#when john marks the deputy but gets marked up instead >:(

[direwombat]

HMMM what about 13 but instead of just Syb, what about all your FC5 OCs, please? - fourlittleseedlings

13. What are their views on sex?

adsf;lakjdfs ok gonna divide my answers by cult kiddos and non-cult kiddos because i have so many fc5 ocs (most of whom i don't talk about oops) all under the cut bc sex talk but also i have a lot of ocs so this is gonna be long lmao thank you this was a super interesting one!

CULT KIDDOS

jonah seed:

staunchly anti sex before marriage and anti-masturbation to the point where he gets kind of homoerotic about god. strongly believes in and follows the project's rule of celibacy and looks down on most people who have been marked with the sin of lust (ie, everyone except joseph). lowkey thinks john is going to hell regardless of the cleansing :/ has a lot of sexual energy and anger that's been pent up for all his life and tbh is probably very close to bursting by the time the deputy kills him.

augustine la roux:

ah. heh. well he has some catholic anxiety about it. i think he falls somewhere on the ace spectrum so there's the general inexperience and also the guilt of wanting someone like that and the fear that they won't return the feeling. then there's also the idea he has that lusting after someone and that lust isn't reciprocated then it's a sin, but also somehow asking if those feelings are reciprocated is him being greedy. all of these feelings just intensify when he falls in love with the Father :'(

benjamin shaw:

has no real strong opinions about sex. it's nice sometimes but it's not something he prioritizes in his life. he has no particular preference towards the gender of his partner and he and pratt start fucking on the down low not long after the reaping kicks off.

lizzie sinclaire:

(who for context, is seventeen at the time of the reaping and was younger when joseph started manipulating her) also believes that sex outside of marriage is a sin and is unlearning her belief that her attraction to other girls is a sin. but also she's young and doesn't have any relationship experience to have any views on sex beyond that.

valerie king:

valerie ended up joining the cult during the pre-montana days because joseph preached more love than she heard at home so she ran off when joseph was forced from her town. she's horribly repressed and awkward about sex. she flushes during the sermons preaching chastity and gets absolutely flustered by the young woman she's been tasked by the father to protect. her faith.

NON-CULT KIDDOS

sybille la roux:

she's pro-sex and has had her fair share of it with a handful of partners of multiple genders. she's pretty open minded and is willing to try most things if it's something her partner wants to try. she found BDSM interesting but it wasn't something she'd really experimented with because of her trust issues. she never really thought she'd be comfortable on either end of a dom/sub dynamic but was proven wrong after accidentally stumbling into one with jacob. but she is a little ashamed of it. she never considered herself the kind of person to submit herself to someone like him (dominant. male. a little too much like her father if she starts thinking about it), and it's embarrassing for her that she's he gets her to act like that.

robin sherwood:

has a perfectly healthy relationship and perception of sex. is of the no-shame mindset and thinks it's fun! she prefers to have it with people she's formed some sort of romantic connection with but doesn't judge if other people don't feel the same as her. adventurous but not necessarily kinky.

joshua smith:

sees sex primarily as a means of stress relief. he doesn't do emotional attachment and is perfectly content with the fact that his sexual history is a long string of one-night stands.

kip nicholson:

i mean. he's an old gay rancher in rural montana. he's seen a few crazy nights in missoula and is confident enough in his own experience to firmly believe that he could probably fix john (and john is frustrated because he can't figure out which sin he wants to mark kip with). he's besties with addie and while he's not quite as Like That as she is, but he can keep up with her for sure. (occasionally flirts with xander but doesn't mean anything by it, he and addie just think its funny).

[2dmenenthusiast]

"You're not even my favorite sibling, really."

(John Seed x Deputy Gn!Reader)

It's here, besties. My hiatus is (somewhat) over, and I'm proud to present this baby. It's a bit of a short one, but there will definitely be more John in the future cuz I am a whore for that man and I had fun writing for him. Anyways, I hope ya'll enjoy 😌

Summary: You're trapped in John's bunker again, and rather than exposing one of your sins, you discover his instead.

Word Count: 1k

Warnings/other info: swearing, kidnapping, slight use of knives, John being a little shit, reader is gender nuetral

You’d been here before.

This dark room, in the same chair. Your fingers flexed, wrists uncomfortably rubbing against the duct tape wrapped around them, and you took a deep breath. John’s bunker, a place you had become very familiar with in the past couple of weeks. It smelled faintly of John’s cologne, and you couldn’t decipher if it was because he’d been down here so much that his smell became a permanent part of the room, or if it was because he’d been near you recently. Probably a combination of both.

You heard a metal door squeak open and footsteps soon after, each footfall growing closer until they stopped directly behind you. It was so quiet, you were sure he could hear your thundering heartbeat, and you had to hold in a gasp when you felt his fingers sweep over the back of your neck, a shudder rolling through you that you hoped he didn’t catch.

“Deputy.”

You let out a breath through your nose, shoulders relaxing, and you didn’t bother to look back at him as you let your lips twitch up into a smirk. “John.”

His fingers moved, hand settling at the base of your neck and digits curling around it, and he gave the sides of your neck an experimental squeeze.

“You don’t seem surprised to be here. I was expecting a little more resistance from you.”

You scoffed. “I’m sorry to disappoint. What is this, the third time you’ve kidnapped me? If you wanna surprise me, maybe try something a little different next time.”

“Oh?” He stepped around the chair and crouched in front of you, and you finally made eye contact with his crystal blue eyes as he looked up at you with a grin. “And what would you suggest I do?”

“Well, if you’re accepting requests,” you leaned forward in your seat, close enough that you could feel his breath on your face, “maybe instead of using your snipers and little bliss bullets, you can come out and face me yourself. Take me down like a man.”

His jaw visibly clenched, and he stood to his full height as you leaned back in the chair. It was always the same song and dance with him. You’d destroy his property, he’d taunt you over the radio, he’d have you kidnapped, and then you would escape. The cycle repeated over and over, and at this point, you thought it was becoming a lame tactic to actually see you. Like these little “visits” you had were the highlight of his week. You couldn’t lie, it was fun. Messing with him, taunting him. You hated to admit that you enjoyed getting a rise out of him, that some sick little part of you craved his attention. But you weren’t the only one. You swore that if you weren’t out destroying his shit and making his life hell, he’d probably be bored out of his mind.

But you had a feeling this was the last straw. You’d just destroyed his monstrous “YES” sign, leaving it as nothing but a pile of debris, and it was safe to say he was not happy with the situation. He could practically see your smile when he heard you talk through the radio afterward, fingers clenching tightly around his walkie until he thought he might just break it. That’s when he knew he had to have you back in his chair. He had to see you begging, pleading. He had to hear you say yes.

Grabbing a knife from the table, John rolled up a chair and sat down a couple of feet away in front of you. He then crossed one leg over the other, tapping the knife against his chin as his eyes meticulously swept over your form. He didn’t utter a word, and you wondered if he was contemplating how he wanted to mark you, how he wanted your sin to stand out on your skin for everyone to see. Reaching across the distance separating you, he grabbed the bottom of your chair and yanked you forward, the action so sudden that you let out a short gasp as your knees knocked against his.

“There. That’s better, isn’t it?”

“Sure, I love being uncomfortably close to the enemy.”

“Enemy? I thought we were closer than that, Deputy,” John said, his free hand moving to grip your thigh.

“I don’t know. You’re not even my favorite sibling, really.”

He hummed, knife tapping against your other leg as his mouth formed a tight-lipped smile. “Who is then?”

Letting out a huff, you rolled your neck and let your head hand to the side, pursing your lips in thought. “Well, Faith is nice. And Jacob is kinda cute-” You felt his grip on your thigh tighten, and you shifted your gaze to him with a smirk. “Does that upset you?”

“What? That I’m not your favorite?”

“No, that I said Jacob was cute.”

John scoffed, letting the blade press a little harder into your leg until there was a hole in your jeans, but he stopped before it could cut you any. “Why would I give a shit about you whoring around with my brother?”

“I don’t know.” Your eyes narrowed, almost analyzing him as you watched the muscles in his jaw twitch and his fingers slightly flex around the knife. “But you do.”

Rolling his eyes, John stood from his chair and walked back over to the wooden table, leaning his hands against it, and you could see the muscles in his back shift as he decided to forgo his usual vest today. You knew he was upset. That you had wormed your way under his skin, but he hadn’t broken yet. Not like you wanted him to.

“You know, I’m not planning to go and fuck Jacob.” He glanced at you over his shoulder, and you smiled. “If I was gonna whore around with anyone, it would definitely be Joseph.”

He whirled around so fast your eyes could barely track him. Kicking the empty chair to the other side of the room, you heard it crash against the wall as his hand tightly gripped your jaw and forced your head up to look at him, rage swirling behind his blue eyes.

“Is that your sin, Deputy? Lust?”

“Maybe. But I know yours. Is envy already written on you, John? Or do we need to find an empty space to carve it into?”

A shuddered breath rolled through him, fingers digging into your cheeks painfully before he let out a humorless chuckle and let you go. You watched his movements closely as he took a step back and ran a hand through his hair, but then he muttered your name, and your heart stopped as your eyes widened. The sick bastard smiled when he noticed, and he said it over, and over, and over, until he was placing his hands against the armrests of your chair and leaning forward to get in your face, letting the syllables of your name roll over his tongue one last time.

“Oh. I will have fun tearing you apart, Deputy.”

[kitchenisking]

Fic Rec Passover Day 7 😁

We’ve made it the whole week! its Thursday night and the weekend is almost upon us! I hope that everyone had a great chag and week! Let us all have a great weekend❤️

The Future is Bright by Violet_Xmas - (Rating: G, Words: 5780, sterek)

Derek gets a glimpse

You’d Be So Good To Come Home To by SylvieW - (Rating: T, Words: 5073, sterek)

In Stiles’ final year of college, Derek decides to rebuild the Hale house. He keeps asking for Stiles’ opinion on the house plans. Stiles doesn't realize that Derek is building the house with a mate in mind.

How I Long For Yesterday by sweetbutterbliss - (Rating: Mature, Words: 6017, sterek)

Stiles blinks, his throat going dry, and he moves his thumb without thinking - liking the post. He feels a surge of petty satisfaction. At least the fucker will know he knows now. He stands up, his body feeling too heavy, and he blows out the already guttering candles. He lets out a sob of frustration when the last one won't fucking blow out. But he sucks it back in and bites down on his tongue, using his thumb and forefinger instead.

He throws himself into their empty bed without undressing. He lies there repeating the words 'Derek blew me off for Isaac' over and over. He tells himself to shut up while rearranging his pillow violently, but he goes to sleep with the refrain continuing its painful loop.

Wendigo Wednesday by TastyTaboo - (Rating: T, Words: 1480, sterek)

It’s really not their fault the only way to kill a wendigo is fire. Who would have guessed it would find them in the gym at the school? It could have picked anyone out in the streets but it came after them. Stiles said it was because the thing smelled werewolf fillet and Derek wrinkled up his nose and decided aloud that it actually smelled spark soufflé.

Kisses Make Everything Better by JoMouse - (Rating: G, Words: 2546, sterek)

In a world of soulmates and soulmarks, Stiles is the odd one out. Or so he thinks.

Wanna Dance? by one-fandom-became-all-fandoms (Sara36913) - (Rating: Mature, Words: 2296, sterek)

Stiles hates it when Derek picks on him. Derek hates it when Stiles rejects him. Eventually, the two work out their frustrations.

Truth in Pretense by wanderingeyre  - (Rating: Explicit, Words: 13249, sterek)

Stiles took the straw from his drink and started chewing on it. He pulled it from his mouth and stood. He grinned at Derek. “Stop frowning, Sourwolf. I have a solution that will solve all our problems.”

“And that would be?” Derek didn’t move as Stiles moved closer to him.

Stiles winked at Derek. “We get married.” --- The one where Derek and Stiles pretend to be mates to help out a neighboring Pack and find there is some truth in pretense.

Door to Door Enquiries by katiemorag - (Rating: Not Rated, Words: 1608, sterek)

John and one of his deputies are carrying out door to door enquiries when Derek Hale answers the door of the final house on the street wearing only a pair of boxers.

Those boxers look really familiar to John.

It's Called Courting by AMatchInWater - (Rating: T, Words: 1420, sterek)

Stiles has a crush on Derek and refuses to believe it could be reciprocated....meanwhile Derek has been courting him this whole time.

every moonlight by wearing_tearing - (Rating: Explicit, Words: 1610, sterek)

“Are you done with your run, big guy?” Stiles asks. “Did you commune with nature and mark your territory again?”

[im-a-znack]

Our precious angel - 3

Hi sorry for taking so long. English isn’t my first language so sorry if there’s misspellings or stuff that doesn’t make sense. Hope you enjoy :)

Pairing : Seed family x reader

1 2

"You're useless."

I lower my eyes.

"I-I'm sorry..."

"Apologies means nothing from a useless girl like you."

"Hehe I can't wait to get rid of you! Girl's are worthless you should know place!" An other voice said while I fell on the floor.

I stayed on the ground trying to protect my head with my arms as he kicked me.

"Get up! Who allowed you to protect your head!"

I tried to get up but failed miserably.

"I SAID GET UP!"

"Brother let's go eat leave that useless wench on the floor were she belongs."

The silhouette made their way upstairs and locked the basement door leaving me crying on the ground as I drifted away back to consciousness.

I opened my eyes searching the room for those silhouette but I was all alone in the white room I was earlier. It was already dark outside.

I tried to catch my breath before standing up and looked through the window. Again there was a dozen of armed guards.

I made my way out of the room and went downstairs to try to find some food.

I wandered in the ranch pushing doors trying to find the kitchen for a good five minutes before finally finding it.

Near the sink was John Seed standing there with a glass filled with a brown liquid.

"Mr. Seed..?"

He jumped and dropped the glass shattering it on the floor.

"'What do you want?"

"N-Nothing... I was just hungry..."

"...Just grab something from the fridge. Don't bother me."

His gaze was burning my back as I made my way to said fridge to grab an apple.

"D-Do you need something from me Mr. Seed?"

"Sit at the table I don't wanna have to clean the floor if you make a mess."

I obeyed and sat.

He stared at me as I started eating my apple.

"C-Could you please not stare at me please..?"

He didn't answer. Instead I was answered by the sound of his shoes on the floor getting closer.

"You are in my house and you give me orders?" He slurred behind me.

"N-No Mr. Seed I-I was just wondering if you could not stare at me..."

He chuckled before grabbing my face in his hand forcing me to look at him.

"You're in my house I can do whatever I want the only reason I keep you alive is because my older brother want me to. The second he changes his mind I can get rid of you and your annoying presence."

I felt a shiver go down my spine as I made eye contact with his icy blue eyes filled with hatred.

He let go of my face to pull his close to my ear.

"Don't forget that only Joseph wants you alive Deputy."

He bit my ear until he hear me whine then pulled away.

He pointed at the previous shattered glass.

"When you're done clean your mess."

He left slamming the door.

I was shaking on the chair as tears started to pour profusely.

POV JOHN

I hate that little wench how dare she have Joseph's attention. She's no one! She doesn't deserve to join our family!! Joseph even said I'm not allowed to mark her skin with her sins. I absolutely hate her. Why is she so special !?

I slam my fist on the wall.

But her expression when I threatened her was almost arousing how her little eyes looked at me with terror.

I stumbled in the hallway until I reached my bedroom. I let myself fall on my bed looking at my family portrait.

"She has no place in our family..."

POV Deputy

After picking up all the glass shards and throwing them away I found some rags to clean the floor. I got on all four starting to clean the floor before anyone stepped on it.

"Oh. What are you doing there little lamb?"

I quickly turned my head to find a man staring at me.

"I-I'm cleaning my mess sir.."

He crouched beside me petting my head.

"Let me help you."

He took the rag from my hand and finished cleaning as I sat on my knees on the floor.

He looked at me on the floor and offered his hand to help me get up.

"T-Thank you sir..."

"You can call me Joseph"

[consumedkings-archive]

WITCHING HOUR, a john seed/deputy fic. chapter twelve: the desire to devour

word count: ~10.3k rating: m warnings: naughty language, .000002 seconds of spiciness (but not really), john goes "we were vibing, right? we had the vibes? right?" for like the entire last half. also mentions of self-harm and elliot's previous trauma. notes: hi friends! i hope you enjoy this chapter! this is going to be the last sort of in-between chapter before we really get into it, and from here it's going to go faaaaast. i had a lot of fun writing it and feeling out these different dynamics. not to mention john being a gigantic fuckhead (but like what is new, lmao). special thank you as always to my wifey and beta reader @starcrier for your impeccable eyeballs, and also to @vasiktomis and @shallow-gravy for lending their eyes as well because i did fuss a bit with this chap. i would be lost without y'all. thank you everyone for your love and support, esp with comments! it really fills my heart so so much to hear back from you, and i am always in the market for friends so do not be afraid to reach out to me <3

She is twenty-five.

She’s twenty-five, and it's her first full day of work. Or, it was; now, she's sitting in the Spread Eagle listening to Pratt talk about everything that's happened while she's been gone, because he'd said, c'mon, let me take you out tonight. He grins a boyish, toothy grin at her—the same kind that's mimicked in the multiple school dance photos her mother covets—and tries to sound nonchalant when he asks how she liked being in the city.

It's hard not to think about how this is the first place she had ever met John Seed, then-Duncan, and how it feels like it's spoiled the whole place for her.

Elliot redirects her attention as best as she can to what it is Pratt is saying. He's fishing for information. They've always been each other's safety net, the person they can fall back on when all else fails. School dances. Picking partners in class. Graduation walking buddies. He'd driven her to the airport when she left for the Academy, even. But even though she knows he's trying to figure out if she's still a safety net, Elliot can't disguise the way thinking about Mason makes her feel—disgusting—so she brings the beer bottle to her mouth and takes a swallow.

The result is her face scrunching up. Pratt laughs.

“Geez, Elli, slow down,” he says, his smile crinkling at the corners of his eyes. “Bet money you're still a lightweight. When'd you start drinking beer, anyway?”

“I didn't,” she manages out around the taste, swallowing thickly. “I just won't let your money go to waste.”

He shrugs, as if to say, could, if you wanted, and swivels on the stool a little. He wants to press again—she can tell—but seems to have the good sense not to, instead busying his mouth with his own beer.

“Mama said Whitehorse let you right on,” Elliot says casually, trying to ignore the twinge of envy in her voice.

Pratt shrugs again. “He's known my dad a long time.”

“Known my mom too,” Elliot replies, dry.

“Yeah, well.” Pratt pauses, and sounds a little smug when he says, “Just because your mama likes me doesn’t mean I don’t know how she is to everyone else.”

“Likes you, does she?”

“Obviously,” the brunette replies confidently. “She still keeps all those photos of us. Remember senior year, she had all of her gal pals over when we were getting ready for prom—”

“Ugh.”

“—took us about 45 minutes before we were exactly where she wanted to take pictures—"

She rolls her eyes. Pratt grins, and then bumps his shoulder against hers. He says, “Aw, c’mon. Not so bad, is it? Having your mom like me?"

Elliot can feel the flush spreading under her cheeks. Not because she's embarrassed, or flustered, but because the beer sitting in her stomach feels rotten, and because Pratt's looking at her with the same kind of eyes he did before—always, always there's the before—and she doesn't know how to say I'm not her anymore, I'm not that girl, I'm different and changed and I don't know how to go back.

It doesn't matter. If Pratt can see it on her face, he doesn't let it show; just pats her shoulder and pretends he doesn't see the way she flinches from his hand swinging into her peripheral, pretends he doesn't notice the way she covers it up by swallowing another mouthful of beer she doesn't want to drink.

“Hudson’s really glad to have you back,” he says after a minute, when she doesn’t confirm nor deny that it’s not so bad knowing her mom thinks he’s a fine enough person. “Been talking about it nonstop.”

A smile creeps its way onto her face. “I’m glad to be back. With her, especially.”

“Yeah, you two always been thick, huh?”

She nods, swallows more beer, and Pratt rolls his eyes and snags the bottle out of her hand.

“Don’t keep drinking if you don’t like it,” he tells her, and then finishes it off himself, setting the empty bottle on the countertop with a grimace. “Can’t have people telling Whitehorse I bullied the probie into drinking.”

“‘Probie’,” she scoffs. “I could kick your ass.”

“Bullshit!”

“Could’ve done it before, Pratt.”

“Now that is lies and slander.”

Elliot only grins at him, the only time since coming back sans Joey getting her from the airport that it’s been a genuine thing; lopsided and a little sloppy but a grin nonetheless. Pratt finishes his own beer now, coughing a little into his fist before he blurts out, “I’m glad, too.”

She blinks. “Huh?”

“That you’re back,” Pratt clarifies. “Y’know—nice to have my friend back. Didn’t like sendin’ you off to the big city, anyway.”

He doesn’t know. He can’t know, because her mother won’t talk about it and Joey would never divulge what it was that had brought about her speedy return—but even though he doesn’t know about the way she has to swallow back a flinch every time he waves his hand in her peripheral, or the way the smell of beer on a man’s breath makes her stomach clench with anxiety, or how her hands are so fucking cold all the time because her heart hammers in her chest, the way he says that (Didn’t like sendin’ you off to the big city, anyway) feels a little like vindication.

“S’okay,” she murmurs, nudging his shoulder with hers. “Came back in one piece, didn’t I?”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The scent of roses wafted over her in waves. The sound of bathwater murmuring against the sides of the porcelain tub rippled each time she moved, each time she used the grip of her hands against the lip of the sides to sink herself under; her knuckles went cold with the ferocious grip, but when she went under she was submerged in quiet once more. Blissful, serene, quiet; just what she wanted.

Elliot pulled herself out of the water. Downstairs, she could hear her mother’s voice, spiking frantic even through the floors and the two closed doors that kept her separated.

“...years, Mr. Seed, I have lost years of my life agonizing over what she did to herself...”

She dipped below the water, closing her eyes. No sound; no shrill noise; just the heavy, bloated static that existed underneath the surface of the bath. Only her and the baby.

It occurred to her, absently, that she needed to start picking out names for the baby. Now that they had a guess at what the gender was, they’d have to decide about a name; not only a first, but a middle, too—the last name—

“...find it quite intriguing, actually, that the second she comes back to me after being involved with your kind that she’s got all this—this—”

Oh, don’t say it, Elliot thought tiredly, closing her eyes.

“—tear, just wretched wear and tear, Mr. Seed, don’t you? Don’t you find that intriguing?”

John was sitting down there, enduring a thorough verbal lashing, and she hadn’t even asked him to. She’d said, I don’t care if she thinks it was me, and he’d guided her upstairs and cupped her face and kissed her, long and open-mouthed, and swept his thumb over her cheek. Now, Elliot could hear the sound of his voice—calmer, empathetic, like just knowing that her mother was hysterical was giving him some kind of control over himself—but that he was speaking in a normal tone meant that his words didn’t come through quite so clearly.

She heard the sound of her mother saying, “I suppose you’re going to tell me why you’re not bothered in the least?” just before she dipped under the water again.

What was she going to name the baby? Did she even have an idea of what kinds of names she liked? Exhaustion pulled at the edges of her attention; she thought, I’m too tired to come up with a baby name, and gripped the edges of the bathtub harder. More fierce, more firm; grip and pull, maybe spill the entire bathtub over, tilt the clawed feet until it hit the tiled floor and the porcelain broke and the rose-scent water flooded the bathroom, her room, the hallway.

Then they’d have to leave. Then they couldn’t stay, surely, in a house flooded with rose water.

Fingers brushed over hers where they’d gone white at the edges of the tub. She pulled herself out of the water to find John sitting there, knelt at the side of the tub—not unlike the way he’d sat back at her mother’s house in Hope County, when she’d drank too much in the bathtub and said that he could mark her.

Because that’s what it had been. As much as she had wanted it, as much as she had enjoyed it, no matter what John said—he had been marking her as his. Like that Oscar Wilde poem.

The same sin binds us.

Elliot brushed the water from her eyes and settled her head back against the tub, regarding him. He looked less bothered than she thought he would, having sat through her mother’s grilling and interrogation—though he did look like he wanted to say something, like maybe it was sitting, burning into ash in his mouth, the way she could see the flex of his jaw and the way his free hand clenched and loosened.

Ignoring the nagging feeling that he wanted to ask her what she’d been doing under the water, and the even more bothersome knowledge that she had, at some point, become painfully aware of his body language, Elliot said, “We have to think of a name.”

John blinked at her. Less than an hour ago, he’d been saying Of course I’d come for you, I love you, with or without the baby I love you, and she’d been sobbing into his arms and clinging to him.

He said, “And a middle name.”

“I’m trying not to think about it.”

A smile finally ticked the corner of his mouth, his fingers uncurling hers from the edge of the tub. Reluctantly, she let him.

“Your mother’s upset.” He paused. “She still wants you to play nice for her Christmas party, but she’s upset.”

“I know,” she replied sullenly. The despair of her shame, which had at once both overwhelmed her and hollowed her out, had dissipated in the wake of her indignation. What would she know, that vicious thing inside of her said, replaying the way her mother’s expression had crumpled. What would she know of our suffering? What would she know of our pain? ‘Wretched wear and tear’, like we haven’t been torn up for ages, like she didn’t throw us to the wolves and scoff in disgust when we came back bloodied and battered.

She wanted to be angry, really angry, but like most things that had to do with her mother, Elliot found herself more exhausted than anything. Scarlet had always found it impossible to comprehend the scars she’d given herself, had always claimed to feel disconnected to the ways Elliot had searched out meaning and comfort.

Absently, Elliot wet her lips and let her gaze flicker up to where John had perched himself beside the tub. He looked mighty pleased with himself, having finally gotten his words out. I love you, he’d said, palm flat against her window, I love you, with or without the baby.

And John, I want a home with you.

And John, Marriage is hard work, but I know you’re just the woman for the job.

And John, No way baby, I’m fucking it for you.

Blood rushed through her head, thunderous. John was saying something to her, but the words felt distant, and far away, and everything felt like it was underwater when she moved—not just the parts of her submerged in the bath, but all of it, the air too-thick and dragging on her skin and pulling her down slow as molasses. She blinked a few times as she disentangled their hands and reached for the towel, but John pulled it off of the hook first.

She watched him. She watched his mouth move, and his brows pull and furrow together at the center of his forehead, and the way his breath rose and fell in his chest, pushing and pulling the Sloth scar scratched across his sternum. Just like me, dream John had said, gripping her blood-covered hands, you’re just like me.

His voice, muffled and bogged down by the blood rushing through her ears, quirked up at the end. Elliot’s eyes darted back to his, and she asked, “Sorry, what?”

“The water’s cold,” he replied, waving the towel a bit. “Aren’t you getting out?”

“Yeah,” Elliot murmured. She felt hollow. Her fingers itched. She wanted—

John caught her hand as she stepped out of the bathtub, steadying her while her free hand gathered the towel up against her front. Goosebumps prickled across her skin, the lukewarm temperature of the bath still lingering; his fingers interlaced with hers, and she used it to steady herself.

He was close. They were close. A part of her resented it—that she let him be so close to her, that she let him kiss her and fuck her but mostly that she let him hold her when she cried, miserably, that she wanted to go home. Because after everything, after all of it, Hope County still felt—

She closed her eyes. Of course it still felt like home. Joey was there; now she knew Pratt was, too.

And among all of that, if she waded through the weeds spreading in her mind, if she hacked and cut them away, there was John.

“What are you thinking about?” John murmured, his cologne washing over her, their noses brushing. Her eyes fluttered open and she let out a little breath, that wanton little creature in her head chanting it over and over. There’s John, there’s always been John, nobody will love us with this much red in our ledger. No one but him.

“You,” she managed. Her head felt swimmy, the words coming out of her mouth sounding like a stranger’s—thick with want. John’s eyes flickered up to hers, having fixed on her mouth.

“If you want something, Ell,” he rumbled, the pressure of his fingertips against the back of her neck guiding her forward just a little but not all the way, “you only—”

Elliot leaned forward and kissed him, her hand lifting so that she could curl her fingers into his hair, the towel slipping to the floor. His body had tensed, like he wasn’t expecting it—like he was waiting for something else—and she thought about the way he’d kissed her with Kian’s blood in her mouth, the way he’d been just rampant with desire, the way the way the way—

Her teeth caught his lower lip, a little sharper than she’d intended, and his hand gripping her wrist tightened and he moaned, and she felt that same little thrill as before surge through her. It’s my magic, too, the itch in her fingers subsiding when she dug her nails in and pulled his hair a little, parting her lips against his; John leaned into her, crowding her up against the counter in front of the mirror, the hand at the nape of her neck threading into damp hair.

“Ell,” he said against her mouth, his voice rougher than before and hands planted on the counter on either side of her, “what are you doing?”

She murmured, “Stop talking,” and kissed him again, fingers clumsily working through the buttons on his shirt—her voice came out even but everything else about her felt wobbly, unsteady, craving craving craving the way it felt to have him begging her. Anything, to feel in control. Anything, to feel whole. Dig, and dig, and when you hit the bottom you keep digging some more, right?

What do we do with grief, right?

Burn and erase the image of her mother’s disgust and horror at seeing a part of her she might actually like, scrape it from her mind, dig her trenches deep deep deep and hunker down where she could feel safe, where she could feel strong; soon she would be home and—

And John’s teeth snagged her lower lip in retribution, sparking violent and red-hot behind her eyes with pleasure lighting her neurons on fire.

“Off,” she ground out against his mouth, pushing helplessly at the shirt she’d only halfway unbuttoned. The brunette grinned; his hands resumed her work, and she instead devoted her attention to the belt at his waist, yanking at it as John’s face dropped to her neck, hot breath fanning across her skin teeth dragging against her pulse point to pull a moan out of her.

There was a split second between John discarding his shirt on the floor and gripping her hips to lift her onto the countertop, his mouth seeking hers out again as she wound her arms around his neck. She had never been completely naked and felt not vulnerable at all, felt more in control—but she did, now, when she grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled and he moaned her name, a little frantic, Ell, Ell, hellcat, he said into their kiss, let me let me, greedy and wanting as he glided fingers up along the inside of her thigh.

He tensed, like he was going to drop to his knees, and she kept her hand in his hair and said, “Don’t.”

“Hm,” is what he replied, “pulling on my hair, ordering me to take my clothes off—”

“I’m about to tell you to shut up again.”

“—but won’t let me eat you out?” John grinned against her mouth, the scent of his cologne—expensive, stupid shit, but it never failed to feel like it was overwhelming her senses—washing over her. “What is it, baby? Want me to say please?”

Yes, something wicked inside of her said, John’s eyes lifting from her mouth to hers, narrowing playfully. Yes, I’d like that, I’d like to hear you say it like that.

“I know you,” he purred. He dug his nails into her hips, a sound—the wanting kind—trying to crawl its way up her throat. “Know exactly what you want from me. Yeah? So, Ell, won’t you please—”

There was a sharp knock at the door, a pause, and then: “Elliot?”

A near-silent laugh billowed out of John, stifled into her neck when her mother’s voice came through the door. Elliot’s eyes fluttered; her fingers, knotted in John’s hair, loosened and smoothed down the back of his neck, the intoxicating tension relaxing just a little. Heat had coiled in the hollow of her chest, spreading warm fingers at the same leisurely pace that John’s hand drifted up to her hip, his mouth finding the hollow of her jaw.

“I can’t believe her,” she muttered. “Yes?”

“Miss West is here, with her brother.” Scarlet’s voice was tight. “Returning your vehicle.”

Fuck. Elliot sighed, her eyes closing for a second while she tried to gather her thoughts. It was difficult to focus with John’s breath on her neck and his hands on her skin and that fucking cologne—and boy, did she not want to dwell on the fact that he’d shown up with barely anything but somehow also remembered to pack his stupid fucking cologne. But there was a different, special kind of warmth that spread through her when she realized that Sylvia was coming to check on her.

“Hair’s wet,” she called after a moment, “I’ll be down in a minute.”

“Fine.” There was another pause, and then her mother’s voice, scathing even through the door: “Ensure you are put together, Elliot.”

John murmured against her neck, “So no hickeys, then?” and she swatted his shoulder, rolling her eyes and sliding off of the counter. He seemed reluctant to let her disembark, thumb sweeping the slope of her hip before he dropped down—just far enough to plant a kiss on the gentle slope of her tummy. It was—sentimental, unseating her with incredible ease.

And then he ruined it by saying, “Your mommy won’t let me fuck her filthy, but I hear the second trimester throws a woman’s hormones through the roof, so we’ll see how long that lasts,” to her bump as he grabbed the towel from the floor to offer to her.

She snatched it from his hands, wrapping it around herself. “Don’t say that shit to the baby. You think I won’t end your life?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” he offered, head cocked to the side. “Leaving the hickeys, anyway, I mean. Well, and the second part too. About sex. Not the murderous part. Actually, you know I find it—”

Choosing to ignore the latter statement, Elliot narrowed her eyes. “You’d risk Via’s opinion of you dropping so severely?”

“You know what they say.” John spread his hands, almost in a gesture of helplessness; though she knew he was far from it. “Old habits die hard.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“She’s killing all of my angels!”

Faith’s voice was sharp, piercing; Isolde’s fingers fluttered over the bridge of her nose to fend off an impending headache, pen held poised above the notepad where she’d been writing down her thoughts but had paused in time for the girl’s interjection. She couldn’t stand a messy page—ink smears, jarred letters. Unacceptable.

Two hours ago, she’d had Jacob drive her out to where the service was strongest. A flood of emails and texts from her family had been waiting to overload her phone. Her dad, things are looking poorly, where are you?, her sister, I’ve been trying to reach you for days.

“Jacob,” the blonde plunged on, interrupting her train of thought, “you have to do something. They’re being—gutted like fish!”

“You should have locked them down,” Jacob told her. “And you’re not the only one losing things.”

“I put—” Faith cut herself off, clearly taking a moment to compose herself before she pitched her voice low and said, “I put just as much work into them as you do into yours.”

The red head’s voice bloomed with annoyance when he said, “Oh, did you?”

“No fighting, please,” Joseph called from where he sat next to her. His voice was even, elbows rested on his legs and fingers interlaced in thought. “I know this is stressful. But you must keep your faith in God.”

“Santi told me that—whoever she is has been leaving their corpses all around!” Faith’s voice pitched high with distress, now, sweeping around Jacob to come to where they had sat, big doe eyes wide. “We have to do something. Please, Father—I don’t want our people to wonder if they’re going to be next.”

Joseph paused, looking pensive for a moment; Isolde thought he might have been trying to figure out how he wanted to phrase something, but before he could speak, Isolde looked at Jacob and said, “You were going to hunt her down anyway, weren’t you?”

The eldest Seed’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you start with me too, Sol.”

“Get some fresh air,” she replied curtly, “go for a drive, clear your head. Eliminate a problem. You’ve been wearing a hole in the floors anyway; put that energy into being productive.”

“P—” Jacob’s voice spiked, incredulous. “Excuse me?”

He was agitated. She could tell—Pratt, and the phone call with the deputy in Georgia, and the Hunter on some kind of one-man rampage. But more importantly, Isolde thought, Jacob was agitated because there had not been a single conversation between him and Joseph since their argument.

Well, not even an argument. Just a lashing. A public one.

Isolde scooted her chair back from the table that had been set up at the front of the chapel, setting her pen down and stepping away. Her hand landed on the crook of Jacob’s elbow as she passed, and though he made a noise that implied disdain, he followed—not without shrugging her hand off by the time they got to the front doors of the chapel, leaving the other two to talk in low, murmured voices.

“You have got to stop letting this get to you,” she hissed.

“Nothing is ‘getting’—”

“Listen to me,” Isolde interjected. “I’ve been keeping as close an eye on the news as I have been on you. Things are—” She paused, mouth twisting around the words. “There is no room for you lot to be bloody fighting with each other. Do you understand me? This has moved far past needing to prepare PR and build a legal defense.”

Jacob’s eyes narrowed. He looked suspicious. “So why are you still here then, Sol?” he asked.

The words burned insult in her chest. Why are you still here, stinging fresh and hot, because it was a fair question. It was the most fair question. Unlike any of these people, she had a family outside that she still loved. Her sister, and her parents. She should have told John and all of the Seeds to go fuck themselves, to enjoy the end of the world, while she went to be with her family.

But she wasn’t. She was here. Doing—this. Finding fresh new ways for Joseph to connect with his people to keep their morale high, keeping the infighting at bay to make sure they looked like a united front to everyone, second doomsday cult included.

“My parents will take care of Avery. You know they’re close with—government,” she replied after a minute, shaking off the unease. “And I told John that I would.”

He snorted. “John says jump, you ask how high?”

“No,” she bit out, “I say jump and you kiss the fucking ground I’m standing on because I cobbled together what the fuck is left of your congregation.” Before Jacob could say anything, Isolde added, “My hands are full, Jake. Do not add to my pile.”

Dark brows furrowed, his mouth thinning in disdain. He clearly wanted to say something. But true to his nature, Jacob straightened back and settled himself before he said, “Fine.”

“Fine?”

“Fine,” he reiterated with his eyes narrowed. “I’m going to the Veteran’s Center.”

“That doesn’t sound like where we heard about the killings happening last,” Isolde protested, eyes narrowing.

“But she was there,” he replied. “Or someone was. Someone was there enough to steal my files.”

“Your—” Isolde snapped her mouth shut, sucking her teeth as she glanced back at Joseph and Faith; haloed in the dim lighting of the chapel, she could see them looking back at Jacob and herself expectantly. She wondered how much they could hear, from there.

Turning her attention back to Jacob and pitching her voice down in volume, Isolde hissed, “I don’t think prioritizing files is the best move right now.”

“Thank you,” Jacob idled, “for your input.”

“Fuck you.”

“Have fun,” he added, opening the door and letting in a waft of biting, cold air, before gesturing to the Book of Joseph on the table that she’d had her nose stuck in. All the better to make Joseph’s sermons hit home harder, after all. “You know—with your light reading.”

Isolde narrowed her eyes, watching him trudge down the steps for just a second before she said, “Jacob—”

“Yes, Isolde?”

Her mouth pressed into a thin line. “Don’t get shot.”

For a moment, he looked almost surprised at her words—but it was only a moment before he said, “Don’t worry, I’m taking Vidal. He makes a suitable meatshield.”

“God, he’s a talker.”

A tiny ghost of a smile tugged at the corner of Jacob’s lips, before he said, “John and the deputy should be making their way here any day now.”

Isolde grimaced. “I was there for the phone call.”

“Are you going to leave?” Jacob pressed, expression stiffening again. “When he does?”

She paused, clearing her throat and shifting on her feet. I should, were the words that wanted to come out of her mouth. I should go. I only came down here because John wasn’t here. I should go, and get back to my life, and maybe get to my family and try to stay out of the crossfire and—

After a heartbeat, she said, “I don’t know.”

Jacob shrugged, as if to say, see? Told you, though to what he could be referring to, she had no idea; she only knew that she didn’t like the way he swung around and sauntered out of the chapel, leaving her alone in the tepid warmth with Joseph and Faith’s eyes on her in favor of the blistering cold outside. Snow had continued to dump throughout the day and night, and had only just let up recently; the members of Eden’s Gate—those who had survived the Family’s relentless assaults, and those that had been pulled from the bunkers—had been tirelessly shoving pathways, only to have their work tidily undone each night.

Fingers brushed the palm of her hand. Isolde startled; she glanced back just as fingers interlaced with hers to be met with sweet, bright eyes and Faith’s adoring attention planted on her.

“It means so much to me,” Faith murmured, “that you would help. Not just me, but all of us.”

Soli watched the blonde for a moment, trying to gauge. The physical closeness was not something she was accustomed to; carefully, she disentangled their fingers, skin prickling with unease. When she glanced up, Joseph’s eyes were on them, on Faith’s fingers falling from her hand but skimming the inside of her palm in a lingering touch of affection.

He was always doing that. Watching. Watching, and waiting, and pinning each movement and gesture and thought and word out perfectly like the wings of a butterfly, just the color he liked and just the shape.

“Don’t thank me,” Isolde replied, mustering a smile and brushing the hair from her face.

“It’s my job.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“Hey, Miss Honey, John!”

Wyatt’s cheerful voice broke through the late-afternoon chill; the sun setting early, people’s breath coming out in puffs of smoke. It all felt oddly normal, given the circumstances of the morning and the way she’d forgotten to call Sylvia once she got home, and that her friend had fished up a reason to come by the house and make sure she hadn’t—

Well.

Still, if there was any remnant of the morning in Sylvia’s heart, it didn’t show in her face, and it certainly didn’t show in Wyatt’s. Instead, both blondes beamed at her, radiant, the second she came out with fuzzy, fresh-from-the-blow-dryer hair and swaddled up to her chin in thick fabrics to fend off the cold.

And, truthfully, to hide the bump. John had reminded her of it, and even though the moment had been a...good one, it had also reminded her she hadn’t expressed this truth to Sylvia or Wyatt. As John closed the door behind her and jogged down the steps,

“Howdy,” Ell greeted, albeit a bit awkwardly thanks to her stuck-somewhere-nowhere-sort-of-accent. “You didn’t have to drive it back all the way out here, you know.”

“Sure we did.” Wyatt chirped. “Wouldn’t be very neighborly of us if we let it sit and the battery died out, now would it?”

“No,” John demurred after a moment even as Elliot’s cheeks went warm, “I suppose not.”

“You all recovered from this morning?” Via asked cheerfully, purposefully avoiding the actual question. Elliot shifted on her feet. John’s hand skimmed the small of her back, and even through the layers of fabric, it felt warm; she wondered if this was what it would have been like for them, had their life been normal. Had John been truthful with her from the get-go. Now, with everything laid out between them—the lies unearthed and only the brutal, unapologetic knowledge that they wanted each other, in one way or another—it felt like they might have been normal. Sometime, somewhere, someplace else.

It was still hard to swallow, all of it. The lies and the now-truths and the knowledge that she did, in fact, want.

“Oh, yeah,” Ell replied faintly. “Took a bath and...” She tried for a smile. “Decompressed.”

“That what smells so good?”

“Y’all get that tired from dress shoppin’?” Wyatt tsked, having pulled his coat out of the jeep and started to pull it on. He grinned at her and skillfully dodged a side-swipe from Sylvia; he had a good foot of height on her—and Elliot—so it wasn’t difficult. The siblings fussed for only a moment before Sylvia managed to fetch the Jeep’s keys from Wyatt’s coat pocket and held them out to Elliot, puffing.

She was in the middle of saying, “Your keys, madame,” when John’s head tilted and he muttered, “Now what is this?”, drawing her attention to the end of the drive. A police cruiser made its way slowly down the drive, carefully pulling up behind the Jeep.

Not beside it. Not further up toward the garage, not on the other side of the four of them chatting. Behind it. Blocked in.

Sheriff Pritchard stepped out, shuffling a little as he adjusted the black, fur-trimmed jacket on his shoulders and closed the driver side door. He’d come alone, which made Elliot certain he wasn’t here to arrest her—and what a ludicrous thought, that he might have considered it a possibility, because the mere mental image of Pritchard grabbing her arm and keeping his eyes in his head made a hysterical kind of laugh want to bubble out of her.

Not me, not me and not my baby, that thing inside of her said, lifting its hackles and baring its teeth when Pritchard began to saunter over. Not my baby.

“Afternoon, you two. And Wests,” Pritchard greeted as he drew closer. He’d earned himself a curious murmur from Sylvia. “Havin’ a little shindig out here, Miss Honeysett?” Elliot opened her mouth to respond, but he lifted his hands quickly in defense. “‘M sorry, forgot myself. Mrs. Seed.”

It caught her off-guard, sucked the air right out of her lungs. It was one thing to hear her mother say John is Elliot’s husband, to hear her say John is my son-in-law, but it was another entirely to hear herself referred to as Mrs. Seed. It had never, ever been that she was John’s wife, except out of his own mouth, but now—

John seemed eager to engage with Pritchard, because he said, “Something that you needed, sheriff?”

“Yes, actually. Believe it or not, I ain’t in the business of drivin’ out to the rich part of town just for shits and giggles,” Pritchard replied coolly. “Your mama home, Elli?”

“Probably resting,” Sylvia offered, smiling politely. “We just finished dress shoppin’ for her Christmas Party not but an hour ago.”

“Yeah,” Pritchard rumbled, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. “Heard about your little trip to the boutique today.”

John asked irritably, “Do you need to smoke that right now?”

Elliot swallowed thickly. Her lashes fluttered, eyes desperate to close; the warmth that had flooded her face now felt like it verged on feverish, threatening to make her head swim again. This was bad. This was bad-bad, chop her hair off and run run run again bad, the kind of bad that made a girl change her name and burn her birth certificate and make sure that nobody would ever be able to find her again.

“I don’t,” she began, “think mama’s feeling up to visitors right now.”

Pritchard eyed her, taking a puff of his cigarette while completely glazing over John’s pointed question. “Imagine not. You know, you been a hot topic of conversation lately, Mrs. Seed. Gotten loads of questions about you. Lady from out of town, Federal Marshals. I don’t like folks sniffin’ around my town, you know, especially not the fuckin’ Feds, but it’s gotta make me wonder.” The smoke curled out from his nose, the smoke of a lazy, self-righteous dragon wafting around her.

“Sheriff,” John continued tightly, clearing his throat, “you’re going to need to put that out.”

“We’re outside, Mr. Seed. You ain’t ever seen someone smoke a cigarette outside?”

“Do you make a habit of smoking around pregnant women?” John snapped viciously, and oh, she thought, oh, I didn’t even think of that, because her brain was too busy kicking into overdrive and parse out the absolute confirmation that Federal Marshals were asking after her and strange women, too. Oh, I didn’t even think about the baby.

And then Sylvia said, eyes wide as saucers as she laughed, flustered, “Oh, John, that’s very kind of you, but I’m not—” and her eyes landed on Elliot, and she blinked rapidly.

Wyatt was looking at her, too. Big, big eyes, surely having not only learned that she and John were married but that she was also pregnant in the span of only a few minutes. At least, Elliot didn’t think Sylvia would have divulged that information, and if the shock he was clearly trying to cover up in his expression was any indication, that gut feeling was right.

No, she thought, no, this is not what I wanted. This is not what I wanted at all. It wasn’t his to tell, it wasn’t his to tell, it was mine, my choice, mine alone.

Her gaze snapped to Pritchard. She said, “It’s time for you to leave.”

Pritchard lifted his eyebrows. “That so? Well, good for me I ain’t here to talk to you, missy.”

“Get. Off. My. Property,” she bit out through her teeth. “Scarlet isn’t taking visitors, and I’ll cut the decay out of my own teeth before she makes anything close to the time of day for you.”

Now, his eyes narrowed and the cigarette sat between his fingers, still burning amber at the end. “Excuse me?”

“And tell the fucking Feds whatever you want,” she snapped, fingers curled tightly around the keys until the metal edges dug into the nooks and crannies of her hand. “But whatever you do, get the fuck out of my driveway, sheriff.”

Something flickered in the corner of her vision. John started, “Ell,” and his hand went to her shoulder, but she jerked back from him before he could make much more than a brush of contact.

“Don’t,” Elliot snapped at him, her voice wobbling and the tears—shameful tears—welling up and burning, “touch me.”

“Alright, okay,” Sylvia murmured, “Elliot and I are gonna go inside, and John can—”

“Ain’t here to talk to Mr. Seed,” Pritchard drawled venomously.

“If you’re asking questions about Elliot,” Sylvia replied calmly, taking Elliot’s hand with a firm squeeze, “I can imagine there is no better person to ask than her husband, don’t you think so, Sheriff?”

Pritchard’s eyes were squinted into poisonous little slits, and he took a long drag of his cigarette.

“Mrs. Honeysett won’t be any type of cooperative if you get her up now,” Wyatt chimed in, eyes flickering nervously to Elliot—perhaps both because of the news and because of her outburst. But she didn’t have time to think much about it, because Sylvia was tugging her out of the cluster of folks, ginger and reassuring even as her brother plunged on, “I mean, sheriff, come on—you know how women can be when they’re gotten up too early, let alone they’ve been shoppin’ all day—”

And Pritchard said, “You want I should put my cigarette out now, Mr. Seed?” as Sylvia opened the door,

and John replied with a slick, charismatic kind of venom, “No reason to anymore, smoke to your heart’s content,”

and the door clicked shut behind her and Boomer scampered out from where he’d been snoozing under the dining table.

She had to leave.

She had to go.

She had to get out.

Federal Marshals and strange women asking after her, and now her only two friends in the whole fucking world—

(well, not entirely true, since we still have Pratt, isn’t that right? Isn’t that right, Elli?)

—had just seen her almost go fucking bananas on an officer of the law, had watched her demand he get the fuck out of her driveway for wanting to ask her mother about her, had seen her.

“Hey,” Sylvia said, “you’re alright.”

I’m not, she thought, dropping the keys into the crystal bowl by the door, smearing red against the glass. Her hand stung. She reached with the good, unmarked hand for Boomer absently. His cold, wet nose brushed against it, and he whined, feet tapping against the wood as he bumped her for her attention. I won’t go. I won’t fucking go. I won’t pay the price for what they did to me, what they made me into.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted out abruptly, her voice coming out tight. “Sorry that I didn’t—um, tell you. About the—”

“It’s okay,” Sylvia told her quickly, “it’s alright, Elli, it’s not a big deal. You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

Elli, she said, without knowing what the nickname meant. Elli, Sylvia said, it’s alright, and Joey, right now we need to leave, Elli, and Pratt, geez, Elli, slow down, an affectionate nickname saved only for folks who considered her their friend. Sans Pritchard. Fuck Pritchard.

“Lots of people wait to tell,” Via continued, one hand coming to rest on her shoulder and jarring her out of her thoughts, which were quickly and rapidly devolving back into the urge to march outside and ensure Pritchard was obeying her command. Out out out, something vicious inside of her demanded, we want him out we want him gone.

Elliot said, “Yeah, you’re right,” but she felt far away—not lost, not gone from herself, but thinking. She could pack fast. She could pack fast, and John had brought barely anything, and they could leave right now, her mother none the wiser. They could leave now and be gone and Cameron Burke would have to—

But are we sure it’s Burke? Are we sure it’s Burke and not someone else, come to haul your ass to a fucking psych ward, for what you did in Hope County?

For what you did?

No. She wasn’t sure. She could only hope it was one singular Federal Marshall on her tail, and not an actual piece of the government body. That was all.

But whoever it was that was asking after her—strangers, government officials—it didn’t matter. That old mantra had kicked in again; something has to be done, the same kind of calm before the storm that she’d felt when Joey had been killed, something has to be done.

Something has to be done and I’m going to have to be the one to fucking do it.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Pritchard dropped the cigarette into the snow and stamped it out with his bootheel, his eyes fixed on John. Sylvia had rushed Elliot inside, but he didn’t think that had been purely necessary—only in the instance they had wanted to keep Pritchard out of a blood bath. Elliot hadn’t been checking out, trying to keep herself together; she had been angry, and he’d had half a mind to let her say and do exactly as she pleased to the man now standing in front of him in the cold.

“She always been that volatile, Mr. Seed?” the sheriff asked.

“Not undeservingly,” John replied tartly, his eyes narrowed. “Did you have specific questions, sheriff, or did you just come by to terrorize my pregnant wife with your theoretical judgment of her soul?”

“More your speed?” Pritchard replied, lifting a brow.

“Pardon?”

“Heard about you Seed boys,” he continued coolly, “and your...” He gestured with a calloused hand vaguely, looking for the right word.

John smiled, with teeth. “Before I grow old, if you don’t mind, sheriff.”

“Proclivities,” Pritchard elaborated, “for religion.”

Fucking Burke, he thought, with no absence of venom; fucking Burke can’t resist the urge to try and fuck up my life when he’d be better off trying to find a place to hunker down for the end of the world.

“We’re red-blooded Americans,” John idled coolly, “freedom of religion goes hand in hand with that.”

“Mr. Pritchard, you wanna get that car started?” Wyatt cut in abruptly, glancing around like he thought maybe the rest of the patrol might be rolling in any minute. “It doesn’t sound like you’ve got any questions for Mr. Seed.”

“That’s sheriff to you, boy,” he snapped. And then, after a heartbeat, he fished his keys out of his pocket and said, “I s’pose I got all the information I needed, after all.”

“Mmhm.”

John had turned back to the house, spotting Elliot and Sylvia through the front window, when Pritchard announced, “You make sure Scarlet gives me a call when she’s recovered from your wife’s antics, Mr. Seed.”

His gaze returned to the sheriff, narrowed. “Certainly, Sheriff Pritchard.”

“But if I don’t hear from you, no worries,” the man continued, opening his car door, “I’ll make another special trip out here.”

“Goody.”

John flashed another grin when Pritchard’s eyes flickered over him. Wyatt said, “Have a safe drive,” and Pritchard slammed his door shut, his cruiser’s engine roaring to life before he began to slowly back out and make a u-turn to head down the long driveway again. There was a moment of silence, stretching between himself and Wyatt that he didn’t feel particularly inclined to break—after all, Wyatt had been taking liberties with Elliot that he shouldn’t have been—before the blonde finally broke the silence.

“Congrats,” Wyatt said after a minute. “About—uh, the baby, I mean. I didn’t know!”

Ah, he thought, feeling a strange little surge of pride at the way the man across from him shifted on his feet with discomfort, and that’s why Elliot’s mad I brought it up. Her friends didn’t know.

Well, it was better this way, after all. He wouldn’t have taken it back even if he’d gotten the chance, knowing what he did now.

“Thank you,” he replied amiably. “It’s certainly a blessing.”

Wyatt’s mouth twisted for a moment, looking like there was something he wanted to say specifically and didn’t know how to say it without foregoing social niceties, but the sound of the front door opening caught both of their attentions.

“Wyatt, you gonna stand out here like a lemming all afternoon or what?” Via called. “Get the car warmed up, you caveman.” She took a few steps down the front stairs and looked at John. “You’re wanted inside, Mr. Seed.”

A very polite way of telling him that Elliot, perhaps, was in the mood to throttle him with her bare hands. Though he didn’t really see the harm in spilling the news—perhaps with Via, sure, but Wyatt? The cowboy? Like that was ever going to be anything.

“Thanks for your help,” John said, clapping Wyatt on the shoulder before he made his way to the front steps. Via hadn’t moved. In fact, her normally polite expression was eerily cool—whatever amicable, feigned interest she had manicured for him in the past seemed to have evaporated in the wake of Elliot’s own fury.

As he neared, he said, “Something else you needed, Miss West?”

Via’s eyes narrowed. She looked at Wyatt, now inside the car, and then back to John. “You must think I’m mighty dumb, don’t you?”

John lifted an eyebrow inquisitively. “If you think I instigated that little outburst on purpose—”

“What I think,” Via replied, “is that you know exactly what she’s capable of handling. Just because you didn’t do it on purpose doesn’t mean you weren’t thinking of letting her physically assault a police officer.”

His easy-going expression flattened. Sylvia, and her seeing, the same kind of uncanny people-reading skills that Joseph had, too. Seeing his delight at knowing that Elliot would have taken on a man a foot taller than her, pregnant, if it meant keeping him away from the baby, if it meant keeping herself out of the grip of a greater power that wanted her in a psychiatric evaluation.

“I want to like you,” Via continued, taking the steps until she reached the bottom, “and I thought maybe you were here to make a real effort. But it seems like you’re the same person you were before, John Duncan.”

The name sent a jolt of red-hot anger flushing down his spine, filling him up suddenly with a sort of molten rage that only the reminder of his adoptive parents could have inspired in him. When Via went to move past him, he snatched her elbow, holding her in place.

“And where,” he ground out, “did you hear that name, Miss West?”

“It’s called a web browser, John,” Via replied coolly. “You ever heard of Google? Imagine how many John Seeds there are in Hope County, Montana. I don’t need to tell you that the articles regarding you and your brothers, though a bit old, are unflattering. And all I want you to know—” She paused, arm still in his grip. “—is that we’re aware of each other, and that I don’t want anything happening to Elliot.”

“Neither do I,” John replied tightly, “and I especially don’t want someone digging trenches where there’s not a war zone.”

Via regarded him with an even gaze for a moment, glancing back at the car where her brother sat, before she murmured idly, “Kindly take your hand off of my arm, John.”

“Ellliot’s already aware of the any of the information in those articles,” he continued lowly, “just so you know.”

“My point, John,” Via replied casually, “is that I know, and I can—and will—deal with it as I see fit. Now, you gonna take your fuckin’ hand off of my arm, or are we going to have a problem?”

He watched her for a moment—just long enough to consider the dopamine rush of killing her, grabbing a fistful of her hair and slamming her face into the top of the porch, doing something, anything to ensure that Sylvia West was not capable of messing up anything that he was doing—and then he planted a big smile on his face and dropped his hand from her arm.

“Careful,” he said, louder now so that Wyatt would hear, “it’s icy.”

The blonde didn’t respond. Instead, she brushed her hand absently where his had been, as though to brush herself free of his touch, and picked her way across the driveway and to the truck idling just on the other side of the jeep.

Well, that would be one less problem to deal with, in the end.

John made his way inside, closing the front door quietly behind himself and taking a moment to gauge. Just to see what was going on. The house itself was quiet, and Boomer’s little footfalls were nowhere to be heard, and Scarlet wasn’t sipping her vodka in the living room—so.

So.

So.

Taking a breath, he started up the stairs, turning into the hall to find Elliot’s bedroom door halfway ajar. He paused in the doorway; she was rifling through drawers, pulling sweaters and long-sleeved shirts and jeans and sweats out and dropping them into a duffel bag, furious little exhales occasionally coming out of her.

“I was told I was being summoned,” John said, Elliot’s attention razor-sharp and snapping to him immediately.

“Pack your shit,” she said briskly, “we’re leaving.”

He blinked. Taking a step inside, he glanced at Boomer—perched protectively between himself and Elliot—and said, “I thought we were waiting until after the Christmas party?”

“You’re not fucking deaf, John, you heard Pritchard,” she snapped. “The Feds have been asking about me. The only reason they don’t know exactly where to look—whoever it is—is because Pritchard’s a fucking asshole and likes to be as obstinate as possible.”

“And if we sprint out of here,” he replied, “you’re just going to draw their attention.”

“It’s what Pritchard wants.” Elliot zipped the duffel bag shut and then brushed past him into the bathroom, gathering up her toothbrush and toothpaste and the sleeping pills. “For me to be gone. He’ll piss off if I go. And there’s no way he’s going to put up a big fight to cozy up to the government.”

“Elliot.” John watched her furiously gathering things up, and then when she came by again he caught her with his hands. “Ell, just slow down—”

“Stop,” she bit out, “stop telling me what to fucking do, John, and—I told you not to touch me.”

He lifted his hands from her, but not far enough that she could duck past. “Are you that mad about Sylvia and Wyatt knowing you’re pregnant?” When she didn’t answer, and instead hauled the bag over from the other side of the bed to be close to her so that she could dump the collections from the bathroom into it, he sighed. “I didn’t know you hadn’t told them, but I don’t understand what all of the secrecy is about. The baby isn’t—”

“I felt normal!” Elliot replied sharply, her voice pitching a little higher now, and John heard the wet wobble in it too—the way the timbre of her voice thickened and rounded out with the threat of oncoming tears, her cheeks flushed with anger and maybe shame and pain, too. “Okay? I felt—I f-fucking felt normal, for once, and it was enough that Sylvia knew you and I had been—that we’re married, which I don’t even want to dig into right now, but it was another to be like—yes, the father of my fucking child, who I’m actually married to even though I didn’t want it, is here and oh, by the way? He’s part of a cult. Yeah, a fucking doomsday cult. I’m carrying the child of a doomsday cultist.”

“How was I supposed to know?” he demanded. “How was I supposed to know that you didn’t want Sylvia and her brother knowing you were pregnant? You never said. And what does it matter?” And then, feeling the petulance well up inside of him: “I know it probably felt nice, to have Wyatt giving you attention—”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she asked, incredulous. “You’re really pulling that now? So, what—you dumped the news because you wanted to make sure my friend found me as off-limited as possible?”

John crossed his arms over his chest. “I know this may come as a shock to you,” he said, feeling the tension peeling apart behind his eyelids, “I really didn’t want Pritchard smoking near my baby.”

“My baby.” Elliot jammed her finger into his chest, just above his heart, her words vicious. “It’s our baby, or it’s my baby, but there isn’t a single fucking universe where the only person this baby is beholden to is you.”

“He’s,” John corrected, tartly. “He’s our baby. And at the end of the day, whether you like it or not—”

“Have you ever,” she cut in over him, biting the words out between her teeth, “done anything for me that wasn’t for you too?”

Watching her, the words sat sticky in his chest. His instinct was to say, of course I have, but that wasn’t true. Of course it wasn’t. And he wasn’t going to pretend like it was, either—because he wasn’t ashamed that everything he had done had been for them, that if Elliot wasn’t his then there would be no point in it, that it was a zero sum game where he either had her or he had nothing.

He said, evenly, “No.”

Elliot looked unseated by his honesty. She swept her fingers across her forehead tiredly and turned back to her bag. “Then do me a favor and pack your shit so we can go.”

John sighed. “Don’t you think—”

“John,” she bit out, “I am making an executive decision.”

“Alright, Ell.”

“And—”

John had turned to the door to go gather what few of his belongings he’d had when Elliot cut herself off, drawing his eyes over his shoulder to her again. She looked unwell—stressed, feverish, her hands buried into the duffel bag maybe to hide the shaking and her face flushed and her brows furrowed together.

“Thank you,” she managed out after a minute, “for being honest. For once.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Pratt brushed the snow from his hair, teeth chattering as he waded through knee-deep snow out towards the water. It had been three days, and Helmi had told him to meet her out there—how she was going to get past the compound’s security, Pratt didn’t know, but he also thought it probably was best not to dwell on the things that Helmi would do (and could do) to get where she needed to be.

Which is why he found himself less and less surprised to find her standing at the edge of the water, in the middle of the night, swathed up to her jaw in dark, heavy fabrics. The only part of her that wasn’t covered were her hands; the closer he got, he could see she was turning a smooth, dark rock over and over in her hands, passing it between them as she watched him come nearer.

“You remembered,” was how she greeted him, most of her face cast in shadow thanks to the high position of the moon behind her. Pratt shivered and jammed his hands into his coat pockets.

“Yeah, well, kinda hard to forget,” he replied. “Considering it’s been looming over me for the last few days.”

“Poor thing,” Helmi agreed, not sounding sympathetic at all. “Did you call her?”

Pratt paused, clearing his throat. There was something that didn’t quite sit right with him, knowing that he had called Elliot not out of a cry for her help—not really, anyway—but because this other cult wanted her. This cult, which had tore its way through Hope County splitting and gutting its residents, wanted her. And Helmi didn’t seem keen on telling him why.

“I did. They just got word that she and John are on the road now,” he said after a moment. “What, uh—do you want her for, anyway?”

Helmi quirked a brow at him, the corner of her mouth tilting upwards. “Shouldn’t you have asked that before making the phone call, if it was going to bother you?”

A little lick of shame and embarrassment crawled red-hot into his cheeks, and he scoffed, turning his face away. “Well, you said you wanted her alive. Can’t say the same for the Seeds.”

“She’s carrying John’s child,” Helmi pointed out. “You think they’d kill her still?”

Pratt grimaced. It was still hard to stomach—the idea that Elliot was with John. Or had been, at one point. It didn’t sound like things were going great, and he could only imagine why. Still—

Still, he thought there was a lesser of the two evils, and Helmi sounded like it. Maybe not the others, but Helmi.

“They don’t have a problem killing babies,” Pratt replied after a minute. “What are you going to do, once she gets here? They won’t let her leave, and they definitely won’t let you in.”

Now, the blonde grinned—pearly teeth in the dark of the night, surprisingly satisfied with herself. “Big one’s pissed at me, isn’t he?”

“Yeah. Well, you know, Faith too. You've been killing her angels.”

She shrugged. “I’ve got a plan. You know exactly as much as you need to know right now. Are you eating?”

The question came so quickly that Pratt didn’t have time to register the oddness of it, replying on automatic the same way he had been with Arden’s consistent, gentle pestering: “Yeah, I mean—don’t have much of an appetite, but...”

His voice trailed off and he glanced back at the woman. Her head was cocked and her eyes were fixed on him expectantly. “What?”

“Eat,” she told him. “Take advantage of as much as you can. And most of all, listen. Any information you can get will be helpful.”

Pratt’s throat felt a little tight. He kept thinking about the way Jacob had grabbed his shoulder, laughing when he’d insulted the woman doing the heavy lifting for Joseph—grinning like a fucking wolf, like he was going to be dinner, next.

He managed out, “He’ll kill me. If he suspects. He’ll take—everything, from me.”

Helmi planted a hand on his shoulder. The gesture made him want to flinch, but he bit back the urge, and he thought maybe she’d seen but didn’t say.

“He already took everything from you,” she replied lightly, “and do you know what that means?”

The dark of her gaze was intense, piercing even in the late night; it made it hard to look away. Voices echoed back in the compound, and briefly, he thought maybe they’d noticed his absence—but he only shook his head.

“It means you have nothing to lose,” Helmi murmured, “and everything to take back from him.” Her hand moved from his shoulder to the back of his neck, the pad of her thumb sweeping up to his pulsepoint pensively. “See? Your heart is beating, and hard. Your blood knows it’s what you want, even if you don’t yet.”

Swallowing thickly, he nodded his head once. Nothing to lose, and everything to take back. Could he? Could he get things back? Is that what Helmi had done? What Elliot had done?

“And don’t fuck it up,” she added, dropping her hand from his neck and zipping her coat up. Leaving so soon. She grinned. “Or I’ll gut you myself. And I guarantee, it won’t be an Återfödelse.”

A nervous, almost hysterical little laugh bubbled up out of him. Helmi shot him a look and then brushed past him, heading back into where the brush became the thickest, calling over her shoulder, “See you in a few days, Staci Pratt.”

A few days. A few days, Elliot would be back, and John Seed would be back, and Helmi would be seeing him. Seeing them. Maybe it would be better to make a break with Elliot, once she got in—but what if she didn’t want to? What if she was one of them?

Pratt let out a puff of hot breath, digging the heel of his palm into his eyesocket while the pain bloomed just there, turning and beginning to trudge back to the compound before anyone noticed his absence. Each scrape and puff of snow fell in line with his heartbeat, the mantra on and off again.

Nothing to lose.

Everything to take back.

[sunbentsky-archived]

I have soooo many thoughts about Ecaterina as the dep and I’m internally giddy about how well this works out lmao. A couple of noteworthy things:

I’ve been meaning to elaborate on how the Reeds, the gang Ecaterina is part of in her main verse, is very cult-like in how they operate. Their leader, Roland, is the absolute authority and anyone questioning him is pressured to fall back in line. The members are expected to cut off contact with anyone outside “the family” and not form any meaningful relationships after joining the gang (hell, Ecaterina’s parents were executed in front of her when they attempted to persuade her to come back, although that is an extreme case). There’s an initiation process where they all receive new aliases and the R mark on their cheek-- Ecaterina became Ruth. For a long while, new members aren’t allowed to own much of anything; Roland controls their finances and holds onto whatever objects of value they might have until they’re deemed trustworthy. And finally, leaving the gang takes more than just walking away. Ecaterina left after killing another member and for a few years she thoughts that was the end of it until one day they came back for her. It didn’t stop until she killed Roland himself, after which the remaining members scattered, largely directionless without a leader to control everything they do. 

In this verse, her backstory remains largely the same because it feels super relevant to the game’s plot. She still falls in with the Reeds when she’s sixteen, but this time law enforcement intervenes after a few years. The gang is busted and all members end up in prison, Ecaterina included. She still gets married and has a daughter after being released, but instead of walking away from them to hunt down Roland like in her main verse, this time her marriage ends in divorce and her husband takes custody of their daughter. A few years later the events of fc5 take place. (I haven’t figured out how she ends up a junior deputy yet, but I’ll get there.)

The conversation with Nick Rye after getting his plane back hits Ecaterina a little too hard. About how he’s horrified at the thought of leaving his child fatherless and they’ve not even been born yet. She realizes the thought has not even crossed her mind-- that getting involved in this and putting herself in highly dangerous situations means she might leave her daughter motherless. 

And my favorite detail so far!! She already has the R on her cheek, which gives John the idea to use it to spell wrath on her face :-) 

[lulu2992]

What I learned listening to Far Cry 5′s audio files

The game’s lore, as told by its characters.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

John Seed

From Eden’s Gate’s point of view

John is the one who gives them conviction. His sermons are described as “powerful” and a cultist says he will miss his pep talks. A man comments people say you should never meet your heroes but he met John and he loves him. A woman tells other members of the Project they need to keep everything tidy and adds, “you know how he gets with his Baptisms”, implying he is exacting. Since the Reaping began, it seems he is too busy to even spend time in his own ranch.

A woman says he is a smart man while another says that, since he has been through a lot, he knows the human heart and that’s why she trusts him. John is not a man known for typically losing his cool but a cultist says it happened once, when he got into an argument with a “sinner” who disrespected Joseph. John ended up “raining fire” on the man’s property with his plane.

When he Marks someone, it means he believes this person can be saved. He loves planes and a man says he hopes John will take him for a plane ride someday. One cultist says he also loves boats and another adds he would love to be his deckhand. Someone comments it smells “funny” in his house. After the Collapse, a woman bets he will be “a king”.

They are worried because, lately, they noticed he apparently has no idea what he is doing anymore and that he is getting stressed out. The Deputy seems to be the cause for all this and he is paying “special attention” to them. Some cultists wonder why he wants the Deputy alive.

After his death, they try to reassure themselves by saying that maybe John wasn’t part of God’s plan.

From the Resistance’s point of view

Adelaide is very attracted to John and says he is on her “any hole list”. She makes a lot of comments about him, saying he is “as bangable as he’s crazy”, that she bets he gives “the best spankings”, that killing him would be “a waste of a perfectly good set of buns”, that she wouldn’t mind letting him “harvest her valley”, etc. After his death, she says part of her is going to miss him because “creeps turn [her] on”. She also seems to really like his coat and would have loved to see Xander in it (with nothing else underneath). She is jealous of his ranch. She comments he is playing a “strange game” with the Deputy and thinks he might be in “some kind of love” with them.

Charles says John is the Seed he understands the less because he could have become a Wall Street megalomaniac instead of becoming the Baptist. He also thinks he has an inferiority complex.

Dutch warns the Deputy that he doesn’t make empty threats. He has already saved people from John’s Cleansing. At one point, he calls him “little old Johnny”.

Grace thought she would be the one killing him and says she hopes she will never forget the sight of his plane falling. Maybe she will get it tattooed on her one day. She thinks the people trapped in his bunker are like “POWs” (Prisoners Of War) and that they won’t be “free” (psychologically) the moment they are rescued. According to her, “the more you ruffle his feathers, the angrier he gets” because “he can’t deal with embarrassment” or “being made to look bad”. She calls his ranch “hypocrite center”. She thinks he is “too much of a fucking pussy” to come get the Deputy and their companions personally. After his death, she believes he is in Hell.

Hudson is disappointed she didn’t get to see him die. She recalls that, when the Deputy fled the bunker after the Confession and even though he didn’t say anything, it was obvious John thought he had failed. She adds things then got “worse”, as if he was trying to prove something to Joseph. She is for “instant death penalty” for people like him.

Hurk Jr. suggests that, since John believes in the “Power of Yes”, screaming “yes” at him several times should force him to leave them alone. He hopes he would at least act like it did something to him. He says “Johnny boy” wants to invite him in his bunker but that he invites John to “kiss [his] entire asshole” instead. He also comments he is “lusting for a dogfight” with the Deputy before humorously suggesting dogfights probably turn John on. He says he is glad he died because he never learned proper lettering or font techniques so his tattoos looked terrible.

Jerome thinks he is cruel and selfish. He was once kidnapped by him and forced to Confess. He still seems shocked he said what he said… He was then beaten and left for dead in the woods. He thinks John enjoys making people suffer, that he is “a con man”, that he just “seeks glory and riches”, and that he “immersed himself in a sea of self-aggrandizement”. Long ago, he asked John what was driving him and says that, while he gave him many answers, all of them were lies.

Jess calls him “a piece of shit”, maybe the worst she has ever met. She says he had his ranch built just for him and that he likes to scare people with his plane.

Kim says he once sent his men to try to pressure her into selling their property when Nick was away. One cultist got too close and she broke his nose. They tried to have her arrested after the incident but Merle helped get a restraining order.

Larry calls him an “unsavory fellow”.

Mary May says he is “one son of a bitch”. She remembers the first time he set foot in the Spread Eagle and how he looked at her, like she was “a meal”. The day he gave her a tattoo, she says he made her wait half a day in a room before eventually letting her go without harming her.

Merle says he isn’t superstitious but he still asks if someone put a stake through his heart when he died, just in case. At one point, he calls him “John Fuckface Seed”.

Nick says John stole all the baby equipment people had given them and that he said his sin was Greed. Nick disagrees because he just wants to support his family and it’s not a sin. He apparently likes to call people and leaves answering machine messages. According to him, it’s hard to have a family business and John and Joseph are an example of that.

Sharky says he knows pressure points that can make people feel immense pain. Like Adelaide, he thinks John is sexually attracted to the Deputy and that they should “just fuck and get it over with”. He loves to make fun of him, saying he is the type of guy to masturbate in front of a mirror and to marvel at his facial expressions, that he is “like that little brother who gets held down and farted on”, joking he got “the clap” so many times he was diagnosed with “a standing ovation”, calling him “old Johnson”, etc. For this reason, he hopes ghosts aren’t real and that John’s won’t haunt him.

Wendell thinks he would fit in well in Washington because he is a charismatic liar.

Willis calls him “one sick puppy”.

Zip believes his “atheist masters” use his bunker for “sexual rituals”.

NPCs say the key around his neck is the only key to the deeper parts of his bunker, where the people they kidnaped are locked. Apparently, John calls it “the key to Paradise”. They warn the Deputy he always gets what he wants, one way or another, that they can’t run from him, and that every time you meet him, you come away with scars. They seem surprised he insists on catching the Deputy alive. He bought most of the businesses in the area but gave jobs to cultists only. They imply he made it illegal to hunt in Holland Valley. One civilian wonders if he has a big book with everyone’s name in it and if he will come for them personally. When he Marks someone, he then sends them a video. They think one of the reasons why he almost drowns people during the Baptisms is because it’s “a power play”. According to them, his bunker is the cult’s pantry and the only way to get inside is to be “invited”. John wants people to say “yes” but someone thinks he likes it when they say “no” because it gives him “an excuse to get mean”. He has reportedly always been obsessed with the people in Fall’s End and especially with Mary May. He and Eden’s Gate wanted Nick’s plane and they didn’t like it when he told them to “fuck off”. People say Hudson is tough and it will be difficult for John to break her but they also say he “loves a challenge”... One man who had to Confess says he manages to make people say things they didn’t want to say. After seeing his ranch, a lot of civilians think he has awful taste in interior decorating and that he has “the worst case of younger sibling syndrome” they have ever seen. A woman explains he likes to “throw his weight around” while another says he has “scars that run deep” and that, deep down, maybe he wants to die.

They say he is relentless, a “rapacious thug”, a “psychopath”, a “pestilence”, a “pissant” (compared to Jacob), a “sadistic cat”, “the runt/baby of the Seed family”, a “goddamn pussy”, a “human toilet”, a “bully”, a “snot-nosed fearful little shit”, a “bona fide nut job”, a “control freak”, “such a neat freak it’s inhuman”, a “little punk”, “super emotional”, someone with a “singular mind” (the one of a serial killer), that he has an aggressive/creepy grin and a scary look on his face. They hate him but seem less afraid of him than they are of Faith and Jacob. Some even talk about desecrating his corpse or his sepulture (they don’t say such things about the other Heralds).

A few people believe he is just Joseph’s puppet and no better than his dog. One woman thinks he never had Joseph’s full confidence, unlike Faith. They say John sees his brother as a father and they hope that because of the Deputy’s actions, Joseph will be ashamed of him and even “disown” him. It seems Jacob always tried to look out for him.

Comments about other characters

John calls the Deputy to tell them Jerome is “selfish and misguided” and that his followers wouldn’t have left him if he were “a true man of God”.

He says the Deputy is “a murderer and a coward” and comments that they don’t seem to give “a second thought to killing”. According to him, their sin in Wrath. He claims he “personally” knows the feelings that drive them and can help them wash away their sins. He desperately tries to make them understand they are not on the right path and, while he admires their will and their tenacity, he seems sad they refused to listen to him and didn’t care about what he tried to say.

[danaduchy]

NPCs about Seeds

Full script of Far Cry 5 (except cutscenes)

* What were those Seed brothers like? Can't imagine there's anything like a healthy sibling rivalry going on there. * John's the baby of the Seed family. His brothers turn a blind eye to his more sadistic indulgences. * Joseph and John show why it's hard to have a family business. Money and blood mix weird. Even when you're not tryin' to be a messiah.   * When you escaped the bunker... John didn't say it... but you could see it in his face. Failure. Things got worse from there... Like he was trying to make up for something. Prove to his brother he could... * Kim and I used to throw these weekend BBs. Open invite. All you had to do was bring something. If you can believe it, the whole Seed family came once. They brang watery mac and cheese. I shoulda knew they were monsters when they did that. * John's on edge 'cause his brother-Father is getting' cranky. What a fucked up sibling relationship those two got. * Maybe John will go crying to his "father". I wanna see Joseph give John a spanking. * Joseph's pissed the hell off. I hear John's sweating like a piggy. * Word's out - Joseph's had it with John. That little punk is backed into a corner now. * Good thing for us John and Jacob haven't sorted out their brotherly nonsense. I mean if we're lucky, they'll just take each other down. If not, well, I'm going to keep some grenades around with John's name on 'em, eh? It's comin' to a head man.     * Says somethin' that Joseph didn't save his brother. Family really doesn't mean shit to these people. * Wonder what Daddy Seed is feelin' right now. Oh. Shit. What if he WANTED John dead? Fuck man, I can't think about the big game. We did it here. We kicked ass. That's gotta matter. Okay that’s what I'm telling myself.  Yeah, that’s it. * I'm just sayin': If I was Joseph and I had the ability to see into future occurrences, I woulda warned my boy John that he was gon' get murdered... and made some good bets. * I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Joseph tries to spin John's death to his own advantage. * John Seed never had the Father's full confidence, what I heard. But the Joseph loves little sister Faith, and gave her everything her twisted heart desired. * Jacob always tried to look out for his little brother. Imagine what he's gonna do when he finds out you killed him.

* John was always the runt of the Seed family. I'm not surprised that you were able to get him. But I gotta warn you, Jacob's a whole lot meaner than his little brother. * Joseph adopted Faith into their family. She's going to be madder'n a wet hen that you killed her brother John. * John liked to throw his weight around, tryin' to prove how strong he was. Jacob knows he's strong. His actions are more controlled, and he's a lot scarier for it. John was always super emotional, but Jacob's buttons won't be so easy to push. * All this could have been avoided if only a mid-level cable channel gave the Seed family the reality show they deserved. * You know, if any of these Seeds ran for office, they'd win in a landslide. Mind control charisma just oozes off of them. * Come to think of it, the Seeds work just like a political office. You got Joseph, the mayor, and John, Jacob and Faith as his city councilors. It's no wonder they forced me and my people out of office - they already knew how to play the game! * Each of the Seeds has their own bunker. They call them “Gates”. * Know how I sniffed out Eden's Gate's bullshit early on?  Only the Seeds were allowed to be angry, everybody else had to be calm--even though we all had our asses in that church because we were mad at the same shit too. But now everybody gets to be angry, 'cause it's a weapon pointin' where the Seeds want it. Protect the project. Transparent motherfuckers.

John

Resistance

* John's always been obsessed with the people in Fall's End. And with Mary May in particular. * Deep down, I think John wants to die. That man has scars that run deep. * John's got a particular ritual he sticks to. You get marked with a video, then you get dunked in the water. When John wants you found, he doesn't stop. Ever. * Nowadays, if you're caught huntin’, John Seed'll have ya' killed. * John's got people getting baptized all across the valley. In rivers, creeks, hell, even in puddles. * John scrawls a fucking tattoo on your chest, then flays you the fuck alive. He nails it to a wall. * If the peggies wanted a heap of food, why didn't they drive a ways to the wholesale club and take that over? Everythin' would be canned and ready for them instead of still in the ground. You can tell John Seed never had to raise a kid.   * The cult takes people and then sorts out where they go. Whoever John doesn't keep, he sends to Jacob. Or Faith. * John really puts the dick in dictator. The fucker just loves calling and leaving answering machine messages, too. * John's always wearing a key around his neck. He calls it the key to paradise. I don't wanna know what it unlocks. * I'm pretty sure the family that used to own this farm is long gone. John Seed made an offer. They refused. That's that. * This fertilizer company was bought by John Seed a long time ago. They ran it as a legit business. * This one guy, Les Doverspike. House is northwest. He thought he could prepare for everything... Din't count on... JOHN SEED'S LAWYERING SUPER POWERS! In the blink of an eye, Eden's Gate owned Les' land, bunker, arm, leg, dingleberries, ....EVERYTHING! * I've heard some pretty brutal stories about what happens when John wants you to confess. * The peggies had to have planned all this way ahead of time - they're harvestin' at record speed. I guess they had little meetings... John probably hunkered over his map gettin' a hard-on for the sound of his own voice. Hm... now there's a thought... * The thing that always bugs me about John Seed is, who goes to a lawyer that’s tatted up more than a gangbanger? * You're attractin' a lot of attention, especially from John Seed. John's paying special attention to you. * John wants you real bad. Have you considered maybe he's in some kinda love with you? He oughta killed you like two or three times already but he's playin' cat and mouse. Just sayin', if you find yourself alone with him maybe a good long somethin-or-other could save our necks. * Man, that John, he sure does have a hard on for you. So I'm thinking, you guys should probably just fuck and uh get it over with. * I bet you John gives the best spankin's. Sorry I know that's messed up. What can I say, he brings it outta me. I'm just sayin' maybe we don't kill John is all. Seems a waste of a perfectly good set of buns. * Before you, John never lost his cool. You're driving John literally crazy. * I drank with Joey Hudson back in the day. She doesn't take shit from anyone. John's gonna eat her alive. * I know how these things go, man. Deputy, you better keep skeleton keys and wire cutters and a swiss army knife and anythin' that'll get you outta a hogtie on you at all times, because John is gonna truss you up like a dinner turkey real soon. * Always thought there was somethin' kinda twisted about John. * John the Baptist is an amoral predator, end of story. * John Seed's not gettin' what he wants, so he's pitchin' a fit. * Keep an ear out for John's fucken' plane. He loves buzzin' around in that hunk of shit. * I've known men like John Seed before. Real charismatic. They'll sell ya poison and convince ya it's a health tonic. He'd fit in real nice in Washington... * I had one conversation with John Seed and I knew! I knew... He masks his words as guidance, but deep down there is a selfishness that could only come from pure evil. * John Seed's a piece of shit. When news spread that I was expecting, that scumbag spread rumors that HE was the biological father of my baby. I don't know if he was trying to create a wedge between me and Nick or if he was just doing it to laugh at us. * I hear John Seed was a lawyer or something. Used the rules to buy up stuff in the Holland Valley. The cult must have been running damage control already, because think of what a story that'd make. Unless we're already all tapped out of giving a fuck about the shitty economy and its parasites. Huh. Yeah. He's same old, actually. Same fucking old. * I remember the first time John Seed set foot in this bar. I'm wiping down counters and Ma's countin' the till when I hear her bark, 'What the fuck do you want?' I look up and he's standin' in the doorway. Eyein' me like I'm a meal. Some people 'round here said give the Seed's a chance. I knew they were bad news from the start. * Eden's Gate took this town right from under us. They started buying up all the land, forcing business to shut down and foreclosing on homes.... My parents and me fought back, but John wanted this bar. Told 'em he'd have to pry it from our cold dead hands. So, the cult paid off the county and made it illegal to transport alcohol. We fought back with lawyers, but those leeches bled us dry, too. * Whenever there's a neighbor in need, everybody around here pitches in. A couple days after we told some people I was pregnant, we got all this secondhand baby shit from everybody. John Seed stole all of it the next day. * Heard Pastor Jerome had you saving people from being kidnapped. John Seed did that to me. The fucker made me think he was going to torture me, too. Had me wait in a room for half a day thinking he was going to do it. All that fucker did was give me one of those ink jobs. It was messed up. * John Seed is just a man. He seeks glory and riches. He immersed himself in a sea of self-aggrandizement. He pounds pulpits. He professes principals he neither believes nor practices. He stokes fear. But he is just a man. * Before you came along, John Seed kidnapped me. He has his way of getting a person to say things. It's not about my words. It's about what's in his head. When he was done, I was beaten, toed in the woods, and left to die. * A long time ago, in peaceful times, I asked John Seed what was driving him. He gave me so many answers. All of them lies. * John Seed is a cruel soul who can't be reasoned with. He enjoys making people suffer. * John and the Peggies are taking everything and everyone that ain't nailed down. Even then they just come with crowbars. * After you're marked for baptism and dunked in the fucking river, John drags you to his bunker. God save us from whatever he does in there. * There must be a reason John almost drowns people in the baptisms. It's a power play but there's more to it. * If John really wanted to, he could wipe Fall's End off the map. He's toying with the people there, like a sadistic cat. * John's got a singular mind. Dug up from a serial killer's grave, but still, singular. * There's something really wrong with John. I don't have a name for it but you can see it in that creepy smile of his. * When I first saw him on the cult's videos, John seemed pretty harmless. But when I met him in person, he made the hairs on my neck stand up. * John bought up all the businesses 'round here and promised us jobs but the only people who got work were cultists. * When John asks you for somethin', he's not really askin'. He'll get what he wants from you one way or another. * John wants us all to say yes, but I think he actually really likes it when they say no. Gives him an excuse to get mean. * Anyone who doesn't confess to John gets killed and put on display as a warning to others. It's inhuman. * John doesn't just mark people with a sin, but their houses too. You can see his calling cards all over the valley. * I got a package from John Seed the other day. // What was inside it? // A note that said I was favored and that if I admitted to my sin, I'd be cleansed. * What does John Seed do exactly...? // He messes with your head. Asks you questions. Makes you say shit you don't want to be saying. I... I really don't want to talk about it. * John was right, we all do have one sin that tends to run our life. In a weird way maybe he did give us a second chance. * My old house was a piece of shit. It would creak at night, so bad I thought for sure some boogie man was coming to get me every night growing up. // Heh, aw, that's cute. // Yeah. John gutted and burned it to a crisp last week. * Okay, I need to lighten the mood. This is unbearable. // Oh Lord. // John Seed is so uptight, he takes a ruler to bed to see how long he sleeps. // I'm not in the mood. // John Seed is so uptight, he fell down a coal shaft and found a diamond in his ass a week later. // Okay that's pretty good. * You seen that John guy? Most aggressive grin I ever seen on a human being. Like a chimpanzee before it bites ya. // God what a creep. // I hate to think what kinda life he's come from. // Who gives a shit? He's evil. // What makes a guy that evil though? // It doesn't matter. There are loads of people out there with troubled pasts but they manage not to run an apocalypse murder cult. * Not like John was the peak of sanity before, but he's going straight up coo-coo bananas with all you're doin'. * Sounds like Broseph's mad! Ouuuu, family probs! John's like that little brother who gets held down and farted on, and then curls into a ball and cries. * One thing about John -- the more you ruffle his feathers, the angrier he gets. He can't deal with embarrassment; being made to look bad. He'll start sending out search parties to grab people like us, so we gotta stay frosty. * John's lustin' for a dogfight with you, huh. I bet that kid jerked it to Top Gun or something and now it's the only way he can get a stiffie, is in a dogfight. If you have to kick the bucket I hope that's one of your last thoughts, its a good one. * John's playin' a strange game with you. Dunno what's worse, that sometimes he seems to want you dead, or sometimes he seems to want you alive. * John's no better than his brother's dog, and we all know what needs doin' to a mad dog. * John's huntin' you like an animal.  He catches you, you're probably gonna join his other trophies on his wall. * Hey dep, I just wanna say I'm sorry, I heard John's got a partner of yours It's gotta be scary, you know. Probably heard about how John cuts people up and knows all these pressure points and can make you feel pain beyond anything you ever imagined. Anyways don't think about that. I'm sure... I'm sure she's fine. She'll be alright. * Was John dead behind the eyes when you met him? It's not my imagination, there's no soul back there. * I heard there's no spare key for the bunker prison. Just one for John. Control freak. * John Seed, what a fuckin' self-absorbed dick, huh? You just KNOW he jerks off in the mirror, and marvels at his fuckin' facial expressions. * That's John Seed's Ranch. I heard he loved hiding in that castle of his. * John had this place built just for him. Even got a hangar for his fucken' planes. * Look at this place. John's got the worst case of younger sibling syndrome I ever seen. * John's such a neat freak, it's inhuman. * Ugh. John Seed's temple to himself. Fucker's got a tennis court. I ain't never seen anybody play. Just another way he's a hypocrite. * I know everyone's got a bunker out here, but John's is ridiculous. * John's taste in home decor is... awful. * John's been stealin' the planes from all over the Valley. He keeps the best ones at the airstrip next to his ranch. * Of all the Seeds, I think I understood John the least. Inferiority complex, maybe? But he was a lawyer, he could have gone out and, I don't know, been a Wall Street megalomaniac. I guess economic murder isn't as satisfying as direct murder. * John made tattoos look real bad man, I'm glad he's six feet under. You gotta respect the ink. He didn't even learn a proper letterin' or font techniques or nothing, man. No way I'd have even trusted him to touch up my tramp stamp. * With John gone, Jacob will have a harder time building up his army. But he's already got a strong force at the ready.

Peggies

* John Seed's a funny guy. But not 'ha-ha' funny. * Dang, John's bunker is so luxurious. There's parts of this bunker that only John can access. * Deputy Hudson is one of John's "special projects". Every time John leaves here, he's got a big smile on his face. * John's got the only key to the deeper parts of the bunker. We really oughtta make a copy of John's key. What if he loses it? * John knows the human heart. He's been through a lot. It's why I trust him. * I wonder if John's place will survive the Collapse? * I could get in trouble for saying this, but it smells funny in John's house. * Haven't seen John here in a long time. He's super busy. * I knew John loved planes, but I didn't know he also loved boats. I bet John's boat costs more than my old house. * I've never seen Brother John on a boat, but I know he likes to get wet. * You think John fishes? * We need to keep this place tidy. You know how John gets with his baptisms. * Bet we're guardin' John's unreleased films. * I hope Brother John takes me for a plane ride someday. * John keeps all of his favorite things stashed in the hangar. * John wants the word Yes plastered all over this place. Gotta attract new brothers and sisters. * Taking this scrap metal is good forward thinking. John's left nothing to chance. He's a smart man. * Bet John'll be a king after the collapse. * If you're marked, John believes you can be saved. I didn't want to admit my sin at first, but John showed me how to accept it gracefully. * Feels weird turning those people into Angels. I mean, they worked in the store here with us. They cooperated. // Sure, they cooperated. But they were still sinners. There's no going back at a certain point, you know? John said that this was the only way to save them. * I know it's John's will, but...I don't like killing dogs. * John's made catchin' that deputy our top priority. Wonder why John wants the deputy alive. * That deputy's fixin' to get taken into John's special room. * John's relentless, that deputy don't stand a chance. * John's gettin' awful mad. I pity anyone who has to deal with him face to face. * I don't know what's goin' on in John's head, but it's embarrassing. * I thought John had control of things, but lately it feels like he's got no idea what he's doin'. * John's got that look in his eye, I almost feel bad for the people of Fall's End. * John will make everyone atone, even if it kills him. * John was right, they never saw us comin'. * John's so smart. Burnin' what we can't take, so people know they need us, spirit and body. * Last I heard from John, he was real angry. Never knew he had that amount of righteous wrath in him. * Pray you never see John lose his cool. // He never does. // He has though. Some sinner a while back had words with 'im. I couldn't hear exactly, but I heard 'em say the Father's name - I never seen John go so red so fast. // What'd he do? // Well he gets in his plane and wipes the sinner's property off the goddamned map. He rains fire on'em. They're scurryin' everywhere, screamin'. Like a magnifying glass on an anthill. * The Seeds lost a good brother in John. * Maybe John wasn't part of the plan? Maybe this is still what the voice told Joseph? * John's faith wavered, but mine's never been stronger. * I'll miss John's pep talks. * John did so much for the project. He can never be replaced. * John proved his devotion in blood. How can we do any less? * John was always larger than life, it felt like he was immortal.

Joseph

Resistance

* Joseph doesn't like it when his family goes off-book. * I know this is an unpopular opinion, but what if Joseph's right about the end of the world? * That's the first place Joseph ever built. Back when they pretended to be good. Joseph used to preach here. We could have saved us some trouble if we had just set fire to it years ago. * Joseph Seed and his whole family are like the politicians who ran this country into the ground. They sell ya hope and change and all these people buy into it thinking it's gonna be different this time. It ain't. Might as well be buyin' magic beans. * These people in Eden's Gate have been led astray. Joseph Seed claims he loves everyone. Wants them to know the truth.  The truth is he preaches vengeance and sows lies. But the words of an evil man ring louder in the minds of the weak... * You know what really gets me? Cult leaders are usually always in it for the money. Just like a pyramid scheme. Joseph ain't like that. I keep tryin' to break this guy down into what he wants from people. If it ain't money, and it ain't sex, what the hell is it? * Joseph's a charismatic son of a bitch. I mean, you've heard him. The pitch. The tempo. The way the words roll off his gentle lips. His mannerisms. I mean he's been speech trained, probably more than any politician I've ever seen. That's how you know he's a government guy. * I know the people of this valley. They're good, hard workin' people. But in bad times, people get scared, start lookin' for someone to blame. Joseph Seed fed on that fear. Told folk the end of the world was coming. Lot of 'em believed him. Truth be told... way things are now? I sometimes wonder if he's right. Folks felt abandoned, grew weary, they needed our help. And we didn't listen, but Joseph Seed did. Joseph Seed wooed people. He told them EXACTLY what they wanted to hear. With those falsehoods, lies, his poison. It's driven a lot of good folks away from the righteous path. * I knew Joseph Seed was bad business when he wormed his way in here a few years back. I imagine the fucking mainstream media would paint us as two sides of the same coin, because they're either lazy or corrupt or both... But to me, it's simple: I'm willing to sacrifice everything for my family, while Joseph Seed wants to burn down the world for his. * Y'know, I had a dream last night that involved me, a bed, whips and chains, and Joseph Seed. Suffice to say there were a lot of conflicting emotions and sensations... * Did you have a vision? Faith dosed me with bliss, and I saw the Father come to me, personally, and tell me terrible things. * I have a lot of pity for Faith. Joseph is the true monster, manipulating that young woman into a weapon. * Who the heck is Faith, y'know? Joseph treats her both like his daughter and his sister. How much does she know? How influential is she? It's all twisted together. * I wonder how many other secret bunkers there are in the county? Joseph procured a whole missile silo and no one saw! * Faith came to Hope County to detox. Like tourism of hillbilly country for rehab. But Joseph took a shine to her and she was reborn. Hell, her real name ain't even Faith, but something rich, like Riley or Rachel. * Joseph believes in Faith. He's entrusted her with all manner of heinous activity out here. We need to take her out. * I can't see what kind of method to the madness Eden's Gate has goin' on. Three heralds of the Collapse? What are they even doin'? // They got a system. Faith sows, John reaps, Jacob... // Steps on your neck? // Deals in belief, I guess. // Nah, that's Joseph's job. He's the charismatic populist motherfucker. Jacob just wants to cull people. * Joseph's just a nobody from nowhere. How'd he get this many people behind him? * There was a time no western religious leader would be caught dead with a goddamned man-bun. Fuck I miss those days. Listen, I get that he's runnin' this big old cult and all but if you're gonna run a big old cult you gotta look the part! Long robe that's a weird color, like puce or something, stringy moustache, head shaved bald like a baby. Not like some kind of lovechild between a hipster and a country singer. * Joseph Seed's family is gone. He's gonna be vulnerable and running on emotion. He won't be thinkin' straight. If we're putting this to a vote, I'd say we close this chapter for good, as soon as possible.

Peggies

* The father's takin' a personal interest in those deputies now... Maybe his visions told him somethin'.   * Joseph said that deputy is special. I wonder what he meant by that. * Despite everything they've done to us, I know Joseph would still forgive them. * We have to love the sinners. It's what Joseph would want. * It's been too long since I've seen our Father's face. * Joseph is a gifted songwriter. You haven't lived until you've heard Joseph sing this live. * I heard that the Father got the idea for the Judges in a vision. * Jacob might teach us to shoot, but Joseph guides our aim. * President Seed has a nice ring to it. Wonder if Joseph has political aspirations? * I see why Joseph liked this county. Plenty of silos for what we need to store. * Everyone knows Joseph will not tolerate idle hands.   * The Father keeps all the best stuff for his Chosen. Leaves us the scraps. * After the collapse, we won't hear the Father on the radio anymore. * Joseph's disappointed in us, I can tell. We gotta do better. * I hope the Father doesn't take this out on us. * I can't imagine how Joseph feels now, with his brother gone.   * With Jacob gone the Father has to have a backup plan for us. He has to. * Our Father was supposed to save us. Joseph wouldn't ever abandon us, would he? * Joseph will know what to do. I just have to find out where he's hidin'.

Jacob

Resistance

* We're in Jacob's territory now. Know how I know? Wildlife is scarce. I'm not one for hunting but this area in particular used to be home to quite a few species. They've either been driven away or taken in for experiments. It's sad. * Jacob Seed's in charge out here. He's ex-military, he's a combat veteran, and he's a psycho. * Faith was Joseph's favorite, but Jacob is his toughest soldier, bar none. * Jacob's got this Chair. He straps people in and breaks them down until their souls are gone. Then he controls their mind. Don't end up in that chair. * I know Jacob's the bad guy and all, but every bad guy thinks they're this misunderstood hero, right? Has anyone ever tried to just, you know, take him for coffee and talk to him? * Strippin' people of their mind and freewill to build an army for The Father, that ain't right. I still can't believe Jacob and Joseph are brothers. * The mind is the most dangerous weapon and Jacob knows that all too well. No one was really prepared for this. * I've seen him up close once and I'll tell ya' Jacob Seed is one scary motherfucker. * Jacob had one thing right. Things are only goin' to get worse and you gotta be ready for it. * I had a dream once that Jacob took me on a hunt. We shot some deer and he asked me to skin them. As I was cutting them open they changed... it wasn't deer. I... I don't think it was a dream. * Whatever you do, don't listen to the music. That's how Jacob gets you. * One of the first places Jacob took over is the old Veteran's Hospital. No one thought much of it at the time. * Careful. Jacob likes to play mind games with ya. * This was an animal sanctuary until Jacob took it over. Looks like he's got some freaky deaky shit goin' on. Jake-n-Bake Seed really had his fingers up in everything up here. * Jacob's completely insane. He's not even trying to hide what he's doing anymore. * Heard that Jacob has been doin' some weird stuff with animals over here... and not just wolves this time. * Jacob's been putting people in cages. Keepin' them there with no food or water for weeks!  Almost better if they just killed you. * Eli worked on Jacob's special bunkers, did you know that? Turns out they didn't get along. Who would've thought? * No one is immune to Jacob's fucked up conversion. Once they hit you with that you ain't ever the same. * Jacob, he's knows everything that I'm thinking. He's got the key to my mind and he twists... and twists... and twists. * Jacob... his experiments... he takes us... owns us, speaks to us. He hears us. Jacob... he's in control. He controls everything. * Jacob knows how to get into your head. Twists things around so you don't know what's right anymore. * If Jacob can't find a use for you in his army, you become target practice for troops. * Be careful out there. Friends might not be friends anymore after Jacob's done with them. * I bet the Peggies got an armory here, too. I can't believe how Jacob got them so organized. * Jacob's using everything he learned in the military and twisting it to suit the needs of Eden's Gate. Son of a bitch is a poor excuse for a soldier if you ask me. As long as he's alive my Pops will be rolling in his grave, all bitter and mad. * Have to say, you've ticked Jacob off something fierce. * You wanna bet that Jacob had that three-wolf moon poster as a kid? I bet he was a cub scout, too. Now he's getting his badge for people-skinning and brainwashing. * I'm seeing a lot more choppers in the air. Looks like Jacob's using them to move troops and supplies. * You know, I was dumb enough to work for Jacob a few years back. Who you think built him all those Peggie bunkers? You think I saw any of this comin'? Hell no... * Jacob's new recruits gotta kill someone they care about, just to prove their loyalty. That's messed up on so many levels. * Jacob will be pied that you and the Cougars freed the Henbane River. He'll need a new source of soldiers. * Jacob sees himself as beyond the other so-called Heralds. He views his work as the most important, and that the others' purpose was to support him. * Jacob will break every bone in your body to convert you. He lives for pain. * Jacob would happily sacrifice everyone and everything in Hope County to feed Joseph's Collapse. He doesn't care about Faith. * Between John, Faith, and Jacob, I'd say our mind control freak is the worst. He makes people kill their own family. His own mind's twisted. He's a damn maniac. * I hear Jacob's looking everywhere for you. * You gotta save us from all this darkness. All this death. Jacob's losing it and he's out hunting down more people. He's gonna do anything for Joseph's plan to work. * Cult's got the wrong idea 'bout sacrifices. My neighbor killed his old man 'cause Jacob said so. For fuck's sake, you don't do that. * Jacob's gone nuts 'cause he lost a lot of his precious, mindless soldiers. I'd say it sucks even more to see our own teammates turned against us. * Jacob's pissed. That's new. He's always been the crazy type, but I'm afraid of what he'll come up with next. Stay sharp. * Using music to control people is so in bad taste, but Jacob's song pick, that's gotta say something about him. * How much do we know about this Jacob fella? He seems strong. Got a good setup going on... We ought to take some photographs of him or somethin'. Preferably shirtless... Y'know, for intelligence purposes. Know your enemy. * If Jacob he had an experienced woman in his life, this shit would not be happenin'. I'll take one for the team if it comes to that. Just don't tell Xander I said that. He'll get jealous. * I knew Jacob was trouble as soon as he showed up. I mean, did you see his face? It's all burned and twisted like his heart. * Jacob's got training grounds all over the place. I've seen them out there, shooting anything that moves. * I can almost understand why people follow Jacob. He's knows what he's doin', that's for sure. Mind you he's also a fucken' psychopath kind of a deal breaker for me. * Honestly, Jacob scares the shit outta me, even more than the Father. I've seen Jacob up close, I've looked him in the eyes they're empty, not a single shred of humanity anywhere. * Jacob's one sick fuck. Nailing up bodies? Burning people alive? That's just messed up. * You know what? I think Jacob's scared of Eli. That's why he's tried so hard to get him. * Jacob must be getting desperate and crazy. More troops out here than ever. * Jacob's plan worked. I tried to warn them. I told them not to go back. Jacob's going to win. He always wins. * Jacob was the big, mean, brute of the Seed clan. * Jacob was an example of how a vet can go bad without any help. Still glad he's dead of course.

Peggies

* Hope Jacob doesn't have another surprise inspection. Last one didn't go so hot. * Jacob asks for sacrifices from us all.  I gave up my son just so I could understand the Father's pain. * Jacob can turn these animals into weapons for the Father, I've seen him do it. * Jacob calls those wolves of his Judges, 'cause that's what they do. If you're not worthy, they tear you to shreds. * Jacob takes us, molds us and lifts us up to realize our potential. Just like this Judge. Once, it was just a simple wolf. Then it heard the voice of the Father. Now look at it. Stronger, faster... a killer. That's what Jacob does, he makes us better than we were, because only the very best of us will pass through Eden's Gate and on to salvation. * Jacob has asked us to find more recruits for the Project. We have to make them see the light... by force if necessary. * Jacob taught me how to bring a boar down will one killshot. Now I just apply the same logic to sinners. Easy. * Trust nobody, that's what Jacob told us. * Last time I was here Jacob himself complimented me on my shootin'. * Jacob will whip the strong ones into shape. The rest of 'em won't survive training. Jacob sure puts you through your paces here. It's how he makes us strong. * Jacob only wants the strongest of any creature. * Some of the converts have a hard time losing their old notions, but Jacob has a way of getting them to see the light. * If you've ever been in Jacob's presence you know just how powerful he really is. * There is no way anyone would dare stand up to Jacob. They'd be dead in a second. * Jacob's got this county locked down. There's no way they're gonna take him out. * Jacob knows what he's doin'. If he says he's got this bastard covered, I believe him. You know Jacob. He's not gonna give up. * I hear Jacob is furious. We have to try harder. We can't fail the Father. * Jacob's not dead. There's no way. He's too strong to die. * The sacrifice of Jacob must be part of the Father's great plan; we must trust in him. * The guy who killed Jacob. He fucken' cheated. You know Jacob. There's no way he would've lost in a straight up fight. Can't do anything for Jacob, but we can make sure Pratt pays for letting that bastard get away. * Do you think this the father knew about all this? // Of course. It's all part of his plan. // Even losing Jacob? // Do you doubt the Father's visions? // No! Of course not.... it's just... the guys... they have questions.... // Questions? Now's not the time for questions! It's time for action! Do you want to die a sinner? // No! Or course not! // Then get back to your post. The Father needs us now, more than ever! * So what the hell are we going to do now? // What do you mean? // What do I mean? Jacob's dead! That's a pretty big deal, if you ask me. // We still have the Father. It's his plan after all. // Sure, but he had Jacob and the others to help. He can't do it all himself. // That's why we're here. We have to step up, do whatever is asked of us. We can't give up, not now. // Yeah, you're right. Especially with what's coming. // Exactly. Get back to your post, this isn't over yet.

Pratt

* Jacob's caught himself a Deputy. I think it's Pratt. Poor bastard, he's not gonna last a day in there. * Deputy Pratt always came off as a bit of a douchebag, but that doesn't mean he deserves what Jacob's doin' to him. * I'd sure hate to be that Deputy Pratt right now. Jacob's gonna rip him to pieces. He tried to arrest his brother for God sake. * Pratt's days are numbered. One of these days Jacob's gonna have him nailed up on some billboard or something just like the others. * I keep thinking about Pratt, and what Jacob's doin' to him. That poor man's brain's gonna be totally fucked. * Can only imagine what it's like to be left in a cage with nothing to eat for days. God, do you think that's what they're doing to that Deputy of yours? Poor bastard. * I don't think that Deputy's gonna live much longer. I hear Jacob's furious and you can be sure who he's gonna take it out on. * Next time you meet your friend Pratt, be careful. Jacob does things... to your mind... he might not be the same person you remember. Don't say I didn't warn you. * Can you fuckin' believe that guy? // Who? // The Deputy. Pratt. He was wanderin' around behind the cages. // What the fuck was he doin' there? // Who the hell knows. Jacob's probably got him off doing some shit. // Yeah, he's lucky to be able to put two words together after what Jacob did to him! // Seriously. Sometimes I think it's a mistake to put too much trust in these converts. You should come willing to the light, or be struck down. * I.. I was told to feed the Judges but I didn't know where their food was. // Jesus, Pratt. Does nothing stick in that brain of yours? Over there, where it's always kept. // Right! Th..thanks Phil! It won't happen again! // It better not. * I just want go out and hunt down the bastard that killed Jacob and beat them to death.//Don't worry. They'll be here soon enough. We've got their buddy Pratt down here. Pretty sure we're next on the list.//Aren't you worried? They were strong enough to take on Jacob...// Fuck 'em. With the number of guards we got here? They'd be crazy to try to take us on. * Good thing Pratt's out man. He was lookin' like a hipster in a bullfight man. * There's not much of the old Deputy Pratt left, Jacob made sure of that. Almost would've been better that he'd died in there.       * Yeah, the Deputy might be free, but I won't say he's okay. No one is okay after they've been through the trials. No one. * Jacob sure did a number on Pratt. Not sure there's much of him left in there. * It's gonna take a while for Deputy Pratt to recover from this... if he ever does.

[lilwritingraven]

I read that post that theorized what John said to Nick, questioning if he had threatened the deputy because he turned Nick to look at them, (I swear I searched for like an hour for that post and I couldn’t find it ;-;)

But anyways, I got some inspiration to write a one shot from that! Featuring my OC Audry Rook, because her and Nick have the best relationship in my mind.

This is an AU to the events in my story, Searching for Hope, set in the scene from The Atonement. One shot under the cut!

         Nick felt he was going to be sick.

After being taken from his home, forced into the church in Fall’s End, then having GREED tattooed onto his chest, he wasn’t sure it could get any worse.

Then he watched as Audry came rushing in the doors to save them, only to get knocked out by one of the peggies rifles. He struggled harder at that point.

It was no use, however. The three, now four, of them were outnumbered. And John Seed always got his way.

So Nick watched as the sweet girl who loved too much was straddled, still unconscious, by that disgusting man and marked. He could tell by the rapid rising and falling of John’s chest that he was enjoying this more than he should have.

“Hey, get off of her dammit!” He yelled again, trying hard to elbow one of the men holding his arms.

Audry stirred, looking blearily up at John. Her gasp was loud enough to echo in the church, and she grasped John’s shoulder tightly. “Hold still. It’s supposed to say WRATH, not WRAT.”

She slumped back against the floor without a fight, John continuing his monologue above her. Nick’s heart wrenched at Audry’s whimpers of pain. When he finished, he stepped back, arms outstretched like an actor on a stage. The two peggies surrounding them hauled Audry to her feet, trailing her down the aisle.

Like some sort of twisted wedding, Nick thought. As they neared the front of the chapel, he was turned to face Pastor Jerome. Mary May stood to the side, quiet since they had arrived.

“I thought a friendly face might make your atonement easier.” John couldn’t take his eyes off Audry. Nick wanted nothing more than to beat his face in. “Our devoted… We are gathered here to bear witness…”

Jerome stared at Nick, defiance flaring in his eyes. John heaved a sigh, and the peggy beside him struck Jerome. Mary May pounced forward, shouting obscenities at John. Nick winced as the man struck her too. Audry stayed silent.

Laughing, John said, “Let’s try that again.” This time Jerome obeyed, copying the words John spoke.

“I ain’t ever giving into that psychopath,” Nick interrupted.

John’s eyes narrowed, stepping around Jerome to stand in front of Nick. “And there it is. GREED. Always thinking of yourself-“

Nick spit in his face. He would be lying if the look of horror didn’t light a blazing fire of triumph in him. John stared at him, contemplating, before placing a hand on his shoulder and leaning in close to his ear.

“Oh dear Nick,” he whispered. “It would be such a shame if something were to happen to our dear deputy over there.” Nick stiffened. “Just look how soft, how fragile she is. One word from me and I could ruin her.” As he stepped back, all fight left Nick’s body. He refused to look at her, instead staring over John’s shoulder at the Pastor.

It proved to be useless. John forced his head to turn, to stare at the petite, honey eyed girl. Her attention was focused solely on him, unshed tears threatening to spill over at any moment. Hand clenching at the tattered bits of her shirt. She’s too sweet for this war.

“Nick?” John pressed, fingers clenching against his skin.

“Yes. Yes, I will atone.”

[apricitascosplay]

Deputy Casey Reeves

Name: Casey Lawrence Reeves

Age: 27

DOB: May 27th

Gender: Cis Male

Height: 5′8″

Weight: 145lbs

Ethnicity: Caucasian

Eyes: Green

Hair: Dark Brown

Sexuality: Gay

Early Life

Casey was born and raised in Butte Montana to an extremely religious family.

He spent most of his earlier years rebelling against them and their ways, until he finally came out as gay and was ultimately disowned. This eventually led to him running away to live with an older slightly romantic partner. Somewhere down the line Casey became dependant on several vices, drugs, alcohol, sex, etc. After rock bottom and a near death overdose, Casey decided it was time to get his life back on track.

Edens Gate

Casey was not rescued by Dutch from the crash, instead he washed up the shore of the Henbane in Faith's region. This was his first encounter with bliss, it went horribly, as he has actively avoided most of his vices up until then. Faith did her best to console him, in her own way, as well as manipulate him into trusting her and the bliss. Eventually he woke up in the county jail, a few bumps and bruises, a heavy disdain for the bliss, distrust of the water, and a strong motivation to find and save Faith.

Home

Casey lives alone in a 2 bedroom apartment that is slightly too big and too lavish for one person. It's filled with the bare minimum. He owns one pet, a gold fish, named Fish. A pet was recommended by his therapist, though Casey didn't think himself capable of that kind of responsibility, so he settled on a goldfish, something simple that likely wouldn't live long. When the fish didn't immediately die, Casey eventually grew very attached, though having never given it a real name. He arguably takes better care of Fish than himself.

Relationships

Joseph: Casey is terrified of Joseph, deep down he fears that Joseph may be right. Though he struggled internally with being gay and what his family put on him religiously while growing up. He hasn't spent much time with Joseph and from what he has, he is greatly unnerved by him.

John: Unsurprisingly, Casey also dislikes John, greatly. Casey is quick to submit, surrendering without a fight, in exchange for not using bliss bullets on him. He is also quick to 'confess his sins' with John, as again, he has been raised under the belief that being gay is a bad thing. John finds they have some things in common, what with both their addiction addled pasts. Being even remotely compared to the man fills Casey with despair.

Jacob: Casey doesn't feel much for Jacob, of course he dislikes the man, but has had very little interaction with him. Jacob saw him as weak and useless. He did not go through any trials and was quickly assumes wolf/judge food.

Faith: After the initial arrest attempt, Faith was his first actual interaction with the family. He was blissed out of his mind, freaked out, lost, and she was somewhat comforting. He sees a lot of himself in Faith and desperately wants to save her. He's blinded to the poyysytuysibility that she may not actually be as innocent and brainwashed as he thinks.

Parker Cooper (My IRL partner's deputy): upon first meeting Parker, Casey had mild gay panic, which only grew over time. He finds him to be reckless and goofy, but also admires him greatly for being all around good. Parker is only Casey's second ever relationship and the only good one.

Ashe Bell (My IRL partner's deputy as well): Casey isn't particularly close with many women though Ashe is definitely his closest friend. She's hard on Casey and constantly poking fun at him, though they both know it comes from a good place. She is one of the only people he trusts unconditionally, he spends his bad days with her over anyone else.

Whitehorse: Casey see's Whitehorse as somewhat of father figure, especially since his relationship with his actual father is so bad. Whitehorse is a positive role model and influence on his life. He is also considerate of Casey's past.

Nick and Kim: at first Casey had a mild crush on Nick, but quickly moved past it in respect for him and his marriage. He holds both Nick and Kim in very high regards and would do just about anything for them, if needed. Absolutely cried upon meeting baby Carmina.

Sharky and Hurk: Casey doesn't dislike either of the two, though he moreso tolerates them due to their close friendship with Parker. That and he knows that despite the chaos and jackass-ery, they are both genuinely good men.

Grace: He holds a great amount of respect for Grace despite being intimidated by her. Though this doesn't stop him from enjoying her company, he finds they share a comfortable and compatible silence together and appreciates her efficiency with a gun.

Jess: Neither of them spend much time together, as Jess is far too brash for Casey, and he himself, is far too timid for her. There are no hard feelings between the two, they simply aren't compatible.

Adelaide: Adelaide makes Casey rather uncomfortable, what with always speaking her mind and oversharing. He likes to imagine she's what an overly supportive and nosey and somewhat embarrassing aunt would be like if he had one.

Love Life

Casey has been single and avoided intimacy with anyone since becoming sober for personal reasons. He's an expert at turning people down and not responding to advances or any attempts at flirting.

Since starting at the station, Casey quietly crushed on one of the other deputies, Parker Cooper (my irl partner's deputy). He never acted on it, until the events of fighting the cult.  They get together shortly after and remain together throughout the events and the collapse.

Other Fun Stuff!

Casey does not cook, he lives mostly off of take out and leftovers. His fridge is very poorly stocked. He drinks entirely too much coffee for someone with permanent bags under their eyes. He sleeps on his couch more often than in his own bed. His apartment is scarcely furnished, having only the bare minimum. Most of his free time is spent binge watching anything and everything on netflix and other streaming sites and occasionally reading anything that looks interesting.

He is very sardonic and all around hard on himself, though he cares very little if others dislike him or mock him. He can come off as very disinterested and possibly even rude to those who don't know him. He's generally pretty easy to get along with once you get past that, though actually getting him to be social and spend time with friends outside of work is difficult.

Casey has one small, relatively crappy tattoo on his inner ankle, though he has long since stubbed many cigarettes out on it in a somewhat successful attempt at ruining it. He has a few other cigarette burn scars, some done on purpose, others from simply being careless (he's fallen asleep smoking multiples times before). He has the faded scars of track marks on both arms, though keeps his uniform sleeves rolled down enough to keep them covered.

If asked, Casey would describe his parents as somewhat akin to the American Gothic painting. He hasn't had communication with them or any other relatives since leaving home. Though he soon finds that his overly religious folks have joined Eden's Gate, seeking safety from the collapse.

Art by Myself, Minilev and Misclae!

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 2, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Today news broke that Anthony Aguero, who was in the Capitol on January 6 and who is close to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), joined Republican members of the right-wing Republican Study Committee when they traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border Tuesday night.

Aguero interviewed, chatted with, translated for, and gave a ride to one of the lawmakers, there. Those included Representatives Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), Ronny Jackson (R-TX), Thomas Tiffany (R-WI), Chris Jacobs (R-NY), Michael Cloud (R-TX), John Rose (R-TN), and Mary Miller (R-IL). The Republican Study Committee’s deputy communications director, Buckley Carlson, who is Tucker Carlson’s son, said Aguero's presence with the group was "purely incidental."

The association of sitting Congress members with someone who was apparently part of an insurrection is particularly audacious at a moment when the House of Representatives is in the process of forming a select committee to investigate that series of events.

Once before, in 1879, a political party behaved in a similarly aggressive way, trying to destroy the government from within. Then, too, Congress members took an extremist position in order to try to steal the upcoming presidential election. They hoped to win that election by getting rid of Black voting.

Still angry after the votes of Black southerners tipped the contested election of 1876 to the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, Democrats set out to stop government protection of Black voters before the next presidential election. In 1879, they attached to appropriations bills riders that prohibited the use of the army to guard southern polling places (it is a myth that federal troops abandoned the South in 1877) and eliminating federal supervision of elections. The punishment for holding federal troops at the polls was a fine of up to $5000 and imprisonment at hard labor for 3 months to 5 years, that is, an express ride into the convict labor system that was brutalizing formerly enslaved people.

Republicans refused to accept the terms of the appropriations bill, and Congress adjourned without passing it. Hayes immediately called the new Congress into special session. In this Congress, though, Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate, for the first time since before the Civil War. And, since the senior members of the party were southerners, former Confederates quickly took over the key leadership positions in Congress.

Once there, they ignored that voters had put them in office in a reaction against Republicans’ economic policies and Hayes’s contested election. Instead, they insisted that the American people wanted them to enact the extreme program they had advocated since the war, overturning the federal policies that defended Black rights and reinstating white supremacy, unchallenged. They took their fight to end Black voting directly to the president.

The House Minority leader was a Union veteran from Ohio, James A. Garfield. He explained to a friend the Democrats’ plan: if Hayes vetoed the bills and the Democrats were unable to pass them over his veto—“that is, if he does not consent or 2/3 of the two Houses do not vote on these measures as the Democratic caucus has framed them,” Garfield wrote—“[t]hey will let the government perish for want of supplies.” “If this is not revolution,” he concluded, “which if persisted in will destroy the government, [then] I am wholly wrong in my conception of both the word and the thing.”

Democrats tried to argue that they were fighting for free elections, for liberty from a tyrannical national government. But they also listed the virtues of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, whom they compared to George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and U.S. Grant, and celebrated the former Confederates who had been elected to make up their new majority. Just like Davis, they claimed, all they asked was to be left alone to run their states as they wished. One ex-Confederate told the New York Times that leaving Congress in 1861 had been “a great blunder.” Southerners were far more likely to win their goals by controlling Congress. Southern Democrats urged their constituents to “present a solid front to the enemy.”

With Garfield stiffening the spines of nervous Republicans, Hayes vetoed the bill with the riders five times, and as popular opinion swung behind him, the Democrats backed down. They had badly misjudged their power. The extended rider fight kept the story of their attack on the government firmly in front of voters, who despised their behavior and principles both. In the next presidential election, voters turned away from the Democratic candidate and to Garfield, now famous for his stand against the riders and for his wholehearted defense of Black voting.

The 1879 overreach of the Democratic extremists marked a sea change in the Democratic Party. Scorched by their 1880 defeat, Democratic leaders turned away from ex-Confederates and toward new urban leaders in the North. Eager to nail together a new constituency, those leaders talked of racial reconciliation and began to lay the groundwork for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was born in 1882, just two years before New York Democrat Grover Cleveland would win the White House on the party’s new platform.

The story of Garfield’s rise to power has been much on my mind today, partly because it is the anniversary of the day in 1881 when assassin Charles Guiteau shot the president, although he would live until September 19, when he finally succumbed to horrific infections caused by his doctor’s insistence on probing the bullet wound without washing his hands.

But I am also thinking of this story as I watch Senate Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) try to figure out how to respond to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s invitation to suggest five members for the new select committee to investigate the January 6 insurrection. Senate Republicans killed the bipartisan select committee on which Republicans would have had significant power to limit the investigation both in scope, by refusing to agree to certain subpoenas, and in time, because Congress had required that committee to report before the end of the year. Now, Republicans are facing a committee dominated by Democrats who have subpoena power and no time limit, all while Republican extremism is on increasingly public display.

Forcing the creation of this select committee, rather than taking the offer of an independent, bipartisan committee, was a curious decision.

In 1879, when voters spent several months watching extremists of one party try to suppress the vote and take over the country, they rejected that party so thoroughly that it had to reinvent itself.

—-

Notes:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/02/politics/kfile-anthony-aguero-accompanied-members-of-congress-to-border/index.html

https://www.journalgazette.net/article/20190731/WEB/307319646

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[hopecountysfavhoe]

‘Cold’ Chapter Six

Word count: 4,204

TW: Nudity, scars, advanced themes, course language, the usual for Jacob stuff

Jacob woke up the next morning, still naked. He looked over and saw the Deputy in the same predicament, only she was still asleep. She was facing away from Jacob, her back the only thing still showing after being surrounded by the thin sheets. Even when he helped her get undressed when he first brought her to the cabin he avoided looking at her skin so he never realized how scarred she was until now. Now he was getting the chance to observe them.

Scars littered her back, mostly from lash marks, but there were some bullet holes scattered around. Jacob quickly realized that all of the scars were in the places she'd always kept hidden from view. She always had some sort of glove on, and always wore long pants and a full length shirt. The only one she didn't try to hide most of the time was her Wrath 'tattoo'. Last night he got to see all of them.

Her thighs were the worst scarred. Ugly lash scars and long scratches stretched across them, marking them permanently. There were a couple bullet wounds on her legs too but nothing in comparison to the scars Klaus had given her. If Jacob wasn't so used to violence he would have been shocked, and still he was shocked but just not so much at the fact that she had scars. No, he was more so shocked at the fact that those were inflicted on her by someone she thought she'd loved.

Jacob had had plenty of experience with abuse, but he didn't ever think that his parents loved him. He thought that they tolerated him until he did something wrong, then they'd let their full rage out on the young boy. He's known his scars, he'd had them for pretty much his whole life. He knew that they changed the way people perceived him and that's why he understood why the Deputy would want to hide them.

People think less of scarred people. It makes them think that you're somehow 'less than' them. Almost like you're not you, you're your scars. It makes them afraid of you, and if you let it, they'll make you scared of yourself too. The more he cracked into the Deputy's mind, the more he realized so many of her actions were out of fear. She was afraid people would judge her based on her past so she hides her scars. She was afraid Klaus would find her so she moved to Montana. She was afraid of getting trapped in another cycle of violence, that's why she fights the cult...

Jacob hadn't thought of it like that but the epiphany came to him in a sudden brain rush. That's why she panicked when Jacob captured her the first time, she'd killed three of his men before they finally got their hands on her. That's why she fought John's confessions time and time again. That's why she tried to run from Faith's Bliss. Everything made sense now. She didn't hate the cult per se, she was terrified that she was going to walk into another Klaus situation. Maybe she hated them a little bit for hurting her friends but they were freeing them, they were training them to be strong and fight for their survival.

The Deputy was so much more complicated than Jacob or even Joseph had ever imagined. That made her harder to try and turn to their side. Jacob had his work cut out for him.

The Deputy let out a groan and shifted in her spot, pulling the covers up closer to her face. Jacob pulled the sheets up over her bare back and slid out of bed.

He got up out of the bed and stretched, then he started looking for his clothes. When he was fully dressed he found a pouch of food instead of a can of it and heated some water up using the fire. He waited in his same chair for the Deputy to wake up, trying to figure out how he wanted to play this next situation.

He had less time to figure it out than he thought because the Deputy wiggled in her sleep then sat up, almost quicker than her body wanted her to. She pulled the sheets up to her chest and looked around the cabin. She saw Jacob sitting on his chair, studying his hunting knife with his huge hands.

He glanced up at her. "You're awake." He said, stating the obvious.

"Yeah...yeah I'm awake." The Deputy said, a little awkward. She didn't know what to say or do, she'd never been in this sort of a situation before. She rubbed her eyes and brushed her hair out of her face. Jacob watched as she looked around the room, obviously trying to find her clothes.

Jacob motioned to her clothes sitting on the edge of the bed. She leaned forward, keeping herself covered with the sheets, and grabbed her clothes. She shuffled through her pants and shirt, still not finding what she was looking for.

"Jacob where are my-" The Deputy got cut off by Jacob holding her underwear out in front of him with the tip of his knife. "Can I have my underwear?" She asked and Jacob frowned.

"You can come get them." He said simply.

The Deputy huffed, folding her arms over the covers. "I can't, I'm naked."

Jacob scoffed. "Why hide? I've already seen all of you."

The Deputy gave him a glare and looked around the room. She tried to find something she could use to cover herself but was unsuccessful. If only that blanket was around here somewhere. "You're seriously going to make me stand up and walk over there to get my underwear when I'm naked?"

"If you're afraid of being naked, then you need to be naked. It is how God made you." Jacob said with a sly grin.

"Don't give me that." The Deputy spat. But she couldn't find a way around it so she got up and walked over to Jacob. She didn't cross her arms to hide herself the way she wanted too, she wanted to prove a point.

She stood in front of Jacob, her hand outstretched for her underwear and Jacob held the knife out of her reach behind him. The Deputy rolled her eyes and tried to grab them, leaning over Jacob while she did. Unsuccessful, she tried to walk around the chair to grab it but Jacob just tossed the knife into his other hand.

"Can you stop? You're going to rip my underwear." The Deputy huffed, crossing her arms at Jacob. Jacob tried to suppress a smirk and handed her underwear back to her.

"Fine, you passed."

"Don't tell me that was another test." The Deputy rolled her eyes and quickly put on her underwear and clothes.

"Everything's a test with me. But trust me, you've passed them all." Jacob leaned back in his chair, twisting his knife in his hands.

The Deputy wanted to have more fire to fire back at him with but she was pretty tired from the night before. And she was cold and when the Deputy was cold she wasn't very witty. She sat back on the bed, facing the fire. She found her socks and slipped those on, they instantly helped warm up her feet.

"I think I'm going to try and make it down the mountain today." She said and Jacob looked over at her.

"You sure?" He asked, not in a particularly caring tone.

"I think I can make it, I've been recovering for the past two days."

"No what you've been doing is thinking that you're recovering when really you're making it worse by trying to exert yourself too soon. You should rest for at least one more day." Jacob walked over to the water he was heating up.

"But I feel fine, and it's almost Christmas." The Deputy bantered.

"Why does Christmas have anything to do with it?" Jacob asked, not turning to face her.

"I've made promises to be places on Christmas." The Deputy said and Jacob shook his head.

"Just give yourself a day of actual rest, nothing strenuous. And that includes sex." He made the point and the Deputy smirked.

"You did kiss me." She said and Jacob whipped around, a judgmental look on his face. The Deputy raised her hands in surrender. "Ok I promise." She said and leaned into the couch cushions.

Jacob walked over to the kitchen and grabbed another pouch of food, bringing it back over to his chair. He opened the pouch and poured some water into it, sealed it and set it down on the fireplace. He did that same thing with the other pouch. The Deputy watched him make what she assumed to be food.

"Do you celebrate Christmas?" The Deputy asked, uncomfortable with the prolonged silence.

Jacob shrugged. "I don't, but Joseph likes to prepare a special sermon for it. We don't celebrate the way you would celebrate it with the lights and Santa, we celebrate the more religious side of it. You know, Christmas is celebrating the birth of Christ and not just an excuse for grown adults to wear fake antlers." His tone was sarcastic but the Deputy only frowned.

"I know what Christmas is about, it's just nice to celebrate it. Did you celebrate it when you were kids?" She asked and Jacob shook his head.

The Deputy waited for him to say something else but he never did. "My mom didn't really celebrate Christmas, she wasn't sober enough to be able to find a tree or put up decorations so I tried to do it by myself." She wasn't sure why she was telling Jacob this. Maybe it's because she'd already worked through a lot of trauma from her childhood so it doesn't affect her as much. Still though, she should really be careful with how much she says.

"Your mom was a drunk?" Jacob asked, surprisingly curious.

"...Yeah, she was. But I made peace with it. I know that I couldn't have influenced her decisions, even if I tried." The room got quiet. Which it normally did when the Deputy brought up her mom. Maybe it was for the best, she'd already been really open with Jacob. Far more open than necessary.

"My dad was a drunk. Miserable bastard." Jacob grumbled. The Deputy didn't say anything. She knew what she'd hated to hear anytime she talked about her mom. Things like, 'Oh that's terrible!' And 'Oh I'm so sorry for you!' All empty statements that never made anything better.

They waited in silence, eventually Jacob handed the Deputy her packet of food and they ate quietly. It was so quiet that it was hard for the Deputy to not feel tired. The wind had stopped hours ago, meaning any sound from inside the cabin felt amplified to her ears.

It was a little strange but welcome for the Deputy to be sitting for so long. She was always running around Hope County, trying to get done with her massive to-do list before anyone got hurt. But she could hardly save everyone. She was just spread too thin, even with Eli, Sheriff Whitehorse, and Pastor Jerome's help, not to mention everybody like Wheaty, Tracy, Mary May, and Virgil doing little jobs here and there. If only she wasn't in this situation, then the Deputy could have used it as more of a mini vacation for her mind.

Although, if she wasn't in this situation, the Deputy doubted the trip would have lasted longer than a night. In her head she was still running through her list, trying to figure out what everybody needed and when. Mary May told her that she should make an actual list and itemize it based on importance of job but to the Deputy they were all equally important. Every time she tried to make herself more efficient she just wound up right back on square one, her list jumbling in her mind any time she tried to think of more than two things at once.

This was information that she was actually going to keep to herself. She didn't need Jacob getting any ideas on how to make her life more difficult when they got off of the mountain, even though she feared she'd given him plenty of material thus far. She had no idea why she even said those things the night before. Or why she'd tell Jacob about Klaus. Or why she'd sleep with him. It was like somewhere inside her she forgot who Jacob was.

She'd let her guard down, so far nothing particularly 'bad' had happened, but the Deputy didn't want to let herself get that comfortable again. She convinced herself to stay on her toes, not wanting to fall victim to any mind games Jacob would try to pull. It felt really good to be held the way he held her, but that didn't change a thing. At least, that's what she convinced herself to be true.

It had already been a couple hours since they ate breakfast and to be fair they were both getting fidgety. The Deputy had made it her hobby to try and poke the pulls in the fabric of her base layers back through to make her sleeve smooth while Jacob just folded his arms over his chest and tried to get some sleep. They were both bored, but neither of them could take out the plans or check-lists they'd brought with them because neither of them wanted the other to see their plans.

The Deputy eventually dozed off, happy to not be awake but still cautious of falling into a deep sleep. But it wasn't like she had very much control over her sleeping habits. Jacob woke up at some point and after looking at the wood crib decided it would be a good idea to get more wood. He hadn't gotten enough the first day and it was starting to become apparent so Jacob got all dressed in his snow clothes and left the cabin. He was almost up the hill when he stopped and turned around.

The last time he did this, he assumed that the Deputy was too weak to be able to go anywhere but he had been semi-wrong. Now she was recovering her strength and even though she technically promised she wouldn't strain herself, Jacob didn't exactly trust her. She was too impulsive on her own.

So, he walked back to the cabin and took a lock and key out of his pocket. He clicked the lock into place on the door and when he was satisfied that it would hold, he pocketed the key and grabbed his axe. He didn't go too far, but it was difficult to find a dead tree that would make for good firewood. When he did find a proper tree, he wasn't slow to chop it down and get it onto the small sled he used for the wood.

The Deputy woke up alone. The fire had dwindled down to a heap of coals, not a very friendly sight to see. She sat up on the bed, trying to see where Jacob was. But she didn't see him or his snow clothes. She got up and looked around for a note, trying to see an explanation about where he was but she found nothing.

Her mind was racing, where could he have gone? She figured he would be at least half decent and leave a note, but that wasn't really who Jacob was. She walked over to the door and put on her coat, hoping to block out some of the cold. She grabbed the handle of the door and tried to open it but it wouldn't budge. Confused, the Deputy tried it again. She could hear something rattling on the outside of the door, something metal. It sounded like he locked her in!

"Oh god." The Deputy began to panic. He locked her in, but didn't tell her where he was going nor did he leave any of his stuff here. She couldn't even find his pack and gun. Why would he lock her in? It didn't even occur to her it would be because she'd try to leave. She assumed that he'd left her there with a dying fire and few supplies.

She took off her jacket and began pacing across the floor. Her strength hadn't fully recovered yet but the Deputy ignored her body asking her to sit down. She was in crisis. Her mind raced to figure out what she could do. Of course she could try to break a window but they were too small for her to crawl out of. She could try to break the door down but it was too thick to go down without a grenade.

     The Deputy was panicking but she knew she couldn't let fear control her. She didn't need to find a way to break out immediately, she would give herself time to come up with a smarter plan than blow up the door. She tried to take a few calming breaths, but they didn't help. Her legs felt weak so she went back to the bed and sat down. Her pulse was racing but she didn't know why. She had been starting to come up with a plan and began figuring out how to survive when her chest started feeling strange.

     The room felt dark and it was like the walls were closing in. Her chest felt like it was collapsing, it was almost like she was having a heart attack but she knew that couldn't be the case, could it? Her fingers felt tingly and numb but her forehead was sweating. She felt light headed, as if she hadn't eaten in a few days. She brushed her arm across her forehead, wiping the sweat off as she felt her body shake. It wasn't crying, it was more like a shiver except she wasn't cold.

     It almost felt like she'd gotten sick in the last minute and a half. Then it clicked. This was a panic attack. The Deputy has had panic attacks before but this one was pretty bad. Her hands felt clammy and she brought them to her neck, bringing her knees up to her chest. She was still terrified but she remembered trying to get rid of them in the past by doing this. She hooked her hands on either side of her shoulders almost right at her collarbone and squeezed as tightly as she could.

     It didn't make it go away but it did help relieve some of the physical fear. Her hands were still shaking but the grip she had on herself was comforting, even if just a little bit. The Deputy squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out all thoughts from her mind. If she stopped thinking about it, there's a chance it would go away right?

    After a few minutes, the racing heartbeat slowed down, her chest still ached but it didn't feel collapsed anymore. She tried to breath through shaky lips, her equally shaky hands pushed her hair back away from her face. She looked over at the gun laying on the bed, she didn't even realize she'd brought over when she sat down. She also realized that she'd been crying while she panicked, evident by her wet cheeks and sleeve.

     She tried to hide the evidence by drying off her face with her sleeve, though she didn't know why. It's not like there was anyone for miles to see her cry. She was beginning to stabilize when she heard a sound outside the cabin that made her heart rate skyrocket again.

     Quickly she grabbed her gun off of the bed and got onto her knees, readying herself with her gun cocked and loaded. Another thing she'd done when she was bored, unjamming her gun.

     The noise outside sounded like an animal scrapping at the door. The Deputy knew it couldn't be a bear because they were hibernating, but she also knew that it could have been a wolf because she would have heard the howl. The only other option she came to was a cougar. But she didn't know why it'd be all the way up here. Then it occurred to her that it could be another hunter trying to get in.

     Despite the fact that she had no idea what was outside, she didn't want to risk going to the window and get seen. The idea of another hunter was conflicting. Because on the one hand it could be someone from the Resistance that's willing to help her, but on the other hand it could be someone for Eden's Gate that would shoot her on sight, or knock her out and drag her down the mountain, or torture her. She tried to suppress her panic as she waited, her finger itching closer to the trigger.

     She didn't know how to play this. Should she try and say something and make herself known? Maybe if it was an animal it would get discouraged and go away? If it was a person then that was a little more tricky. She knows that if she was trying to break into a cabin in the mountains she'd probably be pretty easy to frighten and the last thing she needed right now was to get shot.

     Time was ticking by almost too slow, the Deputy decided to go with the quiet presence, waiting until whatever it was either walked away or opened the door to say something. She heard the lock break loudly, the chilling sound of broken metal clattering together. Her breath hitched in her throat, waiting in fearful anticipation of what was to come.

     It didn't sound like an animal so the Deputy was pretty quick to jump to the human conclusion. She shifted her hands on her gun and was preparing herself to say something when the door opened.

     The Deputy let out a loud sigh and her tense body thanked her. The 'thing' that was trying to get in was really Jacob. He walked through the door, the expression on his face showed plain shock at what he walked into. The Deputy lowered her gun, her relief quickly turning into anger.

     "What the hell, Jacob?" She shouted. Jacob was a bit taken aback by her tone. He brought in the wood sled and closed the door behind him.

     "I got wood." He said. His tone was unbothered, as if the Deputy wasn't just aiming a rifle at his chest.

     "Why the fuck would you lock me in here?" She demanded, getting up off the bed. That was too fast for her too move. Her body swayed as her head struggled to keep up with her pace, annoyingly undermining her angry stature. She put one hand on the couch and walked around it, coming closer to Jacob.

     "Last time I didn't and I found you surrounded by wolves, I know better."

     "But why did you lock me in?" The Deputy asked, her tone rapidly changing from angry to scared. "I promised I wouldn't leave, but then you left without a damn word and made me think I was stuck here alone!" Her voice shook and she turned away from Jacob, not wanting him to see her so shaken up. It also occurred to her that she probably looked like hell from the panic attack too.

     Jacob realized that whatever happened while he was gone, it must have been pretty bad. "What happened?" He asked and the Deputy wiped her cheeks aggressively before turning back to him.

     "No, you answer my goddamn question first! Why did you lock me in?"

     Jacob pulled his jacket off. "I didn't want you getting any dumb ideas and trying to act on them, so I locked the door. But I lost the damn key so I had to break it off, is that what got you so worked up?" He didn't sound angry, just using his normal, gravelly tone.

     The Deputy whipped around to face him, her face growing red with anger. "No! What got me 'worked up' was thinking that you just left me here to die after everything I've said and everything we've done!" She could tell her emotions were getting out of control and she couldn't let that happen. She rubbed her eyes and brushed her hair back out of her face.

     Jacob watched her with a strange expression, like he didn't know how to react to what was happening.

     The Deputy took a breath and looked away, over at the couch. "You know what, just forget about it, thank you for getting more wood." She said, not in the most energetic tone, and walked back over to the bed. She got to the corner of the couch and paused, looking back at Jacob who stood in silence. "You know, if you're going to continue to be my enemy, you're going to have to know that I always keep my word, always." She said hoping that it came with at least a hint of a threat.

     Jacob studied her and nodded cautiously. "Understood."

[peterfalkfan]

A FRIEND IN DEED

Devilish looking Deputy Police Commissioner Mark Halperin (Richard Kiley) gets an urgent phone call at his house. His "groovy" middle-aged wife answers it and tells the panicked man at the other end that Mark is at his club. The panicked man is his wimpy friend, craven Hugh Caldwell. He finds Halperin at an illegal gambling club with a hot babe. Caldwell just killed his wife "accidentally" and she's lying on the floor. Halperin takes charge. He tells Hugh Caldwell to sit at the bar, make a phone call to his wife at home and pretend to talk to her.

Meanwhile, Halperin dashes over to Caldwell's house, which is very close to his own house. He changes the victim’s dress to a nightgown, steals her jewelry, etc. Then he goes home and banters with his wife, insulting her about what a fool she is to give all her money to bleeding-heart charities. He casually moseys over to the window. WHAT! There’s a man running from the Caldwell house! All the lights are on! OMG I must call the POLICE! There are burglars in the neighborhood! (Note: why would they leave the lights on?) Halperin's wife think it's an overreaction but the police come and find the victim.

Lieutenant Columbo shambles in. Mark Halperin specifically requested him, unaware that he's sealing his own doom. As always, Columbo notices a bunch of discrepancies and already suspects that the perp is this satanic Deputy Police Commissioner — but there is no motive. Meanwhile, craven Hugh Caldwell goes along with the "burglar done it" narrative. He's caught in a few lies by Columbo and acts nervous as hell.

A poorly planned crime is carried out. Mark Halperin comes home. His groovy, middle-aged, rich wife is lounging in the walk-in bathtub, covered in soap bubbles. She wisely doesn't want to talk to her creepy husband but he doesn't care. He issues more digs about her wealth, then insincere protestations of love. He starts hovering over her and boom! He holds her under water and drowns her.

Hugh Caldwell is very grateful to Mark Halperin for all his assistance, but he’s aghast when Halperin starts blackmailing him to help cover up HIS wife’s murder! Halperin ends a lot of sentences with, “my friend,” to sound even more threatening than usual.

There’s a night-time scene in a helicopter where Mark Halperin surveys his own street with a floodlight to see if a burglar is around. WHAT! — he sees a man in his own backyard! The helicopter lowers closer and they can clearly see a man with a nylon stocking over his head carrying a limp woman around the backyard. Startled, the man tosses the dame into the pool. The helicopter is so low that Halperin leaps from it into his pool to save his wife (except she's already dead). — We are supposed to believe this nonsense?

Columbo, of course, doesn't buy it and starts investigating his clues, of which there are many. Halperin, annoyed at Columbo's interruptions and sudden appearances, barks at him not to follow his excellent clues and orders him instead to waste his time on the Brentwood burglaries. Way to confirm your guilt, Halperin.

There's a bunch of stuff involving the real burglar and a nice trap set to catch Halperin and Hugh Caldwell (who is seen sporting enormous Elton John sunglasses).

[nightwingshero]

“secrets get people killed” for Wren & John please??

Thank you, my dear!!! So...to clarify...this is the first time I've written for John and Wren in like...almost a year, I think. So this is sorta kinda their comeback...and this isn't particularly canon, but I could see it being a part of it. I just...went with the muse. I'm also sorry this is super late. I haven't been super inspired for them for a while and honestly, I almost cried writing it, because while it may be a bit rusty, I still love them so damn much. I hope you enjoy!

I had it under control. I was better. That was what I would tell myself, at least, and honestly it had become more of a mantra—something I would repeat like prayer for comfort as I tried to convince myself of the truth to it. The lie felt good, it gave me something to cling to, something that was at least a bit comforting.

But it was a lie. And for someone who held honesty above all else…well, we could just add that to the list of hypocrisy that I’ve committed since this began.

But my hands shake almost violently, skin and blood under my black nails as they dug into my palms. A clear indication that I was not in control, by far. My blood in my veins boiled in a fashion that I haven’t felt, almost as if I had shot up the strongest bourbon I owned instead of swallowing it whole, every ounce of me vibrating with the rage, the anger, the wrath of it.

“You son of a bitch.” I muttered, but I knew deep down that I was only to blame, and so did he. That didn’t stop his blue eyes flashing to mine, lightening quick, as he turned on the heels of his expensive boots. Only a piece of his hair falling into his face, rioting against the gel, gave any indication that he wasn’t put together—that his own rage was meeting mine.

“Oh, darlin’, you know better than that. We know who is to blame for this.” John sneered in defense, his tone dripping with sugary sweet malice with the very mouth that whispered sweet nothings, empty promises of delicious sanctuary. For each. And every. Confession.

“Yes, darling.” I mocked, my own burgundy painted lips twisting, accepting the challenge with retribution feeling like euphoria—a sweet, blissful high. “All my fault, isn’t it?”

I expected another outburst—I craved it—but he only tilted his head as he scrutinized me. My heart pounded at he stalked just a bit closer, taking the dirty black tank and ripped skinny jeans that was caked with blood and sweat—something that made the loose hairs also cling to my skin, making it crawl but I refused to cower in front of him. I didn’t fear the Baptist of Holland Valley.

“What did you think would happen, deputy?” he asked softly, his voice no longer the sharp edge of a weapon against me, and it was enough to make me blink. Suddenly it felt as if I had found my way onto unstable ground, everchanging and shifting beneath my boots as I tiptoed.

The lack of use of my name is a tell, and the hairs on the back of my neck manage to stand on end as I navigate the playing field. Ever so careful. “And what would your dear Father Joseph say, Johnny Boy?” I shot back. “My dear, you’re not looking very worthy.”

That made his face turn beet red with rage, his eyes a storm that promised a drowning if I dared ventured into its waters. And how many times have I dared and walked away free? Dare I try my luck once more? The answer came from him, however, as he stepped forward and wrapped a tattooed hand lovingly around my neck.

Which was met with my own knife pressed against his—a light kiss against his jugular with the blue of my blade.

It only made him smirk and laugh. “The last time you did this, you were drunk off your ass, straddling me with a fucking butter knife.”

“The last time I did this, I could have taken you. You got lucky.”

“Forgive me, darling, but I believe we got lucky.” I huffed at his crude joke, memories of us on the couch just weeks before. It felt like a lifetime ago, or even an out of body experience, as we somehow managed to end up wrapped around each other with bite and claw marks marring our skin and complementing the ink we had discovered on each other.

“John.” I pressed through gritted teeth as my hand shook, begging to open his throat to end the suffering of the people, but not being able to do it. Not having the strength to follow through, not when he was this close with his cologne intoxicating me in a way whiskey never could.

His brows furrowed as he leaned in closer, his thumb lightly rubbing over my pulse as he pursed his lips. “Secrets get people killed.” He whispered to me. “Wren, you know this. What did you expect of me? You knew what would come. The Confession is rather forward in that regard.”

“Maybe.” Tears pooled as my hand fell from his neck, the knife slipping from my numb fingers and clattering against the hard wood of his home. “But they died for mine.”

“Ours.” He corrected, his mood shifting ever so slightly. “I do believe I’m a willing participant.”

“This is wrong.” He only hummed, whether in agreement or not, I wasn’t sure. But he refused to move, his fingers still pressed against my flesh, running over dried blood. “You killed them—”

John clicked his tongue, sharp and clear, in disapproval. “And how many, pray tell, have you killed, my dear? I recall Jane bringing me Holly Pepper’s body rather recently. Is that because she knew or because she was jealous?”

“Because she tried to fucking kill me!” I snapped, my patience running thin as I glared up at him.

“And you don’t think your precious resistance wouldn’t do the same to me?” He hissed in my face. “Have no doubt that the blood on my own hands only mixes with what’s already on yours.”

Words were weapons, but that was more of a slap to the face, and while I want to fight, to say that my cause was better, that I was better, my words fall flat and bitter on my tongue—usually sharp and made of silver, but now dull and made of lead. I wanted to push away, but he wouldn’t let me, both hands coming to cradle my face instead, softly continuing.

“What do you think would have happened if I had let them live, darling?” His eyes darken as he looked down at me, my breath escaping me completely. “What do you think they would have done if they found out that you scream my name for far different reasons than most do behind these walls? What would they do to you then?”

“John—”

“They would kill you, wouldn’t they?” He asked, cutting me off. “Like how they tortured Randy, after claiming he was a deserter…after swearing they were saving him. That is nothing compared to their precious deputy falling into the bed of the Baptist of Holland Valley.”

My face contorted as I fought against it, but I knew deep in my bones he was right. The faces of the people I had fought to save…only looking at me with disgust as they realized the truth, as they caught me sneaking from John…only to have their bodies found the next day with the sins carved into their skin, propped for all to see. “That doesn’t excuse what you did to them.”

“Secrets get people killed, my darling, but your truth…will destroy you.” My eyes widened as he tipped my head back, pressing his forehead firmly against mine. “And you wonder why I have their blood on my hands… I could make you my queen, I could protect you, and you would have a place by my side…but the secrets, Wren…you make me worthy…and until you’re ready to stand by me, I will keep your secret…and kill anyone who threatens your truth if I have to.” John’s eyes flashed dangerously to mine, dark and intense. “We’ll share the burden of their blood, my dear.”

And his lips crashed harshly against mine as my lip cut and the taste of blood bitter on both our tongues.

[a-marlene-s]

So....

I am looking back on past posts of stories that I plan on writing. I thought I tagged them all... but I don’t know if I got them all.

Here’s what I have so far... (Keep in mind, the majority of them are from story prompts from other people or were from asks.)

Bruce Wayne Addams

Cousin Bruce.

Gomez and Morticia love their adopted nephews very much.

Dick is going insane.

I don’t remember if this is a crossover with Miraculous Ladybug. Let alone with my au, She’s an Addams!

She’s an Addams!

Marinette’s mother is Wednesday Addams.

Jagged Stone is an Addams.

Debating if she’ll be with Nino or Canon!Felix.

I don’t remember if this is a crossover with Batman. As I remember a scene where Jagged and knew each other back in college due to them being in a band together... now that I think about it... I think that was part of another story...

Quirk: Miraculous Ladybug

Marinette Dupain-Cheng: Thread Manipulation/Miraculous Ladybug

Adrien Agreste: Formerly Quirkless/Cataclysm

Alya Césaire (class deputy): Computer Interaction

Nino Lahiffe: Frequency manipulation.

Chloé Bourgeois: Paralysis Inducement

Sabrina Raincomprix: Invisibility

Rose Lavillant: Plant Manipulation

Nathaniel Kurtzberg: Digital Art Manipulation

Juleka Couffaine: Identity Manipulation

Lê Chiến Kim: Emotion Weaponry

Mylène Haprèle: Slime Manipulation

Max Kanté: Technological Combat

Alix Kubdel: Flash Forward

Ivan Bruel: Earth Transformation

Lila Rossi: Feign Damage

Aurore Beauréal: Weather Manipulation

Mireille Caquet: Omnilingualism

Jean Duparc: Miming

Luka Couffaine: Sound Manipulation

Marc Anciel: Ink Manipulation

Kagami Tsurugi: Elemental Manipulation.

For this au, it could be as is, or as a penpal au with Marinette being friends from someone from UA. Izuku, Shoto, Hitoshi or someone else.

Justice League Banned from Paris @vivilakitty

JL finding out they got banned from Paris. 

Someone visits for the holiday or some shit that brings them there related to the League.

They see the akumas and they wonder why no one called the league for help. Especially after seeing two kids fighting the Akuams.

"The hero's tried. They were just children when shit started. My kid is thirteen and is the size and age of our hero's were when they started! We tried getting ahold of the League. The Mayor, the heroes, civilians! Everyone! We got called a joke and were told never to contact them again. Then we got blocked."

Mayor decided to bane the League from Paris. If they did not want to help, then they are no longer welcomed in the city of Paris.

The call first got through to some random civilian communicator that goes along with the name of John Christan Ryan Mark Johnson, nickname… whatever the hell first comes up in someone’s mind. When League found out, Chad became a joke among the league and got demoted. Even so, the League went to Paris as civilians and did their best to help out.

There will be mayhem from the Batboys.

Turtle Bug @jacquesthepigeon

Where Fu chose not to put the cat miraculous in play and instead gave his own since Ladybug’s partner would need to protect her. He chooses Nino to be Carapace.

Paris’s anxiety ridden superhero duo is Ladybug and Carapace.

ONE MORE THING! @vixen-uchiha​  

Jackie Chan adventures. Jackie and Sabine are cousins. Jackie decided to take a much needed break from doing what he does best. He and Jade go to Paris to have a simple... fight free... vaca.... great... seems like their vacation is short lived.

What’s the Stitch? @kanamexzeroyaoifangirl

Kim Possible/Miraculous Ladybug crossover where Marinette and Kim are cousins though Gina. Lila lies about knowing and going on side missions with her when Marinette’s the one going on missions with her when she’s in town or visiting. Class minus Chole, Nathaniel, & Kitty Section believe and bully Marinette due to Lila’s lies. Kim shows up during it one Tommie then uses her connections to show the truth and take her down. All bullies are sued and are banned from the bakery.     

Presentation Day @art-deco-shrimp​

Ms Bustier assigns each of the students to do a report on someone they know, with a presentation at the end. They need to pick someone to report on, learn about their daily life, interview at least three people close to them, and then do a presentation on that person when the project is due in two weeks (arbitrary time limit is arbitrary). When Alya comments that it’s too bad that the restrictions mean a report on Ladybug is probably out of the question, Marinette suggests Ladybug’s best friend as a substitute. Alya can interview Lila’s parents as one source, Rose can probably connect her for a short Q&A with Prince Ali about someone who’s done so much for his charities, and Alya can even justify asking Ladybug some questions for the project this way!

The Delinquent  @rubixchick​

Lila assumed the older guy Marinette has been hanging out with lately, is just some delinquent due to the guy’s tattoo’s, pericings and ripped up clothes. Spinning her tales, Lila made it difficult for Marinette to hang out with this guy or trying to occupy her time by smothering her to no end. Things go bad to worse… for Lila when she accused Juleka’s brother, whom she never met before, being the delinquent.

Hear Me Out

Story idea from: @maxdark158​  Full prompt here: https://maxdark158.tumblr.com/post/187476540811/hear-me-out-ive-got-an-au-idea

Best Friends Adrien and Marinette. No love interest or love square here.

Marinette paired with either Damian, Tim, Jason, Dick, or someone from Dc.

Adrien, I don’t know if I want to pair him up with someone or if I do want to pair up him with someone, I don’t know with whom yet.

Adrien is protective of his best friend.

Lila Salt.

Alya Salt.

Passive (Agreste)sive.

Marinette Mode @vivilakitty​: Full prompt here: https://vivilakitty.tumblr.com/post/189567415622

Marinette takes on an apprentice ship under the one and only Edna Mode.

I know her, I’m close friends with her son~  @countingdowndays: Full prompt here: https://countingdowndays.tumblr.com/post/189602949856/prompt-lila-salt-adriens-mom

Adrien mentions the movie his mom stared in to the class. Lila latched onto it, claiming she personally knew the actress and that she could introduce Adrien to her. “Great, let me know what my mom says.”

OHSHC x My Hero Academia: My Hero Host Club @amynchan 

Ships: IzoOcha, BakuKiri, TodoMomo, TetsuKendo, OjiTooru, TokoTsuyu, JiroTama

Summary: Create a club they say. Create something to do in their spare time, they say. Do something creative, they say.

“WHY DID YOU FORCE ME TO JOIN A HOST CLUB!!!”

“In all honesty, you destroyed an expensive vase and you need to pay us back. And joining us, you could easily pay it back… unless you want to pay it out of pocket.”

Kyoka Jiro gripped her hair in frustration. Her parents had told her she needed to create or join a club. Her classmate had told her about the club she had created with her friends… but said friend never mentioned it’s a host club!

Record: Drag Her. @miraculouscontent

Tikki Records Lila's threats

Tikki records Lila's threat towards Marinette with the latter's phone. "Oh, and Marientte? Drag her."

My girlfriend could kick your butt!

Peter Parker got kidnapped and cannot use his abilities without exposing his identity to the whole wide web.

There he is, strapped to a chair with a camera facing and recording his every movement.

Then the bad guys started to threaten Peter that if he doesn’t talk, that they’ll use Peter’s girlfriend as leverage.

“My girlfriend could kick your butt!!!!”

Not even a minute later, the video fed went out and when it went back on, all the bad guys are knocked out and an unfamiliar girl is untying Peter from the chair, all the while apologizing for taking too long to get to him.

This is a debate on which one to write for Dragon Age Inquisition.

Warden Cullen

HoF!Cullen

Champion!Cullen

Inquisitor!Cullen

It will take place in DAI. Pairing are yet to be seen.

If I miss a story prompt, please tell me. I have lost count or I cannot find the posts.

[reading-writing-revolution]

Heather Cox Richardson:

August 14, 2020 (Friday)

Today’s big story was the administration’s assault on the United States Postal Service. Yesterday, the president said outright that he opposed relief funding for the cash-strapped institution because he wanted to stop mail-in voting, even though he and his wife Melania have both applied for mail-in ballots. Slowing down or stopping the mail will create chaos around the election, and will likely mean ballots will not be counted. It will also funnel voters back to polling places, although the pandemic means there are far fewer of them than usual.

Once at polling places, many voters will cast their ballots on voting machines that are vulnerable to hacking. New machines, rolled out after 2016 and designed to keep cyberhackers at bay, proved “extremely unsafe, especially in close elections,” according to Alex Halderman, a computer scientist from the University of Michigan who, along with six colleagues, studied them. At least 18% of the country’s districts will vote on the new machines, including districts in Pennsylvania, which Trump needs to win but where Biden is up by double digits.

“There are strong security reasons to prefer hand-marked paper ballots,” Halderman told Joseph Marks of the Washington Post.

A bipartisan organization of state secretaries of state—the people in charge of elections—wrote to Trump’s new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on August 7 to ask for a meeting to discuss his recent changes to the USPS and to explore how those changes would affect the election. In a delay that observers say is “unusual,” he has declined to answer. The USPS recently sent letters to 46 states and Washington, D.C. to say that it cannot guarantee that it will be able to deliver mail-in ballots on time. The letters were prepared before DeJoy took office, suggesting that he knew the USPS should be ramping up its capacity, not decreasing it.

News broke today that DeJoy was named to the finance team of the Republican National Committee in 2017 (along with Elliott Broidy, Michael Cohen, and Gordon Sondland, if anyone can remember back to the days of impeachment), suggesting his partisanship makes him a poor fit for what is supposed to be a nonpartisan office.

In June, USPS officials told union officials that management was getting rid of 671 sorting machines, about 10% of the machines in the country. The sorters were the kind that handled letters and postcards, not magazines and large envelopes. The argument for getting rid of them is that people write fewer letters these days, but of course we are all expecting a huge influx of mail-in ballots that those machines would handle. Many of the removed sorters were in states that are political battlegrounds: Ohio lost 24 sorters, Detroit lost 11, Florida lost 11, Wisconsin lost 9, Philadelphia lost 8 and Arizona lost 5.

Similarly, the USPS removed letter boxes today in what it said were routine reassignments. The outcry was great enough that it has announced it will not remove any more until after the election. The removal of the boxes may indeed be routine, but David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research told Washington Post reporter Jacob Bogage, “Given the other things that are going on, it’s okay to ask questions…. The high-speed sorters that are getting deactivated, the loss of overtime, the delays in mail we’re seeing right now, all of this should cause some concern and warrants questions.”

Today, Inspector General for the USPS Tammy L. Whitcomb announced that, at the request of Democrats, she is opening an investigation into “all recent staffing and policy changes put in place” by DeJoy. She will also be looking into DeJoy’s compliance with ethics rules, related to his huge financial stake in private competitors to the USPS.

The other big story is that the Government Accountability Office, the main audit institution in the federal government, concluded today that the two top officials at the Department of Homeland Security are not legally in their positions.

The acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, and his top deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, were never confirmed for their positions, although those positions require Senate confirmation. Instead, they were moved into their jobs through the lines of succession in the department, but those lines were altered by the previous DHS secretary, Kevin McAleenen, who himself was placed into position improperly. According to the GAO, McAleenen did not have authority to move Wolf, who had Senate confirmation for a different position, into the directorship. Cuccinelli, who currently holds the title “Senior Official Performing the Duties of Deputy Secretary,” has never been confirmed for anything.

Democrats called for Wolf and Cuccinelli to step down, but DHS spokesman Nathaniel Madden said “We wholeheartedly disagree with the GAO’s baseless report and plan to issue a formal response to this shortly.”

Trump’s handling of DHS is problematic. DHS is a new agency, established after 9-11, and it is staffed with political appointees who report to the president. Trump has increasingly refused to go through normal nominations processes, aware that at least some of his appointees could not make it through even this Republican Senate. Moreover, leaving his appointees in limbo gives Trump more control over them. “I like ‘acting,’” he told reporters last year. “It gives you great, great flexibility.”

Trump has made little effort to fill positions at DHS with qualified people. Within DHS are the agencies that oversee immigration: U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). None of them has a leader that has been confirmed by the Senate. Trump’s sway over DHS means the agency is currently operating, as DHS’s first secretary Tom Ridge said, like “the president’s personal militia.” It was Wolf, of course, who oversaw the recent deployment of federal officers to Portland, Oregon.

In legal news, in a case stemming from U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation of the FBI investigation of ties between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016, a former FBI lawyer intends to plead guilty to falsifying a document. Kevin Clinesmith was the root of the most serious mishandling of the wiretapping of former Trump advisor Carter Page. When it was time for the FBI to apply for a renewal of the request to surveil Page, Clinesmith was asked to find out if Page had ever been an informant for the CIA. When asked, a CIA colleague appears to have identified Page’s role with the agency as something other than a “source,” but wrote an email about it that simply sent Clinesmith to documents to check. Clinesmith altered his CIA colleague's email with the words “not a ‘source.’” The FBI relied on his representation to write the application renewal to wiretap Page.

Clinesmith resigned over the issue last year. He maintains that he changed the wording to reflect what he understood to be true, and other evidence suggested he never tried to hide the original email from his colleagues. Still, he altered a document, and Page’s relationship with the CIA was not accurately represented to the judges who approved the wiretapping. The Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, called out this issue in his report on the FBI handling of the Russia investigation, although he concluded that the FBI opened the investigation properly and without political bias.

In another case stemming from 2016 that got a lot of traction when it was announced, a federal appeals court today ruled that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton does not have to give another deposition about her emails. Judicial Watch, a rightwing organization founded in 1994 that has frequently targeted the Clintons with lawsuits which are usually thrown out of court, wanted to depose Clinton on the subject. She argued they were harassing her. The court noted that the email issue had already been thoroughly investigated by Congress, the FBI, the State Department Inspector General, and another lawsuit and concluded she did not have to testify again. Last year, the State Department concluded that “there was no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information.”

Finally, in all the political craziness, the devastating storm that hit the middle of the country on Monday has gotten less attention than it should have. The storm was a “derecho,” and brought wind over 100 miles an hour. Iowa appears to have lost 43% of its corn and soybean crops; 15 tornadoes in Illinois left 800,000 people without power. In Iowa, four days later, 250,000 are still without power, and roads remained blocked.