#Like old men collect stamps

[oyeedraw-arts]

Hey, I hear some people in the sc fandom would recieve psychic damage from this. Have a nice day! ;D

#starcraft #alarak #Rohana #Protoss #Rohalarak #I collect evil dudes #Like old men collect stamps

[robsheridan]

Sisters of the Solstice, part 2 (start with part 1 here). In June of 1975, photographer Sera Clairmont captured the only known documentation of Sweden's mythical “coven of eternal witches,” (as some local folklore refers to them), and published them in Spectagoria magazine issue 11. These are the last of the pages that have been recovered from that issue.

From Clairmont’s text: “The Sisters are women of ritual. Complex layers of rituals for every occasion have collected upon the Sisters’ insular culture over re-generations like stamps on a well-traveled passport. At no time are the rituals more significant than in the weeks surrounding Midsommar, for that is the time of renewal.

“Each Midsommar season, the Sisters chosen for renewal give their physical shells back to the earth. Some depart in rituals of soil, and their remains are used to decorate the land, often raised to decompose as markers of the Sisters’ territory to scare away any men who dare come near. But some of the women - old souls who require stronger magick to transfer - must give themselves to rituals of flame, and [text illegible due to paper damage] reborn in flame. It is in the flame rituals where one understands the depth of the sacrifices the Sisters have endured to survive for so long without men. At dusk, the [illegible] dangerous ancient dark magick, taking a heavy toll on [illegible]… If any mistakes are made, or [illegible] too weak, [illegible] the soul will never return, [illegible] the wrong soul [illegible] …something else comes back.” [the rest is illegible]

---------

NOTE: Spectagoria is an ongoing work of fiction created by me. This alternate reality horror story is part of my NightmAIres narrative art series (visit that link for a lot more). NightmAIres are windows into other worlds and interconnected alternate histories, conceived/written by me and visualized with synthography and Photoshop.

If you enjoy my work, consider supporting me on Patreon for frequent exclusive hi-res wallpaper packs, behind-the-scenes features, downloads, events, contests, and an awesome fan community. Direct fan support is what keeps me going as an independent creator, and it means the world to me.

#rob sheridan #midsommar #nightmAIres #ai horror #ai art #synthography #ai photography #synthography horror #horror stories #summer solstice #70s horror #writing #spectagoria #sera clairmont

[elvain]

marvel's boys: from sidekicks to heroes

i've been seeing a lot of talk about my friend ray's post about the mentor/sidekick relationship in marvel as compared to DC (this post is specifically in regards to the movie portrayal of said relationships). find the post here. the discussion around this post has inspired some thoughts in me, so i thought i'd share them below.

steve and bucky's relationship as mentor/sidekick originates in the golden age as part of the "child sidekick/hero" craze phenomenon at the time. kids wanted to know they could contribute to the war effort in these years, that they could also make a difference when their fathers and brothers went to war. so the child sidekick was invented and at marvel, that was bucky barnes + toro raymond.

but even in the silver age, we maintained a younger sidekick mentality: rick jones, janet van dyne (until she turned out be old enough to marry hank pym), and i would even include flash thompson's brief stint as a fake spider-man in this category. but, yes, all these "sidekick" scenarios eventually winded down. but i don't think it's because marvel decided sidekicks weren't a worthy trend anymore. far from it.

i think DC's interpretation of the mentor/sidekick relationship becomes more paternal/familial whereas marvel's becomes centered around guilt and trauma (rick jones, primarily). i wouldn't say marvel hated sidekicks after the golden age; they just become heroes on their own (peter parker, the original x-men, nova, etc.) rather than relying on a mentor-esque figure. i think DC has clung to the paternal side of this trend more and maintained it - it's worked for them, so great. but marvel i think dived the other way which was also great.

i know about the "spider-man killed teen sidekicks by being both a young person and the main hero" take as well and i have some thoughts on that, too, if you'll bear with me.

i think it isn't that we started hating sidekicks. i think we realized that, after the golden age, the kids weren't just kids anymore. there is a genre of kid who was too young to fight in ww2 but who still dealt with that trauma and that kid was reading these comics, sending in letters, collecting stamps, etc. comic mags in the golden age used to be FULL of things like "if you see any war planes over your city, report it to the nearest military office!" or "you can collect scrap metal and donate it to the war effort, just like timmy here!" and after the events of pearl harbor, every timely comic had a big stamp on them, demanding that we "remember pearl harbour".

now its 1962 and that kid is 15 and he kinda doesn't NEED his dad as much cause he's either dead or he's been away for years fighting in the war. this kid needs to be his own hero. [gestures to peter parker, richard rider, steve rogers even if you count the origin story] like it isn't that spider-man killed the sidekicks - it's that he lost his father figure (ben parker) and now had to be his own hero and i think that would've resonated a LOT with kids of that era who had gone through a similar loss.

i think it shows in rick jones too - the reason rick just never REALLY "sidekicked" is because he was a reflection of the young boys/girls at the time who suddenly had no parents or elder figures bc of the wars. now they had to deal with it on their own and thats why he didn't stick it out with steve and why he became bruce's friend instead of the hulk's sidekick, cause he just didn't need that mentor and that protection anymore after what he (as a representation of kids from the after-war years) had gone through.

it isn't that the sidekicks died. it's that they were forced to grow up.

if you're interested in thoughts like this, i have some posts on my rarely used wordpress blog. The Golden Age: overview: how i started reading the Golden Age comics. The Golden Age: I: characters i thought i knew, but did not. The Golden Age II: think of the women and children!

#mk.post #marvel comics #i encourage rbs! #mk.essay

[lostcauses-noregrets]

Lostcauses Fic: A Good Man

A small side story to The Permanence of the Young Men. This is my 100th Eruri fic and it's a gift to the fandom for Levi's Birthday ♡

Falco is standing by the sink washing dishes in the neat kitchen that overlooks the small garden at the back of the house. It’s a bright spring day and the cherry trees, so ubiquitous in Hizuru, are swathed in frothy pink blossom that dances in the gentle breeze. Falco likes coming here, to the little house on the square. It’s quiet and peaceful, a world away from the noisy chaotic home he shares with Gabi and the kids a couple of streets over. He wouldn’t change it for the world, but he enjoys the quiet respite of Mr Levi’s house.

Pieck had come to visit earlier in the day, recently returned from the latest delegation to Paradis, bringing news of the diplomatic negotiations and undiplomatic gossip. Much as he enjoys her visits, Levi is always exhausted afterwards. He tires easily these days, especially after time spent in company. After she left, Falco had made Levi a fresh cup of tea, tucked a blanket around his knees and left him to read the newspapers that Pieck had brought from the island.

Falco’s quiet reverie by the kitchen sink is interrupted by the crash of falling china from the room next door. Hands flecked with soapsuds, he rushes through to the parlour, where he finds Levi grey faced and clutching his chest. The blanket is crumpled on the floor, tea cup shattered at his feet in a pool of spilled tea. Crumpled in the Levi’s fist is a copy of the Eldian Herald.

“Mr Levi!” Falco drops to his knees in front of his chair, heedless of the puddle of tea soaking into his trousers. “Are you all right, Mr Levi?”

He’s struggling to breathe, breath rattling and wheezing in his scarred lungs, and when he looks up, his face is grey, his one good eye glassy and unfocused. Falco knows he’s not seeing him. He’s gone; lost in an endless nightmare. He gets like this sometimes, they all do. There’s no escaping the war and its traumatic aftermath.

“You just wait there Mr Levi, don’t worry, I’ll get your pills.”

He dashes to the bathroom and extracts one of the many bottles of pills from the medicine cabinet, collecting a glass of water on route.

Back in the living room, Levi’s breath is still rasping in his throat, but Falco is able to slip the pill into his mouth and coax him to drink.

Falco eases the newspaper from his fist, sets it aside, and sits beside the older man, holding his scarred hand until the awful attack passes.

Once his breathing has eased, Falco helps him to his bed. He grumbles irritably as Falco helps him change into his neatly pressed pyjamas, before tucking him under the covers. He’s breathing more easily now and his eye has lost that terrible vacant stare. He just looks old and terribly tired.

“It’s all right Mr Levi," Falco attempts to reassure him. “Just rest, Ms Peick’s exhausted you. Sleep until morning, you’ll feel better then.” He draws the blinds and quietly closes the door. Though it’s barely late afternoon, he knows that the sedative effect of the medication will ensure Levi sleeps until well after dawn.

Falco goes back to the parlour to clean up the mess, carefully picking up the larger pieces of broken china then sweeping up the tiny shards. It’s a shame, it was one of Levi’s favourite cups. It was a plain old thing, much coarser than the fine Hizurun porcelain Levi has quite a collection of, but it was his favourite nevertheless. The cup had a small winged crest stamped on the bottom, and Falco suspects it may have come from Paradis originally. It’s broken beyond repair now, so Falco sweeps the pieces into the bin, then fetches the mop to clean up the spilled tea. The blanket is soaked, so he carries it through to the laundry, before returning to straighten out the rest of the room.

Picking up the crumpled copy of the Eldian Herald, Falco attempts to smooth out the creases. The front page is dominated by a picture of a statue of a young man with his arms outstretched. It's not a very good likeness, but Falco knows it’s supposed to represent Eren Yeager. He’s never seen a copy of the Eldian Herald that doesn’t have a picture of Eren Yeager on the front page. The headline trumpets “20 Glorious Years of Freedom”. Beneath, it promises a “full photo spread from the Eldian Nation’s biggest Freedom Day celebrations.” Falco flicks through the newspaper and finds images of massed ranks of marching soldiers with their characteristic helmets and rifles, surrounded by crowds of cheering people. There are photographs of various dignitaries Falco doesn’t recognise and several of the Queen standing beside her daughter, the Princess Ymir. Falco guesses she’s supposed to look regal, but to his mind she just looks rather sad.

Turning to the centre pages, Falco finds a double page spread titled “Heroes of the Eldian Nation: Commander Erwin Smith, 13th Commander of the Survey Corps.” At the head of the page is an imposing picture of a handsome grim-faced man mounted astride a rearing white horse, holding his sword aloft as if poised in mid charge. The caption beneath reads: “Dedicate your Hearts! Erwin Smith, the last great commander of the Survey Corps”. Curiosity piqued, Falco sits down to read.

[Continue reading on AO3]

#lostcauses fic #eruri #levi ackerman #falco grice #erwin smith #gabi braun #nile dok #snk #can't believe i made it to 100 #happy levimas

[see-arcane]

The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde and Mr. Harker

The problem of the potion has been at least temporarily solved. Issues of supply have been erased with the aid of the League of Extraordinary Gentlefolk, enough so that triple and quadruple doses can be had...and often they must be. It seems the clock is still ticking down on the ever-imbalanced nature of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, even with a potential sea of the damned elixir to drown in.

It isn't until the night they see what looks like a kindred spirit in action that hope begins to simmer. After all, they had already known the young man before this.

If Mr. Harker can turn from concentrated kindness to the Thing crawling on the walls on a whim and back again, surely he must have some tips...

(For those not in the know, this is a sizable ‘what-if?’ scenario based loosely on the premise of The League of Extraordinary Gentlefolk comic-in-progress putting its roots down on Tumblr, a glorious public domain mega crossover and antidote to Alan Moore’s unpleasant take on the idea. Shout out to the amazing @mayhemchicken-artblog for all the fantastic work already put into the project.)

Ao3 link here

It was in a way almost as extraordinary as stunningly mundane how the mess began. Truly, its inception started long before the League took what mercy it could on him and his condition. Bless Utterson for his mercy, bless him for knowing Norton and his inexplicable wife. Bless Van Helsing, the dear old wonder. And bless, of all shocks, Mr. Harker.

The last time he’d seen the boy had been when Utterson had been cornered into something resembling a birthday party by his colleagues. It was the work of Peter Hawkins, may the old fellow rest in peace, who had conned poor Gabriel into thinking it was a mere talk of professional advice and the bonus of a drink. Instead, the trap had sprung in the form of a veritable horde of his friends assembled under Hawkins’ roof, the route of escape blocked, somewhat sheepishly, by young Mr. Jonathan Harker. Jekyll could still picture the lad as he’d been that day.

A trim fellow, long in the bones and with a curiously elfin edge to his features that stamped him as almost more fetching than merely handsome. His hair had been a solid brown back then, dark as burnt chestnut with eyes to match. Brief as their meeting was, Jekyll had been one of many in the silvering members of the party to wonder why Hawkins had brought his clerk along. A wonder that was followed by an increasing gladness that the young man was there. Not only for the fact that—as it became obvious—Hawkins had adopted Harker in all but law, nor even the revelation that dear tight-lipped Gabriel apparently knew the boy for better than a decade of his brief years, and was as warm with him as if he were blockaded by his own nephew.

No, what thawed the codgers among them was the fact that, like a flower gave off a scent or candle gave off light, Jonathan Harker radiated a feeling of whole and unvarnished kindness. He did not simper up to his seniors for their wise counsel and tales of the legal battlefield, fishing for footholds on the career ladder. Truly, Jekyll had winced over the boy’s politeness when he was ultimately pounced upon by the orators among them, ravenous to share their horror stories with fresh ears. He only broke this decorum whenever a maid or servant came round; staff he knew by name and helped deal with whatever dish or drink was brought in. At one point he cleared a plate and immediately disappeared to interview the cook for her recipe.

“He collects them for his fiancée, Miss Murray,” Hawkins told them en sotto voce. “They want to be able to make all they like themselves. I’ve known her half as long as him. A sharp girl, and as smitten with him as vice versa. If the country at large could ever see those two together, it would doom the prospects of every bachelor in the land, for every bachelorette would see what lies they’ve been fed about matters of love and wifedom. Husbands see their women as a nanny, wives see their men as a chore, but those two? They are Cupid’s own work.” A crease had formed among the half dozen already on the man’s brow. “Poor boy wants to marry her not long after he graduates to solicitor. I think he would set up camp in my office just to work around the clock to have pennies enough for the ceremony.”

Utterson had tutted over his own cigar, eyeing Hawkins with that placid steel that was the constant default of his gaze.

“Poor boy, he says.” Jekyll had nearly gawped at the ghost of a smile creasing under his beard. “As if you were not already gift-wrapping him a castle.” Hawkins had thrown a fuller grin back.

“Hold your tongue, Gabriel. That’s in confidence until he finds out the next workday. Let’s not give him a heart attack in the midst of your big day.”

“It would make a good distraction. I could run for the doctor…”

“The doctor is in,” Jekyll reminded. “And there is no escape. Now, what castle do you mean, Peter? Surely not the Transylvanian—,” But Hawkins had waved and shushed as Harker returned to the room, tucking a recipe in his pocket. Warm hours had rolled on and Jekyll became increasingly convinced of the lad’s nigh-tangible fug of friendliness. A less charitable mind might have likened it to the inviting presence of a chummy dog bred for slavering love, or perhaps some pampered fool so swaddled by good fortune they knew no better than to give and expect mirth.

But no. Jonathan Harker was neither hound nor coddled. It was simply his nature. A nature that, heading home and resuming his toils in the laboratory for the night, Dr. Henry Jekyll had found himself envying as much as shunning. Oh! To be so clean in conscience and intent that it could be felt like a sunbeam! It was the kind of absurd froth churned out by sentimentalist plays and soppier penny books. Such people did not exist. Certainly not among men.

Certainly not in himself. Try as he might. Rather, try as he might not.

It would almost be worth it, he thought, to merely obliterate the dregs of his uglier desires in a chemist’s form of spiritual surgery. Cut it out! Burn it out! Dissolve his evils into foam and let him spit the bile into the sewer to make him wholly the good Dr. Jekyll his friends and fellows believed! Ah, but he was too greedy. Too enamored of those unexercised ills to dabble in that direction. No, duality it must be. He would have his cake and eat it too.

Even so, Jonathan Harker remained a small smiling mote in his memory for days afterward. Like a grain of sand caught under a nail. Minor, yet unignorable.

So good a soul it could be felt. He wished the lad well. Wished harder that they would not meet again. And so such might have come true, but for the coming of Edward Hyde and the impending nightmare of their lopsided coexistence. That damned salt! It was a miracle that the keener minds that Utterson had brought him to could reproduce what they could from the potent crumbs remaining. The last granules of the stuff had been too paltry for a final concoction but enough—God, just barely enough!—to divulge the impurity that had empowered the original batch to begin with.

Thank God, thank God, thank God—

“Dr. Jekyll?”

He had nearly jumped out of his skin. A waste it would have been too, being so freshly regenerated to its proper form. Droplets of sweat and tears flew from his unshorn cheeks as he jerked around. And there was Jonathan Harker. Possibly.

The young man was remarkably changed since the last Jekyll had seen him. There was a greyish undertone to his pallor that brought the freshly dead to mind alongside a surreal impression of ancientness in the features. As if he were merely a stone carving of a young man that had weathered centuries versus the actual model. Most startling was the duo of hair and eyes. Brunet had washed out to a silvery white while the eyes—

Jekyll could not be sure it wasn’t a trick of the light, but a shine had come into them that made him uneasy. His thoughts turned sickly to those nocturnal beasts whose stare reflected moon and lamplight like polished coins. Seeming to realize he was staring, Harker blinked and whatever spell there had been in his silent apparition was broken. Though it made a slight resurgence when he laid his hand gently on the older man’s shoulder. The fingers were so cold he might have taken them straight out of a snowdrift.

“Doctor? What are you doing here? What’s wrong?”

“Ah. It seems to be quite a reunion in this place.” He gave a hoarse noise that was not quite a chuckle. “I should ask you the same, young man. Who did Hawkins have you dealing with on his behalf, hm? Mephistopheles?”

It was meant as a joke. The spike of chill in the resting hand and the hollow gleam of the eyes suggested it was too near to truth for the young man’s liking. And there was something in the air. Some perceptible shift.

Jonathan Harker radiated an antithesis of what Jekyll had felt that day in Hawkins’ parlor; the same feeling that had come off him in soft waves just a moment before. Jekyll could not name the sensation as anything but an intrinsic warning. A metaphysical flash of a poison frog’s spots or the rattle of America’s desert snakes.

Take heed. No closer. In fact, back away. Quickly.

It shuddered up his spine and needled his hindbrain with ice and nightmare. He felt Hyde himself squirm within him. Kneejerk cowardice before a threat now elevated by a hundred.

But then, as quickly as that wretched bristle came, it was gone. Jonathan Harker even managed a weak smile. He was pure amity once again.

“You could say that. I bet my story is longer than yours. I’ve just returned from,” Jekyll caught him hastily adjusting his coat to cover his hip, though not fast enough to hide the handle of a startlingly large blade, “some business outside the city. No time for updates from here. If you can stand to share it, I should like to hear what’s happened to bring you to our door. Though only if you’re up to it.” The words were in earnest. But still.

“It is too much to say, for how little there is to tell. You would take me for a madman even if I spoke the truth. I would babble. Ask your friends, the doctors. Ask Utterson.”

“If you prefer it that way.” Experience honed each syllable. The eyes gleamed again, if dully. “But I have more reasons than most to hear out a man’s so-called babble without judgment. I was worse than that once upon a time. But privacy matters more in some cases. If you don’t wish to tell me, I won’t go fishing for the story from others. Just know that I am a member here. There is no tale too tall for me to hear and I have heard and played a part in many. All of us have. So. Would you prefer a drink and a talk? Or just the drink?”

As always, duality won. Drink and talk it was. Perhaps too much of drink, for it seemed to wash away all sense on his tongue.

Harker stirred barely an inch through it. He frowned over the poor child, of course. A cloud moved in his face when Jekyll spoke of that so-near miss with the battered Carew, Hyde having been startled from his full attack by a far more piercing cry of terror than any blunt plea or yelp from the old man. A keening voice so high in fear that the sex of the victim could not be guessed; just as the voice that Hyde and Jekyll would swear could not have its species guessed.

“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!”

A declaration that somehow echoed in the brain without reaching the ear. In more than mortal fear, Hyde had abandoned his murderous project at a run. All delight in the evil was spoiled by the desire to put distance between himself and the voice that was not a voice. It was some thin boon, at least. He was stopped short of a crime that would see him sent to the gallows. Though prison was unquestionably on the table after both the witness of that maid in the window and the description from bruised and broken Carew.

“But even so! Hyde truly wished the man dead. That much I have never dreamt of even in my most hideous whims. Profanities, yes, awful fancies, but the perverse has never tipped over into bloodlust. That being so, I cannot even tell if Hyde could want to kill for killing’s sake or to commit the act solely for the danger it would bring on me. Revenge of the anti-conscience, as it were. I think he would not be so bold again. Not with so cold a logic as his. Surely not against,” Jekyll had swallowed, “not against one so important. But I fear that he might try other quarries out of sheer petulance now that the question of the salt is solved by better men than us. Than I ever was. He will see it as fresh allowance. Either by accident or intention I feel he will push our luck again. No, I know he will. And none of the secondhand joys he once gleaned for me are worth it. I know it, I know it.”

Poisons danced in his head. Razors. Ropes. Pistols.

“They should never have bothered with the salt. I should never have made my plea to Gabriel. I should have let the rot of Hyde take over, let myself wallow for lack of the potion, and then, come the inevitable, both our weaknesses combined would take the cornered animal’s route, as we both deserve.” He peered blearily down into the latest emptied glass. His reflection shined in distortion at the bottom. “Perhaps we will.”

“Don’t.” Harker’s voice fell on him like a stone. “Never take the final solution when others remain before you. Death comes to all.” Then, under his breath: “To most. There is only the matter of waiting and filling that time with the trials of better options. You are a man of science as much as the supernatural. Many of the scholars under this roof are. Is it not your habit to seek new routes where old ones fall short?”

“What? I don’t…”

“The potion is your only catalyst for the moment. Your only switch between one side and the other, and one that has been growing faulty in potency as Hyde takes on weight. If that’s the case, then the solution to your control must go beyond that swill.”

“You make it sound simple.”

“It sounds like exactly what it is. Difficult. But also the only option a brilliant man can take when cornered, unless he means to cheat himself and leap straight to his end.” Again the cool hand returned to his shoulder. This time the chill was a mild thing compared to the thaw that came off the young man’s face. So young and so wretched at once. Jekyll felt for a moment like the younger man beside him; a boy weeping over a thorn in his foot, comforted by an old man bristling with broken glass and nails. “It will be hard to hold out. I know. But try first, Dr. Jekyll. Please.”

“I believe we must already be past titles, Harker. Henry is fine enough between us.”

“Jonathan for me, then.”

The cool hand fit in his own and shook.

That might have been the end of it. It should have been. There was work and practice enough to do on so many fronts. Hyde to wrangle, appearances to juggle. Busy, busy, busy. Perhaps if he had stayed indoors that particular fog-thick October night, all would have stayed as it was.

But he did not and it was not.

He had gone out for the sake of being out with stalwart Utterson in tow. Comforting as his friend’s presence was, he knew the gesture to be a mere safety line. Just in case, old man, just in case. Better to have cover of night for an excursion—just in case. He had insisted Utterson carry a weapon, concealed he knew not where, also just in case. Both men had grudgingly agreed to the others’ terms, both with matching sorrow. The melancholy of their once-golden friendship might have remained the sole trouble in the air but for the noise.

A miserable, glottal, hating, half-human noise that became a choir of gibberish wails and cries. There was no language in the mess that either could detect. Only senseless, slobbering anger. Growing closer. The moon broke through the clouds and gave better light to the situation just as the mass spilled into their street. The horde of them turned from a bruise in the mist to a sea of crisper human shapes. They were hulking men, all of them. Some wore their stature naturally. But others—some unspeakably grotesque others—did not. As if they were patchworks slapped together in monstrous proportions. Parts bloated by muscle or by too-long architecture of the bones. Some—Jekyll gagged to recognize this—had surplus anatomy to the point of seeming like abominations of man and insect. On top of it all, preceding their legion even through the merciful veil of the fog, was the stench.

Decay. Carrion. The chemical stink of mortician’s fluids and even fouler injections.

“Henry,” Utterson said in a tone pressed flat by shock, “I believe those fellows are dead.”

“I believe you’re right, Gabriel,” Jekyll returned, though with a tremor. Yes, the men stomp-shambling toward them were quite dead. Some fresh, some half-grey with decomposition, some dribbling the odd maggot or chemist’s juice. But dead. All dead. Their dead eyes spotted them standing frozen like sheep before the slaughterhouse. The dead saw. The dead surged.

In the same instant, so did panic. It leapt in Jekyll like a living thing—for it was. Fear shuddered, melted, wracked him with so sudden a spasm of change that it struck him with the brevity of a slap. And then Jekyll was Hyde and Hyde was running.

“Move, Utterson!” he had presence enough to shout, for the other man was still rigid where he stood. No, not quite. Digging in his coat for the weapon. A pistol, no doubt. “They’re dead you damned idiot!” he barked over his stunted shoulder. “Run!” But Utterson was never a man to run back in fear, but forward. So he did. So he shot. So he blew the liquid brains out of the nearest dead man—who kept running.

Jekyll screamed within Hyde, pleading, haranguing, think, think, think you selfish devil, think what loss it would be to them both to lose a friend, an ally such as him, when they were already anathema to Lanyon, Hyde, please not Gabriel, not him, damn you, not him, if you help no one else, not even your other half, help him and save yourself pain later, please, please—

Before Hyde could even pretend to listen to the shrilling in his head, before he could fully register that Utterson was about to vanish under a tide of hateful revenants, his finer senses snapped his head upward. Something else was in the fog. It clambered deftly as a spider along the brickwork of a high building. Through the murk, something flashed. Eyes like bright coins. Where the fog thinned, the moon lit on a head of pale hair and a gleam of steel.

What happened next would have been too fast for ordinary eyes. Hyde caught every heartbeat.

The crawling thing on the brick clambered down, leapt, and cleaved the nearest corpse’s reaching arms off. Followed by the top half of the skull, sending a far more impressive puddle of grey matter flying. Butchery ensued as a pale blur mottled itself with discolored gristle and ichor, some of which seemed to glow as it gushed from those few opponents that risked coming near. And there were but few. Dead though they were, the horde drew back as the pallid figure turned its attention on them. Some even clambered over their brethren just for more distance. Even standing where he did, Hyde could sense the reason.

Dread. Warning. Death is here. Come close, meet my eye, and suffer the consequences.

Not the aura of revulsion and disgust that was his own foul possession, that loathsome birthright that brought as many people running after him for violence as made them cringe and sneer away. This was a miasma of such cold promise of demise that it bordered on the tangible. A veritable perfume of concentrated fatality.

Hyde wanted to run from it and its owner. But not as much as Hyde wanted to see it. Especially as recognition finally revealed the executioner’s identity. His face came clear as he spared one hand to release the kukri blade to latch onto a nearby head and slam it against a wall, bursting skull and scalp like a gruesome egg.

The figure was Jonathan Harker.

And yet not.

As if in a trance, Hyde found himself reversing his sprint to follow the carnage as it was herded back and away down the alley from whence the mobile dead had poured. Utterson made some noise at him and tried to grasp his sleeve. He shook the man off as one would a gnat. Onward, onward, chasing the Grand Guignol scene into the night. And oh, oh! Such a scene! Such a play!

Neither Jekyll nor Hyde had ever been ones for theatre, but this was a show of phantasmagoria that stirred the very worst of rapture in their shared heart.

Harker was joined in his culling of the dead by some horde of ghoulish women, matrons and crones and a single dainty maiden, their nightdresses all stained with the spill of undead veins. Where Harker unmade the horde with blade and bare hands, the ladies ripped them asunder like wolves tearing into fatted calves. Beyond them, a giant of amalgamated pieces stormed through the last ranks of the army, seizing some squalling man clutching an ugly book and a bouquet of syringes to himself. The man hollered things in a reedy voice that sounded like so much madness. A tirade of godhood, of necromancy, of a living world owned by the dead who were owned by him, bow and obey you idiot thrall—

The giant broke his speech quite neatly with the breaking of both the man’s arms. Hyde had to stifle a laugh at the resulting squeal. The whole display carried all the comic weight of the fool characters Shakespeare always peppered his tragedies with. An entertaining distraction. But not so diverting as the second deaths of the cadavers. All had been put down but for some twitching. The lady epicures were seeing to brisk disposal as Harker wiped his blade clean and sheathed it. He stood like a pillar amid the viscera and viciousness for one glorious moment. An ivory Hades overlooking the Erinyes as they devoured back the unruly dead to their proper state.

But between one blink and the next, Jonathan Harker was the dear young man from the League. Hyde could sense the change the way a hand can tell a texture of gravel from silk. The boy looked on the scene with green at his edges, and picked his way deftly through the carnage until he reached the youngest girl of the hungry mass. She too was stepping back from her work a bit shaken. Shamefaced, even. A blip of sour hope rose in him—Oh, dear, what would Mrs. Harker think?—but no, the two were chaste as nuns with each other. Dull. There was some logistical stuff to do with the broken-armed would-be god of the dead still wailing at them and the giant.

Hyde recognized other familiar faces, as well as some new coming out of the makeshift battleground’s metaphoric woodwork. It was a wonder no heads had poked out of the windows to see the fuss. Jekyll would learn later that they had something of an expert in selective drowsiness and perception via an honorary member; the mention of whom made Seward red in the face. Hindsight would connect two and two and reveal the exemplarily voluptuous young woman in the cartwheel hat as their psychic cover. There was very little else to see, bar the giant and some of the company toting the raving fellow away—a fellow who suddenly found reason to keep opinions to himself by way of freezing looks from giant, ghoul, and Harker alike.

“Hyde..?” He did not jump. He’d felt Utterson coming and turned pettishly to face him. The soft old thing had even put the pistol away; though he saw his aiming hand had not left his pocket. “I think we ought to head back.”

“For another hop back to the good doctor. Oh yes, of course. Can hardly risk anything out of doors, can we? Not even in the midnight fog.”

His eyes slid back to Harker, now chatting with something of camaraderie and uneasiness among the carnivorous ladies. They cooed over him like any ring of spinsters over their siblings’ children come to visit. Harker endured them with all the charm of a pup. The thing upon the bricks, the thing that had made slurry of the undead, was gone.

“You never know who’s out in the dark.”

Once back at the League, still picking cadaverous giblets from his hair and fingernails, Jonathan Harker found a hostage situation waiting for him. Of a sort.

“He won’t drink it,” Griffin told him. “The little terror’s always fussed about it, but now he’s like a toddler facing his greens. The lot of us meant to hold him down, only he insisted he was waiting on you.”

“Me?”

“You,” from Jack. He was pacing, his lancet twiddling back and forth over his knuckles. “He made it sound as if you had some business to discuss.”

“That would be something, seeing as I haven’t shared more than three words with Hyde. None of them too polite either.”

“Even so, he’s sworn against taking his medicine without a fight unless you speak to him.”

“I can’t imagine what about. Where is he?”

“Utterson, Art and Quincey are keeping watch on him in the parlor.” Griffin sighed. “If you’d like me to ‘dress for the occasion’ and step in as backup…”

“Wouldn’t matter,” said Jack. He turned the lancet over so it caught the light. “Hyde would know. Higher senses, remember?”

“I’m sure it’s just some whim of his. Jekyll probably had some thought turning over in his head and that passed onto Hyde.” Jonathan tried to think back on what few crossings he’d had with the doctor since his introduction to the League and found all memories to be singularly benign. “Perhaps I upset him without realizing—?”

“Oh, he’s not upset.” Jack again. His eyes were almost brighter than the lancet with his own musing. “In fact, he seemed…eager. Giddy, almost. He says you’ve inspired him.”

Confusion redoubled in Jonathan to the point that he wasn’t certain if he was awake. The residual reek of West’s handiwork was too pungent for a dream, however. So:

“How, exactly?”

“He wouldn’t say. Only that, ‘It has been hard to hold out. But after seeing how Mr. Harker takes his condition in stride, now he is willing to try something new.’ Does that mean anything to you?”

“It might, if he’s referring to what I think he is.” The words left him placidly enough, but Jonathan felt a squirming cold turn over in his belly. He had thought he felt another presence nearby as he and the others went to work—one of a familiar odious quality. But there had been so much happening in the fray and aftermath that he’d disregarded it as a hiccough of his own senses overworking themselves. Apparently not. “Anything else I should know?”

The empty space where Griffin’s head was and was not turned to face Jack. Jack mirrored the motion. Then nodded.

“He says he wants witnesses. To quote directly, ‘Fetch as many of the doctors and scientific tinkerers on hand that you can. Even that Dutchman hack. We shall need their objective opinion when it happens.’ Van Helsing is out of the country and so it’s just down to me and Seward for His Majesty’s demands.”

“I see. But when what happens?”

“The transformations, he said. Emphasis on the plural.”

Edward Hyde was waiting for them on one of the divans. He sat quite alone, but for Utterson who dared to take the nearest armchair. Art and Quincey had posted themselves to block either exit of the room. When Jonathan stepped in, Mr. Hyde straightened to his full diminutive height. His smile was a grimace despite its earnestness.

“Mr. Harker. Thrilled to see you, young man.”

“Mr. Hyde. I wasn’t aware I’d earned your esteem.”

“You hadn’t until tonight. Ah, and here are the good doctors. Better doctors, let’s call them, to give due credit over my other half. The invisible man may have lost to his experiment and the head rattler may be lost to his own mental ills, but at least they aren’t such helpless things as old Jekyll. But neither a mesmerist! A shame. Van Helsing might have been instrumental in our show. Still, I believe we can manage. Seward, I trust you won’t mind us borrowing this for the duration.”

Before Jack could ask what he meant, surprise and annoyance flickered across his face as Hyde produced a clinical thermometer from some sagging inner pocket of Jekyll’s coat.

“When did you—?”

“Oh, Jekyll had a passing thought of asking to borrow one for his own testing. The thought passed on to me. He was curious if there was some recordable shift in temperature that might serve as a tell between one phase and another. A fever spike, a chilling drop. Hard to tell these things when your body is melting up and down. Not that it would matter to know, of course.” He waggled the thermometer before their eyes and his. “The old fool just wanted to have something new to record for his notes. Useless trivia though it is. He’d already guessed it right.”

The thermometer went on the low table before him. While the mercury was descending, it did so from a mildly high reading above the norm.

“There’s a minute increase in temperature. Stress increases heart rate, sets sweat rolling, setting a body simmering. Less the transformation’s fault than the mind’s. Harker.” Again that unctuous grin turned on him. It felt like grease on his eyes. As the little man grinned, he nudged the thermometer further across the table until it faced the adjacent couch to Hyde’s. “Keep that on your side.”

Taking the hint, Jonathan found a seat on the couch. Griffin and Jack bookended him.

“If this is about my hands being cold, then it’s a fair bit more pageantry than the revelation deserves.”

“No, not your hands. Hardly a worthy tell. Anyone with poor circulation can claim a chilly touch. It’s for the sake of your neighbors. We’ve no proper thermostat to use, but even the finicky sensor should prove the point to any doubters.”

“Of..?”

“You and I sharing similar situations, Mr. Harker. Not of the exact caliber, not of the same roots, but cousin conditions just the same. I did not just see you in action tonight. I felt you. Just as clearly as all the curdle-faced company here can feel me, albeit with different results. I revolt. This can act as a call to arms as surely as it might repel. But you?” Hyde clapped his hard palms together in delight. “Oh, you were death walking. Crawling, leaping, slashing, smashing—but Death just the same. A meat grinder on legs, sweating the guarantee of a painful ending in the air. That was you. Rather, the other you.”

Again, that cold twisting in the bowels. Something icier prickling behind his eyes. Jonathan quashed both and buttressed his expression with reinforced civility.

“I think you may have been smelling the spillage of tonight’s unpleasant work,” Jonathan said, gesturing to the rainbow of stains on sleeves and shirt. His coat had covered much, but the mess was potent. “As for the rest, I don’t see how said work deserves your praise or prose. I have picked up some unique traits over time. Some by necessity, some by, I will admit, pure mystery.” He was aware of the others’ eyes on him. Jack’s especially. “But I use them only as anyone would use their skill against an enemy. I am not two people. Just one person who reserves his grisly ability for when it's needed.”

“I didn’t say you were two people. You, cloying heap of sunshine and milksop courtesy that you are, are Jonathan Harker. The other you is not a someone else, but a something. Just as I am.” His oily gaze shifted from Jonathan for a moment to regard the others in the room. It paused for a not insignificant while on Utterson, who frowned sadly back. “Unless you lot truly believe in a more charitable outlook than Jekyll’s? That I am my own man and not a tumor with caricature opinions? An abscess of a homunculus vomiting out another man’s—a true man’s—worst intrusive ponderings? No, I did not think so. Assuming I can think, of course. Regardless, I am a Thing. Just as what I saw turning the living dead into mincemeat was a Thing.”

“Cogito, ergo sum, Mr. Hyde. You think, therefore you are. Enough to have a name. Enough to work against the will of the man you share a life with.” Jonathan gestured at the whole of him. “You exist as a person.” Hyde produced a low noise that must have been a laugh.

“Who do you mean to hearten with that sentiment, Mr. Harker? You or I?” The grin peeled up and back until the gums bared. “Or her? Good Mrs. Harker who kept her own souvenirs from her time as Count Dracula’s Bride-to-be? I am no head doctor, but it is plain to anyone even with a borrowed brain that the dear Miss Martyr must fret terribly over her own level of humanity. She seems the type—,”

“Is there a point you want to get around to?”

Hyde eyed him with some strange balance of wariness and glee. Then he leaned forward as imposingly as his stature could allow.

“The point is you cannot fool me, Mr. Harker. You cannot even fool these dullards’ simple senses when you are so close. Though I can’t tell yet if you’re actively fooling yourself or not. Denial is a powerful drug, after all. So. Are you going to admit yourselves as plural?” Hyde paused here to pull Jekyll’s notebook from another fold of his coat, as well as a pen. He flipped the former open and posed the pen above a clean page. A bead of sweat shined on his brow as he did so. “Or must I prove you both? It should be said now that I do not wish to. I quite despise taking such a risk. But the reward is worth the gamble.”

Jonathan fought down a sigh and an urge to massage away the headache now threatening like a storm in his temple.

“I’m still lost as to what you wish to accomplish by proving some sort of dual nature in me. I am always myself. When a threat arises, I am still myself, just focused on the task at hand. Would you call, for the comparison’s sake, a butcher two individuals because he behaves one way at home and another while he divvies up the cuts?”

“Butchers have a vocation and a professional mien,” Hyde hummed. The pen began to scratch across the paper in halting strokes. “But they remain themselves in mind and body, nature and supernature. I clearly do not. Nor do you, subtle though the change is. I have learned thoroughly how I am to the human eye. Confusing. Deformed without deformity. I am small and strange, but presented in a picture, I would pass as a mere man. Yet I am different. I feel different, needling those atrophied senses that the rest of the animal kingdom still owns in full measure. As the dogs bayed when your Dracula came ashore, the human mind snaps and growls at my presence. I am hated.” The pen scratched, scratched. “Even were I to be a saint among men, I would be hated. You, lucky lad, won a far better lottery. When you are not loved, you are feared. As neatly as dousing a lamp or lighting it. If you do not wish to call it a physical change, then dub it metaphysical. But the change is there. It is real. And I can prove it.”

Hyde took a bracing breath. Exhaled. Then turned the notebook to face Jonathan.

“See?”

Jonathan saw.

And Jonathan changed.

He would not notice it at the time, of course. The world was made too narrow for him in that moment. All that existed was Edward Hyde and the message upon the page. Its content was curt. Its implications sordid. All with Mina’s name at the center of what Hyde imagined happened before Jonathan was stirred on that hellish hour of October 3rd. A fuller list of fluids shared with the Count. Perhaps even a thrill to go with them. Perhaps, the note suggested, Hyde would see to her needs one night. Be she awake or asleep. Jonathan was gone so often, capering with his fellow monstrous ladies. Hunting for the same high of those naughty Weird Sisters and their supple kisses? No blame, Mr. Harker, and no trouble. Yes, Hyde would be glad to see to the missus while he was away. And if she declined, well, perhaps that new boy over in Whitechapel, that Ripper fellow, might just pay her a visit instead—

It was bait. Of course it was bait. Some part of him acknowledged it straightaway in the moment, and the whole of him would admit it later on. But there, here, now? The more pressing notion was that Edward Hyde had thought to even suggest any of it. That there was a possibility, however great or small, that he might decide, on a whim, to act on what was written. This would not do.

Inside the space of three heartbeats, if not two, Jonathan Harker and Edward Hyde were no longer sitting. They were not even within the wide circle of the seating area. Jonathan Harker stood facing the nearest wall with one hand outstretched. A hand that was locked like a hangman’s hug around Edward Hyde’s throat. The smaller man’s face was rapidly turning red as his hands scrabbled at the column of the strangling arm. Stout as he was, his heels could only kick at the air and drum the wall. Somewhere on another planet, voices were raised and feet were running near.

“This—!” Hyde gasped. “You!”

“Me,” the word left Jonathan like an ice chip. Someone put their hands on him. Jonathan turned his head at an angle to face them—Utterson, Art—and saw both men’s faces snap out of concern and into—

Fear. Fear. Fear.

—a paralyzed dread so familiar that he recognized it as if seeing a mirror—

—the head turned, and the eyes fell full upon me, with all their blaze of basilisk horror. The sight seemed to paralyze me—

—or else a certain residual vision in the Transylvanian snow. Mina had written it in kinder words than it had deserved—

—nothing seemed to stop or even to hinder them. Neither the levelled weapons nor the flashing knives of the gypsies in front, nor the howling of the wolves behind, appeared to even attract their attention. Jonathan's impetuosity, and the manifest singleness of his purpose, seemed to overawe those in front of him; instinctively they cowered, aside and let him pass.

Purpose and impetuousness had been in attendance, perhaps. He had not been thinking of anything beyond the former. But he had seen well enough. Seen the slack and freezing terror that he had worn once upon a time, the shovel falling from a nerveless grip. Yes. He knew the effect well.

He certainly knew it then, seeing Art and Utterson halt and lurch back from their grip. Another noise came from Hyde. An airless chuckle.

“See! See! So—ughk—so-good-to-meet-you.” Red now tipped toward purple. “Lie-now-Harker. Say-you-are-unchanged.” Bloodshot eyes went glassy. “If-we-live-if-you-let-us-live—,” His mouth worked mutely a moment, straining on its last drops of air. “Teach-him. Teach-the-damned-doctor. How-to— How—,” His jaw worked dumbly and his hands began to fall away.

“How to what?”

“Change… No salt…”

The eyes began to roll up. Jonathan released his hold. Hyde fell to his knees, gasping. In the peripheral, Utterson plastered a hand to his own heart. Griffin, Quincey and Jack were closing in.

“The salt,” Hyde whooped through greedy intakes. “We are both so…so damned sick of living and dying by the salt and its potion. If I am…if I am truly born of his mind, I should be able to be suppressed…as easily as a thought or whim… That has been his fixation…control of self, of me, beyond being collared to the chemist’s lab. Ha…” He peered up at Jonathan with a mix of dread and hate and a bitterness that stretched so far it nearly circled around to sorrow. “…Indeed, I do want the secret for myself. I am a coward. I desire no fight I know will cost me. Just as all living things have a coward buried in them. It is called the ‘survival instinct’ out of politeness and only the suicidal may say they have grown out of it.

“I wished more than anything to be Henry Jekyll dying in your hand, whatever you are. Harker. Reaper. What-have-you. If I were, the sight of the good man strangling to death would have fished the bleeding heart back to the surface and we would both be saved far sooner. I do not even know if I am saved now, or running the clock until you reappear at another hour and divorce our head from its neck without witnesses. Or wrench it off, I suppose. There are a good many villains out there to shift the blame to. With dear Utterson’s pitying exception, your whole little club and the world at large would be only too glad to alibi you or sing your praises.

“I do not want to die, even as I do not want to rage as a prisoner in my maker’s skull forever. But to win the former, the most vital need, I know I must buckle to the latter. It is a sickening way to be. A Thing born of raw desire, having to bow under millstones of necessity rather than want. I hate it. I hate him. I hate us. I believe I even hate you. You, with your good frame and pretty face, drawing soft looks like flies one moment, sending armies running in another. All with Fate’s own gift-wrapped boons of our dead friend’s inheritance to his feigned son, the childhood beloved so fetching and wedded, and the lion’s share of supernatural winnings from your brush with the undead nightmare while your comrades came away hobbled or robbed.”

Hyde had enough saliva now to spit, and he did. He ducked his head after. It did not quite hide the shine of other wetness dribbling down his face.

“Yes, I do hate you. And I hate the hating. And I hate that I hate it. Impulse needs relief from itself, my fellow Thing. So teach him. Teach the idiot Jekyll how to play Cronus and swallow his mind-son whole and vomit him out as needed without the crutch of the potion before we are left choking down a pond's worth every hour.” He tried to spit again and only managed a cough. Something clear dripped from his cheek. “It is the only way we can exist.”

Jonathan considered this. More, he considered Hyde and what he could see of the man without and the man within. For the same reason he could tell where Griffin stood or his unseen cat padded, he could all but see the conjoined lives within that single unhappy body. Edward Hyde appeared to be less a cyst upon the soul of Henry Jekyll than a belated and malformed sibling in an unthinkable womb. If Hyde had truly been the manifestation of Jekyll’s below-the-gutter impulses at the start, that had been the impulsivity of an infant. Innocent and immediate in his wants, but with the ability to act on them with the faculties of an adult.

Except time had done to Hyde what it did to all children, no matter their leaning—it had taught lessons. It had fostered the need for deeper thought than the self-destructive mantra of, ‘I want, so I will.’ He recalled Jekyll’s talk of Hyde carrying a cooler reason and more cunning action than he thought himself naturally capable, just as he'd explained his suspicion that Hyde had contorted from the mere acting out of his constrained desires to something ‘inorganic.’ As if this child-brother born of the potion had festered into some base malignancy.

As Hyde put it, ‘a tumor with caricature opinions, an abscess of a homunculus.’ If the latter term had been mere theatre, it also brushed against something of Jonathan’s own suspicion: a homunculus. An inorganically made human in miniature, produced by alchemy. He had nearly had his ear talked off alongside the others as Van Helsing and Griffin went into a frenzy of theorizing while making plans to track down and interview the specific chemists in charge of making that initial tainted and powerful salt. There was, perhaps, a true Jabir ibn Hayyan working unawares in a lab somewhere; an unwitting collaborator with Jekyll the Accidental Alchemist.

But the mention of alchemy had focused only on the chemical potential, not what it had already made. Not an aberration, not a mere runaway subconscious full of ill and intrusive urges not his own.

Edward Hyde was a dwarf in a flask of flesh and he was, against his best wishes—wishes he had even outside of Jekyll’s hindbrain daydreams—congealing out of a Thing and into a Person. Enough that he had pounced upon realizations and plans ahead of any possible idea from Jekyll. The doctor had not been the witness-without, had not been the one drawing connections and harvesting a grim crop of hope and, most unthinkably, risking his life on the off-chance of goading Jonathan into putting his own dual states on display. Even taking this last as a display of ‘survival instinct’ entering a gamble for a reward later, to not wait until after the potion and Jekyll’s less volatile shield was between himself and any violence, to use his own ill nature to bait the hook, spoke too much of a calculation and grudging willingness for jeopardy that didn’t line up with either Jekyll or Hyde’s estimate of the little man.

In short: The plea had not come from the doctor. Nor from his own under-thoughts. It was Hyde alone who wished himself jailed and put on Jekyll’s mental chain, dragged in or out on his whim.

Unless he wants such a trick for himself, whispered a cold voice in him. It never raised its volume. It rarely spoke at all. But whenever it did, it did so with frost on its breath, speaking up from some lightless place below the cellar of his mind. Can you put that past him, nascent villain that he is? If he mastered such a thing better than the doctor, he could turn Jekyll into nothing more than a respectable costume to wear, donned only for the drudgery of work and safety while he stole ownership of their life’s greater bulk. True, he is a wanted man on the streets out there. But there is precious little to stop him arranging things to transplant himself and the doctor in a new country. One where he is unknown. And there is Mina to consider.

Cold burned in him. His hands folded into stones.

If he is a man, let him face a man’s consequences. If he is a monster, let him face the same. Why should he have more mercy than the demons that laughed as they killed and did worse? Why should he deserve any charity of your effort, your straining camaraderie? Why?

To the cold’s surprise, an answer was waiting:

Because, Jonathan thought back, there is Mina to consider.

Her. Lucy. All the people who had existed before, and yet within, the horrors they had become by dint of transformation. Even now, he still could not help thinking…

“Harker?” He blinked. Quincey was watching him. No fear sat in his face, only concern. “You with us?”

“As if you have to ask,” Hyde muttered to the carpet. “You felt as much before you saw his face. Good Mr. Harker doesn’t bite friends. Heh.” The greasy look slid back up to Jonathan’s face. “Under most circumstances. When it can be helped. And you’re trying to decide what circumstances these are, are you not? Does the Thing get help or get euthanasia, Mr. Harker? Do you—,”

But Jonathan had already turned his back. He slipped out from under any hand that tried to fall in his shoulder or steady an arm.

“Harker. Harker, answer me. Will you help or not?”

Walking.

“Harker!”

Walking. Waiting.

Hyde made a last hateful noise. It was almost lost among the others’. There was a rush of feet, great and small. Hyde coming close. Rushing, rushing—

Jonathan turned as Hyde swung. He had snatched up Utterson’s walking stick and aimed its heavy end at his head.

In a single motion the stick was caught neatly in his free hand.

The other was already occupied with driving into Hyde’s face like a granite block wearing a wedding band.

Jekyll woke to a muddle of sensations. The most pressing of them was the tang of the potion sticking tackily to tongue and palate, the comfort of a bed, and a throbbing pain so immense it had clearly brought him out of whatever pain-killing stupor had been applied. That hot ache sang its way outward from his right cheek, half-swelling his eye and tormenting his upper jaw. When he brushed the gauze swaddling it—oh so gingerly, yet even this sent thunderbolts through the spot—the flesh there was puffed with injury.

Memory sloshed like a thick soup in his likewise-aching head. Memories that might very well have been a lucid dream for all the sense its scenes made through the haze of drug, sleep, and pain.

“…Hello? Is anyone there?”

“Yes.” Jekyll jumped and promptly cursed at the fresh pulse of agony the twitch caused. Seward was sitting in a sort of half-gloom caused by the low light of the room’s lamps. Jekyll gave a brief thanks for that. His head and eye stung terribly, and a space at full brightness would have been a misery too many. He groaned and cradled his face. “Should I bother to ask how you’re feeling, doctor?”

“Like I ran my face into a girder, doctor.”

“Worse than that, I’m afraid. It ran into Jonathan.”

Like that, memory snapped into full focus. Jekyll groaned again.

“Oh, God. That all really happened, didn’t it?”

“I’m afraid it did,” Seward hummed, his gaze dropping to an open book in his lap. His left hand was obscured as he gently tapped some utensil along its pages. Jekyll couldn’t tell what the volume was in the low light, but he took it for one of the younger man’s sparsely used notebooks. The fellow was addicted to the ease and oration of the phonograph as a rule, he knew, and to break out a journal for the purpose of his notes suggested either a desire to let Jekyll sleep, or else not to let him overhear his thoughts. Seward's line of sight flicked back up. It was hard to tell as much except by the raising of his head, as the lamps caught on his spectacles in a way that obliterated his eyes with light.

“Where’s Harker? I need to apologize, I need to…oh. Oh, no.” Jekyll had been scanning the room without realizing it. Something of Hyde’s prickling senses had leached through to him, insisting another guest was present. Or should be. But it was only himself and Seward and no— “Where is Gabriel? Did he..?”

“Still in the building,” said Seward. His left hand danced along the same page. Over and over. “Talking with the Harkers. Thankfully, neither he nor Jonathan decided it wise to have this present during the chat.” From behind his volume, Seward brought up Jekyll’s own notebook, his thumb opening it to the latest page’s message. Shame and vertigo and deepest darkest self-loathing roiled in him at the sight of it. “How much of this was invention on Hyde’s part, Dr. Jekyll? Because if even a syllable of it was spun from your own fantasies…”

“No! Jack, God, no!” The cry strained on his cheek and he bit back another wince. Carefully, he went on, “No. He improvised that. While our more,” his throat almost closed as he tried to get it out, “perverse wants do swing towards the carnal, such have never skewed toward violation.”

“Just as they have never skewed toward homicide? Or want of homicide?”

“That was different. Carew was the spasm of violence from a bully restrained to the edge of madness.”

So he believed. And, he decided against mentioning, the very nearest he and Hyde had ever come to aching jointly for plotted versus kneejerk violence before the freak instant of Carew was a hunger to visit such on those who made sport of violation. A caveman’s take on righteous sadism, true, but if there was any ounce in Hyde he might mistake for virtue, it was that.

Aloud, he continued, “All he put down there was concocted just to goad Harker into—into what you saw.” Jekyll looked up from his lap, where he’d been hiding from Seward’s glare. “You did see him, didn’t you? The other Jonathan?”

“Yes. We all did. Just as we saw the thermometer.”

“And?”

“Unfortunately, no change in the reading. Despite every man in the room swearing by a feeling of sudden cold when Harker leapt at Hyde. Gooseflesh abounded. Freezing animal fear arose when he turned his lambent glare on anyone who tried to pry him from his attack. I will even grant that I felt dread like a tangible effect pressed into me. However, none of this was a great surprise. Certainly not when we have seen such before, both in action and in stillness.”  

Seward snapped his volume shut with a sharp clap. Jekyll noticed two things.

The first, that the volume was not a mere notebook, but a bound compilation of typed pages and newspaper print. Its front was stamped with the brand: DRACULA: Entries Concerning the Events of May 18—to November 18—.

The second, that Jack Seward was not holding a pen. It was his lancet. As with the glass lenses, the metal soaked up the ambient light until it seemed to glow in his hand.

“Which you already knew.”

“What?”

“Doctor. Van Helsing and the others may have granted you some snippets of the events that transpired in our past. The Harkers may even have given away some portion. But none of us, even with all our stunted mentions combined, would ever have divulged enough to inspire this particular bait. And so I checked the safe where this was kept,” his fingers drummed upon the volume, “the one of records both sentimental and historical. I imagine he was disappointed to find it so bare of more enticing contents. Nothing but glorified memorandum in that one. Hardly worth picking the lock, but for the joy of entertaining literature.”

“Seward—,”

“It was put back in its proper place, of course. No sign of disturbance. But for this.”

Jack Seward held the lancet at a new angle that flaunted its fine point. There was a tell-tale twinkling crust on one edge.

“Perhaps it was caught under your nails or stuck to a fingertip. Either way, there are only so many in this building who would bother handling this particular salt. Van Helsing and I have not opened the safe in months, and neither of us have combed through these pages since it was first tucked away. You might be able to convince me Griffin was the culprit…”

“Assuming I gave half a damn about prying into the other peoples’ penny dreadful backstories. Which I don’t.”

The voice of Griffin was there. Somewhere.

“Dr. Griffin..?”

But the invisible man did not speak again. Nor did he see fit to don the giveaway of a robe. Seward showed no reaction to this. Only scraped the lancet’s blade clean on his trousers before making the steel dance and flash in his fingers.

“We’re talking about you, Dr. Henry Jekyll. And company. Feel free to start explaining. Or, to save your jaw, I shall hazard a guess. You knew Jonathan Harker long before the vampiric nightmare came to call. Even at his most benevolent today, he is leagues apart from the young clerk you knew in those days. Curiosity gnawed. And via Hyde, that curiosity was allowed to bite. Enough to pick the lock, have a look, and replace the ledger before anyone knew he’d been there. A comparatively harmless vice, all things considered. Was that the rationale?”

“…Yes. Yes, it was. More, we—he—I—I-I don’t know—it seemed fair as it happened. All our hideous history had been poured out in a grovel while we were left in the dark about the people who now held the key to our survival. It was a petty act and it fed into a vulgar one tonight. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry stretches only so far, there, Henry.” Griffin’s voice. Somewhere. The right one moment, the left another. “It wouldn’t have stretched nearly far enough if Carew had died. It won’t stretch at all if you suffer another slip and Hyde, who is surely, truly not powered by your nature, decides to pitch another fit against whoever’s at hand. I doubt if he expected or even wanted to beat Harker’s head in. There’d be no chance of coaching from a dead man, after all. But hey. Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he was going for another murderous tantrum.

“Just like maybe, just maybe, he would try the same on others here. Or out there. Why not, if he’s careful and quick about it? If he thinks he can get away with it the same way he knows he’d get away with Utterson.”

“What are you—?”

Seward leveled the lancet at him like a pointing finger.

“You might trust Gabriel to take an emergency shot at Hyde in a life-or-death situation, Dr. Jekyll. But from the start, there has been little question that Hyde, whether acting on your hindbrain or his own suspicion, doubts your friend could ever pull the trigger. He also gambled on the saving grace of good nature that is Harker’s default. The ‘true’ Harker, versus his apparent other half. Because Jonathan Harker is so very skilled at his dichotomy. His shifts. His extraordinary abilities that, try as I and Van Helsing might, we have never been able to explain. Man and monster. That is all Hyde can see as far as threats beyond the reach of law.”

“Terribly short-sighted of him,” Griffin hummed. Close. Too close. “As if anyone less obvious than the gallows or a solicitor with a sword were nothing to worry about. We are all heroic types here, after all. Nothing to fear from we bleeding hearts and misfits, right? Not if it risks a good man like you. Henry.”

“Which is a strange assumption,” Seward put in, playing with the lancet again, “considering all you two read. Or does Hyde think because Harker was prepared for damnation to protect his love, that his companions are any less willing to redden their hands? Because I did speak true, you know.” The lancet gleamed. “I do appreciate the term euthanasia. Most sincerely. As do my friends. And, though you may not believe me now, I am telling you this as a kindness.”

Jack Seward stood. The lamplight finally left the lenses to show a stare no less sharp than that of a raptor eyeing a snake approaching its nest.

“You are an old friend of my mentor. I respect you. I understand the pains of mind and soul you wrestled with to bring you to the point of the potion. But respect and fondness are vapor compared to the love I felt for Lucy Westenra, whose life I failed to save, but whose soul I was only too glad to see freed by true death. You, Dr. Jekyll? For all the amiability and care I’ve felt for you, do not let Hyde think for an instant that I would not free you both myself, in the swiftest clinical fashion. Nor would Van Helsing. Nor would Art or Quincey or Mina herself, who was more than prepared to fire a hole through anyone who touched her husband that sunset in the snow.

“If your passenger has labored under the delusion that he is protected by coddling hands and the shelter of your face, let him labor no more. For if Edward Hyde makes even a pantomime of any sordid attempt on anyone in the League—any innocent outside these walls—consequences will ensue. The level of mercy in it will depend entirely on who will get to you first. Because someone will. Even if you run.”

“Even if you’re alone,” Griffin whispered, so near his breath was in Jekyll’s hair. “Though in that case, it would be mere accident, of course. No way to tell otherwise.” When the voice spoke next, it was at a far table. Jekyll watched a bone saw float into the air and turn in the lamplight, as if inspected by a wondering ghost. “In short, the message is this: Fuck around, and you’re fucked. Period.” The bone saw pointed at Jekyll’s head. “Did he catch all that in there? Telegram received?”

Hyde had. He’d been catching it since Jekyll first saw the lancet. Fear had been bubbling ever since, and it had taken both their combined efforts to maintain their doctorial shape. How much was even left of the freshest batch of the potion? Five draughts? Four? Did it even matter anymore?

“Yes,” he finally got out. “Yes. He understands. We both do.”

We’re sorry. In all ways, neither Jekyll nor Hyde could bring themselves to say. We are a sorry, sorry Thing. If not for much longer.

Their final draught would be taken before the toilet’s mirror.

They had mixed it themselves in private. Stirred and squirreled it away as easily as anything. Not a grain of salt to be found within it. Plenty of unhealthy things, but not a bit of the salt or its fellow chemicals. The resulting mix nearly burned the nose to smell. Strong as it was, it would power through even Hyde’s sturdy makeup. That same sturdiness that had saved them dying with an even worse face behind when they made their exit. Distantly, both men wondered whose face it would be when they found him.

“It will hardly matter,” Hyde muttered to the glass. Yes, Hyde already. Even after guzzling the last dose a mere hour ago. They could swim in the potion and not make a difference. Too late, too late. Had it always been too late since that first drink? Would there have been a difference if they had halted two, three, even four changes in? “No, it does not matter,” Hyde echoed again. His eyes found the reflection staring back at him. Revolting. Repulsive. Repugnant. Forever after. “I ruined it, didn’t I? Pouncing on the boy like that. Turning the whole lot on us with a foul joke. I should have left it to you. You’d have talked him around.”

Assuming he would have any answers for us, Edward. Yes, Harker changes to do what he does. Perhaps there is some split buried in that snowy head. But it is not one like ours. Not even a cousin. We were fooling ourselves to think otherwise.

“Were we really? Or did I ruin it before we could get both our hopes up over a trick we could not imitate? Or abuse?”

…Maybe.

“Maybe, he says. You are the brains of both of us, Jekyll. Did I botch this because you wanted it? Because I did? Which?”

I cannot say. But I believe I would have botched it either way. Because I know—we both know—that we have tried all that might work otherwise. We have suffered through hypnotism, through different drinks and shots, through meditation and stressors. Nothing has changed. We tried, as Harker once told us to try, and we know there is no other ending but as this.

“No. Suppose not.” Hyde laid one gnarled hand upon the mirror. Strange, he thought, nigh in synch with Jekyll, the way their eyes seemed now. So old in the young face. Solemn, yes. But lacking the irksome weight that so often met them in the glass. “Is this you making a last-ditch attempt, doctor? Trying to turn me over to you? If you want to die all dignified and out of baggy clothes, there’s time to make a last batch.”

No. No, this is fine. Only it’s almost funny. We choose now to share our thoughts civilly rather than simply play conspirator or saboteur. Why is it men are like that when they know the end’s inevitable? What makes them so placid?

“Mr. Harker put it well enough. Despair has its calms. Why did you never mention our snooping to them, by the way? I never was clear on that.”

Embarrassment. Tact. Guilt. Why not you?

“Didn’t seem worth the bother. We do love a dirty secret. Loved them, anyway.” The draught rose to his lips. “Do you suppose I’ll fade away when this kicks in? Or will the Judge on the other side deem me man enough for Hell?”

If it is the latter, then I doubt we shall ever part ways, Mr. Hyde.

“That would figure, Dr. Jekyll.”

And with that, the drink was quaffed. A noxious taste and a worse effect chased it. Burning and foaming and choking he went, they went, bucking and jittering on the floor where he’d fallen. He and him and they spasmed hideously all together. It was not entirely how they’d expected the poison to take effect—in truth, it was almost as miserable as their first transformation—but it was taking effect. In three, two, one…

The door smashed open so hard the bolt tore out of the frame.

A moment later there were long fingers jamming down their throat and the whole acidic mess came rushing up from their belly in a gagging tide. Cold implacable hands turned them over so it could be retched out without drowning in it. They heard the voice of Jonathan Harker first bellowing for the resident doctors then, up by their ear, soft and urgent as he told them to breathe, breathe, breathe, hack up anything that comes up, breathe. It was a hard chore with everything still burning and dripping, sizzling even their gums, eyes and nose running in rivers as their current damned-blessed hardiness fought a far lower dose of poison.

Damn it, damn it, why had he stopped them? Was this not what he’d wanted? What all of them wanted? Even themselves? What was the boy even doing here?

“What are you doing here?” they demanded aloud. Oh, that was odd. The poison had clearly done some damage to their vocal cords. Their tone was garbled somehow. Weirdly echoed. But that was not all. Whatever work the toxins had done, it was enough to disorient the whole of them. The room looked out of perspective, somehow, and their limbs were wrong, they were—

Wait.

They looked down at themselves. Yes, their shirtfront was stained in poisonous swill and bile and the unfortunate-looking dregs of supper, but more importantly that shirt fit. As did the trousers. Henry Jekyll’s clothes fit. And yet, the hands were not the doctor’s. Were they? They were fine-boned and long, yet of that ruddy and hard-palmed texture that belonged to Edward Hyde. The sight boggled them.

…Why did they think of themselves as them?

Their head turned so slowly it creaked on their neck as they regarded Jonathan Harker with owlish wonder. Harker, in turn, seemed a touch surprised too. Shock had died for the young man ages ago, naturally, so surprise was as much as could be hoped for. Terribly unfitting for the occasion, they thought, but it served as good enough reason not to break into a blubbering heap of confusion.

“Look in the mirror,” Harker told them. “Do you need help?”

No, they did not. They took his hand anyway as they staggered up, feeling almost drunk as they found their footing. And their reflection.

They were still staring by the time the rest of their audience arrived.

“What happened?” That was Utterson. Still here. Still here. For them. “Where is he? What—,” He stopped short. Though they’d yet to turn their head, they imagined he was gawking with the rest. Harker still stood beside them, unblinking, but with some secret cooking behind his bonny lashes. “Who is this?”

“We aren’t sure, Utterson. Not at all.”

In the mirror, two young men were looking out of the glass. Jonathan Harker on one side. On the other, a youth who might have been Henry Jekyll’s own brother, had his parents ever produced one. Dark hair, smooth features, tanned skin, long bones. And eyes of two tones. One the pale iris of Dr. Jekyll’s. The other that queasy brightness of Mr. Hyde’s.

“Harker.”

“Yes?”

“I’ll not flatter you and say you know for certain what this is. But you look far too sure of yourself to not have a decent hypothesis. Out with it.”

“Nothing so scientific. Just a guess.”

“Which is?”

“Question for a question.” They looked at him. His eyes caught the light like the points of a lancet. Or the coins on dead men’s eyes. The effect sat bizarrely with so gentle a smile. “By any chance, were you two talking to yourselves before this?”

There may as well have been a theatre production for all the gawping packed into the League’s parlor. Weeks of practice with Harker had passed since the initial revelation and now every head in their menagerie, including a few of the honorary brigade, had found time in their schedule to squeeze into the room. Ostensibly so everyone was aware of the change and nobody was stuck as last-to-know—Mrs. Harker and Mrs. Norton seemed utter sticklers on the point of banishing as many secrets as possible, alas—but it was obvious on too many faces that they’d have invented reasons to come watch the display.

It was perhaps a bit gratifying to see Mr. Harker finally perturbed enough to get some proper pink in his pallid face. If he were flustered long enough he might even pass for better than a comely corpse. They considered mentioning this aloud, but decided it would draw attention away from the show. Later, then. For now, let the young man squirm.

“It occurred to me not long after Hyde made his play with my, ah, condition. Mine is, as most have guessed, a transformation that’s left its stamp quite permanently. Physically, I am always able to do what I do.” To illustrate, he hooked a pinkie under the low table, a thing of exquisitely expensive craftsmanship and incredible weight to match. The pinkie tipped it up as if it were made of feathers. “It is either static or possibly developing at a slow rate. All the other solicitors I know who took the courses for this type of thing are all keeping tight-lipped about the particulars. Isn’t that right, Norton?”

Godfrey Norton shook his head beside a mildly bemused Utterson and a deeply unhappy Seward.

“You’ll not get trade secrets out of me that way, Harker. Nor will I share the hair dye recipe.”

“Damn.” The in-joke earned a laugh or ten before he moved on. “The gist being that I don’t have any grander traits to add or subtract when I throw myself at a fight. I always look like I do. But as most of you know and as Hyde very clearly picked up, I do undergo a sort of change. And I stand by the analogy of a butcher at work versus a butcher at home. The man is the same, but the ‘professional’ side of him takes over when it comes time to finish the task. It is always an active shift for him, just as it is for me. But neither is ever wholly just the butcher or just the man at home.”

“Just the monster or just the man,” they corrected from their spot on the divan. “No need to blush about it, Harker. Monsters can be better men than most men, and vice versa. Was that not the sermon we three settled on?”

“It was. And that point does stand. We’ve all had more than fair reasons to adjust our perspectives when it comes to matters of all-or-nothing identity and where the lines are regarding humanity versus monstrosity. In some cases, the lines aren’t there at all. No black, no white, just a gradient along a spectrum. But when it comes to cases like mine, Jekyll’s, and Hyde’s, the two furthest ends of that spectrum do have minds of their own. And while each can operate free of the other’s input, the result is never as good as collaboration. At least, not as I’ve experienced it.

“What started with my journal-keeping seems to have transferred, by natural or supernatural means, to a sort of internal dialogue. Less like simple A to B to C thought, and more of a…” he dug for a word.

“Chat,” they put in. “Jonathan the Solicitor talking things out with Harker the Reaper. ‘Yes, we could put up with this absolute ass of a client, or we could lop his head off. Hmm. No, no, too much trouble hiding the body. Save that energy for the side job.’” They bared their teeth in a grin any imp in Hell would be proud of. Well, no, too deep. Purgatory, perhaps? “Don’t say you haven’t thought it.”

“I won’t. Of course I have. Everyone has passing outlandish thoughts, no matter how fine they are in their day-to-day lives. Your problem used to be the fact that all those passing thoughts and wants and intrusive what-ifs from Jekyll’s mind kept funneling over to Hyde. Then, when Hyde became more of himself than just a shadow of Jekyll, extra complication was added. Impulse developed into intellect and intellect became a whole person. One who grated even against himself as he suffered the reverse of Jekyll’s predicament. No longer just pure impulse, he started growing a hierarchy of needs versus wants—the same mental checks, balances, and restraints that everyone else must develop as they grow up. And that put the two men to war as much as any vicious spasm; at a guess, the attack on Carew was a side effect of that same growth. Hyde kicking and screaming against himself as much as any mere outburst against Jekyll.”

At that, they could not help a nod. It was true in retrospect as much as the scene itself. Yes, Hyde had done it to rage at Jekyll after an overlong imprisonment. But they could not lie to themselves and pretend there was not something of panic in it too. An awareness they’d not even had words for yet, but the announcement of those hyper-conscious senses that declared to Hyde that his carefree insidious nature was steadily corroding under new impulses. Impulses that weren’t impulses but—ugh—thoughts. Emotions. Considerations. Concerns. Needs. Responsibilities. Uuugghh.

Poor Carew had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time and was made a punching bag for it. Look! Look! I am a monster! I am a horror! I am raw and unchecked! See? See?

They blanched at the memory. Shame for one, childhood embarrassment for the other.

“All this,” Harker went on, “combined with the problem of the potion losing its strength brought the whole mess to a boil. It couldn’t have been doing wonders for their focus, let alone anything like collaboration between the two sides.”

“Especially when both sides were still half-convinced one wasn’t even a person.” They swallowed around a lump. “Not even enough to be a monster.”

Jonathan nodded at them.

“Exactly. Not while you were both in an increasing state of stress. When I make my change going up against an opponent, I am stressed—but not the Jonathan Harker swinging the blade or crawling the walls. He is focused because we are focused. Same for the reverse. I talk to myself and I am better for it, just as speaking to a journal once kept me steady. The same, I thought, should be tried with Jekyll and Hyde. I was discussing as much with Mina and Gabriel when…”

Here the roses flared back in his cheeks. Awkward as a foal.

“When your psychopomp senses started ringing?”

“I felt something was wrong," Harker allowed. "Something was—was ending or in emergency. I can’t define it, except to say I guessed where you were and that you were in danger.”

“What uncanny guesses you make, Mr. Harker. If only it could be put to the lottery. Up you came to the rescue, and one undignified bout of sickness on the tiles later, there we were. I was. Whatever.” They spread their hands in the manner that said ta-da. “Because you had another right guess. Jekyll and Hyde had been talking to each other. There was a…”

Most edifying discussion about how very near we were to being slaughtered like a two-headed calf by the doctors on call if Hyde did a big enough no-no.

They thought it. Thought it loudly as their gazes drifted to Dr. Seward and Dr. Griffin. Then thought it was at least some kind of secret out of this whole thing.

“…moment of epiphany, let’s say. End of the rope and end of all hope. The potion was turning pointless and it seemed to the conjoined wretches that Mr. Harker had washed his hands of them. You know, with the exception of the hand used to knock said epiphany rattling about their head. Jekyll and Hyde found themselves with a truce born of their mutual desire to cut ahead and be done with themselves for good. In that united decision of death, there was calm. Followed by, for the first time, genuine dialogue between the two. It carried on all the way to the mirror and the draught. And as the killing shock took over, something else was dislodged in their makeup, already loosened by the two men’s heart-to-heart. Once Harker had finished burping us until the poison was out, we had already happened.”

“You being..?”

“Edward, for the most part. Perhaps even an Eddie. Just as we—,” there was a sudden melting contortion of the man on the divan. A shrinking. When it ended, a dwarf sat there. One in late middle age, with the heterochromia of the eyes having switched places in the eyes. His smile was a kind curl and laughter sat benignly in his crow’s feet. “—are mostly Henry. Or maybe a Hank. And the audience will notice one unmissable factor in both ourselves and in Eddie.” Again they spread their hands; smaller digits, but now wan with pale indoor hours bent over notes and test tubes. “Namely, that there is nothing amiss about either of us. Not in the extrasensory way, at least. No radiation of repugnance nor sugared goodwill. Hyde in his solitude could not help his unpleasant miasma. Like so.” There was another shifting spasm.

Then young and stout Edward Hyde leered out at them.

“Here I am, in all my glory, making you all turn appropriately pucker-faced. Though notably less so than I have been accustomed to before. Could be due to exposure lessening the impact. Or, if Harker’s own otherworldly feelers are correct, I am giving off less of the old souring effect. My former unfettered moral deformity, as the poets in the crowd put it, has been tempered by mental and spiritual growth.” His gaze met Harker’s. “The homunculus fully formed, so to speak. And, in the opposing direction…”

A last spasm and shudder and stretch and then—

Henry Jekyll sat there. Smiling and very near to weeping.

“…here is the alchemist, in one piece. Or four, doing their best to hold the arrangement. Which was the crux of the issue all along. Arrangement. Agreement. The working theory is that the potion kicked an irreversible condition into motion from the first draught. Even if I had never had a second or third or so on, my duality as Jekyll and Hyde was already inevitable. The routine drinks just prodded the change along faster, like shoving a stone downhill when it was already rolling. But the anxiety of that latter period where Hyde started to overshadow me and Hyde’s own changes started to overshadow him reached their horrid crescendo and it all turned into pure hysteria on both our parts. We hated. We warred. We had to coexist or not at all.

“Bickering and clawing at each other when the solution was right there. Hyde’s womb was my own soul, my mind. Even as his own person, this was unalterable. And so the affliction worsened as the conflict in a mind will spoil everything in one's life. Indecision and panic and loathing that couldn’t decide if it was more for the self or the other kept us unable to help ourselves until it was too late. And it would have stayed too late if you hadn’t broken the door down, Harker. Thank you. For that and so much more.”

Harker grinned at him.

Badly.

Coldly.

“Like not killing you?”

Between one blink and the next, Harker was over the table with his heel planted against Jekyll’s chest. The kukri was already out and swinging in a brilliant silver-white flash toward the doctor’s neck. There was not even time for the gathered League to gasp.

Not until the steel stopped a bare centimeter short of grazing the man’s sweat-glazed Adam’s apple. Specifically, the Adam’s apple belonging to the still-present, and thoroughly bug-eyed, Henry Jekyll.

“Scared?” Harker asked.

“A bit,” Jekyll croaked.

“And yet still here.”

“Right. Yes.” He gulped. Carefully.

“Then that's the last test passed. Congratulations, doctor.” Harker promptly took his blade and his foot back with a sprightly gesture. He pricked his thumb purposefully upon the steel’s edge to feed it, then sheathed it with care. Smiling all the while. It was not a cold thing, but the joy in it was no less insidious. Jekyll rubbed his throat thoughtfully. 

“I thought you were joking about this part.”

“Yes. And it was just a joke.” Harker beamed at him.

Jekyll swallowed again as he thought on that miserable conversation with Mina Harker who, to his mingled surprise, relief, and mortification, had been far less incensed than her husband about the ‘joke’ of the goading note. Disappointed, yes, but not incensed. In her words, if she and Mr. Harker took every degenerate come-on with any degree of seriousness in their strange work, they wouldn’t get any work done for all the indignation they would have to slog through. She had been more concerned for her beloved who really didn’t have to go throttling and/or beheading every person to voice a crass word in her direction. Though it was sweet. Harker had countered that she should be just as prudent about not turning every other succubus-adjacent bogeywoman into so much Swiss cheese when they came scrambling after him. Though he was glad to have her in his corner…

And on and on and sickeningly, disturbingly on. The whole exchange had left Jekyll, Hyde, and everyone in-between considerably unsettled.

Back in the present, the makeshift theatre was breaking up with laughs here, celebration there, chatter everywhere. He and Harker both had found no escape from Van Helsing’s latest monologue on the subject, despite having gone through no less than eight already during their interim of practice. The one solace to the Hyde within him was that the Professor took more than a fair share of time to crow excitedly to a stone-faced Seward about all the leaps of psychological puzzle-solving Harker had rushed through at a sprint while red-faced Harker tried to will himself into Griffin’s level of invisibility. Silver linings and all that.

Utterson was, of course, the last one in the room by the time clusters of the League had drifted off into other spaces and personal talk.

Jekyll joined him for an hour. Two. Three. Four. The things that may or may not have been shared between them are private matters. As are any tears that may or may not have been shed, likewise the identities of those shedding them. Towards the end of the night, before the hansom took each to his home—and no, not a word will be said about who within the person of Henry Jekyll wept most at the prospect of a full and uninterrupted return to that place and its faces—they shared a final chat.

“…And you are certain you’ve not seen any more revenants skulking on these streets? Ghouls? Werewolves? A few ghosts on parade?”

“None that I’ve seen, Henry.” Utterson turned to him, the placid gaze still seeming addicted to the sight of Jekyll’s face. “Do you prefer Henry now? I do not know how long it will take to be used to ‘Hank.’ It sounds weirdly American.”

“Mr. Morris thought the same. But not to worry. ‘Hank’ belongs to my compacted self. Hyde is still ‘Edward’ at his ordinary state. And the churlish youth with the patter of brat is dear Eddie. At least, so we have ordered things in here.” Jekyll tapped his brow. “Though I doubt that’s the question that’s gnawing at you now that we’re away from prying ears.”

Before Utterson could admit as much, Jekyll shifted to Eddie.

“You’re worried this mental camaraderie among imaginary friends and fiends is only temporary.”

Eddie to Edward.

“Or that it’s a form of madness like those poor souls in the asylums.”

Edward to Hank.

“Or that it’s all some long game to somehow make another try at juggling last wills and testaments and a fresh uninhibited runaround of various merry sins.”

Hank to Jekyll.

“Which would all be fair suspicions to hold. I would be glad if you held on to them, just as the League surely does. Even if circumstances have changed with regard to Hyde’s side and my own residual unscrupulous cravings. I will not lie and say I do not wish to have unsaintly periods. I do. But with Hyde’s own alteration, there has been a change in equilibrium. As if all the best and worst of my natures have been spread out and intermingled to make an existence less strangled by ‘black and white.’ Striving for the pristine life nearly broke me, just as striving for the most sordid life broke Hyde. We were both of us performers trying to meet and overdo our roles.”

“And what does that make you now, my friend?” Utterson wondered aloud. There was no tremor in it, though there might have been some in his eyes. “How can I know who I speak to anymore?”

“By action, Gabriel. Faces can lie as well as words. But action—the actions all the selves that make me intend to take going forward—will prove me. Because this whole grotesquerie really does come back to my mishandling my wants. By painting everything from the rudest urge to the dullest bit of self-gratification as equal sins, I repressed myself to the point of actual madness. What sane man would have chased and drunk that damned elixir at the risk of death otherwise? For a man to be perfectly angelic is an impossibility, just as pure evil is, without driving one insane. Having more than learned the lesson there, my wants have changed.

“Rather, they have multiplied. All of them tinted with more satisfactory purpose than the mere scratching of an itch. I am more good than I am evil by nature as much as practice, Gabriel. This I can say without hyperbole or vanity. Yet evil is in here as well; rather, cruelty. And it needs its expression too.” Jekyll smiled. It was not quite his own—a jointly crafted grin. “Much good can be done by hallowed means. But if even a fraction of the tales I have overheard as well as spied while making my clockwork visits to the League are but the tip of a larger threat, it suggests we live on the edge of a world ready to be cannibalized by bastards of human and supernatural ilk. The kind of undiluted evil that cannot be parried by goodwill and charity. For that, the world needs its own monsters standing guard, taking point, lopping heads. Metaphorically or otherwise.”

“Forgive my saying so,” Utterson cut in, “but neither you nor any of yourselves have much in the way of practical fighting skill. If you mean to start throwing yourself into the fray with Harker…”

“No, nothing like that. Being hale is no match for that particular polymath of the paranormal. The boy’s juggling Hawkins’ office, detective work, and monster management on scarcely a blink of sleep while the best I could manage was balancing two lives. Yet I do have an advantage my fellow extraordinary oddities lack.”

“That being..?”

“Is it not obvious? They are all steadfast heroes, regardless of their amount of humanity. You can practically feel it wafting off of them. But me?” Jekyll shifted to Eddie. Mismatched eyes twinkled. “I can more than pass muster as a villain, all too ready to mingle with and menace my compatriots in the worsening of humankind with chemical-to-alchemical knowhow. I could never be mistaken for one of the League.” The mismatched eyes blinked. Heterochromia faded to Hyde’s gaze alone as a ghost of the rotten aura thrummed out of the young man. “Not if we put our minds to it. Not until it’s too late for the bastards to undo my mess.”

“…That is quite a leap to make, Eddie. All of you. Are you so sure of yourselves?”

Eddie shrugged.

“It is what we want to do. That’s more important than ‘sure.’ Though there is one last thread lingering which I’m surprised you’ve yet to ask us about.” Again, the smile was wrong for the face. This one was too much Jekyll’s in its mirth. Heterochromia returned in a flicker.

“What is that?”

“You’ve not even inquired about my new last name. ‘Edward Hyde’ is still quite dangerous to be in these parts, you know.”

“Very well. What is your surname?”

Eddie beamed. Beamed and thought of other goodies found lurking in that safe of memories. Not all of them belonging to the vampire hunters. Not all of them about violations of the blood and body.

Not all of them yet addressed.

Some months later, a Lord Henry Wotton found himself facing an occasion he had thought impossible. He was at a loss for words. Namely because all his words appeared to be getting dutifully recorded. Some young cad in black with unequal eyes had taken to trailing him throughout the party with a notebook in hand. The initials on the spine were stamped E.H.

No matter where Wotton drifted, no matter who he spoke to or when, the fellow followed. Always with an unmissable air of one trying to stifle a laugh whenever Wotton opened his mouth. It was curious, even amusing for the first quarter of an hour. By the full hour mark it had grown tedious. By hour two it was bordering on the unbearable, if only because so many of the eyes present had ceased to mind him when he spoke, but turned inevitably towards the young man in black.

Scratch, scratch, scratch went the pen. Flip, flip, flip, went the pages. Ha, ha, ha went the unaired cackle hiding in the odd eyes. Distinctly at rather than with a single witticism. Finally...

“Very well, my dear shadow. I must bite. What is it you are up to? Penning a biography of the party or just myself?”

“Nothing so grand, my lord. I had come here merely to refresh my memory of the best way to deliver the verbal equivalent of gold-plated horse droppings. Thank goodness, you are precisely as vapid as I remember. Excellent material.”

So saying, his pen poised again.

“I do pride myself on proper presentation of vapidity,” Wotton hummed. “Though I must have slackened since last we met, as I usually aspire to the verbal equivalent of—,”

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

“Ha! There it is!”

The young man turned the notebook around so that Wotton and all their audience could read the notes. Apparently, he had invented a sort of tally mark game. There were bullets titled:

HYPOCRISY (FREE SPACE)

DISAGREE TO SEEM SMART

DISAGREE TO SEEM ALOOF WHEN CALLED OUT

AGREE TO SEEM ALOOF (ADD HYPERBOLE = BONUS)

RANDOM FRENCH

INSULT WOMEN (UGLY)

INSULT WOMEN (PRETTY)

INSULT (X) RACE

INSULT (X) COUNTRY

APPLAUD APPEARANCE OVER SUBSTANCE

APPLAUD APPEARANCE OVER SUBSTANCE (WAX POETIC MONOLOGUE = BONUS)

ACTIVELY GIVE BAD ADVICE IN HOPES OF ENTERTAINING DISASTER (SEE: SIBYL VANE, BASIL HALLWARD, DORIAN GRAY)

Each title was cluttered with tally marks. ‘Agree to Seem Aloof’ now had the most at ten dashes.

“You see, once it became clear that your script hadn’t changed a jot in years, there was no reason to take notes. You’re predictable to the point of being mechanical and I need only fill in the blanks for my role. So, to pass the time, I made a little sport. And now look! I’ve hit a ten and owe myself a treat. Oh, now don’t make that face. We both know your sheep love your enabling nattering enough to stay and hover around simpering for your approval rather than go asking silly questions about who has how much culpability in this or that death. Which certainly no one knows about, of course. No one who matters.” The young man’s teeth bared in a sickle. Around him, the air curdled. “Probably. Anyway!”

So saying, the young man clapped the notebook shut so loudly it sent people jumping and others’ heads turning.

“That’s me done for the evening. My thanks again for your wise tutoring. Most invaluable.”

“I don’t believe I heard your name, my friend. I should quite like to address you in the future.”

“Me, Wotton? I am nobody important. Which I suppose does not narrow it down very much. No one is important to you but you. You would walk on your own wife’s face to spare mud on your bootheel. So, a name.”

He made a mock bow and the mismatched eyes almost seemed to blaze. For one surreal moment, Wotton swore he saw the pale eye brighten to the same unhealthy sheen as its twin. The air did not merely curdle as this happened. It nauseated. It grew filthy. It grew poisoned. It grew with the young man’s grin. When the grin split a final time to speak, the voice was wrong. Almost as if it were two timbres in unison, speaking low.

“Eddie Harker, my lord. I do hope we shall see more of each other. Hopefully before consequences have a chance to happen. Between the corpses and the cuckolds piling up in your wake, there’s no telling who will get to you first. Best of luck either way. Good-night.”

With the sound of distinctly less-than-enraptured clamoring at their back, they slipped out of the revelry and melted into the night, pulling down their hat and gripping a newer, sturdier walking stick in one glove. One that would not break in two should the need arise to break something else. Alas, much as they would enjoy seeing the little lord’s teeth scatter and his silver tongue scorched, all of themselves had sadly sworn off any repeats of Carew. There were better things to inflict. The kind of pains that the right kind of patter would never fix. A little hobby to round out the espionage. But that would come later. Not tonight.

Tonight, the sky was clear, the streets were calm, and from a single throat came the sound of a laughing choir. Content to be together.

-FIN-

-?-

#this one's another whopper #my hands are going to mutiny #anyway Let Jonathan Get a Break from These Weird Old Public Domain Dudes' Issues please #jonathan harker #henry jekyll #edward hyde #dracula #the strange case of dr. jekyll and mr. hyde #dracula daily #jekyll and hyde weekly #the league of extraordinary gentlefolk #my writing #The Adventures of Jonathan Harker and the Strange Old Men

[credince--writes]

To Mend My Wounds

John Price x Reader (More like an OC, but meh)

Also, it'll end up following some Jittersverse plot points. Have fun with that.

Luitenant John Price is sent on a (not on paper, but just as much of an order as anything else) mandatory leave to visit an old friend of Captain Lund for some much-needed healing.

John's shoulders were tense, staring down at the skin that he'd peeled at some point from around the corner of his thumb. The flesh stung, not nearly as bad as the assorted bruises and graze on his right arm, but still.

"John."

The Captian said his name- again. He had been too busy spiraling in his own mind to even hear the man.

"Yes Sir?" He looks up, seeing the flicker of worry shine in his eyes.

He wanted to tell himself it wasn't his fault.

He couldn't have saved them all.

You'd never be able to save them all.

Didn't mean it hurt any less.

The Captain looked tired. Drained, the color from his face, shit, the color from his hair starting to drain from his roots. Small grey hairs starting to peak their way through the collective mess of dirty, sweaty brown hair.

"You are going to go on leave. Sort this out at a place." He starts.

John's eyes snap up. "I can't leave my men-"

"You don't have a say in this, Luitenant." Lund cut him off. "I know a woman... Back in the states. I visited her a long time ago when I was in a place similar to yours. You're going to go spend some time there, mend your wounds. Not just the ones of flesh, do you understand?"

John's throat felt tight.

"Yes, I understand sir."

<><><><><><><><>

You'd woken up to the sound of birds chirping, the excessive light shining in through the window directly into your eyes forcing you to roll over with a groan of protest.

It was 8am.

Why were you awake?

You groaned, again, sitting up and rubbing your eyes. Feeling the blankets pool around your middle.

And that's how your morning would normally go.

Wake up, groan. Fight the blankets, and groan some more. Stare out the window at the bird until you get the motivation to hobble out of bed and make a cup of tea.

Maybe staying up late, craning your neck upward at the stars wasn't a good idea.

Maybe it was because you'd spent 3 hours in the wee hours of the morning trying to lure an opossum into your lap.

It was your grandmother's home, or compound was the more correct terminology. For the entirety of your life, spend her days mending the minds and spirits of others with therapies while you wandered through the forests and picked moss off of the trunks.

Dirty feet, the feeling of the crumbling leaves and cold water rushing past in the creek.

To understand the soul is one thing,

but to heal one, so damaged and hesitant to open up to love?

That was her gig.

Your grandpa had been similar, but healing wounds of the physical body. Stitches and staples, and pills. Oh, the pills.

It was funny, for such a soft, loving, and giving woman. She hated that man with spite so deep you'd of guessed standing in the yard, throwing his bags of clothes into a firepit off the front porch and setting them alight she'd summoned all the pain and suffering she'd mended over the years. Carefully collected and stored away for it to rot back into the Earth, right out of the jar like some kind of Pandora's box.

To love so much, only to wither away to a disease that took what she valued most from her.

Her mind.

So you'd wake, grab your tea from the light blue mason jar with collected flowers and herbs you'd grown with her not that long ago. Mix it into the hot water and allow it to steep, while your mind steeped on the loss, the silence, and the feeling of energy all around you.

To step out onto the plush grass, wiggling your toes and feeling the morning dew on your soles. The connection of your body to the Earth is as if your feet were shooting roots to feel the energy of nature- to feel the connection with everything around.

Wandering, primarily, closer to the treeline eyeing a trail of fresh deer prints stamped into the moist soil.

Wandering, to peer back to the house and heard the unmistakable sound of a car pulling up the driveway.

To stand back in the shadow, watching as a man gruffly exited the car, straightening his stature and striding out towards the front door. Khaki pants- possibly a carpenter, a long sleeve jacket with a small collar popping out around his neck.

Feeling his boot connected with the gravel, staring at the man and feeling the unmistakable piercing pain that his soul carried- the weight atop his shoulders. He had a bag slung over his shoulder, marching like a man on a mission.

Like a soldier.

Stepping forward, out into the grass, and walking towards him. Seemingly triggering something in his peripheral, his head whipped over, eyes narrowing onto your frame as if you were a potential threat, then softening the moment he recognized it to be a barefoot woman, staring at him with an amused look holding a steaming mug in her hand.

"Looking for something?" You asked, eyeballing the large back sitting on his shoulder, the tendons in his hands straining. Watching as he pulled the bag down the rest next to his feet.

"I..." He hesitated for a moment. "I'm sorry Ma'am. I'm looking for Miss Evangeline?"

Your Grandmother.

"Could that not be me?" You asked, watching how his body language stood stiff- trained.

"I was under the impression that Miss Evangeline was much... uh." He paused.

"Would you like to see her? Mister..." You started.

"Luitenant Pri-" He faultered. "John. My name is John. And yes, please. Miss...?"

You nodded slowly, a smirk raising on your lips as you lifted the mug to your lips.

Telling him your name, and then motioning for him to follow you. Stepping carefully as you moved into the forest, careful of your steps to not disturb the mushrooms sprouting out under the decaying foliage underfoot.

To your slight irritation, the sound of his methodical footwork, disregarding the flow of your movements to not disturb the piece of the land beneath your feet.

"Here she is." You stepped forward, moving to the side and opening up to a clearing filled with moss.

He glances, confused, before opening his mouth to speak. "...Where?"

You looked down at the dirt, teasingly sticking your toe into a leaf and flipping it over. "A little bit here, a little bit there. I'm sure the wind carried her over there as well." You motioned your head to the side, glancing across the clearing.

He stared mouth agape, not speaking.

"She's dead, John."

"....I figured. I am sorry for your loss- this was a misunderstanding then. Apologies for my intrusion, I will be leaving now." He dipped his head in a pseudo-awkward apology before turning to leave.

"I'm assuming your superiors sent you here?" You asked, him stopping in his tracks to glance over at you. Still staring into the clearing with an amused look on your face.

"Yes. He did, to meet Miss Evangeline." He nodded.

"Our family has been healing for generations." You stated. "Miss Evangeline is my Grandmother, she must know your Superior through her occupation, or through the grapevine." You responded, matter-of-factly. "Doesn't mean you need to leave. I do the same thing she has done, usually, it just takes a while for the word to spread that the next generation's takin' the helm." You mused, taking another sip.

John stood, in disbelief for one part at the distinct lack of grief- or anything really other than a constant calm, amused expression and body language. Usually meeting a strange man and taking him to a gravesite as if it were comedy.

"...Occupation," John states.

"We're healers. Have been since the civil war." You nodded with your statements. "War has always created the trauma. Life, creates it as well but war? It brings out the worst. It's been my family's duty for generations to sew little bits of it back together."

"That is what I was told." He agreed.

"You reek of death, John." You stated, still not looking back to meet his gaze. "You carry it, as a man thinks he should. But the weight has become too much to bear."

John doesn't know what to say, just stands. Stares. Listens.

"Sometimes you need to learn how to let that weight go. It isn't your duty to carry it all at once. It breaks your soul down, bit by bit." You step, turning to stare back. Meet his gaze. The subtle tremor of his hand as he grips the fabric of his jacket.

"Would you like me to show you how to mend it together?"

#John price x reader #cod mwii #call of duty #john price my beloved

[lavellenchanted]

Personal Effects

Steggy Week 2022, Day 3: Headcanons and Meta ↳ A headcanon for post-Endgame

The box sits at the back of Peggy’s wardrobe.

It’s been there for years, moved with her between apartments and houses, plain cardboard with a thin layer of dust on the lid and a blouse that’s fallen of its hanger draped across it and almost obscuring the neatly typed label stuck to the side, that reads, Personal effects of Cptn S. G. Rogers.

It is, like many things in Peggy’s life, a secret.

At the end of the war it had seemed as if anything related to Captain America, anything that might even have retained half a fingerprint, had been scrupulously collected by grey, angular men indistinguishable from one another in their identical suits and taken to some undisclosed location – all of it was packed up and removed from the SSR base, presumably to be pored over for any tiny particle of DNA that might help the government recreate Project Rebirth.

All of it, except one small box that Chester Phillips had brought to her the day the men in suits first arrived and that she had managed, by some small miracle, to spirit out of the base and hide among her own things.

Most of the time it remains undisturbed, apart from when the occasional pair of shoes are stored on top of it. It usually only ever comes out once a year, its contents lifted out one by one and tenderly examined, a quiet ritual to mark an anniversary few others ever think about.

Until the day she’s finally able to return it to its rightful owner.

It’s a few weeks after Steve shows up on her doorstep, when they’re sat at the kitchen table discussing paperwork and false identities and who, or if, they’re going to tell that he’s return when he makes an offhand comment about at least there isn’t the complication of having to reclaim any belongings. He clearly expects Peggy to laugh and blinks in surprise when instead she sits bolt upright before dashing upstairs.

When she returns and places the box down in front of him, his mouth falls opens.

“Are these . . .?”

“Your things.” She nods. “It’s all I managed to save after – well. After. I didn’t even think about it before now but what you said – I thought you might like to have these back, at least.”

His hands shake a little as he lifts off lid and looks to see what’s inside, small pieces of his past that he never expected to see again.

There’s his ration book, worn around the edges, most of the stamps torn out, kept because his name and signature still legible on the front in his clear, neat handwriting. Several loose sheets of paper with half-finished sketches drawn in idle moments. One of them – his cheeks flush red when he sees it – is of Peggy, her face in three-quarter profile, unaware that she was being observed, the pencil strokes soft and drawn with obvious care.

Beneath the sketches are his old watch – a cheap, second-hand thing bought when he was a teenager. It’s long since stopped working, but he takes a moment to marvel at the worn line in the leather strap where he used to have to fasten it so tightly to stop it falling away from his wrist.

A dog-eared copy of The Invisible Man, which he’d been halfway through reading before his last mission. There’s an irony there, given the uncertainty of his own status now, but he doesn’t delve too deeply as he flicks through and finds the ration coupon he’d been using as a bookmark before setting it aside.

There’s a pocket knife, that he thinks was given to him as a present by a neighbour when he was small; it had been replaced by standard military-issue equipment when he was on duty but he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of it entirely and so stowed it away with the rest of his belongings.

And finally – a wallet. Old leather that was beginning to fall to pieces even back that, with a couple of dollar bills still inside, but far more important is the small, black-and-white photograph tucked behind them.

It shows a young woman seated in a chair, a man stood behind it with a hand on her shoulder. She wears a simple, long-sleeves white blouse and ankle length dark skirt, with what looks like sensible boots beneath it. Her hair is pinned back from her face and it’s difficult to be sure of the colour when everything is shades of grey, but it appears blonde. She’s smiling, her right arm held up across her chest so she can hold the man’s hand. He’s in an army uniform, tall and broad-shouldered, hair a few shades darker than the woman’s. He’s looking down at her rather than at the camera, a softness in his expression visible even small and at a distance.

Steve looks at it for several moments before turning it over to see the date written on the back in his mother’s looping cursive: 23 January 1918.

Peggy watches the mingling of joy and grief on his face, and reaches out to place a comforting hand on his shoulder, unconsciously mimicking the pose in the photograph.

“Your parents?”

“Yeah.” His voice cracks a little and he clears his throat before continuing. “It’s only picture I ever had of the two of them together. Dad went back to the front a couple days after this was taken, and it was a month or so later that he died.”

Sorry doesn’t seem nearly enough, especially it only takes the barest calculation to know that Steve’s mother must have just found out she was pregnant around the time this photo was taken.

“You look like him,” Peggy says instead, running her hand up the back of his neck to stroke comfortingly through his hair. “But I can see your mother in you as well.”

“Mom always said I reminded her of him. I liked that, to feel like he was still a part of me even though I never knew him.” Steve absently rubs his thumb over their faces. “One of the more difficult things about being in the future was that I didn’t have anything of them. Sometimes I felt like I was forgetting what they looked like.”

For a moment a frown clouds his face, but then it clears and he looks up at her with a smile.

“Thank you for saving it.”

“I’m just glad you have it back, my darling.” Peggy leans down and brushes a tender kiss across his mouth. “I think I might have a frame somewhere that can fit it – we can put it out on display. Let me check.”

While she disappears from the kitchen to search, Steve turns back to his old wallet and rummages inside again before pulling out one more item – a small, squared silver key.

He grins briefly before slipping it into his pocket. Peggy doesn’t need to know about this, not just yet. Not until he’s had a chance to visit the bank and see if the safe deposit box he left behind is still there, along with the most precious thing he owned before enlisting.

It might be a while yet, but he wants the first time Peggy sees his mother’s engagement ring to be when he’s asking her to marry him.

#steggy #steggyweek22 #steggy week #steggy week 2022 #steve x peggy #steve rogers #peggy carter #otp: the right partner #my fic #please forgive any typos I dashed this off in like two hours

[nicklloydnow]

“Winston shrank back upon the bed. Whatever he said, the swift answer crushed him like a bludgeon. And yet he knew, he knew, that he was in the right. The belief that nothing exists outside your own mind - surely there must be some way of demonstrating that it was false. Had it not been exposed long ago as a fallacy? There was even a name for it, which he had forgotten. A faint smile twitched the corners of O'Brien's mouth as he looked down at him.

"I told you, Winston," he said, "that metaphysics is not your strong point. The word you are trying to think of is solipsism. But you are mistaken. This is not solipsism. Collective solipsism, if you like. But that is a different thing; in fact, the opposite thing. All this is a digression," he added in a different tone. "The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men." He paused, and for a moment assumed again his air of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: "How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?"

Winston thought. "By making him suffer," he said.

"Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love and justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy - everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always - do not forget this, Winston - always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."

He paused as though he expected Winston to speak. Winston had tried to shrink back into the surface of the bed again. He could not say anything. His heart seemed to be frozen. O'Brien went on:

"And remember that it is forever. The face will always be there to be stamped upon. The heretic, the enemy of society, will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again. Everything that you have undergone since you have been in our hands - all that will continue, and worse. The espionage, the betrayals, the arrests, the tortures, the executions, the disappearances will never cease. It will be a world of terror as much as a world of triumph. The more the Party is powerful, the less it will be tolerant; the weaker the opposition, the tighter the despotism. Goldstein and his heresies will live forever. Every day, at every moment, they will be defeated, discredited, ridiculed, spat upon - and yet they will always survive. This drama that I have played out with you during seven years will be played out over and over again, generation after generation, always in subtler forms. Always we shall have the heretic here at our mercy, screaming with pain, broken-up, contemptible - and in the end utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own accord. That is the world that we are preparing, Winston. A world of victory after victory, triumph after triumph after triumph: an endless pressing, pressing, pressing upon the nerve of power. You are beginning, I can see, to realize what that world will be like. But in the end you will do more than understand it. You will accept it, welcome it, become part of it."

Winston had recovered himself sufficiently to speak. "You can't!" he said weakly.

"What do you mean by that remark, Winston?"

"You could not create such a world as you have just described. It is a dream. It is impossible."

"Why?"

"It is impossible to found a civilization on fear and hatred and cruelty. It would never endure."

"Why not?"

"It would have no vitality. It would disintegrate. It would commit suicide."

"Nonsense. You are under the impression that hatred is more exhausting than love. Why should it be? And if it were, what difference would that make? Suppose that we choose to wear ourselves out faster. Suppose that we quicken the tempo of human life till men are senile at thirty. Still what difference would it make? Can you not understand that the death of the individual is not death? The Party is immortal."

As usual, the voice had battered Winston into helplessness. Moreover he was in dread that if he persisted in his disagreement O'Brien would twist the dial again. And yet he could not keep silent. Feebly, without arguments, with nothing to support him except his inarticulate horror of what O'Brien had said, he returned to the attack.

"I don't know - I don't care. Somehow you will fail. Something will defeat you. Life will defeat you."

"We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable. Or perhaps you have returned to your old idea that the proletarians or the slaves will arise and overthrow us. Put it out of your mind. They are helpless, like the animals. Humanity is the Party. The others are outside - irrelevant."

"I don't care. In the end they will beat you. Sooner or later they will see you for what you are, and then they will tear you to pieces."

"Do you see any evidence that this is happening? Or any reason why it should?"

"No. I believe it. I know that you will fail. There is something in the universe - I don't know, some spirit, some principle - that you will never overcome."

"Do you believe in God, Winston?" "No." "Then what is it, this principle that will defeat us?" "I don't know. The spirit of Man." "And do you consider yourself a man?"

"Yes."

"If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. Your kind is extinct; we are the inheritors. Do you understand that you are alone? You are outside history, you are nonexistent."”

#orwell #george orwell #1984 #april 4 #power #party #suffering

[yr-obedt-cicero]

A volume from Hamilton's library, possibly signed by two of his sons

Hamilton had a large library and interest in several different types of books. His fascinating collection was said to have contained books in French, and different genres like philosophy, law, trading, and politics. Unfortunately, through inheritance and time the collection has been divided between several people and families most of it is lost to this day. But a particular interesting find is one of Hamilton's old books, Lex mercatoria rediviva; or, A Complete Code of Commercial Law: Being a General Guide to All Men in Business, by Wyndham Beawes.

With an account of our mercantile companies, our colonies and factories abroad, our commercial treaties with foreign powers, the duty of consuls, and of the laws concerning aliens, naturalization and denization: to which is added, a sketch of the present state of the commerce of the whole world, describing the manufactures and products of each particular nation, with tables of correspondence, and agreement of their respective coins, weights and measures.

The books is Volume 1, (241 x 152 mm), and is also the sixth edition. It lacks all preliminaries before advertisement leaf (including title-page), and all after S1 at end, there is dampstaining and light browning throughout it. Contemporary calf, smooth spine, morocco label, blind-stamped letter “H” for “Hamilton” to center; worn with losses to spine and corners, spine and text-block split down the center, hinges reinforced with cloth tape. Half blue morocco slipcase, chemise.

It's no surprise as to why such a book would be found in Hamilton's collection, commerce was rooted throughout Hamilton's childhood. At the young age of eight, in 1765, Hamilton would be a clerk for his mother's shop in Christiansted, St. Croix. After his mother's death in 1768, Hamilton soon found work in Christansted at the trade firm of Beekman and Cruger, who were both New York merchants. In an exceeding pace, he rose from clerk to manager, keeping the firm's books, dealing with ship captains, planters, merchants, Customers and suppliers, and buying and selling profitably on behalf of his employers. It was perhaps at Beekman and Cruger's that Hamilton first found Beawes's book on British commercial law.

In any case, Hamilton had definitely found the book in his hand during his college days at King's college. The book is quoted in his well-known pamphlet Farmer Refuted, in 1775;

“I shall sum up my whole remarks (says another writer) on our American colonies, with this observation, that, as they are a certain annual revenue of several millions sterling to their mother country, they ought carefully to be protected, duly encouraged, and every opportunity, that presents, improved for their increment and advantage; as every one, they can possibly reap, must at last return to us, with interest.”

Source — The Farmer Refuted, [February 23, 1775]

And later on in 1781, Hamilton asked Pickering for a copy of Lex mercatoria which he needed in order to compose an important letter to Robert Morris regarding the restoration of the colonies' credit and credibility in the eyes of foreign nations;

Let me know the result of your examination whether you can appoint a barrak Master to the French army; if you can, the General wishes you to appoint Col Champlin without delay. Have you the tract written by Price in which he estimates the specie & current cash of Great Britain? Have you Humes Essay’s, Lex Mercatoria or Postlethwait? Any of these books you may have, you will singularly oblige me by the loan of them. Be so good as to forward the inclosed by the first opportunity.

Source — Alexander Hamilton to Timothy Pickering, [April 20, 1781]

Later on Hamilton must have purchased another edition, as this particular copy was sold by H. and P. Rice, No. 50, Market-Street, Philadelphia, in 1795. And then signed his name in the Content's passage;

What is most interesting about this book though is the two signatures on the back possibly signed by Hamilton's eldest and youngest sons, Philip Hamilton, and “Little Phil”.

Philip seems to have taken a considerable interest in literature and there are many mentions of him lending or reading books. Philip graduated from his father's alma mater, King's College, in 1800 and immediately embarked upon a regimental reading of the law laid out by Hamilton. The books contains subjects and insight of law, which is likely why Hamilton might have passed it down to his son. But in 1802, challenged to a duel after an argument and scuffle that involved disparaging remarks about his father's political party, Philip was fatally wounded at Paulus Hook. Later that year, Eliza gave birth to their youngest son, who was named after his deceased brother. And might have taken up his volume of Lex mercatoria as well.

There have been more of Hamilton's old books found with his children's signatures inside of them. Another case being a book located in Columbia College (Formerly known as King's college) with Philip's and Hamilton's fourth son's signature, James Alexander Hamilton's. Although it has been argued that these “Philip signatures” could be Hamilton's great-grandchildren's, rather than his children's. As James did have a grandson named Philip and could have given the book to him instead of it originally belonging to his eldest brother;

In addition, it is interesting to note that Alexander Hamilton's son James—who was born and lived in New York, later returning and becoming an attorney like his father—was married to a daughter (Mary) of Robert Morris, whose inscription appears opposite the title page of a book of a different kind owned and autographed by Alexander Hamilton. Morris comments there that this book was given to him by Alexander in place of one that Morris had loaned to Alexander, who mislaid it. But the book in question is not in itself of direct interest here.

Although certain other books bearing Alexander Hamilton's signature of ownership are not of direct interest here, one of them is also autographed by Philip Hamilton. Philip was the name of Alexander Hamilton's oldest son (killed in an 1801 duel) as well as the name of the grandson of Alexander's third son, James, cited above. Since Alexander's son Philip (b. 1782) was nearly 20 when killed prior to his father's death, it is likely that he, like his younger brother James, inscribed his name in such books, even before their father's death in 1804, that is, in books that Alexander possessed and gave to his sons and that like others remained in Alexander's family orbit for him to see. Or, the book in question could have been acquired by Alexander's son James and later handed down to James' grandson Philip, although in that case one might have expected James to be an autographer as well, which he was not.

Source — Origins of Legislative Sovereignty and the Legislative State, Volume 6, by A. London Fell

Which could be an argument here, but there is no indication this particular book was passed down to anymore children after Phil signed his name.

When comparing the similarities of the signatures with the signatures seen from the brothers in their letters, it is safe to assume the signature on the left page is Phil II's, and the one on the right is Philip's. As Philip seems to have often merely left his first name signed off as nothing but a “P”, usually taking on an “O” shape. While Phil seems to have preferred writing out his full name.

Little Phil's signatures;

Philip's signatures;

Although it is debatable, as Sotheby's disagrees and claims Philip's signature is on the front free endpaper—while Phil's signature is on the front pastedown.

Source: Sotheby's.

#amrev #american history #alexander hamilton #historical alexander hamilton #philip hamilton #philip hamilton ii #history #historical artifacts #hamilchildren #hamilton family #hamilton children #hamilkids #hamilton kids #cicero's history lessons

[bagelswithtoast]

“Church history from the first to the twentieth century shows that the history of the expectation of an early end is one of constantly repeated disappointments—even or more particularly in what are called ‘apocalyptic’ times. But even conceptions like those of the second epistle to the Thessalonians (presumably not composed by Paul), of a final accumulation of evil, a great apostasy before the end and the embodiment of anti-God and anti-Christian forces in an eschatological ‘lawless adversary,’ or—according to the Johannine letters—of one or several ‘Antichrists’ (individual or collective) are not, as is often assumed, special divine revelations about the end time. They are images from Jewish apocalyptic, making use partly of ancient mythological motifs and partly of historical experiences (King Antiochus IV Epiphanes who had to be worshipped as a visible god; Emperor Caligula, Nero redivivus). The ‘apocalyptic’ (revelatory) images cannot be harmonized with each other and—despite their name—today at any rate cannot be understood as disclosures or information about the chronological sequence of the ‘last things’ at the end of world history. They do not form a kind of script for the last act of the human tragedy. Despite the amazingly widespread curiosity even today, man does not learn here what will befall him and what will then happen. The picture of a great public gathering of all mankind—of billions and billions of people—for judgement is no more than a picture.

There is neither a clear scientific extrapolation nor an exact prophetical prognosis of the definitive future of mankind. In the history of freedom we must continually allow for the emergence of something utterly new, which could never have been deduced from the old. The end is not determined from the outset. Man should not simply await this end, but should take up his role creatively in world and history. In the interlacing of freedom giving and freedom given, man is the irreplaceable partner who should give a meaning to the irresistible evolution of the cosmos and set his stamp upon it. The coming of God’s kingdom does not condemn man to passivity, but demands his fearless activity inspired by faith on behalf of his fellow men. There must be no flight into the future, but—resisting all rising skepticism and fatalism—action here and now inspired by hope. In view of the coming kingdom of justice, freedom and peace, there must be a tireless struggle for justice, freedom and peace: against all powers of evil, bondage, desolation, lovelessness, death.”

-Hans Küng, On Being a Christian.

#chrisitanity #reading #quotes

[hilarychuff]

uptown girls in my asoiaf au graphic series

Who says money can’t buy happiness? Sansa Stark has everything a girl could want — a gorgeous apartment, a passport full of stamps from countries all over the world, a precious little pet pig, and soon the perfect 22nd birthday party. It’s poised to be one of the biggest nights of the year, attended by all the most famous socialites in the city and half of the music scene, and the second she sets her eyes on starving artist and upcoming singer-songwriter Jon Snow, she knows just who she wants to be her birthday present.

Myranda knows him from the industry, swears he’s supposed to be celibate or something, too committed to his art to invest any time in his love life, but Sansa knows how to make men want to go home with her. And Jon does, and then he stays there for three days in a haze of takeout and sex and songs he strums while bent over one of her father’s famous guitars. He stays until the constant candle light stops being romantic and her postmates account stops working, and then he tries to clumsily detangle himself and return to the real world while she tries desperately to convince him to stay one more day in this perfect fantasy she’s built for him. And then he’s gone. And then the money’s gone, too.

Before she knows it, she finds herself sleeping on her friend’s couch and playing nanny to a screaming, sickly little boy, spending her days bringing him to school and ballet and doctor’s appointments, trying to pretend she knows what she’s doing when an 8-year-old acts more like a well-rounded adult than she could ever hope to be. Her nights she spends alternately dodging Jon’s calls asking her to drop his lucky jacket at his record label and leaving him her own voicemails suggesting she could bring it to his place. 

When they finally meet at a restaurant, when she delivers his jacket scorched from a kitchen fire of her own making and made new with dye and shoe polish and the skin of a teddy bear she sacrificed to the task, he tells her he can’t see her again. He can’t get dragged back into her world, he says, a world where she seems free of the burdens the rest of them have to bear, especially not now that he’s finally landed a record deal, not now that his music is just as much a business as it is an art. He’s too close, he says, too close to having everything he wants, everything he’s been working for. She can’t make him stay, and so she lets him go, and she doesn’t mention how everything is falling apart around her as Myranda kicks her out, Robin fires her, Petyr tells her she has no choice left other than to sell her father’s guitars, her mother’s dresses, even her brother’s signed baseball card collection. 

All of it is gone, just like that, and Jon’s song, the one written about the four nights and three days he spent wrapped up in her bed sheets is playing on what seems like every radio station. But she’s strong. She’s a Stark, Ned and Catelyn’s daughter, Robb’s little sister, and she can make it through this. She can be brave. Her life may no longer be a fairytale, but it’s hers, and she’s determined to make something of it. 

ft. sansa as molly, sweetrobin as ray, jon as neal, littlefinger as roma sort of, cersei as bob sort of, harry as huey, myranda as ingrid, ned stark as tommy gunn

#jonsa #jonsa au #jon snow #sansa stark #sweetrobin #asoiaf #asoiaf au #got #my graphics #my au graphics #asoiaf uptown girls au #also btw i am working on something longer for this #the blurb got way out of hand and i had to cut it down #but i have lots of ideas about fleshing this all out #asoiaf au series

[lidensword]

Howdy! I’ve been rewording this over two days so I’m really excited to share this with you! It’s my headcanons for Al’s boys and their historical counterparts (and why I picked them instead of the other hundreds on the Outfit’s payroll)!

I’m going to start off with a little historical background because I really, really love that! If you didn’t know the Outfit was the Mob that Al and MANY others were apart of which was founded by Big Jim Colosimo around 1910. After Big Jim was murdered, Jonny “the Fox” Torrio took over control with Al and Frank Capone as his two right hand men. When Frank was shot to death by police in 1924, a lot of threats were pinned onto Torrio. Al took over officially in the next six years.

The name, the Outfit, seemed like it was started to be used in the 60’s. Before that, Chicago Newspapers usually used “The Old Capone Gang” or a mix of Ship-like names of the leaders.

There are four men who were “revived” with Al, I picture these four as: Ralph “Bottles” and Frank Capone, Jonny “The Fox” Torrio, and Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti. As I’ve stated before, I headcanon Al as 26, which plants the story in 1925.

First: My reasons for Jonny Torrio was Al’s mentor. In late 1925, he moved to Italy with his wife and mother, so the “revival” takes place before that. It would be funny, though, that it did take place after! He helped make the Outfit what it was. Legend says he’s the one who murdered Colosimo and pushed the Outfit into Bootlegging! From the Museum’s standpoint, he would be a big point to bring up in an exhibit of Chicago in 1920’s Prohibition.

Second: Frank Nitti, Al’s right hand man and the person who inherited the Outfit after Al when to jail and Ralph stepped down. He’s first cousin to Al too. It seemed like they were really close, the first gang Al joined (I think? I mean when he joined this he was 8-9) Nitti led! It was called “the Boys of Navy Street” and Al was their mascot.

Third: Ralph Capone, “Public enemy #3”, and Al’s older brother of 5ish years (and my favorite). He earned his nickname “Bottles” from the bottling plant he worked at before the Outfit. According to Wikipedia too, “family lore suggests that the nickname was specifically tied to his lobbying the Illinois Legislature to put into law that milk bottling companies had to stamp the date that the milk was bottled on the bottle”! He’s described as a bit of a prick, bullying people into getting his way, but somewhere I read (I lost the source unfortunately) he take IOU’s and not collect them from clients who were down on their luck. He played semi-pro baseball with Al and the two stuck close together till the very end. They joined the Five Points together too before the Outfit. (he also really liked horses and had a racing horse for a while)

Fourth: Frank Capone, Al’s older brother of 4ish years, and (according to Al Capone: his Life, Legacy, and Legend by Deirdre Bair) the smartest of the eldest five of the Capone brothers. He would have inherited the Outfit if he didn’t die in 1924. He’s interesting so I’ll save talking about him for later lol.

I hope you have a good rest of your day and I can’t wait to hear your theories for who was “revived with Al”! I’m going to the Natural History museum where the og NATM was filmed for the first time today so I’m super hyped! (I Hope this is legible bwt, I’m really excited that I finally get to talk to someone else about this)

-⭐️

Thank you for the historical contextualization and facts about each of Al Capone's men! Also, I'm curious about what you might say about Frank Capone.

I must admit that I simply created OCs for Al's boys in NatM 2 (I focused particularly on two of them) instead of seeing them as historical figures. However, your headcanon is indeed a very interesting and relevant perspective.

I'm sorry for answering just now... Yet, that gives me the opportunity to ask you how was your visit to the Natural History Museum? I confess that I would really like to visit it, but more than that, I would LOVE to visit the Smithsonian!!

Thanks for sharing, ⭐! I really appreciate it!!

#That's a very pleasant way to learn more :) #Al Capone #facts #natm headcanon

[c-is-for-circinate]

Okay so maaaaaaaybe I wrote the first chunk of that whole Untamed modern setting playing D&D and also now it's a college AU complete with requisite pining that I was threatening a couple of weeks ago, and maybe I figured I'd post this first chunk because I haven't properly posted fic in about 84 years and also maybe I know way too much about the stat blocks of every single participating character and anyway.

Pre-LWJ/WWX, mild pining, modern AU, D&D. Or something.

We open on a commercial:

A frothing ocean. A tall, rocky cliff. Rushing whitewater rapids. An endless forest.

Then: two men on the coast, hauling gear into a boat. A woman at the base of a cliff snaps a logo'ed carabiner onto a harness, smiles at a similarly-geared man. A collection of people in wetsuits with white lotuses on the shoulder slide into similarly-branded kayaks. A family in backpacks and hiking gear setting out into the forest.

The clips start to roll faster: the mountain climber's hand grabs onto a ledge which fades into a dirt path, and the camera moves out to reveal a cyclist on a mountain bike racing over rocky ground. The spray of gravel under the bike's tires merges with the spray of water around the kayaks, surging down a river between enormous rocks, which then cut to a different mountain, covered in snow, as a skiier plunges downhill at speed. The skiier's pole transitions into a fishing pole, straining as it's held by the two laughing men from the coast, who haul up an enormous fish that cuts to the dad on the camping trip showing his kids a bluegill.

The family sits around their campfire, eating fish, and the camera pans past an enamel camping kettle stamped with the lotus logo. The kayakers paddle leisurely, spread out over a calm river, with the rapids still visible behind them. The rock-climbing woman stands on top of the cliff, sweaty and satisfied, as the camera pans over the logo on her back and out across the landscape.

Jiang Outdoors: Do The Impossible.

Keep reading

.

They grew up outside, of course, because in this family you didn't really have a choice about that, not that Wei Ying ever really wanted one. It was good for the brand, Aunt Yu admitted begrudgingly, and then made sure Jiang Cheng fit every last textbook and piece of homework into his backpack for every weekend camping trip.

(Wei Ying always ended up having to carry half of it in his own backpack, because it turned out that textbooks were heavy and carrying forty pounds of extra weight on a ten-mile hike was rough on a twelve-year-old. Plus Jiang Cheng always insisted, because if Wei Ying was going to leave all his books at home and then borrow Jiang Cheng's then he could at least help carry, and if Wei Ying was going to leave all his books at home and then not borrow any, and do all his homework on Monday morning, scribbled out on notebook paper in the class before it was due when he was supposed to be taking notes, then that was his problem, not Jiang Cheng's.)

The house was an hour north of the city, with lakefront access and a private dock, and Uncle Jiang left for work before seven every morning so he could be home in time, once in a while, to spend time down by the water before it got dark. Sometimes he would pull Wei Ying away from the homework he wasn't doing to take him down to the dock and teach him about boats, while Jiang Cheng resentfully churned his way through math problems and Yanli helped him with his English paper, and that was its own ball of complication that none of them really liked to talk about, but more often than not Uncle Jiang wasn't home until dinnertime anyway.

So mostly it was just the three of them, and during the summer that meant running around and jumping into the lake and tromping around the nearby woods and month-long trips to the cabin in Colorado where Uncle Jiang would work from the home office all day and Aunt Yu wouldn't even come, and Yanli was in charge of keeping her brothers from killing themselves on a hike or a mountain bike or whatever other plan they cooked up for the day. During the school year there was homework, and music lessons, and weekly Chinese classes at the cultural center, and other, less-extreme sports that usually involved teams and balls and trophies Aunt Yu could put on the shelves in the room where she had her friends over for coffee. But there was still the pier at the bottom of the back yard, and the woods you could get to if you took your bikes and either went all the way around or snuck through the middle of the golf course at the end of the cul-de-sac on the other side of the street.

And that was great, for the six months of the year between May and October. 10/10, would do it again, Wei Ying had no complaints. (None. Never.) It wasn't even too terrible in November and December and April, when the snow was still new enough to be fun or probably basically gone and anyway it had been so long they didn't care any more anyway. There was just really, really only so much you could do outside in the middle of January when you lived in a place that regularly got below ten degrees Fahrenheit and the sun set by 4 PM on an average winter weekday. There was only so much cross-country skiing a guy could take.

Aunt Yu hated video games, because of course she did, and it wasn't like Wei Ying could just turn off all the doing-things energy that carried him through every extreme sport Uncle Jiang could find the whole rest of the year and sit still to watch TV or something for four months. For one thing, the only shows playing in December were basically all about Christmas, which he still didn't particularly get the point of in the first place. By January he was usually about ready to vibrate out of his skin. Jiang Cheng didn't like to admit it, but he was usually pretty much there too.

It was Yanli who found the solution, of course, because she was spectacular and beautiful and wise and perfect in every way, and also maybe because Wei Ying had started talking at breakfast about how he was pretty sure he could teach himself computer hacking by the time the really good BMX track out by the state park opened again for the spring. Yanli usually drove them out to the track, and also to school and music lessons and Jiang Cheng's tutoring sessions at the library and all the other places that Uncle Jiang wasn't home for and Madam Yu wasn't about to take them when her daughter had just gotten a perfectly good driver's license to do it herself.

"Look," she said, laying the books down on the coffee table in the sun room, kneeling gracefully just like Aunt Yu was trying to get them all to do properly and Wei Ying could never manage for more than a few seconds. "If you can't have your adventures outside, maybe we could have them in here? Just for a little while?"

There was some kind of giant on the cover, getting stabbed by a lady with a staff. Wei Ying picked it up. The book underneath had a big, tentacle-eyed thing with massive sharp fangs.

"Isn't that for nerds?" Jiang Cheng asked.

"You're a nerd," Wei Ying said reflexively, flipping the book open to a random page. There was a cloaked guy in black and red with a pair of really cool daggers and incredible boots. He flipped to another page. A lady in fancy armor was holding a bow and arrows. Fuck he missed archery.

"Eugh!" Jiang Cheng had picked up the second book, and when Wei Ying looked over his shoulder, he'd found a picture of some kind of horrifying, alien-eyed, centipede-looking bug creature. It had tentacles around its mouth.

"Oh yeah," Wei Ying said, grinning. "We're definitely doing this."

.

Jin Zixuan came into Lan Zhan's dorm room without knocking, which would have horrified Uncle for reasons of manners, and might have concerned Brother for...other reasons. Other reasons that Lan Zhan had no cause to be worried about, no matter what Huan-ge thought he ought to be doing with his college life, or how many freshmen smiled at him in hopes of leniency in his grading of their weekly vocabulary quizzes in the Intro To East Asian History course he TA'ed.

"In high school you always secretly wanted to do the strange nerd things other nerds did with their friends when they didn't have Chinese parents breathing down their necks for more perfect grades and also they had friends, right?" Zixuan asked. It might have been offensive, if Lan Zhan didn't know he was mostly speaking of himself. "Those weird fun white nerd things, ideally without having to deal with all the white nerds?"

Lan Zhan had been asked his opinions on anime many, many times since starting college. At least half of the people asking him seemed to recognize that he was not, in fact, Japanese, but they generally still expected him to have an opinion on anime.

"Mmm," he said. He did not have an opinion about anime. Or video games. Or most "weird fun white nerd things," whatever that consisted of, most of which would presumably have been on Uncle's list of frivolous distractions and Brother's list of "ways you could potentially meet people, didi, if you wanted."

"What I'm saying is, you've never played Dungeons and Dragons, but you could," Zixuan said, continuing as if Lan Zhan had asked him to directly. He hadn't, but he also hadn't not asked, which meant that everything that happened thereafter was at least partially on him. "You should. Play. With me. And some other people."

Lan Zhan looked at him, flushed and flustered in Lan Zhan's doorway. Lan Zhan said, "Oh?"

"So, Mianmian has this friend," Zixuan said, which sounded like the start of a long and intimidatingly convoluted story.

"And this friend has a...a sister, and her mother is friends with my mother, and when we were teenagers they always tried to push us together even though she's three years older than me, and I may have hated it, and I may have been. Rude." Lan Zhan had seen Zixuan be awkward enough to construe as 'rude'. He'd always distantly appreciated it. It was nice not to be the only one. "Except apparently she's in a graduate program here, and it turns out she's actually incredibly wonderful when our mothers aren't being...our mothers, and she invited me to play D and D with her, and Mianmian is too busy this semester to play." Zixuan sounded something between 'overexcited' and 'desperate'. "It's just her and her brothers and one of their friends. I can't play a game I've never played every single week with her and her brothers and one of their friends. Her brothers hate me."

This wasn't Lan Zhan's problem. Uncle would have told him to ignore it and focus on his studies. Brother would have given him that soft, knowing look, the kind he always got when he could tell how much Lan Zhan wanted something that he knew he couldn't have, just from how hard Lan Zhan insisted he didn't.

He was halfway through his third year of his political science degree. At this time next year, he would be applying either to law schools or to graduate programs in public policy. He had one friend, because he and Zixuan had bumped into each other so many times standing awkwardly in out-of-the-way corners at obligatory Chinese-American Student Society events that Zixuan's other friend Mianmian had declared it counted. Lan Zhan didn't know enough about friendship to dispute it.

"Would not be good at it," Lan Zhan said, which was true. It wasn't a no, but it was a good reason for a no. His brain was screaming at him to say no. His heart gave a little throb in the other direction.

"It doesn't matter," Zixuan said instantly. "I'm going to be terrible. Please come and be bad at it with me. If we're both terrible it won't matter as much."

Lan Zhan was not at all convinced of the logic of that, but Zixuan did seem desperate.

And. Brother would want him to do it.

"There's math," Zixuan said. "You know I can't do math. You'll be the only person at the table who's good at the math."

Lan Zhan highly doubted that any friend of Jin Zixuan's mother would allow her children to make it to college without a significant level of skill in math, but he let it go. It was a good excuse.

"How do you play?" he asked, knowing that all his better judgement had already lost.

.

Yanli DMed for them for years of winter campaigns, rolling up brand new characters every October when the weather started getting cold and wet and awful, meeting in a tavern or a forest or an evil overlord's dungeon the week after Jiang Cheng's birthday. Good always defeated evil in the end, usually just in time for outdoor season to get kicking off again in April, and then the books got put away until next year.

It sucked more than a little when she went off to college, but by that time there was more homework and more extracurriculars, school orchestra and more competitions, basketball and rock climbing and resume-padding and Jiang Cheng's eventual SAT and ACT tutors. (Aunt Yu would have paid for an SAT tutor for Wei Ying too, probably, because he might not be her son but that didn't mean he could be allowed to fail, except that he accidentally got a 35 out of 36 on the first practice test he took without even glancing at a prep book beforehand and she sneered him off in disgust. He ended up joining the school newspaper to fill in the afternoons while Jiang Cheng was in tutoring, although that only lasted until the first time an ill-advised Classroom Exposé got him dragged to the principal's office. After that he mostly just hung out and scrolled twitter.)

They didn't pick it back up again until college, and Wei Ying hadn't necessarily been expecting to ever get the chance to play again, until he'd wandered into some other kid's dorm room down the hall during orientation week and spotted the brand new Xanathar's Guide on top of an entire stack of fifth edition rulebooks right there on Nie Huaisang's desk, in between the traditional brush-and-ink calligraphy supplies and the second laptop that Wei Ying was still pretty sure Huaisang only ever used for storing blackmail and porn.

They'd had a good time the past couple of years -- Huaisang was a pretty creative DM even if he pretended not to know what was going on way more often than it was actually true, and it turned out that there was even more new cool source content that had come out in the past few years -- but with jiejie finally back and starting her master's program, this year was already the best. She'd been their cleric last semester, healing up Wei Ying's rogue and Jiang Cheng's fighter and Mianmian's sorcerer between every fight, soothing their arguments before they even started, making everything fit just like the old days.

It was great! It was just that, with four or five years of distance, it had also been really, startlingly, unpleasantly easy to see some of the ways the old days had probably been pretty fucked up.

"Goliath barbarian," Yanli said with a decisive smile. "He's going to be very very strong, and not in the least bit wise. And he doesn't have any idea how to cook."

"Good," Jiang Cheng said fiercely, before Wei Ying could even open his mouth to agree. "Good. You should play what you want."

"It's fun to try something different, isn't it?" she grinned, and Wei Ying kind of wanted to smack his thirteen-year-old self for being an ungrateful little brat. "I used to play all those tough nasty monsters that beat you two up, too, you know."

"Jiejie was the best," Wei Ying confirms. "Sorry, Huaisang."

"No, no, of course you're right," Huaisang waved off quickly. "I know I could never measure up."

The truth was that Huaisang's games were...not better, never in a million years better, but his plots were intricate and his place descriptions were beautiful and his NPCs were grimly, startlingly believable. He was a good DM. But he knew where his players' loyalties lay, and he didn't get threatened or try to fight it, which was part of what Wei Ying liked about his games in the first place.

"So what are you two playing?" Yanli asked, grinning expectantly just like she had when they were twelve.

"I don't know, probably a caster I guess," Jiang Cheng grumbled, which was stupid. Jiang Cheng literally never liked playing full casters who couldn't pick up a weapon and physically hit something. He got annoyed with spell slots and thought picking a spells list was too much trouble. He'd hate it.

"Um, no you're not," Wei Ying said. "You'll bitch the whole time."

"Someone has to," Jiang Cheng pointed out. "Party balance is still a thing, dumbass."

"Yeah, so I'll play cleric or something," Wei Ying rolled his eyes. "Anyway, Huaisang said he had another player lined up to sub in for Mianmian, right?"

They looked at Huaisang, who instantly got the squirrely expression on his face that usually preceded the springing of a trap that was going to take down half their HP while they were already injured.

"I don't know, I really don't, your sister said she had someone -- " he babbled, and as one Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng turned to look at Yanli.

"It will be fine," she said firmly, and just a little defensively, which was all the confirmation Wei Ying needed.

"Jiejie, no," Jiang Cheng groaned. "He's awful."

"He's gotten much better," Yanli insisted, folding her hands over her character sheet primly with the kind of stubbornness that meant she wasn't going to back down from this.

"But he's such a jerk," Wei Ying complained. "He was such a dick to you."

"He's aware that his behavior when we were younger was inappropriate, and he's apologized to me. He wants a chance to make it up to you two," Yanli said, and ugh, fine, clearly she wanted this and jiejie should always get everything she wanted, but the peacock? Really???

"Does he even know how to play?" Jiang Cheng wanted to know, which meant that he'd come to the same conclusion, even if it sucked.

"He will learn," Yanli declared with finality. "Party balance will be fine. We should all play what we want."

She looked at them both with firm, prompting eyes, until Jiang Cheng said, "Ugh," and Wei Ying groaned, and behind them Huaisang sighed with relief.

"Fine!" Jiang Cheng said. "Fine. Beastmaster ranger."

"Seriously?" Wei Ying asked skeptically. One of Jiang Cheng's first characters, back when they were kids, had been a beastmaster ranger. Wei Ying had been playing a moon druid. It was slaughter.

"They're better now, they got updated," Jiang Cheng bit back defensively. "Why, are you gonna play a druid again?"

He'd thought about it briefly, reflexively, as soon as Yanli confirmed she wasn't going to be playing a healer, but the truth was it really wasn't his favorite class and his sister and brother both knew it. Tons of spells and utility, but Wei Ying liked high charisma classes. He liked talking to NPCs. And wisdom was the most fun dump stat in the game.

"Warlock," he said. "If Jiang Cheng's playing a ranger I'll be a warlock."

It would keep them happy about him being happy, plus he could go celestial patron and pick up the slack on healing spells without them realizing right away what he was doing. There was definitely going to be slack. Even if they bullied Jin Zixuan into playing a life domain cleric, which they were absolutely going to do, Wei Ying didn't exactly trust him to keep the rest of the party alive.

"Great!" Huaisang said. "I'm sure party balance will be fine, with five party members you can really all play anything --"

"Five?" Jiang Cheng demanded, and Huaisang winced.

"Did I mention Jin Zixuan is bringing a friend?"

.

There were four people at the table in the common room when Jin Zixuan brought Lan Zhan to meet his new gaming group: two boys he didn't know, a pretty, unfamiliar young woman, and the beautiful, enthusiastic, energetic, terrible, unshakable, impossibly frustrating, impossibly brilliant boy from his Sociology of Diaspora and Colonialism course last spring semester.

Lan Zhan almost turned on his heel and walked straight out, but Jin Zixuan's hand was a vice on his shoulder, and he hissed, "You promised," in Lan Zhan's ear, and by then Wei Ying had seen them already anyway and the only choice left, it seemed, was to give in to the inevitable.

"Lan Zhan!" Wei Ying lit up when he saw them, waving wildly as though it would even be possible to miss him, and Lan Zhan stomped as hard as he could on any part of his heart that might read into that. "I didn't know you were Jin Zixuan's friend who was playing!" He frowned, face twisting up in something Lan Zhan wished he could read as much as he'd ever wished for the ability to read facial expressions before in his life. "Why are you Jin Zixuan's friend?"

Zixuan had mentioned that his would-be girlfriend's brothers didn't like him. Lan Zhan didn't begin to know how to -- whether he even should -- try to convince said brother not to dislike him too by association.

"We met at a Chinese-American Student Society event," Lan Zhan said stiffly. Much too stiffly. Wei Ying had already sprung up from the table and yanked out the chair next to his, all but maneuvering Lan Zhan into it without ever actually laying a finger on him. Of course.

"Lan Zhaaaan, just call it CASS like everyone else!" Wei Ying scolded. "I'm so glad you're playing! Have you ever played D&D before?"

That was at least a question he could answer. "No," Lan Zhan said, and then, realizing that even that was probably inadequate, "never."

"Ah, well that's fine!" Wei Ying assured him. "I'm basically an expert, so just stick with me and I'll make sure your first time is awesome." He sat back down in his chair, dragging it even closer to Lan Zhan's than it already was. "It'll be great!"

If Lan Zhan had ever been worried about what his life might look like after college, he at least had no reason to feel the least bit concerned about it now. Clearly, he was going to die long before the end of this semester.

#c writes stuff #the untamed #welp I committed fic I guess #yes I know how literally the entire rest of this story goes but WORDS HARD #they're very gay your honor

[banamaak]

——— ABOUT THE MUN !

——— BASICS !

(PEN)NAME: jassy PRONOUNS: she/her ZODIAC SIGN: virgo!! explains my inherent need for each and every one of my blogs to have a specific aesthetic doesn’t it SINGLE / TAKEN: lol as if i actually have the energy to put forth towards a romantic relationship

——— THREE FACTS !

• i collect a lot of useless crap, my biggest collections rn are my postage stamp collection and my collection of old littlest pet shops :,) • i was born in india but came to the US when i was about 3 years old!! i haven’t gone back yet but i would very much like to!!! • i’ve wanted a dog for almost my entire life and my first dog actually ended up. being a purebred great pyrenees whom i got for free (not a cheap dog in the least) which. i’m not sure if that counts as a fact but i find it so wild

——— EXPERIENCE !

PLATFORMS USED: i only really write on tumblr nowadays since every other site makes it virtually impossible to do any sort of roleplaying :))) i started out on facebook which was fun at the time but i’m kinda glad it’s dead for a lot of reasons lol

HOW LONG? i started around 2012 i think?? i first started out with mlp rp which i know is extremely humiliating to admit but it’s true! i only started doing hetalia/country personification rp around 2014.

——— MUSE PREFERENCE !

GENDER: i like to think that i have a nice, equal number of female and male muses, but i definitely vastly prefer writing female characters.

LEAST FAVOURITE FACE(S):  i can’t really think of one face in particular, just kind of that genre of white men with chiseled jawlines and spiky hair. u know the ones i’m talking about. yea

MULTI OR SINGLE: well i thoroughly enjoy shipping as u all know, so i’d say multi! so long as our characters have some good chemistry, i’m down :)

——— FLUFF / ANGST / SMUT ! ♡

FLUFF: i adore fluff!! especially with iman, she loves performing acts of service for those she loves and getting pampered in return. i’m always down for some cute and wholesome threads. literally always

ANGST: ok i also love angst a lot, and if you know me you know i’m always finding ways to incorporate angsty shit into my characters. i don’t know what it is but i am just so drawn to it for some reason lol

SMUT: overall i’m alright with writing smut, although i don’t think it’d be something i’d dabble in too frequently. this is mostly due to the fact that i’m horrible at actually writing the smutty parts, and i focus more on the emotional aspect of it. i also haven’t gotten the chance to write it too often, so it’s mostly because of my lack of experience.

PLOT / MEMES: i love both, but i prefer plotting! memes are good and fun, and they’re a great way to break the ice, but i feel that plotting really helps me get a grasp of character dynamics. also we all know i have an absolutely atrocious track record when it comes to clearing out my inbox, so plotting it is :)

stolen from: @geroyam​​ <3 tagging: everyone

#dash games. #this was extremely fun mostly bc i love oversharing <3

[thisisagoodtimetoleave]

It Only Takes a Minute Girl

I wrote this in 2019, the year my grandfather would have turned 100.

I remember that house like I was there yesterday. It was at the edge of the shrubby wasteland where they’ve built a mall now. At night you could hear foxes howl. The house was poorly planned but charming – like a handsome face with a crooked smile. It smelled warm, comforting. I remember that the most –that potent mix of old books, tobacco, a delicate chicken stew, aftershave and a dog. The man of the house smelled of lemons and his skin was always cool to the touch, even during the sultry summer days when he’d walk around in a lungi, putting a kettle to boil. He played solitaire with an old deck of cards while I chewed handfuls of roasted fennel kept inside an old tobacco tin.

The house didn’t have a particularly cohesive design, but everything looked like it belonged where it did. There was a lot of cane furniture - typical of that time, a large, red woven carpet, a framed batik painting which hung proudly over the sofa. That was made by the woman of the house, who was gone before I was born. Her little artistic flourishes made their way into several nooks and crannies, keeping her presence intact. A narrow shelf housed a compact turntable and the old vinyl records were mostly stuff from the 60’s and 70’s. I remember sprawling out on that huge carpet and listening to the records - that analogue hum and crackle before the music started, filling me with anticipation and joy.

The house had a small round verandah, which opened up to a pebbled garden, full of plants and fruit trees the man had planted. I used to like pulling snails off the walls around the garden, just to hear that squelching sound.  I’d collect the round pebbles, feeling their smooth surface inside the pockets of my shorts . There was a small tree outside, from where he’d pluck flowers and give them to us to use during the prayers.  He’d pray too, in his towel, after his bath, and that was the only time we knew not to talk to him. He’d be absolutely still and very very far, his eyes closed to all the distractions of the earth.

A very vintage looking model of the Toyota was parked in the garage. The dog loved sleeping under it. Very briefly, he had acquired an old Morris, but it was almost impossible to sit inside it comfortably. The garage smelled of petrol, and sometimes I wish I could eat that smell, because it seemed forbidden and delicious at the same time.

The stairs took you up to the tiniest little room at the landing, which was a study and a place for me and my brother to hide and play tricks on people passing by on the road outside. It was later let out to a young couple, whom we befriended and played games with. The guy was a stamp collector, and started me on my first stamp collection. His wife and I would draw and paint together. I wonder what we’d talk so much about, but we did – long, rambling conversations.  The man of the house liked this couple. They’d sit with him and have evening tea in the room downstairs.

Then there was the terrace. We’d play with the dog there and give him a bath every Sunday. He hated bath time and would run, shampoo still unrinsed, and hide under the car and come out half black, half white, looking like a pleased Panda. They would squabble like old men, the dog and the man, but were inseperable.

When he came home from his rounds at the hospital, he carried with him the smell of disinfectant and sweat, which strangely, wasn’t altogether unpleasant. He wore courdroy pants, which I never saw anyone else wear at that time, and crisp white shirts. His moustache was huge, salt and pepper, his hair was combed back stylishly. His skin always gleamed. His voice, was thunderous but warm.  

I idolised him, and everyone around me encouraged it. But as I grew up, I caught flashes of that infamous temper – very rarely thrown my way – but it was there. His mind was going. His health was failing. He was bitter and helpless, but he didn’t want help. His coughing was uncontrollable, his anger persistent. One day, while telling me a story, he cried. I had never seen a grown man cry. It frightened me. I was losing him, I was losing my childhood and I wasn’t quite ready.

Then he got sicker, till he couldn’t control any of the sickness, and he knew he was dying – he’d always known it, way before anyone else had known it. He would have flashes of clarity and say something profound, and then go back to staring vacantly – perhaps astounded that, this is what his life had come to. They shaved off his moustache, he couldn’t see anymore. The house was stripped bare. White sheets and strange underwear hung on make shift wires across the living room. The nurses and aides lived there now. He was polished and cleaned with unfamilar scents. His ruddy face was now hollow and skeletal. His hair though, was still combed back the same way. It was still thick and his skin still gleamed. I could hardly recognise him. He could hardly recognise me.

It didn’ t last too long thankfully. It seemed long though. I was thirteen.  I was always angry, always miserable. I was learning all these things about a man I loved that, honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I felt persistently sad. And I don’t think that sadness ever left me completely, even though sadder things probably happened after. I romanticised our bond. I didn’t want to stop feeling so loved, so special. It felt full and concentrated. I didn’t ever have to compete for his attention. I was smug with the knowledge that, he loved me the most, that I was his favourite. Maybe I wasn’t. But he let me feel that way all my life. I don’t think I’ve ever been anybody’s favourite. It’s a heady feeling. Nothing ever cuts it after.

He would have been hundred this year. Thinking about my memories with him seems kind of maudlin now. It was so long ago. It’s all a bit of unecessary nostalgia. I hardly even think of him. But here he is. Sitting by the edge of my bed, grinning impishly, asking me to write about him, think about him and a wave of sadness and joy is washing over me as I write this. I keep telling myself that, “remember when” is the poorest form of conversation. But that’s all I seem to be able to say. I’ll allow myself a bit of this indulgence and then go back to all my modern day gun slinging and cleverness. For now, I’ll try to remember him trying to make sense of my Take That tape, which I assured him was the “best thing he’ll ever hear”. Oh, that quizzical expression on his face when he must’ve heard the platinum haired singer of the boyband go – “It only takes a minute girl, to fall in love. To Fall In Love”.

#grandfather

[talenlee]

Story Pile: The Lighthouse

As with Knives Out, Breaking Bad, and Old Boy, there is some media where I am concerned that by having an opinion, my mere me-ness is very much part of how that opinion is (and should be) perceived. Simply put, there’s a canon of media that I think millenial white guys are a little too excited to talk about, like they’re markers on a talent tree. I feel like there’s an envelope of time, now stamped down into wikis and articles, where people spilled all their thoughts and their feelings and then everyone else who was feeling a bit of the same stepped into the same space and sought some way, any way, to capture that they were feeling the same way, that they were also tangled up inside about this thing and what it meant and they weren’t thinking about it, they were feeling about it, but feelings are hard, and pointing out the reference to Sascha Scheiber’s Hypnose is a fact that can be collected and cleaned and pinned and then…

The feeling has a place to go.

Not going to spoil anything about this movie beyond its broad genre and invocations. You should watch it on your own if you think you can handle two hours of grown men losing their minds in isolation. I’m not going to tell you about what’s in it, as much as I’m going to try and tell you about how I feel about it, and what I feel about what it’s not.

Sooo, uh, first of all: This movie fucks. Not ‘holy shit, this fucks, I want this on as my sex jam,’ but it’s rancid with sexuality, just steeped in the kind of horny of two people who definitely fuck, who want to fuck, who might even fuck each other but absolutely are not going to, haha, unless? There’s this artwork, by Barbara Kruger, called Untitled (You Construct Intricate Rituals), which has been picked up by the internet as a sort of graffiti tag to underscore the ways in which men – yes, men, always men, so often men – will devise nonsense reasons to touch one another in intimate ways. There’s a contrast in life between the joy of their smiles and the energy of their violence, and that is the way in which this movie fucks. It’s the nasty, musty, smelly kind of fucking, it’s the maft of a space where the default smell is the sea and the spaces of people are full of these intimate wet smells. It’s not a story that’s sexy — there’s so much work, I feel, to put effort into making this story high effort, highly tactile and experiential… and then to make that experience the smell of a pair of boxers someone’s been wearing for a week because they’re not going anywhere and have given the fuck up.

I guess given that it’s a story about a pair of dudes being isolated on a island in a lighthouse, I’d guess I was kinda expecting the feeling to be about deprivation, to be about not having enough of anything, and then the rawness that came from feeling empty. After watching it though, I feel the opposite is true — it’s a movie about being overfilled, about having too much, about being overwhelmed by something. There’s this constant indulgence, this excess to how they behave. Shots hang on these experiences longer, and even things I think of as jokes kinda hang on longer than I feel like they should.

Drip by drip, this movie fills, fills, fills, and I drown in it.

It’s not Lovecraftian, by the way. I mean, I don’t feel like this has anything of Lovecraft’s work to it, beyond the fact that he was also scared of the ocean. If nothing else, trust me on this: Lovecraft stories don’t fuck.

Without being glib, though, Lovecraft’s work is often tightly coiled around indifference. The world doesn’t care about you, your privilege is meaningless, your education, your value (as a white man from Boston) does not protect you, and that there are things in the universe that do not and will not ever care about you existing. You are a plaything not because you are hated and punished, but because you do not matter. The world of Lovecraft’s horror is full of things that do not realise they hurt you and they do not care.

I almost wish when I first brought this up to my friend Rachel, she hadn’t said it to me because it’s too perfect, but the feeling I get of the horror in The Lighthouse is more of that old time religion. If you grew up like I did in a Christian country, you probably learned about the Greek pantheon from a fundamentally Christian perspective – which usually means, Zeus first, he’s in charge, he does a bunch of stuff because he’s in charge, and then you fill out the pantheon around him. Eventually you get around to learning about his backstory and how he has a dad who sucks, and that’s all good and interesting enough, but it still means that typically, Greek Myth is presented as having a coherent structure that centralises around Zeus.

And it doesn’t.

The earliest stuff we know we can find seems to suggest that Poseidon predates Zeus – that while as much as we know ‘Greek’ as a thing, Zeus and Poseidon showed up together, but before that point, when Zeus was introduced to stories, Poseidon was already there. Poseidon, which we associate with the sea, seems to have been at a time, a god of earthquakes and the underworld — as if there was some seeming obvious connection between the place everyone lived and the old dark deep.

That’s the horror of the Lighthouse. It’s feeling unattached to the life that fills you up, and rather than finding peace, you find something else

waiting there

to fill you up.

There’s also something to be said for how violence expresses in The Lighthouse. It’s not easy, it’s not clean. A lot of media simplifies the violence of men fighting – usually to save time, sometimes to clean up stunts, and often just because: You don’t need to see what it takes to punch someone so many times they pass out from pain. A clock in the head and they go down and the story can continue and also, people come out of that experience, largely, fine.

It’s weird because yeah, people can take a few hits better than movies make you think but also they can’t take being knocked unconscious as easily as movies make you think.

Anyway, uh, the violence in The Lighthouse feels a lot more brutal and a lot more honest? Like when a guy punches someone a bunch and stops, there’s this thought in my mind that oh okay, so he knocked him out and he stopped. But nah…

Nah, then you see the other guy groaning and whimpering.

It was a choice to stop, which usually happens sometime around when you notice your breathing or your hand hurting.

I feel like the ending is also really intentional, but also deliberately vague. I could point out all sorts of things happening in it, but then it’d feel more like a list of ‘this movie about a loss of a grip on reality has deliberate breaks from reality!’ like I’m just arguing that the movie exists at all. It almost feels like it was deliberately chosen to make sure you can’t take it entirely literally.

And I guess that’s how I feel about this movie. I enjoyed the experience of being unsettled by it, I liked how it refused to answer me, and I felt impressed by what it was willing to overdo.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Media #Story Pile