#miriam : verse. the reaping. — there'll be goodbyes by dozens so practice being brave.

[destineden-archived]

@wrathiincarnate : Emmet — you and me against the world. // :') for lil babygirl herself

She doesn't move from her spot by the fire to stab at the coals. The two rabbits that slowly crackle and roast saturate the air with a mouth-watering smell. Her stomach cramps around the drilling pain of her hunger. Not that their dinner is going to be winning any style points. Unseasoned, cooked rabbit. She can think of a million better alternatives. God, she'd kill for a burger.

When Emmet comes back it finally breaks her spell. She's swamped in his jacket, huddled up against the rock formation that serves as their cover for the night. Exhaustion sits in every bone, gnaws at her joints and worms through her muscles. She couldn't move if she wanted to, not after the trek they weathered today. Luckily, Emmet doesn't ask that of her. Instead he sits down beside her.

His words rouse some response from the young woman, despite the haze. She chuckles at the thought, eyes heavy and dull. "Guess I lucked out, then." As soon as he's settled, Miriam shifts closer to lean her head against his arm. His presence alone seems to sap the strength from her body, as if that's an excuse to relax. Her eyes keep closing.

"Just don't leave, okay? For a bit."

[destineden-archived]

@baptst : John — “ back to admire your handiwork? returning to the scene of the crime. “

No flinch. She notices that. She notices how his voice rises behind her, sharp and accusing like a knife digging into her spine, and she notices how it doesn't touch her. That isn't to say that her body doesn't come to life. Even now, with the smell of smoke in her hair and blood dried on her hands, she feels a youthful flutter in her chest. Her pulse spikes so drastically, the mind can't decide if it's love or a panic attack.

He's come up behind her and it wasn't a surprise. She heard the engine, the tires on the gravel road. In some secluded chamber of her thinking, Miriam knows she should've run. He should've never caught her here, amidst the ruins she has caused. There is a thickness to the air, an unnatural warmth that got nothing to do with sunlight or climate. The fire has burned down now but the swelter, the stench, hangs over the scene like a funeral shroud. The dead are reduced to blackened husks, caked in ashes, their cheap polyester melted into their skin. She did that to them. It's bizarre to imagine.

She breathes in, a sharp inhale, and wonders about particles, about creation in reverse. God took clay and breathed a soul into it and that made Adam. Miriam burned flesh and inhaled its ashes and that made a corpse. She fills her lungs with other people's souls and abolishes them. No motherfucker here is going to heaven.

Blue eyes water and sting. She tells herself that's why she turns around. It's not because he calls, can't be because he calls. Still, when John speaks up, Miriam looks back at him. Her swath of destruction frames her almost absurdly. She doesn't look capable of causing harm. She looks like she'll bruise if you look at her wrong. John looks at her wrong.

With violence brimming in her, a thousand echoes knocking her bloody from the inside, his enraged stare, masquerading poorly as triumph, is such a relief. The Herald appears to her like a dark spirit, summoned by her transgressions to punish her, to treat her as she deserves. The guns he has trained on her don't move her. All his henchmen with their wagging tongues, she can barely see them. They're just meat. She shoulders her rifle, adjusts the strap, and goes to him. Because that's what moths do when the flame beckons.

Her gait is strange and stilted, as if she is directed by a foreign hand, tugged along by invisible strings. Miriam cuts a straight line, with somnambulist certainty, until she steps to John. And he steps back.

"I thought I'd find you here." She says. It's a lie but only if you care for something as banal as facts. Miriam thinks she could find him wherever he hides. And he has to follow her where she goes. She thinks he has no choice. His precious Father has made sure of that, has bound her failing to his. Now they must writhe in the filth together. Better than alone, right, John?

She watches his muscles tense, his expression freezing over. He makes himself a statue in anticipation of her, pretends to recoil. She's seen it often enough now to no longer let it hurt her heart. Miriam is meant to be his punisher, not punishment, so she plays the part. Like a girl, she pushes onto her tiptoes and breathes a kiss into his beard. He flinches under her mouth, as if she is likely to dig her dull white teeth into his cheek and tear it open. Maybe that is why she lingers there, her dangerous lips so close to his main artery. She could bite into him like Eve into the precious apple. Same sin.

Either way she lingers, by his ear, hiding in plain side. The hairs on the back of her neck stand on end as the danger presses in. So close to him, she is aware of every organ in her body that she cannot protect. It's a desperate bid but there are greater horrors in these woods than him. Jacob's hateful snarl sits in her head, calling her back to his cage. She cannot go back.

"I need your help, John. Please."

[destineden-archived]

@sherez : V — why aren't you scared of me ?

No point turning on the TV out here. There's nothing on that she cares to hear, the static only transmitting voices of demons and their almost-butchered animals. The evenings get quiet on account of that, with V scrounging up some food and her curled up in bed, making a nest of comforters, worn shirts and pillow cases. It's a refuge the older woman has built for herself out here, positive that no one will bother, that as long as she stays out here, she won't get caught up in the death trap that slammed shut around the junior deputy.

Miriam, with her ankle in the snare, has to stretch herself thin to be here. There's barrage after barrage of gun fire that she has to ignore, that she has to drag herself away from. She can't do much when she finally reaches the burrow, except collapse, and shiver, and seek warmth. She has already stepped out of her pants, the rifle by the door, muddy, bloody boots next to it. Like peeling a grape, she ends up naked and soft bruising at the slightest touch. V is careful with her though. She knows. She helps her out of the boots and out of the pants. She puts away the guns and flays the blood-crusted gloves off her hands. V sits with her in the bathroom, holds the showerhead while Miriam weeps.

So when V sits down with her, she expects anything but that question. It's never been one before, has it?

"Should I be?" She asks, no trace of caution in her voice. She crawls closer to the other woman and drapes herself over her shoulders. She barely makes weight. "If this is your long game, it's real long." A small sardonic touch there. She swallows it. "If it's all the same, I'll be scared of the maniacs who're tryna shoot me before I worry about you." When this doesn't elicit the laugh or comment Miriam was aiming for, she pauses. She kisses her cheek. A tenderness creeps in, buried under sludge and rust though it is. Difficult to think past the fog of war, sometimes. Difficult to think past the boundaries of your own head. The volume of pain in her body pushes out all else. There's so rarely space for anything but herself. It's made her quite callous, Miriam imagines. Quite selfish.

"Hey. We're good, right?"

[destineden-archived]

@sunbentsky : Kaska —   you can tell me, you know. that’s the way the whole friends thing works. 

"I know," She cuts in before Kaska can fully finish her sentence. It's an ungrateful sound, a cold interjection. She knows. She fucking knows. Miriam drags herself into the bar like she's both the dead bird and the cat. Scruffy, ruffled, mange-ridden, broken wing and bleeding scratches. She wipes sweat from her brow before it can drip down and sting her eyes. She opens her palm and it comes away red. The sight used to startle her. Now it only chills her, a freezing nausea turning over in her gut until her skin crawls. Not her blood, not her problem.

She looks at her friend as she finally, gratefully, lets her rifle slip from her shoulder. The strap has eaten a groove into her flesh, chafed her raw. She'll never get the indention out of her skin. It'll leave a scar all its own. Kaska looks a bit better. The extraction was a clusterfuck. She almost lost her. Almost fucked that up, too. Miriam remembers pressing her dirty hands over the wound in Kaska's side, every alarm bell ringing in her head, screaming about sterility, about infection, sepsis and gangrene. Plague or cholera, really. She wouldn't have lived long enough to get sick. Miriam, already struck with the horror of having killed her best friend, got to watch her recover under more capable hands. Patrick fixed what she could not.

But how can she carry all those images in her brain and then expect Kaska to carry even more? All Miriam ever does is burden her. Every time she tries to help, she makes it worse. Whose fault is it that they're even here? Miriam grabs a bottle of moonshine from the bar, helpfully opened by Mary beforehand.

"Sorry." She adds, more softly, as she sits down with Kaska. The bottle turns into a lifeline under her trembling fingers. She takes a swig and almost burns her throat to cinders. It helps against the cold, though. The cold in her head and her stomach and her bones. She's freezing all the way through. "I know, Kas. I'm just... I don't have anything new to say. It's the same shit as yesterday. And the day before. I can't do that to you. You've done so much, I can't ask more of you. And I can't talk about it. I— If I talk about it," She shakes her head like a child in denial. Instead she reaches her hand over the table to take Kaska's, give it a squeeze with all the dirt and gore that crusts under her fingernails. She lets love overtake her briefly, fill her heart until it aches. It feels so much like grief.

"I love you, okay?"

[destineden-archived]

@austerulous : [chin] - to tilt my muse’s chin up to make them look at your muse – Farkas for Miriam!

Resentment has a way of soaking into the bedding. It yellows the wallpaper like nicotine, year after year of quiet disdain, festering just beneath the skin and crackling there at the slightest touch. A connoisseur of dysfunction, Miriam still tastes its echo in the stale, copper-scented air. The bed frame creaks painfully, a beaten animal that whines and buckles under the harsh ministrations of its master. Disuse made its joints rusty. The wood grew stiff like ligaments, imaginary muscles atrophied. She can feel the entire disappointed history of the couple that lived here in the mattress. The slopes and hollows of two bodies that curled up back to back, without saying goodnight.

Now they lie side by side forever, behind the shed. Angry, slathered words are their funeral prayers. CULL THE HERD and SACRIFICE THE WEAK. The word FATHER screams at her from all sides, sprayed and painted and scrawled. It's a fanatic buzzing on every wall, invoking the name of an eldritch creature. It reminds her of the horrified whisper that has haunted her through the entire county: God will see. God will see.

Miriam finds some refuge in the bedroom. He isn't here, though his tendrils, the poison gas of his dogma, extend mercilessly into every hiding spot. She keeps her eyes on the mattress, on the linen that creases and pulls under her fists. She has her fingers curled into the fabric like its a hide she means to rip off, like her nails digging into the cotton can somehow mitigate the ache that rocks her body, like she can pass it on. The mirror wardrobe stares back at her, unyielding, waiting for her to flinch. She is stuck before it on all fours, on the bed, cold air slapping against her thighs, the lean, bone-tipped softness of her underbelly.

The soldier behind her grunts, low in the throat, and pulls her hips back again. He's taking to pleasing himself, indulging in his preferences. He's gotten used to her. When he buries himself in her again, he does it to the hilt with a sharp thrust. The feeling of fullness, of weight and thickness, that slides inside her, punches into the empty spaces. It's is enough to hitch the breath in her throat. It's a soft, involuntary noise, high-pitched. The yelp of a skewered animal, an arrow through the thorax. It's the first noise she's made for him today and he hones in on it like the bloodhound he is.

He takes her like a dog, ruts into her at the same pace and angle that burns her through. The Chosen is so large and heavy, she thinks he'll bury her, press her down and run her over like the steamroller he is. Maybe it'd feel good, her starved senses whimper. Maybe when she is mired in someone else's skin, someone who sees nothing more than what she is (MEAT) she can finally rest. She'd give her body up for that, throw it to the wolf to eat. She has.

His cock strains inside her and she clenches down on him, rolls her hips as gently as she can to coax him. She sighs, orchestrates the picture of an enemy defeated. She knows what he likes. She knows he wants her to be conquered, to yield exhausted and shaking, at the end of the hunt. Collapse into him, despite herself. He wants to run her down but first she has to put up a fight. That's when he's at his meanest, when he's the most useful to her. With a litany of cunt, whore, slut, sinner, bitch in heat, dirty, pathetic, worthless, sick, disgusting in her ear, the Chosen soldier fucks her numb. And Miriam, numb, answers in turn: yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!

Her whole body burns with shame and guilt. So hot and crawling it turns her stomach. It turns her on. She knows as well as him that she was wet and slick for him the second he pinned her to the bed, the second he flipped her over, peeled her dirty, bloodstained clothes out of the way. She presented her cunt to him, already damp, glistening. And he obliged because he's just as weak and pathetic as her.

Miriam doesn't tell him that. She doesn't need him to know. She needs his cock impaling her until she can't think about anything else, until the pain and pleasure and all the poisonous ways they intermix in her brain are enough to drive out the knowledge of where she is and what she's done, what she's doing right now. His fingers leave bruises on her skin. They turn black and blue on her thighs, her arms, her neck and waist. Perhaps he retraces his touches like a predator in the snow, following its own paw prints over the hillside. Maybe he thinks it's a sign of her spoiling, of her going overripe.

His hand travels up into her hair and she braces herself for the hard tug that tends to follow, him burying his hateful grip in her hair tearing at her scalp until her eyes water. He loves to see that, loves to see her cry, choking and coughing and whimpering. That's his trade. He can't get out of his skin. Sadism has been bred into him. His violence pulses inside him like an organ. She imagines it slick and black, growing like a tumor next to his small intestine. It's a lump of flesh, smooth like a liver, and she thinks if she were to dig into him, she could pull it out through a side wound. But as she braces for his assault, for him to pull her hair back until her neck aches, instead his long finger only hooks into the hair tie that's kept her pony tail haphazardly in place. He pulls it free, and a few knotted strands of her hair with it. Her brown hair cascades free in unwashed tresses, falling over her shoulders.

"Wh—"

The soldier's big paw grabs her by the chin and forces her head up. Suddenly she is face to face with the mirror. Suddenly the scene assaults her in stark relief. Miriam looks into her own eyes, white-framed and panicked. Her reflection screams back, a picture of horror and humiliation. She looks like something subjugated, something half-tamed. Not human. She is on her hands and knees, her hair wild and unkempt, sweat plastering dark strands to her cheeks. And above her, looming and relentless, the masked stranger. His body dwarfs hers, dominates it entirely. He never stops thrusting into her, never allows her to catch her breath. Miriam has to watch as her frame shudders and contorts, how her tits shiver, small pink doves preparing to take flight from her chest. Her body is flushed and awake, moving in practiced unison with the behemoth that mounts her. It's a lurid, jarring picture. The soldier crushes her body into his, nothing more than the idea of a man, the anonymous shape of her enemy. He could be anyone. She sees nothing but his eyes, intense and hungry, as they stare at her reflection, back at her, from beneath the red hood he never takes off.

And above them, the tolling, denouncing voice of the Father. In red lipstick, jagged and aggressive, there stands the verdict, smeared across the mirror, across their grunting, panting reflections: LUST. He doesn't let her look anywhere else, grabbed her by the chin to force her gaze. Miriam has to watch as her expression's slackens and her eyes darken with arousal, mounting pleasure. She has to watch as he grab a handful of her breast, grabs the softest part of her and covers it entirely. Her nipple aches as it is pushed back. He claws into her now, the way she knows him to.

She is forced to be her own voyeur as her enemy, the man who hates her, who despises her and is right to do so, fucks her, defiles her. And she watches him watching her. The thought alone sparks the first spasm of an orgasm inside her. She flinches back against him. Horror twists in her guts like an animal, presses back against the inner lining of her stomach as it revolts against her, as her blood crawls through her veins in reverse. If he could see you now—

A sob splinters in her throat like dry wood, "Harder," She gasps through the wave of surging pleasure. Lust is a tyrant. Lust makes her want to kill herself, but only after it's finished with her. Artlessly she paws at her clit, presses hard against it until her nerves light up in protest. She bucks hard into her stud, pushes up on him. "Please, God. Deeper, baby, come on, I know you got it in you. Harder!"

Her eyes are fixed on the demonic reflection of herself and the hooded beast that runs her through. The woman in the mirror looks like a torture victim, someone upon the rack on the verge of dislocation. But she looks back at Miriam through the veneer of pain and despair, and the eyes, the eyes that look back into the soldier's eyes, are alive. Crazed and manic, glinting with a determination you'd only find in a driver who's sending her car over a cliff.

They confirm what Miriam already knows: This death is not big enough for two.

[destineden-archived]

for @lunareaum : JOSEPH & MIRIAM

The doors don't close behind her but she feels like something swings shut. Miriam's hands itch with emptiness, every brush of air another reminder that she is carrying nothing, that she has no way to defend herself. The church bears down on her and her squad with cruel weight, its flickering half-dark like the a closing mouth. She feels tiny and swallowed, and presses closer to Joey who keeps a narrow glare on the strange congregation. The people in the pews rise slowly, their arms cradling heavy automatic rifles. They look misshapen, half-dissolved. She can't tell one from the other with their unkempt beards and matted hair, every one wearing the same threadbare clothing. Maybe that is the point. Maybe they are all one creature with a thousand heads.

Miriam can't focus on the chimera that prowls and draws its circles closer. Up ahead, bathed in awful fire light, a man stands preaching. Her eyes are trained on him, the bewildering carnality of his presence. The Father, they call him. He stands half naked before his pulpit, a myriad of tattoos and scars on display. A pack of other creatures pull closer to him, his siblings, as if to protect him from the invading force. Miriam swallows dryly, reminds herself of the gun in its holster, the gun she is not allowed to draw.

To see him, this fabled monster, at the zenith of his power, harms her. Miriam's soul cringes into its crevices, its many hiding places. She can feel herself struck numb by the sight of him. She expects blood on his hands where he lifts them as if in welcome. She expects a body groaning by his feet, the man he swiftly blinded with his touch. Some fucked up reverse miracle work. None of that. But he looks large and dark and foreboding and it helps her nothing that he speaks so candidly of impending doom. Miriam's blood chills in her veins. She thinks she's seen him before. She thinks she's seen his eyes. Cold and knowing.

Oh God, she thinks as she fumbles for the handcuffs. She couldn't have been further from the truth.

[destineden-archived]

@wrathiincarnate : Emmet — i thought good guys get to be happy.

It's a bleak statement, preached over the dead at the bottom of Devil's Drop. Miriam can hear the hollowness, the creeping edge of exhaustion. She never thought she'd hear it in Emmet's voice but it chills her. In through the ear, slithering down her spine and knots in her stomach like a clump of black ice. The thought alone seems strangely out of place, like it's not something that should be said out loud.

Miriam kneels next to the broken body of a young woman, blood matting her hair, smearing the side of her face. When she moves her, rolls her over, her arm bends too far. She gags on the sight, and on the cloud of foul sweetly sick odor that escapes from within the collapsed lungs of the cadaver. Before she can grab the ammunition back, she needs to turn away. A sob convulses in her throat, mouth watering in preparation to expel the sparse meal she had before.

On her knees, she retches in the grass. A soft whimper heralds her response. She wipes over her mouth and turns back to the woman, what remains of her. She has no idea if this person was good. If she was someone others relied on, someone who tried to help. Jacob has simply erased her. And Miriam, the vulture, roots around in the remains. She pulls off the gun belt and the rounds. She doesn't gag because she doesn't breathe.

"Have you seen any good guys lately? They're not here, Em."

[destineden-archived]

@blesscdbliss : Faith — am i making you feel?

Her mouth waters so much it hurts. She feels the soft tissue beneath her tongue, looking for the wound like it's an infect tooth. Her eyes can't focus on anything. The trees flicker and blur. Colors bleed like the cut on her scalp, matting her hair into strips of dirty brown that cling to her face. A souvenir from an angel and a well-aimed rock, knocking her onto her knees. Did she kill that one, some farm animal that used to be human? She doesn't remember. There are so many and her head hurts too much.

Miriam staggers and teeters, buckling under the onslaught of bliss and pain and the strange, addictive cocktail that brews in her head, some crossbreed between a beginning high and injury-induced dizziness. Faith, by comparison, is steady and solid. She doesn't shimmer, she doesn't waver. She's no longer sweet, no longer cooing her promises and warnings. Her eyes are a curled fist, a glare like a punch, with fifty pounds of anger behind it. It matches the deputy's.

"Yeah... You do." It's a breathless admission, answering a taunt that deserves no reply. Feel. Feel what? Miriam can barely breathe past the feelings in her chest, storm clouds clogging her throat. She can barely think. She slowly approaches, a loping, limping animal that follows the lure for want of anything better to do. Faith shines. Faith glows. She looks larger than life, an angry angel in her own right.

Miriam, by comparison, is something the dog dragged in. She pulls closer, sloping towards the scent of her. She's seen the light, she ate it. The Marshal lies dead with a bullet lodged in his skull. Virgil bled out at his desk. Miriam cannot bring anyone back to life. She cannot right anything that went wrong. Faith is terrifying. She's made her point.

"You made me feel things I've never felt before." A raspy breath, her boots sinking into the mud by the riverside to which she's driven the Herald.

The baseball bat in her hand slides down by her side until her white knuckled grip wraps around the handle. Then she grabs it and swings, simple and clean. With full force. The bat cracks against Faith's skull and sends her sprawling, into the water.

"My turn."

[destineden-archived]

tag drop : miriam