#the stone that defined and destroyed his life now consuming him

[akuma-tenshi]

congrats on winning ds mr. campbell i'm going to kill you again if you win nymph

[blackoutspoetry]

The anatomy of starved dogs (part 3)(Ghoap) – FLASHPOINT

This is a chapter of a long form slow burn Ghoap fic I've been working on for the past few months.

This chapter alone is has 16k words, so it might be easier to read this fic on ao3.

Read the first few parts on ao3 here:

WARNINGS: gore and graphic depictions of violence, civilian death, acts of terrorism, torture and permanent disfigurement

4 APRIL 2019

CAPTAIN PRICE'S FLAT, UNDISCLOSED ADDRESS, ENGLAND

The most important thing to remember when it comes to human nature, is that the adult brain is shaped from childhood to pursue something which is mostly unattainable. People are defined by the constant pursuit of what they don’t have. 

The healthy brain, it chases after things it's allowed to get ahold of, grows accustomed to the idea of labour rewarded sweetly at the end of a long day’s work. Even if paid in peanuts, a reward is a reward. 

The unhealthy brain is grown from a childhood bid for survival. The young brain is made to endure and spring up like weeds in concrete, grow through difficulty because it becomes indoctrinated with the aesthetic of suffering. It knows nothing else but the weathering of the storm and has not yet learned the concept of injustice or fairness. 

 It learns its place quickly, grows around the stones and infertile soil and becomes a distended, etiolated seedling in the absence of the sunlight it yearns for. 

But grow, it will, forever doomed to reach with begging arms to sunlight that will not yield, until it begins to view itself as a poetic tragedy, see the beauty in the hollowness of needing and wanting. And once that point is reached, it romanticises having nothing until it  becomes afraid of actually grasping that thing it yearns for. 

There is even a point of hunger where the body has grown so used to not being full, that once fed, it rejects the meal to marinate in its own despair. A work of art, one tragic and beautiful, because it cannot fathom the idea that it was robbed of life. A better life. 

If, however, it realises the injustice, refuses to kneel to its feared master and learns that it too is able to bite, it uses this newfound discovery to its advantage. It cuts off completely from the idea of vulnerability and lashes out at anything that mildly gives it the taste of being subservient once more, so that even things that are only vaguely related to the oppression is now a symbol of the life it had fled from. 

It bites and devours out of fear of returning to that life, over correcting and becoming the very thing it had sworn to destroy. 

In the mind numbing hours following the briefing, Soap thinks Vladimir Makarov might be one of those people, grown from a hard life into a dangerous man, or maybe, he was something more dangerous, one planted in the soil of war fertilised earth from his conception. 

Either way, it only further convinces him that he’d made a mistake agreeing to Price’s terms in that coffee shop. He’s dug himself a grave and he’s damn well made his bed in it too. 

Though Soap is substantially pissed at Price, he honours his wishes and makes a point of laying low until they have to leave for Verdansk at midnight. Price had arranged for him to stay over at his flat for the time being and though his thoughts were consumed with visions of doom, he found it interesting to distract himself by the rare insight into the man’s personal life. 

It's a moderately large place, modestly furnished with two bedrooms, a living room, joint kitchen and dining area, a bathroom barely large enough to stand in and a sofa facing a TV. 

“Make yourself at home, I suppose I don’t need to babysit you, but you might benefit from getting some sleep in before we leave,” Price loosely gestures over to the spare bedroom with the single bed, freshly made and ready for him. 

“Thank you, sir.” 

“Anytime,” Price nods with a hint of guilt. He knows he’s got Soap in over his head but neither acknowledge it, they keep things civil. Whether Price had known about Soap’s talk of retirement remains a mystery to him. 

“I’ve got some work to get done before we leave, so if you need me, I’ll be here,” Price informs him, taking his things and disappearing into the other room where his desk was, leaving Soap standing in the living room.

 

 

It doesn’t take long for Soap to settle into the spare bedroom, throwing his suitcase on the bed with a dejected sigh before beginning to strip out of the thick jacket unsuited to the stale English weather this time of year. 

 

He’s just thrown it on the bed when he hears his phone buzzing with a notification. 

 

He’s put his mother on mute for the time being, so it couldn’t be her, possibly one of his sisters. He supposes he should do some damage control before shit hits the fan, though. 

 

Begrudgingly, he sits down on the edge of the bed and reaches for the phone, swiping at the cracked screen to unlock it. 

 

Five unread messages, better than he expected. Three from his mother, and two from someone he definitely doesn’t have the mental energy to respond to now. 

 

He opens the chat and begins typing back before he’s even formulated what he wanted to say to her.

Elena (barista): heyy so I know its been a while but I wanted to know if you're still interested in that second date?

John: Yes|

‘Yes’ is too short…

John: Ye |

John: |

John: abs |

No, that sounds too enthusiastic and she’ll get the wrong idea. 

John: yes, sure

Before he can change his mind again, he hits send. To his surprise, she begins typing back immediately. 

Elena: Great! How does tomorrow evening work for you??? 

Soap grimaces.

John: I'm actually at work at the moment...

He can almost feel her hesitating on the other end. 

Elena: Work?

Elena: I thought you’re not going back until the 15th??

Soap is unsure how much he should be telling her, but he wants to be as honest as possible. 

John: That was the plan but an urgent last minute thing came up. I only found out about it a week ago.

Elena: oh, okay. But tell me when you think you’ll be available?

John: sure :)

Soap exits the chat and quickly writes back to his mother to confirm to her that he had landed safely, but decides against entertaining the conversation any further after that. 

He tries to get a couple of hours of sleep in before Price comes to fetch him at well after dark for their return to base, but he’s still tired enough by the time they arrive that he has to take two shots of espresso for good measure. 

And then it's off to their designated aircraft, a three and a half hour flight outbound for Kastovia and another promise John MacTavish would inevitably fail to keep. 

 

Its just past midnight by the time Soap finds his seat with Sergeant Burns to his left and Ghost two seats on with Price in between them. Ghost gives Soap a nod of acknowledgement as Soap straps himself in leaning back against the cargo netting behind him and letting his head hit the wall with a thud. 

“You been to Verdansk this time of year?” 

Soap is surprised when Burns asks from beside him. The question is half muffled by the humming of the large cargo door being raised to a close but he shakes his head anyway. 

“Can’t say that I have.” 

“It's nice. Off season so it's not as packed with tourists as it is when all the schools are out. It's beautiful actually, when you’re not working.” 

“You think so?” 

Soap had never had the luxury of being in the city for anything other than a work related crisis. His best memories of Russia and the surrounding countries are the quiet moments when the weapons cease or he’s privileged enough to be in the safety of a fortified military base. 

His worst memories there are by far the most haunting of his career and some of the most life changing. He still has visions of that bomb going off, splatters of blood and shattered bone. He’ll never forget the stillness after Oliver had stopped screaming or the look on his parents' faces when he gave his condolences at the funeral. 

So no, Soap did not consider the idea of finding Kastovia beautiful or inviting in his days off. 

“It’s quite a sight actually. I brought my girl out there to propose last year, to get away from it all.” 

Soap raises an eyebrow. “You’re married?” 

“Almost, the wedding’s in two months. You got anyone waiting for you back home?” 

Briefly the phantom smell of smoke and warm blood fills Soap’s nose and he clutches at the chain around his neck, but the moment’s gone in an instant. 

“Nothing serious at the moment, no.” 

He curses the fact his mind had skimmed over Elena so quickly, but he can hardly call her a significant other. 

“Ah well, I’m sure you’ll find someone soon,” Burns says and reaches into his pocket for a half empty pack of gum. 

The plane had taken off with a rumble and Soap’s ears were having trouble adjusting to the change in altitude. 

“Can I have one of those?” Soap inclines his head to the pack. 

“Sure, but they’re nicotine. I’m trying to quit smoking before the wedding.” Burns tilts the pack in his direction nonetheless and Soap hesitates for a moment, feeling a distant suppressed ache in his chest warning him against it but he silences his concern. 

“That’s alright by me.” 

He takes the stick of gum and pretends not to waver as he pops it in his mouth.

They land in Verdansk three and a half hours later and Shepherd meets them on the ground. Its barely past sunrise and the air is heavy with a piercing cold fog that clouds his measured breaths as Soap steps out of the plane onto the landing strip where a man stood waiting for them. 

The man was around Soap’s height, but he carried himself with an air of authority. Something to indicate he was powerful and very much aware of it. 

He gave them a polite nod by way of greeting. Soap watches his overtly friendly interaction with Price and Burns and then the notably impersonal way he shakes hands with Ghost. 

“Sergeant MacTavish, you come very highly regarded by Captain Price, he’s told me a lot about you.” 

Soap feels himself stiffen but he smiles nonetheless, “all good things, I hope.” 

“ Excellent things,” Shepherd corrects.

“Well, I hope he’s got enough of that in him to live up to the Captain’s expectations,” Ghost chimes in from beside him, not with bite, but Soap can’t decide whether he’s supposed to take the joke as a sign of friendliness or hostility. 

As if sensing the uncertainty in the atmosphere, Price claps him on the back and gives his own response of almost flat feeling reassurance. “He’ll be up for it, I’m sure. But I expect we better get out of the wind before we get into any of the further details.” 

 

The drive takes a while. It isn’t long, but the road out is congested and Soap finds his eyes wandering over the densely packed sidewalks, gaze panning over the figures on the street, blissfully unaware of the danger pending over the city. 

It makes some uneasy feeling run a chill down his spine. An image from the carnage left behind by the street market bomb on Price’s slideshow comes into his mind unbidden and he tries to rid himself of the idea of Verdansk being reduced to rubble. 

The base they’d be operating out of for the next few days was situated on the gentle slope of a hill building up into the nearby mountain range, densely forested with evergreen spruce trees creating a thick coverage for the well maintained dirt road. 

Upon arrival, they pass through heavy security and are let to park on a reserved spot by a painted brick face wall rising into the upper floor of the building. 

Once inside, it is much more temperature controlled and Soap relaxes a bit once they’re through security and the doors are closed behind him. 

General Shepherd’s been in Price’s circle for years. Soap knows about the kinds of things he and Price have buried in the past and he’s got his own theories as to a couple of the more sketchy, off the records things. He gets suspicious about when the talk around base doesn’t match up with what’s on the news, so for him to be standing here in the room with both of them, while official records still have him safely tucked away in Glasgow is disconcerting to say the least. 

He glances to his side at Burns and even gives the futile look over at Ghost on his right, but both of them are tight-lipped and observant, their expressions betraying nothing.

An hour and two coffees later saw Shepherd introducing them to a few men from the local authorities they’d been working with and hurriedly getting them over to a more private room to discuss the details. 

Though Soap is still sceptical of Price’s anonymous source, he keeps his mouth shut for the duration of the discussion, listening intently to the plan for the next day instead. 

The airport had upped its security earlier that month. With Verdansk just gently nudging the border of the country and its frequent conflicts with the nearby Russians, the city has grown desensitised to the sheer amount of military vehicles patrolling the streets at all times. They wouldn’t suspect anything out of the ordinary for there to be a heightened military presence at the airport or the nearby areas. 

The good thing, they figured, would be that Makarov would not be anticipating it either. 

Once more, with detailed information from Price’s informant, they determined that multiple bombs would be left to detonate throughout the airport, but how they planned on getting them through airport security remained unclear. 

By the end of the discussion, they’d concluded that the four of them would enter with the rest of the local team Shepherd had assembled well before the window the informant had provided them with and keep a low enough profile so as to not worry the public but be present enough so that any suspicious activity could be flagged. 

By the time Soap was allowed to leave, he felt as though he was due another coffee with how little sleep he’d gotten in the last few days and the monolith of a task before them. He gets himself a coffee and tries to find some fresh air. 

 

By the next morning, Soap had developed an uneasy feeling about it all, a feeling he doesn’t manage to shake by the time he’s dressed and sharply awake at just before sunrise. 

The sun is high and expectant by the time they arrive at the airport the next morning. The world stands at attention. 

A thin smattering of clouds obscured the sun from view almost entirely and rendered the world washed out and lifeless on the drive out to the airport. 

By the time they’ve parked and Price is well out of earshot, Soap can’t keep it to himself anymore and turns to Ghost nearest to him by the open door of their vehicle. 

“I have a feeling that informant of Price has been feeding us bullshit.” 

“As much as I trust Price, I’m not so convinced either.” 

There isn’t time to talk about it after that. The day at the airport is tense. Speaking is difficult, airport security knows next to no English, with Price and another English speaking security officer needing to translate any time something mildly suspicious turns up. With the extra security keeping a keen eye on the ground, they were sitting in a closed off room watching the security cameras for signs of suspicious activity. 

Security flags a man but it's a bust. He’s pissed and cursing as he’s patted down for the forgotten pocket knife in his coat. A generous amount of similar issues turn up but nothing to write home about. 

A little after that, there was a brief issue on a forgotten suitcase left in a suspicious position on the other side of the airport, but after twenty minutes and broken exchanges, security confirms it was a false alarm. 

Soap doesn’t know if that should disappoint him or not. Even Shepherd starts to look frustrated by the time noon comes around and they’ve noticed nothing else. 

“Any news from your guy?” Ghost asks later and Price gives a frustrated shake of the head. 

“Haven’t been able to get through to him since this morning. Absolute silence.” 

“So he set us up?”

“It's too soon to call any of that, Ghost. Let's not jump to conclusions.”

 

The day’s still young when it all goes to hell. 

Security screens a woman potentially carrying drugs in her suitcase and she is immediately pulled away into a side room and searched. Her suitcase, marked fragile and wrapped in plastic, is thrown onto a table and opened for search. 

“What the actual fuck is wrong with you? There’s glass in there!” 

“An American,” Soap observes, finally glad to be able to understand what was going on around him. 

“Just standard procedure, ma’am,” one of the security officers relay in accented English and indicates for her to hold her arms out for her to be searched. Soap watches her disbelief morph into frustration when her handbag is also tipped out onto the table, sending folded receipts, loose coins and her cell phone clattering out onto the table. 

“Hey, you can’t just mess with my stuff like that,” she says as a man shuffles through her suitcase to find the suspicious item. 

The phone suddenly lights up with an urgent message.

Three missed calls. 

The phone suddenly lights up with an urgent message. 

Three missed calls. 

Mikhail: are you ok? 

Mikhail: answer your phone 

Mikhail: I can see the smoke from my window. Tell me u are ok. 

Mikhail: Jess please, are you at the airport? Did you see it?

 

“Captain, something’s not right here.” Soap reaches for the phone, beckoning Price over to show him the texts. 

“Hey, you can’t just look at my phone. That’s an invasion of my privacy–” 

The phone starts vibrating in his hand as another call comes in, Price turns to her, still kept in place by security. “Who’s Mikhail?” 

“My boyfriend, he’s worried about me.” 

“Why?” 

“Maybe I can ask him if you give me my phone.” 

“Bag is clear,” the man searching her suitcase behind Soap declares and she gives him a harsh glare.  

“I could’ve told you that myself,” she says angrily as she takes her phone back from Soap and calls the number back, hurrying to put her things back into her handbag. 

“I’m fine, I’m fine! Wait, slow down, you’re freaking me out… what… like, actually?”

Soap looks from her to Price. 

“No way… just now?... I didn’t hear anything… are you sure?”  

On the other side of the room, Shepherd’s phone rings in his pocket and he goes to answer it while security escorts the woman out of the room. 

Shepherd’s face morphs into a look of distress and Soap tenses in anticipation. “Say again?” 

Soap can’t make out anything on the other side but it sounds urgent. Shepherd relays the news as he terminates the call. 

“Reports of explosions at the stadium. No official confirmation yet, but it seems like the news has caught onto it.” 

Immediately, Soap curses himself for not trusting his instinct sooner. He knew something was off 

“Makarov used the airport as a diversion.” 

“He could still be at the stadium, we might still have a chance to nail this bastard,” Ghost suggests and they turn to Shepherd for confirmation. 

“Ghost and I can stay at the airport until security can get a read on the situation,  just in case he decides to double back while we’re out. Price, take Burns and MacTavish. The three of you head out and assess the situation at the stadium.”

 

 

The door shuts with a resounding, anxious thud as Price ushers Soap into the passenger seat and straps himself in behind the wheel, acting on muscle memory alone as he releases the handbrake and reverses out of the parking lot at an alarming speed. He turned towards the exit and gestures wildly for the security guard to raise the boom for him to exit the parking faster.

Within a minute, he has navigated out of the incoming traffic and headed onto the highway. 

“What’s the plan when we get there, Cap?” Burns asks from behind Soap. 

“It's difficult to say now. It's fresh. We’ve got no idea what the conditions are or what to expect. So we try to assess and contain the situation as best possible. But knowing Makarov, it's best to assume he’s not done yet.”

“And if he’s there?” Soap asks and Price’s grip on the steering wheel tightens. 

“Then we bring him back.” 

“And if he’s not?” Soap asks. 

“Then this entire operation is dead the water.” 

 

The over chewed wad of gum was bland in his mouth and did little to soothe the tension in Soap’s system as he cast a glance out at the world beyond the passenger window, seeing it pass in a smear of colour. They’ve been driving for a good five minutes now. 

 Heart racing a mile a minute, his anger was only spurred by the comms in his ear as Shepherd's voice came through, confirming the worst. 

“Gold Eagle to Bravo-6. Security confirms gunfire and at least one explosion in the stadium with multiple injuries, over… “

He watches the world in the muted grey, fade from obliviousness to panic as they neared the stadium, seeing the world descending into chaos around them. 

Price reached to press the button on his mic, face setting into a hard look as he yanked the wheel hard for the upcoming turn. “Copy, we’re inbound now.” 

Shepherd’s response was instant. 

“Be advised, Makarov and his men may still be inside. If he’s there, you bring him out– alive.”

Soap felt uneasy about letting the man go with his life, but pushed the concern down, silencing the thought with his own acknowledgement of the order, but it did nothing to ease the growing concern as he caught onto the shifting energy on the street around them. 

“Roger that. Where’s medical?” 

Soap couldn’t make out any words from the civilians outside or let his eyes linger long enough to analyse any of the reactions properly, but they were close enough to the stadium that he knew they must have heard something. 

“First responders will not enter until the scene is clear. The third floor VIP lounge may be Makarov’s next target.” Shepherd’s voice was clear and calm as he spoke, but it instantly added another thread of anxiety to the mix and Soap couldn't stop himself from cursing as Price took another left, narrowly dodging past a truck on the corner and putting them on a street funnelling to the stadium dead ahead. 

“You said it, son,” Shepherd acknowledges Soap over comms. “Ghost and I are ten mikes out. Let's bag this bastard. Out here.” 

The high rise office blocks seemed to shuffle them forward and usher them out to the open air, now enough for them to smell the acrid smoke emanating from the stadium in a rolling curtain of grey heat.

A car swerves onto the road and shoots past them at a speed as they merge onto the main road, panic palpable in the erratic driving of those still on the road and fleeing the scene.

The fear ripples through the crowd like a curtain of panic holding the world in a vice grip and descending over the street like a dire blanket of fear. Even the dying leaves on the trees seemed more dead and wilted into themselves with an unseen oppression, like an incursion of an unknown force pushing hostile tendrils into the ground that the earth itself, and by extension, the trees on the sidewalk, seemed sharp and alert to the whims of its enemy. 

The bleak sky was barren like the sun had withdrawn into itself to make way for the undulating spire of smoke curling into the sky before them from the blazing inferno that leaked from the burst windows of the structure, weeping fire. 

Unconsciously, his hand went for the chain around his neck, but it was obscured by his vest and the lack of that comfort made him feel like he was floating in a sea of disarray with no anchor point. 

“Makarov threatened the airport and hit the stadium instead,” Soap seethes through gritted teeth. Even Sergeant Burns, who had been quiet up until that point, had something to say to the carnage. 

“He’s a fuckin’ madman.” 

A row of orange boom gates that was meant to be blocking off the entrance to the stadium’s underground parking was raised for the hurried exit of the cars, now descended into complete disarray as a car drives straight out through the wrong gate into the incoming lane and almost collides with their vehicle. 

“Fuckin’ hell!” Price cursed as he swerved aside for it, missing it by a hair’s breadth and gunning it to the middle gate before another car could block them off. 

“Civilians are everywhere,” Burns noted, sounding as thoroughly shaken as Soap felt. 

Soap resists the urge to look back at the blaze beside him as Price turns down the ramp to the parking lot. 

“Alright,” Price begins, gathering their collective attention. “Check your shots. We’ll have a lot of unknowns inside.” 

Civilians are fleeing on foot and he doesn’t stop when a man trips on the incline of the road and scuttles out of the way before an oncoming car has the chance to plough him over. 

“And Makarov?” Soap risks a glance back over to the stadium, now towering over them like a lit funeral pyre. 

“You heard the order. ROE still stands. We take him alive.” 

Soap jolted when two cars collided in front of them and glass skittered across the junction. Price had been so fixated on the collision that he didn't notice the civilian rushing in front of them until Soap shouted at him to stop. 

There’s a heavy thud against the hood of the car and for a sickening moment, Soap worries they’ve hit her, but when she stands up unharmed, he breathes a sigh of relief. 

Irritably, Price gestures wildly for her to get out of the road. “Get out of here! Go!” 

They watch her stumble disoriented from their path before shooting off ahead into a dark tunnel. Cars piled up on the outgoing lane and Soap shouts for Price to watch it when a desperate soul reaching the back of the row decides to take a risk and turn onto the incoming lane, narrowly missing them again.

“Close one,” Soap says, trying to make sense of the cacophony of panic surrounding them as he watches for more civilians on foot and desperate cars. 

“We’re still in one piece,” Price concedes mirthlessly as he turns off from the incoming tunnel into a wider section that splits off to a higher floor. 

“Watch it!” Burns cries from the back. 

The wailing of an ambulance siren cuts through the panic and the oncoming glow of a pulsing red light gives them enough of a warning to get out of the way as it rushes past them and they turn up onto the ramp to the higher floor. 

For a moment, Soap has the chance to think its blessedly empty, save for a parked ambulance in his peripheral vision until he witnesses a speeding car mow down a civilian, letting the rest of the group erupt into panic as he reversed and rerouted. 

Soap curses. He glances back at the contorted form of the man as Price drives them past, determination set in his face. 

They can’t afford to go back for him now, probably dead on impact by the look of it, but that wasn’t their concern now. 

“This is chaos,” Burns says. 

“Yeah, it's what Makarov wants,” Price confirms. 

Right now, their concern was Makarov and getting that sick son of a bitch behind bars. Soap sends up a quick prayer for the man now, knowing he’ll forget to do it when they’re out of here and he has time to think, it will be lost to the chaos of the day. 

Price drives them into a single lane funnelling them to another parking block and Soap is relieved to find a welcome sight waiting for them. “Police up ahead.”

“They got here fast,” Burns says as they’re approaching the uniformed men, trying to talk down panicking civilians. Soap was even surprised to see them here so quickly, but he wasn’t going to ask questions with more hands– 

“They’re killing civilians!” Soap cries right as an officer guns down three people and turns towards them. 

He dodges out of the way, shielding his face from the spray of glass bursting inward. 

“Return fire!” Price shouts as Soap manages to get his bearings, tugging on the door handle and reaching for his gun and releasing the seatbelt clasp. 

He practically falls out of his seat as one of the men turns his gun towards them. 

With renewed fervour and hatred for the man they were after, Soap takes down three of the fake policemen in rapid succession. 

The concrete floor is slick with a mixture of blood and viscera and Soap can feel it clinging to the bottom of his boots as he crosses over to the entrance of the staircase leading into the building. A civilian lies slumped against a cold wall. The back half of his skull shot out and he lies marinated in a pool of his own blood.

Not far from him lies one of the officers Soap shot down, gun still tight in his grip. A bullet to the neck had been too merciful a death. His face has got the hard look Soap has come to know with the enemies they deal with, and his hand’s got an old prison tattoo obscured by the cuff of his sleeve. Soap’s seen them enough to recognise it instantly, though. 

“Inner Circle’s posing as police,” Soap relays as Price comes up beside him with Burns in the back, taking point and leading them up the staircase. 

“They’d have access to the VIP area," Burns confirms Soap’s concern. 

“It's on the third floor, let’s move.” 

Another bullet shoots off from an awkward position at the top of the stairs and Soap and Price make quick work of clearing the staircase before emerging into the furnished concourse. 

If he'd thought the parking lot was chaos, this was a step up. 

Several more of the fake first responders were opening fire on civilians, screaming and running for safety only to be shot down by a careless bullet. They trip each other and slick the tiled floors with red. 

Price says something in his ear, but Soap is too preoccupied to register what it is as another police officer pulls his gun on him. 

Soap takes cover behind an advertising screen as another one of Makarov's men fires on him. 

Soap shoots first and the man falls backward with a jolt. 

"Gold Eagle, Bravo-6, we're internal and pushing to the VIP area. Be advised, Inner Circle's posing as police, over." 

"Copy. All police on target are considered hostile."  

"Roger that," Price acknowledges. 

Soap gritted his teeth as he pushed forward against the torrent of fleeing civilians. A heavy weight knocks him sideways as a  man stumbles into him, eyes wide and muttering distraughtly in Russian as he scrambles away from him. 

Ahead of him, one of Makarov's men hurls something through a window and it erupts into flames. 

He ducks more gunfire behind a vacant information desk, scrambling for safety before he reports back to the others. 

"Fuckers are using grenades." 

His lungs burn from the hazy wall of smoke as he moves forward. The floor is covered in contorted bodies and coagulating pools of blood, smelling so strongly that the air around him is tainted with a stomach churning thick fog of burning plastic and stench of iron. 

Burns isn't far behind him, trying to get a civilian to safety but struggling with the language barrier. 

Price barely has time to warn him of the figure running out of the smoke before another one of Makarov's men emerge like a wraith from the haze and nearly manages to get a shot in. He dies with two bullets to the head and neck, hand still reaching for his gun. 

Another woman is shot down as she flees from her hiding spot behind a counter of glass cases selling refreshments, pitching forward into the smudged floor, a stone's throw away from Soap. 

"Fuck!" 

Soap aims to shoot and curses when it clicks empty, quickly ducking behind the kiosk to reload as he grimly locks eyes with the corpse of the woman. 

He takes a deep breath to steel himself before leaving his temporary safe haven and charging at her killer with a rage he didn't think possible. 

Taking the man down he dodges behind a pillar in the centre of the floor as another charges out of the smoke and fires at him. 

A bullet clips his exposed arm and blood runs a warm crimson trail down his forearm. 

He just needs to make it through the concourse and get to the VIP area. His arm can wait. The dead civilians, the smoke in his lungs causing him to become light headed, the mission's already half-failure– it will have to wait.

To his right, Soap finds an entrance to the gift shop, by no doubt shorter than the path around it. 

Soap coughs against the wave of acrid smoke hitting his lungs before he informs the team over comms of his detour. 

He steps around the mangled body in the centre of the floor. Even through the cacophony of screaming and gunfire, he has half the mind to notice how heavy his boots have become, slaked in the grime and glass littering the floor. 

Soap reconvenes with Price by the entrance of a stairwell, taking point. He dodges pasta man running them down two at a time, resisting the urge to move out of harm's way as a barrage of gunfire from the top of the staircase sends bodies tumbling the rest of the way to the landing and piling up together by Soap's feet. 

He makes quick work of shooting up the son of a bitch, wasting no more than two billets to make sure he was properly dead. 

At the top of the staircase, he's met with a dead end. 

"Exit's locked." 

"On it," Price says, coming up behind him to pry the door open. 

Burns comes to stand beside Soap, observing the words on the door. Clearly, his Russian was better than Soap's. 

"Executive level. VIP level is close." 

The door gives way and Soap quickly confirms the floor is clear. 

There is an eerie silence overlayed onto the shrill, mindless drone of the fire alarm. The entire floor is strewn with casualties, not a living soul in sight. 

Makarov's men had swept through like a pestilence. 

"Eyes on the VIP," Price says as he spots it to their left. "Got movement inside. Stay sharp." 

Price steps away as they reach the door to give way to Soap, inclining his head in Soap’s direction.  

"On you, Sergeant." 

Soap grips the door handle and twists it on the mental count of three. 

"Special forces," Price cries as Soap pushes the door open, gun at the ready. There’s several men inside, dressed in blue uniforms and tending to bleeding, half dead men on stretchers. Though Soap is glad for the help, he’s seen enough today to be sceptical of anything. 

Soap shouts for them to show their hands and they’re up immediately, all looking from one to the other with worried expressions. 

 "First responders! Don't shoot!" One of the men steps forward, eyes darting nervously from the gun in Soap's hands, to his face, to Price and back again.

The air conditioning is cold on his sweat damp skin. There’s a handful of TVs in the room, all set to mute, but they’re turned into the news, reporting from the outside of the stadium, still shrouded in a column of rapidly worsening smoke. 

"How did you get in here?" Price demands sternly. 

"Security," he stammers, flustered and shell shocked. "Security let us in." 

"Who are you with?" Price pushes. 

"Please, we are trying to save lives." Another of the paramedics is just barely suppressing the urgency in his voice. 

Soap casts a sceptical glance over to the poor half-dead man on a stretcher to his right. Other paramedics are gathered around him, trying to stabilise his condition as best possible. 

"Shit, I need help over here," A paramedic by the side of the body says as he looks up urgently and finds Soap's gaze locked on him. "Soldier, please?"

Taking a risk while the other is occupied by Price's questioning, Soap moves over to assist as best he can. He's no field medic but he knows the basics if he ever gets himself into a twist. 

"Stand fast, Sergeant," Price warns, but he's already halfway over when the man draws a gun from his drug bag. He's a quick draw, but Soap is just as fast.

Soap fires just as a blow to his chest knocks him backwards with all the power of a freight train and he hits the floor with a painful thud. The bullet proof vest absorbs the brunt of the impact, but the shot still hurts like a bitch. 

It is outnumbered by the adrenaline and he recovers quickly, assisting Price and Burns in taking care of the other Inner Circle scum. 

His ears ring in the absence of the gunfire and his free hand comes to clutch futilely at the phantom pain of the gunshot over the clamouring of his racing heart. The tac vest obscures its path and his fingers grasp at spare magazines, his sidearm, as it tries to tear a direct path to ease the pain. 

The shot is absorbed into the marrow of his ribs and he knows somehow he'll feel it worse tomorrow. 

"You broken?" Price asks in a serious tone and he shakes his head. 

"Just the plate." 

Soap makes his way over to the table where various medical bags and equipment was set out on the pretence of being useful, but upon closer inspection, Soap notices the heart monitor is ancient, at least from the 90s and missing its internal wiring. 

Burns beside him opens one of the bags and turns to Price. “Check it. They had explosives. This was their next target.” 

Price calls it in immediately. “Gold Eagle Actual, explosives located in the VIP area. No sign of Makarov.”

Soap moves over to the window, eyebrows knitting together as he sees the rubble beneath the window from where the roiling mass of black smoke was rising up from. The field was empty, but there were casualties twisted and dead in the seats, either blown to bits or trampled by the masses in their bid to weave through the labyrinth of seats. 

He cuts his attention back to the task at hand when Shepherd returns to comms. “Copy, make it safe. Local set up a cordon, so Makarov will have to exfil fast. We’re five mikes out. Don’t let him escape, son.” 

Soap checks the pulse on the nearest man on a stretcher, but he’s so far gone dead, he knows for sure the Inner Circle just had him up there as a cover. 

“Roger that.” 

“The garage,” Burns says. 

It's the next logical option, Soap reasons and Price seems to agree. “Affirm,” he nods to the bag they’d been looking at earlier. “Secure the explosives and get to the secondary exfil.”

Burns gives him a nod of acknowledgement and Price gestures for Soap to follow him, moving over to the door on the opposite side of the VIP area and back into the concourse, the shrill alarm still insistently echoing through the space. 

Along the inner wall, Price stops him short at an elevator and he and Soap just about manage to pry the doors open with force, only for them to slide open and reveal a dark void plunging down into the abyss beneath them.

The only sign that there was something down there was a dim red glow licking up the sides of the elevator shaft, catching on the rivets and dents in the metal plating. 

 Soap took an instinctive step back from where the polished floor dropped off, giving a sceptical glance up to the elevator’s resting point a fair bit above their heads. 

Wires jutted out from the dark and trembled slightly with a phantom tremor of the cables, like vocal cords vibrating an ominous metal groan. Soap was unsure how safe it was for them to be standing there with the metal contraption suspended in the air by nothing but rickety cold war era engineering and pure faith holding it up, but when Price seizes one of the cold cables and drops down into the darkness, Soap has no choice but to follow. 

He hits the floor below with a force he feels compress into his spine and he grimaces. 

Price meets him at the bottom. “Eyes peeled for Makarov.” 

Soap sets himself with new determination as they emerge into the larger space. Empty buses are parked on either side of the tunnel, forcing them to move away from the walls inward. 

A chill runs down Soap’s spine as he hears the echoing of footsteps ahead, run-shuffle across the cast concrete. He reaches for his gun instinctively but Price halts him in his tracks as the man comes into view at the other end of the tunnel. 

“Check fire, that’s a civilian.” 

His gun lowers, but only slightly. 

Ahead of them around the bend of the turn, the rhythmic pulsing of a red emergency light caught Soap’s attention and he stopped dead for a moment, straining to hear the sirens before Price could confirm his suspicion. 

“Vehicle incoming.”  

It rounded the corner slowly, like it was a cornered animal placing a careful step forward into the crosshairs of its pursuer. 

Soap stepped forward, but Price laid a hand on his shoulder. 

“Maintain distance, Soap. Could be Makarov.” 

An empty bus to his left stood as the only shield between him and the ambulance a couple of metres ahead of him. He takes a cautious step backward as the ambulance inched closer at an excruciatingly slow pace, lurching as it halted. 

Price held his gun at the ready, moving away from the direct line of the ambulance. 

“Step out of the vehicle!” 

Though Soap couldn’t see who was inside, it was as though its unmovable energy almost seemed to mock them. 

It happened almost out of nowhere and predictably quickly at the same time. The engine revved and there was a moment the ambulance reversed sharply, turned on the sirens and ploughed forward. 

“Incoming!” Soap shouts and he and Price move out of the way on either side of the oncoming vehicle, Soap knocking his already tender shoulder against the back of the bus with the force he falls backwards with. 

There's the echoing crush of metal as the careless driving of the ambulance sees it knocking into an abandoned car and barreling over onto its side, ceasing the urgency of the siren to a dead silence. The absence of sound and the shifting of angular shadows from the strobing of the red emergency light mounted on the roof drew on the vastness of the dark parking garage, threatening to send the already heightened atmosphere to a fever pitch. 

“It’s down,” Soap says with only a hint of relief. 

Price was already moving. “Move to secure.” 

Soap bit the inside of his cheek to avoid showing how much the strain was impacting him as he and Price made their way over to the upturned vehicle, wheels still spinning for phantom grasp in the air, like desperate waving limbs that couldn’t grasp the earth to flee. 

The doors remained resolutely closed, but Soap’s stomach twisted at what he knew he would find there. There was no question of it. That ominous energy, the itching of his sixth sense, he knows it in the marrow of his bones. 

“Open it,” Price motioned Soap over to the door. 

Though hesitant, he complied, tugging the dented metal door open with a firm yank and flooding the gutted ambulance with sharp torchlight. 

“Hands! Hands!” Price shouted for the figure in the blue uniform moving from his sprawled position, his face turned away from them for the moment. “Pokazat' ruki!” Soap shouted for good measure, drawing on his limited Russian to make sure the man got the message. 

Dead on impact, there were two fake paramedics sprawled on the now earthside wall, but his attention was fixed on the man crouching towards the back, shielding his face from the glaring light. 

His hand shifted away from his face to raise in vitriolic surrender and Soap cursed, instinctively readjusting his grip on his gun. “It's him.” 

“Vladimir Makarov, step out of the vehicle now!” 

Sending them a searing look, Makarov gritted his teeth and crawled across the uneven side of the ambulance panelling, knees shifting over the bruised, dead limbs of his men. 

“Nice and easy,” Soap warns when he gets a bit too close to the door for his liking. After all, he still had his firearm tucked into the holster on his bullet proof vest. 

“That’s far enough.” Soap held out a hand to halt him when he attempted to take a step further from getting out of the ambulance. 

“Now don’t fucking move.” Makarov’s attention shifted to Price as he ordered Soap to search him. 

Soap immediately relieves him of the gun and tosses it out of reach. Makarov’s face held a discontented but somehow still neutral expression that Soap struggled to read. 

“You scared Captain?” he asks in a condescending tone as Soap went through the cursory motions of patting him down for extra firepower. Makarov takes Price’s silence as a win. “You should be.” 

“Shut up.”

A little grin tucks into the corner of his mouth and Soap has had about enough of it. He’ll take silence, he’ll take anger, but he will not have enjoyment coming from someone on the wrong end of a gun. 

He’s a soldier. He does not play fair in the game of terrorists. 

“Get on your fucking knees!” Soap manhandles him into a kneel on the cold concrete. 

Without the usual decorum, Soap roughly completes the search. “He’s clean.” 

Not wasting any time, Soap reaches into his pocket for zip ties and tightens them a bit more than strictly necessary, using a second one for good measure.

“Are you going to kill me?” Makarov asks evenly, completely ignoring the hard plastic digging into his wrists and focusing his attention on Price. 

“Oh I’ve thought about it, yeah.” 

He scoffs. “I recommend you do.”

“And I recommend you tell your men to stand down.” Price’s eyebrows narrowed at him. The gun now hovered only a foot away from Makarov’s face, but he remained unfazed. His expression remained unimpressed and he shook his head almost imperceptibly. 

“They’re not trained to stand down. That’s more… your strategy.” 

Soap couldn’t believe the audacity of him. Even like this, he thinks he’s got the upper hand. It takes a heavy helping of self restraint for Soap not to knock his teeth out. 

Price ignores him, locking eyes with Soap. “Keep him close.”

Soap tugs on his bound arms to get him to stand, following behind Price as he radios in. 

“All stations. We have Makarov. We’re moving to the extract.” 

“Roger that, John. they’ll fight to get him back…” 

“We’re counting on it,” Soap says bitterly with a bit of a shrug. 

He doesn’t miss the way Makarov turns to shoot him a venomous glance and he gets a bit of a rise out of it. 

“Alright, take him left. We clear these vehicles, we move up,” Price instructs him shortly, taking the lead and Soap acknowledges him, yanking Makarov roughly to his feet and shoving him in Price’s general direction. “Get goin’.” 

Price confirms the area on the other side of the ambulance is clear, and Soap starts them out at an urgent pace, making sure not to give the man any chance at a rest after the tumble he’d just taken in the ambulance. 

“You think you can just walk me out of here?” Makarov’s voice doesn’t have a hint of worry or remorse.

“We can drag you out as well,” Soap reminds him, giving him a rough shove to make him pick up his pace, but if Makarov feels anything at the rough treatment, he keeps it to himself. 

“Capturing me… it means nothing.” 

“It means we beat you, Vlad.” 

Soap can just barely see him shake his head, huffing out a laugh. “Don’t be a fool.” 

“Contact!” Price shouts from somewhere ahead of him and Soap’s first instinct is to duck behind the nearest vehicle as the Inner Circle men Price had spotted come into view, irritably losing Makarov to the confusion. 

 He gets a shot in, risking a glance sideways to Price who reassures him he’s got Makarov secured, but Makarov and one of the men are shouting back and forth for another moment before he gets him down too. 

“We clear?” Price asks him when the last man falls. 

“Affirm.” 

“It's not safe here. Grab Makarov, we need to move.” 

Price waits for Soap to take him before they proceed down the tunnel towards where they would be meeting with the others outside. 

“You’re not safe anywhere,” Makarov tells him and Soap’s just about had enough. 

“Your luck’s running dry, Makarov.” 

They’re coming up by another skewly parked bus, promptly ignoring the dead body of one of the Inner Circle men Soap had shot down, lying slumped behind it, Makarov doesn’t even look in his direction, just keeps his eyes focused dead ahead. 

“I don’t believe in luck. I believe in planning. Bad luck, it's just poor planning.” 

“What part of your plan involves rotting in a prison?” 

“A man can be locked up,” Makarov reminds him. “An idea cannot.” 

Soap keeps him close, tightening his grip on Makarov when they pass a woman trying to flee the building and giving her a jump scare. Soap tries to give her an apologetic look, but she’s clearly shell shocked and just stumbles away from him. 

Price is up ahead, securing them a path through to where they were to rendezvous with the others. 

“Found a way through, Sergeant. Lets move.” 

Up ahead was a blockade of buses, narrowly parked together, pressed into the wall. As Soap neared it, he could see the arms of daylight reaching for them from the gap between the two. 

“I bestow my blessings on your courage, but curse your stupidity.” 

“Worry about yourself.”

“Every man is replaceable, even me.” 

The only way around the barrier would be to squeeze through the narrow gap between the two vehicles, but it appeared Price was willing to bet they’d fit. 

“On me,” Price calls to Soap and slots in first. 

Soap gives Makarov a shove, both to move him forward and to shut him up as they come up to the gap, making progress at a snail's crawl. Soap isn’t particularly put off by tight spaces, but this could change that. 

Still, he takes Makarov by the shoulders and forces him after Price, sucking in as far as possible to try to keep his gear from snagging as they move. 

What’s even more unnerving is the pained crying he can hear from inside the bus, a bleak chance that there were still lives that could be saved in this shitshow. They didn’t have the time to stop now. 

“You’re not a soldier, you’re a war criminal.” Price picks up on it too, giving a heated glance in Makarov’s direction as he shuffles sideways. He’s more than irritated with Makarov’s attitude in combination with the injured civilians just metres away from them.

“These people need medical.” 

“What’s stopping you from helping them, Sergeant?” Makarov asks condescendingly and Soap shoves him sideways to keep moving. 

“You.” 

Makarov looks back at Soap. “That's your choice.” 

“You did this, not us…” Price reminds him sharply.

“They’re innocent people,” Soap adds from the side.  

“No one is innocent. War is treachery.” 

“Enough of this shite.” 

Price groans as he squeezes past the last bit and emerges into the open, Makarov –still within Soap’s grasp– follows shortly and Price has them heading for the exit, just to the right, just a little further and they’ll be out of the smoke and into the light. It gives Soap the strength to push on. 

Just to the end of the tunnel. A smoking wreck of a car flickers by the end of it, a false beacon of hope, but Soap knows it's just a little further. He just needs to keep his head on straight. Maybe what he says next is to distract himself, maybe it's because he wants to throw stones at the enemy while there isn’t a glass wall and several government officials between them. 

He doesn’t want to admit that it's probably to cover a chip in his own hope they’ll get out of this in one piece. He’s learned that celebrating the victory too soon only turns a blind eye to the evil building in his peripheral vision.  

“Time for you to meet some friends of mine.” They’re so close that Soap can almost begin to sense the relief of a win drawing close. He’ll get to go home in one piece and he’ll make good on his promises, all the ones he almost failed on. He’ll get time to reconsider his resignation, maybe he’ll let Scotland and its people resculpt him into an honest man. 

“Where are they?” 

Soap doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of a full answer, lips turning into a conceited sneer. “Close.” 

Makarov gave a half-shrug, letting the cuffs jingle a bit behind his back. His hands were balled into tight, tense fists. 

“So are mine.” 

Soap worries it’s too late to save himself now, but he’s twenty-five. A lot of people find their feet at the age of twenty-five. He can still choose to rewrite the ending of his story. He can still return to the nostalgia of his not-yet-past youth, his mother’s home cooked meals. “You should know when you’ve lost.” 

“You’re still thinking about victory. Think about success.” 

It's another pebble thrown against Makarov’s unshakable demeanour, hitting nowhere vital but somehow still spurring him to give Soap a word of advice, sitting on that self-made throne. 

“The wicked prosper. They always will. Peace is invisible. War you can see…” 

Soap hates how evocative it sounds, how a weaker man might have thought it inspirational. Soap just thinks it sounds as though he’s pulled it from a fortune cookie. 

Soap’s nose scrunches up as the smoke thickens and burns at his lungs, blinking as his eyes water from the burn too. 

“Incoming!” 

He’s more prepared for the hits this time when the bullet zips past his head to disappear into the inferno. 

“Molotov!” Price shouts to him and he ducks away behind another wrecked vehicle as a bottle hurtles through the air and shatters on the floor just a couple of metres away, sending flames licking up the side of the wall. 

“I’ve got Makarov, you take ‘em out.” 

Soap swiftly takes care of the man running at him, catching him before he’s even spotted Soap behind the car and turns on the other man running to cover his fallen comrade. 

Soap takes down the next three in rapid succession, sidestepping another attempt at a molotov in his direction and finding the thrower with a bullet to the neck.

The last man catches him by surprise and he takes a hit to the arm before he gets a good shot in. The man slumps to the floor and Soap grits his teeth as he scans around for anyone else to materialise out of the smoke before relaxing slightly. Crisis averted. 

“We’re clear.” 

In his adrenaline high mind, the bullet wound, though only a graze, was a distant low hum, barely offering a distraction from the here and now. He resists the urge to clutch at his chest as he returns to Price. 

He’s by the gate, forcing Makarov to his knees with a gun pressed against his neck. 

“Lift it.” Price inclines his head to the gate and Soap drops to his knees to pull at the edge and lift it just high enough for them to duck under. Once out, he lets it drop with a thundering crash. 

“Gold Eagle Actual, we’re external. East side of the stadium. What’s your status?” 

Soap comes up behind Price, eyebrows drawn together and squinting at the too-bright sky for their helicopter flying over the building to land on the other side. 

“Bravo-6, we’re on station. Be advised, you have enemy personnel moving in from the North. Ghost will provide sniper support.” 

“Copy. We'll meet you at primary exfil. Six out,” Price says and turns to Soap. “I’ll handle Makarov, you clear a path.” 

Soap moves ahead, sticking close to cover as he eliminates those of Makarov’s men still looking to take him back. He’s briefly aware of Price behind him, but he makes sure to cover all their bases before the Inner Circle men can get the better of them. He’s too desperate for a win now. 

To his left, a man emerges from behind a white van, cowering behind a riot shield as he tries to get a shot at Soap. Soap moves back to duck behind a parked car but he lets out an involuntary curse when a neat bullet clips the man in the back of the head and he collapses onto the pavement with a heavy lurch. 

He follows the path of the bullet up to the helicopter hovering above their exfil point, finding the imposing silhouette in the doorway and he acknowledges the man with a nod. 

Ghost may be a bit of a prick, but as Soap looks down at the mess of the man’s skull spattered across the concrete, he can at least acknowledge he’s a good shot. 

“Watch right,” Ghost warns him over the comms and Soap turns and fires at a man ducked behind a parked car.  

There seems to be no further pursuit and Ghost confirms it a moment later, giving them the green light to proceed to exfil with Price and Makarov shortly behind him. 

The helicopter has barely touched down and Ghost is standing guard at the open door, expression completely obscured by the mask, but Soap can sense the tension in his stance as he just barely tracks their movements. 

Soap squints against the torrent of wind coming in his direction, finding Shepherd’s outstretched hand to tug him over the threshold of the doorway. And it's homeward. They made it. 

Price comes in after him, handing Makarov over to Shepherd before he wordlessly taps Ghost on the shoulder to signal him inside. 

The door shuts with a resounding bang and soon, they’re up in the air, watching the smoking stadium recede beneath them. 

Soap steadies himself against the wall to allow himself to catch his breath, resisting the urge to turn and face the monster of a man behind him as Price makes sure he’s secure. He takes a long look at the city beneath him. He can sense it writhing with panic and it itches beneath his skin in a way he cannot put word to. 

“Simon Riley.” Makarov’s accent registers behind him and Soap glances to the left to find Ghost still by the door, now facing Makarov at the mention of his name. Soap turns to meet Makarov’s eye for a moment, but his gaze quickly averted back to Ghost. 

“I expected you to stay at the airport… and die there.” 

“If you wanna live, do not threaten my men, Vladimir,” Shepherd warns him. 

“Are we on a first name basis? Herschel?” 

“So you know names,” Soap cuts in impatiently. “Anyone can read a bloody dossier.” 

A beat passes and when no one makes any move to ask any of the big questions, Ghost doesn’t beat around the bush. 

“What’s the rest of your plan?” 

“This.” He shrugs, almost nonchalant, staged in a way that put Soap’s nerves on edge. Like he knew this was eating at them and he was enjoying watching the scene unfold instead of worrying about the fact he wouldn’t be able to slip through the noose this time. 

Price sits forward. “What do you mean ‘this’?” 

“Amazing. You’re all dumber than you look.” 

“I asked you a question–” Ghost reminds him sharply. 

“And I have a question for you.” he addresses them all, inclining his head in Soap’s direction, hinting at his watch. “What time is it?” 

“What the hell do you care what time it is?” Shepherd asks impatiently and he gives half a shrug as partial explanation. 

“Timing is everything, General. I think we’ll all remember this moment. Some… more fondly than others.” 

It registers first as a distant rumble. A shaking of earth that offsets the balance of the air by such a dire tone it compels Soap to look out the window and find the source of the noise. His heart plummets into his feet. 

“The airport,” Ghost says with more concern Soap thought he was capable of. 

“He pulled us off target.” 

“You fucking son of a bitch!” 

Something in Soap snaps. He’s restrained himself far too long and before he’s even realised what he’s doing, he’s pulling his gun and grabbing Makarov with a fistful of the blue uniform he was wearing, knocking him against the metal wall with a reverberating bang before tossing him to the floor. 

“I’ll blow your fuckin’ brains out, I swear I’ll do it.” 

Makarov locks eyes with him over the barrel of the gun, mere inches away from his face and finds Soap’s eyes with an intensity he didn’t think possible. 

“Soap, don’t do it,” Price warns him, but its dead noise in his periphery. Still, he hesitates. He feels the chain chafing against his neck.

The gun waits between them for Soap to pull the trigger. His finger itches, he clutches just a bit, with no pressure. But he could if he wanted to, he feels the impulse curl his finger in his mind’s eye but there is no gunshot and Makarov is still looking at him as though he’s bluffing. 

“Do it, come on,” Makarov taunts him. 

“You shut your mouth,” Price tells him, but his eyes never leave Soap. 

“Let me finish him.” Soap doesn’t know why he’s waiting for permission. He knows what needs to be done, but he can’t. He needs that bit of reassurance that its a necessary evil. 

Makarov gives a cynical laugh but Price pulls his attention. “John, we have him, he’s in custody. He’s not going anywhere. Stand down, Sergeant.” 

With all the self restraint he can muster, Soap pulls back before he can impulsively pull the trigger, reholstering the gun and taking a seat as far away from Makarov as possible. 

Price tugged Makarov up from the floor and into his own seat. 

“I thought you were the good guys.” 

“You gon’ rot in hell for this,” Shepherd tells him. 

“You’ll die in the gulag with the rest of the Russian rats,” Soap adds. 

Makarov glances at Soap, eyes drifting down to the gun now tucked uselessly into its holster. 

“You can lock me away, MacTavish, but I can promise you, the next time we’ll be seeing each other, you better hope your Captain didn’t just sign your death warrant.” 

Soap has learned over the years that the silence after the fact can sometimes be more haunting than the screams that came before it. Silence is a full stop that drives the hope into the ground and smothers any thought of change for the better. 

Silence is the whiplash passing of the first stage of grief and sinking into those later phases, the knowing that nothing can be done once the last breath has passed dying lips and all that can be clung to is the husk of what remains. 

Sometimes the acknowledgement of the silence is the victory for the sadistic intention, so tight lipped, Vladimir Makarov took the lack of words following the skirmish with Soap on the ground as a proof of this victory. 

Soap didn’t let it show, but he felt it in his knees, sinking into acceptance of the horror and he sank to his seat in bitter anger. He would not let Makarov have the satisfaction of being ignored, so he made a point of looking him in the eye as they made their way back to base, from which General Shepherd had informed them authorities were already awaiting their arrival to take Makarov off their hands. 

Halfway through the return trip, Ghost comes to take a seat next to him and Soap shifts an inch or two further away to allow himself to breathe. 

He’s aware of the motion beside him, Ghost clenching and unclenching his fist in Soap’s peripheral vision.

He’s surprised Ghost isn’t more visibly worked up by the situation, but Soap realises that idea might have come from a misjudgement of the man’s character on his part. Ghost was reserved and brash, but he was calculated, something Soap worried he fell terribly short on. 

“You’re a hard man to kill, Riley. My men tell me you’re dead on paper. Suppose it goes to show that even if you read between the lines, most of the story is left off the books.”

“You’ve got nothing to gain here, Makarov. You’ve lost. Throwing stones at us isn’t going to help your case,” Soap warns him harshly, but Ghost holds up a hand to silence him.

From out of the window, Soap can see them coming up on the base and the helicopter begins to turn in for landing. 

“No, let him talk. I wanna know what else kind of shit has been circulating.” 

“Only a fool lays all his cards on the table, but I will tell you this. Your system, your government is lying to you. They’re using you, tell you its for your country. But they’re all the same, your Captain,” Makarov nods to Price, “the General, they’ve got more skeletons in the closet than they’ll let on, just make sure you don’t become one of them.” 

“No one should be taking advice from a madman,” Price dismisses him. “And we’re coming up on your last stop before you won’t be seeing the sun for a long time, so you better take one long look at the world, because it's the last you’ll be seeing of it.”

The helicopter descended on the landing pad. 

A waiting group of armed men in uniforms stood close by and approached with urgency when the doors opened and Makarov was taken into official custody of the Kastovian government. 

The exchange happens in Russian and Soap struggles to follow along with it as they get out with Price after General Shepherd and the men escorting Makarov into the building, following behind at a respectable distance. 

Makarov is properly restrained and escorted off base to another facility in an armoured vehicle and Soap feels a strange emptiness settle over him as he watches them leave the premises. They’d gotten Makarov, but he cannot consider this a victory. “You did good today,” Price informs him a while later when they’re alone. “The outcome is far from what we hoped for, but we made sure he’ll never be able to do something like this again.” 

Burns arrives later with questions about Makarov’s arrest and the airport after the bomb squad had successfully taken care of the rest of the explosives on site at the stadium, but he’s got very little to say in return to Soap’s recollection of it. 

 

Finding he can’t manage to catch any sleep after an hour of tossing and turning, Soap supposes he should give up on sleep in general. 

He wants to reflect about the day, but his mind is cluttered with thoughts about the thousand of innocent lives lost in the carnage, its jarring to see those faces from the news, burned into his mind and superimposed over what the airport had looked like when they’d driven towards it just that morning, those people outside, saying goodbye to families, pressing kisses to cheeks with a promise of ‘see you soon’. Most of those people are crushed and buried under rubble and maybe even lost forever. The thought is sickening. 

Though it's futile and seems like a juvenile remedy to a problem that can’t be helped, he replays that moment on the flight out from the stadium over and over again, and in each instance, he pulls the trigger and Makarov is dead on the ground. He doesn’t listen to Price. 

Fuck. If only he hadn’t listened to Price back then. 

It wouldn’t have mattered though, he’d have felt just as guilty seeing it on the news, knowing he could have done something to help as he feels now, knowing that he’d been played for a fool. 

Lying back on the bed, Soap dips his hand under the hem of his shirt and pulls out the tangle of his dog tags with the cross over his chest. It dangles in the artificial heatless glow of the industrial strip light he’d neglected to turn off, clinking together as he holds it just a few centimetres from his face, skin warm and seeming to possess a life of its own. He clutches it all together over his heart and closes his eyes, trying to muster the words for a silent prayer through all the clutter of his mind. 

His mind jumps around, but it's sincere. He prays for the families he knows must be mourning their loved ones, for those in hospitals clinging to life, for the people who’d lost their lives today. He puts a conscious effort to word it understandably despite how utterly exhausted he is, even though he knows that God must already know what he has to say. 

Yes, he should probably stop swearing so much and he’s not proud of his history, but at least he’s trying. His hands are covered in the blood of people that despite their choices, God would have wanted to call his children and he’d killed them for material means. No matter how evil their actions, Soap had killed hundreds if not thousands of people over the years. 

It doesn’t matter how tainted the soul, blood is still blood. 

But he’s doing good with the darkness he’d been born with, the destruction he was always leaning more towards. He’d been entrusted with this attribute like a double edged sword he must use wisely and he reminds himself that he does it so that others can keep their hands clean. 

It's a noble thing to do, to sacrifice your own innocence for the sake of others. It's honourable. 

He can only lie there for so long before his skin itches for something other than the stillness of the stale room. Burns is knocked out on the bunk across from him and Soap gets up and leaves the room, turning off the light upon his exit. 

He decides fresh air might do him good and he takes his chance to slip out onto the roof to catch his breath and collect his thoughts. 

The night sky is almost completely obscured by the haziness of the smoke that had spread out from the epicentre of the airport, only letting in through pinpricks of blinking light from the stars. It takes Soap’s breath away for a moment. 

He hadn’t realised just how easily he could see the airport from the base, especially situated on the hill, overlooking the city. He can’t see all of Verdansk, but he can see enough to know how much the disaster has affected it.

He can hear the wailing of sirens and the dim flashing of red lights responding to the remainder of the disaster. 

Soap sighs heavily as he walks over to the edge of the roof, sinking down to his knees and scooting over to dangle his feet off the edge of the roof, he’s half startled out of the haze when his phone vibrates in his pocket. 

He debates answering the message later but goes to pull out his phone. 

Four unread messages. all from Elena. 

Elena: a guy came into work today and he looked almost exactly like you. It was sort of scary.

Elena: oh btw, you left your sweater at my house the other day in case you were looking for it. 

Elena: hey, how was your day?

Elena: Look, I understand if you’re busy and just don’t have the time to talk to me, but if you don’t want to see me anymore, I’d appreciate it if you told me. I can handle it. I really like you and I thought we had a genuinely good connection the other day, but I get it, the moment’s over and I was clearly reading the situation wrong. It seems like we went into it with two very different intentions and I just don’t think it's going to work. After everything that happened, I think I just need someone that’s present and I need some time to work on myself before I get into anything now. I’m sorry.

Well, fuck. Soap can’t be everywhere, he can’t fix everything, he can’t be there for everyone. Maybe he should’ve tried to respond sooner, but on top of today’s disaster, it stings. 

John: There's nothing to be sorry about. I didn’t mean to give you the impression that I don’t want to talk to you, really, I’ve just had a really long day. And I think you’re right, I don’t think this is going to work. I had a great time getting to know you but I’ve got a lot on my plate right now and things are very stressful here. I just have a lot of things to think of right now and I don’t think it's fair to drag you along with me.

It didn’t take very long for her to respond to him, quickly adding a heart emoji in response to his message before she wrote back. 

Elena: thank you for being honest with me. 

There was nothing more after that and Soap stared at the last message for a couple of moments, frowning at it as the screen darkened and died. He sighed heavily, shoving the phone back into his pocket, looking down at the cracked pavement two storeys below him, right to where they had parked coming into base just two days ago and how he couldn’t have ever imagined what was in store for him. 

“Just don’t fall, you’ll cause me paperwork.” 

The voice startled Soap to his core and he almost tipped forward by the sound of it, cursing as he stabilised himself again. 

He turned to find a small pinprick of light from where a dark clothed figure leaned against a wall not far from him. He hadn’t even recognised the smell of cigarette smoke, figuring it was the wind carrying the smoke from the explosion site. 

“Shit, Ghost, you scared me,” Soap laughed uneasily as the man approached him to stand by the railing. 

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he says. Soap gets to his feet and Ghost holds out a half empty pack of Marlboro cigarettes in Soap’s direction, an olive branch. Soap isn’t sure he’ll take it. 

“I don’t smoke. It's a filthy habit.” 

Ghost rolled his eyes, sighing around his own cigarette as he plucked one from the pack, lit it and offered it again, now with a thin curl of silver smoke distending from its orange glow. It highlights the edges of the skeleton motif on his gloves and somehow, Soap knows he’ll carry a part of this day with him for days onwards, because the smell of that cigarette will burn into the fabric of his gloves. 

“I don’t smoke,” Soap insists again with a frown, but all Ghost does is take his hand –not roughly, but not gently either– and puts the thin cigarette between his fingers. 

“After a day like today, everybody smokes, Soap.” 

Soap hesitates with it for a moment, watching the glow eat away at the unburnt part of the cigarette and inching closer away from the ashen end before he gives in and raises it to his mouth for a long, much needed draw. 

He wishes he could wipe the smug look he just knows Ghost has under that mask off his face as he watches the action, knowing how easy it is to fall back into dormant muscle memory. 

“You don’t smoke, huh?” 

Soap pouts, not sure how much he wants to let the strange man in on his past, but he settles for something basic. “I don’t smoke anymore .” 

Ghost nods, whether it was meant to be mocking or genuine is something Soap’s ego can’t discern. “Right.” 

They stand there for a moment in the pseudo-silence, filled with the ambience of night sounds and distant sirens echoing through the ether and surrounding the two of them in a lamentous hum. 

“If it was up to me, I’d have let you kill him today.”

“You would?” Soap asks with genuine confusion. 

“I would. Price doesn’t always think of it that way, but the world’s better off without having scum like him wasting space, even if he’s behind bars.”

Ahead, somewhere from out of the darkness, the glow of the burning airport stood out, a beacon of hellish light that made Soap’s skin crawl. They’re far away and the attack was hours ago, but it lingers on his skin like an itch he can’t run away from. 

He leans on the cigarette for comfort, and just a little, the presence of the taller man beside him helps to ease the loneliness of feeling like one tremendous failure. 

“Don’t think too hard about it Soap, it’ll make your hair fall out and we certainly can’t have that with that illustrious haircut of yours.” 

Soap jerked his head around so fast, he could’ve almost sworn Ghost startled just a little. 

“Oh you’re one to talk about appearances with that halloween costume shite you’ve got going on.” 

It takes two seconds for Soap to realise he’d chosen the wrong option. He’d overstepped one of the rules Price had very clearly set out for him. No questions about his appearance. 

To his surprise, Ghost just gives him a bit of a laugh, albeit a bit of a snide one. “To each their own, but I’m serious, don’t beat yourself up about what happened today, there’s no use in dwelling on it.”

Soap frowns. “How am I not supposed to dwell on it? If we hadn’t responded to the attack on the stadium, if you and Shepherd hadn’t followed after us, we would have died there too,” he gestures vaguely out at the glow of the still smouldering heap of rubble. 

“That’s just the way of the world, Soap. No one gets into this job thinking you’ll walk away with a bruise or a cut you can just slap a plaster over. People die, that’s how it works. We just happen to see more of it because of what we do. We are not entitled to living longer or dying later or easier because we’re supposed to be heroes. We could have died today, but what does it actually matter in the grand scheme of things.” 

“You’re a real ray of sunshine, Lt,” Soap says dryly, bringing the cigarette to his mouth again. In the corner of his eye, he can see Ghost do the same. 

“Maybe I’ve just been screwed over by the system that’s supposed to keep me alive more than I’ve been saved by it.” 

Soap shrugged, but it didn’t sit right with him, the idea that death was just an inevitable fact of life. He’s too stubborn to believe it. For someone who’d spent more than half his waking life trying to change the hand he’d been dealt when he was born to broke college student parents and the expectation to be utterly average, he didn’t take kindly to the notion of just accepting things he can’t change, even if it drives him up the wall. 

There’s a lot of other, more personal questions he wants to ask the man instead, but he settles for something safer. 

“How do you deal with it? Stuff like today?” 

“I’m not the person you should be asking for advice, Soap,” Ghost says with a hint of surprise. “That’s more Price’s thing.” 

Soap turned to face him, trying to analyse what little he could see of his face where the mask was pulled up just high enough for him to smoke. He can just about see the curve of his lip around the cigarette and the edge of what seemed to be a jagged scar extending from the corner of his mouth. 

Just as quickly as Soap had seen it, he lowered the cigarette, holding the smoke for a moment before he released it in a slow exhale. 

“I’m not asking for advice, I’m asking how you cope.” 

“I keep going. Sometimes the only way to cope is to endure.” 

The silence that followed thereafter was more comfortable, more settled. Soap could begin to see why Price had told him Ghost was an acquired taste. For all his cold facade, he was really just a man with a grumpy disposition. Maybe even one with a personality outside of work, but Soap struggles to comprehend what that might be. 

Reminded of work and everything they’d discussed in the wake of the attack, Soap frowned as he took another drag from the cigarette, now on its last breath.

“What do you think ended up happening to Price’s informant?” 

Ghost scoffed, stubbing out his own cigarette against the rail and crushing the rest under his boot for good measure. “Fuck if I know.” 

Soap shook his head, feeling himself getting riled up just at the thought of it. “Bet you the arse is sitting somewhere comfortable, getting piss drunk, laughing at the news.” 

Ghost shrugs. “Reckon you may be right about that one, sergeant.” 

“Wherever he is, I hope karma comes back to get him good.”

 

MOSCOW 

 

The man convulsed with a cry of pain as another shock of electricity surged through him, curling in a distortion of twitching muscles through the point where the cattle prod made contact with his bare, singed back and burned another snakebite pattern onto what remained of the undamaged skin. 

The small, uninsulated barn stank of singed hair and burning flesh, all emanating from a centre point where a young man, beaten and tortured beyond recognition, was bound to a bloodied kitchen chair. 

He shivered and twitched from the aftershock of electricity under the glaring warm buzzing of a bare filament bulb, fixed to the rafters above his head. 

Six other men, still residually wearing police uniforms and paramedic overalls, were gathered around him in a semicircle. 

The one in front of him, Andrei Nolan, was not holding the cattle prod. His hands were clean of blood, though there was a light spatter across the front of his body from his earlier beating, inflicted by the man now standing behind the chair, resting a gloved hand dutifully on the wooden backrest, waiting for further instruction. 

“I’m not going to say I’m surprised, Dmitri. But I expected better from someone like you,” Andrei says with mock pity, crouching down to find the swollen eyes of the young man. A trickle of pinkish saliva traced down his trembling lip and dripped to the cold floor by his bare feet. 

“Not even twenty with a whole life ahead of him. You could’ve gone and married that pretty young thing you’re hiding in the city. Could have fathered children to carry that name since the anti-communist rats snuffed out the rest of your Soviet supporter family and executed them like dogs, but your bloodline will end here because you wanted to be a bootlicker.” 

Dmitri flinched as Andrei pressed a calloused thumb into the burn on his inner thigh, drawing out a pained noise. He leaned away from the hand, but stripped naked and bound, there was little he could do to avoid the pain of Andrei’s finger scratching open the blistered skin and causing it to bleed again. 

Even Yuri, the man that had inflicted the burn waiting behind him with bated breath, began to feel nauseated at the sight of his own handiwork, but it did not show. He kept his expression even and serious. 

Andrei was a dangerous man and Yuri knows better than to cross him when he’s already angry. Andrei might think of Dmitri as a bootlicker, but he was just as much the same to Makarov. Still, Yuri stood by, idle, complacent. The cattle prod in his other hand was heavy and had more weight to it than it should have had. 

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” Andrei asked. 

Mustering the last of his strength, Dmitri lifted his swollen face to look Andrei dead in the eye and spoke around a mouthful of busted teeth. 

“Preserving innocent lives… is not… the same… as bootlicking.” He threw in as much venom as he could into the words, punctuating it by spitting blood and phlegm into Andrei’s face, mere centimetres away from him. The man recoiled with a curse and reacted with a harsh backhanded smack to his already busted face. Andrei wiped at his face with the edge of his sleeve. 

“It would’ve been better for you if you begged for mercy,” he says, getting to his feet and moving a safer distance away. 

“Fucker thinks he’s Pavlik Morozov,” one of the other men laughs, shaking his head pitifully and the others join in. “But by all means if he wants to die a young hero, we give him his martyr fantasy,” another says. 

 Yuri feels himself stiffen. He agreed to rough up the kid, already uncomfortable at the thought of hurting him to teach him a lesson. He gave in when the Inner Circle wanted to use his house to lay low after that afternoon's situation with Makarov’s arrest, but he did not consent to killing a man that had seen him as a mentor. He’d practically fathered him from the age of fifteen when his parents were killed. 

“Don’t be so hasty, Pyotr,” Andrei scolded him. “Now that Makarov is in federal custody, we must make extra sure not to lose his sentiments to our own vision. We must be patient.” 

“We still have Zakhaev,” the first man suggests and Andrei turns to him, unimpressed. 

“Zakhaev is a puppet on a string. He knows what Makarov wants and he’ll be better in executing that vision than any other of his affiliates, but we must not forget that though Zakhaev was Makarov’s predecessor, he still had a different vision for Russia.” 

“It's better than letting the cause die off.” 

“Makarov has planned for this. The system has not failed us. All the more to show that this little stunt of yours has meant nothing,” Andrei directs his attention back to Dmitri, kicking his bare foot roughly. 

“But seeing as this stint didn’t play out as you planned and you have nothing meaningful to say, perhaps you shouldn’t be able to say anything at all.” 

Yuri frowned, unsure where this was going as Andrei addressed one of the men beside him. “Go to the van and fetch the white jug in the back. Should be under the spare uniforms. Don’t let the woman in the main house see you.” 

Andrei tossed his keys to the man. 

“What are you planning to do to him?” Yuri asks, now visibly becoming unnerved. 

“Nothing extravagant.”

“I am not going to kill him with my wife and child barely two hundred metres away,” he said sternly and Andrei scoffed. 

“He won’t die immediately. I’m counting on the secondary complications to do that. Keeps the hands clean and the conscience clear.” 

“You fucking murderer,” Dmitri says as loud as he was able, struggling against his restraints. “All of you will burn in hell.” 

“At least you’ll be there to welcome us,” Andrei says dryly. 

They all turned in tandem to face the creaking of the barn door behind them, just a little way away, the man how having returned and holding up a heavy, half-empty bottle that at first sight seemed to be some sort of laundry detergent, but Yuri’s heart dropped through the floor as he realised exactly what it was. 

“You can’t be serious– that’s insane,” he stammers as the man hands off the bottle to  Andrei, now making a play to thoroughly check the label. 

“Thirty-seven percent hydrochloric acid. A lower concentration is an irritant to the skin, but undiluted, it’ll corrode right through to the flesh. I wonder what it’ll do to those vocal cords of yours.” 

He roughly shoves the bottle in Yuri’s direction. “If you would do the honours.” 

“I am not going to pour hydrochloric acid down his throat.” 

“You’re not really in a position to negotiate here. It would be a shame if I were to show your little girl what her daddy is really capable of.” 

“You leave my family out of this,” Yuri warned. 

“Then you wouldn’t mind teaching the rat here a lesson?” 

Gritting his teeth and avoiding eye contact with a panicked Dmitri, Yuri took the bottle from Andrei and slowly unscrewed the cap. It looks just like water. 

 He moved over to Dmitri with much trepidation. 

“Don’t fucking come close to me– you asshole, I thought I could trust you–” he thrashes, scooting the chair back and lurches back with so much force, the chair tips and he crashes to the floor. He cries out in more pain as he takes his weight on his bound arms behind his back, no doubt dislocating his shoulder in the process. He’s still thrashing and crying out as Yuri approaches him.

He freezes, standing there with the open bottle, not sure what to do now. 

“Dinner’s almost ready Yuri, your wife might come out and fetch us soon. You better get a move on.” 

Torn between what he knows is right and the very real possibility that his family could walk in and see what he had done, he kneeled down by the upturned chair and reached for Dmitri’s face, still trying to move away from him. 

“I’ll fucking bite your finger off! Don’t touch me!” 

“Someone hold him still,” Andrei orders and one of the men dutifully comes over to roughly yank him by his hair into a flat position against the dirty floor, tugging his mouth open with a gloved finger. 

“I won’t be able to hold him like this for long,” the man says plainly, clearly struggling to hold him still but Yuri didn’t move. 

“I can’t.” 

“This isn’t a choice,” Andrei says sharply. 

“I let you stay in my house, share my food with you. I am not getting blood on my hands in my own house.” 

Andrei’s eyes narrowed at him, but he stepped forward nonetheless, taking the bottle from Yuri’s hands and knocking him out of the way. 

“I’m starting to question your loyalty, Yuri.” 

Yuri ignores him, pushing past the five other guys to leave the barn as soon as possible. He doesn't get out before the screaming starts, wet choking around the sound. 

He leaves the barn with his head in his hands. He can still hear him, now, halfway to the house. 

Yuri thinks he might continue to hear that scream five, six years down the line. 

It's not completely stopped by the time he reaches the kitchen and finds his wife standing there over the simmering pot on the stove, shoulders stiff and mouth pressed into a tight white line as she stirs the mix once more and forcefully knocks the extra broth from her spoon on the lip of the pot, clearly demonstrating her discontent while refusing to meet her husband’s gaze. 

“Anya–” 

“Don’t even begin,” she warns sharply. She doesn’t look at him, instead, shutting off the stove and looking out at the uneven plain of dying grass between the house and the barn that had now gone eerily quiet and empty in the symphony of night crickets. 

The barn door opens and five out of the six men still in the room step out and begin making their way over to the house. In the background against the chattering of the TV, Yuri can hear the little girl in the living room, playing with the scatter of toys on the carpet and giggling, blissfully unaware of the conversation unfolding in the kitchen and the horror on the other side of the lawn. 

He turns back to his wife, unsure of what to think, but she gives him something to hold onto. “We’ll talk about it later.” 

She gets him to set the table, clearing all the leftover clutter from the time he’d been away. He’s missed so much over the past few years in Makarov’s ranks, he’s hardly been around to see his child growing up. Still, she draws him in her wobbly doodles of the family. 

He gathers all the drawings together in a stack and goes to shove it in one of the cupboards in the living room, ruffling the kid’s hair as she doesn’t even bother to look away from the TV as he is passing–

“What happened to your hand?” 

Yuri goes back to the kitchen when he hears Anya’s concerned voice, now looking down at Andrei’s freshly bandaged arm as she began ladling soup into the bowls on the counter. 

“Cleaning accident,” he laughs it off, making eye contact with Yuri. “Was struggling with a tough stain that didn’t want to go out without a fight, but it gave in eventually.” 

Dinner after that was painfully quiet, interspersed with a few crude jokes and inappropriate glances in Anya’s direction every now and again when she went to fetch something from a cupboard that one of the men would order her around for, and though Yuri was having none of it, there was little he could do about the situation while being on such thin ice with Andrei and the others already. 

But he knows now, with how deep he’s getting into this, with the incident from earlier that day on the news, his furious wife and his oblivious daughter in the living room, that he has to make a plan to dig himself out of this hole. 

It's only later that evening, when the other men had retired to the spare bedrooms and guest cottage that came with the old farmhouse, that Yuri found his wife in their upstairs bedroom, gathering a bundle of stuffed animals into her arms and throwing it on her side of the bed. 

Their en suite bathroom door was closed and he can hear the faucet of the bathtub running. 

“I’m having Nadya sleep here tonight. I’m too worried about leaving her alone with them,” She informs in a hushed voice, fluffing up one of the pillows and arranging the stuffed animals accordingly. 

“I’m sorry about everything,” he begins to say but she holds up a hand to silence him, still too angry to give him the time of day. 

“Save it. People make mistakes. I didn’t marry you to sit at home alone for half of my life wishing you were here to see your child growing up, I didn’t marry to sleep in an empty bed and wander around in an empty house until the next thing I know is that my husband’s on the news because he was part of a terrorist attack on an airport. I made that mistake, and I have to live with that, but I swear on my mother’s grave, Yuri, you bring these people into my house again, and I divorce you, for real this time. So either, I go back to Kastovia to live with my family, and you forfeit your rights as a father, or you come up with a plan.”

[shroudkeeper]

Darkness consumed her, clinging to the curvature of her silhouette, transforming and defining her attire. She was adorned in her proper raiments, garments which billowed around her ankles. The shadows of her hounds rose, scaling the walls, climbing high above the awnings until the sliver of moonlight had all been engulfed in nothingness. He wanted this, to push her to the brink of enshrouding herself. To see her for what she was.

One of the lanterns peeled away the tenebrous shadows; from above one came to life suddenly. The ghastly light descended and a terrible maw formed then divorced, giving way to a tongue that rolled out, with a glaring eye was fixated on the target of its mistress, whose frigid touch held it in place.

"Finally, you're here..beloved."

His mouth watered at the idea of tasting divinity, to feel those same hands she denied him pressed against his face in praise. His beloved indeed, his beloved. In this state of hers, he would finally prove himself worthy, to stand at her side, even if everyone else had to fall for the sake of this. To his knees, and into a pool of rain, he fell before her. She saw what had become of him as the light finally reached his form. His features revealed themselves to her. This is what envy, desire, and loathing do, give birth to a demon, one who pollutes the tranquility of their soul, their heart decays, and any purity it holds diminishes and allows another to gain control. To manipulate.

"My lady," he could barely recognize his own voice as he addressed her, but the feelings were still there, sprouting with each word. "Would you accept it now, that I am the only one who knows what you are, who can protect you, who can give.. and take."

Each word fell on deaf ears, nothing but an insect's buzzing escaped his lips. Her eyes glanced at him but once and soon settled upon the blade that he flaunted, brandished. Still, there is no expression on her features, her gaze is as empty as before. Sympathy, anger, despair? She was numbed to it all. But to destroy lives, trap the souls purged from their physical forms, followed by the audacity of offering them up to death as if they were a prize.

It was offensive.

The wails and agonized whispers resonating from this accursed blade would be silenced, and these souls would find release.

Without warning, his throat was seized by tendrils rising from the penumbra at his feet, betraying him as she watched them take form and grow defined. He was going to be dragged under by hands, hands that took the form of the people he killed, of the corpses he left behind. Mercilessly they scratched and pulled, trying to sink him into the stone, to be devoured by the shadows of her manifested domain. Into the world of darkness.

"I have killed for you! Always for you! Yet it is not enough!"

He hated it, always being second place. To the clan, to his brother, and now she would treat him like the others. Never good enough, even compared to some worthless merchant who would piss himself if he confronted the monstrosities she loved.

He hated her for it.

And if she would not have him. He would have her, her life, her soul, her body.

"I will be the last thing you see!"

Against his bindings, he lashes out and pushes off the ground in unnatural strength, like a beast that has been taunted too long. Even Kikyo had to take a slight step back, though there was no semblance of fear in her steady gaze, a hint of disappointment graced her lips but dissolved within a heartbeat as her eyes shifted to a space behind him, looking beyond where he knelt.

The indignation he tried to keep in check, shatters past the delicate binds that kept his mind from unraveling, it erupted at once in a strangled roar as he clawed at the fronds of his shadows, but kept a hand clutching the sword he offered, refusing to release it to save his own life.

Then his wail soon joined the cacophonous symphony played into the air as her geta pressed to his wrist and a gruesome crunch splinters through the cries. There is no satisfaction on her face, only watching his desperate attempt to grab at her ankle, only to have his arm pulled back by force and snap at an angle that would send an ordinary man buckling to the ground. But despite breaking his bones, the humiliation of her giving her back to him caused him to foam at the mouth.

Broken bones would not stop him, the umbral bonds were broken and he launched himself forward, but stopped suddenly. Her hound's claws took hold of the demonic horns and snapped them in a sound akin to a twig. A piercing pain and head-splitting sound imploded in his head, and darkness flashed behind his eyes like a Rorschach test.

Limb arms swung, his claws swiped at the air, at fabric, trying to get to her flesh, to disfigure her. To imprint his agony on her in any way, any method, he could. This was his vengeance, for choosing a lesser creation he would brand her as a reminder.

Then suddenly a flash of light and steel broke past the gloom.

And the world grew silent.

The flame of his life was suddenly snuffed but it was not by her hand, nor that of her shikigami who stood vigilantly, but by another. Another who despite his own injuries, still adhered to his orders, who would not sway from his duty.

[countrymusiclover]

16 - Morgan Stark's Future

Iron Stone masterlist

@fanficismydrug

Loss.

I've never experienced it with so many people at once.

Peter Parker is gone...with countless others.

"You know why Ton. I can't sleep...like I used to." He hums into my hair as I felt tears start to slip. "Because when I close my eyes all I see is - Peter collapsing into dust in my arms. I know that he wasn't our kid -" I pause starting to lightly sob. "But I connected with him, like he was. He - he was our son, in a way Tony."

Tony and I are stuck in space with Gamora's sister not probably gonna make it back to Earth or to our daughter. Tony has my head laying on his shoulder as I'm peacefully sleeping until a blinding bright light consumed the ship. Squinting I see it's a glowing woman who transports our ship to Earth. Rhodey, Steve and Pepper with a talking Racoon all watch us exit the ship. Pepper carries Morgan before helping me walk and Steve helped Tony. We're home. Tony is in a wheelchair with iv's as I'm on crutches with an iv in my left arm, bags under my eyes from lack of oxygen on that spaceship. "What wrong with him?" I glanced over to a mopping Thor. "Oh, he's pissed. He thinks he failed. Which, of course, he did...but there's a lot of that going around, ain't there." The talking Racoon named Rocket spoke. "Honestly, until this exact second I thought you were a Build-A-Beer." Tony points at him. Tony and Steve started arguing once again, mentioning Ultron to deal with our problems. Tony tips off his fake chest piece collapsing on the floor. Pepper and I sit at his bedside before I let my eyes fall closed from lack of sleep, cuddling into Morgan wrapped in her blanket. There doesn't seem like a light out of this dark reality...I hope I'm wrong.

2 months later

Tony decided to move our family to a log cabin in the middle of the woods by the lakeside. Pepper thought he was right that we deserved a simple life after everything we've been through. Opening the front door I closed it gently not wanting to wake up Morgan or Tony as I take a seat on the porch swing. It's nighttime but I can't sleep, like Tony couldn't after the attack on New York. I'm wearing one of his long sleeved shirts with some black gym shorts looking up at the stars shining through the tree line. "Sneaking out to stargaze, huh Y/n?" I don't remove my gaze from the sky hearing Tony take a seat beside me on the swing, gently laying his head on my shoulder.

Tony pulls me closer to his chest letting me grip his AC/DC shirt, combing his hands through my knotted hair trying to calm my nerves. "Breath honey, just breathe. I miss him too. But - we did everything we could. I'm here - I'm right here." He tilts my chin up to look in his dark brown eyes. "I love you 3000. Never forget that Y/n."

5 years later

"Oh Tony, I love you 3000 too." Moving my hands up his chest I wrapped my arms around his neck gently pulling him down for a kiss. His hands rest on my hips deepening the kiss, feeling both our tears mixing together before we broke for air. "How about we go cuddle inside, huh?"

Life became better over these years after Thanos destroyed half the population. Morgan is now five years old now, acts like her father half the time. I'm wearing a grey thin long sleeved shirt, ripped up jeans and muddy tennis shoes. Tony sits on the ground outside her little tent for camping. "Morgan H, Stark, you want some lunch?" The girl comes out of the tent wearing a blue and gold iron helmet, aiming her left hand out that has a fake hand blaster that's her size. "Define 'lunch' or be disinterested." Her father holds up his hands in surrender. "Okay. You should not be wearing that, okay. That is part of a special anniversary gift I'm making for mom." He removes the helmet brushing her messy hair back. "You thinking about lunch. I can give you a handful of crickets on a bed of lettuce. That's what you want?" She shook her head no grossed out.

"How did you find this?" He lifts the iron helmet as I walk towards the pair. "Garage." Morgan smiles weakly. "Were you looking for it?" He inquired more as she shakes her head no. "No. I found it, though." Tony sees me leaning against a tree smiling at the pair, causing him to pick her up in his other arm. "You like going in the garage, huh. So does daddy." He grunts walking to me the wind blowing his hair so you can see grey hairs forming. "It's fine, actually. Mom never wears anything I buy her."

I scoff playfully shaking my head taking our daughter from his arms. "That is a total lie, Ton. I've worn expensive dresses, my suit and these..." I show him my left arm with the iron bracelet and my wedding ring. "You know that fiery spirit is one reason I love you." He pulls me into his chest, deeply kissing me. Morgan groans at the two of us being together. "Ewwww." A chair door closed for all three of us to see Steve and Natasha. What are they doing here.

Morgan was inside playing with Pepper who I called to babysit tonight. "The stones are in the past. We could go back. We could get them." Steve has this crazy Idea to reverse what Thanos did with time travel. "We can snap our own fingers. We can bring everybody back." Natasha says but Tony isn't hearing it. "Or screw it up worse than he already has, right. I believe the most likely outcome will be our collective demise." Tony slumped down into a porch chair beside me on the swing. "Not if we strictly follow the rules of time travel. It means no talking to our past selves...no betting on sporting events." Tony cut Scott off raising his right hand. "I'm gonna stop you right there, Scott. Are you seriously telling me that your plan to save the universe...is based on Back to the Future?" Natasha lifts her head up looking at Tony then at me. "We have to take a stand."

Running my hands down my face I sighed bringing up Peter again after years of me crying. "We did Nat, and we lost a lot." Tears well in my eyes causing Tony to gently grab my hand in his, rubbing his thumb knowing there's a lot of sleeplessness nightmares because of what Thanos did. "The Avengers failed. We failed and it cost us nearly everything. It cost me...Peter...who I treated like he was my own son. So, I'm sorry guys but I can't go through that pain again."

"I know you got a lot on the line. You got a wife, a daughter. But I lost someone very important to me. A lot of people did. And now, now we have a chance to bring her back...to bring everyone back. And you're telling me that you won't even..." Tony squeezes my hand still in his. "That's right, Scott. I won't even." He turns his head in my direction holding tears in his soft brown eyes as well. "I can't...we can't."

The front door creaked open for our daughter rush to her father's arms. "Auntie Pep told me to come and save you." He lifts her onto his lap as I reach over ruffling her hair. "Good job. We're saved." Tony turns his head back to our friends. "I wish you were coming here to ask me something else. Anything else. I'm honestly happy to see you guys, I just..." He gets to his feet as I give Steve a sad look making him cut him off. "Tony. Y/n. I get it. And I'm happy for you, both of you. I really am. But this is a second chance." Tony holds Morgan with one arm, tugging me into his side with the other. I lay my head on his shoulder seeing Morgan snuggled into his neck. "I got my second chance right here, Cap. Can't roll the dice on it."

Nighttime had come after we finished dinner. I'd just put Morgan down for bedtime before I lean in the doorway, seeing Tony pick up a framed picture of him and Peter with me being silly in the background. He sat it down messing in the library with Friday's assistants. The words 'successful' appeared on the screen. He leans back in his chair breathing sharply. "Shit!" I rounded the corner climbing in his lap but before I can say anything Morgan's voice fills the room. "Shit." Turning our heads that direction I gasped as he whispered holding a finger to his lips. "What are you doing up, little miss?" She said it again so he warns her. "Nope. We don't say that. Only mommy says that word. She coined it. It belongs to her."

Morgan sweetly asked. "Why you up?" He replied pointing to the tech screen. "Cause I've got some important shit going on here!" I snack his chest harshly for cursing again and he grunts. "No, I got something on my mind. I got something on my mind." Our daughter tilts her head to the side smiling. "Was it juice pops?" Getting off his lap I pick her up in my arms, eyeing my husband. "Sure was, princess." I lay her down in her bed, tucking her under the covers. Tony is on his knees pushing her hair from her face, taking her empty stick in his mouth. I sit on the edge of her bed as she mumbled. "Tell me a story." Tony put his hands together quickly speaking. "Once Upon a Time there was a little girl who went to sleep." She sticks her tongue out not satisfied. "That is a horrible story." He disagreed but kissed her forehead mumbling. "I love you 3000." Getting to my feet I give her a hug and a kiss whispering the same as she drifted to sleep.

I'd give anything to be with my darling daughter again. Instead of in this life and death situation. Steve decided to have us go into the past and retrieve the stones. That plan worked until now. Steve struggles to fight Thanos as I fly around his head until Thanos grabbed my leg throwing me harshly into the ground where I get dizzy. Steve gets thrown into the dirt hearing someone talk to him through his earpiece right before gold portals starts opening around us. I see a man wearing a red eye mask and someone flip out in a red and blue suit that brings tears to my eyes. "Quill....Peter..." Everyone else that got taken returned drawing their weapons ready to fight. Steve stands beside me getting in a fighting stance. "Avengers....assemble!"

Tony and I launched up into the sky with Pepper following beside us in her own iron suit. The giant ant man knocked down the flying sharks with one punch like it was a little feather. I drop down to the ground seeing Peter gasping for breath seeing Tony and I. He started to ramble off in thought as I feel tears appearing in my eyes. "Do you remember when we were in space. And I got all dusty. I must have passed out...because I woke up and you two were gone. But Doctor Strange was there...and he was like it's been five years, come on they need us. And then he started doing the-" Running forward I tackle him in a hug wrapping my arms tightly around him. He stumbled a little then hugs me back feeling tears falling down my cheeks.

"You have no idea - God I missed you, Peter....I missed you so damn much!" I started crying uncontrollably into his shoulder until Tony pulls me away to hug him too. Peter hugs him back smiling until I saw Quill get kicked in between his legs falling on the ground. Dropping my iron mask I shoot up into the sky blasting one of the flying metal creatures we battled in New York awhile back. Thanos removed the purple stone blasting Tony away next to me. Dropping down on the ground Strange raised one finger causing me to gasp looking to my husband mumbling. "That's it. This is our chance." He nodded rushing forward and I fly forward where both of us grabbed a hold of the gauntlet before Thanos threw us far. Thanos raised his fingers declaring with a snap that did nothing. "I am inevitable..." Lifting myself up on my hands and knees I gasped seeing Tony holding all the stones that connects to his Iron Man. He struggled through labor breathing snapping his fingers pausing everything. "And...I...am...Iron Man."

Thanos disappeared into dust when Tony collapsed to the ground. Getting to my feet I rushed forward with Peter starting to cry. "Mr. Stark...hey...it's Peter...We won." Tony started shaking as I rest my hands on his shoulders crying through shaky breath. "Tony, hey its me...You're, gonna be fine..." He weakly puts his right hand over my left one wheezing. "Y/n....I...love you...3,000....you will always be my Iron Stone." Reaching up with my hands not ready to let him go so I bury my head in his iron chest sobbing. Pepper bends down beside me shaking me quickly. "Y/n, your powers. You're necklace - you can save him." Lifting my head up from his chest I bawl my right hand into a fist creating the orange surge of power. I still never understood why I was born with these powers but maybe just maybe this is why. To save the man I love. Pressing my hands to his chest I sniffed through heavy tears calling out to him. "I love you 3,000 Tony Stark...so please fight...please come back to me...I can't live without you, not anymore."

My hands turned his chest orange and I suck in a breath feeling my power getting weaker. Tony's eyes fluttered open and closed a couple of times scaring me. "Friday report now!" I croaked out feeling my heart rate increasing. "Vitatls are still low, Ms. L/n." Pepper rests her hand on my shoulder about to pull me away but I force the rest of my power into him, feeling blood coming from my nose. Tony's chest started heaving up and down with his heart beating normally again. My eyes started falling closed and I felt it harder to breathe. My head gets dizzy where I collapse to the dirt from exhaustion. Pepper rushed to you searching for a pulse and finding a weak one. She glances to Tony seeing him suddenly gasp for air dropping on his knees pulling your head into his lap, crying as he asked Friday. "Friday, is she - tell me she's..." He couldn't form a sentence not wanting you truly gone. "She's alive, sir. Barely holding on."

Y/n's POV

A repeated beeping sound rings in my ears before I can even open my eyes. Blinking my eyes opened slowly where they feel heavy I see I'm laying on a hospital bed. Turning my head from side to side there's an iv in my left hand and everything hurts even with pain meds. Someone suddenly blurted out through tears grasping my freehand and kissing it. "God I thought I'd lost you for good, baby...." Blinking my eyes a few times I don't register that it's Tony's voice at first. Coughing with a sore throat I squeeze his hand intertwined with mine. "Tony...it's you...it's really you." He brushes my hair back crying through happy tears. I hope and pray this isn't a dream or in this case a nightmare. Where I'm alive and he's not. But he squeezes my hand in his climbing into the empty space of the bed beside me. Wrapping his arms around me where I throw my arms around him sobbing happily into his shirt. "I'm here Y/n. I'll never leave you....us bad asses have to stick together."

Lifting my head up from his stained shirt he wiped away some tears on my face with his thumbs. His hair is a tousled mess and there's visible bags underneath his eyes meaning he hasn't got much sleep. "I love you 3,000...Tony." I whispered leaning up and kissing him softly. He moves his right hand cupping my face gently kissing back. The door opened and a fit of giggles warmed my heart. "Mommy, daddy!" Morgan climbed into the bed with Pepper's help hugging me happily. I sigh into her hair pulling her into a hug. Pepper smiled down at me once I broke the hug brushing my daughters hair behind her ears. "I know we gave you quite a scare, princess. But don't worry we'll always be here." Morgan wiped away some tears as Tony pulls us both in for a family hug. Burying my face in the crook of his neck he mumbled into my hair. "Pepper, I believe this has been needed to be said for a long time. Thank you for bringing us together." Pepper smiled mirroring my grin on my face. "Well there had to be a match out there somewhere for Tony Stark." Morgan turned to face us sitting on her knees with puppy dog eyes asking adorably. "Can we go get cheeseburgers when mommy gets out of the hospital?" I snorted in laughter seeing Tony ruffling her hair. "Anything you want, princess."

Well this is the end of Iron Stone. I enjoyed re-writing Tony's end. I hope you did too.

Comments really appreciated ❤️

[therosefrontier]

Whumptober Day 5

No. 5 - I’VE GOT RED IN MY LEDGER

betrayal | misunderstanding | broken nose

+++

Genshin Impact | Zhongli and his memories

(crossposted to AO3)

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“I met with Azhdaha again yesterday.”

Zhongli started his story while seated on an old stone platform in Guili Plains, a low crumbling stone wall behind him, an ancient tablet the only company by his side. “Virtue grows tall like a tree, though there be shade it will flourish forever,” the dome-shaped tablet read. At times like these, he often wondered at what all the author of those words had in mind when she wrote that.

“I…assumed this would happen, one day. Elemental spirits are nigh immortal beings, and it would be foolishness to assume that a sealed spirit won’t some day find their way out.” Zhongli paused for a moment, his words feeling heavy on his tongue, as if someone really were here that he had to explain this too. “He…left, of his own accord,” he finally said. “His spirit is once again sealed in the mountain. Although, we may very well meet again. I simply might dare to hope that next time, it would be under better circumstances.”

“My life is nigh on eternal. I will go on with the infinite flow of time. And you, Morax... You too will live for many a day to come.”

But Azhdaha would never again be free. This…this was their contract.

Zhongli looked down at his hands and at the ground, the events of many centuries earlier being all too clear in his mind. The events of yesterday were but a brief addendum to what already happened. Azhdaha’s roar of rage and pain, his accusations of treachery, the underlying grim reality of knowing that all of Liyue could be in danger if he didn’t end this here and now…all of that happened, already. Yesterday, Azhdaha was divided, his rage and his benevolence split into two beings. The first time they fought, the benevolent and wise Azhdaha that he once knew was nowhere to be found.

“I never thought I’d be able to speak with him again, like he was. Well, it wasn’t his form necessarily: his consciousness had possessed a random human, but still, once his memories were regained, the words and the voice were most certainly his.” Zhongli smiled weakly. “I must admit, that despite the inherent peril of the situation leading up to this meeting, I was glad. To see him, that is. It…was as if he were still alive.”

 “Rex Lapis, we are at your command,” Moon Carver assured him with great gravity, he and Mountain Shaper and the other watching the approach of the rampaging earth dragon with a steeled gaze, ready to fight.

Rex Lapis hesitated only for a moment. Only for a moment did he allow his heart to twist in pain, did he allow his eyes to lose their vivacity as he looked down from the sky at the dragon who cursed his name through his own unfathomable anguish. There was no solution, he knew. Erosion was something that could not be reversed. But he didn’t want to believe it. Not for Azhdaha. He didn’t want to lose him, too.

“We will lure him into the cave underneath the mountain. Follow my lead.”

 Zhongli found Azhdaha as a spirit sealed deep in the earth, a simple but unique rock without sight or motion. His stirrings had been the cause of many earthquakes and tremblings, so Zhongli thought it fit to draw the spirit of stone up from the earth and grant his wish, to give him a chance to be free in the world outside. They made a contract, then. Zhongli always made a contract, with those he invited to join him. There was only one for him for which such an agreement was delayed…only because at first, he did not know what their partnership was even to be called. It was one of many ways that Guizhong confused him.

But for the great stone dragon, their agreement was clear. If Azhdaha ever endangered Liyue and brought ruin to order, he would once again be sealed in the dark.

Zhongli always kept true to his contracts.

 “Come, I wish to show you something,” Morax beckoned him with a slight smile, bringing his friend up to a ledge overlooking the waters, the sun setting over the mountains in the distance and washing the sky with color.

“What is this?” Azhdaha asked in a deep and booming voice, although its powerful aura was perhaps mitigated by the way he spoke with the curiosity of a child. “I have seen this water before; now it is different?”

Morax chuckled softly. “Take a moment and have a look.”

Azhdaha came up over the ledge with thundering steps. “Your sun looks different. The color has changed. Is it nearing death?”

“No, no, not at all,” Morax explained with a slight touch of amusement. “This is a sunset. The sun will soon disappear over the mountains. You asked last night why the light leaves the sky in such a way. So, I thought I’d bring you here to watch. Of course, the motion of the sun can be observed anywhere, but it carries a different effect, in some locations. The sun will change its color now, but after it disappears, it will come back the next day just as it was before.”

Azhdaha hummed in acknowledgement, then plopping down onto the grass with a shaking of the earth. “So now, we sit and watch?”

“Yes, I say we shall.”

 “Morax, how do I look? Unimposing? Like a true human?”

“You look very well,” Morax agreed with a smile. It was in an elemental spirit’s nature to be able to change shape and form, but this was Azhdaha’s first time doing it on his own. His human form wasn’t exactly all that ‘unimposing,’ being that of a man quite large and broad-shouldered, but he looked enough like a human, at least.

“Mm, that is acceptable.” Azhdaha put his newfound fists on his hips and looked down at the Guili Assembly plaza down below. “It is time to interweave myself with humankind. I wish to first try the foods that people keep telling me about. I do not see the appeal of this ‘Grilled Ticker Fish’ that Pervases speaks of, as it is merely a single fish, but I wish to obtain this first, so that I may give him my full opinion!”

“Sounds like a suitable plan,” Morax agreed with a nod. “Then, let’s not keep our human and adepti friends waiting.”

 Zhongli remembered his form then, strong with a youthful wonder that wizened into ancient wisdom over the passage of time. It was so startingly unlike the form half of him took yesterday, of a child with a bitter glare in her eyes.

“So here lies the wisdom of the gods? Destroy all deemed redundant, enlist tyrants to ravage the wilderness!” Jiu mocked in her (his) fury.

Zhongli had a contract to keep. He had to seal Azhdaha away. There was no choice.

“Is once not enough!? You would forsake me again!?”

It wasn’t what he wanted. But was there…really nothing he could have done? If he had stopped the humans from mining in the Chasm, if he had noticed the change in Azhdaha, if he had just taken the time out of his duties to pay him a visit, then maybe…

“Erosion ground Azhdaha’s consciousness into oblivion. Slowly, he forgot the face of his old friend, and his memories of defending Liyue Harbor disintegrated,” Azhdaha in Kun Jun’s vessel recounted his own story with a faint smile of regret.

Zhongli couldn’t stop erosion.

And yet…he mourned what came to pass.

Zhongli had known, for a very long time, that he would never again be able to mourn as a mortal would. Azhdaha was far from the only one he has lost to time and conflict. The name he called him, “Morax,” was a stark reminder of this, that name which he had walked away from a long time ago but never truly shed. Morax was a god of war, a slayer of thousands. Morax had for a long, long time grown used to the bloodshed that was Liyue’s reality, as god fought against god in the Archon War and sacrificed hoards of soldiers as pawns. Morax felt no disgust or horror when he walked through a battlefield after the fight was over, stepping over bodies and walking through pools of blood and entrails as he coldly assessed the damage done.

In some ways, Rex Lapis was no different. For that matter, neither was Zhongli. Although his thoughts on war had changed—he would avoid it through the employment of contracts and words, if at all possible—he could never feel the same revulsion towards death and bloodshed as a human would.

Rex Lapis saw many scores of yaksha and other adepti swear fealty to him over the millennia. They would give him their loyalty, and he would make a contract with them, and he would know, because of how many times it had happened already, that they might give their lives in his service. They might fall to the evil that plagues the land in battle, or they may be consumed by the very filth they faithfully eradicated. Rex Lapis did not consider their deaths to be meaningless, nor did he ever wish to sacrifice his subjects as a pawn of war, but…he might have accepted, at some point long ago, that such deaths were inevitable and necessary.

He could not mourn as a human would—or rather, as a human without authority might. A war god had to know, lest he be blind, that he was sending his people to possible death.

He bore that weight, and he accepted that responsibility.

But in that responsibility…what did that mean for Azhdaha? Whose soul was crushed not by the many battles they fought together, but by the erosion of the earth itself?

He was sealed forever by Zhongli’s own hands. That was their contract. That was justice.

He always kept his contracts. No matter the price, no matter what he had to do…even if it was a pact paid in blood with Celestia, he did what he must for the sake of Liyue…

But was it true? Did Zhongli, in that near-final meeting, betray Azhdaha?

“I did what I must,” he spoke again to the stone tablet, cold and motionless despite the warm words inscribed upon it. “Virtue grows tall like a tree, though there be shade it will flourish forever.” But how did one define what “virtue” meant? How much of this “shade” was acceptable? This increasing debt, made in blood…

“His anger, however, does seem justified, in a certain way.”

“Guizhong?” He looked up, a small drop forming in his near-human eyes. “Did I do the right thing?”

[stan-joonies]

Leave Me Like Everyone Else, It's Not Like I Believed You'd Stay

Y/n laughed when she spotted Rosalie in a tree, her face obscurred by leaves.

"I can see you, Rose." She giggled, standing near the tree.

Rosalie cleared her throat unnecessarily before jumping down, the crack of twigs and leaves filling the silence.

Y/n raised an eyebrow as Rose ignored her in favour of staring at her hands.

"Rose?" Y/n's smile dropped. "Are you ok?"

[[MORE]]

Said blonde shook her head, breathing before looking at the human. The human. Not just a human. The human.

The human that changed it all in the best way possible.

The human that made Emmett do that amazing belly laugh and Rosalie to giggle.

The human who unknowingly fell in love with two monsters, and stayed when she found out the truth.

The human who made two happy vampires even happier.

The human who's heart Rosalie had to break.

The vampire steeled herself, her lips pressed thinly and her shoulders squaring.

"This isn't working." Just those words made Rosalie feel like her insides were aflame. Hands digging their way out of the ground and clawing at her feet, pulling her underground.

Y/n felt like the breath had escaped her, eyes widening.

"What? Rose...What's going on?"

Rosalie gently shook of her hand, closing her eyes and grimacing.

"Me and Emmett thought we were missing something, so we experimented. We thought you were the one we needed but we were wrong. Me and Emmett..." Rosalie felt hands of air trying to choke her. "Are better on our own."

Rosalie wanted to cry in that moment as Y/N's eyes glossed over, lines appearing on her forehead.

"This is a joke right...?"

Rosalie could only shake her head, watching as Y/N broke down, her heart slowly being ripped apart.

Rosalie took a careful step forward, reaching a pale hand to touch her, gasping when Y/N slapped it away.

"Don't touch me!" She exclaimed, h/c brows scrunching up. "You don't get to do that!"

"Y/n..."

"No!" She shouted furiously. "Where's Emmett? He couldn't bother to be here too? I'm not worth the two second trip, am i?" Y/n snarled, crossing her arms over her chest as if trying to shield her fragile heart from more damage. "To think i was this stupid."

"Y/n...you're not..."

Y/n ignored her, rolling her eyes.

"Ever since we got into this relationship. In the back of my mind it was always 'Emmett and Rosalie'. You were always there! My thoughts couldn't escape! Where's Rosalie and Emmett today? Are Rosalie and Emmett having fun? Are Rosalie and Emmett happy today." She let out a sob. "Then i found out...that you weren't what i thought you were. The thoughts got so much worse, so much more negative. Rosalie and Emmett are immortal...will they be there even when I'm old? How would Rosalie and Emmett feel once i die? How can i be equal to Rosalie and Emmett if i die soon. Can Rosalie and Emmett love me equally even if they have hundreds of years together against my fifty? You never left. Those thoughts consumed me. The doubts and thoughts became my daily. But i had the both of you, when you invited me over and we'd snuggle on the couch with Emmett at our feet and we'd watch him play video games, giving him praise when he won. When he was done he'd lift us both and carry us to his room where we'd all hug eachother close. I'd be wearing three jumpers because you both would make me feel freezing. Those moments made doubts go away, if only for a day."

"Y/N," Rosalie encased her in a hug, wincing when, instead of melting into it, she freezes. "You a--were everything. We love you so much. There was no need for those doubts. We love you like you love us and we love eachother."

"But that's still not enough to stay," Rosalie tensed, eyes widening. She didn't even move when y/n broke out of her lax hold.

"I need to find Bella," she quickly turned, running out of the forest and away from Rosalie.

Once she was far away, Emmett jumped down from the trees, quickly taking Rosalie into his arms.

"Why couldn't you be here with me," Rosalie muttered, digging her head into his chest.

Emmett closed his eyes, feeling his heart throb and a familiar emptiness consume him.

"Cause I'd run after her..."

-

Y/N was doing better. When she found out the Cullens had skipped town she was heartbroken, a hollowness consuming her for months on end.

Then, University arrived. A chance to leave the little town of Forks and escape the bad omens lurking in the darkness.

She smiled when she got her acceptance letter. It was far away yet still only a five hour car ride. Bella tearfully told her to come see her once a month, Y/N just as tearfully agreed while hugging the girl's oxygen away.

Y/N remembered driving away, her family waving her off and a sense of lightness came about her. She wasn't healing or living. But she was surviving.

-

With her stomach full, Y/N made her way out of the cheap restaurant and down the dark road. It was swallowed in shadows, rain pouring down and clanging against bins.

Shaking off a sudden chill, she continued walking, her boots clicking against stone.

From her right, a bin tipped over, clashing against the floor and echoing around her. She wanted to stop, see what had caused it.

But Rosalie taught her better.

"No matter what happens, keep moving."

Her voice echoed hauntingly in her head and she followed it, her steps quickening slightly when another bin fell up ahead. Then another. And another.

It was like a horrible, screeching banshee echoeing around her. Her heart was drumming against her ribs cage and her vision became blurry when she forgot to breath.

So when hands slithered around her waist like snakes and pulled her into the darkness, she couldn't scream...

-

When Y/N woke in the barn, seeing Victoria smiling down at her, she jolted up and accidentally smasher a hole into the barn. That earned her being ripped apart and left to slowly reassemble. After that, Y/N chose to brood in silence, actively thinking about her human life and grasping onto them. They were the only things she had now.

When a shirt Y/N recognised was passed around, she hid in shadows, resisting the temptation to snatch it and smell it herself.

That clothing was Bella's. The same Bella who changed her life and now it was the Bella who smelt so sweet to Y/N that she wanted her.

Then, after a month, she met Bree Tanner. A small girl who built up her own resistance, something Y/N admired.

They spoke about their lives before, everyday they became closer, to the point of being sisters.

When Victoria released them, making the mindless newborns follow her by scrunching up a piece of Bella's clothing in her hands, their resistance was put to the test.

They stayed up on trees, far away from Bella.

Y/N watched as her family defeated the monsters, ripping off their heads and throwing them into a fire. But the newborns were vicious, biting and scraping at tough skin.

When Y/N caught sight of Emmett and Rosalie, it felt like a rusty wrench sunk into her heart.

She wanted to go to them, fight with them, but Bree held her back.

"They'll mistake you for the enemy." She informed, making Y/N rethink her options.

When they were all destroyed, a wolf taken away, they jumped from the trees, announcing their presence.

From down here, Bella's scent was much more potent and strong, but Y/N's resolve was stronger.

"No..." she heard someone cry. Y/N looked up, her eyes connecting to Bella's teary ones. "Y/N...what happened."

The vampire looked down in shame, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Victoria caught me, wasn't intentional, but she was ecstatic when she did," she huffed.

Their eyes travelled to her body, where all her scars showed. One thick one on her neck where they ripped her head off. Two on her arms. Two on her legs. Multiple on her stomach...

"This is Bree Tanner," she introduced. "She's my friend."

She tried with all her might to not look at Rosalie and Emmett, who, in comparison, desperately tried to catch her eye.

Then, figures emerged from the forest in billowy black cloaks that masked their faces from view.

"You missed a couple," Jane stated, eyes trained onto Bree and Y/N.

Rosalie snarled angrily, stepping between her and Jane.

"They're with us,"

Y/N sighed, pulling Rosalie back and looking into her eyes.

The world tilted, her dead heart hammering against her chest. Rosalie was even more beautiful then she remembered. Her golden strands of hair framed her face like an antique painting, her porcelain skin glowed from the faint sunlight that peeked through the clouds. Her eyes were black and cold yet they invited Y/N in, almost begging her to come closer and look into them more.

The dam had broke and her eyes immediately searched for Emmett's, who sped to her side and grabbed her by the waist. He was larger it seemed, muscles more defined and his cheekbones higher. His eyes were dark and dangerous but inviting too. His dark hair in contrast to his pale skin created a beautiful painting of a fallen angel. She felt warmth spread through her and caress her slowly mending heart.

Everything was misplaced. Her feelings clashing with her brain and her senses becoming completely overloaded. Memories swarmed her, pushing others out of the way.

The feeling of being disconnected from reality felt freeing yet absolutely terrifying.

But Emmett and Rosalie hugged her, and their bodies were no longer cold to her.

In those arms, the same that had comforted her, the same that had loved her, the same ones thst had broke her, she knew things would happen. Good or bad, she didn't know. But things were coming her way, and she'd be damned if she faced it alone.

Her resolve melting, her arms, with no lack of struggle, snuggled into them both.

For a couple of seconds she could forget the outside world. Just for a couple of seconds.

A white field, burning, suffering. Screams rising into the cool air.

Emmett screaming, Rosalie crying.

A s/c head rolling on the ground, imprinting the snow.

Alice gasped, shaking out of her vision, her eyes going to the three vampires cocooning themselves from the world.

Alice felt sympathy rise up into her chest.

There was only one future...and it didn't see them all in it.

[buirbaby]

The Wardens: An Unlikely Ally

Notes:  Benjen Stark is a bit of a fun project for me. There's not much on him given his disappearances in the books, which means he'll be a fun canon to have join along the saga who really didn't have the chance to shine through. I know this might draw questions about Coldhands and so forth, but it's never actually confirmed that that IS Benjen.

Rating: M + Mature content, language, and violence

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The last thing he saw was a shadow swooping down from the sky and knocking the Other away from him. Afterward, everything was disjunct, muddled, and out of order. The woman, Tabitha was it?-she'd grabbed him and put him on some sort of mount. They had fled. How, he could not say, but he could remember the fierce burning of fiery eyes, hidden beneath the midnight cowl of the female as she'd glared at him earlier. There seemed to be quite a few things that Benjen had not seen before that night, to include wights, an Other, and a woman with eyes of fire. A blazing beacon amongst the frozen boughs of the haunted forest.

Then everything went dark and the pain ebbed away. He was floating in an abyss, nothing and everything at once. It took him a while to realize that he was dead and that there was no afterlife as the Seven preached, just an emptiness in which he conscious could float within and wonder if the woman had survived.

There would be no answers here, just eternal gripes and curiosities.

Until the darkness was juxtaposed by a flame, burning and twisting like serpentine tongues. Erring close, Benjen could see within the writhing fire, three dragons sailing overhead, toward Westeros. Death, war, famine, misery. But the dragons were not the worst of it, just a part of the machinations as the undead stole one, wielding it against their master and destroying the wall to unleash the unholy army upon the unsuspecting. No one knew that they were real. They were wetnurses' tales.

When he reached out to grab the vision, he gasped, the fire consuming his flesh and burning him. No, not burning as it should. He could feel each nerve, muscle, and fiber of his being twinging back into existence. Death had come for him, but a flaming hand had gripped and pulled him from perdition.

The ambivalence of the void faded and as he turned over where he laid, he heard voices in the distance.

"Were you told to bring him here?" he did not know this voice, but it chilled him to the bone, so youthful and yet scarred by the wisdom of centuries.

"I did what I felt was right," it was the fire-eyed woman, Tabitha. "It does not matter. He has died regardless of my help. Just as-"

"Just as intended?" the other filled in.

"I don't know! It was never confirmed, there were only theories," she hissed.

"Do you hear that?"

Only the crackling of the hearth in front of Benjen filled his ears with noise.

"No, Fang-"

But the companion had departed, leaving the woman huffing in frustration. Her footsteps drew nearer and she passed in front of the hearth, lean shoulders framed by the light as she had put away her cloak within the warmth of the room.

"What do you think, Balerion?" she spoke to another, a great shadow unfurling and tensing his heart. The creature that had knocked the Other back came into hazy focus, a thick lion's mane of feathers and fur encircling an enormous eagle's face, intelligent eyes glistening with the same bright flames as the woman who commanded him. After a moment of silence, she shook her head. "We probably won't be able to stay here much longer. Not with the Others marching. Who knows how far behind the Night King is."

"How do you know so much about them?" Benjen spoke hoarsely, his voice sounding as if he hadn't used it in days.

The both of them jumped, Tabitha whirling with her hand on her sword as she gazed down intently where he was laying. "How the fuck- " she started, interrupted only by the slapping of barefeet against stone. Turning a corner, the other voice's visage came into view, and Benjen was shocked into silence once again, staring at a boy of legend. Perhaps he shouldn't have been so startled, but clutched in his tawny arms was a miniature version of the griffin that had fluffed up indignantly. Only the feathers of the fledgling was grey dappled with black.

"Another Warden has been born," he declared, feline eyes turning toward Benjen.

"Fang, that doesn't even make sense. How could he have been..." but she didn't finish her question, dark brows snaring together. "You're still Benjen Stark, aren't you?"

He didn't understand the question, but decided to humor her. "Yes."

"I am not here to explain how things work," Fang scowled. "He has been reborn as a Warden. That means he's been given insight."

"I should get back to the Wall. If what I saw was true, I need to warn everyone," Benjen decided, sitting up and pulling back the cloak that had been strewn over him.

"Your watch ended, Warden. You died and were reborn," the creature, Fang, asserted.

"I still have a duty to Westeros, to my people-"

"Tell me, Stark, what is it you're going to tell everyone that will make them believe you?" Tabitha inquired, leaning against the forge, so that he was able to really observe the woman's face. She did not look or sound Westerosi. If anything, he thought she appeared more Dornish, despite lacking their accent. Her skin was a faded olive from missing the warmth of the sun this far north, her bright eyes framed by dark lashes, and her lips curved in a mocking manner. Dark brown hair had been shorn to fall thick and straight to her collar, parted in the middle and slightly wavy from being pressed beneath a hood. There was a roguish charm to her, nothing quite soft and dainty or willowy as most men preferred in a lady, but this woman was no flower. She had wielded a sword well enough and was tall and lean. Perhaps comely could be used to describe her, the symmetry of her face, but her eyes were also haunting.

"The Others are real and that-" he was going to express his knowledge of the dragons, that they would be coming to Westeros and that there would be war and strife, juxtaposed by the fact that the long night was looming on the horizon. Yet, as he tried to put this knowledge to word, he found himself choking on air, his voice failing him.

"That's what I thought," she remarked smugly, lifting the hand she'd injured during the fight, which was now bound. "Whatever you know, you won't be able to verbalize it. One of the Wardens' most redeeming features. For everything we know, our words shall not serve us, our actions must."

"I can warn them of the Others at the very least," he groused.

"Can you? If you return to Castle Black, they will not understand your rebirth or your need to leave on a moment's notice. We are slaves to the will of the one who saved us, the Lord of Light, R'hllor. Would it not be better for you to be thought to be dead than to have to abandon your post when the Lord of Light commands it?" Tabitha challenged.

"I don't serve this Lord of Light," Benjen rejected, shaking his head.

"Then you'd be dead. It was He who revived you. Are the words not ' Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death '? Your watch has ended and a new one has begun," Tabitha stood up, pacing the length of the room to retrieve supplies from an alcove in the stone.

"Not as if I was given the choice to make an oath in this circumstance," Benjen grimaced, wondering what else would be expected of him as a 'Warden'.

"Don't sound so thrilled. I wasn't given a choice either. Burned to death and woke up here with Balerion," she jerked her thumb over toward the magnificent beast. "Trust me, it doesn't make much sense, but I've just learned to stop questioning it. Here, you must be starving-" she returned with a waterskin, jerky, and black bread. Sitting nearby, she placed her elbows on her knees and hunched forward.

"Burned to death?" Benjen considered, glancing over her once again. "This Lord of Light really knows how to pick his champions, hm?"

The woman snickered. "I didn't feel it. Was unconscious from the smoke beforehand," her eyes flickered over toward Fang. "But this little welp is yours, just as Balerion is my partner. A Warden is a guide, a keeper of knowledge, and wargs-" The griffin was set on the floor as she continued to explain their plight, waiting on the Lord of Light to task them with their duty before sending them on the holy mission to aid in altering the future. While she spoke, the young creature, no larger than a house cat, stumbled on weak feet and tumbled unceremoniously before him, head too heavy for the rest of its tiny body.

He could not deny that there seemed to be a connection between them, the excitement palpable and rolling of the griffin in waves. The features of the little one were unlike the large obsidian one across the room, lacking the immense mane. Rather, his fur was thicker, the plumage of his feathers not as defined or prominent. In a way, the griffin had more canine features, a thick tail, and broader ear tufts.

The Wardens themselves were a rather ambiguous group, something he'd never heard of and yet here he sat with one and their griffin. Had it not been for his own revival from death and the mythical beast pawing at his leg, he might've scoffed at the information being passed over to him. One oath down and a new job set before him, Benjen resigned himself to the fact that his life was eternally destined to be interlaced with servitude. Only now, the complexities of magic and the fantastic had their own roles to play. Everything he'd thought was little more than old wive's tales, turning out to hold substance. Even the legend of the Children of the Forest was worth its salt, Fang erring near the entrance of the warm hearth room as Tabitha explained that their days were numbered.

Finally, the short being departed, leaving just the Wardens and their partners in the room. By now, the griffin had found its way into his lap and had curled up, wrapping its tail around its talons. "They won't do us much good against dragons, but so far I don't regret having Balerion by my side. We wouldn't have made it out of the haunted forest without him."

Dragons. His interest piqued, wondering how much she knew about the topic. "Dragons are dead, aren't they?"

"For now, give it a few more months' time-" Tabitha snorted, brows snaring together as the comment fell from her lips. Confusion was blatant on her face, her spine stiffening as she sat up and stared at him, almost in an accusing manner. "Dragons are going to be reborn once Khal Drogo is burned on a pyre. In which Daenerys Targaryen shall acquire 3 dragons."

He knew that name. The daughter of King Aerys, who had somehow survived the sacking of Dragonstone. Her family wasn't as fortunate. "You know then... That they're going to come here and one will fall into the clutches of the Others-" His tongue was no longer tied, the future spilling from his lips unhindered.

"I... know a lot of things," Tabitha admitted darkly. "Wardens can share information with Wardens..." she muttered, rubbing her face thoughtfully before glancing back toward him. "Makes sense, I guess... I suppose we'll also be able to tell when there's an eavesdropper or intruder."

"So Daenerys Targaryen is going to come to Westeros with 3 dragons," Benjen pieced together, the images he'd seen not possessing a narrative to go along with it.

"Yes, with intentions of taking the Iron Throne for herself. She will realize she needs to help destroy the army of the undead, but there's still a lot of unknown... how dominoes might fall now that you've survived," Tabitha sighed.

"I wasn't supposed to survive?"

"You were supposed to disappear and be presumed dead," Tabitha told him. "As far as I know, you never returned... but then again, all I know is script, not images."

"Then... if we're to be successful, I need to understand everything."

"If I tell you everything, you must understand that we have to adhere to what we're assigned to alter, because a lot of it has to deal with your family," Tabitha warned.

"I've taken oaths before and sworn myself to other causes. I think I can handle what you have to tell me."

That is what Benjen thought before Tabitha sighed and started from the beginning, recounting things that she was not around to witness, speaking in poetry like a prophet that had written the lines of their lives on parchment. She was right, he was not prepared for the intricacies of the world that he would have been better off being daft to. His derision and distrust of the Lannisters deepened, his breath quickening as he learned that it was they that hurt Bran and wished his death. But that was only the most minor of the plights to face House Stark. From the death of his brother at the hand of the Lannisters, to the rise of his nephew as a king, the betrayal and hurt was too much to bear.

Yet, Benjen sat, as it was his duty as a Warden. The web was not only woven with the Starks, but many other faces and names, some of which he was familiar with and others he was not. For as snarky as the woman seemed, Tabitha had an impeccable memory and a talent to retell this all like a story.

When she stopped, he lifted his head to gaze intently at her, his chest aching, but wondering why she'd ended so abruptly. "What happens after? With Jon, with Arya-"

"I can only speculate, that is where my true knowledge of the events of the future ends. You tell me that Daenerys will come to Westeros and lose a dragon to the Night King. Jon will likely be revived by the Lord of Light... Arya will continue her trials to become a Faceless Man, but the others--if we change the future, none of this is certain," Tabitha pointed out tenderly, remarkably softer than she had been previously.

He shouldn't have expected for all of the answers, especially given how much she knew and the years between now and when she'd ended, but... he really wished he knew what became of them. Already, he knew that many of them would die, including Ned, Robb, and Catelyn. In his gut, he wanted to go to them, to free them of their fate, but as he'd had his duty to the Watch, he had to trust in the Lord of Light to give him the opportunity to save them.

"I'll... give you some time alone. I know it's a lot to process," Tabitha stood up, stretching her back like a feline that had lounged out in the sun for too long, before striding away, glancing toward her griffin companion before departing from the chamber.

Benjen sat in silence, wondering if he would have been better off dead than with the vast knowledge and pressure he now felt.

*

"You're leaving yourself wide open," Benjen chastised, smacking Tabitha hard on the side of her arm with the flat of his blade.

"Right, well, my sincerest apologies for not wielding a sword since I could walk," she combatted haughtily, frustrated by her inability to best him.

It wasn't that she was a bad swordsman. In fact, she was quick as a whip and relentless when she was on the offense. However, she seemed to forget that her advantage in speed was outweighed by a man's strength. She often put herself in positions in which she could be placed out of balance and then open for attack. The form was there, as was the finesse, but he had learned by now that Tabitha had a bit of a temper that he could play like a harp. Against most men, she'd win, but against true savants or those that had spent years honing their craft, they'd pick up on the same chinks in her skill as he did.

The Roost was not a bad place, nor his newest companions too disagreeable. It had taken him a little while to grow accustomed to Tabitha's frank attitude and lack of decorum, but he likened it to comrades speaking to one another, not a woman to a man. Putting aside the facets of gender, Benjen found that Tabitha was responsible, reliable, and someone he would have liked to work alongside in the Night's Watch had she been a man. Now, as two Wardens with the task of saving the future that they knew, he was glad that he was with someone as capable as Tabitha, who seemed to have an uncanny memory and been given a scholarly education.

"React less emotionally," Benjen challenged, unable to stop himself from grinning as he thought of the times he'd told Jon the same thing when he was just a young boy. Or perhaps even Arya, who would have loved to be given the chance to be a warrior as a woman. He did not know how Tabitha's talents would transition in Westeros, given the fact a woman wielding a sword was nearly always unacceptable. Trying to think of her in a dress was amusing, as he'd only ever known her in trousers and armor, seemingly somewhat of a permanent fixture for the woman in place of what he'd grown up knowing females should wear.

Her nostrils flared and she came at him again, twisting Fate around in a counterclockwise motion before he parried the blow. The weight was light, barely a kiss of steel against steel, warning him that he'd fallen for the feint. Still, the man was quick enough to see as she redirected herself. Twisting his wrist to counter the next, he was astonished when she dropped beneath his blade and swept her leg beneath him, hooking a boot behind his leg and jerking him right off his feet.

Benjen slammed down hard on his back, collapsing into the remnants of an old nest, muscles groaning in protest from the hard, stone floor than embraced him. Tabitha loomed over him, pointing the triangular tip of her longsword down at him.

"How long?" he muttered, sitting up and accepting the glove she'd offered him to pull him back to his feet.

"How long what?" she asked, feigning ignorance.

"How long were you pretending to cross?"

Tabitha scoffed, as if offended that she'd play that game, but sheathed her sword. "I figured it out a couple of days ago. You always pointed out my anger, so I decided to set a trap."

"It took you a couple of days to set the trap?" Benjen poked.

"Well, there'd be no fun in closing it right away. Especially when you were being wary of me calming down enough to give you a run for your coin," Tabitha shrugged. "Still don't think a trick like that will be enough to defeat an Other, but it's progress."

"Probably not," Benjen agreed.

Tabitha's head whipped toward the grin in the mountainside where the griffins could come and go as they pleased. She had a better sense of when Balerion was arriving, her warging abilities more finely tuned over the years than his own. While he might be a better swordsman, Tabitha had him in the category of magic. "Look who's brought back quite a catch," she whistled, placing her hands on her hips as Balerion flung an elk corpse in through the opening. "Let's carve it up before it decides that we're supper."

The powerful griffin landed soon after, followed closely by Torrhen, who was a little uncertain on his wings, but managed to keep up as he grew into a gawky state where his talons were becoming too large for him to know what to do with. Dropping his own prize of a fat rabbit, he glanced expectantly toward Benjen, waiting for praise.

“Better than last time,” he remarked, bending down to brush the thick ears of the griffin down affectionately. “You’d better eat it quickly.”

Torrhen glanced from his rabbit and then to the elk, poising the silent question as to if they needed to share his catch too.

“No, you’re growing. Eat that yourself. Balerion brought plenty enough back to share.” No sooner had he said that did the massive beast dig its talons into the back of the carcass. Twisting, it snapped the spine and helped divide the elk in half, leaving the left side of the body for them to dress. Dragging the rest away, Balerion threw an expectant look at Torrhen, the tiny counterpart hobbling after his much larger brother.

“Ruined the pelt,” Tabitha chastised Balerion, who let out a huff in disdain at her dismay. She drew her knife and began working, Benjen crouching beside her to assist. It was dirty work, but the griffins were keen on the organs and head, so there’d be no reason to dispose of the waste, instead leaving the mess clustered in the roosting area of the mountain as they divided the remaining elk and dragged it toward the Hearth.

Sitting by the warmth of the eternally burning forge, they worked in relative silence. There wasn’t always a need for conversation and Benjen was unbothered by the woman’s company. Salting and hanging large haunches in the back of the room, the work took a few hours, but would result in a couple weeks worth of food for the both of them. The griffins had been retrieving food as of late, Fang citing that it was too dangerous for them all to go out and hunt after hearing the harrowing tale of their encounter with the Other.

Tabitha sat up on one of the benches, rubbing the arm that he’d taken the flat of his blade to absentmindedly. Her eyes were fixated on the twisting wreath of flames within the forge. A forge that neither of them knew how to use, nor why it was in this mountain. It gave them warmth and protection from the darkness of the frozen north, but otherwise its existence was a mystery. Her brows pressed together and she stood, taking a few paces toward the fire.

Benjen tilted his head, gazing toward the hearth in an effort to notice what she was transfixed upon. Tongues leapt out at him, images burning a path across the fire, a dragon’s shadow lifting to reveal a beautiful city and a crowd of impressive, queerly dressed people as they gave gifts to a young girl. A rotund, greasy man opened a chest and presented three calcified eggs.

“It’s been decided,” Tabitha muttered.

Did she see what he saw?

“We are flying to Pentos.”

[detective-with-one-arm]

A Legacy of Vengeance

Thousands of years ago, a woman crawled into this cave. Thousands of years ago, clutching her only daughter, her eyes torn from her sockets and eaten whole. Thousands of years ago, when the white demon ruled this land and took glee in the subjugation of humans, a gorgon woman made this place her home.

All of that taken away by the white demon naga.

He took her eyes and ate them, the one safeguard against a gorgon’s petrification curse. And since this feat, he attempted to send his children to hunt her, the woman taking flight on her white feathered wings.

The serpents on the left of her face tried their best to heal her wounds, but to no avail.

The monster took her eyes, so she took his future.

Upon the land and its inhabitants, she laid a curse. A curse that transcended death and the power of the gods. For gorgons were feared by gods for a reason, and the white devil would regret forsaking this soon enough.

She stipulated this: Should the naga who took her eyes or his kin invite the scorn and spite of a mortal without fear of his kind through sleight and injustice separate their soul from their body through death, all the collective rage, pain and cries for retribution from all those wronged by that naga and his bloodline will permeate and coalesce within the spirit of that mortal. That soul will act as a host for the will of the curse and they will become the Harbinger of Vengeance, no matter whether that soul is consumed or not.

It will hunger for one thing and one thing alone and nothing will be able to stop it from achieving it: Exacting revenge on that naga. It will take everything from them. Innocent people - all of them - will be destroyed. Nothing will satiate it but the complete destruction of everything that naga values and has gained throughout their life. It will yearn for nothing but the complete destruction of their life and even their entire self.

Nothing will be left behind.

A gorgon’s curse is meant to be everlasting. Meant to withstand until the end of time itself. Once a gorgon’s curse is cast, there is nothing in this world or any other that can break it. It is eternally binding.

In that same cave, her only daughter, Hashladûn, slept. Her scales were as pale as the white demon who defiled and blinded her mother. Despite her upper body being as gorgon as her mother, with her hair made of white pythons with eyes as yellow as the sun and wings as pure and untainted as snow, her long serpentlike body was entirely naga. Though, if you asked her, she would not call herself as such. In her eyes, she was nothing like the chest-beating prideful brutes that the nagas were.

Within the hidden cave of the waterfall, she stirred, grumbling as the new patriarch of the jungle’s voice echoed throughout her dwelling. “What is that worm bellowing about now...?”

Slithering off of the spot she’d chosen to sleep, Hashladûn peeled her chest up and stretched her feathered wings, feeling the stiffness melt away despite the very rude awakening. The heads of her head of hair all came to greet her, their polished white heads and inquisitive tongues brushing against her face. One particular advantage of being a gorgon was the constant pleasant company. She always preferred the company of snakes to people, regardless. Though, perhaps her negative experiences with people both mortal and otherwise were not good references to go off of. After all, her poor experiences with people were forever immortalized in her secret cave, the stone statues in a perpetual state of inanimation until she had some need for them once again.

Though, in petrifying them, she gained all their memories. Despite her own personal experiences with people being very poor, she held no ill will towards humans. She did not particularly like them, but her overall feelings towards them were rather neutral.

Gently cupping the heads of her head full of snakes, the gorgon woman sighed contentedly. “Good morning, Molurus.” She purred towards one in particular, the snake reaching around to wrap around her head underneath all the others to come around and bind itself around her eyes. After all, the last thing she wanted to do was be careless with her power. One look was all it took to petrify others. While she could reverse the condition, she would rather not accumulate more memories than necessary.

Unless there is no other viable option, she would much rather not turn someone to stone.

With the naga’s bellowing above shaking the water from the stalactites up above, Hashladûn had only one destination. The Pool of Truth.

A late gift left behind by her mother, as her window into the world. To see the world as it was past, present, and future without exaggeration or embellishment. Though, it was a rather fickle thing. “Sir, please show me the naga known as Connor as he is currently.” She requested politely.

Before her, the reflection of the cave ceiling swirled until it showed the gorgon exactly what she needed to see. Like before, it was the dark sapphire naga yelling and berating the woman who had arrived not long ago. The outsider from the north. The investigator.

The Lightningbringer.

Her kindness, compassion, empathy, and generosity was absolutely wasted on the prideful spoiled serpent. Insistent and presumptuous, though she may be, was completely innocent in her motivations and actions. The vile and volatile deity was simply needlessly callous and bitter. She did not deserve this treatment. Perhaps a wave of dismissal or a simple rebuttal, perhaps. But not…this abuse.

Yet, she did not falter in his presence. No, she held no fear. This, the gorgon was certain. She was determined and unyielding. A trait that the woman would find remarkably admirable, were it not for the reality of whom she was dealing with.

She was dealing with a wrathful serpent who chose to devour his own heart. Metaphorically speaking, of course. This naga forsake his compassion when he emerged victorious over his wretched father. Hashladûn had hoped that the serpent who would defeat the white devil would be different. Would be better.

But she was disappointed to discover that over the years coming into his own, he was not. He simply traded his father’s overt subjugation with a more subtle and easily deceptive form of tyranny. Tyranny disguised as prosperity and freedom. Prosperity he could destroy along with all of their innocent lives at a whim. He had no respect for them. None whatsoever.

The people were content, but they did not know better. They were not to blame, of course. How could they be? It should not be their responsibility to appease such a volatile creature as Connor. They were mortal. They were powerless.

It was his responsibility to control his ire and temper his temperament. Not theirs to coddle him. It was unfair. It was wrong. He was the one with the power over them. The imbalance was surely not lost on him, and if it was, then he was an even bigger fool than the gorgon had taken him for.

But what he did not realize was that her mother’s curse applied to him as well. It was not his fault for not knowing it. She did not wish to know him and the people kept him content, all things considered. The only ire suffered by humans was that of outsiders, and it was strictly a relationship between trespasser and guardian. Though, she would hesitate to use such a term to describe the naga.

Continuing to observe the interaction, Hashladûn took note of the fact that the human – Rachel – displayed no such fear before Connor. Even as she left, she maintained her dignity. She would not have her worth defined by anyone else. Her worth was not up for debate by anyone else. She did not have to have anyone else’s approval to have worth. She was worthy simply by existing. Something gods all fail to truly understand.

But this did nothing to quiet the discontent within the gorgon. In fact, as she observed the woman, she only grew more anxious. While she had an incredible amount of restraint and control, and a moral integrity that while it bent a little ways, she held it rigid regardless. But that small amount of spite and scorn displayed for a moment in her lonesome was enough to make Hashladûn curl up and tense. Connor’s callousness towards her was personal. She wasn’t just an outsider hellbent on ripping everything away from him like the threats that lurked just outside his territory. She was an innocent woman.

An innocent woman who was just as stubborn as he was without the pride or ego to show for it.

A woman who would make the ideal host for the Harbinger of Vengeance if Connor continues to act this way.

Despite her mother’s reassurances that it was necessary, Hashladûn disagreed with her vengeance being extended to the innocent people of the village. They had done nothing to invoke her ire and they did not deserve to pay for Connor’s father’s transgressions, though valid her desire for retribution was. But the humans did not have to suffer for it. They did not deserve to pay for his crimes.

So, the gorgon’s life was dedicated to ensuring that this curse would not take hold. Preventing it was paramount to everything. Because once it was invoked…there would be nothing she or anyone could do to stop it.

So, she watched. She watched as the Chief gathered the village before the throne where blood had once been spilt. The Shaman had gone to quell Connor’s ire. But as the Shaman reached the naga, Hashladûn’s tail began to bristle, a hiss escaping her lips. “What is that fool doing?!” She hissed, her snakes hissing in unison with her. Lashing her tail, she leaned back from the Pool of Truth and raised her head high. “No. I have stayed idle in this cave for far too long, watching and waiting for threats to arrive. This time, I must act. I will not allow this childish whelp to bring doom upon and threaten everything I have sworn to protect.”

Turning away, the white scaled gorgon’s wings flared and two of the statues in her secret waterfall cave began to animate once more, their soulless empty stone eyes glowing yellow like hers.

Nagas. The attempts of Connor’s father before him to slay her and finish what he had started with her mother. A reminder that he was not above consequences. That he was not truly immortal.

That there were forces and powers that even gods feared.

“Follow me.” She commanded them, bringing her feathered wings up to try and prevent herself from getting wet as much as possible as she emerged from the cave. “You will stop Connor from sealing his fate and I will speak with the Chief and the Lightningbringer.”

Looking out and hearing the calls of the village from afar, Hashladûn had a reinvigorated sense of purpose.

“It’s time for the sins of the past to be cleansed once and for all.”

[deranged-ink]

Dear editor in chief.

Yesterday I was reading a magazine -your magazine- while waiting for my coffee. I´ll admit that I was so into it that, to my embarrassment, I failed to notice the girl approaching until she left the coffee with some croissants on my table. That would be a big mistake if I were reading on the company time.

I was too involved in a single line of your last editorial:

What is your hobby? A simple and dull question, but not to my eyes. I can't help but wonder about what kind of person is asking. Is it someone intelligent? Someone with a really deep understanding of the human nature or just the typical dumb brick monkey behind a typewriter. I can assure you that one honest to god smile cameforth to your inquiry, simply because it is one of those easy-to-answer questions using a triviality, difficult to answer with The Truth.

I suppose that if you force me to answer with nothing but said Truth I would have to admit, with the proper amount of blush on my cheeks, that I like to look at the people, please take note that i am not a stalker, it's just that in order to be good at my job I have to describe myself as a rather avid observer.

I like to look at people, especially on my job. You have to understand, sitting on an uncomfortable chair for countless hours, drinking cheap coffe and killing cigars in some dirty ashtray, just waiting for the phone to ring to do my job... I would have turned crazy long, long ago if I wouldn't found a way to kill some time.

But from my hobby something really good came up.

I learned, no. I found something fascinating while observing these biological machines. Well first, I´ll confess, everything started with a game: Guess what it will do now?

From that game I discovered that all this elaborated, commercialized and consumed idea of freedom is -for most of these poor bastards- fundamentally, a lie . A lie that may or may not be true, that's the beauty of the whole subject. A liar's truth.

Before you burn your brains trying to imagine something like that, let me add something, whatever you imagine, it will be right.

If you think about it, it's a beautiful "oxymoron". Freedom is a useful farse (A dream for the most) where you must be aware of what you do and stop doing. You must fully understand each of your actions from its very root. Thats the really hard part.

Do not get me wrong, I have always said that true freedom is real, a primordial part of what reality is. The problem lies in the excuses that the lower minds uses to escape from the weight of freedom.

They fall for the supposed "unmeasurable plots" of some great powers and some others imaginary enemies (that for some not-even-god-knows reason will try to brainwash or enslave them).

They gave these plotters this divine attribute of being untouchable. And closing their eyes, they turned themselves into beings without a real opinion, without control over their lives. That's nothing short of stupidity. Themselves wrote the fairytale that they now fear, and did it in order of escaping the responsibility of knowing/taking control of their lives.

Themselves choose their imaginary chains and in the same thought, choose the more imaginary saviour that will come to brake them! Just look at those pocket warriors of the social networks, reading only what supports their ideals and burning the rest!

-Oh, traditional book burning! The irony!-

Thats how they define themselves acording their position on said system: left, right, pro-life, pro-choice, feminist, traditional, pro-system, anti-system, pious, atheist.

But what they call "the system" is just a playing field. Not some godwritten rules that will never change.

And there they meet failure without being able to realize that they act as the said system expects them to act. All the pieces on the board have a use. Even when trying to escape, when trying to think and act outside of the box, they only succeed -in a beautiful way if you ask me- to prove that they are wrong.

They do not realize that the system is not a box, but actually a box of many, each box is full of boxes and the fact that you can "get out" of the box only confirms this.

You can -with ease- point out all the poor bastards who buy a t-shirt with the face of Che Guevara (or someother communist symbol). Ironically, they are being part of a capitalist market with them as their target. The same can be said of those really patriotic friends, they really love America and they also really love their flag to be made in china. Sweet irony.

This is the same for freedom. To be free, you must be aware of what you are, truly aware, also accept what you can and can not do and that each of your actions has an effect on the great cosmic pool that is this life, each action is a small or a large stone that falls on water. You will imagine that with so many rocks that big pool is not calm at all. And thats life my friend, actions that modify our actions in one way or another. The real freedom lies in understanding this, accepting it and continuing to live.

Playing "Guess what it will do now?" I had an eureka moment some years ago. From an open window I was looking at the people on the street with my telescope, when I learned something that saddens me: "People" sold their freedom for a manual.

Life is not easy and that´s why most decide to live thinking it is. I honestly ignore the reason behind such a stupid decision. "People" gave away their freedom in exchange of beliefs, just to not question. Just to take the world as it was presented, without thinking, without asking. Only assimilating it and calling it true.

Name your manual however you want... Luck, Destiny, God, the almighty Horoscope, Reptilians or Super corporations that plan to dominate the world. It is in their hands that our world and our lives rest and not on us.

I bet that sounds better than the truth.

Everyone is free to believe in whatever they want, even when those beliefs take away their freedom.

Especially when they take away their freedom

The "manual" depends on many things, such as their upbringing, the books they had read, the books they didn't, their general education, but above all these things, of something greater, something with more force than those preconceived ideas of a man's life being the direct and ultimate result of those first twenty years of his life.

-Those who affirm that are the "intellectuals" who seek to justify mediocrity by blaming society.-

I discovered a truth, a sad truth, that goes beyond. Are you ready?  Our life depends on ourselves

-Surprising, right?-.

It depends on our decisions, our actions and how much we want to be ourselves. How much do we want to be free.

For the rest the world you have that manual that handles their lives or that simply points to the people or entities that will do it. Manuals that dictate the routine of each of them, from how, when and where they go to work, to what they stop to eat and why. What they believe in, how they think, how they feel.

So many "children" blame the manual and I can only feel sorry for them.

I can only look at them straight in the eye and say: Do not blame the manual, blame yourselves for accepting it. Blame your weakness for letting yourself be destroyed to that point.

To the point of acting... In automatic, each and every one of "them" lives like this, in automatic.

I say "them" because I do not know if "you", whoever reads these words, also do it. And no, do not let the fact that you are a reader of newspapers, books and intellectual publications make you think that you are beyond this fundamental flaw of the human being. Maybe you are also, a zombie, a computer that acts according to a list of things to do. That is why I refer to them as "It" or "them", maybe you are, or not, so I consider that these words can be one of two uses for you;

1: A call to wake up.

2: A lesson in what you should never do to yourself.

"They" are predictable, "they" are stupid. A person is a completely different topic, the problem is that there aren't many individuals left, individuals are now an endangered specie. But there are many "people". There were many individuals who decided to stop being individuals to become people.

Good people. Bad people. That doesn't matter. Cuz people is predictable. And it's something that in my line of work I've learned to do, it's a fundamental part of it.

For example; Look at this guy, for the last six days I've seen he it come and go, always in the same old beige suit and dull shoes, with its eyes on the ground, dragging its feet every morning. That's when I guess it goes to work. But not so surprisingly, it walks with the same vigor when it goes back in the afternoon. Two days ago was the day of "bring your son to work" but it didn't bring anyone. I got curious so during one impromptu walk to the donut shop I passed by it and could not help noticing that it doesn't have a single ring in its hand, nor a scar, much less any characteristic feature or mark added by life experiences. It was programmed that way, throughout his life it decided to accept what the rest thought of it, from its parents to its classmates, it let each and every one of their opinions form what it is today, unfortunately those opinions were everything but positive.

If forced to guess I would said that when It was a He, was one of those people with an artistic mind, a characteristic completely undervalued by his parents, repudiated by his peers and misinterpreted by his teachers who were unable to see beyond their own mediocrity.

If I have to bet: I would say that he did not grow up in the city, he was born and raised in a dying small town, one of those that somehow still linger in the 21th century. His parents decided that the life of an artist was not for him, that he deserved better, that he had to be someone "normal". He decided to listen to them. And being a person of unique thinking is not difficult to guess that he ended up in an office job that hates, earning a pittance to make his boss buy a new car every year. Thats how He became It.

But it's not the boss's fault, it's just that It is not good at what It does, it's almost like wanting to screw a chair using a rock. The wrong tool for the task. That is why this could be the best thing that ever happened to It, it may be the wake up call that leads It to recover its life. To become a He.

We can also see the perfect opposite; with a badly rolled joint in the mouth, practically finishing learning to smoke without coughing or looking like a complete idiot: A skinny boy in a leather jacket that barely fits him, too tight jeans, expensive but too big shoes, hair full of hairspray and tinted in three shades of pink that I do not have the slightest intention or desire to learn how to differentiate.

I always see him in the same place, the alley that is right beside the donuts shop, pretending to be the most badass punk of the block for hours. Actually, that doesn't seem to be the place he choose to spend every morning, I think that it's the place that was chosen for him.

He is never alone, always accompanied by others who dress just like him, the same spiky hair but of different colors. They skip school to spend their mornings laughing at the people passing by, provoking them, intimidating them, smoking, but until now they have never said anything to the police.

- Every time a cop walked in front of them they just kept quiet hiding their eyes in their expensive last generation smartphones. They even treat the "autority" with the utmost respect! It's funny but sad.-

This is fashion. Just a trend, fighting against the system, to rebel against their parents, against society, to paint walls with messages of anarchy and rebellion. With no actual desire to do so.

Just playing to be free without accepting consequences or duties, to be free to do what you want while keep on sucking from the old tits of your mother, a whole case for Freud to write two more books. Want me to guess? He never felt hungry. He must come from a boring and average middle-high class family. His parents gave him everything he ever wanted, but never a proper slap, must be the only child or at least the youngest of the siblings. And the only reason he plays the whole punk behavior is that he is bored

That's why he came up with this whole idea of rebelling against the system or rather, copied it, like his friends, without noticing the most comical aspect of all this, wanting to be different they all became the same. Acting the same, acting from a manual.

I bet that He will run, shout, beg to the police as soon as he sees the red rush. If he is smart, he will realize that he is wrong, that the system is not the enemy, is not the monster that makes this world the shit hole it is. The actual monster is the man with the rifle.

[aniimvs]

𝐓𝐎𝐑 𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐔𝐌, a primordial titanic god of a long-dead sea with a kraken-like body and a shark's head wielding six eyes and a mouth of serrated rows. he once fed upon the very bones of the earth, striking fear of chaos and annihilation into the hearts of mortals and deities alike. but his reign of malice was shattered when he was imprisoned within a cave by an ancient foe now lost to the ebb of time.

left with only a fraction of his deathless curse, tor valum was unable to free himself. as the slow march of eons passed, his body fused with the ocean floor. veins and sinew became rock and ore. the ambrosia ichor of his lifeblood crystallized into a malignant metal that spread like a disease through the bulwark of his stone cage. but tor valum was too wrathful of a being to resign himself to fate.

the wounded god turned his prison into a kingdom with the brittle power he coveted. he plotted against his punishment and sought out old servants and fragile creatures of flesh to do his bidding. the nightmarish dwelling would become known as the remnant core ─── the remnicore ─── by the denizens that would populate its drowned halls.

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐍𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐒, also known as the ren, were the risen servants of tor valum. they served as the crew on the revenant, the ghost of a spanish galleon resurrected from the sea and misshapen to fit eldritch god's needs.

tor valum sought the dying, the drowning, and the damned to for his ranks. he offered them a second life, inhuman strength, god-like power in exchange for unending service to his cause. a all that was needed was a good death. and that good death was surrendering all memories and relinquishing their past selves to become something new.

a ren.

the rite was completed once the reborn ren took a new name and received a weapon forged from the ore yielded by tor valum's own body. these weapons were what housed the ren's oath and the powers gifted to them by the drowned god. it also bound their minds to their master's own, creating a hive network of palpable thoughts that were manipulated by tor valum himself.

but the corruption of the curse did not stop at the edge of a blade or in the depths of the mind. it changed their bodies as well.

the longer a ren served, the less human they became. the changes always started from the wound that killed their old self. slowly, but inevitably, the shapes that once defined a ren as a man would distort into some beast of the sea. shimmering eyes turned black like a shark's, a squid-beak where lips once grinned, gills flushed where lungs once drew breath.

tor valum claimed it all till what was left of the man was consumed by the sea.

𝐂𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐀𝐈𝐍 𝐒𝐍𝐎𝐊𝐄 of the revenant was the longest surviving of the remnants. his contracted predated the cultish naming scheme, and rather than a weapon to house his oath, he was bound to the rotting ship he sailed. snoke bore fragile, nearly translucent skin where veins and muscles could be glimpsed from parts unshielded by his golden coat. he was unnaturally tall with a twisted spine that undulated like an eel's when he walked.

because of his status, snoke was given special quarters in remnicore. an immense cavern, rich in volcanic soil, where the captain cultivated a garden of unnatural floral fertilized by any captives the ren took that would not willingly join their crew. his love for his garden is so deeply rooted that his cabin on the revenant is a reflection of it all matter of flesh-eating plants and poisonous vines occupying the decaying walls.

while captain snoke lacked physical prowess, he was mentally unmatched. he was strong enough to disguise his thoughts from tor valum's constant probing which allowed him to scheme against his master. and although snoke saw most of the rens as expendable, there was one, in particular, he believed to be the key to his mutinous plot.

his second-in-command, kylo ren.

𝐊𝐘𝐋𝐎 𝐑𝐄𝐍 was born ben organa, heir to puerto aldera's governing family. among the ren, he's unusual. both tor valum and snoke sought to control him without sacrificing the undying sense of betrayal that drove the young man's wickedness. so when ben bargained away his memories, tor valum left the pain.

it defined the burgeoning kylo ren as he devoted himself entirely to tor valum's cause and wielded his master's powers with monstrous efficiency. kylo's weapon was a massive fire-blackened broadsword that reflected red and teal when caught in the right light. its crossguard was detailed with tentacles reminiscent of tor valum's that crawled up the base of the blade. at the center, the tentacles weaved through the mouth and eye sockets of a screaming skull, as if the very mind of the dead man was being invaded.

kylo's affliction was also unusual. because a fragment of his past was left, the curse's corruption was wretchedly slow. he appeared very much a man of flesh and blood on the outside, but the wound that destroyed the person he was has been completely consumed. which is why where the sounds of a heart should beat, only the sounds of the sea can be heard.

believing himself clever enough to manipulate the young ren, snoke wrested kylo under his wing and treated the ren as if he were a son. snoke nurtured the venomous rage that harbored no mercy for friend and foe alike. and thus the silent war for the mind of kylo ren burned between tor valum and snoke, though only the conniving captain was aware of its wager.

[fearsmagazine]

Classic Euro Horror from Masters of the Macabre: Mario Bava, Jean Rollin & Jess Franco Now Available Digitally on Kino Now

With October upon us, Kino Now brings you a selection of Euro Horror classics from three masters of the macabre: Mario Bava, Jean Rollin, and Jess Franco.

These stylish horror auteurs each brought a unique approach to the genre that transformed it in exciting new directions. Bava’s colorful, lurid tales of terror have been cited as an influence on everyone from Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola to Quentin Tarantino and Tim Burton. Rollin’s dark, dreamlike fantasies pioneered the erotic vampire genre and Franco’s uncompromising exploitation films had a major impact on slasher movies to follow.

Get ready for Halloween with these and other Euro Horror cult favorites listed below! Available on KinoNow.com

Kill, Baby...Kill! Directed by Mario Bava In a turn of the century Transylvanian village, a doctor arrives to investigate a young maid’s mysterious death, only to learn the legend of a deceased girl whose ball-bouncing ghost may be driving the locals to suicide… With its hallucinatory colors and sinister moods, this is the pinnacle of Gothic Euro-horror, an influence on Scorsese, Lynch, Fellini, Argento, del Toro, and countless others, and the ideal entry point into Mario Bava’s body of work.

Black Sunday Directed by Mario Bava After being crucified for devil worship, Barbara Steele, in her breakthrough role, is brought back to life to haunt her 19th-century descendants, and sets her sights on possessing young Katia (also played by Steele). Adapted from a Nikolai Gogol short story and filled with cobwebs and blood, Bava’s first on-screen directorial credit defined Italian Gothic and remains a richly atmospheric masterwork.

Fascination Directed by Jean Rollin Inspired by a purportedly fact-based Jean Lorrain short story, one of Jean Rollin’s most-admired works showcases his frequent collaborator Brigitte Lahaie (at the time France’s top adult-films star) and discovery Franka Mai (later a novelist). It’s the early 20th century, and thief Jean-Marie Lemaire double-crosses his partners in crime and hides out in a château, confident he can handle chambermaids Lahaie and Mai But all bets are off, even before the sun goes down.

The Iron Rose Directed by Jean Rollin Eerie and sensual, this love story finds Jean Rollin in a particularly contemplative mode. Françoise Pascal (later a UK sitcom star) and Hugues Quester (later of Kieslowski’s Blue) catch each other’s eye and flirt their way into a graveyard frolic. After canoodling in a tomb, they emerge into a nighttime world and find themselves lost and disoriented, with the sinking feeling of a no-exit scenario. Rollin trouper Mireille Dargent appears—as she often would for him—in clown makeup.

Female Vampire Directed by Jess Franco Channeling his deepest libidinal desires and darkest fears into films, with no apparent concern for narrative convention or the boundaries of mainstream taste, Jess Franco is a cinematic iconoclast. Here, his wife Lina Romay stars as the mysterious Countess Irina Karlstein, a beautiful vampiress who feeds on victims at their moments of sexual climax. Because she destroys those whose essence she consumes, Irina is doomed to a life of solitude, wandering through the Western Coast of Europe in a dreamlike state, shrouded in a lush musical score by Daniel White.

The Awful Dr. Orlof Directed by Jess Franco Jess Franco’s career was launched by what is generally considered the first horror film produced in Spain. Cloaking the story in the visual style of the British gothic film, Franco injected Orlof with the kind of morbid eroticism that would quickly become his signature. Howard Vernon stars as a diabolical surgeon who, with the help of his blind minion Morpho (Ricardo Valle), lures beautiful women into the operating room of his stone castle, so they may provide the raw materials for a series of experimental face grafts for his disfigured daughter.

[blackoutspoetry]

The anatomy of starved dogs (part 3)(Ghoap) – FLASHPOINT

This is a chapter of a long form slow burn Ghoap fic I've been working on for the past few months.

This chapter alone is has 16k words, so it might be easier to read this fic on ao3.

Read the first few parts on ao3 here:

WARNINGS: gore and graphic depictions of violence, civilian death, acts of terrorism, torture and permanent disfigurement

4 APRIL 2019

CAPTAIN PRICE'S FLAT, UNDISCLOSED ADDRESS, ENGLAND

The most important thing to remember when it comes to human nature, is that the adult brain is shaped from childhood to pursue something which is mostly unattainable. People are defined by the constant pursuit of what they don’t have. 

The healthy brain, it chases after things it's allowed to get ahold of, grows accustomed to the idea of labour rewarded sweetly at the end of a long day’s work. Even if paid in peanuts, a reward is a reward. 

The unhealthy brain is grown from a childhood bid for survival. The young brain is made to endure and spring up like weeds in concrete, grow through difficulty because it becomes indoctrinated with the aesthetic of suffering. It knows nothing else but the weathering of the storm and has not yet learned the concept of injustice or fairness. 

 It learns its place quickly, grows around the stones and infertile soil and becomes a distended, etiolated seedling in the absence of the sunlight it yearns for. 

But grow, it will, forever doomed to reach with begging arms to sunlight that will not yield, until it begins to view itself as a poetic tragedy, see the beauty in the hollowness of needing and wanting. And once that point is reached, it romanticises having nothing until it  becomes afraid of actually grasping that thing it yearns for. 

There is even a point of hunger where the body has grown so used to not being full, that once fed, it rejects the meal to marinate in its own despair. A work of art, one tragic and beautiful, because it cannot fathom the idea that it was robbed of life. A better life. 

If, however, it realises the injustice, refuses to kneel to its feared master and learns that it too is able to bite, it uses this newfound discovery to its advantage. It cuts off completely from the idea of vulnerability and lashes out at anything that mildly gives it the taste of being subservient once more, so that even things that are only vaguely related to the oppression is now a symbol of the life it had fled from. 

It bites and devours out of fear of returning to that life, over correcting and becoming the very thing it had sworn to destroy. 

In the mind numbing hours following the briefing, Soap thinks Vladimir Makarov might be one of those people, grown from a hard life into a dangerous man, or maybe, he was something more dangerous, one planted in the soil of war fertilised earth from his conception. 

Either way, it only further convinces him that he’d made a mistake agreeing to Price’s terms in that coffee shop. He’s dug himself a grave and he’s damn well made his bed in it too. 

Though Soap is substantially pissed at Price, he honours his wishes and makes a point of laying low until they have to leave for Verdansk at midnight. Price had arranged for him to stay over at his flat for the time being and though his thoughts were consumed with visions of doom, he found it interesting to distract himself by the rare insight into the man’s personal life. 

It's a moderately large place, modestly furnished with two bedrooms, a living room, joint kitchen and dining area, a bathroom barely large enough to stand in and a sofa facing a TV. 

“Make yourself at home, I suppose I don’t need to babysit you, but you might benefit from getting some sleep in before we leave,” Price loosely gestures over to the spare bedroom with the single bed, freshly made and ready for him. 

“Thank you, sir.” 

“Anytime,” Price nods with a hint of guilt. He knows he’s got Soap in over his head but neither acknowledge it, they keep things civil. Whether Price had known about Soap’s talk of retirement remains a mystery to him. 

“I’ve got some work to get done before we leave, so if you need me, I’ll be here,” Price informs him, taking his things and disappearing into the other room where his desk was, leaving Soap standing in the living room.

 

 

It doesn’t take long for Soap to settle into the spare bedroom, throwing his suitcase on the bed with a dejected sigh before beginning to strip out of the thick jacket unsuited to the stale English weather this time of year. 

 

He’s just thrown it on the bed when he hears his phone buzzing with a notification. 

 

He’s put his mother on mute for the time being, so it couldn’t be her, possibly one of his sisters. He supposes he should do some damage control before shit hits the fan, though. 

 

Begrudgingly, he sits down on the edge of the bed and reaches for the phone, swiping at the cracked screen to unlock it. 

 

Five unread messages, better than he expected. Three from his mother, and two from someone he definitely doesn’t have the mental energy to respond to now. 

 

He opens the chat and begins typing back before he’s even formulated what he wanted to say to her.

Elena (barista): heyy so I know its been a while but I wanted to know if you're still interested in that second date?

John: Yes|

‘Yes’ is too short…

John: Ye |

John: |

John: abs |

No, that sounds too enthusiastic and she’ll get the wrong idea. 

John: yes, sure

Before he can change his mind again, he hits send. To his surprise, she begins typing back immediately. 

Elena: Great! How does tomorrow evening work for you??? 

Soap grimaces.

John: I'm actually at work at the moment...

He can almost feel her hesitating on the other end. 

Elena: Work?

Elena: I thought you’re not going back until the 15th??

Soap is unsure how much he should be telling her, but he wants to be as honest as possible. 

John: That was the plan but an urgent last minute thing came up. I only found out about it a week ago.

Elena: oh, okay. But tell me when you think you’ll be available?

John: sure :)

Soap exits the chat and quickly writes back to his mother to confirm to her that he had landed safely, but decides against entertaining the conversation any further after that. 

He tries to get a couple of hours of sleep in before Price comes to fetch him at well after dark for their return to base, but he’s still tired enough by the time they arrive that he has to take two shots of espresso for good measure. 

And then it's off to their designated aircraft, a three and a half hour flight outbound for Kastovia and another promise John MacTavish would inevitably fail to keep. 

 

Its just past midnight by the time Soap finds his seat with Sergeant Burns to his left and Ghost two seats on with Price in between them. Ghost gives Soap a nod of acknowledgement as Soap straps himself in leaning back against the cargo netting behind him and letting his head hit the wall with a thud. 

“You been to Verdansk this time of year?” 

Soap is surprised when Burns asks from beside him. The question is half muffled by the humming of the large cargo door being raised to a close but he shakes his head anyway. 

“Can’t say that I have.” 

“It's nice. Off season so it's not as packed with tourists as it is when all the schools are out. It's beautiful actually, when you’re not working.” 

“You think so?” 

Soap had never had the luxury of being in the city for anything other than a work related crisis. His best memories of Russia and the surrounding countries are the quiet moments when the weapons cease or he’s privileged enough to be in the safety of a fortified military base. 

His worst memories there are by far the most haunting of his career and some of the most life changing. He still has visions of that bomb going off, splatters of blood and shattered bone. He’ll never forget the stillness after Oliver had stopped screaming or the look on his parents' faces when he gave his condolences at the funeral. 

So no, Soap did not consider the idea of finding Kastovia beautiful or inviting in his days off. 

“It’s quite a sight actually. I brought my girl out there to propose last year, to get away from it all.” 

Soap raises an eyebrow. “You’re married?” 

“Almost, the wedding’s in two months. You got anyone waiting for you back home?” 

Briefly the phantom smell of smoke and warm blood fills Soap’s nose and he clutches at the chain around his neck, but the moment’s gone in an instant. 

“Nothing serious at the moment, no.” 

He curses the fact his mind had skimmed over Elena so quickly, but he can hardly call her a significant other. 

“Ah well, I’m sure you’ll find someone soon,” Burns says and reaches into his pocket for a half empty pack of gum. 

The plane had taken off with a rumble and Soap’s ears were having trouble adjusting to the change in altitude. 

“Can I have one of those?” Soap inclines his head to the pack. 

“Sure, but they’re nicotine. I’m trying to quit smoking before the wedding.” Burns tilts the pack in his direction nonetheless and Soap hesitates for a moment, feeling a distant suppressed ache in his chest warning him against it but he silences his concern. 

“That’s alright by me.” 

He takes the stick of gum and pretends not to waver as he pops it in his mouth.

They land in Verdansk three and a half hours later and Shepherd meets them on the ground. Its barely past sunrise and the air is heavy with a piercing cold fog that clouds his measured breaths as Soap steps out of the plane onto the landing strip where a man stood waiting for them. 

The man was around Soap’s height, but he carried himself with an air of authority. Something to indicate he was powerful and very much aware of it. 

He gave them a polite nod by way of greeting. Soap watches his overtly friendly interaction with Price and Burns and then the notably impersonal way he shakes hands with Ghost. 

“Sergeant MacTavish, you come very highly regarded by Captain Price, he’s told me a lot about you.” 

Soap feels himself stiffen but he smiles nonetheless, “all good things, I hope.” 

“ Excellent things,” Shepherd corrects.

“Well, I hope he’s got enough of that in him to live up to the Captain’s expectations,” Ghost chimes in from beside him, not with bite, but Soap can’t decide whether he’s supposed to take the joke as a sign of friendliness or hostility. 

As if sensing the uncertainty in the atmosphere, Price claps him on the back and gives his own response of almost flat feeling reassurance. “He’ll be up for it, I’m sure. But I expect we better get out of the wind before we get into any of the further details.” 

 

The drive takes a while. It isn’t long, but the road out is congested and Soap finds his eyes wandering over the densely packed sidewalks, gaze panning over the figures on the street, blissfully unaware of the danger pending over the city. 

It makes some uneasy feeling run a chill down his spine. An image from the carnage left behind by the street market bomb on Price’s slideshow comes into his mind unbidden and he tries to rid himself of the idea of Verdansk being reduced to rubble. 

The base they’d be operating out of for the next few days was situated on the gentle slope of a hill building up into the nearby mountain range, densely forested with evergreen spruce trees creating a thick coverage for the well maintained dirt road. 

Upon arrival, they pass through heavy security and are let to park on a reserved spot by a painted brick face wall rising into the upper floor of the building. 

Once inside, it is much more temperature controlled and Soap relaxes a bit once they’re through security and the doors are closed behind him. 

General Shepherd’s been in Price’s circle for years. Soap knows about the kinds of things he and Price have buried in the past and he’s got his own theories as to a couple of the more sketchy, off the records things. He gets suspicious about when the talk around base doesn’t match up with what’s on the news, so for him to be standing here in the room with both of them, while official records still have him safely tucked away in Glasgow is disconcerting to say the least. 

He glances to his side at Burns and even gives the futile look over at Ghost on his right, but both of them are tight-lipped and observant, their expressions betraying nothing.

An hour and two coffees later saw Shepherd introducing them to a few men from the local authorities they’d been working with and hurriedly getting them over to a more private room to discuss the details. 

Though Soap is still sceptical of Price’s anonymous source, he keeps his mouth shut for the duration of the discussion, listening intently to the plan for the next day instead. 

The airport had upped its security earlier that month. With Verdansk just gently nudging the border of the country and its frequent conflicts with the nearby Russians, the city has grown desensitised to the sheer amount of military vehicles patrolling the streets at all times. They wouldn’t suspect anything out of the ordinary for there to be a heightened military presence at the airport or the nearby areas. 

The good thing, they figured, would be that Makarov would not be anticipating it either. 

Once more, with detailed information from Price’s informant, they determined that multiple bombs would be left to detonate throughout the airport, but how they planned on getting them through airport security remained unclear. 

By the end of the discussion, they’d concluded that the four of them would enter with the rest of the local team Shepherd had assembled well before the window the informant had provided them with and keep a low enough profile so as to not worry the public but be present enough so that any suspicious activity could be flagged. 

By the time Soap was allowed to leave, he felt as though he was due another coffee with how little sleep he’d gotten in the last few days and the monolith of a task before them. He gets himself a coffee and tries to find some fresh air. 

 

By the next morning, Soap had developed an uneasy feeling about it all, a feeling he doesn’t manage to shake by the time he’s dressed and sharply awake at just before sunrise. 

The sun is high and expectant by the time they arrive at the airport the next morning. The world stands at attention. 

A thin smattering of clouds obscured the sun from view almost entirely and rendered the world washed out and lifeless on the drive out to the airport. 

By the time they’ve parked and Price is well out of earshot, Soap can’t keep it to himself anymore and turns to Ghost nearest to him by the open door of their vehicle. 

“I have a feeling that informant of Price has been feeding us bullshit.” 

“As much as I trust Price, I’m not so convinced either.” 

There isn’t time to talk about it after that. The day at the airport is tense. Speaking is difficult, airport security knows next to no English, with Price and another English speaking security officer needing to translate any time something mildly suspicious turns up. With the extra security keeping a keen eye on the ground, they were sitting in a closed off room watching the security cameras for signs of suspicious activity. 

Security flags a man but it's a bust. He’s pissed and cursing as he’s patted down for the forgotten pocket knife in his coat. A generous amount of similar issues turn up but nothing to write home about. 

A little after that, there was a brief issue on a forgotten suitcase left in a suspicious position on the other side of the airport, but after twenty minutes and broken exchanges, security confirms it was a false alarm. 

Soap doesn’t know if that should disappoint him or not. Even Shepherd starts to look frustrated by the time noon comes around and they’ve noticed nothing else. 

“Any news from your guy?” Ghost asks later and Price gives a frustrated shake of the head. 

“Haven’t been able to get through to him since this morning. Absolute silence.” 

“So he set us up?”

“It's too soon to call any of that, Ghost. Let's not jump to conclusions.”

 

The day’s still young when it all goes to hell. 

Security screens a woman potentially carrying drugs in her suitcase and she is immediately pulled away into a side room and searched. Her suitcase, marked fragile and wrapped in plastic, is thrown onto a table and opened for search. 

“What the actual fuck is wrong with you? There’s glass in there!” 

“An American,” Soap observes, finally glad to be able to understand what was going on around him. 

“Just standard procedure, ma’am,” one of the security officers relay in accented English and indicates for her to hold her arms out for her to be searched. Soap watches her disbelief morph into frustration when her handbag is also tipped out onto the table, sending folded receipts, loose coins and her cell phone clattering out onto the table. 

“Hey, you can’t just mess with my stuff like that,” she says as a man shuffles through her suitcase to find the suspicious item. 

The phone suddenly lights up with an urgent message.

Three missed calls. 

The phone suddenly lights up with an urgent message. 

Three missed calls. 

Mikhail: are you ok? 

Mikhail: answer your phone 

Mikhail: I can see the smoke from my window. Tell me u are ok. 

Mikhail: Jess please, are you at the airport? Did you see it?

 

“Captain, something’s not right here.” Soap reaches for the phone, beckoning Price over to show him the texts. 

“Hey, you can’t just look at my phone. That’s an invasion of my privacy–” 

The phone starts vibrating in his hand as another call comes in, Price turns to her, still kept in place by security. “Who’s Mikhail?” 

“My boyfriend, he’s worried about me.” 

“Why?” 

“Maybe I can ask him if you give me my phone.” 

“Bag is clear,” the man searching her suitcase behind Soap declares and she gives him a harsh glare.  

“I could’ve told you that myself,” she says angrily as she takes her phone back from Soap and calls the number back, hurrying to put her things back into her handbag. 

“I’m fine, I’m fine! Wait, slow down, you’re freaking me out… what… like, actually?”

Soap looks from her to Price. 

“No way… just now?... I didn’t hear anything… are you sure?”  

On the other side of the room, Shepherd’s phone rings in his pocket and he goes to answer it while security escorts the woman out of the room. 

Shepherd’s face morphs into a look of distress and Soap tenses in anticipation. “Say again?” 

Soap can’t make out anything on the other side but it sounds urgent. Shepherd relays the news as he terminates the call. 

“Reports of explosions at the stadium. No official confirmation yet, but it seems like the news has caught onto it.” 

Immediately, Soap curses himself for not trusting his instinct sooner. He knew something was off 

“Makarov used the airport as a diversion.” 

“He could still be at the stadium, we might still have a chance to nail this bastard,” Ghost suggests and they turn to Shepherd for confirmation. 

“Ghost and I can stay at the airport until security can get a read on the situation,  just in case he decides to double back while we’re out. Price, take Burns and MacTavish. The three of you head out and assess the situation at the stadium.”

 

 

The door shuts with a resounding, anxious thud as Price ushers Soap into the passenger seat and straps himself in behind the wheel, acting on muscle memory alone as he releases the handbrake and reverses out of the parking lot at an alarming speed. He turned towards the exit and gestures wildly for the security guard to raise the boom for him to exit the parking faster.

Within a minute, he has navigated out of the incoming traffic and headed onto the highway. 

“What’s the plan when we get there, Cap?” Burns asks from behind Soap. 

“It's difficult to say now. It's fresh. We’ve got no idea what the conditions are or what to expect. So we try to assess and contain the situation as best possible. But knowing Makarov, it's best to assume he’s not done yet.”

“And if he’s there?” Soap asks and Price’s grip on the steering wheel tightens. 

“Then we bring him back.” 

“And if he’s not?” Soap asks. 

“Then this entire operation is dead the water.” 

 

The over chewed wad of gum was bland in his mouth and did little to soothe the tension in Soap’s system as he cast a glance out at the world beyond the passenger window, seeing it pass in a smear of colour. They’ve been driving for a good five minutes now. 

 Heart racing a mile a minute, his anger was only spurred by the comms in his ear as Shepherd's voice came through, confirming the worst. 

“Gold Eagle to Bravo-6. Security confirms gunfire and at least one explosion in the stadium with multiple injuries, over… “

He watches the world in the muted grey, fade from obliviousness to panic as they neared the stadium, seeing the world descending into chaos around them. 

Price reached to press the button on his mic, face setting into a hard look as he yanked the wheel hard for the upcoming turn. “Copy, we’re inbound now.” 

Shepherd’s response was instant. 

“Be advised, Makarov and his men may still be inside. If he’s there, you bring him out– alive.”

Soap felt uneasy about letting the man go with his life, but pushed the concern down, silencing the thought with his own acknowledgement of the order, but it did nothing to ease the growing concern as he caught onto the shifting energy on the street around them. 

“Roger that. Where’s medical?” 

Soap couldn’t make out any words from the civilians outside or let his eyes linger long enough to analyse any of the reactions properly, but they were close enough to the stadium that he knew they must have heard something. 

“First responders will not enter until the scene is clear. The third floor VIP lounge may be Makarov’s next target.” Shepherd’s voice was clear and calm as he spoke, but it instantly added another thread of anxiety to the mix and Soap couldn't stop himself from cursing as Price took another left, narrowly dodging past a truck on the corner and putting them on a street funnelling to the stadium dead ahead. 

“You said it, son,” Shepherd acknowledges Soap over comms. “Ghost and I are ten mikes out. Let's bag this bastard. Out here.” 

The high rise office blocks seemed to shuffle them forward and usher them out to the open air, now enough for them to smell the acrid smoke emanating from the stadium in a rolling curtain of grey heat.

A car swerves onto the road and shoots past them at a speed as they merge onto the main road, panic palpable in the erratic driving of those still on the road and fleeing the scene.

The fear ripples through the crowd like a curtain of panic holding the world in a vice grip and descending over the street like a dire blanket of fear. Even the dying leaves on the trees seemed more dead and wilted into themselves with an unseen oppression, like an incursion of an unknown force pushing hostile tendrils into the ground that the earth itself, and by extension, the trees on the sidewalk, seemed sharp and alert to the whims of its enemy. 

The bleak sky was barren like the sun had withdrawn into itself to make way for the undulating spire of smoke curling into the sky before them from the blazing inferno that leaked from the burst windows of the structure, weeping fire. 

Unconsciously, his hand went for the chain around his neck, but it was obscured by his vest and the lack of that comfort made him feel like he was floating in a sea of disarray with no anchor point. 

“Makarov threatened the airport and hit the stadium instead,” Soap seethes through gritted teeth. Even Sergeant Burns, who had been quiet up until that point, had something to say to the carnage. 

“He’s a fuckin’ madman.” 

A row of orange boom gates that was meant to be blocking off the entrance to the stadium’s underground parking was raised for the hurried exit of the cars, now descended into complete disarray as a car drives straight out through the wrong gate into the incoming lane and almost collides with their vehicle. 

“Fuckin’ hell!” Price cursed as he swerved aside for it, missing it by a hair’s breadth and gunning it to the middle gate before another car could block them off. 

“Civilians are everywhere,” Burns noted, sounding as thoroughly shaken as Soap felt. 

Soap resists the urge to look back at the blaze beside him as Price turns down the ramp to the parking lot. 

“Alright,” Price begins, gathering their collective attention. “Check your shots. We’ll have a lot of unknowns inside.” 

Civilians are fleeing on foot and he doesn’t stop when a man trips on the incline of the road and scuttles out of the way before an oncoming car has the chance to plough him over. 

“And Makarov?” Soap risks a glance back over to the stadium, now towering over them like a lit funeral pyre. 

“You heard the order. ROE still stands. We take him alive.” 

Soap jolted when two cars collided in front of them and glass skittered across the junction. Price had been so fixated on the collision that he didn't notice the civilian rushing in front of them until Soap shouted at him to stop. 

There’s a heavy thud against the hood of the car and for a sickening moment, Soap worries they’ve hit her, but when she stands up unharmed, he breathes a sigh of relief. 

Irritably, Price gestures wildly for her to get out of the road. “Get out of here! Go!” 

They watch her stumble disoriented from their path before shooting off ahead into a dark tunnel. Cars piled up on the outgoing lane and Soap shouts for Price to watch it when a desperate soul reaching the back of the row decides to take a risk and turn onto the incoming lane, narrowly missing them again.

“Close one,” Soap says, trying to make sense of the cacophony of panic surrounding them as he watches for more civilians on foot and desperate cars. 

“We’re still in one piece,” Price concedes mirthlessly as he turns off from the incoming tunnel into a wider section that splits off to a higher floor. 

“Watch it!” Burns cries from the back. 

The wailing of an ambulance siren cuts through the panic and the oncoming glow of a pulsing red light gives them enough of a warning to get out of the way as it rushes past them and they turn up onto the ramp to the higher floor. 

For a moment, Soap has the chance to think its blessedly empty, save for a parked ambulance in his peripheral vision until he witnesses a speeding car mow down a civilian, letting the rest of the group erupt into panic as he reversed and rerouted. 

Soap curses. He glances back at the contorted form of the man as Price drives them past, determination set in his face. 

They can’t afford to go back for him now, probably dead on impact by the look of it, but that wasn’t their concern now. 

“This is chaos,” Burns says. 

“Yeah, it's what Makarov wants,” Price confirms. 

Right now, their concern was Makarov and getting that sick son of a bitch behind bars. Soap sends up a quick prayer for the man now, knowing he’ll forget to do it when they’re out of here and he has time to think, it will be lost to the chaos of the day. 

Price drives them into a single lane funnelling them to another parking block and Soap is relieved to find a welcome sight waiting for them. “Police up ahead.”

“They got here fast,” Burns says as they’re approaching the uniformed men, trying to talk down panicking civilians. Soap was even surprised to see them here so quickly, but he wasn’t going to ask questions with more hands– 

“They’re killing civilians!” Soap cries right as an officer guns down three people and turns towards them. 

He dodges out of the way, shielding his face from the spray of glass bursting inward. 

“Return fire!” Price shouts as Soap manages to get his bearings, tugging on the door handle and reaching for his gun and releasing the seatbelt clasp. 

He practically falls out of his seat as one of the men turns his gun towards them. 

With renewed fervour and hatred for the man they were after, Soap takes down three of the fake policemen in rapid succession. 

The concrete floor is slick with a mixture of blood and viscera and Soap can feel it clinging to the bottom of his boots as he crosses over to the entrance of the staircase leading into the building. A civilian lies slumped against a cold wall. The back half of his skull shot out and he lies marinated in a pool of his own blood.

Not far from him lies one of the officers Soap shot down, gun still tight in his grip. A bullet to the neck had been too merciful a death. His face has got the hard look Soap has come to know with the enemies they deal with, and his hand’s got an old prison tattoo obscured by the cuff of his sleeve. Soap’s seen them enough to recognise it instantly, though. 

“Inner Circle’s posing as police,” Soap relays as Price comes up beside him with Burns in the back, taking point and leading them up the staircase. 

“They’d have access to the VIP area," Burns confirms Soap’s concern. 

“It's on the third floor, let’s move.” 

Another bullet shoots off from an awkward position at the top of the stairs and Soap and Price make quick work of clearing the staircase before emerging into the furnished concourse. 

If he'd thought the parking lot was chaos, this was a step up. 

Several more of the fake first responders were opening fire on civilians, screaming and running for safety only to be shot down by a careless bullet. They trip each other and slick the tiled floors with red. 

Price says something in his ear, but Soap is too preoccupied to register what it is as another police officer pulls his gun on him. 

Soap takes cover behind an advertising screen as another one of Makarov's men fires on him. 

Soap shoots first and the man falls backward with a jolt. 

"Gold Eagle, Bravo-6, we're internal and pushing to the VIP area. Be advised, Inner Circle's posing as police, over." 

"Copy. All police on target are considered hostile."  

"Roger that," Price acknowledges. 

Soap gritted his teeth as he pushed forward against the torrent of fleeing civilians. A heavy weight knocks him sideways as a  man stumbles into him, eyes wide and muttering distraughtly in Russian as he scrambles away from him. 

Ahead of him, one of Makarov's men hurls something through a window and it erupts into flames. 

He ducks more gunfire behind a vacant information desk, scrambling for safety before he reports back to the others. 

"Fuckers are using grenades." 

His lungs burn from the hazy wall of smoke as he moves forward. The floor is covered in contorted bodies and coagulating pools of blood, smelling so strongly that the air around him is tainted with a stomach churning thick fog of burning plastic and stench of iron. 

Burns isn't far behind him, trying to get a civilian to safety but struggling with the language barrier. 

Price barely has time to warn him of the figure running out of the smoke before another one of Makarov's men emerge like a wraith from the haze and nearly manages to get a shot in. He dies with two bullets to the head and neck, hand still reaching for his gun. 

Another woman is shot down as she flees from her hiding spot behind a counter of glass cases selling refreshments, pitching forward into the smudged floor, a stone's throw away from Soap. 

"Fuck!" 

Soap aims to shoot and curses when it clicks empty, quickly ducking behind the kiosk to reload as he grimly locks eyes with the corpse of the woman. 

He takes a deep breath to steel himself before leaving his temporary safe haven and charging at her killer with a rage he didn't think possible. 

Taking the man down he dodges behind a pillar in the centre of the floor as another charges out of the smoke and fires at him. 

A bullet clips his exposed arm and blood runs a warm crimson trail down his forearm. 

He just needs to make it through the concourse and get to the VIP area. His arm can wait. The dead civilians, the smoke in his lungs causing him to become light headed, the mission's already half-failure– it will have to wait.

To his right, Soap finds an entrance to the gift shop, by no doubt shorter than the path around it. 

Soap coughs against the wave of acrid smoke hitting his lungs before he informs the team over comms of his detour. 

He steps around the mangled body in the centre of the floor. Even through the cacophony of screaming and gunfire, he has half the mind to notice how heavy his boots have become, slaked in the grime and glass littering the floor. 

Soap reconvenes with Price by the entrance of a stairwell, taking point. He dodges pasta man running them down two at a time, resisting the urge to move out of harm's way as a barrage of gunfire from the top of the staircase sends bodies tumbling the rest of the way to the landing and piling up together by Soap's feet. 

He makes quick work of shooting up the son of a bitch, wasting no more than two billets to make sure he was properly dead. 

At the top of the staircase, he's met with a dead end. 

"Exit's locked." 

"On it," Price says, coming up behind him to pry the door open. 

Burns comes to stand beside Soap, observing the words on the door. Clearly, his Russian was better than Soap's. 

"Executive level. VIP level is close." 

The door gives way and Soap quickly confirms the floor is clear. 

There is an eerie silence overlayed onto the shrill, mindless drone of the fire alarm. The entire floor is strewn with casualties, not a living soul in sight. 

Makarov's men had swept through like a pestilence. 

"Eyes on the VIP," Price says as he spots it to their left. "Got movement inside. Stay sharp." 

Price steps away as they reach the door to give way to Soap, inclining his head in Soap’s direction.  

"On you, Sergeant." 

Soap grips the door handle and twists it on the mental count of three. 

"Special forces," Price cries as Soap pushes the door open, gun at the ready. There’s several men inside, dressed in blue uniforms and tending to bleeding, half dead men on stretchers. Though Soap is glad for the help, he’s seen enough today to be sceptical of anything. 

Soap shouts for them to show their hands and they’re up immediately, all looking from one to the other with worried expressions. 

 "First responders! Don't shoot!" One of the men steps forward, eyes darting nervously from the gun in Soap's hands, to his face, to Price and back again.

The air conditioning is cold on his sweat damp skin. There’s a handful of TVs in the room, all set to mute, but they’re turned into the news, reporting from the outside of the stadium, still shrouded in a column of rapidly worsening smoke. 

"How did you get in here?" Price demands sternly. 

"Security," he stammers, flustered and shell shocked. "Security let us in." 

"Who are you with?" Price pushes. 

"Please, we are trying to save lives." Another of the paramedics is just barely suppressing the urgency in his voice. 

Soap casts a sceptical glance over to the poor half-dead man on a stretcher to his right. Other paramedics are gathered around him, trying to stabilise his condition as best possible. 

"Shit, I need help over here," A paramedic by the side of the body says as he looks up urgently and finds Soap's gaze locked on him. "Soldier, please?"

Taking a risk while the other is occupied by Price's questioning, Soap moves over to assist as best he can. He's no field medic but he knows the basics if he ever gets himself into a twist. 

"Stand fast, Sergeant," Price warns, but he's already halfway over when the man draws a gun from his drug bag. He's a quick draw, but Soap is just as fast.

Soap fires just as a blow to his chest knocks him backwards with all the power of a freight train and he hits the floor with a painful thud. The bullet proof vest absorbs the brunt of the impact, but the shot still hurts like a bitch. 

It is outnumbered by the adrenaline and he recovers quickly, assisting Price and Burns in taking care of the other Inner Circle scum. 

His ears ring in the absence of the gunfire and his free hand comes to clutch futilely at the phantom pain of the gunshot over the clamouring of his racing heart. The tac vest obscures its path and his fingers grasp at spare magazines, his sidearm, as it tries to tear a direct path to ease the pain. 

The shot is absorbed into the marrow of his ribs and he knows somehow he'll feel it worse tomorrow. 

"You broken?" Price asks in a serious tone and he shakes his head. 

"Just the plate." 

Soap makes his way over to the table where various medical bags and equipment was set out on the pretence of being useful, but upon closer inspection, Soap notices the heart monitor is ancient, at least from the 90s and missing its internal wiring. 

Burns beside him opens one of the bags and turns to Price. “Check it. They had explosives. This was their next target.” 

Price calls it in immediately. “Gold Eagle Actual, explosives located in the VIP area. No sign of Makarov.”

Soap moves over to the window, eyebrows knitting together as he sees the rubble beneath the window from where the roiling mass of black smoke was rising up from. The field was empty, but there were casualties twisted and dead in the seats, either blown to bits or trampled by the masses in their bid to weave through the labyrinth of seats. 

He cuts his attention back to the task at hand when Shepherd returns to comms. “Copy, make it safe. Local set up a cordon, so Makarov will have to exfil fast. We’re five mikes out. Don’t let him escape, son.” 

Soap checks the pulse on the nearest man on a stretcher, but he’s so far gone dead, he knows for sure the Inner Circle just had him up there as a cover. 

“Roger that.” 

“The garage,” Burns says. 

It's the next logical option, Soap reasons and Price seems to agree. “Affirm,” he nods to the bag they’d been looking at earlier. “Secure the explosives and get to the secondary exfil.”

Burns gives him a nod of acknowledgement and Price gestures for Soap to follow him, moving over to the door on the opposite side of the VIP area and back into the concourse, the shrill alarm still insistently echoing through the space. 

Along the inner wall, Price stops him short at an elevator and he and Soap just about manage to pry the doors open with force, only for them to slide open and reveal a dark void plunging down into the abyss beneath them.

The only sign that there was something down there was a dim red glow licking up the sides of the elevator shaft, catching on the rivets and dents in the metal plating. 

 Soap took an instinctive step back from where the polished floor dropped off, giving a sceptical glance up to the elevator’s resting point a fair bit above their heads. 

Wires jutted out from the dark and trembled slightly with a phantom tremor of the cables, like vocal cords vibrating an ominous metal groan. Soap was unsure how safe it was for them to be standing there with the metal contraption suspended in the air by nothing but rickety cold war era engineering and pure faith holding it up, but when Price seizes one of the cold cables and drops down into the darkness, Soap has no choice but to follow. 

He hits the floor below with a force he feels compress into his spine and he grimaces. 

Price meets him at the bottom. “Eyes peeled for Makarov.” 

Soap sets himself with new determination as they emerge into the larger space. Empty buses are parked on either side of the tunnel, forcing them to move away from the walls inward. 

A chill runs down Soap’s spine as he hears the echoing of footsteps ahead, run-shuffle across the cast concrete. He reaches for his gun instinctively but Price halts him in his tracks as the man comes into view at the other end of the tunnel. 

“Check fire, that’s a civilian.” 

His gun lowers, but only slightly. 

Ahead of them around the bend of the turn, the rhythmic pulsing of a red emergency light caught Soap’s attention and he stopped dead for a moment, straining to hear the sirens before Price could confirm his suspicion. 

“Vehicle incoming.” ��

It rounded the corner slowly, like it was a cornered animal placing a careful step forward into the crosshairs of its pursuer. 

Soap stepped forward, but Price laid a hand on his shoulder. 

“Maintain distance, Soap. Could be Makarov.” 

An empty bus to his left stood as the only shield between him and the ambulance a couple of metres ahead of him. He takes a cautious step backward as the ambulance inched closer at an excruciatingly slow pace, lurching as it halted. 

Price held his gun at the ready, moving away from the direct line of the ambulance. 

“Step out of the vehicle!” 

Though Soap couldn’t see who was inside, it was as though its unmovable energy almost seemed to mock them. 

It happened almost out of nowhere and predictably quickly at the same time. The engine revved and there was a moment the ambulance reversed sharply, turned on the sirens and ploughed forward. 

“Incoming!” Soap shouts and he and Price move out of the way on either side of the oncoming vehicle, Soap knocking his already tender shoulder against the back of the bus with the force he falls backwards with. 

There's the echoing crush of metal as the careless driving of the ambulance sees it knocking into an abandoned car and barreling over onto its side, ceasing the urgency of the siren to a dead silence. The absence of sound and the shifting of angular shadows from the strobing of the red emergency light mounted on the roof drew on the vastness of the dark parking garage, threatening to send the already heightened atmosphere to a fever pitch. 

“It’s down,” Soap says with only a hint of relief. 

Price was already moving. “Move to secure.” 

Soap bit the inside of his cheek to avoid showing how much the strain was impacting him as he and Price made their way over to the upturned vehicle, wheels still spinning for phantom grasp in the air, like desperate waving limbs that couldn’t grasp the earth to flee. 

The doors remained resolutely closed, but Soap’s stomach twisted at what he knew he would find there. There was no question of it. That ominous energy, the itching of his sixth sense, he knows it in the marrow of his bones. 

“Open it,” Price motioned Soap over to the door. 

Though hesitant, he complied, tugging the dented metal door open with a firm yank and flooding the gutted ambulance with sharp torchlight. 

“Hands! Hands!” Price shouted for the figure in the blue uniform moving from his sprawled position, his face turned away from them for the moment. “Pokazat' ruki!” Soap shouted for good measure, drawing on his limited Russian to make sure the man got the message. 

Dead on impact, there were two fake paramedics sprawled on the now earthside wall, but his attention was fixed on the man crouching towards the back, shielding his face from the glaring light. 

His hand shifted away from his face to raise in vitriolic surrender and Soap cursed, instinctively readjusting his grip on his gun. “It's him.” 

“Vladimir Makarov, step out of the vehicle now!” 

Sending them a searing look, Makarov gritted his teeth and crawled across the uneven side of the ambulance panelling, knees shifting over the bruised, dead limbs of his men. 

“Nice and easy,” Soap warns when he gets a bit too close to the door for his liking. After all, he still had his firearm tucked into the holster on his bullet proof vest. 

“That’s far enough.” Soap held out a hand to halt him when he attempted to take a step further from getting out of the ambulance. 

“Now don’t fucking move.” Makarov’s attention shifted to Price as he ordered Soap to search him. 

Soap immediately relieves him of the gun and tosses it out of reach. Makarov’s face held a discontented but somehow still neutral expression that Soap struggled to read. 

“You scared Captain?” he asks in a condescending tone as Soap went through the cursory motions of patting him down for extra firepower. Makarov takes Price’s silence as a win. “You should be.” 

“Shut up.”

A little grin tucks into the corner of his mouth and Soap has had about enough of it. He’ll take silence, he’ll take anger, but he will not have enjoyment coming from someone on the wrong end of a gun. 

He’s a soldier. He does not play fair in the game of terrorists. 

“Get on your fucking knees!” Soap manhandles him into a kneel on the cold concrete. 

Without the usual decorum, Soap roughly completes the search. “He’s clean.” 

Not wasting any time, Soap reaches into his pocket for zip ties and tightens them a bit more than strictly necessary, using a second one for good measure.

“Are you going to kill me?” Makarov asks evenly, completely ignoring the hard plastic digging into his wrists and focusing his attention on Price. 

“Oh I’ve thought about it, yeah.” 

He scoffs. “I recommend you do.”

“And I recommend you tell your men to stand down.” Price’s eyebrows narrowed at him. The gun now hovered only a foot away from Makarov’s face, but he remained unfazed. His expression remained unimpressed and he shook his head almost imperceptibly. 

“They’re not trained to stand down. That’s more… your strategy.” 

Soap couldn’t believe the audacity of him. Even like this, he thinks he’s got the upper hand. It takes a heavy helping of self restraint for Soap not to knock his teeth out. 

Price ignores him, locking eyes with Soap. “Keep him close.”

Soap tugs on his bound arms to get him to stand, following behind Price as he radios in. 

“All stations. We have Makarov. We’re moving to the extract.” 

“Roger that, John. they’ll fight to get him back…” 

“We’re counting on it,” Soap says bitterly with a bit of a shrug. 

He doesn’t miss the way Makarov turns to shoot him a venomous glance and he gets a bit of a rise out of it. 

“Alright, take him left. We clear these vehicles, we move up,” Price instructs him shortly, taking the lead and Soap acknowledges him, yanking Makarov roughly to his feet and shoving him in Price’s general direction. “Get goin’.” 

Price confirms the area on the other side of the ambulance is clear, and Soap starts them out at an urgent pace, making sure not to give the man any chance at a rest after the tumble he’d just taken in the ambulance. 

“You think you can just walk me out of here?” Makarov’s voice doesn’t have a hint of worry or remorse.

“We can drag you out as well,” Soap reminds him, giving him a rough shove to make him pick up his pace, but if Makarov feels anything at the rough treatment, he keeps it to himself. 

“Capturing me… it means nothing.” 

“It means we beat you, Vlad.” 

Soap can just barely see him shake his head, huffing out a laugh. “Don’t be a fool.” 

“Contact!” Price shouts from somewhere ahead of him and Soap’s first instinct is to duck behind the nearest vehicle as the Inner Circle men Price had spotted come into view, irritably losing Makarov to the confusion. 

 He gets a shot in, risking a glance sideways to Price who reassures him he’s got Makarov secured, but Makarov and one of the men are shouting back and forth for another moment before he gets him down too. 

“We clear?” Price asks him when the last man falls. 

“Affirm.” 

“It's not safe here. Grab Makarov, we need to move.” 

Price waits for Soap to take him before they proceed down the tunnel towards where they would be meeting with the others outside. 

“You’re not safe anywhere,” Makarov tells him and Soap’s just about had enough. 

“Your luck’s running dry, Makarov.” 

They’re coming up by another skewly parked bus, promptly ignoring the dead body of one of the Inner Circle men Soap had shot down, lying slumped behind it, Makarov doesn’t even look in his direction, just keeps his eyes focused dead ahead. 

“I don’t believe in luck. I believe in planning. Bad luck, it's just poor planning.” 

“What part of your plan involves rotting in a prison?” 

“A man can be locked up,” Makarov reminds him. “An idea cannot.” 

Soap keeps him close, tightening his grip on Makarov when they pass a woman trying to flee the building and giving her a jump scare. Soap tries to give her an apologetic look, but she’s clearly shell shocked and just stumbles away from him. 

Price is up ahead, securing them a path through to where they were to rendezvous with the others. 

“Found a way through, Sergeant. Lets move.” 

Up ahead was a blockade of buses, narrowly parked together, pressed into the wall. As Soap neared it, he could see the arms of daylight reaching for them from the gap between the two. 

“I bestow my blessings on your courage, but curse your stupidity.” 

“Worry about yourself.”

“Every man is replaceable, even me.” 

The only way around the barrier would be to squeeze through the narrow gap between the two vehicles, but it appeared Price was willing to bet they’d fit. 

“On me,” Price calls to Soap and slots in first. 

Soap gives Makarov a shove, both to move him forward and to shut him up as they come up to the gap, making progress at a snail's crawl. Soap isn’t particularly put off by tight spaces, but this could change that. 

Still, he takes Makarov by the shoulders and forces him after Price, sucking in as far as possible to try to keep his gear from snagging as they move. 

What’s even more unnerving is the pained crying he can hear from inside the bus, a bleak chance that there were still lives that could be saved in this shitshow. They didn’t have the time to stop now. 

“You’re not a soldier, you’re a war criminal.” Price picks up on it too, giving a heated glance in Makarov’s direction as he shuffles sideways. He’s more than irritated with Makarov’s attitude in combination with the injured civilians just metres away from them.

“These people need medical.” 

“What’s stopping you from helping them, Sergeant?” Makarov asks condescendingly and Soap shoves him sideways to keep moving. 

“You.” 

Makarov looks back at Soap. “That's your choice.” 

“You did this, not us…” Price reminds him sharply.

“They’re innocent people,” Soap adds from the side.  

“No one is innocent. War is treachery.” 

“Enough of this shite.” 

Price groans as he squeezes past the last bit and emerges into the open, Makarov –still within Soap’s grasp– follows shortly and Price has them heading for the exit, just to the right, just a little further and they’ll be out of the smoke and into the light. It gives Soap the strength to push on. 

Just to the end of the tunnel. A smoking wreck of a car flickers by the end of it, a false beacon of hope, but Soap knows it's just a little further. He just needs to keep his head on straight. Maybe what he says next is to distract himself, maybe it's because he wants to throw stones at the enemy while there isn’t a glass wall and several government officials between them. 

He doesn’t want to admit that it's probably to cover a chip in his own hope they’ll get out of this in one piece. He’s learned that celebrating the victory too soon only turns a blind eye to the evil building in his peripheral vision.  

“Time for you to meet some friends of mine.” They’re so close that Soap can almost begin to sense the relief of a win drawing close. He’ll get to go home in one piece and he’ll make good on his promises, all the ones he almost failed on. He’ll get time to reconsider his resignation, maybe he’ll let Scotland and its people resculpt him into an honest man. 

“Where are they?” 

Soap doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of a full answer, lips turning into a conceited sneer. “Close.” 

Makarov gave a half-shrug, letting the cuffs jingle a bit behind his back. His hands were balled into tight, tense fists. 

“So are mine.” 

Soap worries it’s too late to save himself now, but he’s twenty-five. A lot of people find their feet at the age of twenty-five. He can still choose to rewrite the ending of his story. He can still return to the nostalgia of his not-yet-past youth, his mother’s home cooked meals. “You should know when you’ve lost.” 

“You’re still thinking about victory. Think about success.” 

It's another pebble thrown against Makarov’s unshakable demeanour, hitting nowhere vital but somehow still spurring him to give Soap a word of advice, sitting on that self-made throne. 

“The wicked prosper. They always will. Peace is invisible. War you can see…” 

Soap hates how evocative it sounds, how a weaker man might have thought it inspirational. Soap just thinks it sounds as though he’s pulled it from a fortune cookie. 

Soap’s nose scrunches up as the smoke thickens and burns at his lungs, blinking as his eyes water from the burn too. 

“Incoming!” 

He’s more prepared for the hits this time when the bullet zips past his head to disappear into the inferno. 

“Molotov!” Price shouts to him and he ducks away behind another wrecked vehicle as a bottle hurtles through the air and shatters on the floor just a couple of metres away, sending flames licking up the side of the wall. 

“I’ve got Makarov, you take ‘em out.” 

Soap swiftly takes care of the man running at him, catching him before he’s even spotted Soap behind the car and turns on the other man running to cover his fallen comrade. 

Soap takes down the next three in rapid succession, sidestepping another attempt at a molotov in his direction and finding the thrower with a bullet to the neck.

The last man catches him by surprise and he takes a hit to the arm before he gets a good shot in. The man slumps to the floor and Soap grits his teeth as he scans around for anyone else to materialise out of the smoke before relaxing slightly. Crisis averted. 

“We’re clear.” 

In his adrenaline high mind, the bullet wound, though only a graze, was a distant low hum, barely offering a distraction from the here and now. He resists the urge to clutch at his chest as he returns to Price. 

He’s by the gate, forcing Makarov to his knees with a gun pressed against his neck. 

“Lift it.” Price inclines his head to the gate and Soap drops to his knees to pull at the edge and lift it just high enough for them to duck under. Once out, he lets it drop with a thundering crash. 

“Gold Eagle Actual, we’re external. East side of the stadium. What’s your status?” 

Soap comes up behind Price, eyebrows drawn together and squinting at the too-bright sky for their helicopter flying over the building to land on the other side. 

“Bravo-6, we’re on station. Be advised, you have enemy personnel moving in from the North. Ghost will provide sniper support.” 

“Copy. We'll meet you at primary exfil. Six out,” Price says and turns to Soap. “I’ll handle Makarov, you clear a path.” 

Soap moves ahead, sticking close to cover as he eliminates those of Makarov’s men still looking to take him back. He’s briefly aware of Price behind him, but he makes sure to cover all their bases before the Inner Circle men can get the better of them. He’s too desperate for a win now. 

To his left, a man emerges from behind a white van, cowering behind a riot shield as he tries to get a shot at Soap. Soap moves back to duck behind a parked car but he lets out an involuntary curse when a neat bullet clips the man in the back of the head and he collapses onto the pavement with a heavy lurch. 

He follows the path of the bullet up to the helicopter hovering above their exfil point, finding the imposing silhouette in the doorway and he acknowledges the man with a nod. 

Ghost may be a bit of a prick, but as Soap looks down at the mess of the man’s skull spattered across the concrete, he can at least acknowledge he’s a good shot. 

“Watch right,” Ghost warns him over the comms and Soap turns and fires at a man ducked behind a parked car.  

There seems to be no further pursuit and Ghost confirms it a moment later, giving them the green light to proceed to exfil with Price and Makarov shortly behind him. 

The helicopter has barely touched down and Ghost is standing guard at the open door, expression completely obscured by the mask, but Soap can sense the tension in his stance as he just barely tracks their movements. 

Soap squints against the torrent of wind coming in his direction, finding Shepherd’s outstretched hand to tug him over the threshold of the doorway. And it's homeward. They made it. 

Price comes in after him, handing Makarov over to Shepherd before he wordlessly taps Ghost on the shoulder to signal him inside. 

The door shuts with a resounding bang and soon, they’re up in the air, watching the smoking stadium recede beneath them. 

Soap steadies himself against the wall to allow himself to catch his breath, resisting the urge to turn and face the monster of a man behind him as Price makes sure he’s secure. He takes a long look at the city beneath him. He can sense it writhing with panic and it itches beneath his skin in a way he cannot put word to. 

“Simon Riley.” Makarov’s accent registers behind him and Soap glances to the left to find Ghost still by the door, now facing Makarov at the mention of his name. Soap turns to meet Makarov’s eye for a moment, but his gaze quickly averted back to Ghost. 

“I expected you to stay at the airport… and die there.” 

“If you wanna live, do not threaten my men, Vladimir,” Shepherd warns him. 

“Are we on a first name basis? Herschel?” 

“So you know names,” Soap cuts in impatiently. “Anyone can read a bloody dossier.” 

A beat passes and when no one makes any move to ask any of the big questions, Ghost doesn’t beat around the bush. 

“What’s the rest of your plan?” 

“This.” He shrugs, almost nonchalant, staged in a way that put Soap’s nerves on edge. Like he knew this was eating at them and he was enjoying watching the scene unfold instead of worrying about the fact he wouldn’t be able to slip through the noose this time. 

Price sits forward. “What do you mean ‘this’?” 

“Amazing. You’re all dumber than you look.” 

“I asked you a question–” Ghost reminds him sharply. 

“And I have a question for you.” he addresses them all, inclining his head in Soap’s direction, hinting at his watch. “What time is it?” 

“What the hell do you care what time it is?” Shepherd asks impatiently and he gives half a shrug as partial explanation. 

“Timing is everything, General. I think we’ll all remember this moment. Some… more fondly than others.” 

It registers first as a distant rumble. A shaking of earth that offsets the balance of the air by such a dire tone it compels Soap to look out the window and find the source of the noise. His heart plummets into his feet. 

“The airport,” Ghost says with more concern Soap thought he was capable of. 

“He pulled us off target.” 

“You fucking son of a bitch!” 

Something in Soap snaps. He’s restrained himself far too long and before he’s even realised what he’s doing, he’s pulling his gun and grabbing Makarov with a fistful of the blue uniform he was wearing, knocking him against the metal wall with a reverberating bang before tossing him to the floor. 

“I’ll blow your fuckin’ brains out, I swear I’ll do it.” 

Makarov locks eyes with him over the barrel of the gun, mere inches away from his face and finds Soap’s eyes with an intensity he didn’t think possible. 

“Soap, don’t do it,” Price warns him, but its dead noise in his periphery. Still, he hesitates. He feels the chain chafing against his neck.

The gun waits between them for Soap to pull the trigger. His finger itches, he clutches just a bit, with no pressure. But he could if he wanted to, he feels the impulse curl his finger in his mind’s eye but there is no gunshot and Makarov is still looking at him as though he’s bluffing. 

“Do it, come on,” Makarov taunts him. 

“You shut your mouth,” Price tells him, but his eyes never leave Soap. 

“Let me finish him.” Soap doesn’t know why he’s waiting for permission. He knows what needs to be done, but he can’t. He needs that bit of reassurance that its a necessary evil. 

Makarov gives a cynical laugh but Price pulls his attention. “John, we have him, he’s in custody. He’s not going anywhere. Stand down, Sergeant.” 

With all the self restraint he can muster, Soap pulls back before he can impulsively pull the trigger, reholstering the gun and taking a seat as far away from Makarov as possible. 

Price tugged Makarov up from the floor and into his own seat. 

“I thought you were the good guys.” 

“You gon’ rot in hell for this,” Shepherd tells him. 

“You’ll die in the gulag with the rest of the Russian rats,” Soap adds. 

Makarov glances at Soap, eyes drifting down to the gun now tucked uselessly into its holster. 

“You can lock me away, MacTavish, but I can promise you, the next time we’ll be seeing each other, you better hope your Captain didn’t just sign your death warrant.” 

Soap has learned over the years that the silence after the fact can sometimes be more haunting than the screams that came before it. Silence is a full stop that drives the hope into the ground and smothers any thought of change for the better. 

Silence is the whiplash passing of the first stage of grief and sinking into those later phases, the knowing that nothing can be done once the last breath has passed dying lips and all that can be clung to is the husk of what remains. 

Sometimes the acknowledgement of the silence is the victory for the sadistic intention, so tight lipped, Vladimir Makarov took the lack of words following the skirmish with Soap on the ground as a proof of this victory. 

Soap didn’t let it show, but he felt it in his knees, sinking into acceptance of the horror and he sank to his seat in bitter anger. He would not let Makarov have the satisfaction of being ignored, so he made a point of looking him in the eye as they made their way back to base, from which General Shepherd had informed them authorities were already awaiting their arrival to take Makarov off their hands. 

Halfway through the return trip, Ghost comes to take a seat next to him and Soap shifts an inch or two further away to allow himself to breathe. 

He’s aware of the motion beside him, Ghost clenching and unclenching his fist in Soap’s peripheral vision.

He’s surprised Ghost isn’t more visibly worked up by the situation, but Soap realises that idea might have come from a misjudgement of the man’s character on his part. Ghost was reserved and brash, but he was calculated, something Soap worried he fell terribly short on. 

“You’re a hard man to kill, Riley. My men tell me you’re dead on paper. Suppose it goes to show that even if you read between the lines, most of the story is left off the books.”

“You’ve got nothing to gain here, Makarov. You’ve lost. Throwing stones at us isn’t going to help your case,” Soap warns him harshly, but Ghost holds up a hand to silence him.

From out of the window, Soap can see them coming up on the base and the helicopter begins to turn in for landing. 

“No, let him talk. I wanna know what else kind of shit has been circulating.” 

“Only a fool lays all his cards on the table, but I will tell you this. Your system, your government is lying to you. They’re using you, tell you its for your country. But they’re all the same, your Captain,” Makarov nods to Price, “the General, they’ve got more skeletons in the closet than they’ll let on, just make sure you don’t become one of them.” 

“No one should be taking advice from a madman,” Price dismisses him. “And we’re coming up on your last stop before you won’t be seeing the sun for a long time, so you better take one long look at the world, because it's the last you’ll be seeing of it.”

The helicopter descended on the landing pad. 

A waiting group of armed men in uniforms stood close by and approached with urgency when the doors opened and Makarov was taken into official custody of the Kastovian government. 

The exchange happens in Russian and Soap struggles to follow along with it as they get out with Price after General Shepherd and the men escorting Makarov into the building, following behind at a respectable distance. 

Makarov is properly restrained and escorted off base to another facility in an armoured vehicle and Soap feels a strange emptiness settle over him as he watches them leave the premises. They’d gotten Makarov, but he cannot consider this a victory. “You did good today,” Price informs him a while later when they’re alone. “The outcome is far from what we hoped for, but we made sure he’ll never be able to do something like this again.” 

Burns arrives later with questions about Makarov’s arrest and the airport after the bomb squad had successfully taken care of the rest of the explosives on site at the stadium, but he’s got very little to say in return to Soap’s recollection of it. 

 

Finding he can’t manage to catch any sleep after an hour of tossing and turning, Soap supposes he should give up on sleep in general. 

He wants to reflect about the day, but his mind is cluttered with thoughts about the thousand of innocent lives lost in the carnage, its jarring to see those faces from the news, burned into his mind and superimposed over what the airport had looked like when they’d driven towards it just that morning, those people outside, saying goodbye to families, pressing kisses to cheeks with a promise of ‘see you soon’. Most of those people are crushed and buried under rubble and maybe even lost forever. The thought is sickening. 

Though it's futile and seems like a juvenile remedy to a problem that can’t be helped, he replays that moment on the flight out from the stadium over and over again, and in each instance, he pulls the trigger and Makarov is dead on the ground. He doesn’t listen to Price. 

Fuck. If only he hadn’t listened to Price back then. 

It wouldn’t have mattered though, he’d have felt just as guilty seeing it on the news, knowing he could have done something to help as he feels now, knowing that he’d been played for a fool. 

Lying back on the bed, Soap dips his hand under the hem of his shirt and pulls out the tangle of his dog tags with the cross over his chest. It dangles in the artificial heatless glow of the industrial strip light he’d neglected to turn off, clinking together as he holds it just a few centimetres from his face, skin warm and seeming to possess a life of its own. He clutches it all together over his heart and closes his eyes, trying to muster the words for a silent prayer through all the clutter of his mind. 

His mind jumps around, but it's sincere. He prays for the families he knows must be mourning their loved ones, for those in hospitals clinging to life, for the people who’d lost their lives today. He puts a conscious effort to word it understandably despite how utterly exhausted he is, even though he knows that God must already know what he has to say. 

Yes, he should probably stop swearing so much and he’s not proud of his history, but at least he’s trying. His hands are covered in the blood of people that despite their choices, God would have wanted to call his children and he’d killed them for material means. No matter how evil their actions, Soap had killed hundreds if not thousands of people over the years. 

It doesn’t matter how tainted the soul, blood is still blood. 

But he’s doing good with the darkness he’d been born with, the destruction he was always leaning more towards. He’d been entrusted with this attribute like a double edged sword he must use wisely and he reminds himself that he does it so that others can keep their hands clean. 

It's a noble thing to do, to sacrifice your own innocence for the sake of others. It's honourable. 

He can only lie there for so long before his skin itches for something other than the stillness of the stale room. Burns is knocked out on the bunk across from him and Soap gets up and leaves the room, turning off the light upon his exit. 

He decides fresh air might do him good and he takes his chance to slip out onto the roof to catch his breath and collect his thoughts. 

The night sky is almost completely obscured by the haziness of the smoke that had spread out from the epicentre of the airport, only letting in through pinpricks of blinking light from the stars. It takes Soap’s breath away for a moment. 

He hadn’t realised just how easily he could see the airport from the base, especially situated on the hill, overlooking the city. He can’t see all of Verdansk, but he can see enough to know how much the disaster has affected it.

He can hear the wailing of sirens and the dim flashing of red lights responding to the remainder of the disaster. 

Soap sighs heavily as he walks over to the edge of the roof, sinking down to his knees and scooting over to dangle his feet off the edge of the roof, he’s half startled out of the haze when his phone vibrates in his pocket. 

He debates answering the message later but goes to pull out his phone. 

Four unread messages. all from Elena. 

Elena: a guy came into work today and he looked almost exactly like you. It was sort of scary.

Elena: oh btw, you left your sweater at my house the other day in case you were looking for it. 

Elena: hey, how was your day?

Elena: Look, I understand if you’re busy and just don’t have the time to talk to me, but if you don’t want to see me anymore, I’d appreciate it if you told me. I can handle it. I really like you and I thought we had a genuinely good connection the other day, but I get it, the moment’s over and I was clearly reading the situation wrong. It seems like we went into it with two very different intentions and I just don’t think it's going to work. After everything that happened, I think I just need someone that’s present and I need some time to work on myself before I get into anything now. I’m sorry.

Well, fuck. Soap can’t be everywhere, he can’t fix everything, he can’t be there for everyone. Maybe he should’ve tried to respond sooner, but on top of today’s disaster, it stings. 

John: There's nothing to be sorry about. I didn’t mean to give you the impression that I don’t want to talk to you, really, I’ve just had a really long day. And I think you’re right, I don’t think this is going to work. I had a great time getting to know you but I’ve got a lot on my plate right now and things are very stressful here. I just have a lot of things to think of right now and I don’t think it's fair to drag you along with me.

It didn’t take very long for her to respond to him, quickly adding a heart emoji in response to his message before she wrote back. 

Elena: thank you for being honest with me. 

There was nothing more after that and Soap stared at the last message for a couple of moments, frowning at it as the screen darkened and died. He sighed heavily, shoving the phone back into his pocket, looking down at the cracked pavement two storeys below him, right to where they had parked coming into base just two days ago and how he couldn’t have ever imagined what was in store for him. 

“Just don’t fall, you’ll cause me paperwork.” 

The voice startled Soap to his core and he almost tipped forward by the sound of it, cursing as he stabilised himself again. 

He turned to find a small pinprick of light from where a dark clothed figure leaned against a wall not far from him. He hadn’t even recognised the smell of cigarette smoke, figuring it was the wind carrying the smoke from the explosion site. 

“Shit, Ghost, you scared me,” Soap laughed uneasily as the man approached him to stand by the railing. 

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he says. Soap gets to his feet and Ghost holds out a half empty pack of Marlboro cigarettes in Soap’s direction, an olive branch. Soap isn’t sure he’ll take it. 

“I don’t smoke. It's a filthy habit.” 

Ghost rolled his eyes, sighing around his own cigarette as he plucked one from the pack, lit it and offered it again, now with a thin curl of silver smoke distending from its orange glow. It highlights the edges of the skeleton motif on his gloves and somehow, Soap knows he’ll carry a part of this day with him for days onwards, because the smell of that cigarette will burn into the fabric of his gloves. 

“I don’t smoke,” Soap insists again with a frown, but all Ghost does is take his hand –not roughly, but not gently either– and puts the thin cigarette between his fingers. 

“After a day like today, everybody smokes, Soap.” 

Soap hesitates with it for a moment, watching the glow eat away at the unburnt part of the cigarette and inching closer away from the ashen end before he gives in and raises it to his mouth for a long, much needed draw. 

He wishes he could wipe the smug look he just knows Ghost has under that mask off his face as he watches the action, knowing how easy it is to fall back into dormant muscle memory. 

“You don’t smoke, huh?” 

Soap pouts, not sure how much he wants to let the strange man in on his past, but he settles for something basic. “I don’t smoke anymore .” 

Ghost nods, whether it was meant to be mocking or genuine is something Soap’s ego can’t discern. “Right.” 

They stand there for a moment in the pseudo-silence, filled with the ambience of night sounds and distant sirens echoing through the ether and surrounding the two of them in a lamentous hum. 

“If it was up to me, I’d have let you kill him today.”

“You would?” Soap asks with genuine confusion. 

“I would. Price doesn’t always think of it that way, but the world’s better off without having scum like him wasting space, even if he’s behind bars.”

Ahead, somewhere from out of the darkness, the glow of the burning airport stood out, a beacon of hellish light that made Soap’s skin crawl. They’re far away and the attack was hours ago, but it lingers on his skin like an itch he can’t run away from. 

He leans on the cigarette for comfort, and just a little, the presence of the taller man beside him helps to ease the loneliness of feeling like one tremendous failure. 

“Don’t think too hard about it Soap, it’ll make your hair fall out and we certainly can’t have that with that illustrious haircut of yours.” 

Soap jerked his head around so fast, he could’ve almost sworn Ghost startled just a little. 

“Oh you’re one to talk about appearances with that halloween costume shite you’ve got going on.” 

It takes two seconds for Soap to realise he’d chosen the wrong option. He’d overstepped one of the rules Price had very clearly set out for him. No questions about his appearance. 

To his surprise, Ghost just gives him a bit of a laugh, albeit a bit of a snide one. “To each their own, but I’m serious, don’t beat yourself up about what happened today, there’s no use in dwelling on it.”

Soap frowns. “How am I not supposed to dwell on it? If we hadn’t responded to the attack on the stadium, if you and Shepherd hadn’t followed after us, we would have died there too,” he gestures vaguely out at the glow of the still smouldering heap of rubble. 

“That’s just the way of the world, Soap. No one gets into this job thinking you’ll walk away with a bruise or a cut you can just slap a plaster over. People die, that’s how it works. We just happen to see more of it because of what we do. We are not entitled to living longer or dying later or easier because we’re supposed to be heroes. We could have died today, but what does it actually matter in the grand scheme of things.” 

“You’re a real ray of sunshine, Lt,” Soap says dryly, bringing the cigarette to his mouth again. In the corner of his eye, he can see Ghost do the same. 

“Maybe I’ve just been screwed over by the system that’s supposed to keep me alive more than I’ve been saved by it.” 

Soap shrugged, but it didn’t sit right with him, the idea that death was just an inevitable fact of life. He’s too stubborn to believe it. For someone who’d spent more than half his waking life trying to change the hand he’d been dealt when he was born to broke college student parents and the expectation to be utterly average, he didn’t take kindly to the notion of just accepting things he can’t change, even if it drives him up the wall. 

There’s a lot of other, more personal questions he wants to ask the man instead, but he settles for something safer. 

“How do you deal with it? Stuff like today?” 

“I’m not the person you should be asking for advice, Soap,” Ghost says with a hint of surprise. “That’s more Price’s thing.” 

Soap turned to face him, trying to analyse what little he could see of his face where the mask was pulled up just high enough for him to smoke. He can just about see the curve of his lip around the cigarette and the edge of what seemed to be a jagged scar extending from the corner of his mouth. 

Just as quickly as Soap had seen it, he lowered the cigarette, holding the smoke for a moment before he released it in a slow exhale. 

“I’m not asking for advice, I’m asking how you cope.” 

“I keep going. Sometimes the only way to cope is to endure.” 

The silence that followed thereafter was more comfortable, more settled. Soap could begin to see why Price had told him Ghost was an acquired taste. For all his cold facade, he was really just a man with a grumpy disposition. Maybe even one with a personality outside of work, but Soap struggles to comprehend what that might be. 

Reminded of work and everything they’d discussed in the wake of the attack, Soap frowned as he took another drag from the cigarette, now on its last breath.

“What do you think ended up happening to Price’s informant?” 

Ghost scoffed, stubbing out his own cigarette against the rail and crushing the rest under his boot for good measure. “Fuck if I know.” 

Soap shook his head, feeling himself getting riled up just at the thought of it. “Bet you the arse is sitting somewhere comfortable, getting piss drunk, laughing at the news.” 

Ghost shrugs. “Reckon you may be right about that one, sergeant.” 

“Wherever he is, I hope karma comes back to get him good.”

 

MOSCOW 

 

The man convulsed with a cry of pain as another shock of electricity surged through him, curling in a distortion of twitching muscles through the point where the cattle prod made contact with his bare, singed back and burned another snakebite pattern onto what remained of the undamaged skin. 

The small, uninsulated barn stank of singed hair and burning flesh, all emanating from a centre point where a young man, beaten and tortured beyond recognition, was bound to a bloodied kitchen chair. 

He shivered and twitched from the aftershock of electricity under the glaring warm buzzing of a bare filament bulb, fixed to the rafters above his head. 

Six other men, still residually wearing police uniforms and paramedic overalls, were gathered around him in a semicircle. 

The one in front of him, Andrei Nolan, was not holding the cattle prod. His hands were clean of blood, though there was a light spatter across the front of his body from his earlier beating, inflicted by the man now standing behind the chair, resting a gloved hand dutifully on the wooden backrest, waiting for further instruction. 

“I’m not going to say I’m surprised, Dmitri. But I expected better from someone like you,” Andrei says with mock pity, crouching down to find the swollen eyes of the young man. A trickle of pinkish saliva traced down his trembling lip and dripped to the cold floor by his bare feet. 

“Not even twenty with a whole life ahead of him. You could’ve gone and married that pretty young thing you’re hiding in the city. Could have fathered children to carry that name since the anti-communist rats snuffed out the rest of your Soviet supporter family and executed them like dogs, but your bloodline will end here because you wanted to be a bootlicker.” 

Dmitri flinched as Andrei pressed a calloused thumb into the burn on his inner thigh, drawing out a pained noise. He leaned away from the hand, but stripped naked and bound, there was little he could do to avoid the pain of Andrei’s finger scratching open the blistered skin and causing it to bleed again. 

Even Yuri, the man that had inflicted the burn waiting behind him with bated breath, began to feel nauseated at the sight of his own handiwork, but it did not show. He kept his expression even and serious. 

Andrei was a dangerous man and Yuri knows better than to cross him when he’s already angry. Andrei might think of Dmitri as a bootlicker, but he was just as much the same to Makarov. Still, Yuri stood by, idle, complacent. The cattle prod in his other hand was heavy and had more weight to it than it should have had. 

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” Andrei asked. 

Mustering the last of his strength, Dmitri lifted his swollen face to look Andrei dead in the eye and spoke around a mouthful of busted teeth. 

“Preserving innocent lives… is not… the same… as bootlicking.” He threw in as much venom as he could into the words, punctuating it by spitting blood and phlegm into Andrei’s face, mere centimetres away from him. The man recoiled with a curse and reacted with a harsh backhanded smack to his already busted face. Andrei wiped at his face with the edge of his sleeve. 

“It would’ve been better for you if you begged for mercy,” he says, getting to his feet and moving a safer distance away. 

“Fucker thinks he’s Pavlik Morozov,” one of the other men laughs, shaking his head pitifully and the others join in. “But by all means if he wants to die a young hero, we give him his martyr fantasy,” another says. 

 Yuri feels himself stiffen. He agreed to rough up the kid, already uncomfortable at the thought of hurting him to teach him a lesson. He gave in when the Inner Circle wanted to use his house to lay low after that afternoon's situation with Makarov’s arrest, but he did not consent to killing a man that had seen him as a mentor. He’d practically fathered him from the age of fifteen when his parents were killed. 

“Don’t be so hasty, Pyotr,” Andrei scolded him. “Now that Makarov is in federal custody, we must make extra sure not to lose his sentiments to our own vision. We must be patient.” 

“We still have Zakhaev,” the first man suggests and Andrei turns to him, unimpressed. 

“Zakhaev is a puppet on a string. He knows what Makarov wants and he’ll be better in executing that vision than any other of his affiliates, but we must not forget that though Zakhaev was Makarov’s predecessor, he still had a different vision for Russia.” 

“It's better than letting the cause die off.” 

“Makarov has planned for this. The system has not failed us. All the more to show that this little stunt of yours has meant nothing,” Andrei directs his attention back to Dmitri, kicking his bare foot roughly. 

“But seeing as this stint didn’t play out as you planned and you have nothing meaningful to say, perhaps you shouldn’t be able to say anything at all.” 

Yuri frowned, unsure where this was going as Andrei addressed one of the men beside him. “Go to the van and fetch the white jug in the back. Should be under the spare uniforms. Don’t let the woman in the main house see you.” 

Andrei tossed his keys to the man. 

“What are you planning to do to him?” Yuri asks, now visibly becoming unnerved. 

“Nothing extravagant.”

“I am not going to kill him with my wife and child barely two hundred metres away,” he said sternly and Andrei scoffed. 

“He won’t die immediately. I’m counting on the secondary complications to do that. Keeps the hands clean and the conscience clear.” 

“You fucking murderer,” Dmitri says as loud as he was able, struggling against his restraints. “All of you will burn in hell.” 

“At least you’ll be there to welcome us,” Andrei says dryly. 

They all turned in tandem to face the creaking of the barn door behind them, just a little way away, the man how having returned and holding up a heavy, half-empty bottle that at first sight seemed to be some sort of laundry detergent, but Yuri’s heart dropped through the floor as he realised exactly what it was. 

“You can’t be serious– that’s insane,” he stammers as the man hands off the bottle to  Andrei, now making a play to thoroughly check the label. 

“Thirty-seven percent hydrochloric acid. A lower concentration is an irritant to the skin, but undiluted, it’ll corrode right through to the flesh. I wonder what it’ll do to those vocal cords of yours.” 

He roughly shoves the bottle in Yuri’s direction. “If you would do the honours.” 

“I am not going to pour hydrochloric acid down his throat.” 

“You’re not really in a position to negotiate here. It would be a shame if I were to show your little girl what her daddy is really capable of.” 

“You leave my family out of this,” Yuri warned. 

“Then you wouldn’t mind teaching the rat here a lesson?” 

Gritting his teeth and avoiding eye contact with a panicked Dmitri, Yuri took the bottle from Andrei and slowly unscrewed the cap. It looks just like water. 

 He moved over to Dmitri with much trepidation. 

“Don’t fucking come close to me– you asshole, I thought I could trust you–” he thrashes, scooting the chair back and lurches back with so much force, the chair tips and he crashes to the floor. He cries out in more pain as he takes his weight on his bound arms behind his back, no doubt dislocating his shoulder in the process. He’s still thrashing and crying out as Yuri approaches him.

He freezes, standing there with the open bottle, not sure what to do now. 

“Dinner’s almost ready Yuri, your wife might come out and fetch us soon. You better get a move on.” 

Torn between what he knows is right and the very real possibility that his family could walk in and see what he had done, he kneeled down by the upturned chair and reached for Dmitri’s face, still trying to move away from him. 

“I’ll fucking bite your finger off! Don’t touch me!” 

“Someone hold him still,” Andrei orders and one of the men dutifully comes over to roughly yank him by his hair into a flat position against the dirty floor, tugging his mouth open with a gloved finger. 

“I won’t be able to hold him like this for long,” the man says plainly, clearly struggling to hold him still but Yuri didn’t move. 

“I can’t.” 

“This isn’t a choice,” Andrei says sharply. 

“I let you stay in my house, share my food with you. I am not getting blood on my hands in my own house.” 

Andrei’s eyes narrowed at him, but he stepped forward nonetheless, taking the bottle from Yuri’s hands and knocking him out of the way. 

“I’m starting to question your loyalty, Yuri.” 

Yuri ignores him, pushing past the five other guys to leave the barn as soon as possible. He doesn't get out before the screaming starts, wet choking around the sound. 

He leaves the barn with his head in his hands. He can still hear him, now, halfway to the house. 

Yuri thinks he might continue to hear that scream five, six years down the line. 

It's not completely stopped by the time he reaches the kitchen and finds his wife standing there over the simmering pot on the stove, shoulders stiff and mouth pressed into a tight white line as she stirs the mix once more and forcefully knocks the extra broth from her spoon on the lip of the pot, clearly demonstrating her discontent while refusing to meet her husband’s gaze. 

“Anya–” 

“Don’t even begin,” she warns sharply. She doesn’t look at him, instead, shutting off the stove and looking out at the uneven plain of dying grass between the house and the barn that had now gone eerily quiet and empty in the symphony of night crickets. 

The barn door opens and five out of the six men still in the room step out and begin making their way over to the house. In the background against the chattering of the TV, Yuri can hear the little girl in the living room, playing with the scatter of toys on the carpet and giggling, blissfully unaware of the conversation unfolding in the kitchen and the horror on the other side of the lawn. 

He turns back to his wife, unsure of what to think, but she gives him something to hold onto. “We’ll talk about it later.” 

She gets him to set the table, clearing all the leftover clutter from the time he’d been away. He’s missed so much over the past few years in Makarov’s ranks, he’s hardly been around to see his child growing up. Still, she draws him in her wobbly doodles of the family. 

He gathers all the drawings together in a stack and goes to shove it in one of the cupboards in the living room, ruffling the kid’s hair as she doesn’t even bother to look away from the TV as he is passing–

“What happened to your hand?” 

Yuri goes back to the kitchen when he hears Anya’s concerned voice, now looking down at Andrei’s freshly bandaged arm as she began ladling soup into the bowls on the counter. 

“Cleaning accident,” he laughs it off, making eye contact with Yuri. “Was struggling with a tough stain that didn’t want to go out without a fight, but it gave in eventually.” 

Dinner after that was painfully quiet, interspersed with a few crude jokes and inappropriate glances in Anya’s direction every now and again when she went to fetch something from a cupboard that one of the men would order her around for, and though Yuri was having none of it, there was little he could do about the situation while being on such thin ice with Andrei and the others already. 

But he knows now, with how deep he’s getting into this, with the incident from earlier that day on the news, his furious wife and his oblivious daughter in the living room, that he has to make a plan to dig himself out of this hole. 

It's only later that evening, when the other men had retired to the spare bedrooms and guest cottage that came with the old farmhouse, that Yuri found his wife in their upstairs bedroom, gathering a bundle of stuffed animals into her arms and throwing it on her side of the bed. 

Their en suite bathroom door was closed and he can hear the faucet of the bathtub running. 

“I’m having Nadya sleep here tonight. I’m too worried about leaving her alone with them,” She informs in a hushed voice, fluffing up one of the pillows and arranging the stuffed animals accordingly. 

“I’m sorry about everything,” he begins to say but she holds up a hand to silence him, still too angry to give him the time of day. 

“Save it. People make mistakes. I didn’t marry you to sit at home alone for half of my life wishing you were here to see your child growing up, I didn’t marry to sleep in an empty bed and wander around in an empty house until the next thing I know is that my husband’s on the news because he was part of a terrorist attack on an airport. I made that mistake, and I have to live with that, but I swear on my mother’s grave, Yuri, you bring these people into my house again, and I divorce you, for real this time. So either, I go back to Kastovia to live with my family, and you forfeit your rights as a father, or you come up with a plan.”

[tanadrin]

The Last Sin

(Attention conservation notice: 6,500 words of fantasy)

As Masek approached the ruins of the City of Glass, a storm came out of the west. It rushed across the parched alluvial plain, whipping up a miles-long wall of dust as it went; lightning flashed from within and, at last, when it seemed like it threatened to swallow him whole, the cloud surged upward like an immense tower and formed itself into the shape of a man as high as mountains. The immense messenger spoke with a voice like thunder that died in the far-off hills, and Masek could not help but be afraid.

"You cannot do this," the messenger said.

Masek answered quietly, almost under his breath. She could hear him, and this was only her messenger. "I can, and I must." Despite his fear, he kept walking toward the glittering, broken towers in the distance.

“She commands you not to do this,” the messenger said again.

“She can command all she likes.” He was tired. He had been picking his way along the broken road since dawn. His voice was ragged and sounded weak even to his own ears. How pathetic must it be to hers? “I will not stop.”

“Masek!” And now there was anger in the messenger’s voice, an anger that threatened to flatten forests and level the hills. “You have sinned and sinned again against the soul of the world itself; does your iniquity know no bounds? Does your contempt for your god know no limits? Does your hatred for righteousness have no end?”

Masek shook his head as he walked. None of the other Believers had ever understood him; maybe no mortal alive. Her messenger would not understand this either.

“I do not hate righteousness, or love sinfulness, or despise her, messenger,” he said. “I have told you again and again. I am doing what I have to do.”

The towering figure stood silent for a moment, then the thunder returned, mournful and distant. “She begs you not to.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“She could level the city as you approach it. Leave you only the wilderness in which to lay your head. Send wolves against you in the night. Consume your body with fire from within.”

“She could. Will she?”

“You will not desist?”

“She hasn’t stopped me yet.”

“You will not succeed. It cannot be permitted. Even if she waits until the very end.”

“I thought she could do anything?”

“Do not presume to challenge or command her.”

I have done far worse in her sight, Masek thought but did not say. The messenger seemed to take that for answer; at once the form dissolved, and the immense wall was overthrown, a blast of wind covering everything around him in a thick, swirling dust, followed closely by a cold wind. Masek pulled his scarf close about his nose and mouth so that he could still breathe. The ruins in the distance were hidden now, but he could still feel the stones of the old road beneath his feet. He kept walking.

That night, as the storm whipped at the stones of the city around him, he took a scrap of paper from his bag and the stub of a pencil, and tried to work out how much further he had left to go. He reckoned the days since he left Velannu, making little marks he could barely discern in the firelight. Was it a year ago? A little more. The road ahead could not be much longer now. The place he sought, the last city, the city laid waste more than a thousand years ago for the same sin he was about to commit, was only a little further on.

Despite the storm, he slept well, and deeply. He woke only once, turning to his other side, and thought that for a moment he felt a presence standing over him. Not a wolf or a woodwose, nothing dangerous. But something immense, and loving, and full of grief. But it vanished when he opened his eyes.

When Masek awoke not long after dawn, the sky was clear. He ate a little dry bread while he watched birds dart to and fro among the empty streets of the city, and then he set out north again.

He did not expect her to come to him again. He had not expected a messenger after he crossed the mountains; surely that was the sign, the long and dangerous climb, the treacherous and starving descent, that he was determined. That nothing would stand in his way. Surely it was before that, even. The sages who kept the law would have said, you have been warned seven times, and seven times you have answered the warning with determination to continue on your path. Six times God will grant you an open door, a way to return to righteousness. After the seventh, your sins will bind you to your grave.

The seventh warning had long come and gone. It must have been the old man in the city of the Leopard-Folk; the one who had seen him on the street, who had suddenly straightened up and rushed over to him. “You, sir,” he said in a thick accent, suddenly speaking, not the quick and lilting tongue of the city, but Masek’s, the slow, plodding language of the fishing village where he had been born. “She wants me to tell you, not to do this. Not to do the thing you are determined to do. It is evil. It will cause only suffering. And yours will be the greatest. Remember the law!”

“Pardon, grandfather--” Masek answered in his own tongue by reflex. “I didn’t know there were any believers in this land.” But then the man’s expression softened. He said something in the language of the Leopard-Folk. The miracle had left him. Masek shook his hand off his sleeve and kept walking.

But she had not stopped at six. The warnings had kept coming after that. There was the fortune-teller by the docks. And the gull that had spoken to him in his mother’s voice. Oh, yes, and Jasham, the great fish of legend, who he had always thought was only a bedtime story, had risen out of the sea and spoken to him the verses of the Law on sin and judgement. His father had told him as a little boy that the fish lived in the depths and spent the long centuries of its life doing nothing but studying the words of the Prophets, and the commandments of God, and so was the wisest creature in all Creation; and Masek supposed it was true, for Jasham had spoken well.

All had come to Masek at the holy hours, the hours for omens and signs; all had spoken to him in his native tongue, or the tongue of the Believers, and of the Law. But he had not desisted. He would not ever desist, not so long as he had the power in him to move. And surely she knew that, for as endless as her mercy was the immensity of her wisdom. So the sages said.

And yet, now, as he walked these last miles alone, she came again. And this time she did not send a messenger. Masek didn’t know what he should have expected; a being of fire and awe? A frightful face, intended to make him tremble with fear, to wonder if he was about to be destroyed? A ghost from his past--his son, his mother, a throng of all the saints and long-dead sages, each to reproach him and sharpen the shame he felt?

No. She simply spoke to him out of the stony earth, her voice carried by the dusty air.

“Masek,” she called out; and he knew who it was.

“Hello,” Masek said. He supposed he should have bowed, or collapsed to his knees. If he were a younger man, he would have cried with joy to hear God’s voice with his own ears; even just a few years ago, he would have been able to muster anger, to reply with the roaring current of grief that had driven him across the face of the world. But now he found that he had the strength for neither.

“Masek, what are you doing?” God asked.

“You know what I’m doing,” he said. “You know everything.”

“Please. Don’t.”

“The sages would be surprised to hear you beg. The sages would be surprised to hear you at all. Isn’t it written, she does not speak as you or I? Her voice is not ours to demand to hear?”

“Don’t be childish, Masek. You cannot play games with me.”

“It is only that I didn’t expect you to come yourself. Certainly not like this. Didn’t you appear to the First Prophet as a storm? Or was it the third? And the ninth saw you only in dreams, as a blinding light over the sea.”

“Am I not of the stones and dust, as much as I am of the sky or sea?”

“That would be a question for the sages, I suppose.”

“Don’t pretend like you haven’t studied the law.”

“I am no sage. After all, it is also written that to study the law is to study the ways of righteousness. Thus the sages practice the ways of righteousness, for understanding the nature of the world begets harmony with your will. Or so they say. I haven’t found that to be the case.”

“You believe in the law, Masek. You have always believed in me. I know many sinners, those who have lost their faith, those who never had it, those who have never heard of me, or the law, or the sages at all. But not you. Your heart has been full of love for the world since you were a little boy. Why are you doing this?”

“I believe in you, yes,” Masek said. “In a way. And yes, I’ve studied the law. And for a long time, I thought that the law was righteousness, and the world was the law, and you must be, therefore, the source of all that was good. I don’t think that’s the case anymore. And it’s to my unhappiness that it took me so long to see it. After all, you made the world!” And Masek could feel his old anger starting to come back, though he tried to restrain it. The anger was not useful. Anger was a bad reason to do this. It was something he had tried for a long time to leave behind. “And more than that. Not just the trees and the rivers and humans and animals. Not just spirits and the stars and the great beasts below the sea. You made time. And justice. And mercy. And eternity. And love. All things come from you, all things return to you. Isn’t that what the sages say?”

“It is. You disagree?”

“No, I don’t. That’s the heart of the matter, I suppose. You made what is good; you defined, at least, what is evil. The sages disagree about whether you created evil. But you gave us the ability to choose between them, and let us create it where it did not exist before.”

“Was that a mistake?”

Masek ignored the question.

“Tell me. Before the tower fell, and the spirits forgot your name, and sin entered the world, was there suffering? The sages say no.”

“The sages are right.”

“And what causes suffering? The sages say sin. They say the poor old woman whose sons died in war, whose hands are crippled with pain, who’s blind as a block, they say even her suffering is caused by sin. Her own sin, or someone else’s.”

“The sages are right.”

“And the sages say that with the same hand that you reward us, O Sovereign of Unending Mercy, you punish us. My father told me, he said it was like this: your messengers watched us all, and for every sin they made a mark in the ledgers of your halls, and we would be punished accordingly, in this life or a life to come. But the sages disagree: the sages say you do not intervene so crudely. You do not warp and twist the world at will, but you have built it on a rational foundation, on the irresistible logic of the law. And the law says that sins against the soul of the world create suffering, and that suffering echoes out from that sin, lodges itself in the furthest parts of the world, and only the ceaseless labor of the righteous believer is sufficient to mend the world against the endless sea of suffering.”

“Masek, you know the sages are right.”

Masek nodded. “Yes. That’s why.” And now his anger, the frustration and the sorrow and the grief and everything else, now that he was finally talking to her face to face, it felt like it was about to boil over. Part of him wanted to stop and shout, to wave his arms in the air and yell and scream and say every ugly and profane thing he could to her. As if that would surprise her somehow. As if you could argue against God, against the soul of the world herself.

Instead, he spoke as calmly as he could, but his voice cracked, and he found himself speaking through tears. “You made the world wrong. That’s a sin, right, to say that? Even to think it?”

“Yes, Masek, it is.”

“Well, you did. They whipped me in Laai for saying it. I still have the scars on my back. If I had been back home, back in Velannu, they would have thrown me out. Never spoken to me again. It’s a terrible sin. Not the worst one, but a terrible one. Nine days of repentance, the most in the law.”

“Yes, Masek. It’s a terrible sin.”

“And sin causes suffering. So every time I think that, what? I cause a man blindness? I kill a child? A river floods?”

“It’s not like that, Masek. You think I’m that cruel? That I want to bully you into obedience by rigging the world so that your sins cause suffering, so that I can point to them and say, look at the wicked thing you have done? That’s no different than doing it myself.”

“Then how is it?”

“Sin is suffering, Masek. To sin is to go against the law, the world, me. To sin is to struggle against how the world simply is, and you can’t help but create chaos when you do that. In your life or someone else’s.”

“It’s still wrong, though. You should have made the world different. Better.”

“Masek, you’re human. You’re one little soul in something that is so much vaster and more complex than you can possibly imagine. The sages call me the soul of the world, but I’m so much more than that. That’s why they also call me the Inexpressible, the Transcendent, the One Above and Below.”

“Is this where you turn into a storm, and demand to know how I think I have the right to question you? Isn’t that what you did with the First Prophet?”

“Would it help?”

“No.”

“Then I’m not going to do that. You’re not like she was, Masek. I’m trying to talk to you in a way you will understand.”

“All right then.”

“But you, like her, live in ignorance. You do not see creation as I do. You can’t know if a world that is different would really be better. Or maybe it would be better for you, personally, for Masek of Velannu, but worse for everyone else. And there isn’t a chain of words I can give you in a human language that could express the immensity of creation to you.”

“Because you made me small and stupid?”

“Because I made you. And I made things larger and wiser, and smaller and lesser. But I made you, by making the world, and I did so with purpose. And even if I was inclined to change the world, to break apart the space you occupy and re-form it, to change you so you could understand that immensity, it would amount to nothing more than killing you and creating something that resembled you not at all, that simply happened to be named Masek and could understand. I don’t want to kill you, Masek. Believe it or not, I don’t want you to suffer.”

“Yes. And the sages said, because we’re little and we can’t understand, that’s why you gave us the law. The parts we could understand, anyway.”

“The law is the law, Masek.”

“I don’t care. You did it wrong.”

“Masek…”

“No!” And now Masek did stop his endless trudging forward. He did turn, and he faced the space where the voice seemed to be coming from. “I get it, all right? I get it! I’ve been reading the sages since I was a little boy. I became a priest like my father wanted, because he loved you so much he wanted to give you the thing he treasured most in the world. And I learned the tongues of the east, and the tongues of the travelers, and the tongues of the younger sages, all of them, so I could read every syllable, every word! And I’ve traveled north and south and east and west, and read every other book of philosophy and religion and ancient wisdom that I could, and I still think you’re wrong! And I don’t care if every wise man and woman, if every priest and every king, from the day of Creation until the day you decide to hurl it all into the Abyss lines up one after another to say, Masek, you are the most blessed fool that ever drew breath, Masek you are wrong and your head is full of lies. You are wrong. They are wrong. It is all wrong.

“Because I have to live in this world! The beggars I saw in Laai and Moketh and Virim, they have to live here too! The lepers and the blind children, and even the people everyone else despises, the murderers in Kustokam who have to watch their friends get hanged one by one before their day comes too, even the dogs in the street who go hungry, all of us have to live in the world you made for us! And I won’t accept a voice out of the dust telling me not to question it, that questioning it is a terrible sin, if that voice could have done better. The sages say you are all-wise, all-powerful, all-good, but I say the first sin, the worst sin, is yours. Because you made a world in which we have to suffer, and where the comfort for that suffering is forever out of reach!”

Masek caught himself, finally, sobbing and out of breath. She did not answer, but he felt her presence still near him. He was ashamed, for a moment, to realize that tears were rolling down his face, that he had worked himself up into a sweat, that his ragged sobs had filled his nose with snot. How foolish to be ashamed like that in front of her, who could comprehend every part of him with utter clarity. Or perhaps shame was the only fitting thing he could feel. He took a few deep breaths, then kept walking.

“You’re not the first person to be angry with me like this, Masek,” she said.

“And I doubt I’ll be the last.”

“I love you, Masek. I love everything in Creation. I don’t want you to suffer.”

“But you’ve made a world where suffering is inevitable.”

“Not inevitable. And not endless.”

“Ah, yes, the great labor. The work of righteousness. The duty to rectify the world. The price of free will.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t buy it. There’s only so much we can do, and it will never be enough.”

“It could be. It’s your choice.”

“I have a better idea.”

“I won’t let you, Masek.”

“So stop me. Right now. Strike me dead. Make my legs fall off. Make me go blind.”

“You think I want to hurt you, Masek?”

“You could stop me.”

“Your suffering gives me no pleasure, Masek. Your anger and your grief give me no joy.”

“But you will stop me, sooner or later? You will intervene, you will change the world, if I force you to, to keep me from doing this?”

“Yes, Masek. I don’t want to. But I will. And you’ll suffer terribly as a result.”

“You’ll make me suffer.”

“No. It will be... the natural and automatic consequence of the thing you do. Like dropping a cup of wine and watching it shatter. But I won’t prevent it. Because I won’t break the world open and change it to please one man.”

“Or to end the suffering of them all.”

“There comes a point in your life where you have to have faith.”

“So give me faith.”

“I can’t do that without changing who you are. You must make that choice for yourself.”

“So you don’t want me to suffer. But you won’t stop me from causing myself terrible and unending pain.”

“No, Masek. Because you’re not the only one I love.”

“Forgive me if I don’t see the difference.”

“That I can forgive, Masek. But I cannot forgive everything.”

“You mean you won’t.”

“Yes. I mean I won’t. I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

After that, the presence he felt faded and was gone. She was still here, he supposed. She was everywhere. Or beyond everywhere. The sages were unclear about that. But the voice was gone. He thought about calling out to her, asking her to come back. She was at least someone to talk to. But it wouldn’t do him any good in the long run, really.

Now at last his goal was in view. The city whose name was forgotten. It was built on a high hill, surrounded by open ground, and once it had been mighty indeed. So the legends went, anyway. But the people who lived there had been like him. Believers who didn’t understand. Believers who got tired of upholding a law that seemed to do nothing to hold back the endless seas of suffering in the world.

There were four kinds of sin in the law. Sin against your fellow human beings: robbery and murder and the like. Then there were sins against God: blasphemy and heresy. Masek knew a lot about those. Then there were sins against the world. They weren’t exactly blasphemy. Nor were they harm as such. But the law was clear; they caused suffering in the world in the same way as the other sins. To conceive a child during the nine Exalted Days was one. Naming the stars, another. Icons of the Secret Faces were a third. Many such sins, to unbelievers the strangest and heaviest parts of the law. To Masek, they had been the first sign something was wrong. As a young man he had asked his teacher, why did God make these things sins? What harm do they cause? And he had received a slap for an answer. Because in Velannu, as in Laai, they were afraid that even to question that such things might be a sin.

And perhaps it was so. Because wondering why God would make it a sin to reckon the shapes of the heavens turned out to be no more or less a puzzle than why God would make sin in the first place. And that was what had led Masek down the long road to something worse than unbelief.

So, too, the sages said, had this city once questioned the nature of sin, and once found itself condemned as a result. They did not elaborate on what the sin of that city had been; it was considered too terrible, too ugly, too against the law and nature and God herself to bear description. They said only that it had been a sin against the world, the last and worst of them all. And in the centuries since, the sages who came after debated the nature of that worst sin, had decried the lapses and failures of their own eras to be that most awful transgression. Failure to respect one’s elders, to protect one’s children, to care for the poor, to do obeisance to kings. It was only in distant lands, in obscure legends in long-forgotten libraries, that Masek had found the answer.

His pace quickened as he strode along the road that led up the hill. He had wondered, months ago when he was crossing the desert, if at the end his resolve would falter. It had never faltered before. He had been warned against his crimes countless times in the past. He had been driven out of cities in the middle of the night, tortured and threatened with death, been spat on and cursed by people who called him a friend until they learned his name. Then, his resolve had never wavered, not even for a moment. He had wondered if that would ever change. Now, as the moment approached, he found to his mild surprise that it did not.

He passed under the empty gate, and looked back. The great plain, through which the muddy river ran, was stretched out all around him. He wondered if the thin line on the horizon was the mountains beyond, or if it was just a trick of the haze. Though the air was hot and dusty, it was a fine day. The sun shone brightly, and Masek tried to imagine what it would have been like to stand at these gates when this had been a living place, when carts and voices and footfalls and animals had filled it with noise. Then he turned and passed through.

The tall, narrow ruins of this city sheltered the streets from the sun; the air was cooler here, and errant trees that stretched out through holes in walls and ceilings made Masek feel like was walking in a strange sort of forest. The place he sought was in the middle of the city, beneath a holy place long ago profaned. He found it just as the sun was beginning to approach the horizon. He did not pause at the door this time, or stop to look behind him.

His pace quickened. Now he was passing down stairs, first ornate stone staircases, then little more than rough ledges hewn into the rock. He sought the place at the bottom, the place the superstitious held was most hidden from the sight of God. Ah, but the sages wrote, nothing is hidden from the sight of God. He knew this to be true.

The first precept of the law was that God had ordered the world for the good of all living things. To be a good person was to keep in mind the good of those around you. And the ordered world, the world of Creation, was not just the world Masek saw with his own two eyes. For weren’t there spirits, the creatures of strange stuff that humans could only see sometimes, when the light was right, or they chose to make themselves known? And there were the places that were, well, part of the world, but not the world that Masek knew. The places hidden in shadows, and the places beyond the stars, and the places of the dead.

The well-ordered world had a place for everything. But the living were confined to the places of the living; the spirits to the places of the spirits;  the dead to the places of the dead. And there was no power that could bring these places together where they did not already intersect, for God had decreed them separate. To bridge them, even to try, well, that was a mighty sin indeed. But that was not the sin Masek sought to commit.

The world was old, old, old. The oldest cities of the oldest lore Masek knew were twenty millennia old. Mankind was older still. The spirits? The bones of the world itself? Who could possibly say. Only God, and he had not thought to ask her. But there were things which had passed into and out of the knowledge of the world, things which only God herself knew for sure, which, Masek discovered, were possibly things he could learn for himself.

Yes, these were things to mortal was supposed to know, and even just knowing them was an awful sin. But that was a sin Masek had already committed, and it was not the worst of all.

No, this was the worst sin, worse--so the sages would say--than murder, worse than torture, worse than the worst thing you could think to do to the innocent child of your foe. It was to save a life that had already been lost, to pull it back from the middle world, the world of the dead to the world of the living.

There had been a child. When Masek was still a novice, a child was brought to the rectory late one night. The priests were told the boy was an orphan, that he had been taken in by friends of his family who could no longer care for him. They asked no questions, because God demanded mercy of them, and mercy for the helpless above all other kinds. He was perhaps a year old, and because as a novice his duties were less, Masek found that the care of his boy fell mostly to him.

He didn’t mind. Indeed, he soon found caring for the boy to be his happiest task. The child had a strange cast about his features, as though he was from a far-off country, but he could not have loved him more if he had been his own son. For Masek found within himself a capacity love he had not known existed, that grew up out of the deepest part of his heart and overwhelmed him. He named him Omek, after his father, but when the other priests were gone, he called the child Isra, the cherished, the unlooked-for gift from God.

Omek came with him on his rounds about the countryside; and he came with him when he was sent to Jira, on the other side of the peninsula, to care for the souls there. And those were the days that were the happiest of Masek’s life, for though they were both foreigners, and looked it, the people of Jira welcomed them with open arms, eager to hear the message of the believers. Omek grew quickly, and when he was twelve even began to talk of joining the priesthood, to follow in the footsteps of his beloved father.

It was not long after that he fell ill. Tremors came to his hands; and then a dark wound that started on his throat and began to spread over his body. When Omek ceased to smile, Masek’s worry turned to terror. He called for every doctor in every village from Jira to the other side of Velannu, but none could help Omek. The last, though, the one from far to the west, who had traveled six days to see them, she said he had seen the disease before. There was a country where Omek’s people, those with the same bright eyes and tall stature were common. This was a disease that was known only among them. There was no cure; Omek would die.

Masek did his best to care for Omek, and prayed ceaselessly by his bedside for another four nights, until, one morning, a shivering agony overtook his son. Masek watched helplessly as Omek called out to God in his suffering; by the time the villagers came to see what was wrong, he was dead.

It was not Omek’s death that had caused Masek to turn away from God. How foolish, the sages say, is the believer who loses faith in their grief! No, in the time after Omek’s death, Masek only prayed harder. He mourned whatever secret sin of his, or Omek’s, or some other soul might have hastened the boy’s death. He went to bed each night, feeling as though the whole world stood over a great dark pit of grief, and that it was only by the intervention of God herself that he did not fall down into it, never to climb out again.

Masek’s faith died a long, slow death many years later, only when the harshest pain of his son’s death had long passed from him. But he mourned Omek still, and as doubt grew within him, his thoughts returned to the boy, to the strange and awful sickness which afflicted one little country of people, out of all the world.

And what of death? For the sages said, the dead are gone only for a time. One day, be it near or far, when the world is rectified and all our tears have been wiped away by the hand of God herself, the dead shall be returned. So Masek had always hoped. And what of the dead? Where do they reside? Believers didn’t ask such questions, but believers were not the only ones who mourned their dead. And the sages of other lands had many opinions. Some said, among the stars. Some said, below the earth. Some said, in the mind of God. Some said, in the middle world, beyond this one.

So one day Masek had made a decision. Omek had died, and it was not just, and Masek would undo it. He would take the name he had learned, one of the forbidden names, one of the names of God’s most exalted messengers, or perhaps God herself, and he would go to a place where one realm was close to another. And he would try to pull someone back through it. And this was the last sin, the worst sin, the sin for which this city had been condemned for just attempting it, so long ago. He was going, with his little, his human, his imperfect understanding of the world, to try to change it, using a name that could command nature that was not his. To undo something that had already been done, and that was not his to change.

Masek could think of so much worse. So much uglier, so much bloodier, so many more hideous things he could have done with his own two hands. He had contemplated such deeds. He had lied and cheated and stolen, and he had attacked a man for his purse, and blasphemed hideously against God, because he imagined that this was what displeased her. That this was his rebuke. But he had always woken up in the middle of the night later, days or weeks later, covered in sweat and remembering the terrible things he had done. Inevitably, he had repented, begged her for forgiveness, forgiveness which the sages assured him was his.

He was not an innocent man; he never would be again. But he had always been forgiven in the end, for that was what she desired. And she could forgive anything. Almost.

When he reached the great stone doorway, beyond which, in darkness, lay the final place he sought, her voice returned to him suddenly, out of the shadows.

“You need not even ask, Masek, and I will grant it.”

“I don’t need your forgiveness,” Masek said. “I don’t want to be forgiven for the sins that haven’t hurt anyone.”

“All sins hurt someone, Masek.”

“Maybe not. Maybe if you let me do this, this can be the first step to making a world without suffering. To open doors that have never been opened before.”

“It doesn’t work like that. It can never work like that.”

“I can’t give up.”

“Masek, please. A thousand thousand times I will ask, I will beg, I will plead; and you need only answer once in your heart, and I will take you far from here. I will forgive everything you have done until this day. It is already forgiven. Your brothers and sisters will greet you with gladness, and Velannu will know peace as long as you live.”

“Will Omek be there?”

“Omek is gone.”

“They say the dead reside with you. That, if the legends are true, on the other side of this door is a place that touches the middle world, the place where all the dead are, waiting for the rectification of all things. Is Omek there?”

“Omek is there.”

“Is he alive?”

“You watched him die.”

“Yes. But his spirit. His soul. The thing that made him him, and not another boy or a stone or a tree. Omek himself.”

“He is safe,” the voice said. “And as he is now, no harm can ever come to him. No suffering can weigh him down. And one day, however distant, when all the evils of the world are amended, he will wake up, and ask for you.”

“But is he alive? Can he dance, or sing, or shout for joy? Or is he only sleeping, dreaming of our home in the Street of Candles, of the warm bread I would sometimes bake for him in the mornings, of the hills on the horizon he swore to me he would one day climb? Or if he sleeps too deeply even to dream, does he know of anything at all? Does he know that I love him? Are the songs I sung to him in his sleep there with him, waiting to be remembered? Are any of these things true?”

“They are not.”

“So it is as the sages say--for now he is only dust in this world and silence in the next, waiting for your permission to live again?”

“Yes. That is how the world is, Masek. That is what death means.”

“Then he is dead. And that is wrong.”

“It is not within your power to change. Go back to Velannu, Masek. Go back to the land of your father and mother, and I will fill all the rest of your days with joy and with peace. I will forgive every sin above the earth and below the sky, if you will only go back.”

“Will the living cease to die, will the dead rise from their graves, will all the sickness and suffering of the world be washed away?”

“No, Masek.”

“Then nothing will have changed.”

“You cannot bring back all the dead.”

“I have the power to bring back him.”

“You cannot even do that.”

“I must try. For this is how you made me--I could do nothing else.”

“Then I will do what I must.”

“And so will I.”

Masek bowed his head; then he went through the door into the darkness, with the word of power on his lips, waiting for whatever would come next.

[morethanaprincess-a]

❥

Loving Interactions meme

The instructions had been so simple, there was no possible way for Sonia to misinterpret them: to put on one of the dozens of gowns that were otherwise collecting dust in her wardrobe and come to the main hall at seven. Perhaps in another version of her life, she might have found it impertinent that, as Queen, she was taking orders from someone else. But frankly, she was simply too tired: tired of every nightmare, every memory, but mostly, trying to conceive of every possible reason to spurn him and his company, which now had lingered in the castle for months on end.

But her express order to rid her room of every reflective surface larger than her cosmetics mirror now proved a challenge: standing in her underwear and a face of makeup she’d applied herself that had turned out nicer than she thought it would, she now faced a rainbow of sparkle, satin, and shine of varying necklines and skirt widths with no idea of what to choose. Except, of course, anything that reminded her of her time as a princess and that hideous ruler that had nearly destroyed everything she held dear: white, cream, red, and pink were all now no good. And as much as she wanted to lean towards the opposite, her comfort color since her return to Novoselic, Sonia only ran her hand down the black sequin one-shouldered gown before pushing the hanger aside. That didn’t suit the mood either.

“Mint, blush, lilac, lavender, magenta...none of these are right,” She muttered, pushing more hangers to join the one holding up the slinky black gown, their sound scraping against the metal bar that held up the weight of her formalwear. It was nearly a lost cause and the clock was ticking fast, the sun already sinking low in the sky just beyond her balcony. Sonia had nearly reached the back of the closet and while she was determined not to be late, especially due to a crisis of fashion, she couldn’t help but worry that it was going to be inevitable. Pale shades didn’t feel right, reminding her of the princess she was, and anything that could bring her memories of those horrid gowns, constructed to show and hide blood for various situations were not viable options. Letting out a heavy sigh, Sonia leaned against the empty wall beside the rack of dresses, sliding down to a sitting position just beside her pair of glittering silver heels. Careful not to cast her gaze downward, she reached up to grasp at the velvet tray of jewels she’d summoned from the royal vault: diamonds she hadn’t seen since her parents were alive, when her mother wore them for state dinners only after Sonia begged to try them on first. They’d sparkle even in the faintest of light: the set of earrings, the bracelet, and tiara made to resemble woven flowers and covered with hundreds upon hundreds of stones. While she didn’t feel that hairbows and flowered bands suited her anymore, it was a gentle nod to the optimistic, kind girl she used to be.

Picking the tiara up with trembling hands, it would be the first time she’d wear one since the New Years Day address, and all of the emotions that had swirled within her as she’d tried to speak in confidence and with a smile and had just barely succeeded, downing an entire bottle of wine by herself almost as soon as the cameras stopped rolling. That crown had felt so heavy in comparison: this one was surprisingly light and slightly whimsical, the first accessory she’d seen and held in a long time, smiling as she was reminded of the life that flourished inside the castle and throughout the country before everything had gone so wrong. Pink lips formed into a smile as the overhead lights of her closet allowed the diamonds to twinkle back at her, as well as something else...something her left arm was brushing against. Turning to face the mesh that now tickled her skin, Sonia’s gaze came face to face with layers of tulle with an embroidered floral hem that covered an opaque silk layer underneath. Setting the tiara down, Sonia quickly scrambled to her feet to pull the gown from the rack with a deep breath: not quite black but not quite bright either: midnight blue with full skirt with thick straps that would rest just off her shoulders. It would be more than suitable.

Removing it from its hanger and stepping into the pool of skirts at her feet, Sonia pulled it up with relative ease, zipping up the side closure before she had a chance to fixate on the scars the silk hid beneath it. The jewelry and shoes were added after, the tiara highlighting one other attribute she could finally, confidently, wear again: her hair, still long and having regained most of its body and luster since she’d left the island, down her back, not an updo in sight. In the cosmetics mirror, it had already brightened up her complexion, another hint of who she used to be.

Standing straight, Sonia didn’t need a mirror to know that it was all a bit princessy, the sort of fantasy her classmates had always dreamed she lived. But now it hardly mattered. Now, she thought, she was ready to dream a little.

There was an eerie sort of quiet throughout the halls as she exited her room, taking the most direct route to the main hall. This time, with her permission, he’d dismissed most of the staff for the evening, save for whatever he had in mind. This she couldn’t fault him for: even with her family long gone, privacy was still a luxury she didn’t often have, from questions from ministers and parliament to the royal household. Even a queen hated and reviled by much of her people was still a queen in demand. And besides, that was how the stories went, didn’t they? On nights like this, the fairy tale heroes were never bothered unless it was the most opportune moment.

The click of her heels against the floor only paused once she’d reached the top of grand stairwell. Grasping the banister, she slowly took the stairs one at a time, inhaling deeply. It was silly: there was no reason to be nervous, they already knew so much, had done so much, she wasn’t meeting a stranger, not really. She was meeting someone she hadn’t come across for many years, since their time at school and due to circumstances they only wish they could have controlled more efficiently, they’d changed into people unrecognizable from their former selves, presences they had to banish from their hearts and minds both comatose and in the context of their darker, changed reality. Exhaling, Sonia stopped at the bottom of the stairs where he waited. There was no second-guessing her answer now: her decision to arrive on time and properly dressed only solidified that there was only one way she wanted her life to go: forward. It was time to stop being consumed by the past.

“I hope I’m not late,” She smiled softly, her way of announcing her arrival, “Though I have been brought up to understand that a queen is never late. Everyone else is simply early, no matter my country’s customs.”

But he’d had another way of greeting her, beyond a verbal assurance of her punctuality. Before she had a chance to react, one of Gundham’s hands reached for her own, bringing it to meet his lips. If she was attending a grand ball, Sonia would have found such a gesture to be the norm, acknowledging it with a gracious smile before making the small talk she had memorized prior. But this was entirely unexpected, causing her cheeks to flush light pink as a shiver went down her spine. Two things she hoped he didn’t notice as he straightened his posture and focused his gaze on her. He hadn’t needed to do that, both due to their night hardly being an official event and their rekindling friendship of sorts. Sonia didn’t really know how to define it: what did one call another whom they once loved emotionally and intimately, then hurt, then deserted, and now loved again? At least, as far as she knew, Gundham was ignorant of the last part.

“Thank you,” She continued, her own gaze meeting his as her smile, Sonia felt sure, now bordered on giddy entirely due to his kiss, “for arranging this. It’s so difficult to spend more than an hour or two with you without interruptions now and I’m so grateful.”

She didn’t know quite what was in store, but with the staff given the night off it was safe to assume that they weren’t leaving the castle, at least not dressed the way they were. On the streets of Novoselic’s capital, she was a glowing, sparkling target for acts of hatred. But within the castle walls, the possibility of a formal evening without the guests, the responsibility, and the stress was becoming more and more likely.

[ladylynse]

A TAZ/TDiR (The Adventure Zone/The Dark is Rising) crossover snippet for @grainjew‘s birthday! Happy birthday. We have so few common fandoms now I had to really go digging. It’s a good thing you’ve already been thoroughly spoiled for TAZ because this ruins key moments of The Stolen Century and Story and Song. Also, for anyone who doesn’t know it, the end of TDiR sequence, Silver on the Tree. Also on FF and the AO3.

Will Stanton had witnessed a lot of things in all his years of watching, but he’d never seen this before. This shifting, this resettling, this wrongness.

It was time to move on. To find a new profession, a new name, a new life. He thought he’d try a new field again; it was too suspicious, coming into something knowing so much but having nothing to prove that knowledge, and he didn’t want to raise anyone’s suspicions. That made things…difficult.

Will Stanton, currently a history professor at the University of Reading, was not deaf to the wild conspiracy theories of his students or the quiet mutterings of some of the faculty. He knew exactly what they thought of him. He’d just hoped he’d have a little more time before they thought to question everything.

He hadn’t realized it had been so long since he’d come here. Months had blended to years, and years to decades, before he’d noticed. And now he can’t have been here for forty years already because he still looked so young and maybe there was some mistake and—

He’d tried to avoid having his name recorded, his picture taken, but that was…difficult in today’s society. He could hardly remember a time when it hadn’t been difficult. At least he’d done a stint as a computer programmer before this; ever-changing though that field was, he’d kept up his knowledge on the side. It made disappearing easier, and he’d have to disappear again soon.

Perhaps he’d learn chemistry this time. He hadn’t tried that yet, and—

The world shifted.

Shuddered.

Disassembled and reassembled too quickly for anyone else to notice.

Everything was as it should be, but it felt like nothing was quite in its place.

There was something…missing.

He could feel it, the lost ache of something dear, and hear the echoes of screams in his head, screams that hadn’t sounded in this realm. Screams that had never sounded at all. Screams from stolen voices, silenced to almost every ear.

A click of a button submitted the students’ final grades. It was rather absurd, thinking that anyone could believe each student’s knowledge could be so summarily defined. He had no idea how many of them had taken to heart the lessons he’d been trying to teach them. About history. About humanity. About their world, now fully in their hands, and the weight of their choices or inaction.

Especially in the wake of this, of Darkness that should not be, a remnant that should be unable to touch this realm. Such things would not matter if the Dark had found a way to return. He was not supposed to act, was only to Watch, but if this world was no longer free of the Dark….

Will rose, stretched out a hand, spoke words no one else in this realm knew to speak, and walked out of the little office—out of that life—forever.

XXXXX

He found no trace of the Dark or their meddling. Years passed, and he came back to that day, to that moment, time and time again, but wherever he was, he always felt it. It seemed to have no origin on this earth. It resonated instead in every molecule, in every vibration of the universe.

He had studied physics this time, but he had learned nothing, understood nothing, until he had gone back to live that year through again for the hundredth time and beyond. This was the first time he had not felt it—the shift, the resettling, the screaming silence—and though he knew he had not missed it, he could not find what had changed.

It was the same moment experienced over again. Nothing should have changed. But it had. And he was the only one who knew, the only one who could know.

His search for answers had swept him around the world, crossing the Old Ways and common roads alike, but it was not until he had reached a crossroads of the two in the United States of America, intending to get some food from the taco truck unwittingly parked on the intersection, that he heard the Song and finally understood.

It was not the Dark. Not the Dark he had fought, the Dark whose rising tide he and the others had turned back. This was the Dark of another world, another realm. It sought to destroy, to consume. It was powerful. Insatiable. And it had come here.

It had taken as its vessel a man not unlike Hawkin, whispering in his ear and using him to bend others to its will until it had bound them all. It had risen, and it had overwhelmed them. It had won. They had let it, had welcomed it rather than fight it, but Will’s heart ached for the soul of the man lost inside, for all the souls that had been swallowed since the first. He could feel the man across the planes, struggling to remember, to breathe, to live again in the Light, even as the Darkness would have him drown.

Will knew this was not his fight.

He could not turn back this Dark alone any more than he could have staved off the second wave of the Dark that had fought for control in his world, so long ago yet still so recently.

But those who chose to fight now were not doing so alone.

When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back.

They had not been six, in the end. He had held the Sign of Stone; Merriman, Fire; Barney, Wood; Simon, Iron; and Jane, Bronze. But Bran had not held the Sign of Water alone, for he had not been able to cut the silver spray from the tree and defend against the Dark, and it had been John Rowlands who had taken it up and helped the Light. Without him, the final mistletoe blossom could not have been cut before they had been overwhelmed, and no white bird would have flown free from the tree and into the world.

Will knew, as everyone now did, about the seven birds who had guarded the Light across the realms, who had fled from the Darkness which tirelessly pursued them. He knew that they had chosen this time to stand and fight, and he knew they did not fight alone.

This was not his fight, but their Darkness was now invading his world. Their magic had reached his plane. And from the ruins of food truck before him, Will saw a brave resident of his world stand and fight back against the rising Dark. The evil inside men was a matter for men to control and not something in which he could interfere, but this was not wholly their evil.

So, he helped in the little ways he could, in the ways that wouldn’t be known, his magic masked by theirs, because it was of the Dark, and he was of the Light, and those who fought against the Dark should never need to do so alone.

XXXXX

When it was over, Will did not forget, just as he had not forgotten the last time.

Nor did he make anyone else forget.

Now that it was known, now that it was remembered, it should not be taken away.

This was not the time for forgetting, and too many mistakes had been made for forgetting in the past.

As it was, truth would become tale soon enough. Whether remembered in rhyme, masked in myth, or lost in lyric, details would fade as in dreams and memories would become muddled. Before long, all would be relegated to fable and fancy, to story and song, for such was the way of things, and however long Will watched, that would not change.

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[bbclesmis]

Salon: Watching PBS's "Les Misérables" as Notre Dame burned: A lesson in processing spectacular loss

The new version of Victor Hugo's tale has no familiar tunes to sweeten its tragedy. That feels very fitting now

By way of processing the shock of watching Notre Dame burn in Paris on Monday, I turned away from social media, where livestreams of the spreading flames were sadly plentiful, and turned on the latest adaptation of “Les Misérables,” currently airing on PBS’s “Masterpiece.”

This was mainly out of obligation, to be honest. The six-part series aired its first episode Sunday, the same night as the debut of a certain show starring zombies, dragons and queens. It is currently streaming online and via video on demand. Scheduling new installments of the “Masterpiece” epic as time-slot competition to the most popular show on the planet is pure folly; then again, something has to air at 9 p.m. Sundays. If you can’t serve up the flashiest show on television, might as well come in second.

Except this “Les Misérables” trades in substance, not dazzle. It has no music to it — literally. No renditions of the Broadway musical’s most familiar ditties such as “Master of the House,” no “On My Own.”

Andrew Davies’ adaption of Victor Hugo’s literary hulk (my softcover edition is 1,232 pages long) relies on the beholder to drink in the bitter imagery and soften her heart to the plight of characters who often cannot outrun their past failings regardless of what they do.

And although Hugo’s other great work, the 1831 novel “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” has a direct influence on the history of Notre Dame — Tuesday it soared the top of Amazon France’s n the bestseller list on Amazon France — the spirit of this new “Les Misérables” is better suited the age in which we collectively bore witness to a conflagration consuming one of the world’s great monuments.

On social media the chorus could not quite find true harmony in our collective mourning. People shared photos taken from recent visits and musings as to what Notre Dame means to them; others stonily called out the Catholic Church’s various sins over the centuries, citing everything from its participation in and funding of the brutality of colonialism to its protection of sexual abusers. Still others scoffed at what they saw as another example of manufactured grief showcases by way of Twitter.

The voices became a dueling chorus between the Fantines and Jean Valjeans of the world and the Javerts, to look at it another way. In that respect, the PBS version of “Les Misérables” needs no melodies to sell it, because the sorrow and the harsh lawful judgment demonstrated throughout the story, as well as the grace radiating through its performances — with Dominic West as Valjean, Lily Collins’ Fantine and David Oyelowo’s Javert — are its songs.

Presenting the story as an abridged version of Hugo’s writing forces the viewer to absorb the misery its characters endure without the sugar of melodic performance, without distracting spectacle that allows us, in a way, to emotionally split from the horror of what we're seeing.

And his makes it a diametric contrast to "Game of Thrones," a pure act of spectacle and escapism. HBO’s epic is pure fantasy, even though it too has a historical basis, borrowing aspects of the plot from England’s War of the Roses.

But by incorporating mythical elements and magical forces, the series’ fans can emotionally detach somewhat from the tale’s tragedy. In no way am I suggesting that certain Monday mornings in the upcoming weeks won’t be bluer than usual as the show’s fans come to grips with the death of a beloved character or three in the previous night’s episode. But we can also count on such demises being rendered in ways fitting to how the character lived. Each will be a spectacle among spectacles.

This is what struck me as I watched a place to which I’ve made several pilgrimages over the years be devoured by an element as careless, cruel and unreasonable as flame. I abandoned my Catholicism years ago for the reasons the vocal critics who showed up on Monday listed, as well as much more personal ones. And yet I have laid some of the most significant prayers of my life at the stone feet of Joan of Arc; I have knelt in prayer at her chapel inside the landmark in honor of my deceased loved ones and the troubled living I hold dear. To see the spire fall felt like a conduit to the divine being broken, even though I can’t remember the last time I went to church on Sunday.

But for a portion of witnesses, at least some of those voicing their opinions on the Internet, bearing witness to the public destruction of a world landmark prized in part because it is a work of spectacle on a grand scale became a struggle between the desire to feel and remember, and an insistence on emotional remove, a mode of thought that insists, as we watch this grand wonder crumble in faraway France, that this is not about us, whoever “us” may be,  and it's certainly not about you as an individual.

The second episode in the series, airing Sunday, shows the tale’s tritagonist Fantine at her lowest point: she’s cut off all of her hair and sold it, along with her front teeth, in exchange for a measly sum of money to send to the Thenardiers, a pair of cruel grifters with whom she’s left her daughter. She’s already been fired from the factory where she found work. Left with nothing else to offer, and no other place of employment willing to take her, she’s turned to selling herself off piece by piece: first, her most prominent assets, then her body.

The sight of Collins’ Fantine in this version of “Les Misérables” brings to mind the word most  appropriate to the novel’s title: at her lowest point, she looks wretched.

Unlike Anne Hathaway, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Fantine in the 2012 theatrical version, Collins’s Fantine wears the gaps in her dental work like a badge of shame. The darkness in her mouth yawns wide at the viewer as she grimaces through physically and emotionally torturous encounters, particularly at the pivotal moment that a certain gentleman crosses her path.

The man is carousing and laughing with the other ladies of the evening, all in much better shape that Collins’ tragic heroine. And when he encounters her, he treats her like a joke. Asking for her rate, she responds, softly, with the offer of however much he thinks she is worth.

“How about… nothing, then?” he counters, roaring along with his friends. Fantine is too weak to offer much of a defense, only a plea for mercy.

“I have to live, monsieur,” she softly says, adding. “Same as you.”

The “gentleman” laughs in her face. “Same as me? Cheeky cow.”

In the musical version of “Les Misérables” this exchange is preceded by Fantine’s climactic solo “I Dreamed a Dream,” the kind of song that transfixes the audience, making it impossible to look away.

This is the song that made Susan Boyle famous, in case you may have forgotten. Back then Boyle’s looks were as frequently discussed as her angelic voice, after she found fame by way of a 2009 episode of “Britain’s Got Talent.” Would she have achieved international stardom if she hadn’t chosen that particular song? It is an anthem of human tragedy, one of the most beautiful created in modern times. And it romanced Boyle, a woman in her late 40s who had never been kissed, never gotten a chance to take center stage, into an international symbol of triumph.

Point being, we’re all made to be the same creatures under the sky, but not on the same playing field unless someone wills it to be so.

Central to “Les Misérables,” which was first published in 1862, are the various trials of Valjean, actual and spiritual, some imposed on him by Javert, the law enforcement officer obsessed with bringing him to justice for a petty crime for which he was never caught and tried. West and Oyelowo are outstanding individually and in the few tense scenes they share, because they each grapple uniquely with the concept of righteousness. Oyelowo’s assured severity evokes the weight of the law and righteousness as defined by man, which serves as Javert’s north star.

West on the other hand digs into the agony of Valjean’s ongoing spiritual conflict, as he’s constantly torn between doing the right thing by man’s law and following the way of divine justice. His life is a perilous tightrope walk between these poles, particularly when it comes to making amends for his failings by raising and caring for Fantine’s orphan Cosette (Ellie Bamber).

And there’s a comfort in engaging with “Les Misérables” denuded of the songbook that made Hugo’s 19th century story popular again among the late 20th century’s masses, particularly as we come to terms with what’s been lost in the fires that nearly destroyed a place many thought would stand forever.

The spire of Notre Dame has been replaced before; it fell in 1786. It has survived eons of natural deterioration and assaults at the hands of men, notably during the ages of Napoleon and French Revolution, two eras surrounding the main action in “Les Misérables.”

“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and Hugo’s tragic story of the cathedral’s bell-ringer Quasimodo and his unrequited love for a gypsy named Esmeralda so thoroughly seduced 19th century Parisians that they were moved to campaign for the crumbling church’s restoration, an effort that spanned decades,  continuing even up to the day of the fire. If American Francophiles revisit the tale via the page or the various films it inspired in the coming days, no one should be surprised.

But I also hope that as part of that reconnection to history, more people balance the all-encompassing passion for “Game of Thrones” by also taking time to appreciate Davies’ latest take on Hugo’s other tale. “Hunchback” is a story set in Notre Dame, but “Les Misérables” captures the soft clash of emotions resulting from our insistent lamentation over its loss. It is a story that captures the essence of humanity and redemption, appropriate accompaniment for a great work of humankind revived time and again over the centuries, out of an urgent need to redeem what is best in us. That has been the case throughout many centuries, and it holds true even today.

https://www.salon.com/2019/04/17/watching-pbss-stoic-les-miserables-as-notre-dame-burned-a-lesson-in-processing-spectacular-loss/