I've finally caught up with Last Twilight! And I 100% understand why everyone loves this so far, this show is going to live rent free in my head. I'm gonna (hopefully) make some posts about specific parts I really loved, but if there's one thing that speaks about the power of JimmySea and P'Aof, it's the fact that I watched practically all of the aquarium scenes. I'm a certified fish hater, to the point that I cannot stand to look at them. And yet, I watched all the scenes.

à deux

Day 1 Prompt:  Rain

@sasusakublankperiodweek Ao3 | FFN | ↓

“Cold,” he croaks, like unhinging an old metal joint. Instead of the weight of unused years, it’s the weight of unshed tears. The strain in his voice zigzags, lost, falls into its baritone groove. “You always are, when it rains.”

Upon awakening in the bleak dawn, the day’s significance settles on them — at once a burdening melancholy and poignant relic.

At first blush it could be any morning, but as shinobi experienced with the passage of years and the disorientation of traveling dimensions, both are loath to disregard the importance of date and time.

He’s standing at the window. You would assume he’s still lost in a daze of sleep.

Sakura gently presses her cold (they’re always cold, on days like this, days in which it pours and rain floods the countryside and small villages and cleans the dust from these everyday, hard lives) fingertips to his back, alerting him to her presence. Still they are in the phase of learning the lore of one another despite all the things already known, and it is the truest labor of love.

“We should stay one more day,” she says quietly. He hasn’t acknowledged, but hasn’t resisted.

Some days, that’s good enough.

But she overdoes it; that’s who she is. Love may be gentle but her manner of it isn’t always:  Indeed, she is fierce with people that rub her the wrong way, especially those invoking his name out of turn; she eats too fast, as indulgence; she hugs children too tightly when she knows she’ll never see them again, knowing that they are ships flickering through towns, some benevolent symbol of an oppressor they’re too young to put a face to.

Today is the anniversary of death. Over time they’ve both come to know this as an old friend, but this is Sasuke’s most notable scar.

Sakura cannot reach him on days like this, and that’s okay.

“The rain, after all. Traveling in this would be a pain — we’ve tried that before.”

She slides her arm around his waist, pressing her cheek to his warm back.

Don’t cry. It’s not your day. Don’t be so emotional.

Tears escape, they always do. To his credit, he never resents it.

Even with him now,  his equal, there are bouts of disbelief and self-loathing in which all she manages to do is convince herself nothing about her is helpful, that she’s still yearning for him to turn around.

Now the other arm, hanging on to him as if he’s unwieldy, as if he’ll sink into the chilled wood floor and out of her sight for good.

Sasuke’s hand and grip are warm, flash and fire. She knows this is in more ways than one — unspeakable ones, really.

Some grunt of assent, no fully-formed word at all, but she hears him swallow hard, once. It’s easy to, in a small corner of the world which hasn’t yet begun its day.

Hot fingers, frigid arms.

“Cold,” he croaks, like unhinging an old metal joint. Instead of the weight of unused years, it’s the weight of unshed tears. The strain in his voice zigzags, lost, falls into its baritone groove. “You always are, when it rains.”

Sakura resists the urge to click her tongue at his misdirection, the veneer to gloss over his emotional state.

“I’m all right, Sasuke-kun.”

“Hm.”

“I am! It just settles into my hands, that’s all. It’s close to an equinox, you know. The seasons are turning.”

(He’d never admit he likes that about her — nervy, a little more quick to correct, less scared, and that it’s brought him some delight, some sparkle to her that continues to surprise him.)

She feels him scoff under his breath, probably at her ability to pinpoint their location in time, in space, in the universe no matter where they are. When you save lives on seconds of analysis, on minuscule doses, these things become instinctive.

So of course, she knows what today is.

Pressing her nose into his shoulderblade, she says, muffled, “Should I call for tea, then?”

It’s a long beat before he nods, knowing that she’ll have to let him go to complete this task, leaving him alone at the drafty window — the chill having a chance to seep into the cracks in his soul.

They’re always less protected on these days.

.

.

The sleeves of his shirt always drown her wrists and hands, and though she has to flick and adjust them as she moves about the inn room, it’s one of her favorite ways to trap heat against her body. It’s not as cold as the caves they’ve sometimes inhabited, but close. Though the teapot scalds, it’s welcoming.

“It’s steady,” she muses, eyes on the persistent rain. “The whole village will be quiet today, in weather like this.”

Sasuke nods in response with unfocused eyes, collecting himself to meet hers. Green, watching him in a searching way. The way he does to her on all other days, seeking signs of regret or distress or any emotion within his ability to repair or ease. At once, old lovers and new.

A memory sears, a sharp grazing against the mind:  A low table, scattered small dishes like this with food remnants vivid, colorful; a sullen father, the corners of his mouth sagging; his mother beaming, hiding laughter behind her hand.

A brother, by then already burdened and saturated with the weight of his destiny, still finding the almost offensive wherewithal to poke him in the face.

“You haven’t touched anything,” she chides gently.

Tuning in again to them, this, arriving momentarily from his sojourn of the past, his eyes flicker to her own messy plate. Lately she’s only pushed food around in the mimicry of an indulged meal. Worries about her being sick. She just blusters, waving away concerns. (I’m a medic, for god’s sake, I’d know!)

“And you,” he responds, indicating her own dregs with his rude, handsome chin.

She shrugs, burying deeper into his shirt. “Perhaps it’s just the day.”

“You’re coddling, aren’t you? I don’t need that.”

It comes sharper than expected, and he regrets it the second it leaves his lips. He  imagines what Itachi would say, knowing he possesses a great love which he’s taken for granted time over, time again. He’d reprimand him, as he should.

Often he settles for his ex-sensei’s silent admonitions instead.

Finishing a sip of tea, she sets the mug down and sighs. Getting to her feet, she collects a few scrolls she’s been poring over the last few nights and looks at him, a bit less readable this time.

“You’re allowed to feel this, you know, Sasuke-kun. You’re allowed to love, and you’re allowed to hurt.”

She half-turns, but stops and adds,

“And you can even feel it all at the same time.”

Sakura retreats to the corner where one of the few furnishings sits. A chair, large enough for her to fold herself into and unravel her resources. A plant discovered in this new region they had crossed into last week, similar and yet different enough to pique her interest and spur her to research. She’s been lost in common roots, and he’s been mired in the loss of his old ones.

The ability of the mind to experience multiple things at once is truly remarkable. To an observer he watches her study with intent as she furrows her brow, yawns often throughout. Sasuke can see her as well as his past all at once.

Anniversaries of his dead loved ones shouldn’t mean so much. After all, he’s been alive without them longer than with.

Sasuke wishes he could explain that her presence is enough. That her loving him has been enough.

“We could still go through the traditions, if you’d like. Collect what we need. I know,” and her breath hitches, and she glances away under his dark eyes, probably feeling she’s pressing, said too much, “there’s no grave to do it with, but—”

“It’s fine.” He tries, he does, to say it with less bite. Gods, he’s transparent, his pain and denial. He’s not ready yet. Will he ever be?

“This is your day to grieve,” she says softly. “You should do that however you choose. No one can tell you how to feel — not even me.

Even me. He knows she knows his weakness. Watches her yawn again and awkwardly adjust her body, as if her own skin is uncomfortable, blink and he’d miss.

“There’s nothing I want to do,” he confesses, sounding hoarse against his will. “Nothing at all.”

A pause, a long one, in which the rain sings against the roof.

“Then you don’t have to,” she says. “You just grieve.”

And so he does.

Pretends to read.

Stares out the window.

Lingers in the discomfort of his own skin.

Paces.

Touches no food, lapses into a mausoleum silence so complete the lines of them blur against their own dimension.

He can feel his brother’s touch, and she can feel his agony.

She rises periodically, offering him tea, sliding her arms around him from behind again. He alternates between silence and quiet shakes that he’d never admit were sobs.

By dusk he’s in her lap, hair mussed and wild, feeling spent from everything and nothing at all, from wandering in the better memories of a brother he can’t bring back.

It slips from his lips in a moment of weakness, it hurts.

“I know,” she whispers, pulling her fingers gently through his untamed locks. “It always might. But don’t forget, every day has the same number of hours.”

It’s not until they lie down again, the day a simultaneous blur of grief and guilt, that she says in a soothing whisper, “And look, darling — you’ve made it through another. You always do.”

And while he can’t articulate that each year it’s a little more muted, the pain easing off him as they pass, if only marginally, he manages to thank her only in twilight when he’s spared from knowing if she can hear him at all.

.

.

On the second day of rain he awakens before her, an arm curled around her stomach in a way that aligns with some adagio ballad pouring from where, he doesn’t know, the universe, some sign, and as intelligent as he is the facts are slipping from him whether due to the haze of sleep or the turmoil of his ghosts, the way the dead and the living and the coming to life knot themselves with one another, soaking him with an instinct and some sense of surety so intoxicating that he buries his face in her long, wild hair where nothing can see his face, but she will know his heart.

If everything’s a cycle, then the old and new must cross paths in their rotations.

The darkness bleeds away and he realizes she’s waited to spill the joyous news, not wanting to acknowledge that alignment of the stars to spare his feelings, and for that he is endlessly grateful and guilty.

But he likes to think his brother, despite his faults, would have liked to know he continued forward, that he accepted the love he didn’t feel he deserved and tried, desperately, to welcome life anew.

Sasuke presses his lips to the back of her neck, and his warm hand against her stomach.

“It’s still raining,” she murmurs, still in the place between wakefulness and dreams.

He thinks he feels the flutter of his future against his palm. He only whispers,

“Let’s stay here for now.”  

Vikings Ending Explained

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

The following contains spoilers for Vikings season 6 part two.

Vikings has always been concerned with legacy: that of the Vikings themselves, and of Ragnar and his sons. It’s clear from the show’s coda – Ubbe and Floki side by side on a distant beach, contemplating existence as the sun glows down upon the endless stretch of ocean before them –  that the two ultimately are inseparable. Bound up in this spider’s web of myth and mayhem, too, is the fate and legacy of the show itself. How will it be remembered now that it is gone? In a word: fondly. 

Creator Michael Hirst has left us a show for the ages, one that transcends the war, blood, and murder that first drew audiences to its story. The closing run of episodes is at turns thrilling, stirring, chilling, harrowing, heart-breaking, savage, sensual and ethereal, and is capped off with a mesmerizing, mytho-philosophical finale that retroactively elevates everything that came before it, all the way back to the moment when Ragnar first asked Floki to help him sail west. So how does it achieve this greatness? And what does it all mean? Let’s break it down. 

Groundhog Deity

One of the central themes of the show is the cycle of violence and bloodshed in which Viking society finds itself mired, and the battle between those who seek to perpetuate it, and those who seek to break free from it. It’s a dichotomy that burns down through the wick of the show, and often rages within its characters, most notably Ragnar, Lagertha, Floki, Bjorn, and Ubbe. Season upon season, each promise of peace is swiftly pounded into the blood-soaked earth by the vengeance, skulduggery or megalomaniacal ambitions of a chaotic individual, faction or rival; the old ways refusing to cede ground to the new. But still the dreamers and visionaries struggle, against themselves, against the furious roar of tradition, again and again. This rise and fall happened so frequently throughout the show’s run that its rhythm caused some sections of the audience to grow weary. This repetition, though, this sense of helplessness, is largely the point (not to mention an accurate portrayal of the brutish life endured by most people in the Dark and Middle Ages), and one that’s made more explicit than ever before in the final stretch of the season. Like the characters themselves, we the audience must feel – truly feel – the suffocating hopelessness of it all before we can begin to appreciate the burst of light at the end. 

All throughout the series the Vikings’ thirst for war and conquest is cloaked in the language of fate, destiny, glory, and the Gods. In a telling sequence half-way through the final ten episodes, these justifications are stripped away to reveal the dark, very mortal truth that lies behind them. Ivar, Hvitserk, and King Harald reunite in a calm and peaceful Kattegat. All three are burnt-out, frazzled, and dissatisfied. There’s a real sense that “the age of the Vikings is gone” and that this is “the twilight of the Gods”. Harald and Ivar admit that there is no pleasure in being a King, despite it being a title both men have dreamed of and longed for, and for which they’ve lied, cheated, betrayed, and killed. In the final analysis, we can see – and finally they can see, however indirectly – that the great cycle in which the Vikings are trapped has been perpetuated not by the Gods – those great scapegoats in the sky – but by bored and angry men seeking in bloodshed distractions from a cold and brutish world whose quotient of misery has only ever been increased by their actions. It is especially sad to see Ivar churned back into this mill given the growth he experienced throughout this season, not only in being a caring, surrogate father to the Rus heir Igor, but in becoming an actual father after his body asserted itself just long enough to plant his seed in Princess Katia’s belly. 

Ivar witnesses two men in a public gathering-place squabbling over a trivial matter, and extrapolates from this that war is a necessary state for the Vikings, because in peace they fight amongst themselves. It’s patently obvious that the lesson Ivar pulls from this incident says more about his pain and psychopathology – his hatred, his emptiness – than it does about society at large. Ultimately, it is he, and Harald, and Hvitserk, and a million other men just like them, who need war. They need external conflict to distract them from their own internal conflicts and inadequacies. Never-the-less, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Ivar’s facile supposition is all that King Harald needs to hear. Before long, the three men and a ready-made army are heading back across the sea to England for a final confrontation with King Alfred and his Christian Saxon soldiers. 

“The Twilight of the Gods”

This climactic confrontation is, on one level, less a battle between two armies and more the continuation of the chess game Ivar and Alfred once played as children, as their fathers – King Ragnar and King Ecbert – cut deals and hatched plots in another room. 

In many ways, Ivar was always marked for monsterhood. He grew up with the fierce love of his mother, Aslaug, which she wrapped around him like a blanket made of steel. By over-compensating for his condition and physical fragility to such a suffocating degree, she left him isolated, conceited and angry. His father, Ragnar, was absent for most of his youth. Though Ivar had Floki to teach and guide him in the ways of the Gods, Ivar didn’t realize quite how much of himself had been missing until Ragnar returned and took him under his wing. Ragnar was one of the few men who seemed to have faith in Ivar’s abilities; who told him that he could be something other than a liability, a cripple, a joke. They journeyed to England together with conquest in mind, but when a storm sank most of their boats, Ragnar swiftly refocused the purpose of their visit, enlisting Ivar’s aid to kill the surviving members of their party (to remove all evidence of their initial intent) and surrender themselves to King Ecbert. 

Ragnar tells Ecbert to deliver him into the hands of King Aelle, so that Ecbert will not be blamed for Ragnar’s death, and the full fury of the Vikings will be directed at their mutual enemy instead. However, Ragnar has instructed Ivar to return home with news of Ecbert’s duplicity, so that both Kings will become the targets of the rage-and-grief-filled Viking horde. Ivar is the perfect capsule for this incendiary message, as Ragnar gambles, quite correctly, that King Ecbert’s sense of fair play, filtered through his Christianity, won’t permit him to harm or imprison a poor, harmless crippled boy. Ragnar thus succeeds in turning the Saxon’s Christian compassion into a fatal weakness, while at the same time teaching his weaponized son that love, violence, deceit, and death are so intimately connected as to be almost indivisible. 

When Aslaug died at Lagertha’s hands, soon after Ragnar’s death, it removed his only other source of love, cloying though it was. He took that love and turned a mutated version of it upon himself, imbuing himself with delusions of Godhood, something his fury at his parents’ deaths only served to magnify.

In the first dramatic round of the final battle against Alfred, Ivar repeats his father’s tactic of weaponizing kindness. He orders traps to be set in the forest with which to painfully ensnare the first line of Alfred’s advancing soldiers. The hope is that Alfred’s Christian compassion will compel him to send the next few lines of soldiers to assist their wailing brothers, allowing the Vikings to ambush them like lambs to the slaughter. And so it proves. Many lives are lost. The fighting is kinetic and savage; the pervading mist and gloom only enlivened by the occasional eruption of fire, like a melding of Valhalla and the Christian conception of Hell. King Harald is killed, finding some solace and peace at last with a dying vision of his brother, Halfdan, whom he’d killed in a previous battle. 

After this, there is a lull in the fighting. Alfred and Ivar meet under a white flag to discuss terms. Alfred will not yield. He will never again reward Ivar for his unprovoked attacks, nor fall into the trap of trusting his word. He tells Ivar to leave his kingdom, leave England, and never return; entreats him to save his people from further pointless bloodshed.  He goes on to declare: “My God is the God of peace and love. Your Gods are savage. They demand sacrifice. They do not know human love.” The final fight that follows is as much the culmination of a struggle between two competing religious and cultural ideologies as it is a battle between Ivar and Alfred; and by the end of this final episode the matter is settled, at least in a thematic sense. 

Alfred and Ivar cleave to their God and Gods on the battlefield, looking to them for guidance and answers. As the situation becomes ever more desperate, both leaders soon find themselves deserted by their Gods, their imagined connection to them severed. 

“What am I supposed to do?” Ivar shouts to his suddenly deaf and mute Gods. “Answer me!”

“Speak to me, please. I’m afraid. Speak!” Alfred beseeches his lord Jesus. 

Stripped of their Gods, both men are forced to acknowledge in whose image they’ve truly been forged: their fathers’. What they do next will decide if history is doomed to repeat itself, and also settle the question of whether it is their own wills or the wills of their fathers that are the stronger. Ultimately, it is love and compassion, in both instances, that proves to be their guiding light, leading Ivar to reject his father’s ways, and Alfred to embrace his father’s – his real father: the monk Athelstan, who was once a friend and confidante of the great Ragnar Lothbrook. 

All You Need is Love

Ivar watches the battle from the side-lines. Hvitserk has long been a tormented, tortured and fractured man, but in combat he’s whole, screeching and roaring through the flames like a mythical demon. But one man can’t best a whole army, and it becomes clear that Hvitserk isn’t long for this world. Ivar’s eyes shine an electric blue, a physical indication known since childhood that his brittle bones are about to break. Ivar knows his actions in the next few minutes will serve as his last will and testament, the means by which the world will remember him. Ivar watches Hvitserk – the brother he’d many times mocked and tormented, whose life he’d tried to ruin, who’d long forsworn to kill him – and charges onto the battlefield to take his place, submitting himself to the same forces of compassion he’d spent a life-time deriding and subverting.  

“I could never kill you,” he tells Hvitserk.

“I love you. I love you brother,” Hvitserk replies tearfully.

“Now go. Go!” hollers Ivar.

Ivar’s rage and defiance seem to shake the very earth around him. He is at one with his army. He fights and lives through them. In the midst of his last stand a young soldier, shaking with fear, approaches him from the mist.

“Don’t be afraid,” says Ivar, an almost Christ-like evocation at this, his moment of sacrifice. The soldier stabs him repeatedly, and, as Ivar falls, his bones snap and break. Hvitserk runs to him and cradles his dying body, while Alfred calls for the fighting to stop. “I am afraid,” Ivar splutters, words no-one thought they would ever hear from Ivar the Boneless. And then there are three more; his final words: “I love you.”   

Ivar has thus broken the cycle. He has sacrificed himself not for hate, as his father once did, but for love. He was finally able to know and to feel human love; and crucially to demonstrate it instead of demanding it, even if it was right at the end of his life, and only for a few moments. Already Ivar had begun to demonstrate humility. On the eve of the battle he told Hvitserk: “Hundreds of years from now, someone will be proud to find my blood is in their body and my spirit is in their soul.” Maybe part of him realized that in becoming a father he’d finally achieved the immortality after which he’d always hungered, and it was enough.  

Hvitserk is carried away on the back of a wagon. We’re given an aerial view of this, lending Hvitserk the appearance of a corpse returning from battle. In many ways he is. Hvitserk is dead, in a sense. The merciful Alfred baptises Hvitserk, allowing him to be reborn with a new name: Athelstan. 

We know from our future vantage point that the loving Christ Hvitserk has now embraced is destined to eventually, and irrevocably, defeat the old Norse Gods. Not only that, but there will be a millennium of distinctly non-loving conquests, wars, decimations, genocides, enslavements and cultural destructions carried out in His name, all of which will make the exploits of the 8th and 9th century Vikings look like the tantrums of naughty children in comparison. But Hvitserk doesn’t know this. All he knows is that he has found peace by rejecting war and embracing love. He has finally found a way to honor his father – or at least the part of his father that loved Athelstan, and came to see Christianity and Paganism as two sides of the same coin. Love and mercy, then, are the instruments that Hvitserk and Alfred use to break free from the ‘endless cycle of suffering and war’.     

Out With The Old

The show’s themes converge, coalesce and crystalize in the New World, too. The journey from Iceland to Greenland to North America is one fraught with danger and death, but characterized by faith and hope and sacrifice. And it is Othere, the Christian wanderer once known as – appropriately enough – Athelstan (no relation), who leads them there. 

 “This is everything [Ragnar] was searching for,” Ubbe tells Othere, in their new land of milk and honey. “And I found it.” Othere cautions Ubbe against behaving in the same ways that he did before – the old ways – lest this land become just like the land he left behind.

They are not alone. The Vikings discover that the land is occupied by a tribe of indigenous peoples they refer to as Skraelings. The tribe welcomes them warmly. Ubbe soon discovers they have a friend in common: Floki, who somehow reached these same shores from Iceland, alone, and now lives on the periphery of the Skraelings’ land as a revered mystic. If it wasn’t for the Skraelings’ kindness, Floki would have died on arrival. They showed him mercy and kindness.

Asked why he left Iceland, Floki says it was because he was ‘imprisoned in sadness’. 

“What made you so sad?”

“I don’t always remember,” he says, with a wistful smile.

Floki here represents the past of the Vikings as we in the modern world have come to know it, a patchwork of tall tales and omissions. Floki embodies how time will continue to wash away both the Vikings’ history and their legend, until there’s little difference between them, and nothing much is left of either. Floki also embodies the idea that the golden age of the Vikings is gone; he remembers that he once was a Viking; he remembers Ragnar, the sons of Ragnar and the people who were important to them, but little else. There was a time when Floki was the greatest soldier of and preacher for the Gods, but he has now let them go, shed them like a dead skin. “I called to them and no longer heard their voices, or they didn’t make sense,” he tells Ubbe. Again, entropy, evolution, death, re-birth, legend, past, future: all suffused. 

The old ways make one last effort to re-assert themselves, even here in this paradise, and Ubbe gets his defining moment – just as Ivar and Hvitserk and Bjorn before him got theirs. One of his party murders the son of the Skraeling’s leader while ransacking the leader’s home for gold. The Skraelings – clearly more civilized than the Vikings ever were – hand this man over to Ubbe to decide his fate. 

This is a pivotal moment for the series. Where once we were encouraged to see Ragnar as the hero, even when he was killing and pillaging his way through innocent peoples, here we perceive this man, this murderer – who has simply acted in accordance with how the Vikings have always acted – as a dangerous savage. We, the audience, have already made a choice about who the Vikings are now, or who they should be – and so has Ubbe.

At first the murderer is to be publically blood-eagled, a particularly savage and painful form of execution that never-the-less guarantees its sufferer entry to Valhalla. At the last moment, Ubbe changes his mind, and slits the man’s throat instead. 

“Valhalla is not for you, my friend,” Ubbe tells him, mere seconds before carrying out his sentence, “Let me put you out of your misery.” Ubbe does not say this to be cruel, to rob the man of his place in the afterlife. He simply doesn’t want to inflict unnecessary pain, and is showing mercy. But it’s deeper than that, too. Valhalla doesn’t seem to matter to him anymore. Ubbe has come to understand that life can be lived without the old ways and their Gods, and be all the better for it. 

On the beach, Ubbe seeks Floki’s advice and counsel. Floki smiles. “You don’t need to know anything. It’s not important. Let it go.”

It’s fitting that Floki is there at the show’s end. Without his innovation as a boat maker, Ragnar would never have sailed west and discovered Saxon lands; would never have met Athelstan. Without Floki, the Vikings would never have discovered Iceland, or Greenland, or the New World on whose shores they now sit. Ragnar is the one who will be immortalized in legend, while the world will slowly forget Floki. He has already started to forget himself. Perhaps that is the point. Warriors live on in legend and infamy, while the people who built the world around them and at their backs fade away. But wasn’t it ever thus? Legends change the world; love saves it. And here we see that love is the more important, and more enduring, force of the two, even if we’re sometimes too proud to acknowledge it, or too blind to see it. 

“I love you, Floki,” says Ubbe, as they stare across the ocean, at their past, at their possible future, at eternity. 

What a beautiful, and truly surprising, sentiment for a show as blood-soaked as Vikings to bow out on.  

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Of course the status quo clings on in Kattegat, and I guess this will be picked up in the spin-off series. Set 100 years after the events of Vikings, Vikings: Valhalla is reportedly coming to Netflix sometime next year.

The post Vikings Ending Explained appeared first on Den of Geek.

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chilling out (trephacard)

@kittiofdoom requested:

Okay but ' it's cold out so sharing a blanket, alucard get over here and stop brooding '

Warning(s): T, some insinuating content

One would think, after living their whole life in Wallachia, that you would become accustomed to her harsh winters that could freeze the balls off an ox. It was late when Sypha and Trevor had returned from their recent escapade in monster hunting, this time in Hermanstadt in Transylvania that had desperately needed the assistance. For their efforts, they had been rewarded a few thousand Ducats for the widespread relief and the growing reputation of a new Belmont name that was growing on him.

Snowfall was light and contrasted with a darkening sky with squalls of pale white that grew a cool, jewel cobalt as it lay upon the ground. Their steeds tromped through the snow, lifting their forelegs high and puffing motes of steam in their languid efforts. After all, what need was there to rush? The twilight gloam was beautiful and set softly against the jagged peaks of Castle Dracula, for once a familiar sight instead of one mired in so much loss and evil.

From afar, the ruins of the Belmont Estate had been largely cleared of underbrush and invasive forests, a patchwork of wooden struts and platforms ascending newly constructed and restored spires alike, a skeletal structure beginning to take shape. Though the Wallachians were wary working in the shadow of Dracula’s domicile, the vampire had since been rendered dead and now only his kind son remained. 

“Once we get inside, I have every intention of making a fortress of books and neither of you will stop me. I’ll read until my eyes dribble from my head and my fingers freeze that way!” Sypha joked cheerfully as she kept in stride with Trevor’s black charger, her pale white mare almost matching the snow.

“You mean after all that, you really plan on just spending it reading?” Trevor intoned drolly, but the note of teasing was obvious in his voice. He sounded exasperated, but there was clear affection for the blonde present.

“And what do you plan on doing? Spending every Ducat on drinks?” Sypha challenged, smirking triumphantly. Given that Alucard had been granted full supervision and control of the treasury, that likely wasn’t going to happen.

“Not even for one beer? God, Sypha, you’re a fucking buzzkill.”

“If you have complaints, you’re more than welcome to bring them to Alucard’s attention. He’ll be much less sympathetic than I am, that’s for certain.”

“That’s for fucking sure,” Trevor groused under his breath, but the coin pouch tethered on the saddle horn clinked almost in cheeky reply, and he had to admit, a warm swell on pride at the sight of it defeated any disappointment at forced sobriety, real or imagined. Sypha did care, after all. “Anyway, let’s get inside. Any longer in this damn cold and I’ll turn into a bloody popsicle.”

The pair of them proceeded to untack their horses in the newly rebuilt stables and stow their saddles and brides and reins in the tack room, ensuring the horses were locked in and secure for the night from any ravenous wolves. Though it was unspoken, the last bit of their itinerary was clear: descend below to the Belmont Archives where they’d made a temporary home out of, concentrating their cleaning efforts there—especially after those battles from months ago.

Unsurprisingly, it was warmer below than it was above, the damage having largely been cleaned up. It became easier the days passed, and the trio of them worked well together. Alucard, especially, seemed to prefer rebuilding things instead of participating in the destruction of his father. The deep, abyssal sadness Sypha had noted months ago seemed to have lightened.

“Home sweet home!” Sypha crowed as they made it the subterranean levels, thirstily taking in the sight of all the books. “Hello, my darlings, did you miss me?” Trevor couldn’t help but laugh at her comedic attempts of personifying the books, but it was amusing. She retorted by sticking out her tongue. “Hm, I’m exhausted. Why don’t we start a fire and read a bit? I found some books on advanced hunting techniques I thought you’d like to see, Trevor.”

“To think, you greet your books with more aplomb than an old friend?”

Trevor turned in unison with Sypha to see Alucard rise from a set of study carrels that didn’t require an expert eye to see was overloaded with books. Though the dhampir appeared tired, it was a content sort from long study and a satisfying day doing it. Sypha knew the feeling quite well. “Alucard!” Sypha greeted enthusiastically as she threw her arms around Alucard’s neck and kissed his cheek, summoning a vibrant blush to his cheeks.

Of course, Trevor wanted nothing more to exacerbate it.

While Alucard was still in a state of happy shock over Sypha’s enthusiasm, an arm of Trevor’s joined in around the dhampir’s waist and planted a slow kiss to the other cheek, only deepening the blush. “Hello, Adrian,” he greeted suavely with a smirk, unaffected while Alucard looked mildly scandalized.

“Belmont—” he began to protest but was stopped short by Sypha dragging him towards an enormous couch situated before a hearth large enough to comfortably house an entire Yule log.

“Not another word from you, Adrian! You look exhausted, and we’re tired ourselves. We’re resting, no buts!” Sypha commanded cheerfully as they plopped in unison upon the couch, Trevor arranging a small configuration of logs that the blonde didn’t hesitate to ignite into a comfortable blaze.

“I take it your hunt fared well?” Alucard ventured after they were situated upon it, Trevor the last to join at Alucard’s side as he brought a large blanket over the three of them, Sypha like a ballast as she and Trevor wrapped it around them all.

“I’d say so. We made quite a good deal of money. Maybe it can go into repairing the south wing of the estate,” Sypha reasoned aloud as she wrapped an arm over Alucard’s middle and nestled into the junction of his neck and shoulder, feeling Alucard warm into the embrace, tepidly circling his own around her petite form.

“We’re making rather good progress. I agree, that wing could stand to face more improvement,” Alucard agreed, sighing in relaxation but tensing up reflexively when Trevor more or less emulated Sypha, the brunet grinning cheekily at him that caused the blond to huff and avert his eyes. “Belmont, if you say a thing about this—”

“What? Is the Lord of Castle Dracula so scandalized by the idea of cozying up to a vampire hunter? Afraid I’ll bite?” Trevor flirted rather blatantly, grazing his teeth on Alucard’s throat that caused the dhampir’s breath to hitch.

“You presume too much about me, Belmont,” Alucard huffed in a strained note, craning to Sypha as if she’d be the voice of reason here.

“Humans can bite quite a good deal, isn’t that right, Trevor?” Sypha chimed in, digits tracing along the line of exposed skin along Alucard’s exposed sternum and collarbone, the dhampir’s nails raking along their backs as he forced himself to relax despite their teasing.

“…You two will be the death of me, I’m sure of it.”

But that wasn’t really a complaint, was it?

CHAPTER TWO

Victor glares at her, knowing his eyes must look unfriendly and stony. Of all the people to show up late at night, it had to be her. He tended to keep to himself, so when someone had knocked or more adequately thumped at his door, he'd been wary as hell. Then she had fallen at his feet, and his chest had constricted inexplicably. He thought for sure she had come to him with her dying steps, and his heart had seized. He had originally been surprised, then panicked when she wouldn't wake up. What he hadn't told her was that while in her delirium, she'd called out his name more times than he'd been able to count. She had been looking for him in her fever dreams. Why, or how, he had no idea. She had mumbled something about how cute the stars on his pajama pants were. Then wheezed, what had sounded like at the time a death rattle, before he'd realized she had a punctured lung. Using a homemade siphon of thin rubber tubing and a glass of water, he'd equalized the pressure, and she had finally taken a proper breath. Hearing that alone had eased the sickness in the lower pit of his stomach he felt at seeing her this way. He had worked fastidiously throughout the night to get her fixed up, but there was only so much he could do. Stitches were useless as he'd have to cut them out and pull them free from the skin as it healed. Which was a pain. He'd slapped some duct tape on some areas and knew the skin would knit itself back together. Only it hadn't. She had continued to bleed, and he was afraid he was watching her bleed to death as she lay on his couch. She had been holding a dart of some sort in her hand. He had grasped it between his fingers, as though it were some sort of venomous snake, and eyed the thing carefully. He immediately grabbed a few bags of saline, and started to flush her system in hopes of getting whatever was in the dart out of her. He would have to test what was in the damned thing as soon as he could. They'd been friends when they were young, who became more when they were in their teen years. It was unlikely either of them would get powers. It was a rarity in itself, but she had gotten powers. She had always been bright and bubbly. A loving girl who was growing into a woman, who had always had a strong moral compass. She'd also had a picture-perfect life. Two parents who were still married to this day, no tragic back story like some would insist a hero needed. Just a lucky girl, with powers, who wanted to do good things. To be the good that she saw in the world. He had been somewhat jealous, but had always felt she deserved them. And who was he to complain? He was broken, and knew he didn't deserve the powers that afflicted the smallest iota of the populous. His own life wasn't nearly as pleasant as hers. His mother had left him and his father behind when he was three, saying she didn't want either of them. His father was an abusive drunk, who often lived by the rod, and never spoiled the child. He often went to her place where she would use her powers to heal the wounds left behind by the belt and buckle. His father was a man unloved by all who met him, who died of cirrhosis of the liver by the time he was sixteen. He'd ended up in the system, but he'd often sneak out to sleep on her floor. He climbed the large oak tree by her window and would climb in. She always left her window unlocked just so he could sneak in. She would leave a blanket and a pillow on the small bench by the end of her bed. By the morning, he'd find her on the floor with him, curled up in his arms. But nothing she did kept him from being imprinted by the dark shadows that tainted his life. He had wanted and strived to be good for her, but his anger kept him from her. The fury and shadows left behind by a broken childhood and his life had made him unfit. Unfit to be a superhero. Unfit to be good with or for her. And so, when he was lucky enough to get his own powers, he had left her behind, and stepped into the twilight of villainhood. She had begged him to stay with her. That the world deserved their help, but he hadn't felt that way at all. He was furious at a world that had let him down. That had given its all to so many people, and left him behind. After everything, all that was left of him was an obscure twisted version of his previous self. He had once lived in the sunshine she had provided, but he found himself comforted by the shadows that hid the fury in his heart.   It felt like forever ago now that he was thirty-two. When their powers had shown up in their late teens, hers before his… He had thought he was holding her back, and had slowly started stepping away from their relationship even though he'd seen how much it had hurt her. He didn't want to stand in the way of her destiny. Then he'd gotten his powers, and even though he had tried to be good… He had tried so very hard, the darkness had called to him, and he had left her behind to follow his own path. He was no knight. He was a goddamned nightmare. And he knew that. The devil within him, didn't want her to hang her halo off his horns anymore. He had wanted to let his rage and ire consume him, and nothing had kept him in the warmth and light she offered him. And slowly, she had let him go. What had once been a blinding sun, had become a ray or two on a cloudy day. Then soon it was nothing but the soft glow from a candle. Then he had snuffed even that out. And she had let him. As soon as he'd managed to get her awake, he'd returned to his cold demeanor. He wasn't looking to make her feel welcome here, but he'd become gentle and panicked while he'd tried to bring her fever down. He hadn't felt himself feel emotional or weak like that in a long time and it scared him. Angered him. He stiffens his spine and glowers at her. As though she is wasting his time. "Okay, a cat named Bob, got it. What the fuck was in your system, Brooke?" He immediately switches back to her full name, realizing he'd been calling her by the moniker he'd called her when they were younger. "Dart gun…Got hit by one of the Mafia Don's goons…I think at least…I don't know…" She takes a slow breath in, cringing again, and he turns his face away to hide his exterior's cold façade slipping. She takes it as annoyance, and tries to speed up. "It's something they've been working on for a long time. I killed the Mafia Don's son. I didn't…" Brooke takes another slow breath inward, and the grimace across her face shows that she's still in pain. She shouldn't be in pain. She should've healed by now. "I didn't know it was him. Human trafficking." She coughs, and blood speckles her lips. He reaches for the cool washcloth from the coffee table and wipes her mouth down almost without thinking. "Made me practically human." Slow breath. "Would have died." Another slow breath. "If not for you." "Well, fuck. Could've been rid of you finally, if I'd known," he sneers before he can stop himself. She accepts his answer with grace though, and nods minutely. "I know," she says quietly. She was always so accepting of him, and his sharp tongue. She didn't even blink or look pained at his answer. She simply seems to acknowledge it. She takes another slow breath in, avoiding the punctured lung that was taking forever to heal. "But you didn't." She looks at him stoically, and he turns away again, putting the washcloth down. He braces himself against his coffee table before standing and moving away from her. Not willing to let her see the look on his face. "Stay put, or I'll duct tape you to the fucking couch. You're much too weak to be out in the open. And, it's broad daylight," he says simply. "And I don't need you bringing the fucking mafia down on me," he growls. "If they find this place, I'm leaving you behind." As he starts to leave the room, she gasps out, "Wait…Please don't leave me." "What?" He looks somewhat over his shoulder, looking into his fireplace in silence for a moment, as though unsure he'd heard her request. Or perhaps he was just holding himself back so he could hear her talk a little longer. "I'm scared," she whispers. "That's not my problem. You're on your way to healing. Deal with it," he snaps, before taking another step to leave the room. "Then a phone," she says, just as softly. "Someone has to rescue and feed Bob…" He hears her inhale weakly again, and that tightening in his chest won't let him leave while she's still speaking. "If I get you a phone will you stay put?" He asks coldly. He's glaring at the floor and trying to shake the restriction of his chest. "Yes," she says with a sigh of gratitude. He walks at a clipped pace from the room, and looks for the wireless phone in the kitchen. Out of sight, he grips the counter. Crunch. He lifts his hands, and stares at the fingermarks left behind in the dark marble counter top. An expensive addition that he'd put in himself. He may not like many things, but simple luxuries were always nice to have. He scowls, frustrated. This is why he didn't let her near him. She brought things out in him that he didn't want to experience. He didn't want to feel these things. Concern. Worry. Apprehension. Doubt. He didn't want to feel jealousy about the possibility of a man named Bob in her life. What kind of name was Bob for a cat anyway? He takes a deep breath, and tries to calm himself. She had never been able to wrap her pretty little head around just how bad he was for her. She still saw the good in him, even though he was sure it was long gone. The monster that hid behind his eyes, was not the pitying type. Although he had saved her, he insisted to himself that it was for selfish purposes. If anyone were to kill her… Kill that last flicker, that last ember of sunlight within him, it would be him. Then he would fully turn into the murk and mire, and find himself swallowed whole by the demons that plagued his mind. He reaches for the phone, careful not to crush it in his grasp.   He walks back out, and holds it out, just slightly out of her reach. She pushes herself up, her face contorting in pain, as she grasps the phone. As she lays back, she exhales slowly, trying to deal with the pain he'd just put her through on purpose. He nods silently, feeling his face contort back into its permanent scowl. "It's an unlisted number. Don't tell anyone where you are, or I will make sure it's the last fucking phone call you ever make," he smirks at her discomfort before turning on his heel. He leaves the room, and stands out of sight within the depths of the kitchen. ***

She sits quietly for a little while, listening to his footsteps fade away. She attempts to shift her body into a more comfortable position, but can't. This makes her angry. She dislikes being weak. She loathed how he looked at her, like she was some kind of insolent child, inconveniencing him at best. She feels her frustration building. She shoves her tears back, and rolls ever so slightly to her better side. Gasping by the time she gets more comfortable, she calls Michael. Michael had lived on the first floor since she'd moved in. They'd made fast friends, and Michael had been kind enough to feed Bob whenever she'd found herself out and about. Whether it be saving the city from criminals, or working. And so, leaving behind a key with him, had been alright. Her entire place was under tight video surveillance, but Michael had always only come in, pet Bob a little, and fed her a little extra food. Which considering the diet food that she was on it was hard to judge Michael for that. Especially, when Bob loved him a little more for the extra food. "You've got Michael!" The cheery voice meets her on the other side of the phone.

"Hey Michael, it's Brooke, I can't get home – the hospital has me working doubles, do you think you could feed Bob for me?" It takes an entire lung breath, and she feels dizzy by the end of it, but she keeps the chipper tone to her voice.

"Oh, of course, Brooke! I'll feed her as soon as I'm home," Michael says in the same happy tone. Brooke inhales slowly again, cringing against the pain in her side, but keeping the phone away from her face as she does so.

"Maybe just give her two or three scoops, I might not be home for a while, is that okay?" Brooke says in the same happy voice. "Would you mind checking in on her later tonight, just in case?" She has no doubt that by the time Michael arrived, cops would be swamping the place. She knew he would take Bob with him to his place, and worry, but she couldn't let on that she already knew of the disaster that had destroyed her home. She just needed him to get Bob out of the situation, and when the time came, she would collect Bob and move on to her new life, leaving behind Michael and everything she had in that apartment. But they were only material objects.

"No problem, babe! Don't let them work you to death, okay?" Michael says, and Brooke can practically see that happy grin across the phone. She ignores the pet name he'd given her from day one, as best she can, and inhales slowly again. Withdrawing the phone away from her face again as she wheezes inward.

"Promise! Thanks, Michael!" She's feeling dizzy by now, and Michael's laugh sounds like it's echoing.

"Anytime! Ciao!" Michael disconnects, and Brooke hangs up.

She lets the phone drop from her fingertips. It hits the floor, and she gasps for air. Her brows cinch together and she feels for sure she's going to pass out. Even just pretending to be okay was taking everything out of her.

She gasps for air again, and again. Fighting for the breath she needs, and feeling the pain. He said it was 10AM. She should have healed by now. What was in that dart? She hadn't felt this weak since… The tears from before, pressing against the back of her eyes, finally breaking free and falling. They slide down the side of her face before her eyes roll up into the back of her head, and she passes out.

 ------

 He watches from the shadows of the kitchen, and when he sees the tears fall, he bites down so hard on his lip that he tastes blood. He scowls and moves to walk away, but he finds himself walking towards her instead. He grabs the phone, and puts it on the coffee table, and checks her pulse. It was thready.

Whatever the fuck was in that dart was some vicious shit. He hadn't wanted to express his concern, but she was still weak as hell from whatever the hell they had hit her with. She'd fallen back into a heavily sedated sleep. He finds himself checking her forehead again, and he can feel her burning up again. He scowls at her, and heads back to the kitchen. He immediately starts filling large Ziploc bags with ice from his freezer's ice maker again as he had the first time.

He moves her hands out of the way, and checks the saline bag she hadn't even noticed or mentioned. She hadn't even asked if he was poisoning her, or trying to kill her. She'd just assumed the best of him. That she could show up, and he would just…be a good guy for her. He may have been snippy and short with her, but he didn't want her to die. Not yet, anyway, he tries to convince himself. She had been desperate and on death's door. And for whatever reason, she had shown up at his door. Perhaps, she knew he had a weak spot for her. Even though she never questioned him holding the phone just out of her reach. Even him saying that he could finally be rid of her. She took it all with grace and kindness. Understanding and empathy.

She was the good to his evil. And he'd always known it. And yet here was, nursing her back to health. He places the bags of ice down by her legs and midsection, trying to bring the fever down from her head. Her brow furrows as she tries to toss in her sleep before whimpering in pain. She hiccups on a sob of pain in her sleep.

"Victor," she whispers. "Help me..." His eyes narrow as he leans over and plucks her eyelid open. Her pupil is a saucer. She's not anywhere near conscious. As he releases it, he ends up sitting down beside her again, looking for the trick. But there is no trick. Even he could see that. She is alone. Wounded, and terrified. She'd even asked him to stay beside her, and he'd refused. And yet, here he was. He waits quietly, alternating between anger at her for showing up here, and worried.

He frowns and checks her forehead again. The ice is working, she's dropping in temperature, however slowly, but it may not last. Whatever was in the dart, it had made her practically human. And then… she was just one woman fighting, however many men from the mafia. She'd been shot with the dart gun just once, and there were cuts across her body that even he couldn't stitch together. If he'd known sooner about the mysterious dart, he might've stitched her up, but she has fallen into complete unconsciousness for nearly fourteen hours. And she still wasn't fully healed. She might need to bleed it out, too. He wasn't sure what to do anymore. Would she even survive this? His heart clenches again, and he pushes it down furiously. Whatever the Don had been working on, it put all supers at risk. Whether they were good or bad. And that meant he was at risk as well. He scowls, and leans in close to her ear.

"You'd best remember that when it came down to it, that I fucking saved your ass," he growls. She catches him by surprise. Her eyes half open, dilated pupils and all, and she reaches for him. She throws an arm awkwardly around his shoulders and pulls him close.

"It's okay, V. I love you, we can sleep on the floor together," she whispers to him deliriously. He lets her pull him in, and press a kiss to his forehead. His throat chokes him for a moment, and he sees the teenage girl he fell in love with again. He swallows hard against the lump in his throat and his brow furrows hard.

"I'm not that kid anymore, B," he whispers back to her delirious self. Just before her eyes flutter closed again, she murmurs one soft sentence,

"That's okay, V. I'm gonna love you anyway."

The Blessing & the Curse

  Here we are again, thought the Matriarch. She cast her gaze around, taking in the mist gently rising from the lake to the west, the swirled spiral pattern in the grass here just outside the village. We seem to be favoring this place for our happier moments.  I suppose we could do worse, she mused, smiling inwardly. She looked over the glade one last time, reassuring herself that all was ready. At the heart of the spiral the font had been set and filled with water taken from the moonwell to the north, near the Temple. The blessed water glowed faintly in the twilight. For the tenth time at least she smoothed the fabric of her gold and ivory dress. Why am I so nervous today, she wondered, this is a happy occasion. Shaking her head, she took her place at the font, there to await her gathered House.

  From the south she saw him approach, her grandson, the demon hunter Forosuul. Arrayed in a formal kilt, chest bared to the wind as was the ancient way of their kind, as well as his wont. He drew near and nodded to her, saying softly, “The glade is warded all ‘round. We’ll not be getting surprise visitors today.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “If someone uninvited crosses my wards, I’ll know immediately, Grandmother”

  “Good.”  She felt a little paranoid, having him ward the entire glade, but their rivals had been shown to have little restraint. They’d come uninvited to a funeral rite, no reason to think they would not do the same for a blessing of newborn twins.

  Forosuul stepped to one side to await the rest of the House. They did not wait long. The path from the village was soon full of silver-haired figures. No retainers today, only family; a sea of palest violet and silver, the only exception was Lilybeth, mother of the twins. She proceeded all the rest, her cyan hair falling in gentle curls around her shoulders. On each arm rested one of her infant children; the boy, Ælithil, on her left, his sister Kalimè on the right. She walked slowly, still recovering from the ordeal of the twin birth. The rest of the House let her set the pace.

  The sun had gone far below the horizon by the time everyone was ready. They arrayed themselves in a close circle about the font, Kalithil and Lilybeth holding the infant twins on either side. Everyone was smiling. As Kajeda gently sprinkled the blessed water over the twins, Tindomiel and Alsabe chanted the invocation of Elune, asking her blessing and protection on the new generation of the Silverthorn line. Their words carried gently on the night breeze.

Elune, goddess of our home, Goddess of our hearth, We bring tonight new things New members of our line, In these lands, From which we spring. We ask you, Elune, to watch over them Watch over them as they grow. Watch over them as they live. Watch over them with love.

  When the prayer and the anointing was done, Alsabe took the twins, grinning hugely and bouncing them in her arms. Tindomiel, smiling beatifically, took her place next to her husband, Forosuul, while Kalithil and Lilybeth turned to the assembled House to say their thanks. Kajeda watched it all, thinking to herself that she had not experienced a more perfect moment in thousands of years.

  From the corner of her eye, Kajeda saw Forosuul’s head whip around, towards the south. His tattoos surged with power, casting a red glare over the assembled House, and in a flash of crimson he had dashed away. Kajeda, trusting him to deal with any intrusion, moved to shield Lilybeth and the twins.

  Lilybeth, more sensitive to arcane emanations than most, had felt a strange buzzing sensation at the same moment when Forosuul had turned his head. Ever curious, she had turned, and seeing Kajeda move swiftly in her direction, leaned to one side to see what was happening.

  It seemed to Kajeda that she could hear the wind in her ears, as if the fates were howling their hunger at her. Everything seemed to move slowly. She could see Lilybeth go wide-eyed at what she witnessed, could see the girl’s face twist into an expression of hatred mixed with grief. Turning, she saw the source of Lilybeth’s rage. Mire, with her shal’dorei felsworn in tow. Briefly, the single thought crossed her mind, You fools, why would you come here, and then she felt, deep in her bones, a crackling sensation like the gathering of a thousand storms.

  There was a blinding flash followed by a searing heat, and most of the assembled House was thrown violently to the ground. Kajeda, shaking her head to clear it, saw Lilybeth standing over her, limned in violet flames. Thrusting her hands forward, Lilybeth poured every ounce of power she could manage at the woman responsible for her mother’s death. Mire’s felsworn shielded her, causing Lilybeth’s furious magic to careen around the glade, consigning every tree and blade of grass to the flame. Lilybeth, screaming in rage, poured power through her outstretched hands until her weary body could take no more, and collapsed. Kajeda scrambled to her feet, trying to assess the situation.

  To her left, one of the felsworn had ceased his efforts. His body was rising into the air as a ghastly wail tore from his lips. His eyes began to glow like coals. Kajeda smiled grimly, knowing Kalithil had regained his feet and was dealing with the man. Behind her, Dæsin had shielded Alsabe and the twins from the initial release of power, but was now lying dazed as Alsabe protected the infants. Forosuul had used his fel-spawned abilities to careen across the glade, but was battered aside by one of the felsworn and slammed into the burning trunk of a great tree, stunning him momentarily.

  In that moment, the shal’dorei, no doubt believing he could provide cover to himself and his mistress and make an escape, chose to go on the offensive. Extending a withered hand, he let fly a train of green sorcerous bolts towards Alsabe and the infants she carried. Reacting with protective instinct, Kajeda flung herself in the path of the bilious darts.

  The pain was indescribable as the bolts tore through her midsection. She fell to her side on the scorched ground with an unceremonious thud, the fel magic eating at her insides. She watched the scene before her curiously, as if she could not quite understand what was happening. Silannah, her treasure, roared when Kajeda was struck. She charged across the burning glade, heedless of any danger.  The felsworn used his power to batter her to one side as he had done to Forosuul before. She tumbled across the clearing. With the felsworn focussed on her for a moment, Forosuul leapt into the air and let the fel within him come forth, transfiguring his features into a hulking, scaly abomination. He came crashing down on the felsworn’s head. Lifting the shal’dorei up, he brutally impaled him on his ancient warblades. He stood like that for what seemed like ages. Arms high in the air, the shal’dorei wriggling atop the blades Forosuul held. The creature’s blood was dripping onto Forosuul’s face and he was speaking to the felsworn through gritted teeth. His words were lost in the conflagration.

  Behind her, she heard a wailing cry begin.  It rose in volume and pitch, becoming a cacophonous howl. She was having trouble with her eyes, darkness creeping in from the edges of her vision, but she thought she saw her beloved daughter, Tindomiel, step forward. The howl was coming from her. Void power more potent than anything Kajeda had ever seen pooled at the younger woman’s feet and snaked across the burning glade towards Mire, who stood wide-eyed, in a panic over the fury she had engendered.

  As the shadows reached Mire they formed themselves into writhing tendrils and wrapped around her. Their tips bore into her flesh, burrowing down to her bones.  Soon Tindomiel’s howls of rage were joined by Mire’s screams of terror and agony. Mire’s eyes looked to Tindomiel, pleading for mercy from her one-time daughter. Tindomiel’s answer was a savage shriek. Slowly Tindomiel used her shadow tendrils to rend her birth mother’s body. Asked later, no one was sure how long it had lasted, for they had all turned their faces from the horror of it. When Tindomiel was done several slabs of bloody abused flesh struck the floor of the glade. Mire Whisperwind, Second of the House of Whisperwind, was no more.

  Soon the clamor of the sorcerous battle faded, leaving only the roar of the flames and the weeping of the survivors. Dæsin and Tellanon, remarkably cool-headed, regained their feet and began to gather everyone up to flee before authorities could arrive.

  Silannah, ignoring everyone else, gathered up Kajeda’s broken form and staggered away from the glade, trying to leave the fires behind. Afterwards she could never tell how long she walked, but she did not stop until she had reached green spaces once more. Some instinct or ancestral memory must have guided her steps, for when she slumped to the ground with Kajeda in her arms, she looked up and saw a thick-trunked tree with white bark and silver-blue leaves arching over them. On every branch wicked gray thorn sprouted, some a foot long.

 “A silverthorn…tree,” wheezed her beloved Kajeda. “How…did you find one? I thought they…died out.”

 Shocked that the Matriarch still lived, Silannah answered, “Hush, my love, it doesn’t matter.  Just stay with me.”

  Kajeda reached up weakly, her hand caressing Silannah’s cheek, “My treasure…my…shining gift, my magic spell…” Weeping with abandon, Silannah pulled her lover close, unable to find words. “My treasure…you are the greatest joy…”  Kajeda’s words were interrupted by a fit of racked coughing.  When the last spasm died, she did not draw breath again.

  Wailing inconsolably, Silannah rocked her back and forth for a very long time. When finally she relented, she laid her beloved out at the base of the silverthorn tree. Gathering stones from all about, she made a cairn over her body. She worked far into the following day. When the labor was done, she knelt next to the cairn. She stayed there for days, praying quietly through her tears.  At the end she stood, and said only these words: “I am no treasure.  I am a curse.”

It Was The Night: 2

Author’s Note: welcome to part 2! again, please note this is not meant to be historically accurate lmao i cant seem to stress this enough Pairing: Chanyeol x Reader (oc; female) Genre: drama; historical au; romance; suspense Rating (this chapter): PG Word Count: 1,722

II.

It has never escaped my attention that Monsieur Park had, from the time I was child, better perceptions of my future and interests than I have ever been able to decipher. From the moment he saw me, singing to God and to the mass, he seemed to know me, seemed to see inside my soul, or, perhaps, heard my soul, and divined my needs before I could voice them.

My arrival at the Opera seemed, for all intents and purposes, a very long overdue homecoming. At long last I had found men and women, boys and girls, whose knowledge and passions so greatly matched mine. Their continual and profound sense of humour, wit, and imagination provided me with the endless hours of the entertainment I had so been craving.

Within weeks I had made a home of my new chambers, secret imaginary friends replaced with boys as talented as I, and girls with pink, smirking lips, glimmers of possibility contained in the bat of an eye or the flick of a skirt. In the seamstress, I had found the mother figure I had been lacking; in the various stagehands, teachers and playmates, limitless in their knowledge and boundless in their energy, their playfulness.

My first night, the older girls in the room, wickedness and mischief dancing in their rises, pushed our six beds together. As we clambered onto our thin mattresses, they began to tell us, the three new choral members, the story of the Opera Ghost. We sat cross legged, our night dresses tucked beneath our knees to keep out the draft, with a slight forward lean to our spine as we clutched desperately to every word Clara, the eldest in our room, spoke.

Keeping her voice low, she told of music in the recital hall from a grand piano without its player, of footsteps in the rafters of the chapel, dark shadows lurking in mirrors. Always the same shape yet existing wholly without a true form, a paradox of malintent that left a chill wherever it passed.

I drank every detail, eyes wide with curiosity. I imagined a gruesome hanging in the chapel, a suicide in the throes of the black death, and, perhaps most surprising of all, I did not blush for my indiscretion. In truth, I was titillated by the drama of these thoughts, giggled to myself, excited by the thought of what Father Ezekiel would think of me now so soon after my departure. Had I already succumbed to a Godless city? Given over to the temptation of the scarlet warmth of bloodshed? Excessive, theatrical, melodramatic, and turning from the watchful eyes of angels?

‘How did he die?’ asked a young, quiet tongued girl named Jacqueline, with whom I had shared my carriage ride.

I was so pleased she had asked the question begging release from my lips. Yes, I mentally pleaded, tell me if it was bloody, if it was silent, if his guilt is spread throughout the mortar of the stones.

‘That’s the thing,’ Clara whispered, forcing all of us to lean centimetres closer. ‘He is very much alive!’

The moment she said “alive,” Elisabet, Clara’s partner in crime, shouted with a howl so terrible, all the girls screamed. Clara laughed in the candlelight, her jaw seeming to detach with the force of her cackle as her cheeks and eyes suddenly became sunken, hollow. Our cries and their laughter only subsided when Madame Catherine, the caretaker of the grounds, opened our chamber door and demanded we turn out our candles with a draconian glare.

I stayed awake that night beneath the itchy cotton of my bedding, until the birth of the sun in our picture window, imagining a man draped in shadows and living without light. Would his skin feel like wax? Did he move along the river of plumbing, with the tide of the Seine and amongst the bones of fallen stone masons? His hands dominated my mind, the fingers of a pianist with the bones of a skeleton, strong, cold, and lethal.

But as wild as all these thoughts may have been, as scandalous and fascinating they were, I decided just before dawn that his existence was impossible, a fabrication in the minds of girls hoping to exert their authority.

Such a thing could not be real, I told myself pragmatically. Surely such a famous institution would know of a man living within its walls, either to hide from Parisian police inspectors or the slow starvation of poverty. No, such a thing would not be tolerated.

I lived, rather joyously, for three years with this notion, and I watched, yearly, as Clara, and eventually Elisabet told the story of the infamous Opera Ghost. Such experiences had never once happened to me, nor to any of the members of staff I had bravely asked on a December night when the wind held a particular musical howl in its blusters.

‘Your stitches are becoming messy, child,’ scolded the seamstress as I mended a torn frock.

I squeezed my eyes shut, then, tried furiously to ease their dryness and bring forth the sound of blood rushing into my ears. These things, I hoped, would distract mind from the sound of the wind.

‘Apologies, Madame,’ I said, attempting hastily to re-thread my needle. ‘It’s just...the wind…’

All further words died on my tongue before I could voice them, suddenly feeling terribly foolish for these worries, but still, in my childish mind, the possibility of an opera ghost felt terribly real, if only for this brief moment.

The seamstress scoffed, drumming her fingers on the mess of my table. ‘Fear not the wind,’ she stated, though there was some compassion in her tone. ‘It will bring you no harm.’

Still, though, these platitudes did not appease me. For it was not the wind that bothered me, it was the humming within, the pattern and its wistful qualities that brought a chill to my spine. My fingers fumbled with my needle for several moments, caught between the desire to speak and the desire to align myself with the adults around me, wanting to sound mature and ladylike in my beliefs. In the end, my fear won over, wanting confirmation or, perhaps, affirmation, that my suspicions were correct.

‘But the opera ghost, Madam. Does he not live in the wind? In the walls?’

Even as I said the words, I regretted them, wanted to slip beneath the stones of the floor because even such a statement sounded implausible, foolish in its sentiments. And, for this, I was reprimanded.

The seamstress laughed, although the sound was hollow, pressing a hand at the bodice of her corset to ease her breath before she spoke. ‘Ignorant child,’ she said as her laughter calmed, ‘that is simply a story. A story that has been told even when I was a girl in this opera. Don’t believe such tales. Head down and focus your energies on your stitches.’

These words silenced the conversation, made my back curl over as I diligently returned to my work. A sense of pride settled into my bones, glad for the assurance that this was impossible, unlikely, and that I, of course, had been correct in my suspicions. My stitches, then, became straighter, more taught, and no longer did the wind carry a hymn.

Like this, I lived in jovial contentment until the eve of my seventeenth birthday, when I was the last to bed as it was my turn to assist the maids in costume redressing for Les Abencérages. Under the cover of twilight and with one crooked candle as my guide, I made my way to the basins for my nightly wash. The halls had grown dark, shadowed high with the contrast of dark stones and the flicker of firelight. Alone, my footsteps fell in hurried patterns, carrying my body on the balls of my feet so as not to disturb the silence.

Sometimes, as I turned sharp corners, I felt myself being followed, heard scratches in the walls that felt animalistic or in human. As I walked, I reminded myself the building was old, that the foundation of the architecture had settled into the ground like bones. I imagined the building growing, a great maw behind the walls opening to shift around the stones, the structure of the opera house constantly expanding as though it were alive.

In the bath salon, I grimaced as I set my candle on the stand by the mirror to undress, the thought of bathing in the left over, cold water infinitely less than ideal. There was no rush in my motions, choosing instead to delay the chill of the dull water over my skin for as long as possible. My mind raced with music and lessons from the day, fingers still store from my grip on the needle, joints aching. Distracted, perhaps, is the best way to describe my mind, eyes sore and tired, and I think that is why I felt the truth of this evening was muddled in the mire of exhaustion. To this day, I sometimes wonder if I saw it at all, if the vision had been a truth, even though I have every confirmation that it was.

For as the light flickered, I noticed a shadow in the corner of the mirror. It appeared first out of the corner of my eye until I offered it my full focus, my full attention. I waited in stillness for the vision to fade and, when it did not, I became entranced.

I did not yell, I did not gasp. Instead I remained, still, trembling fingers poised on the drawstring of my bloomers as I studied it. It held the shape of a man, tall, and slim, distracted and paying no attention to me. I could only see the outline of his profile as he spoke, quite vigorously, with an unseen conversation partner. Finally, with a flick of his hand, he turned to face me and, in the dim light and the grit of the mirror, I could only just see full lips and a strong jaw before he slipped away through a corridor that did not exist behind me.

I left the bath salon, then, choosing instead to wash the following evening.

In Secret

The traveller fared slowly on his way, who fared towards Paris from England in the autumn of the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two. More than enough of bad roads, bad equipages, and bad horses, he would have encountered to delay him, though the fallen and unfortunate King of France had been upon his throne in all his glory; but, the changed times were fraught with other obstacles than these. Every town-gate and village taxing-house had its band of citizenpatriots, with their national muskets in a most explosive state of readiness, who stopped all comers and goers, cross-questioned them, inspected their papers, looked for their names in lists of their own, turned them back, or sent them on, or stopped them and laid them in hold, as their capricious judgment or fancy deemed best for the dawning Republic One and Indivisible, of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death. A very few French leagues of his journey were accomplished, when Charles Darnay began to perceive that for him along these country roads there was no hope of return until he should have been declared a good citizen at Paris. Whatever might befall now, he must on to his journey's end. Not a mean village closed upon him, not a common barrier dropped across the road behind him, but he knew it to be another iron door in the series that was barred between him and England. The universal watchfulness so encompassed him, that if he had been taken in a net, or were being forwarded to his destination in a cage, he could not have felt his freedom more completely gone. This universal watchfulness not only stopped him on the highway twenty times in a stage, but retarded his progress twenty times in a day, by riding after him and taking him back, riding before him and stopping him by anticipation, riding with him and keeping him in charge. He had been days upon his journey in France alone, when he went to bed tired out, in a little town on the high road, still a long way from Paris. Nothing but the production of the afflicted Gabelle's letter from his prison of the Abbaye would have got him on so far. Ms difficulty at the guard-house in this small place had been such, that he felt his journey to have come to a crisis. And he was, therefore, as little surprised as a man could be, to find himself awakened at the small inn to which he had been remitted until morning, in the middle of the night. Awakened by a timid local functionary and three armed patriots in rough red caps and with pipes in their mouths, who sat down on the bed. "Emigrant," said the functionary, "I am going to send you on to Paris, under an escort." "Citizen, I desire nothing more than to get to Paris, though I could dispense with the escort." "Silence!" growled a red-cap, striking at the coverlet with the butt-end of his musket. "Peace, aristocrat!" "It is as the good patriot says," observed the timid functionary. "You are an aristocrat, and must have an escort - and must pay for it." "I have no choice," said Charles Darnay. "Choice! Listen to him!" cried the same scowling red-cap. "As if it was not a favour to be protected from the lamp-iron!" "It is always as the good patriot says," observed the functionary. "Rise and dress yourself, emigrant." Darnay complied, and was taken back to the guard-house, where other patriots in rough red caps were smoking, drinking, and sleeping, by a watch-fire. Here he paid a heavy price for his escort, and hence he started with it on the wet, wet roads at three o'clock in the morning. The escort were two mounted patriots in red caps and tri-coloured cockades, armed with national muskets and sabres, who rode one on either side of him. The escorted governed his own horse, but a loose line was attached to his bridle, the end of which one of the patriots kept girded round his wrist. In this state they set forth with the sharp rain driving in their faces: clattering at a heavy dragoon trot over the uneven town pavement, and out upon the mire-deep roads. In this state they traversed without change, except of horses and pace, all the miredeep leagues that lay between them and the capital. They travelled in the night, halting an hour or two after daybreak, and lying by until the twilight fell. The escort were so wretchedly clothed, that they twisted straw round their bare legs, and thatched their ragged shoulders to keep the wet off. Apart from the personal discomfort of being so attended, and apart from such considerations of present danger as arose from one of the patriots being chronically drunk, and carrying his musket very recklessly, Charles Darnay did not allow the restraint that was laid upon him to awaken any serious fears in his breast; for, he reasoned with himself that it could have no reference to the merits of an individual case that was not yet stated, and of representations, confirmable by the prisoner in the Abbaye, that were not yet made. But when they came to the town of Beauvais - which they did at eventide, when the streets were filled with people - he could not conceal from himself that the aspect of affairs was very alarming. An ominous crowd gathered to see him dismount of the posting-yard, and many voices called out loudly, "Down with the emigrant!" He stopped in the act of swinging himself out of his saddle, and, resuming it as his safest place, said: "Emigrant, my friends! Do you not see me here, in France, of my own will?" "You are a cursed emigrant," cried a farrier, making at him in a furious manner through the press, hammer in hand; "and you are a cursed aristocrat!" The postmaster interposed himself between this man and the rider's bridle (at which he was evidently making), and soothingly said, "Let him be; let him be! He will be judged at Paris." "Judged!" repeated the farrier, swinging his hammer. "Ay! and condemned as a traitor." At this the crowd roared approval. Checking the postmaster, who was for turning his horse's head to the yard (the drunken patriot sat composedly in his saddle looking on, with the line round his wrist), Darnay said, as soon as he could make his voice heard: "Friends, you deceive yourselves, or you are deceived. I am not a traitor." "He lies!" cried the smith. "He is a traitor since the decree. His life is forfeit to the people. His cursed life is not his own!" At the instant when Darnay saw a rush in the eyes of the crowd, which another instant would have brought upon him, the postmaster turned his horse into the yard, the escort rode in close upon his horse's flanks, and the postmaster shut and barred the crazy double gates. The farrier struck a blow upon them with his hammer, and the crowd groaned; but, no more was done. "What is this decree that the smith spoke of?" Darnay asked the postmaster, when he had thanked him, and stood beside him in the yard. "Truly, a decree for selling the property of emigrants." "When passed?" "On the fourteenth." "The day I left England!" "Everybody says it is but one of several, and that there will be others - if there are not already-banishing all emigrants, and condemning all to death who return. That is what he meant when he said your life was not your own." "But there are no such decrees yet?" "What do I know!" said the postmaster, shrugging his shoulders; "there may be, or there will be. It is all the same. What would you have?" They rested on some straw in a loft until the middle of the night, and then rode forward again when all the town was asleep. Among the many wild changes observable on familiar things which made this wild ride unreal, not the least was the seeming rarity of sleep. After long and lonely spurring over dreary roads, they would come to a cluster of poor cottages, not steeped in darkness, but all glittering with lights, and would find the people, in a ghostly manner in the dead of the night, circling hand in hand round a shrivelled tree of Liberty, or all drawn up together singing a Liberty song. Happily, however, there was sleep in Beauvais that night to help them out of it and they passed on once more into solitude and loneliness: jingling through the untimely cold and wet, among impoverished fields that had yielded no fruits of the earth that year, diversified by the blackened remains of burnt houses, and by the sudden emergence from ambuscade, and sharp reining up across their way, of patriot patrols on the watch on all the roads. Daylight at last found them before the wall of Paris. The barrier was closed and strongly guarded when they rode up to it. "Where are the papers of this prisoner?" demanded a resolute-looking man in authority, who was summoned out by the guard. Naturally struck by the disagreeable word, Charles Darnay requested the speaker to take notice that he was a free traveller and French citizen, in charge of an escort which the disturbed state of the country had imposed upon him, and which he had paid for. "Where," repeated the same personage, without taking any heed of him whatever, "are the papers of this prisoner?" The drunken patriot had them in his cap, and produced them. Casting his eyes over Gabelle's letter, the same personage in authority showed some disorder and surprise, and looked at Darnay with a close attention. He left escort and escorted without saying a word, however, and went into the guard-room; meanwhile, they sat upon their horses outside the gate. Looking about him while in this state of suspense, Charles Darnay observed that the gate was held by a mixed guard of soldiers and patriots, the latter far outnumbering the former; and that while ingress into the city for peasants' carts bringing in supplies, and for similar traffic and traffickers, was easy enough, egress, even for the homeliest people, was very difficult. A numerous medley of men and women, not to mention beasts and vehicles of various sorts, was waiting to issue forth; but, the previous identification was so strict, that they filtered through the barrier very slowly. Some of these people knew their turn for examination to be so far off, that they lay down on the ground to sleep or smoke, while others talked together, or loitered about. The red cap and tri-colour cockade were universal, both among men and women. When he had sat in his saddle some half-hour, taking note of these things, Darnay found himself confronted by the same man in authority, who directed the guard to open the barrier. Then he delivered to the escort, drunk and sober, a receipt for the escorted, and requested him to dismount. He did so, and the two patriots, leading his tired horse, turned and rode away without entering the city. He accompanied his conductor into a guard-room, smelling of common wine and tobacco, where certain soldiers and patriots, asleep and awake, drunk and sober, and in various neutral states between sleeping and waking, drunkenness and sobriety, were standing and lying about. The light in the guard-house, half derived from the waning oil-lamps of the night, and half from the overcast day, was in a correspondingly uncertain condition. Some registers were lying open on a desk, and an officer of a coarse, dark aspect, presided over these. "Citizen Defarge," said he to Darnay's conductor, as he took a slip of paper to write on. "Is this the emigrant Evremonde?" "This is the man." "Your age, Evremonde?" "Thirty-seven." "Married, Evremonde?" "Yes." "Where married?" "In England." "Without doubt. Where is your wife, Evremonde?" "In England." "Without doubt. You are consigned, Evremonde, to the prison of La Force." "Just Heaven!" exclaimed Darnay. "Under what law, and for what offence?" The officer looked up from his slip of paper for a moment. "We have new laws, Evremonde, and new offences, since you were here." He said it with a hard smile, and went on writing. "I entreat you to observe that I have come here voluntarily, in response to that written appeal of a fellow-countryman which lies before you. I demand no more than the opportunity to do so without delay. Is not that my right?" "Emigrants have no rights, Evremonde," was the stolid reply. The officer wrote until he had finished, read over to himself what he had written, sanded it, and handed it to Defarge, with the words "In secret." Defarge motioned with the paper to the prisoner that he must accompany him. The prisoner obeyed, and a guard of two armed patriots attended them. "Is it you," said Defarge, in a low voice, as they went down the guardhouse steps and turned into Paris, "who married the daughter of Doctor Manette, once a prisoner in the Bastille that is no more?" "Yes," replied Darnay, looking at him with surprise. "My name is Defarge, and I keep a wine-shop in the Quarter Saint Antoine. Possibly you have heard of me." "My wife came to your house to reclaim her father? Yes!" The word "wife" seemed to serve as a gloomy reminder to Defarge, to say with sudden impatience, "In the name of that sharp female newly-born, and called La Guillotine, why did you come to France?" "You heard me say why, a minute ago. Do you not believe it is the truth?" "A bad truth for you," said Defarge, speaking with knitted brows, and looking straight before him. "Indeed I am lost here. All here is so unprecedented, so changed, so sudden and unfair, that I am absolutely lost. Will you render me a little help?" "None." Defarge spoke, always looking straight before him. "Will you answer me a single question?" "Perhaps. According to its nature. You can say what it is." "In this prison that I am going to so unjustly, shall I have some free communication with the world outside?" "You will see." "I am not to be buried there, prejudged, and without any means of presenting my case?" "You will see. But, what then? Other people have been similarly buried in worse prisons, before now." "But never by me, Citizen Defarge." Defarge glanced darkly at him for answer, and walked on in a steady and set silence. The deeper he sank into this silence, the fainter hope there was - or so Darnay thought - of his softening in any slight degree. He, therefore, made haste to say: "It is of the utmost importance to me (you know, Citizen, even better than I, of how much importance), that I should be able to communicate to Mr. Lorry of Tellson's Bank, an English gentleman who is now in Paris, the simple fact, without comment, that I have been thrown into the prison of La Force. Will you cause that to be done for me?" "I will do," Defarge doggedly rejoined, "nothing for you. My duty is to my country and the People. I am the sworn servant of both, against you. I will do nothing for you." Charles Darnay felt it hopeless to entreat him further, and his pride was touched besides. As they walked on in silence, he could not but see how used the people were to the spectacle of prisoners passing along the streets. The very children scarcely noticed him. A few passers turned their heads, and a few shook their fingers at him as an aristocrat; otherwise, that a man in good clothes should be going to prison, was no more remarkable than that a labourer in working clothes should be going to work. In one narrow, dark, and dirty street through which they passed, an excited orator, mounted on a stool, was addressing an excited audience on the cranes against the people, of the king and the royal family. The few words that he caught from this man's lips, first made it known to Charles Darnay that the king was in prison, and that the foreign ambassadors had one and all left Paris. On the road (except at Beauvais) he had heard absolutely nothing. The escort and the universal watchfulness had completely isolated him. That he had fallen among far greater dangers than those which had developed themselves when he left England, he of course knew now. That perils had thickened about him fast, and might thicken faster and faster yet, he of course knew now. He could not but admit to himself that he might not have made this journey, if he could have foreseen the events of a few days. And yet his misgivings were not so dark as, imagined by the light of this later time, they would appear. Troubled as the future was, it was the unknown future, and in its obscurity there was ignorant hope. The horrible massacre, days and nights long, which, within a few rounds of the clock, was to set a great mark of blood upon the blessed garnering time of harvest, was as far out of his knowledge as if it had been a hundred thousand years away. The "sharp female newly-born, and called La Guillotine," was hardly known to him, or to the generality of people, by name. The frightful deeds that were to be soon done, were probably unimagined at that time in the brains of the doers. How could they have a place in the shadowy conceptions of a gentle mind? Of unjust treatment in detention and hardship, and in cruel separation from his wife and child, he foreshadowed the likelihood, or the certainty; but, beyond this, he dreaded nothing distinctly. With this on his mind, which was enough to carry into a dreary prison courtyard, he arrived at the prison of La Force. A man with a bloated face opened the strong wicket, to whom Defarge presented "The Emigrant Evremonde." "What the Devil! How many more of them!" exclaimed the man with the bloated face. Defarge took his receipt without noticing the exclamation, and withdrew, with his two fellow-patriots. "What the Devil, I say again!" exclaimed the gaoler, left with his wife. "How many more!" The gaoler's wife, being provided with no answer to the question, merely replied, "One must have patience, my dear!" Three turnkeys who entered responsive to a bell she rang, echoed the sentiment, and one added, "For the love of Liberty;" which sounded in that place like an inappropriate conclusion. The prison of La Force was a gloomy prison, dark and filthy, and with a horrible smell of foul sleep in it. Extraordinary how soon the noisome flavour of imprisoned sleep, becomes manifest in all such places that are ill cared for! "In secret, too," grumbled the gaoler, looking at the written paper. "As if I was not already full to bursting!" He stuck the paper on a file, in an ill-humour, and Charles Darnay awaited his further pleasure for half an hour: sometimes, pacing to and fro in the strong arched room: sometimes, resting on a stone seat: in either case detained to be imprinted on the memory of the chief and his subordinates. "Come!" said the chief, at length taking up his keys, "come with me, emigrant." Through the dismal prison twilight, his new charge accompanied him by corridor and staircase, many doors clanging and locking behind them, until they came into a large, low, vaulted chamber, crowded with prisoners of both sexes. The women were seated at a long table, reading and writing, knitting, sewing, and embroidering; the men were for the most part standing behind their chairs, or lingering up and down the room. In the instinctive association of prisoners with shameful crime and disgrace, the new-comer recoiled from this company. But the crowning unreality of his long unreal ride, was, their all at once rising to receive him, with every refinement of manner known to the time, and with all the engaging graces and courtesies of life. So strangely clouded were these refinements by the prison manners and gloom, so spectral did they become in the inappropriate squalor and misery through which they were seen, that Charles Darnay seemed to stand in a company of the dead. Ghosts all! The ghost of beauty, the ghost of stateliness, the ghost of elegance, the ghost of pride, the ghost of frivolity, the ghost of wit, the ghost of youth, the ghost of age, all waiting their dismissal from the desolate shore, all turning on him eyes that were changed by the death they had died in coming there. It struck him motionless. The gaoler standing at his side, and the other gaolers moving about, who would have been well enough as to appearance in the ordinary exercise of their functions, looked so extravagantly coarse contrasted with sorrowing mothers and blooming daughters who were there - with the apparitions of the coquette, the young beauty, and the mature woman delicately bred - that the inversion of all experience and likelihood which the scene of shadows presented, was heightened to its utmost. Surely, ghosts all. Surely, the long unreal ride some progress of disease that had brought him to these gloomy shades! "In the name of the assembled companions in misfortune," said a gentleman of courtly appearance and address, coming forward, "I have the honour of giving you welcome to La Force, and of condoling with you on the calamity that has brought you among us. May it soon terminate happily! It would be an impertinence elsewhere, but it is not so here, to ask your name and condition?" Charles Darnay roused himself, and gave the required information, in words as suitable as he could find. "But I hope," said the gentleman, following the chief gaoler with his eyes, who moved across the room, "that you are not in secret?" "I do not understand the meaning of the term, but I have heard them say so." "Ah, what a pity! We so much regret it! But take courage; several members of our society have been in secret, at first, and it has lasted but a short time." Then he added, raising his voice, "I grieve to inform the society - in secret." There was a murmur of commiseration as Charles Darnay crossed the room to a grated door where the gaoler awaited him, and many voices - among which, the soft and compassionate voices of women were conspicuous - gave him good wishes and encouragement. He turned at the grated door, to render the thanks of his heart; it closed under the gaoler's hand; and the apparitions vanished from his sight forever. The wicket opened on a stone staircase, leading upward. When they bad ascended forty steps (the prisoner of half an hour already counted them), the gaoler opened a low black door, and they passed into a solitary cell. It struck cold and damp, but was not dark. "Yours," said the gaoler. "Why am I confined alone?" "How do I know!" "I can buy pen, ink, and paper?" "Such are not my orders. You will be visited, and can ask then. At present, you may buy your food, and nothing more." There were in the cell, a chair, a table, and a straw mattress. As the gaoler made a general inspection of these objects, and of the four walls, before going out, a wandering fancy wandered through the mind of the prisoner leaning against the wall opposite to him, that this gaoler was so unwholesomely bloated, both in face and person, as to look like a man who had been drowned and filled with water. When the gaoler was gone, he thought in the same wandering way, "Now am I left, as if I were dead." Stopping then, to look down at the mattress, he turned from it with a sick feeling, and thought, "And here in these crawling creatures is the first condition of the body after death." "Five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half." The prisoner walked to and fro in his cell, counting its measurement, and the roar of the city arose like muffled drums with a wild swell of voices added to them. "He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes." The prisoner counted the measurement again, and paced faster, to draw his mind with him from that latter repetition. "The ghosts that vanished when the wicket closed. There was one among them, the appearance of a lady dressed in black, who was leaning in the embrasure of a window, and she had a light shining upon her golden hair, and she looked like * * * * Let us ride on again, for God's sake, through the illuminated villages with the people all awake! * * * * He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes. * * * * Five paces by four and a half." With such scraps tossing and rolling upward from the depths of his mind, the prisoner walked faster and faster, obstinately counting and counting; and the roar of the city changed to this extent - that it still rolled in like muffled drums, but with the wail of voices that he knew, in the swell that rose above them.