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psychreviews2 · 2 months

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Meditation: Taking Stock

Taking Stock

After completing my diverting and edifying Perversion Series, I started looking back at what this blog/channel has covered over 3 years time and began this summary of Meditation techniques. Typical of my style, I don't separate psychology from meditation because they are simply different perspectives covering the same subject, psychological reality.

The biggest difficulty for people living in a modern society is to be able to connect all the different disciplines together into a lifestyle that is capable of long lasting forms of happiness. Because it's so complicated, and even if this inventory of meditation techniques is wonderful, it really just feels like the beginning. The reality is that most of us have gaping holes in our belief systems and are too lopsided in one particular direction or another. This will factor in big with Carl Jung, but is also a signal from Darwinism that communicates the need for balance in life and in one's personality. Even if this lack of balance shows up in one civilization or another, it doesn't necessarily mean that humans are about to be selected for extinction, keeping in mind that if you watch politics you may find those thoughts appear frequently, the reality is more likely an underdevelopment in many areas of our lives. Between parenting, schooling, and modern culture, so many important skills are left out, and many think this is done on purpose by those in authority to create their own outcome for our lives. Part of growing up is relinquishing those influences, and even rebelling, in order to begin captaining one's own ship.

Captaining one's own ship isn't easy because we move quickly from school authorities to work authorities with whatever skills we have, or lack thereof. Then it becomes a giant project to become a "Life Designer." This can lead to bumping into weird coaches where you are essentially asking their permission to do things you are already free to do, gurus who specialize in certain practices to the point of being out of balance, and following rich people, or people who pretend to be rich, to see if they have any answers. Worst of all are narcissistic cultists that make promises to hook you, repeat lies until they are believed, and after the brainwashing is over, exploit you.

Certainly many role models send the exact same message, which is to make a lot of money so you can make your own decisions. There are many meditation instructors that do live a simple lifestyle, but there are also many that are fabulously wealthy that oddly refuse to talk about how their book sales reduced their stress. Why many people don't have to turn to any of these practices is precisely because they have been able to make enough money that they are the power center of their own lives. To be able to make your own choices is always more healing. Being told what to do all the time is not. There's a deep seated need in the mind for independence and a hatred for tyranny and slavery. Because people have to earn an income, it can't be lost on followers that the guru needs to eat to.

From my experience, working for people who have above average money, and who regularly try to virtue-signal that they are happy, and that we should worship them, I found that a meditation practice is still beneficial precisely because of the pitfalls that can happen with an obsession over money. The pitfalls are doing jobs you hate simply because there are a lot of zeros in the paycheck. Another pitfall that often coincides with work are addictions that are used to numb the pain of work, which depletes the resources that the work provides. The most counter-intuitive problem is spoiled-ness and boredom. It's possible to have so much wealth that boredom becomes a larger part of a person's psychology. One should always maintain hobbies and interests regardless of the wealth. This means that true wealth has more to do with the psyche and how often a person can give it goals to strive for, meaning, love, pleasure, entertainment, spirituality, philosophy, and ample experiences of peace.

Meditation Summary

So the 1st area of meditation that helps regardless of a person's wealth is to create a free form of entertainment in concentration practice. Pleasure is a form of feeding, and this can be readily found when we engage in our hobbies and interests. When things are so interesting a telltale signal that you're on to something is how little physical hunger you can feel. Interesting things can make people skip meals when they are riveted. Meditation is like a hack that taps into this Flow system that Csikszentmihalyi talks about. Meditation is highly challenging and requires a lot of skill, so it's a boundless source of interest. Like in Flow, there's instant feedback on how well one is doing, and it's done for its own sake. Concentration doesn't cost money while engaging in the activity and it creates a lasting form of pleasure. It's true that one has to constantly generate concentration with one-pointedness and consistency, but it can provide endless opportunities for development in other areas. This includes concentrating on skill development and using one-pointedness and sustaining until the skill becomes habitual. It also includes relaxing negative thoughts and focusing on something positive, or skillful, to avoid the energy drain.

Flow: https://rumble.com/v1gvked-how-to-gain-flow-in-7-steps.html

One of the pitfalls of concentration is exactly those lapses in focus. That gap between finishing something and moving onto something else requires some regeneration, but old habits can easily carry one away. This is where mindfulness comes in. We covered the Mahasi noting method, but ultimately one has to be able to sit still with those impulses that seep into the concentration and let them be and let them pass away altogether. Noting is treated as a form of training wheels, but eventually you can just gently acknowledge whatever is in the mind and choose to not follow it. By not following it, it is seen as impermanent because impulses go away on their own when we don't add to them. The mind doesn't need extra noise and pressure to make it go away. Impulses peak to a certain intensity, and if there's enough mindfulness, it will learn to withdraw on its own and the habit can slowly weaken without the Ego feeling that it has to do something. Relief can then be had every time thoughts and feelings bubble up and pass away on their own. A big part of the practice is to enjoy the passing away and the rest that is there between impulses.

Where a lot of Mahayana practices shine are how they can simplify Theravadin practices when they are used with too much force. Thoughtlessness and periods of rest are good, but it's not the end goal for most people. Even if Theravadins would argue that their practice has many more elements, and people aren't practicing with balance, how it is often taught in the West is with extreme narrowness. It's like meditation is polishing a thing called "mind" and putting a lot of strenuous effort into it. Seeing that the effort is pointing at "things" that aren't really concrete, and these efforting activities are often energy draining, is a way to reduce some of the unnecessary tension in practice. If you are already a mind, how can you go searching for it?

Adyashanti helps to explain that balance of cultivation and a regular life. "In the moment when you are available, how deep are you willing to go?...There is something that wants to be recognized right here and right now. The mind says 'I don't know who I am' because when the mind looks into you, it doesn't find you." Here I would help translate it better based on common scanning practices I've done in the past. If you scan your entire physical and sensorial experience you won't find a concrete self. It's just the process of scanning and sensations. Much deeper than this is to see that any movement of scanning or searching also has a sense of self. Nirvana is really the only "place" where there's no sense of self, and this comes from gradually shedding techniques until the mind finds it peaceful enough to let go of pinpointing and labeling altogether. Even if this is an ultimate form of rest, you still have to get back to your life full of a sense of self, but with more knowledge on how stress works. Many tensions are habitual and trying to feed them less allows for a smoother experience in daily life. Only when those impulses begin to relax in a marked way will the questions subside: "How can I be enlightened? How do I stay mindful all the time?"

How can I stay aware all the time? - Adyashanti: https://youtu.be/tv_McETr_jg

The Immediacy of Being - Adyashanti: https://youtu.be/eXVmCV8PHhk

Similar to Rob Burbea's training on Welcoming or Allowing thoughts, both teachers point to a deep seated tension in most of us to not welcome and not allow what's in the mind. To welcome and allow what arises reduces some unnecessary friction, and we don't have to act on anything that arises. Adyashanti reminds people of a Buddha-nature within, essentially a Nothing where all those problematic thoughts come out of. To think a meditation is going some where is already an ego adventuring to a concrete place where it hopes to find peace. He reminds us that "we don't have to manufacture the space or silence between words. We don't have to bring it into being. It's just there...There's something about attending to the wordless...In those blips of quiet, in between one wave of emotion and the next, this gives us access to the deepest realms, to the very ground of the psyche...We are not making any attempt to stop thinking, in fact part of the practice is to not try to control your mind. This is not an exercise in manipulation. It's leaving your thoughts alone, having an attitude as if they are traffic noise, wind through the trees, or the noise of a dog barking, and there happens to be this noise in the mind, thoughts occurring, and also the associated emotions and feelings. Nothing's meant to just stop. It would not be natural for our mind to stop thinking forever. We are not trying to force anything. Be on the lookout for any form of unnecessary effort...It's not that we are looking towards the opposite of effort, which is complete effortlessness. There is a kind of effort to attend to the silence. It's not a striving effort. It's not a grasping effort. It's just a kind of intention, a decision you might say, to attend to the space between thoughts. [We are also] not just noticing the space between thoughts, but around thoughts, because when you get the feeling in the body, just a moment of space between one thought and the next you can notice that sense of the field, the kinesthetic sense of the space or the silence, that still maintains itself...The thought doesn't make the space go away. It actually doesn't make the silence go away. It's just a thought or feeling arising within silence. We are not trying to push away thoughts or feelings. We are just leaving them alone for a moment. Not indulging. Not willfully thinking or feeling for a moment, but we are just allowing all of our experience, whatever it may be to have the space to exist in. There's a strange thing that happens when you grant everything in your experience the right to exist, why?, because it is existing. It's very simple. That gesture of allowing, allows you to notice the space around what's happening. Sometimes when people get a little sense of the space or the quiet around things and within things, they try to grasp at it, hold on to it, but you see the grasping becomes more noise. This isn't a quiet or space you can hold on to. It would be like trying to hold onto the air in the room. When you stop trying to grasp it, well there it is."

The Way of Effortless Effort - Adyashanti: https://youtu.be/OacbURCmA_k

Essentially, Adyashanti was deeply scanning for a concrete self and finding instead that this regular sense of self is a grasping for a self-concept, and the concrete quality of that was the very grasping and tension itself in the search, or any other search. So you scan the body, including your cranium and your face, and relax any tension found, while realizing that each tension that is found is a form of belief in a concrete self. Of course this is easier said than done because of the multitude of tension-habits that a beginner meditator has. Thanissaro Bhikkhu of the Thai forest tradition often reminds people of how those Mahayana practices can be dangerous. Without a practice of directing the mind towards consequences, disgust, and drawbacks to pleasures, and even if one gets good at watching impulses arise, peak and vanish on their own, most people require much more cultivation. It's easy to just let what arises come in and get carried away with actions. Part of the mind wanting to attack other parts of the mind is because it has good reason to and unless that negative desire reduces substantially, the mind will go on attacking itself. Thinking of disgust, consequences and drawbacks brings up a lot of resistance in many people precisely because of how desire actually ignores those things in order to make desire and pleasure more possible. The addictive mind looks for an allure, which is how lust works. It looks at sexualized parts, consumption of parts for food, and singles out parts that are pleasant out of the environment. Parts are short-term, provide pleasure in moments, and become exhausted in boredom, or end in displeasure related to consequences. The regular mind, without any training, just starts the process anew, making the same mistakes over and over again, until the pain is too much, or something more interesting comes along.

The survival part of the mind requires constant seeking and dissatisfaction to maintain the organism and resists total satisfaction. In a state of nature this is necessary, but in a state of modern abundance and technology, that mind can get into trouble. It can throw away what still works through boredom and pursue masochistic goals because of their properties of providing the right level of challenge for the seeking part of the mind. Like Sisyphus, the mind naturally wants constant challenges to overcome and gets too stressed if the challenge is too hard and too bored if it's too easy. Meditation can help in filling in those gaps between goals or when there's no immediate pleasure, but part of the skill of developing mental peace is being able to appreciate avoiding activities and not just moving onto one after another. A modern perspective on this is not to just avoid activities but choose ones with different intensities that one is capable of sustaining for the whole of one's life. This way a person can avoid living a life-denying life. This practice can easily be done with visualization of drawbacks and consequences, accompanied with the regular mind which is already adept for most people at visualizing ways to enjoy oneself.

As one becomes adept at killing time with different mindfulness skills, like directing attention towards footfalls, and infusing them with love, to purposefully seek beauty that is taken for granted, to use concentration for pleasure and to get things done, to relax addictive comparison of one thing to another and to instead compare something to nothing, as away to trigger a sense of wonder, to enjoy deep rest, to enjoy the peace of avoiding activities that are traps, and to relish in authentic hobbies and interests, one can notice that a reliance on authority figures begins to reduce to a lower level. There will still be a need for others, but the pathological clinging to people, who can be very dangerous, since they have power over our goals, the need begins to subside. The boundaries between oneself and others begins to become clearer and easier to navigate. If one has to work with others, once can create small personal goals that match up with others to maintain a certain amount of that feeling of independence. We realize that we have more control over our mind than we originally thought.

Narcissism and Woke Ideology

These experiences remind me of Freud's study of 'The Wolfman' and his dependency on Psychoanalysts for his decision making. This dependency can happen in psychology, meditation, religions, or in any other profession. It can happen with our parents, in the marketplace, and with governments. We can now clearly see the web of interdependence with others. Letting go of Prestige for those who we used to depend on, and letting go of blame for others and how they influenced us negatively, can be another form of freedom. Freud called this process of transferring emotions from one person to another, transference. We have imitated and imaginary versions of people in our minds, a natural bonding ability of the mind that psychoanalysts call Objects. They aren't real people but we rehearse and try to preempt bad things based on these old phantom relationships in the mind, and in extreme cases we can develop preemptive attacks on those we fear because we feel we have to get them before they get us. It just takes another step to make those Objects into stereotypes and bigotry.

‘You’re a murderer’: Officer records verbal attack during traffic stop: https://youtu.be/_THBjQ-uP9A

Lady Gaga, Michael B Jordan, JLo promote creepy new "safety" seal and it is NOT what it seems inside: https://youtu.be/dbxUdTm_VOY

"Look at Me!" Black Mother Takes Blowtorch to Critical Race Theory in Front of School Board: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcJS2UJVwMc

Being able to let go of this preemptive blame we give to people, who seem similar to authorities who wronged us in the past, I think is directly connected to the feeling that we gain when can captain our own psyche. Agency. We let go of helplessness. The irony is that what many people were looking for in their meditation practice was not Nirvana, but to find a way to develop a healthy sense of agency. While growing up we have to rely on imitating authority figures and it's a major feat to move beyond that in adulthood.

The Neo-Freudian René Girard pointed out how our social brain imitates others and if we look closely we can see that our imitations, just like following advertising, lacked that visualization of drawbacks, consequences, and healthy disgust. A lack of agency. A lot of the WOKE mentality of today comes from cycles of blame, including a lot of self-blame for this lack of agency, where there is no mercy, no forgiveness, and no allowing for growth in oneself or others. They break that cardinal rule of left-wing politics and humanist professions that we should only blame behaviors, not identities, and then slap all kinds of people with stigmatizing rigid identities that allow for no growth or individuality. This allows for dehumanization of people into different types of pests, and eventually some kind of final solution that NAZIS and Communists think up. People who have resentment and a common political solution can take over entire institutions and dehumanization allows justification for all kinds of lies and especially fake toxic narratives, that when swallowed, lead to slavery and exploitation for those who go with it. Those who resist get bullied out of their sources of income and power so that they also become helpless. Helpless people then are easier to manipulate, discard, or destroy at some point.

How these woke beliefs become distorted is when the skills required to develop success get denigrated. So not only are identities targeted, the virtues of the targeted are vilified. This is the signal that the criminals and the insane have taken over the asylum of institutions and are now trying to mechanize a form of extermination and replacement in order to usurp power positions to satisfy the their wounded egos, which unfortunately are not capable of full satisfaction as we can see above. These pressures that cause this cycle of scapegoating are common. Today it's the generational gap. Older generations enjoyed their lives and still need money to retire and they can't leave their positions. Many people have to work into their retirement. This puts pressure on younger generations to wait their turn, and even wait until they are so much older that none of those goals that young people want can actually be achieved, like having kids, doing well in a high powered job, which is also important for sexuality and looking attractive to prospective partners, and that enjoyable feeling that some milestones have actually been achieved.

The success of modern technology is great in that it allows people to live longer and hypocritically younger generations will want that for themselves too, but the tension remains with younger generations and a desire to find a way up the power hierarchy, leading to all kinds of conflicts and desires for revolution. As we've seen before, conflict has to do with people who want the same positions, and those positions are scarce and can't be shared. If you can't tell already by now what I think, I think Cluster B types, including Narcissists, are the ones who fall into every hole of resentment and envy and create these frightening political movements. They can be on the left or the right, and they don't care about labels, but they do care about checks and balances. Those who don't like checks and balances in a political system are the ones to watch for and we have to watch those tendencies in ourselves. It's not just Germans and Russians who can have extreme political movements. It can be left-wing activists, or Wall Street manipulators. It can happen anywhere where social strife and oppression reside. The typical method is to gain control of many different organizations by looking at those who hold power and criticizing them to the point that they are removed from power. Some criticisms are accurate, but many are debatable or wholly without merit, and that's the difficulty in detecting Narcissists. Most of us get caught in political and institutional labels and ignore the actual tactics. The tactics are to demonize and criticize, including adding fake narratives that are dark and terrible about the target. When people surrounding the powerful start believing in those narratives, there's a change in personnel to accommodate the new dictator. How these demonizing narratives become believable is how Susan Fiske describes it, which is how onlookers imitate the accusations in the brain. It actually takes effort to vet accusations, and on top of that, people have trouble believing in false accusations. "Why would someone do that?"

What is good about meditation is that it allows people to find alternative goals and pleasures so that one doesn't have to turn into a NAZI or Communist to satisfy desires, and it also helps to reduce the need for addictions which are common solutions when big dreams are not achieved. This is especially true since many of those big desires lose interest in possession and are only interesting when first attained. The mind gets bored and in the end there's really no permanent satisfaction, even if you get what you always wanted. Desire can be silly and we need to be able to find healthy replacements to counter our societal frustrations. If we can't do this, then wars and murder are inevitable.

Because we are all human, all of us are capable of bad desires, or bad replacement desires, or Sins if you want to be Judeo-Christian, and once the ability to weigh things becomes individualized and set within, external blame looks more and more like what you see in a court, a fair one of course based on the facts. If there's an internal police that is welcomed within, there's less need for an external one. Part of the reason for projection and attacking others is to distract the external and internal authorities to protect self-esteem from one's own actions. There's relief when it's someone else's fault. There's also a temptation to accuse others for doing the same things because it's the "you do it too!" mentality. The reality is that everyone is at fault at least a little bit some of the time, and with self-development, learning, etc., two wrongs don't make a right and this allows people to grow. For many others, any faults they see provide ample excuse to start scapegoating entire groups and classifications of people.

When Cancel Culture Cancels Everything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sKX2Gk7eFY

World Narcissistic Abuse Awareness Day: https://wnaad.com/

But if one can police oneself, self-esteem naturally increases and there's no need for all the drama. This process of development also allows for humility in realizing the mistakes most of us are capable of, especially with the wide gulf in parenting styles, and genetic inheritance. You return to looking at people as individuals and no longer as imaginary conformist people with impossibly uniform high standards that no one can meet. This cognitive error is called Splitting. It oscillates between applying impossible standards on someone, which is a type of aggressive demand, and then removing prestige when that God-like person is seen to bleed and be a human. It's most often aimed at politicians during psychological warfare in news-cycles and campaigns and also aimed at celebrities who are edited to be perfect on TV and the internet, but are undoubtedly human, fart, can have smelly armpits, and bad breath from time to time.

If you don't like someone, create a toxic narrative, even if the facts don't support it, and even if the accuser can't meet any of the standards they demand from others. People are too lazy to vet anything and can run with it, and another livelihood is destroyed.

Celebrities without makeup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoPb8JcPjOE

The River of Dreams

After these understandings dawn on a practitioner there still are a lot of voices within, and when there is no remaining fear of them, because these voices can be weighed against each other with new skills, there's now a new area that can be developed, depending on how much time one has to live and how old one is when one has learned these things, if ever. Adyashanti reminds me of Carl Jung when he talks about further intelligence in the mind's unconscious than just impulses that have to be tamed or relaxed.

"Whatever name we want to give our true nature. Whether we give it the name of true nature, or spirit, or soul, Dao, or Buddha Nature, or The Christ, or The Void, or The One Mind, whatever we call it, our true nature is not playing around. There's something in us, it's playing for keeps, and the consequences are high. There's something in each of you that if you do not listen to it, you pay the price for it. In a way we are held accountable to our own depth. So often we are telling our True Nature what we want from it, [but Prayer via the Ego's desires does not listen to the depth.] Instead we can ask what does my depth actually want from me? This involves listening to the quiet places inside. Listening to your own calling."

Acknowledging your Depth - Adyashanti: https://youtu.be/26UjjrjAyP8

The River of Dreams - Billy Joel: https://youtu.be/hSq4B_zHqPM

Contemplative Practice: http://psychreviews.org/category/contemplativepractice/

#narcissism #meditation #cancel culture

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thefanficmonster · 3 years

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Deep Breaths

Valkyrae x Reader (Gender Neutral)

Warnings: Panic Attack, Mentions of past domestic abuse, Mentions of alcohol and drug abuse, Swearing

Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Angst to Fluff, RPF (Real Person Fic)

Summary: Having received a call from the correctional facility where their alcoholic/drug addict mother is being kept, Y/N gets some intense nightmarish flashbacks to a time that still haunts them despite a decade having passed. Luckily their girlfriend Rae is there to comfort therm.

Requested by Anon. Hi dear! Thank you so much for your lovely request, I hope I captured what you wanted to read! Sorry it has taken me so long to complete and post the fic, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. Love, Vy ❤

“Hey Y/N, I-“ One step in the living room and that’s all it took for Rae to pick up on the melancholic mood in the room.

Her partner hasn’t even noticed she’s entered. Instead, they are sitting hunched over on the couch, elbows on knees, hand seeking their hands’ support to stay upright and their eyes hiding a thousand yard stare that’s got Rae worried sick.

“Babe, what’s wrong?“ She asks softly, inching closer to the couch to take a seat next to Y/N, “You can tell me anything, you know that, right?“

Through the fog surrounding their brain, they somehow manage to catch onto Rae’s words, forcing themself to give her at least a nod in response as to not scare her with their unresponsiveness. They can’t bring themselves to speak, it’s too hard on them to even think of what to say let alone spit it out, especially when their chest feels like it’s caught fire and their mind is still going haywire, heartbeat thumping in their ears as the adrenaline rush refuses to cease.

“Hey, look at me...“ Instead of sitting down, Rae ducks down in front of Y/N, taking their hands in hers, almost wincing at how cold they were. “Tell me what’s bothering you, baby.“

The girl is trying her best not to freak out or lose her cool, despite her already quickened heartbeat she can hear in her ears. She has every right to be reacting the way she is. Her permanently happy, bubbly, optimistic and cheerful partner who always seems to be as energized as though they’d just had a gallon of coffee is now a pale ghost sitting statue-still, staring off into the void with eyes that look empty yet terrified simultaneously.

Y/N’s mouth falls open as though they want to say something but the words die out somewhere along the way, refusing to leave their mouth and give them the relief of sharing their pain with the only person they trust limitlessly. “I-...“ They finally manage to find their voice though their gaze is still avoiding hers, “I got a call from the correctional facility where....” They trail off, a bitter taste forming in their mouth, making their stomach turn and bite the inside of their cheek as they feel the urge to throw up start to become unbearable. “She wants to s-see me...”

They don’t need to say anything else, Rae’s already connected the dots and her complexion has gone just as pale as theirs. She knows how sensitive and triggering this topic is for Y/N, how many bad memories are tied to this one person in their life. To make matters worse, they’re the one person who was supposed to take care of them yet she couldn’t even take care of herself - Y/N’s mother.

Rae distinctly remembers the night Y/N told her the truth about their family life - or the lack thereof - almost a year since the two had started dating. Rae never questioned their secretiveness and respected their privacy enough not to ask about it, patiently waiting for them to tell her on their own time and own terms. It was no secret even from the very start that Y/N had a very hard time connecting to people and trusting them. It took them maybe two or so months to be able to call their now-girlfriend a friend instead of an acquaintance. Rae didn’t question that too, didn’t push to pursue a friendship with them since, from her point of view, they were already her friend, so she patiently waited for them to come around and start trusting her enough to accept her within their tightknit circle of trusted people called ‘friends’.

Things progressed from purely platonic to sweetly romantic a little more quickly which pleasantly surprised Rae. The two were quick to grow to be inseparable though that didn’t mean Y/N gave up all their secrets. The darkest one, which happens to be this one regarding their mother, is the one they hid the longest and the last one they had to share with their girlfriend. The night they did tell it was a very emotional one: plenty of tears were shed by both Y/N and Rae but luckily they had each other’s embrace to seek comfort in and protect themselves from the ghosts and demons of a past Y/N spent so much time running away from.

An abusive parent is not a bit of baggage you can just get rid of. It’s something that weighs so heavy on you and is such a big part of who you are that you can feel it as a part of you. It haunts you no matter how much you try to run or hide. It’s not something you can shake off or forget. You might have physical and visible scars from the time spent with said parent or the trauma can be entirely psychological - regardless, it lives within you. Follows you around, raises questions you’re not sure you want answered, degrades you - making it seem like what happened was your fault in one way or another - it destroys you slowly very time something triggers a memory of that time, be it a simple conversation that has nothing to do with the subject or be it the glimpse you accidentally catch in the mirror of a scar on your body - a scar you remember being inflicted on you like it was yesterday.

That’s how Y/N’s been living. Feeling responsible, feeling unloved, feeling chained to their past. They’ve done all in their power to appear unbothered and let it be visible, not even when around Rae since they don’t want to worry her.

But seeing as their past has caught up to them now and they inevitably have to face it, they’re forced to let it show, they couldn’t hold it in even if they tried. Although they don’t wanna play the unbothered, unfazed part any longer. They have been strong on their own for far too long and it’s taken a toll on them. If they keep up with the act, they’ll be completely and utterly crushed.

Not that they’re feeling any better at the moment.

“Stay with me, Y/N. Stay with me. Keep your eyes on me, ok? Take deep breaths. Deep breaths, baby. I’m here, I’m not going anywhere. It’s ok. You’re ok.“ Their short-circuiting brain has been spasming under the influence of the adrenaline, anxiety and panic brought on by the memories of every time they felt small and helpless while at the merciless hand of their alcoholic, drug addict abusive mother, begging to be spared the pain of being hit with whatever object the deranged woman could get her hands on - yet somehow, Rae’s voice still reaches them through all that messy dark fog. “Come on, Y/N, stay with me ok? Please don’t do this, I’m right here, there’s no need to be afraid,”

“I...“ they can barely hear their own voice over the racing of their heart, “I don’t...I don’t wanna go....“ is all they manage to say, a tear falling from their eye.

“It’s ok, we don’t have to go. We won’t go. Your mental health is the most important thing here, Y/N. We’re not going and that’s final.“ Rae replies vigorously, tightening her hold on Y/N’s hands.

Despite the state they’re in, Y/N can’t help but take notice of the use of the word ‘we’, Rae’s reminder that they are not alone, that she’s there for them and will not let them go into this alone. That brings a small smile to their face, calming their heart and panic ever so slightly, “N-no, I have to. It...it’ll help me.” They sigh before attempting to express themself again, “It’ll give me...closure, I guess.”

Seeing that Y/N’s doing a bit better, Rae’s hand move to cup their face instead, pushing the stray strands of hair away for their features to be full exposed to her, especially their eyes, “Are you sure you want that? Can you handle it? It’s not supposed to be your obligation, Y/N. I mean, the woman’s a monster and she hasn’t even thought to contact you in half a decade, and now she suddenly wants to get back in contact? She has the audacity to disturb you after all this time? You don’t have to agree to this, Y/N.”

Y/N shakes their head, “No, no, I want to. I want to agree to this. I want to live a normal life, Rae. I want to leave her and all she did to me behind. And I can’t do that if I keep running away. What happens when I stop to catch my breath? It still catches up to me like I made no progress whatsoever. That’s not a way to live, not the way I wanna live, at least.”

Rae nods slowly, fully understanding what Y/N is referring to. She maybe hasn’t said anything about it ever, but she’s always seen that little bit of darkness behind the happiness and excitement Y/N always displayed. Rae’s heart ached every time she caught glimpse of those little signs Y/N was putting on a performance while actually hurting on the inside.

And if a meeting with their mother was what would help them finally fully embrace a happy life, then who was she to stop them.

“Ok.“ The girl sighs, “Ok, we’ll go see her, but only if you’re 100% sure you’ll be able to handle it.“

They shake their head again, sighing with unease, “I can never be 100% sure, my emotions have a tendency of being unpredictable so I’ll just have to pray I don’t have a breakdown or a panic attack.”

Rae swipes her thumb over their cheekbone wiping the tear that just escaped their eye, “If you do, don’t worry, I’ll be right there. You know the drill: squeeze my hand, take deep breaths and most importantly, don’t forget I’m there for you. Ok?”

Y/N nods their head, the small smile reappearing on their face. They squeeze Rae’s hand and take a long inhale. “Hand squeeze, deep breaths, noted.” They say when their eyes meet hers, “Thank you so much, Rae. Thank you so much for putting up with me and all my shit and thank you so much for never giving up on me no matter how much work I am or how hard dealing with me and my demons becomes.”

Rae’s heart stings at Y/N’s words, tears brimming her eyes when she raises a bit on her knees to press her lips against Y/N’s forehead. “Don’t thank me, angel. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you and I never want to get gratitude for it. Love doesn’t ask for gratitude, and neither do I.”

Y/N lets out a small laugh to cover up an emotional sob that escapes their lungs. “I love you, Rae.” They say with a trembling voice.

“I love you too, Y/N.“

This time, the Y/N’s lips met the lips of their girlfriend, reminding themself that their safe haven isn’t a place, it’s a person - their girlfriend who means the world to them.

139 notes · View notes

usermoreid · 3 years

Text

Darkened Nights (Violent Things)

Fic Week Day Two: Alternate ending to an episode

“I choose Aaron Hotchner. He's a classic narcissist. He thinks he's better than everyone else on the team. Genesis 23:4. ‘Let him not deceive himself and trust in emptiness, vanity, falseness, and futility, for these shall be his recompense’.”

The silence in the room was palpable. In almost perfect synchronicity, every head turned to face the man in question only moments before he stormed out of the room, footsteps echoing throughout the house.

"I'm not a narcissist," he said, pacing back and forth as the others entered the room, slowly as if approaching a wild animal that could attack at any second.

"Come on. Look, you can't think anything from that. He's not in his right mind, Hotch," Gideon tried to reassure him, quickly stopping when he was interrupted.

"No, stop. Stop." The room fell quiet once again. "Alright, everybody right now - what's my worst quality?" His head turned frantically around the room, taking in everyone's hesitancy to answer. "Okay, I'll start. I have no sense of humour."

"You're a bully," JJ said hardly a second after he'd finished.

"I'm a bully," he repeated.

"You can be a drill sergeant sometimes."

"Right."

"You don't trust women as much as men."

"Okay, good. I'm all these things, but none of you said that I ever put myself above the team, because I don't, ever. So why did Reid say that I do?"

"Don't jump to any conclusions just yet. Reid is smart. For all we know, he could have been leaving clues this entire time. We just need to find what they are."

"Clues? We don't even know if Reid's aware that we saw that!" His voice raised at Gideon as an exasperated arm was thrown in the air. "What sort of clue is 'narcissist'? That doesn't lead us anywhere. Like you said, Reid is smart. His clues would be more obvious than that."

He turned on his foot, heading back in the direction he came from. The others all shared a look of trepidation before following after him. They'd never seen their boss so unsettled, and in turn it was fraying their nerves in an already precarious situation. Gideon was the only one to look unperturbed but even Emily, who had spent such little time around the man, could see the tightness around his mouth and the stiff way in which he stood. He may have been acting as though he wasn't bothered but they could see right through him. Despite this, they walked on without mentioning it, knowing how private of a man Gideon was.

Back in the computer room, the tension was so thick it was almost suffocating, squeezing their hearts like a clenched fist prepared to strike at any moment. They were all on edge, staring intently at each blank screen as if they would come to life, the answer to the question that was plaguing them all displayed clearly on the screen. But there were no bold letters written out in front of them. There was no easy solution. Their youngest team member was still at the mercy of an unsub that had seemingly no plan to let him leave alive and they had no way of finding him.

Hotch cursed softly under his breath and stalked out of the room once more after several minutes had passed without so much as a mumble from anyone. The team knew better than to feel any shock at Hotch's out of character expletive; none of them could blame the man for not acting like himself. Instead, they looked to Gideon for guidance. The older man held a single hand up, preventing them from joining him in going after Hotch. He searched through the rooms, not finding his colleague in any of them, and then the grounds outside. It was a few feet in front of the house that he finally spotted him. If it wasn't for the gentle rise and fall of his chest, he could've been mistaken for a statue.

"He's still alive."

Hotch showed no sign of having heard Gideon approaching or settling a few steps behind him, and yet he didn't startle at the words, his stare remaining off into the darkness.

"You can't prove that."

"It's Reid. He always survives."

A small sound filled the air. It would have passed for a chuckle if the bitterness had not been so clear, as if it had rotted within him before being set free.

"You know, sometimes I feel like God sent Reid to me for a reason; as if there was something I could do for him. I couldn't even teach him how to deal with the emotional side of this job before I sent him into what's probably going to be the most traumatising thing he's ever going to experience."

"Then you help him through the aftermath. You still have time, Hotch. Your work isn't done."

Hotch shook his head. "I can't save him."

"All by yourself? Probably not, but I wouldn't be surprised if you did. You've got an entire team in there, Hotch, ready to risk everything. You helped him become the agent he is. If there's anybody that can help him again now, it's you. You understand him. I'm sure there's something Reid mentioned that tells us where he is, but we need you to not treat this like he's already gone."

Neither of them spoke. The only noise between them was the delicate wind, soft whispers floating throughout the air as if sending a message that he couldn’t quite decipher. Hotch’s head dropped down to face the dirt below him, a queue for Gideon to leave that he thankfully took, making his way back to the house that he was beyond tired of seeing. A small breath left Hotch’s lips, almost a sigh but not quite. He knew that Gideon was right. Standing outside staring at the ground wasn’t helping anybody but Hankel, and yet he couldn’t quite find it in himself to turn around. Spencer’s words were playing on repeat in his mind.

“He's a classic narcissist. He thinks he's better than everyone else on the team.”

Was he right? Of course he was, Hotch thought to himself. Spencer was never wrong, and he wouldn’t use the word ‘narcissist’ so lightly. But if he truly did put himself above the rest of his team, could he really trust himself to do what was best for one of its members? After all, everybody else was in that god-forsaken house, working tirelessly to bring Spencer home, and here he was: standing alone outside, focusing on his own problems instead of helping them.

With a shuddering breath, he turned around, pausing for only a moment before heading back to his team. Reid may have been right about the narcissism, but he would do everything in his power to get him back regardless. Reid was still alive, and he intended to find him that way as soon as he possibly could.

They all worked until the sun came up, the bright gold rays almost taunting them as they shone in through the windows. It was as the morning light hit that Hotch finally managed to force some of them to sleep. Morgan, JJ and Garcia were the firsts to go, though Morgan was only out for barely two hours before he returned, letting Gideon rest instead. Hotch felt the need to ask if he’d managed to get any sleep at all but based on the drooping of his eyes and the anxious clenching of his fists, he felt it wasn’t necessary.

They continued the search, finding dead end after dead end, and all the while both Hotch and Morgan refused to sleep. Prentiss eventually conceded, taking JJ’s space once she’d woken up. Hotch was rather impressed by how well she functioned on such little rest but he didn’t spare much thought on the matter, knowing that there were more important things at hand. It was only after the third time that they’d nearly fallen asleep on each other that the two men finally accepted that it was time to rest. They needed their entire focus on getting Reid home and they wouldn’t be able to do that if they were incapable of thinking. With heavy hearts and much hesitation, they left the room.

Neither of them had wanted to sleep in the house, the knowledge that they were currently residing in the home of the man that had their friend was hanging over their heads, making it almost impossible to even stand in. Instead, they chose the comfort (or lack thereof) of the FBI SUVs. Hotch climbed into one as Morgan climbed into the other, both immediately sitting in the driver’s seat and laying it back as far as they could go.

Being mid January, there was a strong chill in the air despite the persistent shining of the sun above them. Hotch wrapped his suit jacket tighter around himself, trying to maintain any sense of warmth that the thin clothing gave him. His eyes fell shut and he attempted to fight back every thought that was swarming around in his mind, loud and obnoxious and refusing to leave. It felt like hours of trying to quieten his mind, though in reality it mustn’t have been more than thirty minutes, when the passenger side door opened. His head instantly turned, eyes flying open as the lack of sleep made him more paranoid but less alert.

“I’m guessing I’m not the only one who can’t sleep,” Morgan said as he dropped into the seat next to him, door slamming shut behind him.

Hotch grunted, eyes closing again. “I knew I should’ve just stayed there and continued working.”

“No, you still did the right thing coming out here. I want to be in there just as much as you do but we’re no help if we can’t even stand upright.”

He hummed non-committedly. “Maybe so. Doesn’t make me okay with being out here while my team is in there working.” Typically, Hotch would never speak to a subordinate in such a way. The lack of sleep, however, was really beginning to affect him, taking away his filter.

It was silent for a few beats, no sound to be heard in or out of the car, until Morgan finally spoke again.

“You know Reid doesn’t actually think you’re a narcissist, right?”

“I hardly think it matters. I’m his boss, he’s allowed to view me in whatever way he does and I have no say in that.”

“But you’re not just his boss, you’re his friend. He had to name someone so that Hankel would stop the roulette. He did it as a means of survival and that’s it. There’s nothing more to it.”

Hotch swallowed hard, still refusing to open his eyes. If he didn’t see Morgan there, he could almost pretend he was talking to himself.

“I just… he’s so young, Morgan, and he’s been through so much already.”

“I know,” Morgan replied quietly. “It’s awful just watching him go through it, I can’t imagine what it actually feels like to be trapped there.”

“We haven’t even seen a video of him in hours and I don’t- It’s not like I actually want to see him being hurt but I’m going out of my mind wondering why it’s been so long.”

Morgan sighed. “I wish I had an answer for you, man. I get it, though. Seeing him is awful but at least we know he’s alive. Right now we’re stuck in this weird limbo where Spencer Reid is both alive and not alive and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Schrödinger's Spencer.”

Morgan didn’t reply for a moment but when he did, it was with a snort. “That’s such a Reid joke to make.”

Hotch let out a light chuckle. “I suppose it is,” he said, his head gently falling back to rest against the seat behind him, “and I suppose that’s a sign for me to go to sleep.”

“Aaron Hotchner cracking jokes? Absolutely a sign to sleep. Good night.”

A small smile made its way to Hotch’s face for hardly a second but the weight that had been taken off his chest felt more permanent. “Good night, Morgan.”

It only took a few minutes after that for the two of them to drift off into a less than restful slumber, the anxiety still flowing through their veins making it difficult to stay asleep. It was enough, though, and by time they walked back into the house, they were ready to start the search again. “What have we got?” Hotch asked as they entered the room.

“Nothing new,” Prentiss informed them, a restrained disappointment seeping into her words. “We haven’t got any more videos, we’ve searched everywhere that’s connected to him, and there have been no new murders.”

“So another dead end." Morgan's fists clenched by his side but he managed to hold himself back from hitting anything.

“I know it’s difficult,” Gideon said, “but we just have to wait it out. I’m aware that the last thing any of us wants is to sit around doing nothing but until we have something to go off, there’s nothing we can do but be patient.”

“Patient,” Morgan murmured with a small scoff. “Right. I’ll just be patient while my best friend is off being tortured.” His eyes drifted around the room, lending on the stack of books sitting on the table. “I guess I’ll go through Hankel’s writing again, see if we missed anything.”

Hotch watched as he reached for one of the books. “I’ll help.”

---------

“We’ll have to watch the videos again.”

Every head turned to face Gideon. They’d spent the past few hours reading the books, over and over and over, looking for any little thing they could’ve missed. Garcia had conducted the most in-depth cyber search possible, trying to find anybody and anything that could be connected to either of the Hankel men. Everything had come up empty. The only thing they had yet to do was rewatch the tapes. They knew it was the next logical step but the thought of watching Reid go through that pain all over again made them feel sick to their stomachs.

“JJ, Garcia, neither of you need to stay for this. Go see if you can get some food together for us, it’s been a while since any of us have eaten a real meal. I know it’s already dark but take a car and see if you can find something. Prentiss, Morgan, you’re free to join them if you’d rather but your eyes would be of use here.”

Once Garcia had loaded the videos ready to be played, her and JJ followed Hotch’s orders, though not without some hesitation from the latter. Morgan and Prentiss immediately sat down without a word, prepared to watch them regardless of how much they wished it wasn’t necessary. It was an unspoken agreement to not acknowledge the way everybody froze momentarily as the first video started, an image of Reid coming onto the screen, clear signs of physical trauma evident.

“The other heathens are watching. Choose a sinner to die, and I’ll say the name and address of the person to be saved.”

“I won't choose who gets slaughtered and have you leave their remains behind like a poacher.”

“Did you see that?” Morgan asked. “The way he looked into the camera before he spoke. What did he say - ‘leave their remains behind like a poacher’? I think that’s a clue.”

Gideon considered him for a moment. “I think you might be right. Here,” he handed him his notebook and pen, “write it down.” He played the next video.

“Tobias, help me.”

“He can’t help you, he’s weak!”

All four of the viewers flinched as skin hit against skin; as whimpers and cries fell from Reid’s lips. Morgan’s fist hitting the table was ignored as the agent on screen fell back in his chair, head hitting the floor with great force.

“You came back to life.”

“Raphael.”

Their focus didn’t leave the screen, watching intently as Reid stared God’s Will directly in the eye and didn’t flinch, God’s angel holding the trigger.

“Choose.”

“I choose Aaron Hotchner. He’s a classic narcissist.”

Hotch exhaled deeply but didn’t stop watching, listening to the words that had been playing on repeat in his mind since he’d first heard them. Morgan’s mouth opened as if to speak when Prentiss suddenly raised a hand in front of her, stopping whatever he was going to say. The men looked up at her and she put a finger to her lips, her other hand pointing in the direction of the room next door. They remained silent, ears straining to hear what Prentiss was referring to. It was a few moments later that they realised what it was - a small thump.

Immediately alert, they all reached for their weapons, drawing them up and preparing to defend each other. Hotch crept forward, signaling for the others to get behind him. He moved soundlessly, slowly approaching the door frame that led to the front room. Once at the edge, he glanced into the room, immediately spotting the man standing on the other side.

Morgan moved to stand next to his boss. Gideon and Prentiss would’ve taken the only other door in the room, leaving him with no exit, but there was no path to get there without passing him. Instead, they pressed close, ready to charge in behind Hotch and Morgan. As they were about to move, the man turned around.

“Aaron Hotchner,” Hankel said, voice low but strong, back straight as he stared down his target. “You’re a sinner. Job 15:31. ‘Let him not deceive himself and trust in emptiness, vanity, falseness, and futility, for these shall be his recompense.’ You must repent.”

His arm hadn’t raised more than a few inches before four different guns went off, bullets lodging into several different parts of his body. He dropped.

Gideon immediately pushed forward, crouching down to check the man’s pulse. “Dead,” he told them.

“Did you hear what he said?” Hotch’s voice was subdued, his gaze fixed on the body on the floor.

“What about it?” Prentiss asked.

“Job 15:31. He said it was Job 15:31. Reid said it was Genesis 23:4. Why would he get it wrong?”

“He’s under a lot of stress. It’s understandable if he misremembered something,” Morgan answered, though he sounded sceptical.

“But he didn’t misremember it. He misquoted it. So what does Genesis 23:4 actually say?” They all hurried to the bookcase that contained bibles, Hotch getting there first and instantly grabbing the closest copy to flick through the pages, sparing hardly a glance at each. “Here,” he said, passing his book to Morgan, “Genesis, chapter twenty-three, verse four. Read it.”

Morgan took the offered bible, finding where Hotch gestured before reading it out loud. “I am a stranger and a sojourner with you. Give me property, forbear a place among you that I may bury my dead out of my sight.”

“He wouldn’t get it wrong unless it was on purpose.” Shock and relief stretched his lips into a smile.

“He’s in a cemetery.” Prentiss realised.

At that moment, the door opened and in walked the two that had left earlier, each with a bag on their arm. “Oh my God,” Garcia gasped as she saw the man on the floor, bag falling next to her feet with a thud. “Who is that?!”

“Is that Hankel?” JJ placed her bag down next to Garcia’s but paid no more attention to the food it contained, her focus entirely on the face that was currently surrounded by a pool of its own blood.

“It is,” Hotch answered quickly. “Garcia, check to see if there have been any reports of poaching in the last couple of days.”

“Okay, okay, uh…” She trailed off as she rushed to the computer with the others following, taking care to not step in the blood. It took less than a minute for her to set up the system and conduct her search. “A farmer reported two sheep being slaughtered on his property.”

“Where are we talking?”

Garcia zoomed in on the map in response to Morgan’s question.

“What’s that patch of green there?”

“Marshall Parish,” Hotch replied to JJ. “I think it’s an old plantation.”

Emily leaned forward, catching everyone’s attention. “Wait. Tobias wrote in his journals about staying clean and keeping away from Marshall.”

“Does that say that there’s a cemetery on the ground?” Gideon pointed at the screen.

“We’ve found him,” Hotch breathed. “We’re going to save him.”

-------

“FBI!”

As soon as Hotch’s foot hit the floor after kicking the door open, he was moving. Along with some of the local police, the team entered the cabin, guns drawn and eyes on alert as they searched for any sign of their missing agent.

“Clear!”

“Oh! What’s that smell?” Prentiss scrunched her face up against the overwhelming scent in the air, casting her glance around the room to find the source. She spotted it on the floor: a pile of burnt fish. The smell threatened to take over their senses as they coughed against it, fighting the urge to leave immediately.

“Let’s spread out. He has to be here somewhere. Let’s go!” Hotch stormed ahead, looking as though the stench hadn’t had the slightest effect on him.

Gideon watched as everybody fanned out to search the grounds as his eyes took one last look over the room, being drawn to the pair of handcuffs laying haphazardly on a chair that he clearly recognised from the videos. Spencer had been sitting in that chair. He’d had those handcuffs on him. He’d been surrounded by that smell. So where was he now? He couldn’t have let himself out of those cuffs, but Hankel wouldn’t have just let him roam free.

With that thought in mind, he left into the darkness of the winter night, the chill immediately seeping into his bones despite the thick clothing he had on to protect himself. An image of Spencer, as frozen as the real Charles Hankel, pushed its way to the front of his mind completely unbidden. He did his best to shove it back, knowing it wouldn’t help. It didn’t leave.

They scoured the cemetery, searching over every inch looking for anything that might tell them where Spencer was before it was too late. Hankel must’ve left him hours ago without a fire or any other means of warmth, it was no wonder that he’d finally become desperate enough to leave the cabin on his own accord despite the great risks it presented him, Hotch thought.

He was aware that Spencer could’ve made it to a road by now but judging by the presumed lack of shoes and warmth, as well as his recently sustained injuries, he felt that it was reasonable to assume that he hadn’t gotten far. Just to cover all bases, he sent some local officers further up, closer to where they’d arrived from.

They’d been searching for over twenty minutes when they finally found something. A patch of soil, packed more freshly than that around it. It had been recently planted within the last few days.

“Morgan!” Hotch yelled at the top of his lungs, above the noise of everybody else calling out a different name. He instantly dropped to his knees and began clawing at the dirt, scraping it out and throwing it in random directions, not paying any mind to anybody around him. A body dropped down next to him and hands joined his own but neither looked at the other, concentrating only on the cold ground below them.

They dug and they dug until they hit something - something colder than the dirt it was surrounded with, something much paler. They continued tearing at the floor even more savagely than before, desperation leaking through at the sight of the foreign object. Fear gripped them tighter than the cold did, making them work harder and faster until suddenly a white cloth was visible, soon followed by a familiar dark red.

“No, no, no, no,” Morgan muttered, each word faster and louder than the last. “Come on, man!”

Hotch pulled away dirt from higher up, more gently this time, though he refused to acknowledge what could be under it until he finally saw it. A face, skin soft and almost glistening in the moonlight, marred by dirt and blood. Spencer.

He wedged an arm underneath his back as soon as the opportunity presented itself, Morgan having pulled enough of the ground off of his arms for it to not cause any harm, and he pulled. Once the top half of his body was fully out of the dirt, his hand raised on its own accord in search of a pulse as Morgan set to work on the CPR.

No pulse.

His breath caught in his throat but his fingers didn’t move. He was vaguely aware of the ringing in his ears but he ignored it.

“Please, Spencer. Please,” he forced out through gritted teeth. “Wake up. Come on. Wake up!”

“Not like this, pretty boy. Not like this.”

Morgan hadn’t stopped the CPR, going harder than what was necessary. It didn’t escape Hotch’s notice that any CPR at all may be unnecessary as he took a closer look at the boy in front of him. His eyes were closed and his skin was freezing to the touch. At first Hotch assumed that he must have been buried only hours before, likely just before Hankel left on his final self-righteous mission. Now, though, as he stared at the blue-tinted pallor of the agent in front of him, he doubted it.

Spencer Reid had been dead for at least a day now.

“Morgan, stop,” he muttered half-heartedly, his line of sight not moving from eyes that wouldn’t open. He’d never forced Spencer to make eye contact with him before but he was wishing with everything he had that just this once, he would; that just this once, Spencer would open his eyes and stare right back at him.

The aggressive panting by his ear hadn’t stopped, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. What if Spencer opened his eyes for only a second as he looked away? What if he missed Spencer’s final breath? What if-

“Morgan. You have to stop.” His voice was weak but it was all he could muster, still not looking away but being able to see the hands still pumping down on Reid’s chest as he periodically reached up to perform mouth-to-mouth. “Morgan.” He didn’t stop. “Morgan!”

He finally snatched his eyes away from those in front of him, becoming frozen in place as he watched Morgan lose control of the tears rolling down his face. Small sobs fell from his lips but he was clearly holding them back, trying so hard to save a dead man. It didn’t look as though he’d even heard Hotch’s words.

With a shaking breath, Hotch put his hand on Morgan’s arm, not surprised when it was instantly thrown off in a rather violent manner. He put his hand back, holding tighter but still getting thrown off. He forced himself to sit back, body threatening to collapse under the stress of it. Harsher than before, he gripped Morgan’s arm and pulled. Nothing. He pulled again. Nothing.

“Morgan, he's dead. You have to stop.”

Morgan furiously shook his head but otherwise didn’t acknowledge him, leaving Hotch with only one other option. He wrapped both of his arms around the man’s torso and pulled as hard as he could, refusing to let go no matter how much the struggling man tried to get away. Morgan’s arms flailed wildly but Hotch didn’t budge.

“You did all you could, Morgan. You did all you could. There’s nothing more to do. I’m sorry,” he murmured into his ear, the low volume not entirely on purpose.

“No!” Morgan shouted, fighting harder against the restraints of Hotch’s arms. “We can’t just give up on him!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he repeated, finding himself unable to stop apologising despite the fact that the words were unable to reach the ears of the person they were meant for.

“Hotch, we can’t- we can’t just give up. We can’t just give up.” At this point Morgan had stopped struggling, both against Hotch and the sobs that were now ripping their way out of his throat. His head buried itself into Hotch’s shoulder as his hands came up to grip onto the arms around him, his legs slightly curling up as wails of agony tore through him.

Around them stood the rest of the team, watching the scene in front of them unfold whilst knowing that there was nothing they could do to help. JJ and Penelope were wrapped around each other, tears falling freely from their eyes as they listened to the slowly quieting cries of the usually hard-to-break agent. Emily was completely frozen, her breath slowing to almost a complete stop. Gideon’s face remained unchanged, though the tears blurring his vision were hard to miss. He took one more look at the man he considered his son, and he turned around, walking away back into the darkness.

Hotch’s arms loosened but didn’t let go of the man inside of them. His apologies hadn’t stopped even as his eyes became less focused, his mind trying to take him somewhere far away but failing to take him further than that cabin. It was ironic, he thought, that a house belonging to someone so dedicated to his worship could be so void of God. No, there was no God here, but there had been an angel, and he’d taken Spencer Reid away from them.

“I’m sorry,” Hotch whispered. “I should’ve understood.”

#hiii<3 #i wish i spent more time on this i might rewrite it a little before i post it on archive but idk yet #i know that there are mistakes in this pls forgive them i havent edited this yet #cmficweek

36 notes · View notes

corvidiss · 3 years

Text

On the Creature’s early influences and how they affected his view of relationships.

(Two TL;DRs at the bottom; one as a detailed summary, one as a far briefer summary.)

I will refer to Frankenstein’s creation as the Creature rather than Adam in this essay, as A) not all people call him Adam, and B) it will avoid confusion with Adam from Paradise Lost.

When thinking about the maturity and motives of the Creature, I was compelled to think on his request for a bride, and his early influences. My thoughts on the matter follow:

The Creature grew up (though his body was adult, his mind was arguably reset and had to grow like a child’s) with no guidance from any parental figure or friend. Instead of being shown the ways of the world by someone, he had to find his way himself; and of the few human things that influenced him, three stand out: Society’s reaction to him, the epic poem Paradise Lost, and the De Lacey family.

Society’s reaction to the Creature was the first, and arguably most important, human factor that affected the development of his worldview. He is immediately abandoned by his creator, and shunned and attacked by the people he stumbles across. Later, Felix De Lacey attacks him violently. All this shows the Creature that he is unaccepted by humanity, and the constant denial of the kindness and love which should come with family (his father, Victor) or familiarity (the family he helped and grew to love) is sure to make him wonder if he’s unworthy of it. His experiences subtly teach him that he is incapable of being loved by humanity, however much he is capable of loving them, and however much he longs for it.

The second factor I’ll address is Paradise Lost, which the Creature says had a profound effect on him. I’ve not read Paradise Lost myself, but I’ve gained the best impression I can from plot summaries and thematic analyses online.

(It is worth mentioning that the Creature relates to Satan – “I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. In Paradise Lost, when Satan comes to Earth to take revenge on God by causing the downfall of his newest and most favoured creations, he is moved to great envy at the sight of Adam and Eve’s innocent happiness; a feeling the Creature will come to know all too well.)

In Paradise Lost, there is no depiction of familial love; only of divine love (of God) and romantic love, and the former is presented as more important than the latter. But the Creature has been shunned by God’s creations, and has been denied the love of his creator, whom he might compare to Adam and Eve’s God – so perhaps the Creature sees divine love as inaccessible to him, and romantic love his only remaining option in a theoretical companion.

Furthermore, when Eve eats the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, Adam chooses to do so too, because he feels his connection to Eve is so strong that they must share each other’s fate, whatever it may be. The Creature has never experienced this kind of devoted connection himself, nor has anyone sacrificed anything for him. Reading about this connection, he must have longed for such a thing himself – a thing, he sees, which has its source in romantic love.

And finally, when Adam and Eve leave their paradise, they are horrified at what they have doomed humanity to, but are comforted by the knowledge that their offspring will have revenge on Satan, and by each other’s love. While Adam’s choice to eat the fruit as well, valuing romantic love over divine love, is depicted as bad in Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve’s romantic connection is shown to be strong enough to keep them happy when they are expelled from their home and the favour of their creator. The Creature might see in this, that if he had a partner like Adam had Eve, he would be able to live with and even enjoy his own exile from humanity.

And thirdly, the De Laceys. Here is the Creature’s only source of what familial love is – and while he sees it to be a comfort to the family, it cannot truly combat the sadness and despondency that hangs over them. They spend evenings listening to the father’s music or reading aloud, but the happiness it affords them, and the happiness it affords the Creature, both fade soon after.

When Safie – Felix’s romantic love – comes along, however, the family’s spirits are brightly restored and their despair disappears. They teach and welcome her – and by doing so teach and, in a way, welcome the Creature too; everything is better for Safie’s presence. Where familial love was inadequate, this appearance of romantic love banishes the family’s sorrow.

Regardless of the true meanings and causes behind the De Lacey’s sorrow and return to happiness, these were the first impressions the Creature got, and so must have shaped his view of the world.

The Creature might be compared to children raised on classic Disney movies of princesses and princes and the portrayal of romantic love in modern media – seeking to enter a romantic relationship before they know what it truly means, or before they are ready, or even before they know true friendship. He grew up an outcast from society, and with sources that taught him of the power of romance, and not its nuances, or what else is possible and just as powerful.

As a result, he sees the only chance of gaining happiness to lie in romantic love. He no longer wishes for the acceptance of his creator – which he has come to see will never be granted to him, and perhaps even begins to believe that he does not deserve it – and instead demands the creation of another like him, so he can have this romantic love which he has been taught, inadvertently, is the only thing that can lift him from his despair.

In short, he's a child who is misguided about relationships: Paradise Lost showed blissful harmony (something which does not occur perfectly in most romances), and the imbalance of power and knowledge between woman and man. While somewhat in keeping with the sexist views of the time, this is a bad starting point for forming romantic relationships when one has had barely any contact with people, let alone the personal interactions necessary for forming one's own opinions on the difference, or lack thereof, in qualities between genders. Not only this, but he is simply not ready for a romantic relationship, especially with someone of an adult age, given his incredibly small experience of relationships and of the world as a whole – and therefore shouldn't be pushed into romantic relationships until he gains more experience as he grows, just like any other child.

Thank you for reading. :)

(TL;DRs beneath cut.)

TL;DR 1:

The Creature was raised with three main human influences: neglect from humanity, Paradise Lost, and the De Lacey family.

The neglect he experienced (Victor's abandonment, the villagers' attacks, Felix's attack) taught him that he is only going to be denied the kindness and love that should come with family (Victor) or familiarity (the family he helped for so long).

Paradise Lost contains only divine love (of God) and romantic love, and since the Creature has been denied the love of his own creator, he might see that romantic love is all that is left to him. The connection between Adam and Eve is strong – the Creature, who surely longs for such a connection, would see its source in romantic love. When Adam and Eve leave their paradise, their love makes it bearable – if the Creature had that love, perhaps, he might think, his own shunned existence would be easier, or even enjoyable.

The De Laceys' familial love is present, but seems inadequate to combat the sadness and despair that hangs over them. But when Safie, a romantic love, arrives, everything gets better and the happiness is restored. Romantic love seems, to the developing Creature’s mind, stronger than familial, whether it be true or not.

The Creature was raised with the concept of romance as a cure for sadness, perhaps similarly to how children grow up on the presentation of love in the modern media. He has come to see romantic love as the only thing that can give him happiness, without knowing its nuances or even what friendship is.

He's a child who is misguided about romantic relationships, and who simply can't be ready for them, given his incredibly small experience of the world and the people that inhabit it.

TL;DR 2:

The Creature’s view of the world was shaped by the few distant human influences he had in his developmental early age – the neglect of humanity, Paradise Lost, and the De Lacey family. All of these contributed towards the idea that romantic love was the Creature’s only remaining chance at happiness, while not teaching him the values of friendship and the subtleties of romance and love in any form.

He was misguided by his influences and convinced that romance was the only thing that could grant him happiness; but with so few experiences of people and the world as a whole, he is not only drastically ill-suited for a romantic relationship, especially with someone of an adult age, he is simply not ready, and therefore shouldn't be pushed into romantic relationships until he gains more experience as he grows, just like any other child.

#frankenstein #frankenstein book #frankenstein adam #adam frankenstein #frankensteins creature #character study #character thoughts #long post #long text post #essay #victor frankenstein #adam #paradise lost #analysis #book analysis #character analysis #character ramblings

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ravnicaforgoblins · 3 years

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Ravnica for Goblins

Alignment

Figuring out where on the spectrum of beliefs, morals, and neutrality your character falls can be a challenge. One individual’s Chaotic Good is another’s Lawful Evil. To help clarify things, most campaigns include alignment for significant NPCs, and one can often draw a line between that NPC and that alignment. This doesn’t apply to every NPC, but the more important someone is, the more they come to represent a specific section of the moral grid in a campaign.

Ravnica does this as well, with most of the alignment chart represented by a Guildmaster. This isn’t completely uniform, however, so there’s wiggle room for an NPC to lean one way or the other as fits the story. There are some pretty safe bets, however, who can be counted on to check certain boxes at all times.

Isperia of the Azorius Senate: Lawful Neutral

Isperia represents the goal of the Azorius; objective devotion to upholding the laws as they are written. She was elected to her position because of her ability to look passed right & wrong, instead focusing solely on interpreting Ravnica’s 10d6 of Psychic damage legal system for all disputes.

Lazav of House Dimir: Neutral Evil

Lazav is the Dimir at their most annoying but least murderous. Blatant disregard for everyone’s privacy, but preference for stealing, secrets, and information over assassination. Lazav infiltrates every Guild, including his own, always determined to stay several steps ahead of any potential threat. This is not to say he won’t kill people if necessary, but his is a cold, “bloodstained calculus” methodology. It’s never personal.

Rakdos of the Cult of Rakdos: Chaotic Evil

On this plane, Rakdos is the living embodiment of Chaotic Evil, a title he takes very seriously. It’s just about the only thing he takes seriously, as he prefers to live without rules and have everyone else do the same. Unrestrained hedonism and mayhem are his bread & butter. You do what you want, whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want, regardless of what anyone or anything else says. No restrictions, no inhibitions, no hesitation. Encouraging this kind of destructive chaos in the streets is the only thing keeping Rakdos from embracing more orthodox Chaotic Evil behavior of slaughtering millions, enslaving thousands, and bowing to no one.

The Obzedat of the Orzhov Syndicate: Lawful Evil

Hard to believe there can be something worse than an actual Demon given permission to encourage every sin imaginable, but that is what the Ghost Council are. The Obzedat exist to stretch, bend, and twist every law designed to maintain order, neutrality, or justice so as to benefit themselves. What’s worse is how the Orzhov play innocent when they do it. Unlike the Dimir or the Rakdos who accept and even embrace society’s interpretation of their actions, the Orzhov refuse to be seen as anything but humble, spiritual, gracious public servants. The very antithesis of what they actually are; arrogant, miserly, manipulative bastards. They will point out exactly which laws they are not breaking, which laws there is insufficient evidence to prove they are breaking, and which laws prevent you from punching them in the face right now.

Trostani of the Selesnya Conclave: Neutral Good

If there’s one thing to be said for Selesnya, it’s that they are rarely the problem. The Conclave is perfectly content to keep to their fields & forests most of the time and focus solely on building up their own Guild. In a city where every Guild has a problem with every other Guild, Selesnya is the only one who at least tries to get along with everyone else. They don’t tend to get involved in matters that don’t concern them, but theirs is always a safe haven for those who seek it. Trostani is made up of three dryads representing Harmony, Life, and Order. You don’t get much more Neutral Good than that. The only problem is that Trostani basically never leave their Guildhall, so their influence only spreads so far. The reason they can live so peacefully is because so little of the chaotic city life overlaps into theirs.

Besides them, everyone has wiggle room and gray area to move around in. Both Niv-Mizzet and Borborygmos are canonically Chaotic Neutral, but with their most prominent personality traits being vanity & anger, respectively, the “Neutral” part of that can go out the window quick. Still, almost every Guild has at least a semblance of a position somewhere on the chart to start from. You can basically count on a member of each Guild to be at least:

Azorius Senate: Lawful

This is the Guild that writes the laws of Ravnica, after all. They literally draw their power from this ancient legal code, so it makes sense that, whether an Azorius leans more towards Good, Evil, or Neutrality, they do so lawfully.

Boros Legion: Good

If the Azorius follow the intellectual letter of the law, the Boros follow the passionate spirit for which said law was originally written. Justice, not legal-ese. Sometimes the law is good enough, but sometimes it fails its citizens. A Boros should be an inspiring force for Good, whether Lawful or Chaotic depends on the individual.

House Dimir: Neutral

The best a Dimir operative can hope to achieve, morally speaking, is neutrality. If you are working for this Guild, you are lying & stealing. Odds are you are infiltrating another Guild to find/steal information to report back to your superior(s). Not every Dimir agent does this willingly, however. Maybe a character only became a Dimir operative after finding out their mentor was. Maybe a character had nowhere else to turn and no one else to depend on. Maybe they just needed House Dimir’s connections to get them close enough to someone in another Guild who wronged them. Whatever the motivation, cling to that gray area of neutrality like your life depends on it. It’s all you’ve got.

Gruul Clans: Chaotic

Gruul are many things. “Lawful” is not one of them. If you’re a member of a Gruul Clan, you’ve definitely got a bit of a temper on you and a strong disregard for authority. Now, a Gruul can absolutely be a force for good, or, conversely, evil. Maybe you joined the Gruul after your ancestral home was bulldozed over for a smelly Izzet facility. Maybe you had a mental breakdown after decades of trying to uphold law in a city where the laws mean jack shit unless there’s a guy in blue sitting at his desk. Maybe you got tired of planting trees and getting stepped on. Maybe you don’t like the pretentiousness of so-called “artists”. Maybe you just like hitting things. Whatever your reason, the Gruul will welcome another anarchist.

Golgari Swarm: Chaotic/Evil/Neutral

The Golgari Swarm are the first Guild where you’re really going to find a lot of diversity in alignment. Some definitely fall into the chasm of Chaotic Evil Necromancers, others stand firmly in the fields of True Neutral Rot Farmer, and some idly wander between the two. Necromancy is pretty normal in Golgari society, and “Evil” can be considered a harsh word to describe it. It’s definitely more normalized in the Undercity than it is on the surface. A lot of typically Evil behavior is like that for the Golgari, lest we forget that this society of giant bugs, necromancers, zombies, medusa, etc also run the sewage system and food stamps program for the city. That said, there are definitely Golgari with sufficient ambition/motivation to become ready-made Big Bads. What is a Lich, after all, but a wizard who says, “No, I’m too important to die!”

Izzet League: Chaotic

If there’s one predictable aspect of the Izzet, it’s that they are unpredictable. For a Guild whose founding principle is “I wonder what would happen if....”, it’s best to accept that you’ll never be Lawful. Your job, as it is, is to look at laws (nature, physics, etc) and poke at them with electrodes to see what happens. Your focus will always be on things that haven’t been written down yet, as opposed to what already has. It’s almost literally impossible to be Lawful and Izzet for that reason alone. As far as Good, Evil, and Neutral go; that’s up to the individual. This experiment could replicate food so we never have to eat Golgari rations again! Or it could replicate essential personnel to prevent understaffing! Or, it could even replicate.... ME (cue maniacal laughter).

Orzhov Syndicate: Lawful

The Orzhov, like the Azorius, draw their power and influence from the laws of Ravnica. Evil is expected, though not mandatory, but Lawful is a requirement. An Orzhov who doesn’t know their way around Ravnica’s laws is a loose end, and the Orzhov don’t allow loose ends to jeopardize their schemes & ambitions. One can absolutely be a Lawful Neutral Orzhov, also known as an Accountant, but such individuals rarely find their way into a life of adventure. A Lawful Good Orzhov can exist, but your greatest adversary will be the large majority of your Guild who sees you as a potential threat to their illicit activities. In which case, you’ll want to know those laws even better than they do.

Cult of Rakdos: Chaotic

Chaos is mandatory, evil is encouraged. By “Evil”, we mean “things people tell you are Evil”. Anything you would do while drunk you should be able to do at all times! There’s really only three rules in the Cult of Rakdos:

Rule #1, Rakdos is #1

Rule #2, JUST DO IT

Rule #3, Don’t be boring

Being Neutral breaks Rule 3, being Good breaks Rule 2 and/or 3, and being Lawful breaks all 3 rules. Which reminds me of the fourth rule:

Rule #4, NEVER break Rule #1

Truthfully, being Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral is perfectly fine as long as you don’t impede on someone else’s hedonism without a reason, or lack thereof. As long as you’re being free & crazy, that’s what really matters.

Selesnya Conclave: Good

As stated with Trostani, Selesnya is a pretty consistent force of Good, if nothing else. They don’t really do hate, you know? Life in the Conclave is pretty uniformly Good, so why make trouble? Why can’t everyone just be Good? In short; ‘cause they don’t wanna, none of your business, go hug a tree, and/or because fire is FUN. Lawful fits some individuals but can just get in the way for others. Neutral is pretty solid but some things must call you to act. Chaotic is if you really want to embrace being a Nature Warrior in a planet-sized cityscape. Selesnya is the Guild for goodie two-shoes, as if that’s a bad thing.

Simic Combine: Any

The Simic Combine is the one Guild that can honestly fall anywhere on the alignment chart. The Guild started out as Doctors, Naturalists, and preservers of life. Now it also operates large-scale bioengineering. You can have a Lawful Good Simic Paladin committed to preserving life and health, a True Neutral Simic Forcemage (Druid) dedicated to living a simple life bolstering plant growth, or a Chaotic Evil Simic Wizard who has decided on everyone’s behalf that flippers and gills are now mandatory. Just like science can be used for great Good, great Evil, or mundane routine, the Simic Combine can turn its experiments to any purpose, depending on the individual. And whereas the Izzet are firmly Chaotic, the Simic have the foresight to think ahead before they try an experiment. You can be anything you want in the Simic Combine, just plan it out.

#ravnica for goblins #ravnica #goblins #d&d #dnd #5e #alignment #roleplaying #dungeons and dragons #dungeons & dragons #good #evil #lawful #neutral #guilds

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pomegranates-and-blood · 4 years

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νοσταλγία (Chapter 12)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Summary: This is a retelling/romantization of the Greek myth of Persephone’s abduction with Ivar as Hades and you as Persephone. The Reader character is a Byzantine woman, follower of the Greek Pantheon/Religion, and a devoted follower of Persephone. This takes place after 5A, but the universe of this is a little changed in relation with the series, of course. Thank you for giving it a chance, hope you enjoy!

Word Count: 4.2k

Warnings: The usual

A/N: Hi, so...either in this chapter I completely dissapoint you or I pleasantly surprise you, I’m very much hoping for the latter lol. I would love to hear your thoughts on this, cause I’m an insecure little fuck and I’m very afraid you’ll all hate this chapter and where the story goes from now on lol

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius @heavenly1927 @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax @pieces-by-me

Decided to post this a day earlier cause ffs, between the fucking election and minks with covid and destiel and putin, the world doesn’t make sense anymore. So fuck it, have some Ivar :)

“Word has it that the King has made you a free woman.” The girl whispers, handing you a piece of bread and sitting beside you, looking out at the stars.

“Mhm.”

“We’ve known you were more than a prisoner since the moment you arrived, though.” She quips quietly.

“Oh.” You can only mutter, but the surprise is written in your face.

Freydis smiles, warm and a little cold at the same time, “It is written in the way you walk, witch. You were never a slave, were you?”

“If you are asking if the Saxons kept me a prisoner, the answer is no. That privilege seems to be reserved for your King.” If your last words drip with venom and anger, she does not mention it. You dare think she understands.

“I was. But now, like you, I am free,” Freydis sentences, and this does bring your attention back to her eyes. Depthless blue eyes, perverse and innocent, relentless and broken. When the girl leans closer, you don’t move. Her words are barely a whisper, but carry the strength of the vow you hissed at Stithulf, “Neither you or me will die slaves to men.”

“To whom, then?”

“The Gods. Yours or mine, I do not know,” She answers simply, fierce when she hisses the words at you, “But we mustn’t settle with mortal men. What we have suffered, it has to…mean something. It has to mean we are destined for more, that we are more.”

“Sometimes pain is just pain, Freydis.” You offer quietly, but her mind is set. You wonder for a moment if these thoughts were what made her spirit survive her time as a slave.

“No,” She shakes her head, stubborn, “We are broken because our fate is to be strong, we are…we are defiled because we are to rise above it.”

You roll your eyes, and even if the conversation remains quiet in the dead of night your voice is strong when you argue, “Did Freyja release you from your binds? Will Despoina release me from mine?” The pain lacers at your heart, but you insist, “No. I shall not be thankful for an unending fight to survive.”

“Yet you survive.”

She is not talking about surviving the Byzantine warriors’ almost successful attempt to silence you like they did your mother. She is not talking about surviving the pain of years, centuries, that marks your soul, a pain that Freydis may not know about but understands regardless.

No. She’s talking of the ‘freedom’ you have garnered here in her homeland, of what it means to be a free woman in a world that steps over the ones that cannot fight like men. She is talking of surviving Ivar the Boneless.

As your eyes meet, different stories, different agonies, and different destinies meet as well; but you feel she understands, better than almost anyone, what guided your words, your steps, your promises, that made an army be laid at your feet, to make a mad King set you free.

“King Ivar was the one to free you.” You say quietly, leaning away from the girl. It is not even a question, is a realization. All her words, all her advice…she spoke from experience, more specific experience than you thought.

“He wasn’t a king then.”

A hopeless laugh leaves your lips, “What men like Ivar the Boneless need you to be, you become.” You repeat her words from a few weeks ago, a new meaning to them altogether.

The girl laughs as well, the sound dainty and musical even if it carries iron beneath, “Although now I realize you may have been too arrogant to lie.”

All you can offer her is a shrug and a sigh as you say, “I die on my own terms, with my own face, Freydis.”

“But you didn’t. Die, that is,” She insists, smile on her pale face that you find yourself starting to return in kind. Her hand settles on your knee and she squeezes and you wonder if it is in comfort or something else. “Whatever you are, he wants to keep for himself.”

You say nothing else, turning your gaze back into the sky outside, suddenly reminded of the circumstances that brought you here, of the invisible chains that still remain on you, of how you have failed to become what you ought to.

If we must, we will die. Resisting, like your mother and I taught you.

And yet you cower and accept scraps of freedom at the first chance you have. Shame and resentment fill your heart, and your mother’s favorite piece of jewelry hanging from your neck feels like a noose when your fingers toy with the old metal.

“Did you seduce him?” Freydis starts suddenly, dragging you away from your thoughts so quickly you find yourself disoriented.

You blink a couple of times before you can answer with anything other than a wordless sound to her question.

“What?”

She shrugs with one of her shoulders, drinking from her own cup of warm milk before explaining, “You earned your freedom, or whatever measure of it that you don’t seem to be happy with. Did you bed him for it?”

It should be insulting, but her clear eyes tell you she does not shame you for it. She seems almost…impressed. It still makes something churn at your insides, and you find yourself hating the world that bound her and made her a slave a little bit more.

“No,” You say, slowly, “Was I expected to?”

Did you? Is what your words whisper but you don’t dare voice, although you have an inkling that she hears it regardless. Her eyes remain on you for a few moments too long, and the start of a knowing smile curves at her lips.

The girl still shakes her head in response, “I was curious.”

“Why?” If you sound harsh, if what Sieghild calls your ‘Athenian nobility’ is heard in your tone, Freydis does not mention it.

“He wants you, you know that. Half of Kattegat wants you.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

She shrugs, “Word runs that he has never taken a woman to his bed. Earls have even gifted him noble women and slaves, but he never accepts them.

A part of you wants to ask why she is aware of all this. You remain silent however, looking back out at the stars and wondering why does she believe the King’s cock and its use or lack thereof is something you are interested in discussing.

“It’s not about beauty, the women brought in were the most beautiful I have seen,” She continues on, talking to herself as she recalls, “It’s also not about…power. Most I have seen wouldn’t be sharp-witted enough to try to get something out of him either.”

She seems to be willing to babble on, but a sharp voice interrupts you, no matter how quiet it is.

“Girl,” One of the older women chastises, gaze set on Freydis. “Eyes and ears follow the witch. Be careful.”

You are stunned into silence, as is the girl next to you, and when the quiet of night settles upon you, you can hear the rustling of leather and the deep breaths of soldiers set outside your door.

His guest. You guess to them being a guest just means a looser set of chains, or invisible shackles.

True fear settles in the girl’s pale eyes, and you reach to place a hand in her knee, placating her. The older woman, you do not know her name, motions so that you both move closer to the crackling fire and away from the windows.

“It will do you no good to gossip like this about any son of Ragnar, especially Ivar,” She advices, but a glint in her eye tells you of times in her youth spent just like this. She leans closer, and whispers, “And also, despite the rumors, you must remember he is a hot-blooded young man commanding an army, you oaf.”

“Maybe it’s about control,” The blonde ponders, side-glance directed at you. After a breath, she shrugs, “Maybe you were brought all the way here just to be fucked, witch.”

Freydis ends her sentence in a giggle, her voice quiet and eyes shining. The young girl behind the past suffering and fear.

The old woman smiles, and points towards you with her head, “She speaks like one of our own, she better fuck like one too.”

Her jest is well-meaning even if insulting, and used already to Sieghild’s equally brash humor, you only roll your eyes with a laugh.

The three of you continue exchanging secrets of this land and its people till the moon is high up the sky. It helps with the feeling of shame, the feeling of having betrayed your purpose; it helps, but it doesn’t quieten the voices that demand to know why you get the right to spend the night next to a warm fire laughing and exchanging stories while your people’s corpses are still fresh, while the survivors await the embrace of the incoming winter to let go of their strength.

When the whispers quieten, when the city sleeps, when you are left alone with your thoughts; you realize what a mistake you have made.

You were taught to fight, you were taught to resist. The Gods made you smart and ambitious, and it was for a reason. It may be Fate you are to cross paths with the Varangian, but it is not written that you are to be bound to him, you refuse to believe so.

You have fought with claws and teeth before, you have lied and kissed and promised to avoid bindings. There is no reason why you shouldn’t now, no reason why foolish thoughts and feelings should stop you from doing what you have before.

Fight. To return to your people. To remain free. To overcome.

And so, letting go of the guilt of not trying enough but with a new sort of guilt and shame settling upon you, you depart the apothecary towards the main hall in the dead of night.

You are not stupid, you know the Viking wants you, at least slightly, at least begrudgingly. And he knows he cannot get any political advantage from making you his wife, he may even lose power by making you queen. There aren’t many things he can force out of you, so that leaves your body.

So, if it is your body he wants, you will let him have it, in whatever way he sees fit.

When it is done, when the foreignness is no longer mysterious, when you make the allure of whatever it is dissipate; then it will be easier to make him see that this was not ordained by the Gods, not his and definitely not yours.

You thank the warrior that leads you to the quarters with a nod and a silent smile, wondering in the back of your mind when or how these men got directions that you are to be allowed in the King’s chambers when he hasn’t called for you.

It surprises you that he hasn’t yet gone to sleep, makes you wonder what he has entertained himself with. A foolish thought of it being a someone that entertains the King at night makes you clench your jaw.

Still, you stand in wait, letting curious eyes wander over the spacious room. When the uneven steps reach your ears, followed by the fainter footsteps of two slaves, you straighten your back and face the doorway.

King Ivar’s eyes widen when he finds you in the room, quickly moving over your form in the red dress before he dismisses the slaves with a gesture of his hand.

You keep your eyes on his, but there has never been a time you have shown less in your gaze. He sits down, discarding the crutch at his side, and you walk closer even though your legs shake and your hands tremble.

Playing games kept you from your freedom, but…playing games may keep you from chains this time.

You’d prefer iron shackles on your wrists and ankles for a thousand years if it meant not having to be an unwilling wife before Gods that, although you don’t worship, you respect and believe in.

Your steps falter, and your heart remembers the consequences of the last time you lied in exchange for freedom. The words in your head are promises that this is no different from Narses, even if Narses was kind, and sane, and you cared for him.

What men like Ivar the Boneless need you to be, you become.

You reach up, keeping your eyes on his, and let the dress drop down to the floor, leaving you bare to hungry blue eyes that immediately trace over your body.

His lips part before he speaks, and he seems to stammer for a moment before he asks, “W-What are you…?”

“I know you want me,” You offer, a little entranced by the desire, the fear, the struggle for control that you see written all over his face; taking a small step forward before you realize it. You shake yourself off your stupor, standing straighter. With what feels like your last breath before a defeated descent to Hades, you whisper, “You don’t have to make me your wife, whatever you want you can get without marrying me.”

Any wonder, any trace of desire and boyish vulnerability you could see written all over his face, shining in his hungry eyes; it all disappears with your words.

His expression hardens and his nose furrows on a snarl, his voice gravelly and almost disgusted as he motions dismissively towards you.

“Get dressed.”

You startle, and resist the urge to cover yourself with your hands.

“W-What?”

“I said get dressed. I do not want your pity.”

Your brow furrows along with your nose, and although with trembling hands you grab onto the linen and cover yourself, you still grit out,

“It’s not pity. It’s…desperation.”

“Desperation?”

“I cannot be bound to you, I cannot be made into your wife.” You try, and the pleading tone of your voice makes disgust at yourself churn at your insides.

“Are you ashamed you will have to be the wife to a cripple, hm? Disgusted?” He taunts, the flip of a coin and back into the cruel rage you have faced before, although with a different, more raw edge to it as he presses, “Is that it?”

And as before, the glimpse of something real, the victory of drawing something human out of the monster that bears the crown makes your own back straighten, your own voice turn into steel.

“That you think your legs are the reason I would have for not wanting to be your wife, King Ivar, tells me all I need to know about you.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” He spits out, and even as his raised voice puts you on edge, you still run your hands through your hair as you start placing, “Do not walk away from me!”

You turn back to him with wide eyes and quickened breath. But it is not fear, it’s rage. For a moment when your eyes meet you want to dare him to make you fear him, but the arrogance beats the desire to prove your foolish heart wrong, and you spit out,

“You have had me chained and humiliated; you have forced me to become something I do not want to!” Your nose furrows and your eyebrows crease, but your voice lowers and you settle the fury in your voice as you answer his question, “And you thinking me being against all this charade has anything to do with your legs makes me realize in your mind all of this,” You gesture around you, “is somehow alright.”

His nose furrows, his lip curls in a snarl before he argues, “It is Fate!”

“Why!? Because you say so!?” You shake your head, “Impressive a man as you may be, you are not yet a Manteion.”

“A what!?”

Of course he doesn’t know, how could he, how could anyone in this cold and foreign place know at all what you mean when you speak in your tongue, to your Gods, about your world.

Letting all the breath leave your lungs, you let yourself fall to the ground, hiding your face in your hands.

“Our worlds are so different, Ivar, how can you think that-…” You sigh, “I do not belong here, I do not belong here with you.”

“Well, you are here.”

You are here with me.

And his arrogance as he says it, his pride, his power, you have known those for a long time, you have seen them in familiar faces and strangers. You have been forced to accept them, accept their rule over you simply because of the way the world is, for too long now.

Your calves grow warmer before the fire, but even if you put your legs above the burning wood it wouldn’t feel as stinging and as burning as the red mark now on your cheek.

The reminder, the thought of it alone, makes your weak hands tremble and your eyes fill with useless tears.

“Tis your pride hurting more than your face, little one.” Sieghild starts, but even if there is the start of a jest in her words, there’s gravity in her voice.

“He had no right to-…”

“He did,” She interrupts. And it is the truth, and it makes you clench your jaw and look away from her green eyes. “You wounded his pride, most men don’t take kindly to that offense.”

You stay silent, because you know. And you know you spoke out of place, you know you acted like a child, wanting things out of your reach. You know you should have lowered your eyes, shut your mouth.

Still…

“Is what he said true?” You ask meekly, feeling the burn of shame at the base of your throat. “That they can…take me?”

“As a prisoner?” The Viking leans back on her bed, a crooked smile on her inked face, “They can try.”

“As a concubine.”

Your mother focuses on you, “You are my daughter, little one. They can force no binds on you.”

“What do you mean?”

Sieghild smiles, with that same smile that speaks of a world of liberties women where you come from could never even fathom.

“You need me to say yes!” You yell before you can stop the words from leaving your lips, and you can only watch with widened eyes and a hand over your treacherous mouth as Ivar the Boneless turns to look at you again, the arrogant ire shining in his clear eyes. You scramble to stand, your eyes wide and hand still somewhat covering your mouth.

“What?”

He heard you. This would be your opportunity to take back your words, to take back your resistance, to accept surrender. You waged war against the very Empire the last time you were asked to surrender, though.

“You need my consent for us to be married, Varangian,” You state instead, the words fast and your breath also. You stand up, hands tightened to fists. A flinch of anger passes over the King’s expression as he presses his lips together, irritated that you are apparently so bent on being free. Yes, truly scandalous of you. You swallow your own irritation down and insist, “I am a free woman, you can’t force me.

He considers you quietly for a moment, and before he has a chance to argue, you remind him,

“You won’t break a promise, so you won’t make me a slave,” Even if your voice shakes, you continue, “I-I know of your ways, of…of your Gods. This wasn’t arranged, and since I’m free you need me to say yes.”

He hears the words you don’t say: And I will say no.

After a moment of stubbornly considering you, the King merely shakes his head.

“You have already been given to me.”

“That Christian has no claims to me, and you know this.” You tell him, speak ing of Stithulf and his useless chains.

“I’m not talking about him,” Ivar says, cold smile on his face as he leans on his crutch and serves a goblet of mead. He lifts the cup to you in offering, but you remain in your spot. With a sigh of both disappointment and irritation, the King gulps down the drink and clarifies, “I’m talking about your mother.”

“My mother is dead.” You say without hesitation, although a pit of fear starts opening at your stomach.

But he shakes his head, lifting a finger from his hold on the cup and pointing to you as he corrects, “I don’t mean the Greek one.”

“You are lying,” Is all you say as you look into Ivar’s eyes, your voice trembling as much as the rest of your body. Your nails dig into your palms but you cannot help it, you cannot tell your body to uncoil, not until you hear the truth. “You are lying to play with my head.”

“How would I know Sieghild Vorsdottir, King Rorik’s wife, famed shieldmaiden from the Danes, is the woman that raised you?” He offers, and with each word the ground under your feet dissolves more and more, “She came to me, told me she gave me your hand. I have witnesses.”

No, no, she would never. All those years, telling you to stand tall, teaching you not to bite your tongue, it cannot all have been for her to ditch you and sell you off to the first king you encounter.

You want to think this rationally, you want to remain calm and look for the truth but…

A part of you that will always be her child, that will always love her like the mother you lost too soon; that part of you leaves you with your hands shaking and your throat clogged with only one word.

Móðir…

“She would never do that, she…” You close your eyes with a deep breath, “If she did such a thing, she told you why.”

“She said she had to, that it was fate.”

“You are lying.” The words are choked, the last grasp of a dying hope.

“Would you stop with that? I am not lying.”

Sieghild’s sad and loving eyes on you, her hand holding your face, “I have asked Freya for help ever since we arrived in Scandinavia. She has answered.”

Frantic questions leave your lips, but in her smile there’s the same resignation you saw when she said goodbye as you readied to face the Byzantines for what was supposed to be your death, “The Seer’s words-…it does not matter anymore.”

“She said-…she knew all this time,” You choke out, wide eyes searching the nothing before you for answers, “Her visions, the Seer’s words, she…she knew.”

There’s a strange moment of hesitation, a breath of uncertainty where you think the Viking is trying to find a way to comfort you.

“Prophecies, visions…it is usually too late to change the result when we realize what the Seer’s words mean.” Is what he finally settles on saying.

Foolish, stubborn tears sting at your eyes, and it is with a shaky hand you reach to hold on tight to your mother’s necklace, despair cursing through your veins.

The Völva offers you a small smile, equally mocking and apologetic, “Run if you want to, fight, kick, scream. Fate will drag you home by the wrists, child. You know how this tale goes. The chariot’s pace will tear the world asunder as darkness goes looking for you.”

Your eyes trace over the skyline, almost frantically searching for an answer you know you will not find there.

“This…this place,” You look over the sea, feeling your chest tighten. “This was Ragnar’s pride. Sieghild’s tales…this is Queen Aslaug’s home. The empty throne.”

“You are not making any sense.”

“I was supposed to come here, before I even returned to Greece. I was-…Sieghild, she knew we were to return to her homeland, to that place ruled by a witch from the Danes.

You turn to him with wide eyes, a manic laugh bubbling up in your chest at the realization. For once, the King stays silent, watching you raptly.

“She knew it was fate. We ran from it, I ran from it.

It is with wide eyes and parted lips you look at the man before you, now in a new light, now with a new weight over your shoulders and heart.

“I have no choice,” The revelation is stealing the air from your lips, but with cracked tones you whisper, “I am…I am to be here. It is fate I become your wife.”

Fate. You never thought a word that once brought you so much comfort would make you feel so devastated.

“I will not be a bad husband for you,” He promises after a moment of silence, voice as uncertain as his eyes searching yours, “You will want for nothing, you will be respected by our people, I...I will take care of you.

You nod, but stay silent as the weight of it all settles upon you. You don’t know what is expected out of you now, what fight can you conjure up, what you can try -and see fail, again- to try and escape these…these invisible shackles.

There’s a moment of quiet, and the man moves in his seat, settling back in place with a posture that in anything other than a monster would make you think he’s sheepish, awkward.

His voice is low, almost hesitant as he offers, “You can ask for anything you want.”

You look at him out of the corner of your eye, “I do not ask for things I do not deserve, my King.”

Maybe it is time you stop asking for freedom.

____

Kay so Ivar’s words at the end are inspired on Hades’ speech to Persephone in the Homeric Hymns: “(…) feel kindly in your heart towards me: be not so exceedingly cast down; for I shall be no unfitting husband for you among the deathless gods, that am own brother to father Zeus. And while you are here, you shall rule all that lives and moves and shall have the greatest rights among the deathless gods: those who defraud you and do not appease your power with offerings, reverently performing rites and paying fit gifts, shall be punished for evermore."

Anyhow, I would love to hear what you think of this chapter and of where the story has led. I hope I haven’t dissapointed you, honestly.

Thank you so much for reading and I hope to see you next Tuesday!! Love you all :)

#ivar the boneless x reader #ivar x reader #ivar the boneless imagine #ivar the boneless #vikings #νοσταλγία masterlist

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harostar · 3 years

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I dunno dude, people seem mad about the AoT ending because Eren went from a dangerous, hateful child resentful at the world for existing, who commits horrible acts despite knowing how awful they are simply because he "keeps moving forward" to a Lelouch who didn't actually want to commit genocide, but did it anyways so his friends could kill him and prove to the world how great Eldians are. And that's not even mentioning the "thanks for the mass murder bro" scenes. How did you feel about the end?

I think other people have nailed it much better than I, in terms of discussing that it could have been better. (In terms of his friends anger towards him.) But that isn’t what I was mocking, nor the people that have expressed unhappiness and criticism for Historia’s final arc. (Or really, lack thereof.)

The issue I’m looking at is the people that expected Mastermind Epic Chad Eren who destroys the world and brings about paradise for his people. Or some other nonsense.

And instead got what people have been telling them for a while: That Eren was ultimately an immature, angry child that managed to get his hands on too much power. And used it to basically make everything 100% WORSE, like a child throwing a tantrum.

And not even having a reasonable or rational explanation for his actions. He contradicts himself several times, really making excuses for his actions more than anything else. He claims he did it so Armin and co could be the heroes, then IMMEDIATELY contradicts himself by admitting that he would have started the Rumbling whether they fought him or not. He just.....wanted to do it. Like an angry, petty child that realizes they can hurt something smaller and weaker than them.

Eren wanted “Freedom”, but his ideal of “Freedom” was simply being able to do whatever he wanted without consequences. He wanted to be the only one in the world, with his select few people there to keep him company BUT also to never have their own desires or inner lives. He wanted them to validate and keep him company, but he didn’t care for their wishes or desires. He simply did whatever he wanted, regardless of the consequences for his friends or how they felt about it.

That’s why we keep seeing him as a Child throughout the Rumbling. Because Eren was a boy that refused to grow up, and wanted to be the only person that mattered. He wanted the world to be his big empty playground where he could do whatever, not a complicated place filled with millions of other people with their own wishes and desires.

Eren was like most real-world extremists and bullies. He was someone insecure and pathetic, who thought making others suffer would make him feel stronger and better about himself. But it didn’t fix anything.

#snk #aot

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unfortunatelysirius · 4 years

Text

UNEXPECTED | Regulus Black, Marauders Era

「 ❁ 」PROMPT 「 ❁ 」

Request // Regulus finds something unexpected—at a Slug Club dinner party, with a girl named Y/N L/N.

「 ❁ 」AUTHOR’S NOTE 「 ❁ 」

Sorry if this sucked.

LOVE.

Even the word itself felt like a promise. It could come like a metaphor, as gentle as misted rain, or it was a broken idea, radiating animosity that maimed worse than misplaced surgical lesions. Some folks went their entire lives without knowing it, feeling it, getting the chance to embrace and relish it—while others did indeed get a taste only for it to scorch like too-hot coffee. A funny little thing, love was. As scary as it was delightful.

Regulus Black didn’t know much about love. He only knew bleak sun—and a yearning that churned his stomach like butter. If he let his thoughts wander off too far, they’d explore territory too disturbingly foreign he’d have no choice but to retreat. His parents taught him discipline and obedience, but “love” was a rare occurrence; truthfully, the only person who ever even had an inkling of understanding for it was his brother Sirius, and the bastard left Regulus to bleed under the ripe moon. He knew what hatred felt like, same with spite, same with betrayal, same with repulsion.

Then he descended on the path weary travelers couldn’t cross.

It all started at the start of his fifth year, getting worse from there. He began noticing the Gryffindor who never stopped challenging professors and requested an extension on nearly every Charms essay. Who always wore an untidy uniform with the shirt untucked, cloak rumpled, and two different stockings. Who could be more quiet than a fairy’s whisper but the loudest personality in the room. Who once punched Giovanni Rivera, some snob in Hufflepuff, so hard in the nose he stayed slumped unconscious by a knight in the open dungeon corridor for an entire night.

He noticed you.

It was entirely accidental. Regulus was not someone to dive head-first, always treading the shallow end before walking into riptides that couldn’t be foreseen. He was caution in a world of chaos. He didn’t want to know the definition of “love,” even though he thought that was what he felt for Sirius. Brotherly love. The love someone had for another that protected them, provided for them in times of need. Then Sirius was labelled the family disgrace, shunned by Orion and Walburga; the perfect little Slytherin son, Regulus shunned him too. Regulus lost that feeling and failed to find it again, even in his circle of friends that mocked tainted blood and wanted more than meager lives. They aspired for a Wizarding World cleansed of impure magic; Regulus wasn’t sure what he wanted.

He quickly became lonely. As the days turned to months then years, he preoccupied himself with his studies—working diligently to fabricate a living lie like he had any future outside of the Dark Lord’s bidding. He envied Sirius for breaking from the family so soon, forcing Regulus into a compromised position; their parents scrutinized him more carefully now and expected more than he would have had to provide if Sirius was the pride-and-joy firstborn they could have turned into a great ally, rather than an adversary. Regulus hated it, hated that whatever he liked and the little joys he had in life were useless now that he had one reason to live. There was little to his life except growing up to be part of the Dark Lord’s army. Regardless of anything, he did know what he hoped for. The only thing that truly, truly belonged to him was his hope. It was different from his aspirations, as even those were polluted by conditioned hate.

He watched you frequently. He watched you curse his own brother, Sirius, for calling you a suck-up. He admired your appearance, from your Y/H/L Y/H/C hair to your facial structure, the effortless way you stood and walked, the kindness in your expression when guiding none-the-wiser first years. You were the same year as him, fifth year, and an entire breed of your own. Regulus didn’t know when he began falling for you. Well, the idea of you. You encompassed freedom, and fuck if Regulus didn’t crave freedom. He wanted to see himself careless, able to act out and be himself inconsequentially. This was an impossibility he loved to consider, like a dreamer in a room of realists. His parents expected the most out of him and in his crystal ball, all that laid in wait was the Dark Mark etched in his skin. Death and destruction. His head dark and heavy. It wasn’t happiness that killers strived for—it was pleasure. Power, too. Regulus knew he was different from the others. He had to hide it and fight every inch of himself that wanted what Sirius had. Freedom.

Regulus wanted to unleash every idea, every desire, every unspoken dislike. A brave heart scratched from under his skin, itching to have a say.

Sirius was the courageous one, not him.

He stuck to watching from afar.

You hated Potions class. You hated parties. You hated Slughorn. Most of all, you hated Slug Club parties. Dammit, you hated your life.

“Why did you drag me here, Lily?” you complained for the umpteenth time, fidgeting in your Gryffindor-red attire. You didn’t even like this shade of red. It was one of those colors you got tired of after seeing at every waking hour. All the assholes that prided themselves in the House the Sorting Hat bellowed, uniquely chosen for them… bleh! Dawning red and gold, parading around in Gryffindor scarfs bought for a bargain. You couldn’t be bothered. Lily had begged that the two of you go in a matching set, as one of your good friends. You never envisioned yourself agreeing. Fucking Lily, conniving you into wearing a dress like looked like it was sewn from a red Christmas stocking and attending a Slug Club party.

Lily smiled innocently. “You owed me a favor!”

A favor. You wracked your brain for any situation you’d been a part of where Lily offered her help. As your honorary big sister and a sixth-year prefect, she was the one calling for damage control whenever you did something warranting of punishment… and you didn’t want to fulfill your duties as a serious student. She chastised you at your worst but boosted you up too. Your best consisted of her praise and affection. You loved her, yes, but you didn’t love what owing her favors implied. It always wound you up in some unlikable predicament, such as this godforsaken party.

“I don’t owe you shite,” you grumbled, pinning your eyes on a table of refreshments over by the door. You belatedly noticed a figure standing by it. The air went still and silent, your blood pulsating like a gushing river of red. Your eyes narrowed just the slightest bit. Regulus Black was sharply—no, impeccably dressed, standing with his glossy dark hair in a neat do and his gray eyes watching the floor indifferently. When he got too close to looking at you, you quickly turned away. Lily was already raising a brow. “What? I don’t.”

“Yeah, okay,” Lily said amusedly. As she reopened her mouth to remind you of your every last unreturned favor and escaped week of detention, she spotted something over your head and a look of horror struck; you gauged this by the way her eyes bulged at the sockets. “Oh, Merlin—why the bloody Hell is he here? I’ll talk to you later, Y/N. Try to have some fun.”

She retreated like a squirrel from a hound, her body launching at the occupied Slughorn over half a room away. As she was nearly there a bulk dressed in black dress robes followed, at a tame pace compared to Lily’s. You knew it was James only by the unruly mess of black hair you saw from his enrobed backside profile.

You rolled your eyes and snuck another glance at Regulus. He wasn’t looking your way.

Try to have some fun, my arse.

You were here. Regulus didn’t know how, but you were. He hadn’t calculated what he’d do if you attended this party, not knowing you were a member. He assumed you weren’t, a rash assumption by all accounts, and that costed him. He didn’t want to be dogged by the thought of you all night, and now that your presence was mere feet from him, his mental duties seemed like lost causes. The burning urge to stare at you, consequences be damned, was incinerating—and control failed him left and right. Fucking hell.

Regulus filled a drink for himself. A punch of some kind. He drank it in one go, hoping the taste would eliminate you from his mind. If it were bad enough he could instead be hounded by his throbbing throat, gagging like no tomorrow. That would be better than this.

The punch didn’t work its magic. He looked again at you and calculated the inevitable penalty of making an approach.

Cursing his luck or lack thereof, he felt less inclined to drown himself in the punch bowl upon the appearance of a bloke he had in Potions, Terrence something. He was a Ravenclaw know-it-all, but he was Pureblood. He could go overlooked conversing with the fellow. Regulus was a master of mimicry and had his haughty Slytherin performance down pat.

The bloke asked too many questions and was evasive on topics Regulus had no interest in discoursing, but he was a well-welcomed distraction. Or ill-welcomed. Regardless of the reception, Regulus’s ambivalence towards you transitioned to an annoyance towards Terrence. Annoyance, that he could work with. He felt it most days. It was familiar territory. A stroke of olive on a canvas of emerald where you were lavender.

It worked. It worked until Terrence bid a hasty farewell, trailing after some quiet, expressionless brunette from Slytherin.

Regulus subtly scowled. Out of the corner of his eye he looked at you, surreptitious in a way he remembered from parties he went to hosted by well-known Pureblood families. You were in mid-conversation with some Gryffindor he knew from a mutual class the three of you shared. It was a bloke whose mouth seemed too keen on keeping a conversation going and hand was swaying too closely to your waist. Regulus’s eyes hardened without his meaning to, and before he knew it, his feet were in complete control; he walked to the two of you with renewed purpose.

You were ready to unleash your inner ugly. Random people kept coming up and trying to talk to you, each of them more mentally-taxing than the last. First there was Cornelius, an absolute walking disaster, then there was Dave, who went on tangents without checking to see if you were listening. Then Kala, then Paisley, then Travis. Finally, there was Justin. Justin was a compulsive flirt. You politely tried to get him to fuck off, but he just wasn’t catching the hint or acknowledging your blatant apathy in what he had to say. He wouldn’t understand discomfort on the part of his conversational partner if it slapped him in the face.

It was like a blessing and a nightmare when Regulus Black, wearing a cold expression and marginally more perfect up close than he was from a distance, appeared.

“Can I borrow you for a moment, L/N?” he asked, something off about his voice. Your eyes narrowed. If you had to garner a guess, you’d say he was straining to maintain a calm disposition, truly angry. The cold in his expression was cracking, giving way to heat. Had he noticed your wandering eye and wanted to clarify with you that he had no interest except to exterminate your muddy self from the Wizarding World? You were unsure; it was a common ideology among extremists, the hatred of non-Purebloods, but Regulus didn’t give off that ambiance. He didn’t feel like a future monster.

“Sure,” you said, sneaking a glance at Justin. Justin’s face wasn’t aggravated at the interruption, just confused that Regulus Black had been the one to interrupt. Regulus kept to himself usually… and he hated anyone who wasn’t pure of blood, supposedly. “Sorry to cut this chat short, Justin. I’m sure there’s plenty of other birds to talk into a stupor around here…”

Justin’s eyes lit up, disregarding the annoyance in your voice. “You’re right! Thanks, Y/N.”

You raised your eyebrows at him but bit back a less subtle remark, following Regulus when his hand prompted you at the shoulder.

“So, what was that back there?” you boldly asked, trying to avoid smirking. It was almost adorable, the way he swooped in and rescued you from a dolt. He couldn’t have approached you just to chastise your invasive stare or threaten you with death. You were taking a chance in assuming he came to save you the burden of dealing with Justin Doley’s bland chatter, but you didn’t care. You really didn’t. It was a sweet gesture if that were his true intention, but a niggling suspicion refused to believe it was. “Thank you, by the way. I was ready to lock my knees just so I could escape.”

Regulus’s face blanched, a tinge of hot pink flooding his cheeks. His brows made a cute little furrow that gave the impression of a natural unibrow. “Why would you lock your knees?”

“When you lock your knees, the blood stops circulating and can lead to fainting,” you said. Now you smirked. “Trying to avoid an answer? I’m hurt.”

He frowned at you. “I’m not trying to avoid anything. It was nothing. You looked uncomfortable…”

“I was more annoyed than anything,” you said, a correction you weren’t obligated to make. Seeing Regulus squirm was a pleasure on its own. He would already squirm, caught willingly communicating with a Gryffindor, but you had a tendency to go over and beyond in putting others on the spot. It made you a childish shade of giddy both inside and out, not that he would be able to tell. “You don’t have to keep talking to me, you know.”

“Oh,” Regulus said but didn’t move. He stayed rooted where he was, watching you with a piercing gaze. Now that you were close enough to reach a finger across the distance and graze those gaunt, knife-sharp cheekbones, you ogled him. You knew he was gorgeous from the brief times you interacted and the long, solitary moments you took to dissect him outside lessons, but being so close and with no time limit, you took a chance. Your chance was a rescue mission disguised as a private discussion.

A smile tore at your lips. “You clean up nice,” you said, your ogling session finished. You could stare at Regulus much longer than you deemed appropriate and actually did, but he was a moment and moments had the ability to pass you swiftly by. In this case, he’d leave without you getting to properly know him. Opportunistic as you were, you wouldn’t let him leave without taking what you could.

Why would you even want to know him? you asked yourself. He’s probably a Muggleborn-hater. The heart wanted what the heart wanted, try as you might to logicize.

Regulus frowned. “Thanks,” he said. He hesitantly snaked his eyes up and down your figure, stopping on your neckline. A beautiful necklace with your favorite gemstone adorned it, a gift from a Muggle relative. He cleared his throat aggressively. “You do too.”

He’s a shy bugger, isn’t he?

You inched closer, moving on a whim and putting your hand on his arm. Your fingers tightened around the material of his sleeve. He drew closer, like it was instinctive, and your eyelids fluttered as you basked in his perfumed, intimate proximity. You’d regret advancing on a Slytherin, especially one as admired and esteemed yet dark and dangerous as Regulus, but he just had this air about him. Like going from an altitude that took your breath away to one that had enough air to burst you at the seams. Like a butterfly with clipped wings, a scorpion without its stinger. He was tempting, but beautifully broken.

I know. I just know.

“When you came over, I thought you were going to confront me on how I haven’t kept my eyes off you all night,” you murmured. You met his gaze evenly, ignoring your pounding heart and fluctuating nerves.

Regulus froze immediately. “What?”

“Oh, did you not notice? Silly me,” you said, flaPping a hand like it never mattered in the first place. Truth was, your thoughts were frozen and fixated on his ignorance—ignorance you had just given a reality check. There had been no point, absolutely no hidden objective, in admitting your inability to overlook Regulus. Yet you had—and now he was staring at you like you had turned the color orange and horns magically sprouted from your head.

Then, like a switch went off that had full control over Regulus’s emotions and the way he expressed them, he smirked. It wasn’t a full smirk, just apparent enough you noticed it. All the tension contorting his face flattened, leaving him like he was relaxed, the opposite of how he looked mere seconds ago. Always the skeptic, you stared at him with narrowed eyes, scrutinizing him from head to toe. He didn’t lose the smirk, his arms crossing over his sleek robes in a devil-may-care fashion.

“Presumptuous of you to think I ever notice you in the first place,” he said, in that pompous voice you were used to hearing from Sirius’s favorite Slytherin, Severus Snape.

You laughed at his audacity and, hearing the music change tone and tempo, reached out a hand. You forgot your wit and lost all possible responses to give his arrogant retort. “Dance with me, Black,” you said softly, “before your brother comes to ruin my night, like the prick he is.”

Regulus raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t deny you. He interlaced his fingers into yours and his free arm, moving at whim and ease, came quickly to your side, enveloping your waist in a delicate embrace. A formal embrace that bespoke of the distance between you, the invisible rift. The dance he swept you in was unfamiliar, but it was simple enough that you could match his pace without tumbling over your own feet.

You felt everyone staring, but nothing mattered more to you than the feeling of his hand on your waist and the deep, unreadable waters of his foggy gray eyes. He was an enigma that swept coast to coast, tainting the sand with his attendance but leaving wild imaginations to run rampant wondering why he was there, what he did, who he was. Everyone knew of him, but no one knew him. You couldn’t deny you also didn’t know him. Really, you knew nothing about him except that he was a Slytherin in your year, the younger brother to Gryffindor’s infamous playboy, and a supposed Pureblood extremist. You were curious, though, and wanted to know all the dismissive facts that made up his mind and crafted a mental narrative even you found ambiguous. He had consciousness, and there was no way in Merlin’s sodding Hell he was a host to someone else’s thoughts, opinions, and interests the way so many other future killers seemed. Every now and then he showed you something unusual—a mannerism individual to him, words you recoiled back at hearing from his mouth. After he smirked at you and accepted your demand to dance, you lost yourself in the shock of his dismal composure cracking at the folds.

You never really believed in love.

Regulus never really believed in love.

But if you wandered too far into the bittersweet fantasy of happy endings…

Regulus could get lost.

The song changed again; slow and calm it became. Pressing your cheek to Regulus’s chest, you let the soft fabric of his dress robes sway you into an admittedly false sense of security. The hawk eyes following your every move disappeared with every cyclic step Regulus took. You were hypersensitive to his heartbeat now. It pounded against your cheek like a drumstick, a vibrato of epic proportions. You felt delirious with delight, yet a piece of you was stuck to the path your half-conscious feet made through the slow dance. It’s like you left a trail, and you’d have to pick up the pieces once Regulus became sick of your pathetic antics.

“Are you asleep?” he asked amusedly, his chest vibrating against you. It rattled you enough to awaken some semblance of nerves.

“No,” you said, shaking yourself out of the daze. You pulled back from him, bridging enough space to look him in his eyes. He had beautiful eyes a silly girl like you could get lost in. Any girl really. They were pools of fog made of spring mornings and forest hues. You just wanted to kiss his eyelids. What a strange desire, but you felt it all the same…

Regulus blinked and you were drawn back in the moment. He had said something.

You hummed in question, your eyebrows raising.

He shook his head, his face flattening until it was expressionless. “I have to go,” he said. You knew what lies looked like. He was a good liar, but you were a better observer. “I have a matter to discuss with Slughorn.”

You laughed. “That’s too bad,” you said, voice coming out like a purr. Your hand rose until it settled on his chest; your fingers curled around his robe, until fabric was fisted and cupped into a swirl. “We could have had some fun.”

“No,” Regulus said firmly. Almost too firmly. His hand jerked up to meet yours and his larger fingers interlaced yours, tugging in an attempt to prompt your release. Your refused to let go. “Y/N.”

“I like it when you talk all authoritative,” you said teasingly.

His face blanched and it was enough of a shock to make him lose all incentive to fight the good fight. You took this chance and drew him in, his feet stumbling in a clumsy attempt to regain balance. “Y/N, I—”

“What are you so afraid of?”

Regulus was afraid of a lot of things. He was afraid of what his parents would do if they figured out he didn’t despise tainted blood the way he was raised to. He was afraid of his peers shunning and scorning him for being caught dead with a Half-blood. He was afraid of losing himself in the moment just to sate his deadened hope and watching you get killed in the crossfire of his foolish, self-indulgent mistakes. He was afraid of many things.

He would never dare utter those fears aloud.

You watched the conflict flit across his face, erasing itself seconds after.

“What?” you innocently asked, noting that he had gone stiff. You were unaware to how deep his issues ran. You knew from Sirius’s running mouth that Pureblood households were devoid of tender moments and affectionate caresses. You wanted to imagine an alternative for them, but Sirius was a hellish hailstorm when honest; his feelings were subjective, but his experience was likely to ring alarmingly true. Regulus was quiet and allowed things to fester, so no one would ever know how he felt.

He looked at you now, a lock where his mouth was. No key in sight. His eyes were piercing and unquestionably inscrutable.

He had to leave before he lost control of his mouth. He couldn’t afford to involve you in his mess. He was a hurricane and you were summer rains. He would destroy you.

“I have somewhere to be,” Regulus said, no room left for an argument. His arms disappeared from around your waist and he tore his eyes away, like it was physically painful to do so.

You grabbed his wrist before he could melt into the dancing crowd. “Regulus, wait,” you said. You hated the way you sounded. You didn’t know him, but you felt strongly anyway, like he mattered more to you than was plausible for a girl and boy from two separate worlds. You couldn’t explain why you cared; you just did. He hid himself under the pretense of a rich, spoiled Pureblood who stood above the rest. He was hypnotically beautiful and bathed in greens and silvers. He was brilliant in ways Gryffindor House could only aspire to be.

Regulus didn’t respond to your plea. He stared at you, waiting briefly to hear what you had to say.

You didn’t have anything to say. You had something to express—and words weren’t always the best at expression.

You reached up to his face and palmed his cheeks, finding little skin and mostly bone. His cheekbones jerked underneath your grip. His eyes went slightly wide, like he disbelieved you had taken physical initiative with him. Your fingers didn’t dig or tear at his skin, nor did you impulsively decide that you had him in your grip and now was the time to hurt him. You didn’t want to hurt him. You wanted to show him that he didn’t have to be risk-aversive; he could fall clumsily into risk with you and the two of you would make it work. As long as he felt this bizarre, unnatural connection same as you did.

You’d find out.

You pressed yourself flush against him and drew your lips until you were a breath away. Then you kissed him.

The room and its occupants disintegrated, leaving only Regulus and you. Regulus dissolved into putty. His arms went around you again, one of them circling your waist entirely and a hand gripping your hip tight like letting you go would mean you never came back. His lips were soft if slightly chapped, moving against yours like they belonged there; there was no hesitation, no anxious energy. Regulus had lost himself in the moment, same as you. He wasn’t a Pureblood and you weren’t some Half-blood Gryffindor who had spent half the night pinning after a Slytherin who would keel over dead before wanting you. Regulus was different, and you hadn’t failed to sense it.

Regulus abruptly remembered his place and pulled from you. Your eyes were still fluttered shut, and it took several seconds before you noticed he was no longer wrestling with your lips.

You stared. Regulus wiped all emotion from his face, refusing to let you know he wanted a second kiss. You were not a good deceiver and every emotion you felt showed on your face, from confusion to lust to apprehension.

“That should not have happened,” Regulus murmured, glancing around. There were people staring; even some of your Gryffindor friends, like Lily Evans and Marlene Mckinnon, were aghast, eyeing the two of you like you had just committed a murder.

“Why?” you said confrontationally. “Did you regret it?”

Regulus glanced at you but didn’t say a word.

You could feel your heart plummet to your gut. “Yeah, okay,” you said, shaking your head. You knew he was being dishonest, but that didn’t stop you from feeling hurt at his blatant favoring of his reputation over a chance at this… this relationship. You jerked out of his slackened grip.

You fought tears as you walked away.

Regulus watched you go.

He knew what it felt like when towers crumbled and empires fell, as it happened frequently. His life fell apart more than it came together. He missed you the moment you left but he knew this was for the better. That kiss had meant more than Regulus would ever admit. He felt the connection and he knew there was a future that would happen if he allowed it, if he chose not to intervene. He was the inhibitor of a lot of good things, but he would rather see himself drown than another person swallow their breath underwater.

So he stared at your retreating back, wishing things were different.

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dramaqueeenamby · 3 years

Text

𝐑𝐞𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐬 ♦︎ 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐷𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔

Summary: He’d searched for centuries to find the sun summoner. What he never expected was for someone to uncover the sun within him. In which the darkling finds himself on a journey with a powerful Grisha who may just uncover the humanity trapped within.

A/N: I am terrible with updating regularly, but here is the second part! If you're actually interested in this hodgepodge of a story, I've updated six parts/chapters on ArchiveOFOurOwn.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my OC and the non-canon parts.

Words: 2.8K // Pairings: The Darkling x OC // Warnings: None, yet.

Functions weren’t Milena’s thing. To be honest, any type of public outing ranked on the not so pleasurable side of the scale. And it wasn’t due to introversion or shyness but rather discomfort and unease for other reasons. As someone who’d spent their entire life moving from place to place and keeping their head down as to avoid garnering attention, being the subject of a setting created unease.

So, when Milena learned that the Grisha were holding a somewhat “party” in the Little Palace and she was expected to attend, she was less than pleased. For one, people. For two, Zoya. They hadn’t exactly hit it off upon their first meeting. In fact, the only hitting occurred when Zoya sent Milena flying into a stack of logs in what was supposed to be a hand-to-hand combat training session.

Milena, of course, returned the favor, despite the scolding she received from Botkin

Third, she just….didn’t want to.

Too many people had already asked her too many questions. Questions about her power, her parents, where she’d been, was she the sun summoner. It was just all too much, hence her sneaking away to find solace in the palace gardens.

Everyone seemed eager to be at the party, so it was a safe place of solitude and silence.

Some of her favorite things.

“I believe the banquet is inside, is it not?”

Naturally, Milena jumped and had her arms up, ready to attack, only to be met with the smug expression of General Kirigan.

She relaxed, slightly, enough to lower her arms. Milena bowed her head and mustered a low, “sir.”

He clasped his hands behind his back. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Be respectful. Milena didn’t know if it was the fact that she hadn’t made the best first impression or his frustration with her lack of progress in their training, but she sensed the edge in his voice. After all, he seemed convinced that she was afraid of something, which was hindering her growth.

Whatever.

Regardless, it didn’t escape her how he seemed to take pleasure in toying with her, or maybe being a prick was just something he enjoyed having as a defining trait. Whatever the case, it was getting old. Real old.

“I prefer being alone,” was all she said, eager, though not hopeful, that he would understand the underlying meaning. Leave me be.

“Is that so?”

“Yes,” she answered, confidently, looking at him head on. Gone were the days of staring at the ground. She refused to do that any longer. “And as this is your palace, shouldn’t you be at your own banquet?”

He smiled, and Milena nearly doubled back. For as long as she’d known him, the only two emotions and expressions she’d known him to emote were irritation and anger. Perhaps, maybe, amusement, but even that was cleverly hidden behind narrowed eyes and closed lips. And now, the bastard was smiling?

“Fair enough.” She wasn’t expecting that. What exactly she was expecting, she didn’t know, but she knew it wasn’t that. “May I?”

He gestured to the seat near the fountain where she stood. Hesitantly, she nodded, watching him take a seat. Milena decided to occupy herself, searching the garden beds for a petal or something else that could be taken without issue.

“How are you adjusting to life in the Little Palace?”

She couldn’t help the snort that left her mouth at that question. Milena considered lying. Would it be disrespectful to tell him that she contemplated running away at least once a week?

“Well, aside from Zoya trying to kill me, Baghra hating me, and being gawked at like some object by everyone else, I must say, it has been quite the adventure.” Rolling her eyes, she looked over at him to see that he was no longer smiling, the familiar scowl returning.

“You do not have to worry about Zoya anymore.”

Milena spun around, eyes widening. “Is she…”

“Taking time off to reevaluate her priorities,” he finished. Milena wanted to know more but she decided not to push. “And pay Baghra no mind, she cares for few—”

“I didn’t know she could care.” He looked at her, prompting Milena to drop her gaze and apologize. “Sorry.”

He said nothing, skipping to his next question. “Is your room satisfactory?”

At that, her eyebrow quipped. Out of everything, having such luxurious rooming accommodations ranked at the top of her list of reasons to stay. “Well, I’ve never had warming stones put in my bed before, so that’s been a nice change.” She located a three-leaf clover, twisting it in her hands as she leaned back against the stone edging so that she was facing him. “It’s nice having Genya. She doesn’t gawk or probe. I like that.”

“I thought you preferred being alone.”

“I do,” she affirmed, sighing and shaking her head. “I’ve-I’ve always been alone. It’s...it’s all I know.”

Why she was saying that, to him of all people, she hadn’t a clue. In fact, Milena suddenly realized just how strange the nature of this conversation was. Never had he inquired about sentiments toward trivial manners such as her enjoyment, or lack thereof, of her time at the palace. And now, she was divulging beyond surface level feelings.

Milena opened her mouth to change the subject when she realized that he was no longer sitting down but standing up just a few mere inches away. “You are Grisha, Milena.” A beat. “You are not alone.”

She swallowed. Milena didn’t know what to say to that. Did she believe him? Not necessarily. Having gifts in common with others did not equate undying loyalty. She’d never been able to trust and depend on anyone, so how could he expect his mere words to reverse a lifetime of trauma?

Milena relaxed ever so slightly when he moved back, turning to leave. Without thinking, she called after him, prompting him to turn around.

“Why are you training me?” She didn’t intend to ask him anything else, especially since he was leaving her to her much desired solitude. And yet, the sight of him walking away irked her to a certain degree. For what reason, she hadn’t a clue. “You don’t train anyone else.”

“You are not like anyone else.”

She scoffed and looked away. “So, I’ve been told.”

He studied her. “Tell me, are you so anxious to be like everybody else?”

She laughed bitterly. “It would be nice to know how that feels someday...general.”

He continued to examine her, as if he was trying to figure something out. Figure her out. “Well, that day is not today.”

“Nor will it be any other day,” she chucked sadly, turning back around to stare at her reflection in the pond. Milena frowned. Another day of seeing a stranger.

Eyes falling to the side, she made out the General’s reflection. He was now beside her. “What do you see?”

She sighed, fingers dancing in the water, creating waves of ripples. “Someone’s reflection of me.”

“Or perhaps the real you is finally emerging.”

She turned to look at him, discovering that he was already staring at her. Suddenly, self-conscious, she turned away with an awkward smile. “If this is the real me, why do you push me so much?”

His answer surprised her. “Because I can see it. You can’t.”

“Are you familiar with disappointment?”

“In all my years, I’ve never seen a Grisha who can do what you can.” He informed, honestly, and again, Milena suspected no subterfuge. He was being genuine. “You are special, Milena, but it will mean nothing if you don’t stop holding back.”

“You keep saying that, but I’m n—”

“What happened to your parents?”

Her mouth dried and stomach immediately knotted. What reason did he have to go there or to even ask what he already knew? Again, she was reminded how awful the Black General could be.

“You kno—”

“Tell me.”

She pursued her lips as her jaw clenched. “They were killed. Betrayed by friends who found out they were Grisha. Burned alive.”

His gaze was so intense, she should have looked away, but she didn’t. She maintained eye contact.

“And you’ve been hiding ever since, hiding who you are, hiding what you can do—”

“So I could stay alive—”

“So what is your reason now, Ms. Belarus?”

At that, her stomach settled, and defensiveness waned. He had her there.

His words replayed in her mind for the rest of the evening, even as she laid in bed, unable to sleep, her mind a vast bat of conflicting feelings.

She never considered that she was holding back. She was able to utilize all three of her gifts, so how could she be holding back? Then she thought, really thought about what not only the General had been telling her, but Baghra said as well.

And gradually, it started coming to her. The quickness in which she put out the flames, she way she would rush and hide when using her squaller abilities, the terror that filled her being when she sped up or stopped someone’s heart.

She lived in a constant state of anxious panic, fear that she would meet the same fate of her parents.

“Who are you holding back for?”

“My parents,” she whispered, grasping at her eyes, wetness pooling at her fingertips.

Frustrated, she sat up, pulling her legs to her chest. This wasn’t how she expected to spend her night, encountering and swallowing hard truths that she’d managed to dodge up until now. The reason she continued to doubt herself was because she feared the same judgment and persecution as her parents. Even more, there was a difference between choosing to be alone because of feared rejection, and solitude out of necessity. Along the way, those two ends had meshed, and she’d lost where the truth lied.

Up until now.

Wiping at her eyes, Milena kicked the blankets off her body and swung her legs around so that they dangled off the side of her bed. Gripping the edge of the mattress, she stared at the ground, taking a slow, deep breath before standing up. Milena walked toward the door, grabbing a silver robe along the way. She loosely tied it so that her white nightgown with the low neck was somewhat concealed, though not completely.

Where she was going, she knew not, she just allowed her feet to do the thinking for her, which may or may not have worked in her favor. She found herself outside of the General’s room, but instead of like most in the palace, his door was open and he was awake. She looked in and saw that he was standing by the war table, back toward her.

Milena could have sworn she was quiet enough to avoid detection, but he still turned around. Milena realized that he was also in his robe, stark black. Of course. He looked surprised, but not annoyed, by her presence.

“Milena.”

She straightened and laid her hand on the door, swallowing. “I’m sorry. I—am I disturbing you?”

Yes.

“Not at all.” He unfolded his arms. “Can’t sleep?” With a small smile, she shook her head and gradually started to enter his room, halfway expecting him to stop her. “Come in.”

She paused momentarily, waiting for him to change his mind, but once again, he didn’t. Instead, he reached for a small glass of what she supposed was wine and offered it to her. “Here.”

She accepted the drink, bringing it to her mouth to sniff for any unfamiliar or strange scents. She found none and took a sip, eyes falling over to the table while his attention remained on her. Milena quietly cleared her throat and gestured to the pawns. “Is this map current?”

“It is.” He followed her line of vision to see the makeup of the map only to look back at her again. “Our enemies are threatened by your mere existence.”

Milena looked away, a small sense of guilt eating at her. He was referring to her discovery. In the midst of moving from one town to another after noticing strange looks of the townsfolk, the saints were clearly not on her side as she unknowingly walked into the middle of a battle between the Second Army and the drüskelle. Initially, her plan was to lay low and avoid being killed, but she quickly realized that was not an option. She was forced to use her power, all three variations, rendering the fjerdans and the grisha nearly speechless. For the fjerdans who survived, they returned with tales of her, her abilities, and for the grisha, she was suddenly a new recruit. It was all so unexpected and sudden, and Milena often felt as though everything was happening far too quickly.

He continued. “There is talk of uprising in the West.” He began to inch away from her, nearing a poster of Zlatan, the First Army General. “Led by our….esteemed First Army General.”

Milena noticed a sudden chill in the room as patches of light became obscured by growing shadows. Confused, she quickly realized they were General Kirigan’s doing. “Our own people, turning their backs on us.”

Milena saw the anger brimming, the way he stared with quiet hate at the poster, the table, the whole thing. Unconsciously, she moved toward him. “General--”

“I have been fighting this war….alone....for so long.” With each pained statement, Milena found herself moving closer toward him as the darkness continued to fill the room. This was more than anger. It was grief. “I have buried so many good soldiers…..friends.”

She placed her glass down and realized she was merely inches away from him. Milena ignored the urge to touch him. She’d never seen him this vulnerable, his ardent anger on full display in a simmering manner which made him appear even more dangerous. Loud anger was palpable, but quiet rage was unpredictable.

“The coffers are running dry, the noose….tightens, and our own people are turning against grisha just as their kin once did.”

Milena was unsure of what to do in that moment. The room was completely dark, save for specks of light that entered through the bottom of the door. His words cut through her life a knife. For the first time, she realized just how much of a heavy weight this man carried. And she sympathized with him. Greatly.

Reacting on pure instinct rather than protocol or logic and repressing her reluctance, she placed her hand on his wrist, tugging slightly. He angled his body toward her, allowing Milena to grab both of his wrists. She looked up at him, quieting the voices in the back of her head that told her her conduct was out of line. Focusing, she detected his erratic heartbeat and worked to calm him, speaking when she realized he was relaxing.

“You are not alone,” she echoed his words from only a few hours prior. This time, Milena studied him, observing how his eyes burned into her with a plethora of emotions: confusion, irritation, peace. Gradually, the shadows receded, and the light returned.

In more than one way.

The Darkling suddenly dropped her hands. She prepared to move back, accepting whatever disciplinary action he thought necessary. Not only had she initiated contact, but she’d used her powers on him without permission. That had to be grounds for some type of punishment.

But instead, she quietly gasped when he brought his right hand to her face, his hands so large that it encompassed nearly the entire right side of her face. She almost flinched, his touch was so cold. Kirigan tugged her closer. She was tempted to lay her hands on his chest.

“I’ve never…” He seemed at a loss for words, something she found astonishing for someone who always radiated such avid confidence. Milena found herself focusing on his mouth, only to realize he was staring at hers as well. “I have been waiting a long time for you.”

Milena hadn’t a clue what to say or even how and if she could or should respond to such a thing. What exactly did he mean? From what she’d learned, the Darkling had always been in search of a Sun Summoner. She was no Sun Summoner. She was simply a grisha with above average gifts, hardly a saint. So, what exactly was the reason behind his quiet confession?

Unsure and now uncomfortable, Milena forced herself to pull away. She could not ignore the drop in her stomach when she moved so that he was so no longer cupping her face. “I should go.”

He opened his mouth to say something, prompting Milena to turn away and amble out of his room. Though the door was open when she arrived, she closed it, leaning against it as she caught her breath. She swallowed and thought about what happened, face warm and heartbeat unsteady, even if she didn’t understand it.

Milena felt overwhelmed with emotions. She’d oscillated through so many feelings in less than 24 hours. She was exhausted and only remained outside his door for a few moments before she wisely hurried away back to her room, unaware that he was also on the other side of the door, also struggling to understand what had just occurred.

#the darkling #the darkling x oc #the darkling fanfiction #the darkling fanfic #general kirigan #aleksander morozova #grishaverse

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lotusjwy · 3 years

Note

“Didn’t you see what I did?!” wwx and lwj, clearly i love Pain - @gremlinmetawin

hello, wangxian is so hard to write and i think i complained about that a lot today 😭 i once again have decided to make this a slight continuation of the last prompt i wrote (again will link the first AND second bits for anyone who hasn’t read it, below!) i’m not entirely happy with this, bc i’ve never written anything that isn’t... well jiang cheng centric, so i didn’t know how to navigate it??? but i hope you like it all the same??? thank u for getting my creative juices flowing, ur always so giving 💜 @gremlinmetawin

It had been a long day for Lan Wangji, and it was only the early afternoon. He wanted nothing more than to drag Wei Ying back to the Jingshi and spend the remainder of their day alone. However, unfortunately that wasn’t a possibility with his brother not leaving his rooms for the day, leaving Lan Wangji to deal with some duties that required immediate attention. Thankfully, Wei Ying had decided to accompany him for the day, making his duties seem less like work and more like running errands with the love of his life.

As they were passing by the Hanshi, Lan Wangji averted his eyes from the dwelling, not wanting to be tempted to go see his brother, having learned from his past mistakes. He wished that there was something he could do for Xichen, that would stop him from getting into these moods, knowing that they were just as draining on him, as they were on those he spoke to.

He was suddenly pulled out of his thoughts, when he felt his husband urgently pulling at his robes.

“Did Xichen-ge play the flute this morning?” Wei Wuxian sounded frantic, his eyes wide, something hidden behind them. Perhaps fear? Wangji was unsure, but he was just as reluctant to let his husband go anywhere near his brother today. Wei Ying had refused to tell him what Xichen had said to him that time, but he knew that the other had had nightmares about it for a long time after, and likely still wasn’t completely over it, even if the two had made their amends.

“He did not. If you wish to see him, you should go tomorrow, instead.” He hoped that whatever Wei Ying wanted from Xichen could wait, otherwise he was not above physically dragging the other away from here. He refused to let Wei Ying see Xichen right now and would do everything in his power to stop it.

However, it would seem that that wasn’t the case, as the Wei Ying seemed to grow irritated at Wangji, “ugh, no, didn’t you see what I did?!” Wei Ying’s attention was no longer solely focussed on Lan Wangji, as he seemed to be searching for something or someone, “someone let Jiang Cheng go see him, fuck.”

Oh. Lan Wangji actually hadn’t seen Jiang Wanyin, as he had purposefully not been looking towards the Hanshi and had thus, apparently, missed seeing Jiang Wanyin.

If it had been anyone else, Lan Wangji would have pitied the person who unknowingly stumbled upon Lan Xichen whilst he was in one of his moods. However, this was Jiang Wanyin, who had more or less spent the past two decades having built up his reputation by being just as hostile, and so he voiced this to his husband. “I’m sure xiongzhang would have said nothing that Jiang Wanyin hasn’t heard about himself before. Would he not be fine?”

This proved to be a mistake on his part, having somehow forgotten how fiercely protective Wei Ying was over Jiang Wanyin. Wei Ying rounded on his husband, his eyes narrowing in a glare that hadn’t been directed at him in a very long time. “Lan Zhan, we are going to have a serious talk about this later. But for now, I have to go find my idiot brother who’s probably about to shut himself away from everyone he cares about, again.” And with that, he had quickly left, supposedly to find Jiang Wanyin and give him comfort from whatever Lan Xichen had said to him.

Lan Wangji went about the remainder of his day in a trance like state, not being used to Wei Ying being mad at him, without them immediately resolving the argument. Of course, they had gotten into fights, what couple did not? But they had generally been about Wei Ying’s lack of care towards himself, rather than something Lan Wangji had done. He wasn’t used to this and he could honestly say that he did not like it. All he could do now was wait for Wei Ying to return and hope that Wei Ying would no longer be mad at him.

It was well after dinner when Wei Ying had finally arrived back, shutting the doors softly behind him. Lan Wangji had winded down from the day, what with 9pm drawing near, though he was growing more impatient for Wei Ying’s return. As time had passed in the day, he had been tempted to go in search of Wei Ying wanting to smooth things over. However, he knew that his husband wouldn’t appreciate him interrupting his time with Jiang Wanyin.

Neither of them said a word to each other, for a few moments, letting an uncomfortable silence fall upon them. Wei Ying moved to grab a bottle of Emperor’s Smile from their ‘secret’ stash and sat down, gesturing for his husband to sit with him.

Letting out a sigh, Wei Ying took a drink directly from the jar before speaking, “do you want to hear what your brother said to Jiang Cheng?”

Lan Wangji could only assume the venom that his brother had spat out, but nodded all the same, “Mn.”

“He told my brother that he killed innocent people for no reason, that he and the cultivation world would have benefitted from him shutting himself away from society.” Taking another swig, Wei Wuxian laughed ruefully, not at all enjoying the situation they were in. A better part of his day was spent comforting his brother and ensuring that he was okay before letting him go back to Lotus Pier, and now he had to work through how his soulmate still hates one of the only family members he has left. “He strung my brother along, let him think that he cared, and then used that against him.”

“Xiongzhang doesn’t mean anything he says on these days…” And that was something that Lan Wangji wholeheartedly believed, he refused to believe that Lan Xichen had meant any of the words that he uttered in these instances.

He tiredly rubbed his hands over his face, trying to consider how to construct his thoughts from here on out, knowing that Lan Wangji would defend his brother to no ends, apparently not realising that Wuxian would do the same. “But Jiang Cheng doesn’t know that, Lan Zhan. How could he have known that when no one told him?”

Wei Ying had a point and Wangji knew it, but he still didn’t understand why Wei Ying was so upset over it, these were words Jiang Wanyin had heard before, “perhaps he should have been told, however it’s not the first time he’s had these wor-“

Wei Ying cut him off, fury in his eyes, “he’s had these words spat at him before, is that what you want to say?”

Lan Wangji silently nodded in response to the other, shocked at the anger he could feel radiating from his husband.

“Who fucking cares, Lan Zhan? I’ve had poison spat at me as well, yet you are there to defend me at every step, regardless of how many times I’ve heard it. Why is it any different when its Jiang Cheng?” And wasn’t that the truth. Any time someone so much as breathes wrong in Wuxian’s direction, Lan Zhan is there in an instant, ready to cut the person’s throat, just to defend his honour.

“You… didn’t do the things you’re accused of.” Lan Wangji was beginning to see the fault in his thoughts, that perhaps he wasn’t being as unbiased as he had originally assumed.

“But I did, Lan Zhan. I did cultivate demonic cultivation. I did leave the cultivation society for the Wen remnants. I killed so many people, I did all of the things they accused me off. I couldn’t control it! Yet you choose to protect me but also to demonise my brother.” Wei Wuxian stopped speaking to take another long drink from the Emperor’s Smile jar. “Lan Zhan, I love you, I love you so much, but I need you to stop hating him so openly.”

“He hates me too.” Perhaps it was a petty response, but Wangji didn’t enjoy being on the other end of being scolded by his cultivation partner.

“Jiang Cheng only gives out what he receives. If you show him kindness and respect, then he will show that back to you in return.” It was always something Wei Wuxian had always noticed about Jiang Cheng, if someone was kind to him, then he would be kind in return, albeit in his own, angry way, but kind all the same. And if you show him nothing but resentment, then he finds no reason to be kind in return. “I’m not asking you and him to get along and become friends, I know how unlikely that is. I’m just asking for you to give him the benefit of the doubt. For you and him to be in a room together without me worrying that the two of you will kill each other. Please.”

Wei Ying was looking at Lan Wangji with desperation in his eyes, and an overall tired look on his face. He hadn’t realised how much this had been weighing on his husband’s mind, and so he had no choice but to agree, “…mn, I promise to try harder to be kind to Jiang Wanyin, in the future.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry I spoke like that to you, but I needed you to understand.”

“Mn. It’s okay.” But there was still one thing lingering on his mind, that Wei Ying hadn’t answered for him yet. “I am... still unsure on something... You do not get upset when people talk about you, why does Jiang Wanyin?”

“Imagine if I had condemned your every move, Lan Zhan. Every life choice you made the past two decades. Not a random disciple from a random sect, but me, your husband.” He looked away from the other, knowing that Lan Wangji would draw his own conclusions about their brothers relationship, or lack thereof, on his own from his words. “Imagine someone you love saying something so horrible about you to your face, saying that they no longer want to be in your company because it’s tiresome to them, and you have no idea why they’d said it. That’s why he got upset, not because of what was said, but because of who said it.”

Lan Wangji began nodding, his mind reeling at the fact that Wei Ying had implied that Jiang Wanyin had feelings for his brother, but he understood what the other was saying. Jiang Wanyin had no idea that Lan Xichen got into these moods, and so he had believed that the other had meant the words that he had said to him. “I apologise for thinking and speaking so carelessly. I’ll try to be more lenient towards Jiang Wanyin in the future.”

Wei Ying gave his cultivation partner the biggest grin that he could muster, “that’s all I could ask from you, Lan Zhan. I’m sorry that I had to leave you alone all day, you must have been so worried.” He stood up, bringing his jar of Emperor’s Smile with him and immediately sat himself down on Lan Wangji’s lap, wrapping his arms around the other’s neck.

“Mn, it is okay. Jiang Wanyin needed you, and you are now here with me.” Lan Wangji smiled at Wei Ying, and gently wrapped his arms around his waist, holding him in place as he pressed a firm kiss to the other’s lips.

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fallenrepublick · 4 years

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I need some adorable as stars fluff for Feral! So, basically, he either lives or escaped (you choose) and finds himself on shili, the togruta homeworld. Fast forwards several years (savage lives!), when savage and maul are actually on Shili(for whatever reason), and Savage sees a small child, hale togruta and half zabrak and follows them to their home....where there is Feral, who actually has a wife, and a family, three sons and a daughter on the way. Overall, adorable family fluff and reunion!!

This was hard as fuck to write

And not just because I spent twenty minutes calculating the distance between Dathomir and Shili and determining that it would take someone four days, ten hours, and nine minutes to get there through lightspeed with a class 4 hyperdrive.

Warnings: None probably

It was the biggest stroke of luck he’d ever heard of. Having been tipped off by an elder Night Brother who was tired of losing so many of his people’s lives, it occurred to Feral that Savage being taken away tipped his odds of survival against him, and his best shot would be to leave while his head was still on his shoulders.

He scrambled away from the village, taking one last look at the place that was once his home. The creaking buildings and aged bridges that spanned the area gave him a strange sense of dread, as if the place was more of a prison than a place of comfort. The only positive memories he had of the place was when Savage was with him, but now that he was gone, there was no point in staying.

In terms of getting off-planet, there weren’t many options. The barren rust-hued landscape was a good option for ships to land on if anyone came down to see the Night Sisters for one reason or another, but those instances occurred few and far between. Ducking behind large rocks and sprinting across the open spaces, his eyes scanned the terrain for anything that might be useful. He’d be grateful for even a speeder if he found one.

The ground shook, the sand and rocks that peppered the stony floor beneath his feet clicking as they trembled. His balance threatened to give out with the tremors, but he held fast, waiting for it to subside. He took it as a sign that his window of opportunity was waning, and as the sun lowered on the horizon, it took with it his chances of escape. Sometime soon, they would notice he was gone, and if that happened when he was still nearby, they’d find him almost immediately. He thought of Savage and what he must be going through, subjected to Talzin’s magic and Ventress’s undeniable cruelty. He wondered if Savage was still thinking about protecting him, and the guilt began settling over his hearts. If he hadn’t been so weak and foolish, maybe Savage wouldn’t have been taken away. Maybe they’d still be together.

Shaking it off, he convinced himself that his fear and regrets had to be dealt with later. He continued on his path, now with a more fervent sense of urgency and mild panic. Across the way, backlit by the sunset, sat a ship, dark and old, most likely belonging to someone the Sisters had killed long ago. His hearts raced as he hurried to the vehicle, climbing into the cockpit, whose front window had been covered in dust by ages of heat and harsh rock storms. He wiped away at the glass and pressed the buttons on the console, practically begging it to start up.

“C’mon, c’mon…” he groaned, the dead dashboard causing an ache in his chest. “Just one more miracle, please.”

The console came to life, the rumbling of the engine in the ship soothing his fears. He smiled to himself, unsure if it was luck, or the ship, or some benevolent god that had listened. Regardless, he took hold of the controls and began his ascent. The ship rose through the atmosphere, and he was whisked out, passing the clouds above and entering the starry cavern of space above him, leaving his past and dangers behind. When he turned around to watch the planet shrink into oblivion, he thought he saw a small spec of green light pulsing from the surface.

He didn’t really have a plan beyond his escape. In all fairness, he hadn’t thought he would get so far as to actually escape unscathed, and now, floating around the vast emptiness that had before seemed so far away, he wasn’t sure what to do or where to go.

Pulling up a map stored in the ship’s database, he was painfully aware that his fuel wouldn’t last forever, so a decision had to be made. Ultimately, it boiled down to only a few systems that were nearby enough to reach, but not too nearby that he’d be easily tracked down. His target landed on Shili, a planet located in the Ehosiq Sector within the Expansion Region. Traveling coreward would give him a better chance, since it was rare that any of the people that might want to find him would dare travel in that direction. Further, the planet was under the control of the Galactic Republic, and had been since the Republic’s earliest years. He might not be noticed there, but the people sent to look for him definitely would be.

Over four days of travel and lots of contemplation about his next move later, he exited hyperspace and gradually lowered onto the planet’s surface, the environment lush and green, plants and trees sprouting up from the ground around him, almost inviting him to come and at least rest for a while.

He leapt out of the ship, taking in the scenery. He’d never seen anything so… alive. His planet had been horribly gloomy, the only living creatures he interacted with either his brothers or viscous, territorial creatures that wanted nothing to do with him except probably eat him.

In front of his ship stood a tall tree that caught his eye, though not for its height, but instead for the person that stood behind it. She was a togruta, a native to the planet, striped head-tails falling over her shoulders and on her back, light green skin almost blending in with the flora that seemed to encase her. He wasn’t sure what to do in the situation, mouth opening to say something, but no words coming out as he found himself unable to find anything worth saying.

“Hello,” the woman offered, still half-hiding herself behind the plants. “Who are you?”

Shocked at her forwardness and his lack thereof, Feral snapped to attention, straightening himself to seem more approachable, or at least vaguely respectable. He doubted it was working. “I-I’m Feral,” he replied, trying to make it sound like he wasn’t nervous. “I was, uh, trying to escape my planet. Y-You see, there were people after me and, w-well it all started because-”

“You’re hurt? Hungry?” she asked him simply. “You can come back to my town if you need help.”

Help. It wasn’t an entirely foreign concept, but this would be the first time in his life that he would be accepting it from someone that wasn’t Savage. Saying yes felt… wrong, but he was in no position to deny it.

“If… If it’s not too much trouble, maybe I could stay there for a while? At least to get my bearings straight.” he responded finally, brushing himself off and rubbing the back of his neck, unsure if what he was doing was even allowed.

The girl snickered a bit at his nervousness and hesitation. “I offered, didn’t I?” Spinning on her heel, she tread through the woods, assumingly towards her village. Feral scrambled to catch up with her, following her every step over fallen branches and various plants. Wish as he may to make conversation, he couldn’t think of anything to say.

Thus, the journey was silent, save for the occasional warnings about ditches and hazards that lay on the path. But Feral found himself unable to contain his amazement when they reached their destination, the design of the buildings unlike anything he’d seen before, and an overwhelming sense of comfort in its inhabitants seeping into his own skin. Sloping architecture mirrored the look of Togruta head-tails, and the vibrant colors blended into the environment as if they occurred naturally.

She led him to a smaller building to the side, a lone point situated far from the chaos of the general populous. As colorful as the outside was, the interior was relatively unassuming, simple

yet comfortable furniture peppering the floor, mostly made of wood and natural materials. He sat at the table near the kitchen, fidgeting as he did.

“I never asked your name…” he offered, trying not to meet her eyes as she walked about her space, gathering various food items.

“Madin. Yours?” She didn’t look up, clearly deliberating between one biscuit or another. She eventually shrugged and decided on both.

“Feral…” he said softly as she set food in front of him. Silence followed, and as Madin sat across from him confidently, he realized that he had no idea how to have an actual conversation.

“You seem so nervous,” she laughed. “I don’t bite. Most of the time.”

“I don’t want to be too much of a problem,” Feral said, his voice shaking slightly. “A-And th-the fact that you don’t really know me may seem like an issue or-”

“From what I can tell,” she began, tracing a finger along the edge of the table. “You have a…” She thought for a moment. “Behm d’ghe. A heart of warmth.”

He laughed nervously. “Well, I do have two of them.”

“Hearts of warmth, then.”

“Remind me again what we’re doing here, brother?” Savage asked as he sat in the cockpit of the ship, accelerating in the direction of their new destination.

Grumbling, Maul removed his feet from the dashboard and turned to his brother. “The planet is relatively defenseless, and as far as I’m concerned, taking it over to add to Mandalore’s power base is nothing short of beneficial to us. Got it?”

Savage’s expression was reminiscent of someone who did not, in fact, get it, but he didn’t bother arguing. Whatever Maul was up to was clearly better suited to his mind than anyone else’s.

Landing on the surface of Shili, Maul exited the ship and began walking away, turning back only to tell Savage, “Stay here until I return.”

Obliging his brother’s order, Savage stood beside the ramp, eyes glazing over the environment. Everything was bright and colorful, almost too much so, and he found himself wanting to leave at the first opportunity he saw. That is, until he saw something that gave him pause.

A child. And it looked… like him. Small and carefree, the male Zabrak wasn’t just a zabrak. Instead of horns were a pair of short, striped head-tails that framed his round face. When Savage approached him, he beamed, eager to speak to him.

“Whoah!” the boy exclaimed when he saw Savage in front of him. “You look a little like my father!” The thought that went through Savage’s mind upon hearing that had to be pushed down, as it was impossible. Though a hint of it lingered in the back of his head. “C’mere, I’ll show you!” The child turned and began running in the direction of his home.

Hesitant to follow the child, Savage worried about Maul returning soon to find him gone, but his curiosity overpowered it, and he found himself behind the child anyways. Instead of logic, Savage began trying to reason through all of the ways his assumption could be correct. After all, he hadn’t seen him after being taken away by Ventress, so his fate was still unknown.

In front of the boy’s house, two more boys that looked very similar to his guide ran to and fro, playing with sticks and yelling about winning some game or another. A woman stood to the side, visibly pregnant and holding a hand on her stomach, smiling and laughing as she spoke. Savage stopped walking, no longer trusting the vision before him.

Feral looked up, spotting Savage’s presence out of the corner of his eye. Almost immediately, his eyes lit up, mouth widening into the biggest smile Savage had ever seen on him. He began rushing towards his brother, Savage hurrying to meet him halfway.

“Savage!” he exclaimed holding onto the sides of his brother’s arms. “You got taller!”

“You were here the whole time…” Savage trailed off, still wary of what he was experiencing. Feral had become noticeably healthier, stronger and more confident in how he held himself. He was almost unrecognizable.

“I got lucky.” He looked over at the woman who had come up beside him. “And then I got luckier. Savage, this is Madin. She helped me when I first got here and then…”

“And then he wound up stuck with me the rest of his life,” Madin hummed. “The three monsters are Terren, Forta, and Uta. In that order. This here is going to be Shin, the only girl, unfortunately for me.” She rubbed her stomach thoughtfully.

Savage was frozen in place. Everything had changed so quickly, and though he should have expected it, he had half-wanted Feral to stay the same. But now, with his new responsibilities to Maul and his seemingly never-ending schemes, he was glad Feral had found his place.

He stepped forward and hugged Feral, practically lifting him off the ground as he did so. “I still can’t believe it!” Being set down, Feral rubbed his chest to return the air to his lungs. Savage motioned to the house. “I must hear everything about your life now.”

Maul’s mission would just have to wait.

#feral #savage opress

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bubonickitten · 4 years

Link

Summary: Jon goes back to before the world ended and tries to forge a different path.

Chapter 3 is up!

Chapter 1 (tumblr // AO3) | Chapter 2 (tumblr // AO3)

Full text + content warnings under the cut.

CW: brief claustrophobia; some grief and loss stuff; a few more instances of casual misgendering (not malicious; just some wrong pronouns here and there due to the speaking-in-statements thing, but thought I'd mention it just in case); a single LORGE spider. Also, Jon gets to do one (1) swear, as a treat. SPOILERS through MAG 169.

Chapter 3: Rift

Jon doesn’t remember the hill being this steep.

Or maybe he’s just winded from the long trek through the wasteland. He’d had to pass through a long stretch of territory fought over by the Buried and the Vast. The ground there was practically a minefield, pockmarked with sinkholes. They would start out as quicksand traps and suffocating tunnel entrances, only to be hollowed out into yawning chasms and cenotes, then ultimately collapsed all over again by a retaliation-minded Choke. It was an endless cycle of petty rivalry and animosity, and passing so near their battlegrounds left Jon breathless with a discordant mix of claustrophobia and agoraphobia.

Worse was when the Dark managed to sneak its way into the mix. Whether it was Too Close I Cannot Breathe or the Vast’s abyss, the Dark could always find a way to exploit subterranean spaces – and it could never resist reaching out to needle at an Avatar of the Eye, no matter how inadvisable it was to cross the Archive these days.

As Jon drew closer to Hill Top Road, he left the warzone behind for a mostly featureless landscape punctuated with the occasional foxholes of the Slaughter and pockets of the Forsaken’s fog. Eventually those too gave way to a seemingly endless dust bowl of soot and ash – a sprawling domain claimed by the Lightless Flame.

The house at Hill Top Road is the only thing still standing in the midst of kilometres of Desolation-scorched earth. The charred terrain stops abruptly at the foot of the hill, a stark line demarcating the boundary between the Blackened Earth and the territory that Annabelle Cane has staked out as her own. Jon had half-expected an invisible barrier to stop him there as well – the last time he was here, Annabelle had forbidden him from returning – but there had been no resistance when he stepped over the border.

As he hikes up the incline now, he finds himself worrying over what that might mean. Is Annabelle expecting him, inviting him in? Is she simply tolerating his presence, curious to see what he’s up to? Could he be powerful enough now that even she cannot stop him? Or is he once again wrapped up in the Web’s machinations, doing exactly what the Mother of Puppets wants?

He shakes his head. No. He and Martin talked about this. There’s no point in obsessing over the Web’s motivations, letting the memory of Annabelle’s statement paralyze him with indecision. Better to just… keep moving forward.

And it’s not like he has anything left to lose.

Jon continues up the hill, increasingly winded, his bad leg throbbing angrily, and he thinks to himself again: he really, really doesn’t remember it being this steep.

Before long, he’s standing at the threshold of the house at Hill Top Road. The dread permeating the place is just as palpable as he remembered.

He waits for the Distortion’s inevitable appearance, determined not to let her startle him this time. As if on cue, a door creaks open on the ceiling above him.

“Interesting.” Without preamble, Helen lands noiselessly on her feet beside Jon and peers around curiously. “I wondered whether Annabelle would let me in.”

So did Jon. Maybe he should be concerned about – no. He shuts down that train of thought before it can pull out of the station.

“You still haven’t explained what exactly you plan on doing here.”

Honestly, that’s mostly because Jon hasn’t figured it out yet, either. He only Knows that this is where he needs to be.

The Eye wants things to change – as much as it can be said to want anything. Setting the question of its sentience or lack thereof aside, at the Panopticon he had been able to Know things that the Beholding had previously withheld from him. He might be stronger than the other Avatars and monsters lurking about the world, but he’s not arrogant enough to believe he could overpower any of the Fears themselves. If the Ceaseless Watcher gives him access to knowledge, it’s because his Knowing will facilitate – or at least not inhibit – its plans, which means that he must have the Eye’s… blessing, to be here? He shakes his head; he’s getting caught up on semantics again.

Point is: he Asked a question and – as usual – he was given a scrap of an answer and left to puzzle the rest out for himself. All he Knows for certain is what he wants to happen, and that this is where he needs to be in order to make it happen.

“Jonathan.” Helen says his name with a playful lilt and leans further into his personal space. “Are you going to share with the class?”

Without a word, he sidesteps around her and walks further into the house. In her statement, Anya Villette had mentioned a door under the stairs leading to the basement, but the last time Jon was here, it was nowhere to be seen. He hopes it’s there this time.

“What are you looking for?”

Jon drags one hand down his face and sighs. Having Helen tag along is like taking a road trip through hell with an easily bored and… well, deeply annoying child. Huh.

“I won’t be ignored, Jon –”

Jon bristles, redirects his gaze, and stares daggers at her with a few more eyes than strictly necessary. “Some magically appearing door.”

“You aren’t being very kind to me right now, you know.” She tries to sound wounded, but really she just sounds pleased to have gotten a reaction from him.

Jon gives an irritated huff and continues forward through the entrance hall. He treads softly, all too aware of every subtle creak of a floorboard. He doesn’t know why he’s bothering muffling his footsteps. It doesn’t matter how quiet he is; Annabelle will know – probably already knows – that he’s here regardless. Still, there’s just something about the house that demands a certain amount of fearful reverence. Disturbing the silence just feels like a bad idea.

Helen doesn’t appear to have the same concerns. In fact, it almost seems like she’s going out of her way to announce their presence. Of course.

Jon catches a glimpse of the staircase as he rounds the corner and – yes, there’s a door under the stairs. A plain, painted white door with a brass handle, otherwise unremarkable and entirely unassuming.

And yet…

As he tries to approach it, he finds himself rooted to the spot, overcome with a sense of trepidation. He feels his breath coming faster, shallower; feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Every one of the Archive’s eyes locks onto the doorknob and for a moment he swears he feels tiny, feather-light legs scurrying down his spine. He pulls his pack tight against him, using the physical weight of it to dampen the tactile hallucination.

“I hate it,” Helen says darkly. Jon jumps just slightly at the break in the silence, and a few of the Archive’s eyes suspend their rapt scrutiny of the door handle to glance in her direction. Her posture is tense where she stands, staring warily at the door as if it might lunge at them. Jon has never seen the Distortion look so… unsettled.

She’s right, though. The door is wrong. More than that, it’s the exact same flavor of wrongness that he felt the first time he saw A Guest for Mr. Spider, and again when he reached out to knock on the monster’s door.

Back then, he hadn’t known that the concept of wrongness could be broken down into so many distinct subtypes: the uncanny disquietude of the Stranger feels fundamentally different from the compulsion of the coffin, the sensation of worms tunneling through flesh, the Distortion’s nonsensical corridors, the Lonely’s suffocating fog.

The pull of the Web is in a class of its own, and the sight of the door in front of him drops him right back into the memory of the day he opened the book – the day he took the first step on the winding path that led him, inevitably, to this exact moment. It’s such a fitting parallel, he wouldn’t be surprised if it was orchestrated down to the finest detail. He knows the Web plays a long game, but precisely how much of what has happened was in perfect accordance with the Web’s plans? What even is the Web’s –

No. Stop fixating on the Spider, he reprimands himself for the umpteenth time this… day? Whatever; it’s not important. He forces his legs to move.

“You’re sticking your hand in a bear trap, I hope you know.”

“I knew opening the door was a stupid thing to do,” Jon says, nonchalant. “So I opened the door.”

Helen breathes a surprised laugh. “Was that a joke?”

“The idea that this is all some grand cosmic joke,” Jon rattles off drily, “thousands of us running around spread horror and sabotaging each other pointlessly while these impossible unknowing things just lurk out there, feeding off the misery we caused –”

“Terrible.” Helen groans and puts her head in her hands. “Here I was, ready to compliment you on finally finding a sense of humor, and you have to ruin the moment with – with existentialist brooding.”

Jon chuckles quietly to himself and takes another step forward.

“Wait.” Helen reaches one long-fingered hand in Jon’s direction, then falters and pulls back. For a moment, she seems to wrestle with whether or not to continue. “What’s behind the door?”

“A scar in reality –”

“Yes, I know about the rift. What do you expect to find in it? An answer? An escape? A means of suicide?”

“A metaphysical quirk of this new reality’s divorce from the traditional concept of time.”

Jon pauses, chewing on his bottom lip as he looks inward and browses through his catalog.

“It bends and twists and returns to what it was,” he settles on eventually.

“I told you not to use my words.” Helen gives him a warning look, but it’s fleeting, because a moment later his meaning sinks in and she huffs out a short laugh of disbelief. “Wait – wait, wait, wait. You think you can… what, turn back time?”

Jon grimaces and makes a noncommittal seesawing motion with one hand.

“…could emerge back into the world that she remembered.”

Helen starts laughing in earnest now. “You think you can time travel?”

Jon just shrugs, unashamed. He knows he should feel embarrassed – back when he first took the position as Head Archivist, he would have scoffed at anyone making such a suggestion – but at this point, is it any more or less unrealistic than anything else that’s happened?

“Alright,” Helen says, stifling another giggle, “I’ll grant you that there’s a rift in space and time. People have traveled through it before.”

Jon gives an enthusiastic nod. After her encounter with the crack in the house's foundation, Anya Villette had found herself temporally displaced. What would stop Jon from also –

“However,” Helen continues, “what makes you think you’ll just rewind your position on this timeline? It could just take you to a parallel world, leaving this one behind to suffer and decay. Would you abandon what remains of humanity like that?”

Seeing as Anya Villette appeared to have also been spatially displaced, Jon has already considered this possibility. Helen probably knows that, too – she’s well-acquainted with his tendency to overthink things. She’s just trying to tap into his chronic self-loathing, demoralize him, make him doubt his own perceptions. It’s a familiar pattern, one Jon used to submit to far too easily.

“…better than staying here with this strange woman.”

“Ouch.” Helen brings a hand to her chest in mock offense. “You’re being awfully cruel today.”

Jon flashes an entirely unapologetic smile.

“I was being serious, you know.” A knowing mischief creeps into Helen’s eyes. “You’ve always been selfish, but would you really run away from your mistakes, save yourself and damn the rest?”

Unfortunately for Helen, she’s arrived too late to this particular debate. Jon already spent the entire trip here berating himself and second-guessing his conclusions, and he’s just about gotten it out of his system for the time being. Self-recrimination as an inoculation against the Distortion’s manipulations – now there’s a concept, he thinks wryly.

“Do you honestly believe you deserve to escape an apocalypse that you brought about?”

God, she’s persistent.

“Now there’s only one thing I have left that I value,” he says simply. “That I love. And I cannot lose him.”

It’s the truth: the final deciding factor for him was, as it so often is, Martin.

“You would potentially forsake this entire world just to reverse your own loss?”

“There was nothing left to save.”

It never gets easier to admit it out loud, but that doesn’t change the truth of it. This world is already forsaken. Humanity is dying out, slowly but surely, and Jon harbors a guilty feeling of relief that their torment will not be eternal after all. As far as he can See, there’s no way for him to save the ones who remain. There never was.

His power was never meant to help anyone. For a long time, the only action within his grasp was to hurt – and so, he went after those who deserved to be hurt, because the only other option was doing nothing at all. But seeking revenge never saved anyone, never even made himself feel any better. If anything, it only made him feel emptier, more and more alienated from whatever human part of him still lingered – and that was a very dangerous place to be.

And when he and Martin decided together that he needed to slow down, to maintain some distance between himself and the Eye? Well… nothing substantial changed in the slightest. He didn’t get any worse, but he also didn’t get better. The world continued to suffer just as much as if he were to sit down and take no action at all. Nothing he did or did not do made any impact whatsoever.

He Knows intimately that he cannot banish the Entities from this world as long as one person remains to feel fear. Once that last person dies, there will be no one left to save. Hell, depending on how human he still is by that time, he may very well be that last person, and the Dread Powers will just have to ration him. And why shouldn’t they? They’ve all had a taste of him more than once. He’s an unfinished meal. They could just resume hacking away at him, demanding their respective pounds of flesh one after the other until nothing remains – until finally, mercifully, the Fears themselves would wither and die as well. He just doesn’t want to consider how long that could take – no. Best not to dwell on it.

The point is, there is no future for this world. There is nothing left for him to do here. His only hope is to prevent all of this from coming to pass in the first place, and this… this is the only lead he has. And besides, Martin –

“You do realize that you have a vanishingly small chance of seeing him again, don’t you?”

“I decided to take a risk and try it anyway.”

Helen looks put out at his easy dismissal, but she really ought to know better by now, Jon thinks. He might be chronically plagued by self-hate and a visceral fear of being controlled, but Martin is his anchor in more ways than one. Their relationship is proof of Jon’s own capacity for free will, and his decision to go after Martin in the Lonely remains one of the only things he’s done where he’s never once wondered whether he made the right choice. He doesn’t think he’s ever been more confident about anything than he is about their love for each other, even if he doesn’t always feel like he deserves it. Helen really couldn’t pick a worse seed with which to sow self-doubt.

When she sees that Jon isn’t taking the bait, she changes tack.

“And assuming this scheme somehow works as you hope it does, and doesn’t just get you shunted to some hellish pocket dimension – which it almost certainly will – you do realize that your little scene with Jonah Magnus will mean nothing, don’t you? This future will be erased, he will not suffer for eternity – he won’t even remember that it was ever a possibility.”

“For all her anger, there was no thirst for revenge in the Archivist, only an eagerness to expunge an infection that had gone unnoticed for too long.”

“Then why bother confronting him? I know it wasn’t for closure – if you were at all capable of letting go or moving on, you would never have been a candidate for the Beholding in the first place, and we wouldn’t be here now.” Jon just barely manages to not flinch at that. Luckily, Helen doesn’t seem to notice that she struck a nerve, instead staring up at the ceiling in contemplation, as if trying to decipher Jon’s motivations on her own. “So, why? All those messy emotions it dredged up and for what – the drama of it all?”

“I live for the monologue,” he deadpans.

“Jonathan!” Helen gapes at him in exaggerated shock. “Was that another joke?”

She could stand to tone down the condescension, Jon thinks. It isn’t his fault if people overlook his sense of humor just because they never think to listen for it.

“Are you certain about this, Archivist? You have a history of reaching these points of no return and choosing the worst imaginable path.”

Even at the very end, the Distortion just can’t resist one last chance at undermining his confidence. Despite the cockiness underlying her taunt, Helen has a hungry, almost pleading look in her eye – desperate, like everything else in this place that feeds on fear, for scraps in the midst of a famine that will never be remedied.

Jon reaches out and grips the doorknob with one hand.

“Even the end of the world can’t stop you throwing yourself on a grenade. Can’t say I’m surprised. I’m not following you in there, though.”

“Thank heaven for small mercies, I suppose.”

“I am trying to have a heartfelt goodbye, Jonathan,” Helen says, not sounding sincere in the slightest. “I doubt this will go as you hope it will, but I’m fairly certain that no matter what happens, I won’t be seeing you again. I won’t wish you luck, but… well, it will be interesting to see whether one of your half-assed plans might pan out for once – not that they ever have gone according to plan.” When Jon’s resolve remains strong, Helen sighs – and this time, her disappointment does sound genuine. “Well, if you’re sure…” She trails off, giving him one last hopeful look – once last chance to fall apart under her skillful denigrations – before her shoulders slump in resignation.

Not content to leave it at that, though, she does offer one last parting shot: “Do say hello to the Spider for me, won’t you?”

An involuntary shudder courses down Jon’s spine as he remembers Anya Villette’s statement – the massive spider legs reaching up to pull her into the crack in the foundation – and compares it with his own memory of the book, the door, and the monster lurking within. Helen breathes a contented sigh at his ripple of unease – basically a snack for her, at Jon’s expense. Fine. She can have that last little morsel of fear from him, as a parting gift.

“Sometimes you just have to leave,” Jon says firmly, turning the handle. “Even if what’s on the other side scares you.”

And, oh, it does.

Miraculously, Helen allows him to have the last word. As he pushes open the door to the basement, he hears Helen’s door creak open in unison. By the time he’s staring down the stairs into the dark, her door has snapped shut and popped out of existence.

The staircase pitches down, down, down, stretching far deeper than it should. It’s too dark to see much of anything, and it takes a full minute of descent until he notices that there’s a slight curve to it. With every step, the air grows warmer and more stifling. The revolting sensation of walking through cobwebs becomes a constant, but any time he reaches up to brush away the web clinging to him, he feels nothing but his own bare skin.

A few minutes in, his bad leg starts twinging again, and he holds on to the wall to steady himself. Before long, his mind begins to wander to the horrifying possibility that the staircase is interminable, and he’s overcome by an image of a funnel web spider waiting patiently for unsuspecting prey. He tries to push the thought away. Just keep moving.

Between the lack of visibility and being lost in his own head, he doesn’t notice the sharp turn in the staircase until he plows right into the wall, a sharp pain erupting in his left shoulder from the collision. He throws one hand back to steady himself and only barely manages to stay on his feet, his bad leg protesting as he throws his weight into it. After briefly taking inventory of himself and experimentally putting weight on his leg again – painful, but not unbearable – he gropes blindly for the wall again and uses it to guide himself forward, more slowly this time. It isn’t long before the stone of the wall gives way to cool, damp earth, and he shivers with the memory of the Buried.

After several more sharp, nearly 90-degree twists and turns, a faint glow starts to permeate the darkness. A few minutes later, the staircase opens up into a large, dimly-lit space, garlanded with spider silk. The ceiling, walls, and floor are composed of tightly-packed dirt, and Jon has to fight back a rush of claustrophobic panic at the thought of being surrounded on all sides by the crushing earth. It’s short-lived, as it’s crowded out by a much deeper, more primal fear when he sees the fissure in the ground ahead.

It’s a repulsive, crooked thing, oozing with a pervasive, tangible feeling of wrongness. It should not be there. It cannot be there. And yet there it is, boldly existing where it has no right or reason to be, a gnawing, open, inflamed wound in the fabric of reality, pulling him toward it like a black hole. It’s a compulsion stronger than the coffin, an abomination more uncanny than the Stranger, a malice deeper than any Dark, an inevitability on par with Terminus itself.

Jon hates it. At his first glimpse of it, every one of the Archive’s eyes fly open, greedily drinking in the oppressive presence of something so unfamiliar and anomalous, leeching off of Jon’s terror as he beholds it. The scrutiny is fleeting, though, as the sight of it turns corrosive and blistering; all at once, the eyes shrink away and retreat, like a school of fish spotting a bird of prey swooping down for a meal. It takes some of the edge off, having fewer eyes with which to see the thing, but it still weighs him down with dread and revulsion.

Jon doesn’t know how long he’s stood there, staring unblinkingly at the fault line, before he senses a presence – something colossal and hungry and wrong, malevolence and foreboding given physical form – climbing inexorably toward him. He hears a faint rustling, the whisper of tiny avalanches of dirt scraped loose and sent sliding down the walls of the crevice. He knows exactly what to expect, and still he isn’t prepared when the first of the spider’s legs peeks up over the lip of the fissure.

How is it that after a lifetime to process a childhood trauma, it still throttles his heart and squeezes the air from his lungs at the mere thought of it? How is it that, despite being the most formidable thing in this world outside of Fear itself, he feels as small and helpless now as he did on the day he met his first of many monsters? Why is he just standing here, letting those hairy, spindly limbs hover and curl around him like an enormous clawed hand, waiting for a fate that is as unknowable as it is inevitable?

Focus, Jon thinks to himself. Listen to the quiet.

He slowly reaches into his jacket and breathes a sigh of relief as his fingers close around the notebook safeguarded there. It’s Martin’s, full of poems and sketches and stream-of-consciousness journal entries. Jon has had it with him for a long time now, but he’s never been able to bring himself to look inside it. Martin would occasionally share its contents with him – mostly completed poems, and only occasionally works in progress, as he was always self-conscious about his creative process – but Jon doesn’t want to accidentally see something that Martin would have preferred to keep to himself. Martin might not be beside him right now, but he still deserves to have his privacy respected.

Still, for Jon, just having it with him is a physical reminder of his anchor, and running his thumb over the cover grounds him in the present. He closes his eyes and looks inward.

The Archive gropes blindly for something solid amidst the noise, some elemental truth to serve as a starting point in the chaotic tangle choking this place. The edges of his mind brush against thread after thread and none of them are what he’s looking for. They stick to him, filling his head with cotton, making him sluggish and confused, obfuscating his sight. The Spider watches as he flails, becoming more and more snarled in the web.

“I closed my eyes and remembered in as much detail and with as much love as I could muster in my despair,” he whispers to himself, anchoring himself in the truth of the statement. He swallows a terrified whimper as something coarse and fuzzy brushes against his face, and he weaves a command into his next words: “Eventually, I opened my eyes again –”

The Archive obeys, hundreds of eyes materializing on his skin and blinking open in the space around him, grotesque satellites of varying sizes all seizing on single question, and suddenly he can See –

There.

A single thread, out of place among the rest, pulled taut and leading down into the deep gloom of the chasm. He spares a brief thought as to its origin point – Is its anchor here, now, or do its roots begin on the other side? – before silencing it. It’s not a question that needs answering right now. The Beholding objects; Jon reflexively shuts it down and takes an aggravated swipe at the nearest cluster of eyes he can reach, like swatting at a swarm of mosquitoes. He doesn’t think it actually does anything concrete, but when they disperse it brings him a small measure of satisfaction all the same.

He gives an experimental tug on the thread and – it feels right. That’s good, right? Well, he supposes it could be the Web trying to trick him into –

God, he’s like a dog with a bone. He could be trapped in a burning building and find part of his mind wandering off to idly ponder the melting point of steel –

…around 1370 °C for carbon steel; between 1400 and 1530°C for stainless steel, depending on the specific alloy and grade…

– which, yes, he has done. It’s a good way to dissociate from a crisis. Unfortunately, it’s also a good way to get killed, and the giant spider is still there, Jonathan, focus.

He holds fast to the thread – make a path for yourself, tune it to the frequency you need –

“Everything about being with him felt so natural that when he told me he loved me,” he tells himself, louder this time, “it only came as a surprise to realize that we hadn’t said it already.”

– and he follows it, stepping carefully around and between the spider’s legs. He has no idea why it isn’t attacking him – what if this is exactly what Annabelle – no. He shakes his head as if it will jostle the thought loose. Just be thankful for it and keep moving before the damn thing changes its mind.

Moments or hours or perhaps days later, he’s standing at the precipice of the fissure and looking down. Several eyes are riveted on the massive hairy form poised above him, but most are staring into the unknowable darkness with a gnawing, longing fascination. He stands frozen in place, torn between an overwhelming urge to flee and an overpowering need to Know what’s down there: something new, something fresh, something different – any reprieve at all from the excruciating monotony of this nightmare world.

The spider shifts above him. It’s now or never. He has nothing to lose, and if there’s any chance at all of changing this doomed future – of seeing Martin again…

“Sometimes you just have to leave,” he reminds himself, shutting his human eyes tight, one hand clutching the notebook and the other clenching into a fist until the fingernails cut into the palm. “Even if what’s on the other side scares you.”

He takes one last deep breath, thinks of Martin – safe hands, warm eyes, gentle touch – and he takes a leap of faith.

Jon can’t see anything. He can’t See, either. There is an incessant, high-pitched whine screaming in his ears and drowning out his thoughts. When he moves to put his hands over his ears, he realizes all at once that he can’t feel his body. He has no sense of up or down, no fingers to flex, no breath to hold, and – and he can’t See.

It’s… terrifying. It’s liberating. It hurts, but in the same way that his first gulp of fresh air hurt after three days asphyxiating in the Buried.

He doesn’t know how long he floats there in that near-senseless limbo, but between one moment and the next a blanket of fog drops over him and the shrill static is muffled. Through the haze, he can just barely make out a voice, coming from so far away – like he’s drowning, and someone is speaking to him from above the water’s surface. He drifts and listens in a daze as the voice cuts in and out.

“– just – thought I’d – by. Check in – how you’re –”

It’s a nice voice.

“– really need you –”

A safe voice.

“– Jon.”

Wait.

“– bad. I – how much longer we can –”

Wait, it’s – that’s Martin’s voice.

“We – I need you.”

It’s Martin. Martin!

Martin is here, he’s here – Jon doesn’t know where here is, but it doesn’t matter, because Martin is here, and – and Jon is so overwhelmed with euphoria that he isn’t actually processing what’s being said. Calm down, focus – focus on the words –

“And I – I know that you’re not –”

Oh.

“I know there’s no way to –”

Oh, no.

“But we need you, Jon.”

All at once, Jon knows where – when he is.

“Jon, please, just – please.”

No. No, no, no, no –

“If – if there’s anything left in you that can still see us, or –”

Martin, I’m here!

“– or some power that you’ve still got, or –”

I’m here, I’m here, I’m here –

“– or, or something, anything, please! Please.”

Martin’s voice breaks, and Jon’s heart fractures with it.

“I – I can’t –”

Jon can just barely make out the buzz of a phone and – oh.

“I’m – I’m actually with him now.”

Martin!

“You were right.” A pause, and a heavy sigh. “I – will they be safe?”

Peter Lukas. It’s Peter Lukas. Peter Lukas is still alive, Peter Lukas is hunting Martin, Peter Lukas wants to feed him to the Lonely, Peter Lukas is –

“Okay. Okay, I’ll do it.”

Martin, don’t –

“Yeah. Sure thing.”

Martin!

“I’m sorry.”

Jon tries to scream, to reach out, to do anything at all, but he doesn’t have a body and he doesn’t have a voice and he can’t See –

“Goodbye, Jon.”

Martin, look at me! Hear me, please - see me!

He tries to thread a command through the words, but the compulsion doesn't come through, and -

Jon hears the rustle of clothing as Martin stands to leave, followed by the soft click of the door as it closes behind him.

Fuck.

End Notes:

me: i could go into some long-winded exposition about the space-time continuum also me: OR, alternatively, i can handwave it and say It's The Power Of Love, Don't Even Worry About It

anyway, my gay little heart knows what it's about.

- Jon’s dialogue is taken from the statements in the following episodes: MAG 146; 054; 151; 139; 168; 101; 134; 010; 037; 008; 019; 167; 108; 103; 146; 048; 013; 146.

- Jon gets some original verbal dialogue starting next chapter. Thought I'd mention it just in case anyone is getting tired of the Archive-speak (though there will still be some of that). :P

- Psst, if you want to read a detour about Jon and Martin's talk about Annabelle and free will and Not Obsessing Over The Web, I wrote that here. (I'm linking it here because it actually originally started as part of this fic but I decided to make it its own thing because my ADHD brain ran with it and it was waaaaay too much of a tangent sdsdhshgh)

#tma #the magnus archives #tma fic #jonmartin #long post #spoilers through MAG 169 #tma spoilers

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ramblinganthropologist · 3 years

Text

N7 Challenge 25 - Lost

Summary: The Shepards get lost on a strange planet. So, like the siblings they are... time to ask how it’s going with your love interest I guess?

---

“Some N7 you are...”

“Hey, you're lost too you know.”

“Yeah but I'm not the one with the hyper-modded omni-tool.”

Ok, fair... but at the same time, no.

Alistair sighed as he tapped his omni-tool. All he got out of it was a lot of static and a headache blooming behind his eyes. He would have taken his helmet off to massage the pain, but... well, they weren't in the atmosphere for it.

Oh the joys of on-planet missions going to shit.

“I think the storm's causing interference.”

Bo, also in full armor, snorted as she crossed her arms. “Of course it is.”

At least they weren't being exposed to the elements. Instead, they were in a ramshackle building that had probably been an outpost for the illegal mining setup they had been sent to investigate. It might not have been the nicest, but it was built to withstand the elements. Right then that was a bonus, because outside was hell on earth.

He had heard the planet had super concentrated acid rain, but the report had stated it was a rare event. How shitty was his luck?

“Maybe the guys we're looking for got caught in it and are out melting there now.” Bo peered out the window. “Nope... don't see any melting corpses.”

Alistair shook his head as he kept trying to get his omni-tool to connect. “We probably would've heard them screaming first. Acid isn't a pretty way to go.”

“Eh, don't ruin my daydream with facts.” She waved her gloved hand in his general direction. “Whatever, here's hoping they pick up our signal soon. I don't know how strong this roof is, but I'm pretty sure our armor can't hold out long.”

Actually, it could hold out five minutes... though the joints were the weakest part of that. Not that he had tested it or anything...

In the end, he gave up on his omni-tool. With any luck, it would clear up when the storm did. So until then, they were both effectively grounded in the small building they had sprinted towards when the skies had opened up. At least it wasn't anywhere animals could get to – this was the perfect opportunity to get eaten by a bear.

Given they had both survived a thresher maw, that would've been really embarrassing.

“So... since we're stuck here... what are you planning to do to Saren once we catch up with him?”

Alistair picked up his head. Bo was still leaning against the wall, glancing out the window in the hopes of spotting the storm clearing up. Outside there really wasn't much to see as the colorless rain fell. Rocks got pitted, the puddles were toxic, and anything organic caught outside that wasn't native was going to get a nasty surprise. Basically it was like regular rain, only more toxic.

So it was boring to watch.

He shrugged his shoulders as he took a seat on a somewhat run down chair that barely held his weight. “Turn him in, I guess? Though I doubt he's going to go quietly, especially since he's been working with the Reapers.”

Bo snorted at his assessment. “God, you're such a boy scout.”

“Oh, and what are you planning to do to him, headbutt him into a paste?” He chuckled. “Maybe that'd knock the implants out of him.”

He could almost picture Saren splatting against the wall like a cartoon character once Bo got a hold of him. If he really closed his eyes and focused, seeing his implants go flying was almost comical. At the same time... probably wasn't going to happen.

But it kept him busy.

“No, I'm going to rip his carapace off and beat him with it until he stops breathing.” She made the motion of cracking her knuckles, but the effect was impossible with gloves on. Maybe she realized that, because she frowned as she looked down at them. “It's the least that bastard deserves.”

Alistair nodded at this. “It's going to be hard to get his carapace off with the implants, though. You might tear it.”

“I'm not trying to pop him out in one piece, I just need a big enough chunk to beat him over the head with. That part on the back of the neck should do just fine.”

Apparently, she had been studying turian anatomy in her spare time. Good to know, maybe it would prove useful when they actually caught up to the rogue ex-Spectre and took him to task. Of course, that felt like light years away as they sat there, watching acid melt rocks and turn dirt into a biohazard.

At least the rocks were in cool shapes...

“So, speaking of turian anatomy... you got a plan on how you're getting into Vakarian's jumpsuit or what?”

Bo's sudden question rose above the hissing of the acid outside. Alistair's face immediately turned crimson, and he was glad for his helmet's visor hiding that. No doubt it showed on his body language, though – he was shit at hiding that.

“You know, I should really be focused on if the weather c-”

Bo snorted at his response. “So that's a no.”

…

Yeah.

Her brief bark of laughter rang out across the small room, which made his face burn even hotter. Even worse, he didn't have an omni-tool to dick around with to help process that. Right then, he was getting his XO at full power.

And he hated it.

“He's part of the crew, and we're barely ok with each other. I should respect that.”

The other Spectre in the room shrugged that off with one of her patented bored gazes. “He's not part of the Alliance, so if you're worried about fraternization you're good.”

Yes, but that wasn't the point. He was still pretty sure the turian hated him, and more importantly they were trying to nail another turian to the wall before he fucked the entire universe over. Whatever he had going on, it was secondary to that main goal of catching Saren before everything went to hell. After that, maybe, he could consider it.

But like... shit, how?

“We've got other stuff to worry about right now.” He tapped his omni-tool. “Damn it, come on. It's only a little acid rain, why are you so fussy?”

His XO rolled her eyes as she shifted her position. “You said that the last time and then our entire unit got eaten by a thresher maw. If that's not an indication you should jump on a situation, I don't know what is.”

Proof the universe hated them? Alistair didn't know, and he didn't care to question it as he sat there, praying his omni-tool would finally connect so he could call the Normandy. Anything would be better than this, possibly even getting hit by acid rain.

Yeah... that was how much he hated discussing his love life or the lack thereof. Maybe that was why he was single.

“Proof that I shouldn't even consider this until I'm out of the military.” He shrugged. “Besides, I could ask the same thing to you. How are things going with Tali?”

Not that he hadn't seen plenty of awkward moments between the two before this moment. After all, he hung out in engineering plenty when he had nothing better to do. Maybe that made him a massive nerd, but it also made him the perfect audience for watching human and quarian interactions play out in a military ship.

So... yeah he enjoyed it a little bit. Just a little.

Bo's posture shifted a little. “Fine.”

“Why does it sound like you're at the same impasse I'm at?”

She shot him a blank look. “Your problem is a combo of generalized anxiety disorder and a possible curse by the universe on anyone you have a crush on. My problem is that I'm scared I'm going to break her in half or breathe on her too hard and give her the flu.”

He was pretty sure that last one wasn't going to happen, quarian enviro-suits were well supported to keep nasty humans from giving them the flu. Once the visor went up, he didn't know. Quarian biology wasn't his specialty.

The former... well... he was going to think the best of her.

“You have good control, and she's pretty healthy.”

Bo groaned at that. “Yeah but I keep freaking out about it! I know she can handle it, she's tough and gorgeous and smart as hell but it's always in the back of my fucking mind that I'm going to get her killed!”

And this was why he kept trying to get her to go -

“I know what you're thinking and fuck off, if I didn't go to therapy after Akuze I'm not doing it for this.”

Apparently she was also a mind reader. He made a mental note of that as he checked his omni-tool one more time. It was still not working, but the static wasn't nearly as bad. It was probably due to the rain – there was a little less hissing. Maybe it was passing over.

Excellent, they could get out before they delved too deeply into each other's pathetic excuse for a romance resume.

He shrugged off her attitude regardless, though. “You already know my recommendation there, I'm not going to say it. But I think she knows what she can handle.”

“I know...” another groan. “Is this how you feel all the fucking time?”

Alistair checked his omni-tool again. “Worried about things with logical answers? Yeah, pretty much.”

“Well it fucking sucks and I want off the ride.”

That made two of them, which was why he took medication for it. It didn't always work because Saren had replaced quite a few things as his top anxiety producers over the last couple weeks, but it helped. It wouldn't help her, though – he didn't even want to think of the dosage she would need at her size.

Did pills even go that high? Maybe he'd ask the doctor about that the next time he saw them if he got out of this alive. Talk about motivation.

After that little outburst, they were quiet. The rain was definitely starting to slow, though. Even better, the sky was beginning to clear up as the sudden storm began to pass the area. It wasn't completely safe yet, but they were getting there.

“Is that thing working yet or what?”

Someone was testy. Alistair gave her a shrug as he tapped it one more time. Much to his relief, this time the static cleared. He could hear something on the other end beeping softly. A connection had been established.

“Yo is anyone out there? Matt, Waters? You two better not have fucking died out there, I swear-”

Nope. That wasn't Joker.

Bo's eyebrow lifted as she looked over at her CO. “I feel like a little stress relief, how about you?”

“I mean, we did come here for a mission.” Alistair was already working to locate the source of the call. It was probably nothing, but at least it would keep them busy until the Normandy could dock safely to pick them up. Maybe they could finish this mission after all.

At the very least, running around would clear both their nerves a little. He was feeling more than a little twitchy, and no doubt his XO felt the same. Maybe a little head smacking would help them settle down for the ride back.

If not... well, they'd work that out before she got back to Tali. It wouldn't do to accidentally break her in half or anything.

#n7month #ramblinganthropologist's writing #Alistair Shepard #Bo Peep Shepard

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fallout-snippets · 5 years

Note

um i love how u write x6, how do u think he would interact w the sosu + other companions post game railroad ending, assuming he was sent to a settlement and isnt immediately hostile to the sosu?

(i know he technically gets hostile if you do any other ending but the institutes, but that’s shit writing and character neglect on bethesdas part.)

Immediately after he’s on high alert, but not looking for trouble. There’s no way he can take on everyone and if he flees, then what? He has nowhere to go. It’s not like he didn’t know it was coming either though. It doesn’t take long after he becomes Soles companion that he realizes that they don’t really have any intentions to join the Institute.

He’d probably blend in with the shadows, waiting for Sole to tell him what to do because honestly, he has no clue what to do or what his purpose is now. Maybe Sole is about to kill him and they just forgot about him. He’s fine with that. Maybe they’re about to make an example out of him to all the surviving Institute affiliates. That’s okay too. As long as something happens soon. He finds himself scared for the first time in... forever. Maybe he should’ve fought with the Institute against Sole but he knows that it wouldn’t matter. Sole would win anyway and honestly he doesn’t like the idea of going against them.

When Sole does find him, he has to smother the fight or flight response. There’s nowhere to run and there’s no way he’ll fight them. He accepts his fate and waits for the final blow. Instead Sole puts their arms around him, pulling him tight against them. He feels them sobbing against his shoulder and he knows enough to put his arms around them too.

He doesn’t know how to cry though.

He’s granted a place with them, if he promises to do right by the people and cast off any allegiance to the Institute and their ways. That’s not a problem to him, it was never his opinion. He wasn’t allowed to have one. All he needs is someone to follow that he trusts and so far Sole has been the only one.

He knows Cait doesn’t trust or like him one bit but she leaves him alone. He appriciates that. As time passes he won’t make too much of an attempt to make friends but he does commend her combat skills and ask to spar from time to time. She never holds back.

Codsworth is a gentleman. He would never make any comments or suggestions of bad character, but X6-88 knows the bot doesn’t trust him that much either. Technically, he is created by the people who tore his family apart, regardless of the bombs. Their interactions are always civil, however, and X6-88 sometimes asks for advice on proper etiquette.

Curie isn’t afraid of him. She might not properly understand his origins but she does love to ask about it. He appriciates her forwardness and doesn’t mind talking to her despite her sometimes invasive questions. They help eachother become a little more human; she teaches him to be softer and he teaches her to be a little tougher.

X6-88 doesn’t care much for Danse and Danse will never accept him. Their backgrounds are just too different, but neither one will seek out the other for a fight. Danse may, sometimes, express his distaste but it doesn’t bother X6-88 at all. He knows the inconvinience a fight among friends would cause Sole and he values them much more than he dislikes Danse.

Deacon and X6-88 rarely interract. He understands that Deacon is loyal to Sole as well but he knows that given just the slightest reason to doubt his own loyalty, he will be executed immediately. Their few interactions are always stiff and he knows that Deacon not only distrusts him, but genuinely despise him. They stay away from eachother as much as possible.

Dogmeat is a friend to everyone who’s a friend to Sole. He definitely notices how the other companions treat X6-88 but if Sole likes him, so does he. X6-88 adores Dogmeats company. Appriciates having someone near that doesn’t talk or request interaction. Likes to just exist near someone.

Hancock takes a while to warm up to the idea of an ex-courser being free to walk around people without strict supervision but eventually understands that X6-88 had no other frame of reference other than the Institute. Considers this his second chance however, and won’t give him a third. They’re not exactly friends but Hancock is a man of the people and understands social situations perfectly, and X6-88 tries to learn from him.

MacCready seems to be equally scared and pissed at him but he’s not in the business of acting on it. Their interactions are always civil and polite but brief. If Duncan is nearby he notices that MacCready becomes much more visibly distressed and so he chooses to keep a distance. Not just because it’s ethically the ‘right thing to do’ but because he doesn’t doubt that MacCready, if pushed into a corner, would do something rash and stupid.

Nick understands X6-88 better than anyone else and doesn’t hold his past against him, if he really is trying to reform. Nick knows firsthand how hard it is to do good and be good when people are continously doubting and using your past nature against you. Nick is probably the closest thing X6-88 has to a friend other than Sole and it’s kind of a friendship based on what they both are and are going through rather than a friendship based on interest and having fun together.

If there’s one thing Piper never thought she’d be doing it’s talking to an Institute puppet without screaming profanities too. She’s always cautious in approaching him at first but once she gets going she can’t help herself. X6-88 thinks it’s intriguing how her thirst for knowledge smothers her fear and he finds himself more than willing to tell her whatever she wants to know. Who’s going to reprimand him for spilling the secrets now? Not that he knows that much. Piper comes to understand that the Institute considered X6-88 a literal tool, nothing close to human, and that he’s trying to emerge from the power they held over him. She’s never going to ask him over for dinner or anything, and she’ll keep Nat a good distance away from the man, but she’s kind of sad to realize he’s not the monster she thought he was.

Preston doesn’t hold his past against him, like Nick, but is also going to make damn sure the Minutemen survive no matter what. Keeps an eye on him and the things he does but as long as X6-88 at least does what Sole says, Preston has no major problem with him. If someone else does, however, that’s between them.X6-88 admires Preston. The worst things that could’ve happened to him happened but he survived and fought through it anyway. He tells him sometime, that he never had much faith in humanity but Preston has proved him wrong. He probably says it much less tactfully and Preston probably doesn’t know if he’s being insulted or complimented but sees the struggle and just thanks him.

Strong assumes that people are wary of him because he’s a fearsome warrior or something. Doesn’t entirely understand the whole faction thing and honestly? He doesn’t care. Humans are humans. Also doesn’t understand why X6-88 apparently isn’t human? Strong is very interested in fighting X6-88 to see who’s the strongest but X6-88 keeps a respectful distance. They’re both two sides of a socially inept coin and there are only misunderstandings between them.

Ada remembers the Mechanist doing bad things thinking it was right until Sole cleared it up with her. Assumes it’s the same with X6-88. She’s not afraid of him. She kind of freaks him out though. If she’s a friend of Sole she’s a friend of his, more or less, but she acts as if she’s not just a bot. And people treat her like she’s not just a bot. But she is a bot. But then, isn’t that what people say about synths? And he’s a synth. So is he a bot or more than that? What’s the truth? Her existence and programming sends him down a spiral of selfdoubt and hard-hitting questions he’s not always ready to deal with (but that he does try to deal with)

Longfellow knows more than well that synths and coursers can reform and change their lives. The only real difference between the two are their job descriptions and hell, Longfellows just too old to give a shit. If he wants to make amends and change his life, let him. X6-88 appriciates the rare kindness Longfellow shows him but finds his lifestyle to not... match with his own. Has no idea why people like alcohol. The first time Longfellow got X6-88 to down a drink he thought he was malfunctioning and followed Sole around with a grip on their jacket until he sobered up. He’s not interested in doing that again.

Gage is probably a bit jealous of the reputation that follows X6-88 around despite the fact that he more or less follows Sole around like a puppy. Gage tries to push him into action but not because he wants everyone to turn on X6-88 and push him away but because he wants to see if it’s true. X6-88 honestly enjoys the testing, finds comfort in how firm he is in his emotions, or lack thereof. Doesn’t much care for Gages previous life, thinks he’s everything the Institute were convinced humanity had become.

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