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brummiereader · 1 month

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MASTERLIST PREVIOUS PART

Uptown Girl (Part Seven)

Summary: After learning about your encounter with Cal, Tommy swiftly seeks out revenge for your brutal beating on your behalf. But after the dust settles from the days' harrowing events, Johnathan interrupts your quiet evening alone with Tommy. Fracturing your growing relationship beyond repair with his own selfishness.

Warnings: Language, angst, violence.

Word Count: 4550

Authors Note: £150 and £40 in 1924 is worth £7600 and £2000 in today's value.

Having dragged yourself to the safe confines of your bedroom before anyone saw the state Cal had left you in. You sat at your vanity, eyes welling with tears at the battered reflection of the person looking back at you.

How many times had you done this? you absently thought to yourself as you blinked through your tears. Fingers weakly stretching out for the powdery palette to conceal your fiance's sins.

And how many more times would you have to endure his heavy hand? your chest swelled with sorrow, pulling sharp breaths from your lungs until the dam opened and you were left hunched over the wooden table, grieving the fleeting happiness you were cruelly allowed to enjoy through strained sobs.

Anger for the hand you had been dealt in life, for the burdens of others you had to bare. You grabbed hold of the silver-plated comb on your vanity, throwing it with force at the glass mirror in front of you. Shattering the taunting reflection of the women in it, and the dreams she held for the future.

And just like times before, you raised your head with determination, summoning the last of your perseverance to continue on as you cleared your throat of any lingering emotions that dared to make themselves known. The mask you had let slip in Tommy's presence, now firmly fixed back in place.

"Enough" you scolded yourself for letting your feelings get the better of you as you pressed the puffy sponge into it's tightly compacted case. Patting the scented powder to your bruising cheek before heading downstairs.

Born into a duty of service to others, you had come to the realisation that no matter how much you screamed, how much you kicked your feet in protest, there was no escaping your life's responsibilities and the fate they held.

Your and Tommy's promise to each other, now suddenly words of misplaced passion. Only a small inconvenience, your heart would quickly bury under the fractures of life's hardships until nothingness. He was just a quick fling, just...

"Tommy..." your mouth parted, the whisper of his name mumbling past your lips as your fingers clutched fiercely onto the book grasped in your hand as you stepped around the corner of the wooden stairs to see him stood in the foyer, talking with a member of staff.

" Y/N..." his smitten eyes beamed with adoration as he excused himself from the conversation. The sight of you never failing to grab his full and undivided attention.

"Been looking for you" he caught up with your quickened pace as you swiftly tried to slip away from him seeing the bruises of violence that bore your skin.

"Bloody hell, slow down love " He chuckled as you silently paced the hallway to the back door of the house. Intent on avoiding any small talk or show of affection that would make the task in hand more torturous than it already was.

"Hey" he frowned, confused by your sudden silent treatment as his hand grabbed hold of the brassy handle of the door, stopping you from escaping his presence.

"You not gonna tell me how it went?" his stance hardened, his grip tightening around your only means of escape as you dipped your head, letting your hair fall around your face to conceal the swelling truth of your encounter with Cal.

" Fine. It went fine" you cleared your croaky voice of the bubbling emotions caught in your throat as Tommy's hand gently came up to brush the stray locks of hair from your face.

" What's a matter with you, eh?" He shuffled from one foot to the other as he turned your chin to face him, only to abruptly pull back when you flinched away from his concerned touch.

" What happened, Y/N?" His voice suddenly lowered into a gravelly demand, determined to know what had you so skittish.

"Nothing. Everything's fine, Tommy" you huffed with frustration, wanting to be free from his questions and the heaviness sitting on your chest.

" Fine, is it?" He scoffed, shaking his head at that scarcity of your reply and the years of knowledge he had gained to know that your chosen word of response was in fact, one far from its actual meaning.

"Yes fine, Tommy" you snapped, finding yourself matching his irritation as your brain scrambled to find another way to damage your lack of communication.

"I just...I just want to finish my book" you bluntly stated, your pathetic choice of excuse not enough to put your point across to Tommy's arched brow of bewilderment, when you abruptly let your tongue slip and delivered words purposely intended to hurt him.

" We don't have to spend every waking moment of the day together, Tommy" you provoked his feelings. Your tone of voice lacking in the softness you had shown him mere hours earlier.

" Why don't you bother someone else for a change, and stop harassing me for god sake!"

Was this your grand plan? Cruelly push him away without explanation, instead of revealing the burdens of your brother Cal was now blackmailing you with, you thought to yourself as a pang of guilt pooled in your stomach, your eyes sheepishly darting up to see the hurt flash across his face from the coldness your words bitterly stung him with.

" It's that what I am to you, eh? A fucking bother?" Tommy scoffed as his hands came to sit on his waist. The visible tension of upset, straining through the bone protruding through his chiseled jaw.

" Well then. Don't let me stop you from your reading, sweetheart" he gestured to the door. His scorned feelings taking the brunt of his dismissive reply as you clutched your book to your chest, eyes cast down with the pooling tears of shame you had unfairly inflicted.

" Excuse me" you pushed past his strong frame, fleeing before your lies revealed themselves through the sadness streaming down your cheeks.

" Fuck sake" Tommy sighed, running his hand down his face until the calloused pads of his fingers settled above his bottom lip, pinching it together in frustration as he watched you walk beyond the gardens of your home.

Confusion for your sudden change in behaviour and the lasting effect it had on his own stubbornness. Tommy briskly set off for the stables, determined to get to the bottom of things. Whether you liked it or not.

With no destination in mind, you stubbornly plodded through the thick mud of the fields behind your stately home, furiously wiping the tears that had settled on your cheeks when the galloping sound of muddy hooves steadily approached you from behind.

" Come on, get up. It's gonna rain" Tommy trotted in front of you on your white mare, looking up to the greying skies as he reached down for you to take his hand.

" It is, not" you stubbornly replied, irritated by the fact he had seemingly managed to tame your usually jumpy horse as a thunderous roar released itself from the clouds above you.

" Fine, have it your way. Come on girl" he clicked his booted heals against the horses muscled body, guiding her with tethered reigns to turn as he led her into a gallop in front of you.

" You, you..." words stumped you as a splattering of mud hit your freshly laundered dress while Tommy sharply turned to see his handy work with an amused smirk.

" You..." you continued to stutter as he trotted back, shifting in his saddle as he waited with curiosity to see if your slipping lady like demeanor would take one last, triumphant fall of grace.

" Go on, I dare you" he teased the words from behind your taught politeness.

" You pigheaded insufferable bastard!" You replied with a freeing gasp, succumbing to the use of vulgar profanities Tommy had purposely coaxed from you as he snorted a laugh.

" Idiot" you mumbled, eyes darting up to the cocky smirk of satisfaction riddled across his face as you scraped the sludge of your dress with the pages of your once pristine book.

" I think I preferred it when you were giving me the cold shoulder, darling" Tommy cleared his throat as another string of insults left your lips.

" Well, your influence has clearly awoken something in me. Something dark" you stormed off with a scorned face, as a glint of playfulness shone in your lover's eyes, pleased with his accomplishment.

"Right, you've had your little tantrum. Now come on" he called after you, throwing his leg over the horse as he jumped off.

"No!" You shouted back like a stroppy child as the sound of his muddied boots squelched through the thick sludge after you.

"Enough, Y/N. Now tell me what's wrong?" he demanded as he caught up with you, spinning you around by your waist to face him.

As your chest heaved with worry for the explanation you knew he was fairly owed, a sudden peppering of small droplets hit your cheeks, momentarily distracting you as you looked up to the darkened sky.

" Wha...what's that?" Tommy's brows knitted together, his grip tightening around your hips at the pigmented liquidy stream running down your face, revealing your reddened skin beneath. " Y/N?"

"Nothing, it's nothing" your hand came up to feel the powder you had applied now a watery substance at the ends of your fingers.

" Don't move" Tommy's voice ordered with urgency as he held you in place, licking the end of his thumb to brush the rest of your carefully concealed bruise exposed by the approaching storm rolling in.

" I'll kill him...I'll fucking kill him!" Tommy's voice roared as his eyes widened at the sight of the battered skin you had kept hidden from him.

" Tommy stop, wait!" You pleaded, scrambling for him as he turned to leave.

" What happened, Y/N?" He abruptly spun back around, grabbing you by your arms as the rage within him and the severity of his punishment for the bastard responsible waited on your response.

" I started it, Tommy. I hurt him first" you sobbed as your shaky hands pawed at his chest, trying to calm the anger within him you feared would turn on you like it had done so many times before with Cal.

"Hard enough to earn you a blow that's blackened your skin, eh Y/N?" His patience with you defending the man accountable, bitterly spat from his lips as a clap of thunder startled your jittery body.

" What else aren't you telling me?" Tommy shook you back to his attention as the heavens opened, and a peltering of rain stung your skin.

"Y/N, I'm not gonna ask twice" he insisted as your darting eyes met his piercing glare through the drenched locks of hair tousled in front of his eyes.

" Johnathan..." you swallowed your mounting tears, reluctant to share your family's troubles as Tommy nodded his head, urging you to continue before he tore the city apart and found the cunt himself.

" Johnathan owes over £900 to a man in Camden. He said he'll kill him if he doesn't pay it back by the end of the week..."

" Go on" he encouraged, wanting to hear the entirety of the ordeal that had you finding yourself at the mercy of your fiance's heavy hand.

"Cal...Cal, he knows about us, Tommy" your eyes pooled with tears as his jaw tightened with anger. Anger for himself and the little he had done to conceal your affair that hand landed you with a battered cheek.

" He said he will pay his debts, and save my brother's life. In return I marry him in three days time" you let the weight of your brother's burden fall from your lips as you stifled your sobs. Unable to meet the eyes of the man that had let you forget the woes of your life you had done your upmost to keep him from.

"Why didn't you come to me?" A pool of hurt sat in his stomach, unsettled by the notion you hadn't sought out his help and took a brutal beating instead.

"Hey. Why didn't you tell me?" his fingers gently cupped your chin, turning you to face him.

"Because it's not your burden to bare. I...I can't...I don't expect anything from you Tommy" you wept as your fingers curled around the lapels of his jacket, holding onto to the comfort his strong frame gave you.

"Yes you can. You can, darling" his voice softened as his thumb brushed over your bruised skin.

"I'll deal with this. With all of it. You have my word" He reassured your worries, pulling you into his chest as he cradled your head against his thumping heart. A strained sigh of relief that he wasn't the root cause of your sudden change of emotion, releasing from his chest.

"Come on, let's go home, eh?"

Having handed the money to pay off the hefty debts of your brother later that day. Tommy had ventured out into the backstreets of his childhood home after receiving word from his men that the unlikely sight of a smartly dressed man had been seen lurking around Small Heath in search of business.

" And whose it we're looking for?" Arthur questioned, smoothing down the whispery edges of his moustache as he dodged the many potholes scattered along the grimy alleyways of Birmingham. "That posh prick?"

" Yeh, the prick..." Tommy's voice petered out, his eyes narrowing from person to person who had sought out the services the underworld of Small Heath had to offer.

" Tom, ay up" Arthur nodded to a dead end at the far side of the gully to Cal stood behind a tin dustbin, trousers bundled around his ankles, pushing the mouth of a renowned prostitute into his groin.

" Go home, the lot of you" Tommy's gravelly voice ordered, stood at the end of the alleyway with his hands sat comfortably in his trouser pockets as the evening's punters scattered from the dimly lit cobbled street around him.

" Not you" Tommy tutted to Cal pushing the woman's head off him as he scrambled to pull up his briefs.

" Go on Dottie, off with ya" Arthur gave the giggling raven-haired woman a light tap on the bum before sending her on her way with a bundle of notes.

" Well, well, well. I thought you were too good for our town, Mr Astor?" Tommy stalked towards him, watching him slick back his usually pristine cropped hair from his face.

"Thought I'd try out the local delicacies. If they're good enough for you...well, I'm sure I can make an exception for myself. Men of the same taste, hm Shelby?" Cal casually remarked as he pulled a cigar from his suit jacket, his comment that of a man trying to diffuse the precarious situation he now found himself in. An unsuitable and stupid occasion to confront him about his affair with you.

"Try all you like. Plenty to go around, ey Arthur?" Tommy's stare stayed fixed on the nervously darting pair of eyes in front him, watching them come to the satisfying realisation that the alleyway was now deserted.

"An abundance" Arthur gestured to the empty street. It's eery quietness enough to prickle the skin of any intruder unaccustomed to its foreboding darkness.

"But make no mistake, Mr Astor. We're not the same. I've never laid my hand on a woman" Tommy's voice spoke with disgust as Cal's eyes snapped to him, a breathy chuckle of nervousness for his brutal assault on you having been discovered.

" Your whore deserve..." Cal spat, only to have his vapid words of an excuse quietened with a heavy blow to the cheek when Tommy's fingers curled into a fist, knocking him to the ground in one perfectly aimed blow to his face.

Scrambling for air, Cal desperately kicked his feet against the muddy stoned path as Tommy loomed over him. Submerging his reddening face through gritted teeth, and strained veins into one of the many murky watered craters.

" Ey, wakey wakey!" Tommy pulled him up against the stoned wall, slapping his muddy cheek to bring him out of the darkness he'd slipped into.

" I'm curious, Cal" Tommy bent down, pulling his head up by the scruff of his neck as Cal's lungs desperately gasped for air.

"How does it feel knowing I was fucking your wife to be as you stood outside her door?" Tommy's smile curled into a wicked grin of enjoyment as he watched his squirming face of jealously.

"Quite the screamer, nearly got us caught" Tommy toyed with him, relishing at the sight of him learning a cutthroat gangster was the only one to have ever given you pleasure.

"Not that you would know, eh? You just take what you want, what you think you're owed. And if you don't get your way...well, you start throwing fists, don't you, Cal?" His grasp tightened around his collar, ringing the air from his lungs.

" Not very gentlemanly. Ladies always come first" Arthur straightened his back, fancying himself a man of importance more than the scum at his feet.

"Of that you're right, brother" Tommy's piercing stare honed in on at the quivering man under his mercy.

"You look concerned, Mr Astor" Tommy cocked his head to the side as Cal's lip trembled in fear at the sharp blade sewn into the peaked cap inches from his face.

" Maybe you should cut him a smile, Tom? Cheer the poor bastard up" Arthur sniggered, tauntingly kicking the end of his pristine dress shoes now covered in the land of the lower class.

" You're right, Arthur. Let's give him something to smile about" Tommy's eyes glazed over with an unstoppable duty of revenge as he pulled his cap from his head, the teasing sharpness of the blade catching the light of the glowing street lamp as it swung in front of him.

"Gentlemen! Gentlemen please, I beseech you..."

"Hear that, Arthur? We're gentlemen now" Tommy scoffed a laugh at the pathetic plea for help, his blade seconds from delivering his retribution.

" Fuck your fancy titles" Arthur found a deep-rooted hatred upon hearing his begging as he spat at the feet of the man that had undoubtedly dodged numerous battles of war his money could buy.

" Now, what do we have here?" a police officer's timely appearance appeared in the opening of the alleyway, baton in hand.

" Scrapping, are we lads?" the officer's brows raised upon seeing the two Shelby men who paid him a generous sum of money to look the other way. But not enough to deal with the headache that would come with the swarm of journalists that would descend onto Small Heath to inquire about the gruesome death of a socialite.

" Boys will be boys" Arthur playfully raised his arms in surrender, a mischievous smirk of deceit toying on the corner of his lips.

" Right, move along" the police officer ordered, taping his black rod of punishment that had seen the back of every criminal's knees in town against the red-bricked wall.

" Keep an eye out, eh Cal? While you can" Tommy's deadly threat quietly warned as he stood up, adjusting his tweed crown firmly back on his head.

" Welcome to Small Heath, Mr Astor" Tommy called out as he and Arthur slipped out of the backstreets into the night.

" Toffs" the officer looked down at the unwelcome visitor before returning to his rounds with a whistling tune.

Unprotected, left to fend for himself in the streets belonging to those that held nothing but hatred for the man that looked down on them. Cal swiftly made a dash for safety through the winding alleyways of unknown territory. Knowing that at any wrong turn, he could see a smiling blade of vengeance come down on his face.

"Whiskey?" you asked, turning to Tommy later that evening stood with his hand resting the weight of his body on the back of an armchair in your shared living room as his eyes scanned over the letter he had recieved on his return from Small Heath.

" Yeh" he absently replied, nose deep in the document and its cementing conclusion of your shared ordeal as you strolled towards him.

" Looks important" you noted, handing him the glass tumbler of liquor as he folded the typed paper into his suit pocket, a look of concern for how the news would effect your growing relationship, etched between his brows.

" Just business" he replied, snaking his arm around your waist as he pulled you in, pressing an urgent kiss to your lips, rich with notes of spice and vanilla from his favourite beverage.

" Business. Do you ever rest, Mr Shelby?" you pulled away from the lure of his intoxicating embrace as you arched a brow.

" How can I with you around, eh?" he smirked into your mouth, taking the crystal glass of whiskey from your hand as his tongue swiped against yours with wanton need.

Trailing his hands under the loose fabric of your flowing summer dress, Tommy guided you backwards until your legs hit the plush pillows of the upholstered settee, when the door flew open and a giggling Johnathan came stumbling.

Fuck sake.

" Johnathan" Tommy huffed, begrudgingly pulling himself away from you as he adjusted his growing desire to have you bent over the arm of the sofa, moaning his name. "Whiskey?"

" A double, old chap" he slurred, fumbling in his pockets for a cigar as his unsteady footing swayed from side to side, causing a bundle of notes to fall from his tailored jacket as your eyes widened with concern.

" Johnathan" you pulled him to the side in a hushed voice as he stumbled to pick up the heavy stack of notes sitting on the polished floor.

" What have you done?" you demanded to know through gritted teeth, grabbing the rolled banknotes from his hand.

" Nothing" he snapped back, as he searched for his lighter. His huffing breath, stinking of champagne and tobacco. Hammered, absolutely hammered.

"Where did you get this? Tell me?" your heart began to race as you watched his lazy fingers struggle to light the cigar between his teeth.

"It's only £150, sissy. Now stop badgering me. You're starting to sound like Grannie" he quietly brushed off your concerns as Tommy watched the hushed conversation from across the room, slowly stalking towards you.

" From the money Tommy gave you to pay your debts?" the realisation hit you as a sickly feeling rose in your chest at the thought of him double-crossing not only a man responsible for crimes beyond your imagination, but a man you fallen head over heels for.

" Johnathan, there's only £40 here" your fingers quickly flicked through the banknotes missing more than one third of it's total sum, as your brother slumped down into the chair next to you.

" My god...you gambled it away" your eyes suddenly welled with tears for the hopelessness you felt pooling in your stomach and the betrayal of trust you suddenly felt. " Tommy paid your debts, and you...you..."

" Y/N?" Tommy's gruff voice rumbled your name as he stood feet from you, the heat of his stare piercing through the back of your head.

"Tommy..." you mumbled as you turned to see the look of disgust for feeling fooled by you and your brother harden his face, having come to his own conclusion as to what your conversation and handling of money was about.

" Tommy, wait!" you raced after him as his thudding footsteps turned to leave before he let the last of his patience with your family's troubles slip into a violent outburst.

" You've been playing me, haven't you? Playing on my affections for you?!" Tommy snapped back to you with a pointing finger of misplaced accusations.

" Wha.. No. No!" Your eyes brimmed with tears as he pushed your once welcome touch forcibly away.

" Was this your plan all along, eh? Tell me your little sob story, so I'd pay your fucking brother's debts off and line your pockets?!" Tommy's voice boomed throughout the foyer as he grabbed hold of the sides of your cheeks, his blood pumping with rage for the scam he was convinced you were both mutually in on.

" You think I'd do that to you?" your lip wobbled as your shaky fingers gingerly reached out for his burning face, reddened with fury for the betrayal he felt.

" My brother's weaknesses are not shared, Tommy. They're not mine" you wept through the sobs caught in your throat.

" Just leave, Y/N. Get out of my house, both of you" he pulled your hands off him in fear he'd succumb to the blazing fire of anger you had ignited in him and tarnish the memories of the time he'd foolishly spent on you. The love he foolishly felt for you.

" This is my home too!" you sniffed back your cries as you defensively straightened your back against his demands.

" That's where you're wrong, sweetheart. Arrow House is mine" he quickly corrected you as he pulled the letter he had kept you from seeing only moments before from his pocket.

"Lawyer drafted a new copy after my meddling Aunt and your Grandmother decided it was best kept from me" he let the document fall into your hands as your eyes darted across the neatly typed words.

" I've no where to go" you tearfully looked up to see him stood watching your pleading eyes, his anger with your deception eclipsing any pity he once had for you.

"That's not my problem, is it?" Tommy's voice snapped, turning away before he let himself fall into the beckoning trap of your weeping sobs.

"Now leave, Miss Y/L/N. Leave my house" he ordered once more as he turned his back to you, his stubborn scorned heart abandoning you to a frightful destiny and your only remaining choice of survival.

" Saturday then?" Cal's bandaged hand snaked over your shoulder as you sat at the bay window of your grandmother's small cottage the next day.

" Yes" you quietly replied, as your reddened eyes blinked through the last of your tears you had cried since fleeing your childhood home.

" Good girl" he praised, pressing his lips to the crown of your head before turning to leave with the guarantee of your future now in his hands.

" Grannie" he bid your grandmother goodbye with a cunning smirk of satisfaction.

As her eyes welled with tears for the unstoppable hands of times honing in. Her aged fingers, marked with browning spots of wisdom, clutched tightly around her cane as she looked up to the framed picture of a woman dressed in a sequinned gown sitting on her mantle.

" I'll get to the bottom of this, my dear. Mark my words" Grannie quietly promised the woman in the picture that had sacrificed her last dying breaths to keep her only granddaughter from a life unworthy of living. Your mother.

NEXT PART

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fruispunk · 1 year

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Nightmares / Joel Miller

pairing: joel miller x f!reader genre: fluff/smut word count: 6544 premise: you've taken up a new job in the QZ but the after affects have you riddled with nightmares. when joel miller, your long-time neighbor, friend, and colleague, hears sounds from your room adjacent to his own, his overthinking mind sends him into a jealous spiral. warnings: 18+ MINORS DNI, she/her pronouns, soft joel is v love drunk, descriptions of dead bodies, mentions of death of children, casual ignorance of addressing trauma, the usual apocalyptical nonsense.

read on AO3

a/n: this is my first time writing joel so hopefully its not OOC please be kind, I appreciate any feedback! I know it isn't the most original concept but I just wanted to feel out writing for him. expect lots more pedro-centric fics on the way too :) ~

You bolted up right, sheets thrown off of you and a ragged breathe dragged its way desperately into your lungs. Your face was tear stained, your skin glistening with a sheen of stress induced sweat. Another bad dream had infiltrated your mind, disturbing what little rest you managed to find. This was the third time this week you had to rub your wet eyes, take some deep breathes and throw your head back down into your pillow in annoyance. Sleep would evade you once again.

Living in the Boston QZ was not necessarily the easiest life, but a lot of the time it beat living in fear, running from those things outside the walls. Or, it had done, until now. Until you took on a much more harrowing job. It paid more, sure, but it left your body aching and exhausted, and your mind in a state of unfathomable unease. It wasn't like burning bodies was anyone's dream job, but it was a job that had to be done, and one with sore consequences on your conscience.

Not that you were weak, but it wasn't like you could pick up the dead weight of a fully grown man and toss him onto the fire single handedly. So that left you with the smaller of bodies. The young women. The children. It was impossible to live in this world without seeing bloodshed, without being tormented by memories of lost loves ones, haunted by actions you wished you could take back or things you wished you'd done quicker. Everyone was plagued with something. Whether you were infected or not. That didn't make doing what you had to do any easier. Holding the limb body of a lifeless child could pain even the darkest of souls.

And that's what had been keeping you up. You'd seen family and friends succumb to disease. You'd seen people torn apart. You had slaughtered and killed and hacked away at plenty in your life - that is what surviving in this world cost. But seeing the piles of small nameless bodies stacked carelessly in the back of a van, dumped in silence into a fire they shared with so many you couldn't count. It hurt. Deeply. Death was not discriminatory to who she claimed as her own - taking too those who had barely started a life of their own. They didn't deserve this. They deserved a life of freedom. A life where they could be children. Where they could play, laugh. A life where when they died at an old age they would leave this world surrounding by people who loved them, who knew their name, who knew their life.

God, if you could only settle your head as easy as you overthought. You knew you could not always afford to be so sensitive or surrender to those innate emotional impulses you had in public. It was dangerous to been seen as weak. So you buried them inside and evidently, when your subconscious mind was allowed a little bit of freedom, all of those unaddressed issues and thoughts and worries poured out of you untameably.

When you left your assigned apartment (if you could call it that) in the morning, Joel was just locking his door. You weren't unaccustomed to the looks he gave you, and you looked forward to greeting him each morning, but the past week he had been rather... off. Distant. Not that Joel was particularly easy to get close to, or that you were extremely close anyway, but the daily nods of greeting as you worked had ceased. The offering of water on your work breaks or knocking on your door to offer leftover wine had stopped too, and casual conversation was no more. You were perplexed as to why. You thought of Joel as a friend, a strikingly good looking, strong, protective one that you harbored a little crush on. You'd be lying to yourself if you weren't feeling a little hurt by his distance.

"Morning," You offered, failing to fight back a yawn. Joel used to tease you when you were sleepy - scold you and tell you to get more rest. He was rarely ever too soft in his words, but you knew they came from a place of care. This morning he simply gave you a grunt in response. You shrugged it off. Maybe he just had a long night too?

As you both made your way out of the building and towards your shared work area for the morning you failed again to rid yourself of your yawn and Joel shot you a glare.

"Not sleep well?" He asked, but there was a striking lack of the usual care in his voice. It was more accusatory.

"Not one bit." You said casually, a little confused by his tone.

"Right." He said, bluntly. He didn't even give you the opportunity to ask what was wrong. He'd already got to work, storming off ahead of you. If you had the energy, and if the FEDRA soldiers scattered all over the QZ weren't watching the place like hawks you might have shouted at him, asked him what his problem was. Instead you sighed. Maybe he just wasn't in the mood for conversation right now?

Work dragged by as usual. Sometimes you felt a little outside of your own body when you worked, your mind checking out when the flames of the fire claimed another of the bodies - the smell of rotten burning flesh making your mind spin and your stomach churn. Ash clung to your hair and the fibers of your clothes. With your hands on your thighs, exhausted, you took a moment to catch your breath. Joel looked at you, and even through the protective goggles and mask you could see his unimpressed face.

"Tired. Sorry."

"Yeah," He said coldly, shooting back, "You're not the only one."

You stood a little dumbfounded at the harshness of his words. This wasn't a throw away comment relating to your struggle. It was angry. He never spoke to you like that. Not with such venom. Never.

You stood, eye to eye, sharing nothing but fumes bouncing from the top of each others heads. Before you even got the chance to say anything back you were being told off by a supervisor. 'No breaks without your pay being docked! Talking can wait! If talking is what Joel even wants to do.'

Joel kicked himself for that, and avoided looking at you for the rest of the working day, which he found much harder than he liked to admit. Looking to you was a brief solace for him on days when he had to burn bodies to feed himself. He had been happy to know you were going to work alongside him. Spend more time with him. You were like a light, warm and inviting, beckoning him in, and like a stupid little moth he spent most of his days drifting off towards you. Now, though, when he looked at you he wasn't filled with that calming enjoyable feeling spreading warm throughout his chest, he was filled instead with a deep gut flipping rage that made him feel sick.

It wasn't his fault. He couldn't help feeling the way he did. Not when you smiled at him more gently than he thought he deserved. Not when your eyes shined a little brighter as you greeted him than they did when greeting anyone else. And of course now he felt guilty because he had started taking his issues out on you. You couldn't help being so kind and sweet to him. He knew you were oblivious to his feelings for you because of course he wasn't very obvious at showing them. It wasn't your fault that he was overcome with jealousy at the thought of you with someone else. You were entitled to that - a grown women that he wasn't going to stop from making her own choices. It didn't mean he would be happy about it though.

He was angry at himself more than anything because, how had this happened? Most men kept their hands and eyes off you and their words to themselves anytime Joel gave them a warning look. He, be it intentionally or not, had an unspoken claim on you. So how, when his eyes were expertly trained on you at most times, had you found this lover you had taken up this past week?

Usually when you would finish your shift, you and Joel would wait for one another to hand in your time sheets and you'd walk back home together. Today however Joel stormed home, too angry to have a rational conversation with you which wouldn't end in him confessing how he felt or making a fool out of himself in public. You were disheartened to see him avoid your stare, which followed his broad shoulders and greying hair all the way down whatever street he had stormed off down until he rounded a corner and he was gone from your sight. The sigh that escaped you when you received your measly food tokens was for once not from the lack of good pay.

When the sky starts to darken and he knows you've made it home by the sounds of your keys jangling open your old rusted door lock he puts his head in his hands. He was practically doing this to himself. He knows he shouldn't. He knows he really really shouldn't. But he cant help himself. He sits up, waiting for you. Listening. Being as quiet as he can to hear for any distinguishable voice to identify your mysterious midnight caller. Nothing comes. No sneaking creek of your front door. No hushed voices. Nothing. Nothing but you that is. Nothing but your noises.

Small whines and gasps leave your lips and tumble into the room around you, echoing in the almost empty room and filtering through any old rotting walls that kept you and Joel from each other. It was driving him insane. To hear you like that. To imagine you writhing against someone else. Seeking pleasure from the hands he did not possess. It burned up in him. He hated that it made him half hard to imagine you bare against his own bed, under his own body.

It was a bad one tonight. A really bad one. Images of all the children you had burned came to you as you slept. Every single one. Their faces unrecognizable against the flames melting their flesh away. They came at you fast. They cried and they screamed and they begged and you did the same in return. You were shaking when you woke. Your mouth dry, your hair stuck to your forehead. You couldn't get back to sleep now. There was no point in trying.

The same as every night for Joel, your noises came to an abrupt stop. And the same as every night Joel had to restrain himself from going over, fists clenched until his knuckles were bright white. But this night, instead of the noises completely stopping, he hears your soft foot steps pat across the floor. In the deathly quiet he hears the smash of broken glass against your hard wood floor, and then, the recognisable heart wrenching sounds of your soft cries.

And he's up then. Without even thinking about it, he's flinging his apartment door open and banging his hand against your door. Hurried and panicked and immediately ready to do what had to be done to protect you! The five seconds from the minute he slammed his fist against your door to you opening it felt like an eternity to him. Where you alright? What had happened? Had your mystery lover hurt you? Do I have to break this door down?

Your heart felt like it jumped out your body when the banging came from your door. You stepped around the glass of water you had accidentally dropped and took your still shaking legs to your front door. You were thankful to see it was Joel through your peephole and not a FEDRA soldier.

The second you unlocked the door he flew into your place, eyes scanning all over the room.

"Where is he!" He almost shouts, without looking at you.

"What do you mean where is he?" You asked confused, "Where is who?"

"Your friend! You know who!" Joel spat at you.

"What are you talking about Joel? There isn't anyone here!" You raised your voice a little at him. He looked at you then. The fury in his eyes dying down as he saw your expression. You looked exhausted, upset. Tears wet your eyes and your cheeks were flushed. He saw the glass then on the floor in a small puddle of water. To your surprise he was looking just as confused as you were.

You noticed him look to the shattered glass, "I just...I just dropped a glass and it just, shocked me a little...I'm just tired."

"Of what?" He said, still a little mad, unsure of the situation he had walked in on.

"Are you angry at me right now?" You asked, a little fed up of his attitude, "Because...if you are I really can't do this right now. I've not been sleeping and-"

"Yeah I've heard." Joel replied flatly, trying to ignore how beautiful and inviting you looked in your little night dress.

"You...you've heard me?" You asked, quietly.

"Yes."

"Oh Joel, I'm so sorry..." You were bright red in an instant, and feeling incredibly guilty. 'Was this why he was so angry? Have I been keeping him up?' "I had no idea I was being so loud. My nightmares, they're really...they're really awful right now. I think its the new job or something..."

Now it was Joel's turn to feel embarrassed, "Wait, did you say nightmares?"

"Y-Yeah. They're like night terrors, or something. I didn't know the walls were so thin. If I had known I'd of slept at the other end of the room. I'm sorry Joel, I didn't mean to wake you." You were so apologetic and it made him want to die inside a little bit. Another wave of guilt washed over him. In his possessive depravity he had only your pleasure on his mind. It didn't even occur to him once that you might be struggling.

He sighed, and finally closed the door to your apartment. You silently wondered what the other neighbors were thinking. You bit your lip a little awkwardly as he sat down at the wobbly stool in your kitchen and put his head in his hands.

"God I'm so stupid."

"What?" You asked gently, stepping closer to him a little, "No you're not. Why do you say that?"

He shakes his head a little and chuckles lowly, "Honey, I thought..." he takes a breath and tries his best to not avoid your looks at him, "I thought this whole time you had someone over here...making you make them noises you were making."

Your mind goes a little blank for a second, and you stand dumbfounded, lips parted a little in surprise. And then his words hit you like a tonne of bricks, and they're heavier than any body you had picked up that day or any day previous. You laughed a little then, covering your mouth with your hands, "No! Oh my god no!"

"Hey! Don't you laugh at me." He laughs back a little, loving hearing these sounds. Even if they were at his expense, he could not help but think of the comparison to the ones he had been hearing before. He much preferred these.

"I'm not, I'm not." You denied playfully.

"You are." He looks away from you and to his feet. You stop laughing but you smile at him softly.

"Joel?" You ask, and he looks to you instantly with those big brown puppy dog eyes and you feel like you might melt, "Where you mad because I was waking you up or where you mad because you thought I had a man in here?"

"You're not dumb."

"I'm not." You nod with a smirk, "Still want to hear you to say it though."

The look he gives you is more intense than you feel you've ever shared. You feel like your heart is in your throat.

"Course you do," He fails to hide a little smirk of his own, "It wasn't because you were waking me up."

"No?"

"No."

The room was silent. You were stood, staring at each other, much too far away for your liking. You swallowed a lump in your throat. Waiting. Wondering.

"I was driving myself insane," Joel says then, "thinking about you with someone else. Thinking about someone else's hands on you."

Your heart was beating so fast and so loud you thought Joel might be able to hear it.

"You really think I'd have just anyone in here?" You teased him.

He raised his eyebrows a little, "You're a grown woman you can do what you like. Who you like. I can't stop you."

"We both know that's not true."

You watched how his eyes got a little darker then as he stared at you, his chest rising and falling in time with his deep nose exhales. He looked like he was ready to eat you. Perhaps in his head he was. He had a problem with possessiveness. 'Did she know this whole time?'

"Do you have a problem with that?"

You let his words settle before you ventured to step a little closer to him, "You're not dumb." You echoed Joel's earlier words.

"Still wanna hear you say it." He teased you back with repeating your own, his words meeting a smirk so handsome you thought you might pass out - you smiled at him. Content. You were both bad at feelings. You struggling to admit how strongly you both felt for one another with words. This moment right here felt like the closest you would get to ever being upfront about how deeply you both felt.

"Joel," The hum of his name on your lips had him reeling. You closed the gap between you both, standing on two feet in front of him as he still sat in your rickety old kitchen chair. You brushed your fingers through the sides of his hair delicately, caressing the side of his stubble kissed face. He leaned into your touch, an arm resting loosely at your waist, the feeling of the pads of your fingers sending goosebumps up and down his body. He closed his eyes for a brief moment. It was the most vulnerable you had ever saw him look. So love drunk. Your heart melted, "Joel I don't want anyone else. You know that right?"

"Well, you have me if you want me that badly, darlin'" He teased you, smiling as he felt you fake shove his chest a little in protest, "Wouldn't let anybody else have you anyway."

"Wouldn't have guessed by the way you nearly took my door off the hinges."

"Almost did it two nights ago when I heard you making those little noises."

"Hindsight Miller."

He laughed heartily at that.

"I'm sorry sweetheart," He said, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, "If I'd of known you were upset I wouldn't have been so harsh on you. Shouldn't have been harsh on you anyway for that matter."

"It's alright. If I'm being honest, I kinda like the thought of you all worked up over me."

"You wanna quit talkin' before you start something you can't stop." He looked over you with that intense dark gaze in his eyes again.

"You think I'd wanna stop?" You challenge despite your heart being in your throat. When he didn't reply you ventured to push him a little further, "Are you going to stay the night or do I have to beg?"

He gave you a chuckle through half lidded eyes, "Guess you're gunna have to get on your knees then."

"Oh look who's got jokes," the banter you shared was not uncommon, but this had been the most flirtatious. The most open about your now clearly mutual feelings, "So that's the stuff you're into huh?"

"You got no idea."

"You're right, I don't," You chuckled at him, watching as he stood from his seat so he was looking down at you now, "Why don't you show me?"

"You're playing with fire, you know that?" The hand still wrapped around your waist pulled you into him then, his other hand caressing your face.

"Would you just shut up and kiss me already?"

He didn't have to be told twice - his lips met yours, more gently at first than you had thought he would do. Almost like he was still unsure. You could feel the pair of you smiling. And then his hand had moved from your face to the back of your neck, pulling you impossibly close so you didn't know where your body stopped and his began. And you weren't smiling anymore. Panting, clutching at his shirt with your hand like you couldn't ever bare to let go. Terrified if you did he'd be gone. Your lips never parted, your tongues slipping past each others mouths, tasting one another with a hunger neither one of you had satisfied for a long time.

He grabbed your face in both hands, moving you so his mouth could more easily place kisses across your jaw and onto your neck. The feel of his beard scratching you gently, the light nips of his teeth as he sucked gently against your neck and the low grunts into your ear had a soft whine escape your mouth. A real one. One he had caused. Joel couldn't think of a time he had gotten that hard that quickly in his entire lifetime - your sounds were like honey. Delectable. And he devoured them, tongue in your mouth, desperate for more.

His hands grabbed at your ass then, his fingers delicately tickling their way underneath your night dress to knead at your ass.

His lips parted yours, panting and breathless. His forehead was pressed against yours, your noses touching still, "Jump for me." He said.

"Not with your back." You tormented.

"Shut up," He scolded you, but with a tone that was far from menacing, "Jump."

You did as you were told with a chuckle, putting your hands to his broad shoulders to steady yourself as you jumped. He expertly wrapped your legs around his waist and walked you over to your bed. Joel was silently thankful that your bed wasn't too far because realistically his back did hurt - he didn't even feel embarrassed for the way in which your words, how they proved to care for him, had the corners of his mouth turning up. He hadn't felt this feeling he had for you for a long while. So long it felt foreign to him; he welcomed it.

He just about tossed you onto the bed then, immediately leaning over you as you let out an excited laugh. Your night dress had rode up so your upper legs and underwear was exposed to him. The guttural noise he made at the sight made your head spin. His mouth was on yours again and his hands grabbing at your thighs, the feel of his fingers on your exposed skin making him even harder than he thought he ever could be. You wined at the strength of the grip he had on you and he let go a little, a little panic in his eyes as he looked you over. He was uncharacteristically nervous - trying so hard not to ruin this with you after wanting it for so bad for so long.

"What's wrong?" You ask, your hands coming to stroke his upper arms.

"Don't wanna hurt ya."

You touched his face sweetly, and kissed his cheek, understanding his apprehension. It had been a while for you too. "You won't break me Joel."

"I might."

"Why don't you show me how you do that as well then?"

He groaned a little at your words, his forehead pressing into yours.

"You're killing me, you know that?" He sighed, "Don't wanna be too much too soon...don't wanna scare you off."

"You could never scare me off. Ever." You said, he avoided your eyes a little, so you continued, thinking he maybe needed reassurance to let loose a little more, "Joel. I want you. I want this. I've always wanted this."

That seemed to do the trick with him. His hands were under your dress then, feeling the curves of your waist, cupping your breast, running the pad thumb over your nipple. The feeling of his hands on you had you whining softly again for him.

"You gunna take this off or do I gotta rip it off?" He growled at you, his hands and eyes desperate for more.

You thought you'd never moved so quickly in all your life. The nightdress pulled over your head and thrown to the floor, Joel's shirt joined it and your lips were locked once again. You were under him, in only underwear, exposed to him under the dim light of your apartment. You felt like you were in a dream with the way he kept looking at you - drinking you in.

"Don't know how long I've waited for this," He said breathlessly, pinning your arms expertly above your head, "Waited to touch you."

You whined in protest a little, desperate to touch him as he took one of your nipples into his mouth, kissing, licking, sucking expertly. A moan left you then, followed by a whine of his name.

"What's the matter sweetheart? You want me to touch you?"

"I wanna touch you."

"You can wait your turn," he chuckled, continuing his assault on your breasts, "Wanna make you cum on my tongue before I fuck you."

You bit your lip at his words and watched him as he released your hands and kissed his way down your body. He admittedly would not normally take such a long time with this, but he'd been wanting you like this for so long he wanted to make sure he lasted. Make sure you were satisfied. You were practically dripping for him by the time his head found his way between your thighs.

He lifted your legs, pulling your panties away from you and exposing your wet heat to him. He groaned, his hands stopping you from closing your thighs together shyly.

"Fuck, you're so wet," He said, enjoying how fast your face went red. You tried to close your legs again, but Joel gripped them hard, "You gunna be a good girl and keep em open for me?"

You nodded, completely unable to form words at the prospect of Joel Miller saying these positively sinful things to you. You were so caught up in his words that the feeling of his tongue licking a stripe from your hole to your clit made you gasp. You watched him as he licked and sucked at you, slowly teasing your clit in circles with his tongue, then sucking the bud and then going back to licking. You threw your head back into the pillow, overwhelmed by how quickly you thought he was going to make you cum, your orgasm already building tight in your stomach.

He couldn't get enough of you, the moans and grunts of his own vibrating against your sex. The taste of you. You couldn't help yourself then - you were a writhing mess beneath him, grinding your hips into his face with your fingers threading through his hair. You slapped one of your hands to your mouth to choke back a moan, and suddenly Joel was pulling away, one of his hands slapping gently at your arm.

"Wanna hear you baby," He said as whined from the lack of contact. He pressed a thumb to your clit but didn't move it, "don't go shy on me now, wanna hear how much you like me tongue fucking your little pussy."

"Oh God," you moaned, his dirty words getting you off.

"Atta girl."

He began moving his thumb in slow circles around your clit, moving his index and middle to slide through your folds. The slick sound they made as they glistened against his finger had him leaking precum onto himself. He slid a thick finger into you and you moaned. He added another an you moaned again, the feeling of your walls gripping his fingers making his head spin at how they might feel wrapped round his cock.

"Fuck, you know how turned on your little noises have been making me? Felt like a fucking pervert, had me hard as a rock thinking about what you'd look like if it was me on top of you, making you whine like that."

He said, picking his pace up, expertly fucking his fingers into you and licking and sucking at your clit in intervals until the grip in his hair got a little tighter and he could feel all your muscles begin to tense up.

"You gunna cum baby?" He asked at the increase in your noises. Words were still failing you so you nodded frantically, your shut in bliss, "Come on, you can do it, come for me beautiful."

Who were you to deny him? Especially when he showered you in compliments. The tight knot of your orgasm unraveled for him, the feeling like stars warm across your whole body. You cum on Joel's fingers as his mouth drank every last bit of you, reveling in how you were gushing for him. Your moans were sinful, and now that he was hearing them, really hearing them, he thinks he was so stupid for believing the noises you had been making were from anything close to this.

He let you ride out your orgasm before your breathing evened out and you started to giggle and push him away from him overstimulating your clit.

"Come here." You beckoned him to come closer to you. His mouth and chin and beard were all glistening with your juices. You could taste yourself on his tongue as he climbed on top of you and captured your mouth on his own. You were practically clinging to him, your arms at his neck and shoulders, his arms either side of your head boxing you underneath him. He leaned on you a little, your breasts coming into contact with his bare chest and you moaned a little as you pulled his hips closer to your own with your legs wrapped around him.

You could feel how hard he was as his hips pressed against yours, the outline of his clothed cock enough to have you biting your lip. You fiddled with his belt a little but struggled to get it off him. He laughed at your attempts and sat back to help you, the wetness of your pussy evident on his trousers.

You sat up, ghosting your hand across his covered length wanting to take him into your mouth but Joel couldn't stand waiting any longer, he was getting a little more desperate to feel you around him. To claim you. Make you his.

He gripped your hands, "Stay down."

"Wanna suck you off." You pouted a little.

He laughed darkly, "As much as I'd love to feel that little mouth on me, that can wait," He discarded his jeans and underwear, his hard weeping cock bouncing up against his stomach, "Just need you right now darlin'"

"Next time then." You giggled at him, trying not to feel intimidated by the length and girth of Joel exposed in front of you. He was big. So big you maybe thought he was doing you a favour - saving the ache of your throat for a different time.

"Next time." He chuckled again lowly, excited by the prospect that this wouldn't just be a one time thing.

He pulled you closer to the end of the bed by the thighs and you let out a surprised laugh. You were smiling up at him, watching how his big hand gripped his length and gave himself a few loose tugs, the site of you had the head red and weeping.

"You're so handsome." You said softly, and for a brief moment his dark eyes softened on you. He leaned down to capture your lips briefly. It was much slower than he had been. Gentle like the first kiss you shared. You held his head in your hands as he ran the head of dick through your folds, "Don't think you'll fit."

"You can take it." He growled into your ear, his big wide hands angling your hips. You moaned a little at his words.

He teased your entrance a little with the head of his cock, running his full length along your folds, over your clit and back down again, gathering up your wetness to help aid himself the fit. When he notched the tip just inside he made a noise so animalistic it sent goosebumps across the expanse of your flesh. He pushed in slowly, not wanting to hurt you. He was so thick. Your mouth hung open a little as he seated himself fully inside you.

"Fuck... You're so- so tight," Joel grunted, moving his hips just a little and looking down to watch how your walls clung to his length. He kissed your cheek and held you close as he pulled out all the way and pushed back in.

His pace was slow at first but still hard, his hips snapping roughly against your own. You felt so full, your body and mind consumed by him. You felt just as demented as he did no as you watched how his lips parted a little, his curls stuck to his perspirant covered forehead. He grabbed your thighs a little rougher, throwing each of your legs over his shoulders and then somehow he was hitting so deep your felt like you couldn't breathe.

"Shit. Shit. Shit. Oh God. You're so big Joel," You were rambling, his dick rubbing hard against your walls, "Fuck. So big."

You words only made his more eager, and he picked up the pace, practically slamming himself into you.

"Taking me so good. Thought about this for so long," Joel confessed, "Thought about what you'd look like wrapped around my cock. Imagined how you'd scream when I fucked you." He was rambling too, the feel of you squeezing him ever time he pulled out like you were sucking him back in so he couldn't escape made him feral. He groaned, mumbling your name like a little prayer as he continued his brutal pace.

You would normally be embarrassed by the sounds you were making, but the way Joel obsessed over your noises you'd never felt more relaxed about letting them out. Moans, whines, grunts, the wet slapping of skin, the creak of the old headboard against the wall. You briefly felt sorry for your downstairs neighbour.

Joel pulled out and scooped you up then surprisingly, his knees shuffling a little more on the bed so he could kneel and bring you down on top of him. Even though he'd been fucking you the change of angle still touch a stretch, the slick of your dripping pussy helping you to sheath him entirely in one move. He moaned, his forehead pressed against yours now. Your heart swelled as you thought perhaps this change in angle was to appeal to the side of Joel that wanted to be close to you, that wanted affection.

You moved your hips with his own, your thighs barely able to move around him he was so buff. He gripped your ass and helped you, bouncing you up and down on him as he continued to fuck up into you. You cried out as he practically split you open, your arms clinging to him, your nails scratching his back and shoulders a little. The movement of him so close against you had the knot of orgasm building again. The brush of your nipples on his chest, the way his pelvis rubbed at an angle so perfect that it stimulated your swollen clit.

"Fuck you feel so good. You take it so good," He rambled again, his teeth and lips grazing your shoulder, "Look so good riding my dick. Shit."

"Joel, I'm gunna cum."

"Good girl. You take it baby. Take what you need. Cum on my cock. Come on sweetheart, give me one more."

And you were cumming again, gushing all over his length, walls pulsing madly on him. Your hands pulled at his hair. The feel of you had Joel panting, his grip bruising as he fucked you hard and fast through your orgasm. You were practically howling his name, your legs shaking and tears clouding your eyes.

"So good for me. Look so pretty when you cum," His hips were loosing their rhythm a little and his grunts were getting quickly and father between each other.

You could tell he was close, and even through your fucked out exhaustion you helped him along, pulling at his hair, sucking at the expanse of his neck, whispering little things for him, "Cum for me Joel, want you to cum. Love your dick in me. Love how you fuck me."

You thought you might have heard him grunt, "Mine," but you couldn't be sure because then he moaned and dragged you off him so he could cum all over your front. He collapsed on top of you, your breathing both heavy as you come down from your highs. Your bodies sticky with cum and slick and sweat. He didn't care that his own cum was all over his front now too as his head found its way to the crook of your neck. Kissing you softly, you smiled at this new bought of affection. His palms rubbing slow gentle circles on your thighs as he still had your legs around him.

"You think our neighbours are going to be mad at us for keeping em up?" You giggled a little as your fingers found their way into his hair, twisting his curls around your fingers.

He was touch starved, the mere thought of having your fingers in his hair a few days ago would have made him hard. Now, empty of his pining lust - evidence of which seemed to be all over the place - he could only think of how much he cared for you. How deeply his heart ached for you. He didn't know how to say it, but he smiled against your skin.

"Let 'em be mad."

He took you both to the bathroom to clean up, kissed every part of you as you cleaned. You loved this side of him. This gentleness. This softness. It was such a stark comparison to the man who had left bruises on your thigh mere minutes before. And the minute your body was back on the bed and your head hit the comfort of Joel's embrace you were out like a light. He kissed both your eyes and let sleep take him too.

Undisturbed with any thoughts but the man who's arms you had wrapped around you, you, unsurprisingly, slept like a baby. No dreams. No nightmares.

#joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller x y/n #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x female reader #last of us #the last of us #the last of us hbo #tlou #tlou fanfiction #pedro pascal #tlou hbo

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precious-little-scoundrel · 7 months

Text

Dear John || Something Borrowed

Masters of the Air fanfiction

Summary: Upon the sudden stop of all their correspondence, Miss Lana Tierney finds herself bereft of her pen pal John Egan’s support -not however, without him first having made a heavy declaration and entrusted her with a precious bit of himself. Battling Tinsel Town’s awful labyrinth of censors, agents, and an ever disloyal mother, Lana seeks to find John, and having once found him, to remind him of his promise to try. Meanwhile in Stalag Luft III, Major Gale Cleven may loiter at his incriminating radio longer than strictly necessary in hopes of hearing a voice that would bring his best friend a shred of hope.

My many thanks to: Christi and Ashley for endless amounts of encouragement and advice and enrichment of the plot, y’all are invaluable darlings and precious friends. To Bri who has been the brains and requests behind the concept and the beating heart behind giving Bucky a love of a lifetime

Warnings: 18+ disturbing content. Not so much war focused but rather Hollywood in the 40’s which can be horribly gruesome itself. We are happily ripping off Lana Turner’s real story for much of this, and so in this chapter you will find mentions of certain harrowing abuses she endured. Such as: brief references to a forced, studio-required abortion, bugging of a woman’s room, arranged engagements, drugging, hinted sexual exploitation, willing current sexual favors in return for a role, Bucky going a little nuts as a POW, Lana’s mother being the worst, John Huston making a cameo that will probably make you wanna punch the guy. It’s ok, the real fella deserved it. Go ahead. Again, nothing explicit, didn’t wanna get all yucky but these themes are prevalent in here in passing.

Word count: a whopping 8k

Character name reminder: Julie Jean Turner goes by the Hollywood alias of “Lana Tierney”

Lana lay abed and stewed. She was past grief, or perhaps it was easier explained that Grief and her sisters, Denial and Betrayal, were more of Julie Jean Turner’s privilege. Miss Lana Tierney, academy hopeful and box office gold, had little left but rage and the moist silk of her pillow pressed to her burning cheek.

“What an awful few days it’s been.” she’d allowed herself to say a few weeks back.

The Julie Jean of that week didn’t know the meaning of the word.

Life was bad enough then, back when he called, but his voice cured everything from her terrible week. Vincent and the engagement and the studios, all of it. But then came a letter, one written awfully like a goodbye, and another one after it but all of them were little provisions for if he were to go down.

Scribbled hours before going up.

“I love you, I know it’s a lot to spring on a gal who’s just doing her bit and keeping me happy but I do. It’s an awful type of love, Julie, very tight fisted and I think I only love you because you love me so well in your way. I don’t think that’s the sort of love to do anybody any good, but I’d regret not saying it, beginners can’t be haughty. Here I wanted to stick my toe in and you gobbled the whole leg, and I love you. I love you for it. I love you.”

She’d rubbed over his signature, not a bit of cursive in that scrawled -John- a million times.

And then, just like that, just like what had happened to her friends and a million women across the world- his letters simply stopped. Julie Jean learned elsewhere he’d been shot down for weeks by the time she’d gotten the last one. It was hard to have finally heard his voice and known of his purpose, but now? -a dead silence that had a voice and face and love attached to it. It was agony of a sort she’d never known and was made worse by the loneliness in her secrecy of not being able to mourn it aloud.

She moaned into the mess of her pillowcase and ignored Bertha's fifth knock of the afternoon. Who’d recognize the glamorous Miss Tierney now? Pitiful and tear streaked and pale from blood loss. She still lay on a chucks pad the studio nurse had rolled her onto, a feeble trickle still seeping between her legs. Curled on her side with eyes glinting at the afternoon sun, she seethed at one more thing taken from her.

Lana could hardly stand it. But she had to try. She’d made John promise he would. They’d promised each other, and somehow she hadn’t any doubts that wherever he was, he was trying.

“Miss Tierney?” That was Herbert’s voice and Jean rolled her eyes at the predictability of this household. After not answering Delores they sent in Bertha and upon not answering Bertha here was Herbert and if she didn’t answer him, her mother might manage to rouse herself and drive over.

“Come in Herb, if you must.” she groaned, hand outstretched and patting blindly for a cigarette on her nightstand.

Her old driver came in with an unusually light step, it bespoke a sympathy for her plight that Jean would have preferred a thousand times never to read on his usually persnickety face. “How are you holding up after -“ he stood awkwardly at the foot of her bed as Jean rummaged and when she sat back with cigarette and holder in hand, she found him looking down at her with such concern she nearly threw the lamp at him. “Tonsillitis, huh?” he hummed sympathetically.

“Oh yes, nasty bout.” she lied merrily, the ache in her violated womb protested her move to sit up. “They had to take them clean out.” it was the only printable explanation for her ailment.

“Yeah.” Herb had been a renowned stuntman before he’d been demoted to driver, and before stuntman he’d been a soldier in the trenches and before that he’d been a clerk. If anyone knew about coat hangers and poor girls held down to be kept forever virginal and ever in use, Herb knew. Herb had warned her even, told her what a sick racket they ran here in Tinsel Town. Much good it did her, she was in too deep before she knew she had so much as stuck her toe in.

Rather like Bucky in love, apparently, and that thought made her madly blink away a stupid rush of tears.

“What��s that?” she pointed at the parcel she just now noticed was tucked under his arm.

“Oh, this? Chocolates. Here, my lighter miss?” Whatever was under Herbert’s arm wasn’t shaped like any chocolates she knew and Jean was about to give him a talking to for being insipid when her mood was so poor but then she saw him press a warning finger to his lips. He walked around the side of her bed and indeed pulled out a lighter, metal and rude and no doubt a relic of the first war, and flicked it for her to light up. Bending down he smelled of tobacco himself when he took the unprecedented liberty of whispering in her ear: “They bugged the room during your operation, Miss. Must be careful. Especially if you want to keep your gift.”

He pulled away and looked down at her sorrowfully before quietly laying the dirty brown package atop her pristine sheets. Mother had them changed after the bloodbath of the…operation. They were spotless before and now they were sooty. That pleased her.

Jean forgot to look away from him. She was startled and upset by the news but she didn’t doubt it. They’d probably bugged the phone ages ago, god knows they’d stop at next to nothing and she did so want to keep something for herself. If she couldn’t have a baby, her baby, then she’d keep a parcel, damn them all. Then a cold feeling of dread filled her and she thought to grab at her books and look for the hidden letters.

Gone. Mother. It must’ve been mother, it was her sort of thing to have rifled through Lana’s things while she was being operated on and found them and took them and-

The rage spurred her to look down at what Herb brought her, cigarette forgotten between her quivering lips. She expected it to be from him, a little pep up. Perhaps a doll or a stuffed animal to cheer her. But no, this parcel in its plain brown wrapping had come from afar, smudged and delayed a million times judging by its redirected stamps -and she’d know that writing from anywhere.

Her Johnny.

Julie Jean’s little gasp let slip the cigarette from her mouth but not before Herb caught it from singeing the sheets. He was quicker than anyone gave the old man credit for, banged up head or not. “Thought that might cheer you.” he grinned in that begrudging way of his, as if he were cross at the joy made manifest on his face.

“I’m scared.” she admitted in a whisper, hands hovering over the brown twine strings. Whatever was inside was squishy and giving. And whatever it was, John had sent it before he’d been shot down. But still, somehow it felt like a gift from him on this, the worst day of her life. Like he was sending some comfort even from hell on earth and without a clue of her own dispair. Herb seemed to read it the same way, and that’s how Jean knew she wasn’t being a delusional, hysterical wreck, if that crusty old sod knew its significance in coming today, then it was plain as the irregular nose on his face.

“Scared of chocolate?” His tease covered a strong reminder for her to watch her words.

“Mm, yes, what if there’s raspberry filled ones?” she whispered back. “You know how I can’t abide raspberries.”

“Guess you’ll just have to be brave and see.” he nudged her.

Nodding her head solemnly, Jean tugged apart the twine that had kept John Egan’s package together for an entire transcontinental delivery. It fell away with a crinkling sound and she found folded upon it, without a bit of fuss or wrapping, the oddest piece of cloth. Almost a patchwork of pale leather and a zipper and -Jean’s throat closed as her hand descended and felt along the soft fluff of a sheepskin collar.

He didn’t. He didn’t send her his jacket? Surely —

Herb made a noncommittal noise beside her which sounded awfully like some touched sorta gasp at the sight, but as it was Herb and he had a tobacco wad where he should have had a heart, so he must’ve been coming down with the same cold that landed Lana in tonsil surgery.

Hands shaky and heart hammering, Jean reached in and pulled the garment out, a tiny little note fluttered out. Someone else’s penmanship. “To the care of Jean Turner, until it can be retrieved by Major Egan.”

“Oh god.” she felt like sobbing before pressing her face into the sweat fumed plushness of it. “Johnny. Johnny. Johnny.” she kept his name buried in his jacket, secret like his gift and his love and his comfort and her desires. Eyes and mouth muffled into the darkness of something that was his. She felt Herb’s gentle hand pat on her head and the following click of the latch as he went out.

“Mister Vincent called to say there’s dinner and photographs scheduled for tonight, Miss Tierney.” he informed her levelly before he left and her ears were not so buried in Air Force Shearling she couldn’t hear of her doom. “There’s been some speculations -they want to smooth it over. Bertha was trying to pass it on.”

Bertha wanted to wipe off whatever remaining blood was on her and primp all signs of coercion off her devastated face, that’s what Bertha was here for. Jean vaguely wondered if her mother’s clenching hand print still lingered on her cheeks, she rubbed John’s jacket against the soreness of her mouth, muffling her sobs the way her mother’s hand had stifled her screams of pain only hours ago.

Back to work, asap, it would seem. -Bleed down your nylons dear, it’ll be alright, so long as they see a happy face and a lucky new couple.

Vincent. She wasn’t sure how she’d face him, the weekend getaway and his little “test drive” of her had been bad enough, the fact he hadn’t the brains to prevent it from having consequences or the spine to stand up for the life of the child he made- oh, she wondered how she’d manage to down her asparagus in the face of it all. Acting, she presumed, a true talent that had suddenly become a personality since -since? -she wasn’t sure when.

Beside her for months now, stacked beneath the pile of new Runyon books she’d taken out of the library, had been a pile of letters that didn’t have a bit of acting in them. Raw and true and terrible and wanton, each of John Egan’s thoughts tumbled off their confining pages and into her heart in mirrored response to her own. Now mother had them.

Jean wondered where all her own letters to him were, now that he was gone and someone else was in his bunk.

Funny to think of that, the most honest account of herself was most likely moldering in the bottom of some MIA airman’s footlocker.

It was all a bit self indulgent, she admitted even as she stripped out of her bloody gown and down to her bare skin, but she had lost plenty and she needed him: so she slipped him on, soft wool caressing her and stopping the shivers of shock that had wracked her all morning. It smelled so manly and sweaty and terribly real she about swooned at the sensation of having a bit of him next to her. Now she’d seen him -all those darling candid photos in repayment for hers- and she’d heard him -oh that awful, wonderful telephone call right before he disappeared- and now she was smelling him.

Jean would have to bathe and take a handful of aspirin and cinch in her girdle and kiss her fiancée tonight, but for a brief hour she layed in bed naked as a baby with her gift wrapped around her like swaddling clothes.

Vincent came later with the car, one of his father’s for certain, and eyed her choice of outerwear with a sour mouth. Fleece and chiffon was an odd mix but Lana always had been a trendsetter and it was early November, even if it was Los Angeles. Of course, for her the jacket was John, and so she wore him like armor -and if she was wearing it, they couldn’t take it without her knowing.

“I’m cold.” she answered Vin’s unspoken question sharply on the ride over, “I’ve just had tonsil surgery, you may recall?”

“It stinks.” he huffed back, his nose presumptuously nuzzling under her curls and very near the sweat soaked fleece, “Smells like a barnyard.”

What it smelled like was a red blooded American man’s honest days work killing Nazis. But Vincent and his pale hands and arranged medical exemptions weren’t likely to know what that smelled like, so Lana felt compelled to give him a pass. “It’s for the war effort,” she sighed, “we must all make sacrifices. Mr. Warner told me it would be grand press to wear it.”

She’d never spoken to Mr. Warner about much else but weather and her tits, but growing ever more desperate as these days went on, Lana thought perhaps she’d pay him a visit.

“Great press?” Vincent seethed, charmingly one track focused, “The press should be about our engagement! Not the war!”

“Be a realest, dahling,” she soothed, “nothing, not even the great scion of a prestigious family such as yours is half as fascinating right now as ball bearings and top turret production in Greenfield. If we want them to print about our engagement, it’s got to have something to do with the general war, see?“

“Ah, ah I see.” Vincent swallowed her lie well enough, still perturbed at the fracturing of his beloved media attention but consoled that Lana was not aspiring to make him a fool.

Oh how foolish that was of him, Lana hummed to herself as they pulled up to the restaurant, perhaps not tonight or in a week's time. No, for now she was down and out and no doubt about it, but eventually, she’d scramble on top, she had to or she’d be offed eventually by it all. She knew that now, it was plain with each aching step on wobbly legs and each smile of her crimped, anemic face, Vincent’s pliable hand more vice than support on her elbow as she stepped out under Chasens’ green awning.

There was conversation and photographs all through dinner, her agent and a Warner Brothers executive kindly gracing the table with heavy, stilted and very implied conversation. Lana might’ve breathed better in her booth had they held an actual gun to her head and told her to finish her parsnips that way. They were very happy she had recovered from the tonsillitis so well, they were very eager to see her on set bright and early tomorrow, they were very eager that any doubt about how in love she was with the respectable Vincent be ameliorated -a very big word to say with a mouthful of steak- and very hopeful that Lana wouldn’t get any ideas about a repeat of the War Bond tour. Yes the last one had been very effective and the government was pleased, but too much exposure to common crowds had a tendency to lessen the goddess effect, she must be let out to the pubic sparingly, and they in turn must not feel entitled to her in any way.

Such as…reaching out through the post, for example, much less expecting to be answered with anything less standardized than what Bertha might write twenty times over in her name in an afternoon.

“I just want to do my part.” Lana demurred.

“Oh honey, you’ve done your part, and now you’ve got a new part. Make a wish.” And there before her was brought out a cake slice with much fanfare, icing making a pretty little drizzle of words -“speedy recovery Lana, love from everyone at Warner Brothers Studio.”

She’d seen actresses carried out plastered to the four winds on sedative from slices just like this one, chivalrously poured into a waiting backseat of a producer or studio head, taken back to be put to bed. God knows what else happened in those beds. Her nausea returned fourfold and it wasn’t acting when she gasped a need to go to the powder room.

Instead she dashed to the phone, the one in the cubby near the toilets, trying resolutely to ignore the spying eyes of waiters and curious waves of famous guests passing by.

“Pick up, Herb, pick up.” she begged, listening to it ring and ring, then suddenly felt a horrid fear at the realization she’d left the jacket slung over her chair at the booth, with Vincent. “Herb please, please.” she moaned, stomping one well shod foot against the marble floor.

“Hallo?”

“Herb, oh Herb!” Lana gushed urgently on hearing him pick up, “You must come pick me up, they’re onto me with the letters and they’ve brought out cake and- bring a car, Vincent brought his father’s-“

“-Thank yeeew, Herbert, that will be all.” Mother’s affected transatlantic sent shivers down Lana’s spine right as she felt the cold clasp of her rings around her wrist, receiver wrenched effectively from her nerveless hand, “This is a family matter, your services are not required.”

“Mommy dearest.” Lana felt her lips trembling in a odd way that fought against the creeping numbness, “What a pleasant surprise.”

“Would that I could say the same, Lana.” Mother reproved, “To abandon your fiancé without thought? And to find you calling on Herbert, like this were some otiresome fundraiser from which you may carelessly abscond -really. Your behavior is nothing but deplorable lately, I hardly know you. The cost, Lana, think of the cost of it all, this recklessness.”

“Who told you?”

“That you weren’t appreciative of the cake?” Mother smiled shyly, “Alfonso.”

The owner, of course, when he couldn’t get a hand up Lana herself he had become quite partial to mother, loyal to an opulent degree. She suspected that cake more than ever, the phone, too. God there was no getting out of this town, this place, this life.

“Alfonso says you’re distracted,” mother went on, “pale and sniffing some jacket? What has gotten into you?”

“Vincent.” Lana joked miserably and if half of Hollywood wasn’t sat so near, she’s rather sure her mother might’ve struck her.

“You’re going to go back out there, and you’re going to smile for the pictures, and you’re going to like it.” Mother laid out the case, the plan and the rest of her life, “And when we go home you’ll be getting a piece of my mind.”

“Oh really mother,” Lana sighed heavily, “I couldn’t take the last piece.”

The pinch on her arm was familiar of when Lana was a child and refused to sing in yet another talent show - the fifth that weekend. “Your fault for falling ill, now we must make up for lost time.” they were gliding back to the table arm in arm with Lana’s pale skin pinched between mother’s manicure, “Smile, darling, smile and wave.” as they wove between one starry guest and another.

Mother’s gait stalled for one fraction of a moment upon coming up to the table and seeing the bizarre article of clothing hanging over Lana’s chair. “Works better than a mink.” Lana proclaimed quite loudly, giddy enough to attract most male attention around who craned their necks to watch her shimmy it on for a try-on, much to Mother’s feigned amusement. She shimmied in the fleece, chiffon doing little to hide the jiggle of her derrière beneath the jacket’s hem and the flash of a bulb cracked significantly amongst the dinner chatter.

“It’s much too large for you -the sleeves, the shoulders-“

“That’s because it’s a genuine article mother!” Lana preened, satisfied to have caught the eye of the one she wanted as he sat in his booth.

Powerful and dark and lecherous, The Jack Huston stared at her unabashedly over the haze of his cigarette, his own date forgotten, taking in the way the man’s coat dwarfed her little body in a pantomime of covering her physically, masculine leather and zipper in stark contrast to baby soft skin swelling out of her neckline. She knew that look well, one of a man sizing her up for how she’d look beneath him.

Lana smirked at him significantly, squeezing the material around her dreamily and created a significantly more substantial amount of decollage for him to view upon doing so. “Lana, sit down for god’s sake.” Mother was hissing and Lana saw Huston laugh at it, she rolled her eyes and dramatically shrugged, seating herself as asked but refusing to break eye contact with him until he raised his glass in a toast to her brazenness.

“Lana, photographers! Come now! Chin up, smile, smile darling.”

There were so many flashbulbs here it was obnoxious to not only Lana’s throbbing eyes but the other patrons, still a hard launch of a stilted, lab grown relationship was hardly an oddity in Hollywood or its most favored eating spots, and so it was endured.

“Doll, open up,” Vincent cajoled in Lana’s ear, hand kneading her waist and nose pressed to her hair, “practice for the wedding.”

It looked quite humorous if a little uncouth in the papers next day, Lana’s gasping and amused indulgence of her green boy fiancé as he playfully stuffed her mouth with cake in that pitiful tradition of marital provocation.

“Look at my dearest daughter, tonsil surgery yesterday and already, so eager, can’t be kept from dinner with her darling fiancé!”

The world grew fuzzy as Lana did her best to keep the wad of cake in her gums until she could spit the most of it out. “Tell your studio i want compensation for having to share press with the war effort.” Vin was complaining to the executive and Lana felt her world swim, only one single, dire hope remaining -Herb.

She gripped the edges of the jacket tighter and tried to focus. Mother was being called away, taking her leave with a photographed kiss to Lana’s clammy temple -some business with Aunt Lu and that promised check for her swimming pool. Lana had put in a lot of swimming pools for a lot of relatives, she was beginning to lose track between the pools and the houses and the cars and the wardrobes and always -“it’s family, Lana, they depend on you. Chin up, smile, smile darling, smile for the cameras, there’s my golden girl, box office magic.”

“Lana it’s very important you understand the role of an engaged woman-“ the executive was very insistent and Lana was very tired and very fuzzy feeling, which apparently Vincent could sense as his hands began to grow courageous in his petting, “-it’s a fine balance between respectability and attainability. The studio has worked so hard to give you this life, made enormous sacrifices so you could have a chance at this career, created an expertly crafted persona for you -if you were to jeopardize it all in any way, by inviting speculation about yourself or your lackluster roots-“

Lana was about ready to stand up and scream “I’m Julie Jean Turner from Broken Arrow Oklahoma!” and watch the deflated disinterest cover her audience like snow, it would ruin the effect -she wanted them to care that her life was a lie, but as soon as she told the truth, they’d lose all interest either way. Fame was funny like that.

“Mr Vincent,” Alfonso was most solicitous as well as perispring when he hurried over to her fiancé’s side, “there’s been an incident, your car, sir! The windows, they are smashed! And there appear to be eggs?”

Lana wasn’t sure she successfully suppressed the bubbling little laugh that flitted out of her leaden chest at Vincent’s deathly white pallor. There were two of him in her fractured, drug impaired vision and he acted like looney twins, scrambling up from the table in a flurry of hands and pomade, tux tails flapping like a frightened bird. “It’s my father’s car you idiot! Where was the doorman? Where?”

“Ooooh daddy’s gonna be mad.” Lana cooed to herself, amused at how this failure of a son couldn’t land a deal or a car or his own, only a troublesome actress who was in dire love with a man she’d never met.

Dear Herb, the eggs were such a nice touch.

The executive was waving off the cameras, this part of the night hardly suitable to be recorded. “Stewart, phone call for you.” A commanding, sonorous voice beside her sent goose flesh popping along Lana’s arms beneath the jacket, Jack Huston and his cologne suddenly pervading the place like an ominous deity casting its shadow over the now almost empty table.

“Mr. Huston.” Lana simpered sweetly when Stewart had left and it was just them alone with his hand on the back of her chair, thumbing at the lamb skin. There were two of Huston too, in her vision, and Lana gulped in trepidation of having to please both.

“Miss Tierney,” he replied, grinning a little too wide for her to focus, “you know what you look like you need?”

“What’s that, Mr. Huston?”

“Call me Jack.”

“What’s that Jack?” she tittered, happily courting ruin.

“A nightcap.” Jack declared and was extending a large palm for her before she could second guess. It was the choice of a lion over a wolf here in Hollywood, and Lana had such plans for Mr. Huston. But, like most things, Lana’s plans must wait until Mr. Huston’s plans for her had been satisfactorily met.

Of all the backseats to be poured into in Hollywood, Huston’s was rather plush and smelled nice and had a clinking little bar in the console, well stocked and vintage. Better yet, the car wasn’t his father’s, it was his. As was his mind and his time and his appetite. Lana could only dream of having that sort of brash freedom, for now she must attach herself to those who did if she so much as wanted a taste.

“So what’s with the jacket?” Mr. Huston had the liberty to be casual on a ride back to his house with a much desired starlet, after all, he had a slam dunk assurance she wasn’t going to say no on arrival.

“It belongs to a man who loves me.” she slurred earnestly.

“Pilot?”

“Yes. He writes the sweetest, filthiest things.”

“To you?”

“Only to me.” she whispered with drunken vehemence.

“I bet he does.” Huston laughed.

Mr. Huston enjoyed ribbons: tying them around her, to be specific but of all the novel and varied ways to be satisfactory it wasn’t so bad, and when he lay next to her afterwards as the drug began to take her fully under, Lana was pleased by the heavy arm around her waist. He didn't care about the tonsillitis. Bucky’s jacket hung carefully over the armchair in her line of sight, Jack had been nice about that, too.

Yes she could make some use of Huston and his ribbons and his new army uniform and his government contracts.

————————————————-

“I was insensible.” Lana maintained the following day at a meeting with Mother and Stewart and a slew of concerned agents and executives who were pleased enough by the engaged cake smashing photographs, less so by the discreet vandalizing of their blonde product by John Huston. “I don’t know what you put in that cake but it did the trick and I was as aghast as you upon waking up where I woke up.”

“And the jacket?” Mother had her priorities straight, troublesome memorabilia first, dear daughter’s virtue second.

“Shoot, I think Huston has it.” Lana whimpered, “I was in such a state, such a rush to leave-“

“Well that was a very unfortunate oversight, Lana.”

“I know.”

“He could use it against us.” Mother fretted.

“He’d make a fool of himself if he did,” Stewart shined best when full of his self-bloated importance and meetings such as these were essential fuel for that importance, “it would look like he took a pilot to bed.”

“Stewart, she’s all over the nation’s morning paper’s wearing the horrid thing!” Mother snapped and while she herself was admittedly awful most times, Lana never doubted she was shrewd, far more than Stewart and all the men in the room she jockeyed for lead with. “In fact Lana, this has really brought to a head a growing issue. Your restlessness, your ingratitude, it’s become insufferable and now it jeparadizes everything. I am speaking of the coat but also of the letters. Oh yes, I know all about those.”

A wise performance required Lana to play the frightened and shocked little miscreant and so she did, wide doe eyes looking beseechingly penitent and horrified in the face of having been caught doing a single independent thing. “Oh mother-“

“They are bad enough with their filth and their familiarity,” mother cut her off, “but to have written to him in your old name! Lana, the carelessness! It’s a mercy he’s dead, think of the presumptuous attitude he would have adopted had he returned. Unthinkable!”

“Dead?” Lana felt her throat close up, wishing desperately to be back in his jacket again, regretting most harshly her high-priced scheming of last night. All of it had been for him, and he was dead.

“Quite dead.” Mother was irritated by her crestfallen state but not so much as to prevent her crowing over little Lana’s misstep. “And now I am burdened with the necessity of tracking down his effects, getting your side of the correspondence back, think of the unpleasantness of contacting his family! Conversations with dead servicemen's families are always so tedious. You do recall what a bore it was for me to have to carry-on with them on your tour. And all of this to get back your filthy, perverse break of discretion.”

“Were they to get out they’d ruin your reputation.” Stewart put in the obvious, “They’d reveal your plain and common upbringing, your drab name and worse, you would be known to be a horny, hungry young woman.”

Lana stared at him across from his desk, that adrift feeling of aloneness taking over her, such as she’d only felt a few times in her life, like when her mother left her on her first studio couch for an audition, despite her pleas to stay. “Yes,” she agreed faintly, “it would be a terrible thing for an object of desire to appear willing. Or wanting, at all capable of their own needs. It would really ruin the shine of it all, I see.”

“Lana!”

“Oh mother, really, pimped out all my life -all for it to be ruined by the suggestion I might like it!”

“It’s worse than all that.” Stewart insisted gravely, immune to female objections and tantrums, “I’ve been contacted this morning by one of the branches of our government dealing with espionage and information,” -no wonder he was feeling so very important today- “and they’re concerned that the German Air Force is aware of your correspondence with Major Agen-“

“It’s Egan, actually.”

“-Agen and a tapped phone call as well, they have concerns, Lana, about the Germans using this connection as leverage on him, now they have him in their camps, under their thumb, at their mercy.”

Lana’s fractured world slid together again like a suctioned mosaic, one focal point of reason being clear. “He’s a prisoner of war.” she knew just the right inquisitive tone to encourage Stewart to keep blabbing.

“Yes.” Stewart was very grave and very important about being privy to this information, and Mother let out a fuming little cluck of her tongue at his fumble.

“So, he’s a prisoner.” she smirked triumphantly at Mother and was not corrected for once. “Not dead.”

“Good as dead.” Mother clarified.

Lana still smiled, she could work with “good as.”

———————————————-

“Jack?” Lana had timed her delicate attack most carefully, waiting until Huston was relaxed but not asleep, dressing but not in a hurry, happy but not restless, and most importantly, not remotely tired of her.

“What doll?” Jack had a broad back and nice hands, sometimes Lana imagined they were rather like Egan’s, or maybe that’s what she told herself to keep the tears at bay long enough for each amorous performance to conclude, “Your mother bitchin’ about me again?”

“Well,” she shied away into the bedding, “to be honest, yes.”

“Little rebel.” he praised her on his way to sling on his suspenders, apparently he was going out tonight, she felt a clench of panic in her gut at the need to throw her pitch before he left or hushed her.

“Jack I’ve been thinking.” She began again.

“Not what you’re payed for, doll.”

“No, true.” Lana was used to laughing at that same joke told by a couple dozen different men, “But is that skit competition still on? The one for the CBS slot?”

“Yeah, few more days left, why?”

“Anything promising yet?” Lana ventured carefully, Jack was so very busy with all these government contracts for documentaries and proganada shows, and ever since then he’d had a very short fuse, fussy over his stalled artistic dreams. Not that he didn’t care about the war, he did in fact, and that’s why Lana liked him if she liked him at all. But he liked it the way a movie maker does, he wanted to tell stories and he wanted to be somebody important, and if he wasn’t going to be shot at he damn sure would be known to hang about the guys who were.

He was off to the Pacific to film some Marines mucking about on some godforsaken Atoll in a month or more. She had to make her move.

In the meantime, he was to organize a broadcast. Lana bad learned that from the grapevine at Warner’s, Betty D. dropping as much over her three carrots at lunch.

“I was wondering why we haven’t got ourselves an anecdote to Axis Sally.” Lana chose to be blunt, Jack was different from other men, he liked her babified act as much as the next man, but he’d belted her too for ‘playing dumb’. Since then she’d said her mind, as much as she dared and he called her idiotic often, but she’d not been belted again. “Our boys keep listening to that trash, and the housewives too, just to hear reports on the missing and the prisoners.”

“They listen ‘cause she’s sexy and funny.” Jack informed her with a pointed look.

“That too.” Lana contemplated the sheets before her, “But can’t we be funny and sexy too? Instead of demoralizing we could be happy! And we’d not have reports on prisoners but we could give them clues and hope, in case anyone's listening in.”

“Listening in.” Jack had stopped his halfhearted listening to her, wheeling suddenly with cuff links partway hanging, “You mean in camps?”

“Camps. Resistance. Wherever.”

“They don’t let them have radios, ya know.” Huston pointed out, but it wasn’t said in argument, he was pondering too.

“You know they still manage.” Lana smiled softly and he smiled back.

“Ok, what’s the pitch?” He sighed and sat himself down again on the side of the bed, evening plans abandoned for the moment.

Lana’s heart swelled with hope and the delicious feeling of being taken seriously. Even if she was lying in his bed with hair a mess and dignity mighty rumpled. “Perhaps we could tack onto Fred Allen’s spot? Hasn’t he got a vacancy? A variety show? A skit? I don’t know, but we could have repeat actors and we could have guest stars. And it could- it could be a girl-“

“-Allied Sally.” Huston joked and Lana genuinely snickered at that.

“Something like that.” She agreed, chagrined at the need for a catchy, corney radio name, “And she could be waiting for her sweetheart, sending him messages and well wishes and jokes and -Oh! The score! The scores on everything! Baseball! Jack!”

“Calm down, calm down, it’s decent.” Jack hushed her, waving her giddy self back down as she warmed to her topic, “And you could be her.” he stated the obvious.

“Don’t you think I’d manage it well?” She cajoled, cocking her shoulder in her best pantomime of a coquette. “Aren’t I funny and sexy, Mr. Huston?”

“Hmph,” he scratched his cheek and stared at her as if summing up the likelihood of this working, “needs another angle. Beyond skits.”

“Alright. Like what?”

Huston secured his cuff links, smile broadening as his mind began to whirl, “Letters.” he stated and Lana’s heart froze, “Love letters, we gotta keep it sexy, you said so yourself. There’s nothing so funny as a redacted letter being read out over the censors. The constant beeps alone will get laughs, give it the right inflection in between and you’ll have a game on your hands with the listeners guessing and filling in.”

“Letters.” Lana mumbled in agreement, numb at the brilliance of it and filled with horror at the idea of monetizing what John Egan had given her -connection, love, devotion, grit, humor. But this broadcast, it might be the only way to keep in any sort of contact with him. At what cost? Would he care at all for her after it? Would he think she used him up for a little business inspiration? Oh she couldn’t bear it, yet worse, she couldn’t bear life as Vincent’s wife, locked in for another ten years at Warner’s under mother’s thumb. “It’s brilliant.”

“Almost uncanny how likely a story it is.” Huston grunted as he pulled on a shoe, sending her a sly look that broke her a heart a little more, “Nothing so powerful as a tale based on a real thing, Lana.” he reminded forcefully.

The letters, the blackmail her mother hung over her, all of it dealt with if this pitch became a reality. It would all fade into a myth. And with it all the realness John had brought her. “Yes, I said -it’s brilliant.”

“Yeah, well, easy does it for now.” He cautioned, “Gotta sort your mother and let that contract expire gently. I’ll pitch it myself. See what CBS can wrangle up. Don’t get your hopes up and keep that jacket safe, it’ll be invaluable when we get you a storyline for it.”

“Right.”

“Well go on, tell mommy dearest.” he goaded, nodding to the phone.

“Oh they wouldn’t be approving.” Lana disagreed, referring to the whole pack of them, her mother and her lawyers and her agents.

“Why not? Sounds like great business. Solves all the scandal too.”

“Something like this part-“ Lana demurred, “-wouldn’t suit my image, mother says.”

Jack barked out a rough laugh, plopped back down on the bed and tugging the sheets from her clutches. “Your mother does realize you’re walking wank material, right? That’s your image.”

“Yes,” Lana sighed, “but…unwilling, she says. That’s the crucial part.”

“Oh. Yeah, well,” Jack eyed her up, “you do make a great impression of a scared lamb in bed.”

“They’re concerned it’ll make me too independent. Like the War Bond tour,” she gave a wistful smile, “I kissed so many boys my lips swelled right up. It was grand.”

“Now Lana,” Huston cautioned, “I’m not on any crusade to liberate you, myself.”

“Oh I know!” She was quick to assure, ever the obliging little lady, “And I don’t want to be. Not from you or the studio-“

“-just from mother dearest?” he nodded knowingly, not knowing the half of it.

“Yes.” she pretended great relief at his perception.

“Huh, well, good. Because this idea would have a contract of its own, and it would be long if I’m any judge of the longevity of the project. You’ll be locked in for years.”

“But it’ll be my choice.” She reaffirmed, and this time she meant it.

“And you’ll look willing.” Jack grinned and she grinned back, compulsively like a child mimicking their threat. “Might take some practice though, to make you look willing. Get over here, doll.”

———————————————-

Major Gale Cleven was appreciative of the dangers of listening to the radio in camp, it was one of those necessary and crucial risks that required responsible stewardship and utmost care. It wasn’t a flippant pastime and it wasn’t a recreation, but then again, neither was it strictly business. Like much of their lives as prisoners of war, he and his fellow soldiers toed a strict line between honoring their captors’ jurisdictions while also thwarting their imposed restrictions at every possible juncture.

Sometimes one should listen to the radio because that is what free men did, and Gale Cleven tried by any means possible- letters, books, calculus or his frigid metal headset- to stay free in his mind, to comport himself with the same surety as his free counterpart.

Otherwise, you lived like a ghost in your own body. And that was no good for oneself or those around you. As everyone who shared a bunk and combine with John Egan was quickly learning. The immediate joy of reuniting with him, the fear of losing him to his wounds, the relief of his recovery, it had all leveled out at the end like a anticlimactic ride on a rollercoaster, skidding to a plateau where he was neither well enough to be exempt from Gale’s concern, nor ill enough to warrant the patience required to put up with his rabid moods. Always restless, being kept in the glamorized equivalent of a dog run was hardly fitting for his nature. It was hard on everyone, but Gale wasn’t such a relativist as to assume John Egan had it the same as everyone. Some folks required more miles and more sky to keep them sane, and Bucky was one of those.

It had tipped Gale into a habit that could no longer be qualified as strictly informative, nor could he defend it as necessary where he to get caught. It was undoubtedly poor stewardship to spend an extra half hour listening to the inane comedy of a BBC guest production. But he had started it to cheer Brady when Glenn Miller’s band was on, and it had done such good for him and Bucky as they crowded ‘round, that Gale had since stayed alert for any other such ‘triviality’ that might be of use.

If the Colonel walked in and demanded an explanation for this extra bit of carelessness, Cleven thought he might make a decent defense about waiting for Ed Murrow to come on, broadcasting for CBS from London, always with a decent take on what was happening in the war. The motivation of Murrow often having stars on his program was completely erroneous.

Or so Gale swore to himself for the tenth time as Demarco kept watch and he himself painstakingly tuned the dials and bent his ear to sort the static.

There was music and the typical overlap of voices for awhile until he honed it down, British and American accents floating in, obnoxiously layered all on top of each other still, yet this time intentional. He must’ve hit a variety show. He gave himself two minutes, that much he’d allow and if the thing he’d been waiting for in secret for months did not occur,

he’d move right on or pack up for the night.

“I’m not sure about no boy writing you letters!” a man’s voice crackled through, comedically irate.

The next voice was girlish, smooth despite the poor frequency and made the hair of Gale’s arms stand on end from universal male appreciation and a gut wrenching sense of recognition: “Well I don’t know any more about it, paw paw, except that he loves me and I love him!”

“Yeah?” -Gale thought perhaps that was Bob Hope’s voice, play acting as the fuming father figure, “Yeah, then tell me, dear daughter, what sorta fella calls the girl he loves: Acorn! Huh?”

Gale’s eyes bugged from his head, glassy and shocked and Crank rushed over in solidarity, terribly sure the whole continent of North America had just been reported as broken off into the sea. “What is it Buck?”

“Crank!” Gale croaked, “Go! Go get Egan, tell him his girl’s on the radio and to get his ass in here, goooo!”

“Egan’s got a girl?” Benny was bewildered.

“Acorn!” Brady and Gale yelled in unison.

“But that’s Lana Tierney.” Crank pointed over the spunk wall, or as it was called in more noble moments of higher aspiration, the Wall of Hopes and Dreams, where Lana and Rita smiled tantalizingly and warm from their crinkled posters, down on the men’s bunks.

“Yes, Acorn. Go!”

Gale held his breath and listened harder, trying to gauge how far into the sketch he had caught them, wishing them to linger, as if by sheer willpower alone he could make her stay on until Bucky got there.

Fuck -acorn? Why would she use that? She had to be out of her mind to dare a thing like that, had to be just to get his attention, right? Surely? Had to be out of her mind, Gale decided, which was just another diagnosis for love. And that gave him pause.

“What’s your feller anyway? He a squirrel?” Bob Hope was pressing the issue right as Bucky burst in with a flurry of flapping overcoat and steaming breath.

“Get in here, come on, get over here.” Gale stood up and pointed to his vacated seat, shoving Bucky down for good measure and crouching to press the headpiece to his ear, wanting to share it for some idiotic reason, as if like a parent he could cut the cord if something sad or risky came on.

“Maybe he is,” Lana was breathily defending, “and we’ll live happily ever after in our tree. And there’s nothing you or Jerry can do to stop us!”

“Shit.” Egan breathed out reverently like he’d been punched real and good and an epiphany on life was brewing beneath his shuttering smile. “Holy hell it -it is her. It’s acorn.”

“On a show called ‘Dear Acorn’, Bucky.” Brady chimed in, face as lit up for Egan’s current happiness as if it were his own.

“So what’re you twos gonna live on, huh?” Bob Hope crackled through “Love and nuts?”

“Oh well dunno, I do so love my nuts.” Lana rejoined.

“Jesus!” Gale pulled away from the headset like it had personally accosted him for a tumble in the sheets.

“Acorn.”

“Yeah paw paw?”

“You’re nuts.”

“About him I am.”

“Uhuh.”

“And there’s nothing you or Jerry can-“

“-can do about it, I know, acorn.”

“Pinky promise!” Lana chirped a couple thousand miles away, and John Egan obeyed her once more with a raised hand and a crooked finger.

That night at roll call they had something to whisper about, and for once it wasn’t half cooked schemes to climb the barbed wire or try smothering the commandant in his sleep. Instead Bucky was rocking back and forth joyfully on his heels in the bitter night air, trying hard to keep his grin in check as the spotlight swooped over, choosing the intermediate bits of darkness to nag Gale for any bits he’d missed.

“I sent for ya right away, Bucky.” Gale insisted in a gentle whisper out the side of his mouth, “They were just starting to joke about letters being written to an acorn.”

“Can you believe it?” Egan hissed, almost demented in his sudden good cheer, “She’s that proud of me, built a whole damn show on it. Fuck, it makes a man wanna fight a dozen wars.”

Gale eyed him up carefully, the inside of Bucky’s head a foreign place even to him, but if his friend was hopeful and generous enough not to mind his intellectual (or rather, lack of intellect) property being capitalized on for the war effort, then Gale wasn’t about to sow seeds of doubt. “She’s somethin’ else.” he agreed nebulously, and meant it, “Bombs Away Betty, huh?”

“Showing partiality to one branch of the armed services, Buck.” John was back to grinning, “She must’ve liked the jacket.”

Hope you enjoined, thank y’all for all the screams and thoughts you’ve sent through my asks, the comments and reblogs too, I treasure each.

If you’d like to be tagged in my MOTA writings, drop a note below. 💋

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#masters of the air #mota #mota fanfic #john Egan #Bucky Egan #gale cleven #john egan x oc #john x acorn #Julie Jean Turner #mota spoilers #masters of the air fanfiction #john egan fanfiction #Callum Turner

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raayllum · 5 months

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6x05 Moonless Night Speculation

So 6x05 is called "Moonless Night" and it's ruining my life (affectionate), so let's talk about it.

Seasonal Placement

Something that's worth noting, I think, is that while episode 5 is undoubtedly an important episode in each season, as it marks the official "over halfway point" of the 9-episode assortment, thus far across the series it doesn't tend to hold the most plot compared to episodes occasionally surrounding it. Consider how 2x05-2x06 or 3x04-3x05 are grouped together as little collections, either grinding the plot to a halt to give flashbacks or to see Ezran leave his kingdom crownless and for Rayla and Callum to retrieve Zym from the wily Nyx. Even 4x05 and 5x05 aren't particularly plot heavy episodes, often getting the next segment of the story underway by travelling to a new location or having certain characters / pieces of information reconvene.

What episode five does tend to be are emotional turning points for characters:

1x05: This is the episode that makes the trio Friends, most notably allowing Rayla to open up to the boys about her parents and her fears, and having their togetherness reaffirmed. Unlike in the previous episodes, she's not hopeful or tolerating them anymore, and the boys have seen some of her more consistently good attributes / learning her behaviours too.

2x05: Callum finds the resolve to open the letter from King Harrow and we see where his mother, stepfather, and Viren felt about the mission that ultimately led to tragedy.

3x05: Soren chooses to do the right thing and stand by Ezran, and Callum and Rayla begin their romantic relationship.

4x05: Callum and Rayla deal with the lingering results of their fallout, even as Callum is able to admit that he is happy she's back, and we see how Rayla has become more jaded whereas Soren's gone in the opposite direction.

5x05: The group reconvenes to decide what to do for the rest of the season about Aaravos, leading to an interesting difference between the brothers. This one fits the pattern the least, arguably, but we'll talk a bit more about how S5 breaks patterns in a second.

As of course, TDP doesn't have to follow any previous seasonal notions. In every other season, Callum's arc(s) have always carried over into the season finale in some way—for 1x09 and 2x09, it's his relationship with magic, and for 3x09 and 4x09, it's his relationship with Rayla. Season five subsequently breaks convention as his arc is shored up by the end of 5x08, leaving 5x09 to give more room for Viren and Claudia's emotional arcs as well as a minor beat for Rayla's metaphorical/literal one with water. Season six could break previous patterns even further with 6x05 being a massive turning point.

With all that in mind, let's first examine what the Moon itself represents in TDP, and then what a night being moonless might mean before we get into plot and emotional arc speculation.

What does the Moon Represent in TDP?

One of the things that's nice about a series like TDP that takes its magic so literally is that we do have a handy list of things the Moon represents, at least tangentially. Callum's Spellbook reads, "Illusion, love, charm, private, deep, secrets, manipulation, death, reflection, appearances, and duality." Certainly seems like a very Aaravos-y star adjacent list, don't you think?

And we also get the explanation from Lujanne in 2x01, which is based off Plato's concept of the forms:

The arcanum of the moon is about understanding the relationship between appearances and reality. Most people believe that reality is truth and that appearances are deceiving. But those of us who know the Moon arcanum understand we can only truly know the appearance itself. You can never touch the so-called reality that lies just beyond the reach of your own perception.

For Lujanne, the philosophy behind the arcanum is rooted in the duality of truth vs secrets, appearances (and illusions) stacked against each other, and the nature of reality. However, we see other aspects of the Moon arcanum, such as Moonshadow form, be tethered to something equally involved in duality if perhaps more noteworthy for our purposes (Bloodmoon Huntress):

Moonshadow form is only achieved when we understand the balance between life and death. Balance is weight against weight, and to understand the weight of death, you must feel the weight and value of another's life. Think of those you love, those you hold dear. Now think of the souls who have touched your life. Understand that each time your weapon meets its target, each time we fulfil our duty, the potential for that life to change—to love another—is gone. We may remove hate, but we remove the potential for love as well.

Now, we can see how both of these may overlap with each other later — Harrow had the appearance of someone who posed a risk to the world but no longer did, and the vengeance declared was for an egg that hadn't actually been killed — but we'll get more to the other implications in the following section.

For now, I want to focus on examining the other less 'metaphorical' meanings and look at some of the more literal associations we have with Moons in the text. As we all know, there's been a prevalent light-darkness motif running throughout each season of the show that's only gotten more affirmed — and more linked to Rayla and Callum's relationship — as the show has gone on. (If you want more details, check out this tag.) We see this first hand in 2x02 "Half Moon Lies" where Lujanne also counsels Rayla through some Moon arcanum wisdom about her relationship with Callum:

L: And it is the same with you. There are parts you keep hidden. Real trust is about accepting even the dark parts we will never know.

By resolving to tell Callum about his stepfather's death, Rayla chooses to show her whole face — a full moon, if you will — and it's not the last time truth is associated with light in opposition with darkness either ("I finally see the truth. I find myself here at these horrifying crossroads because I have followed a dark path"). We even see this in the way the framing at the Nexus changes compared to before Callum knows the truth with Claudia, and after when he knows the truth with Rayla, with Rayla being framed in the light. The truth may be ugly, and Harrow's death darkens Callum's life, but just like each girl's hair being white and black at this point, Callum ultimately chooses Rayla when it matters here the most.

It is likewise not surprising that Callum's understanding of the Moon arcanum ("After all, we can only truly know the appearance itself" "Now you're starting to sound like Lujanne") evolves alongside his understanding of Rayla, knowing better how/what she hides in S3 and what's actually going on.

Then season four comes in very heavy handed with making Rayla synonymous with the moon pretty blatantly in a way she hadn't previously been afforded. Just having Callum looking at the moon is meant to represent his love and longing for her, after all, and she's framed as the moon upon her return as well, literally moving from dark (moonshadow form) to light.

This is a sort of association we've only thus far had given to characters like Janai with the sun. And then they have the association drawn through dialogue, too, just in case the Most Obvious Framing Ever wasn't enough.

Okay, so Rayla is a Moonshadow elf who now has the moon as a potential stand-in for her. Shocking, I know. But put a pin in it as we have one other blatant Moon symbolism thing to discuss, and that's Runaan and Ethari.

Now, the moon itself isn't super prevalent for Runaan and Ethari, per se. They're far more associated with circles/cycles (their family, the pendant, the shape of the lotus pond), weapons, and hearts — their goodbye dialogue for example. We do see two heavy Moon associations for them, though, both of which that is particularly apt for today's meta:

It also worth noting, of course, that neither of these things are exclusive either to Ruthari in the text. The notion of "Guiding Moon" and Ruthari's partnership is a consistent parallel to Rayla and Callum's evolving bond, as well as Rayla giving Callum the necklace with the same sentiments that Ethari did upon giving one to both her and Runaan.

With all that symbolism and setup out of the way, let's get into the biggest speculative question we have to try and answer:

Why is it Moonless?

Now, what you might've noticed in all our symbolism and setup is one main commonality: the moon, while tethered to duality, is usually seen as a more positive symbol than not having a moon. Light, or the light side of the moon, is better than the dark side or it being nonexistent. We can already see undercurrents in this given Callum's arc surrounding darkness ("In darkness, gaze upon a fallen star"): light, or the moon, is a Good Thing—most of the time. If you want more discussion on why Light isn't solely good in the series, check out this meta here.

What I'm getting at here is that Moonless Night almost undoubtedly refers to some kind of dark turn or tragedy. The only question is what/which one, and for that, I have three main thoughts:

1) Luna Tenebris

Luna Tenebris was the Queen of the Dragons after Sol Regem was disposed and before Avizandum (+ Zubeia) took over. She was also queen when humans were expelled from Xadia (known as the Judgement of the Half Moon) and mysteriously vanished circa 4x04's flashbacks, leading to chaos:

However, Luna Tenebris' disappearance is far more associated with a red Blood moon which doesn't bode well for the connection between blood-dark-star magic, and is most obviously associated with the Bloodmoon Huntress, Kim'Dael, as she and her kin were hunted under Luna's reign. So I'm not positing that Luna's death for her personally was a moonless night.

But it might be for someone else, who's been forced to live without her, and who vanishes shortly after she does.

Luna Tenebris' presumably 'unsuitable heir' (maybe the wrong kind of archdragon? Arcanum-less?) bears a striking resemblance to the dragon we see Rayla approaching (attacking?) in the S6 clip from the video game trailer:

We know that he's in a snowy place and we also know thanks to released screencap titles that Callum and — more importantly per the screencap above — Rayla are in snowy place from 6x03 "The Frozen Sea" onwards to presumably 6x05 "Moonless Night" at least, given that I can't imagine they'd always be at the infamous Starscraper (6x04) for just an episode. If Luna's heir is not an obstacle in 6x03 on their way to the Starscraper, facing him could be something they have to do — perhaps he's a nuisance to the Celestial elves or holds something they need, like a glowing crystal — in 6x05, as he's the result of well, a Moonless Night.

This is probably the most abstract of the few we have and the most entrenched in Just Plot (at least phrased/pictured as the above). The other two subsequent theories are much more in vein with an episode focus and/or the title maybe having multiple meanings (the above as well as one of the other two we'll detail down below).

2) Moon Fam Release

I'm prepared to eat my words but honestly, "Moonless Night" doesn't fill me with a lot of confidence for it to be a Moon fam heavy episode—at least not in a happy way. For starters, like I said before, there's all the negative associations with being 'moonless'. Even Ethari's vow amounts to "Myself and my love is with you even when there is no light/goodness/hope in your life." That doesn't exactly feel like a reunion vibe given that Runaan being released from the coins is surely something he will ultimately feel positively about.

Ethari's vow to Runaan is going to be harder to uphold if Ethari isn't there for Runaan's release. If Ethari is Runaan's guiding moon and it's a moonless night, then it doesn't seem like Ethari's there. Of course, he could be. I've speculated for a while that 6x02 will feature Rayla and Callum dropping off the Shadowpaw and making a pit stop at the Silvergrove, giving us a chance to catch up with Ethari; perhaps he'll even come along and has been left out of the (admittedly few) screencaps we have of Rayllum approaching the Starscraper for marketing seasonal secrecy purposes.

Another long held theory though is that whatever Callum has to do to ultimately set Runaan (and everyone else) free from the coins will not end well though.

If Ethari is there in 6x05, that makes me think the Moon fam will get out around the halfway point of the episode, they'll have like one (1) very happy scene, and then almost immediately major shit is going to hit the fan that becomes the focus.

Another add on reason is that I think if Moon fam are released and reunited in S6, the plot reasons behind it are 1) to give Callum a motivation to potentially go 'too far' (too fast?) in his quest to release him, and 2) to have Runaan there to encourage Rayla to kill Callum if/when he gets possessed again. There are many other reasons to love Rayla's parents, there are many other reasons to want them around, but from a structural/plot standpoint of being side characters, I do think that's the purpose they're here to serve in s6, with probably having an expanded role in s7.

For example, if we follow along the line of "Moonless Night" being a release episode with the meaning being largely related to Runaan and Ethari > the main characters, that means it would have to be about either how much Runaan missed Ethari in the coin (which we don't need to see to understand the coin is terrible, we know that) or two, Ethari not being there and Runaan not listening to whatever Ethari would want him to do (maybe not being upset with Rayla or angry at Callum?).

I just can't see an episode like "Moonless Night" ending on a good note for anyone while still having the name of the episode be earned unless we entirely go flashback heavy (Aaravos, Rayla's travels or whatever) or the Luna Tenebris heir route.

With that caveat in mind, I want to talk about what is the most likeliest reason behind "Moonless":

3) Aaravos and Callum

As stated before, the character most accordingly associated with the moon is Rayla. This association has become even more literal into arc 1. I think it's the association next to the Luna Tenebris one that makes the most sense.

While I could perhaps see a flashback or expansion on how she felt during her time away featuring into S6, I would question the validity of doing it at a location like the Starscraper where there is so much feasibly else to focus on in a very unique and special location where we're primed to be meeting new characters (possibly friends and foes from the celestial elves), getting lore drops, and stuff focused on Callum and Rayla's present emotional journeys. Something like that would make more sense on the way to the Starscraper where we're just killing travel time, the same way the S2 flashbacks were reserved for the two episodes where the kids are just stuck on a boat, or in S3 on the way to the Storm Spire.

The other thing that's worth noting is the way that Rayla is framed as the Moon in opposition to Aaravos' darkness. Callum worries he's on a dark path and Rayla reminds him that he can choose to take another way. Callum is gazing 'in darkness' at a Fallen Star and Rayla shows up haloed in light to literally turn him away from it. Like in 2x02, she's seen as the more positive, light side of the moon. And we know without a doubt that she will be at the Starscraper alongside her human fella. We know from S2 and S5 that Callum will go to "dark places" in order to help/protect her.

There's a few different ways this could play out. Maybe Rayla goes off on an agreed upon mini-quest to fetch something from Luna Tenebris' nearby heir to help free her parents, leaving Callum worried and alone at the Starscraper, and he's possessed in the interim. Maybe, as noted in Option 2), he frees her parents at great detriment to himself. Maybe she's threatened because the Celestial elves aren't that friendly or serve Aaravos.

If Callum only 'succumbs' to Aaravos' possessive / coercive control — a moonless night is total darkness — then the removal of light would be a reasonable step on the path to getting there. Threatening or fearing the loss of that light ("But the second you see that elf girl in pain, you completely lost yourself") in order to make it disappear, to let a "dark path" overtake Callum? It'd be a tragedy. It'd be moonless — and it would plunge Rayla's life into darkness as well, fearing that she might have to become the assassin both Runaan — as she carries his bow — and Callum — heart vs duty — have asked her to be.

Conclusion

Like I said, I think there are ways to overlap. Both Option #1 and Option #3 could be paired together if the heir puts Rayla at risk in her journey, or Option #2 and Option #3 if freeing the Moon Fam with all the coins' deep blood magic indicators are taken to the forefront (aka the symbol on the coins matching the symbol on Aaravos' book). It could be none of these things.

If 6x06 is indeed "Moment of Truth" as has been speculated, I'll assume de facto that 6x05 ends with Callum being possessed again (although again, the circumstances that lead to said event could take many paths) in order to nudge Rayla's arc ahead (whether Runaan is literally there or not, though I would probably lean towards yes and Option #2 for 6x05). It'll just be go go go plot and drama wise — and no matter what, I can't wait for it.

#tdp #the dragon prince #tdp spoilers #s6 spoilers #6x05 #tdp meta #analysis series #analysis #s6 #sorry in advance ruthari fans i'd love to be wrong #predictions #s6 speculation

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novaacanee · 11 months

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To The Things I Can’t Control

AlucardxBlack!Reader

Pt.2

“To The Things I Can’t Control

It has been two years since the passing of my parents at the hands of the church. I miss them both dearly. I am currently spending my days working at a Botique known as Modiste. My boss is a lively French woman who sometimes lets me barrow some fabric to make myself a new dress.

These days, I’ve been think about the past and those who encapsulated it. Adrian, my first love. I miss him most deeply. His father has waged war against all of the humans after the church murder his human wife Lisa Tepes. I hope he is okay. I do wonder if I can find him. Would you even allow me to find him again? Will he even recognize me?” The pen in her hand came to a halt. A feeling of sadness overwhelmed her spirit.

She closed her notebook and stood from her bed, walking over to a tote laying in a velvet chair within her bedroom. Verena placed the book inside, along with a pen and some spare clothing. Though she appreciated all that Genevieve had done for her but, she must set out.

Within the last few years, she had been plotting revenge for what the church had done to her. What they did to her family and her home. Her mission was to speak with the Speakers that we’re currently residing in Gresit for the time being. They were familiar with almost all legends and information that circulate around Wallachia.

With her bag in hand, she went down the spiral staircase and left an envelope on Genevieve’s desk before heading out. She has saved up enough coin to buy herself a horse for the harrowing journey ahead.

The ambient sound of the leaves moving in the wind surrounded Verena. Her instincts on high alert as her and her horse travelled through the woods. The sound of leaves crunching under the horses hoof broke her attention momentarily. She was very familiar with the presence of what was know as night creature within the surrounding lands.

A dagger sparkled under the moonlight as it laid firmly in her grip. A chill went down her spine as she felt a presence besides her own. “I know you’re here. You smell Fucking disgusting. We’re so close to a stream and you have forgone bathing all together?” She huffed, hopping off of her horse. “Come out, I have places to be.”

And with that a tall-winged beast flew out from the surrounding trees. A hellish screech leaving its mouth. “Ohh so you’re one of those night creatures everyone has been raving about? Definitely quite ugly…” she said as the monster swooped down at her, aiming its sharp claws for anything it could reach.

Verena managed to dodge just in the knick of time. She held out her weapon, aiming it towards the creature making its second round towards her. With all of her strength, she through the sharp metal. The sound of it being sheared into the head of the beast was rather nauseating but satisfactory. It signified that she was to live another day.

Tattered clothing now stained with grass, night creature blood, guts and dirt. A shaky hand rested on her chest as she felt herself breathing heavily. Verena moved closer to the beat ,analyzing its corpse that laid in front of her.

Through the trees, she could see a small village. “I hope to whatever god that that is Gresit and not a completely different village. You would think Father would have taught me how to read a map.” She chuckled bitterly and went over to where she left her horse only to find it deceased. “Fuck! I saved up for 4 months.” She exhaled sharply.

She sauntered over to the horse and kneeled next to the animal. She reached into her bag and placed it next to the horses gingerly. “I’m sorry I put you in this position. Your sacrifice will never be forgotten.” Verena ran a hand through the blood soaked mane before standing again. “Onward I guess.” She hummed, making her way toward the direction of the village.

The village was rather nightmarish; much more so than she remembered. Puddles of blood stained the perimeter of it. The building practically ruins at this point. It was a miracle anyone could still call this place home. She was about to continue on her way when she bumped face first into the chest of a man “God it’s not even the evening yet and people already drunk. Men.” Verena thought she had said this in her head…she did not.

“And who the fuck are you?” A gruff voice answered. “Talk a lot of shit for someone who bumped into me first. I didn’t say anything about you looking like a failed attempt of a noble.” The man towered her figure. Chocolate locs and striking blue eyes was the first thing she noticed. The second thing was the crest on his Tunic.

Her eyes widened a little as she felt her heart drop. “Belmont…? I thought you guys got wiped out? The hell are you doing here?” Verena asked, praying to any and every god once again that her fangs weren’t visible. “Yeah well her I am. Who the fuck are you?” He asked, drunken annoyance coating his tongue. “My name is Verena. My family name is of no importance to you. I’m only here to converse with the speakers.”

“I really didn’t ask for your life story hun. You’re in luck though, I’m looking for em too.” Verena’s ear perked up as she heard this. “Well then, hope you don’t mind me following you then since you obviously know more than me.” She responded sarcastically. “I do mind actually.” Trevor began to walk away from her, turning into a small alleyway. Verena followed suit, she quite honestly could give less of a fuck if he wanted her there or not. She had a mission that she needed to accomplish.

She noticed 3 men brush past Trevor. Two of them in church attire and the other in a purple cloak. They seemed to be antagonizing the poor old man. “I’m not getting involved.” Trevor mumbled to himself, still watching the altercation. Verena turned to look at him. “Flagitium hominis (disgrace of a man)” she spoke in Latin. “He’s just an old man. He has no means of defense against them.”

Trevor groaned aloud. “What are you the rebirth of Christ? Fine.” A heavy sighed escaped his lips as her reached for his whip just in time to save the older speaker from enduring any injuries from the clergymen. Verena watched as Trevor fought against them a little amused. “Not bad for a human.” She thought to herself. “Wait, I’m part human too, I shouldn’t insult myself.” Trevor scared off the two clergymen and turned to her . “You really don’t know how to not say your thought aloud huh?” Verena gave him a blank look. “Oops.” She shrugged.

“The violence wasn’t necessary however, your kindness is much appreciated.” Trevor shrugged. “You’re welcome although, can I accompany you to your lodging?” Verena physically face palmed at his forwardness however; the speaker abliged. “We speakers are nomadic individuals however; you both are welcome to accompany me.”

The walk to the speaker’s lodging was short. The older speaker invited them in and explained their current situation with their presence in Gresit and the church as well as his missing Grandchild. Verena watched Trevor speak with them, drinking some water. “You might as well help them, ain’t got shit else to do.” She whistled, taking another sip of her water and ignoring the side glare he had given her. “God if the night creatures to Fucking kill me, the sound of your voice will.”

#adrian tepes x reader #castlevania black!reader #alucard x reader #alucardxblack!reader #castlevania alucard x reader #castlevania netflix #castlevania nocturne #netflix original

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freezgibux · 1 year

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Far away, yet so close.

A/N: IK NO ONE ASKED BUT I NEEDED TO WRITE THIS. 😭

And also, im new, please request something!

Under the neon glow of the Valorant base's low lights, Deadlock and you found a moment of respite after a harrowing mission. The air was charged with a unique mix of tension and relief that only those who had faced danger together could understand.

As the two of you stood there, the weight of the world seemed to fade away, leaving only the palpable electricity between you. Deadlock's usually stoic demeanor softened in your presence, her cybernetic eye reflecting the gentle affection she held for you.

Without a word, you stepped closer, your hands finding their place on her hips, drawing her into an intimate embrace. Her breath hitched, surprised by the sudden closeness, but she relaxed into your touch, allowing herself to be held.

You could feel the steady thrum of her heart against your chest, a rhythmic beat that resonated with your own. In that moment, the lines between battle-hardened agent and tender lover blurred. It was just the two of you, finding solace in the quiet sanctuary you'd created.

You tilted her chin up gently, meeting her gaze with a soft smile. In those eyes, you saw a vulnerability that she reserved only for you, a trust that went beyond words. And in return, you cradled her face, your fingers tracing the contours of her cybernetic enhancements with gentle reverence.

Leaning in, your lips met in a sweet, lingering kiss. It was a silent promise, an affirmation of the love that had blossomed amidst the chaos of their world. The taste of victory and the lingering scent of gunpowder seemed to fade, replaced by the sweetness of each other's presence.

As you pulled away, Deadlock rested her forehead against yours, her breath mingling with yours in the quiet space you'd carved out for yourselves. There were no need for grand declarations; the depth of your connection spoke volumes in the tender moments you shared.

In that hushed corner of the base, amidst the echoes of a thousand battles, you and Deadlock stood as a testament to the power of love in even the most trying of circumstances. In each other's arms, you found not only comfort and solace, but a home that transcended the boundaries of their world.

The world of Valorant had taught both of you that danger could lurk around any corner, but it had also taught you the invaluable lesson that love was a force that could conquer even the most daunting challenges. As you held Deadlock close, the world outside seemed to disappear entirely, leaving only the warmth and tenderness of your embrace.

With a soft, affectionate whisper, you murmured, "I love you," the words carrying a profound weight that transcended the battlefield. Deadlock's cybernetic eye shimmered with emotion, and she replied in kind, her voice barely above a breath, "I love you too."

It was a simple declaration, but it held within it a universe of shared experiences, trust, and an unbreakable bond that had grown amidst the chaos and uncertainty of their lives as agents. In that moment, you both knew that no matter how challenging the battles ahead might be, you would face them together.

Time seemed to stand still as you continued to hold each other, relishing the warmth of your connection. The sounds of the base, the distant chatter of other agents, and the hum of machinery faded into the background, drowned out by the symphony of your hearts beating in perfect harmony.

As the night wore on, you and Deadlock remained entwined, finding comfort in the presence of the one person who truly understood you. In each other's arms, you found strength, solace, and the unwavering belief that, no matter what trials the world threw your way, your love would always light the path forward.

In the world of Valorant, where chaos reigned supreme and danger lurked at every turn, your love story was a beacon of hope and a reminder that, even in the darkest of times, love could conquer all. With a final, gentle kiss, you both knew that you were ready to face whatever challenges the future held, hand in hand, hearts intertwined.

#deadlock x reader #valorant x reader #deadlock #valorant #fluff

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theemptyislost · 2 months

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Chapter 15 peep

She bit the inside of her lip to stop the quiver. One beat later, a larger inhale to quell the weight behind her eyes and soft exhale to banish the memories. Astarion could not hurt her here, in the arms of this unlikely ally – another ‘master.’ One which Tav would have thought to be worse, but seemed to be trying in a way that her ex-paramour never fully did. To acknowledge everything that transpired since her arrival back in Avernus was too heartbreaking. She could not bring herself to analyze the multiple layers and complexity of the situation she allowed herself to become trapped in. Just grazing that labyrinth of emotions and events left a sharp sting in the back of her throat and a tingle of warmth in her heart to contradict how she thought she should feel… How she wanted to feel. Instead of allowing her inner turmoil to fester, Tav focused on the sensation of Raphael’s soft breath against her neck; the gentle rise and fall of his chest. She chose to listen to the rhythmic beat of his heart rather than the clamorous vocalizations of the internalized strife she still could not fully shut out. Harrowing whispers of discontent that were only muffled, not put to rest, after her tryst with the Devil.

its super rough, but there is Haarlep/Raph and also....depending on how long that smut pushes things, Astarion is showing up again... because you know...plot things.

#haunt me verse bs #haunt me ao3 LITE #tav x raphael #cheers to another long chapter -_-#at least the words are flowing a bit better nowww #hate not being motivated.#side note - i just really like the attitude in that little lazy half spin he does #my manic writing #bg3 fanfic

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my-watch-begins · 2 years

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A match for love. Part XIII

Pairings: Harwin Strong x Female!OC.

Words: 4.2 k.

Warnings: Grayce and Jaena are 18 and 16 respectively. Mentions of minors marrying, mentions of teenage pregnancy.

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8 / Part 9 / Part 10. / Part 11 / Part 12

The scene before Harwin was one he was very uncomfortable with. He tried to hide his nervousness under the steel gaze of his post as a guard, but he couldn't help his eyes to glance at the parties in front of him.

Early in the morning, Princess Rhaenyra's labors has started. Harwin had arrived at the Princess' door to stand guard shortly after that, and unexpectedly, she has asked for him to be present at the birth. Ser Laenor excused his presence and assured the wet nurses and the Maester that if the Princess felt better being guarded, then she certainly would be.

The birth of the Princess was unlike the birth of Kylian, the stark differences between both women made Harwin happy that he had to endure calm births on his wife's side.

Late at night, the Princess received a Prince, she named him Lucerys, both the parents agreed in calling him Luke for short. After the birth, the King arrived at the room to see his new grandson, along with him was the Queen, who was followed by her own wet nurse who held Prince Daeron. Behind all of them, followed the Queen's sworn protector, Criston Cole.

Harwin was not a stranger to Cole, his antiques, his doings, and certainly the way he had convinced everyone in the King's guard that Harwin was the true father of the Velaryon boys. Cole certainly did the Queen's bidding in that regard.

Prince Luke held the harrowing similarity of his older brother's dark hair.

"A drop of Baratheon blood" the King had said as he held the Prince. Both the Queen and the Princess exchanged looks. Cole watched the family from afar, just as much as Harwin was watching them, then turned his eyes to him to give him a knowing smile, one Harwin had to contain himself from not answering with violence.

As soon as he was dismissed by Ser Laenor, Harwin walked with heavy steps to the Tower of the Hand. He got rid of his armor before he approached the corridor of both his and Kylian's bedroom. The little one was known for being a light sleeper and more than once he'd woken up to the sound of Harwin's armor, when he checked on his son, like every night, Kylian had been wide awake and given him a smile of recognition. Harwin did not sleep most of the nights Kylian woke up because of him, but he liked exchanging hours of sleep with hours uninterrupted with his son.

Once he checked on Kylian and made sure he was asleep, he continued to the bedroom where Ayla slept. She looked behind her when Harwin entered the bed and slid closer to her, she turned around and embraced him. His arms rounded her waist and hers his shoulders, leaving Harwin in the comfort of her chest, his ear just above her beating heart.

"How was everything?" She asked in a little whisper. By the way he sighed, Harwin wasn't happy.

"The Princess had a boy" he replied. Ayla contained her own sigh of frustration, then placed her cheek on top is his forehead "what about you, my love?" His thumbs rubbed her ribs.

"Nothing yet"

Harwin allowed himself to twist his lips in a little smile at the news of Ayla's delay of two weeks in her blood moon.

Not one soul across the Seven Kingdoms would dare say that Ayla and Harwin hadn't tried their absolute most to conceive another child.

Though Kylian was a bit of a handful for Ayla, she had agreed with Harwin to have him be taken care of by the maids only for the duration of her next pregnancy and maybe a few months after the birth of their second child. The initial deal had been arranged for the upcoming month or two. The Gods hadn't been so kind.

Nine months, the whole pregnancy of Princess Rhaenyra, they had hoped to get pregnant. Month after month, they tried. Month after month, they were disappointed when Ayla's blood moons arrived. Harwin couldn't help himself from falling into the spiral of previous thoughts of not being able to conceive a child.

In the blink of an eye, Kylian grew in front of them with a quickness both of them hadn't anticipated. Before he turned one he was already walking around, he responded with smiles to all members of the Strong household, allowed himself to be carried by strangers, and had even stopped wanting to be fed out of Ayla, only looking for such closeness when he wouldn't fall asleep so easily.

Since Ayla still worked with the Hand, she could keep a watchful eye on the boy as he played around, babbled, shuffled from place to place and ate. If she had to reach the office of the Hand, she would take Kylian with her and take her time as her boy walked next to her at the pace his two legs would carry him.

Lord Lyonel was always delighted to see the boy walk and had even gone to lengths to gift him a horse in his first name day, one he would surely not ride for years. The keepers assured the horse was young and would still be in good shape to be ridden in the future.

On one of those trips, Lord Lyonel had looked at Kylian and said "my favorite grandson" to which Ayla replied.

"Not for long" she handed him a piece of scroll, already open. When he read it, he couldn't contain the gleam of happiness in his eyes.

Despite Grayce being the oldest of the two daughters, Jaena had had enough of her disappointment over her unrequited love for Adrian, she demanded her father to marry her and send her far away from King's Landing.

The request had broken Lord Lyonel's heart. He had always fancied himself a man of knowledge and wisdom, but even more a man of family. Having all his children under a same roof brought him a sense of belonging that he longed for ever since he left Harrenhal. Now, with Larys out of the Tower and Jaena leaving with her husband, the Tower felt empty.

Jaena married Layne Roote of Harroway, a town close to Harrenhal. Layne and Jaena had been acquainted in their youth and, as much as Ayla saw in the interactions before the wedding, Layne was much like Harwin and fed Jaena's wildest and best attributes.

The day of her departure though, it was Ayla's worst day in a long time. Never in her wildest imagination she thought she would be seeing her Good Sister and once closest friend leave in a carriage without as much as a short hug goodbye. A few months later, she'd written that she was with child for the first time.

Now, after Prince Luke had been introduced and, once again, word of doubt of his parentage resurfaced, Ayla more than anything needed family members close.

Everywhere she went she heard the whispers and gossips about the true father of the Princes. More than one person had named Harwin, the ever loyal and unwavering knight in her guard. Only the people who had seen Ayla and Harwin out in the Keep and had witnessed the couple in their demonstrations of affection doubted these allegations.

Ayla had never considered herself to be too drawn to gossip, but the parentage of the Princes was something that was beyond her. She had to know, not because she doubted Harwin, but because she needed to put a finger on the other responsible party in that issue.

Ayla had done a great effort to acquaint herself with the maids, the staff in the Keep were the invisible eyes and ears everyone used to get information, even Larys, who found out about Ayla's own pregnancy of Kylian, and now her second child, before anyone in her family knew.

Ayla, on the other hand, had never managed to find out who the father of the Princes was, the one person who might know was Harwin, but she would never dare ask him to reveal such information.

Every single person that found themselves putting the name of the Princes and Harwin's in a same sentence was instantly an acquaintance Ayla didn't want to keep. She found that many people shared that opinion and it came to a point where Ayla would prefer to be confined to the Tower of the Hand rather than socializing with that kind of people.

Pregnancy always heightened Ayla's state, her feelings and how she acted on them. One of the other reasons of her exile to the Tower was the fact that most times she attended the feasts, was out in social gatherings or venturing out in the corridors of the castle, she knew that people were talking about her the second she step into a room and everyone went quiet. It infuriated her to no end.

As much as Ayla fought aleatory people at feasts, Harwin fought commoners and guards that spoke the same lies in taverns across the city. Such provocations were always met with a deathly and warning glare. Anyone who dared bring his wife into the mix of the conversation got several broken bones at the hands of Harwin.

"We've turned quite volatile these last month" Ayla had spoken. Harwin stood still as she dabbed a piece of cloth to clean his split eyebrow.

Harwin appreciated the sentiment of unity Ayla always fomented between them. Deep down he knew his pregnant wife wasn't the one doing the most damage to the Strong name at the moment. Still, he indulged in a little joke.

"You're certainly doing the most of it"

Ayla gave him a fast look and a little smile, trying to find in his face if he was being serious or not, then moved the cloth to his split lip.

"Words might be more hurtful, at least your rage can be written off by the wine you've drank"

"I'm not that lucky" he complained, his face twisted when the cloth burn at his hot flesh. Ayla then moved to his bruised hands and tugged at his fingers. One of them seemed to be broken and Ayla wrapped it tight so he could heal.

Harwin let out a sigh, his eyes trained on her hands working on his.

"We're miserable here" he muttered. Ayla had to laugh at her husband's dramatic words.

"We are not miserable here. It'll come to pass" she assured.

"Not as fast as I would like. It may not even pass at all"

His eyes now landed on her figure, her nightgown hid the small bump in her lower stomach.

"I do not wish for you to go through anything harsh with this child"

"I'm not going though anything my love"

"Adrian says you've gotten in screaming matches in the gardens"

She rolled her eyes and shook her head.

"That's almost a daily occurrence, only heightened by the lies that people like to speak"

When Ayla finished and left the supplies in the table, she stood up and was instantly hugged by him. One of his arms rounded her thighs and the other gripped her waist. Ayla cupped his head and ruffled his hair out of the way.

"Harwin, it'll pass. It passed the last time, it'll pass this time. Let's not breathe more into them"

She placed a quick kiss on his forehead, then jumped in his arms when she was gripped from behind. She looked down at Kylian, who even though walked a little sloppily, he'd walked to them quietly enough to surprise Ayla by crashing to her leg. His blue eyes looked up at her and he chuckled amused.

Harwin's grief rinden face quickly changed when he saw his son, his hands now focused in picking up him from the ground and standing from the chair, he grabbed Ayla by the waist and the three of them walked upstairs.

Kylian and Harwin were not in a mood to sleep for different reasons. Ayla fell asleep hearing the giggles of her son as Harwin played with him, a simply game of covering and uncovering him with a blanket that moved Kylian to unstoppable giggles.

A month later, when Ayla began showing her second pregnancy and the rumors had quieted down because of it, Harwin was surprised by a summon to the Princess' quarters.

Once inside, the princess sent away the maids and the two princes. Harwin could not pinpoint what she could possibly need in the middle of the day, if anything the Princess spoke freely with him during his night shifts when they were alone.

"I believe it would be best to do without your service on my watch"

Harwin, with his hand gripping his helmet tightly, he let a little frown escape. When the Princess spoke plainly with him and told him that the rumors were only being fed by his presence and his actions in the tavern fights, which he regretted, she thought it would be best to put some distance.

Harwin had never felt more relieved. When he left the room, his shoulders slumped down in relief.

The second Ayla laid her eyes on him she knew that something had happened. Harwin had explained that he would no longer be in close proximity with the Princess and that he was relieved on one side, saddened on the other one. Harwin had seen the Princes grow up as much as his own son, pulling away from them wouldn't be that easy.

The distance the Princess had placed between them was not as fruitful as he had hoped.

Besides that, Harwin and his father were not in good terms. After many talks to Ayla about Harwin that had fallen of deaf ears, Lord Lyonel had taken the matter in his own hands. First he spoke of perception, then he spoke of the relationship itself and how him breathing the same air as the Princess fed such allegations. Thirdly and more hurtful, Lord Lyonel had told Harwin that Ayla did not deserve such treatment and if he really loved and care for his family, he would tell the Princess he was better off without being associated with her.

After the Princess laid him off, Harwin hadn't forgotten his father's harsh words and had even begun to doubt himself, doubt if he was being a good father and a good husband. There was only one person that could return him to some comfort about his work.

"Your father speaks harsh words in the hopes to shake you into consciousness of the gravity of this" Ayla spoke, her cheek smashed on his bare chest, enjoying the roughness of his palm on the side of her back, rounding at her ass cheek and pulling up again "he does not believe you're a bad father or a bad husband. I certainly don't think so either"

He pondered, doubting if maybe he should leave the conversations for later, when Ayla wasn't so spent and tired. She'd certainly outdone herself riding him that night.

"It's not about Rhaenyra" he spoke. Ayla shifted in his arms and pressed here chin to his chest, her eyes were closed but she still listened.

"What is not about Rhaenyra?"

"My closeness. It's about the Princes. They oy have her, they hear the word "father" and have no one to look across the room"

"You don't know that"

"But I do. As much as Laenor says he loves those children he spends half his time in the street of silk and the other half in Driftmark with his family and who knows who else"

"I don't think it's your job to fill that space though, Harwin" she finally opened her eyes to meet his. All this time, he'd hoped to be scolded by Ayla in the hopes of knowing that things were affecting her more than what she was letting on. Now that he actually was, he wished he had left the conversation for later.

"You're right, it's not"

"You only do because you have a big heart. No one can deny that. As much as you hate leaving those children to their luck, it's best to leave them to be taken care of by their parents, even if you think they're not capable of protecting them. They're not your responsibility"

He could only nod and fight the urge to say "yes my Lady" to acknowledge the order. Ayla pressed her head again to his chest and hugged herself closer to him. Her naked body had turned cold and she looked for Harwin's body heat. He pulled the sheets over the both of them and kissed the top of her head.

"Rhaenyra won't keep you away for long" she observed, muttering and fighting sleep.

Ayla's attempt to mitigate Harwin's grieve over the Princes had worked. Despite him being more attentive and caring to his own wife and son, Ayla didn't feel comfortable enough to leave the Tower.

Harwin began thinking that the Red Keep had become inhospitable for them, so much so that even Rhaenyra didn't even spend much time in it. Word was that Prince Daemon had married Laena Velaryon and the Princess frequented Driftmark more, leaving the Keep with free reign to speak of them as they pleased.

Harwin received a letter. As strange as it was for him to receive correspondance, the sender was not a stranger. Lord Edder wrote to him, not in the same amount he wrote to Ayla, but he still received a letter time again asking for Ayla's protection on his part. The letter he received that day wasn't of that subject.

In the tent, as he finished reading it, he clutched it and looked around, not believing the words he'd read.

He pondered, swaying Kylian to make him sleep. When he laid him in his bed, he ruffled his short hair and looked at him. Im that moment he though of him, how his future would be living in the Keep, if he would doubt his own father when he aged and heard the rumors.

Upon entering the bedroom and seeing Ayla smooth her hands over her stomach, he smiled at the sight of her. When she saw him come in, she turned to her side to show him her growing belly.

"It's growing faster than Kylian's" Harwin had observed and had said nothing, thinking it was only his imagination. When he saw Ayla, he knew he couldn't keep the contents of the letter hidden for much longer.

He searched for it in his desk and walked to the bed. She had already laid down and pulled some covers over her.

"I wish to speak with you about something" he called, then sat on the bed. Ayla moved to sit as well, her curious frown was quick to appear in her face "your father sent me this"

Ayla was already twisting her lips and extended her hand to the letter, writing a reply in her head to her father asking him to stop bothering Harwin.

When she began reading, her face changed little by little.

"He thinks it would be a good idea if I asked to be station and Harrenhal with him, help him train the soldiers of the region. I could climb fast to General"

Ayla's reaction wasn't the one Harwin had expected. He had hoped for her to jump out of happines in her spot at the thought of leaving King's Landing, to be with her father, closer to home. But no, she just handed him back the letter with a twist of her lips.

"What do you think?" She asked. Harwin scoffed and shook his head, moving to sit closed to her and place a hand to her waist.

"I think it's a Gods send. To have an opportunity to leave this place"

"I don't know" she muttered "feels to good to be true, there must be something"

Harwin cupped her cheek as he spoke "don't think about any ulterior motives, Ayla, just think of us. Wouldn't you like to live in Harrenhal, away from all this, to raise our kids freely?"

"Of course I would like that, that's all I want" she replied with a puff "don't go to your father right away, mhm? Let's wait a few days"

Harwin didn't know why she wouldn't just say yes, hoist Kylian on a horse and leave that very second. He indulged her in the time she needed to think it over.

The very next day, Ayla found herself in Adrian's room. Adrian inspected the letter until he just shrugged.

"What exactly are you afraid of?"

"I don't like the idea of leaving. The Princess left and now everyone is talking about her freely. So does Ser Laenor. Harwin is already being talked about since he left the Princess detail, if we also deserted it would be admitting guilt"

"I think it would be good for you, to leave" Adrian left the letter on top of his desk and looked at Ayla, sitting on his bed "it'll do you good. King's Landing has changed you"

"Changed me?"

"Yes. This very situation is an example. The Ayla I know, who protected everyone around her would've taken her family and gotten out of here. Now everything you think about is alliances, greens, blacks, Larys, perception. Forget about it, Ayla, and leave"

Ayla fiddled with her rings and thought about his words. He was right, Ayla always thought about doing things to protect others, now she didn't do them because of how people would see her.

"Maybe you're right" she admitted.

"Not maybe, I am right" he replied with a fake superiority to make her smile at a little joke. It worked, Ayla rolled her eyes at him with a smile.

"I know that if I leave, you won't come with me" Adrian pressed his lips in a thin line.

"It's a good thing you know me, it would've broken my heart having to tell you"

Ayla gave him a weak smile and fiddled further with her rings.

After speaking with her brother, she slowly fell in love more with the idea of leaving, specially after seeing her little boy around, thinking how happy he would be being raised by the two strongest men in all Westeros, both Harwin and her father.

Once clinging to Harwin's neck as they laid together and were ready to fall asleep, she looked up at him and held herself up on her arm.

"I think it would be good for us, to leave"

Harwin had forgotten that Ayla was still thinking about the letter as if it was a proposal and not a given fact. His fingers stroked her cheek as he smiled.

"My brother has made me realize that I haven't been the same ever since I came here. Though I'll miss the Capital, I know we will be better off in Harrenhal"

Harwin felt relieved that Ayla was okay with the move. Truthfully, he would've tired her with convictions until she agreed.

Now, all that was left was how Lord Lyonel would take the news. Ayla had left the conversation to be started by Harwin, since Harrenhal was their ancestral seat.

On the day that Ayla thought Harwin might bring up the conversation, Lord Lyonel had been brief in breaking his fast with them, but before he left he did say to Ayla "you might be interested in going to the throne room after supper"

She had been his second pair of eyes and ears in more than one occasion. When Lord Lyonel thought that something might be controversial or not accepted by the other Lords and commoners, he would plant a seed and Ayla would listen to the bloomings around the room, later she would relate the information and he would make a decision based on that.

The reason why she would be needed in the throne room wasn't such. Ayla was surprised to see the King, curious Lords filled every gap of the side corridors, and in the middle stood all 25 captains of the city watch. In the crowd was, of course, Harwin and her brother Adrian, who had recently been appointed Captain.

She observed the room, on the other side she could spot Larys, leaning on his cane as he spoke with a lord he couldn't pinpoint, two of them actually, next to the throne was the King and some of the members of the small Council, including Lord Lyonel in his role as hand.

Harwin, with his eyes trained in front of him, hadn't accounted for Ayla's presence.

Her questions were soon answered. When the King walked to the front of the Throne room, everyone went quiet.

"I am deeply grateful to the captains of the city watch for taking their time to be at this assembly today" he spoke, not really acknowledging the other Lords and commoners who, Ayla assumed, had attended the Throne room out of curiosity and not by the King's summons "as you're aware of, the City Watch stands, currently headless in command. It is my regret to inform you that Prince Daemon, as loved as he is by the majority of you, will not return to his place as the Commander"

Ayla's eyes quickly fell to the Hand, who had apparently seeing her as soon as she had found a place in the corridor. They exchanged knowing looks and Ayla's palms began to sweat at the realization.

"It is time to choose a new Lord Commander of the City Watch"

Taglist: @her-fandom-sanctum @evyiione @stitchattacks @grimistangel @mostlyskateboarding @mostclevermiss @agentstarkid

#harwin strong #ser harwin strong #ryan corr #harwin breakbones #harwin strong x oc #harwin strong x reader #harwin strong smut #harwin strong fluff

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tobiasdrake · 1 year

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Villain Breakdown: Arthur Harrow and Ammit

Harrow chokes a bit at the end, as his character design doesn't make for a very interesting super-fight. When the time for the fight does come, his magic staff just gets... Magic staffier.

But that can be forgiven because he's not really a super-fight kind of character. He's a philosophical and thematic villain moreso than a cool beat-em-up action villain. He's the natural endpoint of the road Marc is on, both with Khonshu and with his own relationship to abuse.

Harrow serves the story by presenting the dark side of recovery. Harrow copes with his own abuse by choosing to believe in abuse as virtuous and noble. He would rather say that suffering forges people through fire than accept that the things that were done to him are just not okay, and sometimes there is no greater meaning to being mistreated.

He trades one abuser for another, determined to become the best version of himself through suffering. The man who puts glass in his shoes so it can hurt when he walks admits in the end that he truly believed all this pain, much of it self-inflicted, was forging him into a better person. And it doesn't. Ammit rejects that interpretation, even as she empowers him anyway because she doesn't even subscribe to the ideals he's been following in her name.

Harrow is what Khonshu makes his Avatars into: A real piece of work. And that allows for a strong thematic conflict against Steven, whose philosophy of trauma is that you shouldn't blame yourself for the things people do to you, it's okay to cry, and people deserve a chance to heal with the love of their friends.

In terms of performance, his monotone gravely whisper gives him a stronger teacherly voice. Even when he's talking to Ammit, it never feels like he's having a conversation; Only laying out what he believes the facts to be. His voice is vulnerable yet unyielding, merciless yet compassionate, and consistent throughout all his various contexts he appears in.

#marvel #marvel cinematic universe #moon knight #villain breakdown #arthur harrow

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moseslikellamas · 1 month

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Cinders in the Dark pt.9

Pairing - Benjicot Blackwood x Whent!OC

Summary - Following a harrowing accident, Lucinda demands answers of the Blackwood Lord to varied results.

Warnings - Magic, delusions, trickery, frightening imagery, forced marriage, mentions of death, blood, mention of suicidal ideation,depiction of burns, depictions of panic attack, anxious thoughts, grief, not canon, Kieran Burton fancast.

Word count - 2.5k

Surprise! To me and to you, I was not intending to write this today. But here we are anyway!

Time stopped making sense for Lucinda. She writhed in bed, feeling the lick of flames over her body. At times she could see the burning man in the corner of her room. It had always been there , usually just out of her sight. Maddeningly it was there and not there. That changed when she came back from her escape attempt. She could see its horrible lidless eyes, half melted and dripping, staring straight into her soul. It was his fault she had been burned, she'd decided. The sword had caught flame and burned her. Who else but this wretched fiend would wield such magic? Though she was not discounting the Lord Blackwood, who appeared periodically. She would hiss at the sight of him every time he appeared but he kept returning anyway. When he came this time, she resolved to ask him a question or two. He hadn’t been burned by the sword and that didn’t make any sense to her. Did he know the burning man? Was he the burning man?

The rattle of bones in the corner made every hair on her body stand up. He’d had muscles and tendons the last time she looked at him. It took every fiber of her concentration not to look at the horrid thing wanting her attention. Her good hand clutched the sheets and her jaw was tight at the effort. It had never spoken to her but she got the sense that were she to look at it right now, that would change. Her skin felt prickly and the walls pulsed in a grotesque way that matched the frantic beating of her heart.

A light knock sounded at her door and she was thankful for once when the wood melted away to reveal her captor. She was shivering, though she was not cold. She was sweaty and uncomfortable at his entrance despite her relief at banishing the bag of bones haunting her. She focused on not hissing at the man while he changed the bandage on her hand. Though she swore he rubbed something on the new bandages, she allowed him to wrap her hand with it. He was as quiet as he always was, saying nothing. She wondered what was going on in his head, if he had thoughts. Maybe he was like any predator and thought only of being.

“There’s a burning man that follows me around. He gave me that sword.”

The only indication he heard her was the slide of his eyes to meet hers. A chill went through her under his gaze. Then he reached up to place his hand on her head and she let him, warily eyeing him the whole time.

“You have a fever.” His voice was disembodied and husky. She never saw his lips move, just heard the words from somewhere far off.

“I might have a fever but there is a burning man. His eyes are half melted, gave me that bramble crown too.” She insisted, growing irritated with his casual attitude.

“You should sl-“

“Stop!” She cut him off, scowling.

It had become clear to her that he had some power of suggestion over her and she did not want to sleep right now. She wanted some fucking answers, real and detailed ones.

“I don’t need any more sleep, thanks anyway.” Sarcasm dripped from her lips. “I want you to explain what the fuck is going on here!”

Her desk had been disturbed, she could see that now as he leaned against it. Had he been snooping through her things?

“You’re not well. We should talk some other-“

“We’ll talk now.”

The two of them stared at each other equally annoyed. She wanted to sit up further as she was only propped up on pillows. She was frustrated that he was standing, or rather half leaning on her desk, while she was stuck laying down. After an intense staredown that lasted longer than it should have, he relented.

“Fine. What do you want to kn-“

“Where is my father?”

He sighed and then walked around the desk to pull out her chair, sitting in it before answering. She watched in contempt, silently fuming. He could lay claim to anything in this castle, except anything inside this room. His casual use of her things made her irrationally angry. Of course he saw her stuff as his, they were married. She was simply property like everything else here.

“Your father is dead, though I think you already knew that.”

She had begun to suspect her father was dead but she was holding out hope anyway. She didn’t pause to let the information sink in though. She couldn’t bear to process it, so she barreled into her next question.

“What does the crown think of this whole ordeal?”

She maintained eye contact with him the entire time, hardly blinking as she tried to gather a read on the man.

“The crown is busy at the present moment with much bigger issues.”

“And if I managed to get word out to them?”

His countenance then was for the first time smug. “Not a worry I have.”

Inside she felt like she was burning, like she could rip her own skeleton out to reveal flaming bones. Her combined frustration and helplessness grew at his self assured words. But she swallowed the rage threatening to consume her and moved on to another topic.

“Why did that sword not burn you in the woods?”

That wiped the smug look off of his face to her satisfaction.

“You shouldn’t have tried to leave.”

She rolled her eyes, wishing she could throw both hands up but settling for one. “You shouldn’t have stormed the castle. You shouldn’t force people into isolation after you murder their family. You shouldn’t wander around like a fucking creepy specter. We all have flaws. How about you make one your strengths answering the gods damned question?”

He regarded her silently, expression once again unreadable. She was getting really tired of being confused all of the time. Now she would carry the scars of that confusion forevermore.

“You’re not allowed to leave. Remember the cut I gave you during the wedding?”

She nodded, dread gripping her tightly as she began to understand what had happened. “You’re doing blood magic?”

He didn’t answer her but she hadn’t really said it to him. She knew the Blackwoods made sacrifices to the weirwood trees and that the lord in front of her was a skin changer. But blood magic rituals were a different matter, especially when it was her blood he was using. He’d evidently bound her to the castle grounds and that’s why she wasn’t able to leave. It didn’t explain the sword bursting into flames. She glared at him, still unhappy with what she knew.

“What about the sword?”

He stood now and she knew he wasn’t going to tell her anything else. As he began to walk away from her she groaned in frustration.

“You can’t keep me in the dark forever!”

He turned back to her as he opened the door, she could barely make out his form behind the curtains of her bed. She could hear him perfectly clear though, as if he were right beside her.

“You should sleep.”

Darkness enveloped her completely then. The irony was not lost on her as she drifted off into unconsciousness

***

When Lucinda woke she felt mostly fine. She could see from her window that it was still dark out though she could not discern the time beyond that. Her hand throbbed much less this time around and she saw no sign of the crackling bones in the corner of the room. Both were a relief. She hadn’t been awake a full five minutes before Lord Blackwood knocked on her door.

She knew it was him and considered sending him away. But he brushed into the room without waiting for her to reply either way. She longed to see any other face than the one staring down at her from the foot of her bed.

“And what do you want this time?” She snapped, tired of his piercing eyes and silent mouth.

“You need to get up.”

“You have such a way with words. Incredible bedside manner, truly. Give up the sword, you’re wasted in the field.”

He stared at her a moment longer. “Do you feel better now? Can you answer me or have you got another quip?”

Her cheeks burned faintly with embarrassment and stubbornly she doubled down.

“As a matter of fact, I do have another. Why don’t you jump out of that window really quick, I’ve attached it to the second to last brick at the bottom of the wall. You can’t miss it on your way down.”

He walked around her bed as she spoke, causing her tone to pitch up in fear as she went on. By the time he reached her at the head, her heart was racing.

“Either I can assist you out of the bed or I can assist you out of the bed.”

“Any variation between the two?” She was pushing her luck but what did she have to lose anymore? He needed her, enough not to openly kill her. And that meant she could be as annoying as she wanted.

“Quality of care.”

She rolled her eyes at him.

“Fine, whatever. Do you want to annoy me to death slowly over time? Cause I promise, I’m okay with a quick demise.”

She swung her good leg out of the bed and grasping the lord's hand she slowly began to pull herself upright. The pain was not unbearable but still there throbbing to life the second she moved. She gasped, breathing heavily, once she finally stood up completely.

“Not true. You came back from the watery halls.”

She had almost forgotten he was there in her effort to stand. She shuddered at his words, remembering the icy cold void that longed to have her in its clutches again. Slowly they began to walk across her room, back and forth.

“Please don’t remind me of that place. It wants me back, you know.”

He frowned at that, asking, “Do you feel the cold again?”

She shrugged. “I kind of always feel it.”

She was winded and tired from the few laps they did around the room. So he led her back over to the bed, though she was loath to return.

“Can I not see anyone else? Surely a handmaiden could come in to help me wash.”

“How cold do you feel exactly?” He ignored her question completely.

Huffing as she dragged herself back under the covers she said, “I don’t know! It’s just a sliver, deep inside me. Now about that handmaid?”

He looked deep in thought at her words. “Does it feel as if you left a piece of yourself behind?”

Now she groaned, he wasn’t listening to her at all!

“Look man, you send someone to their death they aren’t supposed to come back. You did this. I don’t know what to tell you but I would appreciate a bath. So if you could send someone in, that would be great.”

His eyes met hers again and she wanted so badly to pitch him out the window. He was shadow staining her life, he shouldn’t be here.

“No one else is coming. Help yourself or wait it out.”

She did not gape at him or even tense her jaw in anger. A thousand insults filtered through her mind in a second, each more devastating than the last. But instead she sat very still and engaged him in his silent showdown. She would manage on her own and then she would start exploring the castle again. There was only one way to figure this mess out and it involved that sept beneath the ground. He couldn’t watch her every minute of every day.

“What’s your game, Blackwood?” She didn’t expect him to answer in any capacity. She just couldn’t stop herself from asking. Nothing he did made any sense to her and rarely did his words clear any of it up either.

“If you make it out of bed, come and find me.”

When the door slammed close behind him the air grew ten, fifteen, twenty degrees hotter. A crackling and snapping noise rattled from the far corner of the room. Worst of all were the shadows thrown by the raging blaze of flames to her left. She had no choice but to turn her head and confront the flayed man.

He was there just as she expected but oddly enough, he was covered in armor. She could see where the metal grew white hot in places from the flames underneath. He was baking inside that armor and somehow it was worse than seeing the muscle and sinew. Other bits of the armor glowed red from the heat but the sword in his hand was melting, dripping molten metal on the stone floors. Then the clank and shuffle of metal could be heard as it lumbered towards her. The sounds of burning flesh intensified the closer it grew and she found herself wishing it were all bones today instead. A funny thought in a hollow way, which burning horror would you prefer today? Would you rather it be fleshy or calcified?

She still didn’t know if the thing was real or imagined. Surely real as it had given her tangible gifts. But how could it be real? And why wouldn’t Lord Blackwood acknowledge it? The last question was of less consequence as she thought he just enjoyed being difficult. She wanted to ask the witch in the tall tower but she had not heard a single whisper of her since she last spoke with her about the Lord. Whether it was real or not was of less importance to her when it was standing a foot away from her bed, the sound of sizzling flesh fresh in her ears.

She waited tensely in anticipation of its actions. Every muscle in her body was coiled intensely, ready to move at a moment's notice. But the thing just stood there, melting sword in hand. She felt compelled to hold her own sword against all reason and logic. The feeling grew to such a pitch she could not ignore it and so she dragged herself out of bed. She walked past the blistering armor and grabbed her sword from its spot on her desk. The moment she held it in her hands she turned to face the knight, both holding their swords at the ready. Inexplicably they moved towards each other until at last steel on steel, the world shifted and bent around them.

Lucinda felt dizzy and disoriented, the clash of steel was still ringing in her ears. But everywhere she looked the image in front of her was wrong. The knight was upside down or was it her that was upside down? Nothing was where it was meant to be and somehow their swords were still clashing together. Time grew thin and weak again.

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indecisive-v · 10 months

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alright, people put translations for yonah and deep cover on youtube so i finally caved, here's thoughts i wrote as i listened

YONAH

now, in t1, it looked to me like kotoko felt it was a necessity to do what she did? like there was no other way to save the victims of those she hunted down, and that makes sense to me

but it's looking now like she's just gotten so used to it that she likes it, and i think she tries to reason for it by saying she's doing the dirty work so others don't have to

she's the one out here beating up the bad guys, partly because kind young es shouldn't have to and partly because comatose weakling es can't

jackalope in novel secret content: es is great at this. peak warden material, A+ 11/10

kotoko in yonah: you're kinda bad at this lol

oh no i just had a Thought. forgive me for what i'm about to say and never let me cook again

so kotoko mentions "karmic retribution" right

my stupid idiot brain that had an undertale phase back in the day thought about sans 💀💀💀

karma and lack of i-frames are what allow sans to hurt you extra bad despite him only having 1 atk

kotoko is the same color as karma's poison effect and the prisoners' "i-frames" are disabled when es is asleep. she thinks she's sans underta- (i am sent to the prison)

kotoko in yonah: what's next, are you gonna start forgiving prisoners just because they're hot?

jackalope at the VERY BEGINNING: vote em inno because they're hot, vote em inno because you just like their Vibes, idc do what you want lol

Deep Cover

HOLD UP WAIT THIS IS A BANGER HOLY GOD I'M ONLY LIKE 4 SECONDS IN

yall weren't kidding about her stealing es' "under" lmfao

OH NO THE DISS TRACK

ok. done listening. i'm normal now.

just kidding gonna listen again

either kotoko figured something out in regards to the 11th prisoner es theory or she is a believer in the theory herself, or both

yep still a banger

funny thing, harrow to me felt like an anime op, now deep cover feels like an ed

you were all saying this was instant guilty material but i don't think it's... THAT bad...? maybe i'm just a lil head empty

at the same time though, good luck kotoko inno truthers fr 💀

i have a little more hope now after listening that the mv will soften the inevitable guilty storm? they better be cooking good lol

kotoko's diss track felt like it was her lashing out in anger after what es told her in the vd, mixed with her thinking "hey, everyone's in here for murder, right? and it's about whether you forgive them as opposed to whether they're actually 'innocent'? well, i can't forgive a murderer, no matter what."

kotoko has already stated in her t1 interrogation that she at the very least hasn't been bullied in the past, and while that doesn't eliminate the possibility of her having another sort of tragic/traumatic backstory (or her having been bullied but not thinking it counted for some reason), it could also just be that she's really misguided due to being a lone wolf and having no one to work with, bounce off of, and validate her but herself. being alone like that does shit to a person

#milgram #yonah spoilers #deep cover spoilers #milgram spoilers #kotoko yuzuriha #milgram es

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worlds-4th-best-dad · 5 months

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what made u want to become a policeman?

Heh, well ain't this a funny sight? Just a few weeks ago, I helped conduct a seminar on stranger danger at a local preschool and some of the kids asked the same thing.

Given that you ain't your average five-year-old, I'll fill you in on more details on my road to the force than the sugar-coated one I handed out to them kids.

Well, that's what I would've done if Tumblr hadn't crashed multiple times before I finished it...

And I worked so hard to go into detail too...

Well, anyway, a summarized version it is then.

I really wanted to buy a Gundam model when I was a kid. I earned and saved my allowance into a piggy bank, but it wasn't enough.

I felt cheated and angry so I stole the toy from the store and ran home with it.

I showed it to my mom, who made my dad come over from his paper to see it.

Dad was happy for a bit, before asking questions and ordering me to see the piggy bank.

Dad figured out that I stole it when he felt the bank was full of money and proceeded to beat a lesson into me.

The only reason I didn't get beaten into a fine pulp was my mom breaking the heavy piggy bank over my dad's head and immediately rushing me to the hospital.

Ever since then, my mom was protective of me and my dad slowly distanced himself from us.

His distancing then turned into absences that began with a single day and turning into multiple weeks.

Me and my mom found out that my dad was never coming home when a police officer came over to our house to say that my dad died on the streets.

Apparently, his absences was for his petty theft spree since he lost his job and the money for the family was running dry.

And that's about it. Honestly, looking back on this, I really put a lot of detail in my story that could've been shorter. Can't blame a man from trying, I guess.

Anyway, the important parts of this story that made me want to become a policeman was when my dad beat me till I was black and blue and my mom saving me from entering the Pearly Gates early. I'm sure you understand what I'm trying to tell you at this point, but I'll still say it regardless.

When I was on the floor, bracing my little body from the blows from my dad, that's when I truly felt like my entire world crumbling before me. I felt many things during that harrowing experience. A lot of pain, obviously, but I also felt so small, like I can be blown away in a gust of wind. Yet, I wanted that, an escape from the ruins of my world. To get away from being the poor fool who got caught in the crossfire at the battleground that was once home.

And yet, when I thought I was done for, I heard a smash in the numbing silence and the tinkling of hope. The next thing I knew, the punches stopped and I was being carried off to who knows where before I passed out from the pain.

When I finally woke up from the pain, I was lying in a hospital bed in the Sakurami City General Hospital. My mom wasn't in the room with me, but when I rustled around the bed to get comfortable, she bursted from the door and immediately hugged me, tears in my eyes, and told me that everything was over and no one was going to hurt me anymore.

It was at that moment I knew what I wanted to be. I wanted to be someone like my mom, who risked getting herself beat up to save someone like me, a petty thief in dire need, from people like my dad, who didn't hesitate to become violent at the drop of a hat. After asking my teacher if there was a kind of job like that, they told me that sounds similar to a police officer and the rest was history.

Sorry, for the long story, but I had to get a lot of it out for you to get the full picture.

I hope my answer satisfied your question, Reisuke.

#now if you'll excuse me i'm gonna go grab a donut and a drink to forget my dad again #reports #mutuals (derogatorily affectionate)#asks

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mayasaura · 2 years

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not that anon but it’s sadder to me because then she’d have every reason to move on from harrow and never see her again lol.. I’m bad. What blossomed from the bloodied dirt of tragedy at canaan house (and proceeded to be stomped) would never have taken root at all

Also because maybe she’d get swept up in what john teaches her like she got swept up with cytherea, and commits high imperialism genuinely instead of apathetically. Or maybe she’d go “fuck you pops” and break off to join rebels after a while? Go to open the tomb by choice? Well nevermind this is looking good actually

John might just kill her though

Every reason to move on from Harrow, but I'd bet my ass no ability. They've been obsessed with one another their whole lives, and all Gideon's ever wanted is for Harrow to acknowledge her. All the titles in the universe and it's still not gonna feel real until she can look Harrow in the eye and make her call her 'Your Highness'.

She'd want to be able to watch Harrow squirm with the knowledge that she holds the fate of the Ninth House in her hands every day, and it's only allowed to continue existing because she's decided to let it. (Even as it makes her sick every day knowing that one slip of the tongue and she'll ruin everything all over again. Having the power to destroy everything you've ever known is a hell of a double edged sword; her dad could've told that.)

None of Gideon's futures are bright and rosy and without suffering; not where she's from, and not with the people in her life. She's going to have to grapple with the horrors of war and empire, and being desperate for approval from a father who hasn't thought of anyone else as being real for at least ten thousand years. It's just that if we're swinging for a sadder future than canon, the bar is so goddamn high right now. We have to beat a scenario where she's torn-open zombie without a heart, a ghost tethered to her own unrotting corpse, convinced that no one ever has or ever will love her. She's canonically the "saddest girl in the world," and we're trying to come up with something sadder.

I suppose you're right, there's always a chance of John killing her outright. I kinda have trouble seeing it, tho. Even when he was on a killing spree, she was technically already dead, and she'd just told him to go to hell, he still wouldn't give her a life-or-death ultimatum. She's his kid; yikes.

#I am dying to know how much the familial connection actually means to John and hoping that will be explored at least briefly in Alecto #as for Harrow and Gideon they'd been watering what blossomed in Canaan House for a longass time #the roots already went deep long before they set foot on the planet #maybe they wouldn't end up in the right conditions again to see those gnarled and twisted roots flower #but maybe they would #the love was already there in with everything else that ties them together #the locked tomb #tlt au #ntn spoilers #gideon nav #kiriona gaia

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ogdoadfates · 1 year

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It was only a cough: #5 Silvery barbs

Here it is! I’m not the best at writing Pike I think but I gave it a shot! Like always here’s a link to the story on ao3!

Vax is, Vax is a lot of things, he’s scared because the woman he loves is sick, he’s traumatized by both his past and the hellish present they all find themselves in, he’s revolted by the stench the undead has left on everything, he’s worried for their friends who aren’t traveling with them, but right now the most prominent thing that he is, is a horrific mixture of anger and terrified. The emotions coil around his beating heart in a desperate attempt to make it burst and release the carnage that is what’s become of his mental state onto the floor. He wants to scream, he wants to rage, he wants to punch whoever controls fate in the face for the hand they all have been dealt.

It was just a simple sentence, one singular sentence that spilled from his twin’s lips like a viper peeking its head out of its den, prepared to strike and kill whomever disturbed it.

“We’re going to have to stop at the next hospital.” That one fuckin sentence destroyed most of the slivers of whatever sanity Vax had left.

Keyleth has been getting slightly better but Vax didn’t know how low their med supplies had gotten. And god does that anger him, he was a damn EMT for fucks sake not to mention his girlfriends health is historically horrendous he SHOULD be the one keeping track of that the most and yet he let his mind slip.

They have to go to a hospital.

His reaction to that news wasn’t the best , the only regret with that is that now Keyleth is even more stressed then she already was. To be fair he wasn’t the only one to react in outrage and fear to the notion of scavenging a hospital, Scanlan’s words spoke true about all the dangers involved but neither of them could fight on it when Vex and Pike pointed out they’d be doomed if they didn’t refill on meds. Even Vax had to acknowledge that they’d die like wildlife in an oil spill if they got sick without meds and that Keyleth would be the first to go.

He’s worrying Keyleth but he can’t bring himself to do anything about it and it sickens him. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands as she tiredly drapes herself onto his back, rubbing his arms lightly in a comforting gesture.

Keyleth’s sicker than Trinket after he eats a chocolate bar and yet she’s the one trying to give some comfort. He can feel the rattle of her ribcage when she turns her head away from him to cough into the empty space and all it does is tell him how screwed they are.

After a particularly harrowing coughing fit from Kiki, he takes his hands away from his face, grabbing her hands lightly.

“You should rest, Keeks.” He says softly yet, try as he might, he can not mask the stressed undertone his words take. She huffs and the next thing Vax knew he was being pulled down onto the bed. Vax’s eyes widen at the short and sudden display of strength from Keyleth as she now looms over him with a sad expression on her face.

“I’ve done nothing but rest for two days now, I’m not going to sleep if it leaves you stewing in misery alone.” She says with as much conviction her hoarse voice will allow. The two stare into each other's eyes for a moment then, taking in the silent words between them.

The fear, the anxiety, the uncertainty and the underlying care and love that despite all the struggles the world has been hurling at them has done nothing but bloom. Like a garden overtaking a mass grave, they struggle but have found a beauty to overcome the grotesque death surrounding them.

Keyleth sighs, and collapses onto the bed facing Vax. She reaches up to take his hand, the angle making it a little awkward but like always they make it work.

“I’m sorry.” She says it barely above a whisper but he still catches it. Vax’s face contorts into one of confusion.

“What for?” He says back. She looks at him for a moment before averting her gaze, he can see her expression morph to one of deep conflict and dismay.

Suddenly it hits him.

Oh, Keyleth.

“It’s not your fault, Kiki. Most likely we would have had to stop at one sooner or later considering we only had basically a week or so’s worth of them.” He says as he rearranges himself on the bed to properly face, never letting their hands part as he does. Vax takes his unoccupied hand to cup the side of Keyleth’s face lovingly, as their gazes finally meet again his heart breaks at the burning fires of her committed self hatred dancing in her eyes like sick vipers of flame dancing in rage within a wooden crate.

“I’d agree if I most likely wasn’t the cause as to why we had so little medicine to begin with. I feel so useless.” She sighs but huddles closer to him, Vax now wrapping his arms around her.

“You’re not useless, Keyleth. We’d be lost without you. Who the hell would have been able to get the keys to the van after they fell through floor boards of that farm house? Who’d have come up with the idea to use email to safely keep in contact with everyone? Who the hell would have remembered the way to Zephrah?” He tells her with conviction as she holds onto him tighter with each word that makes its way out of him. “I couldn’t do this without you. I can’t do this without you.”

At that statement she buries her face into his neck, he can feel the wetness her tears leave.

It’s a while before they move again, Keyleth refusing to rest, regardless of Vax’s pleas, is standing near the window peeking through the small opening in the curtains as Vax watches her from his spot sitting on the bed.

Minxie hops onto the bed curling up next to Vax’s leg and he can’t help but smile at the calming creature. He can’t help but remember when all of this started, the feline wasn’t particularly happy about have to get into their crate to go to the vet so Vax had volunteered to help Keyleth get the feisty feline until they suddenly heard a crash and the next thing he knew everyone was screaming. Gods is he lucky he had been the one holding the carrier so his first thought was to look out the window to see what was happening instead of just rushing down to help.

He’ll never forget seeing the undead tear that man apart, limb from limb like a clan of hyenas devouring a bloated carcass. The sounds and fear radiating off of everything sprung him and Keyleth to action, grabbing anything they could and getting the hell out of there while he called his sister. From there it was a blur, getting into Percy's car with the rest of the gang and high tailing it away.

They were aimless for a while till they were far enough away that they could stop for a minute and call people, that's when they learned the undead hadn’t hit Zephrah or Whitestone yet but both places were getting rapidly colder. At first they thought that meant they needed to head south, run from the cold, but Keyleth quickly corrected them. Better to deal with the cold in places with protections against it rather than places that aren’t.

He still can’t see how she thinks herself useless, she probably has saved the entirety of both Whitestone and Zephrah with her explanations and helping Cassandra and Korrin on how to keep the cities safe in frigid temperatures.

She’s done so much and yet the world only wishes to punish her.

Pike’s been watching Scanlan pace for the past few hours, the anxiety and frustration wafting from him in agonizing waves. Grog had been with them for the first two hours but decided to go on patrol when it started to reach the third.

She can’t blame Scanlan for not being particularly happy at the news that they had to scavenge a hospital for meds, he made a promise to his daughter at the beginning of all of this that he’d see her again whether it was crossing paths during travel or when they reached either Whitestone or Zephrah.

Hospitals are nowadays death traps, she’d know better than anyone how dangerous they are. She idly rubs her fingers over the scar that lay upon her eyebrow. And now they had no choice but to venture into one, otherwise they’re probability for survival is basically zero.

As light starts to dim, Pike begins to ever so slightly shiver. She should probably go inside but she isn’t going to leave Scanlan out here alone. Hopefully they snag some blankets from this motel and that they’ll fit in the van, Keyleth hadn’t been exaggerating about how it’s getting colder and apparently it’s only going to get worse.

“Scanlan?” She calls out causing him to stop abruptly and snap at her.

“What!” Scanlan shouts, Pike flinches slightly at his tone and volume causing him to shrink back, head down, shoulders up. “Sorry.” The two of them take a moment to see if his shout attracted any attention but it’s starting to seem as if they did actually kill everything in the area.

“We need to get inside.” She says walking over to him, he refuses to meet her eyes but gives a small nod. He lets her take his hand and leads him back inside where they find Grog sitting down on one of the waiting chairs, giving a happy Trinket some much appreciated scratches. “Hey, buddies.” She greets him with a small smile, Grog looks up from Trinket and she knows he heard Scanlan shout but can also tell he shouldn’t say anything about it so he just greets her back and goes back to paying attention to the large dog in front of him.

Pike takes Scanlan to one of the rooms the group has been using during their stay here that’s empty. Where Scanlan proceeds to collapse onto one of the beds and stare up at the ceiling.

The lack of jokes about them being alone in a bedroom together really pressed on how much everything is bugging him and in a way unsettles Pike. She’s gotten so used to him being one of the people who lighten the mood that she sometimes forgets he’s in this hell hole too.

She lays down next to him, not close enough to be touching but close enough to feel the other's presence.

“Are we doomed to die?” The question startles Pike, she doesn’t answer immediately, having to gather her thoughts.

“I don’t think we’re doomed to die, I mean we’ve made it this far? And we haven’t lost anyone yet!” She says but even she’d admit that her tone even with her trying isn’t the most convincing but hopefully the facts made some progress into relieving some of Scanlan’s stress.

Scanlan huffs and turns to face her. “We’re going to a literal kill box soon and yeah sure, I won’t be one of the people entering it most likely but if you all die in there, it’d just be me and Keyleth who. Gods she is a good friend but if everyone goes she’d go into shock and either die from an accident or from some random ass sickness, I’d probably die not that long after.” Pike’s eyes widened at his words, she reached over and grabbed his shoulder.

“Scanlan we aren’t going to die in the damn hospital, yes we need supplies but we also know when it’s time to retreat. I think out of everyone, I’d be the one to know that. We’ll be fine, you’ll be fine, you’ll see your daughter again Scanlan. Yes we should be cautious, maybe even a little scared but there isn’t a point in dwindling in what if.” Her voice rings with conviction as she stares Scanlan down. “We will live.”

He stares at her for a long while, particularly the scar marking her brow like some sort of unholy marker of what's before them,he gives her a nod. “Alright, alright.” She smiles and gives his shoulder a light playful push before a smirk slowly makes its way onto his face. “You know, we are alone.” He says with a playful rise of his eyebrows. There it is!

Pike groans and shoves his shoulder enough to where he falls off the bed with a loud thump, yet she can’t help but let a little blush and smile come to her face. Gods, I need a break.

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