under the wings
1. Polly would always always always remember the feeling of falling asleep beneath Fledge's feathered wings.
2. She'd been curled up close to his side with his coverts over her shoulders like a shawl. His pinions had stretched past her to break the night winds. She'd leaned into the crook of his wing, feeling softness on her cheek. When she turned over in the night, feathers brushed her from all sides, whispering against her skin.
3. If Polly could have wished for one thing, at twelve, at twenty, at sixty, it would have been the same: to live in that memory. If she might, she never would have emerged from her place beneath Fledge's tawny wings.
4. She loved her smuggler's cave because it was safe and small and hers. She loved all kinds of nooks and closets, window seats and beds with curtains and covers she could crawl under.
5. Digory never understood it. He himself liked wide open space and covering skies. "It's the same concept though, I think," Polly remarked once. "There's something lovely about the feeling of being underneath."
6. Polly was even, unfathomably, rather partial to certain bomb shelters, though she'd never have admitted it. How pleasant it was to fall asleep underground, curled up in a corner wrapped in a blanket, safe in the knowledge that she was too far down for anything to hurt her.
7. (And when she wasn't in a shelter and the bombs fell anyway, she squeezed her eyes shut and pictured tawny feathers all round her.)
8. Digory wrote her letters and she wrote back. His were full of ditches in the ground and hers of shelters, but they both liked to write about lions and the sky.
9. After the first war, it was easy for a pretty lady to talk her way into flying lessons with one of the hundred wayward pilots left over from the fighting.
10. He was a mechanic by trade, and he didn't mind unconventional women; but he told Polly she had no business in a cockpit if she didn't know her way around an engine. So, two summers after the war ended, she spent her mornings smearing oil across her ruffled blouses and learning how to make things fly.
11. (She would have married him, if ever he'd asked her- but he never did, and maybe it was for the best.)
12. As the years wore past, Polly met other little girls with ribbons in their hair. She told them stories and she taught them her magic, and when they cried she brought them into her hiding places the same way she'd once done with Digory Kirke.
13. They called her Aunt Polly - both those children that she cared for interbellum, and the ones that came after.
14. Once, Polly dreamed that it had been her instead. Aslan told her, you will be the grandmother of all the angels, and feathered wings sprang from her back. Once, Polly dreamed that it had been her instead of Fledge.
15. (She woke with the feeling of feathers still clinging to her shoulders, itching.)
16. During the second war, she worked at an aerodrome. Occasionally she flew with the training crews, but mostly she'd go out onto the tarmac after the sirens were done and stand in the shadows of airplane wings.
17. When Digory told her about the wardrobe, Polly went to his estate, pulled out all the coats, and shut herself in. She didn't have any notions of getting back to Narnia that way-- but she did it all the same.
18. Jill and Eustace made her laugh: Eustace, who hated heights, and Jill, who panicked in small spaces. Oh Lord, thought Polly, save me from the irony. She loved them anyway.
19. In the end, she died in a train crash and opened her eyes to something like fragrant, golden feathers.
20. And suddeny, Polly understood. They're weren't really Fledge's wings at all, were they?
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Things End | People Change - Poisoned Blood
masterlist
content: heavy gore (insides burned, skull smashed in), vampire whumpee, captivity, starvation, muzzles, death wish
Vincent can smell it before they've even gotten down the stairs.
Blood blood blood blood blood. He feels like a newborn vampire again, desperate for the taste of the one thing he needs, willing to do anything, anything to get it, to feel the warmth and the life and the-
The door slams open and it's Sawyer (smoker, sir) and Ezekiel with the knives on his belt. Vincent looks up with wide eyes and a guttural scream escapes him at the sight of the red liquid in the bag. Sawyer leans down and grins, waving it in front of his face. The silver shackles don't allow him much movement, but he can't help himself, he needs it.
Sawyer steps back. "Settle down, bloodsucker."
Ezekiel rolls his eyes and pulls the muzzle from Vincent's face.
"Please, please please please!" Vincent begs, not caring in the slightest how undignified it is. "Please let me have it, please, please--"
"Shut up." Ezekiel kicks Vincent in the face so hard that all three of them can hear the crack. "Oh. Oops."
Vincent whimpers and holds still and silent. He can't risk angering them. There is blood, precious, precious blood in that bag, and all of his thoughts are consumed by the desperate need for it. And that means being grateful and obedient.
"Sit up," Sawyer orders.
Vincent scrambles onto his knees, looking up at the two men like a lost puppy. His eyes are fixed on the bag, body trembling in anticipation of getting it, of what he has to do for it.
Sawyer holds it out to him. "Here."
Vincent's eyebrows knit together. Is this a trick? Is this a dream? A hallucination? Blood blood blood blood blood. He can hear the human heartbeats thundering in his ears, but he has just enough awareness to know that fresh blood isn't an option, and they'd do things he can't even conceive of if he tried to take it.
Why is he just being offered the bag?
His body reacts first. He grabs the bag in his broken fingers and rips it open with his teeth. His lips and mouth are burning with what he assumes is raw need as he drinks and drinks and drinks.
The inside of his mouth is peeling and he can't stop.
Vincent doubles over, still swallowing, even as his throat makes disgusting sizzling sounds and the laughing rings in his ears. All too quickly, there's nothing left, and finally his mind is clear enough to realise that there is something in the blood that is burning him from the inside out.
He thinks to scream a few seconds too late – his vocal cords are already gone.
A horrid noise leaves the back of his throat, and Vincent scratches at his own body, following the burning sensation as his internal linings slough off. He's trying to beg despite it all, but he isn't able to form words anymore. There's a hole burning through his chest. Silver in his heart so that it can travel through the rest of his veins.
Could that kill him?
There's no space left to think about what a mercy death would be. He writhes on the floor and his vision swims as the burning in his chest becomes overwhelming, sharp and stabbing and his mouth opens in a silent scream that can't escape. It stops for a brief moment, then starts again just as suddenly and Vincent realises that it's healing him even as it burns. It almost feels like his heart is beating again, if a beating heart burned and bled and burned again. Well, Vincent supposes it did, in a way.
When it finally leaves his heart, what's left of the silver-poisoned blood begins to drip out of the cavity in his chest as Vincent shudders and shakes.
"Come on, you're wasting it," Ezekiel says, grinning. "You're so ungrateful."
Vincent wants to apologise, but of course, of course, he can't. He clutches the hole in his chest so that he can lick the blood from his hands, and that makes Sawyer burst out laughing until he can barely breathe. Vincent can barely find it in him to care. All he knows is that he's starving.
"Say thank you, parasite," Sawyer wheezes.
Vincent can feel his limbs seizing as the remnants of the poisoned blood make its way around his body. Say thank you. They know he can't, don't they? He tries anyway, just to keep them happy.
"Can't hear you," Sawyer says, kicking Vincent again, his boot catching in the cavity. Vincent's eyes roll back and he twitches like an electric current has just been shot through his body. He wishes that he could pass out, but a dead thing like him can only pass out from exhaustion.
"Speak up!" Ezekiel mocks, and Vincent digs his nails into his throat, as though that will restore his voice any faster. He'll be trapped in silence for weeks, if not months, if they even let his vocal cords regenerate at all.
No, they love to hear him beg too much.
"If you're gonna be disobedient and ungrateful then clearly you ain't learned a thing," Sawyer sighs.
Vincent mouths a series of pleas and nos and words that would be unintelligible if they could even be formed through his cracking, peeling lips. He just wants this to be over already, but there's going to be more.
He doesn't deserve for it to be over.
"Wait, I'll call Ains," Ezekiel says, and at this point Vincent must be drifting in and out of awareness, because it seems as if there's a conversation happening. He's getting used to not being all there. He prefers it.
Vincent lays there, twitching, shivering, as a conversation he can't quite focus on takes place. He's still starving. Every drop of blood was only used to heal the damage from the silver, and Vincent is sure it wouldn't have been enough if it was pure anyway.
"Don't worry, bloodsucker," Sawyer says, patting Vincent's head. "You'll be just fine in a moment."
Vincent doesn't want to know what that means, but he knows he's about to find out.
"You can do the honours," Ezekiel says, throwing a baseball bat at Sawyer.
Sawyer twirls it a little and does a few practice swings, before leaning over Vincent.
"You'll be just fine," Sawyer repeats, and lifts the bat.
Crunch. Vincent feels the side of his skull caving in. It isn't a sensation he should survive feeling.
"I don't think he's out," Ezekiel says. He sounds bored.
"I've got fuckin' noodle arms, just give it a minute."
Oh.
Vincent can almost imagine he hears his brain splattering over the floor in the instant that it does. The scream he wishes he could vocalise dies with his consciousness. He'll wake up, eventually, although he wishes desperately that he wouldn't. He will heal no matter what, so long as his heart remains intact.
Sawyer stares at the body he's created and sucks in a breath. The top half of the vampire's head is just bits and pieces in a puddle of brain matter. He didn't intend to hit that hard.
"That's... probably fine," Ezekiel shrugs.
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@twistxdtales plotted starter [polly/jacob]
Another night had proven to be successful, with Polly leading the audience into cheering and whistling. There was no doubt she had been a favourite in the club for months, ever since she was hired by Jacob to work in it. Word about him being present at the club since the beginning of the show was among the rest of the girls, but Polly didn't spot him in the audience and hadn't seen nor spoke to him as the night went by.
Jacob was a boss known to keep things under control, with no margin for errors, which gave Polly the possibility to improve in her stage dances and to even explore new movements while in her apartment, with a pole she'd set in it so she could practice. She left no room for disappointment and instead gave the opposite effect, making clients want to see her rather than the rest of the ladies. Her coworkers respected him and were afraid of him, but Polly couldn't bring herself to sense fear around him. The way he treated her in a soft, gentle way was different from the way he treated the rest, and he didn't seem to carry such a serious, bold expression with her, which made her feel welcomed in the club and in a sense, protected.
She made her way back to her dressing room, skin glittery, and with beads of sweat formed on her forehead and thighs. Makeup was intact, along with the curls on the ends of her blonde hair that fell over her shoulders. Heels clicked against the floor as she walked into the dressing room, hands moving down her black fishnet stockings. She'd chosen to wear a black leather body piece, hugging her frame perfectly, which left small space for imagination. Polly approached the mirror near the lockers and observed her reflection for a few moments until she heard the door opening. Body turned, eyes widening when she saw a man, in a drunken state, walking to her. "Sir, this area is staff only."
The man attempted to grab her, but Polly's palms pressed against his chest to push him away. She could smell the alcohol in him, traces of liquor on his shirt as well. With a grunt, he grabbed her elbow tightly and then gripped her jaw, a groan leaving her as she attempted to release herself from his grasp. "So pretty you are..." He mumbled drunkenly, attempting to lean close to her.
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