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norabrice1701 · 9 months

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The Duke & The Witch - Ch. 3

Charles Brandon x Fem!OC, A The Tudors Slight-AU fic

Series Main List

Ch. 3 Warnings: Kinda-stalker Charles; discussion of witchcraft; period-typical attitudes towards everything (women, religion, witchcraft, etc.); fantastical squinty science/alchemy

Two weeks later, the memory gnaws at him. He can still taste the cloying red powder on his tongue, feeling it coat the interior of his nose as it sets fire to his body. How is it possible that a red dust could stoke such crippling arousal in a man? The dizzying rush of blood from his head to his cock had indeed rendered him stupid until he could hide away from his guards and take himself in hand behind a tree.

Not his finest moment.

But that makes it all the more intriguing. Who is the person behind the dark, faceless void of that cowl? Who commands such a powerful substance to utterly unman him – or anyone who appears as a threat – so quickly? And that’s in addition to the knowledge required to save a man’s life with a mud salve.

Is this truly the Devil’s work? Or something far earthlier? But who just carries around a handful of dust in hopes of throwing it in someone’s face? Or had the dust wordlessly been summoned into being?

The endless possibilities play in his mind, a nagging loop that threatens to distract him from official business. And as much as he wants to seek out answers - to try another attempt at capturing her for questioning - he can’t ignore the duty to his duchy or his King for too long.

Mercifully, Henry hasn’t summoned Charles back to court yet. Serving as lord of his duchy keeps Charles plenty busy without getting tangled up in the machinations of court life. When Henry had bestowed the dukedom and duchy to him, he hadn’t fully understood what it meant. But the intervening years have improved his education in trade, commerce, and political relations. He serves as the King’s representative among the people, and he can scarce afford to spend days in the woods on a witch hunt.

When Cromwell arrives unannounced the following day, Charles swallows his intense displeasure. Cromwell has always been an unwelcome visitor on a good day, let alone when he comes bearing the weight of the Oath and Act of Succession. Charles had been quite pleased to leave that whole conflict behind him in London, but he isn’t naïve enough to think that he’d escaped it in full. He just hasn’t expected it to show up on his doorstep. Or his archery range.

The sheer nerve of Cromwell to accost him so. A soldier of fortune, indeed. Bulls-eyeing Charles’ archery target like he owns it. For someone of so low birth, his meteoric rise within Henry’s court in such a short time is dizzying. It remains a mystery to Charles – as does the man himself – but a mystery that is not to be trusted. He needs look no further than the well-placed arrow to know that.

But then Cromwell shares the words from the King. Charles’ noted absence. The plea for Charles to return.

Of course.

Henry just has to have it all. The new wife. The bliss that comes with a new marriage. And his vanity that demands an audience for the whole disgusting display that rots Charles’ stomach. Not that he would ever dare voice such a thought aloud, but the Westhorpe countryside has provided a welcome peace to his life.

A peace that the witch has turned into a lingering curiosity. A puzzle to be studied.

But within a fortnight after Cromwell’s departure, he sets affairs to temporary rights and journeys once again to St. Edmunds. If drawing her out the first time worked so well before, then maybe it will work again. Charles is, after all, a sporting hunter and the thrill of the chase always excites him.

He doesn’t have much else to go on other than the knowledge that she helps people in times of need. But has she been so stung by his last attempt to question her that she’s retreated into hiding? Or will she still show herself when the villagers speak of pain and suffering?

This time, he sends one of his own guards directly to the tanner with strict instructions to fabricate another story of a grave accident. It shouldn’t take long after that before news spreads through the village square. As the guard rejoins Charles’ party on the village outskirts, a hopeful smile tugs his lips. The hunting dogs scratch against their wood crates as they wait and the scent of victory carries on the breeze.

He’s underestimated this witch once before but he’ll be damned if it happens again.

Day yields to night before turning back to day, and his patience pays off. He almost doesn’t believe his eyes when the dark cloaked figure appears through the trees and steadily approaches the village. A phantom sight among the green landscape that burns bright in the late afternoon sun.

He turns towards his men, sheltered behind a hidden building. “Come on, men.” He encourages before turning back to the treeline. “Keep close now.”

The rumble of hunting dog crate wooden wheels sounds against the rutted dirt lane behind him as his four guards follow him. He leads his party forward, stepping into clear view, and he doesn’t miss the dark cowl that turns towards him. The intensity of the witch’s eyeless stare hits him like a palpable force as he continues forward on measured steps.

The thrill of the hunt sings in Charles’ veins as he squares his shoulders. “Witch in the woods.” He stops, mindful not to get too close. “The accusation of witchcraft against you still stands, and after our last meeting, you have much to answer for. Despite your previous attack on my person, I make you the same offer - surrender and you will not be harmed.”

The cowl tilts in silent consideration.

Holding his ground, he stares down the shadows where a face should be. “You needn’t make this difficult. If you try to attack again, you will meet with the consequences.” He takes a step forward, watching the cloaked figure draw back an equal step. A draped arm rises but the movement is slow, deliberate.

A warning, then.

He nods to his men over his shoulder. “Bring the hounds.”

The cowl turns sharply to look behind him, to where his men undo the latches on the crates and speak to the dogs in low, inciting tones.

Charles’ mouth pulls to a victorious half-smirk as he glances back at the witch. “Run, if you must. But rest assured, that even if your powers are of the Devil, your human scent will not escape their noses. And neither will you escape my custody.”

With a flourish of heavy cloth, the witch turns and flees back towards the security of the woods. He watches her go, sighing in equal parts tedium and satisfaction. Some sporting activity after such sedentary waiting will be nice. He’s purposefully dressed in brown leather trousers, loose linen shirt and simple vest, forsaking the formal adornments of his station to not slow a foot chase.

He turns back to his men and gives the signal. The dogs are guided over on sturdy leather leads and taken to the spot where the witch last stood. They start to bark and pull against their masters, eager to follow the scent as it sticks in their noses. With his eyes still fixed on the witch’s retreating figure, Charles doesn’t hesitate to give the final command. The guards release the dogs, and they all charge after the cloaked figure.

Charles and his men give chase, hearts pounding as their legs carry them into the woods. The baying hounds follow the witch, and he can just see the hooded figure darting through the trees, trying to escape. But as the dogs close in, there’s nowhere to go.

His chest heaves as he moves, watching the witch stop near the base of a large tree. He nearly trips over a tree root as a gloved hand shoots out from beneath the cloak to grasp a sturdy branch. The witch hauls herself up before reaching for another successive branch. The dogs converge at the tree trunk, jumping and barking to signal the end of their successful hunt even as the witch continues to pull herself up into the foliage.

The corner of Charles’ mouth ticks up, equal parts impressed and dumbfounded. He slows to a stop, breathing deep as he stares up at the dark figure perched on a hearty branch just out of reach. He looks back at his men. “Secure the dogs and surround the tree. She can’t get away from us now.”

The cowl tilts with obvious interest as the dogs are put back on their leads and wrangled into submission by their handlers. But otherwise, she sits unmoving, crouched low and still fully concealed by the cloak. Honestly, Charles is impressed that she can move so well in such a garment.

He looks up at her again, catching his breath. “You cannot stay up there forever. Throw down whatever arsenal you have on your person and come down. You haven’t attacked yet, so we have no reason to harm you yet.” The return of that peerless, intense gaze ripples a shiver up his spine. “Or would you rather wait until hunger sets in? Or some other need? Eventually, you will either climb down or fall down. Surrender is your best option.”

The hooded head tilts further. Whether it’s in consideration or suspicion of his offer, he can’t say, but it tests his patience. A cornered quarry can only deny the end of the chase for so long.

He raises his right hand, balled in a tight fist where it’s plainly visible. “When the last of my fingers points towards the sky, you will have made a decision.” He extends his pinky finger, followed by his ring finger, watching as she remains still. “We will surround this tree and wait for you to weaken and fall.” His middle finger extends to join the other two. “And after that test on my patience, you will not find me so merciful.” It’s mostly a bluff, but he’s always had a good face for gambling. His index finger follows the other three, and the hooded head dips down.

Her right hand reaches over to pull back the left sleeve and he watches, enraptured. A contraption sits strapped to her forearm - metal and leather, from what he can see at the distance. No glimpse of skin, just more dark cloth of sleeves and gloves beneath the cloak as her fingers work to loosen the contraption. It falls from her hands with a dull thud to the leafy forest floor.

He walks over to it, immensely curious. Various straps and buckles lay against the ground, and the device holds several small pouches, even a lever or two. And are those… he doesn’t know, but they resemble tiny fireplace bellows. The entirely mysterious apparatus stuns him as he studies it.

Rustling in the tree above distracts his attention, and he glances up to see her carefully descending the branches. It strikes him that she’s well practiced at this – the cowl doesn’t fall, the cloak doesn’t move to reveal her body beneath. But eventually, her feet land on the ground and she freezes in place. Something about her standing there, so close, so still, makes the hairs on his neck stand up.

Especially as she raises both arms, pulling at the cloak sleeves to reveal no further hidden apparatuses or weapons. Then, she simply holds her arms out straight with wrists together - a true sign of surrender.

His apprehension grows. Something feels horribly wrong about this whole situation. His brow creases with immediate suspicion as he calls out. “Shackles.” He holds a hand out to accept the metal bonds, but he doesn’t dare turn his gaze from her.

The heavy weight of the metal falls into his hand and he steps forward, securing them around her wrists. Frustration gnaws at him as she doesn’t even flinch, and he doesn’t think twice before ripping the hood back to reveal the person beneath.

The word witch has always stirred certain images in his mind – aged, disfigured, ugly, dependent on unholy powers because she has no other graces to offer society. But the woman that stares back at him now does not match with those images. Her eyes hold a bright green tint – the color of grass in spring – and a striking air of calmness where he expected to see fear, or maybe even panic. Her face looks pleasant enough, not striking in beauty but certainly not the hag from childhood tales. She might be his age, or maybe somewhat older. The braided plaits of hair along her temples disguise her age, giving way to a waterfall of wild curls beyond.

Nothing about her appearance soothes his unease. Working a swallow down his throat, he reaches for his knife and without a word, begins cutting away the rough material of her cloak.

She voices no protest as the fabric falls away. He slices up each arm, through the shoulder and down the back, to let the tatters fall to the forest floor. He braces to find a weapon - or another object of power or defense - but his face falls to find none. She wears a dress of crude material that has clearly seen several seasons but is well-cared for, with no frayed ends or open seams.

His curiosity burns. Just who is this woman? And why is she taking her arrest so well? He tears his gaze away from her with a frustrated sigh. “Take her.”

***

The guards slam the door shut behind her, rattling the small iron-bar window with an uncanny finality. Avian blows a nervous sigh, fighting back the nagging uncertainty within her. So far, so good - but it won’t take much for all of this to go fatally wrong.

The lead man - the one from before - has surprised her with the dogs today. She didn’t expect such a vigorous or potentially vicious pursuit, but she refuses to make the mistake of underestimating him again. No matter how the memory of the snarling dogs sends shivers down her spine.

Or maybe that’s from the cell’s damp chill? Her dress provides some warmth, but not enough to ward off the unpleasant air of the St. Edmunds’ garrison dungeon. Faint light leaks in around the heavy door frame, but otherwise the cell sits in darkness. She shivers again, glancing around in the dim shadows. How many souls have faced despair and death within these walls? The disheartening thought threatens to distract her, but she needs to stay focused. Focused for the return of her captor. Focused on her plan for escape.

But how long will they make her wait?

The door handle clanks from the outside, drawing her attention. She draws a deep breath, bracing for whatever awaits on the other side. The lock rattles and the hinges of the heavy door groan open. Firelight pours into the cell from a torch as a guard enters first, followed by the same, finely-dressed man who arrested her.

The flickering firelight catches in his glacial gaze as he crosses the cell, studying her. “Leave us.” His rich voice carries the hard command despite its soft volume.

With a muttered assent, the guard places the torch in a wall sconce and closes the door after him.

She works a hard swallow down her throat, forcing herself to stand tall as his silent scrutiny continues. But as he studies her, so she studies him. The torch light casts a golden sheen to his fine dark attire, painting him in startlingly attractive lines. He’s by far more handsome than she'd originally thought, with striking blue eyes that paint an appealing contrast to the dark curls of his hair and scruff on his jaw. He stands with an imposing air of authority and confidence.

Especially as he holds her arm gauntlet of powders.

He hefts the contraption in his hand. “Are you only as powerful as the powders you carry?”

“No.” Her pride grows at the surety of her tone. “There is no power in self-preservation.”

“And what of those wares that you use to help others?”

“No more powerful than what you hold in your hand.”

His gaze drops to the gauntlet, studying the powders concealed in the thin muslin cloth pouches. He traces a thumb over the pouch containing the dark-red passion powder. “You would be wise to measure your words more carefully.” He says, looking up at her with a sudden, threatening air. “I know firsthand what this powder will do to a man.”

“That does not make it powerful. Drink it and you will feel nothing. Rub it on your skin and you will feel even less,” she counters, holding her head high. “The knowledge to wield it is what makes it powerful.”

His head tilts with piqued interest. “You freely admit to this otherworldly knowledge?”

“Those powders are of this world. As is the knowledge to use them.”

“And I suppose the same is true of St. Edmunds’ mud man, hmm? And the wolfsbane, too?” The corner of his mouth lifts with a grin, sharpened in the dancing shadows. “But what of the rumor about the raven and the lightning?”

“That would be saying too much.”

His gaze hardens with displeasure. “You have been detained to ascertain if you are indeed an abomination of God’s holy law – a purveyor of the Devil’s work among us - and you will answer when questioned.”

She glances up at him sharply. “You are not a priest. Your authority to judge my soul – to judge me a true witch – is of no consequence.”

“I am the Duke of Suffolk, with full power to act on the King’s authority.” His eyes flash to match the steel in his voice. “You will show me the respect for my station and address me as ‘Your Grace’.”

Her brow furrows in open confusion. “Your Grace?” Her eyes rake him up and down, still working to understand. This – he – is the Duke of Suffolk? The village tales give the impression of an older, wiser man who bears his title, but they talk about him all the same. A personal friend of King Henry VIII. The nobleman without a noble birthright. The man who rules his duchy with uncommon fairness and stern dedication.

The silence continues to stretch as their gazes meet, and she can’t help but stare. Heat burns her cheeks as she finally blinks away, exhaling in determination and resignation. “Very well, Your Grace.”

He nods, seemingly satisfied. “You profess to have knowledge of this world, but the tales about you would have anyone believe that you also possess a knowledge beyond. If plainly asked, would you confess to this?”

“If plainly asked?” She wets her top lip in a moment of consideration. “If plainly asked, I would plainly answer. Though, what would it gain me? I do not expect that I shall be here much longer.” A thrill of victory flares in her chest as his brow contorts with surprised confusion that mirrors in the twitch of his lips.

“Is that indeed what you expect?” His smirk grows. “And if I told you that you would never leave here, except in a coffin?”

“I would say that you are wrong.”

“This is not a negotiation.”

“No – you have already made that clear.” She says, indicating the surrounding cell. “I am a prisoner and this is an interrogation.”

“If you believe this is an interrogation, I’m sure there are those on the rack who would beg to differ.”

“But you have learned at least one thing.” She does her best to hold his gaze despite the height difference and the pounding of her heart. “You have learned that I will not be kept here.”

His lips lift with wicked playfulness in the torchlight. “As you say, my witch.” He looks towards the door, lazily tossing her gauntlet to the stone floor before stepping forward with predatory movements. “Then, let us see what other tricks you might be hiding.”

She stiffens as his hands rise, fingers wrapping around each wrist. He slides his hands upwards, searching for hidden objects concealed beneath her dress sleeves. Stepping to one side, he shifts one hand to settle at the top of her back and the other along her collarbone. Her lips purse with indignant displeasure as his hands move in sweeping patterns down her shoulders, across her breasts, along her spine as his eyes follow the movement. He continues to sweep down her stomach and the small of her back, ghosting across the swell of her backside before he couches down. She draws a sharp inhale as his hands work under her skirt, feeling around her ankles and moving up her legs.

He chuckles softly. “Unusual to encounter woolen chausses on a woman.” His smirk holds a naughty glint as his hands continue up and over the fitted cloth leggings, feeling around her thighs for any hidden objects.

“They are sturdier – oh!” The unbidden gasp leaves her as he brushes boldly against the place between her legs. Blessedly, he does not linger and his hands soon work down her other leg.

Gritting her teeth against the rest of his search, her eyes blaze with indignation as his hands fall away. He stands to his full, formidable height and the triumphant smirk on his face infuriates her. “Unarmed as you are,” he says cheekily. “I look forward to watching you affect the means of your escape.” He chuckles softly, clearly amused at her expense. “I hear you can release smoke from your fingertips. Perhaps the rest of you turns into smoke, as well? Or will you transform into a beast? A cat, perhaps?” He chuckles to himself again before turning back towards the cell door. Bending at the waist, he stoops to retrieve the abandoned gauntlet. “Tell me your name.”

She bites her lip in a moment of deliberation. Giving her real name will give him far too much power over her. “Marion,” she says at last.

“Marion.” His dubious tone mirrors in his gaze. “You are aware that there are implements to loosen even the most unwilling of tongues just down the corridor?”

A chilly shiver races down her spine but she refuses to falter. “I’m aware, Your Grace.”

“Then, I am most looking forward to our next talk. Assuming that you’re still here, that is.” He reaches for the door handle, admitting more firelight from the corridor beyond as he exits. The guard follows in his wake, entering to retrieve the torch before slamming the door shut and plunging her back into darkness.

Her fingers itch to reach for the braid on her right temple, to move forward with the escape plan. But it’s too soon. She can’t make it too obvious, even if he does take the bait and put her under observation. A heavy sigh passes her lips as she glances around the dark confines.

She has nothing but time now. Time to wait for him to return. Time to wait for night to fall.

Or, at least, when she guesses night has fallen.

***

Marion. Charles ought to have been insulted.

He isn’t just a decent card player because of lady luck. He can readily tell a boldface bluff from the cold-hard truth. And the lie that colored the name Marion had been plain as day in her voice.

In some respects, he finds it admirable. As a captive, faced with imprisonment and the truth of his station, she still dares to blatantly defy him. She doesn’t strike him as a fool - indeed, a shrewd intelligence lurks in her eyes, and she hadn’t been lying when she spoke of escape.

Maybe that’s ultimately why he has given the order. Why he has directed the guards to shorten their patrols, to take up fewer stations on a defined exit path from the garrison dungeons. And why he now shrouds himself in the dark corridor shadows, using his black clothing to blend in as he waits outside her cell door.

He wants to see her escape.

With no one waiting for him back at Westhorpe, he doubts that he will be missed. His stomach sits full of bread and salted meat, and a nagging voice in the back of his head whispers with the desire for wine, but he settles for water instead. All in the name of this witch. This witch who he absolutely refuses to call Marion.

He will have her real name in time. All it takes is time.

Her cell door rattles, the hinges creaking softly under a gentle touch. He straightens, pressing further into the shadows as he watches the door push open. Her head peeks out behind the solid wood, eyes wide and wary as she takes in the empty corridor. One of the braided plaits at her temple has come undone and the wild hairs cast feral shadows over her face as she leaves her cell on silent footsteps.

Just how in blazes has she broken the lock?

He approaches the cell in the wake of her silence and squints down at the lock, trying to understand. The metal material has turned from its usual gray color to a reddish brown, and the solid material now crumbles with brittle hardness. Small specs of white dust linger around the worst of the damage and is that… is that liquid? Surely not water, but… saliva? His brow furrows as he blinks down at the damage.

What substance could possibly destroy metal with just saliva?

He doesn’t linger, starting his pursuit down the hallway and finding – much to his delight – that she has managed to evade all the posted guards. Leaving the garrison behind, it takes only a minute for his eyes to adjust to the dark night and faint moonlight, but then he sees her.

She isn’t even trying to be subtle now as she flees down the shadowy lane. Then again, she probably doesn’t need to. If she always has worn that cloak, then no one knows what she looks like.

He keeps his distance as he follows her through the village, towards the outskirts and beyond to the edge of the woods. Every now and then, she casts a glance over her shoulder as if to confirm she isn’t being followed. Secretly, though, he can’t help but think that maybe – just maybe – she’s confirming that she hasn’t lost him.

The thought rushes a frisson of forbidden excitement through him. Excitement that he dares not linger on.

It grows trickier to follow her quickly and quietly through the forest underbrush, but he continues his pursuit, falling back a greater distance but still persisting. Will she unwittingly lead him to her home?

But then she stops. In the middle of a natural thinning of the trees, she stands perfectly still. Her hands rest by her side, the five fingers of her right hand extended as if she’s waiting to grasp something. A sense of forbidding grows in his gut as he steps carefully on a bed of moss, even more mindful to mask his movements now that silence falls around him.

The longer she stands there - seemingly waiting, seemingly listening - the more his suspicion grows. Has he unwittingly followed her into a trap of her own?

“Welcome, Your Grace.” Her voice rises above the soft night sounds of the forest. “Have you come to return me to your man-made hell?”

He moves out from behind the tree, showing himself plainly in the distant moonlight. “I have not yet decided what I shall do with you.”

“I can see that. Only curiosity would lead you out here.”

“Your surety betrays your situation.” He says, stepping into the small clearing as she continues to stand still. Her eyes are closed and the fingers of her right hand remain outstretched, but otherwise, he notices no other cautionary tell in her stance.

“I have every reason to be sure,” she says softly. “You claim judgment for my soul, but your tone belies your true interest. Even to the point of accepting my challenge of escape – including in aiding me, it seems.”

“Be assured, your freedom and presence here is only because I allowed it.”

“Yes. And you’ll drag me back to that cell with all the authority of your station if need be.” Her eyes blink open, glittering in the moonlight as she flexes her outstretched fingers. “But you won’t. Not yet. Your curiosity will only continue to get the better of you.”

“Dangerous to speak to your lord so certainly.”

“Dangerous to indulge a curiosity that could lead to the damnation of your own soul, no?” Her head tilts as the corner of her mouth lifts.

Truthfully, he hasn’t thought about it in those terms. Or hasn’t wanted to, at least. His pursuit of knowledge about the powers she possesses is purely an academic interest. Just a mission to root out the Devil’s evil here on earth. There’s nothing that he could seek to profit from gaining such knowledge. Not even in regards to rendering men incapacitated or locks incapable of locking.

… Right?

He steels his resolve, burying all sense of intrigue as he looks back at her. “I cannot let you leave here. You will be brought to trial before the clergy for fair judgment, I assure you.”

She takes a slow step backwards. “Now you be assured that if I wish to return home, you will not follow me.”

“Oh?” He flashes a cheeky grin and dares a step forward. “And will you climb another tree to wait me out?”

She takes another retreating step, saying nothing but keeping her watchful eyes trained on him. His frustration grows as his patience wanes. Perhaps he has indulged her too long, and he reaches for the knife at his belt as the muscles of his jaw tighten.

The moonlight catches on her lips as they curl to an eerie grin. “Goodnight, Your Grace.”

He grips his blade tighter as he lunges forward. “You will stop, witch!”

Her right hand rises, fingers extended as two blinding beams of lightning pierce the night. The brilliant white-purple flashes blind him as they extend from her fingers up to a large overhead tree branch, shearing it from the trunk to fall with a bone-shaking thud just in front of him. His mind stalls, confounded and stunned as he freezes in place.

A witch indeed, if she can summon lightning at will.

His heart pounds wildly in his chest, still too astounded to take any immediate action. Smoke drifts from the charred end of the branch as his eyes adjust back to the darkness. He can just see where she has retreated further into the shadowy trees, her gaze still sharply focused on him.

“Consider that a warning, Your Grace.” Her voice floats around him in the clearing. “The next branch won’t miss.”

#charles brandon #duke of suffolk #the tudors #henry cavill #charles brandon x ofc #henry cavill x ofc #the tudors fanfic

5 notes · View notes

goji-pilled · 2 years

Note

i wrote a thing!!! because my mind went back to that sneeze ask a long while ago and then went back to Donesticated Witches and yeah. enjoy!

---

This was... a regreattable outcome.

Akemi Homura had entered the newest timeline after just leaving one of the most horrible and awful and most tragic loop she has ever experienced. Had it not been for the fact Madoka had died and her shield automatically activated to send her back in time, she would've certainly transformed into a Witch like all the others.

Apparantly she should've because this timeline was backwards as all hell.

The Mahou Shoujo system had been an apparant natural law of this world, adolescent girls with enough magic potential being able to harness their power and be known as Magical Girls. Eventually when they grew and matured into adult women, they'd have eventually reached their next stage of maturaty and be called Witches. This exact system also apparantly works for magically potent boys and men.

The Incubator still found a way to swindle humanity into being cattle, as they convinced MGs and MBs alike to stay as they are but to sew chaos and discord. They even offered the same contract system of granting one wish to drastically enhance themselves and gain near unfathomable power; the most petty and wicked could potentially rival the gods...

Good thing they dont realize that they burn their souls in the process and combust like miniature stars much sooner than they would've as eldurly adults. A lot more violent and painful, too, from what Homura's barely witnessed.

So Akemi Homura found herself in a timeline where to be a Witch was good and staying as a young Magical Person bad. She briefly wished all timelines could be like this before laughing to herself. After all, a world where MGs retained sentience and cognitive capabilities when they become Witches?

That would never exist in the Multiverse.

...

Oktavia von Seckendorff sneezed herself awake, upsetting the little bundle of life next to her.

Nagisa "Charlotte Tomoe" Momoe felt pissed, as if someone mocked her existance somewhere.

The girl known as Walpurgisnacht had felt slighted and betrayed, refusing to look at her paramours for the day.

...

Spring had always been a bit of a cruel mistress to Akemi Homura. Her defective birth had caused her permenant and long lasting health complications, her aforementioned health complications allowing bullies and harrassers to make due with the perfect ammunition. She can't recall any memory of her parents or other living relatives, the most she can dredge up from her mind is a dull ache as she failed to recall a time where they visited her in the hospital.

That was all second banana to the fact Spring was the only season she lived in, with her new friends and family constantly being taken away from her in the span of six weeks. As her most precious person often sacrificed herself for the betterment of humanity on the day she was born on.

Also Walpurgisnatch exists as her constant reminder of her previous failures and sins.

Akemi Homura wanted nothing more than to tear Spring a new one, but she's meddled with the natural force of Time too much to even humor the thought.

That was how the rest of the Holy Warriors - their gender neutral and accomodating team name this loop - found their beloved teammate stewing in on herself, sitting in her favorite recliner. They knew the Time Traveler would confide in them were she actually in need to, so they milled about the living room. Madoka opened the blinds as Mami went about opening the windows with Candeloro's ribbons. Kyouko decided to play Human-Torch and lit her hair on fire, Sayaka snuffing out errant flames with watery notes. Nagisa went limp in her Bebe mode, Yuma worried her friend/sister went dead to the world; Yuma was the only other non-Witch amongst them all, the intricacies of Witch-hood confusing to her.

The chaos finally died down and soon the whole team lounged about the Kaname's living room. The sounds of nature interrupting their sleepy silence along with noises in the kitchen every so often.

Then Sayaka sneezed.

There was still much to discover and learn about Witch-hood, an entire notebook had been filled when Homura first awoke in this loop. It had been filled mostly with the concepts of individuality and identity, where the human ended and monster began. There were idle notes of how MGs who accepted their darker halves became more durable and powerful than the norm, small comments about strength of heart or soul scribbled around the margins.

There was nothing that could explain how Miki Sayaka could've made a loud trumpet noise when she sneezed.

It was a brief toot of a note, one so short that if it weren't so loud it would've been ignored. The entire house was left dead silent, everyone refusing to acknoledge the absurdity of this new development while Sayaka tried bury herself into the couch. Homura didn't know who let out the first laugh, but she knew she herself wouldn't be able to contain the giggles for long. So she laughed and laughed at the Melodius Knight's embarassment.

Sayaka had attempted to say something - an exasperated moan, an emabrassed plea, an empty threat? Whatever it was it would be forever forgotten as she let out another sneeze, brass let loose once more. Then she let out another, followed by two more, soon an entire symphony was played in the privacy of their home.

That was when they all learned that Witches had... volatile sneezes. And it was unfortunately pollen season.

...

It had started out tame that lazy afternoon, an embarassed Sayaka fully flustered as she departed to her private chambers. Mami and Kyouko went to console the blue bull in her labyrinth and left the children with Madoka and Homura, and the day ended with no mentions of brass or sniffles.

The following morning had greeted the girls with another wave of sniffle-inducing pollen, flowers blooming around the Kaname household and trees blossoming into beautiful sentinels. The windows were open once more as they all spent the day working on puzzles and team synergy plans, no news of rampant or swindled MGs reaching their ears yet.

Homura was once more nestled in her favorite recliner except she acted as a cushion for her cherished person to sit on. Madoka slowly dozed off into sleep as the others discussed team compositions and attacks, Kyouko losing any ground to prevent Mami's more jubilant mannerism's from invading the more down-to-earth performances they've kept up. The Crimson Lancer had leaned back on her hands, the sun casting a glow on her raidant ruby hair, staring in slight terror and nostalgia at her ex-mentor. A strong wind had blown in from behind Kyouko, the sweet scents of a Spring brezze mixing in with the scent of smoked apples.

Then the smoke from the actual fire Kyouko accidentally sneezed onto the table ruined the moment in Homura's head.

Sayaka didn't hesitate to drown the table in water, the many pages and notebooks of their plans now gone up in ash. Mami stared longingly at what once held her innermost thoughts and desires she held for her ex-pupil, while Kyouko tried to contain her giggles at the absurdity and luck she held.

Her merrinent died when she got caught in a sneezing fit and nearly burnt down the living room.

...

It was with a piercing shriek and a broken wall or four when everyone learned about Nagisa's sleepwalking habits. This wouldn't have been so bad if she carried herself to the kitchen and munched on cheese in her polka-dot onesie, it would've been so cute that Homura would've cried at the sight! Perhaps, maybe. Not saying she's heartless, but also not saying she wouldn't find the sight adoravle and melt her heart.

It was a bit of a problem when they learned that she mainly stumbled into the other bedrooms when she sleepwalked. It became less of a problem whenever she finnagled herself into being the big spoon of whoever's bed she got in. It became a problem^tm when she came in a was in Bebe Mode.

It was a huge problem when she kept her eyes open as a pale, porcelin doll that also had the mouth of an industrial shredder.

Sayaka is still paying back money for the damages.

As pollen season ended so too did the sunny days of Spring, grey clouds approaching from across the horizon and blanketing the city in rain. The two kids had decided to make a day of the rain and play in muddy grass. An hour later and everyone learned about young Witches having shit immune systems - or maybe that was just Nagisa.

Nagisa had discovered that she could generate candy on her own, either as simple desserts or forms of attack. Yuma had offered to try to eat some of the candy to see if they had any boons the team could take advantage. The green greenie made an offhand remark about how it tasted like how she thought Nagisa's love felt like, and the Sweets Girl bunkered herself in their bedroom out of sheer embarassment.

When Nagisa gets sick she often has long fits of very powerful sneezes.

Mami loves her sister-daughter very much, but she would very much appreciate it if she didn't get blasted with buckshots of hard candy everytime she performed a wellness check. She'd also very much would like to not be covered in candy and in a pile of flailing Witch limbs when she woke up every other night.

...

"Are you sure you can take care of yourself Madoka? You know I'll always be there to help you, be there to protect you, to be there for you."

"I do, Homura-chan. I want nothing more than for you to stay and take care of me... but after all those incidents..."

"I understand, I truly do. However, I also know that it is in your nature, as the Witch of Salvation, to never willingly harm anyone you meet. You bring Mercy to those in pain, let me help you in your time of illness."

"I... T-Thank you, Homura-chan. I just worry about how my power may change while I'm sick. You've told us about how powerful I was before you started these loops, and I worry that... That I might do something I'd regret."

"I know Madoka, but you must also know that you have nothing to fear. The others have been or will be in the same scenario as you are in now, and we've let go of any misconceptions or misgivings because we all understand why these incidents happen.

"I may not ever truly understand what it is like to have grown into Witch-hood, but I want to help you and the others in your journies into adulthood. I want to continue being by your sides and watch as the people I care about live their fullest lives. If I must endure little fits of ashey sparkles or candy-induced welts, then I'll bear it all with a smile."

"...You truly do love us all, Homura-chan. I hope that you can find your way back to your loved ones one day."

"... I do too... But I'll savour these moments we share while I still can. Until I can finally stop fighting and live my life."

"... We love you, Homura-chan. I love you, Homura-chan."

"I love you all too, Madoka."

"...We just need to make sure Walpy doesn't get near the pepper when she does her wellness check."

"Agreed. I can't afford to replace the ceiling every time she sneezes."

---

i wrote silly fluffy ideas that were also fueled by other asks/posts! witness as i add my takes on domestication in psuedo-canon Tamura/Homura ficlets. i've been neaning to write more uplifting stuff but uh... the Walpy Swap fic took precidence. until next time!

／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼

That was so cute omg,,,,,

Well maybe not the part where Kyoko almost burned the living room down, but the rest,,,

#felix answers #io3

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wonderlanddrifter · 7 months

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Overture: The Golden Age, Only Three Seconds Away.

Whale-fall, Heaven-fall, two leviathans sacrificed for the same purpose, a garden of the deep and a perpetual kingdom.

I fell in love with the noose. I simply can't stop thinking “What a perfect little knot.” It is your wondrous embrace that takes me to the sky. I waste the minutes, tying necklaces in honor of our bond. So I whisper to myself as I create our artificial spawn. Ah! Here comes the idiotic Ouroboros! Head caved in since birth, it searches for its tail to form infinity, only to choke its throat, as you’ll do the same to me. And so it loops and loops, trying to grasp a possum nonexistent, only to find me! I flail unwillingly to resist, and like the true lover you are, refuse to take me away from your hold. And in our coitus of struggle, you give the mercy of sleep. Only, I can’t sleep. That harsh, taboo intimacy I have with you is my purpose, a muse. So why can’t I feel your love? Am I not the common petty thief, hand snatched by the aristocrat, ego eyeing gold too bright? Am I, not the desperado, loathed by the crown but loved by the dung-covered commoners? Am I not the sad man, fueling the bonfire of misery with his living ashes, hoping to be consumed?

Is it because you only have eyes for mistresses? Has our love become a distant dream? And when did that river split its course? What is it about those witches dancing naked in the woods, covered in goat’s blood and their urine that is better than me? I can do many rituals without following such sodomite desires! I’ve made many pieces in your honor, yet now you deny me so!

As I float like heaven’s unfinished work in your false choking care, I contemplate, for I see your affair with the other man on the gallows. He lays limp, piss-stained leggings and crows pecking bits of eye and finger. So I conclude with the truth.

You’ve never loved me to begin with.

It is the coward’s tool of death, and I deal with better and greater inspirations. It is the tool of weak willpower, one even a fool could use. Rather, I recall the warriors of old: when suffering defeat after battle as a survivor, rather than weeping at gone memories, they instead take their own blade, their honor, and become a marriage with their tool of blood. HARAKIRI. In the finale when Glory sleeps in his cradle of slaughter, the practitioner of the begone craft, unable to withstand the new white canvas of lull, finds his implement in the bosom, as a dear comrade gives a final kiss: that being his dear friend, the blade. There are other companions, yes, but the spear is too cumbersome in this beautiful parting, and the firearm is too industrial, too simple. Every part of the blade is meticulously crafted by a master, and it dances with its partner. And what of the noose now? A knot that can be tied by a child to make life pennies cheap, to lynch on a mass scale and at a moment's whim. Compared to the personal, painful ritual that takes dedication to one’s life. With that knowledge, I think I know what I’d rather take.

Of course, dedicated to the child of mankind, art, of which the greatest muse is death. The artist subconsciously prays to death, every stroke and word from the pen a life we give, and in completion, taxidermy of dreams obsessed. It is the single feeling that tugs at the all-heart and conducts the lacrimosa, it is the celebration of our biology, the grand finale. But now it is no longer a perfect muse, leaving behind a corpse of the corpse-maker. Leaving insipid carcasses to shamble, a body willing where the spirit is weak, leaving an imprint of sweet and bloody memories clinging to the song of life. But it is not for them anymore.

There is no purpose to Death anymore, Legato, a constant humming in the orchestra of pulsating viscera and biological song, refusing to stop listening, refusing to stop breaking the rhythm with their subpar soprano.

So like the other abstractions in this world of delusions, they lie to the universe and pretend the stage-play of Death is still sorrowful indeed. That the slaughterhouse of war still carries honor and gore in a field of sacrifices, that pestilence still carries heavy, reminding all the limitations of flesh, that I should still cling to life, when an un-life is already confirmed on the other side.

Because The Moth still sings, a chorus of damnation that tells us things still flow naturally, effervescently, and in order. A lie, The Moth which is guided by the sunlight to ferry souls into their cells—the lukewarm labyrinths of judgment— in the precipice of extinction, in the infernal dream and the aether, nothing but an over-glorified bank of memories. All for the illusion that the universe still moves like clockwork after His death.

The only ending that truly matters, one that made even the world wept in melancholy, The Death of God, a divine suicide. In a tapestry of rot and rebirth, it alone was the perfect color of dust. In my twice-born life, I strolled monotonously through the first— a distant daydream—, and only when my cell called for me did I attempt to run, but found the hours to be too short. So I prayed.

And The Moth, parasite, thief of my identity, and dear friend answered. The lovely little fairy of annihilation gifted me all of eternity, freeing me from the cell with a silk string. Legato, my shrieking lullaby discordant in the song of life, a performance repeating upon repetitions. If I so desire, I could join the blind idiotic beings of the deep sea, looking at the dark; an inhumane existence not too dissimilar to the cell. But I was called back from the monotony of eternity by the muse, to showcase to the world the glory and beauty of the holy wounds of reality.

I’ll put it all in a masterpiece, a requiem, the lacerations and gashes from the radiance flowing a heavenly river, the sorrow which He bears alone still seeks to suffocate others in a miserable whisper, the flutterings of the neurotransmitters dreaming of better days in wonderland. So let it be then! The white canvas that will be covered in a thousand intricate fields of flowers supping on His blood, to show the world the beauty in oblivion, a gallery of everything holy from the coalescence of one divine soul. The harrowed and maimed form reveals the prismatic decay of everything, including what is to be forever. I will join the purulent magnum opus, for the artist is only as great as the sum of his work.

My second life, biology that is abandoned for enlightenment through the painting of violence. I am one of the many flies chasing the dead-light of dreams, I am one of the cells in the matrix of The Moth-Song. Legato, I am an unending note.

A vagitus declaration. I return to the broken kingdom as a prophet. My gray matter is a blank canvas waiting to be filled, it contains only the muse, The Moth, and a name: Apostles, a relapse of the mind, fingernail inching towards destruction in an attempt to recollect an artifact of a bygone nerve.

#writing #webnovel #schizoposting #short story #story #writerscommunity #prose #new writers on tumblr #i suck at writing

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soveryanon · 5 years

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Reviewing time for MAG147 X_X/

- We already knew that Annabelle was interested in stories – she was “the Story Spinner” in MAG123, had Gregory Cox instal a website to fish out what were basically statements. And her statement in itself feels a bit like a… crafted story, in-universe? It’s explicitly addressed to Jon, meant to be read by Jon, and it contained so many details reminiscent of Jon’s own infancy: both lived near the sea (Hunstanton/Bournemouth); both were raised by a female figure who didn’t hide her resentment (Annabelle’s mother for having to take care of a large family, Jon’s grandmother for having to take care of her son’s son); Annabelle tried to run away and Jon used to “explore” too far to the point of being brought back by the police; Annabelle left her home with a book (Five Go Down to the Sea) while Jon had been led outside by one (A Guest for Mr. Spider); both encountered The Web as kids and were presumably led to fit in Her scheme later on in their lives as young adults… but with enough nuances and straight-out differences (Annabelle coming from a large family while Jon was a single child without a close family, etc.) to clearly set them apart. This passage, especially, felt especially Dedicated To Jon?

(MAG147, Annabelle Cane) “The air was warm and humid as I snuck out of the house, filled with that slight smell of salt that even now… changed as I am… I still sometimes find myself missing here, in the grimy air of London.”

And what to think of the ~coincidence~ of Annabelle, future Web avatar, growing up in a family of eight children, having a distant mother – while her present Patron is referred as Mother-of-Puppets? Was it a genuine story, or a hybrid creation crafted from various other stories with threads interwoven to form other patterns? Annabelle herself raised the possibility, in a terrifying way (“Or perhaps I am simply telling you what you need to hear, in order to behave exactly as the Mother wishes you to. [STATIC, GRADUALLY INCREASING] Perhaps… I have never even seen a beach.”), and, indeed. Annabelle could be unreliable – we know that statement-givers can conceal information if they want:

(MAG121) OLIVER: And about two years before I came to your Institute, something happened – something I didn’t want to talk about. Didn’t even want to think about. I… [SIGH] I started to see them when I was awake. […] Even when I went to your Institute, tried to warn her, I could see them crawling through the corridors towards the Archives.

(“Lying” is a different matter – can you write a lie when making a statement, or would it work as long as you think/are convinced that an event took place a certain way? We’ve had an example, with MAG015, of events being objectively different from the way the statement-giver described them (“Take her, not me”). But with Annabelle… yeah, absolutely no idea if we’re to take what she said at face-value or not.)

And interestingly, I… don’t feel like we learned anything at all about Annabelle Cane’s actions or history: because she didn’t cover at all the parts of her avatar life that we had heard of. She barely scratched the surface of her transformation, with enough doubt to wonder if she had been led there or if it was a coincidence (something she highlighted, as she said that her experience as a kid “is what engendered in me that terror of spiders which eventually led to my volunteering at Surrey University” but it had been stated in MAG069 that… she hadn’t been told that the experiment was about arachnophobia), didn’t say a word about Neil Lagorio, nor what she was planning with the website in 2015. We only know that she has plans. She is. Terrifying.

- What she said about:

(MAG147, Annabelle Cane) “The Mother is the fear of manipulation and lost control made manifest. So perhaps it is our fear that projects Her influence on everything that happens. Like the mind, retrospectively assigning reason to our actions, so we fit whatever occurs into the neatest pattern we can, and declare Her web both intricate… and complete.”

indeed fits a LOT with the pattern we have seen of avatars reminiscing on the events that led them to their current life. Jude had insisted on her “burn-out”; Mike rationalised that he had always been a bit fascinated by falling, hence going for The Vast; Oliver described it precisely too:

(MAG121) OLIVER: I still remember the first time I tried to touch one. In my dreams, the night before, I had found my way back to my own street. I don’t know why I did it. I knew it was a stupid thing to do, walking past my own home in a dream, but I just– … Maybe I wanted it this way, I mean… when I stepped out the building that morning, I… didn’t turn towards the bus stop like I always do. I turned right instead, walked over to the little alleyway where I knew, some time in the next week, a young woman was… going to have a fatal aneurysm. […] So, I did some digging. Found the identity of a few crew members and started to track them down. I told myself that I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I did. Of course I did. […] I had never felt anything as cold as those veins. It was so… hm, patient. It… made me think of those winter mornings, when I was a kid, with no snow; just… frost and frozen mist over everything. Keeping the world in place, curling you up into yourself and… quietly waiting for you to lose your footing, to slip up and fall. Snap.

Annabelle herself insisted on the idea of control and manipulation when she was a kid, and Jon… Jon had insisted on the curiosity for novelty and on seeing. But if he had been touched, let’s say, by The Lonely, would he have retroactively described his exact same childhood as one of isolation, without any meaningful connection…?

- … I feel so stupid to have just assumed, all this time, that somehow, all Web avatars had to be interconnected to their patron, aware of the Big Plans? Because it was The Web and duh? But nop, apparently, Annabelle doesn’t know about The Web’s intentions (… if it has any “intention”, as Gertrude had questioned MAG145) – she could be lying but. Not Knowing What Your Patron Wants Of You seems to be a recurring thing in season 4, Jon had lamented about it in MAG145 too (which. was. worrisome.).

But Annabelle has her own plans, at the very least, and they apparently involve Jon:

(MAG147, Annabelle Cane) “I’m afraid I don’t actually have these answers for you; I’ve simply been… watching. I’m sure you understand that. Maybe I’ve occasionally been nudging something here and there to keep you safe, to keep everything on track.”

… which does NOT make her an ally, what the flying fuck JON:

(MAG147) ARCHIVIST: So, she is… watching the Institute. Interfering with things. … [HUFF] Is that reassuring, or… really, really bad…? I can’t say I’m… [HUFF] I can’t say I’m sad to have another ally allegedly on our side, but I don’t like the idea of being important to The Web. … That’s a really bad place to be…

(Especially since he had mentioned he was… ready to get into danger or to die if it means saving someone – Annabelle’s comment seems to give credit to the idea that she was the one who sent Martin to put the tapes around the coffin to get Jon back? So if she needs Jon alive, and especially given the current situation… that’s Bad, actually…?)

(- I’m… astonished that Jon didn’t get into a paranoia fit about The Web’s ritual, then? Since he has no information whatsoever about it, and had been researching about rituals until then. The Web making a move should make him think of the possibility…? Unless he has already accessed a few of Martin’s tapes? Unless he “knows” the content of the recording? (… But given that Annabelle and The Web are not the same thing, I do wonder if it’s not possible to have an avatar trying to bring its patron’s ritual to completion despite said patron not being overly interested in theory…? We’ve had the reverse case, with Jared refusing to participate in The Last Feast, after all…))

(- So, that “nudging”: it strengthens the idea that she was indeed the one who sent Martin helping Jon to get out of the coffin?

(MAG134) PETER: What does puzzle me, though, and I mean that genuinely, is… why you were piling tape recorders onto the coffin, while Jon was in there. [PAUSE] It’s a question, Martin, it’s– it’s not an accusation. MARTIN: I don’t know. And I just… felt like it might help. He’s always recording, I thought… it–it might help him… find his way out. PETER: Interesting. Were you compelled? MARTIN: [SULLEN] … I don’t know. … M–maybe? I–I, I definitely wanted to do it… PETER: But? MARTIN: I’m… I’m not sure where the idea came from. PETER: You should watch out for that. Could be something dangerous. MARTIN: Sure.

(MAG135) ELIAS: I needed a way to force him to harness his ability more acutely than he had before. The coffin was a useful tool; Daisy an adequate bait. BASIRA: Then you messed up. Way he tells it, he doesn’t know how he got out of there. ELIAS: But he did. And his powers were no small part of it. Even if he required some assistance, they were what saved him. And he’s still achieved what no one – mortal, monster, or anything in-between – has ever been able to. He climbed out of The Buried.

1°) Peter Doesn’t Like It

2°) Elias Absolutely Doesn’t Mind It

Elias, that’s the 100th time this season, but what DO YOU KNOW about the spiders in your Institute…)

(- There were so many mentions of watching/seeing in Annabelle’s statement, and she did acknowledge Jon’s confusion over what is coming from The Eye and what could come from The Web… so there is still That Thing again. With the confirmation that Smirke had been extremely arbitrary and couldn’t stand to acknowledge the possibility that he might have been wrong in his “architecture”, it seems that “An infinite amorphous blob of terror bleeding out in every direction at once.” still remains The Most Accurate description of the Fears.)

- That… was such a powerful move…

(MAG147) ARCHIVIST: … You hear that? BASIRA: No, I, I don’t hear– ARCHIVIST: Shh, shh! MELANIE: Yes. Room on the left…! ARCHIVIST’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG001: “an organisation dedicated to–” DAISY: Is that…? ARCHIVIST: Yes…. ARCHIVIST’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG001: “–academic research into the esoteric, and the paranormal.” BASIRA: Don’t touch it. ARCHIVIST’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG001: “The head of the Institute–” ARCHIVIST: No. ARCHIVIST’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG001: “–Mr Elias Bouchard–” ARCHIVIST: It’s alright. [BREATHING DEEPER] [FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG001: “–has employed me to replace the previous Head Archivist, one Gertrude Robinson, who has recently passed away.” ARCHIVIST: [EXHALE] [THE TAPE IS STOPPED.] DAISY: Something underneath it. ARCHIVIST: I see it. Uh, hand me that brush? [RUFFLING SOUND] BASIRA: Is… that what I think it is? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Yeah. [RUSTLING PAPER] Official Institute paper, and everything. BASIRA: Goddamnit…! ARCHIVIST: “Statement of Annabelle Cane.” … She left it for us.

1°) She knew that the assistants were going to The Web’s stronghold for the first time, and she left things that had been taken out from the Institute, The Eye’s stronghold as messages. Meaning she has indeed full access to the Institute and the Archives.

2°) Leaving. A statement. As a gift. Nobody had asked and she left it.

3°) MAG001’s tape, meaning Jon’s whole debut as an unwilling servant of The Eye, potentially meaning that she had been watching all along…

4°) Throwing us into the past, too: because it was the old Jon, pretending he didn’t believe in the supernatural – the Jon who hid and dissimulated (just like he did again with the people he attacked for their statements)… because he was afraid, because he thought that acknowledging them would mean catching their attention. We get to hear this Jon, again, and it’s such. A blow. And a reminder that Jon has been doing that again lately.

(5°) … and they arrived just when Elias was mentioned on the tape, so *squints* Is it because it was just the beginning of the tape, or an invitation to go request Explanations&Answers from that fucker.)

- Same, HHHH that power move of beginning the statement with

(MAG147, Annabelle Cane) ““Free will” is a funny old thing – isn’t it, Jon? Can I call you Jon? I’m going to call you Jon.”

… when she revealed a few lines later that she perfectly knew that Jon couldn’t stop reading. So he couldn’t answer anyway because it was an indirect message, but he was forced to read the question and Annabelle’s unilateral decision without being able to agree or protest anyway, and she perfectly knew it. Hhhhh.

(Also, the question was reminiscent of Nikola’s own “Can I call you Elias?” during Jon’s kidnapping&sequestration, and ahahaha, that. Might have been even more triggery for Jon, uh.)

(Aaaand both Oliver, agent of Death, and Annabelle, agent of Web, jumped to a first-name basis with Jon while he was in no position to allow or refuse them – in a “coma” with Oliver, and under compulsion-to-read with Annabelle.

(MAG121) OLIVER: Hum… Hello, Jon. Do you… m–mind if I call you Jon? I… I mean. You don’t actually know me, it’s just… well. “Archivist”, it’s so… formal, isn’t it? And I do kind of know you…? […] The thing is, Jon, right now, you have a choice.

Annabelle and Oliver are definitely kinda-friends, uh.)

(- And the voiceswitch was ABSOLUTELY DELIGHTFUL. Terrifying and wow. Jon felt like someone else, even more than usual.)

- Obligatory squintsquintsquint because:

(MAG147, Annabelle Cane) “I discovered a deep and enduring talent inside myself… for lying. My manipulations were not intricate – but they were far beyond what was expected of a child my age, and I have always believed that the key to controlling people… is to ensure that they always under, or overestimate you. Never reveal your true abilities or plans.”

………… is kinda reminiscent of Martin:

(MAG117) MARTIN: These last couple of years, I’ve always been... running, always hiding, caught in someone else’s trap, but… but now it’s my trap. And, well. I think it will work. I know, I know it’s not exactly intricate, but… it felt good, weaving my own little web. OH, oh Christ, I hope Jon doesn’t actually listen to these. “Good lord, is Martin becoming some sort of spider person?” No, Jon, it’s an expression, chill out. Besides, spiders are fine. I mean, yes, people are scared of them, obviously, but actual spiders, they just… want to help you out with flies!

(And Elias had described his own ability as “weaving” too. And Jon did wonder, in MAG145, if he wasn’t mostly just plainly good at bullshitting. If there are two people we tend to over/under-estimate, it would be Elias and Martin, who both “love manipulating people!”…)

- Obligatory laugh that:

(MAG147, Annabelle Cane) “With any other animal, we talk about “instinct”, we talk about “training”, perhaps if we have spent enough time with them… we talk about “personality”. But we never talk about choice. We never look at a dog racing wildly after a thrown ball and think “What an odd decision that dog has made!”. We talk about the workings of its mind, and its instincts; if it doesn’t chase the ball, we wonder why: is it sick? Is it tired? Perhaps something in the nature of this particular breed, this particular dog, makes it prone to ignoring a game of fetch. The idea of a dog simply… choosing not to chase feels deeply unnatural. Is it even capable of legitimately making a decision? Some would say no.”

Hey, Annabelle. You don’t know cats, uh. And you’re talking to a cat-lover. (Well. A love of The Admiral, at the very least. Who had decided it was time for belly rubs before electing to go on with his day, back in MAG093, in typical cat behaviour.)

- Constant soft static while they were at Hill Top Road, so there is definitely Something Wrong with the place. (However, there was none when Jon read the statement, so did they stop at an inn, or where they back at the Institute already?)

Ivo Lensik had given his statement about Hill Top Road in March 2007, and Jon had mentioned in his follow-up that:

(MAG008) ARCHIVIST: Two families have lived in the house since this statement was originally made but no further manifestations have been reported on Hill Top Road.

Plus, there was Anya Villette’s statement from April 2014 (MAG114), which mentioned:

(MAG114, Anya Villette) “The owners of the house had already filled it with furniture. Not good furniture, of course: just the cheapest IKEA had that wouldn’t collapse under the weight of a textbook. It was all assembled, though […]. It opened to reveal stairs going down into a basement. Nobody had mentioned a basement. Not when they gave me the job, not on the floor plan they’d given me; I’d had absolutely no idea it was there.”

(Anya also mentioned “thick sheets of white plastic, to try and keep the dust off” over the furniture and the fact that she had woken up “in one of the chairs, the dust cover clinging to me like a cocoon”: it sounds a lot like spider web, but she had been able to identify cobwebs as such when trying to reach the basement. So? Is it because The Web’s presence was stronger down there…? Her confusion about things still sounds like textbook Spiral to me, though we learned, since then, that there is the “scar in reality” so… what the heck was happening with Anya.)

By contrast:

(MAG147) MELANIE: When did you say they finished rebuilding? ARCHIVIST: 2008? MELANIE: Hm! ARCHIVIST: Doesn’t look like anyone ever… moved in, though. BASIRA: So this is… ten years of cobwebs? DAISY: More than that. [FOOTSTEPS.] MELANIE: [INHALE] No, I’m sure this is just the normal number of webs that grow up organically…! […] DAISY: Clear. [SHUT THE DOOR.] Looks like nothing downstairs. BASIRA: You wanna… take a moment, before we head up? ARCHIVIST: What about the basement? DAISY: Can’t see one. ARCHIVIST: Huh… DAISY: You want me to take point? ARCHIVIST: Uh… no – no, I’ve, I’ve got it.

So there are Too Many Cobwebs, it looks unoccupied although there used to be furniture, and we still (don’t) have a Schrödinger basement. GREAT.

(And bonus: Annabelle doesn’t want Jon to go there again – or at least, for now.)

- Jon The Tired Young Old Man is back, once again, and it’s been His Season To Shine:

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: Everything’s changed. … [SIGH] Two days out of a coma, and I’m already tired.

(MAG128) ARCHIVIST: [WEAKLY] Statement… ends. [COLLAPSES] [CLICK.]

(MAG131) MELANIE: You’re going now? ARCHIVIST: [NERVOUS BREATHLESS LAUGHTER] [HISS OF PAIN] No. … No, now, I am going for a lay down. That was… that was not what I’d expected. MELANIE: Come on. You can use Basira’s cot.

(MAG137) ARCHIVIST: Everyone else is… running towards something, or running away, and I… [SIGH] I don’t know what I’m doing. [PAUSE] [SIGH] I’m just tired. Think I might go lie down for a while. Get a cup of tea [HUFF]

(MAG140) BASIRA: You look awful. You tried drinking with Daisy again last night? […] ARCHIVIST: [SLURRING] It’s not a hangover. Well, not… [INHALE] I wasn’t drinking. [SIGH] […] Yesterday, I tried something I… [INHALE] I–I deliberately tried to… Know something, like I did in the coffin, but… there was a lot. Too much [SIGH], and I… […] You drink the whole contents of a bar in three seconds, you don’t remember what the merlot tasted like. [SIGH] It just… hurt.

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … We’ve been back in London for just over a week, now. I’m… more or less recovered physically. It’s just this nagging sense of unease that won’t leave me.

(MAG147) BASIRA: Jon, focus. Are you getting any “sense” of anything? Can you… “see” anything? ARCHIVIST: No, I’m just… seeing what you’re seeing. Still a bit… weak from my trip North, to be honest. MELANIE: Sorry we couldn’t stop for a snack…! [SHARED SNORTS.] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH]

(MAG147) ARCHIVIST: This one really took it out of me. [CLEARER] I need to go lie down…! … E–end recording. [CLICK.]

………………………… except that, given His Pattern, and the mention that he hadn’t absolutely recovered from the Dark trip……………….. it probably means he “needs” a new victim to get fully rested. I. Really. Hope. That the girls will keep a close eye on him, uh…

- The Dasira shines… in small but significant ways… and how they like to throw jokes around Jon in tense situations…

(MAG143) BASIRA: [SIGH] Eyes peeled. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: … Was that a joke? BASIRA: Yeah.

(MAG147) BASIRA: So, where are all the spiders? MELANIE: Ah– I mean, they, they hide. You know, it’s a thing they do, spiders – they hide. DAISY: Perhaps they… bugged out. [FOOTSTEPS.] ARCHIVIST: [WHISPERS] … Was that a joke? BASIRA: Jon, focus.

(Not “bugs” technically, Daisy – Martin would be Offended about it!) I love how both Basira&Daisy are unapologetic about it, how it always takes Jon a moment to realise what Was Just Said, how he used the same tone to ask-what-he-already-knows (this is why people like Melanie like to say you don’t have a sense of humour, Jon.), and how… Basira was the one to demand he go back on track in the last one, instead of Daisy.

- My heart cried a bit about the girls throwing jokes because… yeah, it’s how Team Archives tends to deal with dire situations – and it was… really reminiscent of The Unknowing expedition, with TIM’S JOKES ABOUT THE WAXWORKS orz

(MAG118) TIM: And anyways, it’s not like we're alone in here. Look. There’s Prince Charles. [GROANING] TIM: Oh, if he’d been in an accident. Or the Beatles! If they’d all been in separate accidents, like, like Ringo was in a horrible fire, or Paul was in a car crash, that’s a classic– ARCHIVIST: Yes, Tim. I remember them. The waxworks are… bad. […] BASIRA: So would you say this was supposed to be Churchill or Alfred Hitchcock? ARCHIVIST: Jowls like that, could be either.

(MAG147) ARCHIVIST: No, I’m just… seeing what you’re seeing. Still a bit… weak from my trip North, to be honest. MELANIE: Sorry we couldn’t stop for a snack…! [SHARED SNORTS.] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] […] BASIRA: These flares going to work? DAISY: No idea, but… Jon said The Web doesn’t get on great with fire, and we don’t exactly have a flamethrower, so… BASIRA: I mean, at least until we find the one Gertrude stocked [?? unintelligible, Daisy snorting too hard]. DAISY: [SNORT] BASIRA: Right next to the nukes…! […] ARCHIVIST: Well… [SIGH] We’re here now. Might as well push on. MELANIE: … Famous last words. [HUMOROUS EXHALES.]

It’s the same team, minus Tim, plus Melanie…

(Also, the reminder that Gertrude was all about fireweapons… Elias had taunted Leitner about “arson”, and he was positively seething when Martin had begun to burn statements, soooo… really, was Gertrude’s plan to deal with The Eye to burn down the Institute.)

- I’m sad that Melanie doesn’t get a nickname…

(MAG146) DAISY: [SIGH] Come on, Mel. I’ll see if I’ve got a stab vest in your size. MELANIE: … Yeah. Sure.

(MAG147) DAISY: Here, Mel. MELANIE: What even are these? DAISY: Magnesium flares. Technically not legal anymore; if you need more, just shout. MELANIE: Oh? Hum. Fine. [INHALE] Uh, and… and, please, don’t… call me “Mel”. DAISY: What? Since when? MELANIE: Always. I’m… [SIGH] trying to be more… o–open about this… stuff. DAISY: Roger Wilco, Miss King. MELANIE: Mm! Better.

… but I’m SO glad that:

1°) she has trouble, but clearly expressed that she didn’t like it. Worded her discomfort. Tried to fix something that was bothering her and directly impacting her. It’s hard, but she’s doing it.

2°) I’m so glad that Daisy immediately corrected herself, acknowledged it and didn’t even ask for a reason why Melanie didn’t like it. Melanie doesn’t like it, end of story, no fuss.

So no nickname for Melanie, but Daisy and Melanie sound even closer and good together!! ;w;

- Overall, GUUUUH, I’m. So proud of Melanie??? She’s been doing so much better!

(MAG123) BASIRA: Yeah. I did warn you. She’s not, uh… she’s not been having a good time. ARCHIVIST: Mm! Yeah, I did get that impression. [SIGH] Elias is gone. I thought… I mean, wasn’t that supposed to be… it? But she’s still… BASIRA: It’s not that simple. ARCHIVIST: She needs help, Basira. God, it didn’t even get that bad when I was… … Even Tim never threatened me. Not like that.

(MAG125) BASIRA: Oh, yeah, the stuff she takes is pretty strong these days. She should be out for a while. … What? Sleep is hard.

(MAG127) ARCHIVIST: Do–do you think it worked? Is she… BASIRA: I don’t know. She seems more… coherent, I guess. And you did get an apology. ARCHIVIST: Yeah. BASIRA: She said she can cry now, which is, hum… ARCHIVIST: Oh… BASIRA: Progress, I think? ARCHIVIST: Uh… BASIRA: She’s still angry but, she hasn’t attacked anyone. Not even sure she has it in her anymore. ARCHIVIST: Well that’s, that’s good! BASIRA: Hm.

(MAG131) ARCHIVIST: A–at least, it’s out! … Maybe… maybe it’s enough to start healing, start… letting go of the anger. MELANIE: Oh, just stop! Just stop and– listen. ARCHIVIST: Okay. MELANIE: Yes, the, the bullet was bad, right. But it didn’t make me angry. Anger is… Anger’s been all I’ve had for a long time. Years. Maybe since– oh, I, I don’t know, but…! Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve pushed for, was because I was angry! Angry of being past over, being disrespected, ignored… that sort of anger, it, it powers you! … Right until it slips out, and hurts someone. I – hurt someone. And then, one day, I suddenly have this thing that takes all that rage, and it holds it. Tells me it’s right. That it’s me. It didn’t stay in my leg because of some Ghostly Masterplan; it stayed… because I wanted it. ARCHIVIST: … Shit. MELANIE: Yes.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: If you don’t mind me asking, [STATIC:] where are you off to…? MELANIE: Therapy. [STATIC ENDS] … Wait. ARCHIVIST: Oh…! Oh, God, Melanie, I’m, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, uh… MELANIE: [EXASPERATED SIGH] It’s fine. I would probably have told you eventually, anyway. ARCHIVIST: Even so, I shouldn’t have– MELANIE: Just… forget it. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] It’s good, though. I–I’m glad you’re getting help. MELANIE: Yes, well. We’ll see. There’s a… a lot of crap therapists out there. ARCHIVIST: I guess. Still, it–it is a good step. MELANIE: I suppose. ARCHIVIST: You want to tell them the truth? MELANIE: I don’t know! It’s all a bit… [SIGH] Y’know? Er… C… can we drop it. ARCHIVIST: Of course.

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: The others are doing… better, I think. Basira’s busy doing research for something secretive, unsurprisingly. But she seems to be adjusting to, uh… the new Daisy. I actually like Daisy now, which is a… really weird feeling. [INHALE] Melanie’s quiet, but I think therapy’s helping.

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: Oh, uh, therapy! You’re taking her to therapy! GEORGIE: She… told you, then? ARCHIVIST: Uh, yes. Yeah. GEORGIE: … Well, you don’t need to sound quite so psyched about it. She gets… nervous travelling there alone.

(Compare this with Elias’s:

(MAG127) ELIAS: I believe you’ve recently lost Melanie. BASIRA: … We saved Melanie. ELIAS: As a person, yes, but as a defender…

… go rot in jail, Elias. OH WAIT–) (It’s been almost a year for him, I hope it’s getting long and he’s feeling very bored.)

Still unsure whether Melanie’s therapist is Bad News (… even more concerning: I found Jon’s narration of Annabelle’s statement very close to the therapist’s own jumpiness), but… the therapy in itself seems to be working? She’s learning little tricks to improve her life and remain in control and calm? She is expressing boundaries? It’s good? Melanie!!!

- I’mmmmm a bit interrogative about the comment she made about Jon’s ~compulsion~ to read statement right away:

(MAG147, Annabelle Cane) “Of course, that’s not the real crux of the free will question that’s… bothering you at the moment, is it? I think that one probably comes down to whether or not you’re choosing to continue reading this statement out loud. You didn’t mean to, did you? No, I’m sure you told Basira and Melanie that you were going to glance over it and report back. Perhaps they asked you if you were going to record, and you shook your head – “Maybe later”. That sounds like the sort of thing you’d say. But think about it, Jon: when’s the last time you were able to read a statement quietly to yourself without instinctively hitting record and speaking it aloud? It is just instinct? Habit? Or is it a compulsion – a string pulled by the Ceaseless Watcher or the Mother of Puppets? Or both? I know the summaries have started to confuse you. Where did they come from, when you read a statement fresh? How do you just… sort of know what it’s about, before you even start to read it…? But by then, you’re away: the roller coaster is dropping and you’ve no real choice but to hold on and hope that… I don’t crash you.”

Alright, for the summaries, I… had been wondering about it. And we indeed got a demonstration with live-statements that Jon knew the subject and a few key elements even before beginning to hear the story – and alright, it might be how he knew what the tape was about in MAG146, although there couldn’t have been no name written on it (since Martin didn’t know Jess’s name and Jon is the one who reveals it):

(MAG141) ARCHIVIST: [INTERESTEDLY] You… FLOYD: Uh…? BASIRA: Jon? ARCHIVIST: You used to work for Salesa… FLOYD: W–what, you… Who did? I don’t know what you’re talking about. ARCHIVIST: Mikaele Salesa. You used to work on his ship. FLOYD: … I don’t know you. ARCHIVIST: [ARCHLY] But I know you. BASIRA: Jon…? ARCHIVIST: Floyd Matharu. Served on the Dorian from 2011 to 2014. With Salesa. BASIRA: Jon, I’m not sure about this. ARCHIVIST: I am. Tell me what happened. [STATIC INCREASES] FLOYD: W–what…? What is this? ARCHIVIST: Whenever you’re ready. FLOYD: A–a–alright. [STATIC DECREASES] … Sure… [SILENCE] He… he–he w–was a good boss, you know?

(MAG146) BASIRA: Martin left a tape for us. [SHUFFLING NOISE] ARCHIVIST: And what exactly is on this t– … Oh… MELANIE: Yes.

… But for written statements, we got recent examples where Jon… did some follow-up before recording, or apparently got acquainted with a statement without recording it right away? Cases in point:

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: The investigation is tricky, I don’t want to impose on Basira and, obviously, Melanie and… Martin… aren’t available, but I did do some light searching myself on Gregory Cox. … Vanished, unsurprisingly. […] No notes or follow-up here that I can see, just… [SIGH] It looks like the statement came in just after Gertrude disappeared. […] There’s a small supplemental document with it, though, that is a… bit alarming. I–it’s apparently a list of people whose names appear in the various pieces of text Mr Cox was pasting into the code. It’s unclear if they were meant to be… users or victims, but I cannot help but note that there seem to be the names of several statement-givers who found their way to the Institute, including noted arachnophobe Carlos Vittery.

(MAG125) ARCHIVIST: Regardless, I’ve hit another research dead end with this.

(MAG126) ARCHIVIST: I did do a small bit of follow-up on Deborah Madaki, just for my own curiosity. She didn’t go to Sannikov Land in the end. I don’t know, however, whether that was because she decided not to, or because… shortly after this statement was given, they found the body of one [Mary Randall] in her basement, and she has spent the last nine years in Eastwood Park Prison, where she remains to this day. I can’t find any evidence related to the condition of the body, but I can imagine what a sculptor’s apprentice might be capable of. Even an unwilling one.

(MAG127) BASIRA: And what was that you were doing yesterday? ARCHIVIST: … When…? BASIRA: You were sat on the floor for like four hours. ARCHIVIST: … Oh! Er, n–n–no, I was, er, I was… listening. Y’know, it’s, trying to see if any of the statements… called to me. BASIRA: And? ARCHIVIST: [FLIPS PAPER] BASIRA: Brilliant.

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: No one’s come seeking vengeance recently, though, and looking at the details for the British Steel Plant in Scunthorpe, it does seem like Eugene is still around. So I can only assume… some sort of equilibrium was found. (MAG145) ARCHIVIST: I did some more digging into Eugene Vanderstock. I thought he was still alive and… working at the steel plant, but it looks like he’s just listed on one of the old directory pages on their website. … I really miss having people who know their way around a computer better than I do…!

So: were those cases of Jon… forcing himself to not read the statements, but already knowing the names/summaries and trying to do some search before he would be compelled to read them, or was this… Annabelle trying to mess him up a bit more, playing on his fears and trying to make him panic even more strongly.

(The fact that Jon felt a compulsion to read the statements out loud is not a novelty: he mentioned it to Georgie in MAG093. What I’m curious about is that Annabelle seems to insist that the recording is on Jon, although Jon claimed in MAG146 that he isn’t the one hitting record anymore. Does he do it unconsciously? I had always wondered about Tim’s comment, in season 3, describing to Martin how he had got mad because Jon and him had tried to talk and Jon had reached for the tape recorder – the way Tim had described it, it… had felt, to me, as if Jon wasn’t really aware of it.

Outside of statements, though: we’ve had had tapes popping up when Jon physically wasn’t in the room, or not yet – so Jon hadn’t manually turned those on. In season 4, there was his encounter with Martin in MAG129 (the tape recorder clicked on when Martin was alone in the room, we heard Jon enter), and his walk in the tunnels with Melanie in MAG131 (we heard them getting closer, and Jon asked her to give him the tape recorder, which she had been unaware of). So. Are the tape recorders a purely Jon thing, whether he activates them manually (consciously or not) or supernaturally? Are they Web and/or Annabelle’s, and she tried to divert his attention there?)

- In the end, I found Annabelle’s statement almost… reassuring? (Oops.) Because, in a way, Basira had already provided a possible Answer to this:

(MAG147) ARCHIVIST: I’m sure the flares will work fine. … I mean, un–unless it’s all some… elaborate… plot… to have us… burn this place down again. BASIRA: So what if it is? ARCHIVIST: I don’t follow…? BASIRA: I mean. Anything we do could be part of the “Grand Master Plan”. So – what, we do nothing? Just… sit on our hands, and hope that’s not what the spiders want? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH]

Basira had been presented by Daisy as more action-orientated and in a way… indeed, I’m not sure that “intentions” and “who is controlling” is the most fundamental focus of all? True that uninformed actions can have disastrous consequences (and Jon knows that: axing the Web table liberated the Not!Them, for example), but… Annabelle talked about how influences are numerous and their origins mostly unknown, or unable to be identified – it still leaves room for deciding who/what you want to be and what should matter to you? That you’re “you” as long as you decide? We had the case, in season 4, of Jon explaining his descent into the coffin as his own conscious choice, for his own (partially selfish) reasons, and… he brought some good, with that decision and action?

(MAG136) DAISY: Jon… when you went into the coffin. Was it you choosing to do that? Did you actually think you could save me, or was… that something telling you to do it? [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: It was me. I was… drawn to it, I’ll admit, but it was my decision. [PAUSE] It wasn’t entirely about you, though. DAISY: What was it? ARCHIVIST: My– [PAUSE] [INHALE] [SIGH] My memories of the coma are not clear. But I know I made a choice; I made a choice to become… something else. Because I was afraid to die. But ever since then, I… I don’t know if I made the right decision; I–I’m stronger now, tougher, I can… … If I do die, now, or get sealed away somewhere forever… I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. And I don’t want to lose anyone else so, if I can maybe stop that happening, and [DRY CHUCKLE] the only danger is to me, I– I’ll do it in a heartbeat; worst case scenario… the universe loses another monster. DAISY: That’s messed up. ARCHIVIST: [LOW SELF-DEPRECATIVE DRY LAUGHTER] … Yeah. I suppose it is. […] Plus, I thought… [PAUSE] W– [SIGH] Well, I didn’t know what being down there had done to you. DAISY: You thought I was gonna kill you? ARCHIVIST: It was a possibility.

And even in season 3, he had made the conscious choice of trusting the others, and of burning Gerry’s page – although both were hard, and he had to force himself to stick to it, but this is what he had chosen and who he wanted to be?

(MAG117) ARCHIVIST: Still, it does sometimes make it hard to… fully trust them, I– [SIGH] You– you know what, no. I’m… I’m done with that. No more paranoia. It’s almost got me killed more than once, and… Georgie was right. If I am… slipping, then I need people I can trust. And I… I don’t think that can happen naturally for me an–anymore, so… I’m making a decision. I trust them. All of them. E– except Elias, obviously, that’s not– I mean… I’ve listened to the tapes. I’ve listened to the tape, I– I know what they talk about behind my back, how much they’ve… suffered, because of… this place… because of me.

(MAG117) ARCHIVIST: That’s it, then. I, I think. Except… [PAPER] I, uh… I haven’t burned it. Gerard’s page. … G–Gerry. I, I… I know there’s more he could tell me. He, he wouldn’t, of course, I, I, I know that, b–but he, he, it would still– b–be– there, that, that, that knowledge. I– It it would, it would still exist, I– I, I, I can’t. I… I want to help. I, I want to. But I… uh… I’m scared. On, on tape, just… just– just do it. [UNCAPPED LIGHTER] [HEAVY BREATHING] [SOUND OF A FLAME] Do it! [HEAVY BREATHING] [CRIES OF PAIN, BURNING SOUND] [HEAVY BREATHING, MUFFLED] I… [CAPPED LIGHTER, SHAKY VOICE] … you owe me one, Gerry. Rest in… … Just rest.

(I get that Annabelle is saying that there is always the idea that you’re never truly “you” because so many things are influencing you – but at the same time, I find it instead, yeah, oddly empowering because… “you” are your influences, too?)

(- Re: Jon, it’s. A really thin line, but at the very least, HE is still not fine with what he’s been doing:

(MAG146) ARCHIVIST: [QUIET] … That’s horrible… HELEN: Is it? We do what we need to do when it comes to feeding, don’t we? … Don’t we, Archivist? ARCHIVIST: … Yes… HELEN: It would be better if you embraced it. ARCHIVIST: … It’s not…

(MAG146) DAISY: And the third was after the coffin. ARCHIVIST: A man rejected by all who knew him, searching ever-darker places for love. When he told me his story, he started… weeping maggots. BASIRA: Enough. ARCHIVIST: … I hope so.

(MAG147) ARCHIVIST: What I’ve been doing to these people, it– … It hasn’t been because I was… “puppetted”, or “controlled”, or “possessed”. I wanted to do it. It felt good. … But at least, I know I can stop. I just… [INHALE] don’t know how. I… [INHALE] I don’t… want… to stop… … Goddamn! This… [MUFFLED VOICE, COVERED BY HANDS] This one really took it out of me.

And from blaming to The Web to acknowledging his responsibility, and that it had felt “good”, this is progress; and it’s still something he is not embracing, that he’s not okay with, that upsets him. So yeah. The “I don’t want to stop” bit is worrying but… At the same time, the way he’s handling the situation doesn’t scream “I want to keep doing it” either. And I doubt the girls will allow it to happen.)

- I wonder if Annabelle’s statement wasn’t technically meant to… give Jon his “Web” scar. I was positing until now that it had happened with A Guest for Mr Spider, as a kid, when he had been mincontrolled and had also watched the book’s effect on his bully, before it had snatched him – the loss of control on himself and on others. We (/I) tend to focus on the injuries-as-a-collection, as the mark of Jon experiencing the Fears, but technically, “experiencing” also happened to be about getting an inner understanding of their essence? I’m mostly thinking about The Unknowing, when he was able to finally pinpoint what was “Nikola” (what made The Stranger itself), and in the coffin, when he suddenly understood the nature of The Buried:

(MAG119) ARCHIVIST: … I see you. NIKOLA: Do you, now? ARCHIVIST: Yes… Yes, I s… I see the sad clown, b–bitter and hateful. I see him finding his way into a ci–circus where nobody knew him. I see him torn apart, becoming the mask, remade by a… a cruel ringmaster. Sometimes a doll, sometimes a mannequin, always hiding in somebody else’s skin. Somebody else’s name.

(MAG132) ARCHIVIST: … Come on… [STATIC] [SHAKY BREATHING] DAISY: Jon? ARCHIVIST: I know… DAISY: Th–the way out? ARCHIVIST: No… I know where we are! There isn’t no out, not here. This is… this is forever deep below creation. Where the weight of existence bears down… This is The Buried, and we are alive… There isn’t even an up.

… and curiously, alongside giving her own example and playing with Jon’s own fears of The Web and the loss of control, Annabelle… gave him a straight breakdown of the nature of The Web?

(MAG147, Annabelle Cane) “Unless, of course, none of it was intentional. None of it was planned. The Mother is the fear of manipulation, and lost control made manifest. So perhaps it is our fear that projects Her influence on everything that happens. Like the mind, retrospectively assigning reason to our actions, so we fit whatever occurs into the neatest pattern we can, and declare Her web both intricate… and complete. Perhaps She is no more active than Terminus – simply sitting and revelling in the inevitable cascade of paranoia, as those who hold Her in special terror cocoon themselves in red string and theory. Or perhaps I am simply telling you what you need to hear, in order to behave exactly as the Mother wishes you to. [STATIC, GRADUALLY INCREASING] Perhaps… I have never even seen a beach. Don’t… go to Hill Top Road again. [STATIC FADES]”

Basically, Annabelle threw Jon deep into the web by… making him doubt and fear that he could be manipulated (saying he wasn’t, then demonstrating that she could still do it, hence the final order, hence the mentions that she could have been lying all through her statement). So, giving him another paranoia fit while throwing him into the pit re: responsibility and potential guilt because he attacked people and those ones were on him.

- Annabelle’s considerations about “free will” and about Jon’s preoccupations indeed seem to play a lot with his current concerns and fears:

(MAG125) ARCHIVIST: I suppose that’s the question with so much of “violence”, “war”: how much are you really in command of yourself or of others? I’m not sure what scares me more: the idea that deep down, everyone is in complete control of their actions, that everything is, on some level, intentional; or that ultimately, we don’t have any control of ourselves at all, and the rest is just… rationalisation.

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: I don’t like this. I don’t like… not being sure what’s going to be in my mind. What thoughts are mine and what are from… elsewhere. Why I just know some statements are what I should be reading. I assume this one is related to the coffin. To Daisy.

(MAG136) DAISY: [BREATHING HARDER, FASTER] Yeah, well… What do you think? You think I’m weak, just… [SIGH] ‘cause I’m not already chasing the next kill? You think I’m less me? ARCHIVIST: I… [SIGH] I don’t feel like I’m exactly in the best place to judge the… intersection [CHUCKLE] between free will and humanity. Still trying to figure that out myself.

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] The more I listen and learn, the more it seems to me we’re all just… “groping about”. Trying desperately to find out what we’re actually meant to be doing. [PAUSE] These things that… loom so large over our lives trap us, and push us, and… sometimes kill us. But they never actually tell us what we’re supposed to be doing. So we scheme and we plot, lash out at each other without ever really knowing why. […] But I’m really starting to worry that there aren’t any answers. Not like I want there to be. There aren’t any answers in Ny-Ålesund; there aren’t any answers in the past; I’ve been inside The Buried, and there were no answers there.

(MAG146) ARCHIVIST: There is… nothing in the world more reassuring than ignorance which we can mistake for certainty. But no. Almost every one of those statements, those… people… that poor old man…

… and technically, she didn’t give any answer either, no certainty. So it really feels like the big purpose was to mess with him? (… to feed herself, maybe? She did mention that The Web was about “loss of control made manifest”, too, and that’s… what Jon is experiencing right now, although he’s aware that he is responsible for his own actions, and that he’s entangled in Annabelle’s plans.)

- One thing that Annabelle mentioned regarding how The Web operates:

(MAG147, Annabelle Cane) “Looking back, of course… and remembering the crunch of used syringes beneath my feet, I realise that addiction… is one of the strongest vectors of control there is.”

And as usual, could be an exaggeration/misleading/making you focus on the outside aspects and elements rather than their effects but… it’s indeed true that there is an enormous proportion of addicts, especially smokers, who have come into contact with The Web – I had finally noticed it thanks to MAG136:

(MAG016, Carlos Vittery) “I walked out there one day with the intention of smoking a cigarette, sat on the rusty garden furniture that had come with the place, and looked up. There it was – stretched between two large branches, silhouetted against the sky it sat. […] I leapt up, and started to head back inside, but as I did my eyes flicked wildly around the rest of the garden, and everywhere they came to rest I saw more lurking spiders, more webs. There were dozens that I could see, which meant there must be hundreds more I could not.”

(MAG056, Trevor Herbert) “In the early 80s, I was deep in the grip of my twin addictions. As I mentioned, after a while, The Hunt became an addiction of its own. Of the two, I’ve always found heroin the easier one to quit. […] But The Hunt… The Hunt is a purpose. It’s not just a way to get through the day, it’s a reason for there to be a day at all.” […] “she locked eyes with me. The weirdest sensation began to flow through me; I wanted to leave. It wasn’t like with a vampire, where I would feel like I’d been spoken to. This was just a sudden awareness of my own desire. I’d been sober for three years at that point, but I felt like I desperately wanted to get high, and I knew that the best place to get some was out in the night. Looking back, I think it might have been my own mind rationalising the way I felt my will being tugged out of the room, but it was still very powerful. If I hadn’t had a lifetime’s experience of identifying and fighting off the effect of the vampire’s gaze, I probably would have done it, too.”

(MAG059, Ronald Sinclair) “We never really got into any proper trouble – but the sort of glares we got just for smoking on the street made me want to break a window sometimes. I never did, though. I’m… not quite sure why I didn’t, to be honest. Before I met Ray, I… would have. There were plenty of broken windows in my past. There was something about living there, though, that… dulled the urge. My memories of a lot of my time there are, well… not exactly foggy, but feel almost like I’m watching someone else’s memories. I remember that it sometimes felt like I do things, without actually deciding to do them – like it was just muscle memory moving me, or a… string gently guiding me. It was never bad, or dangerous stuff, just… things I wouldn’t normally have done, like brushing my teeth.”

(MAG112, Alexia Crawley) “Brandon took to the role immediately, with a gravity and a weariness that I don’t think could have been entirely feigned. He was the only one who didn’t seem excited by the movie, and spent his off-hours smoking and reading quietly in one of the trailers. It was a shame because, for whatever reason, he also seemed to be the only one that Dexter would listen to. I only saw them talking once or twice but every time, Dexter would be wrapped, nodding at… whatever Brandon might have to say.”

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “Despite this or, maybe because of it… [Neil Lagorio and I] became friends. I think we bonded on that shoot; sheltering from the rain for hours at a time, watching a sobby animatronic jaguar gradually start to rust. I had to fight every instinct inside me, everything that wanted to burst out in admiration for his work and his… profound effect on my life. But instead I chain-smoked and laughed, trying my best to come across as my hero’s peer…!”

And it obviously put Jon’s smoking to mind. He had told Leitner that he had been quit for “five years” in February 2017 – except, well, he had cigarettes on him, so at this point, no, he was probably actually back to smoking already and presumably had been for a while. After he had opened the lighter’s package and denied smoking (MAG036, Tim+Jon: “You smoke?” “No… And I don’t allow ignition sources in my archive!”), Elias had commented about his smoking on July 29th 2016 (MAG040, “He’s not smoking again, is he?”) in a way that could mean… that either he knew about Jon’s Past As A Smoker, either Jon had been spotted with cigarettes recently (THAT’S CREEPY, CREEPY BOSS, ALL-SEEING OR NOT), and Tim’s snarky remark in February 2017 fit too well to think it was a completely random example (MAG079, “But he’s going to do something, and it’s going to be bad. And I don’t mean like ‘sneaking a cigarette’ bad – like, properly bad.”). Daisy spotted his cigarettes in MAG091 (“SILK CUT”. FOREVER REMINDER THAT HE SMOKES “SILK CUT” OF ALL THINGS.), he offered one to Gerry in MAG111, Daisy pointed out his lighter in MAG136 and Jon apparently Can’t Think About It (static and then changing the subject) so… something is definitely up with the lighter, at the very least.

-> The moment Jon stopped smoking roughly matches the time he joined the Institute (since he had worked there for four years when he began the series, second-half/end of 2015), but also the death of his grandmother (he mentioned in MAG081 that she “peacefully passed away five years ago”) – was it related to one of those two events? Because he’ll definitely need to channel again the Jon from back then who had managed to quit. (… if he ever did. Because uh. Telling Leitner that he had been quit for five years, while he had cigarettes on him, was… Jon. Jon. You had broken your streak a long time ago, you absolute hypocrite disaster.)

-> And it was ~because he had suddenly wanted a cigarette~ that Jon had left Leitner alone in MAG080, giving an opening for Elias to Brutal Pipe Murder him – something that Nikola would later use to toy with him, by mixing it up with guilt:

(MAG119) ARCHIVIST: It is not! It’s not, I didn’t know, it’s not my fault you died! LEITNER: No, I suppose not. Me, on the other hand… […] I understand, of course. You needed a cigarette! I suppose you should have remembered that smoking kills!

-> So once again: ELIAS, what do you KNOW about the Spiders running wild in your Institute, and about Jon’s lighter.

(- And the smoking/addiction being potentially usable by The Web puts me in mind of a few other people too:

(MAG144, Gary Boylan) “I’d been out easily twice as long as any time before. But my dad didn’t say a word about it – just sat in front of the TV, laughing at some crappy panel show, smoking that… God-awful pipe that left the wallpaper yellow and peeling. I remember thinking he wasn’t content to just destroy himself. He seemed to have to take everything out around him.”

Extinction statement but. Gary’s dad was a vivid picture.

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) “The deaths were about a fortnight apart, and when the third came in with the same symptoms, Bianca, the coroner, called me in. For the last few years we’ve had an… arrangement. I slip her a bit of cash to feed a nasty habit she has, and if she’s called to any inquest which looks strange, I’m the first to know. Despite her weakness, Bianca is still a damn good coroner, and filled me in on the details quickly.”

………………. Adelard, who had been in possession of The Web Table at some point after its Hill Top Road days, and had been able to use it to bind and trap the Not!Them…

And. And. Technically, I cannot not mention:

(MAG049) ARCHIVIST: Supplemental. Elias Bouchard is a difficult man to pin down, certainly since he became head of the Institute in 1996, taking over from James Wright, who ran the place from ‘73 until he passed away. […] I found an old gossip column in the student newspaper that – sure well – that mentioned him. If I’m not reading too much into it, the implication seems to be that he was… something of a… pothead [CHUCKLE]. Was he… like that when he first came to work here…?

Listen: if I’m haunted by the mental picture of Elias, smoking weed in his office in March-or-May 2015 because the Institute’s budget is getting tight again, and suddenly shouting “You know what? I should totes KILL GERTRUDE to solve my problems. GENIUS!” while a spider scurries away.

then, you have to be inflicted with it, too.)

- Though Trevor had presented The Hunt as an “addiction”, and Jon’s own relationship to the statements had also been presented in such a way:

(MAG107) ARCHIVIST: I’d love to rattle off a lot of potential other reasons for this, nice rational causes of recovery, but… I feel we’re past the point of transparent rationalisations. It looks like the recording of statements has now passed over from psychological compulsion into… a more physical dependence. I don’t whether this is… some sort of classical addiction or something a bit deeper. But either way, this is not the time for experimentation. I’m on a deadline, and if I need to be reading statements to stay well enough, then I suppose that’s what I shall do.

Martin also name-dropped it in his list of potential reasons for Jon’s behaviour and the way he had attacked Jess for her live-statement, and then Jon first tried to blame it on an exterior influence before finally admitting that it was all him, wording it in a way… that indeed matches up with addiction too:

(MAG142) MARTIN: Oh, that can’t– that can’t… I mean, it’s not him, is it? Not, not really? It’s, what, addiction, instinct, maybe mind control, something like that? I… can’t believe he’d choose to do something like that. … No, no, I, I can’t think like that, though, I, I can’t let myself, ‘cause I mean, if, if he’s already gone, then all of this is just…

(MAG146) BASIRA: He knows exactly what he’s doing. ARCHIVIST: I don’t–! Uh, it’s not that simple, it–it feels… [BREATHING QUICKENING] … I don’t know if I can control it, I don’t know if it’s even me doing it…! BASIRA: … So you say you’re being controlled. ARCHIVIST: I–I don’t know. Maybe? Th–The Web, it–

(MAG147) ARCHIVIST: … Annabelle’s right, though. I mean– I can’t trust anything she says to not be another lie to further manipulate and manoeuvre us, but… deep down, I think she’s right. What I’ve been doing to these people, it– … It hasn’t been because I was… “puppetted”, or “controlled”, or “possessed”. I wanted to do it. It felt good. … But at least, I know I can stop. I just… [INHALE] don’t know how. I… [INHALE] I don’t… want… to stop… … Goddamn! This… [MUFFLED VOICE, COVERED BY HANDS] This one really took it out of me.

As of now, I’m not… utterly convinced by the addiction analogy for what is happening with avatars and people’s fears, though, but that’s mostly because I’m thinking in terms of effects, and the fact that in Avatars’ cases, the primary victims are not themselves but other people: here, the main problem is not that Jon has an addiction problem to (live or written) statements, but the fact that extorting live-statements causes pain, distress, fear and overall constant suffering, impacting and destroying the lives of other people (eg Jess). The fact that it makes him feel good or not… is not the most relevant thing as to why he has to stop it; I feel like talking of it solely as an “addiction” might be diminish the gravity of what he does a bit? (Which is why I’m grateful that Basira immediately summed up his actions as a criminal’s: yes, he’s attacked innocent people, yes, he’s acted monstrous, yes, he’s currently a danger.) (But then again… it could be a point to be made, that the statements are actually bad for Jon – that they feel good but that it is… a sort of reprieve, covering up other issues, and that no, fundamentally, these stories are still shattering him.)

However, it is probably the correct analogy to approach how they should get him to stop it or to control the craving – if… it is… even possible… which I’m not even sure about…

(- I am kind of expecting a talk about why the team shouldn’t just try to find a way to kill Jon off, if he can’t or won’t control it? Concretely, of course, it’s not like they would know how to do it: Jon heals fast, can’t harm himself, didn’t manage to get instantly destroyed by the Dark Sun. He has managed to get out of the coffin once and might be able to pull that off again – even if he went back inside willingly, he probably wouldn’t manage to stay inside forever, since he already had “regrets” about going inside after three days. Plus, Daisy had managed to get some distance from The Hunt and to separate herself from it when she was inside of the coffin, but we saw that Jon’s powers had still been active and kicking while inside – so that… doesn’t seem to be exactly an option for him (because The Eye is him/within him? Because The Buried relies on awareness, like The Vast, and it can’t totally be isolated from The Eye?)

But pragmatically, I still feel like the question of what-to-do-with-Jon-and-is-it-really-worth-it-to-ensure-that-he-stays-alive has to be raised…? (Or am I totally heartless for thinking that eh, even if I liked him a lot as a character, if he’s terrorising people and hurting innocents, then no, it’s not worth it, and I’m not interested in hearing him getting glimpses of genuine happiness or jokes or hopes while Jess and probably more are hurt and hurting and their lives utterly messed up because of him.) If Jon is going Monster and can’t/won’t stop, and given how the Assistants reacted, it might cross their mind, and rightfully so? I’m expecting them to at least contain/monitor him, as of now, to prevent further victims, although… it won’t solve anything on the long run. But I want it to stop, arrrrg orz Not solely because I don’t like random people getting hurt, but because it was… the reason… Jess had come to the Institute…

(MAG142) MARTIN: O–okay. Hum. [INHALE] Right, well… [EXHALE] Firstly, I’m re– I’m really sorry that this happened. Hum… in–in terms of next steps… JESS: Just, I just… I don’t know, y–you know, talk to him, I guess? J–just tell him, like, like, I mean that– it’s not okay. You know, right, I’m not… I don’t know what he did, but it– You know, he can’t just go around, and well, you know, just keep doing… MARTIN: Right. I–I understand. JESS: Good! … Well… You… I just, I don’t want to see him again, alright? Ever.

It was hard, it was awful to describe what had happened to her again, she got hit really badly by Institute, but she came because Jon had to be stopped… it was only for this that she came, we probably won’t hear her ever again, and I don’t want it to go to waste………………. ;_;

(YES, I know that we’re potentially heading towards a ritual getting completed and/or many, maaany people dying/getting tortured in the process – but I always find it harder to hear about personal stories than the overall broad picture, and I know that Jess won’t be okay ever (… well, Daisy confirmed the trick of signing up with the Institute to get rid of the dreams/come under The Eye’s protection, but Team Archives has never been… invested in saving/helping people they didn’t personally know), but it’s even worse if her complaint doesn’t mean anything in the end… ;;))

- Okay, so. Probably off-track and gratuitous long tangent but, eh, that’s what speculation is about, right?

I got a bit of a punch over MAG147’s date, because suddenly, time had moved… very fast towards a few Archives Anniversaries. Annabelle’s statement was dated 20th July, 2018; it’s already one month since the expedition to The Dark (Jon took Manuela’s statement on June 16th, in MAG143) and… we’re getting close to the anniversaries of both:

* Jane Prentiss’s attack on the Archives, July 29th 2016.

* The Unknowing attempt, August 06-07th 2017.

… And Jon is very conscious of the time passing, of the dates – he sighed about his perception of time in MAG123 (realising that two years had passed, and that he… hadn’t “lived” the entirety of them), and even mentioned the Institute’s anniversary as a source of dread:

(MAG127) ARCHIVIST: Whatever is happening now… has its origins two hundred years ago. In the work of an evil man. … Exactly two hundred years, in fact. Don’t think that little detail has evaded me. I don’t know the precise date the Institute was founded, but I do know that it was in 1818. … Something’s coming. I know it is. … But I just don’t know what I need to do.

These are of course also the anniversaries of Sasha’s death, Tim’s death. The reminder, too, that Martin is the last one of the original assistants still alive, and so far one has died every summer since Jon was appointed as Head Archivist – if there was a moment to panic over the Assistants “symbolically” being in danger because there is a pattern, it would be now. Daisy mentioned Jon’s PTSD in MAG142, we got a reminder that Jon still had Jane Prentiss’s ashes in his desk in MAG140:

(MAG140) BASIRA: Er… Jon. What’s this. [DRY SOUND] ARCHIVIST: Mm? … Oh. That’s… [SILENCE] That, uh, that’s… my rib? BASIRA: … Right. [PUTS IT DOWN] ARCHIVIST: Yup… BASIRA: And… the jar of ashes. ARCHIVIST: Not– Not mine; I–I mean, it belongs to me, I–I guess, but it’s not… Er, stationery is in the other drawer?

Could have been nothing more than a casual joke but with the anniversary at the corner… I’m not so sure.

But mostly, I’m thinking about Tim.

I’m still… very surprised that Tim was mentioned so little in season 4, when it had been extremely important for Jon that Tim make it back alive?

(MAG118) TIM: You thought you brought me in as a distraction, right? ARCHIVIST: What?! TIM: Let me do it! Go in, maybe you can get some of them– ARCHIVIST: Tim, contrary to what you think, I did not bring you here to indulge your death wish! TIM: It’s not what this is! ARCHIVIST: No?! TIM: No! You knew I might not be coming back! ARCHIVIST: I knew none of us might be coming back, and I’m not gonna let anyone get killed for nothing! TIM: Oh, except for those people in there! ARCHIVIST: They’re already dead! TIM: Not all of them! ARCHIVIST: I am not losing you as well!!

Sasha had been dead for more than six months when Jon realised what had happened, and Tim&Martin learned about it even later – even then, she was… mentioned so much. Nikola pretended to be her during The Unknowing, taunted him about the possibility of her resurrection (“Oh, you caught me~ I’m… Sasha! […] No~! Really, it’s me! Sasha– whatever her name was! Back from the dead, just like you wanted~!”), prompting a visceral reaction from Jon. Sasha was on Martin’s lips, too, when he confronted Elias and his (in)actions. But Tim… from what I recall, this is all we got about Tim this season:

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: Er, the others. T–Tim? Is he… [SILENCE] Oh… [SILENCE] BASIRA: … Daisy, too. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: … I’m sorry. […] You’re… sure a–about Tim? BASIRA: Yeah, they, er… They found his remains a few days later.

(MAG123) MELANIE: How did you make it out, then, mm? ARCHIVIST: What? MELANIE: Tim is dead. Daisy is dead. And you, what? You’re just fine? ARCHIVIST: No, I’ve been in hospital for six months! […] Melanie, Melanie: it’s… it’s me. MELANIE: Oh! Okay, so what, “Hi Jon, how are you, get anyone killed lately?” ARCHIVIST: … I… MELANIE: Wipe that look off your face. Like you’re not the reason all of this is happening.

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: She needs help, Basira. God, it didn’t even get that bad when I was… … Even Tim never threatened me. Not like that. […] So: we’re under siege; Melanie is aggressively unstable; Martin is working very closely with The Lonely, who is, predictably enough, isolating him; and, oh, yes, Tim and Daisy are still dead. Which is at least easy to keep track of! BASIRA: That isn’t funny, Jon. ARCHIVIST: I know it’s not–! … Sorry. It’s just… it’s a lot.

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: I have no theories on it, no… no sudden insights. [SIGH] I wish I could talk it through with Martin. … Or Tim. [SHORT SAD CHUCKLE] Or Sasha. But we never really did that, did we…? … Everything’s changed. … [SIGH]

(MAG126) ARCHIVIST: A “Great Twisting”, that Gertrude stopped at the cost of a single life. … I thought… moving away from my humanity would have made that seem more acceptable. That sort of sacrifice… but it just makes me sad… … I remembered Gertrude’s notebook; we found it alongside the plastic explosives, but it rather got lost amongst the business of… [SIGH] saving the world at the cost of two lives…

(MAG133) BASIRA: Good. As far as I can see, Gertrude Robinson was the most effective person in this place. ARCHIVIST: … That’s what Tim said as well.

Plus, from Martin:

(MAG120) ELIAS: Hello, inspector. Martin. I’m… sorry to hear about Tim. MARTIN: Don’t. ELIAS: And Daisy, I suppose. MARTIN: Don’t. you. dare. ELIAS: I suppose it’s some consolation Basira made it out. And Jon – more or less.

(MAG138) MARTIN: I don’t know what he’s talking about when he mentions Millbank. The old prison, I guess? Tim said the tunnels under the Institute were all that was left of it, but… Jon said he’d checked them pretty thoroughly. [SILENCE] [SIGH] I’m not the one who knows all about this stuff…! I wish– … No. No, it’s fine, I’m… fine, I… [EXHALE] I can do this.

And I’m still sad, and a bit curious?, about the fact that… Jon had heard Tim’s last words to him, but told Basira he couldn’t remember how The Unknowing had gone:

(MAG119) TIM: Back! Get back! That’s right. Jon, I don’t know if you can hear me, but if you can… ARCHIVIST: [FAINTLY AND FAR] Tim…? TIM: I don’t forgive you. But thank you for this.

(MAG122) BASIRA: How much do you remember? ARCHIVIST: I don’t… Music. Everything was wrong. Gertrude was there, and then… dancing. I think? Then… pain. And I was somewhere else. Dreaming.

Are the memories truly lost, and they’ll never be aware of the fact that Tim pulled the trigger, took his revenge for Danny’s death, and saved the world – and that Jon was never to be forgiven? Or are they stuck somewhere in Jon’s subconscious? Are they buried and meant to be dug out, or… forgotten?

“Grief” has been surprisingly absent this season. We know that Martin had the added dimension of losing his mother – which had… already been an open wound for a while (her refusing to see him), made worse by Elias (revealing to him that she hated him, and why, and carving “what she was seeing” whenever she looked at him into his mind), until she died two months later, and… he explicitly bore that death alone:

(MAG127) BASIRA: Honestly, I kind of regret not just… grabbing Martin and shaking an explanation out of him. But I didn’t want to push it. He was in a… bad place, what with the attack and his mom and everything, so I didn’t press it. Now, I try and bring it up, he just… disappears. Nothing to be done. ARCHIVIST: So–sorry, you said… What happened with his mother? BASIRA: Oh, yeah. She died. About two months– ARCHIVIST: Oh… BASIRA: –after you, er… … Martin was… … He tried to stay strong. Keep it together but, that sort of thing… ARCHIVIST: [SIGH]

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: I, er… I heard about your mother. MARTIN: … Yeah. ARCHIVIST: I am… so sorry. [SILENCE] MARTIN: Thank you. [INHALE] It’s… [SHAKY EXHALE] It’s better, this way. ARCHIVIST: If–if you do need to talk, I– MARTIN: I can’t. ARCHIVIST: No. No, o–of course.

It makes a lot of sense, for Martin, to be especially vulnerable to The Lonely: he always had… trouble connecting with others, and his relationships were shown to be ultimately one-sided. He was hovering around and crushing on Jon while Jon was suspecting him of murder; his mother disliked him and refused to let him take care of her, trying to cut ties; even Tim admitted that he didn’t know Martin as well as he used to know Sasha, and avoided him like he did the other new assistants (we didn’t hear them interact again after MAG104, which only happened by accident and chance). He explicitly didn’t like Daisy, in season 3; had been snappy to Basira, and both Basira and Melanie didn’t have a lot of nice things to say about him, although Martin had shown sympathy towards Melanie in MAG108 (and then, Melanie fell deeper to the Slaughter bullet, and Basira began to turn more callous and calculating). Overall, the fact that he was aware that he hadn’t been able to notice that Sasha had been replaced probably didn’t… help.

But it’s mostly that absence of… anything about the loss of Tim that surprises me a bit, and I find it interesting that neither Jon and Martin apparently took the time to grieve. Aside from “addiction” (reminder that Jude used drugs too!), there’s something else that has been present in quite a few avatars’ storylines – depression. Oliver began to dream when he was depressed (MAG011, “I barely made it through a full year before the stress of my new job, not to mention some problems in my personal life, led to me having a full nervous breakdown. I’d broken up with Graham, my boyfriend of six years and had to leave the home we shared, going to stay with some of the few friends that had survived my year of stress-fuelled outbursts and constantly cancelled plans. It was there, sleeping on my friend Anahita’s sofa, in the depths of my misery, that I first started to have the dreams.”), Jude was going through a burn out when she met Agnes (MAG089, “The point was, that I burned through too much of myself, because I didn’t know what else I could burn. My girlfriend saw it, though she had no idea how to help with the deep depression that had settled over me. […] I was burned out in every sense but one. And that was the one that saved me. It was Agnes, of course. I don’t know where she found me, I only remember sitting in a booth with a beautiful young woman who smelled like matches and incense.”). Kinda goes well with “addiction” in the idea that the Fears tend to recruit people when they’re vulnerable? But keeping Jon in mind, Daisy, mostly, had repeatedly pointed out that he hasn’t been fine for a while:

(MAG136) DAISY: You need to stop moping. ARCHIVIST: I what? DAISY: You need to stop swanning around, being all sad. ARCHIVIST: I’m, I’m not “swanning around”– DAISY: “Boo-hoo, I’m so alone and a monster!” ARCHIVIST: I am alone, Martin is– DAISY: Busy. doing. paperwork. Not like he’s dead. Beside, he’s not the only other person here, you know. There’s me; Melanie; Basira– ARCHIVIST: Traumatised; traumatised; and paranoid, because of me. DAISY: Get over yourself! You’re always talking about choices – we all made ours. Now I’m making the choice… to get some drinks in. Coming?

(MAG142) DAISY: I, I mean, it’s pretty standard stuff. MARTIN: What?! DAISY: Used to see it all the time back in the force, especially with the Section’d. Not like there’s… “normal” trauma, you know? But it’s pretty common. The most important thing becomes control, engaging on your own terms. Even when it’s stupid or dangerous. Anything to not feel helpless. MARTIN: Oh, god… DAISY: And of course, for Jon, there’s survivor’s guilt in there, too. He thinks he’s not human. Makes him very… self-destructive. MARTIN: Yeah, well. We’ve all had trauma. DAISY: And everyone’s changed.

(MAG143) HELEN: … How was it? ARCHIVIST: Mm? HELEN: Looking upon The Dark. ARCHIVIST: I thought I was going to die. HELEN: You seem to think that a lot. I remember when you thought you were going to die at my threshold. ARCHIVIST: … Yeah.

And it would’t be surprising if the fact that neither Martin&Jon took the time, nor did work on grieving… contributed, a lot, to put them in such a bad headspace – Jon feeding from people, being in denial over his responsibility and not trying to actively stop it nor warning the others about it, Martin admitting that the temptation of The Lonely is working on him.

At the end of season 3, Tim’s very last scene, very last words… were technically a reference to a joke about depression&therapy:

(MAG119) TIM: You sound stressed. You know, I hear the Great Grimaldi’s in town. You should go see him. Cheer yourself up. NIKOLA: That’s. not. funny. TIM: I know. [LOUD EXPLOSION] [CLICK.]

(And Peter Lukas had offered Martin to go to therapy (MAG120, “And if you want to talk to a counsellor, the Institute will of course cover any cost.”), although… yeaaaah, coming from Peter, it just sounded. Plain bad.)

It introduced the theme a bit; season 4 then made it pretty clear that in this universe, actual therapy is not a bad thing. We saw it with Melanie, though she did express cautiousness about it (it’s not a Miracle Solution, some therapists are bad or don’t fit you). We saw it with Jess:

(MAG142) JESS: So. It… It took a long time to get over that. I mean… That’s not weird, right? I mean, it was a bad time. You know? It–it stays with you. I was signed off for, what, probably about six months, with the injuries? I had pretty bad, uh, nightmares, claustrophobia, I mean… Obviously, right? But, uh, but–but I did my physio, and, you know, talked wi–with the counsellor they gave me? Look, I did everything I was supposed to, and–and yeah, I… I guess I was fine. You know, once the bruises were gone, I… Well, it’s easy to blame memory, right? You know, ha–hallucination, coincidence, all the… classic shite you tell yourself. Look, life went back to… normal, I… I was fine. Until… [CHOKING] about two weeks ago. MARTIN: And that was when you met J– … Er, one of our employees.

Even Gertrude had directed Lucia towards someone – she sounded… very manipulative and lying through her teeth about the nightmares (? She would know that no, Lucia’s wouldn’t stop, especially after giving her statement?), but I have trouble picturing Gertrude doing the extra effort of recommending someone and actively searching for their contact information if it was just to get rid of Lucia (she really didn’t need to do so, the statement was over and Lucia hadn’t asked for anything!); if Gertrude recommended them, it’s probably that she genuinely knew that it could help?

(MAG130) LUCIA: H… uh. Will it help? GERTRUDE: I’m sorry? LUCIA: Telling my story. To you. Will, will it help with the nightmares? GERTRUDE: If that’s your primary goal, my dear, I would suggest you speak to a qualified counsellor. We can suggest one, if you like; that said, I do believe most people find the process of giving a statement to be rather… mm, cathartic. And whatever nightmares your experience has left you with, I’m sure they won’t be bothering you much longer. […] And do you feel any better? LUCIA: No. GERTRUDE: Mm, that’s a shame. Hang on, let me see if I can find you the number for that counselling service. They’re actually quite good.

We’ve had a broad gallery of characters handling their traumas in different ways, this season. Melanie is going to therapy, and whether her therapist is Web/Eye/Lonely or not… it is working to help her get some control over herself. She’s quieter, she expresses her boundaries – far from losing her voice, she is… reappropriating it. Daisy has not sought out professional help, but she’s careful about how she handles herself, the symptoms and how to prevent falling off – she seeks out company, she talks, she communicates, she tries to repair bridges, while remaining overall careful:

(MAG136) DAISY: [QUICKLY] You’re not babysitting me, alright?! I know that’s what the others think, sometimes, but… that’s not it. I just… don’t like… being on my own if I can help it. You know. Flashbacks, panic attacks, the usual. Just trying to avoid it if I can. ARCHIVIST: I know, Daisy, I–I do. It’s hard.

(MAG144) DAISY: No, I’m ju– [SIGH] Just ignore me. Continue with… whatever. [SILENCE] MARTIN: … Are you alright? DAISY: Yeah. Just a… a bit empty around here. You know? MARTIN: Not really. DAISY: Melanie’s out, and… [EXHALE] Jon and Basira’re still off. Bit worried. But they can take care of themselves, you know?

And on the other side, just like Jon and Martin, Basira just… tried to deal with things on her own, and partially failed and hurt herself in the process:

(MAG128) BASIRA: Do you know how I survived the… The Unknowing? ARCHIVIST: I… No. No, I don’t. BASIRA: No powers, no… magic or… help. I was trapped in that place, and so I tried to figure it out. And I did. A little. So I kept doing it. I kept going through until I got out. I… reasoned my way out of that nightmare. ARCHIVIST: Good lord… BASIRA: Then everything ended, and Daisy was gone. And you were gone. And Tim. And then I got back to the Institute, and Martin send me to meet the new boss. Then I stood alone in an empty office for more than one hour. I can trust me, Jon. That’s it. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH]

And it could be that Jon… should have gone for therapy, too, and never will. But if there was ever a moment for him to try it out as a way to handle himself, I feel like it could be now? He had been constantly adamant about not going for it and… his reject resurfaced very recently with Georgie:

(MAG058) MARTIN: He’s just under a lot of pressure. You know how messed up he’s been since Prentiss. TIM: How messed up he’s been?! MARTIN: Of course, I’m sorry – sorry, I didn’t mean that you weren’t, just– TIM: No! Because I didn’t start stalking my co-workers! MARTIN: Maybe try talking to him. TIM: Sure. Like he doesn’t already look at me like I’m a murderer. MARTIN: Look, look, you just got to let me work through this. Alright? I suggested therapy, but he just says no, so– TIM: Well, we need to do something! MARTIN: Yeah, maybe.

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: I’m… I’m alright. I’m trying to, uh… rest up a bit. Take it easy. [HUFF] GEORGIE: Really? ‘Cause… I’m pretty sure I heard talking about a screaming headless corpse just now. ARCHIVIST: Oh… Oh. W–were you… listening? GEORGIE: Oh, uh. Didn’t mean to. You know. These… doors are not that thick. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … Fine. I’m deep in it. Had some… “close calls”. [SILENCE] GEORGIE: I’m sorry to hear that. [PAUSE] … You should probably get some therapy too. ARCHIVIST: [HUFF] Would you go with me as well? GEORGIE: … No. ARCHIVIST: Yeah. … No, I thought as much.

Because concretely, what can they do now, re:Jon, and what can Jon do about this “addiction” of his to destroy people…? Could be that precisely, it’s over, they’re just trying to buy a bit of time, but Jon is Done For, and either he’s dying at the end of this season, either he’s going full monster. But if there is a solution to at least attenuate the problem, my money is on therapy, with how the theme has popped up here and there, together with “control (of yourself)”…? (And it was especially jarring, in this episode, how… I got the feeling that Jon was aiming for Free Therapy in front of the tape recorder? Except it’s a one-sided exchange, it’s him talking to himself, and he’s not equipped for self-analysis.) (And there is something to be said, maybe, about how inflicting Fears and misery on others and the whole “Feed what feeds you, or it will feed on you”, is textbook “hurting others to not hurt yourself/to stop hurting yourself? So, I don’t know. It’s spooks, it’s alien entities, but we’ve always had a mix of supernatural and down-to-earthness when it came to dealing with the entities and their effects… so maybe there would still be a way to unravel Jon’s issues in a positive way, for once.)

(Aaaah, I’m mostly interested in the idea of Melanie and Daisy talking to Jon about the influence of powers and personal responsibility, potentially more�� quietly, after a few days, once they’ve all cooled down. Because Daisy might feel grateful for Jon for having pulled her out of the coffin, and I really doubt she would give up on him. Melanie… a bit less, and she used to genuinely dislike Jon, but she still Knows What It’s like. Both would have rightful reasons to feel bitter/annoyed/mad, though, that Jon has been spilling advice here and there, presenting himself as the voice of reason… and was absolutely not following through with his own actions, once again.)

(- Re: Annabelle’s statement. I have no Personal Offended Feelings about the jovial call-out directed towards the red-strings theorist (“simply sitting and revelling in the inevitable cascade of paranoia, as those who hold Her in special terror cocoon themselves in red string and theory.”), because 1°) THAT’S FAIR BUT HOW ‘BOUT I DO IT ANYWAY, 2°) I’m mostly amused because it adds to the pile of things about how I live TMA as I lived Umineko. I already had a list of things they share that I was amused about (tea, comatose love-interest, and (DUCT) tape, etc.), and I can now add to it “writer using a female character to shout at his fanbase when they’re fumbling around trying to understand The Fuck Is Happening”. Spider woman really interested in stories, insufferable/absolutely awful Witch of Theatregoing, Drama and Spectating – same struggle.)

MAG148’s title is out and OOOOOOOH does it. Sound. Like. Another. Beholding episode. Which would be our 4th already this season – it’s… a lot more than previous ones, really making it feel like The Eye is getting more present and threatening. (Could technically be The Web, too, with that weird intertwining of them that we got lately! Or just plainly Annabelle again.) As for the content: there is an obvious joke to make about Elias and the title would also fit him awfully well (sob); obligatory thinking about MAG003’s Graham; Adelard Dekker had referred to half of it in relation to Gertrude back in MAG113… But mostly: it could… accurately describe the Assistants deciding to monitor Jon? And statement-wise, it mainly screams “PANOPTICON” to me. So. Historical statement once again from the Jonah-Smirke era – or even from earlier, from Jeremy Bentham himself…? (Or from Jonathan Fanshawe post-1831, because so far, with what we learned about him, he had gotten away, and I liked him and I can’t have nice things.) Not necessarily read by Jon; we could switch to Martin again, since Peter had stated that he needed the Institute for his plans, and he had already read Smirke’s letter to Jonah Magnus last time. (… Or it could also be from one of Jon’s three other unnamed victims from season 4 orz)

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #mag147 #tma liveblog #tma season 4 #the magnus archives #tma spoilers/#guess who messed up her schedule this week again #and has 'birth of a new witch' on loop #long post/#i'll stop using victorious-but-barely-conscious emoji when i'll manage to not post these at the last moment (sob.)#... ahahahaha posted the night of 6th-7th august so. obligatory. happy... anniversary... tim... *cries in tim*

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rere-the-writer · 3 years

Note

Can I request poly!Mikaelsons when they find out Reader is pregnant. I loved the headcanons.

Yessssss let's go boys!

Warnings: Fluff, Soft!Mikaelsons, Protective!Mikaelsons

As much as it annoyed them, your lovers let you go on this little adventure of helping Hayley. The wolf had became your close friend after you lost the Scooby gang because they couldn't let go that you were seeing the Originals.

"I'll be careful Elijah. Hals won't let nothing happen to me." You tell your noble boyfriend who frown as Klaus rolled his eyes.

"No offense love but you are unbelievably dumb when it comes to trusting people."

"Niklaus!" Elijah said as you blinked tilting your head as Klaus raised an eyebrow.

"No.....I just like people."

"And there is nothing wrong with that baby." Elijah says softly kissing your head as Klaus smirked.

"Besides if you are harmed I'll tear the little wolf's thoat out." Klaus says as you shivered shaking your head getting peppered with goodbye kisses from Elijah. Both Rebekah and Kol gave you their own goodbye making Hayley blush watching Rebekah give you a heated kiss your face was burning as Kol chuckled kissing your cheek.

"Marking territory sister?"

"Just letting Hayley know who our bunny belongs to."

You and Hayley made it down to New Orleans looking for some leads about Hayley's birth parents and pack. You were in awe with the city as you made sure to call Elijah and Rebekah gushing to them how you were falling in love with the city and how you may not leave.

"So the witches think your pregnant with Klaus's baby?" You ask Hayley as she nodded. You and Hayley had been taken by witches as they believed that Hayley carried Klaus's child even though she was never left alone with Klaus.

"Damn it she isn't the pregnant one."

"What if the other one is." The witch named Sophie said and all the witches turned to look at you. Another witch you learned was named Sabine grabbed you pulling over to Jane Ann. They did the spell again then looked at your abdomen.

Klaus was pissed hearing that witches of New Orleans was plotting something against him so the hybrid travel down to the city which would allow him to be left alone with you. Elijah had followed to find you since you hadn't called in awhile and also to find out just what the witches were planning.

"I'm Elijah. You heard of me?" Elijah asked Sophie after saving her from vampires. After talking to the witch about her sister, Elijah was taken to the cemetery and the witches couldn't stop you from running to your vampire.

"Elijah!" You shouted throwing your arms around Elijah who growled feeling you shiver as your sundress wasn't doing much to keep you warm. Elijah took off his suit jacket placing it over your shoulders and Hayley walked out seeing Elijah and her heart fluttered with how handsome the vampire was.

Hayley met Klaus, Rebekah and Kol so it was his first time seeing Elijah and found Elijah every attractive. Hayley felt a little jealous seeing the vampire cupping your cheek seemly showering you with affection.

"Why do you have my little wife?" Elijah asked his tone having a dangerous tint to it as his eyes darken keeping you close rubbing your back. Both Hayley and the witches were surprised watching you look up at Elijah muttering something and Elijah raised an eyebrow.

"You think she is pregnant?"

"Come inside where we can talk." Sophie says Elijah followed after with you by his side. Elijah stood with his hands in his pockets as you sat with Hayley.

"My sister died proving that Y/N is pregnant with Klaus's child."

"You do realize Niklaus will slaughter you all about this little lie."

"It isn't. Listen to the heartbeat! When he woke his wolf side, it made a loop hole." Sophie told Elijah who narrowed his eyes but did as told. Elijah's breathing hitched hearing the heartbeat.

"I need to find Niklaus. Hayley make sure Y/N stays safe." Elijah said walking out as you sat feeling like crying as Elijah was hard to read and you were scared. It didn't take long for Elijah to come back with Klaus.

"Don't look sad, my Queen. I'll take care of these witches." Klaus said looking over you as Elijah was trying to stay calm as Klaus had placed a hand on your abdomen smiling softly as Hayley got to see the full fury of two of the most dangerous Mikaelsons.

"So you hold my Queen and unborn child as hostage to make me do your dirty work?" Klaus said smirking devilishly eyes darken as Elijah moved to in front of you almost guarding you from the witches.

"We want Marcel gone and you are the one to do it." Sophie said grabbing a knife as the witches were nervous as having two dangerous Originals in the same room.

"And what's stopping me and Elijah from slaughtering you all?" Klaus questioned smirking as Sophie cut her hand and you let out a ylep. Elijah was quick to pull out a handkerchief handing it to Hayley who wrapped it around your hand.

"Not only did the spell proved the pregnancy but also linked me to Y/N. So anything that happens to me happens to her." Sophie said and Elijah was quick to stop Klaus from attacking. Elijah looked at the witches his eyes dark with something they hadn't seen before.

"We'll do this but Y/N and Hayley comes with us or else I'll let my brother slaughter this coven. And Miss Deveraux, I would personally deal with you."

"O.....okay." Sophie said shivering from the fear that flooded her and the other witches. You squealed when Klaus picked you up bridal style carrying you out of the tomb with Elijah beside him telling him to be careful with you.

"So is she like dating all of you?" Hayley asked Elijah as you all headed to a plantation house that Klaus had set up.

"She is. To Niklaus, she is a Queen, to Kol a life partner while Rebekah and I affectionately call her little wife." Elijah says smiling seeing that you fell asleep in Klaus's arms.

"Oh....isn't weird?"

"No. She isn't the first, we've shared a lover before." Elijah tells Hayley opening the door for her seeing Klaus taking you upstairs. As days passed Elijah went missing making Kol and Rebekah drive down worried about Elijah and missing you.

"Kol! Rebekah!" You squealed happily hugging them both as Hayley watched.

"Nik wasn't lying." Kol muttered hearing the heart beat like Rebekah. You tried helping to find Elijah with Rebekah while Kol was helping Klaus and Hayley was reading though Elijah's journal. Rebekah could see you were missing Elijah as you were wearing his botton ups and you only slept in his bed.

"A church?" You asked sitting in Kol's lap as he braiding your hair as Rebekah had came back from learning a general idea on where Elijah was.

"Yes now where is our wolf?"

"Hayley is upstairs."

To say you were overly happy that Elijah was home would be an understatement after Rebekah hugged him. You ran down jumping into Elijah's arms and he caught you with ease.

"Careful, baby. The little one." Elijah says softly pecking your lips as Hayley watched feeling a little jealous.

"Eli, they are still a little jelly bean." You giggle as Elijah raised an eyebrow and Rebekah rolled her eyes.

"Her and Kol has been calling the baby a jelly bean."

"I see. Has Niklaus been good?"

"Over protective. He hasn't let our poor babe leave the house." Rebekah answered as Elijah let you down.

"Please Rebekah, you and Kol hadn't like her out of your sight. Not since the witch attack." Klaus said stealing you away from Elijah only for Elijah to steal you back.

"Witch attack?"

"Angus bought up a doctor out in the bayou to check on the baby. Y/N thought it was a bad idea, Hayley thought it would be safe."

"Since then Rebekah hadn't let Hayley near her too." Kol says as Rebekah crossed her arms huffing as Elijah chuckled touching you abdomen.

"Protecting Y/N and baby is important so Rebekah did what she had to." Elijah says kissing your head as you giggle. You all settled for the night you and Rebekah slept in Elijah's bed that night with on Elijah and Rebekah cuddled into his side.

Hayley came down the next morning finding you in Elijah's lap as he reading with Klaus and Kol sitting on the couch reading also. You layed your head on Elijah's shoulder listening to his soft voice reading to you and Rebekah came in.

"Is this the first thing you do when we are all back together. Vampire book club?" Rebekah questioned as Hayley watched catch a glimpse into an everyday look in the Mikaelson home.

"Reading edifies the mind dear sister. Isn't that right Elijah?"

"Yes that's quite right Niklaus." Elijah answered waking you a bit making Elijah kiss your forehead as an apology. Hayley noticed the dead girl on the coffee table.

"And this nonsense?"

"This our brothers form of an apology." Elijah said helping you stad up from his lap as you gently rubbing your belly headed off to the kitchen.

"Nik and I thought that our big brother was hungry after his time in a coffin."

"And I informed my baby brothers that forgiveness can not be bought." Elijah said looking at Rebekah.

"Well she is staining a 200 year old carpet."

"Oh yes....that she is." Elijah muttered getting up to check on you as Kol and Klaus smirked looking at Hayley. They noticed the look in Hayley's eyes as she wasn't the first woman to fall for Elijah at first sight.

"Goodmorning, little wife." Elijah said watching you take out some yogurt which he took over getting you a bowl.

"Morning, I missed you."

"And I you. Here eat baby." Elijah says giving you the bowl of yogurt and fresh fruit. You blinked see Rebekah drag the dead body through the kitchen.

"Who do we have to kill?"

"Probably no one!" Elijah called out to her as you looked at Elijah with a raised eyebrow.

"Alright, potentially everyone." Elijah muttered as Hayley walked in seeing you sitting on a stool and Elijah behind you hands on your abdomen.

"So.... this miracle baby thing, how are you going to unlink her from Sophie?"

"I have a plan. Niklaus is doing his own plan with Kol." Elijah said kissing your head taking your dirty bowl and Kol decided to cling to you.

"What plan?"

"A plan to take the Quarter from Marcel. Then give our pregnant Queen the castle she deserves." Kol says smirking as you laughed lightly and Elijah smirked. Hayley was sure how to handle the Mikaelsons while you seemed to handle them perfectly well.

"This was another home of ours?" You asked Rebekah walking into the Abattoir with her getting a few stares from some vampires. Rebekah found it adorable how in awe you were.

"Yes before Mikael drove us away." Rebekah said watching you stand in front of the fountain rubbing your bumb.

"You think the baby will like here?"

"Yes, sweet love." Rebekah said kissing your temple when Kol joined you both standing behind your resting his chin on your shoulder.

"Elijah made sure your bedroom was in the middle of ours so you wouldn't have to go far."

"That's sweet of him." You said leaning back against Kol and both vampires moved you three to the den. You sat leaning back against Kol as Rebekah lay in front of you on the couch with you showing your favorite Disney movie.

You three fell asleep like this and how Klaus and Elijah found you three. Elijah gently covered you three with a blanket and gently rubbed your baby bump then sat in a chair and Klaus taking another. It was nice to enjoy the peace while they could while keeping an eye on you and soon to be newest Mikaelson.

#rere's stories #mikaelson x reader #elijah mikaelson imagine #klaus mikaelson imagine #kol mikaelson imagine #rebekah mikaelson imagine #mikaelson family x reader

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bitsandbobsofwriting · 3 years

Text

Twin!AU Part 2:

Gwaine is ecstatic to find that he’s technically dating Royalty (Arthur still isn’t best pleased), and Merlin begins to recover his true heritage.

Part 1 Part 3

Gwaine stares at the two of them open-mouthed from where he sits on the edge of the bed.

Re-telling the story had re-ignited Merlin and Arthur’s anger, but they do a good job of keeping it in as Gwaine tries to process that his partner and The Prince of Camelot are... twins. Gods this sounds like something out of one of Leon’s ridiculous fiction books: long lost royal twins and insane Kings and emotional reunions with long-dead, ghostly relatives. But to be fair, Gwaine has found that in all of his travels, Camelot has definitely been the weirdest place he’s ever been. Or perhaps it’s just the people.

He finally shuts his mouth, nodding slowly as he takes a deep breath and stands. He wipes his sweaty hands down his trousers briefly before stepping forward and pulling Merlin into a hug, making pointed eye-contact with Arthur over his shoulder. The only thing that Gwaine and Arthur had ever agreed on was that Merlin’s safety was of the upmost importance; this whole ordeal had just strengthened that agreement:

“That’s... you guys have had one hell of a day, huh? You said Gaius, and your mo- Hunith, and that bloody Dragon knew?”

Merlin tenses in his arms before pulling away, and Arthur’s expression turns stormy once more as he nods. Gwaine frowns, keeping one hand on Merlin’s shoulder as the servant (Prince?) responds bitterly:

“Hmm. We haven’t spoken to Kilgharrah or Hunith yet, but they’ll be getting a bloody mouthful from me, when we get time.”

Gwaine nods sympathetically, muttering his reply more to himself than the others:

“...Bastards.”

Arthur nods, but takes a deep breath as he puts his own hand on Merlin’s other shoulder:

“Agreed, but we’ve been gone too long; Leon’s been dealing with the council for at least half an hour and we need to go explain things sooner rather than later. News of my- The King’s arrest will spread like wildfire once it gets out.”

Merlin sighs, sagging slightly where he stands, and Gwaine steps even closer to him, moving his arm to be over his shoulder in a side-hug:

“Hey, I’m sure Arthur and Leon can deal with this if you’d rather hide out in here for a little peace. We could always set Morgana loose on the council, she’s bound to whip them into shape.”

(Yes, this fic is ignoring the timeline both in terms of the knights AND Morgana. She knows about Merlin’s magic, and Merlin, Arthur, and Gwaine (and Lance) know about hers.)

Merlin lets out a quiet huff of laughter, leaning into Gwaine’s side slightly as he looks up:

“No, I can’t. Arthur’s right, we need to sort this out sooner rather than later. I’d be perfectly content to not tell anyone about who I really am-”

Gwaine raises an eyebrow and Arthur narrows his eyes, ready to protest, but is interrupted by Merlin’s loud continuation before he can say anything:

“-but I know neither of you will let me get away with that so... here we are.”

Arthur nods decisively and Gwaine hides a grin, clearly thinking about how he’s technically courting a Prince. Arthur rolls his eyes at Gwaine’s expression, a small part of him cursing himself for letting the drunkard stay in Camelot, but the rest of him is grateful, knowing that Merlin needed more than Arthur on his side, especially now he had lost, or partially lost, Gaius, Kilgharrah, and Hunith.

The blonde Prince lets out a deep sigh, looking towards the door despondently as he decides that they really can’t leave Leon to fend for himself any longer. The three of them make their way from the room wordlessly, but Arthur halts the group again at the end of the corridor, turning to Gwaine with a thoughtful frown:

“Go find Elyan, Percival, Lancelot, Morgana, and Gwen. Gaius is a member of the council so he should already be there but double check he isn’t in his chambers, and Leon may have fetched Morgana himself, but I don’t know.”

Gwaine turns to look at Merlin and speaks quietly:

“What should I tell them?”

Merlin’s frown deepens and he glances at Arthur, but he just shrugs slightly, giving the choice to Merlin:

“They’ll all find out in the meeting anyway, so it might be best to pre-warn them so they aren’t blind-sided. Tell them the truth, I was born with magic, and am Arthur’s long lost twin brother, confirmed by Igraine’s ghost and then Gaius.”

He looks bewildered as he says it, almost as though he doesn’t fully believe it quite yet; Arthur nods in agreement and continues his instructions to Gwaine:

“Have everyone meet us there as soon as possible, I want to get this sorted now and I’m going to need as many people on my side as I can get.”

Gwaine nods seriously, pressing a brief kiss against Merlin’s forehead before rushing off in the other direction, hurriedly knocking on the knights’ doors down the corridor as Merlin and Arthur turn the corner.

They make quick work of the journey back through the castle, stopping just outside the doors to the Throne Room with sweaty palms and shivering lungs. The two of them listen to the annoyed sounding murmurs coming from inside for a few moments and the guards try not to give them odd looks as Arthur glances to Merlin—stood at his side instead of behind him—with a fond, though nervous smile. He puts his hand on the other man’s shoulder:

“We’re about to cause one hell of an argument, you ready?”

Merlin takes a deep, calming breath, smiling briefly as he hears Leon pleading with the council to be patient for just a little longer, looking to Arthur with anxious eyes and pale cheeks:

“Yeah. Come on, I think Leon might hurl himself from the window if we make him wait much longer.”

Arthur chuckles quietly, and the guards quickly divert their gazes when he looks back to the doors, taking one last fortifying lungful before walking forward and pushing them open with a bang, Merlin at his side.

The room goes suddenly quiet and Leon visibly relaxes when they walk in, bowing briefly before stepping aside and allowing Arthur to take his place in front of the thrones. There is no table in the Throne Room, so the council stand gathered in the middle, staring up at Arthur incredulously as he runs a hand down the arm of The King’s throne absent-mindedly. He was grateful to see Gaius present, despite not being in any sort of mood to talk to the man; he holds a smirk in when he sees several of the councilmen raise eyebrows at Merlin, still stood at his side when he technically shouldn’t even be in the room. There was even further incredulity as Sir Leon moves to stand guard behind him, as opposed to The Prince.

One of the Lords nearer the front of the small crowd finally breaks the tense silence:

“My Lord, what is the meaning of this? We were told it was an emergency, that we were meeting in the Throne Room as opposed to the council room, and were then made to wait for almost a candle-mark. The King has yet to arrive, what is going on?

Arthur turns to look at them with a raised eyebrow, back straight and face impassive:

“Patience, Lord Angar, The King will not be joining us, though we are waiting for a few more-”

The doors open before he finishes and every head turns to see the remaining knights, Gwen, and Lady Morgana enter, led by a serious looking Gwaine. All of them give Merlin a small smile and a bewildered nod, bar Morgana, who looks nothing short of furious as she moves to stand protectively at his side, glaring at any councilman who dares to look their way. The knights spread out, standing to attention with hands on their swords around the edge of the room, whilst Gwen moves to stand against the wall behind Morgana, Merlin, and Leon. Only Gwaine, Leon, and Lancelot are in full armour, but all the knights are armed and angry looking.

The councilmen, looking more confused and annoyed, look back to a still impassive Arthur. He fixes a short glare on each and every one of them before turning to face them properly and speaking confidently, his tone inviting no argument:

“The King has been arrested and confined to his chambers for the murder of the late Queen, and gross crimes against the Kingdom.-”

The room immediately explodes into angry and incredulous yelling, and Merlin flinches away from the sudden noise. Morgana squeezes his wrist comfortingly, knowing that it was only going to get worse when the rest of the truth is revealed, and Leon steps out from behind him, moving to be at his side with his sword halfway out of it’s sheath.

The other knights and Gwen all tense in place and Gwaine has to resist the urge to run to Merlin, knowing that the council’s disdain for both him personally and his courtship with Merlin would just make things worse. Arthur rolls his eyes at the cacophony of noise and slams the metal part of his gauntlet against the arm of the throne with a bang:

“ENOUGH! You’ll find, gentlemen, that remaining calm and quiet will make this conversation much easier.-”

He glowers at everyone until the hall is drowning in another tense silence before taking a deep breath, forcing himself to keep his hands from fidgeting as he continues:

“-It has come to my attention, through the Witch Morgause-”

A few murmurs of dissent go around the room, but they quickly cease when even the ever-calm Sir Leon begins to glare at people:

“-and further confirmation by The Court Physician, that King Uther used sorcery, against The late Queen’s wishes, in order to conceive a child. He was warned of the dangers, and went ahead with his plan anyway, which resulted in not only the birth of twins, one of whom was magical, but the death of the Queen.-”

At the mention of Gaius, the elderly Physician gets a few confused glances, and even more glares; no one likes being kept out of the loop, especially when everyone there is a Lord except Gaius. At the mention of twins, everyone’s attention is abruptly back on Arthur, and the knights have to resist the urge to look at Merlin, in fear of giving anything away too early.

Before he can continue, Arthur is interrupted by Lord Angar again:

“My Lord, I very much doubt the validity of anything you have just said, but either way, is this really the sort of meeting to be had with servants, a Lady, and your peasant knights present? I know you’re oddly fond of them but-”

Arthur, Leon, and Morgana have to resist the urge to punch the Lord in the face at his words. Gwen, Percival, Lancelot, and Elyan manage to keep their faces neutral, though Gwaine glowers openly. The knight does however hold in his smirk when he notices the fury on Arthur’s face. The Prince takes a threatening step forward but doesn’t lower himself from the dais as he speaks, his tone cold:

“Lady Morgana, Guinevere, and Merlin have proven to be better advisors to me than you ever have Lord Angar; Sirs Percival, Elyan, Lancelot, and Gwaine are amongst the best knights this Kingdom has ever seen, and you will show every one of them the respect they deserve, or you will excuse yourself from this room, and this council. Am I understood?”

The red of Angar’s face gets more severe as he splutters:

“My Lord you can not be-”

“Am I understood?!-”

Arthur’s voice cuts through everyone in the room, despite it’s low volume, and where Leon hides his proud smirk, Morgana doesn’t hold back at all, especially when Angar takes a deep breath and nods his purple head in embarrassment. The rest of the council seems to finally have grasped the seriousness and severity of the situation and play close attention to Arthur as he continues, no one daring to interrupt again:

“-This information changes everything we know about sorcery; my father started a genocide against an innocent group of people because he was too much of a coward to admit his mistakes and refused to take the rightful blame for killing his wife. I will not stand for this, and things will change very soon. If you are not outraged at the unjustness of his actions, at the death and suffering he has caused our people, the people we are meant to serve and protect, then you are more than welcome to leave. Meetings to organise and begin the process of legalising magic will start early tomorrow, and I will be accepting no excuses, this is non-negotiable. As for the matter of my twin brother...-”

Arthur glances back to Merlin, and at his slight nod, Arthur shoots him a small smile and holds his hand out to him. Merlin walks slowly forward to the sound of the council gasping and muttering to themselves, Leon stays barely a hair’s breadth behind him with his sword fully drawn:

“-may I present Prince Myrddin Pendragon.-”

Lord Angar, among others, looks seconds away from bursting once more, so Arthur hurries to continue, though still manages to keep his voice forceful and confident:

“-This information was unconfirmed for both of us until around a candle-mark ago; I have never believed in fate before now, though I think we can all be grateful that The Prince managed to return to Camelot all on his own.-”

He settles his hand on Merlin’s shoulder, but doesn’t pull him forward too much, understanding that his serv- his brother, probably wants to be as far away from the centre of attention as he can get.

“-I want him presented to The Kingdom and crowned before the month is out, this matter is also non-negotiable. Any questions?”

Lord Angar looks desperate to start yelling, but he also seems to have finally accepted that his influence over this room, and now the council in general, was tenuous at best. One of the newer councilmen, a young Lord who Arthur has a slowly growing respect for, steps forward slightly, bowing his head before meeting Arthur’s gaze and quietly asking:

“And The King, My Lord? Should we plan for your coronation as well?”

It was clear that the question was unexpected and Arthur frowns at the realisation that he had... arrested The King. Uther may have deserved it, but Arthur couldn’t bring himself to order his execution, and knowing Merlin he’d argue against it endlessly anyway.

Morgana senses Arthur’s hesitation after a second or two, thankfully before the council becomes restless and annoyed:

“You could always take over as Regent whilst we sort all of this out; that way we can revisit the issue of actually crowning you King later. Though we can’t confine Uther to his chambers forever, we’ll have to deal with him at some point.”

Arthur hums and nods, giving her a thankful smile before looking back to the young Lord:

“Lady Morgana’s suggestion is sound. I’ll take over as Regent,-”

He nods at Geoffrey of Monmouth, who takes a note down in the giant leather tome he perpetually has under his arm. If Arthur thinks about it for too long, he might come to the conclusion that the older man looks proud:

“-and we can revisit the issue when the dust has settled.-”

He rubs his eyes tiredly, as though the last day or so of drama had finally landed with it’s full weight upon his shoulders:

“-I think it goes without saying that, for now, none of this is to leave the room. I trust only Sir Leon with assigning who is to guard The King,-”

He glances to Leon, who nods seriously at his words:

“-keep it discreet Leon. I want to keep as much of this under wraps for as long as possible to avoid public panic; this is going to be a lot of hard work gentlemen, but I mean to see it through with or without your support, the choice is yours. The first meeting will take place in the normal council room tomorrow, two candle-marks after dawn. You’re all dismissed.”

The councilmen—including Gaius, after he sends a forlorn look Merlin’s way—slowly trickle out of the room, some looking angry, most looking resigned, but a few looking rather content, happy even (Arthur and Morgana take mental notes of who is who). The door shuts quietly behind the last man, leaving only Arthur, Merlin, Morgana, Gwen, and the knights left, all of whom understanding that the dismissal did not include them. Arthur lets out a deep sigh when the room quietens, looking back up to Merlin with a tired smile and even more tired eyes:

“Ready brother?”

He quirks an amused, but hugely pleased eyebrow as he says it and Merlin grins, rolling his eyes fondly:

“Not even close, but that’s never stopped me before.”

Arthur chuckles as the others all move closer, an odd mix of exasperated, because Merlin turning out to be Arthur’s long lost magical twin is exactly the sort of insanely dramatic thing that’s likely to happen in Camelot, and hesitant, because... how do they even deal with that? Other than with a great deal of confusion?

Gwen is the first to reach him, pulling Merlin into a tight hug that is very well received:

“I’m sorry Merlin, I can’t imagine how difficult this must be, and I’m so terribly sorry for all the horrible things I’ve said about magic.-”

She pulls back but doesn’t let go of his shoulders, staring up at him with tears in her eyes and a desperate look on her face:

“-You know that we all love, and trust you, don’t you??”

Merlin rolls his eyes fondly and pulls her back into a hug with a wide smile on his face:

“Of course I know that, I love you too Gwen. And don’t worry about it, you believed what you were taught, it’s not your fault.”

She looks like she wants to argue again when she pulls back, but Merlin just pats her cheek softly and gives her a warning glare. She huffs but dutifully steps back, allowing Gwaine to take her place as the rest of the knights pat his shoulders and run soft hands through his hair as way of apology and comfort.

Merlin smiles at them, but sobers quickly when a particularly horrible thought re-occurs to him. Gwaine squeezes his shoulder in question and Arthur furrows his brows:

“Merls?”

Merlin just sighs and leans into Gwaine’s side slightly:

“I need to talk to my... Hunith. And Kilgharrah, but I really don’t have the energy for him right now.”

Arthur nods in understanding, thinking for a moment before looking up to the huddle of knights (most of whom look marginally confused at the mention of whoever the hell Kilgharrah is):

“Percival, Lancelot, you know where Ealdor is?-”

The two of them nod, remembering the route from visiting with Merlin a few months ago:

“-Leave at dawn, take an extra horse and bring Hunith back with you. With all that’s going on, me and Merlin can’t afford to be gone for even a day and it’s a four days’ journey there and back.”

They nod, but Lancelot quickly responds with a quiet:

“We can leave now if you like, it’s not like the journey will take much prep. What should we tell her?”

He looks to Merlin, who frowns slightly as he replies, his words slow:

“Don’t tell her anything, Arthur and I need to have that conversation with her. She’ll panic when you turn up without me so feel free to tell her that we’re all alive and uninjured and not in any danger but... just don’t tell her the real reason.”

Their smiles are understanding, and just a little pitying, but they turn and march off the moment Arthur nods at them in approval, determined to do everything they can to make things go smoothly and easily.

It’s Elyan that breaks the now slightly uncomfortable silence a few moments later:

“So... do we still call you Merlin? Or is it Prince Myrddin, My Lord?”

Merlin grimaces the moment Elyan mentions what would soon be his official title, and the others grin at his reaction, chuckling as he runs a hand through his hair:

“No one’s called me Myrddin since I was about five, and I think it would be a little odd if that changed now, so Merlin is just fine.”

The others nod in agreement, though Arthur sighs as he responds, faux annoyance in his tone:

“Paperwork’s going to be bloody confusing.”

It takes Merlin all of three hours to figure out that Arthur had subtly assigned him a constant guard. The guard consists of Sirs Leon and Gwaine, so he isn’t... complaining, per se, but it's annoying, to escape company for a quick piss to find his partner and friend casually hovering right outside the door.

But to be fair, Merlin only notices when his brain registers that Gwaine isn’t there, and how odd that is. Whilst Merlin is interrogating Leon, Arthur is cornering Gwaine in a seldom used corridor, though the rambunctious knight beats Arthur to the punch:

“I think we’ve been here before, Princess.”

Arthur raises an amused eyebrow at Gwaine’s teasing grin, before sagging slightly in place and sighing. Gwaine sobers immediately, putting a hand on the blonde’s shoulder and trying to meet his gaze:

“Arthur?”

Arthur sighs again, looking up to him with tired eyes:

“This goes without saying, but Merlin.... he is everything to me. As far as I’m concerned he and Morgana are my only family, though I suppose I believed that before all of... this; but that’s besides the point. I know you won’t ever mean to hurt him, and I do trust you, as... difficult as that is to admit, but I need to you understand, Gwaine,-”

Gwaine nods in understanding and agreement:

“I do understand, Arthur. He’s everything to me as well.”

Arthur shakes his head and steps back, bringing himself to his full height:

“No, you don’t. He is my brother, and he was taken from me. He has suffered, more than I think either of us will ever know, and that stops, this Kingdom is now being built for him. But I would burn it all down if it would make him happy. Everything is for him, for Morgana, for my family. Do you understand?”

Gwaine nods, only once, before holding his hand out. Neither his hand nor his voice shakes as he responds:

“I’ll pour the oil, you light the match.”

Arthur pauses for a moment, as if trying to gauge his own trust in the other man, before clasping Gwaine’s hand strongly.

The seriousness of the moment ends when Gwaine lifts his other hand to tug sharply at Arthur’s hair before ducking under his arm and skipping down the corridor towards where they’d left Merlin and Leon. Arthur just huffs and follows him, definitely not sulking.

Merlin turns to them both with a scowl when they enter, immediately taking note of the residual gravity in the tightness of Gwaine’s shoulders:

“And what have you two been doing all of sudden?”

Leon bites his lip to stop himself from snorting in amusement, but fails miserably the moment Gwaine shrugs and opens his mouth:

“I don’t know, some sort of mutual arson pact I think.”

Arthur rolls his eyes first at Gwaine subtly, then at Merlin, far more obviously:

“Honestly Merlin, we’ve spent practically every second with you all day, you can’t go a few minutes without us?”

Merlin huffs noisily and turns around to grab Leon’s wrist, dragging him from the room and not looking over his shoulder as he snarks:

“Leon’s always been my favourite knight anyway.”

Gwaine and Arthur just look outraged, both speaking at the same time:

“Hang on, what about me?!”

They fix each other with narrow-eyed glares before shoving each other childishly, fighting over who could shoulder their way through the door first.

The next conversation, a few days later, is... a lot harder.

With Kilgharrah’s odd ability to seemingly know about everything that happens in Camelot, Merlin couldn’t get away with putting off speaking to him for long, especially with how The Warlock could feel the way he was angrily clomping about in his cave.

The short journey down through the dungeons, made by Arthur, Merlin, and Gwaine, was made mostly in silence. The oppressive feeling of Kilgharrah’s mishmash of emotions bouncing around in Merlin’s head made focusing on any other strain of thought impossible, and Gwaine and Arthur were too busy stewing in their own anger and worry to want to disturb him.

They pause momentarily outside the large iron gates leading to Kilgharrah’s lair, none of them looking to each other as they take deep breaths in an attempt to gather some bravery. Arthur and Gwaine have never said anything, but Kilgharrah terrifies the shit out of both of them; Merlin normally takes these trips alone—Arthur and Gwaine’s fear wasn’t difficult to pick up on and he never wanted to make them uncomfortable—allowing the other two their blissfully ignorant beauty sleep as he sneaks away to argue with a Dragon. But that’s obviously not in the cards today; no way either of them would let him face this alone.

Kilgharrah is waiting for them when they push open the gate and stalk out onto the ledge, and he raises himself to his full height, sparing barely a glance in Arthur’s direction and sparing Gwaine even less as he stares at Merlin with aloof, golden eyes:

“You have discovered who you are, Young Warlock, at long-”

Merlin interrupts him with a scowl and a held up hand:

“You had no right,-”

His voice is echoingly deadly, and the two knights find themselves being reminded of Merlin’s seemingly endless power. Merlin being angry at Gaius was... was like a child being heartbroken at a parent’s betrayal, which it was in some ways. But Merlin being angry at Kilgharrah... that was much more; like a God being angry at a creature of His own design. Merlin stands before The Great Beast, centuries old, full of unimaginable knowledge, and he stands tall, and proud, and angry.

“-no right, to keep this from me. You claim that no one can know their destiny, and then proceed to prattle on about mine in riddles. In my search for answers, you gave me more questions. In my search for comfort, you gave me fear. In my begging for help, you gave me nothing but pain. I’m done, you’re just as bad as Uther.”

Kilgharrah bristles, flaring his arched nostrils as his furious reaction ripples across his hardened scales:

“How dare you compare me to-”

Merlin interrupts him with a yell, his voice growling in it’s reverberation, a hidden power more ancient than the mountains themselves echoing in his words:

“You separated my brother from me and you had no right! You whine about how Uther took your kin from you, but you took my kin from me! You suffered so you made it your greatest goal to make everyone else suffer just as much. You are cruel, and cowardly, and I am done. You will not manipulate me anymore, you will not lie to me, or mislead me. You tried to get me to kill the boy, but I didn’t, and I forgave you. You tried to get me to kill Morgana, but I didn’t, and I forgave you. You keep trying to get me to free you, but I won’t. You will rot in here until you can tell me the truth, a truth I deem worthy, on why you kept my heritage from me.”

He doesn’t wait for a response, turning on his heel and marching out of the gate without another word, Gwaine following closely behind. Arthur stays, just for a few moments, though with Merlin’s sudden display of power over the beast before him he finds himself significantly less frightened:

“He’s right, you know. Every one of my brother’s successes has come to pass because he ignored you. You have haunted him every step of the way, causing nothing but grief; you should be grateful, Merlin has offered you a chance of redemption that I would not have.”

Arthur doesn’t wait for a response either, jogging up the steps to catch up with the other two just exiting the dungeons.

Merlin doesn’t ask what was said, though Gwaine does raise an eyebrow in The Prince Regent’s direction; Arthur gives him a short nod, acknowledging Gwaine’s need to know, need to keep a tight hold on everything so he could keep Merlin safe and happy. Or as happy as he can keep him in this situation. Gwaine relaxes when he understands Arthur’s promise to tell him later, trusting the blonde to have Merlin’s best interests at heart.

The slight relaxation doesn’t last long however; Merlin heads up through the castle towards the large doors leading into the courtyard. The other two follow him, knowing that the younger man likely needs some fresh air to recover from the pressing darkness and power and heaviness of Kilgharrah’s presence, but they quickly tense when he suddenly halts on the steps just outside the doors.

When they peer over his shoulder, they are abruptly reminded of the amount of time that had passed since Percival and Lancelot had left. And apparently returned.

Hunith dismounts her horse quickly, her mouth stretching into a relieved smile as she runs towards him. Merlin doesn’t move, just stares at her with blank eyes, and Gwaine’s eyes shift nervously between the two of them. Hunith’s relief is quickly dropped when she notices Merlin’s non-reaction, and she slows just before she ascends the steps, looking up at Merlin with her brow creased in worry:

“Son?”

Merlin’s expression hardens; his hands clench and his eyes and tone turn icy as he responds:

“I’m not your son.”

END of part 2!!!

Sorry to be a teeeaaasssee :))))) (Not really)

I’ve recently got a BUNCH more hours at work (which is like... good for me personally but not so great for my social life or hobbies lol) so things might take a little longer to come out from now, but I promise this blog is still ultra active and going!! I’ll just only have time to write in the evenings nowadays.

I’m not sure when part 3 will be, but it’s in the works and won’t be too long!! Two weeks at absolute MOST I imagine :D

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notsoheadless · 3 years

Text

Remember Longcat, Jane? I remember Longcat. Fuck the picture on this page, I want to talk about Longcat. Memes were simpler back then, in 2006. They stood for something. And that something was nothing. Memes just were. “Longcat is long.” An undeniably true, self-reflexive statement. Water is wet, fire is hot, Longcat is long. Memes were floating signifiers without signifieds, meaningful in their meaninglessness. Nobody made memes, they just arose through spontaneous generation; Athena being birthed, fully formed, from her own skull. You could talk about them around the proverbial water cooler, taking comfort in their absurdity. “Hey, Johnston, have you seen the picture of that cat? They call it Longcat because it’s long!” “Ha ha, sounds like good fun, Stevenson! That reminds me, I need to show you this webpage I found the other day; it contains numerous animated dancing hamsters. It’s called — you’ll never believe this — hamsterdance!” And then Johnston and Stevenson went on to have a wonderful friendship based on the comfortable banality of self-evident digitized animals. But then 2007 came, and along with it came I Can Has, and everything was forever ruined. It was hubris, Jane. We did it to ourselves. The minute we added written language beyond the reflexive, it all went to shit. Suddenly memes had an excess of information to be parsed. It wasn’t just a picture of a cat, perhaps with a simple description appended to it; now the cat spoke to us via a written caption on the picture itself. It referred to an item of food that existed in our world but not in the world of the meme, rupturing the boundary between the two. The cat wanted something. Which forced us to recognize that what it wanted was us, was our attention. WE are the cheezburger, Jane, and we always were. But by the time we realized this, it was too late. We were slaves to the very memes that we had created. We toiled to earn the privilege of being distracted by them. They fiddled while Rome burned, and we threw ourselves into the fire so that we might listen to the music. The memes had us. Or, rather, they could has us. And it just got worse from there. Soon the cats had invisible bicycles and played keyboards. They gained complex identities, and so we hollowed out our own identities to accommodate them. We prayed to return to the simple days when we would admire a cat for its exceptional length alone, the days when the cat itself was the meme and not merely a vehicle for the complex memetic text. And the fact that this text was so sparse, informal, and broken ironically made it even more demanding. The intentional grammatical and syntactical flaws drew attention to themselves, making the meme even more about the captioning words and less about the pictures. Words, words, words. Wurds werds wordz. Stumbling through a crooked, dead-end hallway of a mangled clause describing a simple feline sentiment was a torture that we inflicted on ourselves daily. Let’s not forget where the word “caption” itself comes from: capio, Latin for both “I understand” and “I capture.” We thought that by captioning the memes, we were understanding them. Instead, our captions allowed them to capture us. The memes that had once been a cure for our cultural ills were now the illness itself. It goes right back to the Phaedrus, really. Think about it. Back in the innocent days of 2006, we naïvely thought that the grapheme had subjugated the phoneme, that the belief in the primacy of the spoken word was an ancient and backwards folly on par with burning witches or practicing phrenology or thinking that Smash Mouth was good. Fucking Smash Mouth. But we were wrong. About the phoneme, I mean. Theuth came to us again, this time in the guise of a grinning grey cat. The cat hungered, and so did Theuth. He offered us an updated choice, and we greedily took it, oblivious to the consequences. To borrow the parlance of a contemporary meme, he baked us a pharmakon, and we eated it. Pharmakon, φάρμακον, the Greek word that means both “poison” and “cure,” but, because of the

limitations of the English language, can only be translated one way or the other depending on the context and the translator’s whims. No possible translation can capture the full implications of a Greek text including this word. In the Phaedrus, writing is the pharmakon that the trickster god Theuth offers, the toxin and remedy in one. With writing, man will no longer forget; but he will also no longer think. A double-edged (s)word, if you will. But the new iteration of the pharmakon is the meme. Specifically, the post-I-Can-Has memescape of 2007 onward. And it was the language that did it, Jane. The addition of written language twisted the remedy into a poison, flipped the pharmakon on its invisible axis. In retrospect, it was in front of our eyes all along. Meme. The noxious word was given to us by who else but those wily ancient Greeks themselves. μίμημα, or mīmēma. Defined as an imitation, a copy. The exact thing Plato warned us against in the Republic. Remember? The simulacrum that is two steps removed from the perfection of the original by the process of — note the root of the word — mimesis. The Platonic ideal of an object is the source: the father, the sun, the ghostly whole. The corporeal manifestation of the object is one step removed from perfection. The image of the object (be it in letters or in pigments) is two steps removed. The author is inferior to the craftsman is inferior to God. Fuck, out of space. Okay, the illustration on page 46 is fucking useless; I’ll see you there. (21) But we’ll go farther than Plato. Longcat, a photograph, is a textbook example of a second-degree mimesis. (We might promote it to the third degree since the image on the internet is a digital copy of the original photograph of the physical cat which is itself a copy of Platonic ideal of a cat (the Godcat, if you will); but this line of thought doesn’t change anything in the argument.) The text-supplemented meme, on the other hand, the captioned cat, is at an infinite remove from the Godcat, the ultimate mimesis, copying the copy of itself eternally, the written language and the image echoing off each other, until it finally loops back around to the truth by virtue of being so far from it. It becomes its own truth, the fidelity of the eternal copy. It becomes a God. Writing itself is the archetypical pharmakon and the archetypical copy, if you’ll come back with me to the Phaedrus (if we ever really left it). Speech is the real deal, Socrates says, with a smug little wink to his (written) dialogic buddy. Speech is alive, it can defend itself, it can adapt and change. Writing is its bastard son, the mimic, the dead, rigid simulacrum. Writing is a copy, a mīmēma, of truth in speech. To return to our analogous issue: the image of the cheezburger cat, the copy of the picture-copy-copy, is so much closer to the original Platonic ideal than the written language that accompanies it. (“Pharmakon” can also mean “paint.” Think about it, Jane. Just think about it.) The image is still fake, but it’s the caption on the cat that is the downfall of the republic, the real fakeness, which is both realer and faker than whatever original it is that it represents. Men and gods abhor the lie, Plato says in sections 382 a and b of the Republic. οὐκ οἶσθα, ἦν δ᾽ ἐγώ, ὅτι τό γε ὡς ἀληθῶς ψεῦδος, εἰ οἷόν τε τοῦτο εἰπεῖν, πάντες θεοί τε καὶ ἄνθρωποι μισοῦσιν; πῶς, ἔφη, λέγεις; οὕτως, ἦν δ᾽ ἐγώ, ὅτι τῷ κυριωτάτῳ που ἑαυτῶν ψεύδεσθαι καὶ περὶ τὰ κυριώτατα οὐδεὶς ἑκὼν ἐθέλει, ἀλλὰ πάντων μάλιστα φοβεῖται ἐκεῖ αὐτὸ κεκτῆσθαι. “Don’t you know,” said I, “that the veritable lie, if the expression is permissible, is a thing that all gods and men abhor?” “What do you mean?” he said. “This,” said I, “that falsehood in the most vital part of themselves, and about their most vital concerns, is something that no one willingly accepts, but it is there above all that everyone fears it.” Man’s worst fear is that he will hold existential falsehood within himself. And the verbal lies that he tells are a copy of this feared dishonesty in the soul.

Plato goes on to elaborate: “the falsehood in words is a copy of the affection in the soul, an after-rising image of it and not an altogether unmixed falsehood.” A copy of man’s false internal copy of truth. And what word does Plato use for “copy” in this sentence? That’s fucking right, μίμημα. Mīmēma. Mimesis. Meme. The new meme is a lie, manifested in (written) words, that reflects the lack of truth, the emptiness, within the very soul of a human. The meme is now not only an inferior copy, it is a deceptive copy. But just wait, it gets better. Plato continues in the very next section of the Republic, 382 c. Sometimes, he says, the lie, the meme, is appropriate, even moral. It is not abhorrent to lie to your enemy, or to your friend in order to keep him from harm. “Does it [the lie] not then become useful to avert the evil—as a medicine?” You get one fucking guess for what Greek word is being translated as “medicine” in this passage. Ding ding motherfucking ding, you got it, φάρμακον, pharmakon. The μίμημα is a φάρμακον, the lie is a medicine/poison, the meme is a pharmakon. But I’m sure that by now you’ve realized the (intentional) mistake in my argument that brought us to this point. I said earlier that the addition of written language to the meme flipped the pharmakon on its axis. But the pharmakon didn’t flip, it doesn’t have an axis. It was always both remedy and poison. The fact that this isn’t obvious to us from the very beginning of the discussion is the fault of, you guessed it, language. The initial lie (writing) clouds our vision and keeps us from realizing how false the second-order lie (the meme) is. The very structure of the lying meme mirrors the structure of the written word that defines and corrupts it. Once you try to identify an “outside” in order to reveal the lie, the whole framework turns itself inside-out so that you can never escape it. The cat wants the cheezburger that exists outside the meme, but only through the meme do we become aware of the presumed existence of the cheezburger — we can’t point out the absurdity of the world of the meme without also indicting our own world. We can’t talk about language without language, we can’t meme without mimesis. Memes didn’t change between ‘06 and ‘07, it was us who changed. Or rather, our understanding of what we had always been changed. The lie became truth, the remedy became the poison, the outside became the inside. Which is to say that the truth became lie, the pharmakon was always the remedy and the poison, and the inside retreated further inside. It all came full circle. Because here’s the secret, Jane. Language ruined the meme, yes. But language itself had already been ruined. By that initial poisonous, lying copy. Writing. The First Meme. Language didn’t attack the meme in 2007 out of spite. It attacked it to get revenge. Longcat is long. Language is language. Pharmakon is pharmakon. The phoneme topples the grapheme, witches ride through the night, our skulls hide secret messages on their surfaces, Smash Mouth is good after all. Hey now, you’re an all-star. Get your game on. Go play.

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sivillanightchief · 3 years

Text

13 WITCH'S RUNES

Rune Number: 1

Rune Name: Sun Think: The brightness of the sun illuminates all things and chases away the shadows of doubt and depression. The sun helps plants grow and flourish. Remember: Positive. Huge manifestations are coming. Powerful, unstoppable, masculine energy is in play. Plenty of attention is being paid to you. Overwhelming growth is happening.

Rune Number: 2

Rune Name: Moon Think: Things are a little bit loony. The moon waxes and wanes in cycles and the full moon looks like a circle in the sky. Remember: Negative. Past cycles are repeating themselves. However, pay attention to your intuition. Your dreams may have special messages for you during this time. There may be much secrecy and mystery going on. The moon can be a motherly, nurturing influence who gives advice that simply must be followed.

Rune Number: 3

Rune Name: Flight Think: Positive. Birds in flight can swiftly travel long distances. Birds call to each other in the trees, communicating and learning the songs of one another. Remember: Communications, news, and travel are in store. Important documents may be signed. Things are moving very fast, so you had better hit the ground running. A bridge has been crossed. There may be distant family or friends to whom a message must be communicated.

Rune Number: 4

Rune Name: Rings Think: Unbreakable bonds are between these rings. Remember: Positive. You can't do it alone, so form the right and lasting alliances. There may be a business partnership, a marriage, or other team formation. Seek out a partnership if none exists in the matter at hand.

Rune Number: 5

Rune Name: Romance Think: The symbol looks like a trillium flower to me, as if offered by some loving romantic. The three loops join together in sharp points, representing the pain of coming together. Remember: Negative. Passion has turned into obsession. Sex and romance are afoot. Diverse people are brought together in one union and so squabbling is natural. People who once had diverging views are now attempting reconciliation, but there may be spite or jaded attitudes all around. There is a raw, magnetic attraction that draws people together.

Rune Number: 6

Rune Name: Woman Think: This rune somewhat resembles a vulva and the crease between two legs. It is also the inversion of the arrow, which is the man rune. Remember: Negative. This represents the passive, receptive energies that are often categorized as feminine. The rune can also represent a literal woman pertaining to the situation. Other feminine characteristics include nurturing, creativity, birth of something new, and cleansing energy.

#witches #witch #witchyvibes #witches of tumblr #witchlife #witchythings #witchcraft #witchblr #witchy #magick #witch runes #beginner witch

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randomsnakesimp · 3 years

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Okay. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna take the leap and say: Phobos is the victim (sorta).

Quick disclaimer: I am going to abuse plot holes and cartoon logic for my cause in a very nitpicky way. If you dislike that, I can completely understand, and I hope this warning will save you a lot of reading.

Also, this won't go into just headcanon territory, I'll put those in a separate post. Everything here I'll try to keep based on actual information from the comics and what I made of them.

That said...

Let's take a look at this scene:

(for a quick translation of the important part, the mother says: "No, Phobos, Meridian is meant for your sister. That's the law. The crown is hers.)

What we can see here are a few very important things:

1. Phobos is at most 5 years older than Elyon.

2. The name "Phobos" is not an edgy nickname he gave himself. Five-year-olds don't go around calling themselves Phobos. So his parents, for some reason, gave him that name.

3. His mother is very adamant about him not even touching the crown and reminding him of his sisters' birthright.

So, after establishing what I would call more or less facts, what else can, relatively savely, be deduced here?

- Since Elyon never noticed anything weird about herself, she can't have aged slower than earth children. So neither can Phobos. This would mean that, as she was kidnapped after her mothers death as a baby, he would have been five. So, he either tried his best to rule at age five, or the council we see as Elyon rules stepped in for him for a while

- this would then mean two things: we need an explanation as to why Miriadel, Alborn and Galgheita fled explicitly from Phobos (I'll give my explanation a bit further down) and second, Phobos' reign of terror wasn't even thirteen years, and a lot of that time he was a child/teen and could not even have been mature enough to rule.

- This also means that Kandrakar pulled up the veil when Phobos was at most five, likely younger, and that the so called "Seal of Phobos" also existed at that time, as both the veil and the seal are seen in the flashback depicting Elyons abduction. For Kandrakar, this, too, I will try to explain soon, but as for the seal, I find it most plausible that the theory @ror-witch used in their fanfiction, of the seal being a royal heirloom and named after each ruler, is true.

- His and his mother's relationship was neither as bad as some assumptions go, but neither was it that good, probably, or at least it wasn't in his perception. See how his memory is of her cradling the baby the entire time and talking more about his sisters birthright than about what he has/can do? Yes, it's only a short memory, but I think it's clear that it's a summary of what he remembers of his mother.

- Phobos desire to rule Meridian does not stem from something deeply sinister, but rather from a childish spite. Five year old Phobos probably just wanted the crown cause it looked nice and shiny, and he was fabulous even back then, but after his mothers words, he sulked and decided to show her. That's his motivation.

So, now let's go a bit further and look at some other things we can deduce from the rest of the comics:

- Phobos has a huge dungeon, a wall of roses that turn people into more roses if they touch it and his plan for the annihilation of Meridian is "Well, Cedric and I hide in the castle and...we'll see". He hates the people of Meridian, but he doesn't seem to have it in him to directly attack anyone until Elyon is there and even here, when he has her knocked out in their duel or locked up as Endarno, he isn't unnecessarily cruel. He's not evil in nature, he's more of a very dangerous child throwing tantrums. ( Cedric is kinda similar, and they both start losing it toward the coronation, but I sincerely believe that before that, there would have been a chance for them to come around )

- The only person he ever tortures or even hurts directly is Cedric. Because one, he likes Cedric and so gets more extreme emotions around him, and two, Cedric never says anything, and just plays it of afterwards, so I don't know if he even fully realizes what he's doing, like a child hitting someone. If Cedric ever just said "Stop it, you're hurting me", Phobos would probably need an entire week to process that input.

- Phobos is VERY reclusive, and he doesn't want anyone to have even pictures of him, and while that could be a God complex, I get some highly insecure vibes out of it, in a vulnerable narcissist kinda way, in that he is massively overcompensating. I gotta admit, though, that I cannot put my finger on why, so maybe take this with a grain of salt and decide for yourself if you agree.

- Kandrakar never orders the guardians to help Meridian in any way, just to make sure nothing oozes out. They likely pulled up the veil for their own protection, so Phobos wouldn't be able to spread far enough to become a real danger, rather than to protect innocent people, as clearly the Meridian people mean shit to them

- while the guards are widely feared in Meridian, Cedric seems to be viewed as... not very frightening or important, as some random merchant feels comfortable clinging to his cape (and rightfully so, apparently, as Cedric just tells him to piss off and doesn't care any further). This further leads me to believe that Cedric is rather unhealthy devoted to Phobos and his tantrums while their shitty ass reign leaves a lot of free space for unsuited people to become guards and tyranize the people.

- the King and Queen seem to have died in rapid succession, and shortly after the scene shown above, yet she looks perfectly healthy in that scene.

Now, what do I make of all this?

I believe the line of events to be as follows:

I don't think Phobos traveling back in time is a viable theory for mainly two reasons: I think his mother would be less chill around him if she saw/heard about his reign herself, and I believe that it would have been mentioned somewhere along the way if that were the case. Instead, what I believe happened is that the oracle had a vague vision of Phobos nearly taking over Kandrakar. Deciding in their random mood swings that today was a day of action, they had the people of Meridian informed that the next male born to a queen would become a dangerous tyrant, pulled up a veil and set their guardians to make sure nothing oozed out.

The veil, of course, made the people of Meridian feel trapped and a horror of the unborn prince who would ruin their lives spread.

So, when Weira gave birth to that prince, a full blown panic spread, so much so that she, in a fit of hysterical emotion, named him after that boust of panic. Of course, people tried to kill the prince basically from the moment he was born, and he was met with barely concealed resentment.

Soon after, Weira and her husband died - whether they were killed, or fell ill, or died in an accident, I have no idea, but I wouldn't completely rule out an assassination either aimed at Phobos and accidentally hitting them or the strain making at least one of them fall terminally ill.

Either the people rioted and Phobos' magic panic reaction or the leftover loyal guard was enough to fight them back, or the people succumbed to their fate at this point, slumping into the state of despair seen throughout the comics. But in the end, five year old Phobos had to be handed the throne. I assume the council still had some say at this point, but he did manage to get all pictures of him destroyed - this order was likely due to the fact that they were mostly caricatures.

So he grew up with the very volatile combination of a shitton of power and no one able to tell him if he was being stupid on one hand, and feeling unloved and unwanted on the other. He withdrew, likely also due to countless assassination attempts or things he perceived as such, and went into a negative feedback loop of being unable to mature and take responsibility, therefore being a shit ruler, therefore being hated, therefore having no one to help him, therefore being unable to face and grow from his mistakes, rinse and repeat.

So, Meridian was plunged into chaos, yet he seemed fine more or less just sitting in the new playroom he made for himself in the gardens, sporadically giving out an order or two and having generally no idea about anything that didn't directly concern him.

Enter Elyon. Now, she send him of the rails, as she was a danger to his lifestyle AND a reminder of all the sentiments he'd be drowning in alcohol if he wasn't too much of a recluse and education denier to know of that option. He doesn't even try. He just lets Cedric, the one person he trusts, handle her, like everything else, and somewhat plays along sometimes, when he feels like it. This is where he passes the point of no return and starts actually trying to kill people, culminating in him creating an army to wipe out Meridian. I still believe that even at this point, in his head, what he's doing is just throwing a nice toy out the window just so his sister won't have it.

#w.i.t.c.h. comics #w.i.t.c.h.#w.i.t.c.h. theory #prince phobos #Kandrakar is a shitshow

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girl4pay · 3 years

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This might be a big question but what would be the ideal way for the raven king to have ended in ur opinion. Bc it doesn’t make sense as is and thematically falls apart I feel but I can never quite figure out what the actually most narratively satisfying thing would be

lets get married. okay keeping in mind i haven't read the series in full in a couple years my core issues with trk are: i think gwenllian was criminally misused, i think adding in laumonier and blue's dad made very little sense and i think doing the gansey noah and cabeswater deaths back to back the way they were was a terrible way to handle a climax. you don't need blue's dad and you don't need laumonier. too many random new parents and men who are absolutely vestigal. gwenllian should be blue's mentor, you focus the piper plotline completely on a professional antagonism between her and henry's mom who can act as the antithesis to piper's greed and recklessness. the grey man is the reader's familiar link between Crime and Magic here, so you can still have him face the challenge of his old life threatening his new life by having to forge an alliance with seondeok to take down a shared threat.

gwenllian as blue's mentor would come with a similar but almost opposite effect to persephone's mentorship on adam: blue isn't getting stranger, she's getting angrier. this witch who knows what she is keeps getting mayo in her hair and her teachers don't understand her and her family is being evasive and the boy she loves is going to die. also a demon is clouding her perspective, but she doesn't really know that yet. more adam and blue scheming to keep gansey alive. more research and bugging relatives and desperately looking into rituals while it becomes clearer to the reader that adam is losing his agency and blue is losing her clearsightedness. gansey's panic attacks begin to attune themselves to the moments where noah is not himself as well. his chest hurts, he can't breathe - it feels like something is sucking away at his heart. at the same time adam is still trying to help ronan with waking up the dreams, and blue is getting closer to gansey and henry, trying to imagine a future that feels like her own when she has the weights of her confused identity and her fate hanging around her neck.

i would have ronan and gansey's relationship blow up here: between the hospital and aurora's death, maybe after his birthday party, ronan finds out - probably through declan, to add insult to injury and even more fucked up brother resentment - that gansey is trying to buy him a diploma. actually definitely just after the night of truth bullshit for prime outrageousness lmao. it goes nuclear. blue is, catastrophically to gansey, on ronan's side. adam is, infuriatingly to everyone, judgmentally neutral. things progress as they were except instead of henry getting kidnapped we get a very reluctant henry passing a message to tgm - things have progressed past the point that is acceptable with piper, and his mother wants to meet. also the visit with gansey's family is tense - they love her and henry, and they just can't understand what's gotten into gansey, who's distracted and snappy, and when helen confronts him, he blows up at her, saying a lot more about his worry for ronan and his fear about what will happen to him than was revealed in the initial fight. they're siblings, their relationship can handle it, but there's still an overarching sense that she doesn't really understand, because gansey is still holding his real fear of dying close to his chest.

cut to auroras death and the grey man having to leave maura with this tragedy to join seondeok - a king, joining a king, doing what needs doing, instead of just a continued trope about being made for violence or whatever that was. there scene with ronan at the bmw goes more or less the same. gansey goes off on his own because he feels isolated and like the burden of fixing all this lies on his shoulders, gwenllians weird witch pep talk goes to blue instead. here is where you would insert cool fun shit about what being a mirror actually means! all of them reunite as in canon, ronan and gansey reconcile after ronan is like you dumb motherfucker i need you here you're my brother and gansey says some self sacrificing shit and blue and adam make it clear without Making It Clear they are going to stand by him, because they still don't know he knows he's going to die.

here is where we reach the core difficulty: i think the death kiss is incredibly stupid and i don't know how i would write around it. i know how i would finish trk from here, but the kiss curse would not show up at all. i like the kiss curse as a concept but it just doesn't make any sense in the narrative of agency trc constructs and i think it limit's blue's storyline. so without considering the kiss curse: as the demon hijacks adam and tries to use blue as an amplifier to spread to other ley lines, everyone realizes the stakes. everything cabeswater has touched, everything the ley line has touched is at risk, and the ley lines are ALL CONNECTED. blue and adam have been skirting around the realization that the demon and cabeswater are like mirrors the whole book. you can't have one without the other. there is no corruption without something to corrupt. the way cabeswater focuses the ley line for ronan is how the demon has been getting power too, but it's a self contained loop, consumption instead of guidance. kill cabeswater, kill the demon. gansey asks it, realizing in a way they others don’t seem to that he and cabeswater are linked, and the others act. there's a little giving tree moment between ronan and cabeswater, which will surely not contribute to any farreaching survivors guilt that might show up in a sequel series. here is where blue being a mirror comes into play. when neeve was trying to see farther than she could, she used a mirror and it sent her there. the demon is trying to consume beyond it's bounds. a mirror sends it inwards. here blue sees the moment of violence that birthed the demon, and she's terrified and it's tragic. it's a very bildungsroman moment of grief and terror of what will come after for everyone. death of the child birth of the man etc. noah, perpetual child, gets laid to rest with cabeswater, but without cabeswater the ley line floods. here is where gansey dies: without noah fighting his hardest to keep him going, because noah loved him, because cabeswater needed him, his heart simply stops. here is where blue kisses him, because it doesn't matter any more, because he dies even though she didn't, because she's seeing without the demon clouding her for the first time in what feels like the longest time and all she can see is grief. shit gets magically weird with adam and ronan too, and it's henry who grounds them all, who is used to enforcing practicality on the unknown to keep himself safe. with his help the three of them dream something to save gansey. ta da!

i feel like this would also feed much better into the theme of the dreamer trilogy of like opening ley lines etc bcus trk completely glosses over what happens to the ley line without cabeswater there, and adds to it making sense that ronan thinks opening the ley lines is a good idea - he saved gansey with it! what more could he do! whereas adam felt overwhelmed and out of control and spends the next year trying to construct and repair his own real life conduits and safeguards on the ley line as ronan builds lindenmere. what are your thoughts did i miss anything that you were like absolutely not hate that need it to be gone

#trc

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shreddedparchment · 4 years

Text

Pt.32 A Hulk’s Smashing Consequences (Pt.2)

06/26/2020

Pairing: King!Steve x Reader Word Count: 5,568

Warnings: violence, blood, pregnancy, labor, seriously...lots of violence

A/N: I’ll let this one speak for itself. Enjoy! xoxo If you happen to reblog, thanks for helping me spread my work!

“Oh…” You whimper, afraid to move as you try to assess the state of your body.

“Why Queen Flowers pee?” Hulk demands, standing up and pointing at your feet.

“I-I think my waters have broken.” You whisper, straining to feel the pain that you were told would come but nothing.

“Baby come now?!” Hulk asks, his voice a little higher than it was before.

You realize he’s nervous and look up to meet his eyes. He’s shifting from one large foot to the other, hands clenched into fists as he stares at the small puddle at your feet while his movements shake the room.

Watching him chew on his large lower lip looks strange considering the barbaric look of him.

“I think so.” You nod, getting a hold of yourself to keep the massive Hulk at ease. “Hulk?”

He turns frenzied and surprisingly understanding eyes on you. He’s definitely not stupid. You weren’t sure how much of Doctor Banner’s intellect transferred over.

One thing you can see in his eyes…a sweetness you hadn’t know you would find there. Fear of what’s to come, but true concern for you in this situation.

“All I need is to change into a simpler dress.” You’re still in your evening dinner gown. Heavy thick white fabric with golden thread embroidered along every surface in a carefully patterned damask design. “And then I’ll lay down, and we’ll wait. Grandmother will be back soon and-”

Oh, no…Grandmother…

Whatever expression your face takes—fear and panic probably from the way you’re feeling—makes hulk thump towards you, stopping two feet away.

“What wrong?” He worries, voice still higher than normal as his nerves get the better of him.

“How is she going to get back into the castle?” You wonder aloud. “She’s…she went into the village to fetch supplies for when I give birth and…and now I’m giving birth and she’s not here and with all the fighting there’s no way she can get back into the castle! Hulk…”

Oh yeah, panic most definitely begins to set in. You shift closer to your bed and carefully sit yourself down as your breathing speeds up. You can feel the wet from your underdress and it’s slightly uncomfortable but nothing you care to notice now.

“Queen Flower no worry. Hulk go get witch lady.” He promises then moves for the door. “Hulk be right back.”

“No wait, Hulk don’t-!” But he’s already gone, barreling through the castle making the ceiling rain dust. “Don’t leave me alone…”

Your whimper fades into silence as your panic begins to steal your resolve to face this night with courage.

Still you feel no pain yet and you relax a little though your mind is attuned to your body more than it ever has been before. When the time comes, you’ll feel it, won’t you? You’ll know when it’s really time?

“It’s too soon.” You cry, not realizing that tears have begun to trail along your cheeks. “You’re too soon.”

Caressing your bump, you sit there for a long time. You hear Hulk’s words again, his assurance and his calling Grandmother a witch which is nothing new—most of the village folk in Bright Rise had called her so—but it’s strange to hear it tumble from Hulk’s lips as if it were true.

Other worries cross your mind. Worries that you’d spoken to Steve about in the quiet hours of cold naked mornings spent with him in bed. Whispered concerns about the possibilities of giving birth. Things that could happen. Might happen. Things that you try not to dwell on right now when Hydra is attacking the castle.

You can feel the rumbles of what feels like castle walls being smashed. Strange sputterings of whizzing magic like that of Father’s energy that propels him through the sky. You hear that strange buzzing of the red magics you’d seen through the window.

There’s thunder and you’re glad that Thor is out there to help. His power is great, and you feel better with him helping in the fight.

It’s endless, their fighting. Although you can’t see it, hearing it you could almost imagine the carnage. The blood and the sweat of your loved ones, trying to protect you. Time too feels endless. Like the night is stretching out forever and only when the sky begins to shift from black tar to starlit indigo do you realize how much time has passed.

Hulk, where are you?

When you can’t stand the waiting any longer you get up and double over as your back splits with pain.

You gasp, trying to catch your breath as you feel the shift in your belly and finally the pain begins to show.

You push through the first wave and move to the large wardrobe where you know you’ll find your clothes. It’s laid out for you at the very front, a long and white nightdress, soft linen with a ruffled and rounded neckline.

It takes what feels like forever to get the cords around your waist undone. Your skirt falls. You unclasp the bodice and let that fall away too.

Your corset is the hardest. You strain to reach the strings that hold you together and as each pull through a loop loosens its grip, you feel a wave of relief to your back.

Stopping to relish in the ability to breathe deep, you stand there, eyes shut.

As another wave of pressure hits your lower back, you grit your teeth as the pain escalates a little more and your hands are temporarily clenched into fists and immobilized to removing your clothes.

You’re almost yelling in silence, mouth open as you struggle through the pain that forces you to stoop over and cling to the door of your wardrobe.

Only after it passes do you remember that Grandmother had told you to count the seconds of your pains, but you’re so wrapped up in it, your mind has only one mission: Endure.

With shaking hands, you manage to pull away from your clothes and stand naked in your room just as the pressure builds again.

“F-five…” You say to yourself, trying to remember that it has only been five minutes is your best guess.

You can’t concentrate enough to count in your head and focus on those sweet and worrying conversations with Steve about this very moment that you’re now living.

As this pain subsides, you breathe out one shaky breath before you concentrate on moving your arms and pulling your birthing dress on.

You feel a little better in clean clothing and waddle as best you can to your bed but reach the post at the foot before you’re seized by another pain. This one is sooner.

“Four…” You guess. “Ahhh…”

You groan with agony as the pressure rips through you once more. Your hand finds and fists the heavy curtains of the canopy on your bed. The strain pulls against the post and you hear a subtle creak as you rely on it with all your might.

The pain is fading when you find your voice again, and you whimper a tearless sob as you wait for your legs to be strong again.

“Steve…” You call for him, knowing he cannot come.

~~~~~~~~~~

Steve crashes painfully with a cart covered in hay. It falls to pieces around him as his body does its damage.

“Ugh…” He groans before shaking his head once to rid himself of the daze and gets to his feet.

He turns to look at his opponent, Rumlow wearing a strange black metal armor. Over his helmet is painted what looks to be a smudged white skull. He can see Rumlow’s dark angry eyes surrounded by charred flesh. A result of the attack on Bright Rise, Steve would guess.

“I didn’t do that to you, which I am most grieved about.” Steve admits to him, rubbing salt in his wounds.

“You die today.” Rumlow promises. “As does that peasant slut you call a Queen.”

Steve’s blood boils and he sees nothing but Rumlow and the death he will gladly dispense.

“You first.”

In his peripheral, though he does not focus on it, he can see a streak of silver blur behind Rumlow across to a group of Hydra guard attacking the Scarlet Witch. She manages to fend them off however and waves her brother along who runs to a lithe figure in black with bright red hair. Natasha leaps onto the shoulders of a guard, twists her hips and brings him to the ground before she unsheathes the daggers along her thighs and throws them at two more guards that had been approaching from behind. The bodies are sent reeling back with the force of her throw, blades in skulls.

Just as the bodies hit the ground, a dark metallic arm reaches down and retrieves a dagger, and sickening squelch as the blade slides through brain and bone. Dressed in a worn but tough navy leather tunic with dark metal armor welded into the fabric to protect his most vital areas, Bucky tosses her dagger back to her before allowing the momentum of his throw to turn him around and catch a leaping guard by the throat. He slams him into the ground with a deep and guttural growl.

Another leaps onto his back and he reaches back, dark hair flying in the scuffle as he grunts and throws the attacker over his head.

The attacker flies through the air and topples into a grouping of five others that suddenly explode back up into the air and in their place is Scott getting larger by the moment. He grows and grows until he’s as tall as the Southern tower and he stomps his way towards the now crumbling and smoking castle gate shaking the ground as he goes. A few of the Hydra guard attack his large feet—a weak attempt considering they cannot even penetrate the thickened hide of his boot—but Scott ignores them and reaches for his target. He grips the flaming battering ram with one hand, lifts it, and with a squeeze of his fist he crushes it easily. As he drops the splintered wood and broken metal to the ground, he finally notices the guard at his feet.

They run, but Scott’s grip is large, and he takes a handful of them before throwing them over his shoulder.

Their bodies soar through the sky, past the Southern tower where Clint nocks an arrow and sends it flying to strike the flying targets. One, two, three bodies shot down, one after the other as the fly past the tower. He misses one and it nearly soars through an open window when Hope appears almost out of thin air to punch the guard. She disappears but the guard is knocked up into the air and then back down to the ground where he falls in a crumpled heap as Hope reappears over his body only to disappear again into the mass of black that pools around a stooped form that seems to be getting overwhelmed with the amount of bodies being piled on top.

There’s a subtle rumble from the sky before it cracks open and lightning rains down to strike the center of the pile just as Thor’s booming battle cry fills the air and those touching him fall down to the ground as the lightning burns them from within.

Thor’s arm is thrust into the air as he pushes up from the ground and flies up only six feet, lightning connecting with his hammer and sizzling with charge as he moves upwards and it follows him back down as falls and slams his hammer down onto the ground sending more Hydra guard up into the air.

They are caught by a streak of red and gold as the Iron Man flies by along with another streak of white and black steel. They throw the guards they’ve caught at each other to collide painfully, before Iron Man catches two more and sends them zooming towards the castle with a blast from his hand.

A shining gleam of silver cuts through the sky as two large wings slice into one of the guards then catches the second. Samuel holds onto the struggling form until they’re nearly at the peak of the tower then he releases the body and dives back down into the fray with an impressive sweeping wind.

The body nearly hits the stone of the parapet when a distinctive whip fills the air and web is wrapped around the body’s waist and swung up into the air and released. The Spider-Man, in a bright blue and red tunic with trousers to match, swings forward as Steve goes flying back once more, a small puff of smoke left where he’d been standing.

As Steve lands, the Spider-Man plants himself behind him and catches him, helping him stand before pulling Steve’s shield off his back.

“Lose something?” He asks, tossing it to Steve.

“Thank you.” Steve says, nodding at Peter before he shakes his head. “Why are you still down here? You’re supposed to be with her Majesty.”

“Hulk is with her.” Peter assures him.

“Hulk?!” Steve gasps, ducking as a guard dives towards him. He swings up with his shield and knocks him out.

“I got sidetracked. There are so many of them.” Peter gasps, jumping easily over a knocked-out guard that rolls by his feet.

“Well, at least I know she’s safe.” Steve sighs, turning back to Rumlow who is busy fighting a few of Tony’s own personal guards while Steve recovers quickly.

“GUHRAWRRHGGG!”

The animal-like cry is familiar and all too close.

Steve, Peter, and half of those fighting turn towards the terrifying sound of an angry Hulk as he comes barreling around the corner of the castle, trampling enemies as he goes while he simultaneously grabs hold of the ones he doesn’t step on, crushing them in his massive grip or throwing them into walls and dirt.

“HULK!” Steve shouts, desperate to get his attention.

The green mass seems to hear him as he turns to look at Steve and then jumps high up taking with him two bodies, before landing only a few feet away, crushing three others and dropping the two that he holds now lifeless.

As he walks over, Steve can see that he’s dirty, hands dripping with blood and mud as if he’s been fighting for a while.

“What are you doing here?” Peter asks before Steve has the chance. “You’re supposed to be with her Majesty!”

Hulk stops, thumping his chest importantly before he points at the cart rolling in from where he’d just come.

“Hulk go get witch lady for Queen flowers.” He says, voice proud. “Queen have baby now. Queen flower peed on floor.”

All of the blood in Steve’s body rushes up to his head and he can hear nothing but Hulk’s last few words.

“Hulk…is-is Y/N in labor?!” Peter asks, voice shocked and full of worry.

“Mm.” Hulk says simply, then points to the cart where Grandmother is dismounting amongst a large violent scuffle.

Steve is numb, and for this moment at least, his mind travels back to a cold winter morning that he will never forget.

You’re nestled in his arms, naked chest pressed against his own as you rest against him. You’ve got one hand up on the back of his neck, your fingers twirling through his hair. The other is resting against his side and he’s trying not to focus on how it tickles when you move your soft fingers in little circles against his skin.

“May I ask you for something? A gift?” You say, voice clear as a bell and full of hesitation but excitement.

Steve smiles, happy that you’ve become so open with him. He can’t believe you’re actually asking him for things now.

“Whatever you want my petal, it’s yours.” He says, pulling you closer as he wraps his arm around you more tightly.

He can feel the heat of your cheek as his words have some strange effect on you. A pleasing one.

You turn to look at him, resting your chin on his chest as gently as you can.

He turns to meet your eyes, admiring the way your hair is all over the place, messier in the back from how much he’s had you on yours.

There’s a glow to your skin, a sticky goodness that gives him such pride to know that he’s spent so much time giving you the pleasure you’d so rightfully deserved. He will never finish making all of it up to you. But this is as good as it will probably get.

“Tell me.” He urges you when you don’t speak.

“Promise me that you’ll be by my side.” You tell him, voice more confident. “When our child is born, I-I know that women die from giving birth and if those are to be my last moments-”

“No.” Steve protests, stroking your arm and shoulders. “No, don’t say that my flower.”

“Please, Steve, I must say it. I need you to hear me and I need to know that you’ll do as I wish.” You sigh. “If giving birth to our son is to be the last thing I do, I would very much like to have you at my side. I love you but more importantly, I want to see him in your arms.

“I want to know that if I should be gone from his life, that you will be there for him. That he will have his father’s protection and love, forever.” You tell him desperately, voice tight and intense.

“Of course, I’ll be there for him. There is no question about my being there for our son. I will always be there for him.” Steve declares, but he knows that you won’t be satisfied with only this. “And I promise, I will be by your side when you give birth to our son.”

It’s odd, sure, for the father to be in the birthing room but if it’s your wish, Steve will fight anyone who gets in his way to be there.

“I-” Steve begins, looking around at the fighting as Hulk disappears into the battle once more.

Beside him, he can see, hear, and feel Peter blocking blows and shielding him from an interruption to his sudden frozen thoughts.

“Your Majesty?” Peter says, trying to bring him around as he incapacitates two guards with his webs. He flings them away where they crash into more Hydra then flips back towards Steve, stopping to place his hand on his King’s shoulder. “Steve…”

Steve looks at him, swallowing hard as he wars with himself to rationalize this decision.

Before he can, two more figures fight their way into their small tense circle.

“What’s the matter?” Natasha asks, red hair whipping back and forth as she blocks a sword and kicks the attack in the gut with a grunt.

Beside her Bucky takes his fist and slams it into the ground hard creating a localized tremor that unbalances a few more guards that Natasha takes out with smaller daggers from around her hip.

“Has something happen?” Bucky asks, breathing hard, skin smudged with blood and dirt.

Steve still can’t speak so Peter does. “It seems Y/N is having the Prince. Now.”

Natasha’s face whitens as she takes a step closer to them both. “What?!”

Steve meets her gaze and Natasha shakes her head.

“You must go, Steve. Go.” Natasha insists.

“What about the fight?” He hesitates, wanting to run to you but knowing that he’s needed here. What if one of them should die because he leaves? He can’t just go.

“We will make do.” She says.

“She’s right.” Peter chimes in. “Y/N needs you more than we do.”

“But-” Steve begins, already decided on giving in.

“STEVE!” Sam shouts from the top of the crumbling gate, pointing towards the Southern forest where a literal cavalry is breaking through the trees.

At the very front, sitting tall and proud with one eye obscured by a black metal mask that covers only that side of his face, Fury leads a troop of guards dressed in blue and gray armor.

There is a deafening crack as the sky splits open once more and through the inky clouds of the coming morning a streak of blinding golden light rips through. At the head of this light is a figure, body covered in a slender armor of gold, blue, and red. Through the helmet is a slit along the top through which long golden hair spills out in what looks like a mane.

The figure stops midair, seems to float there as if the action require no more effort than breathing, then with her fist leading the way, she dives down and cuts through the throng of black until she reaches Rumlow and lands with a small thud.

“Shall we dance?” She asks him, voice cool and amused. Rumlow slams his heavily armored fists together, a reverberating clang filling the air, before he launches himself at the stranger who appears to be on their side.

Steve’s chest is filled with relief as he spots the reinforcements and turns to give in to his own and Nat’s desires when he sees a glimmering blade moving too fast for him to block, aimed right at the center of Natasha’s back.

Steve blinks and when he opens his eyes, he sees Bucky with his metal hand wrapped around the tip of the blade, the back of his hand resting right up against Natasha’s back.

The fury and loathing that blackens Bucky’s eyes worry Steve for a moment that they might not have seen the last of the Winter Soldier but Bucky breaks the blade, knocks the sword from the guard’s hand, and grabs him by the throat.

“I’m going to knock your brain into the soles of your feet.” He promises before punching the man so hard he falls to the ground, motionless with a dribble of blood flowing from his ears.

As he turns to check on Natasha, he has no chance to worry as she throws her arms around him and kisses him so hard his lips turn bright red.

Bucky is quick to wrap his arms around her and crush her to his chest as he returns her affections wholeheartedly.

When she pulls away, they’re both breathing hard.

“We’re getting married tomorrow morning.” Natasha declares.

Bucky swoons and kisses her again.

Steve turns to Peter who nods, and runs with him, helping him clear a path to the nearest entry.

“Tell her we’re all with her.” Peter says, and once Steve is through, he shuts and blocks the door.

~~~~~~~~~~

You’re nearly completely folded over, clutching your stomach and back and your legs and everything hurts, and you think you might die from this but then it passes and you’re counting in your head.

“Th-Three.” Three minutes. It should be time? Isn’t that what Grandmother said?

No. Wait longer. The pains must be so close together that you won’t be able to tell them apart. Laying down would be beset right now however, and you edge your way closer to your bed again.

You’re sweating and straining, breathing heavily, and also not breathing enough. It feels like you can’t take a breath. Every other sound that comes from your mouth is a whine or a groan or a moan as pain engulfs you once again.

You manage to sit this time, hands fisting the sheets of your bed as you grit your teeth and then remember to try and breath but it’s too much. It’s too hard. You’re sobbing by the time the pain passes, rubbing your stomach in the hopes that this is the way it should be and the pain is not a sign of some distress your baby must be in but you’re too stupid, too uneducated to know.

Most women don’t know these things right away. You attempt to console yourself, knowing that only a midwife would know. A doctor would know. A peasant turned princess turned queen would not know. It wasn’t in your studies.

Still, the feeling of helplessness takes hold and you hate yourself for not doing better.

“I’m s-so sorry.” You grieve with your little one, scared and unsure of the fate you will both suffer.

You lay yourself down as the pain subsides and it doesn’t help but you don’t want to stand so you lay there for only half a minute before the bedroom door is thrust open.

“Grandmother?” You squeak, turning to look at the door for what you hope is reinforcements but instead find all of the blood in your body turning into ice at the ashy blonde hair and the wrinkled skin and the thin and slightly parted mouth of a desperate Lord Pierce.

You sit up more quickly than you thought would be possible, eyes taking in his slightly hunched stance as he moves towards you with careful steps. His hands are wrapped tight around the hilt of his sword.

He’s sweaty, breathing just as hard as you.

You realize that he’s had to fight his way up here. There’s a cut along his cheek and another gash on his leg. Not big enough to matter but proof of the battle.

“You should have just stayed with the Asgardian in the woods.” Pierce says, voice strong and resolute. “You should have never come back. Then I wouldn’t have to kill you and that brat inside your stomach.”

You raise one hand, a plea for him to stop as you go numb to everything but his movements and your free hand searching underneath the pillows behind you as discreetly as you can manage.

“Please.” You beg. “Please…”

“You really shouldn’t have come back.” He says, almost truly sounding remorseful but really he’s only irritated that he has to get his own hands dirty.

He raises his sword and swings it down to cut off your head just as your fingers make purchase around the solid hilt of Steve’s hidden sword.

You raise the heavy thing with a strength you didn’t know you had and block Pierce’s strike with a metallic clang.

The two of you struggle for a few seconds, struggling against each other’s solid grips until finally you push yourself onto your feet and nearly scream as you muster up all the strength you can to push his sword away from you.

It frees you up and knocks him off balance but he’s recovering quickly and you know that you will not survive a battle of swords with this man so you do the only thing you can do. You reach for the pitcher of water beside your bed, chuck it at his head, and run.

You can hear him sputtering and the break of the china as you sweep from the room, moving as fast as your baby heavy body will allow. Your bare feet slap against the floor as you turn the corner and race down the hallway towards the war room, but there are two floors and six hallways between you and you’ll never make it.

Pain bites into you, compelling your feet to stop moving as you turn another corner and cling with one arm to the peach limestone of your father’s hallways. The sword drags along the floor, scraping and making noise as you groan and try to hold yourself together as you’re robbed of your breath once more.

“Bitch!” Pierce screams and his voice rounds the corner behind you.

Forgetting your pain, you push yourself forward, terrified that he will catch you. You can’t let him kill your son.

You move faster, urging your body to keep moving despite the crippling pain that threatens to bring you to your knees.

It isn’t fast enough. As you round another corner and the stairs are in sight, Pierce’s hand wraps around your hair and he pulls you back hard.

You scream, knowing that no one will come because every man is down on the grounds, fighting with the Avengers.

He manages to wrap his hand around the back of your neck, but you twist in his grip and he adjusts it so that he’s almost choking you. Drawing your sword again, you can’t swing it from this angle so you raise the hilt up as fast as you can and hit your mark.

Pierce’s nose gushes blood as he stumbles back. The chain of your necklace is wrapped around hit thumb and it rips as he falls, releasing you from his grip.

The run down the stairs is terrifying, with every step a threat to you and your prince. You nearly fall on the last two but catch yourself along the banister before you’re racing forward once more.

You turn the corner and can hear Pierce barreling along the steps. In one horrible moment, you realize that you cannot outrun him. Slipping into the first door on your right, you rush in and urge your breathing to slow as the quiet of the room makes every noise you make that much louder.

You have never been in this room before and find yourself in a room with towering shelves. Each shelf is filled with books and strange knickknacks. Statues and pieces of artwork carefully organize and lined up.

Although the silence is unbearable, you’re grateful for the winding and maze-like bends and turns of the shelves and bookcases.

As silently as you can, you weave through them, stopping only when you feel you are deep enough and go still so that you can listen.

Your heartbeat is in your ears. Your breathing is still too labored.

Was that the door?

No. You cry in silence as the pain strikes again. In your back, in your lower body, your pelvis, it’s all on fire.

You raise your hand to your mouth and bite down hard. You can feel the skin break as the pain becomes unbearable, but you cannot utter a single sound or it’s all over.

Not my baby. You grieve.

The pain begins to pass, and you realize that it has only been a minute since the last one and you have to get out of here if your child is going to survive.

With all the remaining courage in your heart mustered you turn around to sneak out once more only to feel the sting of a powerful hit on the left side of your face.

The strength of it sends you falling onto your back and you gasp, struggling to catch your breath as your bones protest the fall.

“Why do you have to make this so hard?” Pierce asks angrily.

Looking up you see the sword flying towards your stomach.

You shut your eyes and wrap your arms around it, trying to cover as much of your baby as you can before the blow lands. You hear the terrible squish of blade piercing flesh and sob once because you know you’re dead…only there’s no pain.

You hear a groan, Pierce’s groan, and urge your eyes open only to find him standing over you with a shining silver blade peeking out of the center of his gut.

Blood dribbles from his mouth onto your nightdress as the light in his eyes fades. The sword is withdrawn and with a shuddering breath, you begin to cry.

“Are you alright?!” She asks, all beauty and enviable strength in her form hugging tunic of blue and black. Her long blonde hair is gathered up on her head, swept out of the way so that she can fight without struggle.

She sheathes her sword and kneels down beside you, her hands moving along your arms as you let your head fall back, happier to see Lady Sharon Carter than you ever thought you’d be in your life.

New pain fills your body as it struggles through the shock of what just happened and the urging of your son to come into this world.

You groan and moan and Sharon’s eyes fill with panic as she realizes that you’re about to give birth.

“Oh my-” She gasps.

“WHERE IS SHE?!” Another shout fills the castle halls, moving closer and closer as he no doubt follows the trail of your fearful flight.

“Here!” Sharon rises to her feet and disappears from your sight, but you hear the door open again. “Steve, she’s here! Quick!”

Despite the pain your body is in, your mind begins to fuzz over and as you lay there between two large bookcases, Pierce’s lifeless stare gazing right at you, you begin to feel numb again.

“Y/N!” Steve’s voice is closer. “Where?!”

“Here.” Sharon says, leading him to you.

You know when he has you in his sights because his voice breaks as he speaks.

“No.” He cries. “I’m here. My flower, I’m here.”

He kneels beside you and you eagerly turn to meet his gaze.

He’s got cuts along his neck and forehead.

You frown, reaching for them in clear disapproval of any injury he’s gained. Storm blue eyes filling with tears, he’s careful to touch you but places his hand over yours as you touch him.

“Steve…” You try to smile. “I-I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Stay with me, love.” He whispers, tracing the shape of your arm from wrist to shoulder and back. “Stay awake.”

Your eyes close and Steve screams. “NO!”

#king!steve x reader #medieval au #medieval fantasy au #steve rogers x reader #royalty au #king!steve rogers x reader #captain america x reader #avengers x reader #buckynat #marvel au #king!steve x reader fanfiction #marvel fanfiction #arranged marriage au #pseudo princess pt32 #pseudo princess #shreddedparchment

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