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dothwrites · 4 years

Note

worried Dean @ Cas: “I’m not bothering you, am I?”

---

It’s a widely accepted tenet in the art department that Castiel Novak is a genius.

Dean first hears rumors of Novak’s skills when he’s a freshman. He doesn’t believe them at first. He suspects they’re overblown by groupies who are too interested in trying to get into Novak’s pants (not that Dean can blame them: with his shock of dark hair, ice-blue eyes, and delicate scrollwork of tattoos spiraling up his arms to disappear under the sleeves of his very tight t-shirts, Novak is a walking wet dream). Then, at the end of his freshman year, he’s busy setting up the annual art show when a piece catches his attention.

At first glance, the painting is deceptively simple. A shadowed figure stands in the center of the canvas, his arms raised up to the sky. Around him are swirls of red, black, and gold, somehow blending into one color in the background. The more Dean looks, the more ambiguity he finds in the painting. Are the swirls of gold lifting the figure up or restraining him? Is the figure fading into the black or breaking free? Is the red coming from him or is he drawing it in? Are his hands raised in supplication or defiance?

Dean loses track of how many minutes he spends staring at the painting, admiring the shading, the color, the symbolism. Transfixed, he reaches out to touch at the rough surface of the painting before he recalls himself and snaps his hand back to his side.

“You can touch it if you want.”

Dean whirls around at the deep voice, his eyes widening when he sees Castiel Novak standing behind him, hands tucked deep into his pockets. Castiel raises a pierced eyebrow at him.

“Seriously. Go ahead.”

Dean shakes his head, aware of Castiel’s reputation. “I can’t...we’re not allowed to disturb the artwork--”

Castiel’s mouth twists and Dean doesn’t know whether he’s angry or deprecatory. “Well, I’m the artist, and I say you can.”

Castiel’s eyes rest heavily on him. Dean swallows, his heart picking up a rhythm that seems attached to the flick of Castiel’s tongue over his lower lip. Hand shaking, he reaches out to brush his fingers over the textured canvas.

“It’s rough,” Castiel says from right behind him (when the hell did he get that close?), “because becoming is always rough.”

And that’s how Dean Winchester decided Castiel Novak was a genius.

---

As school and life continues, Dean admires Castiel Novak from afar.

From what he can tell, Castiel doesn’t have many friends. He has admirers, which he ignores, and he has a few people who hang onto his fame, which he disdains, but actual friends? The only thing keeping Dean from volunteering is the thought that Castiel will turn the same withering look on him.

Castiel haunts the art building and, as Dean continues delving into the Art program at Carver Edlund University, he does the same. Sometimes he’ll pass Castiel on his way to his studio. Castiel always nods at him, but it’s a companionable gesture, the same that you might give to someone at the grocery store. He never stops to chat, doesn’t even remove his earbuds.

And that’s fine. So Dean’s harboring a crush that’s as much intellectual as it is physical. Plenty of people have crushes. It’s fine. It’s not like he’s obsessed. Not like he lurks around just so he can leave at the same time Castiel does. Not like he skulks through the dark halls so he can get a look at Castiel’s new project. That would make him creepy and pathetic, and those are two adjectives which certainly don’t describe Dean Winchester.

After a while, denial doesn’t even taste bad, just a little bitter.

By the end of his sophomore year, Dean’s accustomed to the status quo. He notices the light in the private studio allotted to Castiel (all senior Art majors get their own studios, but Castiel got the nicest of them), but he doesn’t stop on his way to his own (shared) studio. When he arrives, however, he screeches to a halt.

His studio is filled to the brim with snotty freshmen. His personal workplace has been completely commandeered by a freshman with a (barf) man bun. “What the hell?” Dean sputters. He can feel his face turning red with rage. “This is my time.”

Man-Bun pops his gum as he looks at Dean. His eyes are so hazy Dean’s surprised that he’s not deep-throating a bong at that very moment. “Um, guess again? We totally booked the studio for tonight?”

Seething, Dean storms to the schedule and checks. Sure enough, there’s a long list of names on the door for the studio space. “I always have Thursday,” he protests, but it’s an empty sort of rage. “I’m always here for Thursdays.”

Man-Bun shrugs, turning back to his psychedelic smattering of colors. “Not this Thursday, dude.”

Dismissed, Dean gathers his remaining dignity, and leaves. Standing out in the hallway, he reviews his options. He’s kicked out of his regular studio, and he needs to work tonight, otherwise he’ll never get his final project for figure drawing done. Every studio he passes is booked to capacity; clearly the art program is full of procrastinators. In fact, the only studio that has any sort of room...

“No. No. Shit.” Dean weighs the consequences of failing his class versus metaphorically throwing himself into a volcano. Finally, his fear of failure takes over, and he knocks on the door of his last remaining option.

The door swings open, revealing a Castiel who looks significantly more disheveled than normal (though normal Castiel usually looks like he was rode hard and put away wet). A smear of blue paint decorates one cheek while his earbuds dangle from his neck. Dean tries to ignore the spirals of Castiel’s tattoos, especially where they disappear under his shirt (he especially tries to ignore the thoughts of what those tattoos look like underneath Castiel’s shirt). Castiel blinks in surprise.

“Dean. What are you doing here?”

(The fact that Castiel knows Dean’s name comes as a shock. Dean assumed that he was one of the thousands of nameless faces Castiel passes every day.)

“Um, first let me say, it’s totally awesome if you say no, I don’t expect you to say yes, it’s a huge imposition--”

“Dean, you’re rambling.”

“Can i use your studio? Or share it? I wouldn’t ask, but a bunch of douchebags took mine and there are no other spaces open, and I really need to finish this project--”

“Sure. Come on.”

And with that, Castiel steps back and beckons Dean into his studio.

Dean crosses the threshold with something resembling awe. He never imagined, in his wildest dreams, that he would be allowed into Castiel’s inner sanctum. He tries not to gape too obviously as his eyes dart from corner to corner of the room. It looks...like a studio for the most part. Several canvases are hung around the room; if they’re discarded attempts or inspiration, Dean doesn’t know. They could easily function as either. Castiel finally steps in front of him, directing Dean’s attention to one corner of the room.

“Would there be good?”

Dean nods. “Yeah, that’s good.” He pauses, eyes darting nervously around the studio. “I’m not bothering you, am I?”

Castiel frowns, like the thought hadn’t even occurred to him. “No, of course not. If you were, I wouldn’t have opened up the door.” With that, he seems to consider the topic of conversation closed, and retreats back a few steps.

He sets up his work and tries to ignore the fact that Castiel Novak is watching him. It’s almost impossible not to feel his eyes; the skin on the back of Dean’s neck prickles in awareness, but he perseveres.

He sets his sketch on the easel before casting a critical eye upon it. He frowns as he notices every imperfection. it’s based off a series of sketches he jotted down in class earlier that day. Dean remembers the careless grace of the model, the way that the fabric had draped artlessly over his waist and shoulders, but he can’t recapture the specific atmosphere of the room, which was what made that particular model striking. Every time he tries to put onto the paper how the room felt, his figures end up wooden and two-dimensional.

“You’re paying too much attention to the form.”

Dean jumps, his charcoal pencil scrawling an ungainly line across the page. Not a huge loss, he was already going to toss this one anyway. He turns around to find Castiel standing directly behind him.

Castiel nods towards his sketchpad. “In your drawings. You’re paying too much attention to the form. That’s why it’s coming out wrong.”

“The form is all there is,” Dean replies, a little peevishly. He knows the sketch sucks, but that doesn’t mean he wants Castiel freaking Novak pointing it out to him.

“The form is one part. But you have the lighting and shading and you have the intention. The intention is...the feel of the room. It’s what remains unsaid and unseen to those who weren’t there. It’s what you’re trying to capture by paying so much attention to the form. Of course, by concentrating too much on the technical, you lose the abstract.”

Castiel flicks over to a new page with a deft flick of his wrist. He plucks the pencil from Dean’s grasp with one hand. With the other, he poses Dean’s hand close to his face. Castiel stares at Dean for a few excruciating seconds before he turns his attention to the empty page.

Dean hardly dares to breathe as Castiel sketches. He’s not sure how he’s going to return to real life, knowing now the tiny crease that knits between Castiel’s brows or how the tip of Castiel’s tongue pokes out of the corner of his mouth. How is he supposed to live, knowing Castiel hums tunelessly as his hand works?

“There.” Castiel flips the sketch to face Dean. In it, Dean finds his own face, rendered in a few lines. It’s rough, certainly, but it’s a close enough likeness. More than that, Castiel’s managed to capture...

“Do I look that scared?” Dean blurts out, before he can stop himself.

Castiel actually laughs, deep and rumbling, from the diaphragm. It’s a lovely sound, one that fills the studio, and one Dean would gladly hear again and again. “You don’t look scared.” He sets the pencil down on the easel and turns fully to face Dean. “Anxious maybe. Hovering on the edge of anticipation.” He steps closer. His chest almost brushes Dean’s, which could be misinterpreted as Castiel not understanding the concept of personal space.

What can’t be misinterpreted is the unsubtle drop of Castiel’s eyes to Dean’s lips.

“I guess now would be a good time to tell you that I’ve really wanted to kiss you for almost a year,” Castiel says, his voice scraped rough around the edges. His eyes drag up to Dean’s, and Dean’s taken aback at the wild glint in them. Castiel steps closer and his clever fingers slip into the spaces between Dean’s fingers. “Please Dean,” Castiel breathes, raw and needy, “please, can I kiss you?”

“Fuck yes,” Dean murmurs, which is all he gets to say before Castiel’s hand cups the back of his head and his lips descend upon Dean’s.

Not that Dean’s bragging, but he’s had quite a few good kisses in his life (and been told that he gives quite a few good kisses). Castiel blows them all out of the water. Dean’s never been kissed so thoroughly before, like Castiel wants to own him, like Castiel’s interested in finding exactly what makes Dean tick. His teeth nip at the swell of Dean’s lower lip while his tongue delicately traces the seam of Dean’s lips. Dean eagerly opens his mouth, moaning into Castiel’s mouth as Castiel’s tongue slips in along his.

Hours or days later, when they part, Dean realizes that while one of his hands is cupping the spur of Castiel’s hip (holy fuck, those hips feel like handles for his hands), his other hand is still holding Castiel’s. It’s certainly the sweetest kiss that’s ever given him a boner.

Castiel laughs, a little breathless. It’s only then Dean realizes he’s a little taller than Castiel. “You do live up to expectations,” he murmurs, and Dean’s not sure whether Castiel’s talking to himself or not.

The words spark a recent memory in Dean, and suddenly nothing is more important than finding out the truth. “You said you wanted to do that for a year?” Castiel nods, his eyes suddenly shifting to the side. “Why?”

“Everyone always goes on about my art. How groundbreaking it is, how I’m a ‘once in a generation talent’.” Castiel uses finger-quotes, which should not be as endearing as Dean finds it. “And it’s nice, but none of them even bother to see my art for what it is. They just see my name attached to it and they lose their shit. But last year...You saw that painting. It didn’t matter to you who made it. You saw it and appreciated it for what it was. And I...I saw you.”

Castiel swallows. For all his suave confidence earlier, he looks oddly vulnerable now. “So, anyway. Yeah. For a year now. Um...” He glances at Dean’s easel. “I guess I’ll leave you alone now. Or if you want privacy, I can go.”

“Or,” Dean says, the pink flush on Castiel’s cheeks giving him all the bravery he’ll ever need. “You could stay.” Castiel’s eyes slice to him, their blue intense and jaw-dropping. Dean grins, a little predatory, like they’re on even ground.

“After all, I’m going to need a model for this sketch.”

#destiel #destiel fanfic #destiel fic #dean winchester #castiel #college au #art school au #artist!cas #artist!dean #nervous!dean #meet cute #dothwrites

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blu-joons · 5 years

Text

History Of Love ~ Jeon Jungkook

Every morning when you walked into the classroom, his eyes would fall on you. You sat right at the front, paying your full attention to the lecture, scribbling notes down in your red writing pad, highlighting around it, making sure it stood out.

You didn’t even know his name, he was just the troublemaker at the back of the room, who paid little attention. He was cheeky, sarcastic, but for some reason, the teachers loved him.

Your layout was set out at your desk in time for the teacher’s arrival. The room fell silent, except for the snigger in the background, knowing exactly where it was coming from. You ignored, as you always did, not wanting to give him any satisfaction.

“You’ll be pleased to know, that for this week you will be paired up to make a project. I’ve taken the liberty of pairing you up based on your abilities, and to provide you all with a new challenge.”

One by one the pairs were reeled off, the room started separating off into different directions. You looked back, only five people were left, one of your closest friends, two boys from the soccer team, a girl from the drama society, and him.

“Next, will be Jungkook and Y/N.”

His arm went up in the air; you sunk in your seat. He gathered his stuff, skipping to the front of the classroom, sitting down beside you. Your pad and pen were brushed aside making room for his belongings, his long legs stretching out underneath the desk leaving little room for yours anymore.

Your teacher gave you the task at hand, with the deadline to be met in just six days. You wouldn’t have minded too much if it had been in class, but unfortunately, it was to be done in your own time.

“Let me make one thing clear,” you whispered across to him, “there is no way I am doing this project alone. You work your ass off, and I’ll work mine off. Got it?”

He smirked, you had attitude, and he loved it. It was the first time he’d ever heard you speak, as his nose scrunched, impressed by you.

“I’m all yours,” he teased.

Your eyes rolled, looking back to the front of the classroom, ignoring him beside you. Leaflets and instruction booklets were passed around the room in rows. You took yours from the pairing next to you, only for Jungkook to snatch them away.

“This will be easy, we’ve got nothing to worry about Y/N,” he proclaimed.

“Yeah, we’ll see about that.”

The two of you arranged to meet at his house that night and try and get some work done as he wanted to be at his place. You arrived at six, just like he’d asked, carrying all the books you could find from the library earlier in the afternoon.

You were terrified, no one wanted to work with the class clown. This project was important to you, you didn’t have a failure to your name, and that wasn’t something you wanted to give up now. His house was huge, as you walked up, knocking three times on the front door.

“You’re here come in,” he soon smiled, opening the door for you.

“Yeah, h-hi,” you whispered.

It was daunting walking in for the first time, it was much bigger than your house, it was fancy, and well decorated, unlike anything you could have imagined.

He took you up into his bedroom, offering you the workspace at the desk whilst he sat on his bed, pulling out his notepad and pen.

“Look, I know this project means a lot to you, so I promise I will work hard for you. Just be patient with me.”

You nodded, staring down at your laptop. He loved how shy you were, you were vulnerable to him, and he knew that, but that wasn’t something he wanted to exploit. If anything, he admired you. You were intelligent, and kind, two qualities that he adored in you.

“Alright, where do we begin? I remembered to pick up the information book from earlier so that we can look over it.”

He pulled out from his school bag the pink coloured instruction book he’d so cruelly taken from you earlier. “I flicked through it before you came, and I quite like the topic on the history of language, but it’s up to you too?”

“I’m happy with whichever,” you smiled.

It was settled, the two of you had chosen your topic, step one was done, and it was nowhere near as hard as you thought.

“Next I think we devise a plan,” continued, “maybe divide the workload, find some sources, decide how we want to lay this out. My dad’s got some old canvases we could use; I can find them if you like?”

“Y-yeah, sure.”

You sat, completely stunned as he jogged out of the room, into his father’s office next door. Whilst you waited for your laptop to open, you couldn’t help but look at his open pad of paper. Inside, he’d already scribbled several notes, along with page numbers of books he’d read.

“They aren’t perfect, but I think they will be effective in making ours stand out,” he spoke, re-entering the room, holding two canvases up, nearly as big as him.

“No, they’re perfect.” You smiled.

The rest of the evening the two of you spent searching endlessly through as many books as you could, finding sources and evidence to help support your points. It was nearing midnight when the two of you finally decided to call it a day.

“Allow me to take you home, it’s not safe for you to walk back when it’s so dark. My car is parked just outside,” he offered.

You smiled but shook your head. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. I only live a few roads down.”

“Even more of a reason for you to let me take you, it will only take two minutes.”

You didn’t argue any further, too tired to fight back. He took your bag, whilst you took your books, walking you downstairs, before driving you home.

The following day at school, it felt like you were strangers once more, except for when you walked into the room, you couldn’t help but look over at him. Your eyes met; a subtle wink was sent your way as you took your seat at the front of the room.

Every night for the next six nights was spent at his house, chatting away, creating the perfect project together. It was just what you’d hoped for, as the final piece was stuck to the canvas, job done.

“I have to say, I’ve enjoyed doing this project.”

“Me too,” you giggled, “I thought I’d end up doing it all alone when I got partnered with you, but you’ve surprised me. It’s been good fun getting to do this together and see a new side of you.”

Spending time with Jungkook had helped bring you out of your shell. He was dedicated to helping you achieve what you wanted to, and if he was honest, he enjoyed working so hard and seeing such a good outcome tomorrow.

“I think our project will definitely be the best tomorrow,” he proudly smiled, taking your bag, handing you your laptop.

“Are you sure you’re happy to take it in? I don’t mind meeting you in the morning.”

“It’s all good, I’ll drive my car, so they don’t get damaged, and I’ll see you there.”

The morning of the project presentation had you a nervous wreck. You had great confidence in what you and Jungkook had achieved, but you were still petrified to talk amongst all your classmates.

Jungkook met you in the corridor, holding two canvases, one in either hand, exactly how you’d left them tonight. “Morning, how are you feeling?”

“I’m nervous,” you confessed.

“It’ll be okay,” he smiled, resting them down on a table, wrapping his arm around you. “We’ve worked so hard on these; everyone will love them.”

You looked up, shaking your head, cowering into his bulky frame. “It’s not that, these canvases are amazing, it’s just the thought of speaking in front of everyone makes me feel ill. The thought of standing up at the front of the classroom, having all those eyes looking at me, I just want to run away and turn in nothing.”

“You can’t do that,” he spoke, turning you so you faced him.

He searched your eyes, your body shook in his hold, you were terrified. There was only one thing he could do, you’d worked tirelessly on the project with him, he owed you the world for helping him get his first reasonable success at school.

“How about this? I do all the talking, because if we’re going to present these, we do it together. We’re a team Y/N, you’ve done so much on this, so let me do this for you.”

“Jungkook, I can’t.”

“You can,” he assured you, cupping either side of your face. “You have to let me do this. This week has meant a lot to me, I was worried too when I got partnered with you. The shy, smart girl who would probably think I was some dumb idiot, but you’ve taught me a lot this week. You’ve taught me kindness, humility, respect, and most of all, that it’s okay to accept anybody, just because you aren’t the loudest in the room, doesn’t make you any less special.”

You didn’t know what to say as a lump ran down your throat, tears welling in your eyes. You reached out, intertwining your hand with his, reaching up on your tiptoes, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek.

“What was that for?” He blushed, wiping the mark where your lips had been.

“Just to say thank you, for everything.”

He smiled down at you, brushing his hand through your hair, before picking up both the canvases. He’d never been proud of anything at school, teachers always told him he’d never amount to much, but looking at what the two of you achieved, he was proud. Not only of himself, or his work, but of you.

Your nerves calmed, as Jungkook opened the classroom door for you. All eyes were on what you’d done, there had been whispers about you both all week. The childish boy who didn’t care about school teaming with the know-it-all girl who never said a word. It sounded like a car crash waiting to happen.

“Ignore them,” Jungkook whispered into your ear, sitting down at your usual spot at the front of the class. “We’ll show them wrong.”

“We will,” you replied, resting your head on his shoulder.

The teacher walked in, unable to hide her shock when she saw the two of you had produced a piece together. A small gasp escaped, which her hand quickly covered, standing at the front of the class.

“Well, welcome to you all, I’m excited to see what you’ve all come up with. Do we have any volunteers who would like to go first?”

You sunk back in your seat, if there was one thing you’d learnt, it was to never hold eye contact with the teacher in the hope they’d forget about you in the room.

Only beside you, Jungkook proudly raised his arm, jolting you off his shoulder. “Y/N and I will.”

You glared coldly across at him, watching as he turned to face you, a confident smile plastered across his face. On the inside you were seething, no way could you go first. You always waited until the end in the hope that the lesson would run out of time and you’d get away with doing nothing.

His hand came down, resting over yours, “trust me, I know what I’m doing. We’ll have these idiots terrified to present when they see what we’ve done.”

“Alright, well a round of applause for our willing volunteers, Y/N and Jungkook.”

The teacher stepped aside, whilst the two of you stepped up, holding a canvas each. Your heart was pounding, but Jungkook’s spare hand on the small of your back was the assurance that you needed. You looked over at him, he nodded his head, clearing his throat.

“I first want to give credit to Y/N, who has worked tirelessly on this project. She’s terrified about presenting this, but I hope us going first will prove to her today that she needs to have a bit more faith in herself.”

The whole classroom was locked on the two of you, unable to recognise who Jungkook had become.

“We chose to study the history of the language, because it’s something we both have found we have a great interest in. I’m going to do all the talking today, so sorry if you get sick of my voice, whilst Y/N stands beside me looking pretty.”

A deep shade of red quickly shone on your cheeks, highlighted by the bright lights of the classroom. You didn’t know where to look as Jungkook began, unaware of the flustered state you were in.

He presented it perfectly, in the right order, using the right quotes and stating all your points. It was so good; it even generated a voluntary round of applause from your classmates. Once it was done, you sighed in relief, feeling Jungkook pull you close.

“I have to say, I’m very impressed. You two have certainly exceeded all my expectations, I hope you all take note of what a proper project looks like. Take a seat guys, well done, that is two definite passes.”

Jungkook couldn’t hide the smile on his face, his first pass, after all these years. He guided you back to your seat, slipping the two canvases under the table, out of the way.

Under the table, once you were seated, he took your hand, moving your chair so there was no distance between you both.

“You have no idea how thankful I am to you, and how proud I am of everything the two of us have achieved. You got me my first pass Y/N, thank you so much.”

“No, you got yourself a pass. I hope you’ve proven to yourself how if you put your mind to something, you can achieve anything. Maybe you’re not Jungkook who just sits at the back not giving a damn after all, maybe you can start paying attention and working your ass of and getting the passes you want.”

The two of you were ignorant of the next presentation, most of the room was, it didn’t compare at all to yours.

“I have to admit, there was one thing I left off the project, I didn’t know how you’d feel about it.”

“What was it?” You asked.

He reached into his back pocket, sliding a piece of paper across the table to you. It was crumpled where it had been folded so many times, but you soon recognised his handwriting as you unfolded it. Your eyes read over it, turning to him in confusion as you read it.

Y/N

We may have studied the history of language, but there’s something else I want to call history too. You’ve made me realise that being the shy, intelligent girl isn’t so bad. You’ve always been pretty to me but getting to know you has made me see you in a different way. I want to change, for the better because of you. And if you’d like, I’d love for you to be my girlfriend too.

You stared over at him, noticing his light blush. He’d lost all control, he was weak and vulnerable for you, just how you’d been for him seven days ago. “What do you say? I meant what I said, you’ve opened up a whole new world to me.”

“Is this why you called me pretty up there?”

His head nodded. “I was going to ask you up there, but I got all shy. I guess I’m not so dissimilar to you after all.”

You chuckled, reaching across, cupping the side of his face. The two of you were lost in the room, it felt like no one else was around, your eyes were focused solely on the dark-haired boy before you. “Jungkook, I’d love to be your girlfriend,” you whispered, softly pressing a kiss to his lips.

It was brief, but it was magical, as his head pressed against yours. “I never thought I’d be thankful to have been set up with you on a project, but I’m so glad I was. From now on, I’m going to pay attention, and learn, and be more like you.”

“And I’ll be more like you. I’ll be more confident, and self-assured, because I shouldn’t be afraid of who I am and the things I do.”

“Exactly. Together we are going to make quite the team. Your beauty and brains, and my- “

“-beauty and brains.”

“I didn’t want to say it, but yes, maybe.”

You shook your head, poking the dimple on his cheek from his wide smile. “You’re too cute Jeon Jungkook, thank you for reluctantly being my partner through it all.”

“You’re welcome, thank you for being the best partner in the world, you’ve made me feel ways I never have before.”

“And you I.”

You were interrupted by a round of applause, looking up to see the next presentation had finished. Both of you glanced at each other, falling back in your chairs, sniggering as you paid no attention at all to what had just happened.

“You’re a bad influence on me,” you whispered, nudging his bicep with your elbow.

“It’s a good job you’re such a good one on me.”

---

Masterlist

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whispersafterdusk · 3 years

Text

Lost in Time - ch 14

It'd been four days since their tussle with the spy; they hadn't heard or seen any hint of them, and so far the only injury that had turned up at Xu's clinic had been a woman who had fallen on a bit of wood. Asher had gone into town long enough to get his broken tooth pulled (front right tooth on the top...he looked like a doofus when he smiled now) and had immediately returned to camp to hunker down and wait out the spy's next visit while the Civil Corps members had gone on a manhunt across the marsh and into the neighboring desert area.

So far, nothing.

They'd briefly discussed the suits again; Eli couldn't make up her mind on whether this Access suit thing was an original (less worrying) or if Duvos had figured out how to piece one together (really worrying). Asher shared her worries -- the thought of Duvos mass producing those things for their soldiers, even if they weren't working like they did in Eli's time, would still pose a huge problem if the continent ever went to war again. ((Continued below cut))

He did know she'd given up on the trail cameras for now but she was still working on something out in the tent; it used a lot of the same pieces that she'd set aside for the cameras but also several new, different ones that she'd sent Petra and Selene after. The centerpiece of these new additions was a detached screen that she'd marked out dimensions on - she was either cutting it down to size and needed the middle-most section or she was dividing it into a rectangle and eight smaller squares that were all roughly the same size. She hadn't done anything with the screen yet aside from measuring and marking out those squares but there were small piles of nigh identical looking chips, boards, and wires that were already assembled and sitting in a neat little line on the rubberized canvas under her cot that he assumed had to be put together first before the screens could be attached to them.

It had been a fascinating sight to watch her work with such tiny components; he hadn't had a chance yet to ask her what those things were (interrupting her while she was working on them seemed like a poor idea since it looked so...fragile, in a way) but he was looking forward to seeing the finished product, learning what the gadgets were for, and why she needed so many of them. It also piqued his curiosity about Old World tech in general; so much of it seemed purposely designed to work with pretty much anything else. Maybe Old World technology didn't so much depend on the parts as it did the programs to run it...which in turn made him wonder, assuming they ever got to a point where they knew how to read and create new programs, if all the old relics could be made to work again like they did back then rather than being pieced together with spotty knowledge and prayers.

Behind him Adam, Arlo, and Eli were all asleep inside the tent with the front flaps pulled closed to block out as much of the unusually plentiful sunlight as possible - there wasn't a cloud in the sky and it was considerably warmer today than it had been lately; he appreciated the warmth and imagined his sleeping companions probably did as well but found himself going back and forth on whether he was truly grateful for the "sunny" part of this sunny day. On the one hand, that suit made the spy near-invisible but not intangible so they should still cast a shadow so if the spy was dumb enough to try sneaking in close in broad daylight Asher was hopeful he would spot that before they got close enough to be a danger. On the other hand he doubted they would actually be that stupid. The constant prickle at the back of his neck - the feeling of being watched - wasn't a sensation Asher enjoyed, and it also wasn't something he was used to experiencing for such a prolonged period of time; he had no proof though that he WAS being watched, and that was probably bothering him more than the prickling was.

The grumpy sigh he huffed out whistled a bit as it exited through the gap his missing tooth had left behind; that annoyed him to no end too. Asher didn't consider himself an overly vain person but damn it he'd liked how he looked; it had taken a couple years to be at peace with the sunken in scar across his nose but at least that made him look...adventurous. Dashing. Daring. A missing tooth made him look like a drunkard, and it would be a long trip to Seesai to get a replacement that wouldn't prematurely discolor. Adam was right in that he could easily get a tooth closer to home but, again, discoloration was a problem -- whatever that woman in Seesai did to keep the false teeth from coloring was a closely guarded secret...no one knew what she did or what recipe she used, not even her family if they were to be believed.

He supposed it was a question of if he wanted to look stupid with his tooth gap or look stupid with a yellowed tooth in a few years. Neither thought was especially attractive and brought with it a sort of helpless frustration that, coupled with the prickling feeling of having eyes on him, made him want to get up and move around to burn off the pent up energy and emotion.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of rustling grass; before he could truly react to the sound Eli came into view and he relaxed slightly.

"You're up - uh, early. Or however you want to consider it."

She shrugged as she sat down on one of the rocks ringing the firepit. "Eh, it happens. Sometimes you just don't sleep."

"Any new ideas?"

For a time she didn't respond; silently Asher surveyed their surroundings - everything still seemed to be as it ought to be. He still felt twitchy though...he was ready for action, or for anything that wasn't sitting here keeping watch. Maybe with Eli awake he could exercise or something.

"Not really," Eli finally responded. "I can think of twelve different ways to disable that suit but they all require tech that doesn't exist anymore. And it's not something I could put together from stuff that's left here."

Asher nodded, then glanced back toward the tent; when she'd come out she'd left the tent flaps open and he could barely detect movement inside -- Arlo shouldn't be up for awhile yet but it was looking like Adam was waking up. "So what's all that stuff you've been working on then?"

"Hi-Defs."

"I've no idea what those are."

"They're wrist-mounted computers. A lot of their functionality isn't going to work right in this day and age but back in mine they were onboard guidance systems with maps of all the regions, could make and receive calls, they kept track of addresses and your appointments and bank accounts and whatever else you wanted to track, they could project 3D images, take pictures... They could do a lot of things depending on the model you had."

He blinked at her; only half of that had sunk in as he'd gotten a bit hung up on the concept of a wrist-mounted computer. "Really? Why those then? If they're not going to work right, I mean. What will they even be able to do?"

"I want them mostly for communication and maps of this region. I'd need signal transmitters in some strategic areas but once I get it all tethered to the facility they should work. It's going to take a lot of footwork to get maps updated since it'll have to be manual scanning rather than satellite surveillance...or, hmm. Maybe some satellites survived." She paused for a moment, then shook her head. "Nah, shouldn't rely on that. Arlo mentioned there's a space station segment out in the wastes but even if there's enough left there to scavenge I doubt I could get a link going with anything that might be left up there, and even if I managed it I still wouldn't have a way to issue orders or anything like that." There was another pause and a sigh, and a wistful glance toward the sky before she returned her attention to him. "Mine will be the sort of central control for them all outside of whatever computer station I decide to run them off of. My aim is to give them to anyone involved with the security of this facility."

"Huh." Him with a high tech device...not something he'd considered before. The idea was...kind of exciting, to be honest. "So maps and talking to one another. Is that all we can hope for?"

"Communication and map display is, bare minimum, what I'm aiming for, with maybe a basic calendar and clock function. I'll have a look at what I can immediately do once I've server-flashed Pauline and get at least one transmitter up for testing."

"...and you've lost me. What's a server-flash?"

She laughed quietly. "-right. It's hard to determine what terms survived the years and what didn't - with Petra and Merlin it's at least a 50% shot that I don't have to define something for them. So! Server-flashing. I take the main operational files for an AI and do a sort of...quick copy of their foundation. Pauline's an AI but not a living AI so I don't need to worry about her personality or anything, just the uh...the semi-intelligent framework she runs on."

"Yeah, going to need that taken down a few degrees still. Pauline seems just as smart as Stewart but she doesn't have personality?"

"Nope. She's just a regular assistant AI -- a sort of input-output response machine with just enough programmed intelligence to appear sentient but she can't learn or grow as a...uh...well, not as a "person" exactly but she -- she won't ever change. She just is what she is. AIs like her you could make infinite copies of and they'll never, ever stop being identical copies unless something on the outside alters them. Stewart on the other hand, if I were to make a copy of him, that copy would develop its own personality if given enough time to learn and live and the same would happen with a regular living AI."

That...sort of made sense. At least, it was simple enough that he could grasp it without her needing to explain it more in-depth. "And you're going to use her to run the Hi-Defs."

"After some minor reprogramming yes."

He nodded slowly; having a little, easily accessed map right on his wrist would be neat, even if it was just of Portia. And if it worked well here maybe it could be expanded out into the other cities and nations too...and, oh man, would that make mapping the Peripheries way easier too if all they had to do was walk through it with the Hi-Def recording or whatever it did to create the maps -- suddenly he could think of all sorts of possibilities and perks to having one of the things. "What would be the range on these things? How would they figure out and store maps?"

"Range depends on what kind of signal strength I can get. Hi-Defs have their own localized signals so they'll all be able to 'talk' to one another within a certain range, and also interface with the signals coming from the transmitters at a much wider range. I'm pretty sure I'd only need sixteen or so at some key points to cover all of Portia and a bit of the outlying areas. As for updating or creating maps it'll have to be manual scanning -- someone is going to have to start from an already mapped point and then let the Hi-Def scan the territory as you travel through it. It'll take awhile but the program that runs a Hi-Def is robust enough to piece it all together without too much extra work needed. And they have their own onboard storage to hold it all."

"Neat...and amazing." As a more comfortable silence fell Asher tossed a few thick branches onto the fire and nudged them into place with a blackened, straight branch he'd purposely kept as a sort of log poker. If Adam was stirring too then he should probably get the fire's heat evened out so he could start cooking. "Did you end up camping a lot as a ranger?"

"Yeah. I went camping for fun too."

He carefully poked at the fire for a moment. "...do you miss doing that?"

There was a long pause before she answered. "I miss a lot of things."

Asher winced a bit. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked that."

She shook her head and flashed him a strained smile. "Nah, don't be afraid to ask things. The funny thing with pain is the more you experience it, the easier it is to tolerate."

"I don't think it works that way with this kind of...you know."

With a shrug she turned to pick up the cooking kit (which was in a large leather satchel that had seen better days) that was off to the side of the firepit. "Works well enough for now. I don't want you guys walking on eggshells around me, and I can't hide from it forever. Hell, I can't hide from it even if I wanted to."

Asher was quiet as she handed the satchel over; he pulled the kettle out and stood to go fill it from the water barrel they'd installed just inside the tent flaps, then came back and sat it among the coals to start boiling. A feeling of guilt had settled like a rock in his stomach -- that had been such a stupid thing to ask her. "If you ever want to...talk, or something. I'll listen."

The smile she gave him this time was less strained. "I know. It's appreciated."

As he bent to re-arrange a few half-burned logs she got up and walked out of his immediate line of sight; behind him somewhere he heard Adam's low voice and then the man's plodding footsteps as he came over and took Eli's place on the rock. Asher just managed to catch the sight of Eli disappearing into the tent as he glanced back but she quickly came back into view a moment later.

"I'll be back in a bit - I need to grab a few things from town." She had her pack slung over a shoulder but it hung limp and empty. "Don't bother cooking for me."

"All right. If you're sure," Asher replied.

"I am." With that she began to jog toward the path that, eventually, led back into Portia.

Asher watched her go and then sighed heavily, looking over to Adam. "You ever feel like a massive idiot sometimes?"

"Sure," Adam grunted. "Then I remember I'm not you and feel better."

Asher rolled his eyes and resisted the urge to whack the man with the fire poker stick; when he didn't rise to the man's banter Adam gave him a strange look.

"What did you do?"

"Nothing. I think. How do you want your eggs this time?"

------------------------------------------------------

Dr. Xu had acquired a wooden chair with a really comfortable cushion and a small wooden table for Harrison to work at; it sat in the corner near the front doors so it would be out of the way of everything else in the clinic but its position did mean that usually, when someone walked inside, Harrison was the first thing they saw. Already several tourists looking for headache or muscle ache cures had approached him at the table to ask after the medications, even when Dr. Xu was clearly within view at his desk further in the room.

He kept telling himself to find humor in the situation but it was starting to get a little annoying - especially after someone actually moved a stack of books out of the way to "speak to him" with Xu staring on in surprised confusion.

It was enough to have him dreading the sound of the doors opening, and so today when they slid open he actually flinched and carefully peered over the top of the book he had propped up in front of him.

To his surprise it was that girl from days ago - the one who had fallen on the driftwood and gotten it through her arm. She looked bright eyed and chipper, with no other obvious injuries, and he inwardly groaned as she looked around, spotted him, and came right over.

"Hey there!"

"Hello. How's the arm healing up?"

She smiled and slipped her coat off, then pulled her sleeve up to show the bandage there. "It's all fine and dandy - itchy, but doesn't seem infected or anything."

"Well, that's good." He went silent as she pulled her sleeve back down and got her coat back on, then cleared his throat awkwardly. "So...what did you need then?"

"Ah, hello there -- how is the arm?"

Harrison sat up a bit straighter as Xu came over; the girl gave the doctor a smile.

"It's all good. A bit itchy but seems to be healing."

Xu nodded. "Excellent to hear. Now, what brings you back to the clinic?"

The girl's smile faltered a bit and Harrison swore he saw a tinge of pink appear in her cheeks. "Ah...well, uh, I came to um. Talk to him, actually-"

She pointed shyly to Harrison, and he blinked at her in confusion. Talk to him? Why?

Xu seemed just as confused as he was. "Oh?"

"Yeah...um, private matter."

"Huh?" Harrison blurted out.

She turned her attention back to him and rubbed at her injured arm awkwardly. "Um. If you have the time, anyway."

"S-sure, I guess."

He stood up and came out from behind the table; the girl took a few timid steps toward the door and when he followed along she headed outside into a much brighter day than Harrison had been expecting.

He raised a hand to shield his eyes and looked over to her. "What did you need to talk to me about? Did I do something wrong with your injury?"

She shook her head, hard; it was hard enough to dislodge a few wisps of hair from the messy bun on top of her head. "No no nonono, nothing like that. I was just um, wondering if you'd...like to go get coffee or lunch sometime?"

With that the woman stood there, lightly scraping the toe of her shoe into the mud; Harrison felt like someone had abruptly switched off all the lights inside his brain. She wanted to go get coffee, with HIM?

"Uh..."

"It's ok if you don't want to," she went on in a rush. "I don't mind. You're probably busy. I shouldn't have asked."

"N-no, no, it's-" Harrison interrupted. "Ah - no one has ever asked that before. I think my brain shut off." He offered her a weak, slightly sheepish smile, and to his surprise she returned it. "But...why me?"

"I...dunno. You're from Lucien, like me. I don't meet a lot of Lucien natives when I travel around. And, you're. Um. You know...cute, so I thought, why not?"

Now it felt like his ears were on fire. "A-ah," was all he could say.

An awkward silence fell and it went on entirely too long for Harrison's liking; he was hoping she would say something...he wasn't sure WHAT, but he wanted to hear SOMETHING, anything, that would take the burden of this conversation off him until his brain caught up.

"So..."

"Ah, uh, yeah, um, sure," he said finally. "I-I mean, if you're sure."

The girl's face brightened and she bounced on the balls of her feet for a moment. "Hee! Yay! Ok, so when are you next free?"

"Later this evening?" he offered.

She nodded. "All right then - later this evening. Down at that restaurant in the square? The knight one?"

Harrison nodded, feeling lightheaded; he completely missed what she said as she waved and then headed off down the hill. Too late he returned the wave, and then leaned against the clinic doors behind him.

"What...just happened..." he muttered, rubbing at his forehead.

He, Harrison, had a date tonight.

...wait, did she ever even give her name?

"Oh boy..."

---------------------------------------------------

"Haven't seen you in a bit," Django said as Eli walked through the door.

With all the afterimages swimming around (it was REALLY bright outside today) Eli could barely see him, and somewhat stumbled her way toward the counter. "Been helping the Pigs out at the facility."

"Ah, that'd be it."

She managed to find a stool and sat down. "I had to come back for some supplies and I'd like to take some treats out to the them as a surprise."

Django nodded. "I see, hmm. I just pulled an apple pie out of the oven, and I've got some Black Forest cake made just this morning. Won't take long to whip anything else up either," he said as he flipped open a menu to the dessert section and slid it over to her.

"Thanks." She picked it up and held it in front of her; with the afterimages it'd probably be another minute or two before she could clearly read it. "Do you know if they've established any favorites?"

"I know Arlo doesn't really like sweets in general. I haven't talked to Asher or Adam enough to know about those two."

Eli frowned; good thing she'd asked. "All right, no sweets for Arlo then. I know he likes spicy things at least. How about...an order of vanilla pudding, some of that apple pie, and that spicy spaghetti stuff?"

"Sounds good."

As Django headed off toward the kitchen Eli folded the menu properly and returned it to the pile, then leaned forward to brace her elbows on the counter and put her forehead in her hands.

Every idea she'd had so far to disable that suit all required things that weren't around anymore; the easiest would be a localized EMP to overload the projector circuits and force it into a reboot cycle where it wouldn't be able to disguise its user until it fully restarted itself. A sliver shot would do similar in that it would disrupt the projectors by confusing its sensors with a quick burst of hard light mirror shards. Or she could use a taser overload, or a bolt drainer, or a sys-dis (a system disabler - it would scramble all the circuit signals), or even a battery overcharger. So many things she COULD do, if she was in her own time period...

But she wasn't, and simple ideas like trying to use water or some sort of paint or even dirt to try and short out or otherwise mark their target probably wouldn't work -- Access Suits had built in miniature shield generators evenly interspersed among the projector sensors that pulled double duty at repelling water as well as dirt, dust, or mud-like materials. She couldn't safely rely on the hope that those generators were as damaged as the faulty projectors; if they were working correctly they might get two seconds, tops, of visual assistance if they were to try and douse the spy in something...two seconds could seem like forever in a fight but since there was no telling what else that spy might be armed with by now Eli was not about to risk anyone around her with so many unknown variables (it was as much for the spy's safety as well as their own that they be able to clearly see what they were doing the next time they clashed - she'd hated firing blindly at the spy and it'd be a really simple matter for someone to accidentally kill someone else).

"Something the matter?"

Eli jumped at the sound of Django's voice just over her shoulder. "You walk really quietly when you want to."

Django chuckled as he moved back behind the counter; he had a few containers in hand that he neatly lined up on the counter in front of her. "Old habits I guess, haha. It'll be a few minutes on the spaghetti."

She slid her pack off her back and pulled a cloth bag out of one of the front pockets, then sat it on the counter; before she could say anything Django picked it up and began to slide the containers inside.

"It was an honest question though - something on your mind?"

Eli paused, then huffed out a sigh. "Just trying to figure out how to hunt down a ghost, is all."

Django's eyebrows raised a bit. "Wasn't aware we had a ghost problem outside of our haunted cave."

"Not a literal ghost," she replied, laughing quietly. "More like someone pretending to be one."

"I see. Not exactly your run of the mill problem to have."

With another sigh Eli rested her forehead on her hands again. "I'm not exactly a run of the mill person."

Django nodded slowly, rubbing at his chin. "...you know, how about we have a quick dart game while we wait on your spaghetti?"

There was something...odd, about his tone. Eli eyed him but couldn't detect anything other than his usual smiling demeanor -- he sounded off but looked fine.

"...all right," she answered, standing up and aside as he shuffled out from behind the counter and led the way toward the back game room.

There were a few others in the restaurant; Eli found herself waving at folks as she went and narrowly dodging Toby who was waving a report card at her (she made a mental note that there were only two more months for Toby to prove he'd kept his grades up enough for training) and then she was in the game room with Django already retrieving the darts from a drawer in the prize counter.

He didn't say anything at first as he handed her the three green darts while he kept the red ones. "So. Looking for a person pretending to be a ghost, you said?" Django lined up a dart and then tossed it a breath later; it landed right on the border between a bullseye and the next ring out.

Eli huffed then laughed quietly. "I feel like I'm about to lose. Terribly."

Django tossed another one and it landed squarely inside the bullseye. "I've had a lot of practice. Where's this ghost person lurking? Out at the facility?"

"...yeah," she answered after a pause. "We have an uninvited visitor out there."

The third dart he threw, to Eli's surprise, flew well off to the left and embedded itself into the thick safety backboard that the dartboard was mounted on. "When did this ghost show up?"

"Recently."

She watched silently as he went over and slowly took the darts down; when he was out of the way she took her first throw and it barely stayed within the board, embedding itself into a bottom right section that wasn't worth any points at all.

"Humor me. Was it someone you think is on the smaller, lighter side?"

"I...guess. Couldn't really get a good look at them, obviously." Rather than taking her second throw she turned around to face him; he'd moved over to lean against the prize counter's front, arms crossed over his chest and a somewhat brooding look on his face -- seeing something other than his usual cheerful expression immediately made her forget all about the dart game. "All right, spill: what are you getting at?"

Django inhaled and exhaled slowly. "Did Arlo tell you about that Rogue Knight we had, not too long ago?"

"Yeah, I've heard about it. He said you were the one who was able to drive them off too. You think this knight guy came back?"

He shook his head. "No, I don't think your visitor is the same Rogue Knight I fought that day. But you mentioning a ghost brought back some memories, from when I was younger. Of a different, more dangerous knight, in her own way."

Eli walked over and dropped her remaining darts onto the counter. "Are knights just a common thing now?"

"Not anymore. In the older days - meaning, the older days of our current era, between the Calamity and when humanity was finally recovering - folks took up the title of knight as they fought to protect their homes and people from both man and monster alike. Humanity didn't have much left back then...just a lot of old stories and memories of how things once were, but the legends that were even older than the Old World still managed to survive. Such stories helped keep the survivors alive, and while it's a tradition that's been mostly overwritten by the Civil Corps and other law enforcement nowadays, there's still a fair few of us who stick to those old stories and the honor that comes with claiming the title of knight."

Eli watched him as he spoke; the brooding look had given away to something more resembling a thoughtfulness - a softer, more introspective look, and as he talked his chin was slowly dipping down so his gaze ended up on the floor just in front of his feet.

"So..." she said quietly into the pause that followed. "Why did me mentioning a ghost make you think of another knight?"

Django finally lifted his gaze and flashed her a grim smile. "I drove that Rogue Knight off with the belief that he wouldn't dare step foot here again. I still believe that, in fact. But I've been on my guard for any hints of other troublesome knights that might show up to try and finish the job he left undone. It just so happens that I know of a woman who called herself the Ghost Knight -- I knew her when I was a younger man. We even fought together a few times to clear out monster nests or drive off bandits."

Eli's eyes widened. "You're kidding."

"I wish I were. You mentioning you were looking for someone pretending to be a ghost brought her to mind."

"Who is she? What's she look like? Why would she be here?"

"I don't know. I never learned her real name, and she never learned mine. I never even saw her face - only the strange suit of armor she wore. As for why she's here-"

"Is she a mercenary for hire?" Eli interrupted. "What - how did - how do knights function?" At his mildly surprised look she slumped her shoulders a bit. "Sorry - didn't mean to interrupt you."

Django chuckled and pushed off from the counter, moving to line up to throw his darts again. "Not a problem. I can only guess at why she'd be here -- same reason the Rogue Knight was, I wager. I wouldn't call her a mercenary...that's not what we did. But, it's been over a decade since I last spoke with her, and people can change."

Eli shifted and leaned against the counter almost in the same spot he'd just vacated, putting him and the dartboard at her back as she stared a hole into the wood in front of her; if this person was this Ghost Knight that Django had known years ago then that meant it was a good chance that this spy's having an Access Suit was just...a one-off. One person who got their hands on something that actually still worked. That was one fear off the list, at least.

"Django... How did this woman fight? What did she do as the Ghost Knight?"

"Scouting," came his answer, quicker than she'd expected. There was the sound of the dart thunking into the board before he continued. "No one was better at it than her. And in a battle she was the best flanking attacker you could hope to have on your side."

"Flanking... Does that mean she didn't take people on in a direct manner?"

"She avoided that as much as possible but she was still capable of defending herself if she had to." Another thunk of a dart. "Can I ask you a favor?"

"Sure."

She turned around from the counter in time to see Django turning as well, flicking his wrist and sending the dart at the board without looking or aiming; the dart stuck into the bullseye.

"If you find this person, and manage to capture them, I would like to speak to her."

"I... I mean, I'M willing to let that happen, but I'm not a Civil Corps person. That's not likely up to me."

Django nodded, slipping his hands into the pockets of his colorful coat. "If you can make that happen, I'd be indebted to you... Excuse me, I should go check the spaghetti. It ought to be done by now."

"Yeah, sure thing. I'll head back up to the counter."

He disappeared through a small door into the kitchen and, as she said, Eli walked out of the game room and back to the counter where the rest of her order was sitting packed neatly into the cloth sack.

She looked over a shoulder at the restaurant's patrons; there were considerably more people here now than had been when she'd first walked in, and Django had purposely wanted to talk to her about it away from others. She really, really wanted to ask him more about how this Ghost Knight woman fought, or where she'd come from, or--

'I'll come back when it's not busy, or maybe I can catch him at home.'

That he'd admitted he'd been on the lookout for any other trouble-making knights worried her...maybe she should also split her history lesson time between Isaac and Django.

------------------------------------------------

"Bye, see you tomorrow!"

Django gave Sonia a small wave and a smile as she headed out the front door; there were a few spots left to sweep and then he could put out the lights and head home himself.

Normally he enjoyed the absolute silence of the restaurant late at night - it gave him time to daydream, or plan for the next day's operations. Tonight though... He couldn't help but think of that Ghost Knight. Everything he could recall about her had come flooding back in a rush when Eli had mentioned someone pretending to be a ghost; any other time he would have dismissed it as silly old memories but now...

He bent and swept up dirt into the dustpan, and then moved to carry it over to the waste bin.

Ever since he'd driven that rogue knight off he'd been constantly vigilant for any hint, no matter how small, that someone else had arrived to plunge Portia into chaos. He imagined most people would think he was being paranoid without reason and so had kept such worries to himself...maybe he shouldn't have done that. Portia's residents had been panicked at first and demanding more protections from the Civil Corps folks after the knight incident but, as time wore on, they'd fallen back into their lives without fear of outside threats; would anything be different now if Django had shared his worries with Gale?

"Too late for that," he muttered to himself.

He swept up the last little dust pile and dumped it into the bin, then went to put the dustpan and broom away.

Once everything but a single lamp was powered down he dipped behind the front counter; for the most part he stored napkins, silverware, and small dessert plates behind here but after that Rogue Knight had left he'd started stashing a small box out of sight behind the formal cloth napkins that were only used during holidays.

The box was about the length of his hand from fingertips to the heel of his palm, and was just barely shy of being perfectly square. Django popped the latch open and lifted the lid to reveal a delicate-looking pair of gloves made of silvery wires, each with a single wire that was much longer than the others that ended in a tiny plug; they were very hard to see among the loose cloth that padded the inside of the box, and he knew from experience that even when worn they were difficult to spot.

As he looked the gloves over he had his usual mixed feelings about them; hidden beneath his shirt and jacket were a pair of matching armbands hugging his biceps that had very small charge generators on it -- wearing the gloves with the lead wire plugged in allowed him to charge up and release a controlled shock that went off with a bang, a bright flash of light, and repelled anything he hit along with delivering a strong sting to his target.

Much like the memories of the Ghost Knight now all his memories of having found these relics came rushing back; he'd once been a young, stupid man, with lofty ideals about what it meant to be a knight without truly understanding anything about knighthood. He'd thought that finding these gloves had been the ultimate stroke of luck -- something to make him an unstoppable force of good in the world. He'd been hilariously proven wrong, over and over, until he began to treat them as tools to compliment his own skill, rather than relying entirely on them.

When he finally understood what the gloves true purpose ought to be he began to win more often and eventually they had earned him the title of Storm Knight; when he'd realized that his dependence on them had basically shaped his reputation he had almost thrown them away. The fear that someone else would make the same mistakes he did (or worse - that someone would use them to harm others) had made him keep them, and steadily he relied on them less and less over the years until he'd mothballed them five years before he retired. The Rogue Knight had been threat enough that Django had felt the need to take the gloves out of storage and thankfully with them - and with his reputation - that had been enough to scare the knight off.

The problem with this Ghost Knight was Django knew reputation alone wouldn't drive her away. She had fallen into the same pitfalls he had: thinking that Old World technology made her invincible, or at the very least better than everyone else. Rather than learning and improving she had stagnated...and he'd watched it happen.

"You could have been one of the best..." he sighed, closing the box and tucking it under an arm.

She really could have been...maybe he should have fought her harder on her reliance on that suit. Maybe she would have listened if he'd fully explained his own mistakes with the gloves. Maybe he could have trained with her to show her there was a more honorable way of living. But then again, maybe there wasn't some magical combination of words that would have swayed her to his side and stopped her from getting mad and literally stabbing him in the back.

As he headed to the front door he reached his free hand around to rub at a spot on his lower back. That old scar ached and itched when it was cold or wet outside but it was an old wound he'd learned to ignore; tonight it was a dull throbbing pain - probably exacerbated by the sweeping, or so he told himself before pausing to really examine that thought.

There used to be an old wives tale about how an injury caused by a mortal enemy would burn and ache when that enemy was nearby. The Ghost Knight had been his companion once...he didn't think for a moment that they could be friends again but he could spare a bit of hope that the old tale was true and that he would know exactly when he was needed if it was truly her in the region.

#Lost in Time #lit #Lost in Time - ch 14 #Dr. Xu #Django #My Time at Portia

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xiolaperry · 4 years

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The Piano

Notes: My Camp NaNoWriMo Project for April 2020. A Rumbelling of the 1993 movie 'The Piano'. Has 15 chapters, all are written. I’ll post one every few days. Some dialogue is taken directly from the film and from 'Once Upon a Time'. No copyright infringement intended - I'm just having fun. The film is gorgeous, if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend that you watch it.

Summary: Belle French and her daughter arrive in New Zealand to an arranged marriage with Gaston LeGume. Gaston shows little interest in her or her piano and books. However, Mr. Gold is fascinated...

Rating: E (for future chapters) Also available on AO3.

Prologue

The voice you hear is not my speaking voice, but my mind's.

I have not spoken since I was six years old. No one knows why, not even me. My father says it is a dark talent and the day I take it into my head to stop breathing will be my last.

Today he has married me to a man I've not met. Soon my daughter and I shall join him in his own country. My husband has written that my muteness does not bother him.

I hope he has patience, for silence affects everyone in the end.

The strange thing is I don't think of myself as silent, because of my piano. I shall miss it, and my books, on the journey.

Chapter 1

Belle looked down at the sand between her feet. It rushed away from her and back again in the cold seawater. Poor Tilly hunched over, ill from their turbulent journey in the small boat from the ship to the beach.

The rough sailors unloading their cargo dwarfed diminutive Belle. She watched them, concerned for her books and piano. She was less interested in the other boxes and valises that held her trousseau and other household goods.

The men complained bitterly about the heavy trunks and the awkward crate. Their language was shocking. Perhaps they thought her deaf too? It wouldn't be the first time. Belle struggled to keep a smile on her face.

She could relax now that her three most precious things were ashore: her daughter, her books, and her piano. Full of curiosity at her unfamiliar surroundings, she did not know where to look first. She had read about New Zealand before they left. The descriptions of the flora and fauna, and the Maori people, fascinated her. She gazed about the desolate beach and the rocky cliffs in the distance, topped with verdant green foliage. The wind tugged at her hair. This was her grand adventure. She would be brave for herself and her daughter. Maurice, her father, hadn't given her much choice in the matter, but it was an adventure nonetheless. There weren't many opportunities for women back home. Perhaps it would be different here.

During the long days of their journey, she had spun endless tales with her hands. Of heroes and beasts, of princesses meeting princes and epic quests. Would a prince be waiting for them? She didn't know. But Tilly loved stories and would embellish them with details of her own, a habit she also indulged in as Belle's interpreter.

A few of the men were hesitant to leave tiny Belle French and her nine-year-old daughter alone on the beach. Their group was not yet there to meet them. She wanted them and their rough words gone. She signed to Tilly, who told them, “She says, 'Thank you for bringing our belongings. We will be fine here. Please leave us. We insist.'”

With that, the seamen left, pushing their boats across the sand and back onto the waves. Belle and Tilly were alone on the vast expanse of shoreline. They arranged their possessions around the piano and trunks of books. She sat down on one of them with Tilly's head on her lap. A plank of the large crate that held her piano had split. She pulled at it and reached her hand inside to stroke the smooth keys. She played a tune one-handed, bringing them both comfort.

After Tilly rested, Belle got her favorite book from her satchel. She had kept ‘Her Handsome Hero’ with her for the journey. The rest of her books waited, wrapped in their waterproof canvas inside her trunks. Tilly read their favorite chapter aloud.

Belle felt the first gnawing of concern for their safety alone on the beach when the sun sank golden on the horizon. But she made it into a game for Tilly, finding dry wood to start a fire and fashioning a makeshift tent from her crinoline cage and petticoats. Inside the little cocoon, Tilly interrupted Belle's story of a beautiful princess and a dark sorcerer. Grabbing her hands, she said, “Mama, I've been thinking. I bet he's not a prince. He's not even here. I'm NOT going to call him Papa. I'm not going to call him anything.”

Belle stroked her daughter's face, refusing to be drawn into a disagreement. Tilly quieted and soon sleep claimed them.

In the forest's dampness traveled eight Maori men, an old woman, and two European men. Gaston Legume walked stiffly, his manner one of disdain for the surrounding vegetation. He had been living in New Zealand for several years. He had made himself some money right away, logging his property of valuable large trees used to build masts for ships, but now it was a constant fight to keep the land clear. Unlike the Maori who walked with grace through the underbrush, Gaston had an axe to beat it away. Nature, like some people, needed a firm hand and confidence.

He knew he was handsome, with his height and ebony hair, and took pride in his appearance. This morning he had taken pains with his dress and was resentful of the humidity that was ruining his look. He wanted to be at his best to greet his new wife. He stopped to comb his hair and took a moment to study the photo he had of her. Belle French was beautiful. She looked calm and sounded reasonable in her letter. She would be a worthy companion. After all the waiting, he would meet her soon.

Mr. Gold was the other European man of the party. None of them knew his first name, which was how he wanted it. Names were important. They had power. The Maori respected him for it. The settlers saw it as more proof of his misanthropic nature.

Gaston had asked for his help with the Maori, needing assistance to carry his new bride's possessions. But Gaston did not speak their language and did not deign to learn it. Gold was fluent (another strike against him in the settler’s minds). So he went along to fetch the woman and her daughter. And Gaston now owed him a favor.

With the aid of a walking stick, he was more graceful than the lumbering Gaston. Gold was slight where Gaston was broad, quiet and observant where Gaston was brash and stubborn. Gaston was well-liked. At least, he appeared to be. Gold was not. Except by the Maori and Granny. Granny had left the settlement and joined the Maori people, learning their language and customs, after her husband died and no one else did anything to help her. He didn’t care about the rest of the settlers, there wasn’t a genuine one in the bunch. They came to this new land and expected it to bend to their will, to change into the same society they had left. Gold had no patience for them. They resented him because of the property he owned, the money he had and the influence he wielded over the locals.

The group continued on through the vegetation and reached the sand below. In the distance, they could see a collection of boxes, a crate, and trunks. A tiny figure appeared to be dancing about. As soon as she noticed they had company, she ran to a woman sitting next to the largest crate.

Belle watched the odd group come toward them. There was a tall, well dressed man and natives attired in all manner of eccentric clothes adorned with feathers and beads. One even wore a top hat. A slight man and an old woman with a crossbow brought up the rear. She stood up. This was it.

Gaston approached his bride. She was small, tiny actually. Barely larger than the child she had with her.

“Miss French. I am Gaston Legume,” he said with a bow.

Belle smiled politely and curtsied. He was too tall. He towered over her. But it wasn't fair to hold that against him. He did have the face of the prince Tilly hoped for.

“I have men here to carry your things,” he continued. He knew she didn't speak, but he expected her to show some excitement. “CAN – YOU – HEAR – ME?” His tone brought to mind that of a man speaking to a dim-witted child.

Belle nodded, keeping her smile firmly fixed on her face and smothering her irritation. This was not the most auspicious of beginnings.

Gold watched these first interactions from a short distance away. Of course she could hear. Anyone with a brain could see she was listening to everything that was going on. Her blue eyes sparkled with intelligence. How long would it take this girl to figure out she was married to a conceited fool?

---

End Notes: A huge thank you to the Rumbelle Writers' Realm at Camp Nano- I couldn't have done it without your encouragement: @emospritelet @peacehopeandrats @eirian-houpe @blueboxesanddeerstalkers @kelyon @worryinglyinnocent @jackabelle73 @avatoh @reolf @mrs-stiltskin. Special thanks to @jackabelle73 and @blueboxesanddeerstalkers for beta reading!

#rumbelle fic #arranged marriage au #my fic #camp nano 2020

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haifengg · 3 years

Text

The Dutch Room - Chapter 4

Find all chapters here!

“Did you solve your problem yet?” Johnny asked and fell into the armchair.

His boss sat on the other side of the office, hunched over a remarkable stack of paperwork. “Problem?” He asked without looking up.

“The … uh … thing that came up a few weeks ago.” Johnny said carefully, not sure if he really forgot about the incident.

“Oh, so you’re not talking about yourself.” One could hear Jaehyun’s smile even if it wasn’t visible. Especially if one’s name was Johnny.

“Why would I refer to myself as a problem?”

“Because you always show up when I'm busy and steal my time.”

“By doing what?”

“By talking to me and not working like everyone else.” He said and finally looked up from his paperwork, smiling.

Johnny sighed. “You suck real bad. Did you know that?”

“I’ve been told, yeah. Honestly tho, what problem are you talking about? There are so many lately.”

Jaehyun leaned back in his chair, crossed his fingers behind his head and put his feet up, looking at his oldest friend.

“The one that dropped dead on your floor.” Johnny scoffed and yawned. Once again it was one of those days they were working late, which basically described every other day in their field of work.

Every single one of them had spent at least a few nights in their office, which is why they all kept travel kits at their desks somewhere.

“Oh.” Jaehyun said and his relatively good mood faded within seconds. “That one.”

“I assume it is as always more serious than you’re telling us right?”

“I don’t need to tell you how serious it is. Everyone working here is qualified enough to know that for themselves. And if they don’t I should consider replacing them. But yes, it is gravely serious. It could ruin the entire project.”

“And I assume you found a solution?” Jaehyun nodded and took down his hands, resting them on his core.

“I did. And I will schedule a meeting as soon as it is set in stone.”

“As always. I’m here now so why don’t you walk me through it?” Johnny offered casually while playing around with the end of his tie.

“I’m really busy …”

Johnny snorted. “Dude, I don’t care. I haven’t talked to you in ages about work let alone anything non-work related. And if business talk is the only talk I get these days I will take whatever you got.”

“Fine. The solution we came up with involves Taeil.”

Johnny suddenly sat up straight in the armchair and looked at his friend in a very confused way.

“Taeil? I thought you decided against using the hostesses.”

“True. We won’t use BARbara. But Taeil is the one who came up with the back-up plan.”

Jaehyun paused to lean forward, leafing through his calendar looking for a specific event.

“On the uh … 4th he’s meeting with the owner of a few high class restaurants. Something japanese. To be honest I neither met the guy yet nor have I heard about his restaurants but Taeil apparently knows him for quite some time and I trust him. After they meet up and where he introduces him to the idea, we will schedule another meeting in which we discuss the specifics.”

“I thought you don’t want to involve more people than necessary? Why are you suddenly considering working with someone you don’t know? This seems chancy.”

“Because”, he began and groaned. “the original plan was the most irresponsible imbecile I’ve met in my career so far and whoever Taeil is talking to in two weeks can’t be worse. I don’t know if you noticed but we don’t have that much time left. And I told all of you before that we’re only doing it if we find a way to clean the money.”

“You did tell us that. Several times. But we always reassured you that we would do it even if you don’t know how to launder the money beforehand. Because we trust you.”

Jaehyun sighed and rested his head in the palms of his hands. “You shouldn’t tho.”

The other shrugged and got up. “We know. But we do against your better judgement.”

“You’re going home?” Jaehyun looked at him in surprise.

“What? No.” He chuckled. “I’m working late, boss. As always.”

***

“Someone home?” Johnny stuck the head through the door as he opened it carefully.

“Come on in!” Song shouted from the back of the studio, her voice weirdly muffled.

So he stepped inside and closed the door behind him, looking around for her but couldn’t find her.

The studio didn’t change much since the last time he visited. The dishes were clean and put up to dry, right next to it was a small stash of toiletries.

Everything looked fine and even more in order than Haechan’s cubicle so why did Jaehyun want him to come up here and check on her? And besides, why didn’t he just do it himself?

He shuffled across the room to take a closer look at the easel and the prints that were spread out on the huge wobbly table alongside with a variety of … ingredients and colors. The canvas was smudged with a mix of brown and green tones.

By this point of progress Johnny wasn’t able to see any resemblance or how the hell this would turn into what was on the prints.

“Oh. It’f you.”

Hearing her voice behind him he turned around to see Song in sweatpants and some threadborne sweatshirt. Just now he realized how late it must have been once again, since Song was brushing her teeth and didn’t bother to take out the toothbrush while talking to him.

“If I knew y’all would take the ‘come by anytime’ fo literally I wouldn’t have faid it.”

“Did someone else come by?”

She nodded and walked over to spit out toothpaste and put away the toothbrush. “Yeah. Haechan came to see me the day before yesterday. And Doyoung yesterday.”

“What did he want?” Johnny asked a little bit too hastily which made her turn around.

“Who?”

“Doyoung.”

The conversation forming between them was clipped and terse but not at all in an uncomfortable way.

“He brought the prints.” She said pointing at the table. “It’s a really good quality and very clean. You can literally see every little detail on it. Did you have a look?”

“Yeah, I did just now. Why was Haechan here?”

Since they were still standing around all dressed up and with nowhere to go, Song just walked over to the sofa and dropped down on it, grabbing a pillow to hold in her arms.

“Nothing too important. He just wanted to know how I am doing. Speaking for what reasons people are showing up here all the time: Why did you come?”

He pulled up the stool she was using to sit on while painting and sat across from her, one arm resting on the table and shrugged.

“Same reason. Just wanted to say ‘hi’.”

“Well, you did that. Something else?”

Johnny chuckled more to himself than to Song. Why wasn’t he able to figure her out? Since she was employed he caught himself wondering what the hell she was doing here and how she ended up being their coworker.

“Have you ever sat one foot on our floor?” He asked trying to change the topic but Song was quick.

She thought for a moment leaning her head to one side, then shaking it. “Why would I? Everyone is coming upstairs anyways. I don’t really have to leave this place.”

“Touche.”

Silence settled between them during which Song scanned the man carefully and Johnny tried to not curse himself for coming here. Nice gestures never were a thing at this company so why did he thought it would be a good idea to start being nice?

Right. He though. It was about what Doyoung said and how right he turned out to be. The girl … woman sitting across from him didn’t really fit in with all of them. And even though he corrected his thoughts from girl to woman he couldn’t deny that there certainly was something fairly young about her. She definitely looked her age and she probably had both whit and sass but … something didn’t add up.

“Do you want to drink? Something?” Song suddenly asked and got up.

Johnny jumped to his feet as well and gladly said: “Yes, please!”

***

Song chucked the last sip of wine and lowered her glass. Johnny reached for it to replenish her drink for the fourth time but she quickly covered with both hands.

“No no no, I’m good.” She laughed.

They both sat in front of the sofa, legs crossed and leaning against it. He had no idea of how long they had been sitting together like this but two hours probably already had passed since he got here.

“Are you sure?” He asked sliding the bottle of white wine back into the cooler.

“Yes. Absolutely. This is actually way more than I usually have. If you have questions you only want honest answers to: Ask them now.” She stated jokingly and waved away her sobriety.

Johnny laughed. “Okay, let me think.”

When he wasn’t saying anything for a few seconds she turned her head to look at him and found him actually thinking about what he wanted to ask her.

Song curiously and patiently waited for him to ask:

“What do you think of Panoma?”

Their eyes met and she could see how serious his question was. He really wanted her honest opinion about the company and/or the people working here.

“Well”, Song began but hesitated. “about the people or more about the entire thing?”

“Whatever you want.”

She sighed. “To be honest: I don’t think this is for me.”

Johnny’s eyes widened at an answer he didn’t expect at all. “What does that mean?”

“See, I feel like you all know each other so well. Yeah, sure I am the new one and y’all don’t know me and we don’t have a history but I am not sure if we will get along well eventually. And this is just the case for getting along well. Not exceptionally well or being a great team. Whatever that involves.”

He put down his wine glass ready to give her his unshared attention. This seemed to have bothered her for a while. “What exactly makes you think that?”

“This might sound weird but … to me you all seem like criminals.”

“You aren’t exactly whitecollar either. I chose your file out of 20 others because I like to think of you as someone who screws people over twice. First time by forging art and replacing it and the second time when you keep the original to yourself.”

“But compared to you that’s nothing.” She said, using one the one hand that wasn’t still holding the empty glass to empathize the arguments. “You are professional criminals. Working in a company devoted to launder money and steal shit. This is organized crime. What I do … every art-school graduate could do it. It all comes down to very basic things.”

Johnny sighed. “What makes you think you don’t fit in?”

She sat on her knees, putting aside the glass she was holding up until this moment and looked him directly into the eyes.

“I don’t know? Jaehyun is super scary and June is so … flawless? Doyoung seems a bit odd and I don’t know what to think of you but you are professionals. You work in an office, wear ties and suits, do paperwork, crunch numbers, have desks with files on them.”

“Is that how you define professionalism? That we appear to be harmless office employees but aren’t?”

Song nodded quietly.

“Under the pretext of commonplace?”

“Yes.”

There she was again. The girl Song that seemed so innocent and harmless as if she couldn’t hurt nobody and has no criminal record. As if they were two different personalities sharing one shell.

Johnny chuckled and suddenly the dramatic tension that had built up in the studio imploded and disappeared.

“I don’t mean to offend you personally but that’s very naive of you to think. Romanticizing our field of work is what writers do. And I have to ask you to neither put June nor Jaehyun on a pedestal because those two ain’t perfect. Also they’re not the cold and calculating professionals you think they are. “

He saw her face and immediately backtracked. “Don’t get me wrong: Both are evil masterminds and exceptionally at their jobs. But they have their flaws.” He leaned back. “Did you hear about Lucas?”

“Who’s that?”

“He used to work here before we hired you.”

“Why past tense?”

“He … quit. That aside: Lucas and June had an affair that was going on for quite a while if I remember correctly.”

Song gasped and choked. All Johnny did was laughing at her gasping which made things worse.

“Does everyone know?” She asked after catching her breath and being pat on the back by Johnny.

“I’m not sure but I assume at least Haechan does know. Nothing really goes past him. If you want to know things in the future I suggest you ask him.”

He returned to the semi serious attitude he had about himself for the entire evening as he said: “But my point is: Even though I don’t know if there were feelings involved or what exactly their arrangement was, it is what it is. An affair between two coworkers. And if that’s not the epitome of non-professionalism - I don’t know what is.“

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#nct127 #nct127 scenario #nct127 scenarios #nct127 imagines

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impressivepress · 3 years

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Henri Matisse and the nun: Why did the artist create a masterpiece for Sister Jacques-Marie?

Henri Matisse’s greatest masterpiece resides not in a gallery, but on a peaceful hillside near Nice: a chapel he designed in gratitude to the nun who helped him through a troubled convalescence.

Famous as a great colourist, towards the end of his life, the artist Henri Matisse moved from painting towards a new art form: cut-outs. He likened the process to sculpture – “carving” into colour – as he sliced into huge sheets of vividly painted paper before pinning the shapes in place on a canvas. This novel approach – which produced some of the most recognisable pieces of art from the 20th century, such as his Blue Nudes, Icarus and The Snail – is being celebrated in a major new exhibition at Tate Modern, in conjunction with New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Yet it wasn’t any of those works that Matisse himself termed his “masterpiece”: that honour he bestowed on the Rosaire Chapel in Vence, in the south of France. He worked on it for four years, from 1947 to 1951, designing the building, the stunning stained-glass windows, the tiles with monochrome religious imagery on the walls, even the zany chasubles (vestments) the priests wear. Still a place of active worship for Dominican nuns today, it was an ambitious challenge for Matisse, who was no architect, and was very unwell at the time – and he considered it “the achievement of an entire life’s work, the outcome of tremendous, difficult, sincere work”.

It might have been the pinnacle of his career, but the Vence Chapel was also a way for Matisse to use his talents to produce a heartfelt gift for a Dominican nun named Sister Jacques-Marie.

As a young woman and student nurse, then going by the name of Monique Bourgeois, she had cared for Matisse after a gruesomely botched operation for intestinal cancer in 1941, from which he was never to fully recover. Yet it was being confined to his bed as a physical invalid that in part led to his new cut-out technique – and he would never forget the kindness of his nurse.

He immortalised her in several paintings at the time, and their friendship endured – although she later quashed rumours that their affection might have strayed into the romantic, saying in an interview in Paris Match in 1992: “I never really noticed whether he was in love with me… I was a little like his granddaughter or his muse.”

Some years after nursing Matisse, in 1946, Bourgeois wrote to him to say she was becoming a nun. The Dominican sisters settled in Vence – coincidentally, very close to Villa Le Rêve, where Matisse was living. In one of their many conversations, she mentioned to Matisse her desire for a chapel for the sisters on this pretty hillside. Initially, the artist offered to help design the windows, but soon he was involved in the whole building, right down to the candlesticks (modelled to look like long-stemmed anemone flowers). He worked alongside Brother Rayssiguier, who oversaw the construction of the chapel and was far-sightedly enthusiastic about getting such a well-known artist involved. Rayssiguier thought a splash of modern art might help bring the church’s appeal up to date.

Matisse, however, was less concerned with the revival of Christian art than with a personal sense of the spiritual – and the creative challenge such a building would present to him. “He wasn’t religious – he was raised Catholic but was not practising,” explains Flavia Frigeri, assistant curator of the Tate show, which features sketches, maquettes and photographs from the Vence Chapel. It was more the chance to create a whole building, she suggests, than any particular Catholic calling.

However, the chapel has been a place of worship since it was unveiled in 1951, and – although modest and small – it is charged with a serene beauty that can be spiritually affecting to not only the nuns who pray there today, but to visiting art lovers and tourists. Even stepping foot inside in January, as I did, with a weak sunlight coming through his gorgeous “Tree of Life” stained-glass window, you feel enveloped in pure colour that is both revivifying and calming. The vibrant hues – “ultramarine blue, bottle green, lemon yellow”, to use Matisse’s labels – are reflected in and dappled across the polished pale marble floor and white walls. His imagery, though typically abstract, draws inspiration from the natural world, making it emotionally accessible to all, not just those steeped in scripture.

“The spiritual expression of their colour strikes me as unquestionable,” wrote Matisse of his leaf patterns in 1951. “Simple colours can affect innermost feelings, their impact being all the more forceful through their simplicity. Blue… affects feeling like a vigorous stroke of a gong.”

The Vence Chapel stands apart from archetypal Catholic iconography – even the images of Christ are abstracted into pure line, while an image of the Virgin Mary and child comes surrounded by almost hippyish flowers. It’s a far cry from the gruesomely realistic emaciated crucifixion imagery often associated with Catholicism. Yet Sister Marie-Pierre, a Dominican nun, echoes Matisse’s sentiments when I ask how it feels to worship in the chapel. In broken English, a thick French accent and a beaming smile as radiant as the buttercup-yellow light filling the room, she says: “We worship in beauty, instead of in bad things. It feels special. And I think it is better to pray in beauty.”

She leads us through the 14 images that make up “Stations of the Cross”, a series of rather furious-looking paintings on the back wall, which are complemented by enormous but simple outlines of Saint Dominic and the Virgin and Child on two other walls. The latter, Matisse wrote, “have a tranquil reverent nature all their own” while the “Stations of the Cross” are “tempestuous”. All three were painted in bold, sweeping black on white enamelled terracotta tiles.

The process wasn’t simple, however. In those four years of preparing the chapel, Matisse would practise his designs on paper, over and over again. From initial early studies of religious art by Rubens, Dürer and Mantegna, he developed his own iconography. “There were many images as he worked it out; he simplified, intensified, condensed,” suggests Nick Cullinan, co-curator of the Tate show alongside Nicholas Serota. And Matisse’s pious muse, Sister Jacques-Marie, continued to discuss the different designs with him, their affectionate friendship allowing her to be free with her opinions; Matisse later described the chapel as their “shared project”.

The images he worked on were several metres tall, and required fluid, long lines drawn in one smooth motion, so Matisse would practise using a charcoal stick at the end of a bamboo wand about two metres long, allowing him to reach. In his seventies while working on the chapel, and unable to stand for any length of time, this long “wand” had the added advantage of letting him practise from a chair or in bed. He was known to even paint on the ceiling if he woke up, restless, in the middle of the night.

And so it was that the chapel came to life around him. Matisse was now working in his apartment in the grand old Hotel Regina, in nearby Nice. Long rolls of paper cascaded down the walls for him to paint and draw on with his k stick, while he perfected the stained-glass windows using his cut-out technique: snipping out the brightly coloured plant shapes and pinning them to his walls. Photographs reveal how the artist even mocked up an altar in the middle of his room, using boxes, chairs and a table. He spent nearly two years in this work-in-progress world, inside his studio, inside his apartment; “He really lived in it,” says Frigeri.

Eventually, Matisse had practised the outline of his figures so often, he was able to draw them blindfolded. Appropriately, the artistic experience became almost divine: he commented that all the studies “enable the painter to give free reign to his subconscious… after a certain point, it is no longer up to me, it is a revelation: all I do is give myself up.”

And so by April 1949, Matisse was ready to paint on to the tiles which would be mounted on the chapel’s walls. He did not sign the works – they were to be viewed as integral parts of a religious building, not as collectible pieces. “They were not designs, but signs – to help praying,” says Sister Marie-Pierre. Matisse was, she insists, quite adamant that the Vence Chapel should “never become a museum”.

Matisse kept his hand in even until the final finishing touches: he designed the pews and altar, set at a jaunty angle and made of pierre de Rogne stone he specially selected because its pale-brown grain made it look like “a piece of bread”, according to Sister Marie-Pierre. Most fun, however, are the chasubles that the priests still wear – Matisse made several designs for different Holy Days. Some are gloriously bonkers, with bold patterns – very much in his late style, mimicking the cut-outs in cloth – of flowers, leaves and starbursts, as well as abstracted crosses and crowns of thorns. The eye-popping colour schemes throw together lime, yellow and black or lilac, green and rose, and would look as at home on the cover of Sgt Pepper’s as swishing through the Vence Chapel. They were hailed by Picasso as the best bit of the whole project.

The chapel was consecrated on 25 June 1951; thousands of locals and visitors turned up, but sadly Matisse was too unwell to attend. The chapel soon attracted great international attention. Matisse’s cut-outs had not always been viewed in a positive light by the art establishment – there was a sniffy sense, initially, that they were inferior to paintings, suitable for magazine covers but not for art galleries. But the chapel was recognised immediately as a significant work: “With the cut-outs, people express misgivings, that the old man’s past his best; but the stained glass – that’s fine, that’s well-received,” explains Cullinan. Time, Paris Match, and Vogue all reported on the chapel with delight, the latter dubbing it a “Church Full of Joy”.

It’s an apt phrase for the building. But the chapel also had a significant impact on the final years of Matisse’s artistic career: his subsequent cut-outs, until his death in 1954, went super-sized, growing to a scale similar to his preparations for the chapel, taking over whole walls. And for Matisse, there can be no doubt about the importance of the chapel: although unable to be there at its unveiling, he sent along a written statement. It read: “This work… is the result of all my active life. Despite all its imperfections I consider it as my masterpiece.”

Born in 1869, Matisse qualified in law before studying art in Paris. As a painter, he was influenced by Impressionism, before developing his own style – using brilliant swathes of colour – that was dubbed Fauvism. He later also experimented in Cubism.

The cut-outs were a major development towards the end of his life. They began for practical reasons: with commissions for the Ballet Russes in 1939 and for the covers of magazines such as the art and literature review ‘Verve’. These were followed by an artist’s book, 'Jazz’, featuring the well-known image of Icarus in 1947.

To make the cut-outs, Matisse had his assistants paint sheets of paper in bold, luminous colours; using large shearing scissors, he would cut into the sheets and pin the cut-out shapes first to his walls to perfect the look, and then permanently to canvas.

The technique prompted renewed interest in the human form; but as well as a solidity and stillness, the technique also offered a sense of vivacity and movement.

Matisse was prolific in his final years, despite ill health, and the cut-outs grew in scale. 'The Snail’, one of the most famous, epitomises his large-scale, bright, abstract approach.

Matisse also used them as trial-run maquettes for large-scale ceramic commissions. In 1952, Sidney and Frances Lasker Brody asked him to create an outdoor tiled mural for their LA house – it took him four attempts to satisfy them, the final result being 'The Sheaf’, which features his favourite wobbly-leaf designs seen in Vence.

The cut-outs were initially met with dismissive bemusement, seen more as decorative than fine art; but by the late 1950s, the art world had recognised them as significant achievements, and Matisse’s bold use of colour and shape has influenced everything from abstract art to fashion to graphic design ever since.

~ Holly Williams · 30 March 2014.

#matisse #the chapel of the rosary #art article #painting #The Independent

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evien-stark · 4 years

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✧I Need You✧ Chapter 152 [Begin: Age of Ultron]

The “secret” Hydra base was located on the tippy top of one of the mountains. It was also huge. And obvious. A wonder that none of you had ever thought to look at it before. Then again, Sokovia was such a small place. So small, in fact, that that giant research castle butted up against a town on the other side. That was extremely bad news. Casualties were a real possibility. Also. Getting caught doing this. Which … wasn’t worse than loss of life but it was pretty bad.

It was enough to tick your anxiety on the ride over on the jet. There were so many ways this could go wrong. So many ways that it would. You just had to hold it together. For the team. This could be one less thing to worry about if everything went right. You had to put your focus on the positives. Even as hard as that was.

This mountaintop fortress of theirs was on top of a dense forest. Too much coverage to see through on satellite- except for the watchtowers in very strategic placement. If the incident in Sudan had a little over three hundred soldiers, you imagined these guys had maybe a thousand. And lots of heavy ammunition and firepower. All things the team was going over one more time as the jet stayed in a hover just outside the starting radius.

Oh and… “We don’t know how many enhanced there are, or what they can do. We have to keep sharp.” Steve was leaned over one of the holograph tables projecting the tippy-top base. Funny. Coulson had said the same thing.

Human experimentation. The thought was repulsive. And to do it with the scepter? Something so alien? Hydra must have been extremely desperate. Yet… Jessica had come across something like this, too. Killian had been working on this as well. Was this just the way the world was trending now? Why? Because of the Avengers?? It was a tough thing to think about. Not something you wanted to think about. ...yet you couldn’t stop.

The only thing that took your mind off of it was being thrust into the heat of battle.

Tony had landed the jet outside the perimeter in an established safe zone. The idea was to take them by surprise. To canvas the entire sector inch by inch if you had to and take everyone out and then storm the base.

...but that’s not what ended up happening.

The team wasn’t even a mile in before a battalion patrolling spotted everyone. Bunkers had turrets with that charged Chitauri weaponry, no doubt courtesy of Dr. Jensen, all aimed in your direction. You weren’t sure when someone had shouted for a Code Green, but Hulk had appeared nonetheless.

You and Tony took off together to try and flank the oncoming forces while the rest of the team charged up into battle. That plan had worked before. Why not replay it not even forty-eight hours later? Except the scale of this was much larger, they had much more firepower- and it was turning into a little bit of a shitshow.

“I think we should storm the castle and make a point.” You could beat soldiers on the ground all day long, but if you took their prized possession and handcuffed their leaders, they might lay down their weapons. Wouldn’t that be nice.

Tony arched a brow from his box on your HUD and then nodded. “Alright. Let’s see if Rapunzel will let her hair down for us.” There was a little sting of sass here that said I highly doubt it.

He bolted up and over the treeline and you were quick to follow. The two of you circled the massive property, up and up, to the top most compound. A little too easy to break into. It was just right there. And if anyone could walk in, it wasn’t much of a base. Which was why it only marginally surprised you when Tony closed in on the eastern-most wall and then promptly bounced off it, revealing a forcefield.

“Shit!” More a grunt of surprise from him than anything, with a look to match. Maybe he’d been more startled than actually hurt.

Steve’s voice was quick to chastise over the comms. “Language!”

You couldn’t help the face you made. “Have you been doing more PSAs for schools or something?” Hanging around kids? What had prompted that? Though Tony was grinning.

“I don’t want to talk about it right now.” Clearly Steve was very aware he’d made a mistake. “JARVIS, what’s the view from upstairs?”

As the satellite in orbit zeroed in closer on the building, all the data got thrown up on your screen, including the live feed of JARVIS looking at the compound. “The central building is protected by some kind of energy shield. Strucker's technology is well beyond any other Hydra base we've taken.”

Thor responded to that first. “Loki’s scepter must be here. Strucker couldn’t mount his defense without it.”

You couldn’t help your look of confusion. “We just got out of a battle with Jensen who had brand new tech. We’re thinking this is scepter grown and not Chitauri?” It could have gone both ways, and maybe it didn’t matter in either case. But you had to wonder.

“We took her down with ease, did we not?” He made a good counterpoint to that. So you let him have this, because he seemed pretty pleased. “At long last.”

You rolled out from your position, a little too clear in the air as a few of the watchtowers had started firing on you from inside the base. Natasha’s voice got a little garbled as you took a hit from the side. “At long last is lasting a little long, people.”

Clint sounded annoyed. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure we lost the element of surprise.”

Following Tony’s lead on the opposite side alongside one of the lower-rung bases, not protected by that alien shield, the both of you fired on soldiers heading out of their barracks. Your eyes strayed to him as he spoke, “Wait a second, no one else is gonna deal with the fact that Cap just said language?”

Despite the dire straits you found yourselves in, you couldn’t help the smile. “He’s been spending too much time with kids. Go easy on him.”

Steve made a sound of resignation. “Look. It just slipped out.”

You couldn’t help yourself. “We’re all about good, clean, family friendly fun here at the Avengers.”

JARVIS cut into your good clean fun. “Sir, ma’am, the city is taking fire.”

No. Your heart dropped right into your stomach. That was one of your worst fears. Immediately you broke dual formation with Tony, leaving him to circle the castle alone. “I’ll go deal with it.”

“Honey, I need you here.” The both of you looked at each other from video screens. He wasn’t seriously telling you to let civilians take heat, was he? “Let’s send in the Iron Legion.”

“I don’t know now is the right time for a trial run.”

“Sometimes you gotta run before you can walk.”

But he was waiting. Waiting for your permission. And waiting to see if you trusted him. He’d been working so hard on this one thing. It wasn’t Ultron- but it was what he had now. But to test proof of concept with real lives felt too dangerous. And careless. ...but you did trust him…

JARVIS seemed to be waiting just as much as Tony was. “Ma’am?”

You sighed, and doubled back midair. “Alright. Send them.”

A new window popped open on your HUD and you moved it to the lower right hand corner. Iron Legion details. How many were flying out- five deployed, to be exact. Their status. They were moving, fast. Pre-loaded from the quinjet. At least Tony had come prepared.

Just as you and Tony were taking out another lower bunker with a series of repulsor blasts, Natasha’s sudden cry startled you. “Clint!”

Only seconds after, Steve spoke darkly. “Enhanced spotted in the field. I repeat, an enhanced is on the field.”

Your heart was thundering in your ears. “What kind?”

He sounded annoyed as he answered. “If I could see, I’d tell you.”

You weren’t really sure what that meant. It really could have meant anything, but what it meant that was most important was that this enhanced was extremely dangerous. Natasha spoke again, “Clint’s hit! I need somebody to deal with that bunker!”

This was going sideways. It felt hard to think. Tony had asked you to stay in the air with him, but everything was telling you you needed to get back to ground to help the rest of the team. It seemed Steve agreed, because he called your name next to Tony’s. “We really need to get inside!”

Tony got to the punch first. “We’re closing in.” And then, a little less sure over the private channel, “JARVIS are we closing in?”

Several schematics popped up in your immediate view. It was too much of a task to sift through them. Instead you asked, “Where’s the battery on this thing?”

One of the blueprints came to the forefront and something locked as JARVIS answered. “There’s a pathway below the north tower.”

“Great. Honey, let’s give it a poke.” As he barreled up and left, you took the right. Once up high enough you held your wrist out to match a targeted missile detonation on his mark. As the blast detonated, the blue wall crackled and then fell. “Drawbridge is down, people.” About as much signal as you got, following his lead as he plowed forward, headed right for the top tower.

Steve and Thor were talking about the enhanced- nothing important. Which was why you didn’t feel bad going on private channel to Tony. “They’re probably dumping data right now, we have to hurry. ...and as much as they don’t deserve it, as little casualties as possible, please.”

“Being the bigger people has not once yet felt rewarding. But, since you asked so nicely.”

“Thank you.”

Natasha broke up your conversation with something a little more relevant. “Clint’s hurt pretty bad, guys.”

Thor replied, “I can get Barton to the jet. The sooner we're gone the better. You, Lady, and Stark secure the scepter.”

Steve answered him. “Copy that.”

It sounded like they got a little busy on the field, although not particularly in a very serious way. In the end Thor issued one command, “Find the scepter.”

Tony couldn’t seem to help himself. “And for gosh sake, watch your language!”

Steve’s defeated sigh had you holding back a little laughter. “That’s not going away any time soon, is it?”

You tried to make him feel better. “Nothing wrong with being wholesome. Don’t let them bully you.”

You spied Tony’s grin on his display window. “That part of your afterschool Cap-Hour PSA, too?” Him breaking through one of the windows of what appeared to be a lab cut the ribbing short. You were just behind him. Soldiers were aiming guns your way and the both of you were already taking fire. “Guys. Stop.” His tone was so very dry. “We gotta talk this through.”

Your display converged with his as the targets locked, the mini-gun on his shoulder loaded up. Very pointedly all marks went to non-lethal places, mostly legs. Which had them all falling once the shots went off.

He spoke again, “That was a good talk.”

You couldn’t help yourself. “Very concise. Right to the point.”

To your surprise, one of the soldiers actually answered in a groan of pain. “No it wasn’t…”

In a quick jet as one remaining heat signature lit up in the room just beyond, the both of you came to a land just in the doorway. A man was at the console- LUNA ID’ed him as Dr. List- the one who had gotten away. He was standing in front of several large computer consoles. Presumably deleting everything. Tony was quicker than you, holding his hand up to fire off a repulsor blast that knocked him away and to the floor.

Then, quicker still with a strange harried urgency, he released the suit, stepping out and hurrying over to the computers. Holding up one finger to the suit, while his other started typing, “Sentry mode.” His suit closed back up and started a low sweep of the room. Just keeping an eye on things.

This felt dangerous. He really shouldn’t have given up the armor just yet. It was why you didn’t, though you did release your helmet. As you got closer to him, you saw what awaited the both of you on the screens. A big flashing deleting marquee. Tony unfolded a mini-tablet and stuck it on the side of the console.

“Okay JARVIS. You know. I want it all.” Immediately switching that deleting to downloading after asking.

You peered over his shoulder. “Did we lose a lot?” This data was important to somebody. ...Tony, it seemed like. For what reason you really couldn’t say. Then again, anything having to do with this alien tech probably pinged a lot of his interests. And maybe not necessarily in a good way.

“Hard to say. JARVIS make sure to copy Hill at HQ.” It made sense for him to make that request. She was technically the head of Damage Control. But… the wiser part of you knew this was underground SHIELD business. It really didn’t matter one way or the other.

Natasha broke the silence. “We’re locked down out here.”

What a quick turn around. Only moments ago this felt pretty hopeless. Now all of a sudden your team had won? It was probably better not to question fate. You wanted to feel good about this… but your heart was still slamming in your chest. Something was off here. Your better sense was telling you…

Tony turned from the computers to look at you. “You got something on your mind?”

You’d probably pinged him accidentally. Your gaze, however, was sweeping around the room. There were shadows in the corners. It was cold. Impossibly cold. A shiver crept over your skin and you had to force yourself to stop. “Files are great but that’s not what we came here for. There’s something else here.”

He nodded. “I agree. Hey, J, give me an IR scan of the room real quick.”

A burst of red touched out across the room from the Iron Man suit. JARVIS spoke once it was finished. “The wall to your left. I'm reading steel reinforcement... and an air current.”

The both of you looked at each other just once before moving over to said wall. He brushed up against it, pressing his palms flat over the brick. “Please be a secret door, please be a secret door, please be a secret door…” Just a little giddy at the prospect of such an overly cliched thing.

Secret door in a villain hideout. Very fun stuff.

Still… as he pushed his hands against the wall and it gave way, sliding to the side, you couldn’t help your little bubble of overt adoration while he leaned up a little on the balls of his feet with a tiny little, “Yay!”

“Someone’s in a good mood.” And that one single shift in thinking had calmed you.

“It’s not everyday you find yourself in a Scooby-Doo episode.” His grin was quick as he looked over his shoulder before going into the pathway.

You were right behind him. “Shall we go find old man Jenkins?”

“We shall.”

The stairway you found yourselves descending was a little bit more than daunting. Dimly lit, a long way down. Really one long encased metal tube more than anything. And the further down you stepped the higher your alert was ringing.

So much so that when Steve spoke just as you and Tony got closer to the bottom you actually jumped. “We have a second enhanced. Female. Do not engage.”

That sent your heartbeat right back to painfully fast. You hadn’t even realized you were panting until Tony stopped just short of the bottom of the stairs, and reached a hand out to you. “We’re alright.”

You clasped it with a small squeeze and gave him a nod. “I’ve got your back.” That second enhanced was clearly dangerous and clearly in the compound. You had to watch out for him. Protect him. Now was no time to get lost in panic.

His smile settled you just enough to back off the edge. ...but as you both got to the bottom and entered a large warehouse, your terror came back tenfold. Steve signaled one of the last pieces of your mission, “Guys, I’ve got Strucker.”

Tony one-upped him. “Yeah… I’ve got something bigger.” Hanging from the ceiling was one of those armored whales. And seeing it like this-

Sounds of gunfire and guttural screaming lit up around you. Buildings were collapsing.

Tony moving drew you out of it, but only a little. In an effort to keep up, you followed him closer into the room. And there, hooked up to machinery, finally, you saw the scepter. What they were doing with it, you had no idea. At least not yet. Tony would figure it out. But a familiar high pitched whine was the next sound to clog your consciousness.

You remembered that noise. You remembered it very well. It was drawing you in.

A yellow static emanated up and out and all too quickly you forced yourself to turn away. None of this was real. You were imagining it- but looking towards the left side of the room, you saw several tables. With very familiar looking robotic builds on top of them. They’d been using the scepter to try and replicate the Iron armors? Did that make sense? -...or were these Tony’s??

Coming closer to the table you leaned in, looking closer at one-

And then very suddenly it was like someone had struck a match up your spine. A flurry of unhinged panic attacked you so strongly your knees went weak and you had to clutch the table for support. As soon as you had it in you, you whirled on your heel-

To see Tony standing there. Eyes open wide- and empty- yet terrified. Staring up at that whale. Sweat had started pouring from his brow. His breathing was erratic. And no matter how fast you wanted to rush to him, it felt like you were stuck in quicksand.

But then your better consciousness broke free as a presence lurked up beside you. Behind you. And your own dark, angry fears took hold. Someone was whispering to you. And you would not let that happen. Not ever again.

With a quick strike of your hand, blind and completely instinctual, you reached up and locked on to a wrist close to your face. And when you turned your head you saw her. Staring at you. A young woman- no- a kid really- long red hair and scared green eyes. She was there one moment-

And gone the next. In a blur and a flash of wind. Not only that but it came back to knock you into the table. Nerves frayed as they were, you were quick to rebound onto your feet and fire a useless shot in any direction that made sense. But Tony’s fright was amping up- and it hit you like a tsunami.

Vaulting over the other tables you let your jets carry you to the ground at his side. “Tony-” Trying to call to him. And when absolutely no cognizance showed- you put a hand on his shoulder. And that’s when you felt it. How off balance he was. And just how much he was drowning.

In the very next blink you were no longer there. You saw him with that second set of eyes. And he was awash in a blood-red glow. Struggling.

Laying both your hands against his chest over his heart, you settled the waves beneath the both of you, and focused. When that wasn’t enough, you gripped him harder. The edges started cracking. It hurt. You felt like you were taking it all in, watching as it seeped in through your skin and bubbled underneath your veins, working its way up- every inch like a knife cutting deeper and deeper until your entire being lit up in that crimson light. Everything went dark around you.

Just the both of you.

But with one last concentrated push- one wail of pain you broke him free. Lifting your hands as you felt that power travel back down in a quick bolt, all aimed at your heart- but when you extended your hands and sent one last burst into the air, you expelled it all. Something had happened, and as you went down on your knees you cast your gaze skyward, watching the shift of a takeover as brand new pinks raced across the sky-

His gasp for air drew your attention forward and present, and you swayed, feeling consciousness wane. The both of you reached for the lab table at the same time, steadying yourselves in mirror-moves. Almost like you were briefly one being just struggling to stay upright. He was quicker to regain himself, though not necessarily his composure, and as he looked at you, you felt-

You felt-

Some deep unsettled despair from him. And when he paired it with a touch of his hand at your cheek- and the look in his eyes- unhinged and- -...it was like the look he got- that he used to get- when he thought about- ...when he’d gone through the wormhole- and- and-

In the next shallow breath you barely were able to draw, you felt a million miles away as your vision circled the drain. It surprised you, to hear yourself crying as you barely voiced the only immediate thought that mattered. “I’m gonna pass out-” About as honest as you could be before everything went dark a second time.

---

They were so close to the end-goal. Secret passages meant big, hidden secrets behind them. And Tony had been pretty sure they were about to hit paydirt and make all of this worth it. Even more so than it already was. But the further they got down those steps, the harder she hit him. Unintentionally, he knew. Sometimes he wondered if she even was aware of just how bad she got sometimes-

But she was all over the place, and he needed her to steady out. So he turned, offering her a lifeline, reaching his hand up to her, making sure his eyes were steady on hers, and that his voice gave nothing away. “We’re alright.”

It seemed to soothe her over quick enough, something that always made him feel better. She clasped his hand, “I’ve got your back.” Always genuinely reassuring. And with that goal in mind, she became a little more focused.

At least until they actually hit the bottom of the stairs and entered a room he almost wished they hadn’t. He hadn’t been prepared enough to see that Chitauri whale hanging from the ceiling in a vice, mouth half open. In tact. How in the hell had they stolen this? Steve said something- he answered- but he wasn’t really paying attention.

She was moving around the room. And he wasn’t watching her, either. The scepter was right in front of them. They could take it and go. That’s what he wanted to do. But he found himself staring at it…

And in the very next moment the sound of the chains above him rattling and then snapping urged his attention up. Too slow, as that armored whale dropped down with a monstrous roar. He put his hands up to try and shield himself and rammed into the table as it flew by. Breaking through the building-

Drawing him deep down into a black void. He followed it- about as far as a hill littered with bodies.

Their bodies. Hulk was lying face down, twitching, impaled several times through the back. Natasha- Clint- Thor- Steve- all down. Dying or… dead.

Cap’s shield was split in two.

He felt himself shivering, breathing hard as he approached. And seeing her made his knees give out completely. He dropped aside her, turning her head, fingers heavy on her neck as he put his other arm around her and hoisted her half onto his lap. Trying to find a pulse while clinging to her. Blood was leaking from her eyes- her nose- her mouth- she was battered and bruised and- there was a hole in her chest-

No pulse. This was a unique devastation unlike anything he’d ever felt-

That was until she reached up suddenly, startling him, hand tight around his wrist. Her voice was a choke of tears. “Tony- you… you promised… you promised we’d… be okay...”

He swallowed hard as the rest of her light died right in front of him, her hand slipping away, eyes just… empty. It felt like she’d taken him with her.

Why didn’t you do more?

A murmur in the shape of too many voices. Floating above him, another whale captured his attention, and his head fell back, feeling the energy bleeding out of him in long draws. He wasn’t going to last here much longer. He didn’t deserve to.

Up above him- beyond this hill spattered with bodies he’d failed to protect- the wormhole stared back at him. New York City- no the world- was under siege again- and he-

Tony.

Her voice jolted him just a little and his eyes fell to her lifeless body again. He cradled her face in his hands, sure that he would die here with her.

At least he thought so- but it felt like someone was pounding on his chest- and the next slam into reality was a hard one. He barely caught himself on the lab table, breathing so hard it felt like his heart would give out- it might have-

Wait. Lab table. Lab. He was in Sokovia. Of course he was in Sokovia-

He’d had some sort of traumatic episode and she- Whipping his head up he caught sight of her also struggling to keep herself upright. Alive. Apparently she’d shared the burden with him. With a shaking hand he reached out to her, begged for verification- her skin was clammy but blazing hot as he made contact, fingers brushing at her temple and then down, holding her face in his hand as they stared at each other.

There was a strange glow in her eyes. Not the usual one-

He almost found his body again. But a hitch of a sob broke from her throat. A drop of blood trickled from her nose. Her pupils were wildly dilated. She looked crazed and unsure of herself. Unsure of anything. That made two of them.

“I’m gonna pass out-”

Down she went not a single second after saying so, and he impressed himself, having enough strength to catch her before she cracked her head open on the corner of the table. Moving down into a kneel, he held her close, still panting. Sweat leaking from his forehead.

“Cap I need-” He was aware how terrible he sounded, and he pulled every last energy resource he owned to even out. “Cap, JARVIS will guide you. I need you on my location. As soon as possible.”

“Copy that. I’m headed your way.”

Tony was glad he didn’t ask why. And when he looked at her again, that vision of her cut in between each blink of his eyes.

You promised…

He was still struggling to breathe.

#Tony Stark #Tony Stark x Reader #INY Chapter One Hundred FIfty Two #here we fucking go #next week is gonna be a fucking DOOZY

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diyunho · 4 years

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The Joker x Reader - “John Wick” Part 3

Y/N left The Organization 3 years ago for the one reason strong enough to make her settle down: love. But after tragedy crushed her to pieces, she decided to leave The Joker and seek refuge with an old friend and mentor - John Wick. Needless to say The King of Gotham can’t accept his wife running away without a word, especially since he didn’t have a chance to tell her things she might want to hear.

Part 1 Part 2

The Joker listens at the bedroom’s door, impatient to have a conversation with you. It seems you are engaged into a fervent phone call with Winston and figured he shouldn’t interrupt.

“Please, anything you can discover would be a great help! U-hum… U-hum… Thank you,” and you hang up, which queues your husband to walk into the room.

You completely ignore him, scrolling through the numerous text messages you sent to your connections; several are already answering back and hopefully you can get some news soon. The more people are involved into the project, the more chances to find Kase and untangle the mystery of what happened to him after he was removed from the car.

“You left me there,” The Joker sneaks in and closes the door behind him. “Luckily we had Wick with us so he gave me a ride.”

No reaction. He takes a deep breath, trying to get your awareness.

“I didn’t sleep with Evelyn; sex wasn’t the reason why I kept visiting her. I know how that asshole made it sound and he was totally out of line!”

You quickly glance at him, busy replying to Ares since you feel you’re going to explode soon.

“The only skill I was interested in is the fact that she is an excellent painter and a popular art smuggler, OK?” J raises his voice, sort of annoyed you neglect to participate into his monologue. “I did not cheat, alright?” he approaches his wife. “First of all: I’m VERY picky! Second of all: why would I want a woman everyone else had?! I don’t like used toys. Third: nobody’s been polishing my gun as you tastefully addressed the issue! I have one Queen and I married her!!”

A little bit of doubt in your eyes and he utilizes the opportunity.

“You said you saw me going to her house? I did! The Bowery King asked if it was for the last 6 months? Yeah, I did! You know why?!”

At least now The Joker got your attention: you play it cool but he guesses you’re torn apart by his confession.

Many unfortunate events crammed in lately and hating the man you love made life infinitely more unbearable.

“Why…?” you barely muster the strength to inquire and he sees it as a possibility to mend a few broken pieces; although you can hide your emotions well, J can still read between the lines.

Maybe that’s why he answers with another question:

“Do you realize there are just three Monet paintings in circulation on the black market in the entire world? You admire his work and it took a lot of effort and a substantial fortune to acquire The Water Lily Pond painting. Evelyn Black helped with the transaction, then I had her make some modifications to the original masterpiece.”

You keep staring at The King of Gotham, uncertain about the stuff being tossed your way: is he lying or telling the truth?... In your line of work translating feelings is a huge part of the job; ultimately you had the best mentor to teach you the ropes when you started with the organization: none other than the legendary Baba Yaga. Despite his reputation and to your own amazement, John was one of the few hitmen with integrity and perfectly mastered the aptitude of not being a jerk. Such a rare gem… And blissfully unaware of it himself.

On the opposite end, The Joker is a jerk and flawlessly acquainted with his own “captivating” personality that made you fall in love with him anyway.

Also, doesn’t appear to be deceitful for the moment.

And you despise yourself even more for wanting to believe him.

“What… modifications?...” you throw him a bone and J is definitely not going to pass on the alternative of explaining his actions.

“I wanted to surprise you so I took advantage of Miss Black’s capabilities in the art field; I had her add small images to the authentic canvas: an evolution of you being pregnant, the nine frames culminating with a tenth: the new mother holding our son. Similar to a timeline,” he emphasize and you look intrigued, which might be a positive sign. “Needless to say it was tedious, difficult work, especially because she had to apply special pigments you can’t find at every corner of the street. Apparently you can’t mix old paint with contemporary shades, thus I had to order aged, special colors from Italy, Spain and France. That’s why I went to her place so often: I had to supervise the long process and make sure it turns out astonishing. Then…” and The Joker pauses,”…Kase was gone and I didn’t know what to do with my gift: bring it home or not? Would you have loved it? Would it make you sadder? I continued to drive to Evelyn’s and glare at the stupid painting for hours, undecided on what to do…”

J watches you bite on your cheek, then straightens his shoulders as you utter the words:

“… … … You ruined a genuine Monet?”

Your spouse might be a smooth talker when needed, yet he’s not wasting his versatility on this statement:

“I didn’t ruin it; I made it better!”

Silence from both parties. A good or bad omen? Hard to decipher the riddle with two individuals tangled into a relationship that somehow worked despite countless peculiarities meant to keep them apart.

“I have to talk to Jonathan,” you finally mutter and The Joker steps in front of you.

“Talk to me!”

“Unless you know the exact location of the suitcase full of gold coins he’s been safekeeping for me, I really have to speak to him. Or do you want to hammer the whole basement searching for it?”

Y/N walks out of the bedroom and J lingers inside, evesdropping on the conversation happening downstairs. He can’t understand the chat, but you are probably notifying John about the details your husband left out.

Might as well join the party, therefore The Clown pops up in the living room with a plea impossible to refuse:

“Hey Wick, can I stay here? I don’t care if you say no, I’m not going to leave.”

Your friend crosses his arms on his chest, focusing on the random topic:

“How could I deny such a polite request? Of course you can stay Mister Joker; my house is your house.”

You’re watching the free show unamused; usually it would make you smile…now you lack the depth for such connotations.

“Don’t get smart with me, Wick!” J growls and Jonathan pushes for a tiny, unnecessary quarrel.

“I’m not; although generally speaking, I fancy considering myself a smart guy.”

The Joker opens his mouth and you’re not in the mood for whatever the heck they’re initiating:

“I’m going to pump, then after you dig out the suitcase I’ll take half to the Bowery King,” you announce your plans to them.

“You can do that and rest; I’ll deliver the coins,” John immediately offers. “I can stop by Aurelio’s car shop and ask for his collaboration: he has a lot of associates, doesn’t hurt to get him involved. You have plenty of gold.”

“I have two more suitcases in the Continental’s safe and two more at The Penthouse. It doesn’t matter if it’s all gone as long as I can find my son.”

“I know gold coins are preferred; don’t forget we have a lot of money too,” J reckons with spite.

Is he reminding you or Jonathan?...

*************

Your husband spent the last hour in the garden, talking and texting with a lot of people; needless to mention he’s capitalizing on his network also. Winston disclosed Stonneberg’s contract is still opened, meaning the son of a bitch is out there; you have to scoop him before anybody else does.

“Y/N…” The Joker tiptoes in your quarters. “I thought you were taking a nap,” he huffs when he sees you at the edge of the bed.

You glare at the vial on the nightstand, sharing your idea for a future you wish will come true:

“I didn’t have my medicine in two days; I won’t take it anymore because if we get Kase back… I will nurse him. It all goes in the milk and I want to be able to feed my baby… Do you think his little heart is still beating?...” you sniffle and J is currently debating on a clever response since his mind is blank; one could deduce messing up is encoded in his DNA, but on such a huge scale… well, it gives new interpretations to the term even for him.

The grieving woman seeking reassurance for their loss is trying to make sense of the pointless occurrences that lead to Kase being an innocent victim and The Joker can’t render clarification: he has no clue why he asked her to marry him and why she said yes, it’s not that he’s husband material or a family man. Perhaps Y/N thought he could be… just enough to get by, that’s why she accepted his proposal.

Most women would have cringed at the concept. Most women. Not Y/N.

Most women would have flinched at the notion of having his baby. Most women. Not his wife.

Above all, she trusted J with their son and he treated the three weeks old like a trinket: didn’t drive him home because he had an important meeting, didn’t bother to assign escorting cars nor extra security. The King of Gotham took his child’s safety lightly and it definitely had severe consequences. Too late now to fix past mistakes... but he can attempt.

“You’ll be able to nurse him, OK?” he sits by you and hands over his cell. “Can you enter your phone number in here? Or am I not allowed to have the present digits?”

You’re hesitant and he slides the screen while you hold the gadget.

“Lemme help you,” The Joker sarcastically mumbles. “It should be the first on my list, right where the old number you canceled was.”

You exhale and fulfill his demand out of pure frustration when he squeezes in a second innocent petition.

“Chose my avatar.”

You grunt at his rubbish, scrolling through his folders for a picture anyway; J hopes the largest file will get your attention and that’s the point. How could Y/N miss it?!

Entitled “Baby”, the humongous cluster of pics contains 5,723 items. You open it quite absorbed by its size; what’s more puzzling is the collection depicting Kase’s ultrasounds, hundreds of frames with you being pregnant taken without you knowing: there’s a few when your ankles were so swollen you had to sleep with your feet up on 4 pillows, others with you munching on strange food you craved, more with you in the shower focused on your bump, a decent amount of couple selfies when you were sleeping and J had to immortalize the moment without waking you up and approximately 1,500 images of the newborn.

“You didn’t gross me out when you were pregnant,” The Joker reminds a teary Y/N. “Not sure why you would believe such aberration...” he pulls you on his knees and yanks the phone away, tossing it on the nightstand. “I would also like to underline I didn’t have an affair with Miss Black, alright?”

J lifts your chin up, forcing to look at him.

“Let’s put it this way: why would I fuck around with another woman when I have a wife at home that wants to kill me on a regular basis, hm? Where would the fun be? I mean, she didn’t pull the trigger yet but it’s exciting to hope she might. You know me: I’m a sucker for thrills!”

“Do I?”

“Huh?” J steals a kiss and you frown at his sleekness.

“Know you?”

“Yeah,” the green haired Clown acts composed while in fact his feathers are ruffled. Before you catch onto it he has to ultimately admit: “I’m sorry I didn’t drive the car… I should have…”

The Joker holds in his breath when your arms go around his neck very tight.

“I’m suffocating…” he grumbles. “I can’t tell if you’re trying to hug me or choke me to death,” J keeps on caressing your hair, prepared to block your attack in case you’re actually in killing mode.

This is the excitement he was speaking about: with you, one could never know until it’s a done deal.

“I bumped into Magnus at the Continental,” you give him a bit of space to inhale much needed air and The Joker is surprised at your revelation. “I had no idea about his scheme, otherwise I would have skinned him alive right on the hotel grounds! I wouldn’t have cared about the consequences!”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” J cuts you off and he can tell you’re getting mad; maybe you think he doesn’t give a damn but the reason is simple. “You would’ve been declared excommunicado for murder on neutral ground and I don’t want my wife to be the target of such punishment from the company she so proudly retired from. I need my partner!”

The King of Gotham touches your forehead with his as you whisper:

“I hate you!”

“Mmm, regarding this true love affirmation, I’m gonna need you to take a break from detesting me until we have Kase, then you can despise me full throttle again. Deal?” he extends the palm of his hand and you reluctantly shake it, not realizing you’re reacting to his nonsense. “Is that a smile?” J returns the favor with one of his creepy silver grins.

“No.”

“Liar,” he pecks your lips and can’t explain the weird feeling in his heart when you kiss him back.

*************

Jonathan enters the house and becomes suspicious after a few minutes: too much silence.

Omg! Did you and The Joker engaged into a brawling that ended up badly? Did you end each other?!

John frantically runs to the garage, nervous to see your car and J’s are still parked inside. Shit!

“Y/N?” he shouts, concerned about your fate; The Joker’s… irrelevant. Nobody in the garden, patio is empty also. Downstairs is deserted thus he rushes upstairs to your room. The door is not completely shut and he slowly pushes it, knocking.

“Y/N? Can I come in?”

The first thing he notices are clothes scattered on the floor, then he halts his movement at the sight of Y/N and her husband dozing off on the bed sideways: the naked bodies are covered with a blanket, but he can tell you’re snuggled in J’s arms.

Jonathan steps backwards, guilty of invading his guests’ privacy; he certainly didn’t expect to intrude in such a manner and softly closes the door, grateful it’s not what he feared.

You and The Joker are so worn out the sound of your phones vibrating on the nightstand doesn’t wake you from the deep sleep. Your numerous contacts keep replying back to the text messages, the most important one showing up on his cell: one of the people J reached to is Evelyn Black and the two sentence conversation lights up the screen.

“Let me know if you see Stonnenberg.”

“He’s here.”

Also read: MASTERLIST

You can follow me on Ao3 and Wattpad under the same blog name: DiYunho.

#the joker x reader #the joker fanfiction #the joker imagine #john wick imagine #john wick x reader #the joker jared leto #the joker suicide squad #the joker #joker #joker fanfiction #joker jared leto #mister j #Mistah J #Mr.J #dc #dcu

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kodzukuroken · 4 years

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Seasons change, but people... Do too I guess.|Chapter. 3, Change

Genre: Angst, Slow Burn, Friends to Lovers

Summary: You and Tsukishima had been friends for years but upon the arrival of a very special invitation, your relationship takes a sudden change. Will your long-harbored crush for your best friend finally come into the light? Or will your relationship be altered for good?

Aka, Reader is an artist who is in love with Tsukki, there's angst, there are laughs, there are three established captain relationships! What could a person want?

Pairings: Tsukishima Kei x Reader (Kuroo Tetsuro x Kenma Kozume, Bokuto Koutarou x Akaashi Keiji, Daichi Sawamura x Sugawara Koshi)

Warnings: Drinking, Swearing, Smut

Read on Ao3 | This will update before Tumblr

This is the 4th chapter (including the prologue). I really love writing this story, there are currently 6 chapters out on AO3, so if you’d like to read past this chapter that’s where you can do it! Enjoy!

It took you about a year to fully get back to some kind of normal after everything that had happened. It was slow at first, after that night at Kenma and Kuroo’s they’d given you a ride back to your place but within minutes of being there, you couldn’t stand the sight of it anymore. You’d never realised it before, but Kei was all over that place. His old volleyball sweaters in your closet, photos of the two of you on the fridge and a small plush dinosaur that he’d won you at a carnival in college. Your apartment suddenly felt too big, too empty and after putting all of the things that reminded you of him into boxes, you found yourself not stopping until everything was boxed up. You’d called Kuroo the next day and he’d helped you move everything out, and into your art studio. He seemed concerned at first, the idea of you living in the same place that you worked but the gallery owner and boss didn’t seem to mind as long as you kept it to yourself.

“Otherwise I’ll have all of you starving artists living up there in some kind of commune” he’d said in an annoyed tone that reminded you of Kei.

For the first few months, you were basically a hermit. You spent your time painting and working in the gallery and basically nothing else. If you did have to go out, for groceries or something else you did that as late as possible. You didn’t want to run any risk of accidentally running into Kei again like that night in the summer, or worse run into him and his new girlfriend and she fawned all over him. Luckily, the universe had seemingly given up pushing the two of you together and you managed to get time to heal. Around Christmas time was when inspiration first really struck you again. After everything that had happened and Kei’s discouraging words about your art, you’d found it exceedingly difficult to come up with anything original. You kept up with your commission work and a few other landscape paintings that you knew would sell in the gallery but you could never really seemed to paint anything that meant anything to you. This was until one day in the winter when a friend of yours from the gallery had come to raid your studio for supplies and had found the torn-up canvas with the destroyed painting of you and Kei on it. She’d asked if she could have it, to repair and paint over, but you just couldn’t bring yourself to let it go. You couldn’t understand why at first, you’d managed to put everything else that reminded you of him away why not this too? But as the cogs in your brain began to turn, you realised what you had to do with it.

From then, you found yourself diving into probably the largest project of your life. Several large scale paintings, all some of your best work and all that your boss had deemed “exhibition worthy”. You couldn’t believe it when he’d first said it, you’d always had your work displayed in the gallery, something your boss had been nice enough to do for all the up and coming artists who worked there. However, nobody who worked there had ever even been offered the prospect of an exhibition, those went to more well-known artists the ones who were all the rage on social media or whose work had made it into the best magazines. You didn’t hesitate to agree of course, and before you knew it, almost a year after all the awfulness with Kei you finally felt like you were on a road to a new normal.

“It’s called Change,” you told Kuroo and Kenma one night at dinner. “You guys will be there right? It starts in two weeks.” Kenma nodded furiously, but Kuroo was off somewhere else. It wasn’t until Kenma nudged his husband in the ribs that he even realised you’d been talking to him.

“Huh?” he looked at Kenma who gestured to you.

“(y/n) is asking you to attend the biggest event of her career babe, be present” you giggled lightly.

“Oh sorry (y/n) I guess I was just distracted. We’ll be there, of course, we will, when is it?”

“Two weeks” you repeated “Tetsurõ, are you okay? You’ve been off all night” he laughed, about to undoubtedly come up with some kind of excuse but Kenma nudged his side again, a little harder this time.

“Ow!”

“Just tell her” Kenma shot back.

“Tell me what?” Kuroo was silent for a minute and then decided his husband was right.

“Okay, but promise you won’t be mad?” you rolled your eyes and he continued “I saw Tsukki yesterday.”

“Oh” the sound left your mouth before you could stop it, you hadn’t heard that name in a while.

“I promise (y/n), it’s the first time since everything happened with you guys. I was so mad for what he did to you, but then…”

“Then?” you questioned you hated that you were so intrigued by any of this.

“Well, Bokuto suggested we meet up, just some of the guys from training camp days. I didn’t even think about it at the time but when Bo said it would be at Tsukki’s place I-”

“You were at his place?” god why were you asking? You could already feel the pit forming in your stomach. Kuroo nodded and looked at you with guilty eyes.

“I met her (y/n)” now you were lost for words. Suddenly it felt as though everything you’d done this past year had been for nothing, you still weren’t over it.

“She’s not you,” Kuroo chimed back in “he’s not the same with her as he ever was with you, I can see it. He doesn’t look at her like he did with you, he doesn’t joke with her.” Kuroo paused for a minute and looked around as if he was about to tell some kind of shocking secret.

“(y/n) she’s nice to him, like actually nice. She doesn’t challenge him like you did… he’s bored.”

You shut your eyes tightly trying to push down the bubbling hope in your stomach.

“No,” you said squeezing tighter so that you could see patterns behind your eyelids.

“It’s true!” Kuroo began again but you shook your head.

“Tetsurõ please, don’t do this, I can’t. Not again.”

“Okay, okay,” he said “I’ll drop it” you opened your eyes to see a solemn look on both his and Kenmas faces. Kuroo extended his hand and placed it on yours.

“Are you mad at me?” he asked, eyes doe-esque and wide.

“No, of course not. He was your friend too. I just, I can’t do that again. I was in so much pain after that night.” The two nodded and with that, the subject was dropped. Kuroo went on to ask more questions about your exhibit, evidently trying to distract you from what had just happened. But it was too late, the door that you’d taken so long to force closed in your mind was open again and you were thinking about him.

Two weeks later when your exhibition began you could not have felt more loved. Kuroo and Kenma came the first night, with a huge bouquet of wildflowers and a bottle of champagne. You’d showed them around and felt giddy at the genuine look of pride on their faces. A few nights later Bokuto and Akaashi stopped by, Bokuto was confused by most of your paintings but no less enthusiastic because of it. He even said that he wanted to buy one particular painting because it “looked like the back of Akaashi’s head”. But you told him that you didn’t plan on parting with them any time soon. Your exhibition got more reception than just your friends though, some of the attendees were really big deals in the art world, you’d even ended being interviewed by a local news station. Overall, the exhibition had gone off without a hitch, attendance was consistent and there were no huge disasters. That was until the last night of your show.

There was only about an hour left until the gallery closed, most people had come and gone for the day. The only people who were left besides yourself were your boss and a few of your coworkers. They’d brought out a bottle of champagne and a few glasses and were toasting in your honour.

“To (y/n)!” your boss said brightly and blush rose in your cheeks as they all cheered. You were half-way through thanking them all for their help when you’d noticed you were no longer alone. You caught a glance of his figure out of the corner your eye first and it wasn’t until you’d turned that your drink caught in your throat and you realized who it was. Standing there, in the middle of the gallery staring up at your paintings was Kei. The pit from two weeks ago began to reappear in your stomach and you began to feel your heart pounding in your ears. It wasn’t until your co-worker saw who you were looking at that you managed to snap out of it.

“Who’s the tall glass of water in the jacket?” he’d asked, sipping his drink. You hadn’t noticed at first, but Kei was wearing a stylish dark blue jacket with a colour coordinated turtleneck underneath, his glasses were new too. Your stomach churned as you scanned his new look, it wasn’t that he looked bad, god no, quite the opposite. It was that he looked incredible, the clothes fit him perfectly but you’d known that they weren’t ones he’d chosen for himself. All things considered, Kei had always had a pretty good sense of style for someone who didn’t care about fashion, but he’d never tried at it, it was just what he wore. This had thought put into it, this was her handy work.

“Uh, he’s an old friend” you finally replied after what felt like minutes. You held out your glass and he took it from you smiling and turned back to the group.

Your legs were weak as you walked and it wasn’t because of the heeled boots you were wearing. However, their clack on the hardwood floor had alerted Kei of your presence and now he was staring right at you.

“Hey,” you said, surprised at how natural your voice managed to sound given the circumstances. He looked back up at your work,

“Hi.” you were both quiet before he spoke again “I saw a flyer for the show, and before I knew it” he trailed off, the pit in your stomach began to bubble with hope again. You both stood in silence for a while staring at your feet and he at your painting before you couldn’t stand it any more.

“There’s an order yano” you gestured around the room “to all of this.” He met your eyes for the first time that night, god you’d missed his eyes. “Want me to show you?” and in his very Kei way, he answered with silence.

You led him to the painting closest to the door, it was one of the smaller ones in the collection, but still above your average size of painting. It was an abstract painting of a pair of broken glasses, painted perfectly from memory of one of your first times hanging out with Kei. You stood there for a moment, letting him stare and the work, he cocked his head to the side and a little and then looked at you expectantly. You led him to the next one.

The second painting was the view out of a window, looking out onto your old college campus in the fall. The painting was filled with oranges and reds, you liked this one a lot, it almost looked like flames. It was the view from Kei’s dorm room window, the same one you’d sat at years ago.

You led him around a few more paintings, all different scenes from your lives together. One depicted the carnival you’d attended together in your first year of college, another the sunset you’d watched together on the day you’d both graduated. They were all painted from memory, every one of them had sat like postcards in your brain, you’d had to get them out.

Finally, you led him to the end of the room, where the final two paintings stood side by side. The penultimate painting was the one he’d been staring at when you’d noticed his presence. It was a self-portrait. Your abstract figure sat, hunched over on an ornate spiral staircase. Your face was hidden, but the dress was the exact same colour as the one you wore on the night you’d kissed Kei.

The final painting was by far the largest in the set, it was one that had become so familiar to you that it had seemed the show was incomplete without it. There, towering above the two of you, was the painting you’d shown Kei on the night you’d fought. The red paint was still there, splattered over the pair of your faces, but the once shredded canvas had been repaired. You’d spent hours in your studio sewing the canvas back together, and the thick black thread that you’d used to do so stuck out against the bright paint.

You were both silent for a while longer, and when you were sure that he’d had enough to process you spoke again.

“I know this kind of stuff isn’t usually your thing.”

“No, but I think I got it.” There was something so familiar about the way he’d said it, that honesty mixed with smug that you hadn’t heard in so long. You’d really missed it.

“Kei I-” you began, but you were cut off by your boss's hand on your shoulder.

“I’m sorry to interrupt (y/n) but we should really close up.” Fuck.

“I guess I should go,” he said, but you couldn’t reply. You wanted so badly to protest but you just couldn’t get the words out. He turned to you once more before leaving.

“Goodbye (y/n)” and with that, he disappeared out into the night.

When Kei got back to his apartment late that night his head was reeling. He couldn’t believe what he’d done. He’d been standing in the grocery store what felt like forever ago now and had seen the flyer for your show in the window. Without even thinking, he’d dropped his groceries and had walked the few short blocks over to your gallery. He wasn’t shocked to see you there, he’d kind of expected it really but what he didn’t expect was how fucking good you’d look. The last time he’d seen you you’d looked so... broken. Your hair had been a mess and you’d looked completely exhausted, he had still found you endlessly attractive but it was more the kind in which all he wanted to do was take care of you but he’d done the exact opposite of that. But tonight you looked so good that he could barely keep himself breathing. The way your tight black clothes had hugged you so perfectly and the small lift that your shoes had given you just enough height to bring you to eye level with him, you were literally breathtaking. And the way you’d spoken with such ease when you’d seen him as if nothing he had done had ever affected you, as if you were completely over everything he’d done to you just over a year ago.

Your work had been incredible too, it was all so beautiful he could see your thought process in every single brush stroke on the canvas. It made his heart swell in a way art never had. He was even more impressed in the way you’d managed to remember so many aspects of your relationship. The exact shade of black metal of his glasses from all those years ago and that small crack in the window of his dorm room from college. You’d remembered it all so well and it was right there on the canvas. He’d felt as though he was being transported back to all the best moments of his life, all the moments with you. And when you finally led him over to the final painting in your exhibit, his heart had shattered all over again. It was the painting you’d shown him that night, even with all the red paint and damage he could have recognised it anywhere. He thought back to the first time he’d seen it, it was so beautiful, so full of colour and true emotion but he couldn’t enjoy it. He’d felt guilty, guilty for the way he’d treated you that night at the wedding, guilty for finding someone else when he’d been trying all the time to tell you how he really felt. But rather than apologize rather than try to fix things he’d ran, your words that night had hurt him so badly but it wasn’t because they were inaccurate. You’d been right, he’d known that even then, he was running from you, from something he’d wanted for so long but fear had set in and got the better of him. Fear of hurting you, the fear of things not working and ruining seven years of friendship. So instead he decided to do exactly what he’d feared doing in the first place. God, he was a fucking idiot.

It wasn’t until the light in the hallway flipped on that Kei noticed how long he’d been standing in the darkness of his apartment.

“Tsukki?” he looked towards the source. It was his girlfriend standing there, arms crossed and a little blurry-eyed, he’d obviously woken her.

“Where did you go? You’ve been out for hours” she asked, she was in her pyjamas. They were matching, pink and silky. You had never worn matching pyjamas, you’d usually just worn whatever old Karasuno sweatshirt you’d stolen from him and shorts. His chest tightened at the memory.

“ Kei? ” she asked again, a little more annoyed this time.

“Somethingcameupatwork” he muttered quickly and tried to push past her into the bedroom but she put a hand on his arm to stop him.

“Work? You’ve used that excuse three times this week Tsukki!” he didn’t answer her, just stood there staring into her eyes. Your eyes were so bright compared to hers, she always seemed to look annoyed even when she was completely content, Kei missed your eyes.

“You’re seriously not going to tell me where you’ve been?” she asked but he just shrugged. He knew he should be better to her, she was a very nice girl but after seeing you tonight it didn’t feel worth it to pretend anymore.

“Fine.” she spat. “I’m done Tsukki, done.” He didn’t try to protest, he just leant against the wall in the hallway until she had changed out of her pyjamas back into whatever clothes she’d arrived in. Then once she’d gathered her things, he watched her walk out the door without another word. He knew what he’d done was shitty, but he couldn’t really care about that right now. He would apologise tomorrow.

He sat down on the couch and pulled out his phone, he was half-praying that you might have texted him, but then again who knew if you even still had his number in your phone? He pulled up Instagram and typed in your username, he wasn’t much for social media so he hadn’t really checked your profile since the two of you stopped talking. There was only one post he recognised to be something he hadn’t seen, he guessed you might have secluded yourself from social media in order to produce the kind of work he’d seen tonight. There was no way you’d had any distractions. He clicked on the new post, it was a video of you being interviewed by a local news channel and it was captioned “Hey look! I was the news!” with a bunch of those stupid emoticons you loved. He turned up the sound on his phone and listened to you speak.

“Someone once asked me what I did, I was so young at the time, but even then I’d known what to say.” you paused for a minute and he noticed your eyes wander down to your feet just like they had since you were young. “I’d told them I was an artist, that I liked to make things. And that’s what I do, any time that my soul is at odds with reality I take that and make something from it. And that's what this project is, it’s the process of grieving… and moving on.” Kei swore he could have seen the smallest amount of tears raise in your eyes, but the camera wasn’t close enough to see. He listened to the video a few more times, you were talking about him. He was the one who has asked you that all those years ago in the kitchen of that party. He couldn’t believe you still thought about that day when the two of you had first met. Of course, he did too from time to time, but he’d never thought that that conversation had ever had any kind of effect on you. He was so glad that he was wrong.

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6stronghands · 5 years

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Goodreads interview with Seanan McGuire

Author Seanan McGuire is the busiest person you know, even if you don't know her yet. She's that busy. McGuire has 33 novel-length works currently listed on her bibliography page, and that's not counting her pseudonymous acquaintance, Mira Grant. Scroll down and you'll find short fiction, essays, comics, nonfiction, and poetry. The crazy part? She didn't turn to full-time writing until about three years ago. Along the way, McGuire has won several marquee book prizes, including Hugo and Nebula awards for speculative fiction. Her series of fantasy novellas Wayward Children was recently picked up by the TV network Syfy for development. McGuire's brain is clearly a restless explorer, and her ambitious new novel, Middlegame, maps out another enormous chunk of notional real estate. In the new book, a pair of separated twins named Roger and Dodger endeavor to solve a series of increasingly sinister mysteries. Why were they separated? Why are they being hunted? Why are they developing world-breaking powers? And perhaps most importantly—why did they get such ridiculous names? The brother-and-sister team find themselves squaring off against a cabal of eldritch predators who have cracked the ancient code of alchemy, the missing link between science and magic. Speaking from her home outside Seattle, McGuire talked with Goodreads contributor Glenn McDonald about the new book, the weird science of alchemy, and the curious case of the prescription typewriter… Your bibliography is really astonishing. Are you just writing all the time? Seanan McGuire: Well, I'm not writing at the moment because I'm talking to you. But yeah, I was writing right up to the point where my phone rang. That's pretty much my life, because I am a workaholic and I enjoy what I do. GR: When did you make the leap into full-time writing? SM: I made the transition around January 2016, I think. The best advice I ever received from anyone, about professional writing, was from Todd McCaffrey. He said: Don't quit your day job until you're reasonably sure you can pay your bills off of your royalties. My last job was for a nonprofit, and I was basically sick all the time because I was writing all these books and I was still working a full-time day job. My friends never saw me. Like, never. Then the ACA happened, the Affordable Care Act. I don't think people realize what a difference that made, for all of us that work in the creative fields, to be able to get affordable insurance. I kept my day job for a few years after I strictly had to, just because I was terrified of dying under a bridge. The attacks on the ACA that are happening now are terrifying. Genuinely terrifying. Especially if they take away the protection for preexisting conditions. GR: Were you into writing as a little kid?

I was. I did not figure out that writing was an option until I was about three. I started reading before I was talking, really. Then I started getting migraines because I was trying to write, but I didn't have the physical coordination to actually write at the speed that I could think. So the doctor prescribed a typewriter. Really. My mom went to a yard sale and got me this gigantic thing. It weighed more than I did. I started writing stories. At the beginning, they were all very factual. I would write stories about going to look for my cat. A lot of my earliest work was what we would classify as fan fiction now. There were a lot of adventures with My Little Ponies. The thing about being a genius when you're a kid is that you grow out of it. I was perfectly average by the time I hit school. But there was that brief, frustrating time when I was so far ahead of where they wanted me to be that they just didn't know what to do with me. I would write until 3 a.m. on my typewriter, which sounded like gunfire. GR: There seems to be some of that experience in the new book, with the child prodigies Roger and Dodger. Their relationship is fascinating; it's a sibling thing but also this deeper connection that suggests they're resonating on the cosmic level. SM: I love that this is my best-reviewed book so far and it's about characters with intentionally terrible names. It's a delight to have people have to try to talk seriously about the relationship between Roger and Dodger. It's terrible, and it makes me so happy. Roger and Dodger really are soul mates because they are functionally the same person. They're one person split into two to embody the Ethos [the alchemy formulation sought after in the story]. I don't think that's a huge spoiler; that's basically the premise of the book. We know that, but they don't for a good part of the story. Locking down their relationship, a lot of that was looking at my own relationships with my siblings and the places where it's good or weird or awkward. GR: For readers who might not be familiar, what do we mean when we talk about alchemy? SM: Alchemy is sort of like magical chemistry. It's this idea that you can transform parts of the world into other parts of the world. You just have to figure out the right combination of elements. The classical example is lead into gold. But alchemists also believed that there were spirits and such that could be called upon to help with these processes. It has some of what we might call sorcerous ideas. They were trying to find the magical formulae for these things, like the panacea, which is the cure for everything. Or the alkahest, which is the universal destroyer, a fluid that could dissolve literally anything. Then there's the Philosopher's Stone, which was said to give eternal life. Harry Potter fans are probably familiar with alchemy, more than previous generations, because of the character Flamel, who was an actual and quite famous real-world alchemist. GR: Did you research the actual history of alchemy?

Yes, this was the first time I really jumped into it. I did a lot of research, and research makes me so happy. I hunted down every book I could find on alchemy; they're all downstairs in the library now. Alchemy was a real thing, even if it never worked, even if they never turned lead into gold with these processes. Really smart people spent a really long time trying hard to make these things happen. I wanted to make sure what I was trying to do would fit into at least one school of alchemical thought—and there were many, many schools of thought. Alchemy sounds a little ridiculous now, but there was a time when it was a commonly accepted belief. GR: In the book you have a great villainous force in the Alchemical Congress, who are modern practitioners of the ancient art. They reminded me of historical groups that purported to be keepers of secret knowledge, like the Masons. SM: Right, or like the Order of the Golden Dawn. I never found a specific historical analog to that in alchemy, but maybe that's because they never got it to work. My Alchemical Congress is a group of people who can actually say that alchemy works. They're able to do all kinds of ethically negotiable things. With that kind of power, you're absolutely going to have a group that locks it down so it stays in what these people consider the right hands. GR: The cover image of the book depicts a delightfully creepy magical item known as the Hand of Glory, which also has a historical basis. Do you recall when you first came across that? SM: I feel like I've always known. I don't remember where I first read about that. I studied folklore in college, and the Hand of Glory was very common in certain parts of Europe. It's amazing. Everyone was chopping hands off for a while there. GR: When did you actually start writing Middlegame? SM: Middlegame is kind of unique. I'd been thinking about it for ten years, but it took me a while to develop the technical skill to tell the story and have it make sense to people who don't live inside my head. My brother must have heard me explain this story 90 times before I even sat down to write it. At this point in my career, I have the enviable problem that, for the most part, I don't get to just sit down and decide that I'm going to write. Everything has been pre-sold. I'm working off contracts until 2023. So I know exactly what I'm going to be writing every day when I get out of bed. GR: Don't you ever just get burned out? SM: Well, I think I'm dealing with ten years of systemic burnout because I'm exhausted all the time. But if you mean: Do I ever get to the point that I can't write? Thankfully, no. I think everybody's wired differently that way. So much of my storage space is devoted to people who don't exist. There's a certain concern that if I leave them alone, those parts of my brain will go offline. GR: There are fictional lives at stake! SM: There are! You don't depend on me for your persistence of existence. If I forget about you, you'll still be fine. GR: Your series Wayward Children was just picked up for development with the Syfy channel. Is there anything you can disclose about that? SM: No, not really. For the most part, for myself and other creators, we can't disclose anything because they don't want to let us know what's happening. We have family members that are going to ask, and they don't want us to be the leaks and endanger the production, so we're frequently not told things. I've basically just sold them my canvas, because I'm a wee baby author from the perspective of Hollywood. I have no properties under my belt, I have no track record. There's not a lot of bargaining power on my side of the table. But I trust the people that are involved in this project. And even if I didn't, honestly, television changes everything. The worst show that absolutely butchers my concepts—which is not a thing I'm expecting with this team at all—but the worst show in the world is going to be seen by more people than have read the first book. So that bumps my book sales, almost guaranteed. That sounds very mercenary, I'm sure, but that's just the math of it. Jim Butcher, Charlaine Harris, even Neil Gaiman—they weren't household names until they got something on TV. My mother raised three daughters on welfare, and she lives with me. I'm basically her sole support. I worry fairly regularly about what would happen if I get hit by a bus and can't write anymore. But what happens with a successful TV show—or even a failed TV show—is that my mom lives off my royalties for the rest of her life. GR: This is a question we've been polling authors on: When you read for pleasure, do you read one book at a time or do you have several going at once? Some people say it's insane to read multiple books at the same time, but I usually have two or three going. SM: Well, I'm currently reading six. GR: Is there anything else you'd like to highlight or discuss about the new book? SM: Middlegame is currently a standalone, but there are two follow-ups I'd really like to write, so please buy Middlegame from your local bookstore so that my publisher will let me continue!

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thotyssey · 6 years

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On Point With: Lacy Stoner

A renown artist and painter who’s used the human body as his primary canvas for several years now--and has been mixing it up with drag queens and performers of all sorts for just as long--Ish Peralta has only started performing in drag himself just recently. Now the bitch already has a pageant crown, and several gaggable gigs under their belt! Thotyssey takes a trip with the one and only Lacy Stoner.

Thotyssey: Lacy, hello! Happy Halloween Week! How did Saturday night’s Albatross show with Avant Garbage and Bella Noche go?

Lacy Stoner: The show last night was absolutely amazing! We had a great audience, most of which were dressed in costumes!

You, Bella and Avant are, like, a little drag coven of your own.

Yeah! That’s a great way to put it. We all live together in a fun little drag den.

You’ve been drag-adjacent for a while now... would you have ever suspected, like, two years ago that you’d soon be a queen yourself?

It’s interesting... doing drag is something I often considered doing, as far as creating a drag name. But if I’m perfectly honest, I’m not sure I thought I’d actually go through with bringing Lacy to fruition. At least, not to the level that I have over the last few months. When I originally fantasized about it, the idea was more of getting into drag every once in a while, to go out and have fun at events. But thanks to the amazing people around me--and my two drag roommates--Lacy had become a full-fledged drag queen who performs quite often.

And now look how far you’ve come! Where are you from originally?

I was born in the Dominican Republic, and lived there until I was 10 years old... at which time I moved to South Florida, before finally ending up here in NYC.

And you’ve always been an artist? Yes, art had always been a part of my life. At a young age, my mother always encouraged art be a part of my daily regimen. I learned to play the piano when I was 7 years-old, and then played the saxophone for 6 years. I also have a background in musical theater. But my specialty is painting, specifically body painting.

That’s what you’ve become known for... you paint people to look like these fantastic beings, or to blend completely into their background... how and when did that become your Thing?

That was a interesting adventure. After graduating high school and deciding that college was not the correct route for me, I started a career as a makeup artist. I was specializing in clean beauty makeup and specially effects for film and television. I did that for a few years, and had a chance to work on some very fun projects and meet some really amazing artists within the field.

One day, another artist invited me to join them for a body paint convention, just as a spectator. It was a really interesting setup; the first half of the day was all little classes you could take on different styles of painting, and during the evening they opened up a giant ballroom floor and allowed painters and models to just paint and basically have a party. I fell in love, after seeing the amazing things that these artists could do with just some paint and a brush on a human body. There was just no way I could walk away from that and not try it myself. I’ve since switched over my specialty within the makeup profession to body painting, and I’m happier for it.

It’s an amazing body of work (pun unintended) that you’ve put out there!

Thank you very much, they’re all really a labor of love.

But is there any one body paint job you’ve done that you’re the most proud of?

It’s honestly so hard to pick just one. What if I picked two to tell you about?

Go for it!

The first would have to be a body paint I did for a charity that had a large focus on organ donation and raising awareness around it. I was asked to create two body paints to be recorded and then turned into a video PSA. I painted two models’ backs in such a way that when they came together they became a set of lungs, and on their other side the rest of my team painted all the organs that can be donated wrapped up like presents. It was a really amazing and emotional project, as I spent the entire time talking to the models and the president of the charity about how organ donation had impacted their lives, and how they want to make a difference for others.

My second proudest paint would have to be a paint job I did for the Sotheby’s Auction House. They were holding an event in which they were auctioning off the famous playwright Edward Albee’s entire art collection. They brought me in to paint two models to look like lizard people, which happen to be characters from one of his plays The Seascape. Once they were painted, they were placed within a little sand and rock set piece and their job was to silently imitate the guests as they walked by. It was truly an amazing experience to watch hundreds of people interact with my work, and really showed me a whole new way to utilize body paint and how to present it to a much different crowd than I’d grown accustomed to.

If a nude figure is covered in body paint, are they still nude?

That’s a fantastic question! I guess it would depend on how much of the body is covered. Now that being said, something many people who have been fully body painted from head to toe report is that once the paint goes on and they see it, they don’t feel nearly as naked as they know they are. So I guess it’s all in the mind.

You painted the actors backstage for Broadway’s The Lion King for a stint.

That was probably one of the craziest projects I ever did--crazy in a good way. A show of that caliber has hundreds of people who all have to work together like a well-oiled machine to ensure that everything goes of flawlessly.

I think my biggest takeaway from that experience was how to work quickly and efficiently... because if Rafiki wasn’t out of my chair and ready to start the show... that was not just an issue for me, but would create a problem for every single cast and crew member. And you know what they say: the show must go on! Truly one of the most amazing and humbling experiences I’ve had in my career so far.

And you were a star attraction during the last huge season of Lady Liberty at the Ace Hotel (and several of that competition's subsequent one-off events). A body paint from you was part of the winner’s package, and you were there each week painting a model to help promote yourself and the finale. Is that where you wound up meeting a lot of the queens that would ultimately be your sisters?

Through Lady Liberty, I was able to make lots of new friends with performers and people who stretch across the large spectrum of NYC’s nightlife. Through doing the show, I definitely gained quite a few friends who I now call sisters.

But in all honesty, the performers I'm closest to and that I truly consider family are some of the first people I ever met when I first moved to NYC about five years ago. And what’s even more interesting is that I met all of them on the same night, thanks to a drag queen who had found me and hired me to body paint for an event.

So you could say that my career as a body painter in NYC has always been heavily intertwined with the drag community, and Lady Liberty helped solidify and foster these friendships as well as helped create many more.

What was your first appearance in drag?

My first appearance as Lacy Stoner was for my sister Bella Noche’s birthday show at Rockbar. She had me come in and do a number as a special guest.

And how would you describe Lacy as a queen?

It’s funny you ask that question, because it’s a question I’m currently asking myself. I consider Lacy to be genderqueer, and technically would use the pronouns “they / them,” but I’ll honestly answer to any pronouns and don’t take offense to people using any of them when receding to Lacy.

But I guess the best way I can describe Lacy at this time is a drag performer. I’m still exploring who and what Lacy is, and what they could be. As Lacy, I’ve explored lip syncing and burlesque, and I’m looking to find other ways to set myself apart and do different types of performances.

You often color your beard and hair for drag looks... is that a messy process?

Funny enough, coloring the beard is the easiest and least messy part of my entire makeup process. My beard color is one part of my makeup I never have to worry about transferring or getting messed up. While my face could be a sweaty mess and I may have lost an eyebrow--which can happen if you’re doing a long show without breaks--my beard and mustache always stay intact.

Werk that beard! Are you thinking of entering a pageant anytime soon?

So, I’ve already competed in a pageant and won. I recently competed in the one day pageant that was a part of the Bodega Ball, which is a two day punk festival in Brooklyn. I am your current reigning Miss Bodega.

Congratulations!

Thank you! And I am in talks with a couple upcoming pageants about possibly competing. But to be honest, competing isn’t something that totally excites me. The only part about pageants that excites me is the opportunity to take on a theme or challenge and using it as a way to push yourself and grow as a performer.

I just saw you in the audience of the Miss Rockbar pageant finale this past Tuesday. Nicole Onoscopi was crowned, but it was a tight race and all the queens brought it.

That was such a great night, filled with fabulous performances.�� And we’ll be seeing you back at Rockbar this Tuesday, hosting “Mischief Night,” aka Halloween Eve! What do you have in store for us?

I’ll a few fun, spooky numbers for you to enjoy. Well also have a thriller dance-off for a chance to win some prizes, and a costume contest. At 11pm, there will also be an open stage where any performers new or experienced can come in and do a number. I already have a few people lined up to perform on that open set--amongst them will be a bearded queen from Australia, and some burlesque performers. Let’s not forget we will have my amazing brother DJ JCLEF spinning tunes all night, and making me and all other performers sounds fantastic. You’ll have to come by and see what else we have in store!

Great! Anything else to plug or report?

You can also find me at Bizarre Bar in Brooklyn this Wednesday the 31st for Zalika Parsons’ Legendary Show...

...as well as hosting a private screening of Disney’s The Nutcracker and the Four Realms On November 1st along side my sisters Bella Noche, Avant Garbage and Gloria Swansong. This is an invite only event, but if anyone is interested they can reach out to me or any of the other three hosts for a an invitation as long as space is available. The tickets are free for anyone who wants to attend, as long as there’s still space.

Amazing events all around! Final question: what is a fun Ish / Lacy trivia fact that the world needs to know?

Contrary to what Lacy’s name might suggest, they’re more of an indica strain, than an sativa... LOL!

Higher and higher! Thank you, Lacy!

Check Thotyssey’s calendar for Lacy Stoner’s upcoming gigs, and follow Lacy on Facebook, Instagram (Lacy or Ish Peralta) and Twitter, plus check out Ish Peralta’s makeup artist website.

On Point Archives

#onpointwith #lacystner #ishperalta

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awakeandalive2012 · 3 years

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The Long Overdue Wedding Post

**This post is LONG overdue so apologies on that front**

*Also, it’s going to be a little long, so grab a snack and enjoy*

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Before I begin, I want to first reach out to every single person who liked and commented on our photos, sent a message via any social media platform, sent a text, called, emailed, and spoke with Caleb or I directly, and/or helped with any aspect fo the wedding at all. For all of you, THANK YOU. We could not have asked for an amazing support system to help with with our May 2021 wedding. We sincerely appreciated all of your gifts (if you gave any) and your kind words of congrats and well wishes. So again, from the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU. We feel so loved and are truly touched by each and every one of you. No amount of words can adequately communicate how I am so grateful to have you all in my life.

Now, since it's been a few months since the nuptials, even though I reflected some in my last blog post, I wanted to take the time and focus one blog post about the wedding specifically. This post will focus on the proposal, the planning of every single aspect and the day itself. I know that some of my friends on here recently engaged, so I wanted to give them some advice that could potentially help them down the road. This could also be a good reflective piece for those that have recently tied the knots themselves. Every wedding is different, but I wanted to walk you through what my planning process was like.

Now without further ado, let's teleport back through time.

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July 2020 - The proposal. This is a time for celebration. Aside from the wedding, this should be an exciting for the couple. Many people choose to throw an engagement party as a way to introduce yourself as an engaged couple. We did not have one of these, we opted for a more private dinner amongst family instead. As many of you already know, Caleb and I got engaged on July 22nd, 2020. This was on the same week as my sister’s wedding and during our annual family beach trip. It was such a sweet and memorable moment of our lives. Shortly after we got back from our trip, I traded in my makeshift ribbon ring for a beautiful silver one. That was our way of celebrating our new status as an engaged couple.

Biggest tip: Enjoy the moment. This is only the beginning for you and your future partnership.

August 2020: This was when I got right down to planning and the nitty gritty. Discussing what you want for your wedding between you and your fiancé is an essential first step in planning a wedding. You want to be on the same page, after all it’s BOTH of your days, and it’s not one sided. There were several points that we wanted to take care of right off the bat: who was invited, if there would be a theme or not, basic necessities/vendors to have or cut, etc... In the initial planning phase, you both want to figure out what to keep and what to cut from the wedding in concerns with your budget. Right from the start, we figured out ways to minimize costs, thus we decided not to get a DJ and opt for Spotify playlists instead (a great money saver for sure). Pinterest was my best friend throughout the whole process in concerns with the vision of our wedding, as well as wedding looks for myself and my bridal party.

Biggest tip: Organization is KEY. I used both a physical file folder and Microsoft OneNote to keep track of all of my wedding planning. Zola, a wedding planning website, was also a super handy tool that I used. You can do everything; from checklists and guest counts, to seating tables, website and registry management, and so much more. I used Zola and TheKnot extensively in the wedding planning process, which saved me so much stress. You will most likely be multitasking, especially if you are balancing wedding planning with working. Organization will save you time and stress at the end of the day, so it’s Important to be organized from the get go.

September 2020: This was the month when I got the ball rolling on several wedding related tasks. One of the things I wanted to do was involve my bridal party as much as possible and shower them with so much love and affection. After all, they were going to share this special day with me. I sent these adorable bridal party packages to each of them. I also began research engagement photographers during this time. It was important to me to capture photos of us as a couple. These photos would also be used for our wedding invitations as well.

Biggest tip: Reach out to vendors ASAP. Do your research and make inquiries for any company that sparks your interest. They get booked especially quickly, particularly around spring and summer weddings. Some of the important requirements that helped narrow down my vendor selections included budget, services provided, available for our wedding date, work/samples of past projects, and reviews from previous customers. Even in today’s modern computer age, social media prescience is also another factor to consider, especially if you want to see their previous work. Other details would depend on the specific vendor but it’s important to look at these aspects and see if they line up with your vision for the big day.

October 2020: This was a big month for us as a couple! We booked our venue, and we got a lot of our vendors finalized/booked too! It's better to book the venue sooner rather than later, because like the vendors, venues get booked up, especially if they are popular in the wedding community. This was the date when I officially booked our venue; we decided to rent a lake house for our big day. It was such a huge weight lifted off my shoulders because without a venue, a wedding can't happen. In my particular case, I paid half the deposit this month and then paid the second half a month before the wedding. You can pay it up front (super pricy but it is all taken care of in one swoop). The lake house was significant to us as a couple. We also finalized and booked the caterer and HMU (hair and makeup) for the big day. These two caterers are heavy hitters; you cannot have a wedding without food and you sure want to look amazing on the big day.

Biggest tip: Pay off as much as you are able to for your vendors; ideally, the more earlier on, the better. Depending on your budget, balancing it out with your every day expenses can be a challenge. Stick to your budget in order to stay afloat financially. There will be deposits for most, if not all the vendors you decide to book. Be sure to include those additional fees, tips, and deposit payments in your budget.

November 2020: Around this time, we were finalizing all of our vendors and booking them for the wedding date. We also began going into more detail with each vendor. For the photographer/videographer, I sent an ideal shot list for them to work with for the wedding. We even had time to do our engagement photos! They turned out so lovely and the entire experience on the shoot was memorable for all involved.

Biggest tip: Be in constant communication with everyone involved in the wedding. I was talking with everyone involved and tracking every step of the way throughout the process. You do not want any mix ups or wrong information being given.

December 2020: Holiday season is the hardest time to plan details for the wedding because money will be tight and family gatherings are the #1 priority. By this time, I was in holiday mode, so not a lot of remaining details got finalized until the new year. The only thing I remember accomplishing in concerns with wedding planning was making our website and registries go live. We used Wayfair, Zola, TheKnot and Amazon for our wedding registries. They were super easy to set up and manage our gifts and RSVPs. The engagement photos we took earlier were incorporated beautifully into our website and fit our wedding theme beautifully.

Biggest tip: Remember to take breaks and enjoy life. Wedding planning is stressful but it should be something enjoyable. I sometimes got sucked into the details only to get carried away and whisk my time away. Granted I only got one or two small things done, but do not let that get to you. You have accomplished a lot at this point (the hallway mark) Good for you!!!

January 2021: This was around the time that I went dress shopping. This is the day (or multiple days if you are going to more than one store) in every girl's life that she dreams of. I walked into the store with somewhat of a concrete idea as to the style of dress that I wanted. The bridal shop I went to was very accommodating to all of my concerns and style choices. They were very supportive and took note of my concerns when I brought them up. I also got to share the day with my mom and my sister (via Skype). I tried on six dresses in total before I found my one (on the last dress actually). They were able to take the time and consult on each dress, where they would be able to make alterations, what worked and what didn’t, etc). It was an enjoyable experience and one I will not forget. We also sent out our save the dates. To save on costs, I noticed a lot of couples were sending electronic save the dates. I simply sent emails (also since our guest list was so limited) with a template I crafted from Canva (a design platform - free to use!)

Biggest tip: Take your time with picking the dress. Choosing your wedding dress is a big decision for a bride to make. Whether you find the one on your first store visit or your 10th, it’s a big investment. You will be wearing this dress for the full day. You will most likely be saving the dress afterwards to cherish forever. Choose the dress that makes you feel your best.

February 2021: One thing that couples forget to include with wedding planning is the legal aspect of the wedding. Requesting marriage license and finding officiants for the ceremony are two essential services that make a wedding complete. Depending on the state that you are wanting to get married in, there are certain steps and fees to take in order to get a license in a timely manner. Be sure to do your own research in order to dot all of the legal “I”s and cross all the “T”s . You can also research officiants in your nearby area which fits your preferences and price range. This was when I managed to purchase the majority of the items that were incorporated into the wedding ceremony/reception. A couple of my favorite items that I purchased via Etsy were our ketubah (wedding contract in a Jewish wedding ceremony) and our cake topper.

Biggest tip: Shopping online has changed the game in concerns with the wedding world. Especially when you want a specific item to round out the wedding decorations. Sites like Etsy, Amazon and Oriental Trading are great jumping off points for purchasing gift items, decorations and accessories for the wedding. I got the majority of my items from Etsy and Amazon, and they really completed the wedding’s look. In person shopping experiences like Michael’s, Walmart and other big name stores, can be great for those who like DIYs.

March 2021: Another big month for wedding planning! The big item for this month was sending out invitations. Because of the COVID pandemic at the time, we had to severely limit the amount of people invited. The look of the invitations mirrored our website and it included all of the information for our ceremony/reception. We also added the food options for the wedding (previously confirmed from our caterer). This was also the month where I went and dd my bridal trial. The trial is basically a preview form your HMU team for the big day. Here, you can see what works with your look and what needs to be fixed for the big day. I got my hair done first and then my makeup second. With the whole look done beforehand, you can see what the final look will be. This is really beneficial for brides that are undeceive. Our final accomplishment this month was booking the final vendors (the florist and cake) and sending a wedding day timeline to all vendors. It’s important here to track all the times as precisely as possible. Most vendors pay per hour (pre negotiated in contracts) so it’s important to have a schedule which they and your party will follow to keep everything orderly.

Biggest tip: For invitations, sending those out ASAP is important. That way, your guests can have an appropriate amount of time to respond. Also, this would be a good place to put meal selections on your invitations, that way, your guests can tell you what they want for the wedding. Knocking out two birds with one stone! Finally, triple check and confirm details (date, time, place, dress code, etc) that should be included on the invitation. More than likely, you will want to save a copy of your invitation to scrapbook for later. You do not want to be plagued by a small typo on your otherwise beautiful invitations.

April 2021: With one month out from the wedding, we were mostly focusing on tying up any loose ends and paying those remaining invoices. During this time we also sent out the finalize guest lists to our vendors, and ordered cakes (we used the same place for rehearsal dinner and wedding cake). We also sent rehearsal dinner invite, in a similar email format that we sent the save the dates. This would also be the time to inform all parties of the wedding day (or for us wedding weekend) schedule. Give your guests the information for the venue/parking information for all the events, and the timeline for the day. On your end, be sure to finalize all preparations, gifts, decorations, dress alterations for you and your bridal party, and any other item on your check list.

Biggest tip: Deal with any outstanding items while they are fresh on the brain. You do not want to run into any issues with the wedding being a month away.

May 2021: Wedding month!!! It's the big month! This is when we finalized every single detail. Last minute shopping trips, last minute checking over every single item, food, guest. All bills paid and finalized. No stone left unturned. But what good is this month full of celebrating when you are spending all your time finalizing your plans? Take some time too and CELEBRATE! We were fortunate enough to celebrate in big and small ways. I got the chance to pamper myself and my wedding party before the big day and felt so ready by the time the big weekend came. As soon as I finished the final detail (literally the day before the wedding). It was chaos right before, but with my amazing support system (my bridal party, family and of course my now husband), everything went smoothly.

Biggest tip: Enjoy every second of your wedding day!

*I might do a Day Of Blog later on to explain the details and how everything came together*

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Even after the big day is done, you are still not finished!

POST WEDDING:

June 2021: Be sure to THANK YOUR VENDORS. I sent hand written thank you notes to each vendor, wedding guest, and those that gave a gift from our registry. It’s so important to express your gratitude for them coming out for your wedding. Leaving reviews for all the vendors is also extremely important. It not only shows follow through on your end as a client, but it also shows potential new clients of your experiences so they can make the right decision for their special day. We also got our photos from our photographer and yes I shared those all over social media :)

July 2021: We got our videos back from the videographers. For our package, we got both a highlight reel with a song of our choice to play over it as well as an overall video of the whole day. I believe it was totally worth the price we paid for both videos. This month, I also got my dress preserved from the same place that I bought it from which was really convenient. We also framed our ketubah and it will hang in our house when we get around to buying one.

August 2021: It finally feels like I have finally settled into married life. There were still a couple of ongoing items to deal with post wedding. Changing last name is the next big milestone (for another posts when it eventually happens) but as of right now I am at a stalemate here because of COVID protocols and the SSA in office visits being unavailable at the time. I have (and still have as of writing this post) leftover wedding items that I plan to sell/donate for other people to use for their weddings.

TODAY:

It seems insane what a year will do for reflection on my special day. It’s crazy to imagine planning everything months, nearly a year even, to pull off a beautifully orchestrated event. And yet, here I am, months after, hardly believing that we did that. Honestly, what got me through the majority of the planning was having the best support system. No matter which aspect of the wedding was weighing me down in the moment, I was able to confide in my closest friends/family and they helped me make the best decisions possible for the best day.

Fro those of you that have a wedding on the horizon or if you just want to swap stories, I am always around to help in any way I can.

Happy planning!

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