#keep your fckn eyes and hands away from martin

[hauntedhotel]

I'm most of the way through TMA season 3 and let me tell you, my "Tim is doomed" sense is tingly af. It took me a while to warm up to him, wasn't sure I liked him at all when I first started listening but if he dies (and if he dies without him and Jon ever making amends) I'm going to be GUTTED! I'm still not fully over Sasha actually being dead so if Tim gets taken out blowing up a haunted circus I'm going to need to lie down and stare at the ceiling for an entire 24 hours.

Martin Blackwood, my love, my mysterious boy, he confounds me. Listening to Gerry Keay (sob, poor tragic kid) listing off the fears and then having Martin openly describing his plan as "laying his own little web" while constantly defending spiders and calling them cute for three seasons is concerning. He's such an interesting character because I don't necessarily want to describe him as manipulative because I don't think any of what he puts out into the world is fake exactly. I think he IS a kind-hearted, caring, slightly awkward sweetheart but he definitely knows how to use the fact that people see him as soft and unthreatening to his advantage and there's definitely a core of toughness underneath it all. I don't like the idea of Avatar Martin but I'm picking up some clues here...

Also, I definitely didn't want to end up shipping Jon and Martin but sadly, the brainrot is setting in. I fell madly in love with Martin the minute I heard him speak but I didn't expect to end up loving Jon quite this much, which I think is contributing. He's doing the best he can! Does he always have the best plans? No. Does he think of pretty much the stupidest thing possible to say when he's scared? Yes. (seriously, who's first thought when confronted by an evil haunted mannequin is to ask why they don't have a Russian accent???) but he actually, genuinely cares about all of them and I just love him! Martin having a crush on Jon is apparently canon (although he's not particularly subtle so I wasn't surprised) and Jon is a lot softer and calmer with him than he was at the very start and they at least seem to be friends now, and minor-annoyance to friends to lovers is like a siren song to me, ship wise so...I dunno...prepare yourselves for a long, yearny fix-it from me when I get to the end I guess?

Also how many kidnappings is this for Jon now? Can't even go on a quick business trip to the States without getting himself captured by monster-hunters.

[wilhelmjfink]

The Great Divide - Chapter 7

@crossbowking @jodiereedus22 @apossiblegentleman@mtngirlforever@sourwolf-sterek32 @winchester-angel @qrangr@cole-winchester @the-bottom-of-the-abyss @twdeadfanfic@crazyaboutnorman@deliciousassafrasssandwich @bunnymother93@96ssi @fireeyes-on-teller-dixon-grimes @ima-mther-fckn-starboy@thatsoragan @lonewolf471

A/N: new cover photo hehe :-)

Previous Chapter • Next Chapter

It was a painfully long night for Riley as she watched the single ray of faded sunlight rise into her cell from the open doors down the hall. It was hardly enough to light up a room, but her eyes had already adjusted to the darkness she’d been trapped in, so it made no difference to her anyway.

‘The Divide’ she’d heard it referred to as. 

The night was full of crying from cells adjacent to hers and screaming from somewhere outside of the concrete walls. At one point, she’d given up trying to block out the noise by clutching her hands over her ears to no prevail and resorted to humming loudly to herself in hopes to block out the sounds. It hardly worked and left her throat more raw than it had already been from the agonized screams from being branded like cattle.

She couldn’t see the scar, but she could reach her left arm around to feel it, level with her ribs on the flesh of her mid back. It felt like an ‘X’ and though she wasn’t sure what that indicated, she knew it couldn’t be anything good. It hurt and the mere thought of it churned her guts and she was sure it could’ve easily made her sick if she had anything in her stomach to throw up.

Sleep came to her in minuscule amounts, riddled with nightmares of course, and she’d given up on getting any rest long ago which left her tired and achy and the stale pieces of bread they’d finally given her did little to satiate her hunger.

She had a lot of time to think — a dangerous thing for her.

A lot of time to wonder what she’d done to deserve this treatment. She’d only been trying to help.

A lot of time to sit quietly and fight back tears when she thought about her friends and family back home and especially Daryl, her hopes dwindling from thoughts of being rescued and brought home to just simply wishing they were all safe and sound, with or without her.

Her eyes had dried out and couldn’t produce any more tears; not so long as she was dehydrated, at least. The skin around them was red and chapped from her constant rubbing, trying to stifle them as they’d never seemed to want to stop. She’d cried herself out.

And after she’d done that, she’d begun to get angry.

The morning brought one of the Slavemasters — she’d overheard one of them referring to their position as such, and she acknowledged that would leave her a slave — stomping into the small building and opening cells, tearing each individual out one by one and dragging them outside. It was a new day, and Riley had no idea what it held for her. And she was terrified.

But she refused to show it. She refused to let them break her. She would try as hard as she could, for as long as she fucking could, until she simply could take no more.

So when she was dragged from her cell she bit down on her lip to stop the cries of pain she’d felt every time she moved any part of her body, the fresh burn on her back seeming to tear further along her skin and searing every nerve in her body along with it.

The early dawn brought an eerie scarlet glow to the area, the constant dirty cloud of red that always lingered around the town. The man that had her, she assumed, was the same that she’d seen yesterday on account of the mask he’d dawned. She wondered what he’d planned to do with her for the day.

The city was an enormous maze of building remains and rigged up structures like boarded walls and small camps under makeshift canopies, burn barrels everywhere contributing to the smog and next to them usually some sort of forge or sawmill or furnace. It was always loud. But she could usually catch some chatter if she listened hard enough to those as she was pulled by them. 

They brought her to a big enclosed courtyard with the only exit being the alley they came through. However, it was closed in by rooms that she figured used to be some sort of motel — some old rusted numbers still hung up on the metal doors, big windows to their sides boarded up or shattered. And she watched as the doors would open and workers would step in and out and she breathed a sigh of relief because maybe they wouldn’t make her live in a cage like an animal. That night had been one of the longest in her entire life and more of them were sure to drive her insane very quickly.

Room thirteen had the three missing but the shadow of where it hung still remained on the door that was pushed open, startling all of the workers in that room as Riley was thrown in carelessly and the door slammed behind her. She stumbled forward onto her hands and knees and automatically retracted away when hands reached out to her, away from those monsters that lurked everywhere she looked, but they weren’t the same gloved hands. In fact, they were much smaller, much softer hands, and she looked up at who they belong to and was shocked to see an older woman staring back at her.

“Oh, honey,” the woman said, shaking her head in pity, “you must be new here, huh?”

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Riley sat topless on the stiff cot, wincing as Lidia used a small packet of burn cream and duct taped pieces of paper towels as bandages to cover the fresh wound on her back.

“Almost done.” The older lady said from over her shoulder.

Turns out the community of workers were tight-knit — at least those who had been here for some time. The Slavemasters seemed to have a tiny bit of compassion as it had turned out, giving the older of the workers the easier jobs that weren’t as strenuous as others. Like Lidia, who was in charge of food, for both masters and workers. The job itself, of course, was much rougher than a chef’s job would be anywhere else in the world before it turned — they had a reputation to keep up, naturally — but Lidia had somehow managed to remain a shining light in the darkness throughout her time here.

It baffled Riley, how some people could still find a reason to be genuinely happy even after the shit hand the world had dealt them.

“Did they take you, too?”

Riley sat up straighter, having forgotten Lidia was even there. “Huh?”

“I know you didn’t come here on your own,” she said matter-of-factly and Riley sighed, slouching back over so she could just remain small and unnoticeable. “So they took you away from somewhere, no?”

Riley thought hard about a response before she could find an answer she was comfortable with. As warm and gentle as Lidia seemed, Riley had a lot of time to contemplate her decisions to trust people so quickly as she sat curled up in the dark cell.

“Yeah,” she finally rasped, her shoulders slouching with a defeated sigh. “Yeah, they did.”

“Mm,” Lidia replied with a small nod as if she knew that was the answer regardless of how Riley responded. “Family? Friends?”

The conversation was so bitter, but yet, so natural — and Riley despised that.

No more small talk about the weather or your favorite sports teams latest game  your favorite musician releasing a new album. None of that even remotely mattered anymore.

So she snorted in disgust, racking her brain for an appropriate answer that actually conveyed how she was feeling. She was so mad. She was mad and scared and sad and she didn’t want to think about Daryl again. She didn’t want that infamous pang of metaphysical pain that hurt her heart every time she thought of his voice or his eyes or the feeling of being wrapped up in his arms, safe and sound...

“I had a husband before this. His name was Martin — well, we called him Marty.” Lidia must’ve gotten impatient waiting for Riley to respond as she tripped the end of the duct tape and fastened it to her back securely. “He made it through this whole mess with me, kept us both safe and alive. We’d been married for 47 years, and that was — oh, jeez, how long has it been now?”

“What happened to him?”

Lidia shook out an old tank top, whipping some dust off to clean it the best she could, doing the same with a pair of matching black shorts that hung off of her hips just slightly too big for her small frame that only seemed to be shrinking by the minute.

“I’m not sure. I was waiting for him to return from hunting one morning when those... monsters took me.” Her voice didn’t fluctuate, she hardly seemed emotional at all. Maybe it had been a long time and she’d learned to deal with it by then. Or maybe they really can break you here and Lidia was on the verge of snapping. Riley admired her inability to let rage take over her like she’d done many times just that day. “You have to earn your shoes,” Lidia added bluntly.

“How can you still be so happy?” Riley didn’t mean for the words to come out as sharp and venomous as they did, but she couldn’t help it. Here she was, listening to this poor old woman reminisce about her husband who she hadn’t seen in ages after she was ripped away from him and forced into a life of slavery, and she still found time to help others and to extend her kindness and warmth to them. It didn’t make sense.

“Honey, Marty loved me for a reason.” She explained. “And if I change my ways, then I would be letting him down... and the last thing that man would ever want me to do is give up. Do you understand?”

Her words felt like a punch in the stomach, like she was directing them toward Riley and her spiteful attitude toward life, even though she knew she wasn’t. How was it possible to go through all of those hardships and not feel as though the world owed you something?

“Thank you,” Riley stood up from the cot she’d been sitting on and gestured behind her, “for... all this.”

“Tell me about him.”

She watched as Lidia turned away to tidy up the rotted desk behind her, collecting the new medical supplies she had and shuffling them away into a box far in the corner. Daryl. Could she even manage to say his name? Again, the conversation was so sourly casual to Riley, but there was something strong about this woman that Riley was drawn to; something that made her extremely wary, unable to forget the events that led her here in the first place.

But ultimately, she decided there was no harm in Lidia’s request, and maybe taking about him would help her feel a little bit better.

She sighed and slumped back down onto the mattress, trying to bury the sadness that overcame her. Lidia sat in a rickety wooden chair across from her. “His name’s Daryl.”

“Tell me about this Daryl.”

Where do I even start? “Daryl is the most...” her heart was swelling with admiration already and butterflies fluttered in her stomach like she was swooning to a friend about a crush after a first date. It was bittersweet — that even after all this time, he could still make her heart race and hands clam up. But yet, she found it hard to describe him accurately with just words. “He is the most selfless, misunderstood, and... broken human being that I’ve ever met.”

Lidia rested her head in her hand thoughtfully, become increasingly enthralled with Riley’s story word by word. “That is quite the combination.”

“Yeah,” the corner of her mouth absentmindedly quirked up into a small smile, just longingly daydreaming about him now; maybe if she described him with enough detail, enough to make him so vivid and tangible, he would just appear in front of her and take her back home. “He’s quite the anomaly.”

“Why do you say that?”

Why did she say that? That word seemed appropriate and rolled right off of her tongue. “He spends so much time being angry and pretending like he doesn’t care about anybody or anything... but I’ve never met somebody like him before — someone so selfless who would do anything for anybody just because he wants nothing more than to... just belong.”

Lidia was listening intently.

“Well, it sounds like you’re very special to Daryl.”

Riley’s cheeks flushed and she couldn’t help but smile.

“He’s very special to me.” The giddiness was short lived, though, and she blinked away the familiar pain of tears building up in her eyes. Everything she’d been trying to avoid showed itself in the form of watery eyes and a breaking voice. “I miss him so much.”

“I think you’re special, too, Riley.” Lidia leaned forward and used a tattered rag to comfortingly wipe away her tears. “And I don’t think that this is the end of your story. You just need to have hope. You can’t give up on Daryl.”

what a sweet old lady......

i will update the master list & the ‘previous’ ‘next’ chapter things tomorrow cuz i’m exhausted goodnight enjoy~~~

@crossbowking @jodiereedus22 @apossiblegentleman@mtngirlforever @sourwolf-sterek32 @winchester-angel @qrangr@cole-winchester @the-bottom-of-the-abyss @twdeadfanfic @crazyaboutnorman @deliciousassafrasssandwich @bunnymother93 @96ssi @fireeyes-on-teller-dixon-grimes @ima-mther-fckn-starboy @thatsoragan @lonewolf471

title pic: background daryl i am the girl on the right lmao