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murder-popsicle · 4 months

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Self vs. non-self (and the integration of the Winter Soldier into Bucky Barnes)

As you pointed out in your question, my Bucky has incorporated the Winter Soldier into her self-identity. Whereas MCU!Bucky says, "I am not the Winter Soldier anymore," my Bucky, like 616!Bucky, has accepted that the Winter Soldier will always be a part of her. She's discussed this before with @invncibleiron's Tony -- that Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier aren't two separate personalities.

Bucky has come to the conclusion, looking back on her life, that the seeds of the Winter Soldier were always there. She's always had a certain ruthlessness to her, especially in defense of the people that she cares about. As a child in Brooklyn, that usually involved not being afraid to use her fists to teach someone who hurt her sisters or Steve or her friend Rosie Finn a lesson. She fought by trying to get the bullies on the ground or running away as quickly as possible, even if that meant breaking a nose or knocking out some teeth.

These people are mine. How dare you try to harm them?

Still, when she was young she did her best not to leave wounds that wouldn't heal. But the brutality of the war and the trauma from having been raped, tortured, and experimented on in the Red Skull's factory stripped away a lot of her younger self's qualms about that. She found that killing came easily to her, and also found that she didn't feel particularly bad about killing, either. It had to be done, so she did it -- competently, thoroughly, and without remorse. The Nazis and the Red Skull were murdering innocent people and causing untold suffering for those who survived. Bucky found that unconscionable, so she did everything she could to put a stop to it in the most permanent way possible. Dead Nazis can't kill again.

This world is mine. How dare you try to destroy it?

The pieces of Bucky that would comprise the Winter Soldier were already in place by the time she fell off that train. All that was left for Zola and Karpov to do was to strip away the parts of her that weren't the Winter Soldier. The Winter Soldier is just Bucky Barnes with her conscience, memory, and free will removed. The fact that she was already suffering from amnesia caused by the fall and her subsequent death made their job easier. It would have taken a lot more work to break a Bucky who could remember who she was and what she believed.

I think it's important to point out that, even as the Winter Soldier, she wasn't a bully. She was competent and brutally efficient, but when she was controlled by the Soviets she always made an effort to avoid collateral damage, and she clashed with her handlers over that tendency on more than one occasion. Alexander Pierce broke her of that habit, but even when she was under his control, she never took any joy in hurting people. She followed orders. She did the job that was assigned to her, because that was all she knew how to do, but she did it without passion or pleasure.

When she finally escaped from HYDRA and came back to herself, she had to come to terms with the fact that yes, she had been the Winter Soldier. More than that, she still was the Winter Soldier. So she decided to make use of that fact. Bucky has always been practical. She'll deploy any tool in her arsenal, and the Winter Soldier is now another tool that she can use. People are terrified of the Winter Soldier, so she'll use the name and the reputation to strike fear into the people she has to fight.

There's also one additional fact that Bucky knows but has never given voice to, which is this: She's seen some of the worst the world has to offer, humanity at its most wretched, cruelest, and most malicious. Based on those experiences, she's come to the conclusion that sometimes, to make the world better and to spare innocents from death and suffering, certain people have to die. And, that being the case, she'll take the responsibility for killing those people, because she can bear it. She knows some of her friends, particularly Steve, would cut themselves up inside over having to make that call. So she'll make it instead to protect them.

#bokketo #meme answers #headcanon #hc list #v; brooklyn bird #v; sergeant barnes #v; dead of winter #v; galanthus nivalis #v; city heartbeat

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tnott · 4 months

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Mental health in the Wizarding world

Part of the reason I gave Theo major depression was to explore mental health in the context of the Wizarding world. Based on what we see in the books, the Wizarding world is centuries behind the Muggle world when it comes to psychiatry and psychology. Harry's PTSD goes entirely unacknowledged, which is tragic. I think there's a decent case for Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Severus Snape all also having PTSD, which again goes unacknowledged. St. Mungo's apparently uses electroshock therapy to treat delusions, which is horrifying.

So I decided to give Theo a mental illness -- not one that would be immediately noticeable, but one that would certainly carry stigma if it was known about. That, in addition to my own personal experiences with mental illness, was why I chose depression. I also chose to make it run in the Nott family. Studies estimate that developing depression is about 50% based on genetic factors and heritability, so this is realistic, and it also gives Theo 1) a family secret, and 2) her father as a resource to draw upon so that she's not left completely on her own. (I love her too much to do that to her.)

Her father gives her a name for her illness and shows her how to self-medicate with St. John's wort, which is a fairly effective treatment for mild to moderate depression, though it doesn't work for the kind of severe depression Theo experiences in her sixth year at school. But he also warns her not to tell anyone about her illness, because he knows that she will be judged and ostracized if it becomes common knowledge. Even in our real world in the year 2024, mental illness is stigmatized. I cannot tell you the number of teachers, professors, and even significant others I've had who have tried to tell me that depression isn't real, that I'm "pathetic" or "weak" or "just need to suck it up". My own brother has tried to tell me that my mental illness will be cured by doing yoga. Our current world is still pretty bad for the mentally ill, and I think the Wizarding world must be a hundred times worse.

So Theo keeps her depression a secret. Even following her suicide attempt at age 17, she doesn't mention to anyone that this is not the first time she's felt this way. The only people she's opened up to about it as an adult are @mayhemxmugglesxmagic's Draco and Pansy. In her professor verse, she tries to watch for the signs in her students and intervene as best she can without revealing her own illness, but she doesn't feel comfortable advocating for better treatment for people like her. She's already seen as a maverick for her magiarchaeology work, and she doesn't want the world to write her off as a full madwoman. When it comes to her depression, she's isolated and frightened, which I think must be the case for most of the Wizarding world's mentally ill members.

#bokketo #meme answers #headcanon #hc list #v; what did you learn in school today?#v; the bleak midwinter #v; binning binns #mental illness #suicide mention cw

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maggicktouched · 3 months

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@bokketo

Her throat was painfully dry. Each breath clawed its way down to her lungs like a cat being dragged by the tail. It was the only part of her that was dry. The rest of her was damp. Every inch of her clothing was glued to her skin. She assumed it was sweat, but she couldn't rule out blood either. Either way, the fabric prickled painfully against her with each raspy breath.

She didn't have to open her eyes to know she was laying in a prison cot. The bed beneath her was thin and hard, and there was a gentle murmur of people talking in the distance and horses trotting through town. They'd thrown her in a cage.

"A shallow grave would've been kinder." She grumbled. Finally, she peeled her eyelids apart and, with a white hot flare of pain, forced her aching limbs to push her upright. Her rib was probably broken, there was nothing to be done for that, but a bandage had been affixed to her leg where she'd been shot. Beck ran a hand through her tangled hair. "Bastards left me to rot."

Shifting was out of the question, and if she couldn't find a way to talk herself out of it, she'd swing before she ever got the chance to slip her human skin again. She scanned the cramped cell and the quiet sheriff's station. It looked empty. No one else from the gang had been caught, apparently, and there was no sheriff in sight. It didn't really matter. She wasn't in any condition to pop open the lock either. With a grunt, she pulled herself back up against the wall and shut her eyes.

The door opened, and she could hear the heavy thud of boots on the old wooden floor. Just one pair. A man. She assumed the sheriff.

"So you didn't find them, huh?" Beck looked at him. She didn't like the way the world swam when she opened her eyes, or how raspy her voice sounded. She tried to clear her throat. It didn't do much. "Ya know, I might be able to help you with that."

#bokketo #tumblr just automatically tries to add my drabble tag after yours now lmao

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makeowndestiny · 8 months

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[ HOLD ]: while close to the receiver, the sender wordlessly takes a hold of their hand, for no other purpose than to be holding it. // clarky baby for diana

@bokketo sent this meme | accepting

They were sitting on her balcony, just enjoying the sunset, their glasses of wine long forgotten on the coffee table in front of them. She was already tucked into his side, his arm wrapped around her shoulders when she felt his other hand slide underneath one of hers. Diana smiled at the feeling of being so utterly surrounded by Clark. She moved ever so slightly so that she could rest her head against his shoulder. "I'm glad you're here." She said, squeezing his hand gently.

#bokketo #diana answers things #m: diana prince #thread with: clark kent/superman

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wxldchxld · 3 months

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Shadows:

So I didn't want it two, but I guess this is going to be four parts lmao. Onyx is going to kill me when they open tumblr. I'm unafraid. I'll die like a man. @bokketo also I should edit this before I go eat lunch and move on to the last bits, but I'm not going to. Hot ppl have typos.

Rán sighed irritably as the limp, sweaty body next to her snored loudly. For the third time since he’d succumbed to the bliss of oblivion, she pinched his meaty finger between two of her own and used it to peel his arm off of her. It fell to the bed beside his face with a muffled fwump.

She reached over into the drawer of the nightstand and fished around for her cigarette case. It was still open. This was her third one in the last two hours. Not that they were helping. She held the cigarette between her lips and summoned fire to the tip of her finger with a wordless spell. To the right of her, something moved, and it wasn’t the man beside her.

Rán took a deep drag and shut her fist, cutting off the light.

No part of her was going to miss Hogwarts when the term ended in a couple of months. She hadn’t wanted to come when she was eleven, and she hadn’t wanted to return any year after that. Quidditch had been the only thing she’d ever really enjoyed at Hogwarts, and now she had four professional teams beating down her door, begging for her to sign their contracts. There was no point in playing school yard matches with teams that had literal children flying around the pitch with all the grace of obese bumblebees.

Thank Merlin the season was over.

It had left her painfully bored, though, and there weren’t many people capable of entertaining her here. The idiot snoring beside her was proof of that. Rán cut her eyes in his direction. The only light in the room came from the occasional glow at the tip of her cigarette, but she knew just where his arm was. She had to resist the urge to press the glowing ember against his skin.

The closest he’d gotten to getting her off was pissing her off. Boring. Disappointing. Useless. Just like half the other idiots in the school. How pathetic not even to be good for a quick shag. Her finger twitched, itching to take her irritation out on him, but she resisted.

Just a couple more months. She’d take her N.E.W.T.s and never look back.

Rán snapped her fingers, and the flame returned. This time, she bid it to travel down the length of her finger and settle in her palm. Its light was meager, but enough to illuminate the room. The door to the wardrobe had been left askew, and their clothes were strewn all over the floor, but other than that it was perfectly tidy.

There it was again.

Something in the corner of her eye was moving.

This time, Rán turned her head slowly to face it. Beside her, behind the useless lump of man-flesh was his shadow. Only unlike him, the shadow was not sleeping. It mimicked his position on the bed exactly, but carved from the darkness, two yellow eyes were open and looking at her. When she stared into them, its mouth split open in a smile filled with jagged teeth.

She exhaled a plume of smoke—unbothered. Strange that her own shadow was not cast beside it. Rán moved her free hand, twisting it in front of the flame, but she couldn’t force her own spindly finger to touch the thing.

“Interesting.” Perhaps the first interesting thing to happen to her in months. Her head tilted to its side. “Do you see me?”

The thing nodded its head.

“Can you speak?”

It nodded again, and then its toothy grin was ripped open as its mouth spread wide. All she heard were whispers, far too faint to form intelligible words. It droned on and on until the jaws of the creature snapped closed like a bear trap.

Curious, she reached down and took the limp arm of the sleeping man and slowly moved it one way and then the other. Still, there was a sliver of impossible light between the shadows where they should have melted together, but it obediently raised its hand and flopped back and forth. When her grip loosened, it dropped like a stone.

If she pressed the last few embers of her cigarette to his arm, would the thing scream in pain?

Instead of asking, she reached over for her wand. The wood thrilled at her touch, ever eager, ever hungry. Just like her.

“Dornröschen.” She whispered, twisting her wand over the prone form beside her, pushing him further and further into the realm of dreams and pinning him there like a mounted insect. The air in his chest stuttered and stilled as he froze entirely.

There were no pupils in the eyes of the thing staring back at her, but she felt its presence around her trembling. Was it with fright or frustration? Her fingers delicately stroked the hand that she lifted back up into the air, tickling along the flesh. She got the distinct feeling that the thing did not want to, there was a tug against her own spirit as if it meant to shove her back, but still it raised up its hand.

“Are you afraid? Do you feel?” She hummed. She bid the flame to float in the air before her, and held the hand by the palm. With her free hand, she flattened out his fingers and took hold of the one closest to his thumb. The thing on the wall hissed at her, but it was helpless to stop her as she wrenched the extremity to the side abruptly with a sickening crack.

The shadow figure’s finger mirrored the flesh and blood one in front of her, but it still grinned. No scream of pain, no angry flare of magic pressing against her own spirit. She jerked the finger back into place. It’d still be broken in the morning, but he wouldn’t know how.

“Not afraid then.” She still didn’t release her hold. Her eyes were trained on the strange splinter of light that somehow separated them. “Maybe you just don’t like being told what to do.”

Rán considered the being for another long moment, and it never tired of watching her. Why was it watching her?

Its mouth began to move and it whispered again, but it was with a thousand voices, each piling on top of the other, none in sync. Whatever it said, it said it again and again. Rán tried to read the non-existent lips, mirroring them with her own. Nothing. Nothing. She could understand nothing.

Frustrated, she propped his arm against the side of the bed and decided to try something else. There was an ornate pocket knife in the still-ajar drawer of her nightstand, and she took it out and flicked it open.

Hogwarts didn’t teach blood magic, but she’d seen her mother use it many, many times over the course of her life.

The blade was cold on her own palm, and when she drew it back the slender wound wept blood. She tossed back the covers, cupping her hand and letting it gather in a tiny pool along her palm. When enough had gathered, she held it up to the wall where the shadow was cast and tilted it down to flow across the figure’s razor teeth. It was still talking. Whispering and whispering. It sputtered against the liquid on its lips.

“I know you.” A thousand voices lilted. “I know you. I know you.”

The sliver of light around her own shadow faded away, and she could feel it now. All she could see was the shadow, but it was bigger than that. It curled around her, rubbing against her naked legs, over her hip, across her breast. She shuddered, but not from fear.

“Fuck!” Teeth sunk into the bleeding wound. They were sharp like an animal, and they split open her flesh further. The presence curled tighter against her, and it felt like the very air was shivering. Across her breast, along her neck, pressing between her thighs. It took far too much will power to step away and return to the bed.

It was laughing at her. Wispy little giggles. Rán, breathless and exhilarated, found herself laughing back. The thing was still there, still close enough to touch, and she reached her blooded hand out and snatched it. She jerked, just to see what would happen, and it yielded to her. So did the body beside her, mirroring the shadow’s actions like a puppet on a string. Rán laughed again, perched on her knees.

“I know you.” It kept singing. “I know you. I know you.”

She let go, and watched them both fall back into the bed. “Good.”

#bokketo #;;;my drabbles #ran is absolutely 18 here before you or draco panic #and yes the implication is she's managed to become head girl #and is fuckin people in her common room sldkfgndfgsfgs #idk if her mom is proud or ashamed at this point

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dearlybelovad · 1 year

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yelena smiles behind her coffee cup as she watches natasha approach her table, her gaze drifting across the redhead. she looks wonderful, as always. ❝ mm, finally. i have been waiting thirty minutes, natalia. ❞

@bokketo

#bokketo #yess lemme love you

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notafossil · 1 year

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steve can’t quite hide the relief from his face as nat approaches him, reaching up to push his mask back from his face as he steps forward. it’s been months, barely any contact in the beginning turning to absolutely none in the last month. he’s been worried. even if he knows she’s capable of looking after herself. ❝ you’re a sight for sore eyes. ❞ he tells her, smiling softly as he closes the distance to draw her into a tight hug that lifts her straight off of the floor. ❝ it’s good to see you, nat. ❞

@bokketo || liked for a starter

#bokketo #steeb is very happy to see her tbh

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invncibleiron · 8 months

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@bokketo is about to get all the starters (Rhodey)

Tony had been laying in bed for close to an hour, memorizing a shadow on the ceiling, before he finally gave in to the truth that he would not be sleeping tonight. He got up carefully, aware of the squeaking of the bed and of the floor under his feet as he patted down the hall toward Rhodey's room. Tony was thirty-five years old, but he felt like a child sneaking out after curfew; Mrs. Rhodes always had a way of making him feel that way. In fact, Tony wasn't sure he'd ever felt the way he did in the Rhodes' home--like he was someone that needed caring for, someone worth worrying over.

It was irresponsible to be here, reckless even. The short way of putting it was that Tony's life had become a bit of a mess: an ex employee had stolen a handful of Tony's personal designs and used them to wreak havoc overseas, and though Tony had tracked him down and gotten back every last lug nut, his company's stocks had plummeted and the board of investors was coming for his blood. Then there was the little fact that he'd fallen off the wagon and been photographed by paparazzi leaving a bar, that he'd publicly been dumped by Janet Van Dyne just days after, that the VR world he'd tried to make as entertainment had--like so many things he'd made--been weaponized, and now Tony was facing more lawsuits than he could name.

Falling off the radar for a bit had seemed like a good idea, but he never should have let Rhodey talk him into coming here. No paparazzi had followed him yet, but what if they did? What if they came knocking down Mrs. Rhodes' door just because she'd made the damning mistake of taking pity on him?

Tony pushed open Rhodey's bedroom door quietly. "You awake?" he whispered. God, he hoped he was awake.

#bokketo #v: avengers assemble #let me know if you want me to change anything!#alcoholism tw #[queue] i will explain it when we get back; i will draw pictures; i will use puppets

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graunblida · 9 months

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arrested development prompts // always accepting @bokketo sent: "I’m a scholar. I enjoy scholarly pursuits. Like studying your body." // teen!Nat

Natasha never fails to keep her on her toes. Come to think of it, no one else has tried to put the moves on her in the reference section. " I didn't know you were taking anatomy this semester. " Lexa teases, mischievous twinkle in her eyes. It's even quieter than usual ( if one can imagine such a thing ) since they're "studying" during a lunch period. The rows and rows of bookcases offer some privacy if the two dare to get a little handsy. They can probably get away with some kissing before the bell rings or they get kicked out by a disgruntled librarian.

#bokketo #c; natasha romanova #ii. my truth will be my own » answered.#verse tbd #gorls get to class smdh

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soracities · 8 months

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Have you ever read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? I read it over a decade ago and, upon seeing it in the bookstore yesterday, thought of you and your tastes.

it's actually so interesting that you sent me this bc i'd heard about it years ago but only put it on my tbr list last month! i look forward to reading it!

#ask #bokketo #book recs

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murder-popsicle · 4 months

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Reasons to live

I'm going to split this into two parts: World War II and post-Winter Soldier.

World War II:

Bucky never wanted to go to war; as I've mentioned before, she was called up by the women's draft. And when she first went overseas, she was determined to survive. She wanted to go home. She wanted to see her parents and her sisters again. She wanted to see Steve again. She wanted to marry her fiancé, to settle down, to have a life.

That changed during her time in the Red Skull's factory. Not that she didn't still want to go home -- she absolutely did -- but she was so sick and so badly injured after Lohmer's beating that she just didn't think it would happen. She came to a point where she found herself forced to accept that she probably wasn't going to make it. That was why, when Zola's lackeys came around the day after her beating to pick a new subject for his experiments, she made sure that they picked her. Die in a cell, die in Zola's lab -- what's the difference? She'd be dead either way, and she figured she could at least buy her fellow POWs a few more days in which the Allies might win the war. She knows full well that she only survived because Steve showed up, and that if Steve hadn't come to rescue her, Zola would have kept on going until he killed her. She knows that Zola never intended for her to survive.

After the factory, as the war dragged on and she was dragged deeper into it -- not entirely unwillingly -- she started to get a feeling deep in her gut that she wasn't going to make it home. I think part of her was also aware by then that, even if she did survive and go back to Brooklyn, she wouldn't be going home. The war had changed her too much, and she didn't think she'd be able to go back to her old life. But she didn't see any point in agonizing over that. She was there to watch Steve's back. She was there to clear the way for her comrades. She was there to stop the Nazis and stop HYDRA. That became more important to her than going home. If you can't do something useful with your life when times call for it, then what's the point of living? At least if she died, she would be dying for a cause she believed in.

Post-Winter Soldier:

I'm not going to lie and say that Jane/Bucky has never contemplated suicide, because she has. In the immediate aftermath of her escape from HYDRA, she stayed alive primarily because she knew that if she killed herself, it would devastate Steve. And one thing Bucky has never, ever wanted to do is hurt Steve. As time went on and she advanced in her self-imposed mission of destroying HYDRA, her reason for staying alive shifted to spite (something she definitely learned from Steve). Karpov and Zola tried to destroy her. If she kills herself, that will mean they succeeded, and she won't let them succeed. In her own way, Bucky is just as stubborn as Steve. She's the unstoppable force and he's the immovable object.

Once she reunites with Steve and finds her way back to an equilibrium, she stays alive for a combination of reasons: Spite, Steve & Natasha, and the desire to do some good in the world. And while it's true that she does still have dark days and suicidal thoughts, she's also on the whole pretty content with her life. She has friends she cares about, she has a lover she adores, and she has a job that gives her a purpose. She's about as happy as she can be.

#bokketo #meme answers #headcanon #hc list #v; sergeant barnes #v; galanthus nivalis #v; city heartbeat #suicide mention cw

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tnott · 4 months

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Lessons of history

This is something that Theo has felt strongly about ever since she was a child -- that understanding history is vital to understanding the present and guiding the future. She first formed this idea while reading about the Goblin Rebellions and the history of Wizard-Goblin relations. She saw how this often bloody history was still affecting that relationship to this day. But in a lot of ways it was an academic belief, not something that had much to do with her everyday life.

The Second Wizarding War changed that. The war destroyed her family -- though she blames her father and the Dark Lord for that just as much as she blames Cornelius Fudge and the Ministry. After the First Wizarding War, after Voldemort's first defeat, British Wizarding society and especially the British Wizarding government tried to forget. They tried to move on by pretending that the war had never happened. People who should have been sentenced to Azkaban, like Lucius Malfoy and Lenotius Nott, were allowed to go free and resume their old positions of power, thus giving them free reign to use their influence to keep the old order of society intact.

This meant that when Voldemort returned, he didn't need to start rebuilding his army from scratch. Instead, he immediately had a core group of influential followers that he could call upon. And because the people in power in the Ministry -- Cornelius Fudge chief among them -- had been trying for fourteen years to forget what had happened, the people who should have been paying attention and noticing the signs of Voldemort's return instead chose to turn a blind eye. If the Ministry had acted quickly and decisively, Theo thinks, then the Second Wizarding War might have been prevented entirely.

She's aware that that might have involved her father going to Azkaban and her family still being damaged, but thousands of other people would have been spared suffering and death. It took Theo several years to come to grips with the fact that, by keeping her father's secrets, she was complicit in that suffering. It's her greatest regret in life. But it reinforced her belief in the importance of paying heed to the lessons of history, and more than that, it made it personal rather than academic. She feels that the adults in power in the inter-war period failed society in general and her generation in particular enormously.

As an adult, that belief in the importance of history burns in her, and she's dedicated her entire career into trying to educate Wizarding society about the past in the hopes that that knowledge can help make the future a better place.

#bokketo #meme answers #headcanon #hc list #v; the bleak midwinter #v; digging deep #v; binning binns

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maggicktouched · 9 months

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@bokketo for a domiNATrix verse hahahaha i'm so funny.

It made sense that a woman who made a living out of being paid for something like this would be beautiful and imposing, but she'd still been a bit taken aback when the door had swung open. She wasn't nervous. She refused to be nervous because she wasn't some clumsy seventeen year old who had never been around the block. She was a grown woman who had willingly sought this place out, and she would not let herself be tongue tied and flustered. No matter how tall and imposing and painstakingly beautiful this stranger was.

"Sorry I couldn't get the paperwork filled out online. I'm not very good with computers." She said, looking curiously around the room, her leg bouncing irritably. That, unfortunately, had nothing to do with her current situation. It had been months since she'd been far enough away from the city to relax. She'd been moving, pacing, fidgeting, smoking, non-stop for weeks, and still the pressure in her chest was rising. It was what drove her to seek this sort of thing out in the first place.

She readjusted in her chair and forced herself to focus. "I'll be honest with you, the last time I was in this kind of scene it was with someone I dated. I've never done anything like---this. Paid someone, I mean. Not that I'm opposed to it. Obviously. I just---Jesus Christ. What I'm trying to say is I don't really know how this whole thing goes in the beginning. So if I step on your toes or whatever, just let me know."

#bokketo

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gloriousxdarkness · 9 months

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"MUSIC" // accepting // @bokketo sent — (for nat? clint? foggy? johnny? you choose whoever you like!)

Natasha — "Here Come the Wolves" Lola Blanc

Clint — "All These Things That I've Done" The Killers

Foggy — "Crave" Paramore (#nostalgia...)

Johnny — "Womanizer" Britney Spears :P

#bokketo #( some time later but ily ! )#answered;#ask meme;

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wxldchxld · 3 months

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Shadows:

This is part one, and hopefully the longest part, of what should be two or three drabbles I'll be posting for Rán Malfoy (who is not an official muse on my blog but is Beck's daughter with @bokketo's Draco so this is where it is going) because she is the loudest muse in my fucking head and won't go away.

The world was black and cold.

She had left behind the golden, glowing warmth of the house. Tip-toeing past her mum, who had fallen into a fitful sleep on the couch, clutching her round belly. Shuffling by the door to Nippy’s rooms in slow-motion to keep the elf’s big ears from hearing the creak of floorboards. Angrboda had been the last guardian at the gate—sprawled on a windowsill, staring out into the moon-soaked wilderness and flicking her tail. Rán waited until the feline’s attention was caught by some small, unfortunate critter that made her spring up and dart off into the darkness. The coast was clear, and Rán pushed open the door.

The first breath of cold winter air was refreshing; it made the heat of the wood stove inside feel oppressive. As she crept across the lawn toward the barn, her little fingers began to grow stiff and ache, and she quickly forgot that feeling, but she didn’t turn tail and race back to the safety of the fire’s glow.

It was cold, and she wanted to check on Scuffle.

Frost caked under her nails as she clumsily fought with the swollen wood that latched the barn closed. She grunted, hit it, and shoved all her weight against upward until it popped free and the door swung open just wide enough to squeak through. In the evenings, the barn was pitch black, but she knew where a lantern was. Sticking her foot out in front of her and tapping blindly as she shuffled along, she felt her way to a straw bale. The grasses crackled in protest and prickled her feet as she climbed up on top of it, then used the extra height to clamber up onto the door of a stall so she could reach the post beside it. Blindly, she waved her hand in the air once, twice, and finally tapped against metal the third time. She snatched the lantern from the hook and hopped down.

Icy pain shot up her legs as she landed barefoot on the stone floor of the barn, and she yelped, but she didn’t cry. Malfoys didn’t cry. Nor did she drop her precious lantern. The little girl took a deep breath, shook one foot, then the other, hopped up and down twice, and then knelt down to go about lighting her lantern.

She fished the matches from her pocket and pushed on the little lever to raise the globe. The smell of sulfur tickled her nose as her aching fingers struggled to strike the match. It took three tries before it hissed to life. Carefully, she stuck it to the wick and watched it catch. A little halo of light illuminated the world around her, and Rán squealed with delight. She flicked the lever again, stood up, and ran down the aisle to Scuffle’s stall.

The pony was laying in a thick bed of pine shavings. His head shot up when light poured over the door and roused him from slumber. The flakes of wood that made up his bed clung to his wild hair. She giggled, and he whickered softly at the sound of her voice.

“You ok buddy?” The barn kept out the wind, and his fur was thick, but she still worried he was cold. She pushed open his gate and looked into his water bucket. The icy water snapped at her fingers as she plucked some stray shavings out of it. He had plenty and it was clean. His feeder was still fat with hay too. Mum had made sure he was taken care of, just like she promised.

He didn’t get up. The fat little pony watched her intently, but couldn’t be bothered to stand. He didn’t stir when she got close or spring to his feet in alarm when she crawled on top of him and warmed herself in his fluff. She laid on his back, feet buried in the pine shavings, fingers tangled in his heavy mane, and face pressed against the fur of his neck, until the stiffness faded from her arms and legs. If her mum wouldn’t have died of a heart attack, she might have stayed like that and fallen asleep.

Reluctantly, she gave him a little kiss on his forelock and left him to his beauty rest. She picked up her abandoned lantern and headed back toward the door only to stop abruptly. Something wasn't right at all. Where the door had been open just enough for her to squeeze her way through seconds before, now it was wide open. Not how she'd left it at all. And the wind was still as the frozen pond outside.

“Hello?” She called, thrusting the lantern out in front of her. Out of the darkness cast by the shadow of the barn door, came a huge, hulking figure. The thing moved and she heard the clatter of hooves. The fire in her lantern sputtered and struggled, then died altogether. There was no light left other than the weak splinters of the stars reaching through the open door at the end of the aisle, and it was being blocked by the thing that was still twisting and taking form.

It snorted a cloud of mist into the frigid air and she screamed. Without thinking, she threw the lantern as hard as she could. It sailed through the air a meager foot or two, then fell to the floor and shattered. She back peddled further into the darkness of the stable. The entity opened its eyes and they glowed a sickening red in the abyss.

“MUUUUM!” She screeched. The thing was getting closer and closer. Horns protruded from its head---or was that its body---barely visible in the light cast by its own eyes. Too many eyes. At least ten of them, but she was crying too hard to see. Scuffle was pacing his stall behind her, whinnying in fear as it steadily crept closer. It filled up every inch of the space. It stood from ceiling to floor. It was all that existed anymore. Rán screamed, turning her back to the thing and running as hard as she could down the hall of the stables. Tears wet her face, and her whole body shivered. There was a back door to the barn. If she could just make it there.

The hall was free of clutter, thankfully, allowing her to run without falling, but she couldn’t see where she was or how close she was to the back wall. When she turned her head, all she could see was the blood red of eyes. The hoofbeats on the stone were still unhurried, but there were too many of them, like she was being followed by a whole herd of horses, and the thing was gaining on her with impossible speed. She could feel hot breath on her neck.

“NO! No no no NO!” Rán smacked the darkness at her back, but didn’t touch anything of flesh or blood. “Mum! MUM! NO!”

There was a sudden grunt from in front of her, and she slammed into an enormous, furry body. She fell down wailing and screaming, kicking and thrashing with her hands. She wanted her mum. She wanted her dad. Her daddy had never let anything hurt her. Everything had been safe when he was here. Now he was gone and the—the THING was going to eat her.

Through eyes blurred with tears, she looked up at the thing. But this thing only had two eyes, and neither of them were looking at her. Deep and guttural, the reaver bellowed. It sounded a bit like a horse and a bit like a dragon, and very very angry.

“Sugar!” Rán squealed, frozen in terror.

There was a thunder of hooves as the reaver barreled forward, and then a shriek of pain that sounded like nothing she’d ever heard before. Hoof scratched on stone, flesh thumped against wood and it groaned as it splintered. The thing hissed, then screamed once more, and it was flying backward at breakneck speed. One by one its eyes were fading to blackness. And though she’d never heard it before, she somehow knew that the sickening, fleshy crack was one of bone. Spindly, shadowy legs flailed in the moonlight, but the blackness would flash before her and a heartbeat later, they laid twitching and detached from the thing they came from.

One final scream, but this time, there was something hauntingly human in it.

Light flooded the barn as every single lantern sprang to life. It was so sudden that spots invaded her vision and she had to squint and rub at her eyes until she could see again.

“Rán! RÁN!” Her mother shouted, and then she was scooped up into a suffocating hug.

She sobbed. Harder than she’d ever cried in her whole life, clinging to her mother’s curls for all she was worth. Her mum petted her hair and rocked her, talking too fast for Rán to properly make out what she was saying. When she did pull away, hiccuping and blinking rapidly, she could see past her mother’s pale, panic-stricken face to the doorway of the barn.

Red eyes were watching her.

Sugar was standing completely still and totally relaxed. His eyes half closed and his back leg cocked without a worry in the world. Something dark was drizzling off the tip of his muzzle. There was no carnage spread on the ground beneath him. The only evidence of the battle that had just taken place were splintered stall doors and viscous smears of black on the floor. As her mum stood to carry her back to the safety of the house, and they got closer to the reaver, she could see a shimmering sheen on his body. Up close she realized that he was wet---covered in the same thing spread across the floor.

It would be years before she understood what happened that night. The only thing her five year old mind knew for certain in that moment was that there was more going on in the dark than she’d ever imagined.

#;;;my drabbles #bokketo

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