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assortedseaglass · 4 months

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🌟Mistletoe | Yuletide🌟

Michael Gavey x Fem!Reader

Summary: Michael's Christmas plans are scuppered, but a chance encounter lifts his hopes for the New Year.

Content: Fluff, Language.

Yuletide Masterlist

December 15th. The night of the Catton Christmas party in Brasenose College. Term ended a week ago, but the prospect of partying with the university’s hottest boy and his gaggle of gorgeous followers was too delicious to pass up. Freshers to third-years clamoured to rub shoulders with the prime ministers and business men of tomorrow. Any way to get your foot in the door, and maybe some Christmas action too.

The single-pane windows of the old college dorm room rattled to the beat of NOW XMAS, and each time the door opened a pair of drunk undergrads tumbled into the quadrangle.

The latest two, a straw-haired girl in a Juicy Couture tracksuit and a burly boy wearing a rugby polo, stumbled from the old double doors leading to the common room. On their way, between sloppy kiss and over the top giggles, they bumped into a solitary figure.

“Sorry, mate,” the drunk boy said, watching the other young man through alcohol-heavy eyes. The girl beside him eyed the stranger and snorted. “Merry Christmas.”

Hands tucked into his pockets, scarf wrapped neatly around his neck, Michael Gavey stumbled. The pair got no reply, only a cold glance of annoyance as he made for his dorm.

Gold, string-light bulbs decorated Brasenose quadrangle, tacky Christmas trees were perched in various student windows, and the saccharine chorus of Band Aid 20 was shouted from the common room.

Michael didn’t hate Christmas. He quite enjoyed the fuss from his aunties and the jumpers his grandmother bought him. His mum snuck extra roasties onto his plate and his dad made a point to buy him each year’s Telegraph Quiz Book. This year would surely be even better. The pride on his family’s faces, each asking about his first term at Oxford. First one in his family to go to university and he gets into Oxford.

It was precisely because he liked Christmas that this one was so miserable. Michael was neither surprised nor upset when he checked his pigeonhole that morning to see no invitation to the Catton Christmas part. Him and Oliver. A pair of nobodies.

He took the new Nokia his dad got him for his A Levels out of his pocket. No texts. Punching the numbered keys, he sent one to Oliver.

Back at BC. Mince pies and port ready.

The corridor to his dorm room was empty. With the turn of his key, he opened the door. The room was cold. The ancient radiator was ticking into life and the old windows were beginning to fog with condensation. On top of his stack of maths textbooks a bottle of unopened port gleamed.

Turning on his bedside lamp, Michael gathered two dusty glasses his mother insisted he pack with him, and from his Tesco bag produced a pack of mince pies. He placed them on a paper plate and emptied the rest of the carrier bag (wallet, keys, pencil case, workbook) next to the E45 cream and battered copy of GH Hardy’s biography.

The Nokia buzzed aggressively on the table. Removing his scarf, Michael checked the screen. It was from Oliver. He unlocked the phone and checked the small envelope icon.

Something’s come up, sorry.

Michael slumped on the bed. His thumb hovered over the keypad.

Get a better offer, did you?

He deleted the text, locked the screen and threw it on the cheap duvet.

The others would still be at the pub. He could just go back and meet them there. Could, were it not for his pride. It just wasn’t the same, a group of people forced together, as opposed to those who found each other.

The pub was full of his fellow mathematics students. Spotty, eager to please and reeking of desperation to prove themselves. Michael didn’t need to. He watched as they fought for Professor Mathison’s attention, keen to discuss tutorial projects and career prospects. Mathison was already keenly aware of Michael, judging by the way his jaw dropped when Michael recited the Lagrangian form to the last letter.

With Oliver it was different. They were two outsiders, making their way in a world entirely foreign to their own, their intellect their only way in. Now it seemed the friendship Michael was working so hard to cultivate with Oliver was slipping away.

He stared at the empty glasses. Fuck it. Pouring a little too much port in one of the glasses, Michael stuffed a mince pie into his mouth, grabbed another and made for the door.

The air was crisp, but mild for mid-December. The music of the Catton party across the quadrangle had mellowed, and through the misty windows Michael could make out shapes dancing close together, swaying slowly.

A pang of jealousy twisted in his naval and he twitched awkwardly. He wondered what it would be like, having another body pressed against his. Or rather, to have someone want to be that close to him. His mind flashed to the French girl in tutorial. She’d pressed her leg against his at the pub when Mathison mentioned a partnered project for the new year, and when he’d looked down, he saw her fingers brushing the cuff of his jumper. He’d flinched away.

Everyone was doing it. Quick flings with no regard for consequence. He supposed he could do it too. With the French girl, or the girl with agoraphobia. Lord knows, she was getting as much action as he was. But there was something in his studious nature, his desire for knowledge, that meant he had to be consumed by knowing someone fully, or nothing at all.

Perching his bony bottom on the cold concrete step under an old brick archway, Michael took a gulp of port and began on the mince pie. He took the top off, ate it, and thought of his grandfather, and how he would add brandy butter before replacing the pastry cover. He ate the rest quickly and sipped his port slowly, thinking over the last term. The successes; far and away the best student on the course, and the failures; one (?) friend. It was as he did this that the door behind him opened.

“Shit, sorry! Didn’t see you there!” You hadn’t done anything wrong. Not opened the door on his back or tripped over him. Michael waved his hand noncommittally and without answer. “Do you mind if I sit with you?”

He looked up at this. An old grey coat at least a size too big was wrapped around you, a scarf pulled up to your nose and muffling your voice. Michael couldn’t make much of you out, just the eyes peering down at him from above the scarf, but he could tell you were beaming at him. Why?

He gestured to the cold step. You sat beside him, gave him a bright smile that didn’t falter when he stared at you a little too long, and turned to look at the night beyond the small archway.

“Pretty, aren’t they? All the lights?” Michael didn’t respond. He shifted his body slightly away from yours and took another sip of port. You weren’t deterred. “You a Billy-no-mates too then?”

“It’s Norman-no-mates-”

“I don’t think it matters.” You cut him off. “Well?”

Michael turned his face to you. You were still watching the lights but sensed him looking at you. In turn, you looked back at him, unabashed and direct.

“I might have mates waiting inside.”

“You might, but you don’t. You’re out here drinking wine,”

“Port.”

“Port’s just fortified wine. Drinking on your own when everyone’s off partying.”

Michael didn’t blink as he watched you. You weren’t being cruel by making him feel bad for his social ineptitude. Nor were you prying into what it was that made him so deplorable to seemingly everyone in college. No. You were just stating the facts. Michael loved facts.

“NFI.”

“Snap.” You held out your hand and gave him your name. Michael’s heart didn’t leap, but it did give a strange sort of jolt.

“Michael Gavey.” He shook yours and his mouth twitched when you gave him a firm smile.

“What about you? Why are you sitting on a cold step with a stranger?”

“Mate’s back there screaming at her fella cos he necked some girl in Exeter after a Hooch too many.”

“Let me guess, Business Management?”

“The very same.”

There was a contented silence a while. Michael sipped his port and watched you from the corner of his eye. The fingerless gloves you wore were fraying a little. Everything looked second hand. From your slightly battered Mary Janes and baggy jeans to the bag by your feet. Even the scarf still wrapped around your neck. The hair there was bunching under the fabric and a few wisps kept sticking to your lip gloss. Too pretty to be sitting with him, and too rough around the edges to be the usual Catton-fodder.

Michael licked his lips. “What are you reading?” Please be something good.

“Computer Sciences.” Merry fucking Christmas. “You?”

“Maths.”

“Ah, we could have done with you at the pub quiz! ‘How many birds in total are there in the twelve days o-’”

“One-hundred and eighty-four.” Michael rattled off as though the answer was a grocery list. You stared at him, an impressed smile playing at the corner of your mouth. Michael’s heart vaulted that time. He wanted more.

“Ask me anything. I can do any sum.”

You eyed him with barely supressed glee. “Twelve times thirty-one.”

“Three-hundred and seventy-two. Come on, ask me something harder.”

“Three-hundred and seventy-two times eight.”

“Harder.”

“Times twenty-three?”

“Harder.”

You almost shouted with excitement. “Three-hundred and seventy-two times forty-seven!”

“Seventeen-thousand, four hundred and eighty-four.”

You giggled and let out a low whistle. “Fuck me,”

Yes please.

A broad flush spread across Michael’s cheeks and he licked his lips again. “I can also-”

“Better check madam is ok,” your eyes indicated behind you as you took you phone from your pocket. The white light from the small screen was garish amongst the soft golds of the Christmas lights, and Michael’s heart sank as he watched you scroll through your contacts list. So many names. He’d give anything to be among.

He didn’t pay attention to anything you were saying as you chatted to your friend. The shine of your lip gloss beneath the fairy lights was too mesmerising. Michael raised his port glass to his lips, took a sip and let the glass linger there as you ended your call. He was entranced.

“Love you, mate. Alright, chat tomorrow.” You sighed as you hung up and looked at Michael. “Home for me, I think.”

As you stood, Michael did too, pulling his trousers up and tucking his hands into his pockets. “Nice to meet you, Michael.” You shook his free hand again and took the port from the other. He watched, agog, as you downed it in one. “Graham’s? Very nice.” You passed him the empty glass and began making your way to the end of the archway. He followed you like a shadow.

At the end of the passageway into the old quadrangle you turned to face him. “What are you doing for Christmas, Michael?”

“Home,” his voice was unnaturally high and he coughed. “Home, to see family but not much else.”

“And new year?”

“Seeing some boring old school friends then back here before term st-starts-starts,” you were leaning towards him. With no hint of shyness, and perhaps a little too forcefully, you kissed him. You pulled back, smiling.

“What was that for?” The surprise of your lips on his made him shout, and it sounded more hysterical than genuine shock and curiosity.

“Mistletoe,” you stated simply, pointing at the small poesy hanging from the archway.

Michael coughed. “Of course, yeah. Thank you.” He made an odd movement and almost clicked his heels. You laughed again, turning into the dark night.

“See you in the new year, Michael.” Your voice echoed off the old stone walls. Just as Michael expected, you sounded so certain. In all your ten minutes of knowing each other, he’d learned that about you. The statement wasn’t speculation or conjecture. It was a fact. Michael loved facts.

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope it's been a kind and calm one. H x

The usual suspects: @arcielee @targaryenrealnessdarling @theoneeyedprince @ewanmitchellcrumbs @ellrond @cyeco13 @babyblue711 @exitpursuedbyavulcan @humanpurposes @myfandomprompts @barbieaemond @anjelicawrites

#ewan mitchell #michael gavey #michael gavey x reader #ewan mitchell x reader #mistletoe #saltburn #OI SALTBURN PEEPS #if you're fed up with the lack of oliver and felix fanfic #write your own and leave us to thirst over the nerd in peace #merry christmas!#hilde's twelve days of christmas

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halfpintpeach · 7 months

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Professor Neil (sneak peek)

I missed the guy and WIP Wednesday this week brought him back up so here's a lil gift for @jtl-fics for being amazing and closing on a condo today!!

(Snippet includes part of the WIP Wednesday piece in the beginning)

September 16, 2008 (Tuesday)

Tuesday was probably Neil’s favorite day of the week. He only had two classes in the morning and both were lectures that he didn’t mind sitting in. After his lectures, he always went to the small coffee shop that didn’t even serve good coffee, but it was cheap and it was routine. Routines helped and kept him focused. Besides, the coffee shop was the only one that hadn’t tried to demand proof of papers for his service dog. One would think that the prosthetic leg would be proof enough but Neil clearly overestimated the mental capacity of most people.

Armed with subpar coffee and a warm bagel, Neil made his way to the library. The main floor was a communal hub, with no volume limits and plenty of chairs and couches for people to sit on. Tucked on the left side was an open room full of tables, the tutoring center. The woman behind the desk smiled as Neil walked up and wrote down his arrival in a notebook. Neil liked tutoring oddly enough, he didn’t care much for the people, but he enjoyed the subjects and the feeling of someone understanding a difficult concept was hard to beat.

A good chunk of the people who frequented the tutoring center were those who were on big time scholarships and unwilling to risk a dropping a point in the GPA. Hyped up on coffee, Neil often had to fight them away from his preferred table. The largest portion however, were the athletes. All required to maintain a minimum of a 2.3 to play for the NCAA Division 1 league. Neil tutored football players, soccer stars, and dancers every day. For most, as long as they went to their classes and didn’t fail any exams, it was an easy gig. Five hours a week in the tutoring center was a easy gig.

The Exy team was no exception.

Neil had started tutoring Matt Boyd last year, the tall man hopeless with his French courses. His pronunciation was leaps and bounds better, and the backliner was steadily maintaining a passing grade in the class. Languages were difficult for athletes who traveled almost weekly for games.

Thankfully, there was no one at the table Neil had claimed as his own. Despite the years of therapy he still took a table in the back of the room. There were other reasons, which his therapist had been good to point out, the fact that being further back in the room kept his dog focused on the task. Babe Ruth was a large golden retriever who seemed to forget that he had an additional appendage attached to his rump. The dogs tail was a weapon, thumbing hard enough against a leg to leave bruises. It was a disappointing scenario, considering Babe Ruth walk to the right side of Neil—tail smacking against his good leg. At the table, Neil took care to sit with his back to the side wall rather than the back. It was the little things, his reminded himself mentally. By now, his voice in the tutoring center was easily ignored as he commanded Babe Ruth to lay at his feet. The dog wasted no time, flopping onto the hard carpet and splaying out his limbs.

Neil checked his watch, Matt would be arriving in a few minutes. He always came right after his French class. Neil had managed to arrive a little early, so he went ahead and pulled out the workbook and folder that they’ve been using over the semester. This was their fourth meeting and already Neil liked how they were able to review the French that had just been covered in Matt’s class. He made a mental reminder to email his thanks to the French Professor, she’d been helpful in sending Neil her presentations for the classes.

#aftg #all for the game #andreil #andreil fanfic #andrew minyard #neil josten #pint writes #pints wips #professor neil #professor neil josten au #prof neil prequel #service dog #neil has only one leg #I stole it #dont worry there's another teachers AU called neil but with both legs in my docs #I just love this lil guy

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kodzukii · 2 years

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🗯 THE WIND KNOWS ME (BUT I WANNA KNOW YOU BETTER) ft. kise ryouta.

SUMMARY ! in which kise ryouta hears the wind — but not when it comes to you.

PAIRING ! kise ryouta x gn!reader

GENRES ! fluff, romance

WARNINGS ! none!

TAGLIST ! @n0vad (send an ask to be added <33)

WORD COUNT ! 670+

NOTE ! i’m a little amazed i actually wrote smth ngl 🤧🤧 anyways hi knb fandom this is my debut <33 ik y’all are dead rn but hopefully this gets a few people to rise from their graves a lil bit 💗 also if the tense is a bit weird ik sorry abt that i rarely write in present tense <//3

kise ryouta hears the wind.

the ceaseless chatter and shuffling of his classmates continues around him. “hey, wanna be my partner?” floats around the room, receiving varied yes or no responses. kise sincerely hopes he may be able to dodge the question just a little bit longer. his gaze stays trained onto the half opened glass barrier next to his seat, giving him a view of the vast, azure sky outside. he sighs discontentedly, mechanical pencil spinning between his fingers. his weary pout deepens the more his fist indents his cheek.

through his peripheral vision, kise sees a figure walk toward him. he inwardly groans, realising that the dreaded question is now floating towards him. what a shame. he may have jinxed himself this time. with the softest of sighs, he turns toward the figure and – oh crap, not her again. he plasters a smile onto his lips before his displeasure can show.

“oh, kise-kun! i couldn’t help but notice you don’t have a partner yet! you look so all alone.”

her voice is so grating that kise can almost taste how disgustingly saccharine it was. her bright, glossy lips form into a pout as she says this, and kise muses that the overly cakey makeup on her skin does nothing to hide the rotten personality (and zits) underneath.

“ah… i spaced out while everyone was picking their partners. so it seems i’m the odd one out,” he says with a laugh, voice like honey.

“well, well. i seem to be all alone as well.”

kise nearly gags at the seductive tone her voice had now taken. her lips seem more red now than ever as she leans in a bit, allowing kise to catch a whiff of her vanilla (artificial– and cheap, he notes) perfume.

“oh, is that so?”

the wind becomes louder.

“soooo, we’re perfect – i mean, it’s perfect! silly me.”

he wishes the wind would drown out her laughs – it was like a broken violin grating against his eardrums.

“i suppose. but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, after all.”

and this beholder sees nothing beautiful in front of him.

“you’re right! always so insightful, kise-kun!”

kise thinks his laughs are starting to become out of tune, too.

“heh, of cour--”

“kise-kun? you dropped this in p.e.”

the wind suddenly begins to quieten.

“hey, we were–!”

“(l/n)cchi! i was wondering where that went. thank you so much for returning it.”

to him, the way you glowed was akin to that of an angel. this beholder was proven wrong today. and though he’s never believed in abstract concepts such as fate, today he finds himself thanking the lucky stars midorima seems to oh-so-adore.

“it’s alright. be more attentive of your things next time, okay?”

wow, he really wishes he could hear you lecture him more often. however, before he could do more than nod and say “okay”, you have already left, only a whisper of (and very much natural) scent left in your wake.

he watches you take your seat, scribbling notes in your workbook, likely something to do with the assignment. he thinks he hears the girl’s noisy calls for his name next to him, but his intent gaze stays trained onto your figure. the thoughtful hum that slips from your lips is music to his ears, and he can’t help but find your focused expression rather attractive. and… you’re alone?

the wind is silent.

the chair scrapes from beneath him as he rises to his full height. with the girl forgotten behind him, he walks toward your desk in confident strides. he sees you look up when you sense his presence, and he sends you a smile as he closes the distance between you two. you smile back! wow, your smile is gorgeous. gemini must be on top of oha asa’s list today (maybe midorima is onto something with his belief in fate, kise thinks).

“hi again, kise-kun. do you need something?”

“yes, actually.”

kise ryouta hears the wind.

but never when it comes to you.

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lauryns-orders · 8 months

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Doing things for myself used to make me feel guilty.

I felt like there was something else I should be doing, someone else I should be helping, or that it was a waste of time or money.

I had to work on it. It took a lot of practice, therapy, and support from friends. I still have work to do, but I’m proud to say I’ve gotten better at practicing self-care.

I can help you with your self-care journey. I’d love to:

Find You:

Nail Salons

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Send You:

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Cheap Self-Care Ideas

Or I can handle the tasks taking up your time and mental load so you can just focus on taking care of yourself.

#self care #personal assistant #virtual assistant #small business #free services #mine

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readingcauldron · 1 year

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I'm currently reading Against Interpretations and Other Essays by Susan Sontag and today I read her critique of Notes and Counter Notes: Writings on the Theatre by Eugene Ionesco.

it was kind of ideal timing to read this because I've been thinking a lot about how when language becomes a habit it almost becomes meaningless--especially in terms of the sentence formulas people our age constantly use. things that started out as a funny tweet and then became a twitter trend and then incorporated themselves into our daily vocabulary--like "silly little treat" becoming "silly little (insert anything here)". the words "silly little" used to imply a lot but now they don't mean anything. or hollywood coopting "eat the rich," or (white/nonblack) people misunderstanding the origins and depth of "karen" to render both things practically meaningless in popular culture.

i'm trying to think of phrases that i and many other people use in our daily lives: maybe "you're in your ____ era." or maybe "liminal" or "post-ironic." i know there are better examples, i'll come back and edit this post when i think of them lol.

there are formulas we follow to say a sentence. the "era" example is one i'm guilty of--it's an easy way to comfort a friend, to uplift them, to converse with a coworker and get a cheap laugh, to express my emotions without being vulnerable or thinking as deeply as i should about what i'm saying and how i want to say it. in short, it's an out, a mode of vulnerability-less expression. it's reflexive, empty words used to fill the space.

I don't think these things have the value that slang does, because they're so transient. by feeling meaningless within a few uses, they self-destruct, and we move on to another phrase/sentence formula that becomes meaningless then self-destructs (by becoming cringe or by nonblack people finding out it's AAVE). i could be wrong though...haven't done much research on what qualifies as slang

i think, to a certain extent, maybe it's okay if not every word someone says has meaning. maybe... but habit is so dangerous when it comes to language. "no ethical consumption under capitalism" is a good example of this. it was said so much by the wrong people that the majority of its users don't actually know what it means and it's used by nominal anti-capitalists to justify very capitalist activities.

back to the book: "...exotic substance secreted--in a sort of trance--by interchangeable persons." this puts it into words perfectly. these phrases require no brainpower, they're practically a reflex.

so of course i had to read Ionesco's essay The Tragedy of Language, which is about his first play The Bald Sopranos, which he was inspired to write while learning English from a workbook that had him write down English sentences like "The floor is down" and "The ceiling is up."

From the essay:

So then of course I had to watch the play (links to read, watch). The conversations reminded me a lot of when I was back home and had to talk to a bunch of adults. “How curious it is! How very bizarre! What a coincidence!…but I do not believe I recall it.” Forms of expression that in their automatic usage render their content meaningless. the veneer of politeness that I often find myself trapped in—when I feel I need to be polite, and I feel my personality disappear, and with it any original language, and I default to an echo of the adults around me. The play exposes the absurdity of it all very well.

What I love about reading nonfiction: you go from book to essay to essay to play, hardly conscious of it!

-Lizzy

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whump-me · 6 months

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Whumptober Day 24: Goodbye Note

This is a standalone story in my original Mind Games universe, a modern-day sci-fi/fantasy thriller setting about ordinary humans with superhuman abilities and the people who want to use or destroy them. Full description in my Whumptober masterpost, which is linked in my pinned post.

This story contains: emotional whump, death whump, suicide

Words: 2100

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Jessie woke in a motel room. It could have been any of the motel rooms she had slept in since they’d gone on the run. Wallpaper several decades out of date. Carpet peeling away from the walls at the edges. That same stale smell, sweat and feet and old cigarette smoke.

From the room next door, she heard the faint sound of arguing voices. From the room on the other side, the low hiss of a running shower. The sheets were cheap, but soft from repeated washings. She tugged the lumpy comforter up around her chin as she struggled to cross the barrier between the sleeping world and the waking one.

Dylan was still asleep next to her. At five years old—and a clingy five, at that, although who could blame him?—he was still young enough not to object to having to share a bed with his parents. But he was old enough to thrash around in his sleep with the intensity of a fish flopping on a dock. And old to steal her pillow for himself, along with all the blankets.

He had left her the blankets last night, at least. She couldn’t say the same for her pillow. Her head lay on bare mattress while his curls spread angelically across the pillow that had belonged to her last night. No wonder her neck hurt.

She reached across Dylan’s lightly snoring form for Ethan.

And touched bare mattress.

Ethan wasn’t there.

Jessie sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She glanced toward the bathroom. The door was open. Nobody was inside.

“Ethan?” she called softly, even though she could plainly see for herself that he wasn’t in the room. No one answered, of course.

Neither of them went anywhere alone without telling the other first. That was one of the rules they had set for themselves when they had first gone on the run. They had been at this for two months—no, the leaves were starting to change, which meant it had been even longer—and no one had broken that rule yet.

Until now.

This was how their mornings usually went: Jessie would wake up first, a little after sunrise. She would shake Ethan gently awake, because she hated being the only one awake in a bleak motel room. He would wake slowly, with many grumbled protests that Dylan somehow slept through. They would play a game of rock-paper-scissors to see who would go out and fetch breakfast and coffee. Then one of them—usually Jessie—would make Dylan do three pages in his math workbook and five pages of reading practice, so he wouldn’t get too far behind. The other—usually Ethan—would pore over the maps app to figure out the best route for the day ahead.

After that, they would pay for the room and get in the car, and trade off driving until their eyelids started sagging and their bellies rumbled for dinner.

Long, leisurely mornings were one perk of this new life. They might have been the only perk.

It was a rhythm that had grown familiar. It turned out a person could get used to anything. Even finding out her husband had been born in a secret breeding program for psychic black-ops agents, and had escaped as a teenager to live under a false name. Even finding out he had telekinetic powers he had hidden from her for the first seven years of their marriage.

Even going on the run after the people who made him finally tracked him down.

She hadn’t realized how much she had grown used to that rhythm until this morning, when the rhythm had been broken.

There was something on Ethan’s pillow, a splotch of brighter white against the dull grayish-white of the old sheets. Jessie fumbled for her glasses on the nightstand and slipped them on.

The splotch on the pillow was a folded piece of paper.

A chill came over her as she reached over Dylan to grasp it between her fingers. She didn’t realize her hand was shaking until she accidentally brushed Dylan’s shoulder. He made a faint, sleepy noise of protest as Jessie unfolded the note and began to read.

Dear Jessie,

I’m sorry to leave like this. I know I’m being a coward. But if I stay to talk to you face-to-face, I know I’ll never find the courage to do what I know I have to do.

They’re still after us. I talked to my old friend again last week, the one who still has contacts inside the facility. She says they’re still on our tail. I know we haven’t wanted to talk about it in front of Dylan, but we’ve both seen the cars following us. And we both heard someone trying to break into the room back in Alabama.

We’ve been at this all summer, and we’re no closer to being able to find a place to settle down. If anything, they’re gaining on us.

That’s why I’m going to turn myself in.

I’m going to do it for your sake, so you can live the normal life you deserve—the life you thought you would have when you married me. And I’m going to do it for Dylan’s sake, so he never has to go through what I went through as a child. Don’t worry about me. I got out once, and I can get out again. But I won’t risk bringing this danger down on you or Dylan again.

My friend will be in touch in the next couple of days with new IDs for the two of you. I’m the one they really want. Once they have me, they shouldn’t go to the trouble of searching for you.

I should never have taken the risk of being with you in the first place. I should have known they would find me eventually. It wasn’t fair, bringing you into this. And lying to you about it was the worst part. I hope someday you’ll be able to forgive me.

I’ll never regret the time I spent with you, or the child we made together. I hope you don’t regret it, either.

I love you. I always will.

Love, Ethan.

She turned and screamed into her pillow, pulling it tightly against her face so she wouldn’t wake Dylan.

How dare he? How dare he? As if they weren’t partners in this. As if she hadn’t told him she was in this with him to the end, after he had confessed his secret. As if she hadn’t been the one to work out all the logistics when they had decided to run.

Dylan stirred, his little legs kicking off the blankets. “Mom?” he murmured, his voice thick with sleep.

Jessie lifted her head from the pillow. She crumpled the note into a tight ball. Then she smoothed it out again, and stared down at the rounded shapes of Ethan’s letters.

She understood. She didn’t want to understand, but she did. In his position, she might have done the same thing—for Dylan’s sake.

He shouldn’t have made this decision without her. But he had. It was done. He had done it for her, and most of all, he had done it for their son.

And now it was her job to continue the work of keeping Dylan safe.

She forced a smile for him. After so long of living with the danger they couldn’t voice aloud, it was second nature.

“Good morning, sweet boy,” she said, and hoped he couldn’t hear the tears in her voice. “What would you like for breakfast today?”

Soon she would have to answer his questions about where Dylan had gone. But not quite yet. That was good. She couldn’t handle thinking about Ethan right now.

She folded the note neatly into quarters and slid it into the pocket of her pajama pants.

She repeated one line to herself over and over. I got out once, and I can get out again.

She would never see Ethan again. She knew he was serious about that. But his son would be safe. And so, eventually, would he.

* * *

About an hour away, Ethan sat in a small clearing, listening to the rustle of the surrounding pines. It looked like it was going to be a beautiful day.

The night before, he had seen the small stretch of woods off the highway. He had set his alarm for before sunrise, and put it under his pillow so Jessie and Dylan wouldn’t hear it. He had dragged himself out of bed while it was still dark and hiked out here himself.

As much as he hated mornings, the walk had been surprisingly refreshing. He could still hear the whiz of passing cars, and smell the faint acrid tang of exhaust in the air mingled with the scent of pine. But for the past couple of months, he had spent his days in the car and his nights in interchangeable motel rooms. He couldn’t remember the last time he had a chance to enjoy being out in nature.

Funny—he had never been much of a fan of the natural world before. He was more a “laze around on the couch in sweatpants watching crappy TV all day” kind of guy. Enjoying the sort of everyday luxuries his childhood had never allowed him.

A guy didn’t really know what he was missing until he had lost it.

The pine trees stretched impossibly high, their upper branches laden with needles as deep a green as the bottom of the sea. He lay back and watched the small branches create intricate patterns against the blue sky, like unsolvable mazes.

Like the maze the three of them were trapped in. He had thought finding one more new route on the map would fix it. He wished it hadn’t taken him this long to admit to himself that it wouldn’t be that simple.

He wished he were there with his family right now, groaning in protest as Jessie shook him awake. He wished he could have said goodbye in person. But he would have been too weak. He would have stayed. He would have told himself the next new route would be enough to evade their pursuers, or the next, or the next.

And even if he hadn’t talked himself out of his plan, he would have given away too much under Jessie’s sharp gaze.

It was easier to lie in a note. She couldn’t ask probing questions of a bunch of words on paper. She couldn’t look in his eyes and see the evasion there.

The truth was, he couldn’t go back to the facility. Not ever.

They would question him—and he knew what their questioning involved. Sooner or later, he would tell them about Dylan. Dylan, who had likely inherited the Enhanced gene from him, even if the gene didn’t look likely to activate naturally and give him a power of his own. The people who had made Ethan had ways of activating the gene in dormant carriers. And they were always looking for new operatives. Especially children young enough to be malleable.

Ethan would not risk that. He would not risk Dylan.

He had brought the pills a week ago, when it had been his turn to go get breakfast. It had taken him this long to find the courage to use them.

There were no hiking trails out here. Even as close to the highway as he was, he doubted anyone would find the body. Not in the couple of days it would take for his old friend to pass a tip to his pursuers letting them know where to find him. Then she would send Jessie and Dylan their new IDs, and no one would connect them to the body of a former operative-in-training who had grown tired of running.

Ethan pulled the bottle of pills from his pocket. He took another look up at the vast sky, and at the tall, swaying trees. In the facility where he had been born, there had been no windows. Over the years, he had forgotten the wonder he had felt at his first glimpse of the outside world.

He should never have let himself forget. He should never have let himself take any of this for granted.

It really was a beautiful day.

---

Tagged: @cakeinthevoid @gala1981

Ask to be added or removed from my Whumptober 2023 taglist.

#whumptober2023 #no.24 #goodbye note #oc #fic #suicide tw #death whump #my writing #my writing: Mind Games #my writing: whumptober 2023

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lgwifey · 2 years

Text

council estate

bff!liam gallagher x fem!reader

90s!alex james x fem!reader

Summary : After getting adopted, y/n looses touch with her best friend but bumps into his years later at her boyfriend's award show. For both of them, everything's changed.

Warning : southerner bashing (?)

1987

Black adidas hit the floor of the science block in power filled strides. Ripped tights, a rolled up skirt, an untucked jumper and a blazer smothered in patches and badges of different bands and brands.

Y/n Y/l/n was the rebellion of Barlow Roman Catholic High School. In her cherry red blazer's inside pocket was a walkman, it's headphones infront of her messy bun and on her ears. The sound of I Wanna Be Sedated danced through her ears as she made her way to first period with a Greggs' sausage roll in hand and three more stashed in her messanger bag that swung against her hip.

Two sausage rolls for 50p was going to be the death of her.

Her science teacher, Mr Wright, didn't bother too much about his students excuse making ability and basically worked off students being in school late was better than them being absent, so she didn't have to frey detention.

"Hiya Sir."

Y/n's y/f/c nail polished hand pushed the light wood, possibly oak, door open to reveal the middle aged man trying to teach the room full of teenagers about, she looked to the chalkboard at the front of the class, plant and animal cells. She pulled off her headphones,resting them on her shoulders and pausing the tape. Her body skipped it's way to the back of the room where her friends where sat, originally bored out their brains and now holding their hands out to her for the food.

"Good for you to finally join us y/f/n. Your book's in the box at the back."

She gave a nod at the direction, face screwing up at the use of her christened name. Her bag was discarded on the varnished desk which for some reason was always sticky, ew, and she stretched to the box that sat around a meter away from her to get the yellow workbook.

When her book was opened and the date and title had been scribbled down at the top of the white page in a cheap black biro, the y/h/ced teen looked to her left to find her friend basically staring into her soul.

"What's your issue Liams ?"

"Food ? "

The realisation hit her and she mumbled an 'alreat' as she pulled the two hot sausage rolls and the bottle of coke out of her bag. As she put the stock down on the table between their books and poundshop pens, Liam past her the £1.30 for the things he'd asked her to buy when she'd ran his house from a phone box and told him she'd missed the bus and was therefore going past the highstreet on her way to school.

She almost immediatly pulled out Anna's stuff and passed the sauage roll bag to the girl sat infront of them, who past three ten pences over in the other hand.

After sorting out everyone elses purchases, Y/n got out her bottle of y/f/d.

Finally she actually started paying attention to the lesson Mr Wright was already on the small halfway pop quiz he did at the begining of a subject.

"And y/f/n, "

He pointed the small sparkly red finger pointer stick, which he used for the quizes to try and make them more fun, at the back of the room. Said fourteen year old jumped up dramatically,

"And the powerhouse of the cell is called ?"

"Mitochondria !"

A running joke in the lesson after Liam had asked if that was a disease in the first sub-topic.

The next period of the day was undoubtable the worst.

Maths.

If the subject alone wasn't enough to make y/n want to claw her eyes out and produce them in a smoothie, the rotten Miss Alans was definatly the thing to top off her hatrid of it.

"She 'as it out f'me Liams, wear down."

"Aye. Well as much as I love yeh Birdy, Imma 'ave to leave yeh to it."

Liam had maths next door to y/n.

Mr Lowton.

He literally gave them sweets if they participated and got the answer wrong !

The younger girl gave a grumble as she entered the room and pulled her chair out to slouch down in. A plastic, uncomfortable seat square front-center of the class.

She was a 'trouble maker' according to the old witch.

Honestly, you miss one mass for a concert. Just one.

That was one of the downsides to going to a catholic school, they made sure you went to mass each weekend.

The class dragged on longer than normal, triganometry really could test time's ability to become a tortoise, and half an hour of 'Mary had a little lamb' could really test your sanity's ability to stay strong.

Mary had a little lamb, whose fur was white as snow.

And everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go.

At least that's what she had been singing in her head for the past twenty odd minutes, she wasn't certain the lyrics where spot on but who'd know ?

Y/n was smacked out of her thoughts by a wooden 30cm ruler striking her fingers.

Pain struck through her hand like lightening to a metal rod and she bit her lip furiously in attempt to muffle the screeched curses.

"Miss y/l/n, will you pay attention in my class !"

The strong southern accent shouted through the room, echoing off the walls.

That was another thing y/n couldn't stand about the victorian woman, bloody thatcherite. The greying fifty-eight year old carried on the lesson as if nothing had happened.

bla, bla, bla

sin, cos, tan

The next ten minutes where filled with y/n's mind picturing graphic ways of murdering, or at the very least seriously injuring, the woman pacing infront of the class of petrified teenagers.

A sharpened ruler to the neck; instant slicing, blood spurting out of little sticking out tubey things. It was her favourate image at the moment.

She occationally looked down to her hands, which hadn't moved since the ruler incident. A violet line had become more prominent through them by now and the pain had subsided a smidge.

Maths was the only lesson she'd ever received physical punishments in. Most would say the canes where hell, but those chalkboard dusters hurt like a bitch, especially when at a velosity from being lobbed at your shoulders with the power of one of those shotputs at the olympics.

By the time the lesson was over, y/n was more than ready to leave. She was the first out of the room, waiting infront of next-door's chipped green paint door for the mouthy arses that where Liam Gallagher and Anna Mallons.

Anna was out already and was munching happily on the now cold sausage roll. Liam however was busy chatting indoors so appeared when y/n did, too with a half-ate sausage roll.

"Oh, you wouldn't believe what Sammy told me."

Sammy was Anna's cousin. He was a year older than Anna and Liam, two years older than y/n seeing how she was the baby of the bunch, unfortunatly born at the end of August. He lived in Ireland still with Anna's aunty and gran.

She didn't leave anytime for either to answer with a question before dramatically whispering an answer, showing whatever was going on in Castledurg.

" Aye well, y'know how his school had a colaboration and now girls go there too ? Well there's this one girl and she's joined the,"

She serveyed the area to check for any eavesdroppers before whispering the final part of the sentence.

", the IRA."

The group two paused.

After a minute, probably only a few seconds, y/n grabbed the top of Anna's arm, the red v-neck jumper scrunching up slightly where she had a hold of.

"Anna, that's not'in to be joking about."

"I'm not jokin' y/n, honest to God."

The group remained silent for a moment before Liam abruptly started, basically shouting, about the newest Stone Roses song.

One way to kill the awkward.

The weekend came round slow as per usual.

Y/n was still hung up on the news that a girl in Tommy's class was apart of the IRA.

Sure, she knew that they recruited teenagers, but the knowledge of someone she was friends with knowing one of them was a slight culture shock. They where the kind of people that gave people like her a bad reputation. Poor little immigrant kids, the reputation of terrorists. One of the reasons she faced so much everyday.

She was slouched on her bed on Saturday. Layed in black joggers and a Man City top, one of the ones Liam had outgrew, whilst This Charming Man played on repeat on the record player in the corner. There was no way she could afford it by herself, it was Anna's old one that she gave her as a present when she got a new one. She was relaxed, reading the latest Girl Talk magazine on her bed without any worry other than being concerned about how dead her ends where. Unfortunatly that relaxation was abruptly destroyed by Sister Mackles opening the door.

Sister Mackles was one of the nicer nuns in the orphanage, well nice as long as you stayed on her good side and lucky for y/n she always managed to keep herself in the nun's good books.

"Morning sister."

"Y/f/n dear, quick there's a family here to see you."

Her rushed voice almost caused y/n's heart to stop.

Had she misheard her ?

She must have, the older kids nearly never got adopted.

You hit eight and all hopes where thrown out the window.

She just needed to check.

" 'm sorry sister, what d'ya just say ?"

"Honestly child, there's a family here to see you. "

The woman turned around from removing the record from the pin and threw a dress at the girl to change into.

"Be downstairs in five minutes, the staff dining room."

Y/n gave a nod as the nun closed the door behind her, quickly jumping up and closing her curtains.

She carefully pulled on a pair of near black tights and a bra seeing how she wasn't having to wear one before. The brown and dark turquoise dress that had a sort of peacock pattern on it was pulled over her head and down, it ended just above her knees. The collar was brown and so where the short sleeves whilst the main body of the clothing item was the kind of pretty pattern.

As she was about to leave the room, y/n realised she had a minute or two left and so fluffed up her hair, the mousy brown bird's nest having had a cut the day prior and so rested straight and on her shoulders almost naturally.

She pulled it back with a big black headband, pulling a few strands to frame her face a bit before flicking on some mascara and lipgloss.

Before leaving the band merchandised room, she pulled on her pair of black adidas that she usually wore as school shoes.

A soft knock occured when her shaking fist made contact with the brown varnished door.

She cursed herself for giving such a bad first impression, an impression before the first impression.

The door was quickly opened by the head nun of the orphanage, the woman who ruined y/n's world every. single. day. Her face was that of one you always felt a need to punch. A grumpy old woman with the personality of a dead squirrel. Her top lip always drooped of the bottom one, her eyes always showed grey and dead emotion. She had whisps on her top lip and wrinkles on every possible area of her face.

Y/n hated her.

"Good for you to finally join us y/f/n."

cow.

The teenager restrainted herself from scowling at the corpse infront of her, the woman let her in and harshly closed the door behind.

A group of orphans had snuck into hiding spots to try and find out what all the fuss had been about that morning, mainly trying to figure out why y/n y/l/n was wearing an appropriate outfit.

No baggy trousers, no cut up and cropped t-shirts. No black eye makeup or safety pins in her clothes. No band logos or scuffed up boots. A dress without holes on or that didn't show of her body in a manner which they was taught was inappropriate.

A y/n y/l/n who had been de-y/n y/l/n-ed.

When she'd been sat down by Sister Mackles, y/n was able to see the people who had apparently been thinking of adopting her.

Getting this to stage in the adoption process meant that the couple infront of her hadn't been discouraged by her record; the record that showed how y/n was a social misfit and reject, the record that said "Y/f/n finds it difficult to maintain relationships", the quote "not suitable for (...)" used at least ten times amungst the 3 peices of A4.

The record that only showed her bad qualities.

Getting to this stage in the adoption process meant that she wasn't always seen as a negitive thing in life. Sure, they knew she wasn't good at maths already because her detention record was involved in the summary they'd already been shown but she could tell them all about how she could quote Shakespeare off by heart, and that Percy Byshee-Shelley was one of her favourate poets. They knew she failed every science test she was handed, but they didn't know she could correctly answer 89% of her sociology exam.

Getting to this stage in the adoption process meant that she could actually have a chance of getting out of this ditch.

"Hi, you must be y/f/n."

Okay what the actual-

Southeners.

"I'm Clara and this is my husband James."

"God Clars, stop being so formal you're gonna scare the kid off."

The man next to Clara, also a southener, laughted before speaking to the girl sat with an overly confused expression on her face.

"It's nice to finally meet you y/f/n we've been waiting ages to get to introduce ourselves to you."

"And we think you would really fit in with out family."

As Clara spoke again, her husband muttered something with a laugh. Something about being a tad bit too eager.

She looked down at their outfits, Anna always said you could tell near everything about a person by what they wore.

James was in a brown coilderoid suit whilst Clara was in a knee length blue marble skirt and a tucked in, but still baggy, Beatles top. It seamed that she had been wearing a leather jacket, one being over the back of her chair. Y/n had a similar one hung up in her wardrobe, only it had about a hundred studs in it and an accidentaly slightly ripped sleeve.

Okay, maybe they where half decent people.

There was a slightly awkward silence and small talk made but when the extra nuns had left the room to attent to dutys, Mackles being the only one in the room, y/n became more comfortable.

"Urm, so you like the Beatles ?"

She asked the question and nodded slightly to the hard days night top Clara was wearing.

The bleached blonde woman gave a laugh.

"How could I not, they're literally the best band to ever exist."

A small smile ran across y/n's glossed lips, which subquencly brought a smile onto Clara's.

"Me mate Liams would say the same. The guy literally worships John Lennon."

"Oh is he an orphan, we didn't see anyone called Liam on the list here ? If you're more comfortable with him we can always adopt-"

Clara began frantically speaking, worry lacing her facial features.

"Oh urm no, he's just a mate from school. Total nutter but a good heart like ."

At her words y/n had realised that they where planning on her moving down south with them.

She wouldn't be staying in Manchester's borough, nevermind Burnage.

In all honesty she didn't mind moving. Up here there was only Liam and Anna. Plus, bring adopted at 14 was a rare occurance and if she was being given the oppotunity she sure as hell wasn't letting it slip.

They would understand right ?

The chance to have a family, she couldn't leave that just because she'd have to move.

She could always visit, call, letters. It wasn't like she'd become totally alienated from them.

The only thing she wasn't too keen on down south was the southeners.

Growing up in North-West England as an Irish Catholic kid, you where taugh that they're worse than sin. Monsters who where out to reduce you to dust, but Clara and James didn't seem like that so maybe it'd be okay ?

After a few more minutes mindless conversation began, a finally relaxed atmosphere of untopiced talk and a small debate over whether the Cure or the Smiths where better.

"Oh we've actually brought our other two children with us, we just wanted to get to know you first before we bombarded you with Luka and Mauve."

"Alreat, it'd be nice to meet 'em."

Clara gave another beaming smile before leaving the room to get them.

She already knew a bit about the two children of James and Clara, they'd come up in conversation at the begining.

Luka was adopted as well. He was sixteen, two years older than her. He played the drums and was a punk, something that y/n thought was one of the coolest things since the walkman. Mauve was originally their neice but her parents, James' brother and sister-in-law, had died in a plane crash when she was nine months meaning she'd been living with them for as long as she could remember. She was six and wanted to be an artist when she grew up.

As they waited for her to return with the others, James started the conversation on the Beatles back up.

"So, favourate Beatle ?"

"George Harrison."

"Really ?"

His face filled with surprise,

"Most would say McCatney or Lennon."

"Aye, but did Lennon and McCartney write Here Comes The Sun ?"

"That's your favourate song ?"

"No, but is a good tune like."

"Fair enough."

Before the short conversation carried on, the squeaky door opened to reveal a leather trousers and vest wearing spikey blonde haired teenager. He looked like a teenage version of Billy Idol. He wore an ACDC top with the leather outfit and had smudgy eyeliner on.

She felt so underdressed.

Holding his hand was a small girl with brown pigtails on either side of her head, a plain, pale pink top and high-waised blue jeans with red and pink flowers and a large purple butterfly embroided up the left leg. She had a denim jacket on with a few band pins on.

Okay even a six year old was better dressed than her.

This is depressing.

1996

Y/f/c fabric stroked against the red carpets of Earls Court as y/n made her way back over to Blur's table with a tray of drinks that she'd been asked to go and get for the boys by one of their management team that was attending the event. They where sat on the edge of their seats collecting the award for their third nomination of the night when she'd left. By the time she had made her way back to the seats, they where all sat down and eagerly waiting for their drinks to numb tge pain of yet again being beaten by their mancunian nemises'.

She gave a light tap on her boyfriend's shoulder to tell him not to flinch whilst she put the tray on the table, knowing soneone suddenly appearing from behind him would make him move. Once she had placed the slight dewy tray in the center of the table, she felt a pair of hands rest themselves on her waist and a gentle force pulling her down into the lap of none other than Mr Alex James.

His scent of cigarettes and colone took over her sences as he pulled her in for a short and rough kiss. After a moment, they where deattached by y/n needing her glass of champagne. She took a large sip before moving herself off of his lap and onto her own designated seat right next to him, not without a whine of complain from the brunette.

She gave a small laugh at his pouting face.

Whilst Chris Evans gave two awards for the solo artist catagories, Blur tuned out of the show. They didn't need to listen to them seeing how they weren't involved in them awards.

Graham had busied himself complaining to y/n about how unfair it was and how they where going to get killed by Food if Oasis beat them in the British group catagory, whichcwas next after the female solo artist award.

Alex shushed the pair as the radio host began to speek again, after Annie Lennox had left the stage with the award identical to the three Graham had just told y/n about..

"And the nominees for the British Group award are ; Blur, Lightning Seeds, Radiohead Oasis and Pulp."

Cheers echoed through everyone's hearing, the table growing silent in antisipation. They all knew that if Oasis beat them they'd never hear the end of it from the men's management.

Trying to ease the built up tension, y/n placed a hand on Alex's tensed one, the one which was starting to grip desperatly onto her waist as if not only would he loose the award but also her.

"I bagsy first shoutout when you win and have to do a speech ."

Alex gave her an unamused look, quickly been silenced by Evan's next word.

"Oasis !"

Y/n's mood dropped along with the rest of the table's, the rowdy lot she lratically grew up with swaggering their way to the microphone again.

The second flute of golden champagne was finished off as she slouched in her chair and tipped the glass up over her mouth and nose as the strong accent pounded through the speakers. All she could think of was how much he'd changed since she'd saw him last.

"His accent's so fake."

A mutter under her breath caused confusion amungst the band, she hadn't realised how loud she'd said the words, or that she'd said them outloud at all.

Her boyfriend turned to her, his arms dropping over the head of her chair and his attention being pulled away from the mockery on the stage. Alex gave her a bizzare look.

"How ?"

The girl froze like a deer in headlights for a second, eventually coming up with a believeable answer

"Well, you know. I'd lived in Manchester my whole life up till I was fourteen and i've never heard anyone's accent be that strong."

She shrugged off the question with a simple answer, turning back to the stage to watch the Gallagher brothers walking off, not without Liam catching her eyes and giving a look.

"I'm going to the loo."

She rushed pushing back of her chair back caused a sort of russle from the carpet to sound quietly. Almost robotically, she grabbing her clutch bag and walking off before anyone could say anything.

Y/n walked calmly out of the double doors that led to the fresh air circulated foyé, not going to the toilets but instead waiting for the appearance of the man that she knew would follow her.

A few seconds later, none other than Liam Gallagher strolled through the double doors that had been taunting y/n, acting like he owned the place.

"Well 'ello Birdy. Long time no see 'ey."

A smirk graced his features, she'd never wanted to punch someone in the face so much, not even that witch of a head-nun from the orphanage.

"What do you think you're playing at Liam."

Her hand rested on her hip as she spoke, she didn't need to worry about anyone overhearing the reunion conversation seeing how everyone was in the main hall, like she was suposed to be.

"Oh nothin'. Just wondered if that little boyfriend of yours knew who you really are. Y'know, I don't thing he be too happy if he knew you grew up with us and r'kid."

"Oh shut up."

She scoffed at his comment, anger appearing more distinctivly on her features.

"Nah like, all i'm saying is you use that posh accent like you're not just one of us."

She gave a further look of annoyance at his words.

"Look lad, just 'cause I have pronunciation-"

"You wearing Chanel ?"

At his rude interuption of her point-making, y/n scoffed. She looked down, becoming slightly silenced.

Okay so she was wearing Chanel. Her dress, diamond strapped heels, her crossbody bag, even her stud earings.

"Not that it matters, but yes I happen to be wearing Chanel."

Also, since when did Liam pick up the ability to desyther if a dress was Chanel !

An obnoixious laugh echoed through the empty room at her answer, he was somewhat annoyed with how she was acting while she was down right fuming at how he was behaving.

Y/n furrowed her eyebrows at him.

"What d'you think you're laughing at."

''Ah just, he doesn't know you at all 'ey"

"What are you going on about Liam ?!"

She ran the chipped y/f/c polished nails through her hair.

"Why are you being so bloody difficult right now."

Okay. So genuinly getting emotion right now.

Her old bestfriend, her only bestfriend ever, was shooting a million and a half questions at her but answering none of her's.

She wanted this interaction to be over.

She wanted Alex, but she was starting to crave for Liam's approval all over again, like she always had done as a kid.

She was so annoyed with herself.

"Y'know, you've changed Birdy. I don't know what story you fed them posh southern bastards about your upbringing which made them accept you, or whatever relationships you 'ave goin' on, but all the money in the world can't scrub off the smell of council estate."

With that, he walked off.

His words hurt her.

Liam Gallagher had been her rock growing up, the person who solved all her issues, the one who stopped all the pain and misery.

Someone made fun of her ? Liam stopped it.

She spent her last 30p trying to contact the grandparents she'd found the number of through sneaking through records ?

Liam was always there to tell her how they didn't deserve her.

When she got adopted and moved down south, she lost her bestfriends and her support.

She found a small amount of comfort in music still, a connection to Manchester through Revolver, eventually getting a job as a article writer for Food Records. That's also when she'd met Alex, working for Food at age eighteen.

He was touring, she was working.

Her mind ran back to Liam's stinging comment.

Sure she'd improved herself to be acknowledged in the patriarchle society she worked in, but she hadn't changed per say.

She talked more properly, but that was because people couldn't understand her northen accent.

She wore nicer clothes, more expensive brands. Still that was because she like nice things, not in a egotistical was, just she thought they looked pretty and she could afford them. That wasn't changing, she would've bought them if she lived in Manchester still and could afford them.

Sure Alex didn't know exactly that she'd grew up with the Gallagher brothers, but that just hadn't really popped up in conversation.

He knew she didn't grow up in the nicest of places, but he didn't care for her background's status like he did alot of the time with other people, he just cared about her.

To both y/n and Alex, she was just a normal twenty-three year old. She had a mum and dad and an older brother who was a big part of her life and a little sister who she adored more than everything under the sun. Over the time Clara and James had been her parents, they'd adopted three more children. Two more younger brothers, Finley and Logan, and another little sister, Zoe. She lived for them, even when Zoe threw up over her favourate jumper.

Pulling herself from her memories, y/n sprits some perfume on her wrist and rubbed in it as well as on her neck. She built up some confidence and made her way back to Blur's table.

When she had sat herself back in the comfortable, red cushioned chair, she found Alex looking at her in concern.

"You okay ? You look like you've just seen a ghost Darling."

"I'm fab, don't worry. Want another drink ?"

He gave a hum, handing her the empty glass as she stood up and asked the rest of the group if they wanted refills.

As she walked off something lingered in her mind, a pain stabing her joints.

The smell of council estate lingering around her.

masterlist

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lunarscaled · 8 months

Note

❝ may i stay a while? i feel that we should talk. ❞

A FEAST FOR CROWS

-> Lyric has a student apartment of their own. Of course they do---it would be both naive and dangerous to stay in the same home as their patron, knowing what they know of his line of work, of the man behind the mask. He set it up himself because he wouldn't tolerate the way they muddled from place to place, motel to motel with scratches on their back from a deal gone bad or a creature too ravenous to be reasoned with. He had done a lot of small things like that since he caught them just ahead of him in that vault ( he replaced their toiletries with high-end, name brand things and their hair was in better condition than it ever was; he wouldn't let them eat microwave meals every night of the week like they were used to. they made coffee in a Keurig while they hopped around his kitchen on one foot tying their shoelaces, their uniform blazer one button out of alignment. he fixes a cufflink with one hand while they wobble in place trying not to fall over, voice easy and low, "You left your homework in the living room." ) Their gloved fingertips around the perimeter of an item he viewed through human eyes: just something rich and shiny that others wanted, something with rumors attached that he didn't know to be true. And Lyric, they had come for that exact purpose: "You'll be a fool with power to think you can have this." they wanted to say. Magic threads could hide many things, but that didn't erase their human traces. They hadn't eluded him more than a month before he caught up with them; they had to sleep at some point, after all.

-> He takes up more of their doorway than most do. If anyone else were around they might have wondered if someone had reported Lyric, the quietest student in the whole building, for something suspicious but no. It was only Mirage, dressed neatly in his pure wool fall jacket and loose scarf, buttons done all the way up to his neck in a shirt pressed and starched until not a wrinkle remained. Anxiety runs fingers down their back: what was he here for? Were their grades not enough? Had they made a mistake again? He insisted, over and over, they should not be reckless on missions and jobs, their primary responsibility was to be a student and a person first. He keeps trying to make space between them and what he leads over, and Lyric cannot understand---did he not recognize their own form of entrepreneurship in them? How many years had they been making transactions of a different kind; more blood, less cash, more things he didn't understand. There was no one else in the company that could do what they do, they could be an asset to him. They could do both things, school and the work, they could repay him for what he had already done for them by proving that magic need not only been thought of as fiction and street shows. Efficiency, Lyric thinks. They could make it efficient. Their student apartment is lived-in but not dirty. They have a set or two of dinner dishes soaking in the sink, and their chemistry books set out on the cheap school-provided desk with the bookshelf that sits on the back end of it filled with labeled journals and workbooks. Their jacket is thrown over the back of an only moderately comfortable sofa of equally inexpensive quality, and their shoes are kicked off just to the side of the door. Their backpack hangs on a coat hook a little further inside the wall. They keep succulents on their windowsill.

"...Yeah. Sure. What's up?"

#killerhubby #* questions and answers.#⋇ FEAR WILL BE THE ENEMY AND DEATH ITS CONSEQUENCE: MAGIC MODERN

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sickbaysaturdays · 1 year

Text

Have Mercy

By Kit @solacearchiveWhen Medic is kidnapped from her job at a mining camp to serve as conscript labor for the Imperium, she learns that survival means different things to different people, and doing no harm is never that simple.

While this story can stand on its own, it will make a lot more sense if you’ve read “Succor to the Brave,” available in the February archives of this fine blog.

Content warning for suicidal ideation (mentioned, brief) and torture (non-graphic, throughout).

“Get the damn door closed!” Rushka yelled, pulling her coat around herself.

“Sorry, sorry.” Duncan shoved his weight, which was less and less these days, against the barracks door. It thunked shut, sealing out the subzero but breathable air under the cheap radiation dome outside.

“Gonna freeze us all in our sleep,” Rushka muttered, lying back down.

Duncan ignored her and scaled the ladder to my third-tier bunk. “How’s the reading practice, little sister?”

I shut the floppy children’s workbook that one of the guards had given me. “Hard. It’s like being in grade one all over again. Did something happen?”

He shook his head and rubbed at his bloodshot eyes. “Nah, commandant just locked himself out of his personal computer. The security at her house was insane. Oh, but look what I got for us.” Grinning, he pulled two chocolate bars out of his coat pocket. “Swiped them right off the table when they weren’t looking.”

I squinted at the wrapper in the dim light from the window. “Star-light choc-o-late.”

“See? You’ll be fluent in Dosan before you know it.” Taking his own bar, he swung down onto the middle bunk.

I’d better be. My entire drug cabinet was labeled in the language, and the acceptable number of medication errors is zero.

The chocolate lasted me about four bites, euphoric sugar exploding in my mouth and leaving me wanting more. Chocolate, peanut butter, cinnamon cake, quickbread—once upon a time, before our world ended, I’d told Duncan I’d introduce him to quickbread, Kumitan-style.

I would never get the chance.

Reveille called us out of bed and out into the razor-cold morning. Pulling too-thin coats around hunched shoulders, we shuffled into line, stamping our feet to keep them from going numb. Cold raked my face as I lined up next to Duncan in the yard, under the naked black sky.

“First work detail,” the guard shouted. He started pointing at people. We didn’t pay much attention; our work assignments were always the same.

The guard finished his work roster. Then he turned to the rest of us, the skilled prisoners. “You and you, follow him,” he ordered, pulling two prisoners out of line.

I had a brief, nauseating memory of the mining rig cafeteria. The guard continued, picking one or two people out of every dozen.

“It’s going to be all right, little sister.” Duncan bent his knees and shoulder-checked me while the guard wasn’t looking. “Hang on.”

Duncan was in no position to make such promises, but I knew what he meant.

The guard made his way closer to us. I held my breath, sick with fear. I wasn’t even sure which outcome I wanted. Was it better to be picked or left behind?

When he reached Duncan, the guard shook his head. I knew what I wanted then.

“You, with him.” The guard pointed at me, then at a soldier standing by with a laser rifle. “Move!”

Duncan reached for my hand. His fingertips brushed against mine as the soldier grabbed my other arm and yanked me out of line. It was the last time we saw each other.

Different infirmary, same nightmare. No, sickbay. On a ship, it’s called sickbay. That’s what the Dosan characters above the double doors spelled out, s-ih-ck-b-ayee, with an end signifier on the last letter and a place-name marker above the /s/.

There were no other medics on the Enforcer. The crew made vague, taunting references to what had happened to their last one.

I didn’t have much to do the first week. I studied Dosan from the few computer files I had access to. Marching orders were to sleep in sickbay in case a patient needed my help. A crewman, Suban, brought me food since I wasn’t allowed to mingle with the crew.

She was nice enough, except that sometimes she had plans with her friends and did that instead of bringing my food. I started doing the POW thing and saving the non-perishables in a safe place.

And then a corporal came in with an ingrown toenail. I digit-blocked the toe, removed the offending growth, and provided her with a sheet of care instructions from a file the previous medic had left behind.

“What the hell’s this?” she snarled, waving the slip. “Where’s my off-duty note?”

“T-there’s no r-reason you can’t go to work,” I stuttered. I was so stiff with fear I could barely talk. “The d-digital block—”

“We’re the ones with the keys, flatfoot. Now write me off duty.” Her fingers danced near her sidearm.

The safest way out of this would be to just write the damn note. I went back to the computer. My trembling fingers brought up a blank off-duty note. I made three typing mistakes filling in the blank fields. Baring her teeth, the corporal took her note and sauntered out.

I curled up under my charting desk and hugged my knees, willing the shakes to stop.

The next day, a warrant officer walked into sickbay and, before I could ask him what was wrong, grabbed me by the arms and shoved me into the bulkhead. I barely stifled a scream as he dug his fingernails into my arms.

“You write an off-duty note if someone is in here dying, you got that?” he hissed. “Some enlisted person doesn’t feel like working with an owie toe, you tell ’em too bad, they got to work. I don’t care if they’re mad about it.”

“Yes, sir,” I whimpered. I just wanted him to let go of my arms.

“Damn flatfeet. I don’t care about the labor shortage; using you is a mistake."

Scowling, he threw me to the deck. I landed on my side on the brushed steel, reflexively curling up to protect my vital organs.

"I have to work with you, but I don’t have to treat you good,” he said, and through tears I watched his boot draw back.

Those days saw me trying to thread an impossible needle. Enlisted people want off-duty notes, fun painkillers, and whatever very non-evidence-based treatment they heard about from their friends. Officers will get very upset if enlisted people present flimsy off-duty notes or show up to their workstations high, and military sickbays simply do not stock trout bladder extract.

Eventually, I stopped bothering to ice the bruises.

At night, I slept very lightly because there was no point in letting myself dissolve into sleep if I was just going to be yanked out of bed by an angry crewman with a cough that could not wait until morning. Instead, I dreamed of home, deep in the copper-green desert, under the dark orange sun.

Even though it was warm and there was food when Suban deigned to bring it, I wished they hadn’t pulled me out of line that day. Duncan never let me give up and stole chocolate even though he was risking his life. Rushka was good company, too, once you got past the brusque exterior. I would brave the frostnip to be with them again instead of being stuck on the Enforcer, surrounded by people who hated me.

“You gotta eat,” Suban said to me one day, trying to tempt me with some kind of vat meat and grilled vegetables. “When you first came on board, I thought you must have some gut parasite.”

“Actually, that’s because they barely fed us at the POW camp,” I said.

“We all make sacrifices because of the war,” Suban said. “When I served on the Fist of Glory, we lived on combat biscuits and tube cheese for three weeks once.” She pushed the plate towards me. “Just a bite?”

“My friend’s still there,” I continued, ignoring the food. “My friend Duncan, he’s a software engineer. They stole us from the asteroid mine where we worked. We were civilians.”

Undaunted, Suban said, “But now you have a great opportunity to be part of the Imperium.”

And I think that was the same day they brought me the man.

He was in his forties, fifties maybe, shackled, bruised, and wearing threadbare clothes that needed a wash. He locked eyes with me, pleading silently.

I looked away because I knew I couldn’t help.

“We need you to make him talk,” the lieutenant said as they muscled him into a chair.

I played dumb. “Talk, as in?”

“Give him drugs so he tells the truth,” the sergeant said.

“There’s nothing like that in my drug cabinet,” I said, hoping I’d concealed my horror.

The sergeant turned to his lieutenant. “Is she telling the truth?”

The lieutenant laughed. “One way to find out.”

Torture, whether with a lieutenant’s fist or a medic’s drugs, has been proven time and again to be the most unreliable way to gather intelligence. But that’s never fit with the Imperial worldview.

I clapped a hand against my throbbing eye. The lieutenant’s boot rested on my sternum.

“Which drugs do we give him, Medic?”

I was about to beg him not to hurt me, to insist that nothing in my drugs cabinet, or any drugs cabinet, would suit his purposes, but something inside me chose that moment to wake up.

They’d taken everything and everyone, and now I practiced medicine at gunpoint. It would never end unless I ended it.

I glared at the lieutenant with my non-bruised eye. “Just kill me.”

He made a face. “Do you know how hard it is to find medics in the first place? Gah, just get off the floor and fix the flatfoot, flatfoot.”

I shimmied out from under his boot and staggered to my feet. Approaching the prisoner, I asked, “Is it okay if I take a look at you?”

The sergeant rolled his eyes. “Oh, just do it!”

“It’s a violation of my medical oath to treat someone without their consent,” I said, emboldened by my earlier brush with death.

The prisoner didn’t speak to me, but he caught my eye and gave the slightest nod. From then on, we had an understanding. It was the same way POWs had talked back on that desolate moon: a glance, a head tilt, a flick of the eyes. Maybe if this war went on long enough, we’d develop our own code, a way to say things like I’m from Kumitan, the Cappadine Valley. If you get a chance, tell my family I’m alive.

I never saw the man again. I never knew his name, or where he was from, or if he had family who wanted to know he was alive.

He wasn’t the last.

It wasn’t often, but once a month or so, between the shipboard injuries and illnesses, they brought me a prisoner of war.

Sometimes the injuries were minor, nothing I hadn’t sustained myself at the hands of an angry crewmember. Other times, I had to crack open the burn kits and orthopedic printing medium. I didn’t ask how any of it had happened. Partly because it wasn’t my job, and partly because I already knew.

I heard about Kumitan while I was printing a cast on a young man’s arm. All the insignias had been ripped off his Harahan planetary guard uniform.

“Hey, Medic,” one of his guards taunted. “Hey, Medic, you’re from Kumitan, right?”

“So?” I turned around, keeping an eye on my patient. Why did he care what kind of flatfoot I was? Kumitan, Harahan, we were all inferior people to him.

Giggling and sneering the whole time, they told me what their glorious Imperium had done.

Days smeared together into numbing repetition—perform hand hygiene, see patients, print care instructions, catch hell.

I was getting better at dodging blows.

My ears rang and buzzed when soldiers baited me with lurid descriptions of what their Glorious Planetary Infantry had probably done to my family and neighbors back home.

Now when I dreamed of home, I had to dream of the past. After a while, I had to stop thinking about home at all. It made me unbearably sad.

“Oh, cheer up,” Suban told me, cutting up a piece of meat doused in gravy. “It’s steak night! No frowning on steak night.”

“I’ll eat later,” I said. I wanted to lie down and die. My patient last night had done just that. Bayonet wound to the leg, terminal shock, nothing I could do.

Was he the first patient I’d lost on the Enforcer? Or had the weapons tech died first? I couldn’t remember.

“—steak will get cold, and nobody likes cold steak! Come on, I had to convince them to save some for you. They didn’t want to waste good meat on a flatfoot, but I told them you’re not dumb and sniveling. I mean, you could probably tutor my nieces in Dosan. You deserve—”

Suban kept talking. I focused very hard on my drug cabinet, on the labels in that ancient dead language they’d revived as an affectation.

The weapons tech died during a skirmish with Alliance forces. The Enforcer shifted into normal space, and I, being underslept, malnourished, and generally frail, passed out on the floor from the physical shock of it. I was still getting over my syncopal episode when the ship shuddered on a structural level.

I would later learn that meant we’d been hit.

In the distance, alarms screamed their emergency messages.

I knew this feeling. It was the calm before the storm.

The storm arrived in the form of a screaming Imperial corporal with a bloody mess of a right leg staggering through the sickbay doors supported by two of his crewmates. I directed them to a bed and gloved up. First priority, stop the bleeding. He was shrieking a lot, so I mentally checked off airway and breathing.

I’d barely gotten the bleeding under control when an ensign arrived, dragging the unconscious body of her lieutenant. The lieutenant had rotten-looking burns on his face and one hand, and his dosimeter was blacked out.

“Decon, both of you,” I ordered.

The ensign glared at me, but I was more afraid of radiation than Imperial officers.

While they were scrubbing down, five more casualties came in, ambulatory but with positive radiation exposure and blood pouring out of them crying out for help I didn’t have beds I was just one little medic with no one to help—

And it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that none of my experience had prepared me for this or that I was exhausted and scared and wanted to go home (home doesn’t exist anymore) and sleep forever. I was going to deal with this because there was no other choice.

Deep breath. Fresh gloves. Into the breach.

Hemorrhage-airway-breathing-circulation-neurological status. Plug the holes, secure the airway, support the respirations. Stop the pain. Ignore the screams and prioritize. No more beds, minor cases get chairs or blankets on the floor.

Behind me, the doors banged open. More patients.

Medicine becomes very binary at times like this. Hurt versus not hurt. Stable versus unstable. Alive versus dead, or on the way.

Corporal Leg Wound kept screaming for more painkillers I couldn’t safely give him. As long as he kept hollering, his airway was patent. Stable.

I couldn’t help the lieutenant. Forty grays is well past a lethal absorbed dose. The ensign had also taken a lot of grays when she pulled him and the others out of the irradiated section. Whether or not she’d live was beyond my control. Move on.

I moved on to the mechanic with a pelvic fracture. Stabilize with a binder to prevent blood loss. Give painkillers first because ow. I bolused fluids and blood and did a quick scan to confirm that there wasn’t any more internal bleeding. Stabilized, move on.

Which brought me to a weapons tech with a saturated homemade dressing on his upper arm that dripped blood. I apologized for the wait. He said it wasn’t no trouble in an accent that sounded far from the Imperial core. I cut the dressing away, and blood spattered my safety glasses. I slapped some sterile gauze over the wound and pressed hard.

The wound was too close to the shoulder for a tourniquet, so it would have to be a hell of a pressure bandage.

“Step away.”

The warrant officer stood over me, sidearm hand dangling menacingly. I think it was the same warrant officer who’d kicked me for writing Corporal Toenail the off-duty note, but I had trouble telling the Imperials apart.

I tried to step back and still keep the pressure on the wound, but I knew that wasn’t what he meant.

“This man is a deserter,” the warrant officer said. “He abandoned his post in battle. He will receive no medical care.”

“But—” On Kumitan, and every other Alliance nation-world, medical care was given without condition or stipulation. Prisoners facing life sentences for unspeakable crimes received the same standard of care as schoolchildren. It was part of the oath we took. The oath I took.

“Step away,” the warrant officer ordered.

He unfastened the safety strap on his sidearm holster.

I should have said something. Like, what are you going to do, shoot your only medic in the middle of a battle? Or said nothing and kept the pressure on the wound and dared him to do something, and maybe he would have and maybe he wouldn’t have, but at least I’d live or die a medic.

But I froze. Some very old animal survival instinct grabbed my arms and pulled them back.

I stepped away. The weapons tech looked at me, at the warrant officer, at the blood pouring from his arm.

“I’m sorry, I swear,” he said.

“Glory to the Imperium!”

“Be quiet and die like a man,” the warrant officer snarled. To me, “Stay put, flatfoot.”

The weapons tech took a thousand years to die.

Small things, like the way the sweat dripped off his face as he went into shock and the way the warrant officer laced his boots, etched themselves into my mind. I had a thousand years to do something, but I only watched.

And then there was a sickbay full of casualties to attend to, some in critical condition, and there was no time to grapple with the fact that one person had woken up that morning and a very different person would go to bed that night. That would take a while to sink in.

I could never remember if my POW with the bayonet wound had been the first patient I lost in that sickbay or the weapons tech. Funny how time goes into a blender when every day brings new horrors.

My home was gone. My work meant nothing. The only way I could fall asleep anymore was to take strong medication and pretend it was a fatal overdose. The bruises came easier, lasted longer. Waking hours were a dream, a haze of unshed tears that had maybe caused a novel sort of encephalopathy.

In the Kumitan tradition, members of the lifesaving professions go by titles, not names, while on duty. Driver, Pilot, Medic—it affirms the seriousness of our work.

These days, I called myself Medic because somewhere in all of it, the human part of me had died. The only thing left was the medic.

And so I practiced medicine. Some days when I was half-delirious, the work felt like a sacrifice offered at the altar of some ancient god, Hermes, Asclepius, Sekhmet, Ixtlilton, have mercy on your disciple.

It all came down to mercy. Mercy was what they lacked. Mercy was my trade. A patient came in howling from skin burnt down to exposed nerves and I shot mercy straight into their veins.

And then one day, about a Kumitan year after the reign of nightmares and angry black boots began, there was mercy for me.

Ever since the weapons tech, I got a gnawing dread whenever the battle klaxons went off. This was no different. I waited and waited until the dread overwhelmed me, and still no casualties came. Laser fire echoed down the hallway, but my sickbay was silent as a tomb.

And then two enormous laser rifles stampeded through the door, and I threw my hands in the air and begged them not to shoot me because you can dream of your death all you want, but when it comes you won’t be ready.

I did not die that day. They told me, in the simple words you would use with a child, that the Alliance controls the ship now, not the Imperials. That they would not hurt me.

And there was medicine to be practiced.

It was finally over, and I had never felt so unwell. Syrupy exhaustion lived in my bones and my skull, no matter how much I slept. Sometimes I had nightmares, jarring, bloody fragments that woke me up gasping in a cold sweat. Bright lights hurt my eyes, and any voice louder than a murmur set my teeth on edge.

But I couldn’t tend to myself. There was work to be done, medicine to be practiced, patients to be seen. Ancient gods to be appeased.

Every morning, Corporal Flynn, my command-assigned bodyguard, knocked on my cabin door and got me up for PT. The hollow shell that used to be me put up a perfunctory argument and peeled itself out of bed, dressed, and pretended to be a person for the next twelve hours because that was what these people expected.

But I wasn’t. I had done unspeakable things, and I never didn’t think about it.

Stretching on the gym mats, I thought about the weapons tech. Updating vaccines, I thought about the POW from Harah with the smashed-up arm. Chatting with Lucan, the medic from the Libertad, I thought about Duncan, whom I had left behind on that desolate moon. Any normal life I lived after all of that would be indecent.

Corporal Flynn thought I didn’t put my name in the Kumitan survivors’ registry because I was afraid to know what happened to my family and friends. Actually, it was because I didn’t want them to know what had happened to me.

In any case, the registry was for survivors, and I had not survived.

And every so often, the floor dropped out of the universe. I thought the childhood asthma had come back, until Corporal Flynn pointed out that the β-2 agonists I was taking by the lungful only made it worse. They walked me up and down the less-trafficked corridors, or sometimes just held me until the shakes stopped. We didn’t talk about it after.

Usually, the episodes came right after I was done practicing some serious medicine. On the Enforcer, I’d realized medicine was like pressure holding the nitrogen in a deep-sea diver’s blood. Release the pressure, release the nitrogen, and you have decompression sickness.

And now there was no medicine I could practice, nothing to offer the ancient gods, no mercy for this disciple. There was no first aid kit in this cargo hold, and when I asked about the one topside, my answer was the familiar boot.

“They’ll be fine,” the warrant officer snarled, and clomped back up the ladder.

Fine, fine, fine, yes. From my position between the cargo bulkheads, I could only see their hand, and the hand hadn’t moved in a little while.

I couldn’t see the rest, but I knew they were there. Specialist Begay, Corporal Quinlan, Specialist Suarez, and a few others from the Libertad’s forces that I didn’t know.

Gunnery Sergeant Wong had gotten Lucan and Mechanic Constanzakis to safety, I hoped, and Dr. Wick had been at the CASH hospital when we were ambushed.

Drawing my knees up to my chest, I wondered if the shackle chain was cold enough to use as an ice pack for my arm.

“Hey, flatfoot.”

“That’s Medic to you.” I didn’t even look up. Let them shoot me. I would trick them into showing mercy.

“Okay, fine. Medic.” The voice was hushed , furtive. “I got a question.”

“Trout bladder extract is a scam,” I said.

The ensign kneeling on the deck in front of me actually snorted. “No, not a medical question. You were on the Enforcer before it was captured, right?”

Where was this going? Where was the trap? Slowly, I nodded.

“Um, did you know this ensign?” She produced a digital photo and tipped it towards me.

It showed her, younger, and another woman in military dress uniforms, fists raised in the Glorious Salute. I frowned. Most of the Enforcer’s crew were faceless monsters. But this one, I knew.

“Oh. Her.”

The ensign’s face brightened. “Do you know where she is? I couldn’t find out anything after I heard about the Enforcer.Was she taken prisoner?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I almost was. “She died in battle before the ship was captured.”

“Oh.” The ensign bit her lip and blinked hard. “Damn it, Eliza! How—what happened? You were the medic; you couldn’t save her?”

Oh, I tried. I gave that woman every radioprotective and growth factor and immunotherapeutic that I thought would help, not to mention transfusing ungodly amounts of platelets. It wasn’t enough. That old monster sepsis caught her in the end.

I wouldn’t tell her friend that, though.

“You should know, she was a hero,” I said instead. “She ran into a contaminated section to help evacuate the crew members trapped there. They survived because of her.”

Squinting through unshed tears, the ensign stared at her photograph. “Damn it, Eliza. Damn it, damn it, damn it.”

The engines droned on below my feet. I leaned back against the bulkhead, wincing at the loud scrape of shackle against deck.

My lance corporal’s hand had moved a few times. At least they were alive. There was no response when I called out to them, or any of the others, but between the cargo bulkheads and the drone of the engines, they probably couldn’t hear me. Clever holding pen design on the part of our captors.

The ensign returned, walking toe to heel so her horrible boots didn’t clomp on the metal deck. She crouched in front of me.

“Medic,” she said.

I glared at her. She had some nerve coming here, knowing what they were going to do to us.

“What does the Alliance do to prisoners?” she asked.

This was interesting. “Prisoners of war?”

“Yeah.”

“Depends on what they did during the war. If there’s evidence that they committed human rights crimes, they’re sent to Station New Haag to stand trial. And yes, a flatfoot counts as a human under intersystem law.”

She ignored my barb. “And if they’re convicted?”

“They go to prison, I guess.”

“Or maybe they’re executed?”

It took me a second to realize what the word she used meant. “The Alliance has never used death as a punishment.”

“Really. What are the prisons like?”

“I’ve never been to one. But if you mean do we treat you the way you treat us, the answer is no. We show mercy.”

“Oh.” She paused and looked back over her shoulder at the ladder. “That’s not what they tell us.”

“Who do you believe about the Alliance, the Imperial propaganda machine, or someone who actually grew up there?” I asked.

She left, and I dozed against the humming bulkhead, or tried to. Sick anticipation forced my eyes open. I knew what the Imperials would do to us. Quinlan and I had skills; they would use us, especially her. In such a rabidly xenophobic society, linguists were hard to come by.

The other infantry people, my lance corporal, were only useful to the Imperium as sources of information. And Imperials showed no mercy when they thought you had information. I shuddered, thinking of all the patients who’d told me their stories without saying a word.

I did not want that to happen to Corporal Flynn but I’d failed to stop worse things. I hugged my knees and closed my eyes and—

The ship shuddered, structure-deep, as a ship-to-ship bolt struck its hull.

The world was very far away for a while, a pale, tinny replica of something I used to recognize. I didn’t fight it. Occasionally I recognized something—the flash of laser fire, or the clomp of heavy black boots, or an ensign kneeling on the deck and shouting I’m not resisting! but none of it seemed very important.

Gunnery Sergeant Wong was in there somewhere with a big pair of laser cutters. Everything smelled of burning metal, and then she and my lance corporal embraced like old friends.

The edges sharpened. The edges belonged to the sick bay on the Libertad.

“Hey, you.” Dr. Wick smiled down at me. “How do you feel?”

I had to think about it. “Okay, I guess. Are the lance corporal and the others all right?”

“Everyone’s in one piece. Corporal Flynn went to the commissary for snacks a few minutes ago.

Do you remember what happened?”

No. “Yes.”

“Good. You were pretty out of it when they brought you in, but I couldn’t find anything physically wrong with you. Figured I’d just let you sleep it off.”

“Thanks.” I raised myself up on my elbows, wincing as my bruises made themselves known.

Dr. Wick put her arm around me and helped me sit up. I had the strangest urge to lean my head against her shoulder. But this was Carolyn Wick, co-author of one of the most referenced books on combat medicine. I shrugged her off and tried to look like I had it together.

“Do you know where you are?” she asked me.

“Sickbay, the Libertad.”

“Good.” She ran me through the basic neuro exam. “Is anything bothering you right now?”

There was the black, disgusting sludge that had lived under my skin since the Alliance had captured the Enforcer, but some things medicine could not fix.

Still, being back in shackles had reminded me of old ghosts and unfinished business. And that gave me an idea.

“Medic? You with us?”

I pushed myself off the exam table. “Pardon me, Doctor. There’s some business I need to take care of.”

The prisoners from the Imperial runabout were being held in the Libertad’s brig. When Lance Corporal Flynn returned from the commissary, pockets stuffed with biscuits, I asked them to take me there.

“You sure?” they asked.

I put a hand on their shoulder. “I’ll be fine. This time, they’re the ones in cages.”

Seeing my scrubs and medical insignias, the soldier on brig duty let me inside without question. Corporal Flynn posted themself just inside the hatch.

The ensign was in the last cell, lying on the bench with her jacket open. She sat up when she saw me.

“Medic.”

“Ensign.”

“You were right,” she said, gesturing to an empty meal tray on the floor. “Three times a day.”

I wasn’t here to chat about the conditions. I pulled a couple of paper photos out of my shirt pocket and passed them through the slot. They were a few years old, but freshly printed and decent quality.

“What’s this?” the ensign asked.

“I told you what happened to your friend,” I said. “Now you help me find mine. His name is Silas Duncan. He’s a software engineer. The last place I saw him was the prisoner of war camp on satellite moon KL-33.

"We’ve captured a lot of you, and we’re going to capture even more. On the transports, at the camps, in the prisons, you show those pictures to everyone you meet. Someone’s seen him. Someone knows what happened to him. You are going to find my friend.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Corporal Flynn asked me as we stepped out of the hatch.

“I hope I will.”

“Hey, Medic, you forgot to sign the visitors’ log on your way in,” the soldier on brig duty said, tapping his tablet.

“Sorry,” I said, taking the pen he offered.

Name, the sign-in sheet demanded.

Mercy, I wrote.

—–

If you’ve read all the way to the end, please either like, reblog, or reply (you can just leave a dot or other mark so I know you were here).

Also, if you’ve been a regular reader, please consider leaving a comment in the replies! I’m about to start a new job that will leave me with less free time, and I’m debating which direction to take these stories. I’d like to know: do you have a favorite character or character you’d like to see more of? What’s your favorite type of whump, either in general or in the stories? What have your thoughts been on this story, or the series in general?

As always, enjoy your Saturday in sickbay, and make sure to tell all your whumpy friends about it.

#submission #thank you!!#ss kidnapping #sickbay saturdays #whump #original whump #fiction

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