#i kid you not i had trouble catching my breath during those first ten/twenty seconds

[skinzchoerim]

whenever I hear people hype up a song that was performed during a concert before being released I assume I'm not gonna enjoy it as much as they did since I don't usually share the popular opinions about my faves' music but TASTE IS SO FUCKINF GOOD WHAT

#i kid you not i had trouble catching my breath during those first ten/twenty seconds #stray kids

[wickedobsessed101]

"Sewing It Up" Oneshot #13: "Guiding Light"

3.9K words of more mother-daughter fun fluff with Villy & Nyris ‘cause I was in the mood.

This was supposed to be the final oneshot in the series, but I’m writing one more after this!

~~~

“Nyris, the bus is coming in fifteen minutes, whether we’re at the stop or not,” Villy sighed from the doorway. “Personally, I’d like to be there.”

“Where’s my bag?” the ten-year-old groaned as she ran around her room.

“Wherever you left it. Maybe you’d be able to find something if you cleaned your room.”

“It’s not a mess. It’s organized chaos.”

The blind seamstress rolled her eyes with a huff. “There’s no such thing, especially in this house with me.”

“Found it!” Nyris giggled triumphantly. She made sure she had her allowance (she had been saving for almost three months), slipped her plastic cat ears headband onto her head, and fixed the long strap over her shoulder, matching her stepmother. “Let’s go!”

The two had been looking forward to this special day all week: shopping together at the Sheplin Mall. It was something they didn’t get to do as much, since Nyris was busy with school and ballet, and Villy was busy in the boutique. But the dressmaker had taken the weekend off, leaving Scarly and Maven in charge of the shop, for some much-needed quality time. She remembered teasing her former-employee-now-princess about being a workaholic, and didn’t want to slip into that hypocrite area.

“Put on a sweater. It's getting cooler.”

She went into her closet and grabbed her sky blue, button-up cardigan. “Okay! Let’s go!” She bounced past her stepmother and down the steps with her in tow. “C’mon, Mimsey! We’ve gotta catch the bus!”

The dressmaker reached for her cane on the hook by the door and unfolded it. “I don’t know why you’re rushing me. I’m not the one who spent twenty minutes trying to figure out which skirt to wear.”

“I had to make sure it matched my leggings!” she said like it was obvious.

Villy couldn't blame her, knowing she picked up the fashion tips from her, and locked the door behind them. The two walked down the street to the bus stop hand-in-hand, Nyris excitedly swinging their arms. They made it with five minutes to spare, and Villy got out her wallet for the bus fare, mimicked by Nyris.

“I have my own bus money.”

“I thought you wanted to use your money at the mall.”

“Big girls pay for themselves. I wanna use my own money.”

Villy gave her a light hand squeeze, knowing she wanted to feel grown-up, and nodded. “Okay.”

Once the bus arrived, the young girl proudly paid her fare with a wide grin, then led her stepmother to a two-seater near the middle. “Mimsey?”

“Yeah?”

“No seamstressing.”

Her eyebrow quirked. “What does that mean?”

“You don’t have to talk about fabrics or hemstitches or anything seamstressy. No work talk.”

She nodded. “I promise not to stress over seams.”

“Mimsey.”

Villy had been dreading the day her stepdaughter’s love and interest in her profession would diminish. Now ten, Nyris was starting to develop her own interests, and Villy saw she was starting to lose her “magical dressmaker” persona. But she had to appreciate her honesty. “Okay, Jellybean. This is our special time together, and I’ll make sure my seamstress side doesn’t take over my mother side.”

She snuggled closer. “Thank you.”

Since work-talk was off the table, Villy asked about school and extracurriculars. Nyris indulged her excitedly. The young girl was more than happy to talk about her best friends, how much she liked her music teacher, the boy she liked, and the boy she didn’t.

“I’m ready for my vocabulary test next week, but there’s one word I’m having trouble using in a sentence.”

“What word?”

“Innuendo.”

She thought for a moment. “Okay, here’s one: As long as you’re living under my roof, you better not let me catch any boys sneaking in-ya-window.”

Nyris burst into a fit of giggles. “You’re silly, Mimsey!”

Villy immediately joined her, hugging her close. The driver announced their destination and the bus stopped down the street from the front entrance to the mall. The young girl led her stepmother through the double doors and excitedly looked around at all the stores.

“Let’s get a map. There should be a large board map with little maps inside a pocket near the door.”

“Over here.” Nyris took her hand and lead her towards the large map. She pulled one out and unfolded it. “Got one.”

“Let’s start on the ground floor first, then work our way up. How does that sound?”

“Okay,” Nyris said. She took her hand, this time intertwining their fingers, before she began to walk with her through the mall.

Villy tried to identify a few stores based on smell, or by the context of conversations she overheard. Some stores played music, while others didn’t. She knew when they passed a shoe store and a perfume store by their different, distinct smells. Nyris seemed to sense what she was trying to do and began to describe the stores as they passed them, which made Villy smile.

“This is Tessy’s,” Nyris said, leading her into a store.

“What do they sell here?”

“Mostly dressy clothes, like blouses, dress pants, business suits, skirts, and dresses.”

“Is it a big store?”

“Um… I guess so,” Nyris said, already half-distracted by a rack of pink skirts.

Villy nodded and followed her around the store. The aisles in between the racks of clothes were wide, not creating much of an obstacle. She followed the sounds of her stepdaughter’s giggles and contemplation hums. She knew she wasn’t actively thinking to hold her hand and lead her through the store, so she used the other skills she had to make sure she didn’t get lost or lose her. “What’s the golden rule?”

She looked up from the table of collared sweaters. “Stripes never go with plaids or florals.”

“And who taught you that?”

“You did, Mimsey.”

The seamstress grinned. Those were the only work-related words of wisdom she offered during their trip.

“Look at this!” Nyris smiled, gently pressing a piece of fabric into her hands.

Villy took the fabric and examined it. It was a silky material with sleeves that felt like they would stop at elbow length. She felt the collar and the buttons of the front and realized that it was a blouse. “This is nice,” she commented. “But it’s so light. It feels see-through.” Her stepdaughter hadn’t started wearing a bra yet, and a see-through blouse wouldn’t be ideal.

“I can wear a camisole underneath it,” Nyris said logically.

Villy shook her head and gave it back. “Find something that’s not see-through.”

“Okay,” she said glumly as she put the blouse back.

A few minutes later, the ten-year-old decided on a cotton candy pink, non-see-through blouse, a navy, gathered, mini-skirt (that Villy made sure wasn’t too mini), and baby blue maxi dress with a smocked bodice, ruffled tiered silhouette, and little hearts all over, before they made their way to the checkout counter.

“Your total is twenty-two dollars and fifty cents,” the cashier said.

Nyris pulled out her money and handed it to the cashier. “Thank you!”

“Ready?” Villy asked.

“Uh-huh!”

They made their way to the second floor, where Nyris wanted to go into another clothing store. Villy suspected that it was like the previous store since she recognized some of the fabrics that brushed against her arm. She found her way to a rack of skirts and felt through the items.

“What about this one?” she asked, pulling out a wool skirt and holding it up to where she thought her stepdaughter was standing. “Nyris?” When she didn’t get a response, she called her again. Still nothing. Taking a deep breath, she tried not to panic. She couldn’t have left the store, but then where was she?

“Is everything alright, Miss?” a sales associate to her left asked.

Villy turned towards her. “I seem to have been separated from my daughter.”

“What does she look like?”

“Um… she’s ten, wearing a cat ears headband, and –”

“Mimsey!” Nyris exclaimed, hurrying towards her.

“Found her,” the associate chuckled before excusing herself to help another customer.

“Nyris, where were you?” Villy asked, relief evident in her voice.

“I found this really cute blue dress and wanted to try it on.”

“That’s fine, but you need to let me know where you’re going before you go off like that.”

Nyris quickly realized her mistake. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

Villy sighed, rubbing her face. “It’s okay. Do you like the dress?”

“Yeah. It’s nice,” she said, handing it to her to feel.

After inspecting it, Villy gave her approval and showed Nyris the wool skirt she found. Nyris took a clear interest in it and held it up to her body.

“It looks like it’ll fit.”

“You wanna buy it?”

Nyris hummed in consent, and they went to the register. As they walked out of the store, the young girl continued to chat happily with her stepmother, happily walking side-by-side. They went inside a few more stores, but didn’t buy anything, since Nyris didn’t see anything she was interested in.

Carousel music in the distance caught the dressmaker’s attention and she stopped. “Do you remember riding the carousel?”

“A bit. It was fun, but you weren’t feeling well afterwards.”

The seamstress fought to keep the smile on her face. “Do you wanna go again? You’re ten now. I think that’s old enough to go by yourself.”

“No. I’m okay.”

She swallowed. “I’ll go on with you, if it would make you more comfortable. You used to love carousels.”

“I don’t want to now. Carousels are for little kids.”

She could tell she didn’t believe what she just said, but was led away from the music before she could comment further.

“Can we go into the sweets shop?” Nyris asked, stopping in front of a sweet shop.

Villy turned and smiled at the strong scent of chocolate. “Okay.”

“They’re having a truffle sale. We can fill a gift bag with fifty pieces for fifteen dollars.”

The seamstress had no idea what they were gonna do with fifty truffles, but Nyris led her around, telling her all the chocolate flavors on the wall.

“There’s cappuccino, coconut, red velvet, almond, strawberries and cream, caramel, and white peppermint.”

They worked together to fill their bag (Villy’s selection consisted of mostly red velvet, and Nyris’s got coconut) with the assorted flavors.

“Let’s have some lunch before snacking of truffles,” the dressmaker said as they left and Nyris reached into the bag, sneaking a snack.

After salads in the food court, followed by a few pieces of their treats, they made their way to the top floor. They walked around, mostly window shopping (with descriptions of the window displays), then Nyris found a tween clothing store and picked out a denim jumper and pink plaid overall dress. As they walked out, Nyris gasped loudly, and Villy stopped abruptly.

“What is it?”

“You need new clothes, too!”

The seamstress relaxed. “Alright. Let’s go to Keada’s. It should be down this way.” She turned and led Nyris down the way they came. She recognized the store by the soft music and led her inside.

“What are you looking for?” Nyris asked.

“Um… something for fall, that will be warm without trapping body heat. They should have their fall clothes out.” She found a table and felt through the blazers and skirts, feeling for fabrics and shapes she liked.

“Look at this!” Nyris took her hand and guided her to a nearby mannequin.

Villy examined the dress. It was a polar fleece dress with an elbow-length cloak over the shoulders, short sleeves, and midi length, swing skirt that billowed out. “Okay. What color is it?”

“Magenta. And it has little, light pink roses on the skirt.”

She groped around for the dress rack. “Is it on this one?”

“Yeah. It comes in magenta, red, and dark green.”

“Which one’s the magenta?”

“The ones in the front right side. And they’re in size order.”

She sifted through the dresses, figuring the mediums would be in the middle. She pulled out a dress and held it against her body. “What size is this?”

“Medium.”

“Great. Let’s find the fitting rooms.”

Nyris saw the large fitting room sign on the other side of the store, followed by Villy. She played a game of invisible hopscotch as Villy tried the dress on.

“Nyris?” Villy asked, emerging from the room, smoothing out the skirt, which stopped at her knees in soft pleats.

The young girl turned with a wide grin. “Wow! You look spectaculary, Mimsey!”

“Thank you. I like the way this feels.”

“Buy it! Buy it!”

She smiled and disappeared back into the fitting room, reemerging in her regular clothes and the dress in her free hand. As they left the store, she checked her watch. “We have time for one more store.”

“Why one? I thought we were gonna spend the day together.”

“We are. It’s a surprise, so pick your final store.”

She glanced down at the map in her hands, then grinned and led the way down the path.

“What store is this?”

“Klaire’s!”

The dressmaker braced herself for the over-excitedness of a ten-year-old girl surrounded by sparkly accessories. She knew exactly what to expect, and Nyris didn’t disappoint. She wasn’t surprised when Nyris made her hold the bags as she flitted around the store, looking at all the accessories. The sparkly accessories caught Villy’s attention, and she suggested a glittery, heart-pendant necklace, which Nyris immediately fawned over.

Nyris declared their shopping day a success as she exited the store with her bag of new headbands, silk scrunchies with long ribbons attached, sparkly hair clips, and the heart-pendant necklace. “Where are we going now?” she asked once she and Villy exited the mall.

“The Peach Oasis.”

The little girl gasped. “The fancy spa?”

“I booked the mother-daughter twinning package, complete with facials, massages, and mani-pedis.”

“Really? Thank you, Mimsey!” She threw her arms around her.

Villy eagerly returned the hug. “You’re welcome. Our appointment’s at four. It’s across town, so we have to take the bus, then walk.”

“I like walking with you.”

She chuckled. “I like walking with you, too. Let’s get going. Can you put your bags in mine?” She was given a big bag at Keada’s, despite only buying one dress.

Nyris’s multiple purchases easily fit in the big bag. They made it to the bus stop just in time, taking it a few stops to the other side of the city. Once they got off, Villy took the lead as they headed down the street. With one hand holding the bag and the other maneuvering her cane, it left no free hand for Nyris to hold. Instead, the younger girl looped her arm with her stepmother’s bag arm, falling in step beside her.

Villy chose to think that this was a mother-daughter thing, rather than a guiding thing. Nyris was at the age where she was very eager to help everyone do everything. Whether it was stapling papers for her father, helping Chozon learn his colors and numbers, or leading and handing her stepmother things, she was always in ‘all hands on deck’ mode.

While the seamstress appreciated the help (since she knew it would probably vanish in her teenage years), she had to gently explain to Nyris that she didn’t need help with everything all the time. The little girl was very sweet and caring, with her heart in the right place, and didn’t want to discourage her, so they had to work on finding that balance together.

Now that she was more susceptible to outside influences, that’s where it probably came from. But at the end of the day, she was still a child, albeit a naturally precocious one, and Villy didn’t want to throw the extra responsibility onto her.

“There’s a sign up ahead,” Nyris pointed out.

“What does it say?”

“‘Contortion Ahead’.”

Villy’s eyebrow rose. “Contortion? I don’t think –” Loud banging noises and drilling grew louder, and she abruptly stopped. “Construction ahead,” she corrected.

"Oh. The sidewalk's blocked off."

Villy bit her lip. She hated approaching a surprise construction zone. It made traveling independently more challenging than normal, since she couldn’t hear the traffic flow. “Um…” She paused to think of a solution. It was loud, but sounded a bit far off, towards the end of the block.

“We can cross the street. They’re working on just this side of the sidewalk and street.”

She hated crossing the street outside a crosswalk. Crosswalks were safer, since cars had to slow down and had the chance to see that she couldn’t see them. “Okay. We can go back.”

“There’s a crosswalk in the middle of the street, so we don’t have to go all the way back.”

She wasn’t aware of this mid-street crosswalk, but led the way back, her cane sweeping and searching for the dip in the curb. Her cane hit something metal, and she reached out her hand, feeling the hard octagon. A stop sign signaling the pedestrian crossing, but the curb didn’t dip, nor did she feel the tactile ground marking. She listened for traffic, still a bit harder due to the construction noise, and took Nyris’s hand, looping the bag around her wrist.

Safely across, the seamstress let out a silent breath and turned to go back down the street. She held back a wince at the noise as they approached, but knew they weren’t walking towards the blocked-off path. They rounded the corner and she relaxed, letting go of Nyris’s hand.

“How much farther?”

“We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“How many minutes is ‘a few’?”

“Seven.” An arbitrary number, but it satisfied her. She just hoped Nyris wasn’t keeping track of the time to a ‘T’ and wouldn’t ask why they weren’t there in seven minutes.

Their walk was quiet, and she heard Nyris jumping beside her, probably playing a game of invisible hopscotch. Suddenly, she stopped and took her arm. “There’s a crack here.”

“Sweetie, you don’t have to warn me about every little obstacle.”

She gently pulled her out of the crack’s path.

“No, Nyris.” She gently pulled her arm away and turned to her. “You’re walking with me. I’m the one leading the way.”

“But you’re –”

“The adult and the protector in charge of making the decisions. I prefer it when we walk together. I…” She took a breath. She knew Nyris knew she was more than capable of doing these types of things. All those times when she was little, and they went to the playground, or when she stayed with her in the boutique, or when they went to the ice cream parlor, Nyris would just hold her hand and follow her without question or hesitation. “I can find where things are and ways around them. I don’t need things handed to me unless I ask. And I don’t like being pulled and dragged. It’s not your responsibility to always guide me because I don't want it to be.”

“Okay,” she agreed softly. She locked her hands behind her back, hanging her head.

The dressmaker missed the subtle body language change and continued walking, feeling her stepdaughter fall in step beside her. She was able to maneuver around a bike in the middle of the sidewalk and a car parked over the curb without her stepdaughter’s assistance. “We’re almost there,” she announced to break the silence. “Has it been seven minutes yet?”

“I don’t know.” A pause and she grabbed her arm.

Villy frowned. Could she not even try to be discreet after what she just said? “Nyris –”

“There are tree branches hanging down.”

She stopped. Low-hanging tree branches were undetectable with her cane, and a danger to her getting scratched in the face. “Okay. Wait,” she quickly added when Nyris started gently pulling her. “No pulling.” If she was so insistent on doing this, she was old enough to learn to do it properly. She placed her hand on her shoulder and stepped behind her. “Let me know when we’re past it.”

Nyris looked up at her, but walked around the sharp, protruding nature. “Okay. We’re good now.”

“Thank you, Jellybean,” Villy said, stepping beside her. She took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

She hurriedly wrapped her arms around her in a tight hug. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, sweetheart.”

Once the tension of the moment released, they continued their walk. Villy checked her watch, discovering they had five minutes to get to the spa and check-in before their appointment.

“I see the spa!” Nyris smiled, bouncing as she pointed across the street.

“And we’re right on schedule,” Villy added, about to lead the way across the quiet street, but stopped short.

“We can cross now.”

“Wait, Nyris.”

“But we have the green person.”

“I know, but wait.”

“Why?” Nyris looked down the street. “I don’t see any cars coming.”

Villy squeezed her hand to hush her. Sure enough, a distant siren soon reached Nyris’s ears, and she looked up just as two police cars turned the corner and sped in front of them, bypassing the red light.

“You knew the police cars were coming?” she asked once they safely crossed the street.

“I heard the sirens getting closer, but wasn’t sure if they were turning this way.”

The path leading to the front door was cobblestone, and she felt the terrain change from the concrete. She felt for the door handle and opened the door for her daughter, following her inside.

“Welcome to The Peach Oasis Day Spa. Do you have an appointment?” the receptionist behind the counter asked.

“Yes. Moxx for four o’clock,” Villy said, walking towards the voice and stopping when her cane hit the counter.

She checked them off her list. “Wonderful. Your personal masseuses will be out when your private room’s ready.”

“We’re ready for the Moxx party now, Aysmin,” one of the young masseuses said, coming out with her co-worker.

“Yay!” Nyris clapped, her excitement bubbling over.

The masseuses introduced themselves (Uilia and Eshlin) and instructed them to follow them to the locker room to put their bags away.

“May I take your arm?” Villy asked.

“Of course.” One of the masseuses stepped forward and brushed her arm against Villy’s.

The dressmaker lightly gripped her arm right above her elbow and followed them to the locker room. “You’re Eshlin, right?”

“Yup. I’ll be your personal masseuse, and Uilia’s with your daughter.”

Once their bags were safely away, they were led to the changing room to change into fuzzy robes and soft headbands. Their private room was quiet, save for the soft trickling of water from a small fountain. The full-body massages were first, followed by the facials (Nyris couldn’t stop snacking on the cucumbers), then the mani-pedis. Villy chose lavender polish, while Nyris chose a sparkly dark blue.

After two hours of pampering, the two left feeling super relaxed and rejuvenated. Nyris stayed in step with her stepmother, letting her lead and navigate around obstacles herself. She made sure not to grab or pull, settling for occasional hand squeezes. It took the seamstress a moment to realize the hand squeezes weren’t discreet warnings, but affectionate pulses, and she squeezed back every time.

“Thank you for today, Mimsey,” Nyris smiled, snuggling closer to Villy as the bus approached their home stop. “I had lots of fun.”

“You’re welcome, Jellybean. I had lots of fun with you, too.” She rested her chin atop her head. “And I appreciate your help.”

The young girl’s smile widened and she kissed her cheek. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

#sewing it up #guiding light #stepmother #family fluff #ocs #ocfairygodmother #blind character #shopping spree #ocappreciation

[anamatics]

Send a ship and I’ll tell you who: Fleurmione 🥺

Here have some stuff form the Teenagers Universe, some spoilers as this is mostly set in the aftermath as that’s what I’m writing now. Slight CW for dealing with the aftermath of trauma.

Gives nose/forehead kisses

Probably Fleur, she's the more affectionate of the two of them, but when Fleur dozes off in the middle of a translation, half-read books of runic poetry scattered across the desk and crumpled bits of parchment scatted on the floor. Hermione drapes a blanket over Fleur's shoulders and gently shakes her awake. "Come to bed," she says. She bends and presses her lips to Fleur's forehead. "The runes will still be there in the morning."

Gets jealous the most

Jealousy was reserved for that one time that Hermione had a maybe-almost-something with Pansy that blossomed into what even Fleur agrees is one of the healthiest friendships either of them has. And besides, Hermione had that mortifying moment with Professor McGonagall that was, well, enlightening for everyone. When Pansy finds out about that during a party she laughs for a good ten minutes before giving Hermione a slow once-over and announcing, “I stand by my point about degenerates and nerds from fifth year.”

Hermione doesn’t hex her, but it’s a close thing.

Picks the other up from the bar when they’re too drunk to drive

So maybe Ron splitches himself once too many, and Hermione’s started to just take the night tube back to White City. It’s easier, honestly. Living in a space that straddles both muggle and wizarding London has left her so accustomed to occupying both spaces that it seems the natural option. When she and Fleur get caught in the turnstiles, and neither of them can quite get their oyster cards to read, they realize that they’re in their late thirties and probably should not be out so late when they have children waiting for them at home. But Pansy throws the best parties and the sitter’s agreed to stay late while they explain to the TFL attendant that they’re not too drunk to get on the train, and no one will get sick. 

Takes care of on sick days

Here’s the thing. Wizards don’t get sick the way muggles do, no, they have ailments of the wizarding kind that Hermione’s got no idea how to deal with them when she first encounters a case of dragon pox on her third day of residency at the Queen Vic’s A&E. She still gets headcolds and a flu shot every year because in the eyes of magic she’s more muggle than witch. Fleur attempts to make soup, and, despite Hermione having (relatively) mastered cooking, she’s still not the best at it. When she ends up disappearing for twenty minutes and coming back with a packet of instant noodles from the corner shop, Hermione just sniffles and smiles woozily at Fleur. “Hate that you can’t catch this.”

“I’d rather you didn’t catch it either,” Fleur replies. “Perhaps this is a lesson about refusing to take the floo or apparating to work?”

“I will die before I floo willingly and you like taking the train as much as I do.” Hermione takes the chopsticks offers her and sits up, frowning at the instant noodles. Even through her clogged nose, Hermione recognizes the scent of peppers. “The Korean one?”

“To clear your sinuses,” Fleur answers. 

Drags the other person out into the water on beach day

Here’s the thing, the water’s cold and Hermione isn’t going to just get in it without prompting. She’s brought a book to read, a fiction book. She’s taking a break from all the academic reading and reading a novel that Pansy’s recommended in the shy, hesitant way that Pansy does anything that matters. She’s been working her way through the wizarding classics, but this novel is new - just published. Pansy’d been insistent, and when it’d arrived in the post Hermione understood why. She’s not a fool, and she recognizes a pseudonym and a barely disguised dedication. 

Fleur’s standing by the water, ankle-deep in the chalk-colored water, waving at her. Hermione sets the book aside moves to join Fleur, their fingers tangling together as they wade out into the water, staring across the channel at the French coast. 

“I can’t believe she kept her hobby a secret,” Hermione comments. “Dunno how she has the time between doing all those proofs for work and taking care of the kids while Hannah works nights.”

“I think she wanted to impress up on the world that no one truly knows her,” Fleur answers. 

“Very Slytherin.”

“Quite.”

Gives unprompted massages

It used to be that touch was something they both craved, having spent so much of their early relationship apart. Now, when Hermione gets home at half ten from a shift at St. Mungo’s that turned into a shift and a half dealing with a magical catastrophe so bad that they’d had to call Andromeda back from Reading to even begin to make sense of what had happened. Near-fatal organ damage from accidental magic was something Hermione was used to dealing with, but this, threaded with something think and dark and particularly nasty that sat like oil amidst the child’s blood was not her area of expertise. She’s dead on her feet, and her patient is barely stabilized by the time she’s comfortable leaving. She collapses on the sofa when she arrives back at Catterlily Place, half asleep as she melts into the soft cushions. 

“How bad?” Fleur asks. She’s got her glasses perched on her nose and is already bending to pull Hermione’s trainers from her feet. Her fingers dig into Hermione’s sore, aching feet, and Hermione cannot say anything at all, knowing full-well that there’s a chance the patient won’t survive the night. 

“We had to call Andy back from Reading.”

“Oh, chérie.” Fleur’s hands still and she pushes herself to her feet, settling next to Hermione and wrapping her arms around Hermione’s shaking shoulders. “You are so, so good at what you do, Hermione. So is Madame Tonks. It’ll be okay.”

Drives/rides shotgun

“I think this is a threat to public safety,” Fleur says as Hermione adjusts the seat and fiddles with the height of the steering wheel. She walks around to the passenger side of their rented hatchback, and climbs awkwardly into the seat. “We could be killed in this deathtrap. We are witches. We do not have to drive anywhere.”

“Fleur,” Hermione says with grave seriousness. “Sometimes things that are easier... are worse.”

As they drive away from Reykjavik and into the Icelandic wilderness, Fleur’s breath catches and Hermione’s smile grows smug. This was going to be a fun holiday.

Brings the other lunch at work

It takes over a year for the goblins to allow Hermione back into Gringotts. She runs into Damien Betz when she’s ducking into Fleur’s office on the second floor with with a bag from Pret and two coffees during her lunch break at the Queen Vic. “Mademoiselle Granger,” Damien says. “Bonjour.”

“Salut Damien,” Hermione says. She tilts her head toward Fleur’s office door. “Is she in?”

He nods, but bends close. He’s clearly just had his line done, as it looks as though a razor has carefully sculpted the shape of his bangs against his forehead. “This morning,” he bites his lip, frowning, “didn’t go well.”

The Blakeley Vault has been a nightmare for the entire curse breaking team for weeks now. “I’ll bear that in mind,” Hermione says. “It was nice to see you, Damien.”

He waves his hand, and Hermione moves toward Fleur’s office with purpose.

Has the better parental relationship

When Paulie drops them back at the hostel, she again offers them a chance to stay at her place with her husband. “It’s no trouble, really,” she says. She drums her fingers on the steering wheel. “I know this hasn’t been an easy day - being surrounded by muggles,” she wrinkles her nose looking the hostel’s shabby exterior over, “does not sound like my kind evening.” 

In her distaste, Hermione is able to look through the haze of sadness that’s come over her to see Pansy in Paulie - the Parkinson upbringing creeping through despite the fact that this woman has a muggleborn witch as a mother, despite the fact that she’s helped Hermione undo all the damage she’s done to her parents, despite the fact that she’s being so kind to two complete strangers,  she’s still a Parkinson at heart. 

“It’s alright, Paulie, thank you though.” Hermione says. “I expect there will be a lot of days like this before things get better.”

Later, Fleur holds her and promises her that it will get better. “At least your mum can stand to look at you,” Hermione says through the tears. 

Tries to start role-playing in bed

“Grab the headboard,” Fleur says. Her hair is mussed, lipstick smeared across her cheek. They’d been out at a ministry function, but all it had taken was one lingering look from Hermione, her lips closing around the olive in her martini, to have Fleur pulling her into a darkened alcove and pushing her up against the wall. Hermione doesn’t mind when this part of Fleur comes out, the part that’s content to kiss her like she’s damnation and salvation at once. Hermione’s hands found their way under Fleur’s tailored jacket (she’d insisted on attempting a menswear look to compliment the dress Hermione’d found while out with Pansy and Ginny a few days back and the final product had Hermione’s mouth dry even before they’d left the house), and she’s whispering about finding somewhere more private. 

Hermione grabs the headboard, and Fleur’s straddling her hips, eyes dark and wild. Fleur reaches for her wand, raises an eyebrow. “Will you let go?” she asks. “If I say you can’t?”

Swallowing, Hermione shakes her head. “I won’t.”

But then Fleur’s using a severing charm on her dress, leaning over her with a sinful smile. She bends to kiss Hermione and the whole world is closing in on that one moment and Hermione can’t breathe, she cant--- When the world relaxes and Hermione’s body starts to untense, she’s sobbing, back in the terrible memory of that night at Malfoy Manor and Fleur’s gathering her up in her arms and apologizing over and over again. 

Embarrassingly drunk dancer

It takes nearly three years before Hermione is comfortable going to a club again. Being trapped in the dark, surrounded by people she can’t see, whose faces are obscured and then illuminated by flashing lights is enough to send Hermione into panics that last two or three days. So they go out to warmly lit pubs full of old men who look them over before shrugging and turning their attention back to their conversations instead. On a warm night, when they’ve shared a pitcher of Pims with Harry, Ron, and Ginny, Fleur gets to unsteady feet and asks Hermione if she’d like to dance to the song that’s playing lowly from the wireless in the corner. To her credit, she nearly manages to execute the proper steps to the dance before they tumble together, clinging to each other as they sway to the music.

“This is so disgustingly adorable I need to get a camera,” Pansy comments, sliding into the seat Hermione’s vacated. There’s a large diamond on her ring finger, which is, ostensibly, the reason they’re all out. Hannah didn’t wait long. She pours the remainder of the pitcher into the final clean glass, fishing out cucumber and crunching on it thoughtfully. “When are you two getting married?”

Hermione shrugs, and Fleur just laughs.

“I mean they sort of are married,” Ron says.

“Totally,” Ginny agrees.

Harry buries his head in his hands and groans. Pansy reaches over and pats him on the back before drawing Ginny into a conversation about the ring. Hermione rests her head on Fleur’s shoulder. “We should do that, you know.”

“Let Pansy have her fun,” Fleur says. She presses a kiss to Hermione’s forehead. “There’s a lifetime for us.” 

Still cries watching Titanic

They go to the cinema not long after the war ends, and Hermione very bluntly asks for the attendant what the longest film that’s playing’s run time is. They’re avoiding her parents, who are desperate to reconnect since she’s retrieved them from Australia, and avoiding Fleur’s, who’ve come across the channel to meet Hermione’s parents. When Fleur’s mother had summarily dismissed them as they all traipsed up from the basement dining room of the charming French restaurant near the National Gallery Hermione’s parents knew, they didn’t need telling twice. The conversation thus far had been mortifying, and they’re both eager to get away form the nightmare that is the combined powers of their parents. They offer to meet back up for tea in a few hours, and disappear off to the cinema, where they sit in the very back row leaning on each other and sob through the ending together.

Firmly believes in couples costumes

Hermione hates fancy dress parties and balls, but after the war they become all the rage within her friends group. Something about going out as someone else appeals to so many of them, as they’ve all been forced to be celebrities despite their best efforts to avoid the spotlight. Harry and Ginny always go as famous quidditch players with period-appropriate gear and think they’re terribly original. Hermione lets herself be talked into floor length gowns and togas and, one memorable time, a full pirate costume by Fleur. She wears what she’s told and when Fleur finds a way to use the costumes to drive her wild throughout the night with slips of skin and lingering touches, Hermione doesn’t have any cause to complain.

Breaks the expensive gift rule during Christmas

The ring, when it does come, is presented on Christmas morning at Fleur’s parents’ house in full view of Fleur’s mother and grandmother. Gabrielle is distracted with a new book from her father and Phillipe has been drawn into explaining some of the diagrams at the back of it. Fleur holds out the small box to Hermione with some trepidation, looking from her mother to grandmother. “Oh just give it to her Fleur,” her grandmother finally snaps. “You’ve waited long enough.”

"Fleur?” Hermione asks. 

“You once gave me the soul of the world,” Fleur says quietly. 

“Because it never ends,” Hermione breathes. Her fingers tremble as she opens the box. The ring is beautiful, and when Fleur puts in on her finger it feels as though Hermione’s come home after a long, long time away.

Makes the other eat breakfast

“You need to eat, chérie,” Fleur says. 

Hermione, where she’s been pacing up and down the length of the flat, looks to where Fleur’s standing in the kitchen holding out an energy bar. “I can’t,” she says. “If I eat I’ll get sick and I have to pass this exam today or I will never get the job at St. Mungo’s.”

Fleur’s lips press together into a thin line. She steps into the path of Hermione’s pacing and places her hands on Hermione’s shoulders. “You already have the job at St. Mungo’s. You know as well as I do that Blacks do not stick their necks out for just anyone. If Andromeda says you’re ready, you’re ready.” 

Hermione opens her mouth to protest, but she knows Fleur’s right. Her teeth click as she closes her mouth. 

Fleur’s expression softens. “Now, please, eat.”

Remembers anniversaries

It’s late February when Hermione suggests they go out somewhere nice. Fleur smiles fondly from her translation. “What’s the occasion?”  

“You kissed me for the first time five years ago today.”

Brings up having kids

“There are potions for that, Healer Granger, if you’re at all interested in such things.”

Hermione splutters, nearly spitting her coffee out as she stares across the breakroom table at Andromeda. “Why Healer Tonks,” she says, picking her words carefully. She’s been lamenting to her colleague that Fleur’s mentioned children for the third time in as many weeks and it’s about to turn into a conversation. “Are you offering to brew for me?”

“Well, I was going to offer my sister’s services,” Andromeda says, sipping her tea. “She’s been complaining to me that she’s bored now that the divorce has gone through.”

Hermione does spit out her coffee this time. “I will not have your sister brewing--” 

“Merlin, Hermione, you’re far too easy.”

#fleurmione #fanfic #this was a lot #casual homage to Freckle

[mummybear]

Strangers In The Night - Part 6 - Too Soon

Words: 3181

Warnings: Swearing, Hurt/Comfort, Guilt, Mentions Of Past.... Think that’s it!

Characters: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Bobby Singer, Veronica (OC), Sebastian (OC) 

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Veronica (OC)

A/N: I know it has been a long time since the series update but this will be the second to last chapter! So enjoy! Working on the final part now :)

Series Masterlist

Sam shifts awkwardly in his chair, very aware that he has probably just fucked up by letting Veronica walk out of that door. He wants to go after her but he knows that he can’t leave Seb and Dean on their own when they’re unconscious. Something isn’t sitting right with him, with the way that she’d left, not even able to really look at Dean, that just wasn’t her. She was incredibly hurt and blaming herself for everything that was happening to her brother and his own brother.  So he does the one and only thing that he can think of, calling the only man still alive that he trusts enough to protect his brother the same way he would.

Sam knows that Dean would never be able to live with himself if Veronica sacrificed her life for his. She was the only woman that wasn’t their mother that Dean had truly loved his entire life, no matter how much the pair of idiots danced around it, Sam knew better back then and he certainly knows better now. Pulling out his phone he dials Bobby’s number, hoping he’s not in the middle of a job, or worse that he’s completely out of reach.

The phone rings twice before someone picks up and sighs, clearly already irritated.

“What’ve you pair of idjits got yourselves into now?” 

Sam runs a hand through his hair looking over at his brother and has to swallow the lump in his throat before he can even attempt to speak.

“It’s Dean, Bobby. He’s really not doing so well, he was stabbed during a hunt and he’s in really bad shape. I need you to come here, I really need some help.” Sam tries to hide the shake in his voice but fails miserably.

“Hey kid, It’s gonna be fine, try not to think about the worst case. He’s tougher than he looks, I’ll be there in….” There’s a pause and Sam can hear swearing and banging around. “....Give me half an hour, I’ll be there as soon as I can.” 

“Thanks Bobby, V’s in trouble and I don’t want to leave him on his own, just in case. But I need to go and find her,” Sam pushes back the thought of losing his brother as soon as it enters his mind and clears his throat. “V’s brother is here too,” 

“I’m on my way, just hold tight and don’t do anything stupid, if you can manage that.” Bobby sighs but before Sam can speak up again, he hears Bobby calling his name. “I just remembered somethin’, Dean called me on the way back from mine the other day when Veronica was taken last time. Think you were sleepin’, said that he wanted me to track Veronica’s phone. So, it might be worth lookin’ into that.” 

Unfortunately Sam can’t let himself feel the relief that he should be able to. Because he’s almost certain that he already knows where she’s going at this point anyway and it won’t end well for any of them. 

With a final thank you and a quick goodbye to Bobby, Sam looks back down at his phone, worrying his lip between his teeth as his thumb hovers over the tracking app Bobby had sent him for Veronica’s phone. Knowing that he needs to confirm his suspicions, Sam finally caves and presses the screen and loads the app. 

Sighing deeply Sam looks over at his brother, as his suspicions are confirmed with a ping sounding from the app. With the direction that she’s heading in Veronica is far too close to a crossroads for Sam’s liking. Running a hand through his hair once more, he stands from his chair, pacing the floor between the two beds in the room, he’s way too nervous to sit still and all he can do now is wait for Bobby to turn up.

Twenty Minutes Later 

Sam gets what must be his tenth coffee in as many hours, still impatiently waiting until he can leave, Veronica is now just ten miles out from the biggest crossroads that Sam is aware of, according to the tracking app on her phone. She clearly doesn’t understand demons the way that he and Dean have learned to. Sam knows that as soon as any demon finds out his brother is injured and almost defenceless, they won’t think twice about tricking her and they’d be here seconds later killing him. The Winchesters were wanted dead and that’s the end of it, no demon would ever fall for that deal again.

When Sam looks up from his coffee he sees Bobby finally walking into the room, “well hell.” Bobby sighs, pulling up a seat at the side of Dean’s bed, after he claps Sam on the shoulder. 

“So, how bad is it? What’re we lookin’ at?” Bobby asks, looking like he might be a little nervous as he looks between an unconscious Dean and back at Sam.

Sam gives Bobby a brief run down of Dean’s condition, “the good news is the doctors are hopeful that he should continue to improve, since they got the results from the scan back and they aren’t as bad as the doc first thought. But Veronica left before they told me.” Sam reveals worriedly, standing from the chair to pull on his coat.

“You think she’s gonna make the deal?” Bobby asks, watching Sam carefully.

But before he can answer the Doctor interrupts, “any changes?” Sam asks immediately, stepping in front of the doctor.

The doctor offers Sam a gentle smile, patting him on the arm. “Your brother has improved significantly over the last hour, so we’re very hopeful. He may even wake up soon.” 

Sam turns to Bobby with a wide smile, finally allowing himself to take that breath he felt like he’d been holding since they’d arrived. 

“Thank you very much doctor, our dad is gonna stay with Dean, I just have to head out for a little bit. Just got a work thing to deal with,” Sam explains vaguely. 

The doctor turns to Bobby with a genuine smile and shakes his hand. 

“I’ll be back as soon as I have more information.” The doctor assures them both before leaving.

A groan from behind him makes Sam whip around, so many emotions washing over him all at once. He’s relieved to see his brother starting to come around, but he’s terrified of his reaction when he notices that she’s not there and that he’s the one that let V leave. Let alone what his reaction will be when he finds out where she’s gone and what she’s gonna do.

“Sammy. Bobby? Where’s V?” Dean grunts as he tries to sit up, Bobby gently pushes him back into the bed. 

“Boy, sit your ass down before you hurt yourself anymore.” Bobby huffs out, pulling Dean’s covers back up and pushing him back again when he tries to get up for the third time. 

“Don’t make me strap you down!” Bobby warns.

Sam looks at his brother and swallows hard, “It’s so good to see you awake Dean, we were so worried,” Sam smiles the best that he can but he can tell by the look on his brother’s face that he knows that Sam is hiding something. 

“Spit it out Sammy. What is it?” Dean grunts, holding a hand against his stomach as he shifts up the bed slightly. 

“Nothing Dean, just gonna go get some coffee, so uh yeah, be right back.” Sam tries to assure his brother, unfortunately before he can even turn away it’s immediately clear to everyone that Dean knows something is wrong and he isn’t convinced by what Sam is telling him.

“No you don’t, that’s not gonna work on me. Why the rush?” Dean demands gruffly, “you’re lying to me, Sammy. Spill it.” Dean warns him, a pained expression covering his face when he moves again and Sam sighs.

“Fine. It’s Veronica. She’s gone to do something stupid, so I need to go and stop her.” Sam relents finally.

“You’re fucking kidding me right? You let her leave? Sammy!” Dean exclaims, sounding exhausted and exasperated. 

“Son of a bitch.” Dean grunts finally dropping his legs over the side of the bed. Bobby rushes to his side trying to get him back into bed.

“Let me go! She’s gone to make a deal right?” Dean demands, causing Sam to wince a little at the look on his face and the sound of his voice.

“Dean, please I’m sorry. I’ll stop it!” Sam promises, shaking his head at Bobby. Both men know it’s no good to try and get him back in that bed right now.

Dean angrily rolls his eyes at his brother and almost falls to his knees when he finally stands from the bed but luckily Bobby catches him.

After changing a little awkwardly, Dean walks over to Sebastian’s bed. Frowning when he sees something white poking out from his hand. Dean carefully opens his hand and a note falls from it and onto the floor. Sam picks it up and hands it to his brother. Rushing to open it, Dean swallows hard when his eyes fall on her writing, he’d know it anywhere. 

Dean’s eyes flick over the words and he feels a pit hit his stomach growing considerably deeper, when her words confirm his worst fears. He wipes his eyes before the tears can fall, of course she’d blamed herself, just like he would but she didn’t deserve this weight on her chest. She’d done nothing wrong, she’d only tried to help people. 

-

Veronica feels every bump of the road as it moves beneath the wheels of the car she’d stolen back at the hospital. The tears haven’t stopped streaming down her red cheeks since she’d left their sides and all she can do is picture the two men she loves the most. Both unconscious and fighting for their lives, all because of her, both of them, both of those incredible men’s lives were threatened because of her. This was the only thing that she could do to help, even if it’s a little selfish, she needs them back and the world needs Dean Winchester alive. She hopes that once Dean and Sebastian wake up that they can forgive her for this. 

She’s not stupid, Veronica knows that the demon wont give her long to live, if she gets any time at all. The only thing she really wants is to see him wake up, for those gorgeous green eyes to be the last thing that she sees.

The road is beginning to blur again as the tears become too thick. She wipes them away with her sleeve and slows down, she doesn’t want to die before she gets there. Her heart feels like it’s breaking and it takes her everything to just keep her foot pressed against the gas. Her phone has been ringing for the last half an hour, she wants to answer it, to look at it but she can’t bring herself to see the bad news. Whatever it is, it can wait because she can’t allow herself to think about what it might be, not right now, she’s just about holding herself together as it is. 

There isn’t much further to go now and all she can think about is Dean, his huge smile that day at school when they’d first met. Their nights down at the lake, the way they would just sit for hours and talk, there had always been more there between them but they’d ignored it. Now it’s all she can think about, the life that they might have had. It wouldn’t have been perfect but they would’ve had each other at least.

Veronica hopes he finds someone who will treat him the way that he deserves, she just wants him to be happy. The ringing of her phone once again makes her sigh, glancing down at it for what feels like the hundredth time she sees Dean’s name flashing on the screen. But it couldn’t be him, right? Sam had to be using his phone. Yeah, that was it. Yet there’s something that tells her she should answer it. 

Swallowing hard she finally gives in, picking up the phone she presses answer and holds the phone to her ear. 

“I’m fine Sam, please just stop calling. I’m just getting some air.” She says into the phone before anyone on the other line can speak. But she’s met with static noise.

Clearly the hospital signal wasn’t great. Sighing, she drops the phone into the passenger's seat. 

-

“Son of a bitch!” Dean shouts, throwing his phone at his brother who catches it with ease. “Signal crapped out, she didn’t hear me.”

“Dean, it’s gonna be okay. We’ll get there in time.” Sam tells him, trying to comfort his brother but knowing that his tone is less than convincing. 

Angry tears fill Dean’s eyes but he blinks them away, looking back at Bobby and Seb in the backseat.

“How is he?” Dean asks in an effort to distract himself.

Bobby checks him over again quickly for what feels like the hundredth time at Dean’s request.

“Yeah. Same as last time, he’s fine son. Stop worryin’” Bobby assures the eldest Winchester, acknowledging Dean’s nod with one of his own, watching his knuckles go white with the grip that he has on the steering wheel.

Dean leans over with a grunt, popping a few of the pain meds he’d swiped from the hospital and swallowing them dry. He knows he’s basically gonna be useless in this upcoming fight but he doesn’t let that stop him, his foot pressed flat to the floor as the Impala barrels down the final stretch of road, which he knows leads to the crossroads.

He keeps thinking about what he’s gonna say to her but he doesn’t know, he just wants her where she belongs again, back in his arms and this time he’s never letting her go. Why couldn’t he have woken up sooner, then she never would’ve left, this was all his fault, how could she think this is what she needs to do. It’s all very well for everyone to keep telling him to stop worrying, for the longest time he felt like that was all he did. He remembers a few days ago where he had shared V’s bed, when he’d woken up that morning with her in his arms and realised he’d never felt more at home in his life.

The impala comes to a screeching stop, just in time not to bump into the back of a car abandoned on the road. Dean doesn’t even think before he all but falls out of the car, quickly followed by Sam and Bobby. 

“Someone needs to stay with Seb,” Dean states firmly, loading his gun and pushing it into his jeans before grabbing the demon blade and some holy water.

“That should probably be you,” Bobby sighs as soon as the words leave his lips at the look on Dean’s face and holds up his hands.

“I know, I know. I’m stayin’ with the kid. I know you better than that, ya stubborn ass.” Bobby huffs climbing into the passengers' side in case they need a quick get away. 

“Just be careful.” The older man warns him. 

Dean nods at Bobby, silent appreciation passing between them, turning his attention to the tracks visibly leading away from the abandoned car with Sam following closely behind him. 

They keep their movements slow and careful, not wanting to startle the demon into hurting Veronica. It doesn’t take them long to spot either though, engaged in a fight which has even the Winchesters wincing. They watch in horror as Veronica is thrown halfway across the road. 

In a practised move Dean tosses Sam the demon knife and he goes for the demon, while Dean runs straight for Veronica.

Unable to stop the wince as he breaks into a run, Dean falls skidding to his knees at her side. He gasps in relief when her eyes flutter open, watching the mix of emotions that rush through her beautiful eyes in a split second. She’s covered in bruises and blood, cuts and scrapes but he only sees the girl from his childhood and the woman he’s been in love with for almost his entire life. 

“Sweetheart, are you okay?” he asks gently, gritting his teeth as he pulls her into his lap the best that he can. 

Veronica shifts in his arms, a shaking hand reaches up to his face and cups his cheek, like she’s checking to see if he’s actually there, if he’s real. Dean lets his eyes flutter closed briefly.

“Dean?” She gasps through a choked sob, “you’re okay. But, how are you okay? I don’t understand.” She rambles off in confusion, tears streaking down her face.

Dean smiles down at her as his eyes open once more, giving her hand a gentle squeeze when she searches his hand out. 

“We can talk later sweetheart, can you walk? We need to go.” 

“Y-Yeah, I think so.” She half mumbles, letting Dean help her to stand. Both of them glanced over just in time to see Sam plunge the knife into the demon's stomach. 

“Wait. Seb? Where’s my brother?” She asks urgently, pulling away in an effort to sprint towards the car. 

Luckily Dean catches her hand before she gets too far. 

“Hey! Veronica, come on. Did you really think I wouldn’t bring him?” Dean asks, sounding a little hurt.

Veronica sighs with relief when the two of them round the corner and she spots her brother in the back of the impala. “Sorry,” she smiles awkwardly at Dean, “I just panicked. Who’s that?.” Veronica frowns at the older man in the car, she swears that she recognises.

Dean chuckles lightly, “yeah, we’ve got a lot to talk about sweetheart. I’ll give you the rundown on the way back to the bunker.” 

“Okay Dean, I’d like that. Thank you,” she tells him gently. A thought that crosses her mind makes her smile widely.

“You can finally show me what it looks like when Dean Winchester has a bedroom. You always said that you had an idea of what you wanted when you finally had a permanent home.” She tells him, smiling at the memory of those same green eyes.

“You still remember that?” He asks surprised as the pair come to a stop right beside the impala. Veronica gives Sam a quick smile when he walks past them and squeezes her shoulder, watching him climbing into the impala. Before she turns her attention back to Dean.

“Of course I do, we talked about it alot. I haven’t stopped thinking about a lot of things, since I almost lost you, again.” 

“Yeah well, I hope you enjoyed the break. Because that isn’t happening again.” Dean winks, making her laugh.

But the laughter is cut short when Bobby starts honking the horn repeatedly. The door swings open and Bobby hollers out the door, “get your asses movin’! We’ve got company!”

Tags: @chewie-redbird @julzdec @lettersofwrittencollective @stiles-o-dylan24 @mogaruke @all-alone-he-turns-to-stone @dylanholyhellobrien @desireepow-1986 @emichelle @lilulo-12 @22sarah08 @deanwanddamons @simsadventures  @charmed-asylum @nicole-lynne @hazel-eye-coffee-shop-girl-blog​ @defenderrosetyler @emilyshurley @emoryhemsworth @foxyjwls007 @mylovelydame21 @sunshineandwings86 @akshi8278 @peaches009 @fandom-princess-forevermore @flamencodiva @hobby27 @akshi8278 @littlelonewolfgirl @ladywinchester1967 @screechingartisancashbailiff @maddiepants @spnfanfic-reblogs​ @holylulusworld @mrswhozeewhatsis @sonofabringmesomepie @mrsjenniferwinchester @hhiggs​ @pisces-cutie @trina44sb @heartsaved @matsumama @adoptdontshoppets

#supernatural #supernatural series #dean winchester #dean winchester supernatural #Sam and Dean Winchester #dean winchester SPN #dean winchester series #dean winchester x oc #dean winchester x ofc #OC #original character #original female character #dean winchester x original female character #dean winchester x original character #supernatural fanfiction #dean winchester fanfiction

[pjm-com]

Like an Angel

pairing - Park Jimin x Reader genre - pure smut oops, old friends!AU, angst warnings/tags - lingerie wearing, blind date, Namjoon plays cupid, drinking, dirty talk, eye fucking, oral fixation, ‘sir’ kink, face riding, dick riding, slight spanking, pregnant kink, that kink where you can see the guys dick idk wtf its called, unprotected sex, and degradation kink summary - Namjoon set you up on a blind date, and while looking for him you bump into an old friend who you’ve had quite the past with.

You must’ve second guessed your dress a million times before you even stepped foot into the bar. This really wasn’t your scene, but you felt more comfortable as you realized it wasn’t even that full. You could finally breathe as you made your way inside, ordering yourself a fruity cocktail. You enjoyed getting wasted, but Namjoon set you in this position and you didn’t want to waste all of his efforts. He’s been setting this date up for weeks, and the least you can do is feel it out as you sip your drink. You’re ready to sit down at the bar, before a familiar face catches your eye.

You’re almost floored as you watch him stir the drink he has on the table. You figure that since you had no idea where this.. ‘blind date’ was, you decide to sit with him. You grab your purse, pushing down the rather tight black dress that was riding your thigh and you’re walking over to his table as you tap his shoulder. 

“Need some company?”

The face that Jimin gives you as his eyes are almost bulging out of his skull is comical, and he’s pushing off the table to bring you into his chest. You haven’t seen him in ages, and the hug is like something you haven’t felt in ages. Jimin was.. well, you weren’t sure what he was to you. Either way, his hands are keeping you close to his body. You can tell he’s a little buzzed, but you honestly didn’t mind once you both pulled away. 

“Y/N?” He breathes, and his smile is taking up half of his face. The last time you’d seen him, he still had that sweet baby face of his and his voice was still smooth and soft. Now a full fledged man stands before you, replacing the ‘chim’ you used to now. “Here! Sit down, please!” He gestures to the high stool across from his seat and you slide into it, laughing at how he urges you into the position. You fold your hands into your lap after you set your drink down and push some hair behind your shoulders.

“How are you, Park? Feels like I haven’t seen you in a thousand years! What the hell are you even doing here?” He scoffs, swirling the straw of what you presume is straight. Just how Jimin always liked it. 

“Well, I’m here waiting for someone. Been about ten minutes and they don’t show. You?” You giggle softly at the groan that leaves his mouth as his plump cheeks puff up once he rests his face on his hands. You sip your drink, eyes sweeping the bar just in case anyone looked like they were looking for someone. 

“Funny enough..” You trail off, twisting a couple small strands of hair in between the pads of your fingers. “I got set up on a blind date. Namjoon, if you remember his dumb ass, decided I need to get ‘out there’.” Jimin perks up a little bit at the mention of Namjoon and you’re adjusting your dress again as your ass is ready to pop out of the back. 

Jimin’s face has a knowing smirk on it. “Did he dress you too?” 

You groan, pulling your top up so your boobs weren’t spilling either. “Yeah. He said this was special, that he’d been planning it. When I asked who, being paranoid, I didn’t want to get kidnapped. In the end, he just said that it was—“

“With an old friend.”

You stop cold as you guys finish in unison, eyes snapping up at Jimin as he licks his lips free off the alcohol he just drank. “Namjoon set me up on a ‘blind date’ too, and picked out my outfit as well. Guess he’s just the matchmaker, huh?” Your entire face is red as you smile into the palms of your hands, and you laugh because you’re an idiot. You peek through your fingers at your date, and he’s shaking his head but you don’t miss the sweep he does of your figure. 

Once you’ve regained composure, still smiling like an idiot, you cross your arms. “I suppose he is. Now I feel a little underdressed.”

“What? Saying you’d dress a little sexier if you knew it was me?” You shrug, a smug smile on your feature as he rolls his eyes. “Wow, Y/N. Still as wild as I remember. Twenty two looks good on you.” Now it’s your turn to roll your eyes as you snort, leaning forward into the table. You can not believe you’re sitting here with someone you never thought you’d see again besides at one of your mutual friends weddings. Or, like, high school reunion. (As if you were planning on going). 

“Could say the same, Park. Aged well. What are you doing with your lame self?” He laughs at your teasing, eyes turning into crescents as he hums.

“Well, I do a little modeling now actually.” You weren’t surprised. “I also play some music on the side but it isn’t serious or anything. I’m in school right now to get a psychology degree.” That actually surprised you a little. You figured he’d do teaching or something down that road, figuring he was really good with kids. Either way, good for him. 

You’re smiling as he throws the question back at you. “Well, I’m working in college as a law student, but I have a small job on the side.” The moment you said anything, you mentally slapped yourself. Ever since you turned 19 and left home to live on your own, the financial aid didn’t cover much of your college tuition. Long story short, your parents weren’t helping you and you had a nice body. What more is there to say?

“Oh! You doing Uber Eats, or Door Dash?” He asks. The innocence in his voice makes your smile falter a bit as he’s being genuine. Your face goes red again for the second time that night. “Oh god.. It’s embarrassing isn’t it. You have a sugar daddy don’t you? Or let me guess, toe pics?” You’re failing to keep a straight face as you burst into laughter at his suggestions.

“No, you perv. It’s um.. well god, I wish it was a sugar daddy.” He cocks his eyebrow up as he brings the rim of his glass to his lips. “I, um. I strip for extra cash.”

He damn near chokes on his drink, wiping his chin as he blinks in surprise. “Y/N? Goody two shoes, on the cheer squad, and always hosted study review parties at her house.. is a stripper.” 

“Fuck off.” 

“C’mon I think it’s kinda sexy.”

You soon forget the conversation as he flags down the waiter to get both of your glasses refilled. You honestly had no idea how much you actually missed Jimin as you continued to talk. Catching up and a lot of things. You know that he, Jungkook, and Taehyung all room together. You and Taehyung both worked at the strip club together, where he knocked the heads of any assholes who wanted more than they originally paid for. They were quite the trio in high school, always together and always in the deans.

“That was not me!” Jimin whined, hands up in mock surrender. You can feel the alcohol in your body now, face flushed as you’re more bubbly now than when you first sat down. “Jungkook and Taehyung decided to strip for senior prank day. That’s why they got detention.”

“Then why the hell were you in there?”

He snorts. “For filming.” You roll your eyes, unable to contain the laughter that’s rising in your chest. You feel like you can’t help it, either. Jimin’s smile and laugh was contagious, lighting up any room he was in. Thank god you’re apart of that room. You find yourself staring as he rambles about all the dumb trouble they got into during homecoming week. You watch the way his teeth look as he talks. Hey, his teeth were straight and you had a thing for nice teeth. Soon you’re watching those pretty lips slam a shot as he gestures for you too as well.

Snapping out of your trance, you thank him for the drink and slam the shot as well before you hum. “I’m actually surprised you didn’t die at that one party after homecoming. You and Jin polished off the entire bottle of fireball in like, thirty minutes.” You both laugh at Jin, the only man in the friend group who can handle two whole bottles of liquor before he pukes. 

“I miss Jin,” Jimin sighs and you nod as well, the older trio who had graduated before you guys were essential to the group. “That night was crazy. Especially what happened afterwards.” You don’t miss a beat to raise your eyebrows as you sip a much stronger drink than your first cocktail. You try to think of what happened but all you can really remember is a blur. You’re ready to ask him what he meant before little parts come back to you. You and Jimin were in some random person’s bedroom, chests pressed together on the bed as you made out for what felt like hours. 

“Oh god,” you whine, head dropping down as Jimin starts to chuckle. “I was so wasted that night, Park. I was probably a terrible hook up.” He shrugs as you mix your drink as it tastes a little strong. You were more than aware of what you both knew. You had enjoyed that night to its fullest, and so had Jimin. You both kept coming back to each other for the occasional hook up and party date when you both wanted to get wasted and fuck. Even if it sounded shallow, you had cared for him and there was not a doubt in your mind that he cared for you as well. You also cuddled on many occasions, got dinner, and just spent many nights together doing homework or movies. Like a relationship. 

God you hated that word. It was such a huge label, and you never understood why everyone freaked out about it. If you guys like each other, then why be so complicated? Fuck if you want, kiss whenever. Friends with benefits wasn’t what you were so you decided to stay in the grey area. 

“Yeah, that night was a sloppy night. Prom night made up for it,” He says softly while your eyes avert to his own. You do a quick sweep of the tight button up he’s wearing, and what you’d give to touch his chest. Before you can continue the daydream, you return the gaze to his eyes. 

There is a playful glint in them, one you’re familiar with and you’re more than ready to face what he might throw at you. That being said, you couldn’t ignore the fact that it was the best day of your life. Dancing with friends and eating nice food. Jimin wanted to treat you like a princess that night, even if you guys went as.. ‘friends’? “I think that weekend was even better.”

“That, I can get behind,” You laugh as you raise your glass in small acknowledgment. “Saturday night and all of Sunday I swear we were swimming. We maybe only got out to either sleep in the tents, or eat.” The local swimming hole was something you guys treasured. It was where you guys had fun and forgot about the pressures of college applications and parents. 

You continue. “It’s funny you say that, cause I was actually thinking about the place earlier.”

“I was too, Taehyung brought it up. Mentioned the bathing suit you wore, which I’ll have to agree it was my favorite considering I destroyed you in it.” 

“Shut up you’re such a perv,” You shake your head despite the grin on your face. “I still have it too. Might be a little small. I keep it with all of my stripping outfits too if you want a shocker.” Your laughing falls short as Jimin stares at you, face blank as he rakes the expanse of your figure. You know that look, and as much as you want to steer clear of that ending, a part of you misses the routine with the male. 

“You have certain... outfits?” He gulps, pulling his lip into his mouth. Fortunate for you, the alcohol is really working through your system and you’re feeling it now. You watch the way the veins on his hands move as he clenches his fist, waiting to say something. You weren’t going to lie. Jimin was the best you’ve ever had, and a little part of you was dying for him to touch you.

“If you want to see them,” you whisper playfully, tongue resting under your teeth. “All you have to do is ask.” Jimin groans quietly in response, eyes looking around the bar like he was caught red handed. You were very aware of the affect you had on him and were always quick to use it to his advantage. Now he’s not even bothering to hide the sweep he does of your chest, and you lean forward a bit to give him a better look.

“Still a tease, Y/N.” He clicked his tongue, downing his drink before he puts cash on the table. “I got an uber here just in case my date decided to get a little drunk, and here we are. What about you?” 

“Yeah, I got a cab here. In case I got lucky.” You blush as you admit it, sliding out of the bar stool and pulling down your dress again as he guides you to the door. 

“You did.”

 With his hand on your lower back, you’re leaning into his chest as he orders an uber and you both wait in front of the club. Jimin used his hands to wander your backside a little, fingers under your shoulder blade before he’s running them down to the curve of your ass to grab it quickly. You jolt a little forward, catching your lip in between your teeth as a laugh rumbles in his chest. 

“If I knew we’d be waiting, I would have ordered another drink!” You whine, pulling the soft coat you brought over your shoulders, your phone illuminating your face while you check the time. You can practically hear Jimin roll his eyes as he pulls you towards the car once it rolls up. He moves to let you slide in first, greeting the driver as he shut the door. 

You’re all buckled in and with not a second to spare, Jimin’s hand rests on your upper thigh so his thumb can feel your soft skin. You turn to shoot him a look, but his gaze is turned towards the window while he grins. You wonder if you’re gonna regret this in the morning, but you haven’t seen the sight of him sleeping in your bed in a while. You recognize it too well, pillow under his arm as he hugs it, blanket kicked off so his firm back is on display. Many mornings you spent drawling circles over the expanse of his skin, all the way down to the dimples right over his tailbone. 

You’re needy for it now as the uber stops in front of your apartment, and you both thank him before sprinting towards the door. You’re not even past the entrance to the building before his hands are all over you, bumping into the walls as you guys approach the door to your house. You turn to fumble your keys as you unlock the door, while doing so Jimin is pressing his cock into your ass. You shudder at the feeling of it thick on your body, and it makes you even more eager as you push open the door. 

Jimin takes the liberty of shutting and locking it, kicking off your heels and throwing your coat to the side. His lips are on yours in seconds, sloppy strings of kisses as he guides you backwards into your room. By now you’ve stepped out of your dress and kicked it aside, Jimin undoing his belt while your fingers worked fast to undo his shirt. When you finally get to the room, you can almost laugh at the sight of the pieces of clothing in a scattered line from the door to your room. 

“Missed his, huh?” He laughs breathily, hands grabbing the back of your thighs. You’re quick to get into routine as you push off the ground and cling to him, while he’s pushing your body flush to the wall and working his tongue into your mouth. You guys fool around with embarrassing tongue kisses, sucking on the muscle before he’s just tasting you at this point. Your body ached for his kind of touch, and all nerves were on high alert since this had been the first time you’ve really been active in months. 

You nod into the vigorous kissing, pulling his button up down his shoulders so you can feel the taut muscle moving under his skin as he ruts his hips into your panties. Both parties moan at the action, and he’s quick to move to your neck to scrape his teeth along your jugular vein just like he used to. You’re waiting for him to continue the same cycle he always did on your throat, starting at your ear before proceeding down to your collarbones and to the other side of your neck. If there was one thing you remembered, it was that Jimin enjoyed marking every inch he could. You almost suggest for him to take you right there before you remember the real reason you took him here.

“Still wanna see those outfits?” He’s quick to drop you to the floor slowly, sucking one last bruise under your jaw before his tongue runs over the teeth marks there. His hands let go of your hips so you can turn around to the closet, but not before his hand lands a hard slap to your ass. “Sit on the bed and close your eyes~”

He obeys rather quickly, letting you strip of your rather plain underwear and bra and grab one of your favorite sets. It was gifted to you by a coworker who said that it would fit your body type. Thank god she was right, cause as you slip on the bra you watch the way it cups your chest like a glove. You pull up the underwear, peeking to see Jimin sitting with his eyes closed. You hurriedly pull up the thigh highs and buckle the straps to your underwear where they connect.

“Almost ready, princess?” He laughs, and you flip him off as if he can see you. You walk over to him, and throw a leg over his thighs to sit in his lap. Your eyes marvel in the sight of his toned chest revealed from the button down which was pulled out of his pants. He looked wrecked, and the sight of him was exciting you even more. He waits a second, hands feeling your thighs first before he opens his eyes. You can tell he isn’t disappointed because his eyes fail to find yours. Good.

There’s no trace of a smile on his face as he pulls the fabric of your stockings in between the pads of his fingers to feel it. They travel slowly up your navel to the valley of your boobs, cupping them gently. He whistles, hand cupping the side of your face once he reaches it. 

“Like it?”

He laughs like you just asked a dumb question, thumb dragging your lip down. “My dick is rock hard under you right now, and you’re seriously asking me this?” You laugh a little moving forward to take his thumb into your mouth. He also liked this, if your memory runs right. “God… the strip club doesn’t deserve you. This is— this is like fucking an angel.” He’s referring to the white color to the set, and you nod as his fingers ghost over your clit which jolts your nerves. He brings your hips down hard and guides them over the length of his cock, slow and steady so you can feel every inch. You’d be lying if you said the action didn’t turn you on. 

“I always had thoughts about sending you a little sneak peak of it after I first got it. Wanted you to fuck me real good dressed up like this.” His head drops back a little bit, groaning at the idea as his chest heaves little by little. “Pretended I was dancing for you instead of the old men that wander throughout the club.”

“Babygirl thought of me?”

You know that tone all too well. “Yes, sir.” He grins against the skin he was biting, pulling away as he pushes two fingers against your tongue. He rubs it lightly and you’re quick to lick at the pads as if it was his dick. He watches you with lidded eyes while his tongue darts out, wetting his lips as they’ve ran dry. It’s like the stare itself is fucking you open right there, the tension so thick you could cut it with a knife. Jimin pulls the fingers out of your mouth and leans up to catch your lips in a sinful kiss, one that definitely has you wetter by the moments.

“Being so obedient. If I remember correctly, you were always such a brat.” You shrug, hands against his neck as you look at him. He falls back into the bed and pushes his hips up into yours which makes you whine a little bit. “Come sit on my face, baby… you still like that, right?” You nod quickly, scrambling as you scoot up to his neck and look down at him from that angle. God, you probably looked unflattering from the angle, but the long lick Jimin does over the fabric of your underwear washes the doubt away. Your hands find purchase in his hair as you feel him pull the fabric aside and drag the flat of his tongue over your folds. You can feel it better now, the strong muscle toying your clit as you remember how good he was with it. 

Not a moment too soon, his arms are around your thighs to hold you in place as his lips wrap around your clit. “A-ah,” you inhale sharply as he bites the bundle of nerves gently. He is wasting no time as his tongue plunges deep into your pussy and you can’t hold back the moans that tumble past your lips. Every lick and suck he does has your hips bucking at the feeling, even as he laughs into you. “Mmm, your tongue feels really good, Park.” He’s sucking mercilessly on your clit as your hips roll into his mouth to get whatever you can.

His hands move to your ass while he grabs the two cheeks in his hand and spreads them apart. You grind your hips into his face, your hands running up your stomach to grab your own chest, making eye contact with Jimin as you twist your own nipples. You can practically feel him smirk as his hands cover your own, before finding their way back to your clit as he tongue fucked you. Your head leans back a little bit, eyes closed as you can feel the long drag of his tongue in and out of your pussy. You’re moaning louder as each second passes, with his fingers toying at you and his tongue deep in you, you’re feeing yourself get worked up.

You knew Jimin wanted you to cum. He enjoyed having you already overstimulated when he started, and he was doing a good job of getting his way. You’re whining loudly as he moved quicker, sucking and licking everything he could as if his life depended on it.

“Jimin,” you warned as you panted lightly, rolling your hips into his tongue even harder as you began riding his face, for lack of better words. “Jimin, I’m gonna cum.” He moves even faster after you say that, eyes boring into yours as he wiggles his mouth over your lips. You’re holding onto his hair, feeling your nerves in your thighs jolt as you feel yourself start to grow hotter by the minute. You release all over his mouth with a loud cry, thighs closing in on his head as he finishes you off. You curse as he cleans his plate, licking every last drop before pulling his mouth from your heat. 

“Damn,” he groaned as he licked his lips from the cum that remained. “Sound even hotter now than you did senior year.” You weakly slap his arm, face turning a dark hue of red as he pushes the lace underwear back over you before you move off of his head. You hoped you weren’t suffocating him. You bite your lip as he tackles you to the other side of your bed, pinning you down as he works on the free skin of your chest.

“You’re even better than you were senior year.” You laugh breathily as he’s taking your nipple into his mouth after turning the skin under a light purple. Your hands are in his hair, pushing it back so you can see his face. He’s already staring at you, smiling as he bit into your chest. “Still enjoy throat fucking?” You throw at him, and his lips finish the bruise he’s working on before he snickers. You unbutton his pants, pulling them down and he almost falls off the side of the bed trying to kick them off. After laughing fits, he’s straddling over your torso and you’re giving kitten licks to the top of his dick. 

“I’ve fucked other girls mouths,” He starts and you’re ready to flip him off but he drags the tip over your lips, and then your tongue once it’s out on display. “They will never be as good as yours, baby. Always had to pretend that every pussy I fucked my cock into was yours.” You swoon at the words, even if they aren’t the way you’d like to hear them. Taking the head of his dick into your mouth, you hold the back of his thighs as you bob your head forward while your nose hits the stubble of his pubic bone. Luckily for you, and him, you weren’t much of a gagger so after a few minutes you feel his hand on the back of your head. You relax your throat the best you can as he fucks your mouth, drool pooling at the side of your mouth as you take him the best you can.

“Fuck,” he growls. “Missed y-your pretty mouth over my cock.” The grunting noises he makes is almost animalistic as the sound of his hips slapping your cheeks rings throughout the room. You stare up at him, making it look as innocent as possible and once his eyes are on yours, his head falls back again as he moans. You hollow your cheeks around his dick, sucking as he’s hitting the back of your throat. He speeds up, hips stuttering and you’re ready to take whatever he gives you. Before you can even prepare for his cum, he withdraws from your mouth with an audible ‘pop’ that has you confused. 

Jimin pants as he looks down at you, thumb ridding of the spit on your chin before apologizing.

“What for?” You pant, licking your lips to collect the juices on them. 

He shakes his head, leaning down to kiss you heatedly and you give him back what you get. It’s hot and needy, tongues against each other as you guys roll over again while laughing. It felt like a reunion, even if it wasn’t how you usually had them. He stares at you once you’re situated in his lap, watching you like you’re about to dissolve in his arms. “What?” You repeat.

He laughs weakly, patting your thighs. “I missed you, truly.” He admits and you’re ready to respond with something heartfelt before he ruins the mood. “Cumming in your mouth is good, but to cum in that wet cunt of yours is even better.” Again, you’re whipped at the words so he doesn’t have to tell you twice as you unbutton the two pieces of your underwear. You thank the heavens for the easy removal of the garment as you toss it to the side. You’re ready to take off the thigh highs but he growls.

“No, those stay on.”

You discard the bra behind you as you rub your pussy over the head of his dick to tease him, but he pulls your hips down over him. You whine at the contact and do not miss a single beat to start bouncing on him, swirling your hips before grinding them down. His head back into the pillows, hands over your boobs as he watches with lidded eyes. Jimin wants to see everything you do, even if he’s struggling to keep his eyes open. He missed you, and he meant what he said. He ached for your touch after all these years and he’s ready to start rambling about it all over again.

He decides to keep his mouth shut.

  “Fu-fuck baby, just like that,” He groans as his hands travel your body to land on your hips, holding them tightly as he fucks even harder up into you. 

“Jimin!” You squeak, falling forward and using his chest to keep you grounded while you both work at a pace that feels like cloud nine. Your hair falls forward and you’re tucking it hastily behind your ear while your moans bounce with every push inside you. Made you sound like you were on a bumpy road. “P-please— Jimin please don’t stop. A-ah.. keep fucking me.” He listens closely to your plea as he’s fucking up into you with a pace you can’t keep up with, rendering you useless as you sit there and take it.

You’re clawing his chest in an attempt to release the pleasure you felt, it finally getting to the brink of being too much.

“How does.. m-my cock feel?”

You moan in response as his thumbs pushing your clit all around, rubbing it raw until your hand is patting his pec. “I-it feels good, h-hah.. I c-can’t take it.” Your begging falls on deaf ears as he’s going at godspeed, your thighs twitching at the overworking muscles underneath. “I can’t, J-Jimin, I c— fuck!” You cry out as he rubs over your g spot, and keeps nailing into it as he goes even faster. You’re wondering in the back of your head how the fuck he has the willpower for this, but you could ask the same question of yourself. You missed him and his touch, his body. That’s all there is to it.

“God, fucking right into your cunt.. bet you want me to cum in you and knock you up?” This was more of a kink for him, but you moaned loudly as it was still hot to hear him say the words. “Fill your tummy with cum.” You nod vigorously as his hand comes over your stomach, and he watches the way your skin moves with every thrust.

“Fill me up w-with your cum,” You beg, and he’s biting his lip hard enough that he could draw blood as he drills into you. 

“God I wish I fucking could... watch your stomach bloat with all this cum that I’m giving you. Gonna get my little slut pregnant.”

It comes crashing down, the last tether of your orgasm snapping as you freeze on his cock and grip his biceps like you’re holding on for your life. His name is on your lips as he fucks it out of you, the noises becoming sloppier as your release covers his cock. Jimin looks up at you, pushing back your hair and the smile you give him has him sent. The way you’re looking at him, lidded eyes with blown out pupils. Your neck and body are filled with his marks, and fuck Jimin just wanted you to be his already. 

He’s cumming up into you, stalling as he buries his cock deep inside of you, neck veins straining as he moans loudly. The last thing left in the room to hear is your breathing, hard and rough against the currents of the room. You’re trying to regain your consciousness as you lean forward, laying on his chest. He’s sweaty but so are you, and you could care less as you close your eyes. You lay there until Jimin’s chest turns into a slow, rhythmic rise and fall as he breathes. Jimin’s so focused on combing through the knots in your hair that he almost misses your question. 

“You wanna shower?”

He can tell by the way your voice sounds, that you’re exhausted so he shakes his head. “We have all morning to do that. I just want to lay here with you.” And he did. It’s been so long since he’s held you. Since he’s gotten a proper look at you, the slight upturn of your nose resting against his chest. He pulls out finally so he can rest his legs while he laughs to himself, the way that your cheek is squished against his skin has him chuckling. “I love you, Y/N.”

A part of him wishes you were awake to hear those words. He wanted you to know he meant it, but the other half is glad his words remain unheard.

He has to remind himself that those three words are why you guys split off in the first place.

#bts #bts smut #bangtan sonyeondan #park jimin smut #park jimin x reader #jimin smut #jimin x reader #kim namjoon #kim seokjin #min yoongi #jung hoseok #park jimin #kim taehyung #jeon jungkook

[twoidiotwriters1]

Written In The Stars XV (Harry Potter xF!Oc)

A/N: Tumblr malfunction as I was editing this and everything went to shit. But I hope it works now! Also, @omiwashere for some reason your url doesn’t appear to me as on option so i can’t tag you at all, perhaps you have another url?

Words: 3,252

Warnings: Bit of unicorn blood, bit of violence

Series’ Masterlist

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Chapter Fifteen: The Creature in the Forest.

"It's too late to change the plan now," Harry lamented, "We haven't got time to send Charlie another owl and this could be our only chance to get rid of Norbert. We'll have to risk it. And we have got the Invisibility Cloak, Malfoy doesn't know about that."

On Saturday, the three kids -Harry, Mel, and Hermione- went to Hagrid's hut to take his 'little baby' away.

"Bye-bye, Norbert!" Hagrid sobbed as they disappeared under the cloak with Norbert beside them, "Mummy will never forget you!"

"Mummy," Mel shook her head, "why a dragon, why not another sweet, black puppy?"

They walked in complete darkness, voices catching their attention.

"Detention!" McGonagall shouted, "And twenty points from Slytherin! Wandering around in the middle of the night, how dare you –"

"You don't understand, Professor, Harry Potter's coming – he's got a dragon!"

Mel had to cover her mouth so she wouldn't laugh. She was beaming, Malfoy finally getting what he deserved!

They waited at the top of the astronomy tower. About ten minutes later, four brooms appeared in the night sky.

It was fast and easy: Charlie's friends were nice, they took Norbert as if it was an everyday thing, and they flew, they went further... until they were completely gone.

They were downstairs when Mel realized something important was missing. Before she could warn her friends, a voice came from a dark corner:

"Well, well, well," Filch whispered, able to see them since they forgot Harry's cloak back in the tower. "we are in trouble."

Mel was silent. She was weighing her options, what could she do to get everyone out of trouble.

She was a Dumbledore! Somewhere inside that pea-brain she had the social skills to make their way out of this mess.

"Harry!" Neville appeared next to McGonagall, "I was trying to find you to warn you, I heard Malfoy saying he was going to catch you, he said you had a drag–"

Harry shook his head violently next to her, Professor McGonagall saw him.

"I would never have believed it of any of you. Mr Filch says you were up the astronomy tower. It's one o'clock in the morning. Explain yourselves."

Mel closed her eyes, breathing heavily. This was it, if she didn't give a proper explanation, they'd be doomed.

But what could possibly explain the situation that didn't give them away?

Draco was found and he was telling stories about a dragon and Harry... they didn't get along with Malfoy, all the teachers knew that...

Mel took a moment to control her voice and then, in a very serious tone she answered:

"We lied."

Harry looked at her, Mel avoided his eyes afraid that it might give them away.

"You lied?" McGonagall asked harshly, "About what?"

Mel shook her head taking her time, she added:

"We wanted to teach Malfoy a lesson."

Her Professor nodded once.

"I see. I think I've got a good idea of what's been going on,' said Professor McGonagall to Mel's relief, "It doesn't take a genius to work it out. You fed Draco Malfoy some cock-and-bull story about a dragon, trying to get him out of bed and into trouble. I've already caught him. I suppose you think it's funny that Longbottom here heard the story and believed it, too?"

"No, Professor," Mel added in panic, watching Neville's disappointed face, "Neville wasn't supposed to hear it... but that doesn't excuse us"

"I'm disgusted," said Professor McGonagall, "Five students out of bed in one night! I've never heard of such a thing before! You, Miss Granger, I thought you had more sense. As for you, Mr Potter, I thought Gryffindor meant more to you than this. Miss Dumbledore, you've been spending your time with the Weasley boys, I should've guessed something was going on. All five of you will receive detentions – yes, you too, Mr Longbottom, nothing gives you the right to walk around school at night, especially these days, it's very dangerous – and fifty points will be taken from Gryffindor."

"Fifty?" Harry gasped.

"Fifty points each," said Professor McGonagall.

"Professor – please –"

"You can't –"

Mel put a hand on Harry's shoulder, shaking her head frantically.

"Don't tell me what I can and can't do, Potter. Now get back to bed, all of you. I've never been more ashamed of Gryffindor students."

Next morning was a nightmare, students were insulting her and every single one of her friends except for Ron. All of them were quieter, ashamed of what had happened, but she kept her head high.

She answered every question in class, worked hard to be the head of her year, she wasn't going to feel ashamed about helping Hagrid.

People weren't happy about that either, how dare she be so loud and know-it-all after losing so many points? Mel had to make her way out of her bad reputation soon.

Fred and George weren't bad to her, but they weren't acting as friendly as before. They were impressed about her skill with spells, but they also avoided her in public places. She didn't mind, that way she could focus on gaining more points.

Someone was definitely not avoiding her though, now that she'd helped Slytherin to go back on its first place. As a matter of fact, he seemed excited about their friendship now more than ever.

"Morning, Miss," Erick sat next to her during the morning break, "how's life going when you're one of the most hated people at school?"

"Could be worse," She said shortly, "Harry's miserable as well as Hermione and Neville. I'm not. I owe nothing to the rest of the students."

"Slytherin is beyond happy right now," He replied gleefully, "particularly Malfoy. If it wasn't for your major faux pas they'd be terribly mad at him, but he keeps saying it was thanks to him that you lost all those points... It isn't true is it?"

"He got caught before he could actually find us," Mel replied with annoyance, "Could you leave? If you're only here to brag about Slytherin's victory you can do that another time, I'm not in the mood."

"Calm down, I'm just teasing," He rolled his eyes.

"You never talk to me, but now suddenly you're so talkative," She snarled, "Sorry if I confused your friendly teasing with being an idiot."

"Well yes, you're forgiven," He chuckled. When he noticed Mel wasn't amused, he added, "I'm just seizing the opportunity to openly talk to a friend, it'll go away as soon as you save five kittens from the whomping willow or some bizarre adventure of sorts. I know you have a luck for that."

"Well I wish I had the luck to be left alone when I want to," She replied, "just go away!"

He stood up, as he started to walk away he added:

"I'll stop talking to you until things get better. Or I'll just stop talking to you altogether, who knows?" Erick said it carelessly, but his fists were clenched.

Mel didn't answer, she didn't know what she wanted.

Through the course of a month, Mel won thirty points for Gryffindor. It wasn't enough but she was doing her part, she would keep on working at least until they reached the third place.

Quirrell had given up and Snape was one step closer to get what he wanted. She had promised she wouldn't mingle in foreign matters, she needed to win more points for her house. So she decided to stay out of it.

Harry thought the same, he forced himself to forget about the subject and kept on studying. The only person that seemed disappointed was Ron, who couldn't wait to have another adventure.

Harry, Mel, Hermione, and Neville got a note during breakfast:

'Your detention will take place at eleven o'clock tonight.

Meet Mr Filch in the Entrance Hall.

Prof. M. McGonagall'

"Brilliant," Mel groaned, angrily biting her turkey sandwich.

"Follow me," said Filch once they were gathered outside, "I bet you'll think twice about breaking a school rule again, won't you, eh? Oh yes ... hard work and pain are the best teachers if you ask me ... It's just a pity they let the old punishments die out ... hang you by your wrists from the ceiling for a few days, I've got the chains still in my office, keep 'em well oiled in case they're ever needed ... Right, off we go, and don't think of running off, now, it'll be worse for you if you do."

Mel had a lot of opinions about all that, but she decided to keep it to herself, she was already drowning in troubles.

Their detention consisted of something easy: Hagrid would take them to the forbidden forest, yet she didn't have any idea as to why. Malfoy tried to refuse, it was fun to see his little cold eyes filled with horror.

"Look there," said Hagrid, "see that stuff shinin' on the ground? Silvery stuff? That's unicorn blood. There's a unicorn in there bin hurt badly by summat. This is the second time in a week. I found one dead last Wednesday. We're gonna try an' find the poor thing. We might have ter put it out of its misery."

"And what if whatever hurt the unicorn finds us first?" said Malfoy.

"There's nothin' that lives in the Forest that'll hurt yeh if yer with me or Fang," said Hagrid. "An' keep ter the path. Right, now, we're gonna split inter two parties an' follow the trail in diff'rent directions. There's blood all over the place, it must've bin staggerin' around since last night at least."

"I want Fang," squeaked Malfoy.

"All right, but I warn yeh, he's a coward," said Hagrid. "So me, Harry an' Hermione'll go one way an' Draco, Neville, Mel an' Fang'll go the other. Now, if any of us finds the unicorn, we'll send up green sparks, right? Get yer wands out an' practise now – that's it – an' if anyone gets in trouble, send up red sparks, an' we'll all come an' find yeh – so, be careful – let's go."

The groups parted ways, Neville firmly holding Mel's sleeve as they walked through the narrow trees.

"I shouldn't be here," Malfoy spat, "I should've shown them the letter and I'd be out of trouble-"

"You don't have the letter anymore. Even if you did, it would look like you made it up to get out of your punishment," Mel replied calmly, "stop whining"

"I suppose you must feel quite at home surrounded by beasts"

"Yes, and a rat like you must be terrified, you could be attacked at any moment," She rolled her eyes, "shut up, you'll attract the werewolves you love so dearly..."

Malfoy for the first time ever listened to her and stayed quiet. Neville was starting to hurt her arm, she gently asked him to stop and stepped away, shivering.

They had been walking for about fifteen minutes when Malfoy decided to scare Neville, sneaking up and jumping on his back. Neville got so scared that he shot red sparks into the air.

"You should've seen your face!" Draco cackled.

"Stupid!" Mel clenched her fists, "Hagrid is gonna get mad! We shouldn't be causing fuss while we're doing this, we won't find anything this way!"

"Who said I wanted to find it?" He frowned, "That's not my job, he's taking advantage of us"

"The same way you take advantage of Crabbe and Goyle cause they're big and can protect you," Mel snapped.

Malfoy barely reacted, shrugging.

"They're too stupid to make it through school on their own."

Mel was too angry to reply, she spent the next five minutes calming Neville and once Hagrid found them he was indeed upset about Malfoy's behavior, he changed the groups for Neville's sake.

Now Harry was coming with them. The blond kid remained quiet now, probably tired or pissed about was wasting his time. Harry and Mel didn't talk much either, they didn't want to disturb the creatures.

The unicorn's blood guided them to a clearing: The creature laid dead shining under the moonlight, one could imagine it was sleeping if it wasn't for the pool of blood surrounding its body.

Mel and Harry approached when a cloaked figure appeared crawling over to the animal, drinking the blood from its wound.

Malfoy let out a high, terrified scream as he ran away with Fang beside him, Mel and Harry stood there, terrified. Harry yelped in pain, a hand on his forehead.

He stumbled back and fell to his knees, only then Mel found herself capable to move, kneeling next to the boy and trying to uncover his face.

"What's wrong?" She yelled, hands cold as ice when she touched him.

The sound of hooves approaching and a tall figure jumping above them distracted her... a centaur. Mel watched as he scared the creature away, protecting them from whatever it was that thing.

"Harry," She stammered, looking back at the boy, "l-let me see!"

Harry looked up as the centaur got closer, helping them to their feet.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes – thank you – what was that?"

The centaur was staring at Harry's scar, she would've said something if he hadn't just saved their lives.

"You are the Potter boy," he said. "You had better get back to Hagrid. The Forest is not safe at this time – especially for you. Can you ride? It will be quicker this way," Then he looked over to Mel, icy blue eyes reading her carefully, "You vibrate. What's your name?"

It was a really odd thing to say, but Mel assumed centaurs were strange like that.

"Mel Dumbledore," She stretched out her hand, but the centaur didn't take it.

He nodded, "My name is Firenze."

He kneeled so they could climb over on his back.

Once they were seated, galloping echoed through the trees and soon enough two more centaurs appeared in front of them.

"Firenze!" One thundered. "What are you doing? You have humans on your back! Have you no shame? Are you a common mule?"

"Do you realise who these are?" said Firenze. "This is the Potter boy. The girl is Dumbledore's descendant. The quicker they leave this Forest, the better"

"What have you been telling him? Remember, Firenze, we are sworn not to set ourselves against the heavens. Have we not read what is to come in the movements of the planets?"

"I'm sure Firenze thought he was acting for the best," The second centaur spoke up.

"For the best! What is that to do with us? Centaurs are concerned with what has been foretold! It is not our business to run around like donkeys after stray humans in our Forest!"

Firenze reared on to his hind legs, Mel had to hold onto Harry's waist and he grabbed Firenze's shoulders.

"Do you not see that unicorn? Do you not understand why it was killed? Or have the planets not let you in on that secret? I set myself against what is lurking in this Forest, Bane, yes, with humans alongside me if I must."

Firenze then galloped away.

"Why's Bane so angry?" Harry asked. "What was that thing you saved me from, anyway?"

Firenze did not answer, he kept going and spoke only to make sure Harry and Mel kept their heads low to avoid hanging branches. Her mind was starting to divert when he spoke up.

"Do you know what unicorn blood is used for?"

"No," said Harry, "We've only used the horn and tail-hair in Potions."

"That is because it is a monstrous thing, to slay a unicorn. Only one who has nothing to lose, and everything to gain, would commit such a crime. The blood of a unicorn will keep you alive, even if you are an inch from death, but at a terrible price. You have slain something pure and defenseless to save yourself and you will have but a half-life, a cursed life, from the moment the blood touches your lips."

"But who'd be that desperate? If you're going to be cursed forever, death's better, isn't it?"

"It is unless all you need is to stay alive long enough to drink something else – something that will bring you back to full strength and power – something that will mean you can never die. Do you know what is hidden in the school at this very moment?"

"The Philosopher's Stone! Of course – the Elixir of Life! But I don't understand who –"

"Can you think of nobody who has waited many years to return to power, who has clung to life, awaiting their chance?"

Mel didn't have to think, there was only one man who was capable of such horrors.

"Voldemort," She said in certainty.

"Harry! Mel! Are you all right?"

Hermione was running towards them down the path, Hagrid puffing along behind her.

"We're fine," said Harry, with a dry voice, "The unicorn's dead, Hagrid, it's in that clearing back there."

"This is where I leave you," Firenze murmured as Hagrid hurried off to examine the unicorn. "You are safe now."

Harry and Mel slid off his back.

"Thank you," Mel replied, "I hope we didn't get you in trouble for this"

"Don't worry about me, young Dumbledore. Worry about the dangers that might reach you," Without explaining, he turned to Harry, "Good luck, Harry Potter. The planets have been read wrongly before now, even by centaurs. I hope this is one of those times."

Harry was very agitated when they returned to the common room, he paced up and down as he told Ron and Hermione what happened in the forest, -with few interventions from Mel- he was sure he'd figured things out.

"Snape wants the stone for Voldemort ... and Voldemort's waiting in the Forest ... and all this time we thought Snape just wanted to get rich ..."

"Stop saying the name!" said Ron in a whisper.

But Harry was in his own head.

"Firenze saved us, but he shouldn't have done ... Bane was furious ... he was talking about interfering with what the planets say is going to happen ... They must show that Voldemort's coming back ... Bane thinks Firenze should have let Voldemort kill me ... I suppose that's written in the stars as well."

"Will you stop saying the name!" Ron hissed.

"Not saying the name it's silly," Mel countered, sitting still in her place.

"-So all I've got to wait for now is Snape to steal the Stone, then Voldemort will be able to come and finish me off ... Well, I suppose Bane'll be happy."

"Don't say that!" This time, it was Mel who reacted to what Harry said, "You won't die, think about a second where you're standing."

"Harry, everyone says Dumbledore's the only one You-Know-Who was ever afraid of," Hermione agreed, "With Dumbledore around, You-Know-Who won't touch you. Anyway, who says the centaurs are right? It sounds like fortune-telling to me, and Professor McGonagall says that's a very imprecise branch of magic."

"Maybe with humans it is," Mel shifted uncomfortably on her place, "but we don't know how it works with other creatures, who knows, they might perceive things differently."

"What do you mean?" Asked Harry uneasy.

Mel stood up and put a hand on his shoulder, it was the first time in weeks that didn't feel awkward to have contact with him.

"It means we know nothing... but we'll figure it out."

Next Chapter —>

Taglist.

@tiphareth2018 @vampiregirl1797 @siriuslysirius1107 @celestialhayi @omiwashere

#twoidiots writing #harry potter fanfiction #Harry Potter #harry potter xoc #harry potter x y/n #harry potter x reader #hermione granger #rubeus hagrid #ron weasley #minerva mcgonagall #draco malfoy #neville longbottom #WITT fic

[simplyshelbs16xoxo]

‘Run Away with Me’ Chapter 6: I Don’t Wanna Fight No More

FFN | Ao3 | Buy Me a Coffee?

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               There weren’t any fresh bodies in the morgue today. Molly resigned herself to the fact it would be a long, tedious day. There was a good sized stack of paperwork that needed to be done, and so she worked for hours at her desk, only stopping to use the loo or eat. She was exhausted due to having trouble sleeping the night before, the fight she had with Sherlock continuously playing on a loop in her head until finally she had succumbed to the tears she fought.

               Things brightened up a bit when Greg and Sally came in, a body following not too far behind them. “Edith Shepherd, twenty-eight,” he told Molly. “Found dead in her home around ten this morning.”

               Molly took a look at the body, now lying on the slab. “Cause of death appears to be asphyxiation, but she has many other injuries that will need to be looked at first. Any idea who could have done this?”

               “I think it’s the husband,” Sally chimed in. She almost looked smug about that particular comment, and Molly wondered if it was a jab at Sherlock and their marriage. Who was she kidding? Of course it was.

               “Well, maybe the husband’s innocent,” Molly shot back. “That’s the most obvious choice, well done.”

               Greg looked uncomfortable, his hand rubbing the back of his neck. “Donovan, why don’t you wait outside?” She rolled her eyes, but did as he asked anyways. When she was out of sight, Greg placed a comforting hand on Molly’s shoulder. “Molls? Everything okay?”

               “I’m fine,” she muttered, shrugging him off. “Sorry, I just—I’d like to get on with the autopsy.”

               He backed off. “Of course, my apologies,” he spoke gently. “I just, uh—well, I want you to know that despite the initial shock, I do wish you and Sherlock all the happiness in the world. And I’m no consulting detective, but I can see that you’re going through a rough patch. Just hang in there, okay?”

               Molly offered a sad smile. “Thanks, Greg. That really means a lot.” When he left, she picked up the scalpel and positioned it just where she needed it to be. Whatever clues this body could provide her would help in the long run. As she cut into the woman’s flesh, Molly spoke in hushed tones, “Please, just this once, don’t be the husband.”

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               “Hu-hoo!” Mrs. Hudson alerted Sherlock of her presence. He was curled up in his chair, his eyes unfocused. She set a cup of tea down on the small table before taking a seat in John’s spot with her own cup. The woman who was like a second mom to him said nothing, just sipped on her tea.

               Sherlock sighed. “What is it Mrs. Hudson? Couldn’t help but overhear mine and Molly’s fight yesterday?”

               “I’m sure it could have been heard all down Baker Street, dear,” she told him.

               He harrumphed. “It’s not as if you were entirely supportive of my marriage.”

               Mrs. Hudson straightened up in disbelief. “I never once said I didn’t support it. I was trying to give you advice. I adore Molly—I think she’s a good match for you. I was worried you weren’t prepared to put in the effort, dear. Marriage isn’t a choice to be made lightly.”

               “I know it appears as if I just jumped into it without thinking,” he told her, “but the two years I was away, all I could think about was her—that when it was all over, I’d come home to her. Where we live doesn’t even bloody matter to me.”

               The elderly woman gave him a knowing smile. “I thought not. But all the same, you will have to learn to compromise on things you truly don’t agree on.”

               “I know,” he sighed. “I said something most unforgivable yesterday. I doubt there’s any chance of forgiveness. Mycroft had me so convinced I’d mess this up, and lo and behold, here I am.”

               “Don’t you listen to him,” Mrs. Hudson advised. “He doesn’t know you as well as he thinks he does. Your brother may have taught you all that rubbish about relationships and friendships being a waste of time, but he’s wrong.” A beep from her flat downstairs sounded loudly. “Biscuits are done.” She stood to leave, but not without one last bit of advice. “Sherlock…talk to Molly.”

               He wanted to go to her last night, but thought it best to give her space. Sherlock hadn’t even slept in their bed, instead having fallen asleep on the sofa where her scent still lingered. He took a deep breath and finally got up off his chair. He grabbed the cup of tea, sipping at it slowly. Hesitantly, he made his way to the bedroom, his mouth falling slightly open at the discovery he made.

               Molly had left behind the book he gifted her in Paris. He reached out, picking it up, when several items slipped out onto the floor. Sherlock set the cup aside and knelt down to investigate. There were several photos from their time in Paris, but two in particular caught his eye. One was a photo they had someone take whilst they got married. It was of the kiss that sealed their nuptials. The other was one they took their first night in Paris, after having just made love—twice. They were in bed, Molly gazing at him adoringly, a huge smile on his own face.

               He picked up the second photo to admire it closely, his fingers brushing something taped to the back of it. Turning it over, he discovered a small bit of paper with his handwriting. So she did find it. It was the short message he wrote for her whilst he was dismantling Moriarty’s network that he had posted to the Lonely Hearts and Missed Connections wall in the bookshop.

               I need her. I miss her. My heart aches without her. I’ll be home soon, my darling.

               Sherlock checked the time. It was nearly six o’clock. In two hours, she would be off work. In two hours, he was going to see his wife.

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               “Mister Holmes.” The sharp tone of voice told him she wasn’t happy with him. Anthea raised an eyebrow, questioning him without a word. “I hardly ever find it necessary to question your motives, but I’m questioning them now.”

               He blanched only for a moment, resuming to his cool exterior. “Do go on, then.”

               “Exactly why are you badgering your brother? His marriage isn’t your business, and I mean this with all due respect, sir, but you need to stop being a child.” Anthea crossed her arms. “Love is nothing to discourage him from.”

               “He is incapable—he’ll only hurt her,” Mycroft replied. “I believe he thinks he’s in love, but it is a falsity. He wants it to be true so much, he is not only lying to her, but to himself.”

               Anthea shook her head in disbelief. “Why does it bother you so much? Why are you trying to hurt him?”

               Mycroft sighed. “I’m not trying to hurt him. I realise it seems that way, but trust me, I’m doing him a favor.”

               “How so?” she questioned.

               “The sooner he realises I’m right—that he and I aren’t capable of love—the less painful it will be for the both of them when it ends,” Mycroft explained.

               Furrowing her brows, mouth slightly agape, Anthea stared at him incredulously. “I don’t think you’re incapable of love.” She stepped closer, her hands steadying herself as she leaned over his desk. “I think you’re scared of it.”

               Just as quickly as she approached him, she straightened up and left, leaving a speechless Mycroft Holmes behind.

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               Molly breathed a sigh of relief after finally being able to clock out after having to stay an extra hour to finish up yet another autopsy. It took all her strength to keep it together, having to figure out what caused a twelve year old girl to pass away during surgery on her broken leg from the car crash she had been in. It turned out she had a brain bleed. A head CT could have told them that, but whoever her doctor was had chosen to focus all their time on her leg. One misstep had cost this young girl her life. It was heartbreaking.

               Upon reaching the street as she waited for a cab, Molly was immediately drenched from the pouring down rain. It was so cold, she felt the shivers deep in her bones. Needless to say she was thankful when a cab pulled up. Molly enjoyed the warmth of the vehicle, hesitant to get out once they reached her flat. She planned to make a run for the door, handing over what she owed the cabbie. Stepping out and into a decently sized puddle, Molly dug around for her keys, stepped up onto the sidewalk, and—

               “Sherlock?” Her mouth hung open as she stood there, unmoving, raindrops clinging to her lashes and falling down her cheeks like tears. Sherlock was just as drenched as she was—if not more—and his curls were plastered every which way to his face. “What are you doing?? You’ll catch your death out here!”

               Sherlock moved away from the door as Molly went to unlock it. “I was waiting for you to return.”

               She turned to him, eyebrows scrunched together. “You have a key.”

               “I was trying to respect your boundaries,” he replied. “Molly, I—“ She was pulling him inside by the hand, refusing to let go until they reached the bathroom.

               “Get out of those clothes whilst I get your spares,” she instructed him. “I’ll be right back.” Molly finally took the time to breathe during her short trek to the bedroom. Sherlock was here. He had waited God knows how long in the frigid rain for her, which had her so worried, she didn’t have time to be upset with him. She stripped down, even choosing to replace her damp underthings with dry ones, forgoing a bra, and slipped on her pajamas: pink shorts with black polka dots and an old uni tee.

               Before leaving, she grabbed Sherlock’s spare pajamas and boxer shorts, and took a moment to compose herself again. Molly stifled a giggle when she heard the sharp intake of breath her husband greeted her return with. She left him to dress in order to start up the kettle. Warm tea is just what they needed. It wouldn’t be too long now before Sherlock would appear, so she prepared herself for whatever he might say.

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               Now that he was in dry clothes, he was beginning to warm up. Sherlock took one look at himself in the mirror, his curls dampened and frizzy, and took a deep breath. No, he didn’t have any grand gestures planned, but Molly usually wasn’t one for that sort of thing. Though it would be nice to treat her with something lavish, this wasn’t the time for it. Hesitantly, he made his way toward the kitchen where the kettle was whistling.

               His nerves began to get the best of him the longer he stood there, watching Molly prepare their cups. He swallowed hard, feeling as awkward and out of place the night of the Christmas party many years ago. Soft and unsure, he spoke. “Molly.” He stepped closer.

               She looked up, watching as he approached her. “Yes?”

               “I am sorry,” he told her, his voice raw with emotion. “What I said—it was inexcusable, as was my behaviour.” Sherlock let out a shaky breath, taking her hands in his. “Molly, darling, I didn’t mean what I said. Being married to you is everything to me. I don’t regret it and I never will. And I don’t care where we live. We could live here and my Baker Street flat would just be used for work and experiments. It would be rather unsafe for us to reside there—especially you. I don’t want anything to happen to you or to the children we may or may not have.”

               Molly freed a hand out from his hold and caressed his face, smiling as he leaned into her touch. “You are going to kiss me right now, Mister Holmes, and then you’re going to tell me what’s been bothering you.” His eyes lit up, pleasantly surprised she was no longer angry with him.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Sherlock bent over as Molly rose up on her toes, their lips meeting, brushing softly together. The moment his tongue slipped inside her mouth, she whimpered, tugging him closer. He urged her to jump up into his arms, groaning when their bodies made contact, her legs wrapped around his waist. “Molly, I love you,” he whispered as she sprinkled his face with kisses.

“I love you too, Sherlock,” she replied breathlessly, sighing when he began to trace her mouth with the tip of his tongue. “Bedroom—right now, Sher—oh!” Molly tilted her head to the side whilst his lips and tongue worked at her neck. He drew back long enough to get them safely to the bedroom, gently setting her down on the duvet. His eyes sparkled with adoration for her. Molly slipped off her t-shirt and tugged at the hem of her husband’s. The rest of their clothes were shed quickly in a fit of impatience.

Hovering over her, Sherlock dipped his head down, pressing soft kisses to the hollow of her throat, along her clavicle, and the soft swell of each breast. He lowered himself, kissing her lips whilst his fingers gently brushed through her hair. Molly encouraged him, pressing against the small of his back with her hands. He buried his face against her neck as they finally lost themselves in each other’s arms. “I forgive you,” she whispered.      

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               Tracing circles on his chest with her index finger, Molly adjusted her head so she could face her husband who looked pensive. “What are you thinking about?”

               “What a fool I’ve been,” he answered, stroking her hair. “I allowed my brother to get in the middle of our marriage. In doing so, everything I feared would happen did happen.”

               Molly nodded in understanding. “A self-fulfilling prophecy if ever I saw one.”

               “He told me it would be best to end things before we were ‘too involved,’ which I assume meant before children entered the equation,” Sherlock told her. “Essentially, he said you would be better off without me…and I was frustrated because I agreed with him. I took it out on you, and I shouldn’t have.” He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling her lips press to his shoulder. “I only brought up the fact of you having not moved in completely because it somehow triggered my fear that you agreed with him too.”

               “Oh, Sherlock,” she sighed. “Don’t you think I’m the one who should decide who I’m better off with? Okay, so getting married was a spontaneous choice, but it only stemmed from how much I wanted to share my life with you—how much I love you.”

               He flashed a crooked smile. “I realise that now. Mycroft may think you deserve better than me—hell, I still think you do—but what you deserve more is the best version of me, and I haven’t been that since we returned to London, and for that, I apologise.”

               “We both have our shortcomings, and despite them, we still love each other. I have a tendency to run away when things get complicated—granted, not permanently, but I felt like I should have stayed after we fought or at least should have encouraged you to tell me what was really bothering you.” Molly slid her hand up into his curls. She laughed then. “Hell, we both ran away to escape everyone questioning our marriage.”

               “Well, yes, but a sex holiday is permitted for newlyweds,” Sherlock chuckled.

               Molly gave a playful roll of her eyes. “You are incorrigible.”

               “Mm,” he smirked, “but you love me anyways, don’t you, Mrs. Holmes?”

               “I do,” she smiled. “I really do.”  

#sherlolly #run away with me #my fanfiction

[sultrysirens]

The Dancer [Part 55]

Universe: Teenage Mutant Teenage Turtles (Paramount movieverse)

Rating: PG (swearing)

Characters: Raphael, Jocelyn (OC)

Tags: interspecies, romance, fluff, ballet, dancer, original character, shameless pwp, sex

[<<<FIRST<<<]

[Part 54]

[Part 56]

Jocelyn and Leila’s game of chase became Tag after a little while, the girls chasing one another down just to get a hand on the other. It was exhausting but amazing, filling Jo with a sense of euphoria -- both from the adrenaline and from the simple knowledge that she was playing with her cousin!

She could’ve screamed. Instead, she settled on occasionally tackling Leila into the sand.

At least, until their game was interrupted by a loud, terrified scream. Startled, both girls halted their antics to pinpoint the cause; Jake was already sprinting in the direction of the sound while Kelly gathered up the toddlers with frantic gestures.

Jo went after Jake without a thought, a thread of panic spurring her on despite how her game with Leila had begun tiring her out. She couldn’t help it; that scream meant someone in her brand new family was in trouble somehow, and she’d damn well use her boyfriend’s gifts to protect them.

She soon caught up with Jake. He was crouched down, Nari and Safina frantically relaying something in Hawaiian to him. Lasalo, Aleki and Tataio were standing guard on the girls’ opposite side, looking shaken but standing their ground.

“What’s going on?” Jo demanded, a little breathless from her run.

Leila reached her soon after, panting hard and immediately clinging to Jo’s arm.

Jake answered, “I-I’m not sure, they’re going too fast...”

Leila tilted her head at the girls, confused, as she started to translate, “They saw, um...kupua?“ At Jo’s baffled look, she explained, “It means, like...a kind of shapeshifter or demigod. A supernatural kind of hero.”

At once, Jo got a very intense feeling like she knew exactly what the ‘kupua’ really was.

She glanced at the kids -- who were finally calming, thank god -- and crouched down to their level, pressing, “This...kupua, what did it look like? What did you see?”

The kids, she soon found, were not on the same page. All five began talking over each other in a jumble of barely-caught partial sentences.

“It was -- it was big, like, really big--”

“--tall! Like a tree--”

“--it was bright red bird!”

“--thought it was a croton--”

“--small, but big, like a rock--”

“--dark brown and jagged--”

“--all green and dark--”

Yep, she was now certain of two things: first, the kids all saw something different.

Second...she wasn’t quite as alone as she’d thought.

That sneaky son of a bitch, she thought, even as she said aloud, “I’m sure it’s nothing. I’ll check it out, okay?”

Jake -- clearly not believing the children -- agreed, saying, “Good idea. Shoo it away. I’ll take the kids back.”

Then Leila offered, “Want me to come with? We’re sure to find the kupua if we work together.” Her grin said she didn’t believe the kids either.

Seeing no logical reason to turn her down, Jo replied, “Sure -- you try that way, I’ll try this way, and we’ll meet back up in ten, yeah?” as she gestured different directions.

It didn’t matter which way she went and she knew it. Raphael was somewhere nearby and he’d undoubtedly trail her -- and then she’d give him a nice, whispered reprimand.

And probably a really, really passionate kiss, if she was being honest with herself. God, she’d missed him.

As she and Leila split up, Jocelyn striding out into some thick foliage, she realized something interesting about herself: she clearly didn’t always know when Raphael was around. She’d thought so, once, but now she was getting the impression that she only really knew he was close when she knew it.

And now that she did, she was getting a feel for where, exactly, he was. There was so much foliage and rock growths around, he had plenty of places to hide; it was no wonder she hadn’t pinpointed him before. Now, however, she was picking up on little movements and sounds that didn’t quite match the wind patterns.

By the time she was well and surely separated from Leila -- and everyone else, for that matter -- she was certain she’d found him.

So she turned right towards him, folded her arms, and demanded, “Alright, out. I know you’re here.”

There was a beat of absolute stillness before he complied, stepping out of a thick, tall bush with huge leaves -- right where she knew he’d be.

She was getting pretty good at this ninja stuff, apparently.

Raphael was looking sheepish, and he shrugged his massive shoulders when she stared him down. “What? Like I was gonna let you go alone,” he said brusquely.

She bit back an immediate retort, then replied, “‘Let’ me? Really?”

He glanced away, clearly recognizing his mistake. “I mean...unprotected. New place, all’o that.”

“Uh-huh,” she deadpanned. When he didn’t respond, she sighed, saying, “Baby, we talked about this. A lot. We decided--”

“You decided,” he interrupted sharply.

That gave her pause. Had she been so pushy during those conversations, simply ignoring his concerns? She couldn’t recall ever shutting him down, but she did remember him biting back retorts.

Often.

...Maybe she had strong-armed this particular issue.

Taking a deep breath, she exhaled in a huff, then began, “Okay, so...what I’m getting here is you felt like I wasn’t hearing you?”

He didn’t reply to that, but his body language said ‘yes’ in clear, bold letters.

“Then I’m sorry, baby,” she told him. Striding up to him, hands already lifting, she went on, “I guess I was so caught up in what I wanted that I didn’t see what you wanted, and that’s on me.” She caressed him, shoulders to cheeks and back, venturing, “Will you forgive me for that?”

He watched her in silence for a second; then, all at once, his gaze softened and he leaned in, bringing their foreheads together. As his arms circled her, he murmured, “Ya know I can’t stay mad at’chu. Yeah, babe -- I forgive you.”

She smiled, gave him a sweet kiss -- then abruptly yanked back from him with a sharp, “And now it’s your turn.”

He looked surprised. “What?”

“Apologize,” she prompted.

He narrowed his gaze. “For what?” he demanded.

Oho, getting stubborn, was he? Two could play that game. She shifted until she was in the Stubborn Female Power Pose™ -- arms folded, weight on her left leg -- and directed, “You lied to me. You said you’d wait at home, but you snuck aboard my flight, didn’t you? Didn’t even wait a day first.”

He scoffed, shuffling, denying with a gruff, “‘Course not, I let ya go with yer mom, like I said.” Glancing away, he added more quietly, “Then I started missing ya...”

The last part was sweet, but the first part was another lie.

“C’mon, Raphael,” she said, annoyed, “you knew I’d landed within minutes. Either you really expected the flight to be precisely twenty minutes late, or you were there.”

Brows drawn, he immediately shot back, “It wasn’t late. It was five minutes--”

“--early?” she finished for him.

It was almost comical, watching him get caught in a lie. He went quiet and still, catching on to her little trap, then heaved a huge sigh. “Fine,” he relented, “yeah, I snuck on the flight. Been here the whole time.”

Nodding, she replied, “Well, that’s pretty impressive, I can admit that. But you still lied to me. That hurts, baby.”

Just like that, he crumbled, head dipping. “Yer right,” he murmured. “’M sorry I lied. Can ya forgive me?” He gave her this adorable, tentative smile as he said that, and it had her melting on the inside.

Turning his words around on him, she replied with a little smirk, “I can’t stay mad at’chu, you know that. Yeah, baby, I forgive you -- but in the future, just tell me the truth, alright?”

Wincing, he confessed, “You woulda been pissed, though.”

“I was gonna be pissed either way,” she pointed out, “but at least this way you wouldn’t have made it worse by lying, too.”

He huffed a sigh, then nodded. “Alright, yeah...yeah. That’s my bad.” Lifting his hands in surrender, he finished, “Won’t lie about sneaking aboard your flights anymore, promise.”

Brows lifting, she replied, “Wow. That’s quite a qualifier.”

His lopsided grin said he was teasing her, and she’d missed that about him so much she didn’t even chide him for it. She just strode back into his arms, hands lifting of their own accord to caress him. Being this close to him again -- even though it’d only been a few days -- started a heat inside her, and the adoring look he was giving her wasn’t helping.

Not for the first time, she was struck by just how much she loved him.

But when he dipped his head, intent clear, they were interrupted by a sharp gasp and a whispered “kupua“.

In unison, they looked towards the sound, finding Leila standing there. She must’ve followed Jo, and now she’d caught the lovers red-handed.

Uh-oh.

A thread of panic went through Jocelyn. She wasn’t ready to make these particular introductions -- she barely even knew her family and didn’t trust that they’d accept her choice of boyfriend. At once, she was getting a dozen visions of how this could result in the Matautia family rejecting her, and each one rent a new hole in her chest.

She had to get in front of this.

When Leila took a strangling inhale, Jo was there in a second, harshly directing as she neared, “Don’t scream! It’s okay, this is fine -- Leila, look at me, okay?”

The teenager looked between Jo and Raphael and back, stuck in a stun. That was good -- or, well, better than screaming, anyway.

Gesturing Raphael, Jo explained, “This is my boyfriend, Raphael. Technically-speaking, he wasn’t supposed to follow me, but he did, so...surprise, he’s a turtle!”

“Hey,” Raphael greeted with a small wave.

Leila squeaked out a syllable, then murmured, “Kupua...”

“Right, yeah,” Jo agreed quickly, “a...turtle kupua, that’s a great way to describe it. But, look, you can’t tell anyone, okay?”

“Huh?” was Leila’s dazed response.

Turning the younger girl’s face towards her, Jocelyn directed, “You can’t tell. It’s important, okay? I need you to promise me you won’t tell.”

Slowly shaking out of it, Leila finally started to focus, giving Jo a confused look. “What?” she demanded, seeming almost offended. “No, I can’t -- I can’t keep secrets from kuku and kane, it’s disrespectful.”

Boy, that sounded familiar, Jo thought dryly. “I get that, and I’m sorry for asking this of you, but Raphael -- the more people who know about him, the more danger he’s in. I just need you to trust me. I’ll tell Laini and Alex later, okay? When I feel the timing’s better. I promise.”

Leila was silent for a long time, staring at Jo as if she’d grown three more heads, then turned her gaze back to Raphael. He shrugged. Somehow that seemed to work, because Leila’s expression began to fall.

Sighing, she relented, “Yeah, yeah -- okay. I won’t tell. But you need to,” she hinted.

Jo was quiet for a second, processing that, before venturing, “Wait, do you...do you really think they’d be okay with this? With Raphael?”

Shrugging, Leila replied, “Well, yeah -- you’re family, right?”

Yes, Jo thought, though she wasn’t sure if she really believed it yet or just had a desperate hope.

“And your boyfriend is a kupua!” Leila pressed, steadily going from shocked to excited. “How cool is that?”

Striding closer, Raphael checked, “Okay, I give -- what’s a kupua?”

Jo answered, “Like a hero, apparently.”

He puffed up a little at that, drawing an indulgent grin out of her.

“Usually it’s more like a shapeshifter kind of demi-demigod,” Leila explained. “Not a direct child of a god, but a descendant with some gifts.”

Raphael’s blooming smile said he liked that description. “Kupua?” he repeated, talking directly to Leila for the first time.

The girl gave a startled laugh as she realized she was the center of his attention, and she pressed in a little closer to Jo as she answered, “Uh, yeah, you got it.”

Jocelyn looped an arm around her in support, murmuring to her, “That’s gonna go straight to his head.”

He huffed. “Ya got somethin’ to say to me, huh?” he demanded.

Jo stuck out her tongue. “Only that you’re such a preening, prancing princess.”

Leila laughed; Raphael scoffed, even as he grinned. If anyone else had said those words, it would’ve started a fight and she knew it. She loved that no matter how she teased him, he always brushed it off.

Then, edging closer, Leila whispered to Jo, “He’s...he’s kinda hot, huh?”

Jo inclined her head in agreement. “Ohh, yeah,” she agreed. Dropping her chin to give her cousin a hard stare, she warned in a low voice, “But don’t go gettin’ any funny ideas. He’s mine.”

Having missed all that, her boyfriend tilted his head at the females. “Wha’s goin’ on?” he demanded.

Hedging, Jo told him, “Just discovering one more thing I have in common with my cousin, here.”

Leila gave another nervous giggle.

By dinnertime everyone was here. And by “everyone”, Jo meant something more along the lines of “more people than she’d ever imagined could even be in a single family”.

There wasn’t nearly enough room in the home to seat this many people, so they had to set things up outside. According to Laini, they didn’t usually gather the entire family like this, but this particular Thanksgiving was special. When she’d put out the news that Enoka had a wife and daughter who’d be around for this holiday, absolutely no one had declined the invitation.

Jo and Cecilia spent a good portion of the night being passed around like a newborn and questioned about their lives. At one point one of her aunts -- she couldn’t quite tell them apart yet -- put a flower in her hair, and it was so adorably typical she couldn’t bear to take it out.

Alana, in particular, kept cooing over Jo’s hair, too. Every so often she was pulled back into her aunt’s grasp to have her curls mussed, and after a little while of this her littlest cousins got in on it. Her hair was a wreck by the end of the night, but Jo found she didn’t mind it.

Point of fact, she returned the favor by playing around with their hair, too. In the end just about all of the women had flowers, leaves, and random braids in their hair. And Jo noticed that Laini watched the proceedings with a watery smile.

It was a humbling thing, knowing that her very existence was causing her grandmother this much sheer happiness.

...And a sad thing to realize that neither Jo nor her own mother would ever get to know that same joy.

It hard thing, then, to keep her spirits up. She kept telling herself to enjoy the dinner and her freaking massive family, but her mind kept returning to her lover. What we’ll never have, he’d said once, and she’d simply told him not to think about it.

And now here she was, thinking about it with a pang in her chest she couldn’t quite identify. It remained when she gave in to the constant requests to “do something” ballet-related, performing moves then explaining them and aiding her cousins as their attempted to copy her; it remained when she became the target of dogpile, a host of giggling kids pulling her down and proceeding to smother her; it remained even after the procession moved to the beach, the seemingly endless space finally giving her room to breathe.

It was amazing out here, she admitted. There was a constant wind caressing her, the waves had a strikingly calming sound and sight to them, and the stars seemed to go on forever. Reflected in the ocean, doubling their number, she found herself staring out into what felt like an abyss, held in awe.

I used to know all the constellations, she thought, but against this many she couldn’t get her bearings. She could still recall a few -- the Big and Little Dipper, in particular -- but here and now they were utterly lost in the sea of stars. It gave her the juxtaposed sensation of being both insignificantly tiny and unbelievably valuable.

And, oddly, it gave her the strongest urge to dance. It put a smile on her face, thinking how silly it was to be wanting to dance ballet on a sandy beach of Hawaii. Maybe someday she’d even cross her heritage with her profession and create a play specially for her bizarre, unique life. Right then she could almost feel the steps involved, could nearly hear the music which would accompany her moves.

Cecilia interrupted her contemplation by siding up to her and taking her hand. There was a concerned line to her mother’s brow as the older woman looked at her, checking, “How are you holding up? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you stand so still in your entire life.”

Jocelyn chuckled at that, admitting it was true. “Just taking in everything,” she replied, giving her mother a shoulder bump. “It’s...unbelievable, you know? I’m a born ‘n bred New Yorker, and here I am on a beach, of all things. Plus...those stars? We don’t see even five percent of that in Manhattan.”

Nodding, Cecilia agreed, “Yeah, it’s pretty...well, it’s pretty.”

Lowering her voice a fraction, Jo continued, “And kinda scary, y’know?”

“I know,” Cecilia murmured, giving her daughter’s hand a squeeze.

They fell into silence then, moments passing as they idly watched the activity of the children and the non-activity of the sky in turns. And then Jo whispered, “Guess who followed us here.”

Cecilia glanced up in surprise, then clucked her tongue. “Do I need more than a single guess?” she muttered dryly.

“Nope. He’s here -- probably in earshot,” Jo told her.

“Want me to go give him a piece of my mind?”

“No need, I already gave him plenty of mine,” Jo chuckled. “But I was thinking...I kind of...need him right now.”

That was all it took. Cecilia gazed at Jo for a moment, then nodded, releasing their clasped hands. “If anyone asks, you just needed some time alone,” she said.

Jo leaned in, giving her mother a kiss on the head, and turned from the mesmerizing sight before her to seek out something far more alluring.

It wasn’t difficult to track Raphael, now that she knew he was here. Maybe he was making it easy on her, too, but either way she had no trouble following the sound of his footfalls on the rough ground and his hefty form passing through the foliage.

He led her this way until they were well and truly secluded, and she found he’d set up a little room for himself in an area covered on all sides by huge outcrops of boulders. A pile of giant fronds made what was obviously a makeshift bed, and she saw he’d also brought a few supplies for cooking for himself.

The supplies included packaged and canned foods; self-sufficient he may be, but he was clearly still more than a little spoiled by life in New York. There was a kind of charm to that, she thought, amused.

Raphael helped her over the rocks, then tugged her against him. There was concern in his gaze as he brushed her hair back, reading her expression. “Whatever ya need,” he said, and that was really what she needed most.

She leaned into him, arms circling his middle and fingers diving under his shell. She inhaled deep, taking in his familiar, comforting scent as he pet her hair and back. He didn’t press her to talk, thankfully -- she had no idea what would come out of her mouth if she did.

It was funny, in a way. Earlier she’d been so irritated with him for sneaking here, and now she couldn’t have been more grateful. Maybe it was indicative of weakness, but she needed his support now more than she ever had before and she didn’t care if that meant she’d lost some measure of strength.

After all, was there any more pure expression of love than reaching for someone else when you felt unsteady?

“I love it here,” she murmured then, uncertain what spurred her on but unable to stop it. “I love them -- my family. And I’m scared, cause I know when this is over I’m gonna miss them so much, and they’ll be sad and I’ll be sad, but...but I can’t just stay here, y’know? I love it here, but I’m already itching to leave, too. I love New York and everyone and thing in it, and I wanna go home. I need to go home. With you,” she added, looking up for the first time.

In this low light she couldn’t tell for sure, but she thought there was a shine to Raphael’s eyes. He lifted a hand to her cheek and stroked, sending pleasing tingles through her. He didn’t speak, but then, he didn’t need to -- she could feel the opposing turmoil and adoration in him.

Then she went on, “Does that make a terrible person, being here and surrounded by so many people and wanting someone else more? To have finally found my roots and wanting to be someplace else?”

“‘Course not,” he answered, a smile starting to bloom to life. “If everyone stayed where their roots were, New York wouldn’t exist.”

A great point. Relief filled her, tension pouring out of her. “Thanks, baby,” she cooed.

He chuckled. “Ya know, if anything, I’d say you’re pretty lucky -- havin’ more than one place ya can call home. First New York, now here. Not so many people get that.”

She nodded, then added coyly, “You forgot one. The ‘home’ thing.” He tilted his head, intrigued, and she finished, “You.”

A grin split his face, looking away from her in clear avoidance.

With a laugh, she reached up and guided his face back around. “C’mere, sexy,” she teased.

He huffed, but she was pretty sure it was just for show on account of his grin never let up. Following her gentle pull, he lowered his head, giving her a sweet, soft kiss.

That’s my baby, she thought, pleased.

She didn’t leave him that night. They talked quietly all through the night, until exhaustion caught up with her and put her to sleep. And she was comfortable the entire night, the air feeling a little heavy from humidity but perfectly balanced, too.

Plus her beau was shockingly comfy to sleep against. His bed might be just leaves and foliage, a pitiful mockery of their bed back home, but she quickly found a comfortable spot against him and proceeded to konk out.

When she woke again, it was to the sensation of being shaken and urgent murmurs of her name.

“What, what?” she demanded, irritated.

“Shh,” Raphael hushed sharply. “Yer family’s close. They’re callin’ for ya.”

Oh. Haha. Oops.

His urgency transferred over to her and she nodded as she pushed herself up. Living with him had done a good job of teaching her to actually wake up after being roused, and right now she pushed it harder. Once on her feet, she listened, catching her name being called by numerous people.

Maybe she shouldn’t have left her phone behind last night, then. At least she’d have been able to text that she was alright, but she hadn’t wanted the phone to get damaged while at the beach.

Live and learn.

With Raphael’s help, Jo scaled the rocks hiding his little cove and hopped down to the ground. The landing didn’t quite stick, thanks to her recently-woken limbs, so she tumbled straight into a huge bush with a yelp.

Then she got to hunt down her family, composing a series of excuses as she did so. And, she found, every single male in her family -- including her cousins -- had been looking for her, as well as half the women and her mother. Luckily she found Leila first and managed to convince the other girl to lie with her.

“I just fell asleep watching the stars,” Jo coached.

Leila sighed. “I don’t like lying, hoa hānau.”

“I know, and I’m sorry,” Jo told her.

“Where were you, really?” Leila pressed.

“With Raphael. I really did fall asleep watching the stars,” Jo pointed out. “Just...not alone.”

Tilting her head, Leila checked, “Why were you with him, then? Why not us?”

Shrugging, Jo confessed, “I needed him. So much about this place confuses and unsettles me, and no offense, but I still don’t know you guys that well. I just really needed him right then.”

Leila stared at Jo sideways for a moment, then shook her head. “Being in love sounds weird,” she commented.

“Don’t knock it till you try it,” Jo quipped.

Leila flipped her hand dismissively. “Anyway, maybe next time come to me, yeah? Whatever you’re feeling, I can help.”

Smiling, Jo replied low, “I have no doubt you’d try, and I appreciate it -- I really do -- but I needed my lover, not my cousin.”

Leila coughed at that, and Jo caught her starting to blush.

Suddenly feeling a little superior, Jo commented, “That’s right -- I said lover. Oh no,” she faked gasped, “that’s such a grown-up word!”

Leila elbowed her. “I’m a grown-up!” she snapped. “Well...almost.”

“Almost,” Jo echoed, a mocking note to her voice. That earned her a shove, which she took with a chuckle. It was so weird, but she was seeing so much of herself in Leila -- the attitude, the passion, the pride. And it made her wonder if seeing parallels in family you’d never met was a common thing or not.

Either way, she was getting a strong feeling that she’d made a sister out of a cousin.

And then the storm hit.

Leila had already sent out a text, letting everyone know Jocelyn was found and perfectly fine, so by the time the girls made it home everyone was there -- and in varying degrees of anger, relief, and exhaustion.

Aside from Leila, Cecilia was the only adult who remained calm, and to her credit, she kept trying to settle everyone’s explosive reactions. Laini started it by rushing over and yanking Jo into a hug, demanding a strangled where’ve you been?! as she patted Jo down for wounds.

Then came Alex: You had us worried, kūkā, -- Naomi: Any bites? Anything? -- Malia: You shouldn’t just wander off, you don’t know your way around! -- and Great-Grandpa Tau: Trying to give me a heart attack, kid?

Overwhelmed, touched, and a little uncomfortable, Jo cut in with a sharp, “Guys, guys! I’m fine, see?” She did a spin for their benefit, feeling weirdly humbled that they’d been so worried about her when she was, essentially, still a stranger. “I didn’t even go that far, okay?”

Jake spoke up then, asking, “Why’d you check out, anyway?”

Shrugging, she answered, “Just...needed some time alone. Gather my thoughts, sort through my feelings, that kinda thing.”

“And,” Cecilia added, “I told everyone you’d be fine. They worried anyway,” she said with a little wincing smile towards Jo.

“It’s alright, Mom,” Jo told her with a hug. “Thanks anyway.”

Laini huffed, still torn between relief and matronly anger, then directed to Jo, “Well, as punishment, you get to help me with breakfast.”

That pulled a smile out of Jocelyn. “Accepted. Lead the way -- and, if you’re willing, this gives me a perfect segue into how Dad used to cook.”

That caught everyone off guard, and a thread of silence spread through the room.

Then Leila ventured, “Uncle Enoka used to cook?”

Giving the other girl a grin, Jo answered, “Like a pro. He taught me, too -- so now we get to see how his skill holds up to Gra-- ...Grandma Laini,” Jo finished weakly, internally wincing as she forced out the words.

Laini was quiet for a moment, a hand lifting to cover her mouth, before she composed herself and nodded. “Come, dear,” she directed Jo, gesturing the kitchen.

As if Jocelyn could’ve resisted by this point. And, yes, she had a weird sense of connection as she worked in the kitchen with Laini, as if she were giving this grieving mother another piece of her lost son. It’d been years, now, but she found herself carefully considering what Julian would’ve done now, which foods and ingredients he would’ve selected and at which portions.

Because a part of her wanted to give this incredible family their lost member back, and the only way she could think to do it was by showing them exactly what he would’ve made for breakfast. As she did so, she could almost imagine her father’s hand over her own, guiding her choices.

It was silly for an atheist, but also...comforting. And, she thought, it did its job, that illusion: she’d developed her own style and tastes over the years, but this was Julian.

Pancakes with strawberries on the side and vanilla creme instead of syrup, sausage, scrambled eggs, and papayas -- a fruit she’d never known was Hawaiian until now but could clearly remember always being in their fruit bowl at home.

She didn’t want to just start declaring how her dad had always subconsciously known he was Hawaiian, but damn if she wasn’t seeing similarities now that she knew the truth. He’d never been big into pineapple or coconut, but papayas? They’d been his favorite fruit, bar none.

He’d put them in every dish he possibly could -- and several he really shouldn’t have. And, now that she was thinking about it, a few times he’d just held up two of the pieces on either side of his face and called himself Dadaya for her amusement.

God, she loved him.

Now she intended to show everyone else how worthy he was to be loved.

[>>>NEXT>>>]

#siren nightshade #tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles #the dancer #part 55 #sfw #raphelyn

[navpike]

Dead Men Walking: Chapter 8

They don't always show it, but they've each got their own demons to battle. Peter keeps happening upon these battles.

OR a bunch of times that Peter was there for the Avengers in a moment of need, and one time they were all there for him.

Chapter Eight: Peter [on ao3]

Peter Parker hates the winter. It’s too cold, and too dry. When it snows in New York, it takes mere hours for it to turn from pristine white to a slushy, mushy grey that sloshes into shoes and soaks into clothes and is generally disgusting. It makes it hard to drive and harder to walk.

Peter Parker hates the winter.

He’s never had this kind of trouble with the weather before though. He can’t remember ever living through such a ridiculously cold winter. Sure the heating’s all but gone out in the school building due to all the snow in the past week, but it isn’t the first time that this has happened. He’s been in buildings with faulty heating before. The school has never had the most well-regulated temperature, during any season. But he can’t recall it ever being so freezing fucking cold.

He’s got layer upon layer on already, he’s pushing rules for the dress code with how many layers of sweaters and jackets he’s wearing and he’s still so goddamn cold.

He tries pushing it to the side, tries to focus on his schoolwork and pay attention to his teachers but by third period, he’s trembling from the cold, his joints aching with it. He doesn’t make it even ten minutes into the class before he decides it’d be best for him to give up. He feels sick, but that’s not possible. He doesn’t get sick anymore, not with the powers and the crazy enhanced healing and whatnot. He literally cannot be sick.

Something must be terribly wrong.

He raises his hand and the second the teacher looks at him, she sends him to the nurse’s office without him even needing to utter a word. That doesn’t exactly give him a surge of confidence.

Peter makes it halfway to the nurse’s office before he remembers that Aunt May is at work. There’s no way she’ll be able to come pick him up and there’s absolutely no way in hell that he’ll be able to make it anywhere on his own.

Shit.

Next he knows it, he’s lying on one of those stupid long chairs in the nurse’s office, and she’s asking him who she can call for him.

Peter debates it for a few seconds, before grimacing and heaving a deep breath.

“Captain America.”

“Very funny, Mr. Parker, but I’m really going to need a number I can call. I can’t let you go home alone.”

“Bruce Banner?”

“Mr. Parker!”

Peter shakes his head, and instead of saying a name, rattles off a string of numbers. The nurse sighs and rolls her eyes, picking up the landline to call the number he’d given her.

On the other end of the line, Peter hears Steve’s voice answer, “Steve Rogers, how can I help you?”

“Mr. Rogers, this is Nurse Caldwell from Midtown Science and Tech High. I have a Peter Parker here with me who isn’t feeling well. Are you able to come pick him up?”

“What? Peter’s sick? Yeah, yes, I can come get him, of course. Can I talk to him?” Phone-Steve says.

Nurse Caldwell responds in the affirmative, and passes over the phone to Peter.

“Peter, bud, what’s going on?” Steve says as soon as Peter’s got the receiver in his hands.

“Hey Cap. How’s it going?” Peter’s teeth chatter so hard as he speaks that he can barely make out what he’s saying himself.

“Jesus, kiddo, what happened to you?”

“M’Cold, Steve. M’Really, really cold. Can’t stop shaking. You’re coming to get me, right?” He’s just now considering that Steve might not actually be in the city. He knows that recently, Steve’s started keeping an apartment in Brooklyn, but he splits time between there and the compound. Peter’s got no real guarantee that Steve’s anywhere near him right now.

But, like he always does, Steve pulls through for him. “Yeah, yeah, I’m on my way in just a couple minutes. I’m at my apartment, so I’ll be able to get there quickly. Just. Okay, who did this to you, pal? Is it a poison? Some kind of chemical? You didn’t tell us you got into a fight recently.”

“Didn’t. I’m just really cold. I think I might be sick,” Peter mumbles.

“Peter, I don’t think you can get sick, with your powers. I’m really worried. Look, I’m on my way, just hold tight, pal. I’ll be there in twenty.”

“Thanks Steve. You’re the best.”

The phone disconnects then, and Peter hands the receiver back to the nurse, and curls in on himself to shiver and chatter his teeth in peace until Steve gets there.

He’s half dozed off by the time someone’s gently shaking his shoulder.

“Pete, hey pal, come on, we’ve got to get going.”

Peter rolls onto his other side, to see who it is, because that’s not the nurse’s voice, and he comes face to face with none other than Clint Barton.

“Clint!” Peter exclaims, but his teeth are still chattering, so it’s a clattery approximation of Clint’s name at best.

“Oh man,” Clint mutters, and then he signs, “You look awful buddy, let’s get you home.”

Peter weakly signs a thank you, with shaky, shaky hands, and then wraps his arms around himself. It feels like it’s only gotten colder in the time he’s been sitting waiting for Steve.

Wait.

Steve.

He was waiting for Steve, why is Clint here.

Apparently, he signs that out to Clint, because Clint shifts to the side and hooks a thumb over his shoulder. Steve is standing behind Clint, filling out an early dismissal form with the nurse, who seems to be completely dumbfounded by the fact that Captain America is standing there in civvies, signing out a sick student.

He loses track of anything except being ridiculously cold for a few minutes, and the next thing he knows. Steve’s got an arm looped around his waist, and he’s leading Peter out of the building, while Clint follows, talking to someone on the phone. Peter doesn’t pay too much attention to the phone conversation, instead opting to question Steve.

“Why’s he here too?”

Steve snickers, but answers, “I only had my bike with me at the apartment. Needed to borrow a car, and Clint was nearby. Bruce is going to meet us at my apartment too. We’re worried about you, kid. You shouldn’t be looking this rough.”

Peter nods a little sleepily. It feels like his bones are grinding together, rattling with his shivers.

He’s so fucking cold.

“Wow, language, Pete,” Clint chastises. Shit. Peter hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

“Sorry, dad,” Peter teases through his chattering teeth. Clint snorts and then returns to his phone conversation.

Steve shoves him in the back seat of a car then, and Peter only vaguely aware of the car ride and Steve and Clint talking to each other. Steve gives Peter his jacket halfway back to the apartment, and he all but carries Peter up the two flights of stairs once they get there. Peter’s not actually that weak, but he is shaking he’s so freezing, and Steve takes pity on him.

Bruce is waiting for them when Clint kicks open the door.

“Peter, you’re not looking too good.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that? I get it. Rude.”

Clint snickers and helps Steve get Peter situated on the couch.

“Alright, let’s take a look, Pete,” Bruce says, and Peter lets Bruce check his pulse, and his blood pressure and his blood for toxins, and when he still finds nothing, sticks out his tongue to let Bruce stick a thermometer under it. He thinks it’s a  little ridiculous, but he still lets it happen, because he figures, at this point, why not?

“Oh my god,” Bruce says when he draws the thermometer from Peter’s tongue to look at it. “There’s no way you should be alive right now, your temperature is way too low! How is this even possible?”

“I dunno. How bad is it?” Peter’s eyes widen comically when Bruce turns the thermometer his direction so he can read it. “Oh shit. That’s… I mean. That’s not right. What’s happening to me? I mean the heating was kinda out at school, but that can’t be it. I’ve never been this sick, not even before the spider bite.”

Bruce seems to consider that for a moment and then it’s like something clicks together all at once.

“Spiders. That’s it! Peter, spiders can’t thermoregulate. You’re not sick, it’s just-- Clint, turn up the heat, and Steve, grab as many blankets as you can. We’ve just got to warm him up, that’s all.” Bruce turns back to Peter once he’s done doling out tasks, and gives him a gentle smile, the kind they rarely ever see from Bruce. “You’re fine, Pete. You’ll be alright.”

Peter returns the smile, and clenches his teeth to keep them from clattering together, and breathes a sigh of relief when Steve returns with blankets. He sits up on the couch so he can curl himself into the tiniest ball he possibly can, to try to conserve warmth. He lets himself be wrapped in blankets and sinks back as far into the couch as he can go, and he drifts off before he even notices.

When Peter wakes, he’s comfortably warm, still wrapped in his blankets, and flanked on either side by Thor and Brunnhilde. He smiles and thinks he mutters something half unintelligible and slips back into sleep again.

He wakes with a start, again, a short while later, and glances around, his breath catching in his chest at the unfamiliar surroundings, before he takes in the people with him. Thor and Brunnhilde still sit on his either side, Steve and Bruce hard at work in the kitchen. Clint is sitting at the table, Wanda and Pietro with him, the three of them engrossed in a game of cards. Something plays quietly on the TV in front of them all. He thinks he hears someone mention the others coming soon for dinner.

Peter, warm and safe, is more content than he has been in a while.

He feels so content, that he almost falls asleep yet again.

That is until he remembers something that has him sitting bolt upright, panic coursing through his veins.

“Oh god, I forgot to tell Aunt May where I am.”

#peter parker #steve rogers #clint barton #bruce banner #marvel #fic #mine #dmw au #spiderman #captain america #hawkeye #hulk

[solivar]

Massacre In Deadlock Gorge

A special report by Olivia Colomar of Paranormal New Mexico.

Deadlock Gorge.

It’s a name that catches the imagination almost immediately, harkening back as it does to the days of the Wild West, of handsome cowboys and grizzled old prospectors, wagon trains full of tenderfoot settlers, Pony Express riders and stagecoaches and the black-hatted outlaws who robbed them all. That is, of course, not its only name -- only the most recent, and likely the most famous, for a variety of reasons.

The Ancestral Puebloans left ruins there, as they did in so many other high-walled canyons in the Four Corners, but even now their descendants do not give it a name. In fact, my regular Puebloan cultural experts flatly refused to speak with me about the place at all. The Spanish settlers who made their homes around Albuquerque called it El Cañon del Viento Cortante, the Canyon of the Biting Wind, though its position tends to be rather nomadic on antique maps of the region housed in the University of New Mexico Anthropology Department’s library. The Navajo bands who were its closest neighbors simply called it the Hungry Place and shunned it with astonishing enthusiasm given the presence of readily available water, arable land at its widest point, and the shelter to be found within its network of water-carved sandstone caves. Today it lies entirely inside the boundaries of the expanded Navajo Reservation Annex and is only desultorily patrolled by Navajo Nation police. It came by its present name, of course, thanks to the infamous Deadlock Gang, who used it as their base of operations as they marauded across Native communities and Anglo settlements, prospecting outfits and isolated ranches, before the final bloody confrontation within the canyon’s walls brought an end to their reign of terror.

In fact, Deadlock Gorge appears to have had a rather significant history of violence, stretching back as far into history as I’ve been able to research and very much extending to the present day. It was, as of this writing, only ten years ago that the art colony established there by the Santa Fe Society of Arts and Letters came to a grisly and, to date, unexplained end.

*

It was just after midnight on October 29th when the call came in to McKinley County 911. Veteran operator Melissa Rosales received that first frantic call for help.

Melissa Rosales is a petite woman who wears her graying brown hair in an asymetrical style that flatters her pixieish face. Her eyes are framed in crow’s feet and the years have gifted her with a generous portion of laugh lines. She is smiling as we sit down together at Cafe Pasqual to talk once she’s done her shift. She still works at the county 911 office, as a supervisor, and she says that, over the years, she has received many calls that have stayed with her: the young family caught in their vehicle in the midst of rising flood waters during a freakishly powerful storm, the two year old bitten by a rattlesnake in her family’s garden, more than one car accident involving drunken college students and long haul transport rigs on the interstate. None of them haunt her like the frantic cries that came from Deadlock Gorge that night in October ten years ago.

“It was almost Halloween, and it was a full moon -- that whole week was crazy, weird calls every day. The night before, someone called to report a chupacabra raiding their compost bin. Can you believe it?” Melissa laughs, shaking her head, but the humor doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “It isn’t always like that on the full moon but that month, it surely was. When the first calls came in, Ms. Colomar, I freely confess that we didn’t know what to believe.”

[Begin Transcript:

911 Call #1 12:07 AM

911 Operator:

911, where is the emergency?

Unidentified Woman:

Help...please help…

911 Operator:

We will certainly do so, ma’am, but I need you to tell me where you are.

Unidentified Woman:

Deadlock...We’re...We’re in Deadlock Gorge, just off 66, the Starry Desert Center For the Arts -- [static] -- ter’s residency at the edge of town. Something --

911 Operator:

Ma’am, could you please tell me the nature of the emergency? Do you need fire and rescue services? Emergency medical services? Police?

Unidentified Woman:

I -- I -- I don’t know I don’t know. I’m at the window, the front window of the writer’s residency parlor and and I see...someone’s lying in the street. They’re not moving, they’re not moving, I think they might be dead, the street lights are out I can’t -- [static]

911 Operator:

Ma’am can you hear me? [pause] Ma’am?

Unidentified Woman:

[whispering] I hear something right outside. I can hear it breathing. I think it can hear me, too. Oh God I think it can hear me too.

Recording Ends

[End Transcript]

“There are all sorts of weird stories about the Gorge -- I sure you’ve heard more than a few of them.” Melissa fiddles with her necklace as she speaks, a delicate silver chain hung with turquoise beads, a strangely nervous gesture for a woman who otherwise comes across as bedrock settled, coolly calm and collected. “That it’s haunted, that it’s cursed, you know how it is. I was half convinced, given how close it was to Halloween, that it could be some kind of stupid prank, college kids with nothing better to do. Then the second call came in.”

[Begin Transcript:

911 Call #2 12:12 AM

911 Operator:

911, where is the emergency?

Anita Colomar (Writer’s Residency Director at Starry Desert Center For the Arts and Sciences):

Starry Desert Center For the Arts and Sciences, 66 Canyon Drive, in Deadlock Gorge. Please send police and emergency medical services.

911 Operator:

Ma’am, can you tell me the nature of the emergency?

Anita Colomar:

I’m...not entirely certain myself. Power is out in the gorge -- I heard an...I don’t want to say an explosion but...it could have been. It was loud -- loud enough to wake me and several of the residents out of a sound sleep and --

[A high-pitched sound cuts across the recording, followed by several seconds of intense static]

911 Operator:

Ma’am? Ma’am, can you hear me?

Anita Colomar:

Yes -- yes, I can hear you. Did you hear that?

911 Operator:

Yes, I did. That was at your end?

Anita Colomar:

It was. I think -- was that coming from outside? Candace, can you see?

[Inaudibly muffled voices from off the line, a sequence of loud bangs, a short scream that terminates abruptly]

Jeff, Candy, push my dresser in front of the door. Hurry. Officer, I think someone may be inside the residency building --

Recording Ends

[End Transcript]

I suppose I should confess, at this point, that my interest in the incident that took place at the Starry Desert Center For the Arts and Sciences -- the so-called Massacre In Deadlock Gorge -- is not entirely one of a neutral observer. My aunt, my father’s younger sister, Anita Colomar, was the director of the writer’s residency at the time and one of the few people to have verifiable contact with emergency services on the night of the incident itself. In fact, the woman sitting across from me was, in all likelihood, one of the last people to ever speak to her.

“I dispatched police as soon as the first call came in.” Melissa says, her tone quiet and apologetic, as though she has something to apologize for. “When the second came in, I also dispatched emergency services. And after that, well…”

My FOIA request to the McKinley County 911 dispatch office for calls related to the incident in Deadlock Gorge yielded eighty-seven individual call records and associated transcripts concentrated in a single twenty-five minute period between 12:07 am and 12:32 am. Most of the calls are no more than a few seconds long and consist almost entirely of static, snatches of loud noises, and incoherent voices. Cellular contact with the Gorge failed entirely by no later than 12:33 am. The first law enforcement responders arrived at the edge of the canyon three minutes later. The motivators and antigrav units in their vehicles failed as they crossed beneath the sandstone arch that marks the entrance to the town proper, forcing them to approach the cluster of darkened structures clinging to the mid-canyon escarpment on foot. What they found once they arrived exceeded the expectations of even the most experienced officers but not those of the dispatchers, whose lines had by then fallen eerily silent.

“I’m sorry that we couldn’t do more that night, though to this day I’m not sure if there was more to do.” Melissa tells me as we step outside into the warm summer evening, ten years removed from the cold and dark of that night. “And I’m sorry for your loss.”

*

Deadlock Gorge first enters the “modern” historical record in documents dating from the early 1700s, copies of reports written to and by the assorted Spanish colonial governors of Villa de Alburquerque, as the city was known at that time, a strategic military outpost along the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. It was this military significance, and resultant presence of a fairly hefty armed garrison, that led the rancheros living west of the city -- in what is today McKinley County -- to repeatedly beg the assistance of their governor when it came to keeping marauders out of their flocks. The ranchers mostly raised sheep (for their wool -- early Albuquerque was a major center for the New World textiles trade) and goats (for their meat and milk) and in the autumn of 1711, something was taking a sizeable chunk out of that trade, whole flocks, and whole shepherds, going missing. Evidence suggested that the missing livestock and farmers were disappearing, voluntarily or otherwise, into El Cañon del Viento Cortante, a deep, twisting canyon of red sandstone walls, one end of which formed a natural border between several different ranching concerns.

The wealthy Spanish landowners were losing money hand over fist, they were having trouble retaining trustworthy workers, and they insisted, in a flurry of letters growing gradually shriller as the year wore on, that the governor had to send troops to help rout out the source of their trouble. Frankly, they suspected marauding natives clever enough to cover up the evidence of the depredations. Finally aggravated beyond endurance by all the whining, from sheep ranchers and wool merchants alike, a detachment of soldiers under an experienced native-fighting commander was sent to investigate the situation in El Cañon del Viento Cortante, kill whatever needed to be killed, soothe the ruffled feathers of the locals, and return with proof that the matter was handled.

The detachment never returned.

In fact, nothing of them was ever seen or heard from again. No remains were ever found. No indications of battle -- pitched or otherwise -- were found. No evidence of ambush, either. The local Native bands who came to trade in Albuquerque disclaimed any knowledge of the thefts or the fate of the Spanish soldiers but issued an unusually blunt warning: El Cañon del Viento Cortante was not a good place, was not a safe place, and that was why no member of any band not insane, desperate, or outcast chose to make a home there. It would be best if the Spaniards left it alone, as well.

The governor of Albuquerque quietly arranged for the ranchers to be compensated for their losses and urged them to abandon the territory immediately surrounding El Cañon del Viento Cortante. Fragmentary records exist to suggest this may have happened -- or that the ranchers, like their unfortunate herds, employees, and soldiers, also vanished into the hungry maw of the canyon.

*

Sergeant Andrew Flores of the New Mexico State Police was the first police responder to reach Deadlock Gorge on the night of the incident, followed closely by three black-and-white cruisers rerouted from patrols in nearby communities. He organized the group and led them into town on foot after all their vehicles failed, more or less simultaneously. He recounts the way the night unfolded to me as we sit together in the living room of his trim little cabin outside Chimayó, drinking iced tea and eating a meal he has prepared using the vegetables grown in his own garden. He retired from the State Police three years ago and settled down in this vibrant little town in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, to write his memoirs and to raise heirloom produce for sale in the local farmer’s market. He does, in fact, have plenty to write about but, even so, the incident in Deadlock Gorge stands out in his memory as the strangest of many strange experiences.

“It’s a cliche but I guess that’s for a reason,” Former Officer Flores laughs, shaking his head slightly. “‘Twas a dark and stormy night,’ you know? The moon was full -- I recall that vividly -- but it hardly mattered because heavy weather was rolling in from the north and the moon was playing hide and seek with the clouds. One minute it was almost as bright as noon, shining off the canyon walls and the streets and the buildings, and the next it was as dark as the bottom of a well, no lights anywhere except ours, not even battery powered emergency lights.”

The town of Deadlock Gorge is built atop a midlevel escarpment a couple hundred feet down from the rim of the canyon at its extreme northern and narrowest end, straddling a relatively short and dangerously curvy stretch of Historic Route 66 that exits the canyon headed west, into Arizona. That particular stretch of HR 66 was, at one point, a shepherd’s trail, used to usher flocks of sheep and goats between one pasturage and another, and then a wagon trail, used by settlers traveling west, hopefully to California. The original town sprung up to tend to the needs of weary travelers and consisted of a boarding house, a saloon, a dry goods store, a livery stable, and a blacksmith. Of those original buildings, only the boarding house survived the raid that put an end to the Deadlock Gang -- survived it in good enough condition that efforts were made to preserve it by the New Mexico State Historical Society and, when the land was later purchased by the Santa Fe Society of Arts and Letters, it was rehabbed into a part of the Starry Desert Center For Arts and Sciences. Specifically, it was the building used to house the members of the residential writer’s program and its presence, at the edge of town, made it the first structure the investigating officers encountered on their way in.

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photo #1:

The structure is longer than it is wide, owing to the relatively narrow slice of land on which the town is built, two stories of clapboard siding painted a slaty blue-gray under a steeply pitched shingled roof, studded with windows flanked in functional shutters, an unenclosed patio/porch extending nearly to the street in front. A sign bolted to the facade over the front door identifies it as the Starry Desert Center Writer’s Residence; a plaque next to the door identifies it as a building on the State Register of Historic Places. The door itself hangs open on one twisted hinge barely clinging to the splintered wood of the frame.

Crime Scene Photos #2, 3, 4, 5 - 13:

The interior of the Writer’s Residence, ground floor. A steep staircase stands just inside the front door, leading to the second floor. To the left of the staircase lies the parlor: a collection of mismatched furniture (a sectional couch, a smaller semi-matching loveseat, a selection of chairs, a coffee table) sits in a rough circle. No holotank or sound system but a high capacity ceramic space heater designed to resemble a 19th century cast iron wood stove occupies the far corner. The signs of a struggle are obvious: an area rug covering the hardwood floor is rucked up; the coffee table lies on its side, glass top smashed, fragments scattered around it; something dark stains both the rug and the floor and more than a few pieces of glass.

To the right lies the dining room, a single long table surrounded by a dozen chairs, one of which, at the far end near the entrance to the kitchen, sits askew from its place. A glass-fronted hutch sits at the far end of the room, containing the residency’s good China, one door marked by a smeared, dark handprint.

In the kitchen, the back door stands open into the breezeway linking it to the fenced-off herb/vegetable garden occupying the next plot over. Pots hang over the prep island, undisturbed, and all of the cabinets are closed. A single piece of cutlery is missing from the knife block sitting on the prep island.

Bedrooms line the second floor hallway, most of them in states of profound disarray, as though the occupants were woken abruptly. At least one was partially barricaded from the inside. The attic lofts, containing quiet study space, appear untouched.

[End Sidebar]

“The initial 911 contact indicated that the caller saw a body lying in the street.” Copies of the crime scene photos taken in the days after that night are spread out on the patio table between us -- we have adjourned outside to enjoy the fine weather as the day fades into evening and the view of the aspen-clad mountains, already beginning their autumnward turn. “We didn’t find a body -- a splotch of blood where a body might have been, and drag marks that led right to the edge of the escarpment, but no body. In fact, we didn’t find any bodies of any kind until we got into the basement of the Center’s admin building, down in the storage rooms.”

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photo #14, 15:

A dark pool in the middle of the road, stretched into several smaller, splotchier pools amid obvious drag marks that terminate at the south rim of the escarpment.

The photographer must have leaned uncomfortably far out over the side to get a shot of the canyon floor at the base of the escarpment, a mass of loose scree and brush, also containing no body or bodies.

[End Sidebar]

Most of the Center’s larger buildings -- the writers’ and artists’ residences, the main administrative building, the gallery display space, the shell of what was intended to be a small performance theater, still under construction at the time of the incident, were built hard against the canyon wall. The building that housed studio space for artists and sculptors, the kiln house, the materials storage outbuildings, were constructed closer to the escarpment rim, inside a waist-high guard rail fence further reinforced with decorative iron rods strung with hurricane webbing. Nobody wanted anyone to accidentally stroll off the side.

“By the time we reached the first of the production buildings, another couple black-and-whites and a few more Staties had arrived, so I felt a little more comfortable splitting the group into search parties.” Mr. Flores chuckles and shakes his head. “I...really can’t explain in words how eerie the whole scenario was -- that night was surreal in a way I’ve never experienced, before or since. The wind was howling down the canyon like a living thing -- and not any living thing, a living thing with fangs and claws that hated us all and wanted us to die. Some of the guys swore up and down that night and for days after that they heard voices in it.”

“Did you?” I feel compelled to ask, as I leaf through his personal casefile on the incident -- he’s got more pictures than are available even through FOIA requests, and he will later graciously copy them for me.

“Not...really.” He pauses, takes a sip of his tea, refuses to meet my eyes. “I heard something...but I wouldn’t call it a voice. Not words, at any rate. I split the group into two teams, one under my command, the other under Major Hathaway, and we proceeded deeper into town.”

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photos #16 - 20:

The building containing the art studio space is a two-story structure built in a roughly crescent shape along the widest part of the escarpment rim -- a blocky central building containing a foyer scattered with a mismatched assortment of chairs and a lumpy ancient futon, a unisex bathroom setup, and two projecting wings containing studios for traditional media art, digital art, photography, textile art, and sculpture. Most of the studio spaces have enormous windows overlooking the canyon itself.

The glass-fronted door of the studio space is smashed and the door itself hanging open. Traces of blood adhere to the door and create a path up the stairs to one of the sculpture studios on the second floor. The window of that studio is broken from the inside -- glass fell into the narrow strip of land behind the studio and between the safety fence. The break itself is small, as though something were flung through the window with great force.

The blood trail ends completely in the upstairs sculpture studio.

[End Sidebar]

“Major Hathaway’s group took the escarpment side of the town and then circled around the far end toward the spot where they were building the theater. Most of what they found was concentrated in the arts studio -- none of the storage outbuildings were touched, they were all padlocked shut, until they came to the new construction.” He slides a photograph across to me, one I had heard referenced by my contacts among the State and local police forces, but which I have never seen until now. “And that was some weird shit, let me tell you.”

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photos #21 - 28:

Multiple views of the semi-complete outdoor theater/amphitheater. What would have been the stage is no more than a skeletal hint of a structure but the seating is more or less complete: low-backed wooden benches sitting on top of elaborately carved sandstone supports in two concentric semi-circles, four rows each, with an aisle between them.

At the end of the aisle, in front of what would have been the stage, is the remains of a large firepit dug several inches into the underlying stone, ringed in more stones, containing the remains of a large bonfire. The stones ringing the firepit are likewise elaborately carved in a style distinctly different from the bench supports: they are jagged, appear to be broken from several larger stones, and are covered in petroglyphs: perfectly executed circles lined inside with triangular forms, inward-turning spirals, concentric bullseye figures surrounded in a dozen smaller circles around the outer edge. Some of them are splashed with a dark semi-liquid substance.

The two rows of benches closest to the fire are covered in upholstered throw cushions and a few throw blankets here and there. Discarded clothing is scattered between them. Half-hidden beneath someone’s sports bra and semi-buried in the sand is a knife, its hilt carved from horn of some sort partially wrapped in leather, its blade roughly leaf-shaped and made of carefully shaped obsidian.

[End Sidebar]

“There were rumors, of course -- had been for years. You can’t put a bunch of artsy-fartsy types out in the middle of nowhere, have minimal interaction with the outside world, and not have rumors. And where there’s rumors, there’s complaints.” Mr. Flores hands over a sheaf of papers: noise complaints, public disturbance complaints, the basic legal nuisances used to make nontraditional communities miserable when there’s no other way to do it. “We investigated, of course, but the Center was, for a pack of allegedly immoral bohemian libertines, pretty hard on the straight and narrow. Minors were not allowed to apply for residency even if they would be legal adults before the residency started. Minimum age of participation in any program was twenty-one. Zero tolerance policy for drug or alcohol abuse or for sexual harassment. Which isn’t to say that they were perfectly squeaky clean. We got called a couple times from inside for domestic disturbances, because they allowed couples to apply together, and residents to bring plus ones if they could pony up for it, and even the best couples sometimes don’t stay that way. But nothing like this.” He shakes his head. “Nothing even close. Certainly nothing to indicate that they directors were actually running a cult.”

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photos #29 - 40:

The interior of the artists’ residency in a now-familiar state of disarray: evidence of attempts by the residents to secure themselves in their rooms, apparently to no avail, indicators of a struggle in some instances, including blood spatter on the walls, on the floor, in one case across the ceiling.

Inside the central administration building, the destruction is even more significant. The shelves in the community lending library are reduced to kindling, the books themselves to little more than empty covers lost amid snowdrifts of shredded pages. The main office has been completely destroyed: metal desks twisted apart, their fragments embedded in the walls and the floor. Not a single computer or other piece of technology escapes destruction.

The downstairs storage rooms, where the community stored years of hardcopy records in filing boxes and cabinets, are strangely untouched, though all the doors have been torn off their hinges.

At the far end of the corridor stands one intact door: solid wood, carved with a sequence of glyphs similar to those on the stones outside around the firepit. A second and thematically distinct set of carvings adorns the frame. Inside the room stands a single object: a cage consisting of heavy forged iron bars sunk into eight inch thick wooden railroad ties, slightly more than six feet long and three feet wide, containing a thin pallet, a pillow, and a blanket. All three items are bloody and a pool of the same spreads out from beneath the cage.

The bars of the cage are meticulously carved with glyphs identical to those on the door and the doorframe, as are the railroad ties. Two sets of iron manacles, one attached to the head of the cage by a heavy length of chain, the other to the foot, are similarly marked though in the case of both it seems as though the manacles and the chain were cast in that design. The door of the cage is secured with a heavy padlock of similar manufacture.

The walls, the floor, and even the ceiling are covered in concentric lines of the same visual script, some images repeating from the door to the cage to the rocks around the firepit, some completely different.

In the far corner of the room, the only example of actual human remains recovered in Deadlock Gorge that night: a human hand, roughly severed just above the wrist, ragged ends of bone clearly visible. Nearby lies a second obsidian knife, its blade and handle bloodstained.

[End Sidebar]

“We found the kid downstairs -- we might not have found him at all, but one of the officers in my search group thought she saw something moving at the head of the stairs that led down to the storage area.” Mr. Flores pours himself another glass of iced, drinks, stares out into the deepening twilight for several minutes. “He...was not in a good way -- it was lucky Hathaway had her lockpicking tool on her, because otherwise we’d never have gotten those manacles open. I don’t think Forensics ever actually found the key to the damn things. We had to jimmy all the locks just to get him out and there wasn’t much he could do to help, hurt as he was. The EMTs told me he was lucky to be alive -- one of the stab wounds nicked the abdominal aorta and he was in the process of bleeding to death internally when we found him. The blood on the knife we found was his. The hand belonged to Val Kalloway, the Center’s director of operations, according to the fingerprints.” A humorless smile. “We never did find anyone else.”

In fact, none of the experts brought in to examine Deadlock Gorge after that night found anything else. In the days and weeks that followed, law enforcement officials from Federal, State, and local agencies combed every inch of the town and the canyon beyond for any trace of the missing inhabitants of the Starry Desert Center For Arts and Sciences. There were four writers plus the program director on site for the September through December residency term; there were six artists plus the art residency director. The Director of Operations and six members of the permanent instruction staff plus two administrative personnel lived in a smaller residence behind the main administration building.

Twenty-one people disappeared without a trace that night. Cadaver-sniffing dogs found no evidence of hidden human remains, either in the town or in the canyon. The forensic scientists who processed the scene found copious evidence of habitation by the the people who were supposed to be there but no evidence whatsoever of any invaders, intruders, or involvement by outside individuals. The lone survivor -- a juvenile male listed as John Doe in the official documentation of the incident -- was transported via ambulance to the University Hospital. It is my understanding that he survived, despite the severity of his injuries and his overall condition, which was something other than ideal, and that he gave an official statement to the authorities. Both that statement, and the documents confirming his identity, are sealed by Federal district court order and have never been released to the public. A FOIA request I made in regard to this issue was summarily rejected.

Mr. Flores gifted me a copy of his entire casefile on the incident -- the so-called “Massacre In Deadlock Gorge” -- before I left that night and wished me luck.

“Of all the unsolved cases I’ve had in my time -- and there have been a couple -- that’s the one that’s caused me the most sleepless nights over the years.” He admitted as he walked me to my car. “Because if it could happen there, who’s to say it couldn’t happen somewhere else? Lots of small places where small numbers of people live now, after the Crisis, and we don’t even have official eyes on them all. Someday, it’s going to happen again.”

*

Daniel Locke was not the sort of person one would reasonably expect to find running a gang of ruthless outlaws out of a bloodsoaked canyon in the desert but, well, he did.

He was the scion of a wealthy Massachusetts family, a step below the true northeastern aristocratic clans of the day but rich enough from their own endeavors that their “lesser” social cachet hardly impeded them. His elder brother, Alexander, graduated from Harvard and served terms in both the Massachusetts State Senate and in the US House of Representatives. His younger sister, Margaret, graduated from Mount Holyoke and married well, repeatedly, further enhancing the family’s fortunes.

Daniel himself attended Dartmouth and evidently graduated with sufficient academic success that his doting parents sent him on a Grand Tour of Europe, a rite of passage beloved by the economic elite of the United States in the years leading up to the Civil War. We know, as a result of his own extensive journals on the topic -- Locke loved to write, particularly about himself -- that his Tour departed from the well-beaten path of posing for portraiture among majestic Roman ruins in Italy rather early in the proceedings. His writings on the topic are erudite and scathing, lambasting the insipidity of it all, scrabbling for meaning amid the pretty wreckage instead of seeking the true legacy of lost knowledge, sparing not even his family, “who seemed to content to profit from the scholarly endeavors of earlier, better generations,” and I quote. At the point in the standard Grand Tour itinerary where the average wealthy American would winter in Geneva, writing odes to the lake and/or the Rhone, sipping chocolate and flirting with beautiful young women (apple-cheeked Swiss milkmaid variety), Daniel Locke abandoned his traveling companions and his guide and continued on. In the last of the journals he wrote in Switzerland, entrusted to a college friend for delivery to his parents, he indicated his intent to seek a hidden school in the mountains of the uttermost (European) East.

And then he vanished.

For more than ten years.

When next he appears in the historical record, it’s on a Wanted poster in the New Mexico Territory. A relatively modest reward is offered for his capture on charges related to a stagecoach robbery on the road between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. That would, over the next handful of years, change rather rapidly: at the time of his putative death, the bounty on his head was over $15000, one of the highest in the history of the Old West, and the charges had grown to include murder and rape as well as a spectacular and brazen series of robberies. His own initial successes as an outlaw attracted to him a band of likeminded confederates and together they terrorized communities on both sides of the New Mexico-Arizona territorial border.

They were called the Deadlock Gang: Daniel “Deadeye” Locke, who claimed that his uncanny skill with a gun was a gift from the hands of the Devil himself, for which he had given his mortal soul; Black Frank O’Rourke, an Irishman who fled New York just ahead of the hangman, having murdered both his wife and her lover; Jefferson “Skinner” Delacour, an infamous former Confederate officer and fugitive slave-hunter; Sarah “Red” Reed, a young woman from a long line of cattle rustlers, horse thieves, bootleggers, and fences. Others came went but they formed the core of the group and, for four bloody years in the late 1870s to the early 1880s, they held sway over a constantly shifting court of rogues and killers from the little town in the canyon that came to be known as Deadlock Gorge. In many ways, they owed their success to the possession of that stronghold: the entrances and exits of the Gorge were natural chokepoints, easy for a relatively small group of defenders to hold, and the twisting, switchback routes along the canyon floor and through the town itself lent a significant advantage to anyone familiar with their tricks. It couldn’t last, of course: each of the gang’s members were wanted individually for crimes ranging from murder to bank robbery to forgery and, together, they represented a significant threat to law and order as well as an almost impossibly huge payday for bounty hunters.

In the end, it was a joint operation of the US Marshals, a detachment of the regular Army, and a posse of personally interested individuals, many of them the friends and kin of the Deadlock Gang’s victims, to finally take them down. Light artillery pieces were involved. So were at least two gatling guns. There are still places along the rim of the canyon where the scars of the battle are visible to this day. By the time the shooting was over, more than half the Marshals, no small number of the soldiers, a goodly portion of the vengeful posse, and the entire Deadlock Gang lay dead. Or, at least, it was presumed that the entire Deadlock Gang was dead. Their bodies were recovered from the bullet-riddled ruins of the saloon/inn that they used as the site of their last stand, as were their personal possessions: an astonishing quantity of ill-gotten lucre, firearms, explosives, and Daniel Locke’s many, many, many journals, which he had never ceased to write and excerpts from which ultimately served to confirm his identity to his horrified family back East. All but one was buried in Fairview Cemetery in Albuquerque -- that one being Daniel Locke himself, whose body disappeared before it could be interred. The Locke family denied any involvement in the matter and, in fact, his name was formally stricken from the family lineage. They refused to take possession of any of his mortal effects, leaving his journals and his allegedly hell-forged six-gun to the authorities to dispose of as they wished. Packed away in an ironbound steamer trunk, they passed through numerous hands over the course of a century before finally landing in the possession of the University of New Mexico Sante Fe Historical Documents Archive where they were promptly deposited in the storage annex and forgotten again for nearly a second century.

They were rediscovered in the early 2050s when the Historical Document Archive began an aggressive program of content digitization for the preservation of at-risk documents. The revelation that the so-called “Deadlock Journals” still existed sent a shockwave through the loose community of historians focused on the Old West -- it was generally assumed that they had been destroyed at some point, surviving only in the occasional excerpt published by the more salacious tabloid newspapers of the day. It’s easy to understand why the discovery was such a sensation: college educated outlaws who can’t stop writing about everything they see, hear, do, and think are rare as hen’s teeth, and Daniel Locke continued to be a particularly witty, insightful, and erudite example of the breed right up to the end of his life. His authorial voice is distinct and precise, with a natural storyteller’s gift for phrase-turning and an artist’s eye for detail. In fact, several of the journals are enlivened with his pen-and-ink drawings and the occasional watercolor rendering of landscapes and his cohorts, as well as duplications of the petroglyph-bearing standing stones that once ringed Deadlock Gorge. A genuine polymath, he spoke and wrote in several languages, including his native English, Spanish, French, modern Italian, Latin, two southern Athabaskan dialects, and Romanian.

The “Romanian Memoirs” are by far the most interesting to me because it is in them, and them alone, that he discusses at any length the ten years he spent in Europe, if only obliquely in many cases. What one can surmise is that he did, indeed, find the school he sought and, after many trials, won entry to it, that he drank deep of the wells of secret knowledge and, contrary to his boasts to the contrary, he was one of the fortunates who left its walls with his soul no more in hock to unholy powers than the cost of his tuition. More importantly, they detail his motives for abandoning a life of wealth and ease among the Yankee upper crust for brutal outlawry on the frontier: something there reached out and called to him almost as soon as he landed at the port of New Orleans and he could no more deny its summons than he could refuse to drink water or breathe air. Something that lay waiting beneath the sands, chained deep within the blood-red stone, something that could not free itself but required willing hands to act as its protector and, eventually, its redeemer. Locke traveled west, across Texas, into the territory of New Mexico, where in the bloody, water-carved canyon that eventually bore a bastardized version of his name, he apparently found what he sought and willingly chose to become its servant, feeding it a bounty of fear and pain and blood. He knew, eventually, that it would have to end -- they were far too bold in their depredations, far too cruel in their savagery to be left to their tasks for very long -- and he evidently prepared for that eventuality. He left his “grimoire” and his tools encased somewhere in the webwork of sandstone caverns woven through the walls of the canyon for his “heirs” to find, a bequest that has, theoretically at least, remained unrecovered.

Daniel Locke, during his time in the west, fathered at least three natural children: his daughters Charity Needless (with Silver City prostitute Katherine Needless) and Amelia Reed (with Ruth Reed, the younger sister of his partner in crime, Sarah Reed) and an unnamed son who was only a few weeks old at the time of Locke’s death. A cursory examination of birth and death records show the descendants of his daughters are scattered all over the southwestern United States. The Reeds relocated to California in the bloody aftermath of the legitimate massacre in Deadlock Gorge. Katherine Needless died of tuberculosis in an asylum in the Arizona Territories -- her daughter became a Ward of the Court, eventually a schoolteacher, and married in due course. If any of them sought the inheritance their father left for them, it has not entered into any historical record that I can access.

*

The Ancient Ancestors -- at one time called the Anasazi and now known more widely as the Ancestral Puebloans -- left their marks all over the Four Corners region, quite literally, including in what would become known as Deadlock Gorge. At the extreme southern end of the canyon, high off the floor, lies the remains of a small cliff-dwelling, less complete and subsequently less studied than the far more extensive, and famous, examples to be found in Mesa Verde National Park and Chaco Canyon. At one point, I’m told, the entire canyon was ringed in petroglyph-bearing stones, enormous chunks of basalt carved from the El Malpais lava fields, carried overland by unknown means, and set in place around the rim of Deadlock Gorge in antiquity. Today, only a few examples remain -- but those that do are strikingly similar to those found on Urraca Mesa, famous in legend as the site of a world-shaking battle between the Lords of the Outer and Underworlds, a gateway into the realm of evil spirits hostile to humanity, and the place in New Mexico where lightning strikes more than any other. Compasses don’t like to work there and most technology decides you don’t really need to live in the 21st Century anyway.

Ranger Maritza Whitehawk reminds me of this as we sit together at her kitchen table, sipping coffee and reviewing the documents I’ve already compiled as part of my research, including the copy of Sergeant Flores’ casefile. Her family owns a trim little ranch outside Gallup: a two-story cabin, a barn for horses, an enclosure for goats, pasturage. A fire burns in the wood stove in the next room, perfuming the air with piñon and cedar, and the coffee she pours for me is considerably better than the boiled dirt I’ve been drinking for the last few days.

“I wasn’t involved in the initial investigation the night of the incident -- but in the days after? Oh, yes. As many hours as I could reasonably assign myself.” She admits, paging through the casefile thoughtfully. “Wild stuff going on all around the region that night and in the days leading up.”

“The 911 dispatcher I spoke to about the incident said as much.”

“Now there’s a job I’d never want to do.” She chuckles, but it’s the last laugh for a while. Seven months before the disappearance of the Center’s population, her own eldest son, Marcus Whitehawk, vanished in the hills southwest of Deadlock Gorge. Neither he nor any indication of his whereabouts were ever discovered, despite an intensive search. The loss has been one of the driving forces of her life since: she has compiled an amazingly complete and comprehensive dossier of missing persons (solved and unsolved), unexplained disappearances, and horrible, tragic deaths associated with Deadlock Gorge and environs within the last century.

It’s...a lot. The hardcopy for the last century alone is three solid feet thick. Fortunately, the digital version fits neatly on a microdrive, which she shares with me for mutual research purposes. It’s while combing through it while writing the outline of this article that I discovered it, tucked in among the details related to the October 29th incident at the Center.

[Begin Sidebar:

A grainy still photo lifted from the camera roll of a media drone with moderately competent imaging equipment: a hover-gurney ringed in EMTs and mobile life support equipment, carrying a single patient who seems to be unconscious and severely wounded, no more than teenaged despite his height.

[End Sidebar]

Jesse McCree. That was the name appended to the image file. There are several other pieces of documentation. A missing persons report, anonymously filed. An official Have You Seen This Child/at risk notification from the authorities in Gallup. A copy of his admission and treatment records from the University of New Mexico Hospital at Santa Fe, which is an impressive and dubiously legal bit of records request chicanery that I’m going to have to find out how she managed. Several more information requests, including her own request for a copy of his sealed testimony before a Federal circuit court judge, also denied.

Jesse Nathaniel McCree is an oddity. Publicly accessible records for him exist but not the sort of records you might expect. Adoption records, and there’s a birth certificate on file with the State of New Mexico, the information related to his biological parents either blank or redacted. He was apparently home schooled, except for one brief stint at public school in Gallup, via the Schools For Isolated and Distance Education, a special needs online education outfit that operates in several countries around the world, including the United States. They issued him diploma-equivalent educational certs on a nonstandard completion curve -- he missed a whole year and a half of school following whatever he experienced that night in Deadlock Gorge but still graduated at the highest levels of academic proficiency. He sat collegiate admission exams slightly later than average but came away with scores sufficient to earn a slot at the school of his choice: he chose the University of New Mexico, where he dual-majored in History and Anthropology with a concentration in Ethnology. Upon graduation, he pursued employment with the National Park Service and further education in the UNM Anthropology Masters program, specializing in folklore and cultural anthropology. (His Master’s thesis is available through the UNM bookstore in dead tree and ebook formats and makes for fascinating reading. I heartily recommend it.) He is pursuing his doctorate in those fields, occasionally guest lectures at UNM, and serves as the Ranger In Residence at the Los Cerrillos National Monument.

He has no social media presence to speak of and the primary means of contacting him seems to be through the NPS website’s links. I’ve used them. He turns up occasionally in tourist photos and on undergrad social media threads from UNM students that attend his lectures. I’m not entirely surprised: he is a strikingly good-looking man, tall and lean and, well, rangy, all dark hair and eyes and, listening to his drawl on recordings, I can see why he ties Freshman knickers in knots. At the same time, there’s something just a little bit off about him, something not quite right that might come across more clearly in recordings than it does in person. I can’t entirely put my finger on what it is.

He has, thus far, declined to grant an interview. If this changes, you will be the first to know. Until then, both he and Deadlock Gorge continue to guard their secrets.

-- Olivia Colomar, Paranormal New Mexico, reporting.

#Massacre In Deadlock Gorge #Olivia Colomar reporting #Tumblr gets it first

[ghostbustermelanieking]

Polaroid AU 4

part one, part two, part three

the majority of this story is based on these bts pictures. 

William had been having weird dreams since he was a kid, padding down the hall and crawling into bed with his parents after a nightmare for years until it seemed too babyish. And the worst part was that most of the time, the dreams seemed to come true, in one way or another. He'd dreamed about the cat getting hit by a car three days before it had happened, and the time his dad had gotten really sick and had to have surgery. Once or twice, he'd dreamed the contents of an upcoming test and found his dream to be accurate. (He hadn't minded those too much.) But the ones that had probably been the scariest were the ones in the smoke-choked office and the scary older man sitting in the chair. He hadn't had one of those since he was ten, but they always terrified him for some reason he couldn't explain. The office was full of pictures of people who looked like him, files with long, Sharpied-out passages and CLASSIFIED written in bold letters across the top, ashtrays among ashtrays. He'd had the first one when he was four and had crawled under the desk and refused to come out. The smoking man had called out in a melodic voice and he put his hands over his ears and shut his eyes until everything faded into the familiarity of his bedroom. (He did that a lot in dreams.)

Two weeks after arriving at Mulder and Scully’s, he had the dream again. He was lying on the floor of the nicotine-smelling office, his cheek plastered to the rug. He scrambled to his feet clumsily, looking around. The room was empty. On the desk in front of him was a pile of cigarettes beside an ashtray and a slew of pictures spread across the table.

William drew closer and held in a gasp. He recognized Scully's SUV, parked in front of a sprawling hospital. Covert shots of Monica Reyes and Scully in a lab, Scully in various hospital rooms, Scully and that one guy Skinner in a conference room. William held his breath and flipped further through the photos. An immaculate apartment, the house he was sleeping in right now, hotel rooms. A picture of her with a baby--him. Taking him out of the car, years ago, a stupid hat on his head. He tensed all over, holding his breath.

“William,” said a voice behind him. The smoker. When he turned around, he couldn’t see the smoker; there was a blinding flash of light and the screech of bending metal.

He woke up with a start, cold all over except for a very small spot where Daggoo was curled into him. He gulped in breaths of fresh air, huddling under the thin quilts piled over him. Just a dream, he tried, but he knew that couldn't be true. Scully was connected to the smoking man somehow, and she was in trouble. Things like that had happened with an eerie accuracy too many times to be false.

Light was streaming in through the window. It looked early. Scully might not have left yet, he realized, and rolled off of the bed, sending Daggoo tumbling with a yip. He could catch her. He didn't know if she'd believe him, but if the files were any indication, it might be enough to stop her. His feet slid over the bare floorboards as he went through the hall and to the kitchen. Mulder and his weird friend, Langly something, were sitting at the table with laptops. Mulder looked up as soon as he came in, saying, “Will,” with some kind of pleasant surprise.

“Has Scully left yet?” William blurted.

Langly blinked in surprise. Mulder exchanged something of a stricken look with him and turned back to William. “An hour ago. Why?”

William looked between them, uncertain. Aside from his best friend in the third grade (who'd thankfully thought he was crazy, since they weren't friends anymore), he'd never told anyone about the dreams. About how he could make things move sometimes if he concentrated hard enough. (He loved Star Wars and hated Carrie, if that said anything about him.) But this was important. And if anyone was going to believe him, it would probably be the paranormal investigator in the room.

“You're not going to believe me,” he said.

Langly snorted. “You clearly don't know Mulder,” he said.

William met his birth father's eyes. There was encouragement there, and something of a faint desperation. He took a deep breath. “He knows where Scully is,” he said. “The guy with the cigarettes. He's had surveillance on her for years, and he has pictures of the hospital where she and Miss Reyes are. I saw it in a dream.”

---

Scully had no way of getting in touch with anyone staying at their house; in the chaos of the past few weeks, someone had knocked down the nearest cell tower and they were disconnected from everyone, at least until she and Reyes got into the city. (Langly had hooked up some rogue Wi-Fi hotspot that managed to work with their laptops, but phones still weren’t an option.) Which was part of why she was confused at the unfamiliar number calling her that morning. She didn’t have William or the Van de Kamps as contacts, but the cell reception was still an issue. And she couldn’t think of anyone else who’d be calling her outside of her brothers, but she had Bill’s number (and had talked to him several nights since this had all started, promising to fly out as soon as possible) and she’d begrudgingly programmed in Charlie’s number after her mother. Brow furrowed in confusion, Scully showed the screen to Monica. “A number you recognize?”

She shook her head, confusion flickering over her face. “Just a second, let me call my contact on the inside,” she said, referring to her time undercover in the Syndicate. (Deep enough undercover that she couldn’t reveal her position until after she had William safely in her custody. Scully couldn’t express how much relief had coursed through her veins when she’d seen Monica pushing her way through the crowd on the bridge as the light vanished, shouting her explanations over the blur of voices in the background as a lanky teenage boy stood behind her. She didn't really believe Monica was a traitor. She couldn't.) “Go ahead and answer,” Monica added as she stepped towards the door, pulling her cell phone out of her jacket. “Might as well find out, right?”

Scully nodded, pressing Send on her phone. “Hello?” she said calmly, half-hoping that Mulder or Langly had found a way to call.

Nothing but the harsh sound of raspy breathing into the speaker.

Scully’s fingers clenched hard around the phone. Mulder had told her about his visit to the smoker, hugging her hard with his nose pressed to her collarbone. She couldn’t believe he was alive, but he was. “You,” she said through clenched teeth.

“Why the harsh tone, Agent Scully?” said Spender pleasantly. “I saved your life, after all.”

“What the hell do you want?” Scully snapped, two seconds away from hanging up.

“Just for you to be aware of what awaits you at home.”

Her breath froze in her chest. “What?” she whispered. She didn’t think she could manage anything louder than that.

“I’ve seen men to your house,” he said. “To find your son. And Mulder. And that pesky informant friend of yours. As you can imagine, my interests were compromised…”

“What have you done to them?” she growled. God, she thought this was over, she thought it’d be over when she saved Mulder. And William, William… he hadn’t been in danger in years. But now…

“Nothing yet,” the smoker replied jovially. “I’d hurry if I were you.”

Scully hung up the phone. She burst out of the room, fumbling for her gun under her suit jacket. She rushed past Monica in the hall, ignoring her calls asking what was going on. There was no time. She had to get to them. She found Mulder in her contacts and called him, even though she knew about the cell tower. Maybe by some magic, it had been fixed. “Pick up, pick up, pick up,” she whispered desperately, yanking the car door open and collapsing in the driver’s seat. She felt like it was two weeks ago, like she was stuck in a desperate cycle of worry that spanned twenty-four years. Mulder didn’t pick up. She called again, putting it on Speaker and jamming into the cup holder. She backed out of the parking space and stepped on it, fingers clenching hard around the wheel as she speeded out of the parking garage.

She drove halfway through the city in a crazed delirium, pressing the little green phone button on Mulder’s contact tab again and again. She had to get to them. Her lead foot was coming in handy. She pressed call again and listened to the empty rings echoing through the car. She was looking up when the car hit her.

---

Mulder believed him. He didn’t have much of a choice; his son had Scully’s eyes and he saw the truth in them. He had to go and warn her. He muttered something about goddamn phone towers as he fumbled for the car keys.

“I dunno what’s going on, um, but I haven’t had a dream about the smoking office in five years,” William was saying, leaning hard against the counter. “I guess you know him… I thought you might, I saw pictures of you in the office… from when you were a kid, I think…”

“Son of a bitch,” Mulder muttered, before he remembered the teenager in the room. “Don’t say that, Will.” He rummaged through the junk drawer rabidly. Where the hell were the keys? Oh, right, he’d left his car at the smoker’s house because that kid Miller had to come scrape him off the pavement. “Shit.”

“Mulder, I can drive you, man,” Langly said, grabbing his shoulder. “I have a car, remember?”

He turned, clumsily, to face him. “Thanks,” he said. “Thank you. We should go, um. We need to go. Will… William… you should be safe out here, but…”

“Wait, I’m coming with you,” William said, in the self-assured voice that he remembered from his own teenage years. No argument. He finally understood his parents’ side of the equation.

“No, you’re not,” he said automatically, in what he hoped was a.stern parental voice, but probably just resembled the panic knotting in the pit of his stomach. “You can’t. It’s not safe.”

“Showing up on a bridge during the apocalypse to donate my stem cells or whatever wasn’t exactly safe either,” William snapped. His hands were balled in his pockets and he had a look of furious determination on his face. It looked so familiar, god, his son.

“That was different,” Mulder snapped back, although he wasn’t entirely sure why. “This is preventable. You need to stay here with your parents.” (Mulder had the same stubborn determination that Scully did to not refer to them as William's parents, but here he didn't exactly have a choice. The word still hurt, still dredged up resentment he thought he'd buried deep enough, but it was the only word to use, wasn't it.)

“They know about here, too. It’s no safer here than there.”

Mulder exchanged a look with Langly, who shrugged helplessly. Their son was just as stubborn as Scully and just as impulsive as him. He wasn’t sure it made a good combination. God, Scully, Scully was in danger, and he couldn’t put his son in danger too. He couldn’t lose either of them, but he couldn’t lose both of them. He took a deep breath and forced his voice to go calm, said, “Will,” softly. “I appreciate you telling me about what you saw. You don’t know how grateful I am. But I have to keep you safe. We don't know if it'll be dangerous or not. Your parents would never be okay with it. You need to stay here.”

William gulped, rocking back and forth on his feet. “I can help,” she said quietly. “With Scully, if she’s hurt. I can help. I did it a couple of times before. Never very much, so I wouldn’t get caught, but I’ve done it on a person before. I can help.”

Mulder took a deep breath, looked at Langly again. Langly looked uncertain; he shrugged at Mulder again, in a way that indicated that he thought William had a point. Mulder took another deep breath, clenched his jaw. “You stay in the car,” he said. “Unless I tell you it’s okay, you stay in the car. You do exactly what Langly or I tell you. Okay?”

William nodded. Mulder exhaled, reached out to squeeze his son’s shoulder. “Okay,” he said softly. His mind was still racing, coming up with all the things that could be happening to Scully. “Okay. You need to tell your parents. Tell them I’ll keep you safe.”

William nodded again, turned and headed back to the guest room, sneakers squeaking loudly on the floor. Mulder turned back to Langly, sick panic building in the pit of his stomach. “Is this a good idea?” he asked softly.

“I guess we’ll find out,” said Langly.

A minute later, William reemerged with the Van de Kamps in tow. Something turned in Mulder’s stomach--he did not have time to argue with them, what was he thinking, this was insane, there was no way he could take William with them, he needed to go--when the husband (Toby, he thought his name was) spoke. “Will filled us in,” he said, hand on William’s shoulder. William looked mildly embarrassed, squirming under the awkwardness. Mulder didn’t blame him.

“Right,” he said, finger brushing over the butt of the gun in his holster. “Right, um…”

“We’re coming with you,” Lillian said, matter-of-factly. The both of them looked uncomfortable about it, like they’d rather be doing anything else, but William must’ve said something to persuade them. He was staring at the top of his shoes uncomfortably.

“Right,” Mulder said again. As long as he could get to Scully and warn her, he could endure an awkward car ride with his son’s adoptive parent, his long-dead friend, and the teenage son he barely knew. “We should get going, then.”

---

She was half-conscious when someone pulled open the door of the car, grabbed her wrist, around the waist, and started trying to pull her from the car. She groaned, blinking through the haze. Her head hurt too much. She heard the hard smack of knuckles on skin, and whoever was trying to pull her from the car let go. And then the over-eager voice of Agent Miller, taking an unusually concerned tone: “Agent Scully! Agent Scully?”

Scully groaned again, opening her eyes wider. “Agent Miller?” she muttered.

“Here, here, let me help.” Miller moved to lift her out of the car; she looped an arm around his neck for balance as he set her on her feet. She stumbled slightly, Miller still supporting her, but somehow managed to stand on her own.

She blinked, pain thumping through her head, and turned to see Einstein handcuffing someone on the sidewalk. She clenched her teeth and asked, “What happened?”

“Agent Reyes sent us after you,” Miller supplied. “We got here in time to see you get T-boned. By the time we reached the wreckage, that guy was trying to pull you out.” He indicated with a jab of his thumb.

She groaned as pain sliced through her ribs when she tried to move. She fucking hated car crashes. “The smoker must have sent him,” she growled, pressing a hand to her bruised side. And then she remembered. “William,” she gasped. “And Mulder… he sent someone after them, he…”

“Agent Scully, calm down.” Miller steered her towards the car gently. “We’re going to get you back to the hospital so they can check you out, okay?”

She gritted her teeth and tried to turn around. “Someone’s going there to find them, I have to warn them.”

“It’s fine, Agent Scully. We’ll go take care of it. They’ll be fine.” Miller moved her towards his and Einstein’s car. “You need to get to the hospital.”

Scully would've argued more, but it hurt too damned much. She let Miller lead her to the car.

---

They'd been driving for almost forty-five minutes when they hit a traffic jam, just inside the city. Mulder swore and smacked the dashboard with the flat of his hand, and then gazed apologetically at the Van de Kamps in the backseat. Beside William, his father shrugged.

(The most surprising thing was how laid back he seemed about all this, William had noted more than once. The second night after they’d regained consciousness, he’d sat in the room with his dad while his mom took a bath and had stumbled over awkward apologies out of nowhere, embarrassed to have spent so much time with his birth mom. That they were there in the first place. This was all supposed to have ended when Scully gave up custody, and William was somehow embarrassed that it hadn’t. His dad had waited for him to finish before saying, “Will, you’re kind of in an awkward position here, son.”

William had gulped. “Yeah, I know.”

“I think you’re doing the best you can, all things considered.” His father smiled and tousled his hair, something William had declared himself entirely too old for in recent years, but didn’t mind so much in the moment. “You don’t have anything to feel guilty for. We didn’t have a choice. Besides, Dr. Scully saved your mother and I, and we owe them for that. And they seem like nice people.”

William gulped again, his mind guiltily turning back to the Polaroid he had ended up keeping on the window sill by his bed. “They are,” he mumbled, feeling like a traitor.)

His mother seemed more uncomfortable with all of this, but she was keeping her mouth shut about it either way. She had momentarily offered William an encouraging smile for most of the uncomfortable car ride. Now, her express twitched into concern as she gazed at the stall up ahead of them.

Fidgeting anxiously in the backseat, William craned his neck to see what was going on. “Someone crash?” he asked of no one in particular, foot tapping absently against the seat.

Langly shrugged. Mulder said nothing. His parents seemed to be avoiding his eyes.

William looked down at his grimy sneakers on the carpet floor of Langly’s car, and all of a sudden he knew. Could see the wreckage of Scully's car in the back of his brain.

It was the summer he was eleven all over again, with his cousin crumpled on his side with his arm at a strange angle and his hands all shaky as he tried to make it work, but it would work. It had to. He was fucking Carrie or a Jedi or an alien or something, and he could help his birth mother. He fumbled for the door handle and stumbled out, hitting the ground running without a second thought.

“Will?” he thought he could hear his mom call, in a panic, but it was hard to hear anything over the slap of his sneakers on the pavement. He wove his way through stalled cars until he reached the block, the wreckage. Sirens wailing in the distance, and some red-headed woman shoving a man in handcuffs towards a car and Scully sitting in the backseat of a second car. There were bruises up and down the side of her face; her eyes were shut like she was in pain.

William jogged to the car, heart thudding. “Scully?”

She opened her eyes, startled, and relief immediately washed over her surprise. “William,” she said, and it was like a held breath whooshing out. “You're okay.”

He swallowed hard, hands shaking as he reached out to touch her arm. “Are you okay? You, um, your car…”

“I'm fine.” She grimaced at the words and put a hand to her side, clearly not fine.

William blinked hard, trying not to look at the wreckage. “I don't want you to die,” he said. Somehow, all he could see was that stupid Polaroid. The way he'd been acting since he got here, the way he snapped at her on that first night. “I was mad at you, but I don't want you to die.”

She smiled, just a little and obviously painfully, but still. “I'm not going to die, Will,” she said at length, like every word hurt. “I'm just a little bruised. It's okay.” She reached out through gritted teeth and pushed the hair out of his forehead. It was such a maternal gesture and it made him think of the glossy edges of the photo under his finger.

William bit his lip hard. “I can help,” he said, feeling utterly helpless despite. And he touched her arm again, concentrated hard. His hands didn’t shake.

When he opened his eyes, Scully looked considerably better. Her face was white, but the bruises were gone. And she was staring at him. “William?” she whispered. Her hand was warm on his forehead.

He didn't know what to do. He pulled his arm away and nodded. Yep, I can do that. Her hand slipped off of his head under its motion. The most telling thing was that she didn't look surprised.

And then Mulder was behind them, calling their names. William turned and saw him pushing through the police cars, the FBI agent from the bridge and the woman who was arresting the guy earlier watching. The same relief that had come when Scully had seen him moved across her face. Mulder reached them, squeezed William's shoulder and reached for Scully's hand. “What happened?” he asked breathlessly, squeezing her fingers hard. His eyes widened at the wreck of her car. “Are you okay, Scully?”

Scully took his hand in both of hers. “It's a long story, Mulder.”

He moved closer and wrapped his arms around her gently, mumbling, “My god, Scully,” into her hair. She was hugging him back just as tightly, nails digging into the back of his jacket. William bounced back and forth on the balls of his feet and purposefully looked away. He liked to make fun of his parents when they were affectionate, but he didn’t know Mulder and Scully well enough for that. He looked past the police cars, where his parents were pushing their way through the crowd.

His mother was half-jogging, but mostly just walking fast like she was trying not to run. “William?” she said frantically when she reached him, obviously pushing back panic. She reached out to smooth his wayward hair. (The gesture reminded him too much of Scully in the moment and it hurt; he wanted to close his eyes against the guilt.) “What happened, baby?” His father reached them, eyes full of confusion and concern.

“It’s okay, Mom,” William said. On impulse, he looked over his shoulder at his birth parents. Mulder was bent over Scully in the seat; she seemed to be reassuring him in a teasing way. He pushed hair away from her face and kissed her forehead lingeringly. William looked away again, back at his parents. “It’s fine. I promise. It’s okay,” he said again, and accepted his mom’s hug.

The sirens on the police car sprung to life as it pull away. The feeling of anxiousness that scrabbled around the inside of William's ribs like a live thing finally settled and he breathed out a sigh of relief. They'd be okay.

#i still have no idea where this is going but i liked the idea of incorporating some set photos #xf fanfic #i wrote this #polaroid au

[projectmedusarp]

Welcome Kara! We’re pleased to announce your audition for Nova Sinclair / Pyrokinesis has been accepted! Please send an ask to the main from your account within the next 24 hours so we can set you up with the OOC blog. We can’t wait to have you join us!

{{ PLAYER INFORMATION }}

NAME: Kara

AGE: 26

TIMEZONE: EST (Eastern Standard Zone)

PRONOUNS: She / Her

ACTIVITY LEVEL: I’m normally pretty active during the day/night, but my schedule can be a bit unpredictable because I’m a nanny and the kids aren’t organized enough to tell me when they need rides ahead of time lol. So sometimes I have to randomly disappear to take them places. During the summer, I’m pretty much free after 1pm but for driving kids around (and I have most weekends off). During the school year, freedom comes roughly after 3:30 or so.

PREVIOUS ROLEPLAY EXPERIENCE: I’ve been RPing since I was eleven and on neopets so… god, like, fifteen years? Roughly six on tumblr.

PERSONAL TUMBLR CONTACT: Link Removed

TRIGGERS: Incest

{{ CHARACTER INFORMATION }}

CHARACTER: Nova Sinclair

PRONOUNS: She / Her

AGE: 31

FACE CLAIM: Natalie Dormer

POWER: Pyrokinesis

QUOTE: “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”

PERSONALITY:

Witty - Nova’s got a quick sense of humor and a snappy retort for pretty much any situation. She is a clever woman with a sharp mind and tends to use jokes as both defense and offense. It’s a talent that gets her far with her writing and it’s good in sales, as it tends to make people relax around her.

Affable - Nova is the agreeable sort with a talent for making people feel comfortable around her; it’s that old school southern charm. However, though it takes a hell of a lot to rile her up, she is not what anyone would call a pushover. Mostly she’s agreeable because she just doesn’t have the patience for conflict and avoids it if she can help it. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, after all (though she’s never really understood why anyone would want to catch flies).

Curious - Some call it nosy, Nova prefers curious. She likes to know things, likes to be involved. She likes to know about people and she likes to learn about a variety of topics. Of course, sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong has gotten her into trouble a time or two, no matter how hard she tries to avoid it. Some people don’t appreciate others poking into their business. Especially a writer who will (and has) used stories she hears in fiction.

Imaginative - Nova creates situations in her head and sometimes can conflate them into something worse than they are because she tends to imagine the worst possible outcome. It serves her well in her writing. Not so much in real life, however.

Ambitious - Nova has worked her way up from the bottom to the top, a true rags to riches story that she tends to keep to herself. She has always had big dreams and is good at getting what she wants. She isn’t above doing whatever has to be done to meet her goals.

Reserved - A lot of people let Nova’s friendly, cheerful front deceive them into thinking she’s easy to get to know. She isn’t. She’s secretive and not at all forthcoming about herself or her life. She doesn’t let people in easy and trust has to be fought for. She likes to keep herself to herself and it’s hard to get past the high walls of privacy she’s built to the person beyond it. Though Nova has plenty of acquaintances, there aren’t many she’d call friend and she prefers it that way.

Judgmental - Nova’s far from easy to impress and if you make one wrong move, she’ll judge you for it instantly. She’s got a strong sense of what she’ll tolerate and what she won’t and she tends to be quick to write people off when they cross it. Second chances aren’t her forte. Friendly, sure. Forgiving? Not so much.

BIOGRAPHY:

Nova was born in New Orleans and lived there with her single father until the age of ten, when he was killed in an accident on the construction site he was working on. Nova was left with very little and she didn’t much like foster care either. At around thirteen, she ditched her foster home and became a bit of a street urchin. Easy to get lost in a city the size of New Orleans, and that’s exactly what she did for a very long time. She mostly conned people out of their cash with a sweet smile and her big, bright eyes, asking for bus fare from strangers or a couple of bucks for lunch because “my daddy gave me some cash this morning, ma’am, but it must’ve fallen out of my pocket on the way to school.”

Ever since she was small, however, Nova had a quick and creative mind and she used it to her advantage. It meant that even on the streets, she had big dreams and a strong will, one that would get her on her way to the top. When she was sixteen, she lit out of New Orleans. She worked on a river boat for a time, sailed her way up to Memphis, then took a bus over to New York City. In Nova’s mind, that was the place to be when you had big ambitions and wanted any chance of making them come true.

With nothing but a backpack full of clothes, a battered notebook of scribbled stories, and forty-seven dollars in her pocket, Nova set up at a local shelter and breathed in the air of the big city. She liked it immediately, the brisk pace, the clipped northeastern accents, the way everyone minded their own business. It was exactly what she’d been looking for and Nova was gonna make it work for her.

It was in this shelter that she met Dotty Fisher, a middle-aged shelter worker who took a particular shine to Nova in her early days in New York. Nova liked her too, this woman with a kind smile who made her think of how a mother should be. Bit by bit, she began to trust Dotty, even let her read some of her stories. When Dotty came to her about the idea of getting her GED and trying to go to college, Nova enthusiastically set about doing it all and ended up graduating with honors a handful of years later. She got a job and a crappy little studio apartment and got to work soon after. She had much bigger fish to fry.

Nova’s first novel was published when she was twenty-five, a thrilling mystery that became a best selling novel. Following that success, Nova purchased a small bookstore, which she now runs while writing on the side. Since the first novel, she’s written two more, both hugely popular, though her preference for anonymity meant that she’d written all of them under a pen name.

Nova was quietly celebrating a movie deal in the works for her first novel when she drank the tonic water that would chance her life as she knew it. It was definitely a bit of a shock for someone whose life is spent surrounded by paper to discover she could manipulate fire – all she’d been thinking was how she wanted the fire in the fireplace to burn a little hotter, a little brighter, and suddenly the flames shot so high that they blackened the stone mantle – and she has been quietly and curiously testing her powers out since.

Alone, of course. With someone like Nova whose ear was always to the ground, it was impossible to miss the murmurs of disappearances plaguing the city…

HEADCANONS:

Sometimes when Nova is stuck on a particularly hard section of her writing, she’ll sketch out a scene to try and form a picture in her head. She has no real talent for drawing, however, so her desk is often littered with nonsensical stick figure drawings, most of which are only half finished.

Nova is a notorious pen chewer. It’s a habit she hates, but can’t seem to break. At least twice a pen has exploded in her mouth and her face has been stained with ink for days, but no matter what she tries, she can never get herself to stop.

Nova bought her own store instead of keeping her job at someone else’s because it means she can mostly set her own hours and doesn’t get in trouble if she’s a few minutes late getting back from lunch or if she shuts the doors a few minutes early. For this reason, there are no store hours posted on the store front and those who want to shop there kind of just have to get lucky about when they decide to go. Surprisingly, her most frequent shoppers tend to find this charming. She has one regular who acts unfailingly surprised any time he shows up and she’s actually open.

She’s a deep sleeper, the kind of person who likes sleeping in a freezing cold room with tons of blankets piled on top of her. She tends to keep late hours and wake up late, so the book store is never actually open before noon on any given day.

Nova is queer as a two dollar bill. It’s not something she flaunts, but it’s not something she hides either. She’s just always been more interested in and more comfortable with women. 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Nothing currently (:

#accepted #pmaccepted #accepted audition

[so-flashtastic]

Not an ordinary damsel || 0.1

Summary: Y/N Y/L/N is one of CCPD’s best detectives, and Barry Allen being the only one in the forensics department, causes them to interfere with each other more than they like. You see: Y/N and Barry doesn’t like each other so much. But when Y/N suspect Barry to be the Flash, she gets herself into a bit too deep trouble.

Pairing: Barry Allen x Sarcastic!Reader

Warning: Zoom’s involved, therefore we don’t know about Kid-Flash yet, and Jessie Quick isn’t a speedster yet either;) And to those who are sensitive to swearing 'n such, I'm sorry?

A/N: So because I have tons of requests, I will mash some of them up if I think they will work out nicely (and hopefully they will!). In this case, I hope it’s ok for you, galactichoran and lisagust14 <33

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“Allen, you need to run a test for me!” Y/N strode over to Barry’s desk and slipped the little plastic bag right in front of him to catch his attention – as if the yelling hadn’t done its work. “What for, detective Y/L/N?” Barry said through gritted teeth, the knuckles of his fists turning slightly white.

“Well, I would use my own, but my machine broke down last night,” she said with a fake pout. “I’ll see what I can-” “Good, I need it the second lunch is over. Thanks, Allen,” with that she left. And Barry’s annoyance came out with a deep sigh. Gee Y/N, thanks. It’s not like I have other things to be done as well, no no, I’ll clear my schedule…

Y/N sat by her desk, a half-eaten Belly burger by her side while she was working hard on the questions she would be asking the neighbor of the late Miss Graham. Out of nowhere, a paper attached to one of her pieces of evidence was dumped in front of her – almost into her fries.

“Here it is,” she looked up to see the irresistible stone-cold face of Barry Allen, that just made her vexing side itch for a sarcastic remark. “Oh thank you your gracious, for offering your precious time for my mortal, unimportant business. I will forever be thankful for your goodness,” Y/N was about to take the arts of hand-gestures to a whole other level but didn’t get the chance to. “I need to go, uhm... lunch meeting,” Barry said and jogged towards the elevator and out of her sight.

This irked Y/N’s interest. He always said something back at her. It could be anything from a bad comeback (good ones too, but Y/N wouldn’t admit that), to dull attempts at ignoring her: like pretending she hadn't said anything, answering her as if what she said didn’t really matter – stuff like that. But Barry never just went, and that with nothing but a lame excuse to leave. Y/N was going to get to the end of this. She was going to find out Barry’s little secret. She was a detective, after all, the ones that solved mysteries – now in her case: her colleague’s.

Her hands were hammering fast against the keyboard. She was writing a report based on the interview and piece of evidence she had gotten tested earlier. Her eager to get it done so she could continue with her to-do list and in the end: check the lab for any missing Barry Allen, was radiating. The witness could describe the suspect with following adjectives… She looked down at her notes again, praying she would get today’s duties done by midnight.

“Thanks, Fred!” Get back to the apt., look for clues, she added to the list in her notebook. Now that the searching-warrant was dealt with, Y/N was off to her colleague’s laboratory. Let's see how long that lunch meeting lasted... And as expected, Barry was not to be seen when Y/N opened the door. 

Y/N hadn't slept for more than 4 hours that night. Though she wanted to blame it all on Barry Allen, she knew better. It wasn't his fault she hadn't gone to bed before 2 AM. In addition to that, it would be hard to explain how he would be guilty of her watching four episodes of Doctor Who, but he was the one who had occupied Y/N's thoughts before falling asleep. Maybe that's how he ended up in her dreams. But why he had worn nothing but an eye-patch and a pair of old and torn pants was still a mystery.

With three cups of coffee in the bin under her desk and a warm one in her hand, Y/N took notes in her little notebook on Bartholomew Henry Allen – family, appearance in media, everything she could get her hands on. Was this 100% legal? Maybe not. But Y/N didn't care about that at the moment, she had to know. "Y/L/N, how are we on the Graham-case?!" She quickly switched to her other desktop and flipped over to the page of her other notes. "Getting there, Singh!" This would be harder than expected. Y/N needed help. Hastily, Y/N hit his number, and it didn't take long before hi picked up. "Hey, Benji, have I ever told you how much I love you?" "Just stop the sugar coating, Y/N," "Oh my darling, best friend Benjamin, I need you to do me a favor, but I'm afraid you're going to like it..."

He didn't like it. Not at all. But by promising him three No-question-asked favors, he agreed to dig deeper into Barry's profile. Though she had covered the investing and digging, Y/N knew she would have to shadow him. Now how on earth would she be able to do that when there were tens of cops surrounding them both? You know, as well as doing her job.

Maybe he's a part-time stripper, Y/N thought. But does he have the body to? She looked over to where Barry stood with Joe West. Meh... a skinny pack may be hiding behind that sweater, but doesn't strippers need to have six- and eight packs? I wouldn't exactly have anything against skinny packs, I mean: no packs are neccesary, but... Ugh, Y/n you need more friends. And then she saw the same look on Allen's face – the one that had appeared yesterday as well, and then he left.

Tue, 17.01.17 – 12:04 Wed, 18.01.17 – 14:16 Finding patterns weren't hard for Y/N Y/L/N, she kind of liked it, made inner peace. Though finding a pattern by two days? Impossible. You know what they say: once is accidence, twice is coincidence, third times's a pattern. She would have to put her new, more interesting case on ice, let Benji do his magic, and wait. meanwhile, doing her job seemed like a good idea, so she did just that.

It had been weeks, and what happened to miss Graham was in the open, and the criminal was currently in trial. The two lines of dates she had in her notebook were extended to a whole page. It was frustrating and mocking Y/N every day as the list grew longer. There was absolutely no pattern. Whatever her colleague dealt with, it happened frequent, on random times during the day – sometimes he left twice a day, other times he either didn't show, left extremely early or came to the office criminally late. Benji had an update, though, but he said the info "had to be told face to face" because it was "too dangerous over the line, someone could be wiretapping". Y/N loved him to death, but her friend wasn't exactly the bold, and brave type of guy.

"Captain, I came to ask for Allen, I need him," "Allen?" Singh couldn't believe what he heard, had his ears betrayed him? Y/N Y/L/N needed Barry Allen, and came personally to ask for him? "Yes, a friend of mine needs me in Starling to help with a simple case they can't crack which includes a forensic expert," Singh had to think. Normally he would have had to command her to take him with (if that was needed of course). So if she asked for him, this would have to be important. "You get two days, Y/L/N, you and Allen leave tomorrow," "Aye aye," Y/N left his office with a smile on her face. Good luck Barry.

She walked up the stairs to the lab, happy like a kid on Christmas morning. It wasn't like Y/N loved to make lives more difficult for people, but this mystery had been bugging her for over two weeks, and she was tired of the patience-demanding work. The door was right in front of her, and Y/n had to take a minute to calm herself down, she couldn't just burst in and look like a grinch, she had to act normal. Feeling ready, Y/N opened the door and put her head just enough in to catch barry's attention. "Pack your bags, Bartholomew, we're going on an adventure!" 

Barry was shocked. Shocked, nervous and worried. Worried about multiple things, about Zoom, about flash stuff in general, how was he supposed to survive two days with Y/N Y/L/N – the detective of Central City, and not get caught red-handed? But most of all: Barry was nervous of how she had managed to know his whole first name. He knew had to talk to the team before dawn. Y/N watched Barry leave ten minutes later. He was in a hurry, probably has to tell whomever he's seeing about the next couple of days. 

At least I can cross out the option of him going to how-to-be-punctual classes... Y/n thought while she stood at the train station, waiting for Barry to arrive. I knew I should have given him an earlier- "Hey, sorry I'm late!" As if Barry had read her mind, and possessed the ability to teleport, he now stood in front of her out of breath. "That's ok, now when we go back I will need your help with the chapel I'm planning on building," when he just looked weird at her, Y/N continued: "You know, since the power of the Spaghetti monster made us just not miss our train that is leaving in five minutes," with an eye roll from Barry, the overdramatic and the scientist started their trip to Starling City.

They had been sitting in silence for twenty minutes, the first five being used for som small talk. Barry was sitting opposite to Y/N, a computer in his lap. If it hadn't been so silent in their railway carriage, Y/N may have had missed the sound of Barry's phone vibrating in his back pocket, but it wasn't. And even if Barry calmed himself down by thinking she couldn't have heard it based on her ears plugged with music, the headphones were just for show. 

"Uhm, I have to go to the toilet, do you need anything?" "Nothing from the boys' restroom, thanks. But if you're going to the girls' I would love a latté," Y/N smiled innocently. "I meant that I will probably walk pass the café," "Coffee would be nice, Allen," and with that Barry left. Y/N on the other hand, stuck out her notebook to write down the time. It had just been half an hour, and he had given her more than ever, this would be it. She would get her answer, and that within two days.

Y/N hadn't been able to expose him. There had been a minimal of suspicious happenings after Barry's little 'bathroom-break'. 

“Hey, sorry it took so long, there was a long que," Barry came back to out cart with nothing else but a sad smile and empty hands. "And you thought I might be in danger, so you skipped the café to save me?" Y/n refered to the non-existant coffee in his hands, but immediately smiled at him reassuringly when she saw... was it worry? In his eyes. "I'm-" "Not in need to be sorry at all, I brought my own," she showed him, and saw Barry's tense body relax as he sat down in his seat.

So she had decided to go a bit more easy on him those days – she had pretty much dragged him with her, and in the end: Y/N found out he wasn't that bad. he was quite nice when not irritated, a bit adorable as well – though that's not something she would ever admit to a living soul.

When it came to the 'precious', confidential info Benji had, it wasn't anything special.

“I really don't get why you wanted me to look into this Bartholomew, Y/N," he had started, which made Y/N huff in irritation. And people think I'm the dramatic one... "Benji..." "Well, his mother was murdered when he was ten, and the police blamed his father-" "It wasn't him?" "Don't interrupt me, Y/N, please! I was coming to that part!" After a bit of whining, Banjamin had continued. He had been right, it wasn't much info on Barry Allen, the only interesting was his denial of his father murdering his mom – which wasn't very unusual for 10 years olds.

So looking back, she could pretty much have looked at her two days in Starling as a little weekend get-away in the middle of the week – just much less stress-relieving.

Out of basil, Y/N walked out of Ian's Supermarket. Craving some pasta and pesto, she had to do a detour after work and was now heading home, ready to prepare her dinner. Though she was splendid at her work, Y/N wasn't the best observer when tired, which might have explained how she hadn't noticed the gang of men that had surrounded her.

"Hey dollface, how you doin'?" Her attention was taken, and she finally analyzed her surroundings. There was five of them. Five huge, drunk men against her, a detective with her hands full of grocery bags and nothing to defend herself. "You wanna come home with us, sweet pea?" They were closing up on her, and Y/N was starting to panic. "We're gonna treat ya real nice," Y/N cringed at the third one's missing tooth. "As long as you don't need daddy to punish you," she was seconds before losing her cool, calm and collected façade, but in a blink, she was five blocks away, in front of her house with a familiar man in red spandex.

"Are you alright?" A vibrating voice made it impossible for Y/N to get any picture in her head of whom the man behind the mask could be. "Uhm... I thought you just did the huge stuff," was the first thing that popped up in Y/N head, which happened to be the lamest thing to say to a superhero of all the things it could have been. No no, save the wittiness and such to non-metas, Y/N, nice work. "You don't think a possible rape is worth stopping?" When Y/N didn't have anything to say back – which rarely happened, Flash just smirked at her and sped off.  "Wow..." 

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A/N: A positive side with this little mash-up: I got a bit carried away and made the imagine very long, which equals two parts (I think/plan/hope)!

#Barry Allen #barry allen imagine #barry allen au #barry allen imagines #barry allen one shot #grant gustin #grant gustin imagines #grant gustin imagine #grant gustin one shot #grant gustin au #The Flash #the flash imagines #the flash imagine #the flash au #the flash one shot

[solivar]

WIP: Massacre In Deadlock Gorge

An investigative report by Olivia Colomar of Paranormal New Mexico.

If you like what you read, kindly throw a penny in the tip jar: https://ko-fi.com/nagaina

Deadlock Gorge.

It’s a name that catches the imagination almost immediately, harkening back as it does to the days of the Wild West, of handsome cowboys and grizzled old prospectors, wagon trains full of tenderfoot settlers, Pony Express riders and stagecoaches and the black-hatted outlaws who robbed them all. That is, of course, not its only name -- only the most recent, and likely the most famous, for a variety of reasons.

The Ancestral Puebloans left ruins there, as they did in so many other high-walled canyons in the Four Corners, but even now their descendants do not give it a name. In fact, my regular Puebloan cultural experts flatly refused to speak with me about the place at all. The Spanish settlers who made their homes around Albuquerque called it El Cañon del Viento Cortante, the Canyon of the Biting Wind, though its position tends to be rather nomadic on antique maps of the region housed in the University of New Mexico Anthropology Department’s library. The Navajo bands who were its closest neighbors simply called it the Hungry Place and shunned it with astonishing enthusiasm given the presence of readily available water, arable land at its widest point, and the shelter to be found within its network of water-carved sandstone caves. Today it lies entirely inside the boundaries of the expanded Navajo Reservation Annex and is only desultorily patrolled by Reservation police. It came by its present name, of course, thanks to the infamous Deadlock Gang, who used it as their base of operations as they marauded across Native communities and Anglo settlements, prospecting outfits and isolated ranches, before the final bloody confrontation within the canyon’s walls brought an end to their reign of terror.

In fact, Deadlock Gorge appears to have had a rather significant history of violence, stretching back as far into history as I’ve been able to research and very much extending to the present day. It was, as of this writing, only ten years ago that the art colony established there by the Santa Fe Society of Arts and Letters came to a grisly and, to date, unexplained end.

*

It was just after midnight on October 29th when the call came in to McKinley County 911. Veteran operator Melissa Rosales received that first frantic call for help.

Melissa Rosales is a petite woman who wears her graying brown hair in an asymetrical style that flatters her pixieish face. Her eyes are framed in crow’s feet and the years have gifted her with a generous portion of laugh lines. She is smiling as we sit down together at Cafe Pasqual to talk once she’s done her shift. She still works at the county 911 office, as a supervisor, and she says that, over the years, she has received many calls that have stayed with her: the young family caught in their vehicle in the midst of rising flood waters during a freakishly powerful storm, the two year old bitten by a rattlesnake in her family’s garden, more than one car accident involving drunken college students and long haul transport rigs on the interstate. None of them haunt her like the frantic cries that came from Deadlock Gorge that night in October ten years ago.

“It was almost Halloween, and it was a full moon -- that whole week was crazy, weird calls every day. The night before, someone called to report a chupacabra raiding their compost bin. Can you believe it?” Melissa laughs, shaking her head, but the humor doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “It isn’t always like that on the full moon but that month, it surely was. When the first calls came in, Ms. Colomar, I freely confess that we didn’t know what to believe.”

[Begin Transcript:

911 Call #1 12:07 AM

911 Operator:

911, where is the emergency?

Unidentified Woman:

Help...please help…

911 Operator:

We will certainly do so, ma’am, but I need you to tell me where you are.

Unidentified Woman:

Deadlock...We’re...We’re in Deadlock Gorge, just off 66, the Starry Desert Center For the Arts -- [static] -- ter’s residency at the edge of town. Something --

911 Operator:

Ma’am, could you please tell me the nature of the emergency? Do you need fire and rescue services? Emergency medical services? Police?

Unidentified Woman:

I -- I -- I don’t know I don’t know. I’m at the window, the front window of the writer’s residency parlor and and I see...someone’s lying in the street. They’re not moving, they’re not moving, I think they might be dead, the street lights are out I can’t -- [static]

911 Operator:

Ma’am can you hear me? [pause] Ma’am?

Unidentified Woman:

[whispering] I hear something right outside. I can hear it breathing. I think it can hear me, too. Oh God I think it can hear me too.

Recording Ends

[End Transcript]

“There are all sorts of weird stories about the Gorge -- I sure you’ve heard more than a few of them.” Melissa fiddles with her necklace as she speaks, a delicate silver chain hung with turquoise beads, a strangely nervous gesture for a woman who otherwise comes across as bedrock settled, coolly calm and collected. “That it’s haunted, that it’s cursed, you know how it is. I was half convinced, given how close it was to Halloween, that it could be some kind of stupid prank, college kids with nothing better to do. Then the second call came in.”

[Begin Transcript:

911 Call #2 12:12 AM

911 Operator:

911, where is the emergency?

Anita Colomar (Writer’s Residency Director at Starry Desert Center For the Arts and Sciences):

Starry Desert Center For the Arts and Sciences, 66 Canyon Drive, in Deadlock Gorge. Please send police and emergency medical services.

911 Operator:

Ma’am, can you tell me the nature of the emergency?

Anita Colomar:

I’m...not entirely certain myself. Power is out in the gorge -- I heard an...I don’t want to say an explosion but...it could have been. It was loud -- loud enough to wake me and several of the residents out of a sound sleep and --

[A high-pitched sound cuts across the recording, followed by several seconds of intense static]

911 Operator:

Ma’am? Ma’am, can you hear me?

Anita Colomar:

Yes -- yes, I can hear you. Did you hear that?

911 Operator:

Yes, I did. That was at your end?

Anita Colomar:

It was. I think -- was that coming from outside? Candace, can you see?

[Inaudibly muffled voices from off the line, a sequence of loud bangs, a short scream that terminates abruptly]

Jeff, Candy, push my dresser in front of the door. Hurry. Officer, I think someone may be inside the residency building --

Recording Ends

[End Transcript]

I suppose I should confess, at this point, that my interest in the incident that took place at the Starry Desert Center For the Arts and Sciences -- the so-called Massacre In Deadlock Gorge -- is not entirely one of a neutral observer. My aunt, my father’s younger sister, Anita Colomar, was the director of the writer’s residency at the time and one of the few people to have verifiable contact with emergency services on the night of the incident itself. In fact, the woman sitting across from me was, in all likelihood, one of the last people to ever speak to her.

“I dispatched police as soon as the first call came in.” Melissa says, her tone quiet and apologetic, as though she has something to apologize for. “When the second came in, I also dispatched emergency services. And after that, well…”

My FOIA request to the McKinley County 911 dispatch office for calls related to the incident in Deadlock Gorge yielded eighty-seven individual call records and associated transcripts concentrated in a single twenty-five minute period between 12:07 am and 12:32 am. Most of the calls are no more than a few seconds long and consist almost entirely of static, snatches of loud noises, and incoherent voices. Cellular contact with the Gorge failed entirely by no later than 12:33 am. The first law enforcement responders arrived at the edge of the canyon three minutes later. The motivators and antigrav units in their vehicles failed as they crossed beneath the sandstone arch that marks the entrance to the town proper, forcing them to approach the cluster of darkened structures clinging to the mid-canyon escarpment on foot. What they found once they arrived exceeded the expectations of even the most experienced officers but not those of the dispatchers, whose lines had by then fallen eerily silent.

“I’m sorry that we couldn’t do more that night, though to this day I’m not sure if there was more to do.” Melissa tells me as we step outside into the warm summer evening, ten years removed from the cold and dark of that night. “And I’m sorry for your loss.”

*

Deadlock Gorge first enters the “modern” historical record in documents dating from the early 1700s, copies of reports written to and by the assorted Spanish colonial governors of Villa de Alburquerque, as the city was known at that time, a strategic military outpost along the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. It was this military significance, and resultant presence of a fairly hefty armed garrison, that led the rancheros living west of the city -- in what is today McKinley County -- to repeatedly beg the assistance of their governor when it came to keeping marauders out of their flocks. The ranchers mostly raised sheep (for their wool -- early Albuquerque was a major center for the New World textiles trade) and goats (for their meat and milk) and in the autumn of 1711, something was taking a sizeable chunk out of that trade, whole flocks, and whole shepherds, going missing. Evidence suggested that the missing livestock and farmers were disappearing, voluntarily or otherwise, into El Cañon del Viento Cortante, a deep, twisting canyon of red sandstone walls, one end of which formed a natural border between several different ranching concerns.

The wealthy Spanish landowners were losing money hand over fist, they were having trouble retaining trustworthy workers, and they insisted, in a flurry of letters growing gradually shriller as the year wore on, that the governor had to send troops to help rout out the source of their trouble. Frankly, they suspected marauding natives clever enough to cover up the evidence of the depredations. Finally aggravated beyond endurance by all the whining, from sheep ranchers and wool merchants alike, a detachment of soldiers under an experienced native-fighting commander was sent to investigate the situation in El Cañon del Viento Cortante, kill whatever needed to be killed, soothe the ruffled feathers of the locals, and return with proof that the matter was handled.

The detachment never returned.

In fact, nothing of them was ever seen or heard from again. No remains were ever found. No indications of battle -- pitched or otherwise -- were found. No evidence of ambush, either. The local Native bands who came to trade in Albuquerque disclaimed any knowledge of the thefts or the fate of the Spanish soldiers but issued an unusually blunt warning: El Cañon del Viento Cortante was not a good place, was not a safe place, and that was why no member of any band not insane, desperate, or outcast chose to make a home there. It would be best if the Spaniards left it alone, as well.

The governor of Albuquerque quietly arranged for the ranchers to be compensated for their losses and urged them to abandon the territory immediately surrounding El Cañon del Viento Cortante. Fragmentary records exist to suggest this may have happened -- or that the ranchers, like their unfortunate herds, employees, and soldiers, also vanished into the hungry maw of the canyon.

*

Sergeant Andrew Flores of the New Mexico State Police was the first police responder to reach Deadlock Gorge on the night of the incident, followed closely by three black-and-white cruisers rerouted from patrols in nearby communities. He organized the group and led them into town on foot after all their vehicles failed, more or less simultaneously. He recounts the way the night unfolded to me as we sit together in the living room of his trim little cabin outside Chimayó, drinking iced tea and eating a meal he has prepared using the vegetables grown in his own garden. He retired from the State Police three years ago and settled down in this vibrant little town in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, to write his memoirs and to raise heirloom produce for sale in the local farmer’s market. He does, in fact, have plenty to write about but, even so, the incident in Deadlock Gorge stands out in his memory as the strangest of many strange experiences.

“It’s a cliche but I guess that’s for a reason,” Former Officer Flores laughs, shaking his head slightly. “‘Twas a dark and stormy night,’ you know? The moon was full -- I recall that vividly -- but it hardly mattered because heavy weather was rolling in from the north and the moon was playing hide and seek with the clouds. One minute it was almost as bright as noon, shining off the canyon walls and the streets and the buildings, and the next it was as dark as the bottom of a well, no lights anywhere except ours, not even battery powered emergency lights.”

The town of Deadlock Gorge is built atop a midlevel escarpment a couple hundred feet down from the rim of the canyon at its extreme northern and narrowest end, straddling a relatively short and dangerously curvy stretch of Historic Route 66 that exits the canyon headed west, into Arizona. That particular stretch of HR 66 was, at one point, a shepherd’s trail, used to usher flocks of sheep and goats between one pasturage and another, and then a wagon trail, used by settlers traveling west, hopefully to California. The original town sprung up to tend to the needs of weary travelers and consisted of a boarding house, a saloon, a dry goods store, a livery stable, and a blacksmith. Of those original buildings, only the boarding house survived the raid that put an end to the Deadlock Gang -- survived it in good enough condition that efforts were made to preserve it by the New Mexico State Historical Society and, when the land was later purchased by the Santa Fe Society of Arts and Letters, it was rehabbed into a part of the Starry Desert Center For Arts and Sciences. Specifically, it was the building used to house the members of the residential writer’s program and its presence, at the edge of town, made it the first structure the investigating officers encountered on their way in.

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photo #1:

The structure is longer than it is wide, owing to the relatively narrow slice of land on which the town is built, two stories of clapboard siding painted a slaty blue-gray under a steeply pitched shingled roof, studded with windows flanked in functional shutters, an unenclosed patio/porch extending nearly to the street in front. A sign bolted to the facade over the front door identifies it as the Starry Desert Center Writer’s Residence; a plaque next to the door identifies it as a building on the State Register of Historic Places. The door itself hangs open on one twisted hinge barely clinging to the splintered wood of the frame.

Crime Scene Photos #2, 3, 4, 5 - 13:

The interior of the Writer’s Residence, ground floor. A steep staircase stands just inside the front door, leading to the second floor. To the left of the staircase lies the parlor: a collection of mismatched furniture (a sectional couch, a smaller semi-matching loveseat, a selection of chairs, a coffee table) sits in a rough circle. No holotank or sound system but a high capacity ceramic space heater designed to resemble a 19th century cast iron wood stove occupies the far corner. The signs of a struggle are obvious: an area rug covering the hardwood floor is rucked up; the coffee table lies on its side, glass top smashed, fragments scattered around it; something dark stains both the rug and the floor and more than a few pieces of glass.

To the right lies the dining room, a single long table surrounded by a dozen chairs, one of which, at the far end near the entrance to the kitchen, sits askew from its place. A glass-fronted hutch sits at the far end of the room, containing the residency’s good China, one door marked by a smeared, dark handprint.

In the kitchen, the back door stands open into the breezeway linking it to the fenced-off herb/vegetable garden occupying the next plot over. Pots hang over the prep island, undisturbed, and all of the cabinets are closed. A single piece of cutlery is missing from the knife block sitting on the prep island.

Bedrooms line the second floor hallway, most of them in states of profound disarray, as though the occupants were woken abruptly. At least one was partially barricaded from the inside. The attic lofts, containing quiet study space, appear untouched.

[End Sidebar]

“The initial 911 contact indicated that the caller saw a body lying in the street.” Copies of the crime scene photos taken in the days after that night are spread out on the patio table between us -- we have adjourned outside to enjoy the fine weather as the day fades into evening and the view of the aspen-clad mountains, already beginning their autumnward turn. “We didn’t find a body -- a splotch of blood where a body might have been, and drag marks that led right to the edge of the escarpment, but no body. In fact, we didn’t find any bodies of any kind until we got into the basement of the Center’s admin building, down in the storage rooms.”

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photo #14, 15:

A dark pool in the middle of the road, stretched into several smaller, splotchier pools amid obvious drag marks that terminate at the south rim of the escarpment.

The photographer must have leaned uncomfortably far out over the side to get a shot of the canyon floor at the base of the escarpment, a mass of loose scree and brush, also containing no body or bodies.

End Sidebar]

Most of the Center’s larger buildings -- the writers’ and artists’ residences, the main administrative building, the gallery display space, the shell of what was intended to be a small performance theater, still under construction at the time of the incident, were built hard against the canyon wall. The building that housed studio space for artists and sculptors, the kiln house, the materials storage outbuildings, were constructed closer to the escarpment rim, inside a waist-high guard rail fence further reinforced with decorative iron rods strung with hurricane webbing. Nobody wanted anyone to accidentally stroll off the side.

“By the time we reached the first of the production buildings, another couple black-and-whites and a few more Staties had arrived, so I felt a little more comfortable splitting the group into search parties.” Mr. Flores chuckles and shakes his head. “I...really can’t explain in words how eerie the whole scenario was -- that night was surreal in a way I’ve never experienced, before or since. The wind was howling down the canyon like a living thing -- and not any living thing, a living thing with fangs and claws that hated us all and wanted us to die. Some of the guys swore up and down that night and for days after that they heard voices in it.”

“Did you?” I feel compelled to ask, as I leaf through his personal casefile on the incident -- he’s got more pictures than are available even through FOIA requests, and he will later graciously copy them for me.

“Not...really.” He pauses, takes a sip of his tea, refuses to meet my eyes. “I heard something...but I wouldn’t call it a voice. Not words, at any rate. I split the group into two teams, one under my command, the other under Major Hathaway, and we proceeded deeper into town.”

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photos #16 - 20:

The building containing the art studio space is a two-story structure built in a roughly crescent shape along the widest part of the escarpment rim -- a blocky central building containing a foyer scattered with a mismatched assortment of chairs and a lumpy ancient futon, a unisex bathroom setup, and two projecting wings containing studios for traditional media art, digital art, photography, textile art, and sculpture. Most of the studio spaces have enormous windows overlooking the canyon itself.

The glass-fronted door of the studio space is smashed and the door itself hanging open. Traces of blood adhere to the door and create a path up the stairs to one of the sculpture studios on the second floor. The window of that studio is broken from the inside -- glass fell into the narrow strip of land behind the studio and between the safety fence. The break itself is small, as though something were flung through the window with great force.

The blood trail ends completely in the upstairs sculpture studio.

[End Sidebar]

“Major Hathaway’s group took the escarpment side of the town and then circled around the far end toward the spot where they were building the theater. Most of what they found was concentrated in the arts studio -- none of the storage outbuildings were touched, they were all padlocked shut, until they came to the new construction.” He slides a photograph across to me, one I had heard referenced by my contacts among the State and local police forces, but which I have never seen until now. “And that was some weird shit, let me tell you.”

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photos #21 - 28:

Multiple views of the semi-complete outdoor theater/amphitheater. What would have been the stage is no more than a skeletal hint of a structure but the seating is more or less complete: low-backed wooden benches sitting on top of elaborately carved sandstone supports in two concentric semi-circles, four rows each, with an aisle between them.

At the end of the aisle, in front of what would have been the stage, is the remains of a large firepit dug several inches into the underlying stone, ringed in more stones, containing the remains of a large bonfire. The stones ringing the firepit are likewise elaborately carved in a style distinctly different from the bench supports: they are jagged, appear to be broken from several larger stones, and are covered in petroglyphs: perfectly executed circles lined inside with triangular forms, inward-turning spirals, concentric bullseye figures surrounded in a dozen smaller circles around the outer edge. Some of them are splashed with a dark semi-liquid substance.

The two rows of benches closest to the fire are covered in upholstered throw cushions and a few throw blankets here and there. Discarded clothing is scattered between them. Half-hidden beneath someone’s sports bra and semi-buried in the sand is a knife, its hilt carved from horn of some sort partially wrapped in leather, its blade roughly leaf-shaped and made of carefully shaped obsidian.

[End Sidebar]

“There were rumors, of course -- had been for years. You can’t put a bunch of artsy-fartsy types out in the middle of nowhere, have minimal interaction with the outside world, and not have rumors. And where there’s rumors, there’s complaints.” Mr. Flores hands over a sheaf of papers: noise complaints, public disturbance complaints, the basic legal nuisances used to make nontraditional communities miserable when there’s no other way to do it. “We investigated, of course, but the Center was, for a pack of allegedly immoral bohemian libertines, pretty hard on the straight and narrow. Minors were not allowed to apply for residency even if they would be legal adults before the residency started. Minimum age of participation in any program was twenty-one. Zero tolerance policy for drug or alcohol abuse or for sexual harassment. Which isn’t to say that they were perfectly squeaky clean. We got called a couple times from inside for domestic disturbances, because they allowed couples to apply together, and residents to bring plus ones if they could pony up for it, and even the best couples sometimes don’t stay that way. But nothing like this.” He shakes his head. “Nothing even close. Certainly nothing to indicate that they directors were actually running a cult.”

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photos #29 - 40:

The interior of the artists’ residency in a now-familiar state of disarray: evidence of attempts by the residents to secure themselves in their rooms, apparently to no avail, indicators of a struggle in some instances, including blood spatter on the walls, on the floor, in one case across the ceiling.

Inside the central administration building, the destruction is even more significant. The shelves in the community lending library are reduced to kindling, the books themselves to little more than empty covers lost amid snowdrifts of shredded pages. The main office has been completely destroyed: metal desks twisted apart, their fragments embedded in the walls and the floor. Not a single computer or other piece of technology escapes destruction.

The downstairs storage rooms, where the community stored years of hardcopy records in filing boxes and cabinets, are strangely untouched, though all the doors have been torn off their hinges.

At the far end of the corridor stands one intact door: solid wood, carved with a sequence of glyphs similar to those on the stones outside around the firepit. A second and thematically distinct set of carvings adorns the frame. Inside the room stands a single object: a cage consisting of heavy forged iron bars sunk into eight inch thick wooden railroad ties, slightly more than six feet long and three feet wide, containing a thin pallet, a pillow, and a blanket. All three items are bloody and a pool of the same spreads out from beneath the cage.

The bars of the cage are meticulously carved with glyphs identical to those on the door and the doorframe, as are the railroad ties. Two sets of iron manacles, one attached to the head of the cage by a heavy length of chain, the other to the foot, are similarly marked though in the case of both it seems as though the manacles and the chain were cast in that design. The door of the cage is secured with a heavy padlock of similar manufacture.

The walls, the floor, and even the ceiling are covered in concentric lines of the same visual script, some images repeating from the door to the cage to the rocks around the firepit, some completely different.

In the far corner of the room, the only example of actual human remains recovered in Deadlock Gorge that night: a human hand, roughly severed just above the wrist, ragged ends of bone clearly visible. Nearby lies a second obsidian knife, its blade and handle bloodstained.

[End Sidebar]

“We found the kid downstairs -- we might not have found him at all, but one of the officers in my search group thought she saw something moving at the head of the stairs that led down to the storage area.” Mr. Flores pours himself another glass of iced, drinks, stares out into the deepening twilight for several minutes. “He...was not in a good way -- it was lucky Hathaway had her lockpicking tool on her, because otherwise we’d never have gotten those manacles open. I don’t think Forensics ever actually found the key to the damn things. We had to jimmy all the locks just to get him out and there wasn’t much he could do to help, hurt as he was. The EMTs told me he was lucky to be alive -- one of the stab wounds nicked the abdominal aorta and he was in the process of bleeding to death internally when we found him. The blood on the knife we found was his. The hand belonged to Val Kalloway, the Center’s director of operations, according to the fingerprints.” A humorless smile. “We never did find anyone else.”

In fact, none of the experts brought in to examine Deadlock Gorge after that night found anything else. In the days and weeks that followed, law enforcement officials from Federal, State, and local agencies combed every inch of the town and the canyon beyond for any trace of the missing inhabitants of the Starry Desert Center For Arts and Sciences. There were four writers plus the program director on site for the September through December residency term; there were six artists plus the art residency director. The Director of Operations and six members of the permanent instruction staff plus two administrative personnel lived in a smaller residence behind the main administration building.

Twenty-one people disappeared without a trace that night. Cadaver-sniffing dogs found no evidence of hidden human remains, either in the town or in the canyon. The forensic scientists who processed the scene found copious evidence of habitation by the the people who were supposed to be there but no evidence whatsoever of any invaders, intruders, or involvement by outside individuals. The lone survivor -- a juvenile male listed as John Doe in the official documentation of the incident -- was transported via ambulance to the University Hospital. It is my understanding that he survived, despite the severity of his injuries and his overall condition, which was something other than ideal, and that he gave an official statement to the authorities. Both that statement, and the documents confirming his identity, are sealed by Federal district court order and have never been released to the public. A FOIA request I made in regard to this issue was summarily rejected.

Mr. Flores gifted me a copy of his entire casefile on the incident -- the so-called “Massacre In Deadlock Gorge” -- before I left that night and wished me luck.

“Of all the unsolved cases I’ve had in my time -- and there have been a couple -- that’s the one that’s caused me the most sleepless nights over the years.” He admitted as he walked me to my car. “Because if it could happen there, who’s to say it couldn’t happen somewhere else? Lots of small places where small numbers of people live now, after the Crisis, and we don’t even have official eyes on them all. Someday, it’s going to happen again.”

*

#WIP Massacre In Deadlock Gorge #Olivia Colomar reports

[solivar]

WIP: Massacre In Deadlock Gorge

An investigative report by Olivia Colomar of Paranormal New Mexico.

Deadlock Gorge.

It’s a name that catches the imagination almost immediately, harkening back as it does to the days of the Wild West, of handsome cowboys and grizzled old prospectors, wagon trains full of tenderfoot settlers, Pony Express riders and stagecoaches and the black-hatted outlaws who robbed them all. That is, of course, not its only name -- only the most recent, and likely the most famous, for a variety of reasons.

The Ancestral Puebloans left ruins there, as they did in so many other high-walled canyons in the Four Corners, but even now their descendants do not give it a name. In fact, my regular Puebloan cultural experts flatly refused to speak with me about the place at all. The Spanish settlers who made their homes around Albuquerque called it El Cañon del Viento Cortante, the Canyon of the Biting Wind, though its position tends to rather nomadic on antique maps of the region housed in the University of New Mexico Anthropology Department’s library. The Navajo bands who were its closest neighbors simply called it the Hungry Place and shunned it with astonishing enthusiasm given the presence of readily available water, arable land at its widest point, and the shelter to be found within its network of water-carved sandstone caves. Today it lies entirely inside the boundaries of the expanded Navajo Reservation Annex and is only desultorily patrolled by Reservation police. It came by its present name, of course, thanks to the infamous Deadlock Gang, who used it as their base of operations as they marauded across Native communities and Anglo settlements, prospecting outfits and isolated ranches, before the final bloody confrontation within the canyon’s walls brought an end to their reign of terror.

In fact, Deadlock Gorge appears to have had a rather significant history of violence, stretching back as far into history as I’ve been able to research and very much extending to the present day. It was, as of this writing, only ten years ago that the art colony established there by the Santa Fe Society of Arts and Letters came to a grisly and, to date, unexplained end.

*

It was just after midnight on October 29th when the call came in to McKinley County 911. Veteran operator Melissa Rosales received that first frantic call for help.

Melissa Rosales is a petite woman who wears her graying brown hair in an asymetrical style that flatters her pixieish face. Her eyes are framed in crow’s feet and the years have gifted her with a generous portion of laugh lines. She is smiling as we sit down together at Cafe Pasqual to talk once she’s done her shift. She still works at the county 911 office, as a supervisor, and she says that, over the years, she has received many calls that have stayed with her: the young family caught in their vehicle in the midst of rising flood waters during a freakishly powerful storm, the two year old bitten by a rattlesnake in her family’s garden, more than one car accident involving drunken college students and long haul transport rigs on the interstate. None of them haunt her like the frantic cries that came from Deadlock Gorge that night in October ten years ago.

“It was almost Halloween, and it was a full moon -- that whole week was crazy, weird calls every day. The night before, someone called to report a chupacabra raiding their compost bin. Can you believe it?” Melissa laughs, shaking her head, but the humor doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “It isn’t always like that on the full moon but that month, it surely was. When the first calls came in, Ms. Colomar, I freely confess that we didn’t know what to believe.”

[Begin Transcript:

911 Call #1 12:07 AM

911 Operator:

911, where is the emergency?

Unidentified Woman:

Help...please help…

911 Operator:

We will certainly do so, ma’am, but I need you to tell me where you are.

Unidentified Woman:

Deadlock...We’re...We’re in Deadlock Gorge, just off 66, the Starry Desert Center For the Arts -- [static] -- ter’s residency at the edge of town. Something --

911 Operator:

Ma’am, could you please tell me the nature of the emergency? Do you need fire and rescue services? Emergency medical services? Police?

Unidentified Woman:

I -- I -- I don’t know I don’t know. I’m at the window, the front window of the writer’s residency parlor and and I see...someone’s lying in the street. They’re not moving, they’re not moving, I think they might be dead, the street lights are out I can’t -- [static]

911 Operator:

Ma’am can you hear me? [pause] Ma’am?

Unidentified Woman:

[whispering] I hear something right outside. I can hear it breathing. I think it can hear me, too. Oh God I think it can hear me too.

Recording Ends

[End Transcript]

“There are all sorts of weird stories about the Gorge -- I sure you’ve heard more than a few of them.” Melissa fiddles with her necklace as she speaks, a delicate silver chain hung with turquoise beads, a strangely nervous gesture for a woman who otherwise comes across as bedrock settled, coolly calm and collected. “That it’s haunted, that it’s cursed, you know how it is. I was half convinced, given how close it was to Halloween, that it could be some kind of stupid prank, college kids with nothing better to do. Then the second call came in.”

[Begin Transcript:

911 Call #2 12:12 AM

911 Operator:

911, where is the emergency?

Anita Colomar (Writer’s Residency Director at Starry Desert Center For the Arts and Sciences):

Starry Desert Center For the Arts and Sciences, 66 Canyon Drive, in Deadlock Gorge. Please send police and emergency medical services.

911 Operator:

Ma’am, can you tell me the nature of the emergency?

Anita Colomar:

I’m...not entirely certain myself. Power is out in the gorge -- I heard an...I don’t want to say an explosion but...it could have been. It was loud -- loud enough to wake me and several of the residents out of a sound sleep and --

[A high-pitched sound cuts across the recording, followed by several seconds of intense static]

911 Operator:

Ma’am? Ma’am, can you hear me?

Anita Colomar:

Yes -- yes, I can hear you. Did you hear that?

911 Operator:

Yes, I did. That was at your end?

Anita Colomar:

It was. I think -- was that coming from outside? Candace, can you see?

[Inaudibly muffled voices from off the line, a sequence of loud bangs, a short scream that terminates abruptly]

Jeff, Candy, push my dresser in front of the door. Hurry. Officer, I think someone may be inside the residency building --

Recording Ends

[End Transcript]

I suppose I should confess, at this point, that my interest in the incident that took place at the Starry Desert Center For the Arts and Sciences -- the so-called Massacre In Deadlock Gorge -- is not entirely one of a neutral observer. My aunt, my father’s younger sister, Anita Colomar, was the director of the writer’s residency at the time and one of the few people to have verifiable contact with emergency services on the night of the incident itself. In fact, the woman sitting across from me was, in all likelihood, one of the last people to ever speak to her.

“I dispatched police as soon as the first call came in.” Melissa says, her tone quiet and apologetic, as though she has something to apologize for. “When the second came in, I also dispatched emergency services. And after that, well…”

My FOIA request to the McKinley County 911 dispatch office for calls related to the incident in Deadlock Gorge yielded eighty-seven individual call records and associated transcripts concentrated in a single twenty-five minute period between 12:07 am and 12:32 am. Most of the calls are no more than a few seconds long and consist almost entirely of static, snatches of loud noises, and incoherent voices. Cellular contact with the Gorge failed entirely by no later than 12:33 am. The first law enforcement responders arrived at the edge of the canyon three minutes later. The motivators and antigrav units in their vehicles failed as they crossed beneath the sandstone arch that marks the entrance to the town proper, forcing them to approach the cluster of darkened structures clinging to the mid-canyon escarpment on foot. What they found once they arrived exceeded the expectations of even the most experienced officers but not those of the dispatchers, whose lines had by then fallen eerily silent.

“I’m sorry that we couldn’t do more that night, though to this day I’m not sure if there was more to do.” Melissa tells me as we step outside into the warm summer evening, ten years removed from the cold and dark of that night. “And I’m sorry for your loss.”

*

Deadlock Gorge first enters the “modern” historical record in documents dating from the early 1700s, copies of reports written to and by the assorted Spanish colonial governors of Villa de Alburquerque, as the city was known at that time, a strategic military outpost along the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. It was this military significance, and resultant presence of a fairly hefty armed garrison, that led the rancheros living west of the city -- in what is today McKinley County -- to repeatedly beg the assistance of their governor when it came to keeping marauders out of their flocks. The ranchers mostly raised sheep (for their wool -- early Albuquerque was a major center for the New World textiles trade) and goats (for their meat and milk) and in the autumn of 1711, something was taking a sizeable chunk out of that trade, whole flocks, and whole shepherds, going missing. Evidence suggested that the missing livestock and farmers were disappearing, voluntarily or otherwise, into El Cañon del Viento Cortante, a deep, twisting canyon of red sandstone walls, one end of which formed a natural border between several different ranching concerns.

The wealthy Spanish landowners were losing money hand over fist, they were having trouble retaining trustworthy workers, and they insisted, in a flurry of letters growing gradually shriller as the year wore on, that the governor had to send troops to help rout out the source of their trouble. Frankly, they suspected marauding natives clever enough to cover up the evidence of the depredations. Finally aggravated beyond endurance by all the whining, from sheep ranchers and wool merchants alike, a detachment of soldiers under an experienced native-fighting commander was sent to investigate the situation in El Cañon del Viento Cortante, kill whatever needed to be killed, soothe the ruffled feathers of the locals, and return with proof that the matter was handled.

The detachment never returned.

In fact, nothing of them was ever seen or heard from again. No remains were ever found. No indications of battle -- pitched or otherwise -- were found. No evidence of ambush, either. The local Native bands who came to trade in Albuquerque disclaimed any knowledge of the thefts or the fate of the Spanish soldiers but issued an unusually blunt warning: El Cañon del Viento Cortante was not a good place, was not a safe place, and that was why no member of any band not insane, desperate, or outcast chose to make a home there. It would be best if the Spaniards left it alone, as well.

The governor of Albuquerque quietly arranged for the ranchers to be compensated for their losses and urged them to abandon the territory immediately surrounding El Cañon del Viento Cortante. Fragmentary records exist to suggest this may have happened -- or that the ranchers, like their unfortunate herds, employees, and soldiers, also vanished into the hungry maw of the canyon.

*

#WIP #Massacre In Deadlock Gorge #Olivia Colomar reports

[solivar]

WIP: Massacre In Deadlock Gorge

An investigative report by Olivia Colomar of Paranormal New Mexico.

Deadlock Gorge.

It’s a name that catches the imagination almost immediately, harkening back as it does to the days of the Wild West, of handsome cowboys and grizzled old prospectors, wagon trains full of tenderfoot settlers, Pony Express riders and stagecoaches and the black-hatted outlaws who robbed them all. That is, of course, not its only name -- only the most recent, and likely the most famous, for a variety of reasons.

The Ancestral Puebloans left ruins there, as they did in so many other high-walled canyons in the Four Corners, but even now their descendants do not give it a name. In fact, my regular Puebloan cultural experts flatly refused to speak with me about the place at all. The Spanish settlers who made their homes around Albuquerque called it El Cañon del Viento Cortante, the Canyon of the Biting Wind, though its position tends to be rather nomadic on antique maps of the region housed in the University of New Mexico Anthropology Department’s library. The Navajo bands who were its closest neighbors simply called it the Hungry Place and shunned it with astonishing enthusiasm given the presence of readily available water, arable land at its widest point, and the shelter to be found within its network of water-carved sandstone caves. Today it lies entirely inside the boundaries of the expanded Navajo Reservation Annex and is only desultorily patrolled by Reservation police. It came by its present name, of course, thanks to the infamous Deadlock Gang, who used it as their base of operations as they marauded across Native communities and Anglo settlements, prospecting outfits and isolated ranches, before the final bloody confrontation within the canyon’s walls brought an end to their reign of terror.

In fact, Deadlock Gorge appears to have had a rather significant history of violence, stretching back as far into history as I’ve been able to research and very much extending to the present day. It was, as of this writing, only ten years ago that the art colony established there by the Santa Fe Society of Arts and Letters came to a grisly and, to date, unexplained end.

*

It was just after midnight on October 29th when the call came in to McKinley County 911. Veteran operator Melissa Rosales received that first frantic call for help.

Melissa Rosales is a petite woman who wears her graying brown hair in an asymetrical style that flatters her pixieish face. Her eyes are framed in crow’s feet and the years have gifted her with a generous portion of laugh lines. She is smiling as we sit down together at Cafe Pasqual to talk once she’s done her shift. She still works at the county 911 office, as a supervisor, and she says that, over the years, she has received many calls that have stayed with her: the young family caught in their vehicle in the midst of rising flood waters during a freakishly powerful storm, the two year old bitten by a rattlesnake in her family’s garden, more than one car accident involving drunken college students and long haul transport rigs on the interstate. None of them haunt her like the frantic cries that came from Deadlock Gorge that night in October ten years ago.

“It was almost Halloween, and it was a full moon -- that whole week was crazy, weird calls every day. The night before, someone called to report a chupacabra raiding their compost bin. Can you believe it?” Melissa laughs, shaking her head, but the humor doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “It isn’t always like that on the full moon but that month, it surely was. When the first calls came in, Ms. Colomar, I freely confess that we didn’t know what to believe.”

[Begin Transcript:

911 Call #1 12:07 AM

911 Operator:

911, where is the emergency?

Unidentified Woman:

Help...please help…

911 Operator:

We will certainly do so, ma’am, but I need you to tell me where you are.

Unidentified Woman:

Deadlock...We’re...We’re in Deadlock Gorge, just off 66, the Starry Desert Center For the Arts -- [static] -- ter’s residency at the edge of town. Something --

911 Operator:

Ma’am, could you please tell me the nature of the emergency? Do you need fire and rescue services? Emergency medical services? Police?

Unidentified Woman:

I -- I -- I don’t know I don’t know. I’m at the window, the front window of the writer’s residency parlor and and I see...someone’s lying in the street. They’re not moving, they’re not moving, I think they might be dead, the street lights are out I can’t -- [static]

911 Operator:

Ma’am can you hear me? [pause] Ma’am?

Unidentified Woman:

[whispering] I hear something right outside. I can hear it breathing. I think it can hear me, too. Oh God I think it can hear me too.

Recording Ends

[End Transcript]

“There are all sorts of weird stories about the Gorge -- I sure you’ve heard more than a few of them.” Melissa fiddles with her necklace as she speaks, a delicate silver chain hung with turquoise beads, a strangely nervous gesture for a woman who otherwise comes across as bedrock settled, coolly calm and collected. “That it’s haunted, that it’s cursed, you know how it is. I was half convinced, given how close it was to Halloween, that it could be some kind of stupid prank, college kids with nothing better to do. Then the second call came in.”

[Begin Transcript:

911 Call #2 12:12 AM

911 Operator:

911, where is the emergency?

Anita Colomar (Writer’s Residency Director at Starry Desert Center For the Arts and Sciences):

Starry Desert Center For the Arts and Sciences, 66 Canyon Drive, in Deadlock Gorge. Please send police and emergency medical services.

911 Operator:

Ma’am, can you tell me the nature of the emergency?

Anita Colomar:

I’m...not entirely certain myself. Power is out in the gorge -- I heard an...I don’t want to say an explosion but...it could have been. It was loud -- loud enough to wake me and several of the residents out of a sound sleep and --

[A high-pitched sound cuts across the recording, followed by several seconds of intense static]

911 Operator:

Ma’am? Ma’am, can you hear me?

Anita Colomar:

Yes -- yes, I can hear you. Did you hear that?

911 Operator:

Yes, I did. That was at your end?

Anita Colomar:

It was. I think -- was that coming from outside? Candace, can you see?

[Inaudibly muffled voices from off the line, a sequence of loud bangs, a short scream that terminates abruptly]

Jeff, Candy, push my dresser in front of the door. Hurry. Officer, I think someone may be inside the residency building --

Recording Ends

[End Transcript]

I suppose I should confess, at this point, that my interest in the incident that took place at the Starry Desert Center For the Arts and Sciences -- the so-called Massacre In Deadlock Gorge -- is not entirely one of a neutral observer. My aunt, my father’s younger sister, Anita Colomar, was the director of the writer’s residency at the time and one of the few people to have verifiable contact with emergency services on the night of the incident itself. In fact, the woman sitting across from me was, in all likelihood, one of the last people to ever speak to her.

“I dispatched police as soon as the first call came in.” Melissa says, her tone quiet and apologetic, as though she has something to apologize for. “When the second came in, I also dispatched emergency services. And after that, well…”

My FOIA request to the McKinley County 911 dispatch office for calls related to the incident in Deadlock Gorge yielded eighty-seven individual call records and associated transcripts concentrated in a single twenty-five minute period between 12:07 am and 12:32 am. Most of the calls are no more than a few seconds long and consist almost entirely of static, snatches of loud noises, and incoherent voices. Cellular contact with the Gorge failed entirely by no later than 12:33 am. The first law enforcement responders arrived at the edge of the canyon three minutes later. The motivators and antigrav units in their vehicles failed as they crossed beneath the sandstone arch that marks the entrance to the town proper, forcing them to approach the cluster of darkened structures clinging to the mid-canyon escarpment on foot. What they found once they arrived exceeded the expectations of even the most experienced officers but not those of the dispatchers, whose lines had by then fallen eerily silent.

“I’m sorry that we couldn’t do more that night, though to this day I’m not sure if there was more to do.” Melissa tells me as we step outside into the warm summer evening, ten years removed from the cold and dark of that night. “And I’m sorry for your loss.”

*

Deadlock Gorge first enters the “modern” historical record in documents dating from the early 1700s, copies of reports written to and by the assorted Spanish colonial governors of Villa de Alburquerque, as the city was known at that time, a strategic military outpost along the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. It was this military significance, and resultant presence of a fairly hefty armed garrison, that led the rancheros living west of the city -- in what is today McKinley County -- to repeatedly beg the assistance of their governor when it came to keeping marauders out of their flocks. The ranchers mostly raised sheep (for their wool -- early Albuquerque was a major center for the New World textiles trade) and goats (for their meat and milk) and in the autumn of 1711, something was taking a sizeable chunk out of that trade, whole flocks, and whole shepherds, going missing. Evidence suggested that the missing livestock and farmers were disappearing, voluntarily or otherwise, into El Cañon del Viento Cortante, a deep, twisting canyon of red sandstone walls, one end of which formed a natural border between several different ranching concerns.

The wealthy Spanish landowners were losing money hand over fist, they were having trouble retaining trustworthy workers, and they insisted, in a flurry of letters growing gradually shriller as the year wore on, that the governor had to send troops to help rout out the source of their trouble. Frankly, they suspected marauding natives clever enough to cover up the evidence of the depredations. Finally aggravated beyond endurance by all the whining, from sheep ranchers and wool merchants alike, a detachment of soldiers under an experienced native-fighting commander was sent to investigate the situation in El Cañon del Viento Cortante, kill whatever needed to be killed, soothe the ruffled feathers of the locals, and return with proof that the matter was handled.

The detachment never returned.

In fact, nothing of them was ever seen or heard from again. No remains were ever found. No indications of battle -- pitched or otherwise -- were found. No evidence of ambush, either. The local Native bands who came to trade in Albuquerque disclaimed any knowledge of the thefts or the fate of the Spanish soldiers but issued an unusually blunt warning: El Cañon del Viento Cortante was not a good place, was not a safe place, and that was why no member of any band not insane, desperate, or outcast chose to make a home there. It would be best if the Spaniards left it alone, as well.

The governor of Albuquerque quietly arranged for the ranchers to be compensated for their losses and urged them to abandon the territory immediately surrounding El Cañon del Viento Cortante. Fragmentary records exist to suggest this may have happened -- or that the ranchers, like their unfortunate herds, employees, and soldiers, also vanished into the hungry maw of the canyon.

*

Sergeant Andrew Flores of the New Mexico State Police was the first police responder to reach Deadlock Gorge on the night of the incident, followed closely by three black-and-white cruisers rerouted from patrols in nearby communities. He organized the group and led them into town on foot after all their vehicles failed, more or less simultaneously. He recounts the way the night unfolded to me as we sit together in the living room of his trim little cabin outside Chimayó, drinking iced tea and eating a meal he has prepared using the vegetables grown in his own garden. He retired from the State Police three years ago and settled down in this vibrant little town in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, to write his memoirs and to raise heirloom produce for sale in the local farmer’s market. He does, in fact, have plenty to write about but, even so, the incident in Deadlock Gorge stands out in his memory as the strangest of many strange experiences.

“It’s a cliche but I guess that’s for a reason,” Former Officer Flores laughs, shaking his head slightly. “‘Twas a dark and stormy night,’ you know? The moon was full -- I recall that vividly -- but it hardly mattered because heavy weather was rolling in from the north and the moon was playing hide and seek with the clouds. One minute it was almost as bright as noon, shining off the canyon walls and the streets and the buildings, and the next it was as dark as the bottom of a well, no lights anywhere except ours, not even battery powered emergency lights.”

The town of Deadlock Gorge is built atop a midlevel escarpment a couple hundred feet down from the rim of the canyon at its extreme northern and narrowest end, straddling a relatively short and dangerously curvy stretch of Historic Route 66 that exits the canyon headed west, into Arizona. That particular stretch of HR 66 was, at one point, a shepherd’s trail, used to usher flocks of sheep and goats between one pasturage and another, and then a wagon trail, used by settlers traveling west, hopefully to California. The original town sprung up to tend to the needs of weary travelers and consisted of a boarding house, a saloon, a dry goods store, a livery stable, and a blacksmith. Of those original buildings, only the boarding house survived the raid that put an end to the Deadlock Gang -- survived it in good enough condition that efforts were made to preserve it by the New Mexico State Historical Society and, when the land was later purchased by the Santa Fe Society of Arts and Letters, it was rehabbed into a part of the Starry Desert Center For Arts and Sciences. Specifically, it was the building used to house the members of the residential writer’s program and its presence, at the edge of town, made it the first structure the investigating officers encountered on their way in.

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photo #1:

The structure is longer than it is wide, owing to the relatively narrow slice of land on which the town is built, two stories of clapboard siding painted a slaty blue-gray under a steeply pitched shingled roof, studded with windows flanked in functional shutters, an unenclosed patio/porch extending nearly to the street in front. A sign bolted to the facade over the front door identifies it as the Starry Desert Center Writer’s Residence; a plaque next to the door identifies it as a building on the State Register of Historic Places. The door itself hangs open on one twisted hinge barely clinging to the splintered wood of the frame.

Crime Scene Photos #2, 3, 4, 5 - 13:

The interior of the Writer’s Residence, ground floor. A steep staircase stands just inside the front door, leading to the second floor. To the left of the staircase lies the parlor: a collection of mismatched furniture (a sectional couch, a smaller semi-matching loveseat, a selection of chairs, a coffee table) sits in a rough circle. No holotank or sound system but a high capacity ceramic space heater designed to resemble a 19th century cast iron wood stove occupies the far corner. The signs of a struggle are obvious: an area rug covering the hardwood floor is rucked up; the coffee table lies on its side, glass top smashed, fragments scattered around it; something dark stains both the rug and the floor and more than a few pieces of glass.

To the right lies the dining room, a single long table surrounded by a dozen chairs, one of which, at the far end near the entrance to the kitchen, sits askew from its place. A glass-fronted hutch sits at the far end of the room, containing the residency’s good China, one door marked by a smeared, dark handprint.

In the kitchen, the back door stands open into the breezeway linking it to the fenced-off herb/vegetable garden occupying the next plot over. Pots hang over the prep island, undisturbed, and all of the cabinets are closed. A single piece of cutlery is missing from the knife block sitting on the prep island.

Bedrooms line the second floor hallway, most of them in states of profound disarray, as though the occupants were woken abruptly. At least one was partially barricaded from the inside. The attic lofts, containing quiet study space, appear untouched.

[End Sidebar]

“The initial 911 contact indicated that the caller saw a body lying in the street.” Copies of the crime scene photos taken in the days after that night are spread out on the patio table between us -- we have adjourned outside to enjoy the fine weather as the day fades into evening and the view of the aspen-clad mountains, already beginning their autumnward turn. “We didn’t find a body -- a splotch of blood where a body might have been, and drag marks that led right to the edge of the escarpment, but no body. In fact, we didn’t find any bodies of any kind until we got into the basement of the Center’s admin building, down in the storage rooms.”

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photo #14, 15:

A dark pool in the middle of the road, stretched into several smaller, splotchier pools amid obvious drag marks that terminate at the south rim of the escarpment.

The photographer must have leaned uncomfortably far out over the side to get a shot of the canyon floor at the base of the escarpment, a mass of loose scree and brush, also containing no body or bodies.

End Sidebar]

Most of the Center’s larger buildings -- the writers’ and artists’ residences, the main administrative building, the gallery display space, the shell of what was intended to be a small performance theater, still under construction at the time of the incident, were built hard against the canyon wall. The building that housed studio space for artists and sculptors, the kiln house, the materials storage outbuildings, were constructed closer to the escarpment rim, inside a waist-high guard rail fence further reinforced with decorative iron rods strung with hurricane webbing. Nobody wanted anyone to accidentally stroll off the side.

“By the time we reached the first of the production buildings, another couple black-and-whites and a few more Staties had arrived, so I felt a little more comfortable splitting the group into search parties.” Mr. Flores chuckles and shakes his head. “I...really can’t explain in words how eerie the whole scenario was -- that night was surreal in a way I’ve never experienced, before or since. The wind was howling down the canyon like a living thing -- and not any living thing, a living thing with fangs and claws that hated us all and wanted us to die. Some of the guys swore up and down that night and for days after that they heard voices in it.”

“Did you?” I feel compelled to ask, as I leaf through his personal casefile on the incident -- he’s got more pictures than are available even through FOIA requests, and he will later graciously copy them for me.

“Not...really.” He pauses, takes a sip of his tea, refuses to meet my eyes. “I heard something...but I wouldn’t call it a voice. Not words, at any rate. I split the group into two teams, one under my command, the other under Major Hathaway, and we proceeded deeper into town.”

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photos #16 - 20

The building containing the art studio space is a two-story structure built in a roughly crescent shape along the widest part of the escarpment rim -- a blocky central building containing a foyer scattered with a mismatched assortment of chairs and a lumpy ancient futon, a unisex bathroom setup, and two projecting wings containing studios for traditional media art, digital art, photography, textile art, and sculpture. Most of the studio spaces have enormous windows overlooking the canyon itself.

The glass-fronted door of the studio space is smashed and the door itself hanging open. Traces of blood adhere to the door and create a path up the stairs to one of the sculpture studios on the second floor. The window of that studio is broken from the inside -- glass fell into the narrow strip of land behind the studio and between the safety fence. The break itself is small, as though something were flung through the window with great force.

The blood trail ends completely in the upstairs sculpture studio.

[End Sidebar]

“Major Hathaway’s group took the escarpment side of the town and then circled around the far end toward the spot where they were building the theater. Most of what they found was concentrated in the arts studio -- none of the storage outbuildings were touched, they were all padlocked shut, until they came to the new construction.” He slides a photograph across to me, one I had heard referenced by my contacts among the State and local police forces, but which I have never seen until now. “And that was some weird shit, let me tell you.”

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photos #21 - 28:

Multiple views of the semi-complete outdoor theater/amphitheater. What would have been the stage is no more than a skeletal hint of a structure but the seating is more or less complete: low-backed wooden benches sitting on top of elaborately carved sandstone supports in two concentric semi-circles, four rows each, with an aisle between them.

At the end of the aisle, in front of what would have been the stage, is the remains of a large firepit dug several inches into the underlying stone, ringed in more stones, containing the remains of a large bonfire. The stones ringing the firepit are likewise elaborately carved in a style distinctly different from the bench supports: they are jagged, appear to be broken from several larger stones, and are covered in petroglyphs: perfectly executed circles lined inside with triangular forms, inward-turning spirals, concentric bullseye figures surrounded in a dozen smaller circles around the outer edge. Some of them are splashed with a dark semi-liquid substance.

The two rows of benches closest to the fire are covered in upholstered throw cushions and a few throw blankets here and there. Discarded clothing is scattered between them. Half-hidden beneath someone’s sports bra and semi-buried in the sand is a knife, its hilt carved from horn of some sort partially wrapped in leather, its blade roughly leaf-shaped and made of carefully shaped obsidian.

[End Sidebar]

“There were rumors, of course -- had been for years. You can’t put a bunch of artsy-fartsy types out in the middle of nowhere, have minimal interaction with the outside world, and not have rumors. And where there’s rumors, there’s complaints.” Mr. Flores hands over a sheaf of papers: noise complaints, public disturbance complaints, the basic legal nuisances used to make nontraditional communities miserable when there’s no other way to do it. “We investigated, of course, but the Center was, for a pack of allegedly immoral bohemian libertines, pretty hard on the straight and narrow. Minors were not allowed to apply for residency even if they would be legal adults before the residency started. Minimum age of participation in any program was twenty-one. Zero tolerance policy for drug or alcohol abuse or for sexual harassment. Which isn’t to say that they were perfectly squeaky clean. We got called a couple times from inside for domestic disturbances, because they allowed couples to apply together, and residents to bring plus ones if they could pony up for it, and even the best couples sometimes don’t stay that way. But nothing like this.” He shakes his head. “Nothing even close. Certainly nothing to indicate that they directors were actually running a cult.”

[Begin Sidebar:

Crime Scene Photos #29 - 40:

The interior of the artists’ residency in a now-familiar state of disarray: evidence of attempts by the residents to secure themselves in their rooms, apparently to no avail, indicators of a struggle in some instances, including blood spatter on the walls, on the floor, in one case across the ceiling.

Inside the central administration building, the destruction is even more significant. The shelves in the community lending library are reduced to kindling, the books themselves to little more than empty covers lost amid snowdrifts of shredded pages. The main office has been completely destroyed: metal desks twisted apart, their fragments embedded in the walls and the floor. Not a single computer or other piece of technology escapes destruction.

The downstairs storage rooms, where the community stored years of hardcopy records in filing boxes and cabinets, are strangely untouched, though all the doors have been torn off their hinges.

At the far end of the corridor stands one intact door: solid wood, carved with a sequence of glyphs similar to those on the stones outside around the firepit. A second and thematically distinct set of carvings adorns the frame. Inside the room stands a single object: a cage consisting of heavy forged iron bars sunk into eight inch thick wooden railroad ties, slightly more than six feet long and three feet wide, containing a thin pallet, a pillow, and a blanket. All three items are bloody and a pool of the same spreads out from beneath the cage.

The bars of the cage are meticulously carved with glyphs identical to those on the door and the doorframe, as are the railroad ties. Two sets of iron manacles, one attached to the head of the cage by a heavy length of chain, the other to the foot, are similarly marked though in the case of both it seems as though the manacles and the chain were cast in that design. The door of the cage is secured with a heavy padlock of similar manufacture.

The walls, the floor, and even the ceiling are covered in concentric lines of the same visual script, some images repeating from the door to the cage to the rocks around the firepit, some completely different.

In the far corner of the room, the only example of actual human remains recovered in Deadlock Gorge that night: a human hand, roughly severed just above the wrist, ragged ends of bone clearly visible. Nearby lies a second obsidian knife, its blade and handle bloodstained.

[End Sidebar]

“We found the kid downstairs -- we might not have found him at all, but one of the officers in my search group thought she saw something moving at the head of the stairs that led down to the storage area.” Mr. Flores pours himself another glass of iced, drinks, stares out into the deepening twilight for several minutes. “He...was not in a good way -- it was lucky Hathaway had her lockpicking tool on her, because otherwise we’d never have gotten those manacles open. I don’t think Forensics ever actually found the key to the damn things. We had to jimmy all the locks just to get him out and there wasn’t much he could do to help, hurt as he was. The EMTs told me he was lucky to be alive -- one of the stab wounds knicked the abdominal aorta and he was in the process of bleeding to death internally when we found him. The blood on the knife we found was his. The hand belonged to Val Kalloway, the Center’s director of operations, according to the fingerprints.” A humorless smile. “We never did find anyone else.”

In fact, none of the experts brought in to examine Deadlock Gorge after that night found anything else. In the days and weeks that followed, law enforcement officials from Federal, State, and local agencies combed every inch of the town and the canyon beyond for any trace of the missing inhabitants of the Starry Desert Center For Arts and Sciences. There were four writers plus the program director on site for the September through December residency term; there were six artists plus the art residency director. The Director of Operations and six members of the permanent instruction staff plus two administrative personnel lived in a smaller residence behind the main administration building.

Twenty-one people disappeared without a trace that night. Cadaver-sniffing dogs found no evidence of hidden human remains, either in the town or in the canyon. The forensic scientists who processed the scene found copious evidence of habitation by the the people who were supposed to be there but no evidence whatsoever of any invaders, intruders, or involvement by outside individuals. The lone survivor -- a juvenile male listed as John Doe in the official documentation of the incident -- was transported via ambulance to the University Hospital. It is my understanding that he survived, despite the severity of his injuries and his overall condition, which was something other than ideal, and that he gave an official statement to the authorities. Both that statement, and the documents confirming his identity, are sealed by Federal district court order and have never been released to the public. A FOIA request I made in regard to this issue was summarily rejected.

Mr. Flores gifted me a copy of his entire casefile on the incident -- the so-called “Massacre In Deadlock Gorge” -- before I left that night and wished me luck.

“Of all the unsolved cases I’ve had in my time -- and there have been a couple -- that’s the one that’s caused me the most sleepless nights over the years.” He admitted as he walked me to my car. “Because if it could happen there, who’s to say it couldn’t happen somewhere else? Lots of small places where small numbers of people live now, after the Crisis, and we don’t even have official eyes on them all. Someday, it’s going to happen again.”

*

Daniel Locke was not the sort of person one would reasonably expect to find running a gang of ruthless outlaws out of a bloodsoaked canyon in the desert but, well, he did.

He was the scion of a wealthy Massachusetts family, a step below the true northeastern aristocratic clans of the day but rich enough from their own endeavors that their “lesser” social cachet hardly impeded them. His elder brother, Alexander, graduated from Harvard and served terms in both the Massachusetts State Senate and in the US House of Representatives. His younger sister, Margaret, graduated from Mount Holyoke and married well, repeatedly, further enhancing the family’s fortunes.

Daniel himself attended Dartmouth and evidently graduated with sufficient academic success that his doting parents sent him on a Grand Tour of Europe, a rite of passage beloved by the economic elite of the United States in the years leading up to the Civil War. We know, as a result of his own extensive journals on the topic -- Locke loved to write, particularly about himself -- that his Tour departed from the well-beaten path of posing for portraiture among majestic Roman ruins in Italy rather early in the proceedings. His writings on the topic are erudite and scathing, lambasting the insipidity of it all, scrabbling for meaning amid the pretty wreckage instead of seeking the true legacy of lost knowledge, sparing not even his family, “who seemed to content to profit from the scholarly endeavors of earlier, better generations,” and I quote. At the point in the standard Grand Tour itinerary where the average wealthy American would winter in Geneva, writing odes to the lake and/or the Rhone, sipping chocolate and flirting with beautiful young women (apple-cheeked Swiss milkmaid variety), Daniel Locke abandoned his traveling companions and his guide and continued on. In the last of the journals he wrote in Switzerland, entrusted to a college friend for delivery to his parents, he indicated his intent to seek a hidden school in the mountains of the uttermost (European) East.

And then he vanished.

For more than ten years.

When next he appears in the historical record, it’s on a Wanted poster in the New Mexico Territory. A relatively modest reward is offered for his capture on charges related to a stagecoach robbery on the road between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. That would, over the next handful of years, change rather rapidly: at the time of his putative death, the bounty on his head was over $15000, one of the highest in the history of the Old West, and the charges had grown to include murder and rape as well as a spectacular and brazen series of robberies. His own initial successes as an outlaw attracted to him a band of likeminded confederates and together they terrorized communities on both sides of the New Mexico-Arizona territorial border.

They were called the Deadlock Gang: Daniel “Deadeye” Locke, who claimed that his uncanny skill with a gun was a gift from the hands of the Devil himself, for which he had given his mortal soul; Black Frank O’Rourke, an Irishman who fled New York just ahead of the hangman, having murdered both his wife and her lover; Jefferson “Skinner” Delacour, an infamous former Confederate officer and fugitive slave-hunter; Sarah “Red” Reed, a young woman from a long line of cattle rustlers, horse thieves, bootleggers, and fences. Others came went but they formed the core of the group and, for four bloody years in the late 1870s to the early 1880s, they held sway over a constantly shifting court of rogues and killers from the little town in the canyon that came to be known as Deadlock Gorge. In many ways, they owed their success to the possession of that stronghold: the entrances and exits of the Gorge were natural chokepoints, easy for a relatively small group of defenders to hold, and the twisting, switchback routes along the canyon floor and through the town itself lent a significant advantage to anyone familiar with their tricks. It couldn’t last, of course: each of the gang’s members were wanted individually for crimes ranging from murder to bank robbery to forgery and, together, they represented a significant threat to law and order as well as an almost impossibly huge payday for bounty hunters.

In the end, it was a joint operation of the US Marshals, a detachment of the regular Army, and a posse of personally interested individuals, many of them the friends and kin of the Deadlock Gang’s many victims, to finally take them down. Light artillery pieces were involved. So were at least two gatling guns. There are still places along the rim of the canyon where the scars of the battle are visible to this day. By the time the shooting was over, more than half the Marshals, no small number of the soldiers, a goodly portion of the vengeful posse, and the entire Deadlock Gang lay dead. Or, at least, it was presumed that the entire Deadlock Gang was dead. Their bodies were recovered from the bullet-riddled ruins of the saloon/inn that they used as the site of their last stand, as were their personal possessions: an astonishing quantity of ill-gotten lucre, firearms, explosives, and Daniel Locke’s many, many, many journals, which he had never ceased to write and excerpts from which ultimately served to confirm his identity to his horrified family back East. All but one was buried in Fairview Cemetery in Albuquerque -- that one being Daniel Locke himself, whose body disappeared before it could be interred. The Locke family denied any involvement in the matter and, in fact, his name was formally stricken from the family lineage. They refused to take possession of any of his mortal effects, leaving his journals and his allegedly hell-forged six-gun to the authorities to dispose of as they wished. Packed away in an ironbound steamer trunk, they passed through numerous hands over the course of a century before finally landing in the possession of the University of New Mexico Sante Fe Historical Documents Archive where they were promptly deposited in the storage annex and forgotten again for nearly a second century.

They were rediscovered in the early 2050s when the Historical Document Archive began an aggressive program of content digitization for the preservation of at-risk documents. The revelation that the so-called “Deadlock Journals” still existed sent a shockwave through the loose community of historians focused on the Old West -- it was generally assumed that they had been destroyed at some point, surviving only in the occasional excerpt published by the more salacious tabloid newspapers of the day. It’s easy to understand why the discovery was such a sensation: college educated outlaws who can’t stop writing about everything they see, hear, do, and think are rare as hen’s teeth, and Daniel Locke continued to be a particularly witty, insightful, and erudite example of the breed right up to the end of his life. His authorial voice is distinct and precise, with a natural storyteller’s gift for phrase-turning and an artist’s eye for detail. In fact, several of the journals are enlivened with his pen-and-ink drawings and the occasional watercolor rendering of landscapes and his cohorts, as well as duplications of the petroglyph-bearing standing stones that once ringed Deadlock Gorge. A genuine polymath, he spoke and wrote in several languages, including his native English, Spanish, French, modern Italian, Latin, two southern Athabaskan dialects, and Romanian.

The “Romanian Memoirs” are by far the most interesting to me because it is in them, and them alone, that he discusses at any length the ten years he spent in Europe, if only obliquely in many cases. What one can surmise is that he did, indeed, find the school he sought and, after many trials, won entry to it, that he drank deep of the wells of secret knowledge and, contrary to his boasts to the contrary, he was one of the fortunates who left its walls with his soul no more in hock to unholy powers than the cost of his tuition. More importantly, they detail his motives for abandoning a life of wealth and ease among the Yankee upper crust for brutal outlawry on the frontier: something there reached out and called to him almost as soon as he landed at the port of New Orleans and he could no more deny its summons than he could refuse to drink water or breathe air. Something that lay waiting beneath the sands, chained deep within the blood-red stone, something that could not free itself but required willing hands to act as its protector and, eventually, its redeemer. Locke traveled west, across Texas, into the territory of New Mexico, where in the bloody, water-carved canyon that eventually bore a bastardized version of his name, he apparently found what he sought and willingly chose to become its servant, feeding it a bounty of fear and pain and blood. He knew, eventually, that it would have to end -- they were far too bold in their depredations, far too cruel in their savagery to be left to their tasks for very long -- and he evidently prepared for that eventuality. He left his “grimoire” and his tools encased somewhere in the webwork of sandstone caverns woven through the walls of the canyon for his “heirs” to find, a bequest that has, theoretically at least, remained unrecovered.

Daniel Locke, during his time in the west, fathered at least three natural children: his daughters Charity Needless (with Silver City prostitute Katherine Needless) and Amelia Reed (with Ruth Reed, the younger sister of his partner in crime, Sarah Reed) and an unnamed son who was only a few weeks old at the time of Locke’s death. A cursory examination of birth and death records show the descendants of his daughters are scattered all over the southwestern United States. The Reeds relocated to California in the bloody aftermath of the legitimate massacre in Deadlock Gorge. Katherine Needless died of tuberculosis in an asylum in the Arizona Territories -- her daughter became a Ward of the Court, eventually a schoolteacher, and married in due course. If any of them sought the inheritance their father left for them, it has not entered into any historical record that I can access.

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#WIP Massacre In Deadlock Gorge #I'll fix the formatting later