#If I May Dare To Think he might be prone to night terrors

[todayisafridaynight]

The bookmark tag was #holder until i think of a tag for these asks but To Be Real even I forgot what it was...

BUT YEAH thanks so much for reading and I'm glad it's :] Intelligible At Least :] obviously I would be up for reading anything that came to mind after putting you and your followers through All That but understandable... A lot of people I've shown the checklist items or pointed out specific behaviors to have actually said similar [i.e. I'm In This Picture And I Don't Like It], so I totally get what you mean, too!

I think a lot of my picks wound up being generalized trauma responses/aftereffects of abuse or neglect [hence I meandered off into just talking about Jo's father half the time], so I guess it's to be expected a lot of them don't read as being CSA-specific or are broadly relatable; it's not like he's supposed to be read that way, after all. I just wasn't able to zero in on many of the more specific ones because I've Never Seen Jo In This Situation Chief I Don't Know What He Thinks About His Name Or His Body Or Mirrors Or Sex Or Affection I Don't Know How Well Or Poorly He Sleeps [Presumably Poorly Though He Has The Second-Reddest Eyes In The Whole Game]

I don't really think I'll have anything to add though unless Infinite Wealth goes off the rails or I actually continue reading the book... so that will have to do... I originally was just riffing on RGGJo's attachment issues, self-destructiveness, and specific entwinement of sexuality/aggression/romance, and his portrayal in my fic lined up pretty closely, so I thought it'd be interesting to apply the same lens to Y7Jo...

But Yeah x2 thank you for the opportunity to talk about it and I'm Glad It's Intelligible At Least x2

THANK YOU i really should change that tag to something better... <- i will immediately forget to do so like a jackass

BUT YA OF COURSE OF COURSE i was truthful when i said it was a real good read (but once again. i have -5 speech skills so i can't properly word SHIT) and was a thorough examination of jo's trauma and how it manifests in him and how it's exhibited through his actions. ALWAYS a big fan of that :)

#snap chats #IN REGARDS TO Jo In Situations that is. VAGUELY my specialty #ive at least thought of jo's attitudes towards affection/relationships #and i Do Not Think he sleeps AS adequately as he should whether it's due to just. Overworking or #If I May Dare To Think he might be prone to night terrors #the Danger Zone of me thinking of Jo In Situations that dont have a lot of background is that i end up projecting a LOT of my issues LMAO #i dont know what it says about me when a lot of those issues seem to fit him #i do try my best NOT to over project of course i try to keep everyone relatively in the bounds of believability to their charas #which is why its funny when i do end up doin a lil projection it works out. Apparently #not sure i could do the same when it comes to jo's POV on his name and body tho. i hate those things bout myself for uh #VERY different reasons LMAOO tho i could imagine jo harboring some feelings of. hm. whats the word. #not Total Disgust But Some and Some Agitation whenever he has to acknowledge he exists outside of being a tool. To Put It Bluntly #cause we know he sees himself as a tool in some aspects- a bullet more specifically. so i can imagine instances where he has to Be A Human #its just. Ew Whats That LMAO YK WHAT I MEAN i do. i know what i mean. mirrors are evil #SORRY IM RAMBLING i shouldnt be.. i got gameritis <- i fucked up my wrists playing sonic riders somehow and it hurts to move #point is i very much enjoy thinking of jo and i enjoy looking at him through a multitude of lenses so AGAIN #thank you much for writing in :] im sorry i have three jewel beetles and a cicada shell for a brain #i am always interested in reading what you have to say tho... cant stress that enough.. #truly curious for how jo will be in infinite wealth now that he Doesnt have to be a bullet anymore. what are you like my guy.. lemme see.. #now pardon me while i fuck up my wrists more. i do not want to do my job today (i will soon im just delaying the inevitable. as a treat)

[skadventuretime]

hello @herstrayskies, i’m your secret santa! this is so much shorter than i intended because things got Rough this month, but i hope you enjoy this spoonful of yatori regardless. <3 happy holidays and may everyone have a happy new year!

Yato never dared dream it’d turn out this well. His father defeated, Yukine reclaimed, Nora welcomed into the life she should have always had. Bishamon was awake and terrorizing everyone but Hiyori, but he couldn’t really blame her for that. He still can’t believe he’s alive, that they’re all alive, and that now they have a future to build.

A wisp of brown flickers in the corner of his eye. Hiyori, all the more beautiful for being alive and unharmed, sits on a cushion at the far corner of Kofuku’s table, deep in conversation with Bishamon. There are wounds yet i healed with her for what he and Kazuma did, but so far she hasn’t tried to gut him, or avoid him, or put him into too many extra headlocks. Yato takes it to mean all will be well.

And speaking of the future...

Hiyori’s journal. He’d read it, of course, before returning it to her. It was wrong of him to invade her privacy, he knows, but he’d succumbed to the weakness of wanting one final image of her branded in his memory in the hopes that some of it might survive his reincarnation. There was a line about Kofuku tying their plaques together buried between narrations about his whereabouts and actions, something that filled him up in a strange and heady way if he thought about it too much.

The plaque line stuck with him, though, and he’d resolved to talk with her about it after he dealt with Father. It was a coward’s bargain because he never thought he’d survive, never thought he’d be gifted with more time, but here they are and here he must go.

A firecracker explodes to his right. “Oopsie!” trills Kofuku, ends of her hair singed while Daikoku clicks his tongue and wipes a bit of soot from her nose. Yukine rushes over to see if she’s all right, eyes wide with concern and the slight fluster* he always gets when he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do, and Yato’s heart aches with how much he’s happy to be alive. Here, with his family.

Like a compass seeking true north, the word has him scanning the room for Hiyori. He finds her looking back at him and time seems to skitter for a moment, the past and present blurring into an indefinable future that is at once infinite and nonexistent beyond the point of Hiyori’s natural life.

It’s time. Yato gestures upstairs and begins to head up while Bishamon fends off Kofuku’s increasingly drunken attempts to sit in her lap.

A page of Yukine’s newest homework sits open on the small table by the window. There are a few differently colored marks where he and Hiyori had begun teaching Nora what Yukine was learning. Nora is still hesitant, still prone to watching them sleep in the night in case they tried to pack up and leave her. But she is learning, Yato thinks. They all are.

“Yato?” Hiyori hovers by the doorway, the hand on her chest giving away her uncertainty.

“This won’t take long, I promise,” Yato says. He wipes his palms on his tracksuit. “It’s uh, it’s about your journal. I know I shouldn’t have read it and I’ll never stop apologizing for it but there was that one part about Kofuku tying our plaques together and—“

Hiyori, beet red, stutters, “Y-you actually read all of it?”

Yato feels his own face heat up. “I—well yeah, but that’s not the point. You meant the plaques during Kannazuki? The matchmaking plaques?”

“Yes. Kofuku tied them, but what does that have to do with anything?” Hiyori comes into the room at last, hands gripping the sleeves of her sweater.

“I was just um, wondering what you thought about it.” Why does his brain melt whenever he tries to be honest with her?

“That was during matchmaking, so — oh! Oh no. Oh no no no.” Hiyori seems to realize the significance all at once and starts to pace. “Oh no, and Kofuku herself tied them, no no no. Yato, has she ever tied anyone else’s plaques before?”

Yato thinks back to the 80s and cringes. “I try not to think about it.”

Hiyori makes a sound somewhere between a whimper and a laugh. She’s radiant like this, moonlight shining in her eyes. “So does this mean something awful will happen to us?”

A fair question, one Yato has been deliberating himself. “I don’t think so! I mean, technically anything’s possible with her, but this hasn’t been done before that I can think of, a god and a human being tied. Maybe it will cancel out.”

Hiyori still looks miserable. “When I was sitting there after you’d left, I realized how important you are to me and how much I don’t want to lose you. Ever. I’d been so caught up in the external dangers that I forgot something like this might hurt us, too.”

That warmth is back in Yato’s chest, but this time it travels up his throat and down his stomach until he’s sure he’s on fire. “Don’t worry,” he says, drunk on this searing courage. “So what if the goddess of misfortune tied our plaques? I’ll become an even greater god of fortune and cancel it out! You’ll always be safe with me, Hiyori, as long as you want me.”

There’s a moment of stillness in the room, the only noise the sounds of merriment from the floor below bleeding through.

“Do you mean that?” Hiyori says at last, voice serious and hopeful all at once. “You want to stay, you don’t want to run off somewhere else?”

It hurts to hear the fragile hope, already bruised by his carelessness. Never again, he tells himself. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be,” he says, and on impulse tugs her close.

Her hands slide around him until it’s him being pulled in, her hair tickling his nose as she buries her face in his neck. “Good,” she says, lips near his pulse. “This is where I want you. And you know, I believe you. I believe you’ll become the greatest god of fortune yet.”

So Yato holds her, throat thick, and thanks all the gods he knows by name and all those he doesn’t that he has had the chance to grow in her light.

#noragami #yatori #noragami secret santa 2019 #madi tries words #this was going to be a lot more and then i drank straight depresso the whole month #noragami spoilers

[lunaraindrop]

True Love’s Kiss and No More Roses Ever

Prompt from @justlikeregularchickens: 

I don't think we have nearly enough whump in this fandom, so I'd like to propose a "hella sick Q and a worried Eliot" if you're down for it!

I was inspired, so this is one of two answer fics!

This is the angstier of the two. I promise all will turn out well and lovely for our boys. 

Trigger Warning! There are mentions of blood and injury, but nothing worse than what we see on the show.

Season 1-2 AU Where Eliot doesn’t have to marry Fen but has to use a loophole to make her a queen to put a Fillorian on the throne instead of Alice.

Quentin stared at his bloodstained hand in shock. Blood dripped off his fingers at his brain tried to comprehend what he was looking at. He looked down at the wound on his abdomen where the thorn from the gigantic rose was still embedded. His bow furrowed even as he saw the crimson stain bloom and grow across his gray long-sleeved t-shirt. He wasn’t comprehending what he was seeing. It just, uhh, didn’t make sense? One minute he was excitedly tagging along with Benedict to see the famous Fillorian Flower Forest that had not been mapped since the reign of King Rupert…and the next? Stabbed by flora. Of course. Why not? Welcome to the shit show that is his life.

Right before it happened, Benedict stared up at the red rose in horror. “Oh no. These were supposed to have been eradicated years ago! Your majesty, we must return at once! King Eliot must know of the danger!”

Quentin had thought he had been minorly scraped by a passing branch. A nuisance, really instead of actual pain. He did not expect something that looked like the Basilisk fang in Harry Potter to be sticking out of his body. It didn’t even really hurt…

“Uh, ow?”

It appeared that the rose shot a thorn at him like some nature ninja.

He felt dizzy all of a sudden, even as he heard Benedict’s scared voice from miles away. Why was Benedict miles away? Wasn’t he just there telling them they had to go warn people?

“Your majesty?! King Quentin!  You’re bleeding!”

Quentin stumbled and landed on a large mushroom.

“Yeah, no shnit Sh’lock. Ha, Ben-dict, Sh’lock? Ha. That’d f’nny…”

Even as things became dimmer and more disconnected, he realized his speech was slurring. Slurring was not a good sign.

“Ben-dic…am I hav-ning a str-ah, you know, stroke? Am I hava-ing one?”

Benedict was back and so much closer than he expected him to be. His hands flew like panicked butterflies near the thorn.

“Do I leave it in?! Do I take it out?! I-I don’t know what to do, Your Majesty!”

Quentin knew from hours of Grey’s Anatomy his mom used to watch while during his visits with her that leaving the object in was the way to go.

He couldn’t tell that to Benedict, though. His mouth felt too soft to move. He had to watch helplessly as Benedict decisively nodded to himself and yanked the torn out of his side.

In an instant pain became his reality.

---

 Before that day, if some random had asked Eliot Waugh, High King of Fillory and the Physical Kids when he was the most afraid, he would make up some lie about a Manhattan bar being out of top-shelf vodka or something like that.

Before that day, if Margo was the one asking, he would tell her in stilted, hushed tones that he couldn’t choose. Every day living with his father in his teenage years was a nightmare. (But he would only disclose that bit of tragic backstory if he was shitfaced and partook of at least two illicit drugs.)

But nothing, nothing could compare to the heart-rendering terror he felt hearing a bloody Quentin’s painful whimpers and Benedict dragged his ragdoll body into the castle.

Eliot didn’t feel himself move. He didn’t make a conscious effort to do anything. He completely blanked on anything that wasn’t Quentin’s upturned face and the blood that should be in his body. Yet he found himself on the floor cradling the man in one of his arms as he pressed his very expensive embroidered shirt into the wound.

When Q’s beautiful tear-stained brown eyes finally caught his, his weak hand pressed into Eliot’s naked belly.

“El…help…Idunno…”

Something broke inside Eliot’s chest. Something fundamental that he never dared name when it came to Quentin Coldwater. Somewhere between rising panic and despair, a seething anger rose from the depths of his soul.

This is what turned Harvey Dent into Two Face. From good guy to scary fucking supervillain. You don’t mess with the people they love.

“WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO HIM?!”

A hush settled over the occupants of the room.

Apparently, Margo was the only one with the ovaries to talk. And send Tick to get the Centaurs. And actually, keep a level head. He really needed to than her.

“Yeah, what he said! Are we under attack?! Was it assassins?!”

Benedict finally spoke.

“It was the Cupid’s Bow Roses, Your Majesty! They’re back!”

Fen and some servants gasped in horror.

Margo put her hand on her hip.

“A rose tried to shish kebab Quentin?!”

Fen was filling her in on whatever the fuck it was that did this to Q. He didn’t pay attention. While everyone else was talking, Q would mumble some words in between weakly crying out in pain.

“A-a-ah, uh, a th-thorn, El. Ro-ses a-are, hah, danger…ous. Fuc-k roses! Soooo not romantic…”

Eliot, feeling tears slip down his cheeks, tried to give Quentin some type of comfort.

“Yes, fuck roses. I’ll have every rose burned in the kingdom so you won’t have to look at them again. Would you like that, Q?”

Quentin didn’t answer. He passed out.

“No. No no no no no, you can’t do this to me Q. You can’t. Please. Wake up. WAKE UP!”

At that moment two centaurs showed up and whisked him away.

Sitting bereft on the floor, hands covered in Quentin’s blood, he didn’t move until Margo and Fen pulled him into his rooms for a bath.

---

Clean and newly dressed, he met with his queens and the healers to talk about the health of his king.

“Well, Your Majesty, we do have some good news. The stopped the bleeding and healed the wound.”

Eliot sighed with relief…only to feel dread at the panicked faces of both Margo and Fen.

“Okay, so, what now? Isn’t he better?”

Margo grasped at Eliot’s elbow.

“Here’s the gist. The roses? They’re cursed. They were outlawed a long time ago, and everyone thought they were gone, but like herpes, they came back with a vengeance. So while Quentin’s healed…he’s not gonna wake up until we find his one true love to kiss him…”

Eliot blinked, then rubbed at his aching temples.

“True Love’s kiss? Are you fucking kidding me, Bambi?”

“Yeah, no. This straight out of some Disney shit.”

An idea struck.

“Maybe it doesn’t have to be romantic love? We can get his father…or or Julia to-“

Margo just sadly shook her head. Fen was the one who answered though.

“I’m sorry, Eliot. They’re called Cupid’s Bow Roses for a reason. They��re for bringing soul mates together.”

“But that could take years of scouring multiple plains and worlds! What if we never find her?!”

Tick humbly cleared his throat and stepped up.

“If I may, Your Majesty. It is in the nature of the flower to bring true lovers together. That means that he attracted the rose’s thorn because he was already in love with his soul mate, but probably not acting on it.”

Eliot nodded. “Right. We need to find Alice, then.”

Think had been strained between everyone since the threesome. Sure, tension and anger lessened with taking down The Beast and the three offenders becoming kings and queen of Fillory.  Alice might have gone back to Brakebills saying she forgave Quentin…but that had been months ago. They had not talked since. Who knew if Alice Quinn could be brought back to wake Q. Eliot needed to know what kind of timeline they had.

“Will he be okay like this until we find his true love?”

Again, things did not bode well.

“I’m sorry, but King Quentin has until the stroke of midnight. If he isn’t kissed by his soul mate, he will die.”

It had been a long time since he accidentally used his magic, so when the pitcher and all of the water goblets broke simultaneously, everyone’s loud exclamations were understandable.

Everyone left the room. Margo promised to go off-world to find Alice, while Fen said she would get Quentin a change of clothes.

Right. His clothes were ruined.

Here Eliot was clean and dressed, while Q…

If it wasn’t for the smears of blood and torn cloth, Quentin could be sleeping normally.

The centaurs had done nothing to make him look a little more presentable, and Eliot just fucking wouldn’t have it.

Taking the water from the broken pitcher and a soft cloth, Eliot gently sponge bathed him. He paid attention to wipe every trace of dried blood from his skin and made sure to gently clean under his fingernails.

Fen came in the middle of his task, laying what he assumed to be Quentin’s clothes at the foot of the bed (he didn’t even look). She watched him as he combed his fingers through his adorable floppy hair, willing himself not to cry.

“Eliot…kiss him.”

That certainly stopped any tears from falling.

“What?”

Fen said it again.

“Eliot, I’ve seen the way the two of you look at each other. Many have whispered rumors of the two of you being lovers.”

“That’s preposterous. We’re best friends. Men can be close.”

“Yes, men certainly can. But…friends don’t look longingly after the other when they go to separate bedrooms at night.”

Damnit. Fen had caught him.

“I do not look longingly at him when he goes to bed.”

Fen leveled him a look.

“I wasn’t talking about you.” She said as she flipped her hand towards Quentin’s prone form.

“It’s just me here. What harm could it do to try?”

But that was the harm, wasn’t it? Having full proof that Quentin could never love Eliot like he…felt…for him. If he tried…if he kissed him…and it didn’t work?

It would break him.

He would try to act cool and never speak of it again, but he would live in constant heartache. Sure, lots of sex and booze might dull the pain, but watching Quentin love somebody else after he tried and was proven to not be the one? Yeah…not good.

Fen seemed to actually read his thoughts. (Not literally, of course. They don’t need more than one psychic in their friend group.)

“Don’t you want to do everything to save him?”

How dare she!

He felt himself tremble as he ran one lone fingertip down his sweet nose.

“Of course. I will burn this world to the ground if I have to.”

Shaking just a little more, his thumb smooth over Quentin’s slightly chapped lips. (When, not if, when he woke up, he was going to hound him with cups of water and fruit juice to make sure he stayed hydrated.)

“Then kiss him. Rule yourself out. I’ll even step outside and not peek. Promise!” She didn’t even wait for him to say anything. She just left the room with a quiet click of the door.

Now it was just the two of them.

Feeling awkward and really needing some cuddle comfort, Eliot slid under the covers and held Quentin close. He pet his arm in slow swoops and breathed in the scent of his hair. Like many times before, he hugged the smaller man close, enveloping him in his arms like he belonged there. Unlike most times, though, Q wasn’t burying his nose into his neck squeezing back hard enough to pop Eliot’s back. It was just…perfect. Quentin just knew how to hug him to make him feel safe and wanted.

What would he do if his favorite nerd didn’t wake up? How could he live in a world that didn’t have his favorite fanboy babbling in his ear?

“Come back to me, sweetheart. Just…let it be me, and I’ll try so hard to make you happy. I promise. I’ll give you soo many orgasms. So, so many. It will be obscene. We’ll be obscene if you just let me wake you up. Okay?”

Eliot steeled himself. Cupping the back of his neck, he placed an achingly tender kiss on his lips.

In stories, it always took a moment of bated breath to see if True Love’s Kiss worked. Often times in movies there was a dramatic moment of dread like it didn’t work before the music picked up and the princess slowly woke

Yeah…Disney did not prepare him for being pushed immediately on his back and being ravished by a previously comatose babbling king.

“Oh God, El! Yes, yes, all of that! Jesus Christ, you’re a good kisser.”

Reluctant as he was, Eliot pushed Quentin far enough above him to look in him the eyes.

“Wait. What the hell just happened?”

Quentin awkwardly shrugged, but his eyes twinkled with merriment and were hot with seduction.

“Uh, nutshell? I could hear everything that was said, and you just saved me by being my fucking one true love, seriously what they hell, fanfiction didn’t lie?! Oh, and you were totally misguided in trying to bring my ex-girlfriend here to kiss me. I kinda figured out what I felt for you was sooo not platonic when I crowned you, oh Mr. Spectacular. I kinda want to blow you now. To, umm, thank my hero and prove how much I really really like that he decided to kiss me?”

Eliot tilted his head and laughed, before pulling Q down into a rather filthy kiss.

“Oh Q, baby, I am so into that idea. However,” he said as he ran his thumbs across the apples of Quentin’s elated cheeks, “I almost lost you today. If you are willing, I feel the need to worship your body and make you scream my name.”

Quentin’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. He didn’t need words, though, he strongly nodded his head and attacked Eliot’s mouth again.

A few hours later Margo contacted Fen through a magic mirror spell.

“Shit, I can’t find Alice anywhere. Dean Fogg said she was doing some work-study at the Library.”

Fen blushed and tipped he mirror closer to Quentin’s door. While Margo couldn’t see anything, she certainly heard something.

Margo smiled. “Son of a clit! That sounds awfully like our Q moaning that Eliot’s cock is a magical gift?”

“Mmm-hmm,” Fen said timidly.

“How long has Q been awake?”

“Oh, I’d say a few hours.”

“And how long have they been at it?”

“Just a little less than that.”

“I don’t think I should be this happy that my best friends are boning….but…huh…True Love, huh?”

The Cupid’s Bow Roses were very carefully removed from the Fillorian Flower Forest, as well as any normal roses removed from the castle grounds.

On their fiftieth anniversary, Quentin gift Eliot with a bouquet of red tulips and Peruvian lilies.

#queliot #queliot fic #lunaraindrop #please don't hurt me

[eviesmyspiritanimal]

A Stolen Rose

Summary: This week has sucked for Princess Audrey. Her boyfriend that she had been with for a year broke up with her over the phone and is now with some other girl within only a few days. And as if things couldn’t get worse, she’s now being abducted by some super hot thief with a heart. Jay x Audrey or Jaudrey AU with mentioned Bal and Ben x Audrey or Baudrey.

  Audrey stormed into her room, stopping in front of her vanity as she looked at herself in the mirror. She took in her perfect, frustratingly princess-esque appearance, and she felt her heart ache as her gaze drifted down to the picture of the her and that boy there in the picture nearby.

  Audrey felt the tears come flooding, and she plopped down into the seat at her vanity as she allowed herself to cry hard, her heart positively breaking as she held her head in her hands.

  It had been a very rough week for Princess Audrey Roselia Camilla of Auroria. And it was all because of that evil, horrid boy that she had actually allowed herself to give her heart to.

  Ben.

  How could she have been so stupid?

  And today, she had seen that he had already gotten over her easily and was sucking some punk-rocker girl’s face under the bleachers. She had been with Ben for an entire year, and they had never done that together. And there were plenty of times that she thought that it would have been only normal and natural to do so.

  It wasn’t that she had really ever wanted to do that with him, but she thought that as a couple that had been together for about a year, it was a natural progression of things.

  Actually, strangely, some small part of her asked if she had ever really wanted to physically get that close with him.

  But she pushed that tiny voice away in favor of wallowing in the fact that she had a boyfriend about a week ago, and she had been crying every day over him when he seemed perfectly happy to find another girl within a few days. She had wasted an entire year on him, being as good of a girlfriend as she could possibly be, and he repays her by breaking up with her.

  And it was over the phone.

  Audrey closed her eyes tightly, trying to reign her tears in as she attempted to push her feelings of anger forward instead of her feelings of hurt and pain. Anger was much less messy. And much less painful than actually sitting there and realizing that there was no one there that cared for her in that entire castle outside of her hateful elderly grandmother.

  She had just managed to quiet her sobs so that she was now sniffling just a bit, when she suddenly heard the quietest click of her window. Audrey furrowed her brow, turning her head swiftly to see what had made the noise.

  To her utmost and absolute terror, there was a black-clad figure in her room not three yards away from her. She gasped and shot up from her chair, her lower back slamming into her vanity in the midst of her pure fear.

  They just stood there staring at one another for a moment, the figure covered from head-to-toe in a black suit with goggles. She blubbered for a moment before starting to yell at him.

  “Who are you?! Get out of my castle!” she screeched, her voice cracking as she gaped at him, and he seemed to jump to attention, coming alive from whatever was keeping him held still.

  “Whoa, whoa, Princess, I’m not here to chat, I’m here to--- wait a minute, are you crying?” he questioned from his position standing there on the cushions of her bay window, tilting his head slightly as he lost a great deal of his straightened and stiff posture. Audrey sniffed hard, wiping at her eyes as she gazed at him in horror.

  “No, I’m not crying and it’s none of your business! I’m the one asking the questions! You have invaded my home, you--- you…. Homewrecker!” Audrey screeched, knowing she was likely pushing her luck but unable to help her innate nature to attempt to take control of the situation. The male suddenly returned to his previous posture and marched over to her.

  “What do you think you’re doing, you brute---mmph!” Audrey’s mouth was suddenly covered as the man clamped his hand over her mouth. Audrey furrowed her brow, her eyes going wide as she glared into his goggles, just barely catching sight of eyes beneath their dark lenses. Audrey growled under her breath, and sucked in air to scream from behind his hand, but as soon as she did, a rag was placed over her nose.

  Obviously, the fabric was laced with some substance that she was definitely not prepared for, because in only a few more moments, the figure before her started to waver, until her entire vision was covered with black.

   ………………………………………………………………………………………………………

       When Audrey regained consciousness, she found she was sitting in the passenger seat of a miniature vehicle with a very small backseat. Audrey blearily looked about, and the first thing she realized was that her hands were bound together.

  The second thing was that the black figure was sitting next to her in the driver’s seat. Audrey narrowed her eyes, but as her eyes trailed over him and she had enough sense to truly consider what was around her, she realized that he was completely sans mask and goggles.

  He was completely different than what she naturally stereotyped kidnappers to be--- she could only guess that was what he was since he had taken her from her home against her will. He had long hair for a boy, and it was dark and mussed as well as slightly sweaty presumably from being shoved up underneath the mask. His gaze was hardened and determined as he watched the road, obviously deep into his own thoughts. He had a chiseled jaw and appeared overall to be quite muscular. Of course, she had noticed that when he first jumped through her window.

  Ultimately, he couldn’t be much older than her if any.

  And honestly, he was downright attractive, and she really couldn’t help but slightly admire him in the midst of her somewhat dopey state, but she wasn’t so far from coherence to understand that he was a very dangerous guy.

  But she was obviously far enough out to start running her mouth as she was so prone to do.

  “What in the name of Pete are you doing with me?!” Audrey suddenly exclaimed, and he jumped in shock, his eyes widened and she wondrously took in the front view of his face. He was even more attractive from that perspective.

  But Audrey shook herself from those thoughts. This was downright ridiculous, and she honestly didn’t know what she was thinking. It could have been something to do with how she had just been dumped by her first long-term boyfriend. She wasn’t going to dwell on that, though.

  “Woah, I had no idea you were going to wake up that fast! They usually just conk out and stay out! Nobody’s ever woken up this fast!” he yelped, glancing between her and the road as he started to pull over.

  “Oh, no, you aren’t pulling over just to conk me out! I want an explanation!” Audrey cried, and the boy paused in his attempts as he gazed at her strangely. He stared at her for a long time, and Audrey was beginning to think she was going to die, but he suddenly shook his head.

  “Nobody’s ever demanded anything either,” he murmured under his breath, almost to himself as he gave her a onceover with the slightest bits of a smirk tugging at the corners of his lips. Audrey crossed her arms over her nightgown-clad chest as she glared at him. He might have been cute, but she definitely wasn’t going to let some random kidnapper ogle her.

  “Why have you stolen me?!” Audrey demanded, and he furrowed his brow as he almost laughed.

  “Haven’t you heard about the infamous “Thief of the Night?’” he questioned, holding a hand out as he gesticulated to stress the self-perceived importance of the title.

  “No. Sounds like a prostitute,” Audrey replied automatically and sarcastically before she could hold herself back, and she immediately berated herself for her boldness. She was going to get herself killed in this situation all because of her big mouth.

  However, to her surprise, he actually chuckled in reply.

  “Yeah, thought I needed to work on that,” he murmured to himself with a slight grin, and Audrey tilted her head as she looked at him oddly.

  “Why are you laughing?” Audrey demanded, and he raised an eyebrow at her playfully.

  “Can’t I be a happy thief?” he questioned seemingly innocently as he drove, and Audrey huffed.

  “Well, I don’t suppose! You just nabbed a girl from her home! I don’t think that a very happy type of person wants to do that!” Audrey took her chances, daring to sass once again as she started to feel out the situation.

  “It’s because I was paid to, Princess. There’s a difference between a person wanting to abduct somebody and wanting to get paid.”

  “I would have thought that the paid one would have more guilt,” Audrey pointed out with a hard glare, and he paused, looking at her with a strange glance of honesty. For a moment, she just stared into his eyes, shocked at the emotion she saw.

  But it disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared.

  “Well, luckily for me, I’m the happier sort because I don’t have to worry about hiding from the cops. And hiding the bodies,” he spoke, his eyes positively sparkling with devilish, dangerous mischief. Audrey gaped at him in unadulterated horror.

  “Who wants me?!” Audrey squeaked in terror, and the boy just shrugged.

  “Oh, some dude aiming to collect ransom on you. He’s not gonna hurt you,” he dismissively waved her concerns away before sobering slightly and tilting his head as he watched the road.

  “But he may not find your mouth to be as cute as I do,” he playfully told her, winking at her slightly and Audrey’s eyes widened.

  “Are you hitting on me?!”

  “Your words, Princess, not mine,” he informed her with a slight grin. Audrey furrowed her brow as she gazed at him. He waggled his eyebrows in response.

  “What’s next? You ask me on a date?” Audrey questioned, halfway serious.

  “A girl who knows what she wants and isn’t ashamed to reach out and take it. Y’know, I’m really not supposed to get involved with my targets, but you’re making that policy very difficult. And I’ve only known you for less than thirty minutes,” he expressed, and Audrey just eyed him judgmentally.

  “What? It’s a compliment,” he told her with a smirk, and Audrey shook her head in response.

  “Yeah. Because my attitude attracts you, right? Couldn’t have anything to do with my face, huh?” Audrey told him, and he shrugged.

  “Nah, the attitude’s hot. But the face is certainly not bad to match,” he flirted shamelessly, and Audrey just furrowed her brow, the topic of conversation sending her back to her woes with Ben and the phone breakup.

  Thinking back on it, Ben had never given any compliments to her attitude so much as her looks, and she certainly never expected this from a boy that was sent to capture her so that she could be dragged to some creepy old person wanting ransom money.

  And at that moment, it truly occurred to her just how endangered that she was.

  This boy’s charm and flirtation had distracted her--- as well as that strange emotional quality he had but hid beneath the surface--- but now that she really had an opportunity to consider it, she realized that she was likely being driven to her death.

  “Hey, are you okay?”

  Audrey just shook her head swiftly, feeling an overflow of tears starting to hit her as she tried to regain control of herself. She could feel the panic overcoming her as the events of earlier along with her current issues started to boil over.

  “I can’t do this! I can’t die! I’m not ready to die!” Audrey cried suddenly and loudly as she grabbed her head in her hands, running her fingers through her hair in panic. The boy’s eyes widened as he gaped at the princess.

  “Woah, woah, don’t cry, Princess, it’s going to be---”

  “MY NAME’S AUDREY!!!!” she screeched, currently too absorbed in her own grief and fear to focus on her volume.

  However, she did quickly notice when the car started to pull over on the side of the road. Audrey just closed her eyes tightly, knowing what was coming as the tears slid down her face in the midst of her pure terror.

  His seat belt unbuckled, and she could hear him shifting. She knew she was about to be drugged once again, and she sobbed pitifully as she prepared herself for her inevitable fate.

  But once again, this guy surprised her.

  To her complete and utter shock, she suddenly found that one hand was on her arm and squeezing her gently, and the other one was on her back carefully. She shook her head, wiping furiously at her tears running down her face.

  “I’m going to need you to calm down, okay?”

  “Why do you care?!” she screeched in return, and she felt his grip on her arm falter as he looked at her somewhat oddly.

  “Nobody cares! My parents are never around, my boyfriend dumps me over the phone---”

  “Oh… Ouch,” he commented with a wince, and she found herself caught somewhere between immense irritation at and thankfulness for this stranger’s odd sympathy.

  “And now some insane person trying to kill me is sitting her caring about how I feel?! You are crazy! C-R-A-Z-Y! Cray-cray, looney toon!” Audrey cried, fully throwing a fit there in the passenger seat.

  “Hey, look, I’m not that crazy. Listen, let me tell you something, okay? And you can’t tell anybody,” he told her, his voice dead serious as he addressed her. She rolled her bloodshot eyes in exasperation.

  “Yeah, who’s there to tell? My murderer that you’re taking me to?” Audrey scoffed, sniffling as she tried to speak through the insane wavering of her voice.

  “Hey, listen. This is the first time I’ve ever stolen a girl much less a princess. I’ve always abducted male targets, alright? And targets that were deserving of being abducted,” the boy explained carefully.

  They were quiet for a moment, and Audrey just considered that information silently.

  “You’re a sucky kidnapper,” Audrey finally pointed out, somewhat against her better judgement, but she figured that she was at his mercy already.

  Surprisingly yet at the same time very unsurprisingly, he actually laughed at her comment.

  “Yeah. I suck,” he agreed with such a genuine honesty that she couldn’t help but laugh with him.

  Honestly, she was fried right now. She couldn’t hardly deal with all of this stress any longer, and she was already in a near death situation. She was now just laughing from her nerves being shot and her fear levels on tilt.

  “Prince--- Audrey… Audrey, I’m going to take you back home, okay?” he told her carefully, and Audrey’s eyes widened in surprise as she looked at him suddenly.

  “Really?” Audrey questioned somewhat skeptically, but much too hopefully to be very effectively stern about the entire situation.

  “Yeah. I thought this wasn’t really my scene when I took the job, and now I know it’s not,” the boy told her, a sincerity in his eyes that she knew was there all along but that just hadn’t been released fully as of yet. Audrey immediately felt an overwhelming sense of relief overcome her as she giggled a bit in disbelief.

  He squeezed her arm gently before buckling his seatbelt back in and turning back onto the road but heading in the opposite direction. Heading toward her home.

  They sat there in silence for a long while, and she finally worked up the nerve to look over at him. He had a softer expression on his face now, and she felt the slightest bits of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips now.

  He took a few more turns, going much faster than she would have ever thought possible. She had never ridden with someone that went over the speed limit. But now that she thought about it, it was rather nice to have this change of things.

  He finally pulled in front of her great castle and turned off the car. They both looked at the castle from inside the vehicle, and he then turned to her.

  “Come here,” he beckoned, opening his hand, and she furrowed her brow, hesitantly placing her bound hands in his own.

  The boy took hold of them carefully and he pulled a knife from his pocket. Despite her knowledge that he probably wasn’t going to hurt her, she couldn’t help but feel some fear. After all, she didn’t really know this boy’s intentions. However, when she saw the slow and gentle way that he was holding her hands and bringing the knife closer, she knew that he wouldn’t cut skin.

  He shifted his grip so that he had one of her hands in his, his thumb gently pressed against the center of her palm. Her gaze immediately shifted to where his thumb was touching her, the inevitable feel of butterflies firing up in her stomach.

  The boy then carefully sawed through the zip tie, and it broke loose from her wrists. She just sat there, looking at her freed wrists for a moment before she suddenly realized that one of her hands was still in his.

  She flushed a bit and pulled away quickly, looking at the castle longingly before turning her gaze to the boy.

  He was just looking at her with a soft smile on his face, and she returned it hesitantly.

  “Umm… Thank you,” she finally lamely said, not sure what she could really say that was appropriate in these circumstances.

  She had just been taken away from her home by some hired thief and she was now being deposited back to her home by that same said thief. And he seemed to be sort of a gentleman when you weren’t one of his preferred targets.

  “You get on in there, okay? Before somebody figures out that the treasure of the castle’s gone,” the boy told her, his eyes sparkling as he gazed at her fondly. She felt the slightest bits of a grin rising upon her face, but she tried to swallow it down as she turned to get out of the vehicle.

  She stepped out and came around the front of the car so that she was before the gates of the castle. She allowed a large grin to break out across her face.

   “Hey, Audrey?” a voice suddenly called, and she turned to look at the boy in the vehicle. He winked at her and she could not help but smile just a little at him.

  “Check your back,” he told her with a wide grin, and she furrowed her brow as she reached around her shoulders.

  Her eyes widened as she found a small card attached to her back. She grabbed it and pulled it off of the back of her clothes to examine it.

  It had a phone number and a name.

  “Jay?” she hesitantly questioned, and his smile got even bigger as he dipped his head and moved his hand slightly in a bowing sort of gesture. He then straightened, winking at her as he offered her a two-finger salute.

  “See you around, Foxy,” Jay winked before driving off at full speed. Audrey’s eyes widened as she clutched the card in her hands tightly. She blinked, looking back down at the card in bemusement.

  “Foxy,” she murmured under her breath, and against her will, her stomach fluttered and she felt an odd bloom in her chest as well as a warmth in her cheeks. She looked back up in the direction that he had left, and she allowed just the slightest hints of a smile to come onto her face.

  It seemed that this smile just wouldn’t subside, and it soon spread into a giant grin.

  It was the first time that she had really smiled in a week.

  And it was all thanks to an honorable thief tasked to steal her that had given in to his heart rather than his head, and his stupid ways of shameless flirtation and bold moves.

  Audrey shook her head a bit, gazing at the phone number on the card as she tried desperately to memorize the sequence of numbers and know them by heart.

  She didn’t think she’d ever get past the heartbreak of losing Ben. But with this phone number in hand, that smile branded in her mind, and those eyes burning her heart…

  Audrey thought she might could see how somebody could conjure a new relationship within only a few days.

#jaudrey #jay #audrey #audrey rose #descendants #D3 #D2 #descendants 3 #descendants 2 #descendants audrey #descendants jay #jay x audrey #jayxaudrey #descendants jaudrey #descendants audrey rose #descendants humor #fluff #descendants fanfiction #descendants fanfic #fanfiction #descendants fic #fic #fanfic #ask #anonymous ask

[anchored-in-high-tide]

Evermore

Rating: General Audience

Fandom/Pairing: Sherlock (TV)/Johnlock

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 2068

Tags: Fluff, Post-Canon, Sherlock x Disney, Beauty and the Beast (2017), Oblivious John, Pining Sherlock, Parentlock, Rosie wants to be a princess, Sherlock sings, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers

Inspired by the song: Evermore from Beauty and the Beast (2017)

He will tell him today, John decides as he carries the groceries back to their flat. Rosie will start school in a couple of weeks. It’s high time she gets her own room, to invite friends, to do homework, to have a place she doesn’t have to share with her father. Sherlock will surely understand that, won’t he? Yes, John will tell him today that he and Rosie will move out.

Maybe Sherlock already figured it out by himself. He has been a little quieter lately, has even declined some of Lestrade’s—according to Sherlock, absolutely boring—cases to spend more time with Rosie. Maybe he already knows and is just waiting for my final verdict.

That this arrangement had even worked for the past five years was a miracle, after all; Working on murder cases with a toddler on one’s arm was—a challenge, to say the least. In all those years following John and Rosie’s rather rash return to 221B Baker Street, neither John nor Sherlock have dared to talk about its implications for the future. They have simply enjoyed each other’s company, watched Rosie grow into a brilliant, funny girl, lived in the moment—because both know that those bits of happiness vanish faster than you can blink. You need to hold on to them as long as you can. The future will arrive soon enough and spoil all your plans.

And things have been fine, great really. Sherlock adores Rosie and the little girl, in return, is obsessed with her “Sher” that lets her ride on his shoulders and teaches her about bees and stars and disembowelment (if John doesn’t watch him very carefully).

John’s lips hurt a little as he smiles melancholically. Yes, they have had five good years. But even good things have to end sooner or later. Probably, Sherlock will even be glad to finally have his flat back, to experiment in the kitchen again and play the violin at all times of the night.

John just has to get it over with. It won’t be that bad. It’s not like they won’t spend time together anymore. He’ll make sure to find a place as close by as possible so that Sherlock can see Rosie whenever he pleases. He can’t separate them, not after everything Sherlock has done for them.

It has taken John longer than he cares to admit adjusting to his life as a widower, to cope with all the traumas and terror he has lived through. He couldn’t have done it without Sherlock—his help with Rosie, his friendship, his companionship. By now, he is factually Rosie’s second parent. John doesn’t want to break their bond. It would devastate all three of them.

But they can’t keep on living in denial about the lack of space for a rapidly growing child. They have to find a new place, to move on. They can make that work. They always have.

As he unlocks the front door and steps into the familiar hall, John can already hear the music floating down the staircase from their flat. He tries to remember the last time it has been quiet when he came home. Will there still be music in their new flat? Will the songs still sound the same without Sherlock?

John shakes his head determinedly, hoping that his painful thoughts would just fall off. He isn’t prone to sentimentality but having to leave Sherlock for a second time is bound to be an emotional train wreck, at least for him. Who knows what’s going on in that funny head of Sherlock’s? He wouldn't care, now, would he?

Following the soaring melody, John climbs up the stairs, trying to identify the tune. It’s either something from Frozen or Beauty and the Beast, probably.

Rosie is in the middle of her princess phase, ever since she has seen her first Disney movie. For the past weeks and months, she has barely talked about anything else than her favourites—Belle, Elsa, Moana, Cinderella, … She insists on watching the same films over and over again whenever John and Sherlock allow her some telly-time. The rest of her days, she spends reenacting her favourite scenes, soundtrack included. John can (more or less proudly) claim to know the lyrics to Let It Go even in his sleep by now.

At first, John was utterly horrified when his daughter for the first time expressed interest for something as far removed from science as possible, especially fearing that Sherlock might make some snarky comments about romantized and outdated gender roles, but, to John’s surprise and amusement, he has supported Rosie in her royal extravaganza with as much enthusiasm and diligence as he usually displays on a crime scene. He even convinced Mycroft to buy her a yellow gown—“Just like Belle’s! Thank you, Uncle Myc”—for her birthday. John has never seen anything funnier than Mycroft Holmes, the personification of the British Government, bowing to her majesty Rosie the First and graciously accepting her invitation to tea.

As he is half-way up the stairs, the music ebbs away and he hears Rosie’s high, demanding voice: “Now sing your song, Sher!” Her talent for bossing people around would do a real princess honour.

“As you wish, your majesty,” responds Sherlock’s silky baritone. He has never been one for strict parenting, John thinks as another melody begins. He would spoil Rosie rotten if John didn’t interfere, his heart being simply unable to deny her anything.

The lump in his throat grows with every step, the grocery bag weighing him down as if it were filled with lead instead of apples, toast, and beans. He will miss all of this. But what other choice is there really?

In the sitting room, only a few meters away now, Sherlock’s voice begins to sing a song John recognizes from Beauty and the Beast, the live-action version which Rosie has been only allowed to watch a couple of nights ago. She was a little scared of the howling wolves but the Beast won a special place in her heart right away. John must admit that he, too, enjoyed that particular film. Well, they can still have movie nights at their new place.

He mounts the last few steps, stopping on the landing to listen to Sherlock, the words now easily distinguishable:

“I was the one who had it all, I was the master of my fate. I never needed anybody in my life. I learned the truth too late.”

The fervency he lays into the lyrics makes John’s insides tingle. He has heard Sherlock sing to Rosie before but nothing has come close to this level of… honesty? The words drip from his tongue as fresh and true as spring water and make John hold his breath almost devoutly, a clandestine listener to a secret symphony.

With utmost caution as to not disturb them, John opens the door to the sitting room and peaks inside. The scene before his eyes is one to thaw even the coldest of hearts: Rosie, a head full of golden locks and mischief, is standing on the couch, her light blue dress playing around her bare feet as she bounces up and down in excitement. Sherlock’s slender figure is towering over her, the blanket the three of them cuddle under on cold nights draped around his shoulders as a makeshift cape. With melodramatic gestures and skillful vibrato in his honey-like voice, he entertains the little girl:

“I'll never shake away the pain. I close my eyes but he's still there. I let him steal into my melancholy heart; It's more than I can bear.”

John stops short in the doorway. He? Him? That can’t be right. As far as he remembers, the Beast sings this song about Belle. Why would he use male pronouns? Or has he misheard?

He eyes Sherlock carefully but the singing detective doesn’t show any signs of flustering, nor does Rosie correct him. Surely, John has misheard then. When it comes to reciting Disney songs, Rosie is more than unforgiving when someone makes a mistake. Unfortunately, she has picked up Sherlock’s habit to correct everyone on everything, although not with the same air of smugness as her godfather.

“Now I know he'll never leave me. Even as he runs away. He will still torment me, Calm me, hurt me, Move me, come what may.”

There it is again. He! John is sure he has heard it right this time. The syllable rings in his ears, echoes in his chest, lets every sinew in his body vibrate with alarming anticipation. He can’t move. Glued to the spot, he just keeps watching the two most important people in his life, both completely immersed in their little show. Rosie giggles satisfied as Sherlock kneels down in front of the sofa in an overly dramatic fashion, clutching his heart with one hand.

“Wasting in my lonely tower, Waiting by an open door, I'll fool myself, he'll walk right in And be with me for evermore.”

The deep note makes goosebumps spread all over John’s body. Deep inside his bones, something is shifting, falling into place, but he can’t quite put his finger on it. Why does this performance move him so much? It is heartwarming to watch, sure, but there’s something more, something significant going on. His breathing speeds up a notch without him being able to do anything about it. His whole body has become oddly rigid, no longer accepting orders from his mind. The bag full of groceries slips from his hand and lands on the floor with a thunk that makes Sherlock, at last, aware of his existence.

For a split second, their eyes meet and the hint of a coy smile tugs at Sherlock’s mouth but it vanishes so quickly that John is not quite sure if he has seen it at all. Rosie wins back his attention at once. Sherlock rises and swoops her off the sofa in one smooth movement, whirling her around in a pirouette that makes her squeal with laughter.

“I rage against the trials of love. I curse the fading of the light. Though he's already flown so far beyond my reach he's never out of sight.”

Rosie wraps her legs and arms around his body like a little spider monkey, Sherlock securing her with strong arms as he keeps spinning them around. He lets his head fall back and sings at full volume as they twirl on the worn-out carpet, his voice saturating the air with its enchanting timbre. Every single word hits John like a wrecking ball.

“Now I know he'll never leave me, Even as he fades from view. He will still inspire me, Be a part of everything I do. Wasting in my lonely tower Waiting by an open door—”

Sherlock’s eager eyes fix on John and a hint of sadness and something apologetic flit across his face as he halts in the middle of the sitting room, the few steps between them, the safe distance they had kept all these years, this unsurmountable abyss finally being bridged by a delicate construct of wavering words.

John burns up under his gaze and is yet unable to divert his own eyes from the face of the man he shares his life with. Why would he ever give this up? Why would he ever let anything as mundane as a missing bedroom rip Sherlock from his side again? He can’t leave him, he doesn’t want to, he has never wanted to, since the first day they met. The realization crushes him like an avalanche, breaking bones and convictions like brittle twigs.

“I'll fool myself, he'll walk right in. And as the long, long nights begin, I'll think of all that might have been—”

Sherlock knows. How could he not? Sherlock knows how John feels about him. And if the pleading look he gives John and the confession he has woven into the song are any indicators, he feels the same. It couldn’t be clearer. John lets out a disbelieving puff of air—half laughter, half sigh. Why has it taken him so long to see it?

“Waiting here for evermore.”

The last note of the song hangs unfinished under the ceiling of their home as John crosses the sitting room with three swift steps, takes Sherlock’s face in his hands, and shuts him up with a long overdue kiss.

@itsalwaysyou-jw @drunk-rambles @barbsiebabe @blueeyesbitch @bugzy-boiz

#johnlock #fanfic #one shot #sherlock x disney #johnlock fluff #beauty and the beast (disney) #song fic #my first one-shot #baker street boys

[ambitchiovs]

lenny back at it again… i warned y’all about the intros dump. anyway, off to this bitch:

&&. isn’t that [ DEBORAH ANN WOLL ] walking around the hamptons? oh no, nevermind it’s just [ ADELAIDE MONTSERRAT ]. y'know, the [ 19 ] year old [ CIS FEMALE ] known to be quite [ CHARISMATIC and DETERMINED ] but also [ CUNNING and RUTHLESS ]. currently, the police has them as [ A PERSON OF INTEREST ] in the case of samantha wheeler, because they [ WERE PART OF SAMANTHA’S FRIEND GROUND ]. but they go on about their life as [ A STUDENT ]. i wonder what secrets they’re keeping?  [ lenny/23/gmt+3/she/her ]

TW: eating disorders, addiction, mental disorders, possible suicidal thoughts/mentions

DON’T YOU EVER TAME YOUR DEMONS, ALWAYS KEEP THEM ON A LEASH.

In the eyes of Adelaide Montserrat, there was never a girl to be found. If you dare to pry, you will not find what strangers see when they pass her by the crowd. You will look into a bottomless void that threatens to swallow you whole and it will look back at you with smiling teeth. Little Addie, once a girl with pink tutu’s and ballerina shoes, was never one to be meddled with - she would captivate all her teachers and classmates with rosy cheeks and a clever tongue beyond her years, but there was nothing warm or kind about the little girl whose parents held so close she nearly choked to death.

History goes, her father — her biological father, anyhow, was a very powerful politician before he dropped dead. Nobody really knows what happened that night - all everybody seems to know is that all her loved ones seem to fall like dominoes. Her father died when she was 16, during a robbery. The men were never caught, but little Adelaide was left bawling into her mother’s lap. Surprising as it may be, she was actually the product of a one night stand and poor lack of judgement, or so her mother likes to tell her - but Catherine Montserrat was no fool, and she took him for all he had - and as it turns out… That was a lot.

That doesn’t come cheap, for Adelaide, anyways. Being a part of a new family meant she now had a new player to share her inheritance with - and damned if she didn’t do everything she could to throw them off the board. In the eyes of her parents, she could do no wrong - she was pure and pristine and everything they hoped their little girl would be. You’d assume being the younger sibling meant competing for attention - but she never competed. She never even considered it a competition. She won, plain and simple. Her half brother, that man who called himself her “father” now were but pebbles in her shoes, nuisances she had to navigate through to continue on with her luxurious lifestyle. They didn’t understood her, didn’t particularly wanted to, and it was easier to smear on some foundation and bake it with powder than let explain why her skin was cracking. It was easier to strap on those old ballerina shoes and put on a show until her toes were bleeding, than to try and show them what was behind the curtains. And all jewelry in the world, all praise, all money and countless designer bags she accumulated every year could never fill up that gaping hole, that detachment she felt towards the outside world and inability to connect with things and people - even those supposedly closest to her.

You see, Adelaide didn’t lose, because she tailored the game to her whims and batted her heavy set of lashes to make it seem fair. And if she did lose - the game be damned; she’d destroy it and any evidence of her failure with the wrath of a woman scorned. She didn’t want to be a little sister, or a daughter, or something for men to gawk at. She wanted to be something else. Anything other than this vile thing dripping with self-loathing , cloaked in a veil of perfectionism. Something that wasn’t rammed into this golden mold before she even took her very first breath.

Addie’s behavior as well as their parents favoritism only blurred the lines between love and hate between the half-siblings, complicating her understanding of relationships even further. And it certainly didn’t help that her new brother was just as stubborn and competitive as she was. The children were picture perfect, carrying on the legacy of their parents on their backs as if it weighed no more than a feather - while whatever had been good or soft in them began to rot.

But just who is Adelaide Montserrat? The reincarnation of the Virgin Mary to most. The girl with perfect hair, perfect hair and a perfect family. In truth, Adelaide could be seen only as a terror taken human form to those who opposed her, and a perfect, exemplary girl for those who keep a safe distance. What she is, what she truly is, is a game of smoking mirrors - a fragmented girl, scattered into so many pieces to cater to the whims of crowds, that now, when she looks into a mirror, the image that looks back is something recognizable; distorted.

Fueled by her own securities and desire to obtain perfection, paired with the crowd of rich kids that were offered to her as friends growing up, it didn’t take for things to escalate; by the age of only fourteen, poisoning their blood with alcohol, snorting up enough cocaine so she had to carry around wipes and kicking each other in the stomach while crouching over the toilet became somehow ordinary. Encouraged, even. All that deep-rooted self-hatred had to spill someway, somehow. She grew to resent how boys were granted more freedom, more room to misbehave and make mistake. She resented girls for being themselves, for not wanting to scream every second of every day. And she resented Samantha for how genuinely she could smile - for how easily everything came to her, and for how she was everything she could never be; while she was lying in a grave she dug herself - shackled to the image of perfection she’d crafted, held to the highest of regards, expected to never falter nor stutter. It was hard to define the relationship between her - one moment Addie was sweet, the next she was cruel. And as to that unfortunate Halloween night, she claims they parted ways before she could see anything.

All the harder she tries to cling to this illusion of control, the deeper she dives into that well. Parents often say kids will “grow out of it”; their fits of rage, their apathy towards other children, their unwillingness to share, their manipulative, spoiled ways of obtaining what they want- but Addie never did. Somewhere inside there’s still that little girl who’d rather break her toys in half than to share it with other kids. Who’d bump into other little girls at school, and tell the nurse they tripped. Who’d rather set her arm back in place herself than say “you were right”. The little girl who’ll sit in an empty throne all alone, built with the bones of the people she once claimed to love.

PERSONALITY-WISE:

Adelaide is emotionally unstable and has a very competitive, volatile, manipulative personality; she doesn’t forgive, and she sure as hell doesn’t forget, and she can lash out in incredibly ruthless ways due to her extreme lack of empathy for hers. Her addictions and unwillingness to ever speak to anyone in depth about herself only worsen the state of her BPD. Despite all this, on the surface, she can seem like just like any other pristine, privileged girl. It’s not usual for people to find her charming - she does exude that sort of magnetic aura that’s very easy to fall for, because people tend to see what they want to see - and therefore, it’s easy for her to adjust her personality to the expectations of whomever she’s trying to captivate. In a way, her entire personality has merged with her addiction: being friends with her feels a lot like moment of high in exchange for an eternity of sorrow.

She can be a loyal friend, to some extent, although she’ll never put anyone above herself. She’s also very insecure and prone to fits of rage (in private) whenever she doesn’t get what she wants (think broken mirrors and glasses), as her self-image is heavily dependent on what she can achieve and how others perceive her. Deep down, this all stems from jealousy - she so desperately wishes she could connect with other people and things the way everyone around her does, but in the end she can’t, and she’s left feeling like an outside looking in. If she’s miserable, why shouldn’t everyone around her be too?

HIT ME UP TO PLOT U COWARDS !!

for reals, though - i know this was unnecessarily long, but oh well. you can be ex friends with her? don’t know why they’re not friends anymore - but i’m willing to bet it’s addie’s fault.

maybe some sort of competitor?  academic or otherwise.

maybe there’s some poor ex out there who knows what a headcase she actually is? but probably can’t say much bc they fear for her life lmao.

she wouldn’t openly date anybody who could reflect poorly on her reputation, so secret hookups??? give me someone who’s getting sick of being used pls. ( she’s a closeted bisexual. society isn’t very welcome to the idea rn ) so girl crushes yes pls let girls have crushes on her. let her manipulate them bc she knows. i need.

also gimme someone who deals drugs to her tbh, bc this needs to be kept SUPER lowkey, but it’d also be hilarious bc she wouldn’t have to fake her personality around them & it’s like bitch what the fuck this girl is dr jekyll and mr hyde.

i’d love love to see a fake relationship - but i don’t mean the ‘secretly have feelings for each other’ - i mean the… secretly despise each other but they’re image-obsessed people and like being seen as the golden couple.

oH and pls someone give me a… dare i say sisterly connection? mostly, a girl who idolizes her or puts her on a pedestal, that she might or might not have a soft spot for ( which in addie’s handbook just means she’ll be that much crueler whenever she feels like it tbh ) & see it as some sort of protegee.

idk i’m open to anything, these are just suggestions thrown at the wall here. the point is… plot w me u cowards. and yes, my muse does bite.

#hamptcns:intro

[dweemeister]

Movie Odyssey Retrospective

Dracula (1931 English-language version)

The 1920s had been an ideal breeding ground for horror films in the West. As cinematic technology improved and daring directors unleashed their magic on nitrate film, audiences found themselves terrorized by titles like Nosferatu (1922, Germany), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), and The Unknown (1927). With the introduction of synchronized sound, it was only a matter of time before someone took the genre to the talkies. Tod Browning (frequent collaborator with Lon Chaney, Sr., including The Unknown) would be that director, and the first horror masterpiece after the silent era would be Dracula, based on the 1924 stage play Dracula (itself based on the classic Bram Stoker novel of the same name). Universal Studios – a major studio but not yet considered in the same class of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros. at that time – had been considered specialists in horror and further burnished that reputation here. Hungarian-American Béla Lugosi became an overnight sensation, and since 1931 he has always been associated with black flowing capes, a badass accent, and blood-sucking.

Before a brief synopsis, it should be noted that there is a Spanish-language version of this film, Drácula, directed by George Melford and starring Carlos Villarías as the title character. That film, also released by Universal, came at a time when – during the early years of synchronized sound movies – studios frequently released non-English language versions of their movies (almost always European languages like French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Swedish; a burgeoning, but bankruptcy-prone market for films catering to the United States’ numerous ethnicities existed, too). Thought lost to time, Drácula resurfaced in the 1970s and has been restored for public consumption. A third version – a silent film – was released to theaters that had not updated their technology yet. As should be obvious, this write-up on Dracula will be on the English-language version with synchronized sound.

On Walpurgis Night somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania (present-day Romania), Englishman Renfield (Dwight Frye) is traveling by carriage to reach his client, Count Dracula’s (Lugosi) estate. Count Dracula has expressed his interest in an abbey outside of London. Villagers, warning of the spirit of Nosferatu, are fearful that the Count is a vampire, but Renfield dismisses those concerns. Renfield arrives at the castle, stunned at the immensity of the place and the appearance of a cloaked, slick-haired figure gracefully, slowly making his way down an immense, cobwebbed staircase. After bidding Renfield welcome, something can be heard howling outside. 

“Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.”

Renfield becomes Dracula’s first victim and servant – groveling, maniacal, and violent – as the plot shifts to England and characters like Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan), sanitarium Dr. Seward (Herbert Bunston), his daughter Mina (Helen Chandler), Mina’s fiancée John Harker (David Manners), and Mina’s friend Lucy Weston (Frances Dade) begin investigating their newest acquaintance.

As the vampire Count Orlok in Nosferatu (itself an unauthorized version of Dracula), Max Schreck relied on his physical acting and makeup to frighten audiences. As Count Dracula in this film, Lugosi has a powerful weapon not afforded to Schreck: the sound of his voice. Born in 1882, Lugosi, having appeared in 1927 as Count Dracula in the stage play this movie is based on, arrived in the United States from Hungary in 1920. In that interim, Lugosi became fluent in English (this is disputed, but even if he had to learn his lines phonetically, the results were worth it) yet retained a thick Hungarian accent that prevented him from having a more prolific, diverse movie career. Nevertheless, in Dracula, his dialogue delivery – deliberate, deceptive, sometimes pausing for no apparent reason near the end of sentences – is incredible. Where Schreck’s Orlok angled for removing any semblance of humanity, Lugosi’s Dracula (which, on the basis of subsequent cultural references, has become the preferred prototype on which to create a vampiric character) is sophisticated, in touch with his humanity, all while retaining a threatening sexuality – “I never drink… wine,” he says. To put that in terms of a scenario, meeting Lugosi’s Dracula for dinner in any place outside of his castle might leave you charmed by the Count and just comfortable enough to eat and drink in his presence. That is, until Dracula feeds on you.

Universal did not see Lugosi as their first-choice Dracula; instead, that went to the senior Lon Chaney (1924′s He Who Gets Slapped, The Phantom of the Opera). Chaney died prior to production and, despite Universal’s preference for Paul Muni, relented when Lugosi lobbied relentlessly and said he was willing to accept an exiguous salary of $3,500 (~$56,000 in 2017′s USD). Lugosi declared bankruptcy the year after the film’s release. Having turned down the title role in Frankenstein (1931), Lugosi plodded through years of typecasting as suave horror villains and a British ban on horror films in the mid-1930s. He never became as established a movie star as fellow Universal Monsters star Boris Karloff, and played Count Dracula only twice – the second time in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).

Alongside a bevy of forgettable performers, only one other actor stands out. That is Dwight Frye (who would also play Fritz in Frankenstein later that year) as the realtor-turned-slave Renfield. His performance, nowadays, might be dismissed as a relic of the worst of silent-era filmmaking that seems anachronistic even in 1931, but it works. Whether Frye swings into entertaining campiness or unmitigated insanity, he serves the film wonderfully. With eyes wide, veins pulsing from his neck, and not giving a shit about what people think of his behavior, Frye’s Renfield is unpredictable, unstable, and possesses an unsettling laugh – it is not the stereotypical villainous belly/diaphragm laugh – halfway between a sneer and a chuckle. It is not exactly something you want to hear in the darkness.

Director Tod Browning – an expert in horror films – assembles a team of craftspersons of envying pedigree.  Production designers Herman Rosse and John Hoffman and art director Charles D. Hall (1930′s All Quiet on the Western Front, Frankenstein) outdo themselves with Dracula’s castle. It is everything you want from a decrepit fortress – cobwebs (one eighteen-foot spiderweb was created by rubber cement shot out of a rotary machine gun), an enormous fireplace (one fire made so much noise that the primitive microphones then being used picked up that sound rather than the dialogue; production halted as the fire winded down) ruined windows and columns, and tangled vines intruding from the outside. The enormity of the set lands with chilling impact, assisted with the costume design by Ed Ware and Vera West and cinematography by Karl Freund (1927′s Metropolis, 1937′s The Good Earth, I Love Lucy) inspired by German expressionism – a silent film-era movement which emphasized exaggerated geometries, shadows, and high-contrast lights and darks. Freund’s camera is often static but, unlike many films the early 1930s, slowly floats across the set when needed. This creates an impending sense of terror, lending Dracula a thick atmosphere that has kept it watchable even though the movie itself may no longer be scary to most. However, this focus on the production design is mostly abandoned after twenty-five minutes as Dracula finds himself in London. Lugosi and Frye’s performances grab the film by the scruff, and further solidified themselves into Hollywood lore.

The sets themselves impressed Universal’s art department and directorial contractees so much that they remained standing for at least a decade longer for subsequent films for the studio; the finale of Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942) holding its finale within what used to be Dracula’s walls, for example. These same sets also appeared in the Spanish-language Drácula –when the English-language production completed its shooting during the daytime, the Spanish-language production commenced at night using much of the same resources. The cast and crew of the Spanish-language production might even have had an advantage, as they had access to the English-language Dracula’s dailies/rushes (raw, unedited footage of the day’s shooting on a movie), to tinker with their own performances and handiwork.

Other than Tchaikovsky’s most famous theme from his ballet Swan Lake playing over the opening credits and a brief snippet of Wagner and Schubert, there is zero music in Dracula. In scenes as Dracula is approaching someone with ill intentions, this increases the dread. In transition scenes where the audience is reading the text of some publication or when characters are traveling, this might not work with impatient viewers. This almost-complete lack of music is because – with synchronized sound introduced just four years earlier – filmmakers believed that movie audiences could not accept music in a film unless there was a source of music within the film (diegetic music; one of those instances is when an orchestral performance is featured in Dracula). Considering that silent films were never truly silent – movie theaters during the time had resident musicians (typically pianists, organists, or small ensembles) – and that movie music has become a genre all its own, that idea might seem quaint to modern audiences. Watch enough post-Jazz Singer 1920s and early 1930s movies and one will notice that lack of music is widespread.

In other aural developments, depending on the quality of the print that you watch, a crackling image noise may be heard throughout the film. That is due to the age of the film print and the quality of the sound recording available in 1931; the newest restorations of Dracula should minimize the sound.

Though a relic of early Hollywood horror, it is a film energized by a star-making performance from Lugosi, which has since altered audience conceptions of what a vampire looks like, talks like, moves like. Okay, we never see Dracula’s blood-sucking fangs, but credit Lugosi, Browning, and screenwriter Garrett Fort for devising a character that is essentially the origin of anything that even references vampirism.

Dracula shows its age as it approaches its ninetieth anniversary. Wooden acting from almost all of the supporting cast, its rough editing, and pacing issues may not be accommodating for those accustomed to older movies and are watching the film without knowing the limits of cinematic technology in 1931 (again, Dracula may have terrified viewers upon release, but it is no longer “scary” in the modern sense). It is an essential piece of the horror genre, as well as cinema. The dedication to which those behind the camera applied to this film is remarkable, diffusing a frightful feeling that could only have been produced in its own time.

My rating: 9/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

This is the tenth Movie Odyssey Retrospective. Movie Odyssey Retrospectives are write-ups on films I had seen in their entirety before this blog’s creation or films I failed to give a full-length write-up to following the blog’s creation. Previous Retrospectives include A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), and The Wizard of Oz (1939).

#Dracula #Tod Browning #Bela Lugosi #Helen Chandler #David Manners #Dwight Frye #Edward Van Sloan #Herbert Bunston #Frances Dade #Carla Laemmle #Garrett Fort #Karl Freund #Charles D. Hall #Herman Rosse #John Hoffman #Ed Ware #Vera West #TCM #My Movie Odyssey

[puttingfingerstokeys]

[untitled]

Nanowrimo day 20 Featuring Alabaster Belmont, Joachim Armster, Alucard, and Darck Eve, an OC on loan from @darckcarnival  Modern dark fantasy Castlevania, violence, blood Unfinished and unedited

The castle gates yawned open, a drawbridge spanning a moat within which flowed, not water, but stinking, crimson blood. Alabaster gagged and held a hand over his mouth and nose as the four mismatched companions passed the threshold of the ancient place, their heels ringing hollowly on the old wood and silent cobblestones. 

No sooner had they entered than the portcullis dropped with a resounding smash. Alabaster jumped and whirled about to force himself to face whatever had made the sound. Part of him had, of course, known exactly what it was, but that was not enough to stop the reflex. A hand on his shoulder calmed his nerves. Despite the paleness of it and its owner, Alabaster felt at ease and raised his own hand to cover it, a silent thank-you. For some reason, the idea of making noise in this unholy space felt ironically sacrilegious. 

He turned his attention to his other companions, Darck Eve and Adrian Tepes himself. Still standing next to him, Joachim Armstair maintained constant, physical contact with the only human in their party. Alabaster’s heartbeat was quick and strong and all three night walkers could hear it. They would have been lying if the had told him they were not scared, as well. Castlevania had not manifested itself this way in ages. It was a sight to behold and sent chills down even the stoutest spines. Surely, these four must have been that, else they would never have dreamed of setting foot here, on this blasted ground.

The courtyard was wide, stretching far to either side of them, and might once have held a bustle of activity, but that had been centuries prior and now only death and decay remained. Alabaster took in the sights slowly, methodically, centering himself on Joachim’s touch as he did so. He was not prone to full-on panic attacks, but now would not be the time to put that particular bit of truth to the test; it could always change. 

“He’s not makin’ this easy,” Darck observed quietly, the first to speak. Alucard shook his head, his white-gold tresses catching the moonlight far above and shimmering like so much silk and gold. Even in this eerie, haunting light, he was beautiful. Alabaster had thought that was just the nature of vampires, but in reality, Adrian Tepes was, simply put, a stunning specimen of half-humanity who likely would have been so regardless of his vampiric blood. 

“My father’s castle has ever been a stronghold,” said Alucard. “More than that, however, it is a reflection of what is inside him.” 

Joachim made a noise of disgust and drew Alabaster closer. Alabaster did not resist, preferring to be enveloped in arms he knew could protect him, versus pretending he had more bravery in him than he did. It did not take a perspicacious individual to tell that whatever must have been lurking within the heart of the master of Castlevania was horror personified. It also would have taken very little insight to ascertain that, along with the hatred, anger, and rage, there was no small measure of grief. One might almost have pitied the night king. 

Alabaster did not.

“We don’t have time for this,” Alabaster hissed, keeping his voice low to disguise his terror. They could hear his heartbeat, but he was not about to wear his brain on his sleeve, too. “I’m sick of lookin’ at this place, already. Let’s kick his damn door in and find my sister.”

Darck winced. Alabaster knew as well as the rest of them that the presence of the Vampire Killer on his hip meant that his sister had departed from this world. Knowing Rosario, she had gone with fists and holy water flying, but that did not bring her back. Rather than heartlessly reminding Alabaster of this fact, however, Darck kept her mouth shut, but shared a look with Alucard. He shook his head minutely and gestured that the boy was right; they had little time. 

That the castle had physically manifested meant that the imminent return of the dark lord himself was nigh upon them. As if to confirm this, the courtyard was suddenly soaked in rust-colored light as the moon turned to a gaping wound, casting its pall over everything under heaven, daring the foursome to move. 

Alucard drew his weapon. He offered no explanation for this, but the other three followed suit, forming a ring and facing outward. Darck, ever the pragmatist, drew and checked her sidearm, checking the safety. Joachim began to hover, reaching out with his abilities to locate any discarded weaponry; a few rusted swords and a battle axe flew to his aid and ringed them around. Alabaster knew he should have drawn Vampire Killer, but just the thought of weidling his sister’s weapon filled his heart with squeezing despair. He raised both hands in front of him instead and, drawing a few complex, runic sigils in the air before him, summoned power from the universe itself and conjured a ball of crackling energy that spat sparks into the reddish shadows around them.  

All at once, the air around them shuddered and reverberated with the groans and cries of the damned, the dead, the undead, and all manner of voracious beast of the night that Dracula kept within his ever-shifting walls. Shambling corpses rose first, their stink issuing forth and hitting the foursome like a wall. Alabaster retched, but the rest showed no sign they had even noticed it, beyond the minute twitch at the corner of a mouth, the beginnings of a grimace. 

“Stand firm,” Alucard growled, “and move as one, lest we be overcome.”

It was as good a strategy as any. The four of them knew which direction they had to go, at least, and staying together would not hurt a bit. The first of the undead horde reached their position with a staggering grasp for someone’s cloak or leg. They were batted away with a swift boot and the sharp report of pistol fire which echoed angrily off the surrounding walls. 

More zombies flung themselves at the group and were met with blade, rusted and well-oiled, bullet, and magic. Deferring to Alucard’s wisdom, they moved as one, stepping in to fill gaps and covering one another. Dark kept a watchful eye on the dhampir’s back and Joachim upon Alabaster’s as they forced their way through the throng. 

“This isn’t enough to stop us,” Darck hissed. “You know he knows that… So what the hell’s he doing?”

“A war of attrition, perhaps?” Joachim suggested as blades spun about them, mowing down shambling corpses as if they were nothing. “Wearing us out to make easier targets for his generals. It’s what I would do.”

Alucard nodded, “indeed,” he confirmed, “that may very well be the case. Sacrificing a few pawns for the grand chessboard has ever been one of my father’s uglier… idiosyncrasies.”

“Not… super out of character for a guy with the nickname ‘impaler’, to be honest,” Alabaster bemoaned, flinging lightning, which caught a whole crowd of the undead by surprise (if zombies could feel surprise, that is) and frying them almost instantly. His comment earned him a slap on the back from Darck, who was barely containing her mirth. 

In fact, after a few minutes of this onslaught, the four of them had all begun to loosen up, feeling themselves a little more fully and stretching the limits of their abilities just a little bit once they realized that everyone else was more than capable of defending their own person and area. 

Darck was letting loose her liquid shadow abilities, rather than relying on her firearm. Alucard was dicing zombies into chunks. Joachim had acquired a slightly larger arsenal from some of the weapon-wielding undead. Alabaster was commanding an arc of flame that resembled a great serpent, plowing its way through the undead hordes. They were awash with corpses and the smell of burnt flesh, but never did they separate, never did they lose sight of one another or their goal. 

It was not long before Castlevania seemed to catch on, as if the first hordes were just a test of their strength, a gauge to see precisely what threat level it ought to anticipate. Alucard called a halt to their advance and bade them come together once more. “I feel the castle rising beneath us; something moves in its depths, hidden in the womb of darkness.” 

Darck was struck by the poetry of his words and, in other circumstances, would have commented thereupon. She could not help herself picturing some kind of weird, monstrous birth, an ancient womb gushing forth with putrid fluid, ichor, and the maimed remnants of what should have been its child. She wondered if it would show itself now, or if they would need to delve deeper to find it. There was no doubt in her mind they would see it at some point, whatever it was. 

“I mislike the feeling of this place. We ought to move,” Joachim suggested, gesturing toward the grand staircase which led into the castle proper. The doors yawned, as the gates had done, a great, gaping maw, awaiting their arrival. A fine, crimson-colored carpet had been unfurled to greet them, like a tongue lapping outward, seeking to draw a meal in. 

“The whole place is gunna feel like this, Jo’,” said Alabaster sourly. Alucard shook his head, gesturing that they should indeed move. 

“He’s right,” Darck pointed out, “I mean it is Castlevania, but… y’know now you mention it fellas, I think something is truly fucked.”

They started their forward pace once more, easily carving through zombies as they made their way across the final stretch of the cobbled courtyard for the staircase. Every one of them expected their way to be barred by some eldritch horror, a mass of ichor and rage the likes of which they had never seen. Every step forward, they anticipated this, knowing it would come, that it must come. Eventually, even Alabaster felt the difference in the tremors beneath their feet, from that of the zombies to the larger, looming threat. 

They reached the stairs as a yawning chasm opened up right in the very center of the courtyard, spilling forth a sickly, red-orange glow as if rising from the depths of hell itself. The ground began to fall away and they scrambled up onto the porch-like platform just before the door as the cobbles gave way and tumbled into the ever-widening pit. 

A misshapen hand reached out of that pit, grabbing the edge and pulling more rubble down as it scrambled for purchase. Alucard, Darck, Joachim, and Alabaster were rooted to their spots, just outside the threshold of the door to Dracula’s accursed abode, their gaze locked on whatever was about to rise from that crevasse. Steam belched forth, followed by a deafening roar that was some combination of thunder rolling and an earthquake ripping through the earth. 

“Go!” Darck shouted, gesturing toward the door. “Go, GO GO!”

She was certain, as the hand was joined by another, that they were quite far from equipped to deal the fiend that was about to rise. She was also absolutely, unsettlingly certain that the moment the doors closed behind them, they would be safe from it, that Dracula and his enchanted castle would not dare unleash something like that within its walls proper. 

Something about her tone convinced them of this same idea, though not in so many words. Joachim dropped the swords he had been controlling and bustled Alabaster through the door, the young man being his first priority. Alucard grabbed Darck’s upper arm and gave it a solid tug. Despite her warning, the woman’s eyes were still riveted upon the pit. 

“For my sake,” he whispered, “if not your own, Darck, you must heed your own warning.”

This snapped her from her hypnotized state and she whirled, joining him in passing the threshold. The doors closed sharply behind them, the resounding boom drowning the beast’s deafening bellows from without and leaving them in a tomb of silence. 

“Welcome home,” Darck grunted.

#OC #CC #CW #AU #violence #blood #castlevania #Alabaster Belmont #Joachim Armster #Alucard #Adrian Tepes #Darck Eve

[bellatrixobsessed1]

Reaped (Part 10)

The call is closer and it chills her to the bone. She is ankle deep in river water but she has to cross it, the wraith will catch her otherwise. That water is dark and thrashing, merciless. The deeper she goes the more silted it becomes until she feels as though it is more clay than river. It is so hard to move in sludge so dense and she feels trapped. The screech of the wraith has her fears coming to a head, she doesn’t think that she is going to make it. It had been a dreadful mistake to try the river, not that she could have anticipated that it would thicken into mud. She wonders if she has wandered into quicksand. She gets her answer as it pull her under into a deeper dark, a suffocating dark. But she thinks, at least it is better than taking a chance with the wraith. But now she doesn’t know how she will ever find that thing, whatever it is, that she is looking for.

She hears her name.

It is called once and then another time.

The voice is pleasant and it almost outweighs the cry of the wraith.

Almost…

 Regina had begun to dream more than ever lately. She didn’t think it was possible for the soulless to dream. She wondered to herself if she had retained some visage of her soul after all. She dared to hope that she had. She found that, since watching the movie she was prone to boughs of emotion. They weren’t particularly positive emotions but she found that she felt them in full and for all of her displeasures she was brought some solace. It came in the form of a more pleasant feeling; reassurance, comfort. She thought that it was the first kind emotion she had felt in ages and she was thankful for it.

 Granted she had stepped on more than a few toes that week. The first time she felt searing rage rip through her soul at full force was exhilarating. It was Mother Superior who had flared her temper. The woman had come to check on Emma. “I just want to make sure that the Queen hasn’t killed you, or worse.” The vexing fairy had said, never mind that Regina was still within ear shot. Such was always how it had been, whispers about her when people thought she wasn’t listening. Something about that day was different though, something somehow stung more. It might have been that she hadn’t done anything for so long and they still expected her to do something dreadful. That she was literally down a soul and they still saw her as the most horrific threat that the realms have seen. Or maybe it was that that she already had enough of her plate and she could use some sympathy for a change rather than a bubbling slew of resentment.

Or maybe it was that the fairy implied that she would hurt Emma. At her own thought she was conflicted all over again. Didn’t she want to hurt Emma? Wasn’t that what she was supposed to do? And yet, she wasn’t keen on doing so at all.

 She had been so quiet and demure for such a long time that her sudden outburst had taken both Emma and Superior aback. She hollered something, something about, “how dare you come into my manor and imply that I’m doing wrong.” And, “she wouldn’t still be hear if I was skinning her alive.” She was proud to note that the image made Mother Superior squirm.

 She had expected Emma to take her by the arm and scold her for being…for being how she usually was. But it almost seemed as if the blonde wanted to keep her fury going. Regina had wanted to keep her fury going, it was wonderful to feel something in full. Eventually after a few calm comments from Emma and some more seething ones from Regina, the fairy apologized for her invasiveness and shooed herself away.

 And thus Regina began a new reign of terror. One wherein she actively sought out things she knew would make her angry. It was a slow progression starting with something so petty and trivial it was almost embarrassing. She went to Granny’s and ordered her usual, this time adding a hint of cinnamon to her hot chocolate knowing very well she hated the flavor. Upon getting it she pitched a fit, calling Ruby incompetent among other things for mixing up her order.

She moved on to another easy target; Grumpy. It was easy to get into a spat with him, he himself was full of petty arguments. The one she chose was a low blow, teasing him for his inability to find love with Nova. The quarrel lasted for at least fifteen minutes before Emma showed up. She hadn’t meant to cause the savoir any strife, but she got some grief for, ‘not keeping her demon on a tight enough leash.’ Her brewed stronger and with it some strange sort of delight.

 In that week she had become something of a junkie. The petty fights were no longer rousing her temper to the magnitude she required to feel reassured. So she stomped straight to Mary’s loft. She was going to have the fight of her life. Part of her, the darkest part of the Evil Queen, wanted it to be a physical altercation. Maybe it would escalate that far. If Mary said the wrong thing, she would gladly deliver the first punch, she may not be able to get the best of Emma in a hand to hand fight, but she could surly best Mary who was mostly fluff and sugar.

Her fight with Mary was a grand success. It started with the usual; reminding her that she had killed Daniel and ruined her life.  She hadn’t anticipated Mary snapping and declaring that it was her own fault for stupidly trying to hold such a difficult secret.

She came out of it with a bruised lip and a scrapped arm. Mary didn’t look so spiffy by the end either.

 She knew that Mary would feel awful, but she didn’t think that she would care at all. In fact she was certain that her high would wear off soon and she’d be completely numb again as the soulless were supposed to be. But that night was a dreadful cocktail of emotions that Regina wasn’t ready for. Having been so cut off from all over her feelings for so long, they hit her intensely. Bombarding her until she was curled up on the floor, crying and thankful but unhappy all at once, that Emma wasn’t there yet.

 It was regret and sorrow. No one was going to like her, she wasn’t a likable person, and she hadn’t made things any better for herself. She supposed that there was always a part of her that wanted to be better. A part of her that didn’t want to fight anyone. Perhaps that part was bleeding through.

 By the time Emma got home she was retreating back into numbness again. As with any drug, the high never lasted. And she felt emptier than ever. She considered for the first time, in doing such awful things, that she might be losing the part of her soul she had just found again…or at the very least blackening it to the point where she might as well not have it. She decided that it must be the first of her theories, because she felt herself feeling so much colder than she had started out.

She didn’t hear the door open.

 It took her a moment too long to realize that she was still curled up on the floor. For the first time in her life, she hoped that Emma hadn’t brought Henry along to visit.

 Apparently it took Emma a few minutes too long to notice too. The first thing out of her mouth wasn’t an inquiry as to why Regina was on the floor, it was a simple, “why did you do it?” A question Regina didn’t need any elaboration for. She knew very well that Emma always stopped by Mary on her way home from the sheriff’s office.

 “I just want to feel again.” Regina muttered, feeling a fresh round of unpleasant emotions. “And this is the only way that I can.”

 “There are other emotions besides anger and sadness, you know.” Emma almost laughed. “You can pick any one of them.”

 She must have looked so pitiful. With teary eyes and a cracking voice she replied, “that’s just it Emma.” She paused looking somewhat distant. “I can’t. I try to feel them but I can only seem to arouse anger. And it’s effective because my anger always comes with sadness too.” And then she confessed something that she didn’t quite mean to. “It makes me feel human. It reminds me that I might be able to feel other things.” She rubbed her hands over her face. She was truly at a loss. Before she had a rather clear path, a clear path for change. She would use Henry as a sort of guide, as a motivation to be better. But these days she had no idea how to help herself. So, for the first time she stated it bluntly, “help me, Emma.”

 She heard Emma mutter a soft ‘oh, God’ before stooping down to scoop her into her arms and cradle her there. “I’m trying.” Emma replied. “I’m really trying.”

 .oOo.

 Emma felt her rage rise to a height that would probably scare even Regina. How could Gold put her though something so horrible? How could everyone else let him get away as they condemn Regina for lesser evils?

 She was storming down the streets of Storybrooke with her hands balled into fists. She didn’t have a plan but she wanted to raise hell.

 She was torn, knowing that she had just lectured Regina on not letting her fury get the best of her. Knowing that she should probably lead by example. But all the same, she can’t fathom letting Gold get away with yet another deeply dark deed.

She gritted her teeth as Gold’s shop came into view. She had one part of a plan in mind and that was to dramatically kick in the shop door. The night was cold, she got the sense that this fall was going to be a chilly one. The wind whipped at her hair with a temper to match her own.

She had her foot ready.

 She didn’t realize that Regina had been following her until she felt the woman’s hand grasp her by the wrist. “Emma, don’t.”

 Her voice was unusually soft and so was the look in her eyes.

 “Don’t, what?” She didn’t mean to snap at her, but she supposed that it didn’t matter because Regina looked wholly unfazed.

 “Don’t do whatever you’re about to do.”

 Emma was just about asked her where she had any room to preach but decided instead to ask a simple, “why shouldn’t I?” Quickly she added, “he deserves it at least ten times over.”

 Regina nodded in agreement. In understanding.  “I don’t want you to get hurt, you and Henry are the only people I have.” Her voice drops lower and she could detect a melancholy edge to it. “I don’t want someone else I care about to die because of me.”

 Any rage Emma had died right then. “Oh, Regina.” She ran her fingers through her hairline. “You know Mary didn’t mean that, right?”

 “But she’s right.” Regina mumbled. “Come home with me?” It rested somewhere between a request and a demand.

 “But he…” Emma motioned to the door. She can’t really fathom why Regina cared or when she began to…

No that wasn’t entirely true. She imagined that it was in return for the care she’d been given. Apparently, the former mayor didn’t just believe in vengeance. Emma was beginning to gather that the woman operated on a you get what you give level. Her perception of certain things she’d been given were simply misplace and/or skewed. “He can’t get away with it.” She finished.

 “But he will, he always does.” Regina argued rather flatly. “So don’t make it harder than it needs to be.”

 Emma considered. With a sigh she decided that maybe she should at least wait until she had a plan. Her mind was made up for her when the ‘open’ sign suddenly turned to read ‘closed’. Gold stepped out of his shop, sparing her a simple sideways glance. “To what do I owe the pleasure, dearie.” And then to Regina, “how are you feeling.”

 “I’m not.” Her hands went to her pockets.

 Emma resented him for the snide remark, the one that should have provoked a reaction in Regina. The one that had no effect on her at all.

 “Just the way you wanted it.” She added.

 Emma found herself inching closer to Regina, for what reason she doesn’t really know. The need to protect, maybe. Or to give support. It was possible that she was seeking protection.

 “It’s getting cold out here.” Regina noted, her eyes are downcast.

 “Yeah, you’re right.” Emma agreed. She spared Gold one last glare and turned to Regina. She longed to make things right for her, but she didn’t know how. She thought that she had come so close. And she still does. She could see the difference between the woman she’d first found in her cell and the woman standing next to her…

 .oOo.

 Regina had a lot to think about on the way home. She had lied to Gold, she did feel something. Soft, practically unreachable prickles of emotion. But they were there. Neither of them talked as they made their way down the road but Regina didn’t particularly need conversation. No one had ever fought someone on her behalf before. No one save for Daniel.

 She tried so very hard to conjure feelings of gratitude and happiness and coax them into reaching distance but it doesn’t quite work as well as summoning despair. Fear and ambivalence are easy to come by though. They are present aplenty.

 There are things that she was afraid to admit.

Things that she knew now. Things that she was afraid to vocalize because she couldn’t find the words.

Things she was afraid to vocalize because she didn’t know if they would amount to anything anyways.

#regina mills #emma swan #swan queen #once upon a time #fanfiction

[gardenthegates]

Water Under the Bridge

Water Under the Bridge

Chapter One: A Rocky Start

Description: In the years to come, people would often ask Caiwen Lavellan how she could have fallen for the Dread Wolf himself. And her answer was always the same; She didn't, she fell for an apostate named Solas. 

A look into the moments that snuck up on both of them, and captured both their hearts.

Link to AO3: Here Up to Ch. 9 available there

Caiwen Lavellan was not someone who was easily disoriented. Years of training to be her clan’s leading huntress (17 out of her 27 total to be exact) meant that she was quick, observant, level headed (for the most part) and poised. So the sensation of waking up in a human prison of some sort, chained, already being shouted at in Common (words of accusation? For what?) shouldn’t have shaken her. But then she felt it. Her hand. Her bow-steadying hand. It ached. No – seared! She couldn’t remember a time a pain shot through her whole body from a focal point like this.

It was green. And glowing. Magic – she suddenly understood. At the same time it was impossible, she was no mage. Folding the fade around her will was never a talent she possessed, unlike her kin back home. Fear slowly clouded her vision, and clawed at her stomach so that she barely made out the words the Seeker spat down at her.

At first she assumed they caught her spying. Innocent as her mission may have been she knew instinctively that because of her tapered ears she was suspicious to these southerners. In the Free Marches elves were disliked and mistrusted on the whole as well, but at least her clan (one less prone to nomadic practices than others she knew of) had a tenuous relationship with the nearby human cities and tradesmen.

Here she was an intruder, a stranger. They had no way of knowing she was only here to keep her clan as safe as possible. She knew their ignorance of her intention was not their fault. And yet. She words of the Seeker finally took form through the haze in her brain. The conclave was destroyed, people were dead but she was not. Why her brain could not conjure any image of the last few hours (minutes? Days? How long had she been down here?) she could not fathom.

“You think I’m responsible?” She asked incredulously. Hundreds of people dead. She’d never so much as killed one. Boars and bears and rams sure but never a person.

“Explain this.” The woman spat in her thick Nevarran accent, holding up her hand as a particularly powerful spasm of pain shot through it and – was that sparks? She dared not wince; she could not show weakness. Not here, not in front of these strangers’ eyes so full of accusation and conviction.

“I-I can’t.” She stammered out, hating the shake she could not hide in her voice.

“What do you mean you can’t?”

“I don’t even know what that is.” The confusion and panic she felt in her gut was creeping into her voice despite her attempts at steadying herself. It was all she could do to not cry out at the pain from that mystery on her hand. She figured if her choices were a shaky voice or tears, she might as well go with the better option. “Or how it even got there.” Instead of Caiwen’ denial placating her, the woman before her growled and lunged forward

“You’re lying!” Before Caiwen could even react, a second women, one cloaked in shadow despite her brilliant red hair, pushed the desperate Seeker off of her.

“We need her Cassandra.” The woman shot back tersely, concern seeping into her voice despite her strong stance. Well, at least Caiwen wasn’t the only one who couldn’t hide all of herself right then.

“Whatever you think I did, I’m innocent.” She managed to make her voice sound a lot more confident and strong than she was currently feeling. But then the red haired woman asked her what she remembered and she lost any sense of confidence she had mustered before.

“I-I remember…” Spiders. Millions of them. She hated the insects normally but these – all spiky and beady eyes and pincers and huge – “…running. And these creatures were chasing me. And then…” A soft glow, an outstretched hand finally hope in this wretched wasteland “…a woman?” Even as she said the word she couldn’t be sure if it was right. “A woman?” Caiwen’s own amber eyes met the woman’s, she saw hope suddenly flare up in them but she could not decipher why. “She…reached out to me but then…” Nothing. Blank. It was gone, whatever fleeting memory or dream she was grasping at dissipated in her mind.

“Go to the forward camp, Leliana, I will take her to the rift.” The other woman, Cassandra, at least sounded calmer now. That did not stop the surge of unease that washed over the elf at the thought of going anywhere alone with this woman. But then she was reaching down, unchaining her but still not removing the ropes around her wrists. She felt certain enough to ask now, even if she did not know if she would like the answer.

“What…did happen?” Cassandra shifted uncomfortably, suddenly unsure herself. “It…would be easier to show you.”

The sun blinded her for a moment. No it was the wrong color for the sun. As her eyes adjusted to the sight she felt a stone in her stomach. This wasn’t right. There was…a hole? In the sky. It was swirling and massive and terrifying and green. The same sick green of her hand, which was tingling in…recognition?

“We call it the Breach. It’s a massive rift into the world of demons that grows larger with each passing hour.” She felt the stone in her stomach shift again. Demons. Definitely not good. “It’s not the only rift. Just the largest. All were caused by the explosion at the Conclave.”

Explosion. Ok. At least now she knew what everyone was talking about, even if she still didn’t know how she fit into this just yet. She was faintly aware of herself questioning how any kind of explosion could do…well that, and Cassandra assuring her. This didn’t feel real. It had to be some sort of night terror. But no her hand sparked again and pain shot through her body at an unexpected velocity, sending her to her knees.

“Each time the breach expands you mark spreads. And it is killing you. But it may be the key to stopping all this.” The matter of fact tone of the Seeker both calmed and infuriated her, and reminded her so much of her Keeper. There is danger, its not a question but a fact, and you must deal with it da’len.

“How?” Was all she could grit through her teeth, hand clenched around the searing mark as the pain ebbed and flowed through her palm.

“It may be the key to closing the Breach. Whether that is possible is something we will discover shortly. It is our only chance however. And yours.” The edge was back in her voice, sharp like the sword at Cassandra’s waist. These insane accusations (didn’t humans ever hear of proof) ate at the knot of fear in her throat and she could hear the anger boiling in her own voice.

“Doesn’t sound like I have much of a choice.” The woman’s lip sneered in distaste as she yanked her to her feet.

As she was pushed through their camp she felt more than heard the anger emanating off of the people around her. Eyes alight in rage and hurt focused on her, as Cassandra confirmed her suspicion of everyone’s blind hatred. She had been disliked by people before, but this pure seething hatred, more like a giant wild animal than a throng of people, was something she had never experienced directed at her, let alone for something she didn’t even do (for now, despite her gaps in memory, she was sure none of this could have been her doing). Cassandra talked of their Divine (dead?) and her good works, bringing the Templars and mages together like this was something Caiwen had expressed distasted in. Didn’t she, didn’t anyone, know that this stupid war effected her people too? Why did they even think an elven clan would take interest if it did not. They didn’t want this meaningless violence to continue any more than their human counterparts did.

“There will be a trial. I can promise no more. Come.”

And with that the ropes on her wrists were gone and the Seeker was leading her up the mountain pass. It took some convincing to let her keep the bow she grabbed but a few quick shots to a rage demon behind the Seeker quickly made up the woman’s mind. Up and up they ran, cold ate at her but it distracted her from the pain, from everything that she needed to tune out and so she welcomed it. She was on the hunt now, bow comfortably grasped in her left hand , the pressure felt welcome against the sharp sparks of hurt there. Her ears twitched and she hurled an arrow at a demon creeping up behind them. For once she didn’t even know who the prey was. She had a bad feeling it was her this time.

And then Cassandra was leading them to a fight. A dwarf and a man were fighting off demons around a smaller version of the Breach above. No not a human man, an elf, a mage. He was clanless, his face as bald as his head but his strong features moved like the hunters she ran with, his weapon a staff instead of a bow. Muscles twisted and stretched, magic shooting from both him and his staff in a way she wished she could imitate with an arrow. She fired off a few more shots, felling the weakened opponents at they ran up to the two strangers.

“Quickly! Before more come through.” And before she could marvel at the depth of his voice or the raw panic and adrenaline threaded through it, his hand was on her wrist and she felt sparks. Her confusion heightened as she realized the sparks were coming from her. Her hand sparked and throbbed and stiffened as a green light connected the rift and her mark, until she could no longer stand it and she pulled her hand back into her. It felt like pulling a rope, one that was once attached to something heavy and unmoving, but suddenly detached with such force that it temporarily knocked the wind out of her. And suddenly, the pain was gone. Not entirely but lessened to such a wonderful degree that she felt tears of relief prick at her eyes.

She turned suddenly to the strange elf next to her, his hand a sudden absence her body regretted.

“What did you do?” She heard the wonder in her own voice, felt her eyes go wide but for once she didn’t feel like schooling her emotions.

“I did nothing.” His face broke out into a triumphant grin, like he was proud of himself, proud of her, and his eyes lit up in a way that made her whole body ache for a minute. Finally, someone who didn’t wish her dead. Yet, at least. “The credit is yours.”

“I did that?” She looked down at her hand again, doubt rippling through her body. That was definitely magic and she was definitely no mage. “Whatever magic opened the Breach in the sky also placed that mark upon her hand.” The wonder and curiosity he exuded made her feel like a puzzle he had solved. The thought thrilled and infuriated her at the same time. She didn’t want this, ask for this, even know how to use this and here this strange man is, giddy as the thought of such power thrown upon her. “I theorized that the mark could close the rifts left in the Breach’s wake, and it seems I was correct.” Oh. So not proud of her, but proud of himself. His joy turned to smugness and she felt the relief warring with pure annoyance.

“Meaning it could close the Breach itself.” She had forgotten about Cassandra, and the dwarf for that matter.

“Possibly.” And suddenly those giant blue eyes were on her again, the smugness still sitting on his face but now it was overshadowed by a smile that stopped her dead. “It seems you hold the key to our salvation.” It was like the wind was knocked out of her all over again. The weight of his smile, of the sudden responsibility he landed on top of her. Everything was too much. This was not what this mission was supposed to be.

“Good to know.” And just like that she was grounded in the present again. “Here I thought we were gonna be ass deep in demons forever.” The dwarf cocked his crossbow and sidled up to her like a drunkard in a tavern. Yet somehow it was charming rather than sleazy. She fought the urge to grin. “Varric Tethris. Rogue, storyteller and occasionally unwelcome tagalong.” He punctuated his introduction with a wink aimed at Cassandra, which made the woman’s lip curl in a sneer. Ok, she definitely liked this dwarf.

“Are you with the Chantry, or…?” The elf chuckled and she felt another flare of annoyance, despite how brilliant his smile was or the rumble of his voice.

“Was that a serious question?” Well it wasn’t her fault she barely knew anything about these crazed Andrastians or their ways. She didn’t even know anything about what happened in her own recent past.

“Technically, I’m a prisoner, just like you.”

“I brought you here to tell your story to the Divine. Clearly that is no longer necessary.”

“Yet, here I am. Lucky for you considering current events.”

“It’s nice to meet you Varric.” She interjected, taking on her best ambassador voice. She was here to do her people proud after all. And she felt a kinship to this trapped dwarf already.

“You might reconsider than stance. “ the elf interjected dryly, one dark eyebrow cocking up, even though mischief glittered in his eyes.

“Oh I’m sure we’ll become great friends in the valley, Chuckles.” Well that certainly was an odd name for anyone, let alone the elf in front of her. And that was when Cassandra piped in again, arguing with the dwarf, Varric, about whether or not he’d be coming.

“My name is Solas, if there are to be introductions.” Her breath faltered again under his direct gaze. “I’m glad to see you still live.”

“He means ‘I kept that mark from killing you while you slept’.” Her natural suspicion of strangers fell over her shoulders as she examined him. For something no one understood, he understood a lot.

“You seem to know a lot about this.” He grinned smugly again, even though she was not trying to stroke his ego he seemed to take it that way.

“Solas is an apostate.” Cassandra quipped, as if that would explain it all.

“Technically all mages are apostates now Cassandra.” He focused his gaze back on Caiwen, as if to answer her unspoken question. “My travels allow me to experience much of the fade. Far beyond any circle mage.” He grew solemn then, the joy from before vanishing as quickly as it appeared as his seemed to remember everything around them. “I came to offer my help with the Breach. If it does not close we are all doomed, regardless of origin.” No pressure, then. Instead she swallowed the lump in her throat and asked him what he would do when it was all over. When not if. “One would hope those in power would remember who helped. And who did not.” Not such a different mindset than what brought her to the conclave in the first place. “Cassandra. You should know the magic at work here is unlike any I have ever seen. Your prisoner is no mage, but I have a hard time imaging even if she was, that any mage could have such power.” “Understood.” And with that they were heading towards the next forward camp, seemingly forgetting her behind.

Varric turned to her and grinned. Tapping his crossbow affectionately he said, “Well…Bianca’s excited.”

“You named it?”

#solavellan #lavellan #female lavellan #dragon age #dragon age inquisition #solas #dread wolf #fen'harel #inquisitor