#the terror of the passage of time etc etc

[halcyone-of-the-sea]

PREY

PAIRING: Hunter!Simon 'Ghost' Riley x F!Werewolf!Reader

SYNOPSIS: There’s blood on your hands again.

WORDCOUNT: 16.8k

WARNINGS: Intense gore, body horror, death, mutilation, weapons, firearms, knives, intended harm, violence, blood, descriptions of wounds, angst, fluff, protective!Simon, religious mentions, period time standards for men/women (1700s), etc.

A/N: The first of my reverse AUs is finally here! Enjoy!

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

The tale of the Werewolf extends back to around 2100 BC. It was written in The Epic of Gilgamesh, scored into a clay tablet by hands long buried—a corpse forever still in the earth so deep, the bones have yet to be found by greedy eyes. Perhaps the oldest surviving story in human history, and there is still a passage that bleeds into stories hundreds of thousands of years later.

In such, Gilgamesh, a man on the search for immortality, rejects a woman for the reason of turning her previous husband into a wolf. 

“You have loved the shepherd of the flock; he made meal-cake for you day after day, he killed kids for your sake. You struck and turned him into a wolf, now his own herd-boys chase him away, his own hounds worry his flanks…”

And then, the tales spread, changed, through history and through spoken words of caution. Like water trickling from a well, down the shape of the wooden bucket delving deeper and deeper into a pit of age—of caution. 

“The Beast of Gévaudan. Man-eater.” Through France

“He has a wolf-head, you know? Tall thing—short brown hair all over him.” Through Scotland

“Beware the man that changes shape under the full moon.” England.

Now, in the late seventeenth century, it all comes to a head. Even the people in 2100 BC knew that someone who changes into a wolf, or some bastard-like imitation of one, was very much real; it is very much an affliction that overtakes sense and reason. A curse. 

Transferable down to the saliva of one entering your bloodstream.

You must never get within the beast’s sights. 

—

There’s blood on your hands again. 

Hunched over, your body quivers, and the bareness of your flesh in the moonlight is of little concern to you—trapped in a fetal position while the chilled wind howls.

Howls.

Howls.

“Get out of my head.” Your fingers grasp at your scalp, pulling; ripping. A sob jaggedly slashes your throat open. “Please,” you rattle in a fast breath, the grass snapping as you writhe. “Get out of my head.”

It had happened once more, and you can’t remember any of it. 

The forest is deathly still. No birds sing their songs—no breeze moves the long grass, patches trampled down around you as if a beast had staggered into the small clearing you’re lying in. Maybe it had. There are shadows that listen to your quiet panic, the low whines and gasping quivers of your throat; from behind the trees that speak in the way that only they could. The deep night creeps into you, and the moonlight bathing your flesh doesn’t push back the terror in your bloodstream. 

Your body burns like you’ve broken every bone twice over, and judging by the blood stuck in between every line and dip of your skin, to anyone walking past, the analogy could be very real. Fingers flexing and bending, you try to force out the venom inside of your head with desperation befitting a dying dog, spine visible out of the skin of your back as you sob all the harder. 

You tried to stop it—you had; you always do. But, just like every month when the full moon mocks you with its silver-hued face, it never works. 

It never works.

Your eyes stare at nothing as you lay here, in this place of grass, blood, and bile, of corruption as deep as a vile sin of flesh. It came over you like a wave, fingers trapping your throat and bearing it to the caress of fangs. There were different names for it here, miles from your village and the terrified eyes that search the tree line; names coming from the hunters and their black deeds. 

Shapeshifter.

Demon spawn.

Werewolf.

“I can’t take it anymore,” you shove the side of your head into the ground, pushing the torn earth away from the cuts of long claws. Tears flood the dirt until it’s wet and muddy, pushing the crimson stains on your skin away in long streaks. “It hurts, God, please, it hurts.”

The sound of your hysterics rises and falls in the stillness—the inactivity of fearful birds and beasts wondering if your fangs would rip from your gums and your claws would tear from your fingertips. Fur along your body the color of which leads to stories of their own spreading far and wide. 

The White Wolf. The Specter of St. Francis’ Village. A hound from Hell. 

More pale than snow, and sharper seen than a knife or blade through the black trees. Even if the memories of your shifts were fuzzy at best, there were flashes of those who’d seen your gargantuan form from the confines of their stone-cut homes. Those wide eyes. Yelling—screaming; sprays of blood as heads were separated from bodies—

“Stop!” You scream, your legs kicking out as your toes scrape the grass. “It’s not me! It’s not!” 

There’s a call of alarm from deep within the woods, the flash of torches and bellow of hunting dogs. They’re running you down, you’d forgotten that in the depths of your breaking mind and body, and by the time your elongated limbs had set themselves back into a more human-like appearance, your spine cracking at every vertebrae, it had slipped your thoughts entirely. It always took you a long time to understand what had happened after…everything. 

But even now, the shouts of the hunt are pointless to the visceral breaking of your consciousness, stuck between leaving bloodlust and knowledge of horror. There’s flesh in your teeth, and you wail before your fingers drag down your face, cupping over your ears. In the back of your skull, the panting of dogged breath echoes; running, blood, blood, blood. It’s a dance of fangs, of pale fur, staining every inch and flooding the back of your mouth. Drinking it down like water.

Flesh—lovely, disgusting, flesh rent and torn to the bone with smacking gums belonging to a square snout. 

Who had you killed this time?

By the time the dogs had tracked your scent to your curled body, it was already too late. 

“Here!” Male voices shift in and out on the backs of crows, hard and cruel. “It’s here!”

“Get the dogs on it!” 

“It’s not me,” you mutter incessantly, not truly understanding what you’re saying as hounds burst through the bushes, all snapping teeth and slobbering tongues your eyes widen in an instant. Panting, your jaw clenches; long whines move your throat. 

“What…?” Blinking quickly, the dogs surround you—having to be at least ten of them on their nimble legs and thin tails. Everything is distant to you; separated. A knife could be driven through your heart, and you wouldn’t even realize it until minutes later, bleeding out on the grass. 

The hounds are afraid of you. 

They dart forward and balk back, your scent driving them up a wall until rabid slobber drips from their maws. Torchlight pulls through the trees—quicker now, running. Fangs nick your shoulder and you yell, shoving up to your backside as the world swirls, shuffling away as the dogs snarl. Their eyes are red-huen. Drunk off fear and order. 

Your head darts and shifts, blood dripping off your chin to travel down the flesh of your stomach and navel—so much crimson that the whites of your eyes are violent under the moon. Hands slipping over the wet grass, your face pulls and slackens in delirious confusion as you try to stand but fail. You cry out in sharp pain, and the dogs go wild in their kill circle, nearly attacking one another in anticipation. 

You glance down and see the black crossbow bolt sticking out of your thigh. 

The scent of wolfsbane in the air only then becomes clear to you, and the realization is slow. Wolfsbane—you’d been told about it by the village priest. It makes beasts of the night dumb and weak; minds unclear. 

In a moment of clarity, the reason behind your incurable hysteria becomes clear.

Lungs heaving and eyes far-off, the hunting party bursts through to where you stay, and you look up in animalistic fear. Figures dip and slip into one another, faces becoming demons as the visages melt into twos and threes. You yell out, sniffling and sobbing, trying to back up until the hounds grapple onto your shoulder and rip a chuck out of your arm. Screaming, your hand moves back, shoving at its snout before hands staple themselves to your wrist. 

“No!” You wail, injured leg dragging as you’re forced back into a heavy chest. Hot breath fans against your neck as multiple grips pull and touch you—shackling you down with rope and chains. Your throat screams itself raw, kicking and struggling futility. “Let go!”

You’re too weak—too drugged off wolfsbane and blood loss. Rotting teeth move across the canvas of a smeared painting, you can’t focus beyond the riot of your heart inside of your ribs.  

Grubby hands snap under your chin, digging into your flesh as you cry, not able to move as the restraints are tightened. A silver muzzle is slapped over your jaw. Dark eyes shimmer as you rage—aggravating the bolt wound until fresh blood forms a puddle on the ground, which the dogs lick their lips at. 

“Look at that,” a low, lust-filled voice eases out, and hands around your body tightening as you squirm, head spinning. Silver and wolfsbane. Your eyes snap to fight the sudden flood of fuzzy heaviness in your body.  “Pretty little Hell-Beast, eh? Almost seems a bit strange to have the Spector be her. Think that hunter shot the right bitch?”

“Course,” another grunt, a hand grabs the top of your head, jerking it up as your head lulls along with the force. You can barely focus on the words being said. “He isn’t a fuckin’ twat. Killed a werewolf in the next village over, too. Heard he skinned the fucker and took its head for his mantlepiece—just like the vampire skull he wears.” A pause. The dogs are still barking—echoing out in the trees. You can’t feel your legs. “Isn’t that right, Hunter?!”

A shout is sent into trees as your panic breeds with the drug, eyelids drooping as your head is snapped and moved by your hair. Your buggy eyes don’t focus on the man until he steps into the torchlight, the crowd parting for him as the metal of your chains drags and clinks together. 

It’s as if the very blackness of night takes human form. 

The man, the Hunter, is tall—very tall. He looms like an aloof animal over most of the others here with his dark boots and his black hood, and yet, under the fabric, there is no whisper of his face. 

Only the upper visage of a pure white skull, and two long, needle-pointed teeth where canines should be. 

“Ghost,” one of the men laughs, groping at your bleeding thigh before you shriek, muffled from behind the muzzle, and weakly kicked out. “Good shot, Mate. Right in the meat of the thing. Gave a good trail for the hounds.” 

Ghost blinks slowly, grunting under his breath as the large crossbow in his hands is shifted. He stays silent as your visible pulse hurries on as if you were a rabbit and not a wolf, watching from under the cover of his hood. The darkness of his clothes is blue in the moon—silver buttons down the length of a loose shirt and pants stuffed into boots. The hood is attached to a jacket, which itself extends down to his knees and sways lightly with every shift. The silent resting of weapons and tools is not lost to anyone. 

Belt of filled vials and large knives; a firearm over his back, and two pistols hidden on either thigh. That crossbow was still in his hands.

Brown eyes openly dig into your soul, dead as a corpse, and your voice whines as your thigh is finally released with a laugh. Your vision blacks and comes back a moment later as you try to breathe from behind the muzzle, gasping. That skull on his face…you don’t like it. It scares you. 

And the Hunter only continues to watch numbly as his wide shoulders stay stationary.

“Get the cage!” Someone roars, and you flinch, shrinking until a dog with short fur comes and nips at your ankles, the man holding you grinning sharply as you sob and shake.

“C’mon—expected more of a fight from you, Spector. Getting bullied by dogs, now? Ain’t that a twist of fate, then. Bet this devil’s whore can’t even walk with all that wolfsbane in ‘er, eh?”

A grumble of chuckles as the rattle of metal is in the distance. You grow more fearful, mind flashing to a burning stake and the trials you’d seen in village after village. No—no they can’t put you in a cage; they can’t put you on trial.

They’re going to make it hurt.

“Say we try it out.” A shadow comes closer and grabs you by the arm, ruthlessly shoving you to the ground. You cry out as your spine meets the earth, arms and legs kept under chains that tangle and screech in their metallic way. The rope that holds the muzzle pulls against your neck until you can’t breathe except in ragged wheezes. 

“Go on,” they taunt, some holding back the rampaging dogs just to watch you flail and shimmy. Your face grows hot as you struggle to sit up—shaking so violently you can’t focus on anything but the quiver. “Put on a show for us, Beasty!” 

Death would be better than this.

Tears hit the ground as the cage is finally brought into view, the men all groaning and annoyed that you hadn’t even attempted a forced shift or a desperate run into the trees. 

Ghost’s fingers, you notice from the side of your blurring eye, tighten minutely around the body of his weapon. You do not doubt that he’s wondering if it would be easier to just put a bolt through your eye right now. 

“Get it loaded up,” the Hunter’s voice is accented and gravel-like. As if rotting wood is being peeled back and scraped along gravel, he stares at you for a long moment and then glances at the dogs. “And get those fucking mutts under control.”

“Which one?” Is the low-blow joke, and the ruckus of loud amusement that follows makes you want to die. 

It’s not your fault, how do you tell them that? It’s not your fault.

Your throat bobs in an attempt to speak, but you can’t move your jaw from behind the restraint of your face—held tight to you as the men come back over and grapple for you again. The priest was right, wolfsbane makes werewolves sluggish.

You can do nothing as you’re ruthlessly dropped into a silver cage, borrowed, no doubt, from the Vatican itself, and christened with holy water. But it was a funny thing, really, and the dark humor wasn’t lost to you even like this. There was nothing godly about this contraption.

Locked in, you shove yourself immediately into a corner and hunch over, grasping at your thigh as the bolt still leaks fluid in a long trail over the ground. The pain is so great in your head, that the physical agony is little—a bullet wound to a sliver. 

Your temple slams into the metal, smacking into it as your eyes shove themselves closed. 

Head hurts—hurts. I can’t think. Can’t think. It’s humming, my skull is breaking open.

Bile pools in the back of your throat, but the muzzle keeps it in, leaving you gagging as the cage is lifted with a grunt and carried by long poles; back to St. Francis' Village, no doubt, but you can’t…focus.

“Think you might ‘ave given her too much, then, Hunter,” one calls, slapping Ghost on the shoulder as the crowd follows after the panicking quarry. The large man only gives him a look from the side of his eye and the villager pulls away immediately, awkwardly chuckling before hurrying off after the others.

Brown eyes watch your bare body hunch and spasm, pupils wide as you’re carted off. 

He’d been generous with the wolfsbane, truth be told. He’d expected you to be…Ghost’s dark brows pull in from behind his grim mask…he’d expected you to be different.

Humming under his breath, the Hunter watches the torches disappear into the trees and lets his gaze linger on you. 

There was something…off.

Blinking, he turns, eyes studying the place where they’d found you with sharp attention that misses nothing—not even the birds that come back to settle into the trees again. Large boots shift through the grass, and as he’s re-settling the crossbow in his hands, his eyes find something glinting. 

Watching, Ghost takes another step and brings his body to the item in the grass, hidden, before he kneels. Digging with large digits, the Hunter’s hands loop through the chain of a necklace, dragging it through the torn earth until he can gaze at it fully under the light of the moon.

Blinking in slight surprise, Ghost finds the body of a silver bullet hanging from the confines of a leather strap. Brown eyes shifting to look over his shoulder, the man listens to the cheers and merriment of the hunting party mutely. A simmering understanding brews in his gut. It’s only one that you could know from years of experience doing just as he had—hunting and being hunted in turn with a knowledge of all things dark and unholy.

It could never be easy, could it?

A low grunt later, the man sighs out a deep, “Fucking hell,” and moves to slowly stand, slinking back into the darkness. 

—

They kept you in the cage and set it on display in the middle of town for days.

Shivering now from the cold more than the wolfsbane, you stay collapsed into yourself as people come past to poke and prod at you—even sticking knives into the slits of the cage and digging them into you like an animal until your flesh was marked and brutalized. 

You don’t remember what it’s like to not be bloody.

The bolt wound was festering; infected. You dare not touch it, because the pain only makes you want to vomit, and if you do, you’ll most likely suffocate on your own bile before the trial ever happens. 

Yet, on the fourth night of this, as your eyelids flutter and your body grows weaker, a shadow comes to visit. 

“You weren’t born one.” It isn’t a question, but the sudden voice makes you startle. 

Eyes locking onto Ghosts’, your mind flies with fear—thinking that perhaps there’s more abuse that you’ll be put through. But no…the man has no weapons on him tonight. Only a long knife at his belt. The mask stays. 

You stare, unable to speak as your fingers twitch.

Grunting, Ghost’s head tilts, gaze moving up and down as you curl in tighter around yourself. A cold breeze rips through the square, and your eyes clench closed with breaking will. When you open them again, the Hunter is kneeling by the cage, and holding up something in his hand loosely. 

“You going to behave if I take that muzzle off?” You nearly gasped at the hanging image of your necklace—a silver bullet on a leather strap; that dark and heavy thing usually kept around your neck. A reminder.

After a moment of wide-eyed staring, you nod quickly to his question, a desperate, pleading thing without the need to utter words. Please, you want to scream at him, take it off.

Ghost’s eyes are as dark as a mound of dirt, sharply intelligent and filled with an unflinching reality. He doesn’t care what you are, and he won’t until you speak to him and let him judge your character far before any courtroom can. The man knows what a lie is better than any priest. 

“Good,” he says curtly, accent far more deep as he thinks, re-capturing the bullet in his palm and standing before he shuffles it into his pocket. 

You can’t help the anxiety as Ghost moves forward, loping to the side of the cage with the side of his eyes on you incessantly. It’s obvious how his other hand lays limp on the hilt of his blade that, with only one wrong move, you’d feel the chill of the edge with no time at all. 

But the temptation of getting this muzzle off was too good to ruin, and so, you stay as still as you’re able as crows call in the distance and the deadness of the town leaks into your blood. 

Ghost moves his free hand and orders, blankly, “Closer.” 

You hesitate, body tight before you drag your face closer to the bars, angling it parallel with the metal so the tight bind on the back can be taken up. The fear can be smelt the second your eyes have to break contact with his with the turn of your head—neither of you trusts the other. 

Ghost hums under his breath at the sight of your broken body coming farther into the open light of the moon, the whites of your eyes all the more visible from under the slathering of blood and tears. He hadn’t been absent to witness the abuse you’d been put through, even if the coin from his successful hunt was feeding him at the inn, a small window allowed the tight view of your torment at the hands of the people you’d once lived around. 

But the reality was that you’d killed people—scores of them—and yet the worst part of it was that he wasn’t sure if you even knew that.

It took four nights for him to break his only rule: never get involved after the job’s done.

But the hunch he had was too important to ignore. 

Large fingers latch onto the knot at the base of your skull through the cage itself, Ghost grunting at the sight ahead of him. The rope had been gradually chafing over your flesh, peeling back hair and skin until only the bloody meat was left—Simon had to wonder if the people of this village even wanted you alive for the trial or not at this rate. You’d be dead by tomorrow if that infected bolt at your thigh wasn’t taken care of.

Despite himself, a part of his chest tightens at the sight of the thing sticking out of your leg, dripping a yellowish puss. It had been a good shot, and he had overcoated the bolt in wolfsbane. 

Ghost hadn’t expected you to be so susceptible to it—most werewolves only got slower, but you…you seemed to have a stronger reaction. He files that fact away and tilts his masked face to the side. 

Grasping at his blade, the sound of a knife being slipped out of a sheath makes you startle, jerking your head back and shoving away even as your muffed whine of pain falls out. Ghost momentarily readies himself for an attack, but the way you force your mangled body to the opposite corner has him grumbling out a hard, “Easy.” 

The Hunter raises the blade, watching you with unblinking eyes. Your body shakes; panting. It was like calming a feral dog.

“You want the thing off or not? Have to cut it.” Once more, the man rises and walks over, boots almost silent over the small raised platform the cage had been set on like a trophy, you inside are comparable to the golden coins that greedy eyes touch and run their dirty hands over. 

Your mind is a troubled thing as you watch this Hunter and his crude knife come closer, kneeling again, and motioning with two fingers to shift your head. 

“Out ‘ere,” Ghost says, brown eyes not letting you guess anything about his true motives. “Don’t have time to fuck around. Guards’ll make a round soon and I’d rather not get caught wide-eyed.” 

Your brows pull in, hands clenching and unclenching in your lap as goosebumps travel the length of every limb. You were tired—hungry and thirsty; there were open wounds that burned with infection and ones that were crusted over with dirt and grime. You can’t feel your toes, and the tips of your fingers have long since gone numb. 

The thought of getting this muzzle off was like the promise of heaven being dangled in front of your nose. Your hesitation this time is far longer than the first, moonlight glinting off the visible blade in Ghost’s hand as he stares. That mask holds death. 

The hood is gone from him—only that pale bone left and sewn into dark, dark, fabric. The sharpness of the teeth leaves your throat bobbing in a nervous swallow as your head carefully shifts to rest on the bars. Bending, you present the knot once more and try not to focus on the way Ghost’s attention is fully on your expanding lungs; the pulse that is seen through the meat of your neck. 

But he says nothing before his fingers once more grasp the rope and the tip of the knife slips up. You don’t even feel it before the sudden slackening of the muzzle, and then the thing slips from your face before it slaps the bottom of the cage with a dull thump. 

The first thing you do is vomit. 

Spine pulling in, your body jerks as the bile that had been in the back of your throat rockets out, restrained hands slapping the ground as the acidic concoction leaks from between your torn lips. Face on fire, you choke and retch for what seems like minutes before you can finally breathe in the damp air—the innate shame and disgust rolling through as you cough raggedly. 

It’s only after you’d forgotten the man kneeling outside that he seems to remind you of his presence with a grumble. 

“Breathe. It’s no use if you can’t speak to me.”

A weak, quivering glare comes across your eyes, saliva dripping off your chin as your tongue moves to lick at your lips. But the brown gaze is as immovable as stone. Finding it pointless, your hands come up and delicately touch the base of your skull, only making you flinch when the fresh blood pools down and over your neck, licking at your shoulders. Tiny droplets fall to hit the metal one at a time. 

Ghost’s fingers twitch as he puts the knife away. 

“Who bit you?” You stare at him, hands falling before your wrists rub at the aggravated skin of your jaw. He shifts his head, voice slow but heavy. “Speak.”

“...I’m not a dog,” your voice is scratchy, hoarse. You send a small glance his way, mouth open and nostrils flaring in an attempt to bring in the oxygen you’d been lacking. 

“Really?” A hidden eyebrow is slowly raised. “Hell, coulda fooled me.” 

“Damn you,” you whisper, not meeting his gaze as you shuffle back. The crossbow bolt catches on one of the cage’s bars and you bite on your lip to stop the shrill yell that threatens to exit. Head moving, you lightly slam your skull into the wall in pain. 

Breath hitched, you clench your trembling jaw tight. 

“Speak or don’t,” Ghost grunts, and he makes a move to stand. “Your funeral.” 

A spark of fear stabs you as he begins to shift, and you can’t explain why. Perhaps it was because it was the first conversation you can remember having lately that wasn’t one-sided or on the edge of a blade.

“W-wait,” you stutter, blinking through the blood. The Hunter doesn’t slow, and then he’s on his feet and fixing the gloves over his fingers, flexing his hands before his foot begins to pivot— 

“Please, don’t go,” your voice is thin and pleading, echoing through the street. “I’ll answer your questions, any of them you want,” the sentence cracks through a dry throat, tears welling. “Please, don’t leave me here alone.” 

Ghost had half of his body turned away before it went rigid; the side of his dead eyes flash to you, swirling with specs of moonlit silver. A hunter and a werewolf lock gazes, great beasts respectively brought together in seconds that seep into slow minutes of delicate need.

Knowledge and company. Understanding and a horrible fellowship. 

The Hunter’s eyes twitch in their ever-narrow resting place, glancing away before he mutely moves back to where he was before. 

He wastes no time.

“Who bloody bit you?” 

You stifle a pathetic sigh of great relief, taking company with a man who had shot you not days before. Yet the ability to speak and be heard was a commodity that was dimming each and every day.

“It was already fully turned,” you speak quickly, tongue tripping. “A big wolf—a gray one with eyes like the sky.” 

Ghost glares to the side. Gray? There were no contracts for gray werewolves with blue eyes in the area. Only you—only Specter. The next question is just as stiff. 

“When?”

“Three years ago,” your lips move. “Only three years, I promise.” Brown eyes narrow slowly, fingers tapping the fabric of his pants once before he makes a noise in the back of his throat. Ghost’s jaw clenches, mind working through the hoops that need to be jumped. 

To you, the questions might seem pointless, but to a hunter, they were important—very important. Werewolves who are born afflicted with this moon-drunkenness are different from those turned by a bite. Not only are shifts from turned werewolves more violent, more deadly, but they rarely know their own actions from that of the frenzy under their skin; those that are born as such are rarely out of control, unlike your faction. 

The only question now was if Ghost could condemn you to death when it was obvious your human form was entirely different and you had no semblance of an idea of what was going on. Was it even his problem to care about? Even looking at you now, the man blinked away from cuts and inflicted injuries—the muzzle on the ground. 

The blood and the bolt.

He’d known it had been a foolish play to bring all of those townsfolk with him on this hunt but he needed their knowledge of the terrain; he hadn’t passed through St. Francis’ before. At the time, Ghost hadn’t been averse to assistance as long as he got the job done in his own fashion: capture or kill, the contract had stated. Rarely was he known for capture.

Maybe, deep down, he’d known something was already wrong about this.

“Show me it,” the Hunter grunts, staring you down, a deep anticipation growing in his bones. He had to make sure you weren’t lying.

You lick your lips, face pulling with every twitch and sway of your form. The black at the edges of your vision was coming back, and you blinked quickly, chains dragging before you shifted your back with a quivering breath. The punctures were difficult to see through all of the gore, but Ghost made do as he grabbed at the waterskin at his waist and the rag hanging from his belt. 

Flooding the fabric in the lukewarm water, he hums out a firm, “Don’t move. Cleanin’ it,” before you feel the press of the rag to your back. 

Gasping lightly, you almost jerk away before the sensation becomes a nearly welcomed one—the drag and slight scrape of rough material. Your averted eyes dip lower, staring at nothing as your heart momentarily slows to a normal pace. Ghost cleans the areas where the swell of scar tissue is the most obvious, and, one by one, the violent groves spread out like a slash of paint over canvas. Along the left side of your waist, the blood gives way to a dented ‘v’ shape of healed punctures. Deep, dragging; a point to where your side was almost ripped away before it broke off swiftly. 

Ghost’s dark eyes fight the need to widen, and that hidden blankness stays. 

A great gray wolf with blue eyes…

His mask tilts, head shifting as his gaze moves slowly. Gloved fingers twitch to touch them, moving in an almost examining way that befits a surgeon and not a decapitator. Your breath is held in the back of your throat, but you sag nearly entirely into the bars of the cage, growing more unsteady by the second. 

The scent of infection is so strong it makes your head burn, and you’re overtaken by it as Ghost’s presence suddenly disappears. 

You don’t know if it’s minutes or hours before you understand that you’re alone again, but when your limp neck finally turns to wonder where your silent captor is, you are greeted with nothing but moonlight. Blinking through the sludge behind your eyes, the sinking in your gut was stark and sudden—like a knife dragging itself from gullet to navel. 

But all you offer is a light whine as more blood moves to cover the places where Ghost’s rag had just cleaned. You were scared of him, no doubt. A hunter through and through down to the vampiric skull on his face and the shroud of death at every inch of his form. 

He’d shot you and drugged you with wolfsbane. Found your necklace. 

So why had he talked to you?

Your head is too muddled for this, too delicate. Like the crimson under your nails, it dries and flakes off of your brain as the lack of distraction breeds stored agony. There wasn’t anything left to focus on besides the upcoming trial, your death, and the pain that doesn’t let you sleep except for now, on the brink of not rest but unconsciousness. 

And at the sound of a key being slotted into the silver of your cage’s door, only then does your body slump with the weight of doom. 

You don’t even feel the hand that grasps at your ankle.

—

The sway of the horse makes your teeth clatter with every clop of hooves. 

Your conscience mostly comes and goes, only staying in thin seconds where you feel the press of clean bandages on your afflicted flesh and the tipping of warm broth into your mouth. Grass under your head. 

Blankets being shuffled over your clothed body when you shiver. 

When you’re finally able to speak, when the horse is moving along and hands keep your back stuck to a strong chest, it’s a low, garbled, “Ow.”

Ghost barely blinks down to your head as it slumps to the gait of his horse, glancing before his attention returns to the thin forest trail ahead of him. You’d made noises in your sleep often enough—this was no different except for the fact he felt your shoulders flex.

Slowing the horse with a pull on the reins, the dappled mare settles to a walk. 

“You up, then?” Ghost hums, his hand around your waist tightening as you groan under your breath. “Good. Thought I was dragging a corpse—would have wasted my bandages.” 

Your eyes shudder as they open into the light, having to focus on moving them before the sting of the sun makes them water. But you do, and then the confusion outweighs the numb stinging of tended wounds. 

Head shifting, you look behind you slowly with wide eyes as the horse under both of you snorts.

Brown eyes watch you before a dark brow twitches upward. “What is it?” 

You just blink, mouth slightly open. 

“Where…am I?” 

“Forest.” Ghost states matter-of-factly. 

If you had the energy to glare, you would have. Seeing that nothing will get the man into a proper conversation—he was a brick wall even now—you look down at yourself and land on the scarred forearm that keeps you secure on the saddle. Ghost’s gloves were still on, but the sleeve of his dark shirt had ridden back to his upper forearm, and in the wake of pale skin, you find the black ink of all manner of warfare. 

Werewolf skulls; vampire fangs and fire. The slash of inkish chains with skeletons. 

Your lips thin, your senses slowly becoming your friend again as you stare at the snarling face of a needle-hewn wolf. Eyes tightening as the horse moves to the left, your body follows the reactive action before Ghost’s pressure tightens once more, visibly veins behind the pale flesh. You move on, seeing the thin tunic and pants over your body—feeling under that, the bind of wrappings with the scents of mashed yarrow leaves in the fabric. 

They’d been re-applied recently, too. 

“Stay still unless you want to re-open them,” Ghost utters, eyes scanning the trees for unseen threats. It was midday by now, the sun high above the trees watching the both of you on your trek to seemingly nowhere. “We’re far enough away, but I want more distance before I take the time to close them fully.”  

“The trial,” your arm moves up, fingers grazing the side of your nose before it falls back down. Ghost can feel the air heat with unease. “The…the cage?”

“Trial was two days ago,” he draws, thighs shifting over the saddle. “Give or take.” 

The confession isn’t as shocking now that you have woken up here, but the lack of remembrance on your part of that time startles you. It’s a blank slate—just like the aftermath of your shifts. You don’t like not knowing. 

The next question comes out with a haggard cough, sweat dripping off your nose. “Why?”

“You’re going to tell me ‘bout the werewolf that made you,” the Hunter grunts. “And you can’t speak if you’re lit up like a pig on a spit. Took you the night we met in the square.” 

Through it all, Ghost barely looks at you—always his attention keeps to the trees and the shadows that linger; seeming to listen. He knows more than anyone that they do. 

The horse continues on, your pain surfaces again, and with a shuddering breath, you fall into a fitful sleep once more. The arm around your body tightens, and the warmth it lends is accented when Ghost’s shifting gaze glances at the top of your head. He wears an expression he can’t name yet.

When the throws of fever pull their curtains back for the last time, it shows you the slats of the attic above your head, wood polished and clean as the heat of fire moves over your body. Pulling a large inhalation of air into your lungs, you blink softly as if clearing away cobwebs with a broom—willing sense to return in the few seconds it had flown away. 

The furs are warm. 

In the village, you weren’t anyone of standing. A simple woman—unwed, and, thus, unimportant due to the era the world sees itself in. It wasn’t all bad…namely, it hid your affliction far longer than you could have hoped it did. You had a small piece of family land passed down to you on the edge of the village, and that was where you stayed. Nothing fancy; a hearth, a large, single-room property with a garden and a well. You were known to keep sheep, a fact that had caused perhaps a few hysterical chuckling fits when, every full moon, one or two went missing, but it gave you the ability to accumulate money and, more importantly, an alibi. 

Who would suspect a werewolf to own sheep?

But this home already had a more detached feel to it—something removed. The air was sterile, somehow. Groaning, your face tightens before you rise to the palms of your hands, muscles quivering to keep the strength your stubbornness gives to them. Half-vertical, you turn and study the area. 

Square, the four walls are stone with mortar and clay to keep the rounded blobs together. You’re on the ground floor, a staircase to the far right while the bed is stuck into the left corner; a nightstand sitting void of all except a single chamber-wick holding an unused candle. A sturdy table with one wooden chair, a stone fireplace set into the same wall the headboard is level with, and a large oak door.

There are runes written on it. 

You can’t make sense of what they mean, but when you see them, your tiny-pupiled eyes slip to the rest, all placed at windows or near some point of entry—unassuming things until you realize why they were red in color.

Your shoulders tighten, and whatever bit of magic moves through your skin lets your nose pull to the scent of human blood. 

You clear your throat and look away, licking your lips with a dry tongue. Moving your toes under the two bear furs that rest at your abdomen, you notice the lack of earth-shattering pain that accompanies it, and, shifting a hesitant hand, you grab the edge and push it back a bit farther. 

Bandages with perfect ties meet you, void of any crimson staining. 

Truth be told, you expected more of a Hunter’s home—skulls; trophies. The town always spoke of burnt bodies strung up on crosses that mark the property of those in this profession, a ward and a sign of grim hope. Vampires mostly, wasting away in the brutal sun. Others as well. Werewolf fur and witch bones shoved in blessed boxes. 

This place is almost normal, you think, thighs shifting over the dip of the bed as your finger runs the white wrappings where the bolt should be. Your mind dares not go to how he got the thing out of you, and at the stretch of sutures, you take your curious grip off of it entirely. 

Looking around once more, your brows furrowed tightly. 

Where was the man? The hunter responsible for your current predicament? Ghost. With his vampire skull mask and his black attire—a hellhound with dark ink and intentions. More importantly…

Why were you still alive?

Your memories come back slowly as you stand, bare feet moving to the floor as the tunic over your upper half falls to your knees at the verticality of your spine. They creak a bit, the bones, at the ability to stand fully upwards and not be impaired by bars of silver. A strength seeps through you slowly. 

In the deafening silence, you clear your throat tinily and lightly itch at the clean flesh at the back of your neck where the muzzle sat; rubbed raw now scabbed and healing with the spread of natural oil balms. Taking in a slow breath, you step forward with a heavy limp and watch the door, glancing at locked trunks and cupboards, eyes blinking. Your muscles ached, but the sting only served as a way to remind you that you were still here—living. Few in your position were granted second chances. 

You’re about to study the runes at the door when you’re called to with the creak of the stairs in your left ear. 

“Wouldn’t recommend it.” Your head snaps over, blinking quickly. 

Ghost carries the leather holders of his twin pistols in one hand, the bodies of the weapons in them hanging as he comes to ground level one step at a time. Brown eyes glance over through the confines of his skeletal face-covering as he walks to the table, placing down the items. 

“Keeps the spirits out—smudge ‘em and the house gets haunted,” he grunts. “Rather not bleed myself again to get the runes copied.” 

You stare in mild shock, sound sparking from the back of your throat. “...Right.” 

Side-eyeing the markings, you shiver and step back from the door, silent as Ghost seems to focus on his task at hand—looking over his weapons.

Large hands running the metal and wood, the pistols in his grip shift as the drying light of the day streams in through the curtains of the windows. He touches them intimately, knowing every grove and dip until he tilts one and rubs away a slash of dirt from the barrel with his bare thumb. 

You quickly turn awkward, looking down at yourself and the bareness of your lower legs. It wasn’t lost to you that the man was the reason you were in this situation in the first place. 

“You shot me,” you grumble—not unlike someone who had a knife to their throat. 

“Affirmative,” Ghost says nonchalantly. You get a slow, blank glance and nothing more. 

“Have you drugged me?” You ask, heart speeding up. There wasn’t anywhere to go—not without an escape plan and with Ghost in front of you.

“Wolfsbane?” The Hunter shifts his thighs, boots moving over the hardwood. “Negative. Not yet.” 

“Yet?” An attitude seeps in, lips thinning. 

Ghost sighs under his breath, slipping the pistols back into their holsters. “Forgetting about how we met, Love?” 

“No,” you huff. “Not really.”

“Perfect.” Eyelids pull down slightly. “Don’t.” Ghost nods his head to the table's chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “Sit.” 

“I told you I’m not a—” A sharp, numb look makes your snappy reply stall itself, and you stand there for more than a minute before you find the pointlessness of this.

You limp forward and sit in the chair.

Looping your arms around your waist, you glare to the side as your skin crawls at the unblinking eyes that stare. Ghost rolls his shoulders, tilting his head. 

“What do you know about the werewolf that bit you beyond appearance?” 

“Nothing,” you chuckle hopelessly, moving a finger in confusion. “I…I don’t know why you’re asking me about it—it’s not like I had a conversation with him.”

The Hunter blinks at your sudden confidence, unable to separate your form now from the one in the cage; blubbering ceaselessly in a grassy clearing. But lesser pains always bring out someone's true colors. As long as you told him what he needed to know.

Ghost explains with a sheen of dull annoyance. “Every turned werewolf holds a connection to the one that bit them. It’s pack mentality.” At your blank look, his brows pull in, the mask shifting. “You telling me you’ve never come back into contact?”

“...No?” Your lips dip. “For three years I’ve been by myself with this.” 

Brown digs into your face, a small sheen of confusion slipping in to tighten them, around his biceps, Ghost’s fingers twitch. 

You lick your lips, speaking up in the impending silence. “I don’t remember anything after I turn. Is that normal?”

“For you?” He mutters, still not taking his eyes off of you. “Yes.” 

“I’m not going to pretend like I know what’s going to happen,” you shrug. “But at the very least I want to try and understand why I’m like this.” You open and close your mouth for a moment. “Before you kill me, anyways.” 

“If I wanted you dead,” Ghost grunts through a half-amused tilt of his head. He doesn’t beat around the bush. “...You would be.” 

“‘Capture or kill,’” you huff. You’d seen the flyers; heard from word of mouth. “Right.” You sigh. “They’ll track you down, you know. They’re not going to just let you take me.”

“They won’t make it through the forest. Bastards would get lost on the trail.” The Hunter moves until he can grasp the waterskin from the counter, dragging it over with his hand. He tosses it to the main table in your direction after he comes back over, and you hesitantly reach forward and pull the top off. Ghost changes the subject back to his studies of your condition closely. Dark eyes slip down your front as your lips part to take up the liquid. “Before your shift, tell me what you see.”

Your throat bobs as you drink the water, thirsty as it soothes your dry mouth. You hum, but the inquiry makes your hair rise. Your arm wipes at your mouth as you lower the waterskin, a small thankfulness in your heart. “It’s less of what I see and more of what I hear and smell—blood; metal. River water. I…” Your chest tightens. “I feel my bones breaking and I hear howling mixing with whispers.”

“Whispers?” Ghost leans, eyes alighting with dim interest. “What’re they saying?”

“I try to block it out,” you whisper, not exactly answering. “Makes it go faster.” 

A long nothingness ensues. 

The impending night grows deeper, and then Ghost finally speaks again after you begin to shift with unease. He nods firmly, tilting his head as if it’s already been decided. 

“Next full moon, you’re going to listen to them.” 

Your horrified face snaps up. It’s a moment of stuttering before you force out a heavy, “What? No!”

He’s already turned, moving back over to the stairs and placing one foot on the steps. 

“Ghost!” You yell, face devoid of blood.

He side-eyes you. “Go back to bed. You’re dead on your feet.” 

And then the same man who shot you in the thigh with little remorse disappears into the attic.  

—

The Hunter was a strange beast.

The days the two of you spent together were mostly silent—left with tight stares and tense shoulders. Clipped sentences. 

Ghost, for what it was worth, gave you space in this small house; as much as you could get. He kept himself up above while you stayed on ground level keeping yourself occupied. You’d gotten spare trousers and socks, a jacket, and the bed was practically yours with how your scent rolled off of it now. Yet, you had never been permitted to go outside. 

You’d seen the land from the windows—careful of the runes, of course, and it wasn’t anything… ghastly. A vegetable garden, a single-stall stable with a dappled mare, and a beaten-down trail out the front. 

No livestock.

No bodies. 

It was only when you had become ever more curious about your lupine curse that you braved the stairs to the attic—one week into the impromptu stay. It’s funny due to the fact that Ghost had never said that you couldn’t go up there sooner.

You stand now in the flat room with a sloping roof and find the man making bullets. It’s a long table, parallel to the walls in the center of the room; dark and covered in all manner of books and tomes. Grimoires tied up and locked. Racks of weapons with markings and blessings tied to sheets of ribbon…it was something you’d never seen before. 

Studying it now, the contents were a dark fascination. 

Ghost fiddles with his silver shell, mixing in gunpowder into the hollowness. He doesn’t speak until you do, but he knows you’re there.

“Tell me more about werewolves,” you speak through the air, and he waits before answering. “The ones who are born with it.”

“Rare,” Ghost comments, and you’re stuck by how willing he is to tell you about this. He puts down his bullet and picks up another. “Harder to find, even harder to kill. Unlike you, they know what goes on when they’re running ‘round. Fuckin’ nightmare to pick up the pieces—bloodbath.” You thin your lips. “Not all of ‘em are murderous, but they’re unpredictable. Can’t help but make packs.”

“Instinct,” you murmur, coming a bit closer. Ghost pauses, looking at you before huffing in the form of a gruff ‘yes.’ Your wondering continues. “But why am I alone then?”

“That’s the question,” the hunter says slowly. “Need to figure out why.” Brown eyes slowly move to you. “‘Fore more people end up dead. Or turned.”

“Can I,” you stop at the table, standing opposite the man. “Can I turn people, too?”

“No,” is all you’re given. Ghost’s eyes glint. “And I’d rather you didn’t bite on me to try.”

Your face heats.

Your attention focuses for a while on how he works—prepares for something unseen. He’d said he’d kept you alive to help him find the one who bit you, but he’d also cleaned your infected injuries, bandaged you, and fed you. Kept you warm. Safe. It was far more than could be said about your village.

However, it was strange how Ghost’s stark muteness was something that you found in the darker hours, a small comfort. When the moon was coming in from the windows, and you hid from its rays as if being stalked down, he once found you sleeping under the bed on the floor because of it.

He never said anything, just offered you a silent hand and helped you back out with a slow blink and a tilt of his head.

There was a distrust, obviously, but there was also an unspoken nearness. No one would make any sense of it—you couldn’t either. It was like a wolf and a raven; something built on hesitence but necessity. You didn’t like Ghost’s mask or his brutalist profession of shooting his wolfsbane-coated bolts, and he didn’t like that once a month you turned into a rampaging werewolf. 

Comparable things, really. 

But even here, in this workshop in his attic, you saw the need for this—for hunters. If you couldn’t stop yourself, there came a time when you had to be stopped. Truth be told, you expected it to be a quick and final end. Maybe that was just a foolish hope. 

A silver bullet would have always been your final song, you believed. Perhaps the very one that had once swung from around your neck; the one you’d never taken off until now. 

But then, perhaps that would have been your own brutalist profession.

“Thank you,” you nod. Ghost pauses, fingers stained with gunpowder. He blinks at the bullet in his hand as you continue. “I know you don’t care about anything beyond your work, but if you hadn’t gotten me out of that cage they would have burned me alive. Skinned me.” Your tongue pokes out of the side of your mouth. “I don’t know, but it wouldn’t have been kind. Job or not…thank you for getting me out of there.” 

“I shot you,” he utters, voice gravel. Ghost seemed confused.

Your lips flick. “I never said I forgave you for that part.”

A smooth chuckle wafts out over the attic and your own softly mirrors. Your head tilts somewhat quizzically. “But, about that…did you mean to put so much wolfsbane on it?”

Ghost shakes his head, grumbling. A small sense of honesty leaks out. “...Expected you to be bigger.”

You blink, and then, a few seconds later, a loud snort echoes like a ringing bell. 

The Hunter's unimpressed look only leads you to find him all the more enjoyable. “Shut it. Fuckin’ hell.”

A hand is waved from your party, dismissing the harsh snap. “Sorry, sorry.” You puff out amused air. “Spector not up to your expectations?”

Ghost nearly rolls his eyes, trying to focus on the task at hand. He didn’t mind your company, at the very least he knew he needed to keep an eye on you for any potentially forced shifts or hostile attitude. What he hadn’t expected was to find you so…different from your muzzled counterpart, your shared physical inhabitant. 

He could almost call you endearing if he wasn’t so numb to the sight and scent of reality. 

“Sightings were far between,” Ghost grunts. “Here-say. I took an educated guess—better to put something like you out of commission than drag my way out of a forest without legs.”

“No apology?” You try, tilting your head.

“None,” is the drawn response. “I don’t have regrets. You’re alive.” 

Your fingers touch the outside of one of his journals, tracing the bumps and grooves of age and wear. You hum, but don’t reply. Most of your pains have been pushed back now, even if you still weren’t up to full strength. Food and rest helped, but the anxiety that perpetuated only lengthened the healing process. 

When you can’t trust even yourself under the drunkenness of the moon, it only makes your fear of the sun worse. Everything made you afraid—most of all your mind; most of all, the future. 

“Why do you want to find the werewolf that turned me?” You have to speak this, have to push. Your curiosity demands it.

Ghost puts the bullet down and grabs a rag from his belt, mask turning to look your way as he brushes off his hands. He pauses, looming with that gargantuan height—natural intimidation in the span of his chest and the trunk that makes up his front. You find yourself in his shadow as he rubs at his fingers with the rag, taking it away and slotting it back into his belt a moment later. 

The man’s heat leaks into your body as he blinks over, glancing your form up and down in a single look; keeping a respectful distance but still making his attentions known. 

He stares. “If it keeps biting people, there won’t be any villages left to take up contracts from.”

“Money?” You frown.

“Principle,” Ghost counters, chest rising and falling steadily. “There needs to be a middle ground. Too many feral werewolves, too few people. Cut off the head.”

“Ominous,” your form turns to his, itching at the back of your head again—the scabbing skin. “If what you said was true, how do you know the thing isn’t already dead? If it hasn’t tried to get to me, what was the point of making me?”

“Because you hadn’t left St. Francis’ by the time I put a bolt in you.” Ghost grumbles, rubbing a hand on his bicep, itching above the fabric of his tunic. He stretches with a grunt—and you see his shirt ride up and the pale skin underneath. You gawk for a moment at the length of scars and brutal muscle.

“Charming,” you dryly utter, stuttering in a brief second of pulling back your senses, but the Hunter continues on, ignoring you.

“That was where you were turned—your territory. You stayed because your leader is still close by waiting.” Legs shift, and all of a sudden, a body is over you, hands are on the base of your skull, pushing your own away as brown eyes dig into the injury you pick at. 

Your breath hitches, tensing for a second as your spine straightens. You watch widely from the corner of your eye as Ghost runs a careful hand over the flesh. He puffs a breath, chest moving in a grunt that is both commonplace and expected, yet the brush of his chest to your shoulder is not. 

You restrain a shiver, nostrils moving to the overwhelming swell of leather and gunpowder. Bone fragments; the tang of whiskey. 

His skin as he runs a thumb over the edge of your wound.

“It’ll start cracking.” Ghost utters, and through his fabric, you feel the brush of speech. “Have to apply more balm. Stop messing with it unless you want stitches soon.” 

It takes a moment more of his surgical study and a small clearing of your throat before you can speak. Your mind changes the subject for you.

“So…if my bite can’t turn anyone,” you breathe, nearly sagging as Ghost’s fingers catch in your hair, shifting it under his attention to get a better look. He listens, you know. He wasn’t good at talking, but he always listened. “Why did they muzzle me?”

For a brief instance, you think you feel the Hunter’s fingers jerk a tiny amount—some reactionary muscle twitch that leads your body to still. 

Ghost can’t say why he did that, though perhaps it was the sudden flash of the injuries that he’d wrapped on the road back to his property that went over his eyelids. Or the cage—your pleading face aching for whatever small sliver of brutish company you can get. 

The silver bullet that he still had in his pocket, attached to that leather cord. He knew the purpose; the intent. Just as he knew the scrape of scabbing under his fingertips. 

“Control,” he grumbles, and it’s all he’ll say. 

Your burning face is somewhat down-turned, letting him do as he must, study what he can. He hadn’t made any moves to endanger you, and besides the upcoming full moon, there was nothing here that screamed imminent danger. Danger as a general, yes, of course. You were a werewolf in a hunter’s home—it would always be…your eyes flutter when his fingertips drag over your scalp…it would always be danger….dangerous.

Ghost doesn’t think you notice it, but your eyes are drooping. 

He watches after the slight shock wears off, a tiny smirk flickering the hidden skin of his lips after he realizes the reason. If you had a tail, he’d assume it would be moving in a soft arch by now. 

The man was mildly amused at that, and before he moved away fully, he had to stop himself from uttering a sarcastic, ‘like that, then?’ 

He had to remind himself not to get attached to whatever…this was. He was using you as bait, as some key to his problem. Not a companion. The distance here had to be firm and heavy-handed. 

“The balm is down in my packs,” he grunts, leaving just as his name implied before you had the chance to gather your bearings and the lack of caressing heat. You startle back to the attic room, eyes wide and face loose before Ghost’s retreating footsteps echo on the stairs. “Don’t bloody use it all, then.”

The front door opens and closes with a pull of weighted wood.

—

“I can’t do this,” you mutter, pacing alone in the middle of the night down in the living room 

The full moon was tomorrow. 

“I can’t do it,” you itch at the back of your head, peeling at the nearly healed flesh harshly. Your nails dig into the soft tissue, drilling like a knife. A bead of blood slips around your fingers, but it doesn't stop you.

It’s late—late enough to know that Ghost should be asleep by now. For days, the paranoia, just like always, builds until you are nearly as mute as your Hunter. No more curiously searching his attic; no more questions about his job or how he got into this business. Brown eyes had been lingering more as the days went by, this strange companionship growing. You knew, in his own way, he was…worried.

So silent, even he had been getting noticeably uneasy. Shifting legs and quick glances. Nights where you hid under the bed from the moon until lunch came around, Ghost speaking as easily as he could to try and coax you out to no avail. You, a feral dog with white-rimmed eyes. 

At supper, only hours before this panicked pacing, you had told something to Ghost that made him double-take. 

“If I can’t stop it…I need you to shoot me. In the head.”

He’d never answered, but his eyes seemed to get ever-sharper as the hours continued on. More tense. Ansty.

But…that was his job, wasn’t it? 

“Can’t do it,” you murmur. Blood slips down your wrist. “It isn’t right—”

“Spector?” Ghost’s voice had become so familiar to you that the only thing that made your heart skyrocket was the sudden call of it. Your gasp is sharp from behind a panted breath, hand flinching away from the crater you were steadily digging in your skull. A long string of blood trails into the air as your fingers jerk away, and it’s only then that you notice the deep pangs of pain.

Your eyes shudder for a second as Ghost’s form makes it to ground level. He comes over slowly, attention staying on the way the moonlight makes the crimson stains glint from the dripping line seeping into the sleeve of your tunic. He blinks, and you both stand.

The man’s skeletal adornment was missing, though the fabric under remained. A loose sleep shirt and pants, stained by the rays of night. 

“Let me see,” he sighs under his breath, a tiny rasp telling of the sleep he’d been awoken from.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” you utter. He doesn’t seem to care, grabbing your wrist and pulling the limb away as his body takes up presence behind you. 

“Was already awake,” Ghost grunts, eyes narrowing in hidden worry. You calm down a bit at that, one less problem to worry yourself about. 

The Hunter, quietly, leaves for a second and grabs his pouch near the door. With a muffled command, he nods to the bed until you’re backing up and hitting the back of your knees off of it, sitting. 

Ghost lights the candle on the nightstand and opens his belongings with stiff glances your way. He noticeably doesn’t ask why you’ve harmed yourself like this.

“I can’t,” you say it like a plea for help. “Ghost, I can’t do it again.” 

Hands fiddle with clean bandages and take out his waterskin. The man douses a rag with the liquid and comes over, shifting onto the bed and lightly turning you so your back is to him—legs half hanging off. 

The hard press of cold water makes your breath hitch, and you bite your lip.

“It hurts,” you push out. Ghost knows you’re not talking about the newly opened wound. 

“Breathe,” he says to you, seeing the way your sides expand with heavy lungs. Brown eyes flutter from the push of his large hand to the warmth of your shaking flesh. “Tell me about your home, yeah? Heard you lived in your own place.”

The question makes you double-take.

He’s asking me that? Here? Now? Hours away from perhaps another catastrophe?

Yet, you can’t help the slippage of your tongue as Ghost’s fingers rub into your scalp. The rag is lessened, and, soon, the material is rubbed gently over the sore itch of weeping skin. You fight a whimper and reply with an addled mind. 

“It…it’s quiet. Calm. I always keep the candles going because I don’t like the dark.” Ghost works quietly and quickly. 

“There,” he grunts, glancing at the flickering light of the candle he lit. He’d have to remember that. “And?”

“I kept sheep.”

He pauses, and, without meaning to, a soft scoff bounces off the confines of his chest. It catches your attention far better than a bullet could. Ghost shifts a needle and thread out of his gathering of items, taking away his limbs only for the short while it takes him to loop the two together. 

“How many?” The masked man asks, amusement gone just as quickly as it had come. 

“Only a handful,” you whisper. Your mouth opens and closes, glancing over your shoulder as the candle-light spills out over the room; casting shadows over Ghost’s face, catching on his long eyelashes. Those browns of his glint like tree trunks covered in dew.

“Please,” your words are muffled. Eyes wide and fearful, there isn’t anything that can console you on this. “You need to kill me.”

There was a dichotomy to you—a violent thing. You didn’t want to die, no, you feared it heavily, more than the moon, but the truth was that you couldn’t keep going through this. The unknowing. The breaking bones, the blinding pain. The understanding that nothing that you do can stop it. 

“It hurts, Ghost,” your breath stutters. “More than taking off a limb, more than slicing yourself open and ripping out your intestines—it burns more than the light of the moon.”

The Hunter listens through all of it. He sits, he stares, and he hides the brimming sense of concern behind his dead eyes.

With a pulling of his eyebrows, Ghost’s free hand moves upwards and grabs your chin. Freezing, you study this phenomenon from over your shoulder, face on fire with eyes wide to the pale skin visible to your view. You hadn’t realized until now, but this was the most you’d seen of the man’s face. 

You could make out the point of his crooked nose—the strength of his jaw under the form-fitting fabric. Cheekbones and the heaviness of his brows. Wisps of hair. He had eyes like a cat, you had to admit; something sly about them despite the numbness that seemed to extend bone-deep. 

But his hands had been kind to you. 

Firmly, Ghost’s fingers run your flesh, and he blinks softly before a low sound echoes in his throat. He pushes carefully on your jaw and shifts your head back forward so he can help you. When he lets go, your heart quivers in your breast

“I’m ‘ere,” he mutters, and you feel the first stitch enter the thin flesh of your head. You take down deep breaths, focusing on the scrape of his fingertips and not the point of the needle. Ghost can understand the fear of it—of pain. It’s instinct. He tilts his head and pushes out, “I can only ask for one full moon from you, yeah? No more. I just need one.” 

“And if I can’t find the werewolf?” Your voice vibrates with emotion, staring down at your hands as Ghost’s chest brushes your spine. The scent of him was addling your brain; the rub and slide of his hands.

The Hunter’s jaw clenches softly. “...Then I let you go.”

It wasn’t what you were expecting, but anything from the time you’d gotten a bolt through the thigh was unknown territory, and, like a dog without a leash, you’d run into it. Your brows furrow, blood oozing down your neck before Ghost’s grip shifts to place the rag back again, swiping away firmly. 

“Go?” He nods, but you can’t see it. “But what about the hunt?”

“I can manage.” The stitching pauses. The air is broken up nearly a full minute later. “You’re not evil.” Before they start up again as if nothing was uttered aloud. 

The confession makes the sting in the back of your eyes start up again—a strong thing of confusion and vulnerability. Ghost continues his task, pulling together your skin one suture at a time until the injury is fully closed; clean. 

“Chin,” he lowly states, and you allow him to tap your jaw, shifting it up so the wrappings can loop above your ear and over your forehead—securing them. 

Even far after the blood has seeped through, the two of you stay.

—

Come morning, you already feel wrong.

Your body stays in bed, shaking—sweating. A large pain flairs in your chest over and over like a pulsing well in the earth, skin twitching with the spread of blood. Ghost sits beside the bed all the while, having dragged over his chair. He leans back into it, one arm over the side, hanging with the thing ever so often moving to rub at the back of his neck. 

You don’t think he’s moved since he brought it over last night; since he got another candle to stick into the holder—push back the dark. To watch, to study, or just to stave off your rising anxiety is another question. 

It’s only after the fourth time you try to rip at the stitches at the base of your skull that he finally grabs your hand and holds it silently. Now, his thumb moves over your knuckles—his gloves back on. 

At noon, he tries to suggest eating.

“Hungry?” Ghost asks. 

“No,” you say instantly, sweat dripping over your temple, your body partially buried under blankets. “No, I’ll just throw it up.” 

Brown eyes glint. “Just one bite?” 

Your mouth is already salivating—thoughts of wet flesh and blood in the forefront until you whine and shove your face into the pillow; panting heavily. 

Whispers dance in the shell of your ears. 

I’m here.

I’m here.

I’m here.

“Go away,” you whisper quickly to them. 

Ghost pauses, hesitating. After a moment, his thighs tense with the action of movement, thinking you’re speaking to him. Something swirls in his chest, but he starts to stand nonetheless.

Your eyes widen.

“No!” Both of your hands latch onto the Hunter’s wrist, fear a needle stuck in your gaze. “No, not you. Stay, please.”

A silver cage covered in blood slides across Ghost’s slightly shocked look, but he only licks at the corner of his mouth and slowly leans back once more. 

“Not going anywhere,” he says, accent dipping. “Tell me what you’re hearing, yeah?”

His hand slips back into yours, and he presses into your pulse softly, counting. The sun continues across the sky.

“I don’t like how it sounds,” you say, shaking your head. “It’s wrong.”

“Focus,” Ghost breathes, looming closer. His grip squeezes once. “It can’t hurt you.” 

You shiver, eyes tightly closed as tears burn the back of your nose. “It’s howling.”

A suddenly gloveless hand spreads up your cheek, resting there and pushing back the sweat that pools. It’s calloused—scarred. You whine, head spinning.

I’m waiting. 

Find me.

Find me.

“I don’t want to,” you utter under your breath, words an amalgamation of slurring gasps. 

“Spector,” Ghost calls, head moving closer. “Eh.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” your hurried panic is similar to a mind overdosing on wolfsbane. “Gotta go away—gotta get out—”

“Spec!” The Hunter’s quick bark makes your eyes pop open, and you lock instantly with brown orbs. 

They’re tight, unblinking just as always. They offer just a few moments of clarity. 

Ghost holds your head still while the rest of you shivers with cold sweats, you can hear the blood inside of his veins; his heart pumping. The scent of his skin was addicting to the point of memorization on the airwaves. You watch, gulping down breaths as your throat bobs. 

Eyes dart you up and down, fingers spreading out to offer what little comfort he can. The man wonders if he’s completely in over his head. 

Ghost pulls his face-covering up to his nose, and your heart skips beats at the sight of ravaged skin and stubble, scars spreading out like your own. Long ones, short ones, burn marks, and hyperpigmentation. He wasn’t pretty, but he was real. 

Oh, he was real. 

His grip on you strengthens until all you can focus on is him. 

Ghost blinks, and you see his lips move. The gravel of his voice was never more clear. “Fucking hell, keep that head on, okay? Nothing’s going to happen as long as I’m here. I’ve got you.” He sighs out a low breath, thumb running your undereye as the small dribbles of tears begin to sneak out. Ghost murmurs. “I’ve bloody got you, alright? Let it happen—we can figure it out.”

He’d grown fond of you over the course of a month. You were curious; not pushingly so. Honest. Good. You’d been dealt a bitter hand, and damn him if his stone heart wasn’t stretched thin at the raw fear on your face. This wasn’t your fault, but he needed to find who turned you and stop them before it got any more out of control than it already was. If more unstable werewolves went running through the woods, there wouldn’t be anyone left in the territory alive.

“When you turn,” Ghost says as clearly as he’s able. “Go. Don’t fight it. I’ll find you.”

“Promise?” You ask, a weak flicker coming to your lips—eyes vulnerable. 

Ghost nods once, and it’s all you need. “I’ll find you,” he repeats. “Doubt me?”

“No,” you ease, clearing your throat. “But…one more thing?”

“Anything,” the Hunter instantly says. 

“Just don’t shoot me in the thigh again.”

When the claws start protruding from your nailbeds hours later, you’re bolting to the door with only one last glance at the Hunter and his half-pulled-up mask. Booted feet hitting the wood as he stands, he lets you go even as his thighs tense in a need to run after you. Patience was his beast to tame, but it seemed to have left him in the form of a woman disappearing into the tree line. 

There is companionship in broken things.

Your body slips into the forest just as the creak of your bones begins to shift and bend. You fall into a heap, hearing the gargling of marrow under your skin like a call to sea. An urge grows to infect you; a feral need to run and hide. Biting back a shrill scream, a hoarse yell escapes instead—flesh rippling as your mouth opens, fangs breaking the supple mushiness of your gums as blood floods like a river. 

Find me. 

Find me.

Find me.

“Ghost,” you whisper, hands snapping to your head. “Ghost, please.” 

Your bullet, you want your silver bullet.

A rabid scream rips from your throat, and back in the house, Ghost’s hands tighten into fists as he glares at the open door. He growls under his breath, eyes tightening in a certain type of anger that brews in his gut. The nights your shuffling woke his light slumber were more common than when you hadn’t, and every utterance was clearly heard to his ears. It had become a curse to him—how you’d met.

A regret was seeping in, a care, and now, as he forces himself to back up and head into the attic, Ghost clenches his jaw tightly. So unaffected by the horror of monsters, he was now at a loss of sense for this growth of feelings. 

He wasn’t dull, he knew that some of the contracts he took marked him as a tool and not a person of stable mind. He’d done things he wasn’t proud of, and he would continue to do them for no other reason than they were the orders he was given.

But you had broken a piece of that off of him, somehow, someway, your face had seared itself into his retinas—speared him at the brutality that your community had treated you with. The muzzle. It was cruel, and while Ghost was precisely that, there was a limit. 

He did his job, and that was that. Anything after wasn’t his problem. 

You became his job, and the one who turned you was an add-on. Maybe if he justified it to himself, he could understand his actions better. 

But he was already sprinting to grab his gear when the first howl shattered the night.

—

A white beast prowls the forest. 

It stands on two legs, but it isn’t human—isn’t natural. It’s taller than a grown man is; snout pulled back in a soundless snarl that puts dogs to shame with rows of teeth so sharp, they look like pale knives. Its feet—large, splayed—soundlessly skate the ground until clawed fingers slam to the earth. 

A nose inhales the scent above the dirt, tongue lulling as a shaggy tail lays limp behind a curved spine. In between the erect ears, under the thick skull of the werewolf, the rolling bumps of a brain spark. A pull.

Find me.

Your eyes are tiny black dots—and they blink once before you rise once more. A great growl moves inside of your chest, the large collection of hair around your neck standing on end.

I’m waiting.

But there’s something that keeps you here—standing in the grass as the moon shines atop your head, your fur nearly glowing even with the stain of bloody injuries. The remains of clothes are about a meter away; only strips of what was. 

Your gaze looks over your shoulder, and your gargantuan frame lumbers backward until you can stoop to them—nose once more sniffing with your arms reaching.

Your fingers twitch, blackened claws digging through the ground as a near purr echoes in your throat. The scythe-like additions card across the strips.

Gunpowder. 

Leather.

Whiskey.

Something you can’t quite name, but feel drawn to despite the tightening noose at your throat. There was something there you can’t focus on…something that you need. 

Your drooling jaws snap, saliva coating the fangs until they drip off one at a time to stain the grass. Body shifting, your head lowers until your wolf-ish visage rubs against the fabric, licking at the sides of your gums as delicate grumbles slip out of your mouth. 

A far-off howl leaves your frame freezing.

Eyes slipping back into the feral-inhumanity of a wild animal, your body jolts up, gaze to the forest trees and the rustling of bushes. The swell of rain on the clouds is in the back of your nose, and the previous attraction to the ripped clothes is lost as simply as it had come. 

You were being summoned. 

Ears twitching, the entirety of your body refuses to move to the sound; tensed and ready to spring on anything that moves if only to let off the spike of anger at the lack of control. The pull grows stronger, and it feels like something is trying to drag you away into the wilds.

This was the sensation you were always trying to fight—the one that led to the aggression; the hunt. You knew that if you followed that howl, whatever was left of your human sense would be gone entirely before you could stop it. 

Yet, this time, there’s a nagging need to find the owner, and you can’t remember why.

Your large head tilts, feet spaced as the curve of your spine grows more aggressive—hunching forward as you snarl at nothing, claws shaking as your fur is more bristly than sleek. 

Like pure white spikes. 

In the back of your head, a thin sliver of a memory slips in. Fingers on the back of your head, caressing calluses and dark, dark, eyes. Clean bandages and gentle touches.

I’ll find you.

If the side of your vision picked up the shadow shifting from far off into the trees, your curled lip never turned that way. If your nose twitched to the heavy weight of a man’s sweat, it never shifted to point as a mutt would to the rustling bush.

Your body bolts after the resounding echo of a wolf’s howl, and it’s no later that Ghost slips after your clawed prints to follow.

—

Crossbow in hand, the hunter’s mask gleams in the darkness, his pale eyes twinkling. Bending down, he glazes at the long pushing tracks of your form—seeing the spray of dirt to the side and the broken branches. Ghost blinks, shoulders tense before he swiftly stands and continues on. The firearms at his thighs lightly rattle, and the bolts in his crossbow are already laced with wolfsbane; silver tips smelt a week ago. 

He passes a river with only a single glance at the tossed rocks from the bed, sloshing through the water as the bottoms of his pants get weighed down. Ghost’s mind is on one thing only: make sure this plan won’t get you killed. 

The bolts aren’t for you—the silver bullets aren’t for you. 

He grunts under his breath, the dark woods casting phantoms over the ground. The Hunter’s legs shift through tall grass, and he carries himself with the ingrained confidence a man of his station requires. If he were anything less than a monster himself, he would have died ages ago. Ghost shoots and lets others come up with the questions, but he could never be called dumb. 

Seeing what fast glimpse he had of your shifted form after the last time, he was struck by how erratic it acted. Snapping head, twitching ears, and roving eyes. If he didn’t know any better, Ghost would have called it rabid. 

Yet, your actions with his borrowed shirt were…body-stilling, to say the least about it. It had made his gut swirl.

“Give me a trail,” Ghost utters to himself, brown eyes still picking up the dash you’d taken. His agile feet splash through a puddle, the beginnings of raindrops hitting his head. 

The man grabs at his hood and pulls it up stiffly, frowning under his mask.

Rain would wash away the tracks.

“C’mon, Love,” he grinds out, body hunched. “Leavin’ me to do the dirty work, eh?” 

It’s too quiet—even a collection of minutes later of hard hiking, the trees barely move. There aren’t any birds; no animals beyond the black bodies of crows in the far-up branches, waiting, watching with obsidian eyes that don’t blink. 

Ghost isn’t off-put, but the length of his strides gets far tinier, carefully stepping over twigs and rocks like a soldier at war. Then again, he was at war. And if he was caught unawares, there wouldn’t be a bullet to pull out of his side, but, instead, a chunk missing. 

His ears were almost ringing from how hard he was focusing. 

Brown eyes shift from one area to another, and then, suddenly as if a deer, he freezes. 

Ghost’s body winds up, fingers twitching from the stark trigger discipline of his crossbow downward instantaneously. No one but him can explain what just happened, but he knows when he has to listen instead of act. Stuck in a clearing not unlike the place he’s first met you, his feet rest shoulder width apart and his eyes stare blankly into the trees ahead.

Your tracks end here.

From behind him, just as the large raindrops slap the side of his bone-ed visage, the small crack of a twig makes his ears twitch.

A low snarl sets his hair on end. 

Looking over his shoulder, Ghost is met with the same color that he’d become so accustomed to in a full month completely blacked out. Void. Lifeless to anything besides rage and bloodlust. 

Your white fur was infected with dirt, blood, and leaves—a mosaic of ferality ingrained into your body; pale fangs snapping. The beast slips through the treeline, slapping a veined hand into the soggy earth. 

Ghost only watches, eyes a mystery. 

His finger shifts over the trigger, and for the first time in his life, he hesitates. 

The man looks into your glinting orbs, the dripping saliva on your lulling tongue as your esophagus pants for breath. One hesitation, he always knew, would mean death. One mess-up. 

You’d asked him to end it, he shouldn’t feel remorse, guilt, perhaps—he was still human, despite his appearance, but remorse was deeper. It left wounds that were harder to lick clean again. 

…So why isn’t he sending a bolt into your forehead?

Ghost remembers the times he’d found you under the bed, your shaking, and the way you hadn’t allowed him to change your bandages the first few weeks you’d stayed with him; didn’t want him to touch you. The nightmares and the small smile you’d gain when he’d spew his dark, sarcastic words as if this was a joke. How you’d always thank him under your breath for the food he’d give you, hunted by his own hand. 

A silver cage. Crimson blood. The sight of your pleading eyes when you’d told him to shoot you.

Maybe the two of you were far more alike than he’d dare to admit. And he currently won’t, not even on his deathbed. Not even now.

Ghost watches, and he waits. 

He can’t do it.

Your body slinks closer, stalking with the sound of anger, nearly rib-shaking in its volume. Ghost’s jaw clenches, and his body shifts to face yours head-on. At the sight of the crossbow, your snarl turns into an air-biting rage, saliva flying through the rain.

“Spector,” he keeps his voice low, even. The sight he’d seen as you smelled his clothes had to mean something. Ghost tilts his head, moving out a hand from the side of his weapon in an appeasement gesture. “I’m not going to shoot you. We have a job to complete…get those fangs away.”

He wonders if ordering you around will even work. You had told him before—you’re not a mutt. Ghost agrees. No mutt was the size of a fucking boulder.

The werewolf’s claws drag—goring the mud as if a pig to tear apart. 

“Spector,” the Hunter tries again. But something’s different about his tone; he drops it, letting it pull on a softer string. “I’m here to end this. We’re here to end this.” He blinks and lowers the crossbow completely. “Breathe. The night can’t last forever.” A breeze whips the trees. “I made you a promise.”

There’s a second, he thinks, where he can see something shift in your gaze, pupils slightly widening above the deluge that wets down your fur into a sopping mess that hangs off muscle.

“That’s a girl,” Ghost grunts, taking a small step closer. “Never told you,” he utters, eyes locked with yours. He sees your nose twitch minutely. “But if we get this right, Spec, there’ll be no more painful shifts, hear me?”

Your dog-ish mouth is closed, hanging off every word as Ghost comes even closer.

“I kill this bastard,” the hunter breathes, gloved hand still outstretched, nearing closer to the near-silver of your form. “The moon’ll have no claim on you. She’ll let you off the leash, Little Wolf. You get to decide when it happens.” 

He thinks he has you now, back to some state of recognition in the addled brain that tries to see him as prey; as competition. Ghost’s fingers are close enough to almost touch you, but just before he can brush his gloves over your wet fur, your mouth opens in a display of untamed challenge. Your growl is enough to make the man unconsciously reach for his pistol, and in the time it takes him to realize the fault of it, you’ve already rampaged forward with an unhinged jaw.

Ghost’s eyes widen, taking a quick step back. 

Your legs push off, and you shove the hunter out of the way just before the fangs of an immense beast can clamp down on him, your own finding the shoulder of gray, thick fur.

Fighting as wolves do, Ghost only needs a moment to recover and get to his feet, though the sight in front of him can rival any that he’d seen before. His crossbow clatters a few feet away, sending the bolt off into the trees with a metallic ‘twang’.

The two werewolves roll around the pouring clearing, snapping teeth and rending claws drawing blood that’s deep enough to swim in to the green grass. White and gray meld together—blue eyes like a knife to Ghost’s chest when he takes it in from between the sound of tearing fur. 

“Bloody fucking…” the man trails, staggering as his palms slap to the pistols at his side. He blinks, shouting in more of a bark than even a dog could imitate. “Spector!” 

The wolves pull and rip the other to shreds, flesh torn and limbs grasping for purchase. Bodies are slammed to the ground before getting tossed to the side, fangs flashing in the moonlight. Ghost watches crimson stain your fur a pinkish-red.

He can’t get a good shot.

The werewolf that turned you sinks its claws into your sides, dragging them downwards as you yowl, eyes tiny with aggression before your jaws connect with its snout, biting down with more force than a horse’s hooves. The monster screams—a garbed thing of fangs and saliva. 

Just as easily as it called you here to it, as it stalked your Hunter, it bashes your body back into the earth and takes you by the scruff of your neck. Eyes wide in that lupine way, you lock on Ghost’s profile before your body is lifted, and tossed away violently. 

Spine slamming into a tree, you hear the cracking and bending of your bones in your ears just after you hear the sharp shout from the man in the clearing, body dropping to a heap into the grass and mud. Angled head flopping back and forth, black infests the edges of your vision, coughing up blood that seeps from between your gums and slips down the back of your esophagus. Fur and flesh are stuck at the base of your throat. 

Whining, your limbs drag and pull futility, eyes flooded over with crimson and fogged by rain. A great roar worries the air, sending long shivers over your spine as you try to rise to your limbs, a five-fingered hand slamming you back down. 

Just before the fangs can clamp your throat, two great booms burst through the forest. 

The wolf atop you reels back, great bellow escaping its throat when you can finally drag your head to look over. This beast was clawing at its chest, shaking its large head in an arch to try and dispel the shock of having two silver bullets entering its back—the gray head snapped around to Ghost, who held his twin pistols aloft with eyes burning with anger from behind his mask. An avatar of vengeance; a bringer of death. 

The orbs inside of your sockets widened, nose twitching wildly as you bleat a quick warning bark. 

Blue-Eyes rises, body far larger than yours would ever grow to be—on two feet more powerful looking than a bricklayer many years into his craft; tall enough to reach to the sides of black-shingled homes and pull itself up. Ghost takes one look and growls under his breath, knowing there would be no time to reload the weapons in his hands. 

So he drops them and pulls slowly at the cruel blade in his belt until the gleam winks in the low light like a curved smile. Setting it in his hands, the small flicker of a sharp smirk on his lips is lost to you. 

Yet, there isn’t a chance for some brawl between two beasts—there’s only the flash of pale fur and the final crunch of a body hitting the ground. 

You bury your fangs into the wolf’s neck; the one responsible for all of your pain and torment spanning years of isolation. You feel the body seize as it drops, the last remnants of a dying brain trying to fight the inevitable nothingness that ensues, and, you only hold on the harder, the bloodlust seeping back in with every drop of life pooling into your locked jaw.

Your throat releases tiny growls of pleasure, biting a bit to make sure there wasn’t a sliver of a chance that something living was walking away from this scene. 

Ghost pauses, and in the back of his head, he knows he should stop you. Brown eyes see the animalistic sheen of enjoyment at a fresh kill, the way you pull at the flesh until chucks peel away from a gurgling wolf. Even when the thing is long dead and the rain still slaps the earth, you barely let go until you get a hold of the meat and tear with a backward jerk of your snout.

“Love,” the Hunter sheathes his knife, taking a step forward. The blood was pooling under your body. How many of those were treatable? He had to know. “Let me see what’s—”

The eyes that lock on him are not yours. 

Up to your ears, the entirety of your face was awash with the stain of life, dripping off the whiskers at your cheeks; your chin. 

Before he can utter another word, he finds himself on his back with a snapping snout right in front of his face, two dead eyes staring deeply into his own. Ghost sucks down a quick breath, hand snapping to the large wrist shoving down on his chest.

He pants out, gravel accent far more deep than it was before. 

“Easy, Spector. Easy. Eh—focus on me.” Your tongue licks at your fangs, body shaking. Ghost pushes out, “That’s it, then. It’s over, yeah? You did it; let's pack it up and head back home.” He grunts. “Recon even dogs get cold in weather like this—the bed’s waiting. Get a nice fire going.”

Ghost sees your face move closer, and his hand minutely shifts to the vial of wolfsbane on his belt. It wouldn’t kill you, but it could put you out of commission until your body shifted back into its proper form. He could carry you back—that wouldn’t be a problem at all. 

But he was worried about your injuries. Even now the droplets of blood roll off of you faster than the water can. 

Too much.

Brown eyes crease, darting a look down. 

“Fuck,” he growls, seeing the carnage and the open meat. “Sweetheart, we need to get you checked out—you need to listen to me. Can you do that?”

He can see the conflict; the internal fight. 

Your mouth moves with fast pants, claws stuttering over his gear futilely. You blink rapidly, shaking your large head in fast increments with small snarls. 

“C’mon,” Ghost says slowly, fingers looping the vial. “Keep listening. Know my voice is utter shite, but only you can tell me it.” 

Your head drops to his chest just as the wolfsbane is popped open, and, for whatever reason, Ghost pauses. He waits. 

You take a long inhale of his gear—of the leather and the gunpowder, and just before the Hunter can dump the vial over your skin, the long blackish claw on your finger loops the bottom portion of the fabric under his bone attachment. 

The man’s breath hitches as you let it rest along his nose bridge…holding it there as you drag your head upwards as if it were an impossible chore. Your mouth dribbles out gore to his cheeks, but the Hunter stares upwards into your eyes as they soften in a lupine way. 

Inexplicably, you let out a bone-rattling sigh and slump into oblivion. 

—

Come morning, you sleep under the spread of large fur blankets—clean bandages over your bare frame as the man has tended to you for hours. He mutters for you to slip your arms into a spare shirt after he finds your eyes open, not uncomfortable by your nakedness, though he wants you yourself to be at ease. 

His brown eyes are creased, and you can’t remember what you’ve done. 

You comply with small grunts and moans; more sore and cut up than you can recall ever feeling as a large tunic is slipped over your head by scarred hands. 

Gunpowder. 

“What did I—?”

“You finished the job,” he says, sparing you a glance as he shifts back with his eyes averting themselves from your visible legs. The sun seeps in through the windows. “It’s morning.”

You blink slowly, and the man eases you back down into the furs. 

“I’m tired,” your voice yawns out—weak and brittle like the hope you’d had that this plan of his would work. Eyes half-closed, they blink at the hunter with a soft kind of care that you can’t remember showing before. Whatever pain medicine he’d given you, it was working. The underlying itch was still as strong as ever, though. 

“Tired is good,” Ghost nods slowly, standing still until he crosses his arms and sets his feet. He’s in a fresh shirt and pants. There’s blood under his fingernails; traces smeared over his flesh. “Means you accomplished something.”

“Don’t think that’s entirely true,” you breathe. A pause. “...Why is your mask like that?”

It was half pulled up—showing off his lower jaw and the stubble. The scars that you already have memorized. Ghost shrugs, blinking those dead eyes of his. 

“Ah,” he grumbles. “Forgot. Here.”

He reaches up and slips the thing off in one motion. Your loose brain takes a moment to realize the entire face you’re staring into, but the second it does, the image is engraved into your mind forever. You make a noise in the back of your throat. 

“Better, Little Wolf?” 

“W—” Your lips stutter, new sutures pulling tight. “Why would you…?”

“Hungry?” Ghost asks, quickly changing the subject. “Know you like that venison that I caught.”

“No,” you breathe. “No, I’m not…I’m tired, Ghost. My head hurts.”

A hand sweeps over your forehead, staying as you sag into it with a hum and a fluttering of your eyes. 

“Bloodloss,” the Hunter murmurs. “Normal. Go back to sleep; take however long you need. I’ll be here.” 

The bond between the two of you has strengthened to that of a silver rope.

“Stay,” you plead under your breath, already slipping back into nothingness with no promise to wake up again soon. “Hold me, Ghost?”

“Simon,” he grunts to only himself, knowing that the words are lost to you. Perhaps that makes him all the more eager to share it with you when you’re better. “Stay still.”

It wasn’t like you could protest.

The broad man slips in, shifting the furs until you’re covered back up and your forehead is to his chest—keeping himself closest to the door where the runes still sit in their bloody glory. If he listened hard enough, he could even hear them humming him a tune.

No song was better to him than the one of your breath at this very moment. Alive. Moving. There were many times in the night that he thought...hm.

“Better, then?” The dry tease slips out. 

A kiss to the side of his mouth is what he gets in answer, and he doesn't say a peep more until he knows you’re back in the clutches of a dream—a good one, he knows, because he watches your expressions like a loyal guard dog would.

Ghost, Simon, rests his lips on the top of your head, and in a delicate murmur, eases, “You did good, Love.” 

There was much to do, but for now, all he had to do was hold you a little bit tighter and let his stone heart beat a little bit faster.

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@sheviro-blog, @ivebeentrashsince2001, @mrshesh, @berryjuicyy, @romantic-homicide, @kmi-02, @neelehksttr, @littlemisstrouble, @copperchromewriting, @coelhho-brannco, @pumpkinwitchcrusade, @fictional-men-have-my-heart, @sleepyqueerenergy, @cumikering, @everything-was-dark, @marmie-noir, @anna-banana27, @iamcautiouslyoptimistic, @irenelunarsworld, @rvjaa, @sarcanti, @aeneanc, @not-so-closeted-lesbian, @mutuallimbenclosure, @emily-who-killed-a-man, @gildedpoenies, @glitterypirateduck, @writeforfandoms, @kohsk3nico, @peteymcskeet, @caramlizedtomatoes, @yoursweetobsession, @quesowakanda, @chthonian-spectre, @so-no-feint, @ray-rook, @extracrunchymilk, @doggydale, @frazie99, @develised, @1-800-no-users-left, @nuncubus, @aldis-nuts, @clear-your-mind-and-dream, @noonanaz, @cosmicpro, @stinkaton, @waves-against-a-cliff, @idocarealot

#cod #cod x reader #cod x you #call of duty #cod mw22 #x female reader #call of duty x you #mw2 #mw2 2022 #ghost call of duty #call of duty modern warfare #call of duty modern warfare 2 #cod mw2 #cod mwii #modern warfare 2 #mwii #mw x reader #cod x female reader #x fem!reader #female reader #cod simon ghost riley #simon ghost x you #simon ghost riley #simon ghost x reader #simon riley x you #simon riley #ghost cod #ghost mw2 #cod mw ghost #cod simon riley

[kittenintheden]

I want to share something. I absolutely adore how you write Astarion. You capture his mirth, the absolute ridiculous stray ginger cat energy he embodies, the tragedy of his situation, and how utterly hilarious he is all at the same time. But what I love especially is how *young* you manage to write him, like this is an elf who was killed before he even reached young adulthood in Elvish culture and you capture that brilliantly in both his mannerisms, sarcastic and sometimes juvenile quips and even his body language. It's just mind-blowing and I love reading your fics due to how well you capture him.

this is such an incredibly sweet comment and thank you so much for making it T_T my heart, it is warmed.

if I may ramble for a moment!

here's my thing: based on the information available to us, it's pretty widely confirmed canon (fanon? since Larian hasn't actually confirmed to my knowledge?) that based on the translated dates on his grave marker, Astarion died at 39. which is VERY young for an elf, but still adulthood, because elves physically and mentally mature at a similar rate to humans. the "they don't reach adulthood until 100" is more cultural than physical/mental, so Astarion very much was an adult with a career and all that when he died. culturally, however, he would not have been considered fully adult by other elves.

kind of like if you had a bar/bat mitzvah at 100 instead of 13? like it's not a measure of physical/mental adulthood, it's a cultural/religious ceremony signifying the passage into adulthood. that kind of thing.

WITH THAT SAID: Astarion did die young (we think) and then was launched into a situation that severely impacted his growth and progression as a person. namely: it stopped. he's frozen in time. he had no opportunity to learn, grow, or change. he was literally prevented from doing so.

Cazador worsened and encouraged this behavior not only in Astarion but in ALL the spawn. he refers to them as children, they're considered siblings, and the journals and notes we find in the palace indicate that they frequently pranked the shit out of each other and were generally the worst versions of themselves because Cazador regularly pitted them against one another. he starves and belittles and torments them physically and mentally. no one can thrive in circumstances like that.

when we meet Astarion in game, we're meeting a severely abused soul in survival mode who's never been able to make a plan or act for himself or exist in a world that wasn't constant terror. not since he can remember, anyway. he's fully and completely trauma-brained.

SO MUCH of his behavior is rooted in that. Cazador and his staff routinely refer to Astarion as a brat, little one, child, etc. dialogue indicates that he was constantly shamed for "prattling" and being a talker. so here's a man who's in literal arrested development and any meaningful growth he could have had was cut off at the ground. and he acts it.

until he gets a chance to grow.

then he still acts like a big baby boy but, you know, one who's also beginning to think past his own nose and develop a tiny bit of empathy and consideration. if you let him lol. you don't have to.

also I have a history in writing YA and Romance if that wasn't PAINFULLY OBVIOUS LMAO.

#ask box #kitten rambles #astarion meta #cazador szarr

[thatdebaterguy]

I know tone can be hard to determine on the internet, but I am being genuine when I say I'm only interested in your opinion. Recently, I have heard talk among the Prime Minister and his cabinet about possibly relocating the Palestinian people after the fighting stops. Israeli Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich both mentioned that the idea of "encouraging voluntary immigration" would be the best. Coupled with the issues of Israeli settlers attempting to buy recently deserted land in Palestine, I feel like this conflicts with the idea that Israel is interested in establishing some kind of two-state solution after the fighting ends. My question is: Do you believe that after the fighting stops, Israel will commit to a two-state solution, or will they encourage "voluntary immigration"?

This is interesting, I haven't seen this talk going around but it doesn't seem far fetched to me so I'll take it with a grain of salt and say, if they're committed to voluntary immigration, what would that look like? To me it would be similar to what we've seen in the past, with Palestinians immigrating to Israel to avoid persecution for being gay, Jewish, for a better standard of living, etc, hence why 20% of Israel's population is Arab-Israeli. We may also see this as Israel giving passage from Gaza to the West Bank since Gaza is one of the most densely packed areas around, which has made this urban warfare an absolute nightmare, so relocation to minimise casualties should Hamas resurface or another militant entity take power in Gaza. However, whether this would be beneficial for the Palestinians or not, I don't think you can uproot someone's home and tell them to move somewhere, especially if they're not even in your own country. I think if they offered financial incentives, offering to pay for the houses and land the Palestinians would be moving to, covering the financial aspect, that would be a lot more understandable and make many Palestinians consider the offer.

But whether they'll actually do that? I think they're capable of both. I'm certain we'll see a commitment to the two state solution, as Israel has occupied the Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, all various times throughout history, but they've given them up in the name of the two state solution and peace in the middle east, like the Oslo Accords where Palestine recognised Israel in return for sovereignty. If we see some relocation from areas hit hard in Gaza during the conflict, I also wouldn't be surprised, since it's probably in everyone's interests to make Gaza less dense and highly populated, it's easier to manage for Palestine, and gets civilians out of the way for Israel should Hamas ever get any ideas. I just hope Israel compensates any people forced to move from their homes if they go ahead with it and sets up some kind of aid/relocation scheme for Palestinians who lost their homes, rather than just forced displacement with no help whatsoever, since I understand minimising Hamas' capacity to wage wars of terror, but directly and purposefully affecting civilians in that way is just unnecessary without it being a fair deal for both. But the two state solution will definitely hold up, Israel would never want to occupy or integrate Palestine at this point, there's genuinely no benefit, dealing with the militant groups would cause less casualties than occupying it at this point, so no one wins in that scenario.

#israel #politics #palestine #gaza #current events #hamas

[a-queer-seminarian]

Hi there. I'm wondering how you deal with reading parts of the Bible that talk about the Israelites coming to the promised land, defeating the people there etc, in light of... well, I'm sure you get where I'm coming from! I'm scared to look up commentary on it because I fear it will either be from a Zionist perspective, or dismissive of the "old testament" in that antisemitic way a lot of Christians can be. Every time my daily devotions include a Psalm with a line praising God for granting Israel victory in battle or anything like that it makes me so uncomfortable it's hard to pray...

Hey there, anon. Thank you for your courage in wrestling with these questions. I'm going to try to answer this well, but I may mess up, so I welcome correction or expansion, especially from Jewish folks — any antisemitism here is not my intent and I will fix it if pointed out; my sincere gratitude who anyone who chooses to share their time and energy correcting me.

I also have some books that grapple with these issues on my reading list (more on that at the end of this post), so stay tuned for more posts about these issues in the coming weeks once I've read them.

I see several interlocking components to your conflict, anon:

The presence of violence within scripture, carried out by its protagonists, often with express instruction or at least no condemnation from God.

Uncertainty regarding the relationship between the biblical Israel and the modern state of Israel.

The convergence of the first two components, allowing the use of biblical passages that speak of God giving the "promised land" to Israel to justify the modern Israel's occupation of that land.

Let's start with the first component apart from modern issues.

Wrestling with violence in scripture

When we come across violent or otherwise complicated parts of scripture, we should be disturbed. If scripture is inspired by God, does that mean anything a biblical text seems to condone is also condoned by God — up to and including genocide??

No. Even those of us who hold that scripture is inspired can acknowledge that it was written by human authors, living in specific historical and cultural contexts.

(If you've been raised with something closer to a "biblical inerrancy / literal Word of God" mindset about the Bible, it's okay to feel rattled by realizing there are other ways to read the Bible! You might find my webpage about a framework for reading scripture that acknowledges its human authors helpful for easing into such a discussion.)

In her book Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again, Rachel Held Evans has a whole chapter on wrestling with the Bible's war stories, taking their historical and cultural contexts into account and seeking places where God's inspiration breathes through the human accounts.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. I posted a loooong excerpt from this chapter over here, because I find it so important and helpful for unpacking these "texts of terror," as Phyllis Trible called them. That post is my top suggested reading as you wrestle with questions of violence in scripture, but I'll also add a little more here.

One important bit of context regards when many of the Hebrew texts were written: during or soon after exile in Babylon. Here's an incredibly over-simplified timeline:

In the 700s BCE, the Assyrian Empire destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel. That left its sister kingdom, Judah, rattled and grieving, with a lot of existential questions about why God "allowed" such a thing.

Then in the 500s BCE, the Babylonian Empire sweeps into Judah and obliterates the temple in Jerusalem, deports Judah's leaders into exile, and leaves the people even more traumatized, with more questions about where God is in their suffering and why God "let" such horrors happen to them.

As they're asking these questions, they're looking back at their history, looking both for places where God's presence and support are evident, and places things went wrong.

They consider their exodus from Egypt, and their eventual arrival in Canaan — and they re-imagine that arrival as much more violent than historical and archeological evidence suggest it was: instead of a gradual integration with the peoples already living in Canaan, they write about mighty battles where they wipe the previous people out completely.

Even if such violence didn't historically happen, it's still disturbing to read. Why did these authors want to re-imagine their people as having committed ethnic cleansing and even genocide?

Holy Resilisence: The Bible's Traumatic Origins by David Carr explores how trauma impacts these choices in greater detail than I can here, but part of what he suggests is that in depicting themselves as powerful and capable of enacting the kind of violence that was being enacted on them by empires like Assyria and Babylon, they felt a bit more stable in their current situation.

Trauma and grasping for a sense of control in a situation completely out of their control is also why a lot of the biblical authors, particularly prophets, write about God "sending" those empires to "punish" Israel and then Judah for "going astray" of God's instructions. If these empires are attacking and desolating them simply because they're Big and they Can, the people are helpless to do much about it. But if it's because the people lost God's protection, then they can regain that protection if they start acting faithfully again. There's a sense of control there!

There are also parts of scripture where a writer imagines doing some mega violent stuff to their enemies — the book of Nahum being one such place; Psalm 137 is another. When we read about the psalmist imagining dashing the heads of their enemies' infants on rocks, we must remember that this is the daydream of an extremely traumatized person imagining something they don't actually have any power to carry out. We're allowed to bring all our messy emotions to God, even violent fantasies. We don't have to tidy them up first. Imagining it isn't the same as acting it out. An oppressed person thinking about such violence isn't the same as their oppressor actually doing the violence.

Again, this is all vastly oversimplified; David Carr explains in much more detail, drawing more historical context and trauma theory to do so.

Edit: A fantastic and easy-to-read article on reading the "conquest of Canaan" and how it connects to modern-day Israel by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg can be found here!

So that's some info on grappling with violence in the Bible in general. But what about...

Disconnecting biblical Israel from the modern ethno-state

When the name Israel comes up in the Bible, it's reasonable that our brains immediately connect it to the other Israel we know of — the modern settler colonialist state currently occupying Palestine. This connection has been made intentionally by Israeli supporters, both Christian and Jewish.

But it is vital that we disconnect the biblical Israel with that modern state.

I'm extremely grateful for Jewitches' post that explains the distinctions, and the harm that comes from conflating the Israels, in detail. I urge you to read through their whole post (you'll see it's in infographic form, but scroll down and there's an image description of it all); but here's some main points:

First thing to know is that even within scripture, the word Israel can refer to several things: the person Israel, i.e. Jacob; Am Israel, the people group descended from that person — before, during, and after the biblical kingdom of Israel existed; Israel the kingdom; and Eretz Israel, the physical land discussed in the biblical texts.

None of these are Medinat Israel, the modern political state of Israel.

For centuries, all Jews have continued to identify themselves as Am Israel, the people of Israel, even in diaspora.

To conflate Am Israel and Medinat Israel is to erase that diasporic history, to erase the Jewishness of Jews living outside that political state. That denigration and erasure of diaspora Jews is an intentional goal of Medinat Israel, so that diaspora Jews will feel like they need to come to Israel.

Finally, to conflate Medinat Israel with the biblical people or kingdom of Israel does great harm as well.

The harm in conflating biblical Israel and modern Israel

It's not a mistake that people do conflate these things; there's a long history among both Zionist Jews and Zionist Christians in intentionally using passages from scripture to justify modern Israel's occupation of Palestine and violence against Palestinians. We must resist this!

Again, I'm indebted to Jewitches' post detailing these issues; again, I urge you to read their whole post, but will sum up some main points:

Once we conflate biblical and modern Israel, Zionist Christians are able to use verses like Genesis 12:3, “Blessed is everyone who blesses you, O Israel, and cursed is everyone who curses you," to justify support of the state of Israel. Anyone who questions modern Israel is warned that they are supposedly going against God and incurring divine wrath.

But Christian Zionists don't actually give a damn about Jews; they're using them as pawns in their own theological and political agendas. They can support modern Israel in one breath and pass antisemitic legislation or preach antisemitic shit with the next.

Moreover, "Conflating all Jews with Israel allows people (Jewish and non-Jewish) to attempt to revoke Jews of their Jewish identity when their politics do not “fall in line”."

My recommendation for starting to learn more about the history of the Jewish Zionist movement, started in 1800s Europe, is this article by JVP.

My recommendation for Christians who want to learn more about the harms of Christian Zionism is this other post by Jewitches as well as the Christian site christianzionism.org.

Summing Up / Further Reading

So to sum all this up:

When you encounter stories about Israel or mentions of Israel in the Bible, remember these things:

Am Israel, "the people/nation of Israel," is not to be conflated with Medinat Israel, the modern ethnostate. Am Israel in the present day = all Jews! Not just Israelis. Don't let Medinat Israel erase diaspora Jews, their diverse and vibrant expressions of Judaism, their right to connect with their own scripture and culture.

The biblical people and kingdom of Israel were a small group pressed by more powerful nations on all sides. A lot of the biblical authors bring grief and trauma into their writing about Israel. Remembering this can be helpful when grappling with the Bible's war stories.

While the biblical Israel was constantly besieged and at risk of occupation by others, the modern state Israel is the occupier. Their situations are completely different, so that applying biblical verses to modern Israel is both inaccurate and harmful.

___

There are still more questions to consider. I don't have all the answers; I'm sure I never will, but I'm working on gathering more information. I've had some books in my reading list that I plan to get to in the coming weeks / months; if I find any useful stuff in them, I'll share it on this blog.

If anyone is interested in doing their own reading / research, here are the resources I've gathered — please know that my listing them here is not me vouching for their content. It's possible some of them might turn out to be anywhere from a little problematic to total shit lol. We'll see!

Again pointing to ChristianZionism.org for essays and resources on resisting Christian Zionism.

Palestineportal.org has info on joining with pro-Palestinian Christians and getting active as churches, which is great!

That includes links to various denominations' pro-Palestinian organizations; my own denomination's is the IPMN. Apparently this congregational study guide + video of theirs is good.

Palestine Portal also has several lists of book recs! Here's their recs on Zionism, Christian Zionism, and the Bible. And their liberation theology list. The following books are ones from those lists that I've selected to read.

Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible through Palestinian Eyes by Mitri Maheb

Justice, and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation by Naim Stifan Ateek

Jesus and the Land by Gary Burge, an ex Christian Zionist. He has a statement about why he's not a Zionist any more here.

Chosen? Reading the BIble amidst the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Walter Brueggemann

Israel/Palestine and the Queer International by Sarah Schulman

If anyone has other resources on any of these topics that they recommend, please do share! Thank you.

#christian zionism #reading and studying the bible #bible tag #israel #biblical israel #essays

[saints-who-never-existed]

Rereading The Terror

Chapter Forty-Eight: Goodsir

And so on to the aftermath...

Seven hours pass when Little's lead-scouting party should've been back within four, so the remaining exhausted men launch the boats and follow them.

There's mention here of Des Voeux commanding the last boat in the procession, and of him being "third in command of our overall Expedition now behind Captain Crozier and Lieutenant Little". Not sure if that's an error on Simmons' part or an implication that poor Hodgson has been removed from the chain of command entirely and remains a Lieutenant in name only?

As they make their way along the lead, there's talk of what might've befallen Little's party ("There ain't no way that Lieutenant Edward Little got himself Lost" shot back Charles Best. "He may be Stuck, but not lost.") Soon, however, when they emerge into that huge open lake, all becomes clearer... "The water was Red here." :(((

Initially, Crozier and the other senior seamen commanding the boats try to calm the men, explaining that all the gore on the ice is simply the sign of seals hunted and killed by polar bears. It doesn't take long for them to realise that that's not the case though, as they spot the bow of Little's whaleboat floating vertically in the water, the rest smashed to pieces. The whaleboat is named The Lady J. Franklin...

They continue their passage cautiously across the crimson lake, taking in more grisly sights. First, they find Mr Reid's headless corpse floating in the water, his fingers half-nibbled away by fish, then more nightmarish bloody streaks at the water's edge ("Oh, damn... You can see the bloody grooves of the man's Fingers and Nails in the Snow. The Thing must've dragged him backwards into the Water") Then, they find the remains of a body almost entirely consumed, unidentifiable because all that's left are a few ribs, torn scraps of clothing, and a fucking pelvis.

Then, they find Harry Peglar... :'''((( There's not a scratch on him - it appears that he's managed to climb out of the water and frozen to death on the ice without Tuunbaq ever touching him - yet the sight of him is as disturbing as every bit of gore that's gone before: "It was Harry Peglar lying there almost naked - his few remaining Clothes mere Underthings - Curled up on the Ice, Knee Raised almost to his Chin, Legs crossed at the Ankle as if his last energy had been spent trying to keep warm by pressing his body Tighter and Tighter, his Hands tucked under his Arms while he Hugged himself in what must have been an End in Violent Shivers." "His blue eyes were open and frozen. His flesh was also Blue and as Hard to the Touch as Carrera Marble." (That last line gets me most of all, and strikes me as an interesting reference, slightly Classical perhaps? Putting one in mind of Ancient Rome and Greece, Xenophon etc.?)

But even if there's no sign that Tuunbaq touched Peglar directly, that's not to say that it wasn't involved in his death... All around his body on the ice are Tuunbaq's gigantic footprints, circling again and again and again... "The thing had Circled Harry many times. Watching as poor Mr Peglar lay Shivering and Dying? Enjoying itself? Had Harry Peglar's last shivering Image on this Earth been of that White Monstrosity looming over him, its black, unblinking Eyes watching? Why had the thing not eaten our friend?" "The Beast was on two legs the entire time it was on the floe" was all that Captain Crozier said."

If ever they had any hope left, Goodsir feels it well and truly extinguished after the hasty funeral held for Peglar, Reid, and all the other body parts they've managed to cobble together. "All of us, I believe, were Thinking that these words were a Eulogy and Farewell for each one of us. Up until this Day...I suspect that many of us still thought that we might Live. Now we knew that the odds of that had all but Disappeared..." "The Ice will not give us up.""And the creature from the ice will not allow us to leave."

Nevertheless, they carry on. Later, Goodsir goes through the dead men's remaining personal items. Bridgens approaches him specifically requesting Peglar's comb and his famous Papers ("...just a Remembrance of the man.") which Goodsir hands over, despite his own confusion. The rest is left behind on the ice as they move on, "a sad little Cairn of Mortality".

The chapter ends with Tozer and the other four remaining Marines perishing in dramatic fashion as the ice opens up beneath them in the night and closes right behind them again with a deafening crash as they're swallowed up by "the Wine Dark Sea", another delicious Classical reference to end on. :(((

#The Terror #The Terror AMC #Observations #Random Observations #Meta #Rereading the Terror #Terror Spoilers #Harry Goodsir #Henry Peglar #John Bridgens #Edward Little #Solomon Tozer #Charles Frederick Des Voeux #Pain #Pure unadulterated pain

[astrangergivingthestrangewelcome]

I miss Jonathan Harker and who knows when he'll come back from the war so I've compiled a list of his funniest, most iconic lines

May 3rd- "I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (Mem., get recipe for Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called "paprika hendl,""

"I did not sleep well, though my bed was comfortable enough, for I had all sorts of queer dreams. There was a dog howling all night under my window, which may have had something to do with it; or it may have been the paprika, for I had to drink up all the water in my carafe, and was still thirsty."

May 5th- "so I quietly got my polyglot dictionary from my bag and looked them out. I must say they were not cheering to me, for amongst them were "Ordog"—Satan, "pokol"—hell, "stregoica"—witch, "vrolok" and "vlkoslak"—both of which mean the same thing, one being Slovak and the other Servian for something that is either were-wolf or vampire. (Mem., I must ask the Count about these superstitions)" Okay look I think the overlooked thing in this passage is that he had a polyglot dictionary to begin with and was just quietly flipping through it in the background.

Was this a customary incident in the life of a solicitor's clerk sent out to explain the purchase of a London estate to a foreigner? Solicitor's clerk! Mina would not like that. Solicitor—for just before leaving London I got word that my examination was successful; and I am now a full-blown solicitor! This is in my opinion the best and funniest thing Jonathan has ever said not only the first sentence which is in itself perfection but the fact that when recounting this freaky fucking wolf infested carriage ride to Dracula's haunted castle he does a full stop to ponder his new promotion and Mina's opinions on it.

May 8th- It is very annoying, for I do not see how I am to shave, unless in my watch-case or the bottom of the shaving-pot, which is fortunately of metal.

It was by this time close on morning, and we went to bed. (Mem., this diary seems horribly like the beginning of the "Arabian Nights," for everything has to break off at cockcrow—or like the ghost of Hamlet's father. So true bestie, you really do forget how poetical and rambling he used to be before the trauma set in

May 12th- I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves along a wall. What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature is it in the semblance of man? I feel the dread of this horrible place overpowering me; I am in fear—in awful fear —and there is no escape for me; I am encompassed about with terrors that I dare not think of... ->May 15th- Once more have I seen the Count go out in his lizard fashion. -> June 29th- As he went down the wall, lizard fashion, I wished I had a gun or some lethal weapon, that I might destroy him

May 15th- Here I am, sitting at a little oak table where in old times possibly some fair lady sat to pen, with much thought and many blushes, her ill-spelt love-letter, and writing in my diary in shorthand all that has happened since I closed it last. It is nineteenth century up-to-date with a vengeance. And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere "modernity" cannot kill. Bestie you are literally a prisoner in Dracula's castle and you think you're gonna die here

May 16th- "Up to now I never quite knew what Shakespeare meant when he made Hamlet say:—"My tablets! quick, my tablets 'Tis meet that I put it down," etc.," This is why he's my boy I too would immediately quote Hamlet in a major crisis

May 19- "I am surely in the toils."

June 24th- What shall I do? what can I do? How can I escape from this dreadful thing of night and gloom and fear? We would all like to know

June 25th- No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and how dear to his heart and eye the morning can be." Not funny but I feel strongly about highlighting the resilience of Jonathan Harker at all times

#dracula daily #jonathan harker #literally he is the most fun to get stuck at dracula's trauma castle with

[hetchdrive]

SLEEPOVER SATURDAY YAYYYY I have 2.

1. Because I’m still stuck in fucking Texas, top 3 best US states

2. Top potential AU’s for The Terror

Oh noooooo wishing you a speedy departure tomorrow!

I've lived a lot of places and done a lot of road tripping and without further details on which to define "best" I'm going to go with the three states I feel the most personal connection to and say Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan. I love Lake Superior, I grew up in that area and sometimes I am very homesick for it. I've been trying to develop the same feeling of connection to the landscape in New England since transplanting and I'm not going to lie, it is rough going. I keep saying I am going to try to get into hiking and rock identification so I can see the mountains and maybe 2024 is the year I buckle down and do that.

First off: Star Trek AU obviously. I'm really bad at coming up with plots and writing long fics but I am beginning to take notes for a Star Trek AU in case the Terror SciFi Fest happens again this upcoming May.

Secondly: Ghosts/spiritualism/haunted house AU. While I do enjoy a good modern AU from time to time, to me part of the draw of The Terror is the time period it is set. I am fascinated by the Victorian era, the advances in medicine during the time period, the rise in popularity of ghosts and ghost stories, and I think I'd get a lot of enjoyment out of researching to write an AU that takes advantage of this somehow.

Also, I am obsessed with haunted houses as they are used to represent familial trauma, codependence, grief and loneliness, etc etc, and I think it would be fun to take Crozier out of The Horrors only to put him into a different flavor of The Horrors <3

Lastly: Musicians/orchestra AU. Gonna be honest, I do not have any of the requisite knowledge to write this and it does not interest me enough to do this research. I want somebody else to write this so I can read it. However, I saw a post once that was the show writer going through and saying what each character's job would be if they lived in the modern day and what he said about Fitzjames was that he'd be a surgeon or somebody else with very specialized knowledge, someone who is the best at something. And while yeah, a specialist surgeon is this, and specialist surgeons are, in my experience, divas with complexes, for reasons of personal taste (dislike of the medical field irl and preference for show contemporary AUs over modern ones) I think it would be more interesting to just skip over the medical layer and make Fitzjames a diva with a complex.

This man plays the violin and he is the best at it and he and Crozier cannot stand each other because Crozier has been playing longer, does not care about the limelight, and actively scorns Fitzjames for doing so. I just have this idea in my head of Fitzjames saying to someone else that Crozier plays a perfectly serviceable, workmanlike violin, but he obviously doesn't truly care for it, he doesn't play with any passion, and Fitzjames who has been doing this his whole life and made it his whole life, the only thing he's ever been good at that he's had to hang all his hopes on, finds that intolerable. Meanwhile Crozier cares about the violin very deeply but doesn't really show it to anybody and keeps to himself because loving music and loving your coworkers are two different things.

Additional inspiration for this idea is the fact that when Phantom of the Opera shut down on Broadway a couple months ago (last year? What is the passage of time...) I saw a news article about it which said some of the people in the orchestra had been playing the show together since it started running in 1986. The drama within that pit must have been insane and I desperately want to read about it.

#this got away from me #clandestinegardenias #asks

[fearlessinger]

I watched the Mark Oshiro interview and noted down the rrverse-relevant passages for y'all

(I would rec watching the vid in its entirety if you have time to kill; Mark is super charming and thoughtful, just like I remembered them from their "Mark Watches" days, and says a lot of interesting stuff abt writing and the publishing industry in general)

– Rick had the full outline ready: major arcs & themes figured out already

– there’s stuff in the outline Rick had been planning for years, he had it sitting for a while

– Rick sought Mark out specifically, then Mark was asked to “audition” by writing the first 3 chapters that would be later seen by various ppl including some of the Disney publishing ppl. Mark decided to tweak/change some stuff. Kept 90% of the outline changed a 10%. They felt they needed to figure out/visualize things that weren’t in Rick’s outline, that were left unspecified there (the way Mark talks abt it, it feels like it’s mainly worldbuilding/lore stuff they are talking abt). Mark says Becky Riordan was very helpful with this, she knows the canon deets better than Rick.

– Rick wanted Mark to write first draft bc even tho the story is Rick’s, he wanted it to be told through an authentically queer perspective, with the nuance and sensibility that he as a straight man doesn’t feel capable of understanding/conveying.

– There’s things in the final draft that Oshiro decided to leave to Rick bc they felt Rick knew the characters better

– Oshiro talks abt the reactions of the ppl who have read the quasi final drafts and how one of the Disney editors said the book was for rrverse fans “like Spiderman No Way Home was for spiderman fans”, meaning this is a book that respects the identity these characters have built through the prev books and the history they have while still managing to take them somewhere new, which is exactly what Mark was trying to accomplish, and which they say “Rick is deeply thoughtful about. He cares a lot.” – Mark wanted to give these characters their due and also (said in a lighthearted but also clearly committed & passionate manner) make the gayest Percy Jackson book ever published

– talks a bit about an upcoming horror YA book of theirs and calls it “the fist dual pov book I’ve written”. The book comes out march 2023, it seems likely Mark’s started working on this before the solangelo book so… probably means nothing re: whose pov solangelo is told from?

– Mark thinks Rick has the ability to inject levity in extremely dark moments without lowering the intensity/stakes, which is essential when writing for middle graders while still wanting to take the story to emotionally challenging places, but very few authors can do it as well and as effectively (I AGREE)

– there’s a scene in the solangelo book where Mark kinda wrote themselves into a corner bc it was too scary and they realized it might not fly for the intended readership “and then I thought of the silliest way to deflate the terror” and they are very proud of that bc they feel they captured the quintessential Riordan tone. Bc the PJO books are great and complex and telling important stories etc but quote: “they’re fucking weird as hell” too.

– Mark actually only started reading the saga in 2018. Read them all in a week and was like the Lady Gaga meme. At the time they feel like they were only missing TON (if this was 2018 they were missing TTT too so either they are misremembering the year they read them in, or that they were missing TTT too). They reread them all when TON came out, and twice again last year.

– “the best time to start reading Percy Jackson is always.”

– They know it’s cheesy but their fave char from the moment he was introduced was Nico, and there’s a big reason for it that Mark can’t talk about bc it’s stuff that is in the solangelo book. It’s plot spoilers. Mark will be free to say it when the press tour for the book starts. (This seems contradictory tbh but it is how Mark explains it)

– They like Annabeth and Grover a lot

– “My favorite surprise character that at the beginning I was like ‘ehhhhh’ and at the end I was like ‘I would die for him’ was Apollo.”

– after reading series 1 Mark was like how are there 10 more of these where can this story possibly go, and then Rick did “a thing” (no spoilers) in series 2 that made the narrative world bigger, and then he did “another thing” in series 3 that concerns the character of Apollo, “and Apollo grew on me so much”, he goes “from the most annoying character on the face of the planet who judges everyone around to ‘all of these demigods are my children and I will murder for them’, it’s just incredible to watch that whole thing happen. Which means I also love Meg, and I love Meg’s growth too”

– there’s another character too that Mark loves and feels deserved the spotlight so they put them in the new book. “We don’t talk abt them enough” (Mark’s kinda joking as they say this, tho the love feels sincere)

– Mark’s godly parent would be Hades whom they liked in the PJ books but also always liked in general and share an aesthetic with

#mark oshiro #rrverse #the upcoming solangelo book #idk what else to tag this

[alevoil]

Resident Terror fan here, hi!!

-The Terror is a 2018 show that ran on AMC that follows the true story of the Franklin Expedition, an Arctic expedition made by ship in the 1840s to find the Northwest Passage that ultimately had no survivors. The show is pretty historically accurate but it has a mythological/supernatural twist (which I know sounds kind of silly at first but imo it’s actually worked into the story really well).

-There are gay characters (one canon gay couple that includes a main character, one couple heavily implied), and imo overall the show has a lot of queer moments in general (I mean the cast is about 99% male and they’re all stuck in the Arctic so you can imagine.)

-There is a main character who is Indigenous (Inuit - Netsilik) and very important to the plot!! The show also shows at least a little bit of life among the Netsilik and features a fair amount of Inuktitut (the language the Netsilik people in this region speak). (Also side note: someone in the replies to your original post said she was “probably Ada Blackjack” (a real Inuit woman who was the sole survivor of a different doomed expedition). She isn’t, she’s a fictional character made up for the show. Blackjack was a different branch of Inuit, spoke a different language, and wasn’t born until half a century after the Franklin Expedition was lost.)

-If the show sounds interesting to you I highly recommend you watch it!! It’s really well done, great acting, costumes, dialogue, etc. and lots and lots and lots of shots of ice. I will say it does get really violent and gory at times so if that’s something you’re wary of I’d definitely suggest looking up content guides online for the show so you know what to look out for. And yes lol, the Terror fandom is alive and well (and very very passionate about the show as you can see here hah), and we’d love to have you join us!!! :-)

dude this show sounds kickass! I’ll try and watch it sometime! Thanks for your answer :)

#the terror

[horsesandhockeyplayers]

When Life Gives You Lemons- Part 13

Warnings: Mature content, abuse, rape, eating disorders, OCD etc. Some of these things go into a bit of detail.  These warnings are relevant to the whole fic, not just particular  chapters.

Word Count Chapter: 4677

Word Count Total: 58,279

Author’s Note: Barbs and Lemon are back by popular demand! Reminder, that this fic starts during the summer of 2019. I   will be tagging the Avs and Lausanne HC. Also *~*~*~*~* means a POV   change. Flipping between Mark and Clementine. This part begins with  Clementine. THERE BE SMUT (kinda).

Part Thirteen*

When I woke, my heart was racing, Daze was planted on my chest with her head tucked under my chin, and Barbs was in a towel, soaking wet; standing over me. Absurdly, the first thing I noticed was how the droplets of water followed the trail of his chest hair down to his belly button.

I petted Daze and took a few deep breaths, focusing on the water dripping down Mark’s chest, the nightmare featuring Bill fading into the recesses in my mind where he would lurk until next time. 

When my heart rate approached a reasonable rate, the Border Collie lifted her head and licked my cheek. 

I was still focused on watching the water trail down Barbs’ body, and without thinking, I reached up to chase a droplet with my finger.

HIs brows disappeared into his hair, as he asked, “What the fuck, Lemon?”

My focus was still on that droplet and it took me a minute to realize that that wasn’t what he was asking about. My voice sounded like it was coming from a different room and when I put the pieces together, I responded, “Oh, I have night terrors,” like I was mentioning I bought the wrong milk and not a serious psychosomatic issue. 

His voice was stern, which pulled me out of my body-hair-water-droplet-related rapt state, when he said, “Clementine.”

Daze retreated to the other end of the couch and gave me a weary look. “I mean,” I started defensively, “I don’t know what you want me to say. I have night terrors. It’s not something I can control.”

He pushed away from the couch and ran his fingers through his dripping hair, looking sort of frantic. “Fuck,” he exhaled, “I thought you were dying. Do you have these every night?”

He was pacing, water was still dripping off of his body and, amongst other things, I was a little worried he was going to slip on the concrete floor. 

The more wound up he got, the tighter I felt the boa constrictor squeeze my chest. I knew that I was only going to get one chance to reason with him or explain myself before I felt like I was going to completely suffocate and it would become impossible to do so, so before I got there, I pleaded, “Mark.”

I don’t know what he saw, but his face closed down and he turned on his heel, walking down the hallway and muttering to himself, “Fucking night terrors.” The loud slam of the door made me jump, and Daze was trying to crawl in my lap, likely because she realized that I was all of a sudden overwhelmed by the feeling I needed to be anywhere else right the fuck now.

I pushed her off of my lap and made my way to the front entryway, snagging my tote on the way. My hand was reaching for the door when Mark came out of the bedroom, tucking himself into his jeans, calling “Lemon?”

My bare feet didn’t make a sound on the polished concrete floor as I walked toward the bank of elevators. Daze was trotting beside me trying to cross in front of my path and I started to dig in my bag for an extra leash; I usually had five on me. You know, just in case. 

I veered right at the elevators since I was still taking the stairs these days, which was when Mark caught up to me, a pair of my of shoes in one hand and his house keys in the other.

“Lemon, wait,” he implored. When I didn’t respond, he repeated, a little more forcefully, “Lemon, babe. Shoes.” How he managed to leap down a flight of stairs and skid out in front of me to block my passage, I don’t know; however, I will say that I wasn’t too wrapped up in my panic attack to prevent my noticing this feat of athleticism and subsequently file in away in my brain as something to appreciate at a later time and place. But now was not it.

Mark knelt down in front of me, laces on my shoes undone, and he slipped a little ankle sock on each foot. Honestly, the image was so ridiculous that it provided me with a moment of clarity just long enough for me to take a deep breath. I used his shoulder for balance as I put one shoe on, then the other. I could feel his body heat through the palm of my hand; his muscles were like granite, and he just felt so warm and solid in front of me. 

By the time he was done lacing both shoes, my panic attack had ratcheted down from a 7 to a 3 out of 10. My fingers were gently tracing random patterns into his shirt, allowing me to feel the intersections of muscles beneath his skin. Mark didn’t say anything as he remained kneeling in front of me, letting me have my moment or ten. Eventually, though, he stood and slid his arm through mine, pulling me in for a hug and setting my hand on his forearm so I could twirl his arm hair, much to my heart’s delight.

Things after that were a bit of blur and I don’t know how far we walked, but we ended up at a small park that was completely devoid of people. Taking Daze’s leash off, I started to dig in my purse and she knew whatever was coming out was going to be for her, so she started dancing on her front paws. I sat on a bench and handed the ball to Mark. He showed it to Daze, who let out an excited bark as he threw it.

He sat next to me, arm behind me on the bench, his voice almost light, as he murmured, “I didn’t know service dogs could play.”

I leaned into his body, suddenly tired even though I had just woken up. Between the night terror and the panic attack, I felt like I had run a marathon. “Dogs are like people,” I reminded him, “They’ll burn out if it’s all work all the time. They just need to be dogs sometimes.”

We sat in silence for a few more minutes before he spoke again. “You know,” he began, “even the most well-adjusted, intelligent man would struggle with this situation, right? And we both know I am neither of those things.”

“What situation would that be?” I asked, playing very dumb.

Mark didn’t pull any punches as, without hesitation, he responded, “Trying to date a woman who has survived some serious trauma and not without physical and mental scars.”

I was glad to hear that, if nothing else, he didn’t say ‘crazy person.’

Daze came back and dropped the ball at his feet; he picked it up and threw it again, wiping his hand on his jeans. “You’ve had a lot of time to get used to what happened to you, to learn how to make jokes about it, but this is all new to me.  I never think it’s your fault, I never think this is something wrong with you.” He took a deep breath before he continued, “You just need to give me a minute to fucking process some shit. Like, when I hear you scream like you’re being murdered on my couch while I’m in the shower, for example. I don’t think my heartbeat has ever been that fast and I am a professional athlete. And then you’re totally just chill, telling me you have Night Terrors like you’re informing me the Queen got another Corgi.”

I cleared my throat, vaguely uncomfortable, informing him, “Actually, the Queen isn’t actually breeding corgis anymore…”

His hand settled on the back of my neck and he squeezed lightly, as a tight smile crossed his face and he shook his head ruefully. “Lemon,” he chuckled, “that’s not the point.”

I halfway turned to face him, asking pointedly, “What is the point then, Barbs? That we’re both perfectly imperfect?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” he clarified. “What I mean is that only one of us can freak out at a time, Lemon, and sometimes that person needs to be me. Like, when you casually drop the bomb that sometimes you wake up screaming, solely because some asshole traumatized you that much.” He looked at me and went on, “And it feels like I have about half a second to process that information and go through a range of emotions related to that. Today, for example, I went from thinking “putting that dude in a hole in the ground is too kind” all the way to “holy shit, what does this mean for my sleep on game days?” in about two seconds flat.” He gave the back of my neck another squeeze before he continued, “And sometimes I’m probably going to need to walk away to process. But I’m not walking away from you, ok?”

I nodded, understanding what he was telling me; as someone who had spent a good chunk of time overwhelmed by a variety of feelings, I didn’t have to imagine very hard what a situation like that felt like for Mark.  “I think that’s fair,” I acknowledged, meeting his eyes. I took a deep breath and continued slowly, “I’m just… surprised you’re willing to try at all.”

He pulled me into his body, whispering in my ear, “Of course I am. But we are going to have to figure something out regarding the shoe situation, because I can’t have you wandering around Denver in bare feet. It’s where I draw the line.”

“That is an acceptable request,” I said through a smile. “I will work on it.”

Daze brought the ball back and Mark threw it farther this time. Clearly upset it was so much farther away, she offered a hysterical bark as she tore after it. 

We sat in silence for a while, watching Daze take her time coming back with the ball; there was a quasi-pattern to her actions, but she tended to rotate between the following: dropping it to sniff an interesting smell, picking it up again, pausing to pee on a dandelion plant, sniffing said pee with the ball still in her mouth, sniffing said pee after dropping the ball, etc.

Meanwhile, I appreciated the fact we could sit in comfortable silence, especially because it gave me time to absorb what Mark had said. After I’d mulled things over, I was the one who finally broke it and asked, “So, what do we do now?” I wasn’t sure if I meant in a general existential way or in this “relationship” or with the afternoon ahead of us, but he didn’t ask me to specify.

He was running his hand down my hair, combing it between his fingers,  and with the amount of time that task was requiring, it seemed that taking a nap while it was still wet was a poor choice, and I was grateful I hadn’t yet seen a mirror. “I don’t know,” he replied, “I was thinking we could order in, but you didn’t exactly get a second date, so if you want to put on something nice, we could go out instead.”

“What?” I was very confused.

“Lemon, I know I’m the dumb one, but this isn’t really that complicated. You asked what we do now, do you want to eat in and bingewatch TV, or go out?”

I blinked, still not understanding. “You don’t want to take me back to my parents?”

His hand stilled on my hair, and I realized I had caught him off guard. “I mean, I can take you if you want to go,” he offered. “Do you want to leave?”

I shook my head.

“Then, I’m lost,” he told me.

“I mean, this has been kind of stupid,” I said, looking at him, feeling like it was a totally obvious assessment of the situation. As he looked back at me with that same look regarding our plans for the evening, I realized there was a huge disconnect somewhere and so, I continued, “Last night I slept for 15 hours. I was awake for like, two, during which you cooked me a meal, then I fell back asleep and after sleeping for however long again, I woke up and in doing so, I scared you half to death. I’m just surprised you aren’t itching to get rid of me.”

I yelped slightly as he dragged me into his lap and I could practically hear him rolling his eyes as he replied, “Lemon, were you not listening earlier?”

Frowning, I answered, “I was paying attention.” 

“Did you miss the part where I said I wasn’t going to walk away from you and none of this is your fault?” Mark asked.

“No,” I grumbled.

“Great. Then, do you want to order in or go out?”

I reached out to finger the silver chain peeking out of his tee shirt, as I offered, “Order in?”

He captured my chin with his fingers and angled my face toward his, confirming, “Order in, it is, then.”

The kiss was hard but brief, though during it, he managed to stand and gently set me on my feet all in one motion and I remembered that I needed to be in awe of his body. 

He cleared his throat and quirked an eyebrow at me as he wondered, “Why are you looking at me like you’re 3 days into going carb-free and I’m a fresh baked loaf of french bread?”

I did my best to school my face into a more neutral look, but he wasn’t buying it. I knew I wasn’t off the hook, but to give me some time, he whistled for Daze, who picked up her ball from the grass and came running. After clipping on her leash Mark tucked me into his side, asking again, “Lemon?”

I sighed, admitting “I just realized today I don’t think I was ever attracted to Bill, but I am very attracted to you.”

The smug practically radiated off of him and I knew I had to clarify, lest it go to his head. So, I continued, “But sometimes, I still want to dump a 1 billion degree McDonald’s coffee over your head, so there is still room for improvement.”

When he spoke it was under his breath and through his smirk as he singsonged, “You liiiiikkee me. You want to dddaaattttee me, you want to kiiiiissss me.”

“Calm your tits, Gracie Hart,” I said, rolling my eyes.

He pulled me impossibly closer, “Mmm I think we both know Sandra Bullock’s tits have nothing on yours and I mean, Sandy is hot.”

I had to concede there, allowing, “Sandra Bullock is hot.”

Mark grinned again and kissed my temple, saying, “My girl has good taste.”

I made a face but let him have the small victory. 

When we finally made it back to his apartment, my phone was vibrating on the coffee table and I grimaced, realizing I hadn’t checked in with Nora yet, save for a brief text this morning. I scrolled to the bottom of the text thread, which took me an embarrassingly long time, and unfortunately, they were still coming in.

Nora: I’m calling Columbo.

Nora: The national guard

Nora: Homeland security

Nora: The feds!

I shot off a response before the situation escalated further, though it did give me pause to consider who might be above the feds on Nora’s hierarchy of emergency contacts; maybe The Pope?

Hi! I’m here, I'm alive! 

Nora: Quick question: WHAT THE FUCK?

Nora: FIRST of all, you are at a cute boy’s house and you don’t text for awhile, ok, I get that. You have better things to do, but Clementine Jones, it has been almost 24 hours and all I got some bullshit brief shit this morning. SECOND OF ALL, take a picture of Mark, right now. Right this second. 

Mark was downing a glass of water and I zoomed in on him with my phone and snapped a picture before sending it to Nora. He lifted a brow and I just shook my head.

Nora: Why is he wearing clothes? Are you wearing clothes? I’m realizing now that maybe we need to have a conversation about the birds and the bees before I sent you off with The Italian Stallion and that’s on me. 

I rolled my eyes at her, even though she couldn't see me.

I have had many revelations over the past 24 hours and 1 of them is that I now know for certain I was never sexually attracted to Bill and the 2nd is I don’t own enough panties.

Nora: !!!!!!!!

Now, Barbs and I are ordering dinner. 

I turned my phone off and set it back down on the coffee table as I was joined on the couch by a tired Border Collie and a less tired Barbs.

“Was it Nora?”

I nodded and settled into the corner of the couch.

Mark snatched up my legs and hauled me down the length of the couch, putting my feet in his lap. He slipped off my shoes and socks, the very same ones he had put on earlier, and started rubbing my feet. I tried to pull them away as I whined, “Mark, stop.”

He stopped massaging, but didn’t release my feet, “What,” he asked, “why?”

“I don’t like it.” 

“Have you ever had your feet rubbed?” he prodded.

“I mean, yeah, like pedicures and stuff.”

“Well, did you like it then?”

I narrowed my eyes at him, suddenly aware of where this line of questioning was going, and it was a checkmate on the conversation. I relaxed back into the cushions grumbling, “Yes.”

“Ah, so you just don’t like ME rubbing your feet,” he teased.

I didn’t dignify that with a response.

“Why don’t you want me rubbing your feet, Lemon?” he continued, pushing on despite my reticence. “You actually fight me every time I try and do something nice.”

“To be fair,”  I said, defending myself, “a lot of this is touch related and I am a little gun shy.”

“Mmmhmmm,” he acknowledged.

He returned to rubbing my feet, and I did my best to relax. When he dug his thumbs into the bottoms of my arches, I may have moaned while my muscles turned to warm jello.

“That’s it, she’s finally relaxed,” he said, with more than a hin of smugness, but I really wanted him to continue doing what he was doing so I stayed silent. Of course, he couldn’t let that go without comment.

“Oh, wow,” he chirped, “No smartass remarks?”

I opened my eyes long enough to roll them.

*~*~*~*~*~*~* 

She had these walls she didn’t even know she had about issues she didn’t know she had, and I really enjoyed taking a sledgehammer to them and getting a little closer to her with every swing. 

Finally, after that moan— which, honestly, had me hard in my jeans— she took a few deep breaths and I literally felt all the tension drain out of her body. 

I knew she wasn’t sleeping, because every so often, her foot would twitch when I hit a ticklish spot. 

“Hey, Lemon?” I prompted, “What do you want for dinner?”

She didn’t open her eyes to answer as she murmured, “Whatever you want, Barbs.”

“Pizza?”

She opened one eye and asked, “If you gorge yourself on pizza, are you going to be slow as fuck at camp on Monday?”

For the first time in my life, I didn’t have anything to say and I gaped at her.

Her smile was small and sly, but I caught it. “You little minx,” I spat, setting her feet back on the couch and levering over her, fitting my hips to hers. “Are you accusing me of being slow?”

“I’m just sayin’,” she intoned, “everyone looks good this summer and it would be a shame if you got sent down because you couldn’t hack it. I’d be forced to take pictures of Gabe… or worse! EJ!”

I kissed my way down her throat as I whispered against her skin, “You say that like you only take pictures of me.”

She squirmed under me as she admitted, “I have a secret folder on my computer that’s just you. I download the excess photos before I turn in the memory cards.”

I sat up a bit and braced myself on an arm above her, looking her in the eyes as I asked, “Seriously?”

She made a face I couldn’t decipher and nodded slowly. 

I don’t remember deciding to kiss her but I just suddenly was, my tongue against hers, trying to coax it off the bottom of her mouth. Her hands hesitantly slipped under the hem of my shirt, and I sat up again, pulling it over the back of my head with one hand.

She seemed to freeze as I did that, and pulled her fingers away. I missed her touch immediately and maybe it was a little selfish but with my free hand, I reached for both hers and replaced each on my body. When I settled back down to kiss her again, the cross around my neck settled in the hollow of her throat.

She removed her hands again, but this time pushed her fingers into my hair as she murmured, “I can’t get enough of your hair.” Finally, the hair gene paid off. 

Her fingertips massaged my skull and I dropped my cheek to her chest, giving a contented sigh. “If you never stopped doing that and I could lay on top of you forever, I might just die a happy man,” I informed her.

She finger combed my hair, nails scraping against my scalp and suddenly the intimate idea of a relationship didn’t sound awful. I currently ONLY wanted to fuck Clementine ANYWAY and if this intimacy and this closeness was a bonus, I suddenly understood all the guys on my team with wives and long-time girlfriends. These were moments that just didn’t come from a one night stand or a hookup. These impromptu moments of intimacy filled a part of me I didn’t realize was empty. 

And just as suddenly, I realized Tine was the only woman I could picture myself with like this, just laying here, while she ran her fingers through my hair, close, intimate, with a weather ear on the golf tournament I had turned on. 

“Mark?” She asked, trailing her hands out of my hair and down my back.

“Hmm?” I resisted the urge to rub my beard scruff against her.

“Are you going to fall asleep?”

I smiled and shook my head against her chest, “Nuh uh.”

She was dragging her fingertips against my skin and I could feel the goosebumps chasing her fingers. “Then can you kiss me?” she asked softly.

I lifted my head and pressed my lips to hers, more than happy to oblige. This time, she was the one to deepen the kiss, her tongue licking across my lips. 

My moan may have sounded more like a growl as my tongue shoved hers out of the way and I kissed her hard. The moment I did, she backed off, almost seeming to freeze. I pulled my lips from hers, sensing her limits and asked “Too much?”

She nodded. I took a breath and slid my arms underneath her body flipping us so she was on top. “Okay,” I affirmed. “What if you drive?” I suggested.

Her knees settled on either side of my hips. I could feel her heat through my jeans and her leggings and I shot a little prayer toward the sky that I would be able to control myself and give her an experience she deserved. 

Tine rocked on my erection, adjusted her position and rocked her hips again, letting out a small gasp.

I folded my hands behind my head contentedly, and she placed her hands on my chest to change the angle. She looked down at me through the veil of her hair that fell over her shoulders. 

“Is this ok?” she asked

“Does it feel good for you?” I responded.

She nodded.

“Then it’s more than ok,” I said easily. 

Her hips rolled again and she bit her lip as she set a rhythm, grinding against me as she whimpered, “Fuck, Mark.”

She was fully clothed and still, it was quite possibly the hottest, most intimate thing I had ever experienced.

She adjusted her position again, her pace increasing and when it started to falter, I grabbed her hips and thrust up against her, holding her steady. As she shivered above me, I did it again. And again. And again. Finally, she threw her head back and her entire body shuddered; I watched as the tremors rolled through her and I was sure I’d never been harder in my life. When she pushed against my chest and tried to wiggle away from me, I stopped moving and she collapsed against my chest. From her place tucked under my chin, I heard her whisper, “Barbs?”

“Mm?” 

“What the fuck was that?” she wondered.

“An orgasm?”

“That’s an orgasm?” she asked in disbelief.

My next words escaped before I thought about them, because all the blood to run my brain was currently in my dick and the affection gripping my heart was almost overwhelming, meaning I was basically fucked. “Babe,” I blurted out, “I watched you have an orgasm in the shower.”

She sat up and looked at me, her face inscrutable. “You watched me?” she echoed.

I grimaced and nodded, elaborating, “I knocked and called your name, but you didn’t hear me.”

“Ok, gross invasion of privacy aside, even that didn’t feel like this.”

“Baby, I don’t know what to tell you. That was an orgasm.”

“Holy shit,” she breathed, sounding a little awestruck.

I pushed the hair away from her face, wanting to check on her, because I figured this was A Lot. “Are you ok?” 

She nodded, smiling as she said, “An entire genre of books and television suddenly make sense.”

I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her to my chest. Eventually, her breathing evened out and I was almost certain she fell asleep. I squirmed and tried to snake a hand between our bodies to adjust myself.

“Am I too heavy?” she mumbled.

“No, babe, just… too sexy.”

She snorted into my chest as she rejected this answer, informing me, “You’re such a liar.”

“Lemon,” I sighed, “when you wore that dress did you not look in the mirror?”

“Ok,” she narrowed her eyes at me, skeptical “but I don’t exactly look like every other hockey guy’s girlfriend.”

“But you’re not every hockey guy’s girlfriend,” I retorted, “you’re MY girlfriend.”

She turned her head, our eyes mere inches apart, as she questioned, “Am I your girlfriend? Are you going to put a label on me?”

I pushed her hair out of her face again so I could look at her as I confirmed, “Yeah. I’m gonna put a label on you. So I hope you’re okay with that. And plus, maybe that’ll help keep Comph and Josty’s ass-ogling at bay.”

The smile on her face was faint, but it was there, “They do not do that,” she dismissed.

“You have no idea,” I said earnestly, “I had to threaten all of them.”

“When?” she pressed. 

“When what?”

“When did you have to threaten them?”

I twirled the ends of her hair, brushing it against my beard and pretended I didn’t hear her.

“Barbs, when?” she pestered.

I cleared my throat and mumbled without making eye contact, “thedayicaughtyouinmyarms.”

She turned her head toward me and chirped, “Excuse me, I didn’t catch that.”

I captured her lips with mine for a soft kiss before I pulled back and smirked, “I said, the day I caught you in my arms.”

Her face was soft as she recalled, “Barbs, that was the first day you met me.”

“Nothing wrong with your memory, Lemon.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

#Mark Barberio #mark barberio imagine #mark barberio fic #mark barberio rpf #Colorado Avalanche #Colorado Avs #colorado avalanche imagine #colorado avalanche fic #colorado avalanche rpf #avs #Avs fic #avs imagine #avs rpf #lausanne hc #nhl fic #nhl fiction #nhl rpf #nhl imagine #hockey fic #hockey imagine #hockey rpf #hockey romance

[brilliantfantasticgeronimo]

rewatching the idiot's lantern

visuals: this episode's direction is amazing, ya'll. really underrated. the use of slanted angles gives what could be a standard period YA story stand out, and it gives it a kind of... splashy, noir-but-colorful vibe. it also fits really well with the whole "telly gone wrong" thing the story is going for. the faceless ones effect is simple but effective, the telly lady is iconic, and don't get me started on rose and ten's iconic rockabilly outfits... colonialism / hegemony: some interesting lines: "we may have lost the empire, but we can still be proud" / "only an idiot hangs the union flag upside down". there's a line from ten that's really funny about "this is the queen's england! not being men in black or stalinist russia",,, stealth anti-communist propaganda is always hilarious but specially hilarious in november 2023 when sunak is pushing the "anti-terrorism" card to jail palestine marches (and starmer would rather be die than call for a ceasefire). this ep is interesting also in that it's a good example of brittish pop culture trying to re-build a sense of identity after being "beaten" as an empire. so in the story, the coronation itself must retain its importance, the monarchy can't be questioned... but it seeks to reframe its importance in "the domestic" and entertainment sphere ("this is history right here"). make no mistake tho, it is still very patriotic. the dad gets called out not for being a Proper briton and not hanging The Flag Correctly... overall tho it's fun to see a conservative ass get his own rhetoric used against him (by the doctor, by rose, by tommy, and by the mother). And i think this episode makes the correct analysis in showing how the "patriotic veterans" ideology is fueling the neo-facists of today's uk (See: the "poppies sellers are afraid to leaver heir home" circus last week). themes: i used to think s2 didnt have much of a cohesive theme compared to s1 or s3 but now i think im starting to notice one emerging: the resistance against modernity and the passage of time. this episode is a good partner to rise of the cybermen/Army of steel with one talking about "phone updates and blootooth but they can mind control" and "what if tv melts ur brain"... in both the evil bug eyed monsters make those fears literal... but the real moral crutch is, pherhaps more than "phone bad"... that people become complicit and compliant to everything happening on the world around them. and that those who rebel against this apathy are virtuous in doing so (see The Preachers, tommy, etc). I also think this theme fits really well with School Reunion (sarah jane coming to terms with her ageing, rose coming to terms with her eventual death / the death of her relationship with the doctor, the "disco" aspect of k-9 being ridiculed but then showing to have value) and then with GiTf, with the clockwork robots being a probable (unintentional?) metaphor for monarchy and "obsolete" technologies that linger on.

Character of the day highlight: The telly-lady is such a good one off villain. Every time she says "IM HUNGRY" "FEEEDMEEE" it was hilarious and great. The whole family is also all get a moment to shine. "I did what I thought was right" and "That's my mother" were really arresting. On a negative point though, I would have cut the inspector guy, his death did not hit hard enough because he just didn't have enough screentime in this one. The Timeless Child bonus: Ten's bonding with the kid serves really well as parallel to himself. Tecteum would have a lot in common with the dad this episode so it's kind of cool that in that way, The Doctor gets to stand up for themeselves.

Companion watch: Ten and rose are very clever in this one.not in a wow million years of techbobabble clever or high functioning psychopath clever way but like, good ol fashion connecting cues, knowing how to push ppl's button and who to talk to get information. I would say these are about apathy, and [falling in line]. there's also an interesting character point of her being more invested in things working out for his family which as i said in another post, honestly takes off some of the sensationalism i've seen around her telling the kid to talk to his dad.

Misc: Missed a trick by not having ten say NOTHING IN THE WOKR DCAN STOP ME NOWW in That Scene. this ep also vibes well with s1 in that tommy is Inspired to save the day (i wish he had more time to bond w/ 10/rose so this Hit more, but as it is, it's perfectly fine. it's more of a "this person was already great and they didn*t *need* the doctor and co, but it's nice that they helped anyway").

#60threwatch #dw

[gust-jar-simulator]

Details on the relationship with Loftwings in Tool Gods AU:

Not every person is soulbound to a Loftwing. It's mostly restricted to the knights as a rite of passage, although anyone can petition for the privilege. It's easier to get approval the official way, though, so a lot of merchants will send their kids to be knights so someone in the family can ship goods effectively.

It's possible to ride a Loftwing without a soulbond, but the bond is necessary for the quick response times needed in a crisis, like catching people who fall off the islands or conveying more complex instructions than "fly that way".

The Knights' Academy graduation ceremony involves submitting yourself to the scrutiny of the Loftwing flock, letting one of them pick you, and then a magical ritual very similar to marriage that ties rider and bird together. The initial stages manifest immediately- a telepathic bond with emotional feedback, usually. Depending on the strength of the bond, the next stages will manifest within a few weeks or a few months.

(The Hero got his within a week.)

Physical modifications include lighter bones, eyes changing to handle the rigors of flying, patches of feathers that match your bird, and the ability to make Loftwing calls. Most people never unlock this, but in dire circumstances the body can alter to subsist on sunlight for a limited amount of time. It's useful when Skyloft has famines.

Other modifications include the telepathic/empathic bond, frequently an irrational fear of the dark, and some new instincts/compulsions.

They don't name their birds because they can be identified in the way birds identify eachother, through calls and plumage and other cues.

Details on the fuckery that is The Hero of Skyloft:

He fully changed within a week of bonding, which was somewhat disturbing for everyone involved. Patches of hair falling out, going blind for a day, bone pain, losing a couple pounds of bone density, etc. Before the change, he had dirty blond hair and blue eyes. After the change, his hair was flecked with red feathers and his eyes turned gold. He lost all ability to see in the dark.

After defeating Demise, he walked away with widespread lightning scars as well as Demise's divine halo (see: The Imprisoned's final form). A halo is not the same thing as a crown, and can be altered (though not removed) to suit the will of the bearer. The Hero absolutely does not want a halo and is hiding his among the pattern of lightning scars on the back of his neck. He's also tried wearing it as a ring, and wears it more often as a ring once the kingdom of Hyrule is formally established.

A halo is a mark of the divine, and can be used to magically induce pants-shitting terror in anyone who sees it, or even shine brightly enough to blind and burn. It can also stockpile magical energy. The Hero did briefly experiment with using it to boost his stamina but the results were... overkill. He's decided to ignore he has one.

In default form his halo looks like a ring of black lightning. Zelda's looks like a shifting bronze gear, like the gate of time.

#tool gods au #loz skyward sword #tg bloodfeather

[charlesdesvoeux]

terror rewatch time!!! i'll be using this post to comment on ep. 1 "go for broke" block the tag terrorwatch2 if you'd like :-)

(instead of clogging up you guys' dash I'll just post all my little notes here under the cut):

interesting thing that crozier requests an ice report, and they could've just fetched mr. reid and given it very straightforwardly and objectively, with no fuss. but sir john decided to make it a social occasion, a dinner with the officers, which I think is a tiny but interesting way of illustrating their different priorities (even if we haven't met Crozier yet)

the chat between hickey and the boys is a nice way of introducing the class structure within the ship, and we see hickey already has ideas of questioning this very structure which of course culminate in something very interesting later on as all these boundaries of class and propriety blur as they get closer and closer to doom

"as I climbed the ladder I was thinking of caesar crossing the rubicon" james you're unbearable (affectionate)

i'm thinking about franklin's choice to get David Young to erebus when they could have just sent stanley over. is it lack of trust in Dr. MacDonald? does he not want to inconvenience stanley with having to go to another ship in the cold- instead exposing a sick boy to the cold air of the fucking arctic and dismissing the concerns both crozier and macdonald raise about what this could mean to his health? either way it means that david young died away from his friends who could have provided some comfort for him as he passed.

"after one glance from him I have to remind myself I'm not a fraud" that's exactly what made them so antagonistic to one another at first... when James sees himself through Francis' gaze he's afraid, he's afraid that his construction of the mask of Commander James FitzJames will come crumbling down. but the thing is- it HAS to. it has to come down. they have to reach the end of vanity, the end of all illusions and pretense in order to see clearly and try to survive. and the worst thing is, jfj does reach the end of vanity- but he does not survive.

"you love your men more than even god loves them" "for all our sakes let's hope you're wrong" is this the only moment of self awareness for franklin??? i can't remember any other from my first watch. sir john doesn't love them, not really- his supposed affection is frankly quite shallow and only present when it doesn't inconvenience him. it's not love, it's a performance of "love" that hits traditional beats (affability, a cheery tone etc) but is entirely hollow.

john franklin is a VALOR STEALING BASTARD

goodsir telling david young "you may be a warning of things to come".... it came true in more ways than one.... what with him having both the lead poisoning and the vision from the shaman alerting them to leave...

david young dies: no mother or father will welcome him into heaven; his sister is on the other side of the world; his friends are on the other boat. but at least he may console himself with the promise to see the passage first, and the certainty to have died for the economy.

love the visual parallel established between collins removing the ice from the propeller and goodsir removing david young's organs in the autopsy

the scene where franklin makes The Worst Call™ is so interesting in terms of the dynamic between him, crozier and fitzjames but also. he was never gonna listen to crozier. crozier doesn't fawn over him, doesn't put on the performance of reverence- he's a relentlessly practical man. it wounded franklin's pride. so even in face of what appears to be a very sensible plan he simply will not yield to crozier's judgement. and thus sir john's pride and hubris knocks down the first thing in the rube golberg machine of doom of the franklin expedition.

goooood the way hickey puts up the two fingers at tozer and then hurriedly changes it to a thumbs up. i love you ratman <3

francis' withering look at franklin in one of the last shots. jesus fucking christ

#terrorwatch2

[bruhstation]

the 4 (four) genders of casa tidmouth

1. humans

a classic one. there's flesh. there's also a soul inside. they walk around and work and do whatever humans do. they also eat and breathe and sleep. you know the drill. a select few of them met god after receiving a near-death experience and got sent back to life. humans also have to deal with whatever hilarities and horrors beyond mortal comprehensions the island of sodor has to offer but of course there's nothing worse than facing unruly coworkers tomorrow

2. ghosts/spirits/supernatural entities/whatever you call it

humans that died but are still incredibly, truly, extraordinarily determined to live are sent to the shining time world. the case with ghosts, however, is that the amount of gold dust required to bring them back to life was probably not given enough to them. they also most likely have some unfinished business or a goal that still needed to be fulfilled, whether good or bad, to add to the factor. some possess inanimate objects just for the heck of it, some terrorize random passerby, some look over their loved ones, some just sit around trying to remember their purpose. they're the main reason why the island of sodor is filled to the brim with regular bizarreness to the point where its inhabitants are more mildly inconvenienced than actually horrified

3. time travelers

scenario is similar to ghosts/spirits. however BEFORE the impact of death struck them, instead of being sent to the shining time world they're just... pulled out of danger's way and then thrown to the future. this is usually because the situation for them to live in their own era is not suitable enough for them to come back (they're being chased, there's a bounty on them, their environment is in shambles, etc) so to the safer future it is! how far to the future? it's up to the god's own imagination and logic. they also lost their memories as a result. it's a side effect but that could be for the best. whoever watches the island of sodor most likely has no idea how incredibly fucked up this is but hey, they're gonna live and that's good! it's probably not that bad. her job there is done. bada bing, bada boom.

4. god.

do you hear it? can you hear it? the bells ringing? the power of judgement in your hands? despite your might over life and death, the passage of time, luck and probability, wishes and realities, there's no guarantee you'll ever truly be able to understand humans.

#zin.txt #casa tidmouth #casa lore.... there are some asks that have questions alluding to these things so HERE'S A LITTLE GLOSSARY THINGY

[gossip-girl-of-middleearth]

Alright you’re the person I know who seems the most like they’d have experience with… *ahem* dubiously legal things. So do you know if it is possible to sneak onto a plane? (like a regular commercial plane) Is this something you have ever tried before? Are there other methods to get somewhere very far away in quick time with paying no / very little money? (assume I have a few months to plan this adventure but spare money is not something I possess in high volumes) just trying to have some fun with my life but capitalism is constantly trying to stop me 😞

xoxo, your bestie

Hello my dude!

You’ve certainly come to the right place 😂

I can say this is something I definitely have ✨experience✨ with in the past

I think it’s probably best to avoid stowing away on planes all together. Ever since 9/11, commercial planes in particular have basically become Fort Knox. Counter terrorism practices are very tight and high in planes nowadays, so unless you’re a ninja turtle sneaking into the cargo hold, it’s near impossible

Like, potentially you could pose as a baggage handler on the airport grounds and then stay in the cargo area until takeoff and then sorta stay out of sight at arrival with the new baggage handlers and pretend to be one of them, but there’s the matter of getting onto the grounds in the first place, finding a grounds pass, a uniform, putting up with the humidity of cargo etc… Planes are not what I recommend

Boats and ships however! Oh-ho-ho! Much better bet

If you find out the manifest for a cargo ship or something, there’s plenty of places on board to tuck yourself away

Alternatively, you can always actually approach the captain or crew and offer to lackey for them on board in exchange for free passage. Just make sure you have your passport and appropriate travel documents on hand, as unless you luck out and they’re dodgy, they’re not gonna wanna assist anything too illegal and risk their jobs/qualifications

Only thing to keep in mind with that is that if you’re a girl or femme-presenting, there’s a high chance they’re only gonna say yes to you coming on board so they can have a vulnerable runaway on board their ship of men out in the middle of the sea with nowhere to go…

Definitely keep your wits about you

The next way and easiest for domestic and continental travel is hitchhiking. A lot of truckers will pick you up and go far distances. You can meet a lot of cool people along the way. Again, just make sure you have your travel documents and passport handy if going across international lines

So there’s really lots of alternative ways to get around! The only downside is that there are alternative dangers too

I’ve been in one too many scary situations that have urged me to stay on the “normal” side of life now

A lot of these methods should be a last, last resort, as you’re endangering yourself every time. It’s much easier to get a crappy in betweener job and pay for the initial one way ticket to where you wanna go and figure the rest out from there

Safe travels! Xx

#xoxo gossip girl

[leseigneurdufeu]

Papy fait de la résistance !

I've got absolutely NO context so I'm going to have to interprete ok?

Are you asking if I know it? If I can sum it up? OK:

I know it. Papy fait de la Résistance is a french parodic war/resistance movie in which acted essentially the Troupe du Splendide (a theater kids group except they knew each other as theater kids but also went on to have cinema and theater careers, mostly in comedy, mostly in movies where they were all or many of them at once like Les Bronzés, Le Père NOël est une ordure, etc.). Brief (who am i kidding i'm unable to sum things up briefly) it starts with the father of a family of three who dies in stupid circumstances after a whole day of bad luck, except he was in the resistance. Two years later, the germans decide to take his house because they need a couple rooms to lodge a general (who not only has a name that only sounds german but is most probably czech or something, his name also sounds exactly like "sponge"). THe resistant father was living with his flamboyant wife, his mad-scientist-vibes-but-not-a-scientist father-in-law, his gay-caricature-with-collabo-undertones son and his two daughters. After his death, they took in a latin teacher to get rent and make ends meet, and he ended up getting engaged to the eldest daughter.

So when the general arrives anyway, they get the fiancé out of his room to give it to the general (despite the fiancé noting that there are other rooms in the house, a big mansion, which are empty and could be used, to which he's told back that everyone has to make sacrifices, big cliché of the resistance movie turned absurdist because of the other rooms). The grandfather procedes to loudly insult the germans (believe me he knows what he's doing, it's not like he was not as bright as in his youth or anything, he will procede to gleefully lie to the germans about menial things to wreak havoc in their orders for the rest of the movie, completely unprompted) who in retaliation put the whole family in the cellar (again, spacious because under a mansion) instead of the one-bedroom-and-one-bathroom that were confiscated.

The son of the family proceeds to say that after all the germans won so they can do whatever they want and adds that the german radio has very good songs after all (so he listens to it), which horrifies the rest of the family. Since they're all musicians, they take their piano, tuba, everything, and start playing and singing the Marseillaise, which prompts the general himself, arrived in the mean time, to arrive, compliment them for their talent because he's an art-enthusiast, ask them what the heck they're doing in the cellar since the house is full of empty rooms, and quotes Goethe to prove he likes art. The Goethe quote is identified by the son, so the general congratulates him, then leaves. THe whole family turns on the son and calls him a "dirty traitor" for knowing a bit of german/idenfiying the quote.

But plot twist! The son is actually Super-Resistant, a guy dressed like the phantom of the opera (except for the mask which is different) who terrorizes the nazis in Paris ever since his father died. To get what I'm talking about I'm going to pull some screenshots from my archives.

he looks like this... aaaaand i just realized that's my header so that might be why you sent the ask but too late I'm invested in this so I'll keep going.

Message by him found at the former general's place, which he bombed (also the guy apparently had his head against the bomb because it was against his pillow and is in better shape than the appartment so it really doesn't make any sense:)

the guy on the left is the new general, pointing to it to ask the former one "what the heck is this". It translates as "bon voyage fat ass (signed) super-resistant".

Anyway the son goes back home via a secret passage between the mansion and the Louvres (I think? or maybe another museum) and sneaks on the general (who obviously uses the room in which the passage arrives).

The mother, the eldest daughter and the fiancé go to the Kommandantur (administrative place where the germans govern the location and around, and where they take complaints if need be) to complain that they were put in the cellar (which... again, absurd, because the general offered them to get the rest of the house back because his soldiers were stupid to put them in the cellar, and they refused) and there they see an english (scottish?) soldier, wounded and prisonner, who is obviously left unattended for a good five minutes during which they pass him a weapon. He uses it to kill the collabo (used that word twice already, if you don't know what is it's a french guy who collaborates with the occupation forces) who was trying to get the family to denounce any jews they would know (other big cliché as far as i know) and they all run away, except he's shot in the leg and they split up, the family bringing him back home (re: in a house full of german soldiers) and the fiancé forced by the eldest daughter to go find him so medicine. He manages to be made a prisonner by the germans because of some dumb mistake/altercation and is about to be shot, along with other guys including a resistant, when Super Resistant arrives and saves them before trying to make a fundraising for the resistance (hence the Croix-de-Lorrained metal pots on the picture) but everyone dodges the collect and tries to flee which... i mean, is logical. The fiancé starts pestering the other resistant to join the resistance and the other resistant ends up telling him about a secret reunion when the fiancé tells him about the british aviator in his cellar.

In the mean time, waiting for the fiancé to come back with the medicines, the family is operating the british guy, the grandfather having been a military doctor during the first world war. The gestapo arrives at that moment, led by Mr Adolfo Ramirez, who used to do oddjobs at the Opera de Paris and who was at odds with the family because of a mix of inferiority complex and political disagreement. Ramirez starts insulting the family while the british guy is trapped head-down in a wardrobe, then as the german general arrives in his back, Ramirez doesn't see who is arriving and tells him to shut up, calls him a gay slur and threatens him then asks his name and the guy is like "sponge. general sponge." anyway shenanigans ensue.

Half of the family and the british guy go to the secret reunion that the fiancé was told about, it's in a brothel (which is alas the reason the movie is PG rated or should be) but the fiancé sees Super Resistant entering the brothel for the reunion and thinks there's a masquerade ball inside, so he disguises himself as hitler before entering and stumbling upon a bunch of german soldiers having a good time. Awkwardness ensues.

The secret reunion is upstairs where Super Resistant and a british envoy conclude an alliance, but Ramirez arrives, starts shooting blindly, someone shoots him back, he is then arrested by german soldiers for starting a shootout (the resistants ran away safely) despite being part of the Gestapo himself. Super Resistant and the others steal the car the family had come in, and see inside it the aviator and the younger daughter in a passionate make out session, which infuriates Super Resistant (which, remember, is the son of the family) who starts calling the british names and loses control of the car to bash him over the head. The alliance is moot. It lasted like 5 minutes.

In the mean time, the eldest daughter and general squarepants (er... Sponge) start a romance because after all he's not that bad and he doesn't want war etc. At that moment the general receives the news that Hitler's hidden twin brother (or was it half-brother?), field marshal von Apfelstrüdel (german for... Apple Pie) is about to go visit Paris and they want to organize a party for him because with how Super Resistant is messing things up, a party is the only way to save themselves from prison/destitution.

Turns out Apfelstrüdel hates parties, and the only way Sponge can save the night is to have the family sing and play, because Apfelstrüdel has nothing against opera. The family refuses because the reason they needed the fiancé to pay rent in the first place was because they refused to sing in front of nazis, but Ramirez finds the secret passage in the house and Sponge blackmails them with that (although they had no idea there was a passage, also they don't know where the son has gone). THe fiancé gets a bomb by the resistant he met when they were almost shot and places it under the table but Apfelstrüdel invites the family to eat with him, which prompts the fiancé to go under the table to try and deactivate it. He only manages to break the table in... a suspicious way let's say.

and is arrested, but not before Apfelstrüdel had a whole musical number about how the mother of the family looks a lot like this girl he knew in Germany (who he makes a very unflattering description of) and sings with an awfully inaccurate german accent "Je n'ai pas changé" (I didn't change, literally) which was a popular pop song at the time the film was released.

Anyway the fiancé is arrested. The general tries to take his defense but is arrested too. Ramirez gives Apfelstrüdel an earful about how he, Ramirez, is the only real nazi in Paris and is arrested too because why not.

At that moment Super Resistant arrives, slides down a banner with a dagger and sends a sword to Apfelstrüdel to do this mano a mano. The more I write about this movie the more I have to check the dvd on my shelves because it feels more like a fever dream than a real movie but alas.

Anyway they take Applepie hostage and steal a tank before riding into the sunset. Then twist! What we saw was actually a movie inspired from real events that the protagonists were watching in this french emission in which people who participated in the movie comment on it during the second part of the night.

The journalist (the same who did the emission in real life) starts the emission by introducing everyone: we've got the fiancé who became minister after the war, we've got Adolfo Ramirez Jr, who came back from Bolivia especially to participate to the emission, we've got Sponge and the older daughter who are now married, and we've got the brother/son/super resistant who looks more stereotypically gay than he ever did at the beginning of the movie.

Chaos enfurls as the minister tries to monopolize the conversation, the brother denies having ever been Super Resistant, and Adolfo ramirez jr (played by the same as AR Sr) not only pretends his father was never a nazi (ARJr: "my father was never a nazi! He was actually a double agent! He had wormed the gestapo to fight them from the inside!" / the minister: "Mr Ramirez if your father was a double agent then I'm working for the KGB" / ARJr: "well I've got no proof you don't!") but also starts digging up dirt about everyone. He pretends the couple consumed their marriage way before the wedding (the details he gives pinpoints the "consumation" to a part of the movie where his "father" intruded on the couple kissing), that the minister embezzled millions, and that Super Resistant killed his best friend because he was sleeping with the youngest daughter. The couples leaves, outraged, and the other two start beating Ramirez up on air while the journalist concludes the emission alone.

So anyway hey that's my "brief" summary of Papy fait de la Résistance (Grandpa is in the resistance, lit.) which I can't encourage y'all to go watch if you can, if you speak french, and if you're more than 15 because there are a few scenes (mainly in the brothel) which contain nudity.

#papy fait de la résistance #movies #ask #long post