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carry-the-sky · 3 years

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Hi could you do 14. touch on a bruise for brio please?

ahhh thanks for sending this one in!! have some post-s3 angst, hahaha. :)

(also on ao3)

The next time she sees him, he’s bleeding.

Okay, maybe not actively, but the jagged line of stitches etched above his ear looks like it’s seconds away from ripping open. Beth takes in the nasty bruise blooming along his jawline, the cut splitting his bottom lip.

“Um,” she says.

Rio smirks. “What’s up?”

“I—” she sputters, because he’s just standing there with that stupid, smug expression, like it’s the most normal thing in the world to drop by the showroom after hours looking like—that. “You—what happened?”

“Not your division, darlin’.”

He says it lightly enough, but Beth reads the undercurrent of warning in his voice like a neon sign. He wants her to drop it.

Well. She’s not feeling very incentivized to give him what he wants at the moment.

“It is when you bring that”—she pointedly eyes the stitches—“into my showroom. Those look awful, by the way. Did he do them?” She juts her chin toward Mick, who’s lurking in the doorway.

The two men share a look, and Mick folds his arms across his chest. “Maybe I did,” he grumbles. “YouTube’s got tutorials for everythin’.”

Beth glances between them both. She’s about to open her mouth—to say what, she has absolutely no idea—when Mick snorts, shaking his head at the same time that Rio’s mouth twists into a grin.

“Nah,” Rio says, still smiling as he casts a glance back at Mick. “Nah, he didn’t. Your concern’s duly noted, though.”

Mick makes another sound in his throat that he quickly covers by turning it into a cough. Beth’s face flames, but she draws herself up and meets Rio’s gaze head-on. Let him try to get a rise out of her—she knows better than to take that bait.

“Fine. What can I do for you, boss?” she says, spitting out that last word like it’s acid.

Rio’s eyes fall to the floor, but Beth can still see the ghost of a grin lingering at the corners of his mouth, like he knows he got under her skin. Like he’s won. For one furious second, she imagines how hard she’d have to hit him to split his lip, leave a bruise. She imagines hurting him and liking it.

But she doesn’t really have to, does she? Beth still remembers the weight of his gun in her hand, how the recoil from pumping the trigger once, twice, three times made her hand ache for days afterwards. She remembers him choking on his own blood, the sound of it filling up the loft—

No. No, she hadn’t liked any part of that. It’s a catch twenty-two; she hates him, she wants him dead, gone and out of her life, his name crossed out in permanent ink, but then—sometimes she doesn’t. It’s the not-knowing that keeps her circling the drain, pushing that damn boulder up the hill only to watch it come crashing down again and again.

She thinks she might hate that even more than she hates him.

Beth blinks, coming back to the office. Mick’s staring her down like a hawk, but Rio’s gaze is more appraising, head tilted to the side in a gesture that’s so familiar, so him, it makes her stomach flip.

“Just here for my cut,” he says, as nonchalant as if they’re discussing the weather. She hears the unspoken words as clearly as the night he said them—you, me, we. It’s just business.

Beth holds his gaze a second longer, then tugs a black duffel out from under her desk. She hands it off, dropping the straps like they burned her to avoid brushing her hand against his when he takes it from her. If he notices, he doesn’t show it.

“What, no mama bag this time?” he says, then presses his lips together like he’s trying not to grin.

Beth glares at Mick, who just shrugs. She snaps her eyes back to Rio, barely managing to unclench her teeth before asking, “Anything else?”

“Yeah, Mick’s gonna check the books.”

Of course he is. Beth isn’t exactly shocked, but it still feels like a slap on the wrist, another reminder that there’s a hierarchy and she’s the furthest thing from sitting on top. Even this, the operation she pieced together herself, the system she built on equal parts desperation and determination—even this isn’t hers.

You wanna be the king, you gotta kill the king.

Yeah, she tried that. Technically she’s still trying, but she shoves that thought down deep and ignores the twinge in her chest.

Rio’s already turning to go, slinging the duffel over his shoulder. “Next week, yeah?”

Maybe it’s the way he says it, like he’s glad he can pawn her off on someone else because he has better things to do with his time, or maybe the stress and exhaustion from these past few months are finally cracking her foundation—the reason doesn’t really matter. Beth can’t—won’t—let him have the last word.

“You should really get those stitches looked at,” she says.

He pauses, then looks back at her. In the low light, his eyes almost look black.

“I’ve had worse,” he says, and the words hang between them for a moment, heavy as a loaded gun.

Beth swallows. “Still. They could get infected.”

Something slides across Rio’s face, sharp and predatory. It’s the look he gets when he sees an opportunity, and Beth feels her stomach drop.

“Yeah?” he says, turning around so that he’s facing her again. He drops the duffel, and Beth can’t help flinching at the thud it makes when it hits the floor. “Sounds like you’re volunteerin’.”

“No, that’s not—”

But he’s moving, sliding into the chair on the opposite side of her desk. Beth’s eyes dart to Mick, but he just arches an eyebrow, not even bothering to look up from the list of sales projections he’s been checking.

Rio leans back in his seat. “A’ight, doc, fix me up.”

Beth stays where she is. The irritation that’s been bubbling just beneath the surface ever since he walked through the door is reaching its boiling point, but there’s something else humming under her skin, crackling like a live wire. He can leave whenever he wants—he was halfway out the door a second ago—but instead he chose to stay.

They’re circling the same drain, each of them waiting to see who will get sucked under first.

“I’ll—get the first aid kit,” Beth says, stepping around the desk only to be stopped in her tracks by Mick, who clears his throat audibly and pulls his jacket back to reveal the Glock tucked against his side.

Beth resists the urge to roll her eyes. “Really? You think I’m stupid enough to try something with both of you here?”

Rio doesn’t answer, just fixes her with an amused look.

“Fine,” Beth snaps, taking a step back. She nods at Mick, tips her head in the direction of the door. “It’s in the bathroom across the hall.”

Mick gives her a two-fingered salute and ducks out of the room, and then it’s just her and Rio.

He’s still—watching her. He looks relaxed enough, legs spread a bit and his hands clasped loosely in front of him, and if Beth didn’t know better, she’d say the expression on his face is almost neutral. But she does know better. His eyes are what give him away, flashing with the same electricity that’s thrumming behind her sternum. He’s waiting for her to make a move. She knows, because she’s doing the same thing.

God, she hates how much she likes this.

She barely registers Mick coming back—it’s only when he tosses the first aid kit onto the desk that she jumps, startled back to herself.

“Thanks,” she says, injecting as much sarcasm as she can into the word.

Mick’s mouth twitches, but he goes straight back to the books, sinking into a chair in the far corner of the office. Beth rolls her own chair around the side of the desk, lowers herself slowly into a seated position beside Rio. This close, she can see each individual color in the whorl-patterned bruise that stretches up toward the hollow of his cheek. She lets her eyes drag across it, then up his temple. The stitches look—well, not great. It’s clear they were done hastily, probably to prevent as much blood loss as possible, but the wound is seeping.

“Damn, that bad, huh?” Rio asks, reading it on her face.

Beth stares down at the kit in front of her. Her first aid knowledge extends about as far as patching up a skinned knees and Benadryl for minor allergic reactions—removing possibly-infected stitches from her crime boss’ head isn’t even in the same zip code.

“I don’t—I don’t know what you want me to do,” she says, abruptly exhausted.

Rio adopts an expression of mock concern that does nothing to ease Beth’s urge to slap him. “Oh, no?” he says. “What part’s trippin’ you up?”

Beth shuts her eyes for a second, briefly wonders why the hell she didn’t let him waltz out of here when she had the chance—except she knows why, and so does he, and when she looks again—

He’s practically beaming, that smug tilt at the corners of his mouth dialed up about a thousand percent, and it’s like a puzzle piece slotting into place. This is just another game—he’s messing with her, playing with his food before eating it.

The low buzz of electricity inside her ignites.

He’s not the only one who’s hungry.

“No, you’re right,” she says, popping open the first aid kit and digging around until she finds the antiseptic wipes. “I should at least clean those stitches up. Maybe even remove them, start fresh.”

She glances up, and that’s the only reason that she sees him falter, a blink-and-miss-it record-scratch behind his eyes before he recovers, slides the mask back on. Satisfaction floods through her. She can play his game.

“Whatever’s good, ma,” he says with a shrug. “You’re the boss, yeah?” He echoes her earlier emphasis on the word, grinning when he sees the barb land. “Shit, that’s my bad—poor choice o’ words.”

Beth rips open a wipe. “This might sting,” she says, pressing against his line of stitches, hard. She’s rewarded with him hissing a breath through his teeth, the hand at his knee balling into a fist.

“Easy, mama,” he grits out.

Beth flashes him her sweetest smile. “I’m sorry, is that too rough? I thought you liked that.”

Mick makes a noise like he’s choking, and Rio looks over, eyes bright with amusement. “Ay, cállate la boca.”

“Didn’t say nothin’,” Mick mumbles, still staring intently at the books.

Beth presses her tongue behind her teeth, swallowing a pinch of annoyance as she switches tactics. “Aren’t crime lords supposed to have, I don’t know, some sort of medical professional on retainer? For situations like this?”

“Nah,” Rio says with a shake of his head. “Why, you gunnin’ for a promotion? ‘Cause I gotta say, your bedside manner could use some work.”

And something inside her roars, because this is how she’s going to get him. She dabs gently at the wound beneath his stitches, swiping a thumb over the sutures. Rio winces, jerks back—

She sees it, the moment he drops the mask.

Beth leans forward. She brings the antiseptic up to his face again, stops just short of pressing it to his skin, as if to ask, okay?

She sees it, the moment he drops the mask.

Beth starts at his temple, softly scrubbing at the caked-on blood that’s streaked down from the cut above his ear. Her hand moves lower, fingers gliding over his cheekbones, and she’s not sure if she imagines his breath hitching when she reaches the bruise at his jaw. She drags her thumb across it, then back again. His skin is warm, under the pads of her fingers.

“How am I doing now?” she breathes, barely above a whisper, and she knows she doesn’t imagine him dipping a glance down to her mouth. Their faces are inches apart, close enough for her to count the shades of brown in his eyes. Her fingers trace lower, toward the curve of his lips—

His hand comes up to grasp her wrist, tug it away from his face. “Don’t,” he growls, low like thunder. A warning. “Don’t do that, Elizabeth.”

He’s looking at her again, but she almost doesn’t recognize the emotion swimming in his eyes. He’s—terrified. Of her. For a fleeting second she lets the thrill of it run through her, buoyant on the feeling of power, the feeling that she’s won—

(—she did it, she shot him, she’s free—)

The moment pops like a soap bubble, and she’s empty, hollow, everything good inside of her scooped away until this is what’s left. This is who she is. And maybe this game they’re playing was never meant to have a winner.

The realization leaves her numb.

She’s vaguely aware of Mick slipping the books back onto her desk, and when her eyes flick back up to Rio, his mask is firmly back in place. Steel, untouchable.

“I’m all better now, thanks,” he says, and then he’s pulling away, pushing up from the desk, slipping out the door. She watches his silhouette until it dissolves into shadow.

She’s alone.

#brio #beth x rio #brio fic #nbc good girls #my fic

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stab-the-son-of-a · 3 years

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Whumptober No.1 - Barbed Wire

TW: Character death, choking, blood

Gladys doesn’t get paid nearly enough for what she deals with. Sometimes, the joy of helping a burgeoning new enthusiast wet their feet outweighs the irritation and frustrations. Other times it’s exactly the new whumpers that irritate her so much.

Idly drawing stylized S’s on her notepad, she listens to the woman on the other end list out the symptoms. At the start, Gladys had written her client’s name down but now, going on an hour later, she finds she can’t read her scribbled writing.

“So the symptoms you’re describing,” Gladys interrupts the woman, because waiting for an opening hasn’t worked for the past half an hour. “They’re a spot on match for lockjaw. Fever, muscle spasms, the whole breathing and swallowing thing.”

“Um, nooo,” the woman draws out her words in the most annoyingly condescending tone possible. Quite the feat considering she’s dead wrong, Gladys thinks. “Tetanus went away with the vaccines. Like polio.”

She absolutely does not get paid enough for this. In a display of superhuman self restraint, Gladys holds back from telling her just how ridiculous she sounds. She deadpans, “I’m sorry ma’am, herd immunity doesn’t protect from toxins.”

“Whatever! What do I do? How do I fix this?”

“There’s really no fix for tetanus—”

“Um, yes, there is! It’s like antibiotics, or medicine or an antiviral or something.”

A lack of proper planning and knowledge on the clients’ part nearly always necessitates in an emergency for the agents, and she's well accustomed to the golden rule of never underestimating how damn stupid people can be, but Gladys is also pretty sure that sharp throbbing pain behind her eye is her IQ draining away.

In the distance, she hears the poor whumpee groan, the sound tight and agonized. You and me both, pal, she thinks as she stares down at the now full page. With a sigh she rips it off and starts a fresh one.

“Are you going to fix it or not?” Karen — she’s going to call her Karen because it’s perfectly apropos — demands. “I’m not done with him yet!”

“No, I’m thinking you’re done with him.” As Gladys awaits Karen’s indignant squawking, she switches to drawing cubes rotated at various angles. “He’s done for, ma’am.”

On cue comes the tirade. How Gladys can’t possibly know this just from a list of symptoms and a short discussion and a picture. How Gladys isn’t a doctor (never claimed as such) and thus not qualified to give a diagnosis.

Honestly anyone with half a brain can see what happened. Karen dressed up her ex-lover in shibari made from barbed wire, and she didn’t even check if he was up to date on his shots. That’s on her.

That said, the picture sent to Gladys is just delicious, so she almost can’t blame Karen for this. The man in the photograph, stripped down to his jeans, kneels with his arms bent behind his back just so- elbows forced together by the wiring, hands and wrists cinched against his waist. The result pushes his chest out, opening it to expose the bloodied stripes and blooming bruises from previous sessions with a whip. (Gladys wouldn’t be surprised if Karen used one made of barbed wire.) The bindings continue down his hips and legs, the angle forcing them apart and curving his spine backwards due to the short length tying his wrists to his ankles and both to his neck.

But what really catches the eye is the blood. It wells up from countless small puncture wounds, trails and rivers flowing down, collecting in hollows and marking the trails and contours and planes of his body.

“Are you even listening to me?” Karen interrupts Gladys’s appreciation with an indignant shriek. Like a newborn needing attention, she raises her voice, and Gladys hastily pulls the receiver away from her ear before she can deafen her. “I called looking for help and you’ve done everything but help!”

She knows how she’s meant to react, technically, by the rule book, and all that PR, customer is always right, bullshit. Instead, Gladys says coolly, “Are you ready to listen to me?”

“I’m ready for someone to help me.”

“You see, ma’am, in my professional opinion, you’ve fucked this up beyond repair.”

Karen goes absolutely silent, but her whumpee whines and whimpers, the sounds all breathless and shallow, weak and raspy. Yeah, no, that man is dead or on his way there.

Emboldened by the success of getting a word in, Gladys continues, “Yep. Fucked it right up. Start over. Toss the whole man out.”

“You don’t understand. It has to be him! I chose him for a reason!”

“Then take a picture for memory’s sake but you can’t keep broken trash laying around. That doesn't spark joy.”

To that, Karen doesn’t respond, except to set down the phone on some hard surface. She doesn’t hang up, surprisingly.

“Baby…” the man croaks. He sounds absolutely parched, his voice raw and shattered from screaming. “Please… don’t…”

“Fuck you!” Karen finishes her cry by yanking on the wire that encircles her ex’s throat, if the choked gasps are any indication. “You ruin everything! You couldn’t do this one thing for me, Jason? You couldn’t let me have any bit of happiness?! You selfish pig! I should have done this years ago!”

The sounds of struggle and asphyxiation slow and then stop entirely. Her ex hits the ground with a boneless, wet noise, and doesn’t gasp or wheeze again.

“Thank you,” Karen says primly as she picks up the phone again. “That was unpleasant.”

Gladys taps against the paper and wonders for a moment if she should say something. Finally her conscience gets the better of her. “Ma’am, are you wearing gloves?”

“What does that have to do with it?”

… so no. Clearly Karen handled the very same tetanus infested wire without protection. Gladys glances down at the man in the picture, at those resigned, glistening eyes still so stupidly filled with hope and affection, and shrugs to herself. “No reason,” she says with a sharp smile. “Would you like to stay on the line for a brief survey?”

Click.

#whumptober2021 #no.1 #barbed wire #oc #fic #character death #choking #stress position #blood #tetanus #wcc gladys #wcc series #crack whump #konmari your whumpees

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everlarkbirthdaygifts · 4 years

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Happy Birthday, alepaolvi!

Apologies for the delay on your birthday gift, @alepaolvi! We hope you had a wonderful day on October 2, and got exactly the presents you were hoping for! To bring your party back around, the lovely @norbertsmom has written a story just for you!

Author’s Note: Happy belated birthday, @alepaolvi. Sorry for the delay. I hope you enjoy your arranged marriage fic with a jealous Gale. This is set in Panem au. The revolution happened a few years before it did in canon. You may notice several lines are taken directly from the book, and tweaked to fit this new timeline. Special thanks to my bestie, @mega-aulover for her help. Rated T.

A Different Kind of Reaping

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When I wake up, I reach out for Prim but find the other side of the bed is empty. Prim has her own bed now, but sometimes I forget we’re no longer in the Seam. I prop myself up on one elbow. There’s enough light in the room to see that she’s not in her bed. Of course not. She’s been so excited to help me get ready for today. I’m sure she and mother are up prepping my clothes and making breakfast.

The two of them are so alike, with their blond hair and blue eyes and perky attitude. At fourteen, Prim is fresh faced and as lovely as the primrose for which she was named. My mother is still beautiful, if not a little weary in her grief at the loss of my father. Even seven years later, his absence is still felt, especially today.

I get out of bed and pull on trousers, a shirt, and tuck my long dark braid up under a cap. I slide my stocking feet into my leather hunting boots and grab my bow and sheath of arrows along with my foraging bag.

On the table is a feast fit for celebration: eggs, bacon, toast, and orange juice. All luxury items just a few years ago, before the war. Now a gift to me on my reaping day.

Reaping day is so different now. Before the revolution, reaping day was the day all district children between the ages of twelve and eighteen had their names put into a drawing. In punishment for the failed first uprising, each of the twelve districts had to provide one boy and one girl, called tributes to participate in the Hunger Games. The twenty-four tributes would be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena to fight to the death. The last standing tribute won.

“Sit down for breakfast, Katniss,” my mother says. “You’ll need your energy today.”

I set my hunting gear down and sit, loading up my plate and tuck into the meal. I want to go out into the woods one last time before the ceremony. Who knows if I’ll be able to go back out after today?

Prim plops down in the chair beside me. “Are you excited, Katniss?” she asks as she loads up her own plate.

“Um,” I hum around a mouthful of food because I really don’t know how I feel. “A little scared, I guess.”

When the revolution was won by the districts, the Hunger Games were abolished. But soon after it was discovered that the population was critically low, and at risk of extinction after all the loss during the war. The new senate that ruled the country with one representative from each district, came up with a plan to help repopulate the nation: arranged marriages.

They decided to reclaim the reaping day as a day to bring new families together. That first reaping day after the war, men and women eighteen and older were matched to form new families. I wasn’t old enough then, but I am now. I don’t know how I feel about having my future decided for me.

I think back on all of the questionnaires we had to complete in our last month of school. We also had to list the names of those we would be happy to be matched with. We weren’t allowed to leave it blank, so I wrote down the one name I secretly wish for, but I’m sure I won’t get.

I may not even be matched this year. Not everyone is matched in their first year, so they have to go through it again the next year. Special deferment was granted for those who fought in the war to put off their reaping a year or two.

“Leave your sister alone, Primrose. She has a big day ahead of her,” mother says as she joins us at the table. She pours herself a large mug of coffee and cups it with both hands, holding it under her nose to breathe it in. She closes her eyes before taking a sip.

I’m the first to finish and get up to leave. “Thanks for breakfast,” I tell them as I grab my gear and head toward the door. I’m in a hurry. My old hunting partner, Gale Hawthorne is back in the district today. I haven’t seen him since he went away to fight in the rebellion. After the fighting was over, he stayed in the military and moved to district three so he could study under the victor Beetee Latier.

“Don’t forget your cheese,” Prim says as she gets up from the table and hands me a perfect little goat cheese wrapped in basil leaves. It’s been a tradition since she started making goat cheese to give them as gifts on special occasions.

“Thank you,” I tell her with a hug as I pocket the cheese.

“Don’t stay out too long, Katniss,” mother says. “You need to report to the Justice Building by one thirty. We need time to get you ready.”

“I won’t,” I tell her as I slip outside.

Our part of District 12 is the merchant quarter. My mother and Prim run the apothecary, but we didn’t always live here. I grew up in the part of the district nicknamed the Seam, where the miners live. The apothecary had been vacant since my grandparents died when the mayor’s mansion was bombed at the start of the revolution. After the war, my mother applied for and was granted permission to take it over.

As I’m skipping down the back steps, I look over to the bakery next door. Peeta Mellark is walking toward the trash bin with a bag in his hand. He looks up at the sound of our door closing. “Hey Katniss,” he says with that contagious smile of his. “Heading out to the woods, I see.” He nods to my hunting gear after placing the bag in the bin.

“Yep,” I tell him with a smile of my own. “Gotta catch dinner for tonight.”

“Ooh. Wild game, that’s one advantage you have over the other girls in the reaping today,” he says, crossing his arms as he leans against the small fence that divides his yard from mine.

“Whatever you say, Mellark,” I tell him, shaking my head. He’s always teasing me about how different I am from the other girls who live in town. Not because I’m from the Seam, but like I’m some unique creature he’d never encountered before.

As I walk down the path I wonder who Peeta will be matched with. He’s such a kind person. He was the only person to help me and my family after my father died. He gave me bread that helped us survive and gave me hope to go on. I’m sure he’ll have no problems finding a match today. Lots of girls will be hoping to be the next baker’s wife. Peeta lost his mom at the start of the war. She was one of those lost in the bombing of the mayor’s mansion.

Even though there’s an entrance to the wood close to home, I make my way through town toward the Seam to the entrance by my old house. It makes me feel closer to my father. That’s where he would take me into the woods when I was a child.

The streets of the Seam are empty today. Usually, the workers would be out heading to their morning shift at the mines or the medicine factory, but the ceremony isn’t until two. Might as well sleep in if you can.

Our old house was almost at the edge of the Seam. I only have to pass a few gates past it to reach the scruffy field we call the Meadow. The barbed wire loops that used to top the high chain-linked fence that separates the Meadow from the woods are gone. The fence remains to keep the wild animals out of the district, but gates have been installed at several locations around the perimeter to allow citizens access to the woods.

As soon as I’m in the trees, I look around for signs of a threat, like packs of wild dogs, bears, venomous snakes, or rabid animals. Inside the woods they roam freely, but there’s also food if you know how to find it. My father knew and he taught me some before he was blown to bits in a mine explosion. There was nothing even to bury. I was eleven then. Seven years later I sometimes still wake up screaming for him. But since Dr. Sidney, the head doctor, came to the district after the war, I’ve learned how to deal with my grief. My nightmares aren’t as frequent. Dr. Sidney helped my mother as well. She no longer lies in bed staring at the walls.

Before the war, trespassing in the woods was illegal, and poaching carried the severest of penalties, but the woods belong to us now, the citizens of District 12. Still, most people aren’t bold enough to venture out unarmed. My bow is a rarity, crafted by my father along with a few others that I keep well hidden in the woods, carefully wrapped in waterproof covers. If my father was still alive, he could have made good money selling them, but before the rebellion, if the officials found him selling weapons, he would have been publicly executed for sedition. Which is kind of ironic since the mine explosion that killed him was one of the catalysts for the rebellion.

We were never prosecuted for poaching back then because most of the Peacekeepers had turned a blind eye to the few of us who hunted. They were as hungry for fresh meat as anybody. Now we get food shipped in from other districts regularly, and I can sell my game openly to the other merchants at their back doors, and at my booth in the open-air market called the Hob.

In the woods waits my hunting partner Gale. I feel myself relaxing and quicken my pace when I think about seeing him again. I only got a quick chat with him yesterday when he arrived, mobbed by his family. He asked if we could meet up to hunt this morning like old times. I climb the hills to our rock ledge overlooking the valley. A thicket of berry bushes keeps it hidden. The sight of him brings on a smile. We used to be the best of friends before he went away.

He looks different than I remember. Not just older; he stands different, ridged and yet alert as if he is waiting for an attack from a wild lone wolf. He’s wearing gray uniform pants, and a faded black shirt. His eyes are sharper; they scan the area, before settling on mine.

“Hey Catnip,” says Gale. He knows my real name, but I had whispered it when we first met so he thought I said catnip. It stuck as a nickname even after all this time.

“Look what I shot,” Gale says as he holds up a loaf of bread with an arrow stuck in it. I let out an uncomfortable laugh. It’s fine bakery bread, the kind used during a toasting ceremony.

I’m not sure if he’s trying to impress me with what he can buy with his fancy new job, so I take the bread in my hands. I pull the arrow out and hold the puncture in the crust to my nose, inhaling the fragrance that reminds me of the blond haired, blue eyed son of the baker.

“Mm, still warm.” He must have been at the bakery at the crack of dawn to buy it. “Prim gave us cheese,” I tell him quickly as I pull it out of my pocket.

“Thank you, Prim,” Gale says as he pulls out a shiny knife from a sheath on his hip. I watch as he slices the bread. He could be my brother, same straight black hair, although his is cut short in a military style, same olive complexion, we even have the same gray eyes. We’re not related, at least not closely. Most of the families in the Seam resemble one another this way.

That’s why my mother and Prim, with their light hair and blue eyes used to look out of place when we lived in the Seam. They were. My mother’s parents were merchants. They ran the apothecary. That’s why she got it after the war. Now I’m the one out of place. I have the look of the Seam, but I live in town.

My father got to know my mother because he would collect medicinal herbs and sell them to her shop. She really loved him to leave her home for the Seam. Back then, the homes in the Seam were nothing more than shacks really. We had to boil water from the spigot in the yard if we wanted it hot. After the war, all of the squat gray houses in the Seam were replaced with new homes that are well insulated with running hot and cold water and reliable electricity.

Gale spreads the bread slices with the soft goat cheese, carefully placing a basil leaf on each slice while I strip the bushes of their berries. We settle back in the nook in our rock. I don’t eat much, since I already had breakfast, but it’s a nice treat. Everything would be perfect if all this day off meant was roaming the woods with Gale for a casual family dinner tonight, catching up on how our lives have changed since the war ended, but instead it feels awkward, like I’m here with a stranger instead of my old friend Gale.

“What’s it like in District 3?” I ask quietly to break the awkward silence between us. It was never like this before. He would rant about the unfair treatment the citizens endured, and how we should rise up against them. But now that the revolution is over and won, we don’t really have much to say.

“It’s alright, but I’ll be moving to District 2 after the ceremony. You’ll love it there. Mountains bigger than these. Lots of woods to hunt in.”

“Why would I want to go to District 2?” I ask. The idea is preposterous. I can’t leave my sister. Before the war, the fantasy was to run off, and live in the woods, but this conversation feels all wrong now. There’s never been anything romantic between Gale and me. When we met, I was a skinny twelve-year-old, and although he was only two years older, he already looked like a man. It took a long time for us to even become friends, to stop haggling over every trade. Then he went off to war and moved to District 3 as a hero. His hero status gave him the option to postpone his reaping until this year.

Gale’s good looking, strong from his time as a soldier, and he has a good job in another district. He will be a desirable match at the reaping today. I don’t know why he would want me.

“Forget it,” he snaps.

I let out a breath and ask, “What do you want to do, hunt, fish, or gather?”

“Let’s fish at the lake,” he says. “We can leave our poles and gather in the woods. Get something nice for tonight’s betrothal meal.”

Tonight, after the reaping, everyone is supposed to celebrate, but I’ll be betrothed. I’ll be spending time with my intended. He and his family will come to my house so we can get to know one another. Does Gale hope it will be him?

We fall into the comfortable silence I remember from hunting with him before he left. By late morning, we have a dozen fish, a bag of greens, and best of all, a gallon of strawberries.

On the way home, we swing by the Hob and trade half the fish and greens for fresh vegetables. Greasy Sae gives us a nod as we walk by. Even with the beef and chicken coming in from other districts, her wild game soup that she calls beef is always a hit. The customers around her booth are talking away about today’s reaping.

When we finish at the Hob, we go to the back of the mayor’s home to sell half of the strawberries. The mayor lives in a modest house not unlike the others in the district. After the war, the residents of the district realized that the old mayor’s mansion was just another tool the Capitol used to keep us in the district divided. The poor people of the Seam resented the wealth the mayor and the merchants had. So when the mayor’s home was rebuilt, he had it built the same as all the others.

The mayor’s daughter Madge answers the door. She was in my year at school, and my closest friend since Gale left. Her everyday outfit has been replaced by an expensive white dress, and her blonde hair is done up with a pink ribbon. Clothes fitting for the betrothal reaping.

“Pretty dress,” says Gale.

Madge shoots him a look, trying to see if it’s a genuine compliment. He used to antagonize her when we were younger, but now that he’s been gone for a few years it’s hard to tell. She presses her lips together and smiles. “Well I have to look nice for my reaping today, don’t I?”

“I’m sure you’ll have the match you want,” Gale says with a scoff.

Madge’s face has become closed off. She puts the money for the strawberries in my hand. “Good luck, Katniss.”

“You too,” I say, and the door closes.

I turn to Gale, “What did you mean by that?”

“Her father’s the mayor. People in power can influence the outcome of the reaping,” Gale says.

Madge’s father isn’t just the mayor. He was quite influential during the war. He was able to convince the residents of District 12 to join the revolution by bringing in Annie Cresta. Then he became our district’s liaison with the rest of the rebels.

Annie Cresta was the last Victor of the Hunger Games,and the spark that started the rebellion. She won the summer after my father died in the mining explosion. During her interview, after winning her games, she started screaming about her father and brother who were lost at sea with a whole ship full of fishermen just before her games. The Capitol played it off as her going mad. But during her victory tour she was more subdued, she would compare her district’s loss to the loss each district had suffered from a tragedy that same year.

The rumors started that perhaps the mine explosion that killed my father wasn’t an accident, but a sabotage to take out the rebel miners who had been planning an uprising. While in District 11, she talked about the silo collapse, in District 10 the stampede, and so on until she had rallied half the country behind her. Before her tour reached the Capitol, District 13 re-emerged from the ashes to sweep her off to be the face of the rebellion.

District 12 was one of the last districts still neutral to the rebellion even though the mayor tried to get our residents involved. He asked Annie Cresta to come back, to rally us to join the cause. Most of our Peacekeepers were recalled to the Capitol to fight off the uprisings in other districts. Those who stayed behind were sympathetic to the districts’ plight. The residents of District 12 wanted to wait out the war. If we didn’t join in, nothing would happen to us.

After the rally, while most of the residents of the district were at home debating why we should join the rebellion, the mayor hosted a dinner for Annie with the most influential Merchants and Seam residents. After the dinner was over, the mayor, his daughter Madge and a few others were seeing Annie off to her hovercraft back to District 13 when the mayor’s mansion was bombed by the Capitol. All those still inside were killed, including the mayor’s wife, his staff, my grandparents and many others.

The rally that day, along with the bombing that took out the mayor’s mansion, is what finally convinced the residents of District 12 to join the rebellion. We couldn’t stay neutral. The war came to us. Gale, among others old enough, went off to fight in the war. Not everyone came home. The baker’s oldest son died. Gale stayed in the military.

As we walk back toward my house, I glance over at Gale, still wondering why he came home this year. He could have participated in the reaping in his new district. I hope he didn’t come back here for me.

Gale and I arrive at the divide between the Seam and town and split up our spoils.

“See you in the square,” I say.

“Wear something pretty,” he says flatly as he walks towards his mother’s house in the Seam.

When I get home, Peeta is in the yard next door, feeding the pigs. “Hey, Katniss,” he says. “Good day hunting?”

“Yep, got some fish and greens for tonight,” I tell him.

“I’ve got a few recipes you can try out on your new family if you want?”

“Sure, that last one with the nuts was nice.” Curious I get closer. “So are you ready?”

He stops feeding the pigs. “I’m nervous,” he confesses.

“Nervous?” Peeta has nothing to be nervous about. He’s good like my sister Prim. Any of the women today would be lucky to have him.

“Well, what if the girl they pick for me doesn’t erm,” his face turned pink. “Well, like me.”

What he is saying is impossible.

“My parents didn’t have the best marriage, you know.”

I nod. I can see why he would be anxious. His parents did not get along; they hated each other but miraculously, had three boys.

I wish I had the words to be able to tell him that he had nothing to worry about. But nothing comes.

"Listen, I'll see you at the reaping. I've got to get ready. Don't want to scare my bride away by smelling like a pig pen."

I shake my head and laugh. When I go inside my mother sets aside her knitting and jumps up from her chair. “There you are,” she says as she helps me remove my hunting gear. She hands my bag to Prim and ushers me into the bathroom. “Get yourself a shower. You need to start getting ready.”

I scrub off the dirt and sweat from the woods and wash my hair. When I’m done I find my favorite dress from my mother’s collection laid out on my bed. A soft orange, with white lace insets near the collar, and a tie at the waist. “Are you sure?” I ask.

“Of course. I’ll fix your hair,” she says.

After I’m dressed, I sit at the vanity as she towel dries my hair and I watch as she braids it up into a crown on top of my head. I hardly recognize myself in the mirror.

“You look beautiful,” says Prim in a hushed voice.

“And nothing like myself,” I say as I hug her. Things are going to be so different after the reaping today.

Prim and mother get dressed. We have a quick lunch and then it’s time to go to the Justice Building to check in.

As we head toward the square, we are joined by others headed that way. Attendance is not mandatory like it was for the Hunger Games reapings, but most people show up anyway.

Mother and Prim hug me goodbye when I go into the Justice Building. After checking in, I’m ushered into the women’s waiting room. I find Madge and join her at the refreshment table.

At precisely 1:45, our escort, Effie Trinket, comes into the room. Miss Trinket was on track to be an escort for the Hunger Games, but she was actually a rebel working inside the system to help bring it down. After the revolution she became our escort for the betrothal reaping. Her bright pink clothes and makeup, while much more flamboyant than what those of us in the district would wear, is nowhere near as garish as the makeup and outfits worn by our last Hunger Games escort.

“Ladies, it’s time to follow me out onto the stage,” Effie says and we all line up to follow her out.

As we go out onto the stage, a cheer begins to rise from the crowd gathered in front of the Justice Building. Effie escorts us to the several rows of seats arranged on the left side of the stage. Madge and I sit next to each other.

Once we are all seated, Effie goes back into the building, but comes out a few minutes later followed by the group of men for the reaping. She escorts them to the seats on the right side of the stage. They are all wearing their best suits. Peeta gives me a wave before he sits in the second row. Gale sits in the front row in his military uniform.

At precisely 2 o’clock, Mayor Undersee steps up to the podium and begins his speech. He talks about the history of Panem: the dark days, the first failed rebellion, the 70 years of the Hunger Games, and then the revolution that freed Panem. He talks about how we have to rebuild Panem, the population lost from the Games and the war. Which brings us to today, the Betrothal Reaping. He then introduces Effie Trinket.

“Welcome, welcome,” Effie says. “It’s such an honor to be here, to help bring together the families who will be the future of our country.” She goes on to explain how the selections are not random. The answers we gave in the surveys taken during school, as well as our DNA were used to determine the matches. “Now, onto the pairings!” she says, and with a flair of her hand pulled out a stack of envelopes.

She plucks the first envelope from the stack and calls out, “Delly Cartwright!”

Delly jumps up from her seat, and quickly walks up to stand next to Effie. Delly is practically vibrating in anticipation. I wish I could be that excited. I just hope I get someone I can stand.

“And your match is,” Effie pauses dramatically, “Thom Davison!”

Thom, one of Gale’s old classmates who didn’t get matched in his previous two reapings, looks around bewildered. He gets a nudge from the person sitting next to him before he gets up and walks up to the podium to formally meet Delly.

Delly and Thom are ushered to the back of the stage where they stand next to each other whispering, with big smiles on their faces. I guess that means they are happy with that match.

“Very good,” says Effie. “Our next match is the mayor’s daughter, Madge Undersee.”

I squeeze Madge’s hand and she stands and gracefully walks up to stand next to Effie Trinket.

“And your match is… the local hero, Gale Hawthorne!” Effie exclaims. A quiet murmur goes through the crowd. That pairing was unexpected. I think everyone expected me to be paired with Gale, but I know it would have never worked out, we’re too alike.

Gale doesn’t look very happy at his selection, but stands and walks up to meet Madge. They stiffly shake hands, then walk back to stand next to Delly and Thom. It’s quite the contrast between the two pairs.

“Wonderful!” Effie says with a little too much enthusiasm. “Next up we have, Katniss Everdeen.”

I stand up slowly, then stiffly walk to stand next to the podium.

“And your partner is… Peeta Mellark,” Effie calls out.

My eyes go wide as I think, Oh, it’s him, my neighbor, my friend. The boy, no man, I correct myself, who saved my life and gave me hope. The man who reminded me that I was not doomed. The man who’s name I wrote on my questionnaire. I feel a smile come across my face as I watch Peeta get up and walk toward me. The smile on his face matches mine.

When he reaches me we stand and stare at each other for a moment before Effie Trinket clears her throat. “Go ahead, shake hands,” she urges. Peeta's large warm hand engulfs mine, and he gives me a reassuring squeeze. “Go ahead,” she tells us, nudging us toward the back of the stage.

When I drop Peeta’s hand, I feel the loss of warmth immediately, but I feel his hand at the small of my back as he escorts me to join the others. “Told ya I’d see you at the reaping,” Peeta whispers in my ear, and I can’t help but laugh. After that, I’m in a bit of a daze and miss most of the remaining matches.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, Effie dismisses the few remaining people who didn’t get paired up and calls the matched pairs to the front of the stage. Delly and Thom lead the way, arm in arm. Madge and Gale walk stiffly side by side. Peeta takes my hand and leads me toward the front of the stage, and the couples behind us follow suit. When we are all lined up, Effie calls out, “District 12, I give you your new couples. Please join us in the reception hall for family introductions.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That’s the end of part 1. This will continue as a work in progress.

A few notes: Dr. Sidney is named after Dr. Sidney Freedman from the final episode of the TV show M*A*S*H. He helped the main character work through his PTSD. Thom Davison is named for Dave Thomas of Wendy’s fame, who seemed like such a sweet man. The character Thom in canon is only mentioned a few times, but he is such a great guy. Gale’s friend who helps carry him back after the reaping, and then after the war Thom comes back and takes on the task of clearing away the debris so the district can rebuild.

#everlark #everlark fanfiction #everlarkbirthdaydrabbles #everlarkbirthdaygifts #fan fic #by norbertsmom

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ace-of-sspades · 3 years

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Okay concept. Captain America: The First Avenger but it’s a 1917 style gritty war movie. (Yea I know those are different wars but you get the point). Captain America is all about humanity and hope and what is patriotism and what is it worth and tfa is a fun time sure but it never properly sets up those themes because it’s just a little beyond the suspension of disbelief (imo).

Just imagine Steve and Bucky on a gritty, gory WWII battlefield. Covered in mud and climbing over corpses and barbed wire. The movie can start the same and 1940s New York be the epitome of hope and the “home”. Then imagine eager pre serum Steve longing for the fight, he’d still get drafted by Erkstine and then no dancing monkey nonsense. Imagine they throw still clumsy doesn’t know his strength Steve into the thick of it. Because now he’s America’s golden boy he better prove his worth. And he realizes how horrible war actually is. He sees men die over and over and we can get a glimpse of that doubt he has in tws and civil war. Maybe he can actually live up to the line from tws where he tells fury they did things that made them not sleep so well. Okay but then drawing from both sources of inspiration he can go on a mission across enemy lines to save Bucky’s battalion. Maybe he doesn’t do it rouge but he doesn’t exactly follow the rules. Also the red skull would still be the big bad but I’m imagining him more as a concept than a supervillain. Like special Nazi science task force is plotting big trap/attack on Bucky’s battalion and Steve has to hassles some higher ups to get the general to back out of the trap. He can have a big speech about patriotism and what war is really like and how the general leading the charge can’t just send people to die senselessly or else there just as bad as the Nazies. But then like 1917 the first wave could have already gone out Bucky leading the charge. Maybe Steve rushes onto the battle field and finds him wounded but still fighting. I’m envisioning Bucky then saves Steve’s life somehow or other and ends up falling wounded off a bridge, rather than the train. Into a River already littered with corpses. Also imagine Bucky’s arm wasn’t a clean cut, what if hydra found him half alive on the shores of the river with his arm hopelessly broken and infected and have to amputate it. That would be so much more gritty and realistic for 40s era war medicine. At Bucky’s “death” Steve rushes behind enemy lines and confronts the red skull himself, being not only a metaphor for evil men with too much power but also a physical embodiment of the overindulgence in war. A man who takes pleasure in sending others to die for his gain and is thus a monster and also a true Nazi. But anyway the red skull reveals the trap was to test a new hydra super weapon. Now this is the tricky part because there’s no plane and no ice. But I’m thinking maybe something about the tesseract and the super weapons freeze Steve after he subsequently destroys them and can’t escape in time. Maybe he has a last radio call back to the general who didn’t listen to him and Steve, blaming him for Bucky’s death, basically tells him to fuck off before presumably to the rest of the world, dying in the hydra explosion. In the aftermath allied troops realize just how dangerous hydra was boosting Captain America to legendary status for saving the world from such a dangerous weapon.

Idk I just love this idea I know I just rewrote the movie but I honestly really wish I could’ve seen my version.

#Captain America #marvel #captain america the first avenger #rewrite #1917 #war movies #Captain America fanfic

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lochrannn · 3 years

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@pepperf and I challanged each other to three Whumptober fics. Here’s my first contribution

No. 1 - ALL TRUSSED UP AND STILL NOWHERE TO GO “You have to let go” | barbed wire | bound

Warnings: Canon-typical Violence

Tags: Hurt/Comfort; Canon-Typical Violence; Injury; Implied/Referenced Torture

Relationshipts: Diego Hargreeves/Lila Pitts; Diego Hargreeves/Hargreeves Siblings

Characters: Diego Hargreeves; Lila Pitts; Five Hargreeves; Allison Hargreeve; Klaus Hargreeves; Hargreeves Siblings

Summary: Stuck in an unfamiliar 2019 the Hargreeves have struck an uneasy truce with Reginald and his Sparrows until Diego and Five are summond to the academy to identify an intruder who was captured by their father while looking for them.

They’ve struck an uneasy truce with Reginald and the Sparrows.

It’s caused no small amount of strain amongst the siblings. Fuck, Diego can’t say he’s in anyway pleased about it himself, he was probably the one who argued the hardest against it, but it’s not like he can’t understand Five’s logical pragmatism either.

There is no immediate benefit and only very real danger to fully antagonizing the most powerful group of people in a place where the original six Hargreeves siblings (Diego is confused himself sometimes about how to refer to all of them) have no resources, no allies, and no history to speak of.

They already had a scuffle with the Sparrows when they first arrived, and maybe if they hadn’t been exhausted and confused and completely overwhelmed to see not-Ben in the Sparrow academy uniform they might have had even a sliver of a chance. But as it stood then, they were very quickly overpowered and the only thing that saved them was Five’s ability to compartmentalize.

Somehow Five convinced Reginald to let them leave the mansion. Whether their father genuinely doesn’t think they are a real threat to his world and his timeline is entirely unclear, but Diego and his siblings know that they have been free to move about the city and stay at a motel on the outskirts only because Hargreeves is letting them. If and when he decides that he can’t risk leaving them alone any longer, they will be in real trouble.

They are all sat around the bedroom Allison is sharing with Vanya, arguing over how to continue, Five firm on his stance that his siblings need to sit on their asses until he is done calculating how he can bring them back to their original timeline (nobody wants to say out loud what they all know to be the silent continuation of that phrase - if it even still exists), while Diego thinks Five can juggle his silly little numbers, but in the meantime they should try and establish just exactly how dangerou the Sparrows are and if they should actually take the opportunity they’ve been given to protect the city from their father’s twisted sense of justice.

Allison, unsurprisingly, is with Five, and considering that she has lost the most in their original timeline, Diego can’t actually blame her for it.

To his utter surprise, he thinks Luther might actually be coming around to his point of view. Vanya is trying to find a compromise and though Diego has started appreciating her need for harmony, right now he really wishes she would stay the fuck out of it.

Klaus is sitting by the cracked window, intermittently taking drags of his cigarette and watching the discussion, but clearly uninterested in taking part.

Some part of Diego is worried about him, but he neither knows how to approach Klaus about how he’s feeling, nor does he think he has the time to stop and deal with his brother’s grief. It can wait till later, he tells himself.

“... you imbecile!” Five is shouting at Diego, the two of them squaring off in the middle of the room, Five’s lack of height doing nothing to make him any less ferocious, “If we draw dad’s attention like that he might figure out that we’re trying to restore our own timeline. And I might not know the old man that well, but he’s not an idiot. He wouldn’t risk the possibility that us trying to restore our own timeline could destroy his. He might not have killed us yet, but I have no doubt he will if he thinks we might bring about the end of his world.”

That stops Diego for a moment, he hasn’t thought of the fact that that could be a genuine risk. He doesn’t know how to feel about that, but he catches a glimpse of Allison out of the corner of his eye, the way her eyes are big and bright, her lips pursed, and her arms are crossed so tightly it almost looks like she’s physically trying to hold herself together, and he decides that that is another thing to think about at a later stage, or hopefully never.

Diego is just about to respond to Five when there is a knock outside.

It’s not particularly loud, but it isn’t gentle either and they all freeze and stare at the door.

Then there is a flurry of hand signals going around and it doesn’t seem like they are really communicating anything through them, except that nobody is quite certain what the best course of action is, and in the end Allison, who is the closest to the door, rolls her eyes, untangles herself, and turns around to open the door a crack.

Diego can’t see who it is but he can tell by the way Allison tenses and squares her shoulders, that it’s not a welcome guest. It would have been highly unlikely anyway, it’s not like they know anybody good in this place.

“What do you want?” Allison says. Her tone is cold and razor sharp. She doesn’t need the Rumor to be commanding even when asking a question.

“My father would like to talk to your brothers,” a man’s raspy voice responds.

“Yeah, well, why didn’t your father come here to talk to them, then?” Allison doesn’t budge an inch and continues blocking the door with a foot behind it so it can’t just be shoved open.

“My father is a very busy man, Allison, he doesn’t have the time to trudge all the way out here,” the man on the other side of the door responds, clearly one of the Sparrows, and Diego can see Allison's knuckles go white where she has her hand on the doorframe at the casual use of her name.

“We’re a little busy, too, right now, so if Hargreeves wants to talk to any of us…” Allison begins but then Five interrupts her and calls out from where he’s stood next to Diego in the middle of the room, “Who does he want to talk to?”

There’s a beat in which Allison starts fidgeting by the door, clearly as enraged with her brother now as with the man standing outside the motel room. Then she pushes the door open far enough to reveal a man that Diego recognizes as the Sparrow with the scarred up face, but Allison doesn’t let go of the door, making sure to signal that he is not coming in, even if she’s letting him talk to the rest of the Hargreeves.

“You,” the man says in an even voice, pointing at Five, then shifting his finger just a little to point at Diego next, “and him.”

They are greeted in the entrance hall of the Sparrow Academy by a Pogo that looks like the butler/teacher/guardian they grew up with but who has only the slightest hint of recognition in his eyes when he looks at Five, but none whatsoever when he looks at Diego.

He takes them to the elevator that they were never allowed to go near when they were children and presses a combination of buttons that makes the contraption descend.

When they stop and Pogo opens the grate, Diego realizes that at least they haven’t arrived at the floor with an anechoic chamber at the end, but it doesn’t make him feel any less nervous about being in the Academy’s basement. They have nowhere to run.

And the way their father is standing halfway down the hall shrouded in darkened shadows certainly also doesn’t help. On the contrary, it makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

“At last you’re here,” Reginald says, his voice not particularly loud, but it echoes off the empty walls and is dripping with sarcasm, “I haven’t got all day. Pogo, tell Number Four that I expect him to bring our honoured guests here in the fastest fashion possible, if I ever ask him to retrieve someone again.”

Diego and Five give each other a look and clearly silently agree that apparently they're expected to follow Hargreeves when their not-quite father turns on his heels and starts marching down the hall, Pogo bringing up the rear.

“We have had an intrusion into the Academy last night. But fear not, with only a very small amount of difficulty, we were able to subdue and capture this interloper. However, though we applied our most thorough interrogation methods, we haven’t yet been able to establish her identity,” Reginald declares grandly and Diego feels his blood run cold in horror.

“That being said,” Hargreeves continues, voice still clipped and impassive as he opens a heavy metal door and ushers in Five, Diego, and Pogo, “Before she started putting up a fight, she seemed to be under the impression she might find you here!”

Hargreeves is looking at him expectantly, but Diego is taking no notice of him, because they have walked into a cold, tiled room, with very sparse furniture, at the center of which is a large metal chair.

Handcuffed to the chair’s arms is Lila, looking badly beaten up and possibly unconscious, head lolling on her chest, and Diego can see a white piece of cloth tied as a gag around the back of her head that’s highlighting even more how messy her hair looks.

Diego sees red and three things happen at once.

He wants to call out to her and go to her and get her out of here, but all he manages is to stammer, “Luh-” before the word gets stuck in his throat and as he takes a step towards her, all of a sudden, everything stops.

Irrationally, Diego has the sudden burning urge to suck in a breath, despite the fact that he doesn’t actually need to and also he realizes that even though it feels like even the air around him has gone completely still, he has no actual trouble breathing.

And then he feels the hand grabbing his wrist and when he looks down at it, he sees that Five is holding on to him with fingers that are glowing blue and an expression on his face that is split between concentrated, enraged, and in pain.

“What the fuck?” Diego says, staring around them at the way everything suddenly seems like it’s two dimensional, the complete and utter lack of any movement flattening the world around him weirdly.

“I know you are about to do something really fucking stupid, Diego, but I need you to stop and think for a second,” Five says. He sounds a little out of breath and strained.

“Have you stopped time?” Diego almost shouts, incredulous.

“Yes, but I won’t be able to hold onto this for very long so I need you to understand that there’s nothing we can do to help her right now!”

Five almost tips forward at the force with which Diego pulls his arm free from his grip. He’d like to punch the little twerp for saying something so aggravating, but he already looks like he’s standing on shaky legs, so Diego balls his hands into fists in frustration and stares his oldest brother down.

“Don’t be so dramatic, idiot! We’ll come back for her, okay? But for now, we can’t let dad know that we know who she is or give him any information about her. What do you think he’s going to do if he finds out about the Commission? It’s too dangerous for us. And I presume for Lila, too. So, Diego, I need you to let this go!”

Five barely finishes his sentence when everything starts up again.

It feels like a tidal wave crashes in on him as air begins flowing around him again and low humming noises that he would not have noticed before assault his senses.

His father is saying something but Diego can’t hear what it is because Lila, apparently not unconscious, lifts her head and looks right at him.

Diego’s chest feels like someone has cracked it open and his heart has fallen out.

There are spots of red on the gag in her mouth, and dried blood is running from the corner of her mouth down her chin. Her lip is split but that’s not where the blood is coming from, and the top of one of her cheekbones is bruised red and purple and looks slightly swollen.

He doesn’t quite know how he sees it, because he can’t actually tear his eyes away from hers, but he registers that her knuckles are bloodied and bruised and he can guess that the rest of her body is no better but it’s covered in a long sleeved black top and matching pants. Her feet are bare, though.

Even if he wanted to ignore Five’s instructions, he’s not sure he could make his limbs move to go towards her, rooted to the spot by the intensity of Lila’s eyes on him, as she struggles against the cuffs holding her arms and legs to the chair. Her shouts and screams are muffled by the gag, but Diego still thinks he can hear her calling his name, begging him to help her.

He feels sick.

He is staring at Lila and is willing her to use Five’s powers to teleport out of there. He doesn’t even care if she disappears again, as long as she gets away from these ruthless so-called superheroes and his dangerous father. Diego realizes at that moment that some part of him never actually expected to see her again. He thinks he could live with her disappearing for good this time, if only it means that she’s no longer here, in his psychopathic father’s torture chamber, getting interrogated because she made the mistake to come after him.

“She was quite the handful,” Reginald explains, “it seems she has powers of her own. But I have injected her with a mild sedative of my own design that will continue to suppress her powers until we have decided what to do with her.”

Diego’s eyes flit from his father back to Lila and he can feel his heart simultaneously hammering in his throat and the pit of his stomach. His ears are ringing. And once again he is unable to protect someone who is so important to him, like Eudora, like Mom, and in that moment he can feel his eyes stinging with tears that he has to hold back if they don’t want to tip their father off.

“Well, can’t say I’ve seen this woman before, I wouldn’t know why she was asking for us,” Five says, his tone so casual that Diego would almost believe him if he didn’t know it was a complete lie.

“Diego?” Five turns to him, one eyebrow quirked up in question.

His tongue is sticking to the roof of his mouth and his throat is seizing up completely. And all he can do is watch Lila struggling, stare her down, and try as best as he can to communicate to her that this is not real, that they will come back for her, that he made her a promise of family and that they won’t leave her behind.

“Apparently he doesn’t know who she is either.” Five has gotten impatient next to him, waves a hand in what seems to be half a shrug and also half a non-verbal see? and turns back to Reginald.

“If that’s all, I think we’d best be getting back to our siblings. You understand, we’re still reeling a little from arriving in this very unrecognizable time.”

Five doesn’t wait for an answer, instead he turns around towards the door, grabs Diego by the elbow and the last thing he sees as he’s dragged out towards the elevator by his much smaller brother, is Lila beginning to struggle frantically and his father’s very skeptical look.

For some incomprehensible reason they aren’t stopped from leaving the mansion and they only get to round the first corner before Diego doubles over, hands on his knees, and dry heaves into the gutter.

Five wants them to wait another day before they go back to the academy to grab Lila as he expects the Sparrows to be on high alert after their visit today, but Diego explains in no uncertain terms that he is going back tonight, with or without his siblings’ help, and even Allison backs him up when she hears about the obvious signs of torture.

The plan is that Diego, Allison, and Five, the best trained at stealth combat out of all of them, go to the mansion, while Luther, Klaus, and Vanya cause a distraction in a different part of the city, hoping to create at least a small window where some or all of the Sparrows are out of the house.

That actually works significantly better than any of them could have expected. Or Reginald knows they’re coming and doesn’t care, and right now, neither does Diego, because for some reason Five blinks into the mansion and only a minute later blinks back out into the alley that they are hiding in, just about able to support a very unconscious Lila for long enough to set her halfway gently down onto the dirty ground.

Diego is by their side in a flash, hands nervously hovering over her body, eventually deciding on supporting her head and stroking the hair out of her slack face.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! What did he do to her?” he’s whispering frantically, not actually expecting an answer, but Five pipes up and says, “Oh yeah, that was me.”

Diego freezes and then slowly turns to look up at his brother, thinking he must have misheard.

“What’d you say?” he asks, deliberately making his question sound as threatening as possible, though Allison’s hand that lands heavily on his shoulder does take a little bit of the wind out of his sails.

“Diego, we have no idea why she came here. For all we know she came to finish the job and kill us all -” Diego opens his mouth to protest, but Five just holds up a hand and maybe because Allison squeezes hers on his shoulder, half in warning and half in support, he lets Five finish.

“I just want to make sure we know what we're dealing with and that we’re properly prepared for whatever that might be.”

Diego can actually see the logic in that, it’s not like he hasn’t got good reasons to distrust Lila, but it still doesn’t sit right with him, not after the promise they all made.

So he huffs in annoyance as he snakes his arms under her knees and shoulders and lifts her up easily, maneuvering her until her head is lying against his shoulder, gentle breath tickling his neck, and he is struck by how quickly he’s forgotten how small and skinny she really is with how energetic and forceful she is when awake.

Diego thinks he doesn’t ever want to see her this vulnerable again, but nevertheless the feel of her body against his is an instant comfort for his nerves that have been pulled taut since he first laid eyes on her this afternoon.

Diego is livid with his siblings as he paces the tiny floor space in the motel room.

It’s just him and Klaus and Lila, still unconscious, lying on the bed, both wrists cuffed to the frame.

Five’s idea again. All of the siblings whose powers Lila could use to escape have taken their leave while Klaus has been left in charge of the key to the cuffs, because Diego can apparently not be trusted with them. And Five seems to believe Diego wouldn’t go through Klaus to get to them.

He’s thinking for probably the thirtieth time in about as many minutes that he might just like to prove Five wrong on that one, when Lila begins to stir and mumble incoherently.

Klaus, who’s been doing an impressive job of ignoring Diego’s hyperactive fury, stubs out his cigarette and glides over to the foot of the bed where Diego is standing, frozen to the spot, watching Lila come around.

“You fucker!” she says, finally, when she’s managed to pull herself half upright against the headboard where the cuffs are also attached to the decorative cut-outs in the wood.

Diego stares at her, now completely incapable of saying anything.

“You left me to rot in that fucking torture chamber!” she shouts at him then, thrusting her torso forwards as far as she can go to put more force behind her accusation.

That jolts Diego into action and he tries to rush out an explanation when Klaus just talks over him, and Diego is really beginning to resent that, but his brother seems completely unbothered.

“Are you here to murder us, missy?” Klaus asks in the voice of a not particularly strict school matron.

“I fucking might, now! All that talk about family and then you abandon me to those psychopaths! I know you have daddy issues, but I didn’t know you have no fucking spine when it comes to that monster!” She's jangling the cuffs aggressively and Diego’s stomach twists, both at her words but also at how the cold metal is digging into the already reddened skin at her wrists.

“So you’re not here to kill us?” Klaus tries again and it’s almost like he’s cut Lila’s strings with his perfectly even, practically friendly question.

She falls back against the headboard, turns her head away from them, deflated, and says quietly, “no.”

“You wanna hurt any of us?” Klaus adds.

“Yeah, I really do, but I won’t,” Lila grumbles off to the side, clearly more drained than she first let on.

“Wunderbar!” Klaus exclaims and then tosses the key to the handcuffs up in the air and when Diego manages to catch them, only fumbling a little, because this is not what he expected, Klaus is already halfway to the door.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” he shouts over his shoulder as he leaves and slams the door shut behind him and after all of his angry and frantic struggle to get Lila back to their motel and have her wake up, Diego wishes Klaus hadn’t left.

Because, what’s he supposed to do now?

He’s given a clue when Lila shifts, doesn’t look at him, but the motion makes her cuffs clatter against the bed and Diego decides that whatever else he needs to do, the first thing is to let her out of the handcuffs.

He makes his way around the bed, sits down on the edge and leans over her to unlock the cuffs.

Lila doesn’t look at him, just pulls her arms back down now that she has her full motion and cradles her hands against her chest protectively.

Diego notices that her eyes are shining but she’s not blinking very much, probably holding back tears and now he knows even less what he’s supposed to say.

On instinct he thinks that if he can’t talk about things, maybe there’s at least something more immediate he can fix and he gently pulls her hands away from her to inspect her wrists.

Lila lets him, but still doesn’t really acknowledge him.

The skin there is reddened but doesn’t look raw, so Diego rubs it carefully with his thumbs and when Lila flinches he sets her hands into her lap, just glad that she’s not quite so curled up into herself anymore.

He takes a look at her face, they haven’t yet taken care of the cuts and bruising on her cheek and lip. There’s even still the line of dried blood down the side of her mouth.

Momentarily grateful that that gives him something to do, Diego gets up and swiftly makes his way to the small bathroom. He picks up one of the fresh white towels and runs it under lukewarm water and then grabs their meager first aid supplies on his way back into the room.

When he comes back in, Lila is busy cleaning dirt - probably dried blood - out from under her fingernails, but she looks up at him and while it had bothered him before that she was avoiding his eyes, he now feels like the skin on his entire body is heating up as she won’t look away.

Diego sits back down on the side of the bed and half expects her to take the wetted towel and scrub her face with it herself, but instead she is just waiting, chin tilted up a tiny bit, as if in challenge.

Never one to back down, he nods, not quite sure what he’s agreeing with, and lifts the towel up to her face to gingerly wipe the dried blood off.

“You just left me there!” she says coldly and Diego lets his hand drop again.

“We didn’t have a choice...” That sounds like a feeble excuse even to his own ears and Diego drops his head with a sigh.

“Was that some kind of fucked up retaliation for when I left at the barn?” Lila shoots back immediately, sounding far more angry than before.

“What? No!” Diego’s head snaps up to look at her. She’s baring her teeth furiously, the slight pink blotches from where he wasn’t able to properly clean the blood off her face making her look almost wild, but her eyes are shining brightly again and Diego suddenly feels a lump forming in his throat.

“No, Lila! We couldn’t risk my dad finding out about the Commission, if he thought he could have gotten that kind of information out of you, I can’t think about what he might have done! But I didn’t want to leave you there like that, I swear. I was going to help you! I tried to, but Five stopped me!” He’s desperate to get her to understand that the last thing he wanted to do was abandon her after everything she’s been through.

“Well that would have been pretty stupid!”

Lila’s interjection completely stops him in his tracks and Diego can’t help but stare at her a little dumbfounded.

“What?” he says, looking her dead in the eye, her expression a mixture of annoyance and exasperation, but also softer than before.

“Your idiot hero complex could have fucked us all over, huh?” she adds, and Diego is just about to argue when his protest dies away in his throat as Lila moves to tuck a strand of his hair behind his ear and then leaves her hand at the side of his face.

All the tension Diego’s been holding since he first saw Lila tied to that chair, or possibly even earlier, possibly since he saw her disappear out of Sissy’s barn, seeps out of him and he leans heavily against her hand, eyes closing with how drained he suddenly feels.

“You came back for me,” Lila says and Diego doesn’t know how to respond to that other than to cover her hand with his own.

He feels the mattress shift and then without warning her lips press against his and he makes a strangled, involuntary noise at the back of his throat as the intensity of the relief he feels then, for Lila being safe, for her being back with him, is almost painful.

Diego wraps his arms around her and pulls her against himself, deepening their kiss carefully, not wanting to be too forceful considering her injured state, but Lila presses into him hungrily, so Diego tightens his grip on her and very much plans to never let go again.

#otp: just be gentle #lila pitts #diego hargreeves #dielila #diego x lila #diego/lila #tua #the umbrella academy #five hargreeves #allison hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #fanfic #oneshot #whumptober 2021

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ryleighflynnagin · 3 years

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The Hospital

You can hear the children laughing can’t you? You can always hear them. But God have mercy on your soul if you see them. With eyes black as the night they say. Course no one know for sure. For anyone who has ever seen them is said to never return. That was the rumor, anyway But there was one.

One night I had gotten a call about a disturbance in the old hospital. That place was locked up, but kids was always tryin to test their bravery on who could last the longest by themselves. This night was no different. I went down there expectin to see the usual teenagers, vandizin, and drinkin. Couldn’t blame them too much though. There was nothin in this town. Nothin worth stayin for.

There were two kinds of people in this town. The people that were born here, and the ones that got left.

I walked up to the front door and saw the chain had been cut. Yeah, it was those damn kids I had thought. I keep tryin to steer them away from here. Not because of the vandlism. No, I didn’t mind that. Kept me busy in this boring town. No, this was more for them. There was evil in this place. I could feel it.

As I pushed my way in through the front door of the hospital I shined my light. I could see the crude paintings and writing on the walls left by the local graffiti artists. Some were weird zigzag looking things. I think they was supposed to spelled out a name, but I was never too good at readin ‘em. Some were devotin their love to a high school crush. Some were just of...well...ya know, teenagers have a weird sense of humor with body parts. But there were a few black drawings on the wall that left chills down my spine. Satanic stuff. Like pentagram stuff, and upside down crosses. Yeah we got those kinda folks ‘round here too. They just don’t know what they’s getting themselves into messin with that kind of stuff. Though I don’t believe that’s what brought this evil to this place. No, this place has been haunted long ago. Before I was even born actually.

To tell you the truth no one even really remembers when it started. Just that one day this hospital was full of people, and then one day they just wasn’t. It was a hospital that had a pediatric wing all on it’s own. One of the first in the area of it’s kind. Having a place that helps just the youngins was kinda rare for it’s time in all. Then one day, it was as if everyone just suddenly left. No reason, just got up, stopped what they was doin and left. I couldn’t even find any reports on the place when it was abandoned.

I shined my flashlight all around lookin to see if anyone was around. I didn’t hear anyone, and I had called out to let them know police was here. No one answered. If there was any kids, they prolly done scurried off, or kept quiet. I didn’t want to be in there any longer. The place just gives me the willies. I went to turn back to the door, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw somethin scurry. I shined my light where I had seen it, but just some rustled papers floated to the floor. I told myself it was some kinda rodent.

And then I heard it.

That laugh. That twisted evil child laugh. A chill crawled it’s way down my spine like a spider. I needed to get out. I called out to any kids that might be playin some kinda trick on me that I’ll be leavin and they best be leavin too if they knew what was good for them.

I went for the door and noticed it was shut. I don’t remember shuttin the door when I came in. I pushed and pulled on it, and heard somethin clankin on the outside. It was the chains. Those damn kids. I don’t know how they had done it without me noticin, but they manage to lock me in here without me knowin’. Least that’s what I told myself.

I needed to find another way. I heard it again.

I start lookin all around flippin my light back and forth tryin to find another exit. I found a door to the left. I walked over to it findin that it only lead to the basement.

No sir. I’ve seen enough of them horror stories to know, you never go down to the basement, and you never go up the stairs further away from an exit. Stupid, who writes those dumb stories anyway. I mean if they think running to the attic is gonna give them a chance of getting away from the monster, then all they do is end up screamin for help out a winder….sorry. Got off track. Where was I?

Oh yeah...That horrible bone chillin laugh that echoed off those stone walls. To any unsuspecting person, it would just sound like a child playin. But this, somethin about it, just...I don’t know how to describe it. Just evil. Somethin truly...evil.

I saw a broken winder and decided that was my exit. I cut my hand pretty good on the way out and took out my hankercheif. I wrapped my hand as I start my walk back to my patrol car when I notice I was fenced in.

Now I’ve driven all ‘round the property. All three hundred and sixty degrees and not once never did I see a chain link fence in the back of the hospital. I look up to see if I can climb up, but there some barbed wire all across the top.

Damn it. I need to get out of here.

I run along the fence to see if there is an open gate, or atleast a hole large enough for me to fit through. Nothin. There is not even a gate to come in and out. My only way out is through that hospital. But how? The door was chained shut. I look back at the building and notice something else strange. There’s no door back into the hospital. There is no door, to a fenced in area, which also has no entrance or exit.

What is with this place? What did they keep out here? And how did they get it out here?

I shine my light on the ground. I noticed that there was patches of dead grass. Well...not really patches really. More like, lines. Lines of dead grass that criss-crossed to each other. I walked all around shinin my light and saw that they connected at five points in a circle. Oh my God. It hit me. I was standin on a giant fenced in pentagram.

I found what I thought was the winder I climbed out of, and crawled my way back in not caring about the broken glass. As I climbed in I heard that sound again. Only this time it sounded like it was right next to me. I shined my light in the direction I heard the sound, but there was nothin there. I heard it again behind me and wiped around, but again there was nothin there. I ran to the front door prayin for it to open. I pushed all my body weight into the door but it only pushed my back from it bein chanined together. I look for a broken winder to the front of the building but none of them seem broken. I took a chair from the recieption desk and tried to break a winder, but I’ll be damned it would not bust. No matter how hard I hit that winder. There had to be another way out.

That was when I saw it. Well I saw the reflection. But there was no doubt what it was. A little girl with pink ribbons in her hair wearin a hospital gown. Her eyes were black. I was fixed on her gaze. She smiled at first, but then she opened her mouth and this awful black stuff came pourin out of her mouth. I heard a scream that damn near made me go deaf. I wiped around with my light, but just as soon as I did, the screamin stopped and there was no little girl.

Some’a y’all might be wonderin why I never pulled my gun out. Well, there no point tryin kill whats already dead. I didn’t know exactly what was in that place, but I knew nothin live was in there other than me. And nothin good neither.

I tried bustin the winder again. Hell I did try shootin at the damn thing. Nothin would bust that glass. I tried bustin all the winders all the ones that would lead me out to my freedom. Nothin. The only way out was out the back. But how?

I headed back out to the fenced in area. I shined my light all around tryin ta figure out my options. I noticed somethin that hadn’t been there before. I don’t if it was just put there, or if it was there all along and I hadin’t noticed. But I found a shovel.

I know that seems pretty insignificant to some of y’all, but to me an idea started to form. If I couldn’t climb my way out, I was gonna have to dig my way out. So that’s what I done. I started diggin as fast as I could.

It didn’t need to be a big ol hole. I’m not your stereo typical cop. But I’m stronger than I look, haha.

Anyway, I musta disturbed somethin when I was bout half way through diggin, cause that’s when I heard somethin just a rumblin and creekin. The ground shook, and I heard slammin of shutters and doors in the hospital. I took a peek behind me to see what was goin on, but I instantly regretted it.

The walls were drippin’ with this black oily stuff, and there was this fiery red light emanatin’ from inside. I heard a voice in my head to keep diggin’ And that’s what I did. I kept diggin.

Once I thought the hole was big enough to crawl through I threw the shovel down and got down on my bellly and wriggled under the fence as quick as I could. Something grabbed me though. I couldn’t turn around to see what it was, but it was mad. Mad as a crazed bull I would say. I kept tryin ta pull me back but I fought. I fought tooth and nail for my life that night.

As I tell this story to you now, it’s pretty obvious that I got away. I don’t know what happened, or how, but whatever had ahold of me that night, just let go of me, just like that. I don’t what it was, nor did I care. I didn’t have the ability to look back, and even if I did, I don’t think I woulda wanted to. All I know is that once I crawled my way outta that darn hole I just ran. I ran faster than I ever thought possible.

Whatever was in that place was even more angry I got away, cause when I was runnin, I heard the most demonic and terrifyin’ scream I had ever heard. But I never looked back for fear it might have the chance to drag me back in.

I reached my patrol car and jumped in, slammed the door shut, and peeled outta there like I was one of them dukes of hazard boys.

I never told no one till now. Figured no one would believe me. But, now, I don’t care if ya believe me or not. As God as my witness, everything I’m tellin is the honest truth.

If you feel like visitin that place, it’s still there. I don’t recommend it though. You’ll have to find a way around the fifty foot tall fence I had built after that incident. Good luck, I’m sure if someone wanted in bad enough, they’ll find a way. They always do.

#short story #horror #ghost stories #creative writing

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Why Amazon Prime’s Invincible Had to Be Animated

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Invincible comic writer Robert Kirkman has a gentlemanly agreement with Steven Yeun, who appeared in The Walking Dead for six seasons and now stars as the adapted Invincible’s titular hero.

“Steven and I have a rule that there’s no more popping his eyeballs out. I can live with that – once is enough,” Kirkman tells Den of Geek and other outlets during the series’ press day.

Kirkman’s imagination is as violent as it is vast. Yeun’s character Glenn Rhee on AMC’s The Walking Dead (based on the Kirkman comic of the same name) was a notable unfortunate recipient of that bloodlust when he was beaten to death with a barbed wire baseball bat in the show’s seventh season.

Now Yeun is providing his voice to Mark Grayson a.k.a. Invincible – the super-powered high schooler at the center of Amazon Prime’s adaptation of Kirkman’s comic. Steven (and Mark’s) eyeballs are safe for now…but very few other body parts are in this sprawling superhero tale.

Invincible first premiered in a preview as part of Image Comics’ Savage Dragon #102, more than a full year before Kirkman’s black and white zombie blockbuster The Walking Dead debuted. The character graduated to his own regular series in 2003, first illustrated by Cory Walker, and then by the prolific Ryan Ottley. The story of Mark Grayson ran, uninterrupted and with very few side arcs, for 15 years before concluding with issue #144 in 2018.

The appeal of Invincible can be hard to describe. At first glance, it’s a very conventional comic book story. Mark is the son of Nolan Grayson a.k.a. Omni-Man, an alien from the planet Viltrum and now Earth’s most powerful superhero (of which there are many). The series begins with Mark eagerly anticipating the arrival of his own superpowers and then embarking on an adventure of super self discovery, alongside a host of heroic allies and terrifying villains.

What sets Invincible apart, however, is its dedication to realistic storytelling. Mark is a very likeable, yet believably flawed young man.Kirkman’s sprawling 144-issue narrative meticulously follows Mark’s maturation and the ethical questions raised by a universe fit-to-bursting with invulnerable ubermensches.

There’s also the violence…oh the sweet, sweet violence. Ryan Ottley’s art in Invincible has a deep, abiding respect for the physics of super powers. Though the images may be colorful, the action depicted within them are shocking in their brutality. Nary does a bone go uncrunched or an intestine un-ripped out in Kirkman and Ottley’s hyper visceral world.

Naturally, Invincible was always a hot target for adaptation, particularly after AMC hit Kirkman zombie paydirt with The Walking Dead. But how exactly could any TV series fully capture the deliriously gory detail of Ottley’s art? The answer as it turns out is to just go ahead and adapt the art too.

Amazon Prime’s Invincible, the first season of which will be eight episodes, features animation from Wind Sun Sky Entertainment and Kirkman’s own Skybound. Kirkman himself is on board as a producer, alongside David Alpert, Catherine Winder, and Simon Racioppa (who serves as showrunner). The end result is an animation style that hews closely to the comic’s original art and often seems like Ottley’s illustrations in motion.

“The action is a little bit more brutal when things are moving. I think it’s going to serve to heighten things in the series,” Kirkman says.

While heightening the violent rhythms of Invincible seems like a wild proposition, the show’s star agrees that the animation does just that.

“You can go to places that live-action probably isn’t able to go to, even now,” Yeun tells Den of Geek and other outlets. “(Animation) creates a nice separation so that you can examine what the show might be saying without one-to-one comparison. Like that’s an actual arm being ripped off, but it’s a cartoon arm being ripped off. There’s just something different about that.”

Both Yeun and J.K. Simmons, who plays Nolan, note that the show’s kinetic sequences provide interesting voice acting challenges.

“What’s really fun is going back over in ADR and tracing back over these action sequences and these emotional moments. A lot of this show lives in those emotional moments that aren’t necessarily mixed in with dialogue, where a breath or a subtle way of gurgling blood in your mouth and trying to breath is its own kind of emotionality,” Yeun says.

“ADR is usually just ‘make this grunt.’ But because of the intensity of the violence and the stakes and the repercussions, it did feel much more emotionally connected doing the fight sequences,” Simmons adds.

The show’s animation style isn’t all about merely capturing the grunts and gurglings of blood, however. While Mark Grayson’s story begins relatively small, it eventually blossoms into an enormous superhero universe containing countless people, monsters, and worlds. Even in our era of technical sophistication where just about anything seems possible on television, Invincible is a hard sell as live-action.

According to Kirkman, animation was the only way to properly tell this story.

“The main benefit is that we’re going to be able to provide the audience with a scope and scale, more akin to a $200 million blockbuster movie than what you usually get from your average superhero television show,” Kirkman says. “Drawing an army of a thousand people is a little bit easier than hiring a thousand people and putting costumes on them and things like that. If we want to have three different alien invasions in the same episode, we can.”

Invincible Review (Spoiler-Free)

By Bernard Boo

Kirkman knows the limits of live-action television as well as anyone. Though The Walking Dead remains an enormous success for AMC, it has experienced quite a bit of casting turnover throughout the years with only Norman Reedus’s Daryl Dixon and Melissa McBride’s Carol Peletier remaining of the season 1 main cast in the show’s 11 seasons. Requesting that actors endure grueling television shooting schedules in the humid Atlanta summers for an undetermined number of years is a big ask as it turns out.

If depicted in live-action, the commitments of actors’ times and bodies would be even more brutal for the Invincible cast. And the cast of Invincible is set to be huge. The first season alone will star: Yeun as Mark Grayson, Simmons as Nolan Grayson, Sandra Oh as Debbie Grayson, Seth Rogen as Allen the Alien, Gillian Jacobs as Atom Eve, Andrew Rannells as William Clockwell, Zazie Beetz as Amber Bennett, Walton Goggins as Cecil Stedman, Jason Mantzoukas as Rex Splode, Zachary Quinto as Robot, and many, many more. (Check out the full list over here).

And that’s before the story begins to expand with more heroes and villains in later issues/seasons. The relatively smaller time commitments of voiceover acting in animation allows Kirkman and the series writers to keep the cast as large as needed, though Simmons notes that he, Yeun, and Oh all still get to act together in-studio.

Kirkman says the show is able to delve deeper into certain characters than the comics did, with figures like G-man Cecil Stedman and the Rorschach-esque Damian Darkblood getting more screen time.

“These are characters that I should know intimately, but getting to work with these actors and getting to hear these voices and how these performances come together, it’s like I’m meeting these characters again for the first time and the absolute best way,” Kirkman says. “I’m seeing new aspects to them that didn’t really exist before. It’s really making me more excited about moving forward with this show for many seasons with this cast.”

Yes, Kirkman and the rest of the Invincible cast already have “many seasons” in mind for the show. Whether those seasons will come to pass are up to Amazon and its subscribers. But it seems clear that animation was the right choice for the story’s scope was television was the right choice for its length.

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The first three episodes of Invincible will premiere Friday, March 26 on Amazon Prime.

The post Why Amazon Prime’s Invincible Had to Be Animated appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3lItwd9

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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whumpqin · 4 years

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Here we are, the next chapter!! I honestly.... can’t wait to get into this story more it’s... gonna be a fun ride :)

Masterlist

Taglist: @faewhump @imagination1reality0 @galaxywhump @castielamigos-whump-side-blog @insanitywishes @spiffythespook (if you want on the taglist, just let me know!)

CW: Fantasy whump pet whump, referenced sensory deprivation, food, starvation used as a form of conditioning, conditioning, brainwashing, collars, leashes, self victim blaming, memory loss, being mean to people with stutters, tied to a table (thanks Jeremiah), abusive language, mentioned fingore, blink and you’ll miss it animal abuse, near escape attempt, barbed wire mention

Word count: 5,457

With time, the basement only got darker. Even with his Cambion night vision, a boon he was quite thankful for in fact, it never chased the looming bits that always stuck to the corners. It couldn’t rinse the wish for tomorrow, so that he might be let out of the basement for even just a few minutes like they had promised him.

It had been over a year and a half since Elisha had won the game they presented to him and had finally been let out on ‘walks’, as they put it. Now, he clung to the faint light that peeked from the basement trap door like it was his only hope. In some cases, it actually was.

In truth, a year and a half didn’t seem long enough to Elisha. It felt like it was shorter, but also longer at the same time. A year and a half just didn’t sit right with him, but Aridai had let it slip recently at some point, and he wasn’t about to question his Master. Instead, he allowed the words to hang in the air, constantly reminding him how long it had taken for them to finally trust that he was capable of being good. Elisha often found himself wondering how long it took the other people that Aridai had kidnapped to learn how to be good.

Even though he wasn’t one to question, it was all he could really do in an empty space like this, that is, if he didn’t want to acknowledge the damned shadows, which always felt like they were creeping around somehow. Elisha forced his mind to wander away from the thoughts, allowing himself to unravel the longer they left him be.

Most of the time, he simply stared up at the basement door, waiting for his Masters to come back.

Elisha was beginning to grow dependent on his captors, their very presence a source of comfort in spite of his attempts to believe otherwise. He barely got any interaction beyond them, and he couldn’t help but indulge the part of himself that was dreadfully lonely. Elisha clung to every morsel of voice they threw his way with an unhealthy need, like a touch starved animal begging for attention. At some point, he had begun to be good just to get the friendly pats they gave to him when they were impressed by his behavior.

It was easy enough for him to wonder if he was finally beginning to go crazy, stuck down here in the basement. Yet another reason Elisha wanted out.

As it seemed, in the midst of his thinking, his wish was eventually answered. He heard the heavy footsteps of one of his Masters thumping through the hallway, stopping just at the trap door that led into the basement where they kept him. Elisha shifted, chains rattling as he knelt at the center of the room obediently. They always hated when he kept himself to corners or sides.

The trap door opened, flooding dim light into the room. Footsteps slowly lowered one of his Masters down the stairs, unknown to Elisha until he caught sight of blonde hair and green eyes. They were a dead giveaway for Jeremiah, who quickly scanned the room until he found his quarry.

Without speaking he crossed the room, and Elisha leaned forward as best he could to Jeremiah’s outstretched hands reaching for his jawline, allowing his head to be taken so his Master could inspect his face. In a strange note of gentleness he brushed his thumb against a tear stain from last night, watching Elisha with thoughtful poise. The night before Elisha had cried himself to sleep after not being good enough to be allowed upstairs that previous day, and it was obvious how desperate he was to improve his manners.

“Aridai’s out for the day, pet. It’s just you and me,” he stated simply, removing his hands. While Elisha chased the touch, Jeremiah instead reached into his pocket to retrieve a key. The hands returned, tilting Elisha’s head to the side so he could unlock the chain. “You’ll be a good boy for me, right?”

Elisha watched silently as a leather leash was hooked onto his collar in place of the chain. He remained quiet, unsure if he had been given explicit permission to speak or not, until a sudden hand clamped down on either side of his jaw, putting enough pressure to make it hurt.

“Right, Caleb?” Jeremiah asked again, in a warning tone that made a chill run down his spine.

“Ye-yes, Master! I’ll be g-good,” he said, trying to recover quickly as the narrowed gaze was directed his way.

“Good. Up, boy.” Jeremiah tugged on the leash hard, forcing Elisha to stand to his feet. A small whine was pushed through his nose as he got up on wobbly knees that hadn’t moved from their position for what felt like hours, his tail the only thing that could help give him balance. Jeremiah didn’t seem to notice. “What’s your name?”

“Cay-Caleb. My name is Caleb.” Elisha, he corrected mentally.

“Good. What are your rules?”

As he slowly began to recite them, Elisha was led out of the basement. They had recently added a new rule in the wake of more recent - or perhaps old, he couldn’t remember - events. It had taken a bit of getting used to and a fair amount of punishments before he could accurately recall it, but it was simple enough eventually.

Pets with bad tempers get punished.

Jeremiah guided him up the stairs, giving him a moment to get his bearings towards the top. Elisha’s head poked out of the basement like a scared, stray cat, looking every way as his wide eyes attempted to adjust to the bright light. Being in the darkness for so long, Aridai had told him in that matter-of-fact tone, made him quite unused to having any normal light from the day. They had further gone on to tell him that his walks would need to be shorter until he got used to being up here, before they could let him stay up any longer. He couldn’t remember how long ago that had been.

Elisha was pulled up to his feet, standing on even footing with Jeremiah and easily towering over him. Sometimes he forgot how tall he was, considering he had spent so much time making himself smaller. Jeremiah kicked the trap door shut with his right boot, not bothering to lock it. There wasn’t anything to keep safe down there besides the chain, and that wasn’t going to escape any time soon.

Distractedly, a bird began chirping outside, joining the chorus of others. Elisha’s head whipped in that direction despite being dragged away, searching for the culprit. His sensitive eyes found bright light shining through the living room window, catching sight of broad fields of golden plants. A small bird was perched on one of the thin stalks, picking pieces of it apart to hold in its beak. It was still somewhat blurry, but it was enough to put a smile on Elisha’s face before the image dipped behind the archway between the living room and the entrance.

He swiveled his head around to see Jeremiah leading him into the kitchen. Elisha watched as he tied him to one of the unmoving drawers beneath the sink, allowing him enough lead to walk the length of the kitchen and no more. To further prevent Elisha from just untying it himself and escaping, Jeremiah added a small padlock to the mix, shoving its key into his front right jeans pocket.

“Can you cook?” The question was simple, but it made Elisha pause for thought. He used to make many things for himself when he was home - likely the reason Jeremiah was asking in the first place - so he figured it wouldn’t be too hard to pick it back up again. He nodded, pulling his hands together to wring them. “Good. Then make me breakfast. Something with eggs.”

Again, Elisha nodded, slipping away from Jeremiah to cross the kitchen and access the fridge. Elisha liked eggs too, as far as he could remember, so he knew there were many ways to prepare a meal with them. For now, he decided on something simple, but what he liked: an omelette. He gathered eggs, some greens, and a bit of meat together, laying it all on the counter.

Elisha stared at the ingredients for a long time, feeling his mind drawing a blank on the proper steps.

Had he… forgotten how to do this? Forgotten how to cook?

It was fuzzy, similarly in the way he couldn’t remember what day it was, despite knowing that outside looked like harvest season. He couldn’t remember when harvest season was exactly, but the way the wheat looked it was definitely ready to be picked. In a similar fashion he knew what an omelette was, but seemingly all of the times he had made it slipped away, like water through his fingers.

As Elisha lay his hands over the meat - some bacon he found in the back of the fridge - his eyes began to well up with tears. He couldn’t remember what to do. How had he forgotten this so easily? Were there other things that being in the basement had taken from him?

“Something the matter?” Jeremiah’s flat voice murmured from behind him. He was sitting at the table Elisha vaguely recalled hearing a chair creak away from.

“N-no, I’m, I’m okay. It’s okay. I’m… I’m making food, Ma-Master. It’s…” Elisha forced himself to settle into a low crouch, opening one of the low cabinets to search for a usable pan. “just... been, been a while.”

The silence was deafening. Elisha forcibly rattled pans around until he found a suitable one, and rose to his feet to set it on the stove.

“...You better make something fucking edible, Caleb, or you’re going back down into the basement,” Jeremiah said in a low tone. Elisha looked back at him, seeing a serious expression stare back into his own, terrified eyes. Jeremiah only looked angrier, cold and without mercy. “Stop crying. I don’t want your fucking tears in my food.”

“Ye-yes, Master. I’m sorry, Master,” Elisha blurted out, flinching away as Jeremiah rose suddenly in his chair. He had immediately known what was wrong, even though he had been obedient and subservient like they wanted him to be. Pets don’t speak without permission.

Jeremiah reached up, grabbing Elisha’s horn and forcing him down. Elisha grabbed onto the counter for some leverage, his long legs sprawling out in a desperate attempt to stay standing. He could hear the thump-thump of his tail as it tapped against the wood cabinet, nervous and terrified of what was happening.

So close, Elisha could see the strands of light green that danced in Jeremiah’s eyes. “I didn’t fucking tell you to speak, Caleb. Are you going to give me problems today? Maybe I should just throw you back down there and be done with it, hm?” Elisha opened his mouth to say something until he felt another hand clamp it shut for him. “That wasn’t permission either, you fucking idiot. This better be a damn good breakfast for putting up with your bullshit, you understand me?”

He nodded as his face twisted into a horrible frown, tears beginning to stream down his eyes. Elisha’s foot slipped just slightly, lowering himself so that Jeremiah was practically holding him up by the horns.

Jeremiah… paused, for a moment. There was a slight twitch that Elisha wouldn't have been able to catch otherwise had he not been so close, a slight note of softness that wasn’t there before. The corner of his mouth twitched in tandem, before he released Elisha entirely, allowing him to sink, sobbing, into the floor.

“Come on. Get back to what you were doing,” he said. It was harsh, but not exactly in the way that Elisha had heard before.

He didn’t question it.

The threat was heard loud and clear, but it only made Elisha feel worse. There was so much more pressure on him now, with staying upstairs the reward that hung on the line. But he still couldn’t stop how he floundered on his memory, unable to recall even the simplest steps of making a fucking omelette.

He started by lighting the burner underneath the pan he set down. It took a moment to find the right one, turning on a couple others before he found it. Elisha took out some of the bacon and set it into the pan, just enough for Jeremiah, and waited.

Elisha was sure that he needed to be doing something else while this cooked, but he couldn’t be sure. He continued with the eggs, figuring that since it had been so long since he cracked one he needed to be more careful about the shells so he wouldn’t screw everything up. Another few moments of gingerly searching the cabinets, cringing every time Jeremiah shifted in his seat, Elisha settled on one of the two beige-colored bowls they had and drug it back to the counter top without making much of a sound.

Every time he selected one of the eggs and cracked it, it felt like eyes were boring holes into his back. The feeling itself kept his throat locked up so he wouldn’t speak, the constant lump in it forcing tiny whines whenever another sob wanted to tear through him again. Elisha knew that Jeremiah was watching him carefully, testing him even now. He felt a note of added stress at that idea, of still not being good enough to be given permission to exist. It ruined his nerves, which had already been shot since he had stepped foot into the kitchen. The bird seemed almost like a distant memory, now.

The eggs were slowly cracked into the bowl one at a time. As he set down the second set of shells, Elisha paused. I didn’t ask him how many he wanted, he realized.

With great reluctance he slowly turned back around, already wincing from having to confirm that his Master was watching him, only to see Jeremiah engrossed in what looked like a laptop. His eyes were focused on the screen instead of Elisha. Had he just been that paranoid this entire time?

Instead of giving it too much thought and psyching himself out of doing it in the first place, he strode towards the table and tapped against it with his index finger. Jeremiah’s gaze drifted from the screen over to his fingers, watching them for a moment. Then, he looked up to Elisha, who immediately flinched from his sharp gaze.

“What?” Jeremiah sounded annoyed at being bothered for even a moment, and Elisha had to resist the impulse to drop to his knees and start begging. His other Master might have appreciated that, but Jeremiah was quick and to the point. He wasn’t interested in playing games.

“Um… how, how many, um…” Elisha began, voice barely above a whisper.

“Speak up, I can’t fucking hear you. And stop stuttering, or I’ll give you something to stutter about,” he warned. Fresh tears sprung to Elisha’s eyes and trailed lazily down their familiar paths. He wiped them away quickly and pretended it didn’t happen.

“Um… How many… eggs?” he asked again, voice wavering.

Jeremiah turned his eyes back to the screen. “Three.”

With a feeling of relief and accomplishment, Elisha scurried back to his workspace. He cracked another egg with ease and flipped the bacon with a fork he found in one of the drawers. The same fork was wiped off and placed into the bowl with the eggs, the word scrambled flitting around his mind as he mixed them together quickly.

At some point, Elisha had given up on his original idea. There was no way he could remember how he made it before without some help, and he wasn’t about to ask Jeremiah. Instead, he just tried to cook to the best of his current ability. After the bacon was done, he found a plate to rest them on before dumping the eggs into the pan and praying that they didn’t mess up in the process.

A few agonizingly slow moments of watching the pan later, a breakfast for one was made. He ignored the empty, hungry feeling in his stomach as he finished plating it, instead picking it up to present to Jeremiah. Elisha hung close to him, watching as his Master drew his eyes away from the laptop to drag his plate closer to him.

He sharply looked to Elisha again. “What do you expect me to eat this with, my hands? Go get a fork.”

On command, he scrambled backwards and rustled through the drawers until he found a suitable fork, quickly placing it on Jeremiah’s plate and resuming his awkward posture of standing next to the table. Elisha tried resting his hands behind his back while holding his wrists, but the way that Jeremiah slowly looked over at him with that vaguely annoyed glare told him that this wasn’t right, either. He swallowed as Jeremiah stood up with a sigh, reaching for something on top of the fridge that Elisha hadn’t noticed.

He pulled out what looked to be leather straps from a bag. As Elisha watched the leather was slowly unwound, his heart leaping to thud against his throat with every second that passed by. He couldn’t run like he was, so he was simply forced to watch as Jeremiah moved behind him. A sudden force pressed him down against the table, pressing his chest into it as leather was wound around one of his wrists.

After Jeremiah was finished, Elisha had been carefully tied down to the table with no hopes of moving, arms outstretched outwards and legs against the corner stands.

Jeremiah sat back down with a sigh. He was still being watched with nervous eyes as he took the first bite, though his expression remained neutral as he audibly chewed and swallowed. Then, he turned to Elisha.

“Did you forget what salt was? This shit’s bland,” he criticised. Elisha remained silent, unsure how to properly answer that yes, he had actually forgotten about the existence of salt. “Whatever. I’m too fucking hungry to make you remake it. Just hope you know you’re not getting any reliable food until you learn to cook like we both know you can.”

Elisha felt a note of disappointment - at himself, really. Because Jeremiah was right, he used to be a rather good cook. He should have done something better to try and remember for his Master.

Jeremiah ate in total silence. Elisha watched every agonizing bite, trying not to imagine how good it must taste - even if it was bland. The only sounds present were the occasional clicking of the computer mouse and Elisha’s forced, slow breathing. His tail thumped against the table legs a couple of times until Jeremiah ordered him to stop, to which Elisha wrapped it around his ankle as best he could. In a final attempt to be good, he tried to focus on the computer screen to read what Jeremiah was doing, but he wasn’t able to catch anything due to the angle.

He vaguely recalled having a much better computer than that little laptop, and his heart ached at the thought of it. It was probably thrown out by now, or sold to someone else.

Jeremiah slid the plate away when he was done, standing to walk over by the sink. Elisha wondered what he was doing, until the smell of leftover scraps from the meal wafted in his direction. He strained to look, noticing crumbs of food and oil still left on the plate. Elisha’s stomach rumbled at the sight, smothered by the sound of a fork clattering into the sink. The water was turned on after that, and he could hear the sound of Jeremiah rustling behind him.

A cup of water was suddenly set into Elisha’s view, which made him jerk in surprise and shift the whole table. Jeremiah snorted in amusement as he slowly tugged at Elisha’s bindings and untied him..

“Kneel on the ground, Caleb,” Jeremiah ordered once he was free. Elisha slid down onto his knees without hesitation, somewhat thankful for being off of his feet. “Here. Drink this.”

A cup of water was placed against his lips as Jeremiah tilted his head back. Elisha savored every bit of the bland but refreshing taste of the water. He wasn’t usually given something to drink on a regular basis, so every drop Elisha was grateful for. It was another one of those unspoken rules that his Masters would get mad at him for if he didn’t comply.

“Thank you, Master,” he whispered when Jeremiah drew the cup away, setting it back onto the table.

“Good boy.” It released some of the inner tension in his stomach to hear the praise. It was so few and far between, especially from Jeremiah, that Elisha had quickly learned to savor every time it reached his ears. “Here.” Jeremiah slid the plate to the edge of the table as he settled back into his chair. “Eat the scraps off of that. It’s all you’re getting today.”

As if on cue, Elisha’s stomach growled. His tail lifted up into the air, curling happily as his skinny fingers pulled the plate off of the table. There were leftover bits of eggs, bacon, and oil - crumbs that the fork hadn’t been able to gather. He picked off what he could with his fingers, relishing in the feeling of having food on his tongue even if it was just the scraps. Elisha eventually resorted to licking at the plate, cleaning it of any taste that had remained on it.

While he busied himself, like an animal with one of those chew toys - even though he tried not to think about it like that - Jeremiah was doing something on the laptop. From his vantage point Elisha didn’t really care, having more important matters to attend to. However, when he did look up again he caught the cool greens of Jeremiah’s eyes staring him down, and Elisha paused mid lick to stare back.

“Alright. I think you’re done,” he muttered, snatching the plate from Elisha’s hands. His fingernails scraped horribly on the ceramic, making both of them wince at the sound. “And we’re cutting those today. I’m not going to be ripped to shreds by those claws of yours.”

As Jeremiah stood to put the plate in the sink, Elisha looked down at his hands. Claws, he had called them, but they hardly looked like it. They were just fingernails, albeit a bit stronger than normal, human ones.

Elisha felt an uncomfortable twinge at the memory of being held down, fingers held out of his sight while one of his Masters snipped away at his nails to make sure he was “declawed”, as Aridai had once said. Jeremiah had countered that they would have to cut off his first finger bones for that to happen, and proceeded to go into the diatribe of all this information he knew about declawing cats. They had a nice laugh about it, and joked about doing the same to Elisha. He repressed the shudder that crawled against his skin at the idea of Jeremiah cutting his nails, being left alone with him.

His collar was hooked upwards suddenly. Elisha made a startled, choked noise as Jeremiah drew him up to his feet.

“Come with me, now.” It was harshly toned and tense. Had he done something wrong? Elisha dared to not ask. Instead he scurried up to his feet and allowed Jeremiah to lead him to the bathroom and shove him inside. “Stay in here until I come to get you. Don’t make a fucking sound, understand?”

Elisha nodded, then Jeremiah shut the door.

He heard a knock at the front door.

Shifting forward, Elisha pressed his ear against the bathroom door so that he could listen. The front door wasn’t so far away from the bathroom - the house was small enough as it was - so if he was quiet he should be able to hear their conversation.

“Can I help you?” Came the muffled voice of Jeremiah as he opened the door. It wasn’t his typical greeting or voice, set in a higher pitch that Elisha remembers his mom saying was a phone voice. It meant there was someone new at the door.

Someone who didn’t know he was in here, trapped with two sadists.

Elisha’s heart leapt into his chest as it painfully beat against him. He could get free, perhaps. He could open the door and shout for help, and between two people they might have a chance of pushing Jeremiah out of the way and getting out of here. Elisha’s hands clenched into fists, eyes widened at the voices.

“Just a package, sir,” the other voice said. It was also masculine in nature. “Here you go.”

Pets aren’t allowed outside without explicit permission, the more cautious part of him hissed.

There was a pause. Likely Jeremiah inspecting the package and the man the same way he does with everything. Suspicious until proven otherwise.

I could have a chance at freedom. I could really go home.

“...Nice weather lately, huh? Can’t get warmer days like this in the fall,” the newcomer said, attempting to make conversation.

Elisha’s hand slipped down the door, thumbing over the handle with careful consideration.

Pets aren’t allowed. Pets do what their masters tell them to.

I could have my life back again.

Leave it ALONE.

“No, you really can’t. Helps make the farming easier, though,” Jeremiah responded. Elisha knew he was talking about the wheat fields he planted because he was bored and because it ‘helped sell that we’re farmers and not living with a Cambion pet’, as he had overheard before. “Hey, thanks for bringing this out here, by the way. I know some of you wouldn’t be damned to come out this far down the road to deliver a package like this.”

Open the door. Open the fucking door just do it do it-

A small whimper left through his nose as fresh tears flooded his eyes again. He couldn’t do this, he couldn’t disobey. The last time he did he was hurt so badly he couldn’t stand for what felt like a week.

Turn the knob and scream, tell him you’re trapped. He’ll understand from the leash, he’ll know-

They hate Cambion, out there Elisha, he heard a softer voice, one whose name he couldn’t place. Stay inside for me, okay? Don’t let them know you’re here.

“Oh, no problem! Gotta look out for the rural people, you know? My mom’s a farmer, so I totally get it. Besides, you and your partner seem nice enough.” A pause. Elisha scraped his nails against the wood of the door, praying he would be heard and hoping Jeremiah didn’t hear at all. “Looks like everything’s in order. Have a nice day, sir.”

“You too.”

The door shut.

He had missed his window of opportunity.

Elisha heard the sound of something heavy impacting the table. Then footsteps began to thud towards him. He scrambled backwards, forcing his hand away from the door and falling down in the process. He backed up so that he hit the side of the tub, chest heaving with utter fear as the door handle turned. It opened, and Jeremiah’s head peeked around from behind it.

Their eyes met, and he smiled.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Jeremiah said as he opened the door all the way and held out his hand as if he were calling an animal. “Come here, Caleb.”

On command Elisha moved forward, dragging his leash behind him before stopping in front of Jeremiah to kneel. He looked up, leaning into the outstretched hand to accept the comfort offered. It was a gentle touch, one few and far between much like the praises they gave, so Elisha allowed himself to relax at the feeling of it.

“Alright, get up. You still have to clean up the mess in the kitchen. You can at least clean, right Caleb?” Jeremiah asked with a tilt of his head.

“Of, of course not, Master. I… I can, um, clean,” he responded, eyes darting away and back again as his mind slowly searched for the words that it wanted to say.

I could have almost been free of you.

Jeremiah tugged on the leash, leading Elisha back into the kitchen. He was tied to the same drawer and directed to clean up. Jeremiah watched him as he picked up all of the ingredients, including the greens he didn’t end up using, and put them back where he had found them. Elisha washed the dishes too, thankful that he could at least remember how to do that.

His mind slowly fell back to the voice of that delivery person, knowing if he had had just enough courage to step out and call for help, he might have been free already.

If only you didn’t rely on them so much, his mind hissed back at him.

Elisha sighed, leaning against the sink as he finally finished cleaning. He waited for a moment for his next order to be issued, but everything remained quiet. He turned around to see Jeremiah watching him like a hawk. Elisha froze, terrified that he had done something wrong, and darted his eyes away to look less threatening. His gaze found the box that was now on the table next to the laptop, funny letters scrawled on the top, black over white. He squinted to read “Barbed Wire” on the top of it.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Jeremiah started, dragging the box closer to himself. Elisha watched him closely, fear nearly cutting off his air. He heard me at the door. He’s going to punish me for it. I can’t believe I was so stupid to think I wasn’t caught, why was I even thinking about leaving pets aren’t allowed outside without explicit permission. “I don’t like it when you call me Master.”

Elisha blinked once, twice, three times before he finally registered what was happening. He had to force his hands to grip the sink hard to support his wobbly knees.

“Caleb, I want you to call me Sir from now on. It just sounds better, and it’ll be easier to know who you’re talking to anyway. Understand?”

That’s… it? Elisha glanced down to the box, then back up to his Master - no, his Sir, and blinked again. He realized that Jeremiah was waiting for an answer.

“Ye-yes, um… Sir. Yes Sir,” he stammered out, mouth dry enough that it took him a moment to properly get the words out. Elisha tapped quickly against the sink.

“What?”

“Um… Sir, are you… going to use that on, on me?” He nodded over to the box, trying to pause enough so that he didn’t stutter all over the place.

There was a look of satisfaction and triumph that settled in Jeremiah’s eyes, one that mimicked Aridai’s in nature. “No, Caleb. These are for something else. Why, do you want me to use them on you?”

“N-no! I-I just… it’s… sharp. It’s sharp. The… wires.” Elisha let his gaze fall to the ground. “Sorry for, um… stuttering.”

Jeremiah snorted. “At least you know you’re doing it. But yes, they are. Maybe I’ll have you test them at some point. For now,” he stood, crossing over to the drawer that Elisha was sitting by and began to untie him from the handle. “let’s get you back into the basement. I have work to do, and you’re probably exhausted, aren’t you?”

Elisha gave him a gentle, polite nod. He was tired from being upstairs today, though he wasn’t sure whether he preferred this or the basement. Especially when there were visitors.

As they exited the kitchen, Elisha let his gaze traverse towards the front door where the delivery person had been. He could almost taste the fresh air coming from it, could only imagine how bright and golden everything was from the sun and the wheat. He actually managed to get another glimpse of it from the living room window, and he slowed his pace to get an extended look outside.

Jeremiah tugged at the leash a little harder than normal, nearly threatening to topple Elisha over. “Come on, Caleb. There’s nothing out there for you.” His voice held a thinly veiled warning that told him he was already pushing his luck.

With one last look outside, Elisha watched as a small wren dangled off of two of the wheat plants, then looked around and fluttered away to freedom.

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sailynthesayaad · 4 years

Text

The Beginning Pt. 2

Part one.

“Ah dun care! Ah dun care!” Sail beat her fists in against her sisters chest, tears streaming down her cheeks, tail slapping down in against the floor of their small room. Despite the past four years passing by, Sail was still a full head shorter than her sibling. In the short time the two had been in the small city they had spent most of their time cheating and scamming other people, it was the best way to survive. Turns out the reason the city was so happy to take on two unlucky orphans was simply because a disease had infected in their stalk of food as it traveled from another small fishing village. The other village did not survive at all from the plague and was now a ghost town. The city was better managed but it still left many pairs without mates, other children without parents and Matriarchs without children to watch over or pairs to be with. The current Matriarch they were with had lost everything, became a drunk and a generally sunken, abusive male. The goal and hope was for him to have a turn around in being given the chance to look after young ones again, that unfortunately did not become the case. So it was up to Sail and Mast to get money and supplies for the house and take care of things. Mast also needed to trade for her voyage, which was proving difficult with the amount of time she had to spend taking the brunt of things from their current care taker, looking after Sail who despite her current state had become rather rebellious in her growing teenage years and seemed to enjoy stirring up quite the trouble which of course came back onto Mast. Mast sighed heavily, grabbing at her siblings wrists rather roughly and pulling them up over her head to keep her from striking further. “Sail! Enough! Ya kno’ ah got ta do dis. Our people grow weake’ an’ weake’ ‘ere an’ we dunno ‘ow other our kin are on da other A’lurs. We haf ta keep our traditions strong and our people.” A soft smile touched Masts lips as she let go of her, “So dun be sayin’ ya dun care abou’ me, when ah kno’ ya do. Ya gonna hurt someone’s feelin’s sayin’ that some day. Ya know no one gonna know ya as well as ah do, don’ let ‘em misunderstand.” Sail slowly began to calm down, sniffling back tears and snot, moving hands to rub at her eyes. “Ah dun wanna be alone. Ah dun like it.” “Then you don’t haft to be.” Came a new voice from the window of their bedroom, startling the pair of them, which caused the owner to chuckle. “Ah sorry sorry, didn’t mean ta jumps yas. Pretty nice speech there ya know eh? Ya two clearly close, and why people gotta splits such a bond eh? No no, don’t be sitting right by me.” They couldn’t tell if the person in their window was male or female, as they leaned into it, resting chin on wrapped arms as they spoke and looked over the pair with keen eyes. There was an open strange wonder to their eyes that Sail was rather curious about, as if this person had seen wonders beyond their comprehension. Sail stepped in forward, “So then..ya kno’ ‘ow ah can stay with Mast?!” Another chuckle came from the elder as they went ahead to pull themselves through the window to stand with the pair, Mast quickly going for her spear to hold it stead fast to the invaders throat. They put up their hands but didn’t seem to even flinch over it, their attention seeming focused on Sail. “Oh yeah, don’t ya going worry over that. Look i’ll be straight with yas, not ta brag, but i’m from another world-” Mast cut them off by pushing the spear in a bit more sharply, actually cutting into their skin, “That’s impossible! Dun lie!” A sudden gasp came from her, spear lowering slightly as eyes widen from the pair. The strangers blood wasn’t blue like their own, it was green. Slowly they moved to cover the wound, rubbing their hand over it and withdrew. The cut was gone, only a smear of the blood remained.”Well that’s one way of showing it a bit. But iffen ya need more proof why not come on with me?” Moving on they go out of the window they came through, with little hesitation Sail makes to follow before Mast grabs her by the arm, “No! We dun kno’ anythin’ about ‘em.” Hissing to her. Sail pulls away, “Iffen they can make it true dat i dun lose ya then ah dun care. Besides, iffen ya go what else am ah gonna do? Ah don’ got nothin’ ta lose in dis it seems ta me.” Shrugging a shoulder as she moves ahead to go out the window. Mast sighs, her sister had a point in any regard, least she couldn’t argue against it. Moving in along, she too would move out the window to follow the stranger. They would walk on in silence heading down towards a more abandoned rough part of the city, even in Sails and Masts dealings they avoided this part of the city. The entered into an abandoned storehouse, used for the colder months to store food. Within, standing in the middle, was a large metal seeming craft. A type of home or cocoon maybe? The siblings stared at in confusion, tilting their heads as they stared at it with uncertainty. This made the stranger chuckle. “Ya two truly are close.” When the pair looked in towards the stranger once more, they looked completely different. Rather then webbed toes they had hooves, their tail went from thick and scaly to thin and wired like with barbs running down it near the spine of back and curled tip end. On their back was a pair of webbed wings with dual claws in the midst top of the wings as they spread out. A pair of horns sprouted from their forehead curling up and back, spiraled into pointed steeps. One arm swept back with extended wings and the other curled forward in front of themselves, bowing forward. “Let me introduce myself, I am Sh’taria. I am a Sayaad of the Legion. We are a collective from across the universe seeking others to follow in our path, to bring about a peace like none ever known. But pretty words wont do here, why don’t i just show you?” In those yellow eyes a sparkle appeared that spoke out to Sail, the promise of a sight unknown, of expanses to be yet explored. It excited her. Heart beating in her chest as she stared wide eyed in wonder with something to knew and strange. Taking a steady step forward, toes drawing in together before they could touch back on the ground as her sister stopped her. “We don’ kno’ wha this...thing is. It’s no’ safe.” Mast spoke softly, seeming to glare over to the claimed being, Sayaad. “Iffen she wanted us dead, then we’d been dead already.” Sail spoke aloud looking over to her sister. With a small pause the elder sibling would sigh once more and withdraw her arm, moving to follow in along to see to just what this creature wanted. Sh’taria opened the hatch to her ship, lowering the door to reveal stairs and moved on ahead insider to start it up. At first the noises seemed to have dismayed the curious Chalurin younglings, but their curiosity grew and got the better of them, even Mast couldn’t help but desire to know exactly what was going on or just what this -thing- was. Once they had entered the ship, they never imagined how much their life had just changed with a door simply closing behind them. How much they would change, how much they would see and do and most of all how much regret Sail would soon live with.

#emily fiegenschuh #not my art #my writing #my oc #ic story #sayaad #world of warcraft inspired #beginngs

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sourwolf-sterek32 · 5 years

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Unforgettable Memories ( Daryl Dixon x Reader )

Summary: Y/N Grimes is Rick’s younger sister. You used to be in the military and have enough PTSD to last a lifetime. With Shane’s help you created the quarry camp and came across the Dixon brother’s in the woods. You bought them back to camp, but after that everything changed and you were still trying to figure out if that was a good thing or not.

Pairings: Daryl Dixon x Rick’s Sister!Reader

Word Count: 4.1k

Warnings: Blood, guts, language (just usual twd warnings),

Chapter 21-

By the time the sun began to rise the following morning, Daryl was still sitting beside you. You knew he dozed off for a few hours when you told him to get some sleep, but he woke up not long after and insisted for you to sleep, but you couldn't. Not after what happened last night. So you and Daryl stayed on top of the RV together and kept watch.

Everyone was up and walking around camp earlier than you had ever seen them, but it was probably because nobody got much sleep anyway. Shane had apparently burnt Randall's body last night so at least you didn't have to worry about dealing with him which you were glad of, but him and Andrea had also buried Dale during night, so you held a funeral for him that morning.

Rick said a few words, saying how we needed to honour Dale by putting aside our differences and coming together, and he was right. If the group had any chance of making it, of growing and becoming better, that was exactly what you needed to do.

A few others in the group said a few words, shared a few memories back from the quarry about Dale which sparked a few sad laughs and smiles. After the funeral you all made your way back to camp, but before you had a chance to talk to Rick about making the camp safer, Hershel, Maggie and Beth approached your group, saying that your group could move into the house.

"It'll be tight, don't worry about that. With the swamp hardening, the creek drying up and 50 head of cattle on the property we might as well be ringing the dinner bell. We should've moved you in a while ago." Hershel explained, looking between you and Rick as you both nodded gratefully at the older man.

"Alright, let's move the vehicles near each of the of the house doors, facing out toward the road." Rick instructed pointing to the farmhouse and all the vehicles that were parked around area. "We'll build a lookout in the windmill, another in the barn loft. That should give us sightlines both sides of the property." Rick added and you nodded in agreement. The RV was a good watch point, but you couldn't see everything, there were blind spots where walkers could easily get through undetected.

"Hershel, with your permission I'd like to take a group out and secure your fences. They seem pretty good, but I want to double check and maybe reinforce them if need be." You suggested, glancing over at the older man. It was still his property after all, but you knew he was starting to warm up to your group.

"That is fine by me. We have fencing equipment in the shed, take what you need. I'll stock the basement with food and water, enough that we can all survive there a few days if need be." Hershel replied and you smiled at the man liking his thinking as he walked off back towards the farmhouse leaving you guys in camp.

"We'll have a group build the lookout in the windmill first, that will take the most work, the lookout in the barn won't need much done to it. Y/N will take a group around the property to secure the fences. T-Dog, you can take watch duty on the RV for the time being until the other lookouts are ready to use. The others can start moving our gear inside the house." Rick instructed, looking around the at the group.

"Alright, you heard the man. I'll start the lookout in the windmill, Andrea you can help me." Shane spoke up, glancing over at the blonde girl causing you to grin at Shane who not so subtly gave you the bird as he adjusted one of the buttons on his shirt and you rolled your eyes at him.

"I'll go with Y/N." Daryl added causing Shane to send you the exact same grin you gave him only seconds before as you rolled your eyes at his childish behaviour and flipped him off and you could tell Rick was trying not to laugh at the two of you.

"We're gonna need more to help with the fencing, Glenn, you in?" You asked, looking over at him as he nodded in agreement before Carl spoke up.

"I want to help too." He said, walking over to the group of you as you looked over at Rick. It was his call whether Carl came out with you or not, but Rick just nodded in agreement causing Carl to fist bump the air in excitement.

"Sweet, let's get started then." You responded as you began walking over to the blue pickup truck, followed by Daryl and Glenn. Daryl climbed in the drivers seat, not wanting you to irritate your injured hand any more, so you jumped into the bed of the truck with Carl while Glenn sat in the passenger seat.

You went via the shed first, filling the back of the truck up with iron droppers, a couple rolls of barbed and straight wire. You grabbed a few tins of metal staples to hammer into the wooden fence posts to keep any new wire secure, along with a couple tool boxes which you hoped had anything you might need inside.

You decided to start on the far side of the farm and work your way back towards the main area, which meant you and Carl should get comfy in the bed of the truck for the next 10 minutes as you drove to the far side of the farm. You leant your back against the window of the cab as you stared out at the trail of dust the truck was leaving behind as Daryl drove, Carl sitting right beside you.

"Did you kill him? Randall?" Carl suddenly asked, just loud enough for you to hear over the old trucks engine. You glanced over at Carl who was staring at you in curiously and you sighed. You should have seen this question coming.

"Yes. I shot him, it was quick and painless. But, that doesn't mean killing people is the right thing to do, it's not. You know that right?" You asked and to your relief Carl nodded straight away. "It was the only way to keep the group safe, I didn't have a choice. But, you don't ever kill someone unless they are going to kill you and it is your last option. And you don't ever draw your gun on someone unless you plan on actually pulling the trigger."

"I know. Shane told me most of that when he was teaching me how to shoot." Carl replied causing you to smile, glad that Shane didn't just teach him how to safely operate a gun, he also taught Carl about the right and wrongs and it seemed Carl was a fast learner.

"But, you won't have to worry about anything like that for a long time. You have a whole group of people who will always be here, your father, Shane, Daryl, me and we'll deal with any bad people that come our way, just like we did with Randall." You reassured and Carl nodded.

"This is going to be a good place for my baby brother or sister to grow up in." He commented proudly as he looked up at you with bright eyes and you nodded in agreement unable to stop the smile forming on your lips because he was right. This was going to be a damn good place for the group to settle down in and good place for Lori, Rick and Shane to raise the baby.

You spent majority of the afternoon out with Daryl, Glenn and Carl fixing the fences. It was nice being out in Hershel's fields with the three of them, Glenn was still down about Dale so you kept trying to make him laugh and keep his mind distracted as you fenced and it seemed to work.

"You two make a really good couple, you know that?" Glenn suddenly said as you began loading the fencing equipment back up into the truck as the sun slowly began to set in the distance.

You glanced over at Daryl who seemed to be trying to ignore the other man as he focused on putting the hammer and nails back into the toolbox, but you didn't miss the slight blush of his cheeks as he did so.

"You're both strong and independent. Neither of you take shit from anyone, seriously if you guys had a kid, he or she would be badass." Glenn added causing you to chuckle.

"Says you. Look at you and Maggie, you guys are like the perfect couple and if you have kids in the future, they would be so adorable." You responded, closing the tailgate of the truck, not really knowing how to respond to what he just said so you tried turning to conversation back to him which seemed to work as Glenn and Carl both laughed.

"Ya done with whatever the hell this conversation is 'bout?" Daryl asked in amusement, turning back towards the three of you, a hint of a smirk forming on his lips and you chuckled, but nodded.

"Relax, Dixon. We all know Shane and Andrea will have a kid before anyone. Those two can't keep their hands off each other." You responded causing Carl to make a fake throwing up noise.

"Ew." Your nephew muttered in disgust and that was all it took before you, Daryl and Glenn burst out laughing. It was probably the first time you had ever seen Daryl generally laugh at something, he looked so happy as he grabbed Glenn's shoulder when the guy nearly fell over from laughing and you couldn't stop the smile spreading across your lips as you watched them. "Grownups are gross."

"Can't argue with that, kiddo. C'mon, hopefully tea's ready by the time we get back." You said breathlessly from laughing so much as you all began piling back into the truck. You and Carl in the bed of the truck again before Daryl started the engine and you all drove back to the farmhouse.

To your surprise all the tents had been taken down and the only thing that remained from your camp was the ashes from the campfire. Everything else was all packed up and when you walked through the front door to the farmhouse it was clear where everything went.

The Greene's lounge room had been turned into the new camp. Pillows, blankets, sleeping bags and mattresses were all spread out across the lounge room floor.

You glanced around the room, spotting your military bag and blankets sitting on one of the mattress along with Daryl's bag and you rolled your eyes knowing Maggie must have made sure your gear was put together on the same mattress.

"Well this looks cosy." Glenn commented as the four of you stood by the entrance of the lounge room taking it all in.

"If anyone snores they're gettin' a pillow to the face." Daryl muttered causing Carl to laugh as he said something about Shane being a loud snorer before he disappeared towards the kitchen where you could hear everyone else. Daryl threw his crossbow down on top of the mattress and you did the same with assault rifle as Daryl suddenly grabbed your shoulder. "Ya alright with sharin' a bed like this?"

"As long as you don't use my pillow to throw at Shane when he's snoring in the middle of the night then, yes." You replied with a grin causing Daryl to snort as closed the distance between the two of you, his hands coming up and cupping your face as he stared into your Y/E/C eyes before pressing his lips to yours and you kissed him back.

"I know I said you guys make a good couple, but seriously get a room." Glenn commented in amusement as you and Daryl to both flipped him off as you continued to kiss causing Glenn to groan. "I'm so glad Maggie is letting me stay in her bedroom."

"I'm sure that's the only reason you're glad about that." You responded as you pulled away from Daryl and looked over at Glenn who's cheeks instantly began to blush causing you and Daryl to chuckle before the three of you made your way towards the kitchen.

You stood by the door for a second as you took everything in. Everyone was sitting around the large dinning table, another small card table was set up beside it where the people who couldn't fit at the main table were sitting.

"There's a few spare seats here." Maggie called out, spotting the three of you by the door as you all walked over to the small card table where three plates of food were waiting for you. You sat down between Maggie and Daryl and quickly began eating, only just realising how hungry you actually were.

"How's the lookout in the windmill coming along?" You asked between mouthfuls as you looked over at Shane and Andrea who were sitting beside each other at the dinning table.

You glanced around at the rest of your group, Rick sitting on the other side of Shane followed by Lori and Carl along with T-Dog, Hershel, Beth, Jimmy, Patricia and Carol... she still hasn't spoken to you at all and you didn't even need to talk to her to know that she blames you for the death of her baby girl. It was your fault, no matter what Daryl says, you knew it was your fault.

"Should be finished by tomorrow, then we'll start on the barn lookout." Andrea answered since Shane was too busy eating his food to answer the question. "How'd the fencing go?"

"Good, it should be enough to stop any stray walkers from pushing through the fences." You said and Rick and Hershel seemed happy with that answer as you all began talking about plans for the winter. Hershel told you guys about a section of pine trees on the outskirts of the farm that would make good firewood, pinewood burns slower and lasts longer which would be ideal for the winter.

"I left my hat in the shed when we were putting the fencing stuff away." Carl suddenly said and you rolled your eyes at your nephews forgetfulness, but before you could say that you'd go with him to get the Sheriffs hat, Rick's already standing and the two of them headed off to retrieve the hat that has lasted longer than you ever thought it would.

The rest of you continued talking about future plans between eating the food that Lori, Patricia and Carol had apparently made. It wasn't much just pieces of chicken and some vegetables, but it was more than what you've had in a long time and after working all day it was damn delicious and by the way Daryl and Glenn had quickly scoffed down their meals they agreed as well.

"What's taking them so long?" Lori suddenly questioned 10 minutes later as she began picking up the cutlery off the table while T-Dog and Jimmy started washing the dishes.

"It's Rick and Carl. They probably got distracted with something stupid, I'll go find them." You replied, standing up from your chair as you handed your empty plate to Lori before you walked out the dinning room towards the front door.

You opened the door and looked out towards the shed to see if you could spot your brother and nephew, glad that it was still a full moon so you could easily, but that wasn't what you spotted.

"Holy shit." You gasped, taking in the herd of walkers that were heading towards the barn and house.

You quickly raced back inside to find everyone still standing around the dinning room, but when they heard you run back they all instantly stopped their conversations and looked over at you in confusion until they saw the look on your face.

"There's a herd coming. Shane, get the guns. Patricia, kill the lights." You quickly instructed, not waiting for anyone to respond as you rushed into the lounge room grabbing your backpack. You threw it over your shoulders knowing you had spare clips for your assault rifle inside before grabbing your rifle and Daryl's crossbow as you rushed back outside onto the front porch.

Daryl was suddenly beside you and you quickly handed the crossbow to him. "Maybe they're just passing, like the herd on the highway. Should we just go inside?" Glenn asked and you glanced over your shoulder to find most the group standing behind you on the porch staring at the herd in shock.

"Not unless there's a tunnel downstairs I don't know 'bout. Herd that size will rip the house down." Daryl responded as your eyes quickly scanned the area trying to find any sign of Rick or Carl, but all you could see were the walkers.

"I thought you said you guys secured the fences." Andrea commented from somewhere behind you, panic evident in her voice.

"I said it was enough to stop any stray walkers from pushing through, not a whole damn herd." You responded as you tried to do a head count of the walkers. Fuck, there were so many.

Shane quickly rushed through the front door with the bag of guns as he dropped it on the ground behind you as him and Maggie began handing out the various shotguns and rifles to everyone, but Daryl shook his head.

"I got the number, it's no use." He muttered nodding towards the herd.

"You can go if you want." Hershel spoke up as he began loading rounds into one of the shotguns.

"Rick and Carl are out there somewhere. I'm not leaving without my boys." Lori stated in panic and you nodded in agreement.

"I'm not going anywhere without them. We have guns and we have cars. We kill as many as we can and use the cars to lead the rest of them off the farm." You instructed, checking the magazine inside your rifle relieved that it was full.

"You serious?" T-Dog questioned in disbelief and you glanced over at Hershel waiting for his call.

"This is my farm. I'll die here." He responded and you nodded. Well, this was going to be one hell of a fight.

"I was born a soldier, might as well die like one too." You responded, sliding the magazine back into your assault rifle as you looked over at Daryl and Shane waiting to see what they wanted to do.

"Alright, it's as good a night as any." Daryl responded, loading his crossbow as he jumped down over the railing of the porch, but you chose to take the stairs not wanting to screw your bad knee up again.

"Two people in each car, one drives the other shoots. We leave one of the cars here for you girls and you take it and go if we can't stop the herd, understood?" Shane instructed, glancing back towards Lori, Carol, Patricia and Beth who were standing by Hershel and on the porch and they all nodded in agreement as you all began running towards the cars.

Glenn and Maggie took one, Andrea and T-Dog took the other leaving you, Shane and Daryl as you stood by the vehicles.

"I'll take the bike, I can ride 'n shoot at the same time." He stated, pulling out his handgun and checking the clip before tucking it back through his belt.

"Shoot from a distance. You don't have the walls of a car to protect you from the dead, be careful." You said, unable to hide the fear in your tone as you leant over Daryl, pulling him into a hug as he mounted his bike and he instantly hugged you back.

"Ya be careful too, alright?" He asked as you pulled away, his worried eyes locking with yours and you nodded.

"Always am, Dixon. I'll see you when this over." You responded, giving him a reassuring smile before you jogged off back towards the blue pickup truck, noticing Shane was already in the drivers seat as you opened the passenger side door, throwing your backpack inside before climbing in.

"You good to shoot with your hand?" Shane questioned as he put the truck into gear and took off down the dirt road towards the gate that lead to field by the barn.

"Yep, just keep the walkers on my side of the car and I'll take them down." You responded, rolling down window because of course Shane picked the one car without electric windows.

Flicking the safety off you pressed the butt of your rifle against your shoulder as you leant the gun over your wrist brace since you couldn't exactly hold with it your hand to stabilise it. You used your good hand to hold the handle, your finger hovered over the trigger as you lined up the first walker and squeezed it.

"The barn's on fire!" Shane yelled above the gunfire, vehicle engines and walkers causing your head to snap around towards the barn to find that it in fact was on fire and seemed to be drawing some of the walkers towards it.

"That had to be Rick and Carl." You replied before turning your attention back towards the walkers as you continued firing bullet after bullet, making sure every shot was to the head as Shane continued steering the truck around the outside of the herd.

You could see the other two cars driving around on the other side of the field along with Daryl on his motorcycle, who was parked outside the fence and firing at the walkers. Someone had obviously climbed inside the RV, who you suspected was Jimmy and to your relief he drove over to the barn where you could see two figures standing on the roof, Rick and Carl.

"We're not making a dent and they've already busted through the fence and are heading to the house as well." You observed, flicking the empty magazine out as Shane swung the truck around and began driving back that way as you quickly grabbed a full magazine from your bag between you legs, your hands were shaking but you easily reloaded the rifle. You've done this a thousand times before back in Afghanistan, okay not exactly like this because there weren't any walkers then. But you had been in enough fire fights to know how to calm your body and focus on the mission instead of just freaking the fuck out even though that was all you were doing on the inside.

"If any of you can hear me, get back to the house to pick up the women and Hershel and get the hell out of here. There's too many!" Shane shouted through the CV radio in the truck. You had no idea if the other cars had a handheld radio or not. You knew the RV did, but you hoped like hell Maggie's and T-Dog's vehicles did as well and hoped they happened to be on the same station.

You continued firing at the walkers relieved when you saw T-Dog's truck driving back towards the house to pick up the others, but you couldn't see where Maggie's car or Daryl’s motorcycle was through the herd of walkers. Shit.

"Everyone, get off the farm! Get off the farm now!" Shane yelled through the CV as you spotted the taillights of Maggie's car disappearing off in the distance, clearly having heard what Shane just said through the radio.

You focused back on the walkers firing off rounds into the herd even though there was no way you'd be able to shoot them all, there was just too many.

"We do one lap around the property, make sure everyone's gone and then we get the fuck out of here." Shane instructed and you didn't bother to respond as you continued firing at the walkers out your window as Shane turned the truck around and began heading towards the burning barn.

You kept your eye out for Rick and Carl, but you were pretty sure you saw them make a run for the red car by the farmhouse a few minutes ago. You were almost certain they were safe, but like hell you weren't going to double check.

"Shit!" Shane suddenly yelled as he drove around the corner past the barn and you did not like the tone in his voice as your head quickly snapped around to the front window to find a thick group of walkers right in front of you. Oh shit.

"Turn!" You screamed, dropping your rifle as you grabbed the handle on the roof above you to brace yourself. Shane quickly spun the wheel to try and avoid the walkers, but with the speed he was going and how sharp he turned, the truck flipped.

- NEXT CHAPTER

A/N- Link in my bio for Masterlist. I will reblog with My Daryl Dixon Tag List, if you want to be added just comment below.

Another cliff-hanger, my bad. But, hopefully I can post another chapter this weekend for you guys, but life is just so hectic atm so I can't make any promises.

There has been a lot of cannon-divergence in this fic and there is going to be even more in the remaining chapters, but also, I just wanted to warn you guys now, the next few chapters will have very limited Daryl in them, but I promise it will be worth it, so please bare with me because the ending to this fic is honestly one of my favourites.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, but until next time, stay safe everyone and have a great day.

#Daryl Dixon #Daryl Dixon x Reader #The Walking Dead #daryl dixon fanfiction #daryl dixon fanfic #daryl dixon imagine #the walking dead fanfiction #the walking dead imagine #twd #Norman Reedus #Rick Grimes #Shane Walsh

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ashintheairlikesnow · 5 years

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Daniel Michaelson: Mine

(for @whumptober2019 day 26, prompt: Abandoned. Used some of these incrdibly creepy dialogue prompts from @untilthepainstarts to get some inspiration for this one!)

“Deep breaths for me, Red. In through the nose… repeat after me…”

Daniel breathes in through his nose, a deep breath that expands his lungs as far as they will go, pushes them against his aching side where the rib has never healed right. He focuses on the twin spikes of pain that string him between his neck and his ribcage.

“Now, say, ‘no one wants me but Abraham.’”

Daniel holds his breath as he speaks, “N-no one wants me b-but, but Abraham.” His fingers are curled over his thighs, digging fingernails into his palms hard enough to draw blood.

He does not think about the barbs jabbing into the thin skin of his neck where Abraham has wrapped the wire around and around and around it. He does not think about the rib that will never be right again. He does not think about the way the backs of his hands ache still, or the little pain of the skin worn raw underneath the iron cuff.

He does not think of any of these things.

He thinks only of the oxygen he holds inside his lungs, of it pouring into his bloodstream, carried to the tips of his fingers and the ends of his toes.

“Hold for five counts…”

He holds, feels the tension inside of himself, lungs full of air beginning to protest, waits as Abraham counts.

“One… two… three… four… five… Now exhale and say, ‘No one will ever want me but Abraham’.”

He lets the air out through his mouth, careful to do it slowly, the way Abraham wants him to, repeating his words in a low, unresisting voice. “No one will ever want me but Abraham.”

“Inhale…‘I have been abandoned by my family’.”

“I have been abandoned by my family.”

“Good. Hold for five… exhale. ‘No one is looking for me.’”

Hold for five. Then, in the same low voice, “No one is, is, um, looking for me.”

One of his friends once dragged him to yoga, in the life he’s not supposed to remember, in the life he has been told to forget. They did an exercise where they breathed just like this - only without Daniel kneeling with a man’s hands dancing over his neck and his face, without the wire wrapped around his neck, without the bruises and the burns and the scars and the pain, without everything in his world boiled down to doing whatever it takes to be exactly what the fucking monster wants him to be.

He can’t picture Abraham doing yoga. The image is too ridiculous.

“Inhale. ‘I have been abandoned here.’”

“I have been abandoned here.” Lungs full of air, his aching rib, the pain in so many places he cannot quite tell which wounds are new.

“Good. Hold for five. Exhale. ‘No one will ever, ever find me here.’”

Daniel hesitates, then forces the words out on his exhale, hearing them shake. “No-… no one will ever find me here.”

He has to be good.

“That’s it.” Abraham’s voice is so soft, and he hates him so much, and he can do nothing but kneel, and wish Nate would finish and come back from checking the traps, and obey.

“Good boy, my little Red. That’s my good boy.” Abraham moves one hand to ruffle through his hair, mussing it up affectionately. “You’re nothing. No one wants you but me, not now that you’re my good dog. If you even tried to go back, they’d just kick you back out. At least here someone cares about you.”

Yeah, Nate, not you, you asshole, you-

No. Be good.

His face burns - he can never get past the humiliation of it, the tears that threaten every time Abraham says it again - but he says nothing, only waits to be ordered to breathe. His racing heart begins to slow, unwillingly - he can feel it stutter-skip inside his chest, pounding out of rhythm, trying hard to panic again.

He cannot panic. He had a bad day, that’s what started this, and he’s not allowed to have bad days. He’s not allowed to panic over the fact that he’s going to die here in the woods. He’s not allowed to be terrified of the reality that one day Abraham is going to hurt him so badly he can’t come back from it - or a wound will get infected - or maybe they’ll leave him down in the cellar and next time they won’t come back.

He’s not allowed to realize that he’s sort of relieved at the idea that all this pain and humiliation and the way the scum layered on his skin from what he is forced to do will never, ever scrub clean… that it might actually end.

His heart starts to beat fast again, and he wills it to slow, he wills it, but the finger pressed against his pulse feels the sudden uptick in speed, and Abraham clicks his tongue against his teeth in disappointment.

Daniel’s heart freezes in fear at the sound.

“You’re not focusing, puppy. Try again. In through your nose…”

“R-Right, I’m sorry, Abraham, um, give me a sec, I, I just-”

“Sssshhhh. Puppies only say what their owners want them to say.” Abraham grabs the end of the barbed wire and yanks hard, pulling it even tighter around him, and Daniel whimpers, just a little, in the back of his throat. He nods, frantically, just to show he’s listening, even though it forces some of the barbs in even harder, and he feels the first trickles of blood down the side of his neck.

Be good. Try harder. You can do this. Try again.

He tries again, tries to really truly focus this time, to be good. He can feel the texture of the braided rug under his knees, his toes just digging into the dip between two sections. He has it all memorized, every single inch of color that the previous owner of this cabin had so carefully woven together from scraps of fabric.

“Good. Inhale. ‘I love Abraham and want to be good.’”

In through his nose. “I love Abrah- Abraham… and I want to be good.” Voice strained with holding the air but also with hating every word out of his own mouth.

Hold for five.

“‘I have been abandoned by people who no longer want me.’”

Exhale. “I have been abandoned by people who no longer want me.” Cold fingertip pressed against his pulse to feel his heart slow once more, cold fingers along his jaw on the other side, a thumb pressing so gently into the notch dug hard into the skin there, where the line of his jaw is now broken, just like the rest of him.

“Inhale. ‘I am a very good puppy. I want to be good.’”

“I am a very good puppy. I want to be good.”

“Hold for five. Now exhale. ‘No one else will ever want me.’”

“No, no one else will e-e-ever want me.”

He manages to keep his heart placid, beating slowly, even as the words sink under his skin, leave him feeling lost, like a child who wandered away from the campsite and was never seen again and no one even bothers to report him missing.

Abandoned here, to live and to hurt and to die under Abraham.

No one’s looking for him.

No one cares.

“There. Better this time. Good job, Red.”

It’s a little harder to breathe, with the wire tighter around him, but he manages to keep himself calm, to not focus on that extra bit of effort to get the oxygen he needs. He focuses on being good, and he can feel the air change around him, the slight hint of warmth when Abraham is truly happy with how well he’s done.

If he opens his eyes, all he will see is Abraham - he’ll fall into the ice-chip eyes, he’ll tumble and he’ll drown in them and in that smile, the only one left in the world who still wants him - so he keeps his own closed, for as long as he’s allowed.

“You know,” Abraham says softly, lovingly, and Daniel shudders in disgust and fear but he doesn’t - can’t - pull away from the hands that insistently prod at the scar on his jaw, push into the pulse along his neck, and he lifts his chin a little more to try and escape the pressure without flinching.

He keeps his breathing slow and even, just the way Abraham wants him to.

Abandoned here with him, to be his good dog and hope that eventually he’ll get tired of me and kill me. Left here alone. No one is looking.

They’ve all given up by now.

“I really don’t think you know how good you’ve got it, with me,” Abraham says thoughtfully, trailing a fingernail along the top line of the wire, curving around the front of Daniel’s neck. He gets a bit of Daniel’s blood on his finger, and Daniel keeps his eyes closed, but he can hear Abraham suck the blood into his mouth, and fights back bile that tries to take what little room in his throat he can currently fill with air.

It cuts into the awful thoughts that he can’t quite fend off on his own, shatters the spell he was under in a sudden burst of rage.

How good I’ve fucking got it? How much unscarred skin is even left now, you piece of shit?

Daniel digs his fingernails even harder into his palms, shifts just slightly where he kneels on the floor. The chain attached to the cuff around his ankle scrapes, just a little, and he stills himself again. He gives no sign of the fury that lights him up inside, the hint of himself that still remains, that wants something better than just to be good.

You fucking monster, I fucking hate you, I’m a person, I’m a human being, I am more than the puppy, I am more than this.

“I kn-know, Abraham,” He says, hating himself for how small and weak his voice is now, thinner as he keeps his slow and careful breathing, trying to speak around it, to speak in a way that won’t move the skin of his throat and force the barbs in any further than they’ve already gone. “I know how good it is here.”

I used to be more than this.

“Do you, little Red? Do you really? I mean, my God, at least I actually want you. Do you think your family’s still looking for you?”

Daniel knows the answer Abraham wants to hear - and it’s the answer that wakes him up at night, that leads to the bad days he’s not supposed to have, when his future is one long stretch of moments just like this and nothing more. It’s the answer he makes him speak, over and over, as he breathes carefully and slowly on command. “No,” He says softly. “I know they’re not looking for me anymore. N-no one wants me.”

“That’s right. That’s my good boy. You’ve been abandoned, haven’t you?” Abraham pushes his thumb against the side of one of the barbs, forcing it hard into his Adam’s apple, and Daniel coughs, jerking back unconsciously to try and escape, then freezing himself in place. “Ah ah ah, little puppy, you don’t pull away from me, do you?”

“N-No, I’m sorry, I can, I can do better-”

Abraham presses again and then time Daniel manages to hold himself still, gasping a little, his eyes flying open to stare up into Abraham’s, wide and pleading, just the way the monster wants him to look. He can feel the warmth of the blood welling up, and as Abraham leans in Daniel tilts his chin up and back obediently, baring his throat for Abraham to move the barb just a little to the side, the awful wet heat as he tongues the wound and licks up the blood.

“Good boy,” Abraham breathes into his skin.

Daniel barely catches the way his stomach wants to flip and churn and throw up what little he’d been given for breakfast. Somehow, he holds himself still. Somehow, he holds back the tears in his eyes, keeps them glittering there so that when Abraham pulls back, pale lips stained red, he sees the tears that tremble and threaten to fall but not the sight of Daniel crying.

He likes the tears, but he hates it when Daniel cries.

He has to thread the needle of submission and despair - give the monster what he wants and maybe he won’t hurt him so much today. Try harder. Be good.

Pray that Nate finds enough game in the traps to get weighed down and come back quickly. Pray that Nate comes back fast, to interrupt this, to stop it before it goes too far, before Daniel is consumed by it, before he is lost in the pain and Abraham’s hands.

He feels his heart trying to beat fast again and presses his lips together.

Focus.

Be good.

Breathe through his nose - hold for five - out through his mouth - hold for five. Ignore the ache in his neck and the blood on Abraham’s lips.

“I’m so glad you decided to come here with us,” Abraham murmurs, icy fingers carding through his hair, sliding around behind his head. Abraham pauses, considering, and Daniel feels himself tense, knowing what’s coming. “So glad you understand now that this is your family. I own you, don’t I? What do we say, Red?”

Daniel swallows. The cold fingers graze along the back of his neck, making him shiver, finding the first bumps of his spine. “We, um, we say…” His voice trails off. “We say…”

Abraham leans down, kissing his cheek as his thumb presses at one of the barbs again, opens a new wound, a new droplet of blood to lick up and redden his mouth with, twisting his fingers into the wire collar to Daniel closer to him, smiling at the gasp of pain as barbs jam into the skin at the back of his neck now.

“Who do you belong to?” He whispers into Daniel’s ear, pressing his lips there, smearing blood Daniel can feel cool and start to dry.

He shivers, struggling to keep his breathing calm now, and Abraham chuckles, a thick sound deep in his throat. Daniel knows that Nate cannot come back fast enough, not this time.

“Say it,” Abraham says, and pulls on the wires again. “Say it, Red. Who do you belong to?”

“You.” No one wants me. “I belong to, um, to you.” No one is looking.

“Again.”

No one will ever find me here.

He’s been abandoned here, and Abraham and Nate are all he has left, and Nate is out checking the traps and won’t come back fast enough to get between he and Abraham, not this time. He keeps his head tilted back, the pain of the barbs mixing uneasily with the pleasant shiver as Abraham kisses his neck, just over the flutter of his pulse.

He forgets his focus.

He forgets how to breathe.

No one is looking.

“I belong to you, Abraham,” He says, and knows that it’s true, knows deep inside of himself that it doesn’t matter what happens now - he’s never ever going to get free. “I b-belong to you.”

“Good. Don’t you ever fucking forget that you’re mine.”

#whumptober2019 #no. 26 #prompt: abandoned #whump #intimate whumper #creepy whumper #tw: blood #tw: noncon touching #tw: noncon kissing #tw: reference to past assault/violence/torture #barbed wire #collar #pet whump #dehumanization #controlled breathing #conditioning #Daniel Michaelson's story

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