#Wade and his guardian angel | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fromprison2002 · 5 months

Text

Short story

Stuart Dybek: Hot Ice

Saints

The saint, a virgin, was uncorrupted. She had been frozen in a block of ice many years ago.

Her father had found her half-naked body floating facedown among water lilies, her blond hair fanning at the marshy edge of the overgrown duck pond people still referred to as the Douglas Park Lagoon.

That’s how Eddie Kapusta had heard it.

Douglas Park was a black park now, the lagoon curdled in milky green scum as if it had soured, and Kapusta didn’t doubt that were he to go there they’d find his body floating in the lily pads too. But sometimes in winter, riding by on the California Avenue bus, the park flocked white, deserted, and the lagoon frozen over, Eddie could almost picture what it had been back then: swans gliding around the small, wooded island at the center, and rowboats plying into sunlight from the gaping stone tunnels of the haunted-looking boathouse.

The girl had gone rowing with a couple of guys — some said they were sailors, neighborhood kids going off to the war — nobody ever said who exactly or why she went with them, as if it didn’t matter. They rowed her around to the blind side of the little island. Nobody knew what happened there either. It was necessary for each person to imagine it for himself.

They were only joking at first was how Kapusta imagined it, laughing at her broken English, telling her to be friendly or swim home. One of them stroked her hair, gently undid her bun, and as her hair fell cascading over her shoulders surprising them all, the other reached too suddenly for the buttons on her blouse; she tore away so hard the boat rocked violently, her slip and bra split, breasts sprung loose, she dove.

Even the suddenness was slow motion the way Kapusta imagined it. But once they were in the water the rest went through his mind in a flash — the boat capsizing, the sailors thrashing for the little island, and the girl struggling alone in that sepia water too warm from summer, just barely deep enough for bullheads, with a mud bottom kids said was quicksand exploding into darkness with each kick. He didn’t want to wonder what she remembered as she held her last breath underwater. His mind raced over that to her father wading out into cattails, scooping her half-naked and still limp from the resisting water lilies, and running with her in his arms across the park crying in Polish or Slovak or Bohemian, whatever they were, and then riding with her on the streetcar he wouldn’t let stop until it reached the icehouse he owned, where crazy with grief he sealed her in ice.

“I believe it up to the part about the streetcar,” Manny Santora said that summer when they told each other such stories, talking often about things Manny called weirdness while pitching quarters in front of Buddy’s Bar. “I don’t believe he hijacked no streetcar, man.”

“What you think, man, he called a cab?” Pancho, Manny’s older brother, asked, winking at Eddie as if he’d scored.

Every time they talked like this Manny and Pancho argued. Pancho believed in everything — ghosts, astrology, legends. His nickname was Padrecito, which went back to his days as an altar boy when he would dress up as a priest and hold mass in the backyard with hosts punched with bottle caps from stale tortillas and real wine he’d collected from bottles the winos had left on door stoops. Eddie’s nickname was Eduardo, though the only person who called him that was Manny, who had made it up. Manny wasn’t the kind of guy to have a nickname — he was Manny or Santora.

Pancho believed if you played certain rock songs backward you’d hear secret messages from the devil. He believed in devils and angels. He still believed he had a guardian angel. It was something like being lucky, like making the sign of the cross before you stepped into the batter’s box. “It’s why I don’t get caught even when I’m caught,” he’d say when the cops would catch him dealing and not take him in. Pancho believed in saints. For a while he had even belonged to a gang called the Saints. They’d tried to recruit Manny too, who, though younger, was tougher than Pancho, but Manny had no use for gangs. “I already belong to the Loners,” he said.

Pancho believed in the girl in ice. In sixth grade, Sister Joachim, the ancient nun in charge of the altar boys, had told him the girl should be canonized and that she’d secretly written to the pope informing him that already there had been miracles and cures. “All the martyrs didn’t die in Rome,” she’d told Pancho. “They’re still suffering today in China and Russia and Korea and even here in your own neighborhood.” Like all nuns she loved Pancho. Dressed in his surplice and cassock he looked as if he should be beatified himself, a young St. Sebastian or Juan de la Cruz, the only altar boy in the history of the parish to spend his money on different-colored gym shoes so they would match the priest’s vestments — red for martyrs, white for feast days, black for requiems. The nuns knew he punished himself during Lent, offering up his pain for the poor souls in purgatory.

Their love for Pancho had made things impossible for Manny in the Catholic school. He seemed Pancho’s opposite in almost every way and dropped out after they’d held him back in sixth grade. He switched to public school, but mostly he hung out on the streets.

“I believe she worked miracles right in this neighborhood, man,” Pancho said.

“Bullshit, man. Like what miracles?” Manny wanted to know.

“Okay, man, you know Big Antek,” Pancho said.

“Big Antek the wino?”

They all knew Big Antek. He bought them beer. He’d been a butcher in every meat market in the neighborhood, but drunkenly kept hacking off pieces of his hands, and finally quit completely to become a full-time alky.

Big Antek had told Pancho about working on Kedzie Avenue when it was still mostly people from the old country and he had found a job at a Czech meat market with sawdust on the floor and skinned rabbits in the window. He wasn’t there a week when he got so drunk he passed out in the freezer and when he woke the door was locked and everyone was gone. It was Saturday and he knew they wouldn’t open again until Monday and by then he’d be stiff as a two-by-four. He was already shivering so badly he couldn’t stand still or he’d fall over. He figured he’d be dead already except that his blood was half alcohol. Parts of him were going numb and he started staggering around, bumping past hanging sides of meat, singing, praying out loud, trying to let the fear out before it became panic. He knew it was hopeless, but he was looking anyway for some place to smash out, some plug to pull, something to stop the cold. At the back of the freezer, behind racks of meat, he found a cooler. It was an old one, the kind that used to stand packed with blocks of ice and bottles of beer in taverns during the war. And seeing it, Big Antek suddenly remembered a moment from his first summer back from the Pacific, discharged from the hospital in Manila and back in Buddy’s lounge on Twenty-fourth Street, kitty-corner from a victory garden where a plaque erroneously listed his name among the parish war dead. It was an ordinary moment, nothing dramatic like his life flashing before his eyes, but the memory filled him with such clarity that the freezer became dreamlike beside it. The ball game was on the radio over at Buddy’s, DiMaggio in center again, while Bing Crosby crooned from the jukebox, which was playing at the same time. Antek was reaching into Buddy’s cooler, up to his elbow in ice water feeling for a beer, while looking out through the open tavern door that framed Twenty-fourth Street as if it were a movie full of girls blurred in brightness, slightly overexposed blondes, a movie he could step into any time he chose now that he was home; but right at this moment he was taking his time, stretching it out until it encompassed his entire life, the cold bottles bobbing away from his fingertips, clunking against the ice, until finally he grabbed one, hauled it up dripping, wondering what he’d grabbed — a Monarch or Yusay Pilsner or Fox Head 400—then popped the cork in the opener on the side of the cooler, the foam rising as he tilted his head back and let it pour down his throat, privately celebrating being alive. That moment was what drinking had once been about. It was a good thing to be remembering now when he was dying with nothing else to do about it. He had the funny idea of climbing inside the cooler and going to sleep to continue the memory like a dream. The cooler was thick with frost, so white it seemed to glow. Its lid had been replaced with a slab of dry ice that smoked even within the cold of the freezer, reminding Antek that as kids they’d always called it hot ice. He nudged it aside. Beneath it was a block of ice as clear as if the icemen had just delivered it. There was something frozen inside. He glanced away but knew already, immediately, it was a body. He couldn’t move away. He looked again. The longer he stared, the calmer he felt. It was a girl. He could make out her hair, not just blonde but radiating gold like a candle flame behind a window in winter. Her breasts were bare. The ice seemed even clearer. She was beautiful and dreamy looking, not dreamy like sleeping, but the dreamy look DPs sometimes get when they first come to the city. As long as he stayed beside her he didn’t shiver. He could feel the blood return; he was warm as if the smoldering dry ice really was hot. He spent the weekend huddled against her, and early Monday morning when the Czech opened the freezer he said to Antek, “Get out…you’re fired.” That’s all either one of them said.

“You know what I think,” Pancho said. “They moved her body from the icehouse to the butcher shop because the cops checked, man.”

“You know what I think,” Manny said, “I think you’re doing so much shit that even the winos can bullshit you.”

They looked hard at one another, Manny especially looking bad because of a beard he was trying to grow that was mostly stubble except for a black knot of hair frizzing from the cleft under his lower lip — a little lip beard like a jazz musician’s — and Pancho covered in crosses, a wooden one dangling from a leather thong over his open shirt, and small gold cross on a fine gold chain tight about his throat, and a tiny platinum cross in his right earlobe, and a faded India-ink cross tattooed on his wrist where one would feel for a pulse.

“He got a cross-shaped dick,” Manny said.

“Only when I got a hard-on, man,” Pancho said, grinning, and they busted up.

“Hey, Eddie, man,” Pancho said, “what you think of all this, man?”

Kapusta just shrugged as he always did. Not that he didn’t have any ideas exactly, or that he didn’t care. That shrug was what Kapusta believed.

“Yeah. Well, man,” Pancho said, “I believe there’s saints, and miracles happening everywhere only everybody’s afraid to admit it. I mean like Ralph’s little brother, the blue baby who died when he was eight. He knew he was dying all his life, man, and never complained. He was a saint. Or Big Antek who everybody says is a wino, man. But he treats everybody as human beings. Who you think’s more of a saint — him or the president, man? And Mrs. Corillo who everybody thought was crazy because she was praying loud all the time. Remember? She kneeled all day praying for Puerto Rico during that earthquake — the one Roberto Clemente crashed on the way to, going to help. Remember that, man? Mrs. Corillo prayed all day and they thought she was still praying at night and she was kneeling there dead. She was a saint, man, and so’s Roberto Clemente. There should be like a church, St. Roberto Clemente. With a statue of him in his batting stance by the altar. Kids could pray to him at night. That would mean something to them.”

“The earthquake wasn’t in Puerto Rico, man,” Manny told him, “and I don’t believe no streetcar’d stop for somebody carrying a dead person.”

Amnesia

It was hard to believe there ever were streetcars. The city back then, the city of their fathers, which was as far back as a family memory extended, even the city of their childhoods, seemed as remote to Eddie and Manny as the capital of some foreign country.

The past collapsed about them — decayed, bulldozed, obliterated. They walked past block-length gutted factories, past walls of peeling, multicolored doors hammered up around flooded excavation pits, hung out in half-boarded storefronts of groceries that had shut down when they were kids, dusty cans still stacked on the shelves. Broken glass collected everywhere, mounding like sand in the little, sunken front yards and gutters. Even the church’s stained-glass windows were patched with plywood.

They could vaguely remember something different before the cranes and wrecking balls gradually moved in, not order exactly, but rhythms: five-o’clock whistles, air-raid sirens on Tuesdays, Thursdays when the stockyards blew over like a brown wind of boiling hooves and bone, at least that’s what people said, screwing up their faces: “Phew! They’re making glue today!”

Streetcar tracks were long paved over; black webs of trolley wires vanished. So did the victory gardens that had become weed beds taking the corroded plaques with the names of neighborhood dead with them.

Things were gone they couldn’t remember but missed; and things were gone they weren’t sure ever were there — the pickle factory by the railroad tracks where a DP with a net worked scooping rats out of the open vats, troughs for ragmen’s horses, ragmen and their wooden wagons, knife sharpeners pushing screeching whetstones up alleys hollering “Scissors! Knives!” hermits living in cardboard shacks behind billboards.

At times, walking past the gaps, they felt as if they were no longer quite there themselves, half-lost despite familiar street signs, shadows of themselves superimposed on the present, except there was no present — everything either rubbled past or promised future — and they were walking as if floating, getting nowhere as if they’d smoked too much grass.

That’s how it felt those windy nights that fall when Manny and Eddie circled the county jail. They’d float down California past the courthouse, Bridwell Correctional, the auto pound, Communicable Disease Hospital, and then follow the long, curving concrete wall of the prison back toward Twenty-sixth Street, sharing a joint, passing it with cupped hands, ready to flip it if a cop should cruise by, but one place you could count on not to see cops was outside the prison.

Nobody was there; just the wall, railroad tracks, the river, and the factories that lined it — boundaries that remained intact while neighborhoods came and went.

Eddie had never noticed any trees, but swirls of leaves scuffed past their shoes. It was Kapusta’s favorite weather, wild, blowing nights that made him feel free, flagpoles knocking in the wind, his clothes flapping like flags. He felt both tight and loose, and totally alive even walking down a street that always made him sad. It was the street that followed the curve of the prison wall, and it didn’t have a name. It was hardly a street at all, more a shadow of the wall, potholed, puddled, half-paved, rutted with rusted railroad tracks.

“Trains used to go down this street.” Manny said.

“I seen tanks going down this street.”

“Tank cars?”

“No, army tanks,” Kapusta said.

“Battleships too, Eduardo?” Manny asked seriously. Then the wind ripped a laugh from his mouth that was loud enough to carry over the prison wall.

Kapusta laughed loud too. But he could remember tanks, camouflaged with netting, rumbling on flatcars, their cannons outlined by the red lanterns of the dinging crossing gates that were down all along Twenty-sixth Street. It was one of the first things he remembered. He must have been very small. The train seemed endless. He could see the guards in the turrets on the prison wall watching it, the only time he’d ever seen them facing the street. “Still sending them to Korea or someplace,” his father had said, and for years after Eddie believed you could get to Korea by train. For years after, he would wake in the middle of the night when it was quiet enough to hear the trains passing blocks away, and lie in bed listening, wondering if the tanks were rumbling past the prison, if not to Korea then to some other war that tanks went to at night; and he would think of the prisoners in their cells locked up for their violence with knives and clubs and cleavers and pistols, and wonder if they were lying awake, listening too as the netted cannons rolled by their barred windows. Even as a child Eddie knew the names of men inside there: Milo Hermanski, who had stabbed some guy in the eye in a fight at Andy’s Tap; Billy Gomez, who set the housing project on fire every time his sister Gina got gang-banged; Ziggy’s uncle, the war hero, who one day blew off the side of Ziggy’s mother’s face while she stood ironing her slip during an argument over a will; and other names of people he didn’t know but had heard about — Benny Bedwell, with his “Elvis” sideburns, who may have killed the Grimes sister; Mafia hit men; bank robbers; junkies; perverts; murderers on death row — he could sense them lying awake listening, could feel the tension of their sleeplessness, and Pancho lay among them now as Eddie and Manny walked outside the wall.

They stopped again as they’d been stopping and yelled together: “Pancho, Panchooooooo,” dragging out the last vowel the way they had as kids standing on the sidewalk calling up at one another’s windows, as if knocking at the door were not allowed.

“Pancho, we’re out here, brother, me and Eddie,” Manny shouted. “Hang tough, man, we ain’t forgetting you.”

Nobody answered. They kept walking, stopping to shout at intervals the way they had been doing almost every night.

“If only we knew what building he was in,” Eddie said.

They could see the upper stories of the brick buildings rising over the wall, their grated windows low lit, never dark, floodlights on the roof glaring down.

“Looks like a factory, man,” Eddie said. “Looks like the same guy who planned the Harvester foundry on Western did the jail.”

“You rather be in the army or in there?” Manny asked.

“No way they’re getting me in there,” Eddie said.

That was when Eddie knew Pancho was crazy, when the judge had given Pancho a choice at the end of his trial.

“You’re a nice-looking kid,” the judge had said, “too nice for prison. What do you want to do with your life?”

“Pose for holy cards,” Pancho said, “St. Joseph is my specialty.” Pancho was standing there wearing the tie they had brought him wound around his head like an Indian headband. He was wearing a black satin jacket with the signs of the zodiac on the back.

“I’m going to give you a chance to straighten out, to gain some self-respect. The court’s attitude would be very sympathetic to any signs of self-direction and patriotism, joining the army, for instance.”

“I’m a captain,” Pancho told him.

“The army or jail, which is it?”

“I’m a captain, man, soy capitán, capitán,” Pancho insisted, humming “La Bamba” under his breath.

“You’re a misfit.”

Manny was able to visit Pancho every three weeks. Each time it got worse. Sometimes Pancho seemed hardly to recognize him, looking away, refusing to meet Manny’s eyes the whole visit. Sometimes he’d cry. For a while at first he wanted to know how things were in the neighborhood. Then he stopped asking, and when Manny tried to tell him the news Pancho would get jumpy, irritable, and lapse into total silence. “I don’t wanna talk about out there, man,” he told Manny. “I don’t wanna remember that world until I’m ready to step into it again. You remember too much in here you go crazy, man. I wanna forget everything, like I never existed.”

“His fingernails are gone, man,” Manny told Eddie. “He’s gnawing on himself like a rat, and when I ask him what’s going down all he’ll say is ‘I’m locked in hell, my angel’s gone, I’ve lost my luck’—bullshit like that, you know? Last time I seen him he says, ‘I’m gonna kill myself, man, if they don’t stop hitting on me.’”

“I can’t fucking believe it. I can’t fucking believe he’s in there,” Eddie said. “He should be in a monastery somewhere; he should’ve been a priest. He had a vocation.”

“He had a vocation to be an altar boy, man,” Manny said, spitting it out as if he was disgusted by what he was saying, talking down about his own brother. “It was that nuns-and-priests crap that messed up his head. He was happy being an altar boy, man, if they’d’ve let him be an altar boy all his life he’d still be happy.”

By the time they were halfway down the nameless street it was drizzling a fine, misty spray, and Manny was yelling in Spanish, “Estamos contigo, hermano! San Roberto Clemente te ayudará!”

They broke into “La Bamba,” Eddie singing in Spanish too, not sure exactly what he was singing, but it sounded good: “Yo no soy marinero, soy capitán, capitán, ay, ay Bamba! ay, ay, Bamba!” He had lived beside Spanish in the neighborhood all his life, and every so often a word got through, like juilota, which was what Manny called pigeons when they used to hunt them with slingshots under the railroad bridges. It seemed a perfect word to Eddie, one in which he could hear both their cooing and the whistling rush of their wings. He didn’t remember any words like that in Polish, which his grandma had spoken to him when he was little, and which, Eddie had been told, he could once speak too.

By midnight they were at the end of their circuit, emerging from the unlighted, nameless street, stepping over tracks that continued to curve past blinded switches. Under the streetlights on Twenty-sixth the prison wall appeared rust stained, oozing at the cracks. The wire spooled at the top of the wall looked rusty in the wet light, as did the tracks as if the rain were rusting everything overnight.

They stopped on the corner of Twenty-sixth where the old icehouse stood across the nameless street from the prison. One could still buy ice from a vending machine in front. Without realizing it, Eddie guarded his breathing as if still able to detect the faintest stab of ammonia, although it had been a dozen years since the louvered fans on the icehouse roof had clacked through clouds of vapor.

“Padrecitooooo!” they both hollered.

Their voices bounced back off the wall.

They stood on the corner by the icehouse as if waiting around for someone. From there they could stare down Twenty-sixth — five dark blocks, then an explosion of neon at Kedzie Avenue: taco places, bars, a street plugged in, winking festive as a pinball machine, traffic from it coming toward them in the rain.

The streetlights surged and flickered.

“You see that?” Eddie asked. “They used to say when the streetlights flickered it meant they just fried somebody in the electric chair.”

“So much bullshit,” Manny said. “Compadre, no te rajes!” he yelled at the wall.

“Whatcha tell him?”

“It sounds different in English,” Manny said. “‘Godfather, do not give up.’ It’s words from an old song.”

Kapusta stepped out into the middle of Twenty-sixth and stood in the misting drizzle squinting at Kedzie through cupped hands, as if he held binoculars. He could make out the traffic light way down there changing to green. He could almost hear the music from the bars that would serve them without asking for IDs so long as Manny was there. “You thirsty by any chance, man?” he asked.

“You buyin’ by any chance, man?” Manny said, grinning.

“Buenas noches, Pancho,” they hollered. “Catch you tomorrow, man.”

“Good night, guys,” a falsetto voice echoed back from over the wall.

“That ain’t Pancho,” Manny said.

“Sounds like the singer on old Platters’ records,” Eddie said. “Ask him if he knows Pancho, man.”

�� “Hey, you know a guy named Pancho Santora?” Manny called.

“Oh, Pancho?” the voice inquired.

“Yeah, Pancho.”

“Oh, Cisco!” the voice shouted. They could hear him cackling. “Hey, baby, I don’t know no Pancho. Is that rain I smell?”

“It’s raining,” Eddie hollered.

“Hey, baby, tell me something. What’s it like out there tonight?”

Manny and Eddie looked at each other. “Beautiful!” they yelled together.

Grief

There was never a requiem, but by Lent everyone knew that one way or another Pancho was gone. No wreaths, but plenty of rumors: Pancho had hung himself in his cell; his throat had been slashed in the showers; he’d killed another inmate and was under heavy sedation in a psycho ward at Kankakee. And there was talk he’d made a deal and was in the army, shipped off to a war he had sworn he’d never fight; that he had turned snitch and had been secretly relocated with a new identity; or that he had become a trustee and had simply walked away while mowing the grass in front of the courthouse, escaped maybe to Mexico, or maybe just across town to the North Side around Diversey where, if one made the rounds of the leather bars, they might see someone with Pancho’s altar-boy eyes staring out from the makeup of a girl.

Some saw him late at night like a ghost haunting the neighborhood, collar up, in the back of the church lighting a vigil candle; or veiled in a black mantilla, speeding past, face floating by on a greasy El window.

Rumors were becoming legends, but there was never a wake, never an obituary, and no one knew how to mourn a person who had just disappeared.

For a while Manny disappeared too. He wasn’t talking, and Kapusta didn’t ask. They had quit walking around the prison wall months before, around Christmas when Pancho refused to let anyone, even Manny, visit. But their night walks had been tapering off before that.

Eddie remembered the very last time they had walked beside the wall together. It was in December, and he was frozen from standing around a burning garbage can on Kedzie, selling Christmas trees. About ten, when the lot closed, Manny came by and they stopped to thaw out at the Carta Blanca. A guy named José kept buying them whiskeys, and they staggered out after midnight into a blizzard.

“Look at this white bullshit,” Manny said.

Walking down Twenty-sixth they stopped to fling snowballs over the wall. Then they decided to stand there singing Christmas carols. Snow was drifting against the wall, erasing the street that had hardly been there. Eddie could tell Manny was starting to go silent. Manny would get the first few words into a carol, singing at the top of his voice, then stop as if choked by the song. His eyes stayed angry when he laughed. Everything was bullshit to him, and finally Eddie couldn’t talk to him anymore. Stomping away from the prison through fresh snow, Eddie had said, “If this keeps up, man, I’ll need boots.”

“It don’t have to keep up, man,” Manny snapped. “Nobody’s making you come, man. It ain’t your brother.”

“All I said is I’ll need boots, man,” Eddie said.

“You said it hopeless, man; things are always fucking hopeless to you.”

“Hey, you’re the big realist, man,” Eddie told him.

“I never said I was no realist,” Manny mumbled.

Kapusta hadn’t had a lot of time since then. He had dropped out of school again and was loading trucks at night for UPS. One more semester didn’t matter, he figured, and he needed some new clothes, cowboy boots, a green leather jacket. The weather had turned drizzly and mild — a late Easter but an early spring. Eddie had heard Manny was hanging around by himself, still finding bullshit everywhere, only worse. Now he muttered as he walked like some crazy, bitter old man, or one of those black guys reciting the gospel to buildings, telling off posters and billboards, neon signs, stoplights, passing traffic — bullshit, all of it bullshit.

It was Tuesday in Holy Week, the statues inside the church shrouded in violet, when Eddie slipped on his green leather jacket and walked over to Manny’s before going to work. He rang the doorbell, then stepped outside in the rain and stood on the sidewalk under Manny’s windows, watching cars pass.

After a while Manny came down the stairs and slammed out the door.

“How you doin’, man?” Eddie said as if they’d just run into each other by accident.

Manny stared at him. “How far’d you have to chase him for that jacket, man?” he said.

“I knew you’d dig it.” Eddie smiled.

They went out for a few beers later that night, after midnight, when Eddie was through working, but instead of going to a bar they ended up just walking. Manny had rolled a couple bombers and they walked down the boulevard along California watching the headlights flash by like a procession of candles. Manny still wasn’t saying much, but they were passing the reefer like having a conversation. At Thirty-first, by the Communicable Disease Hospital, Eddie figured they would follow the curve of the boulevard toward the bridge on Western, but Manny turned as if out of habit toward the prison.

They were back walking along the wall. There was still old ice from winter at the base of it.

“The only street in Chicago where it’s still winter,” Eddie mumbled.

“Remember yelling?” Manny said, almost in a whisper.

“Sure,” Eddie nodded.

“Called, joked, prayed, sang Christmas songs, remember that night, how cold we were, man?”

“Yeah.”

“What a bunch of stupid bullshit, huh?”

Eddie was afraid Manny was going to start the bullshit stuff again. Manny had stopped and stood looking at the wall.

Then he cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled, “Hey! You dumb fuckers in there! We’re back! Can you hear me? Hey, wake up, niggers, hey, spics, hey, honkies, you buncha fuckin’ monkeys in cages, hey! We’re out here free!”

“Hey, Manny, come on, man,” Eddie said.

Manny uncupped his hands, shook his head, and smiled. They took a few steps, then Manny whirled back again. “We’re out here free, man! We’re smokin’ reefer, drinking cold beer while you’re in there, you assholes! We’re on our way to fuck your wives, man, your girlfriends are giving us blow jobs while you jack-offs flog it. Hey, man, I’m pumping your old lady out here right now. She likes it in the ass like you!”

“What are you doing, man?” Eddie was pleading. “Take it easy.”

Manny was screaming his lungs out, almost incoherent, shouting every filthy thing he could think of, and voices, the voices they’d never heard before, had begun shouting back from the other side of the wall.

“Shadup! Shadup! Shadup out there, you crazy fuck!” came the voices.

“She’s out here licking my balls while you’re punking each other through the bars of your cage!”

“Shadup!” they were yelling, and then a voice howling over the others: “I’ll kill you, motherfucker! When I get out you’re dead!”

“Come on out,” Manny was yelling. “Come and get me, you pieces of shit, you sleazeballs, you scumbag cocksuckers, you creeps are missing it all, your lives are wasted garbage!”

Now there were too many voices to distinguish, whole tiers, whole buildings yelling and cursing and threatening, shadup, shadup, shadup, almost a chant, and then the searchlight from the guardhouse slowly turned and swept the street.

“We gotta get outa here,” Eddie said, pulling Manny away. He dragged him to the wall, right up against it where the light couldn’t follow, and they started to run, stumbling along the banked strip of filthy ice, dodging stunted trees that grew out at odd angles, running toward Twenty-sixth until Eddie heard the sirens.

“This way, man,” he panted, yanking Manny back across the nameless street, jumping puddles and tracks, cutting down a narrow corridor between abandoned truck docks seconds before a squad car, blue dome light revolving, sped past.

They jogged behind the truck docks, not stopping until they came up behind the icehouse. Manny’s panting sounded almost like laughing, the way people laugh after they’ve hurt themselves.

“I hate those motherfuckers,” Manny gasped, “all of them, the fucking cops and guards and fucking wall and the bastards behind it. All of them. That must be what makes me a realist, huh, Eddie? I fucking hate them all.”

Sometimes a thing wasn’t a sin — if there was such a thing as sin — Eddie thought, until it’s done a second time. There were accidents, mistakes that could be forgiven once; it was repeating them that made them terribly wrong. That was how Eddie felt about going back the next night.

Manny said he was going whether Eddie came or not, so Eddie went, afraid to leave Manny on his own, even though he’d already had trouble trying to get some sleep before going to work. Eddie could still hear the voices yelling from behind the wall and dreamed they were all being electrocuted, electrocuted slowly, by degrees of their crimes, screaming with each surge of current and flicker of streetlights as if in a hell where electricity had replaced fire.

Standing on the dark street Wednesday night, outside the wall again, felt like an extension of his nightmare: Manny raging almost out of control, shouting curses and insults, baiting them over the wall the way a child tortures penned watchdogs, until he had what seemed like the entire west side of the prison howling back, the guards sweeping the street with searchlights, sirens wailing toward them from both Thirty-first and Twenty-sixth.

This time they raced down the tracks that curved toward the river, picking their way in the dark along the junkyard bank, flipping rusted cables of moored barges, running through the fire truck graveyard, following the tracks across the blackened trestles where they’d once shot pigeons and from which they could gaze across the industrial prairie that stretched behind factories all the way to the skyline of downtown. The skyscrapers glowed like luminescent peaks in the misty spring night. Manny and Eddie stopped in the middle of the trestle and leaned over the railing catching their breath.

“Downtown ain’t as far away as I used to think when I was a kid.” Manny panted.

“These tracks’ll take you right there,” Eddie said quietly, “to railroad yards under the street, right by the lake.”

“How you know, man?”

“A bunch of us used to hitch rides on the boxcars in seventh grade.” Eddie was talking very quietly, looking away.

“I usually take the bus, you know?” Manny tried joking.

“I ain’t goin’ back there with you tomorrow,” Eddie said. “I ain’t goin’ back with you ever.”

Manny kept staring off toward the lights downtown as if he hadn’t heard. “Okay,” he finally said, more to himself, as if surrendering. “Okay, how about tomorrow we do something else, man?”

Nostalgia

The next night, Thursday, Eddie overslept and called in sick for work. He tried to get back to sleep but kept falling into half-dreams in which he could hear the voices shouting behind the prison wall. Finally he got up and opened a window. It was dark out. A day had passed almost unnoticed, and now the night felt as if it were a part of the night before, and the night before a part of the night before that, all connected by his restless dreams, fragments of the same continuous night.

Eddie had said that at some point: “It’s like one long night,” and later Manny had said the same thing as if it had suddenly occurred to him.

They were strung out almost from the start, drifting stoned under the El tracks before Eddie even realized they weren’t still sitting on the stairs in front of Manny’s house. That was where Eddie had found him, watching traffic, taking sips out of a bottle of Gallo into which Manny had dropped several hits of speed.

Cars gunned by with their windows rolled down and radios playing loud. It sounded like a summer night.

“Ain’t you hot wearin’ that jacket, man?” Manny asked him.

“Now that you mention it,” Eddie said. He was sweating.

Eddie took his leather jacket off and they knotted a handkerchief around one of the cuffs, then slipped the Gallo bottle down the sleeve. They walked along under the El tracks passing a joint. A train, only two cars long, rattled overhead.

“So what we doing, Eduardo?” Manny kept repeating.

“Walking,” Eddie said.

“I feel like doing something, you know?”

“We are doing something,” Eddie insisted.

Eddie led them over to the Coconut Club on Twenty-second. They couldn’t get in, but Eddie wanted to look at the window with its neon-green palm tree and winking blue coconuts.

“That’s maybe my favorite window,” he said.

“You drag me all the way here to see your favorite window, man?!” Manny said.

“It’s those blue coconuts,” Eddie tried explaining. His mouth was dry, but he couldn’t stop talking. He started telling Manny how he had collected windows from the time he was a little kid, even though talking about it made it sound as if windows were more important to him than they actually were. Half the time he was only vaguely aware of collecting them. He would see a window from a bus, like the Greek butcher shop on Halsted with its pyramid of lamb skulls, and make a mental photograph of it. He had special windows all over the city. It was how he held the city together in his mind.

“I’d see all these windows from the El,” Eddie said, “when I’d visit my busha, my grandma. Like I remember we’d pass this one building where the curtains were all slips hanging by their straps — black ones, white ones, red ones. At night you could see the light bulbs shining through the lace tops. My busha said Gypsies lived there.” Eddie was walking down the middle of the street, jacket flung over his shoulder, staring up at the windows as if looking for the Gypsies as he talked.

“Someday they’re gonna get you as a peeper, man.�� Manny laughed. “And when they do, don’t try explaining to them about this thing of yours for windows, Eduardo.”

They were walking down Spaulding back toward Twenty-sixth. The streetlights beamed brighter and brighter, and Manny put his sunglasses on. A breeze was blowing that felt warmer than the air, and they took their shirts off. They saw rats darting along the curb into the sewer on the other side of the street and put their shirts back on.

“The rats get crazy where they start wrecking these old buildings,” Manny said.

The cranes and wrecking balls and urban-renewal signs were back with the early spring. They walked around a barricaded site. Water trickled along the gutters from an open hydrant, washing brick dust and debris toward the sewers.

“Can you smell that, man?” Manny asked him, suddenly excited. “I can smell the lake through the hydrant.”

“Smells like rust to me,” Eddie said.

“I can smell fish! Smelt — the smelt are in! I can smell them right through the hydrant!”

“Smelt?” Eddie said.

“You ain’t ever had smelt?” Manny asked. “Little silver fish!”

They caught the Twenty-sixth Street bus — the Polish Zephyr, people called it — going east toward the lake. The back of the bus was empty. They sat in the swaying, long backseat, taking hits out of the bottle in Eddie’s sleeve.

“It’s usually too early for them yet, but they’re out there, Eduardo,” Manny kept reassuring him, as if they were actually going fishing.

Eddie nodded. He didn’t know anything about smelt. The only fish he ate was canned tuna, but it felt good to be riding somewhere with the windows open and Manny acting more like his old self — sure of himself, laughing easily. Eddie still felt like talking, but his molars were grinding on speed.

The bus jolted down the dark block past Kedzie and was flying when it passed the narrow street between the ice house and the prison, but Eddie and Manny caught a glimpse out the back window of the railroad tracks that curved down the nameless street. The tracks were lined with fuming red flares that threw a red reflection off the concrete walls. Eddie was sure the flares had been set there for them.

Eddie closed his eyes and sank into the rocking of the bus. Even with his eyes closed he could see the reddish glare of the walls. The glare was ineradicable, at the back of his sockets. The wall had looked the same way it had looked in his dreams. They rode in silence.

“It’s like one long night,” Eddie said somewhere along the way.

His jaws were really grinding and his legs had forgotten gravity by the time they got to the lakefront. They didn’t know the time, but it must have been around 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. and the smelt fishers were still out. The lights of their kerosene lanterns reflected along the breakwater over the glossy black lake. Eddie and Manny could hear the water lapping under the pier and the fishermen talking in low voices in different languages.

“My uncle Carlos would talk to the fish,” Manny said. “No shit. He’d talk to them in Spanish. He didn’t have no choice. Whole time here he couldn’t speak English. Said it made his brain stuck. We used to come fishing here all the time — smelt, perch, everything. I’d come instead of going to school. If they weren’t hitting, he’d start talking to them, singing them songs.”

“Like what?” Eddie said.

“He’d make them up. They were funny, man. It don’t come across in English: ‘Little silver ones fill up my shoes. My heart is lonesome for the fish of the sea.’ It was like very formal how he’d say it. He’d always call this the sea. I’d tell him it’s a lake, but he couldn’t be talked out of it. He was very stubborn — too stubborn to learn English. I ain’t been fishing since he went back to Mexico.”

They walked to the end of the pier, then back past the fishermen. A lot of them were old men gently tugging lines between their fingers, lifting nets as if flying underwater kites, plucking the wriggling silver fish from the netting, the yellow light of their lamps glinting off the bright scales.

“I told you they were out here,” Manny said.

They sat on a concrete ledge, staring at the dark water, which rocked hypnotically below the soles of their dangling feet.

“Feel like diving in?” Manny asked.

Eddie had just raised the bottle to his lips and paused as if actually considering Manny’s question, then shook his head no and took a swallow.

“One time right before my uncle went back to Mexico we came fishing at night for perch,” Manny said. “It was a real hot night, you know? And all these old guys fishing off the pier. No one getting a bite, man, and I started thinking how cool and peaceful it would be to just dive in the water with the fish, and then, like I just did it without even deciding to, clothes and all. Sometimes, man, I still remember that feeling underwater — like I could just keep swimming out, didn’t need air, never had to come up. When I couldn’t hold my breath no more and came up I could hear my uncle calling my name, and then all the old guys on the pier start calling my name to come back. What I really felt like doing was to keep swimming out until I couldn’t hear them, until I couldn’t even see their lanterns, man. I wanted to be way the fuck out alone in the middle of the lake when the sun came up. But then I thought about my uncle standing on the pier calling me, so I turned around.”

They killed the bottle sitting on a concrete ledge and dropped it into the lake. Then they rode the El back. It was getting lighter without a dawn. The El windows were streaked with rain, the Douglas Avenue station smelled wet. It was a dark morning. They should have ended it then. Instead they sat at Manny’s kitchen table drinking instant coffee with canned milk. Eddie kept getting lost in the designs the milk would make, swirls and thunderclouds in his mug of coffee. He was numb and shaky. His jaw ached.

“I’m really crashin’,” he told Manny.

“Here,” Manny said. “Bring us down easier, man.”

“I don’t like doing downers, man,” Eddie said.

“’Ludes,” Manny said, “from Pancho’s stash.”

They sat across the table from each other for a long time — talking, telling their memories and secrets — only Eddie was too numb to remember exactly what they said. Their voices — his own as well as Manny’s — seemed outside, removed from the center of his mind.

At one point Manny looked out at the dark morning and said, “It still seems like last night.”

“That’s right,” Eddie agreed. He wanted to say more but couldn’t express it. He didn’t try. Eddie didn’t believe it was what they said that was important. Manny could be talking Spanish; I could be talking Polish, Eddie thought. It didn’t matter. What meant something was sitting at the table together, wrecked together, still awake watching the rainy light spatter the window, walking out again, to the Prague bakery for bismarcks, past people under dripping umbrellas on their way to church.

“Looks like Sunday,” Manny said.

“Today’s Friday,” Eddie said. “It’s Good Friday.”

“I seen ladies with ashes on their heads waiting for the bus a couple days ago,” Manny told him.

They stood in the doorway of the Prague, out of the rain, eating their bismarcks. Just down from the church, the bakery was a place people crowded into after mass. Its windows displayed colored eggs and little frosted Easter lambs.

“One time on Ash Wednesday I was eating a bismarck and Pancho made a cross on my forehead with the powdered sugar like it was ashes. When I went to church the priest wouldn’t give me real ashes,” Manny said with a grin.

It was one of the few times Eddie had heard Manny mention Pancho. Now that they were outside, Eddie’s head felt clearer than it had in the kitchen.

“I used to try and keep my ashes on until Good Friday,” he told Manny, “but they’d make me wash.”

The church bells were ringing, echoes bouncing off the sidewalks as if deflected by the ceiling of clouds. The neighborhood felt narrower, compressed from above.

“I wonder if it still looks the same in there,” Manny said as they passed the church.

They stepped in and stood in the vestibule. The saints of their childhood stood shrouded in purple. The altar was bare, stripped for Good Friday. Old ladies, ignoring the new liturgy, chanted a litany in Polish.

“Same as ever,” Eddie whispered as they backed out.

The rain had almost let up. They could hear its accumulated weight in the wing-flaps of pigeons.

“Good Friday was Pancho’s favorite holiday, man,” Manny said. “Everybody else always picked Christmas or Thanksgiving or Fourth of July. He hadda be different, man. I remember he used to drag me along visiting churches. You ever do that?”

“Hell, yeah,” Eddie said. “Every Good Friday we’d go on our bikes. You hadda visit seven of them.”

Without agreeing to it they walked from St. Roman’s to St. Michael’s, a little wooden Franciscan church in an Italian neighborhood; and from there to St. Casimir’s, a towering, mournful church with twin copper-green towers. Then, as if following an invisible trail, they walked north up Twenty-second toward St. Anne’s, St. Puis’s, St. Adalbert’s. At first they merely entered and left immediately, as if touching base, but their familiarity with small rituals quickly returned: dipping their fingers in the holy water font by the door, making the automatic sign of the cross as they passed the life-size crucified Christs that hung in the vestibules where old women and school kids clustered to kiss the spikes in the bronze or bloody plaster feet. By St. Anne’s, Manny removed his sunglasses, out of respect, the way one removes a hat. Eddie put them on. His eyes felt hard-boiled. The surge of energy he had felt at the bakery had burned out fast. While Manny genuflected to the altar, Eddie slumped in the back pew pretending to pray, drowsing off behind the dark glasses. It never occurred to Eddie to simply go home. His head ached, he could feel his heart racing, and would suddenly jolt awake wondering where Manny was. Manny would be off — jumpy, frazzled, still popping speed on the sly — exploring the church as if searching for something, standing among lines of parishioners waiting to kiss relics the priest wiped repeatedly clean with a rag of silk. Then Manny would be shaking Eddie awake. “How you holding up, man?”

“I’m cool,” he’d say, and they would be back on the streets heading for another parish under the overcast sky. Clouds, a shade between slate and lilac, smoked over the spires and roofs; lights flashed on in the bars and taquerías. On Eighteenth Street a great blue neon fish leapt in the storefront window of a tiny ostenaria. Eddie tried to note the exact location to add to his window collection. They headed along a wall of viaducts to St. Procopius, where, Manny said, both he and Pancho had been baptized. The viaduct walls had been painted by schoolchildren into a mural that seemed to go for miles.

“I don’t think we’re gonna make seven churches, man,” Eddie said. He was walking without lifting his feet, his hair plastered by a sweatlike drizzle. It was around 3:00 p.m. It had been 3:00 p.m. — Christ’s dark hour on the cross — inside the churches all day, but now it was turning 3:00 p.m. outside too. They could hear the ancient-sounding hymn “Tantum Ergo,” carrying from down the block.

Eddie sunk into the last pew, kneeling in the red glow of vigil lights that brought back the red flicker of the flares they had seen from the window of the bus as it sped by the prison. Manny had already faded into the procession making the stations of the cross — a shuffling crowd circling the church, kneeling before each station while altar boys censed incense and the priest recited Christ’s agony. Old women answered with prayers like moans.

Old women were walking on their knees up the marble aisle to kiss the relics. A few were crying, and Eddie remembered how back in grade school he had heard old women cry sometimes after confession, crying as if their hearts would break, and even as a child he had wondered how such old women could possibly have committed sins terrible enough to demand such bitter weeping. Most everything from that world had changed or disappeared, but the old women had endured — Polish, Bohemian, Spanish, he knew it didn’t matter; they were the same, dressed in black coats and babushkas the way holy statues wore violet, in constant mourning. A common pain of loss seemed to burn at the core of their lives, though Eddie had never understood exactly what it was they mourned. Nor how day after day they had sustained the intensity of their grief. He would have given up long ago. In a way he had given up, and the ache left behind couldn’t be called grief. He had no name for it. He had felt it before Pancho or anyone was lost, almost from the start of memory. If it was grief; it was grief for the living. The hymns, with their ancient, keening melodies and mysterious words, had brought the feeling back, but when he tried to discover the source, to give the feeling a name, it eluded him as always, leaving in its place nostalgia and triggered nerves.

Oh God, he prayed, I’m really crashing.

He was too shaky to kneel, so he stretched out on the pew, lying on his back, eyes shut behind sunglasses, until the church began to whirl. To control it he tried concentrating on the stained-glass window overhead. None of the windows that had ever been special for him were from a church. This one was an angel, its colors like jewels and coals. Afternoon seemed to be dying behind it, becoming part of the night, part of the private history that he and Manny continued between them like a pact. He could see night shining through the colors of the angel, dividing into bands as if the angel were a prism for darkness; the neon and wet streetlights illuminated its wingspread.

Legends

It started with ice.

That’s how Big Antek sometimes began the story.

At dusk a gang of little Mexican kids appeared with a few lumps of dry ice covered in a shoe box, as if they had caught a bird. Hot ice, they called it, though the way they said it sounded to Antek like hot eyes. Kids always have a way of finding stuff like that. One boy touched his tongue to a piece and screamed “Aye!” when it stuck. They watched the ice boil and fume in a rain puddle along the curb, and finally they filled a bottle part way with water, inserted the fragments of ice they had left, capped the bottle, and set it in the mouth of an alley waiting for an explosion. When it popped they scattered.

Manny Santora and Eddie Kapusta came walking up the alley, wanting Antek to buy them a bottle of rum at Buddy’s. Rum instead of beer. They were celebrating, Kapusta said, but he didn’t say what. Maybe one of them had found a job or had just been fired, or graduated, or joined the army instead of waiting around to get drafted. It could be anything. They were always celebrating. Behind their sunglasses Antek could see they were high as usual, even before Manny offered him a drag off a reefer the size of a cigar.

Probably nobody was hired or fired or had joined anything; probably it was just so hot they had a good excuse to act crazy. They each had a bottle of Coke they were fizzing up, squirting. Eddie had limes stuffed in his pockets and was pretending they were his balls. Manny had a plastic bag of the little ice cubes they sell at gas stations. It was half-melted, and they were scooping handfuls of cubes over each other’s heads, stuffing them down their jeans and yowling, rubbing ice on their chests and under their arms as if taking a cold shower. They looked like wild men — shirts hanging from their back pockets, handkerchiefs knotted around their heads, wearing sunglasses, their bodies slick with melted ice water and sweat; two guys in the prime of life going nowhere, both lean, Kapusta almost as tan as Santora, Santora with that frizzy beard under his lip, and Kapusta trying to juggle limes.

They were drinking rum using a method Antek had never seen before, and he had seen his share of drinking — not just in the neighborhood — all over the world when he was in the navy, and not the Bohemian navy either like somebody would always say when he would start telling navy stories.

They claimed they were drinking cuba libres, only they didn’t have glasses, so they were mixing the drinks in their mouths, starting with some little cubes, then pouring in rum, Coke, a squeeze of lime, and swallowing. Swallowing if one or the other didn’t suddenly bust up over some private joke, spraying the whole mouthful out, and both of them choking and coughing and laughing.

“Hey, Antek, lemme build you a drink,” Manny kept saying, but Antek shook his head no thanks, and he wasn’t known for passing up too many.

This was all going on in front of Buddy’s, everyone catching a blast of music and air-conditioning whenever the door opened. It was hot. The moths sizzled as soon as they hit Buddy’s buzzing orange sign. A steady beat of moths dropped like cinders on the blinking orange sidewalk where the kids were pitching pennies. Manny passed around what was left in the plastic bag of ice, and the kids stood sucking and crunching the cubes between their teeth.

It reminded Antek of summers when the ice trucks still delivered to Buddy’s — flatbeds covered with canvas, the icemen, mainly DPs, wearing leather aprons. Their Popeye forearms, even in August, looked ruddy with cold. They would slide the huge, clear blocks off the tailgate so the whump reverberated through the hollow under the sidewalks, and deep in the ice the clarity shattered. Then with their ice hooks they’d lug the blocks across the sidewalk, trailing a slick, and boot them skidding down the chute into Buddy’s beery-smelling cellar. And after the truck pulled away, kids would pick the splinters from the curb and suck them as if they were ice-flavored Popsicles.

Nobody seemed too interested when Antek tried to tell them about the ice trucks, or anything else about how the world had been, for that matter. Antek had been sick and had only recently returned from the VA hospital. Of all his wounds, sickness was the worst. He could examine his hacked butcher’s hands almost as kids from the neighborhood did, inspecting the stubs where his fingers had been as if they belonged to someone else, but there were places deep within himself that he couldn’t examine, yet where he could feel that something of himself far more essential than fingers was missing. He returned from the VA feeling old and as if the neighborhood had changed in the weeks he had been gone. People had changed. He couldn’t be sure, but they treated him differently, colder, as if he were becoming a stranger in the place he had grown up in, now, just when he most needed to belong.

“Hey, Antek,” Manny said, “you know what you can tell me? That girl that saved your life in the meat freezer, did she have good tits?”

“I tell you about a miracle and you ask me about tits?” Antek said. “I don’t talk about that anymore because now somebody always asks me did she have good tits. Go see.”

Kids had been trying for years to sneak into the icehouse to see her. It was what the neighborhood had instead of a haunted house. Each generation had grown up with the story of how her father had ridden with her half-naked body on the streetcar. Even the nuns had heard Antek’s story about finding the girl still frozen in the meat freezer. The butcher shop in Kedzie had closed long ago, and the legend was that after the cops had stopped checking, her body had been moved at night back into the icehouse. But the icehouse wasn’t easy to break into. It had stood padlocked and heavily boarded for years.

“They’re gonna wreck it,” Eddie said. “I went by on the bus and they got the crane out in front.”

“Uh-oh, last chance, Antek,” Manny said. “If you’re sure she’s in there, maybe we oughta go save her.”

“She’s in there,” Antek said. He noticed the little kids had stopped pitching pennies and were listening.

“Well, you owe her something after what she done for you — don’t he, Eduardo?”

The kids who were listening chuckled, then started to go back to their pennies.

“You wanna go, I’ll go!” Antek said loudly.

“All right, let’s go.”

Antek got up unsteadily. He stared at Eddie and Manny. “You guys couldn’t loan me enough for a taste of wine just until I get my disability check?”

The little kids tagged after them to the end of the block, then turned back bored. Manny and Eddie kept going, picking the pace up a step or two ahead of Antek, exchanging looks and grinning. But Antek knew that no matter how much they joked or what excuses they gave, they were going, like him, for one last look. They were just old enough to have seen the icehouse before it shut down. It was a special building, the kind a child couldn’t help but notice and remember — there, on the corner across the street from the prison, a factory that made ice, humming with fans, its louvered roof dripping and clacking, lost in acrid clouds of its own escaping vapor.

The automatic ice machine in front had already been carted away. The doors were still padlocked, but the way the crane was parked it was possible for Manny and Eddie to climb the boom onto the roof.

Antek waited below. He gazed up at the new Plexiglas guard turrets on the prison wall. From his angle all he could see was the bluish fluorescence of their lighting. He watched Manny and Eddie jump from the boom to the roof, high enough to stare across at the turrets like snipers, to draw a level bead on the backs of the guards, high enough to gaze over the wall at the dim, barred windows of the buildings that resembled foundries more than ever in the sweltering heat.

Below, Antek stood swallowing wine, expecting more from the night than a condemned building. He didn’t know exactly what else he expected. Perhaps only a scent, like the stab of remembered ammonia he might have detected if he were still young enough to climb the boom. Perhaps the secret isolation he imagined Manny and Eddie feeling now, alone on the roof, as if lost in clouds of vapor. At street level, passing traffic drowned out the tick of a single cricket keeping time on the roof — a cricket so loud and insistent that Manny didn’t stop to worry about the noise when he kicked in the louvers. And Antek, though he had once awakened in a freezer, couldn’t imagine the shock of cold that Manny and Eddie felt as they dropped out of the summer night to the floor below.

Earlier, on their way down Twenty-sixth, Manny had stopped to pick up an unused flare from along the tracks, and Antek pictured them inside now, Manny, his hand wrapped in a handkerchief, holding the flare away from him like a Roman candle, its red glare sputtering off the beams and walls.

There wasn’t much to see — empty corners, insulated pipes. Their breaths steamed. They tugged on their shirts. Instinctively, they traced the cold down a metal staircase. Cold was rising from the ground floor through the soles of their gym shoes.

The ground floor was stacked to the ceiling with junked ice machines. A wind as from an enormous air conditioner was blowing down a narrow aisle between the machines. At the end of the aisle a concrete ramp slanted down to the basement.

That was where Antek suspected they would end up, the basement, a cavernous space extending under the nameless street, slowly collapsing as if the thick, melting pillars of ice along its walls had served as its foundation. The floor was spongy with waterlogged sawdust. An echoing rain plipped from the ceiling. The air smelled thawed, and ached clammy in the lungs.

“It’s fuckin’ freezing,” Eddie whispered.

Manny swung the flare in a slow arc, its reflections glancing as if they stood among cracked mirrors. Blocks of ice, framed in defrosted freezer coils, glowed back faintly, like aquarium windows, from niches along the walls. They were melting unevenly and leaned at precarious angles. Several had already tottered to the sawdust, where they lay like quarry stones from a wrecked cathedral. Manny and Eddie picked their way among them, pausing to wipe the slick of water from their surfaces and peer into the ice, but deep networks of cracks refracted the light. They could see only frozen shadows and had to guess at the forms: fish, birds, shanks of meat, a dog, a cat, a chair, what appeared to be a bicycle.

But Antek knew they would recognize her when they found her. There would be no mistaking the light. In the smoky, phosphorous glare her hair would reflect gold like a candle behind a frosted pane. He was waiting for them to bring her out. He had finished the wine and flung the pint bottle onto the street so that it shattered. The streets were empty. He was waiting patiently, and though he had nowhere else to be it was still a long wait. He would wait as long as it might take, but even so he wondered if there was time enough left to him for another miracle in his life. He could hear the cricket now, composing time instead of music, working its way headfirst from the roof down the brick wall. Listening to it, Antek became acutely aware of the silence of the prison across the street. He thought of all the men on the other side of the wall and wondered how many were still awake, listening to the cricket, waiting patiently as they sweated in the heavy night.

Manny and Eddie, shivering, their hands burning numb from grappling with ice, unbarred the rear door that opened onto the loading platform behind the icehouse. They pushed out an old handcar and rolled it onto the tracks that came right up to the dock. They had already slid the block of ice onto the handcar and draped it with a canvas tarp. Even gently inching it on they had heard the ice cracking. The block of ice had felt too light for its size, fragile, ready to break apart.

“It feels like we’re kidnapping somebody,” Eddie whispered.

“Just think of it as ice.”

“I can’t.”

“We can’t just leave her here, Eduardo.”

“What’ll we do with her?”

“We’ll think of something.”

“What about Antek?”

“Forget him.”

They pushed off. Rust slowed them at first, but as the tracks inclined toward the river they gained momentum. It was like learning to row. By the trestle they hit their rhythm. Speed became wind — hair blowing, shirts flapping open, the tarp billowing up off the ice. The skyline gleamed ahead, and though Manny couldn’t see the lake, he could feel it stretching beyond the skyscrapers; he could recall the sudden lightness of freedom he’d felt once when he had speared out underwater and glided effortlessly away, one moment expanding into another, while the flow of water cleansed him of memory, and not even the sound of his own breath disrupted the silence. The smelt would have disappeared to wherever they disappeared to, but the fishermen would still be sitting at the edge of the breakwater, their backs to the city, dreaming up fish. And if the fishermen still remembered his name, they might call it again repeatedly in a chorus of voices echoing out over the dark surface of the water, but this time, Manny knew, there would be no turning back. He knew now where they were taking her, where she would finally be released. They were rushing through waist-deep weeds, crossing the vast tracts of prairie behind the factories, clattering over bridges and viaducts. Below, streetlights shimmered watery in the old industrial neighborhoods. Shiny with sweat, the girl already melting free between them, they forced themselves faster, rowing like a couple of sailors.

Lost

I remember, though I might have dreamed it, a radio show I listened to when we lived on Eighteenth Street above the taxidermist. It was a program in which kids phoned the station and reported something they’d lost — a code ring, a cap gun, a ball, a doll — always their favorite. And worse than lost toys, pets, not just dogs and cats, but hamsters, parakeets, dime store turtles with painted shells.

I’d tune to the program by accident, then forget about it, and each time I rediscovered it, it made me feel as if I were reliving the time before. The lost pets would always make me think of the old Hungarian downstairs who, people said, skinned stray cats, and of my secret pets, the foxes in his murky shop window, their glass eyes glittering fiercely from a dusty jungle of ferns, and their lips retracted in a constant snarl.

Magically, by the end of the program, everything would be found. I still don’t know how they accomplished this, and recall wondering if it would work to phone in and report something I’d always wanted as missing. For it seemed to me then that something one always wanted, but never had, was his all the same, and wasn’t it lost?

Pet Milk

Today I’ve been drinking instant coffee and Pet milk, and watching it snow. It’s not that I enjoy the taste especially, but I like the way Pet milk swirls in the coffee. Actually, my favorite thing about Pet milk is what the can opener does to the top of the can. The can is unmistakable — compact, seamless looking, its very shape suggesting that it could condense milk without any trouble. The can opener bites in neatly, and the thick liquid spills from the triangular gouge with a different look and viscosity than milk. Pet milk isn’t real milk. The color’s off, to start with. There’s almost something of the past about it, like old ivory. My grandmother always drank it in her coffee. When friends dropped over and sat around the kitchen table, my grandma would ask, “Do you take cream and sugar?” Pet milk was the cream.

There was a yellow plastic radio on her kitchen table, usually tuned to the polka station, though sometimes she’d miss it by half a notch and get the Greek station instead, or the Spanish, or the Ukrainian. In Chicago, where we lived, all the incompatible states of Europe were pressed together down at the staticky right end of the dial. She didn’t seem to notice, as long as she wasn’t hearing English. The radio, turned low, played constantly. Its top was warped and turning amber on the side where the tubes were. I remember the sound of it on winter afternoons after school, as I sat by her table watching the Pet milk swirl and cloud in the steaming coffee, and noticing, outside her window, the sky doing the same thing above the railroad yard across the street.

And I remember, much later, seeing the same swirling sky in tiny liqueur glasses containing a drink called a King Alphonse: the crème de cacao rising like smoke in repeated explosions, blooming in kaleidoscopic clouds through the layer of heavy cream. This was in the Pilsen, a little Czech restaurant where my girlfriend, Kate, and I would go sometimes in the evening. It was the first year out of college for both of us, and we had astonished ourselves by finding real jobs — no more waitressing or pumping gas, the way we’d done in school. I was investigating credit references at a bank, and she was doing something slightly above the rank of typist for Hornblower & Weeks, the investment firm. My bank showed training films that emphasized the importance of suitable dress, good grooming, and personal neatness, even for employees like me, who worked at the switchboard in the basement. Her firm issued directives on appropriate attire — skirts, for instance, should cover the knees. She had lovely knees.

Kate and I would sometimes meet after work at the Pilsen, dressed in our proper business clothes and still feeling both a little self-conscious and glamorous, as if we were impostors wearing disguises. The place had small, round oak tables, and we’d sit in a corner under a painting called “The Street Musicians of Prague” and trade future plans as if they were escape routes. She talked of going to grad school in Europe; I wanted to apply to the Peace Corps. Our plans for the future made us laugh and feel close, but those same plans somehow made anything more than temporary between us seem impossible. It was the first time I’d ever had the feeling of missing someone I was still with.

The waiters in the Pilsen wore short black jackets over long white aprons. They were old men from the old country. We went there often enough to have our own special waiter, Rudi, a name he pronounced with a rolled R. Rudi boned our trout and seasoned our salads, and at the end of the meal he’d bring the bottle of crème de cacao from the bar, along with two little glasses and a small pitcher of heavy cream, and make us each a King Alphonse right at our table. We’d watch as he’d fill the glasses halfway up with the syrupy brown liqueur, then carefully attempt to float a layer of cream on top. If he failed to float the cream, we’d get that one free.

“Who was King Alphonse anyway, Rudi?” I sometimes asked, trying to break his concentration, and if that didn’t work I nudged the table with my foot so the glass would jiggle imperceptibly just as he was floating the cream. We’d usually get one on the house. Rudi knew what I was doing. In fact, serving the King Alphonses had been his idea, and he had also suggested the trick of jarring the table. I think it pleased him, though he seemed concerned about the way I’d stare into the liqueur glass, watching the patterns.

“It’s not a microscope,” he’d say. “Drink.”

He liked us, and we tipped extra. It felt good to be there and to be able to pay for a meal.

Kate and I met at the Pilsen for supper on my twenty-second birthday. It was May, and unseasonably hot. I’d opened my tie. Even before looking at the dinner menu, we ordered a bottle of Mumm’s and a dozen oysters apiece. Rudi made a sly remark when he brought the oysters on platters of ice. They were freshly opened and smelled of the sea. I’d heard people joke about oysters being aphrodisiac but never considered it anything but a myth — the kind of idea they still had in the old country.

We squeezed on lemon, added dabs of horseradish, slid the oysters into our mouths, and then rinsed the shells with champagne and drank the salty, cold juice. There was a beefy-looking couple eating schnitzel at the next table, and they stared at us with the repugnance that public oyster-eaters in the Midwest often encounter. We laughed and grandly sipped it all down. I was already half tipsy from drinking too fast, and starting to feel filled with a euphoric, aching energy. Kate raised a brimming oyster shell to me in a toast: “To the Peace Corps!”

“To Europe!” I replied, and we clunked shells.

She touched her wineglass to mine and whispered, “Happy birthday,” and then suddenly leaned across the table and kissed me.

When she sat down again, she was flushed. I caught the reflection of her face in the glass-covered “The Street Musicians of Prague” above our table. I always loved seeing her in mirrors and windows. The reflections of her beauty startled me. I had told her that once, and she seemed to fend off the compliment, saying, “That’s because you’ve learned what to look for,” as if it were a secret I’d stumbled upon. But, this time, seeing her reflection hovering ghostlike upon an imaginary Prague was like seeing a future from which she had vanished. I knew I’d never meet anyone more beautiful to me.

We killed the champagne and sat twining fingers across the table. I was sweating. I could feel the warmth of her through her skirt under the table and I touched her leg. We still hadn’t ordered dinner. I left money on the table and we steered each other out a little unsteadily.

“Rudi will understand,” I said.

The street was blindingly bright. A reddish sun angled just above the rims of the tallest buildings. I took my suit coat off and flipped it over my shoulder. We stopped in the doorway of a shoe store to kiss.

“Let’s go somewhere,” she said.

My roommate would already be home at my place, which was closer. Kate lived up north, in Evanston. It seemed a long way away.

We cut down a side street, past a fire station, to a small park, but its gate was locked. I pressed close to her against the tall iron fence. We could smell the lilacs from a bush just inside the fence, and when I jumped for an overhanging branch my shirt sleeve hooked on a fence spike and tore, and petals rained down on us as the sprig sprang from my hand.

We walked to the subway. The evening rush was winding down; we must have caught the last express heading toward Evanston. Once the train climbed from the tunnel to the elevated tracks, it wouldn’t stop until the end of the line, on Howard. There weren’t any seats together, so we stood swaying at the front of the car, beside the empty conductor’s compartment. We wedged inside, and I clicked the door shut.

The train rocked and jounced, clattering north. We were kissing, trying to catch the rhythm of the ride with our bodies. The sun bronzed the windows on our side of the train. I lifted her skirt over her knees, hiked it higher so the sun shone off her thighs, and bunched it around her waist. She wouldn’t stop kissing. She was moving her hips to pin us to each jolt of the train.

We were speeding past scorched brick walls, gray windows, back porches outlined in sun, roofs, and treetops — the landscape of the El I’d memorized from subway windows over a lifetime of rides: the podiatrist’s foot sign past Fullerton; the bright pennants of Wrigley Field, at Addison; ancient hotels with TRANSIENTS WELCOME signs on their flaking back walls; peeling and graffiti-smudged billboards; the old cemetery just before Wilson Avenue. Even without looking, I knew almost exactly where we were. Within the compartment, the sound of our quick breathing was louder than the clatter of tracks. I was trying to slow down, to make it all last, and when she covered my mouth with her hand I turned my face to the window and looked out.

The train was braking a little from express speed, as it did each time it passed a local station. I could see blurred faces on the long wooden platform watching us pass — businessmen glancing up from folded newspapers, women clutching purses and shopping bags. I could see the expression on each face, momentarily arrested, as we flashed by. A high school kid in shirt sleeves, maybe sixteen, with books tucked under one arm and a cigarette in his mouth, caught sight of us, and in the instant before he disappeared he grinned and started to wave. Then he was gone, and I turned from the window, back to Kate, forgetting everything — the passing stations, the glowing late sky, even the sense of missing her — but that arrested wave stayed with me. It was as if I were standing on that platform, with my schoolbooks and a smoke, on one of those endlessly accumulated afternoons after school when I stood almost outside of time simply waiting for a train, and I thought how much I’d have loved seeing someone like us streaming by.

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mrshcloset · 6 months

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God's Rescue

He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. Psalm 40:2

READ Psalm 40:1–4

LISTEN ONLINE

A compassionate volunteer was called a “guardian angel” for his heroic efforts. Jake Manna was installing solar panels at a job site when he joined an urgent search to find a missing five-year-old girl. While neighbours searched their garages and gardens, Manna took a path that led him into a nearby wooded area where he spotted the girl waist-deep in a marsh. He waded carefully into the sticky mud to pull her out of her predicament and return her, damp but unharmed, to her grateful mother.

Like that little girl, David also experienced deliverance. The singer “waited patiently” for God to respond to his heartfelt cries for mercy (Psalm 40:1). And He did. God leaned in, paid close attention to his cry for help and responded by rescuing him from the “mud and mire” of his circumstances (v. 2)—providing sure footing for David’s life. The past rescues from the muddy marsh of life reinforced his desire to sing songs of praise, to make God his trust in future circumstances and to share his story with others (vv. 3–4).

When we find ourselves in challenges such as financial difficulties, marital turmoil and feelings of inadequacy, let’s cry out to God and patiently wait for Him to respond (v. 1). He’s there, ready to help us in our time of need and give us a firm place to stand.

By Marvin Williams

REFLECT & PRAY

When has God delivered you from the ‘muddy marsh’? How do His past rescues encourage you to trust in Him?

When I’m stuck in the mud, I’ll wait patiently for You, my loving God.

SCRIPTURE INSIGHT

Psalm 40 is identified as a psalm of David, but we aren’t given any other information regarding the events that prompted him to write it. Some scholars, however, find messianic significance in verses 6–9 because the songwriter expresses his commitment to do God’s will—seemingly at all costs. Jesus made similar statements in the gospel of John: “My food . . . is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (4:34); and “the one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him” ( 8:29). Our Saviour’s commitment in these verses seems to echo the words of David in Psalm 40:6–9.

Bill Crowder

#thoughts #daily devotion #bible readings #november 2023 #brain injury #Vienna #travel #europe #with friends #keeppushingforward

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robeight · 2 years

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Man Installing Solar Panels Finds Missing Autistic Girl

A Massachusetts solar panel installer finds a missing five-year-old autistic girl. Jake Manna was working on a rooftop in Plymouth, Massachusetts, installing solar panels when he heard that people in the neighborhood were looking for a missing five-year-old girl who has autism. He wasn’t familiar with the area, but decided to take a break from work to help look for the girl.

Manna started down a rural trail in search of the missing girl and he noticed a diaper and a T-shirt in a stream. He ran down the stream and found the girl standing in waist-deep water, wading out to deeper water. First he tried to coax the girl to safety, but when she wouldn’t listen, he put her over his shoulder and carried her out of the water.

Police later posted on social media calling Manna a “guardian angel” and thanking him for his selfless act. They also said Manna was the “nicest, most unassuming young man one could meet,” and presented him with a certificate and Command Coin from the Plymouth Police Department.

Source: Boston.com

#Good News #GoodNews #Boston #autism #GuardianAngel #hero

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pool-spidey · 3 years

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Something angelic. Something gold.

#Spideypool #Peter Parker #Wade Wilson #Andrew Garfield #Ryan Reynolds #spideypool art #my manip #slash fanart slash whatever #Wade and his guardian angel #my soul is in desperate need of them

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randomrosewrites · 3 years

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Bittersweet Dreams

Every night, your mind is plagued with visions of an old Liyue. She blesses your nights, like a guardian angel, but you never remember her face or name when the sun rises again.

Pairing: Ganyu X GN reader Words: ~5K Warnings/ tags: Memory loss, reincarnation, blood and injury, death, fluff and angst, happy ending, implied sexual content a/n: I never thought much of Ganyu, until I dreamt of her one night (which unspiringly inspired this fic) and now I'm hooked. Patiently awaiting her rerun.

She comes to you in a dream.

You can tell it’s her from the feeling of it. Warm. Comfortable. It loosens your muscles (if you even have muscles in dreams) and puts your mind at ease. It makes you sleepy, wanting to lie down on the soft hills of grass under the shade of a tree to take a nap.

You don’t know exactly where ‘this’ is, whether or not it’s in the fields of your home, Liyue, or some other place. It looks like Liyue, with the craggy mountains behind you, and the bubbling stream running down the hill. But it feels different.

Then, you see her.

You don’t know what – or who – she is exactly, because you can never get a clear view of her. Everything blurs around her body. But you know she’s there, know she’s waiting for you. Sitting in a pocket of empty grass, sounded by glaze lilies, feet tucked underneath her as she naps.

She starts when you approach, uncurling herself to sit up properly. She smiles. She says your name – at least you think it’s your name, it feels like your name – and pats the spot beside her.

You wade through the flowers and sit down, so close to her that your legs are touching. It’s rather close even for friends, but with her, it feels right. How it should be.

She never talks much. For a dream or a vision, she never has much to say. Only whispering in a soft voice about how pretty the flowers are, or how beautiful the day is. The silence is good. A brief period of peace.

(Peace from what? You always wonder when you wake, but no matter how many times you re-enter the dream, you always forget to ask.)

This dream always ends in the same way.

“You should get some rest,” she says.

“What about you?” you always respond, the words feel foreign in your mouth – like they’re not yours.

She shakes her head. “I’ll be alright. Rest, and have peaceful dreams.”

You rest your head in her lap, as you’ve done a thousand times before. Her hand cradles your head, brushing through your hair lovingly.

“Who are you?” “Why are you doing this?” “What is this?” – You always want to ask, but no matter what you try, the words never come out, tongue glued to the roof of your mouth.

Just like every time, your eyes grow heavy, your body grows weak, and you close your eyes, falling asleep once more.

…

When you wake, you’re never in the flowery fields anymore, but in bed staring at the ceiling. The hum of noise vibrates through the wall, employees at the Inn already getting up to do their daily tasks.

You sigh and rub your eyes, rolling around for another ten minutes before finally getting up.

By the time you dress and leave your room, you’ve forgotten all about the dream.

---

“Good morning, Mrs. Goldet,” you great sleepily, rubbing your eyes.

Verr Goldet looks up from the counter and nods. “Good morning, sleep well?”

You give the cat laying on the counter a few scratches. “As good as always. I had a nice dream.”

She blinks slowly. “What did you dream of?”

You turn away, heading out of the doorway to start your chores. “Her. As always.”

As you disappear, Verr Goldet’s brows furrow and she frowns. It dissolves the second a customer walks into the lobby, ready to check in.

---

You’ve been working and living at the Wangshu Inn for a while now. Free room and food for helping out every day, with Sundays off. It’s a good deal.

You do odd tasks around the Inn, helping out in the kitchen, moping the floors whenever travelers track in mud from the marsh – things like that.

Days are spent polishing the balconies, evenings are spent wiping down dinner tables, and you when the moon is high in the sky, you sleep.

And dream.

---

There are many people in the crowd, packed tight together under the hot midday sun. Guili plains is alive in celebration. Booths are set up on either side of the streets, the smell of delicious food wafts through the air, and colorful decorations hang everywhere. You push through them, scanning the sea of heads for a particular person. She’s not hard to miss, but everywhere you turn, she evades your sight. Anxiety begins to bubble in your stomach – the speech will start soon, and you want to be with her when it begins.

A cold hand falls on your shoulder. Turning around, you sigh with relief.

“There you are,” you yell over the noise of the crowd. “I thought I’d lost you.”

She smiles, showing off fresh Qingxin flowers in her hand. “Sorry, I was distracted by a stall. Would you like some?”

You take her free hand and kiss it. A red blush forms on the apples of her cheeks. “They’re all yours.”

Hand in hand, the two of you make your way towards an elaborate stage, raised high above the people, crafted out of rock and decorated with gold. Many people are gathered around, waiting patiently, holding umbrellas to protect from the sun or fanning themselves off with whatever they have. The two of you take your seats just as the theatrics begin.

There’s a cry, and a point of fingers as the audiences’ attention is turned towards the sky. Hailing in rays of light are two of the Adeptus, taking the form of cranes. One of them a gold and orange, the other blue and white.

Cloud Retainer, you’ve heard (?????) call her Adeptus.

They land on stage and spread their wings out in a flourish.

“People of Guili,” Cloud Retainer begins. Her voice ringing out like a crystal bell. “On behalf of all the Adepti we would like to welcome you here.”

“We hope you have all enjoyed the festivities,” the gold and orange bird speaks next. “Today’s celebration marks not only the anniversary of the creation of Guili, but to also pay homage to the warriors that have fought and are still fighting in the ongoing war. Because of the date’s significance, the Lord of Geo and Lady of Dust have decided to bless all of use with their presence.”

The two birds spread their wings once more. Cloud Retainer raises her head high in the air. “People of Guili, I now present to you, the Lord of Geo – Morax and the Lady of Dust – Guizhong.”

At the mention of their Gods, the people break into a round of applause, this only increases when a man and woman appear onstage, and everyone rises to show their respects. They’re both dressed beautifully, in fine silk-robes, adorned with smears of make-up around their eyes. Your goddess looks divine, accepting the praise with a warm smile. Morax, on the other hand, gazes out towards the crowd, sharp gold eyes piercing anything in his sight.

Morax – though you have nothing but respect for him – has always been a bit enigmatic to you. You can’t imagine what your Goddess sees in him. But their companionship has what lead you to become acquainted with her, so you’re not complaining.

Morax steps forth on stage, raising a hand. The crowd goes silent instantly.

“Thank you for the warm welcome,” Morax’s voice is rich and calm. Beside you, your companion is sitting at full attention, gnawing on her bottom lip in anxiety. She startles as you place a hand over hers. She smiles thankfully, some of the tension leaving her, before returning her full attention to the couple on stage.

“This land has seen many years of fighting,” your Lord’s words are wispy yet firm, just like dust being blown through the wind. “Many, many people have suffered at the bloody hands of war. Such heinous acts stain the land red, spreading sorrow on every inch of the earth.”

She gathers a breath, and when she speaks again, her voice is strong, that of a warrior who has fought in battle. “But not here. Guili will be – is – a place where there is respite. It’s the beginning of the future, a future where the monsters of today are nothing but a kids-bedtime story in the future.”

Guizhong touches her chest with one hand, the other extending out towards the crowd. “I make this vow to you now – my precious people – we will fight to protect the lives of each and every one of you. I promise you security, prosperity, and peace. One day, the bloodshed will end, and I promise you, when that time comes, when the dust has finally settled, we will lead you into the new age of Liyue. To this, I swear on the very ground I walk upon.”

There is nothing but pride, joy, and determination emanating from the crowd, applauding the Lady’s finest speech. Even Morax is smiling at her, the small corner of his mouth quirking upwards.

Cool fingers squeeze yours. Looking over, there are tears in your friend’s eyes. She blinks them away, the wind tousling her blue hair.

She’s beautiful. Your heart squeezes painfully as you fight the urge to lean over and kiss her.

You squeeze her hand back, letting all of your hopes, feelings, and things unsaid pool between the two of you.

---

There is an Adeptus at the Wangshu Inn.

You know little of the Adepti, but seeing the boy (being?) in front of you, there’s no doubt in your mind that he is one.

His sharp eyes slide over to meet yours, run up and down your person, before returning to your face, then back to staring at the marsh.

“Sir Xiao?” you ask. “I’ve brought you dinner.”

Xiao doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t even acknowledge your presence. You were warned he would be like this - bitterly stubborn and unresponsive.

You settle the plate down by your feet. “It’ll be here if you feel like eating.”

You wait a minute longer, but Xiao doesn’t make a peep. You sigh and turn to go back inside.

“Do you remember Guili?” he whispers suddenly, so quiet you nearly mistake it for being the wind.

You spin around. “Do I what?”

“Guili. Remember Guili.”

“…Remember? It’s an ancient ruin,” your brows furrow as you frown. “I’ve only been there maybe once or twice, passing by.”

A painful second goes by.

“Why, am I supposed to know something about it?”

From what you can see of his face, Xiao grimaces. “Nothing, just – just forget it.”

“You can’t just-”

“I said forget it,” he snaps, his voice cracking at the end of his words. “You don’t – I thought you – ” He rubs his face with his hand, breaths deeply. “It’s nothing. Please just leave.”

He gets up suddenly and leaps from the balcony before you can even speak. Leaving both the tofu and you alone on the balcony, a cold ache spreading through your heart.

---

She’s nervous, you think. Abnormally so.

Jueyun Karst is safe, kept watch over by Morax’s Adepti and the Qilin in the clouds. Only select few are allowed up where you are – (There was a smug steak of satisfaction when Cloud Retainer begrudgingly let you traverse her abode atop the mountains, Ganyu smiling gleefully as she held your hand.) – and even less are allowed to set foot on the sacred lands.

She’s been shifting for the past hour, unable to focus on conversation and jittery. Ever so often, she rubs her hands over her horns in a pacifying motion, then as if realizing what she’s doing, abruptly tears her hands away.

“Is the upcoming battle bothering you?” you ask, finally, not being able to stand her fidgeting much longer.

She stiffens, surprised that she’s been found out, and dips her head in embarrassment. “Oh. No, it’s not that…”

“…Ok. If not that, then what?”

She swallows thickly. She turns to you, taking both of your hands in hers, refusing to meet your eyes.

“I was wondering…I mean I hope,” she starts, nervously. “That after this is over…all of it…that maybe…you’d, um…”

You’re patient, gently prompting her, “I’d?”

“W-well, that we could…?” she trails off, squeezing your hands again. “That this…could be s-something more.”

Oh. Oh.

Your chest heats as you lean forwards, whispering her name to the wind. She squeaks raising her head.

“I like you,” you sigh, unable to stop the loving cadence in your tone when you say it. “A lot. So whatever concerns you have just know that…anything you want is…it’s all good.”

She’s silent for a moment as your heart pounds against your ribs. Slowly, she tilts her head towards yours, resting your foreheads together. Her cheeks are so hot, unlike the cryo vision strapped to her side.

“I like you a lot, too,” she says. “I don’t really have…any…experience with something like this but um…I’d like to try.”

Your heart soars, leaps, and does a flip twice over. You smile so hard your cheeks hurt. “Can I ask you a question, now?”

She blinks, nodding her head.

“May I kiss you?”

She wets her lips with her tongue and nods again, vigorously.

You close the distance, firmly kissing her lips. They’re soft and plush, warmer than you’d imagined. (Because you have imagined this, many, many nights before.) A mix between a gasp and a pleasured sigh escapes her, the noise only heating you up further.

When you pull back, she’s turned three different shades of pink and her eyes are glazed. You rest your head against hers and wrap your arms around her waist, feeling the curves and dips of her body, squeezing at the skin there.

“Good?” you ask.

She nods, tucking her head onto your shoulder. “Mhm.”

At some point, you lie down together, tangled in limbs, listening to the sounds of each other’s breathing and heart beats as Liyue’s night sky sparkles with constellations.

It’s only much later, when you hear the screams, that you realize peace is fleeting in this world.

---

You pant heavily, setting the last box down on the ground and flop on the stairs. Five in total, weighing gods know how much. Each one filled to the brim with legal documents from Liyue Harbor. You had suffered through carrying them one-by-one up the stairs as the elevator had conveniently decided to break this morning.

You push the box with your foot, sliding it with the others against the wall. If this is how much paperwork the Inn gets, you don’t even want to know how much paperwork the Qixing have to deal with. (Then again, it was the Qixing that dictated the laws, so perhaps it was well deserved.)

Verr Goldet had taken one look at them and called it an early day, leaving you to handle closing.

At least your day is done now. You hang the keys up in their proper place, pet the cat goodnight, and begin blowing out the lanterns.

“Um…excuse me?”

The sudden voice startles you, turning towards the entrance. A figure stands in the doorway, silhouetted by the moonlight. You can’t make their identity out.

“Could I speak to Mrs. Goldet? It’s about the recent delivery of paperwork.”

“Mrs. Goldet is away right now; I could take a message?”

The person nods, steps through the threshold, and your mouth goes dry.

She’s tall. Eloquently dressed with hair the color of Glaze Lilies. It frames her face, falling down her back in delicate curls. As you stare, stary eyes blink back at you in shock.

She seems familiar.

“I’m…sorry…” she says, turning away quickly. “I-I’ll just come back tomorrow-”

The tassel of her outfit swings as she does a complete 180. Her hair is furled out, exposing the smooth expanse of her back. The sight sends a throb to your temple, the scene feeling reminiscent of…something.

Your head is aching.

“W-wait!” you reach out and grab her arm, catching on the cuff of her sleeve. The motion rattles the necklace around her neck – no, not a necklace – a bell. The chime crisp like morning frost, soft like the way she feels, like the way she-

Pain bursts from your temples, piercing both sides of your head. You cry, loosing your grip in the process. There’s a muffled yell before the world blurs, spins, and sends you tumbling down, down, down, into the dark.

And then, there’s a hallow nothing.

---

She comes to you in a dream, but Liyue is not as it once was.

There is fire everywhere you look, the ground scorched by flames or destroyed in the aftermath of intense fights. The air is thick with smog, choking you with each gasp you take. One of your legs isn’t working and blood pools through your fingers pressed tightly against your side. You don’t know how much further you can make it.

You hobble through destroyed fields, corpses littering the ground, blood seeping into the earth. All of the glaze lilies are gone, wiped out in the destruction.

You cross the river on one leg. You slip on a rock and lose your footing, collapsing into the water. It’s freezing, the sensation colliding with the burn of your wound. You shiver and suck air through your chattering teeth, dragging yourself using your arms. Your side screams in pain at every pull, black spots dance in your vision. You grit your teeth and dig your fingers into the dirt, pushing forward.

Not yet, you can’t die just yet.

You exhaust yourself at the edge of what used to be the flower field, rolling onto your back and wheezing at the sky. This is as far as you’ll go. Mud soaks through your clothes. You dig your fingers into it, grounding yourself from the searing pain.

You hear the chime of her bell before you see her, crisp and pleasant, soothing your mind. She cries out your name, fear and desperation in her voice. You call back, a cracked, soft groan.

The bell draws closer and she rushes to your side, kneeling in the dirt. Her hair’s a mess, dirty and singed. Her sleeve is torn, blood dripping down her pale forearm. She pulls you onto her lap and rushes to tend to your wounds, pressing a hand to your side. She’s never been a healer, only a fighter. A strong fighter. Stronger than you could have ever hoped to be.

“You’ll be fine,” she says to herself more than you. She nudges you gently. “Please stay awake just a bit longer.”

You take her hand and squeeze it tight. Smiling takes all of the will you have, and even then, it’s weak. “It’s alright.”

She shakes her head. Her eyes – such pretty eyes – wide and filled with tears. “Please don’t go. I can’t…”

“Morax,” you croak. “There’s still him.” Your goddess, Guizhong might be gone, but he’s still alive. As enigmatic as he is, you know she’ll be safe in his care.

“I care about that!” she shouts, for the first time ever, her anger directed at you. “I’m not talking about a god to follow, I’m talking about you!”

She’s sobbing now, her eyes swollen red, teeth clenched tightly through her gasps. She curls around you, fingers grasping at your bloody clothes.

You lean your head into her, offering what little comfort someone dying can offer their partner.

“I’m sorry, Ganyu…” The life is fading from your body, your fingers and toes are so, so cold. “For leaving you like this…”

She gives up on the wound, wrapping her arms tightly around you, burying her head onto your chest, over her heart. Pitiful whimpers leave her mouth, awful sounds that make your heart ache.

“I love you,” she confesses, the words coming out as a sob. “I love you.”

Your heart squeezes. “I love you too, please…”

But the words don’t come. The ache in your side is almost unbearable, growing worse and worse with each shallow breath you manage. You fight to keep your eyelids open, but you’re so tired. And sleep has never been more appealing.

“Rest, now,” she coos, combing your matted hair from your face. You feel the small, delicate press of chapped lips on your forehead. “I’m not going anywhere.”

The void calls, gathering you into its arms, wrapping you in a warm bundle; warning you that your time’s up. You fight against it a bit longer, mustering up the last of your consciousness to tell Ganyu – you friend, partner, lover, one final thing.

“Forgive yourself.”

She bites her lip, fresh tears forming in her eyes. She nods. You’re relieved.

Her form wavers, and you know you can’t stay any longer. You let your eyelids close, your breathing slows, and you give yourself to eternal sleep.

…

“Sweet Dreams…” she whispers after a long while, in a soft, saddened voice.

---

You wake up alone, sweating in your bed, in tears, and remember.

---

The climb to Quicing Village is long and straining. You could have taken the path to the west, but stubborn as you were, wanted to save time by scaling the mountain.

You don’t know what drew you to this place, only a tugging at your heart forcing you forward. A firm belief that you’re heading where you need to go.

It’s easier the further up you go. You’ve done this before, in another life, as another person. You remember scaling mountains all the time, just to pick the freshest Qingxin petals for her. You used to eat them together, on the tops of Mount Azjong, legs dangling in midair, watching the birds go by, the wind nipping at your skin.

It’s not long before you reach the top, where the path dips to overlook the village. Fields of red, blue, and yellow stretching over the lands.

You let yourself wander, talking to the villagers as you go. Everyone is so nice, excited to talk to a new stranger in town. The air’s so fresh and the grass is so green, it reminds you of those days in the fields of glaze lilies.

You almost stop breathing when a familiar scent flows by on the wind. Sweet, fresh, cool. One you’re very well acquainted with. You rush forward, running towards the smell faster than your legs can carry you.

She’s sitting in a field of flowers. Just like the ones in your dreams, except there’s only one glaze lily, resting by her knees and cupped in her palms. You slow down and take the stone paths carefully, as to not to disturb the environment.

You stop just behind her, clearing your throat. She startles with a jump, turning around. Your face heats in embarrassment.

“Ah…I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

Her lips, which are slightly parted, close. She shakes her head. “It’s quite alright…I was just enjoying the day.”

“Do you mind if I join you?”

She pauses, then nods wordlessly. You settle down in the grass beside her, a visible gap between the two of you. There are many things you are unsure of. Does she even want you here anymore? Does she just want to forget what happened?

“[First] is your name, correct?” she says eventually.

“Oh – yes, it is.”

She nods, staring out over the river. Another silence befalls you.

“I’ve dreamt of you,” you blurt. “For a while. It comes back in chunks. The memories of my past.”

“That usually happens with reincarnation. The soul is the same but the body and mind doesn’t remember, plagued by shadows of a past life.”

You swallow down your nerves, trying not to focus on how your voice shakes. “In that past life, were we…were we…lovers?”

Her fists clench on her lap. She takes a shaky inhale and nods.

“Oh…” Is all you can say. You knew – know? But to heart it out loud is…

“You look just like you did all those years ago,” Ganyu murmurs sadly. “I’ve never forgotten your face.”

A heavy, hot weight settles in your chest. “How long has it been?”

“Thousands of years…since before the Arcon war,” Ganyu rubs her eyes with her palm. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

You wait until she composes herself before you speak again. “I remember in the past, you asked me to share a future with you.”

Ganyu turns to face you, and desire flares up inside your chest. Dark and powerful, urging you to pull her close and into your arms.

“I did.” She says.

“I’m not…the same person from the past. I don’t know who or how I was, and I don’t know if I’ll ever return to remembering anything. But…”

Cool fingers rest on your lap, you shudder at the touch. Ganyu smiles gently, and there’s a feeling of deja-vu when she says. “But…?”

“But if you’ll have me, I would like – I’d really like to – to try. With you.”

Ganyu scoots to the side, until your thighs are touching, and hums softly. “I think I’d like that, too.”

You let out a shaky, relieved breath and squeeze her fingers tightly. She smells sweet and floral, the scent overwhelming your body, making your head drift and spin. You’ve never smelled anything more right.

“I hope this isn’t rude, but you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.”

She flushes deeply, smile spreading across her face. “You told me that before, thousands of years ago, when you first met me.”

You smile back, tucking a piece of stray hair from her face. “Well, it’s true.”

---

As much as two immortals (???) might have just rushed back into dating, neither of you wanted that.

You two talked. A lot. About your current lives and past. You talked about Wangshu, about your occupation, about Xiao. (“Don’t mind him,” Ganyu had said. “Xiao’s always a bit cold, even to the other Adepti.”) Ganyu talked about the harbor, about your past lives in Guili.

You might not ever get your memories fully back. But even if you don’t, you feel surprisingly calm and accepting of it.

At the end of the day, after both of your throats were hoarse from conversation and your eyes wet from emotion, you both decided to part ways.

She returns to Liyue Harbor. You return to the Wangshu Inn.

Temporarily, you promised, until you figured yourself out. Liyue Harbor is daunting, the populated streets reminding you too much of Guili, of memories you can’t remember, that make your head ache terribly.

You stay at Wangshu. In the mornings, you mop floors, dust paintings, and help fix the elevator. At evenings, you go to the top floor and eat plates of Almond Tofu with Xiao, staring longingly towards the Harbor.

And at night, when you go to bed, you don’t dream of the past, but of your future.

---

One day, when you return to an empty room, and your heart aches with loneliness and the desire to see her becomes too painful to bear, you decide it’s time to go.

---

Liyue is calm, today.

The clouds drift by idly, whisps of white against blue as birds soar on the random wind currents. The sun shines high in the sky, slowly making its way across the map.

“Stop moving,” you grumble, locking your arms tightly around her, burying your face into her chest.

Ganyu chuckles, carding her hands through your hair. “I’m sorry, did I disturb you?”

“Yes…I was having a good nap.” Which is true. Ever since your reunion, you’ve been sleeping more soundly than you ever have in years. Perhaps it’s because you don’t dream of the old anymore, don’t float through your memories like a puppet being pulled on a string.

“You’ve had enough time to rest, I think,” she says tartly. “Thousands of years’ worth.”

You lift your head and pout. “You’re so cruel,” But your words don’t hold any bite.

Ganyu smiles mischievously. Her hand trails down your spine, drawing a shiver from you. “Do you think it’s unfair? To not indulge me after I’ve waited for you all this time?”

You drag yourself up to be eye level with her. Your hand cups the back of her head, trailing up to the base of her horns. A gasp escapes her lips and her eyes flutter when you tenderly pet them.

“If you wanted my attention,” you whisper, lips an inch from hers. “You could have just asked.”

Ganyu pulls you down by the neck, sighs and gasps being lost to the wind.

---

Much later, when the two of you were sweating and grass was stuck in both of your hair, you lay together, dozing under the night sky. Ganyu lays curled to your side, feet tucked underneath her, a content purr vibrating from her throat. You wonder if all Qilin do that.

As you pet her hair, fingers rubbing curiously over her empty ring finger, a deep feeling of content seeps into your bones.

You’re home, at last.

You kiss her forehead, joining her into a peaceful dream.

#i cant beleive this is so long ganyu my love #ganyu x reader #ganyu x you #genshin impact #ganyu imagines #genshin impact imagines #my writing #genshin impact fanfiction

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dreamsmp-au-ideas · 3 years

Note

Immortal council au

Technoblade is the literally immortal vessel of the Blood God. He can't die in battle no matter what he does but he CAN die by "normal" means. "Chat" are former vessels giving him advice.

Phil is the Angel of Death. He's not Death himself but he is (or was) one of the reapers who fell in love with humanity and earth a little bit too much and decided to stay. The sky is his domain, keeping his charges safe from his master a little bit longer.

Death is watching patiently. Eventually, his reaper will return to him. It is inevitable, just like Death himself.

Tubbo and Tommy are semi-immortal demigods, similar to Castor and Pollux in Greek mythology. If one of them dies, the other will follow him into Death too. On the other hand, they always know where the other is/what he feels and they possess mild teleportation powers.

Sapnap is a fire spirit but everyone always thinks he's a blaze hybrid. When he gets injured, no blood shows, only little flames dancing on his skin. He's also obviously fireproof and can change as quickly as the fire between moods.

I can see George as some sort of spirit of the seasons (maybe fall?) which would explain why he always sleeps so much. It's in his nature to miss most of the year until he's needed and if he decides to stay for longer than he should, it takes massive amouts of energy.

Nobody is really sure who or what Dream is. He's not human, clearly, but the others also know he's something else. Sometimes, when you look at him quickly enough, you can see the shadows moving ominously and a light from his mask that should not be there. Nobody has ever seen his face.

(Dream is something else, that is true. Far older than the others know, he's just grateful he's found a place where he's accepted no matter what. And if he enjoys the slaughter similarly to Techno sometimes or seems to know what others are thinking like Tommy and Tubbo or he plays with the elements like Sapnap, nobody says anything.)

Eret is Herobrine. No more explanation, they are just straight up Herobrine.

Niki is something similar to Hestia, a goddess dedicated to family and hospitality. She likes to bake because those were the offerings humans used to leave for her.

Fundy's a trickster god, having chosen the form of a fox a long time ago.

Ranboo used to be a spirit too but something went wrong with his body. When someone summoned him and forced him into a (mostly) human body, his memories and powers got screwed up in the process. Only Dream knows who he used to be.

Puffy is a benevolent goddess who watches over the weak and provides for the ones with good intentions. She used to be a human knight, many many years ago and will still sometimes act like it.

Wilbur... Now Wilbur's very interesting. Gods aren't supposed to die, after all. But as the (former) patron saint of a city, he lost himself when his city got reduced to nothing after a bombing. He's still a deity now but his powers are a lot more volatile since thry no longer really have an "anchor" or a duty.

Karl watches over the timeline. He no longer remembers who he was before he took up his duty but he'll never forget the people dear to his heart, no matter how many timelines he'll have to wade through. His guardian powers give him mild time travel and time manipulation abilities (freezing/speeding up time, etc.)

Quackity is a bird spirit. Freedom is his domain and he will stand in the way of everyone who tries to oppose this. Similar to Philza, he has permanent wings on his back which symbolize his position.

Punz and Purpled are both spirits of war. They're not the God of war themselves, similar to Philza and death, but they've always been there when there's bloodshed to be had. That doesn't mean they enjoy it.

Ponk is an ancirnt trading and trickster god, similar to Hermes in Greek mythology. He can manipulate deals and money and if you give him an opportunity, you will lose, but if he likes you, you'll suddenly find yourself enjoying riches you've never heard before.

Sam is the patron of inventors, Bad doesn't even have to change as a demon, Skeppy is a nature spirit who somewhere alsong the way picked up an unshakeable love for diamonds and Ant is a cat spirit .

This ended up way too long but enjoy. -V

I enjoy this a lot! I enjoy it a lot! These are all so cool!

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master-sass-blast · 3 years

Text

Children of the Gods: Part Three, Chapter Two.

I had to input every single italic you see in this fic by hand because Tumblr doesn’t hold text format when I paste it innnnnn. *pained smile*

Please give this chapter some love, because that was fucking painful to do.

Summary: The aftermath of capturing Allison proves messy -both in dealing with the teen's evident trauma, and in all the skeletons in various closets that get unleashed soon after.

Pairing(s): Piotr Rasputin x Reader, Nathan Summers x Wade Wilson, Frank Castle x Karen Page, and Alexandra Rasputin x Nikolai Rasputin.

Rating: M for gun violence, depictions of death and injuries, depictions of emotional trauma, and gratuitous use of the word “fuck.”

Word count: 8.9k.

Set after “Children of the Gods: Part Three, Chapter One.”

Taglist: @marvel-is-perfection, @chromecutie, @super-darkcloudstudent, @girl-obsessed-with-things, @leo-writer, @emma-frxst, @sadstone-s

“What the hell were you thinking!”

“Ooh, careful there, Doohan,” Wade snarks, head rolling to indicate he’s rolling his eyes. “Get any more agitated and you’ll be saying all the no-no words.”

Scott scowls at Wade. “Stuff it, Wilson.”

“Every damn night, laser pointer.”

A mixture of grimaces, sighs, and groans go up through the crowd.

You’re all gathered in the medical wing of Xavier’s –the X-Force and nearly all of the X-Men. Allison’s off being examined by Dr. McCoy and Alyssa –to make sure she’s stable enough to be taken out of the handcuffs and the suppression band—and Frank and Karen are sequestered in a separate room until it's clear how everything's going to shake out.

Because, naturally, there’s been a wrench thrown in the situation.

Or maybe the whole damn toolbox, you mentally amend as Wade and Scott resume arguing.

“We cannot harbor a mob criminal here—”

“She’s thirteen, Summers!” Wade snaps. The eyes on his mask narrow into slits. “She’s not a criminal –and her parents’ choice don’t automatically make her guilty!”

“Murder, illegal theft and possession of firearms, assault, stalking, kidnapping,” Scott starts listing, ticking off each of Allison’s misdeeds on his fingers.

“She lost her family,” Nathan interjects, voice going to gravel. “Where the fuck were all of you when she needed support? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”

The room goes silent. Many of the X-Men members look away or hang their heads slightly.

“We had no way of knowing that Allison was a mutant,” Ororo speaks up. “Without the proper information, we can’t help. It’s unfortunate, yes, but out of our control all the same.”

“But you know now,” Wade argues. “You knew with Russell. You knew with all the kids at Essex house. You turned your back on him and those kids, just like you’re turning your back on Allison now.” He scoffs, disgusted. “Same shit, different day. You’re all a bunch of cowardly cocksuckers.”

“We do have limits,” Professor Xavier speaks up from his chair. “Russell and the other members of Essex house were considered wards of the state. Legally, that meant Essex house had custody of them until they turned eighteen. We wrote petitions. We did as much as we could to bring attention to the issue. Unfortunately, it got swept under the rug or stonewalled by anti-mutant members of the legal system. As for Allison…” He sighs. “Taking in wards with criminal connections put the school at risk. Not just for fear of retaliation –as would certainly be a risk with Miss Ricci’s connections to the mafia—but also our funding and licensing. As an orphaned mutant, she is certainly deserving of our help—” he pauses to glare sternly at Scott and a few of the more stubborn, self-righteous members present “—but we have to consider the needs of our other residents and students, too.”

“I think we’re overlooking that Allison is here right now,” Jean pipes up. “Whether or not she stays with us is one thing, but we need to decide what to do for at least the next forty-eight hours.”

“She stays here,” you say automatically. “As far as we know, she has no other guardians, potentially even nowhere to go. I don’t think it’s gonna kill us to give her a bed and some food to eat.”

“Absolutely not,” Scott fires back –and, behind him, Angel and Iceman nod. “She’s far too aggressive to possibly put the students at risk.”

“She’s agitated and traumatized,” you reason, “but that doesn’t mean she’s going to lash out at people left and right.”

“Doesn’t she have a guardian of sorts?” Neena pipes up. “Artemis? Has anyone gotten ahold of them?”

“We reached out with the number Miss Ricci gave us,” Xavier explains. “The call picked up, but there wasn’t any verbal response for the duration of the call.”

Well, that bodes well. “What about her attorney?” you ask. “If we can’t keep her here, wouldn’t her attorney be able to arrange some sort of safe place for her to stay.”

“Thus far, we haven’t been able to reach her attorney.”

And that bodes even worse. You fight the urge to sigh or roll your eyes, and instead mentally curse monkey wrenches and whoever thought to invent the damn things.

“For the time being, I’ve contacted some of our external resources” –the glance Xavier shoots at both you and Piotr tells you that it’s your uncle and Alexandra—“to help with matters until the dust settles. They should be arriving soon, so—”

There’s a loud crash from down the hall, the sound of glass shattering, and an angry screech that sounds suspiciously like, “Fuck you, Castle!”

You give into the urge to sigh before booking it towards the sound of chaos and rage. Great. Now it’s an entire toolshed.

***

Subduing Allison this time, at least, is easier for several reasons.

First, she’s still wearing the repression cuff on her wrist. Without her powers –without a way to pop in and out of this existence, specifically—she’s much easier to catch.

Second, she’s tired. It’s not just the bags under her eyes or the sweat glistening at her furrowed brow. She’s stumbling unevenly, panting as she tries to exact her revenge.

Third, Illyana happens to show up at the exact same time with your uncle and Alexandra (and Nikolai as well, though he has less involvement in the “subduing process”).

Alex reacts fastest. She hooks one strong arm around Allison’s waist, then scoops her away from Karen and a hangdog-looking Frank. “Alright, that’s enough.”

Allison, however, doesn’t seem to agree. (Though whether it’s due to general teenage contrariness or trauma-induced rage, the jury’s still out.

…Actually, it’s probably both.)

“You don’t even get it, Castle!” Allison snaps with a manic grin, eyes wide and haunted. “You killed a good man. My dad was getting out! He was going to testify against them—”

Alex clamps a hand over the teen’s mouth, making her cut herself off with a garbled grunt. “I said enough.”

Allison thrashes in the older woman’s iron-clad grasp –to no avail, unsurprisingly. Her face scrunches up, then her jaw starts flexing. There’s a moment where her expression goes slack when Alex doesn’t react, then her nose scrunches up again and her jaw starts working harder.

Alex sighs, then starts carrying Allison back down the hall (she’s astonishingly unfazed by been chomped down on). “Come on. Let’s get you calmed down, malen’kiy.”

At the other end of the hall, Neena pokes her head into the fray. “Someone who calls herself Artemis is at the front door.”

Professor Xavier nods, then says, “Please escort her back to Miss Ricci’s room,” before wheeling after Alex and Artemis.

You look between Neena and the Professor –then, in the interest of going where you’re actually allowed to be (and not being bored out of your mind because you’ll be literally shut out of the room), you head towards the foyer.

…

“Do you think Frank was set up to stop the trial?”

Your uncle shrugs; the two of you have taken up a spot at the back of the room, where you can watch things unfold and gossip like the two old ladies you are in spirit. “It’s possible. It’s also possible that it was retribution for Allison being a mutant. The Ricci syndicate is notoriously… intolerant.”

You grimace. You certainly understand just how far people will go against their own flesh and blood for intolerance’s sake. “Blood and water.”

Your uncle nods, expression equally sour. “You fucking said it, punk.”

There’s not much point in hashing it out any further –both from the standpoint of “forbidden knowledge” and digging up old trauma—so you settle back into watching Artemis go through the mandatory security check.

She’s tall, with broad shoulders. Her hair’s dark, just starting to streak with silver at the temples, and her eyes are deep, intense, borderline black color. Her nose is slightly crooked –comes with the territory in this walk of life—and she’s dressed in black motorcycle wear and combat boots.

She honestly looks so fucking familiar.

You frown, brows pinching together as you try and place her face in your memory. Failing your own abilities at recollection, you lean over and whisper, “Is she one of your team members? I swear I’ve seen her before.”

“Uh –no,” your uncle replies (and it’s too fast and shaky, but you’re too caught up in figuring out whom the fuck you’re looking at to notice). “I mean –everyone has a doppelganger, right?”

“I guess.” You squint at Artemis, as though physically narrowing your eyes will help your brain puzzle things out—

And then Alex strides into the foyer –wiping the hand that Allison bit, and if you look close enough you’re pretty sure you can still see a few bloody teeth marks—and the cloud of confusion lifts from your mind.

“Oh!” you gasp quietly. “That’s why she looks familiar! She looks like Alex.” You look from the Rasputin matriarch, to the other black-leather clad woman, then back again. “She looks… a lot like Alex, actually.” You laugh softly –coincidence is a hell of a thing—then keep rambling when your uncle doesn’t say anything. “Two women who love the color black and carry enough weapons on their person to stock an army. You’d think the universe broke the mold with Alex, huh?”

Your uncle shifts from foot to foot next to you, but says nothing.

“You really weren’t kidding about the whole ‘doppelganger’ thing, huh.” You cock your head to one side, then frown as another epiphany starts growing in your mind. “Actually… she kind of looks like you, too.”

Your uncle makes a quiet, pained choking noise. “Punk—”

“Yeah, she’s got more of your build…”

“Punk.”

“And her lower lip has that weird lopsided curve like yours—”

“Punk—”

You peer closer at Artemis’s face. “Actually, her nose looks like you took yours and Alex’s and mashed them together—”

“Punk.”

You finally look up at him and take in the pale, wide-eyed, tight-lipped expression on his face. “What?” When he doesn’t say anything, you look at Artemis, then Alex, and then back at him—

Oh God.

Holy fucking shit.

You stare up at your uncle, agape. “Wait a second –you and—”

“Okay, shut the fuck up!” he hisses, panicked, before dragging you out of the foyer and into the nearest hallway.

“You and Alex had a baby,” you blurt –albeit in a voice no louder than a harsh whisper. “Artemis is your and her lovechild!”

He winces, then holds up his hands. “I can explain—”

“I don’t think you can!” you hiss. “Why didn’t you tell me that I have a cousin who happens to be my husband’s half fucking sister! Oh God, does Piotr know? Do any of the Rasputins know?”

“I…” He trails off, then cringes. He rubs the back of his neck. “I’m not sure, actually.”

You stare up at him, dumbfounded. “You’re not sure. How are you not sure? Nick knows who you are –what, you think Alex just kept a whole child from his knowledge—”

“I mean, he probably knows that there was a baby at one point—”

“The baby is in this fucking house!” you snap in a quiet growl, arms flailing wildly. “She’s a full grown adult who probably pays taxes and has a 401k going! Why wouldn’t Alex tell her husband—”

“Look,” your uncle interjects, cutting you off. “As far as Alex knows… she thinks she’s… dead?”

You gape. Then, as quietly as you can manage (given the circumstances), you exclaim, “What the fuck!”

“Keep your voice down!” your uncle hisses, gesturing wildly in panic. He looks over his shoulder, then when he’s certain no one overheard you, he sighs and looks back to you. “Look, it’s a long story—”

“I’m sure it fucking is!” You cross your arms over your chest when he winces. “How is it that you know your secret lovechild is alive, but Alex doesn’t? What, did she just abandon her?”

“No, no—”

“Didn’t think so. So what the fuck happened?”

He sighs, shoulder slumping, and runs one hand through his already disheveled hair. “Look –long story short, the people who ‘made’ Alex took the baby—”

“Artemis. Her daughter. Your daughter.”

He purses his lips, but concedes with a nod. “They took her away after she was born and told Alex she was dead –and that’s actually what prompted her to get out, but that’s another story for another day—”

“Okay, hang on a second.” You squeeze your eyes shut and hold up one hand. “Alex thinks her baby is dead –probably one of the most traumatic things in her whole life. You’ve known that she’s alive…” You open your eyes again and fix your uncle with a stern stare. “Okay, how long have you known for?”

He grimaces and shifts uncomfortably. “…well, the US took her, but she didn’t present early, so they turned her loose into the foster system because she didn’t have potential as an ‘asset’—”

“How fucking long?”

He ducks his head, carefully avoiding your gaze. “…tracked her down when she was ten.”

Your eyes widen –and then you slug him in the shoulder. “You fucking colossal asshole!”

He panics again, motioning for you to keep it down while checking over his shoulder. “Shut the fuck up!”

“No! Not only have you lied to Alex for decades—”

“She never asked—”

“A lie by omission is still a fucking lie!” you snap in a gravelly whisper. “So, not only did you lie to her, but you also abandoned your daughter to the mercies of the US foster care system!”

“My life wasn’t safe to keep a kid around!” he hisses back at you. “I couldn’t take care of you, and I couldn’t take care of her! If anything, it was safer for her if the government thought I didn’t know she was alive!”

You sigh, pinch the bridge of your nose, and wave dismissively with your other hand. “Okay –fine. That still doesn’t justify the whole lying thing, but whatever. Does Artemis know that you and Alex are her parents?”

“…Yes. She tracked me down when she was in her twenties and I told her the truth.”

“Well, it sounds like determination runs in the family,” you mutter. “But at least you two have kept in touch…” You look up, see your uncle’s grimace, and sigh. “You didn’t keep in touch with her.”

He shoves his hands in his jacket pockets. “I didn’t know how to handle it.”

“Pretty sure ‘not like that’ is a good answer.” You sigh again, then shrug and put your hands on your hips. “Well, you’ve probably solved your own problem. She’ll probably just tell Alex who she is just to spite you, assuming she got the ‘petty vengeance’ gene too.”

Your uncle’s eyebrows spike to his hairline, and his expression goes through the five stages of grief in a matter of seconds. “She –she can’t—”

“She can and she probably will.”

He hunches over, crouching, and grips the back of his head. “Shitfuckshitfuckshitfuckshitfuck—”

“Myshka?”

You and your uncle both jump, then whirl in unison and give your husband your best convincing, “we’re totally not talking about long lost, hidden family members and other poor life choices” smiles that you can each manage.

(Consider that you don’t look like you just shit your pants, you win.)

Piotr’s forehead wrinkles with concern. “What… is everything alright?”

“Just fine, baby,” you assure him, subtly kicking your uncle so he relaxes. “Just talking about what happens next.”

Piotr nods after a moment, likely picking up on that whatever’s going on right now isn’t life or death and that you’ll fill him in later. “I actually came to find you,” he says, gesturing to your uncle. “Professor Xavier still cannot reach Allison’s lawyer. He has asked for your assistance.”

“Right. Absolutely. On it,” your uncle says with a none-too-convincing smile. He shoots your husband a pair of finger guns, then books it out of the hall and towards the medical wing of the mansion.

Piotr stares after him, then shoots you a confused frown. “Is he okay?”

You shrug. “He’s doing about his usual.” You decide to further sidestep the issue by ambling over to him and giving him a gentle hug. “How are you?” Are doing okay?”

Piotr wraps his arms around you and kisses the top of your head. “I am fine now. Just a little sore.”

“Me too.” You nuzzle your cheek against his burly chest. “We really should invest in that hot tub we keep talking about getting. It’d be great for post-mission recovery.”

“Hot tubs are expensive, myshka,” he chuckles.

“Yes, but we’re not getting any younger. It’d be a good investment in taking care of our bodies.” You tilt your head back and grin up at him. “I thought you were all about that life.”

He sighs and shakes his head, feigning exasperation, but his amused smile is a dead giveaway. “Whatever shall I do with you, myshka?”

You grin wider. “You could kiss me.”

Piotr grins back, then dips his head and presses his lips against yours—

Mikhail appears next to you out of thin air. “Ah. Gross. Big meeting is happening. All hands on deck.”

Piotr rolls his eyes when his elder brother teleports away once more, then looks back down at you and strokes your cheek with his thumb. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine, baby.” You unwind your arms from his massive trunk of a torso, then slide your fingers between his as the two of you walk towards the medical wing.

…

“—I am telling you, Charles, not being able to reach this kid’s lawyer is a bad fucking sign.”

You and Piotr walk into a conference room to find your uncle and Professor Xavier locked in a heated argument.

Wade, Nate, and Neena are leaning against the table to watch, occasionally leaning over to whisper bits of commentary to each other (or, in Wade’s case, speak at normal volume).

In the corner of the room, where a couple of armchairs are positioned, Nikolai sits with his two other children; they’re speaking in hushed Russian, but none of them seem too concerned about everything else going on.

“As I previously stated,” Xavier says, words clipped, “we cannot release Miss Ricci without speaking first to her attorney. The X-Men operate as a special law enforcement service, and failure to comply with criminal and civil statutes will have enormous consequences for the Institute—”

“There’s going to be a bunch of fucking ‘enormous consequences’ for the Institute,” your uncle interrupts, growling through clenched teeth, “if you don’t evacuate this building right fucking now! Fuck’s sake, Charles –you hired me as a security advisor; just listen to me.”

Piotr frowns and curls one hand over your shoulder. “What is happening?”

“What’s happening,” a new, strong, feminine voice interjects from the hall, “is that we’re leaving.” Artemis shoulders past your husband –a feat not easily achieved by many—with Allison in tow, then holds up the teen’s arm that has the repression cuff still attached. She glares at Xavier (and God, she really looks like Alex when she does that), then spits out through gritted, bared teeth, “Get this fucking thing off my kid.”

There’s a longsuffering sigh in the hall, and then Alex steps into the doorway. “She has that cuff on for her own safety –as I already told you—”

Artemis whirls, face contorted by a vicious scowl, and snaps, “I didn’t fucking ask for you input!”

(Boy, if that doesn’t just scream ‘repressed trauma and mommy issues.’)

Your uncle looks like he’s about to pass out again, but Alex seems remarkably nonplussed. She merely raises one eyebrow at Artemis, as if to say ‘that’s all you got?’

There’s no way she knows, you think as you watch the two stare each other down. Not with how much she cares about her kids. There’s no fucking way—

“Actually, we’ve got bigger problems,” your uncle pipes up, voice quavering slightly before he clears his throat. “We can’t reach your kid’s shark.”

“They have other clients,” Artemis retorts, upper lip curling in a derisive sneer. Her dark eyes smolder with barely constrained hatred as she tosses a withering glance in his direction (daddy issues, too, this chick won the whole lottery). “Or maybe they got stuck in traffic.”

Your uncle narrows his eyes at that (and now the two of them look so much alike, overcome by ire as they are). “You cannot possibly be that fucking stupid.”

Artemis sucks a breath through her teeth, eyes widening with rage and hurt. “You fucking dick—”

In the corner of the room, Illyana bolts upright before going stock still. Then, she gasps and reaches out towards her mother. “Mama!”

(The way Artemis’s face mars with a pained grimace makes your heart ache.)

Alex tenses, eyes glowing gold as she starts scanning the horizon (presumably checking for heat signatures). “Gde?”

The room goes quiet –and then you hear it.

The sound of engines rumbling –multiple engines—and car wheels crunching against gravel. Doors thumping open and shut, followed by footsteps. Hushed voices.

You scamper over to the nearest window and float up, just enough to see several men clad in black and Kevlar and carrying rifles stalking towards the front door and around the sides of the house in groups. “Guys with guns. Lots of them.”

“Then get down!” Nate hisses before yanking you back from the window.

“Lights out,” Alex orders before hitting the switch herself. “Get everyone to a reinforced room.”

“There’s a safe room at the end of the hall,” Xavier says before wheeling himself towards the door.

Allison clings to Artemis’s sleeve, much like a baby koala. “What’s going on? What’s going to happen?”

“Go with the Professor,” Artemis says. She quickly –but gently—frees her arm, then clasps the teen’s face with both hands. “Look at me. Listen to the Professor, and stay put until I come get you. Okay?”

Allison’s forehead puckers, and her lower lip starts trembling. “But—”

“Is alright,” Nikolai interjects with a kind, reassuring smile. He gently ushers Allison towards the door, then down the hall before she can protest further.

A few doors down, Karen pokes her head out of the room where she and Frank have holed up. She frowns as she takes in the chaos. “What’s going on?”

“Mafia men with guns!” Wade chirps as he half-skips, half-jogs towards the mansion’s entryway. “Tell your boy to suit up!”

“There’s a safe room at the end of the hall,” Neena adds as she runs after Wade.

Frank squeezes around Karen and kisses her temple before falling in line behind the two assassins.

You step to the side so Karen can run past you, then turn and press a hasty kiss against Piotr’s cheek. “Love you.”

He kisses your cheek in return, equally as brief. “Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu.”

And then the two of you run towards the danger bearing down on your home.

***

In all the firefights you’ve been in, there’s always this moment of silence. A calm before the storm. A moment where everything goes still, while both sides wait for the other to make a move.

You duck behind a wall as the mafia gunmen continue hammering away at the front door, tucking yourself in a shadow. Your stomach tenses, breathing going quick and hard as your mind starts putting a plan together. Don’t want to risk collapsing part of the house by doing a pressure vacuum. Best option is to probably knock them to the ground so the others can jump them.

The door rattles. The wooden portal splits on one side, sending jagged splinters poking out into the air.

You slow your breathing, forcing yourself into a calm, focused state. Wait for them to get past the entryway so you can hit as many of them as possible.

In the back of the house, near the kitchen, you hear glass shatter.

They’re in. You clench your fists at your sides, watching as the front door slowly gives way. Three… two… one…

The door breaks open, swinging inwards as the first gunmen step into the foyer—

And then the door snaps off its hinges and slams into the men, taking them out like bowling pins.

Strike, a small, inane part of your brain giggles.

Shouts go up through the house. You can hear the sounds of rushed footsteps, shattering glass, and what sounds like people being bodyslammed through tables (and, given the type of people fighting for your side, it just might be that). Gunfire pierces the air –and is accompanied by the telltale, metallic plinks of the bullets ricocheting off your husband’s armor.

Angry screams emanate from the front step. Men barge in, firing down the hall, towards some unseen target (likely Alex or Nate, given the door trick).

You wait until as many men are piled into the foyer as possible, then send down a downdraft that blows out the windows on either side of the door.

The gunmen tumble to the floor, swearing in a mixture of English and Italian.

Nate, Wade, and Neena swoop in. They descend upon the mafia men like a pack of wolves, breaking bones, dislocating joints, and cracking skulls as they disarm –and, in some cases “un-alive”—the gunmen.

“It’s raining men!” Wade sings as he runs one of his katanas through the gut of one assailant. “Hallelujah! It’s raining men!” He ramps off a nearby wall, then t-bags another man before stabbing him through the temple. “Amen!”

You crouch, tracking the movement of the scuffle. You tense when you see a couple of the men jump Nathan, then charge towards the railing and dive over when a few more try to break past to run down the hallway. You flip in the air, land in the hallway ahead of them, and unleash a blast of wind right in their faces.

The mafia men fly out through the front door. They sail over half the front drive, then bounce off the gravel surface and roll several times before coming to a stop.

You let out a harsh breath, then dart down the hall towards the kitchen when you hear glass shattering and the sound of Frank bellowing angrily.

The kitchen and rec room are a mess. Glass shards from shattered windows coat the floor, glittering before being crushed underfoot. Doors are cracked from having people slammed into them. The rec room couch is overturned –and is sagging suspiciously on one side, hinting at a cracked frame. The entertainment system is shattered, with smoking bullet holes littering the TV, speakers, and media systems.

Frank has one of the guys pinned down over the sink. He’s snarling as he uses the lip of the sink to choke the guy out. There’s blood smeared his lips and chins, trailing back up to his chin.

Another gunman stalks in through the dining room, gun trained on Frank’s head.

You whip a blast of air at the second man, sending him sailing into the wall so hard the drywall cracks.

He drops to the ground, unconscious.

There’s some terrified shrieking –and then a gunman is punted up and out of the basement stairwell. He sails through the kitchen window headfirst, crumpling in a heap in the hedges outside.

Your husband storms up the staircase, teeth bared in an angry snarl. The waning daylight glints off his metal exterior, almost making him look like some sort of avenging angel. He stops short when he sees you, though; his irate expression vanishes, replaced by concern. “Ty v poryadke?”

You manage a smile and flash him a thumbs up—

And then a truck with a Gatling gun strapped to the roof rolls up to the back door.

“Get down!” Frank hollers before tackling you to the ground behind the kitchen island.

The room explodes into chaos. Bullets plow into the walls, sending up spurts of drywall dust in their wake. Wooden doorframes and floorboards crack, unleashing cascades of splinters in every direction. Glass shatters, raining down upon everything in its reach.

Frank positions himself over you, shielding you as fragmented bullets rain down upon your both. He cups your head with his hands, doing his best to protect you from the hellfire.

Over the din, you can just make out a loud, angry bellow –and then the sound of bullets hitting metal. Heavy, deliberate stomps make the floor shake.

The gunfire cuts off. A shriek pierces the air just before you hear what sounds like a car being tossed into a tree.

(As you’ll discover later, that’s precisely what you heard.)

Frank lifts his head, then carefully rolls off you. He crouches next to you and holds out a hand. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Your ears are ringing, and you’re pretty sure you’ve got glass shards and splinters in your hair, but you’ve been worse. You take his hand, flinching when you hear the sound of more gunfire outside.

Frank peers over the lip of the island. “Reinforcements. At least five more cars headed our way.”

You suck in a breath. “Piotr—”

“Is holding his own for now,” Frank says.

“I’m gonna help him,” you rasp out. “Make sure everyone in the house that’s not on our side… stays down. And that we’ve still got all our people.”

Frank nods, then runs off towards the foyer.

You catch your breath, then creep towards the back door (better safe than sorry). You flatten yourself against the wall next to the doorway, then peer around the broken frame.

Piotr’s facing off against the new influx of cars. He’s got one hand on the hood of one Range Rover, arm extended out like he’s fending off a five-year-old. With his other hand, he flips another SUV over, causing the thing to land on its roof and putting the vehicle squarely out of commission.

Your stomach sinks when five more Range Rovers tear across the lawn, leaving deep, muddy tracks in their wake –and are followed by three more trucks with Gatling guns attached to the roofs. You sprint out the door, take a flying leap over Piotr, then send out a shockwave of air when you land on the ground.

A few of the cars fly backwards, rolling across the lawn like tumbleweeds. A majority of them, however, manage to stay upright or bump into each other and recover.

Your eyes widen when one of the Gatling gun operators aims directly at you. Shit.

Piotr leaps in front of you, whirling so his back is to the gun. He curls his body over yours, shielding you as gunfire rains down on you both.

You grit your teeth, grunting. You can feel the impact of the gunfire resonating through your husband’s metal body. Worry clutches at your heart when Piotr lets out sharp, ragged groans; he’s largely invulnerable in his armor, not to mention his sense of touch is severely dulled, but you know that with shit like this he’s still feeling some sort of pain –and there’s nothing you can do. You’re both pinned down, and as powerful as your shockwaves are, they’re not enough to stop or even skew the trajectory of a bullet—

Blue light washes over both of you. The sound of the gunfire wanes, replaced by warbling, pinging noises instead.

You peer around Piotr’s side to see Illyana standing between the two of you and the oncoming cars. She has her arms outstretched, palms facing the onslaught of adversaries. A shimmering, sky blue shield with various magical incantations floating through it surrounds all of you, stretching into the sky for at least forty feet.

Illyana grunts. She’s being shoved backwards from the force of impact from the bullets. Her feet are digging into the ground, leaving ruts as she tries to hold her stance. “We need new plan!”

“How about ‘stay alive?’” Piotr shouts back as he digs shrapnel out of the grooves on his arms.

Wade, Neena, Nate, and Frank come barreling out the back door, faces streaked with soot and blood. They dive for the ground, covering the backs of their heads and necks with their hands—

An explosion goes off inside the mansion. The shockwave shatters windows on both the first and second floor, blowing out window frames and trim.

Piotr covers your body with his once more. He cups your head with his hand, shielding you from the falling debris and the worst of the shockwave.

You cough and hack as smoke billows out the broken windows and doors. You do your best to make a vortex to suck the smoke away and send it up into the air. Your lungs burn, and your ears are ringing like a bell from all the gunfire and the explosion—

Four more gunmen emerge from the smoke pouring out the back door.

You snarl, then whip blasts of air at them, slamming them into the exterior walls of the house.

One of them goes down, while the other three are merely stunned.

Mikhail comes barreling out next. He lets out a guttural battle cry, then sucker punches one of the men in the back of the head before aiming a blast of rust colored energy at another’s gut.

The man screams as he sails into the air, arcing over the tree line and disappearing somewhere in the canopies.

The third man aims his gun at Mikhail –then staggers and drops to the ground when a beam of golden energy sears through his chest.

Alex storms out of the smoke with Artemis and your uncle trailing close behind her. She glares down the remaining gunmen and cars, teeth bared in a vicious snarl. Blood is flecked across her face and spattered over her leather jacket. “House is clear!”

“Yeah, except now we’re about to be cleared out!” Wade hollers back. “As in, ‘all sales final, no returns, no exchanges!’”

“If we could make plan,” Illyana screams, voice strained with the effort of holding the shield, “would be very great!”

You look over to Alex –and see her eyes widen. You whirl towards the gunmen just in time to see one of them aim a rocket launcher at all of you. “Oh, for the love of—”

The first hit is technically deflected by Illyana’s shield, insomuch that the projectile and the shield both shatter the moment they meet. The force of the magic breaking sends out a shockwave of blue energy that flies backwards into all of you, knocking those who managed to get up back off their feet and stunning the rest of you.

You groan, head reeling. Your vision clears slowly, casting double images when you move too quickly. Shit.

You can make out Piotr, just next to you. He’s lying face down on the lawn, grunting and moving in slow, clumsy movements. He turns his head, brow furrowing when he sees you, and reaches out towards you.

You extend your hand to grab his –but he’s just out of your reach, no matter how far you strain. Your body feels heavy with fatigue and pain; everything inside you is screaming to get up, to fight, to keep moving because death is knocking right on your door, and you’ll be damned if this is how you go out—

Alex recovers first –no surprise there. She shoves herself to her feet, seething and growling like a feral beast. She hurls a blast of energy at one of the cars –and, from the sounds of the carnage, makes a direct hit. She storms towards the sea of mafia men like an avenging angel, hell bound on vengeance and blood.

Audible gasps go up from the amassed assassins.

You lift your head to see several of the gunmen backing away from the mansion and crossing themselves with shaking hands. You chalk it up to Alex being Alex, and make to drop your head back against the ground once more—

And then you see Allison standing in the ruined doorway.

She’s glaring down the gunmen with a viciousness that doesn’t suit the youthful roundness of her face. Her brows are knit together, and her mouth is twisted into an ugly scowl. Her eyes are glowing a brilliant shade of blue and give off little wisps of azure colored smoke. Her skin and hair are smoking as well, creating an aura around her body. Blood drips down from her nose and onto her shirt –which is stained with ash and soot. There are burn marks and indents on her wrists from where the repression cuff and the handcuffs used to be, respectively, but the restraints themselves are gone.

The ground begins to shake. Two patches of cerulean light appear underneath the grass, growing larger until they form swirling vortexes of magical energy. The ground begins to crumble at the edges of the portals, eroding away and growing wider until they make gaping tunnels that channel so deeply into the earth there’s no telling how far they truly go.

You recoil when the smell of sulfur and smoke blenches forth from the tunnels. Shit, did she hit a gas line? Fucking dammit, like this day can get any worse—

Echoing, blood-chilling howls emanate from the tunnels.

Your eyes widen –and then your heart starts working overtime when you see two, then four massive hellhounds (like the ones Allison summoned at the mall) crawl out of the tunnels.

Shrieks of terror sound from the gunmen. Several take off running, while others try to shoot the beasts.

The hounds snap and snarl at the gunmen, then charge at the group. Two of them go off after the runners, while the other two start lunging after the assassins like they’re rabbits.

You stare at the chaos in disbelief –and then a set of strong hands grab you underneath the arms.

“Get up.” You uncle tugs you to your feet, keeping you steady when you stumble. “You can’t be in the flow of traffic for this.”

Behind you, Allison is panting like she’s run a marathon. The aura of blue smoke is growing around her, trailing into the air and floating over the ground. Veins of light spread across her face and arms, glowing the same shade of vibrant blue as her eyes. Her breathing grows louder and more ragged, until she’s growling and shaking with each exhale— and then she screams.

Much like the first confrontation in the cemetery, all those months ago, the scream unleashes a shockwave of blue energy. This time, though, the shockwave is far from a decoy for escape. It washes over you, the X-Force, your uncle, the other Rasputins, Frank, and Artemis harmlessly enough –then slams into the mafia forces and vehicles like the wall of a hurricane.

Alex charges after the shockwave, carefully trailing behind it. She waits until it clears the first line of gunmen, then slams her fist into the face of the man closest to her. She blocks his attempt to strike her, then twists his arm –dislocating the shoulder, which makes him shriek in pain. Then, she wrenches his rifle away from him. She shoots him once in the center of his forehead, then turns the firearm on his fellow men and keeps firing.

Mikhail and Artemis go after the one surviving Gatling gun. Mikhail teleports onto the truck bed; he sweeps the back of one man’s jacket over his head, effectively blinding him, then kicks the other man present in the balls before shoving him over the side of the truck.

Artemis, on the other hand, stops a few feet away from the truck. She uses her telekinesis to rip the Gatling gun off its mount, then yanks the driver out through the windscreen –headfirst, no less—and dumps him on the lawn.

He doesn’t get back up.

“Come on,” your uncle says, pointing towards the further reaches of the property, where some of the gunmen are still trying to outrun the hellhounds. “Let’s give the dogs a helping hand.”

The two of you reach out, creating a wind current that slices through the air and slams into the stragglers.

The men careen into nearby hedges –and the hellhounds have it from there.

The familiar sonic blast of Nathan’s gun rips through the air. The shot slams into the last remaining SUV, rendering the vehicle to little more than glass shards and mangled metal.

The back lawn and gardens fall silent, save for the sounds of groans of pain and the hellhounds chewing on various gunmen.

Mikhail takes a fall off the back of the truck bed. He flops onto the ruined grass below, limbs splaying like a rag doll’s. “Alright. Is time for nap. Wake me… never.”

Illyana scoffs from where she’s sat next to a smoldering bush. She picks up a nearby stone, then chucks it at her eldest brother’s head (and hits her target, no less). “There is still clean up. Bezdel'nik.”

Mikhail flips her off, then groans as he rubs the bridge of his nose.

“She’s right,” Alex lectures her eldest as she picks her way through the carnage. She nudges one body with the toe of her combat boot, then shoots him through the temple when he groans.

“Mama!” Piotr gapes at her, expression scandalized. He sputters, looking between her and the body at her feet.

“Chto? Vy khotite yego zhivym? Chtoby on mog dolozhit' svoim khozyayevam? Chtoby on mog obrushit' adskiy ogon' na etu shkolu i vsekh, kogo vy lyubite? No –no.” She holds up her index finger and stares sternly at Piotr when he tries to argue. “You do not leave enemies on your six o’clock, medvezhonok. First rule of survival.”

Piotr swallows hard, then says softly, “X-Men do not kill.”

Alex shrugs. “And I am not an X-Man.”

“We’ll handle it,” Nathan says. He holds his hand out for Alex’s rifle, nodding when she hands it to him after a moment’s hesitation.

(Wade and Frank are already working their way through the sea of dead and wounded. Frank’s traversing the chaos methodically, sticking to minimal shots to kill the survivors, while Wade’s alternating between singing “Dancing Queen” and getting post-mortem revenge.

“You shot my dick off inside!” Wade gasps as he peers down at a –slightly chewed on—corpse. “Extra bullets for you!” He then shoots the dead body several times before resuming his pitchy serenade.)

“What now?” Allison asks, staring out at the carnage with a slightly shocked expression.

“‘What now?’” Artemis repeats, laughing incredulously. She stomps towards Allison, pulling a pack of tissues out of her inner jacket pocket. “What the hell are you even doing out here? You were supposed to stay in the safe room—”

“They had cameras in there,” Allison says with a roll of her eyes, as if that justifies her decision to join the fracas. “You guys were getting your asses kicked.”

“We would’ve handled it.”

“Yeah, except you weren’t,” Allison fires back. She scrunches up her face when Artemis starts wiping the blood off her face, but otherwise takes the mothering without any complaint.

“It’s not your responsibility to deal with this shit,” Artemis says, voice and expression softening for a moment. She cleans up Allison’s face –then scowls. “And where the fuck are your cuffs? How did you even get out of them?”

Allison shrugs. “I used my powers to short the repression cuff out and ash it off.”

Illyana’s, Alex’s, and your uncle’s heads all snap around to stare at Allison.

“Are you kidding me?” Artemis hisses through clenched teeth. “You could’ve fucking killed yourself!”

“Or caused magical paradox that ripped hole in space-time continuum,” Illyana snaps.

“Ruptured blood vessels in your brain and caused an aneurysm, made the cuff deliver a lethal electrical shock, turned your magic against your own body and rendered yourself to ash,” your uncle continues, ticking off items on his fingers.

“Well, I didn’t do any of that!” Allison snarls, glaring at the others while Artemis keeps cleaning up her face. “And I made sure you losers won the fight –so fuck off!”

“Get her something to eat and drink,” Alex says. “Her blood sugar is bound to be low after pulling a stunt like that.”

Artemis glares at Alex and opens her mouth to respond—

Across the yard, Wade lets out a pained shriek. “My balls are not fetch toys! Bad Fido! Bad!”

Your eyes widen as you watch one of the hellhounds swing Wade around by his legs. You bite down on your lip, holding in a shock-induced laugh.

“Where’s this mutt’s off-switch –hey, hey! No!” Wade wriggles in the hellhound’s mouth, panicking as another beast bounds towards him. “My spine is not a tug toy! Can someone get rid of Fido and Rufus before they rip me in half!”

Allison snorts –then, before anyone can stop her, holds out her hand and flicks her wrist.

All four hellhounds melt back into the ground, disappearing to the depths of hell from whence they came.

Artemis swears under her breath, then catches the teen when she stumbles. She moves frantically, grabbing more tissues as blood starts pouring out of Allison’s nose once more. “You fucking idiot. Why the fuck did you do that? When are you going to fucking learn that you’re not invincible—”

Allison lets out a sharp, hoarse laugh –then passes out.

…

The wreckage inside the mansion is heartbreaking.

You stare at the ruined furniture, the scorched walls, the splintered doors, the ruined rec room and kitchen, and you have to wonder what was the fucking point?

Part of you understands that the mafia came prepared for war; they were going up against powerful mutants, so –naturally—they would want to be prepared. Having the strongest, most powerful weapons available increased their chances of success. Logically –from a strictly tactical standpoint—it makes sense.

Glass crunches under your shoes. You stare down at a litany of fallen picture frames, heart wrenching as you stare at the ruined pictures of graduates, students, and workers inside. We’re just a school. We work with kids. What was the point of trying to wipe us out?

Piotr ambles up behind you. He puts his arms around your shoulders and kisses the top of your head. “Cleaners and repairmen will be here in less than one hour.”

You feel numb. You place your hand on his arm. “That’s good.”

“We have back ups of pictures,” he murmurs. He kisses your cheek. “Insurance to cover replacing damaged items. We will be fine.”

“I know.” You sigh, leaning back against your husband’s chest. “We’re just a school. What… what was the point? Why try to wipe us out?”

“I do not know.” Piotr kisses your other cheek, hugging you reassuringly. “Perhaps they believed we knew information about ‘family business.’ Or that we were protecting Allison for some reason.”

“She’s just a kid,” you argue, voice breaking as your grief and exhaustion wells up and threatens to overtake you. “She’s only thirteen…”

Piotr says nothing, merely holds you closer.

You sigh—

And then a door slams. Hurried stomps echo down the hall. There’s creaking as a door opens again, followed by more footsteps and exasperated shouts.

Allison storms past you and Piotr, heading towards the kitchen. Her jaw is set, fists clenched at her sides.

You and Piotr look at each other –then follow after her, if only to be sure that nothing else is going to explode today.

She slams her hands down on the island counter –and, on the opposite side, Frank and Karen both flinch and stare at her warily.

Allison glares at Frank, jaw working convulsively. Her shoulders heave with each breath she takes. Her eyes shine with unshed tears, making the bags underneath seem darker and deeper by comparison. She trembles, expression flickering wildly between grief, white hot rage, and the neutral mask she’s trying so desperately to hold. She sucks in a breath that sounds more like a pained sob, then stares Frank down and spits out through gritted teeth, “You leave my people alone, I leave yours alone. Deal?”

Frank sighs. He nods, expression heavy with grief and eyes shining with remorse. “Yeah, kid. You got a deal.”

Allison clenches the edge of the island so hard her hands go white. She lets out a strangled, angry laugh as the tears finally start to fall. She ducks her head briefly, then glares back up at Frank. “I fucking hate you.”

Frank grimaces, but nods and says, “I know kid. It’s okay. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“That ain’t worth shit.”

“I know… believe me, I know.”

Artemis –who’d previously been watching at the kitchen threshold—steps forward and puts her arm around Allison’s shoulders. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go.”

Allison clenches her teeth together, but still lets out a choked sob. She presses her lips together, looking around the room to try and regain her composure, to stop the flow of tears. She manages a deep breath, then takes one last look at Frank and snarls, “If I have to see your fucking face again, I’m ripping out your guts,” before storming out of the room.

Frank, to his credit, doesn’t respond (though you suspect he feels too guilty to even consider arguing). He merely hangs his head, expression that of a kicked dog.

Karen leans against him. She interlocks her fingers with his, murmuring in his ear (likely about how it isn’t his fault, and while it looks like that may technically be the case, you’re glad you don’t have to walk the spider’s silk of a line those facts lie upon).

What a shitshow.

Piotr puts an arm around your shoulders and gently leads you out of the kitchen. “Come on, myshka. Let’s go find spot to rest.”

…

Frank and Karen leave shortly after “making the deal” with Allison.

Allison and Artemis hang back for a bit to talk to Xavier. You don’t get all the gorey details but from what you can tell, it’s essentially an offer to help train Allison’s powers so she doesn’t hurt herself rolled in with a warning to keep her nose clean, stay on the straight and narrow, etcetera etcetera.

The sun’s just starting its descent from the sky before the two of them walk out of the meeting room.

Allison is wearing Artemis’s jacket and looks downright haggard.

Artemis has her arm around the teen and is gently guiding her while she talks to Xavier (though, perhaps the term “talk” is too generous, considering most of her responses are nods or terse, one-to-two word replies).

The rest of the Rasputin family, you, Piotr, and your uncle are all gathered in the foyer to make sure Allison and Artemis leave without too much trouble (or causing more trouble themselves).

Your uncle is sweating bullets and looks like he just shit his pants; he’s glancing between Alex and their daughter so fast it’s a miracle he hasn’t given himself a headache yet.

Now or never, you think, watching him with pursed lips. Tell your secrets before they’re told for you.

Alex kneels down next to Allison. “Are you okay?”

Allison’s gaze doesn’t leave the floor. “The fuck do you think?”

She quirks her mouth to the side. “Not all that good.” Alex ducks her head lower, trying to catch Allison’s gaze. “You remember what we talked about?”

Allison’s eyes narrow. She moves her gaze away from Alex. “Go to hell. I know what I know.”

“Sometimes… it’s better to not,” Alex says. She stares at Allison for a moment longer, then pats her shoulder before standing and walking away.

Artemis stares after Alex, expression morphing rapidly between fury and shock. She sputters for a moment before snapping, “What –that’s all you have to fucking say?”

Alex pauses, turning slightly so she can see Artemis. She raises one eyebrow, otherwise looking unbothered. “Is there something else I should be saying?”

“You don’t have anything to say to me?” Artemis presses, crossing her arms over her chest. “Nothing at all?”

“Is there something you want me to say to you?” Alex fires back, smirking slightly.

Artemis stares at Alex for a long, hard moment. She shakes her head, eyes welling up with tears, then turns her glare onto your uncle. “You really didn’t fucking tell her.”

“What?” Alex’s expression sobers, going wary as she looks between your uncle and Artemis. “What didn’t you—”

“This really isn’t the time or place—” Your uncle tries.

And here it goes.

“I’ve gotta do all the work, then,” Artemis snarls with a vicious smile. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense, considering I’m not your favorite,” she tacks on with an angry glare towards you. She storms towards Alex, one hand outstretched, with a cruel, angry smile stretched across her face. “Hey, mom. How’s it going?”

Alex’s eyes widen. She stares at Artemis, eyes tracking over the younger woman’s face. “What…”

“You fucking heard me.”

Illyana, Piotr, and Mikhail look at each other, then at Alex, then at Nikolai. They explode into confused Russian, gesturing between their parents, Artemis, and your uncle—

Realization dawns in Alex’s dark eyes. Her expression trembles, tears welling up in her eyes as she stares at Artemis’s face.

And then she uses her telekinesis to yank your uncle over and decks him.

#sass writes #piotr rasputin x reader #colossus x reader #nathan summers x wade wilson #frank castle x karen page #alexandra rasputin x nikolai rasputin #love me some soap opera style drama #and frankly so does marvel #and honestly if marvel can have whatever tf infinity war and endgame were i can have this #probably shouldn't have built alex's whole backstory and have it be outside the scope of this series bUT OH WELL #deadpool fanfiction #x men fanfiction

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