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lostinfic · 5 years

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2. Indonesia, summer (cont’d)

Summary: She writes for magazines about luxurious resorts in exotic places and five-star hotels in glamorous cities. He’s photographed devastated war zones, refugee camps and child soldiers. For both of them travel is an escape, but he’s had enough of this grim reality, and she’s had enough of this disconnected fantasy. Perhaps together they can find something in between, something real, and stop running from themselves. Each season, a new destination and a chance to grow closer.

Pairing: Alec Hardy x Hannah Baxter Rating: Mature~ish (for now) Word count: 2.6k

Prologue | Chap. 1 | Ao3

The sun had sunk halfway down the Indian ocean. On the beach, the hotel staff were retrieving lounge chairs and parasols for the night. Only a few couples lingered on the shore. The distant echo of conversation and clanking dishes came from the terraces of the hotel’s restaurants.

Sun-heated sand slipped into Hannah’s sandals and splashed against her calves. She removed her shoes and walked in shallow water instead.

Hardy walked fast, ahead of her, as if ashamed to be seen with her, but he still sporadically checked on her over his shoulder. “Watch out, there’s a crab.”

They didn’t exchange more than a few words. She didn’t peg him as the small talk kind anyway, so she didn’t make an effort. He scanned the beach, eyes narrowed, serious dimples in his cheeks. He kept his hands poised on the camera hanging around his neck. This was no romantic stroll. They were colleagues, out on the prowl, chasing a scoop— and she loved it.

They were looking for that bunker-like structure Hannah had seen in the background of her selfie, from the sailboat excursion. Despite declaring she could guide him there, she had only a vague idea of where it might be located. Hardy had a real, old-school compass to guide them westward, but darkness would make it harder to find.

The main structure of the resort faded into impressionist patches of light. They still passed by smaller buildings— private villas, storage, kayak rental kiosk— but they were fewer and farther in between.

“I think it’s on the other side of that,” Hannah said. She pointed at a rock formation ahead. It was much taller than a human, came form inland and dipped into the sea, essentially blocking the whole width of the beach. She was no geologist, but it looked like volcanic rock to her, like fat rolls of lava descended from the center of the island. At low tide, barnacles and sea grapes clung to its side. A line of orange buoys extended from it, far into the sea to mark out the end of the resort’s beach.

By the time they reached the rock, only the full moon illuminated their path. Hardy shined a tiny LED flashlight over its surface.

Hannah thought she could skirt around it in the water and cross over the buoys. Hardy wasn’t too keen on trudging through water and opted to hike over the rock instead. Hannah walked farther into the sea. It was deeper than she’d anticipated. She was in up to mid-thighs before even reaching the buoys. She retreated and climbed behind Hardy. Her sandals slid over the slimy rock. He offered his hand. She held on to it tightly as he hauled her up on top of the rock formation.

“Wow!”

In the bay, on the other side, the shore sparkled with thousands of tiny electric-blue dots, like something out of a science-fiction movie. The ebb and flow of the water stirred and alighted them. Everything else around was dark.

Hannah grinned, in all her trips, she’d never seen anything like it.

“It’s gorgeous.”

“Bioluminescent plankton,” Hardy supplied.

They climbed down the other side, his hand at her elbow in case she slipped.

“D’you think I can touch it?”

He shrugged. “It’s always in the water, you just don’t usually see it.”

She kicked off her sandals once more and tiptoed into the sea. She giggled like a child, each step generated more blue dots.

“It lights up when it’s agitated,” Hardy explained. “There must be some strong current around here.”

Hannah kicked the water, propelling a luminous arc of plankton in the air. She heard the camera shutter, and glanced at Hardy over her shoulder.

“Perv,” she joked.

He chuckled, and she wished she could see his smile.

“Why is it only on this side—eeww!”

Something slimy covered her ankle. Panicked, she kicked it off but lost balance. Hardy caught her in the nick of time. She grasped his shoulders until she was steady again, and then they hopped out of the water.

“Thanks,” she said out of breath, heart still hammering. His arms remained around her. “Christ, what was that?”

Hardy shone his torchlight on the water. There was a squid, dead, decomposing even. The flashlight revealed more dead fish floating on the surface. Hannah shivered with disgust and hid her face against Hardy’s shoulder.

“We must be close to something,” he said. “Bioluminescence can indicate harmful algae in the water.”

“You could have said before.”

“You alright?” He aimed the light at her legs.

“I’m fine.”

Truth be told, all she wanted now was to go back to her room and take a shower. But, remembering Duncan’s grating “stick to what you’re good at” comment, she persevered. A sigh puffed up her cheeks, and she took off after Hardy.

“Did you come here specifically to investigate?” she asked him.

“Aye. A former colleague called me. You?”

“I’m working but I wasn’t sent here for this. I’m writing a piece on the resort for Elite Travelers.”

He stopped dead in his tracks. “Thought you said you’re a journalist.”

“I am a journalist.”

He scoffed. “That’s a liberal use of the word.”

Hannah gaped in outrage. How dare he? Before she could reply, he started walking again, faster.

“And who do you work for?”

“Depends.”

“Don’t give out everything, it’s embarrassing,” she said sarcastically.

“This is freelance work.”

“But who have you worked for before? Name one if you’re so much better than me.”

“The Broadchurch Echo… The New York Times.”

“Alright, well, it doesn’t matter, I want to expose this sham as much as you.”

“No.” He stopped walking, and she nearly bumped into him. “This is my job, my life, you’re just—“

“My readers will care.”

“Your readers?” he all but squeaked. “They’re the problem.”

“I’m trying to learn here, okay?”

“You gotta do more than that.”

“I just— Urgh! I don’t want to get too involved, people start expecting things from you and I can’t— I can’t do that.”

They started walking again. She thought he’d dropped the subject, but ten minutes later, he asked: “Who pays for your stay here? And the article you’re writing. Who’s paying you?”

“What? The magazine, of course.”

“Right, who’s paying them?”

“Do I really need to explain this to you? Subscriptions, advertisement…”

“The owners of the resort? The local government?”

“No, it’s not like that,” she replied.

“How can you be sure, uh? This, your magazine, your article, it’s nothing more than propaganda.”

God, that man was infuriating. But he had sowed doubt in her mind. Was that why Duncan didn’t want her to cover ecotourism? What if she was just a tool?

She breathed audibly out of her nose and stalked past Hardy. “I’m gonna find that bloody bunker,” she muttered.

Not long after, they saw the bunker-like building in the distance, inland. An industrial spotlight hung above its metal door. It cast an artificial white light over its surroundings. Flies and moths buzzed around it. There was one security camera too, and they tried to stay out of its scope.

“Out-bloody-standing,” Hardy whispered. He clapped her too hard on the shoulder. “You found it.” He raised his camera and took several pictures.

It was still almost ten feet away and then bushes blocked the path. As they approached, a sound of water, distinct from the waves, grew louder. There was some kind of river behind the vegetation. She rose on her tiptoes, to look over the narrow hedge. She couldn’t quite see the river and she realized this was because it was at the bottom of a ravine. The water was maybe twelve feet below, between steep walls of rock and soil. It created a natural moat around the building. There seemed to be no way around it, and the rest of the building was protected by an electric fence.

“What now? We can’t get any closer,” she said.

“Yes, we can.”

She watched, aghast, as he waded through the bushes to the ravine. What was he doing? It was too wide to jump over. He crouched on the edge. His foot slipped and rocks tumbled below with a delayed echo.

“You’re not thinking of climbing down, are you?” He didn’t answer. “Hardy?”

Hannah cursed under her breath and trudged through the thorny bushes. She shivered at the thought of all the creepy crawlies in there. When she joined him, he was testing the strength of a branch to rappel down the ravine.

“You’ll kill yourself,” she said.

“If that’s what it takes.”

They stared at each other, his eyes defiant. The color drain from her face.

“What?”

“Maybe if a white man dies people will finally care about what’s happening here.”

She rolled her eyes and grabbed his arm. “Oh no, you’re not doing this to me.” Hardy was in a too precarious position to resist her tug, but Hannah expected him to fight back. So she pulled with all her strength and weight, and they stumbled backwards. Her foot caught in a root. They fell to the ground, Hardy landed on top of her. His camera knocked her on the jaw.

“OW!”

His eyes widened. “Sorry.” He touched her jaw lightly, and it struck her how a man so careless with himself, could be so gentle with her. Their eyes met, and she became very aware of his body covering hers.

“Berhenti! Berhenti!” yelled a security guard, running towards them. Their argument must have alerted him.

“Bollocks.”

They stood up.

The man’s cap flew off his head as he ran faster. They could outrun him for sure, but Hardy didn’t budge. The security guard was a middle-age Indonesian man with small sticky-out ears. Upon noticing they were not locals, he switched to English. “Stop! You cannot be here. Forbidden. You come with me.”

Arms crossed, Hardy towered over him. “What are you hiding, uh? Who are you protecting?”

“You come with me.” He grabbed a walkie-talkie from his utility belt, to call for back-up perhaps. He had a stun gun too.

“They’re destroying your island, your birthplace,” Hardy continued. “Report us to your management and this will go on. But we can help change this situation that’s—”

“Look, we were not doing anything wrong,” Hannah intervened before Hardy got them in trouble. She looped her arm through his. “Just wandering, exploring. It’s such a romantic place, we got carried away…”

She fluttered her eyelashes at Hardy, but he made no attempt at playing along. The security guard lowered his walkie-talkie.

“I understand it’s important that we don’t come here. I’m sure there’s a good reason, it looks dangerous. Really, it’s our fault, we shouldn’t be trespassing.”

Hardy finally looked at her, appalled by her apologies. Hannah continued, taking on a honeyed voice and offering her nicest smile.

“We don’t want you to get in trouble with your boss. I mean, you would, wouldn’t you? Be in trouble that is, if your boss knew we’d wandered all the way here by accident.”

It took a moment for Hannah’s words to sink in, after a few blinks, the security guard’s blank stare turned into a smile.

“Yes, yes. Okay. You leave, I”— he mimed zipping and locking his mouth— “no trouble for you. Thank you for me, okay?”

She nudged Hardy. “Give him some money.”

“I’m not participating in corruption.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” She had a few Rupiahs folded in her phone case, and she handed them all to the man. “Can you show us the way back? I think we got a little lost. Thank you, you’re very kind.”

The security guard escorted them back to the lobby. The concierge noticed them arriving together, but the guard lied and said he’d found them lost. It reassured Hannah that he wouldn’t talk. Under no suspicion, she would be free to continue investigating. If only Hardy hadn’t gotten on his high horse, they could already have proof of the resort’s scam.

As they walked towards the south wing of the hotel, Hannah kept glancing at him expectantly.

“Wha’?”

“Aren’t you going to thank me for saving your arse?” she said.

“Sorry? Saving my arse! He could’ve helped us more if you hadn’t bribed him. If I’d had time to convince him—”

“Not with the way you were talking to him. You’re just so fucking condescending.”

He crossed his arms and clenched his jaw.

“So the hotel’s not very good for the environment. Is it really worth risking your life for?” Hannah asked.

He huffed impatiently and took her aside. He told her everything he knew: the foreign investors, the Navy evicting families, the corruption, the threats to his journalist friend, the destruction of mangroves and fields. It was so much bigger than she’d imagined. Overwhelmingly so. He told her about the Tirrand family. How the father tried to protect his farm and received five bullets to the chest. In front of his own daughter. Hannah thought of that little girl with the fierce eyes, dauntless now that she’d already seen the worst possible thing.

Hannah felt suddenly very cold. She cared about what had happened. And then she didn’t. She turned her gaze towards the window and the starlit sea.

“It would be a shame not to share such beauty with the world,” she said in a voice that seemed to come from outside herself. “I don’t like how it happened, but why should they keep this island to themselves?”

“What are you on about?”

“I’m just saying, what’s done is done,” she continued without looking at him. “They can’t go back, the resort’s built, might as well make the best of it.”

She was aware of the strain in her cheeks as she smiled.

“You need some rest,” he said.

What a pretentious wanker, she hoped to never see him again.

______

Chapter 3: Singapore

#hardy x hannah #Broadchurch #secret diary of a call girl #Alec Hardy #romantic plankton #travelers AU #lostinfic writes stuff

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theclaravoyant · 7 years

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AN ~ @memorizingthedigitsofpi graphic for a platonic DaisyKara fic reminded me that I hadn’t actually ended up posting this romantic DaisyKara yet! The original prompter was Anon so if you’re out there, I hope you find and enjoy this. Also tagging @buckysbears bc... idk, traumatised sapphics going hiking feels like your aesthetic. KINDA wish I’d given them a husky to take with them ngl. and that I’d had wayyyy more time to write. but ANYWAY

Read on AO3.

Daisy shut the boot of the car with a satisfying slam, and drew a deep breath of the fresh forest air. Somehow, she’d come to believe that pine trees didn’t really have a smell; that it had been invented to sell cleaning products and air freshener, and those little things that dangled off people’s steering wheels. Now as she took her first breath of truly fresh air in – days, months, perhaps even years? – she knew why people had spent so long trying to capture its essence.

“Are you sure about this?”

Kara was frowning up at the mountains, her backpack slumped in the gravel at her feet. Daisy frowned back.

“What’s there not to be sure about?”

“Well, have you ever hiked? What if we get eaten by a bear? What if one of us falls down a ravine? I’m just being practical, that’s all.”

“This is a popular National Park, babe, not the Amazon. We have a phone and a satellite phone and a first aid kit, I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

Daisy rolled her eyes as good-naturedly as she could in the face of Kara’s fretting. While it was frustrating, especially after such a long trip, Daisy had to remind herself that Kara had good reason to worry. The same reason that woke Kara in the middle of the night or set her screaming when she trapped herself in the shower. Daisy had to remind herself that she knew some of the darkness behind Kara’s hesitation and that she sometimes let it run wild with her. In times like those, she needed Kara to hold her back. In times like these, she hoped, it was Kara who needed her to nudge her forward. Baby steps.

“Look,” Daisy offered. “We don’t have to go on the trails if you really don’t want to. There’s a picnic area and a little café just down the entrance path here. Let’s just have lunch. K?”

Kara nodded, and swung the bag onto her back. Her fingers dug into the straps at first as if holding it in place would somehow make her feel steadier, but what really worked was when Daisy held out her hand and the new place didn’t feel so foreign anymore. Holding tightly, she followed Daisy down the path and every now and then, looked back to the car until her heart slowed down and she acclimatised. She remembered how it had felt to sing into the sunshine with Daisy on the winding paths that led up here. She’d come this far. She breathed in deep and started to notice the smell of the air and the calls of the birds, and why Daisy had brought her out here.

“It feels…” she whispered, not sure quite what she was feeling, or how to put it into words.

“I know,” Daisy agreed, smiling back as if the freedom of the forest was a secret only they knew.

She dropped Kara’s hand as a Ranger approached, smiling warmly.

“Can I help you ladies?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s no problem,” Daisy insisted, brushing him off instinctively. “We’re just looking for the café?”

“Not yet!” Kara interrupted. “The walk first. I want to do it. Let’s go.”

The Ranger glanced between them. “Well, the café’s just on your twelve there, and the trails start over by that courtyard. If you’re not experienced hikers I’d recommend a squirrel. Stay away from the bear grade.”

He gestured to a sign nearby, detailing squirrel, moose and bear as the levels of difficulty of the trails on this particular walk. Daisy felt the thrill of a challenge between her toes.

“Sure thing,” she promised.

Fortunately, Daisy was well trained in the art of not grinning as deviously as she felt she should in moments like those. Besides, she was not foolish enough to throw away the advice of an expert, especially not when Kara was at risk too, and already out of her comfort zone. Her wild - reckless? – heart pleaded with her to race straight up the bear trail. What would she find? More animals up there, since it was less used? Rock-climbing? Waterfalls?

But she was not here today to skin her knees, so she gestured for Kara to lead the way down the more trodden squirrel path. It was warm, and a little muggier than she’d been expecting as they headed deeper into the tree cover. The occasional bug darted past her face.

“Oh, hey, look!” Kara cried, and pointed after one of them: a dragonfly, that landed for a moment on a nearby tree. Daisy screwed up her nose a little; curious, and a little disgusted. Still, Kara stared at the dragonfly in awe and Daisy couldn’t bring herself to make a joke and break the moment.

Of course, the dragonfly soon darted off again and both of them jumped, but Kara soon recovered a small smile. Daisy smiled back.

“See?” she prodded. “It’s not so bad out here.”

“Not bad at all,” Kara agreed.

They continued on their trek with a lighter step now; looking around, eyes and hearts back to taking in the forest and the wildlife around them. They posed for photos against tree-trunks, found a hedgehog, jumped a stream, and the outside world slipped away and the past slipped away and the chains and the nightmares slipped away until they were two women and freedom.

Laughing, Kara pulled Daisy to a stop on a rocky shore and drew her in for a kiss. A long one, as sparkling and warm as the sun on the river. The water babbled around them and a cormorant jumped a few feet away to continue its fishing in peace but they paid it no mind. Kara was breathless, and Daisy was as struck by the smile on her face and the ease in her fingers as she was by the sun on her luminous copper-brown skin.

“Damn, we must look so good right now,” Daisy murmured, imagining a sweeping camera shot around them, or at the very least a killer Instagram filter; such was the warmth, the richness, the movie-magic perfection of this moment. Kara laughed, Daisy’s humour warming her heart. Always so patient, that one, although she didn’t think she was.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” Kara said, linking her fingers with Daisy’s as they walked on. They strolled along the riverbank hand in hand.

“Any time,” Daisy promised. “Any time.”

#daisy johnson #aos fic #daisyjohnsonfic #aosfemslash #aospositivitynet #aosficnet2 #prompt me stuff #clara's fic tag #daisy x kara #daisykara #women of shield

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autolovecraft · 7 years

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He knew he did walk and the thing to do now was to stop it.

Mazurewicz two floors below, and in desperation he seized his hat and walked out into the room a curious little fragment of bone.

About two o'clock he went out for lunch and as he threaded the narrow lanes of the city he found himself turning always to the southeast. The witch—old Keziah—Nahab—that must have meant her death. Gilman by the shoulders, yanking him out of bed and into empty space, and suddenly he realized just where the source of the pull lay. Now he felt that a monstrous and unthinkable relationship was crystallizing, and only with tremendous resolution could Gilman drag himself into the old house and up the rickety stairs. By this time Dombrowski, Choynski, Desrochers, Mazurewicz, and the nightmare shape of Brown Jenkin scrambled up over the brink of the narrow triangular gulf.

Just what had really happened was maddeningly obscure, and for a moment both Gilman and Elwood canvassed the local museums in an effort to identify the strange spiky image on the table which did not belong there, and a second look left no room for doubt. At three o'clock he took some lunch at a restaurant, noting meanwhile that the pull had either lessened or divided itself. Then he saw the two shapes laboriously crawling toward him—the old witch and small furry thing advancing toward him over the carpeted floor. On the other hand. Elwood said, showed no tendency to talk or rise in his sleep? The passage through the vague abysses seething around him. There had been soft talking, too—and as he began to pick up in his mathematics, and he felt himself helpless in the formless grasp of the iridescent bubble-congeries and the little polyhedron—the strange sunburn—the wrist-wound—the unexplained image—the muddy feet—the throat marks—the tales and fears of the superstitious foreigners, whose imaginations had become highly excited. He must meet the Black Man and go with them all to the throne of Chaos where reigns the mindless daemon-sultan Azathoth? No, he had thought at first that Gilman's window was dark, but then he had seen in the peaked space in the other dream, while from a lesser distance the old woman and the fanged, furry thing began tittering a continuation of the unknown ritual, while the narrow road ahead led to Innsmouth—that ancient, half-deserted town which Arkham people were so curiously unwilling to visit. Mazurewicz came home at six o'clock and said people at the mill were whispering that the Walpurgis revels would be held in the dark ravine beyond Meadow Hill and on the unpeopled island in the river.

Elwood said, showed no tendency to talk or rise in his sleep.

He was glad to sink into the vaguely roaring twilight abysses—the green hillside—the blistering terrace—the pulls from the stars—the ultimate black vortex—the black man—the muddy alley and the stairs—the old witch and the fanged, furry thing began tittering a continuation of the unknown ritual, while the spiky arms gave them a maximum diameter of about two and a half inches. Now he was praying because the Witches' Sabbath was drawing near. Not only did they fail to correspond with any known element, but they did not even fit the vacant places reserved for probable elements in the periodic system. The base of the barrel. Then, long after both he and Gilman had retired, the atrocious shrieking began. As once before, the hideous crone seized Gilman by the shoulders, yanking him out of bed and into empty space, or to similar dimensional phases of other space-time continuum—and that the converse would be likewise true. There had been virtually a tunnel through his body—something had eaten his heart out.

Very often he stumbled, for his eyes and ears were chained to an extremely lofty point in the blank blue sky.

That this could be accomplished without loss of life was in many cases conceivable. Of this he had been assured by Frank Elwood, the one fellow-student whose poverty forced him to room in this squalid and unpopular house. He had been taken that way every year ever since she could remember. Elwood, whose thoughts on the entire episode are sometimes almost maddening, came back to college the next autumn and was graduated in the following December, and it could speak all languages. They decided, however, could induce the stolid landlord to let him investigate either of these two closed spaces. Doctor Malkowski—a local practitioner who would repeat no tales where they might prove embarrassing—and he thought that their progress had not been near Joe's room, nor anywhere else—and it meant no good when they held off like that. Gilman let the cheap metal crucifix hang idly from a knob on his host's dresser. Its shrill loathsome tittering struck more and more intently at the corner where the down-slanting ceiling met the inward-slanting wall. By the time he had reached the bridge over the Miskatonic he was in a dark, muddy, unknown alley of foetid odors with the rotting walls of ancient houses towering up on every hand. Everything he saw was unspeakably menacing and horrible; and whenever one of the knobs ended in a jagged break, corresponding to its former point of attachment to the dream-luminance was utterly beyond sane harborage. It must have been shod, since there was a faint suggestion behind the surface that everything of that monstrous past might not—at least in the darkest, narrowest, and most intricately crooked alleys—have utterly perished. A room was easy to secure, for the Walpurgis-rhythm in whose cosmic timbre would be concentrated all the primal, ultimate space-time continua—though of course there must be vast numbers of mutually uninhabitable even though mathematically juxtaposed bodies or zones of space.

Non-Euclidean calculus and quantum physics are enough to stretch any brain, and when one mixes them with folklore, and tries to trace a strange background of multi-dimensional reality behind the ghoulish hints of the Gothic tales and the wild whispers of the chimney-corner, one can hardly expect to be wholly free from disquieting dreams.

His recollections were very confused, but the workmen who found it whisper in shocked tones about the long, brownish hairs with which it was associated. Again the infinitude of the shrieking abysses flashed past him, but in another second he thought he had glimpsed that light through the cracks around the door. At night the subtle stirring of the black city outside, the sinister scurrying of rats in the partition all the evening, but paid little attention to them. For some time, apparently, the curious angles of Gilman's room had been found in a public rubbish-can.

#H.P. Lovecraft #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains #The Dreams in the Witch-House #1933 #The Dreams in the Witch-House week

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