#character: oonagh o'dwyer

[theartistknownaslymond]

Whumptober 2022 day 30

This is the writing mood lads, but we’re nearly there...

Manhandled | Hair Grabbing | “Please don’t touch me.”

Another stellar shout from @stripedroseandsketchpads ​ Mmmmaybe the thing in PiF where Lymond is caught/being held back and GRM tries to literally force him to take drugs etc? Iirc there was also face grabbing involved…

Took me a while to find the in on this, and please don’t question surrounding details - PiF timelines and events diverge a bit from canon. A card game isn’t equivalent to five-aside opium-fuelled murder chess, it’s just one element of things. Francis has been playing at other tables too - though you might be suspicious as to whether he really has been trying to cheat the house.

CW: kidnapping (well...implied gambling for custody over people), prescription drug misuse and addiction, manhandling and signs of a beating (blood). Casino setting. GRM being there, being a creep, trying to force drugs on our dear hero. Also cw 1980s fashions. And a toddler gets dropped, but that’s how it goes in canon, too.

---

"You can't just keep me here!" Philippa injected all of her strident Somerville common-sense into the words.

She supposed Kate had been right about another thing - a shower and a change of clothes could do wonders for your confidence. She'd probably have been unstoppable if she'd been allowed to choose the outfit herself. Instead she had to make do with Kiaya Çalışkan's idea of suitable attire for a business meeting in a casino: a clingy mint green dress cut straight across the top so that her shoulders and collarbones were bare, cinched in at the middle by a wide gold belt that felt almost like a corset. In the air-conditioned room, Philippa's neck and shoulders might have felt exposed if not for her hair, which fell long over her clavicles, and for the child, Hamal's warm weight in her arms.

She stood at the table where the final game of the night had been played and stared down the array of disinterest and disdain that greeted her.

The owner of the casino, Roxelana, gazed impassively at Philippa. "Sweetheart, he lost," she said, raising one empty palm and shrugging.

Kiaya Çalışkan's arms were folded - an unusual indicator of her annoyance - but she said nothing to support Philippa. She looked at Roxelana and Philippa thought she saw something pass between them, these two otherworldly women. They towered on their huge heels like tall, elegant birds, Kiaya's gracefully curved nose raised in the air, Roxelana's long, narrow eyes quick to observe from beneath her heavily made-up lids.

Roxelana's thin lips softened at the corners into a hostess' smile and she turned back to Philippa. "You'll be quite comfortable here, our rooms are luxurious. It's only until Mr Crawford and Mr Reid Malett can reach a more...binding agreement."

"It's still kidnapping," Philippa said baldly.

Roxelana chuckled mirthlessly, her mouth remaining closed as she did. She met Kiaya's eyes and Kiaya smiled back obligingly.

Philippa wondered what sort of life these women led, where a teenager complaining of kidnapping and abduction could just be treated as a source of amusement, or something endearingly naïve to be patronised.

The third person on the other side of the table had been staring at her with an expression of boredom and disgust. Graham Reid Malett's lip curled even as he ran his icy blue eyes up and down her body. His hands were in the pockets of his pink satin suit trousers and he stood in an aspect of readied relaxation that belied the damage Philippa knew had been done to one of his legs.

Philippa clutched Hamal tightly and pretended she couldn't feel Reid Malett assessing every swell and curve of her seventeen years through the form-fitting fabric of her dress. She tossed her hair back and raised her chin assertively. "Mr Crawford won't stand for this. I know he has a plan. He'll never consent to leaving Ms O'Dwyer and their son behind with a man like him," she deliberately ignored Reid Malett and addressed Roxelana, the lady in charge.

Another woman, who remained sitting down next to her, gazed up with her own look of wry amusement, though it was nearly buried beneath exhaustion. Oonagh O'Dwyer appeared every inch the supermodel again after Kiaya's work - an ivory-coloured satin bodice enfolded her body, as straight-edged and unyielding as she was, and an artfully pressed pair of matching trousers seemed to engulf her long, skinny legs. She held a toddler on her lap as well, a sullen and restless boy with blond curls and a long, angry mouth. She didn't contradict Philippa - but Philippa gathered that she had little hope of any help from Francis now.

"He ought to have played better then, oughtn't he?" Reid Malett sneered.

"Yes, well - " Philippa drew an indignant breath, but didn't get the chance to offer up an excuse for Mr Crawford. At that moment the door to the private room opened and the man himself was launched back through it, followed by two black-suited security guards.

Francis tumbled to his knees on the thick, patterned carpet and wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. Philippa saw it come away with blood on it and she detected Oonagh's soft murmur - some Irish curse, no doubt.

Reid Malett perked up at his appearance, swaying to face the man who was now being forcibly restrained by the guards. His hands still in his pockets, he nodded his head at Roxelana's chief of security, who had been standing in the shadows by the wall, observing all with silent professionalism.

"Well, Dragut. Looks like your boys have discovered some...irregularities already."

The Turkish guard did not move or unfold his arms. His moustache twitched a little, like he wanted dearly to say something to Reid Malett, but instead he asked his men what the situation was.

One tossed a leather satchel on the table and pointed a finger at it. "He's been pocketing his winnings. Tried to leave without paying off his credit."

"A serious accusation," Reid Malett looked at Roxelana and stepped forwards, reaching for the bag. "May I?"

Dragut watched him closely but did not object. Roxelana frowned, folded her arms and nodded.

Philippa was staring at Francis, who laughed ruefully and shook his head. There was blood welling from his split lip and dripping on the front of his white shirt. His arms were held unnecessarily tightly behind his back by the two guards. He glanced up finally and met her eyes. "Hullo. Fancy meeting you here," he gasped, his attempt at a reassuring smile somewhat undercut by the blood on his teeth.

Hamal saw it too and whimpered unhappily. He wrapped his small fists in Philippa's hair and nuzzled her chin.

Reid Malett was removing things from the satchel. What interested him most seemed to be a little orange pill bottle, which he shook experimentally and held up to the light above the playing table. "Oh, Francis, my dove. What on earth is this?" he cooed.

Philippa went to take another step closer to see what it was, but felt a cool grip on her arm.

Oonagh looked up at her with steady, serious green eyes. "Mo chailín cróga. Don't."

She hesitated. She just wanted to ask the guards to loosen their grip a bit, to check Reid Malett hadn't somehow planted the evidence he seemed so unsurprised to find. But Oonagh's expression was the expression of a woman who knew all too well what was at stake and what the people in the room were capable of. She squeezed Philippa's arm until the girl sighed and agreed to hang back.

In Oonagh's arms, Cai watched Swami Geetesh with a rapt expression. "Sweeties!" he yelled, and pointed a chubby finger at the bottle in Reid Malett's hand.

Most of the people in the room where staring at the child and the pill bottle - only Philippa and Oonagh saw Francis turn glacial white at the boy's demand.

Reid Malett smiled perfunctorily at Cai. "Not sweeties, no. The sign of a dreadful addiction, in fact. When did you grow so desperate that you had to self-medicate, Francis?" he stepped towards him until he was standing right in front of the kneeling Mr Crawford, and he shook the bottle of pills again, holding it down by his crotch, which he held jutted towards Francis' face.

Francis swallowed and a tremor went through his body. The guards responded as though it had been an escape attempt and wrenched his arms back further.

Graham Reid Malett stared at him, open-eyed, open-lipped, an expression of thirsty fascination on his features. "It's been a while since you've had any, hm?"

He flicked the cap off with his thumb and wafted the bottle below Francis' downturned face. It probably didn't smell of much at all, but the proximity of it made Francis snap his head up and wriggle against his restraints.

"You must be feeling dreadful," Reid Malett mused. He turned to Roxelana and Kiaya, but he did not move away from Mr Crawford. "It must have impaired his judgement during the game. It would be remiss of me to accept a result like that - won on an advantage, against a man who is already lost to his basest instincts."

"Indeed?" Kiaya's brows raised. "What do you propose?"

Reid Malett barked a laugh. "Well first, he needs to be in his right state of mind." He raised the bottle and studied it again. "They're strong, Francis. How long have you been taking them?" Abruptly, he dropped to a crouch, so that he was at eye level with his plaything. "You must be feeling..." Reid Malett studied his face, then whipped a large hand out to grab Francis and hold him, his thumb on Francis' cheek, his fingers tight on the back of his head. "Simply dreadful. No sleep...cold sweats...anxiety...do you see that it is all hopeless yet, darling?"

Mr Crawford pressed his lips together and Philippa distinctly saw him shudder again.

Reid Malett beamed. "Siezures? Oh dear. Dear, dear, dear. I think the only way you can work with us is if you have a little more, hm? We don't have time to wait out the withdrawal symptoms."

"Hold his head," he stood and ordered the guards.

"Stop!" Philippa yelped. "Why are you listening to him? He's not your boss!"

Oonagh's hand was on her arm again, pinching tight, but Oonagh was also looking at Roxelana and Dragut. Kiaya was looking at Dragut. Dragut was looking at Roxelana.

The lady of the house turned to the table and ran her fingers through the takings that had been discovered in Francis' bag. She hummed to herself and tapped a roll of bills with one manicured nail. "Why did you steal from me, Mr Crawford?" she asked.

Francis, his head forced back and his hair pulled tight by one of the guards, grimaced. "My financial problems are well known."

Roxelana's eyes narrowed. "Indeed, which is why I brought you here to negotiate a residency on stage."

Francis' brows rose and he glanced at Reid Malett, a smile almost reaching his lips. "Yes. It doesn't make much sense, does it?"

"The uncontrolled impulses of a junkie," Graham Reid Malett announced.

Roxelana looked down her long, straight nose at Mr Crawford and at Reid Malett. Then she shrugged and turned away.

"Dragut, I think Mr Crawford will be staying with us as well. Please have someone prepare a room for him."

"No..." Philippa whined, pain seeping into her voice as Oonagh's nails bit into the skin of her bicep.

Mr Crawford didn't have a chance to cast a brave look in her direction. Reid Malett grabbed his jaw between his thumb and fingers and pinched tight enough that Philippa could see the blood rise to his skin even from where she stood.

Reid Malett lifted the bottle of pills towards Mr Crawford's mouth and squeezed as hard as he could against his teeth, trying to force an opening to appear between his lips.

The only thing that Philippa could think of to do was not very fair, really, but then nobody in this room could judge her on it. Nobody except for Hamal himself, whom she murmured an apology to as she let her hold on him fail and watched him drop to the floor.

Hamal shrieked as he fell and shrieked again at the impact. It wasn't very far and the carpet was plush, but the shock of it left him howling.

It was enough of a distraction - in the instant the guards' attention wandered, Francis tore his hair free and threw himself sideways, managing to knock the pill bottle from Reid Malett's hand with his shoulder as he turned.

The contents of the bottle rolled away and found places to nestle in among the thick pile carpet. Francis didn't try to flee, but let the guards grasp him once more and laughed even as the back of Reid Malett's hand landed a blow across his cheek.

Philippa had bent to where Hamal sat screaming, his face red and the tears flowing down his cheeks. She tutted at the carpet burn on his knee and spoke gently but firmly. "Fie, fie, hinny! It’s a soft, expensive rug!"

She glanced up to check on Mr Crawford and saw he was staring at her with horror, Reid Malett's face next to his, also turned towards Philippa. She could almost read the words on his lips as he murmured against Francis' cheek: "Don't worry. I'll see that she pays for it."

#whumptober2022 #whumptober #every day i write the book #character: philippa somerville #character: francis crawford #character: graham reid malett #character: kiaya khatun #character: oonagh o'dwyer #character: cai o'dwyer #character: hamal #character: dragut #character: roxelana #setting: topkapi casino #band au: pawn in frankincense

[venndaai]

I finished Checkmate recently, which means I can finally go ahead and write a very important post!

Lymond Characters Ranked By Their Degree Of Transgender Swag*

Danny Hislop: listen to me. Listen. I 100%, no joke, believe that Daniel Hislop is canonically AFAB. There is zero evidence to contradict this and considerable evidence for it, if you count up every time Danny's small stature and beardlessness is pointedly mentioned, and also if you just look at how much swag he has.

Oonagh O'Dwyer: canonically was happy for exactly one afternoon in her whole life, and that was because she was passing as a boy during it. I am just saying.

Francis Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny: canonically extremely good at drag. Is God's specialest princess. Is apparently physically nearly identical to his half-sister, including their voices. High levels of transgender swag.

Robin Stewart: is canonically not trans, but a lot of his issues would be even worse if he was, nice, and he is also my favorite poor little meow meow so I'm claiming him.

Marthe: already has Gender Trouble up the wazoo, why not add a bit more. Is apparently physically nearly identical to her half-brother, including their voices.

Mikal: is already fem, bisexual, and the swaggiest character on this list. He could be anything he wants to be baby.

Adam: soft gentle bisexual artist who can also Murder. Decent amount of transgender swag.

Christian Stewart: pretty sure she's a cis lesbian and that's why marriage feels like death to her, but it could absolutely be because she's an egg!

Will Scott: again, very much a cis gay man, but AU transgender Will would be delightful.

Archie: I feel like Archie transcends gender, tbh.

Philippa Somerville: no trans swag but she'd definitely be an Ally.

Jerott: he's already confused about enough, let's not make it worse.

Margaret Lennox: my favorite failgirl villainess has zero swag of any kind.

Richard Crawford: always and forever the token cishet. Transgender swag levels terminally in the negative.

(*obligatory "just, like, my opinion, man" disclaimer goes here)

#lymond #the lymond chronicles #hello. i have only the most highbrow contributions for this fandom. #lymond chronicles #i forget what tag i was using

[intearsaboutrobots]

Oonagh O'Dwyer giving up her chance to escape to reveal Galatian to the invaders is the kind of furious, "you're going down even if i have to go down with you" anger that i really enjoy seeing in a character

#lymond chronicles spoilers #lymond chronicles #disorderly knights lb #i like oonagh #i hope she finds happiness somewhere w no terrible men #i include francis here #i hope oonagh finds an island w some other ladies and gets to just hang out there w them

[figureofdismay]

I'm rereading the Queen’s Play, and I just had to take a little break and prepare my for the first entrance of Oonagh O'Dwyer. It's a funny thing, she aided in multiple attempts on Lymond's life but I adore her. And I still think that she and Francis adored each other in a completely deranged but heart felt fashion. The whole thing is completely unfair, and I do think that DD held a grudge against her own character for not being The Right Kind Of Woman. I think there's a juvenile vindictive quality to some of DD's choices in LC that I didn't notice at all in King Hereafter. I want to finish reading the series on this attempt, because I do love Francis. But between the biases she shows and the things I know are coming, I'm struggling far more than I would have expected for a series with such beautiful prose and advanced, many geared plotting.

[theartistknownaslymond]

Whumptober 2022 day 2

Nowhere to Run: Cornered | Caged | Confrontation

---

Oonagh and Cai (Khaireddin) on the ashram. References to Oonagh's ED, plus her imprisonment and Geetesh's manipulation of Cai.

Went hard one day 1, had barely any time/inspiration on day 2, rip and apologies! I'm not happy with this but it's done and I had fun comparing Oonagh to the Morrígan at least.

---

Now and again she was allowed to see her son, and it was the only thing that kept Oonagh O'Dwyer eating. For nine months after his birth he had at least been kept close by, and every few days Oonagh had been granted an audience in a sound-proofed room at Swami Geetesh's private residence. But then, as her son learned to crawl and toddle, as he began to blossom with an interest in the world, he had been taken and left among the other young children whose presence on Geetesh's ashram was a mere distraction from the spiritual path of the adults. Volunteers minded the infants in the nursery, but Oonagh was never allocated such work - she was honoured to labour in the service of Swami Geetesh himself, in the house he imprisoned her in, where he could keep a close eye on her spirit to ensure it remained small and acquiescent. On the occasions when Geetesh entertained rich donors and couldn't have her around the place - silent and furious, a walking denial of the healing he claimed to offer - she was banished to the kitchens, where her appetite dwindled further in the face of stacks and stacks of dirty plates and greasy pots to wash.

No one on the ashram knew who Oonagh was anymore, no one was left who remembered her pregnancy and her plans to go to Vegas for the birth. No one who knew that, before she was called Ma Daso - the servant - her name had been Oonagh O'Dwyer. She had been supermodel, singer, lover of the superstar Lymond. She had survived the tyranny of Cormac O'Connor before she had survived this.

But earlier, when she had meant to leave this place, she had been sun-tawny and strong, her edges smoothed by happiness, satisfaction, and the health she had learned to maintain for the sake of the child she carried. Now she looked in the mirror of the little bathroom in her attic prison and saw a ghoul: dry black hair starting to show grey wisps - like ruffled feathers - cheeks too hollow, skin too pale and patchy, eyes frenzied and accusatory. Her lips were dry, always troubled by blisters or spots, uneven and bloodied where she picked at them with soft, flaking nails. She looked like a deity whose temple had been slighted; a war grave that had been desecrated; an omen of death.

But when she was with Cai, she laid all that aside - for a few brief minutes once every so many days, or weeks, her captor let her watch over her child, and she made herself glow during that time. Just seeing him was like feeling a tug on the life-belt tethering her to existence. She wouldn't let herself drown while he lived, while a future existed in which she might escape, with Cai, and forge the life she had promised herself.

She never saw another sannyasin at the nursery when she was there - only Geetesh, who watched silently, with contemptuous expectation.

Oonagh wondered, with her own measure of contempt, whether he thought she might one day not recognise her own child in amongst the other toddlers - as if she would ever mistake him for another when she had already spent so many months wondering whether the baby she bore would be the stout, heavy-browed child of bruising colonial traumas, or a poet's changeling, delicate and defiant as the astrantia that had flowered beneath the trees in the month she was due to leave the ashram for the birth.

When she'd met Cai and seen his father's long mouth and delicate brow, his fair complexion and long limbs, she knew she had met someone unforgettable.

Cai was hers and he was a gift from a much-loved friend, not, in fact, a memento from a hellish period of her life that Cormac O'Connor might choose to be litigious about. Cai was hers and no matter how firmly Swami Geetesh referred to the boy as Kailam, his plaything, Oonagh knew, as carrion birds already know the outcome of battle, that Cai was hers.

He had been shy within the group at first. He had known her voice and cleaved to it - crawling across bare floorboards or dry sand to reach for her red linen skirts.

Geetesh had forbidden her from picking him up, but when she spoke to Cai it seemed to amuse him. She'd murmur words of confidence in Irish, and Geetesh would look at her like she was simple.

"Misneach, mo chroí," she told her son. She promised that they would leave together one day, and never wear red again.

And then Cai had stopped coming to her. Geetesh made Oonagh wait longer between visits. And when she arrived, Cai was only as interested in her as the other children were. Less so, in fact. She knew him, always, but Geetesh's contempt turned into amusement as he watched her try to speak with the boy.

Cai had no time for her voice any longer. What return did it bring him? What gratification? Cai saw another child playing with a toy he wanted and he took the toy - Geetesh laughed and praised him. Cai stamped brazenly up to Geetesh and held a hand out. His demands were made - monosyllabic, steeped with certainty - and Geetesh laughed, praised him, and rewarded him with some treat or other from the pockets of his pink linen robes.

If Oonagh objected, the meeting would be cut short. She would be escorted away, Geetesh's large hand pinching tight around her skinny arm.

"Ma Daso, do not interfere," Geetesh warned her, bundling her back inside his car.

"What in hell's name are you doing to him?!" Once, in pure frustration, the question had escaped her.

Geetesh stared down at her from the other side of the car door. Oonagh fought the urge to slam the lock down, as though it would do anything to stop him when he had the keys in his fist.

"He is learning how to transcend the petty limitations we impose upon ourselves," Geetesh said quietly.

"You're turning him into a little psychopath!"

He chuckled. "No, Daso. I am giving him freedom - of course, if you no longer wish to see him, all you need do is tell me."

She swallowed. Her fists clenched in her lap and she searched the icy depths of Geetesh's eyes - whatever she saw there, it still wasn't the same as what she saw in Cai. Cai was hers. Geetesh could give him all the freedom he wanted, but that child - unlooked for, unplanned - was hers, and she would never let it be forgotten.

#whumptober #whumptober2022 #character: oonagh o'dwyer #character: cai o'dwyer #band au: disorderly knights #band au: pawn in frankincense #every day i write the book #character: graham reid malett

[theartistknownaslymond]

Whumptober 2002 day 5

Blood Loss | Running Out of Air | Hyperthermia

Good lord a bare draft of FAR too many words because I have no time to edit, was enjoying writing ashram weirdness and Jerott flapping, and will certainly be coming back to edit this and incorporate it into a current WIP anyway... Mainly, I spent the day researching aquifers in Nevada just to check the plausibility of the context and I’m not a geologist so screw it. This fic ties into various others I’ve posted already around Jerott’s wrist injury trying to escape the ashram and leading up to the Zuara equivalent (timeline is a little different in the AU, but still. Zuara!). Don’t you love how ExtraTM Pawn in Frankincense is? I know I do...

So warnings are really just about the build-up - dangerous roads, sink-holes, storms, tunnels, blood, flooding etc...

---

Since they'd begun the journey back into the mountains the weather had only worsened. Gilles was a competent driver, but he was angry, and there was no passenger side seat-belt - Jerott sat tense with terror, every hair on his arms and neck standing on end, as the truck's gears screamed up gravel tracks, its tyres fighting against the rainwater that was beginning to pour down from the peaks along roads and arroyos. In his arms, he clutched Dasypus the armadillo, trying not to squeeze the animal's leathery carapace too hard even as Dasypus' long claws scrabbled at him in protest.

The rain was so heavy up at the ashram headquarters that they didn't see the damage until Gilles had to slam the brakes to avoid hitting a crowd of sodden Rajneeshees in pinks and reds.

Regardless of the solid rain, they were gathered around a pile of dark rubble where half of Swami Geetesh's compound used to stand, some holding shovels, some gesturing angrily, all looking lost.

Jerott bolted from the truck, shoving Dasypus into Gilles' arms and ignoring his alarmed questions.

He grabbed the soaking wet shoulder of a former colleague, who didn't recognise him at first.

"Swami! It's me, Vadan! What the fuck happened?"

The other man peered at Jerott, at his short, scruffy black beard and over-sized clothes - none of which were in sannyasin colours. Still, whoever he supposed Jerott was, he offered the explanation Jerott needed: "A sinkhole, beneath Swami Geetesh's house...we can't see what the damage is, but it looks like there were tunnels, or a cellar beneath it. Ma Daso was inside when this happened."

"Ma -?" Jerott felt his stomach flip and his temperature drop. He looked about him in a panic. "What happened? Is she ok?"

"She's over there..."

Jerott squinted in the direction indicated and saw some of the Rajneeshees clustering around a figure seated on an upturned bucket. He slapped the other man gratefully on the shoulder and ignored the query that trailed after him: "Swami Vadan? What happened to your arm?"

The woman who had been rescued from the building looked small and folorn from a distance, but when he approached her, Jerott saw the fire in her green eyes.

Oonagh O'Dwyer held one pale, thin hand to her bloodied brow, but the other was clenched into a fist in her lap. She studied Jerott with a frown, her thick black brows fierce and her mouth a grim line, and he didn't expect her to recognise him - they had only met the once, several weeks earlier, when Geetesh had been occupied with tormenting Jerott in the room that now gaped open on the edge of the sinkhole.

"Ma Daso?" he said carefully, glancing at the others who had been fussing over her. "Ms...Ms O'Dwyer?"

Her eyes widened, though her expression remained suspicious. She nodded minutely. "You were here before..."

Jerott nodded and crouched down beside her bucket. Oonagh O'Dwyer shooed the others who had been helping her away and bent towards Jerott. She was thin, her skin barely more substantial than the clouds sitting low all about them, but even so, Jerott felt the power of her presence, the heat of her spirit and all that Francis Crawford must have found compelling about the ex-model.

"I thought he'd kill you," Oonagh hissed.

To Jerott's surprise, something like a memory popped into his mind: Swami Geetesh looking down at him, contempt and pleasure all mixed together in his expression. In Jerott's vision, he imagined a pressure on his throat and the taste of blood on his lip. He shuddered and shook his head. "No. Just sent me away. What happened? Was he in there?"

"He found Francis," Oonagh's words, low and urgent, struck Jerott with a piercing horror. "He was keeping him in the tunnels. Please for the love of God, tell me you knew about the tunnels? None of these precious fools did..." she rolled her eyes at the Rajneeshees standing around the sink hole, some of whom were now looking pathetically at their unresponsive pagers.

Jerott shook his own head, and felt despair clutch at his chest. There had been so much going on here he hadn't known about, so much Geetesh had been involved in that he should have recognised, should have stopped.

Oonagh swore in Irish and, he realised through the rain, blinked back tears as she gazed up at the sky. "He's in there with him. Can you imagine that?"

"What did he want with Francis? Why the tunnels?" Jerott asked, mortified to have let her down, to be letting Francis down, to find himself - yet again - just another of Geetesh's useful idiots.

Oonagh blinked and shook her head, her lower lip projecting miserably. "Music? I suppose? He was always whistling when he came back...singing..."

"Oh!" Jerott leapt to his feet. "There was the store beneath the studio! We started expanding it before I left, but I never knew why. Maybe it linked up?"

Oonagh looked up at him incredulously. "The studio's miles away!"

"By track, yeah, but if he went under the mountain it's just down there," Jerott gestured vaguely to the trees on his left.

"So they might not have been anywhere near the sinkhole..." Fear settled over Oonagh's body once more.

Jerott hesistated to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder - her wet hair hung over thin, clingy linen, and she seemed too exposed already, raw like a seam of precious metal. "I'll take the truck and go."

"Wait - " Oonagh stopped him, her voice a desperate whip-crack. "Wait, what's your name? Be careful. If Geetesh is..."

"I know," Jerott nodded tightly. "I know who he is. There's a shotgun in the truck."

Oonagh swallowed and took a breath. She didn't look as perturbed by the mention of the gun as most people would have. "Vadan, was it?"

"Jerott. Blyth. I knew Francis...ages ago. He probably didn't -"

"He did," Oonagh smiled tightly. "Best go after him, eh? I hear you didn't before."

Jerott reeled away from her, hurrying back towards Gilles and the car, trying not to think about what she'd said.

"Hey, hey! Where you goin'?" Gilles dashed towards Jerott, Dasypus under his arm.

"I need the keys, I need the truck..."

"Non, non, we use it to clear the hole!"

"No, he's not...he's not in there, Pierre. You want to find the land-owner? Reid Malett?"

"We gotta clear it out, get to the tunnels..."

"Arrêtes! Arrêtes, je sais, mais ils ne sont pas la!" Jerott grabbed Gilles' broad shoulders and shook him. He had no idea how clear his French was to someone who spoke a Cajun dialect, but at least it made Gilles understand his seriousness. He explained that he knew another entrance to the tunnels, that a friend was inside and likely in danger. Gilles didn't quite get it, but he'd gathered, through their weeks working together, that Jerott was the kind of maniac he could trust - and so he handed over the keys and told Jerott where the spare gun cartridges were.

Jerott was so used to working with the improvised cast on his left wrist now that it didn't impede him at all as he reversed away from Geetesh's house in a spray of mud and gravel.

Driving that had been terrifying when Gilles had been behind the wheel seemed perfectly sensible when Jerott was the one breaking, steering and then immediately feathering the accelerator as soon as he was on the exit of a bend. He hurtled down familiar roads, the windscreen wipers clattering like the brush hitting the sides of the car. He didn't even think about the last time he'd taken this route and what had happened - if he had done, it might have occurred to him how much more likely another landslip was in this weather.

Down the mountain he went and round its foot, into land that had been cleared for crops, across a plain that was still dry and dusty compared to the land at higher altitude. The road swept round, curving back to the wooded base of the range, where the little black studio building squatted all on its own - Jerott had often thought of it as resembling the Kaaba in Mecca.

The windscreen was covered in mud and dust that clung to the wet glass and Jerott had to switch the wipers off. The truck skidded in wet dust as he came to a halt and he leapt out, Gilles' old snake-scaring shotgun in one hand, a handful of cartridges in the other that he stuffed into the wet pocket of his jeans.

He sprinted for the studio and ran inside without stopping to consider what he'd do if Geetesh and Francis were there.

It was empty, luckily, and Jerott wove his way between chairs and equipment to the door at the back and the dark steps to the basement. He was beginning to think it had been a foolish thought, anyway - how on earth could Geetesh have constructed so many tunnels and bunkers without anyone's knowledge? He wasn't coming down here himself with a shovel every night...he had probably taken Francis far, far away. Oonagh must have been mistaken about the tunnels at the main building...

But there was a door in the basement there hadn't been before. Jerott fumbled around on the shelves and found a torch, and then he tried the handle.

No dice: the door was metal, and it was locked. Everything smelled damp and rusty, and there seemed to be a breeze from the other side and Jerott paused, leaned his head against the surface, and tried to hear anything beyond his own ragged breath.

There was a kind of rushing noise, like the sound of the sea in a shell, and Jerott shook his head in frustration and stood back from the door.

With a shrug, he readied the gun and pointed it at the lock, and gave up any pretence of subtlety.

There was a flash and a loud, metallic clang, and the lock broke open beneath the gun's bark, and Jerott shouldered his way into the dark tunnel beyond.

He trotted onwards into the depths of the earth, increasingly troubled by the coolness of the air and the damp floor. Rainstorm or not, they were in the desert - there shouldn't have been this much standing water beneath his feet.

Sooner than he expected, the tunnel widened into a chamber, and inside, beneath the wavering light of his torch, he was met with a scene of carnage.

The floor was covered by two inches of dirty water. In it various examples of detritus floated: clothes; plates; scraps of paper; a ukulele. Against one wall there was a table covered with papers, stationary, a broken lamp... Opposite it lay a narrow metal bedframe with a thin mattress on it, and on that bed a body was awkwardly sprawled.

Jerott caught his breath - there was blood all over the mattress: a dark, shining pool of it that spread from the leg of the man lying there. He wore rose pink linens, and he lay face-down against a pillow, his hair shining golden beneath the wavering light of Jerott's torch. Everything was wet, the blood on the mattress thinned at its edges like tie-dye, and the golden hair was matted with the same filty water that covered the floor.

Jerott stepped down into the room and moved his light around again so he wouldn't notice his hand shaking. As he did, he caught sight of the other body, which had been swept up against the table legs and lay half-submerged.

Jerott glanced once more at the body on the bed, wanting to be certain that it wouldn't move, and then he put the gun and the torch down on the table and dove down to check for signs of life.

"Francis!" He hissed, casting another nervous look at the bed as he touched the wet, cold skin of his friend's neck.

He wasn't breathing, but Jerott had had first aid training and didn't hesitate to haul him to the dry tunnel and turn his head to the side. He pinched Francis' fine-boned nose between his thumb and forefinger and covered his long lips with his own, filling his lungs with warm air and then forcing it into Francis' body with all the power he would usually put into singing the lyrics Francis wrote. Jerott's mind was on the amount of oxygen he could push into Francis' body and nothing more - he repeated the breaths until, beneath him, Francis flinched and retched, and Jerott had to sit back quickly as rancid water sputtered up from his lungs.

Francis coughed and coughed and Jerott helped him to sit up, and eyed the dim lit room with Geetesh's body inside.

He hadn't moved.

The boy who had almost gone to medical school hesitated, supposing that he should do the same for the other man. But Francis was leaning into him now, still coughing, his eyes screwed shut, his body struggling against the new availability of air.

The first thing he asked, when he was able to, and had cast a perplexed look at Jerott's bearded face, was: "Is he dead?"

Jerott froze and then nodded. Geetesh hadn't moved. The bed was covered in blood. There was so much blood.

"Yeah. Yeah he's gone."

Francis closed his eyes and bowed his head. Beneath Jerott's steadying hand his body shuddered and winced. The words he murmured sent chills up Jerott's spine: "O mill...o mill what hast thou ground..."

#whumptober #whumptober2022 #band au: pawn in frankincense #character: jerott blyth #character: pierre gilles #characters: dasypus #character: oonagh o'dwyer #character: francis crawford #setting: ashram #every day i write the book

[theartistknownaslymond]

Whumptober 2022 days 16 + 17

Mind Control | Paralytic Drugs | “No one’s coming.”

Breaking Point | Stress Positions | Reluctant Caretaker

Clawing my way through this week, I will catch up, I stg!! For now, belated weekend prompts. It’s pretty much a straight re-write of the scene after the Tour des Minimes in Queens’ Play, but I had a crisis of confidence about...everything, but mainly writing, and needed to just hold Dorothy’s hand and get something down.

CW: injuries, pain, references to building collapse, hospitals. Opiates and other drugs, but generally not non-consensual, and being used - broadly - for their intended purpose..

---

Gradually, the crumbled bricks, the shattered beams, and the teeth of broken tiles were lifted. Beyond them lay the sky, painted pastel blue, stippled with unusual texture. The amps were still buzzing, or there was a guitar creating feedback... Some noise, anyway, insistent as a fly at his ear, was harrying Francis for attention. He tried to unravel the elements of the sound, mentally working the faders, dialling down the bass, trying to extract the essence of the melody.

There was a voice, wasn't there? Spoken word vocals, wry and cool. A steady rhythm over the confusing bed of noise below it.

If he was in the studio, Francis would tell the speaker to move nearer to the mic. He'd push that bass down lower to let her husky tones dominate...

Ah, yes - it was a woman's voice.

It sounded even more aloof and cynical now he recognised that.

"Come on now, I know you're awake. Your eyes are open. Are you just going to lie there staring at the ceiling all day?"

Day? It should have been nighttime...East Berlin. The secret gig. All the pretty young things who didn't have access to the clubs in the West being given one night of release, of musical ecstasy, a crowded floor where awkward small talk was unnecessary, where desires could be read in the eyes of other dancers and the bass thudded and moved willing bodies closer together.

Francis gasped mutely as pain washed up around him, belated and vast, revealing a yawing chasm of agony - and the potential for more agony - that lay swathed around his body.

He remembered, then, the dust that had filtered down through lasers and shafts of neon light - at first it had looked like glitter. The music made the floor shake, it was so loud Francis felt it in his muscles, a vibration in his bones and organs and very being. He was at the centre of it, conducting it like a lightning rod, controlling the alien squeals and guttural growls of his guitar.

No one noticed when it was joined by a more dangerous rumbling, emanating from the roof and not the amps.

When the building had become structurally unsound the chain of events that followed happened too quickly to anticipate - one moment Francis had been setting down the cello bow he'd been using on his guitar strings, reaching for the keyboard and the synthesiser. He had glanced at the drummer, wondering what Condé was playing at, and in a split second realised that if Condé was not responsible for the rolling build of noise, then they were in deep trouble.

The heavy beams had come down decisively on the crowd, the music had segued seamlessly into the noise and chaos of disaster, and Francis had been flattened by debris; the impacts memorable, though their aftermath was lost to him.

This was not death, then.

The pain that swaddled him was generous, however. He felt the heaviness of one leg, the jaw-melting, tooth-fogging anguish of broken bones - there in the shin, probably beneath a weighted cast, and at his clavicle. He remembered the damage of the bullet wound he'd sustained two years ago and...the effects of Richard's care...but when that had happened it hadn't hurt to breathe, not like this. He was light-headed and nauseous, and his muscles felt weak and useless. His extremities were cold, his mouth was dry and mossy, and as well as the labyrinth of recent trauma he felt the more prosaic pain of a headache in his temples.

On top of everything else, the sensation was vexing, to say the least.

He wondered what clinic he had washed up in, which side of the checkpoint he was on, and how the problem of his papers would be dealt with - if it had not already been solved. Maybe Tom Erskine had pulled some diplomatic strings. Maybe Richard had called on old contacts in the FCO. Doubtlessly, it had been - or was to be - a great inconvenience, almost worthy of the term incident, and Richard would entreat Francis never to leave the homeland again...

The voice nearby cajoled him to turn, and he realised all over again that it wasn't on a record or a tape - there really was someone in the room with him. He had thought so earlier, hadn't he? And then he'd lost the thread of the question linked to it. What had it been?

"If you show me you can look at me, there might be some morphine in it for you."

The tone was sharp as broken glass, the accent rural Donegal - its hardness worn down by a lifetime of international travel, though the words carried the bitterness of all that life's accompanying regrets.

Frustrated by the pain, hampered by the sluggishness of his reluctant body, it took an injection of indignant anger to allow Francis to turn his head at last towards the unsympathetic voice.

The collapse of the venue, nearly killing him - and it was certain that others would have actually perished - could have benefitted only one person. And Oonagh O'Dwyer knew who he was.

She blinked when he turned with sudden ferocity, his will at last overcoming the lethargy in his muscles and the pain that hung threateningly around his body.

"Well if it isn't himself, finally back from his stay with lieber Sandmann."

Her black hair was tied back in an unpretentious ponytail and she wasn't wearing catwalk make-up, red carpet make-up, stage make-up - or any kind of cosmetics that Francis' foggy vision could discern. Her skin was still clear and smooth - a sallow hue that had probably been called 'exotic' by the European press when her career took off in the '60s. The shadows under her eyes were a revelation though, honest and unashamed.

Her brows rose as he looked up at her.

"I've been just dying to know what you'd say. To find yourself miraculously transported to the West, frail as a poddy lamb, and owing a great debt to me."

He strained against the weakness of his body, fighting to make his reply. "I'd sooner be hale, and in the East, and still in your debt," his voice rasped in his dry throat, distant, with too much reverb. "How did you do it?"

She studied him without emotion and then sighed. "I don't like it when no one gives me a say. There was underhandedness and coercion at work. So I went to see - simply to see if you lived after the collapse. I had you dropped off without your documents at the hospital. Then I returned later to get you released into my care." She gazed down at him, her mutable eyes shaded by thick lashes, one corner of her mouth almost toying with a smile. "They were happy to be rid of you, to be fair. A mystery the GDR didn't have the resources to deal with. A diplomatic incident waiting to happen - they should be eternally thankful to me!"

"But...the checks..." he focussed on her as hard as he could, frowning with determination. "The guards..."

Oonagh did smile then, her dusky red lips twisting wryly. "You're not the only person in Berlin who knows a document forger, Mr Crawford."

"Oh. Oh..." he closed his eyes. His breathing had grown heavier as the pain tried to absorb him, and the deeper his breaths, the more his ribcage moved, the more agony he was in.

"Perhaps you'd like another dose," Oonagh stood. She smoothed her fine wool trousers and rolled up the sleeves of her immaculate white Aran sweater.

"Of...?" Francis couldn't get the word what out, he was exhausted already, the edges of his vision sinking around him into the abyss of pain.

Oonagh moved out of view and some glass clinked. When she came close to the bed again she showed him the hypodermic needle she'd prepared. There was no enthusiasm or sadism in her expression, just a kind of self-deprecating matter-of-factness, as though she was internally mocking herself for ending up as his personal nurse.

Francis couldn't speak but his brows moved, troubled, and his mouth opened to object.

Oonagh dipped her chin and tutted. She reached beyond his sight again and held up a vial for him to see. "Morphine. You're tired because of the Norflex - that's a muscle relaxant, to keep you still. This," she shook the little bottle between her thumb and forefinger. "Is just to make the pain stop. Would you like some?"

Francis managed a groan, but she would have to interpret it as she chose - it would be too late to battle this wave of agony anyway. Rest would probably do him more good than anything else, after all, though questions accumulated thickly below the surface of his discomfort. They would have to wait. He felt her cool fingers on his left arm, felt a little nip from the needle, and soon relinquished his grasp on consciousness.

#whumptober2022 #whumptober #every day i write the book #character: francis crawford #character: oonagh o'dwyer #band au: queens' play

[theartistknownaslymond]

Whumptober 2022 day 14

Desperate Measures | Failed escape | “I’ll be right behind you.”

A prompt from @stripedroseandsketchpads​: Oonagh *did* canonically try to break out from the seraglio w Khaireddin one time…

She sure did! This one in the AU is set immediately after Breathe for Two (see fic list pinned post on my dash). Oonagh is not to be fucked with. Unfortunately, she’s also not able to succeed this time.

Sorry for the delay posting! I’m trying to get back on track, I really am :’)

CW: pregnancy and symptoms of low blood pressure, references to terrorism training and guns, also to DV. I’m afraid Graham Reid Malett also turns up, so be prepared for that: some blood and violence.

---

Oonagh waited until it was dark. By then she knew she was in control of the symptoms she'd experienced since trying to leave the ashram earlier that day. She still felt light-headed if she rushed a task, and her skin was clammy, her stomach in turmoil, but these were sensations a woman in her third trimester could put into context and deal with. Provided they didn't worsen; provided she was otherwise healthy.

Oonagh, after six months of work on the ashram, of good food and good friendships and no Cormac O'Connor, felt the healthiest she'd been in years.

Light-headedness aside, of course.

So since Swami Geetesh's visit she had used her seething fury to plan and to prepare. He had made it quite clear that he considered her little more than a vessel, a carrier for the child that he hoped belonged to Francis Crawford. What the fuck he wanted to do with the child if that was the case was anyone's guess - and what would happen if the child turned out to be Cormac's was an even more troubling unknown. But Oonagh had promised herself never again to be in a position of vulnerability and subordination to a man. Never again to let someone else dictate what her body was for and how it should look. She would not sit meekly in her room and wait for her world to be snatched away.

So during the afternoon, she'd torn the cotton sheets on her bed into strips and soaked them in the small bathroom sink - you didn't spend a lifetime in the fashion industry without learning a thing or two about the properties of fabric and how to improve the strength of cotton fibres. At least, you didn't if you had the kind of quick, ready mind Oonagh had always had, the kind of mind that thrived on stimuli and newness and on understanding every little thing that went on around her.

She took a bag of carob brownies a friend had baked from her bag and made herself eat half of one for strength and focus, and she wrapped the rest in a select parcel of only the most necessary clothes. And then she waited, doing breathing exercises, rubbing her hands over and over her huge belly, talking to the child she carried inside her in Irish, muttering low under her breath.

The child wriggled in response, as restless as Oonagh felt in the little room. She murmured comradely reassurance - she told them to save their kicks for Swami Geetesh, although if mummy could, she would make sure they never had to meet him.

Sunset came slowly, agonisingly slowly. It couldn't really be seen from her window, she just had to wait as the light changed and the gaps between the trees disappeared. The towering, straight trunks looked like bars layering jail cell after jail cell outside her room, but as twilight deepened, engulfing their bases and the heights of their boughs beyond what Oonagh could see, the darkness unlocked opportunity.

She checked her watch and wondered whether she ought to wait, in case someone was tasked with bringing her an evening meal. But there had been no scents rising from downstairs, no sounds of cooking - no sounds at all, in fact.

So Oonagh, nervous from waiting so long already, made her choice and pushed the window open. It would be a tight fit for her swollen, co-occupied body, but she would manage. She secured the knotted rope of wet sheets to the heavy wooden bed, ensuring the furniture was wedged tight against the wall already and wouldn't give her away with any screeching movement across the floor.

She had changed out of her flowing red dress and pulled on an old pair of dyed leggings and a top that was loose without being baggy. She tied her long black hair back, knotted the bundle of essentials she had chosen in a makeshift papoose held above her belly, and took a deep, soothing breath - part meditation, part catwalk prep, part eyeing up the target on the provo’s training range as she tightened her finger on the trigger of a Libyan rifle.

She squirmed backwards out of the window, her bare toes reaching into the night air, flailing until she got her angle right, and then flexing against the wooden walls of the building, her fists knotted in wet wraps of torn sheets. She allowed herself one more quiet promise in Irish made directly to the child, and then paused to listen again to the silence.

The water from the taut cotton was dripping steadily on the wooden floor of her room, her blood was rushing and she felt a headache building at the base of her skull - if she took too long about this, she risked a return if the light-headedness. She risked a fall from a height she most certainly couldn't afford.

Oonagh clenched her teeth and unwound one hand from the rope of sheets, moving it lower, rewrapping it securely before she unwound her second hand.

Her knuckles felt squeezed and bruised, but the tactic kept her secure. With each steady movement, accompanied by each steady breath, she recited a favourite poem in her mind, line by line, one foot then the other, one hand unwrapped, rewrapped, then the other:   I won’t go back to it –   my nation displaced into old dactyls oaths made by the animal tallows of the candle –   land of the Gulf Stream, the small farm, the scalded memory, the songs, that bandage up the history, the words tha rhythm of the crime  

where time is time past. A palsy of regrets. No. I won’t go back. My roots are brutal:   I am the woman - a sloven’s mix of silk at the wrists, a sort of dove-strut in the precincts of the garrison -   who practices the quick frictions, the rictus of delight and gets cambric for it, rice colored silk.   I am the woman in the gansy-coat on board the Mary Belle, in the huddling cold,   holding a half-dead baby to her as the wind shifts east and north over the dirty water of the wharf  

mingling the immigrant guttural with the vowels of homesickness who neither knows nor cares that   a new language is a kind of scar and heals after awhile into a possible imitation of what went before

Her feet touched crisp leaf matter and dry, gritty soil. She let out another deep breath and freed her hands, laying the palms against the wooden sides of the house and checking that her body was still with her, working with her, supporting her. The ache in her head hadn't worsened, and deep breathing settled her nausea and the floating feeling inside her chest and brow.

She slipped her sandals back on, but it didn't seem advisable to go by foot, she realised that with grim certainty. She was managing, but she didn't want to risk collapsing in the woods. She wanted to escape, not put her child at risk. At least in a car she would be sitting. She would be comparatively still. She would be able to get off the ashram, and on the I-93 she'd find someone who could help get her the rest of the way to Vegas.

With a pang of regret, she noticed it hadn't even occurred to her to approach the friends she'd had here. Who knew what they would do if Swami Geetesh asked it of them? She couldn't trust anyone in this place if she couldn't trust him.

She shuffled round the building, keeping close to the walls. Light radiated from only one room, escaping the cracks in the curtains, but she ducked low and crawled beneath the level of the sill.

In the front yard there were two cars - the truck and the saloon. Geetesh's housekeeper - Donati, Oonagh had thought her name was, Ma Dānti - was instructing a man as he carried a heavy-looking wooden rocking chair into the house. Oonagh held her breath - it must have been the one meant for her room, which meant she didn't have much time before they'd realise she was gone. There was no sign of Geetesh, though, so she figured they would spend a few extra minutes panicking without their leader.

She steeled herself and ran in as low a crouch as her belly allowed across to the truck once both figures had gone inside the house. Her hands were steady and her breathing was controlled when she silently popped the door, her fingers hooked under the metal handle. She kept one eye on the house - the door was open, but still the only light was from the room on the corner, which must have been large to have so many windows.

Her hope was that the man who had brought the chair might have left his keys in the truck, but - no dice.

"Go hlfreann leat!" she spat, and pulled the hard plastic cover under the steering wheel down, more annoyed than inconvenienced by the lack. She knew how to hotwire, just as she knew how to fuse an improvised explosive. Long supermodel's fingers worked quickly, tugging and twisting the right components until she had the two wires she needed, held ready in her hands. Did she wait until she heard a commotion from the house? Did she just go?

Shite, she realised she should have done something to disable the saloon. She'd been too keen to leave, too smug with the knowledge that she had the skills to do so.

Oonagh glanced back at the house. There didn't seem to have been any change in the situation there, yet.

Crouched low, she moved round the from of the truck to the saloon, which was at least concealed by the shadow of the bigger vehicle. It made it easier to get inside, pull the bonnet, and lift it high enough to snatch the spark plug without being visible from the house.

She went back to the truck again, the spark plug gripped tight in her hand, the other one soothing the excited child in her belly.

"Oh, you're enjoying this, are you?" she whispered. Pride overrode the moment of trepidation she felt as she imagined her child - the child of Cormac, after all? - attending the same training she'd undergone.

She picked up the wires as she'd left them and didn't hesitate to touch them together now. The little spark made her blink, dazzled momentarily as her eyes came to terms with the darkness again, now filled with the rumbling of the truck's engine. Then she stood, one foot in the truck, one hand on the door, and realised the latter was resisting her attempt to close it.

She turned with a gasp and saw Swami Geetesh standing too near, his large hand preventing her from slamming the truck door closed.

"No," she couldn't stop the word. Like when she knew it would only wind Cormac up further to hear her object, but she had to object anyway.

Geetesh said nothing. He looked white with fury and he ripped the door from her hand, throwing it wide open and grabbing at her arm with a pinching grip.

She'd come too close to freedom to go quietly back now. She didn't give a shit who was working for him - she'd make them doubt their loyalty all right. She hollared loud enough to make her throat raw. She bellowed and screamed and held onto the steering wheel with the hand that still held the spark plug from the saloon. She kicked at him with her woefully soft sandals and remembered the catharsis of group meditation, the catharsis of Francis Crawford encouraging her to really scream into the mic during one recording session they'd shared.

She knew he was stronger than her. She knew she couldn't keep this up long, it was already making her temples howl with pain and making blackness seep into her vision.

So while she still had the strength to, she let him drag her from the car and used the momentum of her body to swipe at him with the sharper end of the spark plug.

He turned his head, but the metal grazed through his thick, guinea gold hair, and Oonagh pressed hard against the resistance beneath her weapon - she dragged it along his scalp and let it slam into the upper part of his chest. An ineffective injury, but an injury nonetheless.

Blood began to seep through the strands of his hair and he slapped her, open-palmed, so the shock of it made her drop the spark plug, her body trembling, remembering the touch of Cormac O'Connor.

"Daso," he said commandingly. "Where are you going? Ma Dānti has prepared you a meal."

"I'm not hungry," she sneered and spat in his face.

He closed his eyes momentarily and shook her in his grip before wiping it from his cheek. "There is a chair and a reading light."

"I don't want to sit," she raised the arm he wasn't holding and went to claw her nails into the wound in his scalp.

He grabbed her wrist before she could, but all she had hoped for was to make him realise she'd fight him the whole way.

He ground his teeth, his jaw bulging angrily though he tried to keep up the cool, impassive act. "Then pace the room until your heart is content, but know this: you will not be leaving it again until the child comes."

"You won't have my child," Oonagh told him.

"You can't stop me, my dear," he returned, his nose coming near to hers as he finally allowed his anger to seep through into his voice.

***

The poem is Mise Eire by Eavan Boland (1983), a response to Padraig Pearse’s poem of the same name (”I am Ireland”) and against a whole genre of comparing the island to a mythological woman.

#whumptober2022 #whumptober #character: oonagh o'dwyer #character: graham reid malett #band au: disorderly knights #kinda? #every day i write the book

[theartistknownaslymond]

Whumptober 2022 day 8

Stomach Pain | Head Trauma | Back from the Dead

Oonagh and Mikál are leaving Graham Reid Malett’s ashram. She’s not feeling 100% but she’s hopeful about a new start. She doesn’t know she’s about to meet someone she thought she was free of.

CW for references to Oonagh’s ED, symptoms hinted at are withdrawal from a drug she didn’t realise she was being given, one character has a gun, references also to Oonagh’s time training with terrorists.

---

The Alamo road had seemed unending, but Oonagh didn't loosen her grip on the steering wheel. Through washouts and hidden pockets of powdery dust she'd guided the car carefully, coaxing it onwards though it was totally unsuitable for the terrain. The sky had turned a bright, mercury-coloured grey, and the mountain range where the ashram was based glowered in the rear view mirror. There was no radio signal out there in the desert, so they drove in silence - the boy Mikál was unusually pale-faced and edgy in the passenger seat, which Oonagh put down to his feelings about the low-slung car and the rustic trail.

He'd offered to drive, but she'd looked him up and down, decided he was basically a child, and refused to hand over control of her escape to this wee slip of a thing in his lilac kaftan and purple, infantile pedal-pushers. Oonagh herself had trained in off-roading back with the provos in a boggy camp in County Meath, so she wasn't about to trust her life to this little hippy - she willfully pushed aside the thought that, at the time, she had likely not even been as old as Mikál was now.

Maybe it was the tension getting to her, not knowing whether Francis and the others were successfully following them, not being certain whether they had managed to get the children out of the compound Geetesh had kept them in. Maybe she was just unused to having to concentrate so hard. Maybe the sky was simply too bright. When they turned onto Highway 95, Oonagh peeled a hand stiffly from the wheel and rubbed at the deepening frown line between her brows. She'd started to feel light-headed and clammy, detached from her surroundings even as the car rattled them over the uneven surface of the trail and the steering wheel juddered so that vibrations followed up her arms, right to her clenched teeth.

The smooth, straight highway was a struggle to focus on now, and she blinked and shifted in her seat, willing herself to stay alert.

"Are you well, Daso-jan?" Mikál murmured, turning his long, narrow face to her.

"Mikál..." Oonagh said, deliberately pronouncing it with a thick accent - Mee-hail - and shooting him a pointed look. "What did I tell you when you came back?"

He smiled, unashamed, unperturbed by the reminder. "Oonagh-jan. Are you well?"

"I'm tired, Mikál," she pronounced it according to his version this time. "But the road to Vegas is smooth and straight. We'll be there in no time."

"This is true, but why hurry when you are tired, and risk all you have? There is a diner at the gas station on the edge of the city. Let's stop and celebrate our freedom."

Oonagh shook her head and rolled her eyes. Her stomach felt like it was made of concrete, but the thought of food made it clench sharply. "I'm not hungry. Are you hungry?"

He grinned bashfully. "I'm a growing boy, they tell me." He tucked his long, mahogany hair back behind his ears and gave her his sweetest smile. He had this look about him of innocence and potential - guileless open lips and handsome dark eyes. Oonagh was sure he plucked his strong brows into their artful, arched shape, and he was always immaculately shaved - not a bit of hair on his chin or his legs or his arms. It made it hard to judge his age, even aside from her conviction that he had the unworldly, inexperienced nature of a naïf. But then life on the ashram could do that to people, and she didn't know how many years he'd been a devotee of Rajneesh's cult, nor what he had done with his life before that.

"I don't think I could manage to eat, Mikál," she shook her head again. "But I'll take you to a drive-thru if you want."

"Oh," he repeated the gesture with his hair, though it was still pinned behind his ears. "Come on, Oonagh-jan. There must be something you've missed on the ashram?"

She squinted out beyond her arms at the road. Her wrist bones looked sharp, nearly as skinny as she remembered Cai's being. Her stomach hurt, a clenched, vague discomfort that teetered on the edge of pain - and she wasn't certain whether it was a pain from hunger, a pain from not being hungry, or a pain from the worry that kept every muscle in her body taut. It had been building in her since the moment Geetesh's house had collapsed, it seemed - as though he had planted some spore within her that would continue to torture her even after he was gone.

She swallowed and felt her body fight even his simple gesture. So perhaps letting herself enjoy something cheap and trashy from a diner - assuming Mikál had cash on him - would be an act of defiance. A way of putting the ashram life behind her and combating the ache in her stomach, of fighting Geetesh, even after his death.

"All right. Coffee. I haven't had a good cup of coffee in..." she bit her lip and let her foot lie a bit heavier on the gas pedal. She had counted the months by Cai's age. "A while."

"Ayo!" Mikál exclaimed. He shook the air with his clenched fists. "I will buy you coffee and apple pie, Oonagh-jan."

Oonagh smiled. She still didn't want to eat, but the idea of a slice of pie on a plate pleased her. She would order it with a scoop of white vanilla ice cream and watch the ice cream melt down between the slices of cooked fruit. She would wish Cai was with her, so she could slice pieces off with her spoon and offer them to him.

Stepping out of the car at the diner she felt light-headed and leaned on the car for a moment. Mikál said he would go in and order, so she let him go and took deep breaths, acutely aware of the fragility and weakness of her body after all she had denied herself and all Geetesh had denied her on top of that.

From the open window of the diner she smelled the food and, although her stomach still hurt, her heart beat faster at the rich aromas, and her mouth began to fill with saliva. As she moved around the car, keeping one hand on it to steady herself, she began to feel hopeful about the coffee and the pie. Maybe she would let herself have a mouthful. It would steady her, and the rush of sugar on an empty stomach like this - combined with caffeine - would be even better than the highs from pure West Berlin cocaine.

She didn't see Mikál when she entered, but she was too weak to stand at the counter, so slid into one of the booths and ignored the stares of the other patrons. They'd have their opinions about the so-called 'pink people' no doubt, and Oonagh's long red dress wasn't standard attire in these parts.

Mikál arrived shortly after the coffee and the cake he had ordered her, and the bean tacos he'd chosen for himself. "Sorry Daso-jan, I was just calling the hotel to let them know we'll be there soon."

She raised her brows, but her focus was on the coffee, which she raised in order to inhale the scent. "Kind of you to think of that, Mee-hail," she smirked and took a sip of the coffee, black as it came, in order to consider whether it could be managed without cream or sugar.

Mikál chuckled. "I don't understand why you have given up your name. Daso is a beautiful name."

"But I am no longer a servant, Mikál," Oonagh said firmly. "And I note that you never took a sannyasin name..."

He grinned as he tucked into his food. Shrugging, he seemed to grant her the point. "I haven't found the right name because I am still testing my path. It may be that I am a Rajneeshee - it may be that I am something else. But there is no shame in serving. It is an honour to serve, where the cause is mighty and the master is great."

She considered the cream and the sugar and eventually decided to add a little of both. "You've met him, of course. At Rajneeshpuram?"

"Yes," Mikál cocked his head to one side. "But I knew then that he was not my master. My master cares not for Rolls Royces - all that he does, he does for love."

Oonagh stirred her coffee, watching the hue change and thinking about how it was like the beautiful fabrics she used to wear on catwalks and in shoots - swirling with endless gradients of colour, each one made more subtle and lovely because of those it neighboured. She looked up to tease Mikál about who his new master might be, and saw that he was gazing rapturously over her shoulder.

Oonagh turned, but before she saw who it was, she smelled patchouli and cedar, and the skin on her scalp crawled in recognition. She took a breath, sharp enough to feel it as a blade in her chest, but the sight of a handgun tucked into the waist of peach-pink suits trousers, flaunted at what was eye level for her, persuaded her to remain silent.

Back from the dead, but no less imposing than before, Graham Reid Malett - Swami Geetesh - looked down at her with an expression that no one could have mistaken for a smile. It was cruel and seemed more intimately familiar with pain than Oonagh recalled. The very tips of his mouth quirked up, but there was no softness in his eyes, which fell on her with disdain.

"Daso. I expected you to have brought your whelp. Had I known you would be so eager to leave him behind I might have let you go many months ago."

Oonagh gaped, she shivered with the chill of being in his shadow once more, and as Geetesh sidled into the booth next to her she turned to Mikál. "What did you do?!"

Mikál tucked his hair back and smiled sadly. "To serve is to love - and to accept service is to love, Daso-jan."

"You were dead!" the words were somewhere between a shriek and a hiss, and Geetesh laid a large hand over one of hers in warning. "You were dead, they promised..."

Now he was close, she felt the clamminess of his palm and saw the waxy sheen of his skin. He had greenish shadows beneath his eyes, and his colour wasn't as robustly healthy as it had been before. Oonagh had gone to see a horror film with some of her girlfriends on a shoot in Turin, back in '79, in which the dead had returned to attack the living, their skin tinted blue and their eyes deep-set in bruised sockets. She wondered what rituals had been performed to keep Graham Reid Malett alive.

His mouth moved again, that pinched curve, like he had smelled something unpleasant. "Promises, promises, Daso. I'm amazed you still believe in them. Haven't you been let down enough by this world?"

She shuddered, and the hand holding hers squeezed - too tight.

"I keep my promises, Daso. And I swore to that you would see your son destroy his father. So drink up - eat your pie. And then we must go to our appointment."

#whumptober2022 #whumptober #character: oonagh o'dwyer #character: mikál #character: graham reid malett #band au: pawn in frankincense

[theartistknownaslymond]

Oh also I can’t remember if I asked, but maybe an Oonagh playlist if you’d like? (Lmk if I’m requesting too many of these haha)

Not at all! Love getting these asks :D And this one was waaaaay too fun, I could have kept adding things forever. Managed to wrestle it down to 15 tracks...

Hard-wrought with Unleashed Storms - a playlist for Oonagh O'Dwyer in the band AU (link to Spotify)

The Dubliners - Óró Sé Do Bheatha' Bhaile

David Bowie - Oh! You Pretty Things

Gang of Four - We Live As We Dream, Alone

Grace Jones - Nipple to the Bottle

Cocteau Twins - The Spangle Maker

Carpenters - Ticket to Ride

Horslips - Hall of Mirrors

David Sylvian - When Poets Dreamed of Angels

Shriekback - The Big Hush

The Cure - Pictures of You

The Velvet Underground & Nico - All Tomorrow's Parties

Shakespeares Sister - Red Rocket

PJ Harvey - Sheela-na-gig

Kraftwerk - Das Model

Melissa Etheridge - Come to My Window

Comments below the cut. CW for discussion of domestic violence, EDs, you know...Oonagh stuff.

We begin with an Irish rebel song, of course. When you can also translate the opening lines as 'Welcome oh woman who was so afflicted, / It was our ruin that you were in bondage, / Our fine land in the possession of thieves… / And you sold to the foreigners!' I think we can safely call this an Oonagh song on every level.

Oh! You Pretty Things is early Bowie from Oonagh's modelling days, having a blast with her friends, living a life her family thoroughly disapproves of, and doing her bit to arm the nationalists on the side.

The Gang of Four track just makes me think of Oonagh's spikiness and cynicism, the way she throws herself into making money from her career and Cormac just doesn't believe she can really be doing that well from such a silly job - though he's happy to spend her earnings just the same. Then Nipple to the Bottle is another song about her and Cormac, alcoholism and dv, her defiance, plus Grace Jones has the kind of career Oonagh thinks she would love. And yes, I realise the song is actually about the breast vs bottle-feeding debate. But I suppose Oonagh probably has strong feelings about not being able to feed Cai herself given how unwell she becomes under Gabriel's care on the ashram, so it fits either way.

The Cocteau Twins track is just so sinister, very Berlin (QP) Oonagh, about both Cormac and Gabriel (though she doesn't know it about the latter yet). Ticket to Ride is her escape to the ashram (and yes I am deeply annoyed Karen Carpenter changed the pronouns, because it's Oonagh leaving, not Cormac), sad but at peace, and Oonagh is doubtless well aware that Karen Carpenter is battling with severe ed just like her. Horslips are another Irish band Oonagh would be fond of, and Hall of Mirrors covers everything from modelling and dysmorphia to the gas-lighting of Cormac and Gabriel. Eerily, the carnival music in the background reminds me a lot of Ticket to Ride, too.

The David Sylvian track is another one that covers her relationship with Cormac, her aunt Therese's deliberate ignoring of Cormac's violence because he's a poet and a 'great man' and the fact she puts up with him for so long for 'the cause' as well. Just imagine Francis playing a cover of this (it's a bit late, really, '88 I think, but go with it) and Oonagh raging in the audience at his audacity, but also being kind of moved that he's noticed and cares.

Softly explore each hallway and room

Like a thief in a haunted house

You never know what you will meet next

A monster or a mouse?

It's time to face up to yourself

Come and watch your head distort

This one's interesting

Shows a crack right through your heart

Then the Shriekback song is one I chose first because of the sound - it's exactly the sound Oonagh wants to cultivate in her break-through, and when she and Thady Boy sing it's precisely this kind of thing. The lyrics don't hurt either, mind:

She rises early from bed

Runs to the mirror

The bruises inflicted in moments of fury

He kneels beside her once more

Whispers a promise

"Next time I'll break every bone in your body"

And the well-wishers let the devil in

And if the river ran dry they'd deny it happening

Pictures of You is for Oonagh reflecting on her modelling career, reclaiming her identity and what she likes about herself. Musically I think she's really into early goth like The Cure.

Is there a flame in the dark?

Is there a bright hard star?

These creatures look the same now

We freeze wherever we are

We wake alone in the blackness

We sleep wherever we fall

One dream all around us

This big hush infects us all

All Tomorrow's Parties is one I had on the mini-playlist for Oonagh ages ago and it's just too her not to put it on here (see also Kraftwerk, Das Model). Definite Nico vibes to her brief attempt to get into pop-stardom, and she, too, has a quirky voice rather than a, uh, good one for singing.

Shakespeares Sister - Red Rocket is a bit of fun from a great Irish artist, but it's also a bit about the ashram:

And then oh, if I could draw, I would draw Oonagh and Marthe going absolutely ape-shit in the crowd as PJ Harvey sings Sheela-na-gig - reclaiming sexuality and Irishness and autonomy and just 'washing that man right outta my hair'. Finally, Come to My Window is also for Them - early '90s lesbian chart domination!! They deserve it.

Life's a bitch then you die

No more dancing in the sky

Part on another star

You can't get there in a car

Find a new religion

Going on a mission

Making a decision

To face my soul

#character: oonagh o'dwyer #playlists: period appropriate #character: cormac o'connor #character: marthe #persona: thady boy #band au: queens' play #band au: pawn in frankincense #band au: post canon #absolutely LOVED making this

[theartistknownaslymond]

I hear the saxophone and it tears my soul And we're feeling old, feeling so cold She is the torch and she is the theme She could be a dream but - oh boy - is she real Try to avoid her eyes, to avoid her words They will hit you with all that you feel

He's searching She's showing See him held in a deep, deep spell He knows she's glowing

I can find within my mind a way to go I can look deep into your light and shout Hold me Hold me Hold me Hold me Hold me

#character: oonagh o'dwyer #character: francis crawford #ship: name tbd #band au: queens' play #ficspiration: music #Spotify

[theartistknownaslymond]

In the pop world, O'Connor felt like she couldn't be herself. She said she spent more time having her picture taken than doing what she really loved — performing live and making music.

"I found the world of pop stars quite imprisoning. It's a bit like being the Queen of England or the President of Ireland. You can't actually express an opinion about anything," she told Power.

For O'Connor, freedom of speech is at the heart of her artistry.

"I'm an Irish artist, and we have a history of causing riots in the streets with songs and plays," she said. "You know, back in the old days, you couldn't put an Irish play on without there being a riot in the street after, or, you know, mounted police on horses outside the gigs in London. Our job as Irish artists [is] to cause riots in the streets."

#ficspiration: links #sinead o'connor #character: oonagh o'dwyer #band au: queens' play

[theartistknownaslymond]

Would you like to exprеss Your sex without stress? Would you like to discovеr Physical conversations of different kinds? To get what you expect That's fidelity Possession bursting insecurity Solid values and stability Does it give you a healthy personality?

#au pairs #sex without stress #sense and sensuality #one for the oonagh covers album!! #she'd have liked to do armagh but the record label said no :') #ficspiration: music #character: oonagh o'dwyer

[theartistknownaslymond]

Holding up on animal fear Soaking up the waves underwater Turned to music no one can hear Forever in this half light All desire, the ashes and the fire Turning this night inside and the light from you All desire, the ashes and the fire Turning this night inside and the light from you

#character: oonagh o'dwyer #persona: thady boy #character: francis crawford #band au: queens' play #francis and oonagh performing this kind of duet in a berlin club #(yes i know the song's from '85 shhhh) #SoundCloud

[theartistknownaslymond]

Welcome to the pleasuredome!

(it’s a Frankie Goes to Hollywood reference)

Here I post aesthetics, reference, ficspiration, fanart, obnoxious playlists, and occasionally fanfic for my cursed 1980s band AU for the Lymond Chronicles.

I always welcome asks and requests! Wanna hear a playlist? Wanna know which character would listen to your favourite band? Want me to stop already? Just ask me and I will play! (but I won’t stop, sorry. I will add more tags if anyone needs them for blocking though)

Below the cut is a list of all the stuff in the band AU so far! I’ll try and keep it up to date.

Pre-series:

Prequel

Sibylla and her children watch the moon landing together in 1969, art by me.

Young Oonagh, illustrated by K

Jerott’s paternal grandmother, Deepa Anand, illustrated by K, with some backstory

Jerott’s mum, Kahina Bensaïd, illustrated by K, with some (a lot) of backstory, partly relating to Jerott

Music is a made-up thing like myth (posted chronologically on Ao3. Hasn’t updated in a while. Isn’t dead yet!)

Freshly victorious at the 1979 Solway Moss Battle of the Bands, young Francis Crawford, aka Lymond, finds himself stuck in an awful contract and an even worse relationship. Things don’t improve as his first US tour approaches and Lymond struggles to find artistic freedom.

Game of Kings

Eloise Crawford illustrated by K

Isolation (Richard reflects on the loss of his siblings)

Gunpoint (Lymond meets Dragut when he falls in with some mafia types)

Bleeding out (More mafia types)

Les gens ne te touchent pas/il faut faire le premier pas (Pune, India, 1981. Jerott Blyth is learning about himself with the guidance of Graham Reid Malett)

Returning to the UK, Lymond has to navigate rumours both personal and political: what role did he play in his sister's disappearance and just how involved was he with the mob in New York? In the meantime, uncertain of his record contract and his inheritance, he has to make a living: he tours relentlessly with bandmates Turkey Mat (drums), Will Scott (bass) and Christian Stewart (guitar).

Queens' Play

Francis in the style of Munch drawn by me

"Don't move" (Lymond wakes up from an accident to find Christian by his bedside)

Trembling (Philippa Somerville thinks her father has just returned - it turns out to be someone quite different)

Humiliation (Will Scott tries - and fails - to humiliate Lymond)

"Stay with me" (Richard pushes his injured brother too far)

West Germany, 1983: Ireland's Eurovision entry, ex-model Oonagh O'Dwyer, is forced to pull out because of industrial action at the Irish state broadcaster. Her partner, the playwright Cormac O’Connor, convinces her they may as well go to on that holiday to Munich and Berlin anyway. The Artist Formerly Known as Lymond, in a techno-goth outfit with Irish producer O'Liamroe, is on hand to disrupt events and keep an eye on young Mary Fleming, part of the British ensemble. But while he's there who can say no to a few illicit cross-border gigs in the GDR? Western decadence at its most provocative...

Disorderly Knights

Laced drink (Margaret Erskine is on hand to comfort Lymond in the aftermath of a heavy night)

Pinned down (Oonagh searches the wreckage in the aftermath of an illicit gig)

Seeking control over his career, Lymond decides to set up his own recording studio and fill it with hand-picked talent. In researching the kind of set-up he wants, he's pushed to get in touch with master producer Graham 'Gabriel' Reid Mallet, who is now a senior figure in the spiritual movement established by Rajneesh/Osho. As the miner's strikes rage on and police response toughens, the role of music in protest comes into sharper focus than ever.

Pawn in Frankincense

Shackled (Jerott Blyth witnesses the carnage at Orgreave picket line)

"Don't try to fix me." (Adam Blacklock thinks he recognises something about Joleta's behaviour)

Bloodied shirt (Everyone is sleep-deprived and grumpy as they leave Dumbarton in the middle of the night)

Stab wound (Lymond is late to a DJ set and misses an altercation)

Joleta and her favourite things drawn by K

Dragged away (Philippa and Joleta go for a night out in Edinburgh)

Scars (Joleta is curious about Lymond's scars)

Nightmare (Joleta stays over with Mariotta Crawford, trouble ensues)

Recovery and "None of this if your fault." (Philippa waits by her friend's bedside after an overdose). Illustrated by K.

It's your choice babe - so you choose well (Archive warning for rape, E. Gabriel/Jerott)

Oonagh and Joleta drawn by K

Oonagh in Rajneeshee red drawn by K

Abandoned (Oonagh O'Dwyer abandons her life in Europe for the promises of a Nebraskan ashram)

Breathe for two (Oonagh realises she's trapped at Graham Reid Malett's ashram)

It's time to try and break America - second time lucky?/Or will America break Lymond? As a front for a final showdown with Gabriel at his ashram in Nevada it's not exactly subtle, but at least Lymond gets to learn something about his family along the way.

The Ringed Castle

Human shield (Marthe takes Philippa into her first mosh pit)

Delirium (Jerott suffers with a combination of delerium tremens and cyanide poisoning)

Adrenaline (Luckily, there's a telenovela star called Dona Maria there to get him out of jail)

Asphyxiation (still suffering from the poisoning, Jerott wakes up at Baron Morgan's motel)

Secret injury (Gabriel doesn't want Jerott to leave the ashram)

This is it, that's the end of the joke (Jerott is at Graham Reid Malett's mercy immediately after his escape attempt).

Jerott in the style of Munch

The only one keeping me sane. (Marthe takes care of Oonagh at the ashram).

Marthe's t-shirts, illustrated by K

Unconscious (Lymond and a small blond boy sleep off their adventures)

Ransom (Gabriel catches up with them in Vegas)

Hallucination (Archie figures out the cause of Lymond's present malady)

Muffled scream (Philippa and Lymond share a Vegas hotel room)

Tear-stained (Oonagh and her son are going home)

Anemone (Jerott accompanies Francis into rehab; he's in denial about a number of things though)

Marthe and Oonagh, illustrated by K

Más é an ceol bia an ghrá (One night stands in Dublin: Marthe goes to Oonagh's leaving party, Jerott stays in the hotel bar)

1987, glasnost: Lymond and an ambitious group of artists, experimental sound technicians and musicians are invited to tour behind the iron curtain alongside Ukrainian bete noir Baida and his band. The tour is to be filmed by ex-propaganda director Ivan Vasilyevich. Meanwhile Red Wedge tries its hardest to get the people of Britain to vote in a non-Tory government at the general election.

Checkmate

Stitches Adam Blacklock has had a rough night)

Numb (Richard encounters his brother in Dundee)

Embrace (a version of the Languish Locked in L scene)

Philippa's Raspberry Beret drawn by me.

??Profit?? No really I need to write more of the rest before I know what the fall-out here is going to look like. It will probably involve: Nelson Mandela's 70th Birthday Concert, the opening of the Cairo Opera House and the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

Post-Checkmate

Beaten (Jerott Blyth has been behaving badly)

All we need is music, sweet music (After a successful gig in Calais, Jerott longs to be closer to Francis)

Soap, soup and salvation (Danny teaches Adam to cook for Kate)

Coisich, a rùin [come, my love] (a series of scenes in Francis and Philippa's relationship)

Spoilers for overarching plot NO REALLY POST-CM SPOILERS

Don't wake the house (Jerott breaks down on an half-familiar (OC's) shoulder post-Checkmate)

Jerott, Archie, Adam and Kate get ice cream, drawn by me

A love that seems great beyond growth (in need of rest and recovery, Marthe visits Oonagh in her new life)

"Would you just hold still?" and What I love about many waters (Philippa and Joleta go for cocktails. Lymond helps his wife through the hangover)

"Don't look at me like that." and "When you smile..." (domestic, married fluff with Francis and Philippa).

Pushin' palaces to fall (Thompson the pirate causes trouble for the Crawfords. He gets trouble back)

Morosexual (Danny has a tearful admission to make to Jerott)

If this name wasn't on my lips (Danny/Jerott record collection-based fluff)

Explosion (It's a prequel)

Period-appropriate playlists (links to Spotify, sorry)

A Purely Spiritual Love (you may hear this at Graham Reid Malett’s ashram)

In a position of ascendancy... / ...a knife gripped in each hand (inspiration from Danny and Adam’s Jewish background)

Every Cell Charged with Stark Common Sense (young Philippa’s folk influences)

tant que je vive (Francis/Philippa happily ever after)

A twinge of approval (Danny/Jerott happily ever after)

Nothing but the Cathartic (Francis thinks Sibylla and Richard are dead)

Feared before God and the Devil (soundtrack to The Ringed Castle)

Come to Linger (Adam/Kate happily ever after)

Such Hapless Hap (Francis pining over Philippa)

Hard-wrought with Unleashed Storms (an Oonagh O’Dwyer playlist)

Stop your breath (a Joleta Reid Malett playlist)

By Some Alchemy (an Archie Abernethy playlist. DRUMS!)

#pinned post #housekeeping #the lymond chronicles #lymond chronicles #lymond #dorothy dunnett #the band au #1980s au