averbaldumpingground

[averbaldumpingground]

The basin was red-stained already, the skin of his knuckles scrubbed raw. But he had awoken with half-strangled gasps, fingers stained crimson and tacky. He still remembered those eyes.

#March 15 2024 #I may be EXTREMELY sleep deprived right now. #I was going to go somewhere with this. But then I lost the ability to English.

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Her arm burns, the words a lurid deep green. They weren’t there before, and, stupidly, the only thing that she can think, watching them form on her skin, is that she’d asked Darcy, twice, to just turn off CNN.

It wouldn’t stop New York from burning, but…

The phone rings. And then she’s scrambling to gather up her journals. The writing on her arm can wait. There isn’t any time to let herself believe it.

That will come in the aftermath, she’s sure. With nightmares made of glass, tubes in her mother’s arms, her own words dull and sterile like a promise.  But they’re still there, lost as they are in wreckage and debris.

They’re there when she wakes up, half-strangled in her sheets. They’re there, and she knows, in her soul, she shouldn’t want them.

#fanfiction #Jane Foster #Lokane #January 28 2024

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She's much too young for him. He doesn't want to touch her. Except he’d give the world to hold her close. He knows he’ll let his need for her destroy him.

But when she’s there, asleep, too trusting of the worst of his intentions, he thinks he feels a sort of fragile peace.

It’s in the way his fingers slip, when they brush back the copper of her hair. It’s in the gentle parting of her lips, the quiet of her whimpers from her nightmares. He knows he is a fool to keep a vigil here.

But she’s the end of him, the last face he’ll remember when he dies. And she’s a thought he shouldn’t want to live for.

Sometimes, he’ll let himself believe she’s breathed his name. And that, perhaps, the girl could come to love him too. But it’s a passing thought, on nights he knows he’s had too much too drink.

He’ll watch her from as close as he can stand it. But he knows he won’t let himself corrupt her. At least he hopes he won’t. He’ll try to do his best to stay away.

#fanfiction #Sandor Clegane #Sansa Stark #ASoIaF #Game of Thrones #January 10 2024 #This ficlet is brought to you by the Kylie Minogue song I have stuck in my head on repeat. #It has absolutely nothing to do with this ficlet either content-wise or thematically. #But I was listening to it over and over again while reading SanSan modern AU fluff on my commute home today. #(Which took A While because the train was stuck between stations.)

[averbaldumpingground]

"No, no, don't apologize. Your constant complaining is music to my ears."

Sarah ignored him, squaring her shoulders as the rocks arranged themselves again. They didn't reach as high this time, but seemed like they would be a little bit more stable.

"Verily, my lady, art thou certain about proceeding with this endeavor? Ambrosius and I--"

"Ow!" So much for stability. She banged her knee as the stone that she'd stood on rolled backwards.

"Sorry," came the low, defeated roar.

"Oh, it's alright, Ludo. There's got to be another way to do this."

"Or you could just give up. And maybe let His Royal Highness win this one?"

"There is no honor in conceding defeat! Why I--"

Sarah tuned them out. She had known, before she'd even opened her mouth, that making a bet with the Goblin King would be a terrible idea. But she was tired of the goblins trampling her makeup and eating all her little brother's crayons. And if competing in the goblins' Chicken Olympics was what got them to stop, well, she had been willing to try it.

She just hadn't counted on needing to be able to fly. Or pretty much any of the rest of it.

This whole thing really wasn't fair. She should have known.

#fanfiction #Labyrinth #Sarah Williams #December 31 2023 #I gave up on the original plan for this prompt and saved that hot mess to try and figure out again later but I don't know if that's doable. #I'm not happy with it but this was a last minute change to the plan and I give up and am going to be. #This concludes my daily attempts at getting something written. #I've kept at this since January 1 2019 so 5 whole years of this daily thing. #At first it was a challenge to myself to see if I could and then also a way to try to handle my depression. #I don't have it in me anymore to keep trying. #So this blog thing is going to be mostly defunct now. #I may or may not come back and write things for the hell of it when I feel like it. Or answer a prompt if I get one. #But I am done I guess. #I should probably say something profound but since no one reads this thing anyway I'm not going to bother. #And now I get to sleep. Hooray!

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Song Prompt: When You Break by Bear's Den

The rain is rattling the windows, and she's already mostly on her way to drunk. But with the power going out, the panic's clawing at the edges of her breathing.

The worst is that the terror's always there, from noises in the wall, the clap of thunder. A music box, the low voice of a man. She can't remember why she's so afraid.

But she remembers hands, somebody's laughter. And she remembers running for her life.

The bourbon sometimes blocks it out a bit. It's not enough to sleep; the dreams she can't remember wake her screaming. But it's enough to help her through the storm. At least for now.

At least for long enough, until the panic's bad enough to choke her.

#fanfiction #Labyrinth #Sarah Williams #December 30 2023 #Tomorrow's is going to be my last one. I'm not gonna do a daily thing after that.

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Counting Paths by Matthew and the Atlas

The photograph's familiar. The young man's smiling.

But it's not the face he's come to recognize again. The lines around the eyes. That hollow, haunted look. The hatred when he wakes up from his nightmares screaming.

There isn't any going back. At least not yet.

Not when he can't pretend, not like he used to.

#fanfiction #Bucky Barnes #Winter Soldier #Sorry this was yesterday's. I fell asleep and then had other stuff to do today. #December 29 2023

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I'll love you, as fiercely as death, a hurricane, a thunderstorm.

But there are words we'll never speak. And I won't touch your face, the soft slope of your shoulder.

#December 28 2023 #Too tired. Blech.

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"I'm not saying you're a bad cook, but even the flies in the kitchen wear gas masks."

The goblin with the dirty purple whiskers burped. "I thinks the chickens like this one."

"Chickens still sick. Gorbachev vomit on flowers."

Jareth sighed. Dramatically. The large Brahma hen, apparently still queasy from his previous attempt, let out a couple of pathetic clucks where she was resting near the overturned pot with the horribly wilted monstera. He could relate to her distress.

"King use magic now?"

"No." Forfeiting the wager with that infernal mortal girl was not an option. He pointed at a chicken at random. "That one."

The goblin with the colander cheered. "Jane Austen likes pancakes!"

The rooster crowed indignantly, menacingly flapping his wings.

"Be good now, Jane Austen," the goblin prodded, "King make good pancakes!"

#Fanfiction #Labyrinth #Jareth #December 27 2023 #Late because I feel asleep last night and then didn't have time before work. #Will also do today's. #Sorry this one doesn't actually use the quote as intended. #Sarah gave the goblins an encyclopedia if you can't tell. #It's going GREAT.

[averbaldumpingground]

A Little Messed Up by june

The door's locked between them, and in the coconut steam of the bathroom, she tries not too panic too loudly.

"Emma? Love? Are you alright in there?"

The knock on the door makes her almost knock over his razor.

She breathes. She tries to breathe. The window's too narrow, and all of her clothes are still somewhere all over his kitchen. She thinks he's wearing his robe.

"Emma?"

He sounds concerned. That makes it worse. He hasn't got a right to sound concerned.

"Emma, are you alright?"

He hasn't got a right to smile and look at her like that and maybe mean it.

"...Emma?"

It's that resigned, quiet rasp of her name that makes her hold on to the counter too tightly. To stare at her familiar reflection. The bruises, shaped like fingers, on her hipbones. The redness from his beard along her breasts.

It's stupid to allow herself to want him. This thing they've got is never gonna last.

#fanfiction #OuaT #Emma Swan #Killian Jones #Friend? I would like to lodge a complaint here. #These NoTP plot bunnies? I would like to return them please. #Maybe this is also a companion piece (a precursor?) to the other two I've done? #Maybe TSB AU. Who knows. #(This is still not the thing I've been struggling with for days. ARGH.) #December 26 2023

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Song Prompt: Alibi by Mansionair

The colors of the seiðr fill his dreams, a tapestry his fingers almost touch, the workings of a fate he knows he's lost his chance for. But even from these galaxies away, he knows the whispered secrets of her longing, the constellations forming in her hands.

The knowing is perhaps the worst of what he hopes is penance. Knowing her growing frustration, the silence that surrounds her in her empty dwelling, a temporary life he thinks she knows his brother has no place in. He cannot reach her. He can do nothing to comfort the hurt that he finds himself drawn to, her dedicated isolation.

The threads that bound him to her are severed, only a mocking reminder of what, for just the glimpse of her face, could have been. Here, apart, the seiðr almost taunts him with that shadows of her life it shows: her umber hair, curled on a decorative pillow, her parted mouth, her languid eyes in the morning. The darkness is gone from them. The hunger, the power, they're gone.

And was it that, the other that his fate entwined with? The magic more ancient than he? The future, cut off as it is, gives no answer.

He hopes, perhaps, it might have been so.

Because, were it her, the visions he wakes to are crueler: laughter and warm, gentle hands; moonlight, and bare, bony shoulders. Grey in her hair and in his. Someone to see through his lying.

A universe. A universe that never formed. That never can come into being.

#fanfiction #Loki #Jane Foster #Lokane #Merry Christmas Friend! I hoped to write you something else but it just plain refuses to cooperate. Like at all. #I will keep trying tomorrow but we're now on Day 3 of it not working. #December 25 2023

[averbaldumpingground]

Have a merry Christmas! I hug you tightly.

Merry Christmas to you too! :)

#How about a platonic fist bump instead though?

[averbaldumpingground]

She dreams of how the lord would hold her heart, a beating thing, still bleeding in the snow, his crown of antlers woven through with pine fronds.

She feels his fingers buried in her chest, his claws against her skin, the empty, gaping hole left in her rib cage. The drumming that surrounds them has a pulse, almost a murmur in the cloudless darkness.

She dreams that she steps closer, watching, knowing. The lord will laugh, and then the dream will end.

She's not sure what it means that he has picked her.

#December 24 2023 #Too tired to think after church and baking.

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You'll find him in the spruce, the last remaining leaves of autumn's disappointment.

Rough hands that promise a rewarding harvest. He's got a crocus heart, a tender bit of hope the winter's over.

#December 23 2023 #The prompt I was working on isn't working. So this garbage. #I just want to sleep.

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Dialogue Prompt: "I can't change my feelings for you. Believe me, I tried."

The words should be a comfort, the soft admission that he doesn't want it either.

But he won't let it go. Won't leave the room the moment that he sees her. And those impossible, soft eyes, the tender way he's ready to forgive her worst impulses, they hurt more than his anger ever could.

Because with how he stares, there's no way to outrun the thousand choices that she didn't make. The happiness she hadn't wanted then, the second chance she knows she can't deserve.

There's no way to deny herself his warmth, the way his mouth will feel. The need to hold somebody close enough to hurt her.

#fanfiction #OuaT #Outlaw Queen #Meh. #I didn't want to go here but I did. #Meh I say. #December 22 2023

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The light will catch, and then, remaining, she will understand. The sorrow of the world, his fingers, rooted in the stone. The coldness of the soil. The blood.

#December 21 2023 #Prompts tomorrow. Still too braindead from work. #Happy Solstice.

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There aren't any lessons to be learned. Amanda knows, from how they're twisted on the bed. From how the living room's a mess.

Amanda knows she's got to be the one to end things.

#December 20 2023 #A break from prompts today because I am falling asleep on my laptop and lack brain power.

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"Don't you dare try to shift the blame onto me!"

The Pomeranian-sized goblin shrugged, almost dislodging the funnel it wore as a hat.

"Don't you dare! I--"

"--Now what was that, precious?"

Sarah groaned, not bothering to turn around. The awful little traitors set her up. They'd promised to return her missing socks. And the novelty slippers her old roommate got her for Christmas. And maybe her measuring cups.

She really should have known better.

"My, my, is that illegal chicken racing I see?"

Pudding, the charcoal grey silkie, had perched on his throne, still in her purple-pink tutu. Thumbtack, the kadaknath, was pecking at the remnants of the racecourse.

Sarah winced. She knew she should have just bought some new socks. The cheap kind that came in a ten pack.

#fanfiction #Labyrinth #Sarah Williams #Jareth #December 19 2023