#then i suppose this line gets even more meaning. it all rots into nothingness and forgives all

[gabriestat]

when you ignore the context of marty cheating for the 10th time this really is one of the most beautiful quotes all show

[heich0e]

begin - nicholas wolfwood/f!reader (trigun) prequel to the poly!au, bounty hunters!au, wild west-ish, tw BLOOD/INJURIES, reader is patching up a bullet wound so warning for all the expected nastiness that entails, tw mentions of attemped assault (not reader and not in detail), mentions of sex work, gratuitous mentions of nico's stubble

BOUND - poly!au masterlist

You live in a nothing town, in the dead middle of nowhere, called The Bend.

It’s called that because a long time ago—long before your days, or your daddy’s days, or even your granddaddy’s days—there used to be a wide, rushing freshwater river snaking through the valley, and right where the town centre now sits is where it used to turn east to the far-away sea. 

But the river’s dried up now, and it took the green grass with it.

The sea is farther than you could ever hope to travel. 

And the B on the sign that marks the border into your dusty little nothing-nowhere town has rusted off and decayed away with the years, which means the only warning that any misguided traveller has to tell them where they’re heading is an ominous old sign, half-rotted, that reads:

Welcome to The  end.

It’s fitting, you think. An omen to give anyone who wanders within spitting distance of the border a final caution that they have one last chance to turn around. A choice to get out while they still can.

It’s a choice you never had.

You were born and raised in The Bend. Your blood runs thick with the dust that coats the decrepit old town. It’s all you’ve ever known, and all you ever will know; your beginning, your middle, and your miserable, inexorable end.

Because that’s the thing about The Bend: few people ever show up here and those who do aren’t stupid enough to stay. And the unfortunate few that are born from the dusty earth and dried up riverbeds, like you? Well, those ones never leave.

There’s some comfort to be taken from that, you suppose; a kind of stability that comes from monotony. From certain inevitability. Every day the same, unchanging. A familiarity to the nothingness of your little town, your little house, your little life.

But then, on a night just like any other, something changes.

One night, you meet him.

Nicholas isn’t quite sure how he ended up here, but he isn’t all that surprised either. 

There’s something kind of undeniably fitting about bleeding out in the middle of fucking nowhere, supported on either side by two of the finest prostitutes The Bend has to offer—and flanked by a handful more as the group guides him through the dark, dusty night.

The Bend isn���t the first hellhole town Nicholas has ever stumbled into. His line of work has brought him to more than his fair share of seedy dumps just like this one. Towns like this are the perfect place for someone to hide from the law after all, because not many people would bother to come looking for you in places that might as well not exist. Most bounty hunters don’t even know about this particular town, and they don’t care to learn, especially since half the maps on the market don’t even bother marking its sorry half-existence down.

But Nicholas isn’t like most bounty hunters.

That’s what brought him to The Bend.

There’s a vicious flash of lightning that suddenly forks through the sky overhead, lighting up the dim, depressing town and the dusty valley beyond it as brightly as the midday sun for just a blink. It’s followed almost immediately by a crack of thunder that makes the packed earth under his unsteady feet tremble, and Nicholas knows that means the lightning’s closer than he cares for it to be.

“’s it gonna rain?” he slurs, tearing his eyes away from the sky and looking over to the woman supporting him on his right (or is that his left?)

He wracks his hazy, addled brain as he tries to remember her name. Starts with a V, he’s pretty sure. Victoria? Viola?

She snorts, her ruby rouged lips lifting at one painted corner. “Honey, it’s been almost five months since we’ve seen a drop of rain around here, and even then it was nothin’ to write home about. You just focus on puttin’ one boot in front of the other, and don’t go gettin’ your hopes up.” 

All at once, Nicholas is reminded of the burning pain in his arm; the searing, radiating agony of a bullet nestled deep into flesh. 

Oh. Right.

He got shot.

It’s not the first time he’s suffered a similar wound, nor will it likely be the last if he makes it through the night—God, or whatever all-knowing bastard’s out there, willing. That doesn’t make it any less of a miserable bitch to deal with, though.

How the hell did he get shot, again?

He ponders this question for a moment, reflecting on it through alcohol sodden introspection, and the answer comes back to him in bits and pieces as he keeps aimlessly shuffling along through the night.

The sound of heels clicking overhead at the town saloon—that’s the first thing he remembers. The clacking metronome of Big Annie’s working girls crossing the wooden floorboards of the brothel that operates above the only place in this awful little town to get a half-decent drink.

A drink. 

Yes, it was something bitter and dark—completely nauseating to presently even think about. It burned on the way down, and now it sloshes unpleasantly in his stomach as he walks. The girls had made him down the better part of a bottle after he’d been shot—to help with the pain, they’d said, and he’d been anything but reluctant to heed their advice—and he’d already had fair a few glasses earlier in the evening as he’d occupied his table in the corner of the bar on top of that. Panic had palpably sizzled between the women while they watched the tattered cloth Nicholas held to his arm ink steadily darker with scarlet in the lamplight of the old bar following the shooting—the tension building amongst them like the perspiration beading at his temple. They were bickering about something then.

No, not something.

Someone.

“We gotta take him to see Mama!” 

It was Charity who said that, he recalls—the pretty little thing with full lips and a mane of thick, curly hair that Nicholas had complimented the first time he ever saw her traipsing through the saloon. She can’t be a whole lot older than 20, and her voice is still high and childlike; even more so that particular evening as she stomped her foot petulantly, looking over at him with worry-filled eyes as she made her plea to the other girls watching him bleed out in the musty wooden booth.

“Mama won't want anything to do with this one.”

That was Violetta who’d replied to Charity’s fractious appeal. She’s one of the older girls who works for Big Annie at the brothel. She’s got a sort of seasoned air to her, with a husky rasp in her voice—like the sand that blows through the empty streets in town has roughened it. She’s still undeniably pretty, but she comes across a little tougher than the rest of them. Doing the job she does in a town like this one, Nicholas doesn’t blame her for it.

Violetta’s the one currently supporting his right side, leading him through the night towards the woman who’s supposed to be his saving grace.

Towards Mama.

But who the hell is that?

He’s sure he’s heard the name in passing while he’s been kicking around the town saloon between his work, nursing half-noxious drinks and flirting harmlessly here and there with Big Annie’s working girls—who seem to have taken a liking to lingering around his table between visits from johns. 

Nicholas wasn’t even supposed to be staying in The Bend long, only for a day or two to follow up on a bounty lead he’d caught wind of three towns over—but the lead went cold, and a few days turned into almost a week. Nevertheless, while his stay may have been extended, he just he never thought to ask any more questions about this mysterious matriarch all the working girls seemed to know so well and speak so highly of. But now, as those very same girls are dragging his half-conscious ass to the other side of town in search of this Mama, he wishes that maybe he’d dug a little deeper.

“Mama’s gonna get you all fixed up, handsome,” little Charity appears on Violetta’s other side, her eyes wide enough as she stares at him that they reflect the next flash of lightning as it rips through the dark of night. She looks worried, in spite of her words—even in his present state of drunkenness and blood loss fuelled delirium, he can tell that much. 

They all do. Even the toughest, Violetta—though she seems reluctant to let on as she stands stoically at his side and shoulders his flagging, stumbling weight. 

Charity nods, but it’s a gesture that seems more to reassure herself than anyone else. “Mama always takes care of us; she’ll have you good as new by morning.” 

Ah, so this woman must be a doctor of sorts—or as close to it as a shithole little town like this can offer.

It’s Nicholas’ turn to nod, a bobble of his cotton-filled head the only recognition he can muster to her words, as he just keeps staggering on under their guidance. He’s lucky that The Bend even has some kind of doctor to look after him, even if it’s just some old lady who looks after the saloon girls.

The unlikely group soon arrives at the doorstep of a little house at the edge of town—as slummy and dilapidated as all the rest of them—and Queenie, the girl who’d moments before been supporting Nicholas’s injured left side, raps sharply on the door.

“She’s not gonna answer,” Violetta mutters dourly under her breath, still at Nicholas’ right side.

“She will,” Charity counters with her arms crossed over her chest, punctuating the assertion with an indignant little huff for good measure. “Mama always answers when we come knockin’.”

But Nicholas worries for a moment—a long moment as the door stays firmly shut—that Violetta might just have a point. It’s the middle of the night after all, and this ‘Mama’ could very well be sleeping like any other reasonable person would be at this hour. 

Queenie knocks on the wooden door for a second time, this time with an open palm. This series of raps is a little louder. A little more insistent.

“Mama? It’s us! Open up!” she calls, casting a worried glance over her shoulder at Nicholas—who’s got his entire weight slumped over onto poor Violetta, now.

Nicholas is bleeding out on the front porch, and part of him still almost feels bad for waking up some poor, unsuspecting old—

The door flies open.

“What the hell do you want?”

Oh.

Nicholas knows that his eyes travel up your frame in a way that can only be considered wholly impolite. But he’s not really in his right mind, after all—or at least that’s what he tells himself as he justifies his immodest stare. He starts at the uneven cuffs of your paper-thin trousers, before climbing up, up, up your body to the tight white undershirt your wear—appreciating the way it clings to the curve of your waist and sits snug around your chest, and he particularly admires the pretty little edge of lace that frills around the neckline at your breasts. Finally, his gaze makes it to your face, and you look irritated to say the absolute least on the matter.

He’s not all that sure what he was expecting to find on the other side of the chipped paint of this shabby front door, but he can say with a steady hand to his foolhardy heart that it certainly wasn’t you.

For a moment, Nicholas is convinced they’ve got the wrong house—as improbable as that might be in a town as small as this one. At the very least, he waits for someone else to come to the door—a mother, or grandmother even—because surely you can’t be the one that these women have been calling—

“Mama! You gotta help us,” Queenie exclaims. She’s luckily perceptive enough to stick out her foot once she sees you fully process just what’s waiting for you outside, keeping the door jammed open with her heeled boot as you rush to slam it shut.

“I haven’t gotta do anything,” you counter sharply from around the edge of the door, your face pinching in a blatantly vexed expression at the way the woman is keeping it ajar.

Your eyes flicker over to Nicholas through the gap between the door and its frame, surveying him with a look of disdain that might just have been enough to offend him if he were a little more himself.

“Mama, he got shot!” Charity suddenly bursts into what can only be described as a spectacular display of tears—blubbering noisily between each word as she elbows her way through the group towards your door. She reaches across the threshold and desperately clutches at the front of your shirt with both hands as she pleads to you. “P-please let us in, y-you’re the only one who can h-he-help him.”

“Bertie, what in God’s merciful name is wrong with you?” you sigh aggrievedly, roughly batting her hands away from their grip on your clothes. In the next breath, you wrench open the front door to your home, stepping back to allow your unexpected visitors the space to cross through the doorway. “And cut the waterworks or you’re gonna wake up half The Bend and get us all shot.”

As the girls help Nicholas inside and across the gnarled, warped floorboards of your little house, you slip wordlessly away into another room out of sight. When you return moments later, you’ve pulled on a creased button-down over that pretty little undershirt of yours. 

Nicholas can’t help but notice that you’re dressed practically like a man, especially in comparison to the painted faces and petticoats of the other women in the room. But it strangely suits you, for reasons he can’t quite place.

“He got shot fightin’ some bozo tryin’ to rough up Ada on her way home,” Violetta explains when you look to her with an expression that demands context. She’s the most level-headed of the five woman gathered in your tiny home, so no one can blame you for turning to her first. 

Nicholas feels dizzy, the modest lamp-lit room around him reeling like a child’s toy spinning top gaining speed. 

Did he do that?

He remembers hearing something out back in the alley that runs behind the saloon and the inn when he went out to take a piss late into to the evening, well after it had dropped dark. He was already sufficiently drunk by that point, but there was no mistaking the sound of a woman putting up a fight the moment that he heard it. He followed the racket and found the pair quickly—on instinct more than anything—grabbing the drunken man by the scruff of the neck and hauling him off the poor girl he was trying to force himself on. In the ensuing scuffle, the man pulled a gun that Nicholas wasn’t expecting. With his senses drink-dulled, he didn’t react quickly enough to miss the shot entirely and caught it in his arm—but he’s lucky the guy had such terrible aim to begin with, or the night could have turned out a whole lot worse.

But who’s this Ada? He thought the girl he’d helped’s name was Priscilla—having met her a few times in the saloon. She was always quieter than the rest of them, a little more reserved. She didn’t say much to anyone from what Nicholas had witnessed in his time spent in The Bend. But Ada’s not the first name he’s heard since showing up at your door that’s unfamiliar to him.

“You've got a lot of nerve dragging some no-good, half-cocked brute to my door like this in the middle of the damn night, Sarah Jane,” you hiss through your teeth, your eyes flickering from Violetta over to Nicholas once more.

Violetta snorts, but offers no argument.

“Please, Mama,” Priscilla (or is it Ada? Nicholas can’t keep track anymore) says quietly, though her tone is unmistakably earnest. It’s the first time she’s said anything since the girls came stumbling through your door with the injured man propped between them. First time he remembers her saying anything at all—at least other than when he heard her screaming and chased off the scum that was hassling her.

Your attention suddenly turns to where Priscilla stands just off near the corner of the little room, with Theodosia (another one of Big Annie’s working girls) at her side with a comforting arm looped around her waist. It’s not hard to see the way the woman trembles as she holds her shawl around her shoulders. She’s got a bad scrape across her cheek, and her lip is split—evidence of the ordeal she’d gone through earlier in the evening. Her skin still looks clammy and sallow from the shock. 

Your expression softens as you contemplate her.

“C’mere, Adaline,” you beckon to her, reaching out a hand. “Step into the light and let me take a look at you.”

She approaches you without any reservation, and you carefully inspect her wounds after taking her face gently in your hands. A long, resigned sigh slips from your lips once a moment has passed, having turned her face this way and that to fully scrutinize her condition. You look around at the women gathered in your home, and the man slumping between them, then your head hangs in defeat. Your hand lifts to pinch the bridge of your nose.

“Bertie, go grab my bag from my room. Georgie, fetch some clean water from the basin in the kitchen.”

Charity and Theodosia move briskly once you’ve issued the order—like they don’t want to give you the opportunity to change your mind.

Nicholas finds it a little funny how easily these women yield to you, though most seem to be your seniors—you’re just a scrappy young thing, only a few years into your adulthood if he had to guess. As he watches you, he sees that you carry yourself with a  certain quality that’s beyond your years—every action and word steeped with a sort of weary assuredness that you haven’t even lived long enough to properly earn. 

He watches you move with the grace of a woman, and listens to you speak with the authority of a man—and It could be the blood loss talking, but Nicholas thinks you might just be the most interesting thing he’s stumbled upon in this god-forsaken little town.

“You’re a doctor?”

You freeze, your head snapping in his direction when you finally hear him speak.

Your lip curls and you bare your teeth to him, and Nicholas is suddenly reminded of those city cats that wander the back alleys in Julai, hissing with their hackles raised when you happen across their path.

“Do I look like a doctor to you?” you sneer at him derisively.

For some unplaceable reason, Nicholas almost wants to laugh—the sensation bubbling up in his stomach in the wake of your harsh words.

(Though, that might just be the liquor.)

“Her daddy was a doctor,” Queenie whispers to him quietly as she and Violetta help Nicholas up onto the wooden table at the centre of the room at your instruction, leaning him back until he’s laid flat across it with a grunt. “Only one The Bend’s seen in the last 80 years."

“Prudence, you better shut your damn mouth if you want me to do anything about this mess,” you snap without looking up, busy rifling through the ancient leather medicine bag that Charity just dragged in from the other room.

You tend to Priscilla first, fixing her up with a compress on her cheek and a salve for the cut on her lip. She’s not the most desperate case in the room, but no one tries to turn your attention to the man on the table until you’re good and ready to do so of your own accord—a unanimous, though entirely unspoken, pact of silence lest your precarious agreement to help be withdrawn. Once you’re satisfied that the woman’s been sufficiently looked after, leaving her once more in the dutiful care of Theodosia, you finally turn to Nicholas.

The lamplight is fairly dim, even though you’ve moved it closer to the table to help illuminate your work—and there’s very little oil in the grimy reservoir of the glass lamp to keep it burning.

You approach him slowly.

“You a lefty?” you ask him, plunking yourself down in the wooden chair nearest to his injured left arm.

“Luckily not,” he slurs, his head lolling over to look at you as you sit beside him at the table.

“Luckily?” You huff, and Nicholas thinks that maybe it’s as close to a laugh as someone as mirthless as you ever gets. “You must not’ve heard: luck left The Bend years ago, and it’s not coming back.”

Nicholas really does find himself laughing then in the face of your plain, bur distinctly dour expression—and he immediately winces as a sharp pain shoots through him from the strain of trying to hold it back.

Your eyes survey the sopping, blood-soaked handkerchief he’s holding to his injury, then you lean over towards the medicine bag and begin digging through it again. He watches as you pull out an inhumanely large needle and some thread.

“Clear out, ladies,” you remark flatly to the group of onlookers without glancing up from the contents of the bag before you. “None of you are gonna wanna see this.”

The girls delay momentarily even after you bark out the order, as though worried that once they leave the room your willingness to help may exit with them.

You lift your face in their direction, some gauze and a corked flask of an indistinguishable transparent liquid in hand. Your lips pull down noticeably at the corners when you see the way the women are hesitating. “Go on, then. I’m making this exception for you once, and never again. Get Ada back home safe, and then the rest of you oughta do the same.”

Still, no one seems keen to heed your words.

You and Violetta share a pointed look, and it’s clear your patience—hardly-there to begin with—has worn dangerously thin.

“Alright, whores—clear out!” the older woman says, turning on her heel and corralling Queenie, Charity, Priscilla, and Theodosia towards the door with her arms outstretched. “Unless one of y’all are keen to be the next one who needs stitchin'!”

It takes a moment to get everyone moving—Charity in particular putting up more of a fight than the rest of them—but eventually Violetta succeeds in ushering them out. She casts one final glance back from the doorway, and Nicholas catches the exchange of almost imperceptible nods of thanks between you.

It’s unbearably quiet once they’re gone.

You move swiftly but silently, and set to work without a single word exchanged between you and the man stretched across your table. Without hesitating, you drag a thin blade in two strokes up the front of Nicholas’s bloodstained shirt—one cut along the torso and then another up the sleeve—and then pull off whatever’s in your way. You don’t so much as bat an eye as the tanned skin of his chest and abdomen is suddenly bared; there’s no distinguishable emotion or thought on your face that Nicholas can make out, but he’s also fairly distracted as he bites back the groans of pain that threaten to slip out each time you jostle his injured arm too roughly. 

Next, you begin cleaning the surface of the wound—as best you can given that it’s still unstitched—in preparation to fish out and remove the bullet still stuck inside. That little flask from earlier has some sort of antiseptic in it, which Nicholas discerns by the acrid smell and unbearable burning that rips through him as you let it trickle over the open gouge in his skin. He cries out as it happens, and the sound even takes him by surprise—guttural and completely instinctive.

“Don’t be a baby,” you sniff, dabbing away at the blood and antiseptic around his wound with some clean gauze.

“Sorry,” Nicholas mumbles through his panting breaths, pressing his opposite hand over his mouth in an attempt to keep himself quiet.

Your eyes flicker up to his briefly in the wake of his apology, and your gazes meet. You’re the first to look away after the momentary hold.

Next, you tip the flask into your hands, coating your palms in the stinging, astringent antiseptic. The lamplight catches in the little droplets as you shake them from your fingertips.

“My daddy told me once that doctors have to tell lies to keep their patients calm,” you say quietly, your lips pursing forward as you wrap one cool hand underneath his bicep. “Said that it’s just part of the job.”

You suck in a little breath, meeting his gaze briefly once more.

He can’t help but think your eyes look pretty when the light reflects in them like this. 

“But I’m no doctor—and this is gonna hurt like fresh hell.”

Outside your rickety little house on the edge of this forgotten, nowhere town, another peal of thunder roars.

You don’t often patch up bullet holes.

In fact, you can count on one hand the number of times you’ve tried.

But you’re not a professional, and you’ve never claimed to be; you’re just a doctor’s daughter who used to follow her father on his rounds through town, helping out whenever and wherever it was needed. Unavoidably, you learned some things along the way—like treatments, and time-honoured remedies, and how to sew a stitch so it won’t pucker when it scars—but you’re about as far as anyone could be from trained. You’ve got no education beyond your reading, writing, and basic arithmetic—what little education the school house in town could offer you until you just stopped going altogether—and your experience is limited only to the care you offer to Big Annie’s girls: whether it’s cleaning up the messes left by their particularly nasty customers or treating them as best you can when they fall ill. 

You don’t bother telling any of this to the man bleeding all over your table, though. You doubt it would do him much good.

Daddy used to deal with gunshot wounds all the time. They’re about a dime a dozen in a town like The Bend, after all, where tempers are high and spirits are low—not to mention where the men outnumber the women by about ten-to-one. 

And if there’s one thing you know about men, it’s that they all love slinging guns but less than half of them ought to be allowed to—because it always leads to injuries like this. It’s rarely ever women who walk around town getting themselves shot.

But in spite of all that, and your lack of experience, you watched your father go through the motions frequently enough that the movements come to you now like second nature: disinfect, remove, keep pressure, suture, bandage. You know the order of things, and you find your mind clear and your hands steady as you set to work—starting by cleaning him up as best you can to prepare to extract the bullet. 

You can see the very butt of it in peeking out from inside his ugly wound; a pesky little thing, slick with blood that catches in the light when his arm twitches towards the lamp. It’s not nestled too deep in there, thankfully, and he’ll probably be fine if he lets it heal properly—but it’ll still hurt like a bitch to pull out. 

But that’s his problem, not yours.

Unfortunately, you don’t have a pair of tweezers you trust to pluck the bullet out—at least not a pair that isn’t rusty—so your god-given tools will have to be what you use for the undertaking. You disinfect your hands as best you can before you begin.

“Would you stop squirming?” you mutter under your breath as the man on your table flinches the first time your fingers graze his open wound.

“Sorry,” he mumbles back, and your eyes flicker up to his face again briefly. 

This man keeps apologizing to you. 

It’s unsettling.

His dark eyes are heavy lidded, but you can still sense them tracing along the lines of your face as you work. There’s visible sweat beading at his temple as he lies flat on his back atop the wooden table in the centre of your home, and his bare chest rises and falls with heavy, laboured breaths that shake every so often on the exhale—the lamplight at your side catches in the perspiration glistening there too, near the little smattering of hair that sits at the highest point of his sternum.

This guy—this stranger who’s bleeding all over the table you eat your meals on—really pisses you off.

He’s got an awful lot of nerve to show up here in the middle of the night, looking for your help after he went and got himself shot. A small part of you knows that’s not entirely fair to think, because he got shot helping Adaline and it was the girls who’d brought him to you in the first place, but you still can’t help but be resentful. 

You feel yourself frown.

Your fingertips dip inside the wet heat of his wound for the first time, and he lets out a gasping, wretched groan from deep in the centre of his chest—so loud it almost makes you flinch.

“Don’t pass out,” you warn him flatly, pinning his injured arm more firmly to the table and prodding further in as you try to get a grip on the evasive little bullet with the very tips of your fingers. “You’re dead weight if you’re unconscious, and I’ll drag you outta this house in parts if I have to.”

“Noted,” the dark-haired man says through clenched teeth, his eyes squeezing shut as he attempts to stomach the pain.

You don’t have anything to offer him to dull the sensation—though you’re not sure you’d waste something so precious on him even if you did. After a while, and a bit more poking and prodding, he seems to acclimatize to the agony anyway. 

Or at the very least he gets better at masking it.

“I’m Nicholas, by the way,” he grits out after a while of you unsuccessfully trying to remove the bullet—frequently having to pause and wipe away the blood that’s continued to seep from the wound, slicking you down to your wrist. It stains the cuff of your shirtsleeve now, and you regret ever pulling it on to begin with, because you know it will be a nightmare to pound out in the wash.

“Didn’t ask.”

“I know,”—miraculously, he manages to laugh a bit, even as you’ve got two fingers digging around inside his arm—“just thought I’d tell ya anyway.”

You don’t bother replying, your eyes honed in solely on the task at bloody hand.

“‘M grateful for your help, y’know. Even if it’s just an exception,” the man—Nicholas—slurs next, his head tipping to the side on your kitchen table. You can tell that he’s talking, if nothing else, to distract himself. A lonely bead of sweat drips down his throat as he looks at you. “It’s awfully nice of ya to take pity on a no-good brute like me, Mama.”

You feel a crick of irritation tighten in your jaw then, as he parrots your earlier words back to you. Your fingers, still poking around to retrieve the bullet in his shoulder, twitch—and you aren’t sure the gesture is entirely involuntary. The man on the table before you yelps, flinching away from the pain, and you lean closer with your eyes still fixed on the wound piercing his skin.

“Don’t call me that,” you hiss through the dull scrape of your teeth grinding tightly together.

Nicholas lifts his right hand to his mouth, curled into a fist, and his pearly teeth bite down hard into the flesh at the base of his thumb as he pants through the pain. You finally, mercifully, manage to get a grip on that damned bullet, plucking it out and tossing it into the waiting dish atop the table with a delicate, terribly anticlimactic clink. You swiftly press a pad of clean gauze to the wound to staunch the bleeding while you reach for the stitching needle you left set off to the side.

“Hold this,” you order him, and the man lets his hand slip from the bite of his jaw to do as he’s told while you rifle through the bag at your feet. You can see the marks his teeth left in his skin as he takes the gauze from your hand into his own and begins to apply pressure.

You stand and wash your hands off as best you can in the basin of water Georgie brought in for you earlier, poised at the end of the table. The liquid tints pink as you first dip them in, and then slowly it turns an even darker, uglier colour as you properly scrub his blood from your skin. You shake as much of the water off your hands as you can, and then use the front of your shirt to sop up the rest—faintly rust-tinged handprints left in the cotton.

You take your seat once more, and Nicholas watches you through mostly-closed eyes as you set about sterilizing the needle.

“How come I can’t call you that?” 

You light a candle using the lamp at your side. Then you swish the needle around in antiseptic before running it through the flickering flame until it sparks—careful not to let it lick too close to your fingertips. Your eyes slide over to Nicholas as you pluck it from the fire.

With his face tilted towards you, another little drop of sweat has tracked down his cheek towards his prominent nose, and it glistens against his flushing skin in the warm light of your oil lamp. His eyes are glassy and unfocused, too—from what you don’t doubt is the combination of pain and whatever booze he’s been guzzling to numb it—and lips part on a shuddering exhalation as you survey his face.

“Call me what?” you mutter, averting your eyes and turning again to search through your medicine bag for a clean roll of bandage.

“Ma—” A sudden, harsh glare cuts him off before he even has the chance to say it. He smiles a little, the expression half-delirious, and you can’t help but think that if he weren’t so weakened from the pain that wracks him, he might have even managed another laugh.

You kiss your teeth quietly. “Only the girls call me that.”

The man bleeding out in the middle of your table clearly knows your tone of voice means not to push it, because he doesn’t. Instead, he turns his head until he’s staring up at your dingy ceiling once more, though you can tell from the faraway look in his eyes he’s not seeing much at all. 

“The girls,” Nicholas remarks quietly, speaking more to himself than anything. “You don’t call ‘em by their names.”

That’s right: he’d only know the girls by their working names. You’re surprised he even caught that.

“The hell I don’t,” you mutter, turning back to face him in your seat once more with your last roll of bandage clutched tightly in your hand. You set it down atop the table as you set your supplies up just how you like them. “I call them by the names their mothers gave them.”

Nicholas hums thoughtfully. “Sarah Jane, that’s Violetta?”

You grunt out an affirmative, threading the freshly cleaned needle with nimble, dextrous accuracy. 

“And Charity, her real name’s Bertie?”

“Bertha May,” you correct him, snipping away the excess thread with a little pair of mostly-dull scissors—careful not to take more than you’ll need, but still giving yourself sufficient supply to work with.

“Priscilla’s name’s Adaline,” Nicholas continues, his eyes still tracing the cracks in your ceiling. “And what about Theodosia and Queenie?” 

“Georgina and Prudence,” you supply flatly as you secure a tight knot in the end of the stitching thread.

Nicholas sighs before slurring, “’s a lot to keep track of.”

You snort. “Wait until you find out Big Annie’s real name.”

He looks over at you with wider eyes than you’ve seen on him since he came staggering through your door. He catches the expression on your face and his own softens, clearly sensing that you’d said it only in jest. 

Annie’s just short for Annabelle, after all. Madam’s rarely need to take up new personas—why would they need to be someone they’re not if they aren’t the ones doing the dirty work?

Nicholas watches as you tug on the stitching thread one last time to test its strength—eying the glinting needle warily. You set the threaded implement carefully off to the side once you’re confident it’s ready.

“So you learned all this stuff from your daddy, huh?” he asks you next.

You swallow over the unpleasant lump you suddenly feel in the back of your throat and reach up, nudging his hand away from where he’s holding the gauze to his wound. He’s become a real chatterbox now, and part of you wonders why you’re even tolerating it.

You clean the area with antiseptic again—and Nicholas is just as dramatic as he was the first time as a low moan of pain tears through him. For a moment you worry he really might be on the brink of passing out, the whites of his eyes taking over as they begin to roll back, so you know you need to keep him focused.

“He used to take me with him on his rounds,” you mumble a reply to his earlier question. 

Nicholas’s eyes open a bit wider when he hears your voice, a little more focused now than they had been.

“My daddy, I mean,” your tone is dismissive and flippant, but it seems to be an effective distraction. “I just picked things up here and there while I watched him work.”

“You’re a natural.”

You snort mirthlessly in the wake of his reply. “Don’t know about all that.”

“You just pulled a bullet outta my arm with your bare hands, that’s gotta count for something.” Nicholas hisses as you press the antiseptic-soaked gauze to his wound one last time, then he sucks in a sharp breath. “And the girls trust you a lot, so you must be good at it.”

“Somebody’s gotta take care of them.” 

Lord knows no one else around here does.

You set the scarlet saturated gauze aside in the dish with the discarded bullet, then pick up your needle.

You make neat, even sutures through his skin, and you take your time to do it right. You’ve always been good at this kind of thing, even when you were young. You were born with a keen eye for detailed work like this, and your daddy used to get you to finish up the smaller wounds he was called to treat that needed finer stitching—said your little hands were just better at it than his own big, life-roughened ones. He always used to tell you that you got your steady hands from him, but your nimble fingers from your mother.

Not that you’d know anything about that.

Nicholas has stopped flinching now, a little more relaxed than he’d previously been, and you can’t help but look up at him every so often as you work—wondering if that steady, even rise and fall of his chest means that he’s finally knocked out. Especially since he’s suddenly gone so quiet. 

But each time you check, you find his eyes are still open—though only just barely—and are peering up towards the ceiling. Sometimes you catch him glancing at you too.

Once the wound has been fully closed in a tidy little line of stitches, you wrap the roll of bandages around it with some gauze tucked underneath, just in case.

“You’re all done,” you say quietly, slumping back in your chair once you’re finally finished.

All at once, you feel exhausted—the adrenaline you didn’t even know had been rushing through you disappearing in a blink. It reminds you of how the wind dies in the valley in the wake of a bad storm, like it took the breeze with it. You’re all too conscious of the fact that it’s the middle of the night now, and that you ought to long be asleep.

“Thank you,” Nicholas says as he pushes himself up onto the elbow of his uninjured arm, though he still winces at the movement. You don’t make any attempt to help him.

His shirt is in pieces, and he discards it since it’s of so little use to him now, shaking his right arm to free it from the only sleeve that remains in tact on the garment. You watch as he pushes himself fully upright, throwing his long legs over the side of the table to stand. When he does, he dips slightly—like the sudden movement makes him woozy, and his knees are weak—and his right hand shoots out to balance himself on the edge of the tabletop on instinct. You suppose it’s not unexpected given the amount of blood he lost.

You watch his toned, tanned back as he stretches himself out as much as his injury will allow; observing how his skin pulls taught over the defined musculature that surrounds his spine. He’s littered with scars—a map of wounds that weren’t stitched as neatly as the new one on his upper arm—and part of you can’t help but wonder how he got them all. Can’t help but wonder what stories those marks tell, written in a language you don’t know how to read.

You look away, feeling an inexplicable heat flood rapidly to your cheeks.

You stand and quickly slip off your own overshirt—just some old button-up left behind from your father, though you have no memories of him ever wearing it. You clutch it in your fist and stick it out for him to take.

He eyes it in surprise for a moment before accepting it.

“Those blood stains are yours, anyway. You might as well have it,” you say, eyeing the red mark at the cuff on the right-hand sleeve as the garment passes from your hold into his, “in any case it’s in better shape than the one you came here with.” 

It saves having to clean it, too. So it’s all the same to you.

“I’ll pay you,” he slurs, still unsteady on his feet as he begins rifling awkwardly through his pockets with his only useable hand. He almost tips right over in his haste, but you quickly slip beside him and steady his frame.

“Yeah, you will,” you agree, holding tight to his right arm to keep him standing. “Worry about it tomorrow.”

Nicholas’ bare skin radiates warmth with only your thin, lace-trimmed undershirt left separating you as you stand pressed into his side. He peers down at you curiously, blinking slowly like he’s being called to sleep. From this close, with him standing properly upright for the first time, you realize just how big this man is—tall, with a broad chest and defined muscles, and stubble dusted along his sharp jawline that you hadn’t noticed before. You take a sudden step away to put much needed distance between the two of you, these realizations making something stir in the pit of your stomach that makes you feel squeamish. 

“Do you know your way back to the inn?” you ask him, your arms crossing over your front.

Nicholas bobs his head in a completely unconvincing nod. It’s not like the town is big enough to get lost in in the first place—and he very well might know his way if it were daylight, or he weren’t half delirious—but sending him out into The Bend in his current state would be as much of a death sentence as it would have been to turn him away when he first showed up at your door. 

You sigh in resignation.

“Just sleep on the floor here for tonight. I’ll check your stitches again tomorrow morning before you leave.”

The man looks taken aback, but he nods quickly—as though he doesn’t want to give you time to rescind the unexpected offer.

You fish around in the depths of your father’s old medicine bag, eventually pulling out a bottle of murky liquid as Nicholas gets settled with an old cushion and a threadbare quilt near the unlit hearth of the fireplace. You use the edge of your nail to uncork it, take a quick whiff to make sure it’s the right one, and then tread towards the man on the other side of the room.

He peers up at you from his makeshift bed on the floor, resting with his knees apart and his long legs sprawled out in front of him. You pass the little glass bottle to him, your fingers brushing as it passes from your grip into his. “Drink this, it helps to fight off infection.”

He eyes it warily. The outside of the bottle is suspiciously grimy, and the putrid colour of the liquid inside is no less reassuring. “What is it?”

“Hog Fennel.”

He grimaces, peeking into the opening of the bottle with one eye closed. “Sounds foul.”

You snort. “It is."

Nicholas doesn’t draw it out any longer, tipping the vial back an draining it all in one shot. He winces once he swallows it down, his pink tongue peeking out a little as he pants through the taste—which you’re sure is bitter and disgusting.

“How was it?” you ask him wryly.

“I’ve had worse, honestly,” he says, shooting you a little grin you can’t believe he’s able to manage not only in the wake of such a disgusting concoction but considering what he’s been through that night.

You blink, your brow furrowing, and then eventually nod dismissively before turning and shuffling off towards the other side of the room where the door to your bedroom is found.

“Thank you.” 

Nicholas speaks again as you’re just shy of crossing the threshold into your room, you consider pausing in your shock but then think better of it.

“You already said that,” you reply, your tone annoyed, and shut the door behind you.

You open it again a second later to poke your head back out towards him.

“I’ve got a gun in here, by the way, and I won’t miss. Just in case you were thinking of trying anything funny.”

Across the room, Nicholas is already laying down on his pitiful excuse of a resting place, looking strangely content.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says with a smile, though his eyes stay closed.

Part of you is annoyed at how comfortable he seems. How easily he talks to you. How normal his presence feels in your home.

Another part of you—one that’s deeper, locked away and hidden out of sight in a place where you think you’ve lost they key—isn’t.

You slip back into your room and close the door behind you with a soft click. 

And in the silent stillness of your little bedroom with your shoulder blades pressed back into your bedroom door, you realize that the thunder outside has stopped but you can hear the softest, faintest pitter patter of raindrops through cracked glass of your window.

Rain came back to The Bend.

Maybe luck would follow.

[littlewetbeast]

hi! i love your tumblr fics/writing in general… sending you so much love and appreciation! if you’re taking requests and if the mood takes you… do you think you could write something about dean’s lack of hunger? i’m obsessed with it as a concept, it’s fascinating! i don’t think we talk about it enough :( happy 4th july!

Note: timeline is a bit muddy - set roughly in kripke & gamble era, s4-s7. Warning: very vaguely NSFW, depressive and suicidal feelings Word count: 2k

It’s always the little things that end up getting to him, in the end. The server glances at his unfinished plate of food, and with a tilt of her head says, “Not to your liking, honey?” He stills. A tight sensation coils in his stomach. “I’m good,” Dean says, flashing her a smile, willing every muscle to relax. “Just had a big lunch.” He pats his stomach for show. She nods, leaving it at that, and brings him his bill. Dean reminds himself that there is no need to check around the diner to see if anyone heard it. He rubs his greasy fingers on the napkin and downs the rest of his beer, leaving an extra large tip with the odd hope that it will, somehow, quell the unease deep in his gut. It doesn’t. Then again, nothing ever does.

* * *

The reality is - he gets the urges. He gets the pangs of hunger and the dry-mouthed thirst; the deep aches for rest; the need for an extra long shower with his hands on himself, gritting his teeth to bite back the noise. Dean has basic desires and fleeting wants. All of them remain only surface-deep - they never soothe the gaping void in his chest, or the sensation that he is rotting from the inside out. Dean tried to explain it to Sam once. After seeing the way his mouth twisted with pity while he listened, he vowed never to bring it up again. He peers into his drink, his tongue darting out to wet his numbing lips while he drums his fingers absently against the glass. Dean’s not sure how many he’s had now, but he has enough muscle control that as he waves down the bartender for another one, he isn’t met with protest. It takes him far too long to realise someone has appeared on the stool next to him. Mind moving sluggishly, he realises that the stillness with which they arrived means they can only be one person. “Not seen you in a while,” Dean says, still looking into his drink, eyeing the sorry drop that’s left. “Hello, Dean,” Cas says, voice low. Dean knows for sure he’s had too much now, because the sound of him instantly sends a flush across his cheeks, one he can’t blame solely on the alcohol. He lifts the glass to pour the last drop onto his tongue, for something to do.

“How’s all that angel crap going?” Dean says as he sets the glass back down, not bothering to dampen the slur of his voice as the bartender brings him his next drink. “It’s fine,” Cas says, a little curtly. He shifts on the stool, half-turning against him. “Sam wondered where you’d gone.” Dean snorts and takes another sip of his drink. “He sent a babysitter.” “He’s been worried about you,” Cas says. Dean hums, licking his lips again. “I’m fine, Cas,” he says. He turns towards him, roaming his eyes across him lazily, then grins, big and toothy. “I’m wonderful. Peachy. Having a swell ol’ time.” As if to prove it, he lifts the glass up with a jerk, inadvertently sloshing some of the liquid onto his fingers. He swears and puts it down on the napkin, sloppily licking his fingers. Dean only barely has enough self-control to stop himself from making a sensual show of it.

Cas doesn’t say anything. Dean can feel the weight of his gaze, but he now feels unable to look at him. After a moment, he hears Cas call the bartender over. “Whatever he’s having, please,” he says.

Dean feels himself sink into the seat, releasing tension in his body he hadn’t even known was there. As Cas receives his drink and lifts it to his lips, Dean watches. He’s too drunk now to be able to look away; the willpower it takes is already challenging while sober. Cas maintains eye contact as he takes a sip, and something in his eyes keeps Dean’s gaze locked to him. The urges, as always, are there - even if they are inhabiting a dead man.

He’s starting to feel the latent effects of the previous drinks now, buzzing underneath the surface of his skin. Dean takes another long sip, relishing the burn of it at the back of the throat, and Cas doesn’t say anything more. He remains a warm, solid form next to him as they drink. None of them push each other further, and Dean is grateful for it. By the time the glass is empty, the full effects of the alcohol is working its way through his body, sending the room into a hazy spin, with Cas being the only steady thing left. Dean vaguely registers being taken out of the bar, feeling the bite of the night air on his skin, cooling the warmth on his cheeks.

“I’m not really hungry, Cas,” Dean says, eventually, as he begins to register his feet moving under him. “You’re not making any sense,” Cas says, his breath hot in his ear. Dean desperately wants to lean into it. He realises now that he’s been talking for a while.

“I told you,” Dean says, “I’m not really hungry.” He laughs, a sharp bark that punctures the still midnight air. “You’re upset because you’re not hungry,” Cas says slowly. Dean snorts inelegantly. “Dude,” he says, “I’m upset because you fucked up.” He disentangles himself from Cas from a second, and realises swiftly his mistake as he wobbles around, waving his arm at something to grab at. Eventually, his arm is clasped by Cas, bringing them together again. Dean makes a half-hearted attempt to separate himself from him, but there is nothing solid around to steady him except for Cas. He feels giddy now, inane laughter bubbling up from his chest. “I’m not all here, man,” Dean says. “There’s something missing.” A bizarre thought occurs to him. “I’m not soulless, am I?” “No, Dean,” Cas says. Dean shakes his head. “You angels ever get that feeling where,” he snaps his fingers, clumsily, “you keep worrying you’ve left the oven on?” “No,” Cas says. “Well, it’s like that,” Dean says, swinging his finger emphatically. “You did that. Except it was me. I was the oven.” They shuffle along quietly for a moment, Dean slumped into Cas, pulling back every urge to nuzzle into his neck. “I’m very confused by this metaphor,” Cas says eventually. “Yeah, ‘cause you’re the one who left it on,” Dean says, as if explaining to a toddler. “I see,” Cas says, resignation laced in his voice.

This time, Dean can’t help but nuzzle into him. “I should be pissed at you, you know,” Dean says into his ear.

Cas doesn’t say anything, seemingly focused entirely now on keeping Dean upright, urging him to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Dean wonders if Cas ever expected himself to be abandoning his heavenly missions in favour of dragging a drunk man home. “No,” Cas says. Dean realises he’s saying everything out loud, and snaps his mouth shut. “Hey,” Dean says, deliberately this time. “Why aren’t you, uh,” he frowns, and makes his one free hand flap like a bird, “you know, just flying me back?” “Not sure how the effects would be on someone this inebriated,” Cas says. “Keys, Dean.” “We should go to Hawaii or something. Get a couple of drinks there,” Dean says. “Dean,” Cas repeats firmly. “The motel keys.” Then he starts patting Dean’s jacket down, and Dean sways in place, focused now entirely on keeping his head cool while Cas’ hands move all over him. He pulls the keys from his jean pocket, his hand far too close to Dean’s crotch for his liking, and they jingle as Cas unlocks the room. The giddiness deflates from Dean’s chest as he remembers, suddenly, why he’s here. How he had left Sam with a mumbled excuse, booked a room for just himself, because he could no longer bear how the hollowness had grown to a gaping hole in his chest; or how he had the overwhelming sensation of being nothing but a puppet, an empty vessel that was simply being manouvered into doing things he was supposed to. Drinking, sleeping, eating, hunting, teasing Sammy, flirting with girls - all things he had done before spending a lifetime in hell. He does all the same things, but they are no longer the same. This time, Dean Winchester is no longer there. He died a long time ago. “Dean?” He looks up, and realises he’s gone still in the doorway, and the image focuses slowly in his eyes. Cas is watching him with his brows furrowed together, his mouth set in a worried line. Dean feels like he should laugh again, but there is nothing left in him now but what remains at the core of him - a deep, aching nothingness. Dean swings the door shut behind him, and Cas reaches out to him as he attempts to stand on his own two wobbly feet. Smiling thinly, Dean says, “I’m all wrong.” With effort, he tugs the jacket off. It feels like it’s wound tightly around every limb, refusing to let go, but eventually he manages to peel it off. “You left a piece of me down there in the pit,” Dean says, and huffs a dry, humourless laugh. “You left the damn oven on.” For a moment, Cas says nothing. He hovers a half-step close to him, and they stand quietly while Dean’s breaths get thick and raspy, his hands trembling by his sides. “You gotta fix this shit,” he bites out, and he feels his cheeks have turned hot and wet. Dean braves the journey to the bed, with Cas’ hands securing him by his side, and he slumps down heavily on it. “You gotta,” he presses the palms of his hands into his eyes, drawing in a shaky breath, “You gotta fix this, Cas.”

He breathes into his hands, both covering his face, and he draws in a breath, then another, his whole body trembling. “I can’t do it anymore,” he says, his voice small, breaking at the end. “I can’t go on anymore, Cas.”

Dean’s hands are gripped by something warm and soft. Cas’ hands are pulling them gently away from his face, and placing them on his knees. He doesn’t make a move as Cas tenderly brushes away the tears streaking down his cheeks. He doesn’t protest as he cups his face. Distantly, he wonders if anyone has ever touched him like this, and comes up short. Cas is just inches from him, his eyes watching him like he wants nothing more than to draw out every bit of pain and ache Dean has ever experienced. Dean is gripped by the notion that he could lean forward and kiss Cas right now. It’s not the first time he’s thought it, but it’s the first time he’s let himself seriously consider it. “You need to get some sleep, Dean,” Cas says. His voice is barely a whisper off his lips.

Dean feels Cas’ hand over his forehead, and for a brief moment, he wonders if it is normal for angels to have a touch that is so unbearably tender, as if they can pour love into their skin. He feels as if something warm has filled his chest, the dry ache smoothed away, the sensation of something like peace. For one insane moment, he wants to tell Cas he loves him. He doesn’t.

Instead, he sleeps.

* * *

When Dean awakes the next morning, he thinks for the briefest of seconds that he can see a dip in the mattress, fresh from the weight of a body. As he rubs the sleep out of his eyes and shakes himself awake, he remembers that he is alone.

Dean reaches out for his phone, clumsily plugs it into his charger and waits impatiently for the screen to finally light up in a glow. He calls Sam, who has left five increasingly panicked voice messages on his phone. He ribs him mercilessly for it - What are you, an old man? Send a text like everyone else! - and then lets him know his phone had died over the night. There, nothing to be worried about.

The events of the past day feel foggy, courtesy of the hangover. Despite that, when Dean looks up in the bathroom mirror, he finds himself looking refreshed. He feels lighter than he has in years. Later, he tells Sam that he clearly needs to take more vacations away from his griping, and receives a half-hearted punch to his shoulder. "I prayed to Cas, you know," Sam says, looking at his hands. "He must be busy. Didn't answer." Dean huffs, sipping his coffee. "God, you're such a drama queen. Can't survive without your big brother for one day." "Shut up, jerk." "Bitch." Sam sends him a look, but he doesn't say more - he changes the topic, and that's that. Dean drinks his coffee as he half-listens to Sam filling him in on a new case, and he tries to recall when he last saw Cas. He wonders, briefly, if he should pray to him. His stomach flutters traitorously at the thought, and Dean swallows thickly, deciding against it.

He swirls around the remaining coffee in his cup, rubbing his chest absently, and wonders at the ache that has settled there now. Distantly, he reaches for the broken pieces of an old memory, a lingering sensation of a warm palm to his forehead.

[meraki-kintsukuroi]

a star is dying, but the universe won't let it.

(or alternatively: you're burning out like a dying star but these hands that have loved you even long before will never let you go, even if it means getting burnt along.)

tags/warnings: hurt/comfort, light angst, soft fluff, references to depression and to the pandemic, and maybe probably a bit of child abuse it doesn't happen though its just mentioned, implied long-distance relationship, space, morbid, and colour metaphors, discussions about death and dying, shit writing and word vomit (bc im rusty as hell).

pairings : kindaichi yuutaro/reader (gn! reader & ambiguous relationship bc ytf not)

wc : 1, 755

a/n: dedicated to @haru-senji for being in the same situation as I and to all the other people who are as well, hang in there you guys, love you and please stay safe <3.

"Hey 'tarou are you up...?", Yuutarou hears you call out to him in the dark, breaking the silence in the night with your voice faint and small, almost lost against the loud howling wind of the dim sky.

He shifts, twisting his body to where you are, and in the dark--despite of it all--reaches for you when you don't pull or push him away and squeezes the hand you let him hold.

(Intimacy between skin has always been a line you jump in and out of and yuutaro wonders if there ever could be a day where he can hold you without you flinching or shrinking away, and without him saying that its okay despite the hurt in his heart or the deep open scars in yours.)

"Mm, yeah..?", he asks, voice a deep low rasp from the silence that had long been stretching between you, "What is it?"

There is a pregnant pause before you speak. It stretches long and wide much like the ones before and he can't help but be reminded of sea and the sky and he thinks that even in the vastness of it all with you besides him, your backs against the grass of some far away place, underneath all the darkness and twinkling nights, and far away from all uninvited eyes. He thinks that if you were to say anything here and now he would keep it lock in his chest until the day he died.

(Because happiness is limited in a world that is almost at its limit, only holding on to whatever thin silver lining there was to just not fall into the void of nothingness and cease to exist.)

"Do you know how a star is born?",

The ex-volleyball captain blinks once and then twice, and thinks of a grand king who he had served for three long years, of a boy turned king-enemy, to a friend that he had found once lost, of a gymnasium so big that it had to be the whole universe with how many stars, planets, and other celestial bodies there had been, but no matter how much he had thought of it, those astral objects that he had thought of was only at their prime and not at their beginning.

(Those people, those upperclassmen, those players, those rivals, his teammates, had been and always been stars--the moon, the sun, the planet--his universe.

He wonders how proud, those who have seen them at their very beginning feel? To see the rock with no fuel burn with utmost energy along with others who are just as bright as them.)

"No, I don't.", He says, a quiet thing and hears you hum, before feeling you twist and turn before finally settling again, not once letting his hand go as you did so.

(He does not comment on how closer you are to him now, afraid you'd pull away and distance yourself from him again.)

"How about when they die?", you ask him instead, and across the vast meadow he hears the crickets chirping this season's song "Do you know how they die?"

Yuutaro closes his eyes, and thinks of an explosion, of bright colours and a supernova exploding in the expanse of space, of the destruction that follows the grief that comes along with the loss of something as bright as a star.

He thinks of the king-prince-boy and how he had exploded into nothing but colours of red, black, and blue of the grand king who had burst out crying hues of green, grey, and teal, of a dark black empty gym with no bright light or palette in sight.

"They, uh, collapse i think...?" He says trailing off, trying to rack his left part of the brain of the lessons he hadn't slept in science class, "Yeah they do--And then they, they, uh... explode into supernovas? Yeah they explode into supernovas." He finishes unhappy but accepting all the same.

It's not like he was as blunt but smooth with his words just like his best-friend, not sweet like honey, or rough but straight to the point. He was still an awkward, tongue tied, and still fumbling idiot even after all this time. Even when he had hit a growth spurt or even after hitting a major milestone in his life, He was still the tall awkward boy people know who had just grown into an adults body to fit an adult's clothes.

You hum again, and he feels you inching closer, but not close enough to hold you the way he wants to--needs to--

(He pushes the greed--the fear of loosing you--letting go of you away. He can't, does not, will never be selfish, he can't allow it, not when he knows all too well what happens to you and the people around you, suffer through all too well.)

"Do you think we'll go out like that?", you ask him again, voice almost like a child afraid, "Like a supernova exploding in colours?"

He feels you shift again, and this time he thinks you're much closer to him than before and he thinks that you might be facing him this time too, he doesn't know it's too dark to see (but even so, even so, even so please come closer so I can hold you so--)

"Or do you think, we'll go out like a daisy crushed by the one who's supposed to take care of it?"

And something about that question, something about the way you say those words, makes his heart scream and mind twist in agony.

Because he thinks of the world, and how its marching to an unknown point and how much its scaring people. Thinks of you and your home that's only getting so much colder with each day passing. Thinks of himself and how he's just like a ghost wandering with a lover that's slowly collapsing--dying underneath the weight, of the pain of it all, that's too much for them to bear and not being able to do anything about it because-- "the only person who can save you is yourself, and you know that better than anyone else Yuutaro." His mother had once said.

And he knows, he knows, he knows, he goddamn knows, that things are getting worse for you--for him-and for everyone else, but he will fight God and his angels if it meant at least being able to carry some of the burden you had to carry all because the people who was suppose to do it but couldn't so you had to learn how to carry it all by yourself even after all this time.

Because Yuutaro with all his awkwardness and flaws had never been alone.

You however, have been painfully all by your lonesome.

And you meant to him that much to say the least.

"I don't know really." he murmurs truthfully, and squeezes your hand as an I'm sorry that i can't help you lift your pain that I was years too late to even try to do so and now you're hurting so much that you're almost at you're breaking point, and even if you don't know why or what, he still tries to.

Because he was just a ghost with no body or home wandering around this world, trying his darn best to find himself again for a lover that's slowly collapsing and loosing the brightness that they once were.

"Lots of people die in many ways you know?", He says not having one single clue about what's he saying but continues on because happiness is a fickle thing and is it selfish of him to hold your hand and keep you safe from the monsters that was supposed to love you for a bit much longer?

"We're not stars or flowers or anything,", He says with a finality he didn't know he had.

"We're people and we die when we die.", he goes on to say, and he thinks of an accident on the news, a tragedy in a script, and a genocide written on the history books, and thinks that for all the fire and hydrogen or whatever that makes up a star, planet, comet, or whatever. They were all still painfully human even on their last moments.

That they'd all bleed, cry, turn ugly, and at the end of it all die in more ways than one, because humanity is a fickle thing and they were no different.

That he was still human despite being a ghost of he once was, that you were still human even if you were a rotting corpse murdered by the monsters that were your own flesh and blood by the burdens and self-projections that they always had.

That the tyrant he had hated so much was just a boy underneath all the gore, grime, and blood, and that the grand king he had served underneath all the gold and silver and bronze was just human too.

They all were.

"But what if someone wants to go already and the people around them don't want them to...?" He hears you mutter softly, and he squeezes your hand again replying.

"Then don't.", He mutters tiredly just as much you are to the world, the monsters, and at yourself, "Live."

"Do you think we'll ever...", you trail off, and he knows from your tone that you must be struggling with what words to say so he squeezes your hand again because this is the only way you'll let him show his love for you other than his presence (because you're so, so, so scared and he is too, for you and for him as well.)

"Live again?"

Because he's a ghost of a star cluster once formed and you're a rotting corpse of a white dwarf floating in space with no way or direction to what home once was.

"I don't know really.." He says again, and crosses the gap between you deciding fuck it and presses his forehead against yours pushing on as he goes on, "But we'll cross the bridge when we get there all right?"

You don't pull away nor you push him away, instead you tense before relaxing again, and this time instead of him you're the one who squeezes his hand instead.

"Yeah we'll cross the bridge when we get there."

And in the dark--despite the dark, he thinks that maybe you're smiling in what it seems for a long while now, and he thinks that maybe, maybe he is too.

(And when morning comes maybe you both start trying to live again.)

[kellanswritingblog]

The final day of @tmafantasyweek!  Today I went with the prompt Legend and combined it with the Tower prompt from earlier in the week.

I want to give a big thank you to the organizers of this event and to everyone who participated, it is so cool to see what everyone has come up with!

Basira heard tales of an incredible treasure at the top of the tower, but none before her proved strong or brave enough to survive the climb.  In the end, she finds neither gold nor gems, but instead a woman named Melanie, and they attempt to find a path to freedom together.

CW: heights, vertigo, isolation, cave-ins

Basira pushed through the rotting wooden door and stepped inside.  She knew her trials had just begun.

The journey to the tower was difficult enough, leading through treacherous woods, across stormy waters, and atop mountainous peaks.  Now, she had finally arrived, ready to claim the treasure that awaited whoever proved strong enough to reach the top.

She expected levels of monsters and constructs meant to stop anyone from climbing it, but instead she found nothingness.  No stairs, no floors, no enemies.  Only a rickety wooden ladder on the far side of the rounded wall that led upwards into clouds and fog.

The only sign that anyone else had ever attempted the climb was in the remains that scattered the ground.  Other treasure hunters, but they had lacked the finesse to scale into the heavens.

Basira removed her plate armor and set it near the door along with her other supplies, save for an extra length of rope and a few pitons, just in case.  She didn’t need any extra weight pulling her down.

And then she began the climb.

The ladder creaked with every step, and the rope holding it together threatened to fray with the slightest wrong touch, but Basira continued to ascend, begging herself not to look down.  Looking up was little better, as the top of the tower was still so, so far away, hidden in mist.  Instead, she focused on the rungs in front of her, one after another.

Eventually, the ladder ended, and Basira thought for a brief moment that she’d arrived, that she’d made it to the top when so many others had failed.  She panted with exertion and hauled herself up over the edge, only to find a small outcropping, just large enough for her to rest upon, and still so much more distance to go.

She drank a bit of water from her canteen and regained her breath.  Once she felt she was ready to carry on, she looked up to plan her next moves, but there was no ladder.

From there, the only way up was to climb upon the stones themselves, to choose those that jutted out far enough from the rest to gain some purchase.  Basira tied her rope around her middle, making an impromptu harness, then attached it to a piton that she hammered into the wall by the outcropping.  That way, hopefully she wouldn’t fall all the way down if the rock gave out; but she still had no idea just how far up she had yet to climb.

And then she began, carefully testing her weight on each protruding stone before using it to pull herself up and up and up.  With the ladder, she could focus on the rung in front of her, but now she had to look up and down and all around in order to find the next safest step, which mean there was no avoiding just how much space there was between her and the ground below.  

She couldn’t focus on that.  She could only focus on the fabled treasure at the top.

After what felt like eons, a ceiling appeared above, and Basira knew she was almost there.  She had to be.  But her rope harness tugged at her as the length ran out.  If she wanted to reach the trapdoor up there, she would have to untie her safety line.

She perched carefully on the stones, and let the rope fall.  Without anything to catch her, she continued the climb.

The trapdoor was almost in her grasp, but her handhold crumbled beneath her grip and she very nearly began to plummet downwards.  She would not give up so easily.

With her last purchase on the wall, Basira pushed herself upwards and barely grabbed a hold of the ring on the trapdoor, saving herself from the descent. As the door fell open under her weight, a pristine wooden ladder folded out from the edge and gave her easy access to the top of the tower.

The legends said there would be jewels, gold, treasures beyond imagining. Instead, Basira found a relatively empty room.  It looked like a bedroom.

“Somebody actually made it?”

Basira had only just pulled herself into this room and pulled the trapdoor up to seal it; she didn’t want to trip and fall down there after all the work she’d done to reach the top.  Now, she turned to look at the voice that had spoken.

She was a small, wiry woman, with suspicion in her eyes and what looked like a knife in her hand.  

“Yeah, somebody did,” Basira replied.  She continued to sit on the floor and catch her breath, then shook her arms and legs as her muscles cried out in pain.  “I thought there was supposed to be treasure?”

“Oh?”

“They say there’s treasure up here.  I didn’t expect a person.”

“Right.”  The woman tucked the knife into her belt, and then came to sit on the floor across from Basira.  “I don’t know what to tell you.  I’ve been here as long as I can remember.  I don’t know about any treasure, it’s just me.”

Basira looked over at her, at the gauntness of her features and the paleness of her skin.

“You’ve been here forever?”

She shrugged.  “I don’t remember anything else, just this room.”  She gestured to the space around them.  It contained the basic amenities, but also a makeshift set of dummies along the far wall that had been slashed and pummeled.

“I’m… I’m sorry.”  

“I’m sorry too.  That there’s no treasure for you up here.”

Basira shook her head.  “My name is Basira.”

“Melanie.”

Basira held out her hand for Melanie to shake, and she did so.  

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you need,” Melanie added.  “I assume you’ll plan to climb back down at some point, but until you feel up to it, there’s room here.  And the food just magically appears three times a day, so I figure it’ll provide for you too.”

“Thank you.”  Basira stood, and Melanie followed suit.  “Have you never thought of making the climb down yourself?”

Melanie looked at her hands.  “I’m not strong enough.  I know I’m not.  I can try and keep myself fit up here, stop myself from atrophying, but I can’t make it down on my own.”

“We’ll find a way to get you out of here, I swear.”

She glanced at Basira and narrowed her eyes.  “I gave up on hopeful thinking a long time ago.  But… thanks.”

Basira stretched out her muscles and then collapsed into a chair that Melanie pulled over for her.  As she had suspected, a second plate of food appeared for Basira when it was dinner time.  Not that Basira had any idea what time it was or how long she had been climbing, just that it was long enough that she eagerly devoured the meal.

Melanie was quiet, examining Basira’s every move.  Occasionally she would ask a question about the outside world. She had read about it – at least her prison cell had a decent selection of books – but never experienced it herself, and there was so much she wanted to know.  Basira did her best to sate her curiosity, but didn’t make any more promises about getting her out so that she could experience the world for herself. Given Melanie’s disbelief before, Basira didn’t figure that it would help.

When Basira let out a lengthy yawn, Melanie chuckled.  

“I imagine you’re exhausted,” she remarked.

“I am going to be so sore tomorrow,” Basira laughed.  

“You’re welcome to the bed.  I can sleep on the couch.  Unless you don’t mind sharing.”

“I don’t mind if you don’t.  It’s your bed, after all.”

“Fair enough.”

Melanie offered Basira a spare change of clothes, and then they crawled into bed together.  They each clung to their side of the mattress, terrified of invading too far into the other’s space.  Basira might have made more apologies if she hadn’t been so exhausted, but, in her current state, she couldn’t even remember if she offered Melanie a proper goodnight or if she had fallen asleep without another word.

The next thing she knew, the floor was shaking.

“What’s going on?”  Basira exclaimed as she sat bolt upright, taking in the crumbling walls around them.

“I have no idea!  This has never happened before.”

Basira attempted to race to the window, but a chunk of ceiling fell in and blocked her path.  Instead, she threw herself back into the bed, and pulled Melanie into her arms to protect her from any other debris.  If the tower continued to collapse, it would do little good, but at least neither would die alone.

“I’m sorry…”  Melanie breathed as more of the ceiling clattered down around them.  She held tightly to Basira’s arms.

Basira didn’t have the chance to reply.  In a cloud of dust and smoke, they both had to shut their eyes.  The world shook around them and then, as suddenly as it had started, all was still.

When the coast was clear, they took in the collapse around them, coughing up the dust that got stuck in their lungs, but neither let go of the other. Instead of a locked tower room, they found themselves on the ground, the wonderfully safe and normal ground.  A few stone walls protruded from the landscape, but besides those and the untouched bed beneath the pair, there was no sign of the gigantic tower that had once stood atop the hill.  

“Are you alright?”  Basira asked.

Melanie nodded.  “You?”

“I think so.  That was… strange.”

Only now did Melanie extract herself from Basira’s grasp.  She looked around every which way, mesmerized by the tiny little details of the world that Basira overlooked.  

“I’m… free?”

“Looks like it.”

Melanie turned to Basira.  “I think you reaching the top somehow reset everything.  I don’t know how, but the whole place was magic to begin with, so…”

“Who cares how?  You can leave!  You can do whatever you want!”

“I don’t know what to actually do now that I have the chance.  Will you… will you help me?”

Basira smiled.  “Of course.”

Melanie slowly reached out and took Basira’s hand into her own.  Basira squeezed it gently and met Melanie’s excited and terrified gaze.  

“We’ll figure it out.  You and me.”

“Thank you for rescuing me.  And for everything else.”

Together, hand in hand, they made their way back along the path Basira had once trod alone.  They made slow progress, as Melanie darted around to examine the world she had never been permitted to experience, but Basira didn’t mind.  She couldn’t help but think that the legends were right, and that she had found a treasure atop that tower after all.

[acequeenking]

Hadestober #7

6) It Ain't Right, It' Aint Natural! _Eurydice has never met a man like Orpheus. Not once. (T)

Orpheus treats her nice. Nicer than anyone ever has. Nicer than she deserves.

"Hey," he says, every time he sees her coming. Always gives her a smile. Never asks her for money, for food, for shelter. Never beats her. Never once gave her a single thing expecting something in return.

She doesn't know how to deal with it. She keeps waiting for the rug to disappear under her feet, the sky rising up to meet her. He is like no one she has ever met, and she can't shake the idea that it's somehow just some big joke at her expense that she doesn’t get.

But she doesn't want it to be.

She goes over to the little cafe they met at every day, hoping to see him.

"Eurydice!" He says, with a big grin. He pulls out one of those red flowers he seemingly always i sable to pull from somewhere. She laughs. "A flower," he says. "for the...for the prettiest flower I've seen!"

The line is clearly rehearsed though he says it too fast; she sees Hermes shake his head in the background, his shoulders shaking, too, all from the effort not to laugh. Orpheus puts the flower in her hair and beams at her.

"Why don't you go kids go out?" Mr. Hermes says, turned away from them so, she thinks, he won't look at Orpheus and give away how amusing he thinks this all is. "It's a sunny day, afternoons are always slow...I can manage all my own."

She has to admit, she doesn't know who would be coming to this little, dusty bar in the afternoon.

"Really?" Orpheus' face is boyish, sweet; she's never been this happy. "Thank you, Mr. Hermes!"

"Anytime." Hermes smiles at her, gives her a little wink. "Go on, kids. The day is young, and so, it seems, are you."

"Thanks," she says, softly. He smiles at her, but there's something at the edges of it - a sort of pity, she thinks. It's in the way his eyes crinkle when they look at her, a sort of tired grace that suggests he knows her all too well.  It's a sort of enjoy the good times while they last, kids sort of look. She can't decide if it unnerves her because it looks like Hermes might know the good times are soon about to end, or if he's got some information about Orpheus he isn't telling her, or... Well, or a million other things.

"Anytime," Mr. Hermes says, and turns to open his window, letting some sun in. It's been a long time since he's had opportunity to, seems like; the window spills forth in a small puff of dust that flies into the air, looking like nothing so much as fireflies. Orpheus has been slacking on the windows she supposes. Occupied. With her.

But Hermes doesn't seem to mind.

"Come on!" Orpheus takes her hand, and takes her out the door. Doesn't tell her not to hold his hand in public because someone might walk by and see it; doesn't slap her hand away if she tries to go for a closeness he doesn’t feel like she’s earned. Doesn't even hesitate in trying to touch her. Just holds her hand.

There has to be something wrong with him. She's never met a guy like this.

"Let's go to the park!" Orpheus says. "While the weather is nice."

Weather isn't gonna be nice forever. Eurydice knows this. Knows it in her bones, knows no matter how far she runs and no matter how matter long she goes, sooner or later the weather will grow cold, and lately, it's been a lot colder a lot faster. Seems like there's only a few weeks of summer anymore, but its so nice to not have to bundle up in her coat right now. And it certainly isn't as if she's got anywhere else to be.

She's dropped off resumes just about everywhere.  And no one here is hiring.

"Look at the grass!" Orpheus grins and runs into the park, and she grins as he pulls her down onto the grass with him.

"It's so soft," he says, softly. "This is my favorite season, you know? You feel the grass just growing under your feet."

"Yeah," she says with a soft sigh. Eurydice has slept outside, and she'll take summer over any other season any day.

Her stomach rumbles, but Orpheus doesn't quite seem to hear it. He never does seem hungry much; she wishes she could ask him to give her a bite to eat.

But he is so, so nice, and she doesn't want to do anything to jeopardize her chances with him. He's like no one she's ever met, and she'll sacrifice a few days worth of begging to hang out with him. At least his arms keep her warm.

And when he smiles at her, it's like nothing else on earth. Tomorrow, she'll look again, and surely she'll find something quick. After all, it's summer now; not a hint of clouds in the sky. Got to be farmers hiring. Got to be someone hiring. Ain't summer the time for creating new things?

"I've got a new part of the song." Orpheus says this with a certain shyness, so humble of his talents, and again Eurydice is reminded how different he is from any other man she's ever seen. His  cheeks blush, his eyes are soft and sweet. "You inspired it, Eurydice. I think you're my — my muse."  And he smiles, and his smile is the sun, and it warms her, and it is not food but it it is something nearly as potent.

And the word is so sweet and so kind, what choice does she have but to kiss him? She does, and oh it is a good kiss; right and sweet and true, and more gentle than any man whose ever had a hand on her. "Sing it for me," she whispers, but it takes quite some time before he is able to, for first she must kiss him, again and again and again.

---

"Songbird." Eurydice shivers; the world spins underneath her feet as Mr. Hades closes the door to his office. "So glad you've decided to fly south."

She gives Mr. Hades a smile she does not feel, and he gives her the same in return. It's a horrible thing, that smile. Not moonlight, nor sunlight, but a great mass of nothingness, that smile, simply nothingness. He feels like a void, and she feels like she is being sent through it.

But he promises work. Food. And she doe snot have to say here indefinitely; a year here, a bit more cash saved up, and well she might be able to dash back up to the old town, to Orpheus. He'll forgive her plenty when he sees what she's saved working in the mines, she's sure. She's sure.

Except looking at him, she doesn't feel rather sure at all.

"I'm here," she says. He nods, seems distracted. "For work," she adds.

"Of course," he says, but his eyes have a wicked glint to them, eyes that suggest, as they did above, that such is not the case. "A hard days work for a bone to gnaw on." He sighs, does not elect to offer which bone he feels she should set her teeth to. "We all have such burdens."

And it feels like he will make hers so much heavier.

Still, her stomach is hungry. "Food included?"

"Food and board," he confirms; he is rooting through papers at his desk. He doesn't make eye contact with her, and that's fine, she does not want to look into those eyes, know if they are as much gravity wells as his horrible, rot-gut smile. "Much as you'll need," he says, a beat later. 

And that's got to be enough, she thinks. That's got to be enough. It doesn't matter that nothing about the man is right or natural, and the gnawing feeling to scream or run that runs through her belly — that doesn't matter either.

She just has to think of the promised suppers in his promised land — meat on the bone, bread softer than hardtack — and Eurydice signs the second he drops the papers in her lap. Doesn't feel the need to deliberate. She needs to eat.

Besides, it's only temporary, she thinks, dotting the i of her name and trying to ignore the ever-growing feeling that she's made a mistake.

"It's a good choice, songbird," he says; his hand lands on her shoulder and she can't remember him turning to stand behind her. Can’t remember him getting up at all. But She feels - cold. So cold.

"Why do you...?" She says, but stops, because there is no way to say "why do you have my hand on my shoulder?" to her boss who she realizes, suddenly, controls not only her wages but her food and her bed as well. She swallows the words, and anxiety churns in her soul. This was a mistake. This was a mistake. This was a mistake.

"Don't worry, songbird," he says, his voice sounding strange and thick and wrong. "You won't feel a thing, transferring over."

And she doesn't even the time to ask what he means before she's gone.

And the last thing she thinks, of course, is how much she wishes she was back with Orpheus, on that warm summer day.

[thepilgrimofwar]

Sojourner of Dawn

3.

The gang swept through the streets of the ruined town, one abandoned long ago at the very start of the Phoenix Wars. 

"Spread out and pick this place clean,” said Caler, chewing on a sprig of Bloodthistle. “I want food, supplies and anything else useful piled up and carted back to camp by nightfall. If we’re lucky, we’ll find ourselves a few resettlers to butcher as well."

The bandit leader hoped that the massive township held something- anything- that could be of use. For it had changed hands from one army to another, over and over, until there were no hands left to clay claim to it. Only the dust and ruin of Warlords and Bandits that now lived off the shells of once great cities. All part of the carcass that was once the great Kingdom of Quel’thalas. For even though the crown kept power in Silvermoon and its’ holdings, beyond the reach of Thalassian law were the domains of the ones ruthless enough to impose their own.

It was these places where Lirelle travelled. Far, far off the beaten track was exactly as she preferred things, the path that she had carved South ahead of the slow stream of resettlers was testament to that. The very same ruin that now lay before her was just another one to scratch off the map, just one more stop as she bided her time, waiting until she could conclude the last of her business before returning to where she believed she was supposed to be.

In the pre-dawn calm, Lirelle simply walked straight into the outskirts, keeping to the shadows to conceal her presence until the last possible moment. There was no point in announcing her presence or any sort of theatrics. She had seen enough to spot the tell-tale signs of looters and murderers and knew that the gang within had a share of blood to their names. Knowing that none of the resettlers had made it down this far yet, she could be assured that there would be no innocent witnesses to worry about. 

Just the bandits within, and her.

-

Like any of the other predators in these woods, she was silent. Circling, observing, and when the time was right, singled out the weakest, the one furthest away from the larger group. There were three of them, looting a barn that had held rations for a passing army that had failed to come back for it. Though the fruit had long rotted, the grain had been mage-tended, and was still fresh.

Her hand seemed to drip with ink, the shadows curling on themselves and disappearing. It was a familiar feeling by now, as if her Self was slipping beneath the surface of the infinite black sea, replaced by something from the depths. As her eyes clouded over until they were the same sick purple as her unfortunate target, she felt one last feeling from it; exhilaration. Then, the mask cracked, her bloodless lips splitting apart in a grin, the swirl of shadows around her slowing as they focused themselves, wielded now by someone who truly embraced them.

“Tarla?” The other two paused as their friend stopped responding to their banter. Standing frozen still, crossbow in her hands. “Are you al-” A bolt smashed into the shoulder of one of them and a scream filled the air.

“Tarla what the hell are you-” Then he saw her eyes, wreathed in shadow, and filled to the brim with black, like dolls eyes. “I’ll restrain her! Get Caler!” He tackled his friend to the ground. “Mellenay!” He yells, snapping the wounded bandit out of her shock. “Get help!”

With a bolt in her shoulder, Mellenay heeded the warning and sprinted behind the copse of trees next to the barn. Only to come face to face with something she could not understand. A woman- No, a thing in the shape of a woman. Claws had pushed through the woodlike flesh in her arm. Shadows danced round her form. And a smile like a crescent moon upon a night’s sky. Cold. Predatory.

“We heard the screaming-” Caler said, rounding the corner with help, but they had come too late. 

The leering grin fails to reach Lirelle’s eyes, and something else dances in their reflection. The claws lined along her arm flicked into being, stretching and flexing as if they were alive. They whipped out, slashing across the throat of the unfortunate bandit. As the first falls to the floor, she simply steps to the side, brushing her cloak out of the way to avoid the body as one might do with a mud puddle.

“Monster!” Another cries, charging at her with blades bared. But her claws coil in the air like ribbons, impaling him, and disappearing even before his body even hit the ground.

Mellenay fell backwards, scampering away back to the barn. “Get Tarla and hide, hide!” She yelped, grabbing her friend by the arm. But as she pushed against her comrade, the purple veil over Tarla’s eyes suddenly lifted and was replaced by... nothing. Her body went limp like a discarded marionette, any life left in her blinked out like a dying star.

The almost-crazed smile fades, the neutral mask settling back over Lirelle’s features. A tic of her eyebrow is the only sign of dissatisfaction as once again the shadows curl. As much as she was aware now of these events, of the momentary trade that was made, she did not enjoy it. A necessity, no more. 

The bandit began to cry as she watched one friend fall to the ground like a discarded toy of things both great and terrible and another friend become engulfed in tendrils of shadow,stripping the life from his body. She screamed, crawling her way into the barn and pulled herself to the furthest corner she could find. She hugged her knees and- For the first time in many months- began to pray. Praying to whoever might listen, with all her heart.

But all she heard were the sounds of clattering weapons and screams cut short, as the rest of her gang were drawn to the screaming like moths to a flame. Then, after a few more moments, silence. Then footsteps. Slow and unrelenting.

Lirelle walked up to the lone survivor, cowering in the corner of the barn, knees pressed against her chest and hands cupping her ears. Looking down at the pathetic mess at her feet, the victor watched as Mellenay silently repeated her plea to any deity that was listening, her lips moving fervently even as the rest of her was frozen still.

Whatever gods that she had been praying to, something else had answered, and it was all over in less than a heartbeat. 

-

Lirelle turned from the carnage she wrought without expression, unmoved by the final moments she had bore witness to. Unlike her predecessor, who would sit with them, usher them to the final threshold before ending it all.

I suppose, in your own way, you gave her peace.

“No,” she spoke to the nothingness inside her. “I ended a threat to others, nothing more. Peace is for the living.”

Don’t forget that you carry Lady Death within you. Where you go, so does she.

“What does that even mean? What? That Death just follows in my wake whether I like it or not?”

Does it not? 

There was silence, leaving Lirelle alone with the bodies.

-

Image Cap

@retributionpriest​ @stormandozone​

[unholyhelbig]

Knock, Three Times

A/N: Okay, so you guys know that horror is kinda my element. Which makes me sad that I missed out on the first day. I did actually write something but didn’t like it- so I might post it later! 

Fic Title: Knock, Three Times. 

AO3 Link

Day #2: Accidentally Summoning a Demon

The hospital’s corridors were bleach white. There was no color to the hallways or even the rooms. Just an undeniable white that countered the fluorescent lights with a brightness of their own. Walls were devoid of posters telling patients to keep their heads up and instead were replaced with chain-locked doors. Deadbolted and impossible to move.

Beca Mitchell chose not to look at those doors, the numbers painted in black and chipping away to reveal even more white. She could still tell that they counted up in even numbers. A little window carved out of each metal slab to give the patient, the prisoner, a better view of the world. Which just happened to be a blank nothingness.

“Don’t’ feel bad for them.” The guard walking with her snapped her from her haze. One of those women who had probably gone straight from the military into a psychiatric hospital. She wasn’t like the nurses dressed in a sunny yellow. She had a gun attached to her belt and her features were stoic with knowledge. “They made choices that threw them in here, just like you made the choice to visit your friend. Most of them are killers and crooks just trying to seem insane.”

“Do you ever believe them?” Beca took to asking instead of denying what the woman had said.

“You can’t believe anything other than what’s in front of you in my line of work, honey.”

Beca decided to leave it at that. It was a cynical way to look at the world, but she understood. Women who drowned their own kids, and men who had purposely driven a van through a campground without stopping. All claiming insanity and sticking to the guilty plea. She didn’t strive to make eye contact with any of them, caged and desperate for an ounce of human contact.

They walked a few more feet before a long stretch of windows let in some natural light. It soothed Beca, seeing the stretch of barbed wire and chain link fence wasn’t the same as a beach view, but it told of a world further from this one.

The guard fumbled with the keys on her belt before pulling one covered with masking tape to the front. Room 113 was written in sharpie sloppily. “Right, well, I will be right outside of this door. You feel uncomfortable, or in danger at all, then you just pound on the wall three times and I’ll pull you out. Handle her.”

“What will you do?” Beca’s voice was tight, scanning over the baton she had on her leather belt, and then back to the gun that was a few inches away. “I mean, you won’t hurt her, will you?”

“Relax, sweetie, It’s a sedative.”

Beca didn’t’ know if that soothed her nerves at all but she again let the words hang in the stale air. She had the nervous instinct to play with her keys that she usually kept in her jacket pocket, but they had stripped her of the whole coat. Took her belt, and her shoelaces too. The tongues of her shoes flopped as they walked to their destination.

The metal door creaked open and the hinges groaned in exhaustion. She was hit with the instant scent of rot, not so much as fruit that had succumbed to the elements- more like an old library that was filled with leather-bound books, pages disintegrating the second gloveless fingers touched the print.

Her room was bigger than Beca would have guessed, not large, but more than a classic jail cell. It was white too, but some letters were tacked to the walls and a small window rested on the far wall, barred and then barred again. There was a metal desk and a bookshelf that was occupied to its capacity. They had started to pile on the floor next to the raised cot that had a folded blanket and one bare pillow.

Beca jumped when the door slammed behind her. The girl who was huddled up on the windowsill didn’t so much as look up from the novel in her grasp. Pale and slimmer than she remembers- Emily Junk looked dwarfed in the grey sweatpants and stained white t-shirt. Her hair was pulled into a messy ponytail and her features were shadowed by the outside light. Maybe it was a better view than the barbed wire on the other side.

“They didn’t’ tell me you were coming.” She finally said after a long bout of silence. “I would have tidied up a little bit.”

Beca scanned the girl with wide eyes, those greenish-brown ones finally finding hers with an uncharacteristically simple smile. Too simple for the girl that was trapped in a mandated insane asylum, though, she had read somewhere that they weren’t supposed to call it that anymore. Something about rehabilitation. She had a feeling that Emily was never going to find her way back into society.

“Lighten up a little, it was a joke. It’s okay to laugh.” She spoke again, putting the book down on the nearby desk and adjusting her position so her feet were hanging off her perch. “You look good, California has made you tan.”

“I never went. I put the album on hold for a little, until the trial-“She swallowed thickly, trying to gauge a reaction, but she never got one. “Things need to settle down at home before I make a new one.”

Beca thought she registered a look of guilt from Emily, but she was standing before the other girl was completely sure. Crossing the room to set the book down on the cot and then herself in the corner. Beca could feel the chill of the metal door on her back, almost through her t-shirt. She was pining for that jacket that they had stolen and housed in a plastic bin.

“You know, the only people who visit me in here are my lawyers. And Aubrey that one time. That was in the beginning though.”

“You killed someone, Emily, can you blame them?” A type of fire licked at her stomach. She was told not to say anything, not to bring up why Emily was in here in the first place, that it could damage her recovery process. Beca quickly clenched her jaw shut and looked away. “Sorry, I didn’t mean-“

“You don’t’ have to tip-toe around me, Beca.”

Emily was standing again, directly across from her in the small expanse of blank space not occupied by an item of furniture. Her hands were slack in the pockets of her sweatpants. “What’d they tell you, that I’m liable to snap? To forget everything they’re trying to do to me? Not likely. You can’t erase something like that, no matter how pokey they get with their sticks.”

Beca’s eyes hardened “Why’d you do it, then? Because I’m not buying this whole demon excuse.”

It had all been so fast, raining the night that Beca got the call from Aubrey. Aubrey who had found Emily covered in black syrup in the center of a salt drawn circle. She had panicked, thought it was the younger girl's blood. That’s when she found the neighbor in the bathtub, draining slowly and meticulously. Beca never questioned the design the salt was in or the book that was opened beside her to a blank page. None of it made sense.

“You of all people should be the most willing to accept that as an excuse.” She lifted a brow. “After all, Beca you were the one that told us to stay out of the basement. Said it was haunted. I thought it was just a prank on the new girl- a hazing of sorts.”

Beca’s jaw clenched as she watched the girl meander back over to the desk with hard eyes. She ran her fingers over the dusty surface until they reached the spine of the book. Emily’s stare was filled with longing.

“What exactly were you doing down there all those years?” Emily glanced back up, stray hair falling into her eyes. “raising the dead was my first guess. But then I found that book of yours. It was naive to leave it out in the open like that. Though- I must admit, it was a bit of a challenge to translate all that Latin.”

She was still for a moment, who body rigid as if it were frozen in place. Emily wasn’t as washed as she had thought. It was a simple clean up, hide the book and she looked like nothing more than a girl in the middle of a salt circle covered in someone else’s blood.

Beca let out a heavy sigh. “Fine. What do you want, then?”

Emily looked taken aback by the question. What did she want? Beca was hoping deep down inside that the weight of something like that would puzzle her- the start of a smirk crept against her upper lip. It was unfortunate Beca thought, that someone as sweet as Emily had stumbled upon her book and had read from the darkest page of them all. A cruel trick. Beca almost felt sorry for her in the aspect.

“you’re going to get me out of here,” Emily said.

“Now, I think that’s asking a little too much, don’t you? I mean, you sealed the deal the second you opened your mouth about demons and some ancient spell to summon them. It’s called a secret art for a reason, Em.”

“I’ll tell them about you,” Her voice was flooded with panic. That was another mistake Emily made, confusing hope with the reality of one of her storybooks. “Your book, and your sacrifices, and your… your magic.”

“And who exactly will believe you?”

Beca could smell the bubblegum medicine that they made Emily swallow twice, maybe three times, a day. She was that close. Could see the paleness in her skin and the timid flow in her stance. She had bruises from IV”s in her hand and equally as dark ones around her wrists from straps Beca had failed to notice before.

“Emily, you know how much I adore you and your naive nature, but it’s just that, isn’t it? You say anything about me and they’ll just up your dosages. I think you got confused by my visit here. But if you stick to the program, maybe they’ll let you out one day.” Beca took an even step back. “I’ll keep visiting you, don’t worry.”

She swallowed thickly and tucked her arms closer to her body. Beca couldn’t tell if it was anger or something more. Stirring in her usually placid nature. “Can you at least stop the nightmares?” She asked.

Beca lilted her head with a dark smile and banged on the wall three times.

[dreadnought-dear-captain]

Steve’s Ending: What the Fuck Just Happened?

                            ************WARNING*********** 

BIG-ASS ESSAY WITH SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: ENDGAME AHOY

I have been largely out of the fandom sphere for a spell because of personal stuff that went down and then subsequent Endgame anxiety (I’m sorry, I really will get to some BW asks as soon as I’m done reeling from this film), but I wanted to get out some thoughts about Endgame while they are fresh in my mind. I have seen Endgame twice since its release. I saw it Friday morning, debriefed with my beta @pitchforkcentral86, and then turned around and bought tickets for an evening showing the same day. Why? Because I had to process Steve’s last scene. I had to see it twice just to comprehend what the hell happened and then try to interpret it. I went through several hypotheses and waves of accompanying emotion and then came to a tentative personal conclusion about what the hell Steve’s ending is to me.  But first I had to ask— Is this a true happy ending? Is this lazy writing? Is this a character assassination? Is this a legitimate choice Steve would make? Some combination of the above? So, here go my hypotheses—

Hypothesis 1: This is a legitimate happy ending for Steve and his timeline.

If you only look at the images shown to us and don’t devote much thought to the implications of Steve’s choice for other people in the world, it might appear to be a beautiful ending. After a decade-and-a-half of compass-gazing and pining for the good old days of segregation and boiled food, Steve gets what he wants. He gets the person who is — surprise! — “the love of his life.” This plays into the ongoing narrative that Steve has never been able to find contentment in the modern world or with modern people (some of whom he refers to as “family,” interestingly enough). This hypothesis also assumes that he can only be happy if he is with one woman, because he assumes shared life experience is a prerequisite for partnership, which means that he has essentially preemptively foreclosed on any relationship with anyone who is not Peggy.  Since Bucky’s name has barely even entered Steve’s consciousness lately, except to emotionally whump his past self into not choking him to death, even their friendship seems to be a question in the last two films in this series.

So if we take the arc of these films into consideration, including the last two films, he has apparently resigned himself to a position of “Peggy is my only viable romantic relationship, and she is dead, and I am incomplete as long as this is true.” When you write this thesis for Steve Rogers, which is a sad thesis indeed, this ending might seem like a relief for him. (It could also be argued that it is terribly lacking in resiliency and flexibility and is naive, at best, in terms of what is love versus infatuation versus idealization.) Problematic in this happy ending scenario: The writers clearly did not consider the second and third order effects of this decision. They just needed to tie up Steve’s timeline and get Chris Evans out of the franchise, and this was a way to do it that resonates at face value. Man out of time gets put back in his time. Gets love. Quote: “It was beautiful.” Ignore all of the following and more: -There will now be two Steve Rogers in this timeline. -One of them will presumably be with Peggy Carter for at least a good chunk of time, unless things went south. -Peggy Carter is the director of SHIELD. Her close associates are undoubtedly known to them as a result. -Thus, Steve Rogers probably could not just stay hidden in the pantry. SHIELD would want to debrief him. They would want to know how the hell he got there. Questions would get asked. This could not remain a secret forever. -Is Steve Rogers going to sit out history? Hang on the couch while the world burns, shield unused? -Is Steve Rogers, knowing that Bucky is alive, going to leave him to rot with Hydra? -Even if they made some sort of arrangement beforehand, like Bucky saying it’s okay, don’t come get me, would they both sit well with continuing to let him kill all of the innocents he killed? -If Steve did go get Bucky, he would likely find him some time in the span of however many years he’s in the past. The future would be completely changed. -If he intervened and found Bucky, Sam Wilson would not be Falcon because TWS would not happen. This version of Bucky would not exist. This end scene could not happen. -Thus, this does not seem to be something that Steve chose to do during his life with Peggy. (Debunked-ish, along with other “Back to the Future” science hereafter, below) Which brings me to my second hypothesis about this ending. Hypothesis 2: This was thought out, but it represents writers Markus and McFeely’s disconnect from the character they built. This is where the “there is no way in hell Steve would sit on the couch where the world burns, where Bucky suffers with Hydra etc.” argument comes in. This taints the ending in a particularly sour way, because they have labored so hard to build an image of Steve as someone who would wreck the world to save Bucky Barnes from harm and stop at nothing to prevent serious harm in the world where he could. It’s what he wanted in the first place! It’s where we all started in TFA! The Steve we know and love would want to go to Korea. To Vietnam. He would want to stop the Khmer Rouge and all the bad shit he could intervene with. Right? And his ass would try to save Bucky, especially knowing exactly where he’s kept! Right?? He would keep going and going until he was worn down into a nub of nothingness. Right??? Which meanders me to— Hypothesis 3: This was a decision that Steve Rogers made that is plausible for his character and was deliberate on the part of the writers. Second and third order effects included. This may be a stretch, but I think it could be argued on the grounds of good becomes great, bad becomes worse. Steve does nothing by half measures, an intrinsic trait that is amplified by his transformation. I have always argued that Steve has a very real selfish streak, or else he never would have tried to enlist in the Army so many times knowing he is absolutely unqualified to serve. Serving in his original condition would have put so many lives at risk, and others would have had to pick up his slack, because he would have been next to physically useless in combat as small Steve. But he would not accept reality, and he would not accept a “lesser” form of helping because it had to be the way that served his ego and his sense of rightness and justness for himself, consequences to other soldiers and the mission be damned. It was myopic and self-serving. And if good becomes great and bad becomes worse, maybe this is a form of that. Maybe he and Bucky agreed (because they were clearly in cahoots with that final scene business) that he would not intervene and rescue him, because then there would be no Falcon, or simply on the principle that the timeline must remain as undisturbed as possible. And maybe this one time, Steve didn’t say “fuck you, Bucky” and do what was right. Maybe Steve Rogers was done. Fucking done. Maybe he realized that what he first wanted at the beginning of TFA is not tenable. That he can’t fight forever. That he, like Tony, needs to rest, and that he can’t do that in the modern world. Which is interesting, because he essentially becomes Tony Stark v1.0 in the end, only caring about himself and his own. And Tony Stark becomes Steve Rogers, making the ultimate sacrifice for mankind. So Steve enjoys a life with Peggy while the world burns because he just can’t do it anymore. He’s paid his dues and he’s done being Captain America or Nomad or anyone else. (Wonder how she likes that version of Steve...?) Though how he could possibly say “It was beautiful” is utterly beyond me. I can’t fit that into this hypothesis, unless he has compartmentalized so hard and so well that he has forgotten about Bucky’s existence completely. And if he has, this is a very sad ending for his character.

There are probably many other hypotheses out there. They just didn’t percolate through my mind yet.

Which brings me to some things @pitchforkcentral86 brought up:

Why was Tony Stark’s arc so perfectly completed, so beautifully closed — truly, even I shed a tear — when we have to sit here writing stupid billion word theses on a nearly defunct blog site, grasping for straws, scratching our heads, wondering what the fuck just happened to Steve Rogers? It’s like getting to know somebody for eight years, being told the same stories about their behavior, learning their values system, their truths… and then being thrown a parting image that can only make sense if  a) the writers cannot be trusted — and maybe could not be trusted this whole time, or b) the character is actually not the person we thought he was.

Is either of these what we want to be left with as we close this phase of the MCU? Either the writers failed or Steve Rogers is not the person we love? And do we really not get to see Bucky and Steve’s friendship arc get closed in a meaningful way after building its depth for three movies? Are we really supposed to count a cheap recycling of a TFA line and some shimmery-eyed SebStan woobieface (TM) and some secret time travel hook-up conspiring off-camera (AS THEIR ENTIRE RELATIONSHIP HAS BEEN SINCE CIVIL WAR, PRESUMABLY, OFF-FUCKING-CAMERA) as “closure”? So, what do I think? I think this was lazy, crap writing, and I think Markus and McFeely thought we wouldn’t consider the timey-wimey implications too much. I think they know this character, and I don’t think they figured this would assassinate his character. I think they just really, really needed to tie this story up in a superficially pretty bow, and they couldn’t kill off both Tony and Steve, so they needed to give him something that took him out of the franchise. And that scene at the end with Peggy was aesthetically BEAUTIFUL. I smiled the first time, ear to ear, until my brain kicked in two minutes later and realized what it meant. They have been building up to this forever, kindling Steggy pretty much every movie. We Stucky people are all like yeah, yeah, Peggy, so sad, but the films have been consistent all along about saying a) Steve is a man out of time, and b) he loves Peggy Carter. (However you wanted to interpret that love... until the support group, where the interpretation is made for us). Support group side note: First, I squeed that Steve was running a support group in what I’m pretty sure is a VA auditorium. And on one hand, I loved the super chill gay Russo cameo and Steve’s untroubled reaction. Three cheers for the first openly gay character in the MCU [eyeroll]. But also, it felt like a total concession, like okay all you Stucky idiots we’ve been queer baiting over the years, we are gonna drop an A-bomb your little kingdom, but look, at least Steve isn’t a homophobe! See? He’s cool with the gays and so are we. Thanks for playing. Maybe you’ll get a REAL queer character in the next phase of the MCU! (If you even stick around after the shit we’ve just pulled.) But this laziness is problematic, because it feels terrible and discrepant. Intended or not, it does have serious implications for the timeline and/or the character, and the final scene existing the way it is potentially means at least one of two things: 1. Time doesn’t work the way we think it does. (In other words, what if there is a world where time travel Steve did all these good things like free Bucky, end the Vietnam War early, etc.?) However, since he is here on this bench with Bucky and Sam, dropping off this shield, this is implausible. If he just disappeared for good and Bucky explained the situation with a tiny, knowing smile, then it would be possible that he started an alternate reality where he did all these very Steve-congruent things and freed Bucky in that timeline, which would not affect this one. Wouldn’t that be nice? I could live with that. Just disappear into the sunset and we can write fics to fill in all the gaps of his Steve-ness. His core character is retained. Hooray. 

But if he started an alternate timeline, he would not be here with Bucky and Sam like this in the original timeline as an old man, which suggests that he jumped back in the same timeline. Unless they invented technology to jump between timelines. Or Dr. Strange jumped him back to this bench just to drop the shield off and high five with Sam and then is going to take him back any second or some dumb shit that has no basis in anything we have seen on screen (see @pitchforkcentral86’s point above about grasping for bullshit just to make sense of this). Or it means that— 2. Steve did not do anything and did not give a fuck about it. Both of these are terrible. Terrible. I would rather have had Steve die than have this ending. And this has nothing to do with Stucky for me, because Stucky is mostly just a fun fandom thing for me. I don’t mind that he ended up with Peggy per se. It’s the implication that he didn’t save his friend, knowing EXACTLY — geographically and historically — where he was, not only saving Bucky but also all the innocent people Bucky would kill. OR I hate the implication that the smug motherfucker let Bucky rot — perhaps per their agreement, maybe he kept a promise, whatever — and he had the gall to call it “beautiful.” And this is after Markus and McFeely slaved for three movies to convince us that these are best fucking friends from childhood who are with each other “‘til the end of the line.” At the very least, even if they are not going to be physically together, friends do not let friends suffer for decades at the hands of Hydra, and if they do, they do not fucking enjoy themselves while it’s happening. If this is the Steve they are leaving us with, I do not want him. And I kind of don’t know what to do now.

Am I missing something? Please tell me I am. I’m desperate for a way to make sense of this. Truly.

OKAY, EDIT: 

@koubashii  very kindly sent me a message reminding me that Bruce spent quite a bit of time belaboring on the point that changing the past doesn’t change the future. She reminded me that Nebula killing her past self didn’t obliterate her from existence. I did forget about all this. So I can’t use Sam and Bucky Prime’s existence in their current form as evidence that Steve did nothing, if he went back in time. Point taken. THANK YOU!! 

(Edit: As far as I can gather from some research from actual astrophysicists and not MCU Bruce Banner, this “changing the past doesn’t change the future” stuff is just one small theory and does not appear to be the prevailing theory. However, this is the quantum realm, so we can make up all sorts of silly rules about infinite possibilities, infinite realities, yada yada, because nobody understands quantum physics except Hank Pym. Comic book science wins again!)

So, if he’s creating a separate timeline, let’s say he rescued Bucky early. Is there another Bucky running around with him? (New fun theory to make the pain better: He danced with Peggy, had a good time, went to find Bucky, married HIM, and that’s why he doesn’t want to talk about it with Sam. THERE. Fixed it.) 

But this still suggests that he broke off into an alternate timeline, one that did not disturb the current one. So if he went off into this entirely new timeline, how did he bounce into this old one? Pym particles? Sure. Fine. Comic science Whatever. Maybe he gets some. Did he just drop in by the lake and pop a squat on the bench right before Bucky told Sam to look? Sure. Was he there the whole time? Perhaps. Fine. Who the hell knows. 

So, one possible explanation is that there IS an alternate timeline where Steve did the right thing. And he jumped back here because Pym particles. His character’s integrity is potentially saved and who the fuck knows who he ended up with in the end. Let your imaginations run wild. It’s too late for Bucky Prime to get saved, poor Bucky. At least he has Sam and their upcoming Disney spinoff series, which sounds like a fucking joke when I write it (but srsly I’m dying and cannot wait). 

And there are still problematic things with this narrative for me, such as the idea that Steve’s entire happiness hinges on one woman he barely knew, largely because she didn’t scoff at him when he was smol and I will be DAMNED if Peggy kept his picture on her desk, and there is no effing way that she would even have her back to the door, but whatever. And I still hate that Steve and Bucky’s relationship arc was treated so horribly by these last two films. NO HOMO, indeed. Just in case we got the wrong idea from the intensity of the relationship that the MCU created for us. I will be posting more on this later. 

AND STILL — we should not have to work SO HARD for this kind of "meh” explanation. You should not need a group effort to make sense of your character’s ending, after so much wallowing in despair. And this might still reek of bullshit to many of you. I need to percolate more. 

Pym particles and Wakandan Vibranium trauma-healing brain magic — quick and dirty shortcuts for real character development. Thanks, MCU. Consider my brain exploded.

[kazlifeadventures]

Chernobyl!!

23 May

Those of us who signed up for the full day trip to inside Chernobyl’s exclusion zone were up early in our long pants,sleeves,with enclosed shoes with our passports ready for the security checks to go into the zone. We signed our lives away on a safety waiver, and check in sheets that go to the highly controlled checkpoints located at the different zone crossings. Visits to the area are highly controlled with only a few tour companies given permission to enter, they are required to wear a tracker at all times so they are monitored to ensure they are not going into areas where they are not permitted. We were all required to wear dosimeters so that our radiation exposure could be checked at the end of the day. Our guide, Alexi, gave us some amazing insights he has learned from years of research, insights into not only the events that lead up to what occurred in the early hours of 26th April 1986, but also the time line of sorts of what was done afterwards. A lot of the ‘truths’ surrounding the reactor explosion were lost when witnesses died, or were buried by the propaganda and coverups of the Soviets at the time. Don’t forget it took for America to call them out with the incontrovertible satellite photos of the blast for the Soviets to admit anything had happened, let alone take steps to contain the ongoing radiation leakage and further risks of explosions. When it comes to information surrounding Chernobyl it’s difficult to find a complete story, let alone be able to fact check anything. Alexi gave us the name of a you tube documentary that he advised shows the true side of what happened in reactor 4 on 26 April 1986. The " Battle of Chernobyl" if you want to look it up!

First up was a stop in Zalesye, an abandoned village within the exclusion zone. It was surreal, to step off the bus, knowing that we were walking down a main street, but seeing nothing but vegetation. Then through avenues in the trees we came across the remains of the houses, we then entered into the old town hall building with its rotting floors, and decaying walls. There were still old signs on the walls. I managed to get myself what I like to call a ‘shin - obyl’ bruise on my way in, as only I can - stacked it climbing up onto the entry. Luckily one of my bus mates helped me up as we were told not to touch walls, or ground...or anything really ... so that would be why we had to wear long pants (for when idiots like me fall over!)

The next stop was the reason the power stations were built, the Duga radar. Holy huge metal antenna array... when you know that the huge, costly, power hungry radar actually wasn’t that good at its job makes the events of the reactor explosion seem even more of an avoidable incident. Incredibly, you would have no idea that it was there until you walk into the forest of vegetation, then it’s an ‘oh my’ moment at it’s sheer size and the wonder of the precision of the components. It is slowly rusting, and someone died climbing it a few years ago, so we were not allowed to climb it.

We then headed to Chernobyl and the Reactor canteen for lunch. Yes, complete canteen lunch on a tray... Soup, mains, desert, replete with unsmiling Ukrainian canteen ladies serving it to us. With the extra bread we’d grabbed at lunch we then fed fish from the railway bridge near the reactors. Then it was up close to reactor 4 and the monument for it. I couldn’t believe we were able to get to within about 200m of it. Although there are strict rules on photos in this area - can only shoot in one direction, and there are guards and cameras everywhere.

Chernobyl town was the administrative centre for the district and until its evacuation on the 30th April 1986, housed about 14000 people It was not as close to the site as our next stop.

Alexi gave us an interesting parallel: apparently ‘Chernobyl’ means wormwood in Russian. In Chernobyl town, 164 died as part of the first responders to the explosion, and there is a memorial that has been erected in the central square depicting an Angel blowing a trumpet. The 8th book of revelations talks of a cataclysmic event : “And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.” Revelation 8:10-11. Draw from that whatever conclusions you will, interesting nonetheless...

Pripyat was designed to be new age city of sorts, with its amusement park, cafes, art installations, hotels, apartments it was coming into itself with 50000 residents, housing workers at the power plant. It was finally evacuated in the afternoon of the 27th April 1986, with residents being told they would be gone for a couple of days and to just grab a few things and leave their pets. They were never allowed to return. We climbed through the maternity hospital, where the abortions were performed, with some of its records and equipment still intact. We were warned not to touch anything that still remained as it would still be highly radioactive. Trekking through the vegetation we came across what once was a beautiful cafe on the banks of the river that was due to open on the day the city was evacuated. The stained glass art that had adorned its window depicting the four seasons, some still intact, the rest of it lying shattered on the ground. From there we headed to the sports stadium, through what we later realised was the soccer field (no sign that it was there!) To me it was incredible to see sparks of beauty still there, the glass work in the cafe, the tile art adorning the external sides of two of the buildings we saw. We ventured into the pool area of the sports complex, it’s dive platform still intact, tiles, ladders, everything still there, just decaying, old, or vandalised by some who have snuck into the area over the years. It was then time for the iconic amusement park. Again something that was only just opening when the incident occurred. It stands as a rusting memory of time gone by, bumper cars, Ferris wheel, all the fun of the fair, with that eerie overtone of nothingness or is it hopelessness, I’m not sure.

We then took off to see the last Lenin statue in Ukraine, all others have been removed. It is still located outside of the Communist party building where the ‘fake’ trial took place of a power plant director and 2 engineers, where they were found guilty of negligence and the the blame placed on them for the incident. Nothing of course said about the safety measures that were supposed to have been installed in the reactor, or the fact that they failed, or they fact that the staff were following orders as required under Soviet rule. The Chernobyl town is home to what are known as the ‘self settlers’. Previous residents who have returned of their own volition to continue living in their property.

Our last stop was in the Red forest area, northern part of the exclusion zone. It apparently received the worst of the radiation. We entered the kindergarten where to my dismay we learned that kids continued to be sent to for at least a week after the reactor explosion. Testing after the incident proved that everything including the toys they had played with were riddled with extremely high levels of radioactivity. It was poignant and incredibly sad to see the remains of the toys, the cribs/beds knowing that these children had been exposed to such toxic levels of radiation due to the inaction of the Soviet authorities.

On our way out of the zone we stopped briefly at ‘The men who saved the world’. An un-offical memorial to the first attendees, doctors, firefighters etc, who all died in hospital number six in Russia and were then buried in lead coffins somewhere in Russia. Their families were not allowed to even see them or be at the burial.

On our way out of two checkpoints we had to submit to a full body radiation scan at each in order to check for any contamination. Luckily none of us had to be decontaminated (ie hosed down!). We were then given strict instruction to shower thoroughly and ensure our clothes were either washed or kept in an area safely before we washed them... On a side note the radiation we experienced for the day was somewhere around a 5 or 6 hour transatlantic flight so I pretty much got more radiation flying over to Europe than I did wandering around all day - good to know though!

It was an amazing day. A long one, we're all tired. But wow. How lucky am I that I got to do this. Mother nature has given the human race and it's nuclear power a big fuck you. And I love it! It's surreal to walk down what was once a street realising that on both sides of you hidden by nature's growth stands the time capsule of the crumbling remnants of the buildings of whole towns. Nature has rebounded here in spades, the birds chirping constantly, the land brimming with growth, the fish teeming - and no, none of them have 2 heads or mutations anymore. Apparently nature very quickly removes such mutations when they serve no purpose. The amusement park, a ghost town of rusting steel and decaying wood. The beautiful art works of tile and glass slowly deteriorating. It's eerie, and incredibly fascinating. My emotions are everywhere. Our guide is so passionate about what happened here and what the Soviets did to cover up their mistakes and the impact this had on the people who are still affected to this day, with no accurate records of how many have died from exposure in the years since the explosion. I was astounded how close we were able to get to reactor four. Incredibly saddened at how little care was taken of the people here. This Chernobyl adventure will stay with me forever, and has left an indelible mark on my psyche. If you don’t know much about this story, read more, find as much of the truth as you can, and most important of all - never forget.

[xoleahbeanxo]

Sanctuary: Chapter Twenty

Land of the Hallowed Halls

           Mouse felt as if she’d been pushed from behind and was falling down a dark well. There was nothing around her, nothing speeding up to meet her but when she did stop, it was sudden and disorienting. She managed to land on her feet without any pain in her ankles, knees, or hips. It was a strange landing that only hinted she was standing on anything solid. The world under her was as much a void as it was anything else. Even her heavy breathing echoed beyond the nonexistent reality she now stood in.

           There was a figure several feet in front of her that was fighting against a mass of blackness that shimmered against the muted darkness like a reflection on the water. Mouse raced up to aid them in whatever way she could.

           To her surprise, it was Grek and she was keeping the masses at bay with her bow and dagger. When Mouse joined the fight the strange globous masses shrieked and retreated back a few steps. They cut much the same as aspic. It felt satisfying to dig her katana into them, though the wound simply closed up as they moved away from her.

           “What are you doing here?” Mouse’s voice echoed into the beyond.

           Grek shrugged. Her mouth was moving but Mouse couldn’t hear what she was saying. It was as if the real Grek was still beyond this plane and only a mirror image dwell in this place. Mouse figured it had something to do with the hyena’s connection to the druids.

           Grek snatched up a few of her arrows from one of the closer masses and started away. Mouse was amazed to see stone flooring appear beneath her feet as if the striped hyena had discovered something about this world that slipped past Mouse’s comprehension. Mouse followed hoping that this Grek knew where she was going.

           The stone floor gave way to stone walls and ceiling complete with muted glowing torches set along the wall. The world was forming around them as if their imagination were registering the images to life.

           Mouse could hear the sound of the jelly things flapping against the ground and then dragging themselves closer. She looked back over her shoulder and saw that they moved faster than she’d believe possible. Even though they seemed fairly harmless, it was still unnerving that they were following.

Mouse stepped around the corner and almost ran into another mass of whatever the creatures were. She backed away but not before receiving a hard slap against her arm. It felt freezing to the touch and burned like white hot fire. The fur patch on her arm went from gray to white in a simple second and it made her arm throb. Her screams only incited the thing to come closer.

As the thing flopped closer to her, she ducked close to the wall and darted forward to get around it. The dodge was close but she managed to skirt it. Just ahead Grek waited for her and then she was gone. She disappeared into nothingness. The very walls and floor where she stood started crumbling and falling back to its strange black reality.

Suddenly the visage of Sheik took Grek’s place. The hyena came into the world swinging. Her sword striking the stone wall silently but with enough force to bring sparks into the reality. Relief filled her face when she saw Mouse and hurried to her. Mouse didn’t waste any time with words, she was sure that the hyena wouldn’t be able to hear her anyway. Instead, she ran to meet up with her.

The floor started to ripple into existence once again. This time it shimmered like sand, climbing up over Mouse’s boots. Sheik smiled warmly and took the smaller girl’s hand, leading her onward towards the waiting blackness. After a time, the stone was replaced by familiar city walls. They climbed up around them as if they were back in Sheik’s home again and down scouring the alleyways as they’d once done. Turn after turn, it seemed as though Sheik knew where she was going and Mouse followed. It seemed as though, the only sound she could hear in this world was her own breath and the sounds of the things that existed in this world.

Sheik slowed her steps and turned to look at Mouse. A sad look came to her face and she waved. Mouse knew her time was up and soon she’d be gone from this place. The smaller girl couldn’t hope to fully comprehend what was going on but was thankful to have her friends and family there to help her out. Little did she know that her journey had just begun and things were only going to get harder from here on out.

Behind her, the mass was swallowing up the path that she and Sheik had made. They seemed larger now, more violent. Their eyes were growing to sharper pits of glowing light. Tendrils separated from their black masses and dug into the floor tearing it away and digesting it as if a breadcrumb trail left behind for them.

“There no going back, is there?” Mouse looked at Sheik but she was already gone.

Loky smiled warmly in her stead and pulled her firmly behind him and led her along. Sheik’s mark on this world slowly disappeared as the hyena had and soon a new path for them to follow came into view. They followed it, to whatever destination lay beyond.

***

Grace pressed her back to the stone wall and took a deep breath. The monstrosities looked far worse in the daylight hours. She could make out the rot and mold forming on the bones that lived among the black mass of sinew. The chattered of teeth within the skulls was almost scarier than the sight. Its jaws gnashed as if it were eager to taste flesh before it took another slow sloping step.

Sarah darted away from a pillar and scaled a tree nearby as if it were nothing. She bore a salt treated spear, something of Gilda’s design. It seemed to burn the otherworldly creatures. It even managed to catch one on fire and left it nothing more than a boiling mass of black soup on the ground.

“We’re running out of help!” Gilda stepped up next to Grace, her sudden appearance caused the hyena to jolt.

“You don’t happen to have a few thousand soldiers in those pants of yours, do you?” Grace growled as she leaned out and fired her revolver.

The salt pellet plunged deep into the closest bone creature. It ignited immediately sending out a shower of maggots and smoldering black meaty bits.

“In these pants, dear? They’re almost too tight for me to fit into them.” Gilda laughed and ducked around the corner at a quick pace.

She made a precise slash with her blade and another creature’s “leg” flew away, smacking wetly against a tree. The body slowly tipped over and fell to the foliage in a smoldering mass. The thing was down but it used its corroded white claws to grab the ground and drag itself along.

“Loky is wearing down, we need another connector,” Sheik grunted and leaned against a nearby tree. “You’re up, doc.”

Gilda grunted and backed away slowly. “Hold the line. Don’t let them see you shake in fear.”

The antelope pranced away at the fastest pace Grace had ever seen her move. The hyena turned the corner and saw another three coming out of the trees in addition to the one that was dragging itself along. There were too many of them and Loky’s remaining lion and hyena army’s numbers were dwindling by the moment. Soon the bone creatures would be upon them and everything would be for naught.

“Don’t suppose ye could use the help?” A familiar Irish accent broke the silence.

Grace saw the brawny badger stepping through the woods into the ruins. There was a slice on her forehead and a few bruises under her fur but she’d never looked more beautiful. Behind her shambled the abominable Cre. She was in much the same shape but looking fierce for the fight. Claudia was the least harmed out of all of them, a comforting smile on her narrow muzzle.

“I found them,” Marybeth yelled from behind the tree line, her and Torvik bringing up the rear.

“Oh god, I could kiss you all.” Grace uttered.

“What stopping ye?” Patty smirked.

“Well, big nasties just yonder would be a good guess,” Cre grunted. “Where can we help?”

Grace gave them the quickest explanation she had and everyone broke free of the huddle to do the tasks they were appointed. Arming with the salted weapons was the first. Marybeth was put in charge of caring for those entering the connection and pulling the people into the resting camp.

Grace was overwhelmed with happiness to see them again, but there was work to be done. She didn’t want to boil their return down to nothing more than bodies to help Mouse in the Everall but these were very desperate times. Things were starting to look bleak. 

***

           Mouse was sad to see Gilda leave. There was a quiet composure in the way she led them along. They’d covered so much distance and her existence in the world had lasted far longer than the other ones. It made Mouse wonder if that’s how this world worked. The ones with the stronger presence in the real world had the stronger mirror image in this world.

It was Claudia’s turn to take her place. The opossum took her place in the muted blackness that closed in around them. Mouse was shocked to see her alive and well. Things were so hectic when she arrived that the last thing she’d heard was Claudia’s carriage had gone missing. Mouse had expected the worst.

“This way, darling,” Claudia said.

Mouse took a sharp breath. “How did you do that?”

“I don’t know. As soon as I woke up in this world everything played out like a map in my head. It’s almost like I know the path to take.” Claudia giggled.

“I mean, how are you talking to me?” Mouse was so grateful to hear the opossum’s voice. “None of the others could talk to me.”

“Oh. That, I don’t know. Perhaps I’m just a little more otherworldly then they are.” Nothing seemed to faze Claudia, ever.

Mouse noticed another thing. Unlike the others, Claudia didn’t conjure anything when she made her through the empty world, nothing formed in her wake. There was no hallway, no alleyway. Nothing, the same as it had been for Mouse. There were no answers as too why and neither of them knew enough to venture a guess.

“What do you see? Mouse asked. “In your head, I mean.”            “It’s strange. I see a map of this place, but it’s not the type of map you may be thinking. I can only see a certain distance and then it goes black beyond that.” Claudia’s voice was soft. “It’s so cold here. How are you not freezing?”

“I don’t know. It feels strange to me. It feels like I’m walking through a thick fog. My breath is heavy and it’s muggy here.” Mouse explained. She took the same sharp turn Claudia did.

“Strange, I wonder if this world is different for everyone.” Claudia mused quietly.

           The opossum came to a stop and turned to face Mouse. “My time is coming to an end here. Just know that we’re all fine out there and holding the line. Please bring Annabelle back to us.”

           “I will.” Mouse reached forward to hug the opossum but stepped right through her as if she were a figment of her imagination.

           “Hurry up and save Annabelle, so you can give me that hug for real when this is all over.” Claudia smiled a toothy grin.

           “I promise,” Mouse whispered but she was sure Claudia didn’t hear her since she’d already started fading away.

***

           “You’re up!” Gilda grunted tiredly as she took the revolver from Patty and started to reload it.

           “Aye aye, keep it together, girls. I’m certain Mousy’s close to finishing this thing.” Patty chuckled and ran over to take Claudia’s place in the circle.

           “I hope so,” Grace grunted as she fired another bullet in the army of bone creatures that pushed on through the trees and were converging on the center of the ruins.

           Sarah crouched in the trees and peered out. She wasn’t sure what she saw but something glinted behind the tree lines and it was coming fast. A flash of bright colors could be seen hanging through the foliage. It was foreign and familiar at the same time. Then something broke through the trees that could bring tears to the eyes of the firmest soldier.

Lilian rode on the back of a steel colored automaton horse and behind her an army of brightly colored wagons that bore hyenas, and lions. To her left were Charlotte, Lucie, and the twins. To her right, sat Rebecca loading a flintlock rifle. They’d come to rescue them in their most dire time. How? Sarah choked on her reasoning. How was not important. What was important was that Sarah had to sound their approach.

           Sarah brought a horn up to her lips and blew a deep bellowing roll and Grace snatched a glance at the beautiful sight. Soon a red wolf snapped the reigns hard her carriage breaking away from the pack, taking the lead. She swung a sword ferociously and it flashed in the mid-morning light and they all follow Molly in this final charge.

           Molly steered her carriage toward the camp, slowing as she saw Grace crouched behind a broken wall. “Rounder than usual, aren’t you?”

           “Har har!” Grace smiled wide enough for her teeth to show.

“Merely joking,” The wolf smiled back affectionately.

“You get us out of this and you can make all the jokes you want.” Grace pushed away from the wall to greet her with a handshake.

           Clad in leather armor over brightly covered clothes. Molly looked bigger than the last time Grace had seen her. She looked mature, older to be exact. The little girl wasn’t so little anymore. She was acting the proper lady now and it showed. Grace didn’t fail to notice the salt treated sword she wielded, someone must have told her sooner what was going on.

           “Fall back to the main camp you guys. My men will make a perimeter around the ruins and we will hold them off as long as we can. Your job is to ensure that Mouse and Annabelle get back alive.” Molly’s look was grim as if she’d known more than she’d let on.

           “How do you know about all of this?” Grace asked skeptically.

           “Mother Maggie saw a vision inside of her crystal ball. You can call it what you will even laugh if you must, but Mother Maggie’s prediction are never wrong. I see she is much more right than even she realizes.” Molly explained as she offered a quick thrust with her sword, leading several of the wagons to the east. “In the vision, a woman by the name of Beatrix, who looked much like the master’s wife, told us to come and be prepared to fight.”

           “You couldn’t have come at a better time. Mouse is in the Everall trying to find Annabelle right now.” Grace explained.

           “Then buy her as much time as you can. Leave this to us.” Molly explained.

           Grace nodded and before she could thank the red wolf, she was off to tend to her flock. Grace turned and saw that the others were already falling in line. Marybeth was next and with just a little more luck Mouse would be back with Annabelle and this nightmare would be over.

[hearsaykrp]

                    Presenting — son jieun as the swan.

— info.

name / son jieun birthday / 931112 pronouns / she/her occupation / accountant

— traits.

( vindictive, cunning, witty, charismatic )

VINDICTIVE — Take an inch and she’ll take a mile. She runs her court with an iron fist and a knife to everyone’s neck. Poised, slanting. Some would say it’s overkill, but she likes to think of it as sending a message. No such thing as a warning call to her; just a shot at a point-blank target and the aftermath of revolt lying in pools on the floor. You do not attempt to deal with the devil; you will always get burned.

CUNNING — No one’s ever gotten anywhere by playing fair. Anyone that says so? A liar, and a bad one at that. It’s easy, the way she can bend what is absolute to her whim; truth by omission is still a truth, after all.

WITTY — She has a tongue like a blade and it always cuts deep. No need for a filter where she’s concerned; she’s not afraid of the truth when it's her truth that everyone clings to. Sharp as a needle and clever as the devil, she’s never one to relent to another getting the last laugh.

CHARISMATIC — Hook, line, sinker. There will always be something about her that draws you in. Doesn’t matter what you’ve heard about her; doesn’t matter what she’s done. She smiles and there is an unstoppable, insatiable pull. Maybe it’s the way she looks at people: at them, into them, through them. She does everything with a purpose that cannot be ignored. Every movement, every look, every breath. Even when she has her hands around your neck, you stop and think: how pretty she looks, right before the kill.

— about.

They say she has pretty hands. Small palms, delicate fingers; graceful in action and in the absence of it. Pretty hands, even when wrapped around your neck. Squeezing, extracting, gutting. She finds that she likes the way it feels when she bears them into the pressure points of people — picking them apart like dolls to be toyed with, discarded when they’re no longer shiny and new and interesting.

They’re never interesting for very long.

Question: what makes a monster? (Another question: what makes you?) She smiles, unfazed; amused, even. People always need the reason, the story behind everything. As if it’s too complicated otherwise. As if the world is made up of strings of actions looped together, leading to the singular cause. As if they can’t believe that people are just born with a blackness in their chest, just as they can be born with pretty, perfect hands.

The answer: look in a mirror. Deep inside its eyes.

What do you see then?

-

Four walls and a roof and her mother must think: this can pass for a home. So she settles herself back here and begins to believe it. Religions have been founded on much less to go on, and if there’s anything her mother is, it’s a fountain of blind faith. Old friends come around to marvel at the spaciousness of the penthouse, the sheen of city worldliness on all her possessions, the ring that’s missing from her finger. It’s an open secret: the marriage ended badly.

A little pathetic, wouldn’t you say? All that big talk of becoming someone special, and now she’s back here to rot.

Almost as pathetic as the ones that stayed behind to watch, her mother bites in return.

The story itself is a study in dramatics: teeth to heart, a mouth without a scream, and a little girl witness to it all. A wedding dress in tatters. Broken glass of a picture frame. A silence poised to go off like a loaded gun. She etches it all into the lines of her bones. Gets used to the feeling of ash in her lungs, a poignant reminder of giving away too much.

Of what? She can’t say.

“We’re meant to be more,” her mother says like a mantra. Say it so much that the words seep into the walls, and they start to whisper it themselves. More, more, more. She feels the words roll between her tongue and her teeth before she realizes: she’s started saying them too.

-

She’s never been satisfied.

They say your first times are supposed to be special: first kiss, first love, first smoke, first fuck. So she burns through it all with a fury unparalleled, only to stare at the blank white walls of a boy’s ceiling and think, is that it? Was she supposed to feel different? Was she supposed to feel more?

As it was, it only felt like she was taking what she’s always been owed. Warmth, feeling, secrets. Caught in her fingers as if they’ve fallen into them, only for her to pick them apart one by one. She learns this quickly: that nobody can hide. Not from her, anyway. She’s always been good at watching, seeking. Soaking up the darkness like a sponge. Done it all her life, done it well. All those monsters in the depths of peoples’ eyes — she picks them out, turns them over, learns to become them. If only for the fact that she can.

Kingdoms are not built in a day. Hers is no different. She takes blood, and tears, and hearts; grinds them down to make the foundation, the ceiling, the crown on her head. Who’s to say that any of it was her own? Certainly she’d never tell.

-

Jungsoo is nice enough. Sweet-faced with a heart perpetually sewed onto her sleeve — the antithesis to Jieun, whose side she’s been by since both of them could remember. Jungsoo is the type of girl that has dreams and wishes; the type of girl that tells you she loves you and means it. The type of girl that never crosses lines.

Except one. But it’s Jieun’s line. And to Jieun, that is all that matters.

It’s not about revenge — not in that way, anyway. Any sentiment at being hurt is eclipsed by this singular thought: she was made a fool.

No one makes her bleed. Not even sweet girls who think they can’t help themselves — who do it in the name of love. Out of all the pathetic things to sign away your death for, somehow that being the reason makes it all the more bitter to swallow.

Everyone has a choice. Jungsoo made hers, and Jieun makes hers too.

So she watches Jungsoo as she’s swallowed up by the darkness of the trees, wide eyes shining (the moon or the tears, she couldn’t care less) without so much as an inkling of remorse.

-

“Please, Jieun, I’m scared.“

Silence. Breathing — Jungsoo’s, cracked and heaving.

“I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”

Dead night, an ungodly hour. She looks at her fingernails — red fits her well.

“Tough luck. I’m not quite done being mad at you, Jungsoo. Don’t call me again.”

-

The aftermath of that day is anticlimactic. The police question her, and she answers in an even tone that brokers no questions. “We fell asleep, and when we woke up, she’d disappeared.”

It’s her truth, so it must be absolute. Right?

Soon, it’s just another skeleton swept into the closet. Towns like this have to move on, because they must. What would be the alternative — to remember?

Almost as an afterthought, her high school years end in a muted whimper. She’s impatient for the end of it all. With a ticket to Seoul in hand and her father’s promise of seeing her again, small town life tilts closer to being more unbearable than ever before. Maybe she falls for the glamour: big city life with a big city dad and endless new bodies to feast on. She’s not her mother, who pours herself into everything expecting a return. She takes, and takes, and takes. Ilmyo, more ghost than human, is no longer an option.

“Seoul, huh? What’s waiting there for you?”

She looks him in the eyes, deliberating on an answer. Decides to shoot straight.

“More.”

Come the morning, she’s left with barely a goodbye. No need for false sentiment when she doesn’t intend to come back.

-

Seoul feels cold even in the summertime. The chill sinks into her bones, follows her around like a sickness. Not even she is infallible in the face of unrelenting apathy; not when she is used to being everything in the eyes of everyone. Here, in her father’s world, with endless half-siblings and half-cousins and half-somethings fighting for favour in a world where no favours are given, she stumbles and loses ground. She thought she was ready for this.

“Why did you come here?” One of them — an older brother, perhaps? — asks one day.

For once, she comes up empty. Grasps at the nothingness that fills up the room — the same nothingness that threatens to eat her whole. What did she expect to find in her hands? What did she want to see?

“There’s more to me.” More than being the only daughter of a lesser woman. More than being the no one girl stuck in a nowhere town. More than looking in a fucking mirror every day and seeing someone whose eyes she doesn’t recognize staring back at her.

She’s so much more than this.

Right?

-

Seoul in her rearview mirror looks as foreign as it did when she arrived.

Don’t call it defeat.

Don’t.

-

She sits at the accountant desk in the town’s one law firm and watches the way the sun shines through the slats to make shadows on her wall. It’s a small enough office that word spreads like wildfire and client confidentiality becomes a tenuous phrase. Mrs. Oh’s boy is in for theft again; Mr. Yoon arrested for another DUI. It gets tiring, hearing about other peoples’ vices over and over like clockwork. Mrs. Oh’s boy will always steal; Mr. Yoon will always drive drunk. What’s so compelling about that?

All these threads in their hands and no attempt made to tie them together. No wonder everyone ends up wasting away into an inch of themselves, walking figments of who they once wished they’d be.

This is a town of shadows, and she’s become one of them.

Idly, she remembers her fingernails are red today.

Red, black, darkness, whatever — she will always wear it well.