#its otto's fault too and they should both die

[dirtytransmasc]

[mild tw for marital rape/forced 'consent' its only referenced a little, but it feels necessary to mention it]

imagine Alicent only standing up for herself when Aegon is in the picture. Imagine her talking her son to her chambers cause he's fussy and won't go down for bed and was asking for his mum, and she has him tucked close, blissfully asleep, and Viserys calls for her.

she knows she can't refuse, but she tells the servant he had sent to make him aware of Aegon's state. he still demands that she be brought to his chambers and that the babe go back to his nursemaid. she looks down at her baby, who's now woken due to the disturbance, who is staring up at her with soft tired eyes, a little yawn escaping him.

she doesn't want to go, she doesn't want to be forced to take her husband, to pleasure him at her own discomfort. she doesn't want to leave her son, to have him sent back to bed where he will remain restless and in the care of someone who is not his mother. she had never want to refuse more than she did in that moment.

she hesitates, her facade falters. Aegon is still looking up at her as tears well up in her eyes. he quirks his head at her, fingers reaching for her cheeks as if to comfort her. with a sudden conviction, she takes him in her arms, rising from the bed, requesting a robe and a blanket. when her servant looks at her in question, she clarifies that she will be taking Aegon with her and does not wish to rouse him in attempts to dress him. they look at her with shock, but don't voice the concern written on their faces.

they bring her Viserys's favorite robe. Alicent recognizes it from her time with Rhaenyra and Aemma. she's worn it before, Viserys has made sure the servants bring it to her every time he requests her. she hates the way it feels against her skin, knowing why he makes her wear it. she wraps aegon in his blanket, soft and royal blue, his hands beginning to play with its golden tassles as she tucks him inside her robe, pressed to her chest with care.

even as fear bites at her heels, anxiety churning her stomach, she walks to Viserys's chamber with her held high. she knows she is only asking for her husband's wrath; she knows she should just obey him, but she just can't. her son will not suffer a sleepless night and horrid following day all because her husband feels the need to use her body once more. he will not suffer at his father's hands tonight, even if she has to endure Viserys's anger for it.

she enters her husband's chambers, finding him in bed, in a white night gown, clearly ready to use her; he was never subtle when he asked for her, not even the first time.

she pauses in the doorway, pulling back the robe slightly, making him aware of Aegon's presence. she watches his face fall, barely muted anger. she holds onto Aegon tighter. part of her fears he may hurt her for this disturbance, but more of her fears he will hurt Aegon on her behalf.

"I told the damned servants to take him," his voice is warped and cruel, just an angry scowl of sorts.

"Aegon is not well, dear husband... I could not leave him," she admits before he can say anything else. she puts her foot forward as a mother, hoping to claim mercy from the man who made her one.

he mutters something in response, not quite loud enough for her to hear. she has a feeling she is grateful for that.

"what was it you needed, my dear?" she tries to sound sweet and kind, in attempts to abate his anger, "I'm sure I could still attend to it."

"you know what I wanted," he yelled. it had been the first time he'd truly raised his voice to her. she couldn't help but gasp, stepping back one step, than two, stopping when Aegon began to fuss, curling around him instead.

"Please Viserys, the baby." she ducks her head down to press her against his whispy white hair. her son his huffing, as if about to cry, and she's sure if she could see his face, his little cheeks would be red and his eyes would be crinkled and wet, his lip puckered. she begins to rock him slightly, still afraid to move.

"your'e dismissed," he grunts, but his tone gives it away. she knows he doesn't mean it, the if she leaves she will be in more trouble. she questions staying, calling a servant to take Aegon and giving him what he wants, but decides against it. he would not come before her son, not now, not ever.

"I'm sorry, my dear, another night, when I do not have Aegon to tend to," she forces some cheer into her tone, "he is still so young, so helpless. he needs his mother. I'm sure you understand?"

"he is not the only one in need of you." he had not lost his anger yet. not even for the sake of his son.

"yes, of course. forgive me. only he is not as understanding as you, my love." that wasn't the truth, Aegon was more kind and understanding at a year old, than viserys was in all of his years. "I will leave now. I am sorry for the disturbance."

she pauses for a moment, waiting for her husbands reaction. when he doesn't lash out at her, she breathes a quiet sigh of relief, feeling as though she has evaded a great beast. her heart calms in her chest, slowing from its fluttering and her stomachs stops its dizzing ache. she questions turning and running, fleeing from his presence before he can change his mind, but knows better.

she hurries to his side, eyeing him all the while, each step calculated, avoiding cracking any eggshells, until she is close enough to kiss his cheek. he allows it, and gives Aegon grace when he reaches out for him, letting him play with his finger a moment, before pulling it away, not even turning away fully before sneering. she takes that as her cue to leave, this one being much more genuine than the last.

"goodnight dear husband." he says nothing. she takes Aegon's little hand, waving it slightly, "say goodnight Aegon."

her son tries to imitate her, though unintelligible, as a toddler would. she continues to smile and coo at him even when his father ignores him, not letting him feel his father's scorn, quickly turning towards the door and back to her own chambers.

the second the door is close she feels herself sag, she would have fallen to the floor right then and there had there not been kingsgaurd watching. instead she holds her head high once more, walking calm and steady, like a queen should.

Aegon settles his forehead against her collar, giving a great yawn against her skin. she smiles at him fondly, kissing his brow, earning a tired little giggle from him. it hits her that he is unaware of the trouble he just saved her from. she feels equal parts relief as she does terror; she hopes he never knows, never understands, but is so so thankful for it none the less.

the second she steps into her chambers she pulls of the robe, setting it aside carefully despite the pain it brings her, respecting the memories it carried. she pulls back the covers before smothering her and her son amongst them. he's quick to curl against her, quite tuckered out after their harrowing adventure, even if he was unaware of its true weight. she herself still wanted to cry, but was similarly too tired to keep her eyes open for another moment. tomorrow, she tells herself, tomorrow will be difficult, but tonight you have your son, tonight you have a chance to rest.

so she does, she holds him close, tracing fingers over the gold threaded patterned of his blanket, feeling the shifting of his chest as he breathes and the tickle of his hair against her neck. all is well in that moment. she drifts to sleep at the thought.

[kitkatscabinet]

Do you think; IF Rhaenyra had a daughter by laenor, this could have been a way to build a peace between the greens and the blacks?

Hear me out:

- Alicent sees her and Rhaenyra’s friendship in the friendship between Aemond and his niece

- When Rhaenyra’s daughter is old enough, she could be Jace’s older sister or younger sister(like Rhaenyra slept w both Laenor and Harwin and Laenor’s genes won out) she tells Rhaenyra “Hey I love Aemond and maybe we can fix this”

- NOTE: Rhaenyra’s daughter is the only one who EVER apologised to Aemond for what happened to him by her brothers

- And Otto wants to see the baby as soon as its born (Like Alicent w rhaenyra). So The daughter is like “get me a dress” and carries her kid into a council meeting and Aemond is like “what the fxck”

Ooooh I have so many thoughts about this, I’ll probably write a whole fic later but for now

Honestly the thing about the dance is that there are so many ways it could have been stopped but also at the same time it was always going to happen.

Like it’s a conflict that’s been 20+ years in the making that has consistently been fuelled not only by Rhaenyra and Alicent and thus their kids but by the fuckheads like Daemon and Otto.

I think ultimately the dance is kind of a culmination from years of machinations of power hungry and ambitious men. Then it’s fuelled by Rhaenyra’s selfishness and Alicent’s blindness/refusal to make amends due to her fathers influence.

I imagine the best way for that to be resolved would be on the off miracle that jace and Laenor’s true born were twins. Rare but not frankly impossible, another thing that I think the show should have done also was to keep Rhaenys’s hair black like it is in the books. Naturally there’s still the issue that Jace, like and Joffrey are fuckin pasty as but it would be much easier to pass off Baratheon genes if Jace and reader were twins. It would also be best if she was the oldest and therefore the heir, setting a precedence for female heirs. (Even better if they work in tandem with Driftmark to make Laena heir and then one of the twins)

The next issue you’ve got is the way Jace and Luke treat Aemond even before he claims Vhagar and the way Rhaenyra treats her siblings. If Aemond and reader were close she would have to beat her little brothers asses (and Aegon’s) because there’s a difference between teasing between family members and downright maliciousness even if the boys don’t realise they’re being mean.

There’s also the issue that ultimately Alicent’s children think that if big sis takes the throne then they die. So regardless of whether a daughter is close with uncles and aunt Rhaenyra herself has to be the one to close that bridge. I imagine the kid will be have to be the one to force Alicent and Rhaenyra to make up cause both are too proud/unsure to do it themselves no matter how much they want to.

Ok so Vhagar incident which is heavily fuelled by Aemond’s continued mistreatment which we’ve minimised. Say he still loses an eye that would just immediately destroy and tentative bonds that have been built. It’s not enough to just apologise, Aemond has been permanently maimed and Rhaenyra is trying to make it his fault even when he did not start the fight even if she is appalled her son did that cause she’s still going to try and protect her sons.

There has to be some sort of punishment for the blacks. Viserys is still soft and thus betrothal between Aemond/reader and Jace/Helaena he’s had enough of this shit he just peace’s the fuck out and leaves the squabbling to the kids.

Aegon fosters at dragonstone and Luke Jace at kings landing.

RHAENYRA TELLS RHAENYS THAT LAENOR ISNT DEAD.

There’s still the issue of Otto but through forced exposure everyone has begrudgingly come to love each other and then I imagine Otto demanding to see the baby is the last straw and Aemond fucking loses it. It’s glorious.

[lemonhemlock]

Rhaenicent is what would have been if game of thrones supported danyxsansa. For all of its faults I'm so extremely glad that d&d didn't make it happen. It would have destroyed sansas characterisation where she would have willing bowed down to Dany who is a foreign invader who never gave a fuck about the north, starks or even about jon.

Clearly hotd is so much worse with their increased grooming , sexism and frankly illogical and inconsistent characterisation (that was not in the books). I'm so certain that with how wishy washy they have made alicent they will go with the poisoning theory (to me the show feels like if rhaenyra and her children are in the same danger alicent saves rhaenyra...i guess this may be controversial) and i wish i never got invested in this dumb show. I mean if that is how they conclude everything and if alicent thinks rhaenyra will make a great queen why did she even force aegon to take the throne? He never wanted it. Forcing him also puts helaena and their children in danger. Alicent should have left them to escape and go to essos or something. Maybe helaena convinces aemond and daeron too.

I miss cersei's character who doesn't give a damn about anyone else other than her children and power. She was awesome and after all she went through with robert and tywin she never became as much as a weak character as show!alicent. Both show!rhaenyra and show!alicent cannot hold a candle to cersei(the first and last woman to sit on IT).

Sorry for the rambling, but i feel they should have kept with book alicent age wise ...it would have given less grooming with viserys and otto and i always prefer that. And maybe instead of shipping, people need to focus more on politics.

Always here for the Cersei stanning, but, in all fairness, her goals were much clearer by the nature of the plot - her children are bastards and Robert's only presumed trueborns, she has the means to crown them and she will, otherwise they all die. Whereas the show did a poor job of explaining to the layman why Aegon's claim is superior and why the green children (at least the male ones) are in danger in Rhaenyra took the throne.

That being said, Cersei is her own character and we don't have to clone her every time we need to fill up the Queen spot. I quite liked that they made Alicent distinct, softened her up and gave her internal conflict. Rhaenicent adds a lot to the conversation as a lesbian love story in a medieval setting and subverts the evil stepmother trope. Alicent isn't devoid of a grooming storyline in the books - a highborn girl like her being nursemaid to Old King Jaehaerys is sketchy AF and a honeytrap. Mushroom also says Alicent slept with Viserys before Aemma died. In "The Rogue Prince", it is suggested Daemon deflowered Alicent.

Escaping to Essos has kind of become the go-to solution for everything, but, as Viserys & Daenerys can testify, that doesn't mean they are out of danger, always chased by "the usurper's knives". Saera can live her life in peace because she is a woman with no real claim on the throne; Alicent's trueborn sons? I wouldn't be so sure about that.

Rhaenicent is what would have been if game of thrones supported danyxsansa. For all of its faults I'm so extremely glad that d&d didn't make it happen. It would have destroyed sansas characterisation where she would have willing bowed down to Dany who is a foreign invader who never gave a fuck about the north, starks or even about jon.

There was no reason to make Dany x Sansa happen because they already erased Jon's personality and goals in order for Jonerys to happen. And D&D would not have had the balls to make a major lesbian pairing front & centre of their show either. 🤷‍♀️ Not that I think DxS was desirable in any way lol.

[chiseler]

The Last Light

There is a moment in David Lynch's Twin Peaks: The Return that on its incandescent surface could have been lifted, weightless, from the great post-war dream of materialist deliverance: The top on the convertible is down, the radio on; The Paris Sisters are singing I Love How You Love Me as a reincarnated Laura Palmer lifts her face to a cloudless sky. Within the tapestry of this early Phil Spector production — his trademark reverb eternally associated with Romance and Death (two conditions Spector knew all too well) — the voice of Priscilla Paris is a siren sound from the American Beyond. We could be hearing a dream goddess lullaby from the whispering gallery, or sweet nothings from the crypt. We don't know. We'll never know. Just as Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood keeps us guessing with the elusive murmur that “Sharon Tate will never die,” granting her a gaudy, wondrous L.A. to cavort in where it's 1969 forever and movie stars still matter, so we find ourselves in Tarantino’s version of paradise (complete with flame throwers to the face). In this oneiric echo chamber, momentarily shared by Lynch and Tarantino, Surrealism smiles down upon a vision of American blondness; muscle cars soaked in sunlight; the terrible ecstasy of unending motion; candy for the eye and ear.

David Lynch’s favorite film, to this day, remains Otto e Mezzo, directed by Western Europe's sorcerer of confectionary delights, Federico Fellini; the man who put the “dolce” in La Dolce Vita. And here you have a fleeting taste of ideologies swirled together and spun like ribbon candy: a blur of four-wheeled luxury from the New World, zooming past regional splendor into that fraternity of man: the socio-economic nirvana imagined by Karl Marx.

Careening from one via to another at harrowing, white-knuckle speeds, Fellini was heard to lament that “Some of the neo-realists seem to think that they cannot make a film unless they have a man in old clothes in front of the camera.” George Bluestone, recording these words in 1957 for the pages of Film Culture, was sittings in the literal passenger seat of the ideal metaphor of post-war ebullience in action: that famous Black Chevy skirting the Italian Scylla (the Vatican) and its equally dogmatic Charybdis (the Party); expert, 20th century precision guiding them through Roman streets with graffiti-scrawled churches proudly bearing the hammer and sickle. At those velocities, anything could make sense.

“What for you is the greatest human quality?”, Bluestone asks. Fellini responds, “Love of one’s fellows,” a period-appropriate oath that rings true to his brand of ecumenical solidarity.

“The greatest fault?”

“Egoism.”

Try, if you will, to imagine our more locally sourced egoists nodding along with Fellini in soulful agreement on that one. As a kind of compatriot of Edgar Allan Poe, David Lynch (and, to some extent, Tarantino) spawns from his abiding axiom that “The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetic topic in the world.” In Lynch’s hands, American television has become a brightly lit seance for Poe’s ethereal dead. Immortal creatures afflicted with the dream of physical existence, then afflicting the dreamers. Twin Peaks: The Return modifies Poe's axiomatic truth with great help from Amanda Seyfried's Becky and her pair of visionary's eyes, melting Spector's dark edifice of sugar in deathless, Sternbergian close-up — iridescent search lights, ever more urgently scanning the sky above for a sun to swallow her whole. We can only witness and internalize this shimmering ingenue trading places with Old Sol, as if the drugs she's consumed have entered our system and not hers.

Filmmakers like Fellini and Lynch celebrate bodily extremes in intriguing, if differing ways that should naturally gallop right beyond the pale but nevertheless become wholly, weirdly digestible. It is perhaps the innocent glee, even wonderment, of these artists in the vast variety of shapes the human body can assume; innocence which acts as a giant eraser for every awareness on our part of how physical representation in the age of political correctness is meant to function. Lynch is able to present the disabled as by turns childlike, mysterious or magical beings without ever worrying about lending them agency (The Elephant Man's John Merrick is a passive whipping boy for seemingly the whole of Victorian London) or the lie of adult sophistication (the latest Twin Peaks iteration includes a pint-sized hitman who whines like a puppy when his icepick is broken).

Fellini's dwarfs and grotesques, on the other hand, emerge from the struggle of a one-time Marc'Aurelio cartoonist willing one-dimensional images into three-dimensional embodiment. His big women, of course, are fetish figures. They always were. Gargantuan beauties, evidence of a sexual ideal formed in infancy: the big Italian mammissima, seen from below. As Fellini grew into a rather large adult himself, this ideal was simply re-scaled accordingly (even the icy mountain of Anita Ekberg takes on new implication). Goddesses all, they are, however, not meant for conventional movie stardom.

And what of Tarantino? Once Upon a Time's Margot Robbie IS the no-longer-doomed Sharon Tate as she watches herself on the big screen; enjoying a thrill that few have ever known so guilelessly that any half-baked charges of narcissism shrivel to nullity before they can escape a single throat. Here before us is an essential glimpse into the vanishing phenomenon of movie stardom itself, reflexive handwringing from the woke balconies notwithstanding. Tarantino has at last achieved something transcendental: even his grotesques — slack-jawed, gap-toothed, gormless members of the Manson Family conflated with more contemporary Identitarian cultists on the lookout for 'Lookism', knives unsheathed — are downright mythic. Robbie's Tate is a visage both generically perfect and possessed by the angels, every one of them a blond resident of LA County, sincere and unknowable as desert light.  

The vampires, creatures of night slain by sunlight, infiltrated the movie theaters in the 1920s and never left. They sit next to us in the dark, having ceded the power to hypnotize us to the glowing screen itself. Photochemical vagaries invariably allow movie darkness to behave in impossible ways; as if the physical properties of film itself knew no rules, and thus invited us to accept its essential anarchy without question. Before us is a darkness that GLOWS.

A Black & White image flipped into negative can produce black fire, or the black sunlight which illuminated the Transylvanian forests of Nosferatu, through which a box-like carriage rattles at Mack Sennett speed. But with only the smallest underexposure, a little dupey degradation of the print, or even a little imagination (such collaboration is not discouraged), this liquid blackness will spread anywhere, everywhere; the most luminous pestilence known to creation. Be it in the laughing nightmare of Fleischer cartoons of old (Out of the Inkwell, indeed) or Jean Epstein's photogenie phantasmagoria, we're left to wonder. Is daylight burning out the corner of a building, or is it the blackness of the building which is eating into the sky? As with so many such questions, film permits us no answer. We are to simply watch as characters smudge, their shadows emanating out beyond themselves, pulsing and flickering with an obsidian internal flame.

By the time Jean Epstein adapted The Fall of the House of Usher in 1928, it could wisely be said that Poe had been already aggrandized through the mechanism of carbon-arc projection; which is but one way to say that the vision that once seemed unharnessable, had at last been industrialized. Dragooned. Pressed into an ever more modern service at a pace to be measured in frames-per-second. Artists like Epstein and Chomon were the first generation to wield an immense cultural and commercial instrument; at once abidingly real and totally incomprehensible. No medium of expression predating cinema could so thoroughly lift audiences from linear time, or could as convincingly, in the words of Jean Epstein, render death as a conscious state.

Transcendentalism barely scratches the surface here. A more apposite term — the one he nuances in his film theory, “photogenie” (a genesis out of light) — pulls transitory moments, otherwise escaping human perception, into focus. If Poe engrosses us in Romantic conceptions of death as a means to visionary truth, Epstein reveals that same supposedly “elusive” end in our earthly world of telephones, sports cars, Kodak cameras for the every-man and moderne manicures for up-to-the-minute dandies.

The Victorians were falling away. And with them a system of reality contained in narrow, overwrought performances. Withered technique as a means of reflecting Nature — or, to quote Balzac, the “conjugation of objects with light” — was displaced, uncrowned by Jean Delville’s Death (1890), which embodies an altogether different kind of virtuosity, one no Academy could ever comprehend. The charcoal drawing and ode to Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death yearns with a combination of verve and starkness toward a capital “G” Gloom destined to escape salons.

Coming of age in a series of shady elsewheres — the fairgrounds, nickelodeon parlors and movie palaces of an Edwardian America — nitrate and its twinkling mineral essence gave Poe's crepuscular light its time to shine and  thereby illuminate the world. No longer held in the solitary confinement of a page of reproduced text or an image, however still, rendered in paint or ink. Poe's singularly tormented vision was finally written alchemically, in cinematographic rays beamed through silver salts; into moving images of such aggressive vitality as to blast every rational thing from one's mind.

All hail magic mirrors! Celestial mandalas! Giant eggs and butterfly women! Segundo de Chomón's The Red Spectre (1907) ruthlessly invades our eyes with a wraith-magician dissolving through his coffin lid in a red, hand-tinted, flame-flickering hell. His caped, skull-masked presence was to herald the manic new thespic truth that, from this moment forward, the art of acting is in how you respond to light, and how light responds to you. The Specter of Chomon's dark bauble is in every element Poe's Red Death — japing and performing tricks for us, his adoring fans and welcome guests, before announcing our doom — literary metaphor slammed against a literal backdrop of amber stalactites, pellucid as an ossuary.

Doctor Pretorius might have been musing on the history of cinema in 1935’s The Bride of Frankenstein when he said: “Sometimes I have wondered whether life wouldn't be much more amusing if we were all devils, no nonsense about angels and being good.”

by Daniel Riccuito, Tom Sutpen and David Cairns

[justbitthedust]

Talon In The Belfry [Chpt. 3]

A/N: At this point I give up trying to update regularly. I’m so so sorry that you guys are forced to put up with this sporadic mess!

Anyways, onto the overdue update!

Warnings: Graphic descriptions of torture

Prologue | I | II | III |

It is choking, gasping for air that it will never inhale, swallowing water in the vain attempts for oxygen. Talon’s vision is blurred by the water surrounding it as bubbles of the oxygen Talon so desperately covets are expelled from its mouth and nostrils. Water rushes into Talon’s throat and it chokes on the liquid, thrashing in the chains that trap it in vain attempts to free itself.

Talon’s body begins to convulse at the lack of air, vision going spotty.

What the worst part about this is? Talon can do nothing but choke on the water. It cannot die. All it can do is feel its lungs crowd with water and yearn for oxygen it might never breathe, and eventually black out from asphyxiation.

Hours pass before Talon feels the water in the tank draining, its body sinking along with the until it lies limp on the ground, Talon coughing up all the water in its lungs as it lies there, unmoving.

As the oxygen returns to its brain and it becomes aware of everything again, Talon is hefted up by its arms and dragged to a chair where it is unceremoniously dumped.

Pain flares up Talon’s head from the impact it makes on the ground, but the only reaction is a subtle hitch in its breath, and the action jarred its lungs even more to force more water from its lips.

It is dragged onto the chair before it is strapped down to it with thick, rough leather straps on its wrists and legs.

This is something Talon is unfamiliar with.

Talon’s head is fuzzy and numb; it feels like everything is hazy and muddled.

One of the other Talons—a Senior Talon from all the gold embellishments adorning its uniform—stepped forward holding a simple blade in-hand.

A mere glance at the weapon has Talon jerking back and thrashing in the bonds. Even with a hazy mind Talon can recognize the glowing yellow liquid on the edges of the blade. The liquid that was specifically engineered to elicit immense pain for Talons. The liquid every Talon fears and makes a point to avoid being subjected to.

“N—n—nnn!” The fog in Talon’s mind is clearing but slowly. All it can manage is the single noise—it’s all that Talon can manage to say; all it remembers.

For all the response the Senior Talon offers, it may as well have been nothing as the Talon walks until it stands right in front of Talon’s thrashing body. The Talon reaches out with a hand and digs its fingers into Talon’s scalp, the extremely sharp tips of the glove the Talon wears cutting into Talon’s head harshly, forcing Talon to still as it pushes Talon’s head back.

Talon is given no time to prepare for what comes next as the Senior Talon thrusts the blade into Talon’s chest and twists it.

Searing pain races through Talon’s veins and it arches off the chair as much as possible, mouth opening in a shriek of agony, heart hammering against its chest. Its vision had exploded in white stars when the blade’s tip pierced its skin—the entire blade being buried to the hilt then twisted? The sound to tear from Talon’s throat is inhuman. Its chest heaves and the pain pulses with every frantic beat of its heart.

But the Senior Talon wasn’t done.

Without so much as a twitch or millisecond of hesitation the blade that the Talon still holds is dragged downward, cutting through flesh, muscle, and leather like a hot knife would part butter. The mind-numbing pain ripping throughout Talon’s body is immeasurable and it blacks out for what feels like seconds before there’s a sharp snap sound and Talon feels the broken rib, swallowing the shriek of pain and instead screaming through gritted teeth.

The Senior Talon held up a bloody hand, and in it was Talon’s broken rib, though Talon could barely make it out through the blurriness of its vision.

At this point, Talon should have expected what happens next. The other Talon removes the blade from Talon’s chest only to cut its arm open—which prompts another cry of pain—and force the rib bone into a space where it would fit. Then the Senior Talon stood back and watched, waiting. Talon isn’t sure what the other waits for, until it feels it.

The rib bone started to migrate back to where it belonged, cutting and forcing its way through muscle and tendons excruciatingly.

Immortality. A torture.

Just before the bone settles, the Senior Talon steps forward to cut the healed flesh and muscle of Talon’s chest open again to repeat the process.

Talon screams its throat raw.

Hours later Talon is left in its room, broken, bloody, and sporting a new implant in its neck. Talon doesn’t know what it’s for, but the exhaustion and pain wore to the bone. Instead of dwell on the harsh discipline it’d just received, Talon collapsed boneless on its bed, eyes dim and resigned, everything aching.

As its eyes slid shut, Talon figured a nap wouldn’t be too bad.

The sound of the doorknob turning is what has Talon on its feet in an instant, fatigue suddenly unimportant, back straight as it could be as it continued to minutely correct itself after being repeatedly broken and cut open. Talon catches a glimpse of itself in the mirror and sees a bruise blooming on its left cheek before the door opens and Talon’s gaze snaps forward to the wall of the room.

“Talon,” a silky voice speaks. Talon doesn’t respond but to bow its head slightly. “Look at me as I speak to you, weapon,” the voice snaps.

Talon obeys, sliding its golden eyes to meet the black eyes of a white mask. A Master, Talon instantly knows, both because of the mask and dress. The Master wears black slacks, a black button-up shirt, a white vest, and a white tie. A stark contrast to the Talons who serve the Owls and Masters.

Owls and Masters are different, in one way. Owls wear pins on their ties and dresses, and their masks have a small dot on the forehead, the Court’s small crest. Behavior-wise, Owls never interact with their Talons. Only the Masters do.

The Master holds an arm out, a manila folder in the extended hand which Talon accepts with deft movements.

Still Talon does not speak.

“Read up on your new assignment, weapon. You do not have any time limit for this target due to the threat level.” With a sharp click of the tongue, the Master comments snidely on Talon’s battered appearance and exits, expensive shoes squeaking slightly on the smooth rock floor.

Only when the door is closed does Talon again go boneless on its bed. The folder Talon keeps tightly clutched in a hand, the session it’d just had with the Disciplinaries fresh in its mind and irrationally making Talon fear that if it allowed anything to mess up with the contents inside the folder, there would be pain sure to come.

Talon swallowed thickly, hating itself for being afraid, but unwilling to close its eyes for every time it did it saw and remembered everything that happened with vivid, painful clarity. A powerful shudder tore through it, but Talon forces its mind elsewhere. Dwelling on the trauma would do it no good. It has a new assignment to see through, and it needs to get details on its new target before it can do anything.

With the objective of getting information in mind, Talon sat up on the plush bed and slid a gauntleted finger between the flaps of the folder, opening it. The first thing Talon sees makes it freeze, and it is sure its eyes are wide.

That… That was a picture of Charlie, there, paperclipped to the edge of the first paper, granted that he looked younger.

Something in its gut twisted violently but Talon ignored it, licking at its lips and biting at the lower one before tearing its gaze away from the smiling boy to read the information on the file.

Full Name: Charles Otto Udesis

Date Of Birth: November 11, 1991

Age: 13

Blood Type: A

Ethnicity: English-American

Skin: White

Eyes: Grey

Distinguishing features (if any): Birthmark on left side of chin

Reason for Talon potential: Udesis survives in the Bowery with his mother, father, and little sister. His father works as an un-corrupt officer in the GCPD, his mother works wherever will hire, Otto Udesis himself does not work, and neither does his sister. Udesis excels in his classes and shows great physical prowess. He obeys every command issued to him by his family without hesitation. With certainty I say that if his father told him to jump off a bridge, the boy will do it without a second thought. Obedience and physical capabilities are why I recommend the boy.

The signature of who wrote this… This recommendation is unreadable, but Talon finds that it rather not know just who subjected Charles to this life.

Again swallowing thickly, Talon checks the year this was filled.

August 16, 2005.

Talon’s target is Charles.

Talon’s target is Charles.

Talon’s target is Charlie.

With a deep breath, Talon closes its eyes and focuses on its emotions—that are haywire—to utterly tramp them down. Charles, was a Talon. Just as Talon itself is. Talon has an obligation and Charlie knew this—it’s not Talon’s fault that Charlie decided to… to… to leave. From what Talon read, the Court gave him a better life: food, shelter, training to defend himself, safety, and only asked for one thing in return.

Grip on the folder in its hands tightening so much that the thing starts to tear, Talon gritted its teeth.

Damn it Charlie, it mentally snarled, a low growl slipping past its lips outwardly.

Damn him for doing this to Talon. Charlie was Talon’s friend—the last thing Talon wants to do is hunt him. Especially because it knows the look Charlie will give him. The one that he shouldn’t be able to give because he’s a Talon that went through the same thing Talon itself did, and it makes no sense how someone can go through that and manage to be sympathetic and understanding like that. It wasn’t fair because Talon came out like this and Charlie came out like that and—

Talon cut its thoughts off savagely, eyes snapping open, hands slamming the folder shut, and hissed. This was ridiculous. Talon refuses to start being jealous of its only friend, when they’ve known each other for the entirety of Talon’s time with the Court.

Talon stood and went to set the folder on the dresser. There was no information in that folder that would help Talon locate Charlie, unless he had his memories. In which case Charlie would immediately seek out his sister, at least to make sure she was okay and alive, before finding the Bat.

But Talon wasn’t supposed to know anything of Charlie’s plans to escape. Essentially, it had nowhere to start. It could give Charlie as much time as possible before the Court grew suspicious of his lack of progress, so that is what Talon would do.

Mind made up with grim finality, Talon began to sharpen its blades as it waited for thirty more minutes to pass. Then it would leave to start the “hunt”.

Out of obligation Talon would track its friend. Out of choice would it postpone the foreseeable inevitable as long as possible to give its friend a chance.

Tags: @mizmahlia @boosyboo9206 @an-all-write-life @lovelywally-deactivated20181210 @avengerdragoness @crazyfreckledginger @red-balistic @solis200213 @emmadevr @tomscaprisun @whambamthanksbatfam @queen-fighter @jaybird-rednerd @shirokokuro @aaren-27 @osejn

[readbythestarlight]

c2e24 reactions

Sam’s rejected ads

“All over my Emmet Smith commemorative snuggle!”

“IT’S A TROY AIKMEN SNUGGIE!!!”

SAM THAT SONG ROUGH DRAFT WASN’T FUNNY omg

I like how Sam’s ads are clearly 90% to make his friends die of laughter and 10% to actually promote D&D Beyond

Not immediately knowing that Jester was drawing a dick with her sparkler smh

Fjord seems really not sure about this town and I love it

Marisha/Beau meanwhile is really into it

I like how Fjord, the shiftiest fuck in the group, is concerned about other people being shifty fucks

I MISS YOU ASHLEY SOMEONE BUY YASHA A FLOWER NECKLACE

Beau just bought so many explosives

BEAU BUY FLOWERS FOR YASHA

the flower vendor’s voice I’m crying omg

omg they’re gonna explode the firecrackers with firebolts in the street these nerds

They are all so giggly tonight I love them

Oooo here we go Jester on the piano

“I’m going to sit down and try to play Chopsticks” I knew it xD

“blamblamblamblamblAMBLAMBLAMBLAM”

Beau and Molly with their charisma flops

“I like you, you’re colorful.” Molly flirting with the innkeeper is giving me life

Oh god drinking contest later

Fjord is regretting sharing rooms with Molly now lol

They are being SO GOOFY tonight I’m living

Aww they ended up with a sad babby outcast gnome

Molly stepping in like a total dad

MOLLY HAS THE WORST CHARISMA AND INTIMIDATION

oh fuck this gnome punk flicked him off

omg Molly blood maledict?? ….actually since it won’t hurt him he probably deserved it.

GUYS OMG

So is tiny gnome chick’s name Reesa?

Beau continues to prove that she is the ultimate disaster lesbian

Nott and Jester choreographing a dance oh boy

TEAM DRINKING COMPETITION OMG

DONT. FUCKING. LEAVE. KIRI.

sure Nott let’s pay a working woman to babysit your baby bird

YA’LL. DON’T.

Oh right just have Yasha babysit Kiri that’s using your noggin there Molly

The innkeeper flirting with both Molly and Fjord

IM

CRYING

Fjord is so awkward

“She’s small, I can hold her down” Matt that was perfect and the most in-character way you could have played Yasha

Please stay safe Kiri my baby bird daughter child light of my life

OH DAMN JESTER

Jester being jealous trying to be catty with the innkeeper

B: “Did you just put a hooker on layaway?”

F: “Did you just say I’d had sex with your mom??”

J: “Yeah as soon as I said it I realized it sounded really creepy.”

Insight checking to find out if Fjord is a virgin omg

Caleb back to looking for bookstores that’s my boy

Molly please tell me you’re getting flowers for Yasha

Ah frick Nott you should be more careful please

Aw Nott don’t be sad :(((((

I’m glad Beau is trying to reassure her about not feeling bad about herself

Ooooo some Beau backstory

lol Beau was a bootlegger juvenile delinquent I love her even more

Holy shit her dad paid the monks to abduct her no wonder she has issues with authority

Jester is basically offering Fjord free sex at this point she wants him real bad

Meanwhile Travis is dying

Yoooo my boy found his bookstore

They’re closed, of course. But he can go back in the morning.

SOMEBODY BUY YASHA A PRETTY SILK FLOWER THING DAMMIT PLEASE

Matt’s little girl voices are the fucking cutest things help me

Jester setting up a playdate for Kiri I’m not crying you are

Tara is the cutest baby gnome child ever

Save a flower for Yasha please I’m literally begging

Caleb encouraging Nott to dance my heart

The Wand of Smiles thing kills me every time they use it

Matt is having WAY too much fun playing this innkeeper dwarf

30 gold just to get blackout drunk my god

Caleb needs to blackout he’s probably a lightweight

Oh damn wait Jester should probably

If anyone wins this for them it will be Nott she’s practically always drunk already

Aw poor Jester

Matt stop with all these adorable bird and gnome children I want to adopt them all

NOTT’S GONNA USE THE DAILY LUCK smart girl

SCOREBOARD TIME Molly’s round: Molly: loses, wins, wins, wins Duncan: wins, loses, loses, loses MOLLY WINS and he’s drunk as fuck Beau’s round: Beau: TIE, wins, loses, wins, loses, loses Ruth: TIE, loses, wins, loses, wins, wins Beau loses… and pukes. Ew. Caleb’s round (oh boy…): Caleb: WINS, loses, loses, wins!, WINS!!! Valkin: loses, wins, wins, loses, loses (Nott and Jester distraction dance) CALEB WINS WITH A NAT20 HEEEELLL YEAH THAT’S MY SON THAT’S MY BOY Fjord’s round: Fjord: wins, loses, WINS!, WINS! Tanya: loses, wins, loses (loooool fjord flirting with his competitor) (Jester plz stop you’re gonna make Caleb puke) FJORD WINS WITH DOUBLE NAT20s OMG!! oh no don’t do it double or nothing please oh god they’re gonna do it here we go Nott’s round (please kick his ass Nott plz): Nott “Otto The Bottomless Pit”: wins, wins!, loses, WINS!!!!!!!!!! Blemy “The Whale”:  loses, loses, wins, loses (making herself look gross lol. And using mage hand to pour. Jester trying to bless him.) NOTT WINS HEEEELLLL YEAH

I really thought they were all gonna lose omg

oh no

oh thank god he passed out before he could out her as a goblin

WOOOO FREE DRINKS

Please go to bed everyone

“The mighty nein, the mighty nein, the mightiest nein to ever neeeiiiinnn”

There’s a lot of love between this group right now. They just need to be wasted to show how much they like each other lol

Awww Jester and Caleb waltzing that’s cute

Molly and Nott join in and suddenly its a dance party

OH SHIT CALEB SAID SHIT HE SHOULDN’T HAVE SAID I’m crying he was into Astrid and now he’s sad

And Jester gets him into bed I CRY

I didn’t need Caleb feelings WHY

Wait what is Molly doing?

Ah blood magic stuff

I’m beginning to expect that Taliesin is drunk irl

MOLLY OMG THAT’S DISGUSTING

Matt’s just like “no, no, we’re not doing that no” he’s a total dad

BEAU GOT PICKPOCKETED

she lost 300 gold wtf

who was close to her I can’t even think of who it might have been

THEY HAVE ALL BEEN PICKPOCKETED

OH MY GOD

NOTT, MOLLY, FJORD, CALEB, AND BEAU HAVE ALL BEEN ROBBED

that’s bad

The only inconspicuous figure I can think of is the little girl but I mean…

Are they gonna accuse the little gnome girl omg you guys I wasn’t serious

Whatever happened to Reesa/Risa?

Oh there she is

JESTER DO NOT

Hnnn they gotta learn not to cast the spells so casually on people it’s gonna come back to bite them in the ass

Awww buying Kiri a cute little music box

Repeating crossbow aw damn Nott’s gonna want it real badly

ENCHANTED repeating crossbow

“The Tinkertop Bolt Blaster 1000”

two thousand gold i choked

REESA BE NICE TO YOUR ADORABLE DAD

Reesa and her dad are adorable I like them

Casting suggest sure let’s just cast more spells on random people smh

You made Fitz cry you guys and you’re probably gonna get them fires it’s not their fault you were dumb enough to get robbed this is a dick move I’m with Jester y’all are taking it too far

Okay good at least now they won’t get fired

OH OH OH THEY GOT A BLIP CHASE IT

god please protect kiri she only has 6hp guys please

IT WAS THE KID OMG

Molly’s about to give him all his gold look at his face

Or Beau will give them gold and Molly will give them advice on how to steal and not get caught stealing xD

…Fjord are you seriously planning a jailbreak right now

Do you even know anything about the prison

Nott is like “the solution is obvious we just adopt them like we adopted Kiri it’ll be great it’ll be fine”

…Fjord that’s soft and sweet I hate you because I can’t decided whether I love you or not

Nott playing on Beau’s backstory to try and prompt her to help find the kid’s parents

“leaving them as cold heartless resting bitches” xD

FJORD KEEPS BEING NICE AND IM. JUST. I WANNA JUST KEEP PICTURING YOU AS A SHIFTY FUCK STOP BEING SO NICE

Also yeah listen Fjord grew up in an orphanage

aw Fjord…

Caleb’s a little salty about this but Caleb come on they’re kids

I can’t believe they’re gonna try to pull off a jailbreak

Leave Kiri with these kids yes and now Matt I beg you do NOT, do NOT let her get dragged away please I beg you

Matt’s ability to perfectly mimic Fjord/Travis is amazing

MAN THIS WAS POSSIBLY THE BEST EPISODE? I loved it. I was laughing so hard for all the first half. Fantastic job @the cast

[qqueenofhades]

bloodsport [fighting in a love war]

requested by @stardustrebelprincess, who wanted angsty first time smut for Garcy in future canon. to which I say, yes. also, yes.

rated explicit.

available on AO3.

Lucy has heard the rain drumming on the roof all evening. It hasn’t stopped since they got back – barely – from November 1884. The Berlin Conference, where the voracious European powers decided how to split up and colonize Africa, the kind of historical event that is already evil enough that Rittenhouse can hardly do much worse. Not, of course, that they have not tried. The delegates of fourteen countries, including the United States, attended the conference, and the American contingent included both Rittenhouse operatives, on one hand, and Flynn, Lucy, and Wyatt on the other. (Rufus, faced with the fact that he, a black man, cannot walk into a room of rich white racist imperialists, had to pose as Wyatt’s valet.) It also included historical Rittenhouse member, Sir Henry Morton Stanley, the explorer of “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” fame. Or should they say, late historical Rittenhouse member, who never actually got to be a Sir. He was supposed to be knighted in 1899, and die a comfortable death in London in 1904, but during the escape, Flynn, well. Flynn may have shot him in the head.

Lucy rubs her fingers over her eyes. She doesn’t think Stanley had anything major left to do that would significantly alter history, and he was a notorious and flagrant jackass, so it is not as if his early demise is undeserved. Still, though, this isn’t the first of the important people Flynn has taken out. He is the reason they were able to disrupt Rittenhouse’s plans – barely – for changing the outcome of the conference (again, hard to be more evil, but they were trying). He had all the intelligence on how to get them in and who was in the organization. It seems a little ungrateful of Lucy to go telling him off for one extra death now.

(Especially when he wasn’t the only one. Especially when she grabbed a carriage pistol from one of the hansoms outside Otto von Bismarck’s mansion on Wilhelmstrasse, as bullets were flying in all directions, and took down the Rittenhouse operative on the balcony with a shot she will never make again in her life. Is Flynn’s transgression somehow worse, just because history remembered his victim’s name? Especially when Stanley was, as noted, a dick?)

Lucy clenches her fists, still feeling the kick of the antique pistol, the acrid smell of gunsmoke. Can feel Wyatt dragging her away with one hand, firing with the other, as Flynn did the same, as they barely made it back to the jerry-rigged Lifeboat and 2017. They aren’t entirely sure they did stop Rittenhouse, Flynn and Wyatt had a shouting match as soon as they landed, and Rufus is justifiably salty over the whole thing. Lucy is still sitting in her damp, bedraggled dress from 1884, listening to the rain and her racing thoughts, feeling heartsick and tired and angry, and she doesn’t even know at what, aside from everything. She has given too much of her life to this, and she isn’t getting anything back. Not that that is why she signed up for it, or why she has continued. But it still feels like darting around, frantically dousing embers, while the brush fire rages on, uncontained. Only growing stronger, and stronger.

After a moment, Lucy gets up, a lock of hair slipping loose from its elegant chignon and into her eyes. She could go find Wyatt and Rufus, suggest a drink, some kind of de-stress before whatever other ridiculous assignment hits them in the face. And she still might. But not right now. Instead, she heads down the hall and out into the warehouse where they’ve built a makeshift base of operations. She’ll find him in here. He usually is.

Garcia Flynn is still in his 1884 clothes as well, shirtsleeves rolled up and cravat loosened, sitting at the workbench and tinkering with some delicate bit of telemetry from the Lifeboat’s systems. He has been trying to stabilize its rather tenuous modifications for four people, since he’s familiar with the Mothership, which can hold half a dozen, and even if he wasn’t, he would be nowhere near Time Team Happy Hour anyway. He hates them just a bit less than he hates Rittenhouse and the idea of spending the rest of his life in jail, which is why he’s agreed to help them, but he’s made absolutely no attempt to be their friend. The mission today was their new dynamic in a nutshell. They need Flynn, they need his knowledge, they need his skills, they need him on their side, but they can barely control his collateral damage and his loose-cannon nature. Good luck trying to tell him that, though.

Lucy halts by the Lifeboat, not even sure what she’s going to say or why she’s bothered to come here, as conversations with Flynn are generally about as pleasant as an acid bath. He doesn’t look up, dark head still bent over his work, as he carefully rewires something and tests the reboot. Then he says, “Come out, Lucy. I know you’re there.”

“I – ” She bites her lip, feeling like a guilty schoolchild. “Didn’t mean to disturb you.”

Flynn snorts at what is, if not quite a lie, a fairly flimsy dodge – if she didn’t want to disturb him, why come out here at all? “Let me guess,” he says, plugging in another component and then pulling it out again at once with a curse. “You’ve come to yell at me about Stanley.”

“I. . . no.” Even if she was, it’s not like it would do any good. Stanley is dead, as is Cornwallis, and as history hasn’t gone off the tracks, it makes her wonder just how exactly to the letter they need to save it. That, however, is a dangerous line of thought. “No, I just wanted to. . . thank you. We wouldn’t have gotten anywhere close to pulling that off without you, so. . . thanks.”

A faint smile curls the hard lines of his mouth. It isn’t anywhere close to friendly. “You think I need your approval? Your pat on the back, for something I’ve done all this time? Now that I’m doing it with you three around, I get a gold star?”

Lucy is taken aback. She wasn’t trying to patronize him, she was genuinely trying to reach him (for something like the two dozenth time, to no avail – she shouldn’t be surprised that she yet again ran into a brick wall). “Flynn, I – ”

“Or no, you thought I might want to talk about it?” He turns the circuit board and takes out a pair of needle-nose plyers, testing the connections. “Feel guilty, maybe? Why would I? I’m not guilty. I’m angry. I killed another Rittenhouse member. I did the same godforsaken thing I’ve done this whole time, and for what? I’m not any close to having my girls back. I’m not any closer to being able to stop this. All I’ve done is trade in the Mothership, which at least had some space, which was mine, for this broken piece of shit with you three sanctimonious assholes in my face. Do you want comfort, Lucy? Need someone to hold your hand? Want to talk through how things were hard today? Go find your little soldier boy, or Rufus. I’m not interested.”

Lucy flinches. This might be her own fault as much as anything, expecting Flynn to provide any measure of solace at all, but while her frayed nerves and weary heart can’t handle another fight with him just now, she also has enough pride that she isn’t going to turn tail and scuttle, isn’t going to let him see that he hurt her. She’s told him several times by now that she didn’t know about Agent Christopher and the SWAT team following him to their meeting, that she didn’t mean it, she didn’t. She thinks he knows by now that this is the truth. He just doesn’t care.

“Fine,” she says, more or less evenly. “You’re not interested.”

At that, he finally looks up at her, eyes glittering beneath the shadow of his brows. Like the sparkle of a treasure hoard, enticing her to come look for it, but go very wary of waking the dragon. Sets aside the circuit board and spreads his hands on his knees, the sharp pleats of his pinstriped trousers. “But you’re still standing here.”

Lucy swallows involuntarily. She wishes he would blink, when he stares at her like that. The way she can almost feel the air tightening and twisting around them, visceral as a blow to the chest. “There – will be food. If you’re hungry. Later.”

“How magnanimous.” His accent thickens on the word, gives it a slight, mocking lilt. “Den mother of the Cub Scouts, is that you?”

“I’m nobody’s den mother,” Lucy snaps. “I was just letting you know.”

“Feeding the team?” Flynn abruptly gets to his feet, which is quite an imposing thing for him to do. “Because that’s what you have to do? Don’t pretend that you still care about me, Lucy! If you managed to arrest the rest of Rittenhouse, if Emma had never gotten her hands on the Mothership – you’d have just let me rot in jail, wouldn’t you? You didn’t bother getting me out until it was useful for you! Forgive me if I’m not feeling so eager to press flesh with my overseers and my – ”

“Your overseers?” Lucy chokes. She is a foot shorter and probably seventy pounds lighter than him, but she still takes a step forward, bristling. “We’ve tried all this time to be partners. To give you a real shot. We want to work together, we want to – ”

“Yes,” Flynn sneers. “Wyatt really wants to be my best friend.”

“Both of you act like children around each other!” Lucy’s frustration is close to breaking point. “And I would have tried, I would have tried to get you out, but if I hadn’t, would I have been obligated? You spent months trying to kill Wyatt and Rufus and tear apart our team, all of history, everything in your way. If you wanted me to join you and thought we were meant to be together – to do great things together,” she corrects herself at once, cheeks burning – “you had an awfully strange way of showing it. You knew that what you were doing was wrong and you didn’t like it, but you still didn’t stop. What would it have taken to make you stop? Anything?”

“I would have stopped when I got them back!” Flynn whirls around and hurls a toolbox at the wall, a terrifying explosion that makes Lucy cringe, even though it isn’t directed at her. “That was all I wanted, all I ever asked for! Now I can’t, I won’t! I was so close, so close, and you – and they – took it from me! I trusted you! I trusted you with my child! Do you think this is a fair exchange? Do you?”

He braces his hands against the wall, looking as if he’s about to put a hole through it, breathing like a tempest, until he turns and sees her shrinking against the strut of the Lifeboat. Something about her fear seems to get to him, and he drops his gaze, shamefaced and silent. He looks up at the ceiling, clearly distressed over upsetting her and losing control so badly, but still too stubborn to openly apologize. At last he says, “Please go, Lucy.”

She is certainly more than tempted to. Wants to get out of here before the dragon spreads its wings and soars, having already thrashed about in a fiery fit. She wants to mention that she still doesn’t have Amy back. Wants to remind him that her own mother is part of this, that her whole life is a lie, that he isn’t the only one who’s suffered and sacrificed and bled for this. Any of it.

Instead, she says, “I killed the man on the balcony.”

“You what?”

“The man on the balcony, the one firing down at us.” Lucy throws her shoulders back and meets Flynn’s gaze evenly. “I grabbed a pistol and shot him.”

Something in his eyes flickers. “I thought that was Wyatt.”

“It wasn’t.” Lucy feels oddly, steely calm.

“I didn’t think you were – ” A killer hangs in the air between them, audibly unspoken. Instead, his mouth twists bitterly. “Like me.”

“Maybe you don’t know nearly as much about me as you think. Even though you read the journal, even though you think you do.” Lucy takes a step. “Did you know I killed Jesse James? I did. The men were arguing about whether or not they should. I did.”

It’s Flynn’s turn to flinch. He rucks a hand over his face, through his hair, turning on his heel and gripping the back of his chair. At last he says quietly, “You shouldn’t have, Lucy.”

“What? Because you’re the only one allowed to kill? You and Wyatt?”

“No, because you – ” It’s clear at once that Flynn has gotten himself into far more delicate footing than he at all intended. “Because you shouldn’t have to. Isn’t that what you got me out of jail for? To do your dirty work? To kill so you wouldn’t have to have it on your hands, even though you know there is sometimes no other choice? Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Once more, Lucy chokes. “And what,” she asks, “do you know, exactly, about what I want?”

Flynn gives her one of those looks that says he might have more than an idea, but if she doesn’t have the gumption to prove it, well, she can just go on pretending she doesn’t.

Lucy’s blood turns suddenly too hot, her head too light, her stomach rioting with butterflies. She is too aware of the way his still-damp shirt is sticking to him, sleeves rolled up and neck open, the air he is consuming, the heat and danger of his presence. In the course of their fight, they’ve somehow steadily closed the space between them, and he is standing just across from her, staring down his long nose at her, near enough to touch if she reaches out. She is not sure, however, that she wants to, for any number of reasons. First because she’s still angry at him, and second because if she sets a spark to the air between them, everything is going to explode. In one way, or another. Neither of which she can control. Neither of which is at all a wise idea.

(Oh yes, her head whispers. Lucy Good Girl Preston, always does the wise thing. Closest she ever came to transgression was when she decided to quit school in her sophomore year of college and join that band with Jake. After which she crashed her car and nearly died, someone pulled her out of the water, and she didn’t think about it again, not when the universe had so clearly punished her for even considering it.)

Flynn continues to stare at her with those smoking eyes, unblinking and unmoving. His tongue darts out to touch his lips, seemingly unconsciously. Lucy’s hand raises, almost of its own volition. Not quite sure if she is trying to hit him, or get him to back off, or to just generally give him what he deserves for being such a pain in the ass, she plants it, palm first, fingers outstretched, on his chest, and pushes.

Flynn doesn’t even rock back on his heels. She might have tried to dislodge a boulder, and she can feel the heat of him burning through the thin cloth. He raises a dark eyebrow at her. Now he’s sardonically amused, which is even more obnoxious than his anger. “Oh,” he says. “Try again. You’ll really get somewhere this time.”

Lucy looks up at him, then does so. With both hands, and hard enough that he, still occupied in jabbing her, actually is forced to take a few steps backward. The look of surprise on his face is enjoyable enough, and she doesn’t feel like stopping. She curls a fist and punches him, this time in the shoulder. Not hard enough to hurt him, as if she could, but hard enough to get her point across. He’s not the only one who can hold grudges.

Flynn utters a surprised whoof, even as the look on his face is close to the one he wore in Harry Houdini’s tent, when his eyes could be replaced by actual heart-shaped cutouts of red construction paper without much measurable difference observed. He clearly likes this just fine, more than fine, if Lucy wants to play rough, if she’s feeling feisty, if she has finally been roused to bridle, to give as good as she’s been getting. “Oh?” he drawls, accent again turned stronger, slow and insolent. “You want to hit me, Lucy?”

She doesn’t know. She thinks she might. Just because he’s a perfect embodiment of her frustration and her anger and everything she feels as strongly as he does, about how this isn’t working, isn’t working, is taking too long, going in circles over and over to the same pointless result, about why do they have to play by the rules when it means they get fucked. She takes a swing at him with the other hand, connecting solidly with his solar plexus, and he doesn’t even try to avoid the blow. “You’re punching wrong,” he informs her, breathless but not rattled. “Don’t use the knuckles of your fingers, you’ll break them. Too weak. Use the first two  knuckles of your fist, direct your force into them. Fold your thumb over your fingers, not in in them. Focus. Use your hips, not your shoulder. Throw your weight into it. Like – oof – like that.”

Lucy aims another blow at him, this one of which he knocks aside with a contemptuous flick. “Pressure points,” he goes on, taking hold of her arm. “I jab my thumb into your elbow, like that, your arm bends. Easier for you when you’re fighting someone bigger than you, it takes strength to try to wrestle them by the shoulder. Just jab, like that. Then you twist the arm, duck under, you can pin it. Don’t go for the balls unless you think you can hit them, most men are on the lookout for that. Don’t claw the eyes, poke them. Stiff finger. Heel of your hand is the strongest if you can’t get up enough space to punch.”

Lucy takes his advice, hooking her thumb into the crook of his elbow, jerking it bent, and twisting his arm behind his back, as she feels him vibrate with laughter. “Good,” he says, somewhat muffled. “I’d also suggest grabbing someone by the head and smashing your knee into their face, but you’re not that coordinated. I don’t think you could pull it off. Especially in skirts.”

“Oh?” Lucy breathes. He’s on his knees in front of her (and still almost as tall as she is) and she’s standing behind him, so it doesn’t take much for her to lean forward and whisper in his ear. “Do you want to say that again?”

He twists his head, faster than she’s prepared for, so their noses are almost brushing. His gaze can only be described as happily. “You can’t pull it off, Lucy.”

With that, fast as a snake, he extricates himself and stands up, making it clear that she still has a long way to go if she actually wants to match him. “Headlock, I’m not sure,” he goes on, with the air of a connoisseur at a wine tasting. “Perhaps if you jumped on their back from behind, legs around their waist, take them down, but it’s still risky. You have to know how to take a fall, make your target absorb it, not you. And also definitely not something for skirts.”

“Oh?” Lucy says again. Flicks her gaze up to him, this time with the stated challenge that he’s probably the one too scared to take it up. “Then we could get rid of those, couldn’t we?”

With that, before he has time to say anything, she pulls off her dress, not bothering to unbutton it as she’s not going to wear the damn thing again anyway (probably, at least – they can’t afford to just run through costumes with every mission, they’re on a limited supply without Mason Industries’ fashion warehouse). But she will worry about mending it later. Instead, when she’s in her blouse and leggings, which she has taken to wearing underneath, she steps out of the crumpled skirt and stares him down. “How about now?”

His eyes flick goadingly to her. “You still can’t take me by surprise.”

This is one of the more erroneous statements Garcia Flynn has uttered in a life recently full of them, but Lucy decides not to disabuse him just yet. Instead, she crosses the floor toward him at a casual pace, as if strolling on the sidewalk. Then she grabs him by the cravat, jerks his head down, and – it’s not a kiss, it misses by several inches, their mouths only catching in passing. But it does the job. He freezes dead to the spot, Lucy gets her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, and manages to work up just enough torque to throw them. They hit the deck, or rather Flynn does, taking the fall for her just as instructed (see, she’s a fast learner). They end up face to face, Flynn flat on his back and completely stunned and Lucy straddling him, still locked to him like a barnacle, hair now fully loose and hanging in her face, heart hammering so visibly that she’s sure he can see it, unable to catch her breath. She gulps, tries to get hold of herself, tells herself to let go, now. Now.

Instead, she shifts up on him, too pleased with herself for proving him so spectacularly wrong, even as she can feel him wedged between her legs in a way that makes it uncomfortably clear to both of them that he has absolutely no problem with their current orientation. The opposite of a problem, really, unless you count the fact that he’s been so steadfastly professing to hate her guts. His throat moves as he swallows, eyelashes fluttering, as his hand rises of its own volition to cup the back of her neck. He opens his mouth to say something.

No good whatsoever can come of letting Garcia Flynn say something, ever. Especially not now. Lucy’s free hand fists in the cloth of his shirt, twisting. Their noses are still brushing, his knees hiked up and hers to either side of his hips, as she lands fully atop him. In for a penny, in for a pound. She turns her head, and kisses him. This time, properly.

Flynn makes a sound through his nose as if he has just touched a live electrical wire. His hand hesitates for a split second, then crushes her head down, mouth bearing into hers with almost bruising force, as they roll over and over, entangled. Lucy gets a better grip on him, grabbing him by the ears, as he pulls her bottom lip between his teeth, bites, drags his open mouth against hers, something between a kiss and a devouring. She can barely stand the heat and force of it, the pent-up strength and frustration and sheer, snarling need, and yet, she’s no shrinking violet. She clutches at him, shoving back, as they roll once more and she gets back on top. They keep kissing until they are utterly out of breath, mouths wet and raw and swollen, hair mussed from grabbing, fingers clenched, as she sprawls on his chest and can sense both of their hearts going like trip-hammers. That felt even better than hitting him.

Flynn shifts underneath her, arching his hips into her, and both of them moan. Lucy’s fist clenched in his shirt opens, but just far enough to start pulling at the buttons of his shirt, which is half-undone anyway. He returns the favor with her blouse, practically tearing the thin silk-rayon as he shucks it off her shoulders, fingers curling under the lacy cup of her bra, but not quite going further. Their eyes meet for half a beat, as she can tell that if she stops him, he won’t touch her. It’s clear enough he’s wanted this for a while, and has just as firmly ignored it, but he’s never going to force it. It’s up to her. Push his hand away, shrug her blouse back on, and they can still pull apart and go to sleep, albeit extremely frustrated.

Lucy Good Girl Preston.

Instead, Lucy reaches up, covers his hand with hers, and guides it down.

Flynn’s breath stutters in his throat, as does hers, as his callused fingers skim over the smooth skin of her breast. He catches briefly at her nipple with thumb and forefinger, circles under, then reaches around to her back and undoes the bra clasp with a deft flick, as Lucy shrugs it off her arms and has a moment to pray devoutly that neither Wyatt nor Rufus are going to run in and see what all the ruckus was about. This is just as patently a mistake as it was five minutes ago. But as both of Flynn’s hands come up to her chest, grasping hold, cupping and caressing, Lucy is barely able to care.

He touches her for a moment or two, and then his grasp shifts, pulling her back down for another hungry kiss as she reaches between them to pull the cravat loose and do away with the rest of his shirt. The warehouse floor is cold and not particularly comfortable, and they roll to their knees and then to their feet, but only get as far as the workbench, as Flynn sweeps aside everything he was working on earlier (managing to avoid breaking it, but barely). He lifts Lucy onto it, and stands between her legs, still having to bend slightly to kiss her. They do so with complete, voracious thoroughness, until he gets a hand free, curls around her rib, strokes down her side and takes hold of her hip. She whimpers into his mouth, lifting her leg to link around his back, urging him closer. His fingers swoop across her stomach – and then, when she breathes half a desperate, “Please” – lower.

Lucy grips hold of his shoulders as he slips a hand beneath the waistband of her leggings, gasping as he roughs the pad of his thumb over her clit, knuckling into the wetness of her folds. She scoots forward on the table and trying to thrust against his hand, as he holds her by the hip with the other and ghosts a rather self-satisfied-sounding chuckle against her lips. He’s clearly taking pleasure in torturing her, flicking and teasing, never as deeply as she needs. Her belly is twisted in knots, feverish and fluttering, starving for release, and the only way she can foresee getting it involves him, one way or another. Especially when they are already, rather obviously, in flagrante delicto.

Lucy whines, grinding on his hand, as he slips a finger into her, then a second one. This kind of heavy petting is fine and good, but she hasn’t actually gotten properly laid in too long a time to remember, and she is out of patience. She jerks on him, reaching between them with the intention of unbuckling his belt, but he lets go of her hip and catches her wrists with his free hand, maneuvering her out from between them. He finishes what he is doing inside her, with a few slick, slow strokes that make her see stars while simultaneously leaving her more frustrated and short of breath than ever, and only then withdraws his hand. Undoes his belt himself, and his eyes once more flick to hers. If she’s willing, that look says, she can have everything she wants. But if she doesn’t, she’d better tell him now, while there is any faint, forlorn hope of either of them restraining themselves.

Lucy wants. Wants a lot, and has no idea how to reconcile any of it, and is, quite frankly, sick of thinking. She does that far too much, too long, and to far too little result, and his mouth is on hers again, and she grinds up against him and gulps and needs more, needs more. Reaches down and gets hold of him, hot and stiff against her fingers, feeling the brief glitch in his entire body as she finally has him literally in the palm of her hand, where some might argue he has been metaphorically all along. She lifts herself up, arms around his neck, as he tugs her leggings down around her knees, then her ankles. She kicks them off. And after a final split-second hesitation, her panties too.

Flynn’s eyes take in every inch of her, transfixed, worshiping. Then he slides his hands under her thighs and lifts her off the table, as Lucy locks her legs around his waist, her arms around his shoulders. He walks them across the warehouse to the wall, and pins her against it with a thump solid enough to knock her breath out, though she might not have it anyway with how hard he is presently kissing her. Then as Lucy slides against him, wordlessly opening her body to him, he meets her eyes for a split second more, hitches her up, and just barely, just a bit, enters her.

Lucy gulps back a moan, reaching down to guide him, slipping him into her. He is hard and heavy, pushing her apart with unyielding solidness, God it has been a long time, she barely remembers how this feels. After their frenzied kissing and wrestling, he’s being almost restrained, cautious, but restrained is not what she wants. There is still too much poison in her veins and in her mind and in her heart, and she wants the demons exorcised, wants to burn. She grabs hold of him. “Come on, Garcia,” she manages. “That the best you can do?”

He gives her a look that warns her she will very much regret playing with fire, gets a better grip on her thighs, and drives into her all the way, with a thrust she feels to the back of her stomach. He pushes her knees farther apart as he moves between them, lifting her up to meet him, rasping on her until she can barely handle the intensity of the sensation. Fucks her well and thoroughly, setting his teeth in her shoulder, biting at the hollow of her throat, never slowing the fierceness of his strokes. Possesses her, uses her, but at the same time, she’s aware that he is barely a breath from shattering himself. That he’s giving himself to her like this because, quite simply, she already owns him, and that is far more terrifying than either of them would ever remotely admit.

It does not take much longer until both of them are gasping, dragging and jerking and clawing toward the burning brightness of climax, until Lucy’s whole body wrenches and her hips arch and her hands tear at him, until he is the only solid thing in the storm and she moans into Flynn’s mouth. His back buckles and he almost loses his grip on her, as they slide together down the wall to the floor and Lucy once more ends atop him, clutching him as they go over within a few moments of each other, shaking to the core. They lie there unmoving, him still inside her, pulsing and softening, until he slowly slips out. They do not move.

It’s about thirty more seconds, thirty blissful seconds, until Flynn’s brain belatedly reconnects with the rest of his misbehaving anatomy. He tenses all over, then heaves Lucy off, springs to his feet like a startled cat, and fumbles himself back together, jerking his trousers up and diving for his discarded shirt. He doesn’t look at her as he dresses as fast as possible, swiping a hand through his hair and doing absolutely nothing to look casual. “You should go.”

Lucy, torn from the comfortable glow of orgasm to an abrupt reintroduction to the cold warehouse floor, rolls over and gets to her feet, fishing for her clothes, cheeks burning. Even she is well aware that that was not what she came here to do (though, a jeering voice whispers in her head, was it?) and she reconstitutes herself to decency at likewise top speed. The silence has quickly turned hideous, until she blurts, “We’ll just – ”

“It was a mistake.” Flynn’s shoulders remain hunched, as he doesn’t look back at her. “You were emotional.”

Lucy wants to ask if she was emotional, what that made him – it takes two to tango, as the saying goes, and that back there was a thoroughly mutual effort. Her thighs are slick, her heart pounding low in her stomach, the heat of him lingering between her legs, her lips raw with kissing him, her breath short, her knees trembling. The pleasure of release already feels like a distant memory. “Flynn – ”

“Go,” he repeats. “We’ll just forget this happened.”

Lucy digs her fingernails into her palms, unsure if she wants to conclude the evening, which has seen her do a great deal of both, with one more slap or one more kiss. She came here trying to sort out at least some of the tangled skeins of love and hate and unspeakable, inextricable destiny that somehow binds their souls together, and somehow she’s managed to weave it into even more of an impassable Gordian knot. So that when he says that, some reflexive, damaged self-protection instinct – we’ll just forget this happened – they both already know they’re going to do anything but.

That doesn’t mean they’ll try.

That doesn’t mean this can go anywhere good.

Lucy does up the top button on her blouse, the marks of his mouth still vivid on her skin. Turns on her heel, waits for him to say something else, knows he won’t, and leaves.

[chiseler]

Angels Afflicted with the American Dream

Somewhere in the middle of David Lynch's Twin Peaks: The Return there is a moment that, on its incandescent surface, could have been lifted from the great post-war dream of materialist deliverance: The top on the convertible is down, the radio on; The Paris Sisters are singing I Love How You Love Me as a reincarnated Laura Palmer lifts her face to a cloudless sky. Within the tapestry of this early Phil Spector production — his trademark reverb associated eternally with Romance and Death (two conditions that Spector knows all too well) — the voice of Priscilla Paris is a voice from the American Beyond. We could be hearing a dream goddess lullaby from the whispering gallery, or sweet nothings from the crypt. We don't know. We'll never know. Just as Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood keeps us guessing with the elusive murmur that “Sharon Tate will never die,” which grants her a gaudy, if still wondrous L.A. to cavort in— 1969 forever — Tarantino’s version of paradise (complete with occasional flame throwers to the face). In this oneiric echo chamber, momentarily shared by Lynch and Tarantino, Surrealism smiles down upon a vision of American blondness; muscle cars soaked in sunlight; the terrible ecstasy of unending motion; a confection of both eye and ear candy.

To this day, David Lynch’s favorite film remains Otto e Mezzo, directed by Western Europe's sorcerer of confectionary delights, Federico Fellini; the man who put the “dolce” in La Dolce Vita. And here, we get a fleeting taste of ideologies swirled together and spun like ribbon candy — four-wheeled luxury from the New World in a blur, zooming past regional splendor into that fraternity of man: the socio-economic nirvana imagined by Karl Marx. Careening from one via to another at harrowing, white-knuckle speeds, Fellini lamented: “Some of the neo-realists seem to think that they cannot make a film unless they have a man in old clothes in front of the camera.” George Bluestone, recording these words in 1957 for the pages of Film Culture, sat in the literal passenger seat of the ideal metaphor; a vision of post-war ebullience in action: that famous Black Chevy skirting the Italian Scylla (the Vatican) and its equally dogmatic Charybdis (the Party); expert, 20th century precision guiding them through Roman streets with graffiti-scrawled churches proudly bearing the hammer and sickle. At those velocities, anything could make sense. “What for you is the greatest human quality?” Fellini responds, “Love of one’s fellows,” a period-appropriate oath that rings true to his brand of ecumenical solidarity.

“The greatest fault?”

“Egoism.”

Try to imagine our locally sourced egoists nodding along with Fellini in soulful agreement. No. David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino both spawn from a mutual compatriot, Edgar Allan Poe, or rather his abiding pronunciamento that: “The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetic topic in the world.” Twin Peaks: The Return modifies Poe's axiomatic truth with some help from Amanda Seyfried and a pair of visionary eyes melting Phil Spector's sugar edifice AKA "wall of sound" in deathless close-up — iridescent search lights, ever more urgently scanning the sky above for a sun to swallow Seyfried’s “Becky” whole. We internalize this shimmering ingenue trading places with Old Sol, as if the drugs she's gobbling enter our system, not hers.

Once Upon a Time's Margot Robbie is Sharon Tate when she watches herself on the movie screen, enjoying the thrill so guilelessly that a narcissism charge shrinks to nullity before it can escape our collective throat. And, reflexive handwringing from the progressive peanut gallery notwithstanding, Mr. Tarantino has achieved something (oh, yes) transcendental. Even his grotesqueries — scraggly, slack-jawed, gap-toothed Manson Family members conflated with contemporary Social Justice Warriors fighting “Lookism” — are mythic.

Filmmakers like Fellini, Lynch and to some extent Jodorowsky have a way of celebrating bodily extremes that should be beyond the pale but somehow winds up being quasi-acceptable. There's an innocent glee or wonderment in the wide variety of shapes the human body can take — and this innocence also seemingly cancels out any awareness about how representation in the age of political correctness is supposed to function. Thus Lynch can show the disabled as childlike, mysterious or magical beings, without worrying about giving them agency (the elephant man is a passive whipping boy for the whole of Victorian London) or adult sophistication (the latest Twin Peaks includes a pint-sized hitman who whines like a puppy when his icepick is broken). Fellini's dwarfs and grotesques emerge from the mind of a cartoonist, embodiments of an image formed in his head.

Fellini's big women, of course, are fetish figures — he seems to have formed his idea of a sexual ideal in infancy, and that ideal was a big Italian mama, seen from below. As Fellini turned into a large adult, his ideal needed to be scaled up accordingly, so his films abound with gargantuan beauties. Anita Ekberg is an icy mountain.

In David Lynch’s hands, American television has become a brightly lit seance for Poe’s ethereal dead. Immortal creatures afflicted with the dream of physical existence. While Quentin  Tarantino presents Margo Robbie: a visage both generically perfect and possessed by angels, every one of them a blond California resident, sincere and unknowable as desert light.

by The Lumière Sisters