#this is the chaos state that liminal space feeling

[vesperstardust]

I think my life is done falling apart/together for now

I don't even know how to transcribe the chaos that has been happening in my life the last...forever...but specifically the last 6 months and especially the last couple of months

2020 and 2021 were the best years of my life, maybe that tells you something. They were the years I felt most secure and became most aligned with myself. I've always been a survivor who thrives in liminal spaces.

Falling apart and falling together look remarkably similar. If you take away anything from this post, remember that.

I want to move forward and stay still and let myself be happy and do the things I've been wanting to do but I also want to remember every twist and turn that brought me here. Because I'm grateful how it all worked out.

Wish I could do a cut under a cut Here is the story, I suppose, of what happened.

There is even more I can't write, but the present trials feel like they truly began when I lost my hair from alopecia during 2022.

I've struggled with alopecia areata, one of several chronic illnesses, but that was the first time I became bald. My long auburn red hair I saw as part of my identity, gone. Who am I? I had to find out quickly who I really was and find strength to keep going that I never knew. Cutting or shaving hair as humiliation against one's will, to break one's spirit, I understood why. I didn't recognise myself. During this same time I also had a traumatic experience with people I thought were my friends that was directly related to my experiences with alopecia.

It took months and along with a newly-approved-by-the-fda medication for alopecia and continued scalp injections, it's growing back fairly well. But just as this was happening, we became financially unstable when my partners gig job dried up and he began experiencing a severe health condition at the same time.

Things were stressful and challenging at this point but manageable. Then we lost our food money. At points we were half-starved (I say this without exaggeration - support your local food bank it will save someone's life). The morale blow/raise of losing/gaining treats is not to be underestimated. And people who have never been food insecure don't realise how little other things matter when you can't eat. You can barely think to do other things. I was food insecure growing up so at least that was something I knew how to deal with. But it's still a terrible thing to be hungry.

After going through the winding maze insurance companies so often require even for life-changing prescriptions, my partner finally received the medication he needed to recover his health to a manageable state.

But eventually we faced eviction from our apartment with one week's notice after attempted financial aid fell through. It's traumatic and frightening and sorrowful to have to leave the place you call home under circumstances beyond your control. My partner was interviewed and hired for a perfect job after no luck for months within DAYS of the eviction, ensuring that no matter what happened, we'd finally have food and other resources.

But we still only had a week to find somewhere to move.

One day, management (who had a history of being unreachable, including during the time we tried to seek financial aid and work with them) showed up and tried force their way in (the door chain stopped them) and then proceeded to lie and tell us we had to be gone that day even though legally we did not until 24hrs after the notice had been placed on the door, which it had not yet. That was scary though. And they had sent their newest person, and it's possible she didn't even know it was a lie. But we had the paperwork and emails to prove it. I remember physically trembling, the paper shaking in my hand as we tried to explain. Another time pest control tried to force their way in. I'm sure management sent them too, as the email had only said you could sign up for a visit if you were having issues, which we were not and never signed up for. At an apartment complex, a door chain is such an extra sense of security that prevents people from unlocking your door and just walking in whenever they please, as was proved to me many times.

So we had a week to find somewhere to live. Friends (true friends) helped us more than we can ever repay, in ways that money alone could never repay. We got everything into a storage unit in record time. Our Winter Solstice was spent moving the largest pieces of furniture. Darkest night made bright with their help.

Some places wouldn't even give us a tour because of the eviction now on record. Most things I read during this time about renting with an eviction seemed so bleak. We found one apartment we thought was perfect and applied. They denied our application - but mysteriously accepted it a few days later without us even appealing. Was it because of all the construction at this complex and they were desperate? Did my partner's words somehow sway them? I don't know but I was considering the lilies of the field very, very hard at that point

So we had a place to move to on the 2nd of Jan but in the mean time we had to wait it out at our other apartment, unknowing when we would finally have to leave. A couple weeks sleeping on an air mattress in a near-empty apartment. Merry Christmas. We still had our tiny tree. Happy New Year. Our New Year's Day meal was a single heat and serve bag of basmati which we split, a tin of sardines and some corn. It felt like a small feast. Looking back, all symbols of prosperity and abundance.

On the day we were to move in, my partner's workplace somehow messed up (holidays at least partially to blame) and he still hadn't received his paycheck though he tried everything he could. So we had to scramble to borrow the deposit money from my mom. It's a long walk up to our new apartment at the moment because of all the renovations going on putting out the elevator. And when we got there, we realised they had given us the wrong set of keys so we were stuck outside in the hallway outside the door for 45min with the birds and our small carry items because she'd said she'd bring the correct sets of keys up, meanwhile I also had to go to the bathroom intensely. We'd laughed a lot through all of this when we weren't near-consumed with stress and fear of what would happen next, but it was nice to have a moment that was just purely funny.

The paycheck drama continued for another week so we had to work around that as well. But we had somewhere to live. Somewhere safe.

By the time it was my birthday about a week later. I slipped on the carpet running to say bye to my partner. It could have been worse but I scraped up my knee and hurt my leg. My knee/leg still hurt :') That same day our car also had trouble and stalled while my partner was on the way to work, so our plans to finally go out were dashed BUT he ordered Indian for us so we had a great meal nonetheless.

I love this new apartment. The layout is interesting and unique, one of the reasons we were drawn to it. The closet shelving is threatening to collapse but that can be fixed. Lack of bathroom counter space and large mirror is the only real downgrade from the other place but I can honestly say everything else here is equal to or better. Most important, you can see the moon from the window, and the best view of the sky.

The construction here is intense at the moment but inside the apartment itself is a haven, despite the chaos outside. I don't mind it because, after all, it likely played a part in how we were able to live here.

It sounds so small somehow when I write it all down. But it's not comparable to be on the other side of an ordeal where you can see how it all played out all at once and what you dodged and how you survived. When you're in it you have to get to the next day. Sometimes the next hour. I felt real fear during this time, an emotion I wasn't very familiar with. Throughout my life I've been through what some people might call "a lot", since early on. I've had people tell me I'm the strongest person they know. I've learned to handle many fears of many things. But this was an unfamiliar unraveling. And once I realised what it was, I was able to deal with it better. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. Frank Herbert was right.

My last time at the other apartment was happy, peaceful and filled with relief. It was a nice place for the time we lived, but everything good came with us. There were things I loved about it, but there were also things I won't miss and am glad to get away from (like living by the highway).

Thanks for reading this post if you made it all the way through. I wasn't sure how much to tell strangers on the internet but - we're friends here :)))

Adapt. Survive. Survive. Thrive.

Outside our window currently looks like the blitz. But only in the best way possible. Because the chaos doesn't bring any grief or fear - just a way out.

#personal #eviction #chronic illness #survival #long post #personal storytime

[starscatteredsky]

Voidkin tips and tricks

White or black contacts

Wear fuzzy, baggy, or otherwise silhouette obscuring black clothing

sharp, harsh makeup looks or ethereal inhuman ones

make/buy gear that helps you feel more like your voidself! (paws, claws, tails, wings, horns, ears, hooves, etc)

mediate, or otherwise clear your mind into a void like state

try to find places of pure darkness, or block all light and sound in your room, and enjoy the void for a while

listen to static, or some other noise that reminds you of your void

find liminal spaces to lurk in

try to create non harmful chaos where you can

-👾

Requests open!!!

[image description:

a DNI banner with the background being the promotional image for Little Nightmares 2. The writing reads:

"DNI: radqueers, proshippers, radfems/TERFs, antikin/antitherian, homophobic/ ableist/ anti ACAB/ transphobic/ rasist/ antisemitic/ xenophobic/ antitheist/ anti athiest/ bigoted in any fashion, NSFW/sh/ed/cringe centered blog, fakeclaimer

Before you interact: We are pro mspec gays/lesbians, anti endo/tulpa "systems", enjoy MCYT/DSMP, pro self diagnoses with extensive research, multiple alters are punks/ anarchists"

end description]

#mod👾 #alterhuman #nonhuman #otherhearted #otherkin #otherkin community #fictionkin #otherkinity #alterhuman community #did system #nonhuman alter #non human #alterbeing #did alter #dark kintypes #kintype #voidkin #monsterkin #voidpunk #void alter #monster alter #otherfolk #fictionfolk

[fastcardotmp3]

you should definitely do the liminal space prompts especially if there’s no more work to be did and if you do might i suggest #83: gas stations on long mountain roads <333

and with your blessing my beloved kk I am doing it!

send me a liminal space from this list and I'll write a silly little drabble 🩵

The sound of buzzing fluorescents that hang above each gas pump is familiar enough after this many days on the road, that it's come to feel like this is just what outside the car sounds like to Robin now.

They haven't stopped anywhere except for gas and whatever food they can scrounge up to eat on the road and they've been living out of Steve's car because it hasn't been quite long enough for them to feel comfortable letting anyone see their faces and there's this buzzing.

A hum.

A low growl whispering in the chilled breeze of a coming autumn, carrying the smell of gasoline and the promise of isolation amidst the chaos.

But it's the light alone which she can hear, right here where she leans against their car with the Wisconsin plates and one bashed-in headlight. She can hear the light in the dark of night and she lets her eyes slip shut against its harshness because it's easier this way.

To listen and hear and feel rather than have to look their circumstances in the eye.

Nowhere is safe right now, and it might not ever be again. Their own government and those of foreign powers alike know that they understand too much, have seen too much, to be allowed to roam free for any longer than they already have.

So Robin doesn't need to see it, this moment, the shine of those same singing lights through the glass siding of the convenience store, the grease stained pavement that claims other people were here once despite the eerie absence of them tonight.

There is a sense of transience in this place that has only been growing since they grabbed what they could carry and ran, and Robin wonders at the stories these lights could tell, the ballads they could sing. Women with emptied bank accounts and the hopes of a fresh start; teenagers with the belief that on the other side of state lines will lie their freedom; old men on their way home from annual hunting trips with blood in the bed of their trunk and pride strung across the brim of their cap.

What story might they tell, the lights, of two souls forever entwined but with nothing anchoring them down?

What story might they tell of what exists beyond the trees just across the narrow highway? What story might they tell of the things which watch, which prowl, which listen to the stretch of Robin's lungs like the humming of fluorescent lights and the audible click of gas finished pumping?

She does not see Steve through those gleaming windows as she removes the pump and closes up the tank, but she knows that he is there.

Robin does not see any of the threat which will continue to chase them far down this road and onto the next, but still the same.

She knows it's there.

#dot fic #robin buckley #kisses you kk!!! for easing my floundering with no work to do fjsdaklfj #a little stobin on the run for u <3

[manorpunk]

Visiting Duke Rider - Part 2

“Do you fuck the maids?”

The question spills out of your mouth involuntarily. Duke Rider laughs, unfazed.

“The reason I gave myself the title of Duke is because, regardless of what the anarchists say, any community larger than a neighborhood simply needs some level of vertical authority to survive. If you don’t have some way to create and enforce administrative standards, then power grids start blowing up and bridges start collapsing. But authority requires legitimacy, and legitimacy requires, among many other things, ritual. One ritual of legitimacy is the creation of a liminal space between daily life and serious decision-making. In many historical empires - Imperial China, the Eastern Roman Empire, the Ottomans - this role was filled by eunuchs, who already occupied a liminal gendered state in their patriarchal societies. Femboys are a far superior way to fill this role.” He trades a finger through the air, following the idea like a thread.

You blink.

“…so do you fuck the maids?” you ask.

He leans forward and looks at you as if sizing up your trustworthiness, then gives you a sharp, licentious grin. “They sure ain’t here to do chores,” he cackles.

You must have reacted to that in some way, perhaps flinched or grimaced, because he gets defensive. “It’s entirely consensual. Enthusiastically so. Now then, if I’ve satisfied your non-history related curiosity, let’s get back on topic.”

A History of the 21st Century, Part One - The Boomern’t

The defining event of America in the 2020s was the Boomern’t - the deaths of dozens of aging political and economic figures from the “Baby Boomer” generation (contemporaries had an obsession with genpol (generational politics)) during the winter of 202X. History articles often attribute it to an unusually cold winter, along with new strains of Covid and antibacterial-resistant Staphylococcus. Undoubtedly these were factors – the first Covid outbreak was practically a trial run for the Boomern’t - but the latent cause was that many of those affected (i.e. dead) had simply reached the medical limits of the human lifespan.

However you assign the blame, the consequences were immediate and manifold. As CEOs and board members died, trillions of dollars were suddenly trapped in probate courts and inheritance disputes. The death of over a dozen congpeeps (congresspeople) ground legislation even further to a halt, and the special elections triggered by their deaths were plagued with understaffing polling locations and threats of violence and intimidation.

Despite the chaos, many younger contemporaries were excited, seeing it as their first chance to participate in a government which had kept them locked out for decades, the long-awaited breakdown of a generation that had reached Romanovian levels of indolence, ineptitude, and (figurative) incest.

In fairness, they weren’t exactly wrong. If you check the records, a lot of these folx were occupying the same seats for decades, America was clearly being run by an old boy network. It’s the same old story - feeling powerless to change the material conditions behind their misery, the masses simply chose a demographic to be at fault for everything.

It’s a touchy subject, given that many elderly people at the time - the poor ones, of course - were also facing poor living conditions, mistreatment, or in some cases, quietly being killed off to avoid having to pay for treatment and palliative care. That was another contributing factor to the Boomern’t, though you have to read between the lines to see it.

Where was I? Right. The special elections because a bunch of congpeeps died. A number of Justice Democrats were elected to office - they were sort of like the progressive caucus of our Incumbent Party. And here’s the real tragedy at the heart of the 2020s, which became the even bigger tragedy of the 2030s: these folx could see what was happening. They had a pretty good idea of how to fix it, too. But they weren’t able to organize themselves and solidify their gains before being picked apart, bought off, co-opted, and isolated by both parties.

I do not mean to be dramatic when I say that this left a psychic scar on the politically active populace. After decades of fighting and clawing and struggling, they were left with a disappointment of millenarian proportions. The Justice Democrats have a pretty miserable reputation in most history articles, but personally, I do not think it is deserved. One should not be faulted for failing to succeed at a last-ditch long shot, and it was indeed a long shot.

Still, we must save these what-ifs for another time. In our time, America was struck with the Yet Another Fucking Real Estate Crisis of 202X, and slumped its way into a decade of turmoil.

Don’t worry, it gets better eventually.

Tune in next time for:

A History of the 21st Century, Part Two - The 2030s Crisis; Internal Migration; The Hipsters Redeem Themselves

#manorpunk #no longer canon

[paganpillar]

 ◤──•~❉᯽❉~•──◥

The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended.

- George MacDonald 

 ◣──•~❉᯽❉~•──◢

In my practice, I have put great importance on liminality and liminal spaces. 

 ─━━═════⊰⊱ ⬛ ⊰⊱═════━━─

Lim·i·nal

1. Relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process.

2. Occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.

 ─━━═════⊰⊱ ⬛ ⊰⊱═════━━─

There are many reasons why liminality is such a significant part of my workings and a majority of it comes from a personal need to achieve balance. Most witches already work with the liminal without realizing it. For example, casting a circle is creating a liminal space for spell workings. I, on the other hand, intentionally try to work with liminal spaces, times, and magick. This is partly due to my own mental health, as I consistently experience very high highs and even lower lows. Oftentimes, the only way I can achieve balance is by working within the liminal. Now, I don’t really cast circles anymore but sometimes it is the only way I feel comfortable. 

Other times, I feel most energetic and spiritual during dusk and dawn (which both can be considered liminal times as it is neither night time or day time). Moreover, meditating, astral traveling, spirit work, deity work, divination, and hedgecrafting are all liminal practices that keep me balanced and grounded when I might otherwise be too exhausted or too wound up. 

But what does this have to do with witchcraft? Our paths have already begun, but have they ended? Not quite. Some practices require a road to initiation. The death tarot card reflects a lesson in liminality where something has come to an end before new opportunities await. When we are cleansing, we are clearing out negative and stagnant energies to make way for something more productive and positive. When some witches acknowledge the cardinal directions, these can be considered liminal as well. Some magick circles say having a liminal state of mind can help you receive answers and wisdom from guides, spirits, and deities. Contacting these entities through means of divination is a small part of spirit and deity work that deals in liminal spaces as they are not physically there, but also spiritually present. Invoking deities and spirits require your body and mind to enter a liminal state. The same can be said when we astral travel, enter trances, or when we lucid dream. Some witches and pagans celebrate the equinoxes and solstices, a transition into the new seasons. Even the turning of astrological seasons are seen as liminal times. The Dark moon and new moon in particular are also liminal. All of these things are examples of liminality and liminal magick.

Having respect and taking advantage of these liminal spaces can create a sense of balance and comfort, at least for me. Acknowledging the liminal is accepting and trusting in my intuition, spirituality, beliefs, and my path. It is also a reminder of the uncertainty and chaos of life. 

Liminal Magick

Here is a list of liminal magick and practices:

 ─━━═════⊰⊱ ⬛ ⊰⊱═════━━─

Spirit Work

Hedgecraft

Manifesting

Transformations

Shadow Work

Astral Traveling

Casting a circle

Ancestor Veneration

Deity work and invocation

Dream Magick/Lucid Dreaming

Cleansing/Banishing

Curses/Hexes

Death Witchcraft

Psychopomp Activities

Death Doula 

Psychic Abilities

Past life regressions

Divination

Blood Magick

Meditation/trance work

Ritual work

Altar Space

Visualizations

Energy Work and Manipulation

(All UPG marked with *)

 ─━━═════⊰⊱ ⬛ ⊰⊱═════━━─

Times and Spaces

I find that liminal times and spaces are where I feel the most balanced, grounded, and devoid of emotion that does not serve me spiritually. Does this mean I always seek out these times and spaces? No, because that would be impractical and somewhat unreasonable. Working magick doesn’t involve guidelines that say you must do ‘this’ specifically at ‘this’ time and at ‘this’ place. However, should the need arise here are some liminal times and spaces that might just help you to create some beautiful magick in the right headspace:

 ─━━═════⊰⊱ ⬛ ⊰⊱═════━━─

New Moon/Dark Moon

Midnight

Dusk/Dawn

Weekends/Sunday Night/Wednesday

Solstices/Equinoxes

Holidays/Sabbats

Samhain

Astrological Transitions

Altars & Sacred Spaces

Appearance of Rainbows*

Birthdays/Transitional Celebrations

Forest Edges and Clearings

Hiking Trails

Crossroads

Stairwells

Libraries*

Showers/Bathtubs*

Canyons/Valleys

Beaches

Rivers/Streams/Lakes

Bridges

Thresholds/Entrances/Exits

Cemetery gates

Abandoned Buildings

Property Lines

Ley Lines*

Boundaries

Grocery Stores/Markets*

Balconies/Backyards

(All UPG marked with *)

 ─━━═════⊰⊱ ⬛ ⊰⊱═════━━─

Liminal Tools and Items

Now this isn’t a comprehensive list by any means, but these are just a few examples of liminal times and spaces that hold a different kind of energy than, say, your bedroom. Now, in addition to utilizing these elements, there are also tools that you can use in your practice that can fall under the category of liminal. These things might include:

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Tarot Cards: Death

Colors: Gray

Scrying and Divination tools

Mirrors

Shedded Antlers

Bones

Tourmaline

Labradorite

Lapis Lazuli

Hematite*

Roots

Mushrooms*

Mugwort

Elderberry

Rose hips/Rose buds*

Perennials

Passion Flower

Poppies*

Chamomile

(All UPG marked with *)

 ─━━═════⊰⊱ ⬛ ⊰⊱═════━━─

Deities and Divine Spirits

Lastly, some witches and pagans work with deities who might have liminal associations. I personally find comfort in deities who just so happen to have liminal associations, some of which I did not know about until after I began working with and worshiping them. Some of these deities might have chthonic/death, messenger, crossroad, contradictory, or psychopomp associations. This list is by no means complete but incorporates some more well known deities and divine spirits in no particular order:

 ─━━═════⊰⊱ ⬛ ⊰⊱═════━━─

Cernunnos

Epona

Hermes/Mercury

Dionysus/Bacchus

Ceres

The Lares

Hekate

Persephone/Proserpina

Janus

Cardea

Iris

Osiris

Charon

Anubis

Nephthys

Donn

The Morrigan

Cathubodua*

Hel

Odin

Mania

The Manes

Genius/Juno*

Hypnos

Thanatos

Pluto/Hades

Dis Pater

The Fates

The Mother aspect of the triple goddess

The Valkyries

Morana

Yama

Lucifer*

 ─━━═════⊰⊱ ⬛ ⊰⊱═════━━─

I am sure there is more, but I am trying to focus on deities and spirits that have some death or crossroad associations. Ther may be other deities that are not traditionally liminal but fall under the scope due to contradictory associations rooted in mythology. These might include trickster deities such as Loki. Working and worshiping deities with liminal associations is not required when performing liminal magick but it can definitely help if you are interested in delving into such a thing. I personally find that evoking liminal deities when cleansing liminal spaces such as thresholds and windows can be beneficial. Sometimes I will leave offerings to them in liminals spaces, especially crossroads and hiking trails as a way to show my devotion. I feel that liminal spaces are a special place just for them where I can interact with their energy without having to try so hard. 

Connecting With The Liminal

If you do not wish to do work with liminal deities but would still like to connect to the liminal, then you can do so easily. My only advice is that you meditate in a liminal place, take note of your feelings and energy, contemplate what liminality feels to you, and acknowledge its existence. By doing so, you can tap into the liminal and form your own practice around the observations and energies you feel when you are in a state or place of liminality. 

I hope that my personal practice and view of the liminal has inspired you to conduct your own research to further your understanding. I hold all aspects of the liminal close to my heart and in my practice because it is what helps me achieve balance and spirituality. I can only hope it will help you as well if you wish it too. Remember, everyone practices differently and I might not have covered everything, but I think it is a great place to start. Let me know how liminality affects your practice.

PaganPillar

 ─━━═════⊰⊱ ⬛ ⊰⊱═════━━─

#witchblr #witchcraft #Liminality #Spells #Witch #Witchy #hedge witch #witchythings #witchyvibes #witchlife #Spirituality #Paganism #deities #pagan #deity #paganblr #Magick #Magic #Baby Witch #witch community #witchcore #covens #witch coven

[joshfmpyeartwo]

Project Theme

As a group, in class, we drew up a mind map on 'King Midas and the thief'. The theme of this project revolves around being lied to. Winning a prize and realizing it was all a lie. The most interesting flow of thought could come from the juxtaposition in a false lottery ticket or stolen dreams, but we have already done a project on two sided stories, so I would prefer to stray a bit further on my own project.

The main categories of the mind map were: Alternate Reality, Dreams and nightmares, the destruction of Gods, Identity as physicality, Hope and despair, fools gold, capitalism and a bunch more. Immediately off of the main node I can see the possibilities getting more broad and interesting for me, particularly the ones with themes of duality, being hope and despair or dreams and nightmares.

The ideas I've been looking at for my FMP are:

Identity crisis - Identity crisis occurs when you feel unstable and insecure in your own life. You ask yourself what the point in anything is and struggle finding enjoyment in things your previously enjoyed. Drawing up a game based around identity crisis could allow me to express people experiences in an immersive interactive experience, whilst raising awareness for mental health.

Sleep paralysis - Sleep paralysis is a state where you have complete loss of muscle control just before waking up or after falling asleep. It is also common to encounter forms of hallucinations or feelings of suffocation. I think a game based off of the effect of sleep paralysis could be extremely broad and allow me to experiment with new mechanics and art styles to fit in with the theme of dreams and nightmares.

Space - Space is more the scene I want more than anything. This plays into my love of liminality and isolation which are themes seen in a lot of my favourite projects.

Perceived reality - Chaos is s state of complete disarray or confusion. I love chaos because of it’s sheer unpredictability and fun, which is something I would love to transfer over to my FMP piece. Sticking with the theme of duality and juxtaposing themes, it might also be a good idea to look into organised chaos, and maybe some research on unpredictability.

Liminality - I explored themes of liminality a lot in my second project of the year, and its effects on gameplay and ambience. I think another game on liminality, this time, with a focus on a warmer tone, trying not to emphasise the fear and horror most people experience with liminality.

I think these all stood out to me because they're not surface level themes. They are all pretty existential and have potential to help me create a game that excites me and the intended players.

Most of the ideas I like the most are just the ones that gave me the most freedom. I love the idea of being able to switch the direction of certain ideas I've had and it still fit my brief and proposal entirely.

[universereelsmarvel]

I do not like Sonic Frontiers.

I'm convinced this game was an elaborate ruse to get me to like Sonic Forces more. Sonic Frontiers actually appears as a synonym for tedious on Google.com. Collecting a bunch of random items and travelling for miles to go see a character and see the same animation a million times over, then travel even further to go see the same character again and get another cutscene is mind numbing. It isn't fun because the open world isn't at all interesting. Just a bunch of flat land, like a Unity test demo, as stated many times before. Compare this to a level in Generations for example. I see that and I think "yeah, I wanna explore that." These areas are bland and dull, and give me nothing to work with. And then you collect the Chaos Emeralds in the same predictable, monotonous pattern. It is not at all fun. It feels like a chore, just aimlessly wandering around. Part of why I like Sonic is because it's very accessible and easy to jump into. It's hard to get bored when you're going from one wildly different colorful and wacky, set piece filled level to the next. This just feels too high maintenance for my liking. I know I maybe have the gaming tastes of a 58 year old, but I digress. I am not a fan of the whole "grinding" thing and “levelling up” in a Sonic game.

Properly implemented momentum is barely in the game and feels like it was added in at the last minute. It works when it feels like it. Yes, it can be fun to air boost off of something and get air time, and skip around bigger chunks of the map. But it doesn't work in any consistent way, and often feels unintentional. You have to fight with the game to get it to work. It's not like that in something like Sonic Adventure. Sonic has no genuine, authentic sense of weight in his movements. It often feels like a Sonic 4 philosophy, or lack thereof, of physics, but only in 3D. Speaking of which, the sheer amount of 2D areas in the 3D open world is embarrassing. Sonic Team just does not believe in themselves. When I think open world 3D Sonic, I don't think of extremely basic elementary school level platforming. Or intrusive mini games. Pinball? Galaga? Koko Roundups? Why on Earth would some of this stuff be mandatory? I'm sick of games incorporating these wildly incongruent genres into their games. Puzzles don't belong in a Sonic game, at least not as something mandatory. I'm not one of those people who thinks Sonic is only about going fast, but this just does not fit the impatient, always on the move, rambunctious Sonic that this franchise is supposed to represent. 

And don't even get me started on the final boss being fucking Galaga. What the fuck. What kind of climatic final battle culminates in fucking Galaga, and then a shitty quick time event? Wow, truly the future of Sonic. We end on a re-creation of an arcade game that came out 40 years ago, that is currently available on 5 dollar plug 'n play games at a Dollar Tree near you. And the combat being extremely mindless and button-mashy is also a big negative for me.

The story is also terrible. One of the things that could've saved the barren, dull looking lands is the sense of mystery. There's an intriguing creep factor about Sonic being in this big open space that's almost vacant. Sonic being in a strange, liminal space sounds kind of cool. But the mystery ends up being not at all compelling. It's just the same shit we've seen a hundred times. An ancient civilization losing their people, losing their home, Chaos Emeralds are involved, blah blah. Also not a fan of the Chaos Emeralds having their origin explained. They are much better off just being this mysterious force that works in ways civilization doesn't even understand. And then we have Sage, who's supposed to be a big deal, and seems to have a problem with Sonic is doing. She keeps saying these cryptic things as if there's something huge we don't know about going on, but it ends up being a bunch of meaningless red herrings. She's just another invention by Eggman. And look, Eggman caring for a daughter-like figure is compelling. But this comes out of nowhere close to the end of the game, this concept of Eggman loving Sage like a daughter. But there's absolutely no buildup or elaboration to this. Nothing to bounce off of, no one comments much on what they think of Eggman's newfound surrogate fatherhood, or anything. Sage has nothing to do with these islands, or their people. 

The whole thing just makes no fucking sense. I guess Titans are sentient, but not really, so it's fine that Sonic murders them. The game acts as if it's gonna have some sort of dire moral dilemma for Sonic, with Sage asking him repeatedly if he truly believes he's doing the right thing. You start to think, "Oh, maybe Sonic's somehow ruining this environment, and he has to struggle over saving nature or his friends", or some sort of spin on his arrogance, or just, anything. It really goes nowhere. The themes that the game has a loose idea of wanting to represent are... overly explained, to put it lightly. Ian Flynn has Chris Nolan syndrome to the highest degree. We didn't need to see Sage talking about how she's so lonely and envies what Sonic has and all that, we could see it on her face. The characters in general often act very unnaturally. They come off more as machines designed to spout off expository dialogue, rather than fleshed out characters. The mystery of the game that the story so heavily relies on is practically handed to you, by Sonic somehow coming to these very oddly specific conclusions, and explaining them in a very long-winded way. So much of the dialogue is just people explaining all this overly elaborate nerdy world building, especially in the cutscenes with Tails. 

Speaking of which, there's a very random scene where Tails concludes that he needs to be more independent from Sonic. It's so bizarre and has nothing to do with the story. It's like they're trying to bounce off of Tails's cowardice in Sonic Forces, but it doesn't work. It comes off as Tails is being independent for the first time, and Sonic is emotionally moved by it. As if Tails hasn't been making robots that can fucking shoot people, breaking into maximum security federal prisons 20 fucking years ago. It would've made more sense if they had just mentioned that Tails felt he had lost it a little after something has traumatic as Sonic being taken prisioner to be "tortured" and Eggman taking over the world took place. Tails's behavior in Forces could've made sense if they had just elaborated on that, and they had the chance to here, but it just ends up being bizzarree, like Tails is just now breaking free of Sonic. I actually find it more insulting than the scene in Forces, because it implies Tails hasn't already been independent. 

And goddamn, the fucking references here. Wow, this reminds me of that level, or that one thing from that one game. Look, it's great that they're tying everything together. But everything just feels inorganic. No one talks like this. Imagine if regular people spoke like this. “Wow, this place has a bathroom. Just like the bathroom at my old middle school!” The lack of subtlety going into it is nauseating. I think people have already made this comparison, but it feels like they're just perpetually setting up a Family Guy cutaway gag that never occurs. And with how much they reference older shit, you'd think they talk about how Eggman took over the fucking world, the worst case scenario they'd been fighting against for years, an experience that would've irreversibly altered their very being? But no, next to nothing.

People keep saying that "Sonic is back" and that this game is a return to form somehow. I don't see it. Even in terms of if you like the dark age Sonic stories, I don't see it. At least Forces had a big showdown at the end, it had a more traditional Sonic charisma. Sonic kept his sneering grin, his cocky attitude, he made cringey speeches about friendship. I have a lot of issues with his characterization in that game, but it feels a lot more like Sonic than whatever this is. Characters like Sonic and Eggman dialing back their performances so drastically just results in seeing two characters stripped of what makes them.. them. I might as well be watching air, seeing these characters in action in Frontiers. And here, Sonic, and everything around him, feels more sterile. Yes, the story in Sonic Forces was massively underwhelming, especially considering the sheer scope of the plot of Eggman taking over Sonic's home. But I found this even more underwhelming. Characters just stand around and talk. Sonic transforms into Super Sonic four times in the game with no progression, no ending that's significantly more climatic to build up to. No sense of basic story progression. This doesn't feel like an Adventure era or Dark age era Sonic story to me at all. It's the midness of a meta era story, only completely lifeless. Forces had life to it, Forces had blaring music, over the top set pieces. The quickness, switching up the scenery, even if it was a lot of re-using assets. Forces felt like a glorified mobile game, yes, but it had more identity and fun to it.  

And here we have this game that shuns the uniqueness of Sonic the Hedgehog in favor of generic modern video game tropes. A hodgepodge of other, more successful games. Sonic Frontiers has no identity of its own. It's a hollow, empty game. Ungodly repetitive in both its gameplay and story. I can honestly say it's one of my least favorite Sonic games, and one of the only Sonic games I consider to just be straight up bad.

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic frontiers #video game review #video games #ps5 #playstation 5 #xbox #nintendo switch

[astrologyandlife]

29° and 0° in astrology

the 29th and 0 degrees are said to be "critical" degrees in astrology, meaning that anything sitting in these degrees have a special influence on its expression and impact on the rest of the chart. so, i thought it would be a good idea to explore these two degrees and what they could mean for you guys!

part i: the 29th degree

the 29th degree is the very last degree of any zodiac sign. it is said to be the anaretic degree. here, the most difficult challenges related to the placement in question are presented, as everything else has been mastered. there is also a sense of inevitability with this placement. this is often marked by a turning point in the individual’s life.

sun – the ego and identity are strong, but there could be external circumstances that don’t allow the individual to express themselves in a completely authentic or transparent way. they must reconcile who they are inside with how they act. at times, they feel like an imposter, or like they are selling out to others. they know who they are, but do other people? this feeling that something is physically blocking them from existing impacts every action they take. they must figure out what is holding them back from complete self-expression and give themselves permission to be themselves in spite of this.

moon – this is where the most complex, desolate emotions a person can feel lie—the kinds of emotions that make you think nobody could possibly understand your experience. as a result, there is a profound sense of isolation and a difficulty integrating their emotional experiences into their self-expression. this only increases the intensity of the emotions, creating many situations of turbulence. sometimes the individual ends up completely blocking their emotions off to cope. only by facing their emotions head-on can they assuage these feelings and achieve a balanced state.

mercury – there is a tendency to get stuck in vicious cycles involving self-doubt and overthinking here. as a result, they sabotage their own efforts to make good decisions and communicate clearly. even a genius can make a fool out of himself. there can be this issue where they overthink sometimes and don’t think enough other times. they have this nagging feeling that they are missing some piece of information that is undiscovered or concealed from them. the final lesson is to trust the knowledge and experience they have to make the right decision.

venus – a profound sense of loneliness is pervasive throughout their life, as though every relationship they could have now would be empty and devoid of true connection. it’s entirely possible for these individuals to have trust issues, fall into unhealthy patterns in their relationships, and avoid intimacy. perhaps there is a part of themselves who feels they are unlovable in some way, or there is this one thing wrong with them, which they must forgive completely, the same way they would forgive and love another person.

mars – a desperation to act conflicts with a lack of confidence in their capability to do so. often this leads to them being frozen in the headlights like a deer, thinking, I have to do something but what if it’s wrong? the balance between too much and too little is blurred, leading to inconsistency and turbulence in their lives. they often end up in situations where they are forced to make snap decisions. re-calibrating their approach to conflict and matching their energy to the situation will relieve this problem.

jupiter – without thinking, these individuals over-indulge and rely on their luck and natural talents in some way. they want more of something, and it’s almost as though there is no satisfaction through receiving it. there is both a sense of hollowness and complacency that permeates as a result, and they forget how to materialize success through their own efforts. to remedy this, they must seek out growth, exploration, and expansion in its purest sense, to open their minds to a higher being or knowledge.

saturn – restrictive patterns are almost always the issue here. these individuals deprive them of something in their lives, not allowing even a moment of pleasure or reprieve from the overwhelming sense of responsibility they feel. external circumstances, especially in early life, have placed an undue burden on them, in some cases leading them to do anything to escape any responsibility placed on them later in life. to fix this, they have to let go of the guilt and fear they feel to give themselves back their agency.

uranus – how can they move forward? where is there to go that hasn’t been gone to before? in the same way that the sun in this degree struggles to find true authenticity in this liminal space, so too do these individuals struggle to find progression. somewhere they got stuck and stopped embracing their own unique qualities, which has made it impossible for them to then accept anything else. the final turning point here is to open their mind completely, to embrace entirely the open possibilities of the world.

neptune — this is the deepest recesses of this planet, where material reality as we know it does not even exist. at its most extreme, these individuals find it hard to live in this world because reality is simply too harsh for them in some way. escapism exists in its most extreme form, and the subconscious is too influential. and so, they need to escape themselves. here, the power has been given to a force that is not the individual, but rather something external to them. the task is to give this power back to the conscious individual, to escape the dream they have created for themselves and return to reality.

pluto — here, the complete death has occurred for the person. they have experienced the transformation, the change, and the end of the cycle. perhaps they have experienced in many times in their life. but the last stage hasn’t occurred yet. they become stuck before the rebirth stage, unable to complete the process. thus, the same situation happens over and over, re-opening wounds. the final turning point is to accept the change and open themselves up completely to renewal, to move on for good. lay it to rest.

part ii: the 0 degree

in contrast, the 0 degree is the very first degree of any zodiac sign. this is where the traits of the sign are most clearly and cohesively expressed, and also where there is the most to learn. you express this placement in a very raw, almost untouched way.

aries – there is a childlike innocence and naivete here, as well as an exaggerated impatience and sense of urgency. they feel that there is no time to wait. strong desire to be first and be a leader, even if they don’t know how to be one. there’s almost like a reckless quality to them. extremely assertive to a point of being hostile when others tell them what to do.

taurus – they are stubborn and fixed to the point of being unable to budge. it’s essentially impossible to stop the momentum once they’ve started, and they’re in it for the long haul. they can get stuck in their thinking and behavior patterns, doing the same thing over and over. absolutely must have stability and security in situations or they won’t commit.

gemini – absolutely no tolerance for boredom or lack of activity. they have to be doing something at all times, and often more than one thing. they’re extremely scattered. their curiosity drives them and they’re always asking questions or trying to learn more. they are constantly taking in information and changing their mind, never able to “settle.”

cancer – sensitive and emotional to the point where they can’t hide their feelings. here, there is someone who is very shy, cautious, and puts a protective shell around themselves. they have an intuition that is spot-on. very needy and moody. plays the role of caregiver and can be seen as a motherly figure. empathy is turned up all the way.

leo – they are completely self-focused and wants to be the center of attention. they want people’s eyes on them at all times, and they know how to light up a room. natural actors and tend toward being extremely dramatic. there is a sense of complete confidence in their abilities and pride in themselves. they refuse to settle for less than what they believe they deserve.

virgo – devoted to the service of others, typically in the form of providing feedback, criticism, and a helping hand. very critical and vocal about imperfections. they have an eye for detail that is unmatched. any form of disorganization or chaos is distressing to them, and they have highly specific routines and rituals. mind is constantly running to analyze and process information.

libra – cannot be alone whatsoever, and they are constantly seeking out connections with others. they are a complete pushover and seek out compromise in every situation. there is a desire to always seem agreeable and likeable. they often find themselves mediating for others, and there is an extreme need for harmony and balance. indecisive to the point of being paralyzed/hurt.

scorpio – the most private you’ll ever meet, and it’s impossible to get information out of them. feels the need to keep everything to themselves. has tons of secrets. they are super obsessive and will latch on to things quickly. needs control or to feel powerful in any situation. constantly on the defensive and trying to psychoanalyze the situation.

sagittarius – have an attitude of “it will all work out, don’t worry” even when they should be worrying. it’s impossible to tie down or get them to settle, because they have an intense need for freedom at all times. blindly faithful and optimistic. have a tendency to do things completely spontaneously. can feel claustrophobic when unable to freely act.

capricorn – absolutely rooted in tradition, even to the point of being narrow-minded. they constantly have to be going after success or achievement. the sense of responsibility is always present, which can lead to feelings of guilt or failure. an old soul from the beginning. a sense of “I have to get this right and prove myself” in anything they do.

aquarius – always has to be moving forward and making progress. extreme quirks are very possible here. highly open-minded and non-judgmental, and almost nothing surprises/shocks them. a savant, genius, or revolutionary. always at odds with figures of authority or traditionalists. a humanitarian to the extreme. they are ahead of their time.

pisces – hyper-sensitive to subtle influences and can be very spiritual or superstitious as a result. there’s an ever-present need to escape in some way, and they usually and have vivid imagination/rich fantasies. there can be a sense of directionlessness or shapelessness. the ultimate chameleon.

sun - feels the need for validation of who they are from others, projects a ton of confidence that they may not really have, very performative and forthright in expression. moon - often blindsided by their emotions, has difficulty realizing their needs and wants, less polished about handling their feelings. mercury - always curious and wants to know more, may present as a know-it-all or assert authority over topics, venus - loves the newness of relationships, craves connection and romance, wants to be well-liked by others, rejection is hard for them. mars - always in "go" mode, lots of energy and motivation, can be quick to anger or rile up, ends up in dangerous situations a lot. saturn - inherently assumes responsibility, has to learn lessons multiple times, tries to be disciplined and fails often. jupiter - lots of faith and optimism, definitely naive at heart, open to new experiences and chances for growth. uranus - has a lot of small quirks, open-minded and progressive, has a mindset of wanting to keep moving forward. neptune - rich imagination and a love for fantasy, feels directionless or like the possibilities are endless. pluto - may struggle with changes or transformations, lots of growth ahead of them, a strong presence that is very raw.

finally, i'd like to link some resources for further reading:

· https://www.astro.com/astrology/aa_article190801_e.htm (my favorite--super in-depth and peer-reviewed/published!)

· https://advanced-astrology.com/anaretic-degree/

· https://www.astrologyweekly.com/blog/29-degrees-the-anaretic-degree/

#other #this one took a couple months to put together due to needed to do heavy research! #astrology #degree theory #degrees #astro #natal chart

[aminiatureworld]

A Sea of Fragments V

Word Count: 2,635

Warnings: Swearing

Author’s Note: I don’t know how I went so long without updating! Honestly I really enjoyed writing this chapter. Things are starting to get dramatic, and I’m upping the ante a little bit. As a treat.

Scaramouche exited the dining tent as quickly as possible, storming off towards his tent with urgency. He hated eating around other people; the noise, the insipid conversation, the amount of imbeciles trying desperately to get in his good graces. It was agony, and the sooner he got away from it the better. Besides, he had something vastly more important to do this evening.

Entering his tent Scaramouche took some odd sense of pride from the fact he had beaten you to it. Sitting down in his chair he sighed, propping his head up with his hand and allowing his thoughts to drift for a moment. He had to admit that he was incredibly curious as to what he was going to witness today. He had already gotten a glimpse of your ability during your first meeting, but between the tense atmosphere and the barbed conversation he hadn’t been able to really focus on what exactly you were doing. Your terrible physical state at the time certainly hadn’t helped, as you had looked as if you were going to faint any moment. Scaramouche was glad there would be no fear of that this time.

What must it be like to look into the future? Scaramouche had to admit that he envied your ability slightly. Though you had seemed less than enthusiastic about it, Scaramouche couldn’t believe that you truly begrudged the ability to see into the future. If you did then you were surely a greater fool than he was already aware of. Even with your revelation that it was hardly an exact science as to which future would happen, even the slight ability to see what might come to pass would be an incredible asset to the Tsaritsa and her goal.

Besides, Scaramouche couldn’t truly bring himself to believe that your bedraggled state had been solely due to seeing into the future. How much energy could be expended by sitting into a chair and closing one’s eyes? In a world of war and battle and death the idea that something so still could be so taxing was absolutely ridiculous. No, there was no reason for him to worry, or for him not to begrudge you something that was so obvious a blessing from the Seven.

“Scaramouche?”

Your voiced pierced through the air, pulling the Harbinger slowly out of his thoughts. He hadn’t realized how engrossed he had been in his own musings, and the sudden pull back to reality cause irritation to once more surface within him. He quickly managed to push it down however, the reflexive annoyance replaced with an anticipation that couldn’t be completely hidden. Gesturing for you to sit in the chair across from him Scaramouche sat up straighter.

“Is there anything that must be done before we begin?” The Harbinger wasn’t used to such pleasantries, but this time he figured it was probably worth asking. Seeing you shake your head he nodded curtly. “Good. Then shall we begin?”

“If you insist,” you mumbled, voice lacking it usual sharpness. The nervous feeling that you emitted the first time he saw you in the forest appeared to have returned from out of thin air, and you shifted in your seat awkwardly.

“Is something wrong?”

“No! No, just, I just need to relax.”

“Take all the time you need.”

You shot him a look with very little behind it. Breathing in deeply you closed your eyes, letting your head tilt backwards slightly. Sitting back in his chair, just realizing that he’d been leaning forward this whole time, Scaramouche watched as your breath began to slow and you appeared to drift into some sort of trance.

 Closing your eyes you willed your mind to emptiness. From the moment you had entered the Harbinger’s tent once more you’d been seized with anxiety. You never wanted to be in this position again, divining for others, taxing yourself over and over for goals and wishes not your own. Not to mention the identity of your current employer; Scaramouche’s Harbinger status aside relaxing in front of this man seemed nigh on impossible. Letting your eyes flit this way and that you didn’t even bother to try and look him in the face. Not when what you were about to do loomed over you.

Looking into the future was bad enough, doing it in front of Scaramouche was even worse. You tended to lose control of yourself while looking into the future. Falling out of furniture, mumbling things randomly, all those things were possible. And though the people in your village had gotten used to your half-trances you were sure that Scaramouche wouldn’t quite appreciate you accidentally faceplanting into the table or sliding onto the ground the way the people you had grown up in proximity to would.

Letting yourself sigh once more you allowed your conscious to fade, shoving aside all those problems to deal with it later. The present would always exist, but for now you had to cast your eyes upon the possible futures. The world darkened around you, turning into a sea of stars which fell down, down, down. Letting yourself tumble around you finally saw fragments begin to form in front of your eyes. Stretching out your hands you reached for the one that seemed to shine the clearest, reached for the best outcome that you could find. Always start with the clearest ones first, for the muddier the fragment, the worse the suffering, the more energy must be expended. It was information that had been extracted after years of trial and error, and now you let it guide you as you sought out what you needed to know.

You were standing in a deadly quiet room. Paper doors surrounded you, the moonlight filtering through them casting long shadows, making it look like you were trapped in an odd sort of prison. If so, it was a very cozy prison. All the hallmarks of domesticity were there; pillows thrown this way and that, books shoved into various nooks and crannies on a small shelf, a table which housed various small clay figures. There was a hallway to the right of you, and from it you could hear the faint sound of snoring. Taking a few steps forward you studied the small shelves hammered into the wall, trying to look for something that seemed to house a great deal of elemental energy. Letting your elemental sight guide you, you slowly turned around.

At the other end of the room was a small table. Upon it was a small red cushion, and upon the cushion was a mirror. The circular glass was surrounded by an emerald frame, dotted with small gems and cracked in certain spots. Though it might have appeared like an ordinary enough family heirloom you could tell that it was infused with power, a power so great it seemed to be leeching the rest of the energy around it, a black hole, warping the fragment around it. Taking a step back, afraid of it even in this imagined future, you felt the energy become even stronger, even more corrosive. Blinking slowly your eyes finally removed themselves from the scene.

Looking around at the other fragments around you, you tried for the next clear fragment. In it you found yourself wandering the streets of the village, right near the inn where you had been hiding out until recently. Although nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary initially you were soon pulled towards the rooftops. You could see a Fatui recruit, though which one you were hardly sure. Clad in black their face was a sharp contrast to the night around them, pale and twisted into a frown.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit. What am I going to tell Lord Scaramouche? Where is it? Where is the damn thing?!” Sighing the Fatui member climbed back down from the roof, something not very difficult as the building was a rather squat one. Running into the night you saw him look back once. The village was as silent as ever.

You pulled yourself back into the liminal space around you. Looking around at the various fragments scattered about you felt yourself frowning. How many there were! It would take ages to find such specific information as where the mirror was located. Letting yourself drift you closed your eyes. You would just have to pick one at random. Reaching out your hand you felt the cool shard of a fragment against your fingertips. Opening your eyes you let out a strangled sort of noise, faced with one of the darkest shards floating around you.

What you were transported too was absolute chaos, chaos and a crushing weight pressing upon you. You weren’t supposed to be seeing this, you really were supposed to be seeing this. Stumbling around you tried to focus on one thing. The noise, that was the best thing at the moment. Ignoring the flames that licked at the houses and ground around you, the fleeing people and the choking smoke, you tried to pick up on any piece of information.

“Did you manage to get it before it went up into flames?”

“Fuck, no I didn’t! Did you see that house? No one would fucking survive something like that!”

“I’m not sure if we’re going to even survive.”

“Fuck, no this isn’t how I wanted it to end. I didn’t even get a promotion.”

“You three! Stop dawdling and get out of here! We’ve already caused enough trouble.”

“The village is a goner anyways.”

“Glad it’s not, fuck, glad it’s not mine.”

The voices faded into the cacophony, quickly replaced with more unpleasant sounds.

“Mama!”

“Did you see my husband?”

“No, I have to get back in there!”

“Your books are a fucking goner.”

“Come on sweetie, you have to move. I know, it really hurts, doesn’t it? Come on sweetie, we’ll get something to make it better, but you have to move.”

Voices piled on top of one another, roaring and mixing together. Opening your eyes you stared as people rushed all around you, some covered in soot, others nursing horrific burns. The noise was louder still, the weight crushing the air out of your lungs. Clapping your hands over your ears you felt your mind start to go blank with panic. You needed to get out of here. You needed to remember how to get out of here.

A muffled sound seemed to reach above you. Looking up into the burning sky you reached towards it, almost as if you might tear through the papery-thin night back to safety. Taking a deep breath you tried to open your eyes, to go back into the space that you usually occupied. But the weight was so large, the distortion so strong, you found yourself trapped, as if in a nightmare. The sound called out again and you continued to reach towards it.

Please. Please.

“…”

 Scaramouche watched as you seemed to collapse in on yourself, tumbling out of your chair and onto the floor, barely missing the table in front of you. Your breathing was ragged, irregular, and you seemed to be trying to say something. Panic gripped the Harbinger, blood rushing to his ears. Pushing himself out of him own chair he knelt down next to you.

“Hey, hey!”

Shaking your shoulders he went to pinch your arm. You skin seemed to be cold to the point of heat, and you made no move of recognition as his nails dug into your arm. Shaking his head Scaramouche tried calling out one more time.

“Wake up. Can you hear me? Wake up!” Shaking your shoulders once more he tried to suppress the panic that seemed to be driving him, though his thoughts were in such disarray he couldn’t be entirely sure whether or not it was working. A myriad of things leapt through his mind; his plan was going to fail, the effort took in tracking you down appeared to be worthless, were you really going to die? Surely you wouldn’t. He needed you for his plans. Besides, the idea of you dying seemed somewhat terrifying, lying in stark contrast to all the other people that Scaramouche had used and thrown away. The idea of your death seemed much more visceral, much more real.

“Hey. Look at me. I told you that you never even look at me. Open your eyes and look at me. Weren’t you supposed to be blessed by the gods? You can’t even look at me.”

Scoffing Scaramouche glanced towards the tent. He was going to have to call a healer at this rate.

The sudden feeling of someone grabbing his wrist caused the Harbinger to hiss. Looking back towards you he found his eyes met with yours. You seemed to be half wild with, something. Scaramouche couldn’t tell what lay behind the look in your eyes, but it surely seemed something close to panic. Breathing heavily you let out a whisper.

“It’s going to tear you apart.”

“What are you talking about?” Scaramouche felt anger rush through him as the situation seemed to crash into him. “Is that normal? What in Teyvat happened.”

“The mirror, the thing, it’s not normal. It… it warps everything around it. I, I can’t go back again. I can’t look again, I can’t find it again. It’s too heavy; it’ll tear everything apart.”

“You’re not making any sense! Tell me, is this mirror what we’re looking for? Where is it?”

But you said nothing, instead letting your grip tighten on Scaramouche’s wrist as you stared at him. The intensity of your gaze seemed to throw cold water on the Harbinger for a moment, and he quieted down. Everything had gone unexpectedly, what was he supposed to do now? A part of him simply wanted to haul you up and push you out of his tent, towards the healers or towards your own tent he didn’t care. Another part of him however wanted to ask you if you were alright, wanted to know what had frightened you so much, wanted to know why now suddenly you were staring into his eyes, almost as if you were trying to divine his thoughts. The more you looked into the future the odder you became, and the more Scaramouche found himself unable to understand you.

“Do, do you need a healer.”

“No. Just, let me breathe, just let me breathe for a moment.”

You closed your eyes, placing one of your arms on top of your forehead. The grip on Scaramouche’s wrist lessened and you let your arm slump to the group, fingers curled slightly against your palm.

Scaramouche wasn’t sure what caused him to do such a thing, whether it was fear of you having another episode or something else. Yet before he was entirely aware of what he was doing he placed palm on top of yours, allowing it to rest there for a moment. Your hand felt warm against his, still slightly clammy from what had just passed. He couldn’t necessarily call it comfortable, but he nevertheless didn’t draw away.

Staring down at you the Harbinger wondered once more what you had seen. More than that he thought about your expression when you woke up. Expression panicked, eyes wide, gaze full of fear and urgency and something else. It seemed to be the first time you had stared him right in the face without hesitancy. Were your expressions always so intense when you looked someone directly into their eyes? It was uncomfortable, but it always also something else, intriguing, or something like that.

He wondered if you would look at him directly again. He wondered if your words were truly worth heeding. And once more he once more wondered why he, a Harbinger, would kneel in the dirt and trampled grass to make sure you woke up.

#genshin impact fanfiction #scaramouche x reader #Scaramouche #genshin Scaramouche #genshin impact #series #my writing

[chaospanics]

⇢ OCTOBER PLAYLIST ⇠

I always manage to get more hobby stuff done when I’m really busy with other life stuff 😅 Also so many of my faves this month I’ve been highly anticipating:

Black Marble - Fast Idol

Fast Idol sees [Stewart] return to a sentiment and process that defined the earlier days of Black Marble, in a return to his intuitive song writing process where songs land as impressionistic snippets of daily conflicts, and people struggle with the challenge of trying to move through the world. “People don’t expect me to be responsible for altering their outlook or mood, they come to hear something that meets them where they are. I trusted on this record that if I stayed in that space and created things from that more mysterious place, it would connect with others”...  Fast Idol sees Black Marble face the rising tide of uncertainty, leaving our future selves to trace its signal as its frequencies echo into an interstellar expanse, looking for a receiver. He says: "I want my music to stick with you after I leave, even though you might not feel like you’re any closer to knowing it.”

Grouper - Shade

The 12th full-length by Pacific Northwest artist Liz Harris aka Grouper is a collection of songs spanning fifteen years. She characterizes Shade as an album about respite, and the coast, poetically and literally. How one frames themselves in a landscape, how in turn it frames themselves; memories and experiences carried forward mapping a connection to place—“an ode to blue / what lives in shade.” Songs touch on loss, flaws, hiding places, love. Deep connections to the Bay Area, and the North Coast, with its unique moods of solitude, beauty, and isolation—a place described and transformed by the chaos and power of river-mouth, wild maritime storms, columns of mist that rise up unexpectedly on the road at night. Portions were recorded on Mount Tamalpais during a self-made residency years back, other pieces made longer ago in Portland, while the rest were tracked during more recent sessions in Astoria.

Kedr Livanskiy - Liminal Soul

When asked to explain the title of her third full-length album, Liminal Soul, Russian producer/musician Kedr Livanskiy states, “I was trying to feel about the boundary between the opposites – analogue and digital, natural and urban, a sound and voice and then erase it. It is such an intense interlacement of meanings, so the music came out liminal, ever-changing, elusive.” It’s an apt reflection on a record that feels at once expansive and timeless - the self-produced Liminal Soul finds her pushing the boundaries of electronic songwriting while also remaining true to her sonic roots, making peace with her own transience in the process. Bringing her crystalline voice to the forefront, she channels it into operatic choruses, looping falsetto, and her first full song in English. On Liminal Soul she’s injected her infectious club beats with a dose of the natural, crafting an expansive collection of deconstructed break pop.

Porches - All Day Gentle Hold!

All Day Gentle Hold! is the fifth album from Aaron Maine and a celebratory collection of songs. Harder, faster, shorter and louder than any other Porches record, it’s direct and pointed, charged up and chaotic, described by Maine as “the most energetic, off-the-cuff moments, collaged together into the most captivating songs [he] could make.”

Slow Crush - Hush

Hush is the gloomy & dreamy sophomore album by Belgium based and internationally celebrated shoegazers. Radiating moonlit warmth through a haze of abrasive whirling layered guitars and soul soothing vocals by Isa Holliday. The lull of wistful longing and tranquil bearing, contrasting cascading echoes of beautiful noise surpassing their highly acclaimed debut album Aurora in both song writing and musicianship.

Spunsugar - Things That I Confuse (EP)

The songs on Things That I Confuse pretty much wrote themselves in a frenzy. Still, they sound more Spunsugar than ever. It's still as timeless and nostalgic as it is fresh. The four songs consist of two more poplike tracks and two that have kept the more noisy aggressive sound that has become a staple of the band. Now there's an added layer of an icy lo-fi feel. References to Giallo films and Japanese movie monsters work to tell stories of close relationships, trauma and regret that keeps one up at night. Every second is thought through, there's no unnecessary fluff. Every note serves a purpose on this EP.

Yikii - Crimson Poem

Yikii’s Crimson Poem 深紅之詩 exists at the foggy threshold where dreams become nightmares. The Changchun-based Chinese producer has released over 20 albums and mini-albums in her relatively short career, but none of them resonate with the same trembling intensity as this latest LP. “It’s the closest to the colour and atmosphere of the new world I imagined, compared to the previous albums,” says Yikii about the relative completeness of what could be described as her first proper full-length. It takes its cue from a particular interest in linear time, where Yikii asks, "if we can meet with the wonders of this world, will there be a new beginning in the next, or will it all fall apart?"

Previous months:

FACS - Present Tense

Chicago trio FACS never stop pushing forward; they’ve honed and refined their stark, minimal scrape and clatter for four years and counting, having risen out of the ashes of beloved Chicago band Disappears in 2018 with the bone-rattling intensity of Negative Houses. After three albums in the past three years, the trio return in 2021 with Present Tense, their fourth album and perhaps their sharpest statement as a band. FACS once again shuttered themselves into Electrical Audio with lauded engineer Sanford Parker to lay down the basic tracks and overdubs for Present Tense... The change is palpable from last year’s claustrophobic and fried Void Moments, but Present Tense is still ALL FACS, albeit draped in a layer of haze. Paranoia in soft focus, perhaps?  

Foxing - Draw Down The Moon

St. Louis-based indie alternative band, Foxing, is back with their fourth full length, Draw Down The Moon, out via Grand Paradise on August 6, 2021. Draw Down The Moon is an album about aging, magic and galactic significance. Each song is a different theme to explore through that lens. The album is a treasure trove of richly textured soundscapes that evoke joy, melancholy, and spiritual introspection through the examining of cosmic significance. Featured on NPR's Tiny Desk, Pitchfork, and Sirius XM Alt Nation, Foxing is a band that continues to redefine itself with every release. Alas, all that is left to do is to embark on the journey and explore the rituals of Draw Down The Moon. 

Lisa Cuthbert - Elements I

The first of a four-part series of albums documenting a long healing process since the first Hextapes release in 2015, Elements I takes on a new dimension, delivering a raw sound which aims to transport the  listener through mirky depths and into light, using lo-fi techniques and field recordings in nature.

(cover image source)

#2021.n #2021.10 #txt #yo 3 more days till the damb nation of language LP i'm READYYYY

[writefightandflightclub]

Violent Delights: Chapter 6

Pairing: First Order!Poe x reader

Author’s note: This is different to the other chapters, but I hope you like it! I’ll probably fix typos tomorrow. I’m impatient.

Summary: This definitely answers that KEY QUESTION I left hanging at the end of Chapter 5! If you’re new to this story, there are MAJOR SPOILERS under the cut, so please do read the other chapters first (series masterlist here). Even if you’ve been following, you may want to recap Chapter 5 first! 

Song inspo: Oh, in my ears / My blood is just roaring / When he's the only one I've ever wanted / I suppose that's just the way it is / Just to think this could be / The last time I hold you, hold you / Ever again / Oh, I don't think I'll ever sleep till / Morning. (Nicole Aitken, The Way It Is)

Warnings: 18+ only, dark fic. This is nowhere near as dark as the preceding chapters but still some warnings: OOC!Poe, FO!Poe, Violence inc: injuries! shooting! Explicit language. Mentions of: torture / sex / death / poison! Let me know if I missed any others.

Taglist: @aussiefangirlwolfy, @localashe, @fictionalcharactersownme, @a-somehow-functioning-dumbass, @itsamedeemoney, @woakiees​​ @tintinwrites​@jyn-z-solo​ @spaghetti-666​ @kittyofalltrades​ @planetpoes (TAGLIST OPEN- let me know if you wish to be added / removed)

Word Count: 6K. Yikes.

GIF by @solorenskywalker​

It hurts you. Somehow, it hurts you.

And yet, you are solidified in place, no wound observable.

The moment slows almost to a halt as you register the shot.

Dameron is hit.

The blast hits first. Then, shock, pain, and anger strike all at once, eddying between you and the Commander like the swell of a vicious storm, the air charged and practically humming. At first, his rage at this insulting wound sunk into his flesh is so vital that an immediate hope blooms in your chest; how can he be fatally hurt if he seems so alive? Then; something alien surfaces in his eyes. Something which looks a lot like fear. He delivers an agonised moan, already sounding hollowed out, and your fleeting hope wanes with him.

He unfists his hands from your clothing as he moves to clutch his shoulder in agony. He is cleaved from you and you are split in two, in every figurative way possible. You are ruptured by the blast like a fault line snaking beneath an ocean. This boiling rage is subdued only by the heavy, cooling sea of grief with threatens to depress you down on to your knees. You are torn, the desire to erupt in retaliation on behalf of your “enemy” in stark opposition to your need to sink with your lover. You want to fall to the floor with him. To your knees. To hold him. No question. But if you try and help him, Barret might shoot you too.

The indecision burns you.

It hurts you, this shot.

But it hurts Dameron more.

The commander groans, creaks beneath the weight of this pain. It presses down on him and his body curls in on itself as he creeps further towards a colourless exit, the knives in his eyes blunted. There is no vivid, crimson tide of blood to warn you of death incoming. Not this time. This is death pouncing from the long grass like a whip crack. The predator no-one saw coming.

The commander’s face contorts in a rendition of agony, his face almost beautiful with it. But this is not the kind of pain he has made his friend. This is pain without pleasure. And, since you can’t reach out to him, pain without comfort.

The cruellest pain of all.

“No. No. No.” you repeat -almost inaudibly- as Dameron sinks to his knees. You feel like he’s sinking into the depths of a cold, dark sea. Sinking out of reach.

His dark, tempestuous eyes are directed up at you, teeth gritted, lips sucked thin as agony grips him. On his knees like this, he could easily appear like a beast defeated; defanged and declawed. But there is some fight left in his eyes yet. Enough for him to try and spur you into action. “Time to go, Rebel. You fly, he guns, understand?”

You don’t understand. How can you comprehend leaving him like this?

His voice is shot with gravel, full of holes, but it still speaks its way into the depths of you. “Now. Go!, he insists, his voice winding its way around your bones and pulling you into motion, as if he holds the reins in the palm of his hand. As if he can bend you to his will, even now.

He has been dragging you to him all this time and now he urges you to leave, as if he’s unaware of the strength it will take to release yourself from his orbit; from his gravity. But staying isn’t helping him. In fact, it’s worse than that, you’re a danger to him every second you’re still on this ship. You know too much. He needs you gone from his sky.

You obey reluctantly, giving him the smallest of nods, letting your trembling fingertips drag ever so gently, subtly along his jaw as you turn towards the TIE. You move with strings still on you, dragging you back to him and making each step feel like you are wading through mud.

Progressing towards the craft, you are vaguely aware of Barret barking at you, calling you in to the interior of the fighter. You clamber up the ladder and into the tight cockpit just as Troopers swarm into the hangar, the blaster shots bouncing off the ship’s exterior. Your shaking hands hover above the ignition controls, ready to punch it. Instead, you wait. You wait until you are assured that the Troopers have made their way over to the vicinity of the Commander. You wait until the last possible second.

With a final glance through the transparisteel windshield, you look down at his now stilled form on the ground below you. His crown of pitch-dark curls and his uniform-clad body splayed out -helpless- over the cold floor. You don’t know if it was a killing shot. Without a crimson tide of blood, you can’t tell if Dameron’s still alive. But you do know that you have to go, regardless. With a sharp growl of regret, of anguish, you boost the ship out of the swiftly closing gap in the hangar doors. Just in the nick of time.

And so, you fly.

You fly with a pounding heart, blood raging in your ears. You fly, so enraged with your passenger that you are tempted to crash the ship just to make him pay. But there is nothing around you. No ground, no sky. Nothing to cling on to. Just a loss. An emptiness. Just space. You fly away from him, like a satellite released from its orbit. Equally lost and purposeless in the endless dark. 

From out of the darkness, the thought of the Resistance base should be calling out to you right now like a beacon. A beacon inviting you home, now that you are finally free. But you’ve never before had to escape somewhere you wanted to be and return to somewhere you were no longer sure you belonged. The thought of retuning to base with Barret suddenly seems incomprehensible. And so, when you’re clear of the fleet, you don’t know what else to do except keep flying. No destination in mind, except away.

Flying. Simply flying away, is all you try to focus on. But all you can think about is turning the blasted ship back around. Flying toward him. Following those strings the commander has tied on to you which extend across space, drawing you back to him.

But you know that’s untenable. You fly, and it’s likely a good thing that the Order is in chaos, that the chain of command is interrupted. Otherwise, you’re not sure how -or if- you’d manage to lose the pursuing fleet. Not in your current state of fury. Not with Barret’s meagre attempt at gunning, through intermittent groans of pain.

Somehow, you shake them regardless. As the remaining TIEs abandon pursuit, you hear Barret breathe a sigh of relief from the gunner position behind you. The reminder of Barret’s presence is enough to make your hands tighten so hard on the controls that your fingernails dig crescents into your palms. To make your chest tighten.

Then: “They track these things. Did you disable the tracker?” he asks you.

You are loathe to acknowledge him. Even so, you fiddle with the dash until you’re satisfied that the Order can no longer trace you. You cut the strings leading back to him and you feel that you’ve just cut a lifeline. That suddenly you’re lost to liminal space, in-between anywhere and anyone you’ve ever considered home. Still ruptured in two. The feeling sets a hollowness in the pit of you, like you are a ripe fruit which has been scooped out by a cool spoon.

“Affirmative. Plotting a course to base.” You confirm in monotone, all emotion scrubbed from your voice.

“I can’t believe I got such a lucky shot at that bastard.” Barret continues, his voice sickeningly jovial and full of relief.

You feel like you might throw-up.

“Don’t speak. Save your strength.” You say curtly, inordinately thankful that you are back-to-back in the TIE. At least you don’t have to look at him. At least he can’t look at you – can’t get a read on the emotions you would be incapable of obscuring right now.

Still, as you programme your course you feel like his eyes are roving over you, all the same. You feel like he’s poking around inside you, wondering what’s wrong with you. You can imagine the gears in his brain working in an attempt to figure out why your reactions seem off, to unearth whatever happened to you on that ship. Whatever tortures you may have been subjected to. You can imagine him retrospectively register the bite marks on your neck, the cuts to your hands. The blood on your face and clothing. You practically feel his thought process creep over you in the cockpit like a cold chill.

“What happened to you?” Barret asks then, ever so softly, his voice heavy with the implication of imagined atrocities.

“It’s not my blood. It’s Hux’s. I killed him.” You say, hoping to deflect from exactly what happened to you on that ship.  

Barret hoots with laughter, and the sound jarrs you. You hear his hand slapping against his thigh in celebration. “Wow, we really fucked the Order over today, partner. Hux and Dameron dead!” Barret reaches behind him to squeeze your shoulder and you flinch away as if you are afraid of his touch; as if you don’t deserve it; as if he disgusts you. Perhaps all of those things.

“You don’t know that Dameron’s dead.” You bite off without thinking, molten tears of rage threatening at the corner of your eyes. The break in your voice is giving too much away. Emotion floods the cracks in your words like tributaries joining the churn of an unstoppable river. You can’t choke back the sob which follows.

Barret’s voice softens so much that you want to wring his neck to choke the pity out of it. “Did Dameron... hurt you?”. That’s why he thinks you’re crying, then? Because you can’t be certain that the commander’s dead, and surely you must want him dead for the terrible, unspeakable things he enacted upon you?

The truth might be even more unspeakable. The truth that you’re a traitor. The truth that you’d sell your soul to have the commander do those things to you all over again. To have him fuck you and hurt you and hold you. The truth that, yes, he did hurt you, buy you liked it. Barret doesn’t understand that you’re wretched with a crushing and unexpected grief at the thought that it may never happen again. Not since Barret did what you should have had the sense to do all that time ago. Not since Barret shot the commander.

You hope Barret doesn’t notice the course of the ship waver as your hands slip on the controls. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

The close air of the TIE is suddenly thick with a loaded silence as the ship shudders back along its trajectory. As you regain control of yourself and the craft.

Barret, however, does not relent for long. “Do you think when we get back to base we’ll be welcomed as heroes?” The question simply makes your stomach turn. You refuse to pluck at the question while it hangs there, ripe, and so it becomes a rotten thing in the air between you. You feel that chill creep over you again, as if Barret is reaching inside of you, panning for your secrets. No escape within the confines of this ship.

You think back to the last time you were confined with Barret. It seems so long ago that you hunkered in that stakeout room, tracking that shipment and thirsting hard for the commander. The commander who had consumed you with just one bite. Now, mere days later, your partner seems like a stranger and your enemy seems like your lover. You indulged your appetite for that tempting, delicious darkness; you were willingly suckered into Dameron’s honeyed trap. And now that you have been given a taste, you should feel sated. But the truth is you would gladly open your mouth and drink more of that darkness down. You’d drink it until you were spoiled and loathsome with it.

The most disconcerting aspect of these tumultuous events is how little you know yourself. What you are capable of. What you crave and how far you will wade in to the darkness to get it. You know these are your mistakes, your weaknesses to atone for. You know that despite what you’re feeling now, Barret doesn’t deserve your hate. A part of you still knows that. Knows that, objectively, he’s simply a good guy who shot a bad man. That objectively, you should still be on his side. You know you owe it to him to take him home. At the very least.

An older, softer part of you resurfaces as you hear Barret grunting behind you with a fresh wave of pain. It’s likely that the initial burst of adrenaline is wearing off and he is beginning to suffer.  

“You’re hurt.”

“I’ll be ok. My stomach is hurting like a bitch, though.”

In all the chaos, you’d given little thought to the extent of his injuries, until now. So, next, you ask a question you’re not sure you truly want an answer to. “What happened to you, Barret?”

There is a beat. He replies in a small voice. “The kinda stuff our training tried to prepare us to resist.” His answer is vague but loaded. That’s enough. That’s enough to understand what they’d subjected him to. Guilt flares in the pit of you, knowing that while he was being tortured, you were indulging your darker whims. Knowing how much you were enjoying yourself while he suffered. Enjoying yourself at his expense, when you could have been trying to get him out of there.

So, you still can feel guilt, then? You still know that, on some level, it was wrong. Maybe there is something of the Rebel left in you, somewhere. Buried under the landslide of darkness. But you know there is little chance of that part of you clawing itself out when your next thought is of the commander. When your whole body clenches around the memory of him, clings on to it. You think of how he can torture you in an entirely different way, until you’re begging for mercy. A part of you feels you’d raze everything you ever loved to the ground for a chance to beg him again.

Still, you’re curious. You’re curious whether your commander was involved in Barret’s torture. Perhaps so that you can weigh precisely how much you should loathe yourself. “Troopers, or one of the higher-ups?” you ask, trying to keep your voice level, void of feeling.

“Troopers mainly. Some droids, doctors…” Barret trails off, remembering. “Though, it’s funny, really. Dameron came to my room this morning. Told me -don’t worry- it would all be over for me today. Guess the joke’s on him. The bastard.” Barret’s voice sounds darker, more malicious than you’ve ever heard it.

“He came to your room? This morning?” Something about that doesn’t sit quite right with you, leaves you uneasy. Dameron doesn’t do anything much unless there’s something in it for him, you’re learning. Maybe the games he has been playing aren’t quite over yet. Is it wrong to relish that thought?

“He visited a couple of times. To mindfuck me, from what I can gather. Yesterday he tried to make me swallow some horrible lies about you. To make me think I was alone, I guess- to get some intel out of me. Today… well, he brought me my daily rations and told me it was all over. Well, fuck him, he’s dead.”

Panic flutters in your stomach. You try to remain steady on the flight controls, to calm your breathing. You know Barret doesn’t fully appreciate the implications of his words. Of the commander’s actions. But you might.

You have two burning questions you need answers to.

The first: How much did Dameron tell Barret?

The second: What did he feed him?

Your mind pores over any detail of Barret you can remember from the escape to establish which question is most pressing. You hark back to the sheen of sweat on his forehead, the glassiness of his infuriatingly concerned eyes. The way he was clutching at his stomach. More than being injured; Barret looked ill.

Realisation strikes you, and if you didn’t feel guilty before, you sure as hell do now. You can’t be sure, of course. But somehow you know. You’d bet that the commander had fed Barret some juicy, ripe, red fruit.

Bile rises in your throat, but you force yourself to gloss over your voice with a kind tone. To paint your face with a soft, reassuring smile. “Why don’t you try and get some rest, huh? You’ve been through it.” Your passenger hums, considering your proposition. “If I divert the power from the interior electrics into the thrusters, I can get us back to base a little faster than expected. If you don’t mind flying in the dark?”

Flying in the dark is all you’ve been doing ever since the commander hit your life and turned it upside down, like a hurricane. Ans it turns out you’re still caught in his wake. You can’t tell if you’re soaring or if you’re about to crash and burn.

“Yeah.” Barret reaches a hand around to squeeze your arm again and it is like a hand rising out of a grave. His hand is cold. You resist the urge to flinch away, despite the chill it sends down your spine. “Oh, and, partner? Thank you for rescuing me.”

You bite your lips between your teeth. You’re not sure if that statement could possibly be further from the truth of what happened. Hadn’t you doomed him, right from the start? From that first bite the commander took of you? A throwaway “You don’t need to thank me.” is all you can muster.

Barret curls himself in his chair and you are grateful to fly on in silence. Now that the affront of him is over, you suddenly realise how tense you are, how the emotions wracking you are beginning to take their toll. You can’t explain how it was more comforting to be in the arms of your enemy than trapped in the confines of this ship with someone you’d let down so badly. You owe it to Barret to try and make part of this right.

Don’t you?

An alternative option niggles at you, hiding somewhere beyond protocol, beyond the rules and conventions and obligations. Then you think that, perhaps, it’s a good thing for Barret that you can’t be sure if Dameron’s dead, after all. Because if you knew that he was, you don’t think you could find the compassion or strength to try to bring your partner home. You think you might seek retribution, in the end.

Regardless, you fly. You try and allow the darkness of the cockpit to swallow you. As if Barret is not sitting there, as if Dameron never marked you. You try and push it all down, but the commander did mark you. He’s branded you as his. He’d told you “don’t forget you’re mine”, and now his words are wrapped around your bones. His words will be buried with you. And every time you try and escape, your thoughts orbit back to him. His mouth swallowing your hot core, his hands delivering delicious tortures, his cock pumping into you. Most of all: those dark eyes, like shadowed planets you would kill to be marooned on again.

Left to the dark and the dark alone, your thoughts are consumed by him. That is, until you reach your destination, and swing your craft around in the air to bring her in for touch down. Until you approach base and spot that something isn’t right. Until you see the thick pillars of smoke billowing into the air.

“No. No. No.” You plead to no-one in particular, your protestations and erratic flying drawing Barret abruptly from his sleep.

You land harshly on the runway, avoiding blast holes and charred ground, and scramble hurriedly from the ship. Your feet relentlessly pound the tarmac until you’re in the centre of it all, scanning the scene around you with eyes wide.

No-one comes running to greet you or shoot at you. No-one is left. You look around you, surveying for damages. Surveying for bodies, you realise. That the X-wings and larger crafts are gone from the hangar provides some immediate comfort. Signs of a likely evacuation. Then, your eyes pick out the remains of familiar munitions, the tell-tale shell of a downed and lightly smoking TIE fighter.

The strike was committed by the Order. While you were taken. You shake your head in disbelief. It can’t possibly be a coincidence -not after everything that has happened. That means the Order somehow found out the location of the base while you were captive… but you hadn’t…

Oh. Oh.

You put the pieces together and turn back to Barret in disbelief. He has now come to stand several paces from you on the runway. Laughably, you know you must look betrayed when your eyes meet his. In one hand he grips a blaster and the other hand waves around defensively. No, he doesn’t look well. Now that you’re truly seeing him, he doesn’t look well at all. A sheen of sweat covers Barret’s face, his eyes red-rimmed, tears seeding at the corners. He instantly recognises the accusation in your eyes, in your stance.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” he professes, voice trembling. “I wasn’t strong enough. I hoped we’d make it back before the Order could put the intel to use. Or that we’d disrupted their plans. That maybe no-one would need to know.”.

“You sold the base out?” you spit with utter disgust, looking Barret over like he’s scum.  

Apparently, neither of you were returning to base as heroes after all.

He meets your question with silence, which says it all.

“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” You are yelling now. “You let the Resistance down! You betrayed them!”

You’re so angry that it feels like your blood is boiling beneath your skin. Your breath is ragged, your thoughts swirling. You feel darkness crowding at the edges of you. You feel like you are sucking it up through your fingertips, draining your surroundings of it. Feeling it course through you, like the hum of static before a storm. Barret betrayed the Resistance. He did this. And you’re so angry that you can’t see straight.

You are devoid of any sympathy or empathy for him. You’re so angry at him, of course, because you’re angry at yourself. If you can berate him for being a traitor you will take it, if it makes what you did seem to pale into insignificance.

Instinctually, although you are stood some distance away, you lift your arm as if you could simply reach out and choke Barret. Make him pay for his weakness. Your arm extended towards him, you have the desperate urge to just close your grip and crush. “I wish I could just…”

You are as shocked as Barret when he physically clasps his throat and starts wheezing, his eyes wide and afraid. It shocks you enough for you to drop your arm and physically step back from him. You shrink back from the look he’s giving you as he processes what just happened, raising his blaster arm unsteadily toward you. He looks at you questioningly. He looks at you as if he’s looking at a stranger.

All you can do is look back at him. You look Barret dead in the eyes, and you must reveal just too much. Because, if it’s possible, Barret pales even further, his eyes swimming with disbelief.

“It’s true, isn’t it? I’m not the only one who let down the Resistance, am I?” His voice is so thick with disgust that you can’t bring yourself to keep looking at him. To keep facing what you did.

“The things Dameron told me yesterday. They’re true.”

“What?” you say weakly, a pitiful attempt to backtrack, but you already know it’s futile. You’ve been found out. And you might be a traitor but you’re not a liar.

“You fucked the enemy.” Barret spits. “While I was being tortured in that cell. You could have stopped this.” He yells, gesturing around to the scene of devastation which envelops you. And, in his anger he overdoes it - ends up clutching his stomach in evident pain.

There is nothing you can say. No protestation you can muster. You had been angry and ashamed at yourself, but when confronted with it, you find a small, absurd part of you which is proud of it. Which has no desire to deny it. To apologise for it. Barret may have caved in to weakness, but you found power on that ship. Whilst he may dish out judgement, with the commander you had found understanding. Affinity.

Barret’s blaster wavered with the fresh burst of pain but now he has it pointed back at you, trained intently on you. “I didn’t want to believe Dameron. I didn’t at first.”, he bites off, chewing on his words. “But I promised him that if it was true, I’d kill you both myself. I picked your bastard boyfriend off earlier- so I guess I just need to make good on the other half of my promise, eh, traitor?”

You’re getting sick of this righteous bastard already. Hadn’t he been weak? Hadn’t he caved too? Maybe all rebels were simply hypocrites.Maybe the Order were on to something.

Then, of all the things you should say or ask right now, the next question out of your mouth is entirely self-indulgent. “What did he say?” you ask slowly, stringing out your words. In no rush. You have all the time in the world. Unlike your partner.

“What?!” Barret replies in utter confusion.

“What did he say when you promised to kill me? Because given that he poisoned you I don’t think he was too happy with you about something.” You know it’s wrong, that it’s too cruel, but you can’t help that your eyes flash with a perverse kind of satisfaction as you watch the realisation play over Barret’s face.

Is that why? Is that why the commander has poisoned your fellow rebel? To protect you? Because he threatened you? Oh, how a part of you hopes that’s true.

His blaster arm wavers again, and Barret is so weak of body and wrapped up in turmoil that you are able to walk towards him and take the blaster easily, gently from his hand. You look into his eyes, your voice steely, suddenly not feeling worthless or ashamed at all. Not anymore. Maybe you were cut out for these games, after all. “You don’t look so hot, Barret. So maybe we agree that we both made some mistakes on that ship, yes?” Barret considers your words carefully and then nods, and it acts as a meanwhile truce of sorts. You keep your tone impartial. “I’d suggest that if you want me to help you, you should take a seat. Before you drop. I’ll see if there’s anything left of the med bay.”

“You’re going to help me?” Barret looks at you in confusion.

“Yes, I’m going to help you. I’m not a monster.”

The way he looks at you in response signals that he thinks otherwise. You huff out a breath, perturbed by the condemnation. And so, for the second time that day, you aren’t able to offer comfort to someone in need. Instead, you sling Barret’s blaster on to your belt and jog towards the med bay. Barret’s only hope is that there are some shots left which haven’t been blown-up or cleared-out.

You move as fast as you’re able, gathering whatever supplies you can, but by the time you return, Barret is lying still on the runway.

You are too late.

Barret is the third body you’ve had lying at your feet that day. Three enemies, in the end. One of whom was a lover, and one of whom was a friend.

Despite what Barret had done, you feel no satisfaction in his fate. You sigh deeply and turn your head into your shoulder. You don’t look. You try not to look. All you can do is drag him into the hangar and cover him over, paying final respects to the fallen Resistance member.

Now, you are truly alone.

Feeling somewhat numb, you wander around base, confirming there are no signs of life left at all. Passing collapsed buildings, smoking craters, and remnants of devastation. You act on autopilot, and before you know where you’re walking to, you’ve reached the canteen, picking up some remaining rations and stuffing your face. Then, before you realise it, you’ve meandered across base and stand at the spot where your quarters should be.

All that’s left is a shell.

Suddenly, it’s as if you dropped the bombs yourself. As if you’ve intentionally obliterated everything you used to know and used to be beyond all recognition. You pick through the rubble, try to leaf through the ashes, but nothing at all remains. Still nothing to cling on to.

In your wandering, your quest for solace of some kind, the next place you find yourself is General Leia’s room. Hers remains intact. You find it empty, but her presence is there in all the tiny details. The uniform hanging up by the small closet, the table covered in datapads and holo equipment. Her comb and tumbler of water on the nightstand.

You dearly hope that she’s safe.

Being as quiet as possible, as if she’s sleeping there and you might disturb her, you perch yourself on the edge of her bed, grabbing her blanket and tugging it around your shoulders. You let yourself dwell on all the ways you’ve let her down, the ways you may yet break her heart, and you will the grief to hit you. But it doesn’t. You feel like you should be primed to lie down and cry, letting sobs wrack you. But there’s nothing. Only numbness. Perhaps, deep down, you feel you don’t deserve Leia’s comfort. Perhaps, deep down, you’re not truly sorry. Perhaps you are still too ruptured to start healing. Perhaps all of these things.

At least, sitting still allows the exhaustion to hit you. Still, you don’t feel like you could sleep. You feel restless. A lost celestial object with no course and no orbit. A dark, unlit moon. So, you continue your wandering, digging out some fresh clothes and taking a shower, the cool water sluicing Hux’s blood away. It circles down the drain in a crimson vortex. You redress and rewrap Leia’s blanket around your shoulders.

Without knowing where exactly you’re headed next, you find your feet gravitating towards the TIE fighter, which you half-landed and half-crashed into the tarmac.

Of course.

It’s the closest you can be to him right now.

You clamber inside, the snug cockpit encasing you. And then, finally, the rush of feelings hits you. You remember the Troopers swarming around his still form and it’s as if a vice clamps down on your chest. You imagine the chaos on the ship, the discovery of General Hux, washed up on that crimson tide of blood. You remember how it felt to kill him, and then to have the commander exalt you and kiss you and rail into you. You picture how it should have gone; General Dameron sitting coolly, smugly on the bridge. Taking Hux’s place, knowing exactly what he’d done. What you’d done. Sitting there as calm and devastating as the eye of a storm.

You screw your eyes shut tight against the thought you know will follow.

Is he alive?

And, as you close your eyes, various thoughts and faces eddy through the blackness, coming and receding like waves. As you focus in on each of them, in turn, it is as if you are slipping into a current, or a hyper stream; as if you can follow the tide which might lead you to them. One thought begins to jump out at you, tugging at you like a riptide, causing your mind to drift towards it.

Leia?

You reach out with your mind, searching for her energy. You can’t explain it, but you feel that maybe you can establish where they’ve evacuated to.

At least you think that’s where your heart is reaching out to. But wait; it’s not Leia. It’s something connected, but something darker.

Kylo.

Your eyes shoot open in fright and you startle in your seat. For a moment, it’s as if you have linked to him, as if his face is blinking in front of you. He looks just as surprised as you feel. You recoil in terror. For a good while, you sit motionless in the cold shell of the TIE, as if Kylo is a creature hunting you and any small movement might allow him to pounce. You don’t know how long you sit there, heart racing, and your fingernails digging into your knees threatening to draw blood.

You just touched something so deeply dark. Something frightening. Something you are not quite ready to face.

You don’t know how much time passes, but you sit there, practically frozen, until a blue light begins to blink on the dashboard of the TIE. Your curiosity overriding your fear, you press the button. It’s a holo, patching through.

A cool, rich voice resounds through the cockpit of the TIE.

“It’s General Dameron here.”

Your relief is palpable – a fluttering in your chest. A smile which begins in the pit of you and blooms through your whole body. You hold your breath until you’re sure you can believe what you’re seeing. Your eyes pore over the holo, trying to establish where he is, how he is. He looks as though he may be patched up and lying in a med bay.

“Maybe you thought you could run or hide from me, Rebel, but Kylo -the space bloodhound- tells me he found you.” He looks off to the side of him. “You don’t mind if I call you that, do you, Supreme Leader?”

His voice is still full of holes, shot through with gravel. But he’s alive. You’re sure you can see the hint of a shark smile spread over his features. He dips his head slightly towards the camera droid at that moment, lowering his voice just a touch, his eyes narrowing. Unconsciously you lean in toward the transmission. “So, Killer. As you know, Hux is dead, and you’re responsible.” He leans in even further and even through the holo his intense eyes bore into you. “But I’m very much alive. So, I just needed you to know...” he exhales a breath and bites his bottom lip as if his next thought amuses him. “...that I’m gonna be coming for you.”

Whether his statement is a threat or a promise, you can’t be sure. However, you know that the games are far from over. Whilst tomorrow you may need to figure out your next move, for now, you finally feel like you could cry and you could sleep.

You lean back in the pilot’s chair and allow yourself a deep, relieving breath. And yet again, you can’t hold back your own resplendent shark smile.

You press the button to reverse the transmission before sending a message back to General Dameron.

“Bring it on, General Dameron. I’m ready for you.”

He’s alive.

It’s not over yet.

As much as you would like to run back to him, you know now, more than ever, that you have to return home to the Resistance - to see if it’s still where your heart is. Or whether you have any heart left at all. Then, if you happen to discover that your heart does belong to the darkness after all, at least you know the darkness is coming for you. And at least then, you will truly know that you are ready for it.

You lean back in the seat and close your eyes, allowing your relief to wrap around you -like a blanket- as the darkness holds you and rocks you to sleep.

To be continued (Chapter SEVEN coming soon!)

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[tsarisfanfiction]

Divided, United

Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Teen Genre: Angst/Hurt/Comfort Characters: Scott, Virgil, John

Waking up bound in a dark room is never good news, but the absence of the brother he saw shot in front of him just makes it worse.

Another @badthingshappenbingo​​ this time with the square “Taking the Bullet” - featuring Virgil (as requested by @gumnut-logic​).

I’m still taking prompts for non-Scott TAG characters for the other squares!  I have at least one character per prompt for most of them now, but I’m always up for adding more (sometimes it’s that addition that gives me the spark I need!)

Scott’s eyes snapped open. It was dark, the sort of gloom in a house after sundown when no-one bothered to turn the lights on.  Nothing moved, a stillness in the air unnatural to a man who had grown up with someone else always nearby – brothers, roommates, squadmates – telling him that he was alone.  Completely and utterly alone, the only sound his own breathing – bordering on ragged, a panic stirring in the back of his mind from a source beyond his grasp.

He was lying on his side, crumpled as though he’d fallen, but when he tried to move he found that assessment to be inaccurate.  A loud clang reverberated through the space – must be quite small, to echo that loudly – and his leg stopped short as something yanked on his ankle. Cautiously sitting up, he found that his arms were wrapped around behind him, something that wasn’t coarse like rope or metal like handcuffs binding his wrists together.  Some sort of plastic, zip ties, maybe, although if that was the case there were a lot of them.

A chain on his ankle and wrists bound.  Scott shuddered, nightmares rearing their ugly, monstrous heads, but this wasn’t the same. Not quite, and he focused on the differences to drive the nightmares back down into the box he tried to keep them locked up in.  He wasn’t in uniform – in any uniform, he was alone, and he wasn’t… wasn’t there.  He’d never been there since, the one country Thunderbird One never attended.

Slowly, he wrestled the box shut again, nightmares lashing out at the draw of the familiar even as Scott convinced himself it was different.  It was different, he’d been in New York, catching some fresh air after a meeting with stuffy investors who were trying to claim that as they were investors in Tracy Industries, and the Tracy family were International Rescue, surely that meant they were investors in International Rescue, too?  That wasn’t how it worked, International Rescue weren’t funded by Tracy Industries but rather out of their own pockets, but some investors were greedy and wanted their fingers in that pie, too, never mind that International Rescue was non-profit.

He’d been in New York but this wasn’t New York – or at least, wasn’t any part of New York near the offices.  Too quiet, no traffic to be heard, and the city never slept.

Masked men, outnumbered, and-

Scott surged to his feet, bound hands be damned, only to crash back down as the chain on his ankle pulled taut.  He landed painfully on his shoulder, a cry forcing its way out past clenched teeth, but that didn’t stop him and he pulled himself up again, this time managing to keep his balance.

He was alone, and while that had been a comfort, a defence against the rising nightmares moments earlier now it was a source of a whole new terror, because in New York he hadn’t been alone.  Virgil had been with him, snatching some downtime and some time with just the two of them, but Scott was alone now and where was Virgil?

His eyes had adjusted to the gloom enough to find the door and he lunged for it, clattering to the floor just short when the damn chain pulled taut again.  He tugged at it, jarring his leg again and again, but the metal wouldn’t give.

The door opened suddenly, bright white light streaming in and leaving him blinking furiously, blinded. A silhouette stood there, tall and muscular.  No defining features were visible, and Scott snarled at them.

“I see our sleeping beauty’s awake at last.”  It was a modulated voice, cobbled together from various electrical sounds.  Scott couldn’t even tell if they were male or female. “You’ll only hurt yourself if you keep that up; the chain won’t break.”  Even with the electronic edge to the voice, the contempt was clear in their tone.  “Be a good little detainee and you’ll leave here in one piece.”

Defiant, Scott tugged at the chain again.  “Where is he?” he demanded.  “What did you do with him?”

They laughed and turned away, pulling the door closed.  Scott let out a strangled yell and launched himself forwards again, feeling something give in his ankle before he crashed to the ground again, landing on his chest and getting a mouthful of dust.  In front of him, the bright light had narrowed to a sliver as the door almost closed, hovering in that liminal state between open and closed for just a moment.

“We only needed one.”

The door shut, a click loud in the sudden silence – soundproofing, he noted absently, but that didn’t matter because we only needed one and there had been a gunshot, a yell of pain, a body hitting the floor.

Virgil had gone to get a drink, no point both brothers going inside the coffee shop just down the road to pick up some to-gos and out of the two of them Scott was more recognisable so he’d stayed outside, lurking behind the offices on private, Tracy-owned land while Virgil made the run.  Virgil was also only there to kill some time, dressed in his favourite flannel and jeans combination, while Scott was in full CEO regalia of several-thousand-dollar suit and sharply styled hair.  Virgil had refused to give him some solidarity by wearing his own suit, because all of his little brothers were a pain like that, not that Scott didn’t understand.  He wouldn’t wear it if given the choice, either.

How they’d got past security, he didn’t know, but one minute he’d been alone and admiring what little he could see of the sky in the middle of the city, and the next there had been five assailants grasping at him, creasing his pressed suit and brandishing guns in a way that screamed untrained.  Untrained gunmen were dangerous, trigger-happy and not quite in control. As far as kidnapping attempts went, it was pretty rubbish.  Scott should have been able to drive them off long enough for security to appear, and after a little bit of excitement it would all be over.  It was hardly the first time someone had tried to jump him in the middle of a city – it was an occupational hazard of being rich.

Security hadn’t arrived, but Virgil had, dropping two coffees and a paper bag of baked goods that had smelt heavenly at the scene before making a move towards the nearest assailant.  He wasn’t military trained, but he was Kayo-trained and there shouldn’t have been any issues.

Except these people weren’t trained gunmen, and in the chaos a shot had gone off before either of them could relieve that particular person of their gun.

“Scott!”

He hadn’t been in a position to see the gun in question, see where it had been pointing, but a flannelled shoulder had barged him, knocking him off balance, and a moment later they’d both been on the floor and Virgil’s red flannel was the wrong shade of red, a frayed hole in the fabric.  It had been in the back, somewhere shoulder-ish.  Bad, Scott’s mind had supplied, breaking through the sudden numbness and compelling him into action.

Too slow.  The numbness had frozen him in place a split-second too long and he’d been dogpiled, muzzle of a gun digging painfully into his shoulder – metal warm and the smoky scent of gunpowder trailing it – and a prick in his neck.

Now he was in a room – small, featureless except for the chain linking his ankle to the wall and a thick, soundproofed door – and Virgil wasn’t.  Virgil, who had taken a bullet pushing him out of the way, who wasn’t needed, who had probably been left to bleed out in that small area behind the offices where no-one went because it was private, Tracy-owned.  Virgil, who would not have been left if they’d thought he could talk, maybe even shot again after Scott was down to make sure he couldn’t.

Scott shuddered again and changed tactics, heaving at his wrists, rubbing them together for friction and ignoring the burn of his skin.  He didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious, how long the drug had kept him down for, but Virgil needed him – if he was still alive, the voice that said all the things Scott tried to ignore muttered in the back of his mind – and he had to get out.

Warm liquid trickled down his hands, and idly he noted that his suit was probably past all repair, but he kept pulling, grit his teeth through the pain he ignored because he had to.

There was no give in the bonds at all.  Not zip ties, then, because Scott had been trained to break free of those years ago. Something stronger, more durable, more than a match even for a frantic man whose mind was clouded by fear for his brother.

That wasn’t working. There had to be something, anything, he could do.  He was still in his suit-

His suit.  A plain business man’s suit that wasn’t as plain as it looked because Brains never let any of them go anywhere without at least some inventions shoved up their sleeves – literally.  The laser cufflinks wouldn’t be any use – he couldn’t reach them, and even if he could, without being able to see where they were aiming there was a high chance he’d laser himself.  Scott wasn’t that desperate.  Not yet.

The comm unit in his lapel, however…

It took some contortionism, his shoulders and wrists screaming out in pain as he was forced to hold them in an awkward position until his chin could just about reach far enough to depress the patch.

“Scott!”  John responded immediately, before Scott could even get a word out.  He sounded panicked, harried in a way John rarely was.  “Scott, are you okay?”

“Virgil,” he grunted, wheezing as his muscles trembled.  “Is he-”

“We’ve got him,” John cut him off.  “He was lucky – a clean shot that missed anything fatal.  Hospitalised, but he’ll be fine.  Kayo’s with him.”  Scott sighed in relief.  Kayo wouldn’t let anything else happen.  Virgil was safe, alive, and their assailants were fools.  If, he thought with some irritation, fools with access to a dark room with an embedded chain in the wall.  “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Scott lied, feeling the warm liquid seeping from his wrists and the throbbing of his ankle.  “They haven’t touched me.”  That was the truth, at least.  “Where am I?”

“Downtown.  I’ve got someone working on extraction now.  Do you know their motive?”

Someone?  That was ambiguous.

“They haven’t been particularly chatty,” he shrugged, trying for a nonchalance he didn’t really feel. “There hasn’t been a ransom?”

“Nothing so far,” John confirmed, and Scott could hear that he shared his unease.  No ransom meant they weren’t after anything from the family – no money, nothing IR.  The statistics of recovered kidnap victims were low – alive, at any rate – and without even a ransom to imply they were considering it, Scott’s future was looking bleak.

“How long until your someone’s getting me out of here?” he asked, and there was a bit of fear in there, now, because Scott knew he was valuable for more than just money. Information was a popular currency, and he knew a lot of classified information.  Unfortunately, the fact that he knew some wasn’t so classified.

“Working on it,” John repeated.  “Hang tight, and don’t cut the line.  I’ll mute my end if you get company.”

“F.A.B,” Scott agreed, more than a little relieved, although he did his best to hide it.  He wasn’t alone, but John was untouchable, up in Five. They couldn’t use him against him.

“Do me a favour and don’t do anything that’ll get you injured,” John continued.  “You might need to run for it.”  Scott glanced down at the chain bolted to the wall, and the ankle that wasn’t going to want to bear his weight for very long.

“I’ll do my best,” he replied.  “But if you want me running, your extraction’s going to need some chain cutters.  I’m bolted to a wall.”

There was silence for a moment.  “Noted,” John eventually said.  “What else?”

“Hands are tied, some sort of strong plastic, I think,” he reported.  “A knife should handle that.”

There was another silence and this time Scott could feel John judging him, putting two and two together in that way he had.  “Help is on the way.  Stop trying to escape and wait for it.”  Busted.  “We don’t know what they want with you so don’t give them a reason to hurt you.”

Now that he knew Virgil was going to be okay, and that someone – ‘someone’, probably Penelope, if Kayo was on guard duty with Virgil – was working on getting him out, Scott could manage a little patience.  Probably. He still wouldn’t be happy until he’d seen Virgil for himself.  John had an annoying habit of understating things if he thought they’d be a distraction.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he allowed.  Depending on what they wanted, that might not be avoidable.  He shifted to get a little more comfortable, swallowing the hiss as his ankle protested.  “The sooner your extraction gets here, the better.”

“They’ll be there as soon as they can.  Just hold on.”

Still no clues who he was waiting for, but Scott didn’t get a chance to ask.  The door slammed open, blinding him with bright light again and he hissed involuntarily, fighting the instinct to turn away.

John, thankfully, had the sense to not comment, and Scott hoped he’d muted comms as he’d said he would.

The silhouette was different to the last one – a little shorter and wider – but the voice was the same, electronic not-voice.  “Good morning.”  Morning? It had been mid-afternoon when he’d been attacked; how long had he been unconscious for?  “I hope you enjoyed your nap.”

Okay, that was cliché, although still annoying.  Scott glared at him.  “What do you want?”

They advanced, carefully measured steps, but Scott refused to scramble back, keeping his gaze steady even as his heartrate jumped.  Fingers, nondescript and gloved, cupped around his throat, pressure barely-there but still setting his nerves alight.

“I have what I want.” The electronic voice purred, and more fingers spidered their way up his face, trailing along the line of his jaw in a touch that should have been tender but did nothing except alarm Scott. His alarm only grew when it stopped, relocating to cup his cheek in a mockery of Grandma’s caring touch, and a thumb tugged at his lower lip.

He snapped at it, jerking his head to dislodge the touch, but the hand on his throat tightened, fingertips pressing uncomfortably on his jugular.

“Feisty,” they observed, although they didn’t pull back.  Scott tried to yank back, escape the hand, but the grip was too tight.  “You’ll make a wonderful addition to my collection.”

“What collection?” he demanded, voice coming out strangled by the grip on his throat.  The hand returned to his cheek, thumb once again tugging at his lip, and he let out another strangled snarl.

“You’ll see,” they sing-songed.  “There’s a lot of use for a man like you.”  The pressure on his lip disappeared and the fingers glided along the line of the jaw again. Light, barely there, but sending spikes of alarm all through Scott.  “Oh, that’s a nice look,” they commented and he realised something must be showing on his face.  “I like it. But there’s something that would make it better.”

They clicked their fingers, the noise sharp and unexpected enough to make Scott flinch, and then there were more footsteps.  The silhouette this time, from what little he could see past the one still gripping his throat, was larger than even the first person, probably around about his own height.

“The spider ring would look best, I think,” they said.  Before Scott could work out what that meant, there were fingers gripping his hair, tilting his head back so far it was painful, fingers in his mouth yanking his lower jaw down with more strength than he could fight.  Something with the cool, sharp taste of metal was forced into his mouth, and with both assailants holding him still he couldn’t dislodge it as a strap went around his head, pulling tight and catching some strands of hair painfully.

By the time they released him, his mouth couldn’t close and he glared balefully at them, trying not to panic about what was happening or the implications behind it.

“Oh yes, that looks very good,” they mused, and there was a flash and click of a camera.  “Enjoy.”

Scott tried to snarl at them but the noise came out slightly dampened.  Both assailants – captors – ignored him and left the room, leaving Scott with a rising sense of dread and panic.

“John?” he tried to call as soon as the door slammed shut, but the damn gag got in the way, leaving a muffled mmmn? the only thing to escape.

“Scott?”  Thank goodness John was smart, but Scott had much more on his mind than his brother’s intelligence now.  Being kidnapped for ransom was one thing, information another, but this… whatever this ‘collection’ was, it put a chill all along his spine.

Get me out of here now, he tried to say, but all he managed was a fresh chorus of mmphs.  John was a genius, but even he wasn’t going to be able to translate that. Scott cast around for something else he could use to communicate, beyond thankful that he still had his comm.  The chain caught his eye, and he shuffled awkwardly, trying to reach it with his bound hands.

“Scott, ETA for extraction is fifteen minutes,” John told him.  Either he understood gagged-speech after all, or he just knew what Scott needed to hear.  He made grunts that hopefully got the F.A.B. across.  “Stay calm.  Breathe through your nose.”  Scott knew that, but it was easier with his brother’s steady voice in his ear.  “For clarification, it’s eighteen hundred hours local time.  You’ve been missing for less than two hours and it most certainly is not morning.”

He reached the chain and gripped it with fingers slippery with blood.  Breathing as deeply as he could, he tapped out F-A-B on it in morse, followed by P-L-A-N?

“Nothing subtle,” John told him.  “I’ve got the building schematics and approximate life sign locations, so they’re going to blast their way in.  If the door is north, which wall are you against?”

Scott squinted at the door through the darkness.  C-O-R-N-E-R, he corrected.  S-E.

“Can you leave the corner and head further up the East wall?” John asked.  Scott started to shuffle, reluctant to part his fingers from the chain and his only way of communicating with John, before realising the chain was embedded in the so-called South wall.

N-O, he tapped out. C-H-A-I-N-S.

“Understood.” John fell silent for a moment, and Scott hoped – trusted – that he was relaying that information to the mysterious ‘someone’.  “Move as far into the corner as you can.  They’re approaching from the South-West direction.”

A time and location. Scott steeled himself and began the shuffle to wedge himself into the corner, chain clinking and ankle protesting the whole time.  Part of him felt uneasy – into the corner meant nowhere to escape if his captors came back first, but with the chain on his ankle he couldn’t move away fast enough anyway.

He stopped only when he felt the cool masonry hemming him in on both sides, and reached for the chains again.  H-E-R-E.

“Twelve minutes,” John told him.  “Try not to leave that corner if you can.”

F-A-B.  Scott curled up as best he could with the chain still beneath his fingers.  The gag was gathering saliva in his mouth, drool starting to run unpleasantly down from the corners of his lips, but he couldn’t lick it away or swallow, despite his body’s reflexes.  He kept breathing through his nose and did his best to ignore it.  Twelve minutes.  He could do that.

John kept talking to him, for the most part not about anything important – the stars he could see, theories he was working on, distractions from his current situation – but updating him on the extraction whenever something happened he thought he should hear about.  It wasn’t the first time Scott had admired his brother’s ability to do multiple things at once, but that didn’t lessen his gratitude for the skill at all.  Holding a conversation was limited when one party was limited to morse tapping, so he let John carry it, only responding to a direct question with simple Y-E-S, N-O, or F-A-B.

“Thirty seconds,” came the warning.  “Scott, curl up as much as you can and protect your head.”

He didn’t waste time tapping out an acknowledgement.  With his hands bound behind him, there was little he could do to shield his head except turning his back on the South-West corner and hunching over as much as his bonds allowed.

“Ten seconds.” He closed his eyes and focused on keeping his breathing even and not choking on the saliva that trickled back towards his throat in the change of position.  “Five… four… three… two… one.”

The explosion was loud, hunched shoulders doing little to protect Scott’s ears from the blast, but the ringing in his ears was nothing compared to the sight of two of his siblings scrambling through the hole in the wall.

His eyes widened.

“Target located,” Kayo said sharply, fingers pressing down on the iR of her baldric, but Scott only had eyes for his brother, one arm in a rough sling.

So much for being hospitalised, he thought as Virgil knelt down by his leg and produced one of Alan’s so-called tin openers, the laser making short work of a link in the chain.

“No time for the rest,” his brother said apologetically, grasping him by the bicep and hauling him to his feet with his one good arm.  “We’ve got to move.”  Scott didn’t miss the worried glance at his ankle, but there was muffled shouting from outside and the priority was getting out.  He could run on it, and did, Virgil’s hand still firm on his bicep. Kayo brought up the rear.

No-one ever mentioned how difficult running with a gag was.  Every instinct Scott had was screaming for him to breathe through his mouth, but the saliva pooling made him choke every time he mistakenly took a breath. Between him and Virgil, he was by far the better runner, but even with one arm in a sling, it was Virgil pulling him along, keeping him upright as he stumbled.

Behind him came louder shouts of alarm, all still through electronic voice modulators, but it wasn’t until Virgil skidding to a halt that Scott realised one of them had got round in front of them and cut them off.  The gun was pointed straight at Scott’s chest, wavering slightly.

“I won’t let you go!” they declared.  It was the smallest one, the one that had mentioned a collection and decided to gag him.  “You’re mine!  Mine!” The gun trembled wildly, and Scott glanced around, trying to find a way out without any more injuries.  He couldn’t talk, the gag still there, digging in painfully after his dash for freedom, but he couldn’t let that stop him. There had to be something he could do.

He took a step forwards, towards them, slow – unthreatening.

It was the wrong call.

They screamed.

The gun went off.

Virgil shoved him sideways, knocking him over and forcing a cry of pain as he landed badly on his ankle as well as the same shoulder he’d knocked painfully in the little room.

More gunfire, and his captor – his tormentor, the sensation of the gag still in his mouth, chipping his teeth, corrected – fell.  Scott didn’t care about that, more interested in his brother.  Virgil was down, one hand clutching at his hip, where his jeans – he wasn’t even in IR uniform? – were quickly becoming red with blood.

Scott’s hands were still behind his back, but with no chain tying his ankle to the wall he could pull his legs up and rotate his shoulders enough to hook his bound hands past his feet so they were in front of him.  His wrists looked terrible, and it seemed like some sort of electrical cord had been used, but that wasn’t important.  Not with Virgil bleeding from a gunshot wound for the second time that day – both wounds that should have been his instead.

His suit was expensive, but it was already ruined so he grabbed for the shirt and tore it, bundling it up into a wad of fabric before leaning over Virgil and pressing it over the bleeding area.  Virgil let out a groan of pain but Scott couldn’t reassure him, couldn’t do anything except keep pressing, keeping the pressure on as the once-blue fabric darkened. His fingers were already slippery from his own blood, but even if he couldn’t feel it, he could see Virgil’s own blood joining the red concoction on his fingers.

A glance at Virgil’s face saw his eyes drifting shut, clouded with pain, and Scott let out a scream of frustration as he pressed down with all his weight.  His arms were trembling – pain, exhaustion, maybe something else entirely, he didn’t know – but he kept holding on, because it was Virgil and he couldn’t lose him.  Couldn’t lose anyone else, and definitely not when it was all his fault, when those bullets should have hit him.

Hands covered his – calm, steady hands – and he looked up to see Kayo, eyes grim.

“The GDF are on their way,” she told him.  Her eyes drifted to his mouth before looking down at Virgil – white-skinned, blood staining both their hands.  There was a silent apology in them, an acknowledgement of the gag but an inability to do anything about it when Virgil needed them more.  Scott focused on his brother’s face, watching as Kayo snapped at him to stay awake, tapping his cheek with one bloodstained hand as the other pressed down with Scott’s.

“’mwake,” Virgil slurred, although his eyes barely opened a sliver.  “Sc’t?”

Worry about yourself, Scott tried to say, but it came out a mixture of mmphs and hacking coughs as more saliva ended up back in his throat.

“You’re worse,” Kayo said firmly.  “Scott will be okay.  John, where’s the GDF?”

“Two minutes out,” Scott’s lapel said, echoed by Kayo’s own comm.  “What happened?”

“Virgil’s collecting bullets today,” Kayo told him.  “Right hip, this time.  No exit wound.”

“I’ll tell them to hurry up,” John said bluntly.  “Hostiles?”

“Neutralised.”  Kayo’s voice was grim, leaving Scott to translate that to dead.  Normally he’d be upset about that, lethal force never the answer, but they’d shot Virgil twice, who knew what they’d been planning to do with him, and he was so tired even though he’d spent a large chunk of the past two and a half hours unconscious.

Scott just wanted to go home.

It was Colonel Casey herself who led the troops out of the GDF flyer two minutes later as they touched down, running over to them almost unprofessionally as she directed her soldiers to clean-up, aside from the medics who made a beeline straight for them. It was also the Colonel who pulled Scott back gently, out of the way of the medics, and brandished a small knife to cut the straps of the gag.

He coughed as she eased the metal out of his mouth, batting his hands away lightly when he tried to do it himself, hacking up all of the saliva that had been pooling and overflowing before swallowing painfully.

“Virg-” he started, but his voice broke and the Colonel hushed him, clearly more in godmother mode than military.

“My people are dealing with him,” she assured him.  “He’ll get the best care; John’s already alerted the local hospital.”  Scott lunged forwards anyway as his brother was loaded onto a stretcher and hurried away, almost falling over until his godmother caught him. The knife flashed again and the cables wrapped around his wrists fell away, revealing just how raw and bloody the skin was.  “They’re waiting for you as well, Scott.  Can you walk?”

Could he walk?  He’d just run out of the building with who knew how many pursuers on his tail.  He could hobble over to the flyer.

He dragged his way to his feet, only for his ankle – still with a metal cuff around it, even if it wasn’t linked to a chain anymore – to buckle.  Colonel Casey caught him and tugged his arm around her shoulder.  She didn’t insist he wait for a stretcher, however, but patiently helped him limp forwards, a supporting arm around his waist.  The woman was much shorter than him, but showed no signs of struggling as she guided him up the ramp and got him settled in a jump seat by Virgil’s stretcher, foil blanket around his shoulders.

His brother was unconscious, but that didn’t stop Scott from reaching for him, trembling hand probing the arm in a sling.  His hip had been bandaged, field treatment that would hold until he got into surgery, but it was the earlier wound that Scott wanted to see.

It was Kayo who caught his hand and gently tugged it away, pressing a clean cloth to his bloody fingers despite his protests.

“Kay-” he protested, but she was firm.

“Drink.”  A lidded cup with a straw was presented to him, straw prodding at his lips.  “It’s just water.”

“Bu-”  The straw slipped past his lips.

“Drink.  You’re a mess, Scott.”  Kayo’s voice was soft but unyielding and he reluctantly obeyed.  A gentle finger touched the corner of his mouth and he flinched away.  “Hold still; it’s raw.”  He’d barely registered that pain when there was his wrists, ankle, and Virgil, but it was noticeably soothed by the gel Kayo applied.  “Can you hold the cup?” she asked, guiding both of his hands to it, and he grasped it.  “Just while I get this off your ankle.”

She had another of Alan’s tin openers, and he sat still as she lasered through the metal, scant millimetres from his skin.  Only when it landed on the floor of the flyer with a clatter did he move, putting the cup down on the seat next to him and returning his attention to Virgil.  Kayo didn’t stop him from looking, but she caught hold of his hand again and continued to wipe away the blood from around his wrists, rolling up the sleeves of his ruined, bloodstained jacket to chase the blood where it had trailed in both directions.

“It’s going to be okay, Scott,” she promised, but he barely heard her.

Their arrival at the hospital had Virgil whisked away from him before he could even stand on his feet, and his attempts to follow were thwarted by Colonel Casey, who forced him back into the seat while Kayo vanished.

“You can barely walk,” she scolded, and two men appeared behind her, a stretcher between them.  “You will be entering that hospital on the stretcher.”  He protested, but she stood firm.  “The longer you argue about this, the longer it will be until you see Virgil again.  Stretcher, Scott.”

Scott glared at her, but there was no way he could get past her and her men on a dodgy ankle and they both knew it.  At a gesture, the two men with the stretcher approached and, defeated, Scott had no choice but to let his godmother help him onto it.  Firm arms made him lay down before they finally left the flyer.   Colonel Casey accompanied him the whole way, probably to make sure he didn’t try and make a run for it, until he was delivered directly to the doctors waiting.

It was several hours before he saw Virgil again.  The hospital room he had ended up in, one shoulder in a sling of its own, wrists bandaged and ankle set from where it had apparently been broken, had a second bed, which they had promised would be Virgil’s once he was out of surgery.  It was that promise, and Kayo’s reappearance, that kept him in the room rather than attempting to escape.  Mainly Kayo’s sudden presence on his bed, not quite sitting on him but close enough that it didn’t really make a difference.

“It’s not your fault,” she told him, hand on his shoulder – the one not in a sling, apparently dislocated.

“He got shot twice today, and both times were because of me,” he protested.

“And if the situations were reversed, he’d be the one sat here feeling guilty and you’d be the one in surgery for your second bullet of the day,” Kayo pointed out.  “It wouldn’t have been his fault, and it’s not your fault.”

She was talking sense, but that wasn’t enough to calm him down, not when it had been his inattention, his misjudgement.  Nothing would, and definitely not until he saw Virgil again.  Not even John, flickering into view from her comm, or his other two brothers, roaring in from the other side of the world in Thunderbird Two and piling onto his bed for frantic hugs and assurances that he was okay, could get the image of Virgil, white and bleeding, out of his head, or the manta my fault, all my fault.

At one point, Kayo slipped away, taking John with her.  Gordon and Alan kept him forcibly pinned to the bed in her absence, to Scott’s frustration, but when she returned there was a satisfied air to her, shared by John’s hologram.

“The organisation’s been shut down,” she informed them.  “The GDF tracked down all the surviving members with John and Lady Penelope’s help” – otherwise translated as John and Lady P tracked them down and sic’d the GDF on them – “and all of their bases have been seized.”

“It was an organisation?” Gordon asked, eyes narrowed.  Alan just curled up under Scott’s good arm and hugged him tightly.

“A sloppy one,” John said. “They only got away with it as long as they did because they never targeted a high-profile individual until Scott.” His disgust at that was clear, and Scott could well imagine that somewhere, heads were rolling.

“What were they even after?” Alan asked.  “It can’t have been money or there would have been a ransom.”

“They had ties to the black market,” Kayo replied, a little too quickly.  “Slavery.”  She spat the word.  “The GDF are now working to find all the victims and their buyers.”

That didn’t make sense, not from what his captors had told him, but Scott sensed the lie was for his brothers’ benefit.  He’d get the truth out of them later, especially as that was the moment the doctors appeared, transporting a sleeping post-op Virgil into the other bed.

His siblings physically restrained him as he tried to get out of bed, at least until the doctors reminded him to stay in bed, promised that Virgil was fine and would make a full recovery, and left.  As soon as they were gone, it was a different story.

“You should stay in bed,” John sighed, but it was a lost cause and they all knew it.  Gordon was the one to help him up, the aquanaut as ever stronger than he looked, while Kayo guarded the door and Alan hovered on his other side, poised to move in if necessary.

Deposited into the chair by his brother’s bed, Scott reached out tentatively to look at the wound – both wounds.  They were freshly dressed, no sign of blood, and Virgil’s skin was no longer white but somewhere closer to his regular colour.

He was going to be okay. Scott knew he wouldn’t fully believe it until Virgil opened his eyes, but his pulse was strong and even, and unfortunately Scott had seen his brother in a similar state enough times to know it meant he was on the mend.

Recovery would take a while for both of them, and despite Kayo’s words and attempted use of logic, the gnawing guilt was still there, would join the brewing cauldron in his mind where all the my fault thoughts churned away, from minor things like the time John broke his arm on a dare Scott had made him to world-shattering things like I couldn’t save Dad.

But for the moment, Virgil was alive under his hands, sleeping deeply almost as though it was any old night home in bed, and Scott could at least let go of the what ifs, if not the what happened.  He hadn’t lost a brother.  Not today.

#badthingshappenbingo #bad things happen bingo #thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds are go fanfiction #tsari writes fanfiction #scott tracy #virgil tracy #john tracy #kayo kyrano #gordon tracy #alan tracy #colonel casey #taking the bullet #thunderwhump #thunderangst

[luxlightly]

Ok I was originally not going to post this because it's A Lot of headcanon for an improv video game comedy series and just send it to one person but they never responded and I'm attention starved. So here's my huge, Bubby centric, monster of a headcanon that ties the whole series together. Mostly under a cut because it's A Lot. (written in one sitting on my phone so excuse the multiple changes in tense and typos)

So the big sort of thing is that Bubby caused the resonance cascade. He sabotaged the computers. He just meant for it to be a distraction to escape black mesa but Benry's involvement and the chaotic element of the Player Character interacting with him caused everything to go to hell fast. Also Benry and Bubby are sort of brothers.

Going backwards to explain:

So some of this really stretches the canon because it's mixing a "it's a real world" au and "it's still a video game" au kind of ideas. 

Basically the world of the video game exists sort of as a parallel dimension within the game's code. The G-man exists kind of outside of the rules, able to control more or less the code or console. He's kind of the Mastermind behind black Mesa as a whole who exists outside the game's code to a sort of in between layer (in those time stop moments) where he can only be seen by those who are also in some way connected to the Real World through either direct connection to the Player or sufficient connection to the console code. His reach is in ways limited because of this and he cannot easily interact with the game world characters. He uses Black Mesa as a way to use the science of their word to try to create new things from the code or otherwise more precisely control it.

Which is where Bubby comes in. Basically, black Mesa took the basic code for the security officer Barney and tried to create new copies with connections to the code they could use. However it was pretty much a complete failure. Only two of the attempts even survived to maturity with any kind of personally intact, but they weren't right. Trying to connect them with the code like that broke them in certain ways. On creation, the scientists asked them their names to try to get them to access their own files to find the name, but neither could, it came out garbled. So instead they went by the names they more or less gave themselves. 

Bubby is able to connect to the console commands specifically to set objects and characters on fire(among some others in small amounts that are far less well controlled), but he can't understand that's what it is. It's just psychokinesis to him. And he's not good at controlling it, especially when he was younger. He's also scrawny, has several phobias, and is overall much more suited to academic pursuits than being any kind of soldier for them. It also causes him to glitch at times('here i come, Gordon! Here I come, Gordon! Here I come, Gordon!). His code is more or less like a badly implemented mod that tried to unlock god admin mode but failed and now doesn't quite fit back in with the original code right.

They kept him as a scientist at black Mesa mostly to keep him under surveillance. He knows this. He doesn't know anything about the code or anything, but he knows he was made there etc etc. He spent most of his time just keeping the other scientists afraid of him and his spontaneous combustion and studying as much as he could. He'd never been outside. He wasn't allowed to leave. He'd never really cared to. 

Until (and this was largely inspired by the '30 something Coomer and Bubby when Coomer first joined black Mesa by @inkwellstars) a new scientist was hired. Bubby largely ignored him except for trying to scare him away from any annoying attempts and friendship with some showy (if poorly controlled) pyrotechnics. But Coomer was just fascinated and made a terrible pun about his new coworker being 'a real hothead'. Which infuriated Bubby into taking an interest in him. Coomer remained the only person who was unfazed enough by the fire and the shark teeth to not just still hang around, but even tease him, no matter how hard Bubby tried to intimidate him out of it. Eventually, Bubby realized it was the last thing he actually wanted. That this man was the first person who he'd ever had treat him… Like a human being. And for the first time, he considers a world outside black Mesa. And it's somewhere he wants to go. He wants to follow this man when he walks out the sliding lab doors back to a world he'd never been a part of. 

Not that he's pining or anything!! Coomer was a married man, after all!(no way no sir not that). 

 Bubby has a lot of unmanaged anger because he just catches on fire if he gets too frustrated. After a discussion of Coomer's past boxing ambitions, they set up the underground boxing league mostly just as the two of them, letting Bubby actually let off some steam in a metaphorical instead of literal way. He gets his ass handed to him every time but it's nice to not be treated like either the boss' fragile, expensive toy or a living Molotov cocktail. Bubby learns a bit of fighting along the way,to boot. He gets much better at controlling his fire. Coomer picks him up in a "lift off the ground and spin around" bear hug when he manages to set something aflame without setting any part of himself alight first. Bubby somehow feels that was more important to him than the accomplishment itself. Eventually word gets out about the quite literal underground rings they've started up and it becomes a whole league and Bubby takes a more spectator role, contented to play coach to Coomer.

However, Coomer's impressive strength and fortitude aren't only noticed by an admiring(and sightly love struck) Bubby. Black Mesa decides to try, instead of using code to try to create a new entities with connection to the code, to use an existing character, enhance them, and then create copies of them. Coomer became that existing character.

At first it seemed to work perfectly. They had a character able to alter the world at their will(sending Gordon back and forth through time/creating portals), access a super human, nearly godlike state of power(super player feature) and alter the code in a multitude of other ways. They implemented a system of authorization to stop him from accessing these powers without permission from a handler. These PlayCoins could only be gained and used by someone directly connected to the console code or real world. Someone connected to that liminal space between code and reality the g-man exists in. However, trying to create duplicates didn't create a new, equally powerful entity, it just split the power of the original. From there, Coomer's spirit was still too powerful to be completely controlled, so they split him into dozens of clones, dividing up that power until he was within a range they could control. The effect on his psyche was devastating, however. It trapped him into the code of 'tutorial npc' but his response triggers got completely broken so he responds to the wrong things. Before the scripted events of the game in which those triggers are, it didn't affect his day to day behavior, but it did leave him with an inescapable partial awareness of the game itself. As split as he is, he can't understand or remember anything about what it means, it's just a constant disconnect between him and the game's reality. It causes his marriage to fall apart. 

Bubby doesn't know about what happened to Coomer. A lot of his own memories are controlled and tampered with as well. But he feels as though his getting close to Coomer caused his suffering and they end up drifting apart for a long time and Bubby's longing to see the world outside his laboratory home fades alongside their once strong bond.

Until. The other failed test tube character made from the mangled and stripped code of the security officer Barney who was torn out of the code to be twisted to the g man's whims comes to Bubby with an idea. The man who is not a man. Who has no parents and named himself : Benry.

Benry seemed like he should have been perfect. He kept the most physical resemblance to the original Barney, he seemed physically stable. As far as anyone could tell, he was completely connected to the console code. He should be able to control whatever he wanted, but besides the sweet voice and an unnatural fortitude, he seemed to have no remarkable qualities. Also he was all but totally incoherent. Memory, temporal and spacial awareness,and speech function were severely impaired. He often forgot where and when he was('... What happened to your arm?'), got his own memories confused with the memories of the now non-existent Barney ('you and me we used to be friends do you remember i don't know what happened'). Along with an erratic and unpredictable personality. He was considered another of countless failures and given a menial security job, like with Bubby, mostly just to keep an eye on him. Benry and Bubby, despite being practically siblings, aren't close, but do trust each other insomuch as they know the other probably won't outright kill them. 

But Benry was not as unremarkable as he seemed.

And the introduction of a new element would throw everything into chaos: The Player. And, by extension, The Game.

The Player, in this instance, refers to the assumed person who is playing the game in which the characters exist. They are a discrete, unseen, and unmentioned character, who is neither Wayne nor Gordon Freeman. Wayne is the actor playing both Gordon and, in ways The Player, in the same way that Holly is playing the character of Coomer. Gordon is the AI character who exists within the game world. He believes he is in control of his actions and that what he experiences is real. He exists on the same layer of fiction as the other AI such as the character of Coomer.  The Player is whomever, within the fiction of the series, is physically playing The Game.

The Game is the actual scripted, programmed events that were programmed in the "real world" (the Player's real world in which they live and are playing the Game). It represents the events that happen from the time the Player begins the game and when they complete it. The Game represents the overlap between the reality in which the AI exist and The Player's world. Presumably a copy of the original game Half Life. 

As the events of The Game draw nearer, it makes every charterer with a connection to the code antsy. Bubby starts thinking, for the first time in years, about the world outside black Mesa's walls. Thought becomes longing. Longing becomes desperation. A need to escape from here by any means necessary.

Benry approaches him with an idea. They'll sabotage the big test that Dr.Freeman is running. The whole thing will likely explode, causing enough destruction and distraction for them to slip away in the chaos (with Coomer in tow if Bubby could help it). Freeman would almost certainly die but that was a necessary casualty for their freedom. Bubby never liked him anyway. There was just something...off about him. Like a weird double vision he couldn't shake around the man. Like something was both there that shouldn't be and missing that should be. Bubby avoided him. He didn't think he'd ever had a single conversation with him. He agrees.

Benry stops Gordon at the entrance and tries to stall him as long as possible with bogus requests to give Bubby as much time to sabotage the test as possible (which he does by crawling inside the computers, claiming he's fixing a problem). 

However,Gordon is not connected to the console code, but directly to the real world through being controlled by The Player. As the Player triggers the scripted events of The Game, the holes and mangled code the g man and black Mesa have been tampering with start going haywire. Especially as Benry interacts with him directly. His latent connection to the console code starts activating, giving him ability to control himself and the game more and more, but his memory issues and temporal confusion makes him unable to determine what is and isn't real so his code powers start just making it real, beginning to actively break the Game from within. The bogus excuse about a passport (he forgot the word for ID and had to roll with the lie) became a reality and a powerful one. He starts teleporting and clipping through the walls.

Bubby starts the test, unaware of the change. He played along with the passport thing to not blow Benry's story. But by the time he reaches the chamber, it's already a real thing everyone else there had and should have. 

When the cascade starts, though, Bubby is caught off guard. It was just supposed to explode. It wasn't supposed to bridge dimensions and cause this rift. He assumes Gordon did something to cause it to fail so catastrophically. He phases through the window of the observation room (something he didn't even know he could do and likely didn't even realize he was doing and forgot afterwards since he was immediately knocked out) but it's too late to stop it.

Then the events of the Game are in full swing and all the broken code of every character crumbles and results in the "look Gordon! Ropes!" Glitched tutorial Coomer, a Bubby whose setting himself on fire on accident for the first time in years, and a Benry who transcends beyond the confines of his code into an extradimemsional Chimera of sorts who can pass in and out of the liminal G space, become and summon skeleton minions who also can be or not be in that space, able to be seen by anyone or just by someone able to perceive that plane of existence, such as Gordon.

As Coomer destroys his clones, he gets pieces of his power and fragments of memory back. Enough to know that they are clones and that killing them returns his powers to him. Bubby and he quickly rekindle their bond, with the memory tapering being undone.

Bubby is still desperate to leave, trying to get Gordon to go faster by guilting him and saying he wants to go home (though black Mesa is his actual home). However everything just seems to get more and more drawn out and they can never really make progress.

Benry convinces Bubby that Gordon is the reason that they can't leave. Bubby can sense that something is different about Gordon so he believes it. Benry may or may not believe it himself. He may have realized that leading the Player to the end would only end the Game and tried to subvert that path. Or the programmed event of Gordon's ambush might have just pushed them both to it. Impossible to say. 

In any case, Bubby is quickly also detained and put back in his tube.

With enough clones killed, and having accidentally jumped out of the play box and seen that there's nothing physically beyond black Mesa, Coomer becomes aware of and connected to the console code and aware of the "real world". He tries to use Gordon's connection to the Player to get to the real world, though at this point he can only understand it as the world of Gordon's "dreams". When Tommy kills all of the clones, then knocks out Coomer, it causes a full reset and Coomer becomes his full,unshattered self again. He still is limited by his need for authorization through PlayCoins, but he's much more coherent and quickly becomes completely aware of his situation within the Game and starts talking directly to the Player through Gordon at times. 

The rest is history. 

As for some other non directly related things: Tommy is g man's attempt at a more biological connection between the code and the game universe. Tommy is his son and has all the abilities of a g-man but is largely unable to use them and unaware of them due to his young age (comparatively to the immortal g man, 36 is still a child) and his innocence. He is also completely integrated with the game universe with no glitches from the union. Tommy is not aware he's the Gman's son. He thinks it's just some guy who bought him Vin Diesel and the minions. Tommy tends to use his powers entirely accidentally when he does, with the exception of creating Sunkist. In doing so he also surpassed his father's ultimate limit: creating a completely new element to the game without having to gut other code. He created the perfect dog out of completely new content he willed into existence. Unfortunately for G-Man, Tommy is far too pure and goodhearted to be used to any nefarious ends. 

#hlvrai #bubby #coomer #boomer #benry #gordon hlvrai #tommy coolatta

[mypassionfortrash]

Quarantine dream: day one.

It’s the Great Quarantine of 2020, and you and Roger find yourselves cooped up together. Will you get on each others’ nerves, or do you love each other enough to weather the storm? Warnings: Mentions of really weird sex stuff (as a joke), strictly 18+ Notes: New fic. It’s a bit on the nose, but if we don’t laugh, we’ll cry! I’m going to try and update this daily. Full disclaimer, it was written quickly and might be very disjointed.

Day one.

The missus is working from home now. We’re essentially going to be housebound for the foreseeable. She’s already forbidden me from revving the Porsche too loudly in the garage, coming into her ‘designated work space’ between the hours of nine and five, and trying to help her with the cooking and cleaning. Apparently I’m ‘getting in the way.’  I’ve been cast out to my ‘man cave’ during the daytime... and god help me if I leave to scavenge for snacks or even a cuppa!

Which one lives, which one dies, we’ll see! I have a feeling only one of us is getting out of here alive.

In other news, John sent me a video of him and Ronnie in Tesco. Trolley piled high with TP. Now I have the overwhelming urge to brave the dreaded Coronavirus and get the shopping in a couple of days early.

I’m clearly going to go mad, aren’t I?

One more hour of work. That’s what you told yourself as you settled back at your makeshift desk in the spare room. One more hour and then you could get the dinner on. 

Working from home was harder than you imagined. Not having the commute was lovely, but only having contact with Roger – as much as you loved him – was enough to drive anyone to the edge of sanity.

And it was only day one.

Hunching over your laptop, you scrolled through the emails that had piled up during your tea break, now wishing you could just have a meeting. Times had changed and you didn’t have time for 800 word emails about your company’s next rebrand.

Soon enough, something out in the garden caught your eye.

Roger emerged from the garage, his white t-shirt spattered in dirt and grime from a day of tinkering with his collection of four-wheeled loves. He moved swiftly, shaking his head as he looked down at his phone.

You heard the back door slam closed and his footsteps trudge upstairs. Silently praying he wasn’t coming to bother you, you counted his footsteps in your head, imagining every door that lined the hall.

“You’re never going to believe this, darling!” Roger called.

Your eyes burst open the second he entered the room.

Roger leaned over you and thrust his phone in your face, so close you could barely see what was on the screen. “Look at John!” He screeched. “Look at him!”

“What am I looking at?”

Roger’s voice kept going up an octave every sentence until it made you wince. “The bastard’s cleared out Tesco! Look at his bloody trolley!”

Huffing and rolling your eyes, you turned around, going nose to nose with him. “How many kids does he have?”

Roger quietened down. “I don’t know,” he shrugged, “a lot?”

“Well, I don’t thi–”

“You’re not telling me that’s their weekly shop though. They’re stockpiling toilet roll! It doesn’t make you shit yourself! I’ve got a good mind to go down to Tesco and–”

“And what?”

Roger’s attitude came in peaks and troughs but now he looked utterly sheepish, sinking on to the edge of the bed and batting his lashes. “Maybe do the shopping a couple of days earlier? If you want.”

You sighed and leaned your head on the back of your chair, allowing your eyes to wander towards his. You couldn’t say no to him – he made it impossible for you. “One more hour of work and I’ll come with you to supervise.”

Roger’s eyes narrowed as a broad smile lifted his features. “Good.”

As Roger rose to his feet, you reached out to grab the hem of his shirt, pulling him into you. Your lips met with an audible sigh and a fleeting kiss. “And for the love of god, jump in the shower and change your clothes.”

“Why?” Roger smirked. “We’re only going out during the apocalypse.”

An hour and a clean shirt later, you and Roger bundled into the Range Rover to embark on the five-minute drive to Tesco, completely unsure of what you’d find when you arrived.

The radio droned on in the background, covering the latest developments from the Prime Minister’s daily press conferences. Roger listened on with disdain as he drove – he never had much time for politics at the best of times – but he still listened intently. The situation was getting serious enough to worry him. 

Boris bumbled through the airwaves but his message was clear: stay home.

“It’s what we should be doing,” you sighed, leaning forward to reach into your handbag.

“What?”

You took out a box of latex gloves. You, being the sensible and prepared one, always made sure you had some in the house. Blowing into one and slipping it on your hand, you mumbled your response. “Staying home.”

“What are those for?” Roger asked, glancing over at you snapping on the other glove.

“We’re being careful. But you can’t guarantee everyone else is.”

Roger’s hand found your thigh and gave it a reassuring squeeze as the car spun around the corner into Tesco’s car park.

Neither of you were sure of what you were expecting. 

Chaos? Crowds? Cars everywhere? 

You and Roger sat in silence as the car thudded to a halt right at the front door. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

“This is creepy,” Roger stated. “Bet we’ll be going in to empty shelves.”

“It’s going to be ok,” you said, jumping out and heading towards the door. “Remember the shopping bags in the boot!”

You could hear Roger groan as he retraced his steps. “This is why I hate going shopping with you,” he grumbled, fumbling through the boot for the almighty Bag of Bags. “We’re rich enough,” he wittered, slamming the boot. “We can get plastic carriers.”

From the corner of your eye, you could see him stomping back to you as you grabbed a trolley. A small one, so Roger wouldn’t succumb to temptation.

“…All because some little Swedish girl’s bloody whining about the planet getting warmer… not a bad thing if you ask me.”

“What are you droning on about?” you asked, grabbing the Bag of Bags from him. You hoped that putting them in the small trolley would lessen the amount of space available to him too.

“Greta’s probably having a fucking field day,” Roger mumbled. “Us using those bloody sacks for the shopping. No cars on the road.”

“It’s not a bad thing. We’ve been in London how many years? And when have we ever been able to get a proper breath until now? I quite like the lack of traffic.”

“Make the most of being able to breathe, darling. Corona’s a bitch, I’ve heard.” 

The sight of the baron wasteland in front of you stopped you in your tracks. No people, no food, just rows and rows of empty shelves. 

“I have a list,” you said meekly, taking a crumpled piece of paper out of your pocket.

Roger laughed. “Good luck with that.” He barged past you, peering over his shoulder. “I’ll take the cleaning stuff, fruit and veg, and toiletries. You check the rest.”

Empty supermarkets were strange places. Flickering lights and empty shelves, the only sound came from the creaking wheels of your trolley as you snaked the aisles for something – anything – from your shopping list. The only items  left were either expensive or things you’d never be able to cobble a meal out of. Bread and pasta were non-existent in this liminal space, as were eggs and flour, so you couldn’t even make those from scratch. All you managed to find were two sorry looking ready meals, a bottle of gin and a tin of chopped tomatoes – none of which were on your optimistic list.

Roger didn’t do much better, either. He seemed to spring out of nowhere with armfuls of Bayliss and Harding soap at a fiver a pop, a two-litre bottle of bleach and one measly aubergine.

“What are we going to do with that?” you asked.

“What, the aubergine?” he smirked, waggling his eyebrows.”That gin might loosen me up enough.”

“Oh, fuck off! When have we eaten aubergine, Roger!”

“Well,” Roger began, grabbing the trolley, “it’s like that nature man from the telly says. Adapt, overcome… and...”

You glared up at him, “and?”

“I don’t even remember.”

“This is dire.”

Having checked out your scant supermarket haul, you and Roger embarked on the drive home, trying to figure out what you could do with the food you had found.

“I’ve always wanted to shove an aubergine up my arse,” Roger huffed.

“Why’d you think I kept these gloves? I’ve seen the weird shit you’ve been watching,” You mused. “Oh! Moussaka! We still have mince!” you squeaked, bobbing up and down in your seat.

“Kill the mood, why don’t you,” Roger laughed. “But yeah, moussaka could work.”

“I think this apocalypse thing might just turn out ok after all.”

#roger taylor #roger taylor x reader

[nunonabun]

#10 Turnadette?

#10 …desperately.

The harsh lights of the hospital picked out the delicate veins of the rose petals. They were wilting now, cut off from their natural environment. Shelagh felt a twinge of sympathy for them, hospitals were generally not places where living things thrived. She sent up a silent prayer that the roses were the only things that would die. 

It unsettled her, this moroseness she couldn’t seem to shake. Of course, waiting around to see if the baby you’d miraculously been able to conceive was alive or not wasn’t terribly conducive to a cheerful mindset, but normally she was able to retain greater optimism in times of stress. Perhaps the chaos of her hormones was to blame. As soon as she thought it, a new concern bloomed in her mind. When the baby was born, would she still end up in a deep darkness, as she’d seen many other mothers endure after the bright, shining moment of their child’s birth? If the baby was born. Her mind whispered an unhelpful litany of potential complications. All of the things that could land her in the same crushing situation Gloria was enduring right now.

They had both spent much of the day drifting in and out of troubled sleep. Shelagh’s heart ached for her new friend, but she abstained from reaching out, sensing that Gloria needed space, time alone to grieve. Time seemed such a nebulous concept in this place where life’s normal pace was suspended. Actively doing nothing sapped her energy to a worrying degree. Patrick’s cheerful visits were occasionally oddly abrasive in this state, his energetic conversation asking of her a level of reciprocity she didn’t feel able to return. She wondered if this had any similarity to what he’d felt when his war neurosis had overwhelmed him for that horrible stretch of time two years ago. She resolved to ask him. Talking about the things that pained them could be deeply healing, they’d come to understand that quite well. 

As though her thoughts had summoned him, she felt a gentle hand on her arm and a wave of love and gratefulness overwhelmed her at the compassion in Patrick’s eyes. Her emotions were immediately thrown into turmoil, the fear, sorrow, and desperate hope uncovered from the blanket of melancholy that had flattened them into dull echoes throughout the day. Urgently, she pulled his face down to hers, kissing him deeply, clinging on to the reality of the love she forgot surrounded her in this liminal space.  

[send me a number and ship and I will ship you a fic]

#Anonymous #call the midwife #Shelagh Turner #Patrick Turner #Turnadette #ctm fanfic

[griimreaping]

@utternocries​ - one word fic prompts

Lower ( part 1 )

The tolling of the church bells was genuinely ominous. An impending sense of dread dominating the grey morning fog, which blanketed Novigrad. Those silvery sounding clangs ringing out through the mist to call forward its faithful masses from the gloom. Pulling the traveling cloak tighter around her shoulders, if only to stave off the nerves rather than the general chill that harkened the coming of autumn, Jean flinches when Geralt's shoulder lightly brushes hers. Nerves had been high in the woman's chest as they neared the city, the last time she'd stepped foot in those walls being the night before her family died. Now with the cold solid stone rising around them, Jean couldn't help be reminded of a tomb.

This must have shown on her face from the flicker of a frown that graced the Witcher's mouth. He'd been summoned on a contract put forth by one of the wealthy governors that had come to occupy a mansion in the northern district of Novigrad. Since he'd taken up residence there, it's caused the man nothing but grief. Deaths in the family, along with some more insidious spectral activity that made even the most persistent of tenants shy away from even renting the place. Which only added to the misfortunes befalling an otherwise uninteresting and mundane man of wealth. With such wealth, he enlisted Geralt's help, and by some lucky stroke, Jean as well. Who had insisted she come along since the governor had mentioned something about black vines overtaking most of the house. 

"What plant has black vines?" Had been the first question Geralt had asked when done skimming the frantic letter that had been sent forward to Downwarren. The Witcher had to stop spending so much time in her little hut, now even people outside of the village were beginning to notice. Plucking the letter from his hands and chewing on the inside of her cheek as she read, Jean's mind crunched over all the various odd species that thrived in this environment.

 "Devil's bramble is the first that comes to mind, but it's more of a shrub than vines. Could also be just a mistaken color?" Placing the letter back down and folding arms across her chest, the Druid casts an uneasy glance out of the dewy glass in her kitchen to the misty bog. She hadn't been to Novigrad in nearly fifteen years. The harsh smell of a house fire coming back in a wave so sudden it took a considerable amount of will not to choke on the air stuck in her lungs. Hugging herself tighter, Jean forces the words out of her lips in an attempt to cast away unwanted memories. To drown the screams.

"You'll probably need an expert on plants and herbs," a glance is cut at the Witcher to gauge how the words are received. "I won't ask for any of your payment, I'm just genuinely curious now and could do with a bit of adventure away from the bog and corpses." Geralt grumbled a few words about how things were dangerous, and Jean's rebuttal of how she could handle a sword along with magic seemed to lessen the worries only marginally. Or at least enough that he put them to bed. Now walking among the cramped sewage reek which clung to the southern district like a diseased lover, Jean begins to miss her bog. Roaches hoof beats echo in the dull mist as they weave through cobblestone streets going north. A beggar approaches before seeing the Witcher and thinking better of his choices, slinking back into a darkened patch of fog that yawned into an alleyway. The struggling morning sun had yet to touch these streets, sleepy shop windows gazing out onto quiet abandoned boulevards. A liminal moment in time before the meager warmth of an autumn day shone through the slate clouds above.

 That invisible line between districts isn't so invisible in Novigrad. A stark change between cramped tenant buildings that had begun to go crooked like a thieves smile, to the gaudy colors in the markets almost hurt the Druid's eyes. Even at such an early hour, a merchant in puffy gold pants tried valiantly to hawk some bruised peaches to her, claiming they were the city's sweetest. More polite "no thank yous" than Jean figured were necessary, and he'd given up his venture only to flag down another tired traveler bustling away. They did not make it out of the markets without expending a small amount of coin, which Jean put out to receive a small set of glass bottles in return, which now clinked softly in her bag. Geralt eyed the merchant selling her the glass wear with a critical eye, waiting to see if he was going to swindle her or not. This intense cat-eyed stare is more than likely what got jean a reduced price just to make them go away.

"I think I have a new idea about what the vines are." The Druid pipped up as another jarring change in scenery happened from the markets to the northern district. Now polished iron gates bore their teeth at them from the mouths of massive walkways up to ostentatious villas. No longer is the lower districts' corpse stench lingering; instead, a delicate waft of mountain roses and lemon trees walk in step with the Witcher and the Druid. Jean felt dirty here like she shouldn't be permitted to touch anything for fear of sullying it beyond rescue.

"There's a rare type of flower which only grows on the site of immeasurable evil. I've only ever read about it, though; the drawing seemed close enough to the description he gave." Rummaging around in the folds of her cloak, Jean produces a very worn and overly bookmarked tome. Roughly the size of her palm, the books brown and yellow pages had the look of something that had been steeped in bog water and perhaps blood at one point. Leafing through to the proper page, the pages crackle with age under the woman's touch.

"Here, Dagon's breath. Black vines with leaves about the size of a supper plate, able to produce flowers but only on full moons. Dried flowers turned into a powder can produce some of the most potent madness-inducing potions known to the world. Since this is such a rare specimen, there are speculations that even the scent of the flower can cause severe hallucinations." Reading this passage aloud, the Druid could feel a cold hand drag down her spine. If this was what they were dealing with, then whatever cast the curse even to make it grow had to be obscenely powerful.

The Dagon is old magic. Older than what most perceived as life it's self, coming from the chaos before time. From all that Jean could find in the books in her home, it was a god born of entropy and discord but required strict worshippers to ensure that it would have a proper host to inhabit when the void took back over. Mages and fanatics alike that dabbled in the Old Gods were ones that put their minds in the hands of babbling madness willingly, hoping to be rewarded with some form of forbidden insight to the world. The thought made the Druid shudder. She'd tasted the sharp edges of madness once before, those dark whispers in a language lost still snaked into the blackest of nightmares that she couldn't wake herself from. They'd always promised such alluringly unfathomable things to her.

It's lost in these troubling murky visions that cause the woman to bump into Geralt when he stops at one of the ornate gates. Placing a hand on her shoulder to steady her, the Witcher's disquiet shows fully. He'd had many half-hearted qualms about bringing her along on this, and now that she was becoming so distracted, it only furthered his worry about her being a liability.

"You should go wait back at the inn. Now that I have a better idea of what this plant is, it shouldn't be a problem." I don't want you to get hurt; goes unvoiced, but his cat-like eyes' narrowing conveys the sentiment. Jean's face flares pink around the ears at her embarrassment, but she doesn't allow the dialogue of the inn to go any further. Making a vague gesture at the nameplate affixed to the gate, the woman lets out an irritated breath, the frustrations more directed at herself.

"We're already here; it wouldn't make sense just to send me away now. Plus, I don't remember which roads we took to get here through the fog. Come on, Geralt, just let me continue, and I'll keep my head on straight, okay? No more distractions." A half-hearted smile that she hopes will cement the words into place only has Geralt absently rolling his eyes. Producing the key that had been sent along with the letter they'd received, the gate is unlocked. A horse post just inside the iron portal is where they part with Roach, who busies themselves with munching on the fresh hay that had been left out.

Path flanked on either side by overgrown flower beds containing every flavor of poisonous plant known to the region. Even a few that look notably exotic had a tight knot of anxiety forming in the woman's chest. A breeze sighing up the path causes the nefarious blooms and grasses to seethe in a green ocean around them, their ghostly voices curling in Jean's ears. Reaching out to place a holding hand on Geralt's arm, Jean freezes in her tracks when the house looms into view from the dismal fog, which had turned into a light misting rain.

When the governor had stated the vines were growing along the house, she had expected a few sparse fingers grasping greedily at the spaces between the bricks. Instead, what they were greeted with was a building that seemed to move with a life of its own. Thick coal-black leaves nearly the size of Geralt's head shiver in the breeze giving a sinister shivering quality to the house from foundation to rain gutters. Interspersed with wine-red flowers sporting elegantly curved petals and long golden yellow pistils that reminded Jean of a great blood-sucking insect searching for its next meal.

Then the whispers.

"Geralt, we shouldn't go in there." We're the words Jean heard herself saying, startled by how her voice sounded so terrified. While the Druid can listen to most of the passive voices of the plant life around her, these held that same nebulous darkness that only spoke to her in deepest nightmares. They carried the same voice as the madness. Their saccharine-sweet smell only there to lure you in closer with beckoning leaves and candy red petals.

Before responding to such a statement, a loud voice calls to them excitedly from the house. A gaunt man in a midnight black traveling cloak hurries toward them, waving his arms and wearing an almost crazed smile that shows far too much of his gums, which are far too pale to be healthy.

"Witcher! And... company. So good of you to finally arrive, and when I fear I am at my wits end!" The man nearly shouts at them, reaching out to vigorously shake Geralt's then Jean's hand with both of his clammy skeletal paws clasped around theirs. When his fingers leave the Witcher's, he notices fresh raw wounds on the man's forearms peeking out from his dark robes' confines. They looked almost like symbols carved into his skin, but such a quick glance hadn't been enough time. Deep-set eyes that once would have struck a woman dead with a glance now flit in their sockets nervously, the striking ocean blue ringed with bloodshot scleras and the deep shadows of exhaustion. The man looked to be hand in hand with death, yet the cold grip that clutches Jean's own spoke of fierce hidden strength that still dwelled like an angry spirit inside him.

"You must come inside! He has told me so much about you. I am looking forward to speaking with you before we get to such dark and dismal affairs. Come come." Voice and grip offering no rebuttal, the governor loops his arm with Jean's, nearly dragging the woman toward the house of dark whispers. Following close behind, Geralt notices the low humming of his medallion as they approach the building. There was nothing good contained within, the corrupted magic oozing out and tainting the air around them.

#‘ﾟanswered » JEAN MASTERS — ❝ here the light only dies to remember ! ❝ #‘ﾟships » UTTERNOCRIES — ❝ two sides of a scarred coin ! ❝ #verse﹕WITCHER ► the dead they speak so ﾟ* LOUD #utternocries #alright so look this is part one #part two will get posted tomorrow because I’m trying to edit it to give it an actual endinstead of rambling for like 10000 words