#sir lark

[actionsurges]

Lord of Fracture, Sir Lark

[transbookoftheday]

My Favorite Trans Books

Today is my (@traeumenvonbuechern) birthday, so I want to share some of my favorite trans books with you to celebrate!

[begaydodrughailsaten]

*thinks about lark oak garcia*

[lesmisscraper]

The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being even to God, that is love.

Love is the salutation of the angels to the stars.

How sad is the soul, when it is sad through love!

What a void in the absence of the being who, by herself alone fills the world! Oh! how true it is that the beloved being becomes God. One could comprehend that God might be jealous of this had not God the Father of all evidently made creation for the soul, and the soul for love.

The glimpse of a smile beneath a white crape bonnet with a lilac curtain is sufficient to cause the soul to enter into the palace of dreams.

God is behind everything, but everything hides God. Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love a being is to render that being transparent.

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the attitude of the body may be, the soul is on its knees.

Parted lovers beguile absence by a thousand chimerical devices, which possess, however, a reality of their own. They are prevented from seeing each other, they cannot write to each other; they discover a multitude of mysterious means to correspond. They send each other the song of the birds, the perfume of the flowers, the smiles of children, the light of the sun, the sighings of the breeze, the rays of stars, all creation. And why not? All the works of God are made to serve love. Love is sufficiently potent to charge all nature with its messages.

Oh Spring! Thou art a letter that I write to her.

The future belongs to hearts even more than it does to minds. Love, that is the only thing that can occupy and fill eternity. In the infinite, the inexhaustible is requisite.

Love participates of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. Like it, it is the divine spark; like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable. It is a point of fire that exists within us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can confine, and which nothing can extinguish. We feel it burning even to the very marrow of our bones, and we see it beaming in the very depths of heaven.

Oh Love! Adorations! voluptuousness of two minds which understand each other, of two hearts which exchange with each other, of two glances which penetrate each other! You will come to me, will you not, bliss! strolls by twos in the solitudes! Blessed and radiant days! I have sometimes dreamed that from time to time hours detached themselves from the lives of the angels and came here below to traverse the destinies of men.

God can add nothing to the happiness of those who love, except to give them endless duration. After a life of love, an eternity of love is, in fact, an augmentation; but to increase in intensity even the ineffable felicity which love bestows on the soul even in this world, is impossible, even to God. God is the plenitude of heaven; love is the plenitude of man.

You look at a star for two reasons, because it is luminous, and because it is impenetrable. You have beside you a sweeter radiance and a greater mystery, woman.

All of us, whoever we may be, have our respirable beings. We lack air and we stifle. Then we die. To die for lack of love is horrible. Suffocation of the soul.

When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar.

On the day when a woman as she passes before you emits light as she walks, you are lost, you love. But one thing remains for you to do: to think of her so intently that she is constrained to think of you.

What love commences can be finished by God alone.

True love is in despair and is enchanted over a glove lost or a handkerchief found, and eternity is required for its devotion and its hopes. It is composed both of the infinitely great and the infinitely little.

If you are a stone, be adamant; if you are a plant, be the sensitive plant; if you are a man, be love.

Nothing suffices for love. We have happiness, we desire paradise; we possess paradise, we desire heaven.

Oh ye who love each other, all this is contained in love. Understand how to find it there. Love has contemplation as well as heaven, and more than heaven, it has voluptuousness.

"Does she still come to the Luxembourg?" "No, sir." "This is the church where she attends mass, is it not?" "She no longer comes here." "Does she still live in this house?" "She has moved away." "Where has she gone to dwell?"

"She did not say."

What a melancholy thing not to know the address of one's soul!

Love has its childishness, other passions have their pettinesses. Shame on the passions which belittle man! Honor to the one which makes a child of him!

There is one strange thing, do you know it? I dwell in the night. There is a being who carried off my sky when she went away.

Oh! would that we were lying side by side in the same grave, hand in hand, and from time to time, in the darkness, gently caressing a finger,--that would suffice for my eternity!

Ye who suffer because ye love, love yet more. To die of love, is to live in it.

Love. A sombre and starry transfiguration is mingled with this torture. There is ecstasy in agony.

Oh joy of the birds! It is because they have nests that they sing.

Love is a celestial respiration of the air of paradise.

Deep hearts, sage minds, take life as God has made it; it is a long trial, an incomprehensible preparation for an unknown destiny. This destiny, the true one, begins for a man with the first step inside the tomb. Then something appears to him, and he begins to distinguish the definitive. The definitive, meditate upon that word. The living perceive the infinite; the definitive permits itself to be seen only by the dead. In the meanwhile, love and suffer, hope and contemplate. Woe, alas! to him who shall have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will deprive him of all. Try to love souls, you will find them again.

I encountered in the street, a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was worn, his elbows were in holes; water trickled through his shoes, and the stars through his soul.

What a grand thing it is to be loved! What a far grander thing it is to love! The heart becomes heroic, by dint of passion. It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure; it no longer rests on anything that is not elevated and great. An unworthy thought can no more germinate in it, than a nettle on a glacier. The serene and lofty soul, inaccessible to vulgar passions and emotions, dominating the clouds and the shades of this world, its follies, its lies, its hatreds, its vanities, its miseries, inhabits the blue of heaven, and no longer feels anything but profound and subterranean shocks of destiny, as the crests of mountains feel the shocks of earthquake.

If there did not exist some one who loved, the sun would become extinct.

Vol. 4, Book 5, Chapter 4.

The 15-Pages Love Letter of Marius for Cosette in <Il cuore di Cosette>.

[willow-lark]

bold words from a man whose name is dylan with a w

[lgbtqreads]

Happy International Nonbinary People’s Day 2022!

Happy International Nonbinary People’s Day 2022!

Today is International Nonbinary Day, so here’s a post to help you celebrate in traditional bookish fashion! This post only includes books that were either not featured in or not published by previous International Nonbinary People’s Day posts, so for more, click here and here! Books to Buy Now The Best Liars in Riverview by Lin Thompson Aubrey and Joel are like two tomato vines that grew along…

[bookwormchocaholic]

I'm rewatching "Lark Rise to Candleford," for like the hundredth time. I found I can't stand Sir Timothy Midwinter. He was never a favorite of mine, but this time around I loath him. He's not evil or anything, at times he can show kindness.

Throughout the first series, he's newly (?) married to Lady Adelaide and though he cares for her on some level, he clearly married her due to societal pressures and to have an heir. Lady Adelaide, on the other hand, loves him and is trying to do what is expected of her. She's not blind to his love for Dorcas Lane...IMO Sir Timothy does little to hide his feelings, going to Dorcas when he is struggling in his marriage and for other community matters. Then there are their daily rides. Dorcas begins to distance herself and begins a relationship with the new school master, trying to move on from the past. Sir Timothy isn't pleased that Dorcas isn't pining away for him.

When Lady Adelaide announces the pregnancy, Sir Timothy isn't overjoyed...he appears sad. Granted Lady Adelaide did it in a public way, when she should have told him privately first. But I can't fault her for some of her actions when she knows she'll never be first in her husband's heart.

I know Sir Timothy and Lady Adelaide reconcile and move to London in the last episode of the season one. But I still can't stand Sir Timothy Midwinter.

Note: sorry, that's the only gif I could find of Sir Timothy.

[druidberries]

not the random taking pictures of lark on the slip 'n slide

[idanit]

The hour remained rather on the painful side of ack-emma, but the lark was on the wing, the snail on the thorn, and Jeeves in my room doing the important work of restoring this Wooster to the world, body and soul.

"Jeeves, you stand alone," I said after I had a bit of that.

"If I may be so bold, sir, I think I no longer do."

[risetherivermoon]

not enough people talk about how funny the scene of lark pretending to be sparrow in the papa johns arc is when you relisten to it knowing it isn't sparrow whos talking 😭

LIKE SIR-

[actionsurges]

lark be upon you.

[leohtttbriar]

i really really adored that jadzia went all in for lenara in "rejoined." that she said to sisko 'i know and believe that the symbiont life is precious and should go on' and then said 'but i love her.' it's sir lancelot of her. so desperate and perfect. and also she's still acting in a way that upholds the life of the symbiont. it's not jadzia's love as jadzia alone that she chose to sink into. it's a combination of things that begin with dax. torias, who was who he was bc of dax and the other past-lives. now jadzia, who is who she is bc of them all. it's a multi-being, multi-person Romantic romance and she stood on the balcony and waited to see it end bc that's what romantic heroes do, actively swallowing their heartbreak and letting it end out of deep respect and also for the poetry of it, and. because it was the lark, herald of the morn, not the nightingale.

[andrastepls]

UNTIL DAWN.

synop: reader (callsign lark) and ghost chat over comms one rainy evening. maybe in the same universe as A/SMR ?

warnings: noooone ?

i have once again not proofread shit

The sound of rain pelting down on her makeshift tent was all encompassing, loud — and cold.

Under other circumstances, she would’ve loved the sound. The pitter patter of the droplets may well have lulled her to sleep, but not tonight. Camped out atop a roof adjacent to enemy territory, huddled up underneath a pair of wooden pallets and garbage bags that she’d propped up against the side of the wall, a thermal blanket held up to her nose in an attempt to retain some warmth — this was anything but comforting.

Maybe that was why her eyes kept flicking to her comm. Knowing a familiar voice was just on the other end of a radio wave. He, Ghost, never turned his off. Especially not while she was out on her own, “Manners,” was his response when asked why.

“Lt?” she begins, her voice a breadth above a whisper, “You awake? Over.”

There’s a lull of silence. Not even the static there to keep her company when she lifted her finger from the button.

“Copy, Lark. How you holdin’ up? Over.” came the slight grogginess of his voice, a telltale sign that he had been nearly asleep, if not outright unconscious.

She pauses before answering; namely, what was she going to say? She woke him, it had to be a better reason than being cold and lonely. He was probably cold and lonely too. If he even got lonely. He didn’t seem the type for it. In the two years she had known him, if there was anything she could figure, it was that Lieutenant Riley was someone who enjoyed his alone time.

“Lark?” his voice sounds again with a crackle of static, sounding more awake.

“Here, sir.” she replies, “Just . . . needed to hear a familiar voice. Sorry to wake you. Over.” and she expects that to be the end of it. It was silly of her to bother him over something so mundane. It was weak, and overstepping and —-

“Cold as hell tonight.” he says, dropping formalities. Her chest feels tight. Guilty.

“. . yeah.”

“Y’ got enough thermals up there?”

“For tonight, if it doesn’t flood up here.”

And she swears, she swears, she hears the end of a snorted-laugh when he answers, “The roof innit gonna flood, kid.”

Fighting a smile, she hides herself further into the silver blanket, ducking her head inside and curling her legs up closer, “You’re gonna feel real silly saying that when you need a boat to evac me in the morning.”

"Sure we got a little floaty around here somewhere, if it comes to that." he replies, taking on the tone of a man who thought himself to be hilarious -- having been on the receiving end of his jokes in the past, well . . .

"One with duckies on it, I hope."

"Mm. Nah. Little fish." the Lt. says, his smirk evident in his voice. A smirk she had never seen, but had grown quite accustomed to hearing.

"Nemo?" Lark grins, pulling her sleeves further up to cover her hands in the interim between their comments.

"High standards there, huh?"

"You have no idea, Lt. Nemo or bust."

"I'll see what I can do." he chuckles a bit, and she tries to picture him being up there with her. He was intimidating, no doubt about that, but he brought a certain comfort with him. A sense of safety, even. Must have come with the territory of doing what they did.

You either had each others back, or you all died. That, or get hunted down. Bleak, unless you sucked it up and worked together.

"Fallin' asleep, kid?" Simon's voice comes through again in a crackle of static.

"Nah -- don't think I'm gonna get much sleep tonight." still, she fights back a yawn. It wasn't a matter of not wanting to sleep, because she wanted to. Badly. Getting back to base couldn't come soon enough.

There’s a moment of silence, and she wonders if he had fallen asleep himself. She couldn’t even blame him. Freezing rain, creeping up on 3 A.M. Dawn isn’t all that far off, she told herself, just power through a few more hours.

“Can stay on with ya,” he suddenly says, clearing his throat a little, “Should at least try to get a few winks.”

“That your way of telling me to shut up, Lt?” Lark asks, not bothering to try and hide the sleepy smile evident in her reply.

“Maybe.”

“Brutal.”

“Do I gotta make it an order?”

“Maybe.”

He laughs. Laughs. It makes her chest tighten so unfairly; worse, when she realizes she would do damn near anything to hear that again.

“Get some shuteye, Lark. That’s an order.”

“Mm.” She hums, pulling her thermal over her head, listening to the rain continue to pitter-patter on her makeshift shelter, “See you in the morning, Lt.”

“Jus’ a couple hours.”

“ . . just a couple hours.” she mutters back, tucking her walkie underneath her chin as she settled back in. Forcing her eyes shut as he says a muffled ‘Goodnight’ into the comm.

A/N: i’ve had an idea like this for months, and when i read this, i couldn’t stop myself B) . . . might continue this ? idk

[boxboxlewis]

galex, only four beds, 2k

George said he would book the hotel room himself. Cara was busy, smoothing out the endless administrative details of George’s life, and it wasn’t work travel, anyway—just a little lads’ holiday with Alex, just a stolen slice of time out of time, away from it, in the hot summer weeks when Formula 1 held its collective breath and waited for the season to restart. A spur-of-the-moment thing, after Alex’s plans with Lily fell through. A lark.

Underneath all that was another secret reason for making the booking himself: a sly secret sideways reason. He called the hotel instead of booking online, to make sure they had the kind of room he wanted available. He barely let himself think about the call even as he was making it, most of his attention fiercely directed at the dense weave of the upholstery Carmen had chosen for the sofa he was sitting on. It had a subtle striped pattern, beige on beige.

They were going to Jersey, because neither of them had been, and because Alex suggested it as a joke and then it seemed funnier, somehow, than it should have: the idea of actually going there. “We’re going to lower the median age on the island by about twenty years,” Alex said, the day before they were due to leave, and George, who had looked up “tourist attractions on Jersey” to have in his back pocket in the event of just this sort of cold feet, said “They’ve got these tunnels from WWII, it looks quite neat actually. And you can windsurf.”

Alex raised his eyebrows and said, “All right, eager beaver.” George thought, without meaning to, of the first time he’d had sex with a girl, wanting to like it, for it to be good.

“I’ve got a deal with the Jersey Tourism Board, as it happens,” he said: the less insane part of him. “This trip is actually hashtag spon.” 

Alex laughed, and didn’t suggest cancelling the trip.

They flew from Nice to Nantes, drove a rental car to St Malo, got a ferry to Jersey. “This is very Planes Trains and Automobiles, isn’t it,” grumbled Alex, even though Cara had arranged all the travel, in the end, and George did the driving.

“Oh, sorry, did you want me to teleport us?” George said. “Because I actually left my superpowers back in Brackley.”

“Oh, ‘superpowers’? Bit of a puffed-up nickname for the W14, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, sorry, remind me what you drive?”

They were still bickering as they walked into the hotel. It felt, to George, more like family than any of his own family’s carefully meted affection.

“Heya,” he said cheerfully to the concierge, “booking for Russell?”

The concierge typed something and smiled at them. “Ah, Mr Russell. Of course, sir. Let me get you checked in, sir.” Alex’s face was carefully blank, in a way that was very easy to read if you knew Alex at all, but George preferred this old-fashioned kind of service to what you got at more modern places where the staff all pretended to be friends with you. Although he turned down the porter who offered to help with their luggage; they only had backpacks.

Alex gestured at the wallpaper as they exited the lift and walked along the corridor to their room. “Bloody typical of you, Georgie. ‘I’ll pick the hotel,’ he said. ‘It’ll be fine,’ he said. And then you bring us to a place where they probably iron the fucking newspapers in the morning.”

“No, come on,” George said. He found the door to their room and slid the keycard in. The lock clicked satisfyingly and flared green. “It’s all iPads now, innit. They iron the iPads.”

As they walked into the room Alex started laughing, gratifyingly hard, and George basked in how well his iPad joke had landed. Then he clocked what Alex was looking at. The room was nice, spacious, big windows with a view out over the harbour, and—crisp white linens on the beds: all four of them. Four single beds, arrayed in a neat line.

“This is like the fucking orphanage in Madeleine,” Alex said. “Which two do you want, mate?” He was laughing again by the end of the sentence.

“I don’t—this isn’t what I asked for,” George said. What he’d asked for, very specifically, was a nice big room with a sea view and one king bed and no sofa. He picked up the handset on the desk by the window and called the front desk.

“Good afternoon, this is Reception.”

“Yeah, hi, Room 310. Erm, we have a bit of an issue, to say the least. There are four beds in here?”

“Let me just check your booking, sir. Ah, yes. I see you booked by telephone? And there’s a note here that you specifically wanted four beds?”

“No,” George said. He glanced over at Alex, who was definitely listening. “I asked for two beds,” George lied emphatically. 

“I am most sorry for the inconvenience, sir.”

“Well, we just… we’ll need another room, that’s all.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, sir. It’s the Battle of Flowers this week; everywhere on the island is booked up.”

George dug the hand that wasn’t holding the handset into his pocket and pressed his knuckles into his thigh. “Sorry, the what? The what of what?”

“The Battle of Flowers? It’s—”

“Yeah, I don’t care, actually. I only booked last week, how could I’ve done that if everywhere is so busy?”

“You must have got lucky, sir. Perhaps there was a cancellation.”

George attempted to channel Toto at his most disappointed and scary. “Right. Right. So what are we going to do about this, then?”

“Don’t worry, sir, we’ll get this sorted for you.”

George put the phone back into the cradle. Alex was kicked back on one of the beds, feet dangling off the end. “You know,” he said, “I’m sort of regretting letting you do all the planning for this trip. You did get us return tickets, right? You haven’t signed us up for some sort of murder mystery tour with actual murder?”

“Ha ha,” George said, sitting on the bed next to Alex’s. “Didn’t see you offering to do any planning, did I?”

There was a knock at the door, and they exchanged a look. “This better be a complimentary fruit basket and bottle of champagne,” George muttered, and went to answer it. Two hotel porters came in: not bearing gifts.

“Hello, gentlemen,” one of them said. “Sorry about this mix-up. Right.” He gestured at his colleague, who nodded. Each porter seized a bed and with great stamping and flipping and manoeuvring got it wheeled out of the room into the corridor. 

One of the porters stepped back in and touched the brim of his cap. “There we go, sir. Won’t happen again. Thank you for your patience, sir.” He stood looking at George, who looked back at him.

Eventually George said “Thank you,” sternly, so as to show he wasn’t the sort of person to stand for four beds in his hotel room.

The porter touched the brim of his cap again, and left.

“He wanted you to tip him,” Alex said, voice lazy. He hadn’t left the bed he’d chosen.

“Tip him?!”

“Mm. People tend to like that. Being tipped.”

George sat back down on the bed next to Alex’s. If he reached his arm out he’d touch Alex’s mattress. “Well, that’s rubbish, isn’t it. I’m not going to tip them for messing up.”

“The porters didn’t mess up,” Alex said. It was something he did sometimes, arguing a point just because he could, just to be a shit. George shouldn’t have found it attractive. He didn’t reply, and after a while Alex started laughing and said, “You do realise that, thanks to your phone call, we’ve now got one measly single bed each.”

“We could push them together,” George said, voice casual, as if it didn’t matter. “We could make one big bed. And then we’d both have more room.”

He watched Alex’s foot flex where it was dangling over the end of the bed. Up, down. Up, down. “Yeah, go on then. All right.”

It was harder to move the beds than the porters had made it look, but eventually they managed it, slotting the frames next to each other landscape-style, because they agreed that was likely to be more stable than having them next to each other lengthways. Then they went down to the hotel restaurant for dinner. The food was heavy, French but French through a time machine.

“God, I bet this was the height of fashion in the seventies,” Alex said, poking at his terrine. “The next time I suggest a holiday destination ironically, just whack me on the head, thanks.”

“I think it’s nice,” George said, and Alex snorted. 

“You would.”

George gave him a look that said, he hoped, I’m not flicking a pea at you right now, but only because this is a quite a nice restaurant even though you’re being a dick about it.

Alex flickered his tongue out, and grinned at whatever George’s face did in response.

They went for a walk along the seafront after their meal. “Come on, this is nice, isn’t it?” George said.

“Eh.” Alex scuffed his foot in the sand. “It’s all right, I guess.” He knocked his shoulder into George’s. “Glad this one worked out, you know. After…”

It took George a second to realise Alex was talking about the holiday they’d planned together that Alex had bailed on because he met Lily. He laughed, too loudly. “No worries, mate, all good,” he said. He thought about asking how things were going with Lily, and then didn’t. “Shall we…?” he asked. “It’s getting dark.”

“Yeah, all right, wild child.”

Alex showered first. He came out of the bathroom in his boxers, towelling his hair. Long legs, long arms, his knobbly ankles and wrists, his big feet, his hands. “All yours, mate.”

George’s mouth was dry. “Yeah,” he said, “I’ll just—”

He jerked off in the shower, one forearm braced against the cool ceramic tile, the other hand furious and too-tight on his dick, the way he liked it. His orgasm was much more intense than he was expecting and he groaned aloud with it, too loudly, and then bit his lip as if that might suck the sound back inside.

“You alright in there, Georgie?” Alex called.

“Yeah, yep.” He dressed in briefs and a t-shirt, then took the t-shirt back off. It was warm, in the hotel room. Warm-ish.

Alex was lying on the beds, head cushioned on one arm. “You’ll go blind, you know,” he said, half-smiling. “You’ll get hairy palms.”

George thought for a split-second about denying everything but then tried a grin, awkward with it. “Come on, like you don’t do it.”

“Not usually in a hotel room with my mate,” Alex said lightly. “Question for you, Georgie: how many beds did you ask for? Real answers only, please.” 

George settled himself next to Alex and shut his eyes. “One.”

“Uh huh. Because…?”

“Because I thought maybe if we had to share a bed we would.” George swallowed. “You would, maybe, you’d realise.”

“Realise what?” Alex said, very soft.

“Realise that you wanted me.”

“George.” George felt Alex’s hand brushing lightly over his shoulder, his chest. He tried not to breathe, in case breathing might make the moment stop. “What about Carmen?”

“She’s not—” How to explain everything that Carmen was not? He settled on “She’s not here.”

Alex hummed in response, and pinched George’s nipple. George yelped.

“Not going to ask me about Lily?” Alex’s finger was circling around George’s nipple, so delicate.

“I—I know she’s, I know I’m not,” George said, Alex’s fingertip trailing down his stomach, outlining his abs. “Look, she’s not here either, is she?”

Alex settled himself on top of George, the heavy mass of him pinning George down like a weighted blanket: but even better because George’s weighted blanket had never implicitly promised to fuck him. George hadn’t been pining for his weighted blanket for years. “What do you want, George?” Alex asked. “Is this a one-time thing? Get me out of your system? Or do you want something longer-term?” He kissed George’s neck, lighting it up, sparks straight to George’s dick. “Want to be my mistress?”

George groaned. “Let’s see how good your dick game is, mate,” he said, and grinned when Alex laughed.

“All right, you minx.” Alex ground his hips down against George’s. “Let’s see how well you take it.” He bit George’s lower lip and then kissed it, sweet and lazy. George bucked his hips up.

And then the second bed rolled away from the first, and George and Alex both fell through the crack between up and thumped unceremoniously onto the hotel carpet.

They sat in shocked silence for a moment, and then started laughing. “Right, ok, back to Plan A,” Alex said. “We’ll just share the one bed, I think.”

It was good with Alex, as it turned out: it was everything George hadn't quite let himself hope for, and the price of it was simply that now he was going to be wanting it, all the damn time.

it takes a village to raise a crackfic. thank you to beautiful geniuses @accio-ricciardo for chatficcing this concept with me, @ininininininstayoutstayout for crucial george dialogue thoughts, and @onadarklingplain for her incredibly kind and helpful comments!

[whump-card]

This Death That I Chose: Chapter 1

2507 words

CW: implied past noncon, derogatory language

Masterlist, Next

~~~

“My name is Lark.”

Joshua Tao studied their new captive carefully. The two of them sat opposite each other in the makeshift interrogation room – a back room in the abandoned house the Watch had set up in, the windows boarded closed. The prisoner had shackles on his ankles and wrists, and with his left arm in a cast from elbow to palm and resting in a sling he was forced to hold his right hand up awkwardly to avoid jostling it. Tao was deeply puzzled by him. The Watch had captured him purely by chance: they strayed too far into the ruins during a night patrol due to an over-enthusiastic new member, and spotted a Military transport van moving along an abandoned track. A split-second decision led to the van being stopped, boarded, and overpowered. When the fighting was over, the Watch headed home to their little rebel settlement with four prisoners – until the three captured soldiers cracked open their cyanide teeth and had to be left to rot in the ruins. That left them with one: silent, wide-eyed, with a broken arm, and clearly the transport’s primary passenger. The soldiers had fought wildly to protect him.

The prisoner was no soldier himself, of that Tao was certain. He had a slim build, hardly any muscle at all, clearly revealed by the sleeveless turtleneck he wore. He had pale skin and silky black hair that was too long and well cared for. Neither did he have the age or aura of an officer; the young man had put up no fight, and now stared down at the table between them, refusing to risk antagonizing his captors with eye contact. His face – which looked small penned in by the dark of mop of his hair and the high turtleneck – was ashen and slick with sweat, the result of the hours-long slog through the ruins on a hot summer night. He didn’t seem scared, though. Instead he seemed cold. Detached.

“Your name is Lark.” Tao echoed, drumming his fingers on the holster of his gun. Like the bird? “Okay, ‘Lark.’ What were you doing in a Military transport going through the ruins in the middle of the night?”

“We were returning from the Conservatorium to the Capital.”

Tao wasn’t expecting such a straightforward answer. The young man’s voice was quiet, with a smooth, controlled cadence.

“What were you doing at the Conservatorium?” Tao asked.

“I needed to see a doctor there.”

“For your arm? It doesn’t look bad enough to warrant a trip to the Con.”

“It was… Badly infected.”

Lark’s first hesitation. Tao made a mental note of that, and moved on.

“So you live in the Capital?”

“Yes, sir.”

‘Sir’? He really doesn’t want any trouble.

“What do you do there?”

Another pause. Lark’s eyes darted back and forth, searching the table for the best answer. Tao suppressed a smile.

“I don’t know anything useful to you,” Lark said carefully.

“That’s not what I asked.” Tao leaned forward. “You’re a scientist, aren’t you? Pumping out murder machines, getting top-notch medical treatment when an experiment goes wrong?”

Lark was shaking his head before Tao even finished talking.

“No, sir. I’m not a scientist. I don’t know anything.”

“Sounds like something a scientist would say.”

“I’m not. You shouldn’t keep me here.”

“Woah!” Tao laughed, “Giving orders already? And here I was, thinking you were a pushover.”

“No, sir, what I mean is, people will miss me, in the Capital. They will come looking.”

Emotion was starting to color Lark’s voice for the first time: a hint of desperation.

“They won’t find us,” Tao said.

“You think he doesn’t know you’re out here?” Defiance. And he.

“So you do know things.”

Lark finally looked up from the table, his eyes meeting Tao’s for the first time. They were dark bronze, like late-season honey.

“No, not anything useful, I swear.” Gone was his carefully measured tone and pace. His words flowed quickly and betrayed a slowly rising panic. “If you keep me here you’ll learn nothing from me and the Commander will destroy this place to get me back. You should trade or ransom me for something that’s actually valuable as soon as you can.”

“Aww,” Tao’s voice dripped with fake sympathy, “It almost sounds like you care about us.” He laughed, then grew serious again. “And it sounds like you’re pretty important to the big guy.”

Lark hesitated again before admitting it.

“Yes, sir. I am. In fact -” He gained a second wind of boldness, leaning forward slightly. “In fact, the Commander took a great risk in resources and political standing by sending me through the ruins to the Conservatory for emergency medical care. He has gone through great lengths to ensure my health and safety, and I know he’d be willing to offer you anything you wanted in exchange for my safe return. But… he’s not a patient man. You’d need to act quickly.”

“Well, what I want is my home, my country, and my brother back.” Tao stared Lark down. “I don’t think that’s going to happen, do you?”

Lark was left speechless, his open mouth trembling slightly. Tao stood.

“I’m going to give you some time to think. I’m sure you can come up with something interesting to tell me. If not… We’ll help you out.”

Tao started to leave, but heard chains rattling behind him.

“Um, please, wait!”

Lark’s tone was much different now. He was scared – clearly he hadn’t thought Tao would cut off their conversation so soon. Tao turned back.

“What is it, thought of something already?”

“No, sir, sorry, I – my arm,” Lark gestured weakly to his sling, “It’s not fully healed. I had antibiotics with me on the transport, I need them so that the infection doesn’t… come back. Please.”

Tao nodded slowly.

“We’ll see,” was all he said.

Tao left the room and found himself toe-to-toe with Becca and Vic, who had been listening just outside the door. They said nothing but made expressive faces as Tao mockingly waved them away and bolted the door – the lack of soundproofing went both ways. How Tao wished they had a real interrogation room, with an intercom and a slick one-way window. But buildings like that hardly existed anymore outside of the Commander's hold.

The three of them moved from the small hallway to what had once been someone’s living room, but was now the Watch’s meeting and strategy room. Vic, the Watch’s other leader along with Tao, practically exploded.

“This is crazy. Do you really think he’s a scientist?”

Tao let out a long breath, cracking his knuckles one by one. The whole thing had him more tense than he realized.

“He’s gotta be. I don’t know what else. If he was some kind of laborer or domestic servant, he could’ve just said.”

Becca, the rebel community’s de-facto “mayor,” snapped her fingers to get the two men’s attention.

“Hey. Did I mishear, or did you vaguely threaten him with torture? Because we’re not doing that. Ever.”

“Oh, jeez, no,” Tao put up his hands, “I was just trying to scare him.”

“Aww,” Vic complained, “Can’t we rough him up just a little? He’s part of a fascist regime!”

“No,” Becca insisted, “And Tao, you better track down that medicine he needs. We respect the Geneva Convention in this house.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Vic, how goes the data retrieval from the Military van?” Becca asked.

“It’s going,” Vic nodded, “We should know a lot more about who this guy is very soon.”

“Good. We’ll talk to ‘Lark’ again when we do. Until then,” she pointed to Tao, “Medicine, and,” she turned her finger toward Vic, “Guard him. No funny business.”

Vic gave a lazy salute. “Got it.”

~~~

Tao was going to get the medicine, he really was. But after being out all night and the skirmish over the transport van, he was exhausted, starving, and had a few bumps and scrapes that were begging for attention. Sustenance came first: he left the house that served as the Watch’s headquarters and walked down the cracked and weathered road to the cookhouse.

The little rebel “town” was modest. It was a ragtag collection of survivors that had set up in an abandoned semi-rural neighborhood, guarded and provided for by volunteer Watchmen who scavenged the nearby city ruins. The houses were spaced apart, and there was thick tree coverage that kept them visually shielded from any aerial eyes that didn’t know what they were looking for.

The cookhouse was a home that had been remodeled shortly before the war to sport a modern open floor plan. This made it the largest indoor space, and combined with its state-of-the-art kitchen it was the best mess hall they could manage.

Tao knocked back two cups of instant coffee and some watery eggs, fending off questions from other breakfast-goers about the Watch’s new prisoner. He only just got here. Yeah, yeah, we’ll make an announcement if he spills something juicy. Only the cook on duty cared to ask him how his food was, chuckling out a good-humored “Today is a disaster!” when he couldn’t fake a good enough smile.

Once he had some peace, he rolled the prisoner’s words around in his head. “Lark.” Yeah, right. But…

“You should trade me for something that’s actually valuable.”

The young man hadn’t sounded like he was lying.

~~~

Tao went to the infirmary next. Their doctor, Faye, was a bony old woman with an ornery personality, but she got the job done.

Once Tao had been patched up and downed some ibuprofen he asked her if his crew had dropped anything off for her. She unceremoniously shoved a shoe box of various supplies into his hands.

“I haven’t gone through it yet,” Faye said, “Looks like quality stuff.”

“Yeah, well…” Tao shuffled through the spare sling and packets of bandages to pull out a pill bottle – the antibiotics. “These were for the prisoner we took, and I think he still needs some of it.”

Faye scoffed.

“That’s good medicine, and we’re wasting it on some fash bastard? Tell me you’re not serious.”

Tao shrugged weakly in the face of her ire.

“Geneva convention?”

~~~

Tao escaped the infirmary without any new injuries and made his way back to the HQ with the shoebox tucked under his arm. Inside he found Vic, bouncing on his heels and practically glowing as he scrolled on a tablet.

“You’re never going to believe this!” Vic crowed.

“What is it? You retrieve the van data?” Tao grinned, certain his scientist theory would pay off.

“Yeah we did! And guess who our little friend in there is.”

“Just spit it out, Vic!”

“He’s the Commander’s whore. Listen to this.”

Tao found himself spinning between Vic’s infectious delight and a horrible sinking feeling. He opened his mouth but was cut off by a compressed, crackly recording emitting from Vic’s tablet.

“Home base, this is transport 562, we have departed Conservatory with the fucktoy, en route to home, ETA 07:00, over.

“Transport 562, this is home base, we read you, please be advised to keep your language clean on the coms, over.”

“Yes sir, revise to: we have departed with the… boytoy. Over.”

“…”

“The Commander’s main squeeze? Over.”

“Jeremy I swear to God-”

Vic stopped the recording with a cackle.

“Can you believe it? No wonder he didn’t want to tell us what his job was!”

Vic continued to laugh, slapping his knee, and Tao felt a hollow, automatic chuckle escape his own mouth. Because… it was funny… right?

“Can you imagine what kind of… literal ass-kisser this dude must be?” Vic wheezed, nearly tearing up, “Who in their right mind would fuck that Palpatine-lookin’ motherfucker-”

“Hey, let me see that.” Tao dropped the shoebox of medical supplies on the table and grabbed at the tablet. Vic handed it over, sinking into a chair.

“Oh shit, who fucks who? D’you think -” Vic’s words were consumed by his own laughter as Tao scrolled frantically through the info scraped from the van. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for, but he found the Conservatory’s visit summary.

“Lark.” No surname.

Based on his birthdate, he’s… 22. Shit.

“Arrived with compound fractures of both the radius and ulna, and severe infection. Patient reports arm was broken twice and set improperly the first time. Patient is unclear when the infection set in.” …Twice?

“Pain management disregarded upon request of the payee.”

Tao dropped the tablet to the table with a clatter and scrabbled at the shoe box, upturning the contents and spreading them out with shaking hands. Vic stared at him, finally coming down from his hysterics.

“What’re you doing?”

“There’s no pain meds!”

“What?”

Tao grabbed the antibiotics and rushed past Vic towards the back room.

“Woah!” Vic jumped up to follow him, “Shouldn’t we wait for Becca?”

Tao ignored him, unbolting the door and flinging it open.

“Lark-”

Tao choked.

In stark contrast to his stiff, prim, upright posture earlier, Lark now sat slumped over, head on the table.

“Hey!” Tao shouted at him. Vic came in to stand beside him, cursing.

Lark didn’t move.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Tao darted around the table, stuffing the antibiotics into his pocket. He put one hand under Lark’s head and one on his shoulder and tried to lift him up without upsetting the broken arm, only to find it already pulled awkwardly out of the sling by the shackled weight of the boy’s other arm. Luckily the cast was holding strong. Lark’s head lolled back, and his eyelids fluttered. His color was even worse than it was earlier and his forehead was hot and slippery with sweat under Tao’s hand.

“Help me!” Tao waved Vic over, “Undo the shackles!”

“Are you sure-”

“Does he look like he’s going to escape, Vic?! Get your head out of your ass!”

Vic hustled over and Tao eased Lark’s broken arm back into the sling and held it steady as Vic sorted through his key ring and unlocked the shackles. Lark let out a tiny, pained whimper that made Tao want to throw up.

“Shit, okay, we gotta – we gotta get him to Faye!”

Vic kicked the shackles out of the way.

“Are you sure-?”

“Vic, I swear I will explain what I think is happening here, but he needs help first.”

Vic hesitated, but understood that stopping to argue would get them nowhere. He nodded.

“Thank you. Okay, Lark?” Tao placed a hand on Lark’s burning cheek to gently tilt his face towards his own. “We’re gonna help you walk a little ways, can you do that for me?”

Lark’s eyes fluttered open, and his unfocused gaze wandered over Tao’s face. His eyes abruptly filled with tears, and he took in a sharp breath.

“Please,” he whispered, “Please don’t break my arm again.”

Tao looked up and met Vic’s solemn stare. The other man had finally grasped that something was wrong.

This was going to be a lot more complicated than they thought.

~~~

Masterlist, Next

Taglist: @angst-after-dark, @sunshiline-writes, @flowersarefreetherapy