#then I cried a bit at the mount doom ending

[creature-once-removed]

.

[jedipoodoo]

love you to the moon and to saturn

part one | part two | part three | part four | part five

part one: i think your house is haunted

Notes/Warnings: multi-part fic. Omega whump, Omega POV, Hunter whump, hurt/comfort, Hemlock is a b*tch, Omega is tied up/restrained, Hunter gets beat up and Omega is forced to watch. I've been working on this since the finale and as per usual, this one-shot is now a multi-chapter fic. Enjoy the first chapter!

Omega was terrified.

The guards were always terrifying, always present, but today they were on edge.

They roughly slapped a pair of cuffs on her hands instead of simply telling her to stand, and dragged her from her cell. Omega blinked to clear her vision as the harsh red light was replaced with the white lights in the hall. The commando guards shoved her in front of them and jabbed a blaster in between her shoulder blades to urge her forward. 

Omega tried to get a good look at the cell across the hall. Crosshair stared back at her, eyes wide and mouth set in a firm line. She could almost believe he would jump to his feet, break down the walls of his cell, and run after her. But Crosshair wasn’t an idiot, and neither was Omega. What could he possibly do unarmed against two large, armored commandos? 

The familiar brown eyes watched her walk down the hall with as much grace as an imprisoned adolescent could muster. She glanced back at Crosshair as they loaded her into the elevator. His head was already in his hands.

Omega had long given up on resisting, it only ended up with her being hurt. Or worse, Crosshair being hurt. 

"The best thing you can do is cooperate," Emerie Karr, the woman who called herself Omega's sister, had warned. Emerie insisted that she had warned Crosshair of the same several times, but he had ever listened. Omega understood that Emerie had been trying to help them, but it felt like there was no sincerity behind it. 

Hunter, Wrecker, Tech, and Echo were Omega's brothers, and they had come back to Kamino and certain doom for her. Crosshair was her brother even though he was loathe to act like it, and even he had risked everything to warn them, or so Emerie had told Omega. 

If Emerie was Omega's sister, why wouldn't she act like it? Why didn't she offer them another way out?

Omega frowned. Instead of going down, the elevator was taking them up. Omega was always brought in to watch Nala Se’s work in the labs below ground. Why were they taking her up?

She made herself breathe. Things were going well for them. Nala Se’s work was progressing well, even ahead of schedule, and she hadn’t stepped out of line lately, they couldn’t be punishing her. Perhaps this could be a reward?

Omega shuddered to think what kind of reward Doctor Hemlock would have in mind. Good or bad, she wanted nothing to do with him.

The elevator stopped just as one of the commandos received a comm.

“The timetable’s moved up,” He told his companion. They each placed a large hand on her shoulder, pushing her forward before the door was completely open. 

Omega stumbled over her feet, her hands stretched out in front of her to catch her balance, and tried to catch her bearings. This floor had the same light fixtures as all the other levels of Mount Tantiss, but everything was brighter. Sunlight seemed to come from some unseen windows as they moved her forward. 

Alarms began to go off, and Omega froze. 

“Move it stupid girl!” the butt of a blaster collided with the shoulder where she’d received several injections the day before.

Omega cried out in pain, and slapped a hand over her mouth. Humiliation swelled in her chest at how childish the noise was.

“You idiot!” The other commando snapped at his companion, and now all of them had stopped, even as the PA system announced an intruder alert. “You gotta keep her quiet or he’ll hear!” 

Omega bit her lip. Who was he?

“Isn’t that the whole point of this?” The first commando pointed out.

“Oh, right.” Before she could blink, they hit it again. Omega grit her teeth so that only a whimper made it through, but the pain drove her to her knees.

One of them yanked on her injured arm, and she screamed. It felt like her arm was being ripped out of its socket, white hot pain searing through her body and echoing off the metal walls. 

"Stop! Stop!" She gasped, but they tightened their grip on her arm and resumed dragging her down the hall. One of them took a few steps ahead to open a door. 

Why were they hurting her like this? What point were they trying to make? Hemlock's torture and experiments were sadistic, but they were never pointless. 

"AH!" she cried out as they yanked her arm again, and they tossed her into the room. 

Omega landed on her bad shoulder and whimpered. She tucked her arms into her chest to protect them, and looked around. The room was empty. It was barely larger than her cell, but brightly lit in comparison

The door behind her slid shut, and Omega clumsily stumbled to her feet. 

"Hey!" She slammed the manacled around her wrists against the door, sending a jolt of pain up her arm. After taking a deep breath to mitigate the pain, she gathered all her determination and the discipline Echo had taught her to slam her good shoulder against the door. If they wanted her to make some noise, she'd make some noise

"Let me out of here!" She screamed, slamming her fist on the door. It was solid beneath her hits, not even a dent, and the only window available was just barely out of her field of vision when she stood on her tiptoes. 

She felt rather stupid. She didn't even know if the commandos were still out in the hall. For all she knew they had dumped her in there and left. But Omega had enough of being treated like some animal, and she was going to make it known. 

"Hey! Let me go!" she screamed. 

The commandos didn't deign to reply to her, but she could hear them out in the hall. 

"Blast him!" one of them shouted. Blasterfire muffled any other noises they made, and Omega's heart beat faster. One of them cried out, and most of the blaster fire disappeared. There were a few more blasts, and then some grunts, harmonized with the clash of plastoid armor. 

With one final clatter, the noises stopped. 

Omega bit her lip and backed away from the door. Did she want to know what was on the other side of the door? What kind of creature had fought its way into Mount Tantiss and taken out the commandos? 

Her flight instinct took over as she heard them at the console, tapping the buttons. She scurried across the floor, trying to hide in the corner of the empty room as she curled into a ball and covered her face with her arms. 

The door slid open, and a helmet clattered to the floor. 

"Omega!" 

She gasped and looked up, unable to believe her ears or her eyes. 

"Huh…Hunter?" She whispered. 

Hunter stepped into the room. 

"Hey kid, it's okay," He whispered, holding out his arm towards her. 

Omega braced her hands against the wall, slowly pushing herself to her feet. She stumbled forward, and Hunter closed the rest of the distance between them, wrapping her up in his arms. 

"Hunter!" Omega sobbed. She looped her arms around his neck, still in the cuffs. Her left shoulder screamed in protest, but she ignored it. She had to hold onto him, to wrap her arms around his neck, bury her head in his scarf, to feel his arms around her, with a promise that they would never let go. 

"You came! I knew you'd come!" she said. 

"Yeah," He chuckled softly, "We came.

"I'll always come for you, kid." 

Omega looked up at him, "Are Echo and Wrecker here too?" 

Instead of answering, Hunter scooped her up into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist. 

"About that…" 

Omega felt a sinking feeling deep down in her stomach. The lights overhead flickered out, and the red forcefield blocked the door, prohibiting their escape. Hunter shifted Omega to one arm and drew his blaster, fruitlessly aiming at the commandos and TK Troopers that flooded the hall outside the cell, an innumerable amount of blasters aimed at them. 

Omega shivered in Hunter's arms and he pulled her closer. 

"It's okay, it's okay," he told her. He took his eyes off the troopers for just a moment to whisper in her ear. 

"It's all part of the plan." 

"Sergeant Hunter, put down your weapons or we will be forced to shoot." One of the commanders warned. 

Hunter did as he was told. Without letting go of Omega, he crouched down and set his blaster on the ground, kicking it across the room towards the door. Then he drew his knife. In a classic display of Bad Batch noncompliance, he threw it at the shield, grinning to see several of the TK Troopers flinch before it landed just short of the door. 

With Hunter disarmed, the shield was deactivated and a dozen TK troopers swarmed them. One of them grabbed Omega under her shoulders to lift her off of Hunter and she whimpered.

“She’s hurt,” Hunter snarled, even as the troopers pulled him back by the shoulders. Another whacked their blaster against his groin, forcing Hunter to his knees.

Omega, still wearing her bindercuffs, was dropped unceremoniously on the ground and expected to stand on her own. Hunter’s hands were pulled behind his back and cuffed. 

“Good work, men.” This was a new commando standing in the doorway, with yellow paint on his armor.

“Bring them to Doctor Hemlock.”

[whichstoodonrockyshores]

The Snakes & The People They Bite

Prompt 10: “I’m afraid I’m not the best nurse, but I’ll try.”

From These Prompts.

Rating: Teen

Summary: During an impromptu hunting trip, Boaz is spooked by a snake.

TW: Animal Attack, Sickness, Injury, Vomiting

Requested by @anautisticwriter! Unfortunately I accidentally deleted the ask, my mistake lmao.

Fic Under the Cut

It all began with a loud whiny from Boaz. Javier’s stallion was agitated, jumping pitifully around in fear. Javier rolled his eyes in frustration, annoyed that his horse was freaking out for no reason while he was trying to focus on hunting. Hunting was never something he was great at (he much preferred fishing), but even he was beginning to tire of largemouth bass for supper every night.

So, fed up with Bill’s complaints, he decided to go hunting for a change. Clearly, that was a mistake. This entire outing was a bad idea, as Javier spotted what was spooking Boaz so badly: a rattlesnake was slithering beneath the stallion’s feet, and when Javier felt himself being pushed backward, he knew this was going to end poorly. Suddenly, Javier was flung off of his saddle, flying backward into a large cactus. Boaz bolted away from the snake, and before Javier could try and call his horse back, a pain worse than he had experienced in years suddenly flooded his arm.

He cried out in pain, the cactuses thorns digging into his back as he looked at the puncture wounds on his arm. That wasn’t good, that wasn’t good at all, especially because Boaz was now completely out of sight. He whistled, but the pain was so great the air could hardly leave his lungs. He prayed his horse would return, but the stallion wasn’t anywhere to be seen. And for the first time in years, Javier wanted to see Bill goddamn Williamson.

“Bill,” he choked as he fell to the ground, the cactus now unable to hurt him as a wave of nausea and dizziness hit him, keeping him glued to the ground, “Bill!” he repeated, but his voice only a few decibels louder.

Fucking snake, of course this outing was doomed to go poorly. Javier’s body shook on the ground for minutes on end, the pain so great he felt like his arm was about to fall off. The swelling pushed against his shirt and jacket, the pain only increasing as he threw up his breakfast, nausea catching up with him. For a few moments, Javier was convinced he was going to die in the most humiliating way imaginable. Until the familiar clop of a certain Ardennes’ hooves filled his eardrums.

“Oh, shit-!” Bill exclaimed when he saw Javier, practically flying off of Brown Jack to see what the problem was, “What happened?” Bill asked, but he didn’t wait for Javier’s answer, immediately shoving a bottle of something labeled ‘miracle tonic’ into his hands. Javier usually didn’t bother with any of the town doctors’ snake oils, having no trust in their effectiveness, but Javier felt so horrible he didn’t bother thinking about it before he swallowed the tonic.

Shockingly, the so-called ‘miracle tonic! actually did make him feel a bit better. Perhaps God did perform miracles on modern men like Javier. Bill gave Javier a moment to catch his breath. That was a terrifying experience, after all, and Javier soon threw up once again from the sheer adrenaline and stress of it all. In fact, Javier was so dazed and exhausted from the sheer pain of the incident that he didn’t even realize when he was placed on Brown Jack’s back.

“We’re goin’ back?” Javier slurred, shivering despite feeling like he was burning into a ball of fire, “Wh…what ‘bout Boaz?”

“What about him?” Bill asked immediately, clearly concerned for the well-being of Javier’s American Paint, “Did the snake get him, too?”

“No… he bolted,” Javier explained, hoping that Boaz hadn’t gotten injured in another way, “Horse didn’t respond when I whistled, which ain’t like him. Hope we can find Boaz…”

“We will,” Bill said, hitching Brown Jack when they reached camp, removing the injured man from the mount and carrying him into the tent. Javier groaned in pain when he was laid on his back, the damage he received from the cactus hitting him all at once as he lay there, “Rest up.”

Javier groaned louder at the request, hating the idea of laying around while Bill did everything. Sweat ran down his face though his body felt freezing, perhaps he was sicker than he thought, “Rest? Don’ need rest,” Javier insisted, attempting to pull himself off of his bedroll, only to fall back on his back with a painful cry, “Maybe… maybe I do need the rest.”

“Yeah,” Bill said, sighing as he handed Javier a bottle of whiskey from his bag. Javier readily accepted the drink, taking gulps from it in an attempt to ease his pain, “Ain’t a great nurse, Javier… but I’ll do my best. For you.”

But Javier didn’t hear, the bottle of liquor in his hand resting on his chest as he drifted off to sleep. Bill was sure he’d be better in a few days… Javier Escuella was tough as nails, after all, no rattlesnake could bring him down for long.

[bisexualbumblebee-writes]

Of Princes and Witches Chapter 18- Legolas Greenleaf x OC

Legolas Greenleaf x Alphine Barrowes

Description: The Fellowship travels to the Black Gate to cause a distraction while Frodo and Sam grow nearer to Mount Doom. And it works.

Word Count: 2.4k

A/N: Guys, we are now only two chapters away from finally ending this series :( I almost don't want it to end. I had so much fun writing this. I honestly may write another series with an oc insert for either The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings after this haha. But, we must get through this and the next two chapters, so enjoy!

Alphine sat atop Talysan outside the Black Gate to Mordor. What was left of the armies of Gondor and Rohan were behind her and the rest of the Fellowship, who all sat on horses of their own (aside from Gimli, who rode with Legolas, Merry who sat with Aragorn, and Pippin, who rode with Alphine). The gate was closed to the rest of the world, with no life sounding on the other side. Everyone watched it in silence, waiting for something to happen, but nothing did. 

“Where are they?” Pippin asked nervously. Aragorn glanced at the Hobbit, sharing his unease (albeit subtly), before riding towards the gate. Gandalf, Legolas, Gimli, Eomer and Alphine followed him. 

“Let the Lord of the Black Land come forth,” Aragorn shouted at the gate. “Let justice be done upon him!” As if on cue the gates opened just a sliver, forcing the horses to back up a bit. Out came Sauron’s Lieutenant, whose face was little more than a large mouth with disgusting yellowing teeth and a helmet atop his head. A shiver shot up the Witch’s spine. He was horrific to even look at. 

“My master Sauron the Great bids thee welcome,” he started, voice hissing like a snake grew vocal chords. “Is there any in this rout with authority to treat with me?” 

“We do not come to treat with Sauron, faithless and accursed,” Gandalf responded. “Tell your master this: the armies of Mordor must disband. He is to depart with these lands, never to return.” The mouth laughed, and what a horrid sound it was. 

“Old Graybeard! I have a token I was bidden to show thee.” He held up what looked to be a silver shirt to the Wizard. Was that…

“Frodo,” Pippin gasped. It was Frodo’s mithril shirt. The mouth threw the shirt to Gandalf, who caught it with ease. 

“Frodo!” Pippin repeated, more panicked now. 

“Silence,” demanded the Wizard. 

“No!” Merry cried out, receiving the same response from Gandalf. Alphine’s arms wrapped around Pippin in an attempt to calm him down as the mouth spoke. 

“The Halfling was dear to thee, I see. Know that he suffered greatly at the hands of his host Who would’ve thought one so small could endure so much pain? And he did, Gandalf, he did.” The Witch’s eyes clenched shut in order to not tear up at the thought of Frodo being in any amount of pain. She bowed her head, nearly burying her face in the Hobbit’s hair. 

“And who is this?” Asked the mouth. “Isildur’s heir? It takes more to make a King than a broken Elvish blade.” Alphine heard the sound of a blade swinging, and when she opened her eyes Sauron’s Lieutenant no longer bore a head. 

“I guess that concludes negotiations,” Gimli muttered. Aragorn looked at the mithril short that still sat in Gandalf’s hands, then shook his head. 

“I do not believe it. I will not.” 

“What do we do now?” Alphine asked, voice nearly cracking before she cleared it. She’d been desperately hoping that Frodo was okay, but now she wasn’t so sure. Aragorn didn’t have an answer. They sat there for a few minutes as they attempted to figure out what to do, but then the Black Gate began to open again. Thousands of Orcs began marching through, which admittedly made the Witch gasp. 

“Pull back,” Aragorn instructed. “Pull back!” The five horses rode back towards the army they brought, the Orcs following them. The soldiers looked uncertain (borderline scared) at the sheer number of their enemy. 

“Hold your ground!” Aragorn yelled, beginning to ride across the front of the army to address them. “Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers. I see it in your eyes, the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day! An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand! Men of the West!” 

The soldiers unsheathed their weapons and stood ready, looking much more encouraged than they were before. Aragorn nodded in approval and wheeled around on his horse to face the oncoming enemy. No one moved as the enemy surrounded them, all waiting for Aragorn’s instruction. Soon enough they were completely surrounded. Alphine stood between Merry and Legolas, trying to keep herself calm as her eyes grazed over the many Orc faces. 

“Never thought I’d die fighting side by side with an Elf,” she heard Gimli grumble from the other side of Legolas. 

“What about side by side with a friend?” The Elf suggested, glancing down at Gimli with a smile. The Dwarf looked up at him, a small smile forming on his face. 

“Aye, I could do that.” 

Alphine smiled at his response as her hand reached out, brushing against Legolas’. He met her the rest of the way and gingerly grabbed her hand, interlocking their fingers and giving it a gentle, reassuring squeeze. They shared a weak smile, and Alphine felt much better knowing that if she died, it would be with him by her side. Aragorn stood in front of the army, pausing when he heard a hissed whisper of his name. 

“Aragorn…” It was the Eye of Sauron. “Elessar…” The Man’s sword slowly dropped to his side as he stepped forward, almost as if mesmerized. He snapped out of it quickly however and turned to look at Gandalf. The Wizard didn’t speak and instead held up Frodo’s mithril shirt for Aragorn to see. The Man smiled. 

“For Frodo,” he announced softly. And with that he raised his sword and ran forward towards the Orc army. Merry and Pippin were the first ones to shout and run after him, their own swords raised. That was enough to kickstart the Gondorian and Rohan army to follow them with their own battle cries. The two armies collided in a fit of slashing swords and clanging metal and the battle had begun. 

Alphine fought with a newfound vigor. Gone was her exhaustion and nervousness about the prospect of dying and was replaced with the willpower to at least go down fighting tooth and nail until her last breath. She once again harnessed as much of her power as she could manage to take out as many groups of Orcs as possible (though she’d since learned how to moderate it so she didn’t get as exhausted quickly). Between her bouts of magic she slayed Orcs with her sword. 

Screams and screeches rang from above, which made her look up. Ringwraiths had joined the fight from above, attacking as they did so in Minas Tirith. She lifted her hands and shot various spells at them to at least slow them down, but with so many Orcs surrounding her on the ground she couldn’t focus on them for long. Thankfully she no longer had to worry about the Ringwraiths as another screech was heard. It wasn’t a wraith this time, however, but an Eagle who intercepted a Ringwraith who was aiming for Gandalf. 

“The Eagles!” Pippin exclaimed excitedly from somewhere she couldn’t see. “The Eagles are coming!” And, just like he said, more Eagles flew into battle and engaged with the fell beasts that the wraiths rode on. 

Out of nowhere the Eye of Sauron flared, looking around desperately. Everyone in front of the Black Gate stopped to look at it confusedly. The Eye began screeching and groaning loudly shortly before the tower of Barad Dur began to collapse to the ground. Just before the Eye hit the ground it exploded in a ball of fire, sending a shockwave through the armies. Frodo was alive after all, and he had done it. 

“Frodo!” Merry exclaimed excitedly as Alphine gasped in both shock and delight. 

“He did it!” She cheered jovially, Gimli shouting gleefully afterwards. The Black gate began to collapse. The army of Orcs tried to run away, but the ground below them gave way and they were destroyed. Only the land that the peoples of Middle Earth stood on were spared. 

Alphine watched the chaos with an oddly overwhelming sense of joy, but it was abruptly halted as Mount Doom erupted. Immediately all noise ceased except for Merry and Pippin, who began to cry for their friends. The Witch covered her mouth in horror, tears springing to her eyes as she watched lava begin to flow steadily out of the volcano. 

“No.” Her gaze was quickly broken when she heard Gandalf’s exclamation. She faced him just in time to see him mount one of the Eagles. 

“Gandalf, what are you doing?” She asked worriedly. 

“I am going to find Frodo and Samwise. There is hope for them yet,” was all he had time to say before the Eagle took off with two others (one for Sam and the other for Gollum, who they knew was supposed to be leading them through Mordor), heading straight for Mount Doom. She watched them fly into the distance worriedly, beginning to pick at her nails absentmindedly. It was only when another hand grabbed hers that she stopped, looking at the hand’s owner. She wasn’t surprised to see Legolas standing beside her, though his gaze was also on the three Eagles. 

“Eomer, take them back to Minas Tirith to recuperate,” she heard Aragorn instruct from behind her. 

“What about you?” The new King of Rohan questioned. The Man didn’t answer, though it seemed that Eomer didn’t need one as he instructed his men to get the wounded on horses and head back to the White City. 

The only ones left were the members of the Fellowship, who were waiting for what very well could have been a miracle. Alphine bided her time by making sure no one was hurt and comforting the Hobbits. She knew that it may have been in vain, but she held onto the hope that Frodo and Sam had survived it. And her hope was proven right when she noticed three Eagles flying towards them after what felt like hours (though she knew it wasn’t). 

“Look! The Eagles!” She exclaimed, pointing them out to the others. All heads turned, and Merry and Pippin began celebrating when they realized that two of them held none other than Frodo and Sam. 

“To Minas Tirith!” Aragorn yelled, climbing onto his horse. The rest of the Fellowship scrambled to their horses. Alphine wasted no time in helping Pippin up once she was seated on Talysan. She barely allowed him to get comfortable before she clicked the horse's reins, forcing him to gallop off. The others followed immediately after. They rode under the Eagles’ shadows, heading straight for Minas Tirith. 

Alphine hadn’t been this happy since long before she met and agreed to join the Fellowship of the Ring. It had been a few days since the Ring was destroyed and the battle concluded after a long, difficult and terrifying fight. While she waited for Frodo to wake up, Alphine opted to help with healing wounded soldiers. Of course she agreed to do so, and in between healing she helped clean Pelennor Fields. Things had been coming along wonderfully thus far, and she couldn’t have been happier. Well, she could be, but for that to happen, Frodo would have to wake up. Until then she was content with her work as a distraction. 

After nearly a week passed, Alphine stepped out of the Hall of Healing. She’d been working since dawn arose, so she figured that it was okay for her to take a break. She sighed softly as she closed the door behind her, leaning against the wall beside it as she reveled in the peaceful moment. Well, at least until she heard her name being called.

“Lady Alphine,” a Gondorian guard she’d come to learn was named Irolas called as he jogged up to her. 

“Yes?” She responded confusedly, standing upright as he reached her. “Is everything okay Irolas?” 

“Very,” the Man responded with a smile. “I’ve been told to inform you that the Hobbit, Frodo Baggins, is awake.” The Witch’s eyes widened at the information. She barely had time to offer him thanks before she was running down the hall towards Frodo’s temporary room. Gimli, Legolas, Aragorn and Samwise stood outside the door, all turning to face her when they heard her approaching. 

“Is it true?” She asked, trying to contain her excitement as she came to a stop.

“Aye lass, he’s awake,” Gimli answered for them. Alphine’s smile widened (if it were even possible) and she moved to walk in, but was stopped by Legolas grabbing her hands. 

“Hold on,” he muttered, which made her look at him in bewilderment. “Gandalf wants us to go in one by one so he does not get overwhelmed.” The Witch sighed, though she understood his reasoning. 

“Oh, fine,” she huffed. Just then Gandalf’s head poked through the door and he said Gimli’s name. It seemed that was the Dwarf’s cue to walk in. He did so, stopping in the doorway to spread his arms out and yell jovially. 

“Gimli,” Alphine heard the Hobbit yell happily, which brought a smile to her face. \

The Wizard smiled then gestured for Alphine to come inside. She wasted no time in doing so, the smile on her face becoming wider when she saw Frodo sitting up in bed with Merry and Pippin on either side of him. He looked much better than he did when he first arrived back in Minas Tirith. He had been bathed (well, as well as he could be while unconscious) and it took both Gandalf and Alphine to heal what they could of any injuries he had. Seeing him so clean, lively and happy brought tears to her eyes as they met his.

“Alphine!” He said, almost relieved to see her. She laughed softly and wiped a stray tear from her cheek as she walked closer to him. Just a moment later she felt a presence beside her, and an arm wrapped around her waist. She leaned her head on Legolas’ shoulder as he and Frodo shared a smile. Aragorn was next, then finally Samwise. The six of them sat there, basking in each other’s presences and being happy that all of it was finally over.

[sirencove2]

Into the Golden Light

He wasn't supposed to be here. Anywhere, but here.Frodo shouldn't be here, sitting in a chair carefully crafted and hand-carved by the finest of elven hands, surrounded by a strange mixture of friends and strangers while trying to decide on the fate of Middle Earth as they know it. Hobbits aren't supposed to wander too far from home, he knew that— growing up, it had been all he had heard from his neighbors, always complaining about how his Uncle disturbed the peace back in Hobbiton... back at the Shire. Oh, how he longs for it, now— to run through it's fields and forests, leaping across streams and trickling rivers would be bliss, utter and complete bliss. But instead here he sits, bearing the burden of his Uncle Bilbo's mistakes in the form of a tiny, inconspicuous ring while surrounded by man, dwarf, and elf. Frodo absentmindedly lifts a hand to his shirt to feel underneath it's comforting, soft linen, where his fingers cautiously graze across the ragged scar on his skin. He frowns at the resulting sting that rushes through his chest after touching his wound, causing him to instinctively tighten his ribcage as he sharply inhales— the poison magic within the witch-king's blade had nearly ended his life, and he had originally intended to go home after completing Gandalf's task, but... watching man, dwarf, and elf argue about the supposed prophecy and burden and who's-worthy and who's-worthless has the words flying from his pale lips before he can even truly comprehend them."I will take the ring!" Frodo cries out, his words initially falling upon deaf ears, thereby forcing him to repeat himself in a louder voice. Gandalf's face falls at the sound of Frodo's words, but hardens when he turns and acknowledges the brave, if not nervous look on his face. "I will take the ring to Mordor... though, I do not know the way.""I will bear this burden with you." Gandalf says with a wise, although tired smile. "For as long as it is your burden to bare."Strider— Aragorn, also rises to his feet, muttering a soft-spoken promise to protect the little hobbit from harm, giving him his sword. Legolas follows in Strider's footsteps, professing his bow's allegiance to the little creature before joining his side, where he is quickly joined by a hot-blooded dwarf with a nasty attitude. Lastly is Boromir, a son of Gondor. But just then, three more hobbits come bursting out of the woodworks, pledging to join the team. Nine volunteers in total— harbingers of hope, clad in leather, iron, and mithril. It's a start, but... it's not nearly enough— a fact that Lord Elrond, Lord of Rivendell, notices very swiftly. Out of all the members of the large council that had been gathered here on this day, only nine agree to take the ring?"Surely there are more brave souls that wish to accompany this... fellowship of the ring and ensure it's travel to Mount Doom?" Elrond begins in a strong, stern voice. "Nine is a start, but it will take more than that in order to break through the barriers and travel deep into the bowels of Mount Doom."No one dares speak. Frodo's shoulders drop as one of Gandalf's hands moves to rest upon them, gently rubbing and squeezing them for support as more and more uncomfortable bouts of silence pass. Elf, man, dwarf— no one dares to speak, lest they somehow end up volunteering themselves by sheer accident. Aragorn warily scans the surrounding council's faces, looking for even the slightest bit of hope and bravery, but... he finds none.—"I'll go."Every man present slowly pans their head around towards the source of the voice, speaking so softly their words were very nearly lost to the to the whistling wind.

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I'm so sorry I had to leave this on a cliffhanger because I can only do so many words of the at a time part 2 will be out soon!

[butternuggets-blog]

FOR WANT OF A NAIL

@baldwin-montclair @adowobsessed @sylverdeclermont @nicki-mac-me @thereadersmuse @kynthiamoon @adowbaldwin @profoundme444 @beautifulsoulsublime @lady-lazarus-declermont

Part Eight

Summary: Baldwin Montclair had a string of ex girlfriends, a single child, and a lifetime longer than most people could dream of to make all kinds of mistakes.His family knew one which kept coming out of the woodwork to irritate him every other century.

Also on Ao3

NON-SEXUAL SLAVERY/MENTIONS OF ABUSE/EXPLICIT VIOLENCE & GORE

Merula lay still in the darkness. If she tilted her head to the left, she would get a face-full of hair and sweat. Sabine, snoring quietly, drool sliding down her chin, was pressed up against her side, Merula’s shoulder digging into her back. Tomorrow she would complain again about her sore spine as they worked in the garden together. If she tilted her head to the right, she would end up squashing her nose into the cold stone wall.

There were supposed to be laws. They were often broken, or ignored, but they existed. Take, for instance, the overcrowded cellar. Thirty women, crushed into a pile, in a windowless, locked room barely large enough to stable a horse. If the house went up in flames, they’d be trapped, and forgotten.

Merula balled a fist, bruised knuckles scraping lightly against the wall as her fingers clenched. She swallowed the pain. Rome’s conquest of Sicily had seen the island flooded with prisoners of war and foreign-born slaves. There was such a surplus of slaves that it was cheaper for masters to work them to death and replace them quickly than to treat them with care. Decency cost money.

Merula tried to stretch, breathing through the twin agony of the cramp suddenly rolling up her ankle, and the sharp prickling sensation coming from the still-healing lacerations on her legs.

..‘Slaves do not gossip! ’..

-CRACK-

..no tears…Orazziu will stop sooner if you don’t cry..

..’You’re lucky I don’t send you to the mines like your father’…

He had only been trying to buy a gift for her mother. He had left the money for the flowers on the edge of the stall as instructed, but the vendor claimed he had stolen them, and Orazziu was too lazy to bother arguing the case in court. So her father was sent off to the mines.

Merula reached blindly for her wrist and crooked a finger around the glass bead threaded on a leather cord. Her mother had forced her to take it, years ago; a parting gift, as she watched her escorted out of Orazziu’s house to begin a new life with a new master.

.. ‘- lucky I’m in a charitable mood today-’..

.. ‘Keep it..worthless trinket, anyway’..

Yes.

So lucky.

Merula bit her tongue to keep from screaming, jaw clenched, her fists balled even tighter. In the dark she could afford the luxury of anger.

________________________________________________________________

The rumours didn’t stop.

In fact, they turned out to be true.

A slave revolt in Enna, led by a man called Eunus. He claimed to be a prophet, though of which god the whispers hadn’t been clear. He had danced a fine line between genuflection and mockery, foretelling doom and disaster for the elite who visited his master’s vast estate. They had thought it amusing enough to let him keep his tongue.

A band of men sought his advice about their own master, and his cruelty. Eunus had cried that the time of prophecy was nigh, and that was that. A group became an army, and four hundred rampaging Sicilian slaves eviscerated the city of Enna.

But Tauromenium was around 300 miles away, a city with thicker walls and loyal slaves, as Orazziu proudly boasted.

Then Agrigentum fell.

And the army failed to recapture the southern half of the island. Twice.

As the months dragged on, even Orazziu’s smug confidence lost a little of its edge. By the end of July, the uprising was squatting in the shadowed foothills of Mount Aetna, and Tauromenium’s streets were crawling with the, now-thrice beaten, remnants of the Roman army.

Merula smoothed and patted down the dirt as Sabine raced across the garden to join her. She had been pulling weeds from between the flower beds for the better part of four hours now, churning in compost as she went, and sweating beneath the sun.

'Quickly!' Sabine grabbed her by the wrist and started dragging her along, 'There is a snake in the cabbages!'

The viper was curled up beneath a particularly large over-hanging leaf. Merula brought the falx down on its head; the pruning knife's blade pierced its skull, pinning the writhing serpent to the dirt. It thrashed violently, then stilled.

She picked it up and dropped it into her basket, careful to avoid its fangs. Viper flesh made for an excellent medicine for a variety of ailments. It wouldn’t remain fresh for long, but if she powdered it she could sell it, or keep it for at least a month.

Or you could harvest the venom..

Merula stopped short, her breath caught in her throat. She forced herself to keep walking, putting one foot slowly in front of the other until she found herself kneeling down next to the flowers she had originally been tending to.

As she carefully, deliberately, began plucking at the thin weeds poking through the dirt in front of her, a memory murmured in her ear.

Her final thought, as she fell asleep for the first time without her parents, heart numb and eyes wet with unshed tears.

A prayer and a promise.

No act of charity will erase your sins.

**

Freedmen were looked down on as untrustworthy lowlifes at the best of times. There was nothing safe about this. Two women alone- she had no intention of leaving Sabine behind; she was her sister, after all- in a city on edge, with a revolt of former slaves clamouring for blood descending upon it, and malcontent Roman soldiers within it looking for someone to pay for their wounded pride.

A week of preparation, coins pressed into the right palm for the right papers, and Merula was standing in the heart of Orazziu’s home as a lively party swirled around her. Nobody paid her any mind; one serving girl was much the same as any other to people who felt superior, especially while alcohol flowed freely.

She darted forward when Orazziu signalled for refreshments. His conversation with the man to his right never wavered; he didn’t even look up when she pushed the cup into his hand, he just carried on talking as if the goblet had miraculously appeared on its own.

He sipped.

She tensed.

He kept drinking.

She felt the knot of tension in her stomach ease slightly. The wine was masking the taste of the venom, but he was savouring the alcohol rather than quaffing it, and it made her uneasy.

Would the venom work? She had to time this right. If he dropped dead in front of witnesses, then fleeing the scene of the crime would be almost impossible, and every slave in the building would be round up and interrogated.

The law was extremely clear about doling out punishment to slaves who tried to kill their masters. If slaves were under the same roof at the time as the attack and did nothing, they would be interrogated under torture, and executed. In the event of a poisoning, this law was waived because of the secretive nature of the attack, but it would be very difficult not to put two and two together once she disappeared.

If the dosage was too weak, it would make him violently ill but not kill him. That was no good either because if she ran away with Sabine and he recovered, he would simply order them both hunted down.

Her dilemma was resolved a few minutes later, when Orazziu threw up suddenly into a nearby plant pot and loudly announced that he was feeling extremely nauseous so he would be retiring to bed. He shuffled out of the atrium and down the winding passageways to his bedchamber, Sabine and Merula supporting him under either arm.

By the time Orazziu staggered up onto his bed, he had thrown up twice and was beginning to tremble violently. Merula listened carefully; his breathing had become slightly laboured, with a rattling wheeze every time he breathed out.

‘He soiled himself, I could smell it’ Sabine whispered with a smile, as they slipped towards the back of the house. Merula clamped a hand over her mouth and hauled her into the shadows; a gaggle of small boys rushed past, balancing wide bronze plates of food on the top of their heads.

As the children disappeared around a corner Sabine pulled Merula’s hand off her mouth and gripped her palm, grinning. ‘We did it!’

‘Not yet’ Merula warned, grinning as well in spite of herself. She gathered up her tunic and, still holding Sabine by the hand, walked the final few metres to the back gate which led out to the city beyond.

Heart in her mouth, she knelt and felt along the edges of the paving stones.

‘Hurry up!’ Sabine hissed, peering nervously into the shadows.

‘I am trying! Give me a moment!’ Merula’s fingers brushed the chipped tile she was searching for; digging her nails beneath it, she prised it up and pulled two small cloth-bound packages from the hollow beneath.

‘Here are your papers, do not lose them!’

Merula and Sabine stuffed the bundles into the folds of their tunics, wrenched the well-oiled gate open, and slipped away into the night.

________________________________________________________________

The men had cornered her in the marketplace, a year and half a world away from Sicily, on the far southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula. Six of them, armed with swords, and rope.

‘Where are you going?’ the leader, a leering man with greasy hair and three missing teeth, had grabbed her and held her roughly by the throat, nodding to two of his lackeys to bind her wrists. Merula had kicked and clawed and screamed and struggled, so much so that the two men eventually resorted to pinning her to the ground in order to tie her hands and feet together.

Now she found herself lying in the back of a cart, being jostled around as it rattled and rolled down the road. Through a hole in the canvas above she could see clear, blue sky; they had passed through the city gates a few hours ago, where Merula had heard the clink of coin being exchanged, and two other women -also bound and gagged- were shoved into the back of the cart beside her.

The women were twins. They were lithe and muscular, with light brown hair shorn close to the scalp. Their tunics were stained with grime and frayed around the hinges, and neither woman wore sandals.

She wondered what Sabine was doing. Was she still preparing lunch in the house on the edge of the river? Had she managed to palm the baby off onto her husband or was he still crying incessantly for attention beside the back door? Would she be worried by her absence soon, walking their well-worn route to the market, asking the vendors along the way if they had seen her missing sister?

Merula’s eyes stung and she gave a quiet sob.

One of the women nudged her with a knee, a sympathetic glance peering at her over the top of the gag. The twins seemed calm; bored, even, which was extremely surprising given their current circumstances. The woman closest to her raised an eyebrow in a suggestion of a question.

Are you alright?

Merula felt warm tears slide down her cheeks, but she nodded anyway.

No, but I will be

The cart jerked to the right and Merula slid backwards. As she righted herself, she felt something small catch on the rope around her wrist.

A nail.

Her heart began pounding in her chest.

It must have been hammered in at an angle and no one had noticed to flatten it down. The square edge of the head was slanting up out of the wood like a splinter; it wouldn’t be enough to fray the bindings around her wrist, only loosen them.

Merula felt cautiously behind her, shifting and squirming until she felt the rope catch again. The twins watched her intently.

She yanked too forcefully and the rope slipped up and over the nail. The twins’ shoulders slumped, disappointed. Merula bit down her frustration and tried again.

The rocking and swaying of the cart made it difficult but over the next couple of minutes Merula gingerly flailed her arms around behind her back, repeatedly dragging the nail through the rough, reed-fibre rope.

Eventually she felt confident enough to try and wriggle free of her bonds. She had been keeping as quiet as possible in case one of her captors decided to check in on their cargo, but so far the man driving upfront and the five she could hear keeping pace on horseback alongside them seemed content to drive cart and contents as far away from the city as possible without stopping.

She gave the rope an experimental tug. It gave a little; she clenched her hands into fists to try and shrink her forearms, to gain any slack she could, and wriggled furiously.

Finally, finally, her left wrist came free.

Merula nearly bit through her tongue to stop herself from letting out an excited shout. She pulled her right hand free, and dived for the closest twin to start untying her, just as the driver glanced back over his shoulder through the carved wooden panel at the front of the cart to check on his passengers.

He gave a yell and hauled on the reigns; there was the sound of horses whinnying in alarm then the cart stopped. Merula was flung forward; she croaked, winded, as her back slammed into the wall of the cart, and she could only watch helplessly as the greasy-haired ringleader of the slavers ripped open the canvas cloth flap at the back of the cart and began to climb up into it.

Merula blinked.

A blur hit him square in the chest, knocking him backwards off his feet with a scream.

Merula blinked again.

She was alone in the cart, shredded pieces of rope and a small dust cloud still settling in front of her. Screams and shouts echoed from outside; thick ichor splattered across the cloth beside her, startling her into a frantic shuffle for the exit.

Something heavy slammed into the side of the cart and tipped it onto its side. Merula went flying; she hit the ground and the weight of her body pinning the canvas tore it from its base as the cart continued to roll over her and came to a stop upside down.

There were bodies everywhere. Four of the six men were dead, entrails and limbs spread out in bloody pools on the grass as their horses bolted. The twins, covered head to toe in gore, were in the process of burying a sword up to the hilt into the side of a man who was wearing an empty scabbard, and trying his best to wriggle free of their grasp.

‘LAMIA!’

Merula spun in time to see the man charging at her, but not quickly enough to avoid the blade striking down. A fountain of blood cascaded from her chest as the blade cleaved into her; it missed her heart by inches, tearing a jagged diagonal wound across her torso from shoulder to hip.

She staggered, collapsing onto her back. The man raised his sword aloft to strike at her again, but suddenly the twins were behind him, stabbing him through the chest. Merula saw the light leave his eyes as the man’s body dropped limply to the ground.

‘Shh, shh, rest now’ one of the twins gently pulled Merula into her lap, cradling her. The blood that had been pooling at the back of her throat dribbled down her chin and she took a ragged breath.

...I am dying...

...I am so sorry Sabine...

Hoofbeats, then a horse rode into view carrying the largest man Merula had ever seen. He glared furiously at the twins, who ducked their heads, looking away in shame.

'You were supposed to be watching over Blanda. I find her wandering through the market, alone, and your scent wafting on the breeze'

The man jerked his chin towards Merula.

'Who is this?'

'She tried to help us'

'And you repaid her by getting her killed'

The man appeared to be thinking something over. He knelt beside Merula, shooing the woman holding her away and shifting her into his arms instead.

'I could use a more reliable guardian for my eldest daughter' the twins started to protest but he silenced them with a look.

'Would you like me to save you from death? I can do it. In exchange, you will keep safe what is mine.'

Merula coughed weakly.

'...Lamia?..' she croaked.

The man grinned toothily at her.

'We don't eat children' said one of the women, quietly. Her sister nodded.

...Sabine, frantic, wandering through the city for days, weeks... months..

..."Have you seen my sister?.."Please! You must know where she is!..Please!..

...Unanswered questions...a household in mourning..

Merula glanced down and took a good, long look at the raw, oozing mess that her bones were trying to hold together.

'...yes..'

________________________________________________________________

Approximately 250 years later..

Leire's family had been fishing and trading from the house on the hill above Baelo Claudio since before he was born. He had never shared his father's satisfaction with the sedate growth of the family business; he wanted to accelerate things, bring in new clients both nearby and abroad.

'And that is why I am here' he said, waving vaguely out across Jerusalem, as city life rumbled around him.

Merula smiled proudly at her friend, and gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze.

'You will do very well. I know you will.'

Author’s Notes Face cast for Merula: Imaan Hammam

Venom doesn't actually work like a poison unless you have a cut or wound in your mouth of some kind.

The First Servile War lasted from 135 to 132BC.

Leire is a direct descendant of Sabine, Merula’s sister

[crystal-snowing]

oblivious | bang chan

synopsis: the four times that you almost confess to chan and the one time that he does it for you. or in which, you have the biggest crush on chan and the one time where he finally notices. 

genre: fluff, slight angst, best-friends-to-lovers! au, non-idol! au

pairing: bang chan x reader

word count: 2.9k

a/n: this is for the @districtninewriters’ winter fic exchange, and my person was minnie ( @lveletters​ ) ! surprise !!  minnie is such a fantastic writer, and i had an enjoyable time writing this and definitely writing for chan, i hope you enjoy !! <3 

a/n part two: this gif was made by @/prodskz and i just edited it ! 

one

At the age of eight, there were only two things that you relatively seemed to know about Bang Chan: one; he was your next-door neighbor, two, (because of fact number one, he, therefore) was your best friend. Your relationship with him seemed simple enough, and there was nothing more that you could expect from the boy other than occasionally sharing his food with you during snack time and holding your hand as you both crossed the street on the way home. Life was simple, and you were content, as much as an eight-year-old could be—happily sipping on a juice box and munching on some graham crackers. 

It was any other day at recess, both you and Chan taking up your resident spot on the swing set next to each other, pumping your legs as fast as you possibly could to swing higher than the other. Everything between the two of you was a competition; it was only natural. There was something about Bang Chan that seemed to awaken this drive within you even at such a young age. Your competitive side heightened by his presence—the need to invoke a response from him was too great to ignore. 

“You know, I went to my uncle’s wedding this weekend,” you started, slowing the swing down just a bit so he could hear you over the playful sounds emanating from the playground. “And my uncle told me that one day I’m going to get married too!” 

“Yeah, right! As if someone would ever marry you,” Chan scoffed, rolling his eyes lightly at your declaration. 

You gasped and pouted slightly at his words. Reaching down with your right leg, you allowed it to drag across the wood chips below, slowing yourself down to a stop on the swing so that you could honestly look at him as you spoke.  

“It’s true,” you huffed, puffing out your chest as you spoke, “plus, you’re my best friend, so we have to get married.” 

His nose scrunched up and his eyebrows became furrowed at your words, clearly dissatisfied by the response that you gave. Chan began to slow down his swing before coming to a stop next to your own, as he shot you a frown. 

“No way! I’m never getting married, especially not to you!”“What, why?” 

He stood up from his position on the swing, dusting off his pants slightly before shooting you a pointed look. 

“Because you have cooties,” he stated as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

You paused, glancing up at the brunette boy from your seated position on the swing with your mouth agape. There was an expression that seemed to flash across your face, and upon realizing, Chan broke off into a sprint before you followed after him. 

“Bang Chan, come back here! I swear we’re going to get married one day; you just wait and see!” 

two

The winter formal was perhaps one of the most important social gatherings at your middle school. It could possibly make or break your social reputation. Pairings between the student body had already begun three weeks ago, and the dance was about forty-eight hours away. However, your dilemma was that you were unsure if you even had a date. 

There was a simple enough fix to this whole situation, and all you had to do was ask. Still, it was times like this where you couldn’t help but overthink everything in your relationship with Bang Chan. You assumed the two of you were going together; it only made sense. But considering the proximity of the dance and since he hasn’t said anything about it to you—well, the seeds of doubt have begun to sprout slowly.  

An opportunity had continually presented itself every afternoon when both of you walked, side-by-side, home. You just needed to gather the courage and ask. Still, the walk seemed to end far too quickly for your liking. Before you knew it, you were bidding him goodbye with the repetitive excuse of having “too much homework.” 

There was no way for you to explain the difficulty of putting these feelings into words. You couldn’t even begin to describe the unnecessary panic that you felt at the mere thought of him going to the dance with someone else. The idea of this was too much for you to bear. You were practically intoxicated on the very thought of him, which caused you to lose almost all sense of control when you were around him. The panic you felt closing in on Wednesday afternoon continued to grow as you both arrived closer and closer towards your respective houses. The mounting pressure caused you to suddenly stop short and yell out the one thing plaguing your mind. 

“Chan, I like you! Please go to the dance with me!” 

You couldn’t bear to look at him, quickly averting your gaze and attention into memorizing the intricate pattern of the sidewalk below—mentally preparing for the backlash and consequences to follow. 

He blinked once, then twice, before finally taking a step closer to you and speaking. 

“I like you too, [N/N], you’re my best friend,” he chuckled, causing you to look back up at him with wide eyes, “of course I’ll go to the dance with you.” 

There was something about how he looked in the afternoon sunlight that seemed to make him glow, his eyes radiating warmth as he offered you a breathtaking smile. Your heart skipped a beat at his actions, and with your palms becoming sweaty and your knees weak, you were unsure what was coming over you. 

And just like that, it was over.

With a slight ruffle of your hair, Chan turned away from you and slung his backpack over his shoulder. 

He gave you a small wave and the promise of walking to school together tomorrow as he walked into his house. This left you standing dumbfounded on the sidewalk with slightly messy hair and an overwhelming feeling of bittersweetness sitting on your tongue. 

three

The brisk night air served as a bitter reminder of the impending doom that you felt. Your high school was bustling for this time of night, the remnants of the party fizzling out and became merely a low buzzing in the background. Both of you were situated away from the rest. Sitting with barely an inch between you two on a picnic blanket behind the school, sipping cans of Coke as you watched people from a distance. 

As the moonlight reflected off of his tan skin, your breath couldn’t help but get caught in your throat. He was ethereal, his skin glowing. His suit jacket was discarded somewhere on the grass elsewhere, his red tie loosened around his neck with his white dress shirt unbuttoned slightly as he leaned back on his arms. His legs outstretched in front of him. You drank him in as if he was fine wine, savoring every last drop, your body feeling slightly warm in his presence. 

“You know, I’m always just one call away,” he spoke softly, his voice contrasting against the quiet murmur of the background. He looked at you, noticing the way your eyes seemed glossier than usual tonight, and he couldn’t help but grab your hand and rub small circles into it. 

“But that’s not the same as being with you.” 

The tears were pooling at the bottom of your eyes, gathering around your lower lashes and threatening to spill onto your clothes below. Your lips trembled at the thought, both you and Chan separating after so long together, going to different colleges and traveling on different paths in life. Some tears had spilled over, splashing silently down on the blanket below as they began to dribble down your cheeks and chin. It was only until you couldn’t contain yourself any longer then silent sobs began wracking your body. 

“No matter what, I promise we’ll always make our way back to each other,” he continued to speak, but you couldn’t comprehend the rest. Your head continues to swirl with that particular sentence, playing it back like a mantra. You looked up at him, his brown eyes staring into yours—and you could swear, at that moment, you were home. 

You practically lunged at him, tackling him in a hug and burying your tear-stained face into his chest. His body was stiff as he froze for a second before his arms came to wrap around your frame. Patting your back with a steady rhythm, he attempted to calm your cries as you soaked his dress shirt. Your grip around his frame was tight, and you held onto him as if your life depended on it as your sobs turned into soft sniffles and your eyes began to dry. 

“I love you,” you muttered, nuzzling yourself further into his chest. You were unsure what had come over you, but at that moment, everything just felt right, and the confession that you have been harboring suddenly slipped out. The hand patting your back paused for a split second before resuming so swiftly that you chalked it up as a figment of your imagination. He didn’t say anything in response to your confession; instead, he opted to bring you closer in his embrace, and you dismissed it on the grounds that he probably didn’t hear you. 

For now, you were content with the way things were, slightly thanking whatever god was out there for keeping your feelings hidden for another day.

four

By the time Chan arrived at the party, he was surprised that you were still standing on your own two feet. It wasn’t often that you would drink past your limit, but he knew you, and there were often times where you became a bit overzealous, biting off a lot more than you could chew. He knew that it was the competitive drive within you, and you couldn’t help yourself, but he would be damned if he ever let anything happen to you in this state. 

That’s how he found himself at this end of the semester party, which was in a neighborhood that he was not familiar with at a quarter past one in the morning. 

“Hey, did you know that I have a super hot best friend named Bang Chan?” your words were definitely slurred as they escaped your lips as you clung onto his back like a koala. You shifted yourself slightly on his back as you attempted to make yourself comfortable with your arms around his neck, and his jacket draped over your shoulders. 

“Oh, really?” Chan mused, holding your legs tightly against his hips as he made his way down the sidewalk and towards your childhood neighborhood. 

“Yeah, and I really really like him,” you paused before puffing out your cheeks and pouting, “but he doesn’t like me that way.” 

“But, you guys are best friends; I’m sure he likes you at least a little bit,” he tries to reason with you, readjusting his grip on your legs. Even though he has had nothing to drink tonight, he was hanging onto every word that you spoke—enthralled and curious by this hidden information.

 It was silent on your end for a bit before you leaned closer towards his ear to whisper your response. 

“I’m going to tell you a big secret,” you paused slightly for dramatic effect, “I like like him, actually, no wait, I love love him and not in the friend kind of way.” 

At your confession, he almost drops you but quickly catches himself and continues towards your house, his head clouded with thoughts. His eyebrows were furrowed deeply—scrunched together—creating deep indentations in his forehead as he attempted to make sense of everything that you just unloaded onto him. 

After dropping that bomb on him, you were mostly silent on the ride home. Chan assumed that you had fallen asleep, and by the time he arrived at your doorstep and successfully managed to fish the keys from your pocket, did he come to two realizations. The first being that you were, in fact, awake the whole time. 

“I also have another confession,” you mutter, your voice significantly quieter than it was a few minutes ago. He hummed a response, gingerly opening the door to your house and shutting it behind him. Removing both his shoes and your shoes before making his way to the couch positioned in the living room. “I don’t feel so good; I think I’m going to—” 

Chan didn’t let you finish your sentence before shoving you into the nearest bathroom, holding back your hair as you emptied your stomach into the toilet below. Sitting on the cold tiled floor of your bathroom with the sounds of you dry heaving, did he come into his second realization. 

My god, there was a possibility that you felt the same way. 

five

Bang Chan was having a crisis. The uncomfortable night’s rest that he had on your living room couch did not do him any favors either. Instead of sleeping, he spent most of his night, letting countless scenarios run rampant through his head. After getting fed up with staring at your white ceiling all night, he found himself taking up residency in your kitchen. Watching the coffee pot heat up while drumming his fingers pensively on the countertop. 

“Good morning,” you mumbled, yawning slightly as you padded into the kitchen. Chan jumped slightly at the sound of your voice, shoulders tensing up but then relaxing at your presence. For lack of a better term, you looked like a complete and utter mess. Your hair was sticking up wildly in all directions, your skin significantly paler than usual, and the bags underneath your eyes were more prominent than usual. 

Nevertheless, he still thought you looked breathtaking. 

“Thank you for taking care of me last night. I honestly can’t remember much from last night besides rambling about anything and everything," you laughed, rubbing your eyes as you grabbed a mug from the cabinet above. 

You reached in front of him to grab the coffee pot and poured yourself a cup, brushing your arm against his own as you turned away. His heart immediately skipped a beat, heat flooding to his cheeks as he recalled your confession last night. 

Sipping the hot and bitter liquid, you glanced at his flushed state, taking note of his slightly disheveled appearance as well as his bed head. It was evident that he slept here and took care of you; that was noted by the aspirin and glass of water left on your bedside table. You were more than grateful for everything that he has done for you. However, even in your slightly hungover state, you could notice the way he was avoiding eye contact with you, choosing to fiddle with the sleeves of his sweatshirt instead. 

"Oh god, don't tell me,” you groaned, “what did I say to you last night?” You placed your cup down on the counter, rubbing your temples slightly as you braced yourself for his response. 

Taking another sip of coffee, he paused before flitting his eyes up to meet your own—a small smile dancing across his lips. You were taken aback by his sudden burst of confidence, as you could feel your cheeks heat up in response. 

“Well, you told me that you have this super and extra-hot best friend named Bang Chan. Isn’t it weird that this guy and I have the same name?” Chan had this shit-eating grin on his face before continuing, “oh, and you also mentioned that you might have a big crush on me.” 

The coffee that you were currently drinking almost sprayed across the kitchen, your eyes wide as you quickly swallowed the liquid. If the world could swallow you up at this very moment, you would probably let it—anything to escape the utter embarrassment that you felt. It was now your turn to look everywhere except his eyes, hands fiddling gingerly with the handle of the coffee cup, desperately attempting to think of a way out without confessing the truth. 

Chan took a step closer to you, placing his cup on the counter before running his hand through his disheveled brown locks. He cleared his throat softly, causing you to glance into his eyes. They burned with a type of determination and passion that you have never witnessed first-hand, your lips slightly agape as he began to speak. 

“Because if that’s true, I feel the same way. I like you more than a friend, and I have for a while,” he stopped for a second, wiping the clamminess of his hands off on his jeans, shooting you a sheepish smile. Every single confession that you had given him throughout the years suddenly became apparent, from the warm glow of your cheeks to the bashful smile that adorned your lips—everything became clear. And just like that, his mind was made up. 

“I want to ruin our friendship; let’s date instead.”

[lovely-v]

LOTR (films) Review

So I finally watched the LOTR films (20 years later). I’m super excited to review these because I read the books very recently so I feel at least a little prepared to voice some opinions. Overall I loved the films, here’s a very long (but by no means exhaustive) compilation of my thoughts, which are of course, totally subjective:

(Warning: a lot of me saying “well, actually, in the book...”)

THINGS I LIKED

- Casting! not much to say here, I thought the casting was great. One of my favorite actors that I didn’t think i’d have a huge opinion on was David Wenham as Faramir. I was kinda ambivalent on him when I saw pictures but i thought he did a great job. he showed his quality.

- Music. so much has been said about the films on the music front. I can’t offer too much original insight but when a bit of the Shire theme started to play as Frodo tries to make his way up Mount Doom I cried a little.

- Boromir and Aragorn. I liked the scene where they interact a little in Rivendell. I also like how Aragorn saves Boromir in the Moria battle and gives him this little nod of friendship. I think the films did a great job portraying the dynamic they have where Aragorn is clearly suspicious of Boromir’s motivations but grows to respect him to the point where he doesn’t even blame Boromir for being corrupted by the ring because he understands that, at heart, Boromir is a good person. 

- Sam and Frodo in Osgiliath. I expected to be kind of annoyed with the way this plot point played out (I knew ahead of time that it strayed from the book), but I actually liked it a lot. As I’ll say later, there’s some gripes I have with the way the films extremely play up the disagreements between Frodo and Sam, but I loved the scene where Frodo pulls the sword on Sam and then seems so defeated when he realizes what he’s done. I was pleasantly surprised by how emotional this scene made me. It’s admittedly A Lot, but it was done nicely, especially in conjunction with Sam’s “there’s good in this world” speech.

- Treatment of the ending. I almost think I should dislike the ending as it is in the movies, but my heart is soft and I like that they sugarcoated it a bit. I know the whole point of the Scouring of the Shire and Frodo’s depression conveys a lot about war and trauma and I think that is important, but after watching these things for twelve hours I just wanted Frodo & co. to be happy and I was kinda relieved that they cut the Scouring. Does that make me weak and perhaps bad at film analysis? yes. do I care? no. I was also very glad that the movies didn’t portray how depressed Sam was about losing Frodo in the end. Yes, he cries, but when he walks home to his family he seems happy and in the books that scene came off so much bleaker. I definitely liked the lighter tone.

THINGS I WAS NEUTRAL ON/DIDN’T LIKE

- Arwen. (Neutral) I don’t hate her, I don’t love her. I think the story she and Aragorn have is compelling and I 100% get why the filmmakers decided to add it to give her character more depth, but it felt misplaced at times. maybe it’s just because it was the only storyline I didn’t know in depth, but the scenes with the Arwen/Aragorn flashbacks felt a bit confusing and disorienting. Don’t have anything against Arwen as a character though, I think she’s pretty alright.

- Gimli. (Complicated thoughts) I want to start off by saying I don’t dislike Gimli. I like him a lot! I just think the movies did him a bit dirty. He had some good movie-exclusive moments, but I think his character really fell into this place of being the butt of too many jokes. Would have liked to see some more serious Gimli development, especially with his relationship to Legolas. Their friendship felt too much like subtext here, whereas it’s explored far more in the books.

- Two Towers Pacing. (Didn’t really like). The pacing of TTT was...weird. maybe I’m going into this with a closed mind because of the books, but it was odd to have the movie begin with Frodo and Sam and then have them only appear for a few rapid scenes after that. I think the fact that a WHOLE LOT of what happens to Frodo and Sam in TTT is moved to RotK is what makes it feel that way? In the books, Two Towers ends with Sam discovering that Frodo isn’t dead from Shelob’s sting, and I was surprised by how long it took the movies to get to that part. However, I will give the films a little leeway because I think they needed Frodo & Sam content for RotK, since most of what happens in that book is them walking through Mordor basically starving and dying. Doesn’t make for great cinema I guess, so they had to put the whole Shelob/Cirith Ungol saga into the final film. Still, I think there’s a weird lack of Frodo and Sam’s presence in TTT.

- The go home/missing bread arc. (Full of rage abt this one) yeah. so. my criticism of this is gonna sound pretty tired because people complain and complain about this part of RotK. but I’m gonna complain some more!! I don’t think the split between Frodo and Sam does anything for the plot. I really don’t. I guess it emphasizes the fact that Sam doesn’t understand how much Frodo is projecting onto Gollum, but it’s just. unnecessary angst? They had enough angst in the Osgiliath scene! Which I actually liked! And it simply doesn’t make a lot of sense for Frodo to suspect Sam of eating the bread when Sam had already offered Frodo his own food and made it clear that he would very much starve if it meant making sure Frodo could eat. But what I hate most about this scene is not that Frodo gets mad and tells Sam to go home. No. It’s that Sam actually... thinks about doing that? he actually? goes down the staircase? emotionally this is bad because Sam clearly cared enough about Frodo to follow him this far, to nearly drown for him, so why would he leave now. Practically this is bad because 1. how would Sam get out of Mordor alone and 2. where would he go. He turns around almost immediately, yes, but what was his plan. where was he going. why.

THINGS I LOVED

- For Frodo! This line, and every other shoutout to Frodo. In the books, they didn’t really actively talk about/worry about Frodo (and Sam) as much as they do in the movies. I like that they talk about Frodo more in the movies! I like that they’re thinking about him! I know it was implied that they were in the books, but I really like how it’s shown here. I think it gave a more complete picture of how much they all care about him on a personal level in addition to just needing him to succeed from a pragmatic standpoint. 

- Merry and Pippin! I feel like Merry and Pippin were so well rounded in the films. I’ve heard criticism about them being turned into comic relief characters (which they always were a little bit) but it honestly didn’t feel that way to me. They had a bit of a rough start because the films didn’t make their motives for going with Frodo as deep as the books did, but I think that by TTT they were absolutely amazing characters in every scene. In RotK their respective arcs hit really well and the scene where Pippin is singing to Denethor? *chef’s kiss* poetic. beautiful. sad. idk man I just feel like I have such a newfound appreciation for Merry and Pippin.

- Parallels! people have pointed out the parallel of Frodo and Sam’s hands before (drowning scene/mount doom scene) and I love how the movie did that. Just stunning. Also! The moving of the Smeagol & Deagol scene to RotK surprised me because in the books it was like,,,at the beginning of Fellowship, but I think the placement of it in the movies really helped emphasize the similarities between Smeagol & Deagol and Frodo & Sam (and how much Frodo fears this similarity.) There were a lot of other well done parallels between storylines and a few bits of dialogue that were repeated with great timing, but I can’t remember all of them at the moment.  

Edit: here’s one I remembered! when Frodo wakes up after being rescued and sees Gandalf, he says Gandalf’s name in a very similar tone to the one he used at the very beginning of Fellowship. It was a nice little subtle connection.

- I can’t carry it for you...alright this is self-indulgent. everyone knows I love this line. I’m just so glad it made it into the movie intact. Sean Astin’s delivery was amazing. I cheered. My mom cheered. It’s a raw line and it makes me feel secret emotions...like if shrimp colors were feelings. that line makes me feel shrimp feelings. idk i’m so tired i just watched twelve hours of movies this review is decreasing in quality by the minute but i’m about done for now anyway

Various silly afterthoughts

- I would have liked to see Sam kiss Frodo’s hands at least once. This happens 50 thousand times in the books, they could have given me one scene. one little extended edition scene. Please Peter Jackson I’m dyin’ out here

- They literally made Gollum so hateable. kinda the point yes, but I was so on board with Sam’s murderous rage. I know why Gollum’s a profoundly complex character, I know why Frodo pities him, I know why murder is bad, but I too would throw hands with that creature. also he literally body shamed Sam so much what was that skdjksdjksd. Sam is lovely. let him commit a small homicide. 

- the scene where merry and pippin drink the tall boy juice (as someone once referred to it in the tags of one of my posts)... not accurate to the books (since they don’t ever drink it with the end goal of getting tall) but so accurate to life. if I found some water that made me taller than my friends? let me at it

- Frodo panicking when he falls into the spider webs. so real bestie. i felt just as panicked watching that. i am terrified of spiders and Elijah Wood did an amazing job doing exactly what i’d do in the situation. yelping a lot and falling down.

- I feel like it’s never stated that Sam’s a gardener (or at least that he’s specifically Frodo’s gardener) until he tells Faramir he is. Did I miss this. Or do they really never say.  are you just meant to know. are you just meant to pick up gardener vibes from him.

*

This has been a very chaotic lotr movie review. Thanks for reading.

[hoe-imaginess]

hostage | madara uchiha

Madara x Tobirama’s s/o

summary: Tobirama’s wife is held captive when the Uchiha invade Senju territory. She does what she can to keep the peace. It doesn’t last long.

word count: 9.5k 

warnings: sex as a bargaining tool, physical/emotional harm, heavy angst, mentions of miscarriage/abortion, brutal use of sharingan

a/n: part of a long and self-indulgent founders era fic I was writing, but recently gave up on. so this is just a very choppy rough draft. it’s all over the place. apologies for the poor & skimpy writing style. fair warning: bit of a darker rendition of Madara than what I usually write on this blog. IM me if you want more details before reading

⤰

They attack in the dead of night. 

With the main host of the Senju army battling in far-away provinces, Hashirama and Tobirama with it, few seasoned shinobi are left to protect the plot of land which the Senju call home. 

The Uchiha overwhelm the paltry resistance quickly and efficiently, then set about infiltrating the rest of the territory to claim as theirs. 

They’re met with little defiance. Of the Senju who don’t escape into the woods, slipping through Uchiha clutches before they can fully surround the vicinity, a majority left to endure the raid are civilians with no real experience or means to contend the invaders’ assault. 

Chaos ensues. Uchiha chase down fleeing families, drag them back to the center of the camp where hostages are corralled. They bark and shout orders at stubborn Senju who refuse to abide, sometimes resorting to violence to win obedience. 

Then come the fires. The Senju, in one final, practiced act of loyalty, set ablaze as much property as they can in an effort to destroy any intelligence on Senju affairs which the Uchiha might find and use to their favor. 

Some of these renegades are stopped before they can succeed, others manage to do their part before being apprehended. 

She is one among them, burning the room in her home which her husband uses so often to practice and hone his jutsu; where plots of war are imagined and scribed; where important records are stored. 

Tobirama would balk to see all his work going up in flames, but she knows that it’s what he would want her to do. 

The anguish that beats mercilessly in her chest as she watches her home catch fire is dreadful. 

Such a small little place, she thinks. Just big enough for the two of them. They hadn’t been married for more than a few months now. Arranged, like so many unions those days. 

Yet the little, perfect home held such memories in that short time; watching smoke rise from the walls and foundations makes her sick with sorrow. 

But it must be done. Whatever the invaders might pillage from her home, they would find nothing to their benefit, and nothing that might end up hurting Tobirama, or the Senju. 

Two Uchiha men grab her just as she watches the roof of her home collapse in on itself, pillars weakened and corrupted by flame. 

It’s a sodden and meager thing to find so fulfilling, but it’s the only thing from which to reap comfort. 

Doomed as she may now be to whatever her captors have planned, she, too, has plans: plans to remember Tobirama’s prudence, adopt it as her own. Whatever awaits her, she can face with her chin held high.

As she’s herded into a crowd of the Senju hostages, uncertain of their holistic fate, the cries and tears of anguish from men, women, and children alike hurt her beyond words. 

When the leader of the invaders stands before them and addresses them, with his coal-black eyes piercing every one of them even in the dark void of night, she feels anger beyond words. 

And when she learns of his plans to occupy their land, to keep them as prisoners of war, she feels determination. 

⤰

When she’s brought before Madara Uchiha in the coming days for the purpose of interrogation, he senses immediately that she isn’t a Senju.

Arranged marriages aren’t uncommon, and Madara knows Hashirama is quick to support alliances with clans he finds trustworthy enough. Madara wonders who, among the Senju prominent enough to be pursued for political marriage, might call this woman their wife. 

Feeling foolish for having not expected such a question in advance—though somewhere, she’s hardly able to blame herself, given the chaos of the last few days—her mind races for explanation when he inquires about her husband. 

“I’m a widow,” she lies. “He died months ago.”

She remains with the Senju to uphold the alliance her marriage created, she says, hoping he believes it. 

His gaze is startling, and she fears intermittently that he’s staring right through her with those merciless eyes, extracting the truth under her lies, truths that needn’t be spoken, only simmering underneath the surface for his scrutiny to grab. 

She feels apprehension like she’s never known when, after her explanations, he’s quiet. Utterly quiet. 

Then, just as she tries and fails to steel her heart’s rapid beating, he dismisses her. 

As she’s led out of the tent the Uchiha have constructed for their own purposes of war, she takes a calming breath. 

If she plans on putting her wits to use and curbing the punishments soon to be expounded against the Senju innocents, she needs to leverage herself with composure. 

She can’t let Madara Uchiha rattle her this much if she plans on contriving against him. 

If she plans on winning his trust.

⤰

It’s fairly easy to be granted an audience. 

She’s rigid in her loyalty to the Senju, and answers any of Madara’s interrogations about Senju information with silence or ignorance. Still, she’s compliant with otherwise basic facets of the Uchiha occupation; she tells him where best to find food and water in the land; from which fields they might find the most harvest; offers insight on neighboring clans that may contend the Uchiha occupation of Senju territory, loyal to the Senju as they were. 

In compensation, Madara is usually merciful with her requests. She asks that the Senju hostages be given more daily rations and more room in which to sleep and live, now that the Uchiha occupy most of their old homes. 

Generally, entreatments to the betterment of their well-being are met with leniency. Something for which she is glad, but the brother, Izuna, is not. 

She hears them arguing sometimes: Izuna claiming that his elder brother is being too forgiving on the enemy—she assumes she is the enemy in question—and Madara stating in response that he has no quarrel with Senju commoners, and that amending some of their grievances is no harm to their cause. 

These small victories continue to mount, until she finds herself at his side almost daily, discussing hostage afflictions, enduring his queries and, occasionally, even his frustration at receiving no answers. 

This frustration burgeons quickly, until she’s half-convinced that her play at ignorance is one he sees right through. But he always dismisses her when his irritation becomes visible and unavoidable, almost as if to save her from facing the brunt of it. 

It’s the first of the strange, apprehensive intimacies that he gives her. 

More apparent, soon after, are his long-held gazes. 

They sweep over her, inspect her while she talks, greedily scrutinizing her responses. He doesn’t miss the shiver that runs through her when his dark eyes linger for too long. 

She isn’t naive enough to think this prolonged regard is devoid of any suspicious undertone, nor is she naive to dismiss the lust behind his gazes; the careful inspections of her very body that describe something hidden and desiring under his facade. 

She doesn’t want him to look at her like that. She doesn’t like it. Doesn’t like the way it makes her skin crawl, or her heart stutter. 

But how can she be ungrateful for his dangerous admiration when it might prove profitable?

⤰

She reaps the benefits of his greed not long after their invasion. 

He’s taken up residency in one of the precluded houses near the center of the camp. No guards stand watch outside; he doesn’t need them. 

When she asks for entrance to his room he gives it, albeit cautiously. She doesn’t bother disguising her visit under any pretense; she’s there for him, and he knows this, apparently, judging by the careful look he gives her when she walks in and shuts the door behind her. 

Shame and irritation sizzles underneath her skin, but she ignores it. Her efforts have guaranteed the safety of the innocents under Uchiha rule so far, but those efforts won’t last forever. There’s more to be done. 

It’s not long until she’s pressed against him. Insistently her hand rubs over the space between his thighs. He’s soft, unaffected by her touch. It discourages her, but she continues, regardless. 

“What do you hope to gain from this?” he asks, eyes steely and trained on her, as if her eager hand isn’t even there. 

He hasn’t made a move to stop her, so she urges herself on. 

"Isn’t this what you want?” she implores.

“What makes you believe that?”

“The way you look at me.” 

It’s a calm declaration, though she’s still explicitly hiding something under her tone, he sees, something like frustration. 

“How do I look at you?” he inquires.

When she refuses to answer, he lifts a finger under her chin and forces her gaze to him. 

“Like you want to control me,” she answers bitterly.

The bulge under her hand twitches to life. She rubs harder. His face changes; his expression is tighter, more concentrated. 

“And that’s what you want?” His hand stretches across the back of her neck, keeps her head still. Fingers brush at the nape in deceptively gentle tandem. “To be controlled?” 

“No.” She squeezes her hand, hard. He replies with an angry, swift breath. “You could never control me.” 

The hand at her nape curls into her hair and yanks hard, so hard that her rubbing stops. 

“I already do.”

She’s infuriated by his words, he can see that plainly on her face. But he doesn’t care. She’s made the mistake of dangling her seductions in front of him, and he’ll rise to the occasion, if she's so determined to stir him. 

It shocks her how smoothly he maneuvers her to the futon at their feet, lays her down and climbs over her; how expertly his mouth captures hers and his tongue slides over her lips. 

She opens her mouth obediently, lets him explore. Shame courses through her when a hand between her thighs coaxes a pleased, albeit startled hum from her mouth. 

His fingers work her up quickly, pull her clothes off without a hiccup or delay. 

She had, foolishly, underestimated the strength of him. After she’s stripped bare, when he holds her arms down, there’s no room for her to fight back. As he looms over her, powerful and dangerous, she realizes she should be shaking in fear, in hatred, in uncertainty. 

Instead, her body is calm, forcefully calm. 

Sensing this, he sees it not as her resolve, but as a challenge. 

She refuses to close her eyes when he starts, and stares up at him, disputing his gaze. The pleased sigh that leaves his mouth when he starts rocking into her makes her shiver, despite her determination to keep her body still, keep it pliable for his pleasure but loyal to her convictions. 

His thrusts are deep and hard, reaching into her in ways she didn’t even know possible until now. Her breath catches with every snap of his hips, until those breaths are choking off into surprised gasps when he angles his body a certain way, hits a certain spot inside of her that makes her legs jolt with pleasure. 

One hand is planted firmly into the sheets beside her, keeping his body suspended over her. The other holds her thigh, keeps it pressed down to ensure she’s stretched as open as he needs her to be. 

When pleasure urges him to go harder, he takes her leg and curves it around his waist to dig into her deeper. With the new angle she can peer down, watch his cock spear into her with precise finesse. She tears her eyes away, the sight of it making her nerves tingle, making the unbidden pleasure that much more potent. 

Even if she wanted to vacate her mind, to numb herself to all feeling until she could be sure he was done and her task finished, it’s an impossible feat. Too many sensations; his heavy breath coming in low pants; strong thighs shoving against her legs with every thrust; his eyes, even when she turns from them, searing into her, pinning her down.  

A flush spreads over her body, hot and feverish and anxious. In the scant light she sees his skin giving way to his own pleasure; sweat lines the curve of his prominent clavicles, a drop on his brow as it furrows with the heightened pace of his thrusts. 

She starts to tremble uncontrollably as he roughly pounds into her, losing some of his rhythm, a basic need for release urging him. Rumbling, chest-born moans spill from his lips, and against her body’s wishes, she cums with a hard-fought whimper. 

As she shivers through the onslaught of pleasure, he stares down at her, his face an emotionless canvas.

She doesn’t even realize he’s near his end until he grabs onto her hard, grunts loud and staggered, then stops moving. 

He takes a moment to let the pleasure sink in, eyes closed to revel in the wet heat surrounding him, pulsing and twitching. Then he pulls out.

He leaves her on the mat, naked, curled into herself as if to hide the shame of her orgasm. Nothing in his posture speaks of an identical sentiment on his part. The sex she finds so monumentally impairing, he sees as nothing more than what it is: sex. 

No sooner than he moves away from her is he dressing, the raw muscle of his back moving with every motion, his sweat-glazed scars glistening in the moonlight that invades from closed curtains. 

Before he leaves, he says, “I assume you have herbs.” 

Her eyes open. 

The herbs. 

She had almost forgotten. She hasn’t needed to take them since Tobirama left, since there was no one else to share her bed…

The thought of Madara’s seed quickening inside of her makes her nauseous. She’s almost grateful he’s reminded her of the contraceptives. 

“Yes,” she says. She’ll take them first thing in the morning. They were made to work even after the fact. No need to panic. 

“Good.” 

He leaves her in his room, and she falls asleep despite her errant thoughts.

⤰

She draws a bath for herself and slips into the lukewarm water. 

The bruises and love-marks haven’t gone away. Every time they do, every time her skin is returned to its unsullied state, she’s in his bed again, tempering him, giving herself over to his rough desires in some hope it will continue to coax leniency out of him. 

She’s been bathing more often, she realizes: some meager attempt to wash his scent and his touch from her, no matter the pleasure she takes from it in kind. 

But there’s still much resistance in her thoughts when she gives herself over to him, a chiding reminder in the back of her head that says what she’s doing is shameful. 

She’s a married woman, after all; widow, in Madara’s eyes. 

But the masquerade doesn’t take away from the guilt she feels every time she opens her legs for his lust. It’s not even easy to imagine it’s Tobirama anymore. Tobirama isn’t so purposefully rough, isn’t keen on making pleasure so hard-fought with such domination that she receives from the Uchiha. 

A chill runs through her to think of the difference between them, to think she might never again know the softer, more loving touch of her husband. The possessive, taking nature of Madara’s intimacy might be all she ever knows. 

She touches the skin under her breast, feeling no texture on the flesh, but knowing the seal Tobirama left is still there: a risky, but comforting reminder of his caresses. 

She so misses them. She misses his voice, his touch, his earthy scent. The room around her is so devoid of it. The very air feels seized by the conquest of her Uchiha captors. Every breath she draws is more of their smoke, their fire, their danger.

She sinks underneath the surface of the bathwater, eyes closed, a calming air reserved in her lungs. 

The water is comforting, reminds her of Tobirama. She imagines it’s him surrounding and warming her skin, if only for a moment. 

She lets the world around her numb to nothingness, hoping at some point, so too will her anxieties leave her and make this dilemma all the easier to endure.

⤰

Izuna hadn’t meant to come across her this way.

The woman isn’t answering his brother’s summons, and the guards stationed outside her home say she won’t respond to the calls or demanding knocks they make at her door. 

Izuna isn’t a patient man. He has much better things to do than fetch his brother’s stubborn whore. 

The guards at the door had apparently been warned not to intrude on her sanctity more than necessary, and utter a protest when Izuna barges into her home unannounced. He ignores their murmuring, unfamiliar with the respect—or whatever it is—that keeps them compliant. 

The living area is empty and so is the kitchen. He calls her name once, then twice, irritation coloring his shouts. They garner no response. 

At the back of the house, he hears a sound, and goes to it. He hears it again once he’s closer, coming from the washroom, he thinks. 

He knocks once. 

No response.

He knocks again.

Still, no response. 

Sufferance all but worn, he pulls open the door. 

There’s a bath of water, her form distorted underneath its surface. His intrusion is apparently louder than any previous call for her attention and she folds up quickly from underneath the water, breaking the surface and sending splashes everywhere in her haste to glance around, size him up, and cover herself for modesty. 

Too late. He’s seen it. 

Never mind her naked body. Even if he needs to be forgiven for barging in on her later, he doubts, now seeing the mark that she quickly goes to hide under her breast, that she’ll be getting mercy from him or any other Uchiha from this point on. 

⤰

When Izuna drags her into the war tent, Madara is more startled by the interruption than irritated. 

She’s half-clothed, body and hair wet from the remnants of what he assumes was an interrupted cleanse; Izuna has a distraught look of fury on his face that never bodes well. What surprises Madara most, however, is the way she cowers into herself when Izuna throws her down at his feet. 

“What is this, Izuna?” Madara demands of his brother, mildly offended to witness this treatment of her, at his brother’s hand, no less. Madara’s intimacies with her are common knowledge, if not frowned upon by some of his Uchiha lieutenants. 

Izuna points an accusative finger down at her. “Look at it.”

Madara blinks through his confusion, waiting for clarity. Izuna hisses in anger, grabs her hair, and yanks her upright. 

“Show him,” he commands her.

She groans angrily in response. 

He yanks a little harder. 

“Show him.”

Madara’s suspicion gains with rapid unease. The doubt always tugging at the rear of his conscience comes to the forefront, ready to be fed with truths, ready to reap its victory. 

Izuna forces her to stay still, then claws at the hand she has wrapped about her stomach, hiding something beneath the haphazardly-adorned clothing. 

Madara catches on, and approaches. 

She slows her writhing when he crouches down in front of her. Then something like preemptive defeat rushes through her when he puts his hands on her, and she stills completely.

Madara doesn’t know what he expects to see beneath the fold of the robe he pulls away from her skin—the skin which is always covered by bandages when he strips her bare at night; courtesy, she always says, of a wound received during the invasion—but Tobirama’s Senju’s hiraishin mark is definitely the last.

The silence that ensues as he scrutinizes the seal is far more tormenting, she thinks, than any punishment he can possibly have in store for her. 

He’s enraged, of that she’s sure. And the indignant, defiant scowl on her face which receives him when he looks at her undoubtedly makes that worse. 

But she’s been found out, she knows. There’s little else she has to her aims at this point except her resentment, a resentment which she can now display with liberation. 

Her masquerade is extraneous now; any excuse she can possibly make redundant. She has to accept her fate, with her chin held high. 

Like Tobirama would. 

But the conviction doesn’t last long. 

“Hold her down,” Madara tells two of the Uchiha men in the room. 

She panics. 

When Izuna’s hands leave her and more vindictive ones take their place, she starts kicking away, trying to fight and make their hold on her that much more difficult to win. 

But it’s useless against the pure fear that runs through her when Madara slips out of the tent and returns a moment later, in his hand, an iron poker which had been mending the campfire outside. 

When he brings it over to her, she feels the heat radiating off of its glowing, orange, sharp tip. 

Her heart rate skips into the margins of delirium and she shakes her head. 

“Don’t—” she pleads, glaring up at him. “Don’t—”

Madara presses the singeing iron against the skin below her breast and she screams. Loud and ragged. He doesn’t care. 

Even before the deed is done, the smell of her own burnt flesh nauseates her beyond the limits of her endurance, and she passes out. 

⤰

The burn is so severe that it leaves her bed-ridden for days on end. 

Every twist and turn of her body stretches the thin, pink skin and leaves her whimpering in pain. 

Uchiha medics tend to her wound. She isn’t allowed the relief of healing jutsu; the burn is treated with oils and creams which alleviate only some of the pain, and none of the superficial scarring. Something for which she knows she has Madara to thank. He wants her to bear the mark of her deceit, wants the charred flesh to serve as a reminder of mockery. 

She had slighted him with her seductions, made a fool of him with her deception. The burn itself would be a meager sanction in comparison—he could have killed her, after all—if not for the scornful significance it held that did more justice to his condescension than any words could.

Any semblance of superiority her secret had once given her is all but crushed with the wound. Tobirama’s seal had soothed her, served as a pillar of faith and courage; a warm breath of comfort on her skin whenever the chill of her captors’ doujutsu fixed her, whenever Madara’s gaze searched her for weakness. 

Knowing her husband’s latent protection remained hidden from the eyes of the invaders had been enough, amidst all the turmoil, to shield her from fear. 

Now it was gone, rendered useless and indiscernible under corrugated skin. 

Like her home, her body now, too, at the hands of the Uchiha, denied her refuge. 

Yet in some twisted, ironic way, the wound still grounds her. The pain is a bittersweet reminder that her body is alive, and not a shell for the hopelessness she feels inside. 

It’s a degrading and pitiful comfort. But it’s all she has now. 

⤰

Madara makes infrequent visits during her recovery. 

The first few are made in silence. As she lies there, pitiful and motionless, he stares without a word to spare. His scrutinizing gaze, both spiteful to set eyes upon her and satisfied to see her agony, is the only acknowledgement he gives. 

The patronizing graduates to interrogation. He stands over her impotent form, leering down as he demands to know the reason for her having the seal on her skin, demands to know her relationship to Tobirama Senju. 

The line of questioning betrays the deductions he’s already made. He’s already decided that the woman is Tobirama’s spouse, or at the least, some sort of lover. The intimate placement of his seal is telling enough, and her previous elusion on the subject of her purpose on Senju land is further proof. All the suspicions piece together and exploit her lies. 

But he wants to hear the truth from her own mouth, the very mouth which conspired to deceive him with its pleasure, keep him pliant with its warm caresses on his body. Only then will he be satisfied, only when she admits who she is, what she is, who she belongs to—

Then he can remind her that it’s he who owns her now. He who conquered her home as easily as he had conquered her. 

Her silence isn’t as defiant as she thinks, not by a long shot. To patronize her is a pleasant notion, but the hooded, resentful gaze she gives him fails to stir him in any way besides to sing praises of his own power. 

⤰

“Kill her,” Izuna insists. 

His determined indignation on the matter comes like a chant in the days following the revelation. 

Madara’s commitment to deciding how best to deal with her is only marginally interrupted by his brother’s input, but it does disrupt his logic and feed his own fury. 

He should kill her. Should string her up for the rest of the Senju to see: let her be an example to whoever else among them may have delusions of defying him. 

“What point is there in keeping her alive?” Izuna presses on. “Kill her. Send her body to the Senju army. Let them know we won’t be trifled with.”

“No,” is Madara’s decisive reply. “She serves more use to us alive.”

“I fail to see how. She’s done enough to outwit you. I would’ve thought you eager to be rid of her.”

Madara resents the comment, but tempers his irritation. “I know your dislike for Tobirama makes you enthusiastic to do her harm. And why is that? Because you know harm done to her is harm done to him.”

“Precisely.”

“Then you should understand the benefit of keeping her alive.”

“Fine. Keep her alive. But not unscathed. If you want to use her as leverage, deliver a gift to the Senju. The correspondence between you and Hashirama has been pitifully civil so far. Send something with the next envoy. Something of hers. A finger will do.”

“No.” Madara’s tone is unequivocally firm. “We will do no such thing.”

Madara has little doubt that his brother’s enmity runs deep enough that an adequate offense on her part, no matter how slight, might be cause for Izuna to damage her. That’s not something Madara can allow. 

His conscience forces away the fact that part of his aversion to his brother’s threats are rooted in possessiveness; Izuna has no claim to her, has no entitlement to her punishment. 

That’s Madara’s. That’s his. And his alone.

⤰

How she finds herself sharing his bed again, she may never know, and will never be brave enough to ponder. 

She’s silent when he moves inside of her. Even when he makes her cum, as easily and powerfully as he always has, she barely lets the ragged, frustrated moan loose from her lips for a second before closing her throat and swallowing down the tightness.

When he rolls off of her he lies in silence. Where he would usually get up to bathe or leave, he remains, like he's done so often recently, to sleep beside her. 

He taunted her once, told her he had no fears of sleeping beside her now, because she knows what it would mean for the Senju hostages if she tried anything. 

That aside, she’s half-convinced that he’s awake at all hours of the night regardless, waiting patiently for the opportunity to catch her plots and punish her accordingly. 

But how difficult would it be? To kill him, leave him, save as many hostages as she can while he bleeds out in the room, alone and cold. 

It’s a fantasy she allows herself to imagine over and over again. A fantasy too opportunistic to ignore after their nights of scornful passion leave her weak and spiteful. 

The kunai she left under her pillow feels cold as ice when she slowly reaches for it, hiding the purposeful movement behind a comfortable stretch. 

It’s been a long hour since she first played at sleep. She never hears him breathing, but considers his silence as good a signal as any that he’s unconscious. 

When she carefully turns over, she confirms that his eyes are closed. He sleeps on his back, always, as most shinobi do. Alert and at the ready even in slumber. 

Slowly she rises from under the sheets, ever so careful not to let the fabric move an inch across his skin. She should just slit his throat, she realizes. But piercing into him will be swifter, and more profitable. 

The kunai wavers in her hand. Killing unwitting men in their sleep isn’t so difficult a task; shinobi and kunoichi alike do it all the time, don’t they? That was war. 

It should be easy to stab down into his heart and twist, to watch him wake in tormenting shock as the blood fills his lungs and chokes him. She would enjoy that. 

But the wavering in her hand worsens to a subtle tremor. 

He’s not an unwitting man, not some simple enemy to kill for convenience. That makes her confidence ever harder to steel, but she has to. She has to kill him. 

She won’t wait a moment longer. Kill him, destroy him, and be done with it. 

But just as she raises the kunai, a strong hand wraps around her wrist in an unforgiving grip.

His eyes are open, glaring at her. 

She shivers with fear and rage as his hand tightens to a bruising grip. Her panic sends her mind into a frenzy of action. 

She can still do it. Just one stab downwards and she can end it. 

But even pushing down with both hands doesn’t overwhelm his strength. He still glares and scowls, infuriated.

She tries again, putting her entire body’s weight down on the weapon, limbs shaking with the effort. 

He doesn’t budge. 

He flips them instead, and the kunai is suddenly in his hands, pressed against her throat. 

“There are easier ways to kill me,” he mutters. If his blood is boiling at her trespass, nothing in his bored, thin voice betrays composure. “You could be more creative.”

Tears prickle her eyes. Her hands press desperately against his, trying to push the cold blade away from her skin. But he keeps it there. Even the smallest movement will slice the flesh. 

“Remember that you are the one at my mercy. I could kill you and every Senju in this camp any time I wish.”

“You’re horrible,” she seethes, breath shallow in anger. "I hate you.”

“I’m aware. Yet you continue to share my bed night after night. You still think you’ll gain anything from it?”

The words sting her pride, split her open to let the doubts and faults and fruitless depravities spill in. 

“You do nothing but shame yourself. Look at you. Spreading your legs for me like a dutiful whore, thinking it will somehow save you and your people. It’s pathetic—"

She slaps him, hard. 

Though his cheek burns with redness, he’s otherwise unfazed by pain. He scowls and slams her arm down to prevent any more of her rage. 

“You may think you have control over me,” she says in a seething whisper. Even with the kunai pressed against her jugular, the expression on her face is nothing short of brazen. A lofty, defeated brazen that comes across as scorn. “But you don’t, and you never will. There’s only one man I’ve ever loved. When you’re on top of me I think of him and only him. It makes it bearable. You’ll never be half the man that he is.”

He scowls at her, his eyes like burning, silent daggers. She knows she might have sealed her fate right then and there. But so be it. Let her last moments of life be spent spiting him. 

Her body relaxes, unconcerned with fighting whatever comes next. 

She doesn’t expect him to laugh. 

“Tell yourself that, if you must,” he says, with a sadistic, grim smirk. “But you know very well the power I have over you.”

His eyes turn crimson and she gasps, but by the time she makes to look away, it’s too late.

In the illusion, Tobirama is frowning at her, eyes wide, a sneer of disgust on his face. 

She doesn’t understand why, at first. Why does he look so gloomy? She feels only joy to see him. Joy and unbearable relief. 

She tries to run to him. But burning hands at her throat summon her back. Despite no voice, face, or body to accompany the unforgiving grip, she knows it’s Madara who impedes her by the ferocious strength alone. 

“Whore.”

It’s not Madara’s voice, but Tobirama’s. It carries over to her, like they’re separated by a valley despite his being only yards away. If she could reach out to him, touch him, feel his embrace—

“Uchiha whore,” he barks at her again, scowling now. 

“No,” she pleads, eyes stinging with tears. She tries to pull the grip from her neck away and escape, but Madara locks her arms down to her sides, rendering her utterly trapped. 

“Tobirama,” she begs for his sanctity, for his forgiveness. But he’s backing away from her now. 

She cries and cries desperately, screeching in frustration when Madara’s grip tightens to a visceral degree, until she feels like her skin is alight with flames. 

She looks down, and sees that they are. And the skin which these flames scorch dies off to corrupted, pink flesh as it travels up her arm in a slow crawl. An agonizing, horrible, slow crawl. 

Hours elapse as she endures the torture. Hours of raw, inhuman pain and her husband slurring his vile insults at her. The sheer destruction it pillages on her mind and body makes her feel small, makes the flames which take their time in exploring her skin burn brighter and hotter until finally she feels like nothing but ash. 

The last of her willpower billows away with that ash, as she watches Tobirama’s form start to disappear on some horizon that defies logic. 

She still wants to touch him. Still wants to be held by him. She still wants him, despite how clearly he doesn’t want her. 

His obscenities circle her thoughts, all-encompassing, completely and finally defeating her. 

Whore. Slut. Traitor. Weakling.

She cries a voiceless cry when Tobirama disappears, and Madara takes the illusion away shortly after. 

She blinks for clarity, eyes adjusting back to a reality no less harrowing than the previous artifice.

He leers down at her, takes in her anguish and her seedy frame with gluttonous cruelty in his gaze. 

Numb, teary eyes stare up at him as they slowly read his form. Realizing her predicament, she starts to hyperventilate, and tears run down her face. 

She shuts her eyes in one last attempt of modesty, forcing the stream of salt to sluice more violently down her cheeks. 

“Tobirama,” she pleads weakly, the only thing that she can think of in her hazy pain. 

It angers Madara. 

“He doesn’t want you. Now look at me.”

She refuses.

His hand twists into her hair and snaps her head back so hard that she almost sees stars behind her eyelids.

“I said look at me.”

“No,” she cries weakly, though she obeys, regardless. Her bloodshot, desperate eyes feed his sadistic vengeance. Then she’s turning her head away from him. Meager defiance. “Please—”

Satisfied with the short admission of her defeat, he takes her face and forces her look at him. 

“Try anything like that again and I’ll make sure you spend an eternity in a nightmare of my making. Do you understand?”

She has no energy to respond. 

“Answer me.”

All she can offer is a weak nod, tears still streaming down her cheeks. 

In a moment of triumphant vindictiveness, his fingers press harshly against the burn under her breast, bringing to life a reminiscent pain, a crushing reminder of what he’s done to her. 

He pushes her face away and she curls into herself, thinking of Tobirama.

In these makeshift quarters he’ll find no sleep; his mind is a mess of anger, desperation, and confusion. He needed to hurt her, didn’t he? She had defied him again. What other choice did he have? 

Another moment spent in her presence is another pin of irrational emotion nudged into his chest. He needs to leave.

He catches her glaring at him when he climbs off and starts to dress. It’s a look full of pure, searing hatred.

But he says nothing. He’s extracted enough triumph from her. 

His silence is in victory; hers in defeat.

⤰

She feels less alive each passing day. 

She doesn’t see him very often, not since the incident in the night when she’d failed to take swift revenge. 

Occasionally she hears him on the other side of the door, inquiring the guards who stand watch outside about her disposition. Rarely does he enter and see for himself. 

When he does, they exchange no words. He examines the room for any plotting demonstration of escape or sabotage, disguising his observation of her underneath these sweeping inspections. 

However, sometimes he gives up on the pretense and simply stares, studying her, trying to decide how he feels.

His actions are regrettable, of that he’s sure and self-condemned, but there’s still a glimmer of insolence in her eyes when he catches her gaze: one which rekindles the spite within him, fans vengeful flames and reminds him that she brought this upon herself. 

She would see no pity from him. 

Any words of apology on his tongue fizzle away then, and his visits conclude as silently as they begin.

⤰

The fight in her dwindles helplessly, and as it dwindles, so too does all sense of reservation. 

The prodigious determination there once had been to contend Madara and his Uchiha conspirators is all but spent. What good does it do her now? She’s broken, subjugated, and without leverage. 

Her body, which had once enabled her to use its seductions to the advantage of her people, is now depleted and only a shell. A shell for the hollow, cold heap of defeat that she now is. 

How deluded was she to think she could save all the people here? How had she ever thought that she alone could protect the hostages from the evil at their door? 

And Tobirama, whose embrace was denied to her even in dreadful illusions—what would he think of her? Madara was right. What else was she now but an Uchiha whore? Obsolete, ruined, soiled. 

Tobirama won’t want her. Not now. Not ever again. 

What more is there for her?

As the weeks go by, Madara’s distrust ebbs away. Suspicions of subterfuge die with her audacity; the times he does happen upon her, she’s nothing but a husk of the sharp woman she had made herself out to be. 

House arrest soon becomes a superfluous precaution, and even when the guards leave their posts, she makes few attempts to leave her home. And when she does, she wanders aimlessly, meanders without direction and without purpose. 

She’s pitiful, Madara decides. Pitiful and crushed. He has nothing to fear or suspect from her. Her fire is gone. 

What he doesn’t expect is that the last ember of that fire holds one desperate dredge of scorn. One which she won’t allow to be extinguished. 

When she wanders into the Uchiha war tent that day, she isn’t stopped. 

She’s given no second-glance by any of the Uchiha shinobi. Even if they were to give her careful inspection, they would never know of the kunai in her pocket, the steel icy and begging to be utilized for one final, desperate fight.

Madara isn’t there. Instead, she finds Izuna.

“Where is he?” she asks weakly. 

Izuna pays her so limited attention these days, regards her as little else except the harlot his brother broke in and conquered, that her presence has nothing more than a fleeting impasse on his patience. Like a gnat buzzing around his head. 

“My brother? Who knows.” 

When he accords her his attention he sees that she’s looking lifeless as ever. Sometimes he ponders the nature of the unkind things his brother has done to her, with a fraction of a fraction of pity. Then he’s reminded of the trespasses she’s made, and the pity is gone. 

“What?” he mocks. “If you’re hoping to charm some leniency out of him, you’ll get nowhere looking like that.” He tsks, a sneer marring his lips as he pulls his eyes over her form, like it’s a harrowing task to complete. “You’re better off groveling on your knees... save him the displeasure of looking at your face, at the least.” 

Although she doesn’t react, he sees humiliation simmering underneath the hardened, broken surface of her expression. He would have favored a more promising response to his taunts, but he’s satisfied to see her tamed of her previous unruliness, nevertheless.

He turns his back to her. Her misery is pleasant only for so long; the more he looks, the more unsightly it becomes. 

The Uchiha sigil stares back at her, stitched proudly and delicately onto the back of his garb. 

It mocks her, does more to incite her than any of his degrading condescension can. 

Unthinking, she moves to him. 

Hearing her approach he turns to meet her, the same bored sneer on his face. 

The melancholy is still in full bloom on her features, but there’s something else there, too. Something that tells him she’s struggling to express a grievance on her tongue.  

He scoffs.

“What is it, woman?”

He’s not Madara, she decides, but he’ll do. 

Aimlessly, she yanks the kunai from her pocket, then brings it down on his neck, not caring for whatever consequences will follow.

⤰

She wondered why Izuna didn’t kill her the moment he wrangled the kunai from her grip.

Blood spills from his neck; thick crimson pours in rivulets down his shirt, down the hand that presses against his wound. 

It may not be fatal but it’s certainly critical. Sharingan had worked in his favor. An inch more of the dagger’s descent studied without the activation of his doujutsu might have guaranteed his death. He inched away just in time.

She doesn’t have time to lament her failure. 

He did throw her to the floor in his anger, but nothing else comes. If he hadn’t been so occupied with sealing his wound, she imagines his ire would prove much worse, if not terminal. 

She doesn’t bother pushing up from her place on the floor when another Uchiha, hearing the din of Izuna’s angry hollers, barges in, sees the chaos, and sprints away after taking orders from Izuna. She doesn’t hear the essence of these orders, numb to the world as she is. 

Had the kunai been in her hand, she would slit her own throat in defiance. Death would have been preferable to what comes next.

When Madara storms in, she’s still a pile of hapless defeat on the floor. 

He says not a word, but the pure rage boiling behind his gaze says all it needs to: She made a grievous mistake. 

She gasps when he grabs a fistful of her hair and yanks her to her feet. She screws her eyes shut, unwilling to look at him. He doesn’t seem to care whether she does or doesn’t. 

She’s certain that he rips hair right from the roots when he whips her around, shoves her forward with enough force to break every bone in her body. A bookcase greets her as she barrels into it. That’s when her eyes open in pained shock, a rushed gasp escaping her as she struggles to regain the air thrown out of her lungs. 

She wants to collapse, but a hand clasps around her neck and keeps her standing. Then the fingers tighten around her throat. She chokes pitifully for oxygen. 

“I told you that if you ever tried something like that again that you would regret it.” His voice is cold with anger. “But to make an attempt on my brother’s life?”

She doesn't answer. Apparently, he doesn’t expect her to.

He shoves her back to the ground. It knocks the wind out of her, and when she pushes herself up on shaky limbs, a heavy boot in her back sends her to the floor again. 

She yelps as he digs his heel into sensitive muscle. A burst of hot and red pain spreads through her back. Her kidneys, maybe? She doesn’t know. But he’s damaged something internally, and she wishes she were dead. 

Her breaths are pitiful and scant when he finally takes his foot away. She says nothing. Thinks of nothing. 

“Get up,” he demands, in a rigid, thin voice devoid of anything except fury.

Even if she wanted to obey, her body refuses. 

“Get up,” he snaps, and the unforgiving hand returns to twist into her hair, sending webs of pan across her scalp as he hauls her to her knees.  

He crouches in front of her, a hand still fisted in her hair. Now he wants her to look. His other hand takes her face and squeezes, so hard she’s half-convinced he plans to crush her skull. 

“Open your eyes and look at me.”

Desperately, she tries. But it’s a task to keep her eyes open without nausea seeping into her gut. Her eyelids force themselves to shut in an effort to quell dizziness. 

But then he jostles her around by the grip in her hair, so hard and so viciously that her entire world blacks out momentarily. The motion sends her mind reeling and her vision swimming. 

“Open your eyes.”

Adrenaline shoots through her and demands her to obey. 

She isn’t surprised when the red of sharingan is there to greet her. 

Everything goes black in the world of his making. She almost expects to see Tobirama there, for him to shout at her and degrade her again. 

Instead, she feels pain. The worst pain she’s ever felt. So painful she can’t breathe, can’t think. The only thing that exists is the hot, searing flame of anguish that stings every inch of her skin, every gap of her insides, down to the very organs. 

A hundred kunai stab into her head. She hears them slicing flesh to ribbons and digging fractures into her skull. Her blood curdles until it’s set aflame. That too, she hears, bubbling underneath the surface of her skin like thick, boiling water.

Everything hurts. Everything is endless agony.

When air finally fills her lungs, she wails. 

So loud, so violently, so wretchedly, that it’s almost itself anguish to hear.

Then he takes it all away. 

The relief is heavenly. She crumples into a ball. 

She hates it. She hates the weakness. If Tobirama could see her…

Then the pain comes again. She screams in tandem, then bites her tongue so hard it bleeds.

The cruel routine goes on, for what to her deluded, frenetic mind seems like hours, but is in reality passed in mere minutes.

Izuna watches as his wound is tended to, his expression as devoid of any mercy or sympathy as his brother’s. 

⤰

Two weeks later, when her body and mind make the slow, pitiful climb back to equilibrium, she notices the change. 

It’s unlike one she’s felt before, but not entirely unrelated to an irksome nausea: a queasiness in her stomach that neither food nor rest alleviates; something new, like an aura, that swathes her and accompanies her every second of the day; an extra weight added to the burden of her body.

Then comes the fearful ascent of logic. 

Amidst her turmoil, she’s forgotten about missing her monthly bleed. Its absence could be blamed on the toll her body has taken, but she knows better. 

The revelation brings her into a spiral of hectic anxiety, of despairing conflict. 

It’s not long before she finds herself sneaking into one of the medical tents, decision already made on how best to deal with the new predicament. 

She shuffles through the stock of vials and herbs which the Uchiha medics keep at the back of the tent, finds what she’s looking for and almost escapes as covertly as she had infiltrated, when she’s stopped. 

“What is that you have?”

She pauses a foot away from the tent’s exit, her body in a mode of panic.

“Some herbs for my wounds,” she mutters.

An elder Uchiha woman, a medic, turns her around and inspects the filched items in her grasp. 

“That is ginger root,” the medic observes warily. “If you need something for the pain, I would suggest dried poppy.”

The young woman stares fretfully at the old woman; the old woman stares back.  

“Thank you,” the younger stutters blankly, unable to make a step in either direction; play along and heed the advice to go search for the proper herbs, or flee and risk suspicion? 

“You look ill,” the old woman says, eyeing her, putting a hand to her forehead.

She backs away. “I just need rest.”

“Let me examine you. I can help you find the right medicines.”

“No,” she says. Any medic will be able to feel the life inside of her, given the chance. “I’ll be alright.”

She tries to leave then, but the old woman doesn’t let her. 

⤰

When Madara answers the request for his presence at one of the medic huts, he’s surprised to find her there, sitting on a cot, hunched over and distressingly quiet. Two Uchiha men stand at her sides, supervising her.

“What is the meaning of this?” Madara asks. 

Recently, he’s appreciated any reason to stay away from her. The sight of her makes him sick, makes a conflict of rage and confusion and culpability dance angrily in his head. 

The old woman offers him the ginger root, and a small vial of clear liquid. “She was after these.”

Madara takes them into examination. “Am I supposed to know what this is?” His patience, already thin, dwindles considerably for the roundabout elucidations.

“A toxic mixture,” the old woman explains plainly. “Boiled with regular tea and these will certainly destroy whatever grows inside a womb.”

With subdued bafflement, Madara looks at the woman on the cot, understanding all at once. 

She doesn’t dare meet his eyes. Even now her body trembles with frustration, with fear, with defeat. 

Izuna, who had accompanied his brother, scoffs, incredulously loud. “So either you managed to put one in her, brother, or it’s the Senju’s.”

“Can it be determined?” Madara asks the medic, ignoring his brother, and never taking his eyes off the frail form on the cot. 

“In a month’s time the chakra should be durable enough for us to sense.” 

“Kill it,” Izuna insists, coming to stand next to his brother, a voice of frustrated reason. “If it’s a Senju, better off unborn. And if it’s an Uchiha... you would pass on the clan’s power to halfling filth.”

Unperturbed, Madara stares in silence. Finally she meets his gaze, unsettled by the look of dark concentration in his eyes. 

“Why attempt to destroy the life inside of you unless it’s a burden to you?” he ponders out loud.

She realizes his train of logic: it must be his, for her to be so adamant in her pursuit to terminate it. 

“If it was my husband’s,” she says, “and it is, I would do the same. You would kill my child the moment I bring it into this world. Why let life grow that is destined to be murdered in cold blood?”

“And if it were mine?”

“It isn’t."

Madara scowls. 

“And if it were,” she goes on dangerously. “All the more reason to destroy it.”

That visibly infuriates him. 

“Give her the herbs,” Izuna asserts again. “Let her solve the problem. Either way she’s doing you a favor.”

Madara doesn’t speak for a long time. 

His careful inspection of her lasts long enough to make her doubts rise afresh, make her feet fidget uncomfortably and her heart pound in desperation.

“She stays here tonight,” he decides ultimately, looking to the Uchiha guards at her side. “She doesn’t leave.”

Izuna looks muddled, and somewhat irritated by the decision. 

She just looks afraid. 

⤰

He doesn't return for many days, but his absence can’t be appreciated as much of a reprieve at all; her mind is a mess of anxiety and denial the entire time. 

This can’t be happening, she tells herself countless times. She can’t be pregnant. And worse, can’t be ignorant to the father. There’s no possible way. It can’t be happening.

Part of her reasons for the better: it must be Tobirama’s. No more than three months have passed since the Uchiha first conquered and occupied the land, no more than three months since she’s been with her husband. 

The other part of her, downtrodden and beaten into pessimistic depravity, knows that with the chaos Madara brought, so too came a negligence to her normal routines: was she taking the contraceptive herbs as diligently as she needed to, given their intimacies? Amidst the turbulence he caused, had she remembered each and every time they were together to make sure nothing was conceived from their depraved liaisons? How could she not, when the way he touched her and took her made her sick?

But then, doubt: leading her astray, reminding her that everything horrible and miserable that could happen already had, so what was a bit more to the mountain of suffering she already endured? What was stopping fate from deciding that the life inside her womb belonged not to her loving husband, but to her unforgiving captor?

Thinking about it drives her to depressive insanity. By the time Madara comes to see her, she’s depleted almost all of her brain power. 

“Leave us,” he commands the guards who have been assigned to watch her. 

They obey, and the pair are left in silence. 

Her mind pleads with her to run, to attack, to simply scream—anything. Anything that will quell the distress of the pause in the air, the distress of not knowing his intent. 

When he takes a step forward she inches back. Noticing this, he’s dissuaded from approaching any closer. 

“So long as the child is inside of you, you have nothing to fear from me.”

Her heart pounds so furiously in her chest that she’s sure it’s audible in the quiet of the room. 

The statement angers her, scares her, and much to her shame, relieves her. 

“It’s not yours,” she claims.

“Unless I’m miscalculating, the Senju host left a week before my arrival. And not long after that, a fortnight at most for the sake of assumptions, this child might have been conceived. Between us.”

Bile rises in her throat and she wants to protest, but he goes on, badgering her with the logic she’s thus far refused to entertain. 

“If it were his, you would be farther along. Visibly, for one. And more than likely, I would be able to sense the chakra, deduce which clan it belongs to.”

By now she’s trembling quietly with her fear, fighting the urge to deny him, to preserve the hope that the reality he speaks of is in fact skewed.

“The child inside of you is an Uchiha,” he says determinedly. 

She shakes her head.

“You know I’m right.”

“You’re not,” she argues. “You said yourself there's no way of knowing. Not yet.”

He cocks his head. “Then you really have no idea, do you? No idea who it belongs to? Normally mothers can read the chakra within them at this stage. Can you not?”

She won’t grant him an answer, instead stares down at her feet as they dig into the ground, as if in a desperate attempt to escape underneath. 

Madara watches her with careful scrutiny. “I suppose we’ll have to see, then. But somewhere in that head of yours, you know I’m right.”

You’re not right, she repeats in her mind. You’re not. You’re not.

Just as he makes to leave, he stops. 

“And let me be clear,” he says, menacingly. “If you make any attempt to destroy what grows inside of you, you won’t be the one suffering the consequences.”

The glare he gives her speaks volumes: The Senju hostages. The violence that would ensue. The atrocities he might commit if she disobeyed. 

He leaves her. She clutches her stomach, letting the first, long-suppressed tear roll down her cheek. A warm, wet trail is left in its wake. 

In the turmoil she finds evidence for and against his claims when she lets her thoughts run away with logic. A wash of anxious desperation enlivens her, makes her conscience grab for a reprieve to her doubts. But even that is denied by the crushing reality of her situation. 

The life inside of her might belong to the enemy, to the Uchiha. 

And still, it might not. 

She stumbles between one acceptance and the next, each clouding her ever more until the tears are spilling in streams down her cheeks. 

When she puts every morsel of her ability into sensing the life within her, she can’t tell if the faint trace of Senju chakra she feels is authentic, or a desperate manifestation of her mind’s making. 

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

Dream (more of a nightmare)

this is a touch darker than my other stuff (nightmares and panic attack) so uh, mind that!

After the cave incident, Arthur’s dreams became even more jumbled than they had been before. He was starting to dread sleeping, and the inevitable, oppressive panic that came with waking up afterwards. The one thing he was grateful for was that he didn’t remember most of them.

Most of them.

This dream started with darkness. It occupied that strange place between dreaming and awake, where you only sort of saw what was happening, in your mind’s eye.

Then he saw Lewis, just in front of him. There was still no light source, but his mind produced just enough ambient light to be able to see him more or less clearly. He was turning back to look at him.

Accompanying his face was an intense feeling of dread, that made it difficult to even breathe. It felt like something was just behind him, breathing down his neck, waiting for– what, he didn't even know. It was paralyzing, inescapable. He couldn't even think of running from it.

Lewis started walking forward, and he didn't want to follow him, he desperately wanted to call out and make him stop, because the unwavering sense of doom only got stronger at the thought of moving deeper into wherever they were – but he couldn't make a sound, his throat was closing over, and turning back felt just as impossible. His body moved forward of its own volition, and the helpless trapped feeling just got stronger. There was nothing there was nothing he could do.

He saw the monster before Lewis did, and the sight made him feel physically sick, like something was crushing his chest and stuck in his throat. It was enormous, that dark ominous thing lurking at the end of the path. It had no eyes, only teeth, just rows and rows of enormous teeth in a long, wolflike snout, dark and jagged like stalactites. He wanted – he needed to cry out before Lewis got any closer, but he couldn't–

His mind couldn't generate the image of Lewis being attacked. It skipped over it like a corrupted video, pausing and then jumping forward, and then suddenly he was in bloody pieces on the ground. He wanted to scream but he was still being choked, he wasn't even sure how he was still standing because his limbs felt too weak to hold him. And the awful, eyeless, hungry beast, now dripping with red that turned almost black in the dark, turned its attention gradually, with an achingly slow turn, to him.

The dread felt like it had come to a point, boring into his chest. He stared at that thing, unable to turn or make a sound or even look away, and realized he was about to die.

Then he woke up.

It was less like jolting awake, and more like realizing he was awake. Like suddenly breaching the surface of the water and tasting air. He was granted a momentary reprieve from the joint-locking terror, relief sweeping over him – and then it slammed right back into him, bringing with it the same sick, choked feeling from before. The memory of Lewis lying broken on the ground–

He fought his way out of the sheets and narrowly avoided crashing to the ground, slamming his arm on the dresser instead (oh, that was going to bruise.) He didn't even know where he was going, he just needed out, because he was too hot and too cold and he needed to move something was coming.

He stumbled his way to the bathroom, forcing his shaking legs into working. Initially he just wanted to splash some cold water on his face. When he got there he dropped to his knees in front of the toilet and retched.

Once his stomach was empty and everything was flushed away, he slumped back against the opposite wall, pressing a shaking hand to his face, and finally properly cried. He tried to be quiet – some buried paranoid impulse said something will hear you – but it was hard because his body wanted to sound hysterical. He bit down on his thumb and curled up over his knees.

It was a nightmare. None of it was real. It was just a stress dream, it didn't mean anything, Lewis definitely hadn't been found torn to pieces and– stop remembering that picture–

After – he wasn't sure how long it was, when every moment felt stretched out and vague – he heard something from the hall. The sound prompted a renewed spike of terror in him, and he scooted back to the far wall as it got closer, trying his best to fight off the mental image of that monster appearing in the doorway and pouncing–

Lance knocked on the doorframe as he looked into the bathroom, already frowning. "Somethin' wrong, kiddo?"

Right. Of course it's Lance, he's the only other person in the house and monsters aren't real and they definitely don't live in your walls and attic and- shut up, stupid.

"N- no- nothing, I- I just, I-" he swallowed and took a few unsteady breaths. "Ha- had a- a nightmare."

His expression softened at that. "Oh. Y'need anything?"

"Uh-" What did he need? "Y- uh- I need, need to- c-c-call Vivi." Yes. Right. That was it. Why?

"Alright. Where's your phone?"

"It's, uh, it's in my- my room."

It took him too long. It definitely took him too long, right? Something must have happened. Or maybe everything was just drawn out because his shoulder was starting to hurt and he was dizzy and the air didn't feel like air–

Then Lance was back, already dialing Vivi, and in hindsight he realized it had only been about a minute, and it probably only took that long because he'd knocked his phone on the floor and buried it in blankets.

He tried not to panic quite so much when it took her more than one ring to pick up.

When she did, her voice was tinged with urgency and the remnants of sleep. "Arthur- did something happen?"

"No, I- I'm f-fine, I just-" Why was he calling? There was something he needed, something important, but he couldn't put his finger on what his brain was trying to tell him. "V-Vivi, you- you need to- to, to- get out, there's- you're in tr- in- in danger-"

"What? What are you talking about?"

Right, that was it, and now his panic was just mounting again with the need to make her understand and get out. "Th- there's something with you, it- it's gonna hurt you, you need to go somewhere else, just- j-just- out of the house, anywhere-"

"Whoa, hey, I'm not at the house. I'm with my parents, remember?"

"Doesn't matter it- it's with you-"

"Okay! I can- come to the shop? Is that okay?"

"Yes, just- anywhere else-"

"Alright, should I bring- mm." She cut off that sentence with a hum that sounded... understanding, maybe? "I'll be there in... just a few minutes."

"Okay."

He couldn't bring himself to hang up until Vivi did it for him, and then he just dropped the phone on the tile and slumped back against the wall again.

By the time Vivi got there, Arthur had already fallen back asleep on the couch, but Lance didn't object to her staying anyway.

She didn't want to leave. She couldn't shake the nagging thought that maybe, just maybe, the thing he'd been worrying about was whatever attacked him – and however irrational that thought was, her mind still insisted that if there was any chance it was coming back, she had to be there this time. To protect him. Which was irrational in its own right, because she wasn't exactly armed, but she was tired and in no mood to argue with her instincts.

She dragged Arthur back to his bed, and they slept back-to-back, Arthur facing the door and Vivi the window.

[pastelsandpining]

Spring of Wisdom

Summary: Zelda has a realization on Mount Lanayru. Everything she’s ever known is falling apart. Based on a concept @embyrinitalics wrote into their Whumptober works about the gods of Hyrule being kind of dead.

Words: 1681

Warnings: a lot of angst, honestly it’s just Zelda realizing they’re a little doomed. If there’s something I need to tag let me know, but proceed with caution anyway!

Masterlist

______

Her hands hit the solid concrete that laid under the water, but her knees were what landed a hard hit against the edge of the block. The icy water, whose burn she had at last gotten used to, began a new assault on the torn skin, sending a stinging sensation all throughout her legs. She hissed when her hands joined in—she must’ve scraped them as well.

The parts of her body that hadn’t yet met the water before this felt frozen solid. The water did nothing to warm them. The mountain, decorated by icy crystals that glittered in the sun but never shed so much as a drop, would take her too. She was sure of it. She didn’t have the strength to stand again. But just for a moment, she thought that this would be a far better end than what was coming. If she froze to death right here, became just another part of the mountain’s cold surface, while praying and begging for her people to be saved—they could not say that she hadn’t tried. 

Yet her wish—had she been wishing for that, truly?—would not come true. Not today. Gentle hands, warm hands pulled her gingerly back to her feet. His fingertips felt like ice, numb against her bare arms. But if he felt like ice, then to him, she must have felt frozen solid. She nearly lost her footing again, tripping over her own weakness, and she slowly curled her fingers deep into his tunic. They hurt to move, stiff and frozen, and burned against the warmth his body emitted, but she held on tighter.

She’d become accustomed to the cold of the water. When her hips and legs left their sanctuary, the winds sunk their teeth into her flesh and sent a shiver so violent that she nearly fell for a third time.

Had it not been for his arms holding her, guiding her, she would’ve. And if she did, she didn’t know if she would ever get up again.

A strangled, pathetic sound, somewhere between a whine and a sob, left her lips when he let go of her. Why did he let go? He was so, so warm. 

And then he was draping her coat, heavy with Rito feathers and silky soft to the touch, around her shoulders. The heat of a fire licked at her calves, trying to heal the bites of the cold. She didn’t know how long it’d taken him to do any of it. Time was not of her concern right now, because they were already out of it. 

Her cheeks, rosy and pale and like blocks of ice, stung so much at the sudden warmth that she flinched away. But her eyes finally drifted from the point of nothingness and found her knight, who slowly pressed his hands against her cheeks again.

“Zelda..?” he asked, his voice so soft it was carried away on the winds. Had he been speaking the whole time?

She just shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut and burying into the warmth he was trying to bring back to her body. 

She didn’t say anything for a very long time. She just sat, curled up against the only comfort she had, staring past the fire. The sky was starting to change color, fading from the bright blue to a hazy orange. The sun was setting on her seventeenth birthday, and what a birthday it’d been, nearly freezing to death.

“We should go,” Link said, giving her hands a gentle squeeze. “It’ll just get colder at night.”

Zelda nodded, but she didn’t move more than that. She didn’t want to go down and face her kingdom, her friends, with the knowledge that she’d come to realize. 

“Do you believe in Hylia?” she asked at last, her voice scratchy and quiet. It hurt to speak, like the wind had frozen her chords and the water iced her very core. 

“Do we have a choice?” he answered, running his thumb over her hands. Her eyes drifted over to the sword laying besides them, the one that signified being chosen by Hylia herself, and she knew that no, they didn’t.

“The legend says that she shed her divinity so she could walk the earth besides her hero and protect the Triforce.” The words made her dizzy. She buried her face further into Link’s shoulder and took a breath. “She became mortal and died. That’s what we do. We die. There is no goddess to pray to—no god that will help us.”

Her voice trembled and cracked. Her world, everything she’d known her entire life, was crumbling right in front of her. She held the blood of the goddess in her veins, only because she was not a deity anymore. The statues were silent because she wasn’t there. Prayer would awaken nothing, yet she’d spent years upon years of precious time in springs that drained her of every drop of happiness and patience—only for, what, nothing? Nothing but the realization at too late a time? 

And if the goddess somehow did still exist, she would not reside in a statue.

The answer was quite simple, really. The goddess was silent because she did not know the answer either. The goddess wore the face and dress of a princess who knew next to nothing about who she was, or how to unlock the powers. The goddess hardly knew if those powers actually existed, and whether they were in her at all. And a goddess who prays to herself can accomplish nothing.

A sob wrenched from her chest. What more could she do? Praying wouldn’t work, and she could no longer contribute in the only way she knew how. The Calamity was coming, and their princess, their goddess, was nothing more than a crying child with the weight of the world crushing her shoulders. 

The tears were hot on her cheeks. It was another burn to add to the pile. 

Link’s fingers loosened from her hands and found her hair instead. The comfort he provided was immense, but it didn’t calm her racing heart. 

“H-how can I go down there and- and tell them-“ she hiccupped, lifting her head to bury her face in her hands. 

“Zelda..”

“I can’t.” 

His fingers tried to detangle the clumps of damp hair. In any other circumstance, it might’ve been enjoyable. But all she could do was tremble and try to brave through the oncoming wave of panic. 

“I can’t do it,” she said again, lifting her head to look at Link. His eyes, so sad for her but so full of admiration, made her heart break further. 

“Maybe sometimes,” Link began, brushing at her tears with a feather soft touch, “the heroes just don’t win.”

“But my kingdom— goddesses, we can’t just leave them all to die!” she cried, grabbing at his coat with still frozen fingers. “I can’t— what do I do?”

“The Calamity might not wake for another month, or year,” he tried. “And until it does, we keep doing everything we can. The only reason we’ve gotten as far as we have is because of you. You’re brilliant, Zelda. And if prayer can’t awaken the power, then we can always try something else.”

He looked so sincere that it hurt. 

“I wish I could stay here,” she whispered, ducking her head. “With you. No Calamity, no goddess, no sword..”

“We would freeze to death, or die of starvation,” Link replied, leaning his head against hers. 

“Better than dying to the Calamity,” she muttered. As optimistic as Link had tried to be, she knew better. She had no choice but to come to terms with the idea that maybe the heroes wouldn’t win this one. There would be no legend to tell about the princess and the Hero—not this time. She would have to meet with the Sheikah soon and ask their progress on the medicinal shrine, because it was starting to look like they were going to need it.

“You’re not going to die, Princess,” Link said. Zelda had half a mind to laugh. “I was told to protect you with my life, and I will.”

“Do not let your loyalty to your duty blind you, Link.”

“It’s not out of duty, Zelda.”

She lifted her gaze to his eyes at last, but all she found was sincerity and something else that brought the warmth back into her body in full. All she could do was look at him for a moment, because he made her feel like everything was miles and miles away. And up here, far above any watchful eyes, she wanted to leave all sense of duty behind and just exist with him.

But the statue of Hylia, cold with a taunting smile, watched her from its perch. The warmth was fading. Zelda bit her lip. The space between them was very small, so she leaned her head back and took a deep breath, moving to stand. Her legs cried out and shook beneath her weight and Link had to catch her, but she tugged the jacket tighter and pushed onwards.

“We need to go,” she said, stepping over a rock. “I need to get to my father. We have to prepare for the worst—start evacuations. Get our people out. Revali and Mipha can take their people, they have the easiest escape routes available. Perhaps Daruk and the Gorons will be safe on Death Mountain. I can’t imagine even a demon could withstand the heat. You and Urbosa will work with the soldiers to round up the remaining populations—get them as far from Hyrule as possible.”

“What will you do?” Link asked. She felt his hand wrap around her own, pulling her back down to the ground. 

“Whatever I can. I’ll talk with my father. We’ll come up with a plan.”

“And what happens after we get everyone out?” 

Zelda turned her head to look at him. The sense of dread that she’d woken up with that morning was rapidly flooding back in tenfold. But she straightened her shoulders and gripped his hand tighter.

“We fight,” she said.

[likesomekindofcheese]

Punishment (The Great blurb)

Pairing: Grigor Dymov x fem! Reader

Word Count: 1K

Warnings: swearing, brief mentions of sex and nudity, almost death, drowning (but saved)

From Anon request:  Hi, first of all I'd like to say I absolutely love your writing. Second of all could I request a fic for Grigor Dymov? I had this idea based on the scene where Catherine is in the chest and Peter throws it into the lake. Instead of Catherine it could be the reader and Grigor is really concerned and orders for the chest to be removed from the water and is then all cute and caring for the reader. I know its pretty lame...I've got kinda bad writers block at the moment.

A/N: Sure thing! Good luck with the writers block- and thank you! This was lovely to write!

You woke up into darkness. No morning light. No familiar bedroom. Only darkness.

How on earth did you get here? What were you doing here?

It was rocky. Panic shook you awake as you blinked your eyes open. Your fingers began to reach out to feel your surroundings. Everything felt wooden. It was a rectangular shape. There was a bit of grey light peeking in the form of a thin line just over your head.

How did I get there? Did someone do something to me?

You were in a chest large enough to stuff you inside, you figured. Feeling your own body, you were still in your night clothes. Blinking and pinching yourself, you felt the pain. There was even the cold air from outside seeping in. This wasn’t a dream.

It shook and you felt it being lifted with the huffs of masculine breaths and voices just outside. You took your fists and beat against the wood.

“Who’s there! Is someone there?” Please let me out!” you cried.

There was no response.

“I’m inside! There’s someone in the chest!” you yelled.

When you pushed up against the lid, you realized it was locked tight.  From the inside there was no way of unlocking it from your frantic inspection and what little you could see. Then you heard the rush and bauble of water right outside. And it came pouring through the cracks. First as a puddle. Then more. And more. And more.

Girgor stood outside next to Peter watching the servants take the chest into the river. It was a chilly morning. The sky was overcast, and the trees were either bare or brown. His fur hat itched on top of his head. Guards in dark coats and beards stood all around them watching apathetically. Glancing at Peter, the Emperor’s eyes were dark, and his hands folded. His gaze downward. His lips curled into a smirk. But Grigor felt his stomach turn sour at the sight of the servants lowering the chest into the lake. He heard your voice clearly and clenched his fists.

Already it was halfway down. Y/N’s pleas turned into frightened screams.

“HELP! HELP! SOMEONE HELP PLEASE!”

Her cries rung haunted into his eardrums as if she were being set alight with fire rather than being buried in water.

“SOMEONE! ANYONE!” followed by a scream that made him feel cold despite his clothes.

His hands fidgeting, he sucked in a quick breath through his nose. He turned to Peter.

“Don’t you think she’s learned her lesson?” he suggested.

Peter snarled.

“The bitch fucking called me a piece of shit unfit to rule. She needs to be taught a lesson. No one gets away with calling me names.”

“Well, she didn’t say a ‘piece of shit.’ If I remember the report correctly,” Grigor said.

“She still said I was a bad Emperor!”

There was another scream, the chest was getting lower.

“But…she is being punished and doesn’t know why. I don’t think anyone told her that was why this was happening…they stole her when she was just sleeping! And Peter-wouldn’t you rather be known for your mercy to those who have the little slip up?”

“I’ll be seen as weak! And insulting your sovereign ruler isn’t just a little ‘slip up!’”

“You could…tell her not do it again, she will know why she’s being punished…and you’ll be celebrated. And then she won’t do it again. Peter the Merciful. Peter the Saintly. Peter the Beloved- how does that sound to you? I don’t think Peter-who-drowns-women has the same ring to it!”

He blinked, then stared blankly at the chest.

“If you’re not feeling merciful- let her walk back to the palace in her state. Don’t give her death as quick mercy-but just rather let her suffer humiliation. She could be back in court in half-drowned with everyone knowing what was done. It will stain her life more. That would be even worse than just killing her off- don’t you think?”

There was no response. Peter’s mouth twitched slightly and his eyes looked a little brighter.

There was another scream. The chest was almost lowered completely. If nothing happened, you were doomed.

“I guess…that would be worse…” Peter said.

Running forward, Grigor motioned to the servants in a panic. The Emperor behind him didn’t stop him.

“Stop the chest-bring it up- now! Bring it fucking up! There’s someone in there!” he barked

They glanced at Peter who nodded coldly.

They brought the chest back up out of the lake. The water dripping down created mud beneath their shoes. You could be heard grasping for breath inside.

“Open it,” Grigor ordered.

They pulled open the lock and out dumped leftover water and you.

You coughed out what water you swallowed by accident. Your hair was dripping from your head and your fingers were wrinkled. Although you had landed on your hands and knees, you nearly teared up at the sight or earth and grass. You took in desperate gulps of air, inhaling life until it stung your insides.

You looked up and saw the Emperor, Grigor, and some guards. Looking down, you put your arms over yourself. Your nightgown was drenched, and all these men might be able to have a look of your body now outlined through the soaked, white dress made sheer. Shivering already, the water did nothing to protect you from the icy air.

“Mademoiselle Y/N, do you acknowledge you were wrong?” Emperor Peter scolded.

“About what?” you asked.

“Told you,” Grigor muttered.

“My spies reported to me what you said last night. Are you sorry? Do you take back your words and say I am fit to rule Russia?” Peter asked.

You blinked open, suddenly recalling. You thought no one else could hear it. It was at the crowded party last night and it was to a friend you had in court. Or thought you had.

Grigor walked forward. At first you shifted your weight back, your arms desperately shielding any private bits that could be visible from your soaked, white gown but he put his hands up in peace. He leaned down and took off his fur hat, placing it on your head. Then he removed his fur coat, placing it around your shoulders. It was large enough it covered you entirely.

“Th…thank you…” you sputtered to him.

“Yes, I know I’m merciful and brilliant and have a massive cock and you should be grateful…but are you sorry?” Peter demanded.

Grigor helped you stand up. His eyes at you were wide like a dog begging for scraps of meat.

The new warmth from the fur hat on your head and the protection of his coat gave you strength in your voice.

“Yes….I’m sorry. I take back my words. You are fit to rule,” you said obediently.

“Well, good. And you can walk back to the palace…we have horses waiting for us.”

The fur stayed on you on the walk back. The guards followed Peter like a murder of crows around his horse. Your feet stung from the rocks and pebbles beneath. You had no shoes or stockings. Dirt got all over and there was a slight cut near your toe. There was even a blister growing on your right foot.

Once the large, grey palace was in sight you saw that Peter’s horse and his guards had vanished. But there was one familiar figure, jogging up to you.

“Y/N…are you alright?” Grigor questioned.

“I…I’m…I’m just in shock,” you answered.

“Here-you’ve walked enough!”

“Wha-oh!”

Suddenly he took his arm under you and his other arm went down to your legs. Before you could respond he was carrying you, rushing to the palace and walking inside. Feeling your feet dangling from the other end, you seemed weightlessness. Grigor’s handsome profile was right over your face and your breath stopped at the sight.

He headed up the grand staircase and through a door to the hallway.

A few courtiers seeing you both gasped and murmured. Heads decorated with wigs ran up to look at you. A few servants rushed up.

“Where is her chambers- she needs help” he ordered. “Mademoiselle Y/N almost drowned-we need blankets and warm clothes and hot broth-now!”

There was a scattering of feet. You saw the brown wood and chandeliers over your head, as well as a stag’s head mounted on the wall, antlers twisting to the heavens. Grigor helped you down to a maid who helped you up and walked you to your room.

Two hours later, you sat with a dry nightgown, a thick robe, and a blanket made from a bear’s fur over your lap as you sat in your chair next to a crackling fire. You held a bowl of hot broth and sipped the last bit.

At a knock of the door, you voiced out “you can enter.”

Grigor walked in.

“I…I wanted to see how you were doing…” he commented.

You stood up, setting the bowl and blanket aside.

“I’m better…and alive thanks to you…though I still have your hat and coat.”

Gesturing to the writing desk, Grigor picked up the clothes and kept them in his arms.

“I’m so sorry this happened. Y/N, please be careful…please…” he begged.

You nodded.

“I will be” you promised, “I heard you order the chest out of the water. You saved me today. I saw how mad the Emperor was at you, but you did it anyway…for that, I owe you my life.”

“You owe me nothing, Y/N. I’m just glad you’re safe.”

Walking up to him, you took his hands. Pulling them to your lips, you kissed the knuckles.

“But…I must say it again…thank you, Grigor.”

He grinned. You felt hotter than all the blankets in the world could make you feel at the sight.

“I’ll check on you tomorrow, Mademoiselle.”

Taglist: @sgt-stardust-killerqueen​ @queenlover05​ @itsametaphorgwil​ @foxinaforestofstars​ @iwritefanficnotprophecies​ @simonedk​ @panagiasikelia​ @grigorlee​ @fueled-by-novocaine​ @xviiarez​ @vintage-and-hypnotic​ @raerae27​ @i-wished-upon-a-star-one-night​

[kvetchlandia]

Dave Heath     New York City     c.1957

I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz, who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war, who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull, who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall, who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York, who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls, incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between, Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind, who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo, who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox, who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge, a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon, yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars, whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement, who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall, suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark’s bleak furnished room,   who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts, who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night, who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,   who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels, who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy, who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain, who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa, who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago, who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets, who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed, who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons, who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication, who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts, who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love, who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may, who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword, who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom, who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness, who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake, who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses’ rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too, who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung-over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices, who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open to a room full of steam-heat and opium, who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion, who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery, who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music, who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology, who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish, who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom, who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg, who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade, who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried, who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles, who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation, who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity, who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes, who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second, who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz, who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave, who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury, who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy, and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia, who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia, returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East, Pilgrim State’s Rockland’s and Greystone’s foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon, with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination— ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time— and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipsis catalogue a variable measure and the vibrating plane, who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head, the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death, and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

--Allen Ginsberg, “Howl, part 1″  1956

[newloverofbeauty]

Richard Avedon:  Peter Orlovsky & AllenGinsberg  (1963)

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

 dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

 angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, 

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural 

darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz, 

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, 

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war, 

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull, 

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall, 

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York, 

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night 

with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls, 

incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, 

illuminating all the motionless world of Time between, 

Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over 

the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun 

and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings 

and kind king light of mind, 

who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx 

on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-

wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo, 

who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s floated out and sat through the stale 

beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox, 

who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,

a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon, 

yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and 

eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars, whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes,

 meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement, 

who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall, 

suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark’s bleak furnished room,

 who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts, 

who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night, 

who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas, 

 who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels, 

who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy, 

who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain, 

who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and 

followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa, 

who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and 

the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago, 

who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big 

pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets,

 who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, 

who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing 

while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed 

down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed, 

who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons, 

who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime 

but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication, 

who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts, 

who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, 

who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love, 

who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may, 

who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath 

when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword, 

who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate 

the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb

 and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom, 

who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of 

cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall 

and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness, 

who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed 

in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake, 

who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, 

cocksman and Adonis of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable 

lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses’ rickety rows, on mountaintops 

in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & 

especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too, 

who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden

 Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung-over with heartless Tokay 

and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,

 who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a 

door in the East River to open to a room full of steam-heat and opium, 

who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the 

wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion, 

who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery, 

who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music, 

who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, 

who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology, 

who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish, 

who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom, 

who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg, 

who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade, 

who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to 

open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried, 

who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine 

shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, 

who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown 

and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, 

who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the 

filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses 

barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz 

finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles, 

who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation, 

who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision 

or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity, 

who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, 

who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out 

the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes, 

who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second, 

who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads 

and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz, 

who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers 

to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave, 

who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury, 

who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented 

themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy, and 

who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia, 

who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia, 

returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the 

visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East, 

Pilgrim State’s Rockland’s and Greystone’s foetid halls, bickering with the echoes 

of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,

 with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M.

 and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, 

a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination— 

ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time— 

and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the 

alchemy of the use of the ellipsis catalogue a variable measure and the vibrating plane, 

who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and 

trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs 

and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater 

Omnipotens Aeterna Deus 

to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you 

speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,

 the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death, 

and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and 

blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma 

sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio 

with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat 

a thousand years. 

 –Allen Ginsberg, “Howl, part 1″ 1956

[avery-foxglove]

FrodoSam Moments in The Lord of the Rings (Books): The Two Towers

1.

Frodo made light of it when he learned that they had slept soundly for hours with Gollum, and a very hungry Gollum too, loose beside them.

`Don't think of any of your Gaffer's hard names,' he said. 'You were worn out, and it has turned out well: we are now both rested. And we have a hard road ahead, the worst road of all.'

`About the food,' said Sam. 'How long's it going to take us to do this job? And when it's done, what are we going to do then? This waybread keeps you on your legs in a wonderful way, though it doesn't satisfy the innards proper, as you might say: not to my feeling anyhow, meaning no disrespect to them as made it. But you have to eat some of it every day, and it doesn't grow. I reckon we've got enough to last, say, three weeks or so, and that with a tight belt and a light tooth, mind you. We've been a bit free with it so far.'

`I don't know how long we shall take to - to finish,' said Frodo. `We were miserably delayed in the hills. But Samwise Gamgee, my dear hobbit - indeed, Sam my dearest hobbit, friend of friends - I do not think we need give thought to what comes after that. To do the job as you put it - what hope is there that we ever shall? And if we do, who knows what will come of that? If the One goes into the Fire, and we are at hand? I ask you, Sam, are we ever likely to need bread again? I think not. If we can nurse our limbs to bring us to Mount Doom, that is all we can do. More than I can, I begin to feel.'

Sam nodded silently. He took his master's hand and bent over it. He did not kiss it, though his tears fell on it.

2. 

Frodo after a few mouthfuls of lembas settled deep into the brown fern and went to sleep. Sam looked at him. The early daylight was only just creeping down into the shadows under the trees, but he saw his master's face very clearly, and his hands, too, lying at rest on the ground beside him. He was reminded suddenly of Frodo as he had lain, asleep in the house of Elrond, after his deadly wound. Then as he had kept watch Sam had noticed that at times a light seemed to be shining faintly within; but now the light was even clearer and stronger. Frodo's face was peaceful, the marks of fear and care had left it; but it looked old, old and beautiful, as if the chiselling of the shaping years was now revealed in many fine lines that had before been hidden, though the identity of the face was not changed. Not that Sam Gamgee put it that way to himself. He shook his head, as if finding words useless, and murmured: `I love him. He's like that, and sometimes it shines through, somehow. But I love him, whether or no.'

3.

'I don't like anything here at all.' said Frodo, `step or stone, breath or bone. Earth, air and water all seem accursed. But so our path is laid.'

 'Yes, that's so,' said Sam. `And we shouldn't be here at all, if we'd known more about it before we started. But I suppose it's often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually - their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn't. And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on - and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same - like old Mr Bilbo. But those aren't always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we've fallen into? '

 `I wonder,' said Frodo. 'But I don't know. And that's the way of a real tale. Take any one that you're fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don't know. And you don't want them to.'

 'No, sir, of course not. Beren now, he never thought he was going to get that Silmaril from the Iron Crown in Thangorodrim, and yet he did, and that was a worse place and a blacker danger than ours. But that's a long tale, of course, and goes on past the happiness and into grief and beyond it - and the Silmaril went on and came to Eärendil. And why, sir, I never thought of that before! We've got - you've got some of the light of it in that star-glass that the Lady gave you! Why, to think of it, we're in the same tale still! It's going on. Don't the great tales never end? '

 'No, they never end as tales,' said Frodo. `But the people in them come, and go when their part's ended. Our part will end later - or sooner.'

 'And then we can have some rest and some sleep,' said Sam. He laughed grimly. 'And I mean just that, Mr. Frodo. I mean plain ordinary rest, and sleep, and waking up to a morning's work in the garden. I'm afraid that's all I'm hoping for all the time. All the big important plans are not for my sort. Still, I wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales. We're in one, or course; but I mean: put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out of a great big book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards. And people will say: "Let's hear about Frodo and the Ring! " And they'll say: "Yes, that's one of my favourite stories. Frodo was very brave. wasn't he, dad?" "Yes, my boy, the famousest of the hobbits, and that's saying a lot."'

 `It's saying a lot too much,' said Frodo, and he laughed, a long clear laugh from his heart. Such a sound had not been heard in those places since Sauron came to Middle-earth. To Sam suddenly it seemed as if all the stones were listening and the tall rocks leaning over them. But Frodo did not heed them; he laughed again. 'Why, Sam,' he said, 'to hear you somehow makes me as merry as if the story was already written. But you've left out one of the chief characters: Samwise the stouthearted. "I want to hear more about Sam, dad. Why didn't they put in more of his talk, dad? That's what I like, it makes me laugh. And Frodo wouldn't have got far without Sam, would he, dad? " '

 `Now, Mr. Frodo,' said Sam, 'you shouldn't make fun. I was serious. '

 `So was I,' said Frodo.

4.

`We haven't got there yet,' said Frodo.

 'No, but we'd better keep our eyes skinned till we do. If we're caught napping, Stinker will come out on top pretty quick. Not but what it would be safe for you to have a wink now, master. Safe, if you lay close to me. I'd be dearly glad to see you have a sleep. I'd keep watch over you; and anyway, if you lay near, with my arm round you, no one could come pawing you without your Sam knowing it.'

 `Sleep!' said Frodo and sighed, as if out of a desert he had seen a mirage of cool green. 'Yes, even here I could sleep.'

 `Sleep then, master! Lay your head in my lap.'

 And so Gollum found them hours later, when he returned, crawling and creeping down the path out of the gloom ahead. Sam sat propped against the stone, his head dropping sideways and his breathing heavy. In his lap lay Frodo's head, drowned deep in sleep; upon his white forehead lay one of Sam's brown hands, and the other lay softly upon his master's breast. Peace was in both their faces.

 Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo's knee - but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing.

But at that touch Frodo stirred and cried out softly in his sleep, and immediately Sam was wide awake. The first thing he saw was Gollum - `pawing at master,' as he thought.

`Hey you!' he said roughly. `What are you up to?'

5. 

As they thrust forward, they felt things brush against their heads, or against their hands, long tentacles, or hanging growths perhaps: they could not tell what they were. And still the stench grew. It grew, until almost it seemed to them that smell was the only clear sense left to them. and that was for their torment. One hour, two hours, three hours: how many had they passed in this lightless hole? Hours-days, weeks rather. Sam left the tunnel-side and shrank towards Frodo, and their hands met and clasped. and so together they still went on.

 At length Frodo, groping along the left-hand wall, came suddenly to a void. Almost he fell sideways into the emptiness. Here was some opening in the rock far wider than any they had yet passed; and out of it came a reek so foul, and a sense of lurking malice so intense, that Frodo reeled. And at that moment Sam too lurched and fell forwards.

 Fighting off both the sickness and the fear, Frodo gripped Sam's hand.

`Up!' he said in a hoarse breath without voice. 'It all comes from here, the stench and the peril. Now for it! Quick! '

 Calling up his remaining strength and resolution, he dragged Sam to his feet, and forced his own limbs to move. Sam stumbled beside him. One step, two steps, three steps-at last six steps. Maybe they had passed the dreadful unseen opening, but whether that was so or not, suddenly it was easier to move, as if some hostile will for the moment had released them. They struggled on, still hand in hand.

6. 

Frodo was lying face upward on the ground and the monster was bending over him, so intent upon her victim that she took no heed of Sam and his cries, until he was close at hand. As he rushed up he saw that Frodo was already bound in cords, wound about him from ankle to shoulder, and the monster with her great forelegs was beginning half to lift, half to drag his body away.

On the near side of him lay, gleaming on the ground, his elven-blade, where it had fallen useless from his grasp. Sam did not wait to wonder what was to be done, or whether he was brave, or loyal, or filled with rage. He sprang forward with a yell, and seized his master's sword in his left hand. Then he charged. No onslaught more fierce was ever seen in the savage world of beasts; where some desperate small creature armed with little teeth alone, will spring upon a tower of horn and hide that stands above its fallen mate.

7. 

`Now come, you filth!' he cried. `You've hurt my master, you brute, and you'll pay for it. We're going on; but we'll settle with you first. Come on, and taste it again!'

 As if his indomitable spirit had set its potency in motion, the glass blazed suddenly like a white torch in his hand. It flamed like a star that leaping from the firmament sears the dark air with intolerable light. No such terror out of heaven had ever burned in Shelob's face before. […]

 Sam came on. He was reeling like a drunken man, but he came on. And Shelob cowed at last, shrunken in defeat, jerked and quivered as she tried to hasten from him. She reached the hole, and squeezing down, leaving a trail of green-yellow slime, she slipped in, even as Sam hewed a last stroke at her dragging legs. Then he fell to the ground.

 Shelob was gone […] Sam was left alone. Wearily, as the evening of the Nameless Land fell upon the place of battle, he crawled back to his master.

 'Master, dear master,' he said, but Frodo did not speak. As he had run forward, eager, rejoicing to be free, Shelob with hideous speed had come behind and with one swift stroke had stung him in the neck. He lay now pale, and heard no voice. and did not move.

 `Master, dear master! ' said Sam, and through a long silence waited. listening in vain.

 Then as quickly as he could he cut away the binding cords and laid his head upon Frodo's breast and to his mouth, but no stir of life could he find, nor feel the faintest flutter of the heart. Often he chafed his master's hands and feet, and touched his brow, but all were cold.

 `Frodo, Mr. Frodo! ' he called. 'Don't leave me here alone! It's your Sam calling. Don't go where I can't follow! Wake up, Mr. Frodo! O wake up, Frodo, me dear, me dear. Wake up!'

 Then anger surged over hint, and he ran about his master's body in a rage, stabbing the air, and smiting the stones, and shouting challenges. Presently he came back, and bending looked at Frodo's face, pale beneath him in the dusk. And suddenly he saw that he was in the picture that was revealed to him in the mirror of Galadriel in Lórien: Frodo with a pale face lying fast asleep under a great dark cliff. Or fast asleep he had thought then. `He's dead! ' he said. 'Not asleep, dead! ' And as he said it, as if the words had set the venom to its work again. it seemed to him that the hue of the face grew livid green.

 And then black despair came down on him, and Sam bowed to the ground, and drew his grey hood over his head, and night came into his heart, and he knew no more.

 When at last the blackness passed, Sam looked up and shadows were about him; but for how many minutes or hours the world had gone dragging on he could not tell. He was still in the same place, and still his master lay beside him dead. The mountains had not crumbled, nor the earth fallen into ruin.

 'What shall I do, what shall I do? ' he said. `Did I come all this way with him for nothing? ' And then he remembered his own voice speaking words that at the time he did not understand himself, at the beginning of their journey: I have something to do before the end. I must see it through, sir, if you understand.

 `But what can I do? Not leave Mr. Frodo dead, unburied on the top of the mountains, and go home? Or go on? Go on?' he repeated, and for a moment doubt and fear shook him. `Go on? Is that what I've got to do? And leave him?'

 Then at last he began to weep; and going to Frodo he composed his body, and folded his cold hands upon his breast, and wrapped his cloak about him; and he laid his own sword at one side, and the staff that Faramir had given at the other.

 'If I'm to go on,' he said, `then I must take your sword, by your leave, Mr. Frodo, but I'll put this one to lie by you, as it lay by the old king in the barrow; and you've got your beautiful mithril coat from old Mr. Bilbo. And your star-glass, Mr. Frodo, you did lend it to me and I'll need it, for I'll be always in the dark now. It's too good for me, and the Lady gave it to you, but maybe she'd understand. Do you understand, Mr. Frodo? I've got to go.'

 But he could not go, not yet. He knelt and held Frodo's hand and could not release it. And time went by and still he knelt, holding his master's hand, and in his heart keeping a debate.

Now he tried to find strength to tear himself away and go on a lonely journey - for vengeance. If once he could go, his anger would bear him down all the roads of the world, pursuing, until he had him at last: Gollum. Then Gollum would die in a corner. But that was not what he had set out to do. It would not be worthwhile to leave his master for that. It would not bring him back. Nothing would. They had better both be dead together. And that too would be a lonely journey. He looked on the bright point of the sword. He thought of the places behind where there was a black brink and an empty fall into nothingness. There was no escape that way. That was to do nothing, not even to grieve. That was not what he had set out to do. 

 'What am I to do then? ' he cried again, and now he seemed plainly to know the hard answer: see it through. Another lonely journey, and the worst. `What? Me, alone, go to the Crack of Doom and all? ' He quailed still, but the resolve grew. `What? Me take the Ring from him? The Council gave it to him.' But the answer came at once: `And the Council gave him companions, so that the errand should not fail. And you are the last of all the Company. The errand must not fail.'

 `I wish I wasn't the last,' he groaned. `I wish old Gandalf was here or somebody. Why am I left all alone to make up my mind? I'm sure to go wrong. And it's not for me to go taking the Ring, putting myself forward.'

 'But you haven't put yourself forward; you've been put forward. And as for not being the right and proper person, why, Mr. Frodo wasn't as you might say, nor Mr. Bilbo. They didn't choose themselves.' 

`Ah well, I must make up my own mind. I will make it up. But I'll be sure to go wrong: that'd be Sam Gamgee all over. 'Let me see now: if we're found here, or Mr. Frodo's found, and that Thing's on him, well, the Enemy will get it. And that's the end of all of us, of Lorien, and Rivendell, and the Shire and all. And there’s no time to lose, or it'll be the end anyway. The war's begun, and more than likely things are all going the Enemy's way already. No chance to go back with It and get advice or permission. No, it's sit here till they come and kill me over master's body, and gets It: or take It and go.'

 He drew a deep breath. 'Then take It, it is! ' He stooped. Very gently he undid the clasp at the neck and slipped his hand inside Frodo's tunic; then with his other hand raising the head, he kissed the cold forehead, and softly drew the chain over it. And then the head lay quietly back again in rest. No change came over the still face, and by that more than by all other tokens Sam was convinced at last that Frodo had died and laid aside the Quest. 

`Good-bye, master, my dear! ' he murmured. 'Forgive your Sam. He'll come back to this spot when the job's done - if he manages it. And then he'll not leave you again. Rest you quiet till I come; and may no foul creature come anigh you! And if the Lady could hear me and give me one wish, I would wish to come back and find you again. Good-bye! '

8. 

Sam reeled, clutching at the stone. He felt as if the whole dark world was turning upside down. So great was the shock that he almost swooned, but even as he fought to keep a hold on his senses, deep inside him he was aware of the comment: 'You fool, he isn't dead, and your heart knew it. Don't trust your head, Samwise, it is not the best part of you. The trouble with you is that you never really had any hope. Now what is to be done? '

Fur the moment nothing, but to prop himself against the unmoving stone and listen, listen to the vile orc-voices.

 `Garn!' said Shagrat. 'She's got more than one poison. When she's hunting, she just gives 'em a dab in the neck and they go as limp as boned fish, and then she has her way with them.'

[….]

The voices began to move away. Sam heard the sound of feet receding. He was recovering from his shock, and now a wild fury was on him. `I got it all wrong! ' he cried. `I knew I would. Now they've got him, the devils! the filth! Never leave your master, never, never: that was my right rule. And I knew it in my heart. May I be forgiven! Now I've got to get back to him. Somehow, somehow! '

 He drew his sword again and beat on the stone with the hilt, but it only gave out a dull sound. The sword, however, blazed so brightly now that he could see dimly in its light. To his surprise he noticed that the great block was shaped like a heavy door, and was less than twice his own height. Above it was a dark blank space between the top and the low arch of the opening […]. With his remaining strength Sam leaped and caught the top, scrambled up, and dropped; and then he ran madly, sword blazing in hand, round a bend and up a winding tunnel.

 The news that his master was still alive roused him to a last effort beyond thought of weariness.

9.

Sam heard a burst of hoarse singing, blaring of horns and banging of gongs, a hideous clamour. Gorbag and Shagrat were already on the threshold.

 Sam yelled and brandished Sting, but his little voice was drowned in the tumult. No one heeded him.

 The great doors slammed to. Boom. The bars of iron fell into place inside. Clang. The gate was shut. Sam hurled himself against the bolted brazen plates and fell senseless to the ground. He was out in the darkness. Frodo was alive but taken by the Enemy.

[depizan]

There are a lot of new star war. A lot.

And I am a very odd star war fan.

I think I’m the most interested in Visions. Anime and Star Wars are a good match and it’s bringing some different creators to the Star Wars table. Of course, I’m most interested if we get actually new stories, however short, rather than anime re-imaginings of stories we’ve already seen.

I think the Cassian Andor series has potential. Though I’m not entirely sure it will be my sort of thing. (It could so easily end up being Star Wars: 24. Which would still be someone’s thing. Just not mine.)

The Rogue Squadron movie and whatever movie Taika Waititi makes also have potential. But there’s only a tiny bit of information about the first and no information at all about the second, so it’s hard to know. But I have tentative hype there.

I want to be hype for the Lando series, since I like Lando, but Disney!Star Wars has been very inconsistent with his character, so it’s a series that could go badly wrong, at least in my opinion. Or it could be super awesome.

I wish I were hype for The High Republic book series, but, while I think that a series showing the Jedi at their best is very much needed, I am not that big a fan of space wizards. High Republic shenanigans involving non-Force Users would get a much bigger hell yeah from me.

But that is the series that’s set in its own time frame, which means that many of the things that have been irking me about recent Star Wars stuff should be impossible*. Maybe it’s worth checking out even if it is all space wizards. (And then it turns out to somehow involve Space Voldemort. Again. *cries*)

.

*Freaking hell doesn’t anyone stay goddamn dead in the Star Wars universe??? Do we have to start punting villain corpses into Space Mount Doom to make sure they’re really, really gone? Aw, fuck, clones. It’s hopeless. argrffuiod;sdlk.

Aw frick, here come all the fan favorites from the last series to take over this series. Great. That’s even better than the Why The Bleep Aren’t You Dead!? Villain Parade. Can a series just be about the person it’s named for? No? k;ljdfjksldfakdf