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#[that's the historical spelling and also i love to see her!]

sapphire-weapon · 8 days

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I think Eagleone is canon because in the game something really happens between them and it’s very noticeable, but I’m wondering why you consider them canon?

Because the romantic nature of their relationship is baked into the thematic framework of the narrative. In order for RE4make to achieve what it's trying to do with its storytelling, Leon and Ashley's relationship has to be read as romantic.

Resident Evil 4 Remake is Resident Evil 4 re-imagined as a fairy tale. Survival Horror is the genre of the gameplay of RE4make, but Horror Fantasy is the genre of its story.

RE4make contains fantastical elements that were not present in OG, including but not limited to:

Leon and Ada's plaga hallucinations (Ada's especially looks like it has a magical effect)

The magical blue fire that keeps the Armadura at bay

The cursed black water in the castle (irrespective of whether it's tied to the mold in RE7; it's still attributed to turning men mad and is treated like a magical reagent during the ritual)

Ashley getting possessed -- not Saddler using her plaga to manipulate her body (which he also does in OG) but actually physically possessing her and speaking through her mouth and seeing through her eyes

New enemies that invoke the imagery of Minotaurs

On top of that, one of the major themes of this story is: folklore, story books, and fairy tales. We see it show up not just in the characters but also in the lore of the world itself. Just to name a few examples off the top of my head, we have:

Luis's parallels with and direct verbal references to Don Quixote

The folklore of "madness" spread around the villagers that Mendez tried to quell panic of

Historic folklore from when the people of Valdelobos thought of Las Plagas as demons

Salazar's invocation of Pulgarcito (which is a Spanish fairy tale)

Literal storybooks that you find throughout the game, like the one in Mendez's house and the holy scripture (complete with a colored illustration like a child's picture book) in the castle

And, most of all -- and, most importantly for our purposes -- "The Knight and the Princess Fair" allegory that gets repeated over and over throughout the game centering entirely on Leon and Ashley.

And it's not just Salazar being a crazy asshole, either. Luis also refers to Leon as "Prince Charming," beckons him to the ballroom, and tells him not to be late for the dance.

The story itself also has an element of "true love conquers all" in it, as both Leon and Ashley literally pull off the impossible. Leon manages to fight off Saddler's influence (something that we've seen no other character manage to do -- and Leon's plaga is very advanced at this point) while he's holding Ashley in his arms. And tiny little 120lb Ashley manages to heft all 200+lbs of Leon and his gear up onto Luis's surgical chair all by herself in order to remove his plaga. They saved each other for each other and only got through this ordeal because the other person was there with and for them.

This narrative is then reinforced by overtly romantic imagery, like Leon appearing to Ashley bathed in moonlight, and Ashley wistfully looking to him off towards the horizon, hands clasped to her chest, as embers float around her like fireflies.

It also invokes the imagery of classic romance stories and fairy tales, including:

Several literal princess carries

Prince Phillip about to break the spell on Sleeping Beauty with true love's first kiss

The Prince approaching Snow White's altar

Leon kneeling before Ashley like a knight does his queen

Romeo and Juliet's very famous balcony scene

Leon extending a hand to Ashley as though he's asking her to dance, not once but twice

And in case all of that wasn't enough -- if you somehow still didn't catch it, Capcom included a set of matching alternate costumes for Leon and Ashley literally called "Romantic."

I don't know how much more explicit they could've been about this, short of having a big, sweeping kiss scene -- especially when you consider that absolutely none of the above was present in OG. None of those scenes happen in OG at all.

And this isn't even taking into account that the devs restructured the plot of OG to follow the story outline of a romance novel beat-for-beat -- nor the overt sexual imagery associated with specific lines of dialogue between Leon and Ashley. And even if you ignore the fairy tale aspect all together, Leon and Ashley's relationship is intrinsically tied to the theme of teamwork, and there's a romantic element about how that is portrayed, too.

So, sure. You could look at RE4make as a story about a man who's just doing his job and saves the president's daughter because idk he's a badass and that's just what he does. And he overcomes his trauma about Raccoon City because he actually saved a person's life finally, and it wouldn't have mattered who it was; it just happened to be Ashley.

Sure.

You could.

But you miss the fucking point of what the storyteller(s) were trying to do.

You miss the intention of the developers paying homage to RE4OG being such a huge part of so many people's childhoods by turning the story into a fairy tale.

You miss the parallels of Leon becoming a broken husk of a person because of failing re: Ada, and Leon finding his smile and his kindness again through Ashley.

It leaves you with a shallow story where shit just kind of happens and Leon's a cool dude who overcomes the odds all on his own because he's so cool and strong.

And you'll never be able to convince me that that's how the devs wanted their story to be read. Not with the deliberate layering of themes and imagery and allegory that they've folded into the narrative.

And you'll never convince me that all of this was just a coincidence, either.

Eagleone is canon -- just not canon in the way that most people tend to think of it.

Because the one thing missing from RE4make's fairy tale is that Leon and Ashley don't live happily ever after. They don't end this game a couple, and they'll never be together in the future.

Because while RE4make was a fairy tale, it was the nightmare horror version of one.

And horror stories don't get to have happy endings. That was true for Ethan and Mia in the literal storybook that was RE:Village, and it's true here for Leon and Ashley.

But that doesn't make the romance between these two characters any less real.

#resident evil 4 #leon kennedy #ashley graham #eagleone #meta analysis #this might be the most important eagleone post i ever write #i also never thought i'd compare leon and ashley to ethan and mia #but here we are LMAO #hopefully this was worth the almost three hours it took me to make

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missedditart · 5 months

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Along with my Lackadaisy hyperfixation I've also become obsessed with under the devils moon by @libras-interactives. I absolutely love their ocs and can't wait to see more of them in the story. I made some fan designs of them and thought it couldn't hurt to share them. I had a lot of thoughts about their designs so anyone who is interested can read about that below. Also, English isn't my first language so please ignore any spelling mistakes and such.

Malwina

Malwina's design was really fun, also the first one I did. She is described as having black fur and hair and orange eyes. I knew if I wasn't careful she could end up looking like Ivy, so I made her hair color brighter than her fur color and also made her hair curly/wavy. I also emphasized the eyes as they're often pointed out in the text as big and pumpkin-like. I wanted her to look curious but maybe a little unsettling if she stares at you too long. I also gave her soft shapes and rounded years since she is very friendly albeit a bit pushy.

Máire

for Máire just mostly followed the description we get of her, calico, auburn hair and green eyes. The thing I had to think about for this drawing is what kind of clothing she would wear. I went between thinking she would prefer something stylish or something comfy. I'm not an expert on 1920s fashion so I mostly looked at old clothing catalogs to get a feel for the clothes she could wear. I settled on something more in between a comfy shirt with a stylish skirt. I based the tarot cards in her hand on Pamela Colman Smith’s designs. Also since she is wearing a shirt I couldn't show off the heart fur pattern on her chest but it's definitely there.

Sylvester

Sylvester doesn't have a very striking design but that's the point. For his facial structure i took some inspiration from Asa Sweet and Bobby Bastion from the comic but I also tried to make him stand out on his own. Other than that I kept close to the text, gray suit and graying fur. I was tempted to give him a colorful gaudy tie, maybe something his wife insisted he should wear. To make him more interesting but again he was supposed to be drab and unassuming. So I decided against it. (I still headcanon that his wife gives him gaudy ties and insists he wear them and he cant say no to her.)

Flynn

Flynn was the one I had the most ideas for but also the one I'm the least happy with the result of but might as well share it. We haven't gotten many physical descriptions of him and what we get is somewhat vague. I also haven't played all the backstories so there might be something there that I've missed. But from what we do get he is often described as odd eyed and two faced, this gives me the impression he has a chimera pattern. We haven't been given any specific color so I chose what I thought fit best. black and bluish gray to make him cold and dark looking, i gave him green as an accent color. I probably went a bit heavy on the devil shape language but it's fun so… I also wanted to color the tip of his shoes white or gray to make them look like goat hooves but they ended up looking too much like bowling shoes so I decided against it. He still has a hoof-like pattern on his shoes which probably isn't very historically accurate for 1920s men's shoes haha. And lastly his cane is only described as black and ivory but nothing specific on the shape. I figured giving it some interesting motif would be fun so I went with a snake. specifically a black mamba witch don't look dangerous until you get too close or they open their mouth. I'm sure a fitting metaphor could be made from that. My design for him will probably change if we get new info about him later in the story but so far this is how i imagine him.

#art #my art #lackadaisy #Under the devils moon #interactive fiction #fanart

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he-goes-down · 7 months

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0. There Was A Time

fic chapters/warnings/disclaimers/ect

:DISCLAIMER:

Mentions of drugs/ sex ect.

English is not my first language

POV changes

x reader

inconsistent updates

time line is not perfect or accurate

Character may also not be accurate

I'll also be posting this on wattpad and maybe ao3

So if you see it wasn't stolen<3

Also i dont know how tumblr works and how to link chapters together(someone send help)

ALSO THIS NOT EDITED IN ANYWAY SO SORRY IF THERE ARE SPELLING MISTAKES

THANK YOU FOR READING MWUAH MWUAH

LEAVE COMMENTS <3

The studio was warm in the coldest night of this Autumn, warm yellowish light and the red carpeted floor made it feel like a cosy log cabin. A full drum set with a few too many ride cymbals and windchimes sat close to the middle of the fat bare bricked wall, with a small metal bucket that had the remains of broken splinter drumsticks. A rack of guitars and two bass holders stood next to the right wall where an old armchair sits, a few different sized amps scattered round the square room. Right in front of the glass that separates the control room from the studio three mic stand in a line with noise cancelling boxes surrounding each of them.

In the control room there is a strong smell of weed and other smokeable herbs, "No! You can't take Runaway Blues off the album!" A man with short shoulder length brown hair and a moustache protested as he puffed on his cigarette as he lied back on the couch, his dark glasses fell back on his face as he tilted his head back. "I agree with Jake. It shows how good we are even when we're shit faced." The man with long curly hair, a gorgeous ethnic nose, stood up – towering over the other 4 people in the sesh – and began to roll another blunt on one of the control panels. The one that started this debated piped in, "Thanks Dan for taking my side." He said sarcastically, his curly mullet was like a solid cloud on his head, and he has a moustache like Jake. "We'll our wonderful manager and producer here," A man that looked like Jesus pointed to a woman that sat next to Jake on the couch. "Was the one that wasn't shit faced, I think that's why it was actually good, Joshua." He finished. "Hey, hey, I'm not saying it's shit because of you, please believe me y/n!" Josh dramatically pleaded to y/n. She was looking up at the ceiling. Pupils dilated. Blunt in hand. "Just, make it shorter." She said confidently, waving her hand a bit. Still not looking at anyone and head craned back. "You have the answer to everything." Danny said his mouth slightly gaped that such a simple solution didn't register in any of their minds. Or he's just on a psychedelic trip and can't spark up a brain cell.

The following week the band had dates in LA since they were still doing there 'Dreams in Gold' Tour. The band was already at the venue setting up, some still sleeping in the bus. Y/n had some business to attend to in their studio in New York before going down to LA. She decided to walk down the infamous Sunset Strip, as a historic music place like this could not go untrekked when having the chance. Wearing a black turtleneck, dark blue flare jeans with dark brown boots and a satchel bag hanging from her shoulder, a small suitcase's handle in the other hand while the silver case dragged its wheels on the floor. As she caught the sight of the colourful sign of The Rainbow, a voice called to her. "Y/n?" A older man, short blondish hair, leather jacket, sunglasses.

Axl Rose.

And like the trigger of a gun being pulled,

A life was lost.

(or misplaced)

Y/n's POV:

Everything stood still,

I stood still.

Then it all went dark. It was a black lifeless void.

Falling backwards but being physically still.

Time was reversing.

A previous life. My life?

Memories rolling past like an old film.

My head spiralled.

I can't comprehend this. What is happening to me?

My first years of school, late 60's early 70's. That's not right. It was the early 2000's.

Falling in love with music, Queen, Elton John.

Highschool was trip. My parents being stricter than anyone else's, they didn't believe I could have a job as in the music industry.

Studying music in college then going on the Uni and taking a science course to get my folks off my back.

One of my most successful record deals was Mötley Crüe and Bon Jovi.

Before they even started writing lyrics for their songs, I knew it off by heart and helped them gain success with it and recording went like dream.

Now I was searching the East Coast for a new band to sign.

March 1985, The City of Angels.

A flash of light, and my eyes flickered open.

It a cold night, dark but the city light was somewhat comforting.

It was the Sunset Strip, but something was...

Off.

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

OMG SORRY IF IT'S SHIT

THIS WAS LIKE THE INTRODUCTION, FIRST PART IS COMING OUT SOON

IM SO EXCITED

(Band at the beginning is greta van fleet )

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frostbite-merun · 10 months

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I got reminded BBCs Merlin exists and that spiraled into remembering a bunch of other really, really shitty adaptations of Arthurian canon and now I'm mad so I'm going to list some true facts about it that should hopefully demonstrate why adding "gritty realism" to it pisses me off so much

-Morgan le Fay serves as a Rita Repulsa-esque figure who throws problems at Arthur. She is also a wholly separate person to Morgause, the mother of Mordred. Morgan le Fay is a badass sorceress who's only motivation for being a Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain(tm) is that Guinevere snubbed her in some way.

-It's full of Welsh folklore, especially regarding faeries, and initially started as a recounting of a bit of Welsh military history before people started adding their OCs to it. It then broke containment and spread across europe, especially during the renaissance.

-Loads of the knights have superpowers. Straight up superpowers. Gawain gets stronger (and in some sources, bigger) the higher the sun is in the sky. Kay has some sort of fire shit going on... It's great. People would add their own guys to the round table and give them Cool Powers because they could. Though mostly it was just super-strength. This fell out of favor as it was Christianized because people are COWARDS.

-Lancelot is a French guy's OC, and despite the whole thing being full of those, Lancelot is the most OC of them all (affectionate). The second most OC of the bunch is a dude known for his edgy coat that he always wore that belonged to his dead dad (I am not joking)

-Half of the dudes are described as 'the fairest' or 'the most handsome'. Some have the caveat of 'second only to Arthur'. I legit read a description of how handsome a random knight was that filled a full page once. This is hilarious.

-There's a knight called Bedivere (he whose name has no set spelling) and he's my favorite. He has a prosthetic hand, is head butler, and is the only bitch to survive the big last battle in retellings that I respect. He's also one half of a comedy duo with Kay, also in retellings that I respect. I am admittedly biased because I played him in a middle school production of a really bad adaptation of a knockoff spamalot

-People just fucking murder each other on accident all of the time to show off how STRONK they are. After jousting got added they started having the horses die when lance met shield which DOESN'T MAKE SENSE but is there to, once again, show how STRONK the knights are.

-More on the note of casting, but there are dark skinned people in the canon. Specifically Moors (which is old europe for muslim north-african people with dark skin, a term not really used anymore because it wasn't actually one ethnic group but several). MORE SPECIFICALLY there is one explicitly biracial knight who's the son of one of the other knights and a (and I quote) "Moorish Princess". His name is Morien because people have never been subtle and was one of the knights for whom the tales waxed poetic about how stronk and handsome he was.

-Saved the best for last but this all gave way to the an early historical examples of larping and possibly kinning. King Edward the Third loved a knight named 'Sir Lionel' so much to the point where he'd hold big round table tourneys where everyone would larp as different characters from Arthurian legend (himself always being Lionel) and even named his son after him. The kicker? Lionel doesn't actually have that much in the way of story. He has like one story to himself and is functionally a sidekick in every other appearance I can find. King Eddy 3 had a Blorbo.

All of this to say that Arthurian canon is lovely and goofy and if I see someone make Morgan le Fay into Mordred's mom again I will spew fire and rain hot, bloody terror from the skies. I also think we should start adding OCs to it again and nobody can stop us.

#long post #i just love this shit so much #i didn't even get into the goofiness that is merlin #text post #queue #king arthur #arthurian legend #arthurian mythology

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mostly-mundane-atla · 8 months

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Real talk: i have been pretty absent from this blog (i wouldn't say slacking necessarily because it is first and foremost a hobby, a means of communication second, and i do not consider it a job to any degree). Do not worry, nothing bad has happened, and a big part of it is rediscovering my love of literature. Got my hands on a copy of Thomas Kinsella's The Táin, read The Handmaid's Tale, and recently finished Ivanhoe through audiobook.

I've already been singing the praises of the Táin Bó Cúailnge so i'll spare you having to read through that gushing. Ivanhoe is incredible and shockingly sensitive on the topic of antisemitism for something written by an early 19th century Christian author intended for a majority Christian audience. The scenes with Robin Hood also filled me with a childish glee and i think it was suppose to be a surprise that this guy is Robin Hood but he introduces himself as Locksley and wins an archery contest and leads a gang of outlaws in the woods, including a hermit who refers to Alan-a-Dale quite a bit so it's very obvious to a modern reader. Handmaid's Tale was also as good as i've heard it was, but there's a specific detail i want to discuss that feels relevant to how i think of this blog and how others use it.

I've read the reviews and the plot synopses amd analyses, i knew about the epilogue that frames the story as a historical document a century or so in the future. This did not surprise me. What did catch me by surprise, and something i feel is entirely overlooked, is that this story of an oppressive theocratic regime that uses Biblical precedence to excuse extreme atrocities of human rights violations and turned out to not even last very long, is contextualized as the topic of a discussion hosted by First Nations academics who study white people cultures. You can be pedantic and say "oh but technically they're only First Nations coded because it's presented as a transcript with no physical descriptions" and to a degree you would be right; but when you see names like Maryann Crescent Moon and Johnny Running Dog used for professors of a University of Denay (an anglo-phonetic spelling of Diné/Dene) in Nunavit, there isn't much room for speculating what ethnicity they're supposed to be.

There are so many little details in the book referencing Indigenous genocide. Details suggesting forms of genocide Atwood would be familiar with as a Canadian citizen. To only bring up religious fanaticism and patriarchal regressive politics in Middle Eastern nations like Iran and Afghanistan as well as the United States as inspirations for a surface level five minute summary is one thing, but to ignore all the anti-Indigenous policies that are also obvious inspirations (literally just read the passages about how the Narrator/Offred's daughter was taken from her, renamed, and given to a "proper home" to get what i mean, it's that blatant) when the iconic epilogue makes it as explicit as it can be without writing "THESE ARE NATIVE ISSUES" in big red letters? I won't lie to you, it feels like a slap to the face. Especially when the take away message of such a conclusion seems to be that Native peoples will outlive these regimes.

#other interests #the handmaid's tale #ivanhoe #the táin #thus concludes Mostly Mundane's Angry Native Literary Analysis Corner

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lightflame · 25 days

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Tagged by @bagadew (Also tagging in @waermeflasche because you tagged me weeks ago and I didn't get back to you)

Last song I listened to: Soap by The Oh Hellos. I burn CDs and listen to them in my car. (The first few I tried to give themes and titles, and select the perfect song orders, but ended up kind of bad and the other was cursed and wouldn't play even though I remade it three times, so I just switched to throwing a ton of songs together on "Random Mixes" and enjoying.) I was listening to my very first random mix on the drive home from work and this one came up. It's a pretty snazzy song. I think Theseus and Hello, My Old Heart are my favourites from the band.

Last book I read: Can I do a couple? I just recently finished Play of Shadows by Sebastien de Castell. It's the first book of Court of Shadows, the sequel series to his Greatcoats series. Greatcoats is one of my favourite series, filled with swashbuckling action, clever humour, and an absolutely miserable protagonist, Falcio val Mond, who always manages to get back up and keep going anyway. I read everything de Castell writes, and after a string of books with severe pacing problems (check out The Malevolent Seven for a book that doesn't have a second act) and other problems (I have a hard time seeing any book topping Crucible of Chaos as the worst book I've read this year), he finally seems to be back. The book didn't pack quite the emotional punch of some of his other books, but it definitely made me want to jump up and cheer for the heroes at the end.

The other book I just finished is The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden. I liked her Winternight Trilogy (look it up and be prepared for some absolutely gorgeous covers, with prose to match), so I was excited to see something new from her. This book was about World War I, with some fantasy elements used for magic realism. (Portraying a soldier's struggle with addiction and PTSD through the lens of him losing his soul to the devil was a brilliant idea.) I most subsist on a steady diet of fantasy books, but this one had me hungering to read a few more historical books. I might have to pick up some books about the Halifax Explosion.

Last film I watched: I haven't watched much on my own for a while, but my friends do a movie night every Sunday. The last two times I tuned in, we watched Jesus Christ Superstar and Pokemon 3: Spell of the Unown. They were both fairly cute movies. I liked Judas's actor.

Last TV series I watched: I've been making my way through The Office for the first time. I'm on Season 3 and this happened to me, actually. There was some stuff I was like, "Wow, that was funny. I should tell my coworkers about it," but then I realized that I can't be the guy who tells his coworkers about this funny new show called The Office.

Last video game I played: If visual novels count, Umineko. I've been working my way through it slowly for about five and a half years and I'm finally closing in on the end. It's peak fiction and the greatest love story of the twentieth century. It's also funny I picked a game this insanely long for my first visual novel. Other than visual novels, I just finished Pokemon Legends: Arceus, after putting in 104 hours this year. Completing the Dex is my favourite part of any Pokemon game, so having it be more involved and include a big checklist made the game basically crack for me. I've also been casually playing some Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005) with my brother. Every time we play it, I'm always amazed by how good it is and how much content it has. I want to take command posts forever.

Last thing I googled: "Dandadan Aira". I just started the manga the other day and I like her best, so I wanted to double check her full name, I think? Other than that I'm mostly looking up when books are available at my local stores. I've been religiously checking when The Book that Broke the World will be available and I'm not even sure if I'm buying it.

Last thing I ate: A few snacks from my snack drawer. I also had a Quaker yogurt bar at work. I bought a big box of them last year, but I had to throw them out because of the Salmonella. (Chewed through a lot of them before that came out, though, including eating three on an airplane.)

Amount of sleep: Supposedly seven hours, since I went to bed right after finishing The Warm Hands of Ghosts last night. The only problem is that if I get to bed at a good time, I sleep fitfully, so I'm either sleeping poorly or sleeping well, but not getting anywhere near enough sleep.

Currently reading: I started Empire of Silence, the first book of The Sun Eater by Christopher Ruocchio, at work today. I've had the first three books sitting on my shelf for a year or two and I finally got around to starting it. (I'd resolved to do both this series and Kushiel's Legacy this year, after having both for so long, and I got that one done at the start.) I'm not very far in, but I enjoy the writing style a lot, even if a lot of the worldbuilding is obviously cribbed from Dune. (Whoa, look, mentats.) I've heard it picks up a lot in the second book, so I'm excited for what's in store for me.

Passing this on, I'll tag @somerunner @lyssq @soulsinshadow @lunawithsocks and @dancerladyaqua. (They also have currently watching and sweet, salty, or savoury as questions, which I didn't do.)

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dabblingreturns · 1 year

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I was thinking about the locked tomb today( as usual) and i was thinking about a beautiful peice of fan art I can no longer find of Wake with a Ta Moko tatto.

It gorgeous, I love it. And I will add it to this post when I find it....but I also think it's wrong....

I don't think the ta moko tradition would have survived in Blood of Eden... one or two of the original billionairs might have had Te Moko tattoos on thier faces, but Blood of Eden came from the global elite so that tradition wouldn't have enough traction....also Blood of Eden hid out among other population and super cool face tattoos would have been too much of a give away that they were other.

But I do think that the Ta Moko tradition did survive, ( though changed) in the nine houses. I fact, I think it's one of the first things we see in gideon the ninth....I think the ninth's skull masks were directly inspired by Te moko tattoos....

Here is my batshit theory*: Anastasia was in the second generation after resurection, and was Maori according to Taz muir. She probably didn't have Ta moko tattos....but her parents might have gotten them, pre-resurectio. So little Anastasia could have grown up with an odd love of bones and a very natural love of people who had elaborate face design. The context of those designs would have been lost, but the ink would remain. So when creating her own house, Anastasia might have pulled from the idea of ta moko to create the first skull makeup. This way, she took something beautiful but this no meaning that she loved, and she gave it meaning. And that tradition stayed because the ninth is isolated. And they kepted a peice of pre resurection culture alive

*Disclamer: I am a white American who can never fully understand the culture significance of these traditions....and the only reason I feel comfortable making this speculation is that im talking about a sci fi novel set 1000 years after everyone simultaneously lost thier historical context.

*edit. I originally spelled this "Te moko" because i am very dislexic, but a kind person pointed out that I spelled it wrong. Im sorry for any feeling that my have caused (i do care very much, but sometimes i mess up) I have edited the post to a more correct spelling. Wikipedia spells it "Tā moko" but I don't know how to get the special - on top of the a"

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cutesyscreenname · 1 month

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The Last Great American Dynasty: Chapter 1

This Was The Very First Page

Series summary:

Addiction, deadlines, a nasty divorce. In an effort to shed your skin and find yourself again, you pack up and move to a historic seaside home across the country. It's all a blur, you're hurting and spinning your wheels in a big house all alone. Until Frankie shows up on your doorstep.

Pairing: Frankie Catfish Morales x AFAB Reader

Rating: 18+ MDNI

Word Count: 1709

Warnings: allusions to former drug use, mention of divorce, not too much to warn of yet we just getting started bby

Notes: I hope we all have a marvelous time and I don't ruin everything 💀 I've been gone for a long ass time, taking baby steps getting back into things.

Also much thanks to @pr0ximamidnight for helping flesh this out (aka letting me rant at her until it came together) and @mydailyhyperfixations, @joelsgreys, and @mylostloversbookmarks for also listening to me ramble 😂 lub u 🩵💙

Chapter One Playlist 🎶📻⚓🌊⛵🎶

This was the very first page

Not where the story line ends

My thoughts will echo your name

Until I see you again

It feels pretentious to drive across the country like this when you don't have to. In fact it was a struggle to do so - insisting and arguing with everyone that you wanted, no - needed to. You could feel the eyes rolling behind your back, hear the sarcastic thoughts unspoken.

Who does she think she is, Kerouac?

Truthfully you just wanted the white noise of wind, pavement, and your Spotify playlist of guilty pleasure pop songs, too occupied by operating a motor vehicle to check the deluge of emails and texts that had been pouring in for months.

A Tale of Two Addicts

Best Selling Author Loses Control of Her Own Narrative

Authoring Her Own Disaster: Detox and Divorce

How could you blame them when the headlines practically wrote themselves?

“So let me get this straight. Not only am I not getting new pages, you’re putting this project on hold to move to the east coast so you can - what? - live out some whimsical seaside fantasy?”

You sat in your office chair, surrounded by stacks of cardboard boxes, pen hovering above the signature line of your divorce papers like a memoir you don’t want to take ownership of as your editor sighs at you over speakerphone.

“I’m doing what they told me to do in therapy, Miles. I’m changing the scenery, starting over. It’s difficult to write any pages for you if I’m too catatonically depressed to get out of bed. Take it as good news, a strategic move. Literally.”

The house has a history. That’s the reason you’d chosen it, frankly. You’d discussed the listings with your realtor over the phone, clicking through the pictures as they recounted the amenities and specs of each property.

“And then there’s the Harkness house…”

If her goal was to intrigue you she’d accomplished it tenfold, having you on the hook for every sordid detail as she regaled you with the story of a widowed heiress making a splash of scandal through the coastal town with her extravagance. She leaned into the impropriety of it all, trying to sell you with gossip, but all you heard was the story of a woman who had reclaimed her life after losing love. Perhaps the house held that energy in its foundation. Maybe if she did it there, so could you.

Pulling up the winding driveway you almost feel a page turn, a fresh start. Then the moving van crunches gravel behind you and your phone pings with a missed call from your lawyer, breaking the spell of your daydream.

It’s been a long day already, an endless stream of delays and snafus. Missing parts and tedious tinkering with finicky engines has left Frankie a mess of sweat, grease, and frustration. The sigh of a long day finally finished whistles out as he climbs the stairs to the office, ready to hand in a few leaves of paperwork and drag himself home when the sound of muffled conversation gives him pause.

“She’s ruining everything, we’ve all but flown in the film crew and we hardly have half a film without that house in it!”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Ray, she could be perfectly cooperative. We don’t know-”

“It’s for fucking NETFLIX, Tim. I won’t be made to look foolish by some scandalous, self important, Hollywood-”

“And you won’t. Let’s just give her the packet, for all we know we could have signed papers come Monday morning.”

That’s all Frankie hears before the desire to get out of there steers his body back toward the stairs. I can turn these in on Monday, not worth the hassle...

Before his steel toe can touch the second step, though, the door swings open and a booming voice sounds behind him.

“Ah! Mr. Morales! Good timing, son. You pass the Harkness house on your way out of here, don’t you?”

The question is moot, the offices and hangar located along the coast such that there’s practically no choice but to pass the seaside estate if you want to reach the town and its modest sprawl of surrounding neighborhoods.

“I do, sir.”

“Then it’s meant to be. I’m sure you’ve heard that it’s newly occupied and we have a…welcome packet of sorts…for the new owner but the courier’s service is closed. Would you mind dropping this off on your way home?”

Tim, the more even keeled of the two executives that frequent these offices, hands over a manilla envelope without waiting for an answer, traces of engine grease still clinging to Frankie's skin leaving faint fingerprints on the hefty packet. The man cuts in again before Frankie can open his mouth to speak.

“Is the jet ready for takeoff in the morning? We’re expected in New York by eleven.”

Frankie studies the name on the envelope for a long moment before looking up to meet the impatient gaze of the man in front of him.

“Ah, yeah- Yes, sir. She’s ready for takeoff. Pilot’s ready for you anytime after eight, should you decide to leave earlier.”

He only receives a slight nod before both men push past him and he’s left alone outside the office door, eyes drawn back to the neatly printed label with your name on it. Why does it sound so familiar?

Lost in a daze of curiousity, Frankie’ feet carry him down the stairs, through the hangar, and out to his truck. He’s so distracted by the strange feeling in his gut that he starts his drive with his steel toes still on and the work orders still stacked along with the mystery packet in his passenger seat.

It's been a week and you're still staring at, discovering, stumbling over boxes.

How the hell does one person accumulate this much stuff?, you think as you sit on the sofa and nurse the soon-to-be bruise on your shin from the cardboard cube you'd just rammed into rounding the corner into the living room. The house in LA had seemed so desolate when Trevor had moved out and now you sit surrounded by a sea of what now feels like junk.

Even in this vast expanse of square footage and seaside it seems the walls might close in on you at any moment.

Thoughts manifesting into reality, you begin to feel too hot seemingly from nowhere. Pulling at the collar of your worn t-shirt, you go to crack open the nearest window when a blue pickup truck rounds the bend and pulls up to your gate. Before you can take too long to squint and guess at who the hell would be at your gate on a Friday evening, the driver presses the call button and your phone begins to ring.

“Hello?”

The phone crackles lightly and a deep, dulcet voice answers you.

“Yes, ah- I've got a delivery here. Is this the new owner?”

From the window you can see the figure in the truck cab lift an envelope to read it and he confirms your name.

“Yeah, that's me. I'll buzz you in.”

“Thanks.”

You hang up and press the button to let him through, watching as he winds up the drive and stops in front of the house.

Had you forgotten to sign something? He asked about being the homeowner, so it can't be another addendum to Trevor's many demands attached to the divorce. Your confusion and curiosity gives way to a flustered state when you open the door.

The first things you notice are the rich brown orbs looking back at you, brows, lids, and laugh lines working to form a frame of sincere apology, like he knows it's unorthodox for him to be standing on your front step at this hour. The rest of him is just as entrancing - plush lips beneath a gorgeous nose, a broad frame just as soft as it is strong, and a rueful smile that has your cheeks flushing as he adjusts his Standard Oil cap to lend you a peak of soft brown curls.

“Hi there,” he interrupts your stupor and you wonder just how long you've been staring.

“I'm here to deliver this. It's from the Standard Oil offices, ah…courier service is closed and it's pretty important I guess.” He holds the envelope out for you to take, his free hand rubbing the back of his neck in what seems like a nervous habit. You can see the faint grease marks on his fingertips, a matching set of smears on the paper in his hand.

“Oh, um. Thanks. Any idea what it's for?” You take the packet from him, eyeing it curiously. It's simply addressed to you with no further indicators on the outside.

“Something about the property I suppose, not really clear on the details. Lot of history in this house, ya know?”

“So I'm told.” You smile softly, toying with the metal fastener, more intrigued by the messenger than the message at this moment.

After a brief silence he shakes his head, seeming to come back to the present, and you wonder where his mind had drifted to. “Anyway, I'll leave you to it. Sorry for the interruption.”

“Not at all. Thanks again.” You wiggle the packet lightly in your hand.

He cracks another smile and you're certain his eyes roam over you before he mutters a goodnight and turns to go back to his truck. You stay stagnant for a while, watching as he gets into the cab and pulls out of the gate, and a few long moments after that as well.

Finally closing the door, you pad into the kitchen and pour a glass of wine to sip while you open your mystery packet. As you set it on the island countertop a few stray sheets slip out from beneath the envelope. Picking them up, you notice they don't seem to have anything to do with you or the house. In fact they look like order sheets of some kind, a list of mechanical sounding items listed with costs and quantities scribbled next to them.

Next to a black smudge to match your packet and the stranger's fingertips is a carefully printed name on a line marked ‘authorized by’. You read the name aloud and your stomach flutters at the way it somehow feels familiar to say.

“Fransisco Morales…”

More to come soon, let me know in the comments or my inbox if you want to be tagged for the next chapter 😬

#last great american dynasty #frankie x reader #francisco morales #marry me frankie #frankie catfish morales #she had a marvelous time ruining everything

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stromuprisahat · 3 months

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(I only read TGT once so if I get any details wrong here, feel free to correct me. Same for the historical reference I'm discussing here). I never understood why Nikolai was considered to be a better character than the Darkling when it came to helping the Grisha. I know Leigh Bardugo presents him as the "nicer" option but Nikolai always kind of reminded me of Tsar Nicholas II, who, from what I remember learning in school, was considered to be a nice man who clearly loved his children, but a rather incompetent ruler. He didn't always make good decisions which made relations with the government worse, and increased hardships for civilians and soldiers. He also was really detached and out of touch with the plight of the Russian people and I believe some of his policies ended up alienating people from ethnic minority groups. I brought him up, because Nikolai is also kind of like this, he's not an exact parallel obviously but like, it's kind of there. The only reason really that he's considered effective in the books is because Leigh can't really write politics that well. Like, even the way the nobility would behave is something she didn't really write well, as well as how the public would react to the things that happen in the story. Idk. Did this make any sense? What do you think?

Absolutely.

I can't speak about the historical Nikolai- I've read very little about him, and it's been years-, but while book!Nikolai's ideas aren't bad per se, he's been greatly helped by gross simplification of politics and LB's clear favour.

Nobles are either supportive, or stupid and gullible.

Inclusion of Grisha works 100%. Sure, the soldiers for Nikolai's elite inventors would he handpicked, but either there is no longer hatred for Grisha among the First Army, or the Tsar's too high to see it.

The only peasants we meet are enlightened enough to immediately understand and ADMIT they're faring better (Read the link. OP's no longer on tumblr, but her posts are based on actual Russian history and literature.), which is... well, have you ever MET any real people, Leigh? RoW was published during fucking covid of all possible times! Huge chunk of population will rather die, than accept the unknown!

Making Nikolai visibly think with his cock leads to no trouble. No one's calling him weak, no one suddenly remembers rumors about Grisha girls "being able to put a spell on a man", Zoya's desired and respected, instead of being viewed as seductress or outright Witch Whore.

And one more about Grisha- there have been pogroms barely a few years back. First Army was slaughtering Second only because they've figured they're to blame for the Fold moving (and don't forget the only survivors aside from Malina were the Darkling's people). Am I to believe a new Tsar ascending with THREE Grisha publicly backing him up won't cause decent upheaval?

Sure, Kolya's nice, but he's too nice. Somewhere on his way from Sturmhond to Tsar Nikolai, he forgot how to cut fingers even though it might make him sick. And the situation should look accordingly.

#reply #Grishaverse #Nikolai Lantsov #grishanalyticritical #King of Scars duology #Ravka #Second pseudoArmy #First Army #Zoya Nazyalensky #Grisha triumvirate #anti Leigh Bardugo

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ariays · 8 months

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My 'Destined With You' Prediction/Theory

I posted this on MyDramaList and Reddit. Let's me share my theory here as well.

Ya'll I think there's more to the story than we think. Right now it's confusing because we're just seeing and being shown the surface. The show is definitely holding back some details and information on purpose. But I'm pretty sure we'll be diving in deeper next week once the past life's story is introduced and we'll be able to see the mystery being revealed layer by layer. Now that we know the existence of the 'black magic/curse' book, i have a feeling that there's another copy of it out there and someone is holding on to it and using it (the voodoo which Shin Yu and Hong Jo discovered) and its someone who knows the existence and location of the shrine. Apparently that voodoo was used to cut off the ties between two people (which in this case is Hong Jo and Shin Yu). I read this in a Korean community post. I just think there's a reason why Shin Yu seems almost stupidly loyal to Na Yeon. It just doesn't feel right. He doesn't seem to be emotionally in love with her but yet he's being stupidly loyal to her for no reason. Despite being told multiple times that what he's doing is wrong, he always seem to disregard it (as if breaking up is never an option he could consider). Almost feels like there's a unexplainable force that's constantly holding him back when it comes to Na Yeon. He seem to always put her up on this weird pedestal. Him believing that she doesn't have any faults even when its being presented that she's somehow involved in Hong Jo being transferred (+ even when Hong Jo specifically said that Na Yeon slapped her, he completely dismissed it), finding her to be matchless/incomparable to other women even when he's obviously attracted to another and pushing the attention he received from others whenever they're together towards her to boost up her ego even when the attention was obviously on him and not her. He acts really differently when it comes to her too. He just doesn't act like his usual self, he acts weak when he's with her. Kinda like a puppet. & he was acting this way even before the whole 'love potion' confusion. Also the whole voodoo thing happened after Hong Jo met Na Yeon to tell her everything (about the use of spell) . BUT SUSPICIOUSLY, we didn't get to see her reaction... Now that feels rather on purpose. Why would they leave that out? Hmm. Now I'm really suspicious. What if Na Yeon is the one with a copy? Maybe her family is involved with shamans too. & she used one of the spells to 'seduce' Shin Yu two years ago. Its weird because he just seems so uninterested but felt compelled to tolerate her for some reason. He wanted to break up but couldn't even be firm about it. It just feel weird to me because that's not how he is to everyone else. He's only like that towards her. I feel like it could be an outcome of black magic being used on him. Apparently, from the historical records which we saw Shin Yu googling from the earlier episodes, there a 'Lady Yoon' mentioned that was involved with the death of Aeng Cho(which I believe is Hong Jo's past life). If Na Yeon is not the reincarnation of Lady Yoon then she is most definitely a descendent which would explain how she possibly would have a copy of the black magic book. The question is if it's Na Yeon, how is she able to obtain Hong Jo's PJs? I think the stalker is definitely working for Na Yeon and the stalker is the one that stole Hong Jo's pjs. She may lie that she received the photos from an unknown number but the stalker definitely knows her well enough to be able to, firstly, recognize Shin Yu as her boyfriend, and secondly, knows her phone number in order to send her those photos. Also I'm pretty sure she would know where the Jang family shrine is since she's been with him for 2 years and hangs out with his family. This is just a theory so just take it with a grain of salt.

In my opinion, this theory will also help to make Shin Yu more redeemable. Because as of now, his character is a red flag but notice how he's only becomes a red flag when it involves Na Yeon? What if he was blindsided by black magic and the root cause of it has been Na Yeon all along?

#destined with you #netflix #korean drama #kdrama #rowoon #kim seokwoo #jo bo ah #jang shin yu #lee hong jo #yura #theory #predictions #yoon nayeon

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imarvelatthestars · 6 months

Text

Just a Man: I

Pairings: Jango Fett x f!Reader

Content: this is a Headless Horseman au set during a historical time period on Earth with a special focus on Māori culture to honor Tem's heritage; warnings include - decapitation, violence & warfare, mercenary activity, explicit references to colonization, (D)jango is morally ambiguous and a problematic king but we love him anyway, and also smut

Notes: no use of y/n, although the reader is given a placeholder last name.

Many thanks to @moodymisty who inspired it & @wolffegirlsunite who let me yell all my feral ideas at her.

a playlist | next chapter

important vocab: aotearoa - literally 'the land of the long white cloud', the māori name for new zealand korowai - a type of cloak waka - canoe; waka hourua - large double-hulled canoes made for ocean travel iwi - tribe tamariki - children mana - the supernatural, indestructible power of the gods that exists in everything pounamu - special greenstone or jade that many pendants and patu are made out of patu - a traditional māori war club kaitiaki - guardian django - possibly from a romani word meaning "i awake"; fetu - alternate spelling of the māori name "whetu" (wh- = f-)

1575 – Rotorua, Aotearoa

It is cold this night and he draws his korowai tighter around his shoulders. Most are asleep by now and he ought to be among them, but the stars have kept him up, the stars and their reflections on the lake and what lies beyond them all. This wonder is not a new one. Fetu has wondered about the great beyond many times, enough to have been scolded for it beyond what he can count. Yet still the desire remains.

It calls to him now, itching at the back of his throat, at his hands, his feet, urging him to action, to run into the night and never look back. For the thousandth time, he wonders what sort of chaos would erupt in his absence. His wife would be furious and it might honestly be best that he never return should he indeed choose to leave – her fury would certainly kill him. His brothers would shake their heads, his parents would bow theirs in shame and reluctant resignation, but no one would be surprised.

No, he tells himself like he’s done every night before, I will stay. Duty. Honor. These are things that he believes in and to run would be to abandon them. I will stay.

The stars are quiet. So are the gods, though he swears he hears something on the wind, something like the crashing of waves on a shore that whispers, “Go. Run.”

Fetu shakes his head, one corner of his mouth cracking into a smile. He’s letting his mind run away with him again. Best to get some sleep before any more foolish ideas take root.

Sleep does come, but it doesn’t calm the hunger gnawing at the edges of his mind. The not-quite voice from the lakeshore follows him into his dreams and it is here that the world comes alive with thunder and lightning and the rumbling of the earth. He sees things he has never seen before – a great waka of a shape he would never have conceived with cloaks hovering high above the bow, strange weapons that spark as if crafted by god-fire, lands as brown as his skin that rise and fall like the mountains but shift like the sand on the beach, long stretches of ice and snow, beasts of unimaginable heights and with strange faces, taller even than the tallest warrior. All this could be his to explore, the dream tells him, less with words and more with the kiss of the sea breeze on his face.

Think of the legends, it says. And he does think of them. He pictures the ancestors who sailed from Hawaiki to discover this land, the waka hourua that sailed over vast oceans, the bravery and boldness still recalled over fires so many years later. He thinks of the desperation that has burned in his gut since he was a boy and how everyone in the iwi has tried to douse that fire, his parents, the elders, his brothers, his wife. But it doesn’t have to be that way any longer. He could run.

It would be shameful, he reasons.

It would only be shameful if he were to return. And both he and the dream know that he would never want to.

I have tamariki. They are young.

They are strong like he is. They will endure.

I belong here. Even though he has always known that a part of him belonged elsewhere.

Had the ancestors stayed where they belonged, he would not be here now to live and die. Had the ancestors lived in their fear-

Fetu bristles. I am not afraid.

And yet he stays.

He surveys the things his dream has shown him, the almost glimpses of foreign people at the edges of his vision. There is destiny in the wind that pulls at their hair, there are legends in the footsteps they leave behind. There is a place for him, only if he is willing to go.

He wakes to the sound of his son crying. Another bad dream, something about drowning in the belly of a beast whose mouth is too full of teeth. Fetu thinks that facing such a creature would be an admirable end, an exciting end. His skin pimples with the idea. But he shushes the boy and tells him to go back to sleep. After all, it was just a dream and dreams are not always true.

But sometimes. Sometimes they are. This is the part he keeps to himself.

He’s always been good at plans. It’s why his brothers have always deferred to him. He sees things differently than they do, understands how others think and how best to use that to his advantage. He knows when to be quiet and when to speak, when to wait and when to strike. So he knows that now is not the time to run off chasing his dreams. The start of his story must be slow and careful, it must be restrained, and while this restraint burns in his throat, it is nothing new. He’s been waiting his whole life. He can wait a few months more.

The seasons will change with the arrival of the new year. The weather will warm, food will grow, and he will prepare. New weapons will be made, provisions carefully measured in the back of his mind, valuable skills resharpened, deals made with neighboring iwis in the late evenings when no one knows he is even missing.

Strangest of all, though, is the ache that burrows into his sternum when he watches his children. Poa is growing into a man more and more with every day, a man both very like and very different to him. There’s a gentleness in his eyes that Fetu never felt at his age, but there is also his quiet strength and warrior’s prowess. And Omeka is much the same. She is soft at heart, but it is a deceiving softness. She’s wise for someone so young, very kind and very smart, and incredibly fierce. He smiles when he thinks about the man she will marry one day. Whoever he is, he will need all the help he can get.

He's proud. And he knows for certain now that they will endure without him. They will outlive him and carry his lessons on to their own children, and he will live on through them. It could almost be enough, but… it isn’t. There is a difference in his mind between the legacy of his descendants and the legacy of his name and deeds stitched into song.

The lands of his dreams still call to him when he sleeps. Forests and barren valleys and faded grasslands. He will go there one day. Soon. The weather is almost right. His provisions are nearly ready. His weapons are made. The rest of the world is so close that he can almost taste it.

There is a place at the very north of this land that is said to be the first spot where the ancestors first saw Aotearoa. The rest of the world lies beyond this point. Hawaiki is to the north, apparently, but that is a dead land. His focus is set on the west. Where does the sun go when it sinks beneath the horizon? What people live there? What markings will they bear on their faces, what stories will they tell? He wonders if Poa’s sand beast that eats children whole lives in those faraway lands, and he smiles. There’s only one way to know for sure.

And so the long white clouds of his people fade away with the waves. He sails into the horizon with his own waka and a man from another iwi, a fellow adventurer yearning to discover the untouched reaches of the sea. It is a long voyage and it is hard. Fetu’s back burns under the sun and his arms ache at the end of each day, but he is more alive now than he ever was before. He finds himself smiling. His chest hums with something he cannot name, perhaps some new mana granted by Tangaroa for daring to venture where few will not go.

The land they first come to is not too unlike their own. There is greenery and there are people, a remarkable people that themselves in bright colors and speak in tongues he cannot comprehend. He doesn’t learn much of their language because the sounds don’t quite fit inside his mouth, but he learns enough to understand fragments of stories that tell of islands further up the coast. That is when things change. The land becomes red and cracked and dry, rocky and barren, and he cannot comprehend wanting to live in such a place, fascinating though it is. Yet still, there are people who make it their home.

It's not enough. He wants more. A part of him says that there isn’t much more he can find. He shouldn’t need more. He should be content with what he’s found.

To be content is to be complacent, and that is one thing that Fetu will never be again. He wants more, so more he will find, even if he finds himself sailing to his own ruin, to the underworld itself.

There are so many islands. There is so much water. There is so much world, and he eats it up like a starving man, consumes everything he sees with an appetite so ravenous that he cannot see beyond it. There is only the memory of the dream, the promise given to him by the gods (for what else could it have been?) that keeps him going. His companion left long ago, too tired, too homesick, too weak. He found another. And another. New islands and people come and go, new creatures for him to sink his teeth into, new weapons that crave blood like he craves the unknown.

He never looks back.

Why would he when everything he needs is before him?

He is making his own destiny, carving it out of seafoam and sweat and the constant beat of pounamu above his heart, the only piece of home he deemed worthy.

The stars shift a bit, the weather changes again, but it doesn’t become cooler. Now Fetu finds himself sweating more often than he isn’t. Now his own breath feels heavy in his chest and his hair wilts under the weight of the air. His latest companion suggests they stop and rest.

He travels on his own after that, and the rim of the waka has a dent in it from the force of his patu striking through sinew.

He’s so hungry. He’s never been so hungry before, but no food can satisfy it. It keeps him up at night, burns through him during the day and pushes him through every current and storm. He cannot stop. He’s almost afraid of what will happen if he does. All he knows is that he is searching for something and he has no idea what it is. It calls to him all the same.

The dreams return. They crowd his mind when he wakes. They whisper to him, tell him to keep searching, keep clawing his marks into history and if he tries hard enough, children will know stories of the great warrior who traversed the seas and took the world in his hands, made it his.

And then one day, he sees it. The waka from his first dream, the one that stretches into the sky with cloaks full of sea air. The people that guide it are so strange that it almost scares him. Almost. They are pale like corpses, like clouds. (He came from a land of clouds once.) Their words are sharp and harsh, their teeth are yellow, rotting, and their bodies stink. But their eyes spark like fire. Their weapons are unyielding, harder than stone, painful and brutal in a different way than the wood and whale bone and greenstone his people have used for time untold.

Whatever has brought them to him, he is grateful because for the first time in his life, Fetu feels a knowing. This is where he was always meant to be. He holds the thing they call a “pistol” in his hands and senses something awaken deep beneath his ribs the first time he fires it, something that should never have seen the light of day. It marvels at the destruction wrought by a single little pebble and a bit of fire.

Every day, there is something new to learn. Compasses, maps, pistols and sabers, letters and ink and paper, a new language of sounds and ideas that make no sense to him, but he devours it all, swallows it whole. He learns that the curves and lines on the paper spell out his name, mark places they’ve been and places they will go, immortalize the ideas in their heads so they can never forget them. This is how these people tell their stories. He thinks they must have terrible memories, but he learns their ways without hesitation, makes them his own, stitches their knowledge into his very being so that he can travel in ships like theirs and discover riches like gold and diamonds and spices, and he will write the stories that will live on after he dies.

Finally, his dreams are inching toward reality.

There’s no room for nuance in the life that Fetu the Bold the Brave the Great just Fetu has built for himself. Colonies, empires, they matter little to him. What matters most is turning a profit, since that is what gives power in this world beyond the edge of the sea, and profit can be made on any side. Captains and soldiers are eager to find their local resistance blotted out in the middle of the night – unfortunate accidents and animal attacks take the Império Português by storm – and dethroned sultans and disillusioned nobles are more than happy to find a mercenary to defend their homes, their fortunes, their wives for a night.

His ambition takes him far and he take great pride in his achievements, but there comes a time when his ambition fails him. October 31, 1596 – a curious amalgamation of calculations that the Portuguese like to use to mark the passing of time – is an ordinary day. Fetu wakes up and collects payment for a job well done. He stops the client when he sees that his money is short. This one time, he misses the obvious and all his well thought out plans fail him when a sultan’s sword slices through his throat.

The pain is so hot that it goes cold and the disturbingly uncomfortable sensation of blood bubbling out of his body, his esophagus ripping open and his trachea crackling sends him to his knees. Double crossed for the last time.

The only regret that comes to mind when his vision starts to go hazy is that he cannot kill the man who did this to him, who snuffed out his light before he had a chance to properly shine. He was just getting started. There was still… so much… left to see…

October 31, 1596 – Somewhere in Malacca, Malaysia, Portuguese Empire

After all the stories he’d heard as a child, he’d thought that Hawaiki would be… different, somehow. More water, perhaps, and less blood. But then Fetu has a moment of realization. That blood is his, he remembers it pouring out of him. The ground pressed into his cheek is not the ground of Hawaiki, but the earth of a kingdom far from the one he was born to. It stands to reason, then, that Hawaiki is not a literal underworld in some very far away place, but simply a vision of the place where you die, something you are forced to relive over and over again.

Only, he can feel his chest rising and falling. He can see his breath creating clouds in the dirt. He can hear it rasping in his severed throat. Alive. Oh, he does not like that. fingers map out the jagged tear through his body, slick with blood and saliva and shattered, jagged pieces of something he doesn’t know how to name, but it makes him feel sick. He doesn’t want to know what happens if he vomits now, he just needs to get cleaned up. He needs a doctor, he needs a fucking miracle, whatever those damn Portuguese are always going on about in their book of gods and magic.

The trek between the spot of his resurrection and the only strong-stomached person in the city who can stitch him back up is a bit of a blur. Fetu finds it hard to gauge where he’s going half the time because the world feels out of focus and uneven. His hearing has decreased dramatically, too, and his smell and taste – well, he’s no fool, he knows those things may be lost to him forever. It matters not. He’s still alive and he is not giving up, no matter what the world may throw at him to slow him down. He still has a story to write.

He isn’t entirely certain how this story will write itself, though, because his own capabilities have diminished significantly. Even after he recovers and his throat is somehow stitched together into some semblance of not-destroyed, his eyesight doesn’t return to normal, nor does his hearing or even his touch. The world is muted. Colors are less vibrant and music is more muffled, the smells that were once most pleasant to him now smell of nothing at all, and food leaves him feeling incurably ill. What he had assumed was life he now sees for what it truly is – another kind of death that has transformed his surest desires into mere fantasies.

There is no pleasure in the world. And the hunger that once gnawed at his stomach grows until it becomes so insatiable that nothing could ever quench it, not the blood he draws on the battlefield, not the gold he obtains from wealthy fools who crave control, not the finest silks nor the richest feasts, and not even the knowledge and people of the distant lands he once sought.

He joins a crew sailing for the seat of the empire. Good. He wants to leave these scattered islands full of people who remind him of the ones he left behind. He wants something new, something to satisfy the emptiness that lingers in his belly. But the crewmates whisper in the dead of night, say things they think he cannot hear because they assume he’s asleep. He hasn’t slept since the day he died and came back wrong.

“He’s a savage, like all the rest.” This does not surprise him. The Portuguese are a delicate lot, easily offended by anything they do not understand, and he knows the mere lines of his moko are enough to frighten them. “You see his eyes? Half clouded and empty.” “Can’t even look at him, mate, that scar on his neck is damn ugly.” “Maybe he’s a demon.” “Don’t even look alive.” “Like a corpse.”

These things, however, do.

Is he truly such a gruesome sight to behold? He’d never thought about it. For the first time in a long time, Fetu wonders what he looks like. He thinks about the stench of their fear and the hushed insults they would never dare to voice in the light, and he smiles, and it feels like the first smile of his life.

A demon, he muses. A monster. Monsters live on in legends, haunting the living and children’s nightmares, they are immortal and powerful, feared and respected.

The ship docks in a new land dotted with hills and odd structures. Lisboa, they call it. A quick look at a map tells him he is in another world entirely.

Fetu thinks about the things the crewmates whispered through the voyage and he decides that it would be cruel to disappoint them. He leaves the ship with blood staining his wrists and a quiet in his gut that he has not felt in ages.

September 1820 – Sleepy Hollow, New York

Dead leaves skip over cobblestones. The wind, cool and sharp. One of the horses in the pasture whinnies and huffs, shaking its mane. The evening fog is rolling in already and even while the sun is still in the sky.

The weather has been strange of late, oscillating between the warmth of summer and the biting chill of autumn for several weeks. Today seems to be more autumnal in persuasion, with many trees dropping their leaves and the sunlight taking a particular glint, somehow warmer and darker without any physical warmth to show for it. And while you find this time of year to be particularly delightful, you can’t help shaking the feeling that something is different this season, more than any of the others before it.

Perhaps it’s the withered look of the apple trees, or the petrichor in the wind and the lingering smokiness of chimney fires, or maybe it’s the call of the ravens as they flock overhead the woods. Perhaps it’s just a feeling, albeit a bad one; it will pass, like all feelings do, so you choose not to put too much stock into it.

You end your walk with a final visit by the pasture so you can watch the horses, enjoy the calm and quiet of the moment before-

“Miss Atherwood!” “Miss Atherwood!”

Before the children spot you. But that was a fool’s hope.

You turn so your back leans against the fence and spread your arms wide as the children come running toward you. Cora reaches you first, nearly knocking your feet out from under you with the force of her tiny body colliding with yours. Her arms are around your waist in an instant and you hardly have a moment to compose yourself before Moses appears too, running so fast that he’s little more than a blur before he’s buried himself in your arms.

“We missed you!” Cora cries. She tilts her head back to look up at you better, and you catch the little strand of silver-white hair at her temple as she does. “You were gone for ages!”

You smile. “It was hardly a week.”

“A week too long,” Moses decides, very seriously. “This place is boring without you.”

These children warm your heart like nothing else. Never before have you felt so loved and wanted, so entirely at home, not even with your own family. You press a palm to the boy’s cheek first, then Cora’s, and you smile.

“Well, now I’ve returned and we can continue with all our mischief just like before-“

“So that’s where the two o’ ya ran off ta.” Josiah Minor’s honey-sweet Southern twang is like a salve on your heart. He’s just exiting the house further up the path, smiling brilliantly as ever.

You duck your head and whisper a cheeky, “Just so long as your father doesn’t catch on. Now get!”

And off they go, like a pair of young horses at the races, giggling and pushing and yelping, narrowly avoiding knocking their father down simply due to pure dumb luck.

“’s good ta have ya home,” Josiah sighs once he’s pulled you into a hug. It’s rare, these embraces, but you treasure every one he offers. “House just ain’t the same without ya.”

“Believe me, I’ve never been so happy to be back.”

He raises one bushy eyebrow. “That bad?”

“Worse. But it’s better now that I’m here with you and your rascals.”

He seems eager to hear how your venture home went and you tell him some of it, but it leaves a sour taste in your mouth. Your grandparents have grown crotchety in their old age, worse now than ever before, and they seem to find fault in everything. They especially find fault in your choice of employment – after all, working under the authority of a former slave is not the sort of appearance they wish to keep up, and it reflects poorly on their choice to adopt you – but you care little for what they deem right and wrong. You’ve only ever known happiness under Josiah’s roof and you intend to stay here for as long as you are needed. Longer, if you can manage it.

Supper that evening is a pleasant affair, full of laughter and delighted exclamations as you tell the children about your travels, the animals you saw along the way, and reveal the gifts you’d chosen for them. Cora adores the little blown glass rabbit you spotted in the market and she chooses to name it “Lula”, although the importance of the name is lost on you. Moses, on the other hand, admires the sketch you made of a Lenape family you passed one day. He’s always been enamored with the original stewards of this land, always eager to learn more about them and their ways, so although this drawing isn’t much, you know it means something to him. And for Josiah, a book you’d gone out of your way to purchase and spent far too much money on, and he almost refuses to take it, but it’s important to you that he does.

“Your wife would want you to take it,” you finally say, softly, no bite or malice but the simplicity of the truth. “She came to mind when I saw it and I thought…”

The book is turned over and over in his hands, but he doesn’t dare to open it. The children lean forward in their seats to see better, and Josiah tilts it toward Moses first to give him the first look.

“’Siddur’. Is this like mother’s siddur, the prayer book?” A coil of his beautiful brown hair falls over his face when he looks up at you.

You nod. “I passed a synagogue on my way home and went in to speak to the rabbi.” Immediately, the children are chattering away, asking you questions about the experience. Not once have they seen a synagogue, they’ve never been outside Sleepy Hollow before. And the last time they saw a rabbi was for Moses’ circumcision – which is to say, such a thing is beyond their comprehension. “I know how much your mother’s means to you, so I thought perhaps a new one that needn’t fear your grubby little paws might be appreciated.” And to Josiah you cast an apologetic glance. “I hope it’s not too forward of me?”

But he smiles. It’s a very sad smile, but there’s happiness there too, a glimmer of hope and love that reminds you of the look he gives Cora when she acts a bit too like her mother. Bittersweet. “Means more ‘n you can guess, Mizz Atherwood.”

The wonderful thing about being a governess in the Minor household is that it simply does not feel like you’re working. Moses and Cora are brilliant pupils who are more often eager to learn than they are not, and they are still of an age where your wisdom and humor tickles them and they choose to include you in their chaos. It’s part of the reason why this house is always so full of laughter. But being employed here has also given you access to all the wonders of elevated class, most notably Josiah’s library.

In his efforts to educate himself and his children, Josiah has collected what you can only assume to be thousands of books, and they cover every subject imaginable. The history of the world, science, philosophy, art, linguistics, maps of foreign lands that you can only dream of, ancient fairy tales and folklore passed down through the generations. You’ve been most enamored with the tales of Scheherazade of late. You wander here when the moon is high and the children are asleep so you may read by firelight, transport yourself to distant kingdoms and times you wish more than anything that you could see yourself. For now, you content yourself with your books.

Only, something catches your eye as you settle into one of the wingbacked chairs near the fire. Something outside.

Everyone in Sleepy Hollow knows better than to go peering outside their window in the dead of night. Local Lenape legends and Old World ghost stories have mingled since the colonies first started, trickling down through each generation until even outsiders like you hear them. There are things in the woods, creatures, things that will look back if you dare to go searching for them.

And so you choose to tug the curtains shut, ensuring that the fabric overlaps so nothing can look in and you cannot look out, but… you do linger. Just for a moment, just long enough to look in the general direction of the thing you thought you saw, whatever it may be.

A chill runs up your spine.

Best to settle by the fire, you tell yourself. The fire is safe. You are safe. Of course you are. You’re simply seeing shadows in the starlight.

It’s awful. It’s worse than awful. There may not even be a word for the pure dread and horror pooling in the pit of your stomach, but the feeling only continues to grow, nameless or not.

The blacksmith was killed last night. Brom Bones. He was a fierce sort of man, tall and broad and always working in the smithy. His eye had been cast in the direction of Katrina Van Tassel for several months now, and the whispers in the town say he had even planned to propose to her.

Your thoughts drift to her rather quickly. It hurts too deeply to dwell on Brom’s fate or on the reality of what his final moments would have been. You hope the news doesn’t hit her too hard, though you certainly wouldn’t blame her if it did. To lose someone so close to you, someone you may well have thought you might spend your life with, is a thought that scarcely bares imagining.

You decide to do something for her. It will keep your mind off things (off the stories the people are telling of the blood on the anvil, the hammers bent in half, the bullet holes in the back of the furnace). While Cora and Moses are working on their impromptu mathematics quiz, you set to work on a condolences note for Katrina. A few roses from along the pasture path are trimmed of their thorns and bundled together with twine. It isn’t much, but it is something and it encourages a slightly more positive outlook on the whole scenario, even if only just.

You don’t notice the prints in the dirt until your walk back to the Minor home. The grass by Brom’s shop is trampled and at first you think this is a result of the earlier chaos that had to have arisen when his body was found. You think this is very logical and applaud yourself on your amateur sleuthing, only to stop in your tracks when you notice tracks that do not match any you have ever seen in town before. They’re boot prints, likely large enough to be a man’s, but the shape is odd, pointed at the toe in a certain way that doesn’t make sense to you. The detail is minute, almost impossible to miss, and you think again that it is something easily explained away. Perhaps someone was called in from out of town to deal with the matter. A doctor or added law enforcement would make the most sense.

But then you see the prints again. They lead to and from Brom’s smithy, you realize, and they follow the path. The path you’re standing on. Your heart skips over itself momentarily until you remember that this path if often walked and by folk other than you. Josiah often takes this route, as do the children and any travelers passing through.

You read too much into it, you tell yourself. This is, by all accounts, believable and logical, but your mind starts to wander the moment you come upon the edge of Josiah’s property and find the prints crossing over it.

A flash of the previous night strikes you then. The thing in the shadows, the thing you thought you saw. You thought it had been nothing more than the fire’s reflection on the glass or your eyes moving too quickly to make sense of the outside world, perhaps a raccoon or squirrel had darted past, and its tail caught a glimmer of moonlight. This is what you told yourself when sleep failed to take you and you tell it to yourself again now, hoping to soothe the anxiety hammering away inside your chest, but your thoughts are racing, and all logic has fled because a man was found dead this morning and the tracks leading to and from his home seem to have followed you.

Everything suddenly feels too hot and too cool all at once. With your heart thundering away as it leaps into your throat, you feel your body go warm, but then the sharp slice of fear pierces your spine and ice-cold panic shoots through your limbs.

The thing outside, what was that thing outside?

What if it was nothing? What if you are simply being paranoid?

A quick breeze drifts across the road and carries with it a few dead leaves. They make a crackling sound as they skip by.

It’s a silly thought. Brought on by a sudden bought of hysteria, no doubt. But still, you wonder. What if the thing you saw was no mere critter, but a… a murderer?

A new day brings with it new clarity, and the shadows that had clouded your mind previously are quickly chased away. The warmth of summer is fading fast and September is in its final moments. Food is starting to need harvesting. Fires are staying lit more consistently. Clouds cover a fair portion of the sky, both night and day.

Rosh Hashanah comes and goes, the Jewish New Year that you help Josiah coordinate so the children may have their celebration even with their mother long buried. Yom Kippur comes soon after, not nearly as solemn as you’re sure it’s meant to be, but they are young and Josiah doesn’t have it in him to bring sadness back into his home after the losses they’ve all suffered.

Studies are not put on hold necessarily, but they are somewhat reigned in to allow for other things like afternoon harvesting and cider making, the drying of corn husks for use in crafts you intend to teach them later in the month. Apples are peeled and cooked into cobblers, sliced and drizzled with honey and cinnamon, squashes cut open for stews and mashes. The house begins to smell like autumn and even though the days become shorter with each sunset, there is still a dazzling light that illuminates the Minor household.

And then suddenly it doesn’t.

Because Johannes Van Tassel is found dead. His throat cut, a bullet to the temple, the same as Brom. All while his daughter, Katrina, slept. Rumors start to fly. Gossip cuts hot and quick, and everyone believes their own spin of the tale to be the most likely. All you know is that you may likely retch on your own shoes if you hear one more person speak of it.

You and Josiah try not to let the children overhear the whispers. “They’ve known too much death already,” he tells you, and you understand. After witnessing their mother’s passing before the age of ten, it terrifies you both how cruel and violent the outside world can be. They are still so small, so little and innocent. It would break your heart to see them lose that innocence too soon.

So Bones and Van Tassel’s deaths are simplified for younger ears, lacking any of the gruesome details you have heard on your walks through town. They are told not to be afraid, to stay indoors once the sun goes down, and that you and their father will keep them safe. They have nothing to worry about.

But death is fixated on Sleepy Hollow. With Van Tassel’s passing, something turns up dead every morning. Livestock are left in their pastures with snapped or slashed through necks, travelers passing through are found mutilated outside the inn, townsfolk begin to disappear, picked off one by one, and no one can understand why.

Sleepy Hollow descends into chaos as primitive fear takes hold of every heart and mind. People begin leaving precious jewels, the best sections of their harvest, coins, anything and everything laid out before their homes in the hope that the demon who stalks the streets will overlook them. The church benches are filled to overflowing every day. Guards are stationed at key crossroads, the mayor’s house, the infirmary, the Van Tassel residence, and still every morning another man is found dead, his throat cut through.

The curtains of the Minor’s home are drawn shut during the day. You do not look outside once dusk has fallen, you do not dare to dwell on the image of the thing you saw those weeks ago. You do not search for strangely shaped boot prints. You do not watch the horses in the pasture. You do not leave the house.

And as All Hallow’s Eve approaches, you find yourself falling victim to your own panic and paranoia. Josiah gives you a pistol. You acquire a butcher knife from the kitchen and keep it close to your bed. The children do not sleep well and Cora has taken to crawling into bed with you at night. Moses says he’s not afraid of anything, supernatural or not, but you know he is. You catch him sneaking out of his father’s room on more than one occasion, early in the morning before the servants are awake.

For the first time in a long time, you pray. You don’t want to die, nor do you want the children to be frightened. You want them to live long and prosperous lives, happy and content and full of hope. You fear this is a dream that will never come to pass.

And then one night you wake to smoke and fire.

October 31, 1820 – Midnight

Everything is ablaze. Brom Bones’ smithy is nearly burnt to the ground, the Van Tassel residence is smoking and the women inside are screaming, and Crane is dead. Still, he feels nothing. There is no pleasure in the death he deals, no pleasure in the screams of the burned and dying. But there is blood on his boots and across his chest plate, and that could be enough. He thinks that if he soaks himself in enough blood, he may yet feel something stir in the cold, dark pit of his belly.

He marches on. There aren’t many men left of a strong build and capable age – he saw to that already – so his journey through the sleepy little village is an easy one. What few do attempt to challenge him are cut down quickly, cut through the throat. Always the throat. The ones that get back up again receive a bullet to keep them down.

A girl goes stumbling into his path, her eyes wide and frightened, hair loose around her shoulders. He thinks she begs him for mercy, begs him to take her at the cost of sparing her home. And he finds it strange how this brings heat into his body like carnage has yet to do, but it’s not the heat of lust that clouds his mind. The heat of anger stirs him, pure and righteous fury at the audacity to assume he could be bought for such a price. His knife cleaves through her ribs easily and when she falls, whimpering and crying as blood bubbles between her fingers and her yellow hair goes pink, Django feels alive again. Not by much, not enough to be tricked into thinking that his mortality has been restored, but enough that he feels human again for the most fleeting of moments.

So that’s what he needs. In all his years, he has never craved a woman, although he has known a few. His mind was always set on other sights. But now he thinks he may understand what it means to desire one, not for the sweetness of what lays between her thighs but for the sickly sight of her mouth agape in horror.

His attention flickers then to the house just up the path, the one beyond the blacksmith’s shop. He remembers a woman there, young, pretty enough, remembers her face in the window, her body wrapped up in a cloak as she traced the steps he took from Bones’ shop and across her land, back into the forest. Out of the entire town, she’s the one that’s come the closest to finding the truth. It will be good to kill her. The perfect ending to his scourge upon this town.

He's hardly conscious of the carnage he leaves in his wake, or how he breaks through the barricaded door, the servants shrieking and trembling in the corners of each room. He pays them no mind. All he sees is her, you, fuzzy and half shapeless in the back of his mind, but he will know you when he sees you.

The room he finds you in is simple, plain, sparsely furnished, but he spots you easily enough. Cowering between your bed and the wall, a pistol against your breast. There are shadows behind you that he can’t make out, strangely shaped things that rustle like little kits hiding behind their mother in a storm.

All he sees is you.

What remains of his vision is tunneled and fixated on you, your eyes, how wide they are, how the sparse rays of moonlight catch your irises. His boots are loud and heavy in this room. Your chest rises and falls as he steps closer. His fingers begin to twitch, eager to lift his blade and slice through your flesh, hoping, pleading, desperate for relief. He doesn’t know if he’s the one pleading or if you are.

The sound of a pistol firing takes him by surprise, for surely he hasn’t fired his prematurely? But then the dull ache of something lodged in his shoulder tells him otherwise. He turns.

This man reminds him of something, someone. He cares not who or what it is. He cares not for this man and the smoking gun in his hands. A quick flourish of his wrist is enough to topple him, and so he turns back to you.

His heart no longer beats, but he thinks he hears the ghost of it now as he advances. This is it. This is the moment he has been dying and living for. Your blood will be the answer. It must be. He raises his hand and-

“No!”

Time has not stood still for Django since the day he died, but it pauses itself in this moment. Long enough for him to see the whites of your eyes. Your teeth are bared. You’re screaming. Your pistol is smoking, and his sternum feels shattered. And this time you advance upon him, a knife brandished in your other hand as you scream and scream, and when you move, the shadows behind you are illuminated. The knife flies, buries itself in the crook of his arm when he raises it, and it hits him with enough force to make him stumble. But what brings him to his knees are the shadows, the children.

224 years have passed since he first died. Even more have come and gone since he left Aotearoa, his iwi, his tamariki. He didn’t even realize he still remembered the words. 224 years and he still finds that he would know them anywhere.

He sees Omeka curled into a ball and crying, though she’s trying to be brave. He would know that face anywhere. The wide brown eyes, so kind, so wise, the dark hair streaked with silver, the mark upon her temple that she was born with. He sees Poa, still just a boy, not yet a man, sees his lip snarl and curl, those little teeth bared and flashing against his dark skin, the big brown locks of hair Django still remembers grooming for him.

And then he sees you. Your weapons are spent, you have nothing, yet still you stand before his children like a warrior. You will not let him harm them; he knows this. You will give your life in defense of theirs.

The tamariki are shaking. Poa is crying now, but he hovers over his sister like a kaitiaki. He is proud of what they have become, proud they are his, yet all he feels now is shame. For how far has he fallen? To draw blood from an innocent woman, to loom above innocent children like a warmonger, to crave the fleeting flickers of their heartbeats as if their blood would fill the empty hole inside him? His people have not been above the consuming of flesh before, and it would be so easy. It was so easy; it has been for years. To take thoughtlessly, to kill every time he felt alive and every time he didn’t, to let the blood of his victims sink beneath his skin so it became a part of him. Yet sitting between your four walls, covered in gore and rattling with an anger so fierce that it threatens to burn him alive, he finds that this one time, it is not so easy to take.

He runs.

He’s never run before. He did not run from home, he left it behind when it no longer served him. He did not run from his past, but chase after the future, the promises the gods whispered in his head. Django has never run, neither did Fetu. But here in this village on the edge of the map, in this country built on blood and theft and desperation, both halves of him turn tail and run.

All the while, he sees their faces. The Poa he raised himself and the Poa he found under your protection flicker back and forth, morphing together so their faces become one. Both Omeka’s do the same. He cannot tell where his tamariki start and yours end.

He remembers the men he voyaged with, from Malaysia to Portugal, the ones who had convinced themselves he was a monster, the moment he convinced himself that he would become one. He remembers the sultan who took his life and the faceless, nameless doctor who stitched him back together. He remembers the face of every person who has met their fate at the end of his blade or his pistols.

He remembers the blood. So much blood. He recalls desperate nights where he licked his hands clean, hoping it would reinvigorate him, start up his heart anew, trigger the breath that once stirred in his lungs. That is what he had hoped for here, though he hadn’t fully realized it then. He had only wanted to feel something, anything. Just once more.

He can certainly feel now. He feels the burn of bile as he dry heaves inside his helmet. He rips it off and his head goes tumbling through the grass, and it hits him, stronger than any wave or weapon, exactly what it is he has become.

Django wishes he could die. He wishes more than anything that he had never been cursed with this half-life, that he had never dreamt of the worlds beyond his and chased after them like a child chasing after its mother. He was a fool. He is a fool.

He thinks of Omeka’s face and his body retches, even while his head is still detached. The world is out of focus, blurry, and his senses are so dull that he can’t feel a thing beyond the queasy rumblings of his gut. The shame.

taglist: @dystopicjumpsuit @clonemedickix @wizardofrozz @anxiouspineapple99 @multi-fan-dom-madness @deejadabbles @rain-on-kamino @wings-and-beskar

#jango fett x reader #jango fett x you #halloween au #headless horseman au #star wars #jango fett #x reader #yes there are more parts to come!!#at least 1 more if not 2. we shall see what the final edits yield

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theundeadsnake · 11 months

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Hello if you're comfortable can you do a offenderman x reader where the reader has magic involving dolls (dress in lolita fashion,carries around a porcelain doll, anyone exposed to her magic becomes a doll-like creature)?

Hiya, thank you for this ask, I had a lot of fun working on it and hope you enjoy it :) If you have any more requests, please let me know and sorry for the delays

Some may describe you two as a classic good-girl bad-boy combo. On one hand, there is you, a beautifully dressed lady, adorned with lace and ruffles, carrying a cute classic and yet historic little artifact. A porcelain doll, a piece of history that picked in the 1940s. Many will wonder how you have kept such a wonderful item in such excellent condition despite its years.

On the other hand, there is him, a horrifying looking criminal with sharp piercing teeth and an outgoing attitude that just screams “power” and “confidence.”

You will catch his gaze in an instant. His mind will begin to wonder and curiosity – it’s not often that someone manages to stand out so well against the crowd. An entity his age has met countless beings with their own individual little quirks.

But you are a whole new cup of tea for him. Oddly enough, he won’t be able to lose his focus. Have you perhaps placed a spell on him?

Either way, he will court you in a very respectful manner. Thinking you to be someone weak, feeble, and frail

But oh, how wrong is he?

Offender will learn that you are not to be underestimated. The first time someone decides to mess with you he will see you work your magic. So quickly and efficiently that he is barely able to comprehend what is going on before it’s all over.

And that’s how the wheels in his head will behind turning. For the first time in centuries, he will be baffled.

There is you, the passionate adorable darling of his that he has been unable to stay away from, in fear of you getting hurt. But then there is also you, the girl with the power to turn anyone into a doll-like creature.

Some people can’t exactly stand seeing their partner differ from what they expected, but his interest in you will absolutely increase. While this monstrous being, will love their partner to the fullest regardless of whether they have some kind of a power, not having to worry about your safety too much will definitively bring his worries a lot.

Has your porcelain doll always been a doll?

How did you discover your passion? Your powers? Offender has a lot of questions for you, though he won’t bombard you with them at once.

Instead, he will talk with you about your interests, in-depth and at length. Happily chiming in, asking questions, and generally getting to know you more and more with time. Lolita fashion is something he will be learning a lot about both from you and his own research.

That interest of yours and commitment to your inner self is what drew him to you. It will absolutely get you two even closer.

Offender will go from being ignorant, clueless, and barely able to keep up with you, to being able to engage you at a proper level.

Other than conversing with you, he will absolutely do all he can to help you engage in your hobbies. He will go shopping with you, help you pick out incredible pieces, and even teleport you anywhere you want to go. Would you like to visit Harajuku? Visit a wonderful café? Or maybe spend some time indoors exploring your passion?

Whatever you hear desires, your criminal will go out of his way to try to fulfill.

#creepypasta #creepypasta headcanon #creepypasta headcanons #offenderman headcanons #offenderman x reader #creepypasta x lolita reader #offenderman headcanon #offenderman x lolita reader #creepypasta x reader #request

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waywardrose · 5 months

Text

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY 24

stranger things

eddie munson x reader

rated e

5.6k

spotify playlist

for @punk-in-docs

fem/witch/goth!reader, sweetheart!eddie, magic, slow burn (for me), friends to lovers, angst with a happy ending, no y/n only pet names, series-typical horror, period-typical sexism and homophobia, historical inaccuracies and anachronisms, drug dealing and use, smoking, alcohol use, masturbation, mutual masturbation, fantasizing, one-bed trope, making out, fingering, dirty talk, chasing, oral sex, handjobs, condoms, piv sex, reader’s father is a dirtbag, mild spanking, magical violation, mental torture, body horror, blood, aftercare, nightmares, strict parenting, panic attack, past child abuse and abandonment, semi-public sex, break-ups, running away, guns, fist fighting, everyone survives, tags will be updated as needed

Eddie would have to wait until his lunch break to see this new, hot, weird chick. He wondered which flavor of weird she was. Art weird? Theater weird? Band weird? Weird weird? He shrugged. He liked weird. In other words, you’re the new girl in town, and Eddie is intrigued.

note: Idk if the Cali group arrives in Hawkins on Saturday or Sunday. I'm going with Saturday. If that's wrong, well, this fic isn't canon compliant anyway. Also, Unnamed Freak (aka Dave) has a canon name now with Flight of Icarus: Dougie. I've corrected this entire fic on all platforms. If I've missed a "Dave" somewhere, please tell me. 🖤

The phone rang, jolting you from your research. On reflex, you stretched across the spread of opened spell books for the phone on the nightstand. Then you remembered you weren’t at home. You sat on the bed in one of Steve’s guestrooms.

When he didn’t ask you to answer the phone, you straightened and found where you’d left off. The ringing ceased, then Steve’s voice drifted through the open door. At one time, it would’ve been an annoyance. Now, it reminded you that you weren’t alone. You had people who knew you for who you were and weren’t wary of your abilities.

Last night, Robin had stayed through dinner and Back to the Future. Working at Family Video had its perks, because there was a waitlist to rent it. Robin and Steve had talked through the entire movie, asking about you and sharing about themselves, but you hadn’t minded. You learned that ‘Scoops’ was Scoops Ahoy, an ice cream parlor. It must be a Midwestern chain, because you’d never heard of it.

Robin bragged Steve had slung so much ice cream, they had to put in special orders. Steve shrugged, all bravado, yet his flushed cheeks belied his cool demeanor.

“You should’ve seen some of the girls who came in,” Robin had said, face reverent. “They must’ve come from Fort Wayne or Indy—”

Eyes wide, Steve had interrupted. “Yeah, they weren’t local, that’s for sure.”

You’d glanced at him, then at Robin. He’d tried to divert the conversation. Maybe to protect her? That had made no sense until you remembered you were in the Midwest, where homosexuality — or even bisexual tendencies — was anathema.

To Robin, you asked with a sly look: “That hot, huh?”

“God, I could barely keep eye con—” She curled her lips between her teeth, but rallied. “I mean, they were, like, super intimidating.”

You grinned with a minute shake of your head.

“No, I get it. Girls are hot.”

“Yeah…” she breathed, eyes going glassy. “Girls are hot.”

The conversation had paused as George confronted Biff on screen. When George and Lorraine walked away together, you’d reached for your drink and glimpsed Steve holding Robin’s hand. He noticed you noticing and opened his mouth to speak. You stopped him with an understanding look.

“So, is there a girl at school you like?” you’d asked before taking a sip.

Robin glanced at Steve, who’d offered an encouraging shrug. She’d smiled, giddy and love-struck, and gushed about Vickie. According to Robin, she looked like Molly Ringwald, but even cuter. Vickie was talented and funny and smart. Steve insisted Vickie was into her despite what they’d seen at The War Zone. Robin waved it away, saying Vickie had a boyfriend. It was a lost cause. She’d pine from afar.

You’d said, “Well, not necessarily. She could be bi.”

“I don’t know? It doesn’t seem likely.” She’d gnawed on her bottom lip. “I would normally say that’s ridiculous, because this is Hawkins, but—” She gestured at herself.

You’d narrowed your eyes playfully.

“You could still win fair maiden’s heart.”

Steve laughed. “You sound like Munson.”

“What can I say? He’s rubbed off on me.”

Robin had snorted. “Yeah, I bet that’s not the only thing he’s done.” You’d giggled even as your face heated. You grinned now thinking about it.

Knuckles rapped on the doorjamb. Steve stood in the doorway, the sleeves of his teal henley pushed up his forearms. His perfectly tousled hair framed his face, his jeans showed off the goods, and his Nikes were clean.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey, lookin’ good.”

He put a hand on the back of his head and looked down as if bashful. Like he didn’t know how handsome he was.

You asked, “Going somewhere?”

“Uh, yeah, that was Nance on the phone. She wants to donate some stuff at the school, and I offered her a lift. I think I’m going to volunteer while I’m there, too. You know, whatever they need.”

“That’s…” You first thought ‘surprising,’ but that was insulting. “That’s really generous of you.” You glanced at your suitcase overflowing with clean laundry. “Actually, I bet I have a few things someone else could use.”

“Oh, wow, sure.” He nodded. “You wanna come with?” He waggled a hand. “I mean, I know you’re not ready, but I was going to call Robin and Dustin. See if they wanna join.”

“I want to, but I can’t. I need to heal Lucas and Max.” You gestured to all the opened books. “That’s what I’m researching.”

“What about you?”

“Me?”

He pointed at his left eye.

“Wouldn’t everything be a little easier if you had both?”

“Probably, but Max is worse than I am, so…” You looked at the books. “I can manage.”

He surprised you a second time when he said, “It’s hard to take that ‘put your own oxygen mask on first’ advice, but you should consider it.”

You met his earnest eyes.

“I will.”

It wasn’t a bad idea. You should be the guinea pig before you sprung a healing spell on Lucas or Max. While you were certain a healing spell would never harm, that didn’t mean it would be effective.

Marking your place in the book you’d been reading, you eased off the bed. You knelt in front of your suitcase to pick out a few pairs of socks, a free promo t-shirt you wore when cleaning, and a pair of tartan trousers you hadn’t worn since moving.

There was more at home you’d be happy to donate. You realized you could drop in after healing Max to pick up more — as long as your parents hadn’t returned.

When Steve stopped at your door, you handed over the clothes and told him of your plan. He brightened with a nod. You jokingly assured him not all your clothes were black and scary.

He lifted the stack of clothes.

“Just most of them.”

You laughed as he smiled at you.

He stepped back and said he was leaving, adding he’d leave the spare key on the foyer console. You thanked him and wished him luck before he skipped down the stairs.

As the front door snicked closed, you plucked the book from the bed and found a white tea-candle in your magic supplies. After placing both on the en-suite bathroom counter, you flipped on the light. With a deep inhale, you found your center. Time to be a guinea pig. You opened the book and lit the candle.

Holding your fingertips above the flame, you said, “Magic mend as candle burns; Affliction end and health returns.”

You brought your warmed fingers to the dark, tender bruise on your jaw and repeated the chant. Your skin heated almost to the point of pain. You closed your eyes to concentrate on the feeling. Tendrils of cooling energy twisted through your flesh. You shivered and breathed through it.

Once the tendrils dissipated, you opened your eyes and withdrew your fingers. The bruise was gone. You wiggled your jaw, then put pressure where the bruise had been to find it recovered. Like Jason had never punched you.

That was one injury — and the lesser of the two.

You slipped the pressure patch from your eye and examined your reflection. The cursed eye was like any other injury, you rationalized. Surgeons removed damaged bits of the eye all the time. You were no surgeon, of course. You weren’t removing damage; you were healing it. That was different.

You couldn’t psych yourself out, though. It was like making the Creel house go unnoticed on Thursday. Size didn’t matter. Hence, the extent of the injury didn’t matter. It was all the same and all connected. There was plenty of energy in the candle, in the spell, in the universe, and in you to heal this.

You took a few deep breaths before holding your fingertips above the flame and reciting the chant. You closed your eyes as warm energy gathered. You brought your fingers to your left eye, swallowed the mounting tension in your throat, and repeated the chant.

Your fingers went numb. Heat radiated from your eye like needles of fire. Lightning burned under your skin. The floor left your feet. Or your feet left the floor. You couldn’t find the counter. You couldn’t move or think or orient yourself.

You clawed at the dark like a panicked animal. Red flashed across your vision. Rotting vines slithered across every surface, growing thicker. Their musty, sour smell invaded your nose. Your heartbeat thundered through the room. Red flashed again. A figure made of sharp edges and pain moved behind the vines. You stepped back. They stepped back. You reached forward. They reached forward. You screamed at them. Their mouth opened as though mocking you.

You charged forward to thrust your hand between the vines. Your palm hit cold glass. You met the figure’s eyes. They were your own.

You stumbled away. Your back slammed into something hard. Each blink of your eyes tore you through different realities. The gray Upside Down, your sunny reality, glowing lava fields, a silent city made of slate, a world full of unvoiced secrets, neon lights and the scent of stale beer. Time curved in on itself. No future, no past. On and on it flowed until you yelled for it to stop, stop, stop.

The soft bathmat cushioned your calves. You held onto the counter edge with your forehead pressed against the wood cabinet. The side of your nose filled the left border of your vision.

The spell hadn’t worked.

“Shit.”

You hauled yourself to your knees and braced your elbows on the counter. Thin tracks of blood ran down your reflection’s left cheek.

“Shit.”

You stood and bent over the sink to examine closer in the mirror. The cursed eye didn’t look any worse. Its milky pupil and iris were the same as before. Rheumy blood flaked under your touch.

If the spell hadn’t worked for you, you doubted it would work for Max. She’d taken part of the curse, the same as you. Your eye wasn’t only injured. It stood to reason her arm wasn’t only broken. Then you remembered both her eyes looked like your left.

This was more complex than any healing spell could manage—

Which you said to Lucas after mending his swollen cheek and eye.

From behind him, Erica asked, “Can’t you kill this son of a bitch already?”

You glanced over her shoulder at Susan, who slept on the alcove couch.

“I don’t know if a spell would reach him.”

Lucas turned to Erica.

“And if she kills him, she could kill Max.”

You frowned.

“Why do you think that?”

“El said she couldn’t find Max,” he said, tapping his temple.

He’d explained when you’d first arrived the other members of the party were back in town. On Thursday, El had fought Vecna by connecting to Max’s mind, while Vecna was also connected to Max. El then said Vecna had roared in pain and disintegrated into smoke in his own mindscape. Nancy had connected that to her shooting him and Robin Molotov-ing him.

El had seen Max unconscious in Lucas’s arms afterwards. She felt Max’s steady heartbeat then. Max’s heart continued to beat, which the EKG confirmed. However, El entered Max’s mind this morning to find a void.

“You think she’s with Vecna?” you asked.

Erica said, “Or she’s brain-dead.”

Lucas’s face became a mask of absolute anguish.

“Harsh,” you said to her.

Erica shrugged in lieu of saying it was a possibility. It might be, but you didn’t want to give up hope just yet. Lucas returned to the bedside chair to page through The Talisman. There had to be something you could do or something you could offer.

Erica cursed under her breath and went to Susan. After Erica repeated Susan’s name and shook her shoulder numerous times, she woke with a grumble. Erica announced it was two o’clock. Susan blinked in sullen confusion. Erica said Susan had work at four.

Susan’s voice was hoarse when she said, “O-of course. Thank you.”

Erica backed away as Susan coughed with a wince and sat up. She sounded like shit. Her pallid face looked more tired than yesterday.

You asked, “Would you like some water?”

Her drowsy eyes settled on you.

“Oh, you’re back.” She couldn’t seem to muster a smile, but she looked pleased. “It’s good to see you.”

Without waiting for an answer, you went to the squat pitcher and disposable cups on the overbed table and poured her some cool water. Her hands trembled as she took the cup from you, but she managed drinking half the water in one go. That appeared to revive her, and you offered her more.

She nodded with a soft, “Yes, please.”

As you filled her cup, you thought of a quick blessing. She needed strength to see this situation through. For all you knew, she might be the key to bringing Max back, because despite what Erica said, you didn’t think Max was brain-dead.

By the time Susan finished the water, her green eyes had brightened. She stood, fluffed her hair, and straightened her rumpled clothes. She announced she was going back to the motel to shower and change before work, and if anything happened, to give her a call.

You, Lucas, and Erica promised. Susan nodded to herself and hooked her purse over her shoulder. She went to Max, righted one of her braids, and murmured something to her. She hesitated a second, taking a quick look around, before leaving the room.

You placed the pitcher on the overbed table and threw Susan’s cup in the bathroom wastebasket. The tense silence made you aware of every noise you made, from the swish of the wastebasket liner to the crinkle of your clothes and faint footsteps. Rhythmic squeaking of wheels came from the corridor.

Watching the EKG display, you thought of something you could do:

“I can look for Max, too. I don’t have El’s powers, of course, but Max and I, we’re connected.” You shook your head. “I… I might have a better chance of finding her or finding a clue to get her back.”

Lucas asked, “Are you sure?”

“What if Vecna’s got her, and he takes you?” Erica leaned her elbows on the overbed table. “Then we’re down a magic-user — and we need as many as we can get.”

“He can’t get me here. He tried before and he failed.”

“But you died.”

“And yet, here I am, talking to you.”

“Died.”

You threw out your hands. There was no arguing that fact. Yes, you had died. Yes, Vecna’s curse had killed you. Nevertheless, you were alive. Also, Vecna was wounded.

Lucas asked, “What’s your plan?”

“I don’t know? Connect with her somehow?”

You thought of psychometry. Through touch you’d seen Eddie’s past. Perhaps through touch you could see Max’s. If you could see when the curse hit her from her point of view, maybe that would show you how to get her back.

“Maybe I can’t communicate with her,” you said. “But I might be able to see how Vecna took her.”

“Then you could reverse his steps.”

“Something like that, sure.”

Lucas sighed in thought, tapping his fingers on the book. He came to a conclusion before looking at you.

“It’s worth a shot.”

Erica huffed in disapproval and retreated to the couch.

You propped a hip on the bed, facing Max. Her delicate fingers curled over the cast. You tucked your hand around them and closed your eye.

Unlike with Eddie, you didn’t have to tell Max to relax and trust you. You loosened your shoulders, breathing deep. You focused on her hand, the stillness of her fingers and the fine skin of her knuckles.

The room went cold. Ambient noise disappeared. The mattress sagged under your weight.

Max’s grip tightened.

You opened your eyes. The pressure patch was gone — as was Max’s cast. She stared at you through milky eyes in a younger face. Her now-smaller hand held fast to yours.

The world went wound-red and drained of life. Only you and she remained in the room. No leaves grew on the trees outside. A motionless, stormy sky hovered close. You were in a frozen, bloody version of your world, like a paused horror movie.

“I can’t sleep,” said Max.

“You’re sleeping in our world.”

“What? How?”

“This isn’t your world.”

“Am I dreaming?”

You hadn’t considered that. She could be dream-walking. If she were, why would she choose this? Why would she be younger?

You said, “I don’t know, but you need to leave this place.”

“You mean I need to wake up?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“I can’t. I can’t switch back. I don’t know how.” She frowned. “Where’s El?”

“I don’t know.”

Instinct kept you from telling her El had been at the hospital to visit her earlier in the day. This younger Max could be an illusion. You could be talking to Vecna. Or Vecna could be listening.

“How did you get here?” you asked.

“I was fighting Vecna, and he threw me. Everything went dark.”

“And then?”

“And then I woke up in the goddamn Upside Down.”

You examined the room, noticing how much differed from what you’d seen through the tumbler.

“You sure this is the Upside Down?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s red, and where are the vines? The lightning? The demo-creatures?”

From nowhere, an invisible force pushed you backwards. Your foot skidded across the floor. You held onto Max’s hand. She bent forward to stay with you, then struggled to her knees. Your hip dropped off the crumbling mattress. You gripped the edge of the tattered sheets until they tore.

Her eyes widened as she shook her head.

“Don’t go!”

“I’m trying!”

But there was nothing to fight against.

You met her panicked gaze.

“We’ll find you! Wherever you are, we’ll find you!”

Your heel hit the floor. You lost your hold on Max’s hand. She screamed your name, crawling to the end of the bed. You pitched backwards, your heel the focal point. For a second, it felt like flying.

You landed hard on your side. Your ears rang. Like Dorothy landing in Oz, the world bloomed in technicolor. The pressure patch was back. Hands rolled you onto your back. Above you, Lucas and Erica blurred and sharpened. Their mouths moved, but their voices couldn’t overpower the ringing. You touched Lucas’s shoulder to confirm you’d returned.

The room dimmed. Shadows deepened. The three of you paused.

Red light flared through the window. Thunder vibrated the glass, restoring your hearing. You froze. You’d brought the Upside Down — or wherever you’d been — with you. Any second, those rotting vines would slither over the walls, the floor, Max’s bed.

Lucas helped you sit. Erica peered at the window on the other side of the bed. The clouds darkened further. When the vines didn’t appear, you used the bedframe to hoist yourself to your feet. Erica went to the window first, Lucas right behind her. You followed them, keeping to the shadows. You dared not look at any reflective surface, lest that sharp-edged figure look back.

Red lightning cut through the iron gray tower of smoke now spewing from the mega-gate’s nexus. Deafening thunder shook your bones. Warmth quaked in your gut a second later, silver and true. It filled the emptiness that had settled days ago.

Pitch black surrounded him. He lay on ice — or something like it. It curved around the back of his bare arms, cooled his body numb. So numb he couldn’t move. And he needed to move. There was work to do, someone to find, wrongs to right. Too much had gone wrong in the world. Too many injustices to name. He could make it right. He could help, gather, hunt.

Blood hung in the air. Screeches echoed through his mind, a hungry call for vengeance. Vines pulsed with wrath. The Source promised a righteous purpose larger than himself. The Source was a kindred soul: misunderstood, rejected, and enraged by the world’s hypocrisy. They were misfits together.

And there was no need to be frightened of anything anymore.

He searched the dark, his fingers not offering the answers he needed. He moved his legs and found the curve of the surface he lay on. Raising a foot, his toe bumped into something hard and smooth inches above. He let his heel fall as he walked his hands across the surface. He pulled it down his body. Whatever he was on moved instead.

He walked his hands above his head to find more of the same smooth surface. To his left were round protrusions, like bolts. Yes, he thought, bolts. Bolts meant hinges. Hinges were weak points.

More bolts were on the right. That was the hinge. The left was the handle. Handles were weak points, too.

He placed his palm on the handle bolts.

The Source said he could free himself. Something as mundane as this wouldn’t injure him.

He slammed the heel of his palm below the bolts. The handle rattled. He struck a second time. The handle whined. He struck again. The handle clanged in the background. He waited for someone to come investigate — police, a guard, even an assistant. He pushed the hatch open and waited a few minutes more. It was nominally brighter beyond, yet there was enough light to see he lay on a metal drawer.

He pulled himself through the portal. The drawer rumbled. Still, no one came. All around the portal were similar metal doors with chrome latch handles. He recognized it for the morgue it was.

He’d been dead. He was dead.

The Source contradicted the thought, saying everyone had mistaken him for dead. They’d not looked close enough. They’d abandoned him. They’d thrown him away. Only Source accepted him and had seen him for the valuable individual he’d always been.

He sat and scooted up the drawer to maneuver his legs out. The skin on his torso pulled. He looked down and gagged. Lines of black stitches or patches of missing flesh disfigured his chest and stomach. He touched the flap of skin on a patch on his right side. It should’ve hurt—

Nothing hurt.

He should’ve been cold. He’d been in a refrigerated box for who knows how long, but he wasn’t.

The Source assured him he was beyond pain.

His right calf and left thigh had been gnawed on, too. Someone had attempted to repair the damage with more black stitches. Those injuries didn’t pull like his torso.

That hardly mattered, though. He needed to leave— wherever the fuck he was. He needed clothes for that, because he was very, very naked. Making anything right usually required covering your ass.

He slipped off the drawer, landing on feet that didn’t feel like his own. His legs wobbled. Every wound protested as he straightened. The skin stretched little by little until he could stand.

A shelving unit stacked with linens stood by the main door. He found a scrub top and held it up. His bare hands felt as naked as the rest of him. That wasn’t how it should be. He only took off— No, he hadn’t taken off anything. He was supposed to see someone. They were waiting— No, no one was waiting for him. Everyone thought he was useless — and dead.

He was forgetting someone— No, they’d forgotten him. He touched his upper chest. Something should be there. They’d stolen something from him.

Yes, someone had taken something from them. He needed to find this person— No, wait for this person. They had an essential component in Source’s plan, and he had to capture it.

“Something’s changed,” you said.

“Uh, yeah,” said Lucas, pointing towards the window. “The Upside Down is invading Hawkins.”

You shook your head.

“No, I feel the pull of something.”

You didn’t want to say you felt the silver flame of Eddie’s energy for the first time in days. That sounded hokey even to yourself. If the emptiness — which had to have been Eddie — was filled, it meant Eddie was alive. You couldn’t desert him. You had to find him.

Erica said, “You can’t go now.”

Lucas nodded.

“The party doesn’t separate.”

“Even if it’s for a member of the party?”

“Who is it?”

“I think it’s Eddie.”

“What about Max?” he asked. “Did you find her?”

With a nod, you explained the paused, red world where Max couldn’t sleep. Max thought she was dreaming, but you weren’t sure it was her dream. You theorized it was an illusion to keep her stuck. There had to be something to get her unstuck. She wanted to switch back, but she didn’t know how.

“She exists in two worlds,” you said. “Her body in ours, her mind in another.”

“Or in Vecna’s mind.”

“We have to unite her,” said Erica.

“She asked where El was, but I didn’t tell her. Because I don’t know, and because I didn’t want Vecna finding out.” The pull of Eddie being alive nagged at your consciousness, and you shook your head. “Look, I can’t stay. I gotta find Eddie.” You grabbed your purse from where you’d left it by the door. “Guard Max. Hide her, if you have to.”

Erica and Lucas shared a look.

“We can do that,” he said.

You gave them a nod before leaving the room. Eddie’s energy drew you outside. Though you didn’t understand, you took the service stairs down. Hospital personnel pushed open doors and passed you on the stairs without questioning you.

While the first-floor corridors bustled with people and staff, a hushed tension overlaid every conversation. You swerved around anxious groups of two or three and the occasional thousand-yard-stare loner.

Outside, the scent of smoke and hot ozone had your eyes near burning and your nose on the verge of running. Ash fell like snow from the low ceiling of the clouds. It disappeared when it touched your skin.

You brought your shirt collar over your nose, then crossed the parking lot to your car. You stowed your purse in the trunk and pocketed the keys. There, you hesitated. If Eddie wasn’t in the hospital, he could be anywhere. Perhaps Wayne had identified him and took him to another hospital. However, there wasn’t another hospital in Hawkins. Maybe he was at a doctor’s office. His wounds might’ve looked worse than they were. That didn’t explain his absence from Indra’s net or his reappearance, though.

You turned to the path that led through the trees at the back of the parking lot. Except for funeral homes, only the hospital and coroner’s office could store dead bodies. If Eddie was in a funeral home, word about it would’ve been everywhere by now.

His energy wasn’t far, yet it was muddled, like poor reception on a TV. You tried getting more of a read on him. Pain lit your nerves, making you back off. You pressed your shirt over the bridge of your nose and breathed deep.

Fine, you thought. The coroner’s office it is.

You had to get yourself worked up. An injured girl near tears could get sympathetic assistance and soothing information. You made your breath shallow and rapid as you marched across the parking lot. You brought to mind every stressor: your father rejecting your every idea, being a stranger in this town, Vecna disfiguring your face after stealing your magic, making mistake after mistake and not finding the strength to get over it or fix it, finding Eddie and losing him all in one night.

Tears rimmed your eyes as you walked under the coroner’s office awning. You righted your shirt and pushed at the door. It clanked in its frame.

“What the hell?”

You caught your breath. Maybe you had to pull it. You tried that, earning another clank.

It was locked. Still.

That was complete bullshit.

Your tears evaporated as you grit your teeth. You would not be kept from him any longer. It didn’t matter if he was alive, dead, or undead. You would see Eddie.

You placed a palm over the deadbolt.

“You are undone,” you whispered to it.

Its screws unwound and fell to the floor. The outside cover tumbled off. The interior mechanism flicked open and teetered in the hole. You encouraged it to drop with a jab.

You swiped the cover from the sidewalk before entering the building. Inside, you gathered the deadbolt pieces and dumped them in a potted plant in the dim waiting room. You went to the empty check-in counter to find the area beyond it vacated and dark, save for the blinking lights of the desk phone.

Heavy footsteps echoed behind the reinforced door to your left. With nowhere to run, you put on an innocent expression and curled your shoulders inward. A guard in fatigues tore back the door while another rushed into the waiting room, guns in hand.

“Hands up!” said the closest guard as the door closed behind them.

You raised your hands as your gaze bounced from one to the other. They both had black armbands with MP decorating the side. Military police. Your hunch yesterday about the Humvees had been correct.

“How did you get in here?”

“The front door?” You glanced at it. “The lock’s gone.”

“State your business.”

“I can’t find my-my parents.” You didn’t have to force any nervousness with two guns pointed at you. “They’re not at the hospital. And… and-and the ER told me to check he-here.”

The MPs scowled.

A frenzy of banging and clanging came from behind the door. The MPs turned from you with guns at the ready. You took a step back, heart in your throat.

What were they keeping back there?

The door flew off its hinges, springing off the linoleum by its corner. It ricocheted and crashed into an MP, who toppled to the floor. The door landed to cover his top half. His gun skidded into the waiting room.

“Back away!” yelled the remaining MP. “Hands up!”

You turned your attention away from the gun, thinking he yelled at you. Rather, his attention was on the person in the doorway.

You almost didn’t believe your eyes. You’d expected a demogorgon or some other sort of hellish creature. It was neither. It was Eddie. Unmistakable, even backlit by the severe hallway light. His usually wild hair hung limp around his face. Green scrubs had replaced his clothes.

Eddie hissed at the MP and stomped onto the collapsed door. The MP underneath bleated in protest.

If he kept on like this, he was going to be shot.

“Eddie?”

He turned his focus on you, his blank expression so unlike himself.

The MP shouted, “I said, hands up!”

Eddie’s eyes had you taking another step back. They were like your left: cursed. His skin was waxen like the dead. A tag hung from his big toe. You didn’t know who this was, but he wasn’t your Eddie. He felt like him, looked like him, had his silver flame, but he wasn’t Eddie.

The door was less than a yard away. You could make it out before anyone would reach you. Once outside, you could dash to your car — or lead Eddie away from the hospital.

You pivoted on one foot. A cold body plowed into yours. Hands grabbed your upper arms. The check-in counter dug into your back. Eddie reared up over you.

He’d moved too fast to be natural. In comparison, the MP turned in slow motion.

Eddie pulled the pressure patch down your face.

With a pleased look, he said, “Ah, I see you’re half ours already.”

His breath smelled of old blood.

“Eddie, don’t.”

“Don’t what? Have you join us?”

He leaned in to drag his nose over your cheek, inhaling as he went. You closed your eyes and pinched your mouth shut. His dry, cracked lips skipped up your cheek.

“Pretty, pretty witch.”

“Show me your hands,” ordered the MP.

“Should I let him shoot me?” Eddie asked you.

“Don’t shoot,” you called over his shoulder. “He’s… He’s not hurting me.”

Eddie hummed in your ear. “Take me to Max.”

You couldn’t let him get his hands on her. He’d take her to Vecna. If Vecna had you, Max, and Eddie — all cursed in one manner or another — it would be a recipe for destruction. He’d drain you like a vampire, sacrifice Eddie, and use Max as a pawn. Or maybe something even worse. You couldn’t let any of that happen.

You arched away to look into Eddie’s cursed eyes, so much like your own. You’d tear Vecna limb from limb for this. Apart from El, only you had power enough to destroy him. And you could with the Eradix spell you’d found on Thursday.

“Step away from the girl!”

Eddie snarled and turned his head like a predator. He released your arms before you could protest. You reached for his shirt to keep him with you. Your fingers grasped air.

A triple pop of gunfire had you hunching and covering your head. The waiting room window shattered. A gust of smoke and ash poured into the building. Boots shuffled across the floor. The MP grunted as something clattered.

You wanted to look, make sure Eddie hadn’t been shot, but you needed to get out of there. A wet gurgle and grind turned your stomach. You scurried to the main door, pulling it open. Wind dragged the door from your hand. It thudded against the wall.

With a flinch, you peeked over your shoulder. Eddie stared back. Blood dripped down his chin. The MP hung slack from his hands.

Everything narrowed.

Then everything sharpened as you steadied the main door and sprinted to the street.

#eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson #stranger things #em tagd #waywardrose writes

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l-lenny · 6 months

Text

Dumb Krum… I love you too!

REUPLOAD-longer ver.

Viktor Krum x Malfoy! Fem! Durmstrang! Reader

Tw: reader is swearing, cliffhanger?

Pt 7/??

SERIES MASTERLIST

———

For the rest of the lesson you felt uneasy. Viktor ignoring you was hurting you more than anything. For the rest of the class you tried to talk to him but we’re stopped by either McGonagal or Vik. Right after you left the class you got mad “Stop ignoring me!” You pushed him aside. “I am not ignoring you.” He said sternly. “Yes you are!” He looked at you and admitted “I feel like ve are falling apart .. more so since you hang around that ginger” he said and looked in your eyes. You gasped “how can you say that?!” You loved him! But you also love your friends. He never reacted like this when you were talking with Dolian, Artie or any other of your friends. And what about him and Hermione? You werent stupid. “You are the one and only-“ I love. If it was just so easy to say it. “-the one and only…who will truly know me and understand me.” You said with small smile. Was it a sad smile? Was it a pitiful smile? You weren’t even sure. Your feelings are harder to ignore more and more each day. Viktors eyes sparkled as he looked at your face. “You are truly so amazing!” He said and hugged you. Wishing for time to stop just so you could be in his embrace a little while longer or better yet forever you both parted. The rest of the day continued as it should. Well that is what you thought-

Getting out of DADA the infamous Weasley twins went to their next lesson. Both of them in a hurry because they wanted to be sat in the back of the class for professors Bins trash lesson. For obvious reason of really important nap. Rushing through corridors they turned left just for the twins to see both you and Viktor hug so affectionately. Something in Fred stopped and broke. Seeing someone so delicate, yet feisty, beautiful yet dangerous and kind with some other bloke made his blood boil. George noticing his twin stopped he pulled him back to reality and they continued to professor Bins. “Mate you fancy her.” Said George mater-of-factly. “Nah I think it’s just crush. She is older than me, she is in another school, she is a champion, she is a bloody Malfoy and she fancy Krum it’s obvious I don’t stand a chance” he sighed. “I know I am the more handsome twin but you look good too, I bet she is at least crushing on ya! She asked you to the bloody ball! You are the champion’s plus one! And you were the one whom she retrieved from the bottom of the lake.” Fred smiled at his brothers words. His twin was right. He can’t loose hope now! And for the small chance of hope to be with her he is willing to fight.

After your last lesson of the day you were crossing the courtyard and was stopped by your brother. He was fuming. Getting on your nerves with his yapping about Weasleys. “Draco! Shut it!” You spun to face him. “All I am saying is that your decision to like him is stupid-“ he continued “-you have so much more potential to go for someone better!” You bring out your wand just to glue his lips together. “I hate you!” You said, tears started to spill. Was is so hard that for just one day to have peace and quiet? Not to mention that your emotions were running wild today. “Stop getting into things that don’t concern you! You don’t have slightest idea what happened to you but I hate this version of you” you undid the spell and walked away. Draco was stunned looking at your direction.

In rage you marched to your room when some slytherin guy stopped you. “Hey beauty!” You looked at him already annoyed. In your eyes he was more sleazy than nice or charming. Sly smirk plastered on his face. “The name is Marcus…Marcus Flint! And I know you will have great time with me on the Yule ball” he said confidently. “So I will be taking you to it as your date yeah?” He arrogantly continued. But in that moment you started laughing historically. This just gave you an opportunity to say to whole school you have a date to the ball. “With you?” You started to say. “Hate to break it to you-“ you said sarcastically “-but you’re as charming as a sleazy snail could be, not to mention you didn’t even asked! You dare to order me around? I already have better date, more handsome, charming and has manner!” He looked stunned, but then his face turned red. “You stupid bitch! How dare you-“ you slapped him. You slapped him so hard he fell to the floor. “Do. Not. Ever. Call. Me. That!” You spit out. “I could lit your pants on fire just for the fun of it” you whispered to him in a mean teasing voice. “And I would have a nice laugh out of it. I would paralyse you just so you could be without your bloody manhood. I would be praised as a hero and would be doing a favour to any girl who would be unfortunate enough to see your small length. Do not be this stupid next time you open your mouth and learn some manners.”

You left the scene where many students were watching it unfold. Well it was your intention at least until- “ehm ehm” was heard from your left. And there he was. Professor Snape and his hateful glare. “Striking another student I see… that is not a behaviour I expect from miss champion…see me at detention tonight after dinner.” He said sternly and left. Oh my Merlin you trought. This is super bad.

You never had detention! You always escaped with slight slap on the hand nothing more. You were so enraged. Fleeing to Astronomy tower, wanting to be left alone, you looked up at the sky. Memories of Fred folding in as you looked around. Your anger calming. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come to this bloody school…” everything would be more simple. You thought to yourself. No annoying boys or brothers, no stupid feelings towards Vik and no howlers from your parents. Your mind started to feel heavy from all the stress. “Y/n?” chaos in your head got louder. “Y/n.” Your mind screaming and spinning these thoughts around making you feel uneasy. “Y/n!” You spun around to see Viktor. “V-Viktor?” Must you blabber like that? You look pathetic. “Are you alright? I heard from Hermioni-ni about your ehm… suitor” he looked unsurely at you. Ah, those eyes. You could loose yourself in them. “Well, yeah…” you sighed “and I got detention for it” you admitted and told him about the situation . First he laughed and then he said “But that’s so unfair. Detention for something that he deserves? Hermioni-ni told me he vas a jerk” the nickname stung for some reason. “Thank you for checking in on me, you are a great…friend” you said and came closer. “Of course” he smiled. Suddenly his hand came up. Him tucking your hair behind your ear made your blood to rush to your cheeks. Looking him in the eyes you were suddenly in much better mood. Inching closer and closer you wanted to close your eyes and make this gap between your lips disappear. Slowly his scent intoxicated your mind and closing your eyes you inched closer. Heart beating fast as if you were running a marathon.

#fred weasley #fanfic #fred x y/n #harry potter #harry potter ff #fred weasley x you #fanfiction #fred wealsey fic #fred weasly x reader #viktor krum #triwizard cup #triwizard champions #triwizard tournament #hogwarts #hogwarts au #hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry #durmstrang #viktor krum x reader

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