books to movies. In book to movies adaptations, studios are adding something. Visuals, sound, performance, etc. In video game to movie adaptations, they have to take things away. The most obvious is interactivity. Unlike movies where nothing is required of the audience other than to just dumbly stare at the screen, video games require the audience to actively control the story. Move the character, kill baddies, solve problems and stay alive. You are an active participant in the narrative. As a result, the emotional connection you feel with both the plot and the characters is often stronger than that in a movie because you have direct influence over what happens.

Also video games have the luxury of being able to tell their stories over the course of eight to thirty to even a hundred hours of gameplay. There’s no way you could condense something like The Last Of Us down to a two and a half hour movie. There would just be too much lost. Important character moments and plot points that would have to be chucked in the bin. Yes things get lost in book to movie adaptations, but nowhere near at the scale of a game to movie adaptation. A possible workaround would be to make game to TV adaptations instead, but then we’re back to the interactivity problem again. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that movies are better than books or that video games are better than movies. I’m just saying they’re each individually suited to tell their own kinds of stories in their own unique ways, therefore translating from one medium to the other is often difficult. The Last Of Us would never make a good movie, and that’s okay. The game is still amazing and the story is still amazing. Its artistic merit isn’t lessened because it can’t be translated to films, in the same way the merits of a bike aren’t lessened because it can’t fly. It’s just not designed to do that.

I guess the point I’m making is there’s no one way to tell a good story. There are an infinite number of ways it can be done. So lets stop Hollywood’s obsession with pigeonholing everything into one format and actually explore the possibilities, shall we?

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic the hedgehog movie #live action cgi remakes #video game movie adaptations #quill's scribbles

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your-iron-lung · 5 years

Text

No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross 10

aka ‘The House That Dripped Blood’; available to read on AO3 HERE

Story Synopsis: Some weird low-key occult parties start popping up that Steve can’t in good conscience ignore and takes it upon himself to investigate. Billy gets caught up in the consequences of his meddling, and isn’t it funny? For all the strange things the Upside Down has thrown his way, it’s werewolves that Steve has trouble accepting exist.

Chapter Word Count: 7927

Pairings: Eventual Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington

Genre: Supernatural/Drama/Horror-ish

Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Next Chapter: 11

Notes: if you follow me you may have noticed i havent posted in a while- this is bc i spend all my time playing ffxiv instead of setting aside determined amounts of time to spend on writing/drawing and i have a bunch of artist alleys coming up that im ill prepared for and im terrible at budgeting UH YEP bad excuse but WHAT CAN YA DO here we are

(ive also set up a ko-fi account if you want to give drop me some tippy tips if u enjoy the word things i do) ((no pressure tho))

"Bigfoot."

Hopper leaned back in his chair; let it creak and groan under his weight until he knew it was at its limit, and then pushed it a little more. He studied the no-nonsense expression on the hunter before him, and intrinsically knew that the man was speaking truth.

"Bigfoot," the old man said again, speaking a little sterner than he had before once he recognized Hopper's amiable expression of disbelief. "I seen't him out in the woods just the other day."

The aging man had lumbered into the police station almost immediately after Hopper came in, bundled in some worn hunting gear that looked almost as old as he was. The deputies had offered to speak with him after hearing his initial claim, but they'd been refused when Callahan couldn't stop smirking. The old hunter had insisted on speaking with Hopper, who leaned forward now, taking the stress off of his chair to take a sip of the coffee Florence had brought in for him. He didn't look at the old man as he drank.

"So let me get this straight," Hopper began, setting his coffee aside to rub at his forehead, "you came in first thing in the morning worried about a missing friend of yours, but now you're telling me you're worried about Bigfoot."

"You know me, Jim," the hunter said, a slight hint of pleading desperation edging out of his voice. "You know I ain't some crazy old coot. I ain't seen Lamm in a long while, and yessir I'm worried 'bout him, but when I went out to his cabin to check on him I seen it: I seen Bigfoot!"

As incredulous as the claim was, Hopper believed him- not about it being Bigfoot, exactly, but he believed that the man had seen something out there in the woods, and it had the possibility of being that something he'd spent the last two weeks fruitlessly searching for.

Regardless, he didn't want to let the old hunter know he was taking him seriously. The last thing he needed was for his community to think he believed in this sort of nonsense, but people in town were going missing, and people he knew were getting hurt: if his only lead should turn up in the form of an old man believing he'd caught sight of an urban legend, then so be it. He'd follow it through, but he'd be subtle about it.

"You sure it wasn't just a trick of the light or something, Wes? You know your eyes aren't what they used to be," Hopper remarked casually, softening his voice to let him down easy. "And this isn't the first time Lamm's gone missing; you know he's one of those types of shut ins. Remember those weeks he was gone hunting 'vampires'? He's the kind of guy who lives in his own head more than he lives out here, he'll turn up again on his own time."

The hunter's lips twitched into a frown. "Alright, maybe Lamm is a little off kilter," he relented, averting his eyes for a second, "and maybe it weren't Bigfoot, but the tracks it left were huge 'n mighty, by God, and I ain't seen nothin' else like it before. If it weren't Bigfoot, then at the very least it had big feet, Jim, and I ain't never seen feet quite like 'em."

Interest piqued, Hopper became more attentive. "How's that?"

"Well, they was stretched out lookin', for one." The hunter paused, tilting his head slightly as he tried to recall the details of what he'd seen out in the woods. He held his hands up, spaced apart in an approximation of how long the prints he'd found had been. "Human lookin', almost, which is what had me thinkin' it coulda been Bigfoot. They weren't the tracks of somethin' native 'round here, and I only caught but the barest glimpse of it, but it was tall, Jim; taller'n you or I."

That sounded right; the prints he'd found and unsuccessfully tracked were, as the hunter said, 'huge 'n mighty' and matched the description of what he'd just been told. It didn't take an expert's opinion (though he had consulted one) to discern that the markings just weren't natural. Hopper set his mug of coffee aside and pulled out a notepad from one of his desk drawers. He uncapped a pen and held it to the page for a moment before writing down a few preliminary notes for himself on the top line.

The hunter cocked his head and leaned forward to look at what he was writing and said, "That don't look official."

"Because it's not; this one's just gonna be between us, alright?" Hopper said, looking up to meet Wesley's blue, watery eyes. He held the stare long enough to get his point across, waiting for a sign of affirmation before looking back to the notepad and pressing the tip of the pen to the paper. "Tell me where and when exactly you saw this 'Bigfoot' of yours."

The day was cold and grey at its start, with harsh, biting winds ushering in thick clouds that blocked out any hope of the sun ever making an appearance. Steve eyed the sky apprehensively as he made his way back to his car, wary of the way the clouds looked as though they might start dropping hail on him at a moment's notice. Billy feigned disinterest as Steve opened the rear passenger door and leaned in to shove the box of things he'd bought at the Hunting & Camping store into the backseat. Even with his vision obscured in part by the sunglasses he'd elected to wear, he didn't miss the strong look of annoyance that graced Steve's features when he came around to the driver's seat and entered the car with a pout.

"That guy give you a hard time or something?" Billy asked as Steve buckled in and put the BMW into reverse, turning in his seat to hastily jerk the car out of the parking lot. "Why do you look like someone shit in your cereal?"

Steve clicked his tongue. "He just kept asking what a 'kid like me' needed with a bunch of chains and rope and shit. My god, he just would not let it go, like he thought I was trying to build my own sex dungeon or something. Fucking annoying."

"You mean that's not what we're doing?" Billy asked, grinning a bit at the way Steve's face pinched up in disgust. "What'd you say?"

"I told him the truth; said it was to tie up a werewolf. 'It's a full moon tonight, y'know? Gotta tie 'em down or they go all crazy on you', I said to him, and you know what he said to me then?" Steve asked, speeding out of the little downtown shopping area Hawkins played host to and sounding every bit as gossipy as Carol did when she caught wind of a scandal.

"How the fuck would I?" Billy drawled, turning away from the conversation to watch the scenery pass by disinterestedly.

"He said, 'Damn fool kids will never learn'," Steve said, ignoring him. "'Damn fool kids will never learn', like, what the hell does that mean?"

Billy shrugged. "Who knows? As long as he accepted daddy's plastic then what does it matter?"

Steve clicked his tongue again in annoyance and rolled his eyes. "Fuck you."

Feeling the beginnings of a headache coming on, Billy declined to retort. They rode on in silence, the chains in the box Steve had bought clinking together softly in the backseat before the radio was finally turned on to mask the sound.

Regardless of whether or not Steve actually believed something was going to happen to Billy that night, he couldn't deny that the whole day leading up to that evening just felt… off. From meeting up with Billy earlier that afternoon to go by the camping store, to grabbing lunch together before heading over to the Henderson's house, it all felt wrong.

It was something Steve had difficulty pinpointing the origins of, but as they began work on clearing out enough space in the cellar for Billy to do whatever it was he thought he was going to do, he soon came to realize that the feeling of wrongness seemed to stem from Billy himself.

Few words could better describe Billy than 'annoying' or 'smart-mouthed', but he'd been uncharacteristically tight-lipped all day. He'd become a remarkably dull version of himself, and Steve wasn't sure quite how to handle that.

Usually one to argue and bite back at everything Steve said, when he'd begun dishing out instructions on how best to clear out some floor space in the cellar, Billy hadn't talked back to him a single time; merely lit a cigarette and blinked at him slowly, silently acknowledging what had been asked of him before getting on with it.

It was unsettling. Steve could almost say that he hated how submissive Billy was because of how used he'd gotten to the back-talk and smart-ass remarks Billy usually had ready for him, and though, yes, there were times he had wished for this kind of attitude from him, the silence and absolute subordination coupled with all of the other behavioral changes Billy was exhibiting were enough to set Steve on edge.

Billy kept tonguing the gaps in his teeth where they'd fallen out over the course of the week, and he never seemed to realize he wasn't alone. Sometimes he'd jump at the sound of Steve's voice, or shake his head and crease his brow in confusion when he turned around to see Steve moving stuff somewhere behind him, but arguably the worst part of it all was that he stank.

He'd tried to mask it with an overabundance of cologne that had nearly suffocated Steve when they began working in closer quarters, but buried beneath that was a hint of something that smelled awfully rotten. If he had to, Steve could liken it to the stench of the monster they'd encountered in the woods, but he chose not to, instead chalking it up to a severe case of nervous b.o. or something. The implications that the scents could be related bothered him too deeply to believe, and even then he wasn't sure he really wanted to know what the source of the smell was.

The stench of decay emanating from Billy's person was worrisome enough on its own, but with so much to do in order to get ready before sunset, Steve had a hard time figuring out where to primarily apply his focus: there were simply too many things going on for him to worry about one thing more than another.

The giant hole in the wall that Dart made to tunnel out of the cellar was his immediate concern, but Dustin had done a good job of hiding it from his mother by placing a tall shelf in front of it, essentially blocking it off. That didn't mean it wasn't entirely inaccessible, but Steve wasn't sure what more he could do about it. In all honesty, he'd forgotten about it until he'd tried to move the shelf aside and then found himself peeking into the eerie tunnel. He'd knocked over several things in his haste to put the shelf back in place, but Billy hadn't seemed to notice it, and if he didn't, maybe he wouldn't think to use it if- or when- he lost himself to whatever supernatural effects he was experiencing.

"Big if, though," Steve muttered aloud to himself. Turning away from the shelf, he looked over to where Billy was inspecting some old power tools, turning a nail gun over in his hands before setting it back in the box he'd pulled it out of. "So, are we good or what? This baby-proofed enough for you?" Steve asked, startling Billy out of whatever ruminations he'd been lost to.

Billy looked at Steve blankly, face impassive and emotionless. He frowned, and then looked around himself as though he'd forgotten where he was. When he spoke, his voice was monotone and devoid of his usual arrogance as he said, "I don't know, Harrington; is it?"

"You tell me, man, this was your idea." Steve watched as Billy returned his focus on the box of tools he'd originally been rummaging through. Picking up a hammer, Billy balanced its weight in his hands before gripping the handle tightly. Steve distrusted the look in Billy's eye as he held it. "What are you, a child? Quit rifling through their shit, put it back," he said.

Billy didn't reply or even acknowledge that he'd heard him. Ignoring Steve's demand, he stepped up to the abandoned work bench to splay his left hand out over the wood and lifted the ballpeen up.

"What the fuck are you doing? Put it down," Steve said again, his voice rising slightly in pitch when he understood what Billy was doing. He started towards him in an effort to stop him, but halted when the hammer was brought crashing down.

It missed his hand, but the force of the impact splintered the wooden table's surface. Steve gaped as Billy turned around, a cocky little smile turning up his lips.

"Someone could get hurt real bad down here if they weren't careful, huh, Harrington?" he said, a fierceness that Steve hated to admit he'd missed charging his voice. "But we've been real careful cleaning this shithole out, haven't we, pally?"

"You sick piece of shit, give me that," Steve snapped, snatching the hammer away from Billy's pliant grip. "Fuck you, Hargrove; you could've just said you wanted to move this shit out of here."

"Had you pegged as being more of a visual learner," Billy sneered as Steve threw the hammer back into the box of tools. "Your concern was touching, though, really."

"You're the one who came asking me for help, fuckface. Begged me, almost, if I'm remembering right. 'Oh, Steve, help me, I'm so scared of fake movie monsters!'"

Steve hadn't meant to rise to the taunt, but Billy's insufferable attitude had him stooping to his level as he hoisted the hefty box of tools in his arms and lugged them over to the stairway. Billy laughed dryly at Steve's mocking tone.

"We both wish that fucking thing had been fake," he said as Steve placed the box on the ground at the foot of the stairs beside the box of supplies he'd bought earlier. They were both quiet for a moment, their attempt at a conversation dying as quickly as it had been brought on.

"Only one thing left to do then," Steve said morosely.

Billy blinked and turned to face the stairway, eyes rising slowly up to where the cellar doors were propped open wide. Steve felt the guilt of having to lock him in prematurely and had to remind himself that he wanted to be locked in.

"Better hop to it then, Harrington," Billy said lowly, lips curling back into a familiar grin, but without all his teeth in place to flesh it out, Steve found the display to be more unsettling than annoying. "Let's get this sex dungeon set up."

Steve grimaced. "Not even in your wildest dreams, Hargrove."

"Nothing's off the table in my dreams, pretty boy." Billy breathed out a small laugh at the disgusted look on Steve's face, but the grin he'd been displaying slowly fell away. "Is it getting dark yet?"

"Uh, kind of, but the sun hasn't set yet," Steve replied, stepping up into the stairwell to check the status of the sky. It was as dull and grey as it had been all day, the overcast weather acting as a harbinger for the snowfall the local meteorologist had foretold was coming. "If you took off those fucking sunglasses you'd be able to tell."

"These are for your benefit as much as mine," Billy snapped, frowning suddenly.

"Yeah, okay, whatever that means," Steve said dismissively as he began to fish out the cords of rope from the box, letting them spool out onto the ground before gathering them into his hands. "How do you uh, how do you want to do this?"

"Aw, is this kitten's first time tying someone up?" Billy purred, not moving from where he stood in the middle of the cellar, directly under the light. "Who knew 'King' Steve's favourite flavor was vanilla."

Steve rolled his eyes as he brought the ropes over, wrinkling his nose at the mixed smell of rot and cologne that got stronger with proximity. "I've dated girls kinkier than you'd know what to do with," he retorted as he gestured for Billy to hold out his hands.

"Oh please," Billy said with a snort, "there are no kinky girls in Hawkins or I would've found them by now."

"You're obviously not looking hard enough," Steve muttered in response, gesturing again for Billy to hold out his hands.

Shrugging out of his leather jacket and tossing it over the work table he'd splintered, Billy held his hands up obediently and watched stoically as Steve wound the rope around his wrists, binding his hands together roughly.

"What's should our safe word be?" Billy teased, smirking as Steve wound another, longer length of rope over the original knot.

"There is no safe word because this isn't a sex thing!" Steve insisted angrily.

Flustered, he sighed irritably as he wound the long part of the rope around Billy's waist, hating how close he had to get in order to make sure the rope was tight enough, though Billy seemed to be enjoying how close he'd gotten. He kept shifting his weight around, trying, it seemed, to get Steve into a more compromising position. Annoyed, but determined to finish, Steve did his best to ignore Billy's constant movement and the disgusting, rotten musk that was wafting off of his person to finish tying him up.

"Why do you fucking stink so goddamn badly?" Steve finally asked with a scowl, repressing the urge to gag as he tied the ropes off into a clumsy knot. He stumbled away from Billy, reaching up to pinch his nostrils shut so he wouldn't have to smell the rot anymore, but the rancid scent seemed to have lodged itself deep into his nose. "You smell like a dead Calvin Klein model or something, holy shit, did you use a whole fucking bottle?"

The amusement Billy had held while taunting Steve left his face. His smirk shrunk into an awkward grimace as he looked away in embarrassment.

"I don't know, alright?" he admitted bitterly. "It doesn't matter how much I bathe, and between that and my eyes I have no idea what the fuck's going on with me."

"What about your eyes?" Steve asked hesitantly, unsure if he really wanted to know the reasoning behind why Billy had insisted on wearing sunglasses all day.

Billy faltered for a moment, hesitating briefly before reaching up and plucking the sunglasses off his face. With both hands bound together, he awkwardly folded the legs against the lenses and tucked them into the collar of his button up. He turned his gaze to Steve, who couldn't help but suck in a slight breath of surprise.

His eyes were so bloodshot they looked ready to start bleeding straight out of the sockets. There were hardly any whites left in the sclera to be seen as Billy winked at him, looking immensely uncomfortable at the way Steve was gaping openly at him.

"Do they- hurt? Or whatever?" Steve asked, unconsciously taking a few steps forward to get a better look. In the dim lighting of the basement, even the blues of Billy's eyes looked reddish.

"What's it to you if they do?" Billy snapped, suddenly irritable. He squared his jaw and looked away, unable to face the amount of concern Steve was showing him.

The worry Steve felt for the both of them in that moment grew stronger as he backed off, letting the matter of the changes in Billy's physicality drop, despite how alarming they were. "If I don't hear anything an hour after the sun goes down, I'll let you out," Steve said abruptly as he walked backwards towards the stairwell, grasping for the hand rail behind him blindly, unsure why he was so reluctant now to let Billy out of his sight. It was what they'd agreed upon earlier, and he said it meaning for it to sound reassuring, but the way Billy's lips twitched made it apparent he didn't interpret it that way.

Billy didn't respond.

"Well, uh, I guess that's it then," Steve said as he bent down, placing his box of chains atop the box of tools Billy had been messing around with before lifting them up together to carry them up and out of their man-made dungeon.

The cellar doors shrieked loudly as they were closed, a high pitched agony that erupted when the metal grinded against itself uncooperatively. Steve didn't mind that so much as he hated the sound the chains made as he wove them through the door handles, reminding him of what he was doing and who he was imprisoning as the steel rattled sharply against the doors. He winced at the commotion, but continued to loop them through the small door handles until no more could be fit between them. He tested their sturdiness by attempting to pull them open, and to his pleasure, they remained shut. The doors were secured; the cellar, as far as he was concerned, was now a suitable prison. All that was left of him now was to play the role of the jailor appropriately.

He stared down at his handiwork for a moment before the cold, blowing winds prompted him to seek shelter. Already a few snowflakes were fluttering out of the sky, flying into his cheeks as he turned away, re-gathering the box of tools in his arms and headed for the door Dustin promised he'd leave a key for.

Searching under the backdoor mat, Steve found the promised key, and true to the rest of Dustin's word, the entire home was empty, save for the cat that chirped a greeting for him from atop the kitchen counter. With a deep intake of breath Steve glanced at his watch, stepped inside, and shut the door behind him, wondering if he really was prepared for the worst. In the trunk of his car his bat waited for him, ready to be put to use just in case shit really did hit the fan, but he found himself questioning if he'd really be able to use it; bludgeoning monsters to death was one thing, but turning it on a boy he knew was only a monster figuratively was something else entirely.

For both his and Billy's sakes, he hoped it wouldn't come to that.

Shrugging out of his thick coat, Steve set it down beside him as he took a seat on the Henderson's couch. He glanced at his watch again, dismayed by the fact that time wasn't progressing as fast as he wished it was and sat in anxious worry about what the rest of the night might have in store.

But at least he was comfortable and warm.

The cellar was not.

It wasn't the cold that Billy minded, so much as it was the anticipation: when would the transformation start? Exactly at sundown? A little before? A little after? Would he actually end up transforming? And why the fuck did the word 'transform' make him so damn uncomfortable? The unknown factors surrounding his circumstances were almost worse than any of the physical symptoms he'd been experiencing as of late, and he'd been experiencing a lot.

Anxiety wasn't something Billy had a lot of experience with, but it was the only thing he could think of that explained why his heart had been beating oddly all day. It was running at a notably higher rate, as though he'd been playing basketball or working out extraneously, and brought on palpitations he wasn't used to dealing with at the elevated speed.

In short he felt terrible. His whole body ached like it was going through puberty again. Both his arms and legs were sore in ways that mimicked the aches that came with growing pains when he'd had them, but he couldn't understand why he would begin to hurt in that way again. He hadn't had the energy to work out in two days despite eating practically anything he could get his hands on, so the soreness in his limbs was unwarranted. Either his body was preparing itself for the coming night, or he was having an incredibly drawn-out heart attack.

Standing at the foot of the stairwell, Billy felt the cold permeating in through the closed opening and moved away to find a better spot to wait. He wanted rub his arms to bring some warmth into them, but couldn't with the way they were bound. Already the ropes were beginning to dig into his wrists, rubbing uncomfortably against his skin as he realized he wasn't actually that cold anyway, despite the frigid weather; his body temperature had been on a steady incline leading up to now, leaving him with a rosy complexion and a near constant fever, the long-term effects of which left him feeling severely disoriented.

He could barely remember meeting up at Steve's house only a few hours ago to carpool to his kid friend's house, riding with the windows down in spite of the severe wind-chill as they went into town to get lunch and buy rope. Even though they'd ridden together, he couldn't remember now if they'd actually talked about anything or not. All he could remember were the low tones of the radio and the resonating throbs of the wind as it swooped in through the open windows, rushing to fill the audial space between them. It was as though his mind had been steeped in a fog, and he couldn't accurately think through it: everything was clouded over, incomprehensible, like waking up the morning after a bender and being unable to remember everything he'd done the night before, but knowing all the same that he'd taken part in some memorable shit.

Would there be pain, he wondered, and would it come on as suddenly as it had to the character in the movie he'd made Steve watch? Even though 'American Werewolf' was just a movie, stories like that had to spawn from some sort of truth, didn't they?

The dim little lightbulb that hung overhead flickered briefly, drawing Billy's attention to it as he took a seat at the work table's bench, wishing his eyes weren't a dry and sore as they were.

Coming from above, he could hear the muffled sounds of a TV show permeating through the cellar's ceiling. He couldn't help but think ill of Steve in that moment, but if their situations had been reversed, he probably would have been doing the same thing; he couldn't fault Harrington for finding a way to pass the time, though he wished he had something similar to do for himself. There was nothing interesting to hold his attention, and time passed at a dreadfully slow rate.

Stretching out on the bench, he laid himself down slowly, mindful of which parts of his back hurt the most, and gazed up at the cement overhead disinterestedly. He listened to the muffled sounds of the distant television, trying to conjure an image in his mind that corresponded with what little dialogue he could hear, but the rapid beating of his heart overpowered the noises coming from the TV. He closed his eyes and focused on his breathing in an attempt to lower his heart rate, but it just kept going, pounding in a determined rhythm that seemed to be quickening with each passing minute. A bead of sweat trickled down from his scalp and over his ear as he wondered if the tingling he felt in the tips of his fingers was because of the cold or from the ropes being tied too tight.

He flexed his fingers, opening and closing his hands into a fist to try and bring sensation back into his fingertips, but to no avail. They remained numb, and the cause of which eluded him.

Frowning, Billy stiffly sat up and began to pinch at his skin, belatedly realizing that the numbness was spreading slowly down the lengths of his fingers, a sensation that sent a chill running down the length of his spine.

"Oh," he said. "Oh shit."

The pain, when he finally did begin to feel it, started in his feet. There were still thirty minutes before the sun went down.

Billy licked his lips nervously as he tried to get his boots off, his numb fingers and bound hands fumbling uselessly with the laces as the pain centralized in his toes and grew in sudden intensity. He was no stranger to pain, but this was unlike anything he'd ever felt before: it was sharp and stabbing, with each throb of pain stemming from the bones in his toes, as though they were growing more pointed in an attempt to pierce their way through his skin as they elongated. He could feel them cracking; each joint slowly popping free of itself as the bones began to push themselves forward.

"Oh, shit," he repeated, and could hear the muffled sounds of a laugh track from whatever sitcom Steve had turned on upstairs roaring in delight as he struggled to finally pull his boots off.

The stabbing sensation didn't relent, even once his shoes lay discarded by his feet. He peeled away his socks with shaking hands and stared down at his toes.

They'd turned a bright, beet red and were bulging like they might burst apart, his skin bubbling up around toenails that were already starting to peel off. He couldn't help the whimper as he tentatively felt them, a pain like touching a freshly popped, skinless blister causing him to draw his fingers back.

It was real. It was happening.

Sweating freely now, he reached away from his feet to brush his dampened hair away from his forehead as sweat rolled down the sides of his face. He paused when he felt his hair pull free from his scalp, clinging to the back of his hand stubbornly. Billy stared at the loose, curly strands with a horrified expression and reached up with a shaking hand to grab more. When he pulled, a handful of his hair came away easily, eliciting another whimper from deep within his throat. Disgusted and frightened, he threw his hair away to the floor.

Breathing quickly, he hastily rubbed his hands free of the loose strands in a panic and tried to calm himself. His whole body trembled as he breathed in deeply through his nose, wondering if he should try to call out to Steve to alert him that the worst case scenario was indeed unfolding. Another laugh track from upstairs came through the ceiling as he felt a sharp, sudden stab of pain in his ribs, prompting him to gasp loudly and curl forward over himself. He could actually feel some part of his ribcage shifting inside his torso as he tucked his arms in to his sides. Any lingering thoughts of trying to remain calm left him as he transitioned from panic to full on fear.

He stood up not knowing what he was going to do, but regretted it instantly: as soon as he put weight on his foot, his ankle collapsed in on itself and brought him to the floor. A shout almost came out with his fall, but he managed to internalize the pain as he was used to doing and grit his teeth as his foot essentially broke itself in half.

The central part of his foot that arched snapped without warning. Billy swore loudly and reached for his foot instinctively, wanting to hold the break in place, but he couldn't bear the agony that came with the contact. Warm tears leaked from his eyes, and when his other lateral arch also split in half, he couldn't help but cry out.

From up above, the noises coming from the television ceased. Steve must have heard him and was listening for him now, trying to gauge whether or not he should intervene. Billy clenched his jaw tighter, determined to keep quiet, but gasped loudly when two of his molars gave out under the pressure, snapping to the side and coming loose of his gumline. The copper taste of blood filled his mouth as he spat the teeth out, shuddering uncontrollably when he felt the vertebrae in his spine begin to pop, one by one, pushing up against his skin that was quickly beginning to feel too tight.

Huffing in great breaths of air, he panted heavily as the bones of his tones finally pierced through his skin, causing most of the flesh surrounding them to burst open like little balloons. Blood splattered across the floor in gruesome, miniature arcs and Billy finally, finally became undone. He shrieked, unable to keep silent any longer as new appendages could be seen inside the flayed bits of bloody skin, slowly growing outward, already a part of him.

Warm tears of pain streaked down his face in thick lines as the skin of his feet continued to be ripped apart, making way for more muscle, new flesh. He wiped at his eyes helplessly and thought he could hear Steve's voice distantly calling out his name, asking if everything was alright.

He blinked, his vision blurred by the tears that would not clear away as he pulled himself over to the stairway.

Shaking wildly all over, Billy stretched out on the floor, realizing belatedly that the waistband of his jeans was growing tighter and tighter. Hissing sharply, he cursed himself for not having the foresight to undress himself as he hastily tried to undo his belt. A pain similar to the initial agony he'd felt in his toes was beginning to manifest itself in his fingers as both of his hands slowly began to turn red, swelling up under the bonds of the rope as he fumbled with the buckle, desperately trying to get it to come free.

"Fuck!" he shouted in frustration, his clothing growing ever tighter as his body continued to bloat. He felt like he was being pinched in half with his belt acting as an unneeded tourniquet. "Fuck! Fuck!"

"Hey! Talk to me Hargrove, what's going on?"

Steve's worried voice trilled down through the cellar doors as he continued vocalizing his frustrations. Billy felt an organ in his abdomen shift out of place before popping, prompting him to groan and curl in on himself before he threw up. His couldn't undo his belt as his vision began to darken.

"Hargrove!" Steve shouted, banging a fist against the steel door. "What the hell's going on? Talk to me!"

"Fuck you!" Billy screamed, unable to articulate anything else as he tried to rub the blackness out of his eyes, but the more he pressed his fingers to them, they more they began to hurt.

A pressure was building up behind them the more he rubbed, and as it increased, his vision grew ever darker. He kept blinking, over and over, feeling his eyes bulge out of their sockets and against his eyelids, trying now to keep his eyeballs in place. He was hyperventilating when he finally went blind, the pressure behind his eyes becoming intolerable eyes before it finally came too much, and his eyes popped free.

He felt them slide out onto over his checks and onto the floor, the slimy, blood-slick nerves leaving tracks of blood on his face as he became totally and completely blind.

"No," he whispered to himself, retching again on the floor as he scrambled across the cement, trying to find the stairs, unable to see. "No, no! This isn't real!"

Beyond the cellar doors, Steve had his ear pressed against the slight crack between the panels, desperately trying to understand what was going on. He wasn't sure what to make of the noises he was hearing, unable to determine if Billy was just trying to mess with him or if he was in actual distress.

"Hargrove," he said impatiently, turning his head to try and peak in through the crack to get a glimpse of what was going on, "you gotta start talking to me, man; what the hell's going on down there?"

"I'm fucking blind," he heard Billy shout, his voice rife with fear. "I can't see anything!"

His voice was shaking as he spoke, and Steve knew then that whatever was happening was legitimate; Billy wasn't one to openly show weakness.

"Okay, stay calm," Steve stammered, but he wasn't sure if that was actually sound advice or not. "It's- it's going to be okay, okay?"

Billy howled, and Steve understood that the pain that carried with his voice must have been terrible to get him to shriek like that. He licked his lips anxiously, not knowing what support he could possibly offer him. He continuously opened and shut his mouth, words of encouragement dying on his tongue before he could manage to speak them.

And then, all at once, the cacophony of agony ceased.

Steve couldn't hear anything over the rapid sound of his breathing for a moment before he finally spoke: "Hargrove? Is… are you okay?"

"Hurts." Billy's voice, quiet, strained, and barely audible over the sounds of things (flesh, fabric) slowly tearing, sounded disconcertingly like he was speaking with a throat full of water. It was gargling and grotesque; completely unlike the smooth, honeyed voice he'd become known for.

"Okay, what, uh, what… what hurts?" Steve whispered in response, fear quieting his previously urgent tone.

"Everything."

"Shit," Steve said to himself, backing away from the cellar door panels as the sounds of something large and heavy being knocked over made him jump. "Just, uh, stay calm," he said, though he wasn't sure if he was saying it to himself or Billy. From down below, he heard Billy groan loudly before going silent again.

Steve's heart was pounding as he hesitated, unsure of what to do. All the details of Billy's haphazardly concocted plan fled his mind as he tried to think back on what they'd agreed to do if something ended up happening, and his first instinct was to open the doors to go down and check on him. He looked at the chains wrapped tightly around the door handles and bit his lip before crouching down and pressing his eye to the crack.

The overhead light wasn't bright enough to reveal much, but at the base of the stairwell there was a small circle of illumination. Steve squinted, ignoring the cold of the steel as he pressed his face against the door, trying to see all that he could.

Blood stains. Torn bits of… something he couldn't quite make out. Dark masses on the stairwell; lots of evidence that pointed towards Billy transforming, but no trace of Billy himself.

"Hargrove," Steve whispered, and then shook his head to clear himself of his cowardice. "Hargrove," he said again, louder and with more emphasis, "dude, you have to talk me through what's happening down there."

He waited, unconsciously holding his breath as he waited for a reply. It was steadily growing darker as the sun slowly sank, making it all the harder to see into the cellar from the tiny slit. Frowning and unable to see anything, Steve turned his head and pressed his ear against the door. From somewhere in the depths of the cellar he could hear something breathing heavily. It was moving, too; he could hear something shuffling, moving around the floor space cautiously.

When he turned his head again to see through the crack, he caught a glimpse of... something large and hulking cross under the light, tall enough to set the lightbulb swinging. He couldn't help but suck in a sharp breath of air, his lungs and throat burning with the sting of the cold weather. The thing- whatever Billy had become- halted just outside the rim of light. Entranced, Steve found he couldn't move as it emitted a low, threatening growl that sounded more like a man impersonating a dog than an actual beast.

From his limited viewpoint, he couldn't see the way the muscles in its legs were tightening, or how it had begun to crouch; he didn't have time to react as it sprang forward, jumping up the stairs in a single leap to ram itself against the doors.

The chains held the doors shut, but the sudden impact smashed the metal against Steve's nose and soon all he could smell was blood as it drained out of his nostrils. He fell backwards, holding his nose as the Billy-creature growled again. Horrified, Steve could only sit in the snow and watch as the doors lurched forward when Billy rammed against them again, trying to escape. The second impact loosened the restraints, and all Steve could do in that moment was watch as they rattled uselessly in place, beginning to slip through the handles as they hadn't been properly locked into place.

Cursing to himself, staggered to his feet and rushed to grab the chains, but as Billy threw his body against the doors again it soon became obvious that even if the doors stayed shut, they were about to pop free of their hinges entirely. Blood dripped down over his lips and onto the metal panels as he tried to think of what he could possibly do to counteract the damage Billy had done. In an act of desperation, he threw himself against the steel and hoped that his added bodyweight would be enough to keep them in place.

If it managed to do anything, he couldn't tell. Almost immediately Billy was throwing himself against the doors again, nearly bucking Steve off.

"Stop!" Steve cried out, grasping for the chains to hold them in place. His fingers scrabbled against the cold steel links even as Billy let out another deep, throaty growl. With the doors as loose as they were, Steve was almost certain the doors wouldn't survive another body-slam. "Give it up, Hargrove!" Steve said again, desperately. "Just- fuck, Billy, stop!"

He braced himself for another impact, but it never came. Eyes closed in anticipation, Steve blinked them open and exhaled shakily, his fingers trembling as he let the chains go. Crystalized air puffed out in front of his face over and over as he rolled off the doors and stood up unsteadily, trying to wipe away the blood that had already frozen over and turned to crust on his upper lip. Somehow, miraculously, his pleading had worked, but before he could take comfort in that fact, other disturbing sounds began to creep back up to him from down below.

Things were being tossed around; the metallic clang of old paint cans being bounced off the floors and walls mixed with the hoarse, angry vocalizations of the creature Billy had become made his blood run colder than the air currently was. The noises Billy was making were at once both animalistic and human, deep and throaty and more akin to the bellows of a moose than a man or wolf.

Steve stood in front of the cellar doors not knowing what to do. Already their plan was falling apart, and he was quickly becoming aware of how vastly unprepared he was to handle the situation. He wanted the security of the bat in his trunk, but didn't trust himself to leave the doors unattended for the length of time it would take him to run back inside and grab his keys to get it, but he felt so weak without it.

Another loud, crashing noise came from within and Steve stilled, listening intently. Faintly, he could hear Billy snuffling about, and after the sun finally completely descended, all was quiet. His nose was throbbing as he stood attentively, but when nothing more could be heard, his stomach sank.

With trembling hands and his mind screaming at him to stop, he knelt by the doors and slowly unwound the chains from the handles. The fact that he couldn't hear anything coming from within didn't sit well with him; he had to make sure Billy was still down there.

He tried to shift the chains as quietly as possible, but with how nervous he was, he had a hard time keeping his hands steady. They rattled noisily against the door, grating on his already frazzled nerves as they slid free. Heart pounding madly, Steve carefully pulled the doors open and took the first step down into the cellar.

It was silent. He couldn't hear anything as he hesitantly took a second step, mentally berating himself over and over for being stupid enough to walk defenseless into the lion's mouth. He had no idea what Billy was capable of now, or if he'd even recognize him enough to (hopefully) have enough sense to not harm him. The lightbulb that dangled freely from the ceiling was swaying, throwing its light around erratically, showing him glimpses of the gore that lined the steps.

Eyes wide, Steve gagged at the sight of the flayed strips of bloodied skin that were splattered near everywhere. He had to avert his eyes as he took another step, making slow progress as he was careful not to step in any of the mess. At the bottom of the stairs he warily peered around the walls, hoping he'd only stuck his head into the lion's mouth figuratively. To his immediate relief, but long-term dismay, there was no trace of Billy to be seen in the space of the cellar.

Exhaling deeply, Steve tried to even out his breathing as he came to stand in the middle of the room, looking around to assess the damage. As the swinging lightbulb steadied, he turned towards where the shelf that was hiding the tunnel had been and found it on the ground, knocked to its side and several feet away from where it had originally been positioned. His shoulders drooped at the realization of Billy's escape.

He went and stood before the opening of the tunnel and felt all hope of remedying the situation vanish. A numbness overtook him as he recognized his responsibilities of keeping Billy captive had changed; he was the only one who knew about Billy's circumstances, and he was the only one who could do anything about it now. Distantly, and much further away then he would've liked, he could hear the muted, labored sounds of Billy's breathing as he escaped confinement through the underground system.

The burden of his responsibilities threatened to overwhelm him in that instant, but instead of letting himself be overtaken by despair, Steve took a deep, steadying breath and rolled his shoulders back. He hesitated for only a minute before he took charge and ran in after him, disregarding his urgent need to turn back and get his bat out of the car. There was no time, he thought; no time to get a weapon, no time to get a flashlight. If Billy was now as the werewolf in the woods was, then he was capable of speeds greater than Steve could muster, and every second mattered. If he lost his trail now, then it would be lost to him entirely. There was no time; he had to go now or he wouldn't go at all.

Alone and unarmed Steve ran, chasing after Billy into the dark, cold tunnel, hoping he would be able to catch him in time, and dreading the repercussions that would come if he couldn't.

#harringrove #harringrove fic #billy hargrove/steve harrington #billy/steve #steve harrington #billy hargrove #werewolf!billy #slow burn #long fic #stranger things #stranger things fic

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