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starlit-mansion · 2 years

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runs in the family, fallen london (2.3k words)

A few months before their wedding, Morgan’s fiancee deals with the aftermath of an unexpected family reunion in the Tomb Colonies.

***

Hepsibah had been quiet as soon as she'd returned to the ship, staying out of the way and staring out to zee, turned away from any lights of any warm settlements. It worried Morgan, and they found a spare moment to sidle up and touch her arm.

"Hepsi?"

She smiled, but it was only for their sake. There was still trouble underneath. "Yes, my love?"

"It's dangerous to be so close to the railings. You should go below deck if you can."

She nodded and picked her way unsteadily across the deck. Morgan wanted nothing more to join her, and as their body went through the motions and their mouth spoke to their crew, their mind lingered in Venderbight. Hepsi had been in a strange mood when she reintroduced Morgan to Simon, in the new context of him being their future father in law. It was the brittle cheer after a fight, aftershocks of anger making innocent words sharp, but no one taking the bait.

It reminded them of the moods Eliot would get into on the surface after getting a letter from his parents, or at least the sullen lull before the ranting to Henry in their shared bedroom that Morgan could almost hear through several walls.

There was a disconnect between the bounds of Morgan's empathy and their sympathy. They felt for her -- and Eliot too, when they weren't feeling unkind -- but couldn't understand the places where love failed on its own, and people chose to part from their family. And they hoped they never would.

After some time, the zee was calm and the ship was sound, and Morgan descended to their quarters below deck. Hepsi was lying on her side on top of the covers of the bed, still fully clothed save for her boots. She didn't stir as they came in.

"Do you want some company?"

"Yes," she replied in a very small voice.

They got their boots off, and didn't bother with anything else, instead getting into bed and draping themself over her as comfortably as they could manage. They'd done this for every stressful turn in Hepsi's life since they'd started sharing a home, and they'd gladly do it for every one yet to come. She was vitally warm and soft after the chill of the zee air. Morgan hadn't noticed they were cold until they were beside her.

"How are you feeling?"

"I don't know," she said. "I just feel sick about it. Everything is just racing through my head."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"I have no idea how to start."

"Well… I'll be here either way."

Hepsi was silent for what felt like a very long time, but was probably a few minutes.

"So you knew Simon for a while, didn't you?" she asked eventually.

"Not well, but I suppose, yes." He was a fixture of the docks, offering overpriced tours to new arrivals or running a game of Find the Lady, his few stumpy fingers still dexterous enough under his bandages to make a meager take from terror-addled zailors coming back from a long haul.

"What did you think of him?"

"Honestly? Fairly charming, but sort of… pathetic. Like he might have had it once, but he's far past his prime."

She hummed noncommittally. "He was like that when I was a child, too. It's not new. It's not really an act either, but it works. I mean, you've given him money, haven't you?"

"Well, yes, I suppose, but I didn't really think about it."

"Now imagine it's a few hundred pounds, and he's selling you a deed, or a partially matured bond, or some other official looking piece of paper because he's fallen on hard times and he's giving you a deal, and he's got a young daughter in a ragged dress sitting quietly off in the corner playing with a sad little dolly, and he really would appreciate it so much, it's just so hard to make ends meet." She did a shockingly good impression of the earnest waver in his raspy voice. "I hated that damned doll."

"...Ah, I see." Morgan would have parted with the money, they were sure, and if the papers turned out to be forged, well… A shame, but not worth sending a man to jail over, especially not a father of a young daughter. Were they a mark? Well, maybe. They'd rather be a mark than be heartless, though.

"We had a fight when I was seventeen, and I ran away. That was the last time I saw him before we just met again. I wish I was surprised."

"Would… you rather not have met him again?" Morgan asked hesitantly.

"I don't know… He was a bad father, alright?" she snapped, her irritation clearly not aimed at them. "Not for lack of trying. Oh, he tried. He was always just about to turn a corner, about to make a mint, then we'd finally be set, but it never turned up. How much of your life can be a temporary downturn before you accept that there's just no fucking way up?"

"...Ah."

She softened a little, clearly uncomfortable with the lack of varnish on that truth. "There were some better times. Mostly when he weaseled his way into somebody's household and we had a roof over our heads and a bite of food. But it was always just a moment away from him crossing the line and getting tossed out. Even…" She sighed, and didn't finish her thought.

"That sounds awful," they said, feeling inadequately eloquent.

"I tried to be better than him. With Isaiah, I mean. I tried to be a good parent. I never made him perform, never made it out to be his fault if we didn't have enough money or enough food, didn't move him around all over God's creation. I… I prided myself on that. But I don't know if I really was any better. I see… so much of myself in my father, and I can't stand it."

"Oh, Hepsi, no… You were a good mother. Everyone knew that."

"But Isaiah didn't have a good father, and I made him keep all my secrets, and I had to give him up, at an even younger age than I was when I left my dad. I couldn't give him a better life than being a dockworker without losing him, no matter how hard I tried."

Hepsi had never once indicated a shred of animosity towards Morgan for pawning their inheritance at a fraction of its worth and fleeing Liverpool, but their mind could pull at the threads of the repercussions all day. If they hadn't left, if they'd been any other sort of person than who they were, if they had helped their brother's two favorite people at all instead of avenging his murder, maybe Hespi wouldn't have needed to give up custody of her only son. But if they'd been any other person, Henry would still be alive, or at least unmurdered, so that sort of rambling always led back down the same path.

Surely Hepsi had those same thoughts, but about circumstances they could barely comprehend. They didn't know what coin she'd shared in kindness that she regretted later, what scheme left unventured or vault not ransacked that haunted Hepsi's heart in the middle of the night, but they did know it was as useless for her to speculate as it was for them. She'd done the best she could with what she had.

"You don't need two parents to be a decent person, and Isaiah always seemed decent to me, even when he was an awful little boy and I was an insufferable teenage brat." Hepsi gave a sad little chuckle at that, and Morgan continued. "And Henry loved him very much. I used to joke that he'd replaced me, because every letter from home had about 3 inches of writing about what Isaiah was doing."

"Oh… Of course. That makes sense, but I never really thought about it. Well, in any case, I'm glad Izzy had a decent male role model in his life besides his bloody father."

"There's that, at least."

"The only reason I think I was ever any better than Simon was the people he left me with when he was trying to do business. I called them all my Aunts and Uncles, but really they were just people who took in the poor wandering widower and his daughter for whatever reason. Usually because he was sleeping with them, but not always. Sometimes they were just lonely. The longest I'd ever spent in one place before Liverpool was three years. That was nice…"

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

She nodded, then shifted in bed, arranging herself more comfortably and wrapping her arms around Morgan. They pillowed their head on her chest, letting their eyes fall closed as they settled in to listen.

"I never told anyone about this except Izzy, but I also never told him that my father and my so-called Uncle Jeremiah were lovers. I can't remember if he was a widower, or had just never married, but he was well past speculation at the point where my father wandered into his life. I think he must have seen through my father right away, because there was never a long term plan to creep into the will or steal the valuables like there was at other places. We were just staying there. Dad had to chop firewood. I swept the floors, though I think it was just to keep me busy. Jeremiah ran his own house other than that, top to bottom. He…" Her voice hitched, and Morgan felt her chest jerk in a suppressed sob. "He started to teach me how to cook."

"Oh, Hepsi…" Morgan hugged her tighter, and the threat of tears passed.

"I was 8 or 9 when we started living there. I'm still not clear on when my birthday is, my dad lied about it so many times. Anyway, I think for a while, Dad was trying to go straight, or at least switch to being the indulged younger lover of an older recluse of some means, which is good work if you can get it. He couldn't do it, in the end. I don't know if he was bored, or the trouble in their relationship began before he started up with his old ways. There were a few burglaries in town, then one of Dad's "investment" schemes that fell through. All things we could have easily run away from, but then Uncle Jeremiah just… made them go away.

"I'd find out later, when they were screaming at each other, that it was for my sake. He was furious that I showed up barely able to read, unaware of even a scrap of history and philosophy, and utterly clueless about housework. He was trying to make a stable home for me and give me an education, and Simon was ready to throw it all away for a fistful of fast cash.

"I wanted it to be simple. That Uncle Jeremiah was the good one who really loved me, and my father was the bastard. I used to think that. But I've met enough people who decide they can fix you. It's not a simple thing. Eventually, Dad stole something valuable from Jeremiah, and he was finally thrown out, and I had to go with my father.

"We were in many more houses over the next six years, as guests and servants. After that, I always learned what I could, from books and from people. I made myself useful. And I learned to steal, just like my father. I never found out what happened to Jeremiah. By the time I could go back, I was afraid to. I didn't want to risk him seeing what I'd become, and what I'd failed to be. Better just to leave it in the past."

Morgan had never let anything stay in the past even once in their life, but they could understand Hepsi's way of thinking. They'd certainly regretted dredging things up enough to understand.

They moved so they could face her. She looked exhausted. They doubted she'd slept much in the Tomb Colonies, especially with no one to shake her out of her more violent nightmares. They leaned down and kissed her cheek gently.

"I wish someone had been there to hold you every time you felt lonely, and cherish you every time you felt unloved." They kissed her other cheek. "And I'm so grateful that you survived every injustice that the world threw at you, and became the woman I love."

Morgan was using up part of the wedding speech they'd been writing in their head for several weeks, but they couldn't bring themself to care when she dragged them down and kissed them like that. They'd think of something else later.

When they finally pulled apart, breathless, Hepsi stroked their face. "You know I feel the same way about you, right?"

"I know." They really did. They still had a thousand doubts in the dank underbelly of their mind, but even just the memory of her light could banish any that tried to creep out and take over.

"Except the woman part, obviously."

They laughed, and kissed her again. Then they settled cozily against her.

"There's something I've been wanting to ask you but I haven't been sure how to. Do you want to write Isaiah about the wedding?"

"I'm not sure how to get a letter to the surface."

"Well, there's a few ways… There's some exchange of post to and from the surface via the shipping channels, or you can bribe special couriers for direct delivery if you know the right people…"

"Hmm, and would you perhaps know the right people?"

"If I didn't, I'd find some."

"I'd bet you would," she said fondly.

#fallen london #fallen london ocs #oc: morgan fletcher #oc: hepsi brewster #(izzy's being referred to with he/him because they don't know he's trans yet)#also hepsi is 14 years older than morgan and she knew them a bit as a teen and young adult bc she was their older brother's best friend...#then they met again in morgan's mid twenties in london after them living there for serveral years #and it took them a few more years after that to get together romantically #if you were curious about why they knew her kid when they were a teen

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trekscribbles · 3 years

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All That Goes Unsaid- Chapter 1

Fandom: Leverage Cross-posted: AO3 and FF Summary: Eliot gets poisoned on a job. The rest of the team races to save him. Notes: This story was stolen from inspired by the Almost Paradise episode "A Wedding to Die For", but with just enough details changed to make the plot weaker and the whump whumpier. Also, the poison used in this story does not exist, partly because I couldn't find a real poison that acted the way I wanted it to, and partly because I'm a fantasy writer at heart and it's more fun to make things up than to research. And because the poison does not exist, the treatment described here is also extremely fictional. Please don't try to cure poisoning based on the info in this story.

Chapter 1-Eliot

Eliot felt drunk.

And not in a good way.

His limbs were both heavier and lighter than normal, and it felt like his brain was processing things a second too slowly. Like the world was coming at him through a fun house mirror. Distorted. Warped. Incomplete.

He knew this feeling—the lack of control, the foggy confusion. He had a name for it, somewhere, but the details buzzed just out of his reach.

"My drink..." he croaked, but Nate's voice kept going over the com and Eliot knew he hadn't heard. His chest felt tight and he couldn't get enough air to make another attempt. Fragments of memory hit him like shrapnel—a ballroom, cream-colored walls, blue fabric wrapping around him—his mark, the widow, dancing with him while Sophie laughed in his ear and called him a charmer. But something was wrong, and he couldn't remember what. He had to warn the others. They were in danger.

He took a step and his body moved too quickly. Or maybe it was the room tilting around him, spinning like a moon knocked out of orbit, untethered by gravity. He tightened the skin around his eyes, tried to focus. He had to think. He wasn't in the ballroom anymore... he was in a hallway, alone. Yes—back inside, the mark had handed him a drink, her eyes soft around a smile that seemed so light and genuine. But there was something wrong. Something he knew, something he'd figured out. He had to tell Nate, but she was pressing closer to him, lifting her hand to his cheek. He took a drink to keep her at bay, tasted almonds, went to spit it out—and she moved, and there was a cloud of something in his face, and he was pushing her away and Nate was still talking, and Parker was saying something about bad guys in the hallway. The widow had run out, and he'd followed, and now...

"Guys," he tried again, blinking and stumbling into the wall.

"Eliot," Nate answered. "You've got company. Hold them off."

Company. He didn't have time for company. He had to tell them, warn them about... about something... about almonds in his drink and mist in his face. The thunder of boots echoed toward him, too loud, and Eliot forced himself upright. First things first. His team was counting on him to face the threat and neutralize it and make sure their exit was still an exit by the time they needed it. Failure was not an option. Wasting time was not an option.

So he dug his nails into his palms and told his vision to clear. Told his head to un-fog, his muscles to tighten, his lungs to expand.

And he did his job.

When the door opened and the men burst into the hallway, he took advantage of their surprise like he'd been trained to do. He anticipated their moves and countered them before they were made, and if he stumbled a few times and took a few more hits than he thought he'd be getting, he still managed to end up on his feet with their bodies on the ground. Maybe his breathing was a little more ragged, and maybe the pain from his bruises felt sharper than they should have, but he'd done it. He'd followed his orders.

And if he collapsed afterwards even though he hadn't taken any real damage, if his head felt like it had been wrapped in towels and submerged underwater, at least he knew his team was safe. Whoever had gotten to him hadn't reached them.

But no... he still had to warn them. The almonds in his drink, the taste he'd recognized just before spitting it out—but he had spit it out, so that couldn't be it. Something else. Something that was keeping his thoughts scattered.

The blur in his vision had darkened around the edges, sending black spots and bursts of shadow through his head. He tried to stand up and felt a wave of sickness crash over him, and he was throwing up before he could summon the calming breaths that usually let him control his post-adrenaline nausea. His arms shook, but he managed to roll as he collapsed so he didn't end up in his own vomit. He heard his name chanted like a battle cry in his ear, pounding in time with the heartbeat that seemed ready to rip through his chest.

"Where are you?" Nate was saying, and Eliot tried to answer, but words were even hazier than ideas. They floated out from under Eliot's tongue, escaping before he could form them. Nate kept talking. "We're coming for you. Hardison, the cameras—"

"Got it. He's in the basement."

The basement, yes. He'd chased the men down the stairs—or maybe they'd fallen—and now he was face-down on cold concrete with his arms like anchors at his sides. They hurt, he thought, or maybe they were just numb, wrapped in the pins-and-needles feeling of a limb falling asleep. He thought he might fall asleep too, just to shut out the voices in his head. The cold had seeped through his skin, his lungs, wrapping around the fog in his brain and freezing it solid.

They wouldn't find him in time. He should say something, tell them that it was okay, that they didn't need to save him. That they already had. That he was ready to go.

But he wasn't.

He wanted more time. He wanted to see them again.

So he pushed back against the cold and the numb and the stillness and followed the last thread of clarity he had. He'd tasted something wrong with his drink and spit it out, twisting to avoid the cloud in his face, but he wasn't fast enough. He felt the mist coating his throat and recognized the bitter and earthy flavor just before the fog descended over him.

The memory slipped away and he crashed back to the present, forcing out a single word before the darkness overcame him and he fell back against the concrete.

"Kyanos."

#fanfic #leverage #eliot spencer #whump

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sergeant-angels-trashcan · 3 years

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back by popular demand,

KATE/QUINN

sooooooooooooooooooooo FIRST, the meet-ugly, because Kate doesn’t have meet cutes

Not sure if Quinn calls in a favor with Eliot or if Eliot call in a favor with Quinn

either way, a favor is called in

I feel like it’s Quinn doing the calling

he needs a job that’s easy, that will let him lie low and heal, maybe. or maybe he’s thinking about retiring

and Hardison, who is, of course, Prodigy, is like. hey. hey. I have a friend who could use someone to watch her back

and Quinn says YEAH COOL before he gets the details which. he really should have.

SO.

Kate is ragged. she’s EXHAUSTED. Between her dad and Madam Masque and tracksuits and various others, she’s got a lot of people who want to kill her

a lot of people sending people to kill her

at least two hits

and she’s an avenger, AND she’s got a real job. so she’s tired a.f.

she’s not sleeping because her apartment has been broken into twice and someone has tried to kill her

Quinn knows what she looks like and that’s all. he sees her walking down the street and notices she has a tail which might be why he was called

so he tails her tail AND keeps an eye on Kate

and then suddenly??? he can’t see her??

and he hears the very distinctive sound of someone getting punched which, fuck, he had one job!!!

so he rounds the corner and runs smack into Kate, who is standing over her tail with raw knuckles, panting

and then Quinn is flat on his back

ok it takes a hot second for him to get there, but he’s surprised and he doesn’t put up much of a fight, so really, he lets Kate win

(this will be a bone of contention between them for YEARS)

“hey! hey!! I’m here to help!!”

“help what??? kill me??”

“Eliot Spencer sent me?”

Kate freezes, She thinks she remembers a call from David. She might have dreamed it. So she calls Eliot up.

“Yes! We sent someone to help you watch your back. You called Hardison at 4 AM last week because you couldn’t figure out how to make popcorn and then you nearly set your microwave on fire. Take the help, kid.”

Kate pokes at Quinn with her foot, asks his name. He tells her.

“He says his name is Quinn? That’s the guy? He’s supposed to help me?” Nudges him with her foot again. “You don’t seem helpful.”

he rolls his eyes a little but doesn’t take the bait, he knows signs of exhaustion when he sees them

anyway Kate grudgingly lets him go with her to her apartment. not like she can’t get rid of him there. she’s got lots of weapons stashed

Quinn is sleeping (not sleeping) on Kate’s couch when he hears??? something???

so he kicks down her door

which she locked, actually and he’s going to have to replace it later

and there’s someone trying to kill Kate

i feel like Quinn just kicks the assassin out the window but it could be more involved than that

he can already tell Kate’s not going to go to the hospital, she’s not that kind of person, so he sits her back on her bed, goes to grab some aspirin, some water, a frozen bag of peas, and the blanket and pillow from the couch

he makes her drink the water and take the pills and puts the peas on her freshly attempted to be strangled neck

and drops the blanket and pillow at the foot of Kate’s bed.

she doesn’t say “wut” but he can see it in her eyes so Quinn just shrugs like “look you clearly can’t be left on your own if you want to sleep, isn’t that why I’m here? I’ll keep people from killing you so you can sleep. you can go back to keeping people from killing you yourself in the morning”

Kate settles back in bed, Quinn settles on the floor. He’s not going to sleep. He can tell Kate is trying to stay awake probably to keep an eye on him but eventually she sleeps

he’s going to have a very serious talk with the Leverage gang in the morning because WHAT is this chick into???

he doesn’t know she’s a superhero yet

(for some reason no one will think this is pertinent information to give to him)

stay tuned for part 2

#kate bishop #hawkeye #mr quinn #mr quinn (leverage)#leverage #my stuff #quinnkate

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be-gay-do-heists · 3 years

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very brief teaser/prompt for next chapter of the current meg fic, since it’s crazy how often these vibes have been popping up recently

------

The sound of his ragged breath in his ears, his footfalls on the dry earth, seemed muted compared to the frantic barking he heard coming from Lucille, which was a little dusty from the building’s collapse but otherwise untouched. He barreled toward the noise, skidding to a stop to throw open the back doors, and moved aside just in time to avoid the sudden onslaught of fur and muscle— Meg rocketed out of the van, tumbling down to the ground but rolling to her feet in a flash, scarcely taking the time to breathe amidst all her baying. Around Eliot’s legs she wildly circled, the sound of her distressed barking echoing over the groaning of settling metal and rubble. The hitter knelt to catch her by the collar, getting a look at her panic-stricken eyes, bracing himself against her nervous strength. “Meg,” he said firmly, masking the worry constricting his own throat, making him too want to howl until his lungs were raw. The mastiff stopped to barking to whine, high-pitched and piercing, half looking at him. “Meg, find him. You hear me?” Eliot put all the force he could into his words, a little of his desperation. “Find Hardison. Show me where he is.” At Hardison’s name, Meg twisted up and out of his grip with a booming bark, racing off toward the debris faster than Eliot had known she could even move. Breaking into a run to follow after her, Eliot put his faith in Meg’s nose, praying they would find him, unharmed and alright, among the dusty rubble.

#prepare. for the hurt comfort chapter #subject to changes but i think this is how its gonna go #miko speaks #leverage #into the megverse #fic

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tmabigbang · 3 years

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Masterpost of TMA Big Bang 2020 Fics

To prevent clogging up anyone’s dash, we have put all of these fics under a read more since there are 28 wonderful fics created for this bang, which makes for a bit of a long post! Below the cut are links and summaries to all the fics created for this bang!

In addition to this post, you can also check out our fic page (which you can find here)! The fic page includes links to all the fics, art, and the team members that helped create them! You can also use some basic filters for rating and oneshot/multichapter to find fics.

Thank you again to all our participants, and we will see you next year!

Your Job’s A Joke (You’re Broke) by @bisexualoftheblade and @desert-lily

Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27590578

Summary: Working at the Magnus Institute was stressful by default. With monsters, mayhem, and potential primordial entities, it has very little expectations for being a comfortable job. However, everyone is allowed to have a little fun sometimes - even an archivist, their assistants, and their really creepy boss. Fueled by spite and a rampant lack of heterosexuality, they all try to balance their work life with a bit of fun and a healthy dose of bullying twelve-times divorced Elias Bouchard.

I Know The End by @williammatagot

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27947966

Summary: Except, for all that beautiful poetry, Eliot was wrong, because the world doesn’t end with a bang, sure, but it doesn’t end with a whimper, either. It ends with the distant-yet-deafening voice of the man Martin loves shouting through a ragged, wild throat--I open the door. (The world ends, Jon shatters, and Martin tries to fix it. The house tries, too, in its own way.)

From the Depth of the Spiral by @trickstergod14

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27842941

Summary: Michael had no idea what was going on. He suddenly woke up in the tunnels under the Magnus Institute with no memories of the past seven years after that fateful trip to Sannikov Land. Watch as he slowly spirals into madness, regaining his memories while strengthening his bond with the Distortion along the way. Can he hide all this from the other Archival Assistants? What will happen when Jon wakes up from his coma? And what does the newly crowned Distortion Avatar, Helen, have to do with all this?

Every Word I Say is Kindling (But The Smoke Clears When You’re Around) by @ohnoimdeathing

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27956897

Summary: The unknowing left Jon stirring in the nightmares of others, watching their torment and suffering and making everything worse. He wanted to wake up, to go back to Martin, Tim, Basira, even Daisy. But he didn’t know how to. Until a voice told him to choose Though, to be honest, he doesn’t remember actually making the choice to stay a monster and live rather than be human and die. The only injury the doctors will talk about is his missing eyes, and why are all the doctors Scottish? At least Martin is here.

Spinning ‘Round (like two sides of a coin) by @awayofunderstandingit

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27835756

Summary: Time is a construct. What we know as past, present, and future all exist at the same time, ad infinitum. • Guided not by time but a spoken word poem, follow along the lives of two intertwined souls, Timothy Stoker and Sasha James. The story of their friendship from the time they meet, through growing apart, to when they fall back together, and through their time working at the Magnus Institute. Witness slices of their lives—not memories, memories would suggest the past—as they exist, ad infinitum, even at The End.

retrouvailles by @jet-siquliak

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27818092

Summary: The Magnus Institute burns. The archivist, for all intents and purposes, burned with it. In a dingy hospital room lies what remains - Jonathan sims. weak, powerless, and insignificant. On Jon’s last day in the hospital, Martin awakes from a coma, unscathed. Melanie King kicks the dirt that once housed the institute. Tim stoker wakes up in the middle of nowhere. Elias Bouchard is dead. No one knows where to go from there. Or: the destruction of one home and the making of another.

Still, I’ll Always Keep the Memory by @revolutionnaire-e

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27932125

Summary: [MARTIN turns, stepping out of the shadows towards him. It is blood, not tears. His left eye is not his own. His eyes never shone that blinding green, never shone with such malice or self-satisfied pride.] MARTIN BLACKWOOD Pleasure to see you again, Archivist.

Making Home by @cuddlytogas

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27664805

Summary: After the events in the Panopticon, Jon and Martin rush to leave London. But making their home in an idyllic safe house isn't that easy: between the layer of dust, and Forsaken still clinging to Martin's heels, it could be some time before they reach an understanding.

called your name ‘til the fever broke by @corpsesoldier

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27845161

Summary: Basira made a promise to her partner. At the end of the world, a monster comes and demands she keep it.

assorted family photos by @lesbianbirds

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27903979

Summary: When setting off on a research trip, it is advised that you prepare yourself for certain oddities that may greet you. or; key moments in a world where the entities are weaker and everyone got a bit more therapy

Timothy Stoker’s Guide to Dating by @pezilla

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27841267

Summary: Timothy Stoker has a lot of advice when it comes to matters of the heart, online agony aunt, gossip monger and general love guru. He has a list and he sticks to it. Or he did. That was before he took a job at the Magnus Institute and before he met three of the most fascinating and frustrating people to ever come into his life. Rule #7 under no circumstances fall for a co-worker. Yeah, that rule was starting to become a problem.

Running the Institute by @drowsy-salamander

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27878306

Summary: Caroline Ferguson, the entirety of the Magnus Institute's legal department, is furiously ignoring any weirdness that could be going on in her workplace, from the tech issues to the vanishing colleagues to the everything about Artefact Storage, Caroline will turn a very deliberate blind eye. They're are not her problem. Now if only those murders could also stop.

kindred spirits (not so scarce as I used to think) by @pollylittlehigher-littlelower

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27914821

Summary: An Anne of Green Gables inspired AU, set in modern day England. Jon and Georgie are childhood best friends, but the two stop talking after a falling out. Even doing their best to avoid each other, Georgie struggles to escape him, even while dealing with her own mental health issues and a blossoming romance with her housemate, Melanie. Is Jon truly the kindred spirit she once considered him? Or will the two eventually part ways for good?

Friends of Empty Graves by @artswaps

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27974807

Summary: After the coffin, she cuts her hair. Who is Alice Tonner? People are searching for her in the space she left behind, in the person she was. Daisy looks elsewhere, and tries not to choke.

just let the feeling grow by @ajkal2

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27838447

Summary: Jon is a musician. He plays songs for a living. Except love songs. He doesn't do love songs, and he makes this quite clear with anyone interested in working with him. Except his manager has booked him for a wedding. Without asking. With days before the festivities start, Jon needs help. Desperately. He won't get it from his hosts, the Lukas family. He certainly won't get it from his manager. However, there's a certain amateur poet on the Lukas' staff who has a talent for making love sound genuine.

World Cold and Hard, Moth Boy Warm and Soft by @lcjenkinswriting

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27827491

Summary: Jon, a young moth fairy, leaves the nest in search of a place that feels like home

tapes winding forward by @ghostbustermelanieking

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27858721

Summary: Martin ignores him, stops him mid-sentence to say, "Jon, what have you heard about time travel?" --- Martin and Jon wake up two years in the future. It goes about as well as can be expected.

MAG 26.5: Beach Episode by @ebenrosetaylor

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27882746

Summary: Sasha is aware of the rising tensions in the archives after Martin was stalked by Prentiss and after she had her own encounter with Michael. In an attempt to boost morale and bring them closer together, Tim suggests that they all visit the beach to unwind and get their minds off of all things paranormal. Sasha takes it upon herself to make sure that everyone has fun and relaxes, but she forgets to give herself that luxury.

Rewrite The Rulebook by @radiosandrecordings

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27823774

Summary: "Panic! Bloody panic! I've been out since I was fifteen and never once actually brought someone home. I think I just wanted to seem like I had my life together, y’know? Mainly I just... I think I just wanted someone to be there with me, so I wasn't just alone with her the entire time. A bit of comfort.” There was pause as Martin let out a dramatic sigh, seemingly relieved to ramble out his thoughts. "... I could go with you. If you want."

A Test In Patience by @talking4the1

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27917749

Summary: Elias is going about his day as the new head of the Magnus Institute in 1995. Some spreadsheets to do, meetings to attend mundane and supernatural. Nothing seems out of place until The Eye calls him to Bournemouth.

Of Mothers and Memory by @loverdontleave

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27856585

Summary: There is a story to be told, of two people, a mother and a son. Of their history together, and the sacrifices they made for each other. Perhaps they loved each other once, but that thread of connection has weakened on one end, fraying away. And it is so, so cold.

Would That I Were Golden Dust by @that-one-girl-behind-you

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27734197

Summary: The world is a lot more dangerous with your soul walking by your side, and Entities aren’t shy about feeding on golden Dust.

Till Death, Parted by @bigowlenergy

Ao3 Link:https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27749680

Summary: Jon gets caught after ripping out Gerry’s page by Trevor & Julia, and through a comedy of errors ends up engaged as an excuse. Somehow, Jon gets out alive, Gerry is freed, and they have the two hunters accompanying them as bodyguards - and as best man and best woman - without a fight. Living alone in Gerry’s London safe house afterwards will be totally fine. Jon is fine. He knows what coping is and everything! Totally fine.

The Spoken Word by @drumkonwords

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27802708/chapters/68066326

Summary: Jon wants. Their pinky twitches — stretching and curling to the tune of something musical. The song of wanting, with its motifs of long, low notes. Starting quiet and mumbling up into Jon’s chest until the strings of their heart vibrate like the strings of a double bass and all they can do is wonder who’s tune they’re matching. But they know.

First Aid by @platypik

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27948284

Summary: Jon is certain Martin has been acting strangely all morning. When Martin offhandedly mentions he took a bad tumble off the tube to work, Jon suddenly Knows that the fall had given Martin a nasty fracture. Despite his desperate pleading, Martin stubbornly refuses to let Jon drive him to the hospital. In fact, it seems he would much rather take care of it himself than have Jon worry and fuss over him. Jon would disagree.

Burning Bright, In the Forests of the Night by @triffidsandcuckoos

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27915400

Summary: The safehouse bursts into flames at their backs. You can choose to change the path. Just be ready for what else you might change.

i’ve been static for too long by @furryjefferson

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27887878

Summary: Jonathan Sims ends up with a stranger’s phone on the way home from work. All signs point to the Magnus Institute, and all roads lead to its mysterious archivist: Martin Blackwood.

through the clouds like a moonbeam by @digital-waterfall

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tmabb20/works/27877402

Summary: After passing through the Vast’s domain, Jon is left with an unexpected surprise-- a pair of wings. Unsurprisingly, Martin finds them beautiful. Also unsurprisingly, Jon does not.

#tma big bang 2020 #fic masterpost #the magnus archives #tma

79 notes · View notes

libraryofvenus · 3 years

Text

The Waste Land - T.S. Eliot

I. The Burial of the Dead

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. Frisch weht der Wind Der Heimat zu Mein Irisch Kind, Wo weilest du? “You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; “They called me the hyacinth girl.” —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence. Oed’ und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, Had a bad cold, nevertheless Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, The lady of situations. Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card, Which is blank, is something he carries on his back, Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, Tell her I bring the horoscope myself: One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson! “You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! “That corpse you planted last year in your garden, “Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? “Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? “Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men, “Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again! “You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”

II. A Game of Chess

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, Glowed on the marble, where the glass Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines From which a golden Cupidon peeped out (Another hid his eyes behind his wing) Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra Reflecting light upon the table as The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it, From satin cases poured in rich profusion; In vials of ivory and coloured glass Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes, Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air That freshened from the window, these ascended In fattening the prolonged candle-flames, Flung their smoke into the laquearia, Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling. Huge sea-wood fed with copper Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone, In which sad light a carvéd dolphin swam. Above the antique mantel was displayed As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale Filled all the desert with inviolable voice And still she cried, and still the world pursues, “Jug Jug” to dirty ears. And other withered stumps of time Were told upon the walls; staring forms Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed. Footsteps shuffled on the stair. Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair Spread out in fiery points Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.

“My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me. “Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak. “What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? “I never know what you are thinking. Think.”

I think we are in rats’ alley Where the dead men lost their bones.

“What is that noise?” The wind under the door. “What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?” Nothing again nothing. “Do “You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember “Nothing?”

I remember Those are pearls that were his eyes. “Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”

But O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag— It’s so elegant So intelligent “What shall I do now? What shall I do?” “I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street “With my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow? “What shall we ever do?” The hot water at ten. And if it rains, a closed car at four. And we shall play a game of chess, Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said— I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself, HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart. He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there. You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set, He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you. And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert, He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time, And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said. Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said. Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look. HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said. Others can pick and choose if you can’t. But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling. You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique. (And her only thirty-one.) I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face, It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said. (She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.) The chemist said it would be all right, but I’ve never been the same. You are a proper fool, I said. Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said, What you get married for if you don’t want children? HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon, And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot— HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight. Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight. Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

III. The Fire Sermon

The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed. Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed. And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors; Departed, have left no addresses. By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . . Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long. But at my back in a cold blast I hear The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

A rat crept softly through the vegetation Dragging its slimy belly on the bank While I was fishing in the dull canal On a winter evening round behind the gashouse Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck And on the king my father’s death before him. White bodies naked on the low damp ground And bones cast in a little low dry garret, Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year. But at my back from time to time I hear The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring. O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter And on her daughter They wash their feet in soda water Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

Twit twit twit Jug jug jug jug jug jug So rudely forc’d. Tereu

Unreal City Under the brown fog of a winter noon Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants C.i.f. London: documents at sight, Asked me in demotic French To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting, I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights Her stove, and lays out food in tins. Out of the window perilously spread Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays, On the divan are piled (at night her bed) Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays. I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest— I too awaited the expected guest. He, the young man carbuncular, arrives, A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare, One of the low on whom assurance sits As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire. The time is now propitious, as he guesses, The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, Endeavours to engage her in caresses Which still are unreproved, if undesired. Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; Exploring hands encounter no defence; His vanity requires no response, And makes a welcome of indifference. (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all Enacted on this same divan or bed; I who have sat by Thebes below the wall And walked among the lowest of the dead.) Bestows one final patronising kiss, And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .

She turns and looks a moment in the glass, Hardly aware of her departed lover; Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.” When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone, She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.

“This music crept by me upon the waters” And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street. O City city, I can sometimes hear Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, The pleasant whining of a mandoline And a clatter and a chatter from within Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls Of Magnus Martyr hold Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

The river sweats Oil and tar The barges drift With the turning tide Red sails Wide To leeward, swing on the heavy spar. The barges wash Drifting logs Down Greenwich reach Past the Isle of Dogs. Weialala leia Wallala leialala

Elizabeth and Leicester Beating oars The stern was formed A gilded shell Red and gold The brisk swell Rippled both shores Southwest wind Carried down stream The peal of bells White towers Weialala leia Wallala leialala

“Trams and dusty trees. Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.”

“My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart Under my feet. After the event He wept. He promised a ‘new start.’ I made no comment. What should I resent?”

“On Margate Sands. I can connect Nothing with nothing. The broken fingernails of dirty hands. My people humble people who expect Nothing.” la la

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning O Lord Thou pluckest me out O Lord Thou pluckest

burning

IV. Death by Water

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and loss. A current under sea Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool. Gentile or Jew O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

V. What the Thunder Said

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces After the frosty silence in the gardens After the agony in stony places The shouting and the crying Prison and palace and reverberation Of thunder of spring over distant mountains He who was living is now dead We who were living are now dying With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock Rock and no water and the sandy road The road winding above among the mountains Which are mountains of rock without water If there were water we should stop and drink Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand If there were only water amongst the rock Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit There is not even silence in the mountains But dry sterile thunder without rain There is not even solitude in the mountains But red sullen faces sneer and snarl From doors of mudcracked houses If there were water And no rock If there were rock And also water And water A spring A pool among the rock If there were the sound of water only Not the cicada And dry grass singing But sound of water over a rock Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded I do not know whether a man or a woman —But who is that on the other side of you?

What is that sound high in the air Murmur of maternal lamentation Who are those hooded hordes swarming Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth Ringed by the flat horizon only What is the city over the mountains Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air Falling towers Jerusalem Athens Alexandria Vienna London Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight And fiddled whisper music on those strings And bats with baby faces in the violet light Whistled, and beat their wings And crawled head downward down a blackened wall And upside down in air were towers Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home. It has no windows, and the door swings, Dry bones can harm no one. Only a cock stood on the rooftree Co co rico co co rico In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves Waited for rain, while the black clouds Gathered far distant, over Himavant. The jungle crouched, humped in silence. Then spoke the thunder DA Datta: what have we given? My friend, blood shaking my heart The awful daring of a moment’s surrender Which an age of prudence can never retract By this, and this only, we have existed Which is not to be found in our obituaries Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor In our empty rooms DA Dayadhvam: I have heard the key Turn in the door once and turn once only We think of the key, each in his prison Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus DA Damyata: The boat responded Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar The sea was calm, your heart would have responded Gaily, when invited, beating obedient To controlling hands

I sat upon the shore Fishing, with the arid plain behind me Shall I at least set my lands in order? London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie These fragments I have shored against my ruins Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih shantih shantih

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luluwquidprocrow · 3 years

Text

time present and time past

originally posted: december 30th, 2017

word count: 1,513 words

rated: teen

laura palmer, dale cooper

post-canon, trauma, introspection, two people having a real hard time here, on the interdimensional road trip of a lifetime (or many lifetimes), time shenanigans

summary: Dale and Laura try to reconcile some familiar faces, including their own, in their road trip through time.

opening notes:

title from ‘burnt norton’ by t.s. eliot

she is acutely laura, in this moment. most of the time, in fact, she is somewhat laura, picking through scattered and distorted memories, a hard glaze in her eyes as she tries to reconcile two lives and all the pain between them. sometimes she is a little more carrie than laura, forceful and loud and confused, like she was when they first met and they went to that house and she told dale if he was going to break her open he may as well finish the job, tell me who she is, then, who’s this laura palmer? but since then she’s been quiet and sharp and a ghost like laura, peeling off the mask of carrie page piece by piece.

but here, she is laura, eyes startling and clear.

they’ve seen a few of them. they aren’t doppelgangers. they’re just—versions. scattered around in their travels. the same faces, same souls, different people. diane was linda, and he never saw her again. one time he saw albert, or a man who looked just like him and would’ve have a different name, and dale turned away from him and didn’t look back. the morning laura pushed the curls out of her hair so it laid flat she saw a face she refused to identify to dale, but she went back to the hotel and stole a curling iron and recurled every inch of her hair and told him that carrie was on to something, with this hairstyle, said in a toneless voice that it looked better on her.

“laura,” he’d said, and she’d jumped like she was going to split out of her skin. he didn’t discount the possibility. so dale didn’t ask her who she’d seen. it’d be hypocritical to judge her for hiding, anyway.

the point is, now, here, wherever it is, whenever they are, there is a woman in front of them, behind a counter in a convenience store, where the lights are too bright and the colors too vivid and real. a same face, a same soul, a different person.

dale met donna hayward a few times in twin peaks. he knows she was laura’s best friend, back in that period of time where things, somehow, made more sense. he knows what they meant to each other. he knows what she looked like, the soft sweep of her hair and desperate kindness in her eyes.

this isn’t donna, and this is, in the way that laura is and still isn’t carrie page. and where laura is suddenly bright and sharp and so laura, this woman has a name tag that proclaims her as teresa and she seems in no hurry to be anyone else. but here she is, regardless. an open smile, a wondering face. what would it take to find donna?

he looks back at laura. her jaw is clenched tight, tension clear in the set of her spine, in how her eyes look down and away, flickering at everything else. beyond that, he has never seen someone so still. dale takes the bag of chips she’s been clutching at and puts it on the counter, does the same with the rest of their things.

“nice day outside,” says the woman. she’s still smiling. “is all this for a picnic?”

the anxiety in the air snaps apart. laura takes one step back, then another, and then turns and walks right out. dale watches her go.

“is she okay?” the woman—teresa—asks, leaning forward a little.

dale isn’t sure she’d understand any of the responses he’d give. it leaves a hole inside him, a feeling he doesn’t like. he pays and leaves.

he finds laura out in the parking lot, sitting in the passenger seat of the car, digging her nails into her palms.

“laura,” he begins.

“shut up,” laura says, voice wavering. her shoulders are hunched and trembling, her hair falling across her face. “don’t—don’t fucking talk to me.”

dale gets into the drivers seat and shuts the door. he sits and watches laura. then he thinks about albert, about the man of twenty-five years ago, the man of not too long ago, and then the face he saw. what would’ve happened, if he’d spoken to him? swallowed his pride and tried to find the remains of albert rosenfield? dale doesn’t know. in this moment, he suspects nothing good.

“god, i wish it was her,” laura whispers, squeezing her eyes tight. she puts her head in her hands, laces her fingers through her hair. “oh, donna.”

he’s not sure what to say. and it’s awful, because dale cooper was the man who always had the answers, who always looked for them, who could always put someone at ease with his presence. he had hoped, so much, to do the same for laura. but this dale cooper, twenty-five years away and still wandering, can’t find the words anymore. he brought her father to acceptance once but he pulled laura out of it. his stomach turns when he thinks of saying too much to her now.

it’s so strange to see her face, filled with all these emotions, after the calm mystery of his dreams and her corpse. sometimes he catches her staring in a mirror, like she’s trying to figure out the cause of each line in her face, each dip in her skin she can’t remember. it’s so strange to see his own face too, to know this is who he is, so mostly he avoids looking. he knows the cause of every lost space in his features.

laura jerks her head up and yanks her hands down. she dives into her pockets, fingers scrambling, searching over and over again. she pats down her jacket, her sweater, her jeans, before dale realizes what she must be looking for.

“carrie page didn’t smoke, i don’t think,” dale says.

“well, she fucking should’ve,” laura snaps. she keeps hunting anyway, until she stops. she looks back at the convenience store and then turns away sharply, pushing herself back into the seat. “well. donna didn’t like it when i did it anyway.” her shoulders shift and her mouth trembles, her voice getting quieter and quieter. “not that it mattered, i think. but i cared what she thought.”

they sit in a cool silence. dale should take his keys out, start the car, keep them going. he stays still.

“do you remember,” laura says, “the last thing you said to someone important?”

dale swallows. “i told them all i’d see them again,” he says carefully, staring down at his hands.

“no, i mean—before.” she gestures loosely with a hand, curls it through the air. “before before.”

what was it, the last thing he’d said? to albert? to harry? the words come back to him in a rush. albert, i can handle it. harry, i have to go on alone. his hands tighten around each other.

“i don’t,” laura murmurs. “i don’t know what i told her. fuck off, for all i know. i was so—and i can’t remember, isn’t that sad? that whole day’s a blur. except—and even that’s not—i remember his voice, like from a distance, and a—a dark room, and a mirror. but it’s funny.” she rubs a hand over her chest, slow. “i can’t feel it, anymore. where i died.”

dale raises his eyes to her face.

“you—” laura starts. she looks up, eyes wide. “you took it from me.”

suddenly she is the girl of twenty-five years ago, an open fear on her face, voice ragged and filled with a burning fire. she is the girl who fought and fought back until—

he is still left with his own death—so many years outside of space dulled neither the memory nor the scar between his ribs—but it’s still with him, a reminder, and he didn’t think what that would mean to take it from someone else. here is laura palmer, painfully alive.

“i am,” he says, “so sorry,” although he knows it’s not enough.

she stays hard and cold, a thick red curtain between them. long minutes go by before her face softens, and she shakes her head, all the fire dying away. “yeah, well,” she says vaguely. “yeah.”

laura seems to know what he means, which is a blessing dale didn’t think was possible and he doesn’t know if he deserves.

“i know you,” laura says. “i would’ve wanted to help you, too.” a smile pulls at her lips. “not that it would’ve gone any better.”

he doesn’t smile. he can’t just keep apologizing to her. she probably wouldn’t stand for it, now that he thinks of it.

“would you like to go back?” dale asks. even he’s not sure what he means, to go back. back where? it didn’t work before, that endless running. but he has to give her a choice in this place.

laura tilts her head back, staring at the cool blue sky through the windshield. then she wipes at her eyes and takes in a breath. “no,” she says softly. “i want to keep going.”

#twin peaks

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nancywheelxr · 5 years

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#10 in angst for Alice/Kady? - lesbianmxgicians

10. Change in mind or change in heart?

The weeks after are a mess.

The Monster is gone, true, but the mess it left behind is still very much there and sometimes Alice wonders if they will ever be able to clean it up for good.

It’s just, there are so many other things to take care of– sometimes it feels like they’re putting out fires by drowning everything else.

And besides, everyone is busy in their own way.

Eliot and Margo are running themselves ragged, trying to find a way to save Fillory, and Eliot himself is frankly as much of a mess as could be expected considering what he went through, and Quentin is always either fussing or staring at him as if Eliot might disappear if he looked away.

Julia is running herself ragged in that familiar way she did last year, trying to fan the spark of magic inside her back to the holy fire it used to be, with Penny devoting himself into making up for his choice. Well, Alice can’t fault her, really. It must be strange to go from goddess to ordinary in less than a blink.

But where does that leave Alice, really?

Everyone else either has something to do or someone to look after, but Alice is still struggling to find where she fits in all that. In the beginning, she had been alone, and then she hadn’t, and then she was alone again, and now– she’s not not alone.

An odd limbo of a place to be, if she’s being honest.

The Library would have her working there full time, she knows, but something doesn’t sit well with her. Maybe it’s the history in those walls, all that place did to them over the years and all they did to it– how do you see past all that? The new dust settling over the shelves doesn’t cover all the times they nearly died in those halls.

Maybe that’s what makes her knock on Kady’s door.

“Please, don’t punch me again,” she says once the door swings open, flinching in embarrassment when it’s not Kady on the other side. “Oh, it’s you,” she adds, unsure if she meant to be rude or not.

Pete only snorts, though, calling over his shoulder before stepping aside. “Kady, I think this one’s for you.”

He slips out the door in the time it takes Alice to frown at him and take two steps into the living room. It hits her none of them had come back here since then, only Kady.

And Pete, it seems.

“Thought you were still holed up in the Library.” The voice startles her and Alice whirls around to find Kady, arms crossed and lips pursed, leaning against the doorway to the kitchen.

“Hi, sorry, I should’ve called,” she feels the need to backtrack even without having said anything, apologize for vaguely shaped things, and maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. “I didn’t mean– I don’t want to interrupt.”

Kady shrugs. “Pete was already leaving.”

In the pause, Marina’s clock tick-tocks loudly.

“So? I’m assuming you wanted something?” Kady raises her eyebrows, pushing off the wall to wander closer, sit in the couch in front of Alice. Go on, her eyes dare her to.

“I changed my mind,” Alice says, announces, and it feels more important than it really is. And vaguer, too. She changed her mind about quite a few things in these weeks she spent in the Library. “I’ve been thinking– I take it back, I was wrong.”

Something complicated flickers through Kady’s eyes, her face shuttering in less than a second, but not before Alice could see the hope rippling through her carefully blank expression in quiet waves.

Inside Alice’s own stormy chest, it cracks like thunder.

“What the fuck does that even mean?” Kady asks deliberately, her spiky defense going up valiantly.

“You know what it means,” Alice says quietly, tucking her own hair behind her ear with shaking hands. She’s not sure she’s brave enough to say it aloud, not yet.

“You said,” she stops, fingers flexing like she wants a drink, and god, Alice already knows all her ticks and oddities by heart, how could she think this was anything less than– no. Not yet. Kady sighs, runs a hand through her hair, but when she speaks again, her voice is surprisingly vulnerable. “Was it a change in mind, or a change in heart?”

Alice smiles.

“In mind,” she answers easily, taking a step closer and a deep breath, lungs aching with need. “I think my heart was already sure then. It’s my mind that needed to catch up.”

“Alice,” Kady whispers, averting her gaze, and Alice is thrown back to that night they had left the Library late, later than all nights before, and Kady had paused under a streetlight, causing Alice herself to stop a few feet away.

“Hey,” Kady had said, and her eyes had caught the stars above, glittering impossibly, “we should– we could get a drink.”

Alice had frowned, feeling her heart race. “It’s almost midnight,” she had looked around at the empty street as if to prove her point.

“So what,” she had shrugged, hiding her hands in the pockets of her jacket, “I know a place that’ll still be open.”

Then, Alice’s heart had dropped all pretenses of still knowing how to beat and drummed up a hurricane in her ribcage. She wanted to say yes desperately, anything to keep Kady looking at her like that, but the fluttering of her stomach was terrifying in the way staring down an abyss is– the second where you sway in that stomach-dropping way right at the edge, and it could go either way, you could find your footing and stay firmly on firm ground, or you could free fall down the rabbit hole and–

In the past, Alice found it hurts a lot when you hit the bottom.

Kady is still looking at her like she’s the one with the moon on her hair.

“I– it’s late,” she ends up saying, eyes glancing away, down at her shoes, at the cracks in the pavement. “We should– I should probably go home.”

“Yeah,” Kady echoes, and all the stars dim their light above them, “I’ll walk you home, come on.”

She does, and they don’t talk all the way to the bus stop.

Alice chooses the safety of the ground below her feet.

“We should go out for drinks,” she says here, now, in the present, in the middle of the apartment that used to be Marina’s but is now Kady’s and that looks every day a bit more like Kady. “And you should kiss me. Now.”

“It’s late,” Kady echoes their previous conversation, eyes wide as she looks up at Alice from the couch. She leans forward, elbows on her knees. “Near midnight. Are you sure?”

“I don’t care,” Alice says firmly, stepping even closer. Her sensible black shoes are touching Kady’s boots. “You really should kiss me. I mean, I’d like that. A lot.”

A grin, slow and delighted, bordering into a smirk, spreads across her face. “Well, when you put it that way,” she laughs, quiet and breathless, and drags Alice down for a kiss.

Alice tastes the skies on her tongue and decides she quite likes the fall.

Drinks are postponed until the next evening.

#look an ask #the magicians #kalice #alice x kady #alice quinn #kady orloff diaz #the magicians tag #kalice tag #magiciansfemslash

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impossibletruths · 5 years

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portraitofemmy replied to your post “portraitofemmy replied to your post: you ever...”

Oh God, so many typos, at me proofread your messages. But it's a very Quentin Thing that giving him purpose helps him cope. Interesting and disturbing parallel to how "get Eliot back" was the thing keeping him moving in season 4, and then once that was done, well. I still fucking hold to the fact that if Eliot had been in the story, he wouldn't have let Quentin run himself ragged to the point of being alive ONLY to accomplish a goal. Call out post at Julia, maybe.

I mean, she kind of tried with the whole “I need you to figure out my problem” thing but it was very half assed and not something that he had a lot of reason to invest in.

Yeah I can’t imagine Eliot, who’s been preaching “you’re not alone” from pretty much day one, letting Q run himself into the ground trying to tackle the monster on his own. Though in Julia’s... mmm I don’t want to say defense. experience, maybe? giving Q A Task To Complete has been a way to pull him out of a spiral, historically (i.e. Penny asking him for help post-Alice, fetching her Shade, the whole niffin Alice debacle, the key quest). That she missed how Overwhelming the monster/eliot situation was is.......... yeah.

#portraitofemmy #reply #doylist interpretation the writing team didn't understand what a Big Deal that was for Q and julia was legit trying #watsonian interpretation that usually works and she thinks it'll work again #I'm a big fan of something I've seen in fic which is the idea that how Q Deals With Shit changed during the mosaic #so Julia just like. doesn't catch all the signs cause they're not the ones she grew up with which is. a kinder interpretation I guess #would love to see her have to deal with that in some way shape or form but unfortunately the show ended! so I guess we'll never know!!#the magicians #the witch and the fool #ALSO! yeah the s3/s4 acting-to-help-eliot parallel is brutal rip

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headpsychic · 5 years

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❪ meme ❫ @hittcr said: “pain is weakness leaving the body” ❪ generated ❫ 19. overly exhausted.

He isn’t listening. His eyes are barely open, breaths slowing. It feels like it’s been years since he’s slept. Truth be told, it has been several days. It’s nothing he hasn’t been through before — last year, after Yang took his mother, Shawn had the same problem. Now, here he is, still awake after yet another trauma, picking apart each and every choice he’d made and wishing he had done something — anything — differently.

Abigail had always been the best of him. Better than him. He knows that. Knows that she was right to dump him. ( Who in their right minds would stay with someone who’s so dangerous to be around? This was the life he had chosen. She was never meant to become collateral damage. ) He blinks twice and lets out a long overdue exhale. It’s Gus who had called Eliot. Gus who’d gotten so tired watching Shawn run himself ragged that he couldn’t take care of the man on his own anymore. Gus who’s suffering because Shawn can’t manage to pull himself together.

“I’m sorry, man,” Shawn mumbles slowly, finally making an effort to look at his friend. “Were you saying something? I think I zoned out there for a minute.” His voice is completely devoid of the usual enthusiasm he bleeds. This Shawn Spencer is obviously exhausted to the point of near-collapse. “—You know what, man? It’s getting pretty late and you came a long way. Why don’t you go back to my apartment and crash for a bit? We can totally pick this up in the morning. I’ll be.... right here. In this office. Doing... something, probably.”

#hittcr #[ oh i'm sad ]#[ the yin & yang episodes are So Rough on my boy ]#[ i mean ]#[ the third one is kinda Meh ]#[ which is disappointing ]#[ but between maddy and abigail ??? ]#[ the first two are So Rough ]#[ i'm always sad about them tbh ]#[ he loves them both so much ]#❪ ❛ answer ❜ ❫ —› i am good at what i do and what i do is good.#❪ ❛ verse ❜ ❫ —› when they gotcha down‚ down‚ down‚ gotta make your own luck.

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maximusthewolfe · 5 years

Text

Peaches and Plums | 4/?

Also on AO3

Quentin tries to talk Eliot out of the key’s grasp

“God, Eliot, stop!”

Eliot hated the pain in Quentin’s voice. He hated it more than anything.

“You can make him stop hurting. You can make all of it stop hurting. Honestly, Eliot. It would be so easy,” Not-Eliot said, but Eliot hesitated. If there was one person who could keep him from doing this, one person who could pull him back from the edge, it was Quentin Coldwater.

“Eliot, please don’t!” Q was still shouting, but he sounded closer now. He felt closer.

Eliot turned his head to see Quentin several steps closer, slowing his movement when Eliot caught sight of him.

“Come on, Q,” he said, his voice ragged, like he’d been screaming for hours. “Just, let me end this. I’ll leave the key, you can pick it up with a cloth or something. Problem solved. Key quest back on track.”

“That’s bullshit!” Q said, stepping closer again, reaching Eliot’s side before he had time to do anything drastic.

“You’re right,” Not-Eliot growled. “You can end this, don’t let him talk you out of it.”

“No, Q. It’s not bullshit. It’s smart. The rest of you can figure this out without me,” Eliot said, his foot still perched on the rung.

“Not like you were really much help anyway,” Not-Eliot added, “Quentin didn’t even figure out the mosaic until after you died.”

Eliot shook his head. God, he hadn’t thought of it like that. It made sense. He gripped the rung tighter, willing himself to shift his weight upward.

“No!” Quentin shouted, placing his hand over one of Eliot’s. Eliot stopped.

“Why not, huh? Can you give me one good, legitimate reason? Not some shitty reason about how the quest needs me or how I’m some great magician if I can just stick it out until we get magic back, or how Fillory needs me. That’s all so fucking flimsy, and we both know it. Give me a real reason, Q.”

Quentin was quiet. Eliot took it as an answer. He brought his other foot to the rung, hoisting himself up once more.

“I already lost you once, El, don’t make me lose you again.”

Eliot’s breath, already shallow alongside the rapid pace of his heart as he looked over the edge of the boat into the blackness of the sea, hitched in his throat. It was the closest thing to acknowledging the mosaic at all that he’d heard since they got back. He stepped back down.

“What?” he asked, his skin immediately prickling fearfully at what might come next.

“I buried you,” Quentin continued carefully, and Eliot swore he could feel the pain of those words, the weight that this particular memory, one Eliot had been spared, put on Quentin’s shoulders. “After, fuck, everything, Eliot, I had to bury you. And I know you want to say some crazy, insane, key-induced shit about how I won’t have to bury you this time, some dumb fucking thing about how the sea would be your grave, but I don’t want to hear it. Because that’s not what I mean and you damn well know it.”

He was right. Eliot knew it. Eliot knew it with every single cell inside of him, and he still couldn’t get Not-Eliot to stop hissing inside of his head.

“Stop hurting him, once and for all,” It mocked, cold and relentless, saying everything he was already thinking. Or, everything he thought he was already thinking. He wasn’t sure where his thoughts ended and the key’s manifestation’s began. They were tangled too closely together, intertwined too intricately. The realization picked at the edges of a barely-healed-over scab. Maybe he and Not-Eliot weren’t all that different after all. That was reason enough to jump.

“I keep hurting you,” Eliot said. It wasn’t a particularly emotional statement, despite the way it ripped open one of the fresher fissures in his heart, freeing a new trickle of pain. It sounded as much like fact as it did anything else. The words did not ring in the air as the desperate plea they felt like. Somehow, still, Quentin heard it for what it was.

“I don’t fucking care about that. We’ve been hurting each other for years,” Quentin said, squeezing at the top of Eliot’s hand like the notion that he was here, physically might be enough. It might have been, to an Eliot who hadn’t lived an entire lifetime with Q. Who didn’t know what it was like to have more.

“Yeah, well, I do fucking care,” Eliot spat back, gripping the railing tightly beneath Quentin’s grasp once again.

He felt like he was on a high-speed emotional seesaw. Quentin’s words lifted him up, Not-Eliot’s brought him crashing back down again in a rush. It was exhausting. He was so exhausted.

“That’s – fuck – that’s not what I meant, Eliot. Christ, can you just, will you just step down from that fucking railing already? I can’t make this come out right with you half a second from going overboard.”

“All I’m saying is that I could stop hurting you, make your life a little easier. Isn’t that what you want?”

Not-Eliot had him pretty convinced that was what Quentin wanted.

“If you’re asking whether or not I want to watch you die again, the answer is no, Eliot.”

“So turn away then. Don’t watch,” Eliot said coldly. He was a little bit impressed with himself, with how sure he sounded even as his pulse pounded in his ears and his vision swam, even as he half-choked air instead of breathing the even inhale-exhale pattern of a man at peace with his decision.

“No!” Quentin’s strangled shout surprised Eliot but didn’t change his mind.

It was a flash of movement. He felt Quentin’s hand leave his own. He pushed himself up on the railing, taking the absence of contact as resignation. He heard Not-Eliot laughing gleefully in the background as he shifted his momentum. He felt Quentin’s arms wrap around his waist, felt the center of gravity in his body pulled loose as he lost purchase on the railing.

Then his body collided with the deck, a hard thud echoing in the space around them, any remaining air expelled from his lungs on impact.

“Get. Up. Get up! Getupgetupgetupgetup!” Not-Eliot growl-screamed in his ear. “You fucking idiot. You couldn’t even kill yourself properly. God, you really are just completely useless.”

For whatever depraved, self-loathing reason, Eliot tried. He tried to get up, but Quentin’s arms pulled forcefully around his waist, keeping him, for the most part, locked in place.

“Oh my God, stop squirming, I’m trying to save your stupid ass!” Quentin said, letting go of Eliot’s upper thighs for a split second, only so he could reattach himself just above Eliot’s hip bones with renewed vigor.

“Did you ever consider that I might not want to be saved?” Eliot said darkly, moving his hips around, struggling to break free. He didn’t remember Quentin being this strong.

“Did you ever consider that your judgment might not be exceptionally sound right now?” Quentin countered.

Logically, something clicked into place at Quentin’s words. Eliot knew he was right, but the key made logic far less appealing than certain other alternatives, like flinging himself into the abyss.

“Don’t. Eliot, please,” Q added, his voice thick with something, desperation maybe, that broke through the darkness inside of Eliot.

In direct opposition to what Not-Eliot was telling him, Eliot turned to look at Quentin, really look at him. What he saw in his eyes, raw and unfiltered, took him somewhere else entirely.

****

Eliot had never been particularly afraid of death. Hell, there was a time where he might have even welcomed it. That was before, though. Before he had so much to lose, before he’d already lost so much.

It was a strange sort of irony, that when your life was waning, when you were so much closer to death’s embrace than you were away from it, you understood how much you had to live for. He sat in the wicker chair, the same heavy patchwork quilt he’d draped over Quentin and Teddy countless times laying across his lap. There was a slight chill running through him. It was an omnipresent thing anymore, another symptom of old age. Flexing arthritic fingers in his lap, he watched as they, with moderate struggle and stiffness, mimed Poppers that meant nothing to the mosaic. It was just a habit he’d never been able to break. When he could feel the magic that existed here, it was hard not to want to do it, even when the mosaic didn’t give a damn.

“You’re ridiculous,” Q said, staring pointedly at his hands. His slightly wobbly tone held nothing but affection, and Eliot just smiled.

“It’s better than those stupid physical therapy exercises you tried to talk me into,” Eliot said, “Feels more me.”

“Stubborn and dramatic? Yeah, I’d say so,” Quentin said as he slowly, carefully slotted another piece into the mosaic.

“Oh, you love me and my wrinkly, stubborn, dramatic ass. Don’t even,” Eliot quipped back, and there was mischief in his eyes, just as bright and clear and troublesome as if he were still 23 years old and just getting started at this thing.

Quentin did that to him, made him feel young again. Made him feel like he could do this for a thousand lifetimes as long as Q was by his side.

“That I do,” Quentin said, softer now.

The simple acknowledgment of their feelings as fact was routine by now. Decades had gone by since they shed the preconceived notions and pretended they weren’t as important to each other as they knew they were. The number of “I love yous” the pair ping-ponged back and forth in a given day was borderline nauseating, probably, but they didn’t care. Despite the familiarity of it, Eliot still smiled every time. “Used to it” would never be how he described Quentin loving him. It was too big, too important, too much of what he wanted for him to ever get used to.

“That’s supposed to be a yellow one, you know,” Eliot said, pointing a finger at a tile three to the left of the one Quentin had just placed. Quentin pointed to the tile in question, looking up at Eliot with a slightly confused look on his face. Eliot nodded.

“That is yellow, you old fart!” Q said, confusion dissipating above his brow and giving way to loud, jolly laughter.

It was the laugh of a man who had lived a full life, and that warmed Eliot far more than any blanket ever could.

Eliot leaned forward in his chair, adjusting the glasses on the bridge of his nose and squinting a little at the tile he could have sworn was orange. Upon closer examination, he found that it was indeed yellow. Slumping back into his chair, he huffed out a breath of laughter. “Well, shit. Now I know why old people say ridiculous crap like ‘My eyesight’s not what it used to be, you know.’” He purposely made his voice higher-pitched and wobblier than it normally was, like a cartoon grandma, and laughed louder when Quentin howled at the imitation.

Sometimes it was the little things in life. This life had made him realize that more than anything else. Little things like being able to make the man he loved laugh so hard it turned into a coughing fit, even after 60 years. Like how Quentin placed tiles with the same determination that maybe this iteration would hold the solution. It had been years since Eliot had considered what they would do if they solved this thing. If they would go back to their old life – how would that even work? They had a kid here, grandkids, he had Quentin and a lifetime of memories he wouldn’t trade, good and bad.

If they solved this before they died, Eliot wasn’t sure what would happen, but part of him wanted to see that victory for Quentin. He deserved it, and so much more after everything Quentin had given him. Eliot wanted to see it, but he was tired, the kind he felt in his bones. He was tired and happy, and as he thought about it, his fingers still absentmindedly folding in on themselves clumsily, he noticed how those two things hadn’t co-existed within him in a very long time.

Watching the methodic, practiced, routine way Quentin went about placing the tiles was easy, and soothing. After a few minutes, he felt his eyes get heavier. Eventually, he gave in to the tug of sleep on his consciousness and dozed off in the late afternoon sun.

Some undetermined, but not possibly long enough, time later, he was jostled back into the waking world. Slowly, and with the appropriate amount of groaning to both protest and entertain, he opened his eyes. A panic-stricken Quentin hovered over him.

“Jesus, El,” Q said, patting down some of his wild white hair in a self-soothing gesture.

“What? A man can’t take a nap anymore?”

The look Q pinned him with said a lot of things neither of them was willing to say aloud.

“Yeah, alright. I’ll shout nap next time, first, or something.”

Quentin tried to wipe the fear from his face with a nervous laugh, but he wasn’t entirely successful. Eliot reached out, covering Q’s hands with his own.

“Hey,” he said softly, “It’s still me. Eliot Motherfucking Waugh, alive and kicking.” For emphasis, he kicked out a leg from underneath the blanket and was rewarded with a half-hearted chuckle that sounded much closer to the Quentin Eliot adored.

“I’m right here,” Eliot said, squeezing Quentin’s hands.

Quentin nodded, squeezing back. “Good,” was all he said. It was all Eliot needed. Quentin was all Eliot needed, really. He leaned forward, ignoring the twinge of pain in his lower back, and kissed the back of Quentin’s hands. Quentin leaned forward and caught Eliot’s lips on the way back up. It was soft, sweet, and familiar. Something they’d been doing for so long now that it was as easy as breathing.

“So, veggie stew?” Eliot asked when Quentin pulled away. They both laughed.

****

“Eliot?” Quentin said, his voice timid, like he was dealing with a very fragile thing, like speaking too loud or with too much force might cause it to shatter. Eliot wasn’t entirely sure he was wrong.

“I just – I can’t keep doing this, Q,” Eliot said, his voice bone-tired.

“What? What exactly is it you think you’re doing?”

Eliot could hear the heat building in Quentin’s voice, could practically feel the agitation that somehow always turned into heroic action where it always dissolved into fruitless subversion for him. Shit. He really couldn’t tell which thoughts were his and which were the key’s anymore.

“Fucking it up. If fucking up was an actual discipline, I’d have been top of my class,” Eliot grumbled, entirely disregarding the fact that he actually had been nearly top of his class anyway.

“That’s not true. You can’t just listen to that thing. You have to fight back,” Quentin said, and then, after inhaling to harden his resolve, “Will you just…please give me the key? At least until you can get your head on straight.”

Eliot shook his head. “No. No fucking way.”

“I can handle it,” Q said determinedly.

“Not up for debate.”

Eliot saw the retort there, right on the tip of Quentin’s tongue, but it faded under the equally determined stare Eliot gave him.

“Fine,” Q huffed, “Then just, listen to me.”

Not-Eliot was in the middle of pointing out all the ways in which he was a tremendous disappointment to everyone he’d ever loved, but something in Quentin’s tone held his attention.

“El, without you, we wouldn’t even be on this quest. You decided to find a way to bring magic back. We wouldn’t be halfway there if you weren’t here and that’s just fact. But even without all that, you’re Eliot the spectacular, ok? And that’s who I need you to be right now. Don’t let that handsome dipshit take away the truth of you.”

“What is the truth of me, Q?”

Not-Eliot hissed about how stupid he was to hope in that moment, but Eliot awaited the answer somewhat breathlessly all the same.

Quentin’s eyes bounced around Eliot’s face as he spoke. “You’re Eliot Waugh, ok? You’re a good friend, and you’re a – a great quester, and.”

Eliot wriggled in Quentin’s arms, finally breaking loose. He’d heard plenty of impassioned speeches from Quentin in his day, and as far as they went, this one came up kind of short.

“Eliot! No!” Quentin said as Eliot scrambled to his feet again.

“I said a GOOD reason, Q,” Eliot murmured, looking to the edge of the boat and trying to calculate how fast he could get there over the incessant reminders of how worthless he was that were coming faster, and with increasing volume, from Not-Eliot.

“You were a really great father,” Q said, and Eliot froze. “And don’t you dare say that doesn’t count, because Teddy’s not here. It counts to me, and honestly, I just really kinda need you El. I – I can’t do this on my own. I can’t be the only one walking around with all these memories inside me, with all these, uh- ” he faltered.

Eliot took a step closer to Quentin. A step further away from the prow of the ship.

“These feelings,” Quentin continued. “I can’t just have this whole other life in my head and then the only person who gets it, who was there, who has these memories, too, just throws themselves overboard because of a stupid key!”

“Q-” Eliot said, blinking slowly, pressing his hands against his ears for a moment and looking around.

“No! Some things are – are more important than the quest and – fuck, ok, I kind of can’t believe I just said that but, you know what? Whatever, it’s true and-El, I just, I lo-”

“Q!” Eliot repeated, louder this time, holding out his pointer finger to shut him up. “He’s – gone.”

Quentin’s brows knitted together, his forehead scrunching down over his eyes. “What? How? Poppy said that the only way to get rid of it was, well, you know.”

“I know,” Eliot glanced behind him at the edge of the boat and felt something dark twist in the pit of his stomach. He swallowed hard. “But he’s gone.”

“Shit, that’s,” but Q’s voice cut off when Eliot’s hand when for the breast pocket of his elaborately designed waistcoat, and a panicked look fell across his features.

Frantically, Eliot patted all over his outfit, eyes scanning the deck wildly as he did.

“Your majesty,” Benedict said, and a sick feeling churned inside of him as he turned to his mild-mannered map maker. “The key, it was just sliding around the deck.”

No. “No.”

Eliot thought it, Quentin said it, and they both dove for Benedict’s outstretched arm at the same time, both saw the grim, broken look on Benedict’s face. Benedict instinctively pulled his arm back into his chest.

“Benedict, look, just, give me back the key,” Eliot said carefully, approaching Benedict slowly.

Quentin shot a warning look at Eliot that clearly said he didn’t think putting the key back in Eliot’s hands was the best idea, but Eliot pointedly ignored it. He wasn’t going to be responsible for Benedict’s death. Benedict, however, shook his head slowly, tears welling in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Benedict said, the tears spilling over as he backed away from them both. It was slow at first, but then he turned on his heel and ran toward the edge of the boat. Eliot dove after him, Quentin right there beside him, but they couldn’t make it in time. He was over the edge just as Eliot reached his arm out to grasp the tail end of his coat, but it slipped out of his fingers as Benedict plunged into the ocean.

“Shit,” Eliot said, slumping onto the deck.

He heard something stirring in the water, and pushed himself up in time to see the head of a…fucking dragon? Was that a goddamned DRAGON?! popping out of the water as it swallowed what Eliot, queasy, realized had to be Benedict.

“Mmm,” it said, licking its lips and snorting out a puff of smoke. Jesus fuck, of course there was a dragon. “Yummy.” It stared Eliot and Quentin down for a minute before turning around and diving back into the ocean.

“What the all-encompassing fuck?” Eliot said, looking over at Quentin, who was still staring blankly at the spot the dragon had disappeared from.

“The key. The dragon ate the key.”

Eliot looked back out to the water and set his hands on his hips, heaving an exhausted sigh. “Well, fuck.”

#queliot #queliot ff #the magicians ff #queliot fanfiction #the magicians fanfiction #quentin coldwater #eliot waugh #a life in the day #magicians 3x05 #the mosaic #mosaic fic

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quentinsquill · 5 years

Text

Eliot Waugh and the Case of the Cocooned Conjurers: Chapter 7

I hope you enjoy the new chapter!

Summary:

Eliot and Quentin travel to the New Jersey shore to search for clues as to the identity of the killer.

Read it on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17218352/chapters/41895011

Chapter 7: Dr. Quentin Coldwater

The next morning, as we breakfasted on soft-boiled eggs, toast, and a strong, exotic Turkish coffee, neither Eliot or Margo mentioned what had occurred overnight, for which I was grateful. They treated me as they had since we’d met, and as Eliot finished his food, he gave me a bright smile that made him look boyish and lit up his amber eyes with an almost incandescent quality.

“Are you ready to travel to New Jersey? I’m almost certain that’s where the sandstone came from.”

“The coastline runs for miles, how do we know where to begin?” I asked, sipping my coffee, and Eliot pushed his plate aside, empty all but for a pile of toast crusts stacked off to one side.

“Have you heard of Bradley Beach?”

“That used to be part of the Neptune Township.”

“Yes, only now it’s incorporated and its own entity. They offered sea bathing access to locals and tourists all summer, but it’s been closed since September.” He lit a cigarette. “The absence of people, coupled with the recent improvements made to the shoreline, could make it convenient for a killer to hide evidence there.”

“Then why not just do so at the riverfront?” I asked.

“Too many tourists, and they come all year round. That statue they erected in the harbor brings scores of people here each month, and that’s too many eyes for someone looking to conceal their murderous motives.” He stood. “Come along, the days are getting shorter, so we shouldn’t delay.” He kissed Margo’s cheek as he floated his plate and cup to the nearby sink. “Do try not to throttle any of your shop’s patrons today, you tend to be less patient when I’m not there to rein in your prickliness.”

“You love my prickliness,” Margo drawled, accepting his kiss. “Watch over each other on your travels.”

“We will,” Eliot nodded as he opened a portal and waited for me to fetch my coat, scarf, and cane. A moment later we left the comfort of the apartment behind and found ourselves on Bradley Beach. It was deserted and windswept, the lowering grey the same color as the ocean, which was topped with dollops of whitecaps that reared and plunged like miniature steeds. The tip of my cane sunk into the damp sand.

“It doesn’t look like much,” I observed, and Eliot narrowed his eyes against a bracing wind that flung granules of sand into our faces.

“Which makes it the ideal place for a killer to perform his dirty deeds, my dear doctor!” Eliot removed the piece of Permian sandstone from his pocket and opened the lid of the small metal container he’d kept it in. He passed a hand over the stone, murmuring, and I recognized a magnetic charm both in language and incantation. The rock rose out of the container and zipped away like a bullet, its outer edges glowing orange. Eliot nodded.

“It will lead us to its source. Hurry along now!” He followed after it, his loping stride a bit encumbered by the deep, shifting sand. I kept up, determined to not be left behind. I used my cane like a lever, digging the tip deep into the sand and hauling myself forward, taking the longest strides possible. Eliot kept glancing back at me, but I waved him on.

“Go! I’m all right!”

He paused only a moment before hurrying on. The stone sailed down the chilly coast before dropping down to vanish under a decrepit wooden pier. It stood at the end of the man-made beach, where huge boulders and craggy outcroppings of smaller rocks marked the end of the safe stretch of sand. A large sign that read KEEP OFF had been jammed between the rocks and the pier, and Eliot ducked underneath the discolored wood.

“This way!”

The dock was tall enough that I barely had to stoop to step under its cracked planks. Large wolf spiders, common enough near bodies of water where prey is plentiful, scuttled around the pier’s underside to hide in the cracks and crevices as I passed by. They didn’t frighten me, as I’d seen predatory spiders the size of full-grown horses in the fairy realm, but I moved ahead with a shiver of distaste at how silently they vanished.

“Quentin! There’s a cavern ahead!” Eliot called, and I hurried to catch up. He’d set a delay on the magnetic spell, and the sandstone buzzed in midair like a furious bumblebee. At the pier’s end, some of the supporting rock had crumbled away, leaving a hole about four feet tall and only slightly wider. The entrance was blacker than an old fountain pen’s nub. I swallowed against a sudden spate of anxiety.

“We’re going in there?”

“Indeed we must, if we’re going to find out why this stone was in the dead man’s mouth.”

“But suppose it’s too small once we climb inside? Or our presence causes a cave in?”

“My time as a spy taught me to fly in the face of suppose.” He grabbed my wrist and tugged me through the gap as he stooped down low to enter. I gave a startled yelp of dismay, but Eliot was intent on the stone as it raced ahead of us. The cavern’s walls shut out the wind, for which I was grateful, but the cavern’s absolute darkness and fetid odor made me balk. I straightened up, rapped my head on the low, rough ceiling, and Eliot reached back to grip my wrist.

“Steady, doctor!” He said, and the squeeze he gave my wrist reassured me enough to take a slow, deep breath.

“Sorry. I was momentarily disoriented.”

“I understand. It’s darker than the inside of a black cat’s asshole in here! Cast a Chackril’s Sun for us?”

I nodded and pulled my wrist from his grip before pressing my palms together and murmuring in Arabic as I slowly twisted and pulled them away from each other again, letting the mini sun grow between them. I set it free and it glowed as it bounced against the cavern’s ceiling, illuminating the space and Eliot’s stooped form. He lifted his gaze and pointed at the far end of the cavern.

“Gods above, look!”

The cavern’s ceiling sloped upward and the rear expanded to nearly twenty feet across, although it ceased in a dead end about forty paces from where we stood. Eliot headed toward the blind wall, straightening his spine as he was able. The floor of the cavern was a mix of sand, crushed sandstone, and dried seaweed that had washed into the space after countless storms. Eliot crouched down and scooped up a handful of sand before letting it sift between his long, slender fingers.

“Be a good fellow and bring that sun closer? Yes, there we are,” he nodded as I brought the light closer. He pulled a thin metal tool from inside his vest and expanded it with a flick of his wrist and used one end to search the floor. “Ah!” He exclaimed after a moment, pulling a white fragment of bone from the sand. “Look here, Quentin!” He held it up to the light. “It appears to be a human distal phalanx of the right hand, judging by the angle of the tip.”

“A finger bone! And all three bodies found were missing their hands.”

“Indeed they were . . .” Eliot crouch-walked as he used his speculum to unearth more bones. Most of them were fragments and had an oddly polished appearance. I found a thumb with the first three joints attached by a ragged line of decayed tendon, but the bones themselves had that same polished look.

“Curious,” I muttered, reaching into my inner coat pocket for my spectacles, slipping them on to get a closer look. Eliot glanced over his shoulder.

“What?”

“These bones . . . it’s as if they spent years being polished by the tide, the same way water smooths sea glass, yet if these bones are from our victims, they can’t have been here more than a few weeks! The first body was only found about a month ago.”

“A clever conclusion,” Eliot nodded. “And if these are the same bones, which I daresay they are, what do you think polished them? Think logically, doctor, put magic aside for the moment and use your scientific mind.”

“Some predators are known to lick or suck bones clean,” I said after a moment. “Large predators especially, such as big cats and omnivorous apes.”

“Precisely.” My colleague nodded, his eyes bright with excitement. “It seems we’ve found the den of our enemy, where it brought its prey to feast on the hands before bringing the bodies into Manhattan to dump them.”

“But why only the hands?” I asked. “Why leave the rest?”

Eliot’s reply was cut off, lost in a sea of sound, one that made us clap our hands over our ears as the terrible squealing sound threatened to render us deaf. We gaped at the source—the same type of webbing we’d seen on the murder victims was now sealing the mouth of the cavern as if knitted by invisible needles. The ground beneath our feet began to bubble, as if it had sprung some inner leak. I gasped in surprise as cold seawater swirled around my ankles. Eliot gave me a shove.

“Go! Toward the entrance!”

I obeyed, but the webbing sealed the cavern opening before I could reach it. I backed away, shivering, as the frigid water continued to rise all around us.

#fic #Sherlockian AU #queliot #The Magicians

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154xxx · 5 years

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The Waste Land

by T. S. Eliot FOR EZRA POUND IL MIGLIOR FABBRO

I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s, My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. Frisch weht der Wind Der Heimat zu Mein Irisch Kind, Wo weilest du? “You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; “They called me the hyacinth girl.” —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence. Oed’ und leer das Meer. Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, Had a bad cold, nevertheless Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, The lady of situations. Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card, Which is blank, is something he carries on his back, Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, Tell her I bring the horoscope myself: One must be so careful these days. Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson! “You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! “That corpse you planted last year in your garden, “Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? “Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? “Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men, “Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again! “You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!” II. A Game of Chess The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, Glowed on the marble, where the glass Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines From which a golden Cupidon peeped out (Another hid his eyes behind his wing) Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra Reflecting light upon the table as The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it, From satin cases poured in rich profusion; In vials of ivory and coloured glass Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes, Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air That freshened from the window, these ascended In fattening the prolonged candle-flames, Flung their smoke into the laquearia, Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling. Huge sea-wood fed with copper Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone, In which sad light a carvéd dolphin swam. Above the antique mantel was displayed As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale Filled all the desert with inviolable voice And still she cried, and still the world pursues, “Jug Jug” to dirty ears. And other withered stumps of time Were told upon the walls; staring forms Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed. Footsteps shuffled on the stair. Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair Spread out in fiery points Glowed into words, then would be savagely still. “My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me. “Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak. “What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? “I never know what you are thinking. Think.” I think we are in rats’ alley Where the dead men lost their bones. “What is that noise?” The wind under the door. “What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?” Nothing again nothing. “Do “You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember “Nothing?” I remember Those are pearls that were his eyes. “Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?” But O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag— It’s so elegant So intelligent “What shall I do now? What shall I do?” “I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street “With my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow? “What shall we ever do?” The hot water at ten. And if it rains, a closed car at four. And we shall play a game of chess, Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door. When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said— I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself, HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart. He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there. You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set, He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you. And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert, He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time, And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said. Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said. Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look. HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said. Others can pick and choose if you can’t. But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling. You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique. (And her only thirty-one.) I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face, It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said. (She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.) The chemist said it would be all right, but I’ve never been the same. You are a proper fool, I said. Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said, What you get married for if you don’t want children? HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon, And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot— HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight. Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight. Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night. III. The Fire Sermon The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed. Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed. And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors; Departed, have left no addresses. By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . . Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long. But at my back in a cold blast I hear The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear. A rat crept softly through the vegetation Dragging its slimy belly on the bank While I was fishing in the dull canal On a winter evening round behind the gashouse Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck And on the king my father’s death before him. White bodies naked on the low damp ground And bones cast in a little low dry garret, Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year. But at my back from time to time I hear The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring. O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter And on her daughter They wash their feet in soda water Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole! Twit twit twit Jug jug jug jug jug jug So rudely forc’d. Tereu Unreal City Under the brown fog of a winter noon Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants C.i.f. London: documents at sight, Asked me in demotic French To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel Followed by a weekend at the Metropole. At the violet hour, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting, I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights Her stove, and lays out food in tins. Out of the window perilously spread Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays, On the divan are piled (at night her bed) Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays. I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest— I too awaited the expected guest. He, the young man carbuncular, arrives, A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare, One of the low on whom assurance sits As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire. The time is now propitious, as he guesses, The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, Endeavours to engage her in caresses Which still are unreproved, if undesired. Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; Exploring hands encounter no defence; His vanity requires no response, And makes a welcome of indifference. (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all Enacted on this same divan or bed; I who have sat by Thebes below the wall And walked among the lowest of the dead.) Bestows one final patronising kiss, And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . . She turns and looks a moment in the glass, Hardly aware of her departed lover; Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.” When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone, She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone. “This music crept by me upon the waters” And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street. O City city, I can sometimes hear Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, The pleasant whining of a mandoline And a clatter and a chatter from within Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls Of Magnus Martyr hold Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold. The river sweats Oil and tar The barges drift With the turning tide Red sails Wide To leeward, swing on the heavy spar. The barges wash Drifting logs Down Greenwich reach Past the Isle of Dogs. Weialala leia Wallala leialala Elizabeth and Leicester Beating oars The stern was formed A gilded shell Red and gold The brisk swell Rippled both shores Southwest wind Carried down stream The peal of bells White towers Weialala leia Wallala leialala “Trams and dusty trees. Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.” “My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart Under my feet. After the event He wept. He promised a ‘new start.’ I made no comment. What should I resent?” “On Margate Sands. I can connect Nothing with nothing. The broken fingernails of dirty hands. My people humble people who expect Nothing.” la la To Carthage then I came Burning burning burning burning O Lord Thou pluckest me out O Lord Thou pluckest burning IV. Death by Water Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and loss. A current under sea Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool. Gentile or Jew O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you. V. What the Thunder Said After the torchlight red on sweaty faces After the frosty silence in the gardens After the agony in stony places The shouting and the crying Prison and palace and reverberation Of thunder of spring over distant mountains He who was living is now dead We who were living are now dying With a little patience Here is no water but only rock Rock and no water and the sandy road The road winding above among the mountains Which are mountains of rock without water If there were water we should stop and drink Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand If there were only water amongst the rock Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit There is not even silence in the mountains But dry sterile thunder without rain There is not even solitude in the mountains But red sullen faces sneer and snarl From doors of mudcracked houses If there were water And no rock If there were rock And also water And water A spring A pool among the rock If there were the sound of water only Not the cicada And dry grass singing But sound of water over a rock Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop But there is no water Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded I do not know whether a man or a woman —But who is that on the other side of you? What is that sound high in the air Murmur of maternal lamentation Who are those hooded hordes swarming Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth Ringed by the flat horizon only What is the city over the mountains Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air Falling towers Jerusalem Athens Alexandria Vienna London Unreal A woman drew her long black hair out tight And fiddled whisper music on those strings And bats with baby faces in the violet light Whistled, and beat their wings And crawled head downward down a blackened wall And upside down in air were towers Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells. In this decayed hole among the mountains In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home. It has no windows, and the door swings, Dry bones can harm no one. Only a cock stood on the rooftree Co co rico co co rico In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust Bringing rain Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves Waited for rain, while the black clouds Gathered far distant, over Himavant. The jungle crouched, humped in silence. Then spoke the thunder DA Datta: what have we given? My friend, blood shaking my heart The awful daring of a moment’s surrender Which an age of prudence can never retract By this, and this only, we have existed Which is not to be found in our obituaries Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor In our empty rooms DA Dayadhvam: I have heard the key Turn in the door once and turn once only We think of the key, each in his prison Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus DA Damyata: The boat responded Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar The sea was calm, your heart would have responded Gaily, when invited, beating obedient To controlling hands I sat upon the shore Fishing, with the arid plain behind me Shall I at least set my lands in order? London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie These fragments I have shored against my ruins Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih shantih shantih

#ts eliot

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prophetandprincess · 6 years

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“Where is it?” The air was knocked out of Kara’s lungs as Eliot Spencer pinned her up against the wall. She had only found out that his name was Eliot when an Interpol Inspector, Mr, Sterling, told her that he was a dangerous criminal that shouldn’t be trusted.

“Where’s what?” Kara tried to struggle, but it was almost impossible when all of Eliot’s strength was keeping her in place. Those large biceps that she had admired along with his southern charm were not so charming when they were cutting off the blood flow to her arms. Here she had thought she might invite him over for dinner and he’s deranged. That matched up with her previous dating history at least.

“The bomb, where is it?” Eliot shook her again, like a terrier with a rat, and Kara felt all her teeth clatter together.

“Bomb? There’s a bomb in the museum?” Kara felt her blood run cold. “Have you called the police?”

“Stop playing games,” Eliot’s grip tightened and Kara gasped in pain. “We’re all going to die if you don’t tell me where it is!”

“Eliot!” Both of them turned their heads to see a man standing at the end of the hallway. He had been introduced to her as Lev Kelemen, historian and archeologist. She really doubted that was his name now that she knew that Eliot was a criminal. What kind of people were they?

“Nate, just give me a couple more seconds with her,” Eliot said as Kara’s fingers started to tingle.

“We don’t have a couple more seconds. Besides, Dr. Summers isn’t involved. Hardison did some more digging and found out that someone had stolen her credentials to set everything up. She didn’t do it.” Nate said as he gave an apologetic smile to Kara. “If you could put her back down on her feet so that she can get out of here and we can find that bomb?”

Eliot and Kara looked at each other once again, this time his expression was one of embarrassment and slightly apologetic. Gently, he set her down and rubbed her arms a little. It was weird, but even though she had been terrified of him murdering her moments before, there was this spark between them as he gave her an awkward smile.

“I can get you into the employee areas and restricted sections with my clearance,” Kara offered, thinking about all the priceless artifacts that would be destroyed if a bomb went off anywhere in the museum. “Have you called the police?”

“That’s sweet, but we’ve already stole your credentials,” Kara looked over and saw a pretty blonde standing there, who she hadn’t heard coming up or seen before.

“Dr. Summers, it will be best if you exit the building, just in case we didn’t find this bomb in time.” Nate said as he walked over. “Eliot, Hardison is still trying to find the bomb, go and clear the way so that Parker can get to it when he does find it.”

“Who would want to put a bomb in a museum?” Kara asked, following the three people she had no idea who they are, because this was her museum and she was personally offended someone would hurt it.

“Someone who is planning on stealing the antiquities and make everyone think they were destroyed in a horrible accident.” Nate said, looking at her over the shoulder. “This is going to be dangerous, you should get out of here.”

“No one is going to blow up the museum,” Kara snapped. “Tell me how I can help.”

“Go and clear the security for Eliot and Parker so that when we know where the bomb is, we can get to it,” Nate said. “Eliot, please make sure that the good doctor isn’t killed.”

“It’s really the least you could do after throwing her around like a rag doll,” the blonde called Parker said with a look at Eliot. “I mean, honestly, how funny is it that you were so rude and throwing her around and she had no idea what we were talking about.”

“Parker, that’s no...that’s not funny.” Eliot said casting a glance over to Kara. “Just focus on finding the damn bomb.”

“Still, you should make it up to her. You like taking girls out, get her drunk and have sex or whatever,” Parker said before pushing the door open and leading them down toward the basement.

“Parker, please stop talking.” Eliot said between his teeth.

“I don’t know, I think she has a point,” Kara said, because thinking about a bomb would be way too terrifying. “I mean you did leave bruises on me, after all.”

“Let’s discuss this when we aren’t being threatened with being blown up,” Eliot said, but there was a smile on her face that she thought meant there was a good chance she was going to at least have a date if they didn’t die. She always joked that dating someone would be the end of the world. Well, it was the end of the world as she knew it.

#eliot spencer #Leverage #ficlet #My writing #whumptober #Manhandle #Day 15

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