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daydreamerdrew · 4 months

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Comics read this past week:

Marvel Comics:

the Wolverine stories in Marvel Comics Presents (1988) #72-75

These stories were published across January 1991 to March 1991, according to the Marvel Wiki. All were written and drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith. All of the stories were 8 pages. This was the beginning of the revelation of Logan’s backstory at Weapon X.

The story in issue #72 opens with Logan just getting by and not remembering his past. At first I thought his experience at Weapon X hadn’t happened yet, but then it becomes clear that it has but he’s haunted by a traumatic experience he can’t remember. He’s staying at home for fallen Christians called The Prophecy, and one of the other men staying there tells him, “Prophecy is part of the apocalypse.” Logan thinks that he’s, “Nowhere… ‘cept the edge… of the dark! An’ the dreams… of death… in the shadowed rooms… of The Prophecy.” There are panels of gore interspersed into his mundane life. He sits on the floor of his room in silence of images of being operated on, his flesh regrowing around his claws, the cold eyes of the technician just visible with all the equipment he was wearing, then being outside amongst fences and shocked from above like a dog on the ground. He looks outside his window and the rain hitting it is reminiscent of the sight of the splattered bits of his body hitting the glass of the test tube he was once in.

The story in issue #73 covers Logan being captured, interrupting a life not unlike the one he has in the story in issue #72, and the beginning of the experimentation on him. The story in issue #74 concludes the physical experimentation of his body and has him wake up and kill one of the workers.

In the story in issue #75 the language used to discuss Logan is reminiscent to me of how he was talked about when his mutation first emerged when he was a child in Wolverine: The Origin (2002), creating a cycle where he is dehumanized again. He is called “a wild beast that was once a man,” which is pushed back upon by saying, “that this ‘infernal thing’ is what Logan has always been.” Going forward in the upcoming stories, the goal is to brainwash the “mindless murdering animal” into a controllable weapon.

Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandoes (1963) #13

This issue was published in October 1964, according to the Marvel Wiki. It was written by Stan Lee, penciled by Jack Kirby, and inked by Dick Ayers. It was the special issue where the Howling Commandoes teamed up with Captain America and Bucky. For context, The Avengers (1963) #4, which was the issue that revealed that Captain America was alive and had been frozen for 2 decades and that Bucky was dead, was published in January 1964.

I enjoyed this story more than any of the other WWII Captain America and Bucky comics I’ve read that were published in the 60s, but it was still a disappointing to me because I was expecting a full issue of Cap and Bucky and the Howling Commandoes on a mission together. Instead the Howling Commandoes and Cap and Bucky were in separate places for most of the issue, with the story switching back and forth between them until they met up towards the end, but the Howling Commandoes had been losing members the entire time so it was only Nick and Reb who actually worked with Cap and Bucky. I would have liked to have seen them all interacting with each other. There was also a scene at the beginning of the issue were Nick and his girlfriend were at a movie theater and a newsreel played about Captain America and Bucky, and then Nick and his girlfriend were at a bar and Nick intervened when Steve was getting bullied (Bucky wasn’t there), but Nick and Steve didn’t actually talk to each other during that scene.

DC Comics:

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight (1989) #1-5

These issues were published across October 1989 to February 1990, according to the Grand Comics Database. All were written by Dennis O’Neil, penciled by Ed Hannigan, and inked by John Beatty. This was the “Shaman” storyline.

This story primarily takes place six months after Bruce became Batman, but was set in motion by the events of a flashback well before that, when Bruce was still traveling the world, training in preparation to become Batman. It’s been a bit since I read the “Batman: Year One” storyline, but the specific references to it, the revisiting of the famous scene of a bat flying through Bruce’s window, of course, and the mention of Bruce having helped save Gordon’s baby, were familiar to me. I don’t remember if the scene of Bruce and Alfred inspecting what will later become the Batcave is pulling from something specific from that story. Ordinarily I think rewriting events from a famous, well-received story wouldn’t work well for me, but I didn’t have any issue with that Bruce seeing that bat fly through the window, which inspired his secret identity, also made him think of the Shaman’s story of the bat and the raven. I would say I overall liked the story, even though I was not that particularly personally compelled by the recurring ideas in it- Bruce’s view of religious faith/indigenous culture, the difficulty of trying to put his money to good works and knowing what the real impact of that will be, the symbolism of the story of the bat and the raven, the idea that Bruce is uniquely marked, and that cold is the enemy. The part of the story that I liked best was how at the beginning of the story in the flashback, a killer Bruce was fighting is accidentally pushed off a mountain, seemingly to his death, and Bruce thinks, “I didn’t mean for him to die,” but doesn’t dwell on it, both because he has to focus on trying to survive in that cold environment and because the cold makes it hard to think or care. And then at the end of this story, after Bruce has learned that this man is still alive and they’ve fought again and he was accidentally fatally injured, Bruce tries to comfort him as he’s dying and says, “Rest in peace.”

All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder (2005) #1-10

These issues were published across July 2005 to September 2008, according to the DC Wiki. All were written by Frank Miller, penciled by Jim Lee, and inked by Scott Williams.

I genuinely largely liked this book. At the beginning I thought that the relationship between Batman and Robin was interesting, but that the world the story takes place in being portrayed as so extreme detracted from it, because that minimized the aspect of it that was Bruce bringing Dick into his fucked-up world when that was really the world they both lived in, which the world being more like the regular DC universe but being perceived by Batman to be extreme wouldn’t have done. By the end I was also interested, in addition to Bruce and Dick’s relationship, in how living in such a dark, edgy world would affect a person and was more willing to engage with it as it was, but unfortunately I think the execution of that is inherently weakened by the way women were written in this book. I know that this book has been poked fun at for being ridiculous, and it seems clear to me that it’s meant to be ridiculous and readers aren’t intended to think Batman is as cool as he thinks he is, but similarly I also think the writing of the women was played too straight for that to entirely land.

Bruce’s interest in making 12-year-old Dick his sidekick is portrayed as nefarious from the get-go, as it began before Dick’s parents even died, with Bruce suspiciously saying in issue #1, “I’ve had my eye on him for awhile.” In issue #3 he cites that Dick is “Top of his CLASS in just about every SCHOOL his roving circus life TOOK him to. Made BLACK BELT a few weeks before he turned NINE,” in talking about how he carefully chose Dick to be his sidekick. It’s not great that Bruce knows all that about Dick. In issue #4 he claims, “I’d have waited YEARS before RECRUITING him. At least until he was old enough to SHAVE. I’d have waited YEARS. But some soulless SLOB with a GUN changed the whole EQUATION.” This attributes the change in Bruce’s plan to a human action. But when Bruce sees Dick see his parents die in issue #1, he thinks, “The boy has entered MY world. And he’ll never leave it. There’s no way out of it.” And in issue #4 Alfred gets upset that Bruce is putting Dick through horrible conditions that Bruce chose to put himself through as part of his training and tells him, “You chose this life,” which Bruce argues against, “And it has chosen him.” This frames Dick’s journey as something fated, and therefore makes the specific actions that Bruce takes in making Dick like him not Bruce’s fault. I would say that Dick becoming Bruce’s sidekick is in a sense fated, considering that this is one story published decades after these characters were established as superhero and sidekick. Bruce also thinks in issue #4 that Dick being orphaned happened “On my WATCH. I was THERE. Grayson’s my RESPONSIBILITY.”

When Bruce got to Dick in issue #1 as Batman he addressed him as “soldier” and told him, “You’ve just been drafted. Into a war.” The idea is that after seeing your parents killed in front of you, there’s no path available other than to become Batman. This sentiment isn’t unique to this story, for example the “Shaman” storyline in Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight (1989) I also read this past week had the idea in it that Bruce was “marked” by his childhood traumatic experience. But what All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder is doing with this idea is explicitly portrayed it as false and superheroing as a crutch to avoid dealing with your feelings. This is further emphasized by the manic way Bruce’s outings as Batman are written, the extreme joy he gets from inflicting violence. Bruce has a brief moment of realization in issue #2 that he’s torturing a poor traumatized child when he hits Dick for questioning what’s going on and expressing distress, but he manages to convince himself that, “It’s the only WAY. If I don’t keep the PRESSURE up, he’ll find time to GRIEVE. I can’t let him GRIEVE. GRIEF is the enemy. […] GRIEF turns into ACCEPTANCE. FORGIVENESS. GRIEF forgives what can NEVER be forgiven.” In issue #8 Bruce has another brief bout of realization: “From out of NOWHERE I start thinking about the KID. About whether I’ve SAVED his life- or WRECKED it. I’ve never been all that good with people. But I can’t THINK about that right now.” This is because he’s too busy dealing with another superhero thing.

In issue #2 Bruce says, “The world I’m gonna wake you up to will be no better than the world you already know- but it’ll make a lot more sense than that one did- Once I’ve put you through holy hell, it will.” He says, “Holy hell. Or the next best thing.” Bruce seems to me to want Dick’s company because he’s lonely and to desperately need the validation of Dick becoming like him and feeling similarly. Though there are moments where they’re aligned, they are also notably disconnected at others. For example, during a police chase in issue #2 Bruce manically laughs and tells Dick that he’ll enjoy this, while Dick thinks about how much he hates the experience and Bruce.

Bruce hits Dick again in issue #9, when Dick nearly accidentally kills Hal Jordan during a fight Bruce arranged, once to intervene in the fight and once again out of anger towards Dick. Significant context is that Bruce is absurdly, extremely cruel to Dick throughout this entire book, including in this situation, specifically here he threatens to break the kid’s neck if he pukes in horror. But later Bruce thinks, “I blamed it on HIM. I was WRONG. It was ON MY WATCH. He was IN MY CHARGE. […] I RUSHED things. I DRAGGED him into MY world. I was RECKLESS. I RUSHED it. I BLEW it. I had YEARS- YEARS to learn my path. […] I had YEARS- to GRIEVE.” He takes Dick to his parents’ graves and they hug, the first bit of genuine comfort in their relationship, and Bruce thinks, “We mourn lives lost. Including our own.” What’s significant here is that Bruce is finally recognizing that has he been grieving all this time, he just hasn’t been acknowledging in, that Dick needs something different than he does at this earlier point in his life, and that what happened to them both is genuinely tragic. I think it would have been stronger if the book had ended there, on that dramatic note, and left open the question of what Bruce and Dick’s partnership would look like going forward, if it even would. Instead issue #10 depicts Batman and Robin’s partnership casually in one scene while also beginning new plot threads that’ll never be resolved, though it did portray that Bruce is still thinking about and is still disturbed by Dick accidentally almost killing Hal Jordan.

On Dick’s end, he has a realization in issue #1, after Bruce gets annoyed with him and nearly hits him again: “He goes all SAD. CONTAINED. BOTTLED UP. It’s like he’s the only PERSON in the whole world. I have to PINCH myself to make sure I still exist. […] I’m in another WORLD. HIS world. He’s that LONELY. He’s all alone.” In issue #4, after Dick’s parents’ blood still being on his clothes reminds Bruce too strongly of his own parents’ blood being on him, Dick notices, “His VOICE is a CROAK. Like he’s about to CRY or something. Then he does his best to make his voice go COLD again.” He is the only one able to view Bruce in this way, even Alfred seems to view Bruce flatly, though that’s incredible understandable given the way Bruce acts. Also notable to me was that in issue #9 there’s a point where Bruce is genuinely very concerned about what Dick thinks of him, “His EYES almost bore the SKIN off my face- but he doesn’t ask any QUESTIONS. Me, I pray for a SECOND CHANCE. A fresh start.” I think the extremes in this book are easy to poke fun at; but they serve to make a dramatic point, to make definitive that Bruce is unhealthy and that his relationship with Dick is abusive, but I found the relationship in its full context with the extreme abuse and complicated feelings interesting.

The Bruce Wayne aspect of the character, and Dick Grayson as his civilian ward, is almost entirely absent from the book. Dick only learns that Batman is Bruce Wayne incidentally in issue #9, having been stuck in the Batcave for much of the book. I think the deprioritization of the Bruce Wayne identity is an intentional choice, but the ultimate lack of portrayal of what Dick’s civilian life looks like after all this leaves a hole in this criticism of Batman. I also don’t think that the Alfred question, of if Bruce being Batman is bad then how does that reflect on Alfred having raised Bruce and supported that behavior as an adult, was handled well. Alfred expresses concern about if Bruce has gone mad, though he clearly did a long time ago, and insists on his right to provide Dick with the essentials he needs to survive while he’s stuck in the Batcave, but notably he only does just that. He doesn’t actually rescue the child his boss has kidnapped by taking his out of the Batcave. This isn’t inherently bad for the story, but not as it’s presented here as an aside where Alfred’s perspective is briefly addressed; we would need to spend more time with Alfred to show how he’s maintaining this business-as-usual attitude where he’s so much like the normal DC universe Alfred while Bruce is so significantly different.

Superman (2023) #11

This issue was published in February 2023. It was written by Joshua Williamson and drawn by David Baldeón. Bruno Redondo is the primary artist of this book, and I would usually prefer his art style over Baldeón’s, but Baldeón’s is more expressive and I think that was well-suited for this issue, which principally followed teenager Lena Luthor, who is also the character I’m reading this book for.

Back in issue #9 we saw Lena note that she could ask the AI at Supercorp any question. Issue #10 opened with scene of the supporting characters discussing that Superman had gone missing, before spending the rest of the issue with Superman, ending with him returning to Supercorp and immediately being confronted by Lena, who pleads with him to flee, right before he’s captured by the villains who have presumably already captured everyone else. The teaser referred to the next issue as “Lena Luthor vs. the Revenge Squad,” which I thought would mean the issue would pick up from there with Lena being the only one not captured. Instead, issue #11 flashed back to Lena asking a question to the AI, then followed her learning that Superman had been captured and starting to help in the efforts to find him, the group being interrupted by the Revenge Squad, Lena escaping from them, running into Superman, and then continues the second half of the issue from there.

The question Lena asked the AI is “Who is Lena Luthor?” The information given is largely affirming what we already know or confirming what was suspected because it was true about the original version of this character from the 90s and early 2000s. Notably that “Lex Luthor gave his daughter to Brainiac 13 in exchange for advanced technology from the future. Lena was raised in the future and was forced to be an avatar for Brainiac 13 in the present day.” Lena reacts to the phrasing that Lex “gave” her away, but doesn’t seem surprised by it; she actually expresses disappointment that her father’s files didn’t have more on her. Significant to me was that the phrasing of “Lena was rescued by Superman and returned to Lex Luthor” and that “Lex purged Lena of all connections to Brainiac” before she was “sent to live on a private island with her grandmother” doesn’t include any references to Lena’s age. In the original storyline she was a 1-year-old baby when Lex traded her, she reappeared working for Brainiac 13 as a young woman, and then was reverted back to a 1-year-old after Brainiac 13’s defeat. Lex was raising baby Lena, but she was dropped from continuity shortly after, so we never saw that version of her interact with her father (when not Brainiaced) instead of just being talked at.

Lena’s grandmother interrupts Lena’s disappointment over her father’s file on her and says, “The reality is… you scare Lex. And not just because you represent his greatest sin… But because you are so much smarter than my son.” When it’s revealed that Lena’s grandmother is one of the villains of the Revenge Squad, the shadowed figure in one of Lex’s suits from the end of issue #10, she explains her actions as, “I’m taking back what is mine, Lena.” And she complains about how Lex “sent me to some island to babysit his little brat. The least he could have done was kill me.” None of this is interesting to me, and it doesn’t stand up well in comparison to the writing of the dialogue in the stories Lena was previously a part of. Also, later Lena pleads with a corrupted Superman to not kill her father, demonstrating that she does still care for him. Since she presumably won’t have a relationship with her grandmother after this issue, maybe Lena’s relationship with her father will be more interesting going forward. Overall I was impressed with how she conducted herself in this issue.

Fawcett Comics:

the Captain Marvel stories in Whiz Comics (1940) #86 and Captain Marvel Adventures (1941) #73 and The Marvel Family (1945) #12

In this batch of 8 stories I read the Captain Marvel appearances published in June 1947, according to the issue cover dates. The stories ranged from 7 to 11 pages.

The story “Captain Marvel and the Kingdom of Ulysses” (creators unknown) in The Marvel Family #12 had Captain Marvel go back in time to help Ulysses at the end of his famous journey in The Odyssey, when he’s trying to reclaim his home. The way this happens is that Billy wasn’t feeling well at Station Whiz, so he went to lie down, and then the Wizard Shazam summoned Billy, which from his perspective made it look like everything around him was dissolving into clouds, so he panicked and said Shazam. Then Captain Marvel appeared at Mount Olympus. At the end of the story Captain Marvel returns to Mount Olympus and transforms back into Billy. The Wizard Shazam says he’s sending Billy back to his time, Billy seems to dissolve, and then he’s back on the couch at Station Whiz. This reminded me of the way Billy and the Wizard Shazam’s communication was portrayed in Jerry Ordway’s era writing the character, beginning with the origin story The Power of Shazam! (1994), where Billy could see visions of the Wizard or mentally travel to the Rock of Eternity, or similarly be magically physically transported there. When we’ve previously seen the Wizard Shazam contact Billy in Fawcett’s comics, it’s been in roundabout ways; for example, in “Captain Marvel Battles the Seven Deadly Enemies of Man” in Captain Marvel Adventures #41 Billy opens a letter from the Wizard that he was instructed to open 4 years after he became Captain Marvel, which tells him to visit the Wizard in his underground cavern to learn about a new enemy he has to fight. Also, in the final panel of this story, when Billy was giving his concluding radio broadcast about the adventure, he said, “Captain Marvel enjoyed the adventure! But, frankly, I’m just as happy to have been able to come back to the present and bring you the story on my daily news broadcast,” which I thought was charming.

The story “Captain Marvel Meets Billy Batson” (written by Otto Binder; penciled by C.C. Beck; inked by Pete Constanza) in Captain Marvel Adventures #73 has Zeus’ aim with the lighting bolt be off for a day, meaning that other people mistakenly get hit with it after Billy says Shazam, allowing Billy and Captain Marvel to meet physically face-to-face. This isn’t the real drawn of the story, however, since their interactions are brief. And it isn’t as though this is the first time they’ve been able to talk to each other since, though they don’t did it often, they’ve been portrayed as able to appear to each other as astral projections since the story “Mystery of Marvel College” in Whiz Comics #11. Though I did like how seriously they took the abnormal situation of Billy Batson and Captain Marvel existing in the same space, with Captain Marvel saying, “I better change back, Billy! Both of us can’t-er- go around together! So- Shazam!” The real draw of this story is that since him transforming into Captain Marvel is suddenly unreliable, Billy and a group of boys from the Captain Marvel Fan Club largely had to stop the bad guys by themselves. I liked seeing Billy have to physically fight. I was also intrigued by that Billy originally gets involved in the situation when he overhears a police officer dismiss the Captain Marvel Fan Club boys’ report as only their imagination (itself a surprising portrayal of a police officer for a Fawcett comic), but when he doesn’t initially find evidence of the criminals he also suggests it was only their imagination.

The story “Captain Marvel Gets a Hobby” (written by Otto Binder; penciled by C.C. Beck; inked by Pete Costanza) in Captain Marvel Adventures #73 shows Captain Marvel getting into rock collecting. He had been approached by a reporter wanting to do an article on his personal life, who asked him what his hobby was, raising to Captain Marvel’s attention that he didn’t have any. Later he thinks, “Billy has hobbies, such as stamp collecting and photography. Why shouldn’t I have a hobby? Let me think… Should I collect bird’s eggs? Raise white mice? Get autographs? Or what?” Then Captain Marvel has to rescue a man that got trapped in a rockslide while looking for rare mineral specimens. The man tells him about how great rock collecting is, and shows Captain Marvel his collection at his home. Captain Marvel says, “Say, this looks interesting! I’m sold! I’m going to collect minerals too!” And the man gifts Captain Marvel a rare mineral to start off his collection. Later Captain Marvel says, “Yes sir, this is fun! I’m sure glad Robert Smiths started me off on this new hobby!” And, “My hobby is instructive, as well as being fun! I’m learning all about the different rocks and minerals that exist on earth!” He’s drawn sorting and labeling rocks on his desk in his and Billy’s shared office. At the end of the story Billy says, “Of course he’s got our office so cluttered up with stones now, I can hardly move around! But I don’t mind! We all know what fun a hobby is!”

Ahoy Comics:

Dragonfly & Dragonfly-Man (2019) #0-5

These issues were published across May 2019 to March 2020, according to the League of Comic Geeks site. All were written by Tom Peyer. Issue #0, which was a Free Comic Book Day special, was drawn by Russ Braun. And the rest was drawn by Peter Krause (who I know from him having penciled most of The Power of Shazam! (1995)), except that Juan Castro and Leonard Kirk finished some of the art of issue #5. This book was a prequel to The Wrong Earth (2018), in which Dragonfly and Dragonfly-Man accidentally get sent to each other’s very different universes. In this book we’re just seeing parallel stories taking place separately on each Earth. Considering that there was definitively higher emotional stakes in one of the stories, it’s impressive that it wasn’t a frustration in the reading process when the book left that world for the other, though of course the Earth-Alpha sections worked really well to emphasize what was going on in the Earth-Omega parts.

That said, I don’t think I’ve ever imprinted as hard as quickly on a character as I have Earth-Omega Stinger. I am legitimately emotionally-gripped by him- I thought he was written so well. I’m deeply compelled by his overall mental state and the disconnect between Dragonfly and Stinger’s perspectives, with Dragonfly not realizing how much Stinger is hurt by what he says. I also thought this dynamic fit in well with the book’s sharper look on superhero comic tropes, and that this aspect of it could have but didn’t come across cheaply. In issue #1 when Dragonfly dramatically begins thoughts but doesn’t finish them while they examine a crime scene, Stinger thinks, “Just stop talking like I’m not even here. Why bother consulting with me?” When Dragonfly sets off to their next location without telling Stinger where they’re headed- another tactic for creating suspense for the reader- Stinger thinks, “Don’t tell me, I’m just the sidekick.”

I don’t not believe Chip when he said he thought Richard was evil, but it’s notable that and I was also impressed with how directly he spoke to Richard by the end of the book. While he had issues with Richard before and even openly argued with him, the experience of having to fight brainwashed-Dragonfly gave the negative feelings Chip already had a much stronger form and made him think that this was someone he needed to get away from. But it’s clear to both of them that Chip isn’t in immediate physical danger with Richard, he’s able to insult Richard and tell him to his face that he can’t trust him and Chip doesn’t feel the need to hide that he’s moving out.

I think ideally Richard would have processed his feelings about their relationship blowing up in some other way than (or in addition to) torturing Devil Man to death, and would have started to work towards being able to interact with Chip in a less aggressive and demeaning way. I’m aware that by the time of The Wrong Earth (2018) Earth-Omega Chip has committed suicide. My current assumptions for his life are that he did eventually choose to return to Richard, that their relationship remained unhealthy, and that Chip ultimately committed suicide while living with him rather than run away again. But it’s possible that his mental health continued to spiral wherever he ended up after leaving Richard. I really want to learn more about how these two met and the very beginning of their relationship and I hope future comics explain that.

Earth-Alpha Stinger’s life is absurdly positive. The whole freaking world loves him. Dragonflyman never has anything negative to say to him. He has a fan club. He gets awarded free ice cream for life in this story. I remember Dragonfly becoming very attached very quickly to Earth-Alpha Stinger and wanting to maintain his idyllic life. I can’t imagine that there’s really anything naturally in Earth-Alpha that would disrupt it. In this book Earth-Alpha Stinger gets defeated by henchmen, but isn’t really injured in a lasting way from this (I assume they, like Eve, were holding back with him because he’s a kid), and later is purposefully hit by a car, but is fine after rolling with the movement like Dragonflyman taught him. I remember Dragonfly really wanting to protect Stinger from even this level of cartoon violence.

I’m wondering if the idyllic-ness of this world will ultimately create a disconnect between Dragonfly and Earth-Alpha Stinger, who gets the great life that Earth-Omega Stinger didn’t even get a fraction of and has a really different personality as a result. I’m sure it’s really significant for Dragonfly to get essentially a second chance with Stinger, but I imagine seeing this Stinger have such a positive life would also be emotionally difficult because he would remember how his original Stinger had much more difficult circumstances. And I imagine that it would ultimately be difficult for him to truly understand someone who is so unrealistically perfect, though maybe understanding Stinger isn’t the most important thing to him.

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sebeth · 6 months

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DC Special Series #21: A Super-Star Holiday Special

Warning, Spoilers Ahead…

We are in the “12 Days of Christmas” and the DC Comics Ap has released a “A Very DC Holiday Collection” Seventeen issues are Holiday Specials, and the rest are issues from various DC series.

Let’s go!

We begin with the 1979 DC Special Series #21, a Super-Star Holiday Special. The cover features Cain & Abel on a camel, Jonah Hex, Sgt. Rock, and Batman on the ground. Superboy, Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Phantom Girl, and a witch (from the Witching Hour) are in the sky.

The issue opens with “The Fawn and the Star”, a Jonah Hex story by Michael Fleisher, Dick Ayers, Romeo Taghal, etc. The opening caption states “He was a hero to some, a villain to others…and wherever he rode, people spoke his name in whispers. He had no friends, this Jonah Hex, but he did have two companions: one was death itself…the other, the acrid smell of gunsmoke.

Jonah Hex was a staple of DC’s 1970s/1980s comics. He’s a gunslinger with a scarred face. He traveled to the future in the 1980s and he’s had several short series since the 1980s. He also had a movie and made an appearance in the Justice League Unlimited cartoon.

It is December 24th and Jonah Hex is tracking Barlow Tull, who couldn’t have gotten far with that “30-03 shell ah lodged in his neck day before last”!

Jonah comes across a father and daughter. The daughter is preventing her father from shooting a fawn for their Christmas dinner. The daughter doesn’t want the father to shoot the deer as it is a baby. The father argues game is scarce and potential food can’t be ignored. I’m not a hunter by any means but in this time period, it’s a logical argument – you can’t exactly jump into a car, drive five minutes, and buy food.

Jonah stops and helps the daughter patch up the deer. Jonah recognizes the father and warns “Simon Legree” to leave the deer be. I am not a Jonah Hex expert, so I have no idea if this “Simon Legree” is from a previous story. Jonah offers to hunt a replacement meal for the deer. I had no idea Jonah was so soft, maybe it’s the Christmas spirit.

Jonah remembers a time his ten-year old self saved an injured raccoon only for his drunken father to kill it and make a stew with the meat. Jonah isn’t having any luck finding a replacement meal, but he does stumble across Barlow and the other Tull brother. Cue an old-fashioned Western gunfight that ends when Jonah throws lit dynamite at the Tull brothers.

Jonah returns to Legree household with provisions for the Christmas meal. Simon protests that it is only hardtack and beef jerky. Jonah counters that he never promised delicacies. Simon agrees and allows his daughter to keep the fawn. Jonah leaves to collect the bounty on the Tull brothers.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5. Nothing special but it did reveal a hidden aspect of Jonah’s character.

The second story is “Wanted: Santa Clause – Dead or Alive” by Denny O’Neil, Frank Miller, Steve Mitchell, etc. It is a Batman story that takes place on Christmas Eve.

Batman crashes Matty Lasko’s party. Batman wants to know the reason Lasko arranged for a boat to be waiting in the Gotham Harbor. After some “persuasion” by Batman, Lasko informs him it was a favor for Boomer Katz. A disguised Batman slinks around Crime Alley seeking the whereabouts of Katz. He discovers Katz has a job as a Santa at Lee’s. Bats also gives a resident of Crime Alley a thousand dollars.

Batman determines the only reason a “heist artist” would get a job in a department store is to rob it. Bruce finds it a shame as Boomer had started working with the Salvation Army last year and he thought Boomer had finally gone straight.

We then see Boomer performing as Santa and the manager of the store complimenting Boomer as the “best Santa we’ve ever had”. Boomer is touched by the thanks.

Outside the store, Boomer tells “Fats” that he didn’t disable the store’s alarm: “Everybody was so nice to me an’ the kids made me feel so good an’ all…I just can’t go back to bein’ what I was!”

Fats and his henchmen don’t accept Boomer’s argument. They hold Boomer hostage to force their way into the back office. Fat’s henchmen shoot Boomer for his betrayal.

Batman is approaching the store: “Were those shots I heard? It’s hard to be sure with the wind howling! I’ve got to assume they were!” Batman bursts into the store and mops the floor with the henchmen. The manager tells Batman that Fats Morgan escaped with Boomer and that “They’re trying to murder him!” Batman saves Boomer.

Rating: 5 out of 5. Soley because I loved seeing “my” Batman again and not the insufferable jerk that has appeared in the last twenty years of comics.

I can’t find a title for the third story but it is by Bob Rozakis, Romeo Tanghal, Dan Ardkins, etc. It stars Cain & Abel, Destiny (of the Endless), and the Witches from the Witching Hour. All these characters were the narrators of different comics in the 1970s/1980s – the House of Mystery, the House of Secrets, the Witching Hour, etc. These comics would feature stories with a magical/horror element. This version of Destiny existed before the Gaiman-Sandman comic and the creation of the Endless.

The odd grouping of characters is having a Christmas party in the House of Mystery – they even have a tree and stockings! They are waiting for the last guest to arrive and decide to tell stories to pass the time. The competitive nature of the various storytellers results in a brawl breaking out that ends when the Phantom Stranger and Madame Xanadu arrive. The Phantom Strangers shames the group on their behavior and then disappears. Madame Xanadu remains behind.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5. The stories were one page each so not much meat on the bones. The shenanigans of the storytellers were fun.

The fourth story is Sgt. Rock of Easy Company in “The Longest Night” by Robert Kanigher, Dick Ayers, Romeo Tanghal, etc.

Sgt. Rock and the Easy Company were soldiers during World War II. The were the stars of various war comics, along with the Losers, the Unknown Soldier, etc.

The story is set during World War II, no definite year given, outside of Santa Maria. They encounter a group on a journey to pray at the shrine of Santa Maria. Sgt. Rock warns the group it is not a good idea as battle is going to break out the next day. The group responds with “can’t stop, won’t stop”. Sgt. Rock decides his group needs to double-time it to Santa Maria – they need to end the battle before the group of civilians arrive. Sgt. Rock achieves his goal but blows up the shrine of Santa Maria. Oops. The nun leading the group of civilians announces: “Faith needs no shrine! Our hearts are shrines and our love can light up the world! If that is the case, why didn’t you listen to Sgt. Rock when he told you to avoid Santa Maria?

Rating: 3.5 out of 5. It was good, the premise a bit silly.

The fifth story is “Star Light, Star Bright…Farthest Star I See Tonight!” by Paul Levitz, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Dick Giordano, etc. It takes place it 2979 and features Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Superboy flies toward the under-construction Legion headquarters and notes it is “coming together quickly again”. Clark greets Mon-El, who has “another three hours of guard duty” and Phantom Girl who kisses him under the mistletoe. The duo meets with Saturn Girl who displays how the other Legionnaires are celebrating Christmas.

Karate Kid, Princess Projectra, and Sun Boy are having a tea ceremony in Japan.

Chameleon Boy is on space patrol since Christmas isn’t a holiday on Durla

Colossal Boy celebrates Chanukah as he is Jewish

Superboy decides to look for the star that “blazed over Bethlehem”. Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, Phantom Girl, and Wildfire accompany Superboy. The group doesn’t find the star but they do find a planet and help the inhabitants in various ways.

Rating: 4 out 5. Fun, short story. Love the Legion.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5. Not a dud in the bunch, all stories were fun and followed the “star” theme that was established on the first page. It was also fun to remember a time when DC was more than 30 bat-titles, a few Superman titles, a Wonder Woman, a Justice League, and maybe a few other titles. The DC Universe used to be varied and vast. I miss that time.

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red-riding-wood · 2 years

Text

Heroes - Chapter 8

Chpt. 1 , Masterlist , Chpt. 9

Pairing: Sgt. Elias Grodin x Female OC (Alexis Ryder)

Fandoms: Platoon (1986), Cherry (2021)

WARNINGS: I'm just going to put down a blanket for the entire book/all chapters: graphic depictions of violence and gore, torture, explicit sexual content, attempted sexual assault, language, marijuana use

The adrenaline was still tapering from my bloodstream when the supply chopper landed and I was tasked with handing out empty letters to the soldiers – those who had survived, anyway.

Our platoon had launched our ambush on the Taliban village this morning, seizing it and its hostages. Most were Afghan, though a couple Americans had been flown back on one of the medevac choppers.

We were instructed to stay here for a few days to a week, to maintain our presence and convert the village into a U.S. camp, which meant that we needed more ammunition, medicine, and rations. Someone in authority had provided paper and envelopes for us to write home to our families in case we wouldn’t be able to call back at base anytime soon.

New soldiers would arrive in a couple of days. Slowly, and yet all too quickly, the faces of my platoon were becoming strangers; fresh faces filled the roles of the dead as if replacing the rusted cogs in a machine. It was both a relief and a tragedy when I locked gazes with someone familiar, knowing that they were still here, and knowing that they might not be the next day.

Barnes and O’Neill’s squads had been clearing out the rest of the camp for any Afghans that had hidden; we’d had to pull a few out from under the floorboards of one of the huts, and I’d watched Barnes throw a frag into a hole that still had a screaming child in it. Lerner had tagged along with us, to translate, and I could tell from the grim, about-to-hurl look on his face when he was dismissed that he hadn’t yet witnessed the complete horrors and moral ambiguity of the Two Bravo sergeant’s commands.

When I handed him his letter, I told him that if he wanted to keep his job, that he shouldn’t write about anything he’d witnessed today.

Though he hadn’t been on clearing-duty, psychologically-speaking, Cherry was probably in the worst shape. The whites of his eyes were glazed red, still watery with tears – they’d been like that since the firefight. Crawford had been one of the unlucky casualties this morning, and the friend he’d made in his squad couldn’t seem to shake his death. Taylor and I had been the ones to drag him off of Crawford’s corpse, his entire body shaking as he tried desperately to resuscitate him.

“I’m supposed to hand out letters,” I told him as I approached. He was sitting cross-legged on the ground, staring blankly at the dirt. Dark, glossy eyes that had shone so brightly with mirth in the Underworld were now as hollow as the sky. Gone was the man who’d slung his arm over my shoulder and danced to CCR and laughed at the stories of his fellow soldiers; I almost felt as if I didn’t recognize him, as if he were one of the replacements, or perhaps a ghost of the Cherry who had really died in our last battle and was now haunting the village with his blank stare and the sullen slouch of his shoulders.

Cherry didn’t answer me, his gaze still fixed somewhere on the dirt, but he swallowed, which was enough of a sign that he’d heard me, at least, so I handed him a letter.

“No,” he spoke, swallowing again against the broken fragments of his voice and shoving the envelope away.

“You don’t want to write to Emily?” I asked. She was one of the things that Cherry hadn’t been able to stop talking about during basic, and there had been more than one occasion when I’d given up my phone time so that he could spend more time talking to her, since I didn’t have anyone to call, myself, and since he’d gotten in trouble the first time he hadn’t hung up the phone when he should’ve. He was crazy about this “Emily”, the girl he had waiting for him at home.

Cherry shook his head, gaze flitting down to his boots. “I’ll call her back at base,” he said. But he spoke it as if it were an afterthought, each syllable as hollow as his eyes. I knew that his thoughts were elsewhere.

I knelt down next to him, hugging the stack of envelopes to my lap. “You know, there was nothing you could have done to save him, Cherry,” I spoke hesitantly, but as soothing as I could to my friend.

Finally, his gaze met mine, though it drilled a hole through my heart. He blinked, some of the moisture of his reddened eyes collecting into a tear that suspended itself in limbo beneath an eyelash. For several moments, we sat like this, as he held my gaze, and then he looked back to the earth and said absently, “I know.”

He didn’t believe me, and he was telling me this only because he didn’t want to be convinced he was wrong. He would likely think for the rest of his days if things would have been different if he’d gotten to Crawford a little sooner, if he’d cinched his bandages tighter or if he’d administered more morphine.

I didn’t know what to say – what could I have said? – and carried on to the next soldier with a certain heaviness to each step that I hadn’t possessed before.

Taylor was tying his combat knife to the barrel of his rifle with a piece of twine from one of the huts, wrapping the fabric several times around the now-bayonetted weapon. I wondered if it was because he’d watched Crawford die from a similar invention.

“Mail’s in,” I said, and handed him one of the envelopes. “Do you want extra pages, for your manuscript?”

Taylor’s hands stilled on his rifle, and his eyes darted to the envelope, but he didn’t reach for it. “Nah, it’s okay,” he said, and went back to fastening the bayonet. “I don’t know who would wanna write about this place.”

I frowned, and settled the envelope back on the stack. Ever since he’d arrived at basic, Taylor had been writing letters to his grandmother, with the hopes of someday turning the pages into a novel that documented his experiences in the war. He’d been pretty consistent with it, always writing away in his spare time. For him to pass up the opportunity was unusual. Though I understood not wanting to write any more about Afghanistan, I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t want to give his grandmother the peace of mind that he’d made it another week.

“You’re not even gonna write to your grandma?” I asked, and took a seat beside him on the log pile underneath one of the poplars that he’d made a small haven.

Taylor shrugged. “Don’t know who would wanna read about this place, either.”

My heart sank a little bit. I was no literary genius, but if I had someone to write to, I’d be writing every day, even if it was just about how much I missed them.

But he seemed disinterested enough that I didn’t argue with him, and I could feel stares on me; I was meant to be carrying out my mail-duty a lot swifter than I was.

“That reminds me,” I said, and dug into the duffel that contained letters and "care packages" for the soldiers. “Something came in for you.”

I handed him the small parcel, and his hands stilled on his rifle again. He took it in his hands and went to set it to the side, but I raised my brows at him, and he gave me a confused look.

“Are you gonna open it?” I urged. I didn’t want him sitting here all day stewing in whatever thoughts were plaguing him, mindlessly wrapping that twine around the barrel of his gun over and over and over.

He gave me a bit of an uncertain look, and tore at the outer plastic of the package, revealing a vintage copy of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

“You can read it,” he said, and handed it back to me. “I got in shit for humpin’ too much stuff on my first day. Had to send back a bunch of my grandma’s books.”

I took the book in my hands, which was only maybe a half-inch in width, and said, “Taylor, this barely weighs anything.”

Taylor bit his lip, and fumbled with the knot of the twine, before deciding to loop the ends beneath the material a few more times. “I don’t really feel like reading,” he said, and I nodded, though my actions were separate from my thoughts. It seemed that it wasn’t just Cherry who’d taken a serious hit to his morale today. And now that I looked out over the village, I noticed that many of the soldiers were hanging their heads and busying themselves absently with cleaning their rifles or opening mail.

“You should, though,” he said, still fixated on his little project. “It’s a classic.”

“Alright,” I said, reluctantly. “Tell you what, I’ll read this, if you write something. Doesn’t have to have anything to do with this place. Doesn’t even need to be addressed to anyone. Just… something.”

Taylor finally set his rifle aside and met my gaze for more than a few moments. “I appreciate it, Ryder, but I don’t need the therapy.”

“It’s not therapy. It’s accountability.”

“Yeah, right.”

A light sigh escaped my diaphragm, and I looked across the clearing of the village as King shouted some string of obscenities at me, of which I was only able to decipher half of.

“I think that means I have to go,” I said. “Look… just… think about it, alright?” I set a few of the envelopes down on the log beside me before I took my leave.

King was as chipper as ever, impervious to this morning’s grueling battle. “You fuck the sergeant yet?” he asked me as I handed him his mail – an envelope, which contained a letter and some nude photographs of a lover that he had no issue with ogling in front of me.

I nearly choked on my own spit, and I glanced around, but thankfully, I didn’t think that anyone had heard.

“It’s been a day,” I said to him.

“That don’t sound like a ‘no’.”

“Is fucking all you ever talk about?”

“I’ll have you know I’m a man of variety, little lady. I also don’t mind a lil’ bit o’ rimmin’ action, and I’ll tell ya what, the things a woman can do with her feet – “

“Please stop talking.”

King flashed me a toothy grin, and I felt my mood lighten, if only slightly. “I really do look forward to our talks, King,” I said, as I turned to start towards one of the other men, my steps not feeling quite as heavy as they had a minute prior.

“So that’s a ‘yes’ on you fuckin’ Elias, then?”

I stilled, and turned my head, and though I should have felt more anxious than anything, I was focused more on the blush that rose to my cheeks. I continued on my way, sucking a breath in through my nose and channeling it from my pursed lips. From behind me, the last I heard of King was him shout,

“Hey, Manny! You owe me ten bucks, man!”

After finally making my way through the camp, Wolfe was next to last; he sat on one of the ammo crates near the LZ, working on packing mags. He accepted one of the envelopes with a gentle smile and asked if he could have another.

I took a glance at the stack in my hands, which had seemed to get no smaller, and then another out at the soldiers that I had already delivered to.

“Yeah, there’s plenty to go around,” I said, and sifted off a few from the stack. “Who are you writing to?”

Normally, I wouldn’t have been caught dead talking with the lieutenant of the platoon, but last night had broken a barrier I’d spent so long forging; a piece of my cowardice had chipped away, and a part of my soul felt just a little more free – free, like Elias, who wore his heart on his sleeve; free, like a deer, bounding through a meadow; free like that eagle, soaring over the jagged peaks and the love and the hate. Perhaps the freedom I had found was courage.

Surprise registered on Wolfe’s face, but he replied affably, “My parents, and a girlfriend back home.”

I nodded, the faintest of bittersweet smiles crossing my lips. I thought of him returning to his family when this was all over and hugging and smiling, laughing over a dinner table. And though it tugged cruelly at my heart, I could not help but feel the slightest bit of contentment that at least one soldier would be making use of these letters.

I didn’t get to dwell on this thought for long, however; Elias, who’d been nowhere to be seen during the supply drop, had appeared, having walked from the huts. He was standing with Lerner, who was chatting his ear off about something, but his attention wasn’t on the translator; it was on Wolfe and I.

I noticed the way his eyes seemed to trace over the letters in our hands, the way the mirth disappeared from those pretty blues and his shoulders sunk a bit, like Cherry’s had. He turned to Lerner to utter something briefly, and then he was off, back in the direction of the huts.

“Ryder?” Wolfe’s voice snapped my attention back to the lieutenant, but I was no longer present; I turned back to him with a furrowed brow and a distant stare.

“Here,” I said, sifting one of the letters off and leaving the rest of the stack beside him on the chopper gate, alongside the emptied duffel that had contained the packages from home. “I only have one more delivery to make.”

Wolfe didn’t protest when I left, hurrying through the clearing, past Lerner, through the door of one of the wooden huts, letter in my hand.

The floorboards creaked beneath my boots as I entered the ingress that Elias had disappeared through, and immediately, I recalled the women and children that had been herded out like lame sheep. But I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind, focusing instead on finding my blue-eyed soldier in the now-barren building.

Subtle, but still audible in the silence of the hut, was the groaning of fabric stretching, and as I rounded the corner, I caught sight of the swinging hammock from the Underworld. Elias’ weight had sunken into it, and he merely flopped his head to the side so blue eyes could witness my approach.

“Got mail for me, sweetheart?” he asked.

“You tell me,” I said, and handed him the envelope. “Are you gonna write?”

Elias’ eyes wandered from me, to the envelope, to the dusty floor, and he said, “Haven’t spoken to my family in over a decade. They’d be gettin’ a letter from a ghost.”

Elias had never spoken of anyone back home – I’d assumed he had no one, but from the pain in his poorly-veiled gaze, I could tell that a part of him, however buried, did want to write to someone.

“Why don’t you come up here and join me, sweetheart?” he said, his eyes now glittering with their usual playfulness. He sat up in his hammock, motioning for me to take a seat on his lap.

I smiled faintly as a heat suffused my cheeks, and I found myself tempted by the way his eyes shamelessly raked over me and a few locks of wild hair flopped over his headband at the motion.

“Fine,” I said around a broadening smile, and I clambered up onto the fabric, the ropes groaning again at the stretch of the added weight. Elias made room for me between his legs, forming a little crook by pulling his left knee up to support my back and letting the other lay flat so that I could swing my calves over it. I settled in, a contented sigh nearly escaping me from the way his body heat percolated through his fatigues. I could’ve been in the desert, and I still would’ve ached to feel it seep through my pores like honey.

My world swayed beneath me, the lines of the wooden planks and the woven straw of the walls undulating like the waves of the sea. So I let my head rest against Elias’ chest, sinking into him, my hand loosely gripping his shirt for stability. He untied my hair, letting it tumble in loose waves over my shoulders, and hot lips brushed my cranium as he blessed me with a soft kiss.

“Tell me about your family,” I said, my other hand fumbling idly with the envelope in my lap.

A sigh escaped from Elias’ lungs, disturbing the strands of hair on my skull, and bringing my torso up and down with his own.

“Is that really what you wanna talk ‘bout right now?” he murmured into my ear, voice husky and sparking something in my gut. His hand slipped from where it had threaded into my hair and down to my spine, fingers tracing it through the fabric of my shirt and travelling lower and lower and lower. His groin, where it cradled the underside of my thigh, rocked slowly upwards, his khakis stiffening beneath me.

I breathed a little moan of yearning as I felt my heartbeat drop to my lower abdomen, and I bit my lip as I pushed back from his chest to stare up into blue-black eyes.

“Yes,” I told him, my voice light and almost scarce. Though I wanted nothing more than to repeat last night, I knew that this letter business would weigh on me until he gave me a better reason for not writing.

The line of his lip twitched, and something shifted in his eyes as he stared down at me – their tragedy pained me, tightened my chest – but I continued to stare up at him expectantly, my thumb running soothingly over the bare flesh between the buttons of his shirt.

“You’re a real piece o’ work, y’know that?” he said to me, and I chuffed out a laugh.

“Yeah, I know,” I said.

Another sigh rolled from his lungs, moving my body with it, and he said, “My old man was always sayin’ I didn’t work hard enough, didn’t dream big enough. Didn’t get the right grades, or the right girls. Nothin’ was ever good enough for him. I think he was bitter, think he was tryna project onto his sons. One of them took it. I didn’t.”

Elias paused his story to root through a small pouch of woven weeds and tossed a wild strawberry onto his tongue. I could smell the sweetness as he popped it in his mouth, and I looked curiously at the pouch. So that must have been what he’d been so busy doing. Picking wild berries.

“Always knew my mom didn’t agree with what he said, but she never stepped in. Just made our dinner every night and tucked us in and wished us good luck in school. She was real sweet, y’know. Can’t say I blame her for not sayin’ nothin’. My dad was a scary guy.

“My older brother, he came home one night, drunk as a skunk. He’d lost his apartment, lost his job. Even lost his girl. My parents were out and he was lookin’ for our dad and I was the only one ‘round, so he started yellin’ at me, blamin’ me for his failed marriage and his student loans and his empty bank account.”

He chewed at another strawberry, as if they were pills to numb the memories, before continuing,

“I don’t like takin’ peoples’ shit. Especially since my dad had been tellin’ me earlier that I should be more like him, just ‘cause he was a good boy and did as he was told. So when my brother started takin’ everythin’ out on me, I told him to go to Hell.”

Elias seemed to still then, his exhale lingering beneath me.

“That was the last thing I said to him before I walked out that door and never came back. Haven’t seen or spoken to him since,” he said, a remorseful waver in his tone.

I looked up at him again, my cheek grazing the rough fabric of his shirt, but his gaze was fixed somewhere past me, blue eyes glittering with sorrow.

“What did you do after that?” I asked.

“Got a job in the oil fields,” he said. “I was young, hadn’t finished school. Just needed somethin’ to keep the rent money comin’ in.”

I nodded in understanding, and asked, “Is that why you got involved with drugs?”

Elias chuckled, and shook his head. “That was my ex-wife. She was all into psychedelics – the hard kind, mainly LSD. Blew all my money on drugs and gurus and all that shit, pinned the evidence on me.”

I’d never thought about Elias having a girl back home, or being married. I supposed it made sense; he was in his early thirties. I admonished myself for the slight twisting of jealousy in my gut, though I was more concerned in this moment how Elias must have felt, betrayed by both his family and his lover.

“So that’s why you’re here,” I breathed against his chest, and he chuckled again, notes a low rumble in his diaphragm.

“Surprised King didn’t tell ya. That’s one of his favourite stories,” he said.

“That’s an awful story,” I whispered. “I didn’t know, I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have – “

“Shhh,” he said, stroking his thumb over my hair. “Not your fault, sweetheart.” A pause, and then the wry quirk of a smile. “I think King tells it better, though.”

A slight smile graced my lips, and I sank back into his chest, running my fingers this time over the chain of his dog tags.

“You got family, sweetheart?” he asked me, and cold seemed to seize my chest.

“I used to,” I murmured, half into the fabric of his shirt, half into the stale, dusty air. “They’re not around anymore.”

“That have anythin’ to do with that Bowie song you listen to so much?”

I’d nearly forgotten how intuitive he was, even without those piercing eyes eviscerating my soul.

“I sang it to my mother…” I began, words so quiet I wondered if he could even hear them, his hand stilling where it stroked my hair. I swallowed, and continued, “…when she was dying in her hospital bed. It was her favourite song.”

“It’s a beautiful song,” he said, hot breath soothing against the top of my head, and slowly, the warmth of his body began to seep past the cold that seized me, and I relaxed.

“Elias,” I said, tilting my head back up at him as his thumb resumed its languid motion over my skull. “Do you still love your brother?”

He looked down at me, sadness darting through those pretty blues once more, and he said, “Yeah, guess I do.”

“Why don’t you write to him? Or call him?”

“Alex, I’ve been through a lot o’ shit. Run headfirst into firefights, gone head to head with Barnes, went through tunnels with IEDs. But whenever I pick up that phone, I just… I can’t do it.”

I settled my head back against his chest. A moment of silence passed between us, and in that moment, I thought of my parents, of my mother��s lips parting gently to form the lyrics to her favourite song as her heart rate slowed, and my father, wrapping an arm around me and grinning at me in my youth.

“I think you should,” I told him. “The things I wouldn’t give to hear my mother’s voice again. See my dad’s smile.” I tipped my head back again, making sure to capture his gaze in mine. “Don’t let those things slip away from you, Elias. ‘Cause when they’re gone, they’re gonna make you ache.”

Maybe I should’ve let it go, let him live his life, but yesterday, he’d taught me something I wouldn’t have been able to realize myself, had released me from a demon I had forged. It was my turn to impart some of my own wisdom, the words I’d wanted to say to Cherry, to Taylor, to every soldier out there who’d turned their noses up at the envelopes I handed out.

I remembered the paper now, and pressed it to his chest where my head had been.

Slowly, a lazy grin spread across his lips, and Elias gently pushed the envelope away. “Don’t worry ‘bout me, sweetheart,” he said, his eyes glittering again with affection rather than regret. “I got all I need right here.”

My heart swelled with warmth, and my mouth quirked again into a smile. Though part of me thought that he was just saying that to distract me from the unpleasant subject, another part of me – the part of me that ached for family, for a bond – eagerly accepted his words, let them sink in and spread along every nerve of my body, making my skin fuzzy and my gut all giddy with electricity.

And I decided that in that moment, I didn’t need to hear my mother’s voice, or see my father’s smile. All I needed was Elias. Maybe it wouldn’t last – though I wanted it to –, but it would be enough to get me through.

I tucked the envelope away into the hem of my khakis, and smiled back at him as I watched him catch another strawberry between his teeth, tipping his head back to let it land on his tongue.

“Can I have one?” I asked, licking my lips. The MRE I’d had earlier was still settling in my stomach, though I reckoned that the dry bread and cold beef stew wouldn’t even compare to just one of those little red delicacies.

Elias smirked at me, and plopped one of the berries on his tongue, sticking it from between his teeth invitingly.

My gaze darted from his mischievous gaze to the strawberry on his tongue, and my gut stirred with a different sort of hunger. I giggled and leaned in to capture the strawberry in my teeth, the seeds gritting against my molars but the tart yet sweet flavour exploding across my tongue.

I’d barely swallowed the sugary syrup of the berry when Elias pressed his hot lips to mine, and tugged me closer to the warmth of his body, my thighs to the hardness that had redeveloped in his trousers. His tongue still tasted potently of the berries, and his lips were slightly slick from their juices, but every bit as heavenly as they’d been last night.

I swung my right leg around his waist so that I was straddling him, pressing my own pounding arousal against his now, grinding the coiled heat into him eagerly. We went to work swiftly on unbuttoning each other’s shirts; he had less to accomplish, since I’d never replaced the one Bunny had torn from my collar, and soon enough, I was baring my flesh to him.

He sank back into the hammock, our kiss breaking so that I could kick off my trousers and undo his belt. Beginning to tug down his khakis, I positioned myself up on my knees, but they wobbled beneath me from the sway of the hammock, and I caught myself from collapsing by letting a hand fall to his chest and my spine to curl over above him. I laughed against the bare of his chest, and his own grin mirrored mine, mirth in his eyes. His member was pressing against my stomach now, and as the laughter ceased, I caught my lip in my teeth, a devilish idea forming in my mind.

I watched as his face fell slack from sharp cheekbones and those blue eyes darken with lust as I sidled down, panting my breaths against his navel and inhaling the scent that was of both him and the wilds, my lips brushing the mound of dark hair that crowned his length.

I panted out one last breath against his flesh before letting my tongue run along his length, and he immediately bucked his hips, a moan stirring from him as his hands sought my hair, fingertips just barely managing to hook a few of the strands.

It did cross my mind that Barnes, or Bunny, or anyone could’ve walked through that door in that moment, but I didn’t care anymore. I needed this, in this place that only brought sorrow and guilt, needed to indulge myself in this thing that made me human in this place that made me a monster. And I could tell that Elias needed it, too, from the way that he clawed desperately at my hair and writhed his hips beneath me and bit his tongue to hold back a moan every time I licked or kissed at him.

“Quit bein’ such a goddamn tease, sweetheart,” Elias rasped between heavy breaths. It was oddly reminiscent of when he’d kissed at my thighs last night and I’d told him to fuck me, and I grinned as I felt him twitch beneath my lips, my tongue darting against his sensitive flesh almost wickedly.

His hips bucked again, and I ground the sopping mess that was my panties against the fabric of his leg, seeking my own satisfaction to the burning desire in my groin. A pleasured breath passed from my lips, and I drew my tongue along his length one last time to savour the taste of him before attempting once again to steady myself on my knees.

He nudged my panties aside, a shiver dancing across my flesh as his finger brushed a bundle of nerves, and I lowered myself onto him. I clamped a hand over my mouth to stifle the gasp that poured fast from my lungs as he filled me, stretching walls that still seemed to ache from last night.

It took me a minute, but eventually I got into a rhythm, and the spring of the hammock helped rock my hips up and down, a strangled moan parting from my lips every time the bare flesh of my thighs met his. I tried to keep as quiet as I could, in case anyone outside heard, but I only devoted a small portion of my efforts towards the discreetness, for I was far too enraptured by the movement of my hips, the pleasure that ran from my core all the way to the top of my head, the man who still moaned and squirmed under me as his hands grasped at my waist and his length shuddered inside of me.

His fingers curled firmly into my hipbones as he kept my thighs pinned to him, his hips bucking madly upwards as he spent himself inside of me, and I shivered around him, my head feeling light and my core flooding with the warmth that I craved.

I stayed like this for several moments, head swung back, hair teasing the line of my nude back, riding out the beginnings of my own high, walls tightening around him and my sweat-slicked thighs still trembling on top of him.

When euphoria finally claimed me, I drew myself from him and collapsed on his chest, honey-blonde hair pooling across his neck and shoulders and my fervent breaths panted across the musky sweat of his collarbone.

Elias’ thumb stroked the back of my head again, sending tingles through my overly-sensitive nerves, and with his other hand, he entwined his fingers through my own. And he murmured against me, “See, told ya I got all I need right here, sweetheart.”

#fanfiction #elias grodin #platoon #platoon 1986 #my writing #heroes #oc: alexis #sgt. elias #mdni #there's smut in this story I'm just not saying where because spoilers but you've been warned #writing

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cassieuncaged · 1 year

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Grave Bound - Chapter 9

Chapter 8

Summary: Elias has a torturous recovery ahead of him, not to mention the ire of an abusive father.

TW: medical gore, blood, allusions to verbal abuse, physical recovery, language, etc.

WC: 2.9 K

1969

Collapsed, flattened like a pancake.

Elias’s left lung had folded in on itself. The surgeons inserted a hard tube down his throat before slicing the man open like a piece of deli meat. Rachel considered herself to be a strong-willed person. She’d been in the emergency room in Jacksonville when two dumb teenagers came in from a car accident, legs smashed beyond recognition.

That had been simple in comparison. She was forced to dutifully watch as doctors dug bullets out of his chest before unceremoniously flopping him to one side. Tubes were worked into a wiry frame, an attempt to get a shredded lung reinflated. It was unlikely he’d survive something so strenuous, in the middle of enemy ground with little to no resources.

All they needed was to get him stabilized to survive a chopper ride to Saigon. There was a larger chance of survival at a functioning hospital. Warm breath was humid beneath the cloth mask as Rachel scurried to assist the doctors. Bright red was smeared across latex gloves as the tube was held in place. His mouth was wired open, unnaturally wide as air was pumped in.

The nurse was shifted to holding an oxygen mask over a slack jaw. Eyes twitched beneath heavy lids, dark and sunken. Every breath was shallow, growing slightly stronger. It was too much to see a man so energetic and good-hearted barely clinging onto life. The young woman, like the rest, had seen death far too often. The lives of men they knew and cared about; the men they loved. Attempting to keep Maggie from her mind was a difficulty, knowing there was nothing she could do to comfort her friend.

Knowing that she’d be completely inconsolable if Sgt. Grodin died.

Rachel tried not to think about that, growing hopeful as his vitals improved. The lead surgeon barked out a slew of orders, covered in a stained smock as before slicing open his chest to dig out another slug.

Rumors had begun to circulate while Harris contended with Barnes. The boys were all somber about the entire ordeal. Even O’Neill kept his lips buttoned. Rachel had her own suspicions. They were all sitting ducks until the court martial was ordered.

“Scalpel!” the head surgeon demanded as Kelly quickly complied with a shaking utensil tray. Only a few more slices and the final bullet would be removed from a flattened pectoral. Their odds to stabilize the sergeant were hopeful.

As long they could all stay alive long enough to get him transferred to a chopper and shipped back to the city.

……

An uneasy hush fell over the camp.

Bob was questioned by Harris, who was quick to order a court martial. The captain lived by the book and wanted answers about what the hell unfolded between he and Grodin. Lying in the barracks, the red head could hardly believe how bloody he’d been when the doctors peeled him from the stained stretcher. It was brutal, enough to rip her heart free from an aching body. Sobbing on the ground, Caldwell and Rachel practically had to carry the nurse from the mud to her bed.

Crying herself dry, Maggie felt completely hollow. This was why she didn’t want to get attached; tomorrow was hardly a guarantee in normal times. Throw a war into it and their odds were even lower. Elias Grodin, her light in the dark, all but extinguished.

By one of his own men. And what the hell for? What did Barnes think would happen? Blame it on an attack by the Viet Cong? Did he even consider being caught?

Sadness was swiftly replaced with a white hot anger. Rage wrapped its poisonous fingers around the woman’s heart, suddenly craving revenge. Rain pattered on the roof of the canvas tent when she hopped from the ramshackle bunk. Marching to the mouth of the settlement, the flap was pushed back roughly. A humid mist covered ruddy cheeks as the encampment was searched for Barnes. Harris had left the sergeant alone, still armed to the teeth with his assault rifle. Rain dripped down the mangled scars splitting an angry face, knee wrapped with gauze. Until the court martial arrived, they were unable to spare any of their men. O’Neill sheepishly sidled up to Bob. Words were lost as he gestured to the medical tent, tight red curls soaked. Bob looked irritated, scowling.

Red looked uneasy while Maggie found an opportunity.

Charging like a wild mare, strong legs carried the woman a mere twenty yards before she was colliding with a solid body. Pummeling Bob into the mud had been simple enough, the muddy earth making it easy enough to upend his bad foot. Solid muscle was rendered useless as lithe fingers were fast to attach around a thick neck. Thumb pressing into a soft windpipe, blunt fingernails scraped at open palms.

“You son of a bitch!” Maggie growled with all the vitriolic acid that could be injected into the words. Coughing and grunting against her hands, Bob began to peel himself free of her grasp.

“What the fuck-” he choked. Before the sergeant could say another word, a pale fist collided with the hard plane of a scarred jaw. Large hands reached up to bare down on prominent clavicles as the woman hissed in pain. It felt like the bone would surely give. That was until a sharp knee was brought down onto an unguarded groin.

Howling in pain, one arm attempted to toss her to the side while Maggie was able to land another hit. She could barely register the upheaval of the men around her. Captain Harris was nowhere to be found while Wolfe let the assault unfold. An elbow collided with O’Neill’s nose when he attempted to intervene.

“Fuck,” the man hissed, blood pouring from freckled nostrils as Barnes was bombarded with a fresh attack of smacks and scratches.

“Haven’t you taken enough from me?” An open handed collided with a bloody cheek as the weather morphed into a torrential down pour. “Why don’t you kneel me down at knife point again, you piece of shit!”

Barnes’ squad barely reacted, though that wasn’t shocking; most of them had attempted assaulting several other nurses back on base, succeeding with a few. She wanted Sgt. Barnes to meet his reckoning, beaten into a bloody pulp on enemy soil. By her fists and her fists alone.

King pushed through the throng of onlookers, knowing he was the only one that could talk some sense into the nurse while Harris and Caldwell were preoccupied.

“Maggie!” His voice competed with claps of thunder. “He’s not worth it!”

Thick arms looped around a slender torso, peeling her away. Flailing against the intervention, she attempted to claw herself free of the man. The nurse was easily slung over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

“Bastard’s got a court martial coming for his ass. Let them handle it.” Taylor attempted to reason with the woman, earning a snicker from Bunny in the process. Angry and ruffled by the mess, the private laid out his compatriot with a sharp blow to the jaw.

“Damn it, Chris,” King turned on his heel, “Get your shit together.”

“That’s not enough! Put me down!” Small fists collided with a broad back as King ignored her protests. Rhah and Taylor flanked the soldier to make sure the scrappy nurse didn’t free herself and run amok.

Ducking into their makeshift barracks, they were hit with the warmth of stale smoke. Unsure what else would calm her, he swaddled the woman in Elias’s hammock. Swinging for a wildly for a moment, Maggie looked desperately at the worried faces hovering above her.

A lone headband hanged on a nail on the same post that kept the hammock stable. Grabbing at the scrap of fabric, Maggie inhaled all that she could. Sweat and weed permeated from it, catching the salty tears being shed.

“Mags,” King dropped to his knees beside her, “He’s not gone. Not yet.”

“What if he doesn’t make it? What do I do then?” voice wavering, the private gave the others a look to grant them some privacy. Crowd thinning, she repeated herself, “What happens to me?”

“We keep fighting, Maggie.” He swallowed down his own sob, “We don’t have a fucking choice. If we don’t fight with Elias, we fight for him.”

Cobalt eyes remained unfocused when King left the nurse alone. The men filed back out into the rain, her only company the groan of the sling beneath her. Squeezing her eyes shut, Maggie imagined muscular arms were wrapped tightly around her before sobbing helplessly into silence.

1971

It had been more than a year of rehabilitation.

Time had passed bitterly when Elias was forced to return home to Wisconsin. He was lucky to be alive, even if it was back in The Dells living with his folks. Mary Grodin was doting if not overbearing. She waited on the landing as he limped down the stairs, arms outstretched.

“I got it, ma.” Forcing a smile, he ignored the scream resonating in both his leg and chest. “I can handle myself okay.”

“I’ll do anything to make life easier on you.” Mary watched attentively, genuine in her motive. Nothing stung a mother’s heart like watching her child struggle to become whole again. The surgeries had been endless, keeping Elias in an induced coma for what felt like years. Mary had stayed by his side whenever she could to assure her eldest wouldn’t wake up alone. Even Art had been genuinely worried for the child he often rooted against. That changed abruptly when Elias returned home.

“You’re a sweetheart.” Grinning softly, the soldier accepted his mother’s hand as he worked down the final few stairs. It wasn’t her fault. Mary Grodin wasn’t perfect but tried her damnedest while her husband refused. Every chance he’d had to call his eldest a pansy or Nancy, Art took it. There was no hiding his disdain for Elias’ near-death experience, the one that would leave him in a world of pain for the remainder of his life.

“Paul’s here.” She was quick to add, watching as Elias limped to the kitchen. Stiffening at the admission he silently grabbed an apple from the counter. “Thought you’d like to say hello to your brother.”

He could read between the lines, seeing his mother’s desperate and searching eyes. His relationship with his brother was strained, leaving part of the family fractured with turmoil.

“I don’t know, ma.” Elias took a contemplative bite of the red fruit. “We’re not the best of buddies.”

“He’s been worried about you,” Mary added somberly. “It’d do you both good to talk, to leave the past behind.”

“It’s not that simple,” he ignored how his mother’s eyes glistened, tears ready to fall. Taking another bite, the man sighed. He’d do it just to appease Mary; all she ever wanted was a happy family and was given endless arguments and an onslaught of verbal abuse. Pressing a kiss to a wrinkled temple, Elias headed to the living room.

Art sat in his chair, Paul on the sofa as the pigskin was tossed across the screen of the hulking Zenith television. Both men nursed beers, ignoring Elias as he sauntered over to an empty armchair.

"Dad, Paul." Crossing one leg, Elias bounced his foot nervously before Art’s attention was suddenly on him. A loud crunch was taken out of a dwindling apple.

“Haven’t been to the barber.” He grumbled, the youngest of the group smirking before coming to his brother’s defense.

“A little shag looks nice.” Paul added hollowly. Sporting honey blond hair and standing at a towering 6’2, the younger Grodin was traditionally handsome. Though he also suffered from severe aggression and anger issues. But he was in decent spirits, genuinely curious how his brother’s recovery was going. Art was sullen, though less hostile than usual. It was painfully obvious how unwelcome he was in his own family.

“How’s the ball game going?” Elias asked awkwardly, never giving much of a damn about the sport. Arthur rolled dark eyes as Paul wordlessly gestured to the score on the screen. The Packers were winning. At least that meant his father would be in a better mood for the evening. “How’s Bonnie and the kids?”

“Good, good.” Paul nodded before cracking open another beer. He and Elias had never known how to hold a conversation, sharing no common interests. The veteran had always been closer with his sister, who was far more empathetic and interesting. His father and brother exuded an unwelcomeness that confirmed Elias was a piece of the puzzle that no longer fit, if he ever really did to begin with.

Paul stayed for a strained dinner, quietly buttering a roll as Mary scooped a hearty helping of casserole onto each plate. Elias' appetite had been minimal. He felt like a picky child that didn’t like the meal his mother so meticulously made.

“You gonna eat tonight?” Arthur questioned gruffly.

“I’m not a kid.” Blue eyes offered a warning gaze as a sharp jaw set.

“Then stop acting like one and eat your damned dinner.” A balled fist struck the table, sending a tumultuous shake across the surface. Paul pretended not to notice while Mary burrowed her hand in a weathered one.

“How’s the baby?” their mother turned the attention back to the younger of the two, giving her eldest a moment to gather himself. Living with Arthur Grodin as a father had been difficult enough the first time around. Now the man was incensed, angered by the fact that Elias was only human and suffered the repercussions of gunshot wounds. He hated that the slamming of a door or a balloon popping would send his son into a panicked frenzy. Mind racing, the addled vet tried not to think of their troubled past, the broken ribs or bloody noses. Not to mention the amount of drugs that had been consumed in attempt to soften mental wounds.

Paul shared a couple stories about the new edition, Mary ecstatic to hear about her grandchild. There were a couple pointed comments about the childless Elias, who ignored the conversation completely.

Breathing becoming shallow, a lean body shook nervously as anxiety surged through the man. He wasn’t even sure what triggered him as large hands clutched the table. Nails dug into the underside of the wood, splinters digging into calloused skin.

“What the hell was it this time?” Art grumbled with a mouthful of mashed potatoes. Paul looked genuinely worried as Mary was rushing to her son’s side. “You’ve got to stop babying him or he’ll never get better!”

“Hush, now. That isn’t helping,” silvery blonde fell worried eyes as she gently rubbed broad shoulders. Elias looked up to his mother, eyes watering with desperation as she helped him to his feet. “Let’s get you upstairs, honey.”

Elias nodded as she led him carefully from the dining room and to the dim stairwell. It wasn’t a quick enough exit to save him from his Art’s words. They raced through the folds of a tired mind as his body sagged into the twin mattress. Mary sought a warm blanket and prepared a cup of tea, the best comfort she could provide.

Yet his mother’s tenderness didn’t shake what his father had so casually spat out. Elias wasn’t sure if he was meant for him to hear or not, but now he was plagued to remember. Those words hurt worse than any bullet ever could. Stifling a cry, tears were hot running down a stricken face. Curling around his pillow, his body shuddered as the sobs became impossible to hold back.

Sometimes I wish he didn’t come back at all.

Like a punch to gut, he was instantly grounded. What really stung was the remorse the sentence was delivered with. Not angry or vitriolic. Only resigned and sympathetic. Elias bit his tongue while trying to swallow the thoughts bubbling up a dry throat. Bitter and scarring, the voice in his head urged him to end it all. He never took the subconscious advice though it made him ache more. What was his purpose if not to ache and suffer? What if his father was right? What if he were better off rotting alone in the jungle?

Blue eyes screwed tightly shut as watery rivulets danced across a sharp cheeks. Pillow now damp, he attempted to will the tears away until sleep won the battle.

#fanfiction #otp fanfiction #maggie x elias #otp: dog tags and flower crowns #platoon 1986 #q

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docrotten · 1 year

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C.H.U.D. (1984) – Episode 229 – Decades Of Horror 1980s

“Are you kidding? Your guy’s got a camera. Mine’s got a flamethrower.” A flamethrower’s good. Join your faithful Grue-Crew – Chad Hunt, Bill Mulligan, Crystal Cleveland, and Jeff Mohr – as they hit the radioactive underground in C.H.U.D. (1987). Be sure to bring your flamethrower!

Decades of Horror 1980s Episode 228 – C.H.U.D. (1987)

Join the Crew on the Gruesome Magazine YouTube channel! Subscribe today! And click the alert to get notified of new content! https://youtube.com/gruesomemagazine

A bizarre series of sudden disappearances on the streets of New York City seems to point toward something unsavory living in the sewers.

Director: Douglas Cheek

Writers: Parnell Hall (screenplay); Shepard Abbott (story); Christopher Curry (uncredited), Daniel Stern (uncredited)

Makeup Department

John Caglione Jr. (special makeup creator: CHUD)

Kevin Haney (makeup animatronics)

Selected Cast:

John Heard as George Cooper

Daniel Stern as A.J. ‘The Reverend’ Shepherd

Christopher Curry as Captain Bosch

Kim Greist as Lauren Daniels

Laure Mattos as Flora Bosch

Brenda Currin as Francine the Landlady

Justin Hall as Justin

Michael O’Hare as Fuller

Cordis Heard as Officer Sanderson

Vic Polizos as Hays

Eddie Jones as Chief O’Brien

Sam McMurray as Officer Crespi

Frank Adu as Interrogation Cop

Ruth Maleczech as Mrs. Monroe

J.C. Quinn as Murphy

Patricia Richardson as Ad Woman

Ray Baker as Ad Man (as Raymond Baker)

Beverly Bentley as Doris

Graham Beckel as Val

Gene O’Neill as Jackson

Rocco Siclari as Hugo

Bill Raymond as Victor (as William Joseph Raymond)

Peter Michael Goetz as Gramps

Shana Lee Farrell as Cindy

John Ramsey as Commissioner

George Martin as Wilson

John Bedford Lloyd as Shadow Man (as John Bedford-Lloyd)

Henry Yuk as Coroner

Robert Toupin as Benson

Frankie Faison as Sgt. Parker (as Frankie R. Faison)

Ivar Brogger as Gooney NRC Man

Parnell Hall as Judson

John Goodman as Cop in Diner

Jay Thomas as Cop in Diner

Hallie Foote as Waitress

Jon Polito as Newscaster

Mark Mikulski as Cop at Wrecked Diner

Lou Leccese as CHUD

Sanford Clark as CHUD

James Dudley as CHUD

Carey Eidel as CHUD

Cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers. Or in Spain, Caníbales Humanoides Ululantes Demoníacos. Either way, it’s C.H.U.D., some serious campy 80s gold! The Grue-Crew revisits this fun monster movie from 1984 for this episode of Decades of Horror 1980s. John Heard, Daniel Stern, and Christopher Curry lead the cast in Douglas Cheek’s feature film debut. But the movie is about the creatures and maybe a small cameo from John Goodman… kidding. Check out what the Grue-Crew thinks of this sci-fi/horror classic.

At the time of this writing, C.H.U.D. is available to stream from these free-with-ads sites: Roku, Tubi, PlutoTV, Hoopla, Plex; and from these subscription sites: Amazon Prime, Arrow; and of course, there are PPV options. The film is also available as a Blu-ray disc from Arrow Video.

Every two weeks, Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror 1980s podcast will cover another horror film from the 1980s. The next episode’s film, chosen by Bill, will be Wicked City (1987). Why does Bill keep warning the 80s Grue-Crew about the content of this film? Hmmm . . .

Please let them know how they’re doing! They want to hear from you – the coolest, grooviest fans – so leave them a message or comment on the gruesome Magazine Youtube channel, on the website, or email the Decades of Horror 1980s podcast hosts at [email protected].

Check out this episode!

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chenford4ever · 1 year

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The Rookie’: Eric Winter Teases Chenford’s Tense Valentine’s Day

Stop in the name of love! After four seasons of flirting, the LAPD’s most arresting new couple has finally paired up in The Rookie. And they’re commemorating their first Valentine’s Day in the Tuesday, February 21 episode (airing at 8/7c on ABC).

“They’re quite a force to be reckoned with,” Eric Winter (above right) says of the #Chenford fandom that has championed the love match of his stern Sgt. Tim Bradford and Melissa O’Neil’s (above left) more emotional cop Lucy Chen since he was assigned to be her training officer.

Still, it’s not “all cotton candy and rainbows” now that the two are together, Winter says. Case in point: Their first Valentine’s Day.

“It’s not an easy one,” he previews of the episode, postponed from February 14 by the State of the Union.

Any hope of a perfect romantic day is put on hold when Tim discovers early on that Lucy did something behind his back, which, for rule stickler Tim, “ruffles his feathers quite a bit” — so much so that the tension between them threatens to derail their plans.

Winter hints things will resolve in the classic comedy-infused Rookie way.

“It’s not what you’d expect,” he teases of the outcome. Hey, no one ever said love was easy!

The Rookie is sitting pretty in its new Tuesday timeslot. After switching from Sundays at 10/9c on ABC in January, the series raked in its highest viewership in two years. Let’s hope the positive ratings and #Chenford both stick around for a while.

The Rookie, Tuesdays, 8/7c, ABC

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hotdamnhunnam · 3 years

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Sgt O’Neil: like a horse

Thanks for another fun request! ❤️

Drabble Fest Rules (3 words –> 💯word smut)

Drabble Fest Masterlist

..................................................

Sergeant O’Neill (True History of the Kelly Gang) x F!Reader

like • a • horse

👍🅰️🐴

He’s an asshole in the deepest, damnedest, downright most despicable sense of the word. But he’s also so dashingly handsome it hurts.

It’s not like you to be so attracted to such an insufferable bastard; your inner slut really has no fucking shame when it comes to her thirst.

As the sergeant rides up to your shanty this fine afternoon on a noble black steed, just the sight of him fills you with need...

Thankfully the man also has hungers to feed.

Thankfully they’re as filthy as yours.

Soon he’ll be riding you even harder than he rides his horse.

--- 💯 words ---

..................................................

Main Tag List – Join Here!

Drabble Fest Tag List – below; if you’d like to be added, just let me know!

@est11 @itspdameronthings @rayslittlekitten @alexa-rae-dreamz @20david50david @niki-xie @abby-splace @autumnleaves1991-blog @classyhorseeclipseduck @coffeebooksandfandom @jitterbugs927 @happyhenners

#charlie hunnam #sergeant o’neill #sgt o’neill #true history of the kelly gang #charlie hunnam smut #charlie hunnam imagine #charlie hunnam fanfiction #charlie hunnam x reader #charlie hunnam x you #sergeant o’neill x reader #sergeant o’neill x you #drabbles

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karihighman · 3 years

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Promotional photos for 3x09 “Amber”:

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a-storm-of-roses · 3 years

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October Fics Day 30: Trick or Treat

Pairing: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard

Rating: G

Words: 1202

Summary: Halloween in Atlantis, in the not so distant future. Lions and Tigers and Wraith and Johnny Cash.

A/N: Written to soothe my pain at buying a ton of candy (including full sized bars!) and receiving not one trick or treater during my building's trick or treat session.

Read on AO3 or below!

The bell chimed, and John rose with a stiff groan.

“Oh for god’s sake, let me,” Rodney fussed, picking up the bowl and heading to the door, even as John shuffled behind him.

“Doc said I needed to exercise, get used to moving again.” John protested, even as Rodney palmed the door open.

“Yes, but not by getting up and down every three minutes,” Rodney hissed, as a chorus of “Trick or Treat” rang out.

“Hey guys,” Lorne waved, tiger-painted face stretching into a toothy grin. Next to him, Parrish, face intricately painted to look like a lion, gave a small wave. And between the two, were a pair of bouncing, extremely green characters, dressed entirely in black.

“Now,” John leaned against the door, going for casual, maybe rakish, and looking closer to pained. “What do we have here?”

“I’m a wraith!” One of the small figures, face painted in green and grey, a mop of knit white hair springing from their head, growled.

“Very scary,” Rodney intoned drily, but the kids didn’t seem to notice. “And I suppose you’re also a wraith?” Rodney asked the taller figure. She was dressed similarly to the first, and was carrying a painted piece of cardboard that looked like it was intended to be one of their tablets. Or an iPad.

“I’m Todd!” she exclaimed, and John choked back a laugh, even as Lorne gave a shrug, as if to say, kids, what can you do.

“Extremely scary. Go ahead, help yourselves.” John nudged Rodney in the side, prompting him to hold out the bowl of full-sized candy bars, the children diving in greedily, as Parrish bit back a smile.

“One each!” he chastised. “And what do we say?”

“Thanks!” the mini-wraith chorused, even as they turned to run down the hall.

“I told you Sheppard and McKay always have the best candy,” they could hear the younger boy whisper loudly.

“Happy Halloween!” Lorne called, as he chased after the kids.

The door slid shut, and Rodney turned to John with a sigh. “They get weirder and weirder every year. I can’t believe people still decide to raise their kids here.”

“I wonder what Todd would make of his mini-me. Maybe we should’ve gotten a photo for the next time he comes crawling out of the woodwork.”

They had only settled back into the couch for a few minutes, when the door chimed again.

Rodney pulled John up, and grabbed the bowl from the table.

This time it was one of the new sergeants - Ramirez, John thought - with two small girls hiding behind him.

“Come on, girls, show your costumes to Dr. McKay and General Sheppard.” The taller girl shuffled forward, and muttered something that might have been ‘Trick or Treat,’ to the floor.

John crouched down, ignoring the twinge in his hips and Rodney’s protests. “And who might you be? Let me guess… Cleopatra? And your sister is… a snake, maybe? Or a worm?” Behind him Rodney muffled a snort, as a cough.

The older girl was dressed in a white sheet wrapped around her like robes, with a gold headband and heavy eyeliner. Her younger sister was dressed as some sort of beige snake, or maybe lizard, John thought, heavy canvas tail trailing behind her.

“I’m a sym-bote!” the snake declared. “And my sister is a goa’uld!”

Sgt. Ramirez chuckled. “I tried to suggest princesses, or even dinosaurs, but this was what they wanted.”

As the night wore on they were visited by two versions of SG-1, and no fewer than 4 iterations of AR-1, although the third set had insisted that they were a replicator team, leaving John shuddering and Rodney wide-eyed with alarm. They took photos of a particularly serious mini-Teal’c, and a boy in fishing gear who insisted he was General O’Neill. There were wraith and goa’uld, at least one unas, and a very poor attempt at an asgard.

They also saw a few more classic costumes, Jennifer, her husband, and the twins dressed as Wizard of Oz characters, a few witches, ghosts, superheroes, and princesses. John laughed for a solid minute straight after they closed the door on one of the new geologists, and her daughter who was dressed as Maverick from Top Gun.

It was late in the evening, and the constant stream of kids had finally slowed. John sprawled out on the couch, his head resting in Rodney’s lap, as they started Halloween III. One of Rodney’s hands carded through his hair, as the other picked its way through the rest of the candy bowl.

“Hey, the night isn’t over yet. Save some for the stragglers.”

“Please, it’s well past kids’ bedtimes. Unless Zelenka decides to take Ronon drunk trick or treating again this year, I think we’re done.”

As if on cue, the doorbell chimed again. Grumbling, Rodney extricated himself from under John and took the bowl to the door. John rose at Rodney’s first annoyed huff, and the grouchy “Aren’t you a bit old to be trick or treating?”

“Aw come on Uncle Rodney. I thought you were never too old, as long as you have a costume? Besides, we never had Halloween, not until I was ten. I have a lot of time to make up.”

John grinned at that sly, measured tone. God, he sounded just like his mother, John thought, if his mother was suddenly a teenage boy.

“Hey, Uncle John!” Torren waved from the doorframe, hefting up a large bag that was filled to the brim with candy. Atlantis’s first child, it was clear Torren was still the darling of the exhibition, even as he had transitioned from pudgy childhood to his gangly teenage years.

“And what exactly are you supposed to be?” John asked. “You know the deal - no costume, no candy.”

While his friends all had some sort of obvious, if lazy, costumes, Torren looked the same as he did most days, dressed in dark BDUs and a black shirt. He’d added on one of the old expedition leather jackets, and a pair of sunglasses perched on the top of his head. These days, Torren seemed to prefer the clothing of Earth expedition members, over the Athosian leather and wool Teyla and Kanaan wore. Teenage rebellion took all forms, John supposed.

“Oh please tell me you’re not-” Rodney groaned.

“I’m Johnny Cash!” Torren interrupted! “Mom wouldn’t let me take my guitar. She said I’d damage it.”

“Suck up,” Rodney muttered, even as John grinned. He handed over the bowl of candy, turned a blind eye when the teens each helped themselves to two.

“You know, eventually you’ll be too old to trick or treat.”

Torren shrugged. “That’s alright. Madison said once you get too old to trick or treat you go to parties. Or throw toilet paper on things.”

“She said what?” Rodney’s voice rose an octave, even as John waved Torren and his laughing friends away.

“Ignore your uncle, Torren, you’re never too old to trick or treat!”

Rodney slumped back down on the couch. “Parties?” he asked, voice sounding weak and defeated.

“Don’t worry, dear,” John patted his hand, pressed a kiss to his cheek. “We’ll just be sure to get the jumbo candy bars next year.”

#Kids in Atlantis have weird costume ideas #Next year Torren totally TPs Rodney's lab #He doesn't get grounded #Kanaan just makes him clean up and meditate on what he has done wrong #Teyla runs him through drills #And John is secretly the one who gave him all the toilet paper #mcshep #stargate atlantis #future fic

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marvelousgeeks · 3 years

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February 14-20 “Lockdown” | The Rookie

It’s been another fantastic week on television starting with a riveting and delicious episode of Miss Scarlet and The Duke. Black-ish was an incredible high (pun intended). WandaVision gave us one of the big reveals we’d been itching for while tactfully addressing grief once more. And A Discovery of Witches gave us some necessary conversations. Regé-Jean Page hosted SNL and left us all key-smashing with the fire emoji. But it’s this week’s exquisite episode of The Rookie we knew we had to talk about.

It was a loaded workday for the LAPD and its officers on the latest episode of The Rookie. We saw Nolan (Nathan Fillion) get taken hostage in a truck laced with explosives, resulting in a lockdown. However, the real intensity lay in the storyline between Officers Stanton (Brandon Routh) and Jackson West (Titus Makin, Jr.). After a home visit from Sergeant Grey (Richard T. Jones), Jackson decided he was willing to risk his career in order to remove a dangerous and racist cop from the street. During their patrol, Jackson directly called out Stanton and threatened him with an Internal Affairs investigation, but Stanton didn’t cower into a corner–he retaliated by purposefully leaving Jackson as he got beat up in a rough neighborhood.

Thankfully, Lucy (Melissa O’Neil) and Bradford (Eric Winter) arrived to help, forcing Stanton to join. They found Jackson lying on the ground, bloodied and bruised, but he managed to turn on Stanton’s body cam, which allowed the prior two minutes’ footage of Stanton’s actions to record. Caught red-handed, Sgt. Grey immediately placed Stanton on administrative leave as Jackson was to the hospital. At the hospital, Sgt. Grey and Jackson share a heart-warming conversation in this week’s most exquisite moment.

#the rookie #jackson west #sergeant grey #tim bradford #lucy chen #this week's most exquisite tv moment

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mabokheula2231 · 3 years

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Veteran Stage and Screen Actor Lisa Banes Dies at 65 After Hit-and-Run

Veteran Stage and Screen Actor Lisa Banes Dies at 65 After Hit-and-Run A mainstay of the New York stage, she also acted in films, including “Gone Girl.” She died 10 days after she was struck by a scooter as she was crossing a street in Manhattan.

Lisa Banes, whose stage and screen career spanned four decades, died on Monday at the age of 65. Her death comes 10 days after she was struck by a hit-and-run driver in New York City, according to police.

“We are heartsick over Lisa’s tragic and senseless passing,” Banes’s manager, David Williams, told People. “She was a woman of great spirit, kindness, and generosity, and dedicated to her work, whether on stage or in front of a camera and even more so to her wife, family, and friends.”

Williams told the outlet that Banes had succumbed to “a traumatic brain injury and was unable to recover” while at Mount Sinai Morningside hospital. Banes had the right of way at an Amsterdam Avenue crosswalk when she was hit by a scooter or motorcycle, the New York Post reported, citing police. Per the Associated Press, the New York Police Department said the driver did not stop and that no arrests in the case have been made. Williams told the AP he believed that the Los Angeles–based Banes was on her way to visit her alma mater, Juilliard.

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https://www.guest-articles.com/news/veteran-stage-and-screen-actor-lisa-banes-dies-at-65-after-hit-and-run-a-mainstay-of-the-new-16-06-2021 https://www.guest-articles.com/news/gone-girl-actress-lisa-banes-dies-aged-65-following-accident-us-actress-lisa-banes-16-06-2021 https://www.guest-articles.com/news/gone-girl-actor-lisa-banes-dies-10-days-after-hit-and-run-in-new-york-us-actress-lisa-16-06-2021 https://www.thewyco.com/news/veteran-stage-and-screen-actor-lisa-banes-dies-at-65-after-hit-and-run-a-mainstay-of-16-06-2021 https://www.thewyco.com/news/gone-girl-actress-lisa-banes-dies-aged-65-following-accident-us-actress-lisa-banes-has-16-06-2021 https://www.thewyco.com/news/gone-girl-actor-lisa-banes-dies-10-days-after-hit-and-run-in-new-york-us-actress-lisa-16-06-2021 https://movie793738308.wordpress.com/2021/06/16/gone-girl-actor-lisa-banes-dies-10-days/ https://healthymboa.org/forum-healthymboa/topic/gone-girl-actor-lisa-banes-dies-10-days/#postid-5868 http://www.shadowville.com/board/buyselltrade/on-the-movie-screen-she-played#p481319 https://www.getrevue.co/profile/satubulan65/issues/weekly-newsletter-of-satubulan65-issue-1-652678/0fe05ce8-a0a5-4a96-9ab9-8983e156a144 https://m.mydigoo.com/forums-topicdetail-287509.html https://www.codergirls.org/forum/internshipcollege-essay/gone-girl-actor-lisa-banes-dies-10-days

Born in Ohio, Banes acted in several films throughout her career, including as Tom Cruise’s love interest in 1988’s Cocktail and the mother of Rosamund Pike’s Amy in 2014’s Gone Girl. She also appeared on TV shows such as The Orville, Nashville, China Beach, and Masters of Sex. Banes made her Broadway debut in Neil Simon’s 1988 play Rumors. She then booked roles in the 1998 musical High Society and the 2010 revival of Noël Coward’s Present Laughter. Tributes from her collaborators, including Seth MacFarlane and Dana Delany, poured in on Twitter.

“I am brokenhearted to share that Lisa, my beautiful wife and my love, passed away last night,” Banes’s wife Kathryn Kranhold said in a statement to Deadline. “We appreciate the love, support and prayers from all of you across the country. Lisa was listening.”

Known for her wry humor and confident, elegant presence, Ms. Banes appeared in more than 80 television and film roles, as well as in countless stage productions, including on Broadway.

She found quick success in the theater after coming east from Colorado Springs in the mid-1970s and studying at the Juilliard School in New York.

In 1980, when the Roundabout Theater revived John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger,” with Malcolm McDowell in the lead role as the angry Jimmy Porter, she played his overstressed wife.

“Lisa Banes has a remarkably effective final scene,” Walter Kerr wrote in The New York Times, “on her knees in anguish, face stained with failure, arms awkwardly searching for shape and for rest.”

The next year, at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, Conn., she was in a production of the James M. Barrie comedy “The Admirable Crichton,” playing a daughter in an upper-crust British family that becomes shipwrecked on a deserted island.

“As Lady Mary,” Mel Gussow of The Times wrote in his review, “Lisa Banes has a regal disdain. Gracefully, she plays the grande dame, and with matching agility she becomes a kind of Jane of the jungle, swimming rivers and swinging on vines — a rather far-fetched transformation, brought off with panache by this striking young actress.”

Off Broadway roles kept coming. Later in 1981 she and Elizabeth McGovern had the lead roles in Wendy Kesselman’s “My Sister in This House” at Second Stage Theater. In 1982, at Manhattan Theater Club, she was the sister Olga in Chekhov’s “Three Sisters,” part of a starry cast that included Dianne Wiest, Mia Dillon, Jeff Daniels, Christine Ebersole and Sam Waterston.

In 1984, when Ms. Banes was in the midst of a run in Wendy Wasserstein’s comedy “Isn’t It Romantic” at Playwrights Horizons, The Times named her one of 15 stage actresses to watch. She was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for her performance in that play.

Her Broadway debut came in the 1988 Neil Simon comedy “Rumors,” and she returned to Broadway in Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia” (1995), the Cole Porter musical “High Society” (1998) and a revival of Noël Coward’s “Present Laughter” (2010).

One of her most recent stage appearances was in 2018 at the Huntington Theater Company in Boston, where she played one of the two lead roles in the premiere of Eleanor Burgess’s “The Niceties,” a drama that pitted her seemingly progressive lesbian professor against a young Black college student, played by Jordan Boatman.

Don Aucoin, reviewing the production in The Boston Globe, praised their performances, saying that “both find the nuances in their characters, conveying the occasional cracks within their seeming certitude.”

As Ms. Banes established herself in the theater, Hollywood also came calling. Her first film role was in 1984 in “The Hotel New Hampshire,” Tony Richardson’s adaptation of the John Irving novel, and she began turning up frequently on television, including in regular roles on “The Trials of Rosie O’Neill” in the early 1990s and, more recently, “Royal Pains,” “Nashville” and the outer space comedy “The Orville.”

“Her stage presence, magnetism, skill and talent were matched only by her unwavering kindness and graciousness,” Seth MacFarlane, the creator and star of “The Orville,” said on Twitter.

On the movie screen, she played Tom Cruise’s arrogant older girlfriend in “Cocktail” in 1988 and the acerbic mother of a missing woman in David Fincher’s “Gone Girl” (2014), with Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike.

Lisa Lou Banes was born on July 9, 1955, in Cleveland. Her father, Ken, worked in advertising, and her mother, Mary Lou (Shalenhamer) Banes, was a model.

Lisa grew up in Colorado Springs, where she focused on acting early. Her first paying job, she told The Gazette of Colorado Springs in 2014, was as a cast member at a dinner theater in nearby Manitou Springs.

“They served liquor,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I lied about my age because I was only 15 and you had to be 16.”

In addition to Ms. Kranhold, Ms. Banes is survived by a brother, Evan Sinclair, and her stepmother, Joan Banes.

In the 10 days after her accident, actors and playwrights who had worked with Ms. Banes expressed their support and shock at what happened.

Ms. Burgess, who wrote “The Niceties,” said she had been with Ms. Banes shortly before she was struck by the scooter and described her as a “brilliant, vibrant, wonderful woman.”

Correction: June 15, 2021 An earlier version of this obituary misstated the surname of an actress who appeared with Ms. Banes In the 1982 Manhattan Theater Club production of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters." She is Christine Ebersole, not Ebersol.

Her death, at Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital, was confirmed by the New York Police Department, which said she had been struck by the scooter June 4 as she was crossing Amsterdam Avenue near West 64th Street in Manhattan.

The operator of the scooter had driven through a red light before crashing into Banes and then fled, said Sgt Edward Riley, a police spokesperson. Riley said Tuesday that no arrests had been made.

Banes lived in Los Angeles and had been in New York visiting friends, her wife, Kathryn Kranhold, said.

Known for her wry humour and confident, elegant presence, Banes appeared in more than 80 TV and film roles, as well as in many stage productions, including on Broadway.

She found quick success in the theatre after coming east from Colorado Springs, Colorado, in the mid-1970s and studying at The Juilliard School, in New York.

In 1980, when the Roundabout Theatre revived John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger,” with Malcolm McDowell in the lead role as the angry Jimmy Porter, she played his overstressed wife.

The next year, at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, she was in a production of James Barrie's comedy “The Admirable Crichton,” playing a daughter in an upper-crust British family that becomes shipwrecked on a deserted island.

Off-Broadway roles kept coming. Later in 1981, she and Elizabeth McGovern had the lead roles in Wendy Kesselman’s “My Sister in This House” at Second Stage Theater. In 1982, at Manhattan Theatre Club, she was sister Olga in Chekhov’s “Three Sisters,” part of a starry cast that included Dianne Wiest, Mia Dillon, Jeff Daniels, Christine Ebersole and Sam Waterston.

In 1984, when Banes was in the midst of a run in Wendy Wasserstein’s comedy “Isn’t It Romantic” at Playwrights Horizons, The Times named her one of 15 stage actresses to watch. She was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for her performance in that play.

One of her most recent stage appearances was in 2018 at the Huntington Theater Company in Boston, where she played one of the two lead roles in the premiere of Eleanor Burgess’ “The Niceties,” a drama that pitted her seemingly progressive lesbian professor against a young Black college student, played by Jordan Boatman.

As Banes established herself in the theater, Hollywood also came calling. Her first film role was in 1984 in “The Hotel New Hampshire,” Tony Richardson’s adaptation of the John Irving novel, and she began turning up frequently on television, including in regular roles on “The Trials of Rosie O’Neill” in the early 1990s and, more recently, “Royal Pains,” “Nashville” and the outer space comedy “The Orville.”

“Her stage presence, magnetism, skill and talent were matched only by her unwavering kindness and graciousness,” Seth MacFarlane, creator and star of “The Orville,” said on Twitter.

Lisa Lou Banes was born July 9, 1955, in Cleveland. Her father, Ken, worked in advertising, and her mother, Mary Lou (Shalenhamer) Banes, was a model.

“They served liquor,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I lied about my age because I was only 15 and you had to be 16.”

In addition to Kranhold, Banes is survived by a brother, Evan Sinclair, and her stepmother, Joan Banes.

In the 10 days after her accident, actors and playwrights who had worked with Banes expressed their support and shock at what happened.

Burgess, who wrote “The Niceties,” said she had been with Banes shortly before she was struck by the scooter and described her as a “brilliant, vibrant, wonderful woman.”

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spiderdreamer-blog · 3 years

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Batman: Soul of the Dragon

Batman: The Animated Series/DCAU creator Bruce Timm has had less of a full creative voice in many of the recent DC animated DTV films than one might think; he’s had little or nothing to do with the Nu52 film line that recently ended with Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, and his own endeavors outside of that have been decidedly mixed. Sometimes, we get a fun darker-edged Elseworlds tale like Justice League: Gods and Monsters, or the always welcome DC Showcase shorts centered on lesser-known characters like Sgt. Rock or The Phantom Stranger. Other times, we get things like the bafflingly misconceived adaptation of The Killing Joke or the so-mediocre-I-can’t-even-be-mad-at-it Gotham By Gaslight. Thankfully, Batman: Soul of the Dragon is far more in keeping with the former category in its delightful 70s genre cocktail, blending high-energy performance with terrific action and style.

Secret agent Richard Dragon (voiced by longtime fight scene legend Mark Dacascos) has discovered a plot by the Kobra cult and its leader Jeffrey Burr (Josh Keaton, playing WAY against type) to open the Gate, a portal leading to a realm of snake demons ruled over by the devilish Naga (it’s that kind of movie). Dragon has a past with the Gate, and he heads to Gotham City to recruit old friend Bruce Wayne (Grimm’s David Giuntoli), who has become Batman since their time together as students at the mystical mountain realm of Nanda Parbat under O-Sensei (James Hong). Together, they track down fellow old classmates Lady Shiva (Kelly Hu), now the crime lord of Gotham’s Chinatown, and Ben “Bronze Tiger” Turner (Michael Jai White, putting a Black Dynamite spin on a character he previously played under much different circumstances on Arrow). Together, they must stop Burr and his minions from unleashing the aforementioned snake demonpocalypse.

If I sound a little amused at the excesses on display, it’s because I very much am. More than perhaps any other animated Batman media before it, this most resembles what the comics were becoming in the 1970s under writers like the late Denny O’Neill (who gets a dedication here) that took the character onto a far more global and pulp adventure stage than the noir-infested streets of Gotham with the introduction of indelible villains like Ra’s Al Ghul. There’s snake-men, mystical swords, Dragon has received a Bruce Lee-esque makeover (he’s Causcasian in the comics), Ben naturally has an afro, the Batmobile is a sports car Steve McQueen could’ve driven, and we even receive an affecting cameo from Silver St. Cloud, Bruce’s often-seen girlfriend from the 70s runs, to bring the point home. It’s all played in the proper spirit, with Joachim Horsley’s score even getting in on the fun with plenty of funk riffs and John Barry stylings, especially in the Bondian opening credits sequence. Jeremy Adams’ script displays the proper amount of wit and twistiness to boot, with everyone getting to crack wise and have their moments of badassery. It also makes good use of a flashback structure, cutting between past and present in significant and clever ways until all plot points merge for a rousing finale. Though an early scene where Burr dispatches a sex worker through a snake pit is perhaps the only jarring note in the film; creepy and effective, certainly, but it leaves an unpleasant taste in one’s mouth. Better is a later false reassurance towards a group of children he plans to do a blood sacrifice with.

The cast is excellent across the board, which has not always been the case for these outings, but voice director Wes Gleason, to his credit, has hit his stride for the past several and deserves credit for coaxing not-overblown 70s-style performances out of the cast much in the same way Andrea Romano made the adaptation of Darwyn Cooke’s The New Frontier sound like The 50s without falling into stiff caricature. Giuntoli in particular is a pleasant surprise; there have been many Bat-voices, not all of them good, but he finds a nice middle ground of a young and fairly fresh-to-Batmaning Bruce with the familiar authority and presence that can nevertheless be undercut for a laugh (his best moment is a hesitant “I’m...working up to it” when asked why he hasn’t taken down Shiva as a criminal yet). Dacascos has always radiated charisma onscreen and proves to be a cheerfully vibrant Dragon, suave but relatable; he easily steals the film for me. Kelly Hu makes good use of her natural deadpan as Shiva, by turns funny matter-of-fact and totally badass, and White, as he did with Black Dynamite, makes what could have come off as an unfortunate stereotype into something real and distinct; his re-introduction is a quite lovely show of character growth in particular. Hong, a legend who needs no introduction, is a delight in two parts, first as the wise but eccentric mentor, second as the Naga-possessed shell who hams it up accordingly. And while Keaton has played villains before, none have been quite so unnerving in their combination of neuroses and god complex. Several VA ringers fill out the numbers nicely: Erica Luttrell gets one of the better sincere emotional beats in the film as the aforementioned Silver, while Jamie Chung is charmingly petulant as a more heroic version of Jade “Cheshire” Nyugen. Chris Cox has a fun couple of beats with a traitorous zealot, Robin Atkin Downes goes full villainous German as the creepy henchman Schlangenfaust, Patrick Seitz booms out a funny comeuppance scene as a cocky bouncer (and shows off a faux-British accent as a snooty opponent later on), and Grey Griffin does her ice queen routine to great effect.

Visually, the film is excellent, matching the modernized Timm style to the requisite 70s fashions and technology; I liked Bruce’s wall of TV screens in his penthouse being this story’s equivalent to the Batcave. Studio Mir, of course no stranger to great animated fight scenes, accentuates the choreography wonderfully, adding a great deal of snap and character to already well-staged scenes. A particular highlight comes with a fight where Shiva is instructed to only use one finger in her defense, and this goes about as poorly for her opponent as you’d expect. I was pleased also that it didn’t go overboard with the gore and violence, despite its R rating; it’s there, certainly, but far from how excessive it’s occasionally felt in other DC animated ventures.

Batman: Soul of the Dragon is easily one of my favorite of these films in a long time. In particular, I appreciated how Batman is nearly a supporting character, facilitating the others’ extravagance as more of a straight man, though he still gets plenty of good moments (one scene between him and O-Sensei is one of the best summations of the character’s core in ANY creative work, animated or otherwise, I’ve ever witnessed). Also, it has to be said that the ending of this in particular is a blatant and delightful sequel hook that I’d absolutely be onboard to see fulfilled. With the New 52 era behind us, hopefully we’ll get far more stories like this in the wild and strangest corners of the DC universe.

#batman: soul of the dragon #dc comics #dc animation #batman #richard dragon #bronze tiger #lady shiva #movie review #analysis

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red-riding-wood · 2 years

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Heroes - Chapter 3

Chpt. 1 , Masterlist , Chpt. 4

Pairing: Sgt. Elias Grodin x Female OC (Alexis Ryder)

Fandoms: Platoon (1986), Cherry (2021)

Dawn was rolling over the horizon, filtering in through scraggly branches and needled boughs with its warm, soothing touch; and although it made my eyes dart less nervously around at the shadowy brush, it did nothing to help the sweat that funneled in rivulets down the grooves of my back.

My armour, helmet, rig, and rucksack lay in a heap beside my shovel, which I thrust into the earth with another lethargic swing.

I’d barely gotten any sleep since my turn on last night’s watch, and I was running off of adrenaline.

Wolfe and the sergeants of each squad had met early in the morning to discuss a converging mass of al-Qaeda on our position, and had been strategizing – though mostly bickering – about how we would tackle this threat.

Most of us new fry were tasked with digging foxholes, while the more experienced soldiers would flank the hostiles and flush them towards us.

O’Neill had stayed to keep an eye on us, make sure we were doing our jobs, but really, it was just so that he could kick back his boots and leave the work for someone else.

I huffed out a strained breath over the handle of my shovel, arms quivering over it. My head felt as if it were growing light, from my lack of sleep and from not allowing myself a single break over the past two hours.

“Hey, Sweet Cheeks!” O’Neill’s voice cut through the air, and with my back turned to him, he couldn’t see my wince, the curling of my gums over my teeth as I panted out each laboured breath.

“Get back to diggin’ that hole, will ya? I was enjoying my little show,” the sergeant remarked, and I clenched my jaw, but said nothing.

This was precisely why I hadn’t allowed myself any breaks.

I drove the shovel deeper into the soil, and with reluctance, bent my aching spine with it. My shirt rode up at the base of my spine, catching on the stickiness of my perspiration, and a cat-call behind me signalled that I’d appeased the NCO.

As I went to heave another load of dirt from my shovel, I caught sight of a flicker of movement across the dirt, and I heard the guy next to me – Taylor, his name was – suck in a sharp breath.

I stilled for a moment, watching as a scaled, mud-brown rope curved and slithered its way around his boots. I narrowed my eyes, studying the dull patterns on its body, and then flicked my eyes up to meet the wide, fearful ones of Taylor.

“It’s non-venomous,” I told him, under my breath. “It’s just a dice snake… I think.”

A week into basic, some of my fellow recruits had found out that Taylor had a fear of snakes, and had gathered a few cobras from the outskirts of Kandahar and stuck them under his blanket. Poor guy hadn’t seemed to shake the feeling of scales on his flesh for a good couple days after that.

That was when I’d learned that you never told people of your fears in the army.

Taylor was the transfer that had taken Cherry’s spot in Two Bravo. I hadn’t properly been introduced to him yet, but we were digging the same foxhole and had been working alongside each other all morning. He wasn’t like Bunny, or Junior, or any of the other guys that had been giving me grief all morning. He was quiet, shy, kind of like Cherry, and seemed to be just as rattled as I was by everything that was happening.

And though everyone got their fair share of teasing, Taylor was one that everyone loved to just take out their aggressive, restless energy on. He’d been some rich kid, apparently, had shown up on his first day smelling like La Chatelaine soap and sporting luxuriously-styled locks of hair that had since been mercilessly buzzed like the rest of the new men.

As rough as I had it, I didn’t have it as rough as the rich white kid amid a platoon of uneducated men who’d joined because they had no money or no place to be.

Taylor nodded at me, though the fear didn’t leave his eyes until the snake had, its lithe form disappearing beneath a few fallen branches.

I resumed my digging, though Taylor, in his gratitude, said to me, “Thanks. I still don’t know which ones are the gonna-bite-your-dick-off kind or not.”

My lip curled into the slightest of smiles, and I said, “Well, I’m not really an expert on that myself.”

“I’m Chris,” he said. “Chris Taylor.”

I looked up at him from where I laboured over my shovel, and nodded. “Ryder,” I reciprocated.

“Heard some talk ‘bout snakes over here?” Bunny cut in, sauntering over from the foxhole he dug with Junior. He flashed me a toothy grin, and added, “Taylor bein’ a pussy again? Might have to shove it down his pants, this time. Heard there’s plenty o’room.”

I eyed the man warily, and said, “Snake’s gone.”

“’Course it is,” Bunny said, wild eyes flashing and fixing me with a look. “What’re you two chummin’ ‘bout, anyway?” The wiry soldier shoved his way between us, knocking my shoulder with his.

“We’re talking about books,” Taylor said, and I caught his eye over Bunny’s shoulder. In our gaze, for a mere second or so, flickered the seed of an alliance, and I forced back a smile.

“Fuckin’ books? ‘Course fuckin’ rich boy’s yabberin’ ‘bout books. You don’t really wanna be hearin’ ‘bout that, do ya, Sugar Tits?” Bunny jostled my shoulder again, intentionally this time, and I felt his fingers graze the sweat-slicked fabric on my lower back.

I hoped he didn’t notice how I’d stiffened, and I cast a glance back at O’Neill. Was he not going to tell Bunny to get back to his foxhole?

O’Neill simply flashed a wink at me, leaning back against a pile of rocks like they were a throne.

“No,” I told Bunny, because disagreeing with this maniac would’ve been suicide. “I don’t wanna hear about books.”

With Bunny’s attention now fixated on me, Taylor went back to digging, trying to mind his own business. I wish I could’ve. Suddenly, the physical toll of working the shovel didn’t seem so bad if only Bunny’s wandering hand and the stench of his sweat would take their leave.

Instead, I found myself fake-laughing at some fucked-up joke he made about one of the al-Qaeda he’d killed yesterday. Something about them sucking air through the hole he’d blown in their spine, how he’d thought of sticking his dick in it for a quick blowjob… I had a feeling that Bunny’s creativity would never cease to amaze me, nor would his blatant lack of regard for human life.

But I shouldn’t have been talking. I’d blown away three men yesterday out of peer pressure and hate.

“You like that one?” Bunny said, grin spreading from ear to ear. “Wait ‘til I tell ya about – “

Thwack.

My head snapped around to glimpse the remnants of a tree’s bark exploding in a puff of air, a gunshot announcing its presence along with the sound it made against the wood.

I dropped my shovel, and dove into what Taylor and I had managed to dig so far of our foxhole, fingers dragging across the earth and soil lodging itself beneath my fingernails as I grasped desperately for my M-4.

My heart thudded rapidly in my chest, but I couldn’t hear it over the ringing in my ears; more gunshots followed suit, and equipping my headset wasn’t my priority at the moment.

The gunfire was coming from the trees to the north of us, where the platoon officers had said the al-Qaeda would be headed from. But if these were the same ones, they’d arrived much earlier than their estimation.

Bunny was shouting something; I could tell that much from the way his ribcage expanded and contracted so fervently against my side, where he’d fallen into cover between Taylor and I, and I was just propping up my elbows to open fire when he stuck his head up and began reefing on his trigger, spraying the forest wildly with rounds. Casings landed beside me in the dirt, and I tried not to flinch every time the brass caught a wink of sunlight.

With him laying cover fire, I had enough time to toss my helmet and headset on and pull my plate-carrier around myself before getting myself back into position to shoot.

I was working up the nerve to poke my head out from my foxhole, but seemed to be frozen.

Just do it for a second, I told myself, but another part of me caught the splatter of blood and the violent whiplash of a skull and I also thought to myself, I don’t want to die.

So I thrust my arms up so that barely my wrist was showing, and my gun was held over my shoulders, and I fired blindly into the trees.

When I was out of bullets, I pulled my rifle back down so that I could grab another mag from my rig, little rivers of dirt cascading down around my face as I did so. My eyes and sinuses burned as I inhaled, and a cough wracked my body, but I shoved the mag into place with a relieving click.

With my headset now protecting my ears, other sounds were starting to trickle in past the gunfire: the frenzied shouting of al-Qaeda, the hammer of sandals and boots against earth above me.

And suddenly, my M-4 was being kicked from my hands, and I was staring up at one of the terrorists, their dark eyes wild from where they peered at me beneath their distinguishable black niqab, though the rest of their uniform was camouflaged, designed to mimic U.S. soldiers.

But darker than their wild eyes was the barrel of the AK-47 that stared down at me, maybe a foot from my face.

Though my heart had been palpitating wildly, I thought for a moment that it might have stopped.

I was being yanked upward by the collar of my uniform, and I gritted my teeth, hands lunging for their arms, their throat, but all in vain, for I was seized, not just by one soldier but by three.

But the gunshots had finally ceased, and the al-Qaeda had descended on us like an inexorable tide. Grunts and screeches of defiance mingled with their shouting as my fellow soldiers fought against their clammy, choking hands and their ruthless shoves.

One of these shoves sent my body flying to the earth, a spray of dust raining around me, coating a tongue that was exposed by my panicked breaths, and wedging itself between rheumy eyelids.

Beside me lied a bloodied and mangled Gardner, his chin quivering as he rolled his head to meet my gaze past dying eyes. I swallowed bile as the metallic stench of his blood and the sordid tang of his punctured guts filled my nostrils, and I reached for the rifle that rested beside him, his fingers attempting weakly to close around its stock.

But Gardner shook his head at me, fear laced brightly into those dying eyes, and I hesitated, pulling my hand back beneath me.

Don’t try and be a hero, some part of my mind narrated this action. Just live.

So I was yanked viciously back up, empty-handed, my unlatched helmet falling to the earth, and then my world became blackness; my breaths were coming hot and fast against burlap, and someone’s hand tightened the bag around my throat for a moment just to choke a sputtering cough from me.

But I conceded, allowed rough, calloused fingers to shove me forward over perilous terrain that I could no longer see, and allowed the compensator of an AK to rest assuredly against my spine.

---

Brilliant light blinded me as the burlap sack was torn from my head, and I cringed, wincing against the flashlight that someone was holding to my retinas. It strobed a few times, and I blinked hard against the rheum and dirt and dried mucus that rimmed my eyes. I felt my head roll like a bobble-head’s on an unsteady axis, and a knife split my skull, hot and fiery. My jaw gaped open, and I inhaled the musty stench of straw, the staleness of the air, the faint yet rotten tang of dried blood that my weary eyes now glimpsed beneath my bound legs.

The room was dim, brighter than the burlap sack only by a few shades; it took my eyes a second or two to adjust since the flashlight, and as they did, I dragged them deliriously across the fractured seams of the walls, where daylight spilled in and highlighted clouds of dust that clung thick to the stale air.

My legs burned as hot as my skull, and I was almost certain that I’d torn a ligament or two when they’d escorted me down the rocky terrain of the mountains. Though I’d no idea what direction we were facing, we’d lost plenty of elevation.

Two men stood in the room with me. One uttered unintelligibly into his partner’s ear, though I recognized a few of the syllables, the cadence of his language, to be Arabic. I was fairly certain he’d been the asshole with the flashlight.

The other simply stared at me from those dark eyes, nodding along to who was probably his superior. I couldn’t really tell apart from their body language; their uniforms mimicked ours, though they bore no badges of honour. As far as I knew, terrorists had no real honour.

Fucking pigs, I thought to myself, though I kept my lips sealed. And it was only after my mind uttered these words did I recognize them to be Barnes’.

Once the first man had spoken into the second’s ear, the latter of the two revealed himself to be a translator, for he spoke to me in accented, broken English:

“Tell us mission. How many of you? Where? Purpose here?”

I swallowed past a dry throat, and my gaze flicked to the man who now left the translator’s side to pick from an array of tools on a splintered, deteriorating bench. He was the torturer, and I was his prisoner of war. If I didn’t talk, he would make me.

I hissed in a sharp breath, and clenched my teeth, now glaring up at the torturer’s dark, emotionless eyes and bracing myself for whatever was to come. But something in those veiled, glassy eyes, something in the way he walked toward me told me that there was no way, not even from the training that I had received, that I could prepare myself for anything that was to come.

The torturer held an iron rod that glowed hot with fire; he muttered something to the translator.

“Look down,” the translator told me. “Don’t look in his eye.”

I furrowed my brow, confused, but dropped my gaze to the floor, my eyes once again tracing over the dried blood that had spattered the dirty floor beneath my chair.

They were trying to ingrain subordination into me, I realized; it was their first attempt to break my will.

Though my gaze never left the floor, I promised to myself in that moment that I wouldn’t break, that I wouldn’t compromise any of the men that I had trained and fought with. Not Barnes, not Elias, not even Bunny, who would’ve probably given my name up without a moment’s hesitation.

I felt the heat of the iron grow closer to my flesh, to the sleeve they had ripped upward on my arm.

“Start talking!” The translator screamed at me, and the torturer gripped my jaw in his firm, merciless grasp, dirtied and bloodied fingernails digging past the flesh and feeling as if they might scrape bone.

I gasped, pain searing along my jaw, but I kept my gaze on the floor, and my tongue bound.

A pair of knuckles struck my cheekbone, and my head whipped to the side, but I merely breathed, listened to the sound of my heart drumming against my ribcage, counted the beats and kept my mind off of the horrors that were only beginning to unfold.

Then, it was the iron that struck my flesh, and I convulsed in my chair as pain greeted every nerve of my body, and I wailed, screeched, lamented my pain until a filthy, sour rag that tasted of urine and grime was stuffed between my molars.

When the iron left, its searing pain did not; I glanced down at my arm, at the reddened, swollen skin that seemed to be starting to peel away like old leather. I panted short, frenzied breaths around the rag in my mouth, and I counted the beats of my heart again.

One, two, three, six, eight, eleven… I couldn’t keep track anymore.

“Talk!” the interrogator yelled at me again, but I remained still, my body a statue in every way but the fervid heaving of my chest and the shaking, quivering curling of my fingers into a loose fist.

My shirt was torn from my torso, which, for a moment, was almost a relief, for the room, in the heat of the summer and its stagnant air, was like a boiling pot. Sweat glistened across every inch of my flesh, beading and collecting to form rivulets down the grooves of my abdomen and back.

But then, next came my bra, and my trousers, and even my boots and socks. I shivered, the sweat that had beaded on my flesh beginning to chill me, the sensation so alien in contrast to the magma that boiled on the flesh of my arm.

My whimpers were made into what I was now convinced was a urine-soaked rag, and I resisted the urge to curl in on myself, to appear weaker to my torturers. They wanted to humiliate me.

And then my world tipped over, my head growing light as it fell like an iron weight to the floorboards, the backings of my chair digging harshly into my bare spine and the impact sending a jolt through my quivering body.

The rag was ripped from my mouth in time to unleash a cry, but then blackened my face, and my heart, which was already running in time to a racehorse, skipped a beat in my chest.

In survival training, every soldier had been water-boarded for a number of seconds to prepare us for times like this. Even in training, nearly every recruit had given in to this method of torture. I’d hoped and prayed that day that it would’ve been the last time I ever experienced it.

I wormed beneath my bindings in anticipation, the ropes twisting into my flesh and allowing bubbles of blood to emerge along my wrists, hot against my skin, metallic in my nose.

Someone’s fingers were laced into my hair, holding my head down, and the rag flattened against my face, curving around the orifices of my mouth and nostrils as a cold liquid poured across it.

And I began to drown.

Oxygen became nonexistent, though my lungs fought for it like a ravening wolf would its prey; they filled, tightened, and convulsed, and my mind could not even count to one with the beating of my heart, because all I knew was panic. All I knew was helplessness. All I knew was the flood, the burning of my nasal cavity and the absence of life from my lungs.

And finally, after an indeterminate amount of time, the cloth was removed, my bulging eyes darting across the cracks in the overgrown ceilings, and an elbow struck my abdomen, made me heave the watery contents of my lungs or my stomach or both onto my chest and the floor next to me.

The torturer pulled me up by the roots of my hair, contorting my face in pain, and he asked me again to talk.

When trained for becoming a POW, every officer always told you that there was a point you would reach when you needed to start talking for your survival, but to only give up information that was irrelevant, that bid you time.

With my body trembling, my flesh on fire and my muscles seizing and my lungs burning so intensely that tears poured from my eyes, I realized that now was this time.

“My name is Private Alexis Ryder,” I coughed, spurts of water flying from my lips. “I am a soldier in Two Bravo, a squad in the second platoon of Bravo Company.” I panted out a couple more frenzied, wet, gurgling breaths, and then recited my serial number.

Spittle landed across my cheekbone as the torturer communicated some words in Arabic, and his translator said,

“More, girl. More, or your punishment won’t stop.”

My trembling lip curled over my teeth, and my eyelids fluttered, delirious, but the torturer’s hold tightened on my locks.

I thought of my father. He wouldn’t have given up the details of his mission, wouldn’t have been broken.

I thought of Barnes. He would’ve spat back in their faces.

And, strangely, I thought of Elias, and his bright, blue eyes, and the stars that glittered above him in a hollow, black sky.

And I wanted to ask him what he saw in them. I wanted to ask him if he ever looked up and thought about Heaven, or a life after death. I wanted to ask him if he feared death as I did, in this moment.

The torturer released my scalp, but landed another blow to my stomach, and I keeled over, ropes tightening against the abrasions on my wrists.

And then the two left, and my tears pooled on quivering, naked kneecaps before trickling down aching calves like venomous snakes leaving a lifeless corpse.

---

I had blissfully nodded off, and when I peeled back crusted, tear-ridden eyes, I noticed daylight again through the seams of the walls, and the air around me felt cold, frigid against the sweat and tears and blood that had congealed on my bare form.

It must have morning again.

The first sound I noticed was the screaming.

The wails that echoed down the halls, beyond my room of isolation. The howls that were likely from the rest of my teammates, the “cherries” that had been digging the foxholes.

Taylor was probably one of them.

And then I heard the faint humming of music, so low that for a moment, all I could do was close my blurry eyes and listen, gulping against the dryness of my throat and the taste of bile and urine on my tongue.

Ever-so-softly, “Heroes”was playing, and with how heavy each limb weighed, with how much pain still coursed from the charred flesh of my arm and the chasm that split each leg, and the sting that had formed beneath each rope, I wondered if this was my passing, my ascent through the pearly gates themselves.

But when I blinked open my eyes, forcefully blinking the rheum from them, I saw one of the al-Qaeda men sitting with his back leaned against the wall, and a niqab pulled back around his ears to make room for a pair of headphones. He rocked his head gently to the beat.

“Hey,” I snapped, though my voice came out quiet, weak from my strangled lungs.

“Hey,” I spoke, louder, collecting the deepest notes of my diaphragm and thrusting them into the stale air between us.

The al-Qaeda’s head snapped up, and he set the headphones and the iPod aside next to my other belongings.

“That doesn’t belong to you,” I hissed, and swallowed again past the taste of bile as I bravely – or perhaps foolishly – met his eye.

“You belong to us now, girl,” The terrorist growled as he strode forward. His English sounded crisper than the last, though I couldn’t tell them apart. They all wore the same thing, all shrouded their faces in darkness. I’d begun to wonder if it was more than a cultural custom, or a means of obscuring one’s identity – if, perhaps, it was yet another variable to drive one mad.

“So you’d better talk,” he added, his fingers wrapping around my throat and emptying my lungs of any breath.

Past my strangulation, I mouthed a few vulgarities, and this caused his grip to loosen, his eyes to narrow from between the dark lines of his niqab.

I remembered how helpless, how useless and impotent I had been after my first firefight, and I refused to be that pathetic, scared child again. I refused to be anything less than my father, or Barnes, or the hero that I’d set out to be.

“No,” I panted.

Rage danced in those beady, dark eyes, and a clammy hand ran down my flesh, streaking blood across it. A dirtied fingernail dragged over my nipple, and I winced.

“I’m going to rape you, if you don’t talk, girl,” the al-Qaeda warned, his thumb now hooking the hem of my underwear and his filthy fingernails digging deep into my hipbone.

I swallowed. I panted. I counted my heart-beat again. And I closed my eyes.

The jingle of a metal buckle nearly made me flinch, but I steadied myself, forced a calm to wash over my trembling form that nearly rocked from each beat of my heart.

I heard the thud of a rifle being placed on the ground, felt the brush of its wooden stock against my toe.

My wrists began to fumble with my bindings, pushing the rope past the abrasions of my flesh. They were looser than they’d been before, perhaps from my struggle, and hope flared from somewhere deep inside my chest. Somewhere dark, somewhere buried, it blazed to life, a sole light in an endless expanse of black.

As the belt hit the floor alongside the AK, I jolted, not from the sound but from the freeing of my wrists; the rope had sidled down and was now cradled delicately over the hillocks of my knuckles.

And then, shouting, and the hammering of boots against the floor joined the echo of wails, and my eyes shot open, gazing past the al-Qaeda torturer and to the door that remained closed.

Gunshots rang in my ears, and his head snapped to the door, too.

This was my chance, and I took it.

I tore my bloodied wrists from my bindings and lurched forward, sending my chair tumbling over where my ankles were still bound to its legs. My finger wrapped around the trigger of the AK, and the others elevated it enough to fire a round into my captor’s leg.

His scream curdled my blood, but it also stoked something in that abyssal wasteland in my chest, a human instinct to survive, to hate, to kill.

I shot a couple more rounds somewhere into his chest, and he collapsed on the floor beside me, blood pooling at my fingertips and staining the long strands of blonde hair that clung to the floorboards.

I took the butt of the AK and began slamming it against the rope that bound my ankles, my muscles straining with each effort but adrenaline giving every cell a newfound strength.

Finally, I scrambled free, frayed ropes falling from bruised and bloodied ankles, and with one hand cradling the AK, I reached the other to pull my khakis over my legs, and hastily pulled my shirt around my shoulders, but didn’t bother with the buttons.

My head spun, and I teetered, but I steadied my shoulder against the wall. Even though every instinct told me to curl up against it in the fetal position and let the battle rage on outside the door, I forced myself back into the fray.

I shoved the iPod into the pocket of my khakis, hooking the headphones in their hem, and then thrust the barrel of my weapon towards a door that rattled and shook on its old hinges.

My finger tensed, the iron sights moving and blurring out of focus as I fought to steady my breath.

And then a cloud of dust rained down on me, and I raised the barrel of my weapon to the roof, because the uniforms that greeted me bore the stars of the American flag, and the faces that stared at me, though once intimidating, were now so wonderfully familiar.

“Clear!” Warren – the sergeant of Two Delta – shouted, before moving on through the halls with a cluster of followers.

A few others rushed in to my aid, but one gestured the others away.

“Get back in the fight,” Elias barked at them. “Go, get the other prisoners, now!”

A sigh of relief escaped my aching lungs as my gaze settled into blue eyes, and my grip loosened on my rifle as a dizzying wave struck my skull.

“Ryder,” he said, his eyes raking across my form with urgency. “Are you injured?”

“Elias,” I breathed, and as I staggered across the floor, my fingers reached for him, brushing the fabric of his shirt and grazing the hot flesh of his neck.

“Alex,” he repeated, and asked me the same question as his hands wrapped around my waist.

“I don’t know,” I breathed, my words barely a whisper as darkness teased the edges of my vision.

He smelled of sweat, but also of wildflowers, and earth; and when I inhaled, my head reeled again, the darkness threatening to consume me. But I was okay with that. I was okay with being transported from this nightmare into a place where I could embrace those beautiful scents of nature, where I could be cradled by the warmth of his touch – it soothed my aching body, like honey melting and oozing through every pore.

I wasn’t thinking anymore. My world was being fed in broken fragments to me.

The baritones of his voice murmuring above me, the brightness that streamed through the cracks in the ceiling, the weightlessness that seemed to consume me, the warmth of that honeyed-touch lulling me into sleep as the final thread of my consciousness snapped like a wire.

#fanfiction #elias grodin #platoon #platoon 1986 #my writing #heroes #oc: alexis #sgt. elias #mdni #there's smut in this story i'm just not saying where because spoilers but you've been warned

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