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notmanagingmymischief · 3 years

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4 ᴛɪᴍᴇꜱ ᴀʟᴍᴀ ᴋɪʟʟᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴏʟɪᴄᴇᴍᴀɴ, ᴀɴᴅ 1 ᴛɪᴍᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴅɪᴅ ɪᴛ ꜰᴏʀ ʜᴇʀ.

remember when Alma says "I hope I won't have the landlord knocking on my door with the police again. I've had to kill them twice this month, it's been terribly inconvenient!"

yeah i took that line literally so enjoy our hobbyist killer Alma Peregrine committing murder xx

warnings: graphic descriptions of violence, murder, blood

word count:

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enjoy xx

The first time Alma had to do it, she had some trouble actually committing to it. After all, her role was to protect, not harm. But when the policeman showed up at her home, claiming that one or more of her children had caused a commotion in the town and, supposedly, damaged property, leading to the police demanding to take them into custody, the ymbryne really had no choice. He refused to be put off by her insistence of her children's innocence. So she put on her best polite smile and invited him in. He huffed, but obeyed, the look in Alma's eyes a bit too intimidating to deny her request. She lingered behind him, leading the man to the kitchen and avoiding the others. Once he slipped inside, she quickly closed the door and pretended to prepare some tea. "So, could you tell me what exactly my children have allegedly done?" she asked, hoping to distract him. It worked, and like a fool he turned his back to look at something on the wall while he responded.

Alma's fingers wrapped around the handle of a freshly sharpened knife that sat beside her cutting board, and as reluctant as she was to do such a thing, she still hummed in agreement as she came up behind him, genuinely apologized as she yanked his head back by his hair, and sliced the blade cleanly across his throat. The blood got on her hand, the knife, her table, and part of the wall, and she dropped his head, allowing the man's body to land on the ground with a heavy thud. She watched him in disdain as he choked on his own blood, holding his throat in an attempt to stop the bleeding, but it was already too late. Calmly, Alma placed the bloodied knife in the sink and began scrubbing the blood off her hands as he finally stopped flailing and went quiet. Once her fingers were cleaned, she knew she had to get rid of the body somehow. The woman refused to get her children involved, so she grimaced and quickly removed her jacket, leaving her in a thin undershirt that could be washed much easily than the thick material of her blazer.

And with some struggle, Alma hefted the body into her arms, doing her best not to look at it and ignore the sticky feeling of his blood coating her chest and bare arms. Sneaking outside to the back of the house, she unceremoniously dropped the man into a bush, hidden from view, with a quiet groan. When she was sure no one could see him, she returned carefully to the house and began the long, arduous process of cleaning up. She went to her room to discard her now practically ruined shirt, and swiftly cleaned her skin from the viscous blood that dripped down her skin in thick rivulets. It made her cringe as she dragged the washcloth across her chest, then her arms, until she was mostly clean. Still, the thought made her stomach roll and chest tighten in discomfort. But Alma shook her head dismissively and quickly donned her blazer before heading into the kitchen and started working on the rest of the mess.

The second time, Alma refused to make such a mess; how she didn't expect the blood to travel the first time, she honestly didn't know. But again, the same man appeared on her doorstep demanding to take her children. She'd been able to talk her way out of it the last three times, but this time he wouldn't budge, again. So, yet again, she invited him in for tea and watched as he foolishly walked into the kitchen, repeating his actions nearly verbatim. This time though, Alma settled for something a bit less violent, grabbing a frying pan she'd set out on the counter for the meal that she was about to prepare. As the cop turned around to face Alma again, mouth open to say something, she mumbled yet another apology, and brought the pan down upon his head as hard as she could. Now, Alma was surprisingly strong, so all it took was one wack to have the guy crumpling to the floor, skull bashed in. Blunt force trauma was a pretty clean way to go, Alma realized with a satisfied hum.

The ymbryne did the same as last time, picking him up (but not before kicking his arm just to make sure he was really dead) and carrying him to the same bush as the first time. She brushed her hands off and with a content nod, she strolled back inside and began cooking dinner, the thoughts of her crime already fading from her mind. He'd be alive again tomorrow anyway.

Out of all the times Alma had to kill him, the third time was definitely the easiest. Because when the cop came knocking and, as she once again attempted to talk her way out of it, he declared "It's no wonder they're such heathens, with a woman raising them. You need a man around here to keep them in line." It made Alma's blood boil and she just about jumped him right then and there. How dare he question her authority, her ability to care for her children simply based on her gender?! The woman growled under her breath and stated "You will regret saying something like that," through clenched teeth, fists constricted until her nails drew blood in her palms. With a stiff step, she allowed him past, the smug smirk on the guy's face only making her hands twitch again and her anger spike. Without a thought, she came up behind him, grasped his chin and back of his head, and with a sharp jerk to the side, snapped his neck. He didn't let out a single noise, his death too quick to even comprehend, and Alma let go with a disgusted grumble as he fell to his knees, then his stomach.

She glared down at him, loathing the very sight of him. No one, no one, was allowed to speak to Alma Peregrine like that. Who did he think he was, coming in here and spouting such sexist remarks like he owned the place? This was her home, her land, and statements like that would not be tolerated. "This is why I despise men," Alma mumbled under her breath, barely willing to even touch him, but was forced to do it anyway. This time she just dragged him to an empty room, locked the door, and pushed him from her mind.

Then there was the fourth time. Three more times had passed, each time Alma being able to talk him away. She'd had numerous interventions with the children, requesting almost desperately that they refrain from causing damage because then she was the one forced to clean up their messes. They agreed, for a decent amount of time. In fact, it was nearly six months before she had to kill again. He made no unsavory comments this time, but after the last time and her memory of his words, the second Alma laid eyes on the policeman her heart pounded a bit harder, anger already beginning to heat up her skin. Still she smiled politely, asking "Good afternoon, officer. How may I help you?" Gruffly, he responded "One of your children was seen causing trouble in town. There are claims of arson, ma'am. I'm afraid I'll have to take the kid into custody." She knew immediately that it must have been Olive, and mentally reminded herself to scold the redhead later.

But for now she had to convince the cop to leave. "Surely you must be mistaken. All of my charges have been home today." But the guy wouldn't budge; "Sorry ma'am, this is nonnegotiable. Just hand them over and we can go about this quietly." Alma nearly rolled her eyes. "Very well. Please come in, I'll go retrieve her." The cop nodded curtly and entered, slipping past Alma's tense form and into the foyer. The ravenette watched him with a sharp gaze, blue eyes noting his every move while her head raced to think of a way to eliminate him. She watched him glance around, absently saying "Nice place you've got here." Alma politely replied "Yes indeed. Please, would you like some tea while you wait?" The cop turned to face her and reluctantly nodded, muttering "That'd be alright." So Alma led him to the kitchen, gestured for him to sit down. As a distraction, she cleared her throat and stated "My apologies, I seem to have ran out. I'll be right back." She didn't really give him a chance to protest before she was out of the room and, with quick steps, heading to the small cabinet that held cleaning supplies.

The ymbryne looked around briefly before her eyes finally caught what she was looking for. And with a pleased nod, she grabbed it and held it out of sight as she reentered the kitchen, the cop still sitting at her table. He smiled briefly, though it was clearly fake, and she didn't return it, moving instead to actually make tea. The small bottle of bleach that she had grabbed sat in the sink out of sight, and once the man's drink was made, she quickly poured some of the liquid into the cup, more than enough to suffice. So, clearing her throat, she handed it with another plastic smile. She watched intently as he brought the mug to his lips, and took a substantial sip. It made a smirk twitch on Alma's lips, one she immediately pushed down to avoid suspicion. Once the officer had replaced the cup on the table, he began explaining in more detail his claims of arson. But he only got minutes in before he stopped abruptly and brought a hand to his throat as he coughed. He'd been drinking the tea steadily through the conversation, but now he dropped it, the ceramic shattering on the floor and making Alma sigh irritably.

She watched him choke, pounding the table as he stared at her in shock, but she just smiled at him, mockingly, as he died. Again she cringed when he threw up, falling off his chair as he tried to stumble to the sink but tripping over his own feet and landing painfully onto his knees on the tile as he continued to gag and convulse. This went on for at least five minutes and eventually Alma let out a frustrated groan, removed her jacket, and reluctantly retrieved the same knife she'd used the first time. The woman crouched down to roll the officer onto his back and as he stared up at her in fear, she positioned her hand above him, and brought the blade down upon the man's clavicle. As expected, when she pulled the knife back out blood splattered up and onto her body, covered her hand and began pouring onto her floor, promising a long clean up. Now suffocating both on his blood and poisoned tea, it took only a minute or so for him to still as Alma watched. The ravenette tossed the knife onto the counter, did the usual disposal, and locked the door before getting to cleaning.

In the time it took for the officer to return, a fascinating woman had arrived to the loop. H/c hair, kind eyes, fair skin. She sent Alma's stomach fluttering and made her heart beat faster, but she pushed the feelings down in lieu of continuing to care for the children. But this woman was the oldest of them, and she was so pretty, that when she began flirting with Alma there was really nothing the ymbryne could do to stop the feelings from returning and suffocating her. Y/n was an enigma that left Alma breathless, lips on her skin and hands tight on her hips, made the ravenette's knees weak and her hands shake. But it was such an amazing feeling that she wanted to continue experiencing for as long as the fates would allow her to.

That was months ago, and now you were a staple part of the family. The children (except Enoch) took to you quite easily, and though your relationship with Alma had caused a bit of a stir, it had settled back down soon. You were happy, more happy than you'd ever been, as Alma held your body close and her lips moved against yours desperately. This continued for a moment longer before the woman pulled away with a gasp, just as breathless as yourself. She checked her watch and, reluctantly, breathed "I have to check on the rest. I'm sorry darling." You understood though, and let her go with one last lingering kiss. And after an apologetic smile, Alma slipped from the room. You took a moment to catch your breath, but as soon as you were composed you also exited, heading to the kitchen. Or, at least, you were going to the kitchen. But a few firm knocks on the front door stopped you in your tracks. You spun to face it and hesitantly tiptoed over to the door. Slowly, you swung it open to reveal an officer in a dark uniform. He met your eyes before they raked down your body and a smirk pulled at his lips unconsciously.

"Well, what a pretty little thing you are," he mumbled, licking his lips. It disgusted you and you nearly reeled back as you exclaimed "I beg your pardon! What is your business here?" The cop huffed and rolled his eyes, smirk dropping at your rejection and declared "Where's that headmistress of yours? I saw her wandering about before, I need to talk to her about one of her children. Unless, of course, you'd like to...show me around." His voice dropped to what you were sure he thought seductive, but this time instead of repulsing you it pissed you off. A particularly wicked idea entered your head, memory flashing back to a casual comment Alma had made once. You figured that if she could do it, so could you. The switchblade in your pocket became heavier than normal and you forced your lips into a suggestive smirk and stepped outside with purposefully slow motions. Door closed, you purred "Of course I would, sir." It did as intended and as much as you didn't want to, you took his hand and pulled him away. You avoided everyone, making sure you took the back route.

Once you'd arrived at the back of the house, hidden away well, you pushed him forward. He turned and advanced on you, figuring you were going to do something...less than appropriate. You led him on, but when he was within arm's reach, you tackled him to the ground with a determined grunt. He stumbled, tripped, and fell onto his back with you on top of him. You really knew he was a fool when his shock turned to another gross smirk and he began making a repulsive comment, but then his eyes caught the knife in your hand, and widened immediately. Before he could push you off, you growled "I have a girlfriend you fucking creep," and, raising both arms above your head as you clutched the weapon in your fingers, swung down and watched as the blade pierced his throat. But you didn't stop there, every smirk and inappropriate comment he made just fueling your rage as you repeatedly plunged the switchblade into his body; his neck, his chest, until you were practically covered in blood and panting heavily. When you finally stopped, your breathing ragged and thick blood spattered over the grass and yourself, you stared down at him, eyes wild. "That's what you get for thinking you could get away with trying to take my children, fucker."

Before you could get up, still sitting firmly on the dead man's hips, you heard a choked gasp from behind you, followed by a panicked call of your name. Your head snapped in it's direction and saw Alma watching you in shock. Her eyes darted between the body--dozens of stab wounds bleeding profusely--and you, coated in his blood, her stomach clenched again, and the woman hated the way her skin heated up and a shot of arousal at the sight spiraled down to her stomach. You smiled calmly, bringing your knife hand to your face and casually wiping the back of your hand across your cheek, probably trying to clean away some blood but only serving to smear it across your skin. "Hiya Alms. I got rid of the policeman." The casual manner in which you said this made Alma laugh in disbelief, stepping closer. This time you did get up, dropping your weapon to the grass and facing your girlfriend, still smiling. Alma's eyes returned to the body, and almost against her will, a smirk tugged at her lips. "Well you made quite a mess, sweetheart. How ever are we going to clean this up?" she asked, looking up at you.

Your gaze darkened, enjoying the low purr of the ymbryne's voice, and walked closer until you were just a foot from the woman. "I have a few ideas," you murmured, eyes dropping to Alma's lips. You didn't actually expect the woman to take the hint and press forward, catching your mouth in a surprisingly passionate kiss that took your breath away immediately. You didn't touch her, knowing both hands were covered in blood, but still returned the same amount of effort, the kiss heated as Alma didn't even hesitate to drag her tongue across your lips, licking up the thin sheen of blood that still remained on them with a throaty moan. When you finally separated, a bit of the stuff had gotten on her skin, so you casually leaned forward and dragged your tongue across the area, removing the residue and making Alma tremble slightly at the feeling. Still close to her, you whispered "Now what do you say we get this cleaned up and then you can show me just how much you appreciate me doing your job for you?"

#alma peregrine #miss peregrine #alma peregrine x reader #miss peregrine x reader #miss peregrine's home for peculiar children #mphfpc #eva green #eva greenx reader #fanfiction #x reader #fem!reader #murder #blood #TW #violence #lesbian #lgbtq #wlw #hobbyist murder girlfriends

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senacal · 4 years

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Hey! Would u wanna write one where right after cuba in the hospital charles asks her to sing to him, and all she can remember is an old song from sweden (slightly personalized in that, i hope you dont mind!!) called Flyktsoda by ebba grön, she sings in swedish and he translates lyrics by telepathy. she ends up kinda confessing with the line "dont be scared of me, i am so scared of you" bcz shes a bit scary and mad all the time but shes super weak for charles. then u can decide how it ends 🥺🥺

Request: Requested by Anon

Pairing: Charles Xavier x Fem! Reader

Prompt: Hey! Would u wanna write one where right after Cuba in the hospital Charles asks her to sing to him, and all she can remember is an old song from Sweden (slightly personalized in that, I hope you don’t mind!!) called Flyktsoda by Ebba grön, she sings in Swedish and he translates lyrics by telepathy. she ends up kinda confessing with the line "don’t be scared of me, I am so scared of you" bcz she’s a bit scary and mad all the time but shes super weak for Charles. then u can decide how it ends 🥺🥺

Warnings: self deprecation? Charles isn’t okay and neither is the reader

Author’s Note: I don’t mind at all ^.^ I listened to the song and it was super catchy, even better when I found out what the lyrics translated to (I speak no ounce of Swedish lol 😅) Sorry it took so long btw, I fell into a funk but here I am, forcing myself out 😬

Requests Are Open!

After the events of Cuba, Charles hadn’t been the same. He wasn’t to blame, of course, his whole world had changed with a single bullet. It was heartbreaking to witness the once cheerful man turn into this broken person. He plastered on a smile when he needed to and he pretended to be the same cheeky man, but (Y/N) knew it was an act. Not only had he lost his legs, but he also lost Raven and his best friend Erik that day. Despite Erik being capable of making his own choices, Charles blamed himself for what happened. He blamed himself relentlessly and it annoyed (Y/N) because she knew the turmoil it was giving the man. She hated seeing Charles putting himself through that self-inflicting guilt.

No matter how many times (Y/N) or Hank tried to tell him it wasn’t his fault, Charles still continued to place the blame on himself. Charles did stop communicating that guilt out loud around them when they visited him in the hospital, but (Y/N) was willing to bet that it still resided in the back of his mind. She didn’t have to be a telepath to know that because she could easily see it in his eyes. She liked to think that she knew him well enough through everything they’ve gone through together.

Before Cuba, Charles and Erik had found her working a tireless job to keep herself off of the streets. She was barely scraping by and she lived in a crappy one-bedroom apartment. It was located in the bad part of town and the crime rates were skyrocketing, but the mayor didn’t care to fix that. So she suppressed her powers and forced herself to fight for what little she had. She couldn’t afford for her landlord to figure out that she was a mutant and kick her out. Thankfully her mutation was easy to hide, as long as her emotions were kept intact. The only hint at her mutant powers was the growing life around her wherever she went, meaning, she could manipulate plant life either with a thought or a simple touch. It aggravated her to see people treat the plants in her neighborhood soo poorly.

When Erik and Charles first went to collect her, she couldn't understand what they would want with a girl like her. She was on the verge of homelessness, worked a dead-end job, and had a criminal record. The charges against her weren’t too serious, a couple of shoplifting charges and she might have beat a guy up here and there who tried to attack her. But regardless, she knew she wouldn’t fit in with the others Charles and Erik had recruited. So when she met them, she glared her way through each conversation and ignored the CIA’s requests. But for some reason, Charles managed to worm his way into her heart. Maybe it was his charming smile that should have annoyed her or his eyes that were shockingly blue. Or maybe it was the fact that he understood her even though he was the complete opposite of her. Whatever it was, Charles was the only one who had seen her softer side.

It was almost funny seeing Hank’s shocked face when he witnessed her caring side for the first time. They had both decided to visit Charles in the hospital when Charles had asked for a small favor, some comfortable clothes, and (Y/N) had readily offered to get them. Hank was possibly more surprised than was necessary. (Y/N) did nice things! The other day she helped Erik with his powers, granted that was before he betrayed them and Hank wasn’t there to witness it. Now though, (Y/N) reserved her soft spot for Charles. Hank seemed to understand, he didn’t make any comments about it; but that was probably because when Alex did, (Y/N) manipulated the roots of a tree to keep him stuck for a whole night until Charles turned a disapproving eye on her. He learned his lesson after that though.

But that was all before Cuba. Now it was just (Y/N), Hank, Alex, Banshee, and Charles. But even Banshee and Alex went their own way. (Y/N) couldn’t say where they went, she wasn’t sure. But she did know that their departure had added to Charles’ grief and guilt. She made it her duty to stay by his side while he was in the hospital, a reassurance that she wouldn’t leave him. Charles had turned her into this soft mushy person and it scared her shitless. She couldn’t remember the last time she had loved someone. But the thought of him leaving or being taken away terrified her. Charles terrified her. But she pulled herself together so he wouldn’t realize anything was wrong, he didn’t need any extra guilt.

(Y/N) sat next to Charles's bedside, a book in her hands to keep her busy while Charles slept. She arrived early that day because of the construction happening on the street where the hospital was located and she didn’t want to be late. She wasn’t expecting Charles to be awake which was why she brought the book. She was immersed in the story when Charles woke up, which is why he surprised her.

“You’re here early,” He spoke groggily.

The flowers’ leaves on the other side of Charles’s bedside shot out of their vase and wrapped around Charles’s wrist, forcing it flush against the bed. (Y/N) might have gotten startled since she was distracted. She looked up with a guilty smile and released his wrist when he gave her an unamused look. “Sorry, you scared me,” She grumbled.

“It’s alright, love,” Charles rubbed his wrist. He hadn’t expected the grip to hurt since they were tulip leaves.

“How’d you sleep?” (Y/N) set the book in her hands aside and shifted so she could face Charles.

“Okay, I guess. I’m ready to get out of here,” He shrugged. He adjusted the bed so he could sit up.

“I can ask the doctor when you can be released if you’d like?” (Y/N) offered.

‘No, it’s okay,” Charles waved her off, “I’d much rather keep your company a little longer,” He smiled.

(Y/N) nodded, a faint smile on her lips. “Of course,” She drummed her fingers on her lap. “Did you need anything? The nurse? More medicine? Food?”

“I’m alright for now, thanks though… Can I ask you a question?” Charles hesitated.

“Yeah, anything.”

“Do you mind if, you can say no, but do you mind if I ask you to sing me a song? I’ve been quite bored here and the radio stations are rather crappy and there’s never anything good on the telly,” He rambled.

“Oh, uh,” (Y/N) furrowed her brows, what song would she sing?

“Never mind, it was weird of me to ask, you don’t-”

“No, I’ll sing for you uh, Is it okay if it’s in Sweden? I can’t really remember any songs right now,” (Y/N)’s cheeks flushed and her fingers began to fidget in her lap.

“I don’t mind,” He smiled kindly.

(Y/N) nodded and cleared her throat, here went nothing, “Lyckan kommer, lyckan går. Dom säger tiden läker sår. Jag släcker lampor. Jag öppnar fönster. Letar efter mönster. Jag kommer aldrig. Jag kommer aldrig, kommer. Kommer aldrig komma hem.”

‘Happiness comes, happiness goes. They say that time heals wounds. I turn off lamps, I open windows. Searching after patterns, I will never, I will never, will never come home,’ Charles lay back in his bed, his eyes closing as his mind translated the lyrics for him, one of the better aspects of his telepathy, the ability to understand any language.

“Flyktsoda, ta mig i hand. Sätt mig i brand, ibland ibland ibland. Flyktsoda ta mig i land. Sätt mig i brand, ibland ibland ibland,” (Y/N) could feel her stomach flipping, her chest filling with anxiety. She hadn’t realized how much this song actually meant until now. She hadn’t been happy before Charles came into her life. She was merely going through the motions, living because it was expected of her, but with Charles, hell even Hank, they gave her a reason to keep going. Only Charles was her reason for staying.

‘Escapesoda take my hand. Set me on fire, sometimes sometimes sometimes. Escapesoda bring me to shore. Set me on fire, sometimes sometimes sometimes,’ Charles inhaled deeply, (Y/N)’s voice soothing the ache in his chest. He appreciated everything she has done for him while he was hospitalized. If it weren’t for her, he was sure he wouldn’t have made it out in one piece. He barely made it with her there, but her persistent presence kept him grounded and kept him from falling into despair.

“Var inte rädd för mig. Jag är så rädd för dig,” (Y/N)’s voice stuttered over the words. They pierced her heart when she sang them. They rang true and she was afraid it revealed just how much Charles affected her.

“Don't be afraid of me. I'm so afraid of you,” Charles's eyes opened when he heard the vulnerability in her voice. He looked at her with questioning eyes, he almost felt bad when he read what she was thinking.

“Do you really think that I am afraid of you?” He asked softly.

“I, well, everyone else was, why not you too? I hurt you just a little while ago,” She pointed to his wrist.

Charles's wrist was rubbed raw from the leaf, but it wasn’t too bad, plus he had startled her, “I startled you, it wasn’t your fault.”

“That’s not the point Charles, I’ve done some bad things so why wouldn’t you fear me?”

“You fought to protect yourself. You are so much more than your powers, (Y/N). You’re magnificent, you’re amazing.” Charles wished he could reassure her and comfort her more, but his fucking legs couldn’t move. He shifted as best as he could, “Now why do you fear me?” He wondered.

(Y/N)’s heart was racing, she swore her heartbeat was louder than the heart monitor attached to Charles. “I- you don’t- why-” She ran her hand through her hair. “If I tell you, promise me this won’t change anything between us, okay? You’re all I have and I can’t lose you as a friend.” She spoke softly.

Charles nodded, “You could never lose me.”

(Y/N) bit her lip, wondering how to start. How does one even tell the person they love they fear them because of the hold they have on their heart? Charles managed to shove his way into her life and now she couldn’t picture her life without him in it. “I fear you because how easily you fit into my life,” She looked up at him, tears in her eyes, though she didn’t know why she was crying, shame maybe? “For a long time now it’s been just me, I had nobody, my parents didn’t want me, my landlord was looking for any reason to evict me, my co-workers were all selfish assholes, and I’ve been attacked countless times by men in the streets. I made sure no one could misuse my trust and I made sure no one could hurt me, but here you are,” She wiped a stray tear that ran down her cheek, “You pushed through the walls I’ve built and now I’m afraid to lose you.”

(Y/N) ran her hand through her hair again, she probably looked so pathetic to Charles.

“You could never look pathetic,” Charles reached his hand out to her which (Y/N) hesitantly took, “I know I said this wouldn’t change anything, but perhaps it can change just a little?”

(Y/N)’s brows furrowed in confusion.

“Perhaps once I get out of here we can go on a date?” Charles asked nervously, “You don’t have to agree, and we can continue like normal, but now that I know for sure that you harbor feelings towards me maybe we can-”

(Y/N) stood from her seat to press her lips to Charles’s cutting off his ramblings. She pulled away from the kiss and smiled, “I’d love to go on a date with you.”

Charles grinned, almost looking like his old cheeky self. He might have lost some things in Cuba, but he gained something too. He’d be damned if he let (Y/N) be taken away from him too. “I hope you know you’re stuck with me now.”

“I guess I can live with that,” (Y/N) laughed, “But promise me one thing okay?” At Charles nodded, (Y/N) continued, “Never tell anyone that I sang to you.”

Charles laughed despite her serious look, “I promise not to tell anyone.”

#Charles Xavier #charles xavier x reader #charles xavier x fem reader #x men x reader #X-men #x-men x reader #x-men x fem reader #mutant reader

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doctorslippery · 3 years

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1d50 Fantasy Rumors

In a bathhouse to the far south, there is a well that grants wishes to those who please the guardian Naiad.

The Lord of a nearby country has set an enormous bounty on the head of a wicked bandit chief. However the old folk whisper the bandit is actually the true King, having been spirited away in the night when he was but a small boy.

The dwarves of the Jarring Peaks only surface mine and refuse to go underground. Something terrible drove them from the deeper mines generations ago, and still rests there today.

A foreign dignitary repeatedly insulted the Governor, however this is because by custom speaking praise of someone invites upon them ill luck. An international incident is looming.

In the Hinterlands, defeating someone in a fair duel entitles you to their lands or their lives. The duels, however, have incredibly complex rules that are nearly impenetrable to outsiders.

In the eastern seaport, the bay is supposedly teaming with mermaids. Dangling your toes off the docks is a sure way to get their attention, for better or worse.

There exists a flower that blooms once a century in the depths of the Sparkleberry Swamp that can cure any illness, no matter how dreadful. A tribe of lizard folk have been protecting the site for countless generations.

The mausoleum in the center of the city’s graveyard refuses to remain sealed, the bricks always burst outward in the night. Nothing, however, has been seen going in or out of it.

The old hag who sells flowers in the market place is in fact a powerful witch, waiting for a prophecy to fulfill itself.

The old orphanage at the edge of town doesn’t house real children, but changelings who were discovered in the crib.

Gert the Butcher once got into regular rows with his brother Bert. Bert vanished a few weeks ago and Gert had a sale on delicious sausages.

During a New Moon, the tides dip low revealing an isthmus connecting to Finnegan’s Atoll. The very best pearls can be found in reefs, it is a race to find them first.

Hjalmar Bjornson defeated the evil conjuror Illhugi and took residence in his tower. Recently, however, dark things have been coming from the tower again.

Cattle has been disappearing recently from local fields, a crime that the thieves’ guild refuses to claim. The town fool claims they are being abducted by invisible creatures for their heinous rituals.

The baron’s daughter is set to marry the heir of a neighboring fiefdom. Her maidservant, however, claims she plans to elope with the captain of the Guard, Providence Blanchard.

The Gleaming Desert gets so hot during the summer months that whole areas melt into glass. A local alchemist thinks if conditions are right a huge and perfect lens could be created.

The White Forest is so called for the strange, color draining sickness that affects the animals within. Farmer Gregor claims, however, to have seen a giant black stag with glowing rainbow antlers.

A pair of river traders have brought a new, powerful and addictive medicine which they initially gave away for free. However prices have risen and addicts have taken to increasingly aggressive acts of robbery to fuel their addictions.

Gloria Haversham is a tinker who travels the countryside in her one donkey cart. People say she can fix absolutely anything, but her prices are never in mere coins.

Word on the street is that the fireworks prepared for the New Years celebration have been tampered with and their glowing bursts will in fact place a hex on the city.

A new tattoo artist from the far west has set up shop, creating beautiful works of art on their patron’s skin. They’re almost too lifelike.

Parents always told their children that the Weeping Man would take away naughty children on full moons, but recently children have actually started going missing and the bogeyman has turned into hysteria.

The Wizard-Archeologist Philipa Saint-John claims there is a lost ziggurat buried in the permafrost of the Karngorm Tundra, she just needs the funding and manpower to uncover it.

Jenny Greenteeth has haunted the swamp since time out of mind and the locals now live in a tenuous peace with her. However a rich merchant has brought in foreign workers to fill the swamp and build a road.

The Count’s fortune was read in tea leaves last month. He was so horrified by the prophecy that he banned all fortune tellers and all tea from the county.

A giant hand made of an unknown metal was uncovered by flash floods in the hills.

Migratory patterns have shifted, taking game away from the barony. Something is happening up north that is scaring all the animals away.

The cats hold a monthly sabbath where they make reports to their true master.

The border marauders have been getting more bold after their leader uncovered a trove of strange weapons that fire burning light.

Stay away from the harbor on misty nights, that’s when the ghost ship and her dread captain looks for new crew to take aboard.

13 O’Clock, the Witching Hour, only strikes for those who know to listen for it.

The King in Chains, an especially rowdy tavern, has a terrible rat problem, but for some reason the landlord refuses to do anything about it. He also despises cats.

The Patron Saint of Thieves famously stole themselves right out of the hangman’s noose as they dropped. It is said the holder of that noose cannot be barred by any locked door.

A truly massive thunderhead has been passing back and forth across the plains for weeks without a drop of rain. The locals have taken to calling it the Thunder Anvil.

The city on the other side of the mountain throws a truly spectacular street celebration each year. Its participants, despite the fireworks, feasts, and music are all masked and silent.

A powerful noble was cursed in her youth to never be able to eat the same meal twice. She is elderly now and is desperate for truly exotic ingredients for her increasingly bizarre diet.

The old barrows have always been a haunt of fairies and their mischief was mostly benign. A necromancer recently desecrated those ancient tombs and the fairies have gone berserk.

A travelling circus filled with exotic animals of all kinda passed through last year, however a fire at the big top consumed it. Strange trumpeting and growling are still heard from the village green.

Theodore Goldfinch, the secretary of the magistrate, ran screaming out of the courthouse last week claiming he uncovered a snakeman conspiracy.

“The Slithery-Dee came out the sea, he ate all the others but he didn’t eat me,” claimed the only survivor of a fishing village, found covered in blood and holding a notched whaling hook.

There is a deaf musician who wanders the south who knows a tune terribly sad that those that hear it die of a broken heart. They say the musician is in fact a master assassin.

Giant petroglyphs cut across the shrublands where the sheep graze. The wizards claim that the petroglyphs have actually been walking across the land at geologic speed.

Everyone ties a ribbon with wishes on it to the Angel Oak, hoping they’d come true. Sometimes, they actually do!

Keep a ring of iron in your left pocket when you travel the road at night, otherwise the Wyld Hunt will turn you to a beast and hunt you till morning.

Anyone who dies without fulfilling a contract is damned to rise against to complete it. It is important to burn or transfer contracts to avoid terrible revenants.

After a long bender that the PC barely remembers, their wanted poster has been pasted across the land for the kidnapping of a rich silk merchant’s son.

A bat covered in gold dust was found in the church’s belfry, setting off a rush searching all the local caves for a rich vein.

A strange light was seen pouring out of the canyon in the night and no one who has gone to investigate has returned.

Sir Zoray and his band of knights were tasked by the High Priestess to seek a holy artifact to cure a terrible wasting illness. They were last spotted spending their gold the the most expensive brothel in an eastern city.

A wingless wyrm was spotted swimming through the Frothy Run River and coins of foreign make were later found on the pebbly shore.

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sacred8 · 3 years

Text

For real though here’s some character info on the fan made CR story me and @night-hydrangea have made (Personally I like to call it Crime of Curiosity). Activated Charcoal Cookie belongs to @night-hydrangea!

// do not read if you are triggered by any of the following topics: murder, violence, stalking, needles, hospitals, home invasions or unreality

Choc Chip Cookie

Gender: Demiboy, uses he/they (no preference, will alternate freely)

Likes: The outdoors, photography, street art, piano music, anything interesting or novel, writing

Dislikes: Hot temperatures, leafy vegetables, needles (after the altercation between them and Activated Charcoal), nurses (for the same reason), alcohol

Ever since he was young, Choc Chip Cookie wanted to see the world and all the people in it. He was always fascinated by the new, the unusual and the novel. So, he made it his life’s goal to stay a week in every city in Earthbread and try to do at least one good thing for the community. But after an incident involving a certain nurse, they seem to have lost a bit of themself and are trying to fill the void left behind. Will he ever find something that will light his eyes up with wonder like they did long ago?

Character Timeline

Sets out on his journey to chronicle the sights and people of Earthbread

Checks into the clinic Activated Charcoal Cookie works at due to severe food poisoning, discovers evidence that AC is killing her patients by injecting them with lethal doses of poison and medications

Checks out the following morning, suspecting that AC knows what he found and is gunning for him (she is)

Continues his roaming for a few years, eventually coming to the city where parfaedia institute is located

During this time AC is fired from the clinic for “incompetence” and begins her hunt for Choc Chip in earnest, extracting information on their whereabouts by threatening hotel employees, landlords and the like

Eventually she finds the place they’re currently staying at and begins stalking them to find out his routine, eventually breaking into his current place and hiding out in the cellar

Meanwhile CC starts to become paranoid about strange goings-on in the residence and starts taking photos in case they ever need to go to the police

In one of these photos they catch a glimpse of Acti hiding under the stairs - he dismisses it as their mind playing tricks on him but Acti panics and decides to just get rid of him then and there

She attempts to ambush CC and a fight/chase breaks out with CC only managing to stop it by ambushing Acti and breaking a chunk of firewood over her head, knocking her out

CC locks her in a broom cupboard while he calls the police. Acti comes to in the cupboard and (due to her severe claustrophobia) begins to hyperventilate and have a panic attack, banging on the door in an attempt to get out

CC hears this and thinks she’s suffocating and trying to break out, which terrifies them and he hides in the upstairs bedroom

Acti manages to escape the cupboard right as the police (led by almond) arrive to search the area. She freaks out and attempts to run, but due to her fatigue and Almond’s speed she is quickly subdued

Almond finds the syringe she was going to use and makes Acti empty her pockets, revealing the vial of poison she was going to kill CC with

Meanwhile another officer finds CC in the bedroom and brings him downstairs, where he reveals everything he knows while Acti is (unintentionally) forced to listen

Acti is tried for the killings and is sentenced to life in prison but a few months later is visited by DE, who offers to break her out and “release her from the chains of her past” if Acti joins her cause

Acti is at first hesitant, but agrees when she realises that this means she can finally leave the whole Choc Chip situation behind and continue killing unburdened. DE wipes Acti’s memories of Choc Chip and of being caught, officially integrating her into the Cookies of Darkness

#cookie run #cookie run oc #Activated Charcoal Cookie #Choc Chip Cookie (shelbswastaken)#shelbs writes

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yes-i-am-happyaspie · 4 years

Text

The Definition of Anything-happyaspie [2020-2-27]

The heater in Peter's apartment goes out on the coldest day of the year and the landlord seemed to be overrun with maintenance requests. Calling Tony to help him out seemed like the next logical solution. After all, he had told him many, many times that he should call him if he ever needed anything. The man had never really specified what 'anything' meant but he figured that by definition, 'I'm cold and you know how to fix things.', fell into that category. Right?

❄----❄----❄----❄----❄

--Anything--

Pronoun: Any thing whatever; something, no matter what.

Noun: A thing of any kind.

Adverb: In any degree; to any extent; in any way; at all.

Link to AO3-The Definition of Anything-happyaspie

It was the middle of February and the temperature had decided to take a sudden nose dive into the negative numbers. Not that those kinds of things would stop Peter from patrolling. Seeing as Tony had helpfully provided him with an in-suit heater, he was sure he would be fine and for a while, he was. Though once the sun had completely set, the wind started to become so bitter that, eventually, the heater could no longer keep up.

Seeing as the icy negative fifteen-degree weather seemed to be enough to detour any major crime from taking place in the borough, Peter began to swing him towards his warm bed. The first thing he noticed as he stood inside his closet shimmying off the suit was that it wasn't particularly warm in the apartment. It wasn't cold... it just wasn't as warm and cozy as he'd imagined it would be. So, once he was in a pair of joggers and t-shirt he walked down the hall towards the thermostat. He wasn't surprised by the display saying that it was sixty-one degrees in the house. The entire system was old and a little touchy. It wasn't unusual to have to knock the desired temperature up a few degrees in order to get the unit to kick in. Therefore, he hit the up arrow a couple of times, went back to his room to crawl under the covers and fell instantly asleep.

A few short hours later, he woke up to the sound of May getting ready for work. Though, having not gotten to bed until late he didn't bother to climb out of bed. He did instantly realize that his room was still cold and looked towards his window to make sure that he'd remembered to close it. When it was indeed locked shut, he sighed and pulled his comforter up a little more tightly under his chin. He wasn't worried. If it was really that cold in the apartment, May would turn up the heater before she left.

Except, the next time he woke up he could no longer ignore the chills that were dancing up and down his spine. He lay there for several minutes waiting to hear the hum of the heater begin to blow warmth into his room but it never did. So, with a huff, he pulled the blankets over his shoulders and sat up. May was long gone for her first shift of the day and he was going to have to finagle the stupid thermostat himself. However, once he placed his socked foot onto the laminate flooring, he sucked a hiss in through is teeth. The floor was so cold that it burned but he powered through and hurried towards the thermostat in the hall that showed the temperature to be a balmy forty-six degrees.

As he stood there hopping from foot to foot to avoid having any kind of prolonged contact with the floor, he tapped the arrow to send the desired temperature up well past eighty. Though he knew it wouldn't do any good. Something had finally given in and it was broken. There wasn't much he could do outside of requesting maintenance and he could do that from his bed.

After leaving a message with the landlord, Peter tucked himself back down under his covers. It crossed his mind that maybe putting on his Spider-man suit and swinging across the city with the heater running might warm him up but one look at the outside temperature had him changing his mind. Even with the sun up, it was still below freezing. Besides, he was already back to warming up under the blankets and the Spider-suit was all the way on the other side of the room.

For quite a while, Peter patiently waiting for someone to come to fix the heat but they never arrived. In fact, between the thin walls and the drafty windows, he could feel it becoming even colder in his room. His nose was frozen and he could feel it starting to run as a result. To make matters worse, his stomach was starting to protest his lack of breakfast. However, rather than get up, he grabbed at his phone with his suddenly uncoordinated fingers and attempted to leave another message with the landlord, only this time it seemed that the message box was full. Clearly, he wasn't the only one being affected by the cold snap.

Groaning in annoyance, Peter opened and closed his hands a few times to try and warm them up as he tried to decide what to do next. He considered trying to call May but there was no reason to do that, really. He'd already called to request the repair and it wasn't like she could do anything else. Calling her would just make her worry. Then he thought about going over to Ned's house because surely it was toasty warm in there but then he remembered he wasn't even home. Unlike him, he was still in the Robotics Club and would be spending the weekend at the school working on all the last-minute programming. Then, as he was flipping through his contacts list, his thumb landed on Tony's name... and that had him thinking.

The man was a genius. He knew how to do everything from fixing old car engines to creating an arc reactor and an Iron Man suit out of a box of scraps. Surely he could fix a broken heating unit. That and he had told him many, many times that he should call him if he ever needed anything. He'd never really specified what 'anything' meant but he figured that by definition, 'I'm cold and you know how to fix things.', fell into that category. So, with only slight hesitation he decided to send him a message. If nothing else, but to feel out the situation.

'Hey, Mr. Stark. Are you busy?', he typed out knowing that he probably was and that he'd just asked the stupidest question of all time. The man was a superhero who owned a gigantic tech business. Of course, he was busy. Then, just as he was about to retract the question he received an answer.

Tony, who had been in his workshop all night, literally knee-deep in a new Iron Man suit, smiled down at his phone when the familiar contact popped up on his screen. Peter rarely texted him before noon and he found himself curious as to what the kid was up to. 'I'm always busy. Why? What's up?', he typed back in return before his brain filled him on at least three thousand reasons why the kid could be texting him at nine o'clock in the morning. Especially on a weekend. Those were the days the teenager spent the majority of his time Spidering all over the city. 'Are you okay?', he added while simultaneously pulling up the information from the Spider-suit.

Still feeling, slightly apprehensive about asking his mentor to come over to his house, of all things, he decided to once again remain somewhat vague. 'I was sort of hoping that maybe you could come over to my apartment and help me.', he replied not realizing that by leaving out all context he was sending his mentor's heart rate through the roof.

A glance at the tracking information on the suit verified that it was inside of the Parker's apartment as Peter had indicated. However, the suit didn't seem to be on and the last activity that had been recorded was from the night prior. Upon further inspection, he saw that all of the vitals were within a normal range, short of a slight drop in body temperature and that there was no other indication that anything calamitus had happened. That was all well and good but at the same time, he knew that the teenager had been known to mess with the coding to prevent him from getting certain kinds of notifications. However, what was most worrying was that he'd straight-up, asked for help. He never asked for help. He could be bleeding out in an alley and would still insist that he had it all under control. He wouldn't put it past the kid to lay in his bed overnight, nursing a life-threatening injury, on his own, and then casually text him when he finally decided that maybe he didn't have it all under control, after all. That was all it took for him to call in a functional suit so that he could take off towards Queens. 'I'll be there soon, kid. Hang Tight.'

Being utterly relieved that help was on the way, Peter threw the comforter over his head completely and inadvertently drifted back to sleep. He never once considering how odd it was that his mentor had so quickly agreed to come over help him, despite having no idea what he needed help with.

While Peter was curled up in a tight ball, sound asleep in the little pocket of warmth he'd created for himself, Tony was flying towards him. He'd spent the first few minutes of the trip having FRIDAY go over the Spider-suit's video monitoring in an attempt to narrow down what he would be dealing with upon his arrival but the AI found nothing. He was trying to decide if that was more or less concerning when the familiar building finally came into view.

Deciding that it would be suspicious for Iron Man to go running through the halls of the Queen's apartment, Tony ditched the suit on the roof and began to climb down the fire escape that led into an alley, cursing himself the whole time for not thinking to put on a coat before he left. However, between the fridged air and the nagging worry, he managed to make quick work of the ricketty ladders and was soon inside, taking the stairs two at a time all the way up to the Parker's seventh-floor apartment.

Once he was outside the door he didn't even bother to knock, instead, he took the key that May had entrusted to him for emergencies and walked right in. He was unsurprised at the lack of activity in the large open room. Peter hiding an injury from his aunt would be a given. He wouldn't want her to worry. The fact that she'd already left for work was to be expected. Then, rather than announcing his presence, Tony bounded down the hall and threw Peter's bedroom door open steeling himself for the worst, only to end up face to face with a wide-eyed, sleep disheveled teenager looking back at him in surprise.

Having been abruptly pulled from his sleep by his bedroom door squeaking open, Peter rapidly sat up and pulled the light blue comforter off of his head while being careful to keep it tightly wound around his shoulders. "Mr. Stark!", he half croaked in surprise when he saw that it was his mentor and not his aunt standing in his doorway. He didn't know how long he'd been asleep but apparently it had been long enough for Tony to dive all the way there from Manhattan.

For several seconds Tony stood there and took in the kid's appearance. Well, what he could see of him anyway. Which wasn't much. All that was exposed was his head but his hair was a tangled mess, his nose was red and he could see him shivering where he sat. Upon further scrutiny, he realized that there were no signs of blood anywhere in the room and that all in all the kid didn't seem to be in any kind of distress. With that realization, he allowed himself to relax and it was then that he realized how cold it was in the room and involuntarily shivered himself. "Do you always keep your room this cold?", he asked as he crossed the room, carefully stepping over the various legos and school books that were strewn across the floor.

"N-no.", Peter replied through chattering teeth. "The heater's broken and the landlord hasn't sent anybody by to fix it yet.", he added before running his hand under his nose with a loud sniff. "I'm f-freezing."

After standing there for several more seconds the dots slowly began to connect and Tony huffed a laugh. "Is that why you called me?", he asked with amusement. "You're cold?", added, though he realized it was more than a little chilly in the apartment. It was near frigid.

"Well...", Peter replied with a small, although it be a bit sheepish smile tugging at his lips. "You said I could call you for anything, right?"

"I did.", Tony replied seriously. He'd been trying to drill it into the kid's thick skull for months that he not only could but defiantly should call him whenever he needed help with anything. Whether it had to do with Spider-man or not. Though, he'd assumed that whenever that first call for assistance came in, it would be over something a little more... detrimental. Not that he minded in the least but that wasn't going to stop him from giving the boy a hard time. "I just wasn't expecting it to be because you needed me to put an extra blanket on your bed and tuck you in."

"Actually I was kind of hoping you could fix the heater, Mr. Stark.", Peter replied as another violent shudder wracked through him. "...but an extra blanket would be nice too."

Tony then crossed into the room and patted Peter's leg so that he could sit down beside his shivering form. As he did so, he was more surprised than he probably should have been when the kid immediately leaned over onto him in an attempt to sap up his warmth. "Are you really that cold?", he asked with a chuckled as he wrapped an arm around the boy's blanketed shoulders. "How long has the heat been out?"

"I've been cold all night.", Peter replied with a contented hum, as the man started to run his hand up and down his back. "The heater in the suit, which is super awesome by the way, thank you... wasn't keeping up once it got really, really cold so I came home and I think the heater was already broken then."

"So, you never warmed up? Geez, kiddo. Come here.", Tony replied with genuine sympathy as he opened his arms up so that Peter could fall fully up against his body. They sat there for several minutes, Peter trying to absorb as much heat as possible from his mentor's warm embrace and Tony trying to come up with a plan that didn't have him sitting there acting as a human heating pad all day. "Alright, here's what we're going to do. We're going to move you out to the couch so that I can make you something warm to drink and then you're going to point me towards your tools so I can take a look at what's going on with the heater, yeah?"

"Mm-hmm.", Peter replied though he made no effort to remove himself from the comfortable position he was now in. That is until the man stood up and begin to pull him to his feet.

"Come on Linus Van Pelt, get your blanket and start walking. I'm too old to carry you.", Tony said once he had Peter standing reluctantly beside the bed.

"You're not that old, Mr. Stark...", Peter said in return, though he'd meant it as a compliment and not as a request.

Tony laughed as he continued out of the room shouting, "Still not carrying you.", over his shoulder as he went.

After a very quick stop in the extremely cold bathroom, Peter was settled on the couch and being handed a mug of hot tea. He took one small sip and then another, sighing as the warm liquid coated his throat and began to warm him from the inside out. "This is really good. Thank you, Mr. Stark."

"You're welcome. Now, where can I find some tools.", Tony asked and once Peter had pointed him in the right direction he got to work. First looking over the thermostat and then moving on to the heating unit its self. He had it apart in no time and was quick to diagnose the problem. "Looks like the capacitor's blown. That's why the fan won't cut on. Other than that, it looks okay."

"You can fix that, though, right?", Peter asked as he craned his neck around to where Tony was standing at the sink washing his hands.

"I can, but we need to get a new capacitor.",Tony replied with a casual shrug of his shoulders. "They should have one at the home improvement store around the corner. You coming with?"

"Sure.", Peter replied because that sounded better than sitting, cold and alone, on the couch while he waited for the man to get back. He was also sure that whatever fancy car the man had driven over would have seat warmers. Then before anything else could be said, his stomach grumbled so loudly that he was sure they could hear it three apartments over. "Can we get some food too, please?"

"Of course.", Tony replied with a chuckle. "I already messaged someone to bring me a car. It should be here any minute.", he then said. He'd actually done that the second changing the batteries in the thermostat hadn't done the trick and he was sure he would end up needing to go to the hardware store. Then he glanced over to see the look of confusion on his mentee's face he rolled his eyes. "What are you looking at me like that for? I didn't drive over this time."

"Then how did you get here?", Peter asked with perplexity. There were only so many ways one could get to Queens from Manhattan and he couldn't imagine the man taking the bus or subway.

"Before I answer that...", Tony began as he pointed an accusatory finger in his mentee's direction. "...let me make it very clear that you were being oddly cryptic and I thought you were dying...", he said with seriousness but rather than looking any kind of remorseful, he saw a smile spread across the teenager's face.

"Mr. Stark! You flew here in an Iron Man suit?", peter squawked with delight. While he felt just a tiny bit bad that he'd scared the man enough to make him think that he needed to rush to his side in an Iron Man suit, he was also extremely amused. It was sort of nice to know that his mentor cared that much about his well being.

Rather than playing into the kid's obvious enjoyment of the situation, Tony placed his hands indignantly onto his hips. "I repeat... you led me to believe that you were dying.", he stressed but even he could admit that maybe he'd overreacted just a little. It wasn't like he'd taken any amount of time asking what was wrong. The kid had said he needed help, his brain had demanded that he jump into action and his body had followed through.

"I'm sorry.", peter said though he continued to practically cackle at the mental image of Iron Man busting through the Tower's ceiling, jetting full speed across the city and landing on his building's rooftop.

Tony took a moment to wait out the teenager's continuous giggling, before even attempting to reply and when he did it was with playful sarcasm. "Yeah, you look it."

The trip to the store was quick, the fast-food was warm and soon the two of them were back in the apartment in their previous positions. However this time, Peter had a small electric heater sitting on the coffee table in front of him, blowing warm air in his direction. He'd been hesitant to accept the purchase when Tony had picked it up but now that it was there and cutting through the chill in the room, he was happy to have it. Even if it did take the man no more than twenty minutes to replace the part.

"Thank you for coming and fixing everything, Mr. Stark.", Peter said once, Tony had successfully turned on the heater with a celebratory, 'Yay.', and was sitting down beside him on the couch.

"You're welcome, kiddo.", Tony said before leaning back on the couch and watching whatever nonsense show the kid had turned on while he was doing all the work. Not that he was upset about that. He was just glad that the kid, who had buried himself in his side the second he'd sat down, was finally starting to shuck some of the blankets that had ended up piled on the couch and was no longer sniffling every three seconds. It wasn't until another thirty minutes had passed and he was really starting to feel the rise in temperature that he said anything to the kid who was still pressed tightly up against him. "You do know that the heater's been running for the last half an hour and it's no longer cold in here, right?", he questioned as he poked the boy's side in an unsuccessful, though admittedly unenthusiastic, attempt to get the boy to get off of him.

"I know.", Peter replied before happily scooting just a touch closer making Tony smile.

"Alright, just so long as you know."

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harley-sunday · 4 years

Text

Things We Lost in the Fire [06]

Summary: During a bank robbery you’re surprised when the criminals seem to recognize you and retreat in fear. Only after do you learn that your high school sweetheart now runs a nationwide crime syndicate and has you placed on a “no harm” list. You decide to pay him a visit after all these years.

Pairing: Sebastian Stan x Reader (F)

Warnings: Language. Character Death.

Word count: 3972

AN: We’re slowly getting to the end, guys. Damn. What a ride, huh? This part seriously lacks Sebastian, but I promise to make up for that in the next one. Please let me know what you think, validation remember? ;) ♥

Masterlist

Something feels off when you wake up.

You reach for your phone, finding it somewhere under your pillow, and when you push the home-button to reveal the time you’re surprised to learn it’s almost noon. You roll over only to find his side of the bed empty and a heavy feeling settles somewhere deep inside of you because you know he’s not just downstairs making you breakfast.

Almost out of habit you get up and make your way to the shower, deciding there’s no need to stay and drag out the inevitable. It won’t make him come back.

He’s gone.

The warm water does nothing to comfort you and so your shower is quick. You settle on black jeans and a black top for today, deeming the lack of color fit for the mood you’re in. You pack your duffel bag without too much finesse, figuring it all needs to be washed when you get home anyway. Looking around the bedroom one last time to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything, you grab your bag and make your way downstairs.

The house feels weirdly empty, even though you can’t exactly tell what it is that is missing. Maybe just Sebastian’s presence, you muse quietly as you make your way to the kitchen to do, well, you’re not sure what exactly. But are you surprised to find an envelope on the kitchen counter, propped up against what has become your coffee mug over the last three days? No. Of course not.

There’s nothing written on the back this time, but who else would it be for? And so you carefully fold it and put it in your back pocket, not wanting to read it just yet. Not here, anyway. With no real need or reason to stay here you walk back to hall, where you find your trusted black Converse in the exact same spot you kicked them off, and as you put them on a smile creeps up on your lips when you remember everything he did to you last night, not just here but in the bedroom as well. It’s bittersweet now, for sure, but God did it feel good.

With your shoes on, your duffel bag slung over your shoulder and your purse in your hand you step outside, using the key his mother gave you to lock the door even though it’s not really necessary. The police will get in either way if they want to. There’s a last glance at the house before you get in your car, a single tear running down your cheek, knowing very well you’ll never come here again.

It doesn’t matter, he won’t be here anyway.

The drive home is quick, with a short stop somewhere in Georgetown for a cup of coffee and a sandwich, and you’re home just before five. It feels like you’ve been gone a lot longer than just four days and so you’re a bit surprised to find your house pretty much the way you left it, all your plants still very much alive. God, you’ll miss it here, you think to yourself, making a mental note to contact your landlord first thing tomorrow morning.

But not tonight.

Tonight, you decided on your way here, you get to wallow, and have a drink or two, and feel incredibly sorry for yourself. You’ve earned it. And so an hour later you find yourself on the couch, a just-delivered pizza sitting in its box next to you, a bottle of beer in your hand, and the envelope you found in the beach house sitting in your lap. The TV is showing reruns of Friends and because you’ve seen every episode at least five times already, it’s just background noise at this point.

You’ve finished three slices of pizza and half your bottle of beer when you open the envelope, finding a postcard with greetings from the state of California. Turning it over you find a sequence of numbers written on the back which you somehow know are coordinates.

40°25'50.2"N 124°24'00.1"W

You’re a little disappointed there’s no note, no ‘I miss you’, but you get it, there’s no need to risk it. Saving the numbers as contact details for Bonnie and Clyde in your phone, you smile at the inside joke, and adding the numbers needed to make it seem like legit phone numbers. You tear up the postcard then, tiny little pieces that you burn with the use of a candle, once again very aware that you’re hiding something from the police.

The first thing you do after breakfast on Monday morning is call Bert, telling him you’d like to speak to him. He sounds worried when he agrees to see you and you want to tell him not to, but you really don’t want to lie to him just yet and so you don’t say anything except for a, “See you Wednesday then, Bert.” before you hang up.

You’re landlord is a little more difficult to get a hold of and it takes you three tries to finally reach her.

“Darling,” she says, her voice raw from years of smoking and a love for whiskey that makes you wonder how she’s still so alive and well, “how are you? Nothing wrong with the house, I hope?”

“No,” you smile, even though she can’t see you. “I just wanted to let you know I’d like to end my contract at the end of August, Estelle.”

“It’s not even the end of June, darling,” Estelle offers, “you know the notice period is only two months, right?”

“I know,” you reply, “but there’s a lot going on and I really wanted to give you a heads up.”

Estelle hums in agreement before she asks why you’re moving out.

“I uh,” the lie comes easy then, “I start a new job on September first. Out of state, so,”

“Well, I’ll miss you, darling,” Estelle says. “Call me when you’re ready to hand over the key?”

“Sure,” you agree, even though you’ve already planned to send it to her by post once the time comes. “Thanks, Estelle. For everything.”

“Don’t worry about it, kid,” she says, the familiar sound in the background telling you she’s lighting her cigarette, “I’ll see you.”

“Bye.”

Hands on your hips, you take a look around your living room, a little overwhelmed at where to start. Not wanting to make it too obvious to whoever might visit you in the foreseeable future, even though there's a slim chance someone actually will, you decide to first pack the things you want to take with you, knowing it will be the bare minimum and won’t really show as a lot of things missing. You grab a moving box from the stack you picked up at Home Depot yesterday after your call with Estelle, and fold it into shape. Photo albums first then, followed by your favorite books, and a couple of the little trinkets that live on the shelves next to your books, but only the ones that have meaning. Like the figurine of a squirrel that Josh gave you for your twentieth birthday, to justify the use of your nickname.

You fill two boxes easily and haul them to the laundry room at the back of the house to avoid them being seen, and allow yourself one more box that’s not clothes. The battered old cardboard box, filled with memories from high school including your senior yearbook, goes in first, followed by bits and pieces you collect from all over the house. This box joins the other two and that’s enough for today, you figure. You can’t really pack your clothes yet, and that’s done rather quickly anyway.

There’s a knock on your door then, and you quickly hide the remaining unfolded boxes behind your couch before you answer it, very surprised to see your old neighbor standing on your doorstep, “Mrs Johnson?”

She just smiles and hands you a little box.

You take it from her cautiously, “Uh, thank you?”

She nods, “I’ll be seeing you,” and then turns around and walks away so briskly it takes you a moment to register she’s gone. Looking around to see if anyone has seen you, you’re relieved to find the street empty otherwise and you retreat back inside.

The box holds an older model phone and a piece of paper with a code to unlock it.

0813

His birthday.

You can’t help but smile when you punch in the code. The phone unlocks, letting you know you’ve got one new message waiting for you. Butterflies roam around in your stomach when you click on the message icon and read what he’s send you:

Went to see him. He’s ready. Photo is sent.

It’s cryptic but it tells you everything you need to know.

“Oh shit,” you mutter when you see his name flash up on your screen. You’re on your way to Carver State to see Bert, and this was the last thing on your mind. Stupid. Maybe it’s nothing, you think, trying to calm yourself. Maybe he’s just checking in on you, you reason, but you know it’s bullshit.

“Hello?” you answer on the third ring, as if you don’t have his number saved in your phone.

“This is Detective Johansson,” his voice sending a shiver down your spine. “I need you to come into the station.”

“OK,” you draw out.

“We have some new information I’d like to present to you,” he continues. “The sooner you can get here, the better.”

Fuck.

“Uh, yes, sure,” you clear your throat, trying to sound like you’re willing to help with whatever it is he needs. “I’m just on my way to see my boss, but I could come by after that? Around three?”

“Thank you.”

“Sure,” you say, trying to sound relieved when instead you’re getting more and more worried about how you’ll be able to pull this off. You wait for him to tell you he’ll see you then, but he’s already ended the call and you’re reminded once again why you don’t like him.

You arrive at Carver State then, parking in your usual spot, taking a deep breath before you get out of the car. Of all the things you have to do, this is the one you least look forward to.

“I’m really sorry, Bert,” you say once again, drying your eyes.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” he replies, gently patting your arm, “I understand.” He smiles then, “Honestly, I always knew this day would come, kid. It’s ok. You deserve so much more in life than to just be a bank teller.”

“Thank you,” you sob, because he’s too kind and you feel so, so bad for lying.

“Listen,” he says, sighing then. “You still have a week of leave left and after that it’s just a couple of days until the end of the month,” he smiles a sad smile, “I’m happy to just consider last Monday as your last day here. The sooner you get to chase your dreams the better, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Really?”

He nods, “Yeah, it’s fine. The school holidays are starting anyway and you know as well as I do that it won’t be as busy anyway.”

“Thank you,” you say before you get up and give him a hug.

“Do you want to, I don’t know, go out for dinner with the team as a going-away party or,”

“Oh no, no that’s fine,” you jump in, shaking your head. “If it’s ok with you, I’m just going to swing by Bea and Louise before I leave and then I’d much rather see you all again when I get back.” You throw him a wink, “Much more to tell you then anyway.”

“Yeah,” Bert agrees, “God, I can’t believe you’re really going to spend the next year volunteering in South America.”

Lies. Lies. Lies.

“So,” Detective Johansson says, sliding a picture towards you, “we got this in the mail yesterday.”

You take the copy and try to hide your smile when you see it’s the one of Josh from his twentieth birthday party, just before that awful New Year’s Eve. The same one he showed to you on Saturday. But this one has something written on the back in handwriting your don’t recognize:

This is your guy.

“Care to tell me who that is?”

You look up, keeping your voice soft, “Josh Hughes. We went to high school together.” You meet your own eyes in the two-way mirror that’s behind Detective Johansson, and you study yourself for just moment, relieved to see you look relatively normal. You were a little shocked when he took you to an interrogation room and actually locked the door, as if you might plan on escaping.

“Now, of course we do our job when we get something like this,” he says, interrupting your thoughts. Detective Johansson leans back in his chair, arms crossed in front of his chair, “Didn’t take long, Chestnut Hill Nursing Home, right?”

You just nod.

“Sent one of our guys there yesterday afternoon,” he eyes you cautiously, “he asked around a bit. Talked to nurse Betty who showed him the visitor’s log." He leans forward then, taking another piece of paper out of his folder and slides it across the table, “Care to tell me why you visited Josh last Saturday?” A copy of the visitor’s log stares back at you, your name still the only one there.

Just like you rehearsed, you think, “Because I also got a picture last week.”

You open your purse and take out the photo, a little worse for wear now that it has been in your purse for a few days. You hold onto it, the lie coming easily, “I found it like this, in my mailbox, no envelope, nothing. Just a picture of some graffiti that I vaguely recognized.”

You hand the picture over then, “It’s only when I looked closer that I saw the initials in the bottom right corner,” you wait until Detective Johansson sees them too before you continue, “and then I realized they were the same initials that were on the guys’ bulletproof vests.”

Detective Johansson’s eyes go wide, if only for a second, before he regains his composure, but it tells you that he hadn’t even noticed it before, which makes you hide a smile.

“I know I should have come to you,” you say, dropping your eyes to add to the act, “but I just couldn’t believe Josh was behind the robbery. I wanted to talk to him first.” You keep looking at your hands that are folded together in your lap, “He told me he wanted to confess so I offered to call the police, but he,” you clear your throat, giving yourself some time to remember the words correctly, “he said he wanted to do it on his own terms and I believed him.”

You look up at Detective Johansson, your eyes wide in what you hope looks like shock, “Do you think he’s behind all those robberies?”

“Do you think that’s why the robbers recognized you?” Detective Johansson asks, ignoring your question.

You shrug, “Maybe.”

“Well,” the Detective starts, taking a plastic bag out of his pocket, bagging the photo, “As you know Mr Hughes is in bad shape, and even though he says he wants to help us as much as he can we are facing quite the challenge,” he sighs. “We need to conduct both a thorough and quick investigation and,” he shakes his head, “nothing good ever comes from those.”

“Do you need more from me then?” you ask, hesitantly.

“Yes,” he nods. He sits up then, even more serious, “If I wanted to I could have you arrested right now. Charge you with the obstruction of an ongoing investigation.”

You just nod.

“You’re an accessory after the fact, as far as I’m concerned.” His eyes stare into yours, “In a few minutes an officer is going to come in here and he will take your statement, starting with what happened the minute you walked out of here last week. I suggest you tell him the truth, because if we find so much as a wrong time or place in your statement,” he squints at you and gets up, leaving his threat hanging in the air.

You watch him as he leaves, shutting the door behind him. Reminding yourself of the two-way mirror you hold your composure, staring at a point on the wall where the paint has chipped to reveal an ugly yellow color underneath. You go over the story you’re supposed to tell over and over again, right until a younger, nervous looking officer walks in and asks if you want something to drink before you start.

You decline.

You’re turning the burner phone in your hand over and over again as you pace back and forth between your living room and kitchen. You want to call Sebastian, tell him what happened at the police station this afternoon, how you have this inkling that they’re onto you, but you know you can’t. This is the waiting game Josh warned you about, where everything seems to fall apart, but where you just have to wait.

Wait, wait, wait, until everything rights itself again.

You know the statement you gave is watertight, Josh made sure of that, and you also know Josh will confirm everything you said. But still. There’s this nagging feeling that there’s something you forgot, some minor detail that you did or didn’t mention that will raise questions with Detective Johansson. Every time you hear or see a police cruiser pass by, you cower involuntarily, waiting for the knock on your door where they come to arrest you.

Trust Josh, you think to yourself. Just trust Josh.

He didn’t really tell you what his big plan was, just that he’d set things in motion for you to admit that you’d visited him at Chestnut Hill. That was all you had to do really, admit that you went out on an investigation of your own, which took you to the beach house first, then to Chestnut Hill, the nights in between spent in an hotel on the Island. The front desk clerk would confirm your story, Josh assured you, because he’d quit his job about a month later after he’d ‘suddenly’ come to some money and decided to use it on a trip to Mexico. But by then Josh was certain nobody would care anymore.

Josh assured you that Betty would remember only seeing you that Saturday, as was evident in the visitor’s log, and she too would quit her job a couple of months later, claiming the job became too physically draining for her, when in reality she was going to enjoy her early retirement in a mortgage-free beach house on Pawleys Island.

The phone beeps then, letting you know there’s another message, and you curse quietly because what the fuck? You unlock it with the code he gave you and open the message, a sad smile on your lips when you read:

Heard from Elizabeth. Not long now until you need to call me.

The call from Chestnut Hill comes four days later, nurse Betty’s voice a little hoarse when she tells you, “He passed away in his sleep last night.”

“Oh,”

“The service is on Thursday,” she says after clearing her throat. “He’d want you there.”

“Thank you.” You hang up the phone then because it’s all too much, your chest tightening when you realize he’s really gone. You talked about this, about his end drawing near, but never in a million years would you have thought it would be so soon. The tears come then, slowly at first, but it’s not long before they spill over and you find yourself sobbing so hard it physically hurts and you let yourself fall to the floor, mourning the loss of what you now know was one of your best friends.

It takes you a while to calm down, the sobs subsiding slowly until you think you’re calmed down enough to face the task at hand. You remind yourself that even though Josh is no longer here, there are still a few vital parts of the plan that need to be executed, with this maybe being the most important one.

You grab your phone and find Sebastian’s real number in your contact list, taking a deep breath before you hit dial.

He picks up on the second ring and because he knows why you’re calling all he says is a quiet, “Fuck.”

“I’m sorry,” you keep taking deep breaths, if only to keep yourself from crying.”

Even though there are only a couple of rows of chairs in the little chapel in the garden of Chestnut Hill, you notice not even half of them are filled when you make your way inside. Your eyes dart across the few people sitting there, a little disappointed when you don’t see Sebastian among them. You look behind you just as you sit down, finding Detective Johansson leaning against the back wall, his hands in his pockets, looking slightly unimpressed. He acknowledges you with a nod of his head and you do the same.

You wonder if you should text Sebastian, your hand already on your phone, but the minister walks in then, and the service starts, and you figure he’s not coming. There’s a tug at your heart because you really wanted to see him. Hold him. Comfort him.

Let him know you’re still on his side.

At the same time you wonder why Detective Johansson is here because it doesn’t seem very fitting for a Detective to pay his lasts respects to a suspect, does it?

“Dearly beloved,”

The minister’s voice interrupts your thoughts and you focus on him instead, glad to see him give more of a humanitarian approach to the service than you expected. At some point he invites Betty to say a few words about Josh’ time here and you are pleasantly surprised by how well she seemed to have known him, the warmth in her voice letting everyone know just how much she cared for him.

The minister ends the service with a simple prayer and invites everyone who wishes to pay their respects to Josh to please do so. You wait until the nursing home staff and a few unfamiliar faces have passed the coffin before you make your way to the front. You bow your head, a sad smile on your lips when you whisper a quiet, “Thank you. For everything.”

The sun is shining when you step outside, the rain clouds from earlier having completely vanished, and you throw a wink at the sky because you’re sure this is Josh’ doing. It’s then you see him, leaning against a tree a little further down the path, his hands in his pockets, the black suit he’s wearing making your heart skip a beat. You walk up to him, slowly, not wanting to draw any attention, and he meets you halfway.

“Dragă,” he says, throwing his arms around you and pulling you close.

“Oh Seb,” is all you manage to say before you feel the tears you’ve been trying to hold back spill over.

He holds you until you’re calmed down a bit, kissing your cheek before he lets you go, not saying anything.

Someone clears their throat behind you then and you’re shocked when you see Detective Johansson taking a step towards you.

You look at Sebastian for help but he just winks and you’re not sure how to take this.

“Can I talk to you for a second?” Detective Johansson asks once he’s standing next to you.

You nod, “Sure.”

Fuck.

===

Taglist: @blastaz | @dontbetooobvious | @weirdfanaus | @lindsaywill177 | @oliviastan17

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#Sebastian Stan x reader #Sebastian Stan Imagine #Sebastian Stan fanfic #Harley Sunday x Sebastian Stan #Things We Lost in the Fire

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steve0discusses · 4 years

Text

Yugioh S4 Ep6: Gozaburo Kaiba Just Casually Started WWIII And Only This One Guy Cares

Welcome to November, where we celebrate writing a 50,000 word book as if I don’t do that every single time I write about an episode of Yugioh. Hello, this is my season. It’s wordy season. I’m so freakin good at doing this. I can’t say most of what I’ve made is any good, but I CAN say at least I’m prolific. Do enough content to fill that bitter pit and walk right over it, that’s been my motto for the past 5 years.

Anyway, I had an awful flu this past week. (Everyone I live with had it so every bathroom was like ground zero) It was SO bad. I still can’t eat spicy food over a week later (Which is so hard for me because usually I can keep up with my Indian friends, that’s my spicy level--max spicy, please--but since this illness, my white taste genes went into overdrive and I tried putting pepperoncini slices in my sandwich and it set my mouth on fire. Pepperoncini. It’s v embarrassing.)

I did attempt to write this post. Unfortunately I never made it past this cap because I got VERY distracted by the emblem on Alister’s face, and how it isn’t proportionally adjusted to match the angle of his face, and it was like three paragraphs of just wanting to talk about it. And then at some point I got very distracted talking about how many empty glasses I was given at my place setting at this baby shower I went to during the flu epidemic, and it mattered a whole lot to me at the time, but I think, overall, was mostly just some sort of nonsense. The things I’ve spared you.

(bro has just informed me that the 4 gold-lipped crystal goblets I was given at this baby shower was actually very distressing and a very big deal and that I should absolutely talk to at least someone about it, but maybe he’s just saying that to make me feel better, but I have no idea. I am too sick for sarcasm at this time but my god why was I given so many glasses????)

I straight up have no memory of if I’ve made this joke before. Maybe.

(read more under the cut)

Since it feels like 8 years since the last time I could just eat chicken without feeling like I consumed an entire Thanksgiving meal, a little recap:

-Alister pretended he was Pegasus to lure Kaiba and then, off screen, murdered everyone in Pegasus’ castle

-Pegasus got murdered by I’m pretty sure Mai (which is like...OK then...)

-Yugi and Co went on vacation by driving directly through San Francisco and peeking out the window and saying “yeah that’s enough for me”

-No adults, not even Roland, bothered to come with their kids this time, so the only adult of the entire crew--Pegasus--is dead

-Rex and Weevil are luggage

-The Eye of Sauron showed up and it was the end of the world but Yugi threw a dragon at it so I guess everything is OK now

-Monsters are real but they are hard to animate so we’ll just pretend like they’re causing havoc everywhere although most of the planet seems basically unaffected by this.

-The Grim Reaper is a friendly monster that hangs out in a Japanese park and that feels fairly on brand.

And I think that was all that was happening so far.

In a weird twist of fate, Mokuba is the only one in this room that isn’t trapped which sort of...if you’re the only one NOT kidnapped wouldn’t that also be a type of being kidnapped?

And we finally get to figure out why Alister wants to Murder Kaiba so bad and, spoiler, it reaches.

???

I’m gonna get more to the obvious problems with Alister’s devotion to murdering all the Kaibas in a bit but yes, Alister is in fact going to try and Kill Kaiba on this kid’s show because of Kaiba’s Dad, who is such a horrible and abusive person that Kaiba essentially drove the bastard out of Japan and straight to the bottom of the ocean.

Just kinda feels like Alister has been living under a rock...which, I guess he has been. He has been living in some weird Atlantis structure so I guess he never got the memo that Gozaburo Kaiba is hella dead.

So that’s what they’re up to. How’s Sausalito?

Um.

Huh.

So the North Bay is a really classic scenery. It’s rolling hills. It’s NAPA. It’s like...definitely not Arizona. California has a couple of mesas but they’re no where near here and the Monument Valley style Mesas really only exist in Monument Valley.

And I know it’s because the background artist for Yugioh is all horny for horny rock structures but like...this couldn’t be farther from the Bay Area in the way that it is drawn and it is such a shock after all the work they did last episode to research that Bay Area lore. Once they crossed the Golden Gate they were like “well no one will care about this part” which is true not only of Yugioh but also of real life Californian politics.

Anyway, I have been making a map, but unfortunately my original file will not suffice. time to fix it.

There we go. Now they’re in the right place. Just smack dab in Monument Valley, Arizona, smack dab in the middle of the Navajo Nation and so hypothetically, not even in the United States anymore.

While in the car, Yugi has just been anxious as hell the entire time, and just going “y’all I have a bad feeling I’m uncomfortable I have a bad feeling” while Joey and Tea just patiently stared at him flipping out in the corner. So...kinda like a normal trip with someone who has high anxiety/possessed by a ghost. I kinda feel like this is every girls trip to Disneyland for me. There’s always one Yugi who’s like “no one said anything about CROWDS.” and you kinda just gotta let them do their thing. Just let them get it out of their system and hide in the bathroom when they need to hide in the bathroom and don’t fight it, they’ll be fine. Just hold their spot in line when they desperately look for a secret place to medicinally vape because there’s too many freakin children at Disneyland.

And it is HILARIOUS that Yugi is able to have this type of premonition but cannot figure out that they have somehow missed San Fransisco and have wandered into a DESERT.

Back in Pegasus’ California (an island that legitimately looks more like California than actual Yugioh California) Alister has decided to go completely off the rails and it happens so fast and without any warning.

the line is actually “This doll used to be my brother’s” which is a very different meaning but both are likely from weird ass Alister and this weird ass show, so I’ll leave the cap like this (although yes, this is what I thought Alister was saying for kind of a while until I recorded it for this blog and was like “oh shoot I heard the line wrong when I had the flu huh.”)

Man, RIP Noah, he would have been excellent this episode.

Honestly seems like just yesterday when Seto and Noah were pitted against eachother by a cyberdemon Dad-head floating in the sky, Mokuba was possessed for some reason and being used as a human shield, Tristan was a robot monkey, and Yugi was just shrugging at Kaiba from across the field like “Kaiba if you don’t play good you die--oh my gods, he died. Well that was bound to happen...again.” Man.

Alister should be their best friend, this is nonsense.

So lets do the math to 7 years before 2002.

I searched Wikipedia for wars during 1995 (they do have a list of 90′s wars) and looked for any that involved heavy use of tanks and their artillery fire (on big swatches of cities like this), inner city western architecture, temperate landscapes, and western clothing that match Alister and Mikey (AKA WWII vibes) and found out:

Nothing fits that description

UNLESS Alister and Mikey are time travelers from a WWII bombing in Europe. This is Yugioh. That could happen. Probably not, but youknow...it’s not too late for Yugioh to bring in time travel.

I mean if you don’t want to get super political in your cartoon just invent a world war I guess? We’ve already clarified that Gozaburo was Big Boss, so at this point I can easily see him inventing wars just to sell ships.

(I could probably add thousands of more deaths at this point but I have no idea where they are, if they’re on a tiny island or an entire country so I’ll just...leave the count alone but just now it’s implied that a hell ton of people died during this episode)

People going off about how Sesame Street is so amazing for talking about issues like you’re Dad going to prison while Yugioh was straight up talking about the intricacy of the War Economy. Yugioh being all “don’t forget kids, your good capitalist economy survives off of the undeserved bloodshed of civilians in other countries! Eat the poor!” and it’s like hot damn this heavy commentary came out of freakin no where.

Anyways, this is stuff most kid’s shows will delicately skip over but nah, Yugioh is going to go here, and they are going to steamroll directly through it with massive tanks.

So, lets kill this kid’s entire family and talk about the terrors of the World War of 1995 and all the war orphans who get recruited to become soldiers at the ripe old age of 9. Alister was 9 when he was recruited to be a child card soldier.

This kid’s show.

Alister is...basically Raiden, right? Like as long as we’re talking about Metal Gear, this kid is just one step away from cyborg implants and weird colored blood?

Better wear bright red when you visit the war crime scene, surprised Gozaburo didn’t invite like an entire photo -op crew to incriminate him even further.

Now we did look up “where the hell is Alister from Yugioh from?” (there is no answer) and we did find out a little factoid. In the Japanese version of the show, Gozaburo had bought the land and was just forcibly evicting Alister and his family from their home with tanks.

Which is wild.

He just straight up evicted an entire metropolitan city????

Like the dub did a way better job than the sub at this one, I’ll give them that.

It’s just so weird that Gozoboro just didn’t like...raise the rent like a normal bad landlord. Instead he was like “rather than gentrify my land and save me a ton of money, I’ll just destroy everything I just bought and murder everyone here” which is like...

...Seto did the world so many favors when he kicked out his Dad, right? Like Damn. I don't understand why Alister isn’t freakin worshiping Seto right now when his whole deal is “I must kill Gozaburo” and Seto’s like “yo I already did that. Twice. I didn’t even have to literally kill him either, I just embarrassed him so bad that he killed himself. His stupid tank company sells joke games now. I literally turned the man into a joke.”

Then again, Alister is on the green magic and like I think it alters your brain chemistry somewhat.

(How ripped did Alister get in this episode, by the way? The kid is like 16 years old or something so how did this happen? ...The perpetual horny line running straight through Yugioh, man. Look at it run. That 16 year old is drawn like he’s 28 and really into Crossfit and his crop top gets smaller and smaller like every scene.)

So like this is a very gray issue that I cannot believe they brought up in a kid’s show (like can you imagine if Scrooge McDuck had to face facts that his company murdered tons of people???), but also this is Seto Kaiba. Seto grew up in the system, so like he doesn’t need to be lectured to about dirty money because he was on the losing end of that not too long ago. Seto is himself basically a upscale war orphan since he was adopted by Gozaburo to continue the machine like a freakin maniac (a Solidus Snake, if you will) so of all the people on this show I don’t get why Seto would care about this. This is just how Seto views the entire world as either losing or winning and no reason to feel bad about it because he’s been both.

Also...Seto stopped the machine. Kind of. He was unaware that cards were the same thing as weapons, but at least he stopped the sale of huge child-stealing tanks.

So they play the game for a little while and Seto does kind of poorly as usual, and just when I thought this episode couldn’t get any weirder...

And just like that, Seto peaces out. Like he does almost every single time he has ever played a card game solo except for that one time he was playing Joey Wheeler. (Which was also one of the few times Seto ever won.)

Like I just want to remind you that this segment is in the same episode as WWIII and the tonal whiplash is pretty remarkable.

That’s right, we’re back in the Unnamed Monster World, which is not the Shadow Realm, and which I thought you could only access if you were dreaming and able to search through the puzzle maze.

Apparently this can just happen at any time and all that stuff with the guiding Kuriboh and Yugi and Pharaoh trying to find this place was just...them wasting time.

Again he ditches the legendary sword so freakin fast because who needs a sword when you have a dragon? Only this anime.

And that’s how Seto, who was absolutely going to lose this game, somehow just barely came to a draw.

So just to recap, Seto has yet to win a card game that he didn’t get prophetic help for via a hallucination or Yugi telling him what to do. Unless you count Joey and grandpa.

Then, the one last adult I forgot about, the driver of Yugi’s car, decides that it’s about time that he also died and left this show as adult free as possible.

THE HELL ARE THEY?

Also...maybe it’s the angle but the writing on that gas station looks a lot like kanji.

Yo, what if this is the backgrounds for a different show and they’re just sharing? I mean I doubt it because Yugioh had a good enough budget but...what if? What if that’s why they’re in Arizona?

Anyway, next time we’ll find out if this guy just drops dead or has been a Yugioh monster this whole time, and I think maybe both?

And if you just got here, this is a link to read all my Yugioh recaps in chrono order

#yugioh #ygo #photo recap #episode recap #yugi muto #seto kaiba #mokuba #alister #joey wheeler #tea gardner #tristan taylor #Arizona

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prorevenge · 5 years

Text

I wont give up til you are no longer a landlord.

(source) story by (/u/lilliesdaddy)

#prorevenge #by /u/lilliesdaddy #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #last10

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morbid-n-macabre · 5 years

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This one is local for me. The perpetrators are in my approximate age group, I was 16 when this occurred. Most of us locals who remember when this was going on hold a seething resentment towards this group of punks, and for good reason. Let me tell you why...

So, The Lords of Chaos were a teen militia group who did their very best to terrorize Fort Myers, Florida back in 1996. This crime spree ended with the murder of the very much loved and respected Riverdale Highschool band director, Mr. Mark Schwebes. The teacher was a truly good and decent human being who went out of his way to help the kids around him. Sadly, his killers knew this and used it to their advantage.

The Lords of Chaos lived in one of the more remote areas of Lee County, a place called Buckingham. The group consisted of teenagers with ridiculous nicknames: Kevin Foster was the leader who referred to himself as "God" (yep, the sociopath had a bit of a God complex), Pete Magnotti was "Fried", Derek Shields was called "Mob", and Chris Black was a bigger boy referred to as " Slim". Those 4 were the main members of the gang, but there were others who were less involved: Thomas "Dog" Torrone, Chris "Red" Burnett, and Craig Lesh. The only one in the group to have a criminal record was their leader, Kevin, albeit mostly driving offenses. His parents owned a local pawnshop so Kevin had access to an arsenal of weapons which he was apparently not taught to respect; the weapon which would be used to commit murder, a 12-gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun with an equipped suppressor, had been a Christmas gift when he was just 13. Kevin is described as charismatic, homophobic, racist, and bigoted; he was enamored with the cult leader David Koresh, serials he'd seen on television like Norman Bates, outlaws such as Billy the Kid, and the homegrown terrorist Timothy McVeigh. Kevin wanted to do something big to catch a name for himself, he wanted a reputation; the rest of the group had no problem with following his lead.

This group's crime spree appears to have begun at the end of March when they stole a couple of Jeep Cherokees. They drove the new vehicles out to Lehigh Acres and set them on fire, just sat and watched them burn. Next, Kevin filled a Coke can with something which resembled gun powder and attached wires to it with duct tape; said can was placed on a shelf in a Walmart pharmacy. Kevin then called the store and told the employee who answered that there was a bomb inside; panicked shoppers were evacuated, police flocked to the store, it was a mess. This group did their best to destroy everything they could; they spent their time searching for things to steal, random windows to break, or places to set fire to.

On the evening of April 13th the Lords of Chaos decided to vandalize and rob a restaurant called The Hut. This restaurant happened to have an outdoor patio where customers would sit and eat, and there were two beautiful macaw parrots kept in a large cage. When Kevin heard the two macaw parrots talking, he decided to light them on fire. Macaws are not stupid animals, they're very intelligent parrots with a lifespan which rivals ours. Thankfully one of the birds did somehow survive this, but it lost its mate.

At midnight on April 20th Kevin decided to do something big, it was the anniversary of the Waco siege. The group drove to a historical landmark, our Coca-Cola bottling plant, one of the only original bottling plants in Florida. While Kevin carefully filled a soda can with gunpowder and stuck a 25 foot fireworks fuse inside of it, his buddies strategically placed stolen propane tanks all around the building; they carefully ensured that once Kevin's bomb went off, the whole building would blow. Once it was all set up, the teens sat in a safe spot across the street and watched the explosion; firefighters did their best to put out the fire, but our beloved historical building was lost.

So, it's probably obvious that all of this really upset people, by this point the entire county was beyond angry! A local reporter wrote an article about the ongoing vandalism, and said article was very insulting towards the group of punks who were responsible for these terrible acts. The group read this article, and it only added fuel to the fire, so to speak. In turn, they wrote a manifesto which they had intended to mail off to our local newspaper, the News Press. For whatever reason the manifesto was never sent; nevertheless, it read in part:

"Lee County is dealing with a formidable foe, with high caliber intelligence, balls of titanium alloy, and a wicked destructive streak. Be prepared for destruction of biblical proportions, for this is the coming of a NEW GOD, whose fiery hand shall lay waste to the populous.

THE GAMES HAVE JUST BEGUN, AND TERROR SHALL ENSUE..."

The spree continued with the robbery of a woman named Emory Shields; Emory was not only the owner of a small restaurant called Alva Country Diner, but she had been one of the teen's landlord. After robbing Ms. Shields, they stole her vehicle. At one point the gang took a trip to the Edison mall in hopes of stealing some clothing. They attempted to let off a grenade inside Dillard's, but thankfully it was a dud. Next, Kevin and his buddies decided to attend Grad Nite, which is a big deal for highschool seniors because they get to run around Disney World throughout the night. Kevin had a plan to steal one of the character suits and shoot up Disney, to kill as many teenagers as possible, but thankfully he chickened out.

On April 30th the teenagers drove to their own school, Riverdale, with the intention of trashing it. They stole several things, set off multiple fire extinguishers, then filled up a bottle of bleach with gas and threw it though the highschool's auditorium window. Riverdale's beloved band director, 32 year old Mr. Mark Schwebes, caught the group outside. He confiscated all of the items which they had stolen from the school, and threatened to tell the resource officer. Kevin knew that once the vandalism inside the school was discovered, the teacher would put two and two together and the group would be busted; he decided that the band teacher had to die before that could happen.

The teens found Mr. Schwebes phone number and address by calling 411. They dialed the teacher first, to ensure that they'd obtained the correct information; after hearing Mr. Schwebes voice, Kevin, Pete, Derek, and Chris Black all jumped in their vehicle and drove over. Kevin knew that the teacher would answer his door for a student he recognized, and since Derek had been a member of the band, that's who was sent knocking. At approximately 11:30 pm the teacher opened the door for his student, and Kevin immediately shot him in the face with his aforementioned 12 gauge. It's said that Mr. Schwebes probably never knew what hit him. When the teacher hit the ground, Kevin shot him once more, this time in the buttocks because he wrongly assumed Mr. Schwebes to be homosexual. The group didn't even bother to pick up the spent shells, they just left them at the scene.

There's really no telling what else would have happened or who else would've been hurt or killed had this group not been caught when they did; it's said that they had been planning to rob a local Hardee's restaurant when they were finally caught. Thankfully they were braggarts, and one of the teen's girlfriends couldn't keep the secret, she went to the police.

Craig and Brad faced no charges, while Tom and Chris Burnett both took deals; they plead guilty to lesser crimes and received very little punishment in exchange for their testimony against the main members of the group.

Chris Black, Derek Shields, and Pete Magnotti all pled guilty to first degree murder. Pete received 32 years imprisonment while Chris and Derek are serving life. The only one of the group to go to trial was Kevin Foster. On June 17th of 1998 Kevin was sentenced to death; he has appealed his conviction, but recently it was undecided if the penalty would stick. From what I understand there was a new trial in which Kevin blamed his upbringing for his actions and asked that his own life be spared. It was decided that Kevin will ultimately be put to death by the state of Florida.

*I think it was Dateline which aired a two hour special on this case, I would link it if I could find it. This special kinda irked me because, idk, it almost seemed like the man who covered it fell in love with Kevin. It made the small-time gang leader out to be more than he was, like he was this highly manipulative cult leading criminal mastermind, which just wasn't the case. Kevin wasn't well known, there was no big following, he was not a force to be reckoned with. In all actuality Kevin Foster was a nobody until he and his buddies came up with a menacing name, vandalized our city, burnt parrots alive, and murdered an unsuspecting teacher who would've kicked his butt had he not been ambushed. If you're interested in knowing more, there's a really decent book about the case, "Someone Has to Die Tonight" which is worth the read.

Sorry for the opinions on this one. This whole case upsets me, and if you know me at all then you are already aware that I am a parrot person. Some obsess over cats, other dogs, for me it's parrots; I have 6 of them. My husband is still ticked off about the Coca-Cola plant.

This is a link to Mr. Schwebes sibling's blog. She's a Rabbi, and these are her feelings about the murder, and the new penalty trial which Mark's family has recently had to endure-

https://barefootpreachr.wordpress.com/category/thats-life/mark-schwebes/page/2/

#true crime community #thrill killers #cult #killer kids #Florida #fort myers #true crime #true crime blog #morbid n macabre #murder #school shooter

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adoxographyy-gurl · 5 years

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I Promise

I didn’t know how to post on AO3 (whoops). So I decided to post on here. So @thefruitloop-chan here is my entry to your DFO contest. No matter what, if I win or not, I will try to figure out AO3 and make this a multi-chapter fic.

Izuku opened up his blinds in his room. He was full of energy, even though the city of Shizuoka was still asleep. The sky was ombre of colors, from a dark midnight sky to a slight peach color. Young Midoriya throws off his All-Might covers and runs out of his room to his parents.

“Dad,” Izuku exclaimed as he climbed up on his parents’ bed. They lay together, big arms wrapped around a small waist. His mom was tucked into his dad’s chest, the only indication of her being there was the plume of green hair sticking out. Izuku’s dad’s face twitched, hearing his son’s voice disturbing his peaceful slumber. “Dad,” Izuku whined this time. His tiny four-year-old hands poke at his father’s cheek. “Dad, you promised.”

“Five more minutes,” Hisashi groans and squeezes himself into Inko. He hears a sniffle and a quiet “Okay”. Goddamn, the kid can pull on some heartstrings.

“Hisashi. I really don’t want to wake up with you still in bed and our son sitting on the floor with tears on his cheeks,” Inko mumbled in Hisashi’s chest, “Or that will make me real furious.” Even in her sleep, her mommy radar is on. Hisashi feared her. He really does. But he also loved her with all his heart, and he agreed, hearing (and worst of all, seeing) his son sad was horrible and made Hisashi want to hunt down whoever harmed his son. Hisashi leaned down and kissed her head, hearing her give a purr of approval. He rolled over and was instantly hit with guilt. There, sitting on the ground, was his son pouting. His big green eyes that he inherited from his mother was filled with tears, some already spilling out of his eyes. His eyebrows furrowed with deep sadness and his lip jutting out a bit as he counts up to 300 (with a stumble here and there due to only learning how to count to 100 recently).

Hisashi was pathetic. “You ready to go,” he asked. As if he flicked on a light switch, Izuku’s expression changed. His eyes were shinning as if there were diamonds in his eyes and his face lit up like a Christmas tree. Izuku nodded his head with rapid speed. “Well let’s change out of our pajamas and we can go, okay?” Izuku got up and ran towards his room.

~~~

The promise.

It was a good promise, something Hisashi really enjoys doing with his son.

The promise he gave to his son was that every Monday morning (around 6), they will go out in the city and watch a hero fight (or what Izuku adorably says “Bad Guy Smash”). For Izuku, it’s a way for him to see up and coming heroes come into the scene. Most of the heroes are helping to stop petty crimes like theft and simple assault. For him, he gets to see, who could be the new big hero.

However, for Hisashi, he goes to see what is on the market. The villain. Does he have a motive? A real motive. Not some stupid thing about wanting to get rich but to show how unfair society was to people who have lesser quirks than those with amazing ones. Does he have a flashy quirk that would actually benefit him in the long run or something that is weak with no potential. You see, Hisashi Midoriya was, and still is, a big villain in Japan. However, he isn’t known by Japan. Just to a select few people.

“I wonder if we get to see All Might today,” Izuku asked with a big grin. He sat on the hardwood floor, taking off his All Might bunny house slippers for his tennis shoes. They were a vibrant red that also lit up. Hisashi makes a face. It’s no secret in the Midoriya household that Hisashi doesn’t like All Might. The reasoning behind it varied, depending on who you talked to.

Inko knows a portion of the truth. She knew that Hisashi is older than he looked (some longevity quirk he mentioned offhandedly). That All Might’s predecessor was a real prick to her husband and his family. She knows enough. As a paralegal, Inko insisted she wanted to know somethings but not everything. She does know that her husband is a villain, but she made him promise never to mix work and family ever. (He wasn’t going to but sometimes he likes it when Inko berates him).

Izuku idea changes every time you ask him. One day he says it’s because his dad’s favorite color is black, and All Might has three. Another day could be that his dad hates how loud All Might is compared to his quiet tone. Or once he said it was because his father’s hair was unruly, and All Might’s was manageable.

Hisashi could tell his son the truth about himself and why he hates All Might. Izuku (even for his age) could keep a secret. But…he didn’t want to crush his son’s hopes and dreams. Hisashi was gone for two weeks and when he returned, he learned the truth. That his son was quirkless.

Now in some other timeline or universe, this could make Hisashi hate his son and his wife and for him to leave the family. But in this universe, Hisashi just remembers that he lived in a generation that people were just getting quirks. That people with quirks were the minority. It made sense on why his son didn’t have one. He also remembered his younger brother. His brother and his son were identical on their attitudes on life and how much energy they both showed. Though his brother was sick, which caused him to be weak. His son was the opposite. He was always health (barely ever getting sick) and even without a quirk, he was strong. Strong willed and strong minded. They had the same idea of justice and believed in a better future. And Hisashi couldn’t bear seeing his son and him having a rift between them. So, he keeps his son naïve. For now. He’ll tell his son when he’s older.

“Son, why do you favor All-Might?”

Izuku gets up from his spot and clinks his heel on the floor. “I don’t know. I think I like him because no matter how bad the problem is or gets, he always has a smile on his face. He appears happy which makes me happy.” Izuku looks up from his shoes and takes his two index fingers and put them on his cheek, pushing them up to emphasize his smile.

Hisashi stares at his son for a minute than repeats the action back but with a frown. Izuku frowns back and tries to fix his face, telling him he has to smile and to “turn that frown upside down”. Though the action was something that started from Nana Shimura and has been passed down to All Might, it made Izuku look 30x cuter. But to think that he only likes All Might just because he…smiled, was weird. Must be a 4-year-old thing.

“But All Might isn’t my all-time favorite hero.”

“He’s not,” Hisashi questioned. This was surprising.

“Nope,” Izuku smiles and looks at his dad, “It’s you.”

Hisashi’s heart swelled. And that’s why he didn’t want to tell his son. He is his son’s hero. If he were to tell Izuku the truth, he wouldn’t smile so carefree anymore. Hisashi smiled down at his son, “And you’re mine.”

Izuku beamed and lifted his arms up to picked up. Hisashi chuckled and picked up his son. He opened the door only to come face to face with one of his helpers (who looks more like a butler), Kurogiri.

“Good morning A-Hisashi,” Kurogiri says with a slight bow.

“Oh, good morning Kurogiri. What brings you out here?”

Before Kurogiri could speak, Izuku inserts himself into the conversation. “Hi Mr. Kurogiri,” Izuku said with a grin, “Are you coming with us to see heroes?”

Kurogiri’s yellow eyes widen as they dart between Izuku and Hisashi, “Um…no. I have an important matter that I need to discuss with your father.” Izuku looked down at Hisashi, with a pout, “But you promised.”

“You’re right Izuku, I did promise,” Hisashi tapped Izuku’s shin, “So Mr. Kurogiri is coming with us.” He places Izuku back on the ground. “Now aren’t you forgetting some more things?”

Izuku looked confused, “No?”

“Son, I’m taking you to school after this and you don’t have your backpack or your lunch. And you’re going to leave without telling your mother bye?” Izuku’s eyes widen at the scandal he was about to commit, and he ran from the front door to prepare for the day. Hisashi smiled as he watched his son run but quickly let his eyes dart over to Kurogiri. Kurogiri stiffened, knowing what was about to happen. All for One has explicitly told him to never bring anything work related to his household, especially if Izuku is around.

“Kurogiri, this better be important,” All for One glared.

“Oh yes, sir. It is very important and time sensitive.” Hisashi crossed his arms.

“And what is it?”

“I found Nana.”

Hisashi stiffen but relaxed, “So you ARE wasting my time. Because here’s the thing. Nana has been dead for the last, I don’t know, 20 years. So what yo-”

“No sir. Not Nana herself, but her next in line, or really, her grandson.”

“How did you know that Nana had kids?”

“She had put her son up for adoption due to how risky being a hero is,” Kurogiri says, “He’s grown now and has a son of his own. Her grandson has a quirk that lets him decay things if he lays his a hand on it.”

“How did you find him?”

“The son kept his surname, even after getting adopted. I was listening to the dispatchers, like you told me, and I heard that the apartment building over on the rough side of town had caught on fire. Apparently, Nana’s son was the landlord there. They said the Shimura Apartment Complex. But when you look up the name on the internet, it comes up as All Apartments.”

Hisashi smiled a devious smile. His mind raced, all the possibilities. To have Nana’s grandson under his wing. The son would be preferable but considering the fact that he is an adult, he would be hard to manipulate.

“Well done, Kurogiri,” Hisashi chuckles and put his arm around Kurogiri’s shoulders, “But next time, call me.”

“I will. I’m sorry.”

Hisashi gave a thunderous laugh and smacked his hand on Kurogiri back, “It’s fine.” He heard tiny pitter-patter of feet coming towards him. He sees his tiny ball of sunshine trying to hurry to catch up before all the bad guy fights are over. “Kurogiri, if you don’t mind, can you make a portal for us?”

~~~

“Aw that sucks,” Izuku whines from his father’s side. They visited an apartment complex, similar to theirs, that was burning. Instead of a hero with a water quirk or one with a wind quirk, they brought Endeavor. “I hate Endeavor.” The fire hero was always rude to his fans and never let anyone help him whenever a situation could be solved by multiple people. Yeah, the hero was immune to fire and could go into the fire and save people but did they not think about the smoke and how that could burn his lungs? Apparently not. And again, this could be a two-person team up.

“Dad, who do you think should have been the one saving the people,” Izuku looked up at his dad only to see that he wasn’t beside him. It was some unfamiliar man. Izuku turned to his left and saw old woman holding her fat cat. Izuku felt fear. His breathing quickened and he felt his eyes getting wet. He was about to scream for his dad when he saw something shift in an alleyway. Now Izuku can think logically but in his muddled, scared brain, he headed towards the alleyway.

In the alleyway was a small kid, lanky, and slim. The kid was pale and had white hair. The kid had made himself into a ball, his shoulders shaking. Izuku could hear the kid sniffle. Izuku walked closer and was going to ask if the kid was okay until he stepped on an empty bag of potato chips. The kid stopped crying and looked up from his ball. His eyes were crimson like his friends, Kacchan, however, they were bloodshot due to the crying. He had a mole on the right side of his chapped, uneven lips. Blood was seeping out from the left side of is mouth and from his right eye.

“W-w-who are you,” the kid asked. He was older, maybe by 5 years or so but from how small he looked, he could be confused as younger, “What do you want?” “I was wondering if you were okay,” Izuku asked. He leaned forward, reaching out to try and wipe the hair from the kid’s face but his hand was swatted away.

“Don’t touch me or you’ll die,” the kid warned. Izuku gulped. He didn’t want to die. He was only 4. But the kid looked like he needed a friend or, at least, a shoulder to cry on. Izuku tried again, the kid leaned back until his head tapped the wall behind him. He was trapped. He closed his eyes, waiting for the newcomer to turn into dust when he touched his face. Light fingers touched his cheek and moved his hair to his ear.

“You have a big booboo on your face,” the Izuku said. He wiped back and brought out a small packet of tissues. “My mom does this all the time. I don’t think it really works but I don’t want to hurt her feelings.” He wets the tip of tissue and places it on his wounds. The blood seeps onto the tissue and instantly soaks it. Izuku tries again and again to no avail until he runs out of tissues. “I’m sorry. That’s all I have.”

“It’s fine.”

“My name is Izuku. Izuku Midoriya,” Izuku stuck out his hand, waiting for a handshake. The kid looked down at Izuku’s hand and brought his hands closer to his chest. Izuku blinked but changed his hand from a handshake to a fist bump. The kid raised his right hand and bumped Izuku’s with hesitation. “Um, my name is Tenko Shimura. It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you too,” Izuku beamed, “Is it okay if I sit with you?” Tenko looked at his side and pursed his lips. Tenko really doesn’t know the limit to his quirk. Was it only just his hands or was other body parts? Does he have to touch said thing or can said thing touch him and turn to dust? Before Tenko could answer, Izuku sat next to Tenko, crisscrossed, with his yellow backpack on his lap. He opened up his bag and ruffled through his things, trying to find what else he needed to take care of Tenko.

“Where are your parents,” Tenko asked, frowning.

Izuku froze. In a way, he kind of forgotten that he lost his dad and he didn’t know how to retrace his step to go home. “I lost my dad in the crowd from the fire and my mom is at home. Where are yours?”

Tenko stiffened a little but lets out a quiet sigh, “I think still at the apartment building. They said run and I did. They’re probably freaking out right now.” He gives a small chuckle. To be honest, they probably died in the fire that he accidently caused. He doesn’t mind though, they were trash anyway. The two kids sat in silence for a while, the firetrucks and the constant yelling from Endeavor filled the silence between them. Suddenly, in unison, their stomachs growled.

“I guess you didn’t eat breakfast either,” Izuku asked. Tenko chuckled, his face turning slightly red. Still pale but it has a little color. He nodded his head. Izuku digs into his backpack until he finds the bento box his mom packed for him. He opens it and sees that she made him 3 rice balls shaped like All Might. “Here. You can have some of my lunch.” Izuku tries to pass the dish over to Tenko, just for him to stare at the container. His fingers fidgeted but they stay where they were. Izuku takes a rice ball and places one in Tenko’s hand. Tenko pulls his hand close to his body and used his other hand to pick up the rice ball. He had his pinky raised when he eat the food. Maybe he’s British.

“You can eat the rest if you want. I can eat breakfast when I get to school,” Izuku pushes the box closer to Tenko.

“Izuku!”

Izuku perked up like a dog and try to pinpoint the voice. He looked at the mouth of the alleyway but saw no one. He looked back at Tenko but he was too distracted by the food, his face giving a sour look.

“Izuku! Izuku where are you?” His dad’s voice sounds closer but suddenly sounded like it was far away, like he was turning around.

“Dad,” Izuku jumped from his spot by his new friend. “Dad!” He felt tears well up in his eyes. He sniffled then felt a drop of something wet hit his hand. He was crying. “Daddy!!!”

Hisashi pivots and runs back to the voice of his son. When he saw his son, he ran and kneels. He grabs his son and give him a bear hug. “Izuku, are you okay? Are you hurt?” He patted his son everywhere. He saw a small splatter of blood on his hands. “Are you bleeding? Where are you bleeding?”

“No Dad, I’m fine,” Izuku said in his father’s shoulder, heaving in breathes of air. That’s when Izuku remembered his new friend, “Dad this isn’t my blood. It’s Tenko’s blood. He’s hurt real bad.”

Hisashi unwraps himself from his son and looks and the kid his son is talking about. He stiffens. It’s the boy he was looking for. How did his son find him? Nevermind that. Izuku said the kid was hurt. There were two cuts on the boy’s face, caked with trash from being in the alley. If not treated soon, this kid might get an infection. Hisashi tries to step towards him but the boy makes himself into a ball.

“Wait Tenko, you can trust him. He’s a good guy.”

Tenko started to hyperventilate. There were too many people now. The man was big and burly. Tenko’s father was big too and he always hurt Tenko. Izuku’s father was going to hurt him and he couldn’t even defend himself because he was breathing too fast and the world was going a little dark and-

“Breath.”

Tenko stopped. He looked to his side and saw Izuku beside him. He had started mimicking some breathing exerises. Tenko stared at Izuku for a bit but resumed breathing. “You’re going to be okay. This is going to pass,” Izuku kept reassuring Tenko.

Hisashi was…impressed. Unfornately, maybe all those times Izuku came home beat up, paid off. The kid looked like he was calming down, his breathing following Izuku’s and his eyes trained on him.

“This is my dad, Hisashi. He just wanted to make sure you were okay,” Izuku said. Tenko glanced over at Hisashi. “Is it okay if he looks at your face?” Tenko waited a beat than nodded his head. Hisashi scooted forward and lightly touched Tenko’s face. Tenko stiffened. Hisashi didn’t move, waiting for Tenko to get use to his hand on face for a bit. Tenko relaxed. Hisashi gently moved his face left and right, up and down.

“You have two cuts on your face. They are pretty deep,” Hisashi mumbled, “You might need to go to the hospital and get stitches. Where are your parents?”

“They’re back at the apartment building,” Tenko mutter. Something was off about that statement, Hisashi noticed, but wouldn’t worry about it until later.

“That’s fine. Izuku and I will just take you to the doctors ourselves.”

“We can’t do that,” Izuku explained.

“Why not?”

“What if his parents are looking for him? We can’t just take him.” Tenko flinched. Yeah something to do with his parents. Maybe he doesn’t want his parents to find him? Hisashi used one of his many quirks and looked into Tenko’s mind. He sees a man looming over Tenko with his hands balled into fist. His mother was standing by the counter and was sipping glass of water, talking on the phone with a friend. Her face was scrunched up like she smelled something foul. Hisashi felt sick. He popped out of Tenko’s mind and gave a tight smiled to his son.

“I don’t think they’ll mind that we are taking him to get help.”

Izuku looked at his dad with disbelief. “I’m serious. How about this, to ease your worried mind, we can leave them a note. Does that sound good to you?” Izuku thought the idea through. If they left Tenko behind, his parents could find him but his wounds could get worse. If they take Tenko with them, they could get him help but also risk his parents missing them and thinking he was lost or kidnapped. But if they take him and leave a note-

As son was muttering the pros and cons of the situation, Hisashi looked back at Tenko. He was sitting on the ground waiting for something to happen.

“You killed your parents?”

Tenko tensed, “Yeah. They were bad people.”

Hisashi sighed, “If I was in your situation, I would’ve done the same thing. Did you ever report them to the police?”

“I did. Multiple times. But my parents were good at lying. They never got caught.” Tenko let out a hiccup, “I thought a hero would save me.” He started to cry, the tears mixing with the blood. “But no one came to help me.”

“Except Izuku.”

Tenko stopped talking and look at Hisashi. Hisashi smiled, “Did you know my son is quirkless?” Tenko’s eyes widen. Someone being quirklesss? That is a very uncommon attribute someone to have. “My son has always wanted to be a hero. But when the doctor told him he can never be one, his heart shattered. I told him all the time he doesn’t have to have a quirk to be a good person and help out. But I don’t think my words helped. Once his classmates found out he was quirkless, they started to bully him. Which is funny considering they are all kindergarteners. But nonetheless, he still wanted to be a hero. Society has weird double standards. You wanted a hero to save you and no one came, not even the regular people. And yet, my quirkless son found you and saved you. Isn’t that something?”

Tenko looked back at Izuku in a different light. He was a true definition of a hero. He helped someone random stranger without anything in return. He didn’t care about the other things going around, he made sure that Tenko was always safe and comfortable. Izuku never wanted fame or fortune, just a…friend?

“We can take you home with us,” Hisashi started, “Taking you to the hospital is too dangerous and I don’t want to risk a pro trying to wrangle you to foster care. That could make your living situation worse. My wife can help clean the wound a bit and see if you really need stitches. If you do, I have a doctor friend who can do things on the slide. What do you say, Tenko?”

Tenko stared at Hisashi then looked back at Izuku, stilling muttering up a storm, “Will Izuku becoming with us?”

“Of course. He’ll be with us the whole day. And besides, Izuku’s clothes are a mess. My son gets teased as it is, I don’t want to give the kids another reason to beat him up.”

Tenko sighed but nodded, “Okay, I’ll come with you.”

“Excellent,” Hisashi smiled and clapped his big hands, making thunder like noise in the alleyway, “Than it’s settled. We’ll take you to the house and get that nasty gash fixed for you. Izuku, stop muttering we have to take Tenko with us to the house.”

Izuku stopped muttering but confusion was evident on his face, “I thought we were taking Tenko to the hospital?” “We were but Tenko just told me he’s afraid of doctors and would prefer to stay with us and have your mom fix him up.”

“Oh okay,” Izuku smiled and rushed over to his dad’s side. He tucks on his dad’s sleeve and raises his arms up. Hisashi sighs but with a small smile and picks up his son. “Wait, Dad. What about the note?” Hisashi looks around and picks up Izuku’s backpack. He opens the bag and see one of Izuku’s many hero notebooks.

“Is it okay if I write a note from your notebook?”

“Um…I guess,” Izuku muttered, pressing his heel into his father’s shoulder, “But don’t mess up my notebook. It’s very important to me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Hisashi writes a quick note for All Might (or to whomever it may concern) saying that they have lost a valuable player. He’s thankful at the moment that Izuku can’t read that well. He’s smart, yes, but can’t read everything properly or accurately. He showed the letter to his son, “Does that look good to you?”

Izuku scrunched up his nose, trying to decipher the handwriting. He’s concentrating so hard, his tongue is poking out. When he was satisfied, he nodded his head and gave a thumbs up to his dad, “Looks great to me.”

Hisashi chuckled and tore the page out from the book. He placed the note on a heap of garbage. If no one picks it up, oh well. He straightens up and starts walking to the mouth of the alleyway and heard small footsteps right behind him. He stops and waits for Tenko to catch up with them.

“Come on Tenko, don’t be a slowpoke,” Izuku shouts from the top of shoulders.

Hisashi gives out his hand for Tenko to grab. Tenko looked at the hand and scooted back a little. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Tenko muttered.

“Don’t worry. Dad doesn’t bite,” Izuku gave a wary smile, “but I can hold your hand.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Hisashi answered in a hurried, “and like Izuku said, I don’t bite. You can hold my hand.”

Tenko looked between Izuku and Hisashi, pain all over his face. Tenko let’s out a tiny exhale and let’s his hand fall into Hisashi’s. He held his breath, waiting for the screaming and the dust to fall in between his fingers. All he felt was his hand getting tight. He looked up toe see Izuku and Hisashi looking at him with smiles on their faces. For different reasons, of course, but smiles nonetheless.

“Okay boys,” Hisashi looks towards the exit, “Let’s go home.”

#dad for one #dad for one contest #midoriya izuku #all for one

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pastelsandink · 5 years

Text

Martini With a Lemon Twist

I wasn’t in the room when Adam pulled the trigger on my ex-boyfriend. Adam had hit Ben across the face with a gun we’d gotten from some stranger in an alleyway and dragged him into another room. I was pouring bleach across the floor of the shoddy apartment Ben and I used to share when I heard the pop of Adam’s silencer, and then I heard actual silence. After a while, I wonder if everything is okay, because Adam’s been very quiet and for all I know Ben could’ve been the one to fire the shot, so even though Adam told me it was probably best if I stay away, I walk across the kitchen and open the door to the bedroom Ben and I used to sleep in. When I first walk in on Adam hacking Ben apart, plastic bags and Tupperware strewn beside him, stained red, the first thing I think how similar Ben’s organs, strewn about the walls and room, looked like Christmas garland that we used to hang for the holidays. Intestines are all across the floor in wide, stretched out W-shapes and leave traces of red in their wake until they fall into the corner in a bloody heap of gore.

I immediately feel sick (the stench is like a punch in the throat), and Adam must see how green I look because he yells at me to hold it down, June, hold it down! His voice is grating, angry, desperate, not like I have ever heard before. I keep my lips locked up tightly and throw the key into the back of my mind, and soon enough my insides slide back down my throat and vanish somewhere within the black hole of my body. Adam’s face and thick layers of clothes are all red, and so are the latex gloves around his hands that once were creamy white, and so is Ben, whose ribs are split apart like chicken bones, who has a tiny, bloody hole on his forehead, and whose face is frozen, blue eyes staring vacantly at the sky and mouth slightly agape. The inside of his mouth is filled with blood and for a moment I fear it’ll open wide into that demonic grin of his and pull me in, like a black hole sucking me further and further until I no longer exist. I remember myself, and I turn, shut the door, and continue pouring bleach across the kitchen.

After a long, long while, Adam emerges and pulls the door shut with his foot. I can hear him walk up behind me, and more than anything I just want him to hold me in his arms and let me cry and kiss the tears off my face but I know he can’t do that right now (and besides, I didn’t particularly want Ben’s gore and carnage on me; that’s why Adam was the one to actually kill him and cut him up like a science project).

“Are you okay?” Adam asks, his voice little more than a whisper. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

I turn to look at him and his face and clothes are still red. He has a huge black duffel bag at his side, filled to its capacity with our crime against God. I could barely hear Adam through the pounding hammer sound in my ears, and as I open my mouth to speak it feels like my blood has run cold. “It’s okay. We’re both on edge. Are we finished?” I say, my voice low and my hands trembling at my sides.

“We’re finished. Did you touch anything?”

“No. Do you think the neighbors heard?”

Adam squints. “I don’t think so. We made some noise, but you said the walls here were thick enough, right? ”

I feel a little dizzy for a split second. “Right. They were thick, alright.”

Adam realizes what he said and he reaches his hand out to me before remembering our job, and then he retracts it and says, “Come on. There’s still a lot we have to do.”

The two of us slide on the long, thick coats we bought in the largest size at the thrift store, button them over ourselves. I’m worried that the blood that Adam is covered in will seep through the fabric and that the security camera in the hall will see the stains, or that there will be someone out at 3:24 in the morning as we walk to our car who will see the giant duffel bag and correctly assume that there’s the cut-up remains of a dead man inside. For now, at least, the layer of red covering his body is shrouded by the dark brown coat, so I banish my fears and bite my tongue and try to calm my rapidly-beating heart. We wipe down the wooden chairs and the kitchen table where Ben would serve us dinner and I’d pick at the food like a bird for a while. I remember I’d bought the table-and-chair-set secondhand from some old lady on Craigslist--she was sweet and kind, like honey on the back of my tongue, and offered us a plate of cookies, but she kept calling me Jennifer, Janice, Jane, Juniper. When we left Ben was making fun of her and saying terrible things and I didn’t tell him to stop--it doesn’t matter, anyway, this is the last time I’ll see those chairs, and about five minutes ago was the last time I would see Ben’s eyes. We open the door, wipe down the knobs, and step out as casually as we can into the dark. I wonder as I walk closely behind Adam if Ben is still staring at the sky. I wonder what his hands must feel like now.

----

I met Ben at a seedy-looking bar farther downtown Chicago after I had just broken up with a “we-dated-all-through-college” girlfriend exactly four weeks before, on the day. I didn’t think I was ready for a relationship, but that night the bartender handed me a martini with a lemon twist and told me that the guy at the other end of the bar had ordered it for me. When I turned to look at the guy at the other end of the bar, his blond hair and blue eyes glinting slightly under the dim light of the bar, he cocked his chin back, grinned, and waved at me. I didn’t really like martinis and I especially didn’t like them with lemon twists, but I smiled back and downed the martini (I took a second to choke back a gag reflex) before going to sit with him because I thought it would be impolite to refuse it and, besides, he was pretty attractive so maybe I’d get lucky.

We introduced ourselves and made small talk. Pretty soon we were smiling and giggling and he told some joke that made me laugh loudly and heartily and my laughter resounded through the cigarette smoke and soft 80s music of our little meeting place. He kept pulling on his sweatshirt strings, adjusting them absentmindedly, trying to straighten them out, and I thought it was cute. Twenty minutes later Ben had me pushed up against my car door and we were making out, and his fingers trickled down my back and onto my ass and thighs.

“You got a boyfriend?” he said in between hot, angry kisses.

“No,” I said. “No, I don’t.”

When I said that he grinned and kissed me again, kissed me harder, kissed me hotter, kissed me faster, and when I went back home that night, his contact in my phone, and woke up in the morning, I pulled my pants down and saw that his fingers had left dark bruises over my cinnamon-colored skin. Soon they got bigger and turned angrily purple, but after a while they got smaller and soon disappeared without a second thought, as if they were never there to begin with. But they were.

----

Adam and I had already bought a place in New York. We’d been saving for months, and as soon as both of us were approved for jobs up there we started to cover our tracks. A week ago I had a friend in New York pick up our keys for us and tell our landlord we’d be coming in “tomorrow.” She left the door unlocked and the lights on, thinking we’d be there like we told her. The electricity bill will be a bitch to pay but we’ll work it out. Adam and I both left our jobs officially two weeks ago, saying we’d be leaving within “the next few days.” We’ve been sleeping in our car for several days now (it might be too risky to stay in a hotel too long), but as far as our friends and family are concerned we’re settling into a new home in New York City, not planning and executing a murder.

Adam and I get into the car and I hear him fiddle with the keys, but other than that I can’t really focus too well. All I can look at are the gloves on my hands, and even though I can’t see the blood on them with my eyes I can picture it clearly in my mind. I shut my eyes and lean against the window. I thought of killing Ben so many times before; I once thought of tearing him open and holding his oodles of organs in my hands and devouring them, or cutting one of his veins with a knife and drinking the life from him like I drank the martini he bought me, only this time I wanted it. I wanted to drain any evidence that he was ever alive from his body and lock it away inside myself forever, so that no one could ever find it again, and maybe in his honor I’d add a fucking lemon twist--but right now I’m not sure what I want. Now that it’s over and Adam and I are finally free I feel numb in my head and I feel pins and needles everywhere else, and more than anything I can still taste a martini faintly in the back of my mouth and see him waving at me across the bar.

Then I blink my eyes open and I don’t see the city anymore. I just see wide open plains and a couple of farmhouses quickly getting smaller and smaller behind us. The sun is starting to rise, and orange light spills through the dark. When I look at the car clock it’s just past six-thirty. A few minutes later we get out of the car, step into the dim light outside, strip naked, and burn our clothes inside a cluster of trees, careful so that it doesn’t spread and draw attention. Then, when the flames are high enough, Adam takes the duffel bag, full of what remains of Ben, and tosses it into the fire. I watch the flames cackle, lap, and kiss at the air, and I don’t speak, I don’t move, until I can’t see the red in Adam’s clothes anymore, until the duffel bag is ash and the scent of burning flesh just tastes like regular air. But when he pulls me back into the car and we change into different clothes, I look down and I can still see the red on my hands.

----

When Ben first found out I was an artist at a small comic book studio, he initially seemed to think it was pretty cool.

“It’s awesome you’re doing what you love,” he said, hand on my arm, thumbing the freckles scattered across my skin like spilled coffee beans. “It’s really cool.”

His response was much different from that of my parents and my abuela when I first told them what I wanted to do, so I smiled and thanked him and I fell even more in love with him. That’s what he did--in the first few weeks of our relationship he kept building me up and up like a house of cards, like the tallest house of cards in the world, and his hands on my body felt like they were supposed to be there, like he was home. So when he started texting me every day asking me where I was and who I was with, I didn’t think much of it. I thought he might have just been worried, overprotective. When he started texting and calling me when I was at work, on the way home, when I was with friends, when I was anywhere without him, I started to get a little annoyed but I bit my tongue and shut up about it. My friends were getting worried, though.

“He doesn’t need to call you that much,” they said. “Doesn’t he trust you? Put your foot down and tell him to stop.”

For a while I didn’t really listen. It was just something that bothered me about him versus all the rest of the things that I loved about him.

“Where are you?” his gray bubbles on my phone screen said. “Who are you with? Call me soon. I miss you.”

At first they seemed like he was genuinely worried, and for a long time when I read those messages I thought he was like a little lost puppy, or a neighborhood cat rubbing against my legs and begging to be fed. Sure, it was irritating, but because I was falling hard into love with him I fed him with where I was, that I would call him when I got off work, that I was with Stacey and Henry and Ashley and that I’d be home soon. After a while, though, Ben started to get more aggressive.

“Tell me where you are,” he said if I didn’t respond within an hour. “I’m worried. You better not be doing anything stupid.”

I started to get a little angry that he would talk to me that way. I kept telling him that I was busy, that I couldn’t respond all the time, that he needed to cool it and stop freaking out so much. He would apologize, but then he’d keep doing it. I was starting to think my friends were right.

One day, I’d been in a meeting with the writers at the studio. To be fair it was technically my day off, but I’d gone in to work out the details with the other artists in a specific comic we were making. I put my phone on silent. When I took it out a couple of hours later, I’d had exactly one hundred and three text messages and six missed calls from Ben.

“Where are you?” his texts had started, a little heart emoji lovingly placed at the end. “I swung by ur apartment but u werent there. Call me when u can.” They went on like that, but when thirty minutes went by without a response, his words became a bit pushier. After two hours, “pushy” couldn’t even begin to describe it.

“WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU??? ANSWER ME! IF YOU’RE WITH SOMEONE ELSE RIGHT NOW I SWEAR TO GOD!”

My blood ran cold.

“FUCKIN ANSWER ME JUNE I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU!”

I wasn’t shocked--I was shaken to my core. And they just kept coming--it seemed like every few seconds came the next hundredth-something message and I barely had time to piece together a coherent puzzle of a response. I decided right then that I wouldn’t be spoken to like that--if he thought he had the right to threaten me, to curse at me, then I wasn’t going to take it.

When I texted him, “I was in a meeting, at work. We need to talk,” his messages abruptly stopped. Then, when I got to my apartment, he was waiting, pacing back and forth across the kitchen floor and wringing his hands. He scrambled up to me when I swung open the door, and I pulled it closed with the back of my foot and regarded him with the most furious look I could muster.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice pleading and quiet. “I’m sorry, I was just so worried…”

“Worried that I was with someone other than you?!” I snapped, slamming the door behind me. I decided I wasn’t going to just lay down and forgive him--I decided I had more self-respect than that. “You can’t talk to me like that--I’m just as much a person as you are, you know.”

“But you’re my person!”

“I’m not anyone’s person but my own! If you’re going to freak out every time I don’t speak to you for two hours, then maybe this isn’t going to work out.”

His eyes widened and his voice became hushed and breathless. “What are you saying, June?”

I folded my arms across my chest. “I’m saying what you think I’m saying. Maybe we should break up--”

As my lips molded the words “break up,” he grabbed the lamp by the door, where it stood right next to me, and he smashed it hard against the wall. Glass flew everywhere and the light bulb made an ugly, monstrous sound as it shattered and burned out. I made a short scream and fell back against the door, shutting my eyes and covering my face with my arms.

“We’re not breaking up!” Ben screamed, bringing his an inch or two from mine, so close I could feel particles of spit shoot onto my skin. “We’re not breaking up! You fuckin’ hear me, June?! I won’t let you! Fucking look at me!”

I didn’t say anything--I couldn’t do anything except for tremble while he screamed in my face, until finally he roughly moved me away from the door and left, slamming it behind him. I stayed still as a statue for what felt like hours--I didn’t move, I barely breathed, I couldn’t even cry. All I did for the rest of the day was sweep up the glass, climb into bed, and stare at the wall until the sun fell and then rose again. Ben and I didn’t talk for the rest of the day. We didn’t talk for the rest of the next morning. Then, he texted me as I was at my desk at work, while I was sketching out a page in a comic about a female superhero, still feeling like my stomach had been submerged in ice cold water.

“You should move in with me,” he said in his text message. “It would be easier so I could know where u are.”

The sane side of me beat against my skull and told me to run, to tell him it was over, to block his number and to find another person and forget Ben ever existed while I still had the chance. But the part of me who cowered against the door while he smashed my lamp to pieces and screamed in my face texted back, “ok,” and my fate was forever woven into his.

----

“Pull over,” I say to Adam as soon as I feel my stomach begin to gnarl and twist.

“What?” he says, turning down the music a little. “What did you say?”

“I said pull over!” My voice suddenly spikes in volume because it feels like there is a wild beast inside my stomach, clawing and ripping away at me and I need to get it out.

Adam clicks on the hazard lights and swings to the side of the road. He has scarcely parked before I throw the door open, tumble down the grassy hill at the side of the road, and free the beast inside me through my gaping mouth. Adam yells after me to come back, but I can’t even hear him anymore. Out comes the fast food we’d gotten the night before we killed Ben, out comes the water I’d been sipping on in the car, out comes everything except for my shame, except for Ben’s eyes--they stay glued to the backs of my eyelids no matter how much I retch and heave.

I feel Adam’s hand start to rub figure-eights into my back (I’d know his hands anywhere) and soon when I can’t throw up anymore I just cry, I cry and cry and Adam guides my head into his lap and even as I hear his heart beating comfortingly through the veins in his thighs I’m still crying because all I can picture was Ben’s ribs split apart like some fucked up viking sacrifice and his Christmas garland intestines and his gaping mouth and his eyes, sweet Jesus, his eyes--!

“I’m sorry,” I sob, my shoulders violently wracking up and down. “I’m so sorry, I just--! God, Adam, I can’t stop thinking about him!”

“I know,” Adam says, his fingers running through my hair. “Me too, June. Me too.” He purses his lips together and says, his voice breaking, “God, June, but what choice did we have? We couldn’t just leave his body there. They’d know it was us.”

“We shouldn’t have done it,” I say. “We should have just moved.” Adam and I both know I don’t mean what I say. We didn’t have a choice--it was Ben or us, and it must always be us.

Adam doesn’t say so, though. Instead he just keeps stroking my hair, and his heart keeps beating through his thighs.

“Ba-dum,” Adam’s heart says. I wonder if my heart still beats the same way after what we did. I imagine Ben’s heart in my hands, still beating, and I wonder if it beat the same after all the things he did, too. “Ba-dum… Ba-dum…”

----

As soon as the last of my boxes were unpacked into Ben’s apartment, it was like I was living in some secret tenth circle of Hell. The change was so hard and fast, I didn’t know what could have triggered it, but Ben was different. He made me throw away all of my clothes--he was worried they were “too slutty,” and since I thought that women and men were both beautiful in every way I was sure to cheat on him if he didn’t hold me back somehow. I tried to fight him on it--I told him I can wear whatever the hell I want--but he argued right back.

“Who wants to see you in that anyway?” he said to me one night, beer on his breath and a hideous grin on his face. “You look like a beached whale in it. You look like a fucking bear with all that hair on you, a sasquatch.”

He said it so often, so angrily, that every morning I looked in the mirror and all I could see were the dark hairs that stuck up from my arms like shoots of grass, and my full eyebrows and hair in places it wouldn’t be on the pretty white girls on television, so I shaved it all so thoroughly that I was late to work that morning. The sane part of me watched me do it, and she beat her fists against my skull again and again and told me to kill him, and I wanted to, I wanted to so badly, but I didn’t. I stopped arguing with him after a while.

Ben wouldn’t let me hang around with any of my guy-friends, but as time went on he didn’t want me hanging out with women either. Almost a year into dating I was only allowed to hang out with his friends, and even though my work friends and my college friends stretched out their hands to me, no matter how much I wanted to stretch my hands back I had to keep walking forward as Ben dragged me further into the abyss. By the time Ben and I had been dating for a year my friends had stopped calling.

Ben was the son of a family of cops, so he knew he could just about do whatever kind of crime there was and get away with it. He’d go to parties with me clinging to his arm and he’d tell me that he got us ecstasy, or coke, or a xanny to take before we went inside. I’d tell him I didn’t want it, and he’d tell me how ungrateful I was being because he’d got it for me as a present (even though I never asked for it). So I’d take whatever he gave me and I’d go into a party with a red solo cup in one hand and a plaster smile on my face while I met Ben’s druggy friends. All I wanted to do was take the back of Ben’s head and pull back, and fill his mouth with xannies and beer until he couldn’t take it anymore, and I wanted to watch him seize on the ground and I wanted to watch the life seep out of him slowly until he was empty, until the only thing inside him was death. Then I wanted to reach my hands inside him and spoon his sin and his hatefulness out for all his shitty friends to see, and maybe I’d spoon everything out of them, too. But I didn’t do any of that. I just imagined myself killing him, and then I drifted away as Ben sloppily kissed my neck and the sound from a band I don’t know blared through the speakers. By our two year anniversary, the real June, shackled and chained in the back of my mind, stopped pounding at my head and only wailed occasionally.

“You laugh and talk too loudly,” he said. “It’s embarrassing. Your art shit is never going to get you anywhere. How do you think I feel having to provide for you all the time? Get a real job.”

I thought of scientists breaking open geodes to see the colors and crystals inside. I thought that maybe Ben was treating me like a geode to see what was inside me, only I knew there wasn’t crystals hidden within me. I thought there might be rotten fruit and dead crows and crows picking at the dead crows. He had strategically broken me down to my core. All I wore were turtlenecks and jeans. Ben made me quit my job, and soon my pen and sketchbook were shoved into the back of a closet, and every other night I’d go limp on our bed while he did what he wanted with me, grabbing my thighs and leaving bruises that would disappear eventually like they were never even there. I’d scream sometimes, hoping the neighbors would hear, but the walls were so thick, how could anyone hear me unless they were right on top of me? All my despair would cluster in my head and chest like swarms of black bees and it felt like my skull was full of water, like my brain would start melting out of my ears at any moment, and I couldn’t take it, I couldn’t take it, I couldn’t take the buzzing in my head getting louder and louder and I couldn’t take the real June wailing in my mind but I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t stop--!

Then, on our three year anniversary, when Ben’s fist lashed out and struck my cheekbone, when his hands closed around my neck and tried to squeeze everything out of me, the real June finally broke her shackles and took me over, and I kicked him hard in as many places as I could, turned and walked out of his apartment. He called after me, tried to chase me, but he was doubled over in agony and soon I got in my car and drove to a friend’s house. I only looked back once.

----

Adam and I were tired of sleeping in the car, so when we were several states away we get a room at a place called the “CuppaTea Hotel,” which Adam and I think sounds dumb as hell but it gave us both a little bit of a chuckle amidst everything else. Adam opens the door and flips on the light--the room looks quaint and has a lingering tobacco smell that’s almost comforting. I shower for the first time in about a week; Adam lets me go first but for a while I don’t shampoo my hair or wash the sweat and bleach smells off of me. For a long time I look at the white tiles on the wall, and I watch the water droplets ricochet off of my hair and onto the tiles, slowly rolling down until they’re consumed by other droplets and they all fall down into the tub. A clump of hair has come out and stuck to the shower wall, and I swirl it around with my fingers into some kind of art piece. It doesn’t really look like much of anything when I finish, but maybe if I squinted I’d see Ben’s eyes again. Maybe there’s his ribs, hooped and cracked and twisted apart. Maybe there’s his bones popping amidst the flames. Maybe there’s a martini glass with a lemon twist. Or maybe there’s nothing there at all.

----

I met Adam at another bar in Nashville when I went on a roadtrip with some of my friends. He was in town for a bachelor party, and he’d come to the bar to step away from the festivities for a little bit. I liked him because he asked if he could buy me a drink before he actually bought me one. When we got to talking for a while he told me he was an accountant, but that he really wanted to be an actor.

“Are you going to go to New York?” I asked, my finger stirring my glass of whiskey. “Be a Broadway star?”

He laughed a little. “Yeah, I’d really like that. My family wouldn’t like it much, but maybe when I save enough, if I can get a stable job there for a while, then…”

“I wasn’t meaning to make fun of you,” I said. “I’m an artist. I’m freelancing right now, but I’m reapplying at this studio where I used to work. My parents didn’t like that much either.”

He laughed again. “We’ve something in common, huh?”

I was hesitant to live with a significant other again, but after about a year of dating Adam, when he asked me to get a place with him I couldn’t help but say yes. My friends loved him, my parents loved him--I loved him. Adam didn’t really like parties, and he didn’t do drugs, and he didn’t say that I was ungrateful when I didn’t want to sleep with him (which I didn’t do for a long time), and beyond all of that he was the only person I could talk to about Ben. At night I’d shoot awake in bed, wracked with nightmares of Ben’s hand on my sides, his smile against my ear. When I was living alone, I’d call Adam at the crack of dawn and before leaving for work he’d knock on my door and I’d let him in and he’d hold me. When we were living together he’d wake up with me. When I was doing some menial chore and sank to the ground, a sobbing, pathetic heap of flesh and woe, he’d sit beside me and just listen. For the first time in a long time I felt at home. I felt like I was a ship captain after a long, stormy voyage, and after years of being grinded under Ben’s heel, I was finally seeing the sun come out.

At least, that’s what I thought. Then I got a knock at the door on a weekend in April, and when I opened it there was Ben.

Ben’s eyes were wild, like a wolf closing in on a rabbit, and before I could slam the door shut he stuck his foot in and shoved his way into the apartment.

“I found you,” Ben said, his voice dripping with venom. “I finally fuckin’ found you, June!”

Adam was sitting on the couch, but when he saw Ben he lurched forward and shoved me behind him. Adam told me later that I was as white as a sheet, trying to piece together words and sounds into a sentence but I just couldn’t do it. Ben’s eyes and grin, the same eyes and grin that haunted me day and night, awake and asleep, bore down into me.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Adam said as calmly as he could, “or I’m going to call the police.”

“Oh, please do,” Ben snarled. “June, whenever you want to come back home, let me know. I’ll be around.” His blue eyes, the most innocent and evil eyes I’ve ever seen, seemed to glint as he looked at me, a predator’s piece of meat. “I’ll be around.”

----

When Adam and I are both clean, we climb naked into the creaky hotel bed together, and turn the TV onto a crime documentary. Adam starts kissing my neck and then he rolls on top of me and starts kissing down my collarbone, between my breasts, on my stomach. I moan a little as his fingers and lips explore me, and I wrap my arms around his shoulders and I press my body against him.

He stops for a moment, and I look towards him with concern.

“We had no choice, June,” he says, maybe more to both of us than just to me. “We had no choice but to do it.” He clenches his jaw. “I had to cut him up like that. We had to get rid of the evidence, you know?”

“I know,” I say. I run my fingers through Adam’s hair. “I know.”

“The police wouldn’t help…”

“I know. I knew they wouldn’t.”

“He was gonna kill us.” Adam wraps his arms around my waist and presses his forehead into my stomach. “He was gonna hurt you.”

I don’t say anything because what is there to say? We were stalked, we were threatened--I couldn’t even go to work without one of my neighbors walking me to my car--and Adam’s line at his job was blowing up with calls from Ben. He knew where we lived, where we worked; we just weren’t safe. And no matter how many times Adam called the police, no matter how many times I ran into the station, a deluge of tears streaming down my face, they never did anything. Ben was given a firm slap on the wrist by his daddy at best and they told me to just ignore him.

Adam and I knew we had to take action into our own hands when Ben broke into the house--he’d left before we came home, but he’d shattered our window along with several portraits of Adam and me. That’s when we knew that it was too dangerous--we had to leave. What could we do? Go live with our parents and put them at risk too, or leave some other poor girl at a seedy bar downtown to her wretched fate? No. Not again. Not to anyone again.

Adam grinds his hips into mine, and soon he enters me and I sit up on his lap and lean back and let him take me, praying it takes his mind off of things, but for me there is no hope. I thought that the last time I saw Ben would be when he was dead, but the truth is Ben blasted apart and his shrapnel embedded into my flesh forever, and though I can pull some of it out, the rest have burrowed into my skin and into my organs and there they shall remain forever. And the swarm of black bees and water in my head never truly left, they were always there, even after I left Ben and only looked back once, and now the buzzing of my sin and my grief fills my head with such vicious ferocity. I’m sweating and moaning, and I feel my stomach start to twist. Suddenly, all at once, I picture the Bible that’s surely in the bedside drawer next to us, and I remember the story of Jacob in the Bible and how he pictured his stairway to heaven. Suddenly and all at once I feel just like a Jacob’s ladder toy, like I’m hanging onto the remaining pieces of myself with strings of the person I used to be, and if I lean my head forward too much I will collapse, again and again, over and on top of myself, dangling over the tenth circle of hell I thought I’d escaped.

As we collapse into bed, breathing hard and sweating harder, as Adam starts to kiss my neck again, I can taste a martini with a lemon twist in the back of my throat.

----

I sleep soundly for only a few hours, and when I wake I can see the sun just beginning to peek over the roads and buildings in the tiny village around us, turning everything in its path a soft baby blue. When I turn my head to look at Adam, he’s still sleeping soundly. He’s breathing through his mouth, and his breaths are quiet, hushed, troubled. I decide not to wake him. I sit up in bed, pulling the sheets over my chest and rubbing my eyes, and my gaze drifts over to look outside the window. It’s just after six in the morning--I can see cars driving to work on the roads outside, I can see street lights turn off and house lights turn on. I can see that baby blue tint the sun is giving everything on earth, and even though my stomach doesn’t feel ice cold anymore, I feel like my mouth is full of sand and my brain is a flat-line on a heart monitor. I just don’t feel anything.

Ben didn’t really have many people come over often, so I wasn’t worried about someone immediately finding the body. I had estimated that we had at least a few days before someone went and checked on him, and by then we would be long gone. I wasn’t really worried about being found, either, which by all accounts should worry me because I had taken just about every step I deemed necessary to prevent anyone from knowing Adam and I were involved. When I see the flash of police sirens on a road far from the hotel, however, I start to worry a little bit. It doesn’t last long, though. They can’t find us. Not now. Maybe eventually, but not now.

All I can do is continue sitting in a bed next to the person I love, watching the flash of police sirens in the far, far distance, wondering if I should wake Adam up but deciding ultimately to just watch the red and blue flash on and off for a while. It is pretty, in a weird sort of way.

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soveryanon · 5 years

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Four weeks later, reviewing time for MAG139 /o/

-I’m still crying over how the first time Tim ever spoke on tape, he pointed out so many mistakes/typos/misreadings from statements that were faaar from being one-liner but actually… Big Mysteries that are still relevant now. Amongst those:

(MAG033) TIM: Um… oh, and here, in Miss Montauk’s statement about her father’s killings. You refer to case, um, 9220611 as case, um, 1106922. Oh, and don’t get me started on the other case numbers around the Hill Top hauntings, they’re a mess! […] So, in case 8163103… it isn’t clear if Albrecht’s wife is called “Clara” or “Carla”, ‘cause you keep switching back and forth…

Aaaand it was in that episode that we heard about “Peter Lukas” for the first time ever. I miss Tim and gdi, he had a good nose…

- I want to say a word about Jon’s reading of the statement in itself: “Jon, what the FUCK.” Part of why it was so sneakily terrifying was… how much Jon was into it? He totally ran with the sheer glee and cruelty, especially, I felt, in these moments:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “It’s hard to say how much I’ve got left in me; how much longer my sacrifices can buy me. But when I go… you better believe I’m going big – and it is going to hurt. […] And I hurt so very many people… A building fire is a dreadful thing – but so much more dreadful when it’s shining out into that night. It was the first of my crimes, but not the last, and arson has always been my thing. It’s such a simple way to destroy everything someone has built, both literally, and figuratively. […] I was to secure her sacrifices. I would spare you the details, but I do not wish to~”

Presumably, the dramatic reading is still a Jon Thing and not intrinsically spooky, but w o w Jon, you didn’t have to take that edge for a sadistic serial killer.

- YEAH OKAY, and Eugene was terrifying per se. Why are all Desolation people Like That. And Eugene started… very young:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “So, me? I was born in ’36 […]. But now, staggering through the ruins of his life, the look I saw on his face… it woke something in me. Something… truly awful… Anyone who talks about “the Blitz spirit” wasn’t there, or wants to paper over their fear with nostalgia. Terrible things happened in the Blackout, and we hurt each other just as much as the Germans hurt us. And I hurt so very many people…”

He… wasn’t even ten, back then…

;; Aaaand once again, demonstration that spooks tend to go for the easy, vulnerable targets:

Gerry had commented about the fact that the world becoming a Factory Farm for a Fear God would mean being able to snatch everything (MAG111: “right now all the entities have to act like a hunter, they pick off the weak ones around the edges, the ones that wander too close, and the rest of the time they have to just graze on whatever fear we all passively give away.”) but it’s always upsetting when we get Spooks describing their preferred targets… ;;

Eugene said that he was already seventy, he’s now eighty, Jon had found hints that he was probably still active (MAG139, Jon: “looking at the details for the British Steel Plant in Scunthorpe, it does seem like Eugene is still around. So I can only assume… some sort of equilibrium was found. Given what happened when I met Jude Perry, I’m not in any rush to track him or… any of them down myself.”), but given how Eugene had promised that he would be “going big” at the end of his life, it… probably won’t be pretty.

(And I totally understand that Jon feels like it’s not his own battle! But at every little concession, my heart breaks a bit. There are still people in the coffin; Eugene is probably still taking foreign workers even after Agnes’s death, for his own sacrifices… and it’s true that it’s not the Archive team’s role to save them, that they have bigger things to focus on? But they know what is happening, and that still means that innocents are getting killed and/or consumed and they… let it happen. It feels so Beholding, to know and to allow it, feeding from the scraps of the surviving witnesses’ tales…? They’re not actively allowing these terrible things to happen but they take advantage of that whole system…)

Eugene also highlighted how in the end, the cults/clusters/congregations of people worshipping the same concept are… human-made. There doesn’t seem to be any special instructions or a divine revelation about how they should proceed; they scramble and try things out, but it’s mostly coming from punctual decisions, in the same way that Robert Smirke made arbitrary decisions regarding his Architecture of the Fears.

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “I found my God through my own path, served It in my own way; and when Arthur and Diego found me, told me there were others that shared my devotion… Well, I can’t say it doesn’t feel nice to belong. Even if we do have our… little disagreements. […] But a longing… is not the same thing as an instruction. We’d all been touched and warped by proximity to the holy Burning Fire, but none of us had any special knowledge, no matter what Diego claims he might have read. […] Some objected, said that unless the child was conceived of the Flame, it could never be a true incarnation. But they had no idea of how such a conception could possibly even work, so it was decided that it would have to be enough to birth the child by fire. […] There was some… division amongst us as to the best course of action, something that will surely not surprise you at this stage.”

It’s kind of impressive that the Lightless Flame managed to be a small cult, that Rayner attracted people around his own “religion”, and that the Magnus Institute apparently managed to establish itself around something its people shared (given that there are the international canals, the Usher Foundation and the Pu Songling Research Centre, who knew about the Archivist’s powers, and Jon was identified in Beijing, Elias was clearly familiar to Xiaolin, etc.). It makes sense, in that regard, that even when feeling like they “belong” and are worshipping the same concept, spooks tend to give their same patrons so many different names – like different aspects of it. I wonder if there are also divisions amongst the Beholding people about their ritual and how they should try to go about it? Outside of the fact that some (Jon…? Please, Jon, confirm that you still don’t want That.) might refuse to partake in it altogether because they’re satisfied with the world as is, like Jared demonstrated in MAG131 in his refusal to join in The Last Feast.

- I wonder to which extent we’re going to hear about the history of the Lightless Flame again, because… it sounds like there are still so many mysteries (even more than before this episode?) and I have no idea if they’ll fall into the left-in-the-air-for-us-to-guess/wonder category (Jonny did promise that we won’t get spoon-fed all the answers, iirc?), or if this will all get cleared up later.

* First, everything around Diego Molina (Malina? Not the first time his name has popped up, but each of his episodes are floating in the no-official-transcript void):

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “We all felt the calling, the dreams, pulling us ever closer to a world of fire and loss, a place of burning, and agony, when we remade the world in the image of the Lightless Flame, the one Diego called “Asag”. […] none of us had any special knowledge, no matter what Diego claims he might have read. […] Arthur has told us not to harm you yet, but this whole thing has really rather weakened his authority, and many of us are now looking towards Diego for leadership. But we shall see, I suppose.”

[…] ARCHIVIST: “Diego”, I assume to be Diego Molina, who Basira crossed paths with back in her Section’d days, and “Arthur”… could be Arthur Nolan – though, going from… the head of a cult to watching over Jane Prentiss as a landlord… does seem like something of a demotion. … God knows. It’s not like I don’t have my own office politics to keep track of.

Jon remembered Basira’s account of her encounter with Diego (when she had been able to tell his name), from MAG043, which gave us an official description of him. He had been involved in the case which got her to sign her first Section 31 form, regarding a fire near Clapham in August 2011, and resulting in the death of a fellow (racist) officer:

(MAG043) BASIRA: He was… a Hispanic male. Probably mid to late forties, heavyset with a completely shaved head. […] I realised for the first time the bald guy’s saying something. Not loud, but intensely. I mean, this was years ago so I don’t remember exactly what he was saying, but it definitely involved the words “cleansing fire”, “all shall be ash”, and the name “Asag”? Which, I later learned, is some kind of Sumerian demon. So that’s fun. […] Our arsonist’s name was Diego Molina. He was assistant curator at some Mexican museum, come over with a loan to the Natural History Museum, but… they hadn’t heard from him for a few weeks. […] The only thing Diego Molina had on him, when we brought him in, was a small book, bound in red leather. They caught Spencer in storage, trying to destroy it with a zippo lighter. […] They told me he killed himself when he got home. Apparently, he’d somehow filled the bath full of boiling water and just… just got in. Official story was he’d somehow done it using a kettle, which… that’s, that’s just about the weakest cover-up I ever heard.

And the description she gave, and the focus on “Asag”, is of course putting to mind the mysterious man from MAG012 who was transported to Lesere Saraki’s service on the night of the 23rd December of 2011 (so six months after Basira’s case), and who had apparently been fighting with Gerry Keay, before Gerry killed him for good in the hospital:

(MAG012, Lesere Saraki) “Apparently the fire brigade had responded to reports of a blaze in a building site near St Mary’s churchyard, and had turned up to find the two men lying unconscious. There had been no fire, although the ground they lay on showed several burn marks and a metal bar that had been lying nearby appeared to have bent slightly as if from great heat. […] the more I heard, the more it sounded like most of them weren’t in English. The first sounded like “Asak” or “Asag”, then “Veepalach” and finally in English “The Lightless Flame”. The last part was very clear, and I assumed he was talking about whatever burned him, but he said it with such intensity that the words made me feel quite uncomfortable.”

[…] ARCHIVIST: As far as the mystery man’s chanting goes, if it was indeed “Asag” that he was saying, then that’s quite interesting. Asag is the name of a demon in Sumerian mythology associated with disease and corruption, which doesn’t really seem to have much relevance to this statement except that it was also fabled that Asag was able to boil fish alive in their rivers. Admittedly in Sumerian myth this was because he was monstrously ugly but a curious coincidence nonetheless. “Veepalach” might also be a mishearing of the Polish word “wypalać”, according to Martin, which means to cauterize or brand. Admittedly, if Martin speaks Polish in the same way he “speaks Latin” then he might be talking nonsense again, but I’ve looked it up and it appears to check out.

* Tangent about Gerry but mMMmm, there is one item I had absolutely forgotten about that was mentioned in this episode?

(MAG012, Lesere Saraki) “He was in almost identical shape to the first, except for the fact that the burns seemed to stop at his neck, along a clear line. It was as though he’d been wearing a choker that the damage couldn’t get above but his neck was bare. […] Like the first, he was completely covered in almost uniform second-degree burns, except for what at first I thought were small black scorch marks. Looking closer, I saw that they were eyes. Small, tattooed eyes on every one of his joints: his knees, his elbows and even his knuckles, as well as just over his heart. I would have expected the burns to have almost destroyed tattoos that small but instead they were unblemished and the skin about a centimetre around each one also didn’t seem to have been affected. […] After a few seconds of awkward silence, Gerard spoke. He asked me if the paramedics had brought any items in with them. Specifically, he was after a small book bound in red leather and a brass pendant he had been wearing. He didn’t say what design had been on the pendant but I guessed it had been an eye. I told him that neither of those things had been brought in with him, and he was quiet for a long time.”

With the descriptions of his wounds and how the Eyes had apparently protected him from the burning, and how there was specifically a clear delimitation after his neck, and how he had lost a pendant… it looks like he had a(n Eye?) pendant acting as a protection, which was pretty efficient? Given Gerry’s reaction, was it actually… from Eric’s…? (I doubt he would have been apparently stunned into silence like this if it had just been something from Mary?)

Plus, I’m not sure about a few things but they’re quite interesting to think about: Why had Gerry apparently been fighting against Diego? In MAG111, he mainly described his activities around Leitner books at the time, and we spotted him casually saving or giving hints to a few statement-givers here and there, helping them to survive, but this was the only time we heard of him him… actively fighting and killing a Spook. Had they been fighting over the “small book bound in red leather”? Given how Eugene mentioned Diego’s reading in MAG139, that Basira remembered they had retrieved a book on him in MAG043, and that Gerry was after one that matched its description in MAG012, he was tied to at least that one, so… I would say it was either a (proto)Leitner, either a Smirke book covering some thoughts about the rituals? Did Diego become a Spook thanks to it, à la Mike Crew and Jared Hopworth? (Though in their cases, they got rid of their own books once they acquired their powers…)

(Given Gertrude’s personal history with the Lightless Flame, I first thought, very excitedly, that Gerry had tried to neutralise someone who was threatening direct harm to Gertrude. Technically, unless small retcon, it can’t be the case: Mary Keay was stated to have died in September 2008 (MAG004), Gerry explained that she had “haunted” him for five years after that (MAG111) until Gertrude found him and got rid of Mary, and that Gerry had only begun working with her after that. There is a very small discrepancy here (that would mean that Gertrude made Mary disappear in 2013 and Gerry said he then proceeded to work with her “for a few years”… but he died in late 2014) but, technically, with the information we’ve got, Mary was still haunting Gerry at the time of his hospitalisation in 2011… and sadly, was probably indeed the person who came to fetch Gerry (MAG012, Lesere Saraki: “Gerard Keay was treated for a further four days in the hospital before being discharged into the care of his mother.”). When Jon had highlighted how he had the feeling that Gertrude drew a sick pleasure from pretending to be Gerry’s mom (MAG107), my first instinct was to scream “gERTRUDE…” about MAG012… but nop, doesn’t appear to work. Damnit.)

* Anyway, back to Diego: he was apparently the Scholar-like of the group (was the one calling their god “Asag”, was the one to tell the others that their ideal world was called “The Scoured Earth”), and he was definitely tied to that book in red leather, and Basira did mention that John Spencer hadn’t managed to burn it, and HUUUU, I remembered having thought, with “They caught Spencer in storage, trying to destroy it with a zippo lighter.” (MAG043) that there were lots of lighters involved (Gerry’s, Jon’s…) but… specifically there, given the Very Tense relationship between The Web and The Desolation, I wonder if this might have in fact been the same one with the web design that would later end up in Jon’s hands – the Web trying to use someone to get rid of a Desolation-related item, to put another dent into the Lightless Flame’s activities, a few years after Agnes’s death?

* It’s REALLY interesting that Diego was obsessed with calling their god “Asag”, given how Jon highlighted that it was more linked to “corruption” (MAG012: “Asag is the name of a demon in Sumerian mythology associated with disease and corruption, which doesn’t really seem to have much relevance to this statement except that it was also fabled that Asag was able to boil fish alive in their rivers.”)… and how Arthur Nolan was apparently punished, or cast away, stuck with the Hive:

(MAG032, Jane Prentiss) “I don’t know how long the nest has been there. It’s not even my house, I just live there. Some sweaty old man thinks he owns it, taking money for my presence as though it will save him. […] Now I know that whatever the old man thinks, as he passes about the house with brow crinkled and mouth puckered in disapproval, it is not his. It has a thousand truer owners who shift and live and sing within the very walls of the building. He does not even know about the wasps’ nest. I wonder how long he has not known. How many years it has been there. Have you ever heard of the filarial worm? Mosquitoes gift it with their kiss and it grows and grows. It stops water moving round the human body right, makes limbs and bellies swell and sag with fluid. Now, when I look at that fat, sweaty sack, I think about it, and the voice sings of showing him what a real parasite can do.”

(MAG055) JORDAN: […] a couple of years ago, I was called in to deal with a wasps’ nest. […] The landlord’s name was Arthur Nolan. He was a short man with a constant scowl, thinning white hair and a well-chewed cigar. It looked like his denim shirt once contained quite an athletic build, but it long since settled. […] After he hit me with a look of disappointment, he nodded and began to walk down the hall. I followed him, desperate for answers, but he ignored my questions about what the hell was going on and kept walking down the stairs towards his flat. At one point, he shook his head and mumbled something about hoping it wouldn’t get this far, but he didn’t seem to be saying it to me.”

(Jane Prentiss gave her statement on February 23rd 2014, and Jordan Kennedy mentioned that he had met Arthur shortly after, in February or March 2014.)

Was there a prior “architecture” of the Fears where the Desolation and Corruption might have been lumped in together, through the name “Asag”…? The Hive, at least, sounded very, uh, eager to show how Special it was (to Arthur, in the same way that it was hissing at Beholding in Jane’s statement). Was Arthur tied to The Hive, given how he immolated himself right after Jordan “killed” the nest…? (Jon mentioned that they found Arthur’s body after the fire, in MAG032’s post-statement.) Was he supposed to be punished by getting consummated by it, and tried to throw Jane to it as fodder instead…? Given how there was apparently that Diego-Arthur rivalry and how Arthur (unlike Eugene) knew what had happened to Agnes at Hill Top Road, I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up finding a statement left by Arthur somewhere, when he was “demoted”…?

- Alright, so we got official confirmation that Hill Top Road initially belonged to The Web:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “The compromise we came to… was Hill Top Road. We knew it was a stronghold of The Web, full of other children Agnes’s age […], though if we’d known exactly how powerful The Web was in that place, perhaps we would have reconsidered. […] it seems the fight scarred the place in a way far deeper than simple fire. A scar in reality, that I believe has since been compounded by the interferences of other powers.”

Sarah Baldwin had described the taxidermy shop as a “place of power” for The Stranger, Breekon had referred to the Institute as The Eye’s “pedestal”, Elias pointed out Ny-Ålesund as a “stronghold” of The Dark.

(MAG096) ARCHIVIST: There are, er… there, there are dozens of deliveries recorded here by Breekon and Hope. What were they delivering? What is the significance of this place? SARAH: Nothing, except what people give it. But they give it a lot, make it a place of power for us. Enough to keep certain items here.

(MAG128, Breekon) “That was the first time we saw what would become this place, The Eye’s Pedestal.”

(MAG135) ELIAS: I don’t know the details. Ny-Ålesund is a stronghold of The Dark, meaning I can’t see inside.

(Plus, potentially: somewhere in the sea and/or the graveyard Naomi encountered in MAG013 for The Lonely, given Carter Chilcott’s dreams in MAG057; Point Nemo for The End?; the remains of The Maria Fairchild encountered in MAG051 for The Vast?)

Interestingly, Eugene used “stronghold” and Elias referred to Ny-Ålesund for The Dark in the same way, so it seems to be the Right Word to describe the concept, no need to beat around the bush. Hill Top Road used to be Web, and, as we got a glimpse in MAG008, at least The Desolation (the glimpses of Agnes’s ghost, the burning) and most likely The Spiral (through Ivo Lensik, Father Edwin Burroughs, and/or Anya Villette) have been around that place – is it still powerful, but too chaotic to be definitely claimed…? Jon had said that he didn’t think it would be wise to go there (MAG114: “I’ve half a mind to just go down and have a look at it myself, but… I don’t know. Ever since it first came up I’ve felt like it would be… just a very bad idea.”), but. Was that genuine concern because he Learned From Poking Into Danger (which sounds ludicrous, it’s Jon we’re talking about), or the spiders nudging him to not go because ~obviously, he doesn’t want to go, he’s absolutely not being held by strings, what do you mean~.

- You fucked up a perfectly simple place, is what you did, Agnes. Look. You gave it reality bending.

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “I was… not one of those assigned to watch our chosen one, so I can’t say much about exactly what happened within the walls of that house, but it seems the fight scarred the place in a way far deeper than simple fire. A scar in reality, that I believe has since been compounded by the interferences of other powers.”

Since then, there had been at least, uuh… Desolation and Spiral which have been spotted there (MAG008) + some timeline problems, with Ray and Agnes’s ghosts appearing. Anya Villette (MAG114) seemed to say that The Web might possibly be re-emerging? And there is the problem of Anya Villette herself – was the reality-getting-messed-up-around-her an effect of The Spiral, did she come from a parallel dimension, did she ever exist at all, etc.

- There is something fundamentally hilarious about the fact that the cultists of the Lightless Flame tried to guess how to raise Agnes and failed utterly, because she was… a child. No, wait, it was sad and heartbreaking.

But the fact that they sent her to Hill Top Road because it “was a stronghold of The Web, full of other children Agnes’s age” when they were late teenagers, and she was ten-to-eleven? What a bunch of idiots, holy Mew. (I’m sad for Agnes but also covering my face snickering at these idiots trying to raise a Messiah and having no idea how to deal with a child. No wonder she was “prone to fits of violent rage”, you weren’t giving her the environment she needed……………)

- Iiiiii don’t know what to think about Jack Barnabas. On the one hand:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “That stupid coffeeshop twit. I honestly don’t know why Arthur allowed it, or why Jude didn’t step in – she’s usually so jealous! But Agnes… [SIGH] Maybe Agnes asked them to leave him alone…! Or maybe they were just surprised by her interest in this… boring, unremarkable fool. […] We have allowed Jude free rein on what happens to the coffeeshop boy, though Agnes asked her… not to interfere. She has not yet harmed him, but I cannot imagine what is going through her mind. The misery, and pain, he has brought upon himself. For all her anger, she is not rash, and I fear her quiet consideration far more than I worry about her temper. It may be he lives the remainder of his natural life – but she will make sure he is never happy, and never without pain.”

Eugene was sure that he would be getting hell. And it is indeed what Jack lived… for a while, right after the events (March 2007):

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “I lost almost everything after that. I never had much to begin with, and after I was let go at the café, I couldn’t afford to keep my home. They didn’t even try to pretend it wasn’t because my burned face would scare away customers. I’ve ended up living with my father again, who has been… understanding about the situation though… even he can’t bring himself to meet my eye most days.”

But Jon had also mentioned in his post-statement (January 2017) that his situation had gotten much better:

(MAG067) ARCHIVIST: […] Martin has been able to make contact with Mr. Barnabas by email. He’s apparently been doing much better in the years since his statement, having received some reasonably successful plastic surgery.

;; I had assumed it was a genuine improvement, I really hope it is… and not, like, a small respite before Jude comes after him again to strip him of what he managed to get back.

- Eugene was probably That One Guy With The Candles spotted by Jack Barnabas the night of Agnes’s death:

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “They were all dressed in rough work clothes and wore severe expressions. One of them, a big guy with a shaved head, was holding an unlit lantern, and speaking to the others that I think was Spanish or Portuguese. Another held a bag that seemed to be full of candles, while a third had a clear plastic container filled with hundred of tiny spiders. None of them paid me any attention, and I was rapidly feeling like I was falling into something that I really didn’t want to.”

Diego Molina, Eugene Vanderstock and… probably Arthur Nolan with the spiders? Jon had identified Arthur in the group but without tangential proof (though MAG055 had associated him with burning and fire):

(MAG067) ARCHIVIST: […] If the bald man with the lantern is as I suspect Diego Molina, it would indicate a link between his notable obsession with burning, and… Agnes, who apparently had not inconsiderable abilities in that area. I can’t help but wonder if Arthur Nolan, The Hive’s landlord, was one of the other members of that little group.

* Small fuuuunny thing: there had been a few mentions here and there that Agnes didn’t eat regular food, before Eugene confirmed that she needed another kind of sustenance:

(MAG059, Ronald Sinclair) “She never came to church, though; never sat around the dinner table when it was uncovered.”

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “She never actually put any milk in it. She never even drank it. […] What was her life, that every Tuesday at 3’ in the afternoon, she came into the same café, and didn’t drink a black coffee? […] We went to the park a couple more times; had a meal in an Italian restaurant where she didn’t eat anything; we even went to see a film.”

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “I took foreign workers, mostly. Those with the fewest immediate connections to complicate matters, and the most hopeful dreams of what their life might be. They were the ones that provided Agnes the most satisfying nourishment. […] Agnes would take them to her small, empty flat, lay them on the floor and light them. Over the many hours these candles burned, she would crane over them, so Arthur tells me, inhaling all the agony, suffering, and loss from which they were created. Or he could’ve been lying to me, just keeping me busy with torture and murder so I didn’t get in the way of anything. I don’t think I’d have minded that, actually. At least, I felt useful.”

- HEY, YOU KNOW WHAT WAS ABSOLUTELY ABSENT OF EUGENE’S STATEMENT REGARDING AGNES’S DEATH? SPIDERS. Probably-Arthur had been bringing some on the night of her death. There were SPIDERS in Jack’s flat (that Agnes’s presence burned):

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “It was as I was doing this, I noticed kind of an odd smell? Like when you turn on an electric heater for the first time in a while and you get a whiff of all the burning dust. I looked up, and noticed within the corner of the room, where there had been a spider’s web this morning, there was just a faint wisp of smoke. It was weird, but I had more important things on my mind.”

And also, THE FUCKING TREE at Hill Top Road, which prompted Agnes’s death on November 23rd 2006. Eugene made it sound like Agnes had slowly come to the conclusion that she couldn’t carry out the ritual because of her “doubt” but… we know that her death was tied to the tree at Hill Top Road, the night Ivo Lensik was compelled to unroot it (and to free spiders):

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “[…] I heard Agnes gasp. I turned to see her gripping her chest as though in sudden pain, and she told me we had to go. I followed her as she… staggered out of the park and over to a phone booth where she made a panicked call. She said something about a tree falling, and that they… had to finish something. Then she hung up. She leaned on my arm as we walked back to her flat. […] Agnes turned to me and apologized, told me goodbye, and thank you. There was such a sense of finality to it that I felt like my heart stopped.”

Eugene knew that Hill Top Road had been a stronghold of The Web, but I’m not sure that he understood how much The Web might have possibly been still hanging around? It had struck me, in MAG067, how Jack… had suddenly decided to go talk to Agnes, and how he had described her:

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “But she was so beautiful, she… she was tall, with long straight auburn hair, and these eyes that… when they looked at you, it didn’t feel like she was seeing you so much as… was trapping you. […] I was… drawn to her in a way I can’t… even explain. […] That was the moment I decided to try and talk to Agnes. Seeing her interact with someone else, even in such a weird way, unblocked something in my mind. The following Tuesday, when she came in and ordered her coffee, I asked her name. She looked at me in surprise and, for a second, I felt like I’d made a terrible mistake, but then she… told me, very matter-of-factly. And then I asked her out on a date. I don’t know how it happened, it just… tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop it. […] I worried I was boring her, but every time I looked over, she had that same expression on, which… by then I was pretty sure was a smile. I’d catch her eye and that feeling would flood though me – I… I still don’t know quite how to describe it, but whatever it was, it was powerful. […] I… I don’t know if I would have had it in me to resist. I just couldn’t avoid being drawn in, like a moth to the flame.”

Except for that last image, the way Agnes was attracting him… sounds super Webby to me? And as mentioned above, we know there were spiders in Jack’s flat. I don’t think that his crush was Web-induced, but his decision to go talk to her could perhaps have been due to a string…? (I’m really not sure but one my personal takes would be: The Web’s presence at Hill Top Road was diminished because of the tree, but it eroded over time and/or something made the seal weaken; the spiders used Jack’s crush and pushed him to confess, humouring Agnes and/or giving her a pretext to officialise that she wouldn’t do the ritual (making it sound like she couldn’t, rather than admitting that she didn’t want to); the spiders got Ivo Lensik to “kill” the tree, freeing The Web’s influence… and it was back as a contender for the ownership of the place. Possibly: it’s also what allowed Annabelle to be born as an avatar, a few years later, as Raymond Fielding had been dead for a long while and Neil Lagorio was growing old and incapacitated?)

- Regarding Agnes’s timeline, some bits are now a bit clearer, others still blurry:

* Agnes was sent to Hill Top Road to deal with The Web sometime around 1965, when Ronald Sinclair was turning 18 (he said he was born in the late 40s). Agnes was described as “younger than the other kids, maybe ten or eleven years old, and didn’t talk much”. She (playfully) freed Ronald from Raymond Fielding’s influence. (MAG059)

* The house got slowly depopulated until only Agnes and Raymond remained; Raymond disappeared when Agnes “must have been 18 or 19”, Agnes claiming that “he had gone away and that the house was hers” (Ivo Lensik, MAG008).

* In 1974, a five-year-old boy goes missing in the area. People are suspicious of Agnes, the house burns, Ray’s body is found, missing his right hand, and there is no sign of Agnes. (MAG008)

* Agnes apparently got stuck in the place (MAG139: “As far as we could tell, she had destroyed the place utterly. And yet, she remained bound to it, tied to it in some vital way. I knew, when Arthur told she had kept Raymond Fielding’s hand, that he was worried.”)

* In 1989, Jude met Agnes and the others. (MAG089)

* Gertrude did something tying Agnes to the place (MAG139, Eugene: “Jude simply flies into a rage when it’s brought up. I assume it’s why we were waiting, biding our time for decades, unable to bring our designs to any culmination. Jude had only just joined at the time”), Agnes kept Ray’s hand.

* Agnes began to frequent the Canyon Café in the 90s as, by November 2006, she had been visiting for “a decade and a half” (MAG067). She waited, they all waited.

* In autumn 2006, Jack Barnabas confessed to Agnes and they went on a few dates. (MAG067)

* On November 23rd 2006, Ivo Lensik uprooted the tree at Hill Top Road, freeing spiders from the apple buried under it; Agnes felt it, said that she had to finish something, gathered the members of the cult, and at her request, they hanged her, with Ray’s hand tied to her waist. (MAG008/MAG067/MAG139)

The Web binds and traps, so it might have been its way to get back at Agnes, before Gertrude did… something, fifteen years later? I would have assumed that Gertrude had struck around the time of Ray’s death, but no, Eugene said that it was around the time Jude had joined them, and Jude was absolutely crystal clear that she joined in 1989.

- … I’m still side-eying (ha) a loooot Agnes’s stance on the candles, given that Eugene never actually saw her inhaling them (it was more of a Jude thing, to like incense?), and that Arthur was the one to say she was using them. It sounds like there is room for her to… not have used them at all. And, actually, to not have been that much into serving the Desolation in the first place.

It’s impressive how much Agnes herself still remains a Mystery, despite the fact that we’ve now learned about her birth and how she was raised. Interestingly (and I really doubt it was a coincidence), all the titbits we got about her were people who were either infatuated with her (Jude, Jack), either barely knew her and were unable to decipher her (Ronald), either saw her as a symbol more than a person (Eugene). The only time we heard about what she might have thought or felt was through Jack, and very briefly:

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “She was talking about… some sort of job, and whether Agnes was going to be able to do it. At first, I thought it was a job interview, and… then she started talking about Agnes being released from something. Agnes just… said something softly, and shook her head. She looked sad, an expression I’d never seen on her face before. The other woman sighed, clearly unhappy with the answer, and stood up to leave. Before she went, she took out a brown paper envelope and handed it over; said that she’d give it to her now so she didn’t forget later. She called it “a collection”, and it looked like the envelope might have been full of money. Agnes put it in her jacket and returned to staring out the window, as her intimidating companion left with a frustrated expression.”

(And we still don’t know what was in that envelope! You could technically put small candles in an envelope but they would still be too big for a jacket…? (Were there spiders inside of it.) Was the other woman Jude, since it was “a collection” and Eugene mentioned she might come “to collect” after Gertrude…? Perhaps he wasn’t being metaphorical.)

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “We sat on a bench as the sun went down, watching the sky redden, and Agnes asked me a question. It was the first time she’d said anything more than a few words since we left my flat. [STATIC:] She asked me if I had a destiny. [/STATIC] I don’t need to tell you the question caught me off-guard. I don’t know if I’ve given the impression clearly enough yet, being a single guy in my early thirties still working the tiller to Sheffield Café, but I don’t really see myself as having much of a destiny. Hell, I’m not even sure I believe in destiny. I certainly don’t believe in God, and I feel that’s… kind of linked. So I told her this. She looked at me with the same sadness I had seen on her face before. “That must be nice,” she said, and went back to staring into the sunset.”

It sounds like Agnes might have been much more reluctant about The Lightless Flame’s ritual than Eugene wanted to believe…? Whether or not we get a statement left by Arthur, I’m pretty confident that we might have one left by Agnes herself – or possibly a recording of her talking with Gertrude. There have been lots of people talking about Agnes without us getting to hear Agnes’s voice and intentions directly, and I doubt that this has been a coincidence? Eugene explicitly said that Gertrude did something to Agnes – is it possible that they agreed on something together, with Agnes more or less trying to spare her extended family’s feelings while ensuring that she couldn’t get used by them…?

(It would sound super positive for the series, which tends to give characters darker sides too, but… Agnes’s story has sounded very tragic so far? Just like Gerry – being programmed to be Something by their own mother, getting involved with spooks and fundamentally twisted, unable to escape, until they would reach their bitter end?)

(- There is something very poetic in the idea that… we’ll see about it, but maybe Agnes, whose whole life was programmed, who had a “Destiny” inflicted to her, actually gained agency for the first time in the house of the Web, which is known for its mind-control?)

- … Okay, so the Fears/Dread Powers/Outer Gods definitely are able to touch people more easily through their dreams.

Jane mentioned her “crawling and many-legged” dreams (MAG032), Annabelle had reported “several unsettling dreams about spiders” (MAG069); there were Oliver’s dreams (MAG011, MAG121); Adelard mentioned his own nightmares (MAG113); Lucia was pursued by some (MAG130); it’s unclear how Garland Hillier got his “revelations” but it could have happened through his dreams (MAG134); Robert Smirke had seen the Fears, and ultimately Beholding, in his dreams (MAG138); and of course, there are Jon’s dreams, which… seem more active than most of the others (given that Daisy confirmed that she was seeing him back, and that the way Elias described them in MAG120, Jon was inflicting anguish on the victims and was identified as the cause of their suffering).

- Regarding how the Lightless Flame proceeded and how Manuela designed The Dark’s ritual… the overall guidelines seem to be to Believe In It Very Hard, And It Will Happen?

(MAG135, Manuela Dominguez) “Scientifically, it was nonsense of course. Dark energy and the like don’t work like that, not even remotely. But that wasn’t important. What mattered was that it felt like science, and that was all I needed. To do my work, to create the Black Star would need a parody, an aping mockery of science. But it would also need the deepest of darknesses. When I told Maxwell what I actually needed, he told me such a thing was impossible, but I insisted. And so he began his work on the Daedalus. […] My experiments continued largely uninterrupted, pushing the boundaries of light, darkness and fear. It was dangerous work and more than once, I got too close to the light and it almost destroyed me. But it didn’t. I could regale you with the technical terms or scientific disciplines I played with and rendered meaningless, but in the end all you actually need to know is that I succeeded. A tiny, terrible sun of the pitchest black, shining beautiful Darkness all around it.”

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “But a longing… is not the same thing as an instruction. We’d all been touched and warped by proximity to the holy Burning Fire, but none of us had any special knowledge, no matter what Diego claims he might have read. He wanted a Grand Inferno, a ritual of apocalyptic burning that would make the firebombing of Dresden look like a sparkler. Which sounded… amazing! […] And that’s when Arthur proposed his own plan: a Chosen One. We would create a messiah, the Flame Incarnate, one who could usher in this new world and lead us in what Diego called “The Scoured Earth”. […] Some objected, said that unless the child was conceived of the Flame, it could never be a true incarnation. But they had no idea of how such a conception could possibly even work, so it was decided that it would have to be enough to birth the child by fire. […] And in the centre of the pyre, a hollow, where Eileen was to lay. We prayed, and sacrificed, and anointed her body with holy oil and a crown of kindling. I protested the last one, felt we could do better than to ape the Christians, but I was shouted down.”

It looks like The Lightless Flame improvised… basically everything, by picking here and there symbols and ritualistic gestures that belonged to other cults – so the baffling thing is that it worked, and it’s probably because they thought/hoped/believed it would.

- Whiiiich directly raises the question of The Rite of the Watcher’s Crown, as Jon implicitly seemed to think – or, at least, he has been shown voicing some interrogations about why he was there.

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: Why were we chosen? Agnes was created – crafted with a specific purpose so finely tuned that even a grain of uncertainty threatened the entirety of her being. [CHORTLING] But I’m so full of doubt it feels like there’s no room for anything else, and… I’m sure Martin is the same…! Is there “destiny” here? B–bloodlines and… prophecies, or did we just… stumble into this? Maybe we’re the opposite of Agnes; maybe our doubts are exactly what we need. I–if that’s the case, I’m a… an amazing chosen one. … [LONG EXHALE] Don’t know how that would work, though.

And indeed: how is this ritual meant to work, if the Archivists tend to not be so keen to see the world warped…? Elias pointed out in MAG092 how fitting Jon is for the role and, indeed, his personality matches his powers, which seem to be… compensating for things he is lacking: compulsion means getting the truth out of people (while Jon is prone to paranoia), Knowing comes in handy given that he has so many questions, being able to get formatted statements help to satiate his curiosity… And precisely, because Jon is prone to doubt, he’ll push forward to know. But that doesn’t mean that he would be ready to doom the world and inflict fears on people, especially when Elias pushed him to stop another apocalypse (MAG102, “I should have thought preventing the horrific transformation of our world is not solely my concern!” YEAH, DEFINE WHAT IS AND ISN’T “HORRIFIC”, ELIAS). So what is it Elias saw in Jon that led him to think that Jon might be up for it, if his plans are indeed to carry out The Watcher’s Crown…?

I’m surprised that Jon would mention “bloodlines” in the list of potential reasons for them to be here, given how… it hasn’t been the case for any of the characters we’ve met so far, except Gerry – who, precisely, told Jon that blood didn’t matter (except if you’re a Lukas and use family structure as a tool to shape more believers)?

Overall, there is a non-systematic but still notable trend, amongst the Archival staff, to have encountered Spooks before joining the Institute in order to try and find out more about it:

(* Michael Shelley: lost a friend to The Spiral when he was young, which pushed him to join the Institute to understand what had happened, according to MAG101.)

* Jon had met The Web as a kid, probably never truly got away from it even though he did not die right away. Georgie highlighted how, personality-wise, he was perfect for the job:

(MAG093) GEORGIE: That does at least explain why he picked you. ARCHIVIST: Uh? GEORGIE: If your job is asking questions, I mean. You were always the one who pushed too far, and asked smart-arse, awkward questions. I always was surprised you never got punched.

* We heard Melanie’s recruitment live, though the reasons are still a bit unclear:

(MAG084) ELIAS: Do you want the job, Melanie? MELANIE: Oh… Um, I…Well, it’s, it’s rather sudden, but… er, I mean, sure. Yes. Yes, I do.

(MAG106) MELANIE: Threaten, then. I’ve got nothing. ELIAS: That’s… almost true. Your life is indeed shockingly absent of any meaningful connections. That’s actually one of the reasons I chose you for this job.

(Melanie had had various Spooky encounters at this point: she witnessed a fight between agents of the Stranger and of the… Flesh? Slaughter? (MAG028), got wounded on the shoulder by a Slaughter ghost (MAG076), and was already infected by a bullet from another Slaugher ghost (MAG117) when Elias recruited her. Static was even heard when he was talking to her, so he definitely did something, whether it was… seeing the bullet, or compelling her to think about the reasons for accepting? But why did he want her in the team – was it because she was leaning towards Beholding, in her quest for seeing things that could destroy her/being a witness overall/working with cameras and recording supernatural events? Was it because of the Slaughter wounds, set-up for Jon?)

* Same for Basira and Daisy: officially, Elias needed to neutralise Daisy and to be able to use her “competences” in dealing with Spooks, hence the trapping of Basira as blackmail material. Both had large amounts of Spooky encounters beforehand, as Section 31-signee officers (including the showdown with Rayner). Given recent development, it’s possible that Elias mostly just wanted Basira in the team, but her being good at investigating and “suit[ing] the academic life” (MAG102) might also just have been a happy coincidence – unlike the other Beholding folks, Basira has demonstrated that she’s able to call things quit when she is done with them, such as with her quitting the police.

* It’s unclear whether Jon had personally asked Sasha to be transferred to the Archives when he was appointed as Head Archivist (he liked Sasha a lot! She was getting a free pass on everything!). He did mention that “her working here seems the natural progression of her lifelong interest in the paranormal (MAG048), but it’s unclear whether that bit was Sasha-Sasha… or something rewritten by the Not!Them ;; (Since from what we knew it season 1, Sasha was pretty short on money and even hated Artefact Storage when she was working there but “couldn’t afford to quit”… so it might be that the real Sasha had just been desperate for a job, like Martin.)

* We know, however, quite a lot about Tim: he followed Danny and became an unwilling spectator to Grimaldi/Nikola’s skinning and dancing; he joined the Institute shortly afterwards in order to try and track down the Circus and get answers about what had happened to his brother (he even became a Smirke specialist in just two years!). We know that Jon specifically asked him to come with him to the Archives:

(MAG065) TIM: No. No, you listen for once. I was fine in research, happy. Then you asked me to be transferred here, and suddenly it’s all monsters and killers and secret passages, oh my!

(Plus, the whole thing with how he hadn’t managed to move but only watch in the Covent Garden theatre (MAG104) sounded verrryy much like Jon watching his bully disappear behind the door. Watching until the end, unable to do anything to stop events – but not closing their eyes either. Beholding-compatible.)

* AND MARTIN IS STILL OUR BIG MYSTERY, but of all things, we know that Elias was the one to interview him when he was applied with a fake CV, which UHOH.

(MAG056) MARTIN: I… … I lied on my CV. ARCHIVIST: … What? MARTIN: I don’t have a Master’s in parapsychology, I don’t even have a degree. […] So I… I just kinda started to lie on my applications, sending them out to just about anywhere. For some reason, my lie about parapsychology got me an interview with Elias and, and then a job here. M–most of my employment details are made up, I’m only 29!

(Unclear whether this happened when Martin was 17 or a little later, but he was at any rate already employed at the Institute in 2009, at age 22.) More specifically about working in the Archives, it doesn’t sound like Jon asked Martin to follow him there – firstly, Jon was super dismissive of him in season 1, and secondly, there was Martin’s awkward silence when he and Tim discussed that:

(MAG098) MARTIN: […] [Jon] said he doesn’t want to lose anyone else. Like, y’know, it’s his fault. TIM: Isn’t it? MARTIN: No! No, it isn’t! I mean, you heard Elias… We never really stood a chance. TIM: Yeah. Maybe. But Elias wasn’t actually the one who offered me the job down here. MARTIN: No, I– Sure. …

So either he volunteered, either he might have been sent down there by Elias… which just raises another “why”. It was a bit weird how Jon, in MAG139, immediately segued from Martin to the question of why they had been “chosen” to be there (why did thinking about Martin prompt that?), but on the other hand, it’s still an enigma why Elias hired Martin. Could be that everything was absolutely accidental, could be the Spiders at work, could be that Elias did have specific plans about Martin (because Elias didn’t especially like Martin…? He’s always very casually talking him down), who knows.

*SHAKES ELIAS AGAIN, SPIT WHAT YOU KNOW YOU INSUFFERABLE GRINNING EX-HEAD*

(Other option of why they were chosen: their isolation. Jon’s parents died when he was a kid, and his grandmother died around the time he began working at the Institute, in 2012; Tim’s only family member mentioned was his brother, who had died before he joined the Institute; Martin’s only family member mentioned around him was his mother, and given that he had to care for her when he was only 17, it is implied that he might not have had many family members around or close; Basira only mentioned her father, and in past tense; Melanie’s parents are both dead and Elias pointed out she didn’t have any real anchor anymore; Daisy’s “last connection to humanity” was stated to be Basira. Could be Elias being a vulture, or a bit of classism, targeting people in need/from poor upbringings, assuming that they would be more influenceable and easy to handle?)

- À propos of Martin, this episode also reminded of One Big Important Question:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “And that’s when Arthur proposed his own plan: a Chosen One. We would create a messiah, the Flame Incarnate […]. When we finally decided, it was Eileen Montague who came forward as a volunteer. She was five months pregnant at the time, and had already taken care of the father in the usual manner of our little congregation. […] We baptized her with the boiling water of Asag and named her… “Agnes”, as had been her mother’s final request.”

IS THERE A SINGLE GOOD MOTHER IN TMA. I’m snorting and weeping over the fact that:

(MAG067) ARCHIVIST: […] [Jack Barnabas] was unable to provide much more information on the above but, upon Martin’s asking if Agnes had mentioned her childhood at all, he did recall her briefly alluding to being adopted.

L-O-L YES, SHE WAS ADOPTED… by so many different people. By the cult of the Lightless Flame after her birth, and then by Raymond Fielding (kind of) when they sent her off to fight the Spiders as a kid.

We don’t have Stellar Parenting overall, very true, but I can still think of a few fathers who sacrificed themselves to save a child – Jason North was implied to have immolated himself to save his son from his own curse in MAG037, and YEAH OKAY, ROBERT MONTAUK WAS A SERIAL KILLER but he was also good towards Julia in MAG009 (and we will probably hear a bit more about their family’s story, about Julia’s mother… but I had gotten the feeling that Robert probably did what he did in order to avenge his wife and/or to protect Julia from the same fate?). Plus, Gerry mentioned that he thinks that his father might have wanted to help raise, him before Mary decided to get rid of the problem. Not role models, sure, but not-failing-as-parents. Meanwhile, almost every time we see a mother or hear about her feelings (ie, excluding for example Andrea Nunis’s mother, who was an anchor to her, but who wasn’t a character in herself), it’s Bad News. As MAG139 demonstrated, Agnes’s mother imposed the Destiny on her daughter before she was even born. See also: Mary friggin’ Keay to Gerry, and not-his-mother-but-was-apparently-getting-a-kick-out-of-being-mistaken-for-it Gertrude. Do I need to mention Martin’s mother.

It’s a great subversion of the idea that mothers are inherently nurturing and kind but they’re also… the Rarest Species in this series, uh.

- Hey hey hey, alright, I deserve tomatoes to be thrown at me, but on the subject of Martin Lukas Keay von Closen Son Of Puppets Blackwood. So. Martin and spiders have a loving relationship, but this episode also reminded me that another of his loves is also…

(MAG117) MARTIN: This way I finally get to do something. It’s gonna hurt, but… I’m ready. And I want to. Also, I get to burn some stuff, so that cool!

(MAG118) ELIAS: Tell me what you’re doing, and why. MARTIN: I just thought I’d, y’know, drop a couple of ideas in the old suggestion box! Turns out my suggestion is… fire! [LIGHTER ON]

… arson, so on the list of “what the heck is Martin Blackwood”, what about Unholy Grandchild of Web and Desolation or something through his dad.)

- Gertrude’s death was sneakily pushed back to the forefront again:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “And he’s probably right. Just as well you are not here. Smart move on your part. But they always are, aren’t they? Smart moves. Someday, you’re gonna push your luck too far, and when you do… Well, you just better hope it isn’t Jude who comes to collect. […] As for you… Whatever you did, and whatever protection it might have afforded you is severed, with Agnes’s death. Arthur has told us not to harm you yet, but this whole thing has really rather weakened his authority, and many of us are now looking towards Diego for leadership. But we shall see, I suppose. I hope, when it is time, we may burn you forever, Gertrude.

[…] ARCHIVIST: […] Nice to see Gertrude [EXHALE] also used to get a lot of threats. So far it doesn’t seem that any went… desperately well. Except for Elias, of course. But he didn’t threaten, did he? He just… did it.

And I still feel like we might be missing a few things about the circumstances surrounding it – if Gertrude was pursued by so many people and so cautious about it, how come Elias managed to get rid of her in the end…? Is it because he was kind of a blind spot (ha) and she had been underestimating him…? Is it because, so focused on Spooks, she didn’t consider mundane means…? But she was well-aware of the power of regular, non-paranormal weapons! She used so many explosives…

I wonder if the Reminder that Gertrude had a long list of would-be killers, that she had managed to avoid for so long until Elias got to her, is supposed to mean that we’ll hear more about the Elias-Gertrude relationship… Oliver had mentioned that she had many things going after her, in MAG121; Peter mentioned that he wouldn’t have been against offing her himself in MAG134; and now, again, we’re getting another mention in MAG139…

- Jon is still gathering information about past rituals and we can add another name for the Desolation: “The Scoured Earth”, which should have been carried out by Agnes… and was left on standby and/or cancelled entirely for this round. We’re only missing the name and description for The Lonely (though we know from MAG134 that Gertrude successfully derailed it already), The Corruption (was it whatever Jane tried against the Institute?), and everything about The Vast. Jon didn’t say how and where and why he found Eugene’s statement in particular: whether he was drawn to this one, or found it cobwebs-wrapped, or Knew he had to read it?

(And The Corruption still hasn’t had any statement in season 4! Oh worms.)

- Jon gave us updates on the Archival staff, and it is various shades of sob. Chronologically, by order of mentions:

* Basira still hasn’t spilled the beannnns ;_;

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: The others are doing… better, I think. Basira’s busy doing research for something secretive, unsurprisingly. But she seems to be adjusting to, uh… the new Daisy.

So, on the one hand: Basira is still Hiding Everything from Jon… but on the other hand, it sounds like it’s going better between her and Daisy? … but WELP, if their relationship is pacifying, it means that it’s becoming Something That Could Be Taken Away from us and from them / it’s giving Jonny an opportunity to hurt us a whole lot if one of them dies. Let me be happy about them, gdi?!

* I Have Reclamations To Make About Jon’s mentions of Daisy:

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: I actually like Daisy now, which is a… really weird feeling. [INHALE]

Like, on the one hand, I get that becoming kind of bff with Daisy is throwing you off, Jon, but don’t you dare lie to Us/The Tape Recorder: you liked Daisy and sharing your fantastic shitty sense of humour with her, I Have Receipts:

(MAG096) DAISY: Come on. Before the Met get here. ARCHIVIST: Whatever you say~ DAISY: And wipe that grin off your face.

Plus, you’ve been listening to THE ARCHERS in her company, probably to indulge her, and you went out for drinks with her; there are limits to pity, you’ve been way into Friendship territory for a while now, don’t try to bluff!! :w

Also, a bit saddened that he’s describing her as “the new Daisy” because… it doesn’t really seem accurate? According to Daisy, this was her all along/her true self, and we indeed could see glimpses of it in season 3, like how she gladly accepted the nickname “Daisy” (MAG082, Elias: “Everyone calls me Daisy. I like that because it sounds so gentle […] It makes me feel strong, to know that the soft nickname everyone calls me comes from a bloody wound.”) (But at the same time… ;; It’s very easy to picture Elias waltzing in at some point to highlight that ahah, but the rabid dog was the real you all along, too…)

* Melanie is “quiet”.

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: Melanie’s quiet, but I think therapy’s helping.

And given that the identity of her therapist is still undetermined, I’m filled with dread… The Web is known for making people come off as “quiet”……………

(MAG059, Ronald Sinclair) “The other kids living there were the same – at least, I think they were. I remember them being kind of dull, not that they were… boring, exactly, […] but there was something about them, as though… there were some things that they said and did without anything behind them. Occasionally there would be flashes of something. […] mostly they were quiet, almost placid. I’m sure they’d have said the same things about me, but at the time, nothing seemed amiss. I did what I did because it was what I was supposed to do, and it never struck me to question it. I’m not sure I really recognise who I became while living at that house.”

Please, be just fine and healing, Melanie…? ;;

* Helen is… *LOUD SOB*

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: Haven’t seen Helen much. The door is… sometimes there, sometimes not. … I haven’t knocked. I’m never going to trust it. Trust… her. … Trust it. [DRY EXHALE] And I shouldn’t. Whatever its relationship to the person who was or is Helen… assuming that I can ever know its motivations is a mistake.

Damniiiiiiiiiiiiiit… Extra-aouch that Helen directly told Jon that she wasn’t super-fond of the “it” in MAG131 (and given how Melanie, who seems to be the closest to Helen?, used “she”), and that Jon is… very pointedly choosing to still using “It” anyway after some hesitation (reflex to call The Distortion “it”, then remembering his discussion with Helen and going for “she”, then reaffirming his distrust with “it”?).

I’m really not surprised that Jon is having trouble with her door (Jon has a History of doors that should stay closed, and specifically got bad experiences with Michael’s), I’m saddened that he is choosing to not trust Helen, although… I can imagine why. But is it through an intrinsically personal decision (The Distortion is supposed to lie and deceive; maybe it’s currently trustworthy only because of his lack of trust? Is it because he still feels guilty over what happened to the human Helen Richardson, who got snatched right before him? Is it because he still resents Michael?), or is it also because of the Beholding in him – pushing him to not trust what he can’t know…?

I wonder how Helen being around will end up causing harm (because surely, it will): will it be because Jon will finally decide to trust her because he has no choice left, and immediately be given reason to regret? Is it because Jon will adamantly refuse to trust her when she could be preventing another disaster…?

* And theeeeeeeeeeeeen…

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: And that just leaves Martin, which…

[SAD PAUSE OF ARCHIVIST DESPERATELY PINING] Jon, p l z. If you’re beginning to reach Martin Level of concern/pining/worrying, then Oh No.

(MAG117) MARTIN: I suppose you can get used to anything, but… [PAUSE] It feels different. I need them to be safe. I need him to be okay. … So–sorry, hum. I–I’m not afraid for me, though. Isn’t that weird…? […] I just… really hope everyone makes it back. … And I want to win on my own. Oh, and I hope the world doesn’t end. Obviously. [SIGH] Just… [SIGH] Just don't die, Jon. … O–or Tim, or Basira, or… Daisy, I guess. Just… just everyone please, make it back home…?

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: … [SIGH] I’m just worried about Martin. … Christ… Every other Avatar gets to have their feelings… burned right out of them, but me? I’ve… just got to sit in mine. … I know he said he had everything under control. I need… to trust him; whatever he’s doing with Peter, he’s… he knows what he’s doing. Probably. I just– … [VERY FAST] I need him to be okay. I just do.

(I’m still not sure whether the “I need him to be okay” was a conscious reference to MAG117 from him, or just a coincidence to convey that these two tragic idiots are reaching the same point independently. We have clues that Jon had heard Tim’s testament from that episode, potentially Melanie’s as well since she gave her statement about the Ghost Bullet; but they weren’t dated from the same day, and not on the same tapes if the official description (“A-F”) is any indication, so…)

Anyway. Please, Jon, don’t wish for your feelings to disappear. There is something very delicious and entertaining about Jon complaining that he has FEELINGS, URK, IT SUCKS, but at the same time, This Is That Kind Of Series. Please, enjoy your sad pining and your concern and your worrying, Jon. (;wwwwwwwww; for Jon still trying to put some reason in his own mind; explaining what is the problem, and at the same time still holding to his decision to trust Martin…)

(- There was something very… “SO WHO IS HAVING A CRUSH, NOW, UH.” with that Martin mention, given that Eugene’s statement referred to Jack Barnabas and… back in MAG067, Jon hadn’t been fundamentally kind towards the latter’s story:

(MAG067) ARCHIVIST: Statement of Jack Barnabas, regarding a short-lived courtship with Agnes Montague in the autumn of 2006. […] A rather different perspective on the woman known as Agnes Montague or… Agnes Fielding, depending on who you ask. Although hardly a reliable account, steeped as it is in messy obsessions and confusion.

HEY JON, WHAT’S GOOD, and who is the one pining, now.

(Although of course, more seriously: there is kind of an echo between Jack and Agnes, and Martin and Jon…? Someone Normal harbouring feelings for an avatar who was Chosen and burdened with a specific role in their little society and who had met The Web in their youth, and after a while, the avatar growing fondness in return – though the nature of their feelings is unclear. In Jon’s case, not sure whether his worries and concern for Martin are derailing anything Beholding-related or… just part of the Bigger Plan. Though Jack&Agnes, and Martin&Jon, could also all be… part of The Web’s plans overall. Too many spiders.))

(Following: bits typed down before MAG140 was released:)

- Big question is what happened at the end of the episode exactly?

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: … If I… Knew… what his plan was… If I knew what Peter was doing, if I just– [WHISPERING] … Can I…? [LOW RUMBLING SOUND, STATIC RISES] [CRIES OF PAIN] [VERY SHARP SQUEAL OF DISTORTION STEADILY RISING] [NOISE OF SOMETHING-OR-JON FALLING] [SQUEAL OF DISTORTION DECREASES] [MUMBLING] End… E–end recording…! [CLICK.]

1°) See, Jon: assuming you’re on a first name basis with “Peter” is a bad idea, and karma went right back at you.

2°) Re: the noise of something falling. Was it Jon falling off his chair AGAIN, JON, YOU ALREADY DID THAT IN MAG128. Did Jon manage to get a concussion by trying to Know too hard. Does it count as his Lonely scar. Is Elias laughing hysterically in his cell because Jon is such an Embarrassment.

3°) Okay, so, unlike the other times Jon got to Know about something or purposely used that power… there was, on top of the usual static, Peter’s trademark “squeal of distortion” (I am using the way the official transcript introduced it, in MAG100, and it’s been the same sound surrounding Peter’s appearances since then). So, whatever happened was definitely Lonely-related, but: was it because Jon can’t pierce through the Lonely, in the same way he didn’t manage to peak through The Dark in MAG135? Was it Peter hiding himself a bit deeper in reaction to Jon’s attempt, feeling (or SEEING, if he was… right in the room with Jon) what Jon was trying to do? … Another possibility is that it was that Jon couldn’t access Martin because of MARTIN himself (ie: he’s a bit too much into the Lonely, or worse… is beginning to use Lonely powers), but I’m leaning towards Peter here. With The Dark and now The Lonely, that makes a lot of Power Walls that Jon isn’t yet able to bypass…

4°) Did Jon manage to Know something through the experience, or… not at all? I got the impression that he had just hit the wall of squealing sounds, bounced back, and… didn’t get anything at all.

5°) Obligatory “JON used Beholding powers! JON’s attack missed. JON hurt himself in his confusion. JON fainted!” joke here.

Speculation for MAG140 based on the title (20/05/19):

A PRETTY ONE, and uuuuh, smells of… alchemy? JOHN FLAMSTEED? So either about another way of interpreting the powers before Smirke, in general (Gerry had put them on the same level in MAG111), either, more specifically… about The Dark, and its previous ritual attempt (and then, could also be about Edmond Halley, since Basira had linked the two in MAG108)? Or could be about The Vast? Second meaning… could be about a ~sky~, so Basira explaining her current activities/researches…? Will she finally tell Jon about the fact that The Dark is potentially planning something in Svalbard…?

(17/06/19: AHAHAHA sob.)

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #tma liveblog #tma season 4 #the magnus archives #mag139 #long post/#tma spoilers/

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freudensteins-monster · 6 years

Text

Paint Stained Collar

Pre-Stucky White Collar AU. Also on AO3.

I somehow managed to write this while downing cold & flu meds and liberal amounts of chicken soup, which is ridiculously impressive considering how little writing I've been doing whilst healthy. Unbeta'd - All mistakes are mine and the cold virus's fault.

The repetitive scratching of the worn-down screw against the concrete was almost hypnotic. If he hadn’t been on such a tight schedule Steve could have easily have lost himself in the process. As it was, the moment the cell doors opened he made a few hasty final touches before chucking the screw under his cot and brushed the dust from his hands onto his tired orange jumpsuit. A guard started on the roll call and Steve double checked that his only photo of his mother was in his pocket before stepping out of his cell just as his name was called, and then it was off to the mess hall for what was hopefully going to be his last breakfast of powered eggs and cold toast.

He moved his food around and tried not to be too obvious about tracking the guard’s movements, making sure they were all sticking to the same schedule as yesterday, and the day before that. He also paid attention to his fellow inmates, gauging each group’s current temperament and whether he could expect any trouble from anyone today. Thankfully he was still invisible to anyone of concern, as he had been since his main tormentor, Rumlow, had been sent to Maximum Security, the guards finally acting the third time he put Steve in the Infirmary.

An unsuspicious amount of time later Steve dumped his food tray and headed for the east block security check point. He waited there with the rest of the cleaning crew inmates for the supervising guard to let them all through and escort them to the cleaning supplies storage room. Steve filled up his mop and bucket and headed off to his section, working his way towards the clear barriers next to the guard station and, more importantly, the visitors waiting area.

Twenty of the longest minutes of Steve’s life later he glanced up and easily spied his friend amongst the visitors thanks to his trademark purple t-shirt. He winced as he tapped the side of this nose (the damn thing was broken again), the signal for “Operation: Free Bird is a go”. Steve took a deep breath and put his part of the plan into action.

“Finished that section. Going for a refill then heading for the other corridor,” Steve said as he passed the supervising guard. The man grunted a reply, barely looking up from his phone to acknowledge the inmate.

Good, thought Steve. The guard could be relied upon to be engrossed with his phone until it was time to lock up the supply room, which would give Steve approximately 15 minutes before his absence was noticed. He entered the supply room and abandoned his mop and bucket next to the others, making straight for vent in the back corner of the room. As planned, the vent cover was now unscrewed and it was simply a matter of Steve climbing the rickety shelving unit and pulling himself up into the ventilation shaft opening… eight feet off the friggin ground.

A few prayers and a lot of muttered cursing later Steve fell into the ventilation shaft, reaching for the respirator mask that had been so thoughtfully left for him – thank you, Clint - before he copped a lungful of the mould and dust that coated the metal walls. Also left behind for him was a small, plastic, keychain-sized torch and a much folded piece of paper, with a crude map of the ventilation system and a handy red line between “You Are Here” and “X” drawn on it.

Ten minutes and only one wrong turn later Steve found the duffle bag waiting for him at the exit point. He checked everything was all clear before dropping down into a cubicle in the visitor’s toilets, balancing precariously on a dividing wall before climbing down, the vent cover clapping softly shut behind him thanks to hinge Clint had managed to attach to it.

Five minutes later a skinny hipster in clothes two sizes too big for him exited the toilets and took a seat in the waiting area. The guy in the purple shirt was nowhere to be seen.

Two minutes after that, just as an inmate’s absence was being reported by a sheepish guard, two cameras at the opposite end of the compound lost visual and all hell broke loose. The skinny hipster was evacuated with the rest grumbling visitors and headed for the nearest road, a friendly guy in a purple shirt soon pulled up alongside him and offered him a ride back to Brooklyn.

** *** **

Special Agent James Barnes of New York’s White Collar Crime Unit was pacing outside what was, until very recently, the site of a boiler room with ties – allegedly – to the untouchable Alexander Pierce when Probational Agent Lewis approached him.

“Boss?”

“The place has been cleared out. Just like last time,” James spat. “Pierce has got to have someone on the inside,” he added lowly. “That’s the only thing that makes sense. The team got here not even half an hour after the warrant was issued and the place was empty. Not a single computer or friggin headset was left behind. They took everything but the goddamned light bulbs.”

He stopped pacing and stared at his usually talkative junior agent. She was shifting awkwardly, her phone held out to him.

“What is it?”

“Steve Rogers escaped.”

“What?!”

** *** **

James arrived at the prison and had to let rip with a high pitched whistle to announce himself over the bickering of the warden and the US Marshal in charge.

“Agent Barnes, FBI,” he said, flashing his badge and a smile.

“You’re the one who caught Rogers the first time?” the warden asked, almost reaching out to him in desperation.

“‘Caught’ might be a stretch,” he shrugged. “I brought him in. He’s not really the 'on the run’ type.”

“He is now,” the gruff marshal said gruffly.

“Let’s figure out why, shall we?”

James followed the warden to Rogers’ cell while the marshal peeled off muttering something about roadblocks and hen houses.

“I don’t understand it,” the warden fretted. “Rogers has been a model prisoner. Followed instruction, always polite, never caused any problems… He was up for parole next month.”

Something in the warden’s inflection caught James’ attention.

“Did he have any problems?”

“He was one of the smallest guys here,” the warden shrugged like it explained everything. “He held his own, but there was this one inmate, Rumlow, who had it out for him. Despite being a raging psychopath he was careful and the guards only caught him in the act last month. Rogers was in the infirmary for a week.”

“That’s reason enough to want to escape.”

The warden shook his head. “That was Rumlow’s first and last strike. He was sent up to Sing Sing after that. Don’t know how he wound up in minimum security in the first place.”

“Good lawyer, probably,” James mused, stopping short as they reached Rogers’ cell. “Holy shit…”

Etched into the wall opposite the cot was a replica of “The Girl with a Pearl Earring”, if the girl had been a fifty year old kemo patient.

“He’s quite the artist. Had a good business going, trading tattoos for food or books…”

James tore his eyes away from the art on the walls looked around the small cell. The bed was neatly made and the shelf above the small desk in the corner was piled high with ramen and chocolate bars. The desk itself was littered with drawings and the remnants of cheap pastels. He rifled through the pages - character studies of guards and inmates mostly - until he found the catalyst. He passed the eviction notice over to the warden.

“We’ve got the why, now the how.”

“I don’t understand,” the warden griped, struggling to keep up with Barnes as he made his way back to the guard station.

“He was getting kicked out of his apartment.”

“But he wasn’t living there…”

“He was keeping up with the rent payments somehow. The landlord must have only just cottoned on to the fact that Steve’s not around anymore and terminated the rental agreement. He has until tomorrow to clear out his stuff.”

“You think he hid something valuable in the apartment?”

“Depends what you mean by valuable,” James replied cryptically as they reached the security check point, nodding to the guards to let them through.

“Here’s Rogers,” the guard said, pointing to the blond on the monitor as he exited the mess hall. The security footage sped through the rest of the morning until… “He goes into the supply room, and never comes back out.”

“Keep going until the guard notices he’s missing.”

James didn’t say a word about the idiot guard with his eyes glued to his phone; word had it he was getting fired just as soon as the marshals were done chewing him out.

His eyes flicked to the two camera angles that went dark around about the time the guard realised Rogers’ was MIA.

“What happened there?”

“They were shot out.”

“Shot?”

“With a bow and arrow,” the warden added in the dazed tone of a man mentally drafting his resignation letter. “But we’ve checked the area. There’s no signs of a breakout. And even if there were it couldn’t have been Rogers. He can’t have gotten to that side of the compound without passing through three security check points. Especially not without leaving the storage room first!” the warden reasoned desperately.

“So it’s a distraction. Too coincidental to be completely unrelated,” James countered. “Show me just the cameras from this block. From the moment Rogers walks into the storage room until the place goes on lockdown. … There!” he exclaims, jabbing a finger at a flash of blonde hair. “That’s how he got out: he walked out the front door.”

“But that… that’s just a visitor. Isn’t it?”

James flicked an irritated look at the frazzled warden before turning back to the security footage. “Blow that angle up. Play it again.” On a full screen it was obvious that it was Rogers but apparently the hipster glasses were enough to give the warden reasonable doubt. “Rewind it,” James asked irritably. “Show me when he goes into the bathroom.”

The tape went back and back and back and the moment never came. He gave the warden a non-verbal “I told you so” and made for the visitors bathrooms. He gave the dreary tiled room a once over and didn’t see any obvious entry points, no Shawshank-style holes in the wall, but maybe…

“Give me your baton,” he asked of the guard trailing behind the warden (in case he passed out from stress, James assumed). He extended it with a flick of his wrist and stood atop the last toilet in the row, using the baton to reach up to the air vent cover… And wouldn’t you know it, the damn thing was unscrewed.

“That’s not possible,” the warden scoffed. “It’s not possible. It’s too small! No one could fit in there!”

“No one our size, perhaps, but Rogers is, what? A foot shorter and a hundred pounds soaking wet? A guy that size would have plenty of wiggle room.”

The warden was still clinging to his righteous indignation when James moved to the waste bin and dug out a black duffle bag from under the used paper towels. He pulled an orange jumpsuit from the bag and handed the whole thing over.

“I’d fix those vents if I were you.”

“Where are you going?”

“To find him.”

** *** **

Steve Rogers, in Agent Barnes’ off-the-record opinion, was not a bad guy. He had just been a kid, working his ass off on a partial fine arts scholarship at Columbia, when his talent for recreating old masters was noticed by the wrong people. The guy had an unwavering moral compass and James believed that if his mother hadn’t gotten sick Steve Rogers would never have fallen into the world of art forgery. He was sure Steve had told himself it would just be the one time, but then his mom got sicker and the bills kept coming, so he allowed himself to be commissioned for another forgery, and another. And then Sarah Rogers had died and Steve’s true north died with her. By the time Steve was able to drag himself out of his depression the funeral bills had been added to his pile of debt, the rent was due, and he had a pressing need to eat some time that week. He buckled.

Three years later and Steve was forging everything from “lost works” from old masters to bearer bonds from the forties. He was probably one of the best forgers James had never heard of, until some snivelling yuppie who had been laundering drug money through his art gallery had dropped Steve’s name and crimes in the hopes of reducing his own sentence.

James had gone to Steve Rogers’ home himself to ask him a few questions, get a feel for the guy, but the moment the skinny little artist had seen James’ badge his shoulders had slumped; he knew he was nicked and he wasn’t going to fight it. He did however only do the bare minimum to cooperate with their investigation and didn’t implicate himself in any crimes the Bureau wasn’t currently aware of. He did suggest he wouldn’t be of much help with the crimes they could trace back to him, admitting that all of his jobs were brought to him by an agent of sorts and he never had any contact with the people who bought his work. If he accepted a job he’d give the agent a list of supplies he’d need to pull it off and by the end of the next day they be delivered to his doorstop and he’d get to work. He claimed not to know their name, only communicating via a burner phone that his agents conveniently couldn’t find when they searched his place.

James pulled up at the aforementioned place, an unremarkable apartment building in a corner of Brooklyn that had scared off the forces of gentrification. Back up pulled up a few seconds later and he motioned for them to stay outside and watch the exits. Steve Rogers wasn’t armed or dangerous, and James had a feeling he wouldn’t run.

The elevator was broken again, or still broken from his last visit, so James hoofed it up four flights of stairs to the former residence of Steve and Sarah Rogers. The lock had been jimmied and the smell of fresh paint almost knocked him on his ass as he pushed the door open. It was a small apartment, just two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a cramped “open plan” kitchen/dining/living area, though it seemed less cramped now that it was completely devoid of furniture.

James sighed and checked the bedrooms, and found Steve sitting on the floor of what James remembered as Sarah Rogers’ untouched bedroom.

“Hey Steve,” he called softly from the doorway. “What happened?”

“The bastard lied. He sent the eviction notice to cover his ass but he didn’t even think I’d get it so why wait the full 14 days? He threw everything out two days ago. Now this is all I have left of her,” he cried, holding up the creased photo of his mother.

“I’m sorry, Steve.”

James gave him as much time as he could before helping him to his feet and escorting him from the building. Handing Steve over to the marshals was one of the harder things he’d had to do in his line of work and his broken expression kept James up all night. Not that he told Darcy that when she commented on the bags under his eyes the next morning.

“Where are we on the boiler room?” he said instead, taking the proffered coffee.

“Nowhere,” Darcy grumbled. “Forensics pulled a few partials but they’re not confident they’ll be enough for a match. Fury’s given the file to me to chase down some leads that won’t go anywhere.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because,” she said, brandishing a new file with a smile. “You have something more important to look into: the Ghost might be back.”

The Ghost was called the Ghost because they never left any evidence other than an empty space where a priceless work of art once sat. In the past two years the Ghost had been credited with five high profile thefts, and if the file in front of him was to believed that number was now six. James sighed and tried to savour his coffee. Art Crimes wasn’t exactly his forte, he was a forensic accountant at heart - give him a good embezzlement case and he was happy. But Art Crimes? He’d never quite understood the value and status (rich) people put on it, nor had he been able to, in the five years he’d been an agent, find a reliable CI in that world to give him a leg up.

Maybe Steve knew someone, maybe Steve…

An idea took hold and James threw himself into research, coffee and potential Ghost case all but forgotten.

** *** **

Steve put on a brave face and smiled as James entered the interview room.

“Good morning, Agent Barnes. What brings you here?”

“I wanted to talk you about your parole.”

“Uh, you’re a little late,” Steve chuckled. “The hearing was cancelled on account of my little… furlough.”

“No, I heard about that. I had a little something a little different in mind.”

“Like what?”

“Have you ever heard of Frank Abagnale Jr?”

“The conman they made that DiCaprio movie about?”

“The conman that became an FBI consultant,” James supplied. “I was wondering if that was something you would be interested in.” He smiled as the man across from him did a pretty good impression of a fish. “If you agree you’ll be fitted with a tracking device and be released into my custody. You’d be given room and board – nothing much, I’m warning you now – and serve your sentence consulting on cases instead sitting in a prison cell.”

“If I agree?” Steve laughed. “But why me? I was just a forger.”

“I think you’re selling yourself a bit short there, Rogers. I know for a fact that you were holding out on us when you were arrested, you know a hell of a lot more than you let on, and you’ve got connections in that world which sometimes feels like it’s half the job. So… what do you say?”

Steve smiled. “When can I start?”

** *** **

James smiled as he saw Steve kiss the dog tags and wedding ring that hung from a chain around his neck for the fifth time on their drive back to the city.

“I’m glad you got your personal effects back, Steve.”

“Me too. It’s not much but it’s a hell of a lot better than nothing,” he sighed, relinquishing his hold on them in favour of fidgeting with his new watch-slash-tracking device. “Did they have to make this thing so bulky?”

“Count yourself lucky it’s in standard issue black. I had to talk the guy down from making it in his trademark red and gold.”

“Red and gold? This is a Stark?!”

“Yeah, my boss insisted on something unhackable before agreeing to let you out into the world, and Stark owed me a favour after I solved a patent issue he was having.”

“I feel both honoured and insulted. It’s like your boss doesn’t trust me.”

“Oh, he doesn’t. But don’t take it personally; Fury doesn’t trust anyone.”

James double checked his GPS, took the next right, and pulled up in front of a rundown motel with several letters missing from its flickering neon sign.

“Here we are, home sweet home.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Steve muttered as he followed James into the dingy lobby.

“Agent Barnes,” James flashed his badge at the attendant. “This is Steve Rogers, my office called earlier.”

“Right, right,” the (possibly high) attendant murmured. “There you, Snake Eyes,” he said, tossing the keys in Steve’s general direction.

Steve stared at the keys where they landed on the dirty ground and pleaded with James. “Do I have to stay here? Prison was cleaner. And probably safer,” he added in quiet tones, eyeing the residents loitering in the lobby warily.

“I warned you it wasn’t going to be much,” James reminded him. “It costs 700 a month to house you on the inside, so that's what it costs here. For the money, this is as good as it gets. You find something better - take it. In the meantime, get settled in, do your homework,” he added, passing Steve a few files, “And I’ll pick you up at 7am.”

“What about clothes – or toiletries? I’m wearing my entire wardrobe,” Steve argued, tugging at his threadbare shirt.

“Your tracking anklet is set up so you can go anywhere within two miles of this place. Find a thrift store.”

“And pay for it with what money?”

“Oh, almost forgot. Here,” he said, handing over a fifty dollar bill. “That’s your weekly allowance. That’s how much it costs on the inside,” he repeated before Steve could argue. “If you need anything extra I’ll show you how to fill out a requisition form tomorrow. Until then: homework, two miles, 7 am. Got it?”

“Yeah, yeah…”

** *** **

Steve lasted a whole two minutes in the possibly haunted motel room before walking straight back out again. He splurged on his first decent cup of coffee in almost a year and found a bench in a nearby park to sit and read the files Agent Barnes had given him while the light was still good. After that he wasn’t sure what he was going to do, only that it involved not sleeping in a room that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned properly anytime in the past decade.

He was almost at the bottom of his coffee when something caught his attention; an elderly woman in her eighties, maybe even nineties, clinging to her purse like a life raft, her expression changing from confused to sheer panic at an alarming rate.

“Ma’am, are you ok?” Steve asked, stepping into her field of vision. “Are you alright?” he repeated when she finally registered his presence.

“I’m afraid I’m a bit lost,” she confessed with shaky voice and just the hint of an English accent.

“Why don’t you come sit next to me and maybe I can help you find your way.”

“Aren’t you a nice young man,” she remarked as she allowed him to lead her to the bench.

“Do you remember where you were going?”

“I think… I think I wasn’t supposed to go anywhere,” she admitted bashfully. “I was with my niece and she stopped to take a phone call and I’m afraid I must have wandered off. She’s going to be ever so cross with me.”

“It’s not your fault,” Steve assured her.

“No, it’s this mind of mine, betraying me in my old age,” she tutted. “And it’s got me quite forgetting my manners. Agent Margaret Carter, formerly of her Majesty’s armed forces and Churchill’s S.O.E. But you can call me Peggy.”

“Wait a minute, the S.O.E.? You were a spy?” Steve exclaimed, happy he retained something from his WWII studies.

“Spy, codebreaker, kicker of Nazi asses,” she grinned back. “And who might you be, other than the kind of man who helps little old ladies cross the street?” she teased.

“Oh, uh, Steve Rogers, ma’am. Recently paroled art forger turned consultant for the FBI,” he answered truthfully, returning her firm handshake.

“A forger? Really?” she beamed. “You must be quite talented. You’ll have to paint my portrait for me.”

Steve blushed but before he could answer her a frantic younger woman ran up to them.

“Aunt Peggy! I thought I lost you!” she cried, almost falling to her knees in relief.

“I think it was me who lost you, dear. Steve, this is my niece, Sharon. Sharon, this is Steve, the young man that has been keeping me company while we waited for you.”

“Thank you so much,” Sharon greeted breathlessly, still trying to get her racing heart under control.

“It wasn’t a hardship. You’re aunt’s a real firecracker.”

“Oh you,” Peggy blushed, slapping Steve’s arm. “Steve here is an artist. I was just in the process of commissioning him to paint my portrait, something dark and austere to loom over everyone at family dinners long after I’m gone,” she laughed.

“That sounds great, Aunt Peg. Have you got a card?”

“Oh, no, sorry. Uh, I don’t even have a phone at the moment.”

Sharon raised an eyebrow at his admission but Peggy steamrolled over any awkwardness.

“It’s not the boy’s fault, Sharon dear. He’s just been released from prison, but now he’s working for the FBI, isn’t that exciting?”

Sharon raised both eyebrows.

“Art forger… turned consultant…” Steve repeated self-consciously.

Her eyes flicked to him the files at his side.

“Are those case files?”

“Uh, yes?”

“Can I see them?”

“Um… no?” It wasn’t like they had [Top Secret] stamped all over it, and James hadn’t mentioned anything about confidentiality, but maybe that’s because it went without saying. “Give me a break,” he said in answer to Sharon’s razor sharp gaze. “It’s my first day isn’t until tomorrow.”

“Who’s your liaison?”

“…Special Agent James Barnes. Why?”

Instead of responding Sharon turned her attention to her phone, tapping away until she found the answers she needed.

“Steven Grant Rogers, twenty six years old, convicted of one count of felony forgery though implicated in at least a dozen other cases. Non-violent offender, served 11 months on a four year sentence before escaping only to be captured that same day and released into the custody of Special Agent James Barnes. Currently residing… at the Heart of the City Motel. Seriously? That place is a dump.”

“Yeah, it is, but… How… How did you know all that?” Steve asked dazedly, pointing to her phone.

“Classified,” she smirked.

“My dear Sharon has followed in my footsteps somewhat. She works in Washington,” Peggy supplied with an exaggerated wink, earning an amused snort from her niece. “And that agent of yours doesn’t really expect you to live at that awful motel, does he? That place should have been condemned when Sharon was a girl.”

“According to the Bureau, it cost 700 a month to house me on the inside, so that's all they’ve budgeted for my room and board on the outside. Agent Barnes said if I could find something better for the same money I should take it, but in this city?” Steve scoffed.

“Why don’t you come stay with me?”

“Aunt Peg,” Sharon scolded.

“You said it yourself, dear. Your work is in Washington, and though you visit as often as you can you still worry about me being all alone in that big house once Anna leaves for the day.”

“I really couldn’t…”

“And you,” she said, turning to Steve. “You said you’d paint my portrait. I could be your patron, how marvellous,” she grinned.

Steve couldn’t bring himself to say no to Peggy’s enthusiastic generosity, instead he looked to Sharon to give him out by deeming him an unsuitable houseguest by rap sheet alone, but it seemed she wasn’t immune to her aunt’s enthusiasm either.

“Fine. But if you hurt her in any way, shape, or form, you won’t have to worry about going back to prison because you’ll be dead. Do we understand each other?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he nodded, knowing it wasn’t hyperbole in the least.

“That settles it,” Peggy clapped. “Rent can be due on the first of every month and meals are served at 7am, 12pm, and 5pm, Monday through Friday. Though we’ll be left to our own devices for lunch and dinner on weekends until Anna’s daughter stops working nightshift and no longer needs a babysitter. Any questions?”

“Uh, just one,” Steve replied, holding up his tracking bracelet. “Is your place within a two mile radius of the motel?”

** *** **

Steve parted ways with the Carter’s and wandered back to the awful motel in a giddy daze.

“Hey Snake Eyes,” the attendant greeted. “What can I do you for?”

“Checking out,” Steve grinned, dropping the keys into his hand.

“So soon?”

“Yep. You got paper and a pen? I need to leave a note for that guy that dropped me off.”

“Secret Agent Man?” he asked, passing over the required items.

“That’s the one,” Steve murmured as he crafted his note. “Give this to him when he turns up tomorrow morning?”

“Sure thing. Hey, that reminds me,” he said to Steve’s retreating back. “Someone left something for you,” he said, looking around his small station until he found a familiar brand of black duffel bag. “Left you a note too.”

“To: Cap,” it read in Clint’s familiar scrawl. “Sorry about your stuff. Went dumpster diving behind your building and got some of it back. x Hawkeye”

Steve took the bag and frantically rifled through the smelly contents. It was mostly clothes, some coffee mugs and books, and a few precious framed photos that Steve wasn’t ashamed to say he hugged to his chest.

A few hours later he was settled in his new digs, a guest apartment in Peggy’s townhouse, complete with an ensuite and its own kitchenette. Steve had spent the better part of an hour following dinner with the delightful Peggy getting better acquainted with said ensuite, swearing to himself he was never going back to prison, and prison showers, ever again. When he finally exited the bathroom, wearing only “guest pyjama” bottoms as his entire wardrobe was in the washing machine downstairs, he almost shrieked at the sight of a woman perched at the end of his bed.

“Hello Steve,” she purred.

“Jesus Christ, Nat,” he swore at the redhead. “You almost gave me a heart attack,” he gasped, leaning against the wall for support.

“Not going to ask stupid questions like ‘How did you find me?’” she teased, moving in for a hug.

“I know better than that. I would ask that you don’t make this a habit though. Peggy’s niece is kinda your level of intimidating.”

“I’m aware,” she smirked knowingly. “So, how’s life on the outside treating you,” she asked, rummaging around his fridge for something to drink and finding only random craft beers and bottled water.

Steve gestured at his comfortable surroundings. “I think my luck’s turning around.”

“All you had to do was sell your soul to the feds,” she grimaced, flicking the bottle cap into the sink.

“It’s not like that, Nat.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I’ve got a lot to make up for.”

“You painted a few pictures, Steve.”

“And forged bonds and stock certificates, and a goddamn printing plate. Nat, I did the wrong thing over and over again. I broke laws, committed crimes, and even if the feds aren’t aware of all of them I’m going to atone for them. This is how.”

“Even if it means ratting out your friends?”

“Hey, I would never. I say a word about you then, I won’t now.”

“So you’ll just lie to your FBI handler?”

“I don’t have to lie. I can just be vague and obtuse. Agent Barnes knows I’m not telling him everything and he seems to accept it.”

“Until a case I’m involved in comes across your desk.”

“I’d go back to prison before ratting you out, Nat. You have to believe that.”

“I do, that’s the problem,” she smiled sadly. “You went to prison the first time because of me, I won’t let you do it again.”

“That wasn’t your fault…”

“It was,” Nat argued. “I got you into all this in the first place. My uncle saw that Degas you painted for my birthday and he kept pushing the idea of that first job, asking me to ask you…”

“I didn’t have to say yes.”

“You were desperate. I took advantage.”

“And what about those last few years, after all my debts were paid… Was I still desperate then?” Nat sighed and picked at the label on her water bottle. “It was my choice, Nat. The guilt should be mine too.”

“And yet I still feel like an asshole, so I’m going to make it easy for you: I’m going to take a holiday.”

“For how long?”

“Four years. Two with good behaviour,” she smiled, abandoning her drink in favour of another hug. “Look after yourself, Rogers.”

“You too, Romanoff. And hey,” he called as she made for the door. “Take Clint with you, would you?”

“Who do you think’s flying the plane?” she teased and disappeared from sight.

Steve’s heart broke a little bit at the thought of his friends being out of the country for four years – because of him. But it wasn’t that long in the grand scheme of things, he reasoned, and worst case scenario they’d be back for his 30th birthday, and what a party that was going to be.

** *** **

James read over Steve’s note, and the obnoxious little smiley face tacked on the end, and prayed to his mother’s god that busting this kid out of jail wasn’t going to end up being the worst mistake of his career. He checked the address again and knocked on the fancy front door.

“Good morning, I’m Special Agent Barnes,” he greeted, flashing his badge as was habit. “Is there a Steve Rogers at this address?”

The woman smiled warmly and waved him through.

“Good morning Special Agent Barnes. My name is Anna Jarvis, I’m Ms Carter’s housekeeper. She and Mr Rogers are taking breakfast in the main dining room.”

“Of course they are,” James muttered to himself as he followed Anna through the lavish home.

“Agent Barnes!” Steve grinned contagiously. “You’re early.”

“You moved,” he countered, staring around the opulent room in disbelief.

“Yeah, it's nicer than the other place, don't you think?”

“I don’t think the other place served breakfast. How…”

“Well, while taking advantage of the generous freedom you gave me I went to the park yesterday afternoon and bumped into Peggy here,” Steve explained, enjoying James’ awkwardness immensely. At the mention of her name Peggy dragged herself away from her morning crossword. “Peg, this is James Barnes, the FBI guy I was telling you about. Agent Barnes, this is Agent Margaret “Peggy” Carter, formerly of her Majesty’s armed forces and Churchill’s S.O.E, and my generous patron to boot.”

“Isn’t he a riot,” Peggy laughed.

“He’s something alright,” James agreed. “Steve, why don’t you go get dressed. We’ve got a busy day ahead of us.”

“Will do. Thanks for breakfast, Anna. Have a wonderful day, Peg.”

“You too, dear,” Peggy waved.

James fell down in an open chair and graciously accepted the cup of coffee Anna poured for him. The drink helped him gather his wits and he turned to address the elderly woman at the head of the table.

“It’s very nice of you to put Steve up, Ms Carter, but he did disclose to you that he’s a convicted felon, didn’t he? And that that thing on his wrist isn’t just a watch.”

“Young man,” Peggy replied sharply. “I was hunting down Nazi’s before your father was even thought of; I know what bad men look like, and Steve Rogers is not one of them.”

“No, ma’am, he isn’t,” James conceded.

** *** **

James was waiting by the car when Steve finally emerged, dressed in clean dark jeans, a loose fitting t-shirt, and a comfy looking button up sweater that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Peggy’s wardrobe.

“Ready to go?”

“Yeah, yeah, hold your horses.”

“First day on the job and you’re already late,” James grumbled as he got behind the wheel.

“Hey, you were early,” Steve shot back.

“You read the files?”

“Yep,” Steve said, handing them back.

“And?”

“The Bourke and Jones jobs feel like insurance fraud to me, the Bourke especially. I’d put money on the painting that was displayed being a fake; the brushstrokes looked all wrong to me. The Caffrey was definitely an inside job. I’d look for an employee, or a close relative of an employee, who’s got gambling debts with a guy named Berrigan. He’s got a soft spot for post-war abstracts, Rothko’s in particular. The other three… they could very well be the same guy but I’d like to check out the most recent crime scene before committing to that theory.”

“…You know what, Steve?”

“What?” Steve asked.

“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

In case you were wondering...

- James dropped the nickname Bucky when he went to Quanitco in an effort to be taken more seriously. Steve finds out about it from Darcy, ala Diana telling Neal about Peter's mustache. - Darcy and Sam would be James' main underlings. - James often thinks of Steve as "kid" though he's 26 and Bucky's barely pushing 30. - Clint/Nat are Steve's Mozzie but as Steve is completely different to Neal - no ulterior motives, no big secrets, etc - it seemed right to have them step back from Steve so he wasn't found breaking parole for consorting with criminals, and Steve wasn't torn apart by guilt for covering for his friends/lying to James about their involvement in open cases. - Steve and Clint met as they tried to pass each other in some random alleyway in Brooklyn, both bloody and bruised, when they were still in high school and have been close friends ever since. Steve met Nat in college though he wasn't aware that she was slightly mobbed up until she brought him his first "commission". - I do say the the vent was too small for guys Bucky's size but okay for Steve - so what about Clint? Apparently Clint+ceiling vents in a fanmade trope, and I had no idea, so let's just say that Clint is bigger than Steve but smaller than Bucky and since he's so accustomed to ceiling ducts it might have been a tight fit but completely doable for him. - Steve may have told himself what he was doing wasn't hurting anyone there would have to be an ep where he discovers how his actions ruined someone's life, etc. - Rumlow would come back as Steve's nemesis/hired muscle for Alexander Peirce.

#paint stained collar #white collar au #mcu crossover #steve rogers #bucky barnes #pre-serum steve rogers #criminal!steve rogers #fbi agent!bucky barnes #criminal consultant!steve rogers #clint barton #natasha romanoff #darcy lewis #peggy carter #sharon carter #crime au #criminal au #fbi au #freudensteins-fics

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