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#also my braids are actually kind of frizzy today

yellowocaballero · 3 years

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The Crow’s Funeral Snippet: Jon Gets Involved In Local Politics, Regrets It

Annabelle, of course, was standing on the other side of the door.

Slightly less obviously, she was dressed in a finely tailored suit, complete with high heels and a gorgeous dripping silver chain-link necklace. Her hair was tied up in an up-do of braids piled neatly on top of her head, and there was even a briefcase.

She looked Jon up and down critically. He was wearing sweatpants and a holey shirt.

“You forgot,” she condemned, “didn’t you?”

“No I didn’t,” Jon said reflexively. He paused. “Forgot what?”

Annabelle pinched the bridge of her nose. Jon noticed that she was even wearing her usual all-black lipstick and winged eyeliner. “The council committee for London I planned for today. Remember? The one with a representative for each Entity?” Jon stared blankly at her. “There was an invite?”

“Oh, that. I don’t check my mail.” Jon looked at Daisy, who was now pressing aggressively against Jon. “Did you open up any mail recently?” Daisy barked. Jon looked back at Annabelle. “She ate it.”

“...of course she did.” Written for no real reason besides for the fact that I know too much about my own AU and I care about Annabelle. This story takes place both pre- and post- story: six months after Jon enters London, and six months after the events of the story. We talk about childhood/adulthood, stagnancy/growth, good/evil, and the inherent metaphor of a Nintendo DS. Sometimes...found family...is bad. Rest under the cut.

In the third month, boiling and bubbling over, someone knocked at Jon’s door.

Not the door to his office. The door to his flat, which had a very large ‘EMPLOYEES ONLY’ sign on it, and was always locked. The employees were, granted, Jon and Daisy, but the message was conveyed. Jon saw the sign in stores and copied it, as he copied many aspects of business models. Jon didn’t quite understand how to run a business, but he had read both ‘What they teach you in Harvard Business School’ - whatever a Harvard was - and ‘What they don’t teach you in Harvard Business School’, so he figured he was set. Daisy had also grabbed him a Girl Scout book on starting your own lemonade stand, which helped more than the other two books combined. Harvard Business School could take notes.

Jon rolled off the bed, where he had been downloading knowledge of string games and trying to figure out how to do them. Omniscence was closer to reading an instruction manual than actually knowing how to do something, but at least that left Jon with plenty of time to learn skills. Even if it wasn’t necessarily his favorite activity - he was bad at a lot of them, which would frustrate him and make him wreck the craft. Daisy kept on saying he needed a hobby other than reading but what did she know, anyway -

Daisy, from where she had been sleeping at the foot of the bed, lifted her head and barked sleepily.

“I’ll get them to go away,” Jon promised. Or eat them. Maybe just eat them.

But when Daisy bristled and jumped off the bed, barking heavily, he knew who it was. Jon sighed, hastily shoving a shirt over his head, and undid the three deadbolts before unlocking the door.

Annabelle, of course, was standing on the other side. Slightly less obviously, she was dressed in a finely tailored suit, complete with high heels and a gorgeous dripping silver chain-link necklace. Her hair was tied up in an up-do of braids piled neatly on top of her head, and there was even a briefcase.

She looked Jon up and down critically. He was wearing sweatpants and a holey shirt.

“You forgot,” she condemned, “didn’t you?”

“No I didn’t,” Jon said reflexively. He paused. “Forgot what?”

Jon stared blankly at her.

“There was an invite?”

“...of course she did.” Annabelle glanced down at Daisy, whose fur was standing on end as she growled lowly. “Have you had any success?”

“You would have noticed if I did,” Jon said shortly.

“Have you tried talking to -”

“Yes,” Jon snapped, “but apparently some of us have better things to do than attend meetings and cure dogs.”

Annabelle intelligently dropped the matter, instead frowning at Jon. He crossed his arms, fighting the urge to hunch over away from her dark and perceptive stare. But instead of pushing him, she said, “Go get dressed in something a little appropriate, please. You look like you crawled out of the Buried.” Daisy barked, which Annabelle ignored. “What are you doing to your hair?”

Jon hunched defensively. It was a little matted and frizzy, but who was counting? “Daisy can’t exactly shave it anymore, and I don’t really...know what to do with it...am I doing something wrong? I bathe.”

It was very important to Daisy that he bathe and brush his teeth. Jon didn’t know what the big deal was, but if it was important to her then he did it.

Annabelle just pinched the bridge of her nose again, checking her wrist-watch. “Buzzing your hair is a crime against God, and letting your hair look like that is a crime against me. I’ll take care of this later. Just get ready in the next five minutes, or I’m filling your fridge with spiders again.”

Jon got ready in four. Annabelle didn’t joke around with that stuff.

He didn’t really know what a council committee was. He didn’t know why he had to go to one either, seeing as Jon only tended to concern himself with Daisy. Daisy had been taking up a lot of his concern lately. Then his mood had plummeted again, and in the last month they’ve both been recalcitrant to leave the flat for anything but eating, and he was capable of noticing when he was hunting a little vindictively, and - anyway.

He downloaded the knowledge, and then made a face when it didn’t really help. One of those nasty little political things. What was with his fellow Avatars and politics? Just torture anyone who bothers you. If they were one of those freaks who liked being tortured, then just smite them. Life was easy and very simple once you remembered that basic rule.

But Annabelle was really into it - she kept on saying something about ‘order’ and ‘regulation’ and ‘first dibs’ - and she tended to drag him along into these things. She thought it was ‘important’ that Jon ‘know what was going on’ or something. Jon liked Knowing things, but once you know everything you realize that some things aren’t really interesting enough to know.

When he asked Daisy if she wanted to go with, she feigned sleep. She had been hyperactive lately, compensating for her months of starvation with unbridled and frantic Hunting. Jon had taken her to one of those little pockets where people were running around and screaming all the time, and let her run wild in the rainforest for a while. It was the kind of fun bonding experience they hadn’t had in ages, and Jon had the opportunity to pluck his own grapes from the vine too.

There had been an old man who really hadn’t been happy to see Jon, which had freaked him out a bit. He had started going on a little bit about how Jon had ruined his life, but he only got a few sentences in before a giant, carnivorous plant had eaten him. That was lucky.

Jon had ripped the dimension apart as he left. Nasty little place. Nothing good there.

So Jon left the house without Daisy for the first time since she had been well enough to move around, and with Annabelle. Daisy had been waiting at the door with a rucksack packed with his favorite book and his Nintendo DS, which made Annabelle ask her where the juicebox was. Daisy tried to bite her again. Jon didn’t know why everybody couldn’t just get along.

There was a cab waiting outside, driven by another skeleton, and Annabelle quickly bundled him into it. Jon slouched in the corner and started playing WarioWare as Annabelle leafed through typewritten documents, lips pursing and making notes on the margins of each one with a red pen. She was muttering to herself, somewhat entertainingly.

“My fourth arm for a computer, I swear to Jesus. My fourth and fifth arms. My sixth arm for a computer…”

“Are those the internet machines you told me about?” Jon asked, scribbling his stylus on the screen. Ashley cheered him on. He loved Ashley. “Do council committees need the internet?”

“The internet’s for a lot more than council committees Jon,” Annabelle said tightly. “They’re for video games. Ememoharepeegees -”

“Gesundheit.”

“ - bitcoin mining, instant messaging, online dating, freaking Google Docs -”

“Do you want it back?” Jon asked, bored. “I can make you the internet.”

Annabelle’s pen froze on the paper, hovering over a bullet-point list. “The entire internet? You can just do that?”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.” Jon poked his tongue out his mouth in concentration as he pressed the monkeys in a rhythmic order. Rhythm games were his jam. “That’s, like, the pocket nightmare dimension from Tron, right? I can do that. Addictions are easy. Put people inside, trap them inside a video or something. It’d be mostly for torture but you could probably use it normally.”

Annabelle stared at him, expression blank, for so long it made Jon a little uncomfortable and defensive. What had he said wrong? Daisy was usually good at interpreting these things for him, although sometimes when people went on about ‘violence’ she was just as confused as him. Finally, she said, “No, that’s alright. I always hated Black Mirror anyway.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a telly - never mind. I don’t want you getting any more ideas.”

***

The council committee was held in the stupidest building Jon had ever seen in his entire life. And he had been in London for six months. He knew stupid buildings.

‘London City Hall’ or whatever was this awful giant, lopsided, obloid monstrosity. All glass and windows, with nary a brick in sight, Jon hated it instantly and severely. He was immediately filled with the urge to turn to somebody and commiserate with them about shitty architecture, but there was nobody else in the cab but Annabelle - and, well, she seemed to have other things on her mind.

The neighborhood around it was filled with a mix of equally stupid buildings and perfectly respectable buildings that looked as if they had been made a long time ago. The sidewalks were relatively abandoned, and the streets were empty of everything but the endless rotation of tourist double-decker busses. Jon knew that this wasn’t one of those districts where people actually lived and roamed - instead, it was one of those business districts that people only stepped inside for work or city business. Like that silly little Palace of Westminster building that Annabelle had taken him to months ago when she was showing him the city.

That building Annabelle had especially loved. It was filled with old white men with sagging jowls and liver spots, looping in endless routines and miniature atrocities. Annabelle had asked him to take as many Statements as possible, and Jon had needed no encouraging.

That had been a strange trip. Normally people found his little monologues boring, because they were idiots with no taste, but Annabelle had listened to every single one. She had been enraptured, excited and triumphant. She had dragged him into some “Lord’s Chamber” or something and posed on the throne as Jon obediently took polaroids. Well, so long as she was happy.

Jon was already seeing that London City Hall was no better. Annabelle dragged him through it, anxiously checking and re-checking her files, as they effortlessly weaved between shambling zombies of old white men in suits. Jon tasted the ripe air of trauma from them - a similar taste to that spiralling academic building, but rather a little more tart - but Annabelle dragged him away before he could stop and eat them.

There were parts of London that were safe. Maybe even most of London - although nowhere was truly safe, not really, not every location was absolutely haunted. The grocer’s was the grocer’s; the chemist still sold your medication. Not that you really needed it anymore, but habit was habit.

But some buildings, which were entrenched so firmly in hundreds of years of evil, could not be dissuaded from their nightmares. In that respect, the safest city in the United Kingdom became the most dangerous. Some buildings had been nightmares even before the end of the world.

Jon, of course, gave very little shits about this beyond in the academic sense. Annabelle refused to let him duck out of her meeting to go snack, and she ended up dragging him in front of what looked like a smallish conference room.

Annabelle stopped in front of it, taking a second to breathe in and out and check her makeup. She seemed to be hyping herself up for it, shaking out her arms loosely. Jon slouched behind her, hands jammed in his trenchcoat pockets. Annabelle had asked him to put on a less raggedy suit, but - well, he sometimes had nicer suits, but they got raggedy very quickly. She had also asked him to leave the trenchcoat at home, but no way. It was part of his Look.

“You’re frightened,” Jon noted with interest. Annabelle was scared of less than he was, and she had much less of a reason. “What about this room scares you?”

“It’s not the people in the room,” Annabelle snapped, flashing her compact shut. “It’s what I’m trying to do. If this world’s going to last more than a few years before it devolves into fuckin’ Mad Max we need leadership. I didn’t put all of this work in just to -” At Jon’s blank look, she sighed. “Never mind. You don’t care. Just - try to trust me, Jon.”

“Of course I trust you,” Jon said, baffled. “Why wouldn’t I?”

She stared at him, expression inscrutable, for a long moment, before opening the door and pulling him in.

It was a nice conference room, all wood panelling and that specific green shade you only saw in lawyer’s offices. There was a large rectangular table in the center, and more than a dozen luxurious chairs arranged around it. There was a big pull-down screen on the far wall. Jon didn’t know what it was for, but he knew that if he downloaded the information it wouldn’t help. Omniscence was so useless.

In a move that horrified Annabelle, most of the attendees seemed to be there. They had been chatting - talking, actually, quite loudly - before Annabelle strode in and Jon slumped in after her. But in the second that they both stepped in, an abrupt hush swept the room, and every eye swiveled to them.

If Jon was honest with himself, he’d say that they didn’t quiet when Annabelle stepped in. He’d say that they quieted when Jon stepped in. That it was Jon who they were looking at.

But Jon didn’t particularly feel like engaging with that. He didn’t like being stared at by people he didn’t know, and he didn’t like being out in public with people he didn’t know. He didn’t enjoy being in buildings or meeting new people, much less going to boring meetings. Jon decided all of this instantaneously, as every eye swiveled to him.

Rooms full of humans were fine. It was just humans. Nothing even vaguely intimidating about that, unless the humans were teenage girls. But these were Avatars - Jon could taste their nature in the air, a sharp and electric tingle - and when they stared at Jon he felt something heavier in their gaze. Oh, lord. There was a teenage girl here.

Jon tried slumping to the back chair, but Annabelle grabbed his collar and dumped him in a comfortable chair to her right. Jon saw a little placard in front of it that read ‘THE BEHOLDING’. Great.

“Thank you all for coming today,” Annabelle said crisply, and suddenly every worry was gone. She was calm, poised, confident, and professional. A perfect imitation of the officials and politicians who once really walked these halls, who passed laws and rubber-stamped policies. She could have passed for an assistant or junior staff member, bright and intrepid and ready to climb her way up the ladder. “Are we all accounted for?”

It seemed so. Every chair but one was filled. When Jon peered around at the placards, he saw that each one had a different Entity on it. One of the seats had no placard, and was occupied by said teenage girl. Four were unoccupied: the Spiral, the Slaughter, the Hunt and the Extinction.

Annabelle sat down in the head chair, which seemed just a little fancier. She put her folder in front of her, eyes flickering down the room. “It seems that Helen couldn’t make it. The Hunt duo seem to have...recently met unfortunate ends. The Slaughter Avatar called ahead to say that they couldn’t make it - it was high school picture day? And...I suppose the Extinction Avatar still doesn’t exist.”

She glanced at Jon, who shook his head. “Do you want one?” Jon asked. “I can go find a climate change denier in this building and make one for you.”

That also disturbed Annabelle, as well as everyone else. Jon abruptly felt awkward, and hunched in his seat. He defensively pulled out his DS, his plans to fall asleep in the back of the room already foiled.

Above him, Annabelle continued droning. “Still, I appreciate you all coming. I know that we haven’t all gathered since a bit after the apocalypse began -” Wait, they had? Since when? “ - but I hope we can agree that further coordination is necessary. We’ve already begun having serious territory and jurisdiction disputes, and it’s best that they’re resolved sooner rather than later.” Nobody looked very impressed, but Annabelle looked seriously at them all anyway. “I want us all to have an equal voice at this table. Save the fighting for another time. And please try to keep your powers out of here. I’ve already sworn to avoid using any of my Mother’s gifts in this room, and I hope you all can do the same.”

“Yeah?” A woman drawled. She was unfamiliar to Jon, like most people in the room, but she had a teenage girl sitting next to her who seemed to be paying rapt attention to Annabelle. “How are you going to enforce that?”

Annabelle stared at him for some reason. Jon jabbed at his DS and won the Mona minigame. Nothing more was said.

“Alright, then. I’ve already collected motions from all of you prior to this meeting.” Motions? Annabelle hadn’t said anything like that. Maybe it was on the invitation Daisy ate, but somehow he doubted it. Annabelle looked down and traced her finger down to her first point. “Many of you suggested this, so I would like to introduce it as a general discussion. Territory disputes, apparently, are a point of contention between many of us.” She opened her briefcase and pulled out a large map, and if Jon looked over the top of his DS he could see that it was a map of London. She also pulled out a red marker, uncapping it. The sheet was laminated, and there were already circles and markings all over it. “We’ll go one at a time. Amherst, you’ve motioned that the Stranger is intruding within Camden.”

A foppish looking man on a dumb little top hat scowled, as the young woman sitting behind the Strange placard looked annoyed. “It is gentrification. Every apartment complex occupied by artist studios are stealing food from the plate of my insects.”

“You haven’t had Camden for a decade,” the Stranger woman said, rolling her eyes. The Omniscience informed Jon that her name was Sarah Baldwin. Vaguely familiar - had he seen her at a cafe? “Nobody lives in those rat-infested tenements anymore. Now all the rats are performance art. Which is us. Get over it.”

“What is performance art -”

“Motion for no more Avatars over the age of 40,” Sarah Baldwin said. “I hate how Amherst and Wakely are in this room.”

“I wish I could second that,” Annabelle said, to the great affront of two grimy old men, “but unfortunately we do have to deal with this. Amherst, I’ve heard several complaints from other council members that you’re infiltrating their territory.”

“I am made of bugs -”

Jon checked out after that.

Instead, he surveyed the room a bit. Nobody in it was really interesting, just a meaningless collection of self-important people. The only person in the room other than Annabelle who he recognized was Oliver, who was sitting at the very back doing his best to fall asleep. When Jon Stared at him a bit he took notice and subtly waved. Jon shyly waved back. Jon liked Oliver.

Oliver mouthed something adjacent to ‘what is wrong with your hair’, offending Jon grievously. He didn’t look that bad, did he?

He glanced to his left, then down, to ask Daisy’s opinion, but he realized too late that she hadn’t come with him. Stupid. She could have come as part of the Hunt - they didn’t have anybody, it wasn’t as if they could complain. Not to Jon, anyway.

But she wouldn’t have wanted to. Daisy hated being an Avatar, for reasons that Jon had just never understood. She tried explaining it to him a long time ago, trying to talk about how guilty it made her and how much harm she had done, but it had just confused him more. She had tried to explain up until the end, as Jon had grown more and more angry at her for her refusal. He had never understood.

She had stopped talking about it lately, though. Which was good. Jon didn’t know what he’d do if she starved herself twice. He wouldn’t have tolerated it.

Daisy had told him that the most important thing in the world was to make your own choices. So he let her make hers. No matter how much he hated it.

The others weren’t familiar at all. There was a woman with wild dark hair sitting behind the Dark placard, which confused Jon slightly until he decided that they likely hadn’t wanted to send the thirteen year old. There was this really wrinkly and gross old man for the Vast, a younger looking but older feeling man for the Buried, a deathly pale woman for the Lonely, the muscular woman and the teenager for the Desolation...why did they have two…

The teenager was staring at Jon. She had intense orange eyes, the kind that bored into you and never blinked. She looked away every few seconds, as if she was being subtle, but when her gaze drifted back to him again he met her eyes with an unimpressed stare. She squeaked and looked away firmly, hiding behind her curtain of long red hair.

Okay. Whatever. Kids were weird. Jon was glad he had never been one.

Jon swapped out WarioWare for Pokemon SoulSilver, opening back up where he left off catching another MissingNo. His entire team was full of the things. He wanted a Mareep, damn it.

Finally, Annabelle rapped the table sharply and said, “It’s agreed, then. Everybody submit specific written documentation of your territory by city block, and fax it to me by our next meeting. Please abide by the resolutions to the conflicts we discussed here. Any objections to moving onto our next order of business?”

“I have an objection to the Dark’s questionable behavior,” the Buried guy rumbled. He was dripping dirt everywhere. Why didn’t anybody complain to him about his hygiene? “In the words of the lad Brody, they are kill stealing. If they do not withdraw their nightmares from our embrace of the Earth, we will unleash retribution with extreme prejudice. The dirt is a holy place, and we will not be polluted by -”

“Oh, stick your shovel up your fat ass, Wakely,” the woman with wild black hair said. “People aren’t afraid of the fucking dirt, they’re afraid of the darkness in the tombs. Walk into a mausoleum sometime.”

“You poach the End’s territory now too, wench?”

“Please leave me out of this,” Oliver said.

“If you call me wench one more time, you’ll be watching the back of your eye sockets for eternity,” the woman said pleasantly, “so royally fuck you.”

“Um, not to interrupt, but that’s not really how it works,” the teenager said, and the death glares between the two turned on her. She hunched her shoulders, but her expression stayed firm. “The terror is going to overlap. That’s just how it is. The Buried and the Dark are not entirely...separate things, they’re gradients that overlap. If you get all finicky about what belongs to who, then you’re just going in circles…”

“The last thing we need is the coward Messiah of the Eternal Flame telling me how to worship my god,” the woman snapped.

“Watch your fucking mouth, Manuela,” the muscular woman said flatly.

Then they were glaring, and Wakely was saying something else snide, and Manuela was making another dig at the teenager as the muscular woman bitched, and Jon abruptly wanted them all to shut up.

“You’re being too loud,” Jon said.

The entire room shut up immediately. The teenager opened her mouth, but the pale woman caught her eye and shook her head.

Annabelle clapped her hands in the silence. “Onto the second motion, then! Infrastructure! Right now we are sorely missing a great deal of essential city infrastructure, and it’s becoming a huge problem. We’re still figuring out what’s mystically maintained, and what’s just being maintained because the humans haven’t figured out how to stop doing it yet, but there’s some work that’s being neglected. The Vast has motioned to reinstate the postal system.”

“Vetoed,” the Lonely woman said.

“You can’t do that,” Annabelle said blankly. “We need to vote.”

“I’d like to make an argument for the motion, dear,” the Vast man said, making Annabelle’s eye twitch. “My argument is this: Amazon Prime is so convenient!”

“We have every Amazon warehouse under our control,” the representative from the Flesh said. He was...very fleshy. “It’d be no issue to go back to production.”

“Jared has a point. The Eye’s been feeding through Amazon for years,” Annabelle said thoughtfully. The mention of the Eye piqued Jon’s attention, but then he finally ran into a Mareep and he stopped paying attention again. “We can tap into the people who are living 1984 and get them back in industry.”

“Can we begin producing again?” the Desolation woman asked, interested. “We have all these people miserable at work, but nothing’s actually being made. If we let a little reality break into the nightmares…”

“Wouldn’t that be dangerous?” the Lonely woman asked sharply. “It’ll make it easier for them to escape.”

“They all escape eventually,” Sarah Baldwin said. “They all break out in days to months. We can afford a little more permeability if we actually get things working again.”

Then conversation was off and running about something that Jon didn’t really care about, so he checked out again. He didn’t know what all of this production and infrastructure stuff meant. Going Postal meant that he had a very good understanding of a mail system, but he didn’t have a personal interest. Who he would send letters to?

Jon quickly downloaded what Amazon was. Oh, that would be useful. Wait, he could get any book delivered to his door? Without having to go out hunting for it? How would this work without the internet - a catalogue?

Everybody seemed invested in getting the internet back up, except for the two hundred year olds. Jared kept saying something about porn, whatever that was. If enough people felt like Annabelle, then maybe they would make it a priority. Jon didn’t know how he felt about that.

He didn’t know how he felt about the fact that it was impossible.

But everybody - or most people - genuinely seemed excited about it. They even seemed to be working together, intent on the same goal.

Sarah Baldwin wanted to know if we have enough people constantly under camera to have footage for television. Maybe we could get cable back up? DVDs were a lost cause, but if we could just start airing the VHS tapes…

Annabelle had a look of hook-ups (literally) in the film industry, maybe they could do something like that?

The Hahns are highly involved in production and distribution, Jared pointed out. There was no need to produce food, but if we wanted to increase access to goods it might be possible.

Why? Why did they care? This world provided them everything they needed.

For some reason, Jon felt a little defensive. What did they need all of these things for, anyway? All of this entertainment - cable and movies and internet. The world had books. What was so wrong with books? There were even old VHS tapes liberated from charity stores if you really wanted to get fancy. The most high-tech electronic Jon had ever found was the DS in his hands and a couple of games, which Salasea had given to him as an exotic artifact. Only Salasea owned these things now: trinkets and curiosities, hallmarks of an antiquated time.

What was the point of these supply lines? People didn’t need to eat or shop or consume. Nightmares provided the facsimile, and since they got a little crazy if they never ate they were provided the security of food. Buying towels and shoes and toys...it was a waste of time. People had towels. Nobody outgrew their shoes or wore them out. Children’s toys didn’t break, and anything that made happiness a little easier to come by was discouraged.

Nothing was ever subtracted. Nothing was added. The world was frozen, captured in the amber of time, and it would never move backwards and forwards.

They knew this. Didn’t they?

“We have to make this place livable for us,” Annabelle was saying. She spoke oddly intensely, with a fervor that Jon had seen in her a few times before. Annabelle didn’t like to give off the impression that she cared about things, but once you knew her it was hard to miss. “It’s easier than ever to stay powerful and feed our Forces, but that doesn’t mean we can grow complacent. We have to work together to eat sustainably. To live sustainably. If we don’t try to rebuild, at least enough to get the world moving again, then we’re sentencing ourselves to a boring and decrepit eternity in a world we will all see die within our immortal lifetimes.”

Everyone at the table was nodding. They looked determined. United. Almost...they held an expression that Jon just couldn’t name. An emotion he didn’t understand.

He had seen it in Daisy, once. She had called it hope. He hadn’t understood back then. He still didn’t.

“Liar,” Jon said, as his minigame timed out and the game over music tinkled across the tinny speakers.

Annabelle looked at him, expression inscrutable. “These problems are legitimate, Archivist. The writing’s clearly on the wall, and -”

“You’re all so stupid,” Jon complained, and Annabelle abruptly stopped talking to glare at him. Whatever. Jon had lost all patience. He closed his DS and dropped it on the table, resigning himself to talking. Jon hated public speaking, especially in front of so many people he didn’t know and, frankly, creeped him out. “You can’t build anything in this world. If you try to impose a cute little government then it’ll break down into cannibalism or something.”

“Would you know, Archivist?” Jared asked evenly.

“Jonah didn’t enact this world through myself for living,” Jon said, bored, and everybody stared at him with wide eyes. “We created it for suffering. Suffering isn’t living.”

“One might say the opposite,” the Vast man said, somehow twinkingly. “Suffering is an unavoidable side effect of living, isn’t it?”

“Is that philosophy? I don’t understand philosophy.” Jon wasn’t very good with anything that required extensive and complex thought. Which made sense - Jonah hadn’t exactly created him to think. “Humanity has clouded your minds. Makes all of you irrational and sentimental. Release your attachment to the old world. Just accept the way things are now.” Jon shrugged. “It’s not as if you can do anything about it.”

“Nobody in this room is exactly human, Jon,” Oliver pointed out placidly.

Jon snorted. “Wanting free porn back? You’re all dripping with it.” It was honestly a little sad. “The only ones in this world free of that weakness are Jonah and I. And he’s the only one who could do any of this.”

“Then where is he?” the Desolation woman snapped. She leaned forward, hands gripping the table in anger. The teenager watched her anxiously. “Why doesn’t he come on down from his high tower and explain what’s going on? We’re in the fucking dark here!”

“I’m sorry,” Jon said coldly, “who are you?”

He rubbed his bad hand. For some reason, everybody watched him do so. He stopped, self-conscious.

“Prejudiced remarks aside,” Manuela said. She had been hostile all day, but she now spoke cautiously. “Jonah Magnus needs to take responsibility for this. We don’t even know how the world ended.”

Several people glanced at Annabelle, whose lips thinned. “I shouldn’t say.”

Of course she knew. And of course she wasn’t about to tell him. Whatever. Jon didn’t care. Past was the past.

He found his hand clenching. There was a strange tension in his throat. He didn’t care. He didn’t. Rehashing the worst pain he had ever felt in his life, even now, wasn’t really worth the time or energy. He didn’t care.

“No use crying over spilled milk,” the Vast guy said lightly. “But it is a relevant question. Jonah frequently spoke of his plans, and I realize now that he had never truly shown all of his cards. But he had always held an intention to...well, rule. It’s only in this moment of his victory that he shows no interest.”

“Jonah’s busy,” Jon snapped. “Trust me, you don’t want that arse around. He never even gives me directions, and I’m his right hand.”

“Or his puppet,” Sarah Baldwin muttered.

It was fair. Probably even true. So why did an intense and burning fury shoot through Jon?

“What gives this child the right to dictate us?” Wakely demanded. Jon’s hands clenched on the table until his knuckles turned white. “What gives Jonah Magnus the right to rule us?”

“He’s not much of a ruler,” Amherst grunted. “My vote’s that we rule this world in a council.”

“Administration is important,” Annabelle said, impossibly terse, “but unless anyone here actually has the means to seize control, then there’s no use voting on it.”

“There’s only one Avatar here who has those means,” Manuela said darkly, crossing her arms and looking straight at Jon. “So why doesn’t he do anything?”

They were feeding on each other. They wouldn’t have said these - these treasonous things by themselves. But when one person spoke up, the next felt empowered, and they felt as if they outnumbered him. Jonah Magnus was hardly there to press him into obedience - why buckle under his oppressive gaze? What could he do?

The stupidest people in this world all gathered in one room. It took a special level of arrogance, pride, and stupidity to assume that one was more powerful than Jonah Magnus.

“I’m not in charge of anything,” Jon said tersely. “I don’t even have a domain. I’m just trying to live my life.”

The Desolation woman snorted. “Typical. You’re rolling over for Jonah.”

Jon’s eyes widened - not in surprise, but in anger.

The teenager seemed a little uncomfortable. “Jude,” she hissed, “I don’t think -”

“Jude,” Jon breathed. “So that’s your name.”

He was standing up. Jon didn’t remember standing up. Everybody was leaning away, their own eyes wide. Some just looked confused, slightly perturbed - Wakely, Amherst. Others looked ready to bolt - Manuela, the old man from the Vast. Jon knew, in a flash of insight that grew hotter and hotter, that he preferred to be called Simon.

“Sit down, Jon,” Annabelle said, as authoritative and no-nonsense as ever. Normally he’d listen to her, respecting that she usually knew what was going on far better than he ever did. But the words barely reached him, drowned out by the rushing in his ears. “Look, we can talk about this rationally, alright?”

“Oh, fuck off,” Jude said. She snorted, burning red eyes never leaving Jon’s. “As if I’m scared of this baby prick.”

“Maybe we can move on from Jonah Magnus,” Simon said quickly. “A discussion of airspace rights, perhaps -”

“Jon,” Oliver said, voice creased in worry, “are you okay?”

“This is the all-powerful demigod you all warned me about?” Amherst said. He was dripping with condescension, just like - just like everyone else - “He’s little more than a child.”

“Guys!” the teenager’s voice rang through the room, close to scared. “The walls are melting!”

So they were. It was as if the stone and wood was made of wax, sent guttering by a sputtering candle. Wood and finish were already pooling on the floor, melting the rolling wheel of Jared’s chair and forcing him to jump up from it.

“Jon!” Annabelle said sharply. “Don’t throw a tantr -”

The table cracked sharply. It was warping, twisting in on itself as if it was a wrung towel. Jon realized, too late to care, that his hair was rising. He knew his eyes were spinning, an eternal churning wheel.

“Fuck this, meeting adjourned.” Manuela stood up sharply, pushing her chair back into a melting bubble. The floor was beginning to bubble and warp. “See you all next month.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Simon said quickly, standing up too.

“You have two minutes,” Jon said, voice heavy with static. “Don’t bother me about this shit again.”

The signal was clear enough. Jude rose from her chair, grabbing her teenager’s elbow and pushing her out the door. The others followed in their wake, expressions carefully neutral. It was useless: Jon could taste their fear, their trepidation. Even better: their anger, barely brindled fury, and disgust.

They couldn’t do anything about it, Jon thought giddily. No matter how much they hated or were scared of him, they couldn’t do anything about it. Jon was powerful. Jon couldn’t be hurt. Jon couldn’t -

Jon couldn’t reign this in.

Before he knew it, the conference room was empty. Only two other people remained: Annabelle, expression as inscrutable as ever, and an uncomfortable Oliver. His hands were stuck in the pockets of his pea coat, and he was looking around with disaffected interest - as if he was standing in line at a Starbucks in rush hour instead of in the epicenter of a melting building.

Jon knew. The entire building was dissolving. It was teeming with humans, lost and trapped and defenseless. He didn’t want to kill them. Jon didn’t like hurting people. He heard a voice speak in his head, foreign and familiar. Bring it in, Jon.

But he couldn’t. His hair would fall back around his shoulders, and the static rushing through his ears just wouldn’t abate. It felt like everything was pouring out of him, a relentless faucet that wouldn’t stop churning out thick streams of putrid water.

Jon fisted his hands in his hair, groaning. “Where’s -”

“She’s at your flat,” Annabelle said calmly. “Do you want me to get her?”

No. No, this was too embarrassing. He was an adult, he could handle this. Jon groaned again and sank into his seat, saved from the toxic waste of glass and brick. “No. Focus on getting the humans out of here.”

“What do you care?” Oliver asked, vaguely curious. “You don’t seem that fond of humanity.”

“Just do it!” Jon snapped, instead of admitting that he didn’t know either.

Eventually, the room stopped melting. Jon didn’t even want to think about how difficult it would be to leave the building. He could probably straighten out the hallways just enough to help Annabelle and Oliver get out.

Ugh. This place had sunk straight into Helen’s domain. He could taste it in the air: any future human who wandered in would be stuck in an endless spiral of twisted, melted hallways. Probably flavored with...powerlessness and fear. Feeling very small, as someone very large loomed down on you. Tories.

At least he hadn’t sucked flattened the building into one plane again, robbing it of all spiritual and metaphysical dimensions. Jon had done that to a graveyard once. The place was putrid now. He had accidentally fallen into a grave and panicked and - anyway.

He rested his forehead on the warped and splintered conference table, waiting for his throat to open back up and the rushing in his ears to die down. Finally, after what felt like forever, his hair floated back down and he felt his eyes resume their normal shape.

Awkward silence loomed. Jon sighed. “Sorry.”

“I worked hard to arrange this, you know,” Annabelle said.

“Yeah.”

“I am not happy with you, Jon,” Annabelle said.

“Sorry,” Jon said miserably. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I mean,” Oliver said, after a beat, “that’s kind of terrifying. That you can melt a building on accident. Like, what would happen if you got really pissed at Manchester or something?”

“Goodbye, Manchester,” Annabelle muttered.

Jon lifted his head, glaring blearily at Oliver. “If you think that’s crazy, you should have been there the one time I opened up an extradimensional gate and unleashed nightmare terrors into the world, rendering all of humanity immortal and eternally trapped in endless infernal hellscapes.”

Oliver shrugged, conceding the point.

But Annabelle just looked thoughtful. Probably reworking five billion plans, knowing her. Jon didn’t want to know, because he didn’t care. Let her do whatever she wanted. None of his business. Hopefully, after this disaster, she’d keep it out of his business.

Finally, she asked, “Was that true? That there’s no moving us forward?”

Jon sighed. He really didn’t want to talk about this anymore. But if he didn’t tell her then she’d just bug him about it later, or find some way to get the information out of him that would be both convoluted and unpleasant. “I’m not saying that people can’t...live their lives. They’re obviously still going to work and typing in every digit of pi into their spreadsheets for eight hours and then going home to stare, hypnotized, into cable television. But I am saying that there’s no achieving more than that. There’s no going backwards, and there’s no going forwards. The past is closed to us, and so is the future.” He eyed her warily. “If you have any cute time travel ideas, forget it.”

“I would never,” Annabelle said innocently.

Yeah, sure. Liar. Jon scowled. “You’re all hampered by your humanity.” When Oliver opened his mouth, Jon just shook his head. “Even Avatars are still people. We’re all conduits for eldritch Forces, hollowed out to serve as a live wire for their power, but we - you all remember a human life. You care about things. You have relationships. You love. It makes you weak. Some of you don’t even like your lot in life - some part of you aching for something familiar, when you felt genuine happiness instead of the cheap facsimile induced by causing pain.” Jon looked down at his hands, reflexively picking at one of his many scars. “You should be more like me. You’d be more focused.”

“Are you capable of...changing, Jon?” Oliver asked curiously. “Or will you be this way forever?”

“Most of Annabelle’s plans hinge on that not happening,” Jon said, not even aware it was true until he said it, “so I suppose we’ll find out.”

Of course, Jon knew what Oliver had tactfully not said. He had wanted to know if Jon would ever grow up. They all thought he was a child, even Annabelle. Jon had the feeling even Daisy did, sometimes.

It was stupid and they were wrong. Child would imply adult, would imply birthday parties and learning to talk and learning geography. Jon didn’t have to learn geography. He knew geography. He didn’t age. He was born being able to talk. Jon was above all of these things. He was mature. And even if he wasn’t, who cared?

But Annabelle just smiled at Jon, a polite mask. Annabelle hadn’t made a genuine facial expression in - well, longer than Jon’s memory. Or maybe that was the wrong way to put it. Maybe it was more accurate that she never expressed an emotion that she didn’t mean to. “Well! That wasn’t entirely a disaster, was it? I think next time could go really well. Don’t worry, Jon, I won’t drag you out of bed again.” She propped her hands on her hips. “Now, the three of us are going back to your flat and doing something about your awful rat’s nest.”

Oh, lord. This was going to be terrible. “Do we have to?” Jon whined.

Annabelle smiled again, but this time it was so dangerous that Jon couldn’t help but quail. “My spiders are collecting the avocado oil and coconut oil now. My best friend in secondary had 3C hair too, I think I know what to do. Oliver, bring the buzzer, scissors, and satin wraps.”

“Three cee?” Jon asked, confused. “What’s that?”

Oliver grimaced. “Why am I involved in this?”

“Because I don’t know what to do with a guy’s hair, and you’re probably the only guy I’ve ever met who knows what to do with hair? Keep up.”

“I’m feeling pigeonholed, but fine. But we are not buzzing that hair. It’s a crime against god.” Oliver looked thoughtful for a second. “I think Jon would do a nice, loose afro. I think I still have some hair masks and vinegar rinse -”

“Why is this so complicated?” Jon asked, completely freaked out. “What are these things?”

But Annabelle just smiled sweetly at him, reaching out and squeezing his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Jon. I’ll teach you what you need to know.”

Well. It seemed easier than figuring things out for himself. Jon didn’t like responsibility. Today was his first taste of responsibility in ages, and he had already decided that it sucked. Better to let somebody who actually cared take care of it.

That way, he didn’t have to be powerful. Didn’t have to be anybody’s demigod on Earth, capable of murdering whoever he liked. He could just be Jon, Private Detective, Archivist. He could have fun. Just live. Didn’t he deserve that, despite everything?

He stood up too, summoning a shaky smile for Annabelle. “So you aren’t mad about me ruining your meeting, then?”

“Water under the bridge,” Annabelle said. “Now come on, we have to stop by the chemist’s and pick up a decent hairbrush.”

Hairbrush? What was that for?

****

Six months after time resumed its course

Jon opened his mailbox, only to find mail.

Suspicion immediately loomed. Jon didn’t get mail. Not due to any kind of impossibility, but just because he didn’t pay bills and none of the mimic junk mail was brave enough to try their luck with him. Maybe invoices, sometimes, but mostly those were dropped off in person. The invoices were scarier than the finger-biting mimics: he still didn’t quite know how they worked. Sasha kept insisting they were important, but Sasha also insisted face masks were important. She didn’t know everything. That was Jon’s job.

He grabbed the singular envelope anyway, elbowing his door back open as he inspected the envelope. Thick, rich, and creamy, it reminded Jon uncomfortably of Annabelle’s party invite from a while ago. In the front, he saw that it was addressed to...Agnes?

The living room was noisy and busy, entirely due to the recipient of the letter and her brother. They were playing Mario Kart on the Wii, and apparently disowning each other. Jon watched Agnes hit Gerry with a blue shell, slightly bemused, and saw Dry Bones spin out into the center and make a pitiful noise. Baby Peach loomed supreme.

Jon almost felt bad interrupting. An opened bag of chips scattered dust around Gerry, and Agnes had a half-empty pack of uncooked hot dogs next to her. They had both been at this for a while. “Agnes, you got a letter. And try to keep it down, Sasha’s working and Daisy’s sleeping.”

Agnes turned around, half a hot dog hanging out of her mouth like a cigar. She swallowed it quickly, holding out one hand and letting Jon give her the letter. She frowned down at the front, ignoring the way Gerry craned his head to take a look, and when she checked the back she frowned deeper. There was a wax seal, its details out of sight to Jon.

“Is it that time already?” Agnes muttered, putting her controller down and letting the parade lap on the screen continue.

Gerry frowned too as Agnes carefully broke the seal. “Is that from…?”

“Yeah. Weird, though. Guess it’s about time for the follow-up to the emergency meeting.” She pulled a letter out of the envelope, embossed on creamy paper. She scanned it quickly. “Downing street this time…”

“Are you going to go?”

“Well, it’s not as if Jude can,” Agnes said diplomatically, refolding the paper.

Jon cleared his throat, making the kids jump. They had half-forgotten he was there. Far too late, Agnes hid the invite behind her back. “Care to explain?”

“Oh, you know,” Agnes said vaguely, casually tossing the invite behind her shoulder and letting Gerry snatch it out of midair. “It’s the invite to the Avatar council meetings. I think they’re held once every three months, but since months are a theoretical concept it’s occasionally hard to tell..”

“Not these days,” Gerry said excitedly. “It’s cold! The leaves fell!”

“The leaf thing is dope,” Agnes agreed. “Anyway, I should go. I have, like, serious words. I already submitted ten motions. I want to run for Treasurer, but Jared keeps saying that anybody who isn’t old enough to open her own bank account shouldn’t be treasurer.”

“What on Earth are you talking about?” Jon asked blankly. Was this some kind of youth league? Baseball? Was this baseball?

Abruptly, Agnes looked very sketchy. “I...it’s really nothing you’d be interested in.”

“I am interested in everything,” Jon said. He was offended beyond all belief. “Don’t keep secrets!”

“Jon’s not a big fan of secrets,” Gerry stage-whispered. “Did Annabelle say that we shouldn’t tell him or did she just say not to bother him about it?”

Agnes abruptly started sweating wax. “I can’t remember.”

“Now you have to tell me,” Jon said flatly.

They gave up very quickly. Teenagers loved hiding things, but they also loved drama and spilling secrets. “It’s the Avatar council meeting thing,” Gerry said eagerly. “You know, where you guys all get together and re-enact the British empire by making government decisions and imposing made-up laws on the people you’ve conquered and are currently subjugating under your big stompy boots?”

“I’m changing the system from the inside,” Agnes said proudly.

Gerry shot her an unimpressed look. “Okay. Yeah. Sure. Because that’s a thing that makes sense in an inherently corrupt system with an inherently unethical existence that exists to be profitable at the expense of the marginalized.”

“I don’t understand anything children these days even talk about,” Jon said.

“I’m surprised you don’t remember it,” Agnes said to Jon. But she had a strange expression on her face, one hard to decipher. “It’s where we met.”

Jon stared at her blankly. “I don’t remember talking to you.”

“I was sitting next to Jude?” Agnes hinted. “Teenager? Red hair?”

Wait. Jon snapped his fingers. “Annabelle’s idiot thing! Right! Right, of course, Oliver made me sit still for five hours afterwards, it was insufferable.”

Wait. Jon abruptly remembered the rest of that day. It seemed like so long ago, even though it was probably objectively only about three years. It must have been about...yes, a few months after Daisy had gotten stuck...

He barely remembered those tepid and awful months. He had been on a bit of a hair trigger back then. It had been really tough, with Daisy leaving and his terrifying encounter with Jonah. He remembered everybody had been annoying and mean and made him feel bad…

“First time I ever remember feeling fear, honestly,” Agnes said to Gerry. “Scariest moment of my life. Remember when we first met Jon? All I could think about was that he was going to melt us like he melted that building.”

Hot shame flared in Jon’s gut. Right. Other people were real, and existed, and were probably more important than his...what had he even been upset about? He didn’t remember.

He melted a building and he didn’t even remember why.

“I’m going too,” Jon said, and both kids startled. “I’m coming with you.”

Agnes and Gerry stared at each other with wide eyes.

“Uh,” Agnes said finally, hesitant, “there’s about a 50/50 chance Annabelle said not to tell you about this, and you definitely didn’t get an invite, so statistically you probably aren’t -”

“She can’t exactly stop me from coming,” Jon said, and both kids quieted.

Power-tripping had lost all appeal for Jon - assuming role as a conduit for global and absolute power did that to you - but he couldn’t deny it was useful sometimes. The world probably could have stood a little more power-tripping from him, actually. At least, it would have been helpful if he had ever done anything helpful with it. But he had never really bothered.

But Agnes still looked perturbed, almost worried. “Annabelle’s like one of two people you used to ever listen to, so if you don’t really care what she thinks anymore -”

“I think Annnabelle knows better than to complain these days,” Jon said.

It probably was for the best that Jon didn’t listen much to Annabelle anymore.

****

Jon hadn’t really told the others about Annabelle’s worse-than-murder attempt.

It didn’t really seem like any of their business, and he had spinned a vague explanation of how the situation happened. He didn’t lie, just - withheld information.

For the first time, the truth didn’t seem so important. He had the feeling it would have just upset them. It wasn’t as if he would take revenge against Annabelle. The world needed her, and Jon was a little tired of murdering everyone who upset him. The others (Daisy) would insist on the little murder attempts if they knew, but that was probably part of why he didn’t tell them. If they never knew about the one unselfish thing he had done in his life - well, one unselfish thing didn’t make up for three years of selfishness, so there was very little point.

Martin suspected. Actually, Martin seemed to know, which terrified Jon slightly. It was impossible to get anything past Martin. Jon was deeply intimidated by the man. Sasha laughed very long and hard when he told her that, for unknown reasons.

Besides, it wasn’t as if he felt betrayed. Even if the last time he had attended one of Annabelle’s little council meetings he still trusted her, that had faded quickly in favor of complete apathy. Even then, as young as he was, he had never expected the truth from her. Just friendship. Whatever she was doing, it probably wouldn’t affect him, so there was no use in worrying. Even if Annabelle slightly terrorized every other person in the United Kingdom - well, Jon was fine, so what did it matter.

Jon couldn’t decide if he was stupid or naive. Or, even worse - if he was just lazy.

Jon didn’t listen to Annabelle anymore.

Unfortunately, he still listened to Sasha James.

Two weeks later, the date of the actual meeting, Jon was stuck explaining himself to his entire house, who doubted all of his decisions. Which was just unfair. Jon made good decisions! He had made tons of good decisions, like -

Anyway!

“I think it’s a great idea,” Sasha said, freaking out Jon. “Displaying interest in your local government’s fantastic! Did you do any research on the relevant issues?”

Jon, in the middle of pulling on his trenchcoat, started sweating. “I was just planning on showing up.”

Agnes, who was wearing a gauzy skirt and blouse as Daisy helped a whining Gerry with his court buttons, gave Sasha the thumbs up. “I’m going to propose motions and Jon’s going to say ‘yeah what she said’ and it’ll be great.”

Jon let Agnes believe that.

“Well, you’ll have to share Jon’s political weight,” Sasha said cheerfully. She was in sweatpants and one of Jon’s pilfered t-shirts again. She had recently designated herself a writer, and had joined some sort of recent artist and activist collective where they did mysterious things that Jon didn’t understand. There’s a zine involved? Jon didn’t know what a zine was and he was scared to ask.

Georgie and Melanie had spent a week teaching Jon in laborious detail what exactly the internet was - information Jon could have just downloaded, but they had been intent in their mission of creating ‘the perfect internet’ and had gone through great effort in teaching him what the ‘good’ internet was (Ravelry, Spotify, r/HobbyDrama, YouTubers but only a very specific list) and what the ‘bad’ internet was (social media, the rest of Reddit, every other YouTuber). Jon wasn’t sure if the new internet was to their specifications, and he hadn’t quite been able to avoid parts of it spiralling into nightmare dimensions and hellish breeding grounds for violence and trauma, but Melanie assured him that Twitter had always been like that.

Jon also secretly added a nightmare filter to Melanie’s screen reader, after he made sure every inch of it was accessible, after he roughly recreated screen readers. Melanie said that the voice sounded uncannily like the aunt she had hated, but that it was no big deal.

Anyway, Sasha was a blogger now. After a few meltdowns to Sasha’s computer he had to install a nightmare filter for her too, which made her complain about feeling like an old woman whose grandson had to install AdBlock on her browser. Jon was a little scared of the whole blogging thing, but everybody seemed much happier, so maybe that was the important thing.

“Wait,” Jon said, finally recognizing what Sasha said. “Share with who?”

There was a knock on the door. Jon felt intense fear.

“She’s here!” Sasha said cheerfully. “Come in!”

Jon watched in horror as Basira Hussain casually strode into her house. He knew he couldn’t stop her. She had a key to the place, because Jon had no control of his life.

“Hey honey,” Basira said, intimately.

“Hey honey,” Daisy said lovingly, releasing Gerry from her clutches.

They stared at each other, as if this was any kind of greeting whatsoever, before ignoring each other. Jon did not understand so many things.

Basira, terrifyingly, was dressed like she was about to go defend her client in court. She had a briefcase, and Jon recognized her most important looking crimson hijab. Very abruptly, Jon had a flashback to the way Annabelle had dressed when she had picked him up in his old office. They even had the same expression: determined and resolute, in a way that Jon could never understand.

Basira nodded at Jon. “Hey. Sasha invited me to this thing. She told you I was coming, right.”

“She did not.”

“Whatever. Are we going to get going? We’re going to be late.”

Jon looked at Sasha pleadingly. Cold and resolute stone, Sasha showed no mercy. She smiled brightly, giving Agnes a final hug and pushing her forward. “You kids have a great time! Terrorize the bourgeoisie!”

“I am the bourgeoisie,” Jon said blankly, but the situation had already spiraled out of his control. Agnes and Basira were already comparing lists of notes, seriously discussing the motions Agnes had raised and how she was going to help Basira.

That was it – how Agnes could help Basira. How Agnes, and the role she had in the council hall, could help Basira and the people Jon knew that she intended on representing today.

They hadn’t even looped him in. Had they assumed that he wouldn’t care? That he wouldn’t help? Agnes hadn’t even wanted him there. Only Sasha -

He felt a cool, small hand grab his arm, and he turned around to see Daisy. Gerry was already enthusiastically capturing Sasha about the concert he and Agnes were going to later, and Jon knew that they weren’t listening. Daisy’s expression was somber, her body tense. Daisy wasn’t one for facial expressions at the best of times – not even a new development – but something about this…

“I should go with you,” Daisy said.

“I already told you no,” Jon said, miffed. “I can handle this by myself.”

“I shouldn’t have let you go by yourself last time,” Daisy said. Jon could admit that things probably wouldn’t have spiraled out of control if she had been there, but that didn’t mean – “Don’t terrify yourself just because you feel guilty.”

Daisy hadn’t aged any more than the rest of the world had. As an Avatar, she likely never would. She even looked young for her mid-forties, with her short stature and broad, unlined face. Sasha had assured him that she was ‘Kristen Bell-ish’, whatever that meant. But she always seemed so old to him: larger than life and not even reaching his shoulders. Wise and world-weary even when, as Jon was beginning to see, she didn’t know what she was doing any more than the rest of them did.

It scared Jon, almost: if Daisy wasn’t the person who could swoop in and make it all better, then who could?

If Jonah wasn’t the omnipresent god, then who was the most powerful person in the world?

Jon shook her off, fighting the pull in his gut. “I’m not scared of them anymore.”

She didn’t look impressed. “You’re always scared.”

“Look at the time, going to be late, gotta go!”

He still couldn’t win an argument against her.

They took a taxi there, as Jon had cheerfully informed them that the Tube was delayed due to infernal leaves on the line (Work-from-home was the hot new thing these days). Basira was clearly on edge, tense and constantly keeping an eye on the taxi driver (a friendly skeleton) and the street. Agnes wasn’t any more relaxed, reading her notes over and over.

Jon leaned back in his plush seat, closing his eyes. What would Martin say? He would probably be cuttingly pointing out how Jon was in denial over how he really was secretly afraid of the Avatars and now it was even more dangerous because he was much more willing to power-trip.

Forget about what Jon wanted. Forget about his fear, his insecurities, and every rationale he had constructed for himself as to why Jon deserved a life free of these worries.

Jon was above politics. The Avatar with no need to defend their territory, who held no fear of death or failure, had no need. Jon could not lose the affection of his patron. His domain was the world, and it could not be attacked no matter how hard he tried. Jon was not a politician, so of course that meant he could not be manipulated by politicians -

“What’s your plan,” Jon asked, without opening his eyes.

They told him. Basira was clinical; Agnes excited. Jon didn’t say anything about it, and let the conversation die down until the taxi was rolling in front of 10 Downing Street. Didn’t the prime minister live here? Boris...something? Jon quickly downloaded the information, before he found that Boris Johnson had been the world’s most convoluted psy-op by Annabelle and had never exactly existed. Thank goodness.

Right as the taxi idled in front of the building, Jon opened his eyes. He let them flare up, an intimidating spark of toxic green. “You two follow my lead.”

“Excuse me,” Basira said flatly, as Jon waved at the driver in lieu of payment. He hadn’t found out that you were supposed to pay taxi drivers until...a few months ago. In his defense, they never asked. “This is our operation.”

Jon glanced at her, and something relaxed around the corners of her eyes. He wondered if his expression was familiar to her. He couldn’t help but smile weakly, and that softened her expression even more. “Will you trust me?”

Basira stared at him for one long beat, then two, before grimacing. “Don’t make me regret this.”

“Do I usually make you regret it?”

“Literally, every single time,” Basira said.

“Then it’s a pretty stupid decision to trust me again,” Jon pointed out. “You don’t seem the type to make stupid decisions.”

Basira stared at him for a long moment, before leaving the car.

Jon and Agnes silently watched her leave, before glancing at each other.

“And I thought you ran from your feelings,” Agnes said finally, before following her.

Jon, left with nothing else to do, followed Agnes.

10 Downing Street, Jon quickly found, was just like every other pretentious old British home. With lots of grandiose rooms with furniture shoved into corners so everybody could appreciate the gold-plated tile, or sitting rooms with the most uncomfortable places to sit Jon had ever seen. Each wall hosted gigantic portraits of famous British figures, who were all so ugly that Agnes incinerated one for fun. Jon respected her choices: he had been wearing a stupid wig.

Jon, unfortunately instinctively aware of the layout and history of this sordid place, led them through the halls. He opened his mouth, instinctively about to funnel a Statement regarding the decades of human suffering and imperialism, before forcing his mouth closed. Basira wouldn’t appreciate it. Besides, the Statements had been easier to ignore lately - like curious dogs nosing at his hands rather than insistent children demanding to be fed.

Instead, he settled on casually updating them on the choice of location. “A year ago, this location wouldn’t have been safe for Basira at all. This building was a nightmare pit of despair.” He led them up the ridiculous flights of stairs watching carefully as Agnes jumped up them. Trick steps, you know. Basira proceeded far more cautiously. “It’s...no less a nightmare pit, but like the rest of London it’s now safe to navigate. I’d keep clear of the residential rooms, however. The Prime Minister and his family haven’t escaped their nightmares since the apocalypse, and they never will.”

Basira’s eyebrows skyrocketed up. “David Cameron’s stuck in hell? No surprise there. What’s he having a nightmare about?”

“Well, there’s this pig, right, and you’ll never guess what he’s doing -”

“Never mind,” Basira said quickly. “Not interested.”

“I’m interested,” Agnes said.

“I’d rather you weren’t.”

Jon, who also wished he didn’t know this information, quickly directed them towards the conference room.

But he found himself stopping in front of the intricately carved oak double doors. The wrought golden handles were grimy and dull with dust, but Agnes and Basira did not hesitate to open the door and walk in. They didn’t hesitate; they weren’t frightened. Or, if they were, they didn’t let it stop them.

But Jon stopped. He felt like Annabelle, in that moment. Annabelle, standing in front of that conference room door so long ago, unable to admit that she felt any fear at all.

She had been desperate. Jon saw that now. Only a desperate person would have ever concocted that plan against Jon. He was the sole person capable of murder in this world, and the sole person who was so vindictive and petty that he would kill anybody who said something that he didn’t like.

Annabelle was arrogant. She thought herself the most intelligent person in every room. She was petty, manipulative, and power-hungry. She thought that the world was so broken that somebody had to fix it, and that she was the only one who could. She was desperate.

Jon didn’t particularly want to do this. But Jon really, really had to grow up.

Jon opened the door.

It was a far cry from the nice, professional conference room in City Hall. The floor was some ugly light brown hardwood color, and the walls were tudor-like and panelled. Old man ribboned curtains, an intricate rug woven from human rights abuses, and a claw-foot long conference table with an array of chairs made up an incredibly ‘antique’ room. The British found ‘antique’ and ‘wealth signalling’ to be the same thing. It made for some very ugly buildings and very uncomfortable chairs.

Nobody else had entered yet. Jon checked the time with his extradimensional psychic powers and realized that Sasha had hustled them out the door fifteen minutes earlier than necessary. She was so intelligent.

Agnes was already moving to her uncomfortable seat, and Jon tapped Basira on the arm and silently pointed to the seat with the ‘EXTINCTION’ placard. She raised an eyebrow at him, but followed his direction. Maybe that was what her trust looked like.

There was a placard stamped ‘BEHOLDING’ in big letters. Gone unoccupied since the last time Jon had been here.

He ignored it, and sat down at the head of the table. Likely where Annabelle usually sat, as director of the meetings. Historically, where the leader of Britain had once sat and directed the affairs of the country.

Jon kicked up his heels on the polished antique wood, pulling up an episode of The Twilight Zone in his brain. He identified with Rod Serling.

The other Avatars filtered in, one by one. All of their eyes widened when they saw Jon, but none of them said anything. Jon wondered what had filtered through the Avatar grapevine. They always knew all of the gossip on each other. It was impossible to miss the Earth’s paradigm shift, and Agnes mentioned that they had convened an emergency meeting on it. Doubtlessly, his name had come up. They likely knew he was the instigator. Who else could?

Annabelle was the fourth in, as fashionably on time as usual. She was the only one who stopped in her tracks when she saw Jon. A surprise, to a woman unused to surprises. Jon’s house didn’t have insect problems.

Her eyes widened. Her jaw clenched. That was all it took. And Jon Knew, in the way that he Knew things, that she was wondering if this was when he finally killed her.

She didn’t know why she was still alive. It was stressing her out. It was a move that made no sense - an unforeseen reaction. Jon was predictable. When Jon wasn’t predictable, and when Jon’s actions weren’t being very precisely controlled, then she was left with a vindictive and irreverent steam train on her hands. She hadn’t predicted his presence here.

Jon was also sitting in her chair. Scuffing the wood. Leaning back in the chair, and definitely scuffing the floor too.

He pointed to the chair at his right, with a placard that now read ‘WEB’. Annabelle sat down in it. Everybody noticed.

Everybody also noticed Basira. She was receiving some glares, or some pointedly unwelcome expressions. But Basira’s glares and unwelcome expressions were more powerful than any demon could ever offer, and one by one each Avatar looked away in shame.

Only Oliver actually talked to him. Which made sense, as Oliver feared neither life nor death. When he walked in he was just as surprised to see Jon as everyone else, but he offered Jon a smile too. Jon smiled back, which made several of the other Avatars lean back.

“Hey, Archivist. I thought you hated these things.”

“I do!” Jon said cheerfully. “I wasn’t even invited.”

Annabelle busied herself with her notes and agenda.

As usual, Helen didn’t show up. Jon waited patiently for everybody to filter in. Sarah Baldwin didn’t show up either, and Jon searched for the information before realizing that he really didn’t want to know. He saw some other new faces, as well as some faintly familiar ones. It wasn’t that strange: no position of absolute power was forever. Where was that bloke Wakely?

Wait. He was the Avatar who had talked for too long about burying people alive at a party in a ridiculous skyscraper. He had upset Daisy. Jon had seen red and lost his temper. Jon had...tossed him over the side of the roof. Let him keep falling. Left him to waste away. He was probably gone now.

The entire room had been at that party. Whoops.

Now uncomfortably reminded that Jon had murdered two people at this table, that everybody was aware of that, and that Jon had completely forgotten about one of the semi-accidental murders because, in Sasha’s words, he was “a bit of a psychopath, what the hell”.

This distressed her, because apparently Jonathan Sims had always been a “sensitive boy” with a “tender heart”. Daisy had said that he was still a sensitive boy, just prone to power-tripping. Sasha said that this was also very consistent behavior. Martin said -

Martin said that Jonathan Sims had been a good person. And, more importantly, that Jonathan Sims had wanted to be a good person. That was one thing that Jon didn’t want to change.

Who just buried people alive -

Jon waited until everyone was settled down. Nobody was chatting or talking to each other: just sitting silently, avoiding eye contact.

He could see Annabelle preparing herself to say something. Better get this ball rolling, then.

“Jonah Magnus is dead.”

The silence suddenly became oppressive.

Jon didn’t stop to savor the looks on their faces. That wasn’t the point. Enjoying this wasn’t the point. Jon had all the power he wanted and - and he didn’t want it at all. He hoped that nobody here would make him have to prove it.

Jon did not want to melt anyone. He wasn’t going to melt anyone. Life had started feeling a little valuable lately. These people, the soulless demons surrounding him, weren’t any different than he was. Humans with delusions of grandeur. Infighting and power plays weren’t going to fix it.

But Annabelle had been right, as she always was. Jon couldn’t keep ignoring this. If he could do something, he had to. Even if it was something he didn’t like doing.

Or something he hated that he enjoyed doing.

“Jonah Magnus is dead,” Jon repeated pleasantly. “The world has changed. These two events are related, of course.”

He didn’t elaborate. Jon didn’t lie, but he didn’t have to say everything.

“The chains which bind this Earth have loosened,” Jon continued. He folded his hands over his stomach, relaxed and casual. “We now exist in the third age of life. I ask that you do not resist.

“The seasons have begun to change, our eternal placid summer ripening into fall and sinking into winter. Our world turns yet again. Babies are born, grow old, and die. The apocalypse as we’ve always known was rooted in its stagnancy. Life and growth has bloomed, and will continue to subsist. Change is once again thriving, and we must adapt with it.

“You’ve noticed that your power has weakened. You will have to fight harder than ever to maintain your food supplies. What was once a conquest is now a battleground. The playing field is far from even, but the enemy and harvest now have a fighting chance.” Jon smiled brightly. “Of course, I’m sure that this was all discussed during your emergency meeting. Great job with your repeated warfare attempts against humanity during the last six months, by the way. How’s that working out for us?”

Silence loomed. Of course, their repeated attempts to quash the new human uprising had not gone very well. At the end of the day, for every one Avatar there were thousands of humans.

“You are no longer strong enough to allow these divides into factions,” Jon continued. “We must present a united front if we’re going to maintain the ground we have. We can’t continue on the way we have. And I’ve realized…” Jon glanced at Annabelle, catching her eye. “I’ve realized that I haven’t been helping the situation. There’s more I can do. That’s why Annabelle has handed over moderation of these meetings to me.”

Nobody looked impressed.

He could see it: the way Jon had become an unpredictable, dangerous nuisance towards them. Almost everyone in this room would be much happier if Jon dropped dead. Nobody had really liked him because nobody had ever felt safe around him. Only Annabelle and Oliver - the person who had nothing to fear from him and the other person who did not feel fear - called themselves his friends.

But they would have preferred it if Jon was hostile or dangerous. If he had even admitted his power. But Jon play-acted at harmlessness, unwilling and afraid to make enemies, and in that way he became a nuisance rather than an enemy. He couldn’t even pretend that it wasn’t on purpose. No matter how many Avatars brushed him off or ignored him, it was better than feeling their eyes on him. Or feeling the fear rich on their tongues.

“Also I invited a human to work with us on human affairs,” Jon said cheerfully. “Diversity hire! Any questions?”

There were a lot of questions. Basira didn’t look very pleased at his remark, either.

Simon leaned forward first, pale and watery eyes intent for the first time. “What happened to Jonah Magnus?”

“Natural causes,” Jon said cheerfully. “Next?”

“What does this mean for us?” the Lukas matriarch said. Her eyes skittered away from him. “Are we in danger?”

Jon shrugged. “Only if you’re incompetent at feeding.”

“What caused this?” Manuela demanded. “The children are running wild, we can’t control them. We’ve lost a major food source.”

Jon scratched his temples. “What caused it...sustainability efforts.” He sobered abruptly. “You could never control the children, anyway. This is the generation of the apocalypse. You’ll find that very little frightens them now.”

“Does this have to do with those humans you’ve been running around with?” Jared asked, scratching his chin as Manuela’s expression contorted in rage.

As usual, a frighteningly insightful observation from such a brute. “It is actually directly their fault!”

Everybody turned to look at Basira, who was completely unapologetic. She crossed her arms. “Don’t ask me. First I’m hearing about this too.”

“Did you kill Jonah Magnus?” Oliver asked, morbidly fascinated. “How?”

“We humans didn’t kill him. We showed up at the Panopticon to kill him, only to find Jon there and Jonah Magnus already dead.” Basira scowled as Jon and Annabelle glanced at each other. Jon subtly shook his head. Annabelle’s lips thinned. “It looked like he’d been dead for years.”

An unfamiliar young man with a thick mop of clumped black hair peered at Jon, expression contorted in grotesque interest. He was one of the Avatars who had been born in the Apocalypse, who were all recognizably weird. His name was - right, Geoff Anjou. Some French man who had made his mark in the Parisian Underground before moving to London and conquering his next terrain. A Parisian to the bone - or, a great deal of bones, as the case may be. So many bones. Jon had always meant to take Daisy to that wonderful little nightmare and let her run loose. Chase people through the tunnels. Munch bones. Perfect vacation.

“So did the Archivist kill him?” Geoff asked, in the same way you would ask who won the World Cup. “Steal his Watcher’s Crown or whatever?”

“Are you the new queen bee?” a young woman asked Jon. The new Slaughter Avatar, Henrietta Something-or-another. A Cambridge legacy college student, Annabelle had intoned, and Jon had been afraid to inquire further. She was cyberbullying someone on her mobile, which seemed to be bleeding. “Cuz, like, you don’t seem qualified.”

“I did not kill Jonah Magnus,” Jon said, for the five hundreth time in the last six months. “And I’m uninterested in filling his shoes. That’s enough questions, I think.”

“Are you as weakened as the rest of us?” Amherst demanded. “Surely this destruction has affected you worst of all.”

“He probably ate Jonah Magnus,” Henrietta said. “The Archivist’s probably god now.”

Geoff snorted. “No way. He brought a human as back-up.”

“Why is there a human?” Another woman asked, with long brown hair and a broad face. Something about her was unquestionably severe, from her bulging muscles to her incredible height. Jon had never seen her before in his life. Her name was Julia Montauk. Something about her stank of life and undeath, same as Amherst. “We can’t exactly work with the prey, here.”

“I’m proposing an emergency motion,” Amherst said suddenly, shutting up the rapidly overlapping voices. “I vote that a leader is elected democratically. And that representatives are limited towards loyal patrons of the Forces.”

“I second that motion,” Geoff said immediately. “We can’t afford a chaotic uprising in our government right now -”

“This really isn’t a vote,” Jon said.

“Isn’t this a democracy?” Henrietta asked, with the self-righteous assurance of a twenty year old. “We vote on things in a democracy. And leaders.”

“Annabelle was voted in last spring,�� Julia agreed. “No reason to change things.”

Well. Basira said that she trusted him. He’d have to rely on that.

Jon pressed down.

It felt just like that: pressing down. Reaching out a hand and squashing. Sometimes it was like ripping someone into shreds, and other times it was like plunging your hand into their chest and ripping out their heart. But this was just a press: a heavy static, bearing down over your shoulders like a ten ton weight. A sight so horrible that it was too eldritch to even look at. The realization that the hideous sight was you, and that it was all you would ever be.

Some - Geoff, Amherst - gasped, as if they were choking. Others - Lukas, Henrietta - gasped at their hearts, as if they were having heart attacks. Jon carefully kept it off Oliver, Annabelle, Basira, and Agnes. He couldn’t help but remember what she had said a few weeks ago, about being so frightened -

But Basira winced anyway, clutching her temples, and Jon carefully released the static until the inhabitants of the room could breathe again. His eyes did not stop glowing, and Jon didn’t bother to turn off the light show.

Jon put his feet down on the floor and rested his elbows on the table, leaning forward. As everyone shuddered and gasped, he spoke slowly and pointedly. “This is not a democracy. It never was. It is a monarchy, and the line of succession is clear.”

Annabelle’s eyes widened, and she abruptly clenched her fists before loosening them. An uncharacteristic show of emotion from her.

“This coalition has never been a democracy,” Jon said severely. “This is a house of lords. You are uninterested in representing any needs but your own, and I know Jared failed level eight government, but I’m sure all of you know that democracy represents elected officials. Nobody here has ever lived in a true democracy, and in your human fallibility you have recreated the only system you have ever known. The seats at this table are determined by power - all of you, the most powerful conduits for your Entity. I am the inevitable consequence of this system. I am your natural disaster. All of you bought me. Now you have me. And you are no longer powerful enough to make me leave.”

Agnes’ hand was covering her mouth. Jon dearly hoped Basira was holding onto that trust. He dearly hoped that he wasn’t speaking from anger.

But he couldn’t stop. It boiled and bubbled. It was an anger and a powerlessness that had subjugated him for thirty two years of his life. It had served as the cloud hanging over his head for three more.

“If you want someone to blame for the Archivist who now moderates this meeting,” Jon said, his voice the thin lid over this boiling pot of hurt and anger, “I now know their names. Jonah Magnus. Jude Perry. Nikola Orsinov. Twice. Breekon and Hope’s coffin. Peter Lukas. Jane Prentiss. Maxwell Raynor. A strategic book.” Jon tilted his head, having effectively made his point. There were others, but he had forgiven Daisy and Melanie a long time ago. And Jared had been polite about it. “Bring up your complaints with them. Good luck with that.”

Jon clapped his hands, closing the lid on those memories. Maybe one day the pain would leech from them like a sun-bleached painting, but that day hadn’t come yet. “Now! If you have any further complaints about my position here, or if you want to continue debating political theory, feel free to stand up and tell me so. We’re all interested in you regurgitating your life story until you die. Anyone?” Crickets. Jon leaned back in his chair, making himself comfortable. “Can we go onto the motions now? Ms. Hussain first, then clockwise from her.”

As if they had planned this, with the air of a well-choreographed actress, Basira stood up and spread out her papers in front of her. “The human contingency requests neutral zones in essential areas. Maternal wards in hospitals are highly vulnerable locations, and when assaulted by parasites the mortality rate of children is very high. If you want a self-replenishing food source, you have to allocate space for safe living. The next essential zone is a daycare and a school for children -”

And she was off. Jon had nothing to say, nor was anything necessary. Raging debate sparked after she finished speaking, and Basira effectively crushed the opposition. Agnes spoke up in her defense, and to Jon’s surprise even Manuela contributed a solid understanding of the necessity of children. When the debate started spiraling in an unhelpful direction Jon cut in and shut it down, before forcing the vote.

It did not pass, obviously.

“By the way,” Jon said. “Ms. Hussain proposed five different motions today. At least two of them have to pass. This debate is about picking which two you want.”

Then that started up all over again, and Jon tried not to fall asleep.

Moderating was hard. He actually had to pay attention and focus, and he hated focusing. He was effective enough at shutting down conversations, but sometimes shutting down conversations wasn’t helpful - he just needed to steer them in a more productive conversation. And Agnes’ political theory and Basira’s almost-definitely-made-up statistics started flying so thick and fast above his head that Jon was starting to almost completely lose the plot.

Jon chose his moment as the Lukas woman was complaining extensively about how Henrietta’s digital bullying was intruding upon the Loneliness of her adherents. Henrietta had argued that social media made people more lonely. Jon was afraid that Henrietta was his fault. Maybe the Eye’s fault, holistically. Jared wanted to be friends with Henrietta and co-host Instagram events, which Jon enthusiastically supported despite Basira’s glares.

He leaned over to his right, gesturing slightly at Annabelle so she would lean in closer. She raised an eyebrow at him. Annabelle’s eyebrows were crushing.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Jon whispered to her, as quietly as possible.

Annabelle mouthed very clearly at him, ‘Wow, really? Shock!’.

“I was making a point,” Jon hissed. “An important point. But I don’t - I still -” Jon faltered, uncertain, as Henrietta began sneering something about Lukas’ hairdo. Finally, he weakly said, “You care. They need you.”

Annabelle stared at him for a long, silent moment, before turning away from him.

For the first time that day, she spoke to the room. “Let’s keep ad hominem attacks out of this,” she said sharply. “Madame Lukas, if you’ll make your closing remarks we can bring this to a vote.”

She really was good at it. Just like she had always wanted. She had never directly admitted it, but Annabelle had always wanted to be the kind of person in rooms like this.

A politician sitting in an uncomfortable chair at 10 Downing Street. Rich, successful, important. Powerful and respected. Back then, she had wanted to be famous. Now, she was content to be controlling famous people. A dream out of her reach in life; laughably attainable in this stagnant after-afterlife.

The dream had crippled her. In her search for a functional world, one that achieved and grew and provided a comfortable world, she had ended up recreating a world that hadn’t been functional at all. A world that was slow to change, and seemingly impossible to improve. A world passed down from the hands of the greedy and bloodthirsty into the hands of the uncaring and apathetic.

The apocalypse had been inevitable. Humans driving themselves to extinction. And Avatars, possessed of human weakness, had been eager to do the same. Just a pathetic room of sour and bitter people power-tripping.

For all that Sasha calls us bougie, Jon thought, we’re such deeply unhappy people.

There had once been a young man, desperate for attention and acknowledgement. Dreaming of importance. He would stay up late at night, planning out his life as a famous researcher and well-respected philosopher. Everyone would tell him how smart he was. He would prove it all - with a scholarship to Oxford, with a sneer and a haughty air, with a boss who said that he had so much promise, here’s a job that will let you realize your potential.

I deserve this job -

Something in Jon’s mind flared, a hot poker rammed behind his eye sockets. Jon hissed, one hand reaching unconsciously to his temple, and Annabelle glanced at him in alarm. She had - Jon had been thinking about her, and - what had he been -

Together, they managed to wrangle the meeting into something half-way productive. Most importantly, Basira had gotten three of her proposals passed, and Agnes’ arguments were stirring the other Avatars into serious discussion. Conversation itself would be stilted by his sheer presence, and they weren’t quite all working together yet, but they would.

It was really all the same to Jon if the Avatars or humans won the war. He should care a bit more than he did, so he didn’t vocalize this to the others. But this conflict sparked life, a strange and frantic energy. Experiences and growth. That was what Jon had always fed on.

It seemed that Jon’s skill at prioritizing himself over all others was as sharp as ever.

Eventually the two hours wrapped up, and the other Avatars were eager to leave. Jon waved them off cheerily.

“Meeting adjourned. Try not to do anything stupid until next time. And if any of you break the boundaries of the human safe zones, I’ll know! Annabelle, will you stay behind?”

The others filtered out quickly, uncharacteristically unwilling to see whatever carnage would be wrought. Agnes and Basira lingered.

“That went so well!” Agnes shouted, the minute the last Avatar left. The room was now empty save for Agnes, Basira, Annabelle, and - Oliver, who was leaning against the doorframe. “I can’t believe you actually did something useful!”

“Ouch,” Oliver said.

It was fair, though. Jon smiled weakly at her. “Hopefully I can help out a little more often going forward. But I’m not going to give any favoritism to you, Agnes. I’ll intervene to give humans a fair shot, but I really don’t want to be...king of a ruined world or whatever.”

“I know,” Agnes said firmly. She reached out and squeezed his arm, round and gentle face creased in determination. “You’d be terrible at it. So just be you, okay?”

Jon saluted her, before gesturing to the door. “Will you steal a historical British artifact from this garbage building for me? Daisy needs more targets to shoot.”

Agnes nodded eagerly and ran off. Jon silently hoped Basira would follow her, if also out of interest for also seeing British things destroyed, but she just looked at Jon intensely instead. Not quite a glare - just a searching, intense look, as if she was finding her own Statement from deep within him. It had always been disconcerting. Jon was still convinced she hated him.

“It’s not as if I knew you very well before we rescued you from the Panopticon,” Basira said crisply, pressing a folder to her chest, “but you’ve changed. What happened? What did Annabelle have to do with it?”

Jon and Annabelle glanced at each other. Oliver lifted an eyebrow.

“Basira -”

“Don’t ask me to trust you.”

“I didn’t betray that,” Jon asked, “did I?”

Her expression didn’t soften. “You didn’t. We’re going to continue needing your help. But an ally with inscrutable motivations who does everything on a whim is a bad ally to have.”

“I’m trying, Basira,” Jon said, impossibly exhausted and just a little disappointed. “Please be patient.”

“I’ve been patient for three years,” Basira said, before forcibly cutting herself short from whatever emotion she was about to display. “What happened?”

A phantom pain pieced Jon’s arms, like chains threaded through bone. Jon fought the urge to wince, unconsciously reaching up to rub at a spot on his forearm. Everyone noticed. “It’s...family business…”

“Did you kill Jonah Magnus?”

“Jonah Magnus killed me,” Jon snapped, far louder than he intended, “so he would have deserved it, wouldn’t he!”

He felt a little lightheaded, more than he intended. It felt like a hand was clenching inside his chest, more than he wanted. No, Basira is fragile, you can’t just - no, Agnes is a kid, Daisy said that we can’t -

“Basira Hussain,” Annabelle said, hands folded tightly in her lap, eyes serious and intent. Jon started, surprised to hear her speak again. “You should go catch up with Agnes.”

Basira stared at Annabelle for a long moment, lips thin, before she abruptly whirled on her heel and stalked out. Jon watched her go, exhausted. He waited for her heels to click down the hall, far away enough that he knew she wasn’t eavesdropping, before groaning and dropping his head down onto his desk.

“They hate me.”

“They’re scared of you,” Annabelle pointed out. She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms. “Frankly, Basira could stand to be a little more afraid of you. She’s going to get herself in trouble one of these days.”

“She’s practically my sister in law, I’m not going to hurt her,” Jon snapped. “Your stupid plan relied on me never hurting people I love.”

“Sorry,” Oliver said pleasantly, “is anyone ever going to tell me what’s going on? I feel like an NPC in Jon’s Dungeons & Dragons game.”

“You want to be an NPC, I found you working at Taco Bell.” God, whatever. Jon could tell Oliver. He wouldn’t give a shit. Jon sighed, lifting his head to twist around and look at Oliver instead. “You remember when I was asking around after Sasha James? Annabelle had put me up to it.”

“Obviously. And then Sasha James started following you around? You terrorized Annabelle’s party again?”

“Yeah, it was this whole big thing.” Jon waved a hand expressively. “Anyway, then Annabelle tried to trap me in an eternal limbo that would shred me from inside out so I could act as purveyor of the world, and probably also use her connection with me so she could take over affairs here, and probably either nudge me into shaping the world back into order or into sinking it deeper into hell. I broke out and now I’m mad at her.”

“I had at least twenty other reasons,” Annabelle said, “but that’s the gist.”

Oliver stared at them.

They all sat in awkward silence. Jon found himself winding a finger around a stray coil of hair and letting it spring back into place. He had kept it the same the last three years, never bothering to change the style. A loose and bouncy cloud of hair, sometimes brushing against his shoulders until Annabelle kidnapped him to cut it again - him, as much as the trenchcoat was. So much as anything had ever been ‘him’.

“Well,” Oliver said diplomatically, “I see that you skipped a lot of steps there. So why are you here, then?”

Was it just to spite Annabelle? Screw her out of her work? Did Jon genuinely care? Did he want to organize the other Avatars, get them mobilized and going? Did he want to protect the humans?

Did he really only care about himself, and the people he called his friends and family? Did he really only care about himself, and those he possessed?

“There’s a person I want to be,” Jon said quietly, “but I don’t know how to be him.”

Annabelle stared at him, with dark and glittering eyes, expression as implacable as always. For a sudden, stupid, intense moment, Jon wanted to know if she cared about him. If one of the few people who had always helped him, who was always in his corner, had seen him as anything more than a tool.

Like Basira, who didn’t like him as a person, but found him too valuable to alienate. But Basira was - she was deeply good, if not always kind, and Jon had the sense that she had fought to turn herself into that good person. It was something she chose. She was trying to push Jon into making that same choice.

Jon clenched his hands in his lap, his fingernails digging into his palm. “There’s people I respect, and who I want to respect me. This person I want to be...I’m worried that I only want this because that’s what they want. They’ll deny it, but they want my power. Everybody just makes me into whoever they want. Whatever’s useful to them.” Jon’s gaze snapped to Annabelle, and he fought hard to keep the compulsion from his voice. It was difficult, when he wanted to know so badly, but - “The kind of person I used to be. That person I’m ashamed of. Is that the person who was useful to you?”

He didn’t want to force the answer from her. He wanted her to choose to say it.

Annabelle didn’t react. She didn’t show anything on her face. Much less what Jon wanted from her. She just tilted her head, one of the few unafraid to meet his eyes. “I never made you be anyone, Jon. All I ever did was put you in the right place at the right time.”

“That wasn’t my question,” Jon said, and this time he couldn’t help the static creeping into his voice. “Answer me.”

Annabelle sighed. “Of course it was useful. Is that what you wanted me to voluntarily say, Jon? I didn’t bring you to the first meeting because I thought it would be educational for you. I needed your power to keep the others in line. I needed everyone else to see that I controlled your power. That’s the only reason why any of this worked. We both got something out of it. Don’t pretend that you weren’t happy with the arrangement.”

It...it wasn’t a surprise, but…

“So that’s why you didn’t bring him to any of the other meetings,” Oliver mused. “He wasn’t as controllable as you liked, not when there’s more than ten other idiots around needling him. There’s never been anybody who can always predict when Jon’s going to lose his shit. Besides the biggie, I guess.”

The biggie, which was his past.

No wonder he had stayed so childlike, innocent, and cruel for so long. Jon took responsibility for his own laziness, but - but he had been most useful that way. Annabelle had liked him best that way.

Daisy had liked him best that way too. That cruel child - Daisy had wanted him, because he made her feel needed. Annabelle was just the same.

Everyone had liked him best that way. And if Jon became the kind of person who he wanted to be, nobody would like him at all.

“If you’re going to kill me,” Annabelle said, exhaustion seeping in through her voice, “just do it.”

Jon closed his eyes. He could feel it - Annabelle’s exhaustion, the way that she had just been waiting for him to do this. Everything she knew about Jon led towards an obvious course of action. Even though you nobody knew everything that set Jon off, certain things were pretty guaranteed that he wouldn’t forgive.

Annabelle had never accounted for Sasha. She had brought Sasha into his life, and she had no idea the effect she would have on it. Sasha, who had been the first to tell Jon that she chose to care about him for him. For a brief, hot flash, Jon was jealous. He wanted to be someone unpredictably kind.

If he only wanted that because he had found yet another person to give his wind-up key, then…

“You won, Annabelle,” Jon said finally, and he only knew it as he said it. “Congratulations. You played the perfect manipulation. You took a vulnerable, afraid man, who had been violated in the worst possible way and left to die.” He stood up, already uncomfortable with what he was about to say. “And you arranged him so that he loved you. I chose to love you. I’m making the choice never to hurt you, because I still love you. ”

He left the room. Oliver stood aside just in time, letting Jon brush by.

As Jon met up with Agnes and Basira, summoning a smile and a wave for them, he felt uncomfortably as if he had grown up.

He wasn’t sure that he liked it.

#tma #the magnus archives #my writing #tma fanfic #jonathan sims #annabelle cane #oliver banks #basira hussain #agnes montague #and a ton more #tcf was about deciding to change #and this story kind of hits at how difficult it is deciding who to change into #and how difficult it is to trust your own decisions when you've been manipulated since the second you were 'born'#jon and his choices and agency is becoming a big thing for me!

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mareebrittenford · 4 years

Text

I’ve never believed in magic. I’ve never seen anything that’s convinced me of it, especially not living here in Anaheim, California. It might feel magical to make that big trip to Disneyland, but outside of that shiny spotlight, it’s all boring or depressing.

There’s no magic here. It’s not a special place to grow up. It’s too far from the beach to be cool, too far from L.A. to be hip. It’s dull suburbia, pushing the edge of seedy.

Perhaps that’s why I felt so drawn to something that felt a little outside of normal. The Fairy House.

I’d never noticed it before this last summer. I call it The Fairy House because it looks like something straight out of a fairy tale, the old-fashioned kind that hasn’t been processed to remove the nasty bits. It’s got a real wood shingle roof covered in creeping vines. There’s diamond-shaped windows of wavy colored glass and a fence that looks like drunk elves built it in the middle of the night out of materials they thought were pretty. It even smells special. Rich and damp and green, despite the baking dry heat that’s overrun everything else.

It’s obviously just a house. A funky, water-restrictions-ignoring old house that’s shoved its way into my head. I don’t even know why I noticed it. There are other old houses that are falling apart around here.

But somehow it’s just special. Cute. Not quite belonging.

I’ve altered my running route, to the point of doing extra miles in the summer heat, just so I can run past it. It keeps my mind occupied for the rest of the run, coming up with stories about what if. What if it really was enchanted? I’ve been reading up on older versions of the familiar stories. The kind where there’s no magical save at the last moment. The kind where people die for making bad choices.

If the house were really enchanted, I’d say there would be a 50/50 chance of my fascination being a curse or something. But I wonder, as I stop in front of it and breathe in the sweet smell of flowers and grass, if this was how Hansel and Gretel felt. This strange desire to know. To see. To go inside.

In the end, they’re just silly stories to keep my mind entertained on the long solo runs. Around here people know better than to believe in magic. When you’ve seen backstage, you know that it’s all a trick. All there is to magic is people working to create the illusion.

The house might not be a planned illusion. But my stories about it are just stories, like an oasis in the desert that evaporates when you get closer.

I’m fifteen, so even if I’d ever been taken in by the idea of magic, I’m too old for it now. I have more important things to worry about. School. Getting into college.

When I meet up with the track team the week before school starts, I casually suggest that we take the run along Orangethorpe. Because there’s trees. Everyone wants shade, right? Of course it’s already late afternoon, since no one wants to run in the full heat of summer if they can avoid it. So shade isn’t that important.

I still want to run past my fairy house. It’s been a few days, and I miss it.

Lionel, the new team captain, rolls his eyes. He knows my motive. He’s one of the few people that has bothered to keep up his training over the summer. He’s also one of my best friends. I’ve made him run this route enough times for him to complain about it.

“You need to be careful, or people are going to start calling you the girl who obsesses over weird houses.”

I roll my eyes, but he ignores me, turning away to call out and get the attention of the messy group. He has to clap his hands and yell a few times to get their attention.

Now would be the time to give an inspiring speech about the exciting competitions we have in the season ahead of us, and Lionel makes an attempt, but he’s not much for inspiring speeches. He’s a tall black guy, his long, lean body the ideal runner’s build. He’s going to be good at most of the captain stuff, and he’s got a great eye for talent. But he’s not what you’d call a natural public speaker. We’ll have to find our inspiration elsewhere.

That doesn’t matter today. It’s traditional to make this first run easy. The hell workouts will come in the next few weeks.

“It’s better to start soft so these out-of-shape idiots don’t quit on us,” Lionel told me earlier. Their commitment level isn’t the best anyway. We aren’t exactly an all-star team.

I mostly tune out his speech and focus on twisting my hair into a rough French braid so it doesn’t frizz or tangle too much. Of course as soon as I start sweating I’m going to have a frizzy halo around my face, but at least it’ll be kind of controlled.

Lionel finishes talking, and we all straggle off down the street, some people dropping to a walk almost immediately.

I fall into step with Lionel in a pack with a few other kids who haven’t skipped training completely over the summer.

“Oh wow, I wonder why we’re running this route,” he says smirking. He knows very well why.

“Why are we?” asks Brad, dropping in on my other side. He crowds me a little, and I edge closer to Lionel. Brad has never forgiven me for only going on one date with him. That was one more date than I should’ve. It gives me perverse pleasure to see that his pale skin is now bright red and he’s streaming sweat. Someone didn’t stay in shape over the summer.

“Lyse has a local tourist attraction she likes to cruise past,” Lionel says. He puts on a high-pitched voice. “If you would turn your attention to the building coming up on your right. It’s a falling down old house, which our esteemed teammate Carlyse believes to be inhabited by fairies—” I elbow him in the side, and he makes a choked sound as if I’ve done him some actual harm. Carlyse is my full name, but he only uses it when he wants to annoy me.

“What?” Brad frowns. “What are you guys even talking about?”

We’ve just reached the house, and I flick my thumb at it in annoyance. “This old house. I think it’s cute. And I don’t think fairies live there.” Okay, when I’m right in front of it… maybe I do. Or something like that.

Brad shakes his head. “Why are you guys always such jerks? I'm not an idiot. It’s a model train store. Perfect for nerds. You should visit.” He snorts in annoyance and gives up his battle to keep up with us, dropping back to a walk.

I look up and down the street. It’s a light industry/retail area, and the fairy house is sandwiched between a mattress outlet and a janitorial supply store. Further down is a sporting goods store, and a FedEx depot. There’s lots of businesses. But one thing there isn’t?

“Hey, do you see a model train store anywhere?” I scan back and forth.

“Nope. Just your dopey house.”

“What was he talking about then?”

Lionel shrugs, unconcerned. “He’s just pulling your leg. You know how he is. Or maybe he got confused. There is a model airplane store down on the next block.”

How could he look right at the fairy house and see a model store, train or otherwise? It’s weird. I look back over my shoulder and see him with a couple other teammates who have stopped to walk too. They’re laughing and pointing at the house.

Obviously he’s not confused. Just Brad being his usual asshat self.

I resolve to put him and the stupid house out of my mind.

I actually succeed for a week or so.

This is the opening from my new book The Liminal Gate. Check it out!

#liminal gate #ya urban fantasy #my writing

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obsidianarchives · 4 years

Text

The Mane Thing About Nova

A puddle was beginning to amass under Nova’s right side as she pulled out the map Angelina shared with her. It was two hours before dinner in the Great Hall, so the corridor of the seventh floor was empty as everyone unwound from classes and prepared for the meal. As she tried to remember the instructions Angelina had given her, she could still hear Pansy Parkinson’s taunts during Quidditch practice.

“Oi! Sweettrickle! Next time maybe don’t land in the lake! What an absolute loon! You look like a wet poodle! Here girl! Here!” Pansy made kissy noises at Nova as the other Slytherins laughed while she pulled herself out of the lake. The kind of noises you would use to call a dog to your side.

“Do you want a treat, girl?” Pansy and the Slytherins roared with laughter as she held out her hand with an imaginary treat.

Clearly, Nova had not meant to land in the lake, but she was so focused on chasing the Snitch that she hadn’t seen the tentacle of the giant squid as it emerged from the water. The collision bothered the squid very little, but knocked poor Nova clear off her broom and into the lake.

“Looks like a bit of water has done that nest on your head some good, Sweettrickle!” Pansy teased.

If she could have, Nova would have cursed Pansy bald, right then and there. But she didn’t know how, so punching the little snob in her throat would have to do until she could learn. Nova balled up her fist and made a beeline for Pansy who was too busy laughing to see what was about to happen. Before she could pull back to hit her, a tall girl with skin the color of deep sepia, a head full of tiny black braids, and Gryffindor Quidditch robes stepped in between them.

“You’re one to talk about hair Parkinson, with that stringy mess you’ve got!”

“No one was talking to you, Johnson!” Pansy hissed.

“Well I’m talking to you, Parkinson!”

Another girl stood next to Angelina, hair slicked back in a sleek and sexy ponytail, also in red and gold robes with S-P-I-N-N-E-T on the back.

“Ok so her hair is a little wet because she fell in the lake, Pansy! But you always walking around looking like Snape with titties, so what’s your excuse!?”

Two other girls — clearly twins, in robes of yellow and black, with caramel colored skin, freckles that actually sparkled (that had to be an enchantment, right?), and hundreds of bright red curls held up on opposing sides by Hufflepuff bows — laughed.

“Yeah Pansy,” the twin with the left bow said, “all this magic...”

“And you STILL look tragic!” the other finished.

The group of girls laughed. Pansy turned red as a howler. She was clearly outwitted and outnumbered, so she went for the jugular.

“Right. Like I even care what you people think!”

She hissed the insult, hard and fast, careful to make eye contact with each girl so they could feel the weight of her words. The pitch went quiet like the moment just before a Dementor’s Kiss. The joyous laughter left Angelina’s face as she stepped up into Pansy’s personal space. The girls followed her lead and flanked her sides, making even more of a wall between Pansy and Nova. Pansy looked to the group of Slytherins on the side of the field. No one was coming to her aid. She had gone too far. They knew it and so did she. She was on her own.

“Probably a good idea if you headed into the castle to get ready for dinner, Parkinson.” Angelina’s voice was steady and low, but the threat it carried was loud and clear.

“I...I...I don’t take orders from you, Johnson!”

A sly, half smile slid across Spinnet’s face.

“No, Ang. Let the trick stay. Hermione just taught us that new spell and I would LOVE to use Pansy as my guinea pig!” She lunged forward, but the twins held her back.

Pansy jumped back in surprise and rushed to compose herself.

“Whatever! I have more important things to do!” and she stomped off in the direction of the castle.

Nova stood there, still wet, a bit in a daze. Pansy had been making fun of Nova for the last month. Enchanting paper airplanes to fly into Nova’s hair. Constantly bumping into her and then commenting in a poorly acted stage whisper how she “found” a “gross curly hair” on her robes. She had really been the absolute worst. Everything in Nova wanted to strangle her, but every time she tried, she remembered her Aunt Quinta.

She had taken her in when her parents disappeared. Nova was eight years old then and Aunt Quinta raised her and loved her like she was her own. When Nova turned eleven and got her Ilvermony letter, she was so proud of Nova, even though she hadn’t done a thing to earn it. When her Hogwarts Student Exchange Letter came a year letter, Aunt Quinta smiled for days. This all made her aunt so happy, so she promised that she would behave and do well. But Pansy never let up no matter how nice she was. In fact, being nice almost made it worse.

Then today, this group of girls who she didn’t really know came to her rescue. They stood up to Parkinson. Most of the kids in her classes just pretended they didn’t see, not wanting to earn Pansy’s attention. But these girls didn’t give one lick about her. They were amazing!

“You ok? Uh…”

Nova hadn’t realized anyone was talking to her.

“Huh? Oh! Me? I’m...I’m Nova. Nova Sweettrickle. Ravenclaw, second year,” she answered Angelina.

“Oh wow! Oh cool!” Right Twin said.

“We’re also in the second year of school!” Left Twin finished.

“Do they always do that?” Nova asked Angelina.

“What? Rhyme? Or finish each other’s sentences?”

“Both?”

Spinnet laughed. “Finish each other's sentences? Yeah most of the time. The rhyming thing…well SOMEONE thought they could cheat their way to rap fame.” She playfully eyed the twins.

“Thank goodness this is only temporary!”

“If we stayed like this, it would be so scary!” They nodded in unison.

Angelina smiled and shook her head.

“Left bow is Charli. Right bow is Cyn. I’m Angelina and this is Alicia.” Alicia, the girl with SPINNET on the back of her robes, who had lunged at Pansy, quietly nodded as she pulled her long ponytail over her shoulder. “I don’t remember seeing you last year.”

“Oh, well, I’m an exchange student for Professor Dumbledore's Magic Abroad program. I did my first year at Ilvermorny. My grandfather was actually a Hogwarts alum.” Nova shivered as she answered.

“Damn Ang! You see the girl is shivering. Maybe less third degree and more drying off?” Alicia said.

“Oh yeah, sorry! Of course!” Angelina apologized.

“Uh… let’s see…” she pointed her wand toward the lake soaked girl…

“Aer calidus totalus!” and a gust of hot hair wrapped itself around Nova.

Suddenly her socks were dry. No…wait... just her left sock was dry. Also the left half of her skirt, her undies, her top, her robes. Everything was suddenly dry on one side! Even her hair. HER HAIR!? Oh no! All that water, then just a hurricane of hot hair. She could only imagine what a poofy frizzy mess she must be. The girls' faces really said it all. Quick as she could, she flipped the hood of her robes up. If Pansy saw this…Merlin’s beard! It would never end! Hard as she tried not to, the tears started to well up.

“Oh, hey girl, please don’t cry!” Alicia begged, “Sometimes Ang is a bit more powerful than she realizes.” Angelina nodded and shrugged.

Alicia looked back at Angelina, “Ang, how the hell did you dry one side of her!?”

Nova was really having trouble controlling the tears and each tear seemed to panic Alicia more.

“Hey, it's ok, really. It’s not that bad, right girls?” The twins whistled and looked everywhere but at Nova. “It’s nothing a smoothing spell won't fix. Do you know any good smoothing spells?”

“No.” A huge tear fell and Angelina began to look a bit sheepish.

“I know it might not sound like fun,” Cyn started.

“But what about a spell for a ballerina bun?” Charli finished.

Nova just shook her head this time. Her face was getting hot. Every suggestion upset her more and more.

“My Aunt Quinta says my curls are too much...so she uses this straightening potion. It’s supposed to last for 3 months and then she re-applies when she visits. But I don’t know how to make it. And I’m not…I’m not...I’m not…” Nova was fighting back the tears as hard as she could but it seemed to be a losing battle. Angelina finished her thought.

“Not supposed to get it wet? Yeah. We all been there.” All the girls looked at each other with embarrassed expressions and nodded. “Hey Nova...would you give us a second?”

Angelina’s question caught Nova off guard.

“Uh...yeah,” she sniffled. “Sure.”

The girls walked away, just out of ear shot. They huddled and immediately began whispering fervorously. After about a minute, Cyn giggled and Charli whooped, Alicia shushed them both, and Angelina stood up straight, crossed her arms and nodded, as if a very important decision had been made. They walked back to Nova, surrounding her in a little half circle. As always, Angelina spoke first.

“Alright, Sweettrickle! Executive decisions have been made!”

“Believe it or not,” Charli started, “cause it true...”

“You’ve got spunk,” Cyn finished, “so we like you!”

Alicia spoke next.

“You were ready to knock Parkinson on her ass and anyone who wants to punch Pansy in her fat, racist little nose is a friend of ours. Plus…we gotta stick together.”

Nova understood what the “we” meant. It had not escaped her attention that Hogwarts had far fewer wizards of color than Ilvermorny. She thought she was prepared for how few there would be, but she was so shocked by the reality. It hadn't really bothered her too much until Pansy started in on her and she felt more isolated than before.

“You should sit with us at dinner, Sweettrickle. But first, we gotta handle that hair.” Angelina pulled what looked to be a folded piece of parchment from inside her robes. "Being friends with 'The Chosen One' has its advantages…"

And that was how Nova had found herself pacing the seventh floor corridor, just opposite an odd tapestry that looked like trolls doing…ballet? She looked at the map again. Hundreds of tiny footprints moved across the map of the school, including the girls, whom she could see where near the Quidditch pitch with a few other kids she didn’t know. In a bathroom on the third floor, she saw two sets of footprints squished into a small wash closet. She didn’t know who “Dean Thomas” was, but his foot prints were awfully close to whoever “Hermione Granger” was. She regained her focus and tried to remember what Angelina had told her. She just had to think of those words while she paced this corridor three times.

"I need Aso’s help," she thought to herself. She could already see the evil smirk on Pansy's face at dinner if this didn't work. Two first year Hufflepuffs scurried by her with wide eyes.

"I need Aso’s help.” Her thoughts became more frantic. This was stupid. They hadn’t even told her what was supposed to happen. They were probably having a laugh at her, just thinking about how gullible she was. The dumb American…but they seemed so nice…and they rescued her from Pansy…stood up for her. They were the only ones who had helped her in all this time.

She took a breath and tried to steady her nerves. Without realizing what she was even doing, she wished the girls were right and honest and wanted to be her friend. She wished it with every fiber of her being. Then she paced the corridor one last time.

“I need Aso’s help. Please,” the final words actually spilling from her lips in a whisper of desperation.

She opened her eyes and waited for several beats before the disappointment set in. For the second time today, tears began to well in her eyes. There was nothing. No one. She was still there, alone, hair still dripping wet but also a giant frizz, in partially soggy robes in the same corridor as before. Same dumb statues at the other end. Same dumb tapestry of the same dumb dancing trolls in their dumb tutus. Same dumb door.

Wait. Door? Was that door there before? Nova was pretty sure it hadn’t been. But now here it was. Was this why the girls had sent her here? Was this what would help her?

She cautiously reached for the door, turned the knob and opened it. As soon as she stepped in, her jaw dropped.

“Whattha, whattha...”

The scene laid out before her was strange and yet familiar to Nova all that the same time.

To her left, three young witches of various shades of brown, magazines in hand, sat with their heads under floating bubbles that looked like sparkling plastic. Inside the bubbles, though not touching the girls, little orange and red fire salamanders ran round and round, chasing each other, creating an orange cloud of heat that was drying the hair of each girl.

To the right were three small waterfalls that looked like they were pulled directly from nature (how was the water flowing directly from the wall!?). They spilled into small whirlpools but there was no water on the ground. It was like the whirlpools were just…there. Nova could see the soap bubbles disappearing into the water but where they went Nova couldn’t say, since there were no drains that she could see. Two young ladies sat back, an empty station between them, hair in the whirlpools beneath the waterfalls, while two ladies, bare foot with dresses of finely woven kelp and faces that more resembled seals than humans, washed their hair.

In the back of the room, atop a large wet rock (where was the water coming from?) sat a chubby girl with a head full of big, brown curls, a round face, and a joyous smile, flute in her lap. She sang a song Nova had never heard before but already liked.

“I do my hair toss, check my nails! Baby how you feeling!?” The lyrics seem to speak to Nova. She was almost drawn to the girl beyond her will. But the sight, center stage, had distracted her.

In the middle of everything sat the largest spider Nova had ever seen! Atop the head of the large, black creature was a beautiful yellow head wrap covered in bright blue peacock feathers. At the end of each of its eight large legs were three fingers (Nova didn’t know what else to call them) and each finger had a little claw that was painted hot pink. Two ladies sat in front of it, one on each side, floating mirrors directly in front of them. The first two arms on it’s right ran a hot comb through one client’s hair. The first two arms on it’s left were parting the other woman’s thick, fluffy hair, preparing it for large braids. Around the spider’s mid section, two arms worked quickly, almost faster than Nova could see, creating a beautiful silk magenta bonnet with dragonflies. As soon as a dragonfly was knit, it would shake, as if coming to life, and turned from magenta to a sparkling gold, before settling back into the weave of the bonnet. The last two arms (or were they legs?) took the silk coming from it’s iridescent backside and quickly worked it into the thread the middle two arms used to knit the bonnets. A second spool of silk from its backside hung in a mass from the ceiling, keeping the creature floating and able to reach freely around the room, which it did from time to time, checking in on the other shop patrons, and grabbing tools and supplies from around the shop. This was NOT like any salon they had back home.

“What cha here for, girl?” An accent she couldn’t quite place spoke to her. “Girl,” the spider said, “what cha here for? Braids? Curls? Press? Weave? I’m a busy lady, Sakuri.” Nova suddenly realized all eyes, including the spider’s eight, were on her.

“Oh, uh, just a press please.”

“A press, eh? And who sent you, chile?”

“Um. Angelina Johnson.”

“Aye. I should have known. That girl…” Nova missed the last words she said. The girl on the rock had begun singing again and for a reason Nova could not quite place, she was mesmerized.

“Boss up and change yo life...” If Nova could just touch her, maybe she would be her friend. Maybe they could hang out all the time…forever. Forever? What a weird thought. Was it weird though? What was so wrong about her being the girl’s friend?

“Let me simplifyyyyyyy…” Gosh she was so amazing. Nova was just thinking about how she could listen to this song and nothing else for the rest of her life when the music suddenly stopped. A voice cut in...

“Melissa, sweetie,” the spider said, “The song is coming along nicely, but how ‘bout we take a break, eh?” The girl shrugged, picked up her flute from her lap, placed it to her full lips and played a quick melody, before saying “BYE BITCH” and poof, disappeared! As soon as the girl was gone, it was like Nova had released a breath she didn’t know she had been holding. She could think again. Everyone laughed.

“Sorry, chile. Melissa is half-siren and sometimes has trouble controlling her powers around newcomers. I’m Aso.”

“Huh…oh uh…yes. It’s nice to meet you…uh...ma’am. I’m Nova.” Without thinking, Nova curtsied. Everyone laughed again.

“No need to bow to me, chile.”

Nova felt stupid. Of course she didn’t need to bow, but in all honesty, she had never seen anyone like Aso, so she wasn’t really sure what to do. Not that she should have been surprised. Since learning she was a witch, her life had gotten so freaking weird that a giant, hair-styling spider really should have been expected.

“I suppose you’ve never seen anyone like me?” Aso asked. While the spider removed her cape, the lady on the right was admiring how smooth her hair was.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but no.” God, did she really need to broadcast how out of place she felt even when she wasn’t speaking!? Aso laughed. She had a nice laugh, one that calmed some of the nerves in Nova’s stomach.

“Well, no worries, girl. I don’t plan on eatin’ ya. I enjoy making money too much. You have money, don’t cha?”

Nova pulled a purple, velvet bag from beneath her robes.

“Yes, ma’am, I do. My aunt gave it to me for school stuff and a little extra for emergencies…”

“Well your head is definitely an emergency, if I do say so, myself. But I’ll get you fixed up, no worries, Sakuri. Go see Rian.”

One of the girls beside the small waterfalls waved to her with sharp nails atop webbed hands. Nova nodded and headed toward the girl. She wasn’t sure what “Sakuri” meant, but hearing Aso call her that, it reminded her of her Aunt Quinta and made her feel safe somehow. Almost like she was at home.

As Rian washed her hair, Nova tried to settle into the atmosphere. Rian’s little claws felt amazing on her scalp and the shampoo smelled of fresh rain and pineapples. Nova’s hair tingled right down to the root. Suddenly, she could feel every strand on her head and they were thrilled to be caressed so delicately.

Rian washed and scrubbed and rinsed Nova’s hair as she gossiped the other girl, whose name Nova learned was Siobhan, talking in a way Nova barely understood. It wasn’t exactly English. More like Spanglish, except instead of Spanish, the two girls spoke a language made up of growls, barks, and grunts mixed with heavy Irish English. Most of what Nova understood was from Aso’s responses. What Nova understood, she laughed along with. What she didn’t, she waited for Aso’s response and responded in kind.

Once her hair was washed, Rian took her over to the fire salamander dryers. Only one girl was there now. The girl who had been getting large braids was done and gone now and two new girls sat in front of Aso. One was getting what looked to be a neon green bob, and the other, a finger wave. Rian, took out the two small salamanders that had been in the dryer when Nova had arrived. She gently placed them in a small tank. Inside, a small rock glowed red with heat and they both ran to lay on it, falling asleep coiled around one another. Two new salamanders were placed inside the dryer as it was placed atop Nova’s head. Nova looked up to see them through the bubble. As soon as they saw each other the chase began and the heat built up.

Nova watched, mesmerized as Aso worked quickly. Aso, Rian, and Siobhan worked in sync, fluid like dancers who changed partners often. Aso had already finished the girl with the finger wave. With skin like obsidian, she admired her hair in the floating mirror. The silver color really suited the girl, but Nova noticed what was truly unique about the girl’s hair. Along her hairline, her baby hairs had been slicked down in beautiful intricate designs, like lace and every few minutes, the design of the “lace” changed. One moment it was soft waves around her face, the next it was a quilted pattern with tiny crystals that sparkled at the intersections. Nova had never seen hair like this.

As she took a last look in the mirror, the girl next to her was running her fingers through the fresh, neon green bob.

“Ok, Monae,” Aso said, “Now shake it.” Monae gave Aso a look like she didn’t quite understand. “Oh for heaven’s sake, girl. Will ya trust me and shake ya head!”

Monae shook her head as she was told. Slowly, from the tips up to the roots, her hair went from green to bright blue. Both Nova and Monae’s eyes grew in surprise. Aso laughed. She had a rich laugh that felt like all the ancestors, past and present, laughed with her.

“Again!” Aso commanded. Again, Monae obeyed. This time, her hair went from blue to hot pink.

She turned to Aso and smiled. Now understanding, she shook her head once more and her hair was back to neon green. Monae was overjoyed.

“Oi! Aso! This is brilliant, mate! I’ll be the talk of the common room for days!” Monae handed several gold coins to Aso. Aso handed her and the other girl a bonnet each. The girls thanked her, put on their yellow and black robes, and headed for the door.

“Ok missy...your turn!”

Nova stood up and sat in one of Aso’s chairs.

“So, Little Miss Nova, tell me how you got to be such a mess in the first place.”

As Aso parted and combed her hair, Nova told her about wanting to be on the Quidditch team like her grandfather, who had been a Hufflepuff Seeker before he opened his sweet shop and moved to the States… about the squid and Pansy… about how she always struggled to get her hair right, so Aunt Quinta had relaxed it and how that almost made it harder. So many rules to keep it “tame.” Before she knew it, she was crying a bit and telling Aso everything.

“Oh now chile,” Aso wiped a tear with one massive spider hand, “no need to cry. Aso has just the thing for you.” Before she could see herself in the mirror, Angelina, Alicia, Charli, and Cyn popped in.

“Hey Miss Aso! Over there looking like an eight legged goddess!” Alicia playfully bowed.

“Hush yo mouth, girl!” Aso dismissed Alicia’s silliness with a half smile that showed her top fangs. “Angelina, you send this girl to me!?”

“Sure did, Miss Aso. She needed your magic hands and I see you did your thing.” Angelina’s compliment made Aso blush.

“Oh hush girl.”

“Wowie, wow!” Charli said. “Lookie here girls…”

“Our Little Miss Nova has a head full of curls!” Cyn concluded.

Nova had almost forgotten to look at herself. Charli and Cyn were right! She suddenly had curls. Hundreds of them, honey brown with red highlights that brought out her brown eyes. They framed her face like a fiery, golden halo. She almost didn’t recognize herself.

“Now I know you wanted a press Miss Nova,” Aso said, “but it would be a shame to hide such beauty. This is special, just for you. Rian!”

Before Nova could ask what she meant, Rian splashed a small stream of water directly at her! Instinctively, Nova put up her hands, trying to protect her hair, but the water never even made contact. Siobhan tossed a small pebble from the base of the waterfall.

“Hey now!” Nova said, but like the water it never made contact with Nova or her hair. Four inches before it reached her, it just lost momentum and fell to the ground. Nova was amazed.

“Whattha, whattha…”

“It will take a lot more than that girl to mess up your hair now.” The way she spat the word “girl,” Nova knew Aso meant Pansy. “You just trust Miss Aso, now, ya hear?”

“It's so beautiful, Miss Aso! Thank you so much! Honestly I’ve never seen it like this before. Aunt Quinta is gonna flip.”

“You tell Quinta I said hello, ya hear.” Before Nova could ask what she meant, Alicia read Nova’s look.

“Girl, our Spider Goddess knows everyone! Ain’t that right, Queen!?”

“I done told ya to hush now, girl!” Aso playfully batted at Alicia.

Angelina gently elbowed Nova.

“Give her 1 Galleon and 10 sickles. Give 3 sickles to Rian and Siobhan as well.”

Nova did as Angelina said, leaving Aso’s payment last.

“Miss Aso,” Nova said, “thank you so much!” And before Aso could respond, Nova gave her a hug where she could reach around her exoskeleton.

“Of course, girl.” The giant spider patted her head, hair bouncing right back into place.

“Don’t forget your bonnet, Miss Nova,” Aso said as Nova pulled back to see Aso had placed a beautiful, peridot green bonnet, with gold dragonflies in Nova’s hands.

“Oh! Miss Aso! This is my favorite color! How did you know!?”

“You heard the big mouth, girl! Miss Aso knows everything, chile!” Alicia feigned a hurt look.

“Come on, Sweettrickle. Can’t wait to see Parkinson’s stupid little face when you walk in looking like that!” Angelina and the girls made their way to the door.

“Yeah yeah it’s time for dinner!” Cyn said.

“When Pansy loses, you’re the real winner!” Charli finished.

“Thank you again, Miss Aso.” Nova said.

“Of course, chile.”

As they stepped through the door, back onto the seventh floor corridor, Aso’s Salon disappeared. The girls started down the hall, and Nova took one last look at where the door had been.

“Come on you guys!” Angelina lead the pack, “Let's go show off Sweettrickle!”

Alicia teased and mocked Nova, “Oh Miss Aso!” She laughed as she mimicked Nova with a comically high pitched voice. “You’re such a goodie goodie, Nova!”

“Shut up, big mouth,” Nova said playfully.

The girls all froze and turned to Nova. Had Nova gone too far!? The girls looked at Nova and a look passed between them. Suddenly, they burst into laughter. Relieved, Nova laughed, too.

“She got you, Alicia! You took her for a dummy!”

“But it turns out Nova is really quite funny!” The twins laughed.

And as they walked down the corridor to the Great Hall, smiling and laughing, five carefree Black witches, Angelina looked to Nova and shared a smile.

“I think you’re gonna fit in just fine, Sweettrickle. Just fine.”

#Hogwarts #Angelina Johnson #Room of Requirement

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whatiputonmyface · 6 years

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Margaret’s Summer Product Diary

MORNING

I wake up at around 8:00 am, which, to paraphrase the president, is my personal Vietnam. I feed my plump cat, Clementine (catnip banana for scale), and then head into the bathroom, screaming at my Google Home to play my shower jams playlist. I drink a full bottle of water while waiting for the shower to get hot.

First I wash my hair with Drybar Blonde Ale Brightening Shampoo; it’s violently purple and helps neutralize the brassy tones from bleaching my naturally brown hair. I follow up with Rita Hazan Ultimate Shine Gloss in Breaking Brass. Both of these products are a bit drying, so once a week I use Rita Hazan Weekly Remedy Treatment. This two-step conditioner is the shit. My hair has never felt so soft and healthy – I was forcing coworkers to touch it all day after my first use.

I cleanse my chest and back with the Body Shop’s Tea Tree Skin Clearing Body Wash (hooray for sweaty summer breakouts), and wash my face with Ole Henriksen Oil Control Cleanser.

When I get out of the shower I wrap my hair in an old t-shirt, because the internet told me to. I immediately apply La Neige Lip Sleeping Mask to my perpetually chapped lips.

I start my skincare with Belif Hydra Sebum Control Essence. It smells delicious, and I like patting it on, but it doesn’t really control oil that much. Then I apply a couple drops of The Ordinary’s Salicylic Acid 2% Solution all over my face.

As you can see in my picture, I have a lot of hyperpigmentation due to sun exposure when I was an idiot teenager. I’m currently on the hunt for a vitamin C serum, suggestions welcome!

The salicylic acid is topped off with a very thin layer (like, a pea-sized amount for my whole face) of Belif Aqua Bomb because it’s hot and I turn into a greasy swamp monster with anything heavier. It smells just as good as the essence.

IT ME.

Okay, skincare’s done! On to makeup. I refill my water bottle. Drinking 32 ounces of water every morning has… maybe helped my skin?

I smooth on CoverFX Mattifying Primer with Anti-Acne Treatment, which provides a great smooth base and also mattifies and provides even more salicylic acid to incinerate zits.

On my eyelids, brow bone, under-eye and cheekbone I apply CoverFX Illuminating Primer; I got it as a sample but I’m way too ~naturally dewy~ to use it all over. It provides a very subtle glow to the eye area and plays well under eyeshadow. In the summer, I use it in lieu of eye cream during the day.

I use Tarte BB Tinted Treatment Primer as foundation. I want to use this the rest of my life: it’s mattifying, pore-minimizing, covers quite well, AND has SPF. It should be called a foundation, not a primer, TBH.

Why yes, I DO use three primers. I’m a prime bitch.

A couple dark marks are still visible, so I dot on Nars Creamy Concealer in Custard (not pictured). I’ll set all that with Too Faced Peach Perfect Setting Powder, which actually smells like peaches, and tastes very nice if you get some in your mouth. I do blush and bronzer after setting powder because otherwise it makes me look washed out.

Then I apply blush (Tarte Amazonian Clay 12-Hour Blush in Paaaarty, which was the Sephora birthday gift last year, and it is Fine), and contour a bit with a matte bronzer (Benefit Hoola, also a sample). (Blend that fucking neck!!!!)

To finish off my facial canvas, I sweep Fenty Beauty Killawatt Freestyle Highlighter in Hu$tla Baby on my cheekbones and orbital area. I am now Rihanna.

This is exhausting.

Most days I use Too Faced Sweet Peach Eyeshadow Palette; today I’ve used a pretty rose gold shade from it. I then do a small cat eye using Kat Von D’s Tattoo Liner; when I’m dead, I want tattoo liners scattered on my grave every Christmas. I follow up with Too Faced Better Than Pizza Sex Mascara, which is fine but not really worth the hype to me? Again, it was a sample. I subscribe to Sephora Play and use whatever mascara they send every couple of months.

Side note: I seem to have a lot of Too Faced in my routine, but somehow did not pay for any of it.

The last step in my makeup regimen is also my least favorite: brows. I have sparse brows that seem to grow straight down. Using an eyeliner brush & small strokes, I apply ELF Eyebrow Kit gel in Light. I try not to make my brows too dark, and follow up with Benefit’s Gimme Brow.

All this time, my hair has been air drying. I got a keratin treatment a couple months ago, but it’s starting to wear off, which means my not-so-luscious locks are starting to get puffy and frizzy again. I attempt to smooth things a bit with IGK’s Mistress Hydrating Hair Balm, and then blast my roots with the blow dryer. I end up twisting my hair into a topknot to ensure it looks really horrible later.

Finally, I brush my teeth and dab on Nars Velvet Matte Lipstick Pencil in Cruella, a bright red that looks like a rosy lip stain if used sparingly.

Here I am! I don’t know how to pose?!

FINALLYYYYYYY, at 9:00ish, I go to work. I am a sweaty swamp monster from the second I enter the subway station.

MIDDAY

Blot blot blot blot blot with those toilet seat protector things. It’s the only decent ~life hack~ I’ve seen on Buzzfeed.

Makeup is holding up well, aside from lipstick (I forgot to bring it to reapply) and hair looks less terrible than expected. I drink 3-4 bottles of water at work.

EVENING

I leave the office around 7:00 pm. During warmer months I walk about 2 miles home through Central Park. It’s the most beautiful and relaxing commute, but the downside is I arrive home with a wicked case of boob sweat.

I throw my hair into a bun and hop into the shower again to cleanse my body and soul of sweat and general NYC grossness. While I’m in there I wash my face with the same Ole Henriksen Oil Control Cleanser.

Clementine guards me whilst I bathe.

After showering, I lube my body up with Eucerin. While that soaks in, I stand naked in the middle of the apartment and get stoned.

Before bed, I remove any lingering eye makeup with a couple drops of The Ordinary’s Moroccan Argan Oil (not pictured), and use a cotton ball to apply The Ordinary’s Glycolic Acid 7% Toning Solution. This toner RULES, and is frequently sold out, because it is a HUGE bottle and only eight goddamn dollars, and a dupe for Glossier’s toner.

Continuing on The Ordinary train, I pat-pat-pat a few drops of Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5 into my face, and follow up with The Ordinary’s Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 2% serum. Niacinamide is great for treating acne, but isn’t in a lot of products yet. It’s anti-inflammatory and this serum can be worn under makeup.

Once again I apply Belif’s Aqua Bomb and then smear on Estee Lauder’s Advanced Night Repair Eye Cream. It’s kind of greasy, but I believe eye cream is a scam and refuse to spend money on it. Samples only for this gal. I’m so fiscally responsible!

After all this is complete, I brush my teeth, braid my hair and get in bed at about 10:30. Goodnight!

#beauty skincare makeup theordinary deciem belif narscosmetics #too faced coverfx

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justanoutlawfic · 5 years

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I Belong With You (You Belong With Me): Revealed

Summary: James and David have a conversation that's been a long time coming.

Also on AO3

The Enchanted Forest (One Week & 9 Days Before the Wedding)

David couldn’t get the bandit out of his mind. Sure, she had originally stolen his mother’s engagement ring but she had soon proven to be much more than that. She was a beautiful woman, her dark hair in a frizzy braid. Her emerald eyes brought out the stone in that ring. The second she had tried it on his jest, he knew he had never wanted her to take it off. She could fight harder than any other person he had ever met and that was sexy in its own right, forget her looks.

It was too bad that he was probably never going to see her again.

She was on his mind with every step he took. As he listened to his father plan his wedding or whenever he tried to talk to Abigail (which was like pulling teeth), his mind floated to Snow White. He wondered if she was safe. He wondered what she was doing. Most of all, he wondered if she was thinking about him too.

“And then the Behemoth dragged his dagger through my skin, piercing me alive,” James said.

David looked up from his doodle. “Huh?”

“I knew you weren’t paying attention to what I was saying.”

“I totally was.”

“Considering I’ve never battled the Behemoth, I’d say not.” James leaned forward, staring at his brother’s sketch. “Whatchya drawing?”

David quickly attempted to cover it up with his forearm. “Nothing.”

James snatched the paper out from under him, scanning the paper. “She’s pretty, who is it?”

“No one in particular.”

“Davey, I know you. You got the artistic abilities of the two of us. This is definitely someone.” He studied the paper some more. “I’d say Abigail, but this girl has darker hair and is actually smiling.”

David snatched the paper back. “Father will hear you.”

“He’s out with Midas. Now, tell me.”

David sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. James wasn’t giving up and he wasn’t in the mood for a fight. “She’s a bandit I met in the woods the other day. She stole the ring I’m meant to give Abigail.” James cocked an eyebrow. “I got it back, but we ended up going on a bit journey together…she saved my life.”

James tilted his head. “You like this girl.”

David could feel his cheeks grow hot. “I do not.”

“You totally do.” James smirked. “Davey’s in love.”

“Shut up.” He averted his glance to the wooden table. “Even if I was, it doesn’t matter. In a little over a week, I’m to marry Abigail.”

“Yeah, a woman that can’t stand you.”

“Maybe in time…”

“David, stop. I know you. You always said you wanted to marry for love. Just like Mother taught us.”

“And how realistic is that? We’re royalty, James. Our lives are filled with expectations and arranged marriages.” David’s eyes flickered back down to the paper. He thought of Snow and the life they could have together. It made his heart ache. “Would I like to see what Snow and I could have together? Of course, but it’s just not realistic. I have to do this for Father. Just as he’s done everything for us.”

When David looked back up at his brother, he saw tears in his eyes. It wasn’t often James cried. Even when they were children and their mother died, he had been the strong one. David broke down and had destroyed their playroom. James was stoic, staring into space. He eventually gathered David into his arms and calmed him down. David always loved to joke that James was never a kid, that he had been born a mini-adult. In that moment, however, he seemed so vulnerable.

“David,” James whispered. “There’s something you should know.”

David’s blood boiled as he stormed away from his brother. He blocked out James calling after him, he didn’t want to hear him.

Everything he had known, everything he had ever thought had been a lie.

He slammed shut the heavy oak door to his room. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the leather pouch that contained the ring. All his life he thought it belonged to his mother. Or Serafina.

“Shit,” he mumbled to himself.

Nothing made sense to him anymore. Serafina would always be his mother. She raised him for 5 years. She loved him. She doted on him. She taught him everything he loved about himself, while George had given him everything that he hated.

Yet this ring, the one he had always been told, belonged to the woman that had truly given him life. A woman until 15 minutes prior, he had no clue had existed. A woman that James and George had hidden from him for years. Ruth. She hadn’t wanted to give him up, but Robert-his biological father-had sold him. He was never meant to have this life. He was supposed to grow up a shepherd.

He was never meant to know his twin.

This was too much for him to handle.

“You’re back here early.”

David looked up to find Abigail standing in his room. She was dressed in a long coat, made of the finest pink silk. Her blonde hair was wrapped around her head and a hat that matched her coat sat atop her head. Abigail barely looked at him, let alone snuck into his room.

“What do you want?” His voice came out more bitter than he intended.

“I just wanted…” Her cheeks tinted pink. “I was trying to get some objects I could get to possibly leave this kingdom.”

David shook his head. “I suppose I shouldn’t even be surprised. You’ve made it clear you don’t want to be here.”

He stormed past her and over to his vanity. He grabbed a gold pocket watch along with some pearls that had once belonged to his mother, Serafina, whoever the hell she was. He didn’t know what to think anymore. God, his head hurt.’

He didn’t even love Abigail. He wasn’t sure why he was angry with her. Really, he wasn’t. He was upset with James and George, and it was coming out on her.

He needed a drink.

“I know what you must think of me,” Abigail said. “Poor little rich girl. Has everything she could ever want…why can’t I just marry you…”

“Up until today, I was willing to do this, give up my own happiness to make this merger happen!”

“Well I believe that while marriage requires give and take, you shouldn’t have to sacrifice being with who you truly love!”

David’s hands fell at his sides and he turned to face her. “So, we’re in agreement there, at the very least.”

Abigail cleared her throat. “I suppose so.”

“There’s someone else?”

“There was.” She bit her lip. “I was engaged to be married months before we got word of your father’s request for a merger. To a wonderful, handsome, kind man named Frederick.” She clutched her chest and shut her eyes.

David tilted his head, feeling some of his rage melting. “What happened?”

“You know my father; he turns anything he touches to gold.” Abigail’s eyes opened. A pain look overcame her pupils, a genuine frown encroaching her lips. “It was an accident. He didn’t have his gloves on…Frederick got too close…and the next thing we knew…he was a statute.”

David frowned. “Did you try true love’s kiss?”

“Until my lips bled.”

“Oh, Abigail…”

“I’ve looked into every spell, tried everything I could…but nothing worked. My father supported most of it, until we got your father’s offer. He couldn’t turn it down. The merger was just too great.” She looked out the window. “But I can’t trade my happiness for these kingdoms.

David thought of his own adoptive father. Growing up in this kingdom had felt like a prison. George had been cruel, trying to force both men to become people they didn’t want. It gave James an awful reputation and made David afraid to cross George in any way. They had been beaten and bruised. Their childhoods ended the day Serafina died. Now David found out, his life was never meant to be that way. Robert didn’t sound much better, but he still would never know what could have been.

He couldn’t stick around and continue living a lie.

“Maybe we could help each other,” David said.

Abigail looked back at him. “How?”

“I’ve discovered some stuff about myself that I need to look into. There’s also someone out there that I need to find.”

She studied his face. “A true love?”

David’s lips tugged up partially. “She just may be.” He took a step forward. “I think I have a way that we can save Frederick. We can leave tonight. Do you trust me?”

Abigail looked at him for a minute, before nodding. “I do. But do you really think you can leave all of this behind?”

David’s eyes scanned the rich red and gold room, the canopy bed. He thought of the sword practices, the nights he cried himself to sleep. He would miss his brother, but right now he certainly couldn’t be around him.

“It’s been a long time coming.”

#i belong with you you belong with me verse #snowing #david charming #snow white #princess abigail #prince james #ouat #once upon a time

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jessicakehoe · 4 years

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Texture Talk: 4 Canadian Black Women Open Up About Wearing Wigs

Welcome to Texture Talk, a weekly column that celebrates and deep dives into the dynamic world of curly hair, from crowns of curls that are free flowing to strands that are tucked away in a protective style. In today’s day and age, it shouldn’t be a secret that wig-life is alive and well, especially within the Black community, so this week we asked four local women who love rocking extensions on what wearing wigs means to them and their wig routines.

Sadé Powell, freelance writer and illustrator

Courtesy of Sadé Powell

On wig life:

“I’ve been wearing wigs on and off for six years. I love experimenting with colour, so I always purchase blonde wigs, which acts as a blank canvas for whatever colours inspire me that month. My favourite thing about wearing wigs is being able to change my style at a moment’s notice. If I’m bored of long pink hair, I’ll purchase and dye a short blue wig. It’s like being an avatar in a game! For me, hair is a means of expression. There are a lot of ways to transform hair to accentuate your style, but when you then start to incorporate wigs and extensions, things can get really creative. Being able to continuously change my hair colour using wigs, and without damaging my natural hair, has been such a fun hobby of mine. I love scrolling through Instagram for inspiration, buying the different colours I need to mix the perfect shade, or sometimes just using the colours I have at home, and experimenting. You can always cut your hair, grow it back, curl it, buy a new wig or add extensions.”

On her go-to protective style underneath:

“I typically cornrow my hair as a protective style.”

On the non-negotiables of her wig routine:

“Weekly washes and deep conditioning.”

On her hero wig care products:

“I just recently discovered Silicon Mix Bambu Hair Treatment. It’s great for restoring moisture into my wigs when they start to get frizzy.”

On her hair inspirations:

“It was @heathersanders_ who I first saw on Instagram rocking coloured wigs in blue, pink and ombre designs. She inspired me when I first started colouring my units back in 2015. Lately, I look to influencers like @nyane and @nikitadragun for colour inspiration. I love that they use wigs to create their own characters for that day, whether it’s for a party or just to grocery shop. These girls are constantly switching things up with their wig, makeup and outfit combos to create these striking fantasy looks that I really admire. They’re both very over the top and dramatic, but it reminds me to be playful with how I express myself through clothes, hair and makeup.”

Courtesy of Sadé Powell

On navigating mainstream beauty standards:

“I’ve definitely felt pressure to conform to Euro-centric beauty standards. Especially when you grow up not seeing girls like you represented on television or in advertising, you start to think that there is only one type of beautiful. You then, without even realizing it, adjust your outward appearance to fit in, and reject the parts of you that don’t. I feel like this was mostly true for me before high school, but I was lucky to be from a very diverse neighbourhood where I would see the older girls, especially Black girls, constantly experimenting with their hair. Sometimes the styles were bold and edgy, while other times they were questionable, but creative. Having their influence really helped me find my own style through hair and made me feel like I could try anything.”

Aurore Evee, bilingual communications and creative services specialist

Courtesy of Aurore Evee

On wig life:

“I bought my first wig six years ago. They’re a way for me to push my fashion style even further and play. I see them as accessories, or like makeup, and wear them when I have a specific style in mind that I want to recreate. Nine of the ten wigs I own are synthetic, and I mostly wear them for a day or two in a row. I try my best to take care of them by not applying anything on them, by combing them only before and after wearing them, and by putting them back in their boxes before going to bed.”

On her go-to protective style underneath:

“Braids, always.”

On the non-negotiables of her wig routine:

“Moisturising my own hair before doing my protective style. That way I know that when I remove my wig, I can wear my natural hair as an Afro right away.”

On her hair inspirations:

“Influencer Ambrosia Malbrough. She has been such an inspiration since the beginning of my hair journey and is still my favourite. She is so good with her hair. I love that she does everything herself and changes her hairstyle very often. I wish I had the patience to do so as well!”

Courtesy of Aurore Evee

On navigating mainstream beauty standards:

“My hair is everything to me, and I��ve had such a hair journey, like many Black women. I have felt the pressure to conform to a certain standard when I was in college; I remember wanting to have straighter hair. That’s probably why I started doing weaves back in college. Accepting my natural hair wasn’t easy, because I didn’t even know where to start. I didn’t have examples of women in magazines or on TV with their own natural hair. I didn’t know what products to use and how to avoid damage. I grew up in France where the Black community is big, but it was difficult to find hair products for my 4C curls. Some of the products I bought back then were even bad for my hair! But eventually I started going on YouTube and seeing all of these beautiful women rocking their natural hair, and I started having hope. When I started actually taking proper care of my curls, I understood that: the more I knew about my texture, the more I loved it. This has been my mantra.”

Chinenye Otakpor, rehabilitation specialist by day, fashion blogger by night

Courtesy of Chinenye Otakpor

On wig life:

“I have been rocking wigs for about 10 years now. I started in grade 10, buying my first bundle and watching tutorials on YouTube on how to make a U-part wig. My go-to wig style is always big and sassy, like my personality. I love curls, but I also wear straight hair looks that have volume. I love the versatility of wigs. They also have the ability to provide a certain kind of confidence you cannot explain. I’m sure other Black women understand what I mean by that. As a fashion blogger, my wigs complete my outfit most of the time, and allow me to project the attitude I want that outfit to give. The best part of wigs is it allows me to properly take care of my hair and maintain length without constantly exposing it to heat. The funny part that I also love is that wigs also gives me the ability to continuously confuse people in 2020. People who do not understand the concept of wigs and how it is impossible for me to be blonde today and jet black tomorrow!”

On her go-to protective style underneath:

“I normally have my hair in cornrows to keep my wig installs flat. And when I do not have my cornrows, I do Bantu knots to get that curl and volume for when I wear my hair out.”

On the non-negotiables of her wig routine:

“I would say securing my wig down with wig glue is non-negotiable. I cannot be out here getting my wig snatched and becoming a meme for the Internet! Another significant part of my routine is not over styling it or overloading it with product. My trick to refresh a stringy-looking wig is using dry shampoo.”

On her hero wig care products:

“I normally go for the Tresemme Volumizing Dry Shampoo. It adds the extra little boost my hair needs in those ‘refresh’ times. And my hero haircare product is the Giovanni Frizz Be Gone Super-Smoothing Anti-Frizz Hair Serum. I swear by this product because it leaves your strands so smooth and silky, especially when I straighten my wigs. It always makes my wigs so luscious and luxurious that I’m almost convinced it is my hair! Another product I use first after washing my wigs is the Beyond The Zone Turn Up The Heat Flat Iron Protection Spray. This is one of the best heat protectants I have tried in a while. My trick when using it is spraying it on my hands first and then working it through my hair. Because it’s an oil-based product, it can make your hair look greasy [if you apply too much].”

Courtesy of Chinenye Otakpor

On her hair inspirations:

“First and foremost I would definitely let Neal Farinah, Beyoncé’s hairstylist, bless my head with his hands. Others are @anthonycuts and @tokyostylez for wig installs. No one can slay a wig like these two talented human beings! I wish I could get my hands on one of their creations but my bank account continuously tells me to relax every time that thought crosses my mind. @romeofashionfix is also a huge hair inspiration. She has made me want pink hair or just any bold signature colour for the last year or so. I love that she has a signature hair colour and it never gets boring.”

On navigating mainstream beauty standards:

“I have definitely felt pressure to conform to the mainstream definition of beauty because it provides comfort that does not always need to be disturbed or questioned. I love my natural hair, but I cannot lie and say that I do not notice the difference in the way people look and treat me with my natural hair versus a wig. There are days I do wish I never started wearing wigs because it has conditioned this insecurity in me that makes me question my beauty and self-worth when I do not wear one. It then becomes a moment of continuous self-affirmation: to remind myself that I’m born beautiful just like my mother and that wigs never defined her beauty during her time, so why should they define my image — my self-worth? I have not fully been able to overcome that feeling yet. I just maintain a balance, and continuously remind myself that my natural hair is my crown. I think it’s our job as Black women to continuously remind each other of the beauty in our natural states.”

Francilia Odame-Nyarkoh, elementary school teacher and entrepreneur

Courtesy of Francilia Odame-Nyarkoh

On wig life:

“I’ve been wearing weaves and braids since I was ten and full head wigs since I was fifteen. For special occasions, I love to slip on my Brazilian lace front wigs. The hair is much softer and lighter, and it provides me with a look that I will never get on my own. For an everyday look, I love natural kinky hair wigs. I find that style blends in very well with my own hair. Plus, I don’t have people asking me if it’s my real hair. As a mother of four young kids, I never have time for my hair, so I love the convenience of wigs. I can just get up, slip one on and go. I don’t have to worry about pressing my hair, combing my hair, etc. Maybe in the future, when the kids get older, I will wear my hair natural.”

On her go-to protective style underneath:

“Straight cornrows to the back. Sometimes I leave a little bit of my own hair out to blend into the wig.”

On the non-negotiables of her wig routine:

“I always wear a cap underneath the wig before placing it on my head.”

On her hero wig care products:

“Got2b Glued Gel. My lace front wigs can’t survive without it. I also love using natural oils on my natural wigs made with human hair.”

On the best wig tip she’s picked up from a hair pro:

“Unless your wig is human hair, only use products labelled for synthetic wigs. Using products for real hair will stress and damage the synthetic fibres.”

On navigating mainstream beauty standards:

“My mom first relaxed my hair when I was six years old, so that right away gave me the notion that Afro hair is not beautiful. As I got older, I began to have an appreciation for natural hair. There was one major experience that gave me that ‘Aha! moment’. I had a student in my class, a beautiful Black girl with amazing Afro hair. One day she drew a picture of herself with straight hair. When I approached her to ask her why she didn’t draw her own hair, she responded by saying, ‘Because, I wish my hair was like yours.’ I was extremely saddened by this experience. I literally came to school the next day with my natural hair and didn’t even care that it wasn’t done! But in all honesty, after wearing my natural hair for a few days I realized I wasn’t really comfortable with the maintenance and look of it. So, I went back to wearing wigs. But we did have a very thorough lesson on acceptance, and we had a discussion regarding what my natural hair looks like and why I didn’t wear my natural hair. This experience taught me that, as adults, we really need to be careful of the information that we put out there (even if it’s subconscious). Ever since then, I’ve developed an appreciation for more natural looking wigs as well.”

And if you missed last week’s column, click here.

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ks-caster · 4 years

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Brother, Mine

Fandom: Jurassic Park

I actually did start writing and posting this story (click HERE to read the first 9 chapters on fanfic) but have decided to discontinue it. I figured while I was cleaning out my fanfic stuff, I might as well put it up for adoption properly. (Sadly I don’t think Fanfic has a function for that like AO3 - but if anyone wants to take this one over I’m happy to post a final “chapter” directing followers to your version. The written portion of un-posted chapter 10, as well as spoiler-y notes for the remainder, are under the cut.

Chapter 10: Parent Day

“So,” Gray asked as the four children sat in the school room, ready to greet the three visiting adults and show that none of them had been clawed or eaten. “Owen, what’s your mom like?”

“Pretty,” he said with a shrug. Barry raised an eyebrow.

“That’s an odd way to describe your mother,” Claire commented as she finished braiding her hair. The tight way she’d pulled it back made her face look oddly stretched and severe, Owen thought with a mental wrinkle of his nose. She looked much nicer when she left it hanging in frizzy curls around her shoulders. More approachable.

“You’ll see what I mean when you met her,” he sighed. He didn’t really want to go into explaining his mom—a small-town bar singer whose favorite sight in the world was her own face in the lighted mirror with two burnt-out bulbs that she’d enshrined in her bedroom. His dad always complained that the light hurt his eyes, and they’d argue about it for hours, but that never stopped her gazing into it. Luanne “Lola” Grady was a local celebrity, with her face on an advertisement for beer and her voice on the radio station that broadcast out of a little building near the train station.

“Do you think we get a fancy lunch, since it’s Parent Day?” Barry asked after the silence had gone on for a few moments too long.

The ferry arrived on schedule, bringing with it a tired-looking red-headed lady with a popped-out baby belly, a harassed but pleasant-looking man with mousy hair and glasses, and Lola Grady, all bouncing blonde curls and too much eyeliner and dusty cowboy boots. As Zara had explained, Claire and Owen met their adults in the school room, while the raptors waited in a side-chamber with Barry and Gray, to be revealed later.

Claire’s uncle gave her a hug first, and then her aunt followed suit—gingerly, around her belly. Owen’s mother enveloped him in a heavily-perfumed embrace, which surprised him, but a moment later he realized that Zara and Dr. Wu had entered on her heels; of course she was taking pains to look extra maternal.

“Now, you’ve all had access to our official packet,” Zara was saying as she headed to the front of the room.

‘Like Barry said,’ thought Owen, triumphant on his friend’s behalf.

“Today we’re going to show you a little more about our project,” she continued, opening up her MacBook and plugging it into the projector.

“Shouldn’t we wait for everybody to get here?” Claire’s aunt asked, frowning a little. “There are four families, right?”

“Everyone we’re expecting has arrived,” Dr. Wu responded delicately. There was a moment of tense silence where Claire’s aunt’s eyes filled with pity, until Lola jumped in.

“Well, lots of people have to work weekends these days!” she exclaimed with a laugh. “I had to take off a month in advance, and my boss had such a fit. He’s worried there’ll be a riot or something if I don’t perform tonight. I’m a singer, y’know,” she added hurriedly. Owen mouthed her last sentence as she said it; he’d heard it enough times to see it coming. “But my little sweetheart hasn’t been away from me this long since I gave birth to him—I just had to make the time. It’s what you do for your kids, y’know?”

Ms. Dallas nodded, smiling awkwardly. Mr. Howard raised an eyebrow openly, but Zara plowed right on as soon as she had a moment of silence.

“As you are already aware, your children are being educated on the island, alongside some of our newest assets, to foster comradery and teach human-like social skills. The dinosaurs in question have, in previous experiments, displayed incredible intelligence and aptitude for teamwork among their own kind. The purpose of our social experiment is to use this nature to bond them to humans, in order to keep their handlers safe, and hopefully domesticate them for later research once they fully mature.”

As she spoke, she opened up a power-point presentation with the heading, “Project Symbiosis” and pictures of the raptors hatching surrounded by sleepy-looking children. Owen noticed out of his peripheral vision as Claire ran a self-conscious hand over her pulled-flat hair when her picture appeared on the screen. Girls… The three adults were more interested in the baby velociraptors anyway. He suspected that not one of them knew exactly what they were.

“They’re kinda’ cute,” Lola said as a picture flashed up of the raptors wrapped up in towels.

“What kind of dinosaurs are they?” Mr. Howard asked.

‘Called it,’ Owen thought with a mental smirk.

“They’re modified velociraptors,” Dr. Wu responded smoothly. “They’ve been genetically engineered to be more theme-park friendly, but their base genome is raptor.”

“That means they’re safer for humans, right?” Ms. Dallas checked, looking nervous.

“Velociraptors as they existed in earth’s history are very dissimilar to what people usually think of when they hear the word," Dr. Wu began. Owen heard the impending lecture in his voice before he'd finished his first sentence, and tuned out at the end of the first paragraph. He knew part of this was actually supposed to be an informational meeting for the parents, but he was pretty sure—and he guessed from Claire's face that she agreed—it was a ruse to bore them so much they forgot to wonder if the raptors were less dangerous. His eyes strayed to the door that led to the area where Barry and Gray waited with the raptors. He wanted them back in the room. At least then they could surreptitiously play a game—or at least he could watch Blue and the others goof around instead of having to stare at either the power point or the inviting jungle outside.

Wu's presentation lasted a good half an hour—long enough for Owen to get bored out of his mind, and even long enough for Claire (sandwiched between her aunt and uncle) to play a round of mouthed "I-spy" with him across the room. It was cumbersome, but it beat paying attention to the lesson. He hadn't realized until just now how much he ought to appreciate Mr. Z.

"And now that you're acquainted with our work, it's time for you to meet the subjects," Wu finally, FINALLY said. Owen sprang to his feet and was at the door in two steps—or maybe bounds would be a more apt description.

"Look at him go," he heard his mother say with a laugh. "Never sits still. He may not do so well in school, but at least he'll never be fat!" She laughed again, like she'd made a tremendous joke, but he didn't stop to listen.

"You can come in now," he was saying, and Barry and Gray stuffed their pockets with the bits of chewed-up rope they'd been using for tug-of-war. Blue and Echo bounded forward, Echo passing him to get to Claire, and Blue fondly (he supposed) clamping her teeth down on the hem of his shorts. He edged further into the room and out of sight, grimacing, while Barry, Gray, Delta and Charlie headed out into the school room.

"Blue, drop it," he whispered, pointing sternly downwards. She looked up at him, contemplating for a long moment before complying and releasing her jaws. She'd left a few marks, but hadn't noticeably severed the material. Probably one of them had bitten off a chunk of rope earlier, he guessed, and had informed the others that heavy textiles were not pleasant things to have in one's mouth.

"Let's go, Blue," he sighed, picking her up. She had scrambled to his shoulder before he'd fully turned around, and her tail crooked securely around his opposite collarbone. "Time to meet my mother..."

“Oh, aren’t they cute li’l scaly things,” Lola Grady exclaimed, clapping her hands together in delight, but Owen didn’t miss the nervous shuffle of her feet, the way she didn’t want them quite close enough to touch her. The raptors, for their part, were about as disinterested in the unfamiliar humans as they were in the rotating group of ACU troopers, glancing at and smelling them before running to where the room’s furnishings had been—for once—neatly stacked in the corner, and dragging out their favorite cushions to relax on, just as if it was a school day.

“Ms. Dallas, Mr. Howard, Mrs. Grady,” Dr. Young announced, “meet Barry Finelle and Gray Mitchell, and these are Blue, Charlie, Delta and Echo.”

Awkward parent tour—mom’s doing covers on YouTube now…

Medical exam goes awry and Owen has to rush back to help calm Blue. He’s relieved honestly.

Owen overhears Gray calling his parents and telling each he’s at the other’s house

Owen reflects on his place in the pack, and how family isn’t always what you’re born with—it’s also what you choose.

The story takes place in 3 major parts.

Part 1: raising the dinosaurs along with the kids

Part 2: figuring out that the separating the kids from the dinosaurs is Not Going To Work So Well For Everybody

Owen’s abusive-ass father eventually turns up, and Blue, sensing his distress, kind of accidentally bites his arm off. As you do.

Part 3: getting the dinosaurs out of the park before every lawyer in the world wants a piece of the pie.

Masrani corp and InGen need the dinos off of the theme park island YESTERDAY. But the raptors aren’t socialized to hang out with other dinosaurs - and they don’t want to be separated from their human packmates. The humans have to travel with them to the other island and camp out there for a while to make the transition safer for them.

#Beths New Year's Cleaning Queue #free to a good home #Any and all parts available for general use with credit #fanfic #fanfiction #writing #writing ideas #fanfic up for adoption

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black--excellence · 6 years

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African American Hair Kitchen

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How To Crimp Black Hair With Braids

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When To Dye Dreadlocks

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What Is Natural Hair

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