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mor-beck-more-problems · 3 years

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Don’t Do Sadness || Morgan & Deirdre (feat. Ruth Beck)

TIMING: Current

LOCATION: Houston, Texas

PARTIES: @deathduty & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Morgan flies back to Houston to pick up Agnes’ bones. But there’s other family who need her attention first.

CONTAINS: Mentions and discussions of past abuse

By the time the Houston trip finally rolled around, Morgan booked and planned their stay around her old hangouts in an autopilot haze rather than any eager sentiment. Thanks to modern technology, they largely avoided customer service desks and transitioned from plane to car to hotel without having to ruin anyone’s day. Morgan even put in a delivery order for her once-favorite Vietnamese restaurant from her phone and had it brought up like room service, with just a knock at the door and a quiet ‘thank you’ called into an empty hallway. There was little to say, since the gritty smog didn’t reach her nose and the lo mein she got for herself was soaked in soy sauce and sriracha before she could get a hint of any flavor aside from the brains she’d picked up on the way to the hotel. Morgan hadn’t even liked sriracha when she was alive. At the end of the night, they left the TV on (Titanic was playing on TNT) and laid down holding each other. Morgan thought of all the things she’d once imagined showing Deirdre, the cemeteries, the magic shops, the food, the landmarks. With crazy, non-existent zoning laws, high rises rubbed elbows with tire shops and mom and pop burger joints. There was no such thing as a ‘generic’ street until you were at least thirty minutes to an hour outside of downtown. But those were Alive-Morgan’s plans. This one just prayed that after they dug up what she needed tomorrow, they could bubble themselves up and forget all about White Crest and everything they’d left there on their last full day before they had to go crawling back.

But before they could dig up Agnes Bachman’s grave in the dead of night, Morgan needed to scope it out. And before she could do that, she owed her dead their respects. Sunrise seemed best for the visit. No one would be there except for the workers, the humidity was too intense, and morning traffic on the freeways was already in a gridlock. People would want to be anywhere but Washington Cemetery. Morgan reached for Deirdre’s hand as they passed through the gates, taking a second to appreciate the vastness of the sky. Houston was a flat swampland; from the right place, you barely had to tilt your head back to see as far as the human eye could see. The sky stretched above them like a golden purple dome, not a flash of wings or shadow or teeth in sight. The grass was patchy, but mowed even, so you could hardly tell the weeds from the rest. Flat headstones tiled the area in a perfect grid, so orderly you could play checkers on it with pieces big enough. Her parents were off to the side, near the roar of traffic and mumbling drifters. Every time she visited them, Morgan feared she would forget the way and get lost, but as soon as her feet met the pavement, she knew just where the next turn should be. “Agnes is kinda here by chance actually. When the older cemeteries got condemned, they split up the bodies to be re-homed or whatever, and some randos got the fancy cemetery next door, and Agnes and her kids got this one. They did some random algorithm or lottery thing, and apparently it made my grandmother so mad that she would have to share space with her. But it’s really not that surprising, with our run of luck.” She winced. “I know it’s not…as pretty or anything as what we have back home. Not sure what Texas has against standing tombstones. Maybe it’s all the hurricanes? At least markers don’t drift off course when they’re nailed flat to the ground.” That didn’t sound how she wanted to either. “I’m sorry, what I’m trying to ask is, how do you like it?”

Deirdre would not let them drown. For all the sadness that congealed around them, for every shred of darkness that pleaded to be accompanied, Deirdre would be stronger, louder. For all the pain that weighed down her love, she would carry it in herself, and lift her free. Months ago, a trip to Texas together would have read like a happy occasion—they’d spent nights tangled together swapping stories of their homes. She knew Texas through Morgan’s eyes. The smells, the heat, the thick and sticky air, were not new to her mind, only to her ill-equipped body. Though Morgan moved like she wasn’t so much coming home as she was walking to her death, Deirdre held a measure of excitement about everything, despite everything. It was magical to be in the place that once only existed in the stories she loved. There were the trees Morgan described, and while not those ones exactly, they were just as important for Deirdre’s slowly filling image of Morgan’s life. Their hotel held a beautiful view, and a large, lush bathtub perfect for soaking off the Texas heat. Morgan couldn’t see it, she realized, which is why she pointed each detail out with a smile. It was fine, anyway, love didn’t need to be hundred to exist. Whatever tar was intent on dragging her girlfriend underneath, she would be the life jacket. She could love enough for the both of them; be enthusiastic as if she carried two minds and care as if she were born of two hearts. And, of course, Vietnamese food from such fame as Morgan’s stories of sad nights eating it alone, was just as good as she described it then. Titanic, played in low quality on some choppy basic cable, as featured in tales of Morgan’s viewing it, was just like she said it was. And the side-of-the-road cemetery was just like she heard it might be.

“I love it here,” she breathed, happily leaning over to stare down at each name they passed. Loving it here, was not entirely accurate. She’d complained about the sticky heat already, waltzing around in a thin summer romper and still feeling like her skin was melting off. And she always liked cemeteries, so much so that it wasn’t even a question worth asking. It was being here, in the places that Morgan walked, in the home that she knew, that Deirdre loved. It felt like she had a place in those stories too, in her life. “As if pretty matters...” she breathed. “Oh my love,” Deirdre turned her attention away from the names she didn’t recognize and smiled at her girlfriend. “Don’t worry about that.” She paused and drew her into her arms, picking her up for a quick spin and kiss. “I love you. Do you know how exciting it is to be here? I finally get to see the grass that you did, smell the scents that you did, see the—“ she gestured at the sky “—everything that you did. It’s like...being a part of you. Knowing you. And you—“ she grinned and pressed another kiss to her girlfriend. “—are my favourite thing to know. I would never tire of it.” Even if it felt like Texas was trying to dump hot glue on her. “Tell me more,” she asked, brushing Morgan’s hair back before she settled her hand on her cheek. “Show me more, whatever you feel like. It’d be impossible for me to hate it.” She turned her attention to the cemetery and chuckled, “were you worried about me not liking a cemetery or are you concerned about your touring skills?” Deirdre turned back with a smile. “I think you’re doing a wonderful job, and this isn’t the only time we’ll come back here—we can take a thousand trips, if you wanted them. So...don’t worry; I always enjoy myself when I’m with you. And you’ve got more important things to keep your mind on.”

Morgan’s eyes welled as Deirdre poured all her affection on her at once. She knew she was loved unconditionally, that whatever else came up, Deirdre would care and care and care as long as Morgan let her, but with the air beneath her feet and her banshee’s strong arms around her body, it all pierced her shell and rushed in as a flood. She had burned to give Deirdre pieces of her no one else in town, no one else alive possessed. She had kept them up for hours some nights, talking about how good, how interesting and exciting for all its mundaneness Houston was. The murals, the galleries, the roadkill, the sprawl, the smell. Now they were here and she felt so weighed down by herself. The air, so eerily imperceptible to her new body, felt like it was pulling her into the ground.

I want to be here, Morgan reminded herself. I need to be here.

She clung to Deirdre for a moment, anchoring herself in her body. “I love you too,” she murmured into her shoulder. “After this I’ll show you anything you want. We can go anywhere, I’ll take you to a play at the last minute, they have one with skeletons and murder in it. Or this Italian restaurant my mother would insist on going to that does brunch, or the little one my dad would take me to sometimes that’s not as fancy but makes the best fettuccine and you can have fresh scooped gelato there, and this giant chessboard, and the Rothko chapel, it’s all in black and the skylight is beautiful, but it’s always a little cold in a good way and you can pray to any being in the universe there, and…” The list tumbled out of her in a rush, even if her voice didn’t quite lift to the occasion. Half of the words on her lips were impossible to recapture the way she was. Fresh tears came to her as she parted with pieces of each memory. The awkward silence as she and Ruth scraped their forks at Birraporetti’s, running out of things to say about the ballet only twenty minutes after the show. The mess she made on her shirt with the gelato in Rice Village, the dangerous thrill of buying a new shirt at the boutique next door instead of mending it with magic while her dad lingered outside for plausible deniability. Having something new, and whole, and secret. And there were hours singing loudly in her car, sloppily slathering sunscreen on her forearms too late because she’d gotten so caught up in the escape of the moment. It was all over and never coming back, as permanent as the ache her parents left behind.

Morgan breathed slowly and wiped her eyes, flashing Deirdre a sheepish smile. “Sorry,” she said. “I know everything is so awful back home and I’m trying to shake it off, but I am so glad of you, and so relieved. This is everything I want right now, even if it doesn’t look like it. I...stars, I hate not having anything to do after this visit most years, and now I do, and I’m not so painfully alone.” She jumped on her tiptoes and kissed her again as best she could. Wrapping herself against Deirdre as much as she could, Morgan led her around the next few turns along the path, guiding their steps by intuition and distant memory, until she saw two ghostly figures clustering by the fence.

Morgan stopped short. She couldn’t make out their faces, but she knew who her parents were. Somehow, even with all the Agnes drama, it hadn’t occurred to her that she might see them. Certainly not her dad. “Oh, stars…” Neither of them moved. Maybe they didn’t see her yet. “You see them, right? They’re really here, it’s not a trick this time. Shit, I can’t even…Deirdre, it’s my dad.” His face, from this angle, was whole and warm, and he did see her. He was just watching as serenely as he’d watched everything in life. His head tilted to one side, like he was working out how to parse a line of poetry, and Morgan burst with a laughing sob of recognition. He had the same ugly Hawaiian shirt he’d died in, and from this far away the sick on his shirt looked more like a food stain. It was so normal, so silly and safe and unlike anything in her life now.

Morgan didn’t know what to say to either of them, if they would be proud or even like the person she had become, but even having a fight in front of her girlfriend didn’t seem so bad right now. “It’s real, right?” Deirdre’s eyes could see them, if she tried. It wouldn’t be like before. How could it be, with her dad here? “We have to—he’s gonna love you, come on! Now!” She tore herself away and pawed for Deirdre’s hand, running for the spot so fast she nearly lost her shoes.

Deirdre leaned down to press her lips against Morgan’s neck, laughing in a warm flutter against her cold skin, afraid if she kissed her anyplace else, she might interrupt her. Her mind drifted as easily as Morgan rambled, she pressed nipping kisses in response to each point: a play would be divine, Italian sounds great, I’ve always liked fettuccine, what does a giant chessboard even look like? Houston held so many memories for Morgan, and just as many for Deirdre to learn. As well as she knew her girlfriend, there would always be some things that came new, and she could think of no greater delight than to know them. There was another feeling she didn’t know how to explain, something about life at her fingertips, a world under her lips. She loved their bubble in White Crest, but the earth was vast, and it could be theirs. Houston, Austin, whatever part of Texas Morgan wanted to show off—that was a new world for their taking. Was it so wrong for her to want more for them? To share in everything life had to offer, and then some? To love Morgan in White Crest, in Houston, on every inch of land they set their feet upon? Deirdre lifted her head from where she’d nestled it and smiled warmly. “Don’t apologize, my love. You don’t have to be chipper all the time, excited to show me restaurants and parks all the time….I just want to be with you, in whatever shape that takes. That’s always what I want. And if you want to do something after this, we can. And if you don’t, we can do that too. I’m really just happy to be here, and share in all of this with you….it means so much to me. Thank you, for letting me do this with you. Nothing will rob me of my excitement to be here. I love you, my Morgue, I always do.”

She held Morgan tight and careful, praying that her words might carry the power to soothe some worries. Visiting family graves was no easy task in general, there was no need for her love to be plagued by other thoughts. While the Dolan catacombs were a dark place of pride and worship—there was no sadness in death, after all, it was the greatest show of servitude—Deirdre imagined that Morgan, whose entire family was buried here, would find a visit heavier than most. She was prepared to hold her extra tight, even closer, kiss harder and love louder. She would not allow the sheet of sadness to smother Morgan. It was natural, then, that when Morgan happily yanked her along, Deirdre was shocked. She hadn’t even processed the information that Morgan’s father was a ghostly presence before she was running alongside her.

“W-wait! I’m not ready!” Deirdre yelped, laughing. She hadn’t expected to be meeting her girlfriend’s ghostly father either, and so she had no charming quips prepared. Should she have brought an offering? Did she call him Hector or Mr. Beck? Would he know what a banshee was? Was it appropriate to mention how rich she was before or after she explained the lengths at which she loved his daughter? “What am I supposed to say! All I know is that he likes musicals! I didn’t brush up on my musical knowledge!” She grew sweaty from anxiety rather than the heat, for once, blinking rapidly as her eyes spread into darkness and oh Fates, he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Of all the shirts she pictured he must have died in, that one wasn’t it. His face was soft like Morgan’s, and he tilted his head just like her and—Deirdre shook her vision back to normal and tried to think. She needed to ready herself. At this rate, her eyes would be glued to his questionable fashion and that’d just be rude. Did humans still do that thing where parents had to be asked before their daughters could be courted? Why was it that she suddenly couldn’t remember basic manners? They ran to a halt and Deirdre doubled over trying to collect herself. She huffed and tried nervously to straighten out the wrinkles in her dress. “What if he hates me because I forgot to bring flowers?” She mumbled to herself, deciding finally on a simple ‘hello’. She took Morgan’s hand back in hers for emotional support and as her eyes darkened, she rehearsed her introduction. Hello, Mr. Beck, so nice to meet you, I love your daughter so much I’d burn the world down. No, that was too strong. Howdy, Hector, lovely ghost weather we’re— “My love, I don’t see him.” Deirdre blinked her death-vision away, turning to her girlfriend. “...Morgan?”

Morgan only looked away for a second. It was too good to see him laughing to himself, beaming and shaking his head like he’d just figured out something wonderful and obvious to turn around every time she said, it doesn’t matter, it’s fine, you’ll be great. But she looked back once so Deirdre would know by her smile just how true it was, and when she turned to the grave where her dad was waiting for her again, he was gone. Morgan stopped short, staring at the empty space. There wasn’ anywhere for him to hide in all this open space. And he wouldn’t. He’d never played those kinds of tricks on her. She searched the sky, and the roof of a plain mausoleum across the way, the still-fluffy top of an oak tree, but he was gone.

“What the fuck…” she whispered. She had seen him. It hadn’t been in her head, she’d really seen him, and he’d looked at her. He’d been happy. He didn’t know anything about the choices she’d made since her last visit, but he’d been happy and he’d wanted to see her. “Where did he go? I don’t understand.”

“Oh, and what am I, chop liver?” Ruth Beck demanded.

Morgan was too hurt to hide her pained grimace. This wasn’t about her mother, at least she’d gotten to practice speaking to her once before. But she hadn’t had a conversation with her dad since she was eighteen, a stupid kid in over her head. Why hadn’t he stayed to talk to her? Why didn’t he want to meet her again? Morgan continued to stare at the emptiness over his grave, mouth trembling.

“They don’t bring you the metaphysical manual for ghostly rules and behavior, Morgan. You don’t seriously expect to be handed a tidy little answer to make you feel better, do you? It’s fine; I've known all along how much you two care about me.” Her tone cut with bitterness. “I knew he wouldn’t stick it out with me forever, but I’ll give him this, I don’t think it was an entirely conscious decision. Whatever you took or whatever spell you cast to see us like this, it scratched his itch and now he’s signed off and done.”

Morgan stiffened. Nothing her mother said felt untrue, exactly, but it all sounded so twisted and awful, like her dad had betrayed her by crossing peacefully or like Morgan should be sorry for missing him after having a second chance dangled in front of her. She could never just be; Ruth always demanded her due. “I’m sorry, Mother,” she mumbled, trying desperately to keep her tears in. “I am happy to see you too. I should have said so.” She swallowed, forcing her body to remember breathing. “Are you okay?”

Ruth scoffed, unimpressed, and turned her attention to the woman with her daughter. “Who’s this? She’s taking you talking to the air pretty well. Should I be concerned?”

She knew it. It was her ruffled romper or tousled hair that did her in. Or the sweat, maybe it was the sweat. Hector took one look at how sweaty Deirdre was and vanished out of disgust. Or maybe it was that she’d taken so long to introduce herself, she should have ran up with her greeting instead of standing around waiting for her chance to do it. Deirdre frowned, turning to Morgan to apologize when another voice cut across the air. Deirdre couldn’t see ghosts without summoning her vision, but she could hear them perfectly fine. And she remembered then, hearing this woman and her biting remarks, that she’d seen two figures—the now-gone Hector and someone who was unmistakably Ruth Beck. Out of politeness, she tried not to look angry. She knew Ruth Beck better than she did Hector, not because Morgan loved Hector less, but because Ruth controlled her life even in death. Her painful, complicated memory could not be shaken. Deirdre knew Ruth by way of tearful retelling, shaky explanation of locked rooms and denied love—and the infuriating hypocrisy of her journal, left behind as if to taunt her daughter. And she knew her now, by the sharpness of her voice, and the burden shuddering down Morgan. Eventually, politeness was dammed, and Deirdre’s face twisted with displeasure. She drew Morgan close to her, and then—though she knew it wouldn’t help anything—shifted their bodies so she stood between Ruth and Morgan.

Deirdre let blackness spill across the whites of her eyes again as she looked up and stared Ruth down. She had Morgan’s brilliant blues, and lips that might’ve looked like her daughter’s if they weren’t pulled thin. Her sour expression was different both from Morgan’s transparent emotions, and the pictures Deirdre had seen of Ruth’s past. There were a thousand things she wanted to say to Ruth. She blurted just one, the thing that burned on her tongue, pulled her brows together and her lips down. “Your daughter is dead.” Couldn’t she see it? Feel it? Was it really so important now to be thinking about anything else, when the life of her blood was a zombie? She’d wanted to ask about the locked rooms, about why her husband could find peace in seeing his daughter but she could not, about why she loved Morgan so poorly, or if she remembered being in that cursed coin at all, but Deirdre’s confusion stuck out instead. She’d known Ruth was a questionable mother, but hearing her more offended about a greeting than noticing her own daughter was dead, was something strange. “I’m Morgan’s girlfriend; Deirdre. I’m sorry your husband’s vanished so suddenly. I wonder how terrible that must be for someone who hasn’t seen him since he died. It must be exciting to see someone after that long, don’t you think? Perhaps you’ve been spending so much time remembering that there is no competition here that you forgot your own manners.” Deirdre didn’t know what she was saying, exactly, the words tumbled from her mouth freely. Unlike their forgotten meeting on the beach, Deirdre knew the kind of woman Ruth was now, and she wasn’t so eager to impress her. It would be nice for Morgan, she knew, if her mother approved of something she held dear for once. And perhaps Deirdre should have taken more care for her manners, but Ruth’s words were needlessly petty, and Deirdre didn’t care to make either of them listen to it. She stood straight, stern, breaking her stance only to attend to Morgan, and lend her strength where she needed it.

Ruth had to do a double, no, triple take at her daughter to see if this strange woman was telling the truth about her daughter. She had assumed that sentimentality had gotten the better of Morgan and she’d taken some drug or commissioned some truly powerful magiks to see if her talking to the air all these years amounted to something or not. But she looked, and even with this Deirdre woman blocking her full view, she understood. Then, of course, the woman kept talking, offering her opinion on things that weren’t any of her business. How could she know that Ruth had been looking forward to seeing her every November? Or how much it stung that when granted her ghost-sight, Morgan hadn’t said, it’s my mom and dad, it’s my parents. Only her dad, the one who had coddled and endangered her with his stubborn sensitivity, and then marked himself as a damn saint when he died just four months after Morgan turned eighteen. And this Deirdre couldn’t know how much she’d tried to shuffle off this god-forsaken coil, or how it felt to be left alone, for good this time, by the only person in her miserable life who had been stubborn enough to stay in the first place. No one knew. Even in death, Ruth Beck was certain she remained cursed. When she was sure this Deirdre was quite finished, she looked at the fluff of hair poking out from the woman’s arms. “Is this true, Morgan?” She asked.

Morgan let Deirdre whisk her out of sight, if only so she could compose her face and gasp out the few sobs that wouldn’t be swallowed away. She should probably be happy that all her dad wanted was for them to really see each other again, or maybe see her happy and loved. But her mind was still circling that one second. She could’ve squeezed out an I love you, or a hang on. Just hang on a little fucking longer, enough to meet my girlfriend, enough to know that I’m teaching at a real university, I’m going to make Constance pay for what she did to you, I miss you… but all those possibilities had evaporated in an instant.

But Morgan couldn’t evade a direct question from her mother, no matter how Deidre tried to shield her. Morgan lifted her head and nodded, still holding onto her girlfriend. “Surprise,” she said, breath shaking. “The curse got me, just like you said.”

“I told you,” Ruth began. “On our last phone call, I told you, Morgan--”

“Yeah, well I tried anyway! And actually I got kinda close, but…you were right and I was wrong.” Morgan shrugged, her smile pulling into a pained gash on her face. “So now I’m this. Sad zombie lady. About seven months and counting. And it’s the worst, but I have at least a couple of friends, and Deirdre, who loves me, and who you would probably like if you weren’t spending so much time scrutinizing her like she’s a science problem. She’s insightful, and clever, and curious. She loved me even before I was like this, and she’s still here. So I can’t say I truly regret any of my actions, because I don’t want to know where I’d be without her. But I know that doesn’t sound like good news to you, so I’m at least partially sorry for that, I guess.”

Morgan changed the topic by way of reaching into her bag and fishing out a now partially crumpled bouquet of flowers. “I was gonna split up the bunch in two, but I guess they’re all yours now.” She held them up for inspection out of habit, before realizing that Ruth may not be able to take them for herself and so knelt in the grass to cram them into the bronze vase welded to the gravestone for this purpose. As she arranged the mess, the real news she wanted to share burned on her tongue. But some habits were hard to break, and she was too stiff with ritual fear to begin without first asking, “Are you really okay, Mother? Is there something I can do for you?”

Ruth Beck didn’t say anything for a good long while, but stared, just barely holding her heartbreak at bay. “Oh, pumpkin. I told you going to White Crest would only bring you more suffering,” She sighed. She looked over at Deirdre, defiantly transparent in giving her a critical once-over. “And what are your thoughts on this nonsense? If you’ve been with her through death, you’ve had to learn about our little family sickness eventually. Has she told you what happens to nice, loving girlfriends yet? I’d give you three guesses, but you just saw one of them disappear. And just how are you perceiving me, exactly? I don’t think you’re the one responsible for granting Morgan an extra half-life, but the exorcists and the wannabes who come out here don’t generally get ink in their eyes when they look at me.”

Morgan bowed her head as she worked, visibly cringing at the exchange. “Please be nice to her, Mother,” she said, barely above a whisper.

Deirdre had been expecting more bite, perversely, she had hoped for it. Not for Morgan, but onto herself. She hoped, perhaps, that if her annoyance shifted someplace else, Morgan could be freed from it. Yet, as she had been learning about Ruth, the woman could not make herself easy to hate. Complicated was less like a descriptor and more like a way of life. Even Deirdre, who had no intentions of conceding to Ruth, slumped a little when her bait wasn’t taken—embarrassed that she tried it in the first place. But she shook the sensation away and watched Ruth carefully, listening with an attentive ear. If that bite ever came back, she’d swallow Morgan up in a hug again and stand between them...but if she could be gentle...Deirdre shifted, releasing her high wall of protection for a sturdy one of support. Though she felt a little more like a guard dog, ready to snap if anything came too close. She anchored herself to Morgan’s side, even as she moved, as if stuck there. She hadn’t been expecting, either, that Ruth would address her again. She thought one angry comment was enough for her to ignore her, but Ruth was, as Deirdre supposed, terribly complicated. All she had really wanted to say to Ruth was how dare you and if she had some corporeal body, she might have settled for one dramatic slap. She knew Ruth by her failures as a mother, and as someone who loved Morgan as well, she was the harshest critic of the woman. Just as, she imagined, Ruth was in turn harsh of her.

“I love Morgan very much,” she began, though speaking to Ruth, she smiled warmly at Morgan. “I’ve loved her for a long time. If you’ll let me be dramatic to say it, maybe since I’ve met her. I intend on loving her for a longer one.” She turned to look at Ruth, her smile colored by confusion. Surely the woman who loved, and started a family, understood why Deirdre stayed, so was she testing her? Or did she really not know? “I always have. I’m not so afraid of death, that I would refuse to live. You and your husband have had a good life, wouldn’t you say? She has told me what happens, it might have been the first real thing she told me—and even if it wasn’t, you and I both know that Morgan wears her emotions freely.” Deirdre tilted her head to the side, withholding remarks about how terrible it would be to stamp that away. Or that she couldn’t understand how Ruth would know how badly her daughter wanted love, and then deny it. And if she could understand it, then she certainly couldn’t grasp how a mother would do that, and then expect that her daughter might still be excited to see her. She either played the villain and accepted it, dealt her tough love and recognized what it must have done or...well, she was the standing example of what happened when someone didn’t. “In a good way; in the best way,” she added quickly, nearly in a hiss. “I thought it was noble of her to want to fight fate, silly maybe, but the spirit to fight is a commendable one. How could I not want to be by her side? Maybe we would have had five years, or a few good months, maybe she would have won and freed herself...all I knew then was that I loved her, I wanted her to be happy, and if I could be there too...maybe we could make something together. Pain is unavoidable for anyone, death is equally as demanding, but somethings are worth it, aren’t they?” She had more to say about risks and love and much she knew that death could take prematurely, but that she was always ready. It never was so much the length of time, but how well it was spent. That she knew, better than the average person, just what fate she might have agreed to, and that she didn’t care. She loved Morgan more than letting fear rule her, or them.

But she realized quickly that Ruth was not as endeared to her long speeches and Morgan was, and left it there. ”I’m a banshee,” she explained simply, pressing a kiss to Morgan’s forehead. “And you didn’t answer her question: how are you?”

Ruth’s face remained impassive as the woman, the banshee, spoke. She understood a great deal, though how, Ruth didn’t know. It hadn’t been from Morgan. It would have been nice if she had been able to put those desperate puppy eyes Morgan seemed to have for her to good use and stop her. Keep her alive. But of course she hadn’t. The only way to get Morgan to do anything she didn’t want to was to make her. “I can see why she likes you,” Ruth said. “You’re a romantic fool as much as she is. More common sense, but…” Not enough to keep her in check. “In a less cursed lifetime maybe more of what you said would be true. Maybe wherever the heck you come from, it is. I guess I’m glad she stopped being a liar long enough to tell you.”

“Mother—“

Ruth continued as if she hadn’t heard Morgan’s interjection. “You seem kind, Deirdre. Enough to deserve better than whatever being attached to us is going to bring you. Everything is a bargain, Deirdre. And sometimes the universe cheats. And if she’s gone and made herself a zombie and made this mess last until some dumbass with a sword comes along, I’m not sure if you can know what you’re signing up for.”

“The curse is over, Mother,” Morgan said, hand clenched in Deirdre’s. She feared what looking away from her mother would do, if she would be left dangling and abandoned again or if her mother would read something cruel into it, so she only held onto Deirdre, tight, and hoped she understood that her love was keeping Morgan from falling apart. “I didn’t break it, but it’s done with me. And there’s more, something good and more I want to tell you, but for the mother of earth, I wish you’d just tell me anything about how you’re doing or what I can do for you.”

“I’ve been about as well as you can be after three years being a specter in this place. Neither of you want to know how well I’m really doing.”

Morgan exhaled stiffly. “I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t—I died too, okay? I ‘m not a ghost but I do get something about how awful—

“Don’t say that like it’s something I want,” Ruth’s voice managed to cut without raising to a scream. “If you had just listened to me, if you had accepted for once that I know what I am talking about and I’m not some evil gorgon bent on ruining your life, maybe you wouldn’t.”

“I am trying to tell you that I am taking our power back, Mom!” Morgan flinched to hear the way her voice snapped with anger. She always took the bait, no matter how long it had been or how much she said she wouldn’t. And realizing this made no difference. She couldn’t stop herself from going louder, more determined. “I found the miserable little witch who cursed us. I ripped her out of the ether to make her confess and after she came back to finish the job she started, I found a way to make her pay. She is going to suffer as much and as long as a ghost can for what she did to me and to you and your mother before you and mother before her. I am doing that. Me, Mother! I am taking control of our lives and if there is some miserable little Bachman descendant out there, they aren’t going to have to suffer another cursed year when I’m done with her! I am as free as I am ever going to be, and when she is ground into nothing but floating particles, she is never going to be able to cast her shadow over me or you or anyone. That’s what I wanted to tell you.” She smiled sadly. “I thought it might make you happy. I may not be doing what you wanted, but I am doing something right.”

“Morgan—”

“I’m not finished. I know you lied to me about going to White Crest. I met Nisa and her kids. I found your stuff. Everything you kept from me about your time there. I know, Mom. Everything you pretended you never were.”

“White Crest was a mistake. If you knew, it would only give you hope, it would encourage your outrageous tendencies to reach for something that’s not yours to have. I wanted to keep you safe, Morgan. Are you trying to say that’s a crime, now? Clearly I didn’t do a good enough job teaching you or protecting you, but now I’m a demon for even bothering?”

Morgan hung her head and wondered why she bothered.

“I’m waiting,” Ruth murmured.

Somehow her quiet tone hit Morgan worse than the rest. The words on her tongue started to dissolve. The questions she had for her drifted away like so much dust. What had she really expected? What could there have ever been to hope for? Morgan didn’t have it in her to hold back her tears. Everything went into keeping her voice even. “Maybe the way you tried was. Maybe…” Maybe it should have been.

Deirdre grimaced, pulling Morgan in so she could be tucked tight against her chest. It would have been wholly inappropriate to throw salt at Ruth, but that didn’t stop Deirdre’s hand from inching towards Morgan’s purse. “Hey,” she cooed for her girlfriend’s ears only. “You’re okay; you’re doing good.” She wrapped her arms around her tighter, just the way she liked, like the two of them were the only people who existed. She pressed her lips to the top of her head, hard as she could, and turned to look at Ruth. “It’s a terrible crime, actually. To let fear masquerade as love.” She pulled back just enough to lift her hand up and thumb Morgan’s tears away, as covertly as she could—not that the tears themselves were shameful, but because she understood the desire not to lend any more ammunition to an angry mother. “May I say something?” She asked Ruth, having no intention of listening to her answer anyway. “It’ll be long, so bear with me. But if anything, maybe we can let it serve as a breather for this conversation. I ask you, Mrs. Beck, do you love your daughter? Is there an answer to that you can admit? I would assume you do, and if so, there’s just something I don’t get...let me try and understand you a little better. Correct me where I’m wrong, but let me take a stab at your life.” Deirdre breathed in, drawing her attention away from Ruth so she could care for Morgan. There were tears to wipe, and strength to work back into her bones. Look at me, she was saying, don’t think about your mother, look at me. And like that, she began. “You hate the way your mother raised you, Mrs. Beck. It was cruel, and unfair, and I’m sure she must’ve justified it to you—if your life was suffering, if you loved nothing, there would be nothing to take. Or maybe she just didn’t care, she didn’t want a child anyways. But you grew up, and you got away, and you lived your terrible, tragic life until you found your way to White Crest with hope. But your curse, and the pursuit of its end, hurt people or it would hurt people, eventually. Good people, kind people, even yourself. Maybe the guilt was too much to live with, maybe you tried and tried and there really was no end—not without something too drastic even for you. So you left. And then you met your husband. And he, like you’ve called me, was a romantic fool. Stubborn, I bet. What did he say when you told him about the curse? That it was okay? That he would stay with you anyways? That he didn’t care?” Deirdre looked up at Ruth, smiling softly. “So, he finally convinces you and you two get married. And then you think, or maybe he gets through to you, that there might just be a life around your curse. If you’re smart, and careful, maybe you can make something good. And then you start a family, maybe by plan, maybe by surprise, it doesn’t matter how just that it did. And you have a daughter. And you realize that you can’t raise her like you were, so you try to be better. You don’t tell her about the curse, because the curse only brings pain, and ignorance can be a powerful thing. Either that’s your idea or it’s your husband’s, but that doesn’t matter either. You don’t say anything, and neither does he. But his love is open, yours is not. And how could it be? You know the dangers of love better than anyone else. You’re smart, and careful. And so your daughter wonders, tragedy after tragedy, what’s wrong with life. But you don’t tell her. And ignorance isn’t enough, she needs to be more careful, like you. You try to teach her how not to laugh, love, look forward to things. But you know it’s not working, despite your best efforts, because your daughter is like her father, in that regard—open. And then he dies, and there are some secrets you can’t keep alone. And suddenly all your daughter’s self-hatred has another place to go, and you know what happens next. You’ve lived your life, you know what it does to hope and argument. You try to tell her that she can make a good life with her curse, a smart one, a sensible one. You did it, after all; for those few years. And then you die, and she goes anyways, and you wait for her every year like clockwork. But you see, what I don’t understand with this story is how? How did you ever expect her to learn how to be happy in between the years when you taught her to fear happiness? How are you so blind to the fact that you hurt your daughter? How can you claim to know her so well, and yet speak with such ignorance? How is it that you can love your daughter, and yet never say it? She wasn’t wrong to go to White Crest, just like you weren’t. It’s a courageous act. How do you not know that? Her recklessness, her naïveté...none of those things are bad. She hopes, she fights, even when her odds are impossible and to do so doesn’t make her wrong, it means she was able to do something you couldn’t. How are you not proud of her? Morgan is the strongest person I know, strength she learned not because of you, but in spite of you. How can you think so lowly of her, that you don’t trust that she understood the risks? How?”

Deirdre shook her head, sighing her speech away. “You know what effect you have on your daughter. I know you see it. The curse is gone now, and even if it wasn’t, you’re both dead. You don’t have to keep this up, Mrs. Beck. I know you want to be a good mother, there’s nothing stopping you now. I ask you again, do you love Morgan? And are you sorry, for the role you’ve had to take in her life? Or do you want to float there and justify it to us like your mother might’ve?” Deirdre offered another smile, small but not but less sincere. At least, if everything she was saying was wrong, she hoped Ruth could see that her love for Morgan was true. And if she really cared about her own daughter, then they’d be two people on the same page. “Why don’t we try this conversation again, Mrs. Beck? Maybe listen to Morgan a little better, for once.”

“You don’t know fear,” Ruth tried to interrupt. Whatever airs this woman put on, she didn’t understand what it meant to be a mother, or what the cost of their existence truly was. She didn’t know how much of the banshee myths were true, but she couldn’t know enough about the universe to know when you were pinned down and doomed. “You don’t know me--” But the woman wouldn’t be stopped, and Ruth fell quiet. For the first time, she began to believe that Morgan had figured some things out. She had at least figured out enough for Deirdre to connect most of the dots. She didn’t have enough to make the spell work, to see Ruth as she truly was. Her affection for Morgan, blasted and cursed and biased, was too strong for that. But it was more than Ruth had expected. She couldn’t help but be stricken by it.

The only thing that kept Morgan from turning into Deirdre’s arms and hugging her was the pull of her mother’s face. The more Deirdre went on, so gently and kindly and with so much confidence, the more Ruth seemed to crack. It probably wasn’t visible to Deirdre, but Morgan had scrutinized her mother’s face for years searching her mother’s face for approval, for forgiveness, for a shadow of affection. She could transmute any scrap of tenderness into just enough to hope for. She knew the widening of her eyes, the way the edge dulled in her jaw or her frown slackened, there was something there. Some feeling that was for her. Morgan wished then for any passer-by to wander past them so her mother could borrow their body for a second, just long enough for Morgan to throw herself into her arms and beg and drag that feeling out of her.

“Mommy--” She whispered.

“It was a mistake.” Ruth said, clenching her airy fists. “I didn’t want to bring a child into this world with my problems, my curse. I am aware that I lack the typical temperament people look for in a good mother. And besides that, I wanted to be the end. And my one job above all else was to protect you. Not to be your friend, not to coddle you--”

“Mommy, please.”

“You need to understand.”

“I do! I do understand why you hurt me! I know you tried and I know you were afraid of loving me because of Constance’s fucking curse, but that doesn’t mean it was okay! And you can’t throw me into a room anymore just because you’re afraid that I’m having too many feelings for you to handle!”

“I wasn’t afraid of loving you, Morgan,” Ruth said, more quiet and stiffly controlled than ever. “I was afraid because I already did. I took one look at you, doughy and red and screaming and I loved you. And say all you want about chemicals and hormones in the wake of a pregnancy, but I couldn’t shake that love no matter how stubbornly you disobeyed me or how miserable you tried to make me. A love like that could only mean it would find you sooner rather than later. So I protected you.”

Morgan’s face crumpled with tears. She had waited her whole life to hear her mother say she loved her and now she wanted to scream to drown it out. “You hurt me. You didn’t even want me and you hurt me.”

“I changed my mind about wanting you as soon as I saw you.” Ruth said.

“That doesn’t matter. Like what, if your mother was here and she said she loved you, that would excuse how she destroyed you? Everything she took and burned and beat out of you?” Morgan stared wide-eyed at her mother, daring her to challenge what she said. “She turned you into someone capable of locking your kid away all day. Someone who would try to yell at her out of a fucking panic attack. Someone who would rather gaslight her child into hating herself to the point of danger than admit the truth. Someone couldn’t say I love you for her whole life. Is making you capable of that okay if she loved you? Love isn’t supposed to hurt like that, Mother. It’s not anything a person should want or be giving if it’s giving out licence to be cruel too.”

“Sometimes, pumpkin--”

“No. Not with love. Other reasons, fear, jealousy, anything else. But not that.”

“Then what is it you want from me, Morgan?”

Morgan had to think. She couldn’t touch the thing she wanted, not if it came with accepting all those miserable years, all that misguided bullshit, the skewed equations that meant her self-hatred was worth this so-called perfection and calling it love. She clung to Deirdre’s arms, fastening her tight to her back. It had been a difficult autumn, but what they had was never cruel, never calculating. Their mistakes and lapses were honest. They told each other what was wrong and what they needed. They were honest. They were sorry. Morgan threaded their fingers together as she cried. She tried to breathe with her, steady and confident. “I want you to apologize,” she said.

“I did the best I knew how. I swear to you, no, you--” she pointed at Deirdre. “If I am holding back even a little truth, I will vanish from this cemetery and haunt somewhere else for the rest of my days. I swear--”

“Don’t, Mother,” Morgan said softly. She let go of Deirdre and slipped away, coming right up to her mother until they were face to face. She needed to do this much on her own. “You don’t have to swear. I get it. This is hard for you. And you just want to feel like it was all worth it. All those mistakes, those shitty choices, all of that pain you made both of us carry. You want the exchange for what you sacrificed. But the spell isn’t what you thought it was, Mommy. You got it wrong and it’s not going to bring you what I feel like you’re asking me for.” She sniffled and tried to cup her hand around the shape of her hand. If she could just squeeze it, if she could hold even a piece of her for a second-- “Now, I’m going to destroy the person who really started this. Because you used to be just a sad little kid like I was and none of it was ever going to be fair and you deserve to know that she’s going to be punished. I’m gonna do that for us. Her soul will be nothing and she will hurt as much as we have the whole way. But I can’t get rid of what you did by destroying her. If you want something back from me, you have to at least tell me--” Morgan shuddered as her resolve crumbled one word at a time. “Tell me you’re sorry and you know now it was wrong. Just tell me that much.”

Ruth didn’t say anything for a long time. She could not bear to look at her daughter’s face, unnaturally pale as she began to sob. Morgan always grew red so quick. She forgot how to breathe, it was like she was so ready to run from any suffering, she’d try and take herself into the ether to hide from it. How she made Ruth panic when she hyperventilated. Her eyes would grow big she’d wheeze so helplessly, expecting Ruth to simply know the antidote. “I love you, Pumpkin,” she whispered, just for her daughter’s ears. Then she leveled her gaze at Deirdre. “My vow still stands. I swear I shall not haunt this place another moment again if I am holding any lies or doubts in my heart. I was wrong. I was wrong and I’m—I’m—”

There was a terrible pause before Morgan saw her mother dissipate. She had expected the trick as soon as the words had begun, but there was no bracing herself for the silence that claimed her mother’s voice and in the farthest, saddest parts of her, she thought she screamed just so she didn’t have to hear it.

There were several reactions Deirdre expected—anger, acceptance, sorrow. But for all she expected, Ruth was undeniably hard to read. She reminded her of her own mother in that way, as if her only emotions were anger and pride. Deirdre had yet to see the pride though, but she imagined it would come. And she hoped, as anyone who loved Morgan might, that it would be the right kind. She watched her intently, knowingly. Ruth had an answer delivered to her on a plate in two courses; an admittance of love, and an apology. She knew one would be easier than the other, but as Morgan had taught her, she hoped for both parts. And she waited. And she listened and she cut her ears through all of Ruth’s filler. And she waited. “I don’t accept that,” she mumbled, rejecting her vow. How could she? Neither of them were asking Ruth to leave, only to accept the truth all of them knew. There was no reason to swear to her, and Deirdre held no desire to humour her game. She would stand there and she would be honest on her own merits. She would listen to the sound of her own voice for once. And so she waited. The love came strangely coated in guilt, before her attempt at bolstering a fae bind, but at least it came. As Ruth continued to speak, Deirdre realized her vow was some manner of a performance. She had been withholding the truth from the start, hadn’t she? And now she wanted her exit, and freedom from Morgan. How would her daughter ever find her if she haunted some other place and she had no more magic to search? The hope she had, little as it was, shrank. Ruth revealed herself to be many things: a liar, a coward, and a bad mother. “I don’t accept,” Deirdre mumbled again. She wanted to ask her what it was this time, fear or guilt? Which did she let disguise itself as care? But she was gone soon, perhaps realizing Deirdre hadn’t created any promise between them, and she needed to be away from any more ideas she didn’t like. Deirdre turned her gaze to the cemetery gates, half expecting to find Ruth there, tip-toeing her way out with her bag of stolen goods over her shoulder.

Satisfied that Ruth wasn’t lingering behind some tree, Deirdre blinked her death-vision away and wrapped her arms around her girlfriend. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, trying to pull Morgan against her, “I’m sorry.” As it was, even trying to show how much they understood of her—how much her daughter, the very woman she didn’t think understood much, knew—and how she had no more places to hide, she still manufactured her own escape. “I’m sorry your mother is...like that.” She surrounded Morgan with her love, affection that would not leave, and hoped it could make something okay. “I didn’t accept her promise, by the way. It didn’t seem right to let her have that. But I suppose she just left anyway.” Deirdre sighed, and tried to meet Morgan’s eyes. “How are you, my love? Are you okay?”

Morgan whipped her head around, one side, then the other, searching for where her mother had gone. How far could she have gone? Where was she? Her chest burned and she clenched her fists to keep herself together. “You coward!” She screeched. She strained her eyes on the horizon, hoping to see her silhouette, even a vague Ruth-shaped blip nearby. How good could she be at this after only three years? “You don’t love anything, how dare you!” She kicked the bronze flower holder, over and over until it bent and the flowers spilled over. “You don’t want to talk to me, fine!” Her voice broke and she slumped in Deirdre’s grasp, weeping and gasping. “I should’ve known, I should’ve known she would never--” She grit her teeth and shook her head. “I heard you, and I knew you would never, you wouldn’t take her from me…” She shuddered, choking on sobs. “I don’t want you either!” She screamed to the sky. Maybe she was hiding there, or in a treetop, or behind a car. “I don’t want anything from you until you can tell me that, you coward!” She screamed again and buried her face in Deirdre. “I should’ve known she wouldn’t ever--” Change. Be different. Be better. She had died cruel and now she was determined to be that way. All that fear, all those stupid horror stories and bad memories-- Morgan sobbed and sagged against her girlfriend. “I’m sorry,” she said, still gasping. “You shouldn’t have had to put up with her, and what she tried to put on you.” At least she had run away on her own terms, if that could even be counted as a bright side. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I guess at least I don’t have anything left to say to her,” she laughed bitterly. “I don’t know. I wanted her to be better. If she was here, I was hoping she would...be someone who wanted to be better. I thought if I just understood…and I do, I do understand her pain. But she couldn’t…” Morgan shook her head and let it fall onto Deirdre’s chest. She was tired, and she wanted to be somewhere else.

“It’s not so bad—not so wrong—to hope.” Deirdre hummed, holding her girlfriend close, arms weaved around her as tight as she could manage. “I did too. I really thought she would—“ Deirdre swallowed, sighing the rest of her sentence away. It didn’t matter so much now that they had; Morgan wasn’t at fault for expecting her mother to...be a mother. Deirdre breathed her girlfriend in, pressing her lips against her jaw. There was much she didn’t know about motherhood, or family itself, but she had hoped that Ruth loved Morgan enough to face herself. She couldn’t imagine any other feeling being stronger than love. “It’s okay,” she kissed her cheek now. “Don’t be sorry to me. I’m okay.” She reached her hands down, and felt around Morgan’s purse for a pen and a tissue. “Let’s go back to the hotel, okay?” She kissed her again, pulling back and clicking the pen. “And we don’t have to do anything else. And if you’re feeling up to it, we can come back for the bones tonight like you planned, or we could do it tomorrow, or I can get them, or—“ Deirdre smiled softly. “Let’s just go back, and we can figure out the rest from there. We always do.” She scribbled carefully on the tissue, showing its contents off to Morgan when she finished. “Our address,” she smiled, stuffing it under the bent flower holder. “In case she wants to be civil for Yule. If not, I can throw salt at her. Ghost mothers are convenient like that.” She stepped back, her eyes drifting to the small note she left in the corner “if you want to try it differently”. Deirdre took Morgan’s hand in hers. “All good?”

Morgan rested in Deirdre’s arms, barely standing at all. There was something so counterintuitive and strange and gratifying about knowing Deirdre had hoped too. Even with all she knew of the world and all she knew about Morgan’s mother, she had it in her to hope. Morgan hiccuped another harsh sob and squeezed her girlfriend tight. “I love you,” she mumbled. “And I never, never want to hurt you the way either of us were. I love you and I want our life to be better. And I don’t need anything she has if it’s not going to fit with that.” She just wanted it. Or rather, she wanted her mother to learn to give something she could keep. Just one thing. One nice thing. Morgan hadn’t been able to give her peace with anything she had to say and she had nothing left in her to offer. She clung to Deirdre’s body as she fiddled in her bag and scribbled on the tissue. The rawness in her throat eased as she saw the note, the hope Deirdre was determined to carry for her, for both of them. She felt like a discarded pumpkin, hollowed out and too soft to stand. When Deirdre had finished her work, Morgan squeezed herself flush against her body again. “Thank you,” she said. “I...really like that. I guess when she can choose different…” Morgan shrugged, even as her trembling lip gave away the lingering pain.”Maybe she’ll be at peace. Maybe we both will.” Because that ache was still in her, the one cut by the girl she’d been, banging on her locked door and begging her mother for another chance, for her love. Morgan told the ache to hush, and wait, and have hope. She breathed slowly, trying to make her body still again. If it worked at all she couldn’t tell, but with Deirdre’s hand in hers, it didn’t matter. She nodded and started walking back toward the parking lot. Morgan cast one more glance at the cemetery, watching the shadows and the ripples in the short grass. Was she here? Was she watching? Was Agnes? But there wasn’t a soul to be seen, living or dead anymore. Morgan tucked herself into Deirdre’s side, murmuring, “I still want today to be good. I just need to lay down with you for a little bit, in our world. And then we’ll do all those things we said. And when we come back for Agnes--” She cast one more look back at the cemetery, lingering on her mother’s grave before turning to the spot where she knew Agnes was buried, too much in the shadow of the mausoleum for the grass around her to grow even, her placard probably weathered down to nothing. Morgan squeezed Deirdre’s hand to signal that she’d be back. She scooped up the fallen flowers and ran them over to Agnes’ neglected grave. It was so old, it wasn’t even granted a bronze vase with the others. Who was alive to care about her? Morgan laid the flowers down as neatly as possible and ran back to Deirdre’s arms. “We’ll make things good for Agnes too. If she’s still around here, we’ll help her too.”

“I love you too.” Deirdre said, marveling at how right those words always felt tumbling from her lips. Like breathing, she thought, and couldn’t imagine how anyone else thought they could be so hard to say. She nodded her agreement to Morgan’s words; they would be good to each other, as good as they possibly could be; they would be kind; they would be honest; the hurt they had endured would never be the hurt they left in the world. She could understand Ruth’s fear and cowardice, but only where it had come from, not why it needed to be clung to. She would not emulate her, and she knew Morgan wouldn’t either. It felt so simple then, holding Morgan in the cemetery that held her family, that they could be good. But as she had started to learn, simple did not mean bad. “Are you sure you want to—?” Deirdre swallowed, nodding. “Okay.” She watched Morgan with fondness and curiosity melded into one soft smile and head tilt. As she had also begun to learn, “good” was not some looming branch, fruit too far above to be plucked, it was smaller than that. Seeds, perhaps. Old roots, maybe. It took many shapes, just as evil did. Good was, sometimes, flowers for a neglected grave, dirt brushed off an old name. It was listening to a girl who knew far more about the world than anyone gave her credit, even her own mother. It was life’s discovery, one day at a time. It took the shape of people, or of arms wrapped around. “Yes,” she breathed, leaning down to kiss Morgan finally, fiercely. “We can make it good for her too, even if she isn’t around, even if she is.” Good was not one thing, once, but many things, all the time—shifting. It was choice. And there was no one who knew choice better than Morgan Beck.

#don't do sadness #wr deirdre #wr ruth #wr ruth beck #wr chatzy #wr deirdre chatzy #wr ruth chatzy #wr ruth beck chatzy #abuse tw #tw abuse #domestic abuse tw #emotional abuse tw #mentions of #wickedswriting

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fancymuffinparty · 6 years

Text

Late Night Rendezvous

Rating: T; for language and comic mischief

Pairing: Eren Jaeger/Annie Leonhart

Summary: For Day Four of Ereannie Week 2018! Option A: Mischief. Modern AU.

Eren and Annie’s excellent adventure. Basically. Minus the time travelling, of course.

And all Eren expected to happen after sneaking into her room was a casual makeout session...

Word Count: 1856

A/N: This is a couple days late, but here is my second contribution! :’) The last prompt was kinda angsty, so I’m balancing the feels with some stupid ereannie shenanigans! Hope you enjoy these two lovebirds getting into trouble! :D

It was around nine o’clock when Annie and her father bid one another goodnight and retreated upstairs to their respective bedrooms.

But Annie was still wide awake even after the clock had struck midnight, pacing quietly about her room. Her father had long since fallen asleep, as indicated by the loud snores resounding from behind his door, so she seized the opportunity to text her boyfriend and invite him over for a little late night rendezvous.

In the past, he’d snuck in through her bedroom window, as it was far less risky than trying to sneak him through the front door. ‘Less risky’ in that the two young adolescents had a lower chance of getting caught using this method. The risk of sustaining injury from attempting to climb a somewhat daunting height was still a very real hazard.

The perils of climbing through the window added a certain quality that Annie found rather enticing. The thrills she and her companion got out of it were so rewarding.

Speaking of her companion…

What’s taking him so long? she thought, glancing over at her phone to check the time. The last message relayed between them had been sent nearly an hour earlier.

Before she could compose another message to ensure he was still on his way, she was stopped by the subdued tapping of tiny rocks propelled against her window. Heeding the call, Annie tiptoed her way over and slowly slid the glass window open, her sights directed towards Prince Charming below.

Eren Jaeger was the cutest dork alive- but damn, his timing was the worst.

“You’re late!” Annie chastised him, keeping her voice low so as not to make too much noise.

“Sorry,” Eren apologized, loud enough to wake the neighbor’s dog. The dog’s subsequent barking forced Eren to make haste with his entrance, scrambling up the adjacent ladder Annie had set up earlier in preparation for this very event. “Shit!”

Annie implored him to hurry in earnest. “Are you trying to get us caught?!” she asked, pulling him inside through the window once he’d reached the top. “And what took you so long?”

Eren quickly slid the window shut, relishing in the brief moment of reprieve. “My brother was being a dick and wouldn’t let me borrow the car,” came his hushed reply. “Long story short, I had to bribe him.”

“Well you could’ve texted me to let me know,” Annie muttered, folding her arms across her chest.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry,” Eren said with a sigh. “I also parked a couple streets over so that might have added another ten minutes to my commute.”

Commute? Annie often found Eren’s colorful vocabulary to be fascinating, but rather than give him a hard time about his word-choice, she merely shook her head in disapproval and asked, “Why didn’t you just park curbside a couple houses down?”

“I didn’t want your dad or any of your tattletale neighbors seeing my car,” Eren replied with a shrug.

Annie quirked a brow. “The neighbors don’t give a damn what cars park on our street. Especially not if they’re sleeping,” she contested. “And you know my dad’s a heavy sleeper. He’s been out since around 9:30.”

Eren wiggled both eyebrows upon hearing that. “So your dad’s asleep, huh? Lucky us!”

Annie simply nodded in response, standing wordlessly before the green-eyed brunet with an expectant look on her face.

Okay… Eren thought. Now what?

Now that they’d established all systems were a go, what exactly was the hold up? Not that Eren was eager to jump into bed or anything…

The silence that fell between the two made him feel awkward, and he proceeded with commencing their late-night rendezvous in equally awkward fashion.

“Soooooo are we gonna kiss now or…?” Eren rubbed the back of his neck nervously, still finding their sneaky arrangements somewhat nerve-wracking in spite of the fact that this was hardly their first rodeo. “Should I lie down…?” His eyes flickered to the bed, before returning to Annie’s stoic gaze.

“Clearly not the romantic type, are we?” Annie scoffed, facepalming herself.

Eren frowned, his feelings only slightly hurt. “Are you kidding? That entrance was something out of a fairytale! No! A Disney movie!”

“Oh my god,” Annie huffed, cringing in silent despair.

“What?” Eren chuckled. “You want me to bring some rose petals next time? So I can sprinkle them all over the bed? Or better yet, we could light some scented candles to set the mood. Or how about-”

“Eren,” Annie interjected, bringing her pointer finger to her lips as a warning. “Keep it down.”

Before Eren could mumble a slightly panicked apology, Annie had reached for his hand, guiding them both to her plush queen sized bed. They slumped down next to each other, knee to knee, shoulder to shoulder. Annie appeared to be on the verge of telling him something.

“There’s a reason I invited you over tonight,” Annie whispered, anticipation flaring in her icy blue eyes.

“A reason other than sex?” Eren quipped, earning him an unimpressed frown. “Kidding,” he added quickly. Well, sort of. “Go ahead. I’m all ears.”

Annie tilted her head, hesitant. “I’m pining for a little… adventure.”

Eren became instantly curious, prying for details. “Define adventure.”

Realizing they were only losing prime shenanigan time, Annie got straight to the point, shooting Eren a look of determination.

“We…” she drawled, preparing to dole out the command in resolute fashion. “Are going to egg Jean Kirstein’s house.”

In that moment, Eren Jaeger fell madly in love with Annie Leonhart, internally vowing to himself he would wife her so fucking hard someday.

Jean’s house was a measly ten-minute drive.

As Eren’s car neared the Kirstein’s residence, he killed the lights and then waited for Annie’s cue to cut off the engine.

In the blonde’s lap was a carton of a dozen eggs; the real stars of the upcoming show.

Donning a mischievous smirk, Annie pulled her hoodie over her head and turned to give her partner in crime a nod in affirmation. Eren acted accordingly, killing the engine and pulling over his own hood with the intent of masking his identity.

“All right,” Annie ordered, cautiously handing over half of the carton’s eggs. “You remember the plan?”

Eren nodded, accepting the delicate eggs with care. “Blitzkrieg style,” he recapped. “We bum-rush the front yard and fire away.”

“Aim for the windows and the front door,” Annie reminded him, waiting for the right moment to strike. Not a single person was around, and the neighborhood was devoid of any passing cars or barking dogs. “This ought to teach Kirstein never to steal the last donut ever again.”

Was egging someone’s house a justifiable solution to such a minor transgression?

Yes. Yes, it was.

“Ready?” Annie’s question received an instant thumbs up. “Let’s do this.”

They bolted out of the car in unison, both commencing a furious sprint for the Kirstein house. As soon as they set foot behind enemy lines, they wasted no time bombarding the home’s exterior with cracked egg shells and splattered golden yolks. Eren’s aim was decent, but unable to match Annie’s perfect accuracy and precision.

She was about to fire the last one at an obnoxious-looking garden gnome when it suddenly dawned on her.

Wait a minute… the Kirsteins never had that gnome in their front yard…

Annie briefly looked up, eyes roving over the front porch in search of the house’s number.

The Kirsteins’ address is 1005… and that’s…

1007.

Shit.

“Eren!” She abruptly grabbed him by the arm, tugging him away with urgency “Retreat!”

“What? Why?” His dumbfounded question was answered after Annie had pointed out their fatal mistake- realizing they’d targeted the wrong house.

And not just any house.

The Kirstein’s next door neighbor was none other than Keith Shadis; residential hardass and former Marine.

This was the ultimate fuck up.

“Oh, shit!” Eren mouthed, silently mourning his impending death.

As if to seal their fate, the light above the front porch came on, followed by the emergence of a shadowy figure behind the curtains. It was a tall burly man; the homeowner himself no doubt.

Eren and Annie turned and ran with everything they had, pushing themselves to the furthest limit as though their very lives depended on it. Neither looked back, their eyes set for the getaway vehicle to make their escape.

They were about halfway down the street when a booming voice called after them, shattering the eardrums of anyone unfortunate enough to hear within a five-mile radius.

“Hey! Get back here! You little shits are gonna pay for this! HEY!”

The naughty duo finally reached the car and immediately hopped in, struggling to buckle their seatbelts as adrenaline was still coursing through their veins.

“Go, go, go!” Annie commanded, gripping the edge of her seat.

Eren obeyed her instruction and pulled a quick u-turn, speeding down the street in a frenzy.

Once they were out of the neighborhood and back on the main road, Annie leaned back into her seat and expelled a deep groan, hoodie still covering her head.

Close call back there, she thought. Too close.

Eren willed himself to keep his mouth shut but eventually gave in to the laugh surging through his chest, unable to control his riotous cackling.

“How could you mistake Jean’s house for Shadis’ house?!” he bellowed, voice heavy with laughter. “We’ve visited enough to know what it looks like!”

“In my defense,” Annie began, still mulling over their narrow escape, “The streetlights were unusually dim, and it’s fucking pitch black outside.” Never mind the fact that the Kirstein’s lived in neighborhood where the houses were all cookie cutter versions of the other.

Eren took note of her slightly traumatized demeanor, attempting to ease the tension the best way he knew how.

His fine-tuned idiocy, of course.

“Relax, babe. We’re safe now,” Eren remarked casually. “By the way, that’s one hell of an arm you got there. Kinda turned me on.”

Annie rolled her eyes, but couldn’t help the upturned lips of the smile etched on her face. She turned to look out of the passenger window, ensuring it was hidden from Eren’s view so as not to give him a single ounce of encouragement.

She remained unresponsive, until…

“I think that’s about as much ‘adventure’ as I can handle,” she quipped, cynicism oozing from each word. “Ought to satisfy me for a lifetime.”

Eren suddenly hatched an idea, knowing just the right thing to cap their impromptu excursion. “Care for one more adventure?” he asked. “It’s a fairly tame one. I promise.”

Annie’s interest was immediately piqued. “And what would that be?”

“We’d go on a little hunt.”

“A hunt for what?”

Eren was so glad she asked. “The nearest donut shop.” To celebrate, of course. As well as atone for the donut Jean had stolen earlier that week. Luckily, the nearest twenty-four-hour shop was a short drive away, and they still had a few hours until dawn.

One more adventure couldn’t hurt…

In that moment, Annie Leonhart fell madly in love with Eren Jaeger, internally vowing to marry the shit out of him someday.

#ereani #ereannie #ereannieweek2018 #day four option a: mischief #mywriting #these two make a solid pair #i'd like to think eren brings out the more lighthearted side of annie #i definitely prefer writing dorky pretimeskip eren's personality #he was so much more lively back then...#sigh #posttimeskip eren is cool too dont get me wrong #i like that hes more mature i suppose #anywayyyy #eren exploits annie's love for donuts #for a good cause mostly ;)

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toddsfall · 7 years

Text

Oh, what are you willing to do?

Written for day 5 of Nurseydex week :)

summary: What do you do when your friend is hurting and you're too far away to comfort him?

read on ao3 (which I would recommend doing, since I didn’t copy the formatting on here :p)

It's not like they had never talked before the summer started. Logically, Nursey knew that. Still, he couldn't help but smile at how close his friends felt when he kept in touch with them like this on the daily. Summer in New York away from the guys didn't seem so daunting anymore. It made him feel all warm and fuzzy inside. He was so glad Chowder didn't have the emotional range of a teaspoon. The dude was never shy to let them know how he was feeling. It was one of his best qualities and Nursey loved him for it.

The Frogs B-)

Chowder: I miss you guys :(

Nursey: aw me 2 c

Dex: same

Chowder: What have you been up to?

Dex: work mostly, kinda boring

Chowder: aw no tell us about it! We're interesting. Right, Nursey?

Nursey: sure

Dex: oh okay

Dex: I'm working in my uncle's shop this summer

Dex: it's a hardware store, but we haven't had many customers. so, pretty boring

Chowder: pity :(

Nursey: u should install some games on ur phone

Dex: hmm maybe

Dex: what are you doing, then? roaming around the city?

Nursey: p much, yeah

Nursey: I'm looking for inspiration, trying 2 write some poems

Chowder: cool! what are they about?

Nursey: lots of things

Nursey: the city, my mom, summer, etc

Nursey: I even wrote one about you guys

Chowder: noice

Dex: u should write about the ocean

Nursey: I don't see much of it, but yeah. maybe

Chowder: I have the best view of the ocean anyway B)

Nursey: oh, here we go again

Dex: Christopher Chow I love you with all my heart but you are Wrong

Chowder: :))))

Nursey: pls

Dex: ...

Chowder: I'm going to go help my mom with food

Chowder: we should keep talking guys

Chowder: it feels weird not talking to you guys every day

Nursey: I feel that

Dex: we will C, don't worry. go help your mom :)

Chowder: toodles

The Frogs B-)

Chowder: u know who's really pretty and smart

Chowder: and funny

Chowder: Farmer

Nursey smiled down at his phone. Chowder had many good qualities. Subtlety was not one of them. He was surprised it had taken Chowder a full two weeks before asking though.

Nursey: hmmm

Nursey: are you perhaps trying to ask us if you can add Farmer to the groupschat Chowder

Chowder: ... perhaps

Nursey: go ahead dude

Chowder: you won't regret it!

Chowder: I'm just tired of having to keep typing things in double when I have news to share

Nursey: lol

Chowder added Caitlin Farmer to the chat

Nursey: sup Farms

Cait: hey guys

Nursey changed the name of the chat to Farmer and the Frogs

Cait: oh that sounds like it could be our college band name

Chowder: omg yes! too bad I can't play any instruments :(

Nursey: too bad, we'd look so hot

Dex: oh good another rational person

Cait: hey dex, honored to join the chat

Cait: it's kinda infamous to me now lmao, Chris has told me a lot about it

Nursey: oh no

Dex: not cool c

Dex: what happens in the groupchat stays in the groupchat

Chowder: don't worry I didn't tell her about your embarrassing encounter with that cashier the other day

Chowder: oops

Cait: what happened?

Nursey: Dex stumbled when he got to the register

Nursey: he was holding a very juicy tomato in his hand

Nursey: and he was wearing a white t-shirt

Nursey: it was a very Me move

Cait: oh no :o

Dex: I feel very betrayed right now

Chowder: sorry Dex, I'll try not to do it again

Chowder: but Cait can be VERY persuasive

Cait: *wiggles eyebrows*

Cait: yeah I can

Dex: no flirting in the groupchat

Farmer and the Frogs

Nursey: why did I do this

Dex: what's up Nurse?

Nursey: remember how I thought it might be fun to enter that writing contest?

Nursey: Yeah, it's no fun

Dex: have you written anything for it yet?

Nursey: yeah I have a big chunk of it lined out

Nursey: I just can't bring myself to write :(

Dex: hey no pressure

Dex: I know that's weird coming from me, but putting too much on yourself just isn't going to help right

Nursey: yeah I know, it's just. I wanted to do this

Nursey: make myself proud or whatever

Dex: hey what about this

Dex: you promise to do nothing but focus on your writing for the next ten minutes

Dex: and I'll be proud FOR you

Nursey: aight i'll try

Cait: oh sorry only seeing this now, I was at work

Cait: how's the writing going Nursey? :)

Nursey: I actually made myself sit at myself and write

Nursey: and the chances of me actually finishing this thing are looking a lot brighter

Cait: yay!

Chowder: we're proud of you too!

Cait: you bet :D

Nursey: thanks guys :)

D-menlicious

Nursey: thanks for earlier bro

Nursey: you actually helped me

Dex: you're welcome Nursey :)

Nursey: :)

That night, Nursey went to bed feeling very grateful for his friends. He stared at his phone, trying to see if Dex was going to say something else. When it didn't look like he had anything more to add, he went to sleep.

Farmer and the Frogs

Nursey: do you guys ever think about how small we are and how infinite the universe is?

Cait: all the time lol

Nursey: it's craaazy

Cait: tell me about it

Dex: guys please go to sleep it's 4 am

Nursey: okay but why are you awake dude

Dex: I'm already up bro

Dex: have to drive my uncle around today, we're talking to his suppliers

Nursey: kay, good luck

Cait: night guys

Nursey: night

Nursey: and morning Dex

Farmer and the Frogs

Dex: fuck fuck fuck

Dex: ugh

Nursey: bro?

Nursey: what's up?

D-menlicious

Nursey: Dex?

Nursey: what's wrong

When Dex still hadn't answered after ten minutes, Nursey decided to call him. Maybe he was feeling worried over nothing, but he wanted to make sure. Dex was there for him when he needed him, now he could be there for him too.

Dex picked up after three rings. "Hey Nursey." He sounded tired, but not in a panic or anything. Nursey blew out a breath.

"What's up man? I saw your post in the chat. Sorry I didn't answer immediately, I was writing."

"That's okay. I was just blowing off some steam. Don't worry about it."

"Well, I have you on the phone now. You might as well tell me. C'mon, I'm your d-man. Let me carry the weight, got your back and all that."

"It was nothing major, really. Just one of those days you know?" Nursey hummed, he knew those days well. He was in fact so intimately familiar with those day, that he might as well be in a long-term relationship with them by now. Dex continued. "Like, this morning. I overslept, so I had to rush to the store and I couldn't eat breakfast. Then, to add to my already great morning mood, I dropped a wrench on my foot. Of course, I was wearing work boots. That didn't stop it from hitting my shin, though."

Nursey sucked in a breath. "Ouch, that sounds painful."

Dex huffed out a laugh. "Yeah, it fucking was. And then after my morning in the darkest timezone had finally ended, of course everyone in town suddenly decided to stop by the store. I was swamped all afternoon. God, I'm so tired."

"That sucks dude, but now you're home right? Go rest. Watch some youtube videos of people doing stupid things and falling. Those always cheer you up. Forget about this day for a bit."

Dex sighed. "I wish I could. I got home with that exact plan in mind. But of course my teenage sister has decided that today is the day she's going to rebel against my parents. I heard them fighting when I came in. And now everyone is in a foul mood."

"Yikes. Alright dude. Let's go, you're getting out of the house." Nursey was already getting, putting on his shoes.

"Where am I supposed to go? Nursey, what are you doing?" Dex said, sounding concerned.

"Go sit outside, your yard or your roof or whatever. Just, somewhere without any people around. Can you do that?" Nursey tried not to sound too excited. He was just helping his friend. Not his crush.

Dex sighed again, but Nursey could tell it was the kind of sigh that came before Dex decided to give in. "Okay, fine. I'm going outside right now. Hold on, I'll call you back."

"Aight dude, take your time. I want to show you something."

Nursey went outside, grabbing a blanket as he went. He wanted to settle in before Dex called back.

It wasn't long before he got the call. "Okay, okay I'm on my roof. What now, Nursey?" He could hear the smile in Dex's voice. Good, he was getting him out of his head already.

"I'm going to FaceTime you. Hang up."

Derek Nurse calling

Nursey waved at Dex. "Hey Dexy! Okay, I'm going to show you the view from my roof." He moved his camera around while he went on. "It's nothing special, I know. I just like coming up here when I'm feeling down. Look how pretty and pink the sky looks, though. That's pretty dope right?"

Dex's camera showed his face. A small smile was creeping in the corners of his mouth. "Yeah, it's pretty dope Nursey."

They stayed talking like that for a long time. Nursey felt a little overwhelmed, he hadn't been able to look at Dex's face for most of the summer. Snapchat just wasn't the same. Eventually though, he had to admit that he was getting cold. The sun had set and on the roof, a cool night breeze was giving him goosebumps. "I'm going to have to go inside soon, I'm getting a little cold."

Dex smiled at him, looking infinitely more relaxed than he had hours before. "Okay Nursey. But first, let me show you something too." He turned his phone so Nursey could see the night sky. There were many more stars visible than he could see in the middle of the city.

"Wow, that's pretty cool." The comfort of the moment must have gone to his head, because he added. "Those stars kind of remind me of your freckles."

Dex flipped the camera back around. His blush was visible, even in the low light of his phone. "Oh. Well, thanks. I guess?" His nose scrunched up.

"You're welcome." Nursey smiled at him. He looked adorable.

Dex's answering smile was blinding.

Farmer and the Frogs

Chowder: sooo what's up guys

Chowder: me and Cait are going to the aquarium today :DD

Cait: we're v excited

Nursey: sounds great bros

Dex: have fun

Chowder: thanks! I'm excited to see the sharks

Dex: wow would've thought

Nursey: not me that's for sure

Nursey: I've finished my draft for the writing contest thing btw

Cait: whoooo

Cait: you should celebrate

Nursey: mm maybe I will

Dex: you called?

Chowder: haha wow

Chowder: and you say my jokes are corny

Nursey: oh well, maybe I WILL call you

Dex: oh yeah? and what would we talk about?

Nursey: oh, all sorts of things

Nursey: maybe poetry

Nursey: or sustainable energy sources

Dex: what makes you think I want to talk about those things

Nursey: I can be very persuasive

Chowder: no flirting in the groupchat they said

Cait: hypocrites

#nurseydexweek #nurseydex week #nurseydex #dexnursey #sarahsfic #again #technically I posted this on time on ao3 :p

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someaxolotl · 3 years

Text

Shopping Trip

After being given the potions and notepad I made my way out of the labs. As I was walking back to the portal my Abyscreen started to ring.

“Hey, Veronica! Good job!” It’s Gwyn. “The request has been marked as complete, thanks for dealing with Trem.”

“Wait does she not like you.”

“Kinda… Anyway, it has been brought to my attention that you’re somewhat low on supplies.”

“No, not really.”

“Oh? Then what do you have to heal yourself with? Do you have any anti-poison, smelling salts, food?”

“...fine, I’m low on supplies…”

“Ok, meet me outside the Hall, we’ll make our way to the commerce district.”

Suddenly a second voice cuts in. “Wait are you two going shopping without me?”

Gwyn sighs. “Nim you do realize that you’re a part of both of our screens right? Technically it’s not “without” you.”

“Still it’s not the same, I would love to go shopping in person with my favorite manager and trainee.”

“Fine… if you want you can tag along… but only if Veronica also agrees.”

“It’s fine.”

“Yay! I’ll meet the two of you in front of the hall.” Nim cuts out of the call.

“Sorry about that, Nim can be insistent sometimes. Anyway, you’re also short on cash so I’ll lend you some money.”

“...thanks for the reminder.”

…

Once I got back to the hall I popped into a restroom to change into my casual clothes. A pair of jeans and a hoodie, the only things I still have from home… I guess it should be somewhat somber, but eh, they are just things that haven’t been destroyed yet. Items are meant to be used if they break then they served their purpose. Still…

I step out of the restroom and into the plaza in front of the hall. Gwyn is standing next to a lamppost, he’s wearing a button-down shirt and pants. “Ah good, you’re here.”

Nim pops out of a nearby bush. “She’s here?! Yay!” She rushes at me but I sidestep and she faceplants on the ground. “Oh… boo...”

Gwyn walks over to her and pokes her. “Please control yourself, we are in public.” He turns to face me. “Anyway, now that you’re here I guess we can start or trip.”

There's a muffled “yay…” from the still face down Nim.

“So how do you guys get around?”

“Oh, we take the rail.” Gwyn gestures his head towards a larger building.

“Wait, rail? There’s a rail system here?!”

Nim pops up from the ground. “Oh yeah it’s fun you dummy, it connects most of the city! You haven’t been walking everywhere, right?”

“No?”

Gwyn looks concerned. “Wait how have you been getting around?”

“I’m not really sure what to call it but I kinda fly and/or jump using wind magic. Why?”

“I’m just making sure you aren’t doing anything illegal. You’re fine, just keep the property damage to a minimum.” Gwyn starts reaching into his pocket and grabs his card. “Anyway the rail is free as long as a person is an active member of Abysia. You’ll just need to scan your card.”

We enter the station and Gwyn and I scan our cards. Nim just jumps over the barrier.

“Nim please stop…” Gwyn seems more tired than anything at Nim’s antics.

“What am I going to do, arrest myself? :3”

“Wait is Nim law enforcement?”

Gwyn sighed. “Yeah, she’s in charge of enforcing the rules determined by a council of leaders from different guilds. She’s helped out by some managers like me and some smaller guilds.”

“How does she effectively do it, she seems too… jovial?”

Nim chimes in. “Oh give me more credit, Vevi, I can easily destroy any guild.”

“Wait, Vevi?”

Gwyn facepalms. “Yeah, she came up with that nickname for you.”

“Do you not like Vevi?” Nim seems almost sad.

“No it’s fine I just never had a nickname before…”

Nim seems to perk up and blush in response… wait can an AI blush?

The train arrives and we step inside. We are the only ones in the cabin and once the doors close Gwyn speaks up. “Say, Veronica, what did you do before you arrived here? Your file gives no clear homeworld.”

“Oh well, let’s see,” I think for a bit. “I got kicked out of my family because I “manifested the wrong powers or something” so I acted as a hunter until I messed something up and fell into a different world. I worked rescuing people there and exterminating threatening beasts. Got bored of that place and left for a different world. Rinse and repeat until I ended up here. Some worlds were better than others but I managed.” I look up and Gwyn is typing stuff down into his screen. “Wait are you writing this down!?”

“Yes because this is useful information. Anyway it makes sense why no homeworld was determined, you jumped through so many worlds you don’t have very much of a trace left of your homeworld. Do you happen to know its name?”

“No, sorry…”

Nim suddenly hugged me. “Don’t be sorry Vevi, you’ve had a rough time.”

“Eh honestly it’s fine, it was not bad.” I turn and look out the window. For some reason, in the distance there was a pillar of smoke. “Hey is that supposed to be there?”

Gwyn also looks out the window. “No? See if there’s anything on the screen.”

I pull out my screen… There are a few trending links… A sale… Some random pet video… Ah, here we go, a live stream. I open it. “...oh no.” The live stream shows a half-destroyed bar, and in front, Mila and Elias are arguing over something. The sound quality is bad but they probably got in a fight over drinking.

“Well, I guess I should deduct some money from their accounts…” Gwyn sighs heavily. “At least you haven’t destroyed anything yet…”

“Oh come on you two, at least we know they are exciting people to be around. :3”

Gwyn is just done now. “Nim, they just committed arson, aren’t you supposed to stop breaches?”

“Eh, but that’s not fun. :(“

The train slowly comes to a stop and Gwyn stands up. “This is our stop.”

We step out onto the platform and make our way out of the station. There’s a large collection of buildings. “Vevi, welcome to the commerce district.”

Gwyn starts explaining. “The commerce district is a collection of ‘malls’. Within each mall, there are independently run stores and stores run by guilds. The malls are broken up by purpose and there’s a tier system of sorts, Bronze, copper, silver, gold, and platinum. Each tier is more related to pricing, you can still find some decent stuff from lower tiers. We are making our way over to the silver adventurer mall. A guild by the name of the Gilded Roses sells the excess loot from their dives into the Dungeon and other locales.”

Nim seems excited. “Ooooo can we get crepes?!”

“Crepes? You guys have crepes?”

Gwyn pauses for a second. “Sure.”

…

It did not take long to get to the mall, it is fairly well decorated and there is a wide variety of different stalls peddling stuff like backpacks and anti-poison and other similar stuff. Eventually, we stop at a stall built into a wall. Gwyn steps up and rings a small bell on the counter.

There’s a small voice from the back. “One sec.” A small goblin walks up to the counter, he is oddly sleepy looking. “Oh hello Gwyn, oh and Nim is here too… Did I accidentally sell something illegal again?”

“No Steve, you’re fine.” Gwyn pulls out his screen. “We need to outfit a rookie, have anything on this list?”

Steve looks at the screen. “...I think so? Come on in to the back, I’ll check the stock.”

We walk into the stall and into a small sitting area. “What’s exactly on the list?”

“Oh, nothing special Vevi just a few items to make sure nothing bad happens.”

“Yeah, you already have weapons so you're fine on that front.” Gwyn thinks for a second. “Wait what do you fight in?”

Oop that an embarrassing question… “A tank top and shorts…”

“Heh?! 8/ That's so dangerous Vevi!!”

“I guess we need to get you some armor. Light, standard, or heavy?”

“Oh, I’m not bothered much by weight classes. I can’t wear sleeves in combat though it can interfere with the brands.”

Gwyn thinks for a second. “Eh, we’ll just get you whatever they have without sleeves.”

Steve pops over to where we are sitting carrying a bag. “Lucky you, I found everything. Five health potions and mana potions, three vials antivenom and pouches of smelling salts, ten rations, and a tent.”

Gwyn seems happy. “Thanks, Steve, do you have any vest or sleeveless armor?”

“...I’ll get my sister to check.” Steve turns around. “Clara?”

Another goblin pops her head out from behind the shelves. “Yeah?”

“This lass wants some armor.”

“What type?”

“Vest or sleeveless”

“Ok!” Clara disappears behind the shelves. She runs over with a stack of armor. “So what do you like?”

There's a few varieties of armor like a kevlar vest, a plate cuirass, a chainmail vest, a leather vest… “I’ll take the cuirass.”

“Good choice!” Clara grins, grabs the leftover armor, and disappears back into the back.

Steve waves to Clara. “Is that everything? I’ll send the charge to the administration.”

Gwyn stands and shakes his hand. “That’s all, thanks Steve.”

“So… Crepe time? :3”

…

After we left the stall we walked outside a bit till we got to a crepe stand.

“Gods, these crepes are great!” I am currently eating my third crepe.

“Oh definitely. :D” Nim on the other hand is on her fifth crepe.

“Eh, they are fine.” Gwyn is still eating his first one.

We are currently seated in a park with a nearby crepe stand. It's nice and peace-

“What do you mean we are on probation!” There’s a nearby group of what seems to be adventures arguing with a manager.

“You guys have received a number of complaints from a variety of source-”

One of the larger adventurers flips the table knocking the manager to the floor. “Oh well, I guess another complaint won’t hurt.”

I find myself rushing in between the manager and the adventurers. “Stop what you are doing!”

“Don’t interfere!” the largest one tries to throw a punch but it’s blocked by Gwyn holding a rapier.

“It is against the laws of Abysia to harm a manager.” Gwyn sweeps the adventurer to the floor and stabs the back of his leg.

A second adventure stands up. Just from her general air, she seems to be the leader. “Well if it isn’t one of the prissy ‘enforcers’ what is the robot bitch also here? Oh well, I’ll end all of you!” She pulls out a sword and starts rushing us, but suddenly she stops moving and I feel a flow of electrical mana coming from Nim. “Oh, Nimueh is here, how fun.”

Nim is full of malice. “Stand down…”

“Oh, what are you going to do, kill me.”

The flow of mana stops. “I’ll let you go but if you try to harm any of them I'll show you that there are fates worse than death…”

The adventure flashes a crazed smile. “Bet.” She takes a step forward and there’s an extreme flow of electrical mana almost as if-

There’s a horrifying cacophony of cracks and the adventurer crumbles to the ground. “Nim what did you do!?”

“Nothing major, I just forced electrical signals into her muscles that caused them to flex and fracture a fair majority of her bones.” She kicks the adventure. “Gwyn, call an enforcer and get them to pick these two up. Now, who wants more crepes!:3”

0 notes

thesoundofsimple · 6 years

Text

It took me a while to compile these. Maybe I was busy, maybe I didn’t want the closure. I’m not always so great with closure. I think it was more that i tried and failed to post this several times and it was starting to become too much work. Anyway, I’ve finished the series. This story has consumed me for the last two years. Hey, I’m not a fast reader ok - don’t you judge me. But it’s a nice thing to have something in your life like that for so long, what’s the rush. I’ve compiled a bunch of my fav moments from the book below along with some commentary on some of them. Where to begin... I read this series because of two people. Either in high school or early college my friend Matt insisted that I start reading the Gunslinger series. He was obsessed with it. I was not a king fan at the time and chalked his interest Up to the other weirdo fantasy books he would read about kings and queens and warriors and big bears and those fantasy books you would see in the bookstores with the girls with the big boobs and they are riding a wolf or something from other dimensions and such (you know the ones right?) Sometimes he’d plead with me anyway about how I was missing out. I ignored this but regardless, the seed was planted. As I was reading this, i realized how lucky i was to be able to just keep reading this series unencumbered by the wait for publication. I was never having to wait YEARS for the next book to come out, or wondering if it ever would come out. I kinda got the Netflix treatment on this, i could binge read. I had the sad realization that as obsessed as Matt was with the series, he only got through three. He died a few months before Wizard and Glass which i realize is a small tragedy in comparison to the whole "he died" part but its a tragedy nonetheless. I wish Matt could have been able to finish the series. That would have made him happy. He was a nice person and one of my best friends, I realize writing this, I miss him. The other person implicated here as getting me interested was my friend Amy. She'd been a big King fan since she was a kid. A little kid. A weird little kid according to her, reading fukin Pet Cemetery at age 11 and such. My own 11 year old would have to be committed to a mental institution if she read that book. Amy liked reading in general and I hadn't really been reading any books in a long time and I was embarrassed about that when it came to her so i tried to start reading a bit not to seem like a total degenerate. that kid had a way of making me do things that were good, things i should be doing - nice quality really. She had a way of picking out things for me that, well, I really liked. She was my taste-maker for a few years with stuff like this and I came to believe if she said i would like it, well it was a done deal because she was always right about what i'd like. That said, she was also a little self conscious sometimes about her interests. She'd go on a whole rant about something sorta esoteric and then suddenly become self aware and look embarrassed, say something like "yeah, your girl's a real weirdo, sorry" but I loved listening and learning about lots of stuff (great stuff) i just had been oblivious to. Roland and his friends were among Amy's favorite stories. So a few years later when we, well, didn't talk anymore, and I missed her... quite a lot, I started picking up some of the books she told me about. While Matt put the idea in my head to read these books, I know that the real reason i finally did was to have a tiny part of her around, a one way connection but a connection regardless (now who's the weirdo) And it was nice to be honest. I would have liked to have talked to her about these books, or just say Thankya for putting the idea in my head.

It’s amazing to me how much the world changed for King from the first book to the last. Or since Matt left. Or since Amy left. Or shall I say, the world has moved on, if it do ya. That the first book was started before I was born and before the last, Harry Potter appeared in the world of Roland. This was an almost uncomprehendingly amazing story. I cant believe it came from one brain. its staggering to me really, truly staggering. Thank you Mr. King. August 1, 2018.

—————————— My comments in bold You needn’t die happy when your day comes, but you must die satisfied"

“That smell of cooking meat wafting through the air was not pork.”

“sköldpadda tumbled to the red rug, bounced beneath one of the tables, and there (like a certain paper boat some of you may remember) passes out of this tale forever” Loved this reference to IT

“A man can’t pull himself up by his own bootstraps no matter how hard he tries” agreed. reflective of my continuing shift to the left of the political spectrum

“Roland nodded, which wasn’t good enough for Eddie. “Let me hear you say it.”“Hoggie.”“Hoagie.”“HOOG-gie.” Philly! “always tuned to the oldies on WCBS” my mom always had this on growing up. cousin brucie.

“Anyone who doesn’t think the imagination can kill is a fool” it can. it can make your day or ruin your life

“He leaned forward through the fragrant pipe-smoke. “Son,” he said, “tell your tale. And don’tcha skip a goddam word.”” you knew he was going to believe, i loved this.

“And she kept the secret. I was the only one she ever told.” Eddie, perhaps remembering that post-coital confidence in the dark of night, was smiling painful” keeping each other secrets... i know that painful smile while remembering

“John offered them a smile that augured well for his future as a dirty trickster: bemused on the surface, sly beneath. well, i just liked this

“Do any of us, except in our dreams, truly expect to be reunited with our hearts’ deepest loves, even when they leave us only for minutes, and on the most mundane of errands? No, not at all. Each time they go from our sight we in our secret hearts count them as dead. Having been given so much, we reason, how could we expect not to be brought as low as Lucifer for the staggering presumption of our love?” and sometimes, they leave, and indeed, are gone. “and so will the world end, I think, a victim of love rather than hate. For love’s ever been the more destructive weapon, sure.” aye

“To a wide-eyed lad, the tacky tricks of the world’s most ham-fisted prestidigitator look like miracles. ”

“Steek-Tete in Thunder-clap, thinking just briefly of Mr. C. S. Lewis, and the wonderful wardrobe that took you to Narnia. They did not come out in Narnia.”

“What do you know about what it’s like to spend your whole life on the outside, to be the butt of the joke every time, to always be Carrie at the fuckin prom?”

“It was a simple and perfect bit of wordless communication, the sort people who love each other take for granted.”

“My grandfather had a proverb,” Pimli said. “‘You don’t worry about dropping the eggs until you’re almost home.’” “Was it Emily Dickinson who called hope the thing with feathers? I can’t remember” had a friend, she liked this one.

“Because the only thing talent wants is to be used.””

“Yet he is content enough. The food is good, and although his sexual appetites have subsided quite a bit over the years, he’s not a bit averse to the odd bonk, just reminding himself”“very time that sim sex is really nothing but accessorized masturbation” I cant help but think this is my future. at least it will be accessorized!

If there’s any movie the Breakers never get enough of, it’s Star Wars.” was this a dig a starwars? “Roland smiled. “A man who can’t bear to share his habits is a man who needs to quit them.” “Yet still I love you and would serve you and even bring the magic again, if you would allow me, for that is how my heart was cast when I rose from the Prim”

“Even if the torture stops, I’ll die. And you’ll die too, for when love leaves the world, all hearts are still. Tell them of my love and tell them of my pain and tell them of my hope, which still lives.”

“Nerves, he thought, were for people who still hadn’t entirely made up their minds.”

“the rest of the tale will be short and brutal compared to all that’s gone before. Because when katet breaks the end always comes quickly.Say sorry” = king does this thing where he makes a statement like this and you start worrying and reading faster and faster “All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead. These are the rooms of ruin where the spiders spin and the great circuits fall quiet, one by one”

“He used to tell me that never’s the word God listens for when he needs a laugh.”” “Hush,” he whispered, and she did. The hand caught in her hair pulled. She brought her face to his willingly and kissed his living lips one last time. “I . . . will . . . wait for you,” he said, forcing each word out with immense effort.”

“I probably know more about D-cups than D-lines, and I think that’s true of everyone here” i take the D line home, D cups are more fun.

“on order from Viking Motors (“The Boys with the Toys”) in Oxford himself.” i think i stopped into this store last fall

“It was also a stick shift, and she had never driven one of those.”

“Roland and Jake were now bracing their hands against the dusty metal dashboard, where a faded sticker proclaimed AMERICA! LOVE IT OR LEAVE! in red white and blue” was once in a bar in south boston and they have this big sign up that says this. i agreed at the time 15 years ago, now i realize it’s against everything i believe in

“You’re in one hell of a hurry, mister—like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. What very important date are you almost too late for?” I believe this is what is known as The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon

“Despite his sorrow, there were no tears yet; his eyes felt like hot stones in his head. Perhaps the tears would come later, when the truth of what had happened here had a chance to sink in a little”

“He knelt a moment longer with his hands clasped between his knees, thinking he had not understood the true power of sorrow, nor the pain of regret, until this moment.I cannot bear to let him go.”

“It’s what we call poetic license, Roland.”He nodded, showing unexpected (to her, at least) understanding. “Pretty lies,” he said” =pretty lies, i liked that

“If she had trimmed her bush, maybe she would have taken them off. If she’d known, getting up that morning“

“You wouldn’t dump me without at least . . .” She shrugged one shoulder. The gesture made her look very young. “Without at least saying goodbye?”

“The George Washington,” Marian Carver said. “Or just the GWB, if you’re a native.” i used to listen to the traffic reports as a kid and know all these abbreviations, GWB, BQE, LIE, etc

That man had some hard bark on him

“He opened it and slipped inside with no look back. That, he had found, was ever the easiest way.”

“There were photographs of Eddie and Jake in the folders that were simply too painful to look at. Memories were better.” “nothing so glamorous, just a retreaded adman from upstate New York”

“Then she screamed. There were no words in it, nor could there have been. Our greatest moments of triumph are always inarticulate.”

“Because the body had a way of forgetting the worst things, she supposed, and without the body’s cooperation, all the brain had were memories like faded snapshots.”

“Good boys go to heaven, and all my friends be in t’other place, toastin marshmallows”

“It felt strange to laugh, but it was a good feeling, like finding something of value long after you were sure it was lost forever.” this resonated with me

“Oy had decided to live. It was a small thing, but it was a good thing.” It was a good choice. it always is. no matter what.

“not Sheemie, he’s gone into the clearing at the end of the path, say sorry” thought sheemie deserved a better more dramatic end. “After today she’d see him no more. And that was for the best. Still, she would have given anything in her life to have him make love to her again. You could stay at the apartment for a couple of days and rest up,” she said. “I’d stay with you.” And fuck thy brains out, do it please ya, she thought” sex with an ex? yes please.

““Bet your bottom dollar,” Roland answered”“and was sorry immediately. He’d learned the phrase from Eddie, and saying it hurt.” has this happened to me, using a phases of a departed only to find is satisfying but satisfying at the same time? i think so...

“In the dark, such visions had a horrible persuasiveness, but luckily she was too tired for them to keep her awake long.”

““It hasn’t been a bad life,” Joe was saying. “Not the life I expected, not by any manner or means, but I got a theory—the folks who end up living the lives they expected are more often than not the ones who end up takin sleepin pills or sticking the barrel of a gun in their mouths and pullin the trigger.”

“Laughter, Susannah would reflect later, is like a hurricane: once it reaches a certain point, it becomes self-feeding, self-supporting. You laugh not because the jokes are funny but because your own condition is funny.”

“But what Roland and Susannah and Patrick heard in a major key, Mordred heard in a minor” i liked this. i have this really really smart friend but he cant understand the difference between major and minor even when i played him some stuff in piano, hes like “i dont get it”

“Beneath a picture of Roland in profile, he had printed: BEATLES, not Beetles.” WOW i never NEVER realized this! im in IDIOT

“She wondered why everything had to be so damn hard, so damn”“riddle-de-dum) mysterious, and knew that was a question to which she would never find a satisfactory answer . . . except it was the human condition, wasn’t it? The answers that mattered never came easily.”

“where she’d learned the art of murder and fallen in love and been left bereaved?”

1. “More important than that, it was unworthy of how much he had come to love and respect her. It broke what remained of his heart to think of bidding her goodbye, but if it was what she wanted, what she needed, then he must do it.

2. “No,” said he, and she saw he truly was not. She believed she had never seen such sadness and such loneliness on a human face. “Never” 3. “For a moment she thought he would make it easy on her, just agree and let her go. Then his anger—no, his despair—broke in a painful burst. “But you can’t be sure! ” 4. “She took him by the arm and pulled him down and put her lips on his. When she inhaled, she took in the breath of a thousand years and ten thousand miles. And yes, she tasted death.” 5. “He put his face in his hands. It occurred to him that if he had never loved them, he would never have felt so alone as this. Yet of all his many regrets, the re-opening of his heart was not among them, even now. She had brought grace to his life. It wasn’t a word that had occurred to him until she was gone.” this whole section where suzanne leaves roland was kinda hard for me to read, a little to close to home. even tho they were just friends, it was very familiar.

“A hard rain made for queer bedfellows at the inn; had Roland never heard that saying?”

“Or what if he does know her, somewhere far back in his mind, yet still denies her as completely as Peter denied Jesus, because remembering is just too hurtful?”

“She tosses Roland’s revolver into this litter barrel. Doing it hurts her heart, but she never hesitates.” id never be able to do this.

“His touch is electric, and she sees that he feels it, too. It occurs to her that he is going to kiss her again for the first time, and sleep with her again for the first time, and fall in love with her again for the first time. He may know those things because voices have told him, but she knows them for a far better reason: because those things have”“already happened. Ka is a wheel, Roland said, and now she knows it’s true. This was a sweet part of the book. Reminded me of a lyric “i get the joy of rediscovering you...”

“And will I tell you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness.”

“One taste of the old times sets all to rights”

“All right. I go. Long days and pleasant nights. May we meet in the clearing at the end of the path when all worlds end.” Thank you.

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