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un2-verse · 3 years

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BILLY — Kim Taehyung (1)

》 News of a Sadistic Serial Killer nicknamed “Jigsaw” is spreading around town like wildfire… the nickname stemming from the puzzle piece he cuts from every victim’s body. No one knows who he’ll trap next but in a town full of delinquents and criminals, it could never be you. Right? 《

pairings: john kramer!taehyung x female reader

warnings: dark themes, angst, yandere, murder, torture, self harm, suicide, stalking etc.... (will add more when i know lol) although it is rather innocent in the first couple chapters(?) so idk it could be slow burn but i guess we’ll find out as i write it >< ,, it’s my version of saw if saw was a fucked up love story lol. Please don’t read if any of the topics mentioned trigger you!! 18+

this fic is exactly that, fiction!!!! the au does not represent the characters mentioned irl......

synopsis: you end up lost on the other side of town, where you cross paths with a handsome stranger, kim taehyung, only.... are you a stranger to him?

[a/n: daffodils represent; love me, sympathy, desire and affection returned...]

word count: 3k

series masterlist

part two

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Hiding behind a mask was something you were accustomed to. Your friend group and family were clueless to the torment you endured from simply existing. You were confident your masking had convinced the world you were happy with yourself. Unbeknown to you, one other person saw straight through your façade.

You wanted to end your life.

He needed you to cherish your life.

Nothing looked familiar. The café you frequented was nowhere to be found. Your usual hangout was most definitely not on the side of town you found yourself in. You felt anxiety slowly curl its way around your body, you were frigid. You tried and tried but couldn’t find it in yourself to run.

You lived in the more friendly part of town (so to speak) – where houses were colourful, gardens pristine, warm-hearted neighbours who would treat you like family and white picket fences are what surrounded you. That was your norm, sure, you weren’t exactly loaded but you weren’t exactly poor either. It was a healthy balance in the middle. That’s not to say you hadn’t lived or seen this side of town before.

Your Mother and Father had grown up on this side of the fence. Two young people brought up in the rougher, more unfortunate areas. Your Mother was tough; she looked like a naïve, weak girl, albeit that was not the case. She was strong willed, used to life on the streets and doing anything she could to get money to make sure there was at least some food on the table. While your Mum was the leader, your Dad was more of a sheep. He was easily influenced and was dragged into the wrong crowd (had his fair share with drugs and street racing). That was their life for a few years till they crossed paths and your Mum helped your Dad get back on the right track.

They didn’t tell you much about their childhood and adolescence but they told you enough to make you appreciate what you have and to always work hard for it. To stick with the right people, be wise and conscious of your decisions. Be kind to those around you.

Your family owned a garage; your Dad was the head mechanic. This was the sole reason you were here. You knew it wouldn’t be simple when you agreed to go to this side of town to get a few bits for your Father’s shop. However, you didn’t expect it to be this difficult. How could you be so stupid? Why didn’t you just ask Hoseok and Yoongi to come with you like your father told you to? Or at least tell them where you were… yet you decided today of all days to be stubborn and venture on yourself, knowing full well how unsafe the area was. There were rundown businesses on either side of the road, beggars at every doorstep; drug dealings happening in broad daylight, no one even trying to hide it.

You felt your phone buzz in your pocket, you took it out and sighed a breath of relief once you’d read the texts.

14:37— From Papa: U ok munchkin ??? Did u get the stuff ?

14:39— From Papa: its ok if u didnt. Yoongs rang said hes got majority this morning lol so be safe n get home soon . Love u

14:40— To Papa: ohhh ok pops, i couldn’t find the shop anyway lol i’ll head back soon, love u too x

*LOW BATTERY*

“Fuck, trust me to forget to charge the bastard.” You rolled your eyes as you stuffed the phone back in your pocket.

Muffled shouting was heard around you. People ran across the street, bumping into you as they ran past. You gathered yourself and moved further down the path. “Great!” you exasperated, “honestly I’m so fucking stupid! Yoongi’s gonna kill me for this, I knew, I knew I should’ve told him I was coming over here but no,” your head was hung low as you dragged your feet across the pavement, “maybe I could tell Hobi, he wouldn’t be as angry right? I’m sure he’ll come,“ A sudden scream ripped you out of your chuntering. You whipped your head to the right, you could make out some figures bustling about in front of you, a group of men were quite clearly fighting… your anxiety struck you and you held your breath as you saw a man pull a knife from the waistband of his sweatpants. All thoughts and common sense seemed to leave all at once. Statue like, feet stuck to the ground. You watched on as the group rushed towards the brown haired man, you scanned his figure: tall, broad, confident… he exuded an intimidating aura even when you were this far away from him.

How could someone be so sure of themselves? It was one against five, surely the loner had no chance?

The glistening of the knife brought you back to your senses. Fucking hell. How do you always end up in these situations when you’re alone? Why me? Why? Good Lord, I need to run. Just as you were about to leave, the group who were arguing charged past you; one gripped his side as another supported his weight. Holy fuck, did he stab him? you stood frozen, yet again, your mind raced a mile a minute. Panic bubbled in your chest.

“You okay there Doll?” His voice was deep, velvet-like. It flowed so smoothly you doubted it was real, it was so soothing like it had wrapped itself around you, embracing your body. You heard his footsteps before he planted himself beside you. His shoulder reached the top of your head, his hand brushed yours. Swallowing your nerves you dared a glance up. He was fucking breath-taking, like a fallen angel. The stranger shot you a small smile that you would’ve easily missed had you not been staring at his features… a blush crept up your neck as you nodded. His smile slowly twisted into a smirk.

Cute, Taehyung thought to himself. Couldn’t help but adore the way you slightly trembled under his gaze, the way your hands gripped and twisted your sweater paws. Almost like a puppy. He cleared his throat and reached his hand to yours, “Sorry, I should’ve introduced myself. I’m Taehyung.” you took his hand into yours, apprehensively you greeted him, “I’m Y/N.”

“Ah, Y/N. I haven’t seen you round here before, you new or something?” Taehyung cocked his head to the side, his eyes seemed to stare right through you.

“Uhm, I don’t live here. I live over the other part of Town… I was just grabbing some stuff for my Dad but, my phones about to die. I have no idea where I am or how to get home, I’m sorry, I promise I didn’t see anything!” a deep chuckle cut you off, Taehyung smiled and beckoned you to follow him.

“Come on Y/N, you’re not suited for this side of Town, I’ll walk you back. A pretty little thing like you, you’re easy prey to these guys.” your feet fell into a cautious pace behind him, he glanced over his shoulder, “hurry up Buttercup, I don’t bite.” Taehyung flashed a boxy grin in your direction, which caused you to speed up ever so slightly.

You were unsure how you felt about letting a complete stranger walk you home, Yoongi would definitely kill you for this. Especially with the recent news of some serial killer named ‘Jigsaw’, Yoongi and Hoseok had been very stern and their usual, overprotective selves when the news had broken out. “It’s on every headline Y/Nie! No more leaving the house on yourself, you need to go anywhere you ring either of us. Got it? Don’t talk to anyone you don’t know either. There’s some dodgy fucks about recently.” Although, you loved them dearly, sometimes their protectiveness was a...little overbearing. You already felt suffocated from your parents (you didn’t need it from your best friends as well). They were happy and believed you to be too; but that was exhausting, faking happiness. You had a constant façade, acted like a happy normal teenager with a happy family; when that was far from the truth.

Drowning. That’s how you’d explain the way you felt. Breathing was difficult and brought you more pain than it was worth. Growing up was tedious, you had grown differently to your peers which only brought ridicule and embarrassment for you. You had struggled with your speech (sometimes you still do), you often stuttered, mispronounced words, the list was endless. That was one of the first reasons you were a castaway. As you grew, the ridicule worsened. Verbal abuse turned physical from your classmates. They made you feel like you were a waste of space. The names they called you, you soon started to believe them. Ugly. Weird. Freak. Stupid. They took root in your brain, slowly they grew and grew till your head was overgrown with twisted, rotten weeds.

Eventually, you sought comfort in blood. You didn’t care that it hurt you; you were almost happy to feel pain. Like you deserved to.

By age 14, you had started to skip school. Only ever there for exams and a couple of art classes you had with Jeongguk. He was what you would’ve called a best friend, he supported you and was by your side till you left school. He went away to college and like always with school friends, you drifted apart. Nevertheless, he still texts you now and then to check in.

Although you were (once) close with Jeongguk. He never knew of your inner demons, the same with Yoongi and Hoseok. You didn’t want to feel like a burden and worry your friends when they had shit to worry about themselves.

Why devastate flowers that flourish beautifully with weeds that manage to twist their way around every crack?

You had walked for a few minutes now, having chatted absentmindedly about anything and everything. The roads still didn’t look familiar to you and you just wished they did, you didn’t want to be away from your home any longer, your feet were starting to ache, your phone was on 10% battery and it was fucking cold. You just wanted to be back in bed tucked up watching Lady and the Tramp or 101 Dalmatians for the millionth time. You felt safe and content when you indulged in your comfort films. Far away from the real world and wrapped up in the false reality. They easily distracted you and that's when you truly felt at peace. Your mind was always too busy thinking about how cute it was when Tramp calls Lady, Pidge or how in love Pongo and Perdy were.

Majority of the time you fantasised about having a love similar, but then again, why would you wanna make yourself vulnerable like that? Is the risk of being hurt (more than you are now) any good? Of course it’s not. Fuck that, life isn’t nothing like those shitty romance films or novels… It’s real and painful.

As you and Taehyung rounded the corner, a little cafe caught your eye, a dainty blue and pink building. Fairy Lights strung up around the windows, you could see a handful of people inside, busy sipping their drinks and chatting away to one another. ‘Aroma Mocha’ hung above the doors. It looked so cute and simple. Your previous thoughts left your mind as quick as they had come. You wanted to go inside, it had an enticing atmosphere.

Taehyung hadn’t realised you’d stopped walking until he couldn’t hear the soft thud of your footsteps behind him, he turned as he called out to you, your eyes still fixed on the cafe. He chuckled to himself, “Fucking adorable, like a kid at christmas,” he walked back over to you. “Hey Doll, you wanna go in?” He felt his heart quicken when you looked at him with those pretty eyes, “We’ve plenty of time to get you back before it’s dark angel.” You answered him with a nod as you turned your head from Taehyung to look back at the alluring little cafe.

Not a second had passed before Taehyung grabbed your hand and pulled you across the road to the entrance; you ignored the warmth of his hand as it intertwined with yours; you ignored the way your tummy erupted with butterflies. Taehyung had stopped to hold the door for you, you murmured a small, “thank you,” looking up at him, the heat that crept up your cheeks making your face resemble that of a doll’s he thought to himself. Once he ushered you fully inside, he placed his hand to rest on the curve of your waist as he guided you to the back corner of the room, where a quaint table for two was unoccupied, a little pot of Daffodils sat atop. How fitting...

Taehyung was quick to pull the chair out for you to take a seat, you pulled it in as you sat down and sent a shy smile his way, “I’m sorry, I know we just met Taehyung but this place is so fucking precious! I hope I’m not bothering you, if I am we can just carry on walking or, I could ring a Taxi? Is this weird? Oh god, I can’t believe--”, Taehyung threw his head back as he laughed, a sound that seemed to wrap its way around your soul, twisting around your heart in the nicest of ways, it was almost like a killer to the weeds taking over your body. A temporary release. You felt like you could really breathe in those short seconds of his laughter.

“Angel, if you were bothering me, I’d have kept on walking. That, or I would’ve called you a Taxi myself, it’s no problem honestly.” You ducked your head as he sent a wink your way, fuck sake Y/N get it together! Why are you acting like a fucking schoolgirl?

“Well I uh, appreciate it so, yeah thank you?” You don’t know what to do, you’re here with the most gorgeous person you’ve ever laid your eyes on… yet you have no clue if what you saw was real, did Taehyung stab someone? Could someone have had the knife who wasn’t Taehyung? Was he even the person you saw in that altercation? Did you imagine everything that had gone off?

Before you had chance to overthink it, a light bubbly voice greeted your ears, “Hi! Welcome to Aroma Mocha, I’m Jimin and I’ll be your server today. Is there anything I can get you?” Jimin held his gaze on you as he flashed you a friendly smile, Taehyung turned around at the sound of his best friend, “Oh, Tae! I wasn’t expecting to see you today, what are you doing here? And who’s this pretty little lady?”

“This is Y/Nie, she was in the neighbourhood so we thought we’d nip in for something to drink before I take her back to hers.” you sent a warm smile to Jimin which he gladly returned, “I’ll have my usual and can you get Y/Nie a Strawberry Iced Tea? Thanks man.”

Once Jimin had disappeared to make your drinks, you shot your eyes to Taehyung, “Uhm, how’d you know I like Strawberry Iced Tea?” Taehyung didn’t even look in your direction as he scrolled through his phone, eyes glued to the screen. A minute passed by and he’d still not acknowledged your question so you let it slide, it wasn’t that big of a deal right? Your mind drifted. Your fingers rested atop of your lap, hidden from the sight of onlookers, picking around your nails as anxiety flooded your body. You felt like you were about to suffocate. You shouldn’t be talking to anyone, you shouldn’t let anyone close. You were only going to fuck everything up in a heartbeat. It’s only natural. Self deprecating thoughts devoured and made their way through your veins, poisoning yourself further; your whole body felt as though it was alight.

Jimin brought you your drinks, placed them carefully in front of the pair of you as you both said your thanks.

The click of Taehyung’s phone being locked and the clearing of his throat brought you back to your senses. “The drink I ordered for you is popular here so, I assumed you’d like to try it. You wanna talk about what’s bothering you?” your eyes shot up to meet his, your head tilted a little to the left as your tongue wet your lip, so puppy like...

You stared incredulously, “I don’t know what you’re talking about Taehyung.” You leant forward slightly as you wrapped your lips around the straw and took a sip.

Taehyung saw the way you sucked your drink up through your straw, his eyes darkened. Thankful to have worn sweatpants that day, he shifted himself discreetly, “I’m not stupid Angel, I know what you’re doing under the table. I’m here, so talk to me. I’ll listen to whatever you gotta say.”

You stuttered as you wracked your brain for something to say, “I-I only met you like forty minutes ago, I don’t even tell my friends what’s wrong. Not that there is, everything’s fine.”

You met me just short of an hour ago, he thought to himself, “You don’t have to lie to me Y/Nie…” he grabbed your hands that were laid near the cup of your Iced Tea. His thumb rubbing circles onto the back of your hand. You looked small and fragile, like the Daffodils on the table; one little pluck and you’d be ruined. He wouldn’t admit it to you just yet but, Taehyung fucking loved how delicate you seemed as you sat across from him.

How easy it would be to take your life away. How easy it’d be to pull those weeds up that are poisoning you, torturing you every single day. He shook his head, as he cleared those thoughts. No, only Y/N can make that decision. I’m just going to help her choose.

Live or Die.

You visibly winced, “You don’t know me. Think whatever the fuck you want about me, it doesn’t matter.” your eyes flashed hurt as you went back to picking your skin. You knew it, this whole encounter was too good to be true. A complete stranger (well acquaintance technically) had just presumed shit about you, the fact he was right is what hurt more. You didn’t want anyone to know how you were feeling. Or how you were dealing with it.

You couldn’t exactly tell him to piss off, you still needed his help home and so you tried to distract yourself from the unsettling gaze that watched your every move. You let out a breath as Taehyung went back to his phone. Your eyes drifted as you picked up the local Newspaper, your eyes skimmed over the headline, ‘Jigsaw Traps Continue’. Taehyung noticed you staring at the front page, and chuckled, “you scared of Jigsaw Angel?”

You shook your head, why would you be scared of some nutjob who’s targeted criminals and drug dealers? You’re a nobody. “Of some psychopathic puppet?” if anyone did anything to you that would threaten your life, it would be you. Taehyung just laughed in return as you skipped the article and skim-read the other pointless stories.

You were fucking clueless as to who he was while he knew every little thing about you. He had watched you for months… His precious little Y/Nie… Oh how silly you were, taking your life for granted.

You hated yourself that much, you were willingly marking yourself up. Tainting your skin… oh your skin, how fucking beautiful and soft it looked, even with all the scars it still looked perfect… Taehyung wanted nothing more than to whisk you away and lock you inside with him. Forever. He didn’t want anyone touching what was his.

He knew you wore a mask when in public, too afraid to show your real self. Little did you know, he wore a mask himself...only he wore it to better other people.

He had a plan.

And you’d soon find out.

Let the games begin.

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firefly464 · 3 years

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The Gilded Cage - Chapter 3

I felt like you guys could use some nice fluff after yesterday, so we zoomed to get this chapter out. Also, oh my god i have so many ideas im so excited ahahahahah

ALSO!! IMPORTANT NOTICE!!! The first section of Chapter 5 of The Real World has been edited slightly. I recommend you go back and reread it :)

Written in collaboration with @i-have-this-now :D

Thank you @rivys for beta reading, editing, and writing :D

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~~~

“Alright then, Eret. Talk to me.”

He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, trying to calm himself. “George, it’s all…” he trailed off, unable to explain exactly what he was thinking. “What… what happened to me?” he asked, trying to change the subject.

George scoffed. “Did you not hear me when I said you got shot? Did you miss that bit?”

Bad hit him lightly on the arm. “George! That’s not how you support a friend through a trying time!”

“What?! I’m not wrong, am I?”

“Eret, here.” Bad moved himself over on the bed to sit right next to Eret. “We found you passed out in the woods with an arrow sticking out of your arm, so we brought you back here and patched you up.”

“You also were nearly frozen to death. Honestly, I think the reason you didn’t bleed out sooner is because the blood froze over or… something.” George shrugged, a little too nonchalant for Eret’s tastes. “I dunno, I’m not a doctor.”

Bad frowned. “That reminds me… Why were you even out there without a coat? It’s the middle of winter!”

“I- what?” Eret asked, caught off guard by the question. Hadn’t it just been mid summer? He shook his head. He was in some sort of fucked up world, why was he surprised by a change in seasons?

Even so, it made sense. It explained why he had passed out in the first place. After all, running through the woods in the dead of winter without anything to protect him from the cold was a surefire way to give himself hypothermia. Thinking back on it, it was surprising that he managed to last as long as he did. Any longer, and he very likely would have died.

George cleared his throat, dragging Eret back to the present. He realized that his friends were looking at him expectantly, waiting for an answer. “I uh…” He stammered, trying to come up with a decent excuse. “I didn’t exactly have time to grab a jacket. They were kinda chasing me out…”

George’s eyes narrowed. “Who?”

Bad’s let out a small gasp of surprise as he realized what Eret meant. He quickly stood, trying to take the heat off his friend. “Well, you don’t need to worry about them now!” he exclaimed, trying to hint to George that now wasn’t the time. “Here, how about we get you situated? Do you want something to drink?”

Eret stared numbly up at him. “Why are you being so… nice to me?”

“Because we’re friends,” Bad stated as though it were fact. “And you deserve it. Come on, I’ll make some cookies, and you can rest while I do that, okay? George, give him your jacket.”

“What?!” He sputtered. “Bad, I’m not giving him my--”

“Give it.” Something in Bad’s eyes must have made George decide to change his mind right then. The man nodded and grabbed a coat from a nearby hanger and chucked it over to Eret.

Almost instinctively, Eret tried to raise his arm to swat away the incoming coat. Pain tore through him, causing him to let out a small gasp.

“Hey, careful! You don’t want to tear your stitches,” Bad said quickly, rushing to check that the stitches were undamaged. “You’re still healing.”

Eret only watched as his friend undid the bandages that wrapped around his bicep, trying not to wince. His eyes widened when he saw the torn skin, slightly swollen around the places where string held it together. It wasn’t red or bloody, in fact, it looked like it was at least a few days old. He frowned.

“How long was I out?” He asked.

“A day, maybe?” Bad held out his hand towards George, not looking away from the wound. “Could you grab some of the gauze I just prepped? I might as well replace it.”

Eret frowned as he watched George walk out of the small, curtained room. He could hear the sounds of shuffling in what he assumed to be the kitchen.

“A day…?” He asked, glancing down at the scar on his arm. The faint, red line looked several days old, with only a minimal amount of swelling around it. There was no way it had only been a day. Injuries just didn’t heal that quickly. “How is it healing so fast?”

“We tried our best to close the wound as quickly as possible. It would have been better if we had been able to get to you sooner, but I guess beggars can’t be choosers,” Bad sighed. “It didn’t help that you were half frozen to death, so we needed to take care of that first before we could even begin thinking about your arm -- hey George! Grab some regen pots while you’re out there please!”

“Splash potions or normal?” George called from beyond the curtains.

“Normal. We’ve already taken care of most of the outer damage. Now it’s just a matter of getting back all that blood he lost”

Eret sat in confusion, his gaze darting back and forth between the shadow creature in front of him, and the curtain. “That uh… That doesn’t explain how this looks a week old.”

“Well, your buddy Bad knows a thing or two about healing people,” the demon chuckled. “I soaked the bandages in healing potions so that your wound would close up safely.”

Eret stared at the scar on his arm in wonder. “Holy shit, Bad, that’s genius.”

“Language!”

He looked down, having the courtesy to at least look somewhat ashamed “Sorry…”

“It’s alright, you muffin,” Bad laughed. “Didn’t I tell you guys to use this technique already? You know it’s really not healthy to just drink health potions, right? Have you not been taking care of yourself?”

Eret grimaced. “Well, it wasn’t exactly… common in L’Manberg, per se?”

Bad’s face fell. “Don’t tell me. Did Wilbur forget? I know I told him how to!”

“I honestly have no clue,” Eret shrugged. It wasn’t technically a lie, he really didn’t know, but the reason why was entirely different than the implication.

Bad nodded, pride shining on his face. “Well, Eret, I can guarantee you that as long as you stay here with us, we’ll take good care of you.”

~~~

Eret woke slowly and peacefully, a surprise to everyone in the community house. His eyes fluttered open at the sound of a knocking in the doorway, and was startled to see Bad tapping his knuckle against the wall, a plate in his other hand.

“Heya, sleepy-head!”

“What are you--” Eret sat up and rearranged his pillows to support his aching back. “What are you doing?”

The demon grinned. “I’m bringing you cookies, what does it look like?” He sat the plate he was holding down on Eret’s nightstand with a clink.

Eret stared, dumbfounded. “Why?”

“Lots of reasons!” Bad replied, smoothing out the wrinkles in his jacket. “I figured you weren’t feeling too great, so I wanted to do something nice for you to cheer you up!”

“Oh.”

“Plus, cookies taste better than potions, so I figured I could kill two birds with one stone and put the regeneration potion into the cookies.”

“Oh.”

“You have to make sure you eat all of them, okay? Doctor’s orders! I made sure to keep it a small batch so you wouldn’t get stuffed.”

“Oh...” Eret could only stare at the six perfectly round cookies sitting on the plate next to him. This was real, physical proof that somebody here cared about him -- really cared.

Why?

Eret couldn’t think of a good reason why anyone here should care about him. He had betrayed L’Manburg, or so everyone in this world thought. He was untrustworthy. He could turn on his friends at any moment. It would have been in Bad’s best interest to leave him freezing out in the snow, to leave him to die, but he hadn’t. Bad had done the opposite. So--

“Why?” he muttered.

The demon furrowed his brow. “Why what? What do you mean?”

“Why do you…” Eret stared down at his hands, unsure of what exactly he felt. “Why do you care? You have no reason to, I-- I’m a traitor. For all you know, I could turn on you, I could stab you in the back, I could...” he trailed off, not daring to finish his sentence.

A small scoff sounded from the open curtain. “Please, you wouldn’t do that.”

Eret glanced up. George was once more standing in the makeshift doorway, his arms crossed in front of him. “You’ve already invested way too much into this, you wouldn’t just throw it away. Besides, I like to think of it as a double agent. Sounds much cooler than being a traitor.”

Bad turned and faced George with a disappointed frown. “George.”

“What?” The man glanced around nervously. “I’m not wrong.”

Bad sighed and faced Eret once more. “Well, I guess…” He trailed off, seemingly deciding what words fit his answer best. “I think that everyone deserves to have someone that cares about them. And I already cared about you before I found you in the snow.”

“Besides, we all knew what would happen once you pressed that button,” George added, a soft smile on his face. “We all accepted it, and we knew what would happen. You weren’t the only one in the final control room. We’re in this together.”

He could only watch as Bad took a seat on the side of his bed.“You’re our friend, Eret. You still deserve love, and a warm bed, and some nice cookies, no matter what you’ve done. And I want to be able to give that to you, for as long as you’ll let me.”

Eret blinked hard, trying to clear away the tears that threatened to spill over. “Do you mean that?”

A warm smile crossed his face. “Of course! Besides, I may have not approved of your plan, but I still vowed to stay neutral. I knew that this was going to happen, and I’m here to help you through it.”

Eret gave up. The dams he had put up broke, and tears began to stream down his face. He tackled his friend and held him in a tight hug, not daring to let him go. It was slightly strange, considering the fact that his friend was some sort of shadowy-demon monster, but it didn’t matter. The hug was still filled with warmth and love.

It was enough to make a traitor cry.

He could feel a second pair of arms wrap around them as George nestled his head in the space between the other two’s bodies and let out a content sigh. Their tangle of limbs was slightly awkward, but none of them cared. Both George and Bad were too focused on trying to support their friend, and Eret wasn’t focused at all.

Bad rubbed Eret’s back, trying to comfort him as much as he possibly could. Eret’s throat was too tight for him to say what he meant just then, but he hoped that this embrace said it for him.

Thank you.

~~~

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Taglist (feel free to send me an ask if you want to be added) @hismilw @violet–majesty @chiera99 @koi-boye @waffle-time-god @miss-oleum @porkgavor @crafted-dreams @harley-the-pancake @lemonaid-ruru @luminousart @somethingtocrowabout @bee-tubbo @firepowder @boombahey @rayjayo @carry-on-my-wayward-why @echo-delta @star-fruit23

#this chapter is so self-indulgent #i just wanted fluff #thats it #thats the only reason this chapter exists #eret #the_eret #badboyhalo #georgenotfound #dreamsmp #dream smp #dream team #dreamteam #bbh #mcyt #The Gilded Cage #Split Realities #mcyt au #my writing #the real world

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teamfreehoodies · 4 years

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I'm two days late with a fic prompt sorry lol but I could not get this idea out of my head so, if you're still up for it: what if Witcher AU where it's Yennefer who meets Renfri at Blaviken instead of Geralt <3 Love your fics

Oh my god this is so interesting?????? (Also thank you!!!! 💕)

Yennefer hasn’t been to the coast in years, and she wouldn’t be here under normal circumstances, but she was.... desperate. Rumor had it that there might be a djinn for sale in their market soon, which meant either someone had found one, or at the very least there was djinn activity in the area and someone felt justified that they could find one and for a dirty little place in the backwoods just off the coast it did seem to have something... off about it. She’d portaled to a field just outside the city, a place that should have been empty of magic entirely except for what she brought with her. And yet... something was different about this town. The air felt heavy with it, a stagnant weight hovering over the people, and as she approached the city’s gates it became more and more apparent that something was deeply wrong with this city. Where there should have been children playing games in the street there were only beggars, staring listlessly forward as they huddled against walls for warmth, a stark indicator of a bad fishing season in a town like this.

But there had been no pleas to the Brotherhood to take care of their ills, no appeal to the mages to find the fish, to feed the fishermen, to save the town. Yennefer had left court, but she still knows all the court mages and none of them had said anything of a town under famine. She kept moving, ignoring the damp dreariness that pulled at her heart. Maybe it wasn’t famine, and Blaviken simply had an unusually large amount of serfs with no fields to tend, and the heavy atmosphere was just caused by the concentrated misery of so many people packed so closely together.

She would get no answers on the street, so she ducked into the first tavern she saw, shaking off the strange heaviness of emotion from staring at the misery in the streets of this thrice-cursed backwater. The tavern at least was decent enough, a good crowd for this time of day, early as it still was. She wound her way to the bar, aiming for a beer and a chance to collect her thoughts. She might find someone in here who could tell her of the fishing spots suddenly gone bare— that might be a good indication of djinn activity actually, now that she thought about it.

The bartender slid her a cup and filled it before turning away with a grunt as he picked up the coin she left on the table. The beer was cold, but that was were the positives ended. “What the fuck,” she muttered spitting the ale back into its cup— she’d tasted piss-water more palatable than this swill.

“It’s an acquired taste but I promise, it’s not poison.” Yennefer looked down the bar, tracking down the owner of the offered opinion. Oh, but she was gorgeous, her hair an asymmetrical mess framing her rounded cheeks, lashes long enough to make the brown of her eyes look bottomless, her mouth curled with just the right amount of attitude as she smirked at Yennefer.

“I’d almost prefer it it was poison” Yennefer replied, sliding closer down the bar and dragging the piss-water with her. “At least then the taste would have an explanation.” The woman laughed, cracking more peanuts from the bar, and popping them into her open mouth. She smiled at Yennefer, leaning back in her seat as she made a short gesture at the barkeep.

“You’ve a lot of experience with poisons then?” She asked, turning to face Yennefer fully.

“Enough to never accept a drink I didn’t order myself,” Yennefer countered, smirking as the barkeep plunked two wine cups in front of them.

“Well that’s a shame then, isn’t it.” The woman said, reaching across Yennefer to drag the cup away before the barkeep could pour anything into it.

Yennefer caught her hand against the bottom rim of the cup, feeling the warmth of her rough hands (and gods she wanted those hands against her skin so suddenly she was surprised by the force of her desire.) “it’s only a shame if we let it be.” she purred, rubbing her thumb along the index finger of the woman’s hand still trapped beneath her own.

The barkeep cleared his throat, breaking them apart as he gestured impatiently with the wine bottle. “Am I pouring this or not,” he said “I’ve got other customers, y’know.”

The woman giggled, than guffawed, a hearty laugh that was more wild and free than any woman Yennefer had ever known— instantly, she was hooked. Yennefer wanted more of that laugh, wanted some of that wild freedom for herself.

“There’s better drinks at my place,” Yennefer said aching to reach back out and touch, needing the heat of the other woman’s skin to balance against the chill of her own.

“Are you seducing me?” the woman asked, smirking slyly at Yennefer from behind her fringe of hair.

“Only if you’re interested in being seduced,” Yennefer leaned in closer, not touching, just letting her proximity work for her. They were facing each other still and as Yennefer leaned in the woman did too, almost imperceptibly, until Yennefer stopped, just close enough that their conversation was a touch too intimate for public (but oh, that had never bothered Yennefer one little bit, and in fact it added to the heat in her belly, the tension between her thighs that demanded release.) “Is it working?” she whispered finally, her breath just ghosting over the other woman’s lips.

(Fuck off,” muttered the barkeep as he plunked the wine down on the counter and stalked towards his other customers. He had things to do other than staring at flirting lesbians.)

“Why don’t we go get that wine.” The woman whispered, sending shivers down Yennefer’s spine. Delicious anticipation was thrumming through her veins and it made her sloppy, so she almost missed the knife as it hurtled up to rest beneath her chin.

“I’m not really into knifeplay as a rule,” she said, one hand against the woman’s where it was trying to push a blade into her throat, the other pressed into the base of the woman’s neck, her thumb just above the dip in her clavicle.

“Yeah well, you can tell that to Stregobor when he joins you in hell then can’t you.” The woman said, nonsensically, as they both strained against the other’s grip.

“Stregobor?” Yennefer repeated, mind trying desperately to connect the pieces.

“He sent you to kill me before I could kill him, why else would a mage be in Blaviken?” The woman scoffed and Yennefer realized that the reason no one had intervened was because the entire tavern was being held hostage by men in line with this woman, a collection of dwarves and halflings with swords and crossbows, the sorriest looking army that Yennefer had ever seen. Yennefer’s grip slipped and the knife slid another centimeter closer to her throat and all of a sudden she understood what was wrong about this damn town.

“Cock.” She said, staring into the eyes of the last girl born under the Black Sun, Renfri, Princess of Creyden, sworn hunter of Stregobor the Mage and something of a local legend amongst Yennefer’s circle of influence, precisely for her vendetta against the man. They all hated Stregobor, and he’d been officially censured for his slaughter of the girls of the Black Sun prophecy, and prophecy work had been falling out of fashion ever since— not that that knowledge did her any good, a knife to her throat and a furious shrike holding it.

“I’m not here on business of Stegobor’s,” Yennefer offered, pulling on Chaos just enough to give her a fighting chance. She pushed the hand with the knife against her throat sharply upwards, a fast enough strike that it stunned Renfri, knocking the weapon from her hand though not for long as she was already reaching for a new one— but Yennefer had space, had time—had purpose, and that was all a mage really needed.

“I bet you want him dead, right?” She said, holding up her hands to ward off Renfri’s continued advances (and also to make portalling away faster if need be. Renfri paused, cocking her head at Yennefer. Emboldened she went on, “I don’t have any particular feelings about the man, but I bet even you can’t hope to succeed against him alone.” Renfri, according to legend, wasn’t the sort of shrike that waited. To find her in a tavern in Blaviken meant Stregobor must be close, and must be hiding if he hadn’t yet been killed. “Ahh, that’s it isn’t is,” she said, as Renfri slowly let her go, flipping the knife in a devastatingly hot) show of skill before she sipped it back in to the sheath on her thigh. Oh, if this worked out the way Yennefer wanted it to, they were going to have a fucking amazing time together. “You can’t get to him. What has he locked himself into a tower somewhere? Magicked up some guard dogs I imagine?” She took her seat, reaching for the bottle of wine the barkeep must have left for them, pouring equal measures into the two cups.

Renfri must have made some motion behind Yennefer’s back (it wasn’t much of a gamble to turn her back on this opponent, sure as Yennefer was of her purpose here, but enough of one that a little shiver of pleasure ran up her spine at the implied danger) because the dwarves and halflings were putting down weapons, retreating to the table they’d been occupying before they took the tavern hostage. There was some grumbling from the patronage, but violence seemed to be the language of these people, so it settled quickly, just in time for Renfri to take her seat again, reaching forward to grab the wine that Yennefer had poured for her. “He’s locked himself in his tower,” she said, taking a sip of the wine and letting her knee bump into Yennefer’s thigh beneath the bartop. “Can’t get him out to face me in a fair fight, which he knows he’d lose.” Now that Yennefer is paying attention she can feel the slight disturbance in Chaos as it bends away from Renfri, refusing to touch. Interesting. “So tomorrow me and my men are going to murder every single person in the market until he crawls down from his ivory tower and faces his destiny at the end of my sword.” She’s puffed up already, like she expects Yennefer to object to this plan. The massive planned loss of life bothers Yennefer on a surface level surely, as unnecessary as it is. There are easier ways to pull Stregobor from his hiding place-- more elegant too.

“What if I told you that I could pull him out of that tower without having to sacrifice the townspeople of Blaviken?”

“I’d ask you for what price. I know mages and witchers are alike in that they only work for coin or power.”

Yennefer smiled, taking a long draught of the wine and then slamming the empty cup back on the bartop. “I want everything, little shrike. But this?” she said, spreading her arms wide, “this I’ll do just because Stregobor deserved more than a slap on the wrist for his actions and I can think of no more fitting end than to watch you butcher him in the streets of Blaviken.”

#AND SO THEY MURDER HIM AND THEN THEY GO OFF TO LIVE THEIR BEST LIVES #Geralt walks through Blaviken like a day later and can't find anyone to take his damn Kikimora but Marilka #(freshly unemployed and looking for adventure) is like HEy Mr. Witcher Sir can I Follow You and Learn to Sword Fight #And Geralt who is secretly desperate for a friend is like no #not until you're at least old enough to marry and make your own choices #so she pouts but also he does teach her some stuff #and then he visits for a while every summer making sure to stop at Blaviken which is a welcoming place now that Stregobitch isnt haunting #the damn place anymore #and when she's old enough to travel she just followed Geralt out one summer #and he gets a friend to travel with #and Marilka gets to stab things to her murderous little hearts content #and then uhhh idk what happens after that but YES I LOVED THIS PROMPT SO FUCKING MUCH #Renfri #Yennfri #Thank you nonny!!!!#Now accepting prompt I should think #this was delightfully fun #amber writes

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hypnoticwinter · 4 years

Text

Down the Rabbit Hole part 15 (nsfw elements)

"You’re flinching every time you pull the trigger,” Elena points out, and I shake my head, feeling the bulky, oversized ear protection wobble with the momentum.

“I know,” I mutter under my breath, knowing she won’t hear it. I take aim at the target again, holding the pistol steady, and fire a second time.

I flinch, my muscles jerking in anticipation, and the bullet goes wide. I feel more than hear Elena sigh next to me. The alarm sounds, signaling the range is cold, and without thinking I clear the chamber and eject the magazine in one smooth motion, laying the pistol down on the table in front of me.

I turn and see Elena frowning down at me, looking confused. Her eyes flick between me and the pistol, and she opens her mouth to speak, but before she can say anything Makado stalks around the corner, looking mildly peeved.

“Roan,” she says, “if you can’t even hit the target I’m not going to be able to issue you a pistol.”

I blow out a big sigh. “Look,” I tell her, trying to keep my voice level, “I’m sorry, but I’m just not good at this. It isn’t like I’m trying to miss. Maybe it’d be better if I didn’t have a pistol.”

“You don’t understand,” she explains. “If you don’t have a pistol, they won’t let you come on the mission. It’s a regulation and I can’t bend it. You have to have a personal defense weapon of some kind.”

“She’s right,” Elena chimes in. “Everyone has to be armed, just in case. But you have to qual first, and…”

“Okay!” I snap, then choke myself back. “Okay,” I repeat. “I get it. Thank you. Just give me a little…give me a little time to practice, okay?”

Makado checks her watch. “Look, I can give you half an hour. After that I’ll be back, and I have to see you get at least four shots in that circle,” she points. “I’m sorry, but that’s just how it is. So…” she trails off. She shrugs. “Good luck.”

Then Makado is gone and the range alarm sounds again and sporadic gunfire begins to ring out again from the other lanes. I shut my eyes and squeeze my hands shut tightly until I can feel my fingernails begin to dig into the meat of my palm, and then I breathe out, and let it go. When I pop my eyes open, I see Elena standing there, leaning up against the wall of the booth, her gaze piercing. “There’s something you aren’t telling me,” she says. I frown at her, hoist what I hope is an innocent expression onto my face, and begin to load a magazine from the little box of nine-millimeter ammo she brought for me.

“What do you mean?”

“You knowhow to do this,” she gestures. “I hadn’t taught you how to clear a firearm, how to eject the mag…how to load the mag,” she says, gesturing. I slot another bullet into the magazine, turning it sideways so I can see how full it’s getting through the cutouts. Four more bullets. “But you’ve done this before.”

“My dad liked to hunt,” I tell her. There, it’s full.

“Are you just pretending to flinch? Is that what this is, are you trying not to qual?”

“It isn’t that,” I tell her. I slot the magazine into the pistol and rack the slide, flick the safety off. I take aim again briefly. I squint past the sights at the target roughly 25 yards away. Inside the line, Elena had told me earlier. Touching it doesn’t count. And I have to hit four of these.

I squeeze the trigger and flinch again. The shot punches into the upper right corner of the paper target, far outside the line. “Goddam it,” I mutter.

“What aren’t you telling me?” Elena asks. I glance over at her.

“What do you mean?”

“Why aren’t you hitting these shots?”

I laugh. “Because I’m bad.”

“No,” she says. “That isn’t it, there’s something else. What -“

“You ladies need any help?”

“Go away, Slate,” Elena growls. I turn round; there’s the tall blonde prettyboy I’d seen earlier when Makado first brought me into the barracks, except now he’s got a shirt on. Name of Slate…something. Don’t recall his surname. He’s got that typical West Texas blunt-faced handsomeness to him, with a twangy, almost hilariously stereotypical accent and a deep, deep tan. He looks like a rare species of fox that lives out in the oilfields somewhere.

“None of my business,” he says, spreading his hands. “Be a shame if you didn’t get to go on our little adventure cause you couldn’t qualify, though.”

I roll my eyes. “Look,” I say to Elena. “Is he a good shot?”

“Yes, but -“

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” I tell her. “Yes,” I say to Slate, “I need some help.”

Elena shakes her head at me and walks off, and Slate presses himself into the small booth next to me. “Go on ahead and pop off a few shots, let me see what I’m working with.”

Well, there’s no way to get around it. I fire again; this time it’s closer but I still flinched. “You’re flinching,” Slate says, and I roll my eyes.

“Yes, I know. Help me stop.”

“It’s a mental thing,” he says. “You know the gun’s going to kick, you know it’s going to buck. You just got to convince your body it’ll do the same thing every time, that’s all. Here, maybe if I -“

Slate comes and stands behind me and puts his arms around beneath me. His tough, calloused hands gently cradle my wrists, and then his fingers wrap around mine. He smells like cologne. I open my mouth to say something and then cut myself off. It’s fine, it’s whatever.

“Now, little lady,” he says, “go on and take that shot.”

“Little lady?” I growl, but Slate nods towards the target, paying me no mind at all. His grip is very firm and his arms are as steady as granite.

“She ain’t gonna wait all day,” he tells me. “Go on, take the shot.”

It can’t be sure, but it seems as though he’s pressing closer to me than he needs to. I can feel his belt buckle and the hint of a toned chest as he holds my arms steady. “Okay,” I start, my voice a little unsteady, “if you could, like -“

“Slate,” Elena says, her voice like ice, “get out.”

His hands slip from mine and I set the gun down, catch my breath. “Aw, Lena,” he says, a smile crinkling his voice, “don’t be that way! I was just helping her to shoot straight -“

“You were grinding your dick against the small of her back,” she tells him. “And don’t call me Lena.”

Slate sounds affronted. “The lady asked for my help!” he says. “And I am hurt, woman, by the implication that -“

“Keep talking and I’ll break your nose,” she warns him, and Slate laughs and saunters off, giving me a nod on his way out. Elena blows a breath out and glances over at me.

“You know,” I tell her thoughtfully, “even though he’s a womanizer I’m pretty sure I didn’t feel his dick.”

I can see Elena flush and glance away from me, and for a moment, just a moment, I wonder about it. “The way he was holding you, it looked -“

“Look, we don’t have time, I say. Thank you for coming and helping a sister out, but I still am not going to qual,” I tell her, feeling the rising note of panic in my voice. “And if I don’t qual -“

“Hey, relax, calm down,” she says, putting a hand on the small of my back. I can feel the heat of it through my blouse.

“God dammit,” I growl, and pick up the pistol. I squeeze my eyes shut. Get over it, I tell myself. Get over it, get over it, get over it -

I open my eyes, take aim, and fire.

And again I flinch, and the shot goes wide. Doesn’t even touch the paper this time.

There is a pregnant silence and then Elena says softly from next to me, “look, Slate is an asshole but maybe his idea was good,” she says. She stands behind me just like Slate, puts her hands over mine. “Whenever you’re ready,” she tells me.

I blow a breath out, try and find some way to center myself. “Okay,” I mutter.

We go through a mag and a half before Makado comes around the corner. The last half a mag, I managed to get inside the circle. I’m breathing hard but I’m grinning, and when I turn around Elena is grinning too. “Good start,” Makado says, nodding to me. “Now try it without her helping.”

“What are the rules?” I ask. “It’s one mag, so -“

“One mag, meaning twelve shots, of which at least four need to be within the target. Hits on the line don’t count.”

“So thirty-three percent,” I mutter. “Okay.”

“You can do this,” Makado offers. She’s wearing her hair down today and her messy brown curls surround her face like a halo. I nod, forcing a semblance of determination down into my heart and I turn, pick up the gun, load it again, and then…

And then I do it. It takes the entire magazine, and my heart leaps up into my throat for the last shot, but I do it. Four clean shots, well within the target, away from the black bordering line. Elena lets out a whoop as I lay the weapon down and wraps me into a sweet-smelling hug, lifting me off the ground. I clutch at her, gasping with laughter and relief. When she puts me down her cheeks are flushed and her eyes, normally so serious, have sprouted laugh lines. She has a dimple, I notice, in her left cheek. “I knew you could do it!” she says, and I shake my head.

“I don’t think I could have without help,” I tell her.

“Good job either way,” Makado says. “Help or no help, you qualified. We’ll issue you a pistol when you head out tomorrow.”

“Will we see you at the party tonight?” Elena asks. I frown.

“There’s a party tonight?”

“Every time they have a big operation, the night before, they all get together and have a party,” Makado explains. “Why some of them, particularly Crookshank, think a hangover is a good complement to a trip into the Pit, I’ll never understand.”

“Crookshank is mostly unintelligible anyway,” I note, and Makado laughs.

“Yes,” she agrees. “But he’s a good medic, so we have to keep him around. To answer your question,” she nods to Elena, “no, I won’t be there.”

“Ah, so we can really cut loose, then.”

“Mm,” Makado grunts. “I’d be careful about that. The Sergeant gets back around nine tonight and I’m sure he won’t be happy.”

“The Sergeant?” I ask as Elena grimaces. She waves a hand.

“You’ll meet him, I’m sure,” she tells me.

“Enjoy the party,” Makado tells us, and then she saunters out of the firing range, leaving me and Elena standing there, looking at each other with more than a little fondness.

I think I’ve grown on her, although I can’t say in what way. Sometimes when she looks at me it’s as though she were looking at her little sister. Other times, though, if I didn’t know better…

“Am I invited to the party?” I ask her as we walk out, and she looks at me like I’m crazy.

“Of course,” she tells me. “What kind of question is that?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I mutter, squinting against the bright sunlight. It’s about four or five in the afternoon but the sun still feels terribly high in the sky. “I didn’t know if you guys would want me there.”

“Of course we do,” she says, her tone serious. “I want you to be there.”

“Yeah?”

“Definitely.”

It makes me smile, hearing her say that, and without another word, we turn and head back to the barracks, her arm thrown over my shoulder and mine, after only a little hesitation, around her waist.

* * *

“You okay, kid?” Klaus asks, nudging me in the ribs, and I swallow hard before I think about answering. I can’t tear my eyes away from the mouth yawning in a bed of concrete before me.

I blink, keep my eyes shut. I hear Klaus shifting next to me, the plates in his excursion suit running over each other with a soft, subtle grinding sound. Mine are pinching just above my ass, and when I told the engineer-cum-tailor fitting me he’d shrugged apologetically and explained that this was as good as it was going to get, that they don’t make them slim enough to fit me properly and if he took out too many plates there wouldn’t be enough protection.

Which begged the question, of course, of protection from what, but there are some questions I still dare not ask, questions that even someone from Admin would know the answers to. Peter and Makado’s stories have been colorful but they haven’t been comprehensive guides.

“Hey, kid –“

“Who’re you calling kid?” I growl, and he laughs.

“That’s more like it. This is your first time, right?”

“Quiet back there,” the Sergeant snaps, and Klaus and I share a weary glance before we fall silent again.

There’s ten of us all told – eleven if you count the robot. There’s Peter and myself, obviously; Elena and Ellis and Fumi (short, I learned last night at the party, for Fumihiro), compact, sinewy Klaus and big, barrel-chested Crookshank; tall blond pretty-boy bastard Slate, who’d kept shooting me lingering gazes and sly grins at the party, which I dealt with by steadfastly ignoring him. Then there’s Max Euler, equally slimy but in a nerdier, more harmless sort of way.

And then there’s the Sergeant.

He broke up the party last night, storming into the barracks and snapping the lights on, sending bright multicolored winces flooding into our collective eyes, smacking the needle off of Fumi’s record player and making the shaggy cartographer groan. “We have an operation tomorrow, gentlemen,” he’d barked, staring around at us, a sneer curling his thick lips. “I want each and every one of you to be alert! If I hear one complaint about a hangover, it’ll be asses and elbows –“

And so on. His voice was low and gravelly and contemptuous, a clipped accent knotting his words, his eyes were like burning coals, the veins in his corded arms stood out like a caricature you might find on the cover of a heavy metal album, and generally speaking he was the most ridiculous and contemptible figure of a man I’d ever ran into. He bawled us out for a solid ten minutes before finally flicking his gimlet eyes over each of us before settling on me. “Miss Merriweather,” he’d said, spitting the word ‘miss’ at me as though it was a personal affront to him that I had no rank to offer, “a word outside if you please. The rest of you, I want lights off and everyone asleep in ten minutes!”

I untangled myself from my spot on the old, beaten couch next to Elena as languidly as possible and traipsed after him, watching as the tall, lanky woman rose and tried to compose herself.

Outside the barracks the cool night air was like a slap in the face. It did a little to sober me up but in truth I didn’t need it; I hadn’t drank very much anyway. The taste of alcohol never agreed with me, and the notion of not tasting the alcohol bothered me in other ways.

“Miss Merriweather,” the Sergeant said to me, turning around like a mountain might turn. “It is my intense displeasure to welcome you to my squad. I have been instructed,” he said, blowing out a harsh breath to indicate his sheer resentment at the gall of (I would assume) Makado to instruct him to do anything, “that you will be accompanying us into the Pit tomorrow. I want to make it very clear to you that –“

“Stay out of the way and don’t be a hassle, I’d assume?” I asked, my voice a little rough. He struck me as the sort of man who isn’t accustomed to being interrupted and I could see the muscles at the base of his jaw bulge as he clenched his teeth together.

“If you aren’t going to take this seriously,” he started, but I cut him off again.

“Don’t give me that shit, sir,” I say, voice heavy with irony. The alcohol made me ebullient; if I had been sober I wouldn’t have dared. “I might not have been down in the Pit before but I am far from useless. And I know for a fact you’ve got no weight to hold over me. I’m in Admin,” I said, praying that the words coming out of my mouth are close enough to the truth, praying that I’m not pushing this meatpile of a man hard enough that he’s going to snap and strike me, “you’re in Sec. Don’t treat me like shit and I’m not going to give you any trouble down there.”

He loomed over me for a moment and for a terrifying instant I thought I might have misjudged his restraint, but I matched his gaze and after a moment something in those dark eyes softened minutely. He gave me a curt nod and turned to stalk away into the night, into the other barracks where, presumably, his quarters were. “We’re on the same team, Merriweather,” he tossed over his shoulder at me, and I gave his retreating back the finger, but I didn’t put much heart in it.

I stood out there in the cool air for a while longer and then I sat on the wooden steps and rested my chin in my hands, rested my elbows on my knees, compressed myself and relaxed myself. The door opened behind me and I scooted to the side to let whoever it was go by, but instead they sat heavily on the step next to me, and I saw Elena, still looking fairly smashed, giving me a coy little smile, and though I tried hard I wasn’t able to stop myself from grinning back at her. “Hey,” I said, and she said ‘hey’ back and then for a moment neither of us had anything to say to each other, and after only a second or so of hesitation she leaned over and rested her soft blonde head on my shoulder and I could smell the alcohol but it didn’t seem so bad.

“I couldn’t find you,” Elena murmured to me. “I was running around in there looking all over for you until I remembered that Sarge had dragged you out here.”

“Is he always so…”

Elena laughed. “So much of an asshole?”

“Mm,” I grunted. “I guess.”

“Yeah, basically.”

“Why?” I asked her. She frowned at me.

“Why what?”

“Why is he an asshole? If he’s supposed to be your leader –“

“Ah,” she said, waggling her finger at me. “There’s history you don’t know.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. See, he was gunning for Veret’s position when the last guy in charge of Sec retired. But Veret ended up getting it because, and get this, HR has a quota for legacy employees for some fucking reason. You know anything about that?”

I shook my head, kept cool. “I haven’t heard of it.”

“It doesn’t come up very often. Basically if you were around for the disaster and you’re trying to get promoted you get preference over people who weren’t.”

I thought about that for a moment. “Huh,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s weird, right?”

“Well, I’ve never heard of any other company that does that kind of thing.”

“Me neither.”

We lapsed into another cozy silence. I looked over at her after a moment. “Is the Coast Guard part of the military?”

Elena looked up at me with a tiny smirk on her lips. “Yes, it is,” she said.

I blew my breath out, a quiet little laugh. “I thought it was,” I say, “but I wasn’t sure.” I reached over and smoothed her hair out of her eyes. I savored the softness of it on my fingers and then let my hand fall.

“Are you nervous? About tomorrow, I mean.” I asked her. She shook her head, putting the hair right back in her eyes again.

“Nah,” she said, but her words had a bluster to them that I wasn’t quite able to believe. “Are you?”

“I’m terrified.”

She blinked, looked at me a little more lucidly. “Hey,” she starts, “are you - ?”

I didn’t know where she was going with that until she reached up to my face very gently and wiped a tear away from my cheek and then my cheeks were burning and I blinked the tears from my eyes, furious with myself. Clearly she could see something of it in my eyes, because she put her arms out and caught me when I tried to get up; her arms were strong and I let her hold me even though I felt ashamed. I looked away from her for a long while but she put an arm back and brought herself more upright, leaning away from me a little. When I snuck a glance at her I saw her staring right at me so I looked away quickly.

At least she looked more concerned than uncomfortable. She asked me what I was crying for and I told her it was nothing, and then she asked me if I was scared I’d get hurt down in the Pit and I said that I supposed I was but that wasn’t why I was crying.

Then she laughed at me and asked why the hell I was crying then, but not in an unkind way, and I looked at her then, really looked at her, until she started to get uncomfortable and shrink away from me and wonder what I was looking at, and then I said that I was crying because I hated that I’d met her when I’d met her and not earlier in my life.

I could see something change in her eyes when I said that and then she reached for me and took me in her arms and kissed me, and her lips were warm and firm and soft and it was not at all like kissing a man, not at all like it. I kissed her back, greedily even, and we struggled to our feet at some point, our lips still locked together, her hot tongue flicking against my teeth. I put my arms around her waist and pressed her back against the hard wooden door, and she made a quiet little purr somewhere deep in her throat that only urged me onwards. She put her hands on me, hesitantly at first, roaming downwards from my head and neck, her eyes staring into mine with urgent intensity, and when she grabbed my ass and squeezed as though it belonged to her I moaned, I couldn’t help it, and her smile caught the moonlight like the edge of a still lake at midnight. My heart was beating like it was going to fly away and I could feel myself panting with the heat of my want for her, but I somehow managed to push her away.

“We can’t,” I’d said, looking around, feeling suddenly exposed there in the light above the door, the whole of the world at my back. “Not now.”

Elena had sighed exasperatedly and gave my ass a light slap that sent goosebumps racing down my legs before she tugged me away and around the side of the barracks, staggering with me because neither of us could wait to kiss each other again, and then I had put my hand up her shirt and under her sports bra and she had put hers down my sweatpants and we clutched at each other desperately there in the dark, her fingers tracing circles over me and then, when I begged her for it, made their way inside me, and we stood like that for what felt like a blissful eternity until finally I had cried out softly in the night.

Once I had composed myself I kissed my way down her stomach, tugging down her leggings as I went. I only hesitated for a moment, but she still told me that I didn’t have to, and I told her to shut up, that I wanted to make her cum, and then she knit her hands into my hair and held me to her while my inexperienced but eager tongue lapped at her. It took me a little while to find the best way of doing it but when I did she cried out and then clapped a hand to her mouth, and I laughed against her there, still on my knees before her. I rolled her clit on my tongue until she bucked against my lips, and then we went back in and fell asleep in our cots, and though I ached to hold her it was enough to be able to look over at her in the cot next to mine and see the way she smiled to herself, eyes shut and peaceful.

There she goes, waving at the rest of us in an ironic salute through the small plated windows of the gondola car. Her eyes linger on me and I smile at her through the window, but before I can see if she smiles back the sunlight strikes the glass at an oblique angle and I no longer can see her.

Six at a time can fit, so it’s just us left - me, Euler, the Sergeant, Klaus, and the robot, which Euler has informed us all is named Joker. It’s a pun, he says, of some kind, but it only makes sense in German so he doesn’t share it with us.

Should I feel more strongly about it, about my first experience with a woman? I felt a wrenching in me when the Sergeant had gestured and Elena’s hand had slipped from mine, from where it had lived for the last hour or so, down near our waists, fingers intertwined surreptitiously, but last night it hadn’t felt like a threshold crossed or a turning point. Should it have?

We hadn’t spoken of it. Elena had grabbed my ass when we passed coming out of the shower and I had thrown caution to the wind, the cramped stalls being empty and no footsteps echoing down the tiled hall to the left. I had grabbed her and tugged her into one of the shower stalls and kissed her there, pressed her against the wall, craning my neck upwards to meet her lips with mine, and she only pushed me away from her when I had bent my head to her breast and started to kiss her there as well, her voice a little shaky, her breath a little heavy, telling me that we had to go, that someone would walk in any moment. Then I’d grinned at her and sashayed out of the stall, putting a bit more lascivious of a roll to my hips than I usually do, feeling her eyes fixed on my buttocks like they’d been glued there, and then I’d wrapped the towel around myself and gone and gotten dressed with a smile resting in my heart.

I got a glimpse of myself in the mirror and stopped; the girl behind the glass stared out at me and for a moment I didn’t recognize her. The look on her face was too happy.

But when am I going to tell Elena that I have - ?

“Alright, you lot. The robot – er, Joker,” the Sergeant barks, glaring at Euler, “is heavy enough that it’ll need to go down by itself. Mister Euler,” he says, “if you wouldn’t mind walking Joker into this next gondola?”

“Oh, no, Sergeant,” Euler says with an apologetic smile that’s almost a smirk. “That’s not going to do. I’ll have to ride down with him.”

“And why is that?”

“This little remote,” Euler says, waggling it, “won’t reach all the way down there from the surface. It’s a good signal but not that good. I’ll need to ride down as well, to make sure there’s a constant connection.”

“Why the hell is that so important?” The Sergeant asks. “Can’t you shut it down for the trip or something?”

“Sure, if you don’t mind waiting about two hours for me to boot him up again once we get down there.”

“Gentlemen,” I say after a moment, glancing between them. “I only weigh about a hundred and forty-five pounds, even with this suit and all my equipment. Give me the remote, I’ll ride down with Joker, and the rest of you can take the next gondola. That won’t go over the weight limit, will it?”

“It’ll be close,” the technician at the controls over on the left says, looking over. “You said Joker weighs two-hundred twenty-seven kilos?”

“That’s correct,” Euler says, staring at me. The technician nods.

“That’s the best bet, then,” he says. “Even Specialist Herrera here,” he nods to Klaus, “weighs almost two hundred pounds with his suit and his rifle.”

“Well, Euler, how about it?” the Sergeant asks. “We’re burning daylight.”

“I really don’t think that –“ he starts, but the Sergeant gives him a disgusted grunt and snatches the remote from Euler’s hands, shoves it into mine.

“She’s a smart girl, aren’t you, Merriweather? She won’t break your toy, Euler,” he says. “Now show her how to work the damn thing and let’s get moving.”

Euler blows out a little defeated breath and squeezes past Klaus, comes behind me. He smells odd; not unpleasant, but odd.

“Let me show you,” he says. He puts his hand on the joystick and holds down a small green button simultaneously, presses the stick forwards with his thumb; Joker rises from its squatting haunch and stalks forward into the gondola, which creaks under the machine’s weight but still holds. “This button,” he says, pointing to a red one with a curious latch mechanism built around it, “is the safety for the remote. I’m putting it on now,” he says, flicking the latch over the button and pressing it down until it snaps into place with a tiny click. “And you can do whatever you want with all these buttons and nothing will happen,” he says, pressing the joystick four different directions in rapid succession. Joker doesn’t move a mechanical muscle. “Whatever you do,” he tells me, “don’t undo that latch until you have to get him out of the gondola. You don’t want him moving around in there.”

“Sure,” I tell him. Experimentally, I press a couple of the buttons myself; they have that oily feel to them that you sometimes get with very high-quality plastic, like my fingers are gliding over them.

“I’m serious,” he warns me. “Don’t undo the latch.”

“Yeah, I get it.” I pick up my pack and press into the gondola. I have to duck under Joker’s armpit but after that I have plenty of space in the back. I look back outwards and see Klaus flash me a grin and a quick thumbs-up before the Sergeant reaches up and seals the door in, and then it’s just me and Joker against the world, it seems. We hang there suspended for a moment before there’s a grinding noise and the gondola jerks to life and sends us slowly plunging into the Pit’s moist flesh.

Joker smells like machine oil and electricity, but he hulks there inert. I reach out after a while and put my hand on him; he makes little noise, a small hum and, I noticed before, a soft whine of servos whenever he moves. But sitting still like this? He’s practically silent. I can feel no vibrations rattling his metal hull, but when I press down harder, rest the bone of my palm against him, then I can feel it, a low subsonic buzz jostling my bones.

I’m avoiding the issue. I turn around, force myself to peer out the gondola’s window, and a fist seizes my heart and forces it up into my throat. My head had been throbbing just looking at the orifice but being inside it is worse. I feel queasy and squeeze my eyes shut and that helps a little, but then the gondola jostles to the left and outside there’s a click as a series of floodlights slam to life and I can see the wet pink lightly writhing surroundings in altogether too much detail.

I’m sure it wasn’t designed that way, but the concrete exclusion plate is good enough to be a work of art. The stark, alabaster white, boiling in the sun, throwing up heat so intense that the walkway down to it is shielded both from above and below by heavy canvas, the minute variegated cracks and imperfections like canyons and canals in the moon. As you walk you can see out the sides of the suspended walkway and you can always see the perfectly round aperture ahead of you, the tubes and machinery clustering around it like congeries of bubbles in seafoam spray, but you can’t see down inside of it until you get just above it, the concrete is thick enough that the angle has to be very close.

Then you get above it and you look down and you see down through the concrete and you look down the throat of the Pit, you see the pink, healthy-looking edge of the skin beneath the concrete, pink as anything, a soft brown of a tan towards the inmost edges where it gets no shade, you see the metal flanges and hydraulic system that they use to feed the thing its medicine, keep it asleep, keep it soothed and sedated, but when you force yourself to look at the center of it you can see for imagined and terrifying miles down into the center of the earth, pure black like the Pit were sucking the light out of the sky, and all the pipes and tubes and the chain system and rigging and scaffold for the gondolas are all vanishing down there into darkness.

If I had something better than my cheap, crappy back-up DSLR, if I had the time to set up a shot instead of someone jarring against my back while I tried to crane my neck over the side and stare down into it, I might have, for the first time in my career as a photographer, taken a photo that could have begun to approach art.

Maybe I’ll ask Makado if I can come back and take one, when this is all over.

I laugh to myself, standing there quietly, observing the rivulets of blood and pus and mucus dotting the windows, leaning up against Joker’s inert form, watching the raw, wet inside of the Pit’s throat slide by outside. I think I’ve mastered myself by now, I don’t think I’ll be losing my scant breakfast on the floor, but it was a near thing for a moment.

“Christ,” I say out loud. “This is a fine fucking mess I’m in, isn’t it, Joker?”

Joker doesn’t respond. I reach out and knock gently on that metal carapace but he doesn’t rise to my occasion, he’s too dignified for that. I heft the remote softly in my hand, feel the lightness of it. Wonder, momentarily, what happens if the remote gets lost or broken, down there below us in the Pit.

The lights inside the gondola flicker and then go out entirely, and then the gondola cranks to a halt, swaying lightly from side to side with misplaced momentum. I swallow hard and fumble with the radio at my hip, but before I can get it out of the holster it squawks at me and I jump.

“Roan?” a voice asks. “It’s Makado.” Her voice is grainy and distorted enough that I can barely make out that it’s her, but as soon as I hear it a flood of relief washes through me.

“Mak,” I breathe, then clear my throat, repeat myself a little louder. “Mak, I’m okay. The lights are out and the gondola’s stopped moving, what’s going on?”

When she clicks the radio back on I think I can hear yelling in the background. “Everything’s fine,” she says. “Electrical fault, this happens sometimes.”

“Uh…what’s going on in the background there?”

“Oh,” Makado laughs. “That’s Euler and the Sergeant bawling each other out. Euler is a little upset that he couldn’t ride down with Joker and now that this damn thing’s shorted out again he’s terrified that something’s going to happen to his precious robot.”

“I see.”

“Yeah. I just noticed that nobody was very concerned with your wellbeing so I thought I’d just radio down and let you know we’re working on it, so just sit tight.”

“Thank you.”

“You alright?” she asks again, maybe noticing something in my voice, but I nod firmly even though she can’t see it.

“I’m fine,” I say, “just a little surprised is all. Thanks for the concern.”

Makado signs off and then I’m left alone with my thoughts. And with Joker, obviously, but he isn’t doing much to take my mind off things.

Will ballast fluid do anything? How much of it should I drink? I’d asked a couple of surreptitious questions but all that Makado had told me was that it could cure some diseases, yes, but HIV specifically? Who knows. They’d never tried. That it wasn’t a panacea, that there were limitations. That the scientists never could figure out exactly why it cured things, just that it did. That if you synthesized it in a lab it wouldn’t but if you took it out of the Pit it did.

I can keep butting my head into it for as long as I like but at the end of the day the fact of the matter is that I’m not going to know until I try, until I sneak out of the goddam tent and slurp up some of that ballast fluid (my stomach revolts even thinking of it but I can do it, I know I can do it, I can make myself -) and then get back without anyone noticing. What other choice do I have?

Well, to not drink it. To just let…whatever happens happen. I don’t have AIDS, not yet. And though HIV turns into AIDS I think it can take a long time sometimes. But that would require me to acknowledge that maybe I overreacted, maybe I was wrong…

Maybe the knowledge that I was going to die, no matter how artificial and caveated that knowledge was, made me feel like I had a purpose. Maybe that’s what I’m chasing, feeling that purpose.

Maybe –

There is a crunching whine of motors and servos and I turn very slowly to see Joker moving. His metallic, articulated hand is trembling and then as I watch it clenches into a fist. I can hear a small creak of stressed metal coming from it and I snap a glance down at the remote in my hand, wondering if I’ve pressed something on accident, but no, the lock is still very firmly in place.

The robot’s head turns and gazes, very clearly, at me, and I can feel a scream clambering up my throat.

Then the lights come back on and the gondola jostles back into life and we resume our downwards course. Joker’s fist is unclenched now, open as it was before, its head pointing straight ahead like an arrow. I wonder whether or not I imagined it, whether it was all just in my head.

The radio crackles into life again and again I jump, and hardly daring to take my eyes off of Joker I reach down and toggle it. “Hey,” I say, a little shakily.

“Hi,” Makado says. “You should be moving again.”

“Yeah, we are.”

“We?”

“You know. Me and Joker. Uh, can you get Euler on the line?”

“No, he’s sulking.”

“Wonderful,” I murmur.

“What was that? I didn’t quite catch that.”

“Nothing, it’s fine. About how much longer until I’m down there?”

“About ten minutes. Not claustrophobic, are you?”

“No, it isn’t that.”

“Was it something about the robot? I can grab Euler for you if you really want me to, but –“

“Um. No,” I say after a moment, “no, it’s nothing.”

A pause. “Are you sure?” Makado asks dubiously, and I groan to myself before I hit the button and answer.

“I’m fine, Makado,” I tell her. “Just a little spooked, that’s all. I’m fine.”

“Alright,” she says. “Hang in there, just a little longer.”

It really is only a little longer, and though I can’t bring myself to take my eyes off Joker for the rest of the ride down, he stays reassuringly still, and once the gondola hisses to a stop and Ellis throws the door open for me I even have enough confidence to step outwards and onto the squelching, wet, fleshy ground. Ellis is saying something to me but I can scarcely hear him; I am far, far too busy drinking in my surroundings with a mixture of horror and wonder.

The gondola opens out onto a small staging area atop the control center in the main gullet. There’s a balcony and a guardrail but other than that we’re exposed to the metaphorical elements. It looks as though everyone else has already taken the stairs down inside to the station; I can hear laughter and voices through the open hatch. Ellis and Fumi have stayed up here on the balcony, though.

It’s darker than I’d expected, for some reason. I guess all of the little informational diagrams and pamphlets always portrayed the Pit’s innards like they were properly lit, but it’s dark, and even though floodlights are dotted around the worn metal rim of the station here and there the pale cones they cast onto the ribbed innards of the gullet are entirely inadequate for getting a sense of the sheer scale of the place. The station is anchored to the sides by long outrigging pylons, recessed and greased. I can see where the hydraulics would activate and brace it if the Pit ever did decide to choke again, I can see the broad flat plates where they press against the throat, red and irritated-looking. There’s someone out there in a suit and a helmet, rigged to one of the pylons with a carabiner, a little maintenance car in the track slung below it, doing something with a tube and a wrench.

It’s quieter, too, than I thought it would be. I guess I’d assumed that there’d be an assortment of creaks and groans and squelches, various small organic noises, loud moans and roars and screeches, but it’s just like being inside a cave, with little unnameable and unplaceable drips and drops and soft wet sounds.

It smells fecund in here, not a terrible smell but one that is so overwhelmingly cloying and wet and organic that I find myself swallowing hard to try and keep my gorge from rising in response to the sudden thickness of the air. Ellis claps me on the back and I hunch over, hands on my knees, and just squeeze my eyes shut and focus on my breathing for a moment. “She alright?” I hear Fumi ask, and I nod as best I can, throw up a thumbs up, but it peters out after a moment as I can feel a cold sweat breaking out all along my back. I lean backwards and sit heavily, there on the roof of the station, and Ellis laughs.

“Shit, Fumi,” he says. “First time’s always the worst, huh?”

“Jesus Christ,” I groan. “How do you people breathe down here?”

“You get used to it.”

I stagger to my feet, dust myself off a little. Fumi’s right, you do get used to it after a while, and as long as I refrain from focusing on it…

“You want to get Joker out of there?” Ellis asks, and I nod.

“Right,” I say, and after a minimum of fiddling with the remote I manage to make him walk out of the gondola, and then Ellis slaps the return button and the creak of the chain starts again. We wait there another fifteen or twenty minutes or so until the last car arrives, Klaus and the Sergeant and Euler crowded together, Euler and the Sergeant still glaring daggers at each other. I see it hit Euler just the same as it hit me, and he spends a moment gawking around at his surroundings in wonder before I hand him back the remote and he spends a hurried five minutes or so inspecting Joker before he sweeps his thumb over the joystick and sends the machine marching forward and down the stairs with far greater skill than I’d ever be able to muster. The Sergeant gives me a look and ushers us forwards, and then we head downwards into the station.

‘Cluttered’ doesn’t even begin to describe the place. There is computer equipment, magazines, newspapers, takeout boxes, all clustered like mushrooms growing around the racks and racks of high-tech monitors and workstations. There’s a folding table and chairs set up in the back with what looks like a half-finished game of Risk laid out on it, there’s an ancient cathode-ray TV set on a shelf playing an old western movie that I don’t recognize. The guys who work there, all nerd-types with glasses (one even has a pocket protector and I have to stop myself from grinning at him) are all gathered around Joker fawning over him like he’s a sports car until Euler waves them away, but he does so indulgently, making the robot give them rude hand gestures until the Sergeant snaps at him and then ushers the rest of us through a door and into a much neater and cleaner meeting room in the back. He speaks brusquely to one of the nerds who’d followed us in and gets the slight man to rummage around in a cabinet until he pulls out a map of the Pit and unfolds it, laying it flat on the table.

“Alright,” the Sergeant says. “Everyone gather around. Now we,” he says, giving us all a significant glance, his eyes lingering on me and Euler, “are right here, at the Control Center in the main gullet.”

I crane my neck and peer at the map. It seems like the place he’s pointing is distressingly high up and for a brief moment I wonder what the scale on this map is before the Sergeant drags his meaty paw downwards to a spot that seems equally awfully far below us. “This is the sealed entrance to the copepod barrows. That’s where we’re headed. We can’t take an IAV, we’d need at least three of them in order to carry all of us plus Joker, so we’ll have to leg it. I don’t want to let those bastards know we’re coming.”

A couple of nods, grunts of agreement, and so on.

“We’ll be making our way down the old ruined organ trail,” the Sergeant says, tracing his finger down from the Control Center, “to here, which is close to a cluster of ballast bulbs, to make camp later tonight. Yes, I know, ordinarily we’ve got standing orders to steer clear of bulbs, so as not to get into any more encounters with the wildlife than we have to, but the reports we’ve been getting are that there haven’t been anything particularly dangerous in those vents in the past month or so, and if we wanted to make camp someplace else it’d have to be up here,” he says, thumping his thumb down on a different spot, “which would mean we’d have to detour another three hours out of our way, so we’re going to just stick to camping near the bulbs.”

“From there,” he continues, “tomorrow we’ll make our way over to the Cord and take that down to here, and rendezvous with the research team in the Deep Listening Station in Oyster’s Shame, they’ve stopped answering their radios so we’re going to check in on them. Nothing to worry about, just a mechanical fault most likely. We’ll stay there in Oyster’s Shame tomorrow night, and then the next day we’ll get to the barrows, grab the crystal, and hightail it out of there without taking in too much of the scenery. Capisce?”

I nearly burst out laughing but manage to turn it into a hacking cough. Elena pounds me on the back for a moment and though I almost go down on my knees from the force of it it gives me enough time to compose myself. “Capisce,” I say weakly, and there are a few more enthusiastic grunts of assent from the rest of the squad. Then we’re moving, down flights and flights of stairs, smell like mildew and wet paint, down to a staging area and then grouping up before a wide shutter-style garage door. One of the sleek elongated Interior Anatomy Vehicles, the IAVs, glowers at us in the darkness behind us. Everyone’s getting ready; I see Elena slip her helmet on and fiddle with her headlamp, I see Crookshank and Klaus check their rifles and their sidearms, I see the Sergeant double-checking everyone. It takes me a moment to get my helmet hooked on properly but once I do I raise the visor and feel a little more secure with it cradling my head tightly on all sides. I’m sure it’ll end up giving me a headache after a while but for the moment it’s nice.

“Miss Merriweather,” the Sergeant barks, turning around and glaring at me. “Have you got that camera ready?”

I hold it up and waggle it at him. “Say cheese, Sarge,” I say. I hear a few chuckles but he glares daggers at the rest of the team and they quiet quickly.

“Alright,” he says. “Let’s move.”

He hits the switch and the doors hiss open behind him, loud mechanical rattling filling the air until they come to a clanging rest in their recessed grooves in the sides of the bay. And then, for the second time today, I let the Pit swallow me whole.

Continue with Part 16

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#mystery flesh pit #thriller #Michael Crichton #caving #disaster #novel #writing #original writing #horror #romance

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lu-undy · 4 years

Text

Chapter 30 - SBT

Here it is!

"M, I must say that your opponent is very skilled. He hit points that do hurt a lot but did only very superficial damage…"

The Doctor was a man who looked like any other beggar. He was dressed in rugs and has an unkempt beard, and bushy eyebrows. He was very short and equally old, behind his round pair of spectacles. Beyond the appearances, he turned out to be indeed a medical expert. His surgery was at the end of Maurice's district.

Mundy was sitting on a hospital bed and Lucien was sitting on the one next to him.

"You are welcome, Bushman."

The Doctor sniffed the air and turned to the Frenchman. He removed the cigarette off his lips and Lucien pouted.

"This is a non smoking area…! And M, you did not tell me that this man is the cause of your injuries." The Doctor shut the curtain between the two and started removing Mundy's clothes as he was done with cleaning and patching up his face.

"He is the cause of mine too." Lucien added from behind the curtain.

Mundy rolled up his eyes.

"You looked for it, you fancy ski teacher."

The Doctor raised his head off Mundy's chest.

"He is a ski teacher?!"

"Yeah." Mundy answered.

"Non!" Lucien said.

"Good Lord…" The Doctor shook his head and resumed his tending to Mundy's bruises.

"Ouch, Doc', that hurts…"

"Oui, Docteur, he is delicate, please don't break him further."

"Oi! I'm not delicate! You just hit where it hurts!"

"Oops…?" Lucien answered and Mundy clearly heard that he wasn't really sorry at all.

"It is the first time you bring me your foe to heal too, M." The Doctor said. "And it has been a decade since I last saw you."

The tone in the room became serious again.

"Can I speak freely?" The Doctor raised his eyes to Mundy. The Aussie knew that Lucien would hear everything.

"Go ahead."

"First, lie down on your back please. Thank you. Now, as a doctor, I am the happiest when I don't see my patients, because it means they are in good health. But with you, M, I had my doubts. You were either in excellent health or in a state that no doctor could fix."

"Y-yeah… I see what you mean. Uh… Sorry I didn't say anythin'. And uh, I was in both of these."

Lucien listened closely.

"What happened, M?"

"I… I lost my parents and decided to stop everything. I disappeared and just… I don't really know, time passed." Mundy tried to explain himself without giving too many details, as Lucien was no doubt listening.

And indeed, on the other side of the curtain, Lucien had lied down too and let Mundy's voice just fill the silence.

"I am sorry to learn about your parents. They were good people, very good people." The doctor had applied medicinal creams on the bruised areas and was now putting some bandages.

"Yeah… Thanks."

"But why are you back now?" The Doctor asked.

"Because the bloke who killed them is here and I want to kill him."

The Doctor shook his head.

"M… In all those years of remarkably good work, in all these years of saving lives, you now want to end one?"

Mundy frowned.

"He didn't even give them a painless death."

"Can you turn on your side, please. Thank you. Now…" The Doctor took care of Mundy's right side. "What did your parents do to end up… gone? I presume it was an accident." The Doctor asked.

"No, it wasn't. They did nothing. Absolutely nothing." Mundy answered, staring in front of him. He was facing the curtain and could distinguish Lucien's silhouette. "They…" He sighed. The Aussie was unsure.

"Take a deep breath."

Mundy's eyes snapped wide. It was the same voice as in the sugar factory complex. The one that had asked him to relax. And then, the eyes, artic blue, as calm as the ocean could get, everything disappeared, the eyes again, light blue, almost grey, and streaks of darker blue, like threads intertwining with the lighter blue…

Peace.

Mundy took a deep breath.

"My parents did nothing wrong. They happened to live on a bit of land where there was some oil. They were asked to pack up and go somewhere else, they'd be offered a large cheque as compensation. But my parents loved it there, it was the house that they built together, with their farm, the chickens and geese. I loved it there too. They refused to sell it. A few months later, after being almost harassed about it, receiving countless letters about it, the cheques growing bigger and bigger, they still refused. One day, I was off on a job and…"

Mundy sighed and took another deep breath. He closed his eyes and saw the blue ones that had brought peace to him.

"When I came back home that day, the farm had been burned to the ground, the house was entirely devoured by the flames. I called for the firemen but it was too late. They… There was no one to save anymore." He screwed his eyes shut tighter.

Lucien had listened in utter shock. His lips had parted and his eyes were open wide. How the hell could anyone set fire to a house where two peaceful people lived there? They were harmless, they were just… living there.

"I see." The Doctor said. "And now you are off to find this man and kill him, hm?"

"Yeah. I want to make him suffer, I want him to understand what it was for my parents, and for me."

"And you stopped working for a little more than a decade now?"

"I swore to never touch a rifle ever again. My dad hated them and they got me far away from my parents when they needed me the most. I hate those things."

"Yet, you are incredibly gifted at using one."

Mundy and the Doctor looked at each other. The voice had come from the other side of the light green curtain.

"And you did use a rifle again." Lucien added. "What made you break your oath?"

There was a bit of silence. The Doctor collected his tools and threw away the packages, and dirty compresses in the bin.

"I… This is my last job. It's not even a job, it's somethin' I need to do. I have to kill that bloke and then…"

"And then what?" Lucien asked, looking in the direction of Mundy but only seeing his silhouette through the curtain.

"Then, whatever happens, I don't care."

The Doctor shook his head.

"M, you know that we care for you, don't you?" He said. "Maurice, Eddy, me, the animals' reserves of this country… You have always been doing an incredible job and you did it without killing anyone, ever. I remember the young M, the one who would rather cut his own hand than hurt people, or animals."

"Yeah, well that version of me died the day my parents did."

The Doctor sighed. He let Mundy dress up again and pushed the curtain to go to Lucien.

"Now, to us." He said, and Lucien lifted himself up to sit. "What is your deal?"

"I am after the same man as M."

Mundy put on his polo shirt again and lied down on the hospital bed.

"Ah, is that why you have been fighting? You each thought the other was an enemy when in fact you want the same thing?"

"Not exactly."

The Doctor was cleaning the blood off of Lucien's face.

"What then? You both bumped into each other as you were going to kill that man?"

"Non." Lucien answered.

"And what is your motivation to kill him?"

Lucien sighed. If Mundy had managed to make an effort, then he shall try.

"The same man who stole M's parents away from him, took my family away too."

"Oh… Quite the serial killer that man…"

"Indeed."

"Did he go for your parents too?" The Doctor asked.

"Non. Not my parents. My…" Lucien frowned.

"Hey, mate?" Mundy said on the other side of the curtain. "Deep breath."

Lucien obeyed.

"He took my… My fiancée, and our young son."

Mundy's jaw dropped and his eyes snapped wider than plates. Lucien's voice had cracked, he could hear it.

"Remove your clothes and lie down, please."

Lucien did as he was told. Mundy could only hear the muffled noises of fabrics being moved but his mind was stuck. Duchemin had killed a sheila and a kid…? What kind of heartless bastard was that…?

"Thank you." The Doctor said and started tending to Lucien's chest. "How did it happen?"

Lucien took a second. He closed his eyes, lying down on that hospital bed and saw it all against his closed eyelids.

"They were off to buy some groceries. I was watching them from our house in Boston. Jérémy was holding Marie's hand and they were walking on the pavement. Such grace she had when she walked, her hips swinging ever so delicately, mon Dieu…" Lucien bit his lip and went on, his eyes still closed. "They arrived at the end of the street and crossed. That's when a car arrived at full speed, took a turn and…"

Lucien opened glistening eyes.

"I went out running to them and… Putain de merde… Marie gave me her last smile, as the tears rolled down her smooth cheeks. She looked down at Jérémy and when she saw him in my arms, unconscious, her last tears streamed down her beautiful face and she closed her blue eyes, never to open them again."

Mundy had frozen on his hospital bed, across the curtain.

"When did that happen?" The Doctor asked, as he finished spreading the cream on the bruised areas of his chest and stomach.

"A bit more than a decade ago." Lucien opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling.

"And, uh," Mundy's voice pulled Lucien out of his remembrance. "I guess Duchemin did that?" He looked in the direction of Lucien but could only see the silhouette of the doctor and that of the masked man lying on the bed.

"Oui. That car that ran them over, it was being chased by the police. I enquired about the case and it turns out that the man behind it all was none other than Arthur Duchemin. You see, that black 4x4 was transporting a load of gold that the police had been tracking down. And that gold had been stolen by the man we both are after. It is because of him that my Marie and my little Jérémy are gone now."

"What did you do after all that?" Mundy asked.

"I quitted my job. I left everything behind me and flew back to France where I just… time passed." Lucien said, quoting Mundy.

"What is your job?" The Doctor asked. "You clearly know a lot about close combat, or at least where it hurts. Were you a field medic?"

"Non, not at all. I am… I am a jack of all trades."

"But not a master of none, eh?" Mundy said and Lucien's ears pricked up. "Whatever you are, you're good at doin' it, mate."

"I have a good reason to do what I am doing, nothing more." He smiled.

The Doctor finished patching Lucien up.

"You can dress up again, I am finished."

Lucien slipped his shirt on and buttoned it up. When he was done, the Doctor pulled the curtain away and both Lucien and Mundy looked at each other. They were much cleaner, but their faces were covered in plasters here and there, there were still some red and sometimes even bluish bruises.

"Look at yer ugly mug now, spooky bastard..." Mundy teased and they both chuckled.

"Hey, you're the one with a large plaster across your cheek, Bushman."

"I will be back in a moment." The Doctor left them.

They looked at each other.

"I'm uh… I'm sorry for your loss." Mundy said as he sat up, letting his long legs dangle in the emptiness below him.

"And I apologise for the words I have said about your mother. You seem to love her quite a lot." Lucien answered.

"Yeah, she and my dad were everything I had. Now I don't have anything anymore."

"Don't say that."

Mundy raised his eyes from his feet to Lucien's eyes.

"Easy for you to say, you told me you had someone in your life again. That's nice for you. But I don't."

"An exceptional sharpshooter like you, it would be a shame to see you die." Lucien answered. "An exceptional sharpshooter, and a good teammate, for someone who lives in a hut."

"A hut? I live in my van."

Lucien's eyes snapped wide.

"W-what?"

"My parents' house has been burnt down."

"Didn't you move to a flat, or a house?" Lucien asked.

"Nah."

"So you stayed in that van for ten years?"

"Y-yeah." Mundy looked away and pushed his hat deeper on his head to hide his blush.

"Hey." Lucien left his bed and put a hand on Mundy's shoulder. "There is nothing shameful in that. I locked myself up for the same amount of time as you did. I refused to see anyone, I disappeared and I thought I would just wait it out."

"What made you come back? How did you learn that Duchemin was here?" Mundy asked, raising his head to look into Lucien's eyes.

"Through my job. I know people, they know things."

"And so you came here?" Mundy asked.

"Oui." Lucien hopped on to sit on Mundy's bed, next to him. "I took the first flight to Australia and here I am, to complete my last task."

"What will you do after that? I mean, if we get out of it."

"We?" Lucien asked.

"I mean… We both want the same thing. And we kinda make it work, don't we?"

"We do indeed." Lucien nodded.

"So, uh, what d'you say? We do it together?" Mundy extended his hand and Lucien stared at it for a while. Silence fell and the clock on the wall counted out loud the tics and tocs of Lucien's indecision.

"D'accord." He shook Mundy's hand.

[Agreed.]

"Oh, alright… Thanks, eh."

"Thank you too."

The Doctor entered again.

"Here, for both of you, some aspirin. Use it if it hurts."

"Thanks, Doc'."

"Merci, Docteur."

[Doctor]

They both exited the surgery and walked back together until they arrived at Mundy's van.

"Well, uhm… Let me know if you have any ideas what to do next, eh." Mundy said, looking at Lucien.

"In the immediate future, why not take a few days off and let our bodies rest. We cannot take our next move while being barely able to walk straight." Lucien answered.

"Yeah, you're right. Ok, uh, d'you know where to find me?"

"Non, but I don't need to. Maurice knows."

"Ah, yeah, true. Alright, see you then, Spook."

"Spook?" Lucien repeated.

"Well, I'm a Bushman, and you're one hell of a spooky bloke with your mask, and suit and tie. So you're a Spook." Mundy said with a smile.

"Fair enough, take care of yourself."

"Yeah, same to you."

Mundy drove away and Lucien watched as the van grew smaller before it took a turn and disappeared.

"Well, back to my piano." Lucien said to himself as he walked back to his motorcycle.

-- A few days later, the Queen Victoria --

"The usual, Sir?"

"Uh, yes, please. Actually, could I get a coffee with it, please?"

"Certainly."

The waiter disappeared and left Mundy at his table. He leaned back and waited impatiently for the show to start. He had been waiting for that night with high anticipation and had kept on listening to that song about solitude in his van. His heart didn't have it to switch on the radio. Only that cassette understood what he felt and could sing it. Although, in all fairness, there was nothing like the live performance of that singer on stage. Each time Mundy closed his eyes to see it projected on his closed eyelids, he felt shivers shoot through his spine and diffuse through his limbs.

He adjusted his position on his chair and wiggled his shoulders to shake the shivers away. Mundy was now almost used to the suit and each time he would wear it, he would feel less apprehension. The souvenir of his parents' burial started to fade from that black suit, and his mind started to associate it with the shivers of a new show. Wearing the shirt and tying the tie meant that he was off to see the man that managed to speak directly to something inside him. His soul perhaps, his heart surely.

"Your dessert and coffee, Sir."

"Thanks."

The waiter nodded and turned on his heels before leaving him.

"Ladies and Gentlemen…!"

Ah, Mundy smiled like an imbecile, on his own, and he didn't realise it. People were still chatting left and right from him. He wanted to shush them, like the quiet kid in a busy classroom. But the singer soon appeared on stage and Mundy's eyes couldn't leave him. He was handsome, that man, and always had a different suit. The ladies in the room applauded louder and shouted at him. Mundy was impressed...

"Thank you for coming each night in bigger numbers, I deeply appreciate it." Lulu bowed on stage and people applauded him warmly.

Bugger, he really sounds like L… Mundy thought to himself.

"I was pleased to receive letters from some of you sitting in the audience tonight or on the previous shows, complimenting my performance."

Again, the women in the room all agreed to applaud him and let him hear them. Mundy blushed and tensed. He, too, was one of those people. He felt put on the spot and the heat of the embarrassment crept over his body from his legs which turned to jelly, up to his cheeks and ears burning hot. He clenched his jaw.

"And I was surprised to receive so many. But you also have to thank Andy and his orchestra, without whom none of this would ever be possible."

Lulu stepped aside for the conductor and the musicians to bow courteously at the audience, who again applauded them loudly.

"Tonight, I would like to sing an answer to these letters, if I may."

Lulu went to the piano. He pinched his trousers' legs up and sat down elegantly. It reminded Mundy of L and how he had sat on the chair back in Maurice's hideout. The singer put his fingers on the keys and started playing.

The keys were slammed powerfully and the rhythm was quite fast. Oh, that change of tone was unexpected and it made Mundy curious and eager…!

{To the reader: the song is "La groupie du pianiste" [The fan of the pianist] by Michel Berger}

"Elle passe ses nuits sans dormir,

[She spends her nights without sleeping]

À gâcher son bel avenir,

[Wasting her beautiful future]

La groupie du pianiste.

[The fan of the pianist]

Dieu, que cette fille a l'air triste,

[God, how sad she looks]

Amoureuse d'un égoïste,

[She's in love with a selfish man]

La groupie du pianiste."

[The fan of the pianist]

Mundy couldn't understand a word of all that French but his soul read the subtitles that his eyes couldn't see, and he felt the meaning of the words. That was better than any translation anyone could have provided him with.

"Elle passe sa vie à l'attendre

[She spends her time waiting for him]

Pour un mot, pour un geste tendre

[For a word, for a tender gesture]

La groupie du pianiste

[The fan of the pianist]

Devant l'hôtel, dans les coulisses"

[In front of the hotel, backstage]

Oh he was something to watch that man… He was dancing in rhythm, as his fingers slammed the keyboard along his words, on the black and white keys, making the sheen of his Burgundy, satin jacket reflect the spotlights beautifully on Mundy's irises.

And the Aussie was slouched on his chair, his face on his palm, his elbow on the table. He was drinking the music of the man with the poetic salt and pepper hair beautifully. Ah, that grey front tuft that jumped and brushed the air before Lulu's ice grey eyes…

"Elle l'aime, elle l'adore

[She loves him, she adores him,]

Plus que tout, elle l'aime, c'est beau

[More than anything, she loves him, and it's beautiful]

comme elle l'aime"

[The way she loves him]

"Bloody hell…" Mundy whispered to himself. Lulu was half seated half standing and he was singing with such passion on the microphone…! His eyes were screwed shut and it was as if everything had disappeared around him. He was alone on the stage, and sang something about love quite obviously, with his blood boiling in his very veins!

Mundy was gobsmacked by the performance. He couldn't see himself, but his pupils had dilated to the size of planets and in them were engraved the image of Lulu singing his heart out to a lady who was way too lucky to understand it…

The Aussie bit his lip. That bastard made him feel things he hadn't felt in years, decades even. Even with Emma, a few months ago, he hadn't felt half of the quarter of what was happening inside him now. Oof! What was that?! There was something that came from his very guts, from his eyes, from his chest, something that grew out of his body from his very core and launched towards that man on the piano, thumping his foot on the pedal and shaking his head left and right…

Mundy put a hand on his chest. His heart was pumping hard and fast, to the rhythm of Lulu's words and his music.

"Gosh… What the hell…"

Mundy was breathing fast, as if he was running after something, after someone. His eyes were open wide and he felt his heartbeat on his temples, bugger, he was blushing now that he stared at Lulu…

"Il a des droits sur son sourire

[He has rights on her smile]

Elle a des droits sur ses désirs

[She has rights on his desires]

La groupie du pianiste

[The fan of the pianist]

Elle sait rester là sans rien dire

[She knows how to stay there, mute]

Pendant que lui joue ses délires

[While he plays his heart off]

La groupie du pianiste

[The fan of the pianist]

Quand le concert est terminé

[When the concert is finished]

Elle met ses mains sur le clavier

[She puts her hands on the keys]

En rêvant qu'il va l'emmener

[While she dreams that he will take her]

Passer le reste de sa vie

[To spend the rest of her life]

Tout simplement à l'écouter"

[Just listening to him]

Mundy was hanging on Lulu's very lips. Gosh, he stared at them, his thin lips, how they moved in front of the microphone, not even an inch away from it, declaring a love that a damn woman had without doing anything else but existing!

"Bloody hell…" Mundy sat straight on his chair as he started to figure out what was happening inside him. His hands patted his chest repeatedly, left and right, as if he was looking for something that he had forgotten, in a pocket he didn't know existed anymore. He ended up wrapping his hands around himself. Oh, he needed air, he needed so much air…!

Lulu turned his eyes to the audience, people were applauding in rhythm enthusiastically, the waves of applause crashed, making the air snap and Mundy's heart pumped harder, as Lulu's gaze swept across the room and got closer to him.

"Elle l'aime, elle l'adore!

[She loves him, she adores him!]

Plus que tout, elle l'aime, c'est beau

[More than anything, she loves him, it's beautiful]

Comme elle l'aime!"

[How she loves him!]

Lulu took the microphone off its stand and left the piano to come at the edge of the stage and repeated that infernal chorus that Mundy felt like a dagger to his chest. Oh he wished…! Mundy wished he was the one at the other end of those words. But he wasn't a she, despite being, as hard at it was to admit, a fan of the pianist.

The song ended in a thunder of applause and cheers from the audience, women in the room made their high-pitched admiration shoot through the very air and Lulu was proud. Gosh, he was handsome when he was singing but his smirk was something that split Mundy in halves.

And Mundy was left there, breathless, his eyes, his mind and his heart full of colors, tastes and euphoric feelings he could not describe. When he emerged from his shock, Mundy looked around him to see people eating their dinner left and right, as if nothing had happened a few minutes ago. A few minutes? Mundy looked at his watch. The show had stopped at least half an hour ago.

Crikey…

He needed to vent. To yell at someone, empty himself of what he had just been through. He would write another letter, screw it. Paper? Pen? Mundy patted his pockets. Nah, of course not, he's wearing a suit, he isn't going to school, why would he carry a pen and paper. No, no, of course not! He looked left and right.

Oh?

He got an idea. It was foolish, absolutely out of both his character, and his comfort zone. But screw it all. If he had managed to team up with someone to find Duchemin, how hard could it be to just…?

Mundy took his hat off his table and pushed his chair back. He stood up and walked resolutely to the backstage area. He slipped through a door without anyone stopping him and saw the musicians here and there. His eyes scanned the crowd but he couldn't see the man in the suit. Bugger, where was he…?

"'Scuse me mate, you know where Lulu is?" He asked one of the musicians.

"Yeah, he must be in his dressing room, that's the door at the end of the corridor."

"Ah, thanks."

"No worries."

Mundy walked to the white door. There was a sign on it. It read "Lulu."

"Well, that seems like the right door, eh, so uh, here we go…"

He knocked at the door. Three knocks, like the three words that his heart was beating.

#tf2 sniper #tf2 spy #sniperspy #SBT

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rideboldlyride · 4 years

Text

Perfect: Chapter 8

Like the Waves (Back and Forth)

Ao3 Link Here!

Zuko,

So I guess I should start now, huh? I mean, it’s only been a few days, but I have to start somewhere. We just skimmed Kyoshi Island, landing in Chin Village. Did I ever tell you about this place? They had planned to boil Aang in hot oil at one point. Now they have this day where they eat raw dough in celebration of … not…. boiling him? I’ll have to tell you the whole story in person one day.

Anyway.

Chin Village is the first stop on our little crusade, it seems, since Toph already found the Triad here. (That girl has got a nose for sniffing them out). We followed them, but so far it’s been a pretty uneventful trip. I’ll have to wait to write when there’s actually something interesting to write about…

***

Dark. Black. Flash of inky nothingness flies through the air.

A heavy splash, followed by a guttural grunt. The sound of cloth whipping through the air. Followed by footsteps.

Men’s voices echoed down the hall, angry, confused. Moonlight streams through the windows, being caught up in an unnatural fog.

Silence eats up the heavy tread.

Loud crash. Like a spirit of the damned, a beast straight from the Spirit World descends upon the throng.

The screams are swallowed up by the night. Red, brown, blue, and water. So much water. The men could drown on the dry ground.

They fall like dead bugs around the phantom.

One is still conscious, cowering.

“The Painted Lady…” his voice is reverant, trembling.

“Where are you taking the children?”

***

… I seriously wish there was more to tell. The little bit of information I was able to snoop out of what Toph found seems to point us to Gaoling. She’s… not exactly pleased about it. I don’t think she’s talked with her folks in a while. I guess we’ll see if she’ll talk to them now.

Doubt it.

How are the new settlement talks going? I heard you are playing a big role in that. I know I’m not really in any position to help, but if you want a fresh set of eyes, I’ll be happy to help.

Hope this letter finds you safe and as sane as being the Fire Lord is going to keep you.

Katara

***

Katara,

I’m surprised that you haven’t been up to mischief. That doesn’t quite sound like you. I guess I’ll have to take your word.

Sounds like Chin Village was going to be a quick stop. It’s a pretty small village, isn’t it? My Earth Kingdom geography is a little rusty.

Aang boiled in oil- I don’t think I’ve heard that story before.

I’m surprised to hear that Toph hasn’t seen her parents in a while. Well, maybe not surprised. But definitely sad to hear it. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to smooth any interactions. The Bei Fong’s and I have crossed paths multiple times, and they seem to listen to me. Do you know what direction you’re heading in, once you get to Gaoling? That is a bit of a step up from Chin Village.

The settlement talks are going about as well as you might expect. Kuei thinks that the islands belong to his kingdom (or at least, his advisors do), and yet my advisors tell me there’s evidence of an old Fire Nation village there. I’m not exactly sure how far to push the issue - it’s a bit of a touchy subject, when my people are involved.

I’ve been trying to do some pushing on my end, about the Triad. I’m sad to report that I’m not getting very far…

***

A ring of steel on steel echoed through the alleyway. The grimace on the strained man’s face was hardly a match for the grotesque twist of a face on the spectre’s mask. At that moment, the opponent was doubtful of the nature of the man before him.

Earlier, inside the building they had vacated, one of his gang mates had laid a blade’s edge upon the black skin of the spirit before him and drawn red blood. He had sworn that a man’s voice had bit out a muffled curse at the action. But as the blue and white mask leaned in, there was no sign of a man’s presence behind it. No hint of skin, no rush of breath. Just heat, unbearable, aggressive heat. With a twist, the man felt his blade slip through his fingers and clatter down the street.

A pair of dao blades intersected before his throat.

When he swallowed heavily, his Adam's apple scraped the blade’s edge painfully. One blade was removed, and with a switch of a grip, it came tumbling back down, it’s butt meeting the side of his skull. He plummeted into the darkness.

Over his body, the Blue Spirit stood tall. Returning his blades to his sheath, he bent down, patting down the pockets of the man unconscious before him. A sound caught his attention, and with a deft hand he withdrew a small piece of parchment from a pocket. Unravelling it, he scanned it before slipping it into a private pocket of his own.

With one more look down at the man unconscious before him, he hefted him over his shoulder and disappeared into the night.

The next morning, he would be found bound, with a fresh piece of parchment pinned to his front, showing evidence of the small cell of the Triad in the region near the Fire Nation capital, discarded before the Head of the Guard of the city.

***

… But this does not mean I have given up trying. Anything you need help with, Katara, please, just let me know.

By the time this reaches you, I’m sure you’ll be in Gaoling. Please be safe. I don’t think I want to explain to Sokka why his baby sister is being held by a group of gangsters.

Speaking of Sokka, I hear that they’re planning to visit in the next few months. I won’t lie, I’m excited to see them. There’s something empty to this palace without you all here.

Be safe.

Zuko.

***

Oh Great and Fiery One,

Hi.

Sorry, couldn’t help myself.

Those settlements, Zuko, how old are the remnants? I can understand why you’re nervous to push anything with Kuei, but if they belong to your people… If they’re old remnants, it might just make sense to strike a deal for some archaeological dig but if not- if they’re just from before the war, then why would Kuei want the islands anyway?

I’m sorry to hear about your work on the Triad. I could’ve used the help. As it is, we’re chasing a bit of an enigma. So far the SB (that’s all I’m going to call her, since I don’t want this falling into the wrong hands) has remained elusive. There’s a whisper, but it’s a quiet one. Supposedly, this is the first place she emerged on the scene. According to what I’m finding, she hadn’t intended to be used by them. They just found her…

***

“I do not suffer fools or liars!” A voice like a dark demon split the air, and the man before her cowered in the fog at her feet.

“I would never lie to a spirit - especially as powerful of a one as you, my Lady!” Lord Bei Fong was shivering.

“Then tell me who she is!”

“I don’t know!” He crooned, his voice wavering, as if on the edge of slipping into unconsciousness. “She was found here, yes! We brought her in, but when they came for her, we knew nothing about them or her!”

“You took her in? You, Bei Fong, are not known for your hospitality to the weak and needy.”

“She was no beggar.”

Anger spurred the spirit closer. Red lips curled in disgust as she growled out her words. “Then who was she?!”

“Someone of rank -- that’s all I know!” He threw himself to his knees, prostrate, arms covering his head. There was no more to be known as to the Spirit Bridge’s identity, but maybe she could identify where she was taken to.

“Where did they take her?”

“North - North and east. I don’t know where exactly.”

The Painted Lady straightened, blue eyes glinting in the light. “These thugs prevail on my patience, pry on my good will. Tell me all there is to know about the Triad.”

***

… and they used her. Sounds like she’s a prisoner more than an accomplice. But she’s going to have to go on hold for a few days. (hopefully only for that long. Gaoling is taking too long to comb through, and I’ve got a feeling my road leads to Omashu, at least, and I don’t want to be sidetracked for too long.) There’s a village, Linpan, that is currently being plagued, like Yomi was. It’s out in the middle of the plains, where there isn’t much of a lawful presence at all. I wonder over it’s condition, but it’s better not to concern myself too much till I get out there.

I won’t lie, I already miss Sokka and Suki. And Yuka. I worry that I’m going to miss so much of her life. Maybe when it’s all said and done, I’ll go ahead and let Pakku set me up. Just so I can settle down.

Who am I kidding?

Please send my love to my family. I’ll see you eventually. Be safe too, Zuko.

Katara

***

Very funny.

You call me that again, and I won’t send you Sokka’s leftover seal jerky.

You asked about the settlement: It’s from just prior to the war. The only real reason we’re trying to settle it is to search for the little bit that remains of the Fire Nation culture prior to the war. Most of the settlers planned for are historians. The rest are just to keep the historians afloat. I’ve tried explaining this to Kuei, but I’m beginning to wonder if his advisors are only bringing him their own narratives.

Can I go chase bad guys with you?

This SB… she’s interesting. Her being a prisoner - that changes the dynamics in a lot of ways. And we know it’s a woman? I wish we could figure out her identity. It might help us in the long run.

***

Pitter patter, pitter patter.

It was an easy beat to fall into. Feet on ground, as light as the fall of the rain. Wet shale tiles were like ice in the rain. The spirit would have scaled it effortlessly. The man, instead, slipped and cursed, but managed to find his footing again.

A chorus of yelps and hollers came from the rooftop just vacated. He ignored them and the pain shooting through his arm and shoulder. The Blue Spirit rounded the edge, jumped into an alley, slid down an old open-aired drain, and was gone.

He had retrieved what he came for. The man behind the mask smiled victoriously.

***

So you’re headed to Linpan? If you come across anybody named Gansu, Sela or Lee,... I don’t know. Thank them from me? You might want to wait till the end of the visit to say that, though. What’s taking you out there, anyway? Last time I was there, some of the authorities were not the … friendliest. Please be careful, and don’t pick any fights.

Rather, don’t let Toph pick any fights.

When Sokka and Suki arrive, I’ll make sure to pass along your love. Have you been writing them?

Please, Katara, stay safe. This isn’t an easy quest you’ve taken on. I worry that you’re not telling me everything.

Zuko.

***

Zuko.

Yes, I made that a sentence.

If you’re going to self-project here, I want to be abundantly clear that I know you aren’t telling me everything. I’ll start spilling when you do.

It was a bit of insanity when I got here. Seems the Triad had just struck. Mostly snagged kids, from what I could tell, but a few women too. Went looking for that family you spoke of, but the town told me that Gansu didn’t make it back from the war. His oldest kid did, though - Sen Su. Unfortunately, Lee and Sela were a part of the ones taken.

Don’t worry, though. I think you know what happened next…

***

The wheat faded under to black and desiccated under her foot.

Gold withered to black. Nutmeg and blood. Blue and brown. White billowed around the spectre’s feet, face.

If there were footsteps, it was only the promise of death behind her.

The men cowered, some of the more devout falling to their knees, lips trembling out unheard prayers. Close association with the spirits led powerful men to paranoia, a constant gaze over their shoulders.

Funny that, the spirit considered. If one kept his eyes over his shoulder, they were less likely to see the pit before them.

Red lips curled.

Villagers stood tall. Avenging spirits did not come for the innocent, they whispered to the children. The Painted Lady was the most righteous of them all.

But what of the Blue Spirit, the children responded. The mothers hushed them. It was improper to speak reverentially of a different spirit in the midst of an avenging one.

With the slightest whisper of cloth, arms were raised, fingers curled like talons. The fog seemed to still, hovering.

She rose -

She waited -

She descended.

***

Lee and Sela are back home, along with their friends. Before we left, I mentioned you. I don’t think you realize how much has changed since you left. They insisted that Toph and I stay with them another night. Lee asked if you still had your dao swords -- Zuko, you should come see them.

This cell of the Triad isn’t going to be coming back anytime soon. I think Toph and I scared them enough that they’ll be having nightmares for at least a few months. Hopefully. I didn’t come here expecting to find anything out about the SB, but I actually did! She was in Omashu for a long time, even though she’s been moved since. I’m not quite sure where to, but I’ve got a sneaking sensation that I’ll be seeing the walls of Ba Sing Se before this is all over with.

I’m surprised about the settlement. I can’t help but wonder if Kuei isn’t getting the full story. What can you do about it? Is there anything you can do about it?

As for being safe: I’m doing my best, Zuko. But I wouldn’t go around being high and mighty - I heard that you fended off another attempt, this time without Mai. I think you might be in more danger than me.

Don’t let that happen again, unless I’m there, okay?

I miss you, Hotman. And … thank you. Thank you for insisting we write. It’s keeping me sane between the bouts of Toph’s snoring at night.

I’ll see you soon, Zuko.

Katara

***

Katara,

How did you hear about that? I guess I forget that you write to other people too. As for your request, I’ll do my best.

I’m glad to hear about Sela, Lee and Sen Su, but I won’t lie that it hurt to hear about Gansu. He was a very wise man, and it’s a loss to everyone who knew him. I’ll… try my best to come see them. That was an awkward time in my life, so I doubt it’ll be easy.

It’s surprising to hear about the SB in Linpan. I’m guessing that this side quest of yours was to rout the trade routes they have. It’s just odd to find out crucial information from a little town in the middle of nowhere. Please be careful...

***

The dock rolled slowly in the surf. Bamboo mats swayed under foot. Inky darkness filled the gloom. In the black night, a devilish white grin flashed. Curled fangs snarled silently. The boat moored bumped slightly against the rafts, echoing an unearthly scrape across the soft waves.

The phantasm stole up a plank.

Silence long reigned in the dark. A sudden smack of skin on metal rang through the empty dock. A crash. A scuffle. A stuttering cry.

The hatch opened without care, and a woman in practical nightwear stumbled out. In the silver of the moon’s light, the bronze at the apparition’s arms glinted, the white that lined it’s face glowed, the swords in its hands reflected like two slivers of the moon. A line of red ran down the very edge of one sword.

It loomed over the woman, staring down coolly at her. Her mouth worked without a sound. A single blade point was shoved under her chin. She whimpered.

“I’ll leave!” she shrieked.

A blue face shot forward, their stance readying for action. The woman cowered even more.

“The children, I’ll leave them here. I promise! Just don’t -- don’t hurt me!”

The black pits of emotionless eyes stared a moment longer at the woman. They nodded, pulling back and away. With the grace of many years of practice, the twin swords swirled about him, sliding into the sheath at his back.

He stepped away, just in time to hear it.

A loud cry echoed from the hatch. Holding a vase like a club, he brought it down on the Blue Spirit’s head.

The dark clad figure stumbled, but only for a moment, bringing a small dagger from his boot across the man’s chest. A line of red blossomed there, only a slight wound, but the man staggered away, clutching at it. Something inhuman escaped the wraith and it rounded, something feral in their posture.

For the first time, the Blue Spirit spoke, it’s voice like wood tumbling over stone.

“Leave.”

The woman bolted to the side of the injured man, but turned wide gray eyes back at the Spirit.

“Yes! We will! Forgive him his impudence!” She fell to her face, sobbing. “We’ll leave! We’ll go, and you’ll never see us again!”

She continued to sob into the night, but the offended spirit she placated had long since disappeared.

***

Don’t make me have to come find you.

As for Kuei, I wouldn’t be surprised. We all know he has a tendency towards poor decisions in regards to advisors.

I’m trying to secure a time with him in the upcoming months. I need to make a run to Omashu myself. Bumi has got something he needs to show me, he says, but for all I know, it’ll be more gemmanite crystal in a new color.

Maybe he’s perfected red?

Either way, he’s now going through White Lotus channels. It’s starting to frustrate Piandao, and that’s never a good thing. Who knows? Maybe we’ll cross paths there.

(I hope we do. I’ve been missing you too.)

Zuko

***

They readied themselves on their Ostrich horses, a small pack strapped to the hind quarters of the beasts. Before them, the sun was beginning to peak over the horizon, sending the flat lands aglow. Katara shuffled before the ostrich horse, trying to steady herself for the rocking ride that always left her backside screaming the next morning. Toph, beside her, was a surprisingly comfortable rider, even if Katara had to lead them both, Toph’s ostrich tied to the back of her saddle.

“Please be safe on your journeys, Miss Katara.”

The young woman turned to the older, a smile pulling at her face. Sela handed over two packs - she could tell they were laden with food.

“Sela, please don’t. You three need the food more than Toph and I do.”

A hard look crossed her face, and the older woman’s hand did not falter. “Do not deny my hospitality, Katara.”

The look melted as the waterbender wrapped her up into a hug. “Thank you.”

From the homestead, two young men walked out into the morning. Sen Su shook his head vigorously. “I’m pretty certain that we should be thanking you. I would have tried, but I doubt I could have gotten them back without your help.”

There hadn’t been much more to say, Katara felt, so with one more press of a hug to the family, she mounted the ostrich horse.

“Make sure to write, okay?”

All three nodded. As she started to spur her mount, Lee shot forward, a look of concern on his face.

“Oh! Miss Katara?” She turned a friendly smile to him, and he continued. “When - when you see the Fire Lord again, can you tell him that I’m sorry?”

“Sorry? Lee…,” Katara sighed, dismounting. She placed a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Lee, Zuko is one of my closest friends --” Pointedly, Katara ignored Toph’s shot of laughter. “ -- so we write each other a lot. If I know Zuko at all, he would never feel that he deserved an apology for your behaviour. If anything, he’d be the one apologizing to you.”

“Still,” the young man pressed, “can you tell him for me?”

A wry smile tugged at the corner of her lips. “Yeah, Lee, I can do that.”

***

#zutara #perfect #zutara is my new hell #atla #atla is my new hell #zutara fanfiction #fanfiction update

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listentometalkaboutmorebooks · 4 years

Text

you wanna kiss me so bad it makes you look stupid

Friday nights are the worst.

Look, shout at me all you want, but you clearly haven’t worked the closing shift in a late-night bar before. Drunk people are the worst, especially when they know they have two more days ahead of them to get even drunker. And yeah, I am including myself in that number.

The only thing worse than Friday nights are Saturdays, because by then everyone has stopped drinking to celebrate and started to drink to forget. I got out of that shift by the skin on my teeth, but fate is a double-edged sword, and I got stuck with Fridays instead. Hey, beggars can’t be choosers, I guess.

One thing going for Fridays is that you don’t get bothered a whole lot. The sad drunks won’t come out of their dens until the next night, so all you get is the noise of people with their friends and families. Great time to work on hobbies. Knitted a whole scarf one shift. And so when someone walks in, alone, and doesn’t immediately gravitate towards a table? My attention is piqued.

The stranger sits down at the bar, looking at the seat like he’d rather have put a towel down first. I walk over without being called.

As I move closer, the lights shift, throwing his face into sharp contrast.

Shit. He’s really hot.

He wears an easy grin, the kind you can only get from years of practice. His eyes dart around almost like he’s searching for an escape route, but the rest of his body doesn’t betray any intention to bolt. He’s calm, collected, relaxed… Well, as much as he can be in this loud ass bar. His hands are long and slender, impeccably manicured fingers folded in front of him, sharp teeth poking over his lip, black hair slicked back carefully. It looks like he could kill you and never dislodge even a hair. And honestly… It made me wonder what else he could do without getting ruffled, if you catch my meaning.

“What can I help with you tonight, sir?” I ask, shaking myself out of my thoughts as I prop myself up on the bar by my elbows.

“Ah, good evening. I’ll have your finest scotch, neat.” His voice matches the rest of him, polished and posh. It makes me shiver.

“Celebrating something, are we?” I tease, turning to pour him his drink.

“One could say that.”

“Huh, very mysterious. Where’s your partner? Guy like you has gotta have one.” Okay, so what if I’m being a little forward? He’s either single or he isn’t, better to find out before I go getting attached.

He just winks at me. “What’s your name, darling?”

“Juno Steel. And yours?”

“A gorgeous name for a gorgeous lady, if you don’t mind my cliche. I’m Peter Nureyev.” He grins, showing off those… really sharp teeth. I’d noticed before, but damn… A second too late, I hold out a hand for him to shake. My chipped nail polish looks childish next to his dangerous-looking manicure, but I’m too distracted by his strong grip to lose any sleep over it.

“Where are you from, then, Peter Nureyev?” I hum, pulling a stool around the bar so I can sit opposite him.

“Oh, a bit of everywhere. I’ve never settled down anywhere for too long, three months maximum. Although, here seems quite a bit nicer than most of my other stops.”

“So, what are you running from?”

“Bold of you to assume I’m not the one chasing.”

I raise my eyebrows, impressed, and drop the subject. He might be hot, but I still don’t want to end up on his kill list. He seems like he might actually do it.

“Tell me, Juno, what do you think of Hyperion? Should I finally settle down?”

“Eesh, Hyperion City isn’t most people’s first choice for a relaxing retirement. Sure, it looks all shiny and new, but soon as you get close something tries to stab you.”

“I can deal with stabbings. I’ve had experience.” Nureyev smirks, wrinkling his nose at me teasingly. I can’t tell if he’s kidding or not…

“I don’t doubt it…”

“But you seem to enjoy it, since you live here?” He says, backtracking over the stabbings like it was a normal thing to say.

“What, you’ve never gotten stuck somewhere? I was born here, and I guess I just got sucked in. I’ve had this job since I was 20.” I scoff, absently wiping away a drop of water and tossing the towel over my shoulder.

“I guess you’re right. How old are you now, then?”

“It’s rude to ask a lady’s age, Nureyev. You seem like someone who should know that…”

Down the bar, someone waves to get my attention. I look over, and it’s a gaggle of drunk girls. They can stand to wait another few minutes, right?

“My apologies, dear.” He follows my gaze and sees them too. “I don’t mean to take up too much of your time, Juno, no matter how pleasant your company…”

“You’re not taking my time, I’m giving it.” I tell him, standing up and unwinding my apron from around my waist. “I’m going on break!” I yell to the back room, not really caring whether they heard me or not. A minute later, I’m sitting in the seat next to him. He’s tall, taller than he seemed from behind the bar. His legs are all folded up under him.

“Hello there.” Peter teases, finishing his drink and setting it down in front of him. “Terrible time for you to go on break, really.”

“Shut up. And hey, you never answered my question about your partner!”

“Well, that’s why I’m here tonight, actually. I just ended a five year relationship.” Nureyev says, grinning.

“Uhh. I’m… Sorry?”

“Don’t be. I’ve been needing to make that decision for a while now, honestly.” He sighs, that permanent knowing smile settling back onto his face. He really doesn’t seem upset about this at all…

“Why did you end it? If it’s not too personal.”

“You’ve already gotten pretty personal with me tonight, darling, it’s not like this crosses a line. I ended it simply because she was so… Bland. All her decisions were made for her, she was just told where to spend her money and then she did. I’m also fairly certain she was cheating on me. A lot. She wasn’t really even trying to hide it…”

“Jesus, Nureyev… That really sucks.” I wince, patting his arm very awkwardly. How the hell do you comfort people, and why is he now laughing at me?!

“Juno, it’s alright!” He chuckles, covering my hand with his own. “She was only in it for the drama. We met at a charity auction and she told me she loved me the same night. Onstage, in front of everyone. I have to admit, one of the only reasons I stuck it out as long as I did was because she truly was very lenient with her money…”

“Oh. Good?” I’m not sure what to say here. “I know a thing or two about bad relationships, so I get where you’re coming from. My last partner… You don’t want to hear it. That’s a story for another day, I think.” I shake my head.

“You say that as if we’ll see each other again, sweetheart.”

“Well, would you like to see each other again?” I ask, cocking a brow.

“I thought you’d never ask! Although next time, why don’t we try and find sometime when you’re not supposed to be working, hm?” He adds, and I look past him to see a mess of people at the bar. Looks like they didn’t send out anyone to replace me…

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry, Nureyev, I should probably go back to work. Like I said, I’ve had this job since I was 20 and I have no interest in losing it now.” I wince, throwing my apron back on and rounding the bar once more.

“I can wait until your shift is done…?” He asks, sliding a finger over the rim of his glass and looking up at me through hooded eyes. How the hell do you say no to that?

“I’m done at 12.” I reply, pouring him another drink without even thinking about it before moving on to the rest of the mob.

True to his word, he stays until the bar closes, and conveniently forgets to pay his tab.

God, he’s lucky he’s hot.

#the penumbra podcast #fanfiction #jupeter #peter nureyev/juno steel

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ansgar-martinsson · 4 years

Text

The Best Intentions - Part 32

“Oh, darling,” he said, pausing for a moment, testing the waters. When she didn’t balk at the pet name, he continued, his smile broadening, “I will take you for all the ice cream you could possibly want, at any time or anywhere.”

“Would you?”

“I will keep you in M&M’s for life if you asked it of me. I’d do anything to have you with me; anything to see that smile on your face.”

She looked up at him. “Anything?”

He inhaled. He knew what was coming. “Yes, anything,” he affirmed. “I will even slow myself down. I will slow down and talk things through with you. I will tell you of my machinations from now on, especially should they involve you or your family.”

“Promise?”

“I promise,” he said, crossing his heart. “I just… if I see an opportunity, I tend to jump upon it, damn the consequences sometimes. I… I just didn’t think. I hate to say this but it just didn’t cross my mind that you’d be upset with me talking with your brother, taking him for a drink, inviting him here today.”

“I’d have liked to have gotten drunk with you first, before Elias did.” She gave a small shrug.

“Well, you still can,” he said brightly. “I’m not that drunk. We can remedy that as soon as you like. Tonight, if you’re up for it. I’m game… I hear you Lindbergs are a professional lot of drinkers. I’d like to put that to the test with you.”

“I think I can accept that challenge.” She laughed. “But again you’re changing the subject.”

“I most certainly am not. You’re the one who brought up the drinking, darling, not me. I can’t help it if you go all off topic and willy nilly and….”

“Ansgar…,” she growled. “Focus.”

He chuckled. “Fine. I understand. I should have spoken with you about meeting with Elias, about inviting him to the picnic first. I should never have gone behind your back.”

“What else?”

“I won’t leave you alone again, not like I did today. Not at a social function like this, not where your place with me raises eyebrows, not where you could possibly be eaten by the sharks. I won’t leave you unprotected like that again. I… I made an error in that. A terrible error.”

“Are these… are these actual honest to goodness apologies I’m hearing, Herr Martinsson?”

He peered down at her, his eyes bright, open, honest. “They are,” he said. “I am… I’m sorry, Joline. I’m sorry I undermined you. I’m sorry you had to feel second best today, because you are most certainly not. I’m sorry you had to bear the brunt of my notoriety, take the weight of gossip and backchat, and I’m sorry I left you alone, left you to it.”

“There’s a ‘but’ in there somewhere,” she squinted. “I can hear it.”

He licked his lips and grinned. “You know me so well already, don’t you?”

“I’m getting there,” she said. “But don’t change the subject, what’s the catch?”

“I’m not going to apologize for recruiting your brother. I can’t.”

“I understand,” she nodded. “You need him. You need him and that’s good. I think…, no. I know you two will work well together. I know he’ll do right by you if you do right by him and his family.”

“That is most certainly my intention, darling, to do right by him.”

“Not for my sake?”

He shook his head. “For Elias’ and mine. No more, no less. I swear it.”

“Do you?”

“Will you please stop second guessing me? I swear, I mean what I say to you, Joline. Take me at face value. It’s what I’m giving you, the truth of me – something I’ve not given to many people in my life. It’s hard for me. I wish you’d accept it.”

“I do,” she said tentatively. “It’s myself I don’t trust.”

He brushed his fingers over her cheek, tipping her chin in his direction. He bent to her, caressing her lips with his own - a gentle kiss, nothing sexual, just affection, pure and simple. Pure. Simple. Truth. “I trust you,” he whispered. “Take me as I am.”

“Okay,” she nodded slowly. Her eyes flicked between his two, back and forth and back and forth until she fixated squarely upon him. “Okay.”

“Very good,” he grinned. “Very good indeed.” And he held that smile for a beat, peering down into her face, taking in the beauty of her, the feeling of light giddiness that washed over him at the sight of her, at the press of her body still against his. It was a familiar yet unfamiliar feeling, a scary thing, yet, inviting. Unsettling yet comforting. Something old yet something new. Something very new. Something right.

And to think he’d nearly lost it.

And he wanted more of it.

And it was compounded by the renewed thrum of alcohol in his blood stream – after the emotions, after the adrenaline of the argument, after the roller coaster of fear had passed. It all went straight to his brain. “Um,” he said, fishing in his pocket, “I think you ought to drive.” He pulled the key fob for the Tesla out with a grunt and dangled it in front of her. “We’ll go get that ice cream, and perhaps some dinner after, but I’m still a bit – erm… wonky.”

She took the fob reverently in her palm, curled her fingers around it and beamed excitedly up at him. “I was hoping you’d say that.” Her eyes blew wide and she clutched her hands together near her heart, like a child in supplication, like a beggar thankful for food. “But, before the ice cream,” she sang, “I’d like to open her up a little bit, take her through her paces.”

Ansgar pushed himself off the boot, steadied himself, and gestured grandly toward the car. “Your chariot awaits, my lady.”

“Sgar! Hey, Sgar! There you are! I’ve been scouring the place looking for you!”

Ansgar turned toward the voice, groaning inwardly at the intrusion. Yet, he plastered on a smile and waved. “My marketing director,” Ansgar murmured to Joline through a rictus of a grin. “The guy’s a pest and a brown-noser but he’s a genius at selling. Hey, Dev!” he called out. “What are you doing skulking around here, shouldn’t you be at the music stage playing the emcee bit?”

Dev panted as he jogged to a stop in front of them. “Hi,” he said quickly to Joline. He held his hand out cursorily. “Dev Sharma, marketing, pleased to meet you.”

“Joline Lindberg,” she replied, shaking his in return.

“Friend of Ansgar’s? You are? Oh that’s great. That’s just great. He’s a great guy. Great guy. One of the greatest. A great friend of mine.”

“Great,” Joline replied brightly.

“Yeah! Great!”

“Dev!” Ansgar’s shout startled the man, and then he spoke slowly. “Get to the point. What…do you want?”

“Erm,” he hemmed. “I was erm, sort of hoping you’d come back in, come up on stage and say a few words, you know, before the main band comes on.”

“Uh,” Ansgar cringed. He peered at Dev, and then looked back to Joline, then back to Dev, and back again to Joline. “Sorry, man,” he said at last, shaking his head. “I… I appreciate the sentiment and all, but um,” he swallowed. “I just gave a presser the other day, spent most of today shaking hands with just about everyone, and now I’d just sort of like to slip away quietly. My doing a speaking gig wasn’t on the agenda for today anyway, and I’ve nothing prepared.” He shrugged. “You know I sometimes say too much, talk over peoples’ heads when I extemporize.”

“Extemporize?”

Ansgar laughed. “See what I mean?” He directed that toward Joline, and then looked back at Dev. “When I wing it. Besides,” he indicated Joline to Dev with his eyes. “I’ve a few important things to tend to.”

“Ah,” Dev intoned, and then hissed air through his teeth. “Understood. I… I just thought I’d ask.”

“And I appreciate it, Dev, I do. Just… not today.”

“Not today, great.” Dev muttered, tossing his thumb over his shoulder toward the festivites. “Well, I’ll just be getting back to it, back… back to the picnic.”

“You do that,” Ansgar said.

Dev, shoulders hunched in slight defeat turned to go. “See ya, Sgar,” he said, and then to Joline, “Great to meet you.” He lifted a hand as he walked away.

“Hey, Dev!” Ansgar stopped him.

“Yeah, Sgar?” Dev turned, his face anxious, anticipatory.

“Phenomenal job on the party. It’s… it’s brilliant.”

Dev beamed. “Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”

And with that, Dev jogged back up the path from whence he came.

“Now,” Ansgar sang, smiling broadly down at Joline. “Where were we? I think… you were about to take me for a bit of a ride.”

“Great!” Joline parroted, giggling wildly at their recent company. “He’s a pip, that Dev bloke!” He’d been the first of Ansgar’s company to treat her like a human instead of some succubus come to bleed him of his money, his masculinity and his libido. She already felt better for it.

“Dev… he’s a bit… enthusiastic,” Ansgar opened the driver side door for her. He watched as she hiked up her skirt several inches above her knees to slip into the seat more comfortably. He didn’t say anything but his mind replayed the night at the restaurant. He licked his lips, suddenly quite thirsty for her.

“Come on, Martinsson,” Joline prodded when her heels cleared the gap in the door. “Put a little wiggle in it.” She dangled the key fob as an example to move quicker. She saw his leer, and she felt the desirous pull for him too.

Ansgar returned to himself, concentrated on placing one foot in front of the other, and circled round to the passenger side, a foreign place for him to be. As he folded himself inside, he caught sight of Joline caressing her hands over the buttery smooth leather of the steering wheel.

“This is decadent, Sgar,” she whistled.

“Sexy,” he remark, his eyes never leaving her as he popped his door closed.

Her incandescent smile walked across the console between them, separated by only smoother than smooth leather. “That look, Sgar,” she commented while leaning back, “got us in this messy situation.” Without shame, she stared unabashedly at him.

He grinned widely, knowing that she reflected what he felt. “I’ve never been so grateful for mess.” He crossed over the barrier between them, digging his hand into her hair, to bring her into him. Then he finally, finally kissed her properly.

She properly kissed him back, with no fists, or angry words or stubborn locked lips. She opened up to him, finding her mythical rejuvenation magic in him like she usually turned to her chocolate candies. He was infinitely sweeter for having apologized. He set his pride aside for her and then set his responsibilities aside to be with her. She noticed and appreciated it. In a very real way, she still felt a wedge between them, forced in there by the shadow of his ex-wife and the people who knew her before Joline Lindberg moved back to Stockholm. Alone with him, away from outside pressure and influence, she knew that in that moment, she was meant to be there.

When she pulled back to breathe, that radiant smile appeared again, the unreserved, genuine display of happiness. “Trust me?” She winked as she turned the car over. Without hesitation, she depressed the button to secure the convertible top into the open position, the mechanics buzzed slightly over the purr of the powerful engine.

“Unreservedly… set her free,” he urged, living vicariously through her and enjoying the hell out of his new car.

Joline adjusted the rearview mirror, checked the side mirrors, and realigned the seat for her subtly shorter legs. She set the car in reverse, the oblong movie-like panel on the dash alighted with a crystal clear view behind. The car responded expertly to the slightest pressure of her foot to the gas and the guide of her hands, she nearly swooned. She loved her bike, loved riding through reality, but chassis of underneath gave no vibration, no kick and she fell a little bit in love with the glide of it.

A hush fell between them as she navigated the car from the gravel path to the exit and the soup of roadways around Stockholm. She moved through traffic like a waterdrop on a glass pane, following the path of least resistance, drifting and floating to the E4. When she had the clear motorway ahead of her, Joline really let the car out. The wind whipped through her hair, the sun warmed her from above, and the power under her foot liberated her.

Subtly Ansgar placed his hand on her bare knee to connect with her, as she lost herself in the speed and the drive. It felt so much like flying, and then he was there with her. It felt monumentally better, sweeter, sexier, and freer. Of course she flirted with the speed laws as they just didn’t apply to cars like the one she controlled, power, precision, and pleasant.

Joline drove north out of habit. When she found a few hours free away from life, she cranked out a ride about an hour north of Stockholm to Uppsala. She usually visited in the fall to see the changing of the leaves, but the old city offered a calm refuge. If offered the feel of a city, but masqueraded as a reprieve from the sometimes claustrophobic feel of her home town, a retreat, a sanctuary… but with modern conveniences.

“Have you been before?” she asked of Ansgar when she entered the outskirts of the city.

“Of course. I’ve done recruiting for Martinsson Construction from the graduates from the university.” His thumb drew lazy circles around her knee while he spoke. “It’s been about five years since I dipped my foot into the science division. My head Contract Manager graduated from Uppsala, in fact.”

Joline could listen to the man talk for hours, the cadence of his voice, the eloquence of it, the rough yet soothing tone. “I almost worked there, at the university. I was offered the position but I couldn’t make their starting date. A blessing in the end… the commute from Stockholm would be hell every day and I really wanted the opera house.”

Ansgar moved his hand from her knee to the inside of her thigh, massaging smooth skin he found. “Your plans for the opera house and the little theatre would’ve been wasted in a university setting. You dream bigger.”

She nodded, following a familiar trail through the city to one of the more tranquil spots. She bypassed the entrance to a golf course on the left, and pulled into a lesser traveled area just beyond. “I… I come here to unwind… weather permitting,” she stuck out her tongue and rolled her eyes. “I’ve been rained out the last three times. But I throw a blanket and a book in my saddle bag and come here.”

She pointed beyond the windscreen, beyond the shade and comfort of the trees to the grassy knoll overlooking the pond beside the golf course. The sort rolling hills of the golf course spread out in all directions. She put the car in park in a deserted lane with the panoramic view of mostly green. And it was quiet.

“Gorgeous spot, darling. How did you ever find it?”

“A happy accident.” She indicated with a shake of her hand that they should get out of the car. “I was meant to go to a tournament there,” she explained stepping from the inside as he did. “Apparently the demographic for the opera house are also golf tournament people.” She laughed at the explanation, leaning on the bonnet of the car, following Ansgar’s lead. “A tip left for me by the previous house manager. I think he might have been half mad. I forgot my invitation to get in, back in Stockholm, and the bastards wouldn’t let me in. I was here, so I thought I’d try watching… and I found this!”

Ansgar took her hand and weaved his finger through hers, the fresh air from the cruise northbound had sobered him considerably. He pulled her in front of him, to pillow her body with his. “How was the tournament?” His arms coiled around her middle as he split his legs so they both benefited from the sturdy seat of the bonnet.

“Bloody boring! I had more fun feeding the ducks my sandwich.” She laughed at the memory of it, and pointed to the spot she sat back in April. Her hands guided his to touch her.

He chuckled with her, imaging her throwing chunks of bread into the pond. “Have you ever seen anyone here?” He lifted one hand to her breast, squeezing, cupping, weighing the pliant flesh in his palm.

“Only once,” she murmured on an exhale, breathy desire heating her flesh. She whimpered. “There’s a… a… a pottery place… if, if you follow on. B-b-busy during the week—abandoned weekends.” She panted, losing her train of thought to his seduction. “The woman!” she exclaimed, trying to pick it back up, “T-t-that makes it… antiquing.”

Ansgar kissed a line from her temple to her ear. “You learned all that in one journey.” The low rumble vibrated through her and she was sinking fast into his greedy hands.

“I’m nice.” She burrowed her hips against him, earning a growl and an erection her part in it. “An agenda too. He-he-he… ah! bought tickets.” Her hands splayed along his thighs, needing more.

“Resourceful.” He crushed her deeper into his embrace, all but pulling her onto the car. He tucked his lips into her neck, circling his tongue along her rapid echo of her heartbeat he found there.

Her hand lifted over her shoulder, to grab and fistful of relaxed curls. “Sgar!” she cried as she tilted her head back and her lips connected with his.

#the best intentions

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tidustargaryen · 4 years

Text

Blood of the Dragon

Sorry the quality is not great on Tumblr. It’s better on Ao3.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/22291069/chapters/53236438

Chapter 2 - Daenerys, The Dreamer

Somewhere, at a certain time

"You want our help... ?” Viserys laughed then, but Oberyn didn't seem to be offended by that, he just looked at him, looking for something he was the only one to know. "I am honoured by the trust you have placed in me, but what can I possibly do ? Have you observed our way of life? We are beggars, we have no armies either. Instead, you should turn to the Houses of Westeros who want their true king on the throne. ”

"Unfortunately, there aren't many lords left who support the Mad King's children..."

"How dare you?! My father was your king, you owe him respect. You should blame the traitors who took his life and plunged the kingdom into war. ”

A maid had just brought another jar of Dornish wine before the sensitive conversation between the representatives of the two Westerosi Houses began. After having served a new cup of wine for himself, Oberyn sat down beside the princess on the bed and took her hand in his, he raised it a little higher to inspect the former Queen's ring before answering the prince.

"Oh, but I do, every day, every day I curse the Lannisters for what they did to King's Landing, what they did to my niece and nephew, my dear sister, my sweet and innocent sister, and her innocent children. I curse Robert Baratheon for not asking a punishment for these barbaric murders, he should have taken Tywin Lannister's head on the spot, he should have delivered The Mountain and Amory Lorch to us so that we could do justice ourselves, if only he had been worthy to be king. I curse his reign and that drunken pig with all my soul. "Oberyn let go of Daenerys' hand and stood up, he came very close to Viserys and stared intensely. "But never... never will I be able to respect your father. He was cruel and he was mad. Completely insane..."

Courage was not a quality the prince had, but the anger he had in him was large, even powerful. That anger sometimes drove him to do stupid, dangerous things. His father was a great king, and he will be even greater, but he had to be respected first, he could not let a so-called "partisan" speak such treacherous words. He had quickly got up and grabbed the man by his tunic and dragged him to the other side of the small room.

"I forbid you to talk about my father like that! You are a liar! A liar! You spread the lies of the Usurper, and I'll take your head for it!”

The Dornish Prince had been too surprised to react and had hit the table on which the wine jug had overturned. The man was a great fighter with very good reflexes, the young age, thinness and cowardly temperament of the Targaryen had deceived him. Perhaps he had judged him a little hastily? He could still make him a great king. He would have liked to have found the Targaryens long before, it was easier and more efficient to train a young boy rather than a young man, but his sister had the ideal age, she seemed terrified though, and far too thin to be able to hold a sword or a spear. There was much work to be done to make up for the backwardness of the last two Targaryens in royal education. Oberyn liked challenges, and his thirst for revenge was his main driving force, he had promised his brother a fast return to Dorne, he had to quickly settle the situation with Viserys so that they could all go to Sunspear.

The Dornishman grabbed the prince's hands and pushed him away before readjusting his tunic and seeing the jug on the ground with disappointment.

"You've got balls, I'll give you that. I can also leave you both here. What a pity, the last two Targaryens found dead in a stinking alleyway in Myr, or ended up as slaves in Lys perhaps? Your sister will make a beautiful woman later, she'll surely make a master's fortune in a brothel." The man added coldly.

Viserys knew they were in a very dangerous situation. They were going to have to leave this town and find another, hoping that their name and the prestige of their House would open the doors of a rich merchant or owner of a fighting pit, perhaps a man from the nobility who could provide them with an army, or the money to recruit one. But the worst could also happen, and his House would die with him and his sister, the honour of restoring his dynasty lost forever. The last crown prince of House Targaryen...

He had to tolerate this Dornishman for the good of his House. His reign would be greater than any other Targaryen, even greater than the reign of Aegon the Conqueror, who had the help of three dragons. He would accept his help, as well as Dorne's one, and make him pay for his treacherous words once king.

"Was our father a bad man?" The young princess had risen up and grabbed the bottom of Oberyn's tunic to get his attention. He could tolerate the Dornish's words, but he certainly wouldn't let his sister think such infamy. He grabbed her arm and brought her violently back to the bed with an angry look in his eyes.

"Don't ever say that again! I forbid you to disrespect our father, our king. He has offered you life and a great name, a great House, you will be worthy of him, and you will be worthy of me! Do you hear me, sister?”

Dany had lowered her head during the reprimand and trembled with all her limbs, which made Oberyn angry thinking of the horror, the terror his sister and her children had felt at the wrath of a man. He grabbed his spear from the table and sent it with rage into the wall above the bed, the spear had grazed the prince's hair, which had quickly gone from a violent to a frightened child.

"I will be ready to call you my king, to help you regain your throne, but never, I never want to see this again... My sister was everything to me, her and my daughters, I will do anything for her to be here today. You are lucky to have a sister, your flesh and blood that allows you not to be called the last of your House, it is up to you to be worthy of her and to do what every older brother has to do, protect his little sister.

Viserys then quickly left the room, vexed and surely frightened by the imposing character of the Dornish. As for his sister, she looked at the man with big round eyes and wondered how he could stand up to her brother, their king, or future king, the dragon, as he called himself, and 'never wake the dragon', he said, who would dare stand up to a dragon? Would he take revenge on her next? This man would not always be there to calm his brother, this man did not understand the life they had in those streets, his brother did his best to keep them alive, and if sometimes he was angry, it was not his fault, but that of those who had forced them into exile. She always forgave her brother, he was all she had, the only one who took care of her, since Ser Willem died, without him she would not have been here for a long time, or, in a worse place.

"I'll take you both back to my house in Dorne, it's even hotter than here, the Water Gardens are beautiful, it's my brother's palace, our palace." I want to go home... The man slowly approached and crouched down in front of her. There was something reassuring in his eyes, and even though she had only known him for a short time, she had a terrible urge to cuddle up to him, yet she restrained herself.

Later that day, Oberyn and Daenerys left his room to search for Viserys. It didn't take them long to find him, he was perched on the rock above which he had just replaced their mother's crown. When he came down, he went ashore and put his dry tunic back on him.

"I've met you both before, you know. After the Rebellion, I wanted my revenge, I wanted to attacked King's Landing to avenge my sister and her children, but my brother was more rational, everyone knew the last two Targaryens had fled Dragonstone, and Doran, my brother, asked me to find you." Oberyn's revelations had piqued the curiosity of Viserys, who had approached and listened without a glance at the Dornish. "After spending several days in Braavos, I came across Ser Willem Darry, what a miracle, I had no trouble recognising him. It wasn't easy to gain his trust, but we were able to make a pact. When Viserys grew up, he would marry my niece, Arianne, Princess of Dorne, which would reunite House Martell and House Targaryen on the throne of the Seven Kingdoms, which we would regain thanks to Dorne's army and other partisans, and hopefully for perpetuity. ”

"You could have invented this at any time to gain power on the throne. You've already proved yourself a poor servant to my House with your words against my father."

"There's a witness... do you think i'm a fool ? The Sealord of Braavos witnessed the signing of the pact. I had to leave Essos shortly afterwards, to avoid attracting the attention of Robert's spies. When I came back a few moons later, you were gone, and I heard that Ser Willem was dead. Our whole plan was falling apart, Doran assured me you were dead, it was impossible for you to survive on your own. I didn't want to throw away our last hopes so easily. Luckily I had connections in Essos, people I had met in my youth, I asked them to keep an eye out if one day they saw two children with silver hair and purple eyes. And here I am."

"This pact was made without my consent, without the consent of your king, it has no value. I will not marry Princess Arianne. If I'm to believe what you're telling me, you've always supported House Targaryen, you need House Targaryen, you need our name to rally other armies and take King's Landing. I have much more to offer than you.

"Don't test my patience, boy. I also have reasons to not support House Targaryen and seek revenge for what your brother did to my sister."

Oberyn then told the whole story, everything Viserys didn't know, or didn't want to know. The Mad King in all his cruelty and his passion for the fire, the poor Queen Rhaella, victim of her husband, Rhaegar abandoning his wife and children to flee with the she-wolf. Viserys didn't get angry this time, but he left, claiming he wanted to go to bed. Oberyn had rented a room for the two of them so that they wouldn't spend a night in the street, he accompanied the little Princess who had fallen asleep against him and then went to bed, hoping to reason with this parody of a king, doubting that he was different from his father. The next day, Viserys told him that he still did not wish to marry Arianne, he had already committed himself to marry his sister and advanced the fact that they were the last two Targaryens, they had to rebuild their lineage in the purest possible way. Oberyn had to find something else to negotiate, Doran would never agree to risk any Dornish life without a compensation.

Daenerys liked the fresh sea air, she liked to watch the waves and feel the boat rocking under her. It was a beautiful day, it was very hot, but the wind blowing through her beautiful silver curls cooled her down a lot. Looking out over the sea, she observed the different fishes through the clarity of the water, all kinds of species of unimaginable colours, of a breathtaking beauty that seemed to follow the ship on which she was standing. She wished she could jump into the water and share a walk with the dolphins that had joined the shoal. She felt such a sense of freedom that she had never experienced before, she loved the sea, she loved the wind, she loved the sound of the different birds above her, she loved to sail, she was happy. The big smile on her face had disappeared as she looked up to see a huge pyramid in the distance topped by a winged statue, surprise overwhelmed her as she wondered how she could be close to land when just a moment before there was only the sea in sight.

Her question remained unanswered at the sound of a door being slammed. Dany turned to the origin of the noise and walked towards it, the door in question was very familiar to her. It was the one she had been dreaming about, the one that had closed behind her and her brother forever, exactly the same one. The red door. Her hand was hesitant, but she finally put it on the handle. Inside, everything was dark, but she could hear someone calling out for her, it was a whisper that she couldn't quite understand yet, but she finally recognized her name, "Dany... Dany..." said the male voice.

"Viserys?" Only her brother called her that, the outlines of another door were drawn in front of her. A room, on the bed, a man, her brother... No... Taller, with brown hair. Oberyn? No... Oberyn is slimmer, and taller. Daenerys moved slowly, she didn't want to wake him, not until she knew who he was. She took her dagger out of its sheath and could see the naked man on the bed, but his face was just a shadow she couldn't see. She decided to come even closer, she had to know who this man was, and what he was doing on her ship... My ship...? She didn't have a boat of her own... His ship...? This man seemed to be sleeping deeply, peacefully, she didn't know why, but she felt the desperate urge to put her hand through his curls, to tell him not to worry, that he could still sleep peacefully, she was watching over him. Her eyes followed the hard lines of his muscles and ran through his body slowly when the distant sound of an animal had resonate.

She turned her gaze and saw a different door from the one she had entered through. She took one last look at the stranger before disappearing. She returned on the deck of the boat, but something was different. The weather had darkened, the wind seemed angry and a storm was threatening to fall on her. The waves were shaking the boat violently and it was hard for her to stand. She had been on the ground several times before she reached the railing where she could hold on as the waves became more powerful when the first thunderclap sounded.

A thud from the water made Daenerys tremble and she didn't have to wait long to find out the origin of the awful sound she had just heard. Huge tentacles sprung up from under the sea and clung to the ship. Daenerys knew the fantasy tales of the sailors she had met in her short life, and the giant Krakens were among them, but they were only legends, the ramblings of people who had fallen asleep too long on the bottle. The princess prepared to end up at the bottom of the sea, drowned, or devoured by this foul beast, but as the ship left the surface, when she opened her eyes again, she was not under the sea, but still in a sea, but this time, a sea of grass higher than she was. Large translucent stems seemed to have neither beginning nor end, Daenerys could hardly see the sky and seemed to have been swallowed by her surroundings. However, it was still dark outside, the wind had died down, but she was now on solid ground. She did not know how or why she had come here, but she was determined to finding the way out.

She seemed to have been walking for hours when she finally saw something other than grass far in front of her. She quickened her pace, but something grabbed her leg, and then the other, her arms were the next to be hindered. The grass was trying to hold her back and Dany was struggling with all her strength to free herself. After one last effort, she fell to the ground, finally free, but when she lifted her head up, strange black buildings were in front of her. The material was strange and when she approached to touch it, something else caught her attention. She was in a city, but seemed totally deserted, not a sound, the place was strange and dull, as if dead, there was a smell of burning, but nothing seemed to be on fire, no smoke anywhere, nothing but the houses and what seemed to be a market at the end of the street. The place seemed huge, Daenerys was walking aimlessly through the alleys when at last she crossed someone else's path. Wrapped in an outfit that showed no skin, the face hidden behind a strange mask, the stranger looked at the young woman for a few moments before turning around and taking the adjacent street. Dany started running to catch up with the stranger when she found herself in front of the entrance to a cave, she entered and was now in a total darkness.

The same animal scream she had heard on the boat alerted her ears again, it increasing in volume as she got closer, it was very dark, too dark for her to discern anything. She was moving slowly to avoid a possible collision when two red eyes opened up in front of her and looked at her menacingly. The sound of a frightening breath had invaded the place, the smell of smoke and ashes too, the mouth of the beast had opened and a red light was appearing, increasing in volume little by little... It was only when Dany knew what animal it was that the fire had fallen on her, surrounding her, licking her skin and warming her body and soul in an instant. She thought her skin would melt, that only her bones would remain once the fire was out, and yet she felt no pain, but pleasure and enchantment. The fire was like a husband making love to her and creating life in her, was there a better feeling in the world?

The fire called to her, asked her to open her eyes and see, and she saw. She saw a great army that the fire drew before her, it then turned into thousands of horses galloping towards her and disappearing to take on a human form that looked neither like a man nor a woman. The form slowly drew closer and when it was near her, Daenerys felt an icy cold invade her, despite the fire surrounding her, the heat had completely disappeared. Dany hugged herself with her arms, hoping to get warm, when the hand of this thing came close to her, she closed her eyes hoping that the fire would change shape again and she would feel the warmth again.

But when she opened her eyes, the fire had disappeared, the strange shape had gone, the cold was still there, but much more bearable. She was now in a large room, the elements surrounding her were luxurious, huge pillars decorated with dragons populated this room, Daenerys touched the familiar shapes with her fingertips before she saw a huge throne at the back of the room surmounted by the emblem of a lion, Lannister. She had heard of this throne, forged by Balerion the Black Dread from the swords of the vanquished enemies of Aegon the Conqueror. It was huge, a symbol of her House, of the Targaryen dynasty, the Iron Throne, I'm home... But the throne is held by the Baratheon... To her, it was a horrible thing... She saw her brother sitting at the top, she could imagine the proud look he would have at that moment, but it wasn't her, it wasn't for her. The one at the top dominated everyone, he had considerable power, he could do what he wanted, impose his will, his authority, his cruelty. Like her father in his time...

It was a terrifying laugh that she heard followed by words that she distinguished perfectly "Burn them all! Burn them all!!!" His words echoed through the huge room and cooled her down even more than the strange shape she had just encountered. She was afraid to turn her eyes to the throne, afraid of what she would see there, but when she looked for her father, there was nothing. It was then that the ground shook beneath her feet, explosions coming from the city, when she approached the opening to what must have been King's Landing, she saw huge green flames devouring every dwelling, people screaming and trying to flee into the streets, but nothing could save them. The flames approached the dungeon and soon it was she who was overwhelmed by the flames, but this time she burned.

The pain had been terrible, and the temperature change even worse. The shock of the cold seized her again, and she woke up surrounded by white. What she touched was very cold, and she had never felt snow, but it was snow, she knew it. She got up and walked a few steps forward before discovering a magnificent view in front of her. The little nightgown she had did not protect her from the cold, but the view in front of her certainly warmed her up. The sun was slowly setting over a huge forest of trees that she had never seen before. When she looked down, she saw the huge wall of ice under her feet, it was so high, so imposing, so terrifying. She knew where she was, her brother had described the regions of Westeros to her, and The Wall was one of the worst places in this continent. Here lived the rapists, thieves and murderers who were supposed to protect the kingdom against the Wildlings, but thousands of years ago, he had told her the crazy story of vile creatures, ice monsters that had attacked men. Monsters north of the Wall, monsters that terrified her when Viserys told her this before she went to sleep. The place seemed totally deserted and too beautiful to be inhabited by such monsters. Once again, she saw the same stranger she had followed into the cave when she was in that dark and strange city, he looked towards her and then disappeared among the hundreds of trees.

After descending the many steps, Daenerys went through a long tunnel and passed under the raised gate to get behind the Wall. The forest seemed to have receded even further and the snow under the young woman's bare feet was a real torture. She walked relentlessly and aimlessly now, a thick fog had descended on her and the trees had now disappeared. The cold intensified and the rustle in her ears disoriented her and she found herself kneeling in the snow, curled up on herself, hoping that when she opened her eyes again she would be in a different place, but this time she had not changed her place. The storm had receded a little, but that wasn't going to help Daenerys, a wolf was in front of her, he was huge, and she was sure it could swallow her whole. She took a few steps back while keeping her eyes on the wolf, but soon she realized that other wolves had surrounded her, they were slowly approaching her and had started to growl. The fire seemed a much better way to die, she hoped they would rush to devour her, but once again the storm returned and the wolves were gone. She heard strange sounds, words, it did not sound like any other language she knew, voices belonging to the shadows appearing in the middle of the fog in front of her. They seemed to communicate with each other and the closer they got, the colder she felt.

A giant paw crossed the fog to come and stand between two white shadows, the creature in front of her was terrifying, immense and overcome by another that looked much more like a man. But a man who had already known death. Pieces of skin hung from him, some parts of his body were missing, but what frightened her much more were the two bright blue orbs that looked at her. He seemed to be wearing a strange white armour too, like the skin it covered, he brandished a translucent sword which he raised in the air while speaking and other shadows appeared. Thousands all around her slowly appeared and took the shape of the one climbing on the immense spider. Some were riding simple horses, but just as dead as they were, others were on bears, giant wolves, or even enormous mammoths which she had once studied in one of Mistress Ilissa's books. The dead men was now moving quickly towards her and the stranger reappeared behind her and put his hand on her shoulder. The intense heat she felt on contact reassured her and when she turned around, she saw two red eyes looking at her through the mask, a female voice resounded.

"The fire is your gift, Stormborn, embrace it. ”

Daenerys awoke in her bed, breathing rapidly and her skin covered with a film of sweat. In front of her, a female form that she could hardly distinguish, the fog of sleep still upon her, but very soon she saw a silver hair slipped along a chest covered with a scarlet red dress, the woman stood with a certain posture, a royale posture, and had joined her two hands in front of her while observing the princess on her bed. A smile appeared on her lips as Dany could see her features more easily. Is it me... older ? The woman now stepped to the side of the bed and settled down before taking her hand in hers.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there to protect you, my darling, to protect both of you. But I'm so proud to see this incredible woman you've become. ”

Daenerys looked at this woman with astonishment, she was still dreaming, it was only a dream and when she woke up she would be alone in her room. Was it a gift or a simple torture?

"Mother...? I'm asleep, you're not real." The former Queen didn't seem to be hurt by her daughter's reply, she just put a hand on the cheek of her young princess. "I won't be only if you wish it. Does that change anything?

"Yes... of course, I will wake up and you will no longer be here, I will be alone with Viserys again. And I won't even be able to tell him I saw you, he'll never believe me, he's always blamed me and he was right, it's my fault you're dead." "Never think that you are responsible for my death, never feel guilty about things you have no control over, never forget these words. As for me, I would sacrifice myself a thousand times if I had to so that you could live, you are my child, my flesh and blood. You are not alone my dear, you will never be alone and I am not worried about you at all. I know the best is yet to come. I regret the past, and what drove both of you into exile, maybe I could have changed things. But your future is wonderful. You just have to trust yourself. ” "My future? What about Viserys? He will be king and I will be his queen. "What is written on paper fades, what is in blood and in heart endures."

Her mother's smile had not faded, but the enigmatic answer worried Daenerys, but for the moment, her mother was with her, and she was going to take advantage of it. She couldn't resist the urge to hold her tightly, hoping to keep her and take her out of the world of dreams, but if she had learned one thing since birth, it was that life had given her no gift. Her mother got up and returned to her original place, there was so much love in her eyes that Dany's tears kept flowing ever since she had hugged her for the first time in her life. She wished this moment would never end, no matter Westeros, no matter Oberyn and his plan, Viserys and his throne, in that moment, all she wanted was to be with her mother, to get to know her, to laugh with her, to share tender moments together, to be mother and daughter, no more Targaryen, no more dynasty, no more duty.

She did not have time to see her mother after reopening her eyes that she had already disappeared and in her place was the stranger she had pursued in her dream.

"Stormborn... Daughter of Dragons... Daughter of Fire… Bringer of the Dawn..." A woman... The voice that rose from behind the mask was undeniably a woman's one, dressed in a red coat and hood, hiding her hair with it, not revealing any part of her body, not a hint of skin, she was content to look at Daenerys, her eyes still red was the only part she could see. "Don't forget your gift, don't forget who you are. ”

When Daenerys woke up, for real this time, she was indeed alone. This dream had completely disturbed her and added to her confusion, she felt two other completely opposite feelings. She was so happy to have been able to see her mother, to have been able to feel her body against her, to have had the chance to hear her voice, to be able to appreciate the warm and loving words she had said to her and to feel them as she looked into her mother's eyes. Nothing could be more wonderful than that, but it was only a dream, and now she was alone. Would she ever see her again? She hadn't even thought to ask her if Rhaegar was with her, if he was proud of his brother and sister, she had had so little time, and so many questions. Outside, the sky was dark, the city peaceful, Daenerys went out on her balcony to put her thoughts in order. The nights were cold despite the hot days, but the air was pleasant. Her dream seemed so unrealistic and at the same time intended to make her understand something, but who was this woman? And what was she referring to with her strange words? She had to tell her brother about it, perhaps he also had the same dreams, he was the Targaryen heir, he must have had a visit from this woman if this dream meant something.

Daenerys woke up a little later than usual, her night had been very agitated and she was still disturbed by her dream. She put on her favourite trousers, the ones her brother hated, claiming that they were not worthy of a future queen, but she didn't care, she was comfortable, and the dress was more fit for fighting, the tunic too. Now that Oberyn had returned, perhaps he wanted to practice, or rather, test her. He was very strict in his education, he never spared her, and it was a source of pride for Daenerys to have stood up to the lessons of this warrior she admired so much. The spear he had given her laid along her bed, ready to be taken, the day he gave it to her, Viserys disappeared for several hours, Oberyn had never hidden his preference for the girl, he was much harder on her when it came to education, but it was to her that he spoke for hours, it was with her that he would go on horseback for long rides along the Rhoyne. Viserys had never sought to socialize with Oberyn, he stuck to the relationship of a king with one of his subjects, but he liked pretty things, he liked to be given things worthy of his rank, but Daenerys' gifts were always more valuable than his own, and Oberyn had no qualms about showing the difference. A little personal revenge for the demands that Viserys had expressed in the Targaryen-Martell alliance.

She went to the terrace, the usual place where they broke their feast together. The Mistress always came to share this moment with them, before going to attend to her personal affairs, only today it was Oberyn who occupied her place. He enjoyed figs and various other fruits that often made up their meal. Daenerys loved them, she loved to eat plenty of them on hot days and when she had trained hard. The smile of her favorite Dornishman glowed when he saw her, she placed a sweet kiss on his cheek before settling down in front of him to start by grabbing a few grapes that she quickly tasted.

"Did my princess sleep well? You seem to be absent this morning. ” "Forgive me, I don't really feel like talking about my night, I'm sure yours was more than satisfactory. "She said with a hint of laughter in her voice. She knew Oberyn, she was the right age, he had told her, so he could tell her that she should enjoy the pleasures of this world. Daenerys always avoided the discussion and preferred not to think of anyone other than her brother. "Why did it take you so long to come back? ”

"I'm sorry, my dear, but I also have daughters to take care of. Your brother refused to train with me, he said he didn't have time for my nonsense and will join us later. I thought the years would give him the wisdom necessary to any good king."

"He's frustrated, it's been eight years now you've had to take us back to Dorne, every day is one day too many for the Usurper on the Targaryen throne." Daenerys cleaned the sweet nectar from her fingers and gave her friend an apologetic look. She was more patient than her brother, but she was also eager to go home.

"You know the reasons, by the way, I've got some news. The Hand of the King is dead, Good King Robert..." he said ironically, "...was on his way up north when I left Dorne, he's going to ask Ned Stark to be his new Hand. From wolves in the lion's den, the honorable Ned Stark will have his tail between his legs once he's in the capital."

Dany went mute, she didn't really know what to think of the Starks. The she-wolf had seduced her brother and kept him away from his family, although she also blamed Rhaegar for this. Ned Stark had participated in the Rebellion, and although her father deserved to be ousted, it had led to their exile, and everything that followed. Could her mother have survived if she had given birth at King's Landing, with the best of care? He had also continued to support the Usurper despite the fact that he had left the deaths of two children, and their mother, unpunished. So Jon Arryn was dead, one less. But the worst were still standing.

"Daenerys, Martell! "Her brother had just arrived with Mistress Ilissa. He seemed angry and their hostess worried. "The Dothraki are here, they've sent a representative. There's also a rich Magister of Pentos who wishes to meet the Targaryens," Ilissa said in her sweet voice." "Thank you, Madam. But how did they know about us? ” "We'll soon find out, bring the representative of the Dothraki first, we shouldn't offend the horse fuckers. "Added Viserys to one of the maids.

Daenerys knew little of these people, but was it possible they... No... better not to know.

They went to the main room to greet the visitor, the man who entered was of advanced age, but not old, he was simply dressed, without armor, and seemed to be distressed by the heat. To her surprise, but to Viserys' delight, the man knelt down and raised his head, lingering for a few moments on the young princess before turning to her brother.

"It's an honor to meet the last Targaryens, the heir to the Iron Throne and you, Princess Daenerys. I am Jorah Mormont, I was a knight in the Seven Kingdoms, i was also forced into exile, though for different reasons. ”

"You only have a few seconds to explain yourself before I take your head for treason. You took part in the Usurper Rebellion that brought down my House. ”

"I obeyed my father's orders, but I will submit to my king's justice if it suits him so. The great Khal Drogo wishes to meet the princess, he wishes to marry her, to make her his Khaleesi. In exchange, he will help you win back the Iron Throne. Ten thousand proud warriors who will destroy your enemies on the battlefield."

Daenerys was surprised by his answer. A man wished to marry her without ever having met her. Her brother had described them as savages, but what would they do to this town, and to them, if she refused?

"Ten thousand, is that my sister's price? Is this the few men he has in his army ?" "A horde, Your Grace, and no, I think it would be a great insult to think that your sister has a price. We can begin negotiations if it pleases you, the horde consists of forty thousand men." "And what will he do if I deny him my sister? Will he leave and return to his sea of grass? How did he find out about us?" "When a Khal dies, his wife joins the Dosh Khaleen, the sacred temple of the Dothraki, the priestesses who make up the temple advise and read omens to the Khals. It was foretold to Khal Drogo that he would marry the silver-haired Targaryen and from their union will be born the stallion who mounts the world." Oberyn had just entered the room and the knight cast a strange glance, had he recognized him? Anyway, he wasn't in Westeros anymore, it wasn’t dangerous for them.

After Mistress Illissa intervened to invite the Khal the next day, the Targaryens were alone to discuss and figure out what they were going to do. If the Dothraki believed so strongly in their prophecy, they would not be content with a simple refusal.

"You can marry him instead of me? he said 'a silver-haired Targaryen...' without specifying which one..." Viserys turned to his sister with an angry look in his eyes, but she sketched a sly smile in response. "Very funny dear sister, will your jokes be enough for the Khal tomorrow? I have no intention of agreeing to this marriage. The dragon does not mix with the stinking horse." Dany took his hand in hers. "Let's talk it over with Oberyn, I'll go get him."

"No need, I'm here, look what I found..." Next to Oberyn stood a woman, all dressed in red, hooded and mysterious. She was very beautiful, she took off her hood and let out her long brown hair, her eyes had immediately fallen on the princess, as if she was the only one in the room. "You have found me only because I have allowed you, I wish to meet you." Oberyn stopped her from making her way to Dany. "Don't listen to her, she's a priestess of R'hllor. You'll probably end up in a pile of ashes if you trust her, they like to burn a lot of stuff." "Children of the fire don't burn... I can help you with your Dothraki problem. They fear my magic." Her eyes never turned away from the princess as she spoke, there was something strangely familiar about her. Viserys was astonishingly in agreement with Oberyn when it came to the priestess, he wanted her to leave just as badly. They still had a guest to meet, another person who knew who they were. When Oberyn was about to take her out, she added one more thing.

"Don't forget your gift." The sentence froze Dany's blood and she verbally arrested his friend. She came closer and saw a red glow in the woman's eyes. Was she the stranger who had appeared in her dream? The risk was great, but her mother had asked her to trust herself, and everything in her told her to listen to this woman.

"Your new guest is here, the Magister from Pentos." Ilissa Naeraar came from the entrance accompanied by several maids carrying trays filled with various foods and drinks. She then saw Oberyn disappear with the priestess and hoped that he would trust her and would not throw her out. The trays were placed in the next room, while a healthy man entered. He had a radiant smile, a large beard splitting in two which he had tied at the ends. Behind him, several servants entered one by one with chests of all sizes, which they placed at her brother's feet. They had also placed food in the dining room. Viserys was delighted by this, but Daenerys had a suspicious look in her eyes, why did a stranger offer them so much?

"The great Viserys Targaryen and his beautiful sister Daenerys, let me introduce myself. Illyrio Mopatis, a great merchant living in Pentos, it is a real pleasure to meet you. I've been looking for you for so long." He barely got down on one knee and found it even harder to get up again. Then he leaned over to her and took her hand and kissed it. "I would like to offer you my help in regaining your throne, but first I would like to offer you the delicious food I have brought back from the Summer Isles, among others. “

The tables were covered with food testifying to the Magister's wealth, Mistress Ilissa had allowed the servants to eat at a table with them which seemed to displease their guest who treated his own as if they were his slaves. They weren't been allowed to participate in the feast despite the hostess's invitation. There were many spicy and fruity wines and Oberyn would surely regret not being there, but it was better that he kept a low profile. The merchant specialized in spices and had brought several dishes cooked with them. In front of her were several fish, eels in jelly, a very popular dish in Pentos, cockles, clams and pickled herring. She spotted pike poached in almond milk, which she particularly liked, she didn't wait for the help of her servants to get a plate of it and instead asked them to go and sit down and enjoy the meal as well. There was also wild pork, which was eaten very little in Essos, except in Braavos and Pentos. There were many specialties from the town of the Magister, such as duck liver cooked in wine or capon cooked with carrots, citrus fruits and grapes. At one time Daenerys would have dreamed of such a table, but their hostess was very generous and at that time it seemed more like they were trying to buy her and her brother with rare and expensive spices and alcohol. Visery seemed to enjoy the gifts and to gobble up all the food he could get his hands on. They had also served warm goat cheese with braised apples spiced with cinnamon from Westeros for dessert, but Daenerys preferred blueberries topped with fresh cream before ending her meal.

The Magister followed her brother's example and tasted all the dishes on their table. He was much less refined at the table than usual and Dany had to look away and imagine that he wasn't sitting right next to her in order to keep her food warm in her stomach. After finishing the last crumb on his plate, the Magister clapped his hands and the main door opened on to some servants, four of them carrying a strange trunk. Those who accompanied them were clearing their table so that they could put the trunk on it. It looked rather heavy and the young men had a little more trouble lifting it up to put it down in front of Daenerys.

"Let me offer you, princess, the relics of your House. Three beautiful dragon eggs from Asshaï, the dark city where it is said the first dragons came from." A servant opened the trunk in which the three so-called eggs were lying on beautiful Pentoshi tissues. "Time has turned them to stone, but they have not lost any of their splendor. "Dany was completely overwhelmed by what she had before her eyes, Viserys must have been too, her brother had never been so silent before such a gift, which had not been given to him otherwise. The eggs seemed to be covered with precious stones, but when she lifted the first one, she noticed not only its heaviness, but also the various scales that made it up, which shone like rare gems in the light of the day. The one in her hands was cream-coloured with golden reflections, the one in the center was deep black with red reflections, and the last one was dark green with bronze reflections. Her fingers came to touch the scales of the black one, which she then lifted. It was beautiful, like the other two, and they must have cost a fortune, what was she going to have to give this man in exchange? Then she looked up at the Magister and asked him why he was giving her such precious things.

"They belong to your family, they are also a wedding gift. Your marriage to Khal Drogo will help restore your family on the Iron Throne. I beg you to accept his request, so that you can take back what belongs to you."

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Some details on the story and this chapter:

- Daenerys is only 8 years old in the flashbacks in this chapter, it is completely normal for her to be submissive and silly towards her brother. - During the flashbacks, I mix all the POVs, but in the present, these are Dany's POVs only, for the moment. - I use the elements of the books for this story, more magic and fantasy so. Even if I use the actors of the show to make the moodboard, I imagine the characters as in the books, except Oberyn, Yara and Cersei, I have a lot of love for the actors and their interpretations. But you are free to imagine the characters as you wish. - I don't remember if I said it, but the events that are described in the books, or the show, will surely not happen in this story, I don't want to repeat the story of GRRM, so for example, Ned Stark always comes to KL but everything will change afterwards.

#daenerys targaryen #daenerys targaryen fanfiction #dany fanfic #dany-centric #blood of the dragon #second chapter #daenerys the dreamer #my fanfiction

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fuchsiagrasshopper · 5 years

Text

Vicariously

Benjamin Poindexter x reader

AN: This is an answer to an anon request about the reader who is sensitive to others emotions including Dex, and helps him to feel better. This was such a wickedly original idea and it took me down an interesting road. I feel this is something I never could have come up with on my own, so thanks to you anon. Enjoy everyone!

You had a strong sense of empathy, always had. It made you good with people because you knew exactly what to say in correspondence to what they were feeling. Sometimes it could be a hindrance, especially when the emotions were negative. You would get beaten down by the overwhelming magnitude that another person could feel. It wasn't a special power or anything, at least you didn't think so. Not like the Hero of Harlem that you had heard about.

Sometimes you would be in a room full of people and would only be aware of your own emotions. It took one person who radiated strongly to get you to feel as they did. You had gotten good at deflecting the connections, but on occasion, one would come along who would not be ignored. As you sat in the bar that evening, one such man could not be spurned.

You hadn't noticed him when he came in. He was alone at the corner of the bar and had probably arrived that way. He was nursing a beer, but it wasn't holding his interest. If you had to guess, you'd say he wasn't even a drinker. His eyes kept skirting towards the red-headed bartender. Old girlfriend maybe? No, he wasn't giving off those feelings of affection. He was lonely, but he seemed more in need of guidance. The confusion and anxiety he was throwing off were suffocating. It made you want to crawl into bed and have a long cry. Maybe that's what he ought to be doing instead of ruining your evening. He had put you off of your whiskey sour with his welter of sensations.

It became a game of chicken, unbeknownst to him, of who would get up and leave the bar first. You watched him with impatience, while your fingers twitched with the desire to reach into your purse and bring out some money to pay your tab. The game ended the moment he stood up from his seat, throwing down change before sidling to the door. You took a deep breath as he slipped out of the bar, all of your emotions becoming your own again.

What could be going on in his life that caused him to be such a wreck? It wasn't for you to question, but there was a magnetic force pulling you towards the answer, and you were on your feet after him within a moment's notice. Another thing about you was your curiosity towards others. Most of the time they were more interesting than you.

The night was warm, and the air was foul with the city's pollution. You searched around for your mark and spied his blond hair across the street. He was moving fast, and you picked up your pace as you Jay-walked across the road.

“Hey,” You called before blowing out a sharp whistle with your fingers. “Blondie.”

His speed immediately went from ten to zero as he halted, turning back towards you as you cut in front of a cab.

“Sorry,” You said, waving to the driver who shook his head in disapproval.

You made it the rest of the way, leaping up onto the sidewalk ahead of the stranger. His previous emotions flooded back to you, along with a blend of curiosity as you stood before him breathless. You hadn't got a good look at him before because of the dim bar lighting. He had pointed features and a severe manner that didn't give off an approachable vibe. You wondered if it was ingrained in him from whatever job he held. He had red, angry looking scrapes on his cheek and forehead that looked like they were made recently. As you studied him, he studied you right back.

He closed his eyes and shook his head as if clearing his mind. “Sorry, do I know you?”

You hesitated a moment before speaking. “No.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I've seen you around the bar before.” Okay, that was a lie. You didn't even know if he had been there before. Hopefully, he had or else this was going to be a short conversation.

“I go there sometimes after work,” He supplied, while still wearing a guarded expression.

“Me too,” You said, smiling to try and ease his suspicions. His emotions had lessened somewhat and it wasn't taking so much of a physical toll on you. “Anyway, I saw that you were alone, and so was I, so I thought why not introduce myself? No one wants to drink alone, that's how alcoholism starts.”

He looked quizzical as you let out a nervous laugh. He probably thought you were crazy. Hell, you had chased him across the street after watching him; you were crazy.

“I like to drink alone,” He said bluntly, taking a step towards you threateningly. “Goodnight.”

You stood stupid with your mouth agape. For someone who felt so much isolation and rejection, he wasted no time in pushing people away. Well, you weren't about to let that beggar be a chooser. “Liar, you go there because you're lonely,” You blurted out before he was too far away.

That got his attention. He rounded in on you fast, and you could find no trace of patience left for you. “What, have you been following me?” He grasped you by the shoulders and pinned you to the wall of the nearby building. “Who the hell are you?”

You let out a gasp. When he touched you, you were overcome by everything he was feeling. It made your knees weak, and you would have sat down if his strength wasn't already holding you up.

“I'm a florist. My names Y/N,” You sputtered.

He let go of you and took a step back. The way he looked at you, it's as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. “You're a florist?”

“Yeah, that's about it. Not very exciting, I know. I'm sorry. I followed you with the best intentions, but now it seems I've only managed to annoy you or freak you out. Frankly, I wouldn't judge you for either. I'm gonna go.” You adjusted the strap of your bag and started to turn back when he stopped you.

“Wait,” He said. “What were your intentions?”

“You were feeling stressed and in need of company. I thought I could help,” You said, looking down at your feet nervously. “I can't explain it, but sometimes I can feel what someone else is feeling. It was like that with you. I've never tried to intervene before. Maybe I should stick to that habit.”

“What am I feeling now?” The way he asked, it sounded almost desperate, like he didn't know his own emotions.

You reached for his hand, not surprised when he held it back in hesitation. “It will help me to feel only what you're feeling if I'm touching you.” You explained, and he relented as his fingers wrapped together with yours.

Your brow furrowed, sensing the restraint he had built up to keep his emotions back. He was wound up like a spring. Despite his best efforts, his more prominent feelings were getting through.

“You're anxious and tense. I'd say work-related, but I don't know what you do. You're also curious, probably about me. I'm flattered by the way.”

He cleared his throat, looking to the side in embarrassment as he broke the connection with your hands. “That's...amazing. How do you so that?”

“I don't know,” You said with a shrug. “It doesn't work with everyone. Guess you just have strong emotions.”

“Really?”

“Definitely.” You smiled, watching him disguise his nervousness. “You know you could tell a girl your name. Usually, that comes before hand-holding.”

“It's Dex,” He said.

“Dex, huh? Short and to the point, I like it.” An awkward pause followed. The street noise continued around you, and you felt the first of a cold raindrop on your arm. “Hey, want to grab a coffee? You can tell me all about your job that I assume is the reason for the marks on your face.”

It was a bold move, but you reached your hand out and cupped the side of his jaw, running your thumb over the cut on his cheek. Dex took a deep breath, closing his eyes while leaning into your touch.

The sky opened up, and the sparse drops that had been falling began to turn into a downpour. You took a step back from Dex and let out a gasp at the cold rain on your skin. “Or maybe somewhere dry.”

“My apartment is close. If you still want that coffee, I can make us a pot,” He offered, and you could feel he wanted your company.

Your heart bled at his loneliness, and you found yourself giving in. “Deal.”

You threw your purse up over your head in a vain attempt to protect you from the shower. Dex led the way with you keeping close to his side. Puddles had already started to form along the pavement, and cars were rushing through them in a push to get someplace. At one point Dex pulled you close when you were nearly sprayed by a passing cab.

You were already drenched through your clothes when you came to Dex's building. He hadn't lied when he said it was close, and you wondered if he had picked the bar because of the close proximity or vice versa. It was a well-maintained complex in an upscale area, and you were suddenly aware that you were just a florist.

The two of you were silent as you rode up the elevator to his floor. You were shivering from dampness, while Dex was radiating the nervousness that had returned. His floor was quiet, and you fell behind a moment to admire the delicate crystal light fixture that hung from the ceiling.

“Y/N,” He called, catching your attention. The door to his apartment was already opened and he was halfway inside before noticing you weren't behind him.

“Oh, sorry,” You said absentmindedly, scurrying inside after him.

When you surveyed his apartment, only one thought came to mind. My God, is he neat! The color palette was black and white, and everything was in perfect placement like an Ikea showroom. It was hard to believe the space had been lived in with how stiff the furniture looked.

“I'll get us some towels,” Dex said, stepping down the hall for a moment, leaving you dripping at the front door. You didn't move, making the assumption that he wasn't the type who would appreciate a mess.

Everything was well cared for and had a place, but you couldn't see any personal effects with sentimental value. It was an empty display, and you didn't know where Dex fit in in his own home. The more you tried to make sense of him, it caused you to feel like you were losing grasp of the situation. It was late, so why had you agreed to come here?

As you tried to find an answer, Dex returned with a towel around his shoulders and a spare in his hand that he held out towards you. It was crisp white.

“Here,” He said, passing it to you gingerly.

“Thank you.” You took it while watching his every move.

His wet hair had been ruffled through with a towel, and it caused him to look more carefree. You would have said innocent, but it just didn't quite fit with Dex. He set to work on brewing that promised pot of coffee, and the idea of something warm put you at ease. You took a seat on one of the stools across the island of the kitchen while finishing squeezing the last remnants of water from your hair. You didn't notice Dex looking at you, but you felt a shift in his emotions. It took you by surprise and nearly knocked you down from the stool. He was aroused by you.

“How do you take your coffee?”

You blinked, staring blankly at him while certain your face was red. “Black with sugar,” You managed, setting the towel down in your lap.

“Here, I'll take that,” He said motioning to the damp towel. “I'd offer you clothes, but I don't think I'd have anything that would fit.”

You could stroll around naked and he'd probably be just as happy. He knew you could sense his emotions, but he gave no indication he was embarrassed, and it occurred to you that he probably didn't even realize what he was feeling.

“I'll be alright. I shouldn't stay much longer anyway. I have an early morning, and you probably do as well, doing whatever it is you do.”

“I work for the FBI,” said Dex.

He wasn't kidding. “Jesus, that really is much more exciting than being a florist. The most I'm at risk of is a prick from a rose.” You leaped down from your seat, taking a step towards Dex. He unconsciously took a step back from you. Maybe he wasn't so unaware of his attraction after all. “So what's the story behind these marks?”

“I'm sure you'll hear about it on the morning news tomorrow. This city is going to turn against us,” He said, frustrated. “We lost people tonight.”

Now you were getting somewhere. His pent up stress and agitation made sense. You placed a hand down on his arm, his eyes shooting to that spot while you led him to the couch.

“I'm sorry, that must have been awful.”

He let out a breath. “It was hard, very hard.”

You searched for it, but the empathy in that statement couldn't be found. He needed help to navigate his emotions, and who better than you if it wasn't too bold to say.

“I'm sure you did all that you could. Sometimes all we have is to trust in our own capabilities, and figure out the rest as it comes.”

His eyes found yours, and you forgot all about the storm outside, drawn in by his gaze. “How do you do it, Y/N? I've only just met you, but you get me.”

“Guess you're just lucky you decided to go for that drink.” The coffee machine let out a beep, and Dex made a move to stand before you stopped him. “Wait a moment, I want to try something first.”

Maybe it was a spur of the moment decision or his heightened arousal had fogged your mind, but you leaned forward and planted your lips tenderly on his. You couldn't play it off as a drunken mistake. Both of you were pathetically sober coming from a bar.

Dex's shyness ended the second you leaned in and he had caught the scent of your perfume. He wrapped you in a stronghold with one arm around the waist, and the other hand tangled in your hair. It had curled from the rain. You let out a squeal as he lifted you up with his strength and your back met the sofa with him above you. He let out a shiver as your hands traced up his back under his shirt. Your fingers were still cold from exposure, but you were considerably hotter with Dex's body on top of yours.

He broke the kiss, both of you panting heavily as you stared at one another. His eyes were blown near to black, and yours were surely similar. Your chest heaved, pressing up into him as if starving for contact.

“Coffee?” Dex asked. His hand was still in your hair, massaging the spot at the base of your skull.

Your eyes fluttered and you smiled. “Oh no, I don't need it. I'm warm now.”

Dex grinned back, and he put his lips to yours once more. You continued to explore each other on his couch while the storm raged on outside. Inside the apartment, your emotions formed together in coalescence. Every touch or tease of Dex's body on yours made it impossible to know where his emotions ended and yours began. The thought was far away, and all according to Dex's design.

If you hadn't have been so preoccupied with his emotions when you first entered his apartment, you might have noticed the small, grey vase sitting on his mantel. The yellow tulips had since perished, but he kept the vase as a memento. He had purchased it weeks ago from your flower shop.

#benjamin poindexter #dex x reader #benjamin poindexter x reader #bullseye x reader #bullseye x you #dex x you #daredevil fanfiction #benjamin poindexter x you #daredevil reader insert #poindexter #bullseye #dex

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royallyprincesslilly · 4 years

Text

Title: Convince Me To Go {7}

AU Chris Evans x Reader

Warning: Mild Cursing, Slow Burn

Words: 3.9k

Summary: When we run away, we’re usually running from something. This time you may have run toward it instead.

Note: Welp. 🤷🏾‍♀️ I hope you enjoy this.

***Loosely Edited/Proofread***

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

This was not what you were expecting. You honestly didn’t know what you expected really. Four walls yes. Something masculine yes. Something disorganized maybe. Something dark possibly. What was before you was not what you expected. It was masculine and bathed in cool colors such as navy blues, greys, some white here or there and even black, but it wasn’t dark, it felt airy and comfortable. It was also quite organized.

As you looked around everything was in place or a place that it looked to belong. It was a wide-open space that was separated enough to leave designated spaces for a kitchen, dining space, living room, another space that looked to be a lounge of some sort and another room that was down a few steps that had a wide table in the middle and several papers on top and other items that looked like they were precariously laying around.

“Everything okay?” You jumped hearing his voice behind you.

“I’m sorry, I thought you heard me come up.”

“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t—everything’s fine. Nice place.”

“Is that your honest opinion? I know it may not be what you’re used to.”

“What am I used to?”

“Waldorf, Crown Plaza, elaborate penthouses.”

You sighed and walked away from him while continuing to look around at the different items. You saw more than a few boxes lying around and wondered if they were moving in boxes or moving out boxes.

“What makes you think this?” He didn’t answer when you turned he was giving you the once over.

“Ah, my clothes. You know not everyone who dresses well is wealthy right.”

He shrugged then walked further inside as he peeled off his jacket. “Can I take yours?”

“Thank you.” For the first time that night, you took off your jacket and handed it to him. As he took it he looked over your body and gave a small smile. As he hung your coats you walked to the window and glanced down to the street. it was close to sunrise, you could tell.

“Are you wealthy?”

“I do well enough for myself,” you responded. Again, he nodded.

“Okay. So, a shower. How does that sound?”

“Like heaven.” He smiled and disappeared around a corner to what you assumed was the bedroom.

You saw a few pictures on a shelf and walked to it to be nosey. One was him with two other women and a man who all shared a resemblance to him. siblings, you guessed then moved on to another picture of him and an older woman who had a kind face and surmised it was probably his mother. You continued to scan the contents of the shelf and found yourself smiling at what was there. From the titles of the books, you concluded he was definitely an intelligent man who would be able to hold a conversation about more than sports which was an attractive thing.

You saw a picture of him and another woman who looked to be his age, her hair was brown with dirty blonde highlights. Somehow she looked familiar but you couldn’t place her and knew the likelihood of her being familiar was impossible, so you shook it off. She gave off a prissy aura, one that said she took herself very seriously. They were standing close to each other, but his arm wasn’t around her in any way. It looked like a rehearsed picture, one that he didn’t look to be feeling.

“All right, it’s all ready for you. I got you a clean towel and a bottle of bath wash, and this.” He held up a loofah and your eyes widened. “I had to dig in the deepest, depths of Christmas past to find this.” You smiled and approached him.

“Thank you, I appreciate it.” He nodded as you took the items, your hands touched in the process and your movements from then slowed.

“Uh, so the bathroom is right around there, can’t miss it.” He pointed to it. you nodded and walked to where he pointed then stopped before you went around the corner.

“Thank you white prince Evans.” He smiled and nodded then you walked away.

The scents in the hall were masculine and got stronger when you opened the bathroom door. As you stepped in and glanced around you noticed it was clean and felt relieved. Most men were messy, disgusting creatures but he looked to be the opposite. You could have guessed that from the way he was groomed. His beard and mustache were perfectly clipped, and his eyebrows were also neatly bushy. He took pride in his appearance, but it also looked like he took pride in the appearance of his house.

As you undressed you had to fight the urge to open the medicine cabinet and snoop. You wanted to know more but you also didn’t want to pry or invade his privacy. So, you fought the urge—hard. The first feel of the hot water on your skin was heaven. You must have stood there without moving for ten minutes. It felt too good to move so you just stayed there. When you turned you saw his products and that was where you couldn’t stop yourself from snooping. You read and opened bottles then sniffed to your heart’s content. Everything smelled so good. You decided on the one that smelled like Hawaii and a waterfall in the middle of a pine tree-filled forest. It smelled like him.

As you lathered, scrubbed and rubbed trying to wash the last several hours of dirt, grime, stress, worry and every emotion you’d felt since you hopped on a bus to flee home. It was then you thought about everything. You knew your parents had probably put out a missing person’s alert and everyone was probably trying everything to reach you. You were running out of time. Time was always against you from the beginning.

You took up his shampoo and began washing your hair, normally you were very picky about what went in your hair but right now you were a beggar and you couldn’t very well be choosey. You got lost in the smells, the feel of the hot water and the richness of the lather against your skin and with it lost track of how long you were in there.

After you tidied up behind yourself and wrapped yourself in the towel, you walked out and back down the hall you came down. The smell of pizza filled your nostrils and you moaned. When you rounded the corner, his back was turned in the kitchen. You leaned against the wall and just admired the broadness of his shoulders and the way his shirt sucked on him. he was easily six feet at least, an attractive six feet. He must have felt you there because he spun around but didn’t speak. He looked stunned silent. You started to feel self-conscious and gave yourself a once over.

“Uh—I know, a lot different. Not nearly as put together as earlier in the night, I know.” You walked closer as you spoke until you were behind the island counter with him on the other side.

“It’s—me no filters, or makeup.”

“At the risk of sound like a really huge sleaze,” he began and looked at you waiting for permission to continue. You nodded giving it to him. “You are a very—incredibly beautiful woman.” You didn’t miss the way his voice dropped an octave or two. It made you bite your bottom lip and take a deep breath. “You need no filters or makeup.”

You smiled small at first, but it spread to the size of Texas in no time. You felt like a Disney princess after her prince had just told her she was the prettiest in all the land. It was disgusting how the butterflies flit around your belly.

“Safe for me to grab a shower?” You nodded as he rounded the island.

“I actually found you some clothes if you want to wear something other than the towel.” He walked to the couch and held up the neatly folded stack. You took it and thanked him before he walked off to the bathroom. “Make yourself at home.”

The items he gave you were matching plaid pajamas. The top alone looked like you could wear it as a dress. When you were sure he wouldn’t come back out you put the items on. They were warm and smelled like him which made you snuggle in them. You walked around and made your way down the three steps to look at the papers on the table. They were architectural plans for some building. It looked sleek and modern in design. As you rummaged through the sketches you found yourself smiling at all the plans you saw. He was good.

You looked around the workspace and saw things a contractor would have, plans, sketches, binders and books of vendors, design, and more. From everything you saw, you felt his passion for his career and knew he could bridge the two with the right vision. You tried not to think about how easy it would be for you to fit into the mix with your real estate experience. Thoughts like that were crazy and dangerous.

The smells from the kitchen caught your attention again and you went to check what smelled so good and found two pizzas in the oven that looked just about done. As you took them out and placed them on top of the island you rummaged through the drawers hoping to find a knife of something to cut the pizza. You then looked through the cupboards and found popcorn and wine in the fridge. A smile spread across your face. this was a Sunday night for you, pizza, popcorn, and wine.

After another five or so minutes you looked up and saw him walk closer with sweatpants bottoms sitting low on his hips and nothing else. For the first time, you took notice of how perfect his body was. He was built to be naked. You bit your bottom lip while your eyes slowly took in every inch of him. who knew he hid all of that underneath that wool coat.

“Hungry?”

“God yes.” You sounded anxious as fuck. You were well aware. When you looked at his face he was smiling. You cleared your throat and looked away just as the microwave went off. You walked to it thankful for the distraction.

“I see you made yourself at home.”

“You did tell me to.” You dumped the final bag into a bowl and turned to him.

“Interesting combination you have here.”

“I promise you won’t regret it.” He smiled and took one of the treys of pizza and walked to the living room and put it on the wooden coffee table before he came back for the other. You walked with him carrying the other items. You dropped into the small sectional couch and groaned. He sat slowly while winching. You felt bad for him. You stood again and walked to the bag of dressing the hospital provided then came back to him.

“Will you let me help?” He nodded then sank in the cushions, so he was a little slouched. You dropped to your knees between his legs and prepared the gauze and antiseptic spray provided. While you read the back, you felt his eyes on you.

“This may sting—a lot, there is alcohol in it.” Peeping up to him you noticed the beer bottle in his hand. You didn’t realize he’d gotten the pack of beer.

“Do your worst fancy, I’m at your mercy.” He took a swig of beer and dropped his head back onto the cushion and waited. Once you wet the gauze you arched onto your knees and moved closer to him. your hand hovered over the wound; you didn’t want to hurt him. Seeing you didn’t have a choice you pressed the soaked material to the wound.

“Fuck me!” his pain was evident, all the color drained from his face and as he held his breath his neck and chest turned a bright tomato red shade.

“I’m so sorry, ten more seconds so it really seeps in there.” He groaned louder and squeezed the beer bottle tightly, so tightly his knuckles turned damn near paperwhite. You also noticed through his duress the veins in his arms bulged as did his muscles, he looked incredibly ripped.

“Fuck!” His shout shook you back to reality and you pulled the gauze back then instinctively bent to the wound and blew on it. You didn’t realize you were touching his thighs using them to keep yourself propped up. you blew for a long while then peered up to him.

“How is that? Better?” his eyes were glued to yours and the color was slowly returning to him. the way he looked at you made the hairs on your arms stand up and those damn butterflies return.

Slowly he nodded his head. You pulled back and cleared your throat and prepared the ointment.

“I feel so bad.”

Groaning he took a few breaths. “Why?” His voice was strained, pained.

“First you got a split brow and cheek saving me in that alley, then you got stabbed trying to protect me. You were probably better off never having met me. I may be more trouble than I’m worth.” You pouted.

He studied you and thought you were the cutest thing. He also thought you were being too hard on yourself. He never had the thought through this whole ordeal that he wished he’d never met you. He actually came close to thinking the opposite.

“I don’t think you’re trouble.”

“You don’t know me,” you added as you came closer again and began gently applying the paste-like ointment to his wound. The first touch of your hand made him flinch, not from pain or anxious energy for the pain he was expecting. He flinched at the sudden electrical shock he got, a shock only he felt apparently. He acknowledged as you focused on his side that your hands felt good on his skin.

“Eh, I think I know you well enough by now.”

“Oh yeah. Please do tell white prince Evans.” He took a longer gulp of his beer then sighed out.

“You’re the kind of woman who always does what she’s told, always does what’s expected of you. You would rather do it than risk disappointing your parents. Even though you dream of being brave enough to do just that but can’t because your family means a lot to you, it’s all you think you have but you’re wrong. You have so much more. You even offer more than beauty though that is all you think you have.”

You were speechless. He’d just read you pretty accurately. Your mouth was dry. Pulling your hand away from his skin you wiped the excess ointment off and took up the bandage.

“Stand up for me.” With plenty of groaning and grimacing, he stood while you remained on your knees before him. You then wrapped the white bandage around his waist making sure to make it tight but not too tight. His eyes remained glued to your face never once taking them off you. You could feel it, but it didn’t make you self-conscious right now. It made you feel, but you couldn’t figure out just what you were feeling.

“All done.”

“Thank you.” Nodding you stood and dropped into the couch as he slowly sat back down.

“I’m glad we met, I’ve had a lot of fun with you tonight,” he softly admitted. You looked at him and smiled.

“You have?”

“Of course.”

The two of you passed the time eating, watching tv and talking about everything and anything. He talked about architecture and why he chose it in college and talked about what growing up in Boston was like and so many stories that made you laugh. In turn, you told him about how you got into real estate, what you liked about New York and a little of how you grew up. you didn’t want to tell him too much, so you kept it very minimal.

After the pizza was long gone, as was the bottle of wine the two of you were now on the second six-pack of beer and completely enthralled in conversation not caring that the sun was beginning to peek from behind the clouds.

“So I have to ask now. After all that, why are you still single?” Your smile fell and you looked down. Raising the bottle to your head you took a few gulps.

“After all what?”

“You’re funny, you’re smart, you’re not as mean as you first come off, you’re beautiful that’s not hard to see, and you know how to have fun. So why?”

“what if I told you me knowing how to have fun is new—like tonight new?”

“Bullshit.” You smiled and shrugged.

“No bullshit. I have always been pretty boring. I work, shop, things of that sort. Yeah the occasional club, and dinner and drinks but nothing out of the ordinary.

“So, what was tonight?”

“I don’t know, me taking a stab at being another person. Someone who fits in better I guess.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Try to fit in. don’t ever try to fit in. it’s so clear you were born to stand out.” Your heart skipped a beat. It was a line. It had to be a line you thought. But damn it was smooth. The line coupled with the way he was looking at you it could have been so easy to just melt.

“Wow. Now I have to know. Why are you single? That line alone would have dropped a room full of panties.”

He laughed loud and groaned holding his side. Apologetically you pouted.

“First of all, I told you I’m picky. Second, it wasn’t a line. It was an observation.” You nodded.

“Okay, so you’re picky. What do you like? Tell me your ideal woman.”

He sighed and finished his bottle then took another. You finished yours also and he handed you a new one.

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

“Deal,” you quickly answered.

“Fine, uh—someone smart there is nothing more attractive than a woman with a brain and some intelligence. Someone funny, she has to be able to make me laugh no ifs ands or buts. Hmm, someone polite, I am a stickler for manners. Someone who tells it like it is. I hate liars and people who feel the need to censor themselves all the time. Also, someone who isn’t a poser, she has to be able to be her own individual and not follow the masses. Someone who knows who she is and won’t try to change for anyone or try to change me. Someone who is passionate in everything they do.”

You sat there and just watched him talk. There was something beautiful about how he formed words, how his mouth shaped when he spoke. It was distracting. Through everything, he said none of it sounded like you.

“You didn’t say a thing about looks.”

“Looks don’t matter. If you look at my past girlfriends you wouldn’t be able to see a certain type. I don’t have a type. I follow vibes—feelings.”

You nodded and drank from your bottle.

“And you?” Sighing you groaned out and rubbed your forehead. You had no idea what your ideal man was. You thought you did but it’s funny what a few hours could change.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“It means I thought I knew what my ideal guy was like, I thought I had it all figured out but now—I don’t think I do.” He was quiet for a few moments.

“Now?”

You took another sip and chanced a look at him. “Yeah, now.” The two of you sat quietly drinking your beers and gazing at each other. It was as if you both had tons to say but neither of you dared to.

“So, tell me what you thought it was.” Pulling your legs underneath you and hugging them you rested your chin on your knees then sighed.

“Someone outgoing, someone ambitious, secure in life, strong-minded you know the people who can hold their shit together and yours too, someone simple easy to handle and please, someone who had a plan and always executed, someone who was adaptable, conscientious, a good provider I guess.” As you listed the traits you knew it sounded stupid.

“Were you looking for a boyfriend or a business partner?”

You didn’t answer. He had a point it all sounded so stiff.

“It just sounded very practical, and—clinical.”

“What’s wrong with practical? Practical is secure.”

“Practical is boring,” he blurted.

“Well, I told you I was boring.”

“Plus, life and love are not practical because neither of those things are singular, it’s multi-faceted. There are so many layers to life and love. Relationships cannot be practical. Maybe for you to figure out what you want is to embrace impracticalness, embrace and go with it. you’ve gone with what is expected of you for so long I bet you don’t even know how to be impractical, impulsive.

“I hoped on the first bus I found without knowing the destination. That screams impulsive.”

“It was impulsive. How many times on the bus did you have a panic attack thinking you shouldn’t do it?”

You smirked and drank your beer. “My point exactly. Embrace the impracticality of life and love.”

You thought about his words and you really wanted to, but the word “but” was ringing in your head. He was staring at you as if he were waiting for you to either say something or do something. You bit your bottom lip and his eyes fell to your mouth. You looked away from him and groaned. You finished your beer and stood.

“Should probably clean all this up.” Before you turned he grabbed your hand and held it. looking at it you moved to look at him. He lowered his beer bottle from his mouth and put it down.

“Come ’er.” You turned then stepped between his spread legs. When you did he put his free hand on your waist.

“What’re you doing?”

“Something impractical and impulsive,” he responded.

Your heart was racing so fast you swore he could hear it. You bit your bottom lip but didn’t move, his hands traveled to the buttons of the shirt you wore and slowly began unbuttoning them. With each passing second, your nerves rose. This was something you wanted. You probably shouldn’t but you wanted him. when he’d reached halfway he dropped his hands. He was giving you time to make the final decision. He sat there patiently without an ounce of urgency in his expression. His eyes were another story they said everything. In them, you saw how much he wanted you, saw how much turned on he was, the intensity behind those lagoon blue eyes made the decision not much of a decision at all. This was probably where the entire night was leading.

After almost a minute you raised your hands and finished undoing the buttons on the shirt, then you shrugged it off. His eyes stayed on yours for a few seconds longer then they dipped to take in our exposed breasts. He tipped his tongue out and slowly darted them across his lips. He hooked his pointer in the waistband of the pants and pulled you closer. You sat on him, straddling his thighs.

“Tell me what want, fancy,” his voice was low, deep and sexy as hell.

“You.”

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***If you want to be tagged please SEND AN ASK SO IT WILL BE EASIER FOR ME TO KEEP TRACK OF. Thank you for reading!!! ❤️❤️

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#convince me to go fic #Chris Evans #chris evans fanfiction #chris evans x reader #chris evans x you #chris evans x black reader #chris evans au

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fortunatelylori · 5 years

Text

Why the Jon/D*any romance doesn’t work (Part 5)

Hey, guys! This last part of my “Why the Jon/Dany romance doesn’t work” series was taken down in the great Tumblr purge and I am now reuploading it. I got a few messages from people wanting to read it and I’m really sorry it’s taken this long to get it back up again. But here it is! :)

This is actually the second part of the “More than 2 is a crowd” section of the series but since it got very, very long I split it up.

Welcome to Days of GOT, the soap-opera where your captor turns into your lover only to turn into your aunt:

The “we’re fucked but not in a good way” scene

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As a general rule, I’ve decided not to take into consideration what any of the people involved in this TV show say in interviews or behind the scenes. They very willingly and intentionally mislead the audience and lie to our faces. I don’t hold it against them but I’m not going to spend my time analyzing and commenting on something that may very well be the writers screwing with me.

However, I find it very interesting that Kit Harrington said that he thought this was the scene where Jon and Dany started liking each other. Because this is, by far, the nicest, friendliest conversation they’ve ever had. It’s almost, dare I say it, human-esque.

Here, I’ll even give you some examples:

Jon: No one is less happy about this than I am.

Dany: I know. I respect what you did. Wish you hadn’t done it but I respect it.

Wow! Appreciation and respect … where have you two been for the duration of this plot?

Dany: […] We weren’t extraordinary without them (dragons). We were just like everyone else.

Jon: You’re not like everyone else.

Hello, validation! Nice to see you again, old friend.

See? Even I’ve been generalized into submission. He’s lucky he’s cute. That’s all I got to say.

Dany: I can’t have children.

Jon: Who told you that?

Dany: The witch who murdered my husband.

Jon: Has it occurred to you she might not have been a reliable source of information?

Dany, you lucky girl! You’ve just been struck by the ever elusive Jon Snow joke! Revel in it for it only comes out to play once a season.

So, all of this is very touching … I mean, I say very …. Mildly, in the near vicinity of touching. It would have been even better had this happened earlier and not in their last private conversation but at this point, beggars can’t be choosers.

However, once you strip away this veneer of friendliness, you do find some quite troubling things in this scene.

Firstly, there’s the main issue they are discussing:

Dany: This place was the beginning of the end for my family. […] A dragon is not a slave. They were terrifying, extraordinary. They filled people with wonder and awe and we locked them in here. They wasted away. They grew small and we grew small as well.

The problem with this speech is that it creates a conundrum for both the audience and Jon. Because Jon’s already heard the flip side of this particular coin, directly from his BFF, Jorah:

Missandei: Why did they build it? (the Dragonpit)

Jorah: Dragons don’t understand the difference between what is theirs and what isn’t. Land, livestock, children … Letting them roam free around the city was a problem.

So how does Jon resolve this issue? He doesn’t. He simply listens to Dany, looks around the Dragonpit and keeps his mouth shut.

Are we to understand that Jon Snow simply doesn’t care about children being burned alive because he wants Dany and her dragons to be as terrifying and awe inspiring as possible?

Isn’t it more likely to assume that Jon simply does what he’s always done in conversations with Dany, essentially keep his thoughts to himself and allow her to think whatever she wants? Which can only mean that despite their pleasantries, their dynamic is essentially the same it’s been since the cave scene. Which, by extension, means we’re just going round and round in ever increasingly polite circles.

Great! I got all excited with no rose petal covered way to go.

Then there’s this:

Dany: You were right from the beginning. If I trusted you, everything would be different.

Jon: So what now?

Dany: I can’t forget what I saw North of the wall. And I can’t pretend Cersei won’t take back half the country the moment I march North.

Remember when I said that Jon had no reason to bend the knee because Dany had already promised to help him defeat the Night King?

Tin foil hat: You know nothing, fortunatelylori!

Shut up, you!

Yes, Jon! You heard that right! A near death experience by either zombification or drowning, a dead uncle and a bent knee later and all you have to show for it is a better placement on Dany’s list of priorities. It used to be -100 before but now the goddamn apocalypse is neck and neck with Dany and Cersei’s competition for a piece of furniture. Enjoy!

The “what is fear of assassination anyway when my hormones are out of wack” scene

youtube

I could analyze every line in this scene but I prefer to cut through all the boring travel arrangements that no one paid attention to and cut to the chase:

Jorah: My queen, love of my life, end all be all of my existence, your safety is paramount to me. Please fly to Winterfell and not risk getting blood all over your pretty blond wig.

Jon: Aaa ... I mean it’s your choice, obviously, but ... would you rather fly and be safe or get on a boat and possibly have sex with me?

Dany: Sex with Jon on a boat, definitely.

However, I will say this is a very interesting line:

Jon: It’s your decision, your Grace. But if we’re going to be allies in this war, it’s important for the Northerners to see us as allies.

It sort of feels like Jon is not giving Dany a choice at all. It’s more of a “my way or the highway” type of proposition but again Dany’s too far down the rabbit hole to notice the difference.

The “this better be good, guys! The whole of Westeros is watching” scene

I’d love to link to b0atbang here but Tumblr hates that scene as much as we do. So for your convenience, I have decided to put my considerable artistic talents to good use and I have drawn what I believe is almost an exact representation of it:

Guys, I spent almost 30 seconds in Paint doing this so please show me some love. Tread carefully, Tumblr, for you are treading on my dreams!

We started this section of the series talking about the “more than 2 is a crowd” rule so it seems only fitting that we should end with this: the most crowded sex scene since whatever porno film you watched last night.

There are 6 people involved in this scene and that’s excluding the actual two people that are having sex! Six people, most of them related to one or both Jon and Dany.

We have Jon’s mother but also Dany’s sister in law, Jon’s uncle but also adoptive father, Jon’s real father but also Dany’s brother, Jon’s brother who is actually his cousin, Jon’s best friend and also family member to the victims of Dany’s latest dracarys incident and lastly Dany’s closest adviser and also ex-husband to Jon’s sister/cousin/the current possessor of a “part of him”. This is Days of our Lives gone terribly, terribly wrong.

I don’t think I have to explain why this is romantic plot suicide. A sex scene between a romantic couple is supposed to be intimate, tender, sometimes steamy. It not supposed to be the smallest part of an elaborate montage designed to tell us that the people currently engaged in the devil’s mambo number 5, are actually related as well as de facto rivals for the Iron Throne.

A lot of people have commented on the inherent issues with the set-up of this scene, from the lack of a first kiss (an absolutely crucial part of any romantic pairing), to the lack of conversation before or after , to the horrible transition from a dying, blood soaked Lyanna to Jon and Dany in the midst of physical abandon and up to Jon’s strange expression:

Jon: I don’t think Tinder is working out for me.

What I would like to do instead is show you a scene that has quite a similar setup to this: it starts off in a bed and also includes the dreaded body flip. This is incidentally one of my favorite sex scenes. I am, of course, talking about the sex scene between Achillies and Brisies in 2004’s Troy. When I uploaded this the first time, @lostlittlesatellites mentioned in the comments section that this film was actually written by David Benioff, which I had forgotten. So not only did the D reuse this set-up for the Jon/Dany scene but actually is well aware of the salient differences between the two scenes, since, you know, he was involved in writing both of them. Another nail in the “Ds suck at their job which is why they couldn’t write a better romance” coffin, I guess.

I would love to put this scene up here in all its glory. However, since Tumblr is a prude that can’t handle the gorgeous physique of one Brad Pitt, I can’t. Just type Achillies and Brisies into youtube because it’s a more liberated platform, incidentally with far fewer Nazis lurking around. Also here is a pic of Brad’s gorgeous abs. Tumblr, eat your heart out!

The body flip:

The body flip in the Brisies/Achilles is counterbalanced by the knife. These kinds of flips are awkward when filmed in a wide shot but the fact that she’s holding a sharp object to Achilles’ throat moves our focus towards the character’s faces and not the awkward body movement.

Focus on details:

When you watch this scene, you’ll notice that a large portion of it is Achilles pulling up her dress and slipping his hand underneath the material. That becomes a very intimate movement that, in turn, creates expectation … And expectation creates interest. It has a much slower build-up than what we get with Jon/Dany and it’s that prolonged moment that makes it sexier.

It tells a story:

This is very important. Words in scenes aren’t there just to make the writer feel important. They set the tone, the level of intensity and make the audience feel like they’re a part of it, instead of being kept at arm’s length because they don’t have access to the character’s thoughts.

The Troy sex scene is a whole story in itself: We start with Brisies trying to kill Achilles but hesitating. We have Achilles admitting he will kill more men and daring her to go through with her plan. We have him flipping her and then tentatively kiss her as she finally gives up and drops the knife to the floor. This is an intimate, character driven scene that marks the transition of these two from enemies to lovers.

That’s not to say that Jon and Dany’s scene isn’t telling a story. The difference is that the story it tells is plot driven, not character driven. What makes their scene inherently interesting are the revelations we receive about Jon and how that will affect the plot moving forward. In that sense they become secondary characters in their own sex scene, just gilded cogs in a much larger plot wheel and far from breaking it, their sex scene is advancing it. To what end, I guess we’ll find out in season 8.

And that’s it, you guys! Hope you enjoyed this series. I do have a few ideas on what to write next but if there’s something in particular you’d like me to cover, let me know.

In case you haven’t read the other 3 parts of the series, you can find them linked below:

Part 1: Are D&D really idiots?

Part 2: Repetition and generalization are the death of romance

Part 3: When everyone and their mother has a different take on the same line of text

Part 4: More than 2 is a crowd

PS: none of the artwork in this meta belongs to me. Except for b0atbang which is the only piece of art worth mentioning anyway and which shall be hanging in a museum near you very, very soon.

#asoiaf #got meta #got s7 #anti-jonerys #my got meta

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royal-writer · 5 years

Text

Fondly In Love

I trust you. I trust you more than anyone. I trust you more than words can express. I just wanted you to know, in case you ever doubt or forget. I will always, always, trust you.

She promised herself she’d never be that girl to fall into someone’s arms. People were unreliable, weak, and savage. She’d witnessed the things they did to each other; heard the stories, saw the bloodshed. Couples learned to loathe each other after too many years together. Lovers would stab each other in the heart to have a taste of something new. Others turned the cheek and played ignorant to the deceit of thieves and beggars. Battles fought over feuds that held no meaning. Abuse in the name of Gods. Fleeting feelings that never lasted and left you bitter, and heartbroken.

No one could let her down if she never let them in. No one could hurt her anymore than a stone or a hurtful word if they didn’t truly know her. No one could feed upon her entrails; a vulture to carnage of her spoiled heart. No one could use her traces of softness to fix themselves and leave her more broken and bruised. Her guard was always up. She was safe from the world this way, and this world was safe from her.

She’d never trust anyone to take care of her.

But that’s exactly what she did.

Essätha trusted him to take care of her, and not just when she couldn’t handle it. She trusted him with her broken pieces. She trusted his strength when she felt too weak to hold her own. She trusted his hands to be tender; that his words be true, that when she was crumbling he would be there. She trusted his virtue, his integrity, his morals, and the truth behind the shell that was a humble and vulnerable man of honor, intelligence, and delicate softness. She trusted that when she fell, he would try to break her fall, and unburden her aches.

How ironic it was to be the one afraid of falling, and she tumbled unknowingly straight into his embrace. He caught her, the very first time. He caught her every time since. Even when she wasn’t aware she was letting go.

Her thoughts glided back to Himloroth as she stretched out; unable to enjoy the silent night. The look in Lord Amon’s face, learning that they were carrying the body of the late Fontane. The way his voice sounded so fragile and weak, when he’d told her he didn’t want to be alone. She’d understood why he’d clung to her then; or so she thought. He was desperate, and she had been there with a generous heart.

She turned over in the sheets. Her fear had ignited like a powder-keg. She was scared of being seen; scared of letting him in, scared of the others seeing how gentle she was and taking advantage. But she learned the more she was around them, the less fear she had. Her travel companions may be brusque, at times selfish, or cowardly, but they weren’t ones to judge kindness in character as opportune for bloodletting.

As she unrolled her true self, it seemed like the nobleman was doing the same. His vulnerability became more acute. He played on his jokes so oddly cheesy or plainly silly she couldn’t help but to grin. His smile grew a little less distant and a little more true. He became more of himself. And it was right there at the end of his line, when he thought he would have to express his final goodbyes, that she was sure he was going to miss them.

Did she regret any of it? Heavens, no. Every word she said, she said with truth and conviction. Every time she reached for him, she did so with the conscious that she was reaching for a lot more than a hand. She was reaching for the wandering soul, the outcast, the one he was hiding beneath; and it made her wonder how many saw the real him all these years.

Essie’s body tossed and turned like a boat in rough seas. The bed groaned and it creaked, but it was not the same sounds she was used to. Her mind was restless despite exhaustion. It longed for the raspy warmth of breath against her neck that made her tremble; the echo of a rumbling snore, a snort perhaps. If she thought really hard, she could feel the impression of Amon against her back. He was more snuggly than one would imagine at first glance. Her very heartbeat stuttered and chest lifted in memory of the soothing arms wrapped around her, the signature blend of his fragrance that only saturated her thoughts tonight and not her skin.

As though on cue, the sound of paws thumping down the hall approached the door. Nails clicked upon floorboards, then the doorframe, and a quiet whimpering echoed from the other side.

“Caesar. Come.”

Another whine.

There was a heavy, tired sigh. She furrowed her brow as she stared out the window. What on Earth was he doing up so late?

As the shushing continued, she lifted her head just enough to glance at the doorway. “M’lord Amon?” her voice cracked.

“Sorry he woke you, Essie,” a warm voice responded from behind the door.

“He didn’t; I wasn’t sleepin’,” she crooned in unpleasant admittance. “Thank you for your concern, though.”

A substantial silence followed. “Are you alright, Essätha?” A deep shuddering breath. “… May I come in?”

Baffled, she replied softly, “… It’s unlocked.”

“That doesn’t sound safe,” he advised in a chiding voice, already turning the knob. She didn’t have the heart to tell him she’d left it unlocked out of childish longing. Like her heart, she hoped he’d find his way back in.

The door shut quietly behind him. As it did, she rolled over to face him. The inky darkness made him a few shades less defined than normal, but nothing her nightvision couldn’t identify with relative ease. He was fidgeting with his hands in a nervous fashion like he was unsure.

Caesar, meanwhile, was all too sure of his place. The mastiff padded over to the bedside, and judged the height for only a moment. His haunches lowered, he held his posture, and then the dog made a single bound up and on the end of the bed, where he circled once to flop down. They both laughed, and it eased the tension from the atmosphere.

“Lord Caeser wake you?” she inquired softly, her eyelids drifting as a yawn rose up out of nowhere.

Amon hesitated. Even stuck in a yawn, she noticed. “No,” he finally confessed, “I had gotten up to move around, hoping it would help me sleep.”

She nodded drowsily with understanding. His voice rocked her like a lullaby. Her eyes refused to open again as she openly admitted: “I haven’t slept. The bed’s too cold, and the room’s too quiet.”

Although she could not see it, the nobleman arched a brow and chuckled with amusement. “Next you’re going to tell me you miss my snoring.”

“I do,” she slurred.

His breath hitched. She waited for his response. A short span passed before she realized he wasn’t going to respond; little realizing just how speechless he was. Her next words came from a place of exhaustion, and has she known better, she may not have recited them so comfortably and confidently.

“You can lay and sleep with me. It might help you rest. It would certainly help me.”

“I…Essie…” his voice was husky and thick. He made a sound to clear to throat. “If- if you’re sure…”

She nodded sluggishly, patting the side of the bed beside her. “Join me.”

His boots were quiet against the floor. There was a brief intermission of quiet where all she could hear was the sound of lacing being pulled through leather, and the thump of shoes being sat aside. When he had finally removed him, the bed dipped and sank as the nobleman tentatively slid in on her right side.

Essätha reached for him blindly, with her eyes still shut and dragged down with fatigue. Her hands pawed at the fabric of his tunic and he froze, bewildered. They moved higher, trailing over his neck and felling the weight of him swallowing nervously. She was smiling by the time her fingers found his beard, and then his sideburns with gentle strokes. She could feel his grin in the shape of his rounded cheeks. He laughed deep and quiet.

Strange. She recognized him so perfectly by his features even sightless. Her thumbs traced against the side of his nose, followed the contour of his face, felt the tug of smile as fingertips ghosted against the edges of his lips. He was incredibly patient with her curiosity, but it was mystifying how much she knew him. The space between his eyes, the placement of his quirked lips, the texture of his skin, the way his forehead crinkled a bit when he was thinking deeply, as he was now.

He is beautiful.

“What are you doing?” he finally asked, amusement lining his voice.

“Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“Not at all. I was just wondering what it is you’re looking for.”

Her hands had moved to his sturdy shoulders as he talked. “Nothing,” she breathed. “I was just wondering if I remembered…”

Her voice wavered. It finally struck her, how embarrassing her next words would be.

Amon however, was clearly invested. He sounded breathless with anticipation as he whispered: “Remembered what?”

She swallowed. “… What you felt like. If my memories were right, trying to conjure up the feeling of you sleeping next to me.”

“… You were having that much trouble, getting to sleep… because of me?”

She frowned, cracking her eyelids open a fraction to the worry in his tone.

“Because I missed you.”

He wore the most ethereal expression of untarnished tenderness as he met her tired gaze.

“I missed you,” he parroted back softly, reaching for her all the while.

Her thoughts felt muddled and hazy. More than just tiredness now.

“I don’t want to be alone, Amon.” Her voice was hoarse.

“I’m here, Essie,” he soothed, pulled her closer by the waist, as he moved closer too. “I’m here.”

Cuddling up into his arms, she wriggled and wormed around as he snorted. Her hair got in her face, then she jabbed him in the abdomen and he winced. She mumbled an apology while trying to coil herself around the nobleman. One limb here, another there, this appendage here until they were finally tangled up in a full-body hug.

Essätha hummed appreciatively. “I’m going to cuddle you all night and steal your body heat,” she concured. “It’s my only quality.”

Befuddled, Amon let out an amused chuckle. “You have many other impressive traits and characteristics.”

Curling until her body bowed into him, she muffled against his chest: “You’re just saying that because we’re together.”

He made a nasally, choking sound before answering in a voice that was shy: “I would say that even if we were not. I would tell anyone proudly how much of a compassionate, thoughtful, wise woman you are, whether they wanted to listen or not.”

She scoffed. “Advertise me later. Hold me, now.”

“It would be my pleasure, Essie.”

Content with her face buried against his chest, Essätha closed her eyes once more. She listened to the sound of his breathing. She listened to the beating of his heart, just beneath his ribcage. She succumbed to the feeling of his hands to her back, cradling her. She surrendered to him with a single, solitary shiver and allowed herself to be vulnerable.

She broke the word she thought she’d always honor. The one to herself, to never fall for someone.

But she was not the damsel in this story. She was his equal. He treated her like they were partners; equivalent, on the same scale. When she took a step forward, he, too, took another step forward to meet her part of the way.

Her soul itself seemed to let go of tension like this, bit by bit. A little more hurt and a little more weariness faded away into oblivion. She’d be okay. It was a safe place here. A homey place, for her to rest her head. She trusted him. He’d never let her down. He’d make sure she was safe.

And with a final tired sigh she drifted off, falling ever more into his arms.

#royal writes #essamon ship #Essie rw #amon illiad

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lu-undy · 4 years

Text

Chapter 16 - SBT

Here it is!

After his meeting with Maurice, Mundy was left confused. He knew there was more to know. If Maurice was under the impression that something was happening, then surely it did. And what did he mean with possibly dangerous?

The thing is, if Maurice said he didn't exactly know himself, then there was no way Mundy could. The best thing would probably be to give it all a bit more time.

And that's exactly what Mundy did. He had spent the past few days not doing much apart from being patient. He had phoned Phil from the import/export company and Matt from the animal reserve again but they still hadn't had any news on their side of things.

"Hey, you heard me, M?"

Mundy's eyelids fluttered as he landed back from his daydream.

"Hello…?" Eddy was waving before his empty eyes.

Mundy had driven to his friend’s hunting equipment shop. He naturally was sitting on the stool next to the counter, as he used to a decade ago. Mundy didn’t think much of it, but Eddy noticed how his legs had led him to his former place, as if ten years hadn’t passed at all.

"Y-yeah sorry, I was just… Uh… thinking." Mundy said.

"Yeah, I could see that!" Eddy chuckled. "I don't know where you went in your head but it was bloody far!"

"Sorry, mate, you were saying?"

"I was asking you how you were doing, and if you'd made any progress on Johnson's alligators."

Mundy sighed.

"Yes and no. I did talk to a few people here and there, that's the good part."

"What's the bad one?"

"No bloody clue where the 'gators are." Mundy answered.

"Ah, well…" Eddy shrugged. "I'm sure it'll solve itself."

"I am giving it a bit of time, hoping that some news will drop but I haven't heard back from anyone."

"How long has it been?" Eddy asked.

"Almost a week."

"Is that a lot?"

"Quite a bit, yeah."

"Ah…" Eddy removed his cap off his head and scratched his hair. "Is there anything you could do that you didn't…?"

Mundy frowned and pondered for a few seconds.

"I mean, you might as well as you're not doing anything else."

The Aussie's brow furrowed further.

"Guess you're right." He took his hat off the counter and exited Eddy's hunting equipment shop.

Mundy needed to walk. That, or drive. But his legs were now taking control so he slid his hands in his pockets and let his feet guide him. The streets of his city rolled before his eyes like the reel of a movie he knew all the lines of by heart.

There was something that Maurice said that got stuck in his head and his mind couldn't help but turn round and around to come back to it. In all those years, it was the first time that Maurice had warned Mundy about any kind of danger.

Even on his last job, Maurice hadn't said anything and it had cost Mundy a lot, to say it lightly.

"Pfff…"

The Aussie kicked a rock on the ground and continued walking, his train of thought gliding on the rails of his impatience. When he raised his head again and connected with reality, he got an idea. He spun on his heels and headed back to the one man who knew.

“Maurice?”

Mundy’s heels stopped in a dead end and his voice bounced on the walls back to him.

“Mundy.”

From the shadow, a silhouette emerged.

“How can I help?” The beggar asked.

“Can you tell me more?”

“About what?”

“Look, mate, I’ve never ever heard you ask me to watch out for anything. In all these years, even last time I was working.”

Maurice nodded.

“I have only partial information.” was his answer.

“Go on. A bit is better than nothing.” Mundy said.

“In this case, follow me. We need to go somewhere else. The walls have ears.”

Mundy nodded and followed Maurice out of the cul-de-sac. They walked through the dirty streets of the poorest neighbourhood. Mundy’s eyes lingered left and right. It seemed like a million eyes were on him, following him without moving, without breathing. It intimidated him a bit, he felt like he was put on the spot. But then he just remembered that indeed, Maurice had a lot more people coming to him, working with him.

“Maurice?”

“Hm?”

“These people you feed and help out…”

“What about them?”

“Do you ask anything from them in exchange?”

Maurice chuckled.

“What could I ask? They have no money.”

“We both know you don’t care about money.” Mundy answered.

“It is true. My trade is not in money.” Maurice started. “But to answer your question, no, I don’t ask anything from them. We work our best to get those poor people who didn’t choose this life out of mine.”

“What?” Mundy asked.

“I know that my job is done when the number of people I feed goes down, even if it's just one person. One person less to feed doesn’t make much of a difference to us, but to that one person, to get back into life the way they see it, to not come back in these dirty streets, to not ask anymore, to not beg, to not feel like a burden anymore… In a way, to reclaim their life as their own, and not one where some superior power condemned them to be and feel like less of a human being, that is what I ask of them."

Mundy listened carefully.

"Some of them I do employ and pay." Maurice continued. "And they work for me benevolently, I never looked to hire anyone. They just offered to help."

"They offered, but you pay them?" Mundy asked.

"Those people do the work that our leaders should, of course I pay them. I pay them before I pay myself, and I don't pay them enough. Those are the people you see waking up early in the morning to prepare the food to help those poor souls, after school they help the kids with their homework. I have a few contacts here and there to find them the odd job but nothing very solid, especially for those with high qualifications…"

"People don't seem unhappy about it though." Mundy added.

"Billy!" Maurice called and one of the children playing ball in the street came at him running. "Come follow us, please."

"Sure."

Mundy saw his friend walk to a house and open the door. It was one of those abandoned homes in the poorest district. The wallpaper on the walls was falling in long strips, revealing the dust and washed out paint underneath. The floor was tiled although it had gathered dust there too. Maurice went to what used to be the bedroom, judging by the wooden ruin that looked like a bed frame. Mundy followed him and saw his friend move a carpet from the floor. It revealed a secret door that Maurice bent down to open with the key he was carrying around his neck.

Mundy's jaw dropped. In all those years, he had no idea Maurice had a hideout…!

They took the ladder down and when they hit the ground, surrounded by the dark, Maurice raised his head.

"You can close it now."

"Alright!"

And as Billy shut the door above their heads, the last ray of light disappeared, leaving Mundy confused about his surroundings.

Click.

Maurice flipped a switch and Mundy's jaw dropped again. He had expected a corridor, a room and a few chairs. No… It turned out that they were in what looked like one out of a lot of galleries. Mundy looked down and could see lower levels.

"Where are we…?"

His eyes scanned the metallic bridges, stairs and the like, connecting the tunnels. It was all very well, considering they were underground.

"Welcome to my headquarters."

"Did you have that before as well…?" Mundy asked as he followed Maurice down some stairs and through a door.

"I did, yes, but we expanded our network considerably. You see, these people I help, they usually like to do something to pay me back. That's how I bought the house we have been through, and managed to organise these abandoned tunnels into a fully functional and extremely efficient way of communication."

"How did you do that?"

"One man that I helped was an electrician. He worked for months dealing with the electricals here with his team. The house? Another bloke was an estate agent. As soon as he found a job, he asked me what house I would like to have. I chose this abandoned one. There were other people involved, but those are a few examples. Ah, we are finally here."

Maurice and Mundy had been through countless doors and as many corridors. Had the Aussie been asked to find his way back, he wouldn't have found it…!

"Take a seat."

It was a spacious room with a few people busy here and there. There was a table in the middle with a few chairs.

"Roight."

Mundy took a seat and Maurice sat opposite him.

"Here is what I know. Peter, come and write it down, please."

One of the busy people came with a notepad and a pen. He sat down.

"People with big money are coming here, in Oz. People who sometimes had to travel from the other end of the globe."

Mundy's eyebrows jumped.

"People who didn't get their money through honest work. They deal, traffick, exchange, trade and enslave. For some of them, they kill."

Maurice paused for the word to hit Mundy, and it did.

"They all frequent the restaurant where this one employee you are after works. The Queen Victoria."

"Look, Maurice, I need to get there."

Maurice's eyebrows jumped.

"No, you don't."

"Yeah! If you don't have any information on Antonio Sanchez, I'll find him myself." Mundy answered.

"Mundy, you will not do that."

"Yeah, I will."

"Mundy, you do not understand the seriousness of all this."

"Then stop bein' all mysterious and tell me! What is happenin' there for me to be scared?!" Mundy insisted and his friend sighed.

"There is one man, more dangerous than the rest. He enjoys his dinners there. Do not get close to him." Maurice answered.

"If he doesn't have my crocs, then I'll leave him be. I won't risk my skin."

"You already did." Maurice answered.

"What?"

"Antonio Sanchez is only a waiter." Maurice answered. "He no doubt was amongst those who stole your alligators. But the man behind it is the one I am talking about."

"Wait, you know all that and you didn't tell me?!" Mundy exclaimed, furious. He had never thought his friend would hold back any information from him, he never had.

"Yes."

"Why?!"

"When I came to learn that he was working for that particular man, I used all my means to check, double check and triple check."

Mundy's anger faded when, for the first time, he saw Maurice genuinely concerned. His brow was furrowed intensely and his bushy eyebrows hid his eyes almost completely.

"Mundy, that man is the most dangerous man you would ever meet."

"W-what d'you mean?"

"Not only does he own a fortune, but he walked on an ever-growing pile of corpses to get where he is."

Mundy's heart sank as he started sharing Maurice's fear.

"That man has no doubt sent orders to kill more people than the Australian army for the past decade."

Mundy put a hand on the table, a visible look of disbelief painted on his face.

"Mundy, Arthur Duchemin is no little poacher. His killstreak counts men, women and even children."

"What…?" Mundy leaned back as if the words had slapped him across the face.

"He finances militias across the world, making sure his interests are always safe. In Africa, he even hires children soldiers, sends them to kill and get killed."

"What the hell is he doing with the crocs then? He doesn't sound like he needs them!"

"And yet, he has his hands on them."

"Where?" Mundy asked.

"I don't know."

"You really don't know?" Mundy insisted and Maurice sighed.

"Yes, I really don't know."

A long silence followed. Maurice had lowered his eyes to the table but Mundy was intensely staring at him, frowning. If he had lied once, Maurice could lie a second time.

"I am sorry, Mundy. My point was obviously not to lie to you by omission, but to protect you."

"I don't need your protection."

"You do. You are walking around as armed as little Billy you've seen earlier and you want to meet one of the most dangerous human beings on the planet." Maurice raised his eyes to Mundy's. "Get Eddy to find some equipment for you if you want to continue."

"What d'you mean 'if I want to continue'...? You think I'll quit? Those alligators are the last of their species!"

"I respect your determination, Mundy, but this man is after more than just crocodiles and he is very willing and able to kill to get what he needs. It wouldn't be the first time and it certainly won't be the last."

"Maurice, do you have any idea what it means…? For God's sake, they're the bloody last ones!" Mundy exclaimed.

"Again, I respect your trade and your ambition but I don't think you will be able to fulfill your task this time."

Silence fell for a while. Both men were in a staring contest.

"I'm not asking for your opinion, Maurice. I just need info."

"Mundy, that man will not only end your career, but also your life!" Maurice exclaimed, raising his arms to the sky.

"So be it! I have nothing left to lose!" Mundy answered in a heartbeat. He pushed his chair back violently as he stood up. "I have nothing, absolutely nothing that ties me to this Earth!" Mundy banged the table with his clenched fist.

"And you know what? Same for these bloody alligators! Now, you do your job and give me the information I need, and you let me take care of the rest!"

Maurice looked down and sighed. He was tired of the argument.

"I hope next time we meet won't be at your funeral." The beggar said.

"No."

Maurice raised his eyes to Mundy who adjusted his chair in front of the table again and sat down.

"You don't have to come."

The beggar's jaw dropped. So when Mundy said that he didn't have anything left to lose, he was not exaggerating. He was that done with everything, huh?

"What do you want from me, then?" Maurice asked.

"Get me inside that posh restaurant."

"What? You know that you can't get a place there even if you book months in advance, right?"

"All I need is one dinner, one night." Mundy said, raising an index finger. "Just one."

Maurice put a hand on his face.

"Even if I could get you inside, they would spot you like an elephant in a porcelain shop."

"I'll dress up."

"I was not talking about the clothes." Maurice explained. "They know their clients' faces. A new one would draw their attention to you instantly."

"I need to go there and have a look around, listen to them and see if I can't get anything."

"Give me a few more days." Maurice asked.

"I don't have a few more days. I don't even know if they're alive or dead."

"Mundy, a few more days and I'll give you a location."

"Look, I've given you more time on this than I've ever done before. I can't. I need to save them while I still can. Tell me what I should do to get there and I'll do it."

"I don't even know myself!" Maurice answered. He let his hand sink from his brow to his chin. He was tired of all that. He knew nothing good would come out of it all.

"Maurice, some news." A man interrupted them and gave the beggar a large piece of paper. It looked like a poster. "These appeared in the streets, as your friend asked."

Maurice raised his head to his colleague.

"Did you send the word where I asked you to?" He asked.

"Yes, they will be there. The guys put more tables and chairs for the occasion… I don't know how your friend did it, but he convinced the old man."

"Never underestimate the charm of that man." Maurice answered. "Oh wait…"

Maurice looked at the poster in his hand, then at Mundy, then back at the poster.

"Are all their tables booked?" He asked.

"No, not as of this morning."

"Book one at once!" Maurice said, raising his eyes to the Aussie who wasn't sure he was really talking to him. "This show starts in two days, right?"

"Yes, Maurice. What name should we give?"

"Emme."

"Emme?"

"Yes, like the letter. Mundy, you have a table at the Queen Victoria in two days for dinner. Prepare your best tuxedo and your best manners. This is your one and only chance to set foot in that place."

"Wait, hold on, what? I thought you couldn't get me there?" The Aussie asked, confused.

"Now, thanks to this new show…" Maurice spread the poster on the table. "You now can."

Mundy looked carefully. It was an advert for a new musical show at the Queen Victoria. The poster was blue and golden, like the uniforms that Mundy had seen.

"As you have just heard, they increased their capacity for the occasion, which will allow you to slip in without raising too much suspicion."

"Oh… Alright, I'll get prepared then." Mundy stood up and was about to head off.

"Mundy?"

"Yeah?"

"Be extremely careful. What I said earlier still holds. You are getting close to one hell of a maniac." Maurice said.

"I'll watch out for myself. Thanks for the info."

Maurice nodded.

"Peter, please show Mundy out."

#tf2 sniper #tf2 spy #sniperspy #SBT

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