#and like. there were like... boat fragments in the water u could Climb On and i fuckin LOVED clambering onto shit

[green-eyed-whumpster]

My OC Universe: Rowan 65

Chapter 65 Summary: A short little scene of their night at the inn. Rowan suffers from another nightmare and is very eager to leave. (Taggadocious: @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi, @much-ado-about-whumping, @abitefullofeverything, @whump-me-all-night-long, @sky-or-something-idfk and @tears-and-lilies)

Trigger Warnings: Nightmares

Rowan woke up at some point in the night, unused to being in a bed without someone he was supposed to curl against. He resisted the urge to inch forward and embrace Cordelia as she slept, but he knew that it wouldn’t end well and she would only become more upset with him.

He felt ill. He clutched his stomach weakly as nausea spread through his body like blood in water. His head rolled back and forth nervously as he struggled to gain his bearings, his feet swayed under him and he realised with shock that he was standing at a boat’s helm. 

The salty wind blowing over his face, and the waves crashing against the hull, spewing sharp sprays of water over him. Hands grabbed at his shoulders and wrenched him backwards, his shriek was swallowed by the thunder as he fell hard against the deck, air knocked from his lungs. “You stay back here!” Someone roared over the wind and he nodded weakly, tears pricking his eyes as fear coursed steadily through his veins. He scrambled back on the deck, hands catching splinters and nail-heads as he forced his back against a wall, watching in terror as the ocean sprang over the ship, a large, black wave crashing against the deck, flooding outwards and soaking him to the skin. He didn’t understand where he was. He didn’t understand what was going on. He could do nothing but tremble in fear as the vessel tipped back and forth and fragmented orders managed to temporarily sail above the overwhelming sounds all around him. He let out a pathetic cry as another bout of icy water washed over his skin, droplets falling past his lips and catching his tongue with the sharp salt that caused his muscle to spasm, he squinted as more droplets caught his lashes and stung his eyes like acid. He couldn’t even will his limbs to move, his legs trembling as the torrents of water numbed them to the bone and the irregular rocking of the ship tipped him back and forth on the deck. The orders shouted by sailors made no sense to him, and whatever they were doing didn’t seem to be changing their situation in the slightest. He found himself unable to understand, unable to help, unable to even cry for understanding or scream in fear. He was entirely helpless as water crashed over him, threatening to choke his throat with every breath.

Rowan awoke the next morning to the sound of heavy footsteps, he listened as they moved back and forth around him, pacing in a U-shape. It took a moment for him to force his eyes open, afraid of being faced with the rocking ship again. But when he did he found himself peeking through his lashes at the sunlight, groaning softly as the sharp glare imprinted itself on the inside of his eyelids. He sat up, finally processing the footsteps as an action he should respond to, and blinked furiously to clear his eyes in order to focus on Cordelia. She was readily dressed and packing her satchel, clearing away writing implements and spare clothes. “Where are you going?” He asked and she looked up, twisting her head to peek over her shoulder at him as her body followed. “Hey, you’re awake,” She said softly, closing her bag and letting it rest on the desk. “I was just getting ready for us to leave, but I didn’t want to wake you,” She moved closer to the bed and he tensed instinctively. “So, you…you weren’t leaving without me?” He asked carefully and she shook her head, face displaying clear discomfort as she sat gently on the bed. “Of course not,” She replied. “After yesterday, I thought you would want all the rest you could get.” Her hand hovered over the bed as if she was going to reach out and touch him before deciding against it and falling harmlessly onto her thigh. “Oh,” Rowan realised he was used to sleeping in, William had no qualms about waking him up should the need arise, and once he had satisfied that urge he would allow his consort to fall back asleep. “Th-thank you,” She smiled comfortingly and nodded. “You take your time, we’ll leave whenever you wish.” He shifted impatiently and inched the blankets off his legs. “I want to leave,” He said certainly. “I’ll be ready in a moment.” He climbed off the bed and reached for his abandoned pile of clothes. 

He wanted to get as far from the city as possible, should William escape or somehow regain power, the first thing he would do is track down his disobedient and disloyal whore. “I said when you’re ready,” Cordelia began, just in case he was acting out of what he thought she wanted, instead of what he wanted. “That means that if you want to sleep some more, then you can,” He shook his head quickly and looked at her. “I want to leave.” He repeated, looking up to meet her eye for a moment. Cordelia could sense that he didn’t like making eye-contact with anyone, but he was certain that he wanted to leave. “All right,” She nodded, reaching for her pack. “If you want to leave faster I can go down now and prepare the horse,” She suggested and he paused before nodding. “The owner will give you breakfast when you go down, and I’ll meet you there if I don’t finish before you do,” “All right,” He said steadily. “Thank you, Cordelia,” He hadn’t thanked her so explicitly so far. His appreciation was spewed out in desperate, trembling words accompanied with tears and pleading hands. It meant something different being said so calmly. She felt as though it was more deliberate thanks. Specially for her. Not just gratitude offered to a saviour. “Of course, Rowan,” She replied gently. “I’ll see you down there.” He watched as she shut the door behind her and sighed heavily. I really am free.

#whump #medieval whump #my writing #oc #Rowan #Cordelia #conditioned whumpee #nightmares

[imjustthemechanic]

The Stone Knight

Part 1/? - Two Statues Part 2/? - A Curious Interview Part 3/? - John Doe Part 4/? - Escape Attempt Part 5/? - Making the News Part 6/? - Fallout Part 7/? - More Impossible Part 8/? - The Shield Thieves Part 9/? - Reality Sinks In Part 10/? - Preparing a Quest Part 11/? - The Marvelous History of Sir Stephen Part 12/? - Uninvited Guests Part 13/? - So That’s What It Does Part 14/? - The What and the Where Part 15/? - Gearing Up Part 16/? - Just Passing Through Part 17/? - Dinner with Druids Part 18/? - Kracness Henge Part 19/? - A Task Interrupted Part 20/? - The Red Death Part 21/? - Aphelion Part 22/? - The Stone Giants Part 23/? - Nat the Giant Killer

I don’t think I need to elaborate on the chapter title.

           As the alarm rang, people came running out of buildings all around, some of them carrying firefighting equipment, to react to the emergency – then stopped and looked around in puzzlement when they couldn’t see anything on fire.  There were no golems visible, either, and for what felt like several minutes, though it was probably only a few seconds, people just milled around, confused and asking each other hushed questions.

           Then there was a tremendous groan and crash, and one of the big holding tanks at the east end of the complex collapsed.  From where Natasha was standing it was only possible to see that it had fallen, not why or whether there’d been anything in it, and she was able to hope for a split second that it had been empty. Unfortunately, it had not, and the thousands of gallons of refined oil spilling out of it didn’t take long to find a spark.  It went up with a woosh, pouring black smoke into the air.

           A moment later, the party responsible appeared. There were three golems, and the collapsed tank had coated them all in burning oil, meaning they weren’t just inhuman lumbering figures three times the size of a man – they were also on fire in the late evening dark as they stumped up the road between the buildings looking for humans to crush. No wonder most of the employees simply turned and fled, running indoors to hide or down to the docks in the hopes of escape.

           Natasha did not move.  Her training had taught her that the moments when she most wanted to panic were the times she most needed to stay calm and think.  How did you fight something like this?  The stones had stood on that headland for millennia, all but indestructible.  Sir Stephen seemed to have some theoretical knowledge of magic, but if he’d known how to counter this surely he wouldn’t have been trying to defend himself with a sword and shield.  Or would he? Maybe he just hadn’t had the time or materials to break the spell.  It didn’t matter anyway, because he was lying half-conscious in the infirmary.  His healing might be quick but it took place over hours, not minutes.  Sir Stephen could not help.

           “Natalie!”  Rushman, still cowering in the back of the jeep, reached out the window to tug on her jacket.  “We have to run!  Natalie!”

           “Let go of me!” she snapped, jerking away. Nat had no time for this man or his cowardice right now.  She had to save not only his life but that of every other person on this island, if she could only figure out how. Maybe the refinery would have some explosives… maybe somewhere on the island there was some leftover ordinance from the abandoned military base…

           Then she had an inspiration – and its source, oddly enough, was not training or weaponry.  It was archaeology.

           The prehistoric people of the Orkneys had merely found slabs of stone broken along their natural grain and set them upright, but there were other stone circles in the British Isles whose creators had gone to a little more trouble.  Stonehenge, for example, was made not of shards but of tidy blocks, which had to be quarried.  Before they’d had steel tools to cut through the rock, the ancient Britons had used heat. They would build a fire against a piece of stone to heat it up, and then splash cold water on it, forcing it to contract and split.  The golems were already on fire.  She needed water.

           Sharon had gone to take shelter in the infirmary building.  She was yelling and gesturing for Rushman and Natasha to join her.  Rushman was still in the jeep, as if it could somehow protect him.  Nat climbed into the driver’s seat.

           “I think there’s a boat waiting,” Rushman said, putting his seat belt on.  “Everybody’s gone down that way.  I think there’s a boat.”

           “Shut up,” said Natasha, starting the engine. Anywhere else on earth, she would be able to get water from a fire hose, but they wouldn’t have those here because water was no good for putting out the kind of fires an oil refinery worried about. She would have to look elsewhere. She made a sharp u-turn, and drove towards the golems.

           “The other way!  The other way!” said Rushman, hanging on to the back of the seat in front of him as if for dear life.

           Nat ignored him.  She headed for the nearest golem and stopped about twenty feet shy of it. It stepped towards her, and she drove off again, slowly enough this time that it could follow her.  Sir Stephen had said these were like machines, only following their programming.  In this case they seemed to be programmed to go after the nearest humans.  Hopefully they weren’t smart enough to realize that the human wanted to be followed.

           A second golem joined in the chase.  On the edge of the facility there was another woosh as another tank collapsed and the oil it spilled met the burning residue of the first.  With flaming golems plodding along behind her, she turned onto the ring road, and from there she spotted what she needed – a big onion-shaped tank with the Roxxon logo painted on it, held up on a high tower and lit from below by two floodlights.  She accelerated towards it.

           “Get out,” she told Rushman.

           “What?” he asked.

           “Get out of the car,” she clarified.

           “We’re still moving!” he protested.  “I’ll get hurt!”

           “Either jump out and get hurt or stay in and get killed, it’s up to you!” said Nat.

           He took a deep breath, opened the door, and more fell than jumped, landing in a heap and rolling away to land in the roadside ditch.  Nat revved the jeep up as fast as she could, then kicked the door open and somersaulted out while the jeep kept going.

           She didn’t dare look back.  She just grabbed Rushman and forced him ahead of her up a metal ladder that led to an overhead inspection platform.  They had climbed only a few rungs before the jeep impacted with the base of the water tower.

           The structure creaked, then toppled over. The tank at the top ruptured under the stress, and gallons upon gallons of cold water poured came pouring out.  There were three golems in the immediate area, and none of them made any effort to avoid it – indeed, their attention was focused either on Nat and Rushman or on other humans, and they didn’t appear to be aware of it at all.  The water splashed over them, vaporizing in clouds of white steam that mixed with the black smoke of the burning oil – and with a series of rather musical ping sounds, the stone shattered.  Flakes and fragments crumbled to the ground, some still glowing dull red from the heat of the fire, followed by larger slabs.  They rolled and bounced to a stop, and while some of them seemed to twitch a couple of times it was apparently an illusion. The stones lay still, all animation extinguished with the flames.

           Natasha had been worried that the water would carry a skin of burning oil, but it seemed that the ground in this area sloped in the wrong direction for that.  She began to climb down, then realized Rushman hadn’t moved.

           “Come down,” she told him.  “There’s still more of those things.”

           He whimpered, but didn’t move.

           “Fine, just stay there.  They can reach you,” Nat told him.  She didn’t care – he hadn’t lifted a finger to save her from the Red Death’s henchmen, why should she save him from the golems?

           That scared him into motion and he began to climb down, although he was shaking so badly that he nearly slipped and fell on top of her.  Nat set off across the muddy, boulder-strewn ground as if she fully intended to leave him behind, and he jogged, panting, after her.  There were three golems down, but more were already arriving at the complex.

           People had stopped running away now, though. Natasha’s stunt had gotten attention, and the refinery employees had realized the monsters were vulnerable to heat and cold.  Blowtorches and buckets of burning kitchen grease came out to set them on fire, and dry ice fire extinguishers to put them out again.  The coup de gras was administered when the boat anchored at the refinery docks, a ferry to take workers to and from the island, pulled out its own firefighting apparatus: a hose that pumped water directly out of the icy North Sea.

           Within ten or fifteen minutes, it was all over. Half of the refinery complex was a smoking wreck, and parts of the eastern end were still on fire, but the golems had been destroyed and people were fighting the flames and evacuating the buildings in a far more orderly fashion.

           The single ferry at the docks couldn’t take everybody away, so priority was given to the ill, the injured, and those who had families in the south end village that they wanted to take with them.  With all this going on, nobody seemed too interested in the group of fugitives who’d been brought in with the golems behind them. With Rushman stumbling along behind her, Natasha headed back to the infirmary to find the others.

           It was a very busy place.  Workers who’d already been too ill or injured to move were being put on stretchers to head down to the ferry, while those who’d been hurt or burned in the golem fight were getting first aid, with the promise of more thorough care on the boat.  Seeing all the injuries made Natasha remember Sir Stephen’s words – you cannot mean to lead the beasts to more men and women! – but she shrugged off her guilt as best she could by telling herself that it wouldn’t have mattered.  The golems had been programmed to kill people.  If her companions had escaped the island, or if they’d been killed, the golems would have simply moved on to the next available target and that was the refinery.

           Right?

           She eventually found Sharon, Sam, and Sir Stephen in a little curtained-off area.  Sir Stephen was lying on a cot and Sharon was holding his hand, while Sam finished splinting his bruised and lacerated legs.  There was an awful lot of blood on the sheets, and Sir Stephen’s eyes were closed now, as if he were unconscious or sleeping.  That immediately worried Nat.  Sir Stephen’s stories had suggested he remained awake no matter how much pain he was in.  Could it be the golem had actually finished him.

           Sam gave her a reassuring smile.  “I told them not to mess with him,” he said.  “He’s getting better already – I just had them give him some morphine so he won’t suffer quite so much.”

           Nat nodded, relieved.

           “All right everybody!” called a voice outside in the hall.  “Captain Ibrahim says we’ve got room for a few more!  There’ll be another boat coming for the rest of you in a few hours. For now it’s just the sick, the injured, and children!”

           The curtain opened, and a nurse looked in.  “Are you sure you don’t want to send this guy back to the mainland?” she asked, eyeing Sir Stephen uncertainly.

           “No,” said Sam firmly.  “He can’t be moved just yet.  I’m his doctor, I’ll look after him.”  

           Nat looked at Rushman, who had sat down in a chair in the corner and was now just staring at infinity, as if he still couldn’t quite take in everything that had happened that day.  She went and put a hand on his shoulder.  “Take this guy,” she told the nurse.  “He’s not well.”  She didn’t know about the man in the jeep from earlier, but Rushman was definitely in shock, light-headed and possibly dissociating.

           The nurse nodded and extended a hand to Rushman as Nat helped him up.  “Come with me, Sir,” she said gently.  “What’s your name?”

           “Huh?” he asked.

           “Your name,” the nurse prompted again.  She put an arm around his shoulders to escort him out.

           “Oh.  Allen. Allen Rushman,” he said.  “I wasn’t supposed to… that is… I don’t know what happened.  I just came up here to see my daughter.  I’m missing my car club meeting.”

           “It’s going to be fine,” the nurse assured him. “I’m sure your daughter will be delighted to see you.”

           Little did she know, Natasha thought.

           With Rushman gone, and Sam needed to look after Sir Stephen, that just left Natasha and Sharon to take care of one last important task. They needed to go back to the henge to retrieve the rest of their things – and to look for anything the Red Death’s men might have left behind.

           “Now that the map’s proved useless we have no idea what they might do next,” said Nat.  “I doubt they’re going to give up, so we need to figure it out.”

           “Does it have to be tonight?” asked Sharon, but she stood up and stretched all the same. “I should be used to this,” she said. “When you’re trying to solve a case you don’t get breaks.  Even when you’re sleeping, you’re still thinking about it.  I’ve come up with ideas in my dreams, and had to make myself wake up so I could write them down.”

           “Sam,” Nat agreed.  “It doesn’t sound very different from spying, actually.  Maybe I should have been a detective instead of an archaeologist.”

           They found a couple of utility flashlights in a closet, and headed for the infirmary entrance.  “Why archaeology, of all things?” Sharon asked.

           “Because when I was a kid I liked Indiana Jones movies,” Natasha replied, smiling.

           Sharon smiled back.  “Is it everything you hoped for?” she asked.

           “It’s getting there,” said Nat.

#natasha romanov #black widow #steve rogers #captain america #sam wilson #falcon #sharon carter #agent 13 #fanfic

[krustybob]

literally one of my biggest goals for when i get financially stable is 2 just... buy a nintendo 64 so i can play hey you pikachu again hHSJSjkf

#zees #i had 2 go 2 this like shitty foster home when i was like 10(?) and the only good thing abt it was they had a n64 & a wii lmaO #ive been wanting 2 play a bunch of n64 games again for years :c #i remember i would like. play donkey kong & like diddy kong racing a lot but like . #i would almost never do any Quests or Racing i just really really really wanted to Explore the like. main areas? #like in diddy kong racing u can drive or fly or boat out to all these different doors that lead to different race tracks #but i never actually like . Went In There . id just get on the boat & go thru the ocean really really fast in whatever direction i wanted #id also do that with the plane too lmao id just fly super super fucking fast all over the map #and like in the donkey kong game they had like. it was kinda the same deal? #like theres this HUGE main island and you can just chill out there? but there were like teleport pads that took u 2 different worlds #but there were like Specific Quests n stuff like it was usually just 1 straight path #i didnt wanna do quests i just wanted 2 be a cool monkey & swim around in the ocean for like 5 hours #i think i like. reenacted stories in my head with them lmao it wasnt a Video Game 4 me it was just Advanced Daydreaming hHDJDNKF #i have a super super Distinct memory of like. being on a boat level which i actually loved a lot because Big Huge Boats and Water #and like. there were like... boat fragments in the water u could Climb On and i fuckin LOVED clambering onto shit #and like. i was playing as lanky kong & just chilling on a piece of metal out in the ocean & in my head i was like . #''i have been stranded on this piece of metal for days. my boat is missing and my crew is most likely dead.'' #''i have been fishing for food with my very long arms. god save my soul'' #HDJDKDMFMF #no games no rules no masters just Advanced Daydreaming using Monkeys as my Vessel